THANK YOU

 

For the last 6 months this art show was all that consumed our thoughts but now it’s over and it feels a little weird. We’d never really organized any type of public event or hosted anything like our art show. We’d also never curated anything. It was an experience filled with firsts for us.

We were first introduced to Stay Gallery during high school. We didn’t have a car or know how to drive, the city of Downey was within the driving radius our parents were okay with dropping us off so naturally we spent a lot of time there.

Stay Gallery introduced us to the world of art and creatives that we didn’t know existed. They hosted so many interesting exhibits. In our old blog we’d cover a lot of their events. We still have a couple videos up on our Youtube channel from our favorite exhibits. Stephanie was one of their interns at some point in time and I just liked to hang out there a lot.

I think, at the time,  we were mostly fascinated by their story. Stay Gallery came to be when three friends, passionate about the arts, worked together to provide a creative space for their community. As 16-year-olds with dreams of doing something exciting and meaningful with our lives it gave us hope that we really could.

The people working in Stay Gallery became our inspiration and mentors (whether they knew it or not). We have received some of the best pep talks from them. They motivated us to travel and keep up with our blog.

So we did.

We started taking it all a little more seriously. As we featured more creatives on our website we thought it'd be a good idea to thank them for their time. That was the original concept of the art show. We wanted to give the artists a physical platform to view and promote their art.

After Stay Gallery agreed to host our show we began contacting everyone we’d featured. This means we included artists and musicians that were interviewed or featured on the blog since last summer. We slowly learned that getting over 10 people together to organize an event is hard because life.

Life happens.

So, we couldn't feature everyone we wanted in the art show but nonetheless we added people we admired. It was stressful realizing that it wasn't going the way we had imagined but it truly did turn out for the best.

Organizing this art show was an amazing learning experience that has inspired us to keep going. 16-year-old us would definitely not believe that 21-year-old us were curating a month long exhibit at the art gallery we love the most.

This leaves us wondering, what the f*ck are we going to do next?

 

Thank you to Stay Gallery & Heartcore Productions  for helping us make this happen. Thank you to everyone that came out to support. It was truly incredible to see such a positive response. 

All art on the walls is for sale, please don't hesitate to reach out if you're interested. All the money will go to the artist and gallery!

You can check out Loitering Encouraged until 8/31

Mon - Fri: 12p – 5p @ Stay Gallery