A quick look at Catarina Carreiras’s work and patterns emerge. Her artful reinvention of circles, squares and triangles has made simple shapes into elaborate designs for exhibitions, graphics and clothing. This young Portuguese star seems to be leaving her mark (and markings) everywhere. In 2008, she worked in Fabrica’s design department for Benetton’s communications research centre in Treviso, Italy. Still on as a consultant for Fabrica, she now works in New York City’s Karissonwilker design studio through a grant from Portugal. Check out the colorful answers from this vibrant creative mind in today’s 10 ANSWERS
1. How would you describe your work in three words?
Ongoing: to try, to fail, to challenge. Over and over again.
2. Who is your creative role model?
Sam Baron: great mind, fast moves, tough teacher, good friend, exquisite taste, french sense of humor.
3. If you had an extra hour each day what would you do with it?
Daydream. Think. A weird combination of these two together.
4. What place in the world most inspires you and why?
A big city. Any city. To be violently embraced by the diversity of landscapes, people, places, tastes and smells. In big cities you can always find something new to inspire you, from the center to the suburbs, from the pavements to the skies. Even when you stubbornly come back again and again to the same place just to prove yourself wrong. And I love to prove myself wrong.
5. If you could do a different job for a day what would it be and why?
A writer. I would write the day away, but in a tragic, withdrawn and schizophrenic way. A bit “a la” Virginia Wolf — but hopefully with a stupid sense of humor and without any suicidal feelings.
6. What is your favorite homemade gift to give?
A smile. I can cook, bake, clean, arrange, decorate, draw, write — I was raised to be the perfect wife, amongst the best women I know: my mother and my grandmothers. And I love to do all that in good company. But there is something very delicate and special about an honest smile – at the right place, at the right time. And it is the most low cost, intimate and eclectic gift.
7. What is your favorite object in your home?
My brown leather suitcase. For the past years I have changed my life so many times, I have moved and traveled repeatedly, therefore all the objects around me change at the same fast pace. That suitcase is the closest thing I have to a sense of home: I carry it everywhere, it always follows me.
8. What is the best advice you’ve ever received?
To misbehave. An advice my father gives me every time I leave home: to go to the supermarket or to go to China, doesn’t matter. I never got to the bottom of it, but I think it is a great advice. I keep it in the back of my head and it usually pops up when I am playing too much by the book. I tend to do that.
9. What websites do you use for inspiration?
A lot of randomness. I like places where I can find ordinary and extraordinary things side by side. Like JJJJound, The Shape of the Journey, and . But I do love to loose my bookmarks once in a while and start from scratch.
10. When do you consider a piece of your work complete?
When I really need to deliver it.
RSS - Posts