Today we’d like to introduce you to Melody Romero.
Melody, we’d love to hear your story and how you got to where you are today both personally and as an artist.
Before I moved to LA, I spent most of my life in the Midwest. After immigrating from the Dominican Republic, my parents moved to Rockford, Illinois, where I was born and raised. I went to a small Christian elementary school, where I got a well-rounded education that emphasized learning about everything. I worked hard there, and I enjoyed the adventures we took. Sometimes, we’d take nature walks. Once or twice, in winter, we’d trek through the forest to the nearby hill turned annual sledding mecca. With everything we did, I felt like a different character in a story, setting off for new land.
Whenever I finished my classwork early, which was often, I’d pick a book from the shelf and read. Our class library had the typical assortment of books. Books about the history of America, fiction books, and lots of books on crafts. In one of those craft books, there was a section about making your own dollhouses from shoeboxes. Of course, I already had a dollhouse. A pink plastic contraption, with peeling stickers of rugs on the floors and an elevator that we never had the proper batteries for.
So I decided to make my own. I used every shoebox I could find in the house, some big, some small, some old, and warped by time and humidity. I used them all, and soon I had a cardboard mansion decorating the walls. I had dolls too, but my plastic barbie dolls were too vulgar to inhabit that paper utopia. So I made dolls too, a family from tin foil. I never played with the dolls in the dollhouse – I only set them there. I created a scene. The dolls could do whatever they wanted in it when I was gone. It was a much better story – to pretend the dolls would wake up and have their own lives, than anything I could envision for them.
Eventually, I grew out of dolls, but not out of building worlds. As a kid, it seemed like animators had so much power, and I wanted it. I didn’t want to be limited to making dollhouses out of cardboard and cloth and toothpaste caps. I wanted to make worlds, limited not by physical materials, but imagination. I learned to model and texture environments in 3d, on the computer, because I could maintain that same power of building worlds and creating stories in them. It felt like a natural evolution of what I’d always loved to do.
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’m a CG artist, meaning that I work primarily on the computer. As I previously mentioned, I lean towards environments, but I enjoy all parts of creating a set. That can be anything from modeling, to texturing, to set dressing, or even doing the research beforehand about what goes into a world, and how things are made. I tend to lean towards pieces that are whimsical, and I like telling stories with my work. When people see my work, I hope it entertains them and leaves them feeling lighter. I want my work to do what animation did for me as a kid, which was open my imagination up.
Do current events, local or global, affect your work and what you are focused on?
I don’t think so. I think the role of the artist has always been to record and interpret the world as they see it, or as they want to see it. Mediums change, technology changes, but the role of the artist stays the same. I wouldn’t say that events or issues affect my art directly, but I think because of how crazy and busy our daily lives are, I like to keep my work fun.
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?
I have a website, as well as an artstation profile.
https://melodyromero.com/
https://www.artstation.com/melodyaromero
I’m also currently working as an Environment Modeler on the reboot of Rugrats. So watch the show when it comes out!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://melodyromero.com/
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/melodyaromero/
Image Credit:
Melody Romero
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