Today we’d like to introduce you to Catherine Maldonado.
Catherine, we’d love to hear your story and how you got to where you are today both personally and as an artist.
I have a vivid memory of taking an analog alarm clock apart and putting it back together so the hands moved backwards. That recollection continues to take on new meaning for me personally, but I always use it as an example of how my mind works.
I don’t fully appreciate something until I take it apart and see how I can make it work. That inclination extended to the internet when I realized it was something I could build. I’d see something cool and wade through the code until I figured out what was making it work. Sometimes I would resort to emailing the site owner, fawning over the awesome layout and asking questions, not taking into account someone other than who I was contacting had built the site while the person reading my email was just trying to sell their graphic design services. As you can guess, I never received any responses.
It’s taken a while for me to find my people both online and in my neighborhood. Returning to tinkering with physical things helped me make more personal connections. My favorite, succinct description from someone else of my TeePearls project was “t-shirt alchemy.” Alchemy brings to mind images of ingenuity, transformation, and magic that draws me to artists. Recognizing you have the same drive to create, no matter how dissimilar your work, is instant common ground with another person. I grew up in Tucson, Arizona but only now appreciate the vibrant art community that exists there. Anywhere I travel, whether I’m visiting home or exploring some place new, I can strike up a conversation with an artist about their work.
We’d love to hear more about your art. What do you do you do and why and what do you hope others will take away from your work?
With all of my projects, I take something I’m curious about and try to present it in a new way. I saw t-shirt yarn taking off in the DIY community several years ago and I was drawn to the material more than what people were doing with it. I tried techniques like knitting icord and intricate macramé, but finally settled on a single strand of knots. When I find something where the process becomes like a meditation, drawing me in every day, I know I’ve hit an idea that I will be able to explore as a long-term project.
I’ve been working on TeePearls for seven years. Along the way, both the presentation and process were refined to a point where the end product appears to be incredibly simple. I love that. I’m willing to teach people how to make their own necklaces, but their hands haven’t put in the hours learning to slide knots incredibly close together or how tightly to tie the fabric. It’s not something you’ll learn unless you have the desire or need to make dozens of these necklaces. I’ve perfected the process because enough people have been buying them. It is highly possible that without the encouragement I would’ve stopped TeePearls after making three wonky ones for myself. I’m happy the process is at a point where they’re relaxing for me to make.
My digital projects that I’ve been able to fully realize are more easily recognizable as long-term activities concerned with collecting data. I’ve always felt an urge to package my routines and patterns as documents, whether physical or digital, in order to capture the passage of time. I built a small site called Augmap where I can take and categorize photos in real time by theme as I’m going through my day. I’m also using the bones of that project for a more in depth look at digital signage in Boston. Augmap is a rare instance where I’m consciously documenting something in real time, but other similar habits of mine have only become obvious in retrospect.
I’ve been collecting stickers from CDs and other product packaging in a small 5×5 notebook since I was a teenager and it is almost full. It feels impossible to explain the significance of that small book to me, so I’m going overboard in the opposite direction to make it extremely impersonal. I have several multimedia ideas around how to present each sticker as dataset. I’m trying to decide if I feel comfortable enough to let a piece of that data be stories.
Overall, I hope I present that the process of doing something, or even living day to day, is as important as the piece, or person, you see in that second. Hopefully something visually striking in my work draws people in and then they notice the series of knots or extent of the data and start thinking about time.
What do you think it takes to be successful as an artist?
With so much of my finding an audience these days dependent on being online, it’s difficult not to measure success in numbers and “likes” and conversely see the lack thereof as failure. I think the hardest characteristic to develop is feeling content with creating something tangible from what was only a thought. It’s easy to be seduced by people showing an interest in what you’re doing, but ultimately you need to make decisions around whether following a path that gets you attention is more valuable to you than creating something that makes you proud. Success is being able create while navigating the world and taking care of yourself. Right now, I’m trying to get lost in the process of trying new things rather than focusing on their success. My hope is that some part of what I’m doing resonates with someone and leads to helping them realize a project of their own.
Do you have any events or exhibitions coming up? Where would one go to see more of your work? How can people support you and your artwork?
In the past, I’ve rebranded my portfolio to reflect the work I wanted to be doing in my day job as a web developer, but I’m always drawn back to listing projects I’m personally attached to under the same name. Idiophonebox.com was a domain I bought after learning the word idiophone. An idiophone is any instrument that vibrates to produce sound after being struck. It’s a perfect representation of how I feel inspiration stirring up something that can’t help but be released in some form. Most of my active projects are posted there. (idiophonebox.com)
While developing TeePearls, I’ve found a great community of craftspeople though the Boston/Somerville/Cambridge art markets who inspire me to keep going. One of my favorite markets is the EsomMarket in my neighborhood at La Brasa the first Saturday of the month. The atmosphere is perfect for relaxing and browsing over brunch. I’ve also partnered with a company called SwapIt who are very much in line with what I’m trying to do with TeePearls. I was lucky enough to be introduced to the women of SwapIt, a unique company in the second-hand clothing market. They style clients by appointment from their awesome inventory. SwapIt incorporates TeePearls into their styling appointments and it has been a great match. I’ll be popping up in front of their shop in Davis for Somerstreets in August. My website and online store are pretty good places to keep up on what I have going on with TeePearls (teepearls.com).
Because the internet is such an easy place for creative broadcasts to get lost, I’m trying to find meaningful outlets for my digital work which often leads to places where people want to learn and share. I’ve benefited from communities like Codepen.io and Skillshare.com and I’m making an attempt to contribute with blog posts and my own classes. I just launched my first class on CSS for Skillshare (https://skl.sh/2JM6Y7D) and I’m hoping to do more in the near future.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://www.idiophonebox.com/
- Email: catherine@wellterned.com
- Instagram: http://instagram.com/teepearls
- Other: https://skl.sh/2JM6Y7D
Image Credit:
Meredith Nierman (studio shot, hanging necklaces), Dylan Maldonado (pink sunglasses)
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