Life & Work with Cordelia Giovanna of Mid City

Today we’d like to introduce you to Cordelia Giovanna

Hi Cordelia, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
9 generations ago my ancestors arrived to the port of Los Angeles in 1783, from New Orelans, which they had made port in 1781 arriving from Spain.

Then – 216 years later I was born in Los Angeles! I grew up to a single mother, along with multiple hamsters, 2 birds, multiple benign house ghosts, 5 beta fish, at least 3 tarot decks, and one small fluffy white do named Ned. We lived in an apartment with a balcony jutting over the parking lot, where we would roast marshmallows on Friday nights, and on weekdays after school my friends and I would dangle stuffed animals over the railing to wack with bats like piñatas.

My childhood has a powerful impact on my art of today. I missed out on a lot of my teenage years – so all my art current art is trying to recapture this feeling of freedom of being young, childlike, and carefree.

Like – when you ditch class, successfully, and realize you have no plans and can do frankly whatever you’d like!

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
When I was 12 I was diagnosed with a multitude of hefty mental health disorders. I lost most of my teenage years to illness. I was bullied heavily in high school for being weird and strange, to luckily graduate early. From there I had to navigate a new environment of freedom in community college, and developing new relationships on my own terms – people I wasn’t stuck in high school with.

From ages 17-23 I dealt heavily with mental health problems and housing insecurity. I find that these years of crisis have left a imprint on all the work I make today. When you’re brain is rioting against you, and you don’t know where, what, and who is safe, the panic created a miasma of color and chaos over my field of vision.

I find that it echos through everything I create. There can’t be a “Cordi original” without manic chaos – it just isn’t right.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I’m constantly trying to find new methods and techniques to use in my work. I have been sewing for 10+ years, I started with making clothes for dolls age 10, and gradually advanced to couture sewing in high school to switching to textile art in the last few years.

I feel as if people either know me for jewelry making or photography & editing. My parents are both photographers, so I was allowed to use to a high tech digital camera starting at age 12.

I admire my ability to multitask within the form of multimedia, I’ve never been able to comprehend just using one medium! I love grabbing tools and methods from all over and using them in all the most horrible and wrong ways, which I can attribute to my mother being a dada artist!

I don’t really care what everyone else is doing art wise, trend wise, I feel like I’m curating this one huge inside joke of my own inner world. And whoever gets it, gets it! I’m not stressing about if my art is good or not, it’s about the process of creating and letting the emotion out. If someone doesn’t resonate, then I’m not for them and that’s wonderful, we all have our own wavelength.

The crisis has affected us all in different ways. How has it affected you and any important lessons or epiphanies you can share with us?
In late 2020 my mom was diagnosed with Long Covid, she has been disabled all my life, so this really put the pandemic into perspective for me. Over the next year I would get Covid twice, then to develop chronic fatigue due to severe chronic migraines in 2023. Which I give credit to the two times I had Covid-19.

I have trouble finding the words, and really comprehending what Covid-19 took from me, and my family. I am currently not working due to the disability the migraines give me. I moved back home late 2023 due to Covid-19 related housing insecurity, and to help my mother with her illness.

As I process my grief, it sparks the same manic chaos as before, but I am now trapped in a body that at the end of each day, is too tired to move. It’s difficult to find a medium that I can properly convey the twisted and shifting amalgamation of emotion I carry.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @literallyablueberry @matchmycringe
• Youtube: https://youtube.com/@rotating711hotdog?si=BDk1q4qlmN-Yp6Oy
• Other: https://substack.com/@imgladiexist?r=1hzlld&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=profile

Image Credits
Cordelia Giovanna