Editor’s note: This Q&A with Ana Teresa Fernandez, a Mexico-born, San Francisco-based artist and performer, is the first of a series where we aim to shed light on the day-to-day work experience of women in various walks of life. Her studio, which she calls Black Sheep Studios, is located in San Francisco.
What does your day look like before you begin work?
I wake up at seven and I do about two hours worth of admin work on my computer. I start working on applications; I respond to a lot of interview calls such as yours. I’m averaging at least five a week. It’s just a lot of work on the computer revising stuff and then I’ll probably work out for about two hours, whether it be surfing or running or doing some sort of physical activity and then I’ll head over to the studio and work for about five hours straight in the studio. On a good day, I get five solid hours. It is usually interrupted with meetings or interviews or other things. But yes, it is really rare that I get five hours of uninterrupted work time.
On a traditional work day, what is usually the biggest obstacle you find yourself faced with?
Usually I just power through stuff…I think more real obstacles can be self doubt where it takes me months to jump into an idea that I’ve been wanting to do just out of self doubt. I think those are the more harmful obstacles, the other stuff is smaller which I can usually power through but I would say that my own self doubt would be one of the larger obstacles if I’m being really honest…Especially if you are working by yourself and you don’t really have a boss telling you what to do and you can get away with avoiding something or avoiding delving into something or trying something different because you don’t have someone either pep talking you into it or forcing you into it which is when you have to just cannon-ball into it by yourself.
Where do you find meaning in your work?
I mean what I am responding to in my work is exactly that, is where things need to change, where things need to be addressed and that for me is the true meaning of being able to create conversations about issues that I really care about, human interactions, the existence of valuable individuals or things such as the ocean. And really being able to focus on people’s intentions, and have a silent moment with it or with them and for me it all starts with what I value. And so it’s easy for me to spend a lot of time focusing on it because that’s where it begins, where whatever has gotten my attention I feel has an incredible amount of value and I want to place that value into other people’s view or perspective.
How has your gender influenced your work?
The way in which I grew up, I was just answering this question yesterday where, in Mexico, to invest in women’s education was not seen as valuable or a worthy investment so there’s a disparity between, for example, the men in my family and the women in my family. Most of the women in my family only went to high school whereas the men in my family—my uncles, my father included—there’s 10, 12, 15 more years of education and so when we talk about education, it’s access to possibility, right? Because education affords you an advantage to be able to have certain professions.
I didn’t see that many women working outside of the home but when I moved to the U.S., that was a clear distinction and understanding that was an opportunity that I could possess. And so your brain starts gathering an elasticity of what you can become; if you don’t see it, it’s hard to embody it. So when you start to see women working and owning the conversation, leading the conversation, that’s when you can actually see the possibility of what realm your life can take as well.
So when you start to see women working and owning the conversation, leading the conversation, that’s when you can actually see the possibility of what realm your life can take as well.
I didn’t know that art was a possibility as a profession but I kinda fell into it. I was given a scholarship and even as I’ve been growing in the art world, I’ve really been able to step into my own by observing other women and seeing how they hold themselves and being able to learn and recently I’ve been learning a lot from women I’ve been spending time with and how they navigate difficult conversations and being gracious as opposed to being violent in the way they communicate. I was like ‘Wow.’ That actually demonstrates a woman being really strong.
The ability to hold grace under pressure, be articulate, be intelligent, and not be violent and dismissive or belittling towards someone else. To make them feel big and be bigger by holding that grace, is something I’ve been learning quite a bit from other women and it’s because they embody it so I think that we learn a lot from each other and I learned how we are often kept small and we are not given so many tools so one of the things I really try to do is to afford other women these tools so that we can rise up together.
What day does your day look like after you leave the workplace?
I get home at night, have dinner with my husband where I do absolutely no work, we just get a chance to hangout with each other and then I probably do a little more work on the computer and I love just tuning out and watching some random show as most people do on Netflix. I’ll do one last check of my email and work before I go to bed and then that’s it.