We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Maria Fabrizio a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Maria, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

I need to answer this is two parts:

One :: The most meaningful project that I’ve worked on for myself would be the Wordless News illustration based Blog I started in 2013. It launched my career, taught me how to feel absolutely fine with failure, helped me figure out conceptual work and what felt right — I learned so much from this project. It was authentic and I started it seeking nothing but to learn and I think that made it successful.

Two :: Alongside my own business I work full time as a communications director/artist at a church. I have a lot of freedom and interesting projects but my favorite part of this job, and the most meaningful, is making art for funerals. Instead of the traditional photo of a loved one, we offer custom art for any funerals that happen in our space. I don’t have a ton of interaction with the families during their grief, I ask a few simple questions and offer to create something that reminds them of the essence of the person. It is wonderful to see grief turn to a smile when a family recognizes their loved one in a simple piece of art. The imagery often looks like a record player, a grill, a favorite flower, a mystical train traveling at sunset — usually not a drawing of the person. These images feel like a heavy lift with such a reward, it’s the best feeling to offer care through artwork.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I am an art kid turned designer who decided illustration was my lifelong passion. I like to honestly tell people I really wasn’t great at much growing up, making art was it. I knew from a very young age it was what I loved and felt called to do. In late high school I recognized that making art from my own perspective didn’t interest me, I liked having a project that had a client — or wasn’t focused on my opinion or feelings. Design and illustration felt like the right path for me instead of painting or fine art.

After earning a BFA and MFA in design and working for a few years I realized I wanted to follow a path that was more aligned with illustration. I started an illustration blog in 2013, Wordless News, where I would get up at 4:30am and read a news article, I’d illustrate the article in the most neutral way that I could with just imagery. No words or captions and see if people could figure out the story. This idea was picked up by NPR and I ended up doing a good amount of work and being interviewed on Morning Edition. After that, I really started to see my career grow in the illustration department and now I work with big and small clients creating work for print and web publications. I do a good bit of editorial illustration, lots of science and health related topics, which I find some interesting. I am always looking for a challenge and I thrive with projects that have quick deadlines and turnaround time.

I am most proud in my ability to empathize with a story or a project and take the information from written to visual without being redundant. I love to try and think about the world through the eyes of someone else, not my own, I think this keeps my work versatile and engaging (I hope).

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

In graduate school I really wanted to take a class with a very respectable illustrator, it was one of the reason I picked that school for my MFA. My advisor wasn’t convinced I had the technical or conceptual chops to take the class and I never got the chance to interact with this professional. I was so disappointed and felt quite lost after this — but I kept going in the direction I thought I was supposed to and let it go. When I decided to go out on my own and start my own business and pivot more toward illustration than design I really had that rejection bouncing around in my mind. Instead of feeling like I couldn’t do what felt authentic and I longed to do after a blow to my ego, I decided perhaps he was correct. I needed to be better at what I wanted to do. So I started practicing without the prospect of approval, I didn’t set out to make perfect things or right things, just to be prolific. And it really paid off. My advisor wasn’t wrong, I needed to be better but I had to ignore the self-doubt to get to a place where I felt like it was ok to fail and still love what I was doing.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I had to unlearn that to be successful you have to be competitive. It’s a lesson that I think I am still learning because it’s so present in our society on social media — you need the most followers, the most views, to be liked, etc. A few years ago, I was in the middle of the pandemic, two small kids at home and no time to make anything. My soul felt like those little shriveled up mermaids that Ursal keeps in her sea cave. I felt like there weren’t enough projects, I couldn’t keep up with the social presence grind, projects were stagnant. I asked a friend for some advice and she told me to write a letter to my creativity. So I did, it felt a little strange, I was cautious about if it would help me, but i wrote down all the things I desired and what I was hoping for and I emphasized how grateful I was for what I had. I reminded myself that there is enough pie for everyone to have a slice and this idea that there isn’t enough is just comparison sneaking into the corners of my mind stealing joy.

Two days later, out of the blue I got one of the biggest and most important projects I’ve ever worked on, illustration for Keep Sweet and Pray on Netflix. It was challenging and meaningful — it checked the box on everything I had written in my letter.

Contact Info:

• Website: mariafabrizio.com
• Instagram: studioria
• Linkedin: maria fabrizio
• Twitter: studioria

Image Credits
Holly Graciano photography should be credited for the image I used in the first image upload area.