STARTING OVER

by Brandy Heinrich

Cover image of mimosas in Tampa, FL

Starting over is hard. It’s almost as hard as starting in the first place. Last year, my family moved from the Tampa Bay region, where I’d spent most of my life, where my husband and son had spent all of theirs, and moved north, to Beaver County. That’s where I was born, and my husband and I had talked about moving away from Florida for years. With remote work came an opportunity, and we decided to act on it. But we were definitely starting over in so many ways.

Connections and relationships can take years to establish as you grow your reputation and build up a network as an artist. How do you navigate the kept gates of the art world? Where do you even start? It can be really daunting for someone approaching the industry as a beginner. I’d started focusing on being a “serious artist” around 2015, participating in my first public art show at a tavern at the end of 2016. That was also my first sale. Being self-taught, without a fine art background, I had to work to make inroads in the local art scene. Early on I encountered a lot of rejection and navigated the gauntlet of application and entry fees and “members only” shows. Cliques don’t cease to exist once you grow up and the reality is that oftentimes your best breaks really are a result of who you know, so one of the things I’d tell anyone as an emerging artist looking to get into their local art scene is to find the grassroots groups, such as casual art meetups, and start by meeting people in those circles.

Over the next several years I focused on networking with other artists, attending drink and draws, show openings, and connecting on social media, to create relationships, expand my artist resume, and identify opportunities to have my work find an audience. I participated in dozens of art shows, exhibitions, markets, bazaars – all while maintaining a full-time day-job. I feel like I was consistently leveling up in terms of the quality of my work and the shows and markets I was being accepted into. Then, of course, in 2020 Covid happened, and the bottom fell out of everything. The following year things were starting to pick up again by the summer market season. I had a whole list of aspirational projects and goals planned, and we’d started the process for our long-planned relocation to Pennsylvania…

And then, just before Thanksgiving, my husband suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed. Life’s priorities shifted. The focus of the rest of 2021 and the better part of the following year was his recovery, with physical therapy and specialist appointments taking up a tremendous amount of time and energy. Creative endeavors definitely took a backseat. We were extremely lucky to have a strong support network, with jobs that were at that time still fully remote that allowed us flexibility, and my husband worked really hard to regain strength and mobility. By the summer of 2022 he’d seen a tremendous improvement, and at that point we decided to move forward with our Pennsylvania plans, which meant uprooting our lives and starting over.

I’ve spent the last year getting to know the community we moved to, and exploring the surrounding area, with occasional adventures into the city itself. There is definitely a cultural difference between Western Pennsylvania and the Gulfcoast of Florida. In an effort to start meeting other artists, I’ve joined a couple of regional artists organizations and attended meetings, workshops, and demonstrations. Between health emergencies and moving I haven’t made much new work for a couple of years, but I recently vended at a market out in Akron, tabled a craft market at a local fire hall, and had a painting on display at a local business for a coordinated art month and art reception (through a regional arts org that I will probably look to join in 2024). Because the only way out of a slump is through, and starting over is hard, but building a sense of place and belonging through art will be worth it in the long run.

Brandy Heinrich is a self-taught artist who recently moved back to Western Pennsylvania after living most of her life on Florida’s Gulfcoast. She creates colorful and whimsical art inspired by children’s books and fantasy novels, fairytales and nature, and her favorite holiday is Halloween. When she is not working in her small home office that doubles as a studio, Brandy spends her time reading, hiking, exploring her new community, and volunteering.