We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Cindy Lozito. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Cindy below.
Alright, Cindy thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Are you happier as a creative? Do you sometimes think about what it would be like to just have a regular job? Can you talk to us about how you think through these emotions?
I spent most of my twenties and into my early thirties hopping around part-time and full-time jobs in customer service, retail, tech, office temp work, social justice nonprofits, and health companies. I considered most of this work financial sustenance while I figured out how exactly art would play a role in my life, and then the work became stepping stones before I’d eventually rake in enough income from my artistry to support my life without the additional gigs. It’s an immense privilege as well as a testament to the hours and hours of groundwork I put in that I can now officially work as an artist full-time. My life as a working artist now involves many plates spinning at once: murals, digital illustration, teaching artist workshops, sales from art fairs, and (hopefully, one day!) grants.
When I experience a month or two of quieter commissions or opportunities where I have to figure out how to make ends meet, I start missing the security of a “regular job.” The same thoughts arise when I’m having dinner with a friend with a conventional career and they share how they’re able to plan a vacation months ahead of time or have an extremely clear picture of how to financially plan for their long-term goals. Life as a full-time artist means my plans must account for unpredictability, and the expectation of a consistent, steady increase in yearly salary or benefits that my friends with normal jobs enjoy is not a guarantee for me. I miss knowing that a paycheck, health insurance premium, and a 401k contribution will all magically sort themselves out to and from my accounts every two weeks. I occasionally feel wistful for the days when I’d get paid for idle time sitting listlessly and nodding in virtual meetings, which was what office work felt like for me most of the time.
But in those moments, I also have to remember the feeling of being chained to my virtual desk, watching other people make art online or install murals in my community while I thought, “I wish I could do that, and I KNOW I can do that.” I am never thinking about conventional careers when I’m getting paid to wander a museum for research, cashing in a paycheck from a paid brand partnership that emotionally did not feel like “labor” for me, helping to bring artwork to communities and organizations that do incredible work on the ground, or dispersing my schedule in exactly the way I want to without having to ask a boss for time off. I remember how unhappy I felt pursuing other careers outside of visual arts, and even though I don’t deny the possibility that one day I might feel differently, I know that right now I’m exactly where I need to be and doing the work I am meant to be doing.
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 am a muralist, digital artist, and cartoonist based in South Philadelphia, though I’ve created murals in New York City and digital art for clients around the globe. I started creating art professionally through a female artist collective I helped co-direct in Brooklyn called Art Girl Army. We were a group of young artists in the 2010s trying to support each other with online and word-of-mouth opportunities, in-person workshops, fundraisers, and skill sharing. I designed flyers and art prints for our collective, and those early projects opened up more commissions like wedding invitations, merch for musicians, and posters for dance events for other members of the collective. Once I moved from Brooklyn to Philadelphia, I worked as a freelance designer on projects like brand identities and logos, but I knew that illustration was really where my heart wanted to be. I got a job at a health startup making editorial illustrations for articles written by people living with health conditions. By making tons of illustrations every week and experimenting with digital techniques, my art portfolio truly exploded. Brands began reaching out after seeing the art I was posting on Instagram, and those digital art commissions became requests for public art, which is now a large chunk of my professional work.
When I’m creating public art for a community or organization, I like to think of my work as either representing or inspiring imagination within that group. Butterflies have shown up a lot in my work during this season in my career, and I’ve used them as symbols of hope, wonder, and temporality. A giant butterfly holds a quote in Spanish about pursuing dreams for a light box I designed that spoke to the origin story of Mexibike, a bicycle shop in South Philly run by a woman who emigrated with her family to Philadelphia from Puebla, Mexico. While she expressed to me in our interviews for the project that life has been extraordinarily hard for her, she sees the shop as an avenue for hope and prosperity for her children as they grow. In “Between the Trees,” a mural I painted for the Philadelphia Museum of Art inspired by the feeling of spring, I included a giant butterfly with human-like eyes to represent the way we all become attuned to colors and shapes in our environment when winter finally shakes away. I engaged with the Philadelphia Museum again as their Latinx Heritage Month Collaborator for a campaign I called The Fabric of Belonging. In that work, butterflies served as guardians resting on the border of a fabric-shaped collage showing photos of my Puerto Rican family members, many of whom have passed away and whom I honored through the piece. For a mural I’m working on now for an urban farm serving the community in North Central Philadelphia, I am drawing tons of bright flowers, fruit, and vegetables to cover a 1595 square foot exterior wall. While the lower section of the wall will be covered by tall sunflowers in the summer, painted petals and lush vines that weave through the mural’s design will remind people who see the wall during the winter of the farm’s abundance in warmer months. I like how public art requires a lot of problem solving, but also illustrative, imaginative play.
I do a LOT of different things – comics for the Philadelphia Airport, vinyl decals to beautify businesses, illustrated wrapping paper, diary comics workshops for kids and adults, murals for nonprofits and corporations – the list goes on! My favorite types of clients are the ones who understand the throughline of my many different crafts and can identify the heart of my work. I always believe that the guiding principle for why I create is to make myself and others feel seen. When I facilitate experiences for young people to explore art, it opens up a reciprocal opportunity for us to inspire each other and remember that there’s always value in creating something. I feel similarly when adults share how my art has had an impact on them; some of the very best emails I’ve received are ones like this: “You made me smile, cry, and remember Mom and Dad, tías and tíos, primos, friends, and so many other loved ones when we gathered over food, conversation, arguments, and abrazos.”
I think clients and the public are drawn to my work because I’m not afraid of being playful and expressive with my motifs. I lean into friendly characters, creative storytelling, and bright but soothing color palettes in my style. I’d also say that clients enjoy working with me because I have a corporate background that has helped me communicate and present my creative ideas in a way that’s more legible for them. Sometimes I notice that fellow artists I know who went to art school and haven’t dabbled outside of that path are missing the business and communication skills that are required for thriving in this career. I don’t think it’s possible to succeed without understanding that as artists, we have to know how to communicate and liaise well with people who don’t identify as artists, too.
Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?
I don’t think enough people consider how much I have to be on top of absolutely every aspect of my career as an artist. While I am in the thick of several projects running at once, I also have to make sure I’m re-engaging previous clients and seeking out new ones so that I’m not left in the lurch when my flurry of projects come to a close. Most people I know with conventional 9 to 5 jobs can establish some time to “shut off” from thinking about work, but as an artist in this generation, there is always something I can be doing through the lens of my career. That can look like posting or promoting on social media at any hour of the day, attending art openings, leading evening or weekend workshops, etc. It’s really up to me as an artist to create my own boundaries around life and work and decide when enough is enough for the day, which can be both a blessing and a curse.
Another thing I’ll mention that’s more specific to my journey is the idea of being an “overnight success.” People who are new to my work, either in interviews or colloquial settings, have mentioned that my career looks like it has grown at lightning speed from the outside. The reality is that I’ve been working professionally as an artist and monetizing my work in some capacity for almost a decade now. That timeframe doesn’t include the years I spent studying art history, nor the years beforehand where I had to regain the confidence to try to make art again after being told by an admissions officer that I shouldn’t apply to art school as an undergrad. My journey has had so many peaks and valleys dotted with hundreds of rejection emails, days spent crafting responses to open calls, printing out way more art prints than I should have to sell at fairs, pages and pages of ugly sketchbook ideas, and moments of internal realization where I felt like I didn’t hit the mark as well as I possibly could. Every successful project I post on my Instagram or share on my website contains hidden hours of problem solving alone in my studio or hashing out ideas with my husband over dinner. There is so much more work that goes on behind every success reel.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
That it was “too late.” I used to fill up so many journal pages with woes about how I wasn’t a skilled enough artist, or how I would never be an accomplished artist or illustrate a book or know how to make comics because I was “too late.” I was still in my TWENTIES writing that stuff and feeling paralyzed by that type of thinking! I’m not even sure where I got that idea stuck in my head; it might have been from seeing artists much younger than me with a prolific set of work to share, or because I grew up very academically successful and unsure of how to funnel that energy when school ended. I wish I had spent some of that time self-pitying just making bad art instead, because the reality is that I had to practice a ton before my mark making started to look more like the ideas I had in my head. I still draw a lot of stuff that feels disappointing, but now I see my sketchbook as a safe place for me to land and excavate rather than the meeting place for all of the inner failures I have to overcome.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://cindylozito.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/acleartrace/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cindy-lozito-94b75390/
- Other: https://cindylozito.substack.com/
Image Credits
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Steve Weinik, Whitney Smith, Sammy Kovnat, Erica Figueroa Thomas