We were lucky to catch up with Katie Ruiz recently and have shared our conversation below.

Katie, 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.

The Pompom Project helped a lot of people through the pandemic and that was a great feeling. We were able to connect and work together even when we weren’t together. The pompom project is a group art project. People make pompoms, those cute fuzzy yarn balls often used in craft and decoration. But we make thousands of them and create huge art sculptures out of them that go to museums and galleries. The craft was cathartic during the stressful time and helped people focus on a positive cause.

Katie, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I am a Chicana artist living and working in San Diego CA. I studied fine art at Northern Arizona University and the New York Studio School for Drawing, Painting and Sculpture. With parents from both sides of the border, I navigated two cultures, languages and belief systems. As an avid traveller I have studied art in Guanajuato, Mexico and visited 22 other countries. I primarily work in Painting and Fiber Art, often mixing the two.

My artworks are about the interconnectedness of human beings. Utilizing the subject matter of blankets as a connector, a safe space, and a metaphor for that connection. The textiles of the blankets moved me to explore learning weaving in Mexico. This exploration of Mexican and American textiles throughout my work is expressed through painting and fiber art. As a Chicana artist I live in the in between of two worlds, Mexican and American.

My paintings of the border are about re-imagining welcome as it pertains to the US Mexico border. As a San Diego resident and first generation Chicana, whose father was born in Tijuana, I am hyper aware of the issues about the border, the wall, and the people stuck between. I worked with the refugee children who came across in mass numbers summer 2020. I taught them art classes and tried to be happy spot in their very hard situation. As San Diego processed 2000 children from that facility into the US I was inspired to create the imaginary border portal paintings. Often activist in nature the work utilizes yarn, paint and mixed media to express trials of humanity in our current times with a focus on relationships, women and refugees. The subject matter is heavy but the work hopefully comes through as still colorful, beautiful and healing.

During the pandemic I also created a community art project called “The Pompom Project”. This project creates large scale art installations from handmade yarn pompoms created in classes or zoom parties. This project helps people connect to each other through art. The craft is quite meditative and helps students use their creativity to create an artwork that can then be installed in an office, gallery or museum. Some of the installations have become so big they exceed 2000 pompoms and we utilized a 35 ft lyft to attach it to the facade of the wall.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

A lesson I had to learn was to not box myself in. In this society you’re told you have to pick one thing and stick to it. Although I love painting I have always been a crafter but was told that wasn’t as valuable or serious. I was told that craft is made by artisans and I should stick to oil paint. So for years I stuck to painting, I went to figure painting school and painted from the model 8 hours a day. It wasn’t until I left graduate school and went to a residency in Oaxaca that I took on a new craft, weaving that I began to play with new materials. It turns out my fiber art has made me more well known. It is the community crafts that ended up making it on the walls of museums, not the oil paintings. The lesson is, there is no one way to make it in the art world. You have to find your own path and follow the wins.

Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

It’s important to have a wide variety of skills beside being an artist. If I were staring out today, I would take classes in business, social media marketing, and public speaking. Community colleges often offer these types of classes for minimal or free of cost. There are resources where you can find grants and residences through Artwork Archive, Artist Art Deadlines list, NYFA and more. You must have a website and an instagram profile. You should lead with authenticity. Grant writing, art applications, taxes and sales are all part of being artist.

But, I would say the best resource is going to the galleries, meeting other artists, going to museums and events where you can create an art community that supports each other. Then, what happens is people refer you and you refer others for projects and exhibits, networking and building each other up through authenticity and genuine connection.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.katieruizart.com
• Instagram: @katieruizart
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/katieruizart/

Image Credits
photo by Holly Sutor