Core Memories: Janelle Cordero
We believe the origin of our work as creators is important to consider and hold. In CORE MEMORIES, we ask artists and writers about their own creative beginnings. What led them to operate in their genre of choice? Was it a specific moment, an errant thought, a movement? Was it an insight, a person, a place? Years into their work, does it continue to resonate?
In this edition, we interview Janelle Cordero.
Janelle Cordero is an interdisciplinary artist and educator living in Spokane, WA. Her writing has been published in dozens of literary journals, including Harpur Palate, Hobart and The Louisville Review, while her paintings have been featured in venues throughout the Pacific Northwest. Janelle is the author of four books of poetry: Impossible Years (V.A. Press, 2022), Many Types of Wildflowers (V.A. Press, 2020), Woke to Birds (V.A. Press, 2019) and Two Cups of Tomatoes (P.W.P. Press, 2015). You can find her on Instagram at @janelle_v_cordero, Tiktok at @janellecordero111, and at www.janellecordero.com.
What is your CORE MEMORY?
I've always identified as a writer—in first grade, I gave handwritten stories about ravenous bears to my teacher. In second grade, my friends and I filled an entire notebook with a very disjointed alien novella. And once I hit third grade, I became a talented eavesdropper with a notepad full of phrases from adult conversations. I've been a careful observer of the world ever since, interested much more in the drama of real people rather than whatever I can make up in my own head. As Joan Didion said, "I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear." My identity as a visual artist came later, sometime in my twenties. I've always enjoyed drawing and painting, but I never felt like my work was good enough (i.e. realistic enough). It wasn't until I discovered artists like Egon Schiele and Conrad Roset that I realized art doesn't have to be perfectly proportional and accurate, it just has to be honest.
How has that moment impacted your current work or current artistic practice?
Artists like Egon Schiele helped me realize that it's perfectly fine to paint the same damn thing over and over (i.e. the human figure, the portrait). Our obsessions define us, both as artists and as people. It's also perfectly fine to be messy, to have fun, to experiment, to throw something away and start over. My artistic style is much more experimental than it's ever been thanks to these realizations.