We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Eileen Roscina. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Eileen below.

Eileen, thanks for taking the time to share your stories 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 go through different phases of loving the freedom of a creative life as an artist and wanting something more straightforward where I know exactly what to do next. Sometimes it would be so nice to have a job that you were told what to do, to just show up. But most of the time, I know I am doing what I am supposed to be doing and am grateful for the opportunity to give to my community in this way – however abstract it may feel sometimes.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My path has been non-linear, to say the least. When I was a young girl, I wanted to be an artist. Somewhere along the way, I was told or started to believe that I was not good enough. I abandoned art completely. Years later, I attended film school, lived in a sustainability ranch in Central America, studied culinary arts and how to heal with whole foods at Nutritional Therapy Institute, studied fermentation and started a kitchen. My love for art and my true nature as an artist started to shift my career path. I began to draw the food I was making, then studied formally how to illustrate plants at the School of Botanical Arts and Illustration, which really was the springing board for my career as an artist. Now, I make art full time, am a full time mom and teach art as well. I think the single biggest obstacle in my path has been myself. For so long, I was afraid to own my power – fearful that people would actually listen to me when I started speaking my truth. Self-doubt and negative self-talk have been my biggest challenges to overcome. Making art is a powerful tool for self-expression, and over time, this has helped me develop the confidence to take bigger creative risks. Getting out of my head by connecting with nature, or helping others through teaching helps put things in perspective.
Currently, through the study of biophilia, plants and the use of organic materials, my work explores the tension between states of consciousness and unconsciousness, connection and disconnection, to ourselves and to nature. My work examines the patterns found in the natural world, exploring ideas of form, spirituality, and human instincts through the lens of abstraction and atavistic forms. How does the blueprint of creation found in the architecture and geometry of nature reveal about being a human? I challenge our disconnection from the environment and the conventional wisdom of our time being the dream of unending material progress. Through biomimicry, I attempt to examine social issues and spiritual practices to raise the question of realizing a radically different metaphoric mapping of time, space and our place in the world. Sculpting hand-collected organic materials in concert with specialized industrial optics, I propose a radical re-evaluation of the natural world, our connection to it, and to one another. and the forces that tirelessly, mechanistically work to separate us from it. I’m perplexed that nature is somehow, somewhere other than where we are now, and that our species is deeply, on a cellular level part of nature, yet our ubiquitous technology and forces of material progress, self consumption can make it feel so separate.My art practice often relies on spending hundreds of hours growing from seed or gathering organic materials in the wilderness that I use to make biotic material sculptures and experimental films. By manipulating celluloid film, abstraction in my analogue work paves the way for interpretation as a poetic act between the viewer and the screen.
The boundaries between my life and my art making are blurred. I draw an enormous amount of inspiration from my garden and grow a significant portion of my art materials. I love and insist on being subject to seasonal and daily weather patterns when making things like cyanotypes. There are thousands of hidden hours of process behind every work, harvesting one willow branch at a time in the winter – growing, pressing and storing flowers from seed. This has cultivated a great patience in me, and a joy to witness the duration of these natural processes and organic forms emerge. My inspirations are elemental: the richness of soil, the quality of light, the eons of history and limitless potential packed into a tiny seed—small things that tend to go unnoticed.
A large part of my art practice is experimental filmmaking. Film holds such power as a medium. It can be a visceral experience, holding a viewer’s attention for an extended period of time. Sometimes when I watch a film, I feel it in my whole body, unlike other forms of storytelling. I was initially drawn to film because I am interested in time, our experience of time, and time-based works in general. I am a tactile person and love a roll of celluloid film as an object. Oftentimes, I manipulate and augment the physical film strip: painting, removing layers and rephotographing it until I achieve the desired effect. Through these processes, I am interested in creating moving experiences despite the viewer’s acute awareness that they are watching nothing but a film representation. My film practice questions not only the representation and the film medium but also the idea of perception itself.
I think you can effectively tell a story with either film or video, but I believe depth is added to my work because of my deep love of the process of working with analog film. Despite my best efforts to turn digital, I adore Super-8 and 16mm. Aside from having the inherent film “look” that is dreamy and luscious, I love the accidents that can occur with celluloid. There is an element of chance and some of my most interesting shots are due to a strange light leak, water damage, or a wacky shutter. These are things that could never be fabricated by digital means. I also cherish the waiting period between when you shoot, and when you receive your film back from the lab/process it, seeing it for the first time. This is in direct opposition to our world of instant gratification. Sometimes the results are terribly disappointing, but most of the time it’s pure magic.
Bringing this back to work with organics and natural materials, observing patterns in nature has trained my eye to see the detail more clearly. So much of my process is quiet observation, patiently waiting for the light to shift, or noticing an unusual undulating shadow. It’s all about deep seeing.

Alright – so here’s a fun one. What do you think about NFTs?

I think we will all look back and laugh about them down the line – but perhaps I will be proven wrong and that is the true direction the art world is taking.

Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?

I wish I had known about the abundant resources of teaching yourself art, Adobe Suite and other tools online. There are too many to name, but I am uncertain if I would have invested in a college education, where these resources, if you are self motivated, are incredible tools.

Contact Info:

• Website: eileenroscina.com
• Instagram: @eileenroscina

Image Credits
Eileen Roscina