Hi! I’m Giesla, a multidisciplinary artist residing in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
I feel like there's an unspoken pressure to be elaborate yet succinct with an about page, and I find it painfully difficult to boil everything about me down into the perfect bite-sized description. In all honesty, I find it painfully difficult to describe anything about me at all, which is a condition called alexithymia. Maybe that's a good place to start.
My entire life I've struggled to weave my way through a societal structure that was not built for how my brain works. I didn't know why this was until very recently when I began learning about neurodivergence. It put my life into sharp focus, which was both painful and a relief. Knowing why I struggle doesn't change the fact that I do, it just makes it a bit easier to explain it to people. Embracing my complexity has been challenging, but over time I’ve come to recognize that my endless curiosity and multifaceted perspective are not negative qualities — they are the driving forces behind my work. They have inspired me to explore a wide variety of mediums and themes for over 20 years.
After earning an A.A.S in Multimedia Design in 2001, I encountered a tough job market post–9/11. In 2002, I chose to abandon the job search and become an independent artist. I developed digital collages by layering and blending my own photographs of various locations and landmarks using Photoshop to emphasize the significance of place and honor our collective memories of cherished environments. From 2002 to 2016 I participated in numerous art fairs throughout the Midwest. My work was carried by retailers and galleries in the Twin Cities and licensed by puzzle manufacturers Ravensburger and Buffalo Games for nationwide distribution in stores such as Target and Barnes & Noble. I also received numerous private and public commissions.
When burnout came calling in 2016, I departed the art fair circuit; shifting into freelance graphic design. To keep up with evolving media and to better serve my clients, I taught myself Adobe After Effects and Premiere Pro. This served me well when a few significant life changes and a world-shifting global pandemic pushed me to look beyond graphic design as the sole outlet for my creativity, and I began diving into animation and video.
My animation work centers around my experience with navigating a society that’s not designed for the way my brain works. I blend geometric shapes inspired by the textures, patterns, and movements of the natural world with themes of spirituality and the passage of time to evoke the qualities of simplicity, ease, and flow. In contrast, my video work is guided by a fascination with the jagged edges of humanity and weighty topics such as the societal impacts of information abundance and artificial intelligence. To convey the depth and messiness of these topics, I draw inspiration from glitch art and incorporate the layering techniques that were used in my digital collage.
In 2024, my fascination with color and light and a desire to get people off of their screens and into the physical world led me to projection mapping, which I'm still working with today.
I love all things illuminated! For the Oogie Boogie Halloween Bash at Disneyland, I made this costume of Jerry from the Pixar movie Soul with EL wire.