Romantico Elegante

My work spaces have changed a lot over the last four years or so. Actually, it is difficult for me to afford a permanent studio so I try to rent one for a while every time I have to make work for an exhibition. I also have another job that does not allow me to spend that much time in the studio, although it does allow me to pay my bills and to finance the production of my pieces.

The first studio I rented was a super small place in the house of a very conservative and Christian lady who failed to greet me when one day she came in to clean the space and found a pop-up edition of the Kamasutra I bought in an antique shop (I’m a big collector of useless things). After a while, along with my cousin, who is a photographer, I rented the bottom of a house in Chorrillos. We were evicted quickly because the owner decided to sell it. We felt sad because it was a very nice and quiet place to work and especially to get together, drink beer, and talk about our work (and problems). I still have not paid the phone bill for that place. The best studio I’ve ever had was one that I subleted from a friend to make work for a solo show last year. A nice, big house, located in one of the most beautiful areas of Lima, a place that sometime ago hosted La Culpable, an artists collective that is very important for the local art scene of Lima. After that I traveled to New York for three months to do a residency at Flux Factory, where I had a studio which was also my room. I had a tiny space between the bed and the wall to walk and a desk in which I drew a lot. The prettiest light ever came through that window.

So I have not been in permanent studio for more than a year, but I have been constantly changing my work space according to my needs and possibilities and many times I had to limit myself to work in my room or in my office desk (making a mess in the process). Less than a month ago I moved my studio to the house of a great friend I’ve had since I was a teenager. She bought this house in Barranco and lives there with another great friend. I’ve been very lucky, not only because the space is quite big and comfortable and because I rent it at a much lower price than it is worth; I can also spend time with my friends and laugh a lot. The house is located near the sea.

Las Princesas Solas En Mesa

Now I’m working on a new project which will be presented during Glasgow International this April  in the Project Room of Many Studios. It’s been a big challenge because it is the first time I work on a video but very exciting at the same time. The video shows part of the Peruvian Amazon Uiniversity, a modernist structure built in the Amazon rainforest that embodies a number of contradictions. It was supposed to be created as a response to the demand for a higher education institution in the area, as voiced for decades by the local communities. But this building is just  evidence on how the government spends a huge amount of money building structures that show its power instead of investing on a decent educational system. Although I find the architecture fascinating, the building imposes itself over nature, interfering with its order, and doesn’t respond to the community’s necessities.

The video progressively shows all spaces of the university revealing what the important structure contains: a precarious space in which learning is not fostered and where the lack of it is concealed. I talk about a particular contrast between modernism and lack of progress one constantly finds in Latin American societies. To shoot the video, I spent several days in the jungle. It was a hard work, especially because of the weather in Iquitos, but luckily I had the best team working with me.

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‘Where I Make’ invites readers behind the scenes of artists from many disciplines to share photographs and a little insight about where they create their masterpieces. See more from the series here.

Glasgow based Liverpudlian and graphic designer Geraldine Traynor tells us about her work…

I’m from Liverpool, originally, and I came to Glasgow in 2007 (via Barcelona) with a view to getting back into education and to pursue a more creative career. In 2011 I left Cardonald College, (at 29) with my HND and an Advanced Diploma in Visual Communication, then went straight into full-time work as a Graphic Designer.

In my spare time, I rent a space in MANY studios in Merchant City. I try to get in there a few times a week to get some ‘illustrations’ done. At present, I feel like I’ve only scratched the surface of what I do and where I want my work to go. I get distracted at home really easily so having a studio space has really helped me. Recently, I’ve found that I’m able to experiment more freely and I’m finishing work much faster. By nature I’m averse to any kind of routine so my process (and thought pattern) can be, sometimes, chaotic. Having somewhere to go, to sit with a specific purpose, has helped me to improve my discipline drastically.

I guess what I do could be described as a combination of Graphic Design and Textile Design, though I wouldn’t say it’s that complicated. I’ve no clue what to call what I do, I just do what I enjoy and that’s simply stitching into cardboard. I take something cold, and two-dimensional, and add texture. I find I’m drawn to making straight, hard-edged things look and feel more organic. I like giving my subjects a tactile quality. This then makes them more accessible to me. If I see an object, a phrase, or a word (or even someone else’s work) that I like I have to bring it out of the page so I can touch it. It’s almost like Braille. That probably seems odd but I just feel that if you can interact with something by touch, it makes it more real.

Before my HND, I did an Access to Design course. I loved it. Part of the course was a Design Process for Fashion and Textiles. During this time I learnt different methods of drawing that I’d never considered before, like continuous line or using my other hand. This really loosened me up and opened my eyes to different ways of looking at form and line. This is the base for all of my projects. If my subject can’t be simplified into lined shapes, I won’t stitch it. Filling in blocks of colour with thread is more like embroidery and that’s not what I’m trying to do, I feel that would overcomplicate my work. I’ve never been interested in the end result of garment construction either, only the mechanics of the process.

As well as giving something texture, I like to simplify it with colour. As a rule, I generally don’t tend to use more than two colours for most of my work. I like to keep things looking clean, lots of white space, because I don’t like anything distracting from the stitches. I’ve been experimenting with very contrasting colours, layering card and cutting out sections with a scalpel. It seems to give my work an added dimension. This also helps to cleanly fill in blocks of colour instead of having just stitched outlines. I recently acquired a mountain of old card and paper samples from work, so I’ve been able to try some new things like incorporating slightly different textures of card. I like to scan my work at very high resolutions and zoom in on details, showing the differences in the card as well as the different stitches.

I do everything by hand because using a machine disconnects me from my work. If all of the stitches were uniform, it wouldn’t look or feel like I had worked on it. Those imperfections are important because I feel that they make my work unique and individual to me. I’ll always have the compulsion to do this it’s something that comes very natural to me, even if everything goes in a bag and no one ever sees it, it’s something that keeps me happy.

See Geraldine’s showcased work on Central Station here.

More: Website | Facebook | Behance

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