Name: Cristiana Felguerias
City: Porto, Portugal
Makerspace: Her studio
Day Job: Artist, Maker, Content Creator
Woodworking : Video Production
What’s your maker journey been like? I’ve been making stuff from all kinds of materials and using lots of mediums for as long as I can remember. Lately I’ve been working more frequently with wood since I discovered a huge passion for the techniques and machinery involved in the processes of that kind of work, as I also work a lot with video and sound.
When I was in art school, I developed work in several materials since the idea/concept always came to me as the main “material” in every project. I went from paper to plaster, ceramics to wood, video to three-dimensional objects and installations, trying to find the best working option for every message I wanted to transmit. A few years after finishing my studies, I created the Get Hands Dirty YouTube channel and found myself giving more attention to the techniques and enjoying myself building up some more functional stuff.
It sounds like you work with lots of different materials. What’s your favorite and why? I still make things with a specific purpose, whether it might be intellectual or physical, but, in most cases, I see my videos as the final artistic objects, rather than the projects themselves. These videos are what persist in time and space — here and everywhere in the world.
What does it mean to you to be a maker? I have a need to be active and fulfill myself by being involved in my own world and creating external things. The act of creation, to me, is a self-teaching environment where I can rehearse (in some kind of trial and error context) and transpose to reality all the things I want to make. Most of my end results come from first attempts, and I usually put a lot of thinking and aesthetic concerns into those embryos. I don’t enjoy as much making multiple objects or developing repetitive processes of any kind. Even taking my YouTube videos as an example, in the end they turn out to be differently structured and conceptualized.
I enjoy doing my own research and going after as much knowledge as needed during the process of work. People often ask me how do I know how to make these things. The answer is as simple as I search a bit and go for it with interest and passion in a very improvisational way. But this doesn’t mean I always make the best choices or get the best results every time.
Are there any projects you’re looking forward to? I don’t think too much about the future and about the things that I want specifically. My desires and ideas are always changing and the most important thing to me is to be here now enjoying the present, going through what is necessary to constantly fulfill myself while hopefully inspiring others to learn new things and conquer their own projects and worlds.
You can find Cristiana on
YouTube | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | Her Portfolio
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