The wander years

With her new project, Gravitas and Company, Shiloe Allison is on a quest for new horizons to unearth art and culture across the globe. With a loose guideline for where she wants to go, she’ll travel to different cities, stopping at each one for about a month to dive headfirst into each location’s art and culture scene. She’s thrilled at the prospect of going with the flow to let her journey in search of creativity unfold. She hopes to push her boundaries about what she thinks she knows about art and culture to open her path to finding inspiring art of all mediums in new locations. During the process, she plans on documenting the experience on her blog and eventually in an eBook. It’s a vision quest for independent worldwide creativity.

When used in theater and music, “gravitas” refers the performability or onstage presence of a character. For Allison, it means something that will catch your attention. “It’s like when someone is performing and you can’t stop watching, that’s why I picked Gravitas for the name,” said Allison.

Allison is originally from Truckee, Calif., and currently lives in Reno. After parting with her last job at an indie record label, she realized she wanted to push her own boundaries, explore the world of art beyond the Biggest Little City.

“When I was working for the indie label, I couldn’t help but feel that there was still a void,” she said. “I felt like I was spending so much energy for someone else’s project and decided to part ways. The idea for this project just kind of struck me after my time there. And whatever uncertainty I am feeling with this, I feel like it would be way worse if I didn’t do it.”

She’s driven to follow this creative path and allow for spontaneity along the way. As she jumps from city to city, Allison plans to find people to stay with through friends and the world wide web.

“As of right now I have a loose outline of cities I want to go and I will be staying with either friends or using Craigslist.org or Couchsurfing.org to find people to stay with,” said Allison. “I’m super open to suggestions of places to stay because I’m hoping staying with locals will help me tap into the culture scene in these new cities. I’ll be starting in Denver for August, Chicago for September, and beyond that? I’m hoping meeting people in these cities will lead to connections for other cities.”

“While staying at these cities, I am trying to get involved and really learn about their creative culture with a large emphasis on independent artists,” Allison said. “I’m hoping to meet artists of all mediums who will want to be involved and let me document their work. I want to push my barriers about what I know about art and get beyond just music or painting to explore film, sculpture and other mediums.”

Allison will be updating her website regularly during her journey with photos, interviews and posts about the experience of unearthing a new location’s creative gems.

For now, Allison is funding the venture herself. She’ll launch a Kickstarter campaign this fall to raise money for the project; giving those who donate money an Ebook. Art is everywhere, and Allison plans on finding it.

“I want to find things that inspire me and then want to share them with the world,” she said. “I have recently adapted this huge wanderlust, there is so much beauty in the world, and I want to experience it first hand.”