ARTrepeneurs

ARTrepeneurs

David O'Keefe and Wayne Curtiss were friends years before they decided

to start a business creating and selling original paintings and sculpture.

entrepreneurs by Dave Szymanski | Tampa Bay Editor

The business of art is worth millions on the Gulf Coast, from art shows, to galleries to commissioned work for companies and cities.

But what specifically does an artist need to do to turn his creativity from one man traveling to art shows in a van into a healthy, consistently growing business?

Wayne Curtiss and David O'Keefe hope to find out.

Curtiss, chief executive officer of Smack Apparel in Tampa, has formed a publishing company, David O'Keefe Studios, to distribute humorous caricature paintings and sculptures of pop culture celebrities in politics, music, television, movies and sports done by Tampa artist David O'Keefe.

O'Keefe is a former editorial artist for The Tampa Tribune who has done work for Sports Illustrated, Time, The Village Voice and other publications.

It is an entrepreneurial venture, formed less than a year ago, with a small staff housed in the Smack offices in South Tampa. O'Keefe works from his Brandon home in a studio he made from his garage. Other staff members call galleries to gauge their interest and check on art shows and exhibitions. O'Keefe owns 51% of the business. Curtiss owns 49%.

While young, the venture is off to a fast start. It sold two of O'Keefe's original paintings of the 1965 and 1969 Beatles for $24,000. They will be displayed in the Hard Days Night Hotel in Liverpool, England. A handful of galleries, including one in New York, are buying pieces.

Curtiss and O'Keefe will be going to an art expo in Las Vegas next month where they will staff a 20-foot booth with O'Keefe's biggest work to date: a painting of the 12 members of the "Godfather" movie cast. They'll also take a black-and-white painting of the "I Love Lucy" cast.

Curtiss would like O'Keefe to turn them out faster, but he knows that unlike the shirts he sells, the artwork takes more time.

"The Godfather piece will be epic," Curtiss says. "But they can't come out fast enough for me."

Sometimes events work in their favor - O'Keefe is working on a Brett Favre sculpture. "The coming stuff will make quite a splash," Curtiss says. "It just takes a while."

Learning patience

Curtiss runs a business - Smack Apparel - creating relatively fast line-art for T-shirts and sportswear for pro and college sports fans, then getting it out to retailers. Fine art is a much slower process.

"In the art business, it's tough to grow fast," Curtiss says. "(But) a small amount of buzz has been created."

O'Keefe and Curtiss went to an art expo in New York earlier this year and that inspired the pair to begin the business.

The pair met in 1987 and knew each other for years back when O'Keefe worked at The Tampa Tribune with Curtiss' wife Rosemary.

Curtiss has been running Smack Apparel for 11 years in Tampa. He tried collaborating with O'Keefe on a T-shirt design involving Penn State football coach Joe Paterno, but O'Keefe's more detailed art didn't lend itself to Curtiss' faster, more simple line-art designs.

The two remained friends and when O'Keefe left the Tribune, Curtiss saw a different business opportunity. He is managing partner of David O'Keefe Studios.

"I saw David's talents as incredible," Curtiss says. "After New York, our eyes opened."

That means sometimes taking different approaches. For example, besides paintings and sculptures, the studio is turning some of O'Keefe's caricatures into 500-piece puzzles. The company has created a brand called Sic Puzzles by David O'Keefe Studios.

Using a process called "giclee," which involves taking a large picture of an original painting, laser printing it on a canvas and varnishing it, the company can do fine art reproductions that look like originals.

The niche is humorous caricatures.

"There are a lot of people out there that are trying to look like famous artists," Curtiss says. "With David, no one else is like his style. This will form a collector base."

Although he is not a veteran art publisher, what Curtiss brings to the business, besides capital - he has invested about $90,000 so far - is a sense for what will sell and management experience in getting it out at the right time.

"Art is an enormous industry," Curtiss says. "There are a lot of artists ... I think the only thing that separates Dave from success is exposure."

So besides marketing O'Keefe's unique caricatures, the other strategy is setting up a gallery network. "We take care of them," Curtiss says. "They can take care of their customers."

O'Keefe says he is also more attuned to creating pieces the galleries like.

Some of the galleries focus on well-known artists and celebrity artists, such as rock n' rollers Grace Slick and Ron Wood. But Curtiss is confident those same galleries will buy O'Keefe pieces in two to three years.

An artist at heart

Starting an art business in a soft economy isn't easy, but the soft-spoken O'Keefe has been surprised at the small company's growth.

O'Keefe, 47, moved to Florida with his family when he was 10. His dad saw that David liked to draw, so he got him paints and crayons and told him to draw on the walls at home. He'd tell Dave to draw faces.

Then he sat Dave in front of the television during the CBS Evening News, and told him to draw a caricature of Walter Cronkite.

"Catching a likeness is one of the tough things," he says. "You have to keep tweaking."

His art interest carried over from the home, into school and to his job at The Tribune. Sports Illustrated and other national publications called O'Keefe to do cover art, but that work eventually dried up.

Then, another phenomenon grew. As society became more politically correct, some publications began to be more careful about humorous artwork. O'Keefe did a caricature of country music singer Faith Hill that publication editors we'ren't all fond of.

"A lot of people don't get it," O'Keefe says. "I did a Faith Hill. What I do is humor. I made her not as beautiful. I got flack from that."

O'Keefe is married with four children, aged 20, 17, 11 and 7. He dons the headphones, puts on music and does his painting and sculpturing in the evenings until about 2 a.m. He is then up about 5 a.m. and also works before the children are up.

He is friends with other artists. "Some travel around and sleep in their cars," O'Keefe says. "It is a tough, tough business. Some have a teaching gig. Most teach and have a sideline. If you stay at it, you see the fruition of it."

O'Keefe is focused on growing the relationship with studios and sending them the art they like and can sell. For example, the demand is still high for Frank Sinatra art.

O'Keefe would like to do a painting of the Seinfeld cast. He says he is grateful he doesn't have to paint horses and dogs all the time.

"It's really a plus being able to do this, instead of doing beach scenes," he says.

O'Keefe liked his previous job, working as an in-house artist for The Tribune, but he had to find other work when the newspaper scaled back its staff. He had worked there nearly 27 years.

"To me, it was the dream job," O'Keefe says. "It was always easy, sketching ideas, finding the happy medium."

Besides his editorial work, O'Keefe freelanced in the animation industry, doing storyboards for Blue Sky, part of 20th Century Fox.

Eventually, O'Keefe faced a business decision: Pursue animation or partner with Curtiss and continue his caricatures. He picked the partnership.

Even though O'Keefe Studios has a staff, O'Keefe still has to make calls to galleries and plan expo trips.

"It has got its growing pains," O'Keefe says. "I would love to close my door and paint and sculpt. But there are so many things to juggle."

Still, he's thankful for having a team. And a financial backer in Curtiss. "I'm definitely more blessed, because of Wayne," O'Keefe says. "He believes in me."

Artists united

Tatyana Hankinson, 40, another Tampa painter, can relate to the struggles of artists to set up their own business.

Most artists she knows work part time, sometimes in a job connected to their art, like teaching art. They teach in group and private classes. Whatever time is left, they work producing and promoting their art.

Some do full-time artwork after they retire. Some try to make a living doing art shows, but they have to travel nearly every weekend.

"It's hard for family, hard for yourself," Hankinson says.

Selling directly to galleries saves travel time, but galleries can have difficult terms. Some ask for exclusive rights to artwork.

Others take up to 50% of the sale. Some galleries tack on pass-through expenses for publicity and receptions. Plus, just to get into galleries isn't easy, Hankinson says.

Sometimes the answer for artists is banding together. Hankinson is vice president of a nonprofit organization called Tampa Realistic Artists, which supports local artists. It owns a building in Hyde Park, in South Tampa, that it uses it for exhibitions, arts classes, meetings and receptions. It has a gallery on Swann Avenue where artists can exhibit work and sell it. The organization takes 25% of the sales.

Part of the challenge in the original art business is technology, which has created many copies of artwork and photos at much lower costs than art show or gallery prices.

"People have a lot of choices now," Hankinson says. "You can buy the poster. It still looks good."

The good news is that some people, even in tougher economic times, collect art. And it isn't always the wealthy.

Like a serial entrepreneur that is driven to create new businesses, artists are driven to create quality art. "Artists don't really have a choice," Hankinson says. "When it's given to you to create, it's inside you. You just have to do that.

REVIEW SUMMARY

Company: David O'Keefe Studios

Industry: Artwork

Key: Creating quality caricature art that will sell, getting it to galleries and art shows.