8 Artists Talk Selling Art on the Street in SoHo

In the 1960s and ‘70s, downtown New York's SoHo was a bustling art capital. Now, the galleries that once occupied the neighborhood have become Anthropologies and Topshops, and the artists’ lofts have become luxury condos. Yet somehow, the tradition of artists gathering each weekend near West Broadway and Prince Street to sell their work has endured. Protected by legislation that considers the sale of art part of freedom of speech, art vendors are exempt from purchasing vendors’ licenses, provided they are the creators of the work and pay sales tax.

And, as one might imagine, the sale of art on the street has become its own industry, with rules and tactics that differ quite starkly from those within the confines of a gallery. We caught up with eight artist-vendors to learn the ups and downs of the business and how to make it on the SoHo streets.

RELATED: How To Make It: 10 Rules for Success From Street Artists

8 Artists Talk Selling Art on the Street in SoHo

Patrick Earl Barnes, Collagist/Mixed Media Artist

How long have you been selling your work on the street?
I've been doing this for 12 years.

Can you talk a bit about your work?
I consider what I do to be "deep folk." I take folk art and make it look deeper. The images that you see are people that pop out of my head, They are fabric collages. I'm here in SoHo, so I dress my women like people who come here to shop for dresses.

Why is it important for you to sell on the street?
I use this space as a flagship gallery to get people to go to my website. People have this misconception about being out on the street, but it's just a way of letting people see what you do. Usually, people don't touch or feel or see anything.

I also get an opportunity to meet the people who purchase my artwork, which are my kids, so I know who's responsible for my kids now.

What connections have you made down here?
I've gotten shows from being out here— I've got a show at the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore. I've got galleries in Sweden that represent me. So I use the street to meet people. I've sold to a lot of celebrities, but I like doing my own thing. It's about my artwork, not who buys it.

Do you always pick this spot?
Yeah, this has been my spot for years. I kind of feed off the wall.

Have you found success?
Yeah, I'm happy. I don't compare and contrast. But compared to friends who went to art school and everything, they're amazed because they don't teach how to sell in art school. They only teach how to create and how to make a name for the school. Me personally, I have no influence, and I help them.

Last words?
This is a whole life that people don't really understand. They think it's just a bunch of artists who come out here, but it's deeper than that. It's people who came here with different dreams and inspirations, and things didn't turn out that way, but they learned that this is better than going through the galleries, getting pimped. Now with the Internet, you can be your own art dealer and art gallery.

Andy Omega, Painter

How long have you been selling in SoHo?
I have been in the SoHo circuit for two years now. This, at one point, was once Jean Michel Basquiat's spot.

Can you talk a bit about your work?
It's all Pop Art. I went to school for art and design back in California, and became a graphic designer for an action sports retail company and then for Levi's.

A lot of my art is very line-oriented, there's a flow to them. This giant nude I have here, the inspiration for this was a sound wave, a frequency, just to get the peaks and valleys up and down, and just to make something that was a frequency sent thru space.

How did you make that piece?
These are actually automotive paint on powdered aluminum. My family owned an auto paint and body shop. We would build hot rods and cars back in California, and I incorporated all the training that I got from that shop and school. I lay down an initial color and on top of that, spray another color, and on top of that another, and it's all a series of stickers and masking until I finally peel everything away and I'm left with this image. But you can buff and wax this is just like a car hood.

What's special about SoHo specifically?
There's a legacy here. Everyone speaks of the times when the artists originally started out here, and they did run into some type of benefactor or angel investor or collector. Maybe it was Mary Boone that walked by. The opportunity to make connections out here on West Broadway really do something big if you're worth it.

What connections have you made from meeting people on the street?
I've made fantastic connections. My life is funded by selling this artwork. It's kinda funny the way it happens; people have hive mind. Someone sees someone buy this Lolita piece and goes, "Oh do you have another one of those?" or "Can you make one for me?" and then all of a sudden you're swiping credit cards, wrapping stuff up.

I get commissions for steakhouses, restaurants, and I just finished a piece for the Barclays investment firm over in Santa Monica, California, and a place called Burger Parlor out in Santa Monica as well. It's pretty cool to meet someone here and then it sparks a commission.

What are some of the biggest challenges and frustrations of working here?
[One issue is] street patina for the work; you're transporting this stuff and you're always taking risk. A lot of the places around here have no place to park. You do end up getting hit—you get tickets, but that's the cost of doing business.

The most frustrating thing is haggling, people trying to really get a deal. If there's someone that appreciates your work, there's no problem with that. I'm more than willing to give someone a break so a piece goes to a good home with a person that deserves to have it. But there are other people that are all like "Man that's a lot of money. How 'bout I give you 40 bucks?" The materials alone cost $40! You don't know the work that went into this! But that's life.

O O, Mixed Media Artist

How long have you been selling in SoHo?
It's been going on four years, I reckon.

How did you start selling on the street?
I was first here in the in '80s, just skateboarding around, throwing blueprints on the ground, and getting chased away by the cops. So, I set up [a vendor stand] outside of Madison Square Garden at a Dead show for five days straight and killed it, made like $1000 a day selling $5 posters.

I failed out of art school, and I realized I was not cut out for employment, so I became my own boss, and just sold my art wherever I went.

What's the community atmosphere like in SoHo?
People come and go sometimes, but there are a lot of people, even those that don't sell their work, that hang out because their friends are out here. For the most part, even the locals here appreciate that the artists keep this place from becoming a strip mall. We're local manufacturers.

Sometimes there will be an anti-artist shop that moves in and doesn't get that half the people are here for the art, but for the most part people are cool about the art here. I've never seen anything else like it anywhere else in the world. We're completely embraced, we know each other, and we watch each others' backs.

Being surrounded by so many galleries, do you feel like your work caters to a different audience?
Galleries are pretty irrelevant. They're basically selling commodified art that is 40 years old. It's stuff that isn't relevant to today and now in a lot of cases. They're a part of the equation, so I don't want to diss them, because the people are coming to see art in those galleries might not see something there but then they see something on the street.

Sometimes I think it would be nice to have my work in a gallery and be sustainable so that I could spend more time making art rather than selling it, you know, but then there's something in the selling of it that keeps it fresh for me.

What's the hardest thing about selling in SoHo?
It's the coliseum. If you don't please the mob, you're thrown to the lions. People come here, they don't sell anything, and sometimes they think the people are the reason. They don't try different stuff out, and they get bounced outta here. A lot of people have been coddled through art school and patted on the back and it turns out what they've been making is just therapy, and nobody wants it. But other people are faster on their feet and they figure it out and they can make a living.

What advice do you have for other artists selling on the street?
Listen to your customer, within reason, and do the thing that you least want to do. I did an orchid specifically to match someone's couch, and for years I told myself that was the lowest you could go. One day I just decided to blow my designer friends a kiss, so I did this three-stencil orchid, and within 6 months, an 8-foot version that I had sold to a woman in Beverly Hills—she won a Nate Berkus contest for Best Design by a Non-Professional—was on the Oprah show. That's getting out of your own way.

How has selling in the street forced you to adapt?
I just realized that my idea of artistic integrity was getting in the way of success. People don't care if I spent a year on my hands and knees making dots with a nose hair; they either like it or they don't. I stopped suffering so much for my art. My process has changed from spending months on my hands and knees making dots [gestures to a single, painstakingly-produced image] to firing out an entire series in a night.

You have to be ruthlessly efficient. No one wants to pay somebody to paint for two months. Maybe they do in the galleries, but out here on the street you have to be efficient and ruthless and create perceived value and work hard.

Peter Robinson Smith, Sculptor

How long have you been working here?
About 10 years.

Can you talk a bit about your work?
All pieces are made from high quality industrial wire mesh. I mold each one by hand, so all my pieces are unique.

Can you talk a bit about the history of street art vendors here?
Well, this has been going on every weekend for about 30 years. Mayor Lindsay was the man who opened up the streets to three forms of art expression: visual art, performance, and literature based on freedom of speech, and every mayor since then has been trying to shut it down.

A lot of people don't know this but this area, up until about 30 years ago was all galleries and artists lofts. And all the retail store and restaurants and store you see down here were all uptown. They had seen a lot of tourists coming down to the art district and decided to move. And they moved in and moved in and moved in, and a lot of the galleries moved out. There's very few artist lofts left, so the artists on the streets, technically speaking, are the last vestiges of what this was about.

What's it like working on the street with so many galleries around. Do you feel you cater to a different audience?
[The galleries] are following on the heels of what used to be a legitimate scene here 25-30 years ago. A few are legitimate but more than half of the so-called galleries are following suit, and they're not ground breakers by any means.

Do you work with any galleries?
There are a few galleries that carry my work, but if you talk to other artists, you'll realize that galleries don't always work out. If I'm of a dozen, 12 or 15 artists in a gallery I might sell one or a couple pieces in a month's time, if I'm lucky I can sell eight or 10 pieces in a weekend.

Who usually purchases your work?
Well, this spot along the street is a premium spot, so I meet people from all over the world. Billy Crystal has purchased a piece, most of the crew and cast members of Law and Order, the mayor of London, Boris Johnson, Naomi Watts and her husband were here, Leiv Schreiber. And not just luminaries, but wonderful people too.

What's the most challenging thing about working here?
People think you just set up here and it's easy. I travel 3.5 hours to get here. I'm a retired art teacher and use this to subsidize my social security. I can't make a living up north, but here I can make a living.

Charlie Green, Painter/Mixed Media Artist

Where are you from?
I'm Canadian; I'm from Toronto.

How long have you been selling on the street?
I've been working in this location for five years straight. I actually came to New York for the first time in 2005, and I already had some work with me and sold some on Prince Street. And then in 2007 I was here for a few months, but straight from 2009...

Can you talk a bit about your work?
My work explores animals and totemism, the idea that every species has a wisdom to it, and it began in the streets. This work began in the early 2000s and came out of my drawings, which I've been doing all my life.

Do you have an art background, or perhaps a street art background?
This work is like post-graffiti, moving away from traditional names and lettering into symbolism. And I'm untrained, self-taught, but I've been making art my whole life, since before I can remember. I grew up in a house that had a lot of original fine art and furniture. And close friends of the family were artists, so I was kind of immersed in fine art my whole childhood and adolescence.

Can you talk a bit about the community here?
The community in terms of other vendors is pretty great. I'm good friends with a bunch of them, and I've collected a lot of my peers' work, through good prices or trading work. It's like anything, you don't get along with everybody and some people you click with and others you have nothing to say to.

Then the larger community is the shoppers and the people that live here, and [some of their] entitlement is fascinating to me. But you know this [art] is first amendment protected free speech stuff that the supreme court allows, so I feel entitled to sell it here.

How consistent are the vendors here?
Well, there are people who have been here for years, and it's a really good place to try your product. People come and go, and you either can stay or you can't.

It seems like the street is much more of a commercial market than in a gallery, in that people buy what they like to look at.
My work started in the streets as kind of guerrilla and public, so I feel like the galleries are boring, for one, and they're exclusive and elitist. And they're sterile. They're these white cubes where you have to talk quiet, and for the most part you need lots of money, so it's not that I don't enjoy having my work in galleries and selling there. I need galleries, I have my website, I have the street. But this is more accessible. The prices are typically more accessible, and then it is more spontaneous, and about collecting what you like or buying what you like.

Do you make connections on the street?
You have good days and bad days out here, but all my opportunities have come from SoHo, from chance encounters and connecting with people that have different opportunities, bigger opportunities, galleries, clothing lines.

I have a gallery in the Netherlands called IQ, and Ivo de Lange is a really cool Dutchman. He has like 20,000 pieces of art, and he met me here. He takes paintings off me all the time by the dozen, and he's like the first person that was ever like "I want 15 paintings, and I'll put the money in your bank," and he did it. A lot of these galleries want to take them on commission and pay you when they sell, but Ivo at IQ has been really good to me over the last couple years.

Who are some of the coolest people you've sold to?
Robin Williams is a pretty cool guy. He bought some of my work right here. And Billie Joe Armstrong, who's the lead from Green Day. I've given small pieces to Andre 3000 and Mos Def in passing, just as a "Hey, you guys inspired me. Please take this" gift.

Any last words?
I'm very grateful for SoHo. It's allowed me to live off my work for the last five years. I think the roots of SoHo were the artists and the galleries, and now they've moved to Chelsea so we're the remnants. We're keeping the Bohemian in SoHo.

Dan Cruz, Painter and Streetwear Designer
Joe Strasser, Painter

How long have you been selling on the street?
Joe: Four, almost five years.

Dan: I've been on Prince Street about three and a half years, and before that I was in Union Square for two years.

Can you talk a bit about your work?
Joe: My paintings are a type of Modernist painting, and I show them in the street because I like the idea of showing them to a very large crowd of people. I'm about to do my second show in Switzerland with a buyer for the Bank of Switzerland's art collection, who found me outside of a Ralph Lauren.

Dan: I'm a street artist, I do paintings and designer streetwear. I got into art through screenprinting, and I took a very atypical route to what I'm doing now. I started by selling tee shirts out here on the street. Since I didn't have the proper licensing, I kept getting in trouble with the police, so I had to switch to painting. I'm now working back into streetwear, and that's where I'm eventually headed.

Is that because the "free speech" law only applies to "art" rather than T-shirts?
Dan: That's exactly it. Even if you create artwork, once you put it on an item it's no longer considered artwork.

What are some challenges to selling in the street?
Joe: There's always been people who want this shit outta here as fast as they can, and one of the ways in which they've done it is by putting the Citi bikes here. They're part of big money, and street artists don't fit into that. I see why they feel that way, but I think they should remember why their building's worth five million dollars. There's always been artists in this neighborhood

Do you find there's a stigma against selling in the street?
Joe: There are three types of people: some don't pay attention to that and buy art because they like it, and then there are some people that wouldn't look twice at it here, but [would buy] the same painting if it were on a wall on a gallery anywhere in New York.

The ones that buy in Chelsea but will buy here just as fast: that's who I'm here looking for. I'm looking for people who see what my work's about and don't care that it's in the street. And there's a lot of them.

I can see how Dan's work, being a bit more poppy, might be less surprising to find on the street. How do your different aesthetics affect your ability to sell?
Joe: The thing is, I keep my prices a lot lower that some people think I should, and I pretty much sell every piece I make for that reason. I'm not getting a thousand bucks for a painting, although I can in galleries. Out here it's $400, $300, $200, but I sell sometimes 7, 8 paintings while I'm here. I'm not trying to get "Modernist painting"-type of prices.

Dan: But the thing is, Joe's demographic usually have the money to spend. The problem with selling work like mine is that is that my demographic won't spend $200, $300 as easily as somebody in their 50s. This is why streetwear is important for me. They'll spend $20, $30 [on a tee shirt] no problem, but even $150 sounds like a lot for something that will be on their wall. They'd rather have a shirt sometimes.

How do you balance your artistic vision while still trying to make money?
Joe: Well, a friend of a friend was just in the Whitney Biennial, but he does installation work, which is hard to have a market for. Some other guys are way higher level because they're in the Biennial, but they're not getting paid cash money. They're getting recognition. It depends what your intention is.

My studio-mate, for example, would never bring his art out here because it doesn't really go with the idea of museums in his eyes. I've had my collectors tell me, "You need to get out of the street." I have a guy who owns 30 paintings and has invested a lot of money in my career, and he thinks I should get the fuck out of the street.

But he found you in the street, right?
Joe: He found me in front of a frame store in Miami. So he says I should start working on big shows, and he thinks this is degrading for my work. Other people say, "Dude, you're getting paid, and that's good."

Dan: I have a question for Joe. I see the street as a means to an end. I can't say I'll always be dedicated to coming out here. If I was making good money, and I could stay in my house painting and making clothes, I'd probably do that.

Joe: I mean, I'm 47 years old. I don't think I'd want to be out here after 50. But there's a lot of potential here. It's what Andy Warhol says—it's the art of making money—but you can keep integrity in it or you can paint for money. It shows.

Rob Hann, Photographer

How long have you been selling on the street?
It'll be four years in August.

Can you tell me a bit about your work?
These are all photographs I take on road trips, mostly in the West. I live in New York City, and whenever I get the chance, I'll fly some place and get a rental car, usually for two weeks, and just see what I can find.

How is selling art on the street different from a gallery?
I actually sell with two galleries, one in the city called Click and one in Stockholm. Both happened through me being on the street, the gallery owners walking by and seeing my work, and them saying that they think they could sell large ones.

The ones I sell in the gallery are exactly the same images, but they're bigger and limited editions. And the prices are a lot different. Out here, I sell two sizes for $30 and $20. That's the kind of thing people will buy on the street, so I hope for volume. In the gallery, the biggest ones are $3,500. It's very different.

Then why do you continue selling on the street?
Well, you need to pay the rent, and this is a steady income. Any day I come out, I'm assured to go home with some money. In the gallery, I'll sell 3 or 4 in a month, but there's no guarantee of that.

Also, good things, like the galleries, come from my being here. I'm always meeting people. There is always a chance for something good to happen. And it's really nice having the small images go out all over the world, to different people that I'm meeting. Being a photographer or an artist, you can become quite isolated, but it's great that I live with the work and I talk about it.

Do you find that there's a stigma against selling in the street?
I thought there would be. I started doing this out of desperation. I'd been a photographer for many years, shooting for magazines, record companies, but as both of those industries started to get into trouble, my work was getting really thin on the ground.

I'd been shooting this stuff for a while, but I thought maybe I could try to sell on the street. That was the motivation, just hoping I could make a bit of money. I actually had some stuff in a Chelsea gallery, and they'd sell a print once in a blue moon. And I knew I'd have to give up on that. If I went in the street, I thought peoples' attitude would be "Ugh," "Street vendor," "Loser."

That wasn't true, to my surprise. If people saw something that they thought was good, it didn't really matter where it was. There may well be people who wouldn't look twice because it's on the street, but a lot of people are not that way. Even quite sophisticated people, working for galleries and museums...The Vice President of Christie's bought a bunch from me.

Do people give you feedback a lot? Do you care what they say?
Yeah I do. When you're really close to something and spend a lot of time with it, sometimes your perspective is not that great. So, sometimes people coming at it fresh and from a different place will say something that kind of surprises me.

I was speaking with someone one day, and they asked where I was from, and I said close to Stonehenge in England, and they looked and said wow, that these pictures all looked like little Stonehenges, since usually there's some kind of iconic object in space. And I said, "Oh yeah," and it's kind of obvious that was an influence on me, but I didn't know it. Things like that.

What's the difference between someone who can make it here versus someone who can't sell?
For one, the work has to be universally appealing, which isn't easy. But also, it's the whole package: it's how you present yourself. It's how you interact with people, if you're a good talker, if you have a good attitude.

When people buy something from you and meet you, they are, in a way, taking home a bit of you, their memory at least. If you seem like a nice, interesting person, they like to have that in their home. If you're kind of an asshole, they don't want that presence. Not everyone's cut out to do this, but I see this as an advantage.

I can tell people a story about every one of the pictures. And then when they take it home, they can tell a story to their friends. I sometimes have people stop by, who have bought things in the gallery, and I'll tell them stuff about the photograph that they had no idea about. Obviously, you have to put in a lot of hours, but I think it's advantageous to be here and connecting with people by talking to them and telling them about it.