Former real estate exec finds artistic success
When the Recession hit, John-Patrick McChesney switched gears from real estate to tackling the art and design worlds with a furniture design company and an artist's business lab.
John-Patrick McChesney likens his transition from the world of high-powered real estate to becoming a full-time artist, creator, and business owners to finding a Caribbean paradise after walking through “an endless, scorched desert.” Up until 2007, art was just a hobby for the 45-year-old owner of Dangerous Color and Mutiny Artwrx — a high-end furniture design company and an “artist’s business lab,” respectively. After the Recession hit and the market bottomed out, McChesney decided to take the leap and pursue his artistic endeavors as a serious gig.
Today, he works with a team of 11 — including marketing, sales and photography departments, plus a full video production unit and designer positions he’s currently working to fill. Dangerous Color began in a garage in 2012 and has evolved into what McChesney describes as “a series of lines of colorful furniture, lighting, lyrical sculptures I call ‘pyroglyphs’ and entirely unique artwork with global sales,” think bold hues, uniquely shaped furniture pieces, large-scale original artwork and more. All of the pieces are crafted in Atlanta in Dangerous Color’s 75,000-square-foot studio facility, with a gallery/retail space located in Paris on Ponce, where his Mutiny Artwrx artists also sell their work.
McChesney and his “Mutiny” keep their noses to the grindstone, churning out custom pieces every week for Dangerous Color as well as for special projects that come his way. “We’re on the verge of patenting a modular tiny-home system to be manufactured here in our Atlanta studios,” he says. “It took me a while, but I figured out how to make some real money doing what I love,” McChesney adds. “And now, I’m leading a Mutiny — and teaching these incredible artists how to do the same.” His goal, he says, is to save these artists “some laps around the track and to lovingly, gently kick them into a real-world understanding of how to price and sell their work, and value their unique talents accordingly."