Artist Entrepreneurs

Tom Lorio Presented by: The Arts Council of Greater Baton Rouge

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The fireplace is flanked on both sides with craftsman style windows and shelves adorned with jewelry displays. Through the kitchen, down the back steps, and behind the house is Lorio’s studio, the place where he both works and teaches. This is home, the place that Lorio has lived since boyhood. This is work, the place where friends drop scraps of metal on the porch and where he teaches budding artists the foundations of metalsmithing. And luckily, for those of us just getting introduced to Lorio and his work, the Baton Rouge Arts Market serves as his extended community, a place where he can share his craft with the wider public.

“It is an opportunity,” he said time and again about the Arts Market, the first Saturday venue held downtown in conjunction with the Red Stick Farmers Market on Main Street. This is a venue that Lorio insists is important to both established and new artists alike. He mentions the knowledgeable customers and the “sympathetic audience” that the market draws, people who are looking for high quality work produced in small batches. Lorio’s approach is fairly minimal—just a man, his metals, and a few tools. And this is exactly the type of thoughtful craftsmanship the Arts Council of Greater Baton Rouge seeks to promote.

The outdoor market, a product of the Arts Council’s efforts to provide entrepreneurial opportunities to local artists while fostering creative community relationships, has faithfully popped up every first Saturday for seventeen years. “The Baton Rouge community has embraced the Arts Market with enthusiasm, giving talented artists an opportunity to share their art and benefit financially. It’s a win-win, and we look forward to growing this opportunity in the future,” said arts council CEO and President Renee Chatelain.

Lorio has been showing his work at the market for the better part of a decade, only missing one Saturday in that entire span of time. For him, the market engenders community and exposure, two things artists need to thrive. Relationships are built among artists themselves, a network that becomes a powerful hub for sharing information about art shows and other opportunities; and connections are forged with customers, too, who inspire Lorio to invent new designs and sometimes become his students. Lorio has been hosts private jewelry-making classes out of his home studio.

It is a cyclical partnership: Lorio brings the beauty, the Arts Market fuels the connections; and it is the Arts Council’s vision that sets it all in motion, establishing programs and opportunities from which we all benefit.