How I Got a SIX-FIGURE Commission From Facebook
Here's a fun story! I got a six-figure art commission from Facebook! Funnily enough, I hardly even use Facebook, but somehow the stars aligned and I got an incredible opportunity.
I was scrolling through my feed one day and I saw an RFP, “Request for Proposal.” A company wanted a mosaic artist for a large public project. I’ve done mosaics here and there, but I would not call myself a mosaic artist… but I applied!
I didn’t meet a couple of the requirements in the brief, but I believe you lose one hundred percent of the shots you don’t take, so I put together a proposal and resume, and sent it in!
Lo and behold, they called me and said, “You’re in!”
The project was for two 200-square-foot mosaics at the Minneapolis-St Paul airport. MSP has a really cool beautification program, and they spend a lot of money and effort making their facilities amazing. They have hired more than twenty-five artists to make mosaics for the airport interior!
Because I wasn't a mosaic expert, I had to spend a full year learning how to mosaic. I watched about a thousand YouTube videos, consulted with mosaic experts, and did many, many test projects.
I had a few designs I submitted to the community. My first design was a cool map concept, but it was rejected. I mean, why would anyone care about maps at an airport, right? I’d still like to do this map project sometime, so if some other airport wants to hire me, I am ready!
After the map concept was rejected, I wasn't sure what to do. I was kind of crushed, but at the time I was raising monarch butterflies, so I had butterflies on my brain. I researched moths and butterflies that sometimes visit Minnesota and put eighteen of them in a grid pattern in the two mosaics.
The two mosaics are about 200 square feet each, and I built them in my home studio. We had a very complex method that involved doing small sections at a time, and then taping everything together and storing them. We were getting pretty close to the deadline at the end, so we had a strict completion policy of half a butterfly a day. Otherwise, we wouldn't meet the deadline!
When the mosaics had been assembled, we brought the pieces to the airport, and the team and I assembled them. I hired professional mosaic installers because tile work is hard, and my project was big.
Between me and my team, we used fifteen hundred labor hours to assemble and install the project, and over two hundred thousand tiles. If you’re traveling through MPS, you can see them near Gate F4!
I think artists should get paid. To help with that, I wrote Pricing Your Art Made Easy! Pricing art can be kinda tricky, but I’ll demystify it a bit for you! You can download it HERE, or by clicking the button below!
