Words I sincerely never thought I'd say. I was a happy and content renter for fifteen years, gave the best years of my life to Chicago. The city will always be home, no matter how far away I move. But the world is very different now, and if we're going to be cooped up indoors - we need more space to roam free. We went on vacation last Halloween and found a lil' slice of paradise on the other side of Lake Michigan we never knew existed. It's the perfect combination of forests, waterways and pedestrian-friendly living. So we quit our jobs for permanently remote positions based in EST and essentially rearranged the entire trajectory of our lives to accommodate this monumental move. It's the most spontaneous thing we've ever done and we're impressing ourselves every step of the way with how adaptable we're becoming. In case anyone is wondering how fast the timeline on this decision can move:
MON Feb 13th - Saw the house on Zillow after it was only posted for 5 hours and screamed "OMG I FOUND OUR HOUSE!" while my partner was making dinner (after not looking for over a month because we weren't pre-approved yet, after monitoring the site hourly for weeks to learn what kind of inventory there is out of state) TUES Feb 14th - Scheduled a walk through and signed the paperwork to officially become pre-approved WED Feb 15th - Left after work to drive to our new hometown, outrunning a blizzard that spanned half the country east of the Mississippi THURS Feb 16th - Saw the house, knew immediately it was The One™, tried to schedule another walk through for my parents and sister but the sellers declined, stating that they already started to receive offers and would not be showing the house to anyone who wasn't already booked for a showing. FRI Feb 17th - Submitted our offer SAT Feb 18th - Offer accepted If there's any advice I can offer, it's this:
My new microfilm that I wrapped on last month, Branches Are Arms Are Branches, has been added to my Short Films page, go check it out! It's my ode to majestic trees I've fallen in love with. A lot of people said the music to last month's microfilm made for a creepy soundtrack, so this is my concerted effort to craft a score that's light and fluffy, inspired by the only real snowstorm we've gotten this winter. It's so scary to see what crops will be like this year without the water table being replenished by melting permafrost. For instance, plum trees take a vey hard hit when the ground isn't cold enough to keep frozen, one warm winter can prohibit a plum tree from fruiting for a year or two. I've taken down An Abundance of Lavender, as I've been submitting it to film fests! Fingers crossed the next time I upload it, it'll be adorned with some wreaths.
It was only a matter of time before I figured out a way to make my hot dogs more gay than they already are. This was my first experiment with my new foiling station, which includes a laminator, an array of colorful holographic & rainbow foils and the pièce de résistance - a hefty laser printer!! That's right, I can finally print my own zines and business cards without having to depend a printshop! I feel so liberated, it's beyond glorious. I've wanted one since I published my first chapbook in 2012 and it feels really great to be in a place where I can justify the investment. I'll be setting up an online shop next month where you can buy my zines, limited runs of foil prints and House of Egregious merch! Should I also sell hot dog stickers? ps: shoutout to all the fellow emo scumbags out here in these streetz,
doing the absolute most at doing the absolute least Recently I was commissioned to create some ghost art, and I challenged myself to use my new POSCA paint markers, which I've only used for street art and never for canvases. I'm actually shocked by how easy they are to blend and remove contrasting colors from the tips of their neon markers, especially sherberty orange/pink from my yellow marker when I used it to blend out the sunset. As long as you quickly brush off the blended color onto a clean paper towel and pump new paint once finished with the blend, the blended color comes almost completely off the marker tip! Also POSCA paint markers are much more inexpensive than their competitors, I'm scowling at you Krink, and still have a great color density to them.
I'm excited to hopefully do more of these. Feel free to reach out if you'd like a mini ghost painting of your own! I have three 5.5" x 5.5" canvases left.
For the last five years I've compiled a favorite albums list for my private TinyLetter audience, what started as a fun way to recap the year has turned into my reader's most anticipated message of the year. It gets me all gooey that it gets them all gooey.
This year was an interesting one, because unlike years back - there is a serious vibe cutting across all these seemingly disjointed lawns. I would love to know if you agree with my assessment, or what made it to your top list : ) Drop your thoughts in the comments! LPs 10. Bitchin Bajas - Bajascillators This album commanded my full attention the first time I heard it. Modular synthesis you don't mind sipping on. You can feel the air you're swimming in when you listen to it. Very trippy. I encourage you to listen to the album in the dark the first time you check it out, you won't be disappointed. 9. Sunni Colón - JúJú & The Flowerbug MMmmm chill dancey vibes with this one, the beats are too smooth. It's made for feeling yourself, for cooking dinner in the kitchen with someone you're playing grab ass with. When the soft brass comes out, you might find yourself thinking about lounging beachside under an umbrella, working on your tan. 8. Miel De Montagne - Tout Autour De Nous French pop does something to my brain that I've only heard Ambien users talk about. It instantly relaxes my shoulders and my brain feels like it's being wrapped up in a warm blanket that just came out of the dryer. It's the difference between a brick of creme cheese and whipped cream cheese. 7. Varsovia - Diseñary y Destruir Watching Los Espookies (Dadaism's much anticipated revival, quite possibly the best show on TV since Daria) was my gateway drug into the world of Varsovia. They are the most delicious blend of glitch pop sexy trance rave bubbly goth ska to ever roam the Earth. Honestly, my quality of life has significantly improved since I got into the Los Espookies soundtracks, brimming with all the Latine electro punk bands I've always dreamed of finding. 6. Pity Party (Girls Club) - Hard Times / Bad Trips Low-fi snacks for the hunger heartbreak leaves you with, full stop. I'm so curious what pedals/vocoders they use because the texture of their music is smoldering and I can't get enough. Many of these songs would make great candidates for holding above your head outside your crushes window. 5. Thee Sacred Souls - Thee Sacred Souls I was raised on Smokey Robinson, The Temptations, Delfonics, Otis Redding - so the second I heard this band, I went weak at the knees. Nuevo soul at it's finest, it's always gonna be a big hell yes from me. They are beyond. Set the mood on fire with this gem. 4. Freddie Gibbs - $oul $old $eparately I'm gonna put it out into the universe now, I wanna do some cover art or liner notes for this man. He's from Gary, I'm from Hammond - we're forever neighbors, let's make this happen. I feel like dude jumped up and grabbed the GOAT title while everyone else has either snapped off or gone silent. It's nice to see dudes like him and Anderson .Paak flourish in a time where most rappers care more about selling shoes than making music. 3. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Cool It Down I've been a lifelong fan of the YYYs and it's really cool to see them receive acclaim like never before with this one. The opening track does what few opening tracks do these days, it instantly transports you to the universe they wanna take you to. It sets the tone in an expansive way, gives you something to relish, to sink your teeth into. It's cool to see a band own their evolution, they've continue to refine their sound with every album and this one proves to be masterful. 2. SZA - SOS I'm kind of at a loss, what can I say that the memes and reaction vids SZA posts haven't already said? She is the true MVP, plain and simple - you can quickly gather that from every record this album shattered upon release. She's the only woman out there calling out fuckshit from fuckbois, she don't let em get away with pinche NADA - doing women everywhere a great service. I bow down in admiration, your grace. 1. Cannons - Fever Dream I can eat disco for breakfast, so I find this album particularly satiating. The beats are unstoppably groovy - vintagesque indie pop rock that requires big booty bouncin right out the gate. Every track becomes an instant favorite, the production is so solid it makes my mouth water. Great hype jams for when you need to turn up the mood but want to maintain a chill atmosphere. EPs 5. Cute Heels, Dmitry Distant, Norwell - Parallels 4. Blood Orange - Four Songs 3. Dr. Dre - ETA (with Snoop Dogg, Busta Rhymes, Anderson.Paak) 2. Azizi Gibson, Freddie Gibbs - Hate To Say It 1. marinelli - Dipshit Best guilty pleasures 3. Sipper - fuck sex 2. Dashboard Confessional - All The Truth That I Can Tell 1. Bright Eyes - Old Soul Song (for the New World Order) [Companion Version] Podcast 1. I'm in Hell with Owen Thiele: favorite moments of episodes past (link works best on a phone, I go on at 48m19s) Gives mega Loveline vibes from the late 90's and thus brought me so much joy this year. Nothing was off the table, nothing was prepared, the host always forgot to promo the show - it was a very punk rock way to go about something as official as a contracted SpotifyLive podcast. I appreciate anyone who makes a mockery out of formalities, and the irreverent expectation of the show was a breath of fresh air. After the first unhinged episode I listened to, I was hooked - which says a lot because I don't even fuck w podcasts, so imagine my jaw-dropping bewilderment when the host randomly brought me on stage to interview me while I was casually listening to his last broadcast. In conclusion, I forgot to plug myself or House of Egregious because my brain turned into an actual soufflé during the surprise interview. Owie, hope you make good on your word and let me be the producer of your next pod, I promise I will slay. Loving you! I created a new zine: 5 Ways to Beat Creative Block. It's a one page zine that you can download from the Free Zines to Print page, I've also included directions on how to fold and cut it so you can print it up at home or office. Gobble up that free paper, yeahh!
This strategy has certainly helped me create way more art this year than I would've if I had let myself get caught up in overthinking what should be a simple process for me to chill: pushing around paint, doodling comics, experimenting with different patches on my synth. Hope this helps quell the naysayers that live inside your brain and enables you to get back to enjoying the art making process in the new year. There will always be a special place in my heart for glitch films, I love watching them but I especially love making them.
I created An Abundance of Lavender for the The One Minutes collection, preserved by The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision. It's my reflection of rest, pleasure and play. View this film, along with the other stop-motion films I've made and produced, on my Short Films page. Sometime soon I'll blog about my process for scoring this film, it was really wild as it was my first time ever doing it, took exponentially longer than I anticipated and tried using almost every instrument I own before I figured out the right combo. Very gratifying/thankful that the end product synced up so well with the footage. Virgil Abloh passed on last November and I still haven't been able to bring myself to write about him, I continue to be in the absence of a conclusive summary that adequately articulates his impact on me, which is why I finally made the shadow tribute. I look up to him as a role model and mentor by proxy, he's a true interdisciplinary artist - there's not many people who are revered for being at the top of so many games. Virgil es forever. No one at his level leaves a treasure trove of tools for the next generation of BIPOC creatives to leverage so they don't have to duplicate common mistakes or let gatekeeping obscure their potential. It's inspired me to get back to blogging to share my experience navigating the art world as a disabled, brown, queer woman, in hopes of easing someone else's worries or fears that ultimately we all face, even though so few of us talk about it. I've circled back to these links numerous times over the past few years, so many gems of wisdom sprinkled throughout. We were too lucky to have him.
Summer 2018 I rewatched Virgil's lecture he gave at Harvard's Graduate School of Design - "INSERT COMPLICATED TITLE HERE." If you don't have the time to dedicate to it right now, feel free to review my notes. Mostly everything is lifted verbatim from his lecture, I only sprinkled in a few personal clarifications. This was a game changer for me: ---------START--------- what’s my personal signature? (this began to develop when you were a young child, these are the things you're impulsively drawn to, not learned in school) Notes on Virgil’s “PERSONAL DESIGN LANGUAGE” 1: READYMADE - NEW IDEA BASED ON RECOGNIZABLE PARTS OF HUMAN EMOTION, IRONY know where you're at in the lineage of art movements 2: “FIGURES OF SPEECH” OR THE “QUOTES” insert humanity into conversation. you open up when you laugh. figurative and precise. designing with a keyboard. 3: 3% APPROACH only edit something 3% away from the original form. make you recognize the thing you’ve already consumed. 4: A COMPROMISE BETWEEN 2 DISTRICT SIMILAR OR DISSIMILAR NOTATIONS shorthand between luxury and streetware. internal measuring stick. 5: SIGNS OF “WORK IN PROCESS” - AGAIN HUMAN INTERACTION another humanity thing. you don’t need to be a perfectionist. your hand and brain will tell you when you’re finished 6: A SOCIETAL COMMENTARY - HAS A REASON TO EXIST NOW an output for me has to have a reason to exist 7: SPEAKING TO THE TOURIST & PURIST SIMULTANEOUSLY driving principle. the tourist and purist has to meet somewhere. if we’re not interchanging w regular people, we’re self-serving - as fun as design is. the doorstop interruption embed art into something universal functionality and figurative value add contemporary value, on top of it’s function oversaturation shouldn’t be discouraging, we have a bigger community not like fighting to be different. owning my own voice in this sea of differentness where everyone's trying to make a mark think countryside to city design has to work. art does not. make impossible products it’s important not to be precious find new space for your voice the zig-zag approach finds new space, linear thinking results in copies of past productions. find the opposite and go there. realize different ideas in different spaces get all the way close to that information, what does it look like once the barriers been broken? ---------END--------- WEBSITES/RESOURCES virgilabloh.com/postmodern/ canary---yellow.com/ (scroll to the bottom left & find LV SHOWNOTES 1-7, highly suggest diving in) lectures on youtube SPOTIFY PLAYLISTS Virgil for Vogue TELEVISED RADIO Louis Vuitton Men's Spring-Summer 2020 Fashion Show MUSIC JOURNEY for Louis Vuitton VIRGIL ABLOH THE LOOP |
¿Como se dice "Un Blog?"Here is where I share announcements of all shapes and sizes, and deep dive into my art and music making practices. I aim to demystify the creative process for BIPOC women & NBs. Archives
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