We were lucky to catch up with Abigail Vettese recently and have shared our conversation below.

Abigail, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What were some of the most unexpected problems you’ve faced in your career and how did you resolve those issues?

The greatest unexpected challenge I’ve come up against as an artist is finding the right conduit through which to express myself most deeply, while honoring the very things which inspire me to create in the first place. Something that is immensely important to me, which I hope to honor in all that I do in this life, is nature. My illustrations are centered around plants and insects and creatures of the natural world for whom I carry deep respect, and similarly, my music is often focused on these ideas of watching the world around me from the vantage point of an environmentalist. I feel a deep sadness about humanity’s impact on the natural world and I feel drawn to channel my frustrations through my creative pursuits.

With nature in mind, I’ve had to find ways to manage this care and sense of stewardship while reckoning with the fact that creativity requires the use of resources; that my life is not without impact on the ecosystems all around me. Panels and plastic pens and seemingly endless cables in the studio, shipping materials, cameras, batteries, and so forth, all utilizing resources that are taken from the very thing I wish to preserve. This can be difficult for me as I feel like I can’t truly live without leaving a footprint behind. In my desire to share something meaningful through my art, I sometimes wonder if the impact in regards to the environment is worth it or not. I am always navigating this challenge but I think I’ve been able to manage a fairly minimalist setup. I exclusively draw on wood paneling to feel reminded of the Earth’s presence in every resource I use, every item I touch and employ for my artistry. I try to use a few things as possible in my life and that extends to my creative process. I am hoping to continue on a path of sustainable creativity.

My studio setup is very minimal, I have one primary music device I use along with my computer and I try to not get caught up in the idea of having lots of gear or a bunch of supplies to channel my ideas through. And ideally, I would like to take things to more extreme lengths, living without making waste and without leaving anything detrimental to the planet behind.

While this may seem unrelated to the challenges of creating, it is something we should all consider in our process. How do our practices of expression and our forms of sharing our inner worlds leave a mark on the planet we reside on along with so many other living organisms? How can we persist to be inspired if all is lost from our over-use of what makes this life so spectacular? I hope to inspire others to find creative means of exercising sustainability in their creative efforts.

Abigail, 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 guided by my desire to learn and evolve. I’ve been creating art of various forms for as long as I can remember but my biggest project so far has been The Shape of Sanctum. It has sort of become my identity in some sense, a place where I can share my visual art. It is a place to dig into the depths of my creative curiosities and to share my musings. I’ve always valued sustainability and environmentalism and as an abstract person, I’ve sought out ways to highlight the natural world through art. I’ve landed on this project and have found a lot of success with my botanical illustrations. I’ve done a number of wonderful projects thanks to the folks who support my vision and feel a mutual respect for the natural world. It has been such a delight. I decided at a certain point that I wanted to learn to tattoo as well, without using machines, but instead employing the handpoke method. I wanted to learn to tattoo in a sustainable and intentional way and felt I would be able to translate ink drawing to tattooing quite well. It is a practice I am still very much a novice at, but it has been a fun journey to embark on so far, and I hope to continue developing skills behind the needle.

In the past year or so, I started sharing work via my self-titled project, Abigail Vettese, in which I’ve been exploring other forms of creativity. I’m taking a bit of a step back from The Shape of Sanctum, to give myself freedom and space to detach a bit from this rigid creative identity that’s been kind of imposed on me. I am an illustrator, but I am also so much more than that. I’ve been drawing for so long that it’s become almost a limitation in some senses. I love to do it, but there is something blissful in feeling safe enough within myself creatively to step away from drawing for this moment in time and to offer myself space to try some new ventures. Through my side project, I’ve been producing experimental IDM and found I really love filming the process. I tend to sort of fall into these deep pits wherein I feel a weight of responsibility to “fix” the world around me, to solve issues that are much larger than the scope of what I can manage on my own. That’s where a lot of the music I write comes from. And those ideas and challenges have also informed my writing, as well. Of course, my education also guides those explorations, infusing philosophy, sustainability and creativity in all of these various outlets.

I am proud of my willingness to dive into the unknown with my ideas. There are so many things I have learned in the last several years about my potential and my interests. I’ve been able to really challenge myself to go further and further into the seemingly endless stream of curiosity that lies within. I find I really quickly synthesize information and am able to sort of transmute it into these different forms of expression. I want people to know that creativity isn’t this stagnant thing, that you can explore a myriad of outlets and don’t need to stay in one discipline or arena for your whole creative life. It evolves and becomes malleable the more you lean into it. Creativity thrives on curiosity and the more you ask questions and feed that inner desire to know and evolve, the more your art will align with you. It grows alongside of you, and acts as this sort of companion that is there by your side throughout life.

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

I’ve had to unlearn this idea of perfection. I think many artists would agree that oftentimes the things we create and dislike the most, are ironically the very things that are received most lovingly by our audiences. We live in a creative environment that often highlights only the individuals who are making “perfect” work. It’s all so curated and frankly, fake. As I get older I find myself being much more interested in the imperfections of creativity. I want to see the messy process and the emotion behind a piece of art or film or music. Of course, I want my own work to be stylized and recognizable and beautiful, but I’ve become less concerned with fixing mistakes or reworking something until its dead. We can create so much pseudo-perfection in this technological ecosystem where we can so easily modify ever aspect of art until it’s unrecognizable that a human mind even created it. And as AI catches up with us, I want to see the humanity in art. I want to preserve the imperfection inherent to existing in flesh.

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

I am driven by the pursuit of gaining new understanding, of finding intrigue in things I never imagined would capture me. I think art allows us to find those things, and to change the trajectories we think we are on. Sometimes my creative journey takes me places I hadn’t thought of. Recently, my creative journey influenced me to go back to school, which I never imagined I would do. And it has been the best decision I’ve ever made for myself. The drive, the goal, the motivation, is to let creativity illuminate new ways of existing and thinking and seeing the world. To create a world for ourselves and others that is expansive and beautiful and curious.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.abigailvetteseart.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theshapeofsanctum/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@AbigailVettese
• Other: https://www.instagram.com/abigailvettese/ https://medium.com/@abigailvettese email: [email protected]