opportunity – Bunny Luna

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Hey, friends, I’m here again to talk to you about stuff that I think will maybe help you. So hopefully it does. I’m going to Dive Right In. Because so January/February is talking about goals and ways that I’m like helping myself and ways that I’m finding opportunities as an artist. And I thought that for March, I would talk a little bit about the tools that I use that help me do all the artists things.

So for this video, I want to talk about kind of an extension from think it was last week or the week before where I was talking about the call for entry website and submitting application for residency. So part of submitting an application for a residency is writing an artist statement, and I don’t know about you, but that was really hard for me to do. I consider myself much more of a visual artist than a writer. So writing an artist statement was a struggle. I feel like I’m not as strong of a writer as I am an artist. And I think that with the way that we are required to submit applications for people to look at our art to consider us for opportunities, we have to know a lot about writing in order to submit those applications. So, I feel like that automatically kind of, like, cuts out a whole lot of people that may or may not actually be wonderful artists, they just struggle with writing.

So, in order to hopefully, help more people have more opportunities as an artist. I want to talk about the resources that I use to help me write my artist statement, because hopefully it will help you too. I feel like a lot of us want our artwork to speak for itself and most of the time, it does. But sometimes in order for the right people to see it, we have to write the right things too. And not just have the right images or paintings or visual or whatever art is. So here we go.

This is how I wrote my artist statement. Well, this is the resource I used to write it. Your artist statement is going to be very different than mine. And the way that you write it is going to be unique to you and your art, but the resource that I have found and used to write a lot of these things is the getting your shit together website. They have a book too, I think, when I was in college, they had us buy the book and use the book as part of one of my art classes. And then I learned later on that they also have a website with a whole bunch of resources for artists. So this getting your shit together website is very different from the call to entry website. The call to entry is for artists to submit their applications for opportunities and like to find opportunities. The getting your shit together website is like all of the kind of back-end stuff that artists need in order to be able to request those opportunities. So, like how to write an artist statement, how to write an artist resume, a whole bunch of stuff like that. Like how to find…

I just got really distracted by a really cute bird out of my window! Okay, sorry.

So I use the getting your shit together website as a resource for how to write the artist statement, because I was like, I don’t know. I don’t know what to write. I don’t know how to write it. I don’t know what is expected to be in it. I don’t want to write it incorrectly and then they just like throw out my application for this residency. So this website has all the information that you would need in order to write something like an artist statement. Like, for instance, I learned that artist statements are written in first person. So you say like, I me my… that kind of thing in the artist statement. And then of course it has like in the first section, it should say something like this and the second section you should include these things, and the final part you should do this. So it kind of gives you an outline of the types of things you would need in an artist statement, which will help you write your own based on what your artwork is.

Yeah, artist statements are really hard. So yeah, I don’t make this video way too long and I have told you most of the really important information and in order to not repeat myself a lot of times because I think I’d do that… I’m just going to share the link to the getting your shit together website below, and it has a whole bunch of resources for artists in that way. Like, writing artist statements, writing your resume all that kind of thing. So, yeah. I hope it helps you, it definitely helped me. Yeah, I hope you have a wonderful day. I’ll talk to you soon. I love you! Bye!

Check out the Getting Your Shit Together Website

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Hi! It’s actually been quite a while since I made a vlog for you, so I thought I’d come and say hi! It’s starting to rain a little bit, so hopefully it won’t get too much rain, but I have some exciting potential things that will be happening at the end of October that I will probably tell you more about later, but I want to give you a heads-up that like things are happening and I’m excited! So vague, right?

But something I can tell you about is I made a little PowerPoint PDF thing. It’s actually maybe not that little, it’s like 23 pages, but it’s all about how queer nature is. It’s kind of like a mini book report on this book that I read that blew my mind in the best way! Yeah, I wanted to share this PDF with y’all and see what you think. I’m also considering maybe doing like a like mini webinar where I just like infodump about queer nature. If you’re interested in that, please let me know because I have been thinking about maybe doing that because I think it’d be fun and if you want to be live with me while I infodump about queer nature, then let me know and we can do that!

I do want to tell you more about October. So I know one of them is for sure definitely happening, so I’m going to tell you about that one, but there’s another thing that’s happening at the end of October that’s like, most likely going to happen, but I don’t want to jinx it, so I’m going to wait to tell you that.

So the one that I know is happening is there is this photography space in Charlotte called The Light Factory. They do gallery exhibitions, they do photography classes, they do workshops, all kinds of stuff, they do photo walks for the community where they just like, walk around Charlotte (and I’m getting bit by mosquitos). This is where they walk around Charlotte and do photography stuff, it’s pretty cool. They reached out to me to teach a self portrait workshop!!!!

I remember, I was a teenager, dreaming of having art in the gallery there at The Light Factory. And I did, I was part of one of their group member shows way back in the day. Where basically anybody that wanted to share their art could put it in the member show, so it wasn’t like this juried fancy thing or anything, but that felt really cool and I was like in high school or college or something so it was several years ago.

The Light Factory reached out to me!!! Probably because I have a couple friends who teach there already, so thank you friends!! They put in a good word for me! So The Light Factory is like “Hey Bunny do you want to teach a self portrait workshop?” and I’m like “hell yes I do!!!” So at the end of October… October 23rd? 24th? 23rd. I think it’s the 23rd, I will be teaching a workshop about self portraiture with them. I’m really excited. We’re going to do it outside at a park because I don’t want to do anything inside, because of lots of reasons, like covid is probably number 1 reason I don’t want to do stuff inside, and 2 because I just feel like self portraits are so much better in nature, you know me! So yeah, we’re gonna go to a park and I’m gonna teach a self portrait workshop and I’m really excited.

So it’s like a big opportunity for me and I just feel super special that they reached out to me. Like wow… also maybe I should start actually applying to things because that would help me do more cool fun stuff like the self portrait workshop. Yeah, so I’m really excited. And yeah, originally we were going to do a full day workshop, but they are unable to pay my rate, so we’re going to do a short 2 hour workshop, because that is more aligned with what I’m able to provide based on what they’re able to pay me, because I really do want to create a relationship with The Light Factory. So I think even though I’m not getting paid at my full rate for this workshop, I think it’s a good opportunity for me to meet other artists in Charlotte get my foot in the door with The Light Factory, be able to put The Light Factory on my resume. Yeah, mostly I’m just excited to meet the other creative people.

Sorry, like fly… Something’s flying around me! I totally forgot what I was saying. Yeah, so I’m really excited and I’m excited to share that with you, and I’m going to be sharing the link to the PDF for the queer nature below. You can download it if you want, I’m just going to share with you. But yeah, let me know if you want to do like a little webinar about queer nature because I’m obsessed, and yeah, I mean if you have been around for any amount of time, then you know that I love nature and queer nature is like the best way to affirm my queerness because like it’s super natural! Well, not Supernatural but it’s super space natural. It is very natural. Okay, I’m getting kind of goofy now.

I’m gonna go hang out with my sister later today, meet her new doggy! And yeah, I think that’s all I have to share. So, yeah, thank you so much for being here. I love you so much.

I have honestly been kind of struggling with what I want to share on my website now, since I’m not taking as many photos as I used to, but I also really want to start doing more educational kind of things and I just have to make up my mind and actually do something. I think that’s the problem because I have so many ideas! It’s hard to choose and then I don’t do any of them, and I’m like, why? So I need to just pick a thing and go! So that was my queer nature thing, I just picked that and did it, and now I am sharing with you. So, I hope you like it! Hope you have a great day! I love you so much, and I’ll talk to you soon!

Resources for Artists: How to Write An Artist Statement

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Check out the Getting Your Shit Together Website

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Queer Nature + EXCITING NEWS!

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