THE INSPIRATION PLACE PODCAST
Susan Cohn:
I walked into the studio one day laughing, and she said, “What are you laughing about?” I said, “Somebody outside just asked me if I was an artist.” She said, “What did you say?” I said, “I said no, of course. What do you think I said?” She said, “Susan, have you looked at your work lately?” That was the day I found out I was an artist.
Speaker 2:
It’s The Inspiration Place podcast with artist, Miriam Schulman.
Speaker 2:
Welcome to The Inspiration Place podcast, an art world insider podcast for artists by an artist where each week we go behind the scenes to uncover the perspiration and inspiration behind the art. And now your host, Miriam Schulman.
Miriam Schulman:
Hey there, this is Miriam Schulman. You’re listening to episode 176 of The Inspiration Place podcast. I am so glad that you’re here.
Miriam Schulman:
Today’s guest focused on experimental art. Her work has been exhibited throughout the United States, Europe and in Australia. Her work has also been featured in Professional Artist Magazine in the US, and Australian Artist Magazine. She began painting at 50 and studied with carefully chosen mentors who were talented artists as well as master teachers. She currently lives in Los Angeles in the South Bay Area and has painted for over 20 years.
Miriam Schulman:
Please welcome to The Inspiration Place, Susan Cohn. Well hi, Susan. Welcome to the show.
Susan Cohn:
Hi Miriam. Thank you for having me. It’s really nice to see you today.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah, I’m so excited to have you. Let us catch our listeners up because it’s kind of a big deal that you started at 50. I don’t know too many people who switch directions and then stick with it for, I want to say 28 years. Is that right?
Susan Cohn:
It is correct. Yes, exactly.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay. What’s really amazing, which we’re going to unpack today is not only have you committed yourself fully to being an artist, but you continue to challenge yourself and add new … I’m trying to find a new word for challenge. It’s really hard for me without the thesaurus. When I’m writing the books it’s like, “Oh, what’s another word for challenge,” and I’ll just look it up. You’re continuing to challenge yourself with both your art and your art career, and you just don’t seem to let your age stop you. Let’s dial back first and set the stage to how you discovered art 28 years ago.
Susan Cohn:
Well 28 years ago, my husband got sick and I had a business and I loved it and was doing fine, but his doctor said he needed to move to a quieter community, which meant I had to sell my business, which I did. We moved to a smaller community. I didn’t know anyone and I didn’t have a focus because I’d been in this business and it was gone.
Miriam Schulman:
What was that business?
Susan Cohn:
I had a promotional agency.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay. I just want to make sure my listeners know it wasn’t an art business.
Susan Cohn:
It wasn’t an art business. I was in public relations and marketing. I have a master’s degree in business. That’s my background. So here I was a business person without a business and not very happy. My husband and I went to a fundraising auction for a little theater that was going under, and there were these four art lessons on a silent auction and he bought them for me for $20.
Miriam Schulman:
Did you ask him to buy them for you or he just decided?
Susan Cohn:
No, he just bought them for me.
Miriam Schulman:
What a great story.
Susan Cohn:
I was working on a children’s book because I liked to write, and he thought that I would like to learn to draw. He just bought them for me and presented them to me. I said, “I don’t have any talent. I don’t do art.” He said, “Well, why don’t you just go and see what it’s about?” So I did. That was the moment of me starting to find a new life.
Miriam Schulman:
What kind of art was it then? I know that probably had nothing to do with the kind of art you do now, but what was those first classes?
Susan Cohn:
The first classes were drawing a sphere and just trying to get dimensions and shapes. I had a giant pad of newsprint, and I was drawing these giant simple shapes and just trying to learn how to control a pencil and make a tube that looks like a tube and a ball that looks like a ball and a box that looks like a box. I did that for a couple of weeks. We worked along and at the end of the four weeks, I said to the teacher, “Well, do you think that I can learn to do some stick figure kind of things to show somebody that I want them to illustrate my book kind of in this way?” She said, “I think you can.”
Miriam Schulman:
Illustrate the book, or do the stick figures?
Susan Cohn:
Do the stick figures. No, I wasn’t anywhere near illustrating a book. I was just saying, here are my ideas. Can I put them with a simple … I think maybe Shel Silverstein kind of drawings was my fantasy that I would be able to just do some pen drawings. Well, of course they’re fabulous, but I didn’t know that at the time. She said, “Sure,” and sent me to buy some acrylics and some brushes and supplies and started teaching me how to paint some childlike things flat on a canvas. I started developing characters in a flat style that was very simple.
Susan Cohn:
After a few months of that, my teacher said to me, “You know, you’re doing a really good job, but I think it would help you if you did a more serious painting,” and she sent me back to the art store to get oils and gave me an assignment to do a real painting with dimension and a lot of technique. That painting took me, I think, two months to do, working on it every day for two months.
Susan Cohn:
I’m making a long story longer, but I ended up with a master teacher with these four art lessons. After a year of going every week for a lesson and then painting every day in between, because I felt like I had to catch up with everybody who had been painting for years, that I didn’t have the same kind of skills they did. I walked into the studio one day laughing, and she said, “What are you laughing about?” I said, “Somebody outside just asked me if I was an artist.” She said, “What did you say?” I said, “I said no, of course. What do you think I said?” She said, “Susan, have you looked at your work lately?” That was the day I found out I was an artist.
Miriam Schulman:
So when did you make the leap though from somebody who is an artist because you create art, and what I like to call art-preneur, somebody who is now going to monetize your art or offer it for sale, tell us about when that moment happened?
Susan Cohn:
Well, I said that I had a master teacher and she is incredible and is still a good friend these many years later. She, at that point started saying, “I think you should put this painting in the National Date Festival.” The National Date Festival piece won a second place, after a year of thinking I couldn’t do anything. Then she’d say, “Let’s go into this show.” We’d both go to an outdoor show and I’d start selling pieces. I was just astonished by this, but she could see it, and she kind of guided me and that’s how we moved along, working with her. After another year she said, “I can’t teach you anymore of the direction you’re going right now,” and she sent me to the next person.
Miriam Schulman:
Oh, that’s awesome. But when did you start selling your art?
Susan Cohn:
Jane [inaudible], who was that first mentor, had a studio with a school in it and then had little small studios for artists. She gave me one of the studios, and there was a weekly art walk. As soon as I was in that studio and participating in the art walk, I started selling art. It was after only a year.
Miriam Schulman:
Do you still remember the first painting you sold?
Susan Cohn:
I do. I remember it. Yes. It was an abstract called The Wedding. It was, I don’t know, maybe five by seven or eight by 10. A couple from out of state wandered in and fell in love with it and paid for at that time for me was a lot of money for it. I was just amazed. I was amazed. I loved the painting, but that somebody else loved it too, was pretty astonishing to me.
Miriam Schulman:
Is it ever hard for you to part with art when it’s for sale?
Susan Cohn:
It used to be. In those days, it was very hard because every painting was a lesson. I’d sort of line them up and say, “Okay, I learned this here, and I learned this here and I learned this here,” so it was kind of my notes. After a while it, I just said, “You can’t do this anymore. You have to really be able to let these things have their own life and go to a new home.” Actually one of the most amazing things about being an artist is seeing how these paintings that start on the easel, turn into something else. It’s a communication and you put so much into it. And then when they get framed and the art has its own home now, and it’s removed, I’ve been invited to see how it my work looks in someone’s else’s house and it’s astonishing because it completes the communication cycle. It takes on a completely different feel and meaning, and it goes into its own life. It’s so wonderful.
Miriam Schulman:
Art, when it hasn’t been placed in a new home, is like a cat without whiskers.
Susan Cohn:
Exactly. Exactly. That’s such a good way of saying it, Miriam, because you don’t finish the cycle.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay. We’re going to talk about your books and then we’re going to fast forward a little bit more and talk about our work together and the LA Art Show because there’s so many lessons to unpack there that I think a lot of the listeners are going to really love. Let’s talk first about your decision to write the book, The Art of the Mentor. What made you decide to write a book?
Susan Cohn:
I’ve always been a writer. I came out a writer. When I was a little girl, I used to sit up late at night and fold up pieces of paper and put other paper on it and write pretend novels. I always thought I was a writer when I was seven years old and eight years old. When they asked me when I was little, what I wanted to be when I grew up, I said I wanted to be a poet and I was serious. Here I was, I had just lost my husband and I hadn’t written the book I wanted to write, we had COVID so I couldn’t go anywhere or do anything, and it just seemed like the moment when I could write a book and I sat down and it came out. It just came out.
Miriam Schulman:
Why that book? I know Art of the Mentor is autobiographical and it tells the story of both your love story with your husband, so it’s like a love letter to him as well as I would say, a love letter to your teachers.
Susan Cohn:
For sure. For sure. I am so grateful to them, to all of them, to my husband and to all those teachers, these wonderful mentors that I had, who’ve just given so much of themselves to me because it opened up a whole world to me. Art, it means more than a subject to me. Art’s like a meditation. It’s where I go to be comfortable. I’m 78 years old, and that’s before my birthday next week, and so things sometimes hurt. When I’m painting, there’s no pain. When I’m painting, I don’t have any sense of time. It’s just a place that I go that’s satisfying and it’s a happy place for me. I’m creative and I try new things and my age doesn’t matter. In fact, I think it’s an advantage.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah, which brings us to your next book, which you just finished the first draft of, and you shared with me, this book will be released in April of 2022. Is that right?
Susan Cohn:
Yes. As of now, that’s about when I think it’ll be out.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay, just so you know, Susan, you wrote the entire book while I wrote chapter 10 of my book.
Susan Cohn:
Well, I’d been thinking about it a long time.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay.
Susan Cohn:
I have this favorite book that I did not write called, I’ve Decided to Live to 120. What that means is not necessarily that we’re going to live to 120, but it’s living as if we’re going to live to 120, which puts us in a position to really live every day as fully as we can because we don’t know really how long we’re going to live. But if we see 120, take away 78, there’s a whole lot of years to fill up. It’s time to kind of think about what am I going to do with all that time? Am I going to sit and watch television? Am I going to take pills? Am I going to have things operated? I don’t know. For me, the idea of being able to be creative and productive and to constantly grow in my learning and in my contribution to the world, it’s really exciting. So I can think toward 120 and it’s not relevant, except that it opens the world to me.
Miriam Schulman:
I love that philosophy. I shared that with a friend of mine. I’m 53. My friend’s a little older than me, but not much. I think she’s 58 or 59, and she just got an MFA in poetry. She wanted to be a good poet.
Susan Cohn:
I love it. I love it.
Miriam Schulman:
Right. She was comparing herself to her peers in her program who were in their 30s and she’s like, “Well, I’m in my 50s.” I don’t want to use her first name because I don’t have permission to use it. We’ll just say her name is Cheryl, which isn’t her name? “Cheryl, you could live to 120. You may not even be halfway there.”
Miriam Schulman:
What I love about you, Susan … I get so many emails from people saying, “I can’t do this. Leave me alone. I’m 70.” I’m like, “What are you talking about? I have a client who’s turning 79, so I don’t know why you’ve given up. Some of us haven’t given up yet.”
Susan Cohn:
Yeah, and why should we?
Miriam Schulman:
Right, why should I? I actually think that’s really the true meaning behind there’s a Picasso quote that, “It’s easy to be an artist when you’re a child; the hard thing is to be an artist when you’re an adult.” I think it’s usually interpreted or maybe he even meant it, that it’s about creating naive art. It’s easy to create that naive art when you’re young, but for me, it’s always been that idea of you have so much ambition when you’re young and it’s harder to have that as you get older. So the challenge is to continue to have that same ambition when you’re older as when you were younger to do all those things. I admire you so much for having written two books. The Spring will be out in April.
Miriam Schulman:
By the way, I wanted to make sure you knew about my free training, How to Sell More Art (Without Being Insta-Famous). If you were disappointed with your art sales in 2021, let’s fix that for this year. During this masterclass, I’m dropping lots of gems, including why your success isn’t measured by your social media following, and what’s really going to move the needle, when it comes to sales. You can ditch all those unnecessary time-sucking social media platforms and get more of your studio time back and dig beyond the starving artist’s mindset to uncover what’s really sabotaging your result. To choose your showtime, go to schulmanart.com/sellmoreart. And now back to the show.
Miriam Schulman:
Now I want to move into some of the work we’ve done together over the past year. Let’s start off by, Susan, why don’t you share with people who don’t know, tell them about the LA Art Show, what it is and why it’s such a big deal?
Susan Cohn:
The LA Art Show has come to make LA a major center for art. It’s a big art fair out of LA and it keeps getting bigger and more important. It’s not easy to get into it. I decided once again, I had my life changed and I was making new decisions of what can I do because now my life’s changed and I have to figure it out. So I developed a plan of what I was going to do and I presented it to them as a proposal. They have a committee that decides whether you can get in. There was some back and forth, and they were excited with my idea and accepted me. I took a 12 foot by 40 foot booth, like a crazy person-
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah, that’s very ambitious.
Susan Cohn:
… which is gigantic. What I told them that made them want me in the show was that I was going to do a 30 foot installation, that it was going to be a dark tunnel filled with lighted art and lights and sound all interacting. And then I spent the next whole bunch of months trying to make that up.
Miriam Schulman:
So you didn’t know when you said this if you would actually be able to do it. You just had a vision and you figured you’ll figure it out. Is that correct?
Susan Cohn:
Well, I set up a sample and my son took a video of me with it. We had done this little tiny sample, but they fell in love with the idea. The show got postponed from its normal time because of COVID, so I had a little more time than I would normally have had to do it. We had lines of people waiting to get into this tunnel. It was pretty interesting. I had a fantasy that people would dance through it, really enjoy it, run get their friends and come back and do it again. On the last day of that show, my fantasy was realized because we had lines of people.
Miriam Schulman:
That’s fantastic. If you want to see Susan’s tunnel, you can see videos of it on her Instagram channel. That’s correct, right?
Susan Cohn:
Yes.
Miriam Schulman:
I’m pretty sure that’s where I saw it, okay. Your handle is at cohnart. Is that right?
Susan Cohn:
cohn_art.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay, at cohn_art. We’ll make sure we link to her Instagram in the show notes so you get the right Susan Cohn when you go over there. Make sure that you see it. It was spectacular.
Miriam Schulman:
I’m going to describe it and you can also help me describe it. A lot of the art that she presented in the show, she was very tightly curated, a lot of the art was, I would say it’s ink on Mylar, ink on plastic. Is that right?
Susan Cohn:
Ink on plastic. Yes. It’s usually clear plastic, though sometimes I’ll use a Mylar so that it’ll reflect.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah, which is what made the light show so spectacular. Sometimes the lights were behind the plastic and putting the colors everywhere. Sometimes it was around and it really was a truly three dimensional experience, like an installation piece.
Miriam Schulman:
The other thing that I really liked about Susan’s art is it does have a connection to art history. The two connections that I made with Susan’s art would be both with the installation artist, Yayoi Kusama, who does installation pieces, where it’s the experience of walking through, such as her infinity room, and also with Jasper Johns. The Jasper Johns’ exhibit, which was at the Whitney, I believe it’s no longer there, at least it won’t be there anymore when this goes live, he also painted ink on plastic. That was one thing that I was sharing with you, Susan. I was like, “Oh, this is how he describes it.” He describes it as ink on plastic, and it made your art very modern and very relevant. I know his art wasn’t necessarily even an influence, but you share that place in art history with both of those two artists.
Susan Cohn:
I have this fantasy, Miriam, of standing on the shoulders of the artists that come before and having young artists come after me and stand on mine, and that was one of the times when you sent me to see the Jasper Johns exhibit, where I just felt it happening. The other thing that happened was at the LA Art Show, people filled out a form and wanted more contact and had questions and things for me. There were some young artists who came to my studio after that, and I felt that they were starting to stand on my shoulders. They were so appreciative and they had lots of questions and it was pretty wonderful for me.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah. You did a really great, let’s call it marketing technique that I want you to share with our listeners, because it was very powerful. This was the idea of creating the contest. Would you like to describe that and share more?
Susan Cohn:
Yes. At the last minute, I created a card that was like a treasure hunt of the booth and it listed the different ways I used ink on plastic in the booth to look different and to do different things. People could pick it up and walk around and check off boxes and then put their contact information and put it in a box. I said that the winner would win a studio visit or a small painting. I ended up with a lot of studio visits because we had lots of winners.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah. I remember, Susan, you telling me, “Well, I picked a winner and it was so great having them to my studio, I’m going to pick another winner.” And they were like, “Let’s make them all winners.”
Susan Cohn:
Yes we did. I had so many people come through and really of all of them, there was only one that was an uncomfortable situation. Everybody else, and there were a lot of them, were wonderful. I had these incredible interactions with people. I met these fabulous people of all ages, who just really came in and exchanged ideas and loved seeing the studio, and asking me lots of questions, and had ideas for me about selling and where to show and sort of got involved in being part of my art.
Miriam Schulman:
That’s fantastic. Okay, so now you’re currently in the gallery in New York City, Van Der Plas, and you were in there previously in, I want to say that was October that you were also at the gallery?
Susan Cohn:
Yes. Yes.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay. By the way, there more men coming up to Susan to talk to her and flirt with her than there were people coming up to me. Just to show, it’s such a myth that with the youth and beauty, there’s something very empowering about owning your own worth and space and how attractive that is. This was in a group show. There was nothing to distinguish that Susan’s art was in the gallery versus my art … I wasn’t in the gallery, but there was nothing to distinguish that. They were coming up to you because you were throwing off this aura that was very attractive, and part of your willingness to take these risks and to continue to grow and to continue to evolve, it’s just so attractive.
Susan Cohn:
Well, thank you for that. I think the most fun person who came up to me was a young man. He was probably in his 30s, about six feet tall, and good looking. He came over and he whispered to me, “You look great. You look fabulous. You’re the best looking woman here.” He said, “I’m a hairdresser and I know,” and he walked away.
Miriam Schulman:
It was amazing. It wasn’t like it was an isolated incident. There were several really good looking men who all approached Susan. I was like, “I want some of what she’s drinking.” I mean, I’m happily married, that’s not the point. The point was just your aura was just so magnetic that night. I know you were very proud of what you accomplished.
Susan Cohn:
Yeah. I was proud of it, but I also had a good time that night. It was really nice because to come to New York and have friends and family there with me, who all came and just supported me, I was just in awe. I was very excited by all the people who took their time to be part of my experience. It’s turning into a relationship with the gallery. I was in my second show there this month, I didn’t go, because I had a lot of things going on here, but I’m feeling like it’s beginning to be a relationship that’ll be valuable.
Miriam Schulman:
Absolutely. I know that you being in the gallery led to additional interest in your art from your email list.
Susan Cohn:
Yes. The way that I got involved with the gallery was Instagram. The gallery saw my work on Instagram and contacted me.
Miriam Schulman:
Now, is that because you were part of the LA Art Show? Did they tell you?
Susan Cohn:
Well, I did the Instagram because I was doing this whole push last year with my book and with my art and with the LA Art Show. I didn’t have really much social media involvement because I didn’t understand Instagram. I didn’t know how to do it, so I had to learn what it was about. I’m still not sure I know, except I know that I’m working with a gallery in New York because of it and so I’m willing to keep doing it.
Miriam Schulman:
Yeah. That’s beautiful.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay. Why don’t you step now into the role of the mentor and let’s talk about what were the lessons that you learned in 2021, either through me or through being part of the LA Art Show, or anything else you want to impart?
Susan Cohn:
Gee 2021 was such a big year for me because it was my first year as a widow, and COVID, I had a lot of time to fill. Part of my grieving process I think was to stay busy and maximize my time so that I didn’t get morose, and try to figure out who I was and who I would be going forward because I’m inventing a whole new life.
Miriam Schulman:
You have 40 years ahead of you and look what you’ve accomplished in the last 28 or 29 years.
Miriam Schulman:
All right. Finally, to wrap this all up, I want to make sure that you check out Susan’s amazing art. You can see that at cohnart.com and also her two books, The Art of the Mentor, which you can find on Amazon, but we’ll put the link to that in the show notes, and her forthcoming book-
Susan Cohn:
The Spring Principle.
Miriam Schulman:
The Spring Principle, perfect, okay, which will be available in April 2022.
Miriam Schulman:
Susan, do you have any last words for my listeners before we call this podcast complete?
Susan Cohn:
I do. I think what it is is if I could do this, you can do anything. I hope that you’ll live your life fully every day. We have this life and every day’s a gift.
Miriam Schulman:
Okay. That’s beautiful.
Miriam Schulman:
All right, my friend, don’t forget if you like this episode, you have to check out my free master class. If you want the same success as Susan, you can go to schulmanart.com/sellmoreart.
Miriam Schulman:
All right, my friend, because the friend is the listener, but thank you so much for being with me here today.
Susan Cohn:
Miriam, thank you so much. We’ve been talking all year and you’ve really helped me to grow this year when I needed it so much. And thanks for having me today. It’s just great.
Miriam Schulman:
Well, it’s super fun and I’m sure everyone got a lot out of today’s conversation.
Miriam Schulman:
All right, my friend, and thank you so much for being with me here today. I’ll see you the same time, same place, next week. Stay inspired.
Miriam Schulman:
You’ll find links to everything we talked about in the show notes at schulmanart.com/176.
Speaker 2:
Thank you for listening to The Inspiration Place podcast. Connect with us on Facebook at facebook.com/schulmanart, on Instagram at @schulmanart, and of course, on schulmanart.com.
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