Sustaining Craft - Episode 14: Legenia Bearden: Opening Horizons with Affordable Art Classes

Episode 14: Legenia Bearden: Opening Horizons with Affordable Art Classes

11/01/18 • 36 min

Determined to fulfill the vision she’d had as a child, Legenia Bearden began researching to make her dream, the Bearden Productions Center for the Arts, a reality. In 2006, she found the resources to file for her 501(c)(3) status and was approved three months later.

But it would be another eight years to fully get her vision off the ground. “I just stopped doing stuff, once we got our 501(c)(3) status,” Bearden explained. “It just wasn’t moving fast enough for me when I tried to actually start the business, so I kind of let it just sit there and nothing happened until 2014.

She taught drama for a bit, then worked for the city until 2014. “When I started Bearden Productions, I was still working at the city, and it would just be on my heart every day as I was driving to work,” Bearden shared. “And I’m like, I’m thinking, ‘Oh, I don’t want to be going to work.’ I just knew I was not supposed to be doing it. I just knew in my heart, this is not something I’m supposed to be doing. So I remember, that one particular day, I was crying on my way to work. I went to work, I sat down, and I’m still crying. I’m working. During my lunch, I said, ‘Ok, if I do this, I’m going to need a building.’”

She found the space, renting a dance studio in the basement of a church for $300 a month. “And it was ours,” Bearden said. “Just that simple, just that quick. Like all within a week. I thought about it, I moved, and I did it.”

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More of Bearden Productions Center for the Arts:

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/beardenproductions/

Twitter - https://twitter.com/bppas_

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/_bpca/

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Want the full article about Bearden? Head on over to http://hewandweld.com/news/.
Find Hew and Weld on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter as hewandweld.

Special Guest: Legenia Bearden.

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More of Bearden Productions Center for the Arts:

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/beardenproductions/

Twitter - https://twitter.com/bppas_

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/_bpca/

--
Want the full article about Bearden? Head on over to http://hewandweld.com/news/.
Find Hew and Weld on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter as hewandweld.

Special Guest: Legenia Bearden.

Previous Episode

Episode 13: Katy Raines: Melding Structure and Creativity for Career and Community

Ever the researcher, Katy Raines discovered that becoming a graphic designer meant she could create as a career without foregoing the paycheck. There was also the freedom of creating the art she loved in her spare time. “I figured I could do the graphic design full time and then do fine art on the side and still have fun with it,” Raines said.

In 2014, Raines graduated from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock with a degree in graphic design and a job. The job started as an internship in 2013, over her senior year of college. A professor had emailed her about the position, suggesting she apply. “I saw it and I was like heck yeah,” Raines said. “It’s an internship, they just want part-time, this would be perfect for my senior year or over the summer, whatever. So I was actually in Hawaii when I found the email on my honeymoon. My husband was still asleep so I got up super early and luckily I had my laptop with me and I finished my portfolio and sent my resume. And I sent it to my current boss now and she emailed me back the same day.”

They scheduled an internship after her return. Jet lagged, Raines thought she’d bombed.

She began the internship at Colliers International soon after while she finished her degree, working 20 hours a week while going to classes. “They didn’t have a marketing department at all about a month before I started,” Raines explained. “And then my boss said, ‘We have to have a designer.’ And so now I’ve gotten to do everything from photography to web to social media to actual graphic design work.”

Special Guest: Katy Raines.

Next Episode

Episode 15: Robert Bean: Reading a Painting Through Visual Vocabulary

Robert Bean found himself stuck between needing a job that didn’t involve his craft, wanting to spend time with friends, and still being able to practice his art. “I have to practice, I have to draw, I have to create,” Bean said. “At the same time, I don’t want my life to be nothing but, I go to work, and then I come home and go to work. ... I got creative and I said, ‘Well, what would happen if my friends were going out to dinner, or we’re going out to grab a beer or something--what happens I just take a sketch book with me?’ And so I started drawing on site. I started going out with friends and I would take a sketchbook and I would sketch while we were out. I do that all the time now.”

Bean turned the idea into a class at the Arkansas Arts Center, Urban Sketchbook, where he also serves as the Painting & Drawing Department Chair of the Museum School. “I encourage my students, if you’re sitting around in the doctor’s office, take a sketchbook,” Bean advised. “Draw in the waiting room. If you’re sitting at the DMV, draw while you’re sitting there. Waiting for your car to get fixed, sketch. You can find the time to sketch. You can find the time to keep those drawing skills alive because we have a lot more dead time in our days than we realize. It’s the idea of developing those kinds of disciplines that eventually roll around into making money. Because as soon as you start to create enough, as soon as you start to draw enough, you build body of work. Once you build that body of work, then you can show it. It took me ten years of figuring things out. I do look back at that period in my twenties and go, what if I had that mentor when I was 21 years old that would come in and say, ‘You’ve got to do this and this and this’? Maybe I would have started to make money earlier, but I was in my late twenties before I started making money somewhat consistently with my work."

Get more of Robert's work:
Gallery 26 - http://www.gallery26.com/
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/rbfineart/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/RBFineArt
Website - http://www.rbfineart.com/

Sustaining Craft is a project of Hew&Weld Writing. There are no fees for artists and crafts people to participate. Everything is funded through Hew&Weld and partnerships with friends: Joshua Kurtz, Morgan Allain (The Inkling Girl), Jim Ciago (Seven Second Chance & Nomad Neighbors), and Local. Magazine.

Find more from Hew&Weld:

Each episode of Sustaining Craft comes with a companion article, which can be found at hewandweld.com/news.
Instagram, Facebook, Twitter: @hewandweld
Sustaining Craft is also on Instagram: @sustainingcraft

Special Guest: Robert Bean.