Art Business Talk with Alexandrea Pangburn

In a recent interview, artist and muralist Alexandrea Pangburn shared invaluable insights into building a successful art business, from managing finances and marketing to navigating sales channels and personalizing prints.

About Alexandrea Pangburn

Alexandrea Pangburn with her dog Bingo.

Based in Lexington, Kentucky, Alexandrea Pangburn specializes in murals and artworks featuring local flora and fauna, aiming to educate viewers on conservation. She is also the Executive Director of Babe Walls, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization co-founded in 2019. Babe Walls creates safe spaces for women and non-binary street artists through festivals, workshops, and community-building events across various locations, including Colorado, North Dakota, and Georgia, with team members in Mexico City, Kentucky, and New Mexico.

Squarespace Website

Alexandrea uses Squarespace for her website, valuing its user-friendly, drag-and-drop interface, which she has personally managed since 2020. “I’m not super tech savvy and I don’t know how to write code, so Squarespace was just the one thing that I knew that I could easily drop and drag, add photos, make a template how I wanted to.” 

By our estimation, that’s a great pick for her and for most artists (check out our review of the best website builders for artists).

Prints, Personalization, Sourcing, and Pricing

Artist Alexandrea Pangburn painting a mural.

A key aspect of Alexandrea’s print business is personalization: she hand-signs and numbers each print, adding a special touch for buyers. This approach stems from her own desire for personalized art when making purchases. She is also exploring hand-embellished prints, which are currently in the research and development phase. Deciding whether to hand sign or not is one of the biggest questions most artists we talk to face. Hand signing is more personalized and arguably adds more value. Of course, it also makes fulfilling orders more time intensive and makes it harder to do on demand print drop shipping (for a deeper look at this along with some alternatives to hand signing, check out this guide).

Alexandrea's digitization process involves collaborating with local printers. She provides the original artwork, which is then scanned and color-matched. After approving a test print, she specifies the desired size, paper type, weight, and gloss. She prefers small print runs, typically around 10, to create higher demand. If prints are an important part of your business, it’s critical to find a trusted partner that can handle your needs at the quality level you want.

Alexandrea generally prices prints under or around $100, reflecting market trends and her goal to keep art affordable. For shipping, Squarespace's limitations led her to implement a bulked-in shipping cost for originals and a flat $10 fee for prints and stickers. She often refunds shipping for sticker-only orders as they can be mailed with just a stamp. For prints, the $10 covers packing and shipping costs via UPS or FedEx, which she personally handles to ensure proper handling. 

It’s worth noting that Squarespace recently updated their shipping options so it’s possible that a more robust set of rules could be implemented. For example, items like stickers can be assigned to a shipping profile that offers free shipping, prints can get their own rules, and so on. We have an introduction to different shipping strategies you can check out here.

Sales Channels and Gallery Experiences

Alexandrea primarily sells her art through her website and galleries. She is considering participating in art markets next year, pending an evaluation of setup costs and potential returns. Her experience with galleries is mixed; larger galleries with extensive clientele lists are valuable for reaching a global audience she wouldn't otherwise access. For smaller, local galleries, she consciously creates more affordable pieces and is selective about partnerships. The commission rates of the galleries need to align with the value they bring. Extensive clientele lists may justify a 50% commission, but 30-35% is her limit for smaller galleries that offer less value.

Business Advice and Networking

A mural by artist Alexandrea Pangburn

Alexandrea emphasizes the importance of managing taxes, noting the benefits of switching from an LLC to an S-Corp, despite the increased administrative steps like setting up payroll for herself through a contractor. Find some trusted professionals to work with and make sure you have things set up right, it can save lots of headaches later.

For aspiring artists, her key advice is networking. This involves cold emailing businesses and developing a pitch deck to showcase capabilities and art. Her pitch deck, inspired by Pandr Design, details her services, including indoor and outdoor murals, materials, certifications, workshops, and commissions, making it easy for potential collaborators to share. To our knowledge, this is a pretty novel approach. Most artists we talk to put lots of effort into marketing, but not so much into outbound sales. This makes a lot of sense with outreaching to businesses to land mural projects or large commissions.

Cold emailing can be a numbers game so she maintains low expectations for cold email responses. Some have led to immediate or future projects. She focuses on intentional outreach to brands that align with her values, particularly flora and fauna conservation. There’s no value in outreaching to brands 

Conclusion

We appreciated catching up with Alexandrea Pangburn and learning more about her art practice and her work with Babe Walls. Her focus on community and promoting conservation resonate with us. Of course it helps that her art is killer!

Do yourself a favor and go check her out to learn more. Follow her on Instagram and check out her website. Check out Babe Walls to learn more and get involved.