Parking Lot is our lax interview series where we get to really know a creative. We get to learn about their current work, some random facts about them, some telling ones too, and just about anything else that comes up. In our second edition, we speak with creative, Katrina Mendoza. Mendoza is sort of in between places--making choices, feeling creatively directionless, figuring things out as someone out of art school with a strong inclination to create but also someone questioning why she creates, what makes her excited to create, and if it's worth making work that benefits just her while disregarding the world around her. It was especially exciting to speak with Mendoza about such seemingly micro matters that in fact become major ones as you find yourself between paths as a creative. Our chat circled around those talking points and other random facts about Mendoza including cloning, karaoke, Winnipeg's Portage Place mall, and Devonté Hynes.
Photo Contribution by Laina Brown
Public Parking: What kind of a kid were you growing up?
Katrina Mendoza: Very shy. I also just didn't feel like talking to people that much. I would go to parties with either a book to read or paper to draw on alone. I loved watching nature documentaries and anime. I just liked being by myself. Introversion runs in the family.
PP: What were your parents like with you when growing up?
KM: I am an only child spoiled by the attention of my parents but not spoiled materially. I went to Catholic schools and always wore home-made uniforms that looked different from everyone else's. I had an N64 but I never owned a video game.
Photo Contribution by Laina Brown
PP: What was your favourite breakfast when you were younger?
KM: Honey Bunches of Oats with Almonds and milk.
PP: What was the dumbest thing you'd say you bought recently ?
KM: Maybe this black vegan leather tote bag. The boxy-ness in combination with its size makes it cumbersome to carry with a puffy winter jacket on. It is already peeling. I feel sad about it.
PP: What's your favourite YouTube channel?
KM: I am so glad you asked. I love PBS Space Time.
PP: What's one thing that surprises you about yourself?
KM: I get really sad when I'm hungry.
Photo Contribution by Laina Brown
PP: Do you like karaoke? I can't imagine you wanting to doing karaoke...but if you had to pick, what would be your go-to karaoke song?
KM: I love karaoke! Body Party by Ciara is my go-to. I'm talking about the kind of karaoke where you rent a private room with friends.
PP: That's actually an underrated one! good choice!
PP: What would you rather invest in Cloning vs Space Exploration ?
KM: Cloning is probably more useful than space exploration. But space exploration seems more exciting.
PP: What's an alternative language you've rather been your first language?
KM: Maybe French. Maybe Tagalog.
PP: Can you tell me a new-ish creative person you are currently excited about...
KM: Devonté Hynes aka Blood Orange.
Devonté Hynes - Blood Orange
PP: I lovvve Mr. Hynes! He's kind of my idol. Really good choice.
KM: I heard bits of Cupid Deluxe and really liked him after that.
PP: How much of your work is interested in communicating to an external audience and how much of it is communicating to yourself?
KM: Maybe 77% communicating with myself and 23% communicating to an external audience.
PP: How do you think you developed the way you make creative work or the way you think creatively?
KM: I wanted to be an animator because I watched a lot of anime as a kid but then I got bored of that. I took a plein air painting class in art school which involved a lot of bad photography, tree paintings and then looking for things other than trees to paint. Then I became interested in the city landscape and Portage Place Mall as this perpetually animated space filled with less and less people over the years. The more empty it becomes, the more meditative it feels. Growing up I spent a lot of time in Portage Place. I took its decor for granted. What other local mall looks as festive as Portage Place? I made one painting of the mall and picked up this habit of altering the depth of forms from my original photos of the space. Then I wanted to make spaces like an emptied out, meditative retail environment but I also still wanted to draw. So I just turned my drawings into objects to make spaces with. The spaces didn't turn out very 'retail'-looking though. The installations I make will never be 'real' spaces, they're always pretend-places. I feel conflicted about that right now.
PP: Why do you think you feel conflicted about the pretend places you created for your installations?
KM: I feel conflicted about my pretend places because part of me feels like I should be contributing to making real spaces or spaces that can be physically used by people in everyday life. I guess I feel like I should be learning how to design rooms. It's a weird guilt that I'm not sure is founded on anything other than anxiety over being able to contribute to society.
Install of Kawawa Window & Door
Kawawa Window & Door (detail), 2014
PP: What's your relationship with computer software when it comes to creating work?
KM: Computer software can be great help when it comes to fabricating really smooth and detailed shapes or planning a complex assembly and I find them most helpful when I already have ideas and/or reference images to work from. Right now, I don't think I can rely on Illustrator or 3D modelling programs alone to plan an installation. Maybe I feel this way because I don't have enough experience with these programs or maybe I just need to practice visualizing more of what I want but I think nothing can replace the act of physically moving objects in a room to finish a work.
PP: We are curious how you discovered the way of transitioning your drawings into three-dimensional objects and then installation form...how did you discover materials to use that translated the drawings they way you wanted...
KM: I enjoy painting but it was never three-dimensional enough for me. I was painting with acrylic on translucent Mylar for a bit and I liked how separate the paint looked from the background. I guess I liked the shapes I painted more than the actual references I used for painting. I tried cutting out painted Mylar shapes so they became almost objects but I wanted more permanent forms, hence the laser-cut plastic. Some of those still weren't where I wanted them to be. I wanted them to be more rotund. I was looking at a lot of Isamu Noguchi and Brancusi sculptures. Looking back, maybe I got the idea of making those laser-cut shapes from seeing Noguchi's chess table and chess pieces. A lot of Noguchi's work was made from stone or wood and to try to do something like that seemed too expensive and messy at the time. I also didn't have a lot of room to work with at home. Maybe I was a bit lazy. I thought about making molds of found objects to cast plastic shapes in but didn't want to rely on already-existing shapes that would always be tied to their former function and history. Then I heard that 3D printing was available on campus and I realized modeling and printing was the most economic way to get what I wanted.
LK: What have you been working on recently?
KM: I’ve got these phone photos that I started taking in 2014 of my room, my mother’s room, our kitchen, and other parts of our house. I took more photos since then which I haven't looked at for months and I am now revisiting. I'll see lines and shapes that I didn't appreciate before and then draw them in Illustrator. I am very interested in taking things apart, in taking contours apart, and I try not to worry about being precise all the time. I might make a bunch of lines that constitute a window, door or object in a room without joining them together and then I edit the arrangements line by line. I have also been trying to make shapes that don't have a real reference and that don't say anything specifically but just exist emotionally. I've always had trouble being convinced by that way of working though -- both working from photographs of things around me and making emotion-shapes. Lately, I've had trouble with that more often.
LK: Why do you feel unsure about working from photos you've taken?
KM: I feel like I keep seeing a trend in noticing or making obscure corners and arrangements of objects with maybe-interesting textures. I love how that looks but I'm always afraid of doing this because I'm not sure what it means to me. It’s definitely cool and beautiful but sometimes I feel like it's too contained or maybe uncontained and polished for me to feel comfortable in and around. I think I just need to find more subject matter that I’m genuinely interested in. Or maybe I just need to know why I’m taking apart spaces.
Photo Contribution by Laina Brown
LK: Do you think you are still figuring out what you are interested in terms of your own individual creative output?
KM: Yeah, I’m still figuring out what really makes me make art. I guess I don’t need to know all of why I do it. I suppose I feel like this because I stayed away from making things for a while so I'm not sure why I’m doing things other than the fact that it feels good or just feels like something is going on. Like on a whim; I want to have my own fake fountain or something.
LK: Why are you not satisfied with just that as your way to make work?
KM: I really don’t know. It’s something I’ve always felt unsure about in terms of its usefulness. I don’t know what I mean by ‘useful’ but maybe practically useful to everything outside myself, the rest of society. Maybe. I want to do drafting for interior design or industrial design, but at the same time that's not all I want to do. The more I do other things, the more I realize I just want to do art but I also need to find a way to make consistent money.
Photo Contribution by Laina Brown
LK: It’s nice to hear you in this moment in your life as you are sorting through different things and trying to make choices. I envy people who get out of school and have already figured things out for themselves.
KM: Yeah, I think for some, when you get out of school, you really feel the circumstances of your family. I didn’t really think about it too much while in school but now I think about it all the time. I have to be able to take care of my mom when she gets older. Where my mom is from, it's tradition to take care of your parents and have them live with you or your family when they grow old. I’m an only child and there are no other family members here [in Canada] who my parents can rely on if they get sick or need help. The rest of the family live in the Philippines. The ideal plan has always been to help some of them move here but that hasn't happened yet. I recently realized that if any of my cousins or their children want to move here I might be the only one to facilitate that.
LK: I think these things circling around in your mind are interesting jumping off points for work.
KM: I guess I have a lot of existing and potential displacement in mind. I like the idea of displacing things in art too, which kind of goes along with deconstruction and maybe I'm semi-consciously working through it. I grew up in Winnipeg and I feel like a complete foreigner when I go to the Philippines. There’s this project I want to do based on this indoor-outdoor market I visited called Divisoria where my aunt runs a store. You can pretty much buy anything you’d ever need Divisoria. It’s always so crowded, even at night. Very different from Portage Place. Lots of lights in both places though. In Divisoria it's lots of lights hanging from umbrellas over tables and light spilling onto those tables from storefronts in buildings. It feels like the walls of each store are made of product. A lot of things felt precariously fastened. It's a touristy response but I really enjoyed the dense kind of airiness that exists in Divisoria.
Please check back in for a future post on Mendoza's new series she's currently at work on. You can find her at @ktrnm on insta and tumblr