Rare Device is pleased to present our next gallery show, Women, featuring five independent female artists who created worked based on the theme of female empowerment. One of those artists, A'Driane Nieves, agreed to give us a deeper look into her creative process from inside her San Jose, CA studio. A'Driane describes herself as a writer, artist, activist, and speaker with a heart for serving others and social good.
KC: What is your background in painting and how long have you been creating art?
AN: I was the kid who grew up wanting to be a writer and did performance based arts-I knew I was a creative, but I never considered myself a visual artist. Drawing and painting weren't my things and my art teacher in 7th grade reinforced that belief after looking at my still-life drawings. However, in 2012, after I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, my therapist at the time recommended I find something constructive to do with my hands as a form of self-care. I went to Wal-Mart searching for yarn and a crochet hook, and on my way to the aisle full of yarns, my eyes caught the cheap brushes, paints, and small canvas boards in the aisle over. I threw some in my cart on a whim and after two weeks of failed attempts at crochet, I finally sat on the floor in my room and started pushing paint around on canvas board. All I was really looking for that day was a distraction, but when I finished, I noticed my mind was quieter and my anxiety had eased. I remember being surprised at how peaceful I felt, having unconsciously unloaded all that l had been carrying onto the small canvas board in front of me. So I didn't find painting, it honestly found me during a season I desperately needed something to keep me tethered to living. Painting started off strictly as a form of self-care in my treatment plant, but over the last 5 years, it's replaced writing as my default medium for expressing myself creatively.
KC: Can you tell us about your creative process?
AN: My work is intuitive in nature, so I rely pretty heavily on emotion, tuning into how my body is physically responding to whatever I'm processing mentally or emotionally, and movement to create every piece. Sometimes I'll go into a piece knowing what I want to construct or communicate, based off of something I saw in my dreams or a reaction I'm having to a current event in my own life or our society. With other pieces, it's not until after I'm 2-3 layers into a piece or even once I feel it's "done." There are times that I will not understand what my subconscious has been trying to help me grasp until after it's out of my head and on the surface in front of me, telling me its (my) story. I do a lot of writing, and snap images on my phone that I pull up later in the studio for inspiration. I also do a lot of art journaling in smaller notebooks, collaging images with paint to work out ideas in my head before I jump to canvas or larger paper. Lately, I've been very focused on collecting scraps of paper, dried paint, and other materials to incorporate into my paintings.
You can find A'Driane's pieces, along with the work of LINDSAY STRIPLING, SARAH K. BENNING, KATIE GONG, and KRISTINE VEJAR at the opening of "Women," Friday May 5th at 600 Divisadero Street. The show will be up from May 5th - July 3rd.
https://www.raredevice.net
