Small Business Tie-Dye For!
Art provides people with a way to express themselves, to delve into a world where although there is a theory, there are no rules or limits to one’s creativity. In 2020 when the world became quiet, Fresno State student Jeselle Pulido turned to her love for art, and through that love not only did she make a lifetime of connections, but she also created her very own small business.
“I started during lockdown, and I wasn’t really doing anything with my art during lockdown, but I would see all these cool videos on TikTok of people making their own art into shirts like, graphic,” said Pulido. “And I thought that was cool. And I wanted to be able to do Band Tee’s for myself so I could just screenprint them and wear them.”
Although Pulido’s desire to turn her art into a cool tee began as a fun way for her to reconnect with her art during lockdown, many found her talents shouldn’t have been confined to her wardrobe.
“I put my process of doing it on TikTok and Instagram and then people started being like, ‘do you sell or do you do commissions?'” said Pulido about customers asking her to create designs for them. “‘Like, can I give you a design? And you would just make it? Can I do this for commission? And he did this for the commission. And I started taking them, and then I started making my own designs.'”
While art lovers can enjoy Pulido’s aesthetics of her process on social media, some people get to enjoy the painstaking process in real time.
“She has this one, long table, the longest King Arthur table that she’ll whip out in the room,” said Caro Pulido. “Bathtub full of bleach. Bags of shirts, very professional. She’s got like a locked and loaded hanging over the bunk bed.”
After the commissions came pouring in, Pulido began selling at Fresno Art Hop, where her connection with the Fresno Art Community began to flourish.
“Meeting other people in the art place is kind of nice just to have already connections with other people,” said Pulido. “To do other kinds of things for what I do want to do it and maybe I’ll want to do something that I need help with and I’ve never done before.”
She credits the myriad of art classes she has taken as the reason behind her interest in the various types of art mediums. Pulido hopes to use her fine arts degree and the connections she’s made with the Fresno Art Community to one day teach the younger generation just how rewarding art is.