If you’ve been following me on Facebook or Instagram you may know that I recently had an exhibition of my photographs, my first solo exhibition. The whole night was an amazing experience, I got to meet lots of wonderful people and they all had so many kind words for my work. I believe there was about 80 people that showed up in the course of the night and I tried to talk to all of them (I know there’s one or two of you that I never got the chance to say hi and if you’re reading this I’m sorry!). I feel extremely blessed to have had such a large portion of my family come down and see my work. I got to meet some new people and got the chance to have some wonderful conversations about art, life, and the people that inspire me.
But anyways back to what I’ve actually learned
- Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Throughout the course of planning, preparation, and execution there were a countless number of little details to sort out and TONS of minor setbacks that happened along the process of putting the show together. I ran out of ink for printing posters, I found out that it was illegal for my parents to send some of their wonderful home-made wine over provincial borders, plus food preparation took longer than expected. The same thing happened when I was working on putting a show together for da Vinci College’s graduating photography exhibition. It’s important to keep your mind focused on the big picture (pun intended), accept that nothing is going to be perfect (although that is the goal), and that nobody’s going to care about the minute details. Just because artists often fall victim to perfectionism doesn’t give us an excuse to create nothing. We’ve gotta roll with the punches and work towards putting our work into the world! Imperfections are going to make everything seem more human.
- Delegate tasks. I don’t know about you, but whenever I have a project that I’m passionate about I want to do EVERYTHING. But this is a flawed conception of my own capabilities. Nobody in the world is capable of doing every little task that a project requires, we need to relinquish control and let other people help out because that’s the only way to get things done. Just like my favorite rapper Lupe Fiasco puts it “Didn’t get here by myself a lot of help next to it” Thank you Chris at Picture It In a Frame for hosting the exhibition, thank you nan and pop for helping with the food as well as helping to transport all the stuff. If it wasn’t for the people that helped me put together the show and spread the word the exhibition wouldn’t of been half as much fun.
- Try your hardest to fulfill your best possible vision of what you’re art exhibition should be. Once the show is going on don’t think about a thing. Just relax and remember that these people came to see your work! I’m still fucking amazed at the reality of it.
- Have fun! Spread the positive vibes and you’ll receive positive vibes back.
I’d like to thank everyone that came to the exhibition and especially Chris at Picture It In A Frame, my Nanny Marg and Poppy Stan for making sandwiches and lending me their wine glasses, as well as Poppy Ray for helping transport all of the things that needed transport. You are all amazing.
