Why I love Notion as an artist

and what happened when I turned my organizing attention toward my artistic dreams

In late 2020, I had spent almost five years making art to meet a quantity or timeline goal (a craft show or a pre-order) and after pushing through the early pandemmie without taking a break, I found myself completely depleted by December.

In the early months of 2021 and in the midst of my subsequent artistic block, I started to sit back and consider what I wanted from my art for the first time in years. Mostly I felt shitty about myself and guilty for not making things, but I also felt like… why? How has something I loved turned into a chore that drove me into such a dark place? How could I make my art, keep attention and energy for my much-loved paying job, and just feel happier?

I started to have an inkling that a way to relieve my stress was to find a way that my art would require nothing from me other than to just make the art - the thing that had made me happy in the first place before I lost my way in a maze of overwork.

The first thing I wanted to do was find a gallery or store to represent me - an entity that would support my future art - art I hadn’t made yet, but that they believed in and would sell for me once it was done. This was a way to remove pre-orders from my life and allow the creative space to make whatever I wanted. The second thing I wanted to do was to make products using my art - something I could sell that wouldn’t require the labour that goes into my ceramic sculptures.

These were things I had sort of vaguely thought of in the past - sometimes I would save an IG post when a gallery had an open call, I would bookmark the website of a store I thought was cute, I watched in awe as

schmohee

designed sticker sheets, buttons, and card sets and wondered what my art would look like on products - but I had never followed up on these ideas because they most often ended up lost in my notes app and saved posts.

Sitting squarely in my artistic block and having determined what my goal was, I finally cracked open the Notion account I had signed up for and never used, and I made a spreadsheet. I wanted a place where I could gather info about every store, show, prize, gallery, printing company - anything I had been interested in but that had fallen into oblivion in my iphone notes.

Sitting and looking at my shiny new spreadsheet (a very bare Notion database) the most glaring thing was how many deadlines had passed without me even attempting to apply. I had simply forgotten because the opportunities weren’t in front of me. Once I finally turned my organizing attention to my artistic dreams and utilized Notion to collect my ideas, projects, and goals in one place, I saw a huge shift in the way I viewed my own artistic career.

My favourite Notion creation is my Career Growth Database (screenshot above). This is where I collect all of those opportunities that were previously a mess of saved posts on IG, a bazillion tabs and bookmarks in chrome, and emails that had slid to the bottom of my inbox.

I don’t always apply to everything, but now rather than missing a deadline because I forgot about a bookmark or saved post, I am making conscious choices to apply, or to pass on events and shows that I don’t have bandwidth for. It takes me a minute or two to add something to the list, and I look at it around once a week to see what deadlines are approaching.

If it sounds super simple, it’s because it is - it’s literally just a table. But because of this table, I have found myself feeling motivated and on top of my goals. I was able to clearly see what opportunities were out there for me, and work toward them in my day-to-day life rather than suddenly realizing an application was due that night and frantically throwing something together.

I don’t always get accepted to everything (I almost exclusively apply for things that don’t charge an application fee btw) and in fact, I don’t hear back from most of the folks I contact. But the odds of getting accepted only go up with every opportunity I apply for, and in the past year I have had more growth and opportunity than in any year previous.

Last year, I submitted proposals for two exhibitions to two galleries and landed my first solo show, I’m now represented by a really cute local gallery for my ceramics, I have almost 50 sticker and keychain designs, and wholesale accounts to sell my products - these opportunities and ideas were all collected in Notion. This growth has allowed me to create art knowing that there is a place for it to land - there are avenues to show and sell my art, and I feel free to just create.

The recent success I’ve had is not all because of one software - I work hard and probably too much - but I can see a clear difference in my growth before and after I started to use Notion. I still collect new opportunities in my database, I tend to apply to 1-2 things a week, and I have so much extra space in my brain because I can just dump my ideas into Notion and know I can find them later. It’s helped me in ways I couldn’t have imagined when I opened my first page in 2021!

My wonderful pal

Lindsay Stripling

and I are co-teaching a workshop on April 30th called Notion for Artists! We will each share how we approach Notion, giving you a tour of our personal notion pages, how we use them and musing on different ways that Notion could benefit you! We’ll also cover organization as an artist in general and how that has helped each of us grow our careers. I hope you’ll join us for this sweet 1-hour workshop! And if you can't make it live, the recording will be available after class too ;)

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A final hot tip: I have a folder on my desktop which has my CV, my latest portfolio, artist statement, my linesheet, a bio photo, and photos of my most recent ceramic work labeled with my name. Having these on hand makes applying for something take SO MUCH LESS time by removing a kind of big hurdle. Highly recommend just sitting down and getting those churned out so you can save yourself time gathering them in the future!