How to Hire a Mural Artist

In this episode I share tips on how to hire a mural artist for your next mural project. If you are still looking for an artist for your project, check out my video on how to find a mural artist. 

Show Notes: https://distillcreative.com/blog/11/29/21/how-to-hire-a-mural-artist

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Episode Transcript

Stephanie Eche (00:01):
Welcome to First Coat, where we explore public
art, how it's made and why itmatters. I'm your host,
Stephanie Eche, an artist andart consultant based in
Brooklyn, New York. I interviewartists, cultural producers,
designers and funders, on howart in public space happens, and
how to create more equitable andinclusive projects in public
space. I also share my tips onhow to curate and commissioned

(00:23):
art projects for your business,how I run my art consulting
business, Distill Creative, andhow I'm developing my own art
practice, you can listen to thisepisode, wherever you listen to
podcasts, or watch it onYouTube. If you like what you
hear, please leave a review andsupport this project on Patreon.
I produce edit, and well, I doeverything myself, so your

(00:45):
support keeps this projectgoing. If you're interested in
my art, consulting services, orartwork, check out
distillcreative.com. Thanks somuch for listening and I hope
you enjoy this episode.
So you found your dream muralartist, but you're not sure how
to hire them. Today, I'm goingto show you how to vet and hire
a mural artist so you can getyour project started. Once you
have narrowed down your search,and you know who you want to

(01:05):
hire for this project, you wantto do a couple of things. First,
you want to check theirreferences. If you haven't
already reached out to theartist, reach out to the artist,
share your creative brief, letthem know what you're doing, how
much you can pay them and takeit from there. Next, you can ask
them for some references, theyshould be able to give you a few
references of other clientsthey've worked with, or even

(01:27):
past professors or artistscolleagues, this will give you a
good idea that they're that theycan do the work that they say
they're going to do. And this isreally important because you're
going to be having them on yoursite doing a project and you
want to make sure that they cando what they say they're going
to do. This doesn't mean youshouldn't hire an artist, if
they haven't done the projectthat you want to do before. It
just means that you want to geta sense of the type of work

(01:49):
they've done before for clients.
It's totally fine if you'retheir first client for this type
of work, you just want to getsome idea of how they work with
other people getting a fewreferences is a great way to do
that. You also might be able tofind some reviews online, maybe
they even have reviews on theirwebsite. Those are all helpful
too. If you haven't alreadyshared the creative brief with
the artist and that way, you canmake sure you're both on the

(02:09):
same page of what you're lookingfor. And ask them to do a mural
design, make sure if you paythem to do a mural design, this
can either come out of the fullbudget, or be in addition to the
budget, but make sure you areclear with them about that so,
they know whether or not it'scoming out of the full budget.
But either way, you should paythem to make a design and this
is because mural projects fallthrough all the time for lots of

(02:32):
different reasons and you wantto make sure they're getting
paid for their work. Oncethey've given you a proposal and
you're ready to move forward,you can do a contract with the
artist. I'm not a lawyer, so Icannot give legal advice. But
there are lots of great examplesonline for contracts for artists
in general and even girlartists, the mural artists may
already have a contract. So youcan ask them if they have a

(02:53):
contract. You don't want to givethem this like super huge
contract, you should make it aseasy as possible for both of you
to be able to get to the nextpage, you're going to want to do
some research, make sure youhave a contract prepared so that
you when the artist can feelsecure in what you're asking the
artist to do and that the artistcan deliver on this project, the
artist may have a clause in thecontract that says like, I'm

(03:14):
only going to do two rounds ofrevisions, that should be fine,
because you already did yourcreative brief and gave a clear
direction from the beginning. Sothe first proposal shouldn't be
too far off from what you'relooking for. If it is, then you
might want to go with adifferent artist. But again,
that's why you pay the artistfor the proposal design because
it's possible that you end upgoing with a different artist.
You should never use one artistproposal for a different artist

(03:37):
to do that's crazy. Alwaysrespect your artists. They are
the ones who created the work,don't use their work and have
someone else paint it. There wasa situation where actually one
of my clients, we hired anartist for a project, they
actually couldn't get into thecountry because of Coronavirus.
So, with the artist permission,we hired a local artist to
install that project. It workedout great. But we would never do

(04:00):
that unless there were someextenuating circumstances and
you always want to have theartist permission, anyway. I
have some tips on my blog aboutwhat you should include in a
contract with an artist you canfind that it's pretty simple.
You want to have like contactinfo, budget and timeline how
and when the payments are made.
Are you paying by check? Are youpaying by Venmo? It'd be great

(04:23):
if you can just transfer moneyto them. That's the best you
don't want them to be waitingfor a check. I suggest paying
50% upfront 50% at the end ofthe project. You also want to
know if they need more money upfront for materials like if it's
a really complicated projectthat requires a lot of upfront
costs. Figure that out ahead oftime you don't want the artist
to have to be paying out ofpocket for your project.

(04:45):
Obviously you want to includethe mural design and site
details in the contract. Andthen anything else that you
require like insurance or someweird things that you have to do
on site, you want to make surethat it's clear that the artist
retains the intellectualproperty of the work and then
whether or not you can use theirartwork for your promotional
materials. Now, you should neversell their artwork in any way,

(05:07):
shape or form. But say you'reputting a mural on a new
building and you want to sharethe mural on the building and
like you're leasing materials,you need to let the artist know
up front that you're going to dothat and have that in the
contract so that you are both onthe same page. I also like to
have something that's like,you'll let the artist know if
there's any other needs likethat no matter what you need to

(05:28):
let the artist know, make surethat they feel comfortable with
whatever it is that you mightask now or in the future. You
also want to have a note abouthow and who will maintain the
mural. Some people use thingslike anti graffiti coating on
the mural, I've had situationswhere people are trying to get
that off in order to put a newmural on or to put something on
the wall. And it's reallyexpensive if it's a large wall,

(05:50):
and if it's high up. So Isuggest just setting aside some
money so that you can do anyrepairs if need be. And then
making sure you have the artistcontact info and that and that
they're cool with you reachingout to them if something needs
to happen, and then you can paythem to prepare the mural. Or
maybe they have someone elsethat they suggest to do
that-talk that through with theartist. And then before work

(06:11):
starts, pay your artist. So youshould have already paid your
artist a proposal fee, that'sgreat. But if you want them to
start getting to work on your onyour mural, you need to pay them
something upfront, it could be50 upfront 50 At the end, like I
said before, 30 upfront 30 Inthe middle 30 At the end, figure
it out with the artist but youwant to pay them before they
start doing the work again,because sometimes murals just

(06:32):
don't happen. And if forwhatever reason you had to stop
the project in the middle of itat least the artists got paid
half of it. I don't want you tostop the project but I know that
that happens especially with bigdevelopment projects, things get
moved around budgets get movedaround. This is why you need to
pay your artist when you sign acontract- don't make them wait
around for your payment and Iunderstand that some payment

(06:53):
systems it takes like a month toget them through let the artist
know that ahead of time so thatyou can plan for that and so
it's not this big surprise whenthey think they're going to get
a chunk of change and they'renot if you have any questions
about how to hire a mural artistemail me
[e-mail].
Also, Distill Creative does thisfor clients. So if you want
someone to curate and projectmanage your whole mural project,
you can hire me just go todistillcreative.com. Alright,

(07:14):
thanks bye.
Thanks for listening to thisepisode of First Coat. If you
like this podcast, please leavea review. Make sure to subscribe
to the First Coat Podcastwherever you listen to podcast
and follow us on Instagram @irstcoatpodcast or @distillcre
tive. First Coat was a prduction of my company Distill

(07:35):
reative. Check us out at dis