Today we’d like to introduce you to Valeria Bueno.
Valeria, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
Since I was a kid, I was very moved by art, but mostly, I’ve always had the urge to create characters. In high school, I started making doodles almost every day; they were mostly about me and my friends, adding a little fiction into the story that I was portraying. By the time I got to college, doodling was my favorite hobby; I started making short comics, personalized designs, and other kinds of visual artwork that helped to save up money.
Almost finishing Art school, I took an extracurricular class of ceramics and started to make my doodles into sculptures. I realized it gave them so much life and personality, I published my first official art figures called “Frutos” on my Facebook, and they immediately sold. It was there when I realized I could make money out of it and at the same time have fun with it.
Now I find myself in a place of change and renew. “Frutos” was born in 2017, it gave me so much experience as an artist, as an entrepreneur and it helped to visualize my goals. I recently concluded “Frutos,” so I can open the opportunity for more variety in my work. I’m currently creating new characters and designs that I would like to take it further as a brand.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Working with ceramics is already a struggle; there is so much to learn about this discipline; you have to be ready to fail. In the process of sculpting and firing, they might break, they might explode, or the glaze maybe won’t work out as you imagine. Along the way, I’ve lost a lot of “Frutos” because of my short experience with ceramics, but those failures taught me even more about the process. Now that I have three years working with this material, the mistakes are less, but there are still pieces that don’t come out as I expected, and there’s more to lose since most of these are commissioned pieces or part of the projects im developing.
Being able to participate in events and fairs of art and design has been an amazing opportunity, I’ve met incredible people, and I feel really lucky to be a part of these experiences. The smoothest part is that I really enjoy what I do, and im very grateful that my family has been very supportive. The struggle is that especially in Tijuana, there is a different appreciation for hand made design and art. I’ve bumped with people that question the price of my work and the purpose of my work; they mostly expect them to have an utilitary function. I usually make utilitary pieces for personalized orders. However, I really stick to the concept of creating fun, blobby characters that have no other purpose than just be there, surrounded by our daily objects.
Leria Del Mar – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
I create characters in ceramics and illustration that are inspired by my childhood, pop culture, and daily situations. Their personality is a self-portrait, created by things that I’m passionate about, emotional experiences and stories of people that surround me. I consider it a very versatile project; it’s something that can be part of many categories since it can be presented as art; it can also be commercialized and be presented as design.
What is “success” or “successful” for you?
I used to think that success was accomplishing my goals. And if I wasn’t close to those goals, I felt like a failure. Along this road of developing my own projects, I now define my goals as targets I aim to get me closer to where I visualize myself. Of course, my dream is for this to grow even more and be able to sustain myself with it. “Success” is something that keeps evolving and changing for me. Today I define success as simply being able to do what I love the most.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.instagram.com/leria.del.mar/
- Email: leriadelmar@gmail.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leria.del.mar/
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