Today we’d like to introduce you to Nina Montejano.
Hi Nina, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I’ve always been compelled to create things. I started taking my artwork more seriously as I got a little older. I decided to attend the University of San Diego after I graduated high school. There, I started working toward a major in architecture, but quickly decided to add visual arts as a second major.
My art and architecture professors introduced me to new techniques, processes, and mediums. They showed me pieces from art history and stressed the importance of learning from all of those who have come before us. They gave me tips and advice on how to become a working artist. In my other classes, particularly my theology and philosophy classes, I found meaning and purpose behind my artwork. This meaning is what pushes me to continue creating and sharing my work with the world.
After I graduated from USD in 2019, I was awarded the Naval Training Center Foundation’s Emerging Artist Studio Award and began a residency in the Arts District at Liberty Station. Although my residency only lasted a year, I am now renting a studio in the Arts District. Having a studio has helped me look at my past work and be critical of where it’s been and where it’s going. I hope to apply to graduate school soon for a Master of Fine Arts program, where I can further refine my work and ideas.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
My favorite part about being an artist is the excitement I feel when I’ve created a piece and I know that every part of it is working how I want it to. When I get this feeling about my work, I’m energized. I’m able to keep working out ideas and new pieces for several weeks or months at a time, but it’s not always like this. The biggest challenge I come across is building upon my past work.
As I continue creating, I want my art to raise questions that I can then investigate through new pieces. However, each project does not always easily emerge from the last. I spend a lot of time reflecting on my past pieces. I often get stuck on trying to figure out how my future work will relate to what I’ve already made.
The only thing I can do in these situations is to keep researching my concepts and implementing new ideas. I’ve learned to be open to new processes to counter my creative blocks. It sometimes seems like these blocks will never end, but they always do. I’m happy to say that I’m in a good place with my work now. The last time I experienced a creative block, I worked through it by experimenting with two new photographic processes, cyanotype and gum bichromate printing. The excitement I normally have for my work has returned and it’s stronger than it’s ever been.
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?
Over the past few years, I have been making work depicting subjects that are ordinary, but filled with meaning. These subjects include windows, trees, light, shadows, and hand gestures. I became interested in using everyday subjects in my work after completing my 2019 project “Light As of Thought,” a series of drawings that uses light from windows as a subject. I was originally drawn toward the window because I saw it as a symbol of vision and intellectual clarity. Others that viewed my work had their own associations with my window drawings and slowly, the project became more about meaning itself. It was about how viewers perceive everyday images and form their own personal connections to them.
However, I also approached the project from a theological perspective. I hoped to portray the idea of faith: trust in something that is much greater than what we are able to perceive within our own subjective experiences. In these drawings, we only see the geometric light from windows cast into darkness, while the window lives somewhere outside the frame of each drawing. We are simultaneously certain of the window’s existence but uncertain of whether or not it is actually there. My most recent work is more closely connected to these spiritual concepts. I am striving to create work with more warmth, light, and softness, qualities that were present in my ideas and the way that I spoke about my past work, but were only partially present in the pieces that I was creating.
Many of the images I am currently making depend on light and the sun, sometimes as the subject and sometimes as the power behind the processes themselves.
I started teaching myself the cyanotype and gum bichromate processes this past January. Both of these are photographic processes done by painting a light sensitive solution onto paper and exposing to UV light underneath a negative photograph to create a new, unique image. These processes produce pieces that are photographs but contain painterly qualities, bringing together two disciplines that have influenced my work. My first finished gum bichromate over cyanotype print, “Infinite,” portrays a sunrise over silhouettes of treetops and houses.
I have also started making pinhole cameras out of small tin boxes to record long exposures. Currently, the longest photo I’ve made was recorded over the span of one month. This process is somewhat experimental. I don’t know what the final piece will look like until I scan the image onto my computer and once it’s scanned, it is exposed to light and ultimately fades into darkness on the photographic paper. These images record the sun’s path, depicting bright arches of light that cut through the sky.
For me, these processes are both about the rising and setting of the sun, a daily event often tied to religion, made with the light that the sun provides. These processes get me closer to the ideas that I was first fascinated by three years ago. I’ve found a way to create work about light with light.
What do you like and dislike about the city?
I grew up in northern San Diego county, so this city has always been home to me. I think it’s been a great place for me to start my career. The art community within San Diego is close-knit, but very diverse. I’ve been able to meet a lot of great artists that work in completely different ways, but have hopes for their work and careers that are very close to mine.
I’ve had a lot of opportunities that have brought me into the art community within San Diego, but options are a bit limited compared to other cities. When I head off to a graduate program, I plan on choosing a school outside of San Diego to learn more about myself and my work. However, it’ll always be my home and I’ll definitely be back.
Contact Info:
- Email: nmontejano@sandiego.edu
- Website: www.ninamontejano.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ninamontejanoart/?hl=en
