Today we’d like to introduce you to Celeste Voce.
Celeste, we’d love to hear your story and how you got to where you are today both personally and as an artist.
I grew up in Seal Beach, CA. Both my parents were art majors in college, so they regularly took me to museums, concerts, and dance programs up in LA, which most people in Orange County didn’t do. I flirted with drawing and painting as a child, but it never really stuck. Photography, as an artistic medium, always appealed to me, but I didn’t have any technical training until high school. When I went to Pitzer College, a small liberal arts school, I had no intention of majoring in art, but then it just became sort of inevitable. It was the mid-aughts and it was this moment where analogue was being rapidly replaced with digital, and school was one of the last places to freely use a darkroom. I thought I was making work to maximize a suddenly disappearing resource, but the more I made, the more I realized that it wasn’t just a hobby. The compulsion to make art is a fundamental part of who I am.
We’d love to hear more about your art. What do you do and why and what do you hope others will take away from your work?
I’ve continued to work primarily in black and white, analogue photography as it provides me the space for contemplation. My process is rather laborious, and is strongly related to performance, though it is a performance for no one. The work I create is both highly personal and extremely detached, a reflection of how I inhabit the world. Because my work is simultaneously informed by things that are deeply intimate as well as macro imaginations of the universe, there is a recurrent theme of tension between the beautiful and the visceral. I’m highly interested in iconography as a way to explore the intrinsic human desire to define a singular truth. My photography subverts and rejects the medium as a tool of documentary by presenting reality as something that is always fully subjective.
What do you think it takes to be successful as an artist?
I’m always thinking about and redefining success for myself. The art market is both tough and fickle, and only marks a specific kind of success that has historically lacked depth and diversity. I don’t even think that type of success is worth aspiring to as I never want my art practice to become insincere or burdensome. I’ve learned to only measure myself against myself. I define my success by setting goals, sometimes big, sometimes small, which are always aimed at helping me continually grow as an artist.
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?
My website has images of most of my work, and I also try post updates on Instagram. Those are also the best places to contact me. I especially enjoy having people come to my studio, as it allows for longer and more meaningful conversations about the work.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.celestevoce.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cmvoce/
Image Credit:
All images © Celeste Voce
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