KARINA ENCARNACION

Interview by Isabella Rafky

Photos by Rommel Nunez

Can you tell me a little bit about yourself?

Okay. I am 22 years old. I am originally from St. Louis, Missouri. Kind of random, but it’s a fun place to be and I feel that I’ve gotten to appreciate it more and more the longer I’ve spent away from home. I’m an only child, which is kinda good and bad; I wish I had a sibling, but at the same time I love my parents. I studied architecture, I’m a senior, but I also do a bunch of random design projects in my personal time. Oh! and I’m a dancer. I feel like I’ve kind of neglected that because of the pandemic. But yeah, I’m also a dancer. 

When did you know you wanted to practice architecture?

My first exposure to it was when I was in 6th grade. So I was like, 12 years old or something. I feel like that’s kind of the natural path for kids who like both math and art, and I was a really big math and art kid. So, one of my teachers recommended that I look into architecture, but as a 12 year old there’s really not much you can do at that time. But then, the summer after my sophomore year of high school, I did this architecture camp at Washington University in St. Louis. This was while I was in high school, I was going into my senior year and it was like a sustainability and architecture high school program. It was so stressful, but I ended up loving it. Like that type of weird stress that’s like drawing lines constantly until like 2 in the morning. So I figured that I liked that after doing that little summer camp. And then yeah, in 2016 I did a program for high school kids also. It was really my only career choice, I’ve always kinda known that I wanted to go into architecture.

So, what inspires you in your work currently?

I feel like recently I've been getting... I don’t want to say further away from traditional architecture, but I have been interested more in furniture and objects recently. I think it’s because I’m dealing with the struggle of whether I want to create or help create more skyscrapers or other things that are not so environmentally friendly. It’s a little bit better if I narrow down and create smaller architectures, something that’s more personal and intimate rather than something that’s large and urban.

Furniture is something that allows me to use those skills that I’ve gotten from architecture to create something a lot more personal. Also, they are a lot easier to produce, a lot quicker to produce, rather than getting into a huge project team and creating a whole building. The process is a lot more personal and a lot more prolific and exciting to me. There are a lot more possibilities. 

What sparked your dynamic love affair with furniture?

I’ve mostly covered it, but the main thing is that I have a more personal connection. I see a lot of architects creating furniture that are part of their line or brand, and that's really cool because the furniture kind of becomes a symbol for their architecture as a whole, becomes a more accessible form of the architecture. It’s very consistent with their design language, but yeah, it’s on a one-to-one scale rather than a large community or global scale which I find really fascinating.

I saw your lamps by the way, beautiful! Do you make them from the bottom up or how do you design them? I want one in my home!

Thanks, the ultimate goal is to get them manufactured but that’s gonna take a lot of time. So that was a project for Design Milk, they collaborated with this annual competition called LAMP. It’s an annual competition, open to students and professionals, and they call people to design lamps and they can be anything. My friend who I met when we studied abroad in Copenhagen, her name is Krista [Lebovitz], we collaborated. She’s a studio art major, I’m an architecture major, so neither one of us has experience in industrial design so it was quite a challenge for us. But it was really fun, we wanted to create something that was very approachable and accessible to the general public because some of those lamps get very avant-garde, very sculptural, just not accessible. 

The lamp kind of symbolizes my desires and my goals in design, to create something interesting and exciting but not so completely unattainable to a general crowd. As you said, you can just put it in your room, in your house, on your desk, whenever, and it’s not something that is a giant investment. So far it’s just a rendering, but hopefully, we can figure that out. We actually ended up winning the student popular vote section which is really fun! Thanks for the votes from all my friends.

How long does that process take you? How long did it take to do that lamp project?

So, Krista reached out to me when I was in quarantine, starting the fall semester and I was so bored. She was like, hey, do you wanna do this project with me? That was the first week of September and the project went until late October, early November. So it was just a few months and we met about every week. As I said, the timeline for these projects is a lot shorter, which is why I think they’re more fulfilling, more exciting.

Do you think you’re going to keep going in the furniture and object direction? In industrial object types rather than buildings or different things of that nature?

Yeah, that’s been something I’m thinking about a lot, especially because I’m going to apply to graduate school next year and I’m applying for jobs in the city now so I have to figure out what field I want to go into. Right now it’ll be a bit better for me to go into architecture, and I still love architecture, but I think it'll be a lot easier for me to narrow down my interests later on. Start with architecture and later if I want to go into furniture, then I can more easily. If I were to go to school for furniture design or object design it would be a lot more difficult for me to go into architecture after that. Because architecture is a much wider field, has a lot more technical skills, and I would be able to translate those skills easily into more specific fields rather than going the opposite direction.

What do you find yourself gravitated towards when you’re in the process of building something? And this can mean music, this can mean art, different references that you have, it can mean whatever it wants to mean to you.

Like I mentioned, making objects is a lot more personal than creating these huge architectural projects. There’s a lot less of an environmental impact, a lot less of social and political connotation that architecture might have. I really want to make objects that are inclusive to all people and that are exciting for all different types of people. I also am very interested in fun colors as well, as you could probably tell from my lamps. I also want to start doing more with different textures and materials. My goal this year is to start knitting. But yeah, I definitely want to be making furniture as well as architecture and my ultimate goal is to have a small design firm where I can do both. I create a space as well as the objects inside of them. Very inclusive, very fun, nothing big or elite.

What is your artistic process like? How do you get from point A to point B when creating something like your chairs? Is it something that’s assigned to you or how does that come about?

Generally for all of my projects, like many others, they just start with a sketch. I’m not very strong with sketching though, so I just try to make study models out of paper. My sketches start to translate into little models like that. And then, I usually go into Rhino or other software and start modeling them digitally. From there, it just depends on what medium the project is going to take. For the chair project, I was actually assigned in Denmark when I was there from January to March in 2020. That was a class project where we were making chairs and I went through a series of study models, both small as well as one-to-one scale out of cardboard. 

That program actually got canceled because of the coronavirus so then I had to go home. I was really sad that I wasn’t able to finish it. So I just went and luckily had all the 3D files that I was using to experiment with form, and I just took them to a studio where they cut them out from a machine and I was able to build it there. That was actually my first project where it was made to full completion. Because my other architecture projects are buildings, they’re not actually going to be made right now. So I thought that was very fulfilling, actually getting to see my sketches totally coming to life. Now the chair is in my basement and I can sit in it and do my homework while sitting in it. So yeah, it’s different for every project but that’s generally how it goes.

How have you and your work changed through the pandemic, if it’s changed at all?

I definitely was more into traditional architecture prior to the pandemic. It’s also interesting because I was in Denmark right before it all started, which kind of started that shift, and then the pandemic completed the shift. I was definitely more into architecture prior to the start of the pandemic and then I’ve kind of not been dancing as much as well. So I’ve been focusing a lot more on my design and more on art. Before I felt like dance and architecture were kind of splitting my time and I wasn’t able to get fully immersed in either one. I definitely feel a lot more connected to my work, I’m a lot more excited about my work, and I’m able to use my free time because now we have infinite free time [laughs]. So I’m able to use all of that and produce more work. Before I never felt that I was making work during my free time, it was always for school. Now I have projects that I’m proud of that I can say like, I’ve created this opportunity for myself, or I’ve found this independent from school, so that’s been really exciting. 

That’s super cool. Do you feel that your practices intersect? You were saying just now that dancing and architecture were different worlds pre-pandemic, could you elaborate on that a little more?

Both of them are very closely related to space and the body. Working with furniture has definitely helped me understand the body even more, in a different way, with different proportions. I would like to do a project in the future where I make a chair and I have a video where I dance with it or something. But right now, it makes me really sad that I put dance on hold because now that I’ve gotten so immersed in design I definitely feel like there’s even more of an opportunity for me to integrate those two. Right now, I don't have any projects right now where they integrate each other. I actually did one project with my friend Melody in 2019 where we choreographed a piece that was kind of inspired by some of the work that I did. That was really fun, but I definitely want to do something on my own that’s like my choreography and my art shown in it. So stay tuned, maybe that’ll come soon.

How do you practice architecture in your personal life, outside of academic projects and the classroom?

I don’t necessarily practice formal architecture on my own because it’s such a huge process to tackle, but I definitely do translate the skills I’ve learned in architecture to do other projects. I enjoy making cards for my friends, using whatever graphic skills I’ve acquired, or painting or drawing, stuff like that. I also like fashion, I like lines, my love of architecture and lines is very readily apparent everywhere. It’s not necessarily formal architecture but I think my love of design is kind of apparent in everything that I do and everything that I wear.

Are there any new projects you’re working on?

Yes, I am actually working on this project with my friend Krista who I did the lamp with, and we’re collaborating with a furniture studio based in LA. I’m not quite sure what form exactly that project is going to take, because we’re only in our second week, but it’s also a pretty short project. I guess more updates on that to come. I don’t know if it’s going to be furniture necessarily, but it’s going to be somewhere between furniture and objects and architecture. Very experimental and fun as always. 

Do you feel like living in St. Louis and growing up there impacts your person, or impacts how you see and treat the architecture field in any way?

The first thing that comes to mind is how segregated St. Louis was when I was growing up, and the more that I come back the more integrated I see it has become. There are a lot more artists and a lot more people integrating with each other, but then at the same time, I see a lot more gentrification going on. I kind of have mixed feelings about that. It’s really great that all that is happening, and I’m very excited to see all these artists and designers and new restaurants and places coming up. I was always kind of uncomfortable or interested in how all these different worlds came together in St. Louis because I grew up in a predominantly white area and danced in the city, where it was mostly POC. I was like the only Asian person that I knew, really it was just a few of us. It’s exciting that through the arts St. Louis has become more integrated. I definitely would love to work there at some point or do some sort of project there because it’s a really interesting place. People kind of gloss over it because it’s in Missouri and no one really thinks much about Missouri, but there are definitely a lot of interesting things, a lot of different artists, and surprising things that I wish more people knew about.

Do you have any final notes or takeaways?

That’s mostly it! My brain isn’t functioning at its peak right now [laughs].

Say less, literally my brain is smooth [laughs]. Thank you so much for this!

Karina’s Portfolio

Samantha Blumenfeld

Interview by Jane Ellen Loughman

Photos by Madalyn Hay

I'd love for you to first introduce yourself.

My name is Samantha Blumenfeld. I'm originally from New Jersey, USA, and I've been living in Seoul, South Korea for a little over seven years. I originally studied printmaking, but I didn't really know what I wanted to do with that. I'm a GS student, so, originally, I went to art school, which was really conceptual. But I really liked the idea of the editioning studio, where you make artwork for other artists. I didn't realize that was a possibility, so four years ago, I started a printing studio with my husband, and we were exclusively an editioning studio alongside a personal studio. From there, we were able to expand our community programming, and we do all kinds of things, like workshops, mentoring, and community classes. Between the time of being an undergrad the first time and then making my own print studio, I didn't have access to a print shop, and it was from there that I started to experiment with new media just because it was really the only thing that was accessible.

A New Man, 2019

You're based in South Korea at the moment, so what drew you to a fine art BA at Columbia? Have you been doing it online from South Korea this entire time? 

Yeah, I’ve just been in South Korea this whole time. I didn't realize a non-traditional student program existed at all pretty much. I had left undergrad originally in 2010; I was slated to graduate in 2011. It was an opportunity that I didn't realize, so I took a chance. I applied [to GS] and I was really excited. I don't know how you guys do it; you're kind of like college age, but I was so immature. I was not ready for that experience. Now that I'm an adult, I feel like I really know what I want from school and how I want to finish this program.

Did the pandemic affect your experience of taking classes with Columbia?

It's been really interesting, because I work two jobs during the day, and, you know, there's the 14 hour time difference between here and the US. It's definitely not ideal; I go to the studio from midnight until 6am. It's been interesting, because it allows me to create space in my personal time, that, maybe, I wouldn't have been devoting towards art making. It really forces me to focus on that. So it’s actually been really nice to do classes online because I can still do all the things I need to do in my daily life and have access to my own studio. I'm comfortable working and experimenting here, and I don't really have to worry about what the administration might say about my own projects. So actually, it's been a really nice experience. I know for other students it's been really negative, but it's integrated into my daily life really well.

Why did you move to South Korea? Was it something that you were drawn to for your career?

I was in a long-distance relationship with my now-husband, and he’s Korean. I actually met him in high school. While he was in school, he got drafted for the Korean military, so he had to go back, and we were in that long-distance stage for a while. It got to a point where I was only really seeing him once a year. Because I didn't finish my degree, I wasn't eligible to get a working visa. So I was kind of like, well, you have to marry me. He said, sure!

Dither, 2019

You call yourself a multimedia artist, and I was just wondering, what does that mean to you? How broad is multimedia, or is it limitless? 

I mean, for me, when I was in undergrad, I was majoring in printmaking and minoring in painting, hoping there would be some kind of overlap between them or that my painting process would inform my print work. I ended up struggling with this for probably like ten years, trying to make these two ideas make sense––trying to incorporate screen printing into painting and vice versa was a really big struggle. So, I moved on to new media and thought about the fact that it’s a form of information dissemination, not unlike print media. It was a little bit easier to find a connection there. 

Based on the things that I've done online, there's really no limit to what you can do on the internet. Columbia is doing exhibitions online for undergraduates and the CU Arts Collective and things. I've been in a ridiculous amount of exhibitions in Croatia because everything's visual. You just send them a movie file, and then they put it in an exhibition. There’s also web-based performance, where you can broadcast to everyone. I was thinking about these ideas and then incorporated them into installations, performative installations, and interactive performances. I have some main topics in my work, and that manifests either through new media, printmaking, or a combination of the two.

Signal, 2019

I saw on your Instagram that you recently put forward some pieces to the Art Teleported 2021 Show in South Korea. Can you tell me about the pieces (“Signal,” “online”) you recently submitted for that exhibition?

I haven't really made a tremendous amount of new video work. I feel like this is the age that demands or expects video work since we're now engaging with exhibitions predominantly through online platforms. The idea of performance, or the idea of painting, they come across better in video than in stills. We have an open world of video art. For video work, I need either some really good material or some really specific concept. For “online,” I was definitely thinking about online surveillance, but I was also thinking about the way that we curate ourselves online. We're victims of surveillance, but then there's a sort of voyeuristic interaction that we have with other people we engage with online. Especially as a woman on the internet, I think there's an extra level of expectation and self-curation for how you create an online persona.

Is there anyone or anything in particular that inspires your new media work? 

If you're doing new media, it’s hard to not bring up Nam June Paik, a Korean media artist; he’s the one who created the idea of TV installations. His work is everywhere in Seoul. I think what he did was, and is still, really cutting edge. It's timeless––the idea of integrating these new media technologies into daily life or into spiritual experiences is still something we're talking about today. So I'm definitely interested in his work as far as videos and installations go. 

As for the glitch art, it's really interesting, because the whole community is really crowd-sourced. You can find tutorials for any kind of skill that you're really interested in learning and there's really nothing stopping you from acquiring and developing a new visual language. Aside from that, I feel like John Berger’s Ways of Seeing [inspires me]; how we see, interpret and understand art, what it means to exist in this super, super ultra-commodified space and how there is a consistent reference to art and art history.

How did the pandemic affect your life, artwork, and your work ethic? 

I guess it gave me a little bit more incentive to go back onto the web as a platform. Obviously, there's less in-person exhibition opportunities now than there were before the pandemic. Now it's not so much about creating art as it is about creating content. The idea of branding as an artist is part of this; creating something tangible to post and just being able to utilize the platform in a performative way or to even use it as its own medium, I guess. The pandemic is definitely pushing me more in that direction. 

tvagif16, 2017

I’ve been messing around with AR (augmented reality). A lot of my work is based on these animated gifs of abstract artwork. I was thinking about how it'd be really interesting to be able to integrate them into a real-life experience so that it becomes a universal experience accessible in people's real, lived experiences. I am just starting off with AR, so there's a huge amount to learn, but I'm currently creating some virtual objects based on the same pieces because a lot of my work is a dialogue with itself. It’s very self-referential; I'm looking at this particular frame from this video or this animation, and then turning it into a screen print or turning it into an AR sculpture. Hopefully, this summer, I'm going to start doing some 3D printing. There's going to be a translation from the AR, from the internet to a new kind of object. So I'm really excited to just be able to utilize new technologies and experiment.

Can you tell me more about your performance art piece ‘Art Object’ from 2018?

That was definitely one of those pieces that, after really reflecting on Ways of Seeing, I was like, I have to make this. It was also inspired by the idea of art dissemination and art ownership, and what it means to be able to view a piece of art in your own house as a sense of ownership. I started to think about this idea of virtual ownership in relation to the female image. We have all these famous works of art with women pressured to fit into a certain mold or certain set of standards. I’m looking at classical examples from art, and then it was up to the audience or the viewer to mold me into this perception of this idealized Venus. I almost got thrown off Facebook for that, because I did a Facebook live stream and a bunch of people reported me for pornography. I'm actually wearing a very light pink top and leggings, but they just didn't listen to reason. I've never been, I guess, censored in that way before. So I was just like, this is dumb! It's just classic artwork.

Art Object, 2018

I was totally enraged, like absolutely, unbelievably infuriated. I'm not nude, and I'm utilizing these ideas from Renaissance art. These are examples of art that people think of when they think of the female nude, these depictions of Venus by all these different artists. It's this idea of what the Guerilla Girls say: the only way to be a woman in the Met is to be nude, right? So we're seeing this, we're being told this is the default. It's fine, it's whatever. But then the idea that if I'm utilizing or appropriating these images through a little bit of a different lens, then I'm wrong. And so it's the same bullshit, right?

Is there any one piece or group of work that is your favorite? Or is that just impossible to pick? 

new-gif-1c, 2020

It's hard. When I was doing exclusively new media, I was at a really specific point in my life, emotionally and maturity-wise; I was trying to understand myself. So, projecting this avatar or this facsimile of the kind of person I wanted to be allowed me to experiment and play, even if I missed out on that chance when I was younger. I feel there's some of that work that is really superficial and visual. They’ve been called “screensavers” by art critics. I feel really connected to that work because I did so much; I generated thousands of images for that body of work. And then I started to go back into painting as I was dealing with some personal things because I thought oh, this new media isn't really relevant for me anymore. And then I moved more into screen print, and then more into experimentation, and then more into incorporating or expanding what could be a screen print, pushing that process in a couple of different directions. So I guess I really like the work now. Now, I'm starting to experiment with some textile installation that also brings in screen printing. There's just a lot of different things going on. But I think that where I'm at right now makes sense for this moment. 

Why were you drawn to art as either a hobby or as a career, or both? 

The abridged answer is because my parents didn't want me to do it, and I hated my parents. But art gives you a really unique opportunity to really hear people's stories. It’s an interesting way to see through the lens of someone else, to really try to engage and struggle with some of the things that they're struggling with. Using the internet, I wasn't playing online games, but I was always in chat rooms; I just enjoyed hearing people talk and see what they had to say. And nowadays, it's a changed platform, but I'm still doing the same thing on the internet that I was doing since I was nine. I think art channels a lot of that similarly.

Have you found a community for yourself in Seoul from your printmaking studio or from making art in general?

With our printmaking studio in Seoul, we are in touch with a few other printmaking studios because they're all connected. I wouldn't say it's a niche form of art, but it's very particular. There's a really specific process that you have to do for print. A lot of studios aren't really equipped for it. We are in touch with a lot of community studios in some way, where we work and collaborate together. There's that general printmaking network going on. The other side of it is the people in our studio––we have studio memberships. The one thing I really like about printmaking is that it's usually a communal practice. You're sharing a studio space, you're working with others, or you're collaborating with others. We've done everything we can to build that community here. So we have a lot of screen printers that come from all different types of artistry backgrounds. They collaborate and do exhibitions together, and you know, they become friends. It’s really cool then to see how it affects their practice, and then what projects they do moving forward.

left to right: blur11, 2020. Wave Vr 2, 2020. Ocean Vr 2, 2020.

If you could do anything you wanted, a dream piece, installation, exhibition, anything that you may be thinking of doing or want to do soon or you can't do yet, what would it be?

Yeah, there's kind of a new body, and it's related to some of my textile work. I got sidetracked because of school. A lot of the new media stuff and earlier screen printing stuff that was glitch, I refer to as “the mind mimetic.” It’s a metaphor for the way that we approach our own personal narratives and there are two recurring motives that we return to, regardless of where we're at in our lives. I'm really interested in this dissemination but within a macrocosm of the self or the psyche. And so, now, I'm really interested in the internet tactile––how can we make the internet a tactile, real experience? So, incorporating augmented reality into 2D work––but not being completely reliant on it––to make things that people can touch and really experience and perceive; I'd essentially like to make an exhibition dealing with that.

Are there any new projects you want to plug?

Oh, well, there is a separate project that I'm working on, but I feel it's going to be more of a long-term project. I ideally would like this project to take a minimum of ten years. It’s more of a personal archive of the screen printing work I've made. I have these prints on traditional Korean paper, and they're almost two meters long. They're very unwieldy in size, but I have a series of them. I realized this was a transitional body of work that I was making, so it was this idea of incorporating painting into screen print, incorporating new media, and then creating a screen printed collage with 12 or 15 layers. I have a couple of pages, these giant sheets. I'd like to continue this idea of the archive, and then essentially make these into a very small edition of gigantic books. This is something I'll just be working on in the background while I'm doing other projects I'm more focused on. Ideally, I'd like to have a document that shows all of my artwork in a way that it becomes the artwork, that challenges the idea of what an edition is, which is also something I'm really interested in as a printmaker.

Where else can we find your work?

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/roribleu/ 

Website: https://srb.neocities.org/ 

Raymond Banke

Interview by Sophie Paquette

Photos by Gillian Cohen on FaceTime

Introduce yourself. 

My name is Raymond, I’m a sophomore from Northern California studying Visual Arts. A big part of my upbringing that influences how I perceive the world is my dual ethnicity being Chinese-Caucasian. Always having lived bridging two cultures, two ideologies, that’s reflected in everything I do. For me, the idea of an aquarium as a piece of fine art is similar in that you’re bridging these two disparate but linkable subjects. I see myself at the intersection of many different interests––I love cars, aquariums, art, animals, which intersect in surprising, odd ways. 

I was thinking a lot about how, with the aquariums, you’re not only working with disparate media in the same piece but often fostering interaction between two structures, like two tanks communicating. Sculpture is obviously reliant on form and structure, and a lot of people see it as static. How does working with living media change the shape of your pieces? Does animal and plant life interact with your sculptures in a way that might surprise you or bring them new meaning?

With the aquariums, I mainly took after Takashi Amano. He was kind of the father of the aquarium aquascaping practice. His whole thing is kind of like, “To know mother nature is to love her smallest creations,” paying attention to detail, to the smallest, more static forms and elements of life. A big part of his sculpture practice was not even putting that many fish but focusing on the environment, the plants, wood, and rocks. 

It’s slow. It requires so much patience to really blossom. The labor of aquascaping isn’t in carving or chiseling, and it isn’t an additive process where you’re putting clay together; it’s a testament of time. Doing it for a couple of weeks is easy, but doing it to the point where the aquarium is stable for months? That’s the challenge of this art form. 

Made in America 2.0

I integrate artificial materials into my aquariums, things that we consider ugly, like PVC pipe, recycled beer bottles, and try to find aesthetic and material value in these manmade materials. Another part of the process is asking, what if I assign narrative to them too? That’s why a lot of my pieces discuss gentrification and issues pertaining to the climate. I see these living aquariums as models for social issues, stretching the boundaries of what materials are associated with. Not only can PVC pipes be aesthetically striking, but they can also tell a story. 

I was really interested in how your sculptures personify mechanical media. I love this line from your website about Inter-Aquarium Conversation: “The installation ponders the notion of architectural spaces being able to converse with each other, depend on one another, and perhaps have a beer together!” 

It’s making me think a lot about how, right now, we have to reconsider connection mechanically, digitally. We’re learning how to communicate intimacy without physical touch, asking how “inorganic” elements can connect. 

There’s a technological and mechanical aspect to aquariums, not just with the filtration but with lighting. A lot of modern aquarium equipment can be controlled by your smartphone––it’s kind of crazy what you can do now. Aspects of technology, design, and biology all intersect so nicely with the aquarium. I like the aspect of working with elements developed by someone who isn’t really an “artist,” so when you return to the art world with more advanced equipment or a new rare species, you have a ton of confounding factors, you have unlimited choice, despite being framed within this glass box. 

A Manifestation of Urban PVC in Terracotta Suburbia

But there’s also a big ethical responsibility as an artist working in this space, with living things like fish. These works can’t last forever, unfortunately, but I think that’s the most interesting part. You think of sculpture as being something that can pass the test of time––sculpture from antiquity has lasted so long. But a lot of contemporary work often uses found objects that won’t last forever, and then there’s kinetic work which definitely won’t because everything will eventually stop moving. 

The difference between 3D and 2D art is this ability to view in the round. There is more to be learned than just looking at it from one angle, one plane. Modern sculpture adds the fourth dimension of time. You can look at my work from one plane, but the fish is going to be in a different position from one moment to the next. Eventually, it will decay.

There’s a performative aspect to it too––this is why I think performance art is fundamentally an extension of sculpture. I’ve always been very intrigued by performance; I used to do choir, sing, play piano, do debate… while they didn’t really stick I did love the performing aspect. There’s always this thrill you get from public performance: you’re making a point, a great expression for a short period of time; it’s fleeting.

Aquariums might be first interpreted as being all about containment, but a lot of your sculptures open up the space of the aquarium in really interesting ways. What do you see as the physical limits of a sculpture? What is interior, and what is exterior?

This is one of the things I thought about when creating sculptures with two aquariums. How much space can an aquarium occupy? Can an aquarium occupy space outside of its glass box? I think that’s where aquariums start to be considered art. It’s not just a nice design piece or something for the home, now it’s something that’s really interacting with installation. It’s unclear where it starts or ends spatially, and you’re enveloped in this space with multiple aquariums.  How do you make an ecosystem not just for the fish but an entire ecosystem for humans to explore as well? How do various organic and live creatures take part in that ecosystem? 

I don’t like the quiet or staticity of visual art as much as being able to make something that can draw people in, that captivates and enthralls. Moving water is fascinating to everyone––there’s a reason why aquariums are proven therapeutics. With aquariums, you don’t really need a proclamation as to why you should view it, because it’s already fascinating to watch it slowly change over time. There’s noise to it.

Terracotta Suburbia

When you first started talking about how aquariums are inherently temporary, it felt intuitive that, of course working in environmental media and thinking about ecology and the climate crisis, there is the immediate concern that we’re realizing our planet is not a certainty, and these natural things are not going to last forever. 

But the more you spoke, it felt more hopeful, with the focus on how media can be repurposed and reborn. Opening up the space of the aquarium can have different implications on how we think about our natural world and our participation in it. 

Right, and especially thinking about the pandemic, aquariums more than ever have become a way for people to engage with nature in a contained and safe way. While I don’t like the idea of mere containment, I do think there’s a benefit in that you have this beautiful slice of the ocean or the river, of nature, indoors where you can appreciate it. 

Urban Overgrowth and Decay

Aquariums are also a great way to show people the value of biodiversity and the importance of protecting our ecosystem. You can view a lot of different species of plants or pieces of architecture in a miniature form, and then apply that to what’s happening in the macro world. I think of the aquarium as a smaller, more digestible package that makes the viewer think more critically about what's happening broadly in our environment at-large. 

I’ve spent a lot of my life working in this field. I used to work at the Monterey Bay Aquarium as a volunteer guide and ambassador. A big part of it was just scientific interpretation, teaching people who have never seen the ocean about climate change, acidification, and why they should care about it. For me, communicating those ideas literally and scientifically is personable. You’re empathizing with issues in a way that makes them more digestible. Aquariums do that too. 

A lot of outsiders criticize the ethics of the aquarium hobby; they’re like, you’re trying to harm our ecosystems, you’re harming these animals. And they have a point. They used to use cyanide to connect live saltwater fish in Australia. Fish caught by cyanide capture will most likely die or live a much shorter lifespan. It’s not sustainable for the consumer, and more importantly, it’s unethical. But I also think there is a huge awareness put into aquaculture. A vast majority of aquariums are captive-bred. There’s way less wild capture today than has happened in the past; most freshwater fish have been bred. There were fish we couldn’t dream of breeding ten years ago. The self-sustaining element of the aquarium makes us less dependent on nature while simultaneously allowing us to enjoy it more. 

It’s going to be interesting to see the effect this has in the future, as environments degrade (or hopefully not), and as Covid-19 continues and people fear going outside. This might be too dystopian, but I can foresee a world where you see more species of a certain type in an aquarium than in the wild. I hope that’s not the case; I don’t want aquariums to be the only figment of nature that we have. But I still see them as being a valuable way to teach people about what’s happening in the world. 

Lush Oasis

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about what it means for the image to not only replace but displace the original. That feels really crucial when you’re talking about species that are more populous in aquariums than the ocean or people whose first interaction with the ocean is an aquarium. Do you think the copy or reproduction is in some way equally “real” as the thing it’s replicating, or what different powers do they hold?

This was a big question for me last fall because YoungArts wanted to show one of my pieces in their Miami exhibition. They wanted the real thing in person, so for three months, the aquarium would be placed there. It’s a question of logistical setup but also asking, will this aquarium, in this location, be the same as the initial piece?

Every piece I make can’t be replicated. Artificial pieces might be replaced, but the fish won’t be the same, the placement won’t be the same… there’s no original that’s transportable. I think that’s kind of awesome because every time you make it it’s a new piece of art in a sense. There’s this idea that the original artwork will always have the highest value, but it’s not the same for aquarium-building. The real world inherently makes it such that every piece, every copy, is different than the original, but not necessarily better or worse.

It’s also interesting to think about this in the performing sense. With singing or acting, the performance won’t sound the same every time, but there are ways for you to improve every time, there is a certain aim for consistency. In visual art, though, you are performing and composing at the same time, and with my aquariums, a big part of the performance is spontaneity. How I put the PVC pipe structure for one exhibition or another is going to look different, because I make decisions based on how I feel about it at that moment. 

I always feel for artists working in sculpture who have to document their work with photos, because that can be one of the most difficult forms to translate into a flattened plane. Especially working with living media, seeing your sculptures in real life must be a temporal, spatial, and sonic experience. So many things get lost when communicated as a still image. Have these competing boundaries of digital and physical space affected the way you define sculpture, form, and space?

I think there’s a great analogy to be made with the aquarium because, just like the Zoom screen, it’s a standard rectangle. It’s impossible to make a practical aquarium that is super huge or abstract in form. The aquarium, like every video interface, fundamentally exists in a box. The internet is a very rectangular, boxy media. It’s nice because I have a third dimension, which brings a wealth of exponentially greater possibilities compared to the two-dimensional computer screen. It’s a very comfortable restriction.

Untitled

Just like how I play with aquariums now, not just as a hobby but as an art form that takes up space outside the glass box, I can also Zoom people and play a game of Among Us with them simultaneously. The video has become a secondary way of expressing communication while you’re doing something else. The way you can interact with multiple people at once over video is kind of an extension or adaptation of one-on-one interactions.

I used to submit a lot of stills of my aquarium work. Initially, I saw aquariums as design-like, architectural. Now, they are much more about sculpture and installation, much more fine-art oriented. That’s one of the things I always liked about aquariums, how it creates these intersections of nontraditional media. It felt connected to my identity as biracial and having conflicting interests. Sotheby’s and the MoMA might make you think you need some kind of cultural knowledge to “understand” art, but I think ultimately, art is a way to visually express something personal. Good design and architecture, on the other hand, is invisible. Most humans know how to interact with and how to use good design because it’s intuitive, based on ecology, based on our inner nature. There’s not as much of a cultural barrier, if any, for design.

That’s where my work has been fluctuating around. It went from being a functional way for the public to learn more about ecology and enabling a home for fish and plants, to being more about expressing a certain personal viewpoint. It’s not merely functional; it’s representing something much greater than itself. Unlike an architectural model, which is made to represent an actual larger building, I think aquariums are models and art in and of themselves. You appreciate them for what they are, not just what they can represent. 

Going from design to art has made replication harder. That, along with the spontaneity of working with live creatures and water, has made my work so much more dynamic, so much more difficult to document and to place in a certain setting, but that’s kind of the beautiful part about it too. That’s where I kind of think sculpture is heading, work that is a lot more fleeting. 

On the topic of accessibility and performance, I feel like there’s something so crucial about the aquarium, as contained by transparent glass, being a space the viewer cannot and will not be able to enter. Unlike other installations, the aquarium space is not necessarily one you can participate in. Seeing how the art is operating and being forced to recognize your vantage point and the position of your body feels really important. With other sculptures, I’m not sure you think as much about where your body could participate in that piece. 

I think installation and some modernist sculptures definitely changed how viewers interact with the work. Aquariums in one sense are very performative, but there some are also participatory. Touching a stingray at a petting pond––I mean, is that performance art, or is that just active viewership? Do the viewers become actors as well? At the very least, my work challenges what traditional viewership is. I want them to press their faces against the glass. I want them to be able to come close, to stare through the top of the aquarium, to hear what’s happening, to look at the hidden equipment running below. I want people to see all those living, mechanical, breathing parts, and take it all in. 

What is the experience of moving from this embodied, physically participatory practice to digital media, which might feel divorced from the body?

Before I was making aquariums I was classically trained doing 2D work. The value in learning multiple media as an artist is not so much because you’re skilled, but it gives you more tools to express the ideas you have. That’s the value of knowing printmaking and painting, welding and woodworking. 

I think now, I’ve probably grown most recently in terms of that transition into digital space. While I have been maintaining aquariums at home that are more traditional, I’ve been re-exploring what you can do with media. I got a much better understanding of Photoshop and InDesign, and some Illustrator too, over the summer and through this Barnard class Designing Design. So what I’ve been doing now is everything from making zines to graphic design pieces in Photoshop, really just pushing myself to learn these software tools to better express my ideas. Being at home has given me an opportunity to truly embrace digital media that I’ve always taken for granted. I think I started taking digital media seriously when I first learned photography to document my sculptural work and my paintings. I learned photography in the first place, and then it became creative as I got better at it, better at documenting my things.

But there is a huge limit, like I said with aquariums, when you have to document them digitally. It’s a wholly immersive experience but with photos, there’s no audio, there’s no kinetics, you can only view it from a few certain angles you choose. The view is so much more restricted. That’s the trickiest part, I don’t know in the near future what presenting aquariums will look like. It’s not something I’m worried about, but digital media definitely alters a big part of what it means to be a sculptor. 

Infinite Flow

Over the summer, I taught an art portfolio camp for teens over Zoom. Portfolios have always been submitted digitally, but over Zoom, even I couldn’t see their work in person; it was like I was always viewing it in the way a reviewer would. Going digital definitely trains artists to think hard, to think outside of themselves, to be the judge and the creator. Especially during this digital media era, you have to view your work outside of yourself. Work is always going to be processed in a two-dimensional way, so knowing how to present it will help improve the quality of your 3D work too. That’s definitely been something big for me.

What are you looking forward to, artistic or otherwise?

I’m moving back to New York in the spring which is really exciting. I hope there’s an art class I can take in-person. I want to get back in the habit of creating––especially going to a school like Columbia, where you’re so academically busy. Even if I do a Zoom drawing class, that’s definitely going to be great, just to sit down and draw. Yeah, pragmatically you get a class done. But it’s also really nice to have a structured environment to do that in. For me that’s something I’m looking forward to more, I haven’t had that in a while, I’ve only taken two art classes at Columbia so far, and one design class.

But I’m interested in working more on visual projects, infographics, photos. There’s so much opportunity that’s untapped in the journalism space. That’s probably my big Spectator project, which ties into digital media and work too. How do we optimize what an illustrator can do, for more than just like a mere illustration for an article, you know? Maybe I’ll even get into more advertising and marketing––I’ve always been fascinated by creative marketing. Because I haven’t been able to produce as much fine art as I would like, I’m seeking other avenues to apply art. That really excites me. I think that’s the next step for me; applying my art and curatorial work to journalism or business is something that I do want to pursue more of in the future.

Sophie Lee

Interview by Melissa Wang

Photos by Madalyn Hay on FaceTime

Hello!

Hi!

Introduce yourself.

My name is Sophie. I'm a junior in CC. I'm studying creative writing and history, and I write poetry and I make zines.

Ok, first question - why all the bees in your zines? What do they mean?

That's a good question. I guess I'm not trying to put in a lot of bees into my work, but I've always really liked them. I'm terrified of needles, which is weird, because bees are essentially flying needles; I've always said that if I get a tattoo, it would be a bee. 

And a lot of poets have written about bees, right? I'm thinking of Sylvia Plath, in particular. They're so fascinating. I love their social lives and their hierarchy. So cool. I don't know. There's just, there's a lot to talk about.

Is that why your pseudonym is “Princess of Bees”?

Um, I wouldn’t call it my pseudonym. I think I like the idea of royalty and how that ties in with bees. People always talk about queen bees, and I think it's interesting to think about a princess of bees, and what that means. I don't know. But yeah, I’ve never written under a pseudonym - usually I write under Sophie. Sophia is my legal name, but for some reason I've gone by Sophie my whole life.

You mentioned Sylvia Plath as a big influence on your poetry. Who are your main influences?

Good question. I am trying to branch out a lot more. I really like Plath. I've also been reading Joe Brainard. He wrote this incredible collection called “I Remember.” The whole book is just little short snippets where he'll say, “I remember this instance,” or “I remember this.” It goes on for the length of the book. I think there’s something about that kind of collaging of memories that is so interesting.

I love how you say “the collaging of memories,” because that’s kind of the vibe of all your poetry. It’s like every stanza in your poems is a different memory. How do you plan the memories you add into your poems?

I guess I usually write around a specific feeling or specific memory that I have. I'm inspired by a lot of the poets I mentioned, in the sense that I like to stitch together different images to create a collage-like experience. And yeah, I guess I just revolve around what sounds good to my ear and what feels right in terms of conveying the feeling that I'm trying to convey.

You mentioned Joe Brainard and, in fact, you have a bunch of pop culture references scattered around your zines. How significant are these references in your poetry?

I think I wrote an entire poem based on Joe Brainard, and that stemmed out of an assignment I was given in a poetry workshop. And––I don't know, I really liked this assignment. I continued to edit it and then I just stuck it in the zine. I think something that is unique to zines is that kind of capability to collage different ideas together, most of it from my brain. But I have a lot of outside pop culture influences too. And whether it's an actual, literal magazine collage, or just bringing in different things, sketches and stuff––I don't know, zines are just so flexible. The medium is so fun, there's basically no rules.

What got you into making zines?

I guess I've been journaling ever since I was a kid. I never really considered myself an artist. I did like writing. When I discovered zines, which was maybe in early high school, it seemed natural. It was such a fun way to casually combine art, poetry, and whatever else I was writing. And the idea that it's self-published and self-distributed most of the time just made a lot of sense to me. I like the idea of being able to control what I’m doing, and to remove that pressure of needing to be published or needing to have my work be shown somewhere. So I’d make these zines and pass them out to my friends. Which, I guess, did feel a little bit selfish because I was basically being like, “I made this, please look at it.” But it was fun and I've always really liked snail mail and sending letters, so zines just came naturally to me.

How do you choose the visuals that go into your zines?

That's a good question. I am not the best at drawing. I like collage, though. I guess it depends on what materials are available to me. The good thing about zines is that you can make them with anything you have on hand. So if I'm in the mood to draw, or if I have sketches from a journal or something, then I add them in. Or if it feels like a work that's more personal or recalls specific memories, I might look for photos.

Does each zine have a specific theme?

Sometimes I start with a theme and then I incorporate different elements around it. That was probably the case with the Princess of Bees zine, where I wanted to do something about bees. And in other ones, I will come up with the poetry that I want to incorporate and create some visuals to accompany the poems, and then maybe create a title that somehow ties it all together. Coming up with titles is so fun.

And that fun shines in all your zines! Especially in “Flowerheads.” By the way, what are the flowerheads supposed to represent?

You know, I don't really know. “Flowerheads” was the first scene that I'd ever done digitally. I used Adobe InDesign, which I was super unfamiliar with. I've always done hand drawn scenes or printed out something and then taped it into the zine, so this was a new experience for me. Those flowerheads were easy to draw digitally; I liked the idea of having a cast of characters for the zine and creating this world that's populated with the flowers.

Will you make more digital zines? Or do you prefer the hand-making process?

I might do more digital. I was thinking about doing a second one over winter break, but it’s kind of time consuming. Plus, once I start on a zine, I feel like I need to finish it. I need to set out a good chunk of time for it. 

What’s your work ethic when it comes to zine-making?

I guess I work on zines when I feel like it. I think I started out making more chapbooks than zines, where I was just collecting poetry that I'd written and then creating visuals to accompany them. But now that I've made a few zines, I just really like the flexibility of the medium. They also stemmed from work I was already doing with my writing or from my journal entries. So I guess sometimes, yeah, they are more organic. Like, when I have an idea, I just throw myself into making the zine. But sometimes I’ll just pull together a lot of different things that I've already written or drawn.

Are zines your main medium?

I think it's mostly zines and poetry. Like I said, I'm not a trained visual artist, by any means. But I do enjoy the ability to create something visual to accompany poems that I've written, because I feel like the visuals help make the poems fly off the page in a new way. They make the poems more fun. Does that make sense?

Yeah it does! Would you say humor plays a big role in your work? I noticed that while your poems are hilarious, they also touch really sensitive topics, like toxicity or existential crises. Do you use humor to confront these issues in your own life?

Well, I hope others see me as a funny person! I consider myself to be a person with a good sense of humor. I do improv on campus with Third Wheel, so humor has been a big part of my life. I also did drama in high school, so I’ve always liked the idea of entertaining others and making other people laugh. So I guess all of that seeps into my zines. I think humor is a great coping mechanism. Maybe that’s not always extremely healthy, but it’s definitely fun. And, yeah, especially given the pandemic and everything that's everyone's been dealing with, I think humor is really important…. I don't want to say “now more than ever,” but I was about to!

Would you say you’re an optimistic or a pessimistic person?

I want to say optimistic. And I think the goal with my poetry and zines is to always provide a feeling or experience that is not necessarily directly uplifting, but can maybe provide some comfort or nostalgia and through that have a positive impact on somebody. But yeah, like we've been talking about, the subject matter is not always the happiest. But I don't think we can expect people to only talk about happy things.

Tying back to the topic of themes, I also noticed that your family and friends are featured in several of your poems. Would you say they’ve had a big impact on your work?

Um, I guess pretty big. I'm not making them with the goal of having them published, and like I said, I tend to only distribute them among my inner circle of support. I guess they’re the main audience for these zines. Close family and friends, and then occasionally other people if they want to read my zines. 

There’s also a repetition of specific images across your collection of zines. I’ve seen recurring images of bees, flowers, and even peach rings - how do you choose which themes to return to?

Hmm. I guess if they're just continually in my brain, or if I'm still thinking about them, then they will make their way back into a zine. Sometimes, I'm influenced by older things that I've written, or I will revise something old, and produce multiple things from it. So that might also be where some of these motifs come from. And sometimes they're just from super prominent memories that I have, and these memories always have a way of making it into my work.

The word “oriental” is also repeated a lot in different zines. What is your connection to that word, and to culture?

This is such a big, big topic.

In one of my workshops, we were talking about what it means to be an “identity poet.” And it's kind of crazy, because nobody wants to be pigeonholed into writing about one specific experience. I'm Korean-American, but I don't want to feel like I have to write only about the Korean-American experience, and what that experience looks like to other people, or how other people might interpret my own experience. But at the same time, identity is everywhere, in all of anything that we produce. I guess my workshop decided that everybody was an identity poet. And what that means is different for different people. I personally will always have my heritage in mind when I create zines, but I also don't want to feel restricted in what I create. So I don't try to hold myself to any standard or subject matter, but culture’s definitely there. I'm always thinking about my family and their story, too. Yeah, it's a big, big issue. Or not necessarily an issue. Just a big thing to think about. 

What is the future of your poetry? What do you see yourself writing ten years down the line?

I have no idea. I think I need to make some new memories because being stuck at home has not been good for my archive of experiences. I feel like I've been pretty deprived in terms of sensory experiences, and I've been drawing a lot on past experiences or memories that I’ve already made. So I guess to answer your question, the poems in the future will just have to come out of whatever happens in the future.

Would you say 2020 has had a negative impact on your work?

Hmm, I don't know. I guess everyone has experienced 2020 a different way. I guess I do feel kind of stifled being stuck at home with my family. Not that I don't like my family! But it's just a different, different experience. And it's very quiet here. But at the same time, it's been good to be able to reflect on the past year, and my life leading up to this year. I've been talking to friends, and it seems like a lot of people have come to a new understanding of themselves, in quarantine, and in being at home. I think that’s pretty inspiring.

I’ve got another question, but I can’t segue into it.

Go ahead, hit me with it.

Flowcharts! How did you start incorporating them into your zines?

Well, I’ve never been a techie person per se, but I’ve always found flowcharts kind of funny. Like, we usually use them in business presentations, but they can be translated into anything! I remember, maybe six or seven years ago, we were trying to convince my dad to let us get a dog. So we made a flowchart called “Why We Should Get A Dog,” and it had all these scenarios with different responses that he might have given and our corresponding rebuttals. I guess I like how practical they are; they also have this interesting , choose-your-own adventure vibe that I have so much fun exploring. It’s so much fun to explore all these different possibilities of answers for a single question.

Do you look back on your zines and see how much you’ve changed over the years?

Yeah, I definitely feel like I've grown, maybe most notably, in the fact that I feel like I have more of a style or poetic voice that is unique to me now. Not that it’s fully developed, or perfect by any means; I think I’m just more comfortable with the way that I write and the way that I collage and produce zines. So definitely, with some of my older ones, I look back and I'm like, wow, six-year-old me made this. But I can still appreciate the sentiments that went into them at the time, for sure.

Do you have any advice for people who are just getting into zines?

Well, I wouldn't call myself a zine expert. The world of zines is just so big and amazing. People can basically just do whatever they want. So I advise people to do whatever they want, and to not feel like they're restricted to certain methods of distribution or publication or, or even like artistic mediums within the paper book. Just go for it.

Finally, what’s your next project?

I think I will be collecting a lot of the things that I've written and doodled and made during the past year. And maybe create some kind of… I don't wanna say “pandemic experience,” that might not be a good idea. But I would like to synthesize some kind of transformation from the past nine or so months. I don't think I can claim that the work will be all encompassing of the pandemic or even of my own experience. But I don’t know, it’ll just take some more collecting.

Sofia Grosso

Interview by Leni Sperry-Fromm

Photos by Emma Snoddy on FaceTime

Introduce yourself. 

I’m Sofia Grosso, I’m Colombian-American but I grew up in South Florida. I think both of these things have a lot to do with my work, which I didn’t realize until recently. I’ve always made art because both of my parents are artists so I grew up around that. My work is mostly about color and light that move me. So in my collages, I look for color relationships, and then they kind of make themself. 

What have you been studying at school?

Originally, I was double majoring in Art History and Economics, but now I think I’m gonna double major in Latin American Studies and Economics instead. Just because I wanted to look more specifically at Latino cultural production.

Are you currently in Florida?

Yes, I’ve been here for the fall semester. 

I know you work with collage, but also across other mediums. Did you get started in one medium in particular? Or more generally, how did you get started with art, what mediums grabbed you?

I think in a drawing class in middle school––I went to an arts middle school and I took this drawing class and the teacher was like, You’re kinda good at this. That’s weird. You should probably take more of these classes. So, I think that drawing class was maybe my first official introduction. I mean, I always made little crafts and things but I never thought of it as “art.” But my teacher said, this can have a meaning, you can do this on purpose. Then, in high school––I also went to an arts high school––I focused on visual art and got more into printmaking, which was kind of an extension of drawing. I liked the process of it, how tactile it is. I started collaging my prints, which made me think, what if I just made regular collages? And currently, I’m exploring more collage and collaging my own photographs as opposed to going and finding things in magazines and other things. 

I’m interested to hear more about color. What are the differences for you, if there are, between how color comes up in your different mediums?

Color is my favorite part of the work. I don’t really use color theory specifically, but in my paintings, on principle, I never like to use black. It just kills every other color. Just finding two colors that work well together, they’re greater than the sum of its parts. That sounds so cheesy, but I think it’s really evocative of something. Color can be so evocative. I think that’s what draws me to it and why it comes up in my work so often. It all feels like part of one idea for me because it’s always the same kind of feeling that I’m trying to evoke. Maybe a feeling of wonder. I think what’s fun about it for me is the process, because in painting and collaging you have to search for the colors so differently. 

Painting is really dependent on you and the colors you can put together, and it’s much more delicate because if you mix something wrong it can throw off the whole balance. It can turn south very quickly which is part of the challenge, part of what makes it fun. But then in collage, it’s more of a search, like a scavenger hunt, where you’re always looking for the missing piece that will complement whatever you found. I feel like they’re both really fun, it just depends. Maybe in collage, it just makes itself more because there’s whatever other color is waiting for you in the material you’re working with. Whereas with paint you have to be more intentional and set out to have a specific relationship and balance. 

It’s really interesting that a lot of your work deals with tensions, or, as you put it in your artist statement, “fundamentally unfixed objects.” When you go into creating a collage or another piece, are you specifically thinking about these things or does that more come forward naturally?

I do think about it because I want there to be an element of fantasy or comedy to it. I want there to be some whimsy. Maybe because my dad’s a cartoonist, so he’s always thinking about visual metaphors or paradoxes and I think that makes for really powerful work in general. I like to see that, so that’s why I put it into my work, to see how you can change the way you see things, re-contextualize things in your day-to-day life after seeing them used differently in collage. 

That’s awesome. You mentioned that both of your parents are artists, so I wonder how that has affected your work, in a similar way potentially?

My dad is a cartoonist and he’s always working, so that’s part of my reality. I think he just revealed to me the ease with which you can create things. It doesn’t have to be hard. A lot of times when I was first starting, it felt hard to even come up with an idea of what to paint or focus on. But I think the more I paid attention to him, the more I realized that it’s quite simple. You just have to follow what your gut tells you. You know what you like, and you just have to listen to that. So he’s always helped me with that. 

My mom studied art history and was an artist for a good while, but in my life, she’s always been other things like an art teacher, and more recently she’s worked with kids. There’s always been a creative aspect in that too. She always finds ways to get the need to make things out into the world. So that’s always been interesting to see, and also I think the way that kids take to art is really beautiful. I’m grateful to have always had a connection to that through her, even past the point of when I was little or when my siblings were little. I could still be reminded of that joy. 

You also mentioned you went to an arts high school; how was that for you and how did it influence you as an artist? Have you been able to take art classes at Columbia or find other creatives?

It was so cool! I didn’t realize it was an experience that not everyone shared until I got to Columbia. I think what was coolest about it is that the environment supported you on whatever journey that you were taking because everyone was looking for what kind of work it was they wanted to make, or what message they were trying to send through the work. So you always had a sounding board, and you always had someone to, just like help you mix a color. The community aspect of it was definitely my favorite part. Everyone just wanted to help each other do their best. Honestly, I didn’t think that would be the case at Columbia but people here have been very helpful as well. With creatives, I’m not exactly sure how to explain it, but it’s just different. Maybe because it’s understood that everyone likes art and that at the end of the day everyone wants to see an exciting image, people understand each other more. Yeah, ultimately I just felt safe to grow in that space and that’s all I could ask for. 

I think Ratrock has definitely helped me find that community at Columbia. I was so excited when I went to my first meeting. The other art hoes! I had finally found them! [laughs] I haven’t been able to take any art classes because they’re just really long blocks, but hopefully I’ll get to do that in the future. I walked into the printmaking studio once though, I think it’s the one that the M.A. students use. I was so excited, I walked in even though I wasn’t really supposed to and it was just so beautiful. All the people were so welcoming and showed me around, even though they were kinda like why are you here? [laughs] and I was like I have no idea and while I was on my way back out and apologizing they turned around saying No, no it’s fine! Come look at our work! So, I was really excited to see that the community is still there, and hopefully to be a bigger part of it. 

As you're talking, it makes me think about how the pandemic has recontextualized all of these things, like location, maybe in a more literal way. Has the pandemic affected your work in any particular way?

Because I’m faced with the same three rooms every day, I’ve gotten more into photography, which has changed my perspective on my house in a sense. And more generally, I realized how important creating art is in terms of self-care. Like, I just feel the need to make it now. I had never physically needed to make art like that, but recently it’s helped me think through things, I guess. I was never the kind of artist who, like, when they were really sad and going through a breakup or something, they made a painting about it. That was never really me; I did it because it was fun. But with all the intense and horrible things happening in the world, art is a good medium to express those feelings.

I also think this experience has made me want to explore more than I did before. I was getting pretty comfortable with collage, but now I want to see what I can do beyond that. I’ve been painting again for a little while and exploring other mediums, especially closer together than I had before. 

You mentioned earlier that you’ve recently been thinking more about how being Colombian-American affects your work. I’m curious to hear where that’s come up for you and how you see it in your work. I saw on your website that you use “symbols of Latin American otherness” which sounded so interesting, could you expand on that a bit?

I often go for stereotypes, like there was this one painting I made of a plate of beans and a serape table cover. It speaks to the concept of Latinos as a monolith in the country, and how I observed how people at my school and in my life would refer to Latinos, and feeling othered because I was part of that. 

My print work and my painting are more geared towards being Latina and that part of my identity, speaking to that experience as opposed to speaking to interesting composition. I find it kind of hard to do that through my collage work, but in combining my own photography with collage, I’m finding ways to do that. There’s this new project that I’m gonna do where I’ll take pictures of people who work at—there are a lot of these small Latino supermarkets in my area—so I’m taking pictures of them and of the supermarket and collaging that. I think that will be really interesting. 

I understand that a sense of place and location belongs in your work. So, how has that experience of moving to New York and then back to Florida affected your work?

I’m from a part of Florida that is very suburban, so I always thought it was interesting that I could be anywhere in the world and it would look the same. Going to New York, where every place has such a specific identity, that contrast was kind of difficult to get used to. I think for my work, being back home has made me very nostalgic for New York, even though I’ve only spent nine months there. And being in New York also made me very nostalgic about home, so that was interesting too. Like, I got back into my old collage materials and I was reconsidering certain compositions because they reminded me of home. 

Being home raises these questions of roots, hometown, and what it means to be “from somewhere.” I’m curious if you can speak to that at all? What are the things you’ve noticed or found that ground it in a sense of place?

Yeah, that’s definitely something I’ve been considering. I’m interested in talking about placeless places. The place I’m from has this; it’s very placeless in that it could be anywhere. But being back in Florida, I’ve realized how it does have certain distinctive things that ultimately, I do identify with. I feel like a lot of people from Florida, they just don’t like being from Florida, and that’s their personality trait [laughs]. I feel like I relate to that a lot, but I also have a different appreciation for it being back here. There’s a kind of beauty here that I used to take for granted.

Maybe it’s just getting more acquainted with my specific area, like my specific block. I’ve been going on walks a lot and there will be dogs that live in specific parts of the walk and now I know where they live, and they only live here. Things like that, the little parts of it that didn’t seem important before but now it’s the little parts that build up the whole. They’re important too. 

It’s interesting this sense of place, because like you were saying earlier, New York has that real sense of place and I think that makes moving here such a distinct experience. I’m from a rural area, and I remember moving to New York, being struck by just how much metal and concrete was around.  And it reminds me of this tension between the interior/exterior, natural/mechanized that you use in your work. Could you talk a little bit about that balance?

Yeah, I thought it was very interesting because it felt more natural to be in New York than to be in Florida. Maybe because of who I expected to be in Florida. It really is a lot of retired people here [laughs], and I don’t particularly identify with that demographic. So, it was hard to feel like part of this community, whereas in New York the whole point is that everyone is different. So that was interesting, that being different made me feel like part of it. 

I remember in New York the first thing I noticed is that the sky felt smaller because the buildings were so much taller, there was just so little space left. I guess in Florida, I always feel like I’m looking out into nature, but I can’t really interact with it most of the time, because it’s really hot or it’s a manicured lawn so you’re not really supposed to be on it. It’s made to look at rather than be part of. Whereas in New York, I found that nothing is off-limits so that line is gone. You can sit anywhere and have a picnic on any patch of grass you find. It’s interesting you bring up metal and concrete because I felt like it was all one big interior space.

It seems like you started photographing pretty recently. How did you get into that and how has that been for you?

I just began this year. At my high school, you couldn’t really delve into other media, because our classes really only let you explore what it was that you signed up for, and photography and visual arts were separate. So I never got to do photography then, even though I wanted to try it. I got a camera for my birthday this year and I’ve been experimenting with it a lot. I’m looking for a lot of the same things that I usually look for, and try to create in my paintings and in my collages, in terms of color and light. I’ve had a lot of fun with portraiture, with photography, and with drawings as well. Drawing is cool because you have so much control over the light and the specifics, and for me, it’s very much about lines, I like to cross-sect the whole thing. It’s more tactile in that sense. But, photography gives me a lot of the same satisfaction, because it’s about finding that moment, and that composition that you want to keep. It’s so much fun because you can capture the moment so quickly. 

It’s really interesting to me, you’ve brought up this idea of the tactile nature of art or the mechanics of it. How do you see that coming up in your work or in your process?

It’s such a big part of the process. It’s so much fun. It’s interesting how it kind of is a performance, but for yourself. I thought a lot about performance art, especially compared to visual art because the disciplines were very segregated in my high school. Sometimes it feels like they really can’t come together, even though they do in something like set design. It just seems like they’re fundamentally not the same, or you can’t do both. But, I think you always do both because the whole point of making art is making art, which is the process of putting it together. I love watching people draw. I think that, in itself, is a very interesting performance. So yeah, I like that you can capture all that movement into that one frame. 

Photographing is so interesting in that way because the action itself is almost like freezing motion. 

Yeah. That’s very true. I think about it more as being about the motion of the light. Freezing the light in that particular moment, because it’s always moving, is part of what makes it so powerful for me. And, I think movement is a really big part of my collages too because whenever I collage, I put all the pieces together but then I’m all across the floor, shifting things and layering them until I decide that it’s right. It is about that dance between the pieces and how they want to fit together. So that has a very physical, tactile, element to it. 

That’s so cool. So you just started working with photography; what else are you looking to work with in the future? Are there other mediums, themes, or anything else?

I want to do a mural. I’ve really been contemplating that for a while. I think a mural is very much about location because it becomes part of a place. Potentially more multimedia collage as well, not just photo collage but maybe mixing in printmaking, or even painting and drawing. I find that kind of difficult because I don’t think I’ve found the balance yet. I’m still searching for that and I want to keep working with that.

I’m curious to hear what you think about consuming and making art in this current moment. It’s something we talked about a bit earlier, but I’d love to know more about what art has meant for you during this extraordinary time. 

It definitely goes back to what I was saying earlier about looking more closely at my surroundings. I find that every time I go on a walk or any time I turn my head I feel like that composition I see could be a painting. So, I’ve been able to find the inspiration in that, instead of in things that I normally would in a museum. I think it’s also become more about my friends’ work, not looking for the inspiration or the interesting bits on the outside, like at an exhibition. Instead finding it within a community, and drawing inspiration from that. Maybe getting back to the things I like the most, which is seeing other people create. And getting excited because they’re excited.

That’s such a beautiful thing to see. Lastly, I just wanted to check in to see if there was anything you want to plug or let people know about any work you have coming up?

Wow. It’s crazy I can do that. [laughs] I’m gonna have a show with PostCrypt in January, I think. So that’s coming up, and it’ll be an online gallery so we’re hoping to make it really interactive, people should check that out! And my work is always on my website.

Vivian Lu

Interview by Jane Loughman and Melissa Wang

Photos by Gillian Cohen on FaceTime

What’s your major? Or are you undeclared?

I haven't declared my major yet, but I'm planning to declare in art history. 

Where are you right now? 

Shanghai. 

Oh, cool! So we did stalk your Instagram and we noticed that you have a lot of really cool architectural pieces––I think one of them was of an apartment building near Barnard. Do you miss New York, and how have you and your art been affected by the change in location this year?

I definitely miss New York. It's really weird to take online classes. It's just... I feel I really need this community. I don’t know, I don't want to just take online classes, stay at home, and not do everything that I could have done on campus. Yeah, and I miss all my friends.

Tell us about your piece Melancholy. What was the story behind it? The process?

I feel like the process when I create art is very random. I usually want to express things like chaos and intensity, so there isn't always a specific topic, but rather a really ambiguous feeling. When I created this piece, I just felt… nothing. Or well, it wasn’t like I couldn’t feel anything. It felt like––I couldn’t feel happiness, nor could I feel sadness. So yeah, I wanted to create a piece to convey this complexity. What I usually do is I combine two things––I take different pieces of imagery, put them together, and try to turn them into an art piece.

Melancholy, 2018.

With this piece, I made the conscious choice to draw on rice paper because I have a very traditional, classical way of thinking, and I wanted to see that in this piece. Also, rice paper just creates a sort of barrier, between the "now” and the “then.” I connected this barrier to what I felt was a barrier between my reality and my nothingness––my consciousness. 

Then, I started playing with floral imagery, because I wanted to see how they connected to this barrier. When I drew this, I did some research on the meaning of those flowers; I can’t remember exactly what it is, but I remember feeling a deep connection with those flowers while drawing them. I also played with adding more detail in the smoke and the clothes––they're so fragile, like they could just disappear anytime. You can almost catch them, but not quite; I couldn't really catch my emotion either. 

The stained glass on the other hand reminded me of a Gothic cathedral. When I walk into a Gothic cathedral, I feel a sense of mystery––it is quite solid. I don't feel like I'm with others when I enter a cathedral, instead I'm fully conscious of myself.

Even though this piece is colorless, I feel like the stained glass and the flower could give some imagination of color to that piece. However, this is colorless. There’s supposed to be color, but there's no color. 

Do you mean you were going to add color or that there is supposed to be color in your own interpretation of it?

Yeah, I think there should be color, for those subject matters. But I removed the color because at the time, I just didn't feel like there should be color––it's really hard to explain. I know there are a lot of things around me, but I don't really feel them. I feel silence, I feel they’re all like silence. I guess I convey soundlessness with visual elements.

You talked about how the flowers have symbolism. How much metaphor goes into the different objects you draw or paint?

I definitely think each object has its own meaning. I think that's how I create my art. I love reading and watching movies, because I tend to take different pieces of imagery and expand on them, connecting them to my emotions. For example, for the butterflies in the middle, composition-wise, I made sure to clump them all together. I think that shows how I felt confused and how I was struggling at the time. But the more important thing is how the butterflies fly off. There's a traditional story in China about a butterfly, and the butterfly in that story symbolizes dreams. So, what I want to tell is there is a kind of an interaction or a confusion between reality and dreams. 

Untitled, 2019.

When we were looking at your Instagram, we noticed that you had other artworks beyond drawing and paint––what compels you to play around with different mediums?

I started to learn how to draw in kindergarten. I’d go to art class after school until high school. After that, I was always practicing my skills, but I don't see the purpose of just always improving my skill but not creating my own art. The first time I created my own art, it was a painting or sketching. But then I was like, why don't I just try it with other media? Even for paintings, I try to make it not two-dimensional but three-dimensional. So, for example, there is a piece on my Instagram which is basically a woman’s face on the right and there are several flowers on the left. This is an oil painting, and the flower is kind of like a sculpture. I used an icing pipe. 

I also used some golden foils and things. I always want to experiment with different media; there are so many things I can use. Art is just so inclusive. So yeah, I just want to try stuff. It's not like I only use the one medium. For example, with this sculpture, there's this black mask in the middle of wooden boards, wooden sticks, clay, and wire. I used clay to make a mold of a human face, and then put the cloth into a liquid mix of water, glue and black watercolour. I then covered the mask in the cloth while it was still damp, and when I took it off after it had dried, the color had seeped into the mask underneath. So yeah, I use multiple media, it’s more like playtime for me when creating art. I just want to try and play with the art––it doesn't really matter to me if it fails. 

Memory x Existence, 2018.

Are you ever scared of taking on bigger, more ambitious projects?

I’m pretty comfortable. For example, one of my bigger sculptures was a requirement for an architecture class at Barnard; maybe it was because it was a class requirement, [but] I didn’t feel so scared about messing up. When I wanna do something, I just do it. Like, one day I just woke up and decided I wanted to dye my hair pink. Just went to the parlor and did it. I knew it would be a big change, sure, but hair is just hair! It can grow again.

We noticed that you’ve shifted to posting more minimalistic ink sketches on your Instagram. Was this shift deliberate?

Oh yeah, those! I did those sketches for an internship. I’m working as a branding designer for a new fragrance brand––the perfume’s going to be out this month!

And in terms of a deliberate shift, I mean, sometimes I feel like my more intricate pieces are too dramatic, and more can be said with less. I know detail is usually my personal aesthetic, but I wanted to push myself and focus on basic sketching for a while.

How has 2020 affected your art and work ethic? What’s it like making art at home?

To be honest, I feel like I haven’t accomplished much. For the first part of 2020, when I was still in New York, it was fine. But now, when I’m stuck in my own room? It’s so small, and there’s no space to make art. So I’ve only been able to create really small pieces, like B5-sized. 

And to be even more honest, I don’t feel like creating art. After I came back to Shanghai, I just didn’t have the energy to create anything. I mean, I know I’ll use this experience––this 2020 disaster––to make some art in the future. But now… I treat all my pieces like they’re real people, because of their connections to my own emotions. Right now, I think I’m failing at making anything because I just don’t feel anything. 

Although… I’ve written some short novels? I guess that’s my version of art now. I just needed an outlet for my emotions this year, and writing’s been that outlet for me.

What are you writing about?

Basically, it's about two girls, traveling by themselves and meeting in Venice. Tying back to the way I make art, one of the girls represents who I really am: creative, reckless. But the other girl is more like my rational self. I guess they’re basically how I view myself and how I try to like, kind of control myself. 

It’s a really dynamic interaction between those two. It reminds me of when, in my high school, my art teacher said that I have a controlled chaos, which is really accurate. 

And I wasn’t always a “controlled-chaos” type of person. Early in high school, I was more of the “entrepreneur” type, wanting to start my own business and things. But then I became a person who just wanted to focus on art, to try different things. I guess I changed when I went to the Van Gogh museum; I mean, here was an artist who clearly died for art. I felt like he was a real artist, and that moved me. His passion for everything was just so great, and I wanted to pursue that artistic frenzy.

Why Venice?

I think the reason I put the setting in Venice is that firstly, I really like Italy. I like it a lot. And the second reason is like, I read this book by Thomas Mann, Death in Venice. It’s one of my favorite books, and passion plays a really big role in it. I think there was passion in that novel, and that was something I was trying to capture.

If you could do anything you wanted, like, what would your dream piece be? Like, your dream art piece.

My dream art piece. That's a big question. 

I don't feel I would ever plan to have one. It's more like I don't want to have a dream piece. It's really weird. I feel like if I have a goal, it limits my vision. I may start to view things really narrowly and only focus on that goal––it's not realizable. Actually, when I create art, my style always changes and the final work is so different from my initial thought. I’m just wandering around and trying to fetch things and I've absorbed different ideas and created pieces. I have a feeling that my dream piece will largely involve myself, like of course it will involve myself, but myself as in my physical body. And it might not be an art piece. It could be some behavior for me. For example, I want to see how I die. It's really weird, but I guess…

I love this.

Haha, yeah. I just want to combine art with life, you know?

But hmmm, in terms of real, concrete pieces? Right now, I’m thinking of working on a music video… but I don’t know where to start. I’m planning on asking my friends who make music to see if I can do a video for them. 

Where can people find your work? 

They can follow my Instagram @vivisfantasy (https://www.instagram.com/vivisfantasy/)!

Lexis Rangell-Onwuegbuzia

Interview by Hanna Andrews

Photos by Emma Snoddy on Facetime

Introduce yourself.

My name is Lexis, I’m a junior in CC, I use they/them/theirs pronouns, I’m a Sagittarius, and I’m currently living in Long Beach, CA. 

Did you grow up in California?

Yeah, all around Southern California… I’ve moved like thirteen times, but it’s always been Southern California. 

How did you get into costume design, digital design and other art disciplines?

I had been interested in fashion design since I was in third grade. Middle school was an awful experience, I had no friends… I decided in high school to put myself out there… some friends I made during my freshmen orientation did choir and dance and some theater, so I was like, oh, let me try theater, that's what all my friends are doing. So at first I was really into acting... I didn't really get cast frequently; part of it was I wasn't experienced, the other part was typical nepotism bullshit, and there was also definitely some anti-Blackness there that I haven't fully unpacked, so I was often backstage instead. Because I was into fashion design when I was trying to figure out what to do with theater since I couldn't act, that's how I discovered costume design.

Image from Midsummer

So I’m completely self-taught; freshman year [of high school] I worked on Lord of the Flies so I got to just tear up some school uniforms and stuff, which was super cathartic especially because some were from my old middle school... it was great. After doing that, I was like, oh costume design is really cool...By junior year I was designing for most of the shows, and I sort of became the resident costume designer and it blossomed into a passion. 

I still felt like acting was what I wanted to do primarily, but then my first year of college I acted in a Barnard Department show which was super exciting, because I didn't even think I would get cast in anything, but that was kind of the last nail on the head when I realized I didn't like acting anymore. Especially since my sister acts, I realized that the work it takes to do it well is not something I feel like putting in, but the work it takes to do costume design well, is what I can put in. And so now it’s sort of my favorite thing to do.

In terms of graphic design, that was a little different. During my freshman year [of high school], we had a required arts extracurricular class that we had to pick, so I decided to do the design class, and I knew it wasn't fashion design, and it taught like Photoshop and Illustrator, but I thought, oh it could be convenient, and an important skill to have. But then I just completely fell in love with it… it was just really cool to have that outlet that had nothing to do with theater but was still creative and was for me, and non-competitive, because I think acting and theater was really competitive. With graphic design, it was just my outlet, it was my thing, and just what I wanted to do, and I got to work with a teacher I really adored. 

I would say those are the two main artistic mediums that I do, I’m into poetry but I’m not that good at it, because I did a poetry recitation competition all through high school and I got to know poetry a little bit better and appreciate it more. It’s something I try to incorporate in my graphic designs sometimes. I guess that's my path from multiple angles.

You mentioned writing poetry and you also experiment with video; how do these disciplines map onto your other work and art making disciplines?

From my experience, everything sort of maps from theater onto everything else. They say live theatre is dying, but it’s still my favorite discipline because it's the peak of multimedia, inter-disciplinary community, so I think questions of motion, color, and texture really map out well onto theater and onto everything else I do. Especially with video, I think having to learn about bodily motion through acting experience but also through costuming for musicals and things in which motion is extremely important, I think that just changes the way I look at things. Color is a big thing for me too, especially when I do costume design; I see worlds inside of it, like worlds of meaning inside the color green—why would someone want to wear it and where would they wear it? 

That influences my graphic design a lot. I tend to do neon, very harsh-looking pieces, turning colors on their head. Colorful doesn't always have to be gentle, it can be harsh sometimes. I think when it comes to poetry, that's what I try to capture most. I have a very hard time with creative writing, I think I'm a good essay writer but a very challenged creative writer. I think it has a lot to do with my impulse to explain and put things into boxes, which is probably related to my OCD, so it's interesting then, that I'm most interested in creative disciplines that kind of force me to be more abstract, where not everything can fit into a box, myself included. So that's kind of an interesting back and forth that I feel I have going on all the time.

So on your personal style in costume making—you’ve mentioned your use of neon colors, sometimes loud or sharp color expression; do you gravitate toward specific silhouettes, textures, colors in your costume making? This could apply to your graphic design as well.

I think that it really depends on the project. A big influence would come from the Stanislavski style of acting, the idea that everything is driven by objective, and all people are driven by objectives and things like that. I try to take that into different pieces and consider how someone thinks of themselves, how they want people to think about them, and then how do those two things combine into how they dress? I don't always remember people’s names but I remember what they were wearing, and that's how I remember most things. It probably has something to do with me being trans in retrospect, but I've always had a fixation on what people wear and the silhouettes of their bodies, and I think that kind of maps out into detailed focus onto small accessories to large costume pieces. I definitely tend to mix patterns and loud colors, and I notice that gets mapped out onto my design, but I also on occasion have to reel it back depending on what the piece requires, especially if its naturalistic, but I tend to work on shows that are very fantastical or otherworldly, so I get a lot more room to experiment. 

One of the latest things I’ve worked on, The Bachhae 2.1 with the King’s Crown Shakespeare Troupe (KCST), was inherently all over the place, queer and dramatic, and there was poetry in there, there were selections from different pieces and a sort of patchwork, in a very loud and clashing kind of queer and trans style, sort of encapuslating the different worlds going on. I think lately it's been interesting how my need to categorize maps out onto different designs, thinking of The Bacchae, and A Midsummer Night's Dream, it sort of became this two-world dynamic, creating the aesthetics of one world and the aesthetics of another world and how they collide. That’s been exciting and interesting, and I find there's always one or two transient characters who sort of embody more than one world, and I think perhaps that's sort of myself inserted, for better or for worse. 

I like working with media that aren't traditional; when I worked on A Midsummer Night's Dream, our concept of bioluminescence was our one word to capture the forest. I’m Puerto Rican, and I've been to Puerto Rico twice now, and the first time I went, we went to one of the bioluminescent bays, and I saw it up close, you drag your finger through it and it lights up, and it was amazing. So I had a very clear picture in my mind of what bioluminescence was and what it meant to me, so I had the idea to put lights inside of the costumes and react to the world around them in that way. I had no idea how I was going to do it…. a good friend of mine Zena, who had designed costumes with me before on a different show, is this amazing seamstress, and at the time was studying civil engineering, so knew shit about engineering, and I asked her to work on it with me, and I was lucky enough for her to say yes. It was so cool to sew lights into costumes and use different embroidery tactics to transform costumes altogether, and we even 3-D printed butterfly wings to mask battery boxes for the lights. We worked with a set designer, Kristian, he’s incredible, and he had this awesome idea to play with black lights and UV paint, so when the fairies walked the world lit up with them, and it was just amazing. I like to be very interdisciplinary, I never want it to just be about the clothes; I want to see how I can interact with lights and sets to really transform the show.

I was going to ask you, does your major (East Asian Languages and Cultures) at all influence your work, or anything relevant to theater?

I feel like yes, in very indirect ways. It doesn't come to my mind as an influence, but when I reflect, the influence is definitely there. I was originally going to be a theater major, but after my first experience with the department, I realized there was just a lot of anti-Blackness that I had no interest in dealing with, and then the design aspect didn't really suit what I wanted. I was just taking Japanese as my language requirement, and took one of the department’s required classes, just to see what it was like, and absolutely fell in love with it. And then I took my first film class, a Japanese contemporary cinema class, and loved the professor and the material. I was like, movies for homework, this is awesome...I think those classes specifically have really influenced how I think about art, how I write about it, and how theory interacts with my art...it certainly has me more excited about film, and making costumes for film. I think my major gives me an increased appreciation for doing theater, I think if [theater] was my major I would just be burned out by now, and be sick of theater and the theater community, but because I have something to go to that also extremely interests me, it's not a burden to do theater; it still gets to remain fun. 

Working on film projects now, what major differences exist between preparing for a new project for a film versus a stage production, and the research; how does that differ in creating a specific universe around a cast in a film versus a stage production? 

For me the main difference is that with theater I have to have all the costumes figured out early on; with film, especially with the documentary I worked on, because we had different subjects each week, it was like a week-by-week process of coming up with that and creating it. With film, I think it's a much faster process; I’ll usually have a minimum of 5 weeks with a play, and with film time is even more compressed. 

I will say, with costuming, it's a pretty standard practice so things are pretty similar. You have to make sure people’s sizes are correct, you’re purchasing different clothes and thrifting. I do closet visits often, which is essentially either over Facetime or in person. I take a look at a person’s clothes and figure out what of theirs I can use to costume them. I've done that for both film and theater; I slightly prefer film, and what's different about it is that the details are noticed by people other than the actors. For example, with The Bacchae, one of the main characters was meant to embody American patriarchy, nationalism, and conservatism, so he had a tiny lapel pin that was an eagle, and it was also a script reference. No one in the audience would ever notice it probably, but it was really for me and the actor to make the costume more authentic. The best compliment I can ever receive is that the actor really felt like the character for the first time or transformed into the character through their costume. 

When I worked on Soorim’s film, all of the characters worked in a movie theater, so they got to wear pins on their name tag; We were very intentional about having the pins we picked match the character’s personality, and that enough is contentment for me, because the actor transformed into the character, but it's also cool that the audience can see that too. 

I'm interested in this transformative quality you’ve talked about; what other thoughts do you have on the second life of a garment when it lives on another person’s body, in a performative way or otherwise?

It’s my favorite part of the process. I think because I used to act, I know what it takes to create that character in your head, so I try to work very closely with the actors and ask them questions that seem very unrelated to their clothes. Just the other day, I did a virtual closet visit with someone I’m doing a Zoom show with, and it was really fun because I got to ask how the character feels about this other X character, and all of these more psychological questions that on the surface have nothing to do with the clothes, but really informed the world of how I would make somebody dress. I think that detail allows people to give back a response as a different person and they feel very connected.

I think there's a way that your body changes depending on the clothes you wear that makes you feel like a different person, whether its a tailored garment or a custom fit, or the softness or roughness, or how flashy something is, it just brings out something in people that they didn't know was there before, like seeing some of the nicest people in the world turn into real villains when wearing the right costumes. It's exciting to bring out the best and sometimes even the darkest parts of people just through what they wear. I think it's really important to me being trans; I know how much different clothes I wear will help me recognize my sense of identity and it's something I don't take lightly, a power I don’t underestimate. 

Watching cosplayers at conventions, seeing them turn into a character I've known my whole life, it emphasizes that power for me. In high school I never really had a budget, it was always use and reuse and shit like that, so now at Columbia it's crazy to have budgets in the hundreds of dollars. One time for [KCST’s] Spring Show, I had a budget of like $3,000 and I was floored; I had never seen that much money! So now I’ve become a somewhat expensive designer, but I do like borrowing clothes when I can. 

For The Bacchae I tried to have people borrow each others clothes, because it was sort of this commune of womxn and non-binary folks kind of living in the forest and doing their thing, and I feel like there’s a sense of community that’s inherent when you borrow people’s clothes and see someone else wearing what you own; there’s sort of a sense of togetherness that’s created, and I think it really enhanced the dynamic of those five characters as one body. I think clothes have a transformative quality, and even if I'm having a bad day, if I wear clothes that make me feel like a badass that will help me get through.

You’re self-taught and you've talked about creating your own network at Columbia and your high school to help train new costume designers and meet new collaborators. Are there any influences or mentors that you channel in your designs? Maybe this extends to cosplayers, the queering of worlds in “The Bacchae,” or just certain themes you go after?

I was trying to think about this, and I don't think I have particular influences, but if I were to point to a figure, Stanislavski would be an influence, because motivation, internal dialogue, and concepts on method all go into how I think about costuming. For “The Bacchae” I looked at Pose especially, and Dirty Computer by Janelle Monáe, the “emotion picture,” because I liked the way each crossed boundaries and created these distinct characters out of clothes. For “Midsummer,” one concept was bioluminescence, and the other was this geometric, un-abstract, patriarchal black and white aesthetic, retro-futurism is what I went on; for bioluminescence, thinking of different ways to imagine a fairy besides the typical, like what could that be? So I tried to avoid folklore, and instead turned to cartoons. Cartoons, anime, any kind of animation is very important to me; I looked up Steven Universe, a little bit of She-Ra, and picked up on those colorful, soft aesthetics, and this one anime called Princess Jellyfish, thinking about how to take silhouettes of bioluminescent creatures like jellyfish and transpose them, so a lot of animal work; I looked at animals a lot. 

For period pieces, right now I’m working on a hybrid, contemporary period piece. I like to use The Met, their Costume Institute is amazing and they have a lot of selections on their website, so I look at that to see what people would have worn back then, limited to certain social classes to be fair, and then I sort of adapt that, especially Steampunk stuff, I love Steampunk stuff, I like to work it into everything I do, and it doesn't always work but I try. I think there's various aesthetics I'm into, but I don't think I can point to one designer as an influence, which is how I want it to be since I tailor it to each show. I would say Moschino is a very important designer to me, I like the very loud, Harajuku-type patterns, I like the weird, out-there shit. As far as an aesthetic that I prefer to work with, I would say it's The Bacchae, like Pose, Dirty Computer, Harajuku, all-over-the-place, aesthetic.

I love that. This next question is kind of specific-- I read in a Spectator article featuring your process for conceptualizing costumes for KCST’s “The Tempest,” you discussed a mindfulness in avoiding “the stereotype of associating indigenous people with nature” in your costume designs when incorporating flowy, organic designs. Could you share your thoughts on authenticity and breaking stereotypes in representing characters or groups in your costume designs? 

I think it's something that's extremely important to me as a Black person, a Latinx person, and a trans person, those are the most salient identities I think that come into play with things like that. During my freshmen spring, I worked on a play called “The Hungry Woman,” which in retrospect was very problematic in and of itself, and it was supposed to be an all Hispanic and Latinx cast, and it was, but I think some people thought that superposed itself on the fact that the entire cast were either white or white-passing except for one or two people. It was a very strange dynamic, and very problematic… but I tried to do my due diligence and follow through on committing to the project. Four of the characters were Aztec gods, and one person out of those four was Navajo, a friend of mine, Shaun, and we were trying to design headdresses for the characters, and it was a futuristic show so I tried to design junk scrap headdresses, nothing that could be connected to a pre-existing culture but was sort of emulative of that idea, because the script called for them. So I was trying to think how to best adapt that, and then Shaun approached me saying he wanted to be involved with that process. First, he didn't want people to be wearing traditional headdresses when it was inappropriate, but second, although he's Indigenous, he's not of Azetc heritage at all, he’s Navajo, so he didn't feel comfortable wearing someone else's traditional clothing in that way, which totally made sense to me. So I had him involved from start to finish and it was something we were very mindful of from that point on, and he was really who brought it to my mind. It's a process I think about a lot because I learned a lot, and it wasn't his place to teach me, and I also don't know where else I would go to learn, so it pointed to a lot of traps for me. From then on, it influenced how I think about identity in the different shows I work on.

With “The Tempest,” it was something I was very aware of from the start, and the show itself includes a lot of nature imagery, like wind gods, and sea gods, and things like that, so I tried to play with creatures from each domain. But then, one of the dramaturges who is Indigenous pointed out to me that we should be wary of that; I had a raw, initial idea, and had to then apply a lens to it where I’m aware of like, I’m coming from that idea because there's nature imagery in the play, but how else will other people interpret it regardless of where I’m coming from?

I'm involved in a lot of conversations on campus about diversity in theater, inclusivity in theater, and creating those safe spaces, and something I bring up frequently, especially in casting, is that no matter what someone’s identity is on paper (and I find this the most with Latinx folks, because we are all kind of born with that identity crisis) it’s ultimately a visual medium, so an entire cast could identify as Latinx or Hispanic, but if they all look white, what's the point, basically? When it comes to costumes I try to be aware of that too. Some of it is just basic shit, like being aware of people’s skin tone to see what makes them look best because white designers just have a history of not doing that, but then also things like, what do the villains look like? What color are the villains, what color are the protagonists? How do my costumes either enhance or mitigate that? I try to breach basic tropes like, oh, all the bad guys are going to wear all black and things like that. Recently, I like to put the antagonist in all white and just play with that, and it creates such an interesting dynamic and avoids those tropes that have been used to death. 

That's my biggest thing, I’m very hard-stanced against the idea of colorblind casting, and in fact I think it's one of the biggest problems that theaters deal with, and thus I try to be very color conscious when I'm engaged with casting, when I'm engaged with costumes, and any kind of design. I’m very hyper-aware, at the very least visually, of this idea of color, of this idea of race, especially because I think theater has a colorism problem. When Black folks, especially Black women are cast, they are usually light-skinned, so it’s like, in what roles are we casting different people? It's very complicated I think, and I think it's something I think about often.

With that show, the idea was to reclaim. Reclamation was a big part of it because it was a very colonial piece to begin with, the colonizer’s mark is all over it, so I think I was hyper aware from the beginning as opposed to “The Hungry Woman,” in which case I was an adamant freshman who just didn't know what to be thinking about and it was sort of something that had to be brought to my attention.

Costume Design: Tyrone, Fame

Costume Design: Carmen, Fame

Costume Design: Carmen, Fame

Also, being a trans designer is a big thing for me, even just with knowing what to ask. When I worked on Soorim’s film, one of the reasons she brought me on is because one of the actors is trans-masc, and I worked with her before with the trans actor, and she had never heard of a binder or what that meant with being trans or things like that, and I was able to be a resource for that actor who's also a friend of mine. I think I bring that perspective, I know what questions to ask, like do you bind, do you pack, do you tape, things like that, and I also emotionally know what it's like to be put in something uncomfortable, not just physically but emotionally, so I think I feel very hyper-aware of these things when I do design. I think thats why its important to have non-cis-, non-white designers who just think of questions like that and take non-cis- and non-white actors seriously. 

You mentioned earlier you’re doing a Zoom show this semester, what is the status of your work in COVID-19?

Right now I’m working on a play for NOMADS… I adore the playright, I adore the show, it’s fucking awesome, it’s gay, it takes place in the 1990s and the 1890s in Half Moon Bay, California, and it’s so fucking cool. I’m so obsessed with this show and I’m also on the [NOMADS] board so it was so easy to volunteer myself. I'm working on that right now and it goes up the weekend of December 14th, so that's happening, and then I'll probably do more Zoom designing next semester because I'm realizing I really like it. I've done remote designing before with Soorim’s film so it’s not totally out of the water with me, although there are definitely some challenges. 

Where can people find your work?

My portfolio is probably the best place because a lot of the shows I've worked on have not been recorded. I have a costume design portfolio and a graphic design portfolio. I don't have any public work for my poetry because it's very much for myself, but with NOMADS, the upcoming show, Lily Kepler and the Graveyard Shift, is going on Zoom live on the weekend of the 14th, so that's where you can see that. Honestly, to see my work you usually have to come see it live, so I like it, it's ephemeral, it doesn't last. 

sam choi

In conversation with Sophie Paquette

Photographs by Caitlyn Stachura

On your website, I noticed that you had your work divided into three primary groups. I was wondering if you could tell me a bit more about these disparate projects: how you group them, and where they diverge or overlap for you?

So, the three groups are Realitas, Phantasia, and Macabre. I’ll start with the first, Realitas. Those are simply my reality. They are mostly 35 mm film prints or photos, or candids I guess. I took Photo I almost four years ago, and that was the class that made me really want to be a visual arts major. Most of the things that I would shoot, before I had any concrete direction with film photography or studio photography and makeup, were candids, or I would say maybe commercial work—you know, photoshoots or Columbia runway shows. Most of the things that I would document were my life. When I was taking them, they were just like snapshots, you know, something for the Gram. I categorized them later. 

In 2017, when I left school, and left all my friends and my life in New York, I had to go back to Korea, to the most toxic environment—the most machismo, culturally hierarchical, suppressive environment—one that I escaped and then was forced to go back to. I was looking back to a lot of my older works, and to my life in general. I have probably 70 rolls of film that I shot and a lot of them are shit, especially my first few months, completely exposed the wrong way—but the ones that I do have, and a lot of them, they’re just a great reminder of a life that’s not about death, and disease, sick people, stress, and cultural anxiety. I was working as a paramedic—EMT, very loosely—and in my district, unfortunately, we had a lot of suicides, a lot of sick people, and a lot of income inequality. You’d see some people with barely any housing, with alcoholism, and we’d have to transport them, or you’d see people with insane amounts of wealth who call 911 in Korea because they hurt their pinky. So I was just trying to get away from that by going through and documenting all of my old previous work and my life. That was my little escape, my little nostalgic moment that I documented on my website. That was Realitas. 

Then Phantasia was actually the category that I made because I had already made the Macabre category, so the ones in Phantasia don’t really fit the same vibe. Under Phantasia, a lot of them are experiments as well, because I just recently got a home studio connected to my apartment back in Korea. I would get a backdrop, and I would get the soft boxes and cellophane and make colored lights, and I would do all of these works at like 2 am on a Friday, or on the weekends when I had the days off back home. Phantasia is more about me experimenting with makeup. Lavinia, Uranus… these were heavily inspired by this artist, @isshehungry on Instagram, who did Björk’s makeup for the recent tours with James T. Merry, creative director and headpiece designer. I was really obsessed with her new album and her shows—I mean, it’s Björk, come on, she’s amazing—recently with this new visual, virtual reality thing that she’s really pushing through, and this kind of environmentalism that she’s incorporating into her work, that really inspired me. It blew me away. 

So I was researching, like, who is doing this insane makeup. And I found on Instagram @ishehungry, this German artist. I’m a firm believer that imitation is the highest form of flattery. To learn anything, you really have to. Trying to be original off the bat is so difficult. If it’s not something you’re proudly releasing to the world as your own, I feel like it’s okay to copy, and to try to do it. I adapted some of my looks from Hungry’s looks, and I really experimented with that. I realized I was more extra terrestrial, kind of out there, on a lighter note. Phantasia’s mostly about that: experimenting with colors and lights, and just having fun.

Macabre: they’re the things that are slightly more unsettling, discomforting, almost even grotesque. In my new work, too, the barrier between reality and unreality is lessened. I’ve always been interested in the horror genre, horror films, especially the 70’s Italian Giallo films, like Suspiria and Dario Argento’s other films. Those very campy, slightly creepy things I’ve always been obsessed with. So Macabre, I wanted something that’s not too campy, something that’s not too overt or direct. I didn’t want to be too obvious. One of the series, the ones in German, these are the ones that came almost out of a mental breakdown. Most of the work, especially in the Macabre series, are not from a great time in my life—I was missing Columbia, missing my friends. I was more upset by the fact that when I would come back after my service all of my friends would have graduated because I left sophomore year and it’s a 2-year service. 

I got this lace front wig online. I played with it for a long time—it was blonde, it was Cali, valley girl blonde, it basically became so fried that I couldn’t really make it look good on its own. Because it was a cheap lace front, right, synthetic, not like human hair. I was thinking, “How can I dye it to a darker color and stick it so it doesn’t wash away immediately?” I used sumi ink and poured it in a basin, dunked the wig overnight, let it dry, did shampoo and conditioner, and it turned out this beautiful, ashy gray color. That basically set the tone for my project. I went down to my studio, sewed in some black extensions as well to give it some length, some volume, a little wild something. 

So I had that wig on. I basically just got my dirty brushes, I don’t think I even used any actual products, I just rubbed dirty brushes all over my face and eyes. I got that dirty, grungy, lived-in, almost a mask-like look. I had taken like 700 photos for 4 photos that I uploaded. But that was basically the way I could deal with the life I was living, doing something so creative, and engaging with and exploring my creative side. I was very suppressed when I was working in the emergency medical field. I didn’t want to let go of the momentum I had when I was in my sophomore year, when I picked up photography and did a lot of my makeup work, like individual studio sessions and photoshoots with Columbia students as models, and Kevin Chiu, the infamous Kevin Chiu, the amazing Kevin Chiu, class of 2017, who would take the photographs, and my best friend, Kosta Karakashyan, class of 2019, he was a stylist. Us three, we’d book the Wallach lounge from like 7 am to noon and have students as models, and we would make beautiful photos, and I would experiment and really practice mastering my makeup skills. 

The Macabre, it is my favorite category of the three—well, I’d be lying if I said it all came from a dark, depressing place. A lot of these works are just exploring my old love for the horror genre, you know, the monsters, the creature features, the supernatural kind of shit. One of my favorites, Markos, was from before I had a proper DSLR, I only had my iPhone 7 in Portrait Mode. I had a studio setup, but I was mostly doing iPhone photography, and film occasionally. This one was when I got some black body paint and some acrylic sticker nails, you know, the ones they sell in Duane Reade, and I stacked them—three, because I couldn’t find the super long ones—and it kind of looks like an insect, more offsetting. I had two sets of contact lenses on one eye to intensify the color, so I got that milky but also really intense light look, because I have really dark eyes. This red, magenta, blue lighting, it’s directly stolen from the original Suspiria film by Dario Argento. 

I was definitely curious about the process of photographing these pieces. To me, I imagined it must be kind of like documenting a sculpture--trying to find an angle that successfully flattens this dynamic piece into this more stagnant, permanent form; also maintaining that plasticity while creating this new product, the photo, which exists as its own piece separate from the body in life. 

I say that I’m a photographer as well, but really I just stick to my guns. If I’m doing photographic work or shooting for my own purposes, I usually stick to 35 mm film, 50 mm lens, and my Nikon FE camera. The camera that I used for these is actually my sister’s. My sister lent me her camera for the photoshoots in my studio back home. I had no idea. I’m a luddite at heart, I’m so overwhelmed by all these buttons and options and settings. Luckily, I was able to get to know the basics—how to turn it on, how to use a remote control, and to play with the settings until I find something that works. Then I got an Adobe Cloud subscription for Lightroom and Photoshop. Photographing has always been a struggle, especially with digitals. I would take like 800 or 900 photos of one look, and it would take hours and hours. For each frame I would take the shot, scurry back to the camera, look, and then reference it—you know, I’m a little bit too close to the edge of the frame, or I should turn, orm that’s not a flattering angle. Also, I’m blind without my glasses, and in none of the work am I wearing glasses. 

I actually think of it as kind of taking a photograph of a sculpture. The actual work is a sculpture itself but you’re just seeing a representation, a portrayal. But with sculpture you can have it moved, taken around, exhibited. Makeup is such a temporal medium. If I take it off, or if it smudges a little, it’s completely different. So the photograph automatically has such a huge importance to me. They have to be right. The photographs, the makeup, the styling, they all have equal importance to me because if one fails, then all of it crumbles. 

Could you talk a bit more about stylistic decisions you make when photographing, such as the extra-media elements added that might not be in the body’s immediate space—for example, the smoke shrouding the figure in “Typhoon Soulik,” or the yarn in “Lavinia”?

“Lavinia” is based on the Shakespeare play “Titus Andronicus”, which was a book I read at Columbia. I took a course called “Tragic Bodies,” it was a Barnard course, my first ever college class, and it was amazing. We were talking about the physical body, and the demise of the body, the hero’s demise in terms of the physical body, and other bodies—queer bodies, trans bodies, sick bodies. With that foundation, and working in a field where you are hands on with the physical body, I feel like it was just a natural progression that I would have an obsession with the physical form. “Lavinia” was during my peak experimental phase, with makeup and everything. I got those really black contact lenses, I was really feeling myself. I was still very inspired by Hungry’s Björk look and her personal work as well, but I wanted to do something a bit different, and I wanted to utilize some props I had lying around my house. 

So the yarn, they are tiny little ropes. I had them lying around for about a month, and I was in my studio and I wanted to do something, so I decided I was gonna cut these up and glue them on my mouth. It was some strong glue that took me hours to delicately rip out. I would get pleasantly drunk in my studio, because it’s my studio, and I could just do whatever I want. So that look actually came from that specific prop. Because often, you know a certain makeup inspires the look, or a certain eye look, or a mouth, a wig, something. A lot of my works come from a beginning point. So I looked at it, I decided I wanted it on my mouth: it kinda looks like blood, and in a theater, in a play, when you can’t have spraying blood they use red fabric or yarn to flow around, so it’s like a fluid, red motion. The eye look was completely separate. I had the wig on. And it was just the shirt that I was wearing, but that whole mouth piece really solidified my intention. I immediately thought of Lavinia, who is the daughter of the general Titus—she was assaulted and dismembered by the two sons of Titus’ enemy. 

With “Typhoon Soulik,” that one’s a little on the nose because around two years ago, East Asia had a really bad typhoon. This was shot the night before it was supposed to hit Korea. It was rainy, it was a very depressing day. I wanted something to fit the general mood of the entire East Asian side of the continent. I’m obsessed with storms, there’s something so primordial and raw about them, a break from manmade society. So I went down to my studio on that rainy night, probably 1 am, put some blue cellophane on my studio lights, and created this bluey, emerald eye. Just playing around, using the stuff I had out from my kit. Then I decided to get a spray bottle and wet myself, you know, because it’s the storm. I underestimated how much water I needed, so I ended up basically pouring the whole thing on my head. And this is just me being playful, experimenting, but I wanted something a little more misty, something of the elements. I was like, that’s basically vape! So I just *mimes vaping* and clicked. That took, like, I don’t know how many shots to get one good photo. But it’s also me trying to go along with the mood, to be inspired and go with the flow. But yeah, having fun. That’s my motto. Living life through the prism of pleasure.

With the idea of fun, I noticed you had a statement on your website about taking the work at “face value,” and you talked about working mostly with people you know, people you’re close to. I guess this applies to working with yourself too, but do you think that there’s something that layer of intimacy and familiarity adds to your work and the process? 

Yeah, like I said, all of the things I do are personal. That’s why I don’t really like street photography or taking random photos of people. Because, a) I have really bad social anxiety in uncomfortable or awkward situations, like sometimes I can’t even order my own shit from McDonald’s, I have to have a friend do it for me because it’s so bad. People think otherwise, because I’m loud and boisterous, but outside in the streets, I can’t fucking do that. Also, unless I get their permission and consent to photograph them, when you’re on the go you have to ask permission later. But I can’t do that, because ethically it’s just kind of off. You end up with a very uncomfortable situation, so I don’t like that. All of the models and the subjects are all my friends. It’s also an event, it’s not just the art form or the practice itself. You know, I’m hanging out with my friends, and I want to document this great time. It doesn’t have to be amazing magazine-style portraits or spreads, it can just be them, you know, squinting their eyes at the camera, or hugging each other. 

It doesn’t have to be so serious all the time. It helps if you’re familiar and have an intimate relationship with the subjects, that’s when that kind of true happiness emerges. That’s why I say always take it at face value, don’t think too deep. That’s my thing with art: just fucking enjoy it. Look at it, and if it sparks joy, then it sparks joy, if it doesn’t, just move on. Especially because I’m now taking a lot more art classes, things get highly academic when you’re talking about art. The context—the social, cultural, political context—behind your art can become so convoluted and complex that it becomes inaccessible, I think.

So, you mentioned this a little bit, but I wanted to ask about your upcoming project. Specifically, you said it was based on both Suspiria movies, and then the original prose piece they are based on. I was wondering for you as an artist, what that process of translation is like? So, getting something that was once text, and then lived through bodies in one film, and then another film, and where do you plan to go with that? Where do you see yourself in this lineage of translation, and how does that inform your work?

The thing with Suspiria is that it’s an unhealthy obsession. I was a huge fan of the 1977 film because it’s a cult classic, any horror buff will be like, “Oh yeah, Suspiria, classic!” But as a horror film, it’s not that “horror,” it’s very campy. The visuals are stunning, and that’s where they take the gold prize. But it was always kind of lacking in the story telling and plot to me. I was always curious, why call it Suspiria, because they never mention the word suspiria—it’s a movie about witches but what the hell does that mean? Later I found out there’s a source material, it’s actually not about witches and the director adapted that material into this universe of witches. But that was never really expanded in his later work. And then in 2018 or something, I learned that Luca Guadagnino, one of my favorite directors, was directing the remake. I kid you not, I almost shit my pants. Two of my babies, Suspiria and Luca Guadagnino, were being involved. And then I realized Tilda Swinton is in it, who’s like my mother. She’s an artist I love, and adore, and admire. 

I saw the trailer when it came out and my mind was fucking blown, because it’s so different from the original. When I watched the new one, I was obsessed. The remake is about a coven of witches in a dance company, it’s modern dance, and it’s choreographed by Damien Jalet, who’s an amazing choreographer that I’ve been obsessed with lately as well. So much intention is in the body, and the spells, and the structural hierarchy of the witches, which I could relate to, having worked in that kind of Korean environment. So that seed was planted in my head the moment I knew about the first film, and I did a lot more research about the original source material, the original storyline. 

So, I read the source material, and I didn’t realize how rich it was. Thomas de Quincey writes about how, as there are three muses, three inspirations, there are three ladies of sorrow. So there are three mothers, Mother Suspiriorum, Mother Tenebraum, and Mother Lachrymarum, mother of size, darkness, and tears. The prose goes on to explain in detail about each of these mother figures—their domain, what kind of sorrow they bring, what kind of chaos and havoc they bring as well. That fit so much with my vibe, my direction, I could really explore the depths of sorrow. When I started to work on this project, it was an insanely emotional, chaotic, stressful time. I needed this. Because the cinematic universe of Suspiria had such an important place in my heart, I didn’t want to half ass this. That’s why it’s still an ongoing project, I’m constantly introducing—not just with makeup and photography, but now with modern dance inspired by the choreography in the remake.

tess majors

Tess Majors was a Ratrock featured artist for the month of December 2019. We are all grateful to have helped document her passion for music and thoughts as an artist. It was truly a privilege to feature Tess and her work, and we hope that this interview serves as a meaningful testament to her art and her spirit.

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Interview by Yao Lin

Photographs by Gillian Rae Cohen

Tessa Majors is a grunge-rock musician from Charlottesville, Virginia.

Introduce yourself.

My name is Tessa Majors. I usually go by Tess, though. I am a first-year at Barnard, and I’m from Charlottesville, Virginia. 

Did you grow up in the big city, or did you grow up in a more rural area of the town?

I grew up in more of a suburban area than an urban one. I spent most of my time in a town right outside of Charlottesville—about 20, 30 minutes away, called Waynesboro. It was kinda in between suburban and rural, like a small town. And then I moved to Charlottesville at the start of high school, and that was a bit more urban. But it was still nothing in comparison to the scale of New York City.

Tell me a little about [your band], Patient 0. Why the name Patient 0?

I honestly don’t have a lot of significance behind the name. We mostly just thought it sounded cool. Patient 0 is like, when someone is the first person to get a certain disease in an area. So I guess we’re like the Patient 0 for our music, and then it spreads out from us. I thought it kinda went with our edgy, punk music image.

How did the band come together?

I went to a new school in seventh grade, and one of the first people I met there was a girl named Hannah Fowler. She had just started playing guitar when I met her. I was already a musician—I played the piano at the time—and we started doing music together. The two of us worked together on music stuff for like, years, starting in seventh all the way through the end of high school. So Patient 0 is basically our project. We had a couple different drummers play for us. It was what we arrived at, after we played for a ton of different bands together. That was like the final resting place for us.

How would you describe the friendship between you and Hannah?

Our musical relationship has always been good. Our friendship’s kind of up and down, but I feel like—I mean, the past year has been pretty good. But I feel like the ups-and-downs of our friendship are pretty typical of musicians who work together. If you hear about, I don’t know, famous duos—they always have their arguments and they don’t always get along. I think that’s pretty normal. But we’ve always written together, and played together, even when we weren’t getting along super well in our friendship. And she’s still one of my best friends, to this day. She’s going to Smith College now. And we have a show planned for our winter break—but I’m not sure what the future of the band is, since we’re going to different schools.

Describe your writing process in terms of musical scores and lyrics. Are they simultaneous? Or do you produce the lyrics first, then the music to accompany it?

That’s a good question. My music writing process doesn’t happen in any particular order. It’s kinda just what comes to me first. Sometimes I’ll get an idea for a score progression and melody line—so I’ll roll with that, and come up with lyrics later. Or on the flip side, I’ll come up with some lyrics, and then I’ll come up with something to accompany those lyrics later. Sometimes I will have lyrics and music, and I realize they actually go together, so I combine them—like two separate entities. Hannah and I, for our album, wrote probably five out of nine songs together. Two of the rest were mine, and two of them were hers, so it was an even split in terms of writing. But I also have a lot of songs that are mine that haven’t been recorded yet, or put out anywhere.

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What is your favorite song you have ever written, and what is the story behind it?

My favorite song I have ever written is “Prom Queen,” which is on our album Girl Problems. It’s the last song on the album, and it’s been the most popular one recently—it’s been doing pretty well on Spotify. That song was really personal to me, and almost hard to put out because I wrote it about one of my friends.  I had to get this one person’s consent before I recorded it and put it out, because it was a personal song about this individual. It’s kinda just about—you get this idea of someone in your head, and you kinda idolize them and build them up to a certain thing. And you realize at the end of the day they’re just a person. And the song starts out—or the first line is, ‘Remember the night she rose from the sea.’ And that’s me painting this person as an Aphrodite-like figure, coming out of the sea. It’s just my realization that I’ve built up this whole narrative in my head of what I think is going on, and this person doesn’t feel the same way about me at all. It’s me coming to that realization, and [being] really crushed by it. I guess it makes it more complicated that it was one of my female friends, who I realized I had feelings for. I kinda had to grapple with that, and grapple with what exactly that meant for my identity, you know? It was a whole mess. But luckily I’m still really good friends with the person, and we got our stuff sorted out. She actually likes the song, so it didn’t end up being a big deal at the end of the day. But that was definitely my way of dealing with the situation and processing it, so I understood it a little bit better.

So you mentioned the idealized view of your friend in “Prom Queen,” and you also mentioned stereotypes—the simplified ideals people hold for others. What were the stereotypes when you were growing up in Charlottesville, and do you feel like you are a departure from them? 

Luckily, Charlottesville is a pretty diverse community—I definitely struggled less when I moved there, because I found lots of people who were like me. The music scene is really great and really welcoming. But I will say the main stereotype that I depart from—the stereotypes for all women, particularly so in the South—is that you have to be nice, and be complacent, because you don’t want to start any conflicts. And that was never my personality. I would get into a lot of verbal arguments in high school with people, because they would say things that I didn’t agree with, or that I felt demeaned by. Instead of just sitting there and taking it, I would say something about it. And that wasn’t always received super well, and I guess that was the way I was a bit different from other people. And I am sure that other girls wanted to do the same thing—I’m not blaming them or faulting them for not standing up for themselves. But we’ve just been so conditioned as women to behave a certain way, that it’s really hard to do that.

That reminds me of the Riot Grrrl scene of the 90s. Back then, punk rock was a very misogynistic industry. The male bands were using very misogynistic names—but on the other hand, there were a bunch of female bands coming out and writing these rebellious songs. Do you feel that there is still misogyny in today’s music scene? 

I think there’s definitely still misogyny within the scene. I find that to be the case sometimes when I’m trying to get my music out there, and I feel like people don’t want to hear me as much because I am a woman. But luckily I think that that’s changing. I think the trend overall is changing, because there are so many incredible women in the rock genre right now. And not just the rock genre! There are so many women in hip hop right now as well, which is traditionally a male-dominated genre. So the fact that there is a female presence in these historically male-dominated fields—it gives me hope for the future.

How did you discover punk rock, and how has punk rock influenced you?

I grew up with punk rock. My parents both put me onto a lot of older music. I remember my dad playing 90s bands, like Pixies, when I was younger. And my mom played me Hole and Nirvana. So a lot of it was my parents’ music taste, for sure. And it’s definitely influenced me in pretty much every aspect of my life. Once I started listening to all of these amazing female punk rock singers—like Joan Jett, or Courtney Love, or more modern people like Courtney Barnett—I realized that I didn’t have to sit there and take anything from anyone. I had a voice and I had power and autonomy. I think it’s definitely changed the way I carry myself; music overall gave me a lot of confidence.

Do you think the writing process, for you, is a process of figuring yourself out?

For sure! Every song I write usually starts out as an unresolved question I have—something that’s lingering in my mind, that’s bothering me, usually. And these songs become a way for me to answer those questions. I gave the example of “Prom Queen” earlier, but another one is my song “Not the First One,” which is on the album. I wrote it after I got out of a brief romantic fling with someone, and they kinda thought they could walk all over me. I had this question in my head like, “What made this person think that they could do that?” And the whole premise is that, “You’re not special, you’re not the first one to walk all over me, and so go fuck off!” Essentially.

So you mentioned earlier that you’ve been on gigs with Hannah, or with your band. How does it feel to have connections with your audience through music? 

See, I love Charlottesville—and I love the spaces that they have for musicians to perform. I wish there were more, but the ones that they have are pretty good. I got to gig a lot when I was in high school, and I played shows pretty frequently. My friends would show up to them in pretty big numbers, just to have a great time and dance. It was so fun to see people connecting with my music, and it’s just a very powerful experience to see that other people relate to what you’re saying. Towards the end, people actually started knowing the words to songs, and singing along, which is also really fun. It was the same friends who came to see me for three years—so they know my songs by heart, which I think is really special. 

Have you ever played any covers at your gigs?

Yeah! That’s how I started out gigging, I only did covers. I played in a lot of bands in middle school that were just cover bands. We would cover Led Zeppelin, Nirvana, Foo Fighters—all that classic stuff. And gradually, we were just kinda incorporating more and more original music into the set. By the time I was a sophomore in high school, it was half covers and half originals. And by the time I made it to the end of senior year, it was all originals. 

What’s your favorite instrument?

My favorite instrument to play is for sure the bass. I play piano, guitar, and bass—but bass is my favorite because I like how it’s at the intersection between melody and rhythm. This makes it really fun, because bass drives songs a lot of times. When you want to dance, it’s usually the bass that makes you want to dance. I also really like being a bassist because there aren’t too many people who are bassists and singers, so that makes me kinda unique in terms of bands—because it’s just not as common as being a guitarist and a singer. 

How would you describe your particular bass sound?

I would say I definitely base my bass sound off a lot of 90s bands, like the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and definitely Sonic Youth. But I also like a lot of the modern R&B bass lines. Recently I learned the bass line of “Pink + White” by Frank Ocean, and that’s so fun to play. I think R&B has a very special way of articulating the bass, and it’s just—I connect to that.

Where do you see yourself in five years as a musician?

I hope that I’m touring. Music is what I love and what I’m passionate about, so I really want to do something with it. So ideally, in five years, I would have a steady band, and be in the studio and touring—making a career out of music. It’s hard to do, but I think I can do it.

What about ten years? Still touring?

That is an interesting question, because I actually want to get into some of the audio engineering business. I think after a while—I mean, great music is great music, but there’s something to be said for being young and more marketable. It would be nice to have a plan that’s more long-term, because you can’t tour forever. It’s tiring, it’s exhausting. So I would ideally get involved with producing somehow—mixing, mastering, all that happens in the studio. That will be really helpful for my own music too, because then I wouldn’t have to pay someone else to do it. I could just do it myself. I was actually going to try to learn how to do that at CU Records sometime this semester, because they have classes that teach you how to use the software. 

What about your parents? You mentioned earlier that they are strong influences.

My parents are incredibly supportive, and I’m so grateful for them. I’m pretty sure that they’re cool with me doing whatever I want, as long as I’m happy. And they know that music is what makes me happy. My dad is actually a writer, so he knows what it’s like being in the arts field and trying to make a career out of what you love. So I think that he’s supportive, but at the same time he’s also like, “Be aware, it’s a hard field to go into.” He wants to be supportive, but he also wants to warn me of how difficult it can be. My parents are great. I have a younger brother who is also great.

What is your favorite band?

That’s a really hard question. I have a couple. But none of them are bands, they’re all solo performers. I will say my three favorite artists are Courtney Barnett, David Bowie, and Frank Ocean. Which is kind of an eclectic mix—but I think that David Bowie definitely influenced Frank Ocean, and, I mean, everyone. He’s incredibly iconic. In terms of fashion sense too, I really love David Bowie. One thing I’ve been trying to do in my shows is to always have a really fun outfit— and I think that is definitely because I grew up listening to and watching David Bowie. It’s not just about the music, it’s about the overall image.

Bowie has gone through a series of changes throughout his career. His music is a reflection of his life, and I can definitely see that in you too. Do you see yourself switching from punk rock to another genre in the future?

For sure! I never want to limit myself in terms of genre. And in terms of listening, I listen to everything. My music taste is really expansive, so if I feel compelled to make music that is in a different genre, I’ll just go with it. But I think that what my music is always going to be—even if not stylistically punk—it’ll be influenced by the punk attitude and the punk spirit.

How would you describe the punk attitude and the punk spirit? 

Don’t let other people’s opinions of you influence your opinions of yourself. Dress and act in a way that makes you feel good about yourself, even if it’s outside of the societal norm. Don’t blindly trust authority figures. Always ask [hard] questions, no matter what—even to people you love, you should ask questions. I think questioning is a big part of the punk mentality—not just accepting stuff but thinking deeply about it, which is so often overlooked because punk is so simplistic. But when you think about it, [punk] can be really intellectual in that way, because it’s constantly asking the big questions about what’s important. And I will say, in terms of advocacy—and I think that’s also an important part of the punk movement—I really care a lot about the environment. I feel like my music has gotten increasingly anti-consumerist. Music, it’s about your emotions, but it can also be used to spread a message. And the message I want to spread is that something has to change about the system that we’re in right now. It’s just not sustainable.

Are you involved in any other social movements? Do those also influence you?

I’m involved with some environmental advocacy groups, and I’m signed up for a bunch of social justice related email lists. I’m just trying to stay updated by watching the news and stuff like that. And I think it’s so important to be informed.

How would you describe your music?

My music is a pretty true depiction of teenage life, because it’s an equal mix of sincere emotions and sarcasm and snarkiness—which I think is pretty typical of the teenage mentality, because you kind of switch between being super mad, super sad, super happy. Feeling these strong emotions, to just being super disenchanted by everything, like, “Nah, this is stupid.” It’s a contradiction, but it’s a contradiction a lot of people live with, especially teenagers.

Is there anything else that you want to add?

I guess it makes sense to talk about what I’ve been doing since I got up here. I played one show for Snock at Columbia, which hosts shows—all student bands, pretty much. I had a friend of mine, J.C., playing guitar for me. He goes to Columbia. And I had my friend Chris, who goes to NYU, playing drums. And we did some of my new songs, and that was fun. I’ve written like three or four songs since I’ve come up here. So for the future, I’m just trying to get a steady group up here. I think that will be really helpful because I want to start playing shows again. Over winter break, I’m going to try to go home and record an EP. I’m not sure if that’s gonna be by myself, with Patient 0, or with another group—but I have a lot of songs of mine that are written and just haven’t been recorded yet, so I want to get those out. I feel like there is this need as a musician to be constantly producing new content—which can be really hard. But if you want to keep your band and your audience engaged, you have to put new stuff out there.

What’s a favorite song of yours?

I want to shout out my friend Chris Murphy, because he played drums for me for my Snock show, and he’s been one of my long-time inspirations, competitors, collaborators. We went to school together in Charlottesville. He goes to NYU. He has an album out that’s really great, and I’ll shout out his song called “Can’t Fight.” He wrote it when he was gonna be opening for me for a show, and he realized none of his songs were punk rock enough. He wrote it specifically for the show—which I think it’s just hilarious, and demonstrates how we push each other as musicians. 

You mentioned new songs. What are those about?

My new songs, they’ve kinda been tackling similar [issues] as my old songs. Relationships, and just general emotions about the world. But I feel like my lyricism has gotten more nuanced. Like, I’m getting much better at saying exactly what I want to say, because that has been a problem for me in the past—deciding what exactly I want to say. So I think I’ve gotten better at doing that.

Interesting! So you think that it’s a growing process to be constantly producing music. The more you do it, the more mature you become.

For sure. 

Any parting words for our readers?

High school sucks. Don’t judge the rest of your life based off how high school is. And—listen to my album! [laughs]

aaron jackson

In conversation with Isabella Rafky

Photographed by Annie Millman

Tell me a little bit about yourself. 

Okay, so I’m Aaron, I’m a sophomore in Columbia College. I do digital art. I’m from Harlem, but I’m also not really from Harlem; I migrated in 2014 from the Caribbean. So I formerly lived on an island called St. Kitts. From there to Harlem and now here, still in Harlem. And yeah, I don’t know what I have to say about myself. 

What inspired you to create digital art?

Like my initial inspiration—I feel like that’s digital artists, self-trained digital artists. A lot of them were inspired by anime initially, which is also a category I fall into. That whole late 2000’s subculture of DeviantArt, Tumblr, OCs and shit, fanfiction, that was me. Through drawing I got involved in the artistic community, when I was eleven, online, and just drawing shit. First it was on paper, and then I would see people doing digital art I was like, “Oh how do you do that?” And I got pirated software to do it, but I also did not have a drawing tablet at the time. I would make all this shit purely by mouse, which is difficult and looked bad, but y’know I couldn’t afford a drawing tablet, I’m sorry. [laughs] Once I got into different drawing communities like Tumblr I was like, “Oh these are people who do this as a job, these people have gone to art school and shit. They’re not just drawing their anime graphics or whatever.” I was like, “Oh, I wanna be like them, I wanna draw, actually draw shit.” And so that’s when I think I tried to make the break from just drawing anime to getting my own unique style and actually putting artistic, creative effort into it, so just illustrating if that makes any sense. At that point, I got a drawing tablet to actually practice and do shit with all the software. So yeah, and I don’t think there have been any changes since then, so that’s pretty much been my artistic journey of sorts.

What makes your style unique?

I don’t really know; I mean going based off of what people have told me I guess colors maybe? People seem to like the colors, so I’m gonna say the colors. My style is really developing; like I said before, I was just drawing anime and I was like—hmm, I need to break away from doing this. It wasn’t really successful because people still look at my shit and are like, “Oh, this is very anime influenced,”—at one point it used to annoy me, I’d be like, “Please don’t say that.” You know what, it’s true, that’s the reason I started drawing in the first place, if it’s anime-influenced then who cares? It is. So, final rundown I guess, tldr, colors, and kinda anime-inspired, yeah.  

In terms of your pastel palette, what draws you to those colors? Would you ever think about expanding past that? 

I just like what they look like. I just feel they work together. I’m trying to think of when I started using them and why I started using them. I mean at one point during my whole Tumblr phase I was obsessed with pastels. When I would draw people would be like, “oh they use pastels,” or whatever the fuck. It’s just that I think they’re really neat. I like them. I remember at one point they [my colors] were very saturated and borderline neon. So I took a break from digital art to do some traditional shit. I actually had to put effort into making colors pigmented which affected my color palette and how I went about using it. If you want neon or saturated watercolors you have to be there layering shit for a while. So me being lazy, I’m just not gonna do that. I definitely feel after doing that I’ve been impressed by the colors I wanted to put down in my work and how they work together.

How long have you been doing it for and how have you seen it change over the years?

Okay, so drawing drawing, just on paper—I’ve liked drawing since Kindergarten, doodling. But when I got to high school in St. Kitts, which is equivalent to seventh grade, sixth grade here, I was already drawing, and my shit was not ugly, but it also was not artistically good in any way or form or shape. So I would just create these cute doodles and I thought I was doing something [laughs]. And then I showed it to one of my friends and they were like, “Oh this is cute, when you get better show me something.” What do you mean when I get better [laughs]! I was like, “How could I get better than this?” [laughs] So, I was like okay, at this time I'm gonna actually start taking it seriously and stop making little doodles and learn anatomy and shit, color theory, which I still don’t know [laughs], but I am gonna attempt to know. From there, I was, what? Eleven, twelve? I was like, okay, I’m going to actually take this shit seriously now, learn and grow. I mean all this shit evolved from, again, seeing artists I really admire. Like hmm—I want to just secretly steal this component of your style [laughs] and incorporate it into mine. Hope no one notices, so yeah.

All art is just borrowing style. 

It is!

Do you have any artists that you specifically look up to or you take inspiration from?

Okay, I’m gonna sound really stupid cause I’m just gonna say various Instagram names and Tumblr names. First, this artist I really really really like is @mookie000 on Tumblr. Do you know—okay, I’m not sure how knowledgeable about anime you are. Do you like Haikyuu!!?

I don’t know, I am not super knowledgeable personally. 

Okay, so there was a really popular sports anime called, I still don’t know how to pronounce it— “hike-you”—and they [fans] would draw this really good fanart of it. I was like, the colors are amazing and the anatomy is amazing, this shit looks very pretty. I’m trying to base everything I do after you. Then, eventually I was like—I don’t want to do this anymore. That was on Tumblr, and I was like hmm… I’m tired of digital, so I took a break and just did traditional for a year, got a bunch of watercolors and copic markers—not even copic because I couldn’t afford them. I used the cheap AliExpress shit. I got those one dollar markers from AliExpress, but y’know what– they worked [laughs]. By the time I started to do digital again it was also on Instagram. Looking at that community there, there’s a really good artist called @jellyflavor. They probably had the most impact on me. It’s also crazy, she’s just a year older than me and her stuff is amazing. I’m just like, how? [laughs]

How would you put your work in context with fanart?

So, a lot of the stuff I got inspired by was fanart, like @jellyflavor. They make original pieces, as well as fanart. @mookie000 was primarily fanart. I was also not interested in making fanart myself—I don’t know, I was just interested in drawing my own shit. The thing was, if you wanted to get popular, or in these artistic circles, or get notes on Tumblr whatever, you would draw fanart. That’s the shit that people search for. They aren’t only searching for original illustrations, they are searching for art of the characters they like. Yeah, it’s been a thing. I don’t know, I have just never been into actually drawing fanart, even though a lot of the artists I like, that’s what they do. I draw it here and there, but I don’t think I have ever been attached enough to a form of media that I would make fanart of it consistently. I mean not to say I haven’t done it, but it certainly has not been consistent in any way. All the times I’ve done it I was just trying to get people to reblog my art. 

Do you have a favorite subject (person, thing, etc.) to portray?

I mean, in terms of subjects, I think I just like drawing black people and portraying them really softly. I haven’t even figured out for myself if it’s possible to display a black person non-politically because to exist as a black person is to be a political being and exist politically. In a lot of the art I see drawn by non-black people that draw black people, there’s always I feel an agenda for what they’re trying to say about themselves for including this black person in their illustrations. That’s just also very tiring for me. So that’s also why. I also just like drawing black people and darker skin tones. I just think it’s neat. Yeah, there’s not any major reason. I’m just saying I’m black and I like black people, so why wouldn’t I want to draw black people. 

Where is your favorite place to create art (on or off campus)?

I mean anywhere to an extent. Being in Columbia I don’t really have time to draw in my free time. I joined some organizations on campus that I have to illustrate for. If it feels mandated, or that I have to do it or else—I don’t think they’d kick me out and I don’t think somebody would hate me, but I don’t know, they’d dislike me extremely—then ok, I have to get it done. So it’s kinda up on par with my homework. I have to do my calculus homework but I also have to do this. I'm not just drawing for the sake of drawing, I’m drawing as an extracurricular. To put out my resume. To build my portfolio. So at that point I just started drawing anywhere. But it’s also not really anywhere. Because again, I’m doing this shit on a computer. If this shit breaks I can’t get another one. So I’m pretty choosy where I bring my supplies—libraries, anywhere there’s a very clean, hard surface that I can put my computer down on and draw on. When it’s not a part of any organization on campus I just draw in my dorm. Pretty exclusively.

What organizations on campus are you involved in?

Oh I’m in Spec, the Blue and White magazine, and Rare Candy—It’s the music magazine, the DIY music magazine on campus— it’s really cool. I haven’t illustrated anything for them yet but we’re working on it. 

How do you decide what is a gif and what is not? What is the process to make an image move and turn into a gif?

A lot of it is preemptive. Because I feel a lot of the things don’t work in gif form. If I make it a fully rendered piece I don’t have any intention to make it a gif. I think if you’re playing a video game, but the art style is fully rendered complete paintings—personally I feel that’s real jarring. So usually I do a simplified style [for gifs]. Not fully rendered. And you know like, make some shit move! Again, a lot of it is preemptive and i’m more interested in adding shit to add it. Just illustrating visuals over anything. If you look at any of my gifs and you’re like, “oh this is interesting, what is it about,” I could not tell you because it’s just I made it to make it. It’s very much style over substance. I have no political, deep, extra spiritual reason, I just thought it would look cool. It’s preemptive. I’m like, “I’m gonna make the edges hard, or use these colors, or make this shit fold or whatever. And you know it’ll look cute, don’t ask me about it.” And that’s it. If I’m gonna fully render something then there you go. People don’t give visuals enough credit. Because that shit makes you feel something. You look at something visually and you don’t understand what it means, but you notice the way this person is looking or that accessory they have in their hair that’s glistening—I don’t fucking know, it’s like all this shit looks cool and I think it looks cool or sad or whatever the fuck. I think that’s so underestimated, not given enough credit. Because again, I think that’s maybe me being a being a Libra, being ruled by Venus, but I think just give the source the credit that they’re due. A lot of the shit I grew up with and get inspiration from, I just have no idea what the fuck it means but it sounds or looks very cool, so I’m going try to immitate that. Imitate that feeling that I got from a visual. It could also be a Tumblr person. Random pictures can just show up on your dashboard, and I have no idea what the fuck meaning it has or the context of this, but I think it looks pretty cool. And so that’s pretty much my philosophy for drawing.

If your work had a thesis, what would it be? 

I just like drawing cute shit. Just cute and cool. Those are the only two things I focus on. That’s it. If the thing I draw is cool, and/or cute, then I’ve accomplished something. 

Do you have any plugs?

I’m pretty proud of my Tumblr account but that shit will never be leaked to be public! [laughs] But I still use it. My art Instagram is @54aaron and my personal Instagram is @holoangels.

marisa murillo

In conversation with Lorenzo Barajas

Photographed by Lola Lafia

Could you tell me a little bit about yourself?

I’m Mari, or Marisa. I am a junior in SEAS studying mechanical engineering. This past year I served as publicity director for WKCR-FM New York, and co-captain of Columbia Women’s Water Polo. I’m also involved in Columbia BlueShift, which is our undergraduate astrophysics society. I am a member of the Barnard Clay Collective, and I’m a tour guide with the Undergraduate Recruitment Committee. I’m a proud Mexican-American from Houston, Texas—and I am super excited to be a featured artist!

Could you describe your work’s aesthetic in five words?

I thought about this a little bit. I think it’s kinda hard to do, but I guess I can narrow it down to five words. And that would be noisy, vibrant, dynamic, coalescent, and playful.

Sick! So going back to your background in STEM—as a mechanical engineering student and an astrophysics researcher—how did you find art? How did your relationship with art begin?

I always kid of liked doing things with my hands. Being creative, things like that. One of my earliest memories of being super excited about something I made was when I was designing and making jewelry with my mom. I made this necklace when I was five, and I still wear it sometimes—I just love it so much. And I always sort of liked working with my hands and thinking, what if. And then trying to see if I could do it. At the same time, I was always really fascinated by science. In school, I just had this burning, undying curiosity. My very first science teacher, Ms. Kiley, told me that we’re all scientists— because we all ask questions. And I thought, well, I can’t stop asking questions. I guess that makes me a great scientist! I think now I’m really fascinated by the intersection of science and art, which I sort of see in engineering. I am really interested in finding creative solutions—to build the tools we need to answer all of these questions that we have. And that’s something that I’m super excited to be able to do in my research right now.

Yeah, I think a lot of people do sort of claim that there is an art to science. Do you think that there’s a reverse? Do you see a science in art form?

I would say yes, definitely. So speaking about the first relationship, the art that is in science—I do see that every day when I’m choosing how to visualize my data in a way that is aesthetically pleasing, but at the same time, communicates the results that I want people to understand from my work. And, you know, there’s an art in the technical, hands-on part of research. Whether that’s putting together the hardware assemblies, or pipetting, or whatever it is you’re doing that’s technical with your hands in your research. 

At the same time, I think in engineering especially, I tend to associate the most elegant solution with simplicity. And I think that’s something that’s completely opposite from my art. I think minimalism in engineering is something that I value, but it’s something that I don’t necessarily see in my art. So in the reverse, with the science in art, I see it especially in two media that I use—I see it in ceramics and I see it in textile arts. In ceramics, especially when I’m working on the wheel, I’m sort of thinking about forces on a rotating object. I’m thinking about cross-sections of a rotated solid, just like [what] I think about in calculus. When I’m hand-building, I’m thinking about structural integrity and support, and whether what I’m doing is able to hold its own weight.  I was recently talking with my friend Rachel, who’s a professional fiber artist, about the similarities between computer programming and fiber arts— especially knitting. I taught myself to knit when I was seven years old, and ever since I’ve been able to use different knitting techniques to do things other than just a straight knit stitch. I’ve been writing patterns—cable patterns and fair isle patterns and other things like that. And I see it as a form of object-oriented programming, where you see these objects and instance variables. It reads like a bunch of for loops. A lot of the first computer programs were actually written for weaving machines, so there is, I think, a very strong connection between the arts and sciences—and there is a presence of science in art.

Do you feel your art is working toward making science more accessible and palatable to people who maybe aren’t familiar with science? Or non-majors in general? 

I would hope so. A lot of the work I’ve done is for BlueShift’s Arts & Astro Festival, which is this annual event that we put on to explore the beauty that there is in science. And I think there is great beauty in unveiling the secrets of the universe, and answering our most burning questions. I think especially in astronomy, a lot of what we see can be super visually appealing—but it gets clouded and buried under these differential equations and things like that. I like to bring science into my art just to remind myself that there’s a reason I’m asking these questions. Because I have a personal interest in knowing these things—because they’re so captivating, they’re so beautiful.

So, getting into how exactly you’re mixing science and art, I wanted to talk about one of your pieces, Screaming Interference, in particular. 

Yeah, I had a lot of fun making this piece. It was also for Arts & Astro. I’ve been really interested in the idea of gravitational waves, and the way that the detection works. I wanted to make a piece that shows one small aspect of gravitational wave detection—and [those were] the first gravitational wave signatures that were picked up by the LIGO Livingston and Hanford observatories. So I’ve worked a lot with electroluminescent wire in the past, and I wanted to incorporate that into my work. I essentially took the gravitational wave signals and sculpted them in a slightly abstracted form in the electroluminescent wire. [I used] two different colors—one for Livingston and one for Hanford. And I sort of overlaid them in the same way that the gravitational wave signatures were overlaid, to confirm that it was a gravitational wave event and not just some sort of weird background noise that was happening at one observatory. I also wanted to play with reflection and dimension and color, so I sort of set it up as a tunnel with a mirror at the back end, and a sheet of tinted acrylic at the front end. I had these alternating electroluminescent wires going on and off. You could also look deep into one end of the tunnel and see their reflections—but in a different color, because of the tinted acrylic on the front. 

It seems like distortion is a big aspect of your process. Is this distortion more tactile or digital? 

I think a great deal of it starts with the physical, tactile distortion. I think it’s really cool that whatever physical process you do to the film that you’re shooting on is an irremovable part of the image that you’re capturing. And I think that’s really interesting. When I distort the film, I sometimes shoot on expired film, and I soak it in various household acids. Sometimes, for example, it’s an old disposable camera and the battery will have leaked into it already. Maybe I’ll add soap or lemon juice or something like that, and just see what that does to it. I’m not looking for any sort of effect in particular, I’m just sort of asking, “What happens if I do this?” From there, I let the results of that image sort of guide the rest of the process—which tends to be mostly collage, some physical cutting and pasting, and also some digital stuff. I like to mix a lot of my photos with some data visualization in Python that I think might be kind of fun to go with them.

Cool. So many of your photos tend to mix analog and digital technology. Do you feel that analog has a nostalgic value to you? Or do you feel that it evokes a different emotion than digital?

Yeah, I think so. Like I touched on a little bit before, I think the scratches and the wear and tear on the analog media we use is super fascinating. It just becomes a part of the piece. It’s kind of like rereading your own copy of your favorite book. The more you read it, the more it just sort of wears out—and you can see the love that’s gone into handling it. At the same time, I do think it’s really interesting to combine digital with analog. I almost feel like I’m making little cyborgs when I make art in this way.

You also work with mixtapes. Would you like to speak on those? What sort of sounds are you interested in?

Yeah. So I did mention I’m from Houston, Texas, and a favorite local legend of ours is DJ Screw. He is known for the development of his technique of playing with the speeds of different records when he sampled various, mostly local artists on his mixtapes—and created the ‘Chopped and Screwed’ style of mixing and cutting and pasting, and using different bits of sound and slowing them down. So I take a lot of inspiration from that. While some of my mixtapes are pretty traditional—in the way that you think of a mixtape on cassette—a lot of them experiment with the same kinds of things that DJ Screw did. So I like to sample things from underground 1990’s and 2000’s artists, especially from Houston. And just put things together in ways that I haven’t really seen before. But also, being at WKCR has exposed me to a lot of different ways that music can be put together. I wasn't familiar with New Music as a genre before I started WKCR, but now I think it’s interesting, especially the history of its technology. Some of my mixtapes take samples and inspiration from New Music, especially Computer Music from the 1970’s, and also samples from old nostalgic digital sounds. Even the sound of dial-up Internet, for example. I’m also building a synthesizer as my final project for a class I’m taking on sound, and I’d like to incorporate it on my mixtapes. 

So going into your inspiration, is there any artist specifically—a musician, filmmaker, or someone who produces media of any kind—that you feel inspired by?

I think right now one of my biggest artistic inspirations is Susan Kare. She’s the graphic designer who worked on creating the original user interface for Apple computers. So she made the command symbol, and the smiling Mac, and the bomb, and the click symbol, and all of that. I just think it’s so interesting how she was able to take a 64x64 pixel grid of yes and no, on and off, black and white—and actually communicate, symbolically, what was going on inside a complex machine. And I think that she really did a good job of doing what I would like to do, which is to use my art to communicate scientific information. 

I think going into communication leads to your poetry. In what ways does coding interact with your poetry?

I’d never written poetry before this poetry collection. I have a really good relationship with my University Writing professor from freshman year, and she’s always sort of pushing me to pursue writing on a deeper level, and keep expanding the bounds of my comfort zone in writing. So she encouraged me to take on the project of a poetry series. I thought it would be fun to challenge myself to write poems using a skill set that had, to this point, only been familiar to me in an academic or technical context. And to use it for something creative and expressive in its own way. When I was starting out on this project, I didn’t know if I would actually be able to do it—if I would be able to write poetry in Java that made sense, and was able to stand on its own. But at the same time, be syntactically correct so that once I pushed run and compile, I would get an output that was a poem in plain English. 

With your poetry, I’m wondering if there’s any sort of narrative you’re trying to tell. Or is it completely abstracted? 

So each of the poems is based on a different experience that I’ve lived and have not immediately been able to make sense of. And I think I’m sort of using the poems as a way to display a sort of thought process. So, you know, I’m structuring it on the input side, and trying to logically organize and make sense of these thoughts that are going through my head—and ending up with an output which is sort of a deliberate thing that I’ve put together. I think it’s especially important to note what stays on the input side, and doesn’t make it over into the output. There are some things that just stay as thoughts and don’t really end up becoming conclusions, or being super vocalized or anything like that. So I think it’s important to notice what goes into one side might not necessarily come out the other side.

Is it a therapeutic experience for you to write poetry, or is it just sort of documenting the experience? Is there any sort of reflection that’s happening?

Yeah! I think it’s super reflective, especially having to think within the context of [making] your actual poem compile and run in the computer. And, I think, it’s something of a tool—a way to document how my thoughts are shaping as I’m trying to make sense of things. It’s also a different way to think about these things that are going on, and to look at problems in this analytical but at the same time creative lens. 

I was really fascinated by one of your poems in Input-Output, and the ending of it, where it trails off in a series of curly brackets. Would you like to talk a little bit on the ending of that poem?

Sure. So all of the characters that aren’t white space that you see in my poetry are actually part of Java syntax. I chose Java over any other programming language for this series, just because it feels comfortable to me. And, I really like the aesthetic of the syntax and the structure of it. So, for every curly bracket at the bottom, there’s a corresponding curly bracket at the top. Everything is sort of sandwiched in and fits securely into the program. So it’s actually just sort of built into the syntax of the program. But at the same time I did appreciate the aesthetic of the Java syntax over other languages. It’s the first programming language that I learned, and it just felt the most natural and the most like my own voice. 

Is there any advice you’d give to someone who would like to be involved in the sciences, but doesn’t have the experience? Or is interested in incorporating sciences into their art?

I guess the first thing I would say is to just get in there, and get started and try. Don’t let the math scare you away. If I let the math scare me away I don’t think I’d be an engineer. I think it’s important to go into [science] with a mindset of just doing it for fun with no expectations—and seeing what you can end up with. I do think that, because there is a highly technical aspect to art, that the sciences already are pretty accessible to artists. My high school physics teacher told me [that] we all already know the laws of physics. They’re sort of ingrained in the ways we interact with the world and live our lives. We just have to stop and think about why we know what the consequences of a physical action are going to be. So, I think it’s all really there—you just have to tap into it. I think learning to program is sort of an organized way of thinking about things. If you are a super detail-oriented person, which is a trait that I see in a lot of artists, I think programming is definitely accessible to you. Because it's all about putting in the details to get the big picture. 

You talk about being detail-oriented. Do you see any of your other qualities coming into your work? What aspect of your personality is reflected throughout your process?

I think that when I started out wanting to be an engineer, I didn’t see a lot of examples of what it was to be a woman in STEM. And I thought the only way to be a woman in STEM was to try to resemble a man in STEM. So I just sort of tried to be super serious, and never really show emotion or anything. For school events where we had to travel, I always tried to pack the smallest bag to avoid stereotypes and things like that. I never showed emotion, even when I had to call out things that just weren’t right or fair. And I think now I’ve gotten to a point where I realize I don’t need to try to be someone else to be taken seriously, or respected in my field. It’s very important to be authentic when you’re trying to do what you love. I’m unapologetic about being lots of different things. I don’t like to label myself as any just one, or even multiple things. I think it’s important, if you have an interest in something, to pursue it and not let labels stop you—[to] not let people tell you, because you are this one thing, you can’t do something else. 

Speaking of labels, do you see yourself as an artist, or as a scientist, or a mix of both? 

I’d say probably a mix of both. I think it’s an important part of my identity to be lots of different things at once. I really see these different parts of my identity come together and work as one, even though they seem really separate. I think that they’re all me. They’re all who I am. 

amber chong

Interviewed by Yosan Alemu 

Photographs by Caitlyn Stachura

Amber Chong is a junior at Barnard College studying sociology and education in the Urban Teaching Program.

What is the ceramic process like? What's your favorite part of the process, if you do have one? 

What is the process like? Well, I usually start out by sketching the general shape that I want to make, and then you decide how much clay you need for that. You wedge it—the clay—and get all the air bubbles out of it. And I make a lot of stuff on the wheel. So I'll smush the clay onto the wheel and get it centered. See, you want [the clay] at the very center of the wheel so that your piece will be symmetrical. This part usually takes the most time to learn, and the most time to get it actually there on the center. After, you sort of just pull the clay around into the shape you want while still being mindful of the center. Also, a lot of my pieces have hand-built attachments, so I build those separately and kind of pop them onto the piece. Then the piece goes through the bisque kiln. It gets fired until the clay hardens, and then I glaze it! I really like the glazing process, because there's a little bit of unpredictability with it—and I make a lot of the glazes because I work at the studio, and part of the job is to mix [them]. It's become really exciting now that I understand the chemistry behind it. So after I glaze it, I put it into the glaze fire and just kind of hope for the best!

Can you explain the relationship between your hands and the clay? Compared to other mediums—like photo or like painting—there's obviously involvement with your body and your work. 

I think your hands, in a lot of ways, are like the most powerful [part] of this medium. When you're throwing, when you're at the wheel, it's nice that it requires your absolute focus. It's nice that it makes you really present. You know, if your hands slip, the whole thing can flop over or get smushed. So you have to be very conscious about every microscopic hand movement, because the tiniest little bit of pressure could change the entire shape. It makes you really self-aware of your body in relation to the clay, and in relation to everything around you. 

I really do like the idea of noticing, with absolute focus, your body, your hands, in relation to the clay and piece at work. When you're making your pieces, what do you have in mind in terms of style and inspiration? 

Working in ceramics brings out this childlike energy in me. It reminds me of days way back in art class—of just messing around but then creating something out of this frenzy. And I like to bring that childlike energy into the work. I like big, friendly looking forms, and a lot of really bright colors. A lot of vibrant glazes. When I'm making pieces, I like to think about what's going to make me happy, and what's going to make others happy. Whether it be sitting around the room, or used for meals—I really want to be able to use my pieces and to share them with others. For instance, I have an elephant teapot with flower designs that I love and use practically everyday.

What are you trying to convey to yourself and to those looking or using your work? Is there a story behind each piece? 

 A lot of the pieces I've been making lately—because I'm working at this studio near campus, where I also teach—have been made as examples or to show someone how to do something. So that's kind of exciting to me. I really enjoy working alongside people and using pieces as a tool for teaching. That's one of my favorite parts about the ceramics I'm doing right now, especially because I'm studying education. I like to use my art and the process as a way to possibly unlock new teaching methods, or to think more about hands-on learning. As for the story behind each piece, I think each piece just reminds me of the meticulous work that went [into it]. You can look at some of the handled pieces and you can see every carve, every line on the leaves—like on the teapot that I made. Or even think back to every single chemical you had to mix to get the right glaze mixture. It's just cool to look at a piece for which you have been so involved in the process. Everything from the glaze to the firing technique requires careful work. For example, some of the pieces that I do are roku, which means you take the piece out of the kiln when it's at the peak temperature, 1700 degrees. And the glaze is still molten. Then you put it in this trash can full of combustibles like leaves and newspapers, and you put your piece in the can and watch it burst into flames. When you take your piece out, it's got all of these weird markings from being exposed to the fire. So yes, I tend to look at my pieces and see the work, awareness, and the care that went into its making.

What's your favorite piece? 

That's a good question. I have this one mug where the glaze just came out really unexpectedly. The interesting thing is when you combine glazes, you could have like a yellow and blue—and when you layer them together, instead of making green, the colors can make red just because the chemicals interact weirdly. That's one of the best parts for me, when you get this super random, unintentional color. On my mug I had a deep green, and this kind of reddish glaze over it. Where they met, there was this really bright turquoise color. So, it's just this mug with a huge turquoise spot at the bottom. And that's what I drink my coffee and tea out of every morning. That's my favorite—my green, red, turquoise spotted mug. 

How has pottery and ceramics influenced your life? Everyday experiences? 

 I've been working with pottery and ceramics since high school. It's opened up a lot of job opportunities for me. Like this summer, I was teaching pottery in Washington State, and now I'm working at a studio. I would say these opportunities have really allowed me to see how my artistic interests and my education interests collide and collaborate with one another. More recently, they have really begun to inform each other. I feel like I'm learning a lot about teaching pottery that can be applied to other forms of teaching.

Absolutely! It's really interesting to see that translation. Could you give an example of where your art and teaching interact?

I teach the kids class at the studio, and some of them are very young. I'm learning that when you put this piece of clay in front of a child, they're not going to listen to anything that you have to say. All they're going to want to do is play [with] and squish the clay, and you really can't blame them. But that's part of the magic about the clay, you know? It's exciting to see sheer joy just because of a tiny piece of clay. I guess channeling that excitement about the task and clay at hand is something I feel like can apply to any arena of education, because you’re working with children and are helping them create something by the end of the class. And as I said earlier, creating a pottery piece is difficult, and requires careful attention to the work. It's amazing to see how the children's excitement for the clay is transformed to this sort of eager attention and focus. 

This idea of intimacy, whether it be your own work or teaching children, is integral to your process. Like you said, every step is important and has to be dealt with with awareness and attention. Could you elaborate more on the intimacy aspect? 

Yes! Every step and every curve, every color that comes out in the blaze, every task you perform, every bit of work you put into your piece and its process, is an intimate kind of work. So at the end, I feel as if I become really tied to these pieces. Like it holds some part of myself. And especially in my case, I love using my pieces for the everyday. Being able to use and be in contact with your work further shows this intimacy. My pieces become part of my life. Intimacy lies there. 

What was your favorite art class at Barnard or Columbia? 

I've only taken one, actually, but I took Sculpture I freshman year with Kambui Olujimi and he was a really wonderful professor. I initially thought that we were going to be making little things out of clay, and that the class would be a sort of de-stressor. And it wasn't! It was one of the most stressful classes I've ever taken. We weren’t working with clay, we were working with metal. I literally learned how to weld! 

Really? Oh my god! 

Yes, really! On the top floor of Prentis, they have these metal shops. You get these sheets of steel, your big mask, your plasma cutter, and you're just welding! Once for the class, I made this metal wall that had all of these windows that opened up. [For] some of the windows you'd be able to see through to the other side, while others had mirrors. If you saw one on the opposite side, it was like you were playing hide-and-seek, but sometimes you were only finding yourself. The assignment was to make a mask, and that wall was my mask. That class was so much more work than I thought it was going to be, but it was really worth it. It was fun and inspiring being surrounded by people that were also invested in making these really crazy structures and sculptures. Also, working with a professor who is doing art in the real world was amazing. It was such a fascinating class. I would take it again and again and again. To be completely honest, I think I spent more time working for that class than I have for any class since then. 

What would be your ideal, dream piece? What would you make? 

My ceramics teacher in high school, Bob, who wore Crocs and a kimono to class all of the time, always talked about this friend he had in Oregon who threw ceramic hot tubs that were completely massive. He said that his friend kept breaking his wrist—because when you're throwing that much clay, if you have your hand slightly at the wrong angle, it'll literally just snap. Which is crazy. Sometimes I dream about throwing or creating a piece that massive. Maybe I'll make a fountain, or just grand monuments, and place them in random locations. That would be a dream piece. A massive structure placed—gently, of course—in random places everywhere I go. 

olivia treynor

In conversation with Elizabeth Meyer

Photographs by Ellis Sandro Shapiro-Barnum

Could you start by telling me a little bit about yourself, whatever that means to you?

My name is Olivia, I’m from California. My biggest identities [that] influence my art are being a young person, being a girl, and being queer. I don’t monopolize identities, but I feel part of these communities based on those [identities], and they definitely kind of influence how I perceive things, and think about things, and interact with things.

Is photography your main medium?

Yes. I started doing photography and filmmaking in high school. I wasn’t introduced to photography in a clinical art school way, I was introduced to it as something my peers were doing and that girls that felt like my peers were doing. I grew up with Rookie magazine and that was this great equalizer [to me]. [It] really emphasized young queer voices and female voices and non male voices. To me, it felt like “Of course I could take pictures!” It felt like there were so many people that were doing [it] and they were doing it so well and so beautifully and so powerfully. I just understood things as yes, the female gaze is something that of course I am going to try to reclaim and explore what that means

I [also] took an art class [in high school] where you had to put together a portfolio with all different mediums, so I put together a sewing project, which was out of my element. I’ve done some drawing and other things  But mainly photography and filmmaking are my big artistic practices. I’ve been doing creative writing more recently, but I’m still feeling that one out.

What is your definition of perception, and how does that fit into creation—especially through photography?

I think that photography is a medium about looking. Photography is so rooted in reality and observing reality, that there is less freedom inherent in the medium to make it about inner emotional content. To some extent, photography is always documentary because you have to work with what exists in the real, tangible world—and then distort that in some way to create an artistic statement. I think [in] the way photography is thought of, we imagine that the camera is your eye, and that's what’s dominant. The most important part of taking a photo is thinking about how the camera views something and, to me, that feels distant from what I think good photography is. I hope to use my photography as an empathetic, bodily observation rather than an objectifying tool. I’m trying to reframe ideas that the camera is the most important tool. [When taking photos of someone] I think about how I would naturally perceive and interact with them. The camera comes ranked lower in importance than my personal, empathetic, human gaze.

How do you take your photos?

I’m not thinking [about doing] something that’s never been done before or what the queer/female way of looking at [a subject is]. I retrospectively look back at things and be like “Oh, I looked at that thing in a way that is different from how another person would look at it,” but I don't think that’s an active goal of mine, to counter some sort of hegemony in the photo world. I’m just like “What makes sense in this [photo]?”, and then I can write an artist’s statement that applies that [sense] onto [the photo]. 

[In photography], I really believe that bodily intuition is much more important than being a rational thinker. That may just be an art thing but, to me, feeling comes over technical competence or objective analysis or trying to do something the “best” way. Being the “best” at something is so emphasized [in our society], and I think you can technically be the “best,” but that doesn't necessarily give you the skill to create an empathetic photo which, to me, is the most important part of photography. The best picture is the one that is most empathetic. So I'm cognizant of trying to look at things in a way that is bodily first and technical second. Photography, in a lot of ways, is dominated by the male gaze because its been appropriated as a tool for the male gaze but i don't think it has to be like that but I think the goal of a female photographer or anyone who is trying to conceive a photograph that exists outside of the male gaze has to think about it as an empathetic tool rather than an objectifying tool.

How do you form an empathetic connection with a subject when photographing individuals whose identities differ from your own? 

I think that empathy is not bound by identities. I think that I need to acknowledge that there are narratives that I won’t necessarily perceive that the person I’m photographing perceives because of their role or how they exist in society. As empowering as it is to be a young, queer woman, it means that I have not existed in a lot of different identities. I think acknowledging that, and believing that the photographer is not the most important person when taking a photo, is crucial. Like, [when I’m taking pictures], I feel like I’m a medium somehow, or messenger. The act [of photography] is of an interaction. I try to take photos that feel like they are an exchange rather than something that’s imposing on someone or taking from someone. doesn’t have to be about giving or receiving. It can be something mutual, not a give or take exchange. 

viola hibbett

In conversation with Uma Halsted

Photographs by Zita Surprenant

Introduce yourself.

I’m Viola. I’m a junior at Barnard, doing a philosophy major. I’m from Central Massachusetts—part rural, part suburban.

Describe your work in three words. Describe yourself in three words.

My work: Irrelevant Ransom Note. Me: Short Imposter Ginger. 

Do you have any favorite artists that inspire you?

For animation, Terry Gilliam, the “Monty Python” animator.

When did you start making art, conscious of it being a product?

Probably not until the end of freshman year here. Before, I was indoctrinated into the STEM world. I came in as a physics major, switched to math at the end of my freshman year, and then to philosophy at the end of my sophomore year. 

Did you notice any shifts in what you were interested in artistically as your academic focus changed?

When I was doing a physics track, anything that wasn’t [physics] felt like a side project. Whereas, once I started doing more non-STEM things, I was like, “Oh, this can actually be a thing that I can think about, and put work and time into.”

Do you find that holding onto, and relinquishing, control comes into play in that kind of creative process?

When you try to hold onto the idea of something turning out the way it should in your mind, it always ends up winding up a little off. And then that ‘being off’ seems disnoble—[it] turns into feeling worthless. But then you realize that chain of reasoning doesn’t really matter. It doesn’t matter whether one little thing’s at an angle or not.

Do you have a first memory of creating when you were young?

Honestly, not so much. I do have some memories of making weird drinks to consume as a kid, with a bunch of lemon juice and vanilla extract—with kids putting all of [the] other spices into a liquid and then being like, “Let’s drink it!” So that was probably my entry into creating.

When you are physically making the work, do you feel like you snap into the experience of being removed from reality? Or are you usually quite grounded in reality, and just recalling past experiences and ideas?

I’m not super floaty or whatever. I’m definitely there. I do tend to get super drawn into it though, as in I forget about other things. 

You talk about detaching from reality and from the need to make a ‘good’ product. And then having the space to be silly and fun, and not take yourself too seriously. I am wondering what that looks like when you’re making your art. What does that look and feel like for you as the creator?

We’re all raised in the capitalist world, and so we’re all taught that your value is tied to you producing things—producing things which are good and can be marketed, or which serve some sort of purpose in that world. Once you realize that that’s nonsense, it opens things up a lot more.

Do you feel like you can ever fully detach yourself from that world?

No… I don’t know. I’ve had some times where I’ve legitimately detached from reality, and my brain’s doing interesting kinds of moves. In those times… yeah. I can [detach] and I have. There are other things that you don’t want to detach from. But at the same time, when you’re in that kind of space—thinking about production and making things that are good, and would have a high monetary value—is just so ridiculous and out there that it seems entirely foreign.

What did you end up doing in that space? Was there any connection to making art?

Try to be calm and wait until eventually things settle down. And then they did. Since then, I’ve done some artwork in which part of what I’m thinking about are those experiences I’ve had. I did one where I was trying to capture the feeling of being in one of those photo stand-ins, with the cut-out faces. It’s like that, but the whole world is just that board. And then it’s just your eyes looking out.

Who or what are you making your art for? And because of that, how does your process change?

When I’m making things, I like to be having fun with it, and let things be silly. Then when I have something that’s done and I’m going to give it to someone, it’s almost more like comics—like, “Here’s something that will make you laugh.” If I stay in a fun mindset, then hopefully [my work] winds up more light than if not. 

Why do you want your art to be light?

Not everything that I’ve made is intended to be light. But I feel like everything is so meaningless, or crap like that. So why not have things that are fun and light?

lorenzo barajas

Photographs by Maya Hertz

Interviewed by Isabella Rafky

Tell me a little bit about yourself. 

This was definitely the hardest question for me to answer, because I am interested in so many different things. I’m an art history and english major, and other than that I just recently finished up work as a florist and vendor in Abingdon Square, which was a really fun job for me. Previously, I’ve been a bagel store employee — you know, just getting it done. Other than that, it's really hard to say. I feel like I’m coming to grips with the fact that I’m a quiet, but dramatic person. Kind of an oddball; I like going to really weird events, like Pickle Day. I’m from San Diego. I’m a poet and a visual artist. 

What motivates you to write poetry and create visual art? Are they different forces of motivation?

They are definitely very different forces for each genre. Visual art, to me, is more performative. I’m really kind of a show-off with my visual art: I’ll put it on my walls, I’ll give it as gifts to friends, I’ll do anything with it. Whereas my poetry, or any of my writing, is definitely more guarded. I’m working on a poetry anthology right now that I’m trying to submit to the APR’s First Book contest — so I’m trying to crank out a piece [each] day.

Where do you get your inspiration from? (i.e., Magic 8 Ball Python coding)

All of my work is just an amalgamation of everything that I’m interested in. Everything that I’ve read — poets like Anne Carson, [writers like] Cormac McCarthy. Movies like “The Matrix” — so many different things. I think mainly what I feel is that everyone in all of these works is trying to get at what forces govern a person’s life — what kind of biological, or technological, or celestial forces? And I am really interested in getting at what those could be.

What celestial forces do you feel get at you?

I don’t know! It’s really hard to say (laughs). I definitely am interested in so many different aspects of different religions and incorporating that into my work — like the idea of reincarnation. I come from a Catholic background, so that does come into my work a bit.

If your final actions were to be a “Choose Your Own Adventure,” like in “Oat Milk Forever,” what would they be?

These are all very hard questions (laughs). I feel that life is essentially like a “Choose Your Own Adventure.” Everything that we do is so dictated by choices, and those choices are influenced by different things. But at the end, it’s your own decision. But if it was like, a final decision, I guess maybe I would publish my work — because I feel like it is really representational of who I am as a person, and it would be a good way to memorialize myself.

How do you best express fragmentation? Do you treat each fragment as a whole, or do the fragments form a whole themselves? 

I feel that [fragmentation] is mostly expressed through surrealism as a genre in my writing — because at the root of it, I think feeling disoriented and misrepresented is really reflective of my experience as a minority of any sort. I’m just trying to represent that experience through surrealism as a genre. And to the second question, I feel like each fragment is a whole. I feel that there is a finality to every piece, and it’s hard to put them next to each other if they each have their own circularity to them.

Talk to me more about your surrealism. How did you come to it? Have you always been a surrealist poet? How do you see surrealism in your own work?

I definitely did not start out as a surrealist poet. I started doing open mics in high school, and that sort of work was very activism-based. It was very, like — I don't know what the right word is — but it was very set in stone, very... rebellious. I don’t know if that’s the right word (laughs) but it definitely didn’t have a genre that I can ascribe to it other than performative. And then after that, I started to get into different poets that had worked within surrealism, and I just became completely obsessed with how that genre operated — especially like Césaire. I just found it strangely beautiful, almost like a fever dream. I’m really interested in how [surrealism] works, and how it’s such a unique genre of poetry. I feel like surrealism in art just operates differently than it does in writing. I don’t know if there is anything in particular that caught my eye to it, I just really love it.

Besides fragmentation, what are other themes you touch on in your work, and why? Why does fragmentation call to you?

I think within my work, I’m still trying to figure out a genre that works for me, and I switch very often between different modes, different perspectives — just trying to parse out exactly what I want to do with my work, and where it’s going. That has definitely lent itself to the fragmentation, just due to the experience of writing itself. I think it’s also reflective of where I am as a person right now. I’m on the cusp of being 20; I’m just trying to figure out exactly what I want to do, and I want my work to reflect where I am as a person as well as what I’m interested in thematically. As for different themes, I feel that my work is definitely trying to resist being themed. I don’t know how well it’s doing that — but fragmentation is obviously something that is very identifiable. I’m just trying to create something that anyone can draw out of, whatever they want. There’s this quote by a famous artist that I really like, Fred Tomaselli: “I’m not trying to be anyone’s cop for my artwork.” 

I just want my audience to get out of my work what they want to get out of it and if it is like therapy for them to read my work and relate to something that's great! If it’s just reading something that’s aesthetically pleasing that’s also great. I’m not trying to create a universal truth in my work. 

Are there any spaces on campus that you go to find inspiration or to be creative?

That’s a hard question, because I run in so many different circles. Freshman year I offhandedly decided to join the marching band, so there’s this kinda offbeat circle I’m a part of—just like, community and friends coming together and making music. I play cowbell. But it’s still just [about] relating to other people. Other than that, I’ve been really trying to figure out where those spaces are. Artistically, I’m not really involved very much in any kind of scene. So I often end up wandering with my friends through galleries. There isn’t a cohesive space that I go to to find community. I just end up taking a lot of different classes—I took a class over the summer at the Muji Pottery Studio. I don’t think there’s one thing that’s home to me. I do definitely have a lot of different writing spots that are conducive to getting things out. I end up going to any place that has any natural element, like the park by Saint John’s Cathedral. I don’t know exactly what it is, but the fountain is an area that I just like. I go there and I’m able to write and write for hours. 

How do you think San Diego has affected your writing or your person? 

I think just the experience of being in San Diego is so vastly different from being here—it for sure has affected my personhood. Growing up there, I was really close to the border, which was really interesting being half-Mexican and half-American. I was able to relate so much to my surroundings, but still felt kind of distant from my Mexican identity—which is something I found in both [Mexico and America]. I don’t really feel that here, because [New York City] is so far from Mexico. I ended up learning Spanish, but that's still a big difference from having a native language as a solid part of your identity. I definitely do miss [San Diego]. To me, it’s so much more relaxed. Going back home is like a palate cleanser. Whereas [in New York], I was just exposed to so many different things. And it definitely helped to shape who I am as a person, because when you're exposed to so many different things you end up drawing what you will from them. 

xixi wang

Photographs by Margaret Maguire

In Conversation with Morgan Becker

Could you introduce yourself? 

My name is Xixi Wang, I’m a sophomore at Barnard College. I do acrylic paintings and graphite drawings on the side sometimes. I was raised in Vancouver, Canada, and for the majority of my life I was really focused on music. I was a competitive pianist for a really long time, so when I moved to New York five years ago, that was when I really started honing in on my artwork. I always loved drawing—painting not so much (laughs). But when I got to New York, that’s when I really found my love for it and put my music to the side. During the era of Instagram, my friends started suggesting that I post my stuff online. That’s where my art career began—I just drew whatever I wanted. I mainly started off with, like, celebrity portraits and Disney caricatures, and I would just post everything that I drew on Instagram. And slowly, my following started to build. Here we are today. 

Would you say that your music has an influence on the work that you do? Or was a clean break from one form of art to the other? 

I felt like it was more of a break-off. Because music was really something that my parents pushed me to pursue, and art was more of a side thing. I really liked art classes at school, but other than that, it was music all the time. People at school knew me as the musician, the pianist, who spends all her time doing that. And then when I moved to New York—it was also at a point where I couldn’t really do anything else with music. I could pursue it professionally, or not. So I kind of just dropped it—or it at least became a less important part of my life. I still love music to this day.

Did music ever feel creative to you? 

I don’t think so. No, because I was so classically trained. A lot of it was, like, taking examinations—in Canada, you have Royal Conservatory examinations. So a lot of it was taking exams until you reach a certain level. I did take composition classes and music history classes, but it never got to a point at which I felt like I had creative freedom over my music. 

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From what I see from your work, you do a lot of painting of bodies—literally and figuratively. Where does the fascination come from? 

This is a fascination that has evolved very recently. As I mentioned before, my past artwork was a lot of pop-culture stuff. That was when I mostly considered myself a ‘drawer.’ When I dove into painting, that’s when I created my own sense of style as an artist. I just kind of paint subject matter that I gravitate toward. I never force myself to branch out, or paint something that I don’t speak with. So, why bodies? Now that I’m thinking about it, I don’t really know why. For a long time I loved painting pieces that made you think, and that made you feel something. A lot of the issues that I’m passionate about concern gender, or sexuality. I think that I reflect that through the work I create. 

In what ways do you think femininity is shown through the body? 

I mean, there are ways that we dress ourselves—but that’s unrelated to the pieces that I create. I do more bare bodies, and minimalistic stuff. So in terms of my pieces specifically, I try to strip away gender. My models are usually female. I haven’t really painted male bodies or faces. But I feel like my style is very feminine, if that makes sense? A lot of the colors that I use are pastel, and the way that I work my paint—there’s an elegant texture to it, but it’s also a bit rough. I don’t know, I feel like the feminine aspect for me is more the style of the work, rather than the body being portrayed on the canvas. 

I notice that a lot of the work is also segmented. You never paint a full portrait. Is there a reason for that? 

I love zooming in, close-ups in general. It’s a very intimate way to showcase a woman’s body. And it also provides mystery, and gives me more of a sense of creative freedom. I paint however I want to paint, if that makes sense? If you’re painting a model, their entire body, proportions are really important. Making it look like the actual figure is really important. Which is kind of why I stray from portraits. It gets too much into, ‘Oh, who are you painting?’ ‘Why did you choose this model?’ et cetera. So I tend to zoom into parts of the body where you don’t necessarily know who the person is, and you don’t have that necessity to compare. 

What does touch mean to you? 

Exploring touch has been a fairly recent thing of mine, but I love painting hands. It’s something that I’ve had an obsession with for a long time. I know for many artists, it’s a pain in the ass. But it’s actually one of my favorite things to paint. And through all of the pieces of hands that I’ve created, I feel like there’s a similar theme centered around human relationships. Touch has a lot to do with that. I mentioned this in my artist bio, but I think that touch—out of all the five senses—is the most interesting. It has the most layers to it. It’s so complex. But overall, the main reason why—this is going to sound cheesy, but it connects the mind and the heart in a way that sounds, or smells, can’t do. There’s a very emotional side to touch, as well as physical. It’s a fundamental sense that connects us together as human beings. Imagine never hugging someone, and losing that sense of comfort. I think touch encompasses so many emotions that I like to reflect through painting. At the end of the day, my painting aren’t just hands. They reflect a deeper sense of emotional value and make you think about what the hands are doing, and how they’re interacting with each other to make you feel a certain way. 

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Do you think touch is inherently intimate? 

I think there’s definitely an intimate aspect to it. I don’t think it’s inherent—it’s intimate if you want it to be intimate. But in my pieces specifically, I try to find that intimate level. Like, I really do want that intimacy between the viewer and the painting itself. 

Do you tend to base those painting off your own relationships? Models? What do you use for reference? 

I do some of both. A lot of it is Google searching, and finding non-copyrighted material. A lot of it uses my own body as a reference. Especially for hands, that’s definitely easier. I’ll just take photos of them from different angles, changing the lighting as I go. Also, there is an app where you can take a hand model and basically rotate it however you want, but it isn’t the most realistic. So I just tend to take my own reference images—if for some reason I can’t, I’ll just go off of Google. 

Tell me about your work with temporary tattoos, and how it came about. 

So I work with this company called Inkbox, and they do semi-permanent tattoos. They last from eight to eighteen day. They’re from a fruit-based ink, very similar to henna but completely different ingredients. I design a lot of the tattoos on their website, and I also do freehand, which is where you work with a bottle of ink and apply the tattoo similarly to henna. Wherever you’re getting the tattoo, it’ll take 24 hours to fully develop, and it’ll stay for roughly two to three weeks. 

How I got into it is kind of a long story. Ever since I was a teenager I was really into tattooing—not getting tattoos myself, but the industry in general, and tattooing as an art form. Tattoo artists are so talented, to be able to create these gorgeous pieces of artwork on someone’s body, using the human as a canvas. Having their art carried around forever. So I’d always told myself that I wanted to learn how to tattoo. Someday! But that hasn’t happened yet. I’m still crossing my fingers. I found out about Inkbox roughly three years ago. They had just launched a kickstarter and completely blew up. I started as one of their purchasers, just trying their products. I thought they were really cool as a company, and as a general concept. And then, maybe a year into it, they were looking for artists to design tattoos. I applied, got the position, and ever since then I’ve been in contact with their team. They know that I live in New York, so whenever they have pop-up events they’ll shoot me a text and ask if I can work for them. 

It’s interesting that you said tattoos are a form of art that are carried around forever. I get that they’re permanent—but people are typically less permanent than say an actual painting on the wall. What are you thoughts on that? 

I get that. Wow, never really thought about that. I guess when you create a tattoo, it’s personalized. The tattooists that I follow, who are artistically very good—their work is really personalized toward the person getting the piece, either based on a story that they want to tell, or something that has deep emotional meaning to it. Sometimes, it can just be aesthetically nice to look at, but it always connects with the person. In terms of permanence, tattoos don’t last as long as, say, a painting on a canvas. But it’s completely different, because it’s connected—the person who’s wearing that tattoo gives it meaning. Whereas the canvas can’t really give the paint meaning. 

So the person adds something. I wonder then, when you create a tattoo, is it your work? Or does it belong to the person who has it on their body? Do you share it? 

I do think you share it. First of all, if you’re a good tattoo artist, you’re not copying work from anybody else. You’re creating your own stuff. The best clients know to give their tattoo artists creative freedom, to take the idea however they want, to showcase their creativity through this art form. It’s a collaboration, because someone could also come in knowing what they want. The artist kind of builds that up and creates an end result. 

You said that you post a lot of your art online. Do you also gain inspiration from social media? 

So when I started posting work, I found a community of artists who I was able to share my passions with, who I could throw ideas around with, and I could see the pieces that they were creating. Through that, I was introduced to the hub of art in social media. But I do think that the art I see on social media isn’t the most perfect representation of contemporary art in general. Obviously I believe that seeing a work online is so different from seeing it in person. In terms of finding inspiration, my first source is going to museums and physically seeing art. Or just walking around, looking at architecture, that kind of stuff. When I go onto social media, I look at artists who I already know—who I’ve learned about by going to the MoMA, or taking a class. So a lot of the artists I follow I haven’t found solely through social media. Instagram though, has really become the space for artists who want to become professional. If you want to be a professional artist, you’ve got to post your stuff on Instagram. It has now literally become a portfolio for us. So I think that it’s a useful place to find inspiration—but it’s not my sole space. 

What’s the last exhibition you saw? 

The Whitney Biennial, over the summer. I actually haven’t been to anything really recently, but I was taking a class at Sotheby's about the market of contemporary art. We were talking about big events like EXPO Chicago and the Vienna Biennial. I wasn’t that amazed—nothing at the Biennial really stood out to me. I was really just going because I’m an artist and I like contemporary art. I felt like I needed to go see it. It’s only here once every two years. 

What are you working on now? 

So over the summer, I really wanted to rethink my overall artist statement. About my overall aesthetic. That’s how I started exploring touch, bare bodies, sexuality, femininity. And so most recently, I’m working on a series of hands holding sex toys, which I’m completely in love with. It’s a ten-piece series, and I don’t really know where the inspiration came from. It kind of just hit me—I want to incorporate hands. I want to touch on female sexual empowerment. I want to talk about self-love. So I did a series on dildos, vibrators, and it evolved. The majority of the hands are my own, and I’ve taken reference images of different types of sex toys from Google. I jokingly say that I want to be in that income bracket where I can comfortably afford to buy all of my props and take the photos myself—but I’m not at that point yet. It’s still in the works. Four of the ten are completely done. The other six are on canvases but not finished, and I’m working on them all at the same time. It’s been really fun, really educational, and everyone has been responding so well—better than I thought. People have been DMing me, saying how they love the concept, that they love my work. The series is about female self-empowerment, and exploring your own sexuality. And I know the privileges of going to Barnard and being in a very liberal space. Since we’re a woman-heavy environment, my friends have been so encouraging. At the same time, it’s a subject matter that can be very taboo, very touchy for some people. I want the work itself to make people feel uncomfortable—if it’s a subject matter that you would be uncomfortable with otherwise. At the end of the day—although they’re very aesthetically pleasing—I also want there to be conversation around it. My parents know that I’m painting, and they have very different views than I do, so it sparks some conversation. 

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Have you heard of Helen Beard? She does pornographic art, often involving sex toys. It reminds me of your work, but much more sexually graphic. I guess my question is, why still the hands? Of course they have a lot to do with sex—but when it comes down to it, so do many other parts of the body. 

Yes, I’ve seen that! First take, I love painting hands and I’m good at painting hands. That came first, and then I got down to the other reasons behind why I chose them. In a way, having it be just the hand isn’t as sexualized as depicting the genitals. It’s almost more powerful to just see the hand holding this toy—if that makes sense—against a white backdrop. It’s very in-your-face. There's nothing else to focus on. There’s no other skin; it’s removed from relationship with the body, and really is just about the toy itself. The hand is raising it up, as if showing the product. The series itself almost looks like promotional work for like, Adam & Eve. In a way, I wanted it to be more about the taboo behind using sex toys, especially in relation to women. All the toys that I chose were mainly catered toward females. The reason why I chose to use the hand is because it strips the toy away from the body while keeping that human touch.

I can see how these subjects, imposed on a stark-white background, would be evocative. Especially because they aren’t hyperrealistic, per se. How are they colored? 

So, all of my hands are painted with the same colors. The toys themselves are vibrant, saturated, in-your-face. Some of them I even used gold, silver, metallic colors. I don’t think that there’s a ‘better’ way—images being very graphic or less-so—neither of those methods of painting stands out over the other. They’re just completely different ways of addressing sexuality. Both have their merits, both are very powerful. 

And I guess that once they’re on the Internet, it’s very easy to start comparing people directly. Whereas you wouldn’t necessarily go to two different rooms of a museum and say ‘This person did the female figure better.’ Do you feel competition, putting yourself online and kind of quantifying your art? 

I definitely did, before. I grew up being on Instagram, like 24/7. I loved that I was able to find a place to share what I like to do, and find a community of people who supported me. But it turned into me asking my followers what they wanted to see instead of asking myself what I wanted to make. It got to a point where I was like, ‘I need to have x-amount of followers by this point, it needs to increase at x-rate.’ I was comparing myself to artists who were at my same age, and doing similar types of work. I used those numbers to qualify how good my art was, when in reality it meant absolutely nothing. Some really brilliant artists right now have under 100,000 followers on Instagram right now. Some of my favorites have only like, 20,000. So numbers, at the end of the day, don’t mean much. It does create more of an outreach, and the likelihood of selling a piece becomes higher. That also goes along with galleries that might want to represent your work, or curators who are looking for artists. [Numbers] can then show that you have an established audience and that you’re pretty reputable. I’d like to believe that it should be more about content and meaning. 

Closing remarks? 

You can find me on Instagram @xixiwangartist, or on Facebook. My website—which I just launched this summer—is xixiwangartist.com. You can see all the stuff that I’ve created over the past three years. 

charlie blodnieks

Photographs by Eliza Jouin 

In conversation with Yosan Alemu

Charlie Blodnieks is a Junior at Columbia College studying English. They are also on the Columbia/Barnard slam poetry team, the Editor in Chief of Quarto Magazine, and they really love the Bee Movie. 

What is your writing process like and how does it differ from other creative mediums, especially in relation to your visual work? So how is writing visual? 

Those are good questions. I think my writing process is sporadic. Before I became more developed as a poet, I used to just write out all of my feelings, sort of like a frantic emotional process without really editing or tending to the pieces beyond that point. And it’s not to say that’s necessarily a bad thing, but I’m glad I’m moving towards really defining and refining my craft in terms of careful editing. 

And when I’m editing, I think about the audience, about the performance of the piece—if there will be one—and I want to always be mindful about my work, for me and for the reader. I want to be responsible, and make poetry that is responsible. Being on the slam poetry team and editing for Quarto, a literature magazine, has really helped me in terms of reading, and looking at the ways in which the reading process of both author and reader is just as crucial as the writing process itself. I've been writing a lot recently on mental health and particularly writing about sexual violence and survivorship. And I am always thinking about the way those works need to be written and read about in responsible ways. I want to use writing as an artistic space for healing, but also for advocacy, and the practice of poetry and editing is one way to do this. 

How do you think writing can be visual? 

Poetry is visual! Especially in my written poetry, I care a lot about spacing and how the words look a certain way on a blank piece of paper. I want to take up space purposefully, and I want the spaces to be created in meaningful ways.

Do you edit your visual work? 

I actually don’t edit my visual work. I usually upload a visual piece to photoshop once I’ve physically made it, and I literally splice the image and rearrange it. If you consider that editing, I guess it is! The piece I submitted to Ratrock is super rearranged, and it’s sourced from three pages of random sketchbook lines. In terms of actual visual work, I care more about how I am feeling and [how I] use the visual medium as an outlet. It’s more fun. I think I take my poetry more seriously and that is why I’m editing a piece for months at a time, while my visual pieces can be completed quickly. 

Reading over the work you submitted to Ratrock, I really loved your “Psalm For God's Mother” piece [originally published in Muzzle magazine]. If you would like to share, what inspired you to write it? How did you write it? Why?

The poem was actually my individual CUPSI poem from last year. So CUPSI is the College Union's Poetry Slam Invitational that the Barnard/Columbia slam team goes to every year. That poem was initially three minutes, and I performed it with other members on the team. My best friend Taylor Thompson was singing Moses Sumney’s “Plastic” while I performed the piece. I think that poem has a lot to do with the specific moments of my transition last year, which was around this exact time actually. I had just come out to my family as trans, and I just started requesting people use my correct pronouns. That was really, for me, coming into my own moment, my own self. I was thinking a lot about space, and how to request and demand space for yourself. A large part of the poem also got me attached to Icarus imagery, of flying too close to the sun, especially in terms of space and proximity. I’m always really anxious about taking up too much space, and I felt very uncomfortable with asserting my gender identity and my transness—I had a lot of complicated feelings about it. I still do. The poem also dealt with my relationship with my family, and me announcing to them and the world that I can do these things on my own, I can transition on my own, I can do it myself. Even though there is a lot of sadness to it, there is also some power hidden within it. It might be quiet, but still deeply comforting.

When you were talking about Icarus and flying too close to the sun, that reminded me of your other visual works that depicted flight and movement in the form of birds. Could you explain that a little more? 

I actually haven't thought deeply about the question of “Why birds?” It does come up a lot, and I do think it has to do with flight and escaping, of freely moving and not wanting to be bound by fear and by the world at large. 

You also have mentioned the slam poetry team a few times. How is that like? 

Slam poetry. Oh boy. I love the slam poetry team. That is where I met the bulk of my friends, and that is also where I met my partner. It is definitely the most loving space I have ever been in on campus, and the team means so much to me. So, so much. The team has been so formative in part for my writing but also about collaborating together as a team. I think this is the first place that I've really learned how to have loving friendships and to have loving work within those friendships. Thinking about the power of caring and caring about other people, and what that can do for us, I have found everyone on the team to be that caring and careful, of always helping and wanting the best for each other, and always deeply loving one another. 

When you’re performing a piece for the slam poetry team, how do aspects of body-ship and space production factor into the performance? 

In one of the pieces that we are performing for, it deals a lot with the body and of taking up space, of moving in and out of frames. The goal of the poem is to reckon with the fact that despite how much I want to obscure my body and imaging all I want, I am a person in a body. And then at the end of the piece, I thank all of the people who have impacted my life and my perception of life. I thank Taylor, and Asha, and others, and I feel like the end of the piece really  is rooted in this collective power of being held, and of holding others.

ivanna rodriguez-rojas

Photographs by Morgana Van Peebles

Interview by Isabella Rafky

Ivanna C. Rodríguez is a Mexican-Cuban artist that was born in Montreal, Canada and raised in Mexico City and Miami. She is a Barnard Sophomore majoring in Art History and is a poet, photographer, fiction writer, and founder of the South Florida Arts Collective. The collective is a safe space for Floridian artists of all mediums to be featured and build community.

What is your relationship with art? Any artists, spaces etc you look up to, engage with?

I consider myself very close to art since my childhood because I have two uncles and one aunt who are working artists in Mexico. Since I was a child I had the luck to be in constant contact to museums and exhibitions in many places in the world, so I feel like I'm very familiar with art. When it comes to artists, I find a lot of inspiration in photographers like Graciela Iturbide who is this Mexican photographer and is known to take a lot of street photography, specifically of mestizx and indigenous peoples-and that really influences me. As I said before, my uncles Felix Ayurnamat, Juan Barron, and my aunt Ines Barron are all sources of inspiration for me as well.

Apart from that, I look up to a lot of my friends who are all wonderful artists. I believe that people shy away from choosing colleagues as inspiration. I don't know if there’s this culture built around not uplifting fellow artists, or not admitting that you get inspired by people our age, but I feel like I am most inspired by young people. On top of that, I love Frida Kahlo, so much, she has shaped the way I view myself. From selfies to self-portraits or any kind of self analysis, I definitely look at it through that type of abstract lens, but I also love Bosch because he was insanely Avant-Garde for a Renaissance artist. In terms of spaces, I really enjoy visiting museums. Any museum, you can catch me there and if they’re free.. even better.

What’s your artistic process like?

My artistic process can be either spontaneous or planned– it varies usually, so I never know what to expect. Honestly, it really depends on my mood, but it usually starts with restlessness. I always write when I'm restless. I’m a very busy person so, in general, I don't have time nowadays to produce art but maybe in the past, I could actually decide to make something from my imagination. If I see something in the street that I really like I will jot it down on my phone [in] a couple of notes and then I will compose a poem. I also try to carry either one of my two cameras around whenever I go out because New York is such a powerful place for photography. But if I am not able to, I have an iPhone and even though the quality that is pretty mediocre I capture anything that catches my eye.

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Are you spiritual? How has spirituality and language affected you and your writing?

I think that’s actually a really funny question because in my poetry seminar last week I just submitted a poem about my relationship to five different religions that have been close to me in my life through[out] different moments, but also continuously. I have finally come to the realization that while I am not a religious person, I’m a person full of faith. I have so much faith, and I would never consider myself an atheist. I do notice a pattern of spirituality and faith in a lot of my work whether it's photography or writing. I was raised Catholic from my mother’s side and through my father’s side, the Cuban side, some family practice Santería. As you can see, right now, I'm wearing a gold cross and a Yemaya ilde on my wrist. I don’t go to church often, but I do pray sometimes or light my candles to Yemaya and La Virgen de Guadalupe. I think there’s this powerful hybrid of religious identity within me, just as many of my other identities are hybrid, but I definitely am very spiritual. I think I just have an appreciation for faith; it’s very beautiful, and I think it’s something very powerful in art and life in general.

Which languages do you speak? What about language intrigues you? What do you associate with each language?

I speak English, hablo Español, et je parle français. I think that this year, I am able to finally say that I'm trilingual, but prior to that, I was most fluent in English and Spanish. I think what intrigues me about language is how you can convey the same things so differently, and I think a lot about how words vary from region to region - even Spanish varies so much! My Mexican Spanish is nothing like my Cuban Spanish. It’s really beautiful. I am interested in dialects, accents, colloquialisms, and any other particularities of language. My mom learned French in Canada, I always understood that type of French, but when studying French at Columbia, I was taught French from France, which is entirely different.

I feel the same way about English. English from the south is so different than English in New York. I associate languages with people and places. Spanish feels like home to me because most of my family speaks it. French feels like this powerful yet foreign thing to me. That, since I was born in Canada, from the destiny and fate of my parents’ lives, happens to be as much mine as any other language. English is just very easy to navigate and comfortable for me to communicate with in this school. Recently, I started using my photography and putting bits of my poems on top of it. I want to keep exploring that because I want to see what I link my words to visually.

Tell me about the arts collective you founded.

With the help of two of my friends– last September, we realized that not a lot was being done for artists that have not yet been established: so, young artists, artists with marginalized identity, or artists with low budgets, etc. in Miami but also in the greater south Florida area. While I'm not too fond of the name, and I might want to explore the possibility of changing it later, we realized that in order to get ourselves out there and be accessible,we had to come up with something pragmatic. We titled it South Florida Art Collective, SFAC for short. It’s easy, it's precise, and it does its job. There’s an application process to be featured, and while we accept everyone, we like to have a more business-like manner in which artists can submit a portfolio because we want to treat them as professional artists. We have over thirty five different artists on our page right now, and I am on a little hiatus with it right now because I am busy with work, my own art, and school in general. But I definitely want it to continue and for it to grow. We are about to hit two hundred followers, which is honestly more than I thought it would ever get. There's a lot of enthusiasm from friends and strangers, alike. I even received a submission from someone in Orlando, which is totally not south Florida. I think it just goes to show [that] artists from Florida, or people from the south, yearn to have a platform to show their work and meet other people. They deserve the world.

What are the distinctions between South Florida and Miami? Why do you feel like South Florida needed a space art-wise?

Miami is this very huge bubble that has more exposure to the rest of the world artistically and culturally than the rest of South Florida does. For instance Ft. Lauderdale, Palm Beach, Pompano, etc. are really big cities in the state of Florida, and they have a huge population but compared to Miami in terms of global access and recognition, they don’t have as much. It would be very selfish of me to exclude artists from Broward County, which is right next to Dade county, when the artists are just as capable and talented to be showcased. On top of that there is this mini-rivalry between the counties, and I just wanted to do something where we can all feel like we are part of this community. We are not Broward vs. Dade, we are just this huge part of the whole state of Florida that are getting together to promote each other, network with each other, and do something for the greater good of the state.

¿Cuánto afecta Miami a tu arte? ¿Cuánto extrañas a Miami?

Yo extraño a Miami con todo mi ser, es mi hogar––y pienso sobre él diariamente. No creo que mis padres entienden lo cuanto que amo a Miami! En términos de mi poesia y fotografia, pienso que aunque no todo lo que produzco está directamente vinculado con mi ciudad, de alguna manera refleja alguna parte de mi personalidad. Llevo casi catorce años viviendo en la Florida, así que aunque no quiera hacerlo intencionalmente, me influencia muchísimo. Miami, tal como yo es un lugar cálido, colorido, y lleno de vida––espero que mi arte también tenga el poder de evocar estos sentimientos tropicales y únicos de mi amada península.

Did where you grow up influence your artistic practice? How so?

Yeah, definitely. I really take into account the fact that I spent the first six and a half years of my life in Mexico City because that really influences my artistic practice and foundation. For the other thirteen to fourteen years of my life, growing up in Miami definitely made my art more... tropical isn’t the right word, but my art is very warm; I tend to lean to a warm color palette in photography. A lot of the images in my poetry are soaked with sun, and you can just feel this vibrancy that really resonates with Miami even if I’m not talking about Miami. I feel like the places I grew up in, made me be the type of person I am and that translates into all of the work I am making, whether I want it to or not.

How would you describe your poetry?

I have actually been writing poetry probably longer than I have been doing any other medium of art. I’ve kept a journal since literally the eighth grade. It is full of poems, not many of them are good, a lot of them are very angsty. Around ninth grade was when I started acknowledging that what I was doing was definitely poetry, and I started taking it more seriously. I feel like I have since departed from love poetry and more dramatic things and [started to] focus more on my identity and how I navigate spaces as the person I am, or how I view the world because of the way that I am. But I have been trying to play around with different themes that I am not super comfortable with. I just wrote a piece on religion, and I wrote a poem on my tattoos yesterday-it’s something that’s superficial. I like to reflect more in my poetry but now I'm just starting to allow myself to write about everyday things because they are just as valid. I don’t think I have a favorite poem, but I definitely am proud of the ones that I have gotten published; they are my babies. Like “La Sagrada Familia”, featured in my Ratrock portfolio, but I hope to get more of it out there.

What’s your series “La Sagrada Familia” about?

The title comes from, well “La Sagrada Familia,” the Spanish term for Jesus, Joseph, and Mary. I am obviously not Jesus, but that’s a family of three and I [was like] ‘hey, I have a family of three!’ La Sagrada Familia is also this huge basilica in Barcelona that’s unfinished. The fact that it’s unfinished is so striking to me; I have been lucky to be there before, and it’s so magnificent that I was inspired.

My poem has nothing to do with the architecture, but it gave me the title. It’s a three-part poem. The first part is “El Padre,” which talks about my relationship to Mexico where my mother was born. Since my mother is Mexican, Mexico is my father in that sense. The second part [is] “La Madre,” which is about Cuba since my father is Cuban. Cuba is my mother, and it just talks about my relationship to the island and how I have only been able to be there once in my life - despite it being a forty-five minute flight from Miami. Due to government issues and my dad having to pay to renew his passport to go... it’s just an issue. I am hoping to go there soon though.

The last part, “La Hija” is about Montreal, I am the daughter. I feel like it was probably the hardest piece to write because when I wrote it I had only been to Montreal once since my parents were deported in 1999. I still resented Montreal. I fell in love with the city– it’s a gorgeous place– but I was so mad because I felt robbed that I didn't get to grow up there. I felt the need to write about my relationship it. Since then I was able to go again. I spent my twentieth birthday there and I realized that I don't feel so angry at it anymore. So maybe I will write a part two, but who knows. It definitely is a heartfelt poem and shows how much I love my three nationalities differently, but tremendously.

How did you get started with photography? What do you prefer photographing?

I got into photography from as young as I could remember, just because my mom has always been so passionate about it. I don't know anyone else on this earth [who] has more albums of baby pictures than I do; my family loves recording our history through images. We still have all of my mom’s film negatives and there are probably five different cameras lying around in my house. I was gifted my first camera when I was ten. It was this tiny Fujifilm. It wasn’t until I got to college [that] I started to take it more seriously as an art form. One of my dearest friends loaned me their spare Sony A7 when I mentioned I wanted to improve my skills, so I shoot with that camera now. Just recently I got a film camera of my own, and I love it so much. I like capturing organic moments and candids in the street. I feel like that really immortalizes personalities and moments, and it can make even strangers feel intimate. A more constructed or curated shoot is just as fun to come up with, but is definitely more orchestrated. Telling a model how to pose doesn't feel fake at all, but I do enjoy capturing a natural moment vs a posed moment.

How has your identity influenced your artistic practice? What motivates you to keep going?

I am latinx. I feel that it’s very uplifting to get so much attention, love, and great feedback for my art because I feel like in a white-dominated space I would just be shrugged off and ignored or considered sub-par. I do feel that specifically, while I am Latinx, I am also mestizx. I am not Afro-Latinx, I am not indigenous. I feel like that specific identity branch that I belong to is also...misinterpreted, and misrepresented. A mestizx is the result of colonization and intermixing with indigenous peoples. Latin America is a massive agglomeration of different identities. While latinidad itself is not monolithic, many people wrongly interpret it as such. Accepting my ethnic/racial identity has been a long process, but now I know my place and what I am able to say and what I am not. And that has definitely facilitated my artistic practice and the thematics of my practice. My own happiness and my parents’ happiness [motivates me to keep going]. It is just so satisfying, like when my mom read my published poem she was like ‘this is really good’ (and my mom is that type of person who does not give compliments out for free). When I got into Barnard she was like, ‘okay good, now where’s the financial aid?’ and that was her response . I think that that [it] is very motivating that I can make work that will make my family proud and make me happy; it's really all I need.

How do you want your work to be shown or experienced?

Well, it really depends on the space [the work] would be featured [in]. I like showing my photography in print, rather than it being digital, just because I encourage people to feel the texture of the photo paper I use. I get really nervous reading my poetry out loud to this day. Today, I had to read my poem out loud in class, and I was shaking the whole time. I don't know why I shake because I know nobody's ever gonna tell me something bad or make fun of me, but I think that I have been exploring [doing a] pre-recording of me reading my work and just implementing it on top of video, so that people can experience my true voice. I love when people read my work in general, but I do want people to hear my voice: it's more powerful that way.

Do you see yourself as an artist? Do you imagine working professionally as an artist?

I finally have come to accept that I am an artist and that I am going to take up all the space I want, as an artist. I am an art history major, and I have been planning on being an Art History major for a couple of years before I got to Barnard. I feel like I always shied away from labeling myself as an artist just because I didn't really have a solid portfolio. Now that I do, it’s good to feel like you are an artist and that you have been accepted among a community of artists. I don't know if I would imagine myself just being an artist, I do want to be a teaching artist, which is why I'm minoring in education. I hope to work in the education department at a museum, so I can teach while implementing my craft and pedagogy. I would also love to continue freelancing and creating on the low. I would just love to keep creating and selling prints if possible and make a little side money off of it– it would be very gratifying.

Why did you submit to Ratrock?

I submitted to Ratrock because Isabella Rafky told me to submit to Ratrock. No, truly it’s why I did. I went to the Ratrock site and was like wait ‘this is so cool; all these people are so cool.’ I definitely felt like I was not deserving of sharing such a cool space with such talented people, but I'm glad Ms. Isabella Rafky told me to submit because now I'm here.

luis collado

Interview by Zöe Sottile

Photos by Pedro Damasceno

Luis Collado is a junior from Chicago studying Electrical Engineering in SEAS. He’s also the technical director for WBAR, an engineer at CU Records, and plays guitar, drums, and bass. His music mixes elements of rock, garage, punk, and psychedelic styles to engage with questions of desire and attainment.

When did you start making music?

I started by making beats around freshman year, after eighth grade. I got my first Ableton software the summer after eighth grade. I was really into dubstep [laughs]. So I entered a remix competition for a Lollapalooza artist with my friend Noah. And I had a general idea of resonance and frequency and filter control to make things sound dubstep-y. I bought Ableton for that, and I ended up forgetting about it. And then I plugged my guitar straight into my computer and started making really, really bad sounding, slimey, loose, glassy, recordings of me playing guitar over programmed drum tracks that were more like tests. And then I played in a couple bands that were very bad and classic rock-oriented. But I started getting a feel for recording and what sounded good where.

I tabled that for a bit and then I brought my interface to Columbia. I would make songs when I didn’t have anything to do at night, and I got a little better, but I still wasn’t getting the whole idea. And then I started doing CU Records, and started realizing okay, the recording experience that I have lines up with what I’ve been learning in my classes, but I’m still not really good at mixing. I downloaded a couple plug-ins and figured out how multi-band compression works, and then mixed FRET BUZZ’s album. And then I just started recording things of various levels of shittiness and hi-fi-ness and just messing around with techniques to try to make them sound better. And now I try to make at least one song a month if not more.

When did that goal start?

At the beginning of this semester. I was having a conversation with my friend Leo, and he [asked] ‘can you just make songs,’ and I was like yeah, and he said, ‘if I was you I would be nonstop making songs.’ And so I [realized] I should probably do that. I have all this time and all these people to collaborate with, so there’s no reason not to take advantage of that. Mostly because I derive a lot more purpose and happiness from producing things rather than chilling or going out. Don’t get me wrong, I love chilling and going out. But I think it’s much more lasting to make something that remains.

Do you usually make music regularly or does inspiration come spontaneously?

I get inspired and then I take it too far. I’ll sit down for a bit and really want to record something and then I’ll probably record three songs. Maybe one I’ll mix while I’m recording it; but for the most part, I’ll just be recording things and be like, ‘oh I’ll mix it later.’ And then if I’m bored doing homework I’ll be like ‘alright, study break’ and pull up the files from whenever and mix them. I’ll end up spending an hour or an hour and a half on that study break. I don’t do it like homework - it definitely ends up being spontaneous. It’s a pain in the ass to get everything set up; but once everything’s set up, I try to just get all the ideas [out]. I keep a ton of Voice Memos and all of them are waiting to be turned into a song. It’s just a question of the time.

Tell me about your involvement with CU Records.

I got involved with CU records because it was adjacent to Rare Candy, and then it really became different. I feel like people try to talk a big game about recording being difficult. Expensive recording is expensive, but that’s it. If you know your way around a limiter and reverb and compressor, then you can make something that doesn’t sound that bad. I’ve been trying to impart that framework towards recording onto other people. The [message of the] place is like: there’s mics here, record it no matter how bad it sounds. And maybe that makes you trust your band more when you have a physical product of your own demo.

How does your schoolwork intersect with your music?

There are a ton of intersections, at least with recording and mixing. You learn how to make amplifiers in the classes that I’m taking now. If I were to go to grad school, I would learn to make digital-to-analog converters and analog-to-digital converters. It really demystifies [recording] - it’s really why I treat a lot of things with disrespect, because they’re not very blackboxed. I’m like, ‘oh this thing is actually kind of cheap, it just looks big and fancy.’

The reason that I’m an engineer is that academically I like questions that are puzzles, rather than things that you yourself are trying to work through [like] an essay. Part of me being able to do things for WBAR and do things for CU Records and record stuff is directly related to the intuition built through Electrical Engineering in particular.

What was it like to transition from mostly making music alone to performing for an audience?

Dude, it’s so hard to sing and play guitar at the same time. That shit is impossible. I tried to sing a song for my girlfriend in high school, and it was so difficult to just say anything while playing the guitar. It was like walking and chewing gum at the same time. I also didn’t know how important it was to be able to hear yourself while you sang. There’s a video of me at Snock just not hitting the right notes. And everyone was very supportive, but I was really screwing up. It was tough to do the singing thing, and it was tough to be yourself on stage, because a lot of the time stage fright makes you avoid doing things that are wacky or funny or otherwise in character in favor of not messing up. So you can seem closed off and stressed out on stage. And then letting go - knowing that you’re yelling and not feeling weird about it. Those were all tough, but it’s super fun and everyone is super supportive. Once you do it once, you [see] alright cool, I can do it again.

Do you like performing now?

Yeah. I was super stressed about it in the beginning, I would tremble. Now I still kind of tremble, but I’m a little better. It’s no longer my first rodeo.

You mentioned the importance of knowing what you sound like. Can you expand on that?  

The expression that you’re doing, playing the notes, is so different from the expression that everybody else is picking up from the amplified sound. I wish I could clone myself at events, so I could have me doing whatever instrument I’m doing, and then one of me front row, and then one at the back of the room, and have their input. I have a certain idea in mind, and I’ve become nitpicky about it by running sound at so many events. I want to play the bass, but I also want to know how the bass sounds. You need to reconcile the two. Ultimately, what it comes down to is having a sound person as part of your band, which is difficult.

Tell me about how your EP, FRET BUZZ, came to be.

I met Ryan [Render], the drummer, at a party, and he had just gotten out of a psych[edelic rock] band. I thought that was so cool. For him it was old news, but for me it was new news. And then I ran into him at a CU Records meeting. We got assigned to be engineers together. Our first recording session together, we laid down the first track, and we kept coming back with Voice Memos. Then his roommate [Luke Kowalczyk] joined in on bass and Charlotte Force joined in on vocals. We recorded the EP over spring break [of sophomore year]. How strong we vibed ended up being the root of a lot of the songs. It was the first thing I really put out. I’m pretty proud of it. Once I had that out, I was like, ‘now I can do anything.’

Genre?

What’s cool about Spotify now is artists’ playlists, because you can see the ways ideas behind the music are related across certain genres. Genre is useful, but I think understanding what the band is going for is also critical, or understanding the goals that they have: what they were trying to communicate and not just sound like. Making things just about genre can be reductive. When I try to use well-defined genres to describe the mix that I like to go for, I end up naming seven genres, none of which I incorporate strongly enough to be visible. Which is why I end up going for moods. I’ll be like ‘this song is sunglasses, foggy night.’

Tell me about your new band, Working Out.

I made solo music all of fall semester. Spring semester, I was like, ‘okay, new band time.’ I met Maddy [Tipp] freshman year, and she was super dope from the get-go because she’d already been in bands for a bit. I forget who contacted who, but Maddy and I decided to make music together and then I met Joey Recker. We had the first practice, and it was cool that we all vibed with each other; we understood the music but also got along. And then since I was so excited to expand on these ideas I just blurted out a ton of things. I gave them like fifty five percent and they filled in the rest, and Joey brought in songs. We tweaked the half-baked ideas and practiced, practiced, practiced. Now I’m pretty excited for this blend of [music that is] danceable but says something new and also [is] contemporary, in that it converses with current music. There’s high energy songs and lower energy songs. And it’s cool because I can say we’re “Working Out.”

Luis curated a playlist of his major musical inspirations just for Ratrock. Check it out below.

A collection of songs that I find myself drawing from a lot when I make music!

jazmin maco

Personal Statement by Jazmin Maco

My work is a negotiation of self - my past self, my present self, my future self. In my poems, I reflect on my experiences and put pen to paper about them. My identity as a black queer woman informs my poetry. My Caribbean heritage is also integral to my work because of the specific tension that I feel between cultures, between places, between selves. Even though I was born in America, I have never identified as African-American because I was raised, surrounded by and steeped in Jamaican culture. My poetry presents a negotiation between what is home, and between what is mine to claim and what isn’t. I use my poems as a way to work through these multiplicities and give myself the space to hear my own voice.

The selection of poems on my Ratrock featured artist page is a collection that I compiled over winter break.  I have been writing poetry almost all of my life, but after high school I took a break from writing. I think I was  stuck. I kept looking at my past work and doubting myself, reluctant to return to something that had meant so much to me without the support of my high school English teachers or the structure of a class setting. But this past summer, I was living in the city with a lot of time to myself to grow and think and become an independent being. I intentionally kept a little notebook with me, in which I would write down whatever thoughts came to me as I walked through the city. I continued this pattern on my trip back to Jamaica with my family, where I also took a lot of the photos you see on my artist page. This past break, I decided that I wanted to push myself to put my work out there and engage in the creative scene on campus, so I returned to that notebook and used the fragmented  thoughts and half poems inside as inspiration to write this new collection. These poems have been born and born again - first, when they were conceived during walks through Central Park, then, when I pieced them together to create full poems, when I sat with them and tweaked lines or scrapped them completely and started anew, and finally, when I shared them with the world.

Though I haven’t given this collection a name, it does have a specific order in which it is meant to be read:

1. In the Cite of the Body

2. Witness

3. Lesson in Living

4. Frida’s Footprints: Burning

5. CRACK

6. Aching by god

7. What the Women Know

8. Frieda

9. The Red Dirt in Our Lungs

10. Jam-ai-ca

Through these poems, I incorporate various themes that are born out of my identities and experiences. If read in the intended order, you will move from ideas of introspection to memory to trauma to the body to blackness to womanhood to history to death to adolescence to family to home to space and place.

In writing about myself and my past, I make a concerted effort to bear witness to my many selves. As you read my poems, I hope that you can feel my words, that you can feel what I have felt, and that you can be a part of this visceral experience. Beyond this invitation, my poems are very distinctly for me. I am talking to and about myself and my life. By directing the conversation within myself, I am able to own my narrative and access traumatic experiences without feeling like I am on display for everyone. My poems are not for anyone else. They are about me, from me, and I am the one who has the power to invite you to be a part of them. I am proud of this collection because it has taken me a long time to get to a place where I could confront my past traumas within myself, let alone write about them. Through my poems, I see myself and I give myself the space to truly feel and heal. By allowing myself to hear my own voice, I affirm that I am still able to move forward.

My poetry is an exploration of and conversation with my past and present selves. Through my poems, I give myself the space to openly and loudly express the emotions and experiences that typify my everyday. I find influence and inspiration to explore personal conversations of identity, trauma, resilience, and sense of place in the books I read, in the conversations I have with the women in my life, in the places I call home, and in the moments I spend in communion with myself. For me, learning to love, accept, and hold myself has been a journey - a long and hard journey, a journey for which I am forever grateful, a journey without which my poems would not and could not exist. My work is a representation of myself in all of my multiplicities.

OPEN LETTER: ON THE INTERVIEW OF JAZMIN MACO