ANCO Update - 2025:Q1

The first three months of 2025 have been active. This quarter, we streamlined the ANCO website, purchased a custom domain name (ANCOartistry.com), set up our Etsy store, and launched our first holiday line of wearable art for St. Patrick’s Day 2025. 

We published nine blog posts, mostly cataloging previous writing and one piece of new writing! These quarterly updates are the beginning of step two for blog content. We will publish an update on ANCO operations at the end of every March, June, September, and December. The goal of these quarterly updates is to assess progress toward ANCO business goals, note major successes or struggles, and give insight into our goings-on to our readers and supporters. Step three is new writing content - the planning of which is already underway. 

ANCO co-founder, Anna Currence O’Neal is enrolled at Georgia Southern University working toward her Master of Arts in Professional Communication and Leadership. This semester, her course is focused on research design. As with all of her classes, Anna looked for ways to connect her coursework to ANCO. This semester, that took the form of designing a market research study for professional artists and art vendors aiming to help focus energy and attention to areas that are receptive to the type of art any given artist creates. The study is also intended to provide public opinion data on Public Art and art-themed community events. The hope is that an artist will be able to access the resulting dataset to directly target audiences where their work will be appreciated and their community contributions seen and supported by locals.

The motivation for this study stems directly from Anna’s frustration with the lack of career readiness incorporated into formal art education. For years, she has talked and written about the amazing education she received in the Betty Foy Sanders Department of Art at Georgia Southern University. The professors were knowledgeable, hands-on, caring, and incredibly supportive. She learned all manner of art media and history, but when it came to learning how to use this knowledge to financially support herself, the curriculum faltered. There was just one course required at the end of the degree program that barely touched on how to attempt to be a practicing artist in the “real world.” It felt very “roll the dice and hold onto your creativity in the harsh world out there. Never stop submitting. Just try and try and try and maybe one day the circumstances will line up perfectly for you to get a break.” I can’t think of another field where it is acceptable to frame the industry in such a mystical and clouded way. 

It is well known that students don’t study Fine Arts for a clear career path, but there is MUCH more that our universities can do to prepare their Fine Art students for pursuing the field after graduation - from the gallery setting to vendorship, Public Art to community event organization, and so much more. I understand that the world has changed tremendously in a very short amount of time (mainly speaking about the rapid growth of the internet and the ability for artists to “go at it alone” more than ever before). Students in a BFA program should be heavily involved in community service in the forms of Public Art and community events. This should be worked directly into the art curriculum for upper-level classes at the very least. I have no doubt that with a bit of effort and input from current practicing artists in this new environment, universities can create a much clearer and more helpful version of career readiness for art students who pursue formal collegiate education. It is a college’s duty to prepare their students for the workforce and in their chosen field. In art, this was always more ambiguous than it should have been. But we are seeing the widening gap between what is taught and what is actionable as a career path in other fields more clearly now too. We will explore this and other topics in blog posts over the next quarter.

We are incredibly grateful to our family, friends, readers, supporters, casual viewers, and everyone else who engages with our work in large and small forms. We appreciate you!

Have an outstanding day!! 

“One must work and dare if one really wants to live.” - Vincent van Gogh