KRISTA WRIGHT
You are currently living in the bay area. What are you up to?
Yes, so I moved from SoCal to the Bay Area to follow my dream of going to art school. I knew that art was the only thing I really wanted to do, and tons of people told me I'd be in debt forever and never find a job, bla bla bla, but it's what I wanted and no one was going to persuade me otherwise. I made this little vision board on my mirror with the SFAI program materials and worked really hard to save up a little money, transfer some community college credits and get the heck out of Temecula. My grandparents were super supportive also, I definitely couldn't have gotten here without those amazing women to inspire me. After a year in school, I felt like I really found my place and people. I still can't believe I live here sometimes. It's really funny to think about all those people telling me I would never find a job, because while I did have to work a few serving gigs, I gained as much experience as I could working with kids while studying for my BFA so I could keep both art and school in my life. This year is my first working nearly full time in youth development. Right now, I am working at an amazing organization called Community Youth Center San Francisco teaching art and lending homework help to middle schoolers online, and these days in small in-person groups to get them caught up & entertained through this pandemic.
We met you when you submitted to a group show and the piece you put forward was what, Gumby kicking it on a sofa with a few other folks? Our reaction was, YES....and let's meet this artist. Tell us about this piece
"Turn Out the Lights, I'm Watching Back to the Future" is one of my favorite paintings to this day. It's 6ft by 5ft and my first life-sized painting ever, it was so fun to work on! Actually, there is an installation component to this piece when you see it in person. I made a physical TV sculpture that sits in front of the canvas and gives the painted figures something to watch and viewers something to experience. This TV is filled with a scene of little ceramic characters from my screenprint world.
After falling in love with screen printing at SFAI I have been trying to find the best way of combining my colorful, cartoony, whimsical, world which translates well in print with the visual facts that make up my everyday reality. It was fun to see the conversation between these silly no-rules postures of these characters with the technical renderings of Ice cream socks from my grandmother and the Mega Gumby you mentioned above, who I had to take home from the Alameda Flea Market.
Basically, I wanted this painting to seem like a dream and reality at the same time. On the wall behind the figures there is a poster for the Terry Gilliam movie "Brazil". My best friend took me to see it in the Roxy Theater in San Francisco and it is so wild! I loved how it took you on this rollercoaster of events and in the end, you have to figure out if it was even real because, "it's only a state of mind". I love that concept and how it ties to manifestation a little. Like any kind of life is possible you just have to imagine yourself there. Sitting on a couch with a movie and a caring and cool partner/friend/family member is where I always want to be so that's what I made. I'm so glad you loved this piece as much as I do.
(Ok...I might delete half this question but you'll see where I'm going).. Ok, so then the Gumby piece is part of a larger body of work. Is this a style you've worked in for a long time, because it feels nostalgic, maybe even sacred
This style took a little while to figure out. When I first got into painting, I was looking at a lot of pop surrealism in Juxtapoz & HiFructose where artists were creating their own creatures and worlds and I thought that's what I was going to do too. I painted lots of different friends, fiends, monsters, skeletons and sexy ladies all without hands (the bane of my teenage existence) but things changed once I got into art school and I realized I had to grow out of that comfort zone. I truly thought I was going to lose all my little weirdos forever but one of my favorite professors, Luke Butler, told me that they would always be with me. And, of course, they were, instead of disappearing they evolved into set characters with stories and a world to build along with them. The next step was bringing them to this dimension, so I translated my 2-D drawings/paintings/screenprints the best I could. Sewing became a great tool for this in my practice and I decided the best way to bring them into the figurative work would be recreating them as canvas masks. I made 3 other masks before the piñata one. All 3 were all from characters I had named and painted before, and they do hold their own power and importance to me, but the Piñata mask felt so different. This specific character was something I had drawn a lot before, but they never really had a name like the others, they still have that kind of mystery about them.
"Validated Feelings," was the debut of this Piñata masked character in my paintings and it kind of changed everything. I think my buddy Gfunk described this series best as an "Emotional Petting Zoo".
The piñata masked character is like an imaginary friend that creates that safe space for me to explore my own thoughts, feelings, emotions and empathizes with bigger topics as well.
Wow sacred, I haven't really thought about it like that, but I guess it kind of is.
There is something so special about this character to me because of them not being bound to any story or anything, they are like my own personal muse/guardian.
Your grandparents came to one of your shows and spilled the tea about some of the imagery in your work. Is this something that you talk about, or do you prefer to let the work speak for itself?
People will take what they want from all of the imagery in my work but there is a lot that is so personal, and I am happy to explain what these things mean to me.
Outside of the created worlds I was describing above, I think there are two different aspects that come together to make up the imagery of my recent works - the objects in the paintings and the idea of the “piñata” itself.
Objects can really help create a narrative, set a tone, and interact with cast shadows. I am a sucker for trinkets and knick-knacks, I have always been. The same thing goes for clothes and collected art works. There are just so many cute little things out there and as soon as someone gives me something or I find it traveling there is sentimental value attached to it.
It might be all the cartoons and media I grew up with starring inanimate objects and animals personified, but collecting things is like building a family. Everything has their own personality and sometimes I look up at all of them hanging out on my dresser and just smile. The objects that we surround ourselves with say so much about us. This is important even when I am painting the parts in my roommate's house or someone else close to me. The space is usually surrounded with all of the treasures they have acquired throughout their life and gives a glimpse at who these masked figures are to me in my real life and sometimes these objects can be extremely relatable and interchangeable with the viewer's own experiences. It's really fun to spotlight that in paintings. To me, the more stuff the better!
Above all, one of the objects that has become so close to my heart is definitely the piñata. Although, it is not quite the typical piñata that most folks know so I feel it's important for me to give a little background. There was a time in school I was actually bullied for being a white girl. Painting this figure and calling it a “piñata” creature, but growing up in Southern California so close to San Diego, and being 1/4th Mexican myself, the Piñata and other beautiful aspects of Mexican culture were always surrounding me and mixed into cartoons and pop culture I grew up with as well.
I became really interested in Piñatas during high school. They were such beautiful objects of celebration and people (especially Americans) sure love to celebrate! There was such a "party" culture in the suburbs, it didn't matter what the occasion - it called for a party. Also, both my parents and my older sister were punks and partiers themselves and going back and forth from the party to my grandma's and then trying to make "cool" friends in high school, I always felt like a fly on the wall observing the ridiculous destructiveness of it all.
I drew so many of these silly manic monsters covered in confetti and streamers and these became my first "Piñata People" - they were always ready to celebrate but also needed to be saved all the time. They were the perfect parody of this to me and they were so fun to paint with all of their bright colors and extreme happiness and fear. Then I heard of a friend who had committed suicide without anyone of his closest people knowing he was hurting so much. I switched the whole concept of these monsters around and they became the representations of our problems that we had to destroy with the help of our loved ones to reap the benefits. I did an Ignite San Diego talk about this called “Turning your Problems into Piñatas”.
The more I was bringing these creatures to life in my experiments with sculpture in community college & SFAI, the more the concept evolved. A few years later it became less about destroying these “problems” or “struggles” and more about loving them and all of the parts of ourselves.
In my work today the piñata and other masked figures continue to be a way for me to love myself, show love I have for family and friends in my life and empathize with others. They also create situations where others can insert themselves and not feel so alone.
What inspires your creative process? What do you do when you aren't painting? Do you paint consistently, or in fits and starts?
I get inspired by thoughts, emotions and feelings I experience in my own life, or see in the lives of those around me. I also get inspired by music, comic books, and stories big and small. Many of my paintings are named after songs and obscure cultural artifacts that have stuck with me for a while or just describe the scene perfectly. Then I have to get the perfect reference photo. Photoshoots are a huge part of my process. I’m not a photographer but I love how gels and a few little lights change a dining room into a dreamscape. I’ve been able to create so many different narratives all within the same house and that is so cool to me-especially in a time where we are all kind of stuck in our homes.
Productivity wise, I’m a person who always has to be working on something to feel like I'm contributing to existence so I’m usually always at least working on one new piece.
I’m a little slower than I used to be since I work full time with a commute to & from the city, but my life is pretty much working then painting and maybe some video games and phone calls with friends in between. It may be boring for some, but I like it. If I’m not making anything, I get pretty sad and out of touch, so I make it a habit!
The painting I am working on right now is about memories, ancestors, and Día de Muertos. My roommate is from Mexico City and we have built ofrendas for the previous years, but this was my first time truly understanding the importance of this holiday and remembering our loved ones especially when 2020 has taken so many lives.
