Meet Leslie M. Guzmán: The Artist’s Story Behind the Art
ART HAS A STORY TO TELL, THE ARTIST SURELY HAS ONE
In a world where social media connections are more common than good old fashion in person one on one conversations, I share my art. Not that I don’t prefer showing my art in a traditional space, it’s just you know, 2020 and were all stuck inside.
It’s hard to really appreciate at times what the artist is creating or trying to convey with their art. I see my artworks as each telling a story of their own, maybe short stories. (It’s the little girl in me that loved to read and write, not saying I’m any good at it)
From time to time I get messages telling me that they like my work, or questions about the technique (or if I’ll teach it), but I noticed something missing from what I get in an in person exhibit. No one feels the connection, or understands the story, because most of my work has a story. It’s not the same flipping through photos, endless scrolling or a few glimpses on my website. It just isn’t the same.
Don’t worry I’m not going to break down each artwork that I have on my website. Some already have written stories. Other’s I leave for in person to chat about. But I did decide to break down my art with the rules of writing a story. The who, what, where, why, when and how of my visual stories. In my case I chose the order of what I find more important first.
WHO IS LESLIE M. GUZMÁN
That would be me.
As I type, it’s a bit harder than I thought to put the answers to the questions when I’m trying to write in a casual format. Most artist statements which is where you usually find the answers to these questions are very formal and usually in third person with a lot of art lingo. But here it goes…
I am usually the girl behind the camera. The talker because I will be the girl in the room that will choose a one on one conversation about any topic (if I don’t know what you’re talking about, I’ll ask alot of questions) than to be in a large crowd of small talk. Who likes small talk anyway?
You can say that I am the girl that you can easily confuse with shy because I will be quiet if I don’t know you (or you know because small talk) or because I don’t like the attention on myself. Definitely not shy, ask a few of my close friends.
I am a book person, I can visualize the book in my head while I read and when I see the movie version, I’m always disappointed. Books were my first travel experiences and they were my teachers as I read new words and subjects that I didn’t learn about in school textbooks. They were my first steps into the creative world and I didn’t even know it.
I am the artist, the Guatemalan interdisciplinary artist.
WHAT - THE ART
What I make, my art and my stories.
I’m going to break it down in plain wording, not trying to be a polished art major. I want you to understand my art as if I was having a conversation with you at my studio.
The art is my photographs from my vast vault, my mixed media paintings, my printmaking prints and collagraphs. My art is my experiments of different types of mediums and techniques that I didn’t learn in college and I’m still curious about. Sometimes my art is doing without bothering to photograph the process (I’m horrible at it) because I am too busy doing art. The art is collecting vintage photographs from family and friends to create something new. Let’s include select photoshoots of bridal, engagement and maternity shoots that is not even my specialty. Somehow I always get asked (I am not a portrait artist) and I end up doing them. I might have to change this and practice more.
The recurring answer, my art are my stories. The stories that I want others to uncover in themselves. If they tell me their tale, I might just make something out of it. At this moment my art is that person with an interesting hat, the colorful traditional dress ware, the powerful words on a wall, the chaotic building in a small town, the single mother in love with her child or the iconic city of anywhere in the world.
MY GUATEMALAN ROOTS & EARLY INFLUENCE
My art is always creating from discoveries. I have come to the conclusion that this all began from growing up far from my birth country and becoming obsessed with learning about my own culture, traditions and stories. That now I want to discover everyone else’s stories.
WHY I MAKE ART: PURPOSE AND VISION
I make artwork because I want to tell my story and that of others. Every person has a story to tell. Not everyone thinks theirs is worth telling, or think that only happy stories need to be told. I embrace the good, the bad and the ugly. The bad started me on a creative outlet, the ugly came out through my first creations (darker art) but they were also an outlet. Better than therapy!
I want to tell stories that I didn’t even understand that I was creating. My stories that turned into more in depth search in my life. Connecting the dots to my overall tale. That meant digging into the far past, my past & that of my family, country, getting to know my culture and heritage. All that together makes for more than a good read, but it may even get a sequel.
I make art, because my soul is creative. I can’t stop myself from creating, if that makes sense. Even if I said I will not make art anymore, that’s the end, I couldn’t. I would be thinking about the book I want to write one day or I would see something in the right light that I would think that would be a great photograph. I will make learning cards for my son and get the markers or watercolors out. I will be helping someone find the right name for their website. I will always be a creative.
That is my why.
WHERE INSPIRATION STRIKES
I make art in my head (ideas are always swimming in there) in my eye when I capture a photograph and know I can do something with it. Of course I make art in my art studio. This is the answer to the physical where question.
If we are talking about where I started making art, I will say college. I had never picked up a pencil to draw or paintbrush to paint. There was that one time I transferred schools, for the last month of eight grade and finally got to have an art class even if it was short lived. I made a papier-mâché project (the French way of saying it), and I still enjoy paper mache. My only creative instrument was my little pink camera that my mother bought me as a young girl. I didn’t think I was being creative.
There I was doing creative things since I was young and I didn’t call it creating. I wanted to be in art classes in middle school I was curious, and who wants to take gym as an elective? Not me. Sadly, my school had a sucky art teacher (you should only teach art if you respect it) who allowed the students to get by with a super easy A, so everyone wanted to take his class. I still remember his name. There was never room for us creatives.
TRAVELS, TRADITIONS, AND HOMESTEAD
If we were discussing where inspiration strikes, it usually happens on a trip. When I am in my element of traveling (flying, road tripping or another form) I come up with a series. I don’t know if it’s the stories I make up talking with my family or the traditional clothing I see people wearing, the architecture and now throw in my family homestead. My homestead is influencing my thoughts of how and what to create from. It is definitely taking me in a different direction wanting to build site specific art.
TROTTING ALONG THE CREATIVE TRAIN, WHERE I BECAME AN ARTIST
I was always drawn to writing, but I would get lost in the story telling and forget about the rules and grammar. It still happens. My middle school English teacher tried to encourage me to go to HSPVA (High School for Performing & Visual Arts) and I was so ready to go. My mother didn’t like the idea, because it was nowhere near our house and she had somehow lost the connection to her creative side. Like most traditional Latino parents she didn’t encourage art or a creative career path.
Then in High School I began writing small poems that I usually balled up and threw away because I didn’t think anyone would want to read them. A friend stopped me one day and he told me he’d buy it. I don’t remember the amount, it was more symbolic, an exchange. I wonder if he still owns it. Then one day I just stopped. That is a longer version of my where.
WHEN
MORE LIKE WHEN I MAKE ART
This is a bit of a trick question. For a long time, I didn’t have an answer. Or maybe I had too many. For a long time it was hard to find a work life balance. These days, I create whenever I can squeeze it in. My studio is at home, and I’ve let go of the dream of long, uninterrupted daylight hours. As a stay-at-home mom with a husband who also works from home, time is a negotiation. But when the sun goes down, the house finally quiets. The birds, my child, and my husband all go to sleep — and that’s when I take my fur ball (my dog) and happily sneak into my studio.
That’s when the magic starts.
GUATEMALAN ROOTS & EARLY INFLUENCES
If I were to trace back when I first fell the pull to be creative, it was long before I had a studio. It was during childhood writing assignments. It was stories my classmates would tell me about their countries. I grew up surrounded by kids from all over Latin America. but I knew so little about my own. Guatemala was more of a name a carried rather than a culture I lived. So I embraced theirs. Their food, their music, their accents, their stories filled the space where mine was missing.
Maybe that is my first when. When I started reaching for stories to understand myself.
HOW
HOW I CREATE IN LAYERS, TEXTURE, AND STORY TELLING IN ART
This is one of the harder questions to answer without you standing in front of the art itself.
Many people can recognize my work by its photographic roots, thought hey don’t always realize there is a photograph underneath. I used to call myself a photo based artist. I have evolved like my art, its part of the magic. My photo based pieces often blur into painting, collage or abstraction and viewers don’t notice the image until they read the label or I mention it. These works use mixed media; oil, acrylic, watercolor— whatever I’m experimenting with at the time. I am after all an interdisciplinary artist who is always seeking new ways to blend photos with printmaking, my two loves.
I build layers. Texture is part of the language I speak. Sometimes there is no photograph at all, like a collagraphs, where the surface and print take center stage.Other times I begin with a photograph but end with reductive or intaglio print — the image disappears in the process, but its spirit remains.
I work on paper, canvas, wood and clay. I rip, splice and reconstruct — often times letting the abstract shapes guide me. The art tells me when its done. I still love charcoal and conte even though they show up less often in my work.
My palettee used to lean towards gloom: dark shadows, bruised blues, and reds that cut deep. But later my work colors have shifted — to more vibrant, more alive. I think its because Ive been solving and working on my inner self. Answering questions that I once left hanging.
There is more to my how but I will leave it for the next exhibit— where the art can speak for itself.
STORY TOLD
I’ve answered the who, what, where, when and how of my art— maybe not in the most formal, academic way but in a way that I hope lets you understand me and my work from afar.
The next step? Updating my artwork gallery. This not so tech savvy girl has had to switch websites, creating from scratch, learned from my mistakes and have to finish it all. If anything resonates, let me know. This story may be told but many others are still waiting to be made.
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