We’re looking forward to introducing you to Santi Ruggeri. Check out our conversation below.
Hi Santi, thank you for taking the time to reflect back on your journey with us. I think our readers are in for a real treat. There is so much we can all learn from each other and so thank you again for opening up with us. Let’s get into it: Are you walking a path—or wandering?
I am certainly wandering down a path. Though I have a general idea of where I’m going, I have no idea whatsoever how to get there.
This past year has been dedicated to finding the answer to what it means for me to be an artist. What do I want to create? Why do I even create in the first place? What does success in art look like to me? These burning questions are essentially lighthouses on the coast of a vast and ever-rocking sea. All the while, I’m in a small, slowly sinking dinghy boat doing my best to avoid the jagged rocks underneath the crashing waves.
At times, it does feel like my wandering is endless. It feels like my feet will keep marching on forever and ever and ever and ever and ever (and ever). It’s just about when I decide to turn around that I’ll see a sign that lets me know I’m going the right way. Just one small sign fuels the fire that keeps my practice going.
I’ve created art that I never thought myself capable of creating. Ideas that have taken up valuable property in my brain for too long solely as an idea have finally taken shape in a physical form.
All of this to say that I think it’s important to wander. Having no solid direction of where to go has helped me discover what I do appreciate in one path versus another. I think it will only be a matter of time before I do find the path where I’m meant to be.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
My name is Santi Ruggeri, and I live in my 1992 Dodge Ram Van known as the Goobsmobile, which is parked in my Grandma’s driveway for now. I drove my van all around the United States last year in a four-month-long road trip. By the time this article comes out, I hope to be driving across the US again, and this time, Canada too.
In May 2024, I quit my corporate job so that I could freely and utterly focus on my artistic endeavors. I have taken up many different practices, but the three that I hold dearly are my illustration, my photography, and my sewing.
I have been drawing cartoony characters since the dawn of this new millennium. My first and most important goal with my illustration has always been to make people laugh. I realized it was important for me to do this during the church sermons that my parents used to take my siblings and me to while growing up. Drawing comics on the backs of tithe envelopes and getting my brother and sister to laugh loud enough to disrupt service gave me an unholy amount of joy.
As for photography, in my heart of hearts, I consider myself a travel photographer. Travel is one of my greatest passions in life, as this world is too big not to explore. Most often, I aim to capture the abstract landscapes that you see multiple miles in the backcountry, the quiet intimacy of city life, and the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moments between friends or strangers. I will gladly shove as many cameras as I can in my bag to try and capture even one iota of the poetry of travel. I primarily shoot in film as I love the ritual of loading the camera, carefully selecting my scene, then developing the roll weeks after the fact, transporting myself right back to when I snapped the shot.
My sewing practice is rooted in sustainability and the whole idea of creating something new out of something old. There are endless amounts of textiles already in the world, and I do mean literal mountains of textile waste. Because of this disturbing fact, my ethos compels me to shop second-hand as much as I can. As I amassed what I consider to be too much clothing, I eventually turned to upcycling as a way to give a second, or technically third, life to these old rags. It started with me sewing tote bags, as I have a deep and burning passion for bags. Since then, my practice has exploded into all sorts of different sewing projects.
Amazing, so let’s take a moment to go back in time. What part of you has served its purpose and must now be released?
I think there is one mindset with creating art, especially for those beginning a certain practice or returning to it after a long hiatus, that because they’re just entering the space or coming back to it after years, whatever they make isn’t meant to be taken that seriously. Now, I think that this mindset is actually quite helpful in motivating you to create without any sort of preconceived notion, to create solely for the sake of it, or even – dare I say – to just have fun. I think these are all incredibly important aspects in creating art, and I want to stress that I had this mindset when I was returning to my art practice in my early adulthood.
The part of that mindset that I think keeps people from maturing as an artist, and is what I’ve been learning to release, is the aspect of not taking it seriously. It’s brushing yourself or your work off as immaterial because you’re not really “an artist”, it’s just for fun.
Now serious is not THAT serious of a word. I’m not saying you have to dress up in a suit and tie or have a protractor on hand for all your paintings. There’s no need to isolate yourself in an empty white room to force yourself to work for 20+ hours a day.
If you do get joy from these things, then by all means keep doing them, but what I’m trying to say is that taking yourself and your art seriously comes from a place of giving yourself the dignity to call yourself an artist or a photographer or a musician. It’s giving yourself a proper space to create freely and utterly. It’s getting yourself a nice pen and a quality sketchbook.
You don’t have to be a sales rep who plays harmonica on the side, or a business analyst who draws in the margin of your workbook. You can be a musician AND a sales rep. You can be an illustrator AND a business analyst.
I aspire to create things that are silly, wacky, and goofy, and I’m serious about that.
What fear has held you back the most in your life?
Even to this day, I’m afraid that whatever I make will turn out badly despite any amount of effort, care, or passion that I put into it. Having the finished piece not meet the standards or “vision” that I initially had makes me feel dejected, like I shouldn’t have even bothered in the first place. This materializes even further by making future pieces or projects incredibly hard to get started on, or in some cases, never started at all.
This fear was more rampant when I first got back into seriously making art in early adulthood, when it felt like every single project was the end-all be-all of who I was as an artist and what I wanted to share with friends, family, and strangers. But as I painted and photographed and sewed more, I got stronger. It was easier to not just ignore, but to fully combat that inner critic in my head telling me to not even bother. Like I said, I still do feel that fear that stops me from happily making art, but its grip on me has loosened to the point that I can shake it off as quickly as it came on.
So a lot of these questions go deep, but if you are open to it, we’ve got a few more questions that we’d love to get your take on. What truths are so foundational in your life that you rarely articulate them?
I know that I’ll get there. I don’t care if I have to get there by plane, train, van, or on my own two feet, I know that I’ll get there. I don’t even know where there is, but I know that I’ll get there.
As long as you’re you, and you’re true, then everything that’s meant to be, will be.
Before we go, we’d love to hear your thoughts on some longer-run, legacy type questions. What are you doing today that won’t pay off for 7–10 years?
Across my different practices, I have all sorts of different ambitions and visions for where I want my work to go. I want my paintings in galleries, my photos in magazines, my writing to be published, and my sewing in a lookbook.
I’ve been participating in these art forms for about 3-5 years, and it’s only been more recently in my life that I have adopted a more long-term, slow but steady mindset. This was a huge change from my “all or nothing” mindset that I used to have concerning my projects.
Something I like to tell myself when I’m trying to figure out which direction to take or opportunities to seek is that it’s “just the rest of my life”. I truly believe that if I stick with my practices and devote the necessary passion and effort over 7, 10, 15, 20 years, my work will end up exactly where it’s supposed to be. This can be where I do envision them already, or it could be in places I never thought possible.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://santiruggeri.com
- Instagram: @doodle.goobs
- Youtube: goobs
Image Credits
All images taken by me
so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
