A marionette
“Where do you get your inspiration?”
People ask me that question constantly and honestly I never have a short answer so I end up saying “from nature, animals, things I see…”
That’s not completely wrong, but that is less than half of how the creative process happens. If the person asking me sticks around and has time to listen to my story, then I turn into the deeper, much more complicated answer: I don’t get inspiration anywhere because freaking alebrijes keep popping up in my head and they follow me everywhere like a game of Pokemon Go. If you were to actually see what I see, I’d be walking down the street followed by half a dozen fantastic creatures begging for my attention. It’s fun to live in my head sometimes.
But most of the times, when I say that to people they give me a pierced-lip smile, sip on their drink and change the subject.
No, I’m not delusional, every alebrije I have ever created has appeared at some point in my daily life hanging from electric cables, standing on my kitchen counter, outside of my window looking at me without blinking and the more I ignore them, the more they chase me so when I first see them I know I will have no choice but to get to work.
So basically, what you see in my art is the product of me following their instructions: “butterfly wings, praying mantis body, ocelot head” “Tentacles. And horse legs” “Barracuda face and seahorse body”. I am not exaggerating when I say that I merely follow their command and I cannot take a lot of credit for the creative process, mine is more a creative research that I will explain in another post.
The relationship with me and alebrijes is quite unique. As I say, they just appear whenever the heck they want and they never go away until I make them. While I am making them they get very, very demanding, like a newborn baby. Then they reach what I call their “adolescence”, that’s when we disagree a lot: “Of course I want 8 tentacles, don’t tell me my head is too small for eight tentacles!” “I want bigger wings. Much, much bigger than that” “My head needs horns. Big, ram horns”… sometimes they want a completely different pose than what I envisioned at the first place, so after a lot of back and forth, negotiating, compromising and communicating, the final alebrije is not done until we both agree I’m done.
The result always makes me smile wide. And because I only followed their command for the most part, there’s no ego involved. It wasn’t me. It was them, all this time.
A day in my life