Kate Cosden

Challenge: Convince a talented artist to put her work out in the world in spite of her fears.

I have known Kate for fourteen years. In that time, she has become like a daughter to me. I know her to be kind, funny, deeply intelligent, and one of the most purely creative people I’ve ever met. So when her job was eliminated after years of clawing her way to a stable position with some financial security, even having secured a recent promotion, she found herself in a scary place by no fault of her own.

I had been trying for years to get Kate to put her work out into the world, but she hadn’t quite gotten there yet. I knew in my bones that her work would be embraced - it is charming and funny and she has a real gift for rendering animals. She is incredibly special and so is her work.

So, in that moment of darkness and fear, I finally convinced her to try, even if I had to drag her kicking and screaming a little bit, and her launch was a huge success. People immediately gobbled up her work and actually ordered so much, we had to talk about that most-important-life-skill which is learning when to say “no.”

Kate has grown so much as an artist in the last couple of years,I just couldn’t be prouder. Follow her on Instagram, purchase her images on a range of products on Redbubble, and find her handmade, one-of-a-kind work on Etsy.

Kate’s Testimonial

In the early days of Covid-19, my position as a design coordinator for a well-known chain of stores was eliminated. I was wrecked.

After wallowing for a solid month, Jen encouraged me to finally pursue something I had often wishfully spoken about, but never acted on. "I just want to make art and work for myseeeeelf...!" I would whine into the void… until she set the train in motion.

I illustrate cards and leave quirky little love notes and tokens for my friends, and she pressed me to develop a line of stationary, prints, and sculpted ornaments. I went to her with a beat-up sketchbook and some big feelings, and she pulled me out of the dark isolation chamber that is fear and decision paralysis.

Jen has the intuition to understand what someone's sticking points are. The big ones for me were not believing anyone would be interested, and the other was not understanding how to take an illustration and make it saleable. Jen did a truly remarkable amount of labor-- emotional and physical--to get my drawings to a place where they could be printed and sold. She scanned my drawings and did the painstaking work of correcting every fuzzy pencil line in Photoshop. She changed backgrounds, corrected uneven color values, scaled every last document, helped me write descriptions, got me set up on two e-commerce sites, and somehow didn't become exhausted with the various manifestations of my fear and anxiety. 

I was deeply uncomfortable presenting myself to the internet and to my connections as an artist (I felt major imposter syndrome), but she crafted an image that was so authentic to me that I was able to settle down and get comfortable in that space. It didn't take long to start earning money for our (let's be real, mostly her) work, and in just a month and a half, I was off of unemployment income and earning a real living selling my artwork. Words can't express the depth of my gratitude for the transformation of my work and the perception of myself. Honestly, I credit the major career moves I've made since then to this pivotal moment. She believed in me, so eventually I believed in myself. I've made a name for myself here and my books are full for the next 8 months. Three-years-ago-me wouldn't recognize who I am now (Who is she?! So confident!) and I'm better for it.