Bacello (left, a.k.a. V. Michelle Griffiths) at work. (Photo courtesy of V. Michelle Griffiths)

How to be Creative When Your Job Isn’t

Visual and Makeup Artist Cellibacello Navigates the Divide Between Corporate and Artistic Worlds

By Ysa Madrigal

Photo courtesy of V. Michelle Griffiths

This article is part of the Stage Raw/Unusual Suspects Youth Journalism Fellowship

“I felt like I was reaching a breaking point. My work just wasn’t fulfilling enough and I couldn’t find a break in the practicality of my work,” said makeup artist V. Michelle Griffiths (who as a visual artist, goes by the name Cellibacello).

After graduating from the University of California, Riverside in 1995, Griffiths landed a job at her alma mater, working as an assistant, and then in student services. When confronted with the constraints of the practical corporate-academic world, Griffiths chose creativity and pursued her passions as a second career through which she now spreads the message of keeping life fulfilling and fun. “I do everything I can to maintain that creative side in some way. I have a family and two young kids to support, so it can be hard at times to keep up with it, but I try to keep it a core value.”

The Inland Empire native is also a mother of two young children, for whom she provides. Also known by her artist name Celli Bacello, she describes herself as “always being a creative,” as she was involved in the performing arts and band throughout her childhood in K-12. Griffiths is also a lifelong visual artist.

I met Griffiths at a dress rehearsal earlier this year at Chaffey High School, where I’m a student, in preparation the school’s upcoming musical theater production of Sweeney Todd. Griffiths was hired in to assist with makeup. As a makeup artist in training, I kept close to her as she impressively propped up her setup for an entire 30-student cast in less than ten minutes! Griffiths gave me a clear outline of the makeup table and tasks to be completed before we were able to get as much as a foot near an actor’s face. Her cadence was composed and her analogies from past experiences let all of us know we were in good hands. In a later interview, Griffiths opened up about her journey to becoming a professional.

While she was artistically experimental while studying in university, and involved with the arts during her time working there, especially with photography and painting, she found it difficult to create much art during this time. Her primary focus was keeping herself afloat, a truth many hobby-artists are forced to confront at some point in their lives.

Though her career at the UC campus paid the bills, Griffiths’s creative spirit desperately searched for an escape. After 13 years of working alongside much frustration and thought, she enrolled herself in esthetician school around 2008 to branch off into a  career with more hands-on creative stimulation. She primarily worked with skincare application and techniques before undergoing a short course in theatrical makeup taught by a student from Hollywood’s Cinema Makeup School.

“After that course and the esthetician school, I just felt like I had an attraction to it and had so many questions in my mind about what else I can do, even though I wasn’t as confident with what [schooling] I was doing yet.” Just a year later in fall 2009, she enrolled in the Joe Blasco Makeup Center where she built her foundation of knowledge for set and stage makeup.

Ambitious and ready to begin working, Griffiths landed her first gig designing makeup for the musical Rent at the Lewis Family Playhouse’s “Broadway at the Gardens” program through the Rancho Cucamonga Community Playhouse, just a few months shy of her 2010 graduation from the Joe Blasco Makeup Center. She recalls “persistently reaching out” to the theater director asking for volunteer opportunities despite not hearing back. “You see, I wasn’t as shy reaching out this way because I had been in the career space for so long already and know that’s how you grasp opportunities.”

As Griffiths displayed her determination and talent, the Lewis Family Playhouse welcomed her back to continue working on more “Broadway at the Gardens” productions and to work on black box-style productions. Sooner than later, volunteering turned into paid work and more local theaters were reaching out to her for her services. However, Griffiths wouldn’t soon forget the “Lewis” as a colleague; handling wardrobe there helped her land a job teaching theatrical makeup at Chaffey Community College, where she stayed for the next ten years.

Griffiths taught artists and actors alike in her courses at Chaffey, many of whom would go on to work in the same local playhouses as she did and join the local scene. Like many other working adults in and outside of theater, Griffiths faced issues continuing her work once the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020. Many playhouses resorted to innovative ways to keep the theaters running yet still experienced troubles staying afloat. At this time, Griffiths stopped working at Chaffey, and teaching makeup completely, because her mode of teaching was severely affected: her classes were set up to be half-lab and half-lectures.

She recounted “feeling a disconnect” from her passion and found herself in the same unfulfilling situation she was in ten years prior. Griffiths was able to return to her old job at the University of California for more financial support, working in the graduate admissions office, and was soon able to ease her way back into theater as the tensions from the pandemic slowly but surely lifted.

Her return to the theater post-pandemic is more freelance and relies more so on commissions. She works with schools often and finds young people involved in the arts inspiring, based on her past experience as a student performer.

Photo courtesy of V. Michelle Griffiths

“There’s this community about it,” she notes. “When you’re doing a theatrical production, [or] band performance, you’re a group of kids all working really hard, and you’re tired, and you’re busting your butt to create a performance that is as best as you can make it and you feel really proud about it afterward. It instills a sense of discipline, being proud in your abilities, and it builds confidence. It’s definitely worth any student’s time to be involved.”

There are aspects of the beauty industry and the more niche “theatrical beauty industry” that Griffiths doesn’t enjoy, such as gore-heavy SFX and unrealistic beauty standards. Whether in film, on stage, or walking down the aisle alongside loved ones, her work aims to stay true to her values:  keeping makeup a respected art form rather than a harmful tool. Within the makeup industry, Michelle urges others to be wary of adhering to unrealistic expectations of what “makeup should look and feel like” because worrying about the wrong details can “cloud the original objective of the gig” and potentially straining future opportunities.

“It is important to give yourself grace and reasonable standards to avoid as much burnout and stress as possible,” she adds. “Being a creative and especially working collaboratively in a space like theater can make you more sensitive. You’re putting your heart and soul into what you do and negative feedback can hurt you a lot. But you have to keep going and maintain a good nature about it to learn from your experience. You can always rely on learning, getting your feelings hurt, not so much.”

As a beginner makeup artist and as a high school student, I’ve gleaned great insight from Griffiths on being creative and maintaining practicality in life. While I worked under her, I thought I knew enough about what techniques we were practicing yet she managed to find a novel way to describe the process by letting me in on what experiences it took for her to understand them. She told me, “Experience will always speak for you” and that no experience is a bad one if we can learn from it.

As we live through unprecedented times, financial hardship, frustration, and instability, keeping true to yourself and appreciating the opportunities we have will guide us. For Griffiths, and many others who can relate, things will not always work out the first time, or even the second. It is important to nourish one’s potential and to plant the seeds of our future while we have the chance to. Especially for creatives, suppressing passions only dims their chance of their creativity ever coming to fruition. “Had I not tried, or nagged for that volunteer spot, I wouldn’t be here right now,” she says.

Griffiths’s perseverance helped her come to a solution in her career life, now able to proudly express her creativity and maintain her finances through two professions that are equally fulfilling. “It’s never too late to do what you love or to discover what you love, you just need to try and go and get your foot in the door.”

Makeup is purely an art to Griffiths, who ironically doesn’t wear much makeup herself and isn’t very fond of makeup trends. As she has been able to express her artistic skills more freely, creating visual art has regained its purpose in her life and her technique has grown alongside her. Griffiths’s current preferred art style is inadvertently symbolic of her journey as an artist and as a professional. Her medium of choice is upcycled materials such as recycled mailing paper and plastics, almost metaphorical for the rebirthing of her omnipresent creative spirit and allowing creativity space in her life again. Since she has been creating more art, Griffiths uses words such as “liberating” and “expressive” to describe the work she does on a normal basis as she balances her careers. She leaves the message of perseverance and to keep “practicing what you love because you never know [where it can take you].”