Today we’d like to introduce you to Mara Natkin & Gloria Ramirez.
Hi Mara Natkin, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
My name is Mara, myself and my partner, Gloria, are the artists, founders, and owners of Artery Ink.
What began as a spark of an idea back in 2014 has blossomed into a global brand. It started in a tiny 10×10 spare bedroom and now operates out of a 4,800 square-foot studio + warehouse in Milwaukee, Wisconsin!
Our journey to Artery Ink was fueled by a deep personal transformation. Facing health challenges and loss in our lives, we embarked on a journey of discovery that led us to appreciate our amazing bodies and the importance of wellness. This newfound understanding became our passion, igniting our purpose to fuse art with health, wellness and anatomy. With Mara’s background in graphic design and Gloria’s expertise in illustration, Artery Ink was born.
Starting with greeting cards, prints, and t-shirts, we slowly expanded our offerings to include stickers, coloring books, custom apparel and more. As our business grew, so did our connections, particularly with healthcare professionals. Designing custom apparel for this community became a cherished part of our work.
In 2020, amid the global pandemic, we found a way to give back. Moved by seeing what our healthcare workers were going through, we created special designs and raised over $12,000 for a local “feed the frontline” campaign. This experience sparked a commitment to giving back, leading us to establish the Community Collection. Through this initiative, we support causes close to our hearts, contributing over $90,000 to date.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Running a business has not always been a smooth road, especially being in business for over 10 years! I think one of our biggest challenges was really learning to trust ourselves. We worked with a business coach for a while which when we started was very helpful. However, as time went on we went into debt and experienced a plateau for the first time. When you expect to grow you spend money on that growth and then when you don’t see it panning out you have to learn to adjust your expenses. We had to say goodbye to our business coaches because they weren’t helping us grow anymore. We quickly learned that we had become accustomed to relying on them and now had to do this on our own. It took a while to adjust but as soon as we started to trust ourselves again we started to grow and have been ever since!
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
Myself and my partner (and wife) Gloria are both the artists behind Artery Ink. Each piece of art you see on our products is a collaboration between the two of us.
All of our designs go through a series of phases, and some of them can take up to 80 hours to create! The design starts with me (Mara) on my iPad. I sketch out the design until it looks perfect. I then print it on a matte heavy-weight paper and hand it off to Gloria.
She then takes her black Pilot Fineliner pen and starts adding in all of the tiny details and patterns you see in our designs by hand. She goes over the drawing between 2-3 times. Each time adding more details.
Once that part is complete the drawing takes some time to dry. I then scan the drawing and transfer it back to my iPad. Then I move the scan into my favorite drawing app called Adobe Fresco. There, I take my time by tracing over each line Gloria drew. In this process, there are parts of the drawing I eliminate or adjust slightly. I also add layers, which means the drawing will be more than 1 color.
Once this is done, I transfer the digital file to my desktop computer and open it in Adobe Illustrator. Our entire team usually comes together to help decide what ink colors we should use in the new design!
We are most well-known for anatomical designs, which are most often used by healthcare professionals. The pairing of an intricate and detailed piece of art and a healthcare environment is a unique one which starts conversations and builds community. We’ve heard from nurses and healthcare professionals that our designs/shirts are often used as teaching tools or to explain to the patient what will happen during a surgery.
We love to use our artwork to advocate for causes such as mental health, traumatic brain injury awareness, pancreatic cancer awareness, and transplant awareness (just to give a few examples). The designs we create can help start conversations about hard topics like these. Hopefully making it easier to break down barriers, stigma, and fear.
We are most proud of what our business has grown to become when we hear stories from customers on how our artwork has been a part of their lives. From a family who ordered custom shirts after their brother was in a terrible car accident and a family who bought lung shirts after their dad received a lung transplant to a group of nurses putting together a gift basket and team shirt order for their manager, who is battling cancer and the framed heart print we donated to the family who lost their child to heard disease. It’s stories like these that remind us of exactly why we do this and how grateful we are to be able to use our art and to be in this position.
How do you think about luck?
We are big believers in the law of attraction, not necessarily luck. We make our own luck! We’ve learned that as long as we stay true to ourselves, have FUN while we do this, work towards our goals, and keep our eyes and ears open for opportunities the luck happens to appear!
Contact Info:
- Website: http://www.arteryink.com
- Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/arteryink
- Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/arteryink
