Meet Natale Adgnot

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Natale Adgnot. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Natale below.

Natale, so good to have you with us today. We’ve always been impressed with folks who have a very clear sense of purpose and so maybe we can jump right in and talk about how you found your purpose?

My path has been particularly circuitous. I have always thought of myself as an artist but not necessarily a sculptor. The difficult part was figuring out what kind of artist I was meant to be and that was a hard-fought discovery that took three decades, with three careers in three countries.

The daughter of high school graduates who worked hard to support us, my desire to study art in college was a non-starter. So, I began my career in Texas as a graphic designer – the closest thing to art that they could get behind.

I applied my graphic design education to web design, which allowed me to find a job in France where I ended up staying for a decade. A few years into my life in Paris, I went back to school and studied fashion. I had some lucky breaks that led to stints with haute couture designer Felipe Oliveira Baptista and Chanel. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it was in the couture studios making outlandish clothes and accessories for the runway that I cut my teeth as a sculptor.

In 2009, I moved to New York City where the dream of being an artist still lay buried just below the surface of my daily existence teaching at FIT. It was probably the art that attracted me to a job at Christie’s auction house. While working there, I finally resolved to get my own art studio and make a go of it as an artist instead of a designer.

But one more big turn in my path lay ahead. No longer tethered to a design job, I was free to move abroad again. I lived in Tokyo for three years and while there, the strange alchemy of my childhood in Texas, fashion experience in Paris, and the intensity of New York City reacted with my Japanese surroundings. All of those experiences culminated in my first sculptural series in 2017 and since then, I haven’t looked back.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

I am a visual artist in Brooklyn focusing on sculpture and fiber/textile art. I am also the owner and director of a seasonal art space in upstate New York called N/A Project Space.

My current series, Bird Brains, taps into the surprisingly large number of expressions in the English language that borrow bird imagery. Each artwork is inspired by one of these expressions that invariably point to human fallibility. From black swan theory – a mistaken belief that something is impossible – to the duck test (“if it swims like a duck…”), to the proverbial canary in the coal mine, I tap into colloquial language to highlight the ways we misconstrue the world.

Over the past year, I have begun incorporating autobiographical materials into the work: horsehair and leather from Texas; fashion prototyping fabric from Paris; sumi ink and washi paper from Japan, to name a few. This work will be featured in a solo exhibition at Sweet Lorraine gallery in Brooklyn, NY opening September 4th.

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?

The three most important things that have propelled me in my career have been the following:

1. Building relationships with people through hard work and a genuine desire to help others succeed. This is your best formula for making inroads into any career. I’ve found this to be true in design and in fashion. My art career is relatively young by comparison, but I suspect the same principle holds true in the art world, as well.

2. Dedication to craftsmanship. No amount of enthusiasm or determination can replace the quality of work that can only come from practicing a skill over and over again until it’s polished.

3. Openness to change. This has meant both a willingness to accept criticism and also the courage to question my own path so that I could course-correct.

Before we go, any advice you can share with people who are feeling overwhelmed?

I do get overwhelmed at times, especially when I have to juggle being an artist and being a gallery director at the same time. I’ve found that the most important thing to do is to break down all the tasks into bite-size chunks and prioritize them. When I have a list of tasks, it helps me feel like each step is doable. And when they are prioritized, I know I’m spending my day working on the right task at the right time so I can put the other tasks out of my mind.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.nataleadgnot.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/natale_adgnot
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nataleadgnot
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nataleadgnot/