Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Katerina Lanfranco. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Katerina, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you take us back in time to the first dollar you earned as a creative – how did it happen? What’s the story?
While in graduate school pursuing my Master of Fine Arts degree at Hunter College, City University of New York I produced a series of “Field Note Studies” of invented hybrid animals in their imagined habitat. I had them on view during an open studios early on in my program. Luckily they caught the eye of a New York art dealer. Eventually Priska Juschka, whose eponymous gallery, located in Williamsburg, Brooklyn ended up selling over a dozen of these works on paper to the significant Judith Rothschild Foundation Contemporary Drawings Collection destined for the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. I had made these drawings in what felt like an idiosyncratic personal creative bubble. I devise different ideas about what kinds of marvelous hybrid creatures might exist in the world, and what types of environments they’d inhabit. I painstakingly assembled different parts of foam animal shapes and applied my version of scientific identification and wrote out their names letter-by-letter with individual stamps. During the time that the sale happened, I was traveling solo through Europe by train on an unlimited Eurorail pass. I was recreating my own version of The Grand Tour to see as much of Europe as possible with its tremendous reservoir of arts and culture in museums, galleries, and churches. When I found out that my work, or rather several of my works were destined for the permanent collection at the MoMA I was elated. I had never sold any art for money, let alone into a museum collection. Before that I had been uncomfortable selling art. People had offered to buy, but instead I would give my work as a gift to people I cared about. So, it was a surreal experience. I remember celebrating that evening on a beach in Barcelona twirling around with sheer joy and delight that my first art sale was essentially into the most important museum collection for Contemporary Art in the world. I knew that this was an auspicious beginning and would be a source of continuing comfort in the inevitable ups and downs of living life in the pursuit of art. This became a touchstone, and the first time I earned money as a creative.
Katerina, 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’m an artist and art professor. Primarily a painter, I also make sculptures, works on paper, and installations. I am based in NYC, with a studio in an industrial building in the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn. Ironically the building where I make paintings, used to be a paint manufacturing building. I am represented by the Nancy Hoffman Gallery in Chelsea, NY, and have been since 2006 when I had my first show with the gallery while it was still located in SoHo on West Broadway. My work changes and is responsive to whatever I am going through or experiencing and exploring in life. I aim to balance the role of art instructor, mother, wife, and artist. I think it is hard to juggle different parts of oneself that need to be richly complex to feel satisfying. A lot of female artists lose themselves in their family life and responsibilities, meanwhile, other female artists forgo motherhood and marriage for the sake of focusing on their careers. I don’t feel like it’s an either-or, and there’s no guaranteed success in one or the other if you only choose one path. I don’t think being a full-time creative is for everyone, and I don’t think family life is for everyone, but I do think that there’s a way to manage both with an ebb and flow of attention and priority, combined with flexible creative thinking. (For instance I have my plants and fish set-up on automatic watering and feeding systems while I write this during my stay at an artist residency in Cape Cod.)
My work explores nature, beauty, sciences, fantasy, and mysticism. I like the Japanese term Zuihitsu – meaning following the brush. I think it encourages both patience and faith in the process of making art. I am drawn to beauty in nature and marvel and the mathematical genius in natural forms. Colors and patterns delight me, and I try to bring this sense of adventure, discovery, and marvel into my artwork to share with others.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
Hands down, the most rewarding thing about being a creative is that you get to make your own rules. Consequently, you get to break your own rules as well. Through my work I am able to take anything that catches my interests and make a meaningful work of art in response to it. I’m often surprised by my own artwork, which forces me to accept and sit in a space of unknowing and uncertainty with a degree of comfort and trust that the painting or artwork will work itself out. It is inherently a very meditative and character building process. Some artists plan their work and create something with the full picture in mind from the very beginning of the process, however I think it’s a waste since you don’t get the full advantages of growth and discovery. My hope is that this gets transmitted in the work that I make to contribute to a sense of meaning in life.
Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.
I think living in a highly capitalistic culture, where people fawn over status symbols of wealth, that it might be incomprehensible to some that artists make art for art’s sake and not necessarily for money. The money/art equation has always been a complicated one. But making art for me is not only about outcomes and sales. Good outcomes and sales are great, but so is process, engagement, community, purpose of life and being able to envision and execute short, medium, long-range goals. My favorite aspect of my journey as a creative is that I never have to retire. I look forward to making art for the rest of my life.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.katerinalanfranco.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/katerinalanfranco/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LanfrancoStudio
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katerina-lanfranco-17374a6b/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/katlanfran
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@KaterinaLanfranco1
- Yelp: https://www.youtube.com/c/KLTeaching
- Other: https://www.moma.org/artists/28876 (6 of my artworks are visible online on the Museum of Modern Art website.)
Image Credits
Portrait credit: Photographer Daryl-Ann Saunders Artwork credit: Artist Katerina Lanfranco (and courtesy of Nancy Hoffman Gallery)