We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Carolyn Campo a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Carolyn , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to hear about the things you feel your parents did right and how those things have impacted your career and life.

My parents are without a doubt the reason I was able to pursue a career as a creative. I knew when I was younger that they supported and believed in my abilities, but now that I’m a parent, I am just beginning to comprehend how lucky I was to have had them see me for who I am. I always group my mom and dad as a collective, especially since I was very close with my dad, kindred spirits, but my mom was instrumental in fostering my artistic and creative abilities. In first grade we moved to a town in New Jersey that would get pretty heavy snowfall in the winters, and that first year we were hit pretty hard and had probably more snow days than school. I started making doll clothes for my American Girl doll out of some craft fabric my mom had laying around. They were as basic as it comes; I would lay my doll on top of the fabric and cut around her to make dresses and matching sets and then sew them up by hand. Those were the first things I ever designed. My mom watched me do this for a few years and then when she saw the timing was right, she took me to sewing lessons at the Rag Shop in the neighboring town. I made my mom a cotton poplin sunflower patterned vest. Sewing was an unusual hobby to have at the time and I was basically a lone wolf, but friends seemed to think it was interesting that I knew how to do it. I loved having complete control over creating. I continued to grow, sewing my own clothes into middle school and high school and then friends would ask me to alter their clothes, fix their prom dress, small things like that. My older sister was very math and science centered, and my parents were as well. I had the option to go to the private catholic school that my sister attended and I had to make the choice between a prestigious academic high school or our public, also rigorously academic high school, but which happened to have an outstanding art program that had everything from art fundamentals, drawing and painting to an amazing computer graphics Mac lab, dark room, ceramics studio; you name it. My mom set up a tour with the art department and let me see for myself what they had to offer. I think back now to how incredible this was. I was shy for a long time and felt embarrassed by putting myself out there and asking for anything. My mom on the other hand has a motto, “Just ask. The worst thing that can happen is they say no”. She lives by this and I am finally learning to incorporate this into my life. This was the first big choice that was given to me to make in my life, as an eighth grader. I got to call the shots in my own life. They laid out the options and basically were saying they trusted my decision. I chose the art program. I chose it over and over again and still continue to choose it. It was the best decision I made for myself, and most importantly, I knew my parents supported me. In a freshman year drawing class I saw a flyer posted on the door about weekend classes for high school students at FIT. I mentioned it to my mom and the first chance to enroll, there we were, taking the train into Penn Station together. I did three years of those weekend classes while I was in high school and it was an amazing experience. I learned the fundamentals of fashion illustration, draping, pattern making and interior design. I met other high school students with similar vibes and I even peaked the interest of the professor teaching the draping class who gave me her card and said that when I was ready to apply to FIT, please call her. She ended up being the dean of the fashion design program when I called her, 3 years later. After a year of traveling into the city with my mom, she let me take the train in by myself. It completely opened up my world. It gave me incredible confidence and the feeling of freedom that I’m pretty sure not many of my friends and peers were given as a high schooler. They were so proud of me. I would hear them telling their friends about what I was doing. They came to every show I ever had, wore everything I ever made them and let me take over our dining room to become my studio. They let me explore. My mom would always say “This is her dream”. I would sometimes take offense to that because I felt like it wasn’t just a dream, it was happening. I was becoming a designer and this was my life. I realize now that this type of career path is really not a normal path and they were math and science- so it probably seemed unreal to be doing these things and was in a way a dream. They let me live my life, take chances, watched me create and showed me they believed in me. I never had to question if what I was doing was the right thing. It was unconditional love and trust. I hope I can do as right by my children as my parents have done by me. Truly incredible role models.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I started my art and stationery brand CAMPOFIORE Paper Studio 4 years ago during the pandemic. I am a fashion designer, surface pattern designer and fashion illustrator and have worked in the fashion industry in NYC since I was 21. Expecting that I would continue wholeheartedly on this career path, I learned first hand that life can change so quickly, when my dad unexpectedly died in the months leading up to my wedding, turning my world upside down. I lost the person in the world who understood me the most and everything that felt exciting and familiar in my glorious city no longer held the same excitement. My fiance and I lost our grounding after losing my dad and we left New York in search of something to distract us from our grief. After trying to regroup in Austin, Texas, we ended up abandoning our attempt to live normally, and left everything behind to travel as much of the world as we could, not knowing what else to do.
The saddest and most beautiful time of my life; leaving everything I thought was permanent to essentially begin again. An incredibly transformative chapter in both our lives. We learned how Mexico City is the most romantic place in the world and explored the coffee plantation towns of Colombia with my husband’s best friend. We stood atop Macchu Pichu and picked up hitch hikers along the roads in Peru on Christmas Day. We sat around a fire in the Atacama Desert with fellow travelers from everywhere on New Year’s Eve and made our way through the vineyards of Chile to camping in Patagonia to the Straight of Magellan. We learned the Tiblisi, Georgia has some of the oldest churches and wine making culture in the world. We got married in India. We were headed to Nepal and tickets booked for Sri Lanka when the pandemic came and it sent us back to a very strange reality. In a way, the world was in a state of shared grief and I no longer felt alone in not knowing where to turn or what to do. Art essentially saved me during all of the uncertainty and my now great love for watercolor painting grew, becoming my outlet for handling my grief. I found comfort in the natural world that was all we really had during quarantined life and wanted to have beauty around me as much as I could. I started painting the flowers and plants that I would see on daily walks while we were camped out in South Portland Maine at a friend’s home watching the world fall apart. My husband and I moved to Seattle, Washington and it became a catalyst for so much natural botanical inspiration. I painted almost daily and branched out into using gouache along with watercolor. Painting became somewhat meditative and I saw myself growing as an artist. A former boss of mine from New York had seen some of the paintings I was posting on social media and suggested I turn my work into a paper line. I thought it was an interesting idea and decided to give it a shot. I started designing wedding invitations, greeting cards, holiday cards, and stationery accessories in tandem with my floral centric artwork. It has grown into a business that is now available on ETSY, Minted and Patternbank. My work is ever evolving as my life ebbs and flows and it keeps me thinking like a student. I am influenced heavily by my career in fashion, as a fashion illustrator and my time designing prints for silk and woven scarves, thinking through layout and color palette. I love being able to have multiple outlets for my creativity and use my art for different mediums. Some painting elements naturally lend themselves to layouts for stationery versus surface pattern prints. Color, layout and mood are always the key focus of my art and I strive to create original works that are true to my modern romantic aesthetic. I’m now a mother of two young children and my art continues to be a way for me to express the changes of life and challenges me to keep exploring. I feel very honored to be a part of people’s lives and homes whenever I work on a wedding invitation or a custom piece of art. With so much creativity in the world, the chances that someone finds my work seems impossible and then feels that connection to its sensibility; it always blows me away. It’s truly a beautiful way to connect with people. I work with clients to make sure every detail is as they imagined and the mood is established for the important events of their lives. I love expanding on my existing designs to create a custom piece, maybe a map for the day of the wedding, a corresponding thank you card, an extra vellum piece or place cards. No request is unachievable!

Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?

The one name that was key to helping me dive into watercolor painting as well as start an art and stationery business is Jenna Rainey. Her book Everyday Watercolor was amazing to learn the fundamental techniques of watercolor painting and her tie in to share each lesson you complete on social media helped foster community and provided immense encouragement to keep moving through the lessons. I also took her online course for beginning a stationery business called Pen to Press. She walked you through step by step on how and where to begin and made it seem achievable, which in the end, it was. It helped me get started and I tried not to focus on being perfect, but putting product and ideas out there and then finessing and tweaking along the way. It is so easy to get stuck by thinking this is not perfect, but it’s essential to just start.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

The biggest lesson for me to unlearn was in a way to stop creating for other people. Throughout my entire career in the fashion industry, I created for others. A brand has an identity and a customer and the expectations are generally set for a designer. It’s a huge challenge to create season after season, having to keep reinvigorating the same product in a new way. But at the same time, you really get to understand the customer. The path is clear and there are checks and balances keeping you on the right aesthetic path, with managers, merchandisers and meetings to decide what’s appropriate. I was very used to this way of creative thinking, so when I started creating for myself, it could and can be very daunting sharing my voice without those checks and balances. You have to trust that how you see the world is valuable. I had to push away the voices of people telling me, I wish you would create this type of art. Being true to yourself and having faith in what you are creating is a relentless challenge. Now, every time I sit down to paint I have to remind myself to show up for me, no matter what comes out of that session.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://carolyncampo.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/carolyncampofiore
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carolyncampo
• Other: https://www.minted.com/store/carolyncampo
  https://www.etsy.com/shop/CAMPOFIORE
  https://patternbank.com/carolyncampo