Artist Represents Marginalized People in Her Work
By: Ritwan Abdinor
Staff Writer
Olivia Camarillo is a 26-year-old Hispanic artist from Yakima, WA, who works primarily with pen work art.
Her journey as an artist began when her grandma discovered she had a knack for art. Camarillo recalled how her grandma would make her choose a book and an animal.
“I loved zebras so I would draw that, and that’s when my grandma saw my skill and decided to invest in it,” Camarillo said. “She bought me pencil sets, and I would rip pages out of my books…and my grandma would say ‘we don’t have any more books’.”
It has not been all butterflies and rainbows for Camarillo in her artistic journey.
In high school, she was afraid to reveal her talents, as she was scared that her artwork was not good enough. However, that did not stop her from engaging in other forms of art like music, marching band, and design.
She decided to “break out of her shell” her senior year: “My brother convinced me to take an art class and so I stepped forward and decided to go for it,” Camarillo said. “My teacher loved me and that just pushed me further to do what I love.”
Camarillo loves expressing herself through art because it is never concrete. Every time she submerses herself in a new element of art, whether its music or photography she wants to do her best.
A quote by Thomas Merton—“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves all at the same time,”—enabled Camarillo to lose herself and go out of her comfort zone.
“I feel like as an artist, you don’t know who you really are until you completely rip yourself apart,” Camarillo said. “I had to get away from what I knew and go to a dark place to figure out who I was. A lot of my work has so much meaning to it because it makes people…understand who we are.”
Her art teacher, Cindy Small, describes Camarillo as someone who is dedicated to her point of view.
“Whatever idea she takes on, she becomes fully committed to the expression,” Small said. “Olivia will spend time on her work giving it a 110 percent.”
Camarillo has an agenda on setting forth messages that people are itching to talk about—but refuses to talk about. She is working on her first gallery, and it is centered around the LGBTQ+ community, “I want to get all people from different cultures,“ said Camarillo. “I want people of color, people with disabilities, and people who are shunned from society. My main aim is to show people that it isn’t just a one rainbow flag, there are 26 more flags and some in creation, which is the reason I want these people to be proud of who they are.”
Her art icon Salvador Dali, who painted the Meditative Rose, inspired her to make art which is not only symbolic, but also achieve a sense of a deeper meaning and emotion.
“He sends a message without words,” said Camarillo. “There is this giant rose in the middle of his painting and you see these two little people standing there, what I love about it is that I see the rose, but do I believe in it? It represents love, we see love, but do we actually feel it?”
Her favorite medium of drawing is pen work. She loves the challenge of not being able to start over.
“One of the techniques we had to use in art class was using the pen,” she said. “It challenged me because I was so used to pencil, and this made me believe in myself. The outcome was amazing, and it made me more confident in myself.”
Camarillo is aspiring to become a comic book artist and an art teacher.
She wants to be an art teacher because there are not a lot of teachers in the field who are people of color.
“I want to show people that we are smart and capable of great things and represent this especially in my race,” said Camarillo.
As a comic book artist, she wants to create fun comics and also ones that express deeper messages. She wants to represent people with eating disorders, mental illnesses, and people with disabilities. She wants to integrate reality into her art.
Her word of wisdom to aspiring artists is to never be afraid. She believes it is not what about other people feel about an artist’s work, but about what they are trying to portray—the kind of message and emotions they want their audience to receive.
Outside of her art, she loves music; reading; going on strolls to clear her mind.
As stated before, she is now working on the Over the Rainbow project for her art gallery. This particular project revolves around the LGBTQ+ community.
“I want to make a sculpture that is surrounded by lanterns of the rainbow and stories about the lanterns themselves to convey that there are some people who are scared to come out,” said Camarillo.
She continued: “I want people to read the stories as they walk through the gallery and to put themselves in the shoes of these people. Each lantern might glow or not. The glow represents that there are some people who are afraid, haven’t come out yet or have already come out and I want to let them all know that they do exist.”
