Voyage LA Interview

Today we’d like to introduce you to Agnes Pierscieniak.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Agnes. So, let’s start at the beginning.
Every day since graduating from RISD, Art making and surrounding myself with an inspired art community have been essential fuels for my life. Making thing with my hands is necessary. It’s my form of mediation, being in the moment and focusing. I took new Art classes at a local college, taught design classes and traveled to India, Portuga, Japan, and Mexico for craft workshops. Every class was an opportunity to learn something new and meet new friends. Everyone can make something and be empowered through creativity. I aim to create another context for making art, an art social club to get together, meet new people and create together.

The trips I have taken around the world were amazing opportunities. The places were incredible, the artisans in India and Japan were beyond inspiring. But, a huge benefit of these art retreats was stepping away from daily life, meeting new people and building a community. The people came through all wakes of life. Most were not creatives. Most had not gone to art school. These are the people who need art. They are craving to be creative. And, this is the community I hope to reach out to and inspire with a process and way of seeing the world I was lucky enough to get at RISD.

I started Crave Workshops to add Creativity into the everyday. Inspired by several art retreats I participated in, I realized how essential it is to be creative for even non-artists.

I aim to erase the boundary of art and the preconceived notion that you have to be an artist to do art. Sometimes there’s a fear that “I’m not creative” or “It’s too hard.” I take the crafts I learned in these amazing trips, with the teaching and studio practices I learned at RISD and combine them with a hospitality setting. The workshops become local art retreats, and even for 3-4 hours, we build something together.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
It’s been a pretty smooth road, but we learned early on that building a business is a practice. Each step gets better, but have to accept the doing anything for the first time is harder than doing it for the second or fifth time. It’s fun to teach a variety of art forms, but each art form requires a budget for new supplies and time to perfect. It’s a balance of creating new offerings for our clients and also doing certain workshops multiple times to make them more cost-effective.

We started by always saying yes, even for minimal budgets, but have now learned to build a team, get assistants and manage expectations to create better experiences for clients. It’s all about being flexible and learning from each workshop. Setting the right price, working with the right partners has been good and each workshop is a learning experience for how to do things better. We have about 30 workshops, six large corporate events and one three day retreat under our belts.

So, as you know, we’re impressed with Crave Workshops – tell our readers more, for example, what you’re most proud of as a company and what sets you apart from others.
Crave Workshops empowers everyone to be creative. We believe that making things by hand is an essential practice to staying mindful and inspired. We want people to have fun, connect with others and learn new things about themselves by making things with their hands. Whether Shibori, Blockprinting or Marbling, each workshop is specifically designed for a “no fail” approach to art. We have so many students exclaim that we made it “easy” and fun,” and they love their pieces. We even have had some day that this is the first time they made art since they were kids as they were turned off by bad teachers. Art SHOULD BE fun and we hope to inspire everyone to get in touch with their creative selves.

So, what’s next? Any big plans?
We hope to collaborate with even more corporate clients to bring art to larger groups and more “noncreatives.” From Animal Equality organizations to architects to Snapchat, we want to work with diverse teams on incorporating creativity and hands-on making into their team building experiences.

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