Check out Bianca Acosta’s Artwork

Today we’d like to introduce you to Bianca Acosta.

Every artist has a unique story. Can you briefly walk us through yours?
Growing up, art was always a huge part of my life. I was fortunate to have an amazing artistic role model, who also happened to be my elementary school art teacher, mi madre. She is a supremely talented, eccentric, passionate and supportive lady. The two of us had my great grandmother to look up to. She was a painter and all around magical woman who could fabricate anything, had impeccable taste in interior decorating, and she made hundreds of paintings in her lifetime. The woman painted three renditions of Rembrandt’s ‘Spanish Soldier,’ all of which are hanging in my home. I was always fortunate to be surrounded by so many amazingly talented artists, many who have gone on to become successful musicians and visual artists in Atlanta. I never questioned my decision to attend Georgia State to study art and try to make a living as an artist, and never considered doing anything else.

I’m also very fortunate to have a badass sister who has taught me that you can do or make anything you want, which has become integral to my point of view as an artist. She bought herself a little log cabin (no kidding) a couple miles from downtown Decatur at the age of 21, before most people her age were thinking about adult matters like buying houses. It was basically a shack when she bought it but she has completely transformed it into the wonderful witch palace that it is with nothing but her two bare hands. We live there together, which I cherish because of all of the projects we get into together. We built a screen printing studio in our backyard and are attempting a small scale printing biz. She also inspired me to buy a 1967 beetle which she taught me to work on myself, which is necessary if you drive a vintage beetle because it will probably break down every other week (that’s the fun part).

This can-do mentality has really benefitted me at my job, Malone Design, where I create exhibits and dioramas for nature museums and wildlife refuges. In my 3 years there I have learned so many techniques in sculpting processes and mold-making. I do a lot of realistic sculpting and painting of various bugs, fish, and bird species, and occasionally even a turd or two. We primarily create life sized trees and dioramas which depict the flora and fauna of whatever wildlife refuge it happens to be for, but the possibilities for what we may have to create are endless.

One major part of my life that has given back in many ways has been learning to live as minimally as possible and being okay with being uncomfortable. This has been very important to my lifestyle as an artist, because it’s made traveling for months a possibility, which is essential to my artistic practice. This is something I would like to carry with me for the rest of my life.

Please tell us about your art. What do you do / make / create? How? Why? What’s the message or inspiration, what do you hope people take away from it? What should we know about your artwork?

My work deals is themes of life and death, innocence, viscera, and our weird meat bodies. I am fascinated by the body, how it works, what it looks like on the inside. I spend way too much time looking at images and videos of surgery, disease, accident aftermath, women giving birth.

I started seeking and painting roadkill when I was in school at GSU. Naturally that lead to friends sending me pictures of roadkill they’d come across, or calling me and informing me of the exact location of a particularly gruesome roadkill scene. One day a friend called on a hot ass day in July to tell me about a possum he’d found on the beltline. I picked him up and we went on a possum hunt. I’m not sure what my plan was, if I was just going to photograph it for reference images, maybe poke it with a stick or something, but what I ended up doing was definitely one of the stranger choices I’ve made. I took it, maggots and all, put it in a plastic bag, and put it in the trunk of my car (which had been booted in the meantime). $75 later I drove home and left it there over night because my friend’s band was playing a show I couldn’t miss. The next day I came to my car, and was smacked in the face by the smell. I drove to my studio at The Office (RIP) with my head out the window, unloaded it, tied a scarf around my face, and photographed it for hours. I didn’t know at the time how much those images and the time I spent observing this creature’s life after death would inform my work for years to come. And I am reminded every summer, because the smell somehow reemerges from the trunk of my car with a vengeance and haunts me.

I like to paint things that people don’t normally like to look at, perhaps to find some kind of beauty in it or maybe just to honor it in some way. I’m not quite sure what I’d like people to take away from my creations, maybe it’s just to make them take a moment to look and decide for themselves. There is something I enjoy about having to stare and study every minute detail of something considered ‘grotesque’ for all of the hours it takes to make an oil painting or a detailed watercolor. On a purely visual level, I really just enjoy painting meat, organs, intestines, for the color palette, the depth, the translucent quality, the texture.

More recently I’ve been really into exceptionally creepy or weird looking babies. The kind of weird baby that looks you straight in the eye and you feel like somehow it’s this all knowing being, who understands your past and holds the unknowns of your future… I’m not sure if this ever happens to anyone else. I’ve begun experimenting with placing the babies in scenes with roadkill, I like the contrast.

How or where can people see your work? How can people support your work?
Although I’m terrible at keeping up with internet and social media things my work can be found on my website biancaacosta.com or on my instagram (@bianca.not.here). I have spent the past three summers attending an artist residency organized by Craig Dongoski in Kefalonia, Greece at the Ionion Center for Arts and Culture. There I have worked on 3 collaborative site specific murals with a bunch of other very talented artists. This year we started a mural in the town of Poros, which is believed to be the actual setting for Homer’s Ithaca as well as the site of Ulysses’ tomb. This mural is planned to be completed next summer, so if you ever find yourself in Kefalonia, keep your eyes peeled. I’ve also had the privilege of creating prosthetics and doing special FX work on some short films and music videos for my very talented partner’s production company, Rock and Egg Productions. They always blow my mind with their talent and creativity and I hope to continue to collaborate with them on some upcoming projects. My work can also be found in lots of wildlife refuges across the country in the middle of nowheres, so if you ever stop to take a pee in a welcome center.. perhaps I painted that snake in that diorama.

Do you have any advice for other artists? Any lessons you wished you learned earlier?
Some of these things that I’ve learned I know have helped me along as an artist, and some I need to put into practice, so this is me advising myself too. Learn how to write off your lifestyle (and I mean EVERYTHING) on your taxes if you do freelance work of any kind, in fact, get freelance work solely to be able to do this, then (!) invest in your own tools and write them off on your taxes (so exciting), never let a strange man work on your car (learn to do it yourself with the internet), get yourself a bidet ($30 on amazon, seriously it will change your life), get with 10 of your closest friends near a body of water and take your clothes off, but respect the ocean because she is powerful, dig through ‘trash’, live uncomfortably, take long walks, care only the amount you need to, if you are a woman don’t be afraid to work in a male dominated environment, and never let them talk down to you, surround yourself by people more talented and self motivated than you are.

Contact Info:

• Website: biancaacosta.com
• Email: bianca.eisa.acosta@gmail.com
• Instagram: @bianca.not.here

Image Credit:
Sarah Stover

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