Community Highlights: Meet Marie Rust of Bear Track Studios

Today we’d like to introduce you to Marie Rust.  

Hi Marie, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I grew up in the small town of Whitmore Lake, about 15 minutes north of Ann Arbor, Michigan. We lived in a small cottage on the lake in a neighborhood set back a ways from the main road. Whitmore had been hit hard by the Great Depression and was still struggling when I lived there in the 70s and 80s. Many cottages in our neighborhood were seldom used, and the conversion from small seasonal homes to massive year-round dwellings had not reached our neighborhood, so there were few people and a sense of space. To a child, it felt like a tiny slice of wilderness on an otherwise busy all-sports lake. 

As an only child of two working parents, I had a lot of time alone, and I spent much of it outdoors building forts, playing with the neighborhood kids, and watching wildlife. My mother was an entrepreneur, starting her own business when I was around 10 years old. She was also an artist and, before starting her business, would spend summers on the screened-in porch painting, so I was exposed early to art and business. 

I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t drawing, but my focus on wildlife art began when I was 12. When I was in middle school, I tested into the Creatively and Academically Talented (CAT) program in our small school. This qualified me to take classes that weren’t offered to all students. In 8th grade, I had an architecture class that was taught by Elaine Fisher, a teacher from Ann Arbor who had just published a book titled “Aesthetic Awareness and the Child.” I was looking through a magazine she had brought and found an ad for a poster for the Sierra Club of a cougar standing on a snag and told her I wanted to draw it. She showed me how to break a subject down into parts to get shape and proportion, and the next week I brought in a pencil drawing I had made. She was so impressed she took it and entered it into the Who’s Who of American High School students (even though I wasn’t quite yet!), and it appears in the 1980 publication. 

In spite of my love of drawing, I didn’t pursue art as a career until much later. My art was something I did because it moved me. Looking back, I can see that the subjects I drew were a way of feeling connected to something. Life as an only child can be lonely, but I had also known since I was eight that I was gay, and the fear of being rejected by family and friends made me feel even more isolated. 

After high school, I studied Journalism at Eastern Michigan but never graduated. I studied Photography and Marketing at Washtenaw Community College but also failed to get my degree. I worked at the Humane Society of Huron Valley for five years before getting a job at a photo lab. I ended up at a custom lab in Ann Arbor and was there for seven years, becoming a department manager until digital photography put an end to my career. 

With no degree and at a loss as to what to do next, I eventually decided to try selling my art at festivals. I had many pieces saved up from over the years and found a print shop that could create reproductions. I went to several local shows and talked with artists who helped me figure out what I needed to get started. I spent my 401k on my booth and set about selling at shows. I’ve been at it now for 18 years, which is an astonishing thing to me when I really think about it. I create all of my work from photos I take, which has enabled me to marry three of my greatest joys: photography, art, and wildlife. 

I had been living in Ann Arbor when I launched my career but sold that house and moved to Pinckney, Michigan in 2006, selling high and buying low and using the extra money to help support my art career. In 2017 I moved from Pinckney to west central Michigan and the tiny town of Bitely, which is even smaller than Whitmore Lake, situated in the Manistee National Forest. I am a naturalist (a fancy term for a biologist without a degree) and a birder and have published an article in the American Birding Association’s magazine and done the cover art for an edition of Bird Watcher’s Digest. For the first time this year, I lead trips at the Biggest Week in American Birding in Ohio. I am blessed to live in a place teeming with wildlife. The birds that come to my feeders provide me with endless opportunities for art, and the small lake and surrounding wetland and forests provide me with solace. 

We all face challenges, but looking back, would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
If one is lucky, the road to success as an artist can be smooth, but more likely it is bumpy, steep, and filled with potholes. When I first began, I was selling my work at an artisan market in Ann Arbor, and one of the veteran artists told me it can take 10 years or more to get established. There are so many things to figure out: what people will buy and how much they will pay for it; how to market your work; who to market it to; who your audience is, and where they live. 

As an art fair artist finding shows that work for you can take years. Do you require high-end fine art shows, art and craft fairs, or pure craft fairs? Does your style fit better with a more modern urban buyer or a more traditional buyer? Should you forego festivals and work with galleries? What about online sellers like Etsy? 

I had such grand expectations until I did my first show, an arts and crafts show that was part of a festival that included a car show and a Civil War re-enactment. Over three days, I made a whopping $156.00, and I was left shaken by the experience. But over the next several years, I was able to sort out what types of shows I should be doing and what subjects people were more likely to buy (hint—they have feathers). I transitioned from graphite to colored pencil and ink. I began to jury into some of the top shows in the country and have traveled across the US selling my work and winning awards. 

I was lucky—I had financial support from my partner Lisa, who had a “real” job and am the beneficiary of generational wealth. Both these things enabled me to concentrate on my career and allowed me to get established without having to work a second job. The financial end of it can be a huge obstacle to anyone just starting out, and while I’ve struggled financially in spite of all of that, I have managed to turn my art into a profitable business. 

Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Bear Track Studios, LLC?
Bear Track Studios is a partnership between myself and artists Lisa Ramlow and Lori Taylor. I create and sell original wildlife art, reproductions, and note cards, both online and at art fairs across the country. Lisa is a woodturner and has a You Tube channel with nearly 15,000 subscribers. Lori is a mixed media artist and children’s book author, and illustrator. She has illustrated many books for other authors and has published over ten books of her own under the Bear Track Press label. Lori also does school and library programs across Michigan. 

All of our work is nature-based or influenced, either by using natural materials or by gaining inspiration from the natural world. 

Are there any important lessons you’ve learned that you can share with us?
There are many, many lessons learned in nearly 20 years of doing art fairs (and nearly 45 years creating my art), but I think the most important is to never give up on your dream. When you are doing what you love, what you are passionate about, that energy comes out in all aspects of your work. Your passion is evident when you talk to people about your art and, in my case, my subjects, and that energy is infectious. Also, listen to criticism and suggestions. When I started doing shows I was working in graphite, basically black and white. People often said they loved my work, but it needed some color, which prompted me to start using colored pencil and other media, and that has made all the difference. 

Contact Info:

• Website: www.marierust.com
• Instagram: marie.rust.artist
• Facebook: Facebook.com/beartrackstudios

Image Credits
Lisa Ramlow