Meet Colton Paquette

We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Colton Paquette a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Colton, thank you so much for taking the time to share your lessons learned with us and we’re sure your wisdom will help many. So, one question that comes up often and that we’re hoping you can shed some light on is keeping creativity alive over long stretches – how do you keep your creativity alive?

Since I was young my family and more specifically my grandmother encouraged Creativity plus the freedom of expression that comes with it. These and many more messages were instilled within me from varying art mentors through my early years.

Although they were of different background and practice. The one message they could all get behind is you must never stop experimenting.

trying new things both in Life and Art allows for Inspiration and creativity to come naturally. Art comes from our truest selfs and curiosity is the best way to keep it alive.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

Production Design is my main Artistic / Professional focus at this point in my life.

Since I was young I had so many different dreams and goals without any specific direction to get there, the one thing I knew for sure was that I had been put on this earth to create things. Luckily I had many amazing figures in my life. Teaching me anything I could dream up, from sewing and painting with my grandmother to carpentry and welding with my father I had slowly turned into a Jack of all trades when I made the move from Rural Vermont to New York City.

This is where I slowly met friends from different walks of life, some of which knowing my abilities threw me into the fire that is film production.

Production design & the Art department of Film more specifically have very unique tasks unlike every other department.
Our job is constantly changing depending on the vision of clients and directors. But we always have a good time!

Internally we call ourselves “professional improvisers” as we are constantly being asked to do things we have never done or heard of before. From building small bodies of water in film studios, to custom monster trucks, Anything that can be dreamed up we figure out how to make it happen.

Now being 5 years in the industry me and my group of talented and amazing creatives are working to build a creative house where we can do these types of jobs on a much larger scale.

(Other exciting artistic developments is this summer (2025) I will also be opening up my first mobile tattoo studio in NYC and surrounding city’s)

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

I believe the most important qualities and skills on my journey are:

(1) Be kind
(It helps to be a social and kind to those you work along side as well as in your community, you never know when an opportunity will arise and people tend to want to help or work with you if they enjoy your presence.)

(2)Listen
If you are working as a team creatively, listen to those around you. You don’t have let them take over your opinion fully but Art is something you can get lost within, if you trust those you surround yourself with there thoughts can sometimes mean more than your own.

(3) Be detachable
When creating art it is often hard to separate oneself or ego from the work which they created and can have a hard time dealing with poor reception of work or dislike from viewers. Understand that not everything pans out or works out perfectly and that says nothing to you as a Person or an artist, art is subjective and if you feel proud of your work, be proud if you hate it, toss it out and start fresh. You only fail creatively if you stop creating

Any advice for folks feeling overwhelmed?

“It only matters until it doesn’t.” Is a mantra of sorts that I’ve started saying to myself in times of stress or anxiety. I often find myself getting overwhelmed with something like the timeline of a project or how we will pull off a certain idea, my daily problems are not life or death, this isn’t heart surgery it’s art.
I use these statement to remind myself although I should take this seriously, at the end of the day whatever my stressor is it will only be a problem for a day or two.

(I have no advice for a heart surgeons stress)

Contact Info:

• Website: Full company website coming soon!
• Instagram: @Colts.world