Meet Sophocles Plokamakis | Artpreneur, Curator, Comic book Artist, Art Teacher & muralist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Sophocles Plokamakis and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Sophocles, is there something that you feel is most responsible for your success?
The most important factor behind the success of Start Shows and my personal art success is my deep rooted faith in the creator, in GOD! GOD is my rock, and I love GOD dearly. Whenever I have an issue or a problem I bring it into prayer and ask GOD to help me solve it and ask for how the obstacle can be tackled. I always get ideas as to how to solve the problem immediately!

When you pray directly to GOD you get answers quick if you believe that you will, and I do! Don’t be scared to talk directly to GOD as if you are having a conversation with your father or mother like someone who you love and who loves you back, because that’s how GOD feels about you, GOD created you, and loves you dearly and designed you to pray with belief in GOD and to talk with GOD.

I’ve asked GOD for so many things. GOD has granted most of those things and I know that whatever hasn’t been granted yet either GOD is working on or has plans for something better for me, Thais my wife, my children, Start Shows & the Art Fam that we serve as a business.

For example 1.5 months before Museum of Now in November 2022 an An art exhibition Thais and my business produced, every day I was praying a specific prayer, for there to be Amazing weather, all throughout the 3 day weekend show unusually warm weather for November, sunny weather, with no rain, no wind, no snow, no ice, slush or hail. I did this everyday and repeated this prayer over and over again, and in New York City, in November all 3 days were 70 something degrees Fahrenheit which is VERY unusual for November in NYC.

A few months later before NEW YOU Art Exhibition at One Art Space Gallery every day I was praying to GOD for the artists in the show to have more sales than we’ve ever had in a show and to break our record and the galleries record for sales. The show came and that’s exactly what happened, there were 176 sales off the Walls and tables combined and more than $15,000 was earned by the artists and they kept 100% of the money they earned from all sales of their art.

GOD also blessed me with 2 children, I prayed for happy and healthy girl and boy and I knew in my heart GOD would deliver and GOD did!

That’s just 3 examples of how GOD has hooked me up with things I’ve prayed for.

Other than that, my wife Thais (also my business partner), being friendly and empathetic to our Art Fam’s needs and concerns, Hard work, consistency, dedication, SMART Goal setting and having a vision board are very important factor behind the success of our brand!

What should our readers know about your business?
Start Shows LLC is my business commonly referred to as just Start Shows. I think what sets our business apart from others is that we care deeply about transforming the lives of our Art Fam that we meet online a couple of months before each show, and then finally meet in person usually for a 3 day weekend event in TriBeCa, NYC at One Art Space Gallery. I do a lot of Instagram lives and in the IG group chats for each exhibition, I provide practical tips for pricing, selling, marketing and presentation of art!

I have been an art teacher in after school programs for many years before I became an art curator and continued to teach after I was a curator so I bring a teaching vibe to the shows we do and do my best to help every artist in our shows feel seen, feel like they’ve leveled up in knowledge that they can bring to other shows they do by other curators or solo shows in these 4 categories mentioned in the above paragraph. We also love working with artists repeatedly in multiple shows if they want to exhibit again, and many of them do!

In our upcoming early March 2024 art show, BAM! RED DOT! The Exhibition at ONE ART SPACE Gallery in TriBeCa, NYC several artists that were featured in shows dating back to as early as my first Gallery show in TriBeCa “Septemberfest” and many artists from other shows in the past years are making their long awaited and dramatic return to One Art Space in a show featuring 40+ artists of multiple mediums.

We even sometimes break bread with our Art Fam and have on several occasions gone out to dinner with the artists from multiple shows and enjoyed good vibes good food and once I even brought markers and we did collaboration drawings together on the same piece of paper, some artists brought their kids and wives. It was a blast!

What I’m most excited about that gives me a sense of pride in what I do, is the fact we provide a platform for creatives that otherwise might never be in the position to have their art featured in a real, beautiful lower Manhattan Gallery as well as other amazing venues over the past 6 years since 2018. We’ve helped 700+ artists exhibit in galleries in NYC and many of these artists have sold a piece and many of those artists have sold several pieces in the same show and other shows they have done with Start Shows.

I got to where I am today with Start Shows completely by chance, but it was due the fact that I had a goal, and that was to create a NEO ART RENAISSANCE on Earth and use NYC as the platform to do it, as it is the art capitol of the world. Because I had this goal since 2012 when I started teaching my passions Manga, Anime, comics, animation, Yu-Gi-OH! and Photoshop and digital art making at NEST+M a gifted and talented school in the heart of the Lower East Side, when it was time for me to look for a beautiful gallery to host my first Gallery show at, my eyes were open to the opportunity to ask Diego Ponce (The One Art Space gallery in house curator at the time in 2018) if I could host and curate my own exhibition at Dan Giella’s gorgeous gallery (Dan is like family to us at this point being that we’ve curated 17 shows at One Art Space since 2018 and BAM RED DOT! Will be the 18th in 6 years!). Diego said yes and since then it’s history.

It was at Septemberfest in September of 2018 where I met my wife Thais, she was one of the featured artists who came all the way from Brazil to be in the show. This was an omen for me because a few days after the show we started dating, and we have built a legacy ever since then in the Art world and have featured so many artists and their art in Manhattan, Astoria and even in New Jersey in a mansion for a show we dubbed “Art Mansion”.

It was not always easy, one big challenge that was a challenge for everyone around the world especially in the arts and entertainment industry was the pandemic. We had just had one of the most successful shows we’ve ever done (The New 20’s Art Show) at One Art Space Gallery in TriBeCa, NYC and it was February 2020, and we were excitedly talking about our next show, (New York Stories 2). We started the call for artists soon after, and even had several artists who had signed up for the show. Then Covid hit America like an A-BOM! and spread so rapidly in NYC that we were forced to cancel the show. For many months like most people we weren’t really working on anything other than our own art. But to keep our followers entertained and not ghost our @startshows IG account, we created an art contest that at first we planned to make just a national contest, but an artist requested that we open it up to the world. Artists could submit their art and the art was posted to our IG page and at the end of the contest the winners received prizes and recognition for winning. This was a great way to keep busy during those many months between March and October when we had our next show (Art is The Cure) at One Art Space (with restrictions and careful regulations.

As everyone knows it took a couple of years for things to bounce back 100% but the fact that we stuck with it and kept doing shows helped keep me sane during the pandemic and helped me meet so many amazing people and talented artists.

The lessons I’ve learned along the way is that even when you give it your all and you try to please everyone and do the best by people, sometimes you will have people who are dissatisfied with your services. But the important thing is not to beat yourself up about how you failed or about the criticism you received from client, but to evaluate their criticism and see how you can improve yourself and your business, products and services after that. If it was just criticism that means you need to make adjustments, if not than you can let it be and not let it haunt you forever and move on with your life.

What I want the world to know about me and our brand and story is that I’ve dedicated my whole life to being in the Art field. I’ve been drawing since I was 2 and have never stopped for long other than for a few creative blocks I’ve had when feeling depressed. But I KEPT making art, I found ways to earn money from having a business in a field I’m passionate about and I’ll never stop curating art exhibitions and creating comics and manga because I’m gifted in these things and that’s a present from GOD the creator. In my opinion when GOD gifts you with talents you have to honor him by using them in a way that benefits GOD’S universe and makes it a better place!

Consistency, dedication, power, passion quality and quantity of HARD WORK are my middle names! (I know that’s a lot of middle names but maybe I should say they’re my mantra. It’s what I live by and I can’t, I won’t and I don’t stop, just like the Beastie Boys said!

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
If my best friend was visiting the area in NYC and I wanted to show them the time of their lives, I would take them to Museums like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim museum, the MOMA, chelsea galleries and piers, One Art Space in TriBeCa, and the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria Queens ( Which is all about movies and animation and video games) and to tasty restaurants in those areas. My life revolves around art and I think that in places like those museums and galleries there’s so much art that there’s a little something for everyone!

I would also bring my friend to Carnegie hall and Madison Square Garden for concerts because music is the universal language and the shows at those venues are amazing!

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
I want to dedicate my shoutout first to GOD, because GOD always comes first in my opinion. I am able to create art and art Exhibitions because I was created by the creator with the gift of creativity and that’s special!

To my wife Thais, for giving birth to the idea of creating this business (Start Shows).

To team ONE ART SPACE gallery, (Dan, Carlos, Mei, Jaime, and Diego for being so supportive of our mission to help artists achieve their goals and dreams and have a great START in the art world as well to our ART FAM who are so loving and have enriched our lives so much through their presence, stories and art!

To Michael Sansone, my high school art teacher who helped me build a powerful art portfolio that helped me get the finest art instruction in the world at the School of Visual Arts (SVA)! Thank you Sansone!

Also my parents, who instilled a love for art in all mediums and museums in me at such a young age, who gave me my first crayons at age 2, when I began drawing, and it all has come along full circle.

Website: Startshowsnyc.com & sophotoons.com (my personal art website)

Instagram: @startshows & @farmboystory

Linkedin: Sophocles Plokamakis

Facebook: facebook.com/startshows

Other: Tik Tok: Startshows

Image Credits
Larry Leventhal