Yes! Ballpark operates a highly specialized visual arts and illustration division. Our roster includes world-class commercial illustrators and contemporary mixed-media fine artists. We approach visual artist management with the same structural rigor as our musical rollouts — focusing on long-term portfolio optimization, commercial brand consulting, and maximizing global digital audience touchpoints.

We're an artist management agency that takes a holistic, strategic approach to creative careers. In practice, that means we do the work that would typically require hiring a social agency, a PR company, a booking agency, a design firm, and an artist representation firm. 

The traditional management model was built by gatekeeping, opaque "pay-to-play" tactics, and a systemic reliance on underpaid creative labor. Ballpark is a deliberate rejection of the exploitative norms that have historically governed the arts and music industries.

Our approach is built on a foundation of respect and transparency, guided by these three pillars:

• Systemic Equity: We’ve replaced the industry’s history of exploitation with a commitment to fair compensation. By valuing creative labor of our artists and our team, we make sure that success isn’t built on someone else’s loss.

• Radical Transparency: In a landscape of bribes and hidden incentives, we choose absolute clarity. Our flat-fee model removes the conflict of interest inherent in commission-based management; our advice is based on your career and not our bottom line. 

• Artist Advocacy: We aren't here to extract value from your work; we’re here to protect it. As a woman-owned business, we advocate for a future where fairness and respect are the standard, not the exception.

Beyond our ethics, we provide a unified infrastructure by bringing together traditionally siloed services under one roof. By integrating PR, booking, design, strategy, and social media into a single ecosystem, we eliminate the "middleman tax" and keep every effort synchronized. This approach transforms fragmented tasks into a unified strategy. The result is a clear path forward where your creative vision and business execution stay in total alignment.

It means we came up the same way most of our clients did: by building something from the ground up through a lot of trial, error, and persistence. We started by drawing our own flyers, booking shows with ten person turnouts, sending cold emails, and figuring it out on the fly. Today, that translates to a culture that is resourceful, efficient, and intentionally scrappy. We aren’t afraid of a steep learning curve or a new challenge; we move quickly and focus on what actually works rather than how things "should" be done.

We also advocate for fair compensation as a matter of principle, not just practice. In an industry where creative labor is often undervalued, we’ve built a model that prioritizes equity. Our flat fee pricing model is a deliberate rejection of industry exploitation. Paying our team of working creatives fairly is what allows us to provide the kind of dedicated, high-impact support that traditional agency structures cannot match.

For us, DIY isn't just how we started, but rather a guiding ethos, as well as a direct, honest way of doing business that and prioritizes fair pay for labor.

Ballpark started as a DIY booking operation embedded in the Long Island music and arts scene. In 2024, we started booking shows, making posters, connecting artists with opportunities, and advocating for a scene that deserved better. Long before we were a management agency, we started as artists and organizers who were already doing the work, and built the business around that foundation.

Our team is made up of working musicians and artists who understand the industry from the inside. Ballpark founder, Basia Kurlender, has been booking shows since 2017, starting as General Manager of WPIR Pratt Radio and going on to work as a designer at Baby's All Right, one of Brooklyn's most beloved independent venues. She brings formal fine arts training, years of experience as a working artist, and a design studio trusted by brands like Nike, Snapchat, and Patreon. 

As an organization, we've produced more than thirty live events, earned a grant from Suffolk County, and built lasting partnerships with libraries, nature preserves, cultural nonprofits, and institutions including Museum of Contemporary Art Long Island, Sweetbriar Nature Center, Plaza Cinema & Media Arts Center, and the Village of Patchogue — as well as national brands like D'Addario and Bitchin' Sauce.

Our clients are musicians, bands, visual artists, and multidisciplinary creatives across genres and career stages. Despite the wide range of medium, what our artists have in common is a commitment to ethics, a seriousness about their work, a willingness to collaborate, and a readiness to invest in where their career is going.

For a full list of current clients, please see our Roster section.

Yes! We love working with visual artists and musicians.

We work with creatives making work across a wide range of genres, styles, and mediums. We've worked with screamo bands and folk artists, illustrators and visual artists with wildly different aesthetics, and other practitioners who don't fit neatly into any category. Genre and medium matter less than the quality of the work and the character of the person behind it. If you're making something with a defined perspective and you want to grow, we want to hear from you.

Yes! If you make things and want to build a career around it, we're here to help.

Our systems are designed to flex across disciplines because the underlying work of strategy, pitching, and campaign-building translates across media. The way we approach a press campaign for a record is pretty similar to how we approach a brand licensing pitch, record deal, or promotion fora gallery opening. We love new challenges!

Ballpark is a scalable, full-service artist management ecosystem built to support all types of artists — high growth, mid-career, and established creatives of all disciplines. Our infrastructure is built to execute national publicity campaigns, oversee physical vinyl manufacturing and art direction, and navigate record deal negotiations. Whether an artist is expanding their regional footprint or operating at an enterprise scale, our proprietary executive strategy and design-forward marketing cut through global industry noise.

Yes! We're experienced with working with individuals and groups. For the groups, we work with whoever the designated point of contact is, or communicate with the full band or team, depending on what works best for everyone involved.

Absolutely. Our management strategies are led by design directors and strategists who have executed visual identities, campaign consulting, and brand frameworks for global lifestyle giants like Nike, Vans, Snapchat, McDonald's, and Peloton, alongside municipal governments. We bring corporate-grade professionalism, rigorous timeline tracking, and strict administrative compliance to high-stakes entertainment campaigns, making us a trusted partner for major labels, A&Rs, and global commercial entities.

Our targeted, data-driven approach consistently outperforms legacy music industry standards. Ballpark’s curated label pitching framework recently engineered an unprecedented 18.5% response rate from label executives and A&Rs, nearly quadrupling the professional industry benchmark and outperforming solo cold submissions by more than 11x. This pipeline has successfully secured independent record label deals, driven premier national feature coverage, and generated widespread FM and independent radio placements and interviews (WBAB, WBLI, WHPC, WUSB, WPIR,).

We are happy to work with whatever team is already around you, coordinating with your publicist, your label, your booking agent, your gallery rep. We can also step in and do that work ourselves, which is significantly more affordable for many artists. We figure out what actually serves the artist and go from there.

A booking agent gets you shows and exhibition opportunities. A publicist gets you press. An artist rep handles licensing, deals, and career-level negotiation. A manager* oversees all of those things. Managers operate at the strategy level. 

* Ballpark is different than traditional management. We are built on the strategizing core of the traditional manager, but we also offer many additional services (full list here). We also offer booking agent, publicist, and artists rep services!

Here's how we think about it:

You're walking your path. As you carve footprints into the earth, we are walking a few steps ahead of you, clearing the sticks and rocks and pushing away the overgrown brush. We do not change the path, but we make it easier for you to walk.

We lessen your organizational weight by absorbing the daily operational noise and running your backend business infrastructure, while supplying the in-house design, PR, and digital execution you need when it's time to launch, leaving you completely free to protect your creative hours. 

Just as importantly, management also brings perspective. When you are completely inside your own work, it’s hard to see the big picture; we pull back the frame to identify what’s working, catch the details you might miss, and help you build a wider, intentional roadmap instead of just reacting to a mounting to-do list.

You shape your path. We just help make the road a little easier to walk.

Some good indicators: 

• You're making work consistently and have a foundation to build upon.

• The business side of your career is starting to compete with the creative side for your attention.

• You have goals but aren't sure how to sequence them.

• You've hit a ceiling doing it alone and aren't totally sure why.

• You are excited about collaborating with a partner on next strategic steps

If this sounds like you, let's explore the next step! Check out our Artist Management Application.

Most artists are incredibly good at making work and incredibly under-supported when it comes to everything around it, like the positioning, the timing, the outreach, the decisions about where to focus energy and when. Without a clear strategy, even great work can go unnoticed, opportunities get missed, and careers stall — not because the art isn't there, but because the infrastructure isn't.

Ballpark provides the structural framework required to navigate both long-term career planning and the high-stakes execution of specific project milestones. Whether we build a phased roadmap for a major launch or identify which paths quietly drain your capacity, our focus is on sustainable growth. Our objective is making sure that every action taken is a deliberate step toward a larger professional goal.

We keep our pricing completely transparent. Ongoing artist representation starts at a flat retainer of $150/month or $300/month, which covers your project management, operations, and regular strategy meetings. Our creative campaign services — including but not limited to press campaigns, record label pitching, PR, art direction, vinyl layout design, custom merch collections, social & digital execution, website-building — are priced on a project-by-project basis. Anyone can hire us for a single project, but artists on our ongoing roster receive a preferred, discounted rate on all campaign services when they enter a rollout cycle.

Ultimately, we believe that independent artists deserve access to high-level support at every stage of their career. We pay our internal team fairly while keeping our rates as accessible as possible, because we know that hiring a management team is a significant financial investment. Giving more creatives access to impactful help is why we built Ballpark.

If you just need visual assets or a PR push for a single album rollout, a standalone project is a great fit.

In contrast, significant career growth is a long-term process that requires compounding momentum, steady development, and continuous industry positioning. Ongoing management gives you a permanent strategic partner to sustain that velocity so you can build the foundation for your career.

Plus, our roster clients get preferred pricing on every single campaign rollout, alongside exclusive, priority access to paid gigs, gallery exhibitions, and collaborative commissions across the Ballpark network.

A body of work that represents where you are and where you want to go.

A sense of your goals, even if they're not fully formed.

A readiness to collaborate, to bring your vision, and to trust us to help shape the strategy around your practice.

You don't need everything figured out! Come with your vision and we'll help build the strategy around it.

We are selective, and we think that's a good thing for everyone. We work across career stages and disciplines, but what drives every decision is fit, genuine belief in the work, and confidence that we can make a real difference. We want to be sure we can actually help you!

What we look for are artists who bring us their vision and want a true thought partner helping shape the strategy around it.

Our team reviews every application very carefully, and we are grateful for every submission. If you haven't heard from us, it's most likely a matter of timing or roster capacity rather than a reflection of your work. We're a small team with a selective roster, and fit is everything. Sometimes the timing just isn't right. If you are still interested in artist management, we encourage you to reapply when you have a new project or update on the horizon.