Interview with Andrea Badillo By Peter Hoc Trang Hoang
So what year are you this coming fall? I’m going to be in my fourth year, exciting!
What are you excited about? I’m adamant about having my last year being in person and having a last stretch in an environment of dedicated help I started in and will hopefully finish in.
How has your artistic journey been up to this point? Were you always a sculptor or do you feel like you are experienced in all media? Funnily enough, I actually entered UCI wanting to be an animator. It's been a very entertaining journey because I started off wanting to work at a computer all day and build up layers to produce animation, as I was very intrigued about this medium
that could create images that could come to life. But once I gave sculpture a try, I fell in love with working with my hands and producing artwork that came to life in a real 3D space and could be present with its audience physically. After that point, I realized that I honestly preferred working physically for 7 hours rather than at a computer screen for the same amount of time.
How was being forced to work at a computer screen for the past year? Painful? It's been… an experience. It was very hard because my creative space in this pandemic hasn't been the best - I’ve had to work in a 4 x 3 ft space in the corner of my living room. My work has taken a bit of a toll because of that space limitation - especially working with ceramics/greenware. Clay is something you definitely don’t want in your plumbing or in your breathing space too long, and I’ve been relying heavily on an outdoor faucet and towels to keep my space and hands clean after long projects. That being said, having a tedious clean-up makes for long days to avoid having to clean up more times than I have to. It's also nice to see how my work has benefited from having to learn how to document my work and keeping track of what I’ve done and what hasn’t worked. My art has definitely changed as a result.
Do you feel like your piece could have only come out of the pandemic or do you feel like the pandemic hindered the process? I feel like this piece could’ve done a little better if I had an actual studio space but it’s definitely been a product of my environment, it was fueled by a budding relationship that I found with my partner at this time.
A pandemic relationship! Sounds something that so many people find and never really expect. How did you guys find each other? Was it through art? And why was it important for you to include your partner in the creation of the piece? I feel like the start of a relationship is very pandemic-esque since we met through mutual friends and talked all the time in discord. He’s a film major, and we started collaborating because documentation required me to upload sculptures of my photos throughout the year. In turn, we started seeing each other more often, and realized we shared all of these interests that allowed the collaboration to feel completely natural. I feel like it was important for me to include him directly into this piece since we’ve been working on the documentation side of things so much and we wanted to try something new. I gave him a crash course in ceramics to help me produce this rough semblance of the vertebrae, I would polish it over and get the details in to finish it off. Every time I introduce someone to the texture of clay, it’s very fun to see how they try to handle it and very quickly find out what can work and what doesn’t — and I start teaching from there. This process of helping him learn what I sort of specialized in and having some human contact alongside a creation was very intimate — seeing as it had been a year since the studio spaces and any social interaction amongst artists since the lockdown.
Is the vertebrae a portrait? Of who? It’s a portrait of both of us. I wanted to originally do two spines but one was already really work intensive, like an hour for every three vertebrae, and it was hard to finish before the show started and my own personal deadlines. Despite it only being one spine, it's something we both felt. It's set up in the camper we hang out in and chat, and it was only until later on where we started being more intimate together in that space and having our bodies closer.
So tell me all about the construction of your work; I’m really interested in the choice of materials particularly in the contrast between hard and soft. I am very excited to use clay as a material, because like love, clay has so many properties that are very easy to mold but also very difficult to maintain if you don’t nurture it. Clay has an incredible memory, so if you lay it down mindlessly you might have a crack. It's a finicky material, since you have to keep an eye on it, and while there's periods where it can handle being left alone, you need to pay a lot of attention and be present for every step of its creation otherwise it may cost you the whole artwork. So I feel like since it's a very physical and demanding material, it was the perfect medium for the message of the show.
How long have you been sculpting? I’ve been sculpting for about two and a half years at this point, usually I do more textile and ceramic work. I used to be more into woodworking but ceramics and textiles seemed more ‘easy’ to carry into the home, since bandsaws and handsaws are not very home-friendly.
Is there a certain cost saving aspect to your work? The price for this piece was really hard to measure because it's clay I’ve had since I started sculpting. I haven’t had to buy more clay at all. A pack of clay is about 25 dollars but if you make larger pieces I can see the cost adding up. I’ve invested more in glazes and paying to use a kiln down in Costa Mesa since I have no kiln of my own.
Do you love art? There are times that I feel like I have a love-hate relationship with it, but like other kinds of love it demands a lot of patience and sacrifice. Seven hours for a spine is a pretty intense commitment. With regards to clay, I’ve had near breaking points where I am struggling so badly with a project that I’m trying to create or recreate where at any stage in the process of ceramics something can go wrong. It can be a frustrating experience when everything goes well until it comes out of the kiln and it has exploded, fallen apart, or cracked. You never know how glazes are gonna react to each other and come out a different color than you expected. You basically have to roll with the punches, you have to learn how to manage your expectations and go in a different direction than you intended. So yes, very much like love.
Why are you attracted to very visceral subject matter to communicate a concept such as love? Do you see a disconnect between the body and the heart or is it intrinsically connected? I wanted to focus on the spine because it's a very integral part of the human body, it's a huge support system. My sister fragmented a part of her spine recently, so she finds it very hard to do the simplest thing like bend down or stand for too long before she experiences pain. Helping her out has really informed my decision to make this piece since the spine is otherwise so overlooked and taken for granted. Since it's a very fundamental structure for a body, it felt like a good part of the body to use to communicate a very fundamental emotion.
Going forward, how do you feel like your process will be changed from working under pandemic conditions? Do you think it will be difficult to readjust? I think I’ll give it a month before realizing I suddenly will have the guidance of my peers working in the studio. The environment of the studio is so different from the autonomous situation of working from home, but it will feel really freeing to work in a bigger space with the appropriate equipment and the help of my fellow students. I'd feel very liberated to do bigger projects. The thing I took away from the pandemic was to not brush off documentation. Focusing on documenting performance and sculptural work has been really eye opening, especially since it's a huge challenge to create an interactive piece for an audience that isn’t there. Documentation is a really fundamental aspect in keeping the work alive and ‘functioning’ since I’ve started to view the camera as my audience — with a guided view into the pieces I’ve made.
Do you feel equipped to give advice for incoming freshmen on what to expect from the UCI art major and the new and honestly daunting experience of working around others in a studio, especially after virtual school? The only thing in my mind that might be helpful is definitely not to be shy about exhausting your resources. There’s gonna be people there to help you. There’s gonna be people who hold you accountable for good execution in the most efficient way. You don’t need to feel alone in your project too, especially since most of your peers are on the verge of mental breakdowns because of deadlines and the unpredictable course of our projects. The diversity of thought and advice can take you to really surprising and fulfilling places, so don't be shy to put yourself out there and ask for help. Even during virtual schooling we helped each other, so no matter what, we have each other.