#330 Be Interviewed for Share Art LA
You may recall a month ago when I mangled a young lady’s lovely rendition of What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve by singing along with her. I actually met Juliana briefly after my Mortified show in LA. Since then she’s been a reader and supporter of the blog.
Last month she told me that her and her friend Dana, were starting a website that was dedicated to promoting local artists in LA. In addition to displaying their artwork on the site, they would conduct an interview of the artist. Juliana asked if I wanted to be featured on their site, Share Art LA.
My first feeling was flattery. Nobody has ever voluntarily wanted to interview me before. Why would they? “Greg, tell us how you got four stars on the intermediate version of Master Exploder on Rock Band. The public is dying to know.”
Then I felt embarrassment. Surely there must be some mistake here. Are they really that interested in my blog? I know people read it, but is it worth an interview? Also, am I even an artist to begin with? Hanging out and talking with Kate has made me realize that some of the things I do could be construed as performance art. And if a guy can shit on a piece of canvas, hang it in a gallery and be an artist, why can’t I?
Lastly, of course, was fear. The last time I got interviewed was at the horrible audition for the show about BeautifulPeople.com and that was pretty traumatizing.
But I agreed because I thought it would make a good post but more importantly, I wanted to help out Juliana who had been such a great supporter of SYED.
The interview was at Dana’s apartment. Dana came and got me since the buzzer was broken (by the way, what apartment in LA has a working buzzer? I want to know…). Part of what was making me nervous about the interview was not knowing Dana. At least me and Juliana had been emailing back and forth and I had read her blog as well. But did Dana even the read blog? Did she like it?
When we got back to her apartment, I was quickly put at ease when Dana said she was indeed a fan of the blog. That was a good thing since she was interviewing me. I didn’t want to have another disinterested woman asking me questions like my nightmare Beautiful People audition. Or like most dates I go on.
We shot the interview on a couch. Juliana worked the cameras while Dana interviewed me. While I was a little nervous, for the most part I was all right. Talking with Dana felt like having a conversation with a friend so that made it easier. Even fun.
I felt good about the interview right afterwards but in typical neurotic-Greg fashion, I started thinking I could’ve answered all of the questions better, been funnier, more lively etc. But after thinking about it some more, I guess I did ok. And Juliana and Dana seemed to think so at the time anyway.
I love that they thought of me for their project. I also love the fact that they had an idea and are executing it. That’s a big way that SYED has changed my life. I have ideas all the time, some of them even pretty good but in the past, I would never execute them. I would just file them away in my brain under “TO DO… SOMEDAY.”
But what I loved the most was after the interview, we talked more casually about SYED. It was clear that they both not only enjoyed reading it, but believed that it could become something bigger. I really needed that. I am pretty hard on myself about the blog and even more lately since it’s coming to a close soon so it was nice to have some encouragement.
So please check out the interview on Share Art LA. I can’t watch it. Maybe I will for a scary thing but for some reason it’s too hard to watch right now. But I’m sure they did a good job putting it together! And again, please check out and support their website, Share Art LA, every week for new interviews of local LA artists. They also have twitter and Facebook pages so you can keep with updates that way.
