We were lucky to catch up with Vanessa Porras recently and have shared our conversation below.

Vanessa, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.

Attempting any sort of creative endeavor is inherently risky. The development of the idea is not the only thing that comes with risks, the execution and final product has its own hurdles. Will the materials work? Will it be well received? Is the idea even something worth pursuing? One of the best pieces of advice I received during my BFA was from my printmaking professor Josh Butler, he had many good quotes. Josh told the class during senior seminar, “You’re not only artists, you’re problem solvers.”

Pursuing a degree in art guarantees nothing. There will be no job lined up after your four years of school and if you’re lucky to be able to pursue art full time, there’s essentially no reliable average on how much an artist will earn. However, Josh’s wisdom continues to soothe me in times of uncertainty. I realized that day that it wasn’t so much about the degree itself, rather how I put it to use and how well I could adapt my skills. Artists and creative people are among the few professions who create problems in order to solve them. Our curiosity fabricates nonsensical problems that perturbs us and compels us to explore and find solutions to those self-inflicted obstacles. We are problem solvers.

The biggest risk I have taken is leaving a stable job to pursue a career in art knowing full well all the hurdles and uncertainties I would face. I’ve heard people call college degrees in the arts, hobby degrees, which to a certain extent is true due to the unpredictable nature of those careers. Many classmates were forced to take jobs unrelated to their art degree in order to make ends meet and start paying back their student loans.

However, Josh’s advice offered me a wider lens into what I could accomplish. Beyond being an artist, I view myself as someone capable of developing creative solutions for complex issues. Deciding to study art was a risk I decided to take because I wanted to learn how to express my thoughts and feelings in tangible ways. I wanted to continue being curious about the world around me and develop ways to document it through design and experimentation. In those ways, pursuing art has always been a worthwhile risk.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I’m a printmaking artist, art educator, and writer. I train in relief printing on wood and linoleum, my artistic practice also includes mixed media and visual journaling. In my body of work I explore themes of femininity, patterns in nature, and the psyche. Art has always been an integral part of my life and it’s been the highlight of some of my earliest memories.

In 2018 I graduated from Colorado Mesa University in Grand Junction, Colorado with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Studio Art. For the last decade I’ve been an art educator and have worked for various organizations and institutions throughout the Roaring Fork Valley including, Aspen Art Museum, VOICES, The Art Base and Carbondale Arts among others. I have served as a gallery committee member of Carbondale Arts R2 Gallery where I had the opportunity to co-curated the exhibition, Identidad y Libertad and most recently curated, Para mi madre.

For the last few years, I’ve written a column about creativity titled, Artista existencial, formally known as, Al no artista, which is originally written as a Spanish column published in el Sol del Valle, a Spanish insert of Carbondale’s local newspaper, The Sopris Sun. Artista existencial reflects on topics relating to art theory and the importance of creativity. It was inspired after working with adults who would apologetically say, “I’m not an artist.” I wanted to be able to explore questions like, what is an artist? What is art? for myself and also provide solace to those who felt it inaccessible or elitist.
Storytelling is an essential ingredient to everything I do whether it’s teaching, creating art or writing. As a small business owner, I want to create work that not only inspires me but that others can connect with.

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

A lesson I’ve had to unlearn was also unfortunately something I learned while in school. I think we’ve all heard the saying, “a jack of all trades is a master of none.” I always found this quote confusing because it carried a negative connotation, yet looking at both my parents, they were both jacks of all trades and it was exactly their variety of skills that made them essential and valuable in their workplace and helped them survive. Being a jack of all trades was something my parents had taught me as a valuable asset, I can still hear my mother’s voice in my head when she would say, “I don’t know how, but I’ll figure it out.”

So when one of my professors told me I needed to narrow my specialty because I was still jumping between ceramics, painting and printmaking as a senior, he made the comment, “you don’t want to be a jack of all trades and master none.” I was horrified and took his advice to heart even though I kept feeling pulled in a thousand different directions. It wasn’t until years later that I realized that the full quote was, “A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one.”

I know there was no harm meant in his advice and I know there are artists for whom mastering one medium for a lifetime is better than trying a myriad of different practices and techniques, however, I’m not that kind of artist. I’ve had to unlearn that being a jack of all trades is not a negative thing and actively allow myself to expand and experiment with other mediums in order to keep my creativity alive and healthy.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

What continues to drive me in my creative journey is an insatiable curiosity and desire to share that with others how I viewed the world while I was in it. It’s very profound, creatives throughout all of time have shared that same desire to a certain extent. But when life feels too heavy, I just think about all the books, the movies, the music, all the art that has inspired me and has made my life so colorful. I hope to be able to contribute in a meaningful way to the great archive of our collective human experience.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.vanessaporras.art
• Instagram: @vanessaporras.art

Image Credits
Joe Van Wyk Edwardo Porras