We were lucky to catch up with Fernando Escobar recently and have shared our conversation below.

Fernando, thanks for taking the time to share your stories 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.

I believe I’ve learned my craft by a combination of research, being hands on and knowledge from others. Some obstacles I endured during art college is that I couldn’t learn and stay focused in a traditional classroom environment. During these years I experimented more and realized I excelled by learning with a hands on approach versus a lecture or homework assignments. I noticed I could complete projects faster by making quick mistakes and improving, along with communicating with classmates and understanding their mistakes and improvements.

This allowed me to have more time to be creative with my projects and for them to stand out. I was a shy kid growing up so I wish I had my current confidence level growing up, I believe it would’ve helped me speed up the learning process. These skill sets have helped me with the projects I’m currently collaborating with other community members.

Fernando, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

During my high school years, I had done AP Art and other creative classes. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do post graduation but knew I wanted to create art. After graduation I enrolled at the Art Institute of San Francisco in Game Design. After graduation I didn’t find an art related job right away so I found work in Quality Assurance at several game studios. That’s how I slowly got into the industries I’m in now with gaming and expanding to community organizing.

With our Art of the Bay Collective, a few local creatives and I realized there were no art communities in the east bay (Hayward) of the Bay Area. Inspired by larger art communities in Oakland, San Francisco and San Jose, we started hosting our drawing meetups in different east bay locations. We used our experience from our gaming industry to startup and organize our events. Once we started these meetups, many community members thanked us for organizing since they had never seen anything like that before in their neighborhood.

I believe what has made us stand out is the organic community growth we’ve seen these past 2 years. Along with the variety of community members who attend our events, expanding across various backgrounds and generations. We’ve had several incredible folks become regulars during these meetups and they’ve started contributing back to the community. Some have hosted their own workshops, helped us organize events and volunteered during our popup markets.That is the highlight we are most proud of and hope to continue with future events.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

I have two different perspectives with this, one from my creative years and now being an organizer. When I was creating art on a regular basis, I think the most rewarding aspect was the journey creating the art. There would be some projects that had a quick turnaround and others that expanded over days, weeks or months. But for me the most fun was the challenge in figuring how to complete these projects in those time frames. The artist curse is that often times the project you work on the most sees less success, and the project you don’t stress over ends up succeeding more than you imagined. For me its’ the stories and memories I made either by myself or with others when I created the art.

And now as an organizer, I also enjoy the journey of organizing an event but what I find the most rewarding is the community. Connecting with others who are passionate about their craft and being able to speak the same language even if we’re all doing different mediums. It’s a community I had never been a part of growing up and feels like home now. I also truly love seeing all my friends and community members succeed. Whether it’s completing a project, making a sale or showcasing their artwork for the 1st time. It’s truly rewarding seeing their success and knowing that our community had some inspiration with that success.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

I learned this lesson from talented folks at startup companies I worked for during the years. When trying to make your company stand out from other established companies in the same field, you can’t compete with their large following or funding. You have to find creative ways to stand out and gain your own audience organically. This is the approach we took when we started our social media presence. We didn’t compare ourselves to other organizers in our field, we just focused on our projects and growth.

As an example, we saw trends where people had to post content on a daily basis. Since we all work full time jobs and contribute to the collective on our own time, we didn’t have the resources to put out daily content. So we went the opposite direction and focused on posting at least once a week but making sure each post was at a high quality. That way when we posted anything, our followers learned that each post carried more weight and significance. This helped us standout and also maintain a cadence that wouldn’t burn ourselves out. That would be my advice to anyone starting out, is to make yourselves stand out from the rest of the pack.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/artofthebayshow
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nandoescobar
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/GrowCanvasGrow
• Other: Our art podcast site:
  https://artofthebay.buzzsprout.com

Image Credits

Angelica Sham