We recently connected with Charlotte Treiber and have shared our conversation below.

Charlotte, appreciate you joining us today. When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?

When I was 17 years old. It was my senior year of high school, and I was taking a photography class and an astronomy class, both of which inspired me heavily. We were learning about simulation theory in astronomy, and when I think of a simulation I think of something 2 dimensional, like a computer screen. So I painted the 9 planets (is Pluto a planet again?) as flat squares on this long skinny wooden panel, and I painted Earth as an American flag. I got so into the problem solving, I measured out the squares along the panel so precisely before I started, and I was like, if craters are circular in our 3D world, then that would mean they’d be L shaped in my 2D rendition, right? That’s probably wrong, but I really tried to get into the logic of the whole thing. In my photography class we were making these darkroom exposure drawings, and I was having a lot of fun with that, drawing these characters with random body parts and exposed spines, and breaking up each character onto multiple pieces of photo paper. It was around this time that I started to feel very burdened by my ideas actually, they hit me like a tidal wave & I remember going home early one day just to paint.

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

I grew up in Brooklyn, New York and was always a creative kid who liked to paint & draw. I was very quiet growing up, and felt very self-conscious from a young age. I’ve always had an active fantasy world and liked to keep to myself. I was in the middle school visual arts program, but not the high school one. Growing up I never took art seriously as a career path, and thought I’d major in Psychology in college. But in my senior year of high school everything changed, and I felt such a powerful call to create that it couldn’t be ignored, and I became obsessed with finishing a painting every day. Adjusting to college was difficult for this reason, since all I wanted to do was paint but I had to take all these unrelated courses since I didn’t go to art school. So I spent a lot of my free time in my dorm room, painting or drawing, tea-dying paper to look like old documents to write cursive over, and burning said paper to look even older. Those dorm rooms had windows that opened like double doors, I remember opening them & blowing the burnt paper bits out onto the quad, it was very romantic.

It was around my 3rd year of college that I met my now business partner, Jackson Williams, and he inspired me with talk of artists needing more support than what’s already provided post-college, how most other majors seem to have a specific ladder to climb towards success, but for artists that ladder is quite blurry. His thesis that following year was mapping out the plan for our business, Madhouse Multi-Arts. My thesis involved 7 foot paintings during Covid while the on-campus buildings were shutting down, and transporting and finishing them in Jackson’s garage.

I moved back in with my parents in New York for a few months after a very sad, virtual graduation from college, & promptly moved to Northampton after feeling restless, needing to start my “adult” life. I signed a 1 year lease with 3 other roommates in a 3 bedroom apartment, where my bedroom was technically the living room and I had a curtain for a door. I ended up having to sublet that room, since we closed on the Madhouse Multi-Arts building in Greenfield in 2021, before my lease was up.

The next couple months were a whirlwind of building renovations, getting my wisdom teeth removed, and staying in the upstairs of Jackson’s sister’s house while recovering from oral surgery, consuming lots of liquids, and mostly food from the Vietnamese restaurant I was working at full-time. We signed our first tenant in June, & filled the Madhouse with artist-renters shortly thereafter. The neighborhood was excited, people wanted to see what we were all about, how they could collaborate and get involved. We put out open calls for group shows and hosted opening receptions, chatting excitedly with all of our new friends. We started the Greenfield Arts Walk in May of 2022, getting custom logos printed on balloons for each location for the first final Friday. I spent a significant portion of this time feeling stressed, my art process felt frustrated and lacking focus, and I needed money now that I had quit the restaurant job. I figured I had built up a pretty good resume line with co-founding the Madhouse, and my wandering eye was called to something I hadn’t tried yet: an office job.

I was hired in December of 2022 as an assistant manager at an apartment complex a 20 minute drive away from where I was. I stayed at that job for about a year and a half, spending around half that time as the assistant manager before a slew of power struggles with the manager at the time landed me her position for the rest of my time there. I wasn’t making much art anymore, I was moody, not eating properly, and only motivated by money. The money never felt like enough, was never completely fulfilling, and my creative passion was replaced by a need for perfection and control at work. Around my 26th birthday I felt like it was time to start making really good money and saving for a family that I hoped to have one day, despite never having a real boyfriend before. So I quit the property manager job and took a solar sales job thinking I could make 200k in a year, but the stress and power struggles only continued, making my ability to focus on actual work, worse. This lasted for about 2 weeks before I completely cut off the job world and slunk back to the Madhouse, retreating into my shell (I’m a Cancer) and spending most of my time indoors. But the thoughts of having a family one day still stuck with me, and I figured now that I was in the 2nd half of my twenties it was time to find a husband. I had joked with my mom and sister about quitting my job to pursue dating full time a while back, and that had become my reality. So I opened Tinder, but like, for real this time.

I matched with my then boyfriend in a matter of days on Tinder, and he was everything I had ever dreamed of. If I created an avatar of my ideal man it would be him, and our personalities balanced beautifully. But he lived 2 hours away, and I had just spent the past couple months avoiding the world and subsequently feeling more goblin than human. The universe plopped what I perceived as perfection right into my lap, but I wasn’t ready for it and it was all happening so fast. So I started scrambling. Scrambling to connect with myself again, my truest self, so I could connect with him properly. I went into my studio with more determination than I had in months, even years, and started laying mounds of black thread straight from the spool onto a canvas. It felt like all this black thread was just pouring out of me, like Spiderman getting rid of that black sludge that was clinging to his body. When I got that out of my system I opened myself up to beauty, to color, to a palette far expanded from my usual blacks, whites, & reds. It wasn’t long before my art became completely pink.

We broke up. But that’s okay, because now I was on track, and focusing on my passion with more conviction than ever. It’s shortly before my 27th birthday and I’m painting everyday, returning to a more balanced color palette and looping in materials and techniques that defined the start of my art practice in my late teens and early twenties (just in time for my Saturn return). I’ve accepted my identity as an artist and the money from selling 1 painting feels immensely more meaningful than my old salary. Fast forward to present day, it’s a couple months after my 27th birthday, and I’m in my childhood home working on a 6 foot by 4 foot commission for my collector’s daughers’ bedroom. I’m working in my parents’ basement, just like I did when I was 17.

Can you share your view on NFTs? (Note: this is for education/entertainment purposes only, readers should not construe this as advice)

There was that initial hype which died down, but I don’t think they’ll be dead forever. I think they’re going to come back in a more substantial and pervasive way, when society is A LOT more techy. Right now we’re still very tied to the physical world, but I think the digital world will continue to have more and more meaning as time goes on, and people will care more about having digital paintings for their digital houses, or whatever digital world building will look like in the future. It’s like those apple vision pro goggles or when those VR headsets came out, there’s this initial hype (and worry) that we’re all going to imminently become cyborgs, but after that hype dies down I imagine these things will creep back in and truly integrate themselves when, and if, the time is more appropriate.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

I think it all starts in school. In college art classes you learn how to make art and think critically, but there’s little to no advice or guidance on how to actually become self-sufficient in the world as an artist. It’s kind of assumed that you won’t, or you’ll go into teaching, or work a completely unrelated job for years and years until you can actually make and sell art full time. I think making art and becoming an artist is a very personalized journey, but I still think some basic steps can be decoded and shared more openly. For art majors it may be a good idea to have those students take entrepreneurship classes, to learn about networking and sales. Or even have an assignment in art class be to sell a piece, even for $1, to a friend or family member.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://charlottertreiber.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/charlottetreiber/
• Other: Email: [email protected]