Artist Pat Wagner of Marinette turns hobby into successful business after retiring from bank

The nonprofit arts culture sector is a big deal, according to a report released by Americans for the Arts, a national advocacy and research organization for the arts. Specifically, the report said that the arts and crafts sector generated $151.7 billion of economic activity in 2022.

In northeastern Wisconsin, there are dozens of arts and crafts fairs every year. These fairs generate thousands of dollars in tourism income, stimulate the arts culture, and provide jobs. They also offer exposure for hundreds of hobby businesses, and give them an outlet for introducing their creations to the community.

One of those artists is Pat Wagner of Marinette, owner of Stone Art by Pat. She has an artistic flair that she didn’t recognize until leaving her banking job of more than 40 years for retirement.

She said, “I liked doing crafty things, but never thought of myself as an artist. I did knit and cross stitch and loved going to craft shows, but had no art education and had never done anything like this.”

It was a visit to a store in the Upper Peninsula that changed her life. She saw a collection of stone art and fell in love with it.

“It was very expensive, so instead of buying it, I thought that maybe I could do that,” she said. “I picked out my materials and started making them for gifts. When a friend saw them, she encouraged me to sell in craft shows. She told me that I was an artist even though I had never thought of myself that way.”

That led to hours upon hours of collecting stones. Along with her husband, Richard, she traveled around the Upper Peninsula, Algoma, Alabama, and Maine in pursuit of the perfect stones, sea shells, driftwood, and sea glass.

The stones had to be flat to fix in a shadow box. Each piece of art takes hours in order to find just the right stones and materials, lay them out in a design, glue them down, and frame them. She has had no shortage of ideas, and people at shows are quick to add more. She also had help from her dad.

“In 2019, when I started doing this, my dad had gone to a nursing home for rehab so I made him a picture for his room of a little girl dancing with her dad," Wagner said. "My dad was a wonderful dancer and it was special because he loved to waltz. I would go to see him once a week and he would always have different ideas for me to make and I would go home and make them. When I went back, I’d bring photos of the finished pictures.”

When her dad passed away later that year and she and family members were moving his things out of his room, she found a napkin on his tray where he had drawings that said things like, “Home Sweet Home.”

“When I saw that, I knew it was something he wanted me to do,” she said. “Whenever I am struggling and trying to find the right stone, I think about that and feel like my dad is inspiring me.”

That inspiration followed as she entered her first arts and craft fair in 2019. It was held at a church in Green Bay, and it wasn’t a good experience. That was followed by another show, this one at a hotel in Marinette, and that show was also awful. She kept going and finally found success at an art show in Lakewood.

What she learned was that there is a difference between shows that focus on art and those that are more like vendor shows. Wagner is an artist; "artsy" shows are where she has success.

Now, part of the art community, she has been able to use her banking experience to run her hobby business as a legitimate business. She has separate financial accounts, a tax ID number, and a sole proprietorship.

She said, “This is a business. I’m making money. I’m selling. I’m paying taxes.”

Determining pricing has been difficult, but she checks out what other artists charge and tries to calculate the cost of her time. In the area, she says there is no one else who does exactly what she does and that makes pricing more difficult. There is also the issue of trying to educate customers.

“People going to shows have no idea what it took, but people who do the art do know. When a customer looks at a picture, they might think it’s expensive, but they aren’t appreciating the amount of time it took. When I look at other people’s art, I know what it took and do appreciate it,” Wagner said.

The following she has developed, however, does prove that her art is valued. Most of marketing is done by handing out cards and event schedules at shows, and by posting on social media. One of her greatest challenges is having the time to make the needed inventory for shows.

At Art for All in Lakewood (she is a past recipient of that show’s People’s Choice Award), Wagner had 120 pictures to sell. At the end of the day, she had sold 86.

“It’s hard to keep up,” she said. “I couldn’t believe how much I sold. It can be overwhelming.”

It also takes hours every week. While she gets many requests for special orders, she prefers to come up with her own because it is hard to make what a customer visualizes in their mind. People see things differently in their head. Every piece is a challenge.

Wagner said that if you think of something like a butterfly, when one side is completed, you need to find similar stones for the other side. She finds herself digging and digging through tote boxes trying to find the perfect match.

Once she has that match, she has designed a picture that tells a story, and one of Wagner’s favorite parts of the shows is hearing her customers talk about the art.

“So many of the customers will stand by my booth and say that it reminds them of something that happened in their life," she said. "I made one of two people sitting at the end of a dock that was called, ‘Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay.’ An older woman looked at that and said that she and her husband (now deceased) used to sit on a dock and sing that song and it brought back those memories. Stories like this that make people smile make me feel good,” Wagner said.

That is one of the driving forces that keeps her going. As she and her husband, who along with her family, has been a huge encouragement, she continues to forage for stones, make stone art, build inventory, figure out displays, pack everything and haul it to a show, sell for the day along with her husband, tear it all down, and then get ready to do it again.

When pressured by it all, she puts her head down and gets to work; just like her motto proclaims, “One Stone at a Time.”

Tina Dettman-Bielefeldt is co-owner of DB Commercial Real Estate in Green Bay and past district director for SCORE, Wisconsin.

This article originally appeared on Appleton Post-Crescent: Artist Pat Wagner rocks at turning hobby into thriving business