Meet the Artist - Marisa Aragon Ware
Marisa holding her piece "Moonshadow" which was nominated for Beautiful Bizarre Magazine's 2019 People's Choice Awards.
I recently had the pleasure of chatting with artist Marisa Aragon Ware. I have been following Marisa’s work for quite some time and through the years I have been fascinated and inspired by her visual narratives and beautiful imagery. Located in Colorado, USA, she expressed to me during our conversation that she feels very fortunate to be able to surround herself in the beautiful scenic landscape as it is often her key source of inspiration. Naturally - pun intentional - the centre themes surrounding her work involve life and nature in which Marisa is able to showcase the delicate and arguably essential balance between the two in a very unique way, highlighting both her technical skill and her conceptual abilities. As a paper sculptor and illustrator, Marisa’s work captures the magic of the natural world in ways that are distinctively her own and she is able to share her message in careful detail; turning two dimensional paper into three dimensional works of art.
Some of her accomplishments thus far include, being named one of Beautiful Bizarre Magazine’s Top 100 paper artists in addition, her work has been featured in international art magazines, books and showcased in galleries across the United States. Artistic accolades aside, she also received an undergraduate degree in Journalism from the University of Colorado and has written for Hi-Fructose Magazine and Juxtapoz Magazine as well as authoring and illustrating her own children’s book. I think it’s fair to say her creative abilities are not only remarkable but endless.
I hope you enjoy the following interview in which Marisa discusses her journey as an artist, the inspirations and concepts behind her work, advice she’s received over the years as well as her upcoming projects.
Echo - Marisa Aragon Ware
I just want to start off by saying thank you for taking time to chat with me, I really appreciate it. To get us started, can you give us some background on your journey as an artist, what has lead you to this point in your professional career?
Yes of course, my art journey began when I moved to San Francisco to go to art school and prior to that, I had never taken an art class - never, not in high school or college. I initially wanted to be a journalist so I got an undergraduate degree in Journalism and began working for a newspaper in Colorado which eventually closed down. When the newspaper closed down I was out of a job and it was the first time in my life where there was a pause in the forward trajectory my life was moving in and I ended up going on a one month meditation retreat where it became very clear to me that I needed to pursue art despite not having an artistic background. I made the decision that I was going to apply to grad school at the Academy of Art in San Francisco and when I was accepted everything fell into place and I made the move in 2011. Initially I was super intimidated due to my lack of knowledge but I was completely obsessed with art and while I was in school I met a lot of great people and teachers who helped me tremendously, I’ve learned a lot from them and they were all so willing and eager to offer help and advice, it was really good for me. I was able to throw myself into art and see where it took me and while I was in school I started picking up illustration projects doing album art for music groups which was very exciting for me and started off my professional art career.
Ardor - Marisa Aragon Ware
Would you say that art school was beneficial to you or did you find that it set up a lot of rules in your head that you later had to break to discover your own style?
In my case it was tremendously helpful. I kind of have an interesting juxtaposition to weigh it against because I started studying classical violin when I was two and a half, and I studied with this method called the Suzuki Method which is very rigorous. I had to practice the violin everyday and with classical music every note of every song is dictated; how loud you’re supposed to play it, what emotion you’re supposed to play it with so I learned how to be a really proficient classical violin player but you know still to this day I can’t improvise. I have friends that will want to jam and I- just - can’t *laughs*. You know if you want me to play a Vivaldi Concerto I can do that but I can’t just let it flow and with art it was really the opposite. I had no training, I had no technique, I had no mentorship so in 2011 when I went to art school, all I really had was doodling experience and a vivid imagination but I didn’t have the technique to properly express that. So with going to the Academy of Art, it basically just gave me the tools to be able to express the imagination that I had spent so much time developing. Going to art school was really amazing for me, I was just soaking in everything from every class.
River of Life - Marisa Aragon Ware
So do you think that technical artistic skills are something that can be taught?
Yes absolutely. I teach art privately and I also taught an introduction to drawing course at the University of Colorado which was an elective course for mostly freshmen and sophomore students who didn’t have a background in art. All of them came into the class with the mentality of always wanting to draw but not being able to and I strongly believe that anyone can learn how to draw. Learning how to draw is like learning to play an instrument, and with any skill it takes time and practice but the thing is, it is very frustrating to learn a new skill so most people quit; but I have seen through teaching that you can absolutely learn how to draw. It’s astounding how much progress you can make in a span of a few months but what’s a lot harder to teach is the creative vision, style and meaning and having that meaning imbued into your work.
Pollonation - Marisa Aragon Ware
What would you say would be the biggest piece of advice you’ve been given as an artist, has there been anybody who has said something that really shifted your perspective?
I wouldn’t say it was one specific person, but a couple of years ago I was in a show in New York at Spoke Art and Nathan Spoor - who has been a really helpful mentor to me throughout my whole process - invited me to be a part of his show and was making a coffee table book. I offered to help and what he asked me to do was come up with interview questions for all the artists in the book and one of the questions I had asked all these artists was about their relationship with fear and doubt during their creative process. Because for me that’s always been an omnipresent experience in the creative process, and I always just assumed once you got to a certain level of expertise that would eventually go away. But as I interviewed all these artists, I found out that these giants of the art world experience their own fear and doubt about creating and that sometimes they too don’t like what they make and they question their artistic ability. Personally, I’m always either swinging to the side of like wow this is really working I’m doing exactly what I’m meant to be doing on this earth, and then I swing to the opposite side of being like wow why did I become an artist, why didn’t I just learn how to be a software engineer. *laughs*
The fact that this is just a part of creating has really helped me as an artist because now when that fear and doubt comes up - which it does in a totally cyclical process - I’m able to take a step back and observe it and realize that it’s part of the process. I have noticed that the times I’ve had the biggest fear and the biggest doubt are the times I've experienced the biggest breakthrough and really leveled up because I think that fear causes friction and really helps to bring energy to a piece.
Halcyon Song - Marisa Aragon Ware
What an amazing opportunity to have interviewed so many great artists, what artists have inspired you creatively?
Audrey Kawasaki. Her work has always been important to me; I first saw it on the cover of Juxtapoz magazine when I was in art school and she was one of the artists I had the opportunity to interview which was a bit of a surreal experience for me. Jeff Nishinaka was also a big inspiration. When I was in school at the Academy I took his paper sculpture class and learned his technique which got me into working with the medium. Tara Donovan does huge installation pieces that are made out of ordinary objects, she does large paper pieces as well but when I saw her show it was the most sensory stimulating installation I’ve ever been too and what was so incredible about it was that all of it was created out of ordinary objects it was very inspiring.
Speaking about your work now, is there a particular piece of yours that is your favourite or one that you’re most proud of?
Metamorphosis was kind of a breakthrough piece for me because it was the first animal skull I had done and it was also when I had the realization that animal skulls would look so cool on paper because the texture of the paper is reminiscent of bone so that one was really special and it took a long time. The ram skull had these horns and each horn probably has fifty separate pieces of paper on it where I embossed lines on them to give it texture. That piece was very labor intensive but I also feel it was a step in the direction I’m trying to take my work. Another piece I’m proud of is Halcyon Song. I feel like I have a special relationship with that one just because of how much of a struggle it was and just what that piece taught me overall. I’m really wanting to take my paper sculptures in a new direction, instead of going smaller and smaller to start to make them bigger, I’d like to get into installation pieces.
Metamorphosis - Marisa Aragon Ware
Your work is incredibly detailed and it seems the smaller and smaller you go the more detail you add, is meticulous planning part of your creative process or do you figure it out as you go?
I think it’s a little bit of both. With paper sculpture, every piece is kind of like a piece of a puzzle and because I don’t feel I have that much experience with the medium yet I’m still learning what’s possible and inventing my own style so every time I start a new sculpture I start it with a drawing. Then there’s layer and layers of tracing paper that I use to break sections of the drawing down into different layers to try and build up the three dimensional aspect of this two dimensional medium. It’ll usually take me two or three prototypes before I settle on the final version and because my work is so detailed I have all these little pieces that I keep in separate boxes so even though I’ve been working on something for weeks I don’t really have anything tangible to show because everything exists in numerous little pieces that I have to play around with and put together to create the final sculpture.
Details of "Genesis" - Marisa Aragon Ware
What sort of message or ideas do you hope to convey through your work?
So much of my imagery doesn’t come from a conscious place, I have certain images just sort of come into my mind and then I spend all this time creating them and it’s not until after I’ve finished the piece that I get to look at it and find the meaning in it. I think that because I have had the privilege of growing up in Colorado I’ve been able to escape into nature on an almost daily basis and by doing so I’ve been able to form a strong bond with the natural world that I feel really lucky to have formed and I strive to communicate some aspect of that relationship that I have with nature into my work so that people who don’t have the ability to go out into a forest can still feel the echo of that awe and that wonder and that fulfillment that i get from nature.
There’s a theory about human development as a species called biophilia that says that human beings not only depend on nature for physical sustenance but that also psychologically it’s an important aspect for us in creating meaning in our lives and that we evolved within nature and with nature, needing it to fulfill that purpose. So I just think of all the people who are in cities or work in cubicles and don’t get to have access to nature in that way and how they are missing out on this incredibly meaningful rewarding relationship so I try to on my hikes in the forest try to absorb that radiance and then bring it back in through my work so hopefully someone looking at my work on a screen can have some sense of that feeling within themselves.
Joie de Vivre - Marisa Aragon Ware
Do you have any advice for artists who are coming onto the scene or for artists who you have inspired?
One thing that I have been learning is that unlike other professions where you work an 8 hour day, for me as a creative person I am kind of always working, even if it’s not overtly obvious; meaning I’m not constantly sitting at my drawing desk. I used to be really hard on myself for not constantly working like that but I’ve learned that part of my creative process really is taking two hours to go for a hike and walking around in the forest and looking at flowers and laying down to look at the clouds. I’ve come to realize that is as much a part of my work as sitting down at my desk and creating is. I think it’s hard when you’re a creative person and you’re comparing yourself to these other professions that have a 9-5 work schedule and thinking, okay well I only drew for four hours today I should’ve been drawing for eight hours, and I’ve learned that I simply can’t draw for 8 hours straight, my hand gets exhausted at 4 hours. So just realizing that creative work isn’t the same as other types of work in our society and allowing yourself that time to rest when you feel like resting or to seek whatever your form of inspiration is, is an important part of the process and to not judge yourself for needing that time. Also, don’t compare your productivity and your output to other professions because they just don’t translate and you can’t compare them.
I think similarly comparing yourself to other artists is a natural thing to do especially with social media but comparison is the death of creativity and while it’s a great thing to be inspired by other artists and their work, it’s important not to compare yourself to what you’re doing.
One final thought I’d like to add, there is a book by Elizabeth Gilbert Ross titled Big Magic and in that book there is a quote:
“Consider this fact: the earliest evidence of recognizable human art is 40,000 years old. The earliest evidence of human agriculture, by contrast, is only 10,000. Which means that somewhere in our collective evolutionary story we decided it was way more important to make attractive, superfluous items than it was to learn how to feed ourselves regularly.”
That quote has been so important for me to remember. I think that particularly in our society it has become so obsessed with productivity, output and economics that we have placed so much value in all of these things so it’s easy to feel like your work as an artist isn’t really that important but in the grand scheme of things, it really is one of the most important things human beings have been doing for thousands of years. That work and that pursuit is truly priceless and you just cannot put a price tag on it; so for me there is comfort in trusting that your work has value and worth irrespective of any likes, views and feedback you may receive.
Marisa is participating in the Spoke Art Suggestivism group exhibition, curated by Nathan Spoor. The exhibition will run from July 11th - July 25th at the San Francisco location. Click here for the event page.
Connect with Marisa!