The physical therapist turned artist whose knowledge of anatomy helps her paint the people and colors of Northern Michigan. This episode features fine artist, Katherine Corden.
The physical therapist turned artist whose knowledge of anatomy helps her paint the people and colors of Northern Michigan. This episode features fine artist, Katherine Corden.
(START THEME)
Creative people can sometimes be accused of spending too much time living in their heads.
At first glance that’s what I might have said about artist Katherine Corden …
… who had … initially ... forgotten about our pre-arranged interview.
Katherine [00:00:23] All right I'm gonna have a drink of water before ...
Tommy [00:00:25] Of course.
Katherine [00:00:26] I saw your e-mail. And I was like, oh my gosh, they're live right now. I've got to go.
LAUGHING
Tommy [00:00:32] nothing like jumping straight into an interview!
But when we finally tracked her down we learned that Katherine Corden is that rare thing: an artist who is firmly grounded in reality … an artist who is even good at math.
Every two weeks my husband and I have a money date. So, like, that kind of gives me an idea if I'm on track for achieving my goals for the year.
Katherine is young.
Katherine [00:02:21] I'm 28 years old.
Tommy [00:02:34] You're going to be the youngest guest that we have for sure.
Katherine [00:02:38] Oh, well, that feels good because I'm starting to feel old. I'm turning twenty nine in July.
Tommy [00:02:43] Oh, man. Yeah, it's gonna get worse. Let me tell you!
She’s also a sort of accidental artist.
Despite her love of painting, when Katherine graduated from high school in the height of a global recession, she decided it would be more sensible to pursue a career that was more stable and reliable.
Katherine [00:03:01]
I was definitely having an internal struggle … it wasn't the best time to be pursuing anything that was an unstable career path.
But despite her cautious inclinations Katherine now has a growing fine art business in Traverse City where she paints the people and colours of Northern Michigan.
Katherine [01:06:53]
olive greens and mustards and peaches and slates and colors of the lake.
I’m Tommy Andres and this is Creative Coast …
(THEME MUSIC POST/SLOWLY FADE UNDER - LET THE FADE CONTINUE UNDER MY TALKING)
2009 was not a great year to graduate from high school.
As Katherine Corden prepared to leave her childhood home in Grosse Point, Michigan, the world looked like a scary place.
Katherine [00:03:17] A lot of my friends' parents had lost their jobs. Everybody was pretty much freaking out.
And it wasn’t just the older generation who were feeling the effects of the global recession.
(THEME MUSIC SHOULD BE COMPLETELY GONE BY HERE)
Katherine [00:05:16] at the time, my cousins were graduating from college and they kind of were left with an empty job market. And so they were deciding to go to grad school to just accrue more student loans.
As Katherine watched all of this unfold she had a choice to make.
I had the option to either go to art school or go to the University of Michigan to pursue academics.
(START MUSIC)
Katherine had loved art growing up.
She was the kid who made the homecoming banner. And the kid who always won the local art competitions.
My mom is an art teacher. And that was a big part of my identity. But kind of the culture of the suburb that I grew up in was to pursue more traditional career paths.
And I think I was probably overcome by fear … at the time I had seen no examples of successful artists or people doing creative careers that were actually doing what they wanted to do.
And so I decided at the time, with some advice from parents and other people I trusted to pursue academics. It was a safer option and keep art and creativity as like a sacred hobby. And that's what I did.
Katherine chose the road well-travelled and enrolled at the University of Michigan.
And I ended up studying physical therapy.
(MUSIC SHIFT)
During her senior year of high school Katherine sprained her ankle playing soccer.
Katherine [00:09:39] one of my friends on my soccer teams, mom was a physical therapist, and I immediately went over to her house and she showed me, like, ways to stretch and strengthen before I got my initial appointment … it was one of my first experiences, honestly, seeing any professional career behind the scenes, I think, and I … really liked going to physical therapy.
That early exposure left a lasting impression and led Katherine to choose physical therapy as a career path.
At the U of M she majored in kinesiology and after graduation moved to Chicago and enrolled in a physical therapy graduate program at Northwestern University.
Katherine [00:10:32]
And that was kind of just the track I was on. it wasn't even on my radar to ever pursue art.
(MUSIC SHIFT)
It was there she met Dave, a fellow physical therapy student, who would later become her husband.
Katherine [00:18:09] He was a nerd. And in like the front row. And I was late to class in the way back. So I was just like able to look at him during class all day … by like the end of first semester, we had started dating.
Tommy [00:18:46] So you said he was pretty nerdy, but you also said you sat in the classroom in the back and looked at him. He must've at least been handsome, right?
Katherine [00:18:54] Oh, yeah. He's very attractive.
Tommy [00:18:56] Very attractive.
Katherine [00:18:58] Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's a great combination, in my opinion.
At the time Katherine was so focused on becoming a physical therapist -- and not an artist -- that for a long time Dave knew nothing about that side of her.
Katherine [00:19:26]
He didn't know for the first couple of years of PT school that I was so interested in painting. And honestly, I didn't know that about myself either. I don't think I mean, I had the history, but I wasn't actively doing it.
But then in 2016 something changed.
(MUSIC STOPS)
Katherine graduated from Northwestern and landed a job… but she had some downtime before it started.
Katherine [00:12:59]
I had the entire summer off. So I kind of naturally had this free time and started painting and and working just on creative projects all summer.
Through social media Katherine started to get some commissions.
Katherine [01:02:52] the first people who bought commissions from me were actually friends of mine from high school or their parents or friends of theirs. And that kind of goes back to like that charming thing about growing up with kids in your hometown. They just know everything about you. And they were not surprised when I started painting again, because that's kind of the kid that I always was growing up.
Once summer was over Katherine started her day job as a physical therapist but she wasn’t ready to leave art behind.
As soon as I started my first job, I already had a side hustle, which you could argue was at the time, more of a way to just make more money as a new grad. And like every good millennial has that side hustle. And I did that for my first two years working. I was working full time as a physical therapist and my side hustle of painting was slowly growing.
(MUSIC START)
Katherine was making real money from her art … but was it enough to live on?
She decided it was time to crunch the numbers.
She took an online course that taught creative entrepreneurs how to manage their finances.
I know how to manage my salary and a steady income, but I didn't know how to manage fluctuating income … And I really hustled to kind of figure out how to make this art business work.
Around this time Katherine’s husband Dave got a residency in Wisconsin so the couple moved there for a year. Katherine decided it was time to experiment.
She went from full to part time working as a physical therapist.
It meant she was getting paid almost twice as much per hour... but more importantly it meant she could spend more time painting.
Katherine [00:15:59]
And the truth is that physical therapy it has a good starting salary. But the ceiling is pretty low. And I was meeting fine artists that were making like two to three times what you can make as a physical therapist. And that's definitely not everybody. But when I started getting mentors that believed in me and my work, it kind of encouraged me to keep trying to see what I could make of this.
(POST FADE)
After Dave’s residency, in the summer of 2019, the couple moved to Traverse City and Katherine decided to continue on that same path: working two and a half days a week as a physical therapist at a local clinic and painting the rest of the time.
it's definitely been a gradual shift and a very intentional shift. I didn't like jump out the window of the plane saying Oh, I'm leaving physical therapy behind and just hoping art works. It's been a very calculated shift to make sure that I can make it work financially.
Tommy [00:21:14] did you calculate how much art you had to sell to sort of make them living what you wanted to make?
Katherine [00:21:38] Yeah, exactly. It's definitely a math problem. So the first thing I do when I'm kind of planning out my year is figuring out what is enough financially for our family. And that has been such an eye opening exercise because I feel like so many people are constantly thinking I need more and more and more, more and more. Like I want the promotion, I want to climb up the ladder. But when you're an entrepreneur to start out with, you just have to make sure you hit the bare minimum. Like you need to pay your rent. You need to pay your utilities. You have to pay your groceries. So that's the first thing I figure out is like, what do I need, like bare bones?
Then Katherine adds on the nice to haves: maybe a vacation or some home improvements.
So once I have that number, I kind of work backwards and I work in selling painting collections. So about four or five times a year, I release a body of work on my website that is between 10 or 20 paintings. And based on years past, I can kind of estimate, okay, I on average sell seventy percent of these paintings within the first week and 80 percent of the paintings within the first month.
From these calculations Katherine estimates what her profit will be. And then keeps track of her progress.
Katherine [00:55:19]
Every two weeks my husband and I have a money date. So, like, that kind of gives me an idea if I'm on track for achieving my goals for the year.
Tommy [00:56:49] What is a money date?
LAUGH
Katherine [00:56:54]
So a money date is basically a way of like sitting down and talking finances with your partner and making it enjoyable or just like basically hacking your mind to think that your money date is enjoyable. So you could go out and get coffee and donuts and bring your finances with you and like, hash out your budget for the month. So we do that every two weeks. And it's been actually really helpful. We just bought our new house in September and it's a fixer upper and we have like a lot of financial goals to fix this up. So it's encouraging every month to see how much receiving to hit those goals.
(START MUSIC)
Physical therapy and art might seem like two very different vocations but Katherine’s paintings are heavily influenced by her interest and expertise in the human body …
and the anatomy classes she took as part of her physical therapy training.
Katherine [00:25:04]
It's interesting to think how the two kind of complement each other, influence each other. Like Michelangelo used to study dead bodies. And that's literally what I did for like two years of my life.
Katherine paints a lot of figures … people enjoying a day at the beach and images of the female body.
Each person and pose different from the last.
Katherine [00:24:15]
It's truly something to master. And I think the human body is so complicated and convoluted and one of my peers told me if you can paint the human figure or draw the human figure, you can draw anything. And maybe that's me just trying to achieve that.
Physical therapy is all about movement… and Katherine says she tries to incorporate that into her work.
Katherine [00:27:44] In paintings in general, I think movement is a really important element to draw the viewer's eye in and I kind of love like the ethereal, like blurriness of movement and just kind of like the imaginary aspect of like what's happening in this scene. What are they doing? Transporting yourself there.
Katherine is also inspired by her surroundings: the beautiful landscapes of northern Michigan and in particular the great lakes where she spent her summers growing up with her extended family.
A lot of my childhood memories were from growing up with my cousins on the lake in Frankfurt. We'd all pack into that small cottage and spend a really nice summer up here together. I just love capturing those nostalgic moments on the beach and kind of like those memories that you feel from days on the lake up here.
(MUSIC FADE)
But she doesn’t just paint the lakes … Katherine also supports a local charity called FLOW... “for the love of water”... which aims to protect the great lakes.
Katherine [00:39:52] when I heard stories about like the line five oil pipeline, for instance, that runs underneath the Straits of Makana, that could leak at any moment and devastate the entire shoreline of Lake Michigan. Like, within a matter of days was terrifying.
There’s also the issue of rising water levels … FLOW teaches people what’s going on and tries to find solutions.
Katherine [00:40:38] So when I started painting I decided to create a collection of work called The Lake Lovers, and it was all about people who loved the lake … And a percentage of those proceeds went to flow in. That kind of kickstarted my idea to just make that part of my business. And the thought that my business is small and it was even smaller then. But if you can consistently contribute a small amount when you're small, you'll be able to contribute so much more later on.
Katherine now donates 5% of her art proceeds to FLOW.
Tommy [00:43:42] How much of your day is spent, painting, and how much of your day is better than all the other things you need to do to run your business?
Katherine [00:43:48] I wish I painted every day. I probably paint three days a week right now. and then the rest of the week Work Week is responding to emails, packing up orders, ordering prints and editing my Web site, sending out like a newsletter, things like that.
All of that extra work Katherine puts into the running of the business can be a pain but it has allowed her to work in a way that was impossible before the prevalence of social media.
Katherine [00:48:33]
that's one of the big reasons why I started selling my work again, because there was this free way to market yourself and you didn't have to use a gallery and you could just get a website on Squarespace. And it seemed simple and people were doing it. And my mind was kind of blown like they were girls my age that were making it a career as an artist. And I was like, wait, what? This is this is not a thing.
Tommy [00:49:22] it's not just about putting work online. Right. Like putting work on Instagram. You have to develop like a personality or like a like a like a style beyond just the paintings themselves. There has to be something to it. Have you figured out what that secret sauce is to sort of building an Instagram following with art beyond just putting art up there?
Katherine [00:49:50] I think I'm definitely still figuring it out and working on it. And I think with Instagram specifically, it's constantly changing. But what seems to be a constant is that people just want to get to know the other person on the side of the screen.
So I want to elevate my art work and maintain a professional, fine artist persona. On Instagram. But I also want to let people know who I am and who the artist is behind the artwork and why I'm creating what I'm creating. And so I think if you're able to kind of let your personality shine through, people can really connect with you more. And that's how you develop like true fans. I mean, I think a beautiful art will always attract interested people no matter what but if they're able to develop another connection with you, then they'll stay for more.
(MUSIC START - TINY BREAK, JUST A SECOND OR TWO)
Tommy [00:46:01] Social media and Instagram specifically seems like a bit of a double edged sword for an artist, because you get your work in front of a bunch of new people but you also are inundated with other people's art. Do you find inspiration from Instagram or do you find it difficult to maintain your own style?
Katherine [00:47:36] It’s challenging I mean there's people that I will unfollow or I tried not to follow too many artists because I don't want to be overly influenced by them.
Katherine [00:47:50] But at the same time, I think it's really inspiring to see other artists succeeding and doing a great job. And it's definitely motivating to like get back in the studio and push yourself to do better. And keep working at your craft.
(MUSIC FADE)
Tommy [00:51:00] A lot of your work is thinking about interaction. There's a whole series of people enjoying the lake together. But you spend a lot of time, I would imagine, in your studio alone. Is that a challenge for you or is it something that you’ve learned to really enjoy?
Katherine [00:51:25] it's definitely a challenge because I would consider myself an extroverted person. I love being social. Quarantine is kind of terrible for me. But when I moved to Traverse City, that was one of our goals. My husband and I had agreed, like, I should get a studio outside of the house.
Which is what Katherine has just done ... She has helped to design a hip new artist's coworking space in Traverse City.
Katherine [00:53:22]
all concrete floors, a utility sink, eight studio spaces with great overhead lighting. Most the studios have windows. The walls don't go all the way up to the ceiling. So you can talk to people throughout the day. And it's really casual, like relatively cheap setup.
She and the other artists moved into the new space in May.
I mean, we're not really able to spend too much time together because of social distancing, but we're able to talk over the walls and we have a lot of ideas when we are able to gather again on how we can make it a community space. And it's been really fun.
(THEME START)
Another big step in the improbable career of artist Katherine Corden.
Tommy [00:58:08] If you could talk to Katherine Corden at 18 graduated high school into a recession. What would you tell her as a Katherine cordon of 28?
Katherine [00:58:36] in 2009, I thought that physical therapy would be such a stable career choice with lots of flexibility and freedom, and that art would not be a stable career choice. And then fast forward to today when we're in Covid 19. Physical therapy turns out to be less stable than my fine art business. And for a couple of weeks, I was making significantly more money than my husband, which blew my mind. So kind of the takeaway from all of this is that you really can't plan for the future. You have no idea what's gonna happen. And I do love physical therapy. I think it's such a valuable career and I've really enjoyed my time working there. But at the same time, like, you should do what you really love and what you want to do, because if you love it, you'll make you'll figure out a way to make it work.
But Katherine still wouldn’t do anything in her life differently.
Katherine [00:20:34] I definitely don't have any regrets that I should have gone to art school because I would have missed out on meeting a lot of important people.
Tommy [00:20:51] Including your husband.
Katherine [00:20:52] Yeah, including my husband. He reminds me of that a lot.
LAUGH
And so Katherine continues to do what she loves to do. She’s in her new studio working on a new series called Summer People.
Katherine [01:07:26] think of a snapshot of your favorite beach day where people are shaking out their towels and setting up their beach chairs and kids are running by and it's all in motion and it's all candid and nobody's posed. So it feels like you just whipped out your phone while everyone was running around you and took a picture.
It combines some of Katherine’s favourite things … painting people at the water at home in Traverse City.
(THEME POST)
You can learn more about Katherine and see her art at Katherine-Corden-dot-com.
Creative Coast is a podcast series brought to you by Traverse Connect…
the Grand Traverse Region’s Economic Development Organization…
and is produced by me, Tommy Andres and Maria Byrne for our company Airloom Media.
That’s spelled A-I-R.
The music is composed by Josh Hoisington.
This podcast series is made possible thanks to generous support and funding from the Michigan Film and Digital Media Office at Michigan’s Economic Development Corporation.
You can visit Traverse Connect’s website at traverseconnect.com.
(THEME FADE)