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Well, I'm also looking for people in the art industry that have an arts background, visual arts specifically, educated in the arts, you know, museum and art curators, gallery owners, and so forth.
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And that's how I got introduced to the Business Council for the Arts and several of the Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, Austin, Dittison, Sherman, you name it, arts organizations.
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And then I just built this whole other group or network for artists to help artists, right?
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To be a resource for artists.
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And it's kind of like grown since then.
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Um someone had recommended that I apply for leadership arts in Dallas through the Business Council for the Arts.
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And I got in the class.
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And these were two actually artists that had recommended me to go through it.
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Hello, this is Maddox, and I'm here with my little buddy and my cohort.
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Wait.
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Yes.
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This is For the Love of Creatives Podcast.
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And our guest today is Jennifer Looney.
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And we met Jennifer, I met Jennifer many, many, many years ago in a business networking group.
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And then we just came face to face a few months ago at, I believe it was Art Boost 2025.
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And and then recalled that we knew each other in a former life.
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And so we've kind of gotten to to know each other again.
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And we've hung out a few times at varying different art things.
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And she agreed to come on the podcast.
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And so here she is.
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Welcome, Jennifer.
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Thanks.
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I appreciate the opportunity.
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And uh running into folks that how life changes, right?
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And how sometimes it stays the same.
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You know, you just never know who you're gonna meet at an art gallery, right?
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Right, right.
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And uh I was really glad to see you all there supporting Art Boost.
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Um, I'm actually a graduate from the leadership program from Business Council for the Arts.
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So it was really wonderful to see folks supporting that.
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That was only our third art boost.
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And my understanding is they're gonna keep doing that.
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It's it's a need, it's a want, it's a it's a gap filler, as you probably saw and recognized.
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So I hope you'll continue to you know keep your finger on the pulse of that uh that art boost every year.
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Yeah, we we enjoyed it.
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We had a good time.
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I don't know that we would hesitate to be part again if they, you know, if definitely pull it off.
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So um, and I don't know if you know this, but Dwight is part of the the art.
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I do know I saw that, I celebrated that.
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Congratulations.
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Well, we we both applied, but they they said from one company we can only take one because we've had so many applicants and uh so um enjoy the program and feel welcome to reach out to me if you have any questions or need resources.
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Oh, thank you.
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Yeah, yeah, he's really enjoying it.
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Well, all right, let's jump in.
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I'm I'm gonna turn it over to you for a minute and let you tell our audience a little bit about who you are and what you're about.
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Who I am and what I'm all about.
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I was born a small young girl many, many years ago in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
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A lot of people don't know.
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I'm not from around here.
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Um, but I grew up mostly in Texas.
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I moved around a lot.
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I am a twin.
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I have a fraternal twin sister, and my twin has twins, gave me boy, girl, twin, niece, and nephew.
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Um, but we were raised by disc jockeys.
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If y'all were if y'all are familiar with what those are.
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Oh yes.
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I am these days, right?
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Disc jockeys.
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Um, my father is actually was inducted into the uh Rowan University Communications Hall of Fame for being one of the boss jocks back in the days when it kind of kicked off late 50s, early 60s through early 70s.
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Um our young listeners right now are Googling that.
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I don't know that.
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Uh they actually actually spin records before they started spinning records, if you know what I mean.
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And so we moved around a lot.
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Uh radio stations, formats, uh just the music industry changing and evolving from the 60s to 70s, 80s.
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Landed in Texas in the early 80s in Houston.
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So I always say my home is the Houston area.
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I still have family in the Houston and Sugarland area.
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So that's what that's what I call home.
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Uh went to college at Texas Tech University, so from one corner of Texas all the way to the other, you know, school.
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And my background is in advertising, and it was free internet.
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So before the internet was invented, the original cut and paste, before it was copy paste, it was cut and paste.
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So I was print, mostly print media.
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Um, so that would be newspapers and magazines, a little bit of radio.
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So I sold air on the radio, uh, just because I had the background, and copywriting is copywriting wherever it might be, right?
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Now it's uh a lot of AI generated, but um you know they're Googling that too on air.
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They're Googling that too.
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What is that?
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What is that?
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Um, we still have to make newspapers.
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I work for newspapers and magazines, so I do have a creative background.
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Um met my former husband at university, at Texas Tech University, and we were together 20 years.
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I have two kids.
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I'm a very proud military mom.
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My son is in the Air Force and he is married now two years.
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And my daughter is in sports management and marketing, and she works for a university here in the Texas market.
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They're both close now, they were very far away for a little while.
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My son actually served for five years in Japan, so we got to go visit him in Japan, which was a lot of fun.
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Um, what else?
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So we moved our family to Frisco, Texas in 2001 before the big boom up here.
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There was a big mall, and that's about all there was up here in Frisco.
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And um early on in my career, I was in the barking department of a bank with my ad degree, and the bank got bought out and I couldn't move or transfer.
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So I moved into a teller role.
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Some people may want to look up what that is.
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That's the person that gives you money at a teller line in a bank, not the automated teller machine.
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And I had to teach people how to use an automated teller machine back then because those were brand new on the market, you know, in the late 90s, and then moved around the country a little bit with my former husband's job and then landed in the Dallas market, ended up getting some investment in insurance licenses, have been in banking about 30 years now.
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The Dallas market just sort of moved through.
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Um, that's kind of in a nutshell where I got to today, where I'm a private wealth advisor for Bank of Texas.
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Well, that's that's an amazing origin story.
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And you know, a testament to how creative you are is you're in great company because uh I don't know if a lot of people know this, but uh James Patterson, the famous author also had a background in advertising.
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And uh I I think the the biggest contribution to the the field is he's he's the author of the famous.
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Well, they're gonna have to look this one up too.
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Toys R Us Kindle.
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Oh yeah.
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I don't want to go.
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I'm a Toys R Us kid.
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I could see the whole thing.
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I won't bore your listeners with.
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We're all showing our age now.
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It's like these young ones are going, oh my God.
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You know what?
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All of that happening.
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Now I am remary and I'm married to a photographer, a creative, fine arts, and business photographer, and I was a photographer as well, but back in the film days when film was affordable before digital.
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Um, so I've I feel like the moving around as a child growing up, and then the moving around with my former husband's job, and then having my kids move around and wanting that to move around and see life out there, don't just stay in one spot.
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Um, that is part creativity.
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I think part of it is for some people might be a courageous act.
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For me, it's like that's just kind of how I wasn't born and raised a nomad.
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I'm just gonna move around everywhere.
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But I feel like that gives a skill in that pivot area, that favorite word we all have, pivot, right?
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So to be able to transfer, transform, transition, and not it be a huge, traumatic, life altering, even though for a lot of people it is.
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I know that.
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It's kind of like we grew up with putting computers in our kids' hands, so it's super easy.
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But then when you talk to my mom and those, let's say over 80 years old, it's not as easy for them to pick up and learn.
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You know, we're working with a phone and we're just how do you get your text message, how do you get your pictures, how do you get your videos, how do you get to your social media, constantly reminding them how to do that.
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It doesn't seem to be as intuitive for them as it is for how we grew up and how I think at least those sitting here on this conversation probably pivoted a lot with technology, and some of it might have been a little bit scary, some of it you dove right in, especially if you uh might have a tech background.
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But for some, it's not so easy, and there's so much creativity behind technology that sometimes that mind you understand it.
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That's why there's a big difference between like iPhone and Android, right?
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And Apple and and everything else.
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My first computer was a Mac.
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I thought I would be Apple forever, but no, I was in this industry, I was branded on Blackberries.
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If you remember the Blackberry store, you can go watch a movie about it and a documentary about it now.
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But people are gonna be looking up, what is that?
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And so to me, pivoting to Android ended up being easier for me than it was iPhone.
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I've tried the iPhone and it's as intuitive for me, right?
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So I feel like sometimes, you know, having all those transitions and changes, it's an interesting skill, skill set, I think.
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I think so too.
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Yeah.
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I didn't uh ever touch a computer until I was probably about 36 years old.
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And I can remember, you know, going uh going out, you know, with uh a mate at the time, and and he was very computer savvy because he worked in in industries that had to use computers all the time and helped me pick it out.
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And we got it out, got it home, got it out of the box, set it up on the desk.
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And I'm like, cool, how do you turn it on?
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I didn't even know where the on button was.
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And um, I'm quite literate now, but uh, and that's really odd for somebody that started so late.
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I think I'm an anomaly in some cases.
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I started so late, and yet um I just kept pushing and learning, and I'm I'm I'm pretty literate.
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Now it's kind of going in the in the opposite direction.
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Now things are I'm getting older and things are getting more sophisticated.
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And now I feel like I'm actually my my skills on computer are are diminishing a little bit, but um I think it's just moving faster.
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It's it's moving everything's coming up, it's moving faster and changing faster.
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And I'm moving slower.
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Yeah, you know, and I'm less interested at this point in my life.
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You know, I I don't I I just don't want to be quite as engrossed in it as I I once did.
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Um I I want to ask about because I know we we've learned just enough about you to know that you have a whole other life away from the banking industry.
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Multifaceted, as they'll call it, right?
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Multifaceted.
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Yes, yes.
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And I think it would be interesting for our listeners to hear um how that came about and and and how what that looks like for you, because it doesn't look like like I you you you said you did photography, but you used it as it was a past tense thing, you know.
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And to my knowledge, do you do you paint?
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Do you are you in?
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I didn't think so.
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I didn't think so.
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No, but I'm still a photographer.
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I still love playing with photography, manual mode on my awesome.
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Look at all these cameras on my phone.
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Like, look at all those cameras.
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There's manual modes, there's filters, all the social medias, anything.
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I mean, the minute social media came out and I was aware of it, which for me was LinkedIn, it was more business networking, it's still social, it's still a social network.
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Then it was Facebook, and then it was Instagram, I think, in that in that order for me.
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I just I just gravitated toward it.
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It was that creative advertising, marketing, psychology.
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I loved it.
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I just love it.
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I I'm the weird person that wants to watch the 30-second, 60-second advertisements, unless they keep coming on and on and on, then I want to skip them.
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I love to see a brand new ad.
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I know what's behind it.
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I I worked behind television, uh, print, radio.
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I I did all of that.
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So I love to see where it where it is now.
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Um, but what brought me to sort of the art world in the more recent decade would be meeting my husband SWAT Beetovich.
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He's a professional photographer and a fine art photographer that had to sort of blossom and be presented to the world as that.
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I saw his photography when we were dating, and I was just like, the world needs to see this.
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I'm a photographer, and I haven't played with this type of photography, film and digital photography for years.
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We met in 20 oh my goodness, 14 in a business networking group group, and he was not presenting as a photographer.
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That was not the business that he was presenting at that business networking group.
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He and I had coffee, like we're talking now, and in that one-on-one, found out what we had in common.
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And part of it was photography, a big part of it was photography.
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So the next time we met, I asked him to bring this book that he was talking about that he had printed out a lot of his travels.
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Now, my husband's not from around here, he's from Europe, and so he was able to travel a lot more than let's say folks that might be in the United States.
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It's easy to travel in the United States, but it's so big.
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You know, his weekends were, you know, and and summers with the family were in Croatia, Dubrovnik.
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It's just over the other side of the mountain from where he's from.
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Italy is across the pond.
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It's like going to Lake Lake Louisville.
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It's not far.
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And so he had these amazing opportunities to take some incredible black and white film photography, Ansel Adams being his, you know, epitome of the awesomeness of photography, as most photographers go for.
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And he practiced it.
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He's more of a science mind.
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And that black and white film photography, the lighting, the depth of field, that just it struck him.
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He got his first camera when he was 11, gifted to him by his father.
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And he was just became, in my opinion, an expert at it in his style.
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There's definitely photography styles, what you'd like to take photos of.
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And it resonated with me.
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It was a lot of landscape photography, both city and country and water and mountains, and he did a lot of US travel as well.
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And that's sort of what brought the creative back.
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And we when we ended up engaged and moved him to the Frisco area, we were at an arts festival.
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It was an old, it was called Frisco Arts in the Square.
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And they had art booths there.
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And we just ran into one of the nonprofit art organizations there called the Visual Arts Guild of Frisco.
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And in upon looking it up and researching it, I want to say this was in 2017, maybe 2018, late early 2018, uh, found out they had monthly meetings.
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They were an artist community.
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I was like, they have photographers.
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Yes, they have painters and sculptors, mixed media artists, and so forth, but they're all visual artists, and you're a visual artist.
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And maybe you should put some of your art in one of their shows.
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We should go to their meetings.
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He ended up doing that and winning some awards, and that kind of pulls you in, right?
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Now you've got your community, you've been recognized by the community.
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And then in 20, I want to say late 2018, early 2019, they needed someone on their board that could help with communications and some social media.
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So they asked him to apply and they approved him.
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And he got on the board, so he got even more involved in the visual arts guild.
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And then 2020 hit, and we know how everybody had to pivot.
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Some people needed to leave the state, some people needed to leave their practice, they needed to change jobs.
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And all of a sudden, the board started to dwindle, everything had to go online, you know, and couldn't lead in person because of COVID, pandemics.
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Um that's when he took the lead and said, if you need a president, I'm there.
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And so they voted him as president of the visual arts field of Frisco.
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And at the time the treasurer needed to step away.
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And I said, Well, I have a banking background.
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I think you can trust me with your money.
00:20:06.860 --> 00:20:08.779
A lot of people have for 30 years.
00:20:08.940 --> 00:20:13.740
If you'd like me to be a part of the board, they said yes, and approved me on the board.
00:20:13.900 --> 00:20:25.100
And let's say he was approved and on the board in 20, I think, 18, became president in 20 end of 2020, and I became treasurer at the beginning of 21.
00:20:25.500 --> 00:20:36.460
Went through a year of just learning more, getting more in depth and entrenched in what they normally had done for the last 20 years that they had been an organization.
00:20:36.940 --> 00:20:39.580
They started in Frisco in 2001.
00:20:40.460 --> 00:20:43.340
And this was now, let's say, 2021, right?
00:20:43.500 --> 00:20:43.820
Okay.
00:20:44.060 --> 00:20:46.540
So how do you normally do things?
00:20:47.100 --> 00:20:49.740
And then What can we do differently?
00:20:49.820 --> 00:20:51.019
And what how can we grow?
00:20:51.100 --> 00:20:52.300
And do you want to grow?
00:20:52.460 --> 00:20:56.620
And and so that's when I started visiting other art guilds.