Meet Veronica Cianfrano

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Veronica Cianfrano. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Veronica, so happy you were able to devote some time to sharing your thoughts and wisdom with our community. So, we’ve always admired how you have seemingly never let nay-sayers or haters keep you down. Can you talk to us about how to persist despite the negative energy that so often is thrown at folks trying to do something special with their lives?

I know how annoying it sounds, but the thing that keeps me from getting dragged into impossible expectations or the perceptions of others is gratitude and perspective. I am sitting here typing this with my dog by my side and my husband in the kitchen making dinner. I am safe, warm, and loved. Everyone I love is safe, and they know that I love them. I have privileges that many don’t get.

I have been on the other side, only seeing the things I don’t have and comparing myself to people who have more than I do. It didn’t make me a bad person; I just lacked perspective. Over the last few years, I have deeply loved and lost people. The grief and anger I felt after those deaths were a great teacher to me. It taught me that undervaluing myself means undervaluing all the people who made me who I am, the ones that are still here, and the ones that are gone.

Once I learned that, things snapped into place. I still sometimes get sucked into the downward spiral of unreasonable expectations and uncontrollable perceptions, but in the end, I owe it to everyone around me and everyone that came before me to live with gratitude for everything I’ve been given and to feel joy when I can share it with others because it means I get to share a tiny piece of them.

Make no mistake, I have been betrayed by people close to me, I have discovered feuds I didn’t even know I was a part of, and encountered people who have wished me harm in my life for sure. These are not bad people, and I am no better than them; I just have a perspective they haven’t gained yet, another thing to be grateful for.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

I am an artist and a curator. I have worked in academic, business, and non-profit sectors; curating exhibitions, teaching, running art galleries, and directing cultural programming. I know from experience that a job is more than a paycheck; it occupies a ton of your mental space and has a huge impact on your overall health. In my career, I am guided by one truth: I owe it to myself to spend my time on this planet doing things that matter to me within supportive environments.

I come from a low-income background, and I have spent a large chunk of my life living below or at the poverty line. I know better than to expect that my passions will be how I earn money to survive all the time. Sometimes that has meant cleaning toilets during the day and working on my practice at night and on days off. Right now, I am very lucky and grateful to have a supportive partner who agreed to invest in my independent curatorial practice as well as my art practice.

As an artist, I am working on a new body of work that is trying to visually explain what it’s like to try to rewire your brain after trauma or loss, something we have all experienced. I’ve been using depictions of common interior spaces like homes and schools to represent the mind, and I have been playing with scale and perspective to paint cobbled-together, dream-like spaces that could never exist in reality. The spaces look real, but they don’t interact with each other in a way that makes sense. Working on my mental health feels a lot like trying to navigate and reconstruct spaces like these.

As an independent curator, I’m excited to continue to offer clients the rare spectrum of services I offer. I help artists and art lovers alike, providing a range of services from creating professional portfolios to organizing exhibitions, programming, and large-scale events, as well as advising on art collections.

At the moment, I am really interested in how I can share my knowledge with others and empower them to follow their own curiosity and curate their own exhibitions. There is this unspoken air of secrecy around art curation and all it entails. I think it’s a practice, like painting, that people should be able to learn about and try for themselves. I want to use what I know about curation to help people express themselves and learn more about our world through the creation of art exhibitions/programming. I hope to build this out as part of my independent practice in the coming months.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

I can’t say it has always served me well, but being incredibly stubborn is a trait that has gotten me far. If I really care about something, I will complete it to the best of my ability, no matter what. This is not necessarily a good quality, and I’m working on making it more balanced, but when everything in my life told me to give up, my stubbornness just would not let me.

I also have had a lot of odd jobs. I think that’s important because it teaches you things about yourself and the world around you that you would otherwise miss out on. I think most importantly, it has taught me that there is dignity and pride in all forms of labor. Yes, I went to art school and I make art, but I have met line cooks who did not go to school, but they are artists who move like poetry in the kitchen. I have felt pride at how clean I could get a toilet or how perfectly timed I could fill people’s water glasses. It all matters, and there’s something to be learned in all of it.

Lastly, but most importantly, I would say that nurturing deep and meaningful relationships over decades has ended up creating a community of people that have been indescribably important to me, not just in my career, but in my life. You have to show up for people you care about. I’m very, very far from being perfect at this, but I know they are a top priority. When everything fails you, and most people will reach a point where everything seems lost, you are rich if you have a support system you can rely on. When you find someone that you can grow with, hold on to them because these types of relationships are rarer than you might think and more valuable.

To close, maybe we can chat about your parents and what they did that was particularly impactful for you?

This is such an interesting question. They gave me life, so they gave me everything. They came to the United States with nothing and worked extremely hard so that my sisters and I could have a better life. In these respects, they gave me everything. They were as far from perfect as you can get, and I was still so lucky to have them. I say all this because when I say the most impactful thing my parents did for me was nothing, I don’t mean it in a bad way. They gave me everything, but in respect to my adult life, education, or career, everything had to be earned by me. They laid the foundation for me, and I had to do the rest. This was a matter of survival, not choice. They couldn’t do more for me, and I’m glad because I learned how to survive early on. Now, there is very little that I don’t think I can handle, and that’s thanks to them.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://veronicacianfrano.com
• Instagram: @veronicacianfrano
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/veronica-cianfrano-b1a75ba/

Image Credits

Headshot courtesy L Elwood
TuftCon exhibition photos courtesy Tuft the World