Today we’d like to introduce you to Virginia Anton.
Virginia, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I am and will always be the same person I was as a kid: a slightly off-kilter only child, born and raised in LA by an Italian mother and an Argentinian father, shaped by personal health challenges.
All these quirks still influence my journey today as an artist and the work that I produce. After graduating Pitzer College in 2014 with a bachelor’s in Fine Art, I found a studio space in Lincoln Heights with some friends. This underground basement has been important to me because it has been a liberating place for me to explore myself and what I want to create.
One of the things I have discovered is beside my passion for art, I also enjoy bringing creative minds together. A year and a half ago, I organized my first music/art pop up in the studio. I brought together, with the help of my friends, talented musicians, artists, and people who use creativity as an outlet, together under one roof. I gave it the name, Space 237. I’ve put together three pop-ups thus far, each one unique, vibrant, and showcasing a diverse array of artists and their work. For this coming Fall, I am planning my most ambitious, immersive pop up yet which will feature the ever-growing cast of participants showcasing their work.
When I was little, I would create my own worlds. Whether it was in the hill across my home where I built a tiny secret dwelling, or in the comfort of knowing that my collection of stuffed animals would always listen to me. Two things stand true, I’ll always want to create and connect with others through my work and that I hope to help mold my own imaginative world where expression is whatever I want it to be. Today is this, tomorrow I don’t know.
Has it been a smooth road?
Smooth is not a word in my vocabulary. My life is anything but smooth but that’s what makes my work mine. I’ve always struggled with the concepts of business and balance. The creative world and the business world don’t mingle well in my mind. I create because I always have and it comes very naturally to me. The process calms me when I need tranquility and helps me decipher what’s going on in my maze of a brain. This therapeutic aspect makes it difficult for me to think of myself or my work as a business. I make things. I’m working on going beyond that without commodifying my work.
As a young woman living with Cystic Fibrosis and the other varying illnesses that accompany CF, such as diabetes, I am constantly battling with both maintaining my health and the anxiety that results from this struggle that I face every day. Although my reality is living with a chronic illness, I don’t think of it as a disability or as being a disabled person in any capacity. I instead think of it as an ongoing series of annoying complications that show up unannounced in various forms. Though some days are more difficult than others, I believe that is true for everyone as we all have our challenges.
I have always had a strong resistance to talking about my health and to a certain extent accepting my situation. I worry about being pigeonholed into an identity as a person with CF who makes art when I am actually an artist whose work is informed by multiple things in my life, including but not limited to my illness. That being said, my illness is inextricably intertwined with my identity and I am proud of all facets of who I am and how they define me as an artist. Secretly, deep down, I crave the struggle because I question who I would be without it. Am I being dramatic enough?
We’d love to hear more about your work and what you are currently focused on. What else should we know?
When people ask me what kind of art I make, I tell them I am a mixed media sculpture artist open to using any and all materials and forms of art.
Since I was a kid, I’ve been obsessed with finding objects that have been abandoned or disposed of and giving them a new home. These are personal treasures which I add to my collections over time. Anything from natural artifacts, dead insects, medical paraphernalia, containers, and frames. I like to think I’m giving these objects a sense of purpose and my work centers around this idea of salvaging and enshrining. Some lunatics out there may classify this as hoarding but to each their own.
I go through phases of being fixated with a certain material or form of expression. I’ve worked with photography and ceramics but for the past five years, I’ve been enthralled with mold making and urethane. I like to commemorate the medication that I take daily and incorporate the used medical paraphernalia and its packaging into framed pieces. It gives me a sense of dominance over something I feel is mainly out of my control. In short, controlled chaos.
If you had to start over, what would you have done differently?
There is nothing to start over. That would mean being a different person, with different experiences, making different work. I wouldn’t change anything. I just hope to keep learning and growing as an artist.
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/virginianotvictoria/
Image Credit:
I took all the photographs except for the one of my hands done by Caroline Novit
Getting in touch: VoyageLA is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
