CANVAS REBEL
Meet Giselle Rodriguez
We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Giselle Rodriguez. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Giselle below.
Hi Giselle, thanks for joining us today. Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?
Well it all really began when I was a little kid and largely attributed to my parents. My father is an artist. He went to school for art and started a business designing and constructing Caribbean carnival costumes. Growing up in New York City with my mom, my mother had this penchant for interior design so each room in our apartment reflected a different color. My dads house was the antithesis and gave off this old antique vibe. Think old furniture, slightly squeaky wooden floors and oddly shaped key holes on doors. He had a bunch of different art that he created from when he was younger hung up on the walls throughout the house. In retrospect, my entire life was exposed to art as a result of my parents interests and the ways in which they designed their homes which I think naturally rubbed off on me while inhabiting those spaces. Leading into my interests of pursuing different artistic mediums such as writing, photography and fashion.
When I was in high-school I was really into modeling and style. I always admired looking at the way people accessorize their clothing and followed many fashion bloggers on tumblr. I had this weird obsession with playing dress up in my house and constantly trying on different outfits. During this time in my life, I was sort of figuring out ways on how I wanted to express my individuality outwardly with the clothes I put on.
Fast forward to the beginning of college, i developed an affinity to writing. I would randomly write poems in my notes and quickly realized how easy it felt for me to rhyme words together. As my time throughout college progressed, I developed an interest in photography due to my love of being in front but also behind the camera. Leading to the purchase of my first camera. My sophomore year, I decided to study abroad in London and took a few trips to a few other European cities and started capturing all these moments. The summer of 2015, Ianded me an internship in a wework space where I was surrounded by a ton of different entrepreneurs starting their own ventures and felt inspired to finally launch my blog (originality conquers) that I had been rationally toying around for some time. The blog became a way for me to express myself artistically through my eyes behind the lens. Call it a digital collection of my travels and moments.
Now lets fast forward a bit further to 2018, the year after I graduated. A good friend of mine from college reached out to me and asked if I wanted to join his team and help with furthering his fashion brand. Immediately decided that I wanted to because of how much I saw the vision. At this point, I could say this was the start of me deciding to pursue an artistic path professionally. It’s been 5 years of being involved in this fashion brand and I am excited to be apart of the journey and all that is coming next.
Giselle, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
Hello there! My name is Giselle Rodriguez and I was born and raised in Manhattan, NY. I am a sister, aunt and creative. I went to school in Manhattan on the upper west side until the 6th grade and then transferred to boarding school in Washington D.C. from 7-12th. During my time in boarding school, I developed an interest for modeling and started modeling in school and did some photoshoots on the side. I became quite consumed with following street-style bloggers on tumblr. I really got into fashion street-style in middle school onto high-school. I am not sure if this is due to my schools uniform policy or stemming from my earlier years in school in Manhattan where I would be sauntering throughout neighborhoods observing others’ unique sense of style.