Dominique Avila
SHAPE SHIFTER: Multi-hyphenate visual artist and teacher Dominique Avila sees magic in mistakes.
1. Dope Vitals: I'm Dominique! I am a 27-year-old Rhode Island native, born and raised in Providence. I'm a proudly bilingual daughter of Guatemalan immigrants, an art teacher, and a painter/multimedia artist when I give myself the time to be.
2. Dopest Thing Done: The dopest thing I've done in life was travel by myself to Spain and Portugal. All of the art and architecture was incredibly inspiring--La Sagrada Familia was the main reason I traveled there and the light cast in the cathedral was one of the most spiritual moments of my life. It was refreshing to live in the moment and throw myself into something I wasn't sure of. That trip gave me a lot of confidence in myself and my ideas.
Art-wise, the dopest project I've worked on was either my metal fortune teller or my metal shelving unit. I throw both of those projects out there because both projects taught me a lot about metal and the transformation that can happen with welding and metalwork. I made SO many drafts for the fortune teller (or “cootie catchers” as I called them in elementary school), first cutting pieces out and welding them back together, playing with the thickness of the metal and different tools in the shop. I ended up taking a square sheet of the thinnest steel and folding it like I would a piece of paper, pulling back on corners and pushing to get different parts to pop out. It was satisfying to turn such a hard and rigid material into a softer form. My metal shelving unit was one of the first things I made with steel. It’s not functional at all, but what I love about it is that its design was born out of a mistake and a “watch what I’ll do” attitude. One of the first times I was TIG welding, I put too much material down/held the arc too close and made these barnacle looking lumps on the metal. The teacher brushed it off as mishandling the tools but I was excited about the texture. I ended up safely “mishandling” tools to make a three-shelf unit with barnacle clumps and cut-outs along the walls that I was really proud of! I use that example in class with students a lot—mistakes are important and can be inspiring!
3. Dopest Thing to Do: I want to travel more whenever that is possible again and continue to push myself to make more art! I'm excited about our upcoming photography collaboration on my own Latinidad and what that means and looks like to me. I've been flagging pages in past sketchbooks of drawings I'm still struck by and stretching those ideas with other creative folks to see how I can take them off the page to turn into something bigger. [JPW Note: Dominique and I have some smoke in the works with the Latinidad project. Stay tuned.]
4. Dope Fact about Dominique: I took Russian my senior year of high school/sophomore year of undergrad and can still read and write in Cyrillic. I can have a VERY basic conversation and can read in Russian, just probably won't know what I'm reading! I'm also a welder, though I haven't been in the studio for a few years and would love to get back in. I took classes in a welding studio in Burbank, CA a few summers ago where I learned how to make hairpin legs and was able to help one of the welders install fabricated pieces into a local business.
5. A Dope Life that Inspires Dominique: Hands down my first heroes are my parents. They hustled so hard to help my brothers and me get to where we are. I'm struck that by my age, my parents had two kids while learning the language and culture of a new country—AND they put me and my brothers and through private schools they never really felt welcome in to help us get ahead in life. They teach me patience, appreciation, and love. My mom and dad have so much love for our family that I can't help but put that back out into the world.
There are tons of artists that inspire me because of how they deal with organic shapes and materials, like Antoni Gaudi and Tara Donovan. Or artists like Keith Haring, who like to use lines in such a graphic and loud way. While doing research for this next school year though, I came across two artists that work with painting and collage that really excited me—Mickalene Thomas and Devan Shimoyama. The energy I felt in their works made me think about my own art process and dealing with identity through art. It reminded me of how messy and hodgepodge identity work can really be in whatever medium it's being explored through.
6. Where You Can Catch Dominique Being Dope: Right now, I'm working on building a website and all that jazz, but have an Instagram account that I post work on from time to time (@nomnomnominique), and another profile I am currently updating and will be promoting more on (@dsagart).
Dominique’s Key/s to Living a Dope and Doing Dope Things
I think it’s a combination of confidence with humility, owning your truth, and kindness. I tend to be incredibly anxious, but reminding myself that I am more than my anxiety and that it's a truth I live with. I'm starting to work with my anxiety (thanks global pandemic!) and use it as fuel for creating more art instead of something holding me back from it because really there is no other choice. All of the problems COVID has highlighted for us is leading me to push more into discomfort and work through it. It's something ever-evolving but teaches me more about how and what I feel when I produce my artwork. Being grounded in my beliefs and surrounding myself with people that reflect those beliefs and vibes is also helpful--find your people! Sometimes they're right in front of you and you haven't really met them yet. Sometimes they come from the most unexpected places. That being said--staying open-minded and really listening to what people are saying and doing and paying attention to your surroundings. A lot of the artwork I make is based on ordinary things--puddles, bark, salt stains on the sidewalk in the winter...you never know what you might connect to. Lastly, I'm a thrill seeker and strong believer in taking calculated risks! They might lead to mistakes (moments of growth) or exciting opportunities, but both are valuable. Say yes whenever possible!