Meet Isaiah Castillo

Photo by Carlos Gallegos @fotosgallegos

Isaiah Castillo is a Mexican-American multimedium artist and strategist based out of Austin, Texas. Born in Houston, he spent his early childhood in diverse inner-city neighborhoods before moving to monotonous suburbs. Exposed to stark differences in ways of life, his early socialization sparked a curiosity for learning about people, communities, cultures, and the mechanisms that shaped them. As a young adult, that curiosity turned into a passion and led him to pursue multidisciplinary studies at the University of Texas at Austin. He graduated in 2019 with a B.S. in Communication Studies, a minor in Sociology, and a Global Business Certificate from the McCombs School of Business. 

Oft inspired by his passions for social science and culture, he seeks to create projects balanced between science and story. Leveraging his academic background, his process focuses on utilizing psychology, sociology, and anthropology to understand the world around him, then transforming that scientific understanding into color, composition, and movement to tell visual stories. Through design and photography, he seeks to produce works that are conscious and challenging with the hope of inspiring viewers to consider their relationships with themselves, others, and the world around them.

When and why did you get into photography and design?

I wouldn’t call myself a photographer, nor a designer, nor a videographer. For me, creation is a medium of communication. The camera, the pen, the paper; they are nothing more than tools we use to connect to others and the world around us. 

I spent my undergrad focusing on research in the fields of sociology and communications. It allowed me to understand how we can take patterns of behavior and quantify them to understand people and the constructs that they create. Their communities, environments, relationships, etc. It also led me to the fundamental understanding that for all its insights, science kind of doesn’t mean ****.

It’s not through numbers and data that we come to connect to the world—it’s through emotion and feeling. I won’t get into the science of rationality—shoutout Pinker and Kahneman—but humans mostly aren’t rational. We don’t live our lives through numbers and percentages. So for me, it’s about taking my affinity for science and translating my understanding into creative works that actually resonate with people. Works that tap into the emotional nature of humans. It just so happens that photography and design are my preferred tools of translation at the moment. And as I grow and I have new things to communicate, I’m sure the creative medium will change as well. 

What inspires you? 

Life. My short time spent traveling led me to adopt the philosophy that there’s so much beauty in the mundane—in the time we spend with our friends, in going out to eat, in exploring a city, in visiting museums, and everything in between. However, it’s so much easier to see that beauty and capture those feelings of awe and wonder when you're in exciting and foreign places. 

So for me, I find inspiration in trying to romanticize life when everything is familiar. In trying to capture those feelings of awe and wonder and fascination in the moments we label as mundane and take for granted. That’s the main reason I love carrying a Polaroid around when I go out with friends and we’re doing something. Going back and looking at them makes those moments feel a little more special.

What does being a part of SAUCEMRKT mean to you?

I think being in this role allows me to develop and explore both my logically driven side—the side of me that I developed in school and continue to spend so much time growing—and this newly discovered creative side of me. I get to deploy those scientific methodologies to investigate and problem-solve while contributing to creating something artistic and meaningful.

More importantly, I get to learn from Hauke and Jay and Semaj and everyone whom we’ll collaborate with which will allow me to grow as an artist. It feeds my hunger for my need to be challenged—for my need to feel like I’m constantly learning.

So yeah, it means a lot to me and I’m really excited for this journey.