We were lucky to catch up with Monica Caram recently and have shared our conversation below.

Monica, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?

When I was a teenager I started discovering my path with the guidance of my aunt who was a ceramicist herself. My beginnings were influenced by the clay and fire in the transformation each piece will go through with the entire process. After being inspired by the clay I decided to switch from Electrical Engineering to Ceramics Arts which served me later in life to base my work in sustainability and conceptual art.
Of course I took a break when I got married to build a family and a business related to graphic arts in my native country (Argentina) until we moved to the US.
We moved to California in 2004 then I got engaged in arts through teaching until an opportunity came again to focus on the arts where I applied my engineering studies to create sustainable art using reclaimed glass. Now I extended my art to multiple mediums.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I am a Multimedia Artist, born and raised in a region populated by artisans in Argentina’s North West. I have been making arts & crafts for many years, mostly working with ceramics and paintings, and have always been interested in experimenting with every element to create unique art pieces. Graduated as a Ceramicist from Art’s School at the University of Tucuman in Argentina, and settled in Burbank, California, where my home Art Studio is located.
After years living in California, I became more aware of environmental issues and the consumer responsibilities towards it, then with the idea of sustainability I begun designing home décor from reclaimed glass, turning each bottle into an useful sustainable artifact to contribute at least a tiny bit into saving them from the landfill. All materials used in the studio are obtained locally to minimize the carbon footprint. The concept is to give the bottles a new life and encourage customers to buy my eco-friendly products designed for those who can appreciate and welcome them into their homes.
I am also an Art instructor for the city of Burbank (CA) where I teach a couple of seasonal classes to inspire children and their parents; a class using recycled materials (Recycling to Build Robots) and an introduction to fine Arts through Children’s books (Great Masters) both classes are designed to educate through engaging their creativity while bonding with their parent or grandparent who comes to create with them.

What can society do to ensure an environment that’s helpful to artists and creatives?

In my view as a full time artist the best way to support us is asking questions about our process or inspiration and buying from us because once you buy from us artists it will inspire us to keep creating, The ideal way is visiting us at the Art-walks where we pop-up and bring our art with us for people to buy, not only to display it for compliments, consider this is the way we make our living and put all out passion for the things we do, and if you met us at the shows and didn’t have the chance to buy from us get our social media to access our webstores and keep updated with our latest creations or next shows and keep supporting us as often ass you can because that fills our hearts and feed our families while allowing us to be creative and proactive with our arts and crafts.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

To me the reason is bringing awareness to the consumer about their habits that result in the enormous amount of items we discard on a daily basis, mostly from beverages we drink and for that reason I chose to work with reclaimed glass bottles, to curve them for our landfill and do something useful with them instead of letting them loose into the environment, and that to me is a good mission. Besides this, another good reason I’ve being working in my own journey is to promote self love, which is very important and necessary for everyone to really reconnect with ourselves and be more compassionate, to be the best we can be and that is also an inspiration for some of my art.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.moonstonecraft.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/moonstonecraft
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Moonstone.Craft.MC/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/monica-caram-2665b179

Image Credits
Monica Caram