Title: Organelle 7
Medium: Steel needles, copper wire, polyvinyl acetate, wood, acrylic
Size: 19 x 10,6 x 2,5in
Year: 2015

Briefly describe the work you do.

I work mainly with textile, copper wire, paper and acrylic paints creating and shaping geometric forms.

Tell us about your background and how that has had an influence on your work and on you as an artist.

I was a teacher for over 9 years teaching Portuguese to mid school students. I have always integrate art into my classes even before I realized that I was going to become an artist. So art has been playing a big part in my life since an early age.

The concept of the artist studio has a broad range of meanings in contemporary practice. Artists may spend much of their time in the actual studio, or they may spend very little time in it. Tell us about your individual studio practice and how it differs from or is the same as traditional notions of “being in the studio.”

I wake up, make myself a cup of coffee and off to my studio I go. I tend to spend as much time as I can in my studio creating pieces and experimenting new ideas. Classical music plays an important role during my creative process.

Title: Mass Consumption
Medium: Fabric, polyvinyl acetate and wood
Size: 18,9 x 12,9 x 2,7in
Year: 2015

What roles do you find yourself playing that you may not have envisioned yourself in when you first started making art?

The role of marketing myself, which I did not realized how important it is in this process. At first, you just want to make art for the sake of it then you realize that there is a bigger part that needs to be taken care of.

When do you find is the best time to make art? Do you set aside a specific time everyday or do you have to work whenever time allows?

I tend to feel more in tune with my creative self at a very early hours in the morning around 5 or 6 AM as my mind is rested and full of ideas.

How has your work changed in the past five years? How is it the same?

I believe that my work has been evolving and becoming more mature in terms of technics and boldness of materials and colors I have been using. I realized that in Art being conservative may limit yourself of creating strong impressive pieces.

Title: Untitled
Medium: Fabric and plastic pin
Size: 69.6 x 354.3in
Year: 2015

How have people such as family, friends, writers, philosophers, other artists or even pop icons had an impact on the work you do?

My partner has played an important role in the work I do as we work strongly as team to focus 100% in the idea that I can make my voice as an artist speak up. The works of Eva Hesse. Roberto Burle Marx. Josef Albers, Kansuke Yamamoto, Sheila Hicks, Nelson Leirner plays a very important role for inspiration in the work I do.

Have you ever been pulled in the direction of a pursuit other than being an artist? What are your other interests?

I am also very interested in Architecture and Furniture Design.

About

Rodrigo Franzão was born in São Paulo in 1982 and currently resides in the town of Abadiânia in the state of Goiás, Brazil since 2013. 
The evolution of his artistic process began to unfold after nearly a decade as a Portuguese teacher, Literature and Fine Arts. 

His interest in the arts began at the College of Language Arts, which through literature encouraged reflective perception. His approach was strengthened through focusing on Psychopedagogy and Art Therapy followed by Communication in Art Education, through which he discovered the crucial relevance of making art for the artist. His evolution as an artist distinctly manifested itself during his tenure at the College of Architecture and Urbanism which emphasized spatial organization and visual communication. In order to put his theoretical knowledge into practice, in 2013 he began studying further in the arts to gain a greater understanding of the historical, social and aesthetic context of art. 

Influenced by geometric abstraction, figurative and constructivist art, the artist expresses himself with the aim of revealing the transparency that exists through the use of every day materials. Through multiple languages he interweaves mixed media to show the minutiae and structure that fragment into dispersion, gap and sound. 

rodrigofranzao.com

All images copyright of the artist and used with their permission.