We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Luna Palazzolo. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Luna below.

Luna, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today I’m sure there have been days where the challenges of being an artist or creative force you to think about what it would be like to just have a regular job. When’s the last time you felt that way? Did you have any insights from the experience?

I think there’s a misrepresentation about artist and work. I work hard every day, I wake up and go to my studio, or convince my self to write a 4 page grant, or send emails or do research, I do not do it between the hours of 9-5. However, when I get a rejection letter it is a bit a of a low blow. Recently I received 3 rejection letters together and I thought I was done with art. I got a normal job at a gym and I went to work religiously… for 2 days ! I think it’s more often than not than I say that regular jobs aren’t for me.

Luna, 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 Miami based Argentinian artist. I was born in 1991, and I have memories of only caring about coloring in kindergarten, that’s when I signed my first painting, in 1997. As a teenager, however, photography enabled me to work faster and instantly, and on top of that I could bring the device with me anywhere I went, I did photography exclusively for ten years. The thing is that I have always had a sensitive for materials, but I couldn’t form that until recently. Even in the art world there’s a big pressure to do one thing, and to stablished yourself as this one thing you’re doing. I can’t do that, I think it humanity as too abstract and I refuse to put boundaries on what I could create.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

Most of my work is inspired in abstract concepts that humanity has invented. It could be beauty, time, morals, religion. We need of these things to survive, if we don’t rely on them, we might go insane. I always go back to the writings that shaped me, to understand the fabric of what I am doing, and so I have great affinity to people like Becker, Crowley, Twain, Wollstonecraft, Kierkegaard… but I also allow myself to fantasize through the work of great poets like Borges and García Lorca, Eluard, Bukowski, Claude Esteban, Reverdy, whose writings have shaped new aesthetics in poetry.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

Growing up, even though I had shown and explicitly said the words “I want to be an artist”, it wasn’t something that was attainable in the 90s in a third world country. Being an artist equaled to being financially unstable, so my parents only supported art as a hobby. I went so far as to study law for a little bit in order to make people happy. And even after I left law school, the judgements and pressure from not only family but society didn’t allow me emotionally to dedicate myself to it full time.
The day I realized I couldn’t do anything else I sat my parents down and I requested they stopped bugging me about a career in an office: I wouldn’t do that to myself.
7 years ago, I decided to dedicate my life to my practice, and that’s what I do.
There’s a misconception around the arts that artists are broke or that they can not do a particular job because it would strip them from their title as “artist”. if anything I have learned is that time, ideas, knowledge and experiences are marketable assets, and if you can find a way to profits from those rich values, then you don’t necessarily need to sell a tangible object, so the idea of artist is a bit more fluid.

Contact Info:

• Website: Www.lunapalazzolo.com
• Instagram: Instagram.com/lunapalazzolo
• Youtube: Luna palazzolo