Charlotte Lawrence

December 9, 2024

Feature by Anushka Pai

Photos by Natasha Last-Bernal

Two weeks ago, I hosted an unexpected guest in my dorm. Dressed in her best knitwear and draped in pearls, the doll lay on my dresser, glaring. After three days under her watchful gaze, I walked her across the hall to the room of Charlotte Lawrence (they/she), BC’ 25. As an architecture and environmental science student, Charlotte is passionate about the intersection of design and sustainability. While they often spend their time sketching and doing graphic design, their most beloved hobby is crocheting.

The doll, resting on a crochet pillow (2024

The doll is one of Charlotte’s many projects, made over several months. Since then, she has quickly accumulated a collection of jewelry and crocheted outfits, which she routinely alternates.

Having lived together for the last four years, I have witnessed Charlotte’s creative process from beginning to end, ten times over. The doll began as a textile, evolving into a head, body, and limbs. Starting each project without a blueprint, their vision materializes as they work, turning textiles into dolls, dresses, and accessories.

Tapestry made of scrap yarn (2022) and headphone cover made of second-hand alpaca yarn (2022)

“It’s kind of hard to pinpoint when I decide what it’s going to be because crocheting has always been more about the act of doing it than making something for me. As a textile grows, it kind of starts to take shape into something, and that’s when I realize what it can be,” said Charlotte.

Charlotte allows their mind to wander freely while crocheting. The repetitive motion of creating stitches provides them with a sense of relief. More than once, I have tried to call out to Charlotte from across the room, only to be met with silence. Lost deep in thought, and crochet, it would take me numerous tries to get her attention.

“I’ve gotten to the point skill-wise where my mind can really wander anywhere and my hands just take over. I’m half focused on the motions and trying to get consistent stitches, but for the most part, I just let my mind wander wherever it goes. I’ve found myself in a meditative state before, where my mind is completely detached from the movements of my body,” they stated.

Charlotte began crocheting at the age of 5, learning the craft from their aunt. Over time, it became a way to bond with family, relieve stress, and pass time in their hometown, Kansas City.

“My Aunt Lizzie taught me how to knit when I was young. She’s a fiber artist as well. I got really into crochet when I was about 15 and my math teacher was teaching a crochet class. When I took that class with her, I fell in love with it all over again. Once the pandemic hit, it became a daily activity for me,” they said.

While at home, Charlotte spends their time crocheting with their sister, Ella. Having learned most of their technical skills from her, Ella has played an important role in Charlotte’s artistic development.

“Crocheting with my sister is the way we bond. We often sit side by side, put on a show, and crochet for hours. It’s the most comforting feeling. She is also the one who has taught me the most over the years, and I’m grateful to have someone so creative to guide me,” Charlotte stated.

After entering college, Charlotte’s background in sustainability began to influence their creative process, inspiring them to change how they consume and dispose of materials.

“The more I learned about sustainability and the more classes I took, the more environmental consciousness came into focus in my passions. I used to use acrylic yarn because it’s so widely available. When you use it, it sheds all of these little fibers. However, after taking classes in environmental science, I realized that the shedding of the yarn was basically microplastics and that every time I disposed of little scraps of yarn, I was just putting those chemicals back into the environment.”

While Charlotte almost exclusively purchases her yarn from a second-hand store in Kansas City, she just as frequently reuses materials from previous projects. On their shelf, sit two large bags of old designs, textiles, scraps, and balls of yarn. Many of these materials date back to freshman or sophomore year, made while holed up in our dorm. Often, Charlotte revisits old projects, reworking them into something new. Likewise, she incorporates scrap yarn into her pieces, ensuring nothing goes to waste.

Halter top made entirely of scrap yarn (2022)

“In the machine age, we’ve all become somewhat obsessed with perfection–artistically, design-wise, and functionally. Mechanizing forms of creativity, like crochet, generates a lot of waste. It’s weird to throw that stuff away when you can just use it, even if what it makes isn’t completely perfect,” said Charlotte.

Embracing the ‘imperfections’ of hand-stitched crochet, Charlotte gravitates toward organic shapes and free-flowing lines. In their clothing, these preferences manifest as swirling patterns, unique silhouettes, and alternating stitching. Working without a pattern, each piece is wholly individual.

Mesh halter backless top, made from second-hand alpaca yarn (2023)

After dropping several hints to her, Charlotte gifted me a pair of bright pink fingerless gloves, which she had made earlier that year. One of the reasons that I liked them so much was because, like so much of Charlotte’s work, the gloves were made with complete spontaneity, yet came together so cohesively that it was hard to imagine it wasn’t planned.

“I’ve always been drawn to organic shapes because it feels the most natural to me. It also just kind of happens when I let my hands do the work without interfering,” they stated.

Purse made from acrylic yarn, an old iPhone charger, and a necklace (2024)

Charlotte emphasized that, above all, it is important to them that crochet remains enjoyable, free from becoming something they ‘have’ to do. So long as it remains fun, they plan to continue crocheting for the rest of their life.

“Crochet is one of the few things in my life with no deadline. I can pick up any project I want, but I don’t feel pressured to do so. My timeframe is all of eternity, or at least until I get severe carpal tunnel”

To learn about Charlotte’s latest projects, visit @c.lawmachine on Instagram.

Em Chmiel

December 8, 2024

Feature by Caroline Nieto

Photos by Yawen Yuan and Harper Rosenberg

Em Chmiel is a senior at Columbia College studying political science and fine art. She is a

photographer working primarily in digital and recently exploring film photography.

I met Em on a Thursday, and we stood on one of the longer lines outside of the Hungarian Pastry Shop. She snagged a table for us while I waited, and we bantered until we sat down with our respective drinks (mine a coffee, hers a tea) and could speak freely.

After browsing her portfolio, it was clear to me that Em’s photography can’t be confined to one style. Bleak interiors, barren landscapes, and nightlife shots all make up the scope of Em’s vision. She works with a brand of digital consciousness—an astute awareness of the screen’s power to create an alternative truth. The internet, and social media in particular, has become infamous for allowing ultra-curated versions of the self to pose as reality. But with the screen as an intermediary, Em sees this power to manipulate as an extension of the artist’s perspective. “A theme I’m really interested in is the presence of the medium,” said Em. “[Much of the time] we’re viewing on a screen, and I want to make viewers very aware of that.” She doesn’t ignore the fact that her photographs are shot digitally, in fact, she embraces how unnatural some of her work can feel. Her images feel irreplicable in the real world, often overexposed, double exposed, or curved inward with a wide lens.

It tracks that Em finds inspiration in the digital world—the first camera she used was attached to her blue Nintendo DSI. She eventually upgraded to a small point-and-shoot camera, a gift for a family vacation, and took the liberty to capture everything in sight. Her appetite for observance stayed with her as she grew, yielding images that feel fresh, rarely premeditated. But these days, there’s a distance between an inciting inspiration and the choice to pick up a camera. Em is careful about the work she chooses to make, and even more cautious of what she shares. “I don't really like to make [creative] things for the sake of making them,” said Em, “It’s really hard to motivate myself if I don’t feel a calling to do it.”

As a political science major, Em is inclined to view social phenomena with more scrutiny than most. She treats photography as an extension of her perspective, where her own thoughts and biases are intrinsic to her artistic output. Em and I talked about Susan Sontag’s On Photography, which positions a photograph as a small death, a memento mori of an irreplicable moment. This makes Em wary of street photography—even when a subject consents to the use of their likeness, they’re still at the will of the artist’s perspective. ”You don’t think about taking iPhone pictures like that. [It wasn’t until I began] using a camera on a pretty regular basis [that I seriously] considered the moral implications,” said Em. Sontag couldn’t have foreseen the meaning of her work in the digital age, where images take on a new life when posted online. Inimitable moments become basically disposable images that can take on meanings entirely divorced from their context.

Instead, Em turns the invasion of photography onto herself. Her photo series, “Unbaby” came from a period of personal struggle—just days before leaving the country to study abroad,

she discovered she was pregnant. She knew almost immediately that she would go through the process of having an abortion, leaving her less than a week to parse through the medical red tape. The pressure of this situation led Em to create her photo series, “Unbaby,” a walk through her experience with sexual health. Her own wellbeing, both reproductive and mental, had been at the top of her mind since the removal of her IUD last year; despite the inner turmoil brought about by both the insertion process and the ensuing hormonal effects, her doctors insisted she keep her IUD in. She questioned whether to prioritize her mental or reproductive health—her own instinct or the doctor’s orders.

Abortion is an issue as personal as it is political, and Em doesn’t try to define where one stops and the other begins, saying, “I don’t like drawing lines between where something’s art versus politics [...] I think it’s best to just receive things at an emotional, face value [level] and then go from there.” Given the precariousness of reproductive rights post-Roe v. Wade, Em doesn’t need to spell out a message in her work that’s already implicit. “Unbaby” presents a vision of sex education that hinges on its disturbance—each image holds the weight of discomfort associated with its setting. Em included a prose poem to go along with the images where she verbalizes this unease, describing “Unbaby” through the moments in her life when sex education played a pivotal role. To Em, the series can be described by “The metallic middle-school fountain tap water that I resuscitated myself with when I had my first panic attack in sex ed” or “The globs of Vaseline my grandmother taught me to coat my tampon in when I was learning how to insert it dry.”

“Unbaby” begins with an image of Em’s apartment, the place where she became pregnant, shrouded in darkness save for two dim lamps. Then a picture of a classroom in her elementary school, where she received her first lesson in sex education. There are two pictures of the waiting rooms of abortion clinics, the second being where Em actually got her abortion. This room is painted baby blue and lined with fluorescent lights. A mounted television shows a stock image of a lake, maybe a weak attempt to tame the austerity of the environment.

The image that stands out most captures a medical examination room with a green gynecological chair in the center. Taken with a wide-angle lens, the image seems to close in on itself, aided by a flash that brings out the room’s actual darkness. Considering the intimacy of the procedures it houses, the room is uncanny, or as Em called it, “otherworldly and distorted.”

Though most of “Unbaby” is characterized by eerie interiors, the final image upends this theme, depicting the parking garage of the clinic where Em got her abortion. Above the empty parking spaces is a barred window completely filled with greenery. It’s the only photo in the series taken entirely with natural light, allowing for the shadow of leaves to reflect on the concrete ground. Em ends the series with a beacon of hope that growth can happen anywhere and in spite of everything. As she writes in her poem, “Unbaby” is not only marked by the sickly green of the gynecological chair, but “The window that I saw when the world began / to grow back green.”

Ariana Eftimiu

December 8, 2024

Feature by Sayuri Govender

Photos by Arden Sklar and Audrea Chen

Ariana Eftimiu (BC’ 25) is a senior at Barnard majoring in Political Science and Human Rights. She has been writing for years, using poetry as a method to find and unravel meaning. She also runs an online magazine, Potted Purple, with her childhood best friend since they were 17. For her, poetry has been a medium for catch and release for years. In our conversation, she reflected on the temporality of her poetry, collaging beloved forms of media, and creating space for artists to thrive.

When I enter Ariana’s bedroom, the first thing I notice is how thoughtfully and artfully each decoration is placed on her walls. She walks me through each image, tchotchke, poster, and sketch– with each having a deliberate meaning, position, and coordination with the rest of the decor. Next to her bed are a myriad of postcards, receipts, and photos sharing the same pink hue, while above her desk features large, dark, and haunting posters–representing her love of “everything black and white and a little scary”. Her friend Macy’s art is spread around the room, as well as images of her favorite Depeche Mode album and memorabilia from her favorite restaurants and cafes. This thoughtfulness and sentimentality for her world extends deeply into her writing.

Her process for writing a poem always begins with an “impetus to write”. She describes to me the sensation of being struck with the “need to write about this”. First, the moment must fully pass, and only in its aftermath she writes most honestly. “I need to act on the desire to write or it'll die” she confesses, explaining that the truest feelings expressed in her poetry are the ones first put down on paper. With her poems, she hopes to conjure a distinct and palpable image for her readers, expressing that “ I really want us to be seeing the same thing”. Her writing is both melodic and visual; as she muses that a poem exists almost as a collage of “what does this feeling sound like and what does it look like? How can I make it very clearly look like that to other people? How can I make them see what I'm seeing?” She reveals that each poem has a set of songs that goes alongside them, with meticulously crafted Spotify playlists titled after them. (At the end of our conversation, I confess that I share the same intensity for crafting Spotify playlists for each moment of my life. We laugh and share in our love for writing, music, poetry, and the devotion to it all, and she immediately follows my page.)

As she describes her efforts to conjure images through her poetry, she also jokes how her mother and her sister are incredible visual artists and painters, but she can barely draw–so the gene must’ve skipped her. Then why poetry? Ariana states that “poetry is extremely honest–it's honest even when it's evasive. I like that it can hide something to an extent. There's a thin veil over everything, but otherwise, all of it is confessional” The abstraction of a raw confession is sown throughout Ariana’s poetry. She invites you into her world, to see, hear, and feel what it's like, and put your own meaning into it. (She may even write about you, but can obscure it enough that you might never truly know.) Her work is “an open letter to whoever is willing to understand it.” In a way, it is how she paints.

Within her poetry, Ariana works to understand her place in both suburbia and the city. She grew up directly across the Hudson River, telling me how she stared at the New York skyline from a secret corner of the woods only accessed through a hole in the fence. Her poetry is evocative and critical of the suburban, portraying high school imagery of cars, pool parties, and sneaking into the garage, as well as the loneliness and conformity of it all. Yet, when she works to characterize New York City, she tells me “it is not necessarily less lonely than a suburban area. There's loneliness and struggle in both spaces”. She reflects, now on the other side of the river and embedded in the sparkling skyline, that “a space will not be your saving grace. You need to be your own saving grace, and you can find it in community and people–that love is what makes the space what it is.”

For Ariana, poetry is a reckoning. She writes and encounters yearning, anger, femininity, and sweetness. She tells me how she finds beauty in the fact that poetry is open-ended and can exist without arriving at an answer. Furthermore, she tells me how poetry helps her sift through these emotions, working through wants and desires within the words, expressing how “a poem grounds them as things that can be ethereal and linger in the air, while still being incredibly real”

I find that her work takes these huge emotions and grounds them in specific, intricate, direct things. Her poem “mandarins and roses at the dinner table tonight” starts with “he colors me in, red and white plaid, / poppy on the kitchen table.” In a few words, she evokes a simple yet profound image. She tells me that her ability to see poetry in the mundane comes from her belief that “poetry can make things that are delicate and quiet be seen with a new importance.” She jokes that she might care too much, but that care is what drives her passion for her work. “My overarching sentiment is that everything is that deep,” she adds “and writing about something super mundane is choosing to be inquisitive about it and choosing to ask: what is the significance that this small thing has to me? The beauty of feeling and the beauty of poetry is that they're very constant. It's like listening to a song that was also one of your favorites 10 years ago.”

More recently, she has tried a more outright, staccato style in her poetry with the poem “THE DOW WILL TRADE ALMOST FORTY FIVE THOUSAND POINTS THIS YEAR & YOU EXIST HERE BY CHOICE OR BY FORCE”. In it, Ariana chronicles a desire to “return to a world where art governs,” revealing to me how “that poem came out of a frustration that art doesn't seem to matter. I've interviewed professors and I've talked to friends about this, and it seems like there's an overarching feeling that to be an artist, you must consider what you have to give up” I am stuck on the “return”--has this world existed, or will it? Ariana tells me the want to “return” is born from watching dissent of public trust in journalism, the difficulties of getting published, the loss of funding for the arts, and the inability to get your art into different spaces. She also adds that “‘return’ is also idealistic because it's this world that doesn't entirely exist, but it definitely could. It would just take a giant breaking apart and restructuring [of our society].”

However, Ariana has been working to provide these spaces for artists since her sophomore year of high school, when she and her best friend Nina Evans decided to make an online magazine: Potted Purple. Their website describes how the magazine was “built from a shared dream to collaborate with other creatives in an effort to foster a community of art and writing; encouraging their community to advocate for what matters and vocalize what is on their minds.” Ariana expresses how they wanted to create a magazine with no barrier to entry which young people can get their work published in. Since its founding in August 2019, it has grown a following of more than 3,000 people, with submissions from over 35 countries in its 13 published issues. Furthermore, it partners with Universal Music’s program that boosts musical and artistic projects by 18 to 24-year olds. This has allowed Ariana and Nina to interview a multitude of artists for the magazine, such as Jon Batiste, Billie Marten, and Ariana's favorite, Vlad Holiday. Because of the magazine, they have attended once-in-a-lifetime concerts and music events and followed their passion for loving and dissecting all things music. Yet, even with its continued growth and success, Ariana confides “I think it'll always feel like an idea that we came up with sitting in our hometown tea shop together.” Nina and she have spent the past years side-by-side, both making their way to New York City for college and being able to continue not only the magazine but their love for songwriting together and exchanging their art. She tells me that talking to other creative people is such a lifeblood–it is so important.” Our conversation leaves me feeling the same way. Her infectious enthusiasm for poetry, music, and art, as well as her passion for both pursuing it and opening doors for others is incredibly inspiring.

Her efforts in pursuing her art are meticulous and deliberate. She often feels that her poetry and her magazine are a “lore drop” that completely dismantles her image as a poli-sci major. Yet, her art is not an afterthought, but the center of her life. She has worked to strike a balance between her academics and her art these past four years and thus follows every small spark of creation. Whether it's 11pm and she realizes she needs to go play piano and write a song, or at the kitchen table after everyone’s gone to bed writing the poem that struck her earlier in the day, Ariana always fans the fires of her art.

She hopes in her future that she never loses sight of her artistic practices, and maintains her wonderful devotion. She recognizes that in college it often seems like we have no time for these endeavors, but we don’t realize that we do, we can, and we should.

Viela Hu

December 7, 2024

Feature by Vivian Wang

Photos by Colson Struss

Viela Hu CC’27 is from Vancouver, Canada, studying art history and visual arts at Columbia. Her multimedia creative works have expanded far beyond her traditional training for technical works, investigating concepts of the female body, nature, cosmic connection, and more. Rather than conveying a definitive message, her art documents a continuous exploration of her evolving understanding of herself and the world around her.

As I made my way to the sundial to meet Viela, I tried to remember all the questions I had prepared, wondering how (and if it was even possible) to encapsulate her vast portfolio in one article. Both of us were bundled up against the sudden chill that's picked up in this year's unpredictable weather, and having just come out of class, we unanimously decided to grab something to eat first. After finding an empty table in Lerner to settle down with our sushi, we tried to get to know each other in a casual conversation, giving us time to finish our meal before the formal interview began, but even in casual conversation, we couldn’t help but circle back to her art.

Creating has always been an intrinsic part of who Viela is– an instinctive way of expressing herself that comes more naturally than words. There is no clear “beginning” to her creative process; it’s simply something that exists alongside her, as constant and natural as breathing.

“Art is so central to me. It's a comfort place because there's an intimacy that you have with your work. I always say I feel like it’s alive. You interact with it.”

Viela describes her work as a “curated chaos.” Her artistic process, she explained, usually sparks from a very banal moment in her day-to-day life. From there, the creation unfolds through a highly mechanical process, one that she compares to a scientific experiment. She often pulls from a variety of foreign materials to express the specific concepts she explores, resulting in a lot of trial and error in her work. Despite the presence of recurring elements, from Barbie dolls to peonies, that seem to connect her work, Viela doesn’t seek to convey a singular, overarching theme. Her portfolio, she says, is more like an exploration of the random, the serious and the absurd, with no grand intention behind it.

“It goes back to a conversation with my French professor. Our conversation was centering on ‘is there even a message that the author’s trying to convey?’ And I really agree with this point. There really isn’t anything behind my art that I’m trying to convey where I haven’t figured out already. My work isn’t even a final product, as opposed to an accumulation of my exploration. If I knew what I wanted to convey, I would have told everybody in a very simplified way.”

Much of Viela’s artwork is an exploration of the body and meditates on how it shapes one’s sense of self and their relationship with the world. In Garden of Life, Viela confronts the interplay between life and pain that stems from the uterus. “There’s no religious reference,” she clarified. “I only realized after I named it that the garden could be interpreted as religious. I meant it as the uterus is the garden of life.” This three-dimensional collage embodies a maximalist aesthetic that she tends towards in her artworks, emphasizing depth, texture, and a rich palette of colors. As I gazed at the collage, I felt as if I was looking through an I-Spy book, trying to identify all the elements that strung together to form this symbolic orchid.

Flower Womb serves as a striking visual and tactile manifestation of the journey through the psychological and physical shifts of puberty, using peonies as a metaphor for the uterus. For this project, sourcing materials became a crucial part of her process, as she experimented with a variety of silicon samples to simulate the look and texture of skin. Functioning as headpieces, Flower Womb invites the spectator to become a part of the work. “I wanted it to be that your head is inside the uterus, so you’re seeing and feeling the psychological changes as well as physical changes,” she said. Each of the three headpieces explores a different stage of transformation. The first, with a blue peony peeking out from the corner, symbolizes the subtle unfolding of physical change. The second, featuring pom poms and draped yarn, conveys a surge of energy, while the third, in bold fuchsia, reflects an awakening.

Viela is also fascinated with the relationship between herself, the people around her, and the entire universe, a concept sparked from an astronomy class that she took at Columbia, “Stars and Atoms.” She explained to me that the universe began with hydrogen as the basic element, and the remainder of the periodic table was built from the bursting of stars, which ultimately comes together to form us. “There’s this connection between all things and everything,” she notes thoughtfully, resting her hand on her chin. Me, Others, and the Universe, is a 1 minute video artwork that took two years to make. The video opens with her eye staring directly into the viewer. Her eye becomes a metonym for herself and her deeper inquiry into the feeling of insignificance amidst larger natural forces and the expansive world around her. As her breath becomes the dominant sound, it drowns out the hum of static chatter, placing the viewer in a position of vulnerability and overwhelming presence. Throughout the video, different clips of the bustling city and natural disasters come together, and the rhythm of her breathing subtly shifts, becoming erratic at times, almost as if it's struggling to keep pace with the enormity of the universe. By the end, we’re left with the sound of her breathing and the subsiding of a wave, leaving the viewer with a lingering sense of intimacy.

“Exploration is so central to me. Through the eye, you see the world, and through the eye you’re interpreting the world in a visual sense. I take more of a passive position in my explorations, like I'm looking and I'm interpreting. Unlike the mouth, I’m not projecting things into the audience. With the eye, I’m just looking and interpreting, so it’s a more reflective process.”

From Stars is a continuation of this idea of cosmic connection through a laborious collage of oil paintings. Viela focuses on circular forms, both industrial and natural, while revisiting motifs of her own body, including her eye and mouth, positioning these symbols along the Milky Way. Returning to her multimedia roots by using yarn, she constructs a tangible linear line that ties these earthly elements to the cosmos.

Other pieces take on more playful tones. Split into two series, Me, Life In The Wild, is a satirical commentary inspired by a jarring camping experience. “I have an affinity towards nature, in a quarantined sense. I don't hate camping. I just think that there's something funny about the idea of going outside and camping, but then having to isolate yourself in a tent that's plastic,” she said. While lying on her plastic air mattress, trying to ignore the itch from her constellation of bug bites, Viela began to reflect on our increasingly industrial lives. She saw Barbie as a token of the industrial robot, as well as herself. In series one, she positions the doll in various awkward poses, where the very idea of connecting with the natural world is at odds with its synthetic, plastic form, drawing a dystopian parallel with the artificial boundaries we’ve created between ourselves and the environment. Series two takes a metafictional approach; the dolls seem to be trapped in a continuous loop of self-examination, which I found mirrors Viela’s own process of self-discovery and questioning.

With her art history and visual arts degree, Viela is thinking about going into education, given the impact her various professors have had on her life and her artwork. Viela’s website (vielahu.com) houses more of her portfolio and delves deeper into her rigorous artistic process, alongside glimpses into her life beyond the studio– whether it's baking or skiing. My favorite section, the sketchbook page, shows fragments of her raw, unfiltered creative thoughts and early concepts. You can also connect with her through her instagram @hu.fineart.

Andre Adonnino

December 7, 2024

Feature by Nathan Cho

Photos by Aliaya Nesru

Andre Adonnino (CC’26) is a junior studying Biochemistry. He is also a pre-med student. Andre primarily works in the medium of drawing and his go-to tools for this are a simple black pen and white paper. Andre finds artistic inspiration in the body and its many contortions while infusing all of his work with the “scribble.” Andre leans into the line and the restraint and freedom of it. He often fuses his medical studies with his artistic passions.

I had barely put my bag and jacket down when I looked up to see Andre Adonnino (CC ‘26) standing there eager and early – really early. He showed up twenty minutes before our scheduled interview. There was a lot I had hoped to do in those twenty minutes: print out my notes, go to the bathroom, assemble my recording, and generally look at least somewhat presentable. Caught off guard, I quickly rushed through my preparations and tried to compose a setting for our interview. As Andre began, I grew glad for his early arrival. Andre’s story, rich and compelling, was barely contained within those twenty extra minutes and surely would’ve been incomplete if he had come on time.

Andre’s journey with art is one filled with twists and turns. Although Andre’s love and passion for art is palpable, he intentionally resists any formal education of it. In fact, he is currently a Pre-Med student studying biochemistry. Andre cites his experience with arts education in high school as having contributed to his complicated views on formal arts education. In high school, so much importance was placed on realism. However, this strict emphasis wasn't something that spoke to him. During this time, Andre found himself spiraling in the competition of art, pushing himself against standards that he himself didn’t embrace or aspire to meet. Art began to lose its expressive value– becoming a means to a competitive end. As Andre transitioned out of that environment and came to Columbia, he wanted to free his art of competitive pressures. Now, art is something he orients around himself and his community. In his personal journal, Andre sketches though many of these drawings never see the public light. Now, his growth comes from consistent personal practice and community interaction. His community provides a space where his art can grow without being restricted.

However, this is not to say that Andre entirely opposes an arts education. In fact, one of the most influential experiences in his artistic career came from an interaction with his high school art teacher. She was the first teacher to shake Andre’s confidence and tell him “NO.” This was Andre’s first experience with the semblance of failure. He felt shaken by his teacher's critical assessment of his artwork. The teacher provided him with valuable criticism that proved vital to his artistic practice. Andre describes this experience as crucial to the development of his art. This encounter pushed him to invest more in his practice while starting to shake him from the perfectionist mentality that constrained him early on. He still keeps in contact with that teacher today. Over the three years he’s been at Columbia, he has slowly recuperated art as a practice for himself. This focus on the self is a distinguishing quality of Andre’s style. Having moved away from the standards and confines of hyperrealism, Andre has stripped drawings down to their basics.

Andre's drawing style is primarily characterized by black pen on paper. These drawings are usually sparse in background and center around figures in dynamic contortions that emphasize the possibility of the human–particularly masculine– form. In these dialed down compositions, the line gains a special importance. This line, as it traces and forms the body, is a key subject of exploration for Andre. Just as Andre resists the conventional route of arts education, so does he resist the expectations of the line. In Andre’s drawings, line has the equal power of creating form and destroying it. Lines create the arms and legs as they fling in various positions, but they also leap out and form webs and tentacles that at once distinguish and blur the figure. These “tentacles” have become exaggerated over time as Andre himself began to reckon with his impulse towards them. According to Andre, his exploration of line is “the fun part” that imbues a piece with emotion while also controlling the weight of his composition. These tentacles perform the dual purpose of technical and emotive weight.

This focus on form and figure explains, in part, the running motif of Spiderman present in much of Andre’s work and life. Whether he’s sporting a Spiderman T-shirt around campus, filling his sketchbook with him, or setting him as his phone background, Spiderman has always been one of Andre’s biggest and longest-lasting inspirations, a fact he is not ashamed of. On an artistic level, Spiderman acts as an important exercise in form. Spiderman is often associated with iconic poses that push the boundaries of the body as he is flinging through the air or swinging through cities. Spiderman has also always played an important role in Andre's personal life – having been introduced to his comics from a young age. Spiderman’s intelligence and ambition made him an aspirational figure for Andre who reflected that: “It’s good to have heroes.” And to the people who think his inspiration is childish or cringe, Andre offers straightforward response: “F**k the haters.” Andre knows who he is and what he loves unabashedly. He demonstrates that whether in art or life, “sophistication” is overrated.

As Andre has formed his own identity through and with his art, he has been able to take a personal and unique approach to art. As Chief Illustrator for the Columbia Science Review, Andre combines his interests and passions together. However, his multifaceted practice is not just confined to Columbia’s campus. Andre is a project manager for the Dementia Art Therapy Alliance where he practices art as a form of healing. Working with patients suffering from dementia, Andre implements a collaborative and emotionally attuned approach to artistic creation. Art becomes an active site for healing and connection that is really important to Andre and speaks to the value of art past its technical expectation. Andre was able to expand this work as he was brought onto a pilot program for the Lenox Hill Hospital where he had the opportunity to meet with patients one-on-one and draw as they engage in conversation. Art becomes a space where patients can listen and be heard. It’s a place where even the cagiest let their guard down and share a story that Andre can immortalize through his drawings. Art is a practice as much as it is a craft, and Andre engages with it in all its unique facets. His layered understanding of art is something he owes to his occupation of both the scientific and artistic realm. His experience at the intersection of different disciplines is a huge reason why he sees the “divide” between these two spaces– art and science– as “stupid.” They intersect and rely on each other in so many ways, and this is a truth that Andre not only knows but practices.

Andre’s artwork is constantly changing, and he is open to anything and everything that could help his art grow. So, his future is hard to predict. Although he currently works in black pen, Andre expressed a keen interest in color. Though it isn’t necessarily evident in his current, public artwork, he assured me that color is something he is investigating in private. He wants to ensure that he truly has a handle on color before publicizing it in any of his pieces. Color opens a huge realm of possibility that he wishes to investigate for himself first. With this intention comes to light another important aspect of Andre’s artistic philosophy: the process is just as important as the product. Andre sees the process of creation as if not more important than what is left at the end. If Andre doesn’t find himself enjoying and indulging in the process, he sees very little purpose in the product. This philosophy takes shape in Andre’s handle of time. Rather than slaving away at a piece for the purpose of unattainable hyperrealism, Andre prefers the spontaneity of flash drawing. He finds himself feeling more empowered and connected to the process when engaging in flash drawing. Importantly, his fast-paced drawing is not indicative of a lack of artistic dedication. Andre leans into time and allows it to have its own influence on his artwork. In this sense, time becomes its own space– one where he can push himself and discover new techniques or practices as he races against the clock. Just like the adage goes, for Andre, the journey is more important than the destination.

Andre hopes to always have art in his life, despite his career path not going directly into the art field. He views art as a crucial outlet for expression that he hopes to continue to tap into both formally such as in medicine and informally in ways like his doodling. He sees the interweaving of medicine and art as endless– particularly in the realm of volunteering. He hopes to continue the work he currently does as a volunteer throughout his career. Andre is also interested in investigating some new forms of drawing that engage with medicine more explicitly like anatomical drawings or medical illustrations that push his focus on form to new contexts.

You can follow Andre’s ever-growing practice on Instagram @vowelful where he goes by the pseudonym: vowel. He is also trying to get more involved in showing off his work. He has already sold prints for the Morningside Art Exchange and has even drawn on a skateboard that was raffled off at one of MAE’s events. Keep your eyes on MAE for future appearances of Andre’s art.

Lixin Yan

December 6, 2024

Feature by Anushka Pai

Photos by Alicia Tang

Lixin Yan is a sophomore (‘27) at Barnard College studying art history, visual arts, and psychology. While her primary discipline is fashion design, her portfolio includes sculptures, photography, drawings, and paintings. We met on the Diana patio, easing into our conversation soon after.

Lixin begins her creative process with rumination—pulled towards ideas that are particularly hard to process. As such, her work tackles diverse subjects, be it grief or political turmoil. Two of her recent projects, “The Mirror of Erised” and “Survival of the Fittest,” were inspired by the pain she experienced while navigating an emotional breakup.

In a period of loss, change, and coping, Lixin’s turmoil began to bleed into her subconscious.

“I have a lot of nightmares and I draw all of them. Immediately after I wake up from one, I start sketching,” said Lixin.

The sketches in question are a synthesis of swirling colors, landscapes, and figures. In our discussion, she mentioned waking up to feelings of drowning and suffocation. These moments are captured fresh from Lixin’s mind, evocative of the fear she felt immediately prior. As the first stage of her artistic process, these sketches depict grief at its most tender.

Lixin’s sketches are brought to life as textiles, which she typically embroiders or crochets by hand, utilizing a variety of materials, textures, and hues. Many of these samples incorporate elements of the natural world using patterns and shapes.

“The Mirror of Erised,” juxtaposes distressed denim with bright, flowery yarn, representing the complex, often contradictory emotions she experiences. I took note of the positive connotation of nature in Lixin’s work, which is used across mediums to evoke feelings of peace and inner growth. She often places nature in contrast with inorganic elements, symbolic of the acrimony she experiences.

In the midst of her breakup, while tossing and turning due to her nightmares, Lixin realized that her dreams were a defense mechanism, attempting to shield her conscious mind from pain. “Survival of the Fittest,” draws inspiration from the evolutionary traits of animals, which develop as a form of protection from harm. Both looks feature wearable shells, based on armadillos and turtles.

Lixin drafts upwards of six designs using her textiles. As expected, this process can be lengthy. According to Lixin, these looks take upwards of a year to complete, developing in tandem with her emotional evolution.

Not only is Lixin inspired by her difficult emotions, but she is also motivated by them. The moments when she struggles the most, Lixin says, are the ones that drive her projects forward.

“When I’m really sad, I can only do a few things; that’s when I turn to art. When I’m happy, I have less free time–I’ll spend time with friends and go outside,” said Lixin.

Once assembled, Lixin directs the styling and staging of her looks, aspects that play a critical role in completing her narrative. Lixin’s designs take a new life when photographed, presenting a new condition of healing.

For “Survival of the Fittest,” the subject occupies a liminal space between nature and sterility. Illuminated by the moss below, Lixin’s designs are placed on a pedestal. The subject’s solitude is a reminder that Lixin’s journey is internal—a product of her isolation. Placed in this space, the subject embodies a newfound strength. I interpreted these displays as a ‘return to nature,’ recalling Lixin’s inclination to immerse herself in the external world following the intense process of isolation.

Upon completing a project, Lixin finds herself with a new perspective—one of gratitude for the turmoil she experiences. This is one of the reasons why her work is so cathartic. By accepting her emotions as they occur, her art drives personal growth and healing. What I found most striking about Lixin’s looks is the way they proudly display her most vulnerable moments, never losing sight of the emotions from which they were inspired.

“I use art to heal myself. I don’t see my struggles as entirely negative, because I use them to make art. It’s like a transition of everything bad into something good. It feels powerful to display my personal growth,” said Lixin.

“Sweet Dreams are Made of These” is a sculpture made of candy wrappers, wire mesh, polyurethane foam, and candles. The candy wrappers are displayed bearing the weight of melted candles and wire mesh, making the sculpture appear fragile. This installation was inspired by Lixin’s sugar addiction, a coping mechanism during a difficult period of her life. When her life felt as if it was falling apart, candy became a ‘quick fix,’ providing an instant of relief. However, just as this installation depicts, ‘quick fixes’ can only bear weight for so long, and the only way through a hard time is to face it head-on.

“Eat Well” was inspired by Lixin’s relationship with her grandmother. Due to language barriers and age differences, the pair do not communicate well verbally. Instead, Lixin bonds with her grandmother through food, a subject where they share common ground. Lixin used clay to model different foods, which are displayed across a cloudy arch, symbolic of the bridge between her and her grandmother.

In “Shape of Fear,” Lixin depicts the illusionary nature of fear. While the unknown can feel dangerous and paralyzing, it is often just a trick of the mind. When Lixin first arrived in the US, she was afraid of speaking to her classmates because of language barriers. However, when she finally conversed with one of her peers, her fear dissipated. This sculpture depicts a black shell, with rows of black spikes lining its interior. While seemingly harmful, the spikes are soft to-the-touch, posing no real threat to the semi-abstract human form at the shell’s center. Despite how material fear can feel, it is often a product of the imagination and is meant to be overcome.

Iman Taha

November 11, 2024

Feature by Nathan Cho

Photos by Arden Sklar

Iman (she/her) is a senior at Barnard College in the class of ‘26. Her fervor for photography began at a young age and has blossomed into a diverse collection of photos that experiment with color, lighting, composition, and subject. This experimentation often comes with the spontaneity of Iman’s preferred photography style: street photography.

In preparation for my conversation with Iman, I wanted to get a feeling for how an artist like her would treat the walk from Mudd to Dodge. From my review of her work, Iman seemed to primarily practice street photography, a practice that waits for the perfect shot rather than creates it in detail. As I walked in front of Avery and across Low Steps, I tried as hard as I could to find at least one image worth taking. I came up incredibly short. Nothing seemed to come together, no matter how hard I tried. Thus, I entered my conversation with Iman with a looming question on my mind: How the hell do you do this?

Iman, a senior at Barnard College, had an unconventional start to her photography career. As a child, her medium of choice was not photography, but fashion design. She laughed about those days, explaining how her teacher told her that her designs “were never that good”—but her photography was. In the process of photographing her fashion designs, Iman found her inspiration for another medium. It was not only the best part of her fashion work, but the part where she had the most fun. So, slowly yet surely, Iman began to focus on photography as her main artistic medium. Today, she has an instagram account (@imansphotographs) burgeoning with photos from Turkey to New York City. As her portfolio has grown, so has her practice. While she still uses her father’s old film camera, she has expanded to digital photography as well. As her work has grown, I wondered how the years honed her craft. Concerning my original brewing question, Iman gave me a tour of her artistic mind and process as she patrols the streets.

Iman describes her draw towards street photography as a desire to discover more about herself. Through a documentation of the world as it is, she carves out a place for herself in it. The scenes she captures through her photography,—scenes she describes as distinctly “without her intervention”—provide a space for reflective meditation on her own place in the world. Although she is devoid from the photographs themselves, she is the one shaping them and the ultimate judge of its worth to her film. This meditative practice continues in the development of these photos. As a film photographer, Iman loves both the process of capturing a scene and the labor of processing it and bringing it to life. As she develops these photos, she sees herself developing a story. What draws her to the specific scenes she photographs is a feeling that there is a story hiding in the movement and organic composition of the world. The photograph, as much as it informs Iman, becomes a way to capture her own perspective and the own story she’s seeing. She describes her favorite photos as the ones with the most potential for that “story.” Whether it’s a little girl peering through a window or the soft touch of hands over a bin of vinyls, Iman hopes to capture and preserve the stories of her streets as a way to define her and her world.

Most of the people in Iman’s photos are strangers to her, yet she still develops a relationship with them through her lens. When asked about her approach to street photography and the art of capturing someone, she noted that there is a specific approach she sees in photographing strangers versus someone she’s familiar with. This difference in context foregrounds the photographic relationship Iman has with her subjects on the street. She observes that in her practice, the people blend into the environment, almost like a building. The human form becomes an object of beauty considered for its individual aesthetic qualities in relation to space. This environment, Iman shared, is the key to the beauty she finds in street photography. The confluence of all the aspects of the environment is not something that can be made, only encountered. It only exists out there. It’s just a matter of finding it. The hunt for the perfect street shot becomes one for treasure where gold is dug up and Iman lies in wait for the sun to hit and make the whole scene shimmer. Iman beautifully mused, “Everything you need is on the street.”

To Iman, her street photography is like jazz. Despite its spontaneity and improvisation, like jazz, there is a rule in the noise. The unpredictability of light, shadow, composition, environment, and people all combine in a band of noise that Iman tunes to perfection. Iman notices this intricate balance of having a controlled eye and an open mind that truly makes her photos distinct.

One of the instruments in Iman’s symphony is color. When I first saw Iman’s photographs, my mind was instantly drawn to her use of color. Her photos swam in tones of sepia, black, white, blue. Some of her photos were practically dripping with saturation while others were quiet in their display. In Iman’s black and white photos, she specifically gives attention to contrast. She seeks out the shadows and lights that bring a scene to life. By desaturating the photo, this stark contrast is brought to life. In her photos of color, Iman loves to play with distortion. Whether its light bouncing between ripples of water or glaring off of window panes, Iman understands light and its effect on color as vitally important to the life of a scene. The color and the light can obscure or highlight; focus or distract; liven or dull. Despite this love for color, Iman has shied away from editing her photos. She speaks to how the editing process takes something away from her photos rather than adding it. She just wants to “capture what I capture.” So, Iman’s alterations come before the photo is taken, in the various camera settings that change the wash of the photo. Iman uses daylight and night settings to elevate her photos, enhancing them without necessarily changing them. Iman values color (values) in how they exist and how they can be created, and she turns those dials accordingly.

As someone who splits the year’s time in New York City and Turkey, I wanted to probe the matter of location for Iman. Do opposite sides of the world warrant different practices? While Iman’s general approach stays the same, she identifies some key differences in her practice in Turkey versus in the US versus in the places she travels to. Between Turkey and the US, the energy and tone of her photographs are incredibly different. In Turkey, Iman finds her eyes drawn to architecture while her eyes are more drawn to the people in the US. Despite these differences, both places have a “home-y” feeling for her and this familiarity contrasts with the feeling of her photography from places she’s visited or vacationed in. Iman stated that this feeling of the “outside eye” in these places affects the perspective of her photographs. The difference is clear.

Iman currently maintains photography as an artistic hobby, though she practices it more formally as a photographer for Columbia’s Daily Spectator. The Spectator gave her the unique and fulfilling opportunity to join a community of student photographers. Whether it’s from simple help cleaning a camera or sharing knowledge and approaches, Iman’s involvement in The Daily Spectator has provided her a new avenue to explore her art.

Iman hopes to be able to start a professional practice with her photography, but she knows that, no matter what, photography will always be in her life. She’s currently trying to expand her practice and experimenting with different approaches to her work. She’s particularly interested in exploring narrative photography—bringing new meaning to her curation and compilation of images. You can follow this journey with her on her instagram @imansphotographs.

Iman’s handle of the camera is like no other. Through her lens, she captures those fleeting moments whose significance, intimacy, and emotion only becomes legible on a second meditation. Iman’s art shows us that in the hustle and bustle of NYC where all anyone is thinking about is where to go next—everything we need is in the streets. All you need to do is look.

Julia Kirby

November 8, 2024

Feature by Eli Schalet

Photos by Moksha Akil

(Pairs well with “Wild Mountain Honey” by Steve Miller Band, your favorite goat’s milk gouda and crackers [or some casu martzu if you find yourself reading this in Sardinia], and a glass of chocolate milk.)

Julia is a visual artist from San Fransisco in the class of 2027 at Columbia College also studying physics and archeology. She is a painter (oil, acrylic, watercolor), tattoo artist, illustrator, welder, leatherworker, jewelry maker, glassworker, photographer, and bacterial bio-artist at Columbia Biomedical Engineering. Speaking with her on the steps of St. John’s Cathedral, it's almost as if she can’t not create. “You give me a material, and I'll give you art. I guess for me, art is just anything that I work with my hands.” Her art experiments with how we create memories, their preservation, their distortion; she wants to create these memories synthetically.

As the Thursday evening sun leaves us on a blue-gray and cold Amsterdam Ave, Julia tells me about her bio-art in between Mount Sinai sirens, a hand in her bleached hair. Working out of the Danino Lab – a studio part of Columbia’s Synthetic Biological Systems Lab – Kirby uses microbiology techniques that are usually found in scientific research to make art. “Instead of using bacteria to make a drug that cures cancer, you're making bacteria look pretty. Way better (she laughs sarcastically).” After extracting strains of bacteria with a solution from samples usually sourced from natural environments, like for her ongoing project focalizing national parks, she’ll pipette that solution onto an agar plate that helps the bacteria grow. She then incubates these, sometimes just overnight, other times for up to two weeks, and returns them to colonies of bacteria of all different shapes and colors. Once the bacteria has covered the agar plate she scans it and lets the plate dry out, sometimes adding chemical stains or food dye to augment the plate’s coloring. Other times though, like some of her recent work with bright orange and yellow bacterial samples from musical instruments, she’ll leave the plates with their natural color.

This process is highly selective, and she often goes through many iterations of plates experimenting with different strains or agar mediums, or changing the nutrient mediums or broths. When she inoculates a plate with bacteria, it’s in this malleable liquid culture that she can manipulate and create shapes with. “Recently, I made a plate with a smiley face.” With all this experimentation, Kirby says she sees herself more as a scientist in the lab than an artist. The beauty jumps out from the natural patterns, then she recreates them.

Julia’s scientific creativity stems from her Northern California roots. Up until middle school, she focused her energy mostly on the fine arts, yet was also inspired by the nature around her and captivated by at-home chemistry kits; the tension between science and art in her life was always present, but it wasn’t until she discovered a warehouse in Oakland that housed an industrial arts studio that the two collided. Going every summer with her friends, she immersed herself in the more mechanical processes of artistic creation. “Up until then, it was mostly drawing and painting, and I was still doing that, but I think this warehouse made me realize ‘Wow, there's so much science that can be applied to art, and art that can be applied to science.’” It is now that we must issue a sizable ‘thank you’ to her high school biology teacher Christine Bois, who introduced the young artist to the field of bio-art through a lab one day in class. “[We had] all these colorful bacteria, and like, ‘You can make a flower with bacteria’. And I [thought] ‘This is so novel”, at the time I was like, this is really cool. It was a cute, fun science experiment. I need to go tell her that I'm working [in bio-art] because she's literally gonna pass out.”

Often when creating her plates, Kirby tries to pick bacteria that are particularly motile, meaning their growth moves around the plate significantly. “My favorite species that I've found is called bacillus piscis” (she identifies the strain through sequencing) “and it grows very beautifully in this spider-like formation on MRS. I found it because I collected dirt from Grand Teton. I went to Jenny Lake and got this strain of bacteria, and it's beautiful. And it was sequenced from, [the muscle of] this Antarctic fish!”

When Julia is satisfied with a plate she’ll cast it in PDMS (a translucent silicone preservative). But regardless of the outcome, she keeps all of the plates. Those that she doesn’t cast eventually dry out. “It's just kind of wrinkly, and it's not beautiful, but it's also not ugly. The plate is always aging. If you look at the work of previous plates that were made years ago they're still changing shape, even now.”

This transformation of the physical form, or distortion of image, is present almost everywhere in Kirby’s artwork, but especially in her tattooing. “Recently, a lot of the tattoos that I'm doing are copies of this childhood illustration. I did a tattoo on my mom that was an illustration my brother had made when he was little. I tattooed like a star on myself. It's very much in this childlike, kind of fat lines, distorted shapes. There's a beauty in the imperfections.” Particularly with her tattoo for her mother, she felt a strong meaning in the fusion of mother, daughter, and son through an atemporal artwork on an aging body, almost a connection to her mother’s past self via maternity. It was her mother who also taught her how to watercolor in elementary school, setting the foundation for Julia’s artistic journey, or rather, explosion. In this sense, it’s come full circle in the form of permanent ink.

This comparison between the agent of agar and tattooing is also a strong parallel for how Julia thinks about memory, a core tenet of her artistry. Her eyes light up when she remembers a quote from the introduction of photographer and activist Nan Goldin’s The Ballad of Sexual Dependency:

“Memory allows an endless flow of connections. Stories can be rewritten, memory can’t. If each picture is a story, then the accumulation of these pictures comes closer to the experience of memory, a story without end. I want to be able to experience fully, without restraint. People who are obsessed with remembering their experiences usually impose strict self-disciplines. I want to be uncontrolled and controlled at the same time. The diary is my form of control over my life. It allows me to obsessively record every detail. It enables me to remember.”

“She's kind of putting into words how I think about memory, and how I think about my art. Because I feel like my memory is not great, and I often distort memories of people, places and things. I think my art is me searching for the preservation of the past. That's why I deal with so much scrapbooking. It's why I obsessively keep the train tickets and the receipts whenever I travel.”

This thread is what Kirby uses to weave her infinite spiderweb of mediums and disciplines, connecting the academic with the artistic and everything in between, hoping to catch as much authentic experience in her ‘synthetic memory’ as possible. But she doesn’t always stick to staunch realism; often, authentic replication of the subjective mind’s warping of past events is just as necessary. I mentioned to Julia how I find this distortion in her paintings especially, and she agreed. “80% of the paintings that I make are based off of this [image] in my mind. So when I'm painting something, I'm not observing this physical landscape. I'm imagining this landscape in my mind and painting from that memory,” a memory beautifully warped and twisted by subjectivity.

Julia cites Max Beckmann (showing me The Night and Family Picture, bodies twisting in hyperbolized personality) and Edward Hopper (the famous Nighthawks, Gas, his lighthouses) as her main inspirations, especially with how they distort space. “With Max Beckmann, it's a very clear distortion of space where I'm like, ‘Wow, this is so interesting, how you've made me feel very uncomfortable with these people, but also, like, intrigued.’ It's wonderful. And then with Edward Hopper, the way that he [paints] solitude and the emptiness of this space. Every single time he paints it has this sense of nostalgia.”

This distortion manifests materially in her leatherwork and jewelry. Julia often takes discarded materials and turns them into wearable art, usually gifting them to friends for birthday gifts. “I'm like, ‘If you don't take this, you hate me.’ even though what I'm giving you is literally trash, but I made it into art.” This fascination with trash came from an archive photography class she took freshman year, investigating how we remember photos (which are often as dishonest as they are honest), how we preserve an archive, and what a selective archive is. Kirby saw trash as a clear archive of our environment, accentuating the contrast between today's trash and the trash of the same communities some 200 years ago, culminating in a photo book on the subject.

We laugh about the elusive and confusing nature of nostalgia, and its similarly manipulative effects. “I look back at the bags that I made in middle school, and I'm like, bro, you were so weird. That's also how we're looking back at fashion cycles, like how we're remembering indie sleaze. The indie sleaze that is making a comeback now is so different from what it actually was. I think that's also a part of where I struggle with my art, because I want to capture everything, but I can't. And so how do we select what's important and what's not, and what's worth telling or communicating? I can't preserve every memory. I can't keep this conversation we're having right now. But will I keep this bowl?” (she gestures to her new empty poke bowl) “Maybe, but how? This is why I'm into archeology, this interpretation of what remains, or this interpretation of a culture or a society based on what remains and the physical manifestation of that.”

Julia Kirby posts all her art on her Instagram account @juliamakesartz, where she also takes commissions and tattoo bookings through DMs. Julia’s ongoing musical instrument project with the Danino Lab will experiment with programming code that can combine bio-art with music generated from bacterial patterns. The Lab will also be exhibiting her bio-art along with others at the Mosesian Center for the Arts in Watertown, Massachusetts from November 15 - January 03, 2025. And don’t be shy to ask her about it in person as well. “I'll be around campus selling my art!”

Amber Li

November 5, 2024

Feature by Vivian Wang

Photos by Chantel Hope

Originally from Dallas, Texas, Amber Li is currently a sophomore at Columbia University, majoring in computer science and minoring in statistics. She draws inspiration from her studies in the STEM field and her passion for ballet to create across various mediums, from traditional oil painting to technological art, and even fashion design. Much like herself, her work carries a whimsical, graceful, and innovative spirit.

October 4, 2024. 10:00 AM EST. 60°F. A sunny fall Friday morning.

I perched on a bench outside Dodge, anxiously waiting for Amber. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was in the wrong place—why did we decide to meet outside the gym? My instincts proved right, as that morning I discovered that both Dodge Physical Fitness Center and Dodge Hall exist. I scrambled to get to our actual rendezvous, feeling silly for my mix-up and even more anxious about making a bad first impression. Luckily, when I found her outside Dodge Hall, she greeted me with a warm, bubbly smile. Wearing a cozy sweater, flowing white skirt, and brown leather boots, Amber looked like she stepped out right out of a storybook. The breeze danced through her wispy bangs, framing her blushed face, and I felt a strange familiarity with her. Both being second-generation immigrants with Chinese parents, we bonded over our shared experiences: the push towards STEM, the weight of the “American dream,” piano, and then quitting piano…

Amber was drawn to the allure of New York City and its seemingly boundless opportunities, yearning to break free from the comfortable bubble of her hometown and the—unfortunately much too often—linear path of STEM careers.

“The diversity of New York, and what it claims [to be], and the art space has always attracted me. I wanted to immerse myself in a place where I feel like I could truly be myself. Although I love home, I feel like I conformed rather than was myself.”

Amber has been immersed in the field of arts her entire life—visual and performing. At Columbia, she’s the assistant artistic director for Columbia Ballet Collaborative, where she manages the behind-the-scenes operations while performing. Her love for dance is evident in many of her works.

“One thing that really drives my artistic investigation is my background in ballet. As a dancer, you really have to see the body as a vessel of movement, expressing emotion. I’m so entranced by the human body. It’s capable of so many things, and I’ve realized it’s a trend in my art, not purposefully. I have a lot of pieces that investigate bodily movement, and if not the body, movement and dynamism.”

The painting that drew me to her, Silhouette (2022), depicts a minimalistic outline of a figure folded over; the detail in the painting is found in the hands and feet, which grasp the body in a sensual, intimate manner. It's both one of her and my favorites. When I asked her about the story behind this painting, she opened up to me about her struggle with body image as a result of dance. Taking a sip from her Joe’s matcha, she explained, “I can’t lie to you, I think dancing has instilled in me this almost too keen awareness of my body. I struggled a lot with body image, almost all my life, until college; I feel like it's so much freer here”. Silhouette (2022) alludes to this keen awareness of the body, capturing both a delicate fluidity and tender stillness. Her other works, such as Maneuver (2021), demonstrate a similar investigation of the body, its function, capabilities, and limits.

Of the various mediums she explores, Amber tells me that she favors oil painting for its familiarity. She explains, “it's so flexible, and you're able to do so much. It’s very organic and closely aligns with humanism. You're able to portray real life in the way that we see it, more accurately than other mediums.” Looking through her portfolio, I found that most of her works combine traditional elements with a whimsicality. In one of her most recent oil paintings, Cupid and Psyche (2024), she took inspiration from one of her favorite artists, Colleen Barry. Amber said that she wanted to break free from a realist point of view by merging vibrant, funky colors into her depiction of an Italian sculpture she came across at the MET. Scrolling through her portfolio, I noticed that she has consistent fairytale references and themes in her work, and when I asked her about them, she seemed taken aback. Her art is intimate and oozes from her memory unconsciously. She told me, “I’m just a girl at heart…I think before even realizing that I tended towards fairy tales, maybe more than the next person, I had been already creating so many artworks about that. I think there’s a portrait of my sister in a Cinderella dress, and I didn’t realize that was something I was doing.” Her subconscious integration of fantasy is a comforting reminder that youth, whim, and wonder remain with us as we navigate the complexities of aging.

With a software engineer for a father and an accountant for a mother, Amber was gently herded toward studying mathematics growing up. “In high school, or actually for all my life, I found that finding time for art was the single biggest challenge I faced, because the interdisciplinary sector between math and art isn't that big. There's only so much you can do, and I found myself just living two lives,” she said. Surprisingly, computer science became the in-between. Similar to her artistic process, Amber loved how computer science requires intensive research, technicality, and creativity.

“It really combines the creative portion I love about art and the super technical, problem-solving. I love to think about things from a quantitative approach, while also being creative. So for me, that was my balance. I was able to combine both my passions into one”

Yin and Yang

Ultraviolet, 2022

In some of her recent works, Amber explores a new medium by meshing technology with art, drawing inspiration from algorithms, while also experimenting with generative arts, like “DALL-E.”

“Everything that I have been doing has been technology adjacent, but these two pieces, one of them was called Ultraviolet and the other is called Yin and Yang, are literally, computer generated art. And I think the inspiration behind that was: How can I use computer processes to still emulate the same emotions you get through oil painting? They're completely different mediums, but the creative process that I took was very similar.

Her digital pieces introduce the intricate nuances of computer science while retaining aspects of movement reminiscent of her oil paintings. Her works serve as a synergy between the analytical and the expressive, reflecting her deep understanding of both realms. Contrary to popular opinion, Amber views the emergence of AI-generated art as a new source of inspiration and possibility, rather than a creative hindrance to humanity. Initially apprehensive, she discovered once she began experimenting with it that it was just another medium.

“It truly is just another tool. If you know how to use it, it can inspire so much more about your own creative process. I used it to augment the boundaries of one of my pieces. It provokes you to think about your art in a different way that you otherwise couldn't. In completing those two projects, I realized that it’s coming from you, and you're recursively editing, revising, shaping, and completely reimagining your own code. In that sense, it really is just like an artistic process.”

Amber recently began venturing into fashion design, actualizing her digital creations to life in corporeal form. Made of tape, wire, and ink, Murmuration Garment Design (2022) was heavily inspired by her obsession with Iris van Herpen, who she discovered similarly tries to marry her background in ballet with math and engineering.

As a STEM student at Columbia, Amber talked in depth about her challenges juggling her intended career path with her involvement in the arts. She reflected on her experiences, saying, “It's tough to balance timelines. You only have so many hours in the day, so perhaps college is the biggest creative block for me.” Having a similar dilemma myself, I asked her how she does it, and so successfully too. Her answer: “Art isn’t going to escape you.” She emphasized that creativity is an intrinsic part of who we are, and it doesn’t simply vanish when life gets hectic. Being an artist, she reminded me, doesn’t necessitate constant creation; instead, it's also important to savor the moments when you can engage and appreciate the creative expression of others. Her words of advice: take advantage of Columbia Arts Initiative.

When I asked about her future career plans, she told me she hopes to find herself in data science, AI, quantitative analysis, or even architecture. For now, art simply serves as a personal indulgence, but she toys with the idea of pursuing a masters in art, should life lead her that way.

More of Amber’s work can be found on her website.

Kathleen Halley-Segal

November 1, 2024

Feature by Eve Rosenblum

Photos by Kendall Bartel

Kathleen Halley-Segal CC’ 28 is majoring in Art History and Visual Arts. She paints mostly in acrylic and watercolor. Her work was featured at the Bronx Borough Art Festival, the Met, and the YoungArts Week Exhibition and focuses mostly on topics of gender norms, adolescence, and intergenerational connection.

Thanksgiving at my Grandma’s house was an elaborate affair: 20 cousins, 4 uncles, 3 aunts, and 2 or so turkeys. A hodgepodge of tables pushed together piled high with an assortment of dishes sustained the conversation from afternoon into the evening. Kathleen Halley-Segal observes that the labor required for events like this one tends to fall on women. For them, the time-staking preparations are not necessarily a choice. Rather, fulfilling gendered expectations requires it of them.

Both the hardship and the strength granted by this subjection are main themes in Kathleen’s art work. Her grandmothers and mother feature often. The settings are quotidian. One painting shows Kathleen’s mother breastfeeding. A suburban family home stands out in a melange of pink, blue, and green. Her mother’s lips are parted as though mid speech. In one hand, she supports her daughter. The other is placed casually behind her.

There’s a radical quality to this painting. In contemporary society, images of breastfeeding remain taboo. At the same time, women with children are frequently isolated from the identity of caretaker. Kathleen’s portrait both embodies this experience, and disrupts it. The woman in the painting is visibly interested in things besides the child. She challenges traditional depictions of mother and child.

The women in Kathleen’s life also produced her interest in art. In my conversation with her, she described visiting her paternal grandmother’s home.

“She loved art. She’d compiled clippings over the course of her life that we would look through together.”

Her grandmother inspired the younger Kathleen as she puts it, “to capture the intricacies of the small details in the world.”

She Looks Forward, a painting of her Grandmother, seems to do just that. Every fold is visible in her sweater. Her hair is silver, but also black, and gray. She gazes away from the viewer, in reflection. She is both the older version of herself and all the years before. They all exist at once.

In high school Kathleen began a formal training at the Arts Student League on 59th Street. Classes helped to develop her technical abilities and other students offered a cohort of artistic peers.

Many of those peers are in art school now. Kathleen chose to study Art History at Columbia. She didn’t think studying art full time would be a good fit.

“I think that would not only be limiting in my life, but also limiting in my own artistic practice,” she says. “I think making art, or doing anything creative is about constantly getting inspiration from many different sources.”

One source of inspiration has been the City itself. Growing up in New York, Kathleen was tasked with navigating the subway from an early age. She noticed a sweetness and a holiness of people through these experiences, qualities not often noted in descriptions of New Yorkers. In her painting Sleeping on the D Train, a pair of teenage girls, heading to or from school, rest on each other. The window of the subway car is blue, as though looking out over the ocean or the sky.

Her scenes of the city are reminiscent of artists Jordan Casteel and Alice Neel. Kathleen says they provided an outline for what representation of New York could look like to the young artist. Neel was particularly known for her subversion of the male gaze, painting women conscious of their objectification. The two artists famously explored identity, sexuality, and subjectivity.

Kathleen has a style of her own. Behind many of her quotidian subjects are loud backgrounds. There are stars and wispy strands that make the wind appear to come alive. Many of the paintings use neon blues and pinks. She describes herself as “loose with her colors” and “very experimental.” I ask Kathleen what inspires her more dramatic choices.

“There’s an energy and youthfulness and creativity to the women in my life,” Kathleen says. “That's the way I see them, but that isn't really translated into their physical being.”

As her grandmother aged, photography captured less and less the person that she was. Kathleen remembers the way she talked to people and the little objects around her home. Scattered, like a huge gallery piece, they are embedded in her grandmother’s personhood.

In one painting, a pastiche of fiery colors frame the older woman. She seems to breathe in, breathing out oranges and reds. I tell Kathleen I feel as though I’ve met her.

I see my grandmother too. Louise was a mother to eight and the image of a dotting wife. She was also a social worker for over 30 years.

For Kathleen, the physical and emotional labor women are forced to take on is unfair, but it’s also a source of liberation.

“The expectation that women do a lot of the cooking and preparing everything is a role that's constricting. But it's also this position of authority that women have.” Kathleen says.

As she reflects on the women in her family gathering in her kitchen over the High Holidays and Christmas, both important in her interfaith family, Kathleen is reminded of this physical and emotional labor. She notes how within her family they represent both a sort of injustice and simultaneously a meaningful role.

“It's so much work to plan these events and these dinners, but it's also like this really creative task. You're putting together this huge meal. Those two things exist at the same time.”

The possibility of both power and subjugation exist at once. It is exemplary of the complexity visible in all her art work.

Maya Shkolnik

October 29, 2024

Feature by Kate Henry

Photos by Iris Pope

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Maya (she/her) is a senior at Columbia College studying Russian Literature (CC ’25). She works in both digital and film to showcase not only her technical skills but also her deep emotional intelligence and connection to her subjects. Her ability to capture the “little details” of someone's character through her photography gives her photos depth and an atmospheric quality. She is curious and excited to keep pushing the boundaries of her photography, always eager to learn more and capture more of her world.

Maya and I agreed to meet at her apartment near campus, and as I walked through the hallway to her door I was anxious to see what would come of the conversation. After conducting some light reconnaissance of her portfolio before the interview, I got the sense that Maya’s view of the world is bold and electrifying. Often working in black and white to amplify the contrast in her images, her style captures animated and thought-provoking moments. I was unsure of the best way to approach asking about a style like hers.

Yet Maya welcomed me in, and as I set up my things, she and her roommate finished cooking their fried eggs for breakfast. Seeing them as they live informally and without preparation was inviting.

A row of various black boots lined the wall, housed under a rack of eclectic jackets. Funky chairs and a coffee table with magazines and newspapers filled the living room, and my eye was immediately drawn to a large sparkly Gustav Klimt painting hanging on the wall that Maya later told me was from HomeGoods. Wine bottles with dainty flowers inside and printed photographs of household items (I think one of them was of the inside of a dishwasher) muddled my preconceived notions of Maya from her work and immediately ignited my curiosity about who she is.

I began by asking her about the beginning of her interest in photography. She replied with a smile that she first started getting into photography when she was very young, about 7, and she and her best friend would pose for the camera and make content about “how to be a fashion model” and what to wear. Perhaps this fueled Maya’s interest in fashion photography because she has since worked as a photography assistant for a Vogue Portugal shoot and has had her work featured in Interview Magazine among other well-known publications. She is also the Editor-at-large for Hoot Magazine, Columbia/Barnard’s fashion magazine.

“I had a lot of really good photography influences in my life, just felt like a natural progression…One of my friends asked me to do a photography job; would take photos for weekly gatherings hosted by the New York chapter of the UN. On my way to that I would take pictures of my friends, and felt this was bringing me so much joy. I just went from there.”

Many of Maya’s photographs capture her friends, and I asked her how she goes about shooting people she knows. She responded that she lets her relationship with her subjects dictate the direction of the shoot. This casual format and spontaneity of the shoots allow the nature of Maya’s relationships to show through. She clearly sees beyond what the camera lens shows. She is able to capture emotions that perhaps people don’t even know they’re expressing, like the subtle nuances of their expressions, quick glances and movements, or even just capturing the emotion behind someone's eyes.

“I'm naturally very good at psychoanalysis, so I want to continue that theme in my work… I'm obsessed with people's, like, tiny details”

When Maya revealed her skills for reading people, I, too, felt analyzed. There were many times throughout the interview that I had to redirect the line of questioning back to her because we would fall into easy conversation and she would begin asking me questions about myself. This speaks to a natural inquisitiveness and interest in uncovering the parts of people below the surface. I immediately thought of one of the first photographs I saw in her portfolio from an Alice in Wonderland-inspired shoot. The model stares directly at the camera, with an ornate, sculptural headdress, and tears streaming down her face. Maya captured the model’s mood so vividly, and even though it’s not a wild facial expression, something in her eyes tells viewers more.

She also works in self-portraiture. “When I am choosing myself [as the subject]” she explained “it's to make a point. It's to say something, to reflect on how I'm feeling. There's the first self-portrait stuff that I really did when I was first starting to get a grasp on what photography really was. That was really powerful, to be in the studio by myself and just pose in front of the camera”

The self-portraiture she engages in seems to serve as a form of introspection, allowing her to explore her feelings and identity. This power is evident in her self-portraiture, which she seldom seems to do. It’s clear that this practice holds significant weight for her, and it adds another layer to her understanding of photography as a medium for both personal expression and capturing the world through her eyes.

Her current project is with darkroom photography, a new medium for her. As a senior herself, she has been capturing her subjects in graduation caps and gowns in various scenes. Her concept aims to highlight the instability of graduation in a society that is increasingly unstable itself. By photographing graduates in unorthodox and imaginative ways, she wants to convey the uncertainty of post-graduate life and the future of the world.

“People didn't really post-grad photos last semester unless you didn't care at all about what was going on. And the ones that were posted were super shiny and really contrasted everything else that was being posted online. So I thought, well, I think that a lot of my friends could not see themselves smiling in front of Columbia in the same pose.”

Thus, the idea to make quasi-grad photos was born. Some images show her friend, dressed in a Columbia-blue gown eating in John Jay, while another shows a graduate in a bathtub. Darkroom is an unfamiliar process for Maya, but she’s excited to work with a photography medium that produces a physical object. There’s a chemistry and materiality to the process that brings a different element to the final photographs.

Maya spoke about the community of artists she is surrounded by at Columbia and in New York in general. She mentioned the underground Russian Queer community (which is perhaps a little less underground now, sorry) and the way she, perhaps subconsciously, represents elements of this community in her work. She spoke about the nonconformist art they create “about extremism, internet culture and smoking weed, and weed addiction and schizophrenia.”

This artist community who inspires and creates alongside Maya was the focus of her exhibition in the very apartment we were in. She hosted an exhibition titled Immediate Art, in which 20 of her friends displayed their work in the empty apartment before Maya and her roommates moved in. Some of the artwork still hung as we spoke, and Maya smiled as she said, ‘I'm just gonna keep your work. Yeah, if you don't want it back, you don't ask for it back, and then I’ll just keep it.”.

Maya sees herself putting on more exhibitions and displaying more of her work too. She will continue to take Photography classes at Columbia, but she sees herself going back to school for Russian Literature as well. Perhaps her experience with fashion photography will open doors, but for right now “[She’s] more interested in reflecting on what's going on around me, and kind of picking up pieces here and there.”

Riley Tavares

April 11, 2024

Feature by Susana Crane Ruge

Photos by Will Park

Riley interlaces different mediums that give her the opportunity to explore her emotional depth and sensibility through thoughtful art and skillful craft. Riley prioritizes the physical experience of making art, which is reflected in her tendencies to make physical objects she can give out and wear down with use. She seems to excel in all mediums she explores with, consistently building a physical vocabulary for her expressionary needs. During our conversation, I picked up on her innate need for creating, her variety of inspirations, and the nostalgic sense of beauty comfort she expresses through her art.

“Please don’t quote me in a way that will make me sound silly” was one of the last things Riley Tavares said to me before leaving her dorm, and while laughing I thought that would be a difficult thing to do. Riley is a Senior at Columbia majoring in Archeology, on the cusp of graduating and pursuing her summer plans of excavating archaeological sites in Peru and Italy, then going into art conservation- a “problem- solvey” career plan that incorporates all of Riley’s loves and passions. During our conversation in her dorm- a second-floor suite room cozily decorated with some of her and her friends’ art, truly exhibiting the comfort and warmth of an artist and crafter- I got to see peaks of these said loves and passions, which I have taken the freedom to condense into themes of beauty, vulnerability, playfulness, and sentimentality.

We began exploring her artistic sensibilities by talking about Ratrock, and her deep love for this magazine. As its current co-president. Riley joined the magazine as a freshman during Covid, along with her (first!) friend and co-president Jaqueline. They have seen the magazine be reborn after the virtual dry spell of Zoom meetings, grow in number and in variety of artistic expression, and its increasing welcomeness towards various artistic mediums. She told me about her vision of Ratrock becoming a more prominent community on campus, and how she thinks that fostering the possibility for its participants to develop their individual art is key. She also told me about the effects Ratrock has had on her. It has oscillated her self-perception as an artist, sometimes feeling like her creative energy goes primarily to the club. Seeing her campus reality be so full of art, a beautiful slip one might fall into at Columbia, Riley mentioned how she felt like she is more unserious as an artist. I think she is. I can easily imagine both a younger and older Riley exploring with every medium available to her, experiencing colors, movement, and feelings while making art, all in an attempt to be free from imposed structures and rules, and to blur the lines between the body and the emotion, something that requires allowing unseriousness to creep in. It is this unseriousness that, in my eyes, makes her an authentic artist. Looking around her room and spotting her pieces on the walls, on her bed, her nightside table, her floor, I understood that she appreciates exploration and creation, meaning she has to diverge in mediums to bodily and emotionally experience creation in all its diversity and difference.

Riley is an artist in many and all senses, even though she might doubt defining herself as one. She has a need of bringing her emotions into a tangible reality through art and craft. When it comes to the division of those, Riley has two conflicting approaches. She knows, theoretically, that there is a difference between art and craft -“art with a capital A”- and that much of what she has begun doing falls into craft. But her experiences in crafting- punch needling, sewing, quilting- fulfill her expressionary needs of showing love, bringing physicality to her emotions, soft, tactile experiences, and altering space by creating it, all seem to point to what an artist does. On the other hand, there is a more humane approach to art that Riley has, it integrates the physical space where she makes art with interaction between her and people who she values, and I remember thinking that Riley’s art is about exactly that. More than a desire for representation, Riley has a desire for remembering, being remembered, and finding emotional closures and apertures to people who she appreciates and experiences she goes through. She thinks about the details of experiencing art. She buys baby fabric for her pillows since she appreciated the warmth and softness it provides, she gives her pillows away, wanting them to be worn down by constant love and use, she thinks about grass and being barefoot, about the body and the experience of life through her process of art making in a way that centers both the artist and the receiver-Riley’s art is valuable both as a process and as a product. She showed me some of her pillows. They have the coziest used feeling to them; such personal, intimate gifts she gives.

Riley’s artistic inspirations also come from feelings of homesickness and her relationship with her mom. She made a quilt that is all about the nostalgia that growing up inadvertently comes with, representing the ways in which she appreciates home, the guilt she feels from being away from it. “My cyanotype quilt is about the guilt of becoming my own person, missing my mom. I think my relationship with her is always a huge inspiration. Also my appreciation for Pennsylvania, for grass and being barefoot.”

When it comes to painting, she hasn’t in a while. In high school, Riley only painted with acrylics, so coming into college meant that she had the opportunity to relearn what she thought she knew about painting.

“First it (oil painting) made me think I forgot how to paint. It works differently from acrylic, since they dry so quickly. Oil is malleable for so long, and I felt my work would get muddy. I struggled with mixing my own colors. That is something I love about painting- color. With acrylics, I feel like there is something so beautiful about- and I know other people really dog on this- but getting a fresh pre-mixed Acrylic color you want, squeezing it out of the tube, and using that pure. Oh, it feels so good. With oil, I had to learn how to mix and get the hang of the malleable textures, which I now love. So it was really fun, all the problem solving- infuriating, but fun.”

Riley showed me an oil painting called Belly, an aggregate of poses of her own stomach, surrounded by the brightest greens and blues. She told me that she made that as a way of liberating herself from self criticism and from a constant sense of judgment regarding both chronic illness and bodily, physical perceptions. Again, the theme of bodily engagement and representation arose in our conversation, and Riley mentioned how she enjoyed the experience of painting and the feeling of a finished project.

“When I'm painting, it doesn't really matter what the fuck I'm painting. I'm simply enjoying putting color on canvas. Figuring out how to get the visual effects you want- I specifically like painting skin because it requires a huge experimentation with color”

If she makes a painting, she likes to keep it, see it in her room or in her house. But when it comes to crafting, Riley prefers to give those away, to physically set her presence in space. In making art, Riley is making the most of the experience of living, she is concentrated on life while making tangible proofs of it.

The last medium Riley and I talked about was sculpture, specifically the two ceramic kettlebells that were working as door stoppers in her room. She made them in a ceramics class, having recently finished chemotherapy for cancer. The weights read 30 and 5 pounds, but in reality, the 5 pound one is heavier than the 30 pound one. These gray sculptures seemed to be outside her usual, colorful style, which she was both coerced and inspired into making.

“I feel like ceramics ended up being a really good medium for me to use because I couldn’t have expressed what I was trying to through painting, except maybe in a really cringy, literal way. Versus this, it’s cool. Like people get to embody the feeling of not knowing your own strength or being surprised by sudden signs of weakness. My strength is shifting all the time, so I don't always know if picking something up will be surprisingly heavy for me now. You know, maybe last week it was and this week it isn’t. Yeah. So it's really fun to make them and mess with people. I wanted to make something that was more utilitarian, and people really liked it. I was so surprised. The things that I normally make are so different from this, so I thought no one would care about these, but people really liked them, and so do I.”

With that, Riley told me more about her career plans, being so close to leaving Columbia. She is ready to come into a new moment to explore and dive into art conservation, which we bonded by fangirling over a professor we have both taken- Lisa Trever!-a perfect coincidence for the end of our conversation. Riley will join her in Peru for excavations this summer, and then probably come back to New York to take some classes and get ahead in the requirements she still needs to do for art conservation. She seems to be excited about leaving a place she admittedly is very attached to, and while she will miss her room, her friends, and Columbia, she has so much to look forward to.

Claire Kim

April 11, 2024

Feature by Nathan Ko

Photos by Anaïs Mitelberg

Claire Kim is a junior at Columbia College majoring in Computer Science. A Korean-American multidisciplinary artist, Claire fancies creative direction, styling and makeup, and production design. As diverse as her artistic interests are her inspirations (furniture, sculpture, and interior design), her academic interests (sociology, computer science, math), and mediums (film, music video, fashion show). I’m sure there are a couple more I’m missing.

While waiting for Claire at Blue Bottle Coffee on Broadway, I suddenly worried. “Do I remember what she looked like?” While familiar with the faces of the models she’s worked with, I was less familiar with the face of the one behind the camera, behind the styling.

This worry quickly dissipated. Coming in with black clothes—not a Hamlet, these are “the suits of woe” black but a rather sophisticated, inviting black. Claire recognized me and came over to my temporary corner in Blue Bottle. She had a hot matcha latte with such latte art on top that could excuse the Blue Bottle price tag. Her enthusiastic smile made it easy to converse with someone of her magnitude—not just an artist, but an artist in many different areas. In a sense, a jack of all trades and yet a master of all.

However, to describe herself, Claire often used the word “amateur.” She considers herself an amateur because art was a relatively new hobby that came out of a crisis during her sophomore year.

This crisis was a crisis of what to pursue. With the sophomore year CC major declaration deadline looming, she, at the time, was debating between computer science, sociology, and her other interests. But, in a way, this wasn’t a crisis but rather a metamorphosis into becoming the artist she is today.

While thinking about her interests, she realized that she needed new hobbies. “Frankly, I didn’t have any hobbies, so I decided that this year I needed to do something creative.”

With this new art bug inside her, what allowed her to create art for the first time since seventh grade was a Literature Humanities assignment. “I was inspired by Dante, and I wanted to use fashion and makeup to convey symbolism that I was interested in.”

While the project looks polished, Claire opened up about the messy process of creating art for the first time in a while. Claire had to find an empty classroom instead of a proper studio, stood on a table to get a blank wall, and didn’t edit the final results (all files were raw). It was a frenzied state of experimentation that, fortunately, ended up well. “The makeup, hair, costume - all of that - was just me. Just me in the classroom, putting shit up on my face, going to the bathroom, being stuck for seven hours.”

One of the most eye-catching visuals in this project is the one on violence. In this visual, Claire attempts to show the soul abandoning the body, which she captures through low shutter speed. In addition, what she seems to be holding is a key, a direct allusion to Pier della Vigna in Canto 12 who held the keys to his king’s heart but later committed suicide.

While the creative process for her first art project may have been chaotic, that has changed over her artistic career. As her MBTI is an INFJ (emphasis on the J), she takes pride in “meticulously planning everything because of the type J. I like to plan everything out.”

Her next project gumiho (구미호), which she was the creative director and stylist for, reflects her need-to-plan inclination. Her mood board has all the specifics of her vision laid out, as well as a Pinterest board that furthers those specifics. Her mood board was full of surrealist art, and one stand-out piece from it would be the fur cup.

“I came across Méret Oppenheim’s fur cup at MoMA, and I learned more about the sculptor. She uses a lot of fur as a nod to sexuality and, recognizing that, combines fur with everyday objects to create a sense of discomfort. I was really inspired by that, so I took the idea of fur and was reminded of the gumiho myth and its themes of gender, sexuality, classism, the grotesque as well as the aesthetic.”

Splitting up the themes of gumiho into the day and night, Claire played with time and duality. While directing her model, she told the model to look like a “submissive domestic housewife” for the visual for the first look (day), and, for the second look (night), the model acted more freely with the gumiho’s true identity being revealed.

A completely different type of project that Claire took on recently was a fashion show. It was by far her biggest project yet. “I was working with fourteen models, five designers, two makeup artists, two styling assistants, and one personal assistant. It was a huge team, and everything was happening at the same time. Styling and makeup were happening at the same time, in the same room. It was a lengthy process.”

This project started with Claire cold emailing a bunch of Korean brands, as well as some FIT and Parson students. She also held model casting auditions. She also recalled the physical labor of putting together the show, such as picking up garments and meeting people downtown.

For this gargantuan project to come together smoothly, Claire had to plan everything meticulously. She showed me her in-depth Pinterest boards that had more in-depth Pinterest boards within them as well as a spreadsheet of the models’ info that looked more like an investment banker’s Excel sheet.

A lot of the clothes, makeup, and styling featured alluded to Korean culture, probably most prominent in the clothing being reminiscent of Korean traditional clothing hanbok.

Working with a lot of people for a project is not something Claire is new to. For the film Or, A Frail Correspondence, which she served as the production designer, stylist, hair & makeup artist for, she mentioned how this film had the largest crew she’s worked with. The film uses the loss of virginity to depict themes of absence, loss, and death. “The director wanted to create a sense of limbo, a place in between spaces.

While she wasn’t the director for this project, she was definitely able to have a large role in the creative process. “I didn’t have as much creative say over this project, but I enjoyed interpreting the director’s version, interpreting it, translating it into my ideas, and making it come into reality. One object she got to design was the chair. “I designed this chair, which I found a little funny. There’s an idea of bondage, as well as the use of strings that plays with the idea of hanging in between—again, the theme of limbo.”

Similar to My 9 Circles of Hell, there were chaotic elements of working on site the whole day. She mentioned pouring plaster and dust on an actor as well as yogurt into an actor’s mouth. The plaster was a bit of a problem though, as it elicited an allergic reaction from the actor.

It was also the first time Claire worked with a naked actor, and as she was in charge of styling and makeup, interacting with a naked actor felt different. But, due to the feeling of being on set, she’s able to set aside her personal opinions and be committed to the professional role.

She also mentioned this addicting feeling of being on set. “It’s like doing a Hackathon, and there’s a deadline. I also have ADHD and work well under time constraints. It’s kind of a challenge that I enjoy. Also, the enjoyment of focus and creating collaboratively is addicting.”

Another medium Claire often frequents is music videos. For music videos, Claire works off of the music. “The music grounds the creative process. I feel like someone’s giving me ideas, and so it’s more of a service to the musician.”

As one can tell by now, Claire has many interests and experiences. But as wide as those are her inspirations as well. Her inspirations aren’t limited to surrealist sculpture. She’s been interested in space-age furniture and interior design. “The shapes of that art inspires my creative ideas.”

One interior design she pointed out as her inspiration was the Headquarters of the French Communist Party. “They may seem like different disciplines, but they seem similar to clothing: silhouettes, textiles, material of construction. With space-age furniture, I’m mostly inspired by the silhouettes.”

In the future, Claire plans to pursue more photography and film. “I get to have the gaze rather than be the object of the gaze. It gives me a sense of power. Sometimes I see photos taken of my work, and I’m not 100% envision it. If I get to caption my work, it’ll align with how I envision it.”

To find more of Claire’s art, you can find her website and her Instagram.

Kelsea Petersen

April 11, 2024

Feature by Alison Hog

Photos by Sungyoon Lim

Kelsea (she/her) is a junior at Columbia College studying Visual Arts. Through different mediums—oil painting, drawing, intaglio printmaking, illustration—she lets her creativity run free. Though each serves a different purpose, Kelsea loves depicting people she loves and experiences she treasures across mediums. Kelsea speaks softly and smiles brightly, and this love is evident all around her.

I met Kelsea on a rainy Tuesday evening in the lobby of Dodge Hall. As she approached me with a contagious smile, the kind that could easily make anyone forget the somber weather outside, I instantly noticed her clothes were stained with different colors of paint. Home to the School of the Arts, Kelsea suggested meeting in Dodge as she would be there working on a project for her Figure Painting class. I inevitably pictured Kelsea in one of the studios, combining different shades of red, green, and all the brightest colors to bring her latest visions to life. Paint on her oversized gray hoodie, ripped light blue jeans, and white Dr. Marten platform Chelsea boots were only a small price to pay for such creative endeavors.

Kelsea started her artistic journey early in high school when she got into a program after encouragement from a middle school teacher. Serving as her first real introduction to painting, she was soon welcomed into this world of creatives and ever since, has pursued opportunities that have allowed her to fully immerse herself in her art.

There are three mediums that Kelsea centers on: oil painting, intaglio printmaking, and illustration. Oil painting, she admits, is both her first and favorite form of expression. Kelsea takes pleasure in the creation of portraits inspired by the impact of pop culture, particularly boy bands like One Direction, on teenage girls’ experiences with gender and coming-of-age. Her latest portraiture series beautifully portrays this, depicting her female friends in different spaces and bringing to light their femininity and individuality. The framing of this series was inspired by Harry Styles’s songs that got her through a hard breakup at the beginning of college and, through the inclusion of details and symbols, she hopes to translate the feelings evoked by each of the songs into the essence of the paintings.

For her, these pieces are deeply fascinating and personal. As someone who, just like her, was a teenage girl not so long ago and often finds art to be distant from her experiences in this tumultuous, yet transformative period, I found myself admiring Kelsea’s efforts. Pop culture, and especially pop music in the form of boybands, is a type of media whose power is too easily dismissed as not worth it or even as not sophisticated enough to be explored. Instead, Kelsea is keen to recognize this undermined type of music has dictated a lot of her stages growing up, and so, “it’s a very guiding force in [her] art and also in life,” having the opportunity to immortalize its power in her work.

Between laughs, Kelsea shares how she was initially drawn to capturing the influence of this subculture on teenagers’ lives—their friendships, relationships, exploration of their sexuality—through a project she did on gender performance in One Direction for her University Writing class. Fascinated with what she found, she saw how boybands “is an underrepresented genre in a lot of fine arts, and thought it was interesting to combine both.”

Her portraits are magnetic—while incredibly realistic, they have this dreamlike element to them. “A lot of what I do is what I’ve been calling a Frankenstein method of creating reference images,” Kelsea explains to me when I tell her so. She collages the photographs of her friends with other images to create the final painting and uses layering and wash techniques to emphasize the ever-present details. In terms of color, Kelsea is mostly drawn to the use of pinks, greens, and reds for their vibrancy—which undeniably shines through in her work—arguing how these colors are “sort of looked down upon when it comes to more serious painting,” so she likes having their dramatic effect on her oil paintings to also further highlight her exploration of undermined elements in art.

Another medium Kelsea has been experimenting with is printmaking, going in this case for a more intricate composition. “I like the very drawn, hyper-detailed sketch look to it,” Kelsea tells me with a warm smile as we look at one of her pieces. In this case, the theme of teenage girls and pop musical culture is less present, leaning more towards inspiration from classical storybooks and magical realism. The storybook frame allows her to exploit that detail-oriented element she enjoys and that, while present throughout her art, especially shines through here with the inclusion of objects that highlight the center figure.

Still, even in printmaking with its different techniques and overarching themes, she likes using her female friends as inspiration. The piece we’re looking at, for example, has her two childhood best friends as its core in a situation that though normal—doing each other’s make-up—has this magical dimension to it because of its storybook framing and use of only black, white, and yellow.

“They’re such beautiful people inside and out, and I love getting to represent them,” Kelsea shares with me, and her whole face brightens up, warmth quickly reaching her blue eyes. For her, there are memories attached to these works, particularly from the photoshoots used as inspiration, and she believes that in every single class she's taken so far, her friends have been her muses in one way or another. “To my knowledge, all of them so far have liked my drawings of them,” she laughs. “Hopefully.” And I wondered, how could they not? After all, all of them were so gracefully and generously rendered.

Despite Kelsea’s preference for oil painting and fascination with printmaking, both of which she does for the “sake of art” and have allowed her to “get more personal which [she] love[s],” I soon learned she hopes to pursue a career in digital illustrations. Considering Kelsea’s artistic mastery, it should come as no surprise, then, that she is currently the Illustrations Editor at the Columbia Daily Spectator and the Photo & Art intern for NBC News and TODAY.com.

I was quite skeptical at first. In my eyes, illustrations for hard news journalism meant renouncing, at least to one extent, one’s creative freedom. Kelsea soon calmed my doubts, “I don’t think you have less artistic freedom because even though the idea that the article comes first, it is the way that you interpret it, your own personal spin on it.” And, by also having to juggle fast deadlines, she has grown more confident in her artistic decisions in the way. “I’m able to be a lot more decisive in my artistic choices in a way I wasn’t before,” she explains.

All around, what stood out to me is that there is no doubt Kelsea finds delight in the work she does. She likes “really bright colors” which add an alluring vibrancy to her pieces; intricacy and the “joy in painting aggressively;” and capturing tiny moments of life, her own and her friends’. “It’s just fun.”

Moving forward, Kelsea is hoping to improve her techniques across all mediums, hoping to try combining all forms in a dynamic process that brings her art to new heights. She’s thrilled to start working on her senior thesis next year which will expand on her already existing work on “teenage fandom when it comes to music.” Kelsea is also working on shifting to “art to tell a story as opposed to painting a moment in time,” striving to be more conscious about her narrative choices in her following series.

Through her pieces, Kelsea playfully explores and makes sense of the world around her, a world I want to see through her own eyes—with love, detailed attention, and in all the brightest colors.

Visit Kelsea’s website to view more of her work.

Yimo Chong

April 11, 2024

Feature by Casey Epstein-Gross

Photos by Anushka Khetawat

Yimo Chong is an artist, a talented one, but above all else, he’s an activist—and nothing makes that more evident than his paintings. Despite currently working on a series of oil paintings entitled “Progress” (many of which can be seen in this article) depicting the hypocrisy bolstering that titular neoliberal narrative that’s taken both his original home of China and his current home of America by storm, Yimo’s true focus is aimed, laser-sharp, at labor advocacy writ large. A double Politics and Economics major whose academic interests are primarily focused on Latin America (he’s fluent in Spanish and even interned in Chile in 2021), Yimo’s retelling of his life is filled with anecdotes of class consciousness reckonings deserving of memoir: his anarchist awakening was in elementary school when his role as Safety Patrol (no running in the hallways, classmates!) made him question fundamental institutions of power, and he burst into tears upon turning the page of a textbook in high school and learning that Salvador Allende died. But his relationship to art is no less insightful and nuanced than his political awareness; how could it be, when the former has become, for him, almost a manifestation of the latter? For Yimo, painting is both a space separate from the rest of the world that allows him to “regain the sense of a normal life” and an active process that forces the painter to interrogate societal standards of “normalcy,” bringing about an unlearning, a denormalization, of norms themselves.

When did you first begin to take an interest in art?

It was before primary school, I think. Instead of sending me to a really intense cram school, which is the norm in China, I was very lucky and my parents sent me to this art place, and the teacher was very nice. The moment I realized I liked art was maybe just when the teacher at one point said, like, “Oh, did you know crayons and watercolor don't mix?” And for some reason, little kid me was just, like, “Oh, my God!” My mind was blown. After that, I pretty much just stayed at that art school for a very long time—all the way until I left for the United States in high school.

Is oil painting is still your medium of choice? Did you ever experiment significantly with other art forms, or primarily sketching and oil painting?

There was another period of time during primary school, and middle school, where I also learned Chinese art—this kind of Chinese watercolor thing. It was a totally different style. It didn’t matter whether things looked realistic; you were just supposed to get the vibe. t least from our home, Impressionists learned from Japanese art, and that’s why they started doing that different style in the first place. There was something, like, Daoist about it. I think there’s this sense in a lot of Chinese art that to have something, like, full is actually pretty gaudy, which is why blank space is prioritized so much. I think it’s about being content with some imperfections and actually making them part of the painting. The result is pretty calming.

Obviously, you mostly focus on oil painting these days but are there any remnants of this style, this mindset, that linger in your art or your artistic process even now?

The idea of keeping the important things in the forefront, of making those more detailed, and backgrounding the rest so that it is not overwhelming is still pretty relevant to my art, but more than that, my mindset AND my heart. This sentiment, and art in general, basically reminds me that I should block some time off for, essentially, empty space so that the actual important things can get the room they need. It’s mostly a mentality thing.

What was it about the art school that you went to, about art, that you felt so drawn to?

It definitely wasn’t that I was good at it. I remember there was a time when I tried to be creative, and I wanted to draw a little bird resting on a cloud, and it just looked like it died there. I tried so hard to make it better, but I literally could not figure out how to make it not look dead. It was just a really fun experience. You could draw all of these things and use colors however you want—it felt very freeing. That lack of pressure and being able to just do something out of love is probably why art is the one thing that I’ve continued to do throughout all this time, even when I left for the United States, and even when I came back.

But then, though, the art school teacher I really liked turned out to be super transphobic. I look very passing right now, so people often get confused or surprised when they hear that I’m trans—but back then, I was not. At that point, I was 14 and I had just come out and it was a time when I needed a lot of support. And, well, she was not very supportive. By now, I had already gone to the United States—it was ninth grade—and there was a girl there who was also transgender, the first trans person I had ever met in my life. She—her name was Emelia Worth—became a really good friend of mine. She was so outgoing; she was the little sun of the entire campus. She invited me to her concert and I remember we had this long talk, and she was just very supportive, and nice, and energetic—she was just, like, everything, you know? And then she had depression. Nobody knew about it. And then she committed suicide. That was one of the first things that, eventually, made me realize how terrible the United States was.

Right, because you were brand new there, so you really had no sense of what it was actually like yet.

There’s this fantasy that, in a lot of places but in my case in China, people have about America, especially middle-class liberals. It’s insane to think about now. We looked at the United States and thought it fixed everything bad and authoritarian and unfair in China, in everywhere. When I first came to the United States, I was 14 and I guess I was not supposed to be this stupid, but I genuinely thought that there were no poor people in the United States. There’s just so much propaganda from the United States but I honestly don’t think it’s as effective as our own propaganda, distributed by diaspora, by people who are just guessing what’s happening that these myths begin to feel like facts. To then go to the United States and experience that suicide so soon after, and to see the school be so unresponsive to it was just very unreal.

I was really sad, so I came back home for a few weeks that winter, and thought I’d go back to the art studio and do a sketch of Emelia. I wanted to make a postcard, something people could remember her by. That was the first time I ever drew a detailed person, body, face, eyes, and ears altogether. Naturally, I wanted my teacher to take a look at it and see if it was okay. And then she just started doing transphobic stuff. Eventually, she said, “I want to take you to gǔzhēng performances.” The gǔzhēng is a traditional Chinese string instrument, right? There’s this weird belief that if someone is exposed to more traditional Chinese culture, they would just stop becoming transgender. It’s weird! People have weird understandings of what being transgender is.

Anyways,I switched to a different tutor after that. The thing is, though, I live out of spite. So after that, I was honestly just, like, “I have to finish this and I have to do it well.” It took me a long time but I did eventually make the postcards and send them out to the school—I still have one or two of them. That was another major leap forward in my career; I became much more confident with drawing humans.

What did it feel like when you finished the drawing, considering how charged the entire situation was?

It was just…nice. I picked a picture of Emelia from when she was playing the guitar and she was just in her moment, you know? The happiest. You know how in that Soul movie from Disney when people were in their moment, their soul started floating? This was that moment.

Was this drawing of Emelia your first endeavor into socially conscious art?

Yes. Although, honestly, I didn’t do much more of it until down the line—I did a series of oil paintings on climate change and animal abuse in AP Art, but that was mostly just because AP Art wanted me to pick a theme, so I picked one. It’s not like I did a lot of research into climate

change or anything.

When did your current series — “Progress” — begin? What was the impetus for it? It’s a lot more overtly political than your previous work, so what shifted there for you?

The first painting of the series—not that it was a series yet—started back in 2021, when I quarantining at home during COVID. At this point, I was not very aware of labor problems or capitalism or any of that, at least in China; I had left when I was 14 and I never paid attention to the workers’ situation, which is weird to think about, because I’m Chinese. It was right after the Chinese New Year, and it was COVID, and outside I saw this food delivery worker working. And to work in Beijing, right after the Chinese New Year, and during COVID too, I thought it was insane. The government didn’t give him or any other migrant workers any kind of relief or assistance that would allow people to stay home, but there was nothing, so they just started working, working whatever they could—so that was the first painting with this guy. And I guess it was just this moment of understanding, of realizing that “This is not normal.”

What was it about that moment in particular that struck you—not just politically, but artistically? What about witnessing this made you think “This should be a painting?”

I think it was five o’clock in the morning, and there were festive lanterns still hung up from the Chinese New Year, and this guy was already working. That juxtaposition struck me the most. And right at that moment, I just knew that I should paint it.

Is there something politically salient about painting, or the act of painting? What is it about this specific medium that felt so right to capture these moments for you?

There's something unique in painting, for me, in how much time it forces you to spend on the same thought. You sit on the idea for like two weeks, and then two or three weeks you have to spend just painting. When you sit on something like this for such a long time, you keep reflecting. So when you want to add some details, you think, “Does this fit the situation? What exactly do I want to convey?” It also helps you to denormalize the situation. I never thought that I was “fighting for justice” with these paintings or anything. It just helped begin and illustrate the conversation on labor for me.

I wanted to make sure that painting something that I actually have to unlearn, that the subject is something that I'm reflecting on instead of just following whatever people are talking about at that moment.

So it’s crucial for you, for this series, to physically witness these moments in time?

Yeah. Take the painting with the women quarantined in the store in Beijing. I think what happened with them was that there was one guy who was on that same street of stores, and he went to a different store, not even their store, but then that guy tested positive, so then everybody in the whole neighborhood went on lockdown. Workers were at risk because they had to go to work, and if they went to work, not only would they have a higher potential of being exposed to COVID, but even if they didn’t, they’d get locked down in their workplace, forced to sleep on hard floors. Other residents, like white-collar workers, weren't locked down in their workplaces, they could still go home. It was such a weird and unfair policy. It wasn’t until I quite literally walked by the interaction shown in the painting that it fully hit me; it was that moment, that feeling of “this is just not fair for them.” These aren’t random people on the news, but real people living real lives forced to exist in unreal conditions, and we can only start to reckon with that when we begin to unpack the “normal” things we otherwise don’t even think to question.

Right now, the news doesn't really report on this kind of stuff. Instead of finding something that everybody's talking about, I'm trying to find instances where this kind of resistance can start in everyday life. Like, this is also not normal. It's not just "oh, the workers are owed wages, and they're protesting." Of course that's not normal, it's not right that they're owed wages they aren't receiving, but even when they're not protesting or actively being owed wages, this is all still not normal. The status quo is still not good!

Exactly—people are always like “if only we could go back…” and, like, to when?! To an alternate history or something?

Yeah! It’s crazy. People have this nostalgia for no reason, making them forget so much of reality. That’s why I tried to make this whole series about the things I saw. There needs to be this process where you see a moment, sit on it, and then realize "Wait, this is not normal.” For example, inthe painting of the woman with the trash can, it's normal for her to walk by those gypsum figures, in that coat, in the richest neighborhood in Shenzhen. This is a “normal” situation for—but you have to recognize "No, this is not normal." You have to unlearn that.

Together, these paintings form your “Progress” series—what does “progress” mean to you, both in the context of the series and in general?

After that first painting, I knew I wanted to start a series just called “Progress” about the liberalization of the Chinese economy, about combating the liberal narrative I grew up with. There’s this illusion of upward mobility when it comes to migrant workers in China, but there aren’t any—they become white-collar workers, capitalists, or shop owners. They don’t do any of that. They just have to continue working for the worst wages in the worst jobs. And this was particularly bad during COVID. But right now, I'm sort of running into a bottleneck of sorts because I haven't been in China for a long time, so it’s not like the last two years during COVID when I saw a lot of people, saw a lot of this kind of stuff.

What’s your focus right now, then?

Right now, I am working for a lot of labor advocacy stuff—I mean, you just have to do something, you know? You see all these workers, you want to do something. Right now, I've been doing a lot of research, and I'm thinking for the future that I will use some of this research and turn them into paintings, even though I haven't seen them in real life? But I'm still deciding because it definitely would break the previous rule about wanting to see something firsthand. Right now, these five paintings have all been following the same rule. Hopefully, I will try to continue focusing on Chinese labor, and I might start to include the research pieces, but I'm still hoping to see something firsthand and then paint it.

Liz Radway

March 26, 2024

Feature by Sahai John

Photos by Moksha Akil

Liz Radway is a senior at Columbia College studying dance, computer science and math. She enjoys glancing into the future as she experiments with motion capture technology and the mechanization of the body through dance and choreography. Liz spoke with me about the notion of the body as architecture, the future of dance, and blue zones.

Liz met me in the lobby of her Ruggles dorm in a red checkered sweater, ripped blue jeans, and a pair of cow earrings. She welcomed me into her room where I sat on a soft pink couch tucked between her bed and the window. The bookshelf full of texts on dancers and computer science, a black and white mat with the same checkered pattern as her sweater, and small hanging disco balls that reflected rainbows onto my pants as the light from the window grazed them all made me feel immediately cozied into a world of Liz. She filled this oasis on Frat Row with the music of an Etta James soundtrack playing from a record player next to her book shelf. As I sat on her couch, waiting for her to bring our waters, I could picture Liz playing a song on this and dancing on the checkered mat, creating what might be the start of one of her mesmerizing pieces of choreography or improv… Liz lifted the needle from the record player, pausing the song, and began to tell me about her career in dance.

Liz started taking dance classes with her sister when her mom enrolled them both after finding out that there was a sibling discount. Since then, Liz tells me, “it's always been a part of my life.” She started choreographing professionally during covid. “I wanted to do things on my own terms,” she tells me, “that's when I started getting interested in choreography.” Recently, Liz has been choreographing pieces that experiment with the notion of the body as architecture. “It's something that I've been exploring this semester, as I've been exploring Trisha Brown's movement. Her idea of the body as architecture is something a little bit different than how I've been interpreting it and putting it to use for myself. For her, it's the notion of almost perfection within the body in its positionality. For me, it's the acceptance of positionality in the body and movement, on its own. It's something beautiful and artistic, it can tell stories and can be designed. I’m less interested in the idea of there being a right and wrong and more in the idea of occupying space in a way that tells meaning and is beautiful.”

I asked Liz what that process of choreographing pieces and telling stories through them looks like for her. “I definitely like to keep my work thematic so it has something the audience can cling on to and kind of interpret on their own. But I'm trying to stay away from rigid narratives.” For Liz’s full length works, she takes a phrase of choreography and builds from there to create a story that the audience can interpret. “I think different types of dance serve different purposes,” Liz explains. “The point of improv, for me, is just to have fun, get out some energy, move my body, take a step back from the day and just move around. With choreography, the point is to either get something across or, with some pieces, I feel like the dancers are just trying not to throw up through it. My piece [in CoLab’s ‘The Big Jam’] is definitely like that. There’s going to be a lot of heaving and hawing at the end but it’s so much fun.”

Liz also finds inspiration from working with other choreographers to explore different ways of performing her works and experimenting with different themes. She’s choreographed for Orchesis and Colab and, for her senior creative thesis, she has been working with David Dorfman to incorporate spoken word in her solo.

Liz also enjoys working with her friends to mesh their personal interests with dance. “My two friends, Katie and Abby, and I worked on a piece for The Movement lab Festival and it's very much narrative based in a fun, silly way. Last year, we did a piece centered around space exploration. And this semester… Do you know the blue zones?” Liz asks me. “They're these pockets of Earth where people live to be centenarians, like 100 year olds. We've been thinking about that a lot. Our piece [The Blue Zone] is focused on that. It's centered around the sea. I thought that was a fun little pun off the blue zone and it's also where the oldest life has been throughout the Earth's history.”

Through dances like these, Liz taps into her interest in creative technology as she explores the evolution of the world and intelligent systems. Liz is interested in generative choreography and machine learning generated improvisation. This has inspired her to create her own model that can generate improvisatory movement. She’s been using motion capture technology to collect data for this and “make some fun art with it.” In one of her performances, Liz straps on bands with glowing green sensors around her arms, legs, hips, and head and then dances. A white, robotic figure is projected onto a screen behind her, moving with her. As the figure rolls its automated hips and prances across the screen in the same expressive way that Liz moves through the space, her seemingly disparate interests in dance and computer science appear completely in sync.

“It definitely is where the future of dance has to head,” Liz tells me, explaining how creative technology has become more and more involved in the dance world. Liz enjoys being a part of this evolution in dance. “I think it's fun to just peek into what the world can be like. That's the way that I see a lot of AI generated stuff, moving with dance to replicate improvisation on stage and interact with it.”

I asked Liz what she foresees for her own evolution and future in dance. She explained to me that there wasn’t a single moment when she felt like she had found her passion in dance. “It's always been there. And I could never imagine my life without it.” Liz tried to take some space away from dance this summer and it made her realize that from then on she wants to soak it up as much as possible. “I have a very specific memory of being a freshman in high school and being like, ‘Oh my god, I have four more years left to dance here until it's college.’ I didn't know what the future of me in dance would look like at that point. I just remember being devastated and freaking out about what I would do in a post-dance life.” Liz explained to me that she’s still there a little bit, trying to figure out what the future holds for her in dance but feeling confident that she wants it to remain a part of her life in some way.

“I always want to keep dancing and I always want to keep choreographing,” She explains. “The economy right now is not really one that's geared towards supporting artists and dance is not really placed as a valued art form right now, at least financially. In terms of receiving any funding, I'm not really quite sure how to figure that out yet. But I think that dance in America is alive and well. And I think that there's a lot of places where it's occurring. And a lot of underground places too. In dance history, all of the new ideas have come from these underground places, and eventually percolated upwards.” Liz hopes to remain a part of the long history of dance and traverse these creative spaces.

Moving forward, Liz intends to keep challenging herself in dance and choreography by incorporating new mediums. Film is on the horizon for her next. “I haven't really stepped into that territory before, dancing or choreographing for film. I'm not really sure what that entails yet so that's something I want to explore.”

I used to dance when I was a lot younger and I’ve always found myself easily drawn to dance. Anytime I watch a really good dance performance or performer, I feel a little tug at that younger me that makes me want to get up and dance. Watching Liz perform, I feel like I am being grabbed by the hand and pulled in to dance with her.

You can find clips of Liz’s incredible dances and information on where to watch her perform in person on her instagram.

Maddie Breeden

March 26, 2024

Feature by Sayuri Govender

Photos by Alicia Tang

The Computer Music Center at Columbia, or the CMC, is tucked away into the side of 125th’s Prentis Hall–obstructed by concrete buildings and scaffolding. It is a secret gem of Columbia, a hidden garden only for those bold enough to brave its cracked ceilings, open electrical wiring, and commitment to spending hours there. For Maddie Breeden, her fresh dive into experimental music began here, in the CMC room with the modular synthesizer. She spends two hours a week in it, making music for her classes, her band, and hopefully, a debut album.

Maddie’s relationship with music has grown and evolved alongside her over the years. Her deep connection to music began with her father, who was constantly playing synthy 80s music–like New Order and The Human League–as Maddie grew up, slowly creating the sonic palette that resonates with her today. She also played the flute for her entire childhood, until the orchestra program was cut at her school in the middle of her high school career. Despite the loss of the music program, the musical discipline she learned at a young age persisted into her later life. She would go on to teach herself to play guitar, saying how she “loved the creative freedom I had with it, because I could write my own songs on the guitar.” Throughout Maddie’s life, music has been a constant thread. She grew up in Washington D.C, where she was exposed to the vast genres within the lesser known D.C music scene. “There's a Southern influence to the music scene there,” she tells me, “it gave me an almost Southern way of playing the guitar, which I think is pretty unique and special”. She also takes inspiration from D.C’s hardcore scene in the 80s, consisting of bands like Fugazi, Minor Threat, and Bad Brains. However, she revealed to me her biggest inspiration from home is not the D.C music scene, but the river by her house. She smiles shyly when she tells me, and I can perfectly picture her sitting by a creek, quietly recording the sound so she can try to modulate it later. “I do my best writing when I'm close to water” she professes, “I love the sound. When you listen to a song and get completely lost in it, it's like the feeling of waves on your body. In my music, I want there to be waves of sound that hit the listener.”

Maddie seeks to achieve these waves of sound with the modular synthesizer, a new tool in her life that has completely transformed how she creates music. This past year, in her digital music class, she learned how to use a Digital Audio Workstation, or DAW, and the modular synthesizer. “It opened me up to a lot more sounds that I've been wanting to make,” she mused, “ones that I've been hearing in my head and I can now actualize in my music.” When I ask her to explain to me the process of using the modular synth, she smiles and says “let me show you!” I watch as Maddie kneels down to the huge, black box covered in nodes, switches, plugs, and flickering lights. She takes a plug and inserts it into two outlets diagonal from each other. A booming synth rings out as she tells me about voltage control oscillators, sine waves, clock sequences, and frequency filters. As I try to keep up with the terminology, I feel like I’m learning a secret language. I realize the music Maddie hears is so different from the music I hear–her ear trained in picking up a song’s distorted tom drums or low modulators, like she knows the full recipe of a meal after taking only one bite. “It's not like a typical musical instrument directed around chord melodies,” she explains, “you have no idea what sound you're going to create, which is why it's so fun. Sometimes, when I'm writing a song, I really struggle with trying to perfect it. But I can come to this with an open mind and create something awesome without thinking twice about it. You can't recreate the sound; it just happens.” Despite her skilled use of the modular synth, she discloses to me how much more she still has to learn. “I learned how to do this by just experimenting and playing with it,” she reveals, telling me how much more she wants to learn and what new genres she wants to dive into (currently, she and her bandmate Lolo have been experimenting with playful disco beats–just another genre to add to her diverse discography).

Maddie is struck by the concept of unpredictability, a theme that seeps into her demos. She describes her struggle with finding footing in formulaic chord progressions and song structures, expressing how musical standards never fully resonated with her until she broke free of the structure and discovered the creative freedom of experimental music. “You don't have to follow the rules that are set just because they're popular, or because that's what people expect of you. Experimental music has allowed me a lot more creative freedom.” Her sound is the manifestation of her unpredictable dreamscape–airy, jarring, melodic, and exploratory. Her most cherished song, Etretat, named after a village in France she once visited, combines a gentle electric guitar riff with a synthy humming–coming together in a dreamy beat overlaid with biting electronic chords that build into a thrumming voltaic end. “I love the meshing of electronic music sounds with something delicate” Maddie muses, “I love incorporating the modular synthesizer into dream pop-esque music in order to create a shock or a sound you're not expecting; it keeps the listeners on their toes a little bit.”

Her journey into this more experimental music began during her study abroad last spring in the UK. Introduction to the UK’s post punk groups–such as Black Country, New Road, Jockstrap, Black Midi, and Opus Kink–combined with the prevalence of experimental and techno music allowed Maddie to explore genres of music in a way she hadn’t before. Maddie told me how she also joined the Indie Music Society, a group of bands in Scotland that met to discuss music and share their work. Her friends in the group pushed her to make music with the same devotion they did. She tells me how “I was able to allow myself to be open to creating, centering my music creation. A product of doing that was allowing myself to listen to other types of music and realize their power and how interesting they are. There’s a structure to the noise, and that’s awesome.”

I’m almost reminded of that infamous NYU Masterclass video, in which singer-songwriter Maggie Rogers shows Pharrell Williams her song Alaska–to which Williams shockingly tells her, “I have 0 notes” after hearing it. The reason the song is so striking is because it reflects Rogers musical journey, as she explains how she grew up as a folk singer but after studying abroad in France and having a spiritual experience with dance music there, her relationship to music completely transformed. Maddie’s musical journey–while different–still holds that idea of having a strong piece of one’s musical past transformed by the introduction of a previously unheard of music scene in a city far away. I realize there’s something magical about being in a new city, alone and young, being held together by the songs you come across–letting it shape who you become and what you create. When we get to step out of the everyday Columbia bubble, the thing quietly beating inside us gets to take form, as if it's been there all along and was merely waiting for a calling.

These days, Maddie is working towards releasing new music on her own and with her bandmate and drummer, Lolo. “It's been challenging to create the sound you feel in the room and translate it to an audio file,” she confesses, “But we want to get our music out there so that people can listen. I’m trying to put out at least a few songs by the end of the semester.” Her determination to release music is in part due to an illuminating conversation with an old friend and music teacher from home, who respectively told her how much they loved her music from high school and want more of it. “Having those conversations made me realize it's my duty to produce something and give back by inputting something out into the world. It can be a lot to juggle, but I know I have this obligation to new music.” She played me a snippet of two songs she's been working on–one a thrumming electronic beat with snappy and buzzing synth inspired by indie rock band Spirit of the Beehive, and the other a haunting single-string guitar melody with a build into electronic drums and piano that she only started the day before. Each is completely different from each other, but also intrinsically Maddie. She tells me how she’s been struggling with the notion of making a cohesive theme in her music. However, to me, I feel like the theme is obvious: it's all grounded in the fact that she was the one who created it. The reproduction of her dreamscape, of her mind and the sounds within it, are all immersed within the music she's made. It's a sound that recreates a Southern guitar influence combined with a passion for experimental music abroad–a sound that has a journey within that reflects Maddie’s own.

From writing songs in her teenage bedroom using GarageBand and a MIDI keyboard, to taking on the intricate and complex modular synthesizer, Maddie’s musical journey has grown up alongside her. She reflects on how the musical practices she developed when she was younger are still with her (the Alvvays songs she first learned on guitar in high school are forever embedded within her fingertips when she plays). Maddie’s pure joy and adoration for music is the vehicle for her intricate and impactful songs, as she embeds her experiences in venues across the world into dreamy guitar riffs and idiosyncratic synths. Maddie articulates the sensational feeling of music, contemplating how “When I’m dancing somewhere, I feel the music. It speaks to me and takes over my body in a way that I can't explain. You just get lost in it, and lost in your own world”. The ephemeral, glittering, intangible experience of music is built into the core of what Maddie does. She describes to me a poem by David Berman, the lead singer of the Silver Jews (a 90s indie rock band she listened to growing up), called “And the Others”. “Berman talks about this ‘Light’ that you cannot see,” she tells me “He says how the light shines for all these different people in different ways [such as literature, art, or sexuality] but it shines.

For me, the light comes from my music.”

Olivia Wein

February 28, 2024

Feature by Anushka Pai

Photos by Alicia Tang

Like many young teens, Olivia Wein channeled her middle school growing pains through art. Unlike most of us, 13 year old Wein received commissions and features in magazines, propelling her into a near-decade career in photography.

I met with Olivia in her dorm, where we spoke over tea.

“Child Prodigy, yeah it’s hard.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself. We had much to cover–a decade's worth of transformation, emotion, and documentation. Wein got her start photographing her best friend. She described their lifelong friendship, meeting when they were practically the only two babies in Williamsburg, “before they opened a Chanel and Hermes down there.” She credits her best friend’s beauty as her inspiration.

“It felt compulsive…like a moth to a flame.”

Both Wein and her friend come from families of artists. Surrounded by creativity, they were overwhelmed by ideas of art, friendship, and New York. They grew up during the peak of Tumblr–there was no better time to try on new aesthetics and embody teen angst.

Wein’s first commission was for designer, Susan Alexandra. The two met through frequent visits to Jill Platner’s jewelry shop, a favorite of Wein’s mother. With every visit, Alexandra encouraged a then-12-year-old Wein to pursue the arts.

“She was one of those people who’s like, hey girl, here’s what your life is gonna look like.”

Alexandra eventually reached out to Wein via her Instagram, requesting she shoot for the brand. With a bag full of jewels, Wein and her friends dressed up for a photoshoot. Many photos were used to promote the brand, marking the start of Wein’s commercial career.

Wein’s youthful take on photography did not go unnoticed. She was commissioned by magazines such as Sweet and Nylon Japan, providing a platform for Wein to document the often overshadowed wisdom of a teen girl.

Wein’s career followed a similar trajectory to Rookie Magazine founder, Tavi Gevinson, whose mention led us on a tangent. Listening to the youngest creatives allows for an entirely new understanding of fashion, culture, and life itself.

“Rookie was such a huge part of my life. I still don’t think there’s anything like that for young people. I think there’s room for kids to make things for other kids.”

When asked about how her photography evolved over the decade, Wein emphasized what stayed the same. The feeling of the craft– being moved through looking, has been a constant throughout Wein’s career. Wein described shooting as meditative, engaging her so deeply she feels removed from her body.

The euphoric qualities of photography, however, could not prevent Wein from second-guessing her career path. An experience most of us go through, yet without years of commercial success, is the identity crisis of adulthood. What we once enjoyed in our youth becomes unappealing, and we feel the urge to push it away. Wein grappled with her new priorities, no longer wanting to use photography to try on new identities.

“I used to want us dirty at house shows, smoking cigarettes, and wearing demonias. I wanted to take photos of dead pigeons. And then suddenly I didn’t want that anymore…I was like oh fuck, I’m falling out of love with this, and I’ve accidentally made a career.”

Wein’s struggle to find creative direction led her to film. The medium moved her so deeply that she planned to leave photography behind. For Wein, photography embodied something old and outdated, while film seemed to be new and exciting.

Wein’s muses are her loved ones, whom she depicts in photos and film. I was most intrigued by her description of her boyfriend. While Wein has depicted her relationships through photography for the past decade, she finds her boyfriend best represented through words and film.

“There’s something that feels small about a photo. With film, there’s time, change, and dialogue–which I associate with him. The feeling of him being with me comes up through the film.”

Wein prefers to shoot moments that feel natural, not posed. She mentioned how subjects such as her best friend and little brother are better captured through photography. I was struck by Wein’s attention to detail and drive to represent her loved ones’ characters.

Recently, Wein had a breakthrough about the future of her photography and film career. Rather than viewing these mediums in opposition, she found that they are deeply intertwined. This interconnectedness allowed her to bring photography into the present, rather than it being an emblem of her childhood.

“Photography is like film in pieces. That makes me feel like it’s connected to who I am right now.”

Wein’s new focus has led her to pursue various directorial, production, and screenwriting projects. Most recently wrote and directed her first short film, The Mascot. Simultaneously, Wein’s photography career is still in full swing–she regularly shoots for brands such as Jill Platner while also pursuing her own creative projects. Post graduation, Wein plans to get her MFA in film, continue working, and move back to Brooklyn with her friends.

Renny Gong

February 28, 2024

Feature by Mara Toma

Photos by Anaïs Mitelberg

Renny Gong (he/him) has a very pleasant smile, takes many pauses in conversation, and his preferred beverage at the Hungarian Pastry Shop is black coffee. He prefers black coffee not because he is particularly fond of Hungarian’s black coffee but because he is able to refill his beverage as much as he pleases [pro-tip: order black coffee if you don’t want to keep paying for those fluffy cappuccinos]. Due to popular demand, I never got a chance to taste the stew he sold in Lerner, but something tells me that he would put a lot of joy into any culinary endeavor he undertakes. If in luck, you might be able to hear Renny singing a Justin Bieber hit over karaoke (perhaps at a certain poetry open mic night). I was minutes or maybe even seconds away from witnessing both Renny’s cooking and singing… I hope I’ll get to eat his food and hear his singing one day. Renny describes himself as a flash-fiction writer.

Mara Toma– What’s one thing that made you feel something today?

Renny Gong – I wanted to show you something. Look at this! I have a carabiner attached to my pants and there are a bunch of keys on it. When I stand up, it (really) jangles [Renny gets up at this point]. I put it on for the last few days, and today in particular… I knew I wanted to show Mara [you].

MT— Is that specific to today?

RG— It’s specific to the last few days because I rediscovered it in my possessions. I forgot about it a little bit but now it is fully part of my aesthetics. My friend Andy (one of my best friends), a very sweet guy, decided to get me this as a birthday present. Interestingly, these keys don’t do anything… they're simply decor. Isn’t that so funny?

MT— It is. And there is an interesting musicality too, you now.

RG— It’s a very annoying musicality. I walk around and I clang clang everywhere. He [Andy] went into a key store and asked if he could have their spare keys, and picked all the ones that looked weird.

MT— Now that I am getting to know you a bit more… If you had a day to yourself and you could do anything you wanted to, how would you spend it?

RG— I’d go to the Hungarian Pastry Shop– I honestly feel at my best there. One thing that I love about the Hungarian Pastry Shop is that it’s very loud and there’s no music, and one feels very consumed by noise. There is also nothing piercing through the noise so you can feel fully bothered… which I enjoy. I'd also like to play a game– it can be Gomoku or this other game called Sheng Ji. Sheng Ji is a Chinese card game played by 4 or more players… It's my favorite game in the world. Hungarian Pastry Shop, play a game, black coffee, and I’d like to be on some sort of transportation vehicle, but not a car. I want to be on a train or a bus. I’d like to go somewhere and come back. I would also call my mom.

MT— I am curious… What attracts you to transportation?

RG—I feel like I’ve done something once I’ve transported. If I am just around I don’t feel as good as when I’ve left. You know how some people say things like “I’ve got to get out of the city, or I've got to get out of Morningside Heights, or I've got to get off campus”... I feel that constantly.

MT— Shifting gears a little bit. I feel like your work may be interpreted in a number of ways. It could be read as poetry, prose, or even song sometimes– especially in your shorter pieces, your writing’s identity can appear fluid. Do you defy classification?

RG — I don’t want people to think I am a poet… I don’t know why. There is nothing wrong with a person who writes poems; poems are really good, and poets are nice. I don’t know that I want to be a poet because I’ve set out to become a fiction writer.

MT— As a writer, what does your creative process look like?

RG– Do you make art?

MT– I am not an artist, but I doodle.

RG— What is your creative process for doodling?

MT— I feel bored and then I doodle.

RG— It’s the same thing then– I feel bored and I doodle. I am always trying to think about someone’s voice. If the first line sounds good, then it will work. At least initially, it’s about how it sounds. If it sounds good at first then it will carry throughout the piece. Most artistic process is coming up with a nice first sentence. Also, writing has to sound like someone’s speaking.

MT– How do you construct that voice, that someone-speaking effect?

RG— I say it out loud. If it sounds like someone, it’s good.

MT– Something else that struck me about your work is that it seems to be rooted within a very specific moment in time. It almost feels like a photograph that immortalizes a very specific experience, feeling, or event. What’s the role of temporality in your writing?

RG — My work tends to get very into one moment. I don’t want to make any generalizations. It’s a difficult task to make generalizations about the world. Statements like “that’s why you should never get into a car with a stranger” or “hurt people hurt people” are bad things to write. Instead, the way to achieve some sort of greater meaning is to dig deeper into a specific meaning. That way, you can illuminate deep into one moment, and that can actually help you understand something.

MT — In addition to dealing with a very specific moment in time, a lot of your work engages two parallel interior and exterior worlds that are constantly interacting with one another.

RG— The two are always interacting with one another. I write more “exterior,” though… I want to let the reader figure out the interior. It’s harder to purely write the interior without the exterior. You can say something like “I felt sad” which is not interesting. Instead, you can describe the outcomes of sadness and that way the thing itself is much more sad… and you feel more from that. If I say “I felt sad,” you don’t actually empathize with me. But if I say I did something dramatic and I’ll tell you what the dramatic thing was then you’ll empathize with me. It’s more valuable to write about the exterior as a way to illuminate the interior.

MT — What strikes me is that even though you are firm in the fact that you are a fiction writer, your work is written exclusively in first person and is filled with many details that read as autobiographical. How does your identity interact with the work?

RG — All fiction is completely autobiographical– there is no escaping autobiography. If you make up a story, the elements of that story are still you. There is no point of distinction… everything is me and everything is you. If I incorporate non-fiction elements in my writing that doesn’t make it less fiction. And all storytelling, even "nonfiction" storytelling, is an act of lying. You are always choosing what to share and not share… The prose doesn’t suddenly become better or worse if it’s fiction or nonfiction. It’s not very enjoyable to draw the line between fiction and non-fiction. If you decide that it’s better or worse because it’s fiction or nonfiction, then you are not paying attention to the right things. If you say it’s one thing or another, that’s not interesting. For instance, if you ask your crush if they are into you, and they say “yes” or “no” then the crush is over.

MT– For some people it’s the beginning of a burgeoning relationship though.

RG– Yes it’s true, but the crush is over. Or, the infatuation or the crush may not be over, but something is over.

MT– The mystery is over maybe? The delusion?

RG– Yes, the delusion is over. And delusion is engaging…

MT- When reading your work I felt an informality about it that felt joyful and freeing. How would you characterize the role of joy in your work?

RG—[Instead of answering my question, Renny told me 7 facts about animal sex. According to him, that was more interesting and I think I agree.]

MT– When reading your work, I felt that your writing sometimes resists endings. Would you say this is true?

RG— My dad says it does. But no, I don’t resist endings. I think about endings very carefully, how to land them, where to land, in what fashion to land. I think all my stuff has carefully considered endings.

MT–... I don’t think your endings are not carefully considered– I just think some of your prose resists that finite end.

Columbia professor Sam Lipsyte, who I am doing an independent study with this semester, says that an ending should look like this

[At this point, Renny takes out a notebook and draws two circles. For the first circle, he connects the beginning point with the end point, “a full circle” whereas for the second circle he draws a circle but instead of connecting the beginning to the end the line isn’t fully connected.

A short story should end like this [points to the second circle] so that it achieves an almost closure. That’s something I think about for endings.

MT– Finally, you mentioned working on a novel. Could you tell me a little bit about that?

It’s about a bunch of kids playing ping-pong in rural China. A bunch of wacky shit happens… The kids have some issues. One of the kids, for instance, is twelve years old and has an alcohol problem. His name is Jean-Pierre. There’s a guy named Durian [who is the other main character, I would say]. He loves karaoke. There’s a guy who draws porn for money. They all get really mistreated by the coaches. And there’s a lot of rule-explaining–telling how ping-pong works.

But mainly, it’s a story about the main character and his mother.

MT– … inspired by autobiography?
RG– 10% of it. The setting is all autobiography, but all the content is not.

MT— do you play ping pong?

RG— yeah. That’s the main history of my life: table tennis. I’ve pivoted into the second phase of my life: writing. The first phase is called table tennis and the second phase is writing.

You can find more of Renny’s work here: www.rennygong.com

Meinzer

February 28, 2024

Written by Katharine Lee

Photos by Grace Schleck

As a child, I would hide inside the clothing racks in department stores while waiting for my mother to finish her shopping. I spent many afternoons enveloped in rising clouds of dust and the soft, downy curtains of fabric. Occasionally, someone would remove a blouse from the rack, illuminating a hand, a torso, and a brief, thin sliver of light. For those who didn’t care to look too closely, I remained unseen — possessing, for a moment, the illusion of invisibility.

Meinzer’s work reminded me of this memory: the temporary shelter from the external world, the desire to seek privacy in public spaces, and the preciousness of self-indulgence. Whether through sculpture, printmaking, or textile design, Meinzer and their objects aim to return bodily agency to the user – a process entangled in paradoxes, and in the acquisition of new consciousness.

Meinzer’s dislike of machines, including cell phones, meant that the interview almost didn’t happen. They had texted the wrong number, agreeing to meet in Hungarian to chat. Later, Meinzer mentioned their “book of inconveniences, which is basically just a book of things [they] hate.” I imagined a page dedicated to cellular devices, expounding at length over the futility of technology, and the word-swallowing void into which Meinzer’s text had disappeared, unopened.

We did end up meeting, after some last-minute relocation, on the first floor of Dodge, due to Hungarian’s perpetual lack of seating. I first noted the firmness of Meinzer’s handshake. At the time, I didn’t know about Meinzer’s love of color, which they attributed to their legacy of working with painting. They were dressed in black and white, a juxtaposition of colors they enjoy, inspired by their work with inks and dyes at an internship for a screen printer. There, Meinzer discovered their secret superpower: someone could point to a computer, say, “I want this color,” and Meinzer would mix it perfectly, despite never having taken a formal color theory class.

“Tell me about yourself” revealed several more important facts about Meinzer: they’re from Austin, Texas; their favorite food is dino nuggets and Diet Coke (although “it's actually pretty hard just finding dino nuggets down here, so I really struggle with that,” Meinzer observed); and that they simply would not survive life without their squishy pillow.

It occurred to me that I knew which pillow Meinzer was referring to. Selfies, a series of self-portraits drawn with charming crudeness on kitakata paper, depicts Meinzer swimming, stretching, and walking, among other poses. One print features Meziner hugging the squishy pillow to their chest. There is something relatable and honest about it — the bluntly drawn arms encircling the object, the familiarity and comfort of the embrace.

“With the subject matter, I just didn't want to think about it. I was like, ‘Oh, here's me today,’” Meinzer said. “Also, I’m really self obsessed. All the self portraits and the selfies are kind of a continuation of that self-ness, I would say.”

As a nonfiction writer, I was interested in this: the raw depiction of a self. I explained my own work in personal narrative, how I was beginning to tire of myself, the first person, and the “I”’s dotting the page. “It all feels vaguely narcissistic,” I said. Meinzer agreed with this; they also have concerns about self depiction. They spend a lot of time in front of the mirror. They’ve seen so many photos of themselves and drawn themselves in so many different ways that they’re no longer sure what their face looks like. Their fingers skim their cheek as they tell me this, as if to confirm their physical presence. “Looking at your image, you can become really disconnected with yourself,” they said. It’s a disconcerting experience similar to being in a room with multiple mirrors, where you’re forced to confront many reflections of yourself from all sides. Looking at yourself, I realized, is not necessarily synonymous to seeing yourself.

Meinzer investigates their perceived disconnect between mind and body through the 30 second process of printmaking, which was how the Selfies were made. Printmaking is Meinzer’s way to shake off their technical training in drawing and painting in favor of an “intuitive type of making,” which they find akin to muscle memory. “I want things that put me back in my body,” Meinzer, who described themself as anti-movement, explained. “I really have a hard time feeling like I'm living in my body. I feel like I spend a lot of time in my head. But I’m not going to think myself back into my body, I’m going to get myself back in by feeling something.”

It’s important to Meinzer that audiences are grounded by the tactical element of their work, that they remember how to sit and interact and use things. Meinzer’s objects evoke a choreography of the body, urging users to consider the ways they traverse through space, and what they can touch and do. The objects are situated in an environment that can’t be “beige and millenial,” but possesses its own visual language.

This is apparent in The Dollhouse, which houses Meinzer’s alter egos, Baby Dyke and Lady Darling. The objects within the dollhouse, from the dolls to the furniture themselves, exist to facilitate play and conceptualize Meinzer’s past and present selves – allowing for a growth of consciousness. I press Meinzer on their definition of consciousness as something we continually attain throughout our lives. Do we become more distant from ourselves as we grow older? Part of me assumed, naively, that The Dollhouse was a nostalgic attempt to return to childhood.

Meinzer’s definition of play, however, is more intertwined with one’s submission to fantasy – sustaining the make believe. It’s something kids do all the time, Meinzer said: “If you’re playing a magical character, you’re not delusional. You’re submitting to fantasy. It’s how kids learn empathy. It’s a great tool for imagination. And we lose that in puberty when we become really aware of the gaze.” Slipping into a different self – a metamorphosis that occurs when you remove yourself from external perceptions of you – is something that fascinates Meinzer. It’s a phenomenon that happens with drag, BDSM, and within the trans community, they added. They view themselves as an amalgamation of many different selves and aggregate identities; in play, there is no awareness of fulfilling a role. The new, embodied self doesn’t necessarily imitate who you are in real life, but is unequivocally you.

The follow-up question naturally became, “Is there a way to teach people this?” I pulled up the first page of their portfolio, where they described themselves as “interested in crafting games.” Were games the best medium to activate the confrontation of self?

“I hate games,” Meinzer said bluntly.

“What?” I was incredulous; yet this, I soon discovered, would be my introduction to one of their many paradoxes.

“I'm not interested in games that are traditional, like a board game or a card game or something with a set objective, or way to win,” they explained. “And while I can see the merit and satisfaction in organizing yourself in relation to that sort of structure, I'm personally so bored by it. People get really defensive when I talk about this, especially board game lovers.”

I pointed out the window. “I think I see them coming,” I said. “They’re rallying on the walkway and they’re all holding Monopoly.”

“Yeah, if you’re [a board game lover] reading this, cool it,” Meinzer said.

One game Meinzer does enjoy, though, is arrangement. Their piece, Anti-Puzzle, debuted at Caffeine Underground in Bushwick, and features birch plywood puzzle pieces meant to be assembled on the printed wood table. There is no making Anti-Puzzle, no correct order it can be arranged. It also doesn’t reference anything – it doesn’t take on the elaborate shape of a duck, for example. Instead, how much of the game people can take into their own hands, and apply their own experience and intrigue to the rules, is Meziner’s metric for whether a piece was successful. They recalled the different approaches users took with Anti-Puzzle: some tried to arrange all the patterned pieces together, while others stacked them like blocks. “That was the best thing that happened, because I would have never thought to do that,” Meinzer said. “Other people had covered the table completely so that all of the holes were hidden. And they were like, ‘Oh, did we win the game?’ And I was like, ‘Sure, yeah.’”

Still, Meinzer recognizes that they actually are operating under a set of rules: their audiences are not puppets, and they aren’t the puppet master. “It’s such an artist’s ego thing,” they said. “Like, you really want control over everything. And then when you bring people into it, it’s hard.” To Meinzer, the difficulty of relational aesthetics, and the participatory element of their work, lies in the tension between knowing what to give and not giving too much. “I don’t want people to be used as a medium as opposed to just interacting with a piece,” they continued. “I am realizing how desperate I am for a very specific pattern of use. But then it's also like, I'm not interested in having wall text that says, ‘You can use this.’ That sucks.”

The variability of setting comes up here; would a gallery be the best environment for Meinzer’s pieces? Would they kill the casualness of the objects? These are questions Meinzer is still trying to figure out. They launch into another paradox: how their intuitive side of making is constantly wrestling with their intense planning side. Because their objects are meant for use, the piece needs to be referent enough to everyday objects, and not abstract to the point where the purpose of picking it up and interacting with it is completely lost. Even if there are certain rules in place, concedes Meinzer, they’re “definitely trying to really obscure the set of rules.”

With Anti–Puzzle, a game’s structure can and should be constructed by the user, whose agency depends on decision-making. When does the game start and finish? What are the rules of the game? These are questions the piece asks of the audience, meant to spur the activation of bodily awareness and co-creation on the users’ part. “The game can even be changed halfway through,” Meinzer added. “If you’re bad at the game you’re currently playing, you can definitely change the rules.”

To eliminate the performativity of the gallery space, Meinzer posited whether the best way to interact with their objects is in a room alone, without the acute awareness that others are watching you use the piece. I argued against this, because part of Anti-Puzzle’s appeal to me was its ability to form community, the way strangers were drawn together, even if briefly, to work on the tessellation together.

Meinzer shrugged. Maybe it’s a problem that doesn’t need to be solved. Ambiguity can be desirable. “If the piece fails, it says something about the space around us, the social rules that are assigned to that certain space,” Meinzer said. “Your pieces are smarter than you and they should teach you. You don’t need to know 1000% what your piece is doing.”

A new concept Meinzer is working on now involves unlocking a new level of bodily agency in the audience by encouraging the destruction of their artwork. It’s a pushback against their observed preciousness with art objects in the art world – “do they need to be treated that preciously?” They brought up Ray Johnson’s mail art, in which cheap pieces of paper are streaked with crayola marks, chafed by the mailbox, and carry the indentations of the hands that have held, opened, and transported the material. These signs of wear inspire Meinzer deeply. . There’s something beautiful about imperfection: the undeniable affectation of time and flesh.

“[With Anti-Puzzle], people were putting their iced coffee down, and it was condensating on the table,” Meinzer said, following our dialogue on signs of use. “Thankfully, or I don’t know, not thankfully, there were no marks left, but had there been a mark left, I realize I kind of would have been excited by that.”

This nonchalant approach doesn’t mean that Meinzer isn’t protective of their objects. They recalled a time their friend almost damaged the Anti-Puzzle, which freaked them out. It was another paradox they were grappling with: how open were they really to a piece being altered? When I explained my reaction to “For When You Want to be Alone” as a shelter, they countered by saying many had the opposite reaction – they found the environment hostile. To a certain extent, this accomplishes the goal of their work: “I want people to feel some sense of discomfort but also feel very safe,” Meinzer said. “It can’t just be this sanctuary safe space sort of thing. I’m trying to find ways to include risk or destruction or violence into the work…[to incorporate] some sort of decision making or risk within.”

Overall, though, Meinzer thinks art shouldn’t take itself too seriously. “That’s a huge thing for me,” they said. “Let’s all get off the high horse… it’s completely fine to make a drawing about a squishy pillow.” I remembered a quote I’d recently read, from painter and sculptor Georg Baselitz’s interview on The Talks magazine, on the struggle of artistic expression and why it’s essential: “The misery of the world has to express itself in the mind of the artist in the form of art — only ever the misery, never anything positive,” Baselitz said. Good things, he believed, would never cause audiences to look.

Meinzer scoffed at that. “I definitely don’t hold onto the idea that you really have to suffer for your art,” they said. “How crudely the Selfies are drawn reflect back to the fact that they are making fun of themselves. Baby Dyke was me completely making fun of my own naivety…but also accepting myself in a sort of quintessential queer coming of age. Baby Dyke and Lady Darling… they’re a complete spectacle. They’re in their world being ridiculous and dramatic, and that’s great.”

Meinzer isn’t as concerned about giving pretext for their work, or the biographical elements that inspired them to make the piece. These facts naturally come out through the piece; the open-ended nature of interpretation, and the possibility of an unexpected reaction, is more interesting to Meinzer. They aren’t as fixated on what’s authentic and what’s a construct, or having art serve as an emotional compartmentalizer in their “dust bunny” of a brain. Baby Dyke and Lady Darling are just hanging out, they said. The piece isn’t about when they’re going to grow up. It isn’t about having two genders. It’s about the intentionality and paradox of having two separate beings in one body that complement each other.

“What would you say is the purpose of these objects, then?” I asked.

Meinzer replied, simply, “They help me understand myself.”

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