Do What you Love and Love What you Do
Recently, we here at the Rochester Brainery got a chance to chat with one of our teachers, Andrea Levendusky, who is a freelancing graphic designer, artist and writer right here in Rochester! After our conversation, one word comes to mind to describe Andrea: passion. Within the first minute, it was easy to tell Andrea is in love with hand lettering and chalk. I could feel her passion as she described the details of creating each letter and how she actually enjoys obsessing over the look of every little letter. It's not often that you find someone that has taken what they love and turned it into a career, so I wanted to find out Andrea's secret - how had she done it? Her answer was quite simple: she just took a leap of faith and did it. She related a story of how a year ago she had said to a friend "I just want to do this all of the time" and he said "So... why don't you?" Inspired, Andrea did just that and made a career of something she already enjoyed!
Since then, Andrea's work has been featured in (585) Magazine and Pour Coffee House, which features Andrea's favorite of her work to date (see it to your right!). Andrea admitted that the board in Pour Coffee House had taken a lot of work and paying attention to detail, but the end product had made it all worth it. She now enjoys sitting in the coffee shop and watching people come up and read her board. It makes her work feel both "beautiful and purposeful" as she puts it. I am the first to admit that before speaking with Andrea, if I had walked into a coffee shop and seen this board I would have just seen a menu. However, after speaking with Andrea, I no longer just see a menu, but all the hard work, time, and creativity that the artist put into it.
As our conversation came to an end, I asked Andrea if she had any advice for artists just starting out. Her answer was simple, eloquent and spoke volumes of her dedication to her career: "It seems to me that what ends up being the most successful in my creative career are the things I'm good at. That may sound silly, but I've wasted a lot of time trying to emulate other designers and artists, or create things that were the same style or vibe as them. When I do that, my work suffers for it. But when I do what I love, what I enjoy and what comes natural to my creative mind, I find so much more freedom, success and enjoyment. There really is something to the old, "Do what you love & love what you do" adage. Just be yourself in your work and put in the hustle."
Andrea will be teaching"The Art of Hand Lettering and Chalk" on Thursday, September 4th from 6:30-9:30pm. Check it out here!