Interview with Conny Cavazos
Interview by Natalia Rocafuerte
Conny Cavazos (@connycavazos ) is a multidisciplinary designer, artist, and creative director from the Rio Grande Valley, Texas. Her multimedia practice explores socioeconomic disparities and class displacement through the lens of the Mexican-American border ethos. In her design practice she works with artists of all capacities designing and visualizing in both digital and print spaces. She holds a BFA in Studio Art from University of Texas-Pan American, and recently graduated from California Institute of the Arts in May 2020 with an MFA in Graphic Design. She freelances and is based in LA.
How's quarantine in LA?
It was difficult to adjust, only around October did I start feeling like I had an at-home routine set in motion. The transition from basically living in a studio with my peers with energy of an art school around you, to now having to work alone at home, was jarring to say the least. However, now I kinda love being in my apartment, I've gone full hermit. The other day I was thinking about how the pause in social life and outings, this idea of wanting to be somewhere and be seen isn't giving me the fomo anxiety I once had. Not having to keep up with various events is a relief, but I do miss going out to dance. Fortunately, LA still has its hiking trails and beaches to escape to.
What drives your experimental work?A fundamental curiosity. The need to evade boredom. Making something because if I can't physically manifest it, it'll grow inside of me like a persistent ache. And playing so much Glover for Nintendo 64 in my youth.
Congrats on your MFA in Graphic Design from CalArts!
Thank you!
What's something you recall from the Rio Grande Valley?
The way I move about in my life is directly informed from being born and raised in the RGV. My regional makeup is the context that shapes the perspective I bring to my life outside the Valley. I remember being a kid, passing by the mini golf and party center "The Zone Action Park", off expressway 83 in McAllen. This place is burned onto my memory, an incessant image that became the source of my obsession for my graduate practice. In this body of work I draw comparisons between the designed place for leisure and socioeconomic movement. The mini-golf terrain as a metaphorical portal to access notions of American identity and the economic power to spend on leisure.
Attached is an infographic I made to help me make sense of this idea, the places we design and the ideas we construct around them. I categorized several objects/places/media through a set of X and Y axis points. The X axis ranges from what is constructed to be ‘otherworldly’ and what is deemed to be ‘reality’ on the opposite end. The Y axis ranges from what is shaped by ‘internal forces’ on one end and ‘external forces’ on the other. I wanted to see how I placed these items within the chart, thus revealing my own parameters and relationships I have with these things.
Something like Correctional Facility Google Reviews (denoted by a screenshot of Google Reviews, far bottom right) is held together by "reality" and "shaped by external forces". Meaning the people outside the correctional facilities are shaping the reality of the place by their review of the place (specifically through google reviews). Of course this doesn’t mean that the reviews shape what the inmates understand of their own world. But it does show how an external perspective can alter the idea of a place for others.
Another way in which I try to unravel my thoughts is through prose and poetry. Writing Construct/Desire and including it in the pamphlet speaks to my organic way in which I work through abstract ideas. A research process in where relying on instinct first garners the most peculiar starting points for an idea. Writing as a stream of consciousness, a meditative methodology to release what is already in my mind, and using that as a point of inquiry.
Looking at this now, about a year after I designed this, I don’t exactly agree with the placement of all of these figures, but the infographic was helpful in grounding my curiosities. After many crits and feedback loops, I ended up narrowing my field into an obsession that has been siting in my head since before grad school, and that is the mini golf park, more specifically The Zone Action Park off Expwy 83 in McAllen. See: https://accessamericana.cargo.site
What are you curious about right now?
I'm working on some album art and animations for my friend and musician (@kyns.wav), learning how to rotoscope animations has helped my curiosity meter. Additionally, something not related to my work, I have been curious to help out the community and now volunteer at the LA Regional Food Bank. It feels great to provide selfless work.
Would you care to share your last dream?
Most of my dreams carry post-apocalyptic overtones. Orange skies, dilapidated buildings, few (if any) people in town. In the last one, I was looking for my mom, and she was up in a floating rock structure, think Howl's Moving Castle meets Frank Lloyd Wright's Hollyhock House. Another reoccurring dream I have is being surrounded by pastries, but I can only choose two, so my dream is spent carefully picking out the two that I would love the most, tragically, the dream always ends before I can eat them.
Social/website:connycavazos.com
Check out Conny Cavazos’s latest video project Routine Maintenance during our Experimental Shorts Broadcast hosted by Natalia Rocafuerte on December 4 2020 at 8PM Central Time. RSVP here!
About the film:
This video is the result of what happens when I make a ritual out of the sculpting little clay figurines during the early days of the covid-19 quarantine. This was an assignment given to me by Jamie Wolfe at CalArts in her Loop Loop class, an elective dedicated to creating experimental loop videos and animations. I decided to make a clay sculpture each day for 35 days. Unfortunately, I was constantly skipping days and then having to make up for loss time by making x-amount in a given day. Although all the sculptures were organically designed in the moment I worked with the clay, having to make one each day ended up feeling like a chore, and it turned into a reflection on my inability to fully commit to something that has a strict schedule involved.
-Conny Cavazos
