Solas Studio: A Platform for Community
Written by T.K. Mills
New York City has been a hub of street photography for centuries, with famous figures like Jacob Riis to Instagram-able skyline photography. This storied history, along with the oscillating popularity of film photography, creates a need for accessible photography studios in the city. Tucked away in the second story of the Flatiron District’s historic architecture sits Solas Studio, offering this service since 2013.
Shortly after the COVID-19 pandemic, Solas ventured into the world of gallery art, and put on their first art show, growing their role past photography studio and into an accessible collective of artists and platform to showcase art. With this expansion required new staff. Brandon Wisecarver, a longtime multimedia artist, was brought on board to facilitate this new role for Solas. Since then, Wisecarver, alongside Solas founder Liam Cotter, have grown Solas into a multimedia art platform, spanning from podcasts to oil paintings, hosting gallery openings and nurturing nascent artists in their artistic careers.
I spoke with Studio Manager, Brandon Wisecarver to learn more about Solas’s mission.
Mills: Brandon, can you tell me what you do here at Solas?
Wisecarver: I am technically the programming coordinator. What that entails is basically figuring out how to network the artists that are members here together. We have photographers, multimedia artists, and a lot of artists that wear a bunch of different hats. What I do basically is I come up with programming, whether that is a cricket club or a show.
One of my favorite things we did was one of the very first shows here was in like the middle of pandemic or right after it. We started in March 2020. So, you know, rough, but the artists still wanted to get together.
We have a Discord server and two of our artists were sharing a lot of work on the Discord server. It was very similar. So, I reached out to both of them, and I said, “Hey, you guys both are like coming to the same place creatively from really different areas.” One was doing photo manipulation off their phone. The other was like literally painting in acrylics and scanning it into the computer. So, I said, “Why don’t you guys do a show together because you’ve got really strong work that speaks to each other?”
And they did that, and it was a huge success. That’s kind of the idea. My job here is to finesse the members here, get them together, get them talking to each other, community building.
I didn’t think I’d be good at that. I didn’t think I’d be doing this at all. It’s not like I totally fell into it, but that’s where my background’s been since 2013 now.
Mills: Could you tell me a little bit about Solas and Liam, how everything came together?
Wisecarver: Liam picked me up when I was wafting around in the wind and said, “Come over here and do this, kind of what you’ve been doing over there for me here.” And I said, “Great. Sounds good.” And we’ve been doing that ever since. I know Liam, who are the two other people who work here. Liam’s the founder and the owner. He’s the big kahuna. And he had had Solas as a photo studio I think since 2013.
Mills: I remember he was talking about that last interview.
Wisecarver: We do quarterly group shows here. We also do solo show features. But I’m in an effort to not only improve engagement amongst the members here, but also to improve the quality of their engagement here. I’m doing a lot less of what you might have seen in the past, which is like “Here’s a show. plug into it”.
Like, this is a showcase. And every time we do it, someone goes “What’s the theme?” And I’m like “There’s no theme. This is a showcase ’cause I need to give you guys an opportunity to show your new work.” The theme is new work, one per artist. I decided to let us focus this year on just kind of figuring out what artists are doing that they’re maybe not even telling us about and working more closely with them on their personal projects. For example, one of our artists here is gonna have a Kickstarter to do her tarot card deck on Kickstarter.
She didn’t think it would work out ’cause we have the gallery. And I’m like “Why don’t you have an event here? You know? Let’s throw a party for your Kickstarter. Put all like tarot stuff on the wall.” So, that’s really where I’m at.
Mills: Anything else you want people to know about Solas and some of the projects you guys got going on?
Wisecarver: I would plug the $100-a-month photographer deal ’cause that’s the best in the city. You get a free 8-hour day. For 100 bucks a month, you get a free 8-hour day and that $100 a month rolls over into credit escrow that you can use for printing other services or booking extra time in the studio. 75 bucks a day for members. It’s the cheapest thing. It’s right in Flatiron. Great neighborhood.
Mills: On that note, can you tell me a little bit about some of the other services?
Wisecarver: We do all the artwork digitization in-house. People bring their artwork for us to photograph or scan professionally, so, similar museums and registrar stuff. We get you a really nice photo that you can then make reproductions of. We also make those reproductions in house. We do a little bit of all the programming and social stuff here, but we also export a lot of stuff. We have a lot of partners. The goal is to be a one-stop shop. You can have credit with us. You may pay a little bit more, but you’re saving up this credit and we can get anything done for you. You need T-shirts? We’ll work it out. You need pens, you need anything that you can think of related to your work, we want to be the place you come to. Then we help with that.
Mills: I remember you guys did the pin show at 188.
Wisecarver: That’s totally like exactly what I’m talking about too ’cause the pin show was a thing that Liam and I wanted to do ’cause they sell their pins on Etsy. Liam has been making and designing pins and doing really well on Etsy for a long time. Let’s help our members do that. We had a party where we taught everybody what makes a good pin design. How to get your art translated into a pin.
We let them use their credits, and everybody pitched in and bought their own pins for like— we got them a good deal. And then we went and did a popup in Lori’s side. And I’m happy to say that more than half of the artists easily paid for their pin production just from their popup sales.
Now, they have 80 extra pins to go and 80 or more extra pins to sell on their own over time. Or if they’re not sure how to sell their pins, we open an Etsy specifically for the pin show so that they can keep ’em here. We have a back stock over here. We’ll sell ’em for them on Etsy forever.
Mills: Having this kind of service and the merchandising ’cause that is a big thing. It’s hard to sell a 500-dollar piece, but versus selling 50 10-dollar pins, that in some ways is a little bit more manageable at times.
Wisecarver: The merch stuff is good stuff to have all the time and think about monetizing.
You can definitely sell 500-dollar pins. We sold three at our opening that were at that price or above, last opening. Learning, too, how that happens is important because that’s the problem with vanity galleries. They lure you in with the idea that that’s how you begin getting sales, that’s how you make interest in your art, by popping up at this rental wall place. And that’s just not true. You’re gonna see a lot of artists. You’re gonna bring your friends still. That’s kind of how sales happen too. We want to give people a low stakes place to experiment and to do that. We have our own collectors, but we have such a big variety of artists. You can’t, as an artist, realistically expect our gallery to be able to focus on your kind of work and have the best buyers for you. So, maybe you are gonna invite some of that scene that you’re a part of here, and we want to facilitate that in a way that’s not gonna drain your bank account, like go into some pay to play Art Basel.
Mills: How many artists do you guys have in the roster? Is there anyone in specific you want to shout out?
Wisecarver: Oh, man. I would definitely shout out Amanda Wu who just recently did the latest project that— she came to us and was like “I wanna do a podcast.” And I was like “Okay. Well, we have podcasting stuff here actually, and we can shoulder the Lipson account. So, why not. Here’s the deal, you just shout it out and we’ll say it’s powered by Solus. And I’ll even do a news segment with you.” We got it rolling. We just made our first episode. So, listen to What Does It Mean with Amanda Wu. If you can’t find it yet on Spotify, it’s solas.studio/podcast. That’s the kind of thing I’m looking forward to doing more of. I think she’s great. She also used to be the social media manager for Art in Odd Places, which is like a big festival on 14th Street.
There’s a lot of little networks that are their own people, but there’s so many different artists that do so many different things that I could sit here and shout out all of ’em all day. David Vega who does the photography in Lower East Side. A legend. He’s been here for… he’s been taking photos since before I was born on St. Mark’s. We have people of all different ages, all different races, backgrounds. It’s not a cool kid clique club. It’s like just very practical like let’s get down to business, sell some art and hang out. And maybe there’s cliques that form from here.
And that’s fine. You know? Cool. Find your people.
Mills: Anything else you want people to know about you, the studio, or what you guys got going on?
Wisecarver: We just got a lot going on, so keep an eye out. Follow us on Instagram or whatever. And if you’re an artist and you want to try it out, it’s 5 bucks a month. Turn it off whenever you want. Come hang out. See if it’s good for you. It might be a good fit, maybe not, but check it out.
T.K. Mills is an art journalist based in New York City. After receiving a Master’s Degree in Global Affairs, he discovered a love for graffiti while backpacking through Cuba. T.K. has written for several art publications including SOLD, Global Street Art, and Arte Fuse. Additionally, he manages the street art blog, Well Pleased We Dream. Beyond art, T.K. loves reading and traveling.
