Meet Cellista | Performance Artist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Cellista and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Cellista, is your business focused on helping the community? If so, how?
I am a performance artist and the artistic director of Juxtapositions an interdisciplinary publishing company. As a performer, I want to tell the stories and hear the stories of those around me. These voices and all voices are valuable and deserve to be heard. I am dedicated to providing economic opportunities to working artists through performance, education, advocacy, and professional development. My company is shaped by the very artists and audience members who participate and encounter it, creating an inclusive space for creative cultivation and community building.
Its artistic collaborators, from composers, to authors, dancers, and painters are active participants in its growth and development. They generate and sustain community. Something fundamental to Juxtapositions. It is born of the want to establish linkages and relationships across differences. It is continually and actively concerned with the opening and exploration of potential networks of relations of individuals.
It is my duty to cast a light on the stories of those who live alongside us. It is my duty to also listen to those stories. This illumination allows us to witness the past and future within the framework of our present lens. Music making and art making serves as a liaison between individuals; binding us with its thematic threads. These threads create nests of communities with strands that reach beyond our immediate home.
The primary intention of Juxtapositions is a localized one. It exists to share and serve marginalized voices. It does this by engaging with local communities and offering safe spaces for creative cultivation. It actively builds community by seeking out economic opportunities for those who work within it and through perpetually advocating for its participants.
It is a company of one for all.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
My cello has served as a bridge between ideas and disciplines. As a classically-trained cellist, my world prior to 2010 was limited in scope. I only practiced assigned repertoire. However, my world felt limited. My curiosity about other artists and their processes was enticing. I had an intense attraction to the French Surrealists, in particular, the work of Jean Cocteau. His multimedia art felt complete and dynamic. Culturally, in the classical world, this curiosity and want to explore was frowned upon. So I tucked that away and ignored it. In 2010, I arrived in CA. I had immigrated from France, where my partner is from. I originally hail from Colorado. After years abroad, my homesickness, and want to resume my studies to pursue a career as a cellist led my partner to transfer his job to its headquarters in California, the first place I ever called home. The first place I ever fell in love with. It was here, in California, where I was given my first opportunity to crawl out of the restrictive classical environment that I found my creative voice.
In 2014, after a West Coast tour with the singer-songwriter Tanya Donnelly I created my first participatory multimedia installation at a festival called SubZERO in the Bay. It was generated in collaboration with a visual artist named Tulio Flores and involved me performing, heavily costumed, within an ornate birdcage. The installation was deliberately placed on the street, with gorgeous stage lights that attracted passerbyers. I asked my audience to share their wishes, hopes, and dreams with me on receipt tags they could tie to my cage. I’d then play improvised responses to those tags.
The experience was life-changing and led to me dropping out of graduate school where I was studying for my MM and pursuing this new interdisciplinary path.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
To begin I would take them on a tour of the legendary East West recording studio where my childhood friend works. Following that dose of history, we would have to eat our way through the town, trying out every taco truck. We would wander Venice Beach and walk all the way from Venice to Santa Monica talking about our lives and our dreams.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
My mentor, the composer Daniel Felsenfeld, has coached me through innumerable challenges. He’s given endless support and encouragement in times of doubt. Cherri Lakey and Brian Eder of Gallery Anno Domini in my former home of San Jose, have given me faith, courage, and love. I would not have a career without them.

Website: www.cellista.net

Instagram: xcellistax

Twitter: xcellistax

Facebook: Facebook.com/cellista.music

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/xcellistax

Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@xcellistax

Image Credits
Cromwell Schubarth Temira Decay/ Yellow Bubbles Photography