We were lucky to catch up with Katrina Bello recently and have shared our conversation below.
Katrina, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?
When I look back at my journey when I was a young aspiring artist who was also a mother and immigrant to a new country, I’m often perplexed on how I have come to arrive at some stability today, with all the challenges that come with those experiences. Resilience is the first quality that comes to mind when I wonder what quality best embodies the journey. And in wondering where the resilience comes, there are several places that it emerged from: they are faith, family, community and a belief in the creative spirit.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
I want the reader to know that I’m a visual artist who primarily works in drawing and video. The themes I explore in my work are landscape and memory, and what informs my art are my experience of being a mother and an immigrant. Before coming to the United States, the first half of my life was lived mostly in Davao City which is a major city located in southern Philippines. Growing up in a coastal environment with a black sand beach that was very rich in inspiration for a young artist, I was influenced by the natural surroundings of the tropical area, which was the playground that captivated and animated my and my siblings’ imaginations (up to this day!). More influences are a religious background in the Catholic faith, as well as charitable acts performed and encouraged by some members of my family. Eventually my family moved north to Manila where I attended one of the universities to pursue a degree in art. My second year of college was a pivotal time for me; it was a time that I simultaneously became a mother and immigrated to the United States. The experience of immigrating was unexpected and it resulted in a long and challenging period of adjustment to a new country and culture. The adjustment period was one defined by feelings of insecurity and instability stemming from isolation, family separations, displacement and nostalgia for home. But with the kindness of many people I met here in the United States (counting from extended family, colleagues in the arts, neighbors, community members to even strangers), I was able to be reconnected to my family, be part of several communities, slowly take root in my new country, feel more secure, be more connected, and then eventually able to go back to college and resume my studies in art. The friendships, guidance, mentorships and encouragement of so many people in my journey are what gave me the confidence, assurance and skills that as much as a career in the arts is known to be risky and full of daunting challenges, it was also a dream that had been propelling me since childhood. This dream stems from memories of some family members’ strong sense of faith, their sense of charity, their love of learning and the arts, and their perseverance – these all inspired me to persevere through the difficulties, isolation, and insecurity. It also inspired me to see my artistic ability as a gift that is the object of my responsibility to nurture, cultivate and share with others. At the same time, my art was like a “voice” through which I felt I was incapable of articulating verbally: the beauty and conditions of the natural world, and our complex relationship with it. And because the natural world is something that I believe belongs to everyone, I felt that making art about it is something that I should also share. In time, my artistic practice developed into a meaningful art career that I want to share, and also to leave as a legacy to my daughters who are also artistic. All in all, my journey as an artist, mother and immigrant in this new country is a most fulfilling one, and I cannot thank enough the many family members, friends, colleagues and strangers who have helped and guided me through this journey. The abundance and generosity in their guidance are what moved me to share with my fellow artists in what means I have. And so, creating a space where other artists can also share their work -their own creative “voices”- was my form of gratitude. A few years ago I started an informal artist-run gallery space for site-specific art in my neighborhood in New Jersey where I live. It was a space where I was interested in providing an informal venue for artists in my community to showcase and experiment with their work in an area where there were few venues for artists to do so. Unfortunately the gallery has been on hiatus since the pandemic, and hasn’t resumed operations. It is my hope to resume operations someday and continue its mission of providing space for my community of artists. I’ll make announcements when it does resume.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
Looking back, I think resilience, patience and faith are what sustained me through my journey as an artist, a mother and an immigrant. Interestingly, when I was much younger, these are qualities that I felt I didn’t have; I felt I easily discouraged and gave up very easily, felt I was impatient, and had no faith at all. But a few decades later, looking back at the journey as a “big picture,” I realize now that I did have those qualities but was just unable to see them. Why I wasn’t able to see the acts of resilience, patience and faith is probably because they happened in the small, almost invisible, barely noticeable and momentary increments of them, performed one day after another. And so the advice that I want to give those who are early on their journey is that in their mission to achieve their dream, take it one day at a time.
Thanks so much for sharing all these insights with us today. Before we go, is there a book that’s played in important role in your development?
A book that I recently acquired is “Sacred Promise: An Anthology,” compiled by Dr. Tererai Trent (WCWPress, 2022). It is an amazing collection of true stories shared courageously by women of their experiences in their own personal journeys and the revelations that are learned in those journeys and experiences – the source of their “sacred promises” to themselves. I came upon it because one of the contributors is an artist, writer and curator who I admire – Sarah Walko. I haven’t read yet all the stories in the book, but it is a wonderful and inspiring book that I recommend. It has moved me of memorable stories of examples of resilience, and especially -through the essay by Sarah Walko- the possibilities that art can bring forth to offer the world. In a most moving passage in her essay, which is titled So That I Might Speak To You of Your Magnificence, Sarah wrote: “Over the years, my sacred promise revealed itself to me; I commit to doing everything I can to push the arts forward in the world, from making it, to supporting it, to educating with it, to directing it. Not for art as a thing, but for art as a WAY because of its healing powers, its ability to usher in ritual, its ability to activate our visual mythology. It equips us with the capacity to imagine new possibilities, new tomorrows, entirely new worlds.
Art offers itself to us as an all-inclusive language of hope where all are welcome, all voices heard. It is an arrow pointing right back at each person, the entire universe existing within each one of us and the magnificence of our stories.” (page 11-12)
Contact Info:
- Website: https://katrinabello.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kimbells2037
Image Credits
Portrait (courtesy of the subject)
Video installation (courtesy of Stand4 Gallery)
Video still (courtesy of the subject)
Artist residency studio image at Tusen Takk Foundation (courtesy of Tusen Takk Foundation)
Studio image (courtesy of Kenny Nguyen, at Vermont Studio Center)
