Check Out Tricia Waddell’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Tricia Waddell.

Hi Tricia, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today.
I have always been a highly visual person who daydreams obsessively (not necessarily by choice, mind you!). Being creative is a way to get some of the things constantly swirling in my head out of my body. As a kid, I completely wallpapered my room with fashion and dance photographs I cut out of magazines and kept binders of images that spoke to me.

I began studying and taking photographs in high school. I double-majored in English and Art History in college to become a curator or work in art publishing. After college, I continued pursuing photography and I had a warehouse apartment where I built a dark room at one end and set up lights and a background at the other so I could photograph people all the time. I was interested in capturing how I perceived people in their quietest and most intimate moments. This theme continues to thread through my work today.

After college, I started working as an editor in art, craft, and design publishing showcasing the work and techniques of many talented artists. Even though I continued to do my work on the side, I focused the majority of my energies as an editorial and creative director overseeing photo shoots for many years. Then one day I asked myself what would happen if I refocused the energy I was using to support and showcase the work of other artists and instead put that into my work.

I took the leap and quit my publishing job, moved from Denver to NYC, and went back to school to get a degree in fashion design from the prestigious Fashion Institute of Technology. And then I moved back to Denver and spent two years studying fabric surface design in an independent study Art Cloth Mastery program. I continued to work in publishing the whole time I was studying design so it was an intense 5 years of doing double duty.

Upon completion, I initially began making and selling clothing and textiles for interiors that I designed, dyed, and painted myself. But when COVID and Black Lives Matter happened, my work became more introspective and shifted into more personal artwork. And that’s when I found my voice and came into my current body of work of soft sculptures.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Finding your way as an artist is never a smooth, linear path. I’ve done a lot of mediocre work on my way to where I am now. Unfortunately, there is no other way to do it. I’m very new on the gallery scene as an emerging artist, so even though I’ve been making work for many years, I still feel at the beginning. I struggled with finding the confidence to show my work to people (I still struggle with this!). I am a perfectionist, which both helps me and tortures me.

I’m so masochistically hard on myself that it’s difficult to feel like anything I make is good enough sometimes, so I have to override that negative voice all the time. I am also a very private person which is often at odds with publicly showing and talking about my work. The work I’m doing now is very personal and vulnerable so it has been challenging to to be so open about it with strangers. But I’m learning! On a practical level, pursuing an art career while keeping a full-time job is challenging.

It requires discipline, sacrifice, money, and a lot of time. You have to invest in it and invest in yourself, for it to work. But doing both also provides the balance that I need. I have taken sabbaticals from time to time to be in the studio full-time. But being in the studio every day can be quite isolating so having a day job gets me out of my head. The biggest struggles for me have always been mental, so finding balance is critical.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I create soft sculptures and textile art that are interior self-portraits of everything I keep hidden.

I’m obsessed with combining dye, cloth, texture, and unique forms to tell deeply emotional stories. Each sculpture is inspired by raw internalized emotions that I translate into forms to give them a voice. I create all the fabrics by painting with dye, which forces me to let go of control, embrace imperfections, and work organically. It is a cathartic act to take emotions we often hide, feel overwhelmed by, or feel too vulnerable to express and give them a conceptual physical form.

I was inspired by the beliefs from many cultures that objects and dolls can hold protective and healing powers. My work explores radical vulnerability and empathy and forces me, and hopefully, the viewer, to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. In dialogue with the work, I also want to combat the stigma of discussing mental health issues, particularly in marginalized communities.

So, before we go, how can our readers or others connect or collaborate with you? How can they support you?
I am always open to opportunities to show my work, teach workshops, or collaborate with other creatives.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.studioblkbird.com/
• Instagram: @studioblkbird

Image Credits
Aubreigh Brunschwig (twopencecreative.com) and Grace Hanover