november/december 2011
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Meet Tiffany and Matt…
A husband and wife team, they currently live in Jersey City, NJ. They run Inception to Exhibition (ITE), New York City’s newest, groundbreaking, cross-discipline artistic support community. Their goal is to provide a holistic arts experience from start to finish (hence the name!) by supplying low-cost, high-quality rehearsal, performance, archival, gallery and retail space to local artists. They’re also working to provide community-based activities that serve every age group. They want to strengthen, enrich and unite the NYC arts community.
Education…
Tiffany is a graduate of SUNY Purchase where she received her BFA from the Dance Conservatory. In addition to acting as artistic director of ITE, she serves as associate artistic director of Elisa Monte Dance, works as a guest teacher at SUNY Purchase, NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, Peridance, Steps on Broadway, and Dance New Amsterdam. She was previously a principal dancer for Elisa Monte Dance, resident choreographer for the Shirley Winter’s Ballet School, and created, directed and curated “Dance at the Tank,” for the non-profit arts organization, The Tank.
Matt, executive director of ITE, graduated from Carleton College in Northfield, MN with a BA in Economics and a minor in Environmental and Technology Studies. He spent two years on scholarship at The Ailey School in NYC, and danced for a number of companies, including Elisa Monte Dance. In addition to working to build ITE, he is part owner and manager of DiJiFi, a media digitalization business based in Brooklyn, NY.
The idea…
“I knew I wanted to start an interdisciplinary arts organization in college,” says Tiffany. “I started by interviewing members of the arts community about what they felt was lacking in the way of service to artists. Then I started thinking about how I could address those issues.”
She researched other organizations that had both succeeded and failed to get an idea of what worked and what didn’t.
“Once I had enough information I found another person in the field who had a complimentary skill set and we started working on a business plan and feasibility study. My husband then joined the team after a year and a half. From there we took our idea to DanceNYC to get advice. We then sought out fiscal sponsorship, joined the Arts and Business Council of New York, started a volunteer advisory board and an executive board.”
“My first task was building out the budget for the business plan,” says Matt. “In our first iteration we went through the process of incorporation with the state of New York with the intention of registering as a non-profit 501c(3) corporation, but on further examination of how we wanted to move forward, it made more sense for us to become a sponsored organization of Fractured Atlas. The full process of becoming a registered non-profit takes several years and the IRS wants you to show how you have been functioning as a non-profit organization before designating you as such, kind of a catch-22,” he says.
Fractured Atlas, a national, non-profit artist service, put ITE under their umbrella of organizations. Matt says the larger non-profit essentially vouches for ITE’s non-profit worthiness to the IRS, “allowing us to begin our mission without all the hoops we would have had to jump though if we had gone it ourselves.”
The hard work…
Tiffany’s job as associate artistic director of Elisa Monte Dance typically has her working Monday-Friday, 9:30am to 8pm. She says she spends about 20 MORE hours per week on ITE.
Matt puts in 45-50 hours per week at DiJiFi, then about 15-20 hours on ITE with Tiffany.
Passing along the wisdom…
“It is really important that you have confidence in yourself. You should be incredibly hard-working, be able to take rejection with grace and always be gracious no matter what the situation,” says Tiffany.
Matt agrees: “I second the confidence idea. [Also], constantly moving forward is important. If you get hung up with every detail getting a whole organization moving will be near impossible. Graciousness is a strong second, since non-profits rely on volunteers and generosity, and you really can’t say thank you enough.”
-Katie O’Connell
TheCareerKitchen 
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