Interview with mixed media artist
Carrie Ann Tredo

Location Westfield, NY, USA

Website www.twolakesstudios.com

Facebook @Two Lakes

Instagram  @carrietredo

Ingredients:

• Mother

• Artist

• Business owner

Preparation:

1. Artistic Weapon of Choice:                            My artistic process is purely experimental. I don't usually have much of an idea of where I am going when I set out on a piece. I start by assembling some materials and a product that I want to play with and I really just start moving things around. it doesn't necessarily have to be amazing in the beginning but once I get my hands dirty or start moving material around, it will tell me where it wants to go. I have a lot of failures, but then I feel when I am pleased with a piece, it makes it that much more exciting.

2. Can you tell us more about your artistic process?    My artistic process is purely experimental. I don't usually have much of an idea of where I am going when I set out on a piece. I start by assembling some materials and a product that I want to play with and I really just start moving things around. it doesn't necessarily have to be amazing in the beginning but once I get my hands dirty or start moving material around, it will tell me where it wants to go. I have a lot of failures, but then I feel when I am pleased with a piece, it makes it that much more exciting.

3. How do you balance Two Lakes, being a mother and other life obligations with your art? The balancing act is very difficult. There are conscious decisions made daily on what to neglect. The things that have been neglected in the past have been my own personal life, my home, cooking dinner for family, leisure time, my health, etc. I think it's really easy as an artist to become really immersed in your work when you are really feeling the process and the real world just melts away. Time kind of slips through your fingers and you almost become obsessed with creation. My kids have always been first without question. But all of those optional things get pushed aside. I am working towards more of a balance moving forward between the art and taking care of myself and still having down time. It really is a struggle.

4. Who are your influences,                        My influences are really two sides of the coin. On the one side, I credit my avid obsession with horror movies which I have been watching from a very young age. Old Hollywood monsters, Bela Lugosi, the black and white classics. The graphic, avant-garde movies of the 70"s. Suspiria. The costumes, the special effects.  I remember as a kid visiting the Newsroom in Jamestown with my Dad and he would get Fangoria magazine. It was a publication dedicated to the horror movie genre, behind the scenes stuff and I was just fascinated. My Dad was an influence. He was painting and making latex masks when I was a kid.On the other side of the coin, there is the influence of nature and the idea of growth, rebirth and second chance. Lastly, I have to give credit to Jack and Roberta who were the first people in my adult life to believe in me. When you are just kind of skating through life making one bad decision after another with no real support, it's really easy to just accept an unacceptable life. They believed in me and made me believe in myself and without their influence and support I would probably still be in that abusive marriage, living life as someone else's punching bag.

5. I would call your work experimental, would you agree? How did you get started with your media? I definitely call my work experimental also maybe nontraditional. After my divorce from a 13 year dysfunctional, extremely unhealthy marriage, I began creating out of necessity. I used art as a form of therapy. I have always been creative. I had been making jewelry for years. After my divorce there was a need to create more, to re-create myself. So I bought some canvasses and I started playing around with texture and paint and decide that flat was not for me. I started messing around with wire armatures and paper mache. Things just kind of evolved from there.

6. Of your own work, what would you say is your favorite and why? Of my own work, I still am in love with Tale of Two Sisters because it is a representation of two daughters. It was a very early piece so it was when I was a little more ambitious, It also symbolizes the amount of support I get from my boyfriend Mick. I asked him to cut off the bottom of an entire tree that washed up at Barcelona on Lake Erie's shore. He brought the chainsaw and without question or hesitation supports me every step of this journey. So even though the work on this piece is a bit crude, it embodies my entire world.

7. Do you have a studio space? Can you show us what it looks like? Any tips on sorting/organizing or are you more of creation comes from the chaos like myself? I acquired an amazing studio space this past year. Two Lakes Studios in Mayville, New York. It is in a very historic building with amazing tin ceilings. I have been working on since last September. I opened it as a retail gallery in June of this year. It houses a lot of my work and I am also showing the work of 12 other area artists as a co op. The hope being that the effort of the group would be more successful than the effort of one. There was a really cool co op operating in North Tonowanda where artists were gathered and creating together, sharing ideas, feeding from each other. It was a very inspiring space. I have a large workshop room in the rear of the studio where I host monthly classes in a variety of media.I am constantly in this eternal battle of create, clean up and sort. There are so many components to mixed media work that by the time I am done with a project, I have pooled from so many supplies, it looks like a tornado hit. My studio will never be one of those well organized, labeled totes kind of places.  

Upcoming Shows:

I do have something very exciting up my sleeve at Two Lakes but I am not quite ready to reveal it yet. I am going to be a retailer for a very exciting product and I am currently going to be reworking and moving things around. I am planning on organizing a couple of regular groups as well that will meet monthly at the studio. I am hoping to have all of that ready to launch in October. Stay tuned.

Carrie at Pararhorror in Buffalo Central Terminal 2017

Some of the work I have purchased from Carrie:

Reforge!


I love my new creepy ass doll that I picked up during the Wild America Nature Festival at Panama Rocks!