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

Alright, Patrizia thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?

I have always relied on my creativity, my capacity to translate into lines, textures, colors, images of things I see, or imagine. Art, visual arts in particular, always provided me with an outlet to escape, to find solace. However, it was not until recently that I felt something higher compelled me to share my work with others. The images, the thoughts, the concepts, it all started to pile up and to form a real concept, a real story. This story keeps changing, my pieces a reflection of those changes and those stories. While art has always been a big part of my life it was not until recently that I discovered art as a professional path. I entered a textile competition at the International Show of the Arts of Thread in 2019. I created a piece without a specific goal in mind. This was a non-functional piece. It’s only objective to please the viewer, to transport him/her. I won second place. This small triumph became the stepping stone for a whole new chapter. I now divide my time between teaching textile techniques and studio work. I am still at the very beginnings of my artist career, but already feel incredibly motivated and encouraged by the responses I am getting from people who encounter my work.

Patrizia, 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 came into art through the design path. I was trained as a textile designer. I obtained a BS in textile design from the Escuela Universitaria Centro de Diseño, in Montevideo, Uruguay and an MS in textile design for prints from Thomas Jefferson University, in Philadelphia, PA. Although I always knew art was how I best identified myself. As a child I drew and painted constantly. My mom was always encouraging me on my art endeavours, introducing me to artists, attending art classes, visiting museums and galleries. However, the idea that I could dedicate myself to art always seemed like an extravagance.

Design was practical. Whenever you design you have a goal in mind. An object, something concrete. The ultimate goal is always to sell the thing you create. Art is much more complex and nuanced. The one thing I never expected was how my professional life would take me away from using my hands. While working in the design field I felt handicapped, like a part of me was absent. As a print designer I would spend most of my time at the computer, manipulating artwork, putting designs in repeat, developing colorways. On the side I began to experiment with hand crafted techniques, block-printing, japanese shibori, stitching, embroidery, beading. This experimentation led me to create wearable products. I couldn’t walk away too far from the creation of products, my design training always influencing my decisions. As time went by, teaching took more center stage and the making of products became more and more experimental, opening myself to new possibilities and in the end to a new artistic expression.

I define my work as poetic textiles, they can be best described as sculptural embroidered paintings that defy the two dimensions usually ubiquitous to textiles. In my work I incorporate thread, yarn, fabric remnants, found and heirloom fabrics, as well as a variety of repurposed materials. A special focus is given to plastics which are an emblematic material in all of my pieces. Plastic, while it is one of the most successful of human inventions in the history of material science, its widespread use is one of the biggest contributors to the current state of our environment, as well as climate change. This paradoxical material, which arrived to solve many of our problems, has become one of the main contributors to today’s society of convenience and consumption. Many of my pieces evoke bucolic, tropical, exuberant lands of abundance and bounty, however upon a closer look you realize nothing is what it seems. The portrayed paradise is not made of natural, perfect, well-formed materials but rather out of fragmented, torn, frayed, disposable pieces. Using stitch as my only way to patch and mend my broken universe, I tirelessly and painstakingly unite the pieces to make them whole again.

In its purest sense my work aims to transcend our earthly constraints and attain a new dimension. In this dimension I experience balance, harmony, extreme beauty, peace, eternity. My work is inspired by life and the idea that we are only a small part of this higher organism. I create art with this in mind. Nature is how I feel this higher being and, in my work, I am always striving to translate into images that which inspires me and connects me with this higher universe.

My ultimate goal is to trigger emotions, sensations and ideally develop awareness around issues regarding the state of the environment, as well as raise the materials and techniques I employ to a wider sphere of discussion that enables them to be witnessed and experienced outside of the domestic, purely female domain.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

For me making and creating is compulsive, the fruits of which I feel a duty to share with others. This new path I am embarked on as an artist is what I feel I was meant to do all along. I don’t regret my past experiences though, they are like the broken pieces in my current work, small bits of rich life that now form part of the whole. The most rewarding part of my work today is that I feel in harmony, at peace and in a perpetual state of discovery.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

While my pieces are extremely personal, they exist within a wider sphere. One of the main goals of my work is to resist the temptation to consume, to purchase new, more exciting materials. To make art with what I already have, what lands in my hands or what I find as I scavenge the world around me. Repurpose, recycle, recreate. Another of my big goals has to do with the fact that, as an immigrant woman in the United States, I am in a constant search for my “home”. I feel the need to dig into my past, to reinvent my homeland. This effort transports me to a land of legends, allegories, full of nostalgia and longing. The stories of women in my family who like me left their homelands in search of sunnier lands in the South of South America doing the opposite trip, them to the South, me to the North, are stitched into my work. Using embroidery, and stitching, the same techniques they might have used in their households I get to carry their voices into the future. Together these two big goals, drive my creative journey.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.patriziaferreira.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/patriziaferreira/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/patrizia.ferreira