Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Isabella Hilditch. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Isabella, thanks for joining us today. Do you wish you had waited to pursue your creative career or do you wish you had started sooner?

I’m currently working in both digital and production design but my first true passion in life was track and field. I was 16 when I first travelled abroad for my sport, I was in Istanbul for the European Championships representing Great Britain. For about 10 years of my young life every decision I made was entirely influenced by this big athletic dream. My career in athletics was all-consuming, and I had very little room for practicing art and design. In a world that encourages people to have “one thing”, for me that was athletics. This changed when I was 19, I moved over to the States to be a student athlete at Princeton University. Princeton pushed this concept of “student first, athlete second” and it was embarrassing to not have a “thing” that wasn’t just being an athlete. I decided it was time to invest in my creative potential and started to train as an artist and designer.

I want to say that was the simple timeline of sport to creative practice, but unfortunately it wasn’t that linear. Upon leaving Princeton with a resume full of production work, I arrived at a new crossroads. Do I retire from my sport? It’s hard to articulate now, but at the time the concept of not fulfilling my potential in the sport was infuriating. Instead of continuing on my creative path for the next two years I went back to being a student-athlete in grad school; studying web design, and making my sport the priority once again.

I was biking home from my grad-school graduation with everything I thought I wanted – an olympic trials invitation I’d accepted, a knowledge in web design which would work as a perfect flexible side hustle to my training; but I had an accident on my bike. I won’t go into the gory details, but the decision to be an athlete was taken out of my hands. I dusted off my production resume, got my resources together and moved to LA. I haven’t looked back, and starting in September of 2024 I’ve had an incredible time developing my professional career as an artist and designer. I’ve had so many incredible experiences, from working at the Balloon Museum pop-up in downtown LA with artist Alex Schweder, to production design work at the American Film Institute. I’m founding and co-designing an exhibition tailored to production designers who make fine-art in July. There are so many moments where I consider what would have happened if I’d jumped head first into this career upon my Princeton graduation. In theory, I’d be ahead; yet, I don’t know if that’s necessarily true. Those two years were filled with so much hardship that I’m not sure if without them I’d be as strong and sure as I am now. I couldn’t be more convinced that my creative career is what makes me happy, and while those two years may have delayed my career, they did not ruin it.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I grew up in South East London and moved to the US to be a student-athlete at Princeton University. At the time I didn’t consider myself creative, but simply a devoted track athlete who appreciated books and art. During college I started getting into theater, occasionally skipping practices as I was becoming more of an artist who did track than a track athlete who did art. I began making sculptures, working as a lighting and production designer, before studying digital web design while living in Chicago and North Carolina.

After finishing grad school and moving to London, I started freelancing as a web developer when I caught up with an old Princeton theater friend. Over coffee, she asked me to pick up my old production design hat and come with her to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Long story short, she told me to dump my boyfriend and find my feet in her room in Los Angeles while she traveled. She told me I’d love LA and I embraced her advice completely. Probably a bit crazy in retrospect, but it worked out. If it wasn’t for that coffee, I may still be that web developer deciding whether to continue or retire from track and field, leaving my design ambitions dormant for a little longer.

Now, based in LA, I work in both web and production design. One of my first jobs here was working with artist, or “performance architect”, Alex Schweder on his Balloon Museum installation, an experiential pop-up exhibit in downtown LA. Working on that installation with Alex reignited my passion for in-person production and inspired me to get back into it. Soon after, a friend’s recommendation landed me my first film gig in LA as a scenic and set decorator on a USC Stark puppet movie “Dirty Fuzz”. I grabbed my old paintbrushes and was able to meet one of my closest friends and collaborators on that set. That job opened the door to more opportunities, as I’ve been balancing my life between production and web design since.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

Currently, something that is driving me is spotlighting designers in a way they are respected more. Designers on movie sets or even exhibitions are somewhat “behind scenes” people, but their influence and talents go far beyond that. Most of the designers I work alongside have creative backgrounds outside of project work, and I want to see it in the limelight more. Similarly, in my own practice after working project after project I lose sight of my own individual work. It refreshes my perspective and makes me a better designer

Have you ever had to pivot?

Right now, collaboration is the most rewarding aspect of being an artist and creative. My artistic “niche” is exploring and re-creating personal spaces in a way that calls to a person’s essence and personality. Recently I’ve been working with my close-friend and collaborator Natalie. We are working on a photographic installation project which takes complex scans of bedrooms, before combining them and creating meshed spaces. Something about exploring our friendship through space and combining two rooms that have never seen eachother has been really interesting. Why I bring up collaboration as a main rewarding aspect is there are so many skills Natalie has that I don’t. The most difficult thing about being an artist for me is motivation – having a collaborator makes it so much easier and rewarding to do work. Natalie’s motivation, skills and ideas really elevate my work, and I love that about being an artist.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://bedroom.cargo.site/

Image Credits

Isabella Hilditch