BIO
 

Catalina Bellizzi-Itiola (CATAPHANT) is a San Diego-based designer and fine artist with a background in music who arranges shapes, textures, and human elements to create artwork that communicates spiritual and mental states of being. She graduated from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2011 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts & emphasis in Art Education before teaching visual art in the Chicago Public Schools for several years while producing music. After moving to San Diego, CATAPHANT circled back to visual art full time and now works on large-scale oil paintings, abstract mixed media work, freelance design, and album art direction for various national recording artists. The moniker CATAPHANT is a combination of "Catalina" and "Elephant," a nickname that stuck after being used as a musician name. 

​

CATAPHANT grew up in the midwest and is a half-Colombian, half-Argentine first generation American. Using the cultural complexity of her upbringing to bring nuance and a sense of "in-between-ness" to her work, her art practice thrives on seeking liberation and transcendence of the human experience. Aesthetically, CATAPHANT's art uses a combination of synesthetic shapes and textures with human elements to communicate disembodiment and absolution. 

CV+Exhibition List
Artist Statement

​