PERSONAL WORK - Artist Talk with Adam J. Kurtz

When there’s no limit to what you can create, the hardest question isn’t how, it’s why. Designer, artist, and author Adam J. Kurtz gets real about what happens when “be yourself” actually works. Expect heart, humor, and stories that’ll make you feel better about your own f’ed-up creative process. Let’s get personal: -Connect who you are to what you make, and why it matters -Reframe the big questions around failure, change, and the unexpected weight of success -Explore what profit really looks like: financial, creative, and otherwise It’s a true story of going from “popular online” to major client work, a million books sold, and a retail business of his own, with all the lessons, doubts, and surprises along the way. ––––––––––– Adam J. Kurtz (“Adam JK”) is a Toronto-born, Honolulu-based artist whose illustrative work is rooted in honesty, humor, and a little bit of darkness. His books and journals including Things Are What You Make of Them have sold over a million copies in twenty languages. Obsessed with aphorisms and ephemera, Kurtz’s work seeks to craft new reminders from familiar sources, offering his brand of “back-handed optimism” as a token of encouragement and camaraderie for other creative, emotional, and deeply human people. In 2024, Kurtz and his husband opened a shop called SMALL KINE GIFT.