Today we’d like to introduce you to Andrea Alonge

Hi Andrea, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?

I grew up in a household with parents who were both creative and enjoyed working with their hands. Creativity was encouraged and supported among my siblings and I. When I was about eight, I started sewing with my mother, and making sculptures and doing other forms of art. In high school, I was drawn to ceramics and began working with clay. I continued a ceramics practice throughout my pursuit of higher education, but I felt like I couldn’t reliably maintain working with clay and firing it/ glazing it, etc without a dedicated space. Textiles, however, provided a medium I could work with on a small scale, in my apartment, using machine tools or not, and I started focusing on this form of media as a main feature of my studio practice, eventually receiving my MFA in Fiber from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2015.

I have evolved this practice over the years since graduate school, and the main tenet of how I keep growing my practice is “keep working”. I regularly check in with myself about how I can make it more accessible to work in my studio- is it routine, is it media, is it ability to work with different forms of media, is it better at different times of day, etc – and these questions keep me engaged and thinking about making.

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?

There have been some challenges throughout my practice, but I feel that the creative problem-solving I exercise in my artistic career has helped prepare me for those obstacles, and I always find my way through the barriers. Flexibility has served me well, and careful planning/ preparation are one of the keys to success. I’m a obsessively organized person, and that has been very beneficial for me.

Most of my challenges have come about because I work a full-time job outside of my art career as well as maintain a robust studio practice. Timing of production, shipping, and installation are all elements I have to carefully plan. Organization really is key here, and I feel very proud of the large-scale projects I’ve accomplished while also working. I have a dedicated studio schedule, and prepare and time each work, beginning most projects months before they are due.

My practice has been designed to be malleable- I use lots of vintage fabrics/ vintage materials, and have collected a lot of these items over the years. I rarely buy things for my work these days. I also figured out a better way to hang my works after making a permanent installation for Meta Open Arts, and I use this hanging method frequently now. My work can fold, roll up, or be condensed, and is light, so it can be easily and affordably shipped. These elements all came about because of obstacles or challenges that arose earlier in my career.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?

I make abstract textile works that are wall sculptures but have 3d elements bringing them out of the traditional quilt space. My work is about connection and interaction, and I feel like textiles are a medium that invites this dialogue on many levels. I specialize in “drawing” and mark-making through piecing and surface embellishment. My particular affinity for color combinations and textural/ pattern associations is my biggest creative strength. I love taking fabrics that look absolutely disgusting on their own and combining them in a way that highlights their beauty. I also enjoy taking two very different elements and putting them together to show their similarities. There is real power in combining high and low references, mixing old and new, and using this to talk about how we are connected as a society.

Have you learned any interesting or important lessons due to the Covid-19 Crisis?

Because of the Covid crisis, and how the internet/ social media became a main place of connection and interaction, I started really thinking about how my work reads in photographs vs. in person. I think it’s interesting how my work changes when viewed in person, and how few people get to actually see it in person, only experiencing the work through an image. The little details get lost, the physicality and tactility of the work is no longer present, and gauging the size of the work is more challenging. The power in a digital image, however, is in the distortion of the image- the visual glitch, the eye movement that happens when you’re looking at stripes on a screen, having to zoom in to see something better. There’s a different experience with a photograph. I try to make sure there are differences in the physical and digital experience now, as I think there’s a metaphor for how we interact online vs in person in that.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.andreaalonge.com
• Instagram: @andreaalonge

Image Credits

Mario Gallucci Studio