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houseofvans · 7 years

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Sketchy Behaviors | PACOLLI (San Francisco,CA)

Working as a producer in MTV Brazil, self taught artist Patricia Colli (Pacolli) started out hand drawing her own calendars and silk screening her own shirts. Making her own way through a mostly male dominated São Paulo art scene, Pacolli's natural creativity, unique eye for color and composition, and ear for the lyrical made her work stand out from the rest. Not only did her colorfully spastic, psychedelic, and angsty work catch our eye, but also her “go-getter” attitude and DIY ethic which permeates in everything she does: from silk screening her own gear, self publishing her zines, managing her online shop, High In The Bay to the recent opening of her new art space–Bendgy in Brazil. We got to chat with this chill artist about her new space Bendgy, her artistic processes, and about the magic of zines.

Photographs courtesy of the artist.

Keep calm, read on!

Introduce yourself My name is Patricia Colli, but people call me Pacolli (it doesn't really have a funny story behind the name, it was just my first email because i wasn't much of a Patty and I had a band with my friend Ronaldo who introduced me to everyone as Pacolli, eventually I stopped fighting it and embraced it, it's like a one name thing like Cher and I like Cher). I'm 35, born in São Paulo (Brazil) and I live in San Francisco, California with my husband and also artist Mildred.

What’s the first thing you remember drawing? How did you first get interested in art and making art? I remember drawing a house in the hills when I was in school and the teacher said that wasn't really good, I went to an italian catholic school in Brazil and they were not a fan of arts. Maybe that's why I started, in a very shy way, to go around it and start drawing all the time. I didn't like school from day one so I started drawing during classes to escape from it. In 7th grade I started drawing the guys that my friends and I had crushes on and passing them during class, we would laugh so much because the drawings were really sketchy and they were all about skipping class to go see them and skipping class to go to concerts, getting fake IDs and being crazy, recklessly teenagers!I always kept something like a sketchbook journal through the years and eventually they started to become zines, and then t-shirts...

What’s your artistic process like? Do you keep a sketchbook or doodle everywhere you go? I do keep a sketchbook with me at all times, and I make a lot of lists of things to draw. I also write down funny/interesting things I heard or read somewhere. I like to take my time to come up with an idea and daydream as much as I can about it before doing it. I like the process of coming up with something and letting it reveal itself as I go on. It's like finding something about yourself there.

How did your life go from drawing as a hobby to drawing as a career? I used to work on MTV Brazil as a producer and I used to make my own calendars with a big drawing on top, my co-workers used to make copies of those to use them too... I thought it was cool that people liked it but I never thought I could do this for a living. A couple years went by and I started screen printing some t-shirts and got invited for a fashion art show in Antwerp (Belgium). It was funny cause I started being asked to participate in art shows and collaborative zines in Europe but never in Brazil, so it was like a fun side gig to me. Eventually I started getting some freelance illustration/t-shirt design gigs/art shows in Brazil and abroad and gave up my tv job, started traveling where my art was taking me and it took me to San Francisco where I am since then.

What are some of the hardest challenges you have faced as an artist and how did you overcome them? It was hard to manage the ups and downs of the job and understand that's how it goes, sometimes you get called to make a bunch of shows and gigs at the same time and sometimes it feels like there's nothing happening for months to end... so I like to make things happen when I have these slower times, experiment different mediums, collaborate with other artists, start a new personal project and be productive. It's important to keep a perspective about those things and to not compare your path to anyone else cause that won't help. I tend to get anxious if I don't have projects lined up, but if there are no opportunities you have to create them yourself.

You have some many various types of characters – heart shaped people, coffee cup personalities to rabbit / cat people. What’s the inspiration behind some of them and do they all sort of have personalities? I guess I see faces everywhere lol, drawing humans is challenging! I make myself laugh sometimes when I'm drawing strange creatures that don't exist doing humane things, it's like it's ok for them to look a bit off because there's nothing to compare them to, you know? I like drawing these characters with human feelings but not in a human form because it's more fun and freeing. Sometimes I make these creatures inspired by my friends, I drew the album cover for my friend's band Polara and we used to drink so much coffee all the time, I thought the best way to go about was to draw a bunch of espresso coffee cups dancing like crazy and dizzy bumper cars cause that's how you feel listening to their music after all that coffee!

It’s always really cool to see you printing your own stuff from shirts to stickers When did you first start silk screening and printing your own things? Has the process evolved for you? I had some friends that screen printed t-shirts and I knew the basic process of doing it, so one day I decided to try one myself and I fell in love with the process and results. It was like playing with stamps all over again (I played with stamps and stickers my whole childhood). Since I was self taught in a way, I didn't know what I was doing...so I started to print things a bit different, not doing the same image over and over. I got a small squeegee and I took my time printing each drawing at once and composing a different story behind each tshirt. I became a screen hoarder!, I never throw them away (unless if they're clogged but I don't let it happen much) and bring them from Brazil - i know, it's crazy! I found my happy place doing these 1/1 prints, it gives me new ideas every time I'm printing, I see new possibilities and experiment without fear, it's very calming and exciting at the same time.

How many zines have you self-published? How did you first start creating your own zine? I self published six zines so far, my intention was to publish at least one every year but I've been slacking on that goal. I had too many sketchbooks full of drawings, my friends would tell me to do something with them and I was always shy and a bit embarrassed about sharing personal things, one of my friends called me out that all I like a lot from other artists are personal and maybe embarrassing things lol.. so yeah I had no excuse anymore! Reading Jeffrey Brown, Vanessa Davis and Esther Pearl Watson really encouraged me to make my own zine at that time! They're work is very personal and it was definitely an inspiration to me!

What is it that you love so much about zine culture? I think it's a very specific kind of subject that you couldn't find anywhere else (before the internet got huge). I started reading music zines about underground indie and punk bands. I think I still see it in the same way, a place to put on specific things you don't find anywhere else. I'm really into checking out the paper and print style, small editions with something handmade or hand drawn on it always get my attention. They're hard to find these days! Fun Chicken (the online shop from Mark Todd and Esther Pearl Watson) have really cool zines and I'm always checking Fudge Factory Comics (Travis Millard's online store) cause there's always cool zines. Well everything they have is amazing!

What have been some of your favorite collaborations? What do you enjoy most about them? I collaborate a lot with my husband, he's been making art and zines for a long time too and every now and then I'll sneak one of our collabs in my zines and vice versa. It's important to have some intimacy with whoever you're collaborating with so you can say what you really think. It's fun to do it and I always learn something from the experience.

Is there a medium you want to try and haven’t? What is currently your favorite medium and why? I got a wood burner from my in-laws last christmas and I haven't tried yet, it's sitting next to me and I'm very excited to try it out.I really like painting with acrylics and india ink on wood panels, there's so many possibilities and room for trial and error.

What are your top 5 artistic influences, past and contemporary? When I saw Dan Clowes comics for the first time, it changed my life! The way he draws and portrays the world was so new but so familiar in a way... he's a huge influence to me because it sparkled my interest in expressing myself through drawing. The same happened when I first saw the art of Clayton Brothers, I realized art could be so cool!! Their paintings and drawings blew my mind, I have never seen anything like that... I remember trying to like mainstream art like Picasso and Mondrian but I truly didn't have an emotional connection to any of these guys, I knew that I felt different when I saw Clayton Brothers in the cover of Juxtapoz in 2004. It was hard to find this kind of art in Brazil, and still is! Keith Haring went to São Paulo in the 80's and painted murals, he was on the tv and I thought he was such a cool guy. My mom gave me a calendar with his drawings on it and I loved it and kept it for years! Same thing happened when I discovered Warhol, his persona was always intriguing to me and it made me like his art even more. I grew up watching and reading Peanuts, so I don't think I can leave Charles Schultz out of this list. I don't separate comics from art, they have the same impact for me. I love his ability to create his own world and still being completely relatable, it's also kind of simple but extremely complex at the same time.

There’s an autobiographical nature and intimacy to a lot of your works because they come from feelings and experiences you’ve had or gone through or thought. Can you talk a little bit of maybe you’ve used some bad experiences in your life to create art from that has been maybe therapeutic? I feel like since my first sketchbooks were sort of journal like, that I've always had this relationship with drawing and letting emotions out... and it's therapeutic, cheaper than therapy as I always say! It's hard for me sometimes to not let it out, so I don't hold back anymore. It's funny cause the more embarrassed I am of something ultra personal that I drew, the more I get people to write me and say they really liked it. My first two zines were miserably sad ("I thought it was a love story" and "Mad for Sadness") I didn't know what to do with myself so I put together a zine with all those feelings. It kept me busy, which is usually a great thing, and a few years later I got emails from these teenage high school girls from San Francisco telling me their teacher showed my zine in class (!!) and they thought it was a good way to survive a heartbreak. I thought it was so sweet! I never thought about it before, you know? Sad things will happen anyway but how you deal with them is up to you.

What common misconception do you think folks might have about being an artist or making art for a living? I think the internet makes things look easier and more glamorous than they really are. I grew up seeing cartoonists drawing and being a bit miserable like Robert Crumb. Have you seen the documentary "Crumb"? I knew it wasn't easy being him and doing what he was doing, maybe it made me have even more respect for his work. He never tried to portray any glamour about being an artist and I think it's more like the real thing. These days people don't care for struggle, they seem to always want the easy way and that's not how art goes most of the time so I think it's funny and sad in a way. People rip off your work and forget you're a human too, trying to survive in this messy world.

What do you do to overcome those days when nothing you’re making is turning out right? What do you like to do in your off time? I like to read books when I don't know what to do with myself, it helps me to shift the focus and get into something else than my own drama. It helps me with anxiety and always sparks new ideas. Going to concerts and playing drums are my other escape tools for living a better life, music is magic... the power of live music is amazing, going to concerts is one of my favorite things to do!

Tell us about your recent trip to visit Brazil. When you lived there, you used to do some events called Bendgy. Can you tell us how they came about and how your recent visit went? I lived in São Paulo for 28 years, it's a huge city with a lot of cultural things happening all the time, the pace of the city is maddening and it's hard to keep focus sometimes, but regardlessly it's where i'm from and I love it! I started throwing an art party/concerts in my apartment when I started to make tshirts around 2006-2007. It was a very low profile thing, just for friends and just for fun... i didn't wanted to reach out to places that already existed and try to sell my art because it was weird... so I started something unpretentious to do what I was doing and that's Bendgy!It was an art party with a concert Saturdays afternoon in my apartment, i would sell beers, vegan sandwiches and tshirts. A lot of my friends are musicians so I wanted to have a band and we would support each other, it started getting bigger and I was scared of the risk of being kicked out of my apartment for the loud noise and amount of people coming in...I threw a few Bendgys at my friends places and eventually my dad moved out of his house and it was empty for a while, I started throwing bigger concerts there and it was so much fun!

How is Bendgy now? I just came back from SP and it was a long process but now Bendgy is a real art space, I got a great staff and we open every Saturday! We're having an international art show called "Hit the ground running" with the art of Albert Reyes, Jason Vivona, Jeff Roysdon, Mats!?, Mildred, Michael Hsiung (you!) and myself! In addition to the art show, there's a zine/print/tshirt/stickers shop and we have more affordable things from all the artists in the show and from other great artists from the US, Argentina and Brazil. I'm stoked that it turned out the way it did! It was so much hard work putting it together, I thought I was going crazy.. i felt like Donal Duck, but it was worth it!I book every band and make almost every flyer for it, so it's like I'm there but I'm not.

During your time living in São Paulo, Brasil, what was the art scene like? It was most like an all boys club to be honest. Graffiti and pixação (São Paulo style of tagging) were the underground art that I liked but always made by guys, some really talented ones too! Like, Os Gemeos still blow my mind and were always a reference for me to what brazilian art is, even though they are more respected as artists outside Brazil. I think they're a good example, for some reason Brazil doesn't cherish their own artists until someone else says it's good. It needs a foreign stamp of approval that always made me bored about it because there's so many great artists there!

Who are some artists in Brazil you admire? and why? I love Stephan Doitschinoff's art, he creates his own world and he is very focused on being true to who he is. His work has always been an inspiration to me on how to do things, if there's not a scene for what you're doing you create the scene!

Throw a zine fest or an art party, and make no excuses for not doing things. People tend to complain there's not enough opportunities there, but i feel like it's also in our own hands to make things happen and not just wait for someone to invite you to be part of something. Jaca is another extremely talented artist living in São Paulo, he is super humble and not really into posting his art online. He doesn't need no approval or applause and I love that! He looks inside himself and his works reveal that to us, it's very inspiring! He will have a solo show at Bendgy in July and I can't wait to see what he's going to do.

When did you start your online store High in the Bay? The products on there are all hand made by you in SF? What’s it like keeping your own shop? I started High in the Bay with my husband, Mildred, when I moved to SF in 2010 to make it up for the fact that I couldn't do a Bendgy here (i would have been evicted right away) so we did an online store.We do carry zines from other artists that we like and sometimes we make collaborative zine packs so people get to know other things than our own work, they get to see what we like! I brought some books, prints and zines from an amazing artist from Argentina called Tomás Spicolli, his work has been a big influence to me so I was very happy to have his art at Bendgy and soon at High in the Bay. It's important to learn to manage something even if it's an online shop, so then you get the grip of it and can do things better in the future, I used to work at Needles and Pens and I learned a lot from them on how to do things, it really helped me when I was doing Bendgy and High in the Bay.

You done a lot of cool art for bands! What has been your favorite collaboration? Thanks, man! I have to say I've been lucky to have worked with cool people, like I told before the Polara album cover was a cool one, it's coming out sometime this year in Brazil. All the bands were really cool to me and we became friends, I did a tshirt design for Josh Berwanger Band a few years ago, it had a funny request "draw Patrick Swayze in Road House"! And there was another album cover i did for Swivs that was so much fun to do, his music is so good!!

Give us your top 5 bands or tunes while creating? How does music influence your art? I'm very into the new Afghan Whigs album called "In Spades", and all their music really. It's one of my favorite bands ever, I have drawn so many of their lyrics consciously and unconsciously!I just came back from a concert last night in Oakland from another favorite of mine, The Magnetic Fields. They're great and i came back from Brazil earlier just to see them, love everything that Stephin Merritt does, forever and ever.I'm very into the same bands for the longest time, I love the Ramones, Pulp, Os Mutantes, Cypress Hill, Tupac, Jonathan Richman, Spaceman 3... my music taste is all over the place!Music is a major influence to me, since I was a kid my best friend was not my pen but my radio.

What are your favorite Vans? how would you describe your personal style?Ok, there was a limited edition Lo Pros Saddle shoes that was SO cool! I have a photo of me wearing it, cause i wore it all the time! I'm a Hi Top girl, black and white or just white ones, love those!

What’s the best and worse advice you’ve gotten about art? Best advice is to work hard and be true to yourself, sounds cliche but it's the truth.Worse advice is when people told me I had to go to art school, it might work for some people but it wasn't for me...

What’s on the horizon for the rest of 2017? There's one big project that i'm super excited about but can't talk about it yet... And there will be lots and lots of cool art and live music happening at Bendgy!

Follow Pacolli Website: http://www.pacollipacolli.com/ Instagram: www.instagram.com/pacollionline Shop:https://highinthebay.bigcartel.com Bendgy: www.instagram.com/bendgysp

#Art #Sketchy Behavior #Interview #vans art #Pacolli #San Francisco #bay area art #vans girls

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