“Reflecting Pond Necklace,” by jewelry artist Michael David Sturlin. Formal training has made a “profound difference” in his career, Sturlin says.	Enamel work by Cameron Tucker and Tara Mackintosh. “The focus you get in art school is invaluable,” Mackintosh says.

Education can be a serious investment, whether it’s a week-long workshop or four-year degree program. But measuring the return on your educational investment can be much more complicated than assessing the ROI on the travel costs for a prestigious craft show or the purchase of a new tool that will speed your production.

For every craft artist with a master’s degree in fine arts, there’s one who is entirely self-taught. A formal education isn’t required to enter the crafts field, and there are successful craft artists who have never set foot in a classroom.

When you ask about the advantages of craft education, most artists will first cite the intangible advantages, such as a boost to their creativity or the opportunity to share with other artists.

From a business standpoint, however, the question is whether having an education alters the financial picture for a craft artist. Does investing in education produce a return in terms of higher sales, more business savvy, and a better bottom line?

Arts Education Repays Some Artists

For many artists, the answer is an emphatic yes. “As a person who was entirely self-trained for the first dozen years of my goldsmithing career, I can say for certain what a profound difference it made when I undertook my first formal training,” says Michael David Sturlin, a jewelry artist in Scottsdale, Ariz. “It absolutely enhanced my ability to be productive and practical, and it increased my earnings. Although I was already performing most fabrication projects with the proper approach and technique, there was still a lot to be learned about the ‘hows and whys’ of doing certain things certain ways.”

Sturlin definitely believes that the guidance of master goldsmiths beats the alternative of the trial-and-error method.
Peter Korn, executive director of the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship in Portland, Maine, says arts education gives designers and artists a head start in their careers. “I started [making furniture] 30 years ago,” he points out, “so [my students] are getting all 30 years of what I’ve learned to build their own careers upon. Instead of having to rediscover the wheel, they’re getting their own chariot, and then they can discover what to do with it.”

One of the most popular forms of continuing education for craft artists is workshops and courses in craft skills. “I take workshops because they save so much time,” says Elaine Luther, a metalsmith and jewelry artist in Chicago. “Like metal corrugation — there’s nothing to it, and I could have learned it from a book. But I’d had a book for a year [and I hadn’t done anything with it]. Then I took a class with someone I could ask questions. When you’re taking a class, you have someone who has already made the mistakes and learned all the shortcuts.”

Skills classes allow the artist to broaden his design options, which in turn can lead to a more marketable product. Those new products can, in turn, open doors to new sales venues. Jewelry artist Pam Lacey of Wilton, Conn., credits classes at Brookfield Craft Center in Connecticut for improved skills that led to a new sales opportunity. “I juried into the Wilton Autumn Craft Show, and the only way I had a product of a level high enough to get into the show was because of the classes [I took],” says Lacey. “I don’t think they would have been as excited about beaded necklaces (her first venture in jewelry making).”

Business Training is Even Better

But while classes in technique can have a direct impact on sales, many artists say the most helpful type of formal education are business courses.

“Business education is the foundation of any business. Otherwise you are on a slow road down,” says Sam Patania, a jewelry artist in Tucson, Ariz.

“After ‘surviving’ so long, I strongly feel that to flourish you need to know where your money came from and where it is going. A lack of business education will drag your designing and creativity down with worry and anxiety over why things are happening to your business that you don’t understand fully.”

John I. Russell, executive director of the Brookfield Craft Center, says taking a few business courses in college is one of the wisest things anybody can do to augment their careers. “Bookkeeping, business planning, marketing and financial management are invaluable skills for everyone to have,” says Russell. “In order to survive in today’s world, marketplace artists need to be first class entrepreneurs as well as producers of great work.”

Russell adds that learning to be an entrepreneur is often best learned through formal education. “The most successful craft artists all have one quality in common: excellence in all their affairs, from the studio to the marketplace to their record keeping to their vendor and banking relationships,” Russell says. “These skills and qualities need to be learned, not by making many mistakes, but through formal educational sources at various levels.”

The need for education in business basics has led to a growing number of art schools adding business courses to their core curriculum in recent years. But that wasn’t always the case in the past, and former fine arts students often express dissatisfaction with their formal education in that area.

After two years at Portland (Ore.) State University, Debbie Dean decided that the degree she was working toward 20 years ago wouldn’t help her make a living as a potter. “At that time, I had only learned about fine art things in college, and I really wasn’t learning anything about production,” Dean recalls. “I didn’t want to learn how to do mass production, I just wanted to develop some skills and knowledge about being a potter. But [the arts program] seemed like it was mainly directed toward fine arts.”

Enamel artist Cameron Tucker, who received a fine arts degree from the Cleveland Institute of Art and a masters in fine arts from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan says he had an undergraduate class that taught how to write a résumé. “But nothing about how to run a business, about how you could take what you learned in school and do various things that would allow you to have a real life as well as pursue art,” Tucker says.

Even without business courses, though, art programs give the beginning craft artist a firm grounding in technique and a place to hone a style that will be uniquely their own, both critical to future sales. “I wouldn’t have been able to do this type of work without learning enameling, metalworking, composition, and color,” says Tucker. “I think our education has led to the development of our imagery and the quality of the product.” Adds Tucker’s partner, Tara Mackintosh, “The focus you get in art school is invaluable, to really dig in and get all those skills is not possible at more of a broader educational setting.”

Using the Knowledge is what Counts

Although it appears that a formal education can offer an edge to artists seeking to make a living from their craft, it doesn’t automatically confer business success. “The value to the bottom line is unquestionably dependent upon the quality of the particular schooling and the abilities to learn from and properly apply the gained knowledge,” observes jeweler Bill Kaline of Whittier, Calif., who spent 27 years honing his craft both on his own and through professional classes. “I can honestly say my early education got me started, but I really didn’t begin to learn, and make money, until I acquired several years of hands-on experience. Depending on the niche one is searching for, it simply takes time to become proficient in any endeavor.”

Eileen Quinn Delduca of Eileen Quinn, Goldsmith, in Canandaigua, N.Y., agrees that professional artists need both education and experience. “The formal education I received at the Rochester (N.Y.) Institute of Technology helped me to have a greater understanding of techniques and carry on intelligent and informative conversations with my customers,” says Quinn. “But did it help prepare me for business success? Not really. That I learned after graduation, while working for other jewelers, doing repair work, model making, and production work.”

Real World Experience Outside School

In the real world, experience counts for much more, and for some who call themselves “self-taught,” the secret to business success comes through work experience outside their craft. For example, Maryland decoy carver Reggie Birch relies on “know-how” gleaned from 11 years as an independent insurance salesman to guide his business decisions. And after leaving the university without a degree, Dean gained the experience she needed to run her successful Portland-based business by spending five years in New Zealand making and selling pottery to wholesale buyers.

Such real world experience can also be gained through apprenticeships. “It’s wonderful to learn in an environment where you are also generating an income, and have a master to watch,” says jewelry artist Ande Cruz Miner of Fusion Studio in Alberta, Canada. “I also find [an apprenticeship] really lets a person focus on the true business side of our art — seeing how a successful goldsmith makes a living and operates all aspects of his business.”
Because few crafts in the United States offer a formal apprenticeship program, however, finding such a position often requires at least a grounding in some basic skills. Luther notes that she found two key apprenticeships partially because of her formal training in gemology and jewelry appraisal.
“I couldn’t have gotten an apprenticeship if I didn’t already have some schooling,” she says. “That was my ticket in the door. The gemology [certificate] meant I could help the jeweler, who had less gemological training.”

Formal Training Inhibits Creativity?

Of course, not every artist has the temperament or the opportunity to pursue formal education. “Over the years, I have become aware of a great many artists, artisans, and craftspeople who got less than a great formal education because they were learning disabled,” points out jewelry artist Pat Hicks of Earthlings in Maclean, Va. “However, they are great with their hands and often quite talented creatively. A degree or formal education has nothing to do with talent or a gift for creating beautiful things, be it music or jewelry.”

Many self-taught artists also argue that their lack of formal art education has encouraged them to explore artistic directions they might not have considered had they been classically trained. “I have no real regret at my lack of art education,” says Greg Gerber of Artes Del Alma in San Antonio, Texas. “I wonder if I would have pigeonholed myself into a particular medium. I’m comfortable being self taught, and I’m not sure that the type of art the university could teach would help.”

And sometimes, even if the desire is present, the educational opportunities aren’t. “At least 95 percent of the seminars [in making duck decoys] are on making something realistic,” says Birch. “But the type of work that I do, there’s no one to go to. There are a handful doing restoration and making decoys that look 100 years old, but all of us have our trade secrets that we keep to ourselves.”

With sufficient determination and the right opportunities, these artists often find business success as well. “Knowledge is power, no matter its source,” says jeweler and author Richard Wise of Lenox, Mass. “However, the entrepreneurial spirit, the ability to think outside the box is not learned behavior. I have had a number of very smart people working for me simply because they lacked the chutzpah to crawl out on that limb.”

Still, many successful self-taught artists say that they would have welcomed the opportunity to hone their craft and their business savvy through workshops, apprenticeships, or a degree program. “It would have been helpful to have had an art background,” says Birch. “Just the simple facts about mixing colors, and knowing the color wheel would have been great. When I started out, I didn’t know anything. I’m awful [at drawing], and an art education would have helped tremendously.”

From learning new techniques to mastering marketing, formal education can give artists an edge in establishing a craft business. And in a highly competitive world, that edge may mean the difference between dreaming about making a living from your art, and actually doing it.

Suzanne Wade is a free-lance writer who lives and works in Massachusetts.