From Making to Teaching: Meet Two Artists Who Took the Leap

“Don’t Die Wondering” — Two Artists on What Happened When They Started Teaching

There’s a moment in this week’s conversation that I keep coming back to.

Nicole, a bobbin lace maker based in Melbourne, has spent the last year saying yes to things, putting herself forward, picking herself back up when something didn’t work out, and just quietly keeping going. And when I asked her what advice she’d give to someone just starting out, she said it without hesitation.

Don’t die wondering.

Ask the question. Try the thing. See what happens. Because you genuinely never know unless you do.

A Year Can Change Everything

Nicole and I had a call about a year ago when she was trying to get her teaching off the ground. Opportunities weren’t coming in the way she’d hoped. Her membership had taken three launches to get a handful of members. Things were moving slowly.

This week we got back on a call, and I could barely keep up with her list of upcoming opportunities. Teaching for the UK Lace Guild as part of their fiftieth anniversary series. A three hour slot in the LACE Museum’s marathon in California. Sessions with the hand weavers and spinners in Melbourne. Online teaching lined up with the Canadian Embroidery Guild. A solo exhibition in August with workshops running alongside it, because she simply asked the gallery if she could, and they said yes.

One year. The same person. A completely different picture.

And when I asked her what had changed, she didn’t say she’d cracked the algorithm or found some clever strategy. She said she’d been persistent. She’d kept her ears open. She’d watched for call outs from guilds and organisations, put herself forward, and not let rejection slow her down.

She also made a point that I thought was really worth sharing: don’t just be a member of the organisations in your creative field. Get on committees. Ask what’s coming up. Find out where you might fit in. The opportunities are often already there, waiting for someone to ask about them.

The Question That Became a Course

Vanessa’s story started in a very different place.

She trained as an artist, went straight into teaching, and spent twenty five years as an art teacher before burning out. She lost connection with her own practice almost completely. It was doing the 7 Keys course that helped her find her way back to making art again.

Since then she’s been exhibiting in Auckland, selling work, and running community workshops in meditative drawing and plant dyes through local art centres that did the marketing and organisation for her. Which is a really smart way to start, by the way. Let somebody else find the people while you focus on delivering something good.

But the thing that became her course didn’t come from planning. It came from listening.

Because everywhere she went, at exhibition openings, at schools where she was doing supply teaching, friends of friends would pull her aside and ask her the same thing. How did you get back into your art practice? How did you do it?

She heard that question enough times that she started to realise it was pointing somewhere. The very thing people kept asking her about was the thing she loved talking about most. And so that became her pilot. A free in person workshop for the people who’d asked that question, followed by a series of Zoom sessions, with the aim of gathering feedback and building from there.

She’s not charging for it yet. She’s testing it, refining it, and collecting testimonials so that when the time comes to launch properly, she’s done the groundwork.

And the reframe she shared that really got me was this: she used to call herself an art teacher. Now she calls herself an artist who teaches. That small change, she said, just feels healthier. More true to who she actually is.

What I Took From This Conversation

Two questions came up in this conversation that I think are genuinely worth sitting with if you’re thinking about teaching your art.

What do you love to talk about? And what do you want to avoid teaching?

Both of them matter. Knowing what you don’t want to do is just as important as knowing what you do. Vanessa said those two questions helped her cut through years of uncertainty and land on something that actually felt right. And I’ve been using them myself recently as I figure out what to say yes to.

The other thing worth naming is that teaching is much more about listening than we think. Vanessa didn’t design her course in a notebook. She heard the same question from real people, over and over, and followed that. The content was already there. She just had to pay attention.

If you’re sitting with the idea of teaching your art or creating experiences for people, then let this episode be your sign. Nicole and Vanessa are two people who were exactly where you are not long ago, and they’re further along than they expected to be.

If Nicole and Vanessa’s journeys have inspired you, the Teacher Art: Idea to Income bundle is linked below. Everything you need to get started is in there. 

>> TEACH YOUR ART: IDEA TO INCOME BUNDLE <<

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Have a great week & take care,

Michelle xo