We were lucky to catch up with Loisse Ledres recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Loisse thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

A few years ago, a mentor told me the advice that “the next step is whatever you want to learn next”. Funny enough, I didn’t have a final goal when starting this artist journey. I just knew I wanted to create and the “job title” for that was never set in stone.

I realized I’ve just been following my interests my whole life to become a multimedia artist and I’m continuing to do that.

I’m someone who likes to move from one medium to the next, and a connecting theme throughout these art explorations has always been about immersing people in the world of art and making them experience something, whether it’s a feeling or a story. Some examples are:

-In elementary and high school, I did theater shows because culturally performing was embedded in me through my mom, who taught me how to sing.
-I first learned to paint with acrylic paint in art club in middle school, learned how to draw following more technical rules in art classes in high school, and went to design school for college where I started a comprehensive program covering various design aspects (graphic design, packaging design, experience design and advertising design).
-I learned to be an experiential designer at an ad agency designing for events and activations for brands

Over my career so far, I’ve looked for a variety of ways to express my art. I learned (and am still learning) the ins and outs of freelancing, digital illustration, mural paintings and now I’m returning to painting on canvas, and continuing to refining my technical skills and style. I’m aiming to learn more about building and incorporating wood as a canvas in the future and looking into woodworking class.

The biggest lesson throughout all of this is learning that mediums are mediums, they are not the artwork itself. At the end of the day, I also had to practice the muscle of conceptualizing, doing a lot of internal reflection to see what is truly what I want to share as a story. Being vulnerable is the job of an artist. It can be very easy to rely on what’s worked before and stop there, but the challenge I face everyday is to continue evolving.

Even if my creative exploration has had a lot of twists and turns, I wouldn’t change it. I have identified what helps me learn best, and that is usually being taught 1-on-1 in an in-person setting, ideally with a group of people in short bursts of time. After I learn the basics and get inspired by those around me, I’m able to run with it.

Something I want to continue learning is consistency and discipline. Know that inspiration doesn’t come all the time, so you have to have the self motivation to move forward. At some point you have to stop learning and just apply the skill you have learned.

Loisse, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m a visual artist based in Las Vegas and New York City. My art is often filled with personal details as a way for me to process life experiences in love, faith, community, and my relationship with the earth.

I like capturing the mundane pieces of my life, the things people don’t take a second glance at, and intertwining them with the large worries and hopes of our world. I find that my work with extremely specific details that relate to me and my culture, resonate the most universally across ages and cultures. I think I’m most proud when my art cultivates a shared understanding between me and the viewer and we feel less alone because of it.

I entered into the creative industry professionally as a designer, particularly creating immersive experiences for events and in-person activations, but I have slowly shifted into being more of a multimedia artist within the container of geezloisse studios. Our vision statement is adding color to community, and that can come in many forms.

I now offer art commissions, recently just finished painting a mural for Nevada State University. Now, I’m exploring how to navigate a product-based business versus a service-based one, by understanding how to create a body of work for view in galleries and for sale in retail as a way to keep my practice going. I’m still evolving even now and want to see how I can unite fine art and my commercial design background while being rooted in movement art principles.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

In your view, what can society do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

For all workers in general, I’d love for people to have flexibility in time and resources to have a balance of rest, work and creation time. It took me a long time to realize that I can’t expect myself to create art within a 9 to 5 time, 5-day work week. Creativity and output is extremely hard to measure. I don’t know if there’s a way to solve this since the current world is set up for speed, extreme productivity, and short-lived trends, but one possible solution that I hope for us could be a universal standard income. I’ve met so many great artists and their barrier for time to make art is simply because they can’t make rent.

Another idea is opening up a way to financially support artists on a consistent basis for a longer period of time without requiring extra labor to receive it (ex. Grants, one-time scholarships and residencies). This would create boundless possibilities and progress for artists. This opening up of time and space in the mental capacities of artists can move artists from survival to thriving.

There are some organizations who are helping do this, specifically the Center for Cultural Power who I’ve worked with for a few years in the past.

I’d love to be able to do this institutionally within geezloisse studios one day, where we can provide a cushion for artists, especially in their starting stages, to explore and experiment without expecting anything in return. Creating a system like this may seem extremely counter to our cultural norm of making sure to have a “Return on Investment” and to prioritize profit over everything, but I think radical generosity has been a part of my life whether it be financially or relationally and it’s been integral to my practice.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

Working so hard that my body takes a beating.

As with many immigrants, I learned a really good work ethic from my mom and dad, whose career and professional journeys are both things I’ve been proud of since I was young. I remember sitting up with my mom late at night when I was 6 years old, to keep her company as she finished her master’s degree in her 30s while taking care of a household of 4 kids. My dad grew up extremely poor, and he remembers how he cobbled together school supplies from picking them up on the ground, and he’s now a regional director of the National Economics Authority in the Philippines. I now emulate this work ethic in my own practice.

They showed me that focus, dedication, and resilience are reliable traits to have, but funny enough, both my parents have told me to rest and not work so hard. I think maybe I took it too far, and over the past few years all the late nights and bad health habits caught up to me. I’ve had to deal with hospital visits and new bodily reactions that have caught me off guard and questioning my bodily autonomy.

No work should come at the sacrifice of your health and well-being, everyone says that, but I really am learning to internalize that.

If my career breakthroughs happen at a slower pace because I work less then so be it, I’d rather live a long full life than burn brightly for just a short time.

If you’d like to follow Loisse and her projects, see geezloisse.com or follow her on Instagram @geezloisse.studios.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://geezloisse.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/geezloisse.studios
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/geezloisse
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lledres/

Image Credits

Bingle Pizarro