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Carole A. Feuerman, 80, built a pioneering career in the art world. The New York City-based sculptor’s super-realist torsos put her in a trailblazing group of women artists expressing their vision of the female body during the feminist movement of the Sixties and Seventies.
She still runs a fast-paced career. Her work appears in 45 museums, including the Smithsonian Institution, public art collections owned by cities such as Peekskill, N.Y., and Sunnyvale, Calif., and many private collections, including those owned by former President Bill Clinton and Forbes magazine. The International Sculpture Center just selected her for its 2026 lifetime achievement award, and she is the author of a new book, I am Mine: Early fragments from the 1970s, published by Mobius. Active on social media, she has more than 250,000 followers on TikTok, where she invites fans into her studio and exhibitions.
As Feuerman built her art career, she was also an early adopter of a trend becoming increasingly common: relying on entrepreneurship to fund a creative career. Many artists turn to “day jobs” to support their endeavors. However, a less-often-told story is the number of successful artists who have run businesses in other fields to sustain their lives as creators. Sculptor Richard Serra, is one notable example. He co-founded Low Rate Movers, a moving company, with composer Phil Glass, and hired composer Steve Reich, painter Chuck Close, actor Spaulding Gray, and artist Michael Snow. Painter Katherine Bernhardt, a favorite at art auctions known for pop-culture inspired art of the Pink Panther and Bart Simpson, also runs a business as a Berber rug merchant.
Artists’ pursuit of entrepreneurship has become increasingly accessible with the rise of digital tools, social media and AI. Today, self-employment is much more common among artists and creatives than in other occupations, according to a recent study of Census data, published by researchers at Indiana University and the Israel Institute of Technology. “This has led to the emergence of the notion of the ‘artist-entrepreneur,’ which associates these workers with autonomy and independence and the ability to choose their own career paths,” the study’s authors, Tal Feder and Joanna Woronkowicz, noted.
Feuerman, who spoke with me in October and also sent detailed written thoughts, got an early start in running a business as a freelance illustrator for The New York Times, album covers and rock groups such as the Rolling Stones to pay her way through the School of Visual Arts in New York City. “It was an early lesson in turning artistic skills into income streams,” she said.
After she became a single parent and found herself supporting three children, she sculpted while her children slept and relied on two main businesses to support her family. One was in real estate. With her grandfather’s help, she bought her first building — an auto garage in Mineola, N.Y. — and divided it. She rented the front to pay the mortgage and worked with her assistants in the back, creating some of her most famous artworks. Today, she owns buildings in Brooklyn and Manhattan, bringing in income to support her life as an artist through the rent they generate. Feuerman also runs The Second LSC, Ltd., the art business through which she has sold 500 of her sculptures, which today employs 18 people.
Business ownership gave her the flexibility to pursue a serious career as an artist and to raise her children, who were facing health challenges, she said. “Traditional employment, with its rigid schedules and limited income potential, simply couldn’t provide the flexibility and financial security my family required,” she said. “I needed to create something bigger than a job — I needed to build businesses that could support us while allowing me to be present for my children.”
Feuerman discovered that the skills she developed through business ownership, such as marketing, helped her as an artist. “The art world taught me that entrepreneurship isn’t just about creating a product — it’s about creating an experience and a story that resonates with your audience,” she said. “Each sculpture carries narrative weight, and my job as an entrepreneur was to help collectors understand and connect with that story.”
She also developed practical skills in business operations that were helpful to her art career. “Creating sculptures that would eventually be collected worldwide required more than artistic talent,” she said. “It demanded an understanding of international markets, shipping logistics, insurance protocols, and relationship building with collectors across different cultures and time zones,” she said.
Meanwhile, the analytical skills required in real estate, such as market analysis, risk assessment, and long-term value creation, influenced how she approached her art career. “I began viewing each sculpture not just as a creative expression but as an investment in my artistic legacy and market position,” she said.
In 1981, Malcolm Forbes became her first major collector, which, she said, gave her new credibility and opened doors to other serious collectors. For much of her career, women artists were often dismissed, she said.
Although Feuerman fueled her artistic career through entrepreneurship, she is determined to make it easier for other creators to bring their ideas to life. She opened the Feuerman Sculpture Foundation in 2011 to support underrepresented voices in contemporary art, funding it, in part, with the proceeds from an autobiography she wrote during the pandemic. One recent grant recipient is the Nigerian artist Adetomiwa A. Gbadebo. Feuerman is also a member of the International Women’s Forum, focused on advancing women’s leadership and equality worldwide.
One of a number of serious women artists who have run thriving careers in their eighties and beyond, Feuerman has many projects underway. She showed her work in the retrospective The Body’s Voice (La Voce del Corpo) at Palazzo Bonaparte, Romefrom July to September in an exhibition curated byItalian art critic and curator Demetrio Paparoni. She also recently unveiled a new body of work, the Tattooed Body Torsos, a series of wall-mounted sculptures. Her work is also being shown at the Medici Museum of Art in Ohio and will appear in a 2026 exhibition at the Heydar Aliyev Museum in Azerbaijan.
Beyond her sculpting, Feuerman is currently working on a documentary about her life, one in which entrepreneurship served as a powerful engine.
“My story is ultimately about the power of persistence, the importance of diversification, and the unexpected ways that our greatest challenges can become our most significant advantages,” she said. “In learning to provide for my children, I discovered how to build businesses that could serve collectors worldwide, create lasting value, and demonstrate that creative entrepreneurship isn’t just possible — it’s essential for those brave enough to pursue it.”
