CO.STARTERS Spotlight: Samantha Wood Art
Samantha Wood’s painting style has its own voice. It’s welcoming, and boisterous. It feels like summer afternoons, dropped off and sort of supervised at your aunt's house who has no children, no husband and no rules when it comes to decoration, dress or bedtimes. The familiarity and cheerfulness of it is captivating. She paints a lot of ‘ordinary’ objects, or familiar foliage in a way that is vivacious and exciting.
“It all goes back to third grade” She tells me, “ I thought being a painter was the coolest thing ever, but then... I'm not really sure what got in my head as I grew older, but I thought that art was not a viable career path. And didn't think that that was something just anybody did. I wasn't really aware of living artists,I only had heard of the famous, like Van Gogh and Georgia O'Keeffe and I just thought it was something that happened to you. Not something that you could go after.”
So Samantha became an art teacher, and has been for the last fifteen years. “.. ‘cause that was kind of the next best thing.” She loves children, and really loves teaching, but over the years she found herself walking around the classroom watching them and wishing she was working on her own pieces.
About five years ago, she decided to try and give it a real go, and began coming home from teaching, and working on her own art with discipline as if it was her full time job too. That was five years ago, and this end of the school year (2021) marked her last season teaching, and her first dive into being a full time artist.
She found the CO.STARTERS program through a friend that she had done several pop-up shops with, who had taken it and suggested it to Samantha when she had expressed her plans to begin branching out and looking at the possibilities of going full time.
“She said, you gotta take this class. It's going to help you so much. It's amazing. And I was kind of hesitant, but she just kept on encouraging me until finally I said, ‘okay, I will do it.’ And I'm so glad I did.“
CO.STARTERS is a 9 week program that equips aspiring entrepreneurs with the insights, relationships and tools needed to turn their business ideas into action. It is held here at theCO in Jackson and brings together a fantastic variety of creatives, entrepreneurs and business people looking to chase big goals and put them into action. Every week, the students gather and cover various aspects of business and meet with other professionals for advice, insight etc and ends with “Pitch Night” at the end of the session in which everyone comes together to share the who/what/where/why about their business.
I asked Samantha which part of the program challenged her the most, “Well, definitely pitch night. I do not like public speaking, which was really funny, because in class when we all realized we were going to have pitch night, we all panicked. Everyone was like ‘NO!!’ And I thought, well at least I'm not the only one who is feeling this complete panic.”
With more than a decade of teaching under her belt, but you would have never known Samantha was nervous for her pitch. Her cool, calm and collected exterior paired with weeks of preparation helped her presentation on pitch night go extremely smoothly. ”Public speaking is my least favorite thing to do, but I've learned through this whole CO.STARTERS process with starting a business, I think a lot of times you feel scared, but you just have to get used to feeling scared. You learn the benefits are so big when you follow through, it's always worth it.”
You ask many CO.STARTERS Alumni what their number one takeaway from the program is and almost every single one of them says the sense of community and support. In the nine weeks from the first class to Pitch Night, you develop a sense of community with your classmates. “The creativity is contagious, “ She says, “...it was really inspiring too to see how many creative people there are and their business ideas and their hopes and dreams.” There generally are no two businesses alike in each session, whether you own a traditionally structured company or are a small freelancer, CO.STARTERS provides resources and information that is vital to long term success with your business.
“I felt that one of the biggest take-away (for me) of CO.STARTERS was just the fact that I realized I'm not alone in how I feel.”
You can purchase Samantha’s work on her website here, and stay up to date with what she’s working on via Facebook or Instagram.