BY EVA JANSSEN, Inside Business
Jennifer Desorcy is no motorcycle mama, but you might say that in the natural sense, she's born to be wild.
When she's not scaling cliffs in New Mexico, the 22 year old is contorted, Twister-style, against dining room walls, painting the earthy colours and motifs of the rugged U.S. Southwest, where she'd rather be much of the time.
"I make a pilgrimage down there once a year now. It's where I want to retire too, " she says. "I like the openness. It's very rustic and beautiful."
To make a living though she has chosen London- a middle ground between Owen Sound, her small hometown, and the huge metropolis of Toronto. Eighteen months ago, Desorcy cast aside a potential archaeology career to start a business painting murals and wall designs. Already she is making enough to pay the bills, she says. Within a year, she plans to hire employees to help with wall designs and she hopes to open a branch in Toronto focusing exclusively on murals, her favorite work.
People of her generation wear T-shirts that say "No Fear". Desorcy lives the slogan. She talks quickly and effusively, frequently ending a sentence with a giggle. Hurdles in her fledgling career are passed off with a laugh. Drive and motiviation are her winning tickets, she declares matter-of-factly.
And why shouldn't she be idealistic? Desorcy is enjoying success early. Good contacts and referrals from interior designers mean she no longer has to look for work. It's nice, she admits, to have three messages on the answering machine from potential clients instead of having to knock on doors.
Her bread and butter is the small art job: stencils and faux finishes that alter an object's appearance without using wallpaper. These typically last a few days, she says. At the time of this interview, she was painting her boyfriend's bathroom a rich terra cotta- his Christmas gift actually.
Desorcy prefers doing children's bedrooms, where she can be a little quirky. "I'm very much a kid myself," she says. But she also finds herself fixing clients' mistakes, which can be a big job, she adds. Murals are no less challenging because the artist has to know what the client wants and do an accurate portrayal, Desorcy says.
Visual references
It helps if customers know what art style they want or can show pictures, she says. Typically, she takes photos of the area to help her incorporate external items into the mural. A detailed home page on the Internet displays her murals and allows people to buy online. Most are inside homes or institutions and are small to medium scale- roughly 400 centimetres. Recently, she painted a "tropical forest" inside London Health Sciences Centre, Victoria campus.
Her life, in contrast is far from tropical. Readers of Desorcy's home page on the Net learn she is working to get her uncle David Desorcy out of a Michigan prison where he is serving life without parole for dealing drugs 12 years ago. Desorcy says the mandatory minimum penalties are unjust and she is appelaing to the public for help. She's even planning a benefit art show to raise funds.
"It's just something that really, really bothers me," she says. David's my pet project."
Otherwise, her struggles to establish a career are like those of any other entreprenuer. In the first year: long hours, all work and little pay. "I went out, like once or twice a week," she says, which is apparently low for the average twentysomething.
"The first year, I stopped biking and rock climbing. My hobbies were gone. Everything I used to do, I stopped doing... There were times I felt like throwing my laptop out the window, but I didn't."
Studying
She was determined to try hard.
"I didn't want to be another person in my age category who was a waitress or whatever," she says. Nor did she want to struggle as an "artist-slash-waitress."
After high school, she studied archaeology for two summers in New Mexico, but Desorcy soon found there was little work for archaeologists in London and decided against taking an expensive degree. She found temporary work at a bakery, but when she was laid off, she turned to art - previously a pastime. After some research, she latched onto murals and faux finishes and taught herself the skills.
Desorcy enrolled in a self-employment assistance program and became a member of the Canada Youth Business Foundation, which gave here a $7 000 loan on top of her $2 000. Her first big job was a mural commission for the London Hebrew Day School, where officials gave her a list "as long as my leg", she says, of what they wanted included. She had never painted anything as big, she was unfamiliar with the process and the work had to be done beofre an open house a month away. The result, entitled Shalom, was her biggest task to date, she says.
"I was never used to receiving a regular salary, so when I was getting money for doing what I love to do, it was a bonus."
But she add, "I don't plan on charging $3 000 for a mural I can do in two hours. That's ridiculous.
Her father Pat Desorcy admits he was skeptical his daughter could make a living from art, straight from high school and without any degree.
"I'm impressed" he says, adding, "Not everyone can say they enjoy their job."
Desorcy agrees she's more relaxed, although she says, "I'm still a horrible bookkeeper." Having made it through the first year, she's taking a two-week vacation in Arizona where she intends to compete in a few bike races and climb rocks. And maybe, paint the town red.
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Copyright © 1998
Most recent revision September 30, 1998