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Fawn Penn | Episode 1132
Fawn Penn is a ceramic artist working in Chicago. In 2020, Fawn co-founded The Digs Chicago, a non-profit community ceramics studio home to 100 artists. In 2024, Fawn founded Old Friends, a contemporary art gallery. Fawn graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with a BFA (2020).
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If you were to do it all over again, you said you started completely not knowing what you were doing. If you were to start all over again today what would be the first thing you would do?
I don’t think I would change anything. I think that it got us here. I think I learned as much as I could before jumping into it. I don’t think anyone teaches you how to be an entrepreneur. I think you have to build the ship as it goes.
How about a business plan? Was that a big part of how you did things? Did you start off with a business plan?
Yeah, we absolutely had a business plan. The business plan did not account for Covid however. (laughter)
You had funding from a grant. How did you fund the next phase of building out the two thousand square feet?
We built our classes and our membership. We have been fully independent financially since then. We did not receive grants for probably two years after we opened. We forgot that we could do that as a non-profit and we just ran it as a product service business.
Is having a lease intimidating knowing your future is held by someone else?
Absolutely. It stresses me out all of the time. If I had the means to buy a building, Oh my God, I would do it yesterday. Maybe far into the future.
Have you ever had a month where you fell behind, when you didn’t have enough to cover all the costs?
No, actually. We definitely were scraping by pretty brutally for the first year but we have never not covered the cost.
How much time do you have for making your own work?
I mean, I could talk for hours about that. (laughter) I don’t have much time. I don’t have much time at all. I treasure the time that I do have. I try to make it very intentional. Right now I am working towards my first solo show in July of 2025. It is always a struggle. Anyone in a studio management position is going to have a hard time doing their own practice. I have to really fight for the time that I have in the studio and make connection with clay that caused me to do this to begin with. I got to do clay.
Book
Plants Have so Much to Give Us All We Have to do is Ask by Mary Siisip Geniusz
Contact
Instagram: @fawn.penn