2026 06 22
A meandering creek. Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park, Michigan. July 2025. © Clayton Hauck
Let’s spend some brainpower thinking through a modified approach to one of my businesses, shall we? My studio space, See You Soon at the Kimball Arts Center, is still very much finding its identity even after four years of existence. What I imagined the space to be did not really pan out. In some ways the differences have been better and in other ways far more challenging than anticipated. The reasons are many, and the control I have over the reasons span the entire spectrum, from totally my fault to didn’t see it coming from a mile away. Today, let’s focus on things I can control, specifically: what is See You Soon?
See You Soon Originally was:
A commercial photo studio
Clayton Hauck’s space to do stuff and try things
A rental photo studio
Through the years, new identities have come and gone. Broadly speaking, the space has organically shifted more towards being an event space than it is a photo studio, both for reasons of necessity (financial) and due to where I’ve chosen to focus my energies. While the future existence of See You Soon is currently in limbo, I think it’s quite valuable to give it my best effort as we steadily move towards the completion of our initial five-year lease, even if we don’t end up renewing (for the record, my goal is not to close, however, I’ve come to the point where that outcome will not bother me should it happen. Additional time to do things like photograph Michigan’s Upper Peninsula sounds very appealing to me).
See You Soon Now:
An event space, primarily focused on visual arts and photography
An outlet for Chicago’s creative community
A place for creative people to come together
So, how do we make this new identity work? The primary mission is to make the space financially viable. This means, without getting into specifics, a significant amount of money needs to be made every month, without fail. Listing the space on Peerspace has been the first step in showing me there is a viable future as an event space. From there, it’s on me (or people I hire to do the job) to communicate to others why they should be excited to rent the space. The good news is I continually see the evidence that the room is a valuable asset. Nearly without fail, the people coming to See You Soon are impressed and grateful to spend time there.
So what have I been doing wrong? Well, I think the main factors that have led me astray are:
I didn’t know what See You Soon was
My frustrations with the commercial photography market guided my thinking
I’m essentially learning a new job as I go
I had a good friend fly into town and stay with us over the weekend and he finally helped me see the light. I forced myself to take the weekend off and we had a whirlwind time bopping all over Chicago. The amount of people and energy we encountered everywhere we went was exactly the thing that inspired me to do See You Soon in the first place! Spending so much time buried in front of my laptop and running the space, on top of my two other jobs, led me to shift my perspective towards a less healthy and pessimistic place. Really, I need to get my ass out of the house more and re-engage with the city I love. Are there still challenges? Of course. Do we need to dwell on them publicly? There’s a time and a place for it (like this here blog). I still enjoy and find value in the venting as a form of therapy, but when it comes to selling, it’s not the way to go.
A new framework for communicating all-things See You Soon:
Stay positive! We are having fun!
Have confidence (People will pay for confidence)
Write my story and tell it. (Nobody wants to hang out with Eeyore)
Be engaged & create community
People are buying in to support the cause… Chicago’s creative community
Sure, a lot of this is obvious stuff. But if I’m going to take See You Soon seriously as an actual business and not my own pet project, I need to start acting the part.
Go join the studio newsletter list and see how it goes!
-Clayton
