Honie Beam on Mentoring and Getting Involved in her Community

Bright artist Honie Beam recently completed a period of artist-mentoring in the areas of comic book illustration and design through a local creative arts center in her town. Honie shares with us a bit about what it was like mentoring another artist for the first time and ways she gets involved in her towns creative community.

Explain a little about how you became involved with the GCCA and the Brandon Fellowship. When did you realize you wanted to mentor another artist? Have you been an artist mentor before?

I found the Greenville Center for Creative Arts (GCCA) through one of my neighbors–her daughter had done some volunteer work there and had recommended it to me. I was looking into potential studio spaces and found that they had a few spots you could rent. I put my name down on a waitlist but a few weeks later I got a call from the gallery director, Ben Tarcson. It wasn’t about the studio space, but to talk about the Brandon Fellowship.
The Brandon Fellowship is this amazing opportunity for emerging artists in the Greenville community. The goal is to have three fellows a year expand their artistic careers through education, professional development, community-based work, and guidance. Ben had reached out to me because one of the 2023-2024 fellows, Christine Moore-Bonbright was interested in exploring comics and they didn’t have anyone on their roster who had experience in the field. So that’s where I came into the picture.
I had never been a true art mentor before, besides some informal critiques and portfolio reviews in the past. However, I’ve always been interested in eventually teaching or running workshops–I grew up in a family of teachers–so this was such a fun and unexpected opportunity. I also had a lot of help from neighbors and teachers growing up, so being able to help others in the same way is really awesome. I do hope I get another opportunity to mentor in the future.

What challenges do you face while mentoring, if any?

I think one of the most challenging parts was learning a good balance between over and under-explaining things. Especially when it came to describing the process of making a comic, which I find everyone approaches so uniquely. At times it was difficult to adapt to how someone else works and come up with a good plan to fit their artistic approach.

I wanted to provide both an opportunity to give Christine any advice that I wish I had when I first started making comics, but also wanted her to have a chance to experience the process and ask questions based on what she was stumped on. I didn’t want to influence how she developed her project, just advise on where to start or how to get through a hurdle. A healthy balance between teaching and being very hands-off. It was difficult and I (hopefully) learned how to balance it based on the feedback Christine wanted during various stages.

Has mentoring another artist changed how you think about your own practice?

Mentoring another artist definitely made me overall more mindful of my art process. For example, in one of our first meetings, I sat down with two of the fellows (Christine and Kephira Davis) and described from start to finish how I would approach writing/illustrating a book. Where I get references, scripting tips, picking colors–just all the random little bits that go into creating a project. I’m sure it was a terribly overwhelming infodump (sorry, Fellows), but it was the first time I had described my thought process so vividly. It helped me pick up on the parts I emphasize, the parts I go through quickly, and the parts I don’t think about at all.
Sometimes the fellows would ask a question about my workflow that I had never really thought about at all. It would make me sit back and think hard on ‘how/why do I choose what a panel looks like?” (for example). One time I showed up to a meeting and Christine had this entire visual flow chart to show the plot of her comic and it was so cool. I thought ‘Yeah, I’m so doing something like this for planning my own projects’. For everything I was able to teach the fellows, I learned just as much from them and the questions they asked.

You’re based in Greenville, SC. How has finding your local artist community benefitted your practice? What advice do you have for small-town creatives who are looking to get involved in their communities?

For me, finding a local art community has been beyond motivational. I moved to a small town outside of Greenville, SC right out of art school so I suddenly went from being surrounded by creatives to not knowing anyone in the entire state. It was very daunting! I’m still slowly setting down my roots here but every week I feel like I meet a new creative in the area.
I think my best advice for small-town creatives is that community can come from random places. For me, it came in the form of asking local coffee shops to hand-letter their special drinks signs or a local grocery store asking me to paint their monthly calendar a few times. A Rotary club who needed a children’s cornhole game redesigned and painted. All these random opportunities have connected me closer to my town and other local artists. It’s still something I’m trying to get more involved with. Working from home and living in a small town can be difficult and lonely so in that sense I think every little thing can count towards building a community. From helping out at a local art center, informal sketchbook groups, plein air societies, and random hike and paint groups, to attending farmers/craft markets. It’ll all add up into something super unique.

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Honie is represented by Alex Gehringer. To work with Honie, get in touch with Alex here.