Artists Of Hoot - Nehal Joshi
Nehal Joshi is a 24 year old illustrator who was born in Jaipur, Rajasthan and brought up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA. Team Hootenanny came across and fell in love with her illustrations that were displayed on 19th of March, 2018 at the #HGStreet event organised by HomeGrown in New Delhi. Our team contacted her and she was kind enough to agree for an interview with us. Here's how it went!
"My parents lived in Japan after they got married and my mother came back to India to give birth to me. I was born in Jaipur and we immediately went back to Osaka. A couple years later I moved to Las Cruces, New Mexico then Ann Arbor, Michigan where I spent 9 years of my childhood. That is where I mainly grew up. When asked about what was that one thing in particular that she loved doing more than anything, Nehal said "Art and creativity were always a hobby of mine. Whether it was writing, illustrating comic books, playing violin, or taking dance classes. However you would never catch me without a pen and paper in my hand and over the years I managed to collect piles of sketchbooks with my drawings."
She had told us in brief about how, with the moving from one place to another, art was the only constant that she could find, here's a bit of more on that. "After 9 years in Michigan I moved to Wisconsin for 1 year. By this time I had already attended 5 separate schools and the moving around was getting exhausting. My art was always a constant I had through all the changes in my life. Right after Wisconsin my family and I moved to Singapore. I attended Singapore American School and for two years and started exploring more of my interest in the arts. I started to take more extensive classes at school and joined in the National Arts Honor Society. Soon after that I moved to New Delhi, India.
Here I attended the American Embassy School and finally got to attempt painting and photography. This launched my love of art to another level where I realized I didn't care about any of my other classes or extra curricular activities."
We were really keen to know about her art and where she draws inspiration from to which Nehal said that the culture and the traditional patterns and textiles, as well as the color of everyday life became a huge inspiration for her. She started to form this idea of merging photographs with paint and her illustration technique to create multiple layers to tell a story. Moving and traveling around the world also helped as she used all the different cultures and techniques she had seen and interacted with as inspiration.
Towards the end of highschool she started applying to colleges and went on to be accepted to Parsons, The New School for Design in NYC. Attending this school had been a dream of hers.
"Here I was able to integrate with people from all over the world, talented artists with a myriad of skills, and legendary mentors who were professionals in their careers. NYC was a melting pot of creative individuals and helped me solidify my ideas and my body of work. After 4 years, I took up a job as an animator and designer for Complex Networks Snapchat division. I worked there for almost 8 months until I decided I was losing inspiration and falling into the corporate world which was one place I always wanted to avoid. So I left. I came back to India last year to take a break, travel, find inspiration again and maybe start working for myself. I started designing customized denim jackets, embroidered patches, as well as working on an exhibition of my own paintings and photography. What started as a vacation and a break became a lifestyle. I ended up never going back to the USA. A year later and I'm still here, I decided to freelance full time and try a variety of work. So far I've collaborated with Homegrown's sneaker festival, hand customized bags for Kate Spade, Illustrated editorial art for Vogue, and have started working with the clothing brand NorBlack NorWhite. I'm still painting and freelancing on the side and have many more projects coming up!" We wish Nehal the very best for her future endeavours and we hope that her story, where art was the only constant throughout for her helps all of you realise that your art is worth so much more than what you think and if you really love doing it, you should never let go of it because it will take you places! You should totally check here social media links given below:
Instagram: www.instagram.com/nehal_joshi/ Website: www.nehaljoshi.design
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