Today we’d like to introduce you to Kathy Strauss.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I’ll share a secret—I flunked art in 7th grade. I was marching to the beat of a different drummer and art just didn’t click for me. I wasn’t seeing things the way I do now—I really didn’t know how to see in patterns, colors, or for that matter—seeing the world through my “right brain”. I grew up in West Hartford, CT—even though my mom was crafty and got me involved with that type of work, my dad had a passion for photography. So much so, he built a darkroom in our home’s basement. Both of my parents encouraged me to find my passion for art. I was a photography hobbyist in college and received my BS in advertising design from the University of Maryland in 1978. My late husband, GC Schow was also an artist—he got his BA in illustration from the Art Center of Los Angeles.
At the time we met, he was working as an art director for Hewlett-Packard in Spokane, WA. Me on the other hand, I was working as a senior publication designer for the World Bank in Washington, DC. He moved east in 1998, shortly after our meeting. When he arrived east, he worked in numerous graphic design positions, but nothing really “hit home” for him.
I was celebrating my 20th anniversary working for the Bank when I was asked to take an early retirement package in December 1999. With our 40+ years in the creative industry, GC and I had been talking about starting a creative communications studio and with my package, we figured that it was the perfect time to take that leap of faith. I left the Bank in early 2000, with the full intention of jumping in full-time to our new business, ImageWerks. A twist of fate turned our lives around and GC found himself working full-time in our business and I ended up going back to work full-time as an art director for several USAID public health contracts. It was in 2007, I was laid off from the contract I was on and with that, I dove headfirst into our business.
While I was working for the World Bank and then for USAID—I was doing art every day and I enjoyed learning about the world in general through the projects/contracts I was on… I was creating artwork for publications, proposals, and presentations. I was even working a lot with photography, as I helped to manage image libraries and finding photos that told stories for the projects I was working on. Yes, it was all creative—but it was also, very “left brained” work and very stressful.
When GC and I established ImageWerks, our focus was branding, marketing and web design. We loved what we did, we won numerous awards for our work and our business—but both of us found that we were burning out and we were both looking for something we could sink our creative passions into. GC wanted to do only his fine art and I was okay with that. He had been experimenting with the software Corel Painter and he literally “lost himself” in the program. The work he was creating was breathtaking and I encouraged him to jump into it fully. Me on the other hand—I kept falling back on my love of photography, but I also wanted to dive back into teaching and do something super creative—aka, fine art. With our creative studio, we also donated numerous hours to local non-profits to help either rebrand them or improve their visual messaging. That found me being appointed to numerous Board of Directors of these organizations to help them with their communication needs.
It was in 2010 that I found the program Creatively Fit. In 2011, I got my certification as a creative coach, and it changed my life. I was finally tapping back into my love of art, creativity, and photography and yes—I was finally teaching. My husband would tell anyone that asked him that when I’m in my “creating art” and “teaching art” mode—I’m a different person… calmer, I think clearer, and I love inspiring my students to see beyond the ordinary.
Photography was also becoming more and more a part of our business. I was asked to photograph events, people, and do a lot of marketing photography. It was as if I was using our marketing/branding knowledge to help our clients do the same thing… brand themselves, and tell their story, but they were doing it visually with the photos I took for them. Using both of our artistic strengths, we reshaped ImageWerks into a photography and art studio. GC and I combined our talents with me offering the photography and him then taking my images and turning them into fine art pieces. It was a great way to showcase what we do, but I also wanted to do more with my fine art and do more with creative coaching. In 2007, I became one of the founding artists at the Workhouse Arts Center in Lorton, VA. I ended up becoming the President of the Arches Gallery co-op on campus. Shortly after I got my creative coaching certification, I started teaching my art workshops in their education department. I was excited about what I was doing, excited about where ImageWerks was going, and I loved sharing my passion of creativity—using both my art and photography skills.
Since 2011 I have taught and inspired students of all ages—leading them to discover or rediscover the creative side of themselves. My youngest students find their spark by exploring all artistic techniques, and my oldest students tell me that “they haven’t played with art like this since I was a kid!” From teaching youth to teachers in public schools, to international evaluators at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, and even teaching residents in assisted living facilities. I find that when I see the “art spark” go on, I know I’ve been a catalyst and I’ve done my job. I encourage my students to get messy, scribble and doodle, tear paper, or slap paint on a canvas. My “light bulb moment” shows up when I look in their eyes and know they are doing something fun—something creative. Creating art is the act of quieting the left brain—learning to turn off that judgmental voice that says, “I can’t”. Once that judgmental voice is quiet and the right brain kicks in, you become more present. There is a reason for the popularity of those “paint and sip” art workshops… even adult coloring books. When we were kids, we were told that art was for kids or art was to be shown/sold in a gallery. But in reality, creativity and art surround us every day and it’s just as important as math, science, and technology.
ImageWerks was thriving back in the N. Virginia area, but my husband was longing to move to the beach. He convinced me after 8 long years that he would do better health-wise in the south. In 2018, we moved to Myrtle Beach, SC. With our relocation, I was not just moving the two of us, I was moving ImageWerks. I literally had to reestablish our business and make ourselves known to the local community. My husband wanted to help me as much as possible with the business, but the move also meant he could fully retire from the day-to-day operations and focus only on his fine art. We both got involved with the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce and I became an ambassador for them, I also joined the Seacoast Artists Guild/Gallery and I found myself being appointed to the Guild’s board. As I did not want to do weddings anymore, I felt that sharing our artistic background and focusing on personal branding photography would help me stand out from the other photographers in the area. ImageWerks quickly became known for both.
The past couple of years has been interesting. In 2020, COVID-19 stopped all in-person photography services. This also included any art classes that I was teaching. I had to focus more on the fine art aspect of the business. Using my Photoshop skills, I offered photo restoration services, added more to my stock photography portfolio on the istockphoto site, and I also did a lot of painting commissions. I then decided to try doing a virtual version of one of the workshops I had developed back at the Workhouse Arts Center. I combined my design knowledge with my photography, my passion of teaching and created a photo composition workshop I call “Storytelling with Photos”. It was a success, but I found I love teaching and working in person. In late 2021, my husband’s health took a downward turn, and I ended up being his full-time caregiver. I did as much as I could with our business, but I basically put it on the back burner while I tended to his care. GC passed away on November 8th and I know that he would be sad if I just “closed up shop”. I too, would be very sad—our business meant the world to the two of us.
So, if you ask me where I am today with ImageWerks—I will have to tell you, I’m at a crossroads. I’m planning to write a book that takes the knowledge I gained as a caregiver and patient advocate—using my creativity to help me stay sane the whole time—to help educate others. This taps into my creative coaching and will allow me to create something new and useful. I also will still do my photography to help businesses tell their visual story. I guess it’s a new day for me with the business.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
Overall, the journey of owning & running our business has been a smooth road. We didn’t grow by hiring employees, we only hired contractors as we needed. GC always wanted to hire a marketing person to help us grow & find jobs, but when I would start looking, he would get cold feet about spending the money. Eventually, I told him I would help do the marketing & market I did. There really were only a handful of times there were struggles:
– When we decided to stop doing the graphic design/web design & only focus on the photography/art & creative coaching. We had to retool our website, marketing materials, as well as our messaging to our potential clients.
– When work seemed to dry up & no clients coming in the door. GC would start to “flip” & I would assure him that all would be ok. Like clockwork, high-paying clients would walk in the door.
– When we moved to Myrtle Beach in 2018. We literally had to “shutter” our business that we had running successfully in N. Virginia, drop all our networking connections & move south. We still had several clients that were back up north, but I had to build trust, network my heart out & find clients in our new home/location. It took a year to build things back up to where they were before. We were on track to exceed everything at the beginning of 2020, but COVID-19 happened.
– 2020 & COVID-19… I will say that year was one to remember. But I remember telling GC one day that I was grateful that age was on our side. Both he & I had “put in our time working fulltime”—we had our pension & social security to get us through.
– When his health started to fail. This was honestly, the hardest time for me. GC was unable to do a lot of the work that he was doing before. From managing our books, to working with the Painter software, to just creating the art he so loved to do. I ended up having to take over all the financials as well as my own duties in the business… marketing, photographer, & artist.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
As I’ve shared, I’ve been in the creative industry all my life. It was the same for my late husband as well. So, what do I do? I’m a photographer, I’m an artist, I’m a creative coach. I use my creative voice with my camera, using it to tell stories for personal branding, commercial clients, and families. Fine art is my “release”, using my camera to show the world how I see it. I am also a mixed media artist—painting, doodling, writing… anything that allows me to tap into the universal energy that surrounds us.
The photographer. My photography specialties are personal branding, headshot portraits, marketing, and event imagery, and family photos. I must include my fine art photography into the mix too—but business-wise it’s the latter that my clients seek me out. People know I’m an artist at heart, I see the bigger picture and that comes out in all the work I do. When I’m approached by a client, I tell them that my aim is to tell their story visually—my photos must connect to their viewers/clients. I enjoy creating custom visual libraries for them—I don’t want my clients to go to a stock photography site for their marketing imagery, those don’t tell their story—a custom shoot that is tailored just to their business does. When working with families, that’s very special. I am big into creating memories and telling their story. Just having lost my husband only brings that to the forefront. All my family sessions are filled with laughter and creativity. I want them to remember what they were doing, how they were laughing, joking, or even crying when they look at the final images I create for them. These photos will be hanging in their homes and passed down to generations to come.
The creative coach. When I found the Creatively Fit coach training program, I was in a rut and bored. I always wanted to teach and was teaching PowerPoint as a part of my job—but that just wasn’t creative. The certification and training helped me tap back into the uber creative side—yes, the right side of my brain. I remember telling one of my design clients about my certification and they immediately said, “we have been looking for a creative release for our evaluator students and we would love to have you come up to Ottawa to take photos of the training, but also for you to teach a creativity workshop to them!” This was for the International Program for Development Evaluation Training (IPDET) month-long development evaluation course at Carleton University. IPDET was my first client when I retired from the World Bank, I had been working with them for ten years as their branding and publication designer—and to now being brought in as a staff photographer to tell their story was great, but the creativity workshop I was being asked to teach was something new and very exciting. The original Creatively Fit training was more spiritual and at the time and I didn’t see myself creating workshops based on that. I wanted to take the creativity-based lessons I learned and shape them into something I could share with the corporate world. Using my design background, I developed numerous workshops for the corporate/business world. What I didn’t realize is that there was a whole corporate creativity movement out there. Authors like Daniel Pink and Tina Seelig were writing about design thinking, there were even TED talks about using the right side of your brain—I honestly felt like I had found my teaching/creative voice and it was welcomed by so many of my clients. But I didn’t just develop creative workshops for adults—I was approached by the Workhouse Arts Center where I was an artist to develop art classes for their youth art camp and their adult program. I was finally doing what I wanted to be growing up—an art teacher! Some of the workshops I’ve developed are:
– Your Artist Within: Using the book, “The Artist Within: A Guide to Becoming Creatively Fit” my students go through a series of defined exercises and discussions to help them tap back into their innate creativity. Using the design principles, they explore how to understand the right and left-brain paradigm by doing exercises that helps strengthen their creative muscle.
– Wine, Nibbles & Scribbles: this is a based on the paint and sip model. I provide the canvases and my students follow my painting instructions to create a painting of their own. I’ve taken this a step further now and have my students use different materials to paint on or do other art projects.
– Paint Your Pet: This started when the education director at the Workhouse asked me if I had ever done pet portraits. I literally had a knot in my stomach when she asked, but I didn’t doubt my old painting training and said, “I’ll give it a try!” I broke out the paint brushes and acrylic paints and taught myself how to paint pet portraits—I had to do this so I could teach others how to do this themselves! This workshop has my students learning how to transfer a photo to canvas and I then lead them through basic painting techniques to create a pet portrait masterpiece of their own.
– Shaping Your Future: this is a team-building exercise based on the five universal shapes and universal shapes assessment by anthropologist Angeles Arrien. Through group discussion and creative self-discovery activities, my students learn about themselves, their preferences, what motivates them, and what is preventing them from moving forward.
– Vision and Perspective: this is the workshop series that I originally developed for the IPDET program. I can tool this to fit any business that wants to bring more creativity into it. I use different creative activities based on the needs and interests of my clients. It basically teaches them to understand and learn how to use creativity in their work lives or business.
– Creative Storytelling with Photos: This originally was created for my Workhouse Arts Center students, in 2020 I created a virtual version of it. My students learn to take the design principles and apply them to their photography composition skills. It teaches them how to explore their world, how to see the bigger (or smaller) picture, how to tell a story with their photos, and it helps them hone their skills in seeing and observing.
The fine artist. When I started in photography, I grew up in the film/darkroom era. I had to know what I was taking, how to compose my photos, and what the technical settings were. Then along came the digital age—that literally blew my artistic world open. The possibilities for expanding my artistic endeavors vastly improved. This of course tied back into my old graphic design days. I had to learn Illustrator, CorelDraw, InDesign, Lightroom, and Photoshop to do my job properly. Having Photoshop, etc. in my “back pocket” so to speak led to my being able to create digital fine art that I couldn’t do otherwise. This also was for my husband, GC. He was a trained illustrator and watercolorist, and when he found the software Corel Painter—that really blew his artistic world open! We would frequently collaborate on photography/painting commissions—my taking the photos and he would use those images as references to create digital paintings. Now that he’s passed, I will eventually learn to use that same software so I can follow that process for my clients or for my own fine art creations. But, besides the digital painting and fine art photography, I love to create mixed media art. Whether I’m painting a pet portrait, doing a large piece on canvas, and even painting a palm seed pod—the act of slapping acrylic paint on a surface relaxes me. I’ve had success in my work being exhibited at local art galleries over the years. I think one of the highlights of my creative career was when I was accepted as one of the founding artists at the Workhouse Arts Center. It started off with my fine art photography, but it tuned into learning how to run a gallery and set up a solid body of work for many of my solo shows. I also spent many years after diving into the fine art selling my work at art festivals around the Mid-Atlantic. I am still affiliated with the Workhouse to help jury in new studio artists, but now that I am living here in Myrtle Beach, I exhibit/sell my fine art in the Seacoast Artists Gallery in The Market Common. I also sell our fine art through Pixels https://1-kathy-strauss.pixels.com/. And my stock photography portfolio can be found on iStock by Getty Images: https://www.istockphoto.com/portfolio/imagewerks.
The fine art also led me to creating and authoring two original coloring books. I’ve always been a doodler, especially when I’m in a meeting. One day during a board meeting, a friend looked at what I was drawing and said, “that would make a great coloring book page!” That literally sparked an idea in my head to create one (or two) of my own. It took me about a year to draw and write my first one, but I’m proud to say that I am an author! I’ve written/created two so far: “Coloring Your Spirit: designs to spark the creative in all of us” and “52 Weeks of Gratitude: 52 positive words that can change your life and the way you think.” I’m currently working on my third book—I still have coloring pages to finish and writing the meditations to go with them, I plan to have that completed sometime in 2023. You can find my books on Amazon. https://amzn.to/3ViNJHu
I think my proudest moment as a fine artist was when I was participating in Leadership Grand Strand class 42. One of the projects our class had to do was to create a piece of public art for the new Arts & Innovation District in the City of Myrtle Beach. Working with the owner of one of the buildings located on Nance Plaza, I designed & helped lead my class through painting a colorful mural that depicts the story of Myrtle Beach through artistic icons and is now in the heart of this new arts district. It was completed and dedicated in April 2022.
If you were to ask me what sets me apart from other photographers is that I’m an artist first—a photographer second. Everything I do has an artistic twist to it, with my artistic philosophy driving everything I do, “Live life, love life, paint life, create life! I love showing people that as humans, we are innately creative and everyone’s an artist. I love sharing my passion of creativity, taking pictures, telling stories, and giving back. I’m an artist, photographer… I am a visual storyteller”. It’s this that sets me apart from others, seeing the bigger picture, tapping into their joy, telling their story, and creating memories that last a lifetime.
What do you like and dislike about the city?
I love that Myrtle Beach is a place where everyone feels welcome. It’s known as a pearl along the Grand Strand. This pearl to me is the friendliness, the beach, and the opportunity to make your mark if you so want to. My husband moved us here because of the weather and ocean air, he also loved the colorfulness of a “beachy town” as he would put it. I love it because it is at the very start of a creative boom. I told GC when we started looking to relocate that the place we moved or retired to had to have a burgeoning artist community. In 2018 when we arrived it was just starting, now in 2022, it’s beginning to start taking shape. From all the art and music festivals to the variety of galleries that if you want, you can exhibit/sell your work in, to the Franklin G Burroughs-Simeon B. Chapin Art Museum that has world-class art exhibits and classes. There is so much to see, do, and participate in. Another highlight for me of “what I like best” is the new Myrtle Beach Arts & Gallery Trail was just dedicated in May 2022, this is so exciting as it features more than 100 locations that include museums, galleries, and public art pieces that locals and tourists can visit and see. This literally is just the beginning to me as I know from working with the Virginia Artisan Trail program that an area that embraces the arts thrives.
Then you have the “what do I like least about where I live”? In several words: heat and humidity. I moved here from N. Virginia, but I’m originally from Connecticut— where yes, both places can get hot and humid—but it’s nowhere near as crazy hot/humid as here. I vividly remember when we first moved into our home and we set up our office in the bonus room. I literally placed my desk directly under the air conditioning vent so I could keep myself cool during the summer months. My husband just laughed at me as he loved the heat and humidity.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.imagewerks.net
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/imagewerks/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/imagewrks
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/imagewrk
