anaïs de los santos

Last month, we introduced Art Pulse Emerging — a new series spotlighting artists on the rise. We hope this series offers an opportunity to support your local art community, both by engaging with their work and maybe even collecting it. Contact us anytime to inquire about available pieces.

meet anaïs

Anaïs De Los Santos juggles a lot. She is a full-time tattoo artist, part-time ceramics instructor, and full-time sculptor. We sat down in her Ridgewood-based tattoo studio — which she shares with eight other artists — though you’ll often find her creating ceramics in Tribeca or teaching a clay class in Greenpoint (she’s across all the boroughs…). She shared how her practice is driven by the need to keep creating, to help make sense of intangible emotions.

You are a multi-disciplinary artist, in the most proper sense of the word. How do your practices inform one another?

I have three kind of major modes. I am a ceramicist. I am a tattoo artist. And, I also have a pretty extensive drawing and journal practice. I started off going to art school for sculpture and later, after graduating, began tattooing after a friend gifted me a really crappy DIY tattoo machine.

I have always kept a sketchbook and been obsessed with drawing, and so I feel like my drawing practice has always informed my sculptural practice and later my tattoo practice.

Were you initially drawn to ceramics because of its tactile nature?

Well… actually I went to art school for filmmaking. I wanted to be the next David Lynch.

I quickly realized I can’t like corral a crew of people together... I’m a pretty shy person. After I took a clay class, I realized I could sit alone in the studio for hours and hours and just mess around with clay. I completely fell in love with it.

It is a meditative practice.

Totally. My art practice is all just one big self-coping entity. In a way, it’s like a compulsive habit.

So much of the work I have made starts as a practice. I’ll be in the studio and have some time. I’ll be like “Oh, I have this sketch of a drawing… let me see if I can just start to make something similar out of clay.”

But it’s all experimentation.

The amazing part is people, especially for tattooing, have their own interpretation of my work. You might be seeing something in my sculptures that I am not seeing.

On that note, do you consider your work whimsical?

I’ve never used that term. I don’t even know. I see them as… my whole life is fueled by emotion. I am deeply, deeply, deeply emotional. It’s all feelings based.

People come in for tattoos and ask me “what is the world that your characters live in? what are the names of your characters?”

There is none of that — that is not what I’m doing. If anything, there is just an emotional energy that I need to release that I release through making the work. They kind of exist to me in a more uncanny realm.

What would you say you’re exploring in your sculptures? 

I think… I love animals, and I love interspecies relationship. I’m really interested in the way that humans project emotions onto other creatures, which is why you see a lot of, like, anthropomorphic imagery in my work.

I’m also very attached to my femininity and my woman-ness. I’m always drawing women and then sculpting women. I love these, kind of, women-creature-hybrids.

There’s something about dominance and cuteness - like these weird women holding these little babies and they are comforting each other. Like Madonna and Child. This is ancient imagery I’m reproducing in my own way.

Do you fall in love with every piece you make? Or do you hate them by the end?

That is too binary. I feel like it is 90% making for me. Nothing is precious — things break.

A huge philosophy of mine is to be just constantly making. I don't remember ever feeling attached to anything that I made. I can't worry about the work that I've made — if it's good or bad. It's not a love or hate, it just is whatever it is. And I’m just moving forward.

Final question: what do you listen to in the studio?

Wait, that’s vulnerable to say. I’m a total sad girl. I really love folk music. I’m definitely a nostalgia queen.

For me, listening to music overcomes me. I feel so much. My secret fantasy is that I want my art to feel like how it feels for me to listen to the music that I love.

Maybe that’s an unattainable goal… Part of what drives me forward is that nothing is ever going to feel enough. No sculpture is ever the right sculpture. No idea is ever the right idea.

Listen to Anaïs’s song of choice, To Live Is To Fly by Townes Van Zandt.

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Wall hooks are also available, starting from $65.

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issue #100

Ending on a special note — this is our 100th issue. It feels a little surreal, and we’re so grateful you’re here. Thanks for reading, sharing, and supporting Art Pulse. This is just the beginning.

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