Carolina Lopez ’25 delights in reconnecting with her inner child.
In fact, Carolina actively searches for opportunities in unfamiliar contexts, embracing a childlike perspective in her daily life: “The thing I love about kids is that they’re seeing the world for the first time, and they have such a fresh perspective. Just because I’m older, it doesn’t mean that I need to give up that mentality.”
Since childhood, Carolina has gravitated toward art. Growing up in New York City, she found herself constantly inspired by the world around her, “I think there’s something really beautiful about taking something that you see and recreating it with your own hand … it’s a way for me to process whatever’s happening in my life,” she said.
However, art hasn’t been a constant focus throughout Carolina’s life. The rigors of high school academics and basketball presented difficult challenges. “I had been interested in middle school and just kind of lost it,” she said, adding, “I feel like it happens to so many people.” I can relate. The stress of high school, academically and socially, pulled me away from art. In a time that’s so crucial to personal development, it can be shockingly easy to lose track of your childhood passions.
When the COVID pandemic hit, being stuck at home opened up a new opportunity for Carolina: “My parents got me a sewing machine, which was really nice. I was up all night making clothes. That was the first thing I started engaging with.”
When she arrived at Swarthmore, Carolina frequently wore her own handmade clothes. This opened up new avenues of expression and exploration for her: “I realized I wanted to be an art major when I started taking sculpture classes. I discovered there’s so much more than just clothes and fabric; I began exploring wood.”
Carolina’s discovery of different sculpture media culminated in her senior art show thesis. She transformatively explores the intersection of clothing and furniture. As Carolina spoke, I felt her passion reverberate through her voice. Suddenly, she handed me a wooden silhouette of a foot she was constructing shoes around. “It’s interesting to think about how this [pointing to the wooden foot] is mimicking the human body, but in a furniture form, and how clothing itself mimics the human body, but in this outside form, this encapsulated form, which I’m curious about.”
To Carolina, fashion is a form of self-expression, an exploration of how society manifests gender roles and perhaps how those expectations might evolve: “Something like clothing is very traditionally a women’s craft. Furniture is a traditional male craft. How does putting them in conversation with each other make us question our current views about furniture and clothing?”
I think clothing and furniture are so mundane that I haven’t been able to overlook their physical forms and analyze what lies beneath their surfaces. Carolina connected with this, too. “I look at a chair, I’m like, ‘I’ve seen a chair a million times. What am I going to see that’s new?’ I try to adopt that lens, let me take away my preconceived notions to see what is actually there.”
As a Studio Art and Educational Psychology double major, Carolina constantly works to embrace her inner child, and combines this mindset with artmaking: “I think having the lens of, how would I create an art lesson for students and expanding that to my own art practice has not only helped me make work that is playful but also engages the viewer in a playful manner.”
It’s clear that Carolina’s childlike mentality has allowed her creativity to thrive. Her connection to a child’s fresh perspective, and enduring fascination with the world is incredibly thought-provoking. A child observing a chair for the first time is unaware of the ‘norms’ that a chair possesses, not only in its social implications but also in its appearance. For Carolina, embracing this child’s perspective allows her to break apart the preconceived notions of the item, and therefore challenge the gender roles we associate with fashion and furniture.
During her sophomore year at Swarthmore, Carolina curated a solo art exhibition at Kitao Art Gallery, the campus’ only student-run art gallery. “The whole theme was channeling your inner child and all the stuff in there you could interact and play with.” But how did Carolina come up with this concept? “I think a lot of times [about] watching kids play on a playground. It’s so empowering to play, and you can’t do anything wrong. That’s how I try to think about what I’m doing. This is just an experiment. Like, who cares?”
Additionally, Carolina is a captain of the Swarthmore Women’s Basketball Team. When I asked if the sport impacted her work, she explained that her dedication to basketball influenced her artmaking. “If I want to get [my projects] done in my senior studio, I need to make it a practice,” she said, continuing, “There’s creativity in basketball and there’s creativity in lesson planning. It’s just about how you shift it to what you’re working on.”
Throughout our conversation, Carolina has emphasized the importance of play and experimentation: “I think part of what I’m doing here is making the viewer question these forms that we’re so used to, these objects of the everyday. And kind of making this strange Alice in Wonderland feeling of ‘Where am I walking into? What is this thing?’”
While motioning to a lampshade that was in the works, Carolina explained, “How does making something like a skirt into a lampshade change how you think about the space underneath? This would usually be something much more provocative than what is normally in a lamp. I think there’s a lot of playfulness here too. How can I leave room for the imagination, or not?”
Next year, Carolina is pursuing a ninth semester as a student teacher in Philadelphia, where she will obtain her ESL and art teacher add-ons. “I think that’s one area where I will definitely be a novice. I think it’s a place where I can explore and build on my own art practice through teaching, which I think is very specific and unique.”
Despite pursuing education, Carolina will make time for art. In the long term, she aims to write and illustrate a children’s book. “I think that’s something that I’m really interested in doing, and figuring out what topic is very meaningful to me, what I would want to convey to kids.”
Carolina’s childlike exploration and fascination deeply resonated with me. I believe we should all embrace our inner children, and seek out experiences where we might be novices. Perhaps we’ll learn how to grow again, just as we had in our youth.
Carolina’s senior exhibition will be on display in the List Gallery from April 12 to 25. Make sure to check it out!
