I was excited! Every time I have a chance to display my work publicly is something not to take lightly. First, because it is a pleasure to share an evening of photography when it comes to the reception night. Second, it is a lot of work to do behind the scenes and lastly, as an event organizer, I push myself to make sure everyone has an amazing, enjoyable evening. That last part is probably the one resonating the most as these days an artist/photographer/event manager/marketer has to wear a few more hats than just one and do each of them well in order to guarantee a possible outcome.

I set myself to find a venue which I thought had a great cool factor, good service and showed itself to be a great canvas to display my work. Eventually I picked Insomnia Cafe as it has a very attractive aesthetic and I have always known for them to be very supportive of local artist.

After we had reach an agreement and a date set for the reception, then, and only then, is when the real work begins. As part of the contract, they would be hosting a number of my works for display for the month of July. A quick cab ride there and I was ready to move to the next steps. Which was marketing and entertainment. I wanted to add an element of music to for it and began looking for possible acts. Originally I thought about using an amazing violin quartet called Devah Quartet I had used in my last Halloween Grandiversity party. However I suspected there might be scalability issues plus I wanted to go with something a little more subdued to better mix with the venue. I remember hearing this Latin Jazz guitarist through my adventures with the Indie Coffee Passport earlier in the year and I set upon myself to find him. In the mean time I began marketing through social media and using my own mailing lists.

Through some social media sleuthing and asking around, I was able to easily find Mario Munoz and after some phone tagging,  we were able to work out for him to perform some of his original work during the reception! After a few calls to Insomnia Lounge regarding the logistics of some live guitar.  We were off to the races!