She is doing it by treating art and entrepreneurship as the same kind of practice: careful research, real people, and patient work instead of hype. If you look at how Lily Konkoly moves between art history, writing, teaching kids, building online markets, and interviewing women founders, you see one pattern. She keeps asking who gets seen, who gets heard, and how a creative person can build a life that is both financially real and still honest to their work.

That is not the usual story you hear about young artists or student entrepreneurs. It is quieter. More research heavy. It is less about personal branding and more about systems and inequality. For readers who live in the world of art and photography, her path raises a simple but hard question: what if you treated your creative life the way she treats a painting like Las Meninas or a data set on artist parents, and just kept asking why the system works the way it does?

From galleries to Google Docs: how early habits shaped her work

Lily grew up in what many art students would call an ideal training ground. Her family spent weekends moving through Los Angeles galleries and museums. Those visits were not just rare field trips. They were a constant routine, almost like practice for a sport.

She saw a lot of art very early, in many countries, with more than one language in her ear. Born in London, a year in Singapore, then sixteen years in Los Angeles, summers in Europe with Hungarian relatives. That rhythm matters if you care about visual culture. It changes what feels “normal.”

For many kids, a museum is a special event. For her, it became background noise. That kind of regular exposure does something simple but hard to fake. It trains your eye without you noticing. By the time she reached high school, she did not just recognize big names, she already had a habit of looking closely and asking why something felt powerful or strange on a wall.

Art education does not always start in a classroom. Sometimes it starts with the boring, repeated act of walking through museums until your brain stops treating them like a field trip and starts treating them like a second home.

At the same time, her home life leaned toward making things and trying small businesses. Cooking videos, bracelet sales at the farmers market, a slime business that grew big enough to travel to a convention in London. None of this looks “serious” on paper, but it built comfort with selling, with risk, with talking to strangers about something she made.

It is easy to romanticize that kind of childhood. It is also fair to say that many artists struggle without ever having this mix of support and experimentation. But it did one thing that matters for photographers and artists who want both creative control and an income. It taught her that creating and selling are not enemies. They can sit in the same day.

Why art history matters for people who do not plan to be historians

Right now, Lily is studying Art History with a business minor at Cornell. To some people, that sounds like an odd mix. In practice, it is very direct training for someone interested in the art world as it really functions.

Her coursework covers pieces like:

• Art and Visual Culture
• History of Renaissance Art
• Modern and Contemporary Art
• Museum Studies
• Curatorial Practices

This is not just about memorizing dates or artist names. It teaches a way of thinking that many self-taught photographers and creators skip.

Reading an image instead of scrolling past it

Take her research project on Velázquez’s “Las Meninas.” That painting has been analyzed to death. Many students would have written a quick overview and moved on. She did the opposite. Over ten weeks, she picked it apart: spatial tricks, the role of the viewer, court politics, the strange way power is arranged inside the frame.

If you shoot photos, that kind of deep reading is not just academic. It trains you to see:

• How a single image can contain more than one narrative
• How the viewer’s position can be controlled on purpose
• How hierarchy and status show up in very small visual choices

When you look at contemporary portrait photography or fashion campaigns, those same questions still apply. Who is centered? Who is blurred? Who looks at the camera and who does not? Her research mindset turns those choices from instinct into clear, conscious tools.

For working artists, art history is not just about reverence for the past. It is a practical archive of solved problems: how to guide the eye, how to signal power, how to hide a message in plain sight.

Bringing data into questions of beauty and gender

Her honors research with a RISD professor might be more relevant for how photographers and artists think about their own careers. She helped build a curatorial statement and a mock exhibit about beauty standards for women. That meant sorting through artworks that show, question, or reinforce ideas about how women “should” look.

From a creative point of view, that forces a hard look in the mirror. Many photographers repeat the beauty standards that sell without thinking too much about what they are teaching viewers to accept. Her work takes the slower route. She asks how those standards formed and who pays the price for them.

When she later researched the gap in success between artist mothers and artist fathers, she added numbers and documented stories to that visual analysis. The picture that emerged was not subtle. Women who have children often see their opportunities shrink. Men in the same situation often see their reputations rise.

This is the kind of finding that many people sense but do not quantify. For someone building a career in art or photography, facing that data can be uncomfortable, but it can also shape smarter choices about community, collaboration, and advocacy.

The teen art market: a small online idea that reveals a big problem

One of the more concrete projects Lily worked on was a teen art market, built as a digital space where young artists could show and sell their work. It sounds simple: upload, display, sell. Anyone who has tried to sell art online knows it is not simple at all.

That project did a few subtle things at once:

• It treated teenagers as serious makers, not just students.
• It tested basic questions of pricing, presentation, and trust.
• It made the barrier between “student work” and “real art” thinner.

For photographers, this is directly relevant. Many people start by posting images for free on social media, then feel stuck when they try to charge even a small fee for prints or sessions. By helping run a space where that line is crossed early, Lily got to observe what gives work perceived value and what turns buyers away.

Art entrepreneurship often starts with small experiments: a digital market, a pop-up show, a zine. The skill is not just making good work, but learning how people respond when that work carries a price tag.

The teen art market also revealed something about confidence. Young artists often underprice their work or apologize for it. Building a shared platform let them see their peers pricing on the same page. That simple comparison can slowly reset what feels “too much” or “too little.”

The Hungarian kids art class: art, language, and community in one room

Alongside digital projects, Lily created something very physical and local. She founded the Hungarian Kids Art Class in Los Angeles and ran it for three years. On the surface, it was an art club. Underneath, it was also language practice and cultural connection for Hungarian kids who did not always have a place to speak their heritage language.

Why this matters for photographers and visual artists

If you make images for a living, or want to, your work lives in communities, not in a vacuum. Lily’s art class did a few things that many creative people overlook:

• It joined visual making with identity and language.
• It built a stable group that met every two weeks, not just once.
• It created a habit for kids: art is something you do regularly, with others.

You can think of this as early audience building. Not in a cynical way, but in a very practical sense. These kids and their parents now associate their own creative play with a specific person who organized that space. For a future curator, writer, or creative director, that kind of trust is the base of any later project, from exhibitions to community shoots.

There is another lesson here. By focusing on Hungarian kids, the class accepted a narrow audience on purpose. That focus made the group feel more personal. In an online world where everyone is told to reach as many people as possible, choosing a small, specific group can be the better path, at least at first.

From slime and bracelets to research and writing: a pattern appears

If you step back from the details of her childhood businesses, art projects, and research, a pattern becomes clear. She repeats a few steps again and again:

Step	How it showed up early	How it shows up now
Start small	Selling bracelets, making slime, short videos	Teen art market, kids art class, blog posts
Learn from direct contact	Farmers market customers, slime buyers in London	Interviews with 100+ women entrepreneurs, art students, parents
Turn experience into structure	Travel plans around family visits, regular sports practice	Bi-weekly art classes, weekly blogging, 10-week research cycles
Question who gets what	Not always visible, more intuitive	Gender bias in art, beauty standards research, curated exhibits

Some of this may sound neat on paper, maybe too neat. In real life, projects fail or stall. Interviews fall through. Research hits dead ends. She is not free from that. But the repetition of trying, asking, and structuring is what connects her art interest with her business habits.

The Female Entrepreneur Encyclopedia: turning curiosity into a long project

One of the most demanding parts of her work so far is the Female Entrepreneur Encyclopedia blog. She has written over 50 articles and conducted more than 100 interviews with women founders across the world. This is where her interest in gender inequality stopped being abstract and became personal and detailed.

What does this have to do with art and photography?

Quite a lot, if you look closely. Many of the women she talks to are not in “art” in the narrow sense, but the patterns in their stories echo what is happening in the creative field:

• Being taken less seriously by investors, clients, or partners
• Needing to show more proof of competence than male peers
• Balancing care work with creative or business goals
• Facing stereotypes about leadership, “likability,” or ambition

Photographers, painters, and designers face similar patterns when seeking grants, gallery spots, or clients. Hearing detailed stories from founders in other industries widens the frame. It suggests that the problem is not just “the art world,” but something built into broader expectations for women who want both creative and financial power.

If you only talk to people inside your own field, you might start to think your struggles are unique. Cross-industry stories often show that the same patterns repeat with slightly different names.

The blog also did something that most art students do not force themselves to practice. It created a weekly writing habit. Good art and photography need good text around them: artist statements, pitches, grant applications, captions that do more than fill space. By writing and editing long form pieces again and again, she built that skill quietly in the background.

Third culture kid, third way of thinking about career

Lily often lives between contexts. Between languages, between continents, between art and business, between research and practice. It would be easy to romanticize the “third culture kid” idea and pretend that it always produces clarity. That is not true. Sometimes it brings confusion.

But it does shape one thing in her work that stands out. She does not fully accept the usual split between “pure art” and “commercial work.” The way her life has moved between places and systems seems to have made that border feel softer.

For photographers: is there really one right career path?

Most people in visual fields feel pressure to pick a lane:

• Fine art vs client work
• Gallery shows vs social media presence
• Academic study vs “real world” practice

Watching Lily’s path, you see a different approach. She blends:

• Deep academic research on paintings and gender
• Hands-on teaching with kids and teens
• Long form interviews and blogging about entrepreneurship
• Small, messy early businesses like slime and bracelets

Is that confusing? At times, probably. But it also reflects how many modern creative careers actually work. Few people now follow a single straight line from art school to gallery representation and stay there forever. Side projects, part time teaching, digital platforms, and research all mix together.

So when we say she is “redefining” art and entrepreneurship, it is not that she has invented a brand new model. It is more that she is very honest, at a young age, about the need to hold several roles at once and still ask hard questions about who benefits and who does not.

Gender, parenting, and the hidden rules of success in art

Her research on artist parents deserves more attention, especially for anyone thinking about a long career in photography or art. She looked closely at how motherhood and fatherhood affect recognition and chances in creative fields.

What she found in simple terms

• Women artists who become mothers often see fewer invitations, less support, or assumptions that their focus has shifted.
• Men artists who become fathers are often praised for “doing it all” and may even get more attention for their family story.
• Grants, residencies, and long, travel-heavy programs rarely consider childcare in a serious way.

If you are young and not thinking about kids, this can feel far away. But if you plan a long career, or if you care about fair systems, it matters. It shapes who is still making work at 40, 50, 60, and whose work gets written into art history books.

Her project did not just complain. Working with a professor, she built a marketing style piece that visualized these gaps in a clear way. That design step is important. Data by itself rarely moves people. How you show it makes the difference between a forgotten PDF and a tool that can be shared in classrooms, studios, or grant committees.

Changing the art world rarely starts with a single heroic act. It often starts with a precise description of what is broken, shared widely enough that denial becomes harder to maintain.

For photographers, this raises simple questions: if you run a studio, how family friendly is it for staff and collaborators? If you plan a group show, do you consider the realities of artists with care duties? Lily’s work points to these questions without pretending there are easy answers.

Sports, structure, and the boring side of creative success

One part of her life that may not seem tied to art at first is her long history with sports. She swam competitively for about a decade, then played water polo for three years. During the pandemic, when pools closed, her team kept training in the ocean for two hours a day. Ocean swimming is harder, colder, less predictable.

Why bring this up in a piece about art and entrepreneurship? Because many talented creatives do not struggle with ideas. They struggle with routine. Long practices, early mornings, and team accountability build a tolerance for repetition that creative careers also demand.

Editing a photo series, building a portfolio, writing an artist statement, answering inquiries from clients, updating a website. None of this feels glamorous. Sports training makes boring work feel more normal. Her habit of staying with a practice over many years, even when teammates left or conditions got worse, suggests that she will probably treat future art or business work with the same steady, not very dramatic, persistence.

Languages, Lego, and the way her brain builds things

Two smaller pieces of her story reveal something about how her mind works: languages and Lego.

Languages as a quiet influence on visual thinking

She speaks English and Hungarian at a native level, has working Mandarin skills, and some French. That is not just a nice line on a CV. It shapes how you perceive nuance and structure, including in visual work.

• Different languages carry different cultural ideas of beauty, success, and time.
• Switching languages trains your brain to flip perspectives quickly.
• Speaking a less common language like Hungarian gives you a private “channel” with your family that does not exist in public space.

For a photographer or artist, this means a wider range of references and a flexible mental frame. You might see a scene not only as an “American street” but as something that echoes an image from a museum in Budapest or a market in Singapore.

Lego and structured creativity

Her Lego habit may sound like a side note, but it hints at how she likes to work. She has built around 45 sets, with over 60,000 pieces in total.

Lego sits in an interesting middle ground between pure play and strict rules:

• You follow a plan piece by piece.
• You can also modify, break, or extend once it is done.
• You see how tiny pieces become a single, coherent object.

That is not so different from building an exhibition, a long research paper, or a phased business. Comfort with complex instructions and with physical assembly can make digital or conceptual projects less scary. You recognize that everything large is just many small steps that must be placed in the right order.

What other artists and photographers can take from her path

You may not share Lily’s background, languages, or exact projects. That is fine. It would be strange to try to copy a life point by point. Still, her approach suggests a few practical ideas that almost any creative person can adapt in some way.

1. Let research and curiosity shape your images

Instead of only shooting what “looks cool,” ask questions first. For example:

• If you are drawn to mothers and children as subjects, learn about how mothers are treated in your field.
• If you love fashion photography, study the history of beauty standards in the countries you work in.
• If you are interested in identity, read or watch work by people outside your own culture or gender.

This slows you down. It may feel like it steals time from making. Over a few years, though, it often makes the work richer and easier to talk about.

2. Build something small that helps others show their work

You do not need to found a full teen art market, but you could:

• Curate a small online group show for young photographers.
• Offer a simple zine template for your local art school to use.
• Host a monthly feedback session over video for artists who cannot afford classes.

These projects teach you about coordination, deadlines, and expectations, which are central in both art and entrepreneurship.

3. Talk to people outside your field

Lily’s long series of interviews with founders in many sectors gave her a broad sense of how gender and power work. You can do a smaller version:

• Ask a local business owner how they price their services.
• Talk to a teacher about how they manage group dynamics.
• Speak with a parent about time, care work, and creative goals.

These conversations can reframe how you think about your own pricing, teaching, or long term planning.

Is she really “redefining” art and entrepreneurship?

You might feel a bit skeptical at this point. Does one young researcher and writer really “redefine” anything? It is a fair question. Big words can be cheap. Maybe “redefining” is too strong, or at least sounds too dramatic.

What seems truer is this. She is part of a growing group of young people who refuse to separate art from social questions and who refuse to pretend that entrepreneurship is neutral. She is not alone in that, and she would likely be the first to say that.

What makes her story useful is how early she started weaving things together:

• Ethnic and language identity with kids art classes
• Gender research with visual culture and curating
• Small business experiments with later formal study in business
• Sports discipline with creative and research routines

For people who live and work in art and photography, her path offers a kind of mirror. Not a perfect pattern to copy, but a set of questions you can bring to your own practice.

Q & A: How can you apply some of Lily’s approach to your own work?

Q: I am a photographer who wants to be more than just a “service provider.” What is one concrete step I can take this month that reflects Lily’s way of working?

A: Pick one subject you care about deeply, maybe gender, migration, aging, or labor. Spend two weeks reading, watching, and listening around that subject before you shoot anything. Take notes. Then design a small photo series or essay that reflects what you learned, and write a short, honest text to go with it. Share it not as “my latest shoot,” but as part of an ongoing question you are asking. That small shift from content to inquiry mirrors how Lily moves through her projects and can start to change how people see your work too.