We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Dania Sierra. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Dania below.
Dania, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.
My creative interest instinctively grew as I grew. Being born in Cuba, surrounded by lush tropical foliage, the island’s amazingly vivid colors and modernist architectural elements were seared in me at an early age. In hindsight, this is where my color palette and style evolved from. As a youngster I would spend time with my brother doodling, creating structures out of cardboard boxes, building, and painting model kits or making puppets out of paper mache for our next puppet show. I was happiest when I was working with my hands in a creative way. Both my grandparents were published poets, so creativity ran in the family, and they encouraged it at every moment.
Once I started Art classes in elementary school and continued them in secondary school, my passion was fueled. During high school I was awarded a scholarship to take various art courses at the University of Miami. Experiencing this higher learning institute made me embrace the thought of pursuing a professional artistic career after graduating from high school. My mother, being the wise women she was, suggested getting into an art field like commercial art, then branching into the fine arts little by little. Today, I can say her advice was eye opening. I continued my studies in commercial art, fine art and here I am sitting on two fruitful careers, both being creative avenues for my inner voice.
Dania, 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 am a professional fine artist and graphic designer living in Miami Florida. My studio time rotates from easel to iPad for my graphic design and/or sketching for my next body of work. I stay busy working on commission work, exhibiting in outdoor festivals and group exhibitions. My art also graces the streets of Miami as art in public places projects. In recent years, I have completed the following; a mural that embraces the entrance to the JFK Public Library in Hialeah, Florida, a dog sculpture, Smarty Dogs for Smart Schools City of Pinecrest Florida, another outdoor sculpture, Tales of the Surfside Turtle, for the City of Surfside Florida, and most recently I was chosen as one of the artists to participate in designing an outdoor dog sculpture for Bayfront Park Dogs & Cats Walkway Sculpture Gardens at Maurice Ferre Park in Miami.
The creative process is never ending. When it comes to my paintings, I get my inspiration from an endless stream of experiences intertwined with present emotions. Nature, animals, and human connections also play a big part within my pieces. I thrive to establish a dialogue with everyone observing my artwork, and awaken emotions within them of nurturing, love, pain, freedom, immortality, and hope, which lie within us. I love working with a vivid color palette, as it is the voice which fuses my cubist / expressionist style in my compositions.
I am most proud of staying true to myself and my pieces and not taking my paintings into the more commercial areas of the field. As an artist, I can paint anything, any subject matter, but a true artist paint from within, from the soul and not to match someone’s sofa. An artist has many obstacles as they go through their artistic career and one of these is finding their own voice and signature style. Once you have found it, the creativity becomes vast, and the journey becomes much clearer moving forward.
My graphic design field encompasses services like illustration work, marketing, advertising, branding, product designing, website design and art direction. The creative process of interpreting someone else’s vision and making it come alive is what I enjoy the most in this field. One of my most memorable jobs back in 1988 was designing a Kinetic Robot for Carnaval’s Crystal Palace Resort and Casino in Nassau Bahamas. Her name was Ursula, a sci-fi robot servant, greeting and showing you around the $25,000 a night Galactic Fantasy suite and its high-tech gadgets. It was quite out of this world!
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
One of the most rewarding aspects of being an artist is it makes me feel alive in a magical dreamlike state juxtaposed with life’s daily chores and chaotic world. Sharing my creative world with people and having it resonate with them on a personal level is extremely rewarding. Another rewarding aspect is I can visually see a representation of my life through the years as well as the evolution of my feelings, like new chapters in a book.
With my art career I am most proud of believing in myself, that I had the drive and fortitude to express my feelings to complete strangers without fear or insecurities to do so. My art is an extension of my soul, it is language may not touch some, but when it does, it is the satisfaction of that innate human connection I most enjoy.
Art has no color, no language, no religion. It is the absence of words and the fleeting moments of time. It unites us on the most profound level of spirituality and humanity.
Equally rewarding is having that special connection with the collector that believed in my art. It is very humbling to have my pieces hang in homes throughout the world, hopefully enjoyed for years and passed down to others to admire.
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
My advice to any emerging artist wanting to build an audience on social media would be, most importantly, to post daily. Announce upcoming exhibitions, have good context, excellent visuals, and excellent communication with your followers. Use appropriate hash tags relevant to your style and subject matters and interact with other colleagues as well. The internet has excellent venues and marketing tools for artists. Having a strong presence on it is vital in the world we live in today. More people are turning to it to purchase art. It is as important to participate in art events like art festivals, group exhibitions, fundraisers etc.: people love to interact with artists and get to know them, so be available to them on this level as well. Making a data base of potential clients from each event you participate in, by having a guest book and getting their emails is another excellent way to build up the clientele. Always remember your art will only goes as far as you push yourself, no matter how good of an artist you are. “Out of sight, out of mind,” might sound like an old cliche, but it holds a lot of water.
Contact Info:
- Website: Www.sierrafineart.com
- Instagram: @sierrafineart
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dania.sierra.3
- Twitter: @sierrafineart
Image Credits
Image credit Dania Sierra