Entrepreneur starts art party business

Local artist Emily Page has art supplies and will travel to your party.

Page, who until three months ago lived in Florida and made a living selling her own artwork, has started her own mobile art party business, Artistic Abandon.

For $25 to $40 per person, Page said she can turn a group of novices into budding artists in just two hours. Her target market is any party or group gathering where people want to be entertained and go home with a keepsake.

“[The host provides] the space, food and beverages and I will provide all of the art supplies and walk everyone in the class step-by-step through creating his or her own masterpiece,” Page said. “These parties are as much about having fun as they are about learning to paint.”

Page has enough supplies for groups up to 25 and will provide everything from art easels to paint brushes, smocks and paint. She is hoping business will come as the holiday season gets in gear.

She got the idea after visiting several companies that offer art parties in their own business setting.

“There is no reason why I can’t bring the party to you,” Page said. “I hope these parties will help people tap into a side of themselves that they might not know about.”

Participants will start off with a blank canvas and a piece of sample artwork to work toward. All of the work will be in acrylics (which dries quickly) so guests can take their work home at the end of the night.

“I want to teach people that art is really just one stroke at a time,” Page said. “I want these parties to be art entertainment and not art instruction.”

Meghan Hogan, an artist in Tampa, Fla., took her husband and children to one of Page’s art classes. It was a birthday gift that was special to everyone, Hogan said.

“My husband is one of the most brilliant people I know, but if he drew a stick person you wouldn’t be able to tell what it was,” Hogan said. “Emily was able to pull out his strengths and play down his weaknesses. He created his best artwork yet.”

Page and her husband, Vince Steacy, relocated to Nelson County over the summer to help take care of her father, WTJU disc jockey Nick Page. Nick Page, who hosts the “Nick at 9” show, has frontotemporal dementia, a rapidly progressive degenerative brain disease.

Before Emily moved home, her dad’s co-workers at the station worked with him to keep his show on the air.

Emily Page said she has spent the last few months helping to take care of her dad, planning her business and stealing precious hours to work on her own pieces.

Her arrival home has allowed Nick Page to continue his weekly jazz show, as she goes over his play list and into the studio to help run the equipment, Page said.

“In order to take care of my dad, we can’t take full-time jobs,” Emily Page said. “We needed something we could work into our schedules.”

Although Page is focusing on smaller parties, she hopes to one day work with nonprofits and wineries to host bigger gatherings. She would also like to work with home-schooled students to teach art and with nursing homes.

“We want to do some good with this company,” Page said. “Charlottesville has an educated community, but I think there is a lot of potential here to do great things.”

Hogan said her friend and fellow artist has just the right personality to make Artistic Abandon a success.

“Teaching art is an art itself,” said Hogan, who teaches art to developmentally disabled adults. “Emily has such enthusiasm about life and her art and she’s able to communicate that.”

Page, whose own artwork is very different from what she hopes to help others create through Artistic Abandon, hopes these classes will light an artistic spark in others.

“We emphasize letting go and having fun and enjoying the company around you while you tap into the inner artist you may not have known you had,” Page said.

For more information, visit www.artisticabandon.com or call Page at 906-6210.