Newell Catania
they/she
Newell Catania is a 26-year-old queer metal artist. They will graduate this spring with a BFA in Metals/Jewelry/CAD-CAM from the Tyler School of Art and Architecture in Philadelphia. Catania’s work is influenced by her personal experience with trauma, an unstable childhood, and intimate partner violence. They use their work to relate to their peers, searching for understanding, connection, and home through art. Recently, their practice was influenced by time spent in Iris Eichenberg’s A Travel Altar workshop at Haystack Mountain School of Craft. Newell intends to remain in the Philadelphia area post graduation, looking to celebrate collaboration and become more involved with local queer craft communities.
"As a metal artist (and perfectionist) I’m drawn to traditional processes and tedious finishing. My work has been controlled by rigidity and a narrow understanding of art in the past, bolstered by fear of failure. This fear was worsened by my inability to meet societal standards due to queerness, femininity, and neurodivergence. My practice has recently strayed from perfectionism, becoming an exploration of neurodivergence, collection, and compulsion. It’s an investigation that embraces messiness and imperfection, encouraging me to stop asking for permission. My work validates the origin of my need for control, and examines its implications. Currently, I’m developing a series of boxes, considering if the box functions as containment or care for what’s placed inside. I’m looking for answers about control, family, fitting in, and finding home. I strive to provoke emotionality in the viewer on a personal level, while questioning convention to reassess its value, intent, and relevance."
“As a kid, I learned to be small, quiet, and out of the way. Which was tough because I grew up fat, queer, and desperately craving flamboyance. Consequently, feeling at home in my body has become a huge part of my making process as well as my queerness. My relationship with my body, specifically my hands, is empowering and safe in a way that I’ve never experienced in another relationship. I feel joy in the moment of making (sometimes) and am grounded by the physical task of making. I never thought I would feel at home anywhere, let alone my body. That is queerphoria to me, radical personal growth, and creating comfort in myself that I couldn’t have imagined. As I age and come into my queerness, I’m focusing on being expansive. I’m healing those tender parts of myself that were denied for so long, by surpassing my expectations for the future. Queerphoria is the freedom to do as I please, taking time to learn what I want, and who I am. It’s being surrounded by people who make me feel so much like myself that I couldn’t shrink if I wanted to. All without asking permission.”
What does [queerphoria] mean to you? This can be something felt, experienced, or made.
Girl's Princess Bling Flip Phone Lip Gloss Set for Girls, Bronze, Sterling silver,
Cubic zirconia, Petroleum jelly, Mica, Apple fragrance oil, 1.5" x 3" x 1.5", 2022
“In terms of material choices, I think that queerness showed through in my art before I even knew to call it that. Initially I worked a lot with kids’ craft supplies, processing the traumas of growing up in the environment that I did. You could say those materials are queer, but it makes begs the question is the queerness is in the materials themselves? or the context behind them? Recently I’ve recognized that I’m much more interested in found objects with some grit, not bought online for a specific purpose. I want to go to the dump and find materials that had a whole life before I came into the picture. There’s something queer in that. Finding an object and meeting it where it is, appreciating it in its current state, for both its histories and potential futures. There is hope in materiality; there are endless possibilities at our fingertips, just as there are endless queer futurities.”
What does being queer mean to you in relation to your material choices? Is it something you consider?
“In honor of transparency, this question threw me for a loop. When I found out that I would be included in this exhibition I felt proud, excited, and happy, but also experienced heaps self-doubt, emboldened by my old friend imposter syndrome. Who am I to declare what it means for work to be queer? Why do my thoughts or feelings have weight in this conversation? It feels important acknowledge this fear of unintentional fraudulence, validating myself as well as other queer makers with similar experiences.
To avoid generalizing or suggesting the existence of a universal determining factor for queerness in art, I’ll focus on my personal relationship with queerness and my perceptions of the work as such. Interpersonal connection and collective experiences have been important in my practice. I’ve explored the use of specific imagery and materiality to trigger nostalgia in those who relate to the subject. The connection and joy felt when people are reminded of a childhood interest feels queer to me. I’m interested in making work that provides oasis from the pains of the adult world, rejecting the expectation that our childhood interests and exuberance should be discarded as we age.
I view this divergence from societal expectation as queer, understanding queerness as an alternative way of life. It’s neither the subject nor the maker that define my work as queer, but rather my view of it in opposition to social norms perpetuated by cis-heteropatriarchal structures. This perception of queerness is something I'd like to delve into more, questioning the conventions and traditions of jewelry and metalsmithing. Where do our ideals come from? Who do they serve? Do they deserve to be perpetuated? There is power in examining these practices and deciding for ourselves which have value and which should be left behind.”
Is the work queer because the maker is queer, or is it queer because the subject matter is queer?
“My studio practice is reflective of my identity mostly in the way that I’ve experienced growth. Over the past few years of personal research and healing I’ve come to understand the effect my identity has had on my behaviors, beliefs, and lived experiences. One huge correlation between my process and identity is the need for control. This stems from long term fear of failure developed by world that is designed for my failure a queer, fat, feminine, neurodivergent person. As I moved through them in my personal life, these pervasive anxieties and perfectionism bled into my studio practice. Jewelry and metals became a vessel for compulsion and control. I found comfort in the process of painstakingly finishing each piece to a high shine. Chasing a result that didn’t exist, obsessing over each bump, scratch, and imperfection along the way.
I latched on to a specific way of making, allowing arbitrary expectations control everything I made. It’s difficult to feel joy when you can only focus on the ways you’ve failed. Like my personal journey, I’ve recognized that this need for control is present in my practice and am working to move through it. Growing and healing my practice means abandoning projects early and often, working in quick iterations, exploring finishes I have been turned off by in the past, and seeing beauty and possibilities of my mistakes. I’m learning to celebrate myself and my work. Attempting to queer my studio mindset past perfectionism into a world of play and forgiveness.”
What role does your studio practice play in your identity- if at all?
"Prawn" Set Ring, Gold filled wire, Plastic prawn, 2" x 1" Size 8 Ring Band, 2022
“I do consider the relationship my work has had with the viewer. One of my main explorations has been collective nostalgia, and I’ve made quite a few pieces with the intent of triggering an emotional response for viewers of my generation. The pieces that have had this focus relied on widely recognizable imagery and characters to manufacture connection. Through this work I did not consider the viewer’s interaction with the queerness of my art, as I still hadn’t fully explored my own queerness and the impact it has on my practice.
Recently I’ve been following my instinct to shift my work in a new direction, choosing a different path to follow. I’ve been working on embracing and celebrating the messiness of art, unusual materials, and making to process personal traumas. As a result, I am thinking about the viewer’s interaction with the work and its queerness in a different way. My decisions are based more and more on the way I feel during a process and how I want others to feel when they see it. This lets an audience to contribute their own emotions, interpretation, and thoughts to the conversation; a very different modality than handing people imagery on a platter. Queerness is criticality, encouraging thoughtfulness, and learning from the people you encounter. All in all, I find it easier to consider the viewer’s interaction with the work and its queerness when I leave room for interpretation, focus on emotion, and explore new or untraditional materialities.”
When creating your work, do you consider the relationship your object has with the viewer?
“Going forward I hope to explore messiness in my work, continuing to develop my view of queerness in my practice and life. I want to set the intention of caring for myself and my loved ones in the ways we deserve. It’s time to prioritize breaks, meals with pals, fueling my body, going outside, pancake breakfasts, novelty socks, and dancing in the kitchen as much as possible.”
We've asked you a lot of our questions... What is one thing you would like to share?
“Box”, Brass, Dead bugs, Spit, Chewed up stuff, 3" x 3", 2022