Women at Work on the Business of Art

A profile of Women Across the Continent Who Make Art Work for Them
by Judith Luther Wilder
(excerpts)

Award-winning musicians Lisa Lynne & Eleanor Academia both live in the San Fernando Valley, a region of Southern California. The antithesis of Valley Girls, Lynne and Academia are veteran composers and musicians. They manage their own careers, teach business practices to artists, and have rich lives that incorporate mentoring and mentors, and share a strong entrepreneurial streak.

To say the least, Lisa Lynne is more ethereal in appearance. She produces original music on the Celtic harp, and is the first musician-in-residence at the City of Hope Cancer treatment Center, where she developed a "hands-on-harps" therapy program for cancer patients.

An inspiring performer, Lynne hopes one day to take the City of Hope medical staff and patients to Chicago to serenade Oprah. It is probably no accident that her records have names like "Celestial Winds" and "Love & Peace" or that her record labels have names like New Earth and Lavender Sky.

As a self-taught musician who started playing rock and roll in local bars, Lynne moved from guitar, electric bass and mandolin to Celtic harp. Ultimately, she developed her Web site and mail order business and by the time she had sold a half-million albums, she had a Windham Hill contract and a back catalog of recording that is still valuable.

With management tools such a poster size calendars that allow her to track her work patterns over five-year periods, Lynne bases her career decisions on the stories her calendars tell her. With one glance, she gets a clear picture of what worked and didn't work in 1999 or 2001. Focused on results, she say "Every single day, I do at least one thing, no matter how small, that takes me to my goals."

"My key word is 'today," she says. "What can I do today to move my business forward?"

Her home-based business employs her mother and sister, an office assistant, a contract booking agents, a live show assistant and from time-to-time, photographers, manufacturers and designers.

Since her audience is primarily female, she tends to work with and listen to women to serve as almost an in-house focus group. She estimates that 90 percent of the material on her CDs is originals work, although she occasionally produces a traditional Celtic or Renaissance piece. Her most recent recording "Hopes & Dreams" reached #6 on the Billboard New Age Music charts and was #4 overall on the retail chart for hip and trendy Central New York.

Lynne realized she has the best of both worlds. She has a major label that promotes her work and ensures radio play, as well has her own small label, Lavender Sky Music.

Marketed on her Web site and at live concerts, Lavender Sky Music benefits from the notoriety she receives from work positioned on the charts between Metallica and rapper 50 cent. By blending 70-s rock with Celtic and Renaissance influences, Lynne manages to touch a lot of age groups and satisfy tastes major labels seldom target. She finds it significant that her new work, "Hopes & Dreams" is a compilation of lullabies she wrote for patients at the City of Hope.

"So many fine artists only get rejection, but they are just going down the same tired, beaten paths," Lynne says. "They have to find new paths."

These amazing women are living life on their own terms, living where they want to live, and managing time better than most well-known gurus of time management. These women have found a way to generate income through businesses no Harvard MBA would ever consider feasible. Coco Chanel said, "There is time for work. Ther is time for love. There is no other time." Had she known these ladies she might have added, "There is always time or art for women workers and lovers who have it in them to be splendid."

Judith Luther Wilder is president of the Center for Cultural Innovation in Culver City, CA.

She can be contact at Judith ALW@aol.com