Artist profile in Create Magazine
I am honored to be featured in issue 45 of Create magazine, a beautiful publication known for its dedication to bringing emerging artists and their work to a wider audience. For this issue, the magazine handed the reins to curator Sergio Gomez to select a range of artists from around the world.
What follows below is an interview I gave to the magazine, providing a perspective on my own professional experience and artistic practice.
Interview with Christina Jensen Vicente for Create Magazine, Issue 45
CM: What initially drew you to art?
CJV: When I was a budding design student, a mentor once told me: “You should want to touch everything.” At the time, my eyes were definitely running the show. Time marched on, and soon I realized that somewhere between childhood and responsibility, I had lost a profound connection with my senses. My hands, in particular, had been sidelined. At the peak of my design career, it became clear that it was time to re-engage this connection. Art became my outlet.
CM: What elements of your life have ended up becoming a part of your art?
CJV: Touch, to me, had always been essential. I spent my childhood by a creek in the tall woods in Atlanta, gently stirring the smooth silt, peeling flakes of mica, and carefully washing broad, flat leaves as if they were food to be eaten or clothes to be worn. I made secret hideouts in barley fields and hunted for round stones on a wild coast of Denmark that is my ancestral home. The natural world resides within me, and my hands are the access point to express it.
CM: What about your practice do you find the most fulfilling and/or energizing?
CJV: I strive to create works that serve as reminders to consider our more subtle senses, what they communicate, and the meaning they imbue. Embracing the multivalence of life can inspire unparalleled richness of sentiment and thought. To me, there is no greater beauty.
CM: Tell us about your experience getting to where you are now. What has been the most important thing you’ve learned?
CJV: I spent over 25 years as a creative director for luxury and lifestyle brands. Raising a family in New York City, I needed a career that I could count on and was lucky enough to find one that still allowed me to learn and grow as a creative. While it wasn’t until later in my career that I could explore my own creative voice, my work experience taught me invaluable lessons about the place of art in contemporary culture and in the zeitgeist that I continually draw on for perspective and inspiration.
CM: How has ‘community’ impacted your artistic practice?
CJV: I have been fortunate to have encountered numerous amazing women who have witnessed and supported my development as an artist working at the intersection of art and craft. Women who champion other women—and make a point to give them a platform as they balance career, family, friendships, purpose, and life—are my heroes.