Artist Initiative

I envisioned when I wrote the grant that I would bring groups of Somali elders from my community into the gallery to see my first one-woman exhibition of portraits in Minneapolis. But, during the grant year, walking tours became difficult to schedule, and my solo show was in January - and Mother Nature disagreed with my plan. It was 30 below zero for much of the run of the show, and I couldn’t arrange ways to get that audience to visit. But several colleagues and friends from the east African community did visit what eventually was not one, but two, solo exhibitions of this work, which included portraits of the elders. Using my printer, I created large scale ink-jet prints of both exhibitions, and with those, instead of bringing people to the gallery in freezing cold weather, I brought the gallery to them. Also I engaged many viewers on my iPad portfolio of portraits from these exhibitions. Great publicity for the two shows also led to many more views of the work on-line. 2: My technological skills have grown tremendously this year due to purchasing a large scale color inkjet printer and iPad; both which have become valuable tools with applications far beyond what I had imagined. Using these tools I have not only improved my photos of artworks, but I have used the printer to print jpegs of my subjects and completed portraits, sold a few of the prints, and developed methods of integrating photography and printing into my portraiture – to examine proportions, color, and composition as I develop the paintings. The new tools allow me to print information for exhibitions at low cost, so I’ve improved marketing this past year. The iPad has helped with organizing photos, marketing, taking notes, applying for exhibitions and grants, as well as updating my websites. I have also developed invaluable business skills through having my first solo exhibition, including giving my first artist talk in a gallery.