Gotham Gal

Ariane Goldman, twobirds and Hatch, Woman Entrepreneur

I met Ariane last summer.  I was immediately impressed with her energy, smarts, drive, instincts and entrepreneurial spirit.  Working for herself was probably in the cards from the second she was born.  It was just a matter of time before she got there.  Ariane has taken a smart idea and created two different businesses, twobirds and Hatch, that are unique although similar in concept.  Her creativity as a designer paired with her business smarts is the key to success in the apparel business.  If you take a look at the lines out there that have risen quickly over the past 5/10 years they have all been started by a designer. 

Ariane grew up in NYC.  She went to college at University of Michigan majoring marketing taking as many classes as possible in the business school as possible.  The summer before her senior year she took an internship at Amex.  She returned after college with a paid job and stayed for eight years. 

She started her career in Amex in the acquisitions department and then moved into the marketing department working on sponsorships for large events such as the USOpen and fashion week.  It was a big company and a great company to wet her chops but she knew that she would never be a lifer.

Ariane's parents are entrepreneurs so it is not surprising that she is too.  Her parents worked together in their own shmata business in the childrens wholesale business.  While Ariane was at Amex, she started to take classes in the evening at Parsons.  She was looking for her "thing".  She knew she had a business head but wanted to figure out creatively how to make something with that.  At Parsons she took a lot of interior design classes. 

When Ariane was planning her wedding she designed the dresses for her bridesmaids.  She started to show people what she had created and wondered if this was the business idea she was looking for.  Her husband told her to go for it and she did opening up twobirds.  She went on to show her dresses on Martha Stewart and the business rapidly grew.  Currently she has an online store including brick and mortar locations in New York, Los Angeles, Toronto, London and Sydney. 

When Ariane got pregnant, she saw the same void in the pregnancy market.  Why aren't there simple one piece garments in a variety of colors and thus Hatch Collection was created.  18 pieces online.   What she did was smart.  She took the profits of twobirds to finance the start-up of Hatch.  It was certainly a leap of faith and I am sure scary as hell but Ariane is savvy and knew she had found a void in the market.  She will stay with the online platform for now as she figures out the needs of the customer and the business model.  So far, so good. 

As Ariane says, it is all about execution.  She has that right.  Also, execution has a snowball effect.  Once you get the first step right, it is easier to continue executing and then all of a sudden, there you are.  The hardest part is being a one woman band.  Having a partner is always a bonus so you have someone to confirm that the next step makes sense.  From what I see, she has done a helluva job trusting her own instincts.  I wouldn't be surprised to see a third concept under the umbrella of Ariane Goldman sometime in the future.  

Alinea

I have wanted to go to Alinea since it opened.  Lock of Curbed/Racked/Eater had not been either.  Shouldn't we go on a road trip together and do the deed?  I read the book that the chef, Grant Achatz, had written and it might be my favorite of all the bios written out there.  And so...we went, we tasted, we smelled, we experienced, we oohed, we aahed, we wowed and we are glad we went. 

The restaurant is a little jewel box with attention to detail everywhere.  A soothing grey color throughout.  Even every napkin has the small grey logo on it. 

There are no table clothes so instead you get a small square puff that they put their silverware on for you prior to each step of the meal. 

We opted to go with the wine tasting along side each dish.  The first few courses are fish driven.  They asked us a week in advance if there were any food allergies/aversions etc. so keep that in mind.  Our crew had none.  This is called Steelhead Roe.  A spoonful of roe sitting in a curry broth and then surrounded by thin slices of coconut, small teaspoons of a coconut and carrot creams and I believe the green leaf was cilantro.  Incredible.  Each flavor sung independently yet together it was just harmony.  This was served with a cocktail of Gimonnet Brut with St. Germain and Esterhazy Beerenauslese.

How about this?  Sitting on a piece of wood that appears to have been picked up on the beach and then perfectly placed seaweed strung around it.  Sitting on top are four small bites.  Starting with an oyster leaf, truly a real oyster leaf that comes from somewhere in the world with a migonette.  Tastes like the sea.  A king crab shell filled with king crab, passion fruit, heart of palm and allspice.  A closed dark black shell mussel that is perfectly clean.  Inside is a mussel sitting in a saffron broth with tiny pieces of chorizo and a hint of oregano.

The last thing sitting on this perch is the razor clam.  They do give you instructions on what order to eat in.  You open the razor clam and this is what it looks like inside.  Pieces of razor clam with shiso, soy and daikon.  This is served with a Barth "Charta" Riesling, Rheingau 2010.  Between the wine and the dish you could haved closed your eyes and be sitting at a restaurant overlooking the ocean.  Divine.

This contraption is used to make coffee.  Instead they put a mixture of vegetables in the top and turned it on to make a broth for a course to come.

Hands free on this course.  It is called Wooly Pig.  Charred squid with fennel and orange.  This was definitely more about the concept.

The broth that was made was poured over this at the table including a bit of the broth was poured into a small cup to finish off the course.  It looks like agedashi tofu and it has the same consistency of that but it is a scallop.  Served with Bodegas Godeval "Vina Godeval"valderroas 2010.  This was a total "wow".  If you can see the curled carrot being held together by a small piece of a edible branch.  Just gives you an idea of the attention to detail.

A colorful dish.  Thai banana, seat salt and kaffr lime.  It was like a palette cleansing.  The small pieces of ice in this dish just cooled your mouth.  Served with Chehalem "3 Vineyards" Pinot Gris, Williamette 2010.

This particular structure was our centerpiece when we first sat down. 

It was time to dig in.  We were each given a glass straw and told to stand.  Beet juice mixed with hibiscus and licorice.  You have to like beets for this one. 

Burn Morels.  Sitting on hot rocks was a perfectly executed mixture of finds as if you were foraging.  Morels, ramps, fiddlehead ferns, miner's lettuce, quail egg, Virginia ham, black trumpet mushroom custard and another cube of mushroom custard.  Served with Descendientes de J. Palacios "Petalos" Bierzo, Spain 2009.  This dish was just awesome.  Each bite was new with intense flavors.  A big "ooh and aah".

This small bite is a perfectly cooked potato mixed with black truffle and butter.  Brilliant.

These two mirrors are set down.  One mirror for two and since there were four of us, a mirror a couple.  Seven people worked on these little wonders.  This might go under the category of over the top in terms of the ability to actually make each of these individual pops of flavor and color yet there was nothing on this plate that I wish was larger or that I even loved.  It was just unique. 

This plate had lamb prepared three ways.  The lamb was perfect.  You are supposed to take a few of the pieces off the mirror to complement your lamb.  Served with Cheau Ollieux Romanis "Atal Sia" Corbieres 2008.

We were told that this has been on the menu from the beginning and I know why, it is an explosion of deliciousness.  Think of it like a soup dumpling but instead there is black truffle, parmesan and romaine inside.  Amazing. 

Achatz had seen a Miro painting and it inspired him to create this dish.  Each utensil has a bite of something else.  There is quince paste, a piece of squab, a square of foie gras and a few other things.  Creative yes but didn't get that excited about each individual taste.  Conceptually each taste is supposed to be clean, clear of anything but its one component and that he definitely did.  Served with Valpolicella Classico Superiore "TB" Bussola, Veneto 2006.

While you ate the dish above this silver container smokes the scent of lavendar lightly over the table. Theater.

Now we move into the cheese course.  On the end of a smoking cinnamon stick is a Anjou pear, onion and brie with a crispy covering holding it to the stick.  Different.  Served with "Boston Bual" Madeira from the Rare Wine Co.

Here is the true palette cleanser.  5 little bites of ginger all different.  Imaginative.

I happen to love blueberries.  There was a little theater here with the smoke.  You are to remove the round glass bowl that where liquid is warming the bowl.  Eventually you take another glass straw to taste the liquid.  On top was blueberries, sorrel, macadamia nuts and buttermilk for the ingredients. Served with Braida "Vigne Senza Nome" Moscato D'Asti 2010.

These little gems are helium balloons, literally, made of green apples.  You are to bite in and of course get the squeaky voice for a few seconds and eat the balloon.  Kind of like going to the carnival and having cotton candy.

This is the finale.  They roll out a rubberized table cloth and begin to bring out bowls and a round globe of white chocolate.  Freeze dried strawberry, english pea, lemon and chantilly cream are spread across the table.  Then they smash the white chocolate globes all over the table and basically you did in.  I honestly didn't love any of the flavors on the table but appreciated the humor and thought that went into this.  After all, eating should be fun too. Served with a Matteo Corregia "Anthos", Piedmont 2011.

Thrilled we came.  An amazing experience.  Some of the dishes were just out of this world delicious while others not as yummy but creative and thoughtful.  You have to just be impressed with the attention to detail as well as the idea of taking the tastes of flavors and food to another level.  Had to grab a pic of the kitchen before leaving.  Worth the journey.  Also, the company was fantastic. 

Wrigley Park

I went to college in Boston so I have been to the only other classic old school ballpark, Fenway Park.  I actually lived down the street from Fenway Park.  Walking up to Wrigley Field, seeing the open bars on the street, even the smell of the place, really sent me back a few years.  Certainly at Fenway Park they never mentioned that I was there.  LOL.

On the side streets there are apartment buildings.  The owners of these buildings had built bleachers on the top charging fans for a seat.  Most of them have a one cost including an all you can eat hot dogs and hamburgers included in the fare.  This building has even created a restaurant below. 

A few years back the owners of the Cubs decided they were providing the entertainment so either the owners payed them a percentage of their take of they would block their views.  An agreement was made and I was told that the affiliate fee to the Cubs is 17.5%.  Not bad. 

It was raining but luck had it that the rain ceased until we left sometime around the 8th inning.  What a beautiful field.

The old scoreboard will never be replaced as it is land-marked so there is a new electronic one lower down around the other side.

Had to have the Chicago dog.

As the weather turned colder, as in I was wearing a heavy sweater, winter coat, big scarf and gloves, the birds sat in the stands to watch the game.

Then the birds took over the field.  It was kind of crazy.  Really fun afternoon.  Hung out, watched the game and shot the shit.  Classic American past time.

Girl and the Goat

A few people asked me if I was going to go to the Girl and the Goat when I would be in Chicago.  Ends up I went.  This restaurant opened up about a year and a half ago.  The place was still jamming at 11pm when we left.  The restaurant is huge.  A large bar area and the kitchen is open and literally extends over the entire back of the restaurant.  The walls have this black crackly wood look to them.  Sort of feels like a ski resort. 

So you have to wonder what is up with the goat?  They have a more than a handful of goat dishes just building on the theme that chefs has taken over the past decade that you can make good food with meat that is not as expensive.  Forces the chef to be creative and keeps the prices down.  We were a party of seven and shared everything.  Just to preface my thoughts on the food last night is that I am well aware of how spoiled rotten I am living in NYC with the ability to eat extraordinary food at many restaurants starting with breakfast straight through dinner.  Also, I love to cook and bake too.  I bring this up because I was not so wowed with the food last night.  The menu was innovative yet the food was heavy handed...kind of went with the feeling of the space, good for a ski resort. 

So...to the food.  Hiramasa crudo.  Buttery thin fish with pieces of crispy pork belly and caperberries surrounding the plate with a chili aioli zig-zagged across the dish.  The sauce zig-zag from a bottle was a theme on each dish.

Royal red shrimp ceviche.  Some of the shrimp inside this was actually raw and had yet to cook in the citrus that usually is used to prepared a ceviche.  I believe the crispy pieces that were on the top and bottom of this dish was popiah which is a thin crust made from wheat flour.  Inside this was white asparagus, spiced sunflower seeds and cilantro. 

This is the one dish I really liked.  Pan fried shishito peppers that had just the right kick with a sesame miso paste tossed over them and then parmesan melted on top which eventually oozed all over the peppers.

Goat sausage pizza.  Ramps (tis the season), tomatoes, ricotta and a signature cheese from Beechers Flagship Reserve.  I found this to be bland and heavy handed with the goat sausage which had no flavor.

Ham Frites.  Not sure what the ham part was maybe it was the sprinkling of shaved pork over the fries.  The dips were a smoked tomato aioli and a cheddar beer sauce.  Strange.

Lamb tartare.  I was intrigued with this as you don't usually see lamb tartare.  Chopped pieces of raw lamb mixed with a tuna aioli and a english pea tepande on top.  Water crackers on the side for dipping.  Eh.

Chickpea fritters.  Way too much happening here.  The chick peas were fresh and stewed and then deep fried making the dish mushy in your mouth.  Pickles, red onions and Crave Brothers mozzarella were under the dish..and of course the sauce. 

Tempura soft shell crab in a tarragon brother, sugar snap peas and fennel covered with more sauce, thai chili aioli.  Super heavy.

Scallops were perfectly grilled with a sauce of marcono almond butter, green papaya and green almond nuoc cham.  Great Thai flavorings but then as you poked around there were pieces of braised duck too.  Why?  Just not necessary.

Empanadas stuffed with smoked goat. Marinated goat feta, tomatoes and hummus on the side.  Thick crust.  

Sauteed green beans with a fish sauce vinaigrette and cashews.  Really heavy handed on the sauce.

Pappardelle pasta with rosemary, gooseberries and goat.  This was interesting and really tasty.

Wood oven roasted pig face.  A sunny side egg over potato stix mixed with tamarind, cilantro and a red wine maple sauce.  The name makes it sound more interesting.

A large piece of confit goat belly with a bourbon butter glaze and little pieces of sweet lobster and fennel.  Just enough to send your cholesterol sky high. 

I was so excited to come here because I was bummed we would miss the Girl and the Goat.  So were my fellow foodies on the trip.  Not one of us thought the food was good. Really disappointed.  It happens.  An off night perhaps...but perhaps not...or perhaps just not for me or us.

 

 

 

Eater goes to Chicago....with me!

Curbed Media was the first company that I invested in.  I read Curbed and Eater daily (nationally and locally) and began to read Racked every day as well when it launched.  Am a huge fan of the team and the company.  It has been an education and really rewarding for me being involved at a board level watching the company grow and evolve over the past four years.

Lock and I had discussed taking a road trip to Chicago to meet the team and of course eat.  Last night they put on an event at Nellcote.  A bunch of chefs kindly provided tastings for our clients and advertisers.  It was nice to meet many of them last night.  The photo above is a table overlooking the room(top of the page) at Nellcote.

This treat is from Paul Virant from Perrenial Virant & Vie. He just came out with a cookbook called, The Preservation Kitchen; The Craft of Making and Cooking with Pickles, Preserves and Aigre-doux.  Might be a good pick up for the summer.  He made sauteed morels with bone marrow, pickled garlic and parlsey on grilled bread.  Pretty amazing.

From Michael Ada and Zoe Schor of Ada Street.  Salmon tartare with bacon on crostini, two ways.  I am a fan of the bacon with the fish. 

Jared Van Camp from Nellcote.  Runny burrata with caviar, a thinly sliced piece of radish, a little bit of lemon and a crispy shallot on top.  It was the shallot that changed the entire composition of this dish.  Yum.

Desserts from Mindys Hot Chocolate.  Three types of shortbreads; fleur de sel, oreo chocolate and graham cracker.  Each came with a different ice cream already cut into small squares to make a quick sandwich.  Nice hand held treat.

Razor clam with a slight fennel essence, tender peas and a borage leaf.  This was really light and I really loved the presentation.  They used the shell like a spoon.  Merlin Verrier from Graham Elliot.

There was one more chef that I missed but I will return.  We left after the event and took a walk down the block to the Girl and The Goat for a group dinner.  More on that later. 

 

 

Affordable Art Fair and more

The first Affordable Art Fair that I went to was easily 8 years ago.  It took place at the Pier.  The show has changed locations but is now an event that takes place across the globe.  The concept is of course being that everyone can own art made by real artists. 

Certainly the web is changing the art world too.  The opportunity to buy prints as well as limited editions from top artists are sold at 20 X 200, Art Space, Artstar and Exhibition A.  You can even rent art for your walls from Artiscle.  Access to art is available at an entirely different level.  There is Art.sy where you can discover fine art and through them get connected to the gallery.  There are also Art Fair sites that are launched around specific fairs where you can buy on line prior to the event, during the event and after the event. It is pretty amazing that you can see, discover and educate yourself about art while sitting on your couch watching your computer.

The fair this past weekend, on a beautiful day in NYC, was packed.  75 galleries from everywhere including a heavy presence from Australia.  What I noticed the second I walked in was not only was the place packed that there was alot of purchases being made.  People were walking out with their purchases, pieces were being wrapped...commerce was everywhere. 

So what does that say?  Does it say that more people are buying art, probably.  What it said to me is that the economy in NYC is spreading its wings and that is a very good thing.  Is Bloomberg still thinking about running for President?

Here is the highlights, at least for me. 

These structures are shaped like pills.  The first one is called fucking like bunnies.

The artist, Cecile Plaisance, had Barbie ( always with very little clothes on ) in all of her work.

I had seen these photographs when I was in Mexico City.  An artist from Mexico City captures photographs of people who have come to NYC, dressed up as superheroes, as they go about their daily life and all of them send money home and work several jobs.  The artist is Dulce Pinzon.

I liked this.  LIttle toy soldiers shaped into a heart.  Dinah Dufton, love not war.

Got a kick out of the bird paintings.  All of them were speaking to each other with lingo that we use now.  Mike Chavez

I keep looking for a deer head.  Not sure this is it.  Rachel Denny.

I went down to the lower east side to meet with Rick of Ricks Picks.  I strolled into Hole Gallery to take a look at what they had going on.  Paintings from Nick Mead.

Most of the gallery was taken over by the artist who had turned the gallery into a garden.  E.V. Day and Kembra Pfahler.  I liked the garden more than the photos. 

Nice day. 

The Columnist

The Columnist, is playing at Manhattan Theater Club, starring John Lithgow at Joseph Alsop. First off, Lithgow is such an incredible actor that watching him is one of the joys of live performances.  What I liked about the play is not only his performance but the story.

Joseph Alsop was not only one of the most influential journalists of an era that does not exist anymore, he was a closeted gay man in a time when it made more sense to get married for appearnces.  Joseph did just that.  What he also did was write a column everyday that appeared in over 300 newspapers.  He had the ear of President Kennedy and Johnson as well as many others in high powered positions.  His home had an ever ending rotating dinner party of the all the prominent people in Washington and across the country.

What is interesting about the play is not just learning more about Alsop and his brother, Stewart who was also a journalist and wrote for the Herald Tribune and the Saturday Evening Post but you watch a period of history that completely changed how things were done and that they are no longer. Even the hemlines change over the course of the play. 

In the 50's journalists were just as tightly glued to the politicans as the lobbiest are today.  Journalists were the voice of knowledge.  They relied on the top elite people they knew to provide them with the data they needed.  Then the world changed, Kennedy was killed and Vietnam took over the American psyche.  Alsops demise was that he did not believe in what the journalists in the ground were seeing, he ignored the college students anger, he did not see change coming. At the heart of the matter, he was a staunch Republican set in his conservative ways and the combination of that and being a gay man made for a very angry person as he got older. 

There are stilll highbrow parties taking place in Georgetown, there are still journalists that are friendly with Senators and even Presidents but the media takes place in newspapers, on blogs and all over the Internet for everyone to read.  It is diverse, it is opinionated and there is no guardian at the gate. 

I am sorry Josh did not come with us to see the play.  As he is studying American history, I think he would have really liked the story about Alsop, as he was a pivotal part of our history that is most definitely in the past. 

Julia Pimsleur Levine, Little Pim, Woman Entrepreneur

Julia's father, Paul Pimsleur, developed the Pimsleur language learning system known as the Pimsleur method in the 60's.  The concept is based on memory and language recall.  Julia learned through his methods as a child while living in Paris yet he never lived to see his product come to market.  I am sure that he would be incredible proud of what his daughter has created drawing from his original method.  Julia is the entrepreneur behind Little Pim, an award-winning product that teaches children foreign languages at the time when their brain can easily take it in. 

Julia grew up in NYC.  At 6, the family moved to Paris for her father to teach at the Sorbonne.  It was there that he began the Pimsleur method.  Her parents put their children in the Parisian public school system though they very little French.  In two months she was bilingual and that experience changed her life. 

She returned to NYC to complete high school but never lost her attachment to France.  Julia went on to Yale and spent a semester abroad in Paris.  After graduating from Yale, she got on a plane and went back to Paris.  At that time it was the perfect place to go when you had very little money. 

To survive Julia began to freelance for film companies, vetting American scripts.  She had heard about the French national film school that was free and applied.  It was a six month application process but she got in.  She graduated with a MFA.  It was in school that she realized that she had a calling to make documentaries around social justice issues.  She decided to start her own company.  A woman having her own company in Paris was not exactly the right environment.  So Julia called her best friend from Yale who had taken the same path as her and together they forged together to create Big Mouth Productions. 

Julia produced 5 documentaries over the course of 5 years.  Nuyorican Dream, a gripping portrait of an American family from Puerto Rico; Innocent until Proven Guilty; a personal documentary on her family and Journey to the West, Chinese Medicine Today including another film on female excision. 

After 5 years Julia became frustrated with the process of raising money to make documentaries.  She would get a foundation to fund her films but then there wasn't a seamless channel for distribution.  Julia sat in a meeting at the Ford Foundation that brought together non-profits and film makers and there she brought up the idea to build a community web site so they could all work together.  Ford put in the seed funding and Julia created Mediarights.org

After running Big Mouth and Mediarights.org for several years, Julia became a full time fundraiser for nonprofits, first at Witness, and ultimately at Echoing Green. When she had her first son, she knew she wanted him to speak French like she did growing up.  She scoured the marketplace and couldn't find a good product that would help kids at that age when they are language sponges, before age six.  She thought I am a mom and a filmmaker, my father created the Pimsleur Method and bang she did what any good entrepreneur would do, she created her own multimedia method, and called the company Little Pim.

She knew that she wanted something that had legs.  Julia spent two years making the product right working with award winning film developers and renown scientists.  She shot everything in HD as she knew the power of video and digital technology was creeping up right around the corner. She also wanted to lower the bar for parents, so that even parents who don't speak the language could help their kids learn Spanish, Mandarin or French.  She reasoned, “you might not be good at math but you are your kid’s first tutor in math” and developed a system where parents could be their child’s language coach, using easy phonetics in the Little Pim method.

Little Pim went to market four years ago.  Parents love the product and they have won 23 awards.   The system is theme-based around playtime, eating and drinking, morning and evening routines, etc.  The system teaches you 360 words and phrases and you need to know 500 to be conversational in a second language.  They developed apps with PBS for ipad and two iphone apps as vocabulary boosters.

Little Pim makes total sense as more people who are third generation are returning to their countries and they want to make sure their kids still speak English or others coming here and want to make sure their kids speak another language.  Many studies have shown the positive effects of studying two languages on the brain and many cognitive advantages for people who are bi-lingual (increased memory, better analytic skills, stves off dementia later in life, etc.).

Julia is an impressive entrepreneur.  She has basically been one her entire life from the moment she started doing freelance reading scripts.  Very impressive woman. She also writes a great blog about what she believes in.  By the way, Julia's kids are 4 and 7.  Do they speak French fluently?  You better believe it. 

 

 

 

from a birdseye view

because of the internet we now watch, read and take in the way people live around the globe.  we are witnessing a shift in how people live their lives aesthetically in all types of design.  we are now intimate with how people live their lives in different parts around the globe.  we are watching a revolution in food from the way eat and the cosmic shift around the desire for healthy locally grown produce.  we are watching new consumer products come to market across the board.  we are starting to return to community life and the important connections around friends and family.  the start-up revolution is not only taking place on the streets of new york but it is taking place on the streets of lebanon, berlin, sweden and japan.  if you pay attention we are witnessing a total shift in every facet of our lives which is just the starting rumble of the very long tail of the internet. 

i sit in a very unique place.  as an angel with really no mission except the utmost desire to invest in mostly women, i see everything.  i meet with consumer product companies, food companies, internet start-ups, restaurants, retail stores and ecommerce platforms.  each time i meet with someone who has sparked my interest i think about the future.  will we see this consumer product be the product that pushes out all the old competitors because it is different, fresh and unique?  is this the future?

we are watching a silent revolution taking place through an army of entrepreneurs that are taking an idea that fills a void, pushes the envelope creating a new integration into our daily lives, a creative new product that is the next stepping stone in the evolution of the food world and all of this is taking place across the globe.  through the internet we are all watching and connecting with each other.  through this there is a community being built globally and we are using each others innovations. 

we all know that the way we lived our lives in the past is not how we are going to live our lives in the future.  it is the technology pushing us further.  it is the demise of our governments who are strapped of cash that is pushing us to change the way we live our lives.  as jobs are lost, we are creating new ones through an entrepreneurial community spirit across the globe. 

not sure what this revolution is going to be called as we are watching it take place right now.  the hipster revolution?  it is a revolution that is a mixture of the 60's and the 90's taking place and emorphing into something unique in itself.  i have to say, i am enjoying the view. 

Caroline Hurley

One of the women entrepreneurs I have been speaking to introduced me to Caroilne Hurley.  Caroline is an artist.  I went by her studio to check out her work. 

Caroline grew up in Memphis and came east to go to Rhode Island School of Design.  It was interesting hearing her transition from Memphis to Rhode Island.  Not easy.  She stuck with it and the experience ended up to be a wonderful one but she found herself a little bit like a fish out of water among her peers as many I gather come from the Northeast. 

Being an artist is not easy.  It is hard to make ends meet and practice your passion.  What I really like about Caroline is she is trying to balance that out.  She is selling her paintings but not currently working with a gallery although I pushed her to do that because it really does make a difference. 

She started making beach throws/cover-ups and local shops have been selling them.  She started making jewelry too.  The real thing that keeps her rent paid is she is a nursery school teacher during the day. 

I really enjoyed meeting with her.  Truth is, she is an entrepreneur as all artists are but their product is one that they solely create.  A true life style business.