Check Out Anneliese Salgado’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Anneliese Salgado.

Hi Anneliese, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I have a pretty unique (and admittedly expensive) experience of having attended three major universities in my first three semesters of undergrad – UCSC, LMU, and USC (in that order). While studying at LMU, I worked as a PA in the art department of a couple of TV shows – most notably It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. It was the third season, so at the time not nearly as many people knew the show. It was so fun and amazing to be a part of it at that point. I was totally captivated by the process of creating these worlds for the characters and loved all the details and energy of collaboration on set. I learned a lot from really experienced folks around me very early on. By the time I was at USC later that year, I was more fully focused on developing my drawing and painting practice. I studied abroad in Italy one summer and have been a nonstop traveler ever since.

I moved to San Francisco next, and by 23 I had my MA in Art Education. I thought I was going to be a career museum educator, so I became a teaching artist in some of San Francisco’s most notable museums – the deYoung, SFMOMA and the Legion of Honor for more than five years. I was deeply invested in serving the diverse youth of the greater SF Bay Area in a way that made museums accessible and useful spaces for them. My family was not a museum-going family when I was growing up, but I found the galleries to be a meditative place where conversations could be honest, insightful, productive and rewarding. Facilitating these conversations is without a doubt what prepared me to communicate information and feedback articulately and effectively – which is a core part of what I do almost every day! Just before leaving the city, I was honored to design some art activities to be included in a pair of workbook-style publications on behalf of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

My husband has been a part of my creative journey since we began our relationship in our early 20s in San Francisco. He is a musician and member of the bands The Soft White Sixties and Mystic Knights of Amnesia – which introduced me to an entirely new community of artists, culture and live experience. Sometimes I was flying out to shows to meet them on tour, spending late nights in a recording studio, or watching from the side stage of a music festival. I had never really known much about music, but it was super exciting and also very inspiring! Again – I will take any excuse to travel and meet new people, but I loved digging into their creative process and getting into the deeper stories that inspired the songs. If you’re a lover of stories like I am, there’s almost no better place to be than somewhere outside on a nice night, in a place you’ve never been before, with a group of musicians and a cocktail in your hand past 1am.

My last 2.5 years in the city, I was the studio coordinator for painting and drawing at the San Francisco Art Institute – a historical, inspiring and magical oasis of artistic spirit and delightful nonconformity. I booked models, installed painting shows, helped students in the painting and drawing studios. Sometimes that was listening in on a great lecture or demo, but most times it was dealing with hazardous waste and solving seemingly impossible art storage dilemmas. Again, I found myself working with art and with students in a way where I also had a lot to gain in my own right. It also got me back into a regular painting practice again, which had been pretty sidelined as I was teaching more in the museum galleries.

I returned to LA in 2015 to take a job at DreamWorks Animation working in the Education department, first as a coordinator then as a manager for Artistic Development. My gig was an unexpected but perfect combination of my creative experiences across production, art, and education – all the while bringing animation back into my life! I worked to design and implement artistic education that supported artists across the feature filmmaking pipeline and brought events and talks to the campus. Sometimes this involved a falconer and a birds of prey flight demo, other times it could be a physics or biology lecture. I loved working with the artists, production staff and producers at the studio to curate programming that would resonate and inspire – while informing and ultimately strengthening the films. My favorite day every year was the annual art festival, Dreamcon, where any studio employee could exhibit their personal work in a large outdoor art fair that made visible and celebrated the diversity of everyone’s talents.

After I left Dreamworks, one of my most talented friends, Kiki, started bringing me in to produce shoots for her business, YES Creative Co. She’s an incredible creative director and our skills and strengths complement each other really well both on set and when running large-scale special events. We’ve made incredible memories together designing experiences and events for global brands and some notable celebrities.

In 2019 during a lengthy escape to one of our favorite places on Earth, New Orleans, my husband Aaron and I decided to form Sound + Vision Co.

Early last year, we began spending a lot of weekends out in Joshua Tree, which led to the purchase of our first house in that very area. It’s a rad midcentury home atop a hill in Flamingo Heights that needed just the right amount of redesign and renovation. We have 5 acres to roam and a music studio that just got built out, so we’re excited to bring more of our work out to that magical place when we’re not hunkered down in the Arts District with our two weiner dogs (aka “The Clowns”).

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
The best things are always hard to do, so naturally there have been challenges. Some real highs make way for some real lows. Resilience is the most important thing. In terms of struggles along the way, I’d say that I’ve always had to juggle a lot of responsibilities simultaneously in order to have done what I have up to this point. I’ve always had a lot of jobs. I have also certainly struggled with work-life balance, but I think that is not always uncommon when you’re passionate about your work. Also, student loans. Remember…that’s four total schools on that list.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I just wrapped up about a year & a half working with the entertainment nonprofit Women in Animation (WIA) where I worked on producing events (from weekly talks to film festival and conference presentations), virtual productions and managing their incredible mentorship program – which connects experienced industry pros with emerging talent to advance career opportunities for women and non-binary people in the animation, vfx and games. They’re doing incredible work to bring change to the industry, and working with them let me lean back into the knowledge I’d gained working in education and with grassroots artists back in San Francisco and the insight I had from the work I had done at DreamWorks. The animation community is a really special one, where I have formed some of the most special, valuable and lifelong friendships and mentoring relationships I have.

These days, I am most focused on the work that Sound + Vision Co. is doing with my co-founder/creative director (and most importantly, life partner) Aaron Eisenberg. Our company is a full-service production house for artists and brands. He’s also a creative director, designer, editor, composer, animator…I could go on! Together, we have a really fun time lending our expertise to one another in tight collaboration with the artists and clients we work with. What sets us apart from others is how accessible our services are to artists and brands of all sizes and the authentic insight we bring by way of our combined experiences and paths. We naturally analyze an idea or a project from so many points of view as a result of our journeys, and it gives us a pretty unique toolkit of ideas and solutions to lend in the process of making something great. Our favorite projects lately have been music videos and lyric videos, but we also make commercials, design and animation for live performance visuals, compose original music, motion graphics, and more.

What sets me apart from others is probably my 3-5 year reinvention cycle. There are so many moments in my career where I was certainly happy and content doing something that felt creatively fulfilling but I have always lept towards interesting opportunities where I felt I could both bring something and gain something. It’s not easy to do when you’re comfortable where you are, but I’m obsessed with learning new things and opening up the possibility of an alternate path. If I think I know where this road goes, I start to get antsy. But, ultimately, everywhere I’ve been to this point has elements of fostering creative communities and investing in the next generation of creators while making space for me to feed and nurture my own creative capabilities as an artist.

What were you like growing up?
I was always really reflective and deeply thoughtful, and I usually really wanted to do things the right way. I always wanted to understand everything, would ask a lot of questions, insist on sitting at the adult’s table. A total overachiever, daydreamer and obsessive problem solver. I’m still those things. I started shooting frame by frame recreations of my favorite movies when I was around 8, was drawing and designing cartoons by 12, and was taking animation classes at 15. I ALWAYS liked doing creative things that brought people together. My parents were always really supportive of my creative interests, passions and pursuits – but also very practical about what it would take for me to make that into a real thing that pays the bills. I saw earning a living in the arts as a real privilege and also as a far away dream that really instilled a lot of motivation in me at a young age to keep finding opportunities to learn and do. They worked incredibly hard and still do every single day – and I got that work ethic from them undoubtedly. I think they saw me as being very focused and serious about it early on. In high school, I attended a couple of selective pre-college summer programs at Cal Arts and USC, which exposed me to people and ideas that I just never would have known at such a young age in the town where I was growing up (Elk Grove, CA). Going to Cal Arts in particular for the California State Summer School for the Arts (CSSSA) awarded me a designation as a California Arts Scholar, which was a cool medal to store next to my 8th grade Academic Olympics trophy (I mentioned overachiever earlier).

Contact Info:

• Email: [email protected]
• Website: https://soundandvisionco.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/soundandvisionco/

Image Credits:
Headshot – Victoria Smith CES loading – Giselle Guerrero “Cozumel” – 35mm Film Photograph, by me jtree – Stephanie Pearson on set – Kiersten Stevens “Piglet’s Pennies” – Oil Painting, by me