Business & Bras: Intimate Networking

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Visual Essays — A photo-graphic column

Wanted

Flying Cardboard

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Milly Guthrie: Business, T-shirts, art ...

Flying Cardboard awarded Milly Guthrie a free headshot photo shoot during an event at the Arizona Small Business Association (ASBA). Preparing for a shoot we work to learn as much as we can about the subject in order to capture their unique personality. With Milly, we found the energy and passion of an extremely talented artist.

Milly is originally from Cusco, Peru, forty-three miles southeast from the ruins of Machu Picchu. At the age of seventeen, Milly discovered she had a talent for the arts. Milly's teachers recognized her skills and encouraged the rebellious teen to further her talents.

In November of 1997, the spunky twenty-year-old made the four-day trip by train alone to the embassy. She boldly took her school artwork and requested a visa to work in the United States. Much to her surprise and delight, the visa was granted. Young, inexperience and with no English skills, she headed for California, where her father was living. He received a surprise call a few days before she arrived.

Milly stayed in California for only six months. She felt she would never learn English if she stayed in California, so she headed to Phoenix. She survived financially by participating in several arts and crafts shows doing portraits. The shows were the beginning of her career as an artist.

Determined and full of zeal, Milly decided to call on every art gallery in the valley. With her portfolio in hand, she began the somewhat humiliating process of becoming a professional artist. Gallery professionals shunned her, ignored her, and told her to perfect her skills.

During one of her phone calls, a gallery owner asked if she was genuinely committed as an artist. If so, she was to call back in thirty days. She called a month later and got a job. The position was a preparation assistant to a production line for a local artist. She learned a variety of styles and began to flourish. However, the pay for a preparation assistant is not very high, so Milly moved on.

The next obstacle was the dramatic event of her grandmother’s funeral, which forced Milly to scrape, save, and sell every art piece she had to earn enough money to go to Peru. While there, she visited her high school teachers and spoke to the students encouraging them to not give up on their dreams. Milly says, "I have a gift from God and should give back for it." In the midst of difficulties, she doesn’t give up and her work is evidence of this passion.

Last year, Milly tried as a full-time artist but the business she and her husband Jason own, The T-shirt Shop, was too busy. Their business is a custom screen-printing company that creates, designs, and produces products like T-shirts, sport shirts, hats, signs, banners, and promotional items.