Residency & Showing at The Hive, a gallery in LA.

I am Nicolas Derro, an artist/musician/writer from Sudbury, ON.

For the last year, I have been working full time as a visual artist in an attempt to dedicate most of my time towards expanding my career as a creative. Throughout this year, I have built an extensive body of work, made significant connections, and continue to develop my voice and style as an artist.

In April 2023, I was invited to a residency and showing at a small gallery called The Hive in downtown Los Angeles, California, starting in October 2023, lasting 6 months. With a glowing letter of recommendation, a solid application (for which I've received a lot of assistance in writing), and the body of work to back it all up, I applied for a grant with Canada Council. The total amount I was asking for in this grant was $30,000, which accounted for everything from a vehicle to transport the large paintings, travel expenses (gas/accomodations/etc), materials acquired and needed during the residency, rentals for the studio space/wall space/room rental during my extensive stay, as well as technical aspects such as an artist fee and per diem.

Considering the wait length of 4 months for results, I had no choice but to start painting right away, regardless of the possibility of not receiving the grant. From April 2023 until end of August 2023, I completed 7 large scale (48" x 60") oil paintings to show at The Hive, and have planned and scheduled showings over the next year that I'll be working on paintings for during the actual residency.

Unfortunately, I was not awarded the grant. Canada Council does not provide feedback, but I am confident that the application and budget were reasonable, and it came down to the competitive nature of grants.

In order to justify a fundraiser for this project, I decided to set the fundraising amount to include only expenses directly related to the showing and residency. This includes only rent for the time I'm there, plane ticket, and an estimate of what the cost would be to ship my work there.

This fundraiser is sort of a last resort effort to try and meet this opportunity to show my work, but has required a lot of pride-swallowing and moral balancing to justify. I don't feel good about asking friends and family, a lot of creative people who are in the same boat that I am in, for help. I don't feel good about asking for help to support a career in painting while there are a million other, way more important, causes to donate to.

This is, however, the path that I've dedicated myself to and it holds a lot of weight in my world. Turning down this opportunity to show my work to a larger audience and build valuable connections is not something I am willing to do without exhausting all possible options.

In the event that this fundraiser does not meet a required amount to sustain this project, the raised funds will go towards supporting me through this period of work for upcomming shows, as well as waiting for results of other grants and the re-application of the grant I was unnaccpeted to.

Thanks for reading, and thank you to all of those who have supported me and my work during this last year.