Italy Art Exhibit a Success

 

©Leslie Guzman

Here I am next to my piece A day in Venezia

It is one thing to study in Italy, to get inspired and learn. It is another thing to come back home with all your images, sketches and ideas and actually start making art from it. It was a tough semester especially trying to put my ideas to work for me, for my classes and my professors. It made it harder having no direction, making many mistakes and a lot of negativity around me. Three months later and an exhibit later I feel more positive. 

Some of my panels for
the semester

I decided to be hard headed and stick to what I do best, photography. Although there are some people that do not consider photography art and those people do not need to read my blog because I LOVE photography, probably always will and will talk about it over and over. I have introduced photography into my other mediums of art. When we had the announcement of a group exhibit for those of us who went to Italy I was a bit worried because we only had about three weeks notice. I had already been working with my own images from Italy, so all my semesters work was you can say Italian. Hahaha...

The start of A Day in Venezia

I am my own worst critic and I usually hate my work before I actually see the good in it. This time was worst than any other. I was feeling rushed and I will repeat the word NEGATIVE was around me, so that stood in the way of my creativity coming out. I was beating myself up about not having enough work. Our instructions were to have them matted and framed by November 7th. So buying frames was another stress. Before I knew it I had 9 pieces in the show. Actually I did not see how much work I had until we had all placed our work in the hallway ready to hand. It felt good knowing that I actually worked all semester. 

From Left to Right:  Friends Angelle Cole & Viviana Velasquez
Artists: Leslie Guzmán, Christopher Espinoza, Jeramiah Macha,
Ashley Busby, S. Anhriel Mann

I actually did manual labor as in I worked, hung up my own work and everything looked amazing! We shared the show with the Senior show, this brought a lot of people in. I received compliments from a lot of people, especially from people that know about art. This made me feel more confident about the direction I'm going in. Long story short of the 9 pieces 4 pieces are sold. Not to shabby for Leslie. 

It is always nice to see your name somewhere and even better to go next to your artwork.

I was also interviewed for the school newspaper the very next day. That was a first and to see my work and name in print just added to my confidence level.  A year from now is my own Senior show exhibit and I will need that confidence.