FORGE. Issue 19: Fate

SOPHI GULLBRANTS

Sophi Gullbrants “‘Fate is a loaded idea. Do our actions impact our path? How much of it is predetermined? The puppeteer could be fate, a greater power controlling or giving life to the puppet. The puppet has scissors to open that relationship up to more ambiguity. ” -Sophi Gullbrants

Sophi Gullbrants

novelists, animators, and fashion designers as well. I also love drawing from the prints of Harunobu and Moronobu, their storytelling in an image with nuanced symbolism and fashion.

Age

What materials do you like to work with?

22

For 2D work, I’ve been trying to focus on finding a balance between traditional media and digital editing in Photoshop for clarity. I often have a pile of gouache, watercolors, colored pencils, inks, and Blackwing pencils at hand.

Name

What is your current location?

Providence, RI Where are you from?

I have lived in Maui, HI; Boca Raton, FL; Orlando, FL; Amelia Island, FL; Sterling, VA; Las Vegas, NV; Providence, RI; and New York, NY for a minute— I am from nowhere in particular.

What is your current occupation?

I’m a full-time student and a part-time barista.

Do you have any training or formal education in the field of art you work in, or are you self taught?

I’m currently in my fourth and final year studying illustration at RISD. What people, books, films, (etc…) inspire you the most?

Specific works I’ve been looking at are Suzan Pitt’s Asparagus, William Kentridge’s Faustus In Africa, and the puppet performances of Phantom Limb Company. I’ve been looking at the work of a lot of contemporary painters, illustrators, graphic

What pieces, projects, or collaborations are you currently working on?

I am currently working on a Western puppet show that incorporates animation. There’s a cowgirl named Jo, a spry decapitated horse head, a big snake, and some cacti. I’m excited about the idea of crafting an experience that incorporates live performance and music to shape a visual world. I also just thought it would be funny to say “I’m working on a puppet show for my degree project.”

Is there any music you like to listen to while working?

I’ve been listening to Yo La Tengo, Angel Olsen, Devandra Banhart, Frank Ocean, Sam Cooke, and this hundred hour long playlist on Spotify called Reverberation Radio that has some great funk on it.

Where do you like to work?

Wherever there’s natural light.

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What is one of your earliest memories of making art?

What do you hope to accomplish with your work?

When I was a kid I drew a serial comic strip on copy paper and I vaguely remember being very small with my sister at my grandparents house in Santa Fe, New Mexico making little Sculpey kokeshi dolls.

I want to make someone laugh or wonder or tear up a little. I want to communicate in a unique and sincere voice with my work.

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Where To Find Them Websites: sophigullbrants.com Contact: sophigullbrants@gmail.com Social Media: @seasonalaffectivedisordergrl (Instagram)

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MATHIEU LARONE

Mathieu Larone “I see fate in a way that allows it to be altered depending on our choices. I really don’t think that fate is set, and we’re just along for the ride. My drawing is a map of these choices, more specifically the the versions of life we can choose from. Like a scratch card or map with different locations on it. It’s a drawing that allows you to go into it and explore it and see what you can find.”

-Mathieu Larone Name Mathieu Larone Age 22 What is your current location?

Toronto, Ontario Where are you from?

I’m originally from Montreal, Quebec.

What is your current occupation?

I’m an illustration student at OCAD university in Toronto. I also do some freelance work on the side.

Do you have any training or formal education in the field of art you work in, or are you self taught?

Other than studying illustration and having some drawing courses here and there, I’m mostly self taught. I do think that formal art training is good though, I have a friend studying classical drawing and painting in california and his drawings feel like a punch in the gut everytime I see them.

What people, books, films, (etc…) inspire you the most?

ple I look up to the most. Back in Montreal I work at La Maison de la bande dessinée de Montréal ( Montreal house of comics), where I met people like Maxime Gérin, Al gofa and Vincent Giard. These people have had the most immediate influence on me. I also love people like Brad Holland, Milton Glaser, Vittorio Fiorucci and Saul Steinberg, for pretty obvious reasons. In terms of movies my taste is all over the place, recently I’ve been diving into the work of Rohmer a french new wave filmmaker. His movies are somewhat dated and touch on really weird subjects, but there is a mesmerising mastery of dialogue that just keeps me coming back to his work. As for books, I’ve mostly been reading Vonnegut. I take so much away from his books, and as a visual person, translating his eccentric ideas into drawing has always been a pleasure.

What materials do you like to work with?

I mainly work with thick 4B pencils, which I then colour digitally.

I love the immediacy of colour application when using the computer. I’ve also been getting more and more into painting, I seem to be figuring out way to make it my own. Above all I’m really in love with drawing and that’s really what I do most.

What pieces, projects, or collaborations are you currently working on?

I’m currently working on a book for TCAF coming in may, it’ll be a small anthology of comics I drew last year, with some new stuff sprinkled into the mix. I’m also bothering anyone I can to let me make posters for them, I’m really trying to get better at posters.

I’ve been lucky enough to meet and work with some of the peo-

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Is there any music you like to listen to while working?

What is one of your earliest memories of making art?

My main music workhorse is the Caretaker (Leyland Kirby). If you’ve never heard the caretaker, please go listen to it. It’s like dancing in a room filled with water, and you never have to come up for air. There is just so much in that music that keeps surprising me everytime I listen.

I have a specific memory of drawing on my grandfathers belly with wax crayons when I was three or four. From what I’ve heard he was an artistic person so I guess I got most of it from him.

Where do you like to work?

I have big lofty goals, like everyone else I guess. I mostly want to make work that makes me feel good, that replicates that gut punch that I get when seeing my favorite artists work (my existence is often measured by gut punches). All jokes aside, being an illustrator is everything I could ever want, so all I really want accomplish is to keep doing it.

I’m fortunate enough to have a sweet nook to work at in my apartment so I get most of my work done there. I also love going to the Art Gallery of Ontario and sitting in front of David Milne’s work. I can’t tell you how much ideas have risen from looking at his paintings of canadian landscapes. Cafe’s are also the best to trudge around in early ideas.

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Where To Find Them Websites: mathieularone.com Contact: mathieularone@gmail.com Social Media: @mlarono (Instagram)

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What do you hope to accomplish with your work?

CRISTINA RONQUILLO

Cristina Ronquillo “I hoped to capture the irreverent banality and irony which are often associated with the word fate. In my opinion, believing in fate or giving your life to an unknown force has no more logical explanation than death, like in the instance of getting run over by a bus. I think that all the other things that happen in life are tied to our own efforts and compromises.”

-Cristina Ronquillo Name Cristina Ronquillo (AKA Cris) Age 26 What is your current location?

Barcelona Where are you from?

Barcelona What is your current occupation?

I work as a junior art director.

Do you have any training or formal education in the field of art you work in, or are you self taught?

I made art as a self taught arist until I attended a fine arts university and graduated with a postgraduate degree in illustration.

What people, books, films, (etc…) inspire you the most?

I have classic point of reference like Matisse, Memphis group, Nik de St. Pauli and all the pop artists. As far as books, I love Akira, El Beso De Judas by Joan Fontcuberta, and Historia De La Fealdad by Umberto Eco. As for films, I like Holy Mountain

by Alejandro Jodorowsky and Freaks (1932). Despite all that the

art that inspires me, what inspires me most is young talent. I love photos by Alba Yruela and my personal fav, Petra Collins– her eyes are blessed. All of them, according my way of thinking, are interdisciplinary artists.

What materials do you like to work with?

I normally use materials out of necessity, so I’m never reluctant to use any kind in particular. I preffer to look at the uniformity of color and heavy texture when I’m picking something to work with. I don’t really like materials that creat agradient. I often use acrylic, Posca crayons and clay.

What pieces, projects, or collaborations are you currently working on?

I currently work with two kinds of clients–the boring ones and the fun ones. My boring clients are companies who need graphic design work, fashion brands, etc... My fun clients are music festivals, feminist events, expositions, music art direction–all of that sort of stuff, at a local level.

Is there any music you like to listen to while working?

I love Opatov (psych-garage from Barcelona), Camellos (Madrid’s real garage band). The “Guiri” side of me loves Cola Boy, Alex Cameron, Frankie Cosmos, and Yuki Kikuchi.

Where do you like to work?

I don’t have a studio–I wish I did–so have to work wherever I can.

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What is one of your earliest memories of making art?

When I was three at school we had to study big painters like

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Mirรณ, Picasso, Kandinsky, Matisse, and Dali, and then we had to emulate each of their painting styles.

RACHEL O’REGAN

Rachel O'Regan “All of the bugs and all of the plants are working for our health. Their fate is also ours.”

-Rachel O’Regan Name Rachel O’Regan Age 23 What is your current location?

At home, in Dublin.

Where are you from?

Ireland!

What is your current occupation?

Very recently I made the transition into full-time freelance illustration work and comics.

Do you have any training or formal education in the field of art you work in, or are you self taught?

I am self taught! I am really proud of that, and I love finding other artists that are self taught as well. They give me a lot of hope. I think being self taught kind of allows my work to be totally free and messy and sometimes just plain crude, and I really love things that way. I started making images on Photoshop when I was about 12 years old, which were these strange blends of photos of celebrities and butterflies and pink glittery text. I had a whole website full of ‘em, it was called something like Spicy Graphix. And then I stopped that as I got older because if I still did that now, it’d be a bit weird. Then I did a law degree because I felt like that was what I was supposed to do at 18 to be a sensible person. This was incorrect. Eventually I came back around

to art. But I think that little spicy graphix maker was just dormant inside of me all along and now she’s kind of reawakened. I’ve just moved on to drawing flowers, butterflies and worms with booties instead haha.

What people, books, films, (etc…) inspire you the most?

I have such a long list for each one of these, but I will condence it now for this. Every single bit of Miranda July’s writing and films. Deborah Levy’s Beautiful Mutants and Swallowing Geography. Daisies by Vera Chytilová is one of my favourite films–it’s really lovely visually. Anything I find exciting or abstract I like to lock into my inspiration bank. David Lynch is great of course, I like those miniature chickens that squirt blood in Eraserhead!

Cartoons from my childhood definitely inspire my work. I know a lot of artists are playing around with Mickey Mouse gloves in illustration and comics these days. I do that myself. There’s something so nice about the roundness of character’s fingers in old cartoons. When I think of those cartoons I think of softness.

All of the characters are squishy in my memory and I want that for my own work.

What materials do you like to work with?

I spend so many hours working on Adobe Illustrator that I feel I need to break it up with physical mediums sometimes. Paint is my main thing right now. I paint backgrounds and scenes and shapes which I then use to guide the digital work. Just letting the paint decide how things are going to go. This feels like it’s good for my mental health and for my soul. Ceramics are something I’m hoping to break into in the near future as well.

What pieces, projects, or collaborations are you currently working on?

Right now I’m working on a new picture book called This Is Not

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An Appropriate Climate For Your Survival which I made using a combination of paint and digital artwork. The storyline is a heartbreaking tale of two lovers who explore a surreal and flooding landscape. They learn about who each other truly are and purchase some ceramic piglets along the way.

Is there any music you like to listen to while working?

I listen, almost exclusively, to female artists. Songs that are super long, have really high pitched parts or tell a story are my favourite. I can get lost in these stories and in the waves of women’s voices as I work. It’s meditative really. Weyes Blood, Miriam The Believer, Tori Amos, Angel Olsen, Big Thief, Feist...

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Where do you like to work?

At home for now, but soon I hope to acquire a studio space and a chubby dog who eats sandwiches whenever I look away.

What is one of your earliest memories of making art?

Scraping a picture into the side of my dad’s car with stones when I was very young. Everyone was angry. It was a bold move for my art career.

What do you hope to accomplish with your work?

Calm joy.

JACKSON JOYCE

Jackson Joyce “Fate is this big, lofty idea. Life takes dramatic turns and it seems like something inevitable or predetermined. I painted an early version of this in my sketchbook. When I looked back on it, I saw a metaphor for fate: two lost people confounded by something bigger than themselves.”

-Jackson Joyce Name Jackson Joyce Age 23 What is your current location?

Providence, Rhode island.

Where are you from?

Shreveport, Louisiana.

What is your current occupation?

Freelance Illustrator/ Line Cook/ Student.

Do you have any training or formal education in the field of art you work in, or are you self taught?

I’m currently studying Illustration at RISD. What people, books, films, (etc…) inspire you the most?

Film inspires me the most. I archive film stills and screen-grabs on my computer. When I don’t know what to make, I usually flip through a few hundred film stills—I have a whole folder that is just stills of people driving. Consequently, I use a lot of wide, cinematic compositions. I love reading anything by Donna Tartt, Michael Chabon, Paul Auster, or George Saunders. I also have

some extremely talented friends who are always inspiring me to push my work.

What materials do you like to work with?

Acryla-Gouache is my favorite medium at the moment. I also love working with just a brush and some sumi ink.

What pieces, projects, or collaborations are you currently working on?

I’ve been working on a book of three short comics that should be done soon. The theme of which, coincidentally, is FATE. The stories started out as an homage to Noir, but have evolved into different genres. The story I’m finishing up now is a painted comic about UFOs. Is there any music you like to listen to while working?

Three songs: I Don’t Believe in the Sun by the Magnetic Fields, Only In Dreams by Weezer. I guess that’s it. Two songs.

Where do you like to work?

There is this computer lab in the basement at RISD. There are no windows, so you can’t tell how much time goes by. The only sound is of a risograph constantly spitting out duotone prints.

It’s kind of dim. I get my best work done there.

What is one of your earliest memories of making art?

I was in kindergarten, painting a bird, and thought to myself, This is fucking sick.

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What do you hope to accomplish with your work?

I’m always trying to become a better storyteller, and make more

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Where To Find Them Websites: jacksonedwardjoyce.com Contact: jacksonedwardjoyce@gmail.com Social Media: @jackson.e.joyce (Instagram)

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empathetic narratives. I want my work to be accessible to anyone.

HELEN LI

Helen Li “This piece is my interpretation of the Fates–the personifications of destiny and controllers of the Thread of Life.

They are: Clothos (she spins the thread), Lachesis (she measures the thread), and Atropos (she cuts the thread). I created it on the iPad Pro using Procreate.”

-Helen Li Name Helen Li What is your current location?

Warsaw, Poland Where are you from?

Sydney, Australia What is your current occupation?

Very fresh freelance illustrator.

Do you have any training or formal education in the field of art you work in, or are you self taught?

I just finished my MFA in Illustration as Visual Essay.

What pieces, projects, or collaborations are you currently working on?

I have a piece about women supporting women in the works.

Is there any music you like to listen to while working?

I prefer to listen to podcasts or re-runs of reality competition shows playing in the background (e.g. The Great British/Australian Bake Off or RuPaul’s Drag Race) .

Where do you like to work?

Preferably in a small studio with friends, but currently I’m happily at home with my dog and plants.

What is one of your earliest memories of making art?

I drew a princess and put it in my dad’s soup to show him.

What people, books, films, (etc…) inspire you the most?

Mostly my friends and artists in my community. I also love cartoons and animated films.

What materials do you like to work with?

Digital drawing on the iPad Pro or Photoshop for speed. Coloured pencils for texture.

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Where To Find Them Websites: www.helenofkoi.com Contact: hello@helenofkoi.com Social Media: @helen.of.koi (Instagram)

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SHINYEON MOON

ShinYeon Moon “I found Tarot Cards to be such a beautiful way one could visualize the idea of fate and I started creating these pieces as a meditative, personal project to learn more about them and eventually be able to read them.”

-ShinYeon Moon Name ShinYeon Moon Age 27 What is your current location?

Brooklyn, New York Where are you from?

New York (suburbia) What is your current occupation?

Freelance illustrator and artist assistant.

Mamoru Hosoda, as well as the series Chef’s Table, and seem to always turn to these whenever I am in need of a creativity boost. I just finished reading and also highly recommend The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz.

What materials do you like to work with?

I love to experiment with different materials, but recently (probably due to lack of time) I have been shifting completely over to digital from start to finish (from using a Wacom tablet with Photoshop, to the Procreate App using an iPad Pro and Apple Pencil). But every now and then, I need to step away from the screen, and I turn to Sakura Micron pens or Faber-Castell colored pencils to use on a variety of paper (from Korean Hanji to Hahnemühle printmaking paper).

What pieces, projects, or collaborations are you currently working on?

I’m a recent graduate of the School of Visual Arts MFA Illustration as Visual Essay program.

The newest personal project (which has also forced me to try to begin writing), is called The Book of Introverts. It is a series of images of unaffiliated strangers and a glimpse into a moment of their lives–of quiet moments, which are oftentimes overlooked, but nonetheless moments that are valuable and precious to their owners.

What people, books, films, (etc…) inspire you the most?

Is there any music you like to listen to while working?

I’m not sure where to begin, but I think that traveling has been the greatest, most positive source for my inspiration. I found it’s also super important for me to have a supportive community and I am so grateful to be surrounded by such amazingly talented artist friends and mentors, especially those I met during my graduate program. When it comes to films, I am a big fan of the animation film directors, Hayao Miyazaki, Satoshi Kon, and

Nowadays, I have been listening to a great deal of Blues music and am loving the voice of Big Mama Thornton. I have also been binge-listening to the Lore podcast.

Do you have any training or formal education in the field of art you work in, or are you self taught?

Where do you like to work?

I usually work on a desk in my apartment, but I try to get out to

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coffee shops, libraries, or friend’s houses to draw as much as possible so as not to feel so hermit-like and isolated.

What is one of your earliest memories of making art?

I remember I used to be an obsessive collector of Japanese stationary and I recall trying to make my own version of those stationary sets and their characters to give to my friends.

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Where To Find Them Websites: www.shinyeon-moon.com Contact: hi@shinyeon-moon.com Social Media: @shinnyoni (Instagram)

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What do you hope to accomplish with your work?

I’m not much of a talker, so if my work can start a conversation or in some way make someone think or feel differently, I think I can say I have succeeded in doing my job. I sincerely hope to just keep making work that is most genuinely true to who I am (even if that me is a neurotic weirdo).

SEAN SUCHARA

Sean Suchara “Fate to me is hard to transcribe, because I’ve always felt while there are moments where life seems to come together, I still know it happened by some action of my own volition. Rather than something that acts upon me, whisking me away into my future, I feel fate is something that ‘I’ act upon, I am the cause that makes the effect.

For me fate feels closest to the Japanese four-character idiom ‘Ichi-go ichi-e’ which translates to ‘one time, one meeting.’ Born out of the traditions of tea ceremonies the term embodies the fact that nothing lasts and nothing repeats, so one must cherish and grasp these fleeting moments. Fate to me are these fleeting moments, these events/gatherings/experiences that wish to be recognized, appreciated and acted upon.”

-Sean Suchara Name

plinary practice centered around images.

Sean Suchara

What people, books, films, (etc…) inspire you the most?

Age

Two of my biggest influences are probably Yoshitomo Nara and the Katamari series by Keith Takahashi. I could go on for ages about what they’ve done for me. Currently I’m also into the writing of Gaston Bachelard and Ian Bogost, campy Tokusatsu shows like Ultraman and Super Sentai, Too Much Magazine, illustrated encyclopedia’s of rocks, people putting google eyes on random objects, Picasso’s cement sculptures–is this list getting too long? Most recently I’ve been obsessed with David O’Reilly’s game Everything. That game encompasses–no pun intended– basically everything I want to accomplish with my work.

24 What is your current location?

A small town in the suburbs of Long Island, New York.

Where are you from?

Long Island, NY. What is your current occupation?

What materials do you like to work with?

I currently work as a freelance graphic designer & illustrator. I’m also the art director for Take Shape, a new indie architecture magazine, as well as, a co-partner in the design research duo, Other People Places Things.

I’m having a lot of fun with colored pencils and oil pastels because of their versatility on the go. Thanks to commuting, I built up the habit of only working with what I can fit in my backpack.

I’m hoping to challenge that by doing more large scale work that puts me in one place for a while, namely my studio.

Do you have any training or formal education in the field of art you work in, or are you self taught?

What pieces, projects, or collaborations are you currently working on?

I went to school for graphic design, but I’ve always unconsciously expressed myself through drawing so what I learned in school has kinda naturally cycled back into this weird DIY multidisci-

Right now I’m really excited to be working on publishing my weekly still life series with Platform Editions. Take Shape is currently working on its second issue centered on the theme of commuting. I’ve also been working for the past year with Japa-

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nese artist Rei Nakanishi on a series of collaborative illustrations which we plan to launch as a book in Tokyo.

strong I like to go to a cafe. Public places offer me the ability to get truly bored which is really important to my process.

Is there any music you like to listen to while working?

What is one of your earliest memories of making art?

I like listening to music that has a steady rhythm or sense of flow to it that I can ride into my creative happy place. Something with a feeling of movement, like feet hitting the pavement as you walk to the train just as day breaks. It’s a really specific feeling that I can only describe with more metaphors so I’ll name off some examples instead: Bloodthirsty Butchers, Eastern Youth, Hop Along, Kaseki Cider, Ogurusu Norihide, The Pillows, The Ramones, RVIVR, STUTS.

My parents were always encouraging of me and my sisters drawing on walls–or at least the sheetrock before it got painted over.

Where do you like to work?

I feel lucky because I was able to build a very versatile and comfortable studio out of my home. But, when inertia gets too

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Where To Find Them Websites: seansuchara.info Contact: seansuchara@gmail.com Social Media: @sean_suchara (Instagram)

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What do you hope to accomplish with your work?

I find our relationships to things and each other to be very important. The way we imbue meaning and life onto objects and symbols, and build empathy for the smallest things. I’d love to understand and highlight those invisible aspects of the world and through I guess a kinda of imaginary landscape make people more aware of them in their actual life. I hope by doing that people can see my work as a resource for being more open and kind to each other.

MADELEINE UNDERWOOD

Madeleine Underwood “I made this piece in one of my classes, I’m pretty sure. I’ve been having a lot of mini existential crises lately, mostly when I’m trying to fall asleep. It’s overwhelming to think about heavy things like your fate, the planet’s fate, human race’s fate, when you’re just trying to sleep. It really helps to draw a version of myself that’s physically confined to a page, one that’s real and present.”

-Madeleine Underwood Name Madeleine Underwood Age 20 What is your current location?

St. Louis Where are you from?

Nashville, by way of NYC and Boston.

What is your current occupation?

Student Do you have any training or formal education in the field of art you work in, or are you self taught?

I currently go to design school but I’ve learned the most about art by delving into the work of artists I admire, experimenting with different things and talking to my friends about what they’re making.

What people, books, films, (etc…) inspire you the most?

I am super inspired by the creative scene in Nashville. There’s so many good artists and musicians (people like Dreamwave, Juliana Horner, and Soccer Mommy) coming out of there right

now. It’s great to see a city be so revived and reenergized by the youngins.

What materials do you like to work with?

I carry around my sketchbook with me everywhere, and I like to use a mixture of markers, gouache, watercolor, and pens that I’ve accumulated over the years.

What pieces, projects, or collaborations are you currently working on?

Since I’m in school, it gets hard to balance assignments with creative projects. But I’m working on a printmaking project right now that will be a book with letterpress type and images of my kitchen; I’m pretty excited about it.

Is there any music you like to listen to while working?

I can’t work without music. I love finding out about new artists— right now, I’m super into Ravyn Lenae, Yung Bans, and Steve Lacy. I also heavily fuck with podcasts about ghost stories and true crime.

Where do you like to work?

I work in my bed, in my studio, in coffee shops—pretty much anywhere that’s semi-comfortable and has good natural light.

What is one of your earliest memories of making art?

When I was a kid I really wanted to be a fashion designer. I’d make shoes out of duct tape and wear them around my house,

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and cut outfits out of magazines and make collages.

What do you hope to accomplish with your work?

Drawing and painting, for me, is definitely a coping mechanism.

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Sharing what I make is a way for me to maybe help another person cope, too.

JOSEPH FASOLINO

Joseph Fasolino “‘We Had Lived In Tribeca Before It Was As It Is’ is a reference to the idea of living as multiple selves and being under the rules that decide those realities. In this drawing, I imagine an alternate Tribeca, NYC, where I live together with a specific person from my current life, and we continue on our path in this nature-centered structural environment. In this place, things come and change the neighborhood, transforming the colors, architecture and living patterns. ” -Joseph Fasolino Name Joseph Fasolino Age 25 What is your current location?

Hudson Valley, NY Where are you from?

Hudson Valley, NY What is your current occupation?

I work as a freelance illustrator, a books and records seller, and a busser.

Do you have any training or formal education in the field of art you work in, or are you self taught?

Aside from taking some animation classes in college, I’m mainly self-taught. After I finished school I realized I needed to be on my own for a while and improve my drawing. During my earlier years in beginning art courses I was never paying attention, as I was always thinking of music and playing different instruments in my head, sort of living in a musical state.

What people, books, films, (etc…) inspire you the most?

I love the work of artists Guy Billout, Philip Guston, David Hockney, Jared French, Dali, Jesse Moynihan, Jesse Jacobs, and filmmakers Leos Carax, Alex Garland and Rick Alverson.

What materials do you like to work with?

At this point, I’m always doing my line work in pencil, and it’s usually on some subtly textured paper. I take my drawing over to a spot of sunlight indoors, where I photograph it. I color in Photoshop using a Wacom Intuos, then print on textured watercolor paper.

What pieces, projects, or collaborations are you currently working on?

I’m currently working to extend the realm I’m so invested in, trying to shape the landscape and characters in such a way that each piece exists in this space exists as it’s supposed to. I have this idea that it’s all physically out there somewhere, a place that is colorful but has been abused, a place uninhabitable by humanity but strangely connected to it. I act as a photographer, taking snapshots. I’d like to someday turn it into an open-world, highly detailed and interactive VR experience. That would be the most ideal thing I can think of in terms of convincing my mind I can actually exist in this place.

Is there any music you like to listen to while working?

At the moment it’s Jay Som, The Garden, The Thompson Twins and Pink Floyd.

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Where do you like to work?

I think of ideas as I’m out during the day, as I’m sitting at a coffee place or hiking or traveling. Some ideas just come to me as I sit at my desk. Some come to me as I mess up a line, and then my drawing is something new completely.

What is one of your earliest memories of making art?

When I was about 4 my parents got me a book of blank paper

Previous Work

Where To Find Them Websites: josephfasolino.com​​​ Contact: josephefasolino@gmail.com Social Media: @joseph_fasolino (Instagram)

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and an honestly huge amount of crayons and colored pencils. I would take everything out to a tree stump in our front yard and I would just sit there for a while coloring.

What do you hope to accomplish with your work?

I’m hoping to continue work on my current series, which will end probably never, because this place is like the Earth itself, always explorable!

LARSSON MCSWAIN

Larsson McSwain “I’ve interpreted fate as the way our passions are bound to follow us- regardless of location, time, or state of being. Those of us who love what we do are destined to do it no matter what else may come our way.”

-Larsson McSwain

Name

What materials do you like to work with?

Larsson McSwain

Photoshop is my go-to for efficiency’s sake. A cheap, newsprint sketchbook and blackwings are my go-to utensils for tactile drawing.

Age 22 What is your current location?

Ridgewood, NY Where are you from?

Shreveport, Louisiana What is your current occupation?

I am a freelance illustrator! I’m also a freelance designer working part-time and in-house at Penguin Random House.

Do you have any training or formal education in the field of art you work in, or are you self taught?

What pieces, projects, or collaborations are you currently working on?

I’m currently working on an ongoing project for my hometown– providing posters, advertisements, and a visual identity as they rebrand their downtown district. It’s a very exciting project because I’ve been granted complete creative control to work on something that literally and figuratively hits close to home.

Is there any music you like to listen to while working?

I love jazz. I can be easily distracted, so wordless music is ideal while I’m working. If I’m in the process of ideating, I prefer silence. If I’m getting ready in the morning, people like Glen Campbell and Waylon Jennings wake me up.

Where do you like to work?

I graduated from Ringling College of Art and Design in May, 2017 with a BFA in illustration. I also attended the Illustration Academy a couple years ago. I owe a lot of who I am to those two places and all the folks I met there.

My room, surrounded by books, toys, paintings from my friends, etc. I’m really able to let loose and make a mess.

What people, books, films, (etc…) inspire you the most?

No moment in particular stands out to me, I was just always drawing.

Haruki Murakami, Chip Kidd, George Pratt, Charley Harper, William Joyce, Miroslav Sasek.

What is one of your earliest memories of making art?

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What do you hope to accomplish with your work?

I want to inspire others to make pictures. Growing up and looking at my heroes work fed the creative flame in me. I push

Previous Work

Where To Find Them Websites: larssonmcswain.com Contact: larssonmcswain@gmail.com Social Media: @larssonmcswain (Instagram)

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things like abstraction, tangents, and perspectives in my work and selfishly have a great time doing it. If that makes someone else feel some type of way then that’s even better.

FORGE. ISSUE 6: SERENDIPITY

JESSICA PETTWAY

by MATTHEW JAMES-WILSON

Jessica Pettway is a photographer and designer with a vision and wisdom far beyond her

years. Since graduating the School of Visual Arts, Jessica has produced inventive work for editorial giants like the New York Times Magazine, Time, and Bloomberg Buissnessweek, while maintaining a fulfilling personal practice. Throughout her work Jessica makes light of discomfort, creating harmony with contrasting colors and textures and finding the humor in awkward scenarios. Jessica is committed to being as ambitious as she is playful with her work, and by doing so she’s contributed to a refreshing change of pace in an otherwise stuffy corporate industry. Jessica has a bright future ahead of her, and I’m so thrill to have the opportunity to take a closer look at her work this early on in her photo career.

Where are you from and where do you live currently?

I’m from New Jersey and I’m currently living in Brooklyn, New York.

What was your experience like growing up in New Jersey? What about where you grew up left an impression on you?

New Jersey was super quiet and typically suburban. Boring. There weren’t too many students around me that were super passionate about creating art or creating a career out of art, so that definitely led me to look for a community like that outside of Jersey. I was also surrounded by a ton of trees and farms and I think I’m used to being around that. Every now and then the city is a lot and I crave that quiet.

When did you first get interested in photography? What were the first types of cameras you learned to shoot on?

I got into photography in high school and I started taking photos on my dad’s old 35mm Yashica. I didn’t know anyone really into photography at school and my school didn’t offer a class for it so I spent a lot of time trying to learn from the internet. I made a tumblr and learned about Lomography and Holgas and thought that was like the coolest thing ever. I had a phase where I spent some time experimenting with the Holga and forcing my local Target to “cross process” my film (ugh). After a while that got old and I went back to the Yashica and then eventually a digital slr.

You mentioned getting your start on Flickr. How was that site helpful to your development early on and who were some other photographers on there who you met or admired?

Flickr was a way to feel like I was sharing my photos and getting feedback on things–even though I had like no followers lol. But it was more of a way to learn about what I could do with photography and see people doing things that I wanted to do. At the time I was really into the heavily photoshopped images of people floating and surreal or fake shadows. I had one art

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teacher that I was really close with in high school and he basically built in a little photo curriculum for me outside of what we were doing in class where he would give me a bunch of photographers to look up. A lot of it was geared more towards photo history which was awesome, and then Flickr supplemented that by showing me what people my age were doing.

When did you know you wanted to study photography in college? How did you choose School of VIsual Arts?

Around my third year of high school I knew I liked painting and drawing, but I definitely liked photography the most and wanted to focus on that. I was super lucky and my parents were super supportive. My dad reminded me that he went to SVA and so I started to seriously look into it. I looked at other programs and SVA was pretty much the only program that didn’t require you to complete a foundation year of painting, drawing, ceramics, etc… before you could even touch a camera. I was super decisive—or maybe stubborn—and refused to leave high school only to go on to spend more time learning about things that weren’t directly related to what I wanted to do.

What was your experience like in SVA’s photo department? What was the attitude of the rest of your student body?

It was really cool to finally take photo classes and start out knowing almost nothing about photography and end up learning so much in the first semester! Like any program, it’s definitely what you make of it. It felt like the department was pretty open to a lot of things, as long as you spoke up and asked–and I asked for a lot

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What were some of your favorite projects you did while in school?

I looooved my digital sculpture class! It was super cool to learn something totally outside of my lane and then work it into my practice. That class helped me laser cut my wiggly frames and I definitely want to make more work like that!

What was your experience like when you were finishing your last year? Were you nervous at all about entering the professional world?

It was super weird. For most of my last year I was either super nervous and anxious or like really delusional and super confident that I was going to be able to survive independently solely by freelancing, haha! In my last month of school I got a full time offer from a place that I interned at the previous summer and felt super lucky and relieved!

What was your experience like working full time at that photo studio? What do you feel like you took away from it?

One of the biggest things I learned was to mockup pretty much EVERYTHING. Sometimes it can be overkill, but I do think anytime you start describing a color, shape, texture, or anytime you’re making motions with your hands it’s better to communicate it with some type of mockup or even a shitty scribble so everyone can be on the same page.

What were some of the first few freelance jobs you did after graduating? How did you go about finding clients?

My first big girl job was at the beginning of my second semester shooting for Sweet–Hearst’s snapchat platform. I think they found my work through my SVA Behance page? I didn’t spend too much time looking for clients right after graduating because I didn’t know I wanted to be a freelance photographer and was just more focused on finding a regular j-o-b and paying NYC r-e-n-t.

You have a very distinctive way of taking your still lifes where you incorporate a wide range of odd colors and textures. How did you develop your style of taking still lifes?

I get a lot of inspiration from at a lot of art books, cartoons, movies, reality tv and furniture.

Sometimes I’ll see a texture or color combination in a show or on a piece of furniture and decide to commit to it and try to work it into one of my photos.

What equipment do you like to use when you shoot now?

I shoot on anything that takes a digital photo. Sometimes a PhaseOne, sometimes an iPhone, mostly Canon cameras–whatever works in the moment. I’m not really a gearhead. I honestly think one of the most important things for a good shoot is good snacks so everyone is fed and happily munching.

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What themes and topics do you notice yourself gravitating towards in your personal work?

I gravitate towards the things I’m interested in in my personal life–flowers, nature, cartoons, cheese, Youtube hair videos, and food.

Already you’ve worked for such a wide range of clients, each with varying amounts of resources at your disposal. Do you try to approach high budget shoot and low budget shoots differently? What have you learned from doing each?

I start each project trying to figure out what would I shoot and what props and resources I would use if I could have everything I wanted and if there were no obstacles whatsoever. Then I come back to the real world and take things like budget and time into account to figure out what is realistic. Then from there I try to figure out other solutions to still get everything I want ;) Who have been some of your favorite clients to work for? What have been some of your most memorable shoots?

VICE is definitely one of my favorite clients to work for. I really like that they let me experiment and develop in my work for them and most of the time that work directly becomes a part of a personal project I have or it starts a new tangent for me.

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What do you think keeps young people from putting out their own work when they’re starting out? At what point did you become more comfortable showing and promoting your work among other professionals in the industry?

I think young people feel like they’re be too young and that they have to be grown adults to make great work, which is totally untrue. I think people are also just afraid of asking for things?

I never felt shy about putting work up on Flickr, and then on Tumblr, and then eventually on my website, because why not? I think I had that same attitude in school meeting with different teachers and writing emails to get into the classes and things I wanted. I still get a bit nervous approaching editors and other professionals because I always want to make sure

I’m approaching them in a strategic way–being considerate of their time and really doing my research. But even still at the end of the day, all you can do is close your eyes and hit send. If it doesn’t work out, keep developing and making personal work and try again.

How do you feel your photography has changed since you first started? What direction do you see it going in the future?

I think I’m way more confident in trying out different concepts and shooting things just to see them for myself. I think working this way will give me a lot of photos that I’ll hide and never show anyone, and a few photo that could be a start to a fun project.

We talked a little bit about it in the past but, how have you seen a shift in the cultural/ ethnic/gender representation in photography?

I think people (gatekeepers) are finally starting to listen to black people and other marginalized groups and starting to understand our power to create and influence culture as well as our buying power. They are finally starting to realize that we need to see ourselves in imagery and that they produce.

What problems do you see existing in the photo world right now, and how do you try to avoid or fight them in your own work?

I think the photo world is still super white and male dominated. All I can do is try to use my voice and my art where possible. I mostly work on all women sets and use diverse models

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when I’m not just shooting objects.

What projects are you working on at the moment that you can talk about? What do you hope to work on in the next year?

I’m always trying to create more personal work. I think its super important. A lot of client work I do is still super fun and in line with my interests and it can sometimes become a part of a personal project as well. But I think it’s super important to give yourself your own projects and problems to solve. It’s super important to think about what you would do if you could do anything.

What hurdles do you still see ahead of yourself? What do you feel like you still struggle with in your work?

TAXES. What is this. Why does the government want my coins? I’m late to the game and still learning. Can I write off going to a strip club? I still have a lot of questions. I think I’ve been learning the business side of things by reaching around in the dark and making a lot of mistakes.

Are there any projects you’d like to embark on that you just don’t have the time or money for at the moment?

I’m obsessed with mini golf and I’d love the chance to make a mini golf course soon!

LILLIE WEST

by MATTHEW JAMES-WILSON

Multi-faceted musician and visual artist, Lillie West, has always found comfort in her ability to adapt. Bouncing from Lon-

don to Los Angeles to Chicago during her formative years has given her a level perspective that few attain by their mid-20s. Since settling in Chicago and dropping out of art school after a little over a year, Lillie’s main focus has been her first foray into songwriting and performing, her band Lala Lala. In just over three years Lillie has made startling leaps and bounds with the project, starting from scratch teaching herself guitar, to now performing on the road weeks at a time opening up for bands like Girlpool, Cherry Glazzer, Ian Sweet, and Frankie Cosmos.

Unlike the dozens of other projects Lillie has conceived in her young adulthood, Lala Lala is her first creative endeavor

that has both impacted and reflected the biggest changes going on in her own life. Since writing and recording the songs that make her phenomenal debut full length, Sleepyhead, Lillie has undergone and overcome a tumultuous era in her life that has resulted in her sobriety and a new found clarity. Never being one to look backwards, Lillie has pressed on with Lala Lala with more ambition and conviction than ever before. This winter, while on the way to Los Angeles, I spent a few days in Chicago as Lillie finished recording her newest LP. While in town I spent a day with Lillie, taking photos and discussing everything that has led up to her newest album–which is quite possibly the best material she has written to date.

Where are you from and where do you live currently?

I grew up in London. Then I went to middle school and high school in Los Angeles. Now I live in Chicago.

Did you study music or art at all while you were growing up?

I remember taking classical piano when I was a kid, but I never really stuck with it. I think I took it in middle school too, and on and off in high school. But I never really got into it. The middle school that I went to in Los Angeles was a liberal hippie school and it was definitely encouraging of doing art, but it didn’t have an enormous art program, which is what I knew I wanted to do. So I decided to go to an art high school in LA. In England things are a little more ridged. You do have art class, but by the time you’re 16 you have to have chosen a couple subjects to focus on. You have to choose your majors pretty early on.

So the younger years are maybe more about figuring out what you want, but in a really ridged way. I feel like, my perception at least, of America is that for little kids there’s a lot more playing and experimenting. I don’t remember there being finger painting or anything like that when I was a little kid. In England I think there are more specific timelines for students to follow.

What was your experience like moving from London to LA? I loved it, it was really cool. Like I was saying, England is a lot more ridged, and the weather is unpleasant, and

I had such a shitty time at school. People were so mean to me, haha. In retrospect it’s really obvious to me now why they were so mean. I was really nerdy—aggressively nerdy, like in an obnoxious way. I’d always be sitting at the front of the class, ready to raise my hand. But then I moved to America and I didn’t have to wear a uniform, and it was sunny, and everyone thought I was cool because I had an accent, so I wasn’t lame anymore. I think I just had a more clear perception of what was fun, and I just wanted to be a part of it.

I think I didn’t realize how fun it would be. I think I knew it was going to be good, because I really hated school in England. I was really good at it, but I hated going because—I mean, it’s just like a movie thing. You cry yourself to sleep every night, you eat lunch in the bathroom— very obvious narrative, haha. We were only suppose to move for a year, and then I think we as a family decided to stay because it was so nice. I remember calling my friend—I had like one friend. I saw her recently, and she’s still great! But I called her on the phone and was like, “We’re not coming back…” and she was like “My mum told me that when you left that you weren’t going to come back. She knew.”

When did you first start going to DIY shows in LA? What sort of impression did those leave on you?

I started going to DIY shows at The Smell in Los Angeles, and I just thought it was so cool. It was just another leveling up of things being cool in America, haha. I remember, I wasn’t friends with Sean Solomon or anything at the

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“I moved to America and I didn’t have to wear a uniform, and it was sunny, and everyone thought I was cool because I had an accent, so I wasn’t lame anymore.” time, but I would see Moses Campbell and think, This is so cool. I think it is married with the idea of America in my head—like Bart Simpson and grunge rock and all of that.

I think it’s also just that classic feeling of wanting to be a part of something. Seeing that there’s a bunch of people having fun in this punk way or whatever, and wanting to be with them.

I don’t remember what my first show there was, but I remember I was scared to go because I knew that the cool older kids went there. I don’t even remember how I became friends with anyone. Can I think about it? I really want to remember now… Oh oh! I went to high school with Daniela (Jiménez) who played accordion in Moses Campbell. We weren’t really that close of friends, but I was friends with her friends, so we would go to Moses Campbell shows. That’s how I know them! I thought it was really cool and I really liked it, but I feel like I didn’t understand it as—this sounds silly—a “lifestyle” until I moved to Chicago and started playing music in Chicago and doing DIY touring. It took me a while to realize that The Smell isn’t an island. Of course it isn’t. It’s even more amazing here—here it’s like a spiderweb.

What was going on in the scene while you were still in LA? What were people excited about at the time?

I knew that I wanted to do art because I didn’t like anything else, haha. I applied to Bennington College and decided

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I was going to go there. But eventually I was just like, “I don’t want to study anything that isn’t art. There’s no point in me going to a liberal arts school.” I went to this art high school program called Oxbow in Napa Valley. That program is insane and incredible and catapulted my life into a direction. I stayed in LA for a year while I decided what I was going to do and I just worked at this movie theater.

A lot of my friends from the program had gone to SAIC (School of the Art Institute of Chicago). I mean, I didn’t really think about it that much. I applied to Cooper Union and I didn’t get in. Then I think a friend was like, “I think you should look at SAIC.” and I looked into it and it was a thing where you didn’t have to choose a major the whole time. If you wanted, you could continue taking entry level classes for the whole four years, and it seemed really appealing to me. It seems like the opposite of a corporate university—which is funny actually, because SAIC is super corporate, I’ve found now that I’ve gone there, haha. I did love it, but it was also very corporate. But in my mind the freedom of it seemed cool.

What was your experience like at SAIC and what impact did it have on you? Did the student body seem like they were all working towards becoming professional artists?

That just reminded me—I had this sculpture teacher who was really cool, but I remember him pointing out the people in the class who he thought were going to be “real art-

ists” or whatever. It was really stressful, haha. My impression of SAIC is really weird because, the infrastructure is really corporate. It’s a weird business because they have a really high acceptance rate, and then most people drop out after the first year. I think it’s just a money making scheme. But it’s filled with really smart, cool, creative people—the professors in particular. It’s just about how you navigate it. I figured out pretty quickly, if I had continued going there for four years, my senior year would have been horrible because it would have just been taking all of the required classes that I had avoided, because I was just taking the studio classes I wanted to take. I think it’s really cool, it’s just what you make of it. You have to navigate it and find the right people. That’s the thing, you can be lazy there, and that’s why you shouldn’t go there if you are lazy. You won’t get anything from it. That’s sort of why I left after a year and a little. I felt like I had started to become lazy and it was a waste of everyone’s time and money—like my professors, and my peers, and my own.

But I met a lot of really special people. It still does attract a lot of really cool, weird people.

I was really excited about that, so when I left I was doing off-set print making and sculpture installation because I like moving things around, haha. I think as much as I do like making art, I like organizing objects more. That’s why I liked installation so much and why I like to make dioramas, which is just arranging little worlds.

What were you studying while you were there? What motivated you to leave when you did?

I had been thinking about leaving a lot. I was living at this space in Pilsen called The Yards, and having a lot of shows and getting really excited about the music scene in Chicago. There was this band called White Gold, which my now bandmate Emily (Kempf) was in. It blew my mind.

I was like, This is the best music I’ve ever seen. They were going on tour with NE-HI, which was another Chicago band, and Emily and I were at the bar during their kick off show. Emily was like, “I wish you could come on tour with us, because we have another seat in the van.” So I was like “I… would like to. Can I please come?” Then she was like “Okay!? I’m going to drop you off at your house and I’ll call you in the morning and see if you actually want to come with us.” because she knew I had class the next day. I got home and I packed, haha. Then I left and I didn’t go back to school. I didn’t tell my parents for a while, but I never went back.

I went there thinking that I was going to be a serious painter. Then I started printmaking and doing off-set and

It’s vaguely embarrassing because it sounds like I made it up or something. I don’t want it to seem like an indication

“Emily was like, ‘I wish you could come on tour with us, because we have another seat in the van.’ So I was like ‘I… would like to. Can I please come?’”

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“‘Fuck With Your Friends’ was one of the first songs I ever wrote, which is stressful because it’s everyone’s favorite, haha. I guess I can’t make anything like it again, because it was so instinctual and so non-judgmental of myself.” of me being instinctive or something. I think it was really foolish. I just think it was lucky that I made that foolish decision.

When did you start your band Lala Lala and what was the catalyst for you starting it?

I was playing around in my room with my friend Tyler (Gunn). Then we played one show, and band was called something really silly. It was called Little Dreadful, which sounds really emo, haha. Then after that, I asked Emily if White Gold could play at my house and they did. Then she asked me to do Cool Girls show, which was a series that she was running of non-male performers. Tyler couldn’t do that show, so I asked my roommate Lyla (Taube) to play drums. It was the same songs that me and Tyler were playing—or at least the same process of making songs.

But I feel like that’s when it started its actual formation.

Lyla, Emily and I played together for a little bit, and then Lyla had to focus on school and Emily was like, “I think my roommate plays drums.” because she lived in a big punk house. That ended up being Abby (Black) who played drums in the band for a long time. Then she wasn’t in the band for a while, but now she plays guitar.

Where does the name Lala Lala come from?

It was the name of a pet that I really cared about.

Did you have any specific intentions when you started the project? Did it seem like an outlet to say or do something that you couldn’t with you other art practices?

I don’t think so… I just liked it. I just started doing it, and I just really really liked it. I don’t know if I’ve necessarily even had something to say since then. With Sleepyhead era Lala, the songs were usually me speaking to a specific person. But now I rarely do that. The songs are more like me speaking about something to the void. I don’t have any illusion that it’s necessarily new or vital information that I’m imparting or something. I just really like it.

What were some of the first songs that you wrote for the project? Did you teach yourself how to play guitar and record?

I had learnt chords in middle school—like G and C and…

I think I knew D. I remember for a while, B Minor was so stressful to me every time I had to play it. I remember when I started playing guitar around the formation of Lala, more often to write songs I would learn different chords by playing along to Pangea songs. A lot of Pangea songs have B Minor in them, and it would stress me out so much! I don’t even remember the first songs. It happened so by accident. “Fuck With Your Friends” was one of the first songs I ever wrote, which is stressful because it’s everyone’s favorite, haha. I guess I can’t make anything like it again,

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because it was so instinctual and so non-judgmental of myself. It was a completely uninformed action, making the song. So I’ll never be able to do it again, haha.

I think that it’s about instant gratification. I’ve always been that way, and that’s so much why I’m an addict in everything. So much of my life has been informed by that need to have instant gratification and that’s what I found in music that I hadn’t in other art that I was doing. Drawing comics is so laborious and the reaction is so delayed. But if you play a song for someone, they’re right there and you can see their reaction. Playing a show is an experience and you know how it’s going to work in a way. That’s that thing I was telling you about—I’m so interested in people participating in what I’m doing and experiencing me in real time. That is often a show, and not a piece of art. I guess an album becomes more like that, but I prefer playing shows to making albums.

What differences did you notice between the Chicago scene and the LA scene? Were there things that made it feel easier to start a project here than in LA? I think it was easier for me personally because I had known everyone in LA for a while, so everything they know about you informs what they think about what you’re doing at that moment. I didn’t really know anyone in the Chicago music scene when I started here. I also just think Chicago is stranger. As cool and punk as parts of the LA scene are, it’s still Hollywood and that culture still exists there.

Not that there aren’t yuppie people here, but it’s really yuppie over there. I feel like there’s more ego in LA and Chicago is much stranger. Also spatially, it’s much easier to have DIY spaces here because theres a lot more open space and industrial space. Also there’s the art school. I think geographically it makes more sense, and there’s a lot weirder stuff going on.

You sort of talked about it earlier, but a lot of your writing for the band involves confronting someone about something or confessing how you feel about something. Has writing songs for the band allowed you to process or exercise things that have happened in your life?

Yeah, I think that makes sense. During the Sleepyhead era I was not good at communicating in my normal life.

I was just high or drunk all of the time, so I was confused—like, I couldn’t tell what was going on. So I think I struggled with communicating with people a lot because I didn’t have evidence of what I needed to communicate about. I was like, I feel this certain way, but how can I be sure that it’s valid when I actually don’t know what has happened or what is happening to me. I don’t think it was more cathartic, but it was cathartic in a different way then.

I think it felt necessary for me to communicate in that way.

As necessary as it feels for me to continue doing music in my own life, I feel like important conversations that I need

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to have with people are now conversations in real life. It’s not like a combative song or something anymore. But I did use to find that really satisfying. I also just think there’s less trauma in my life now too, so there’s not as much of a need for that. Although, it’s still the same in that the songs starts with a feeling. Whether it’s a literal sentence that I think of and then write down to expand on or if I’m just messing around and I’m think about how I feel a certain way about something, it usually starts with a feeling. Occasionally I’ll write a lyric about nothing, like a nonsense lyric. But I can’t really write a nonsense song. It has to start somewhere! If I write a nonsense song I don’t like it.

Are there certain themes that you gravitate towards in your writing? Have you learned specific things about yourself after the fact because of things you’ve written?

Sometimes I find that I’m using a similar word. For a month I’ll continue to use a certain word over and over again. But it’s usually themes in my life or things that are happening to me. But a certain time period will have a theme inadvertently, because there’s usually something going on in someone’s life. I think I’m making work that’s a little less personal narrative now. It’s still true to me, but it doesn’t feel like a story anymore.

What were some of the first Lala Lala tours you went on like?

When we first started DIY touring it was a total mixed bag.

We had no idea what was going to happen. We’d pull up to a place, and hope for the best. I remember we did this five week tour from Chicago to SXSW to the West Coast.

It was insane. We had a lot of nine hour drives and stuff— it was terrible, haha. But I remember one show in New Mexico that we played. There was no one there except for the people who ran the space and the other band, and the other band had to leave early. They were like “Can we play first? Also we have to leave early because we’re sick.” so we just played to the people that ran the venue. There was also some altercation outside so there were police there. It was a very distressing show. Then that same tour we played Non Plus Ultra—the old one before it shut down—with Moaning and The Paranoids, and it was a crazy and fun show. So it was totally unexpected. You just didn’t know what was going to happen.

We did meet bands too. I feel like we met Navy Gangs on that tour, and I still love that band. I met Dom on that tour. Emily and Dom had been friends for a while. You meet really amazing people who you stay friends with for a long time, no matter what music or non-music-related thing you’re doing. The first bands we toured with—we did a DIY tour with Moaning, and then we started touring with Surf Curse, which is actually the band we’ve toured with the most.

Was there a tour where you felt like you started taking it more seriously or felt more motivated to prioritize playing music?

During that Super Magical/NE-HI tour, I felt like, This is the most fun I have ever had in my life. I want to do this forever. Pretty immediately I was like, I’m having the most fun I’ve ever have. I can’t believe this is real. The concept of DIY touring was unfamiliar to me. I did not know that you could just do it. My friend Dom (Rabalais)—he goes

by Real Dom. He did that painting over there. but him and this person Neil—Terror Pigeon—they go on like permanent tours. When their at home—if they have a home at the time—they’re only home from tour for like a week every six months. It was unbelievable to me that you could do that. As soon as I knew you could, I wanted to do it.

I think there’s been degrees of seriousness. I feel like it was just fun at first, but after doing it for a while and having certain things in my life happen—you have to do certain things to perpetuate that feeling. It’s pretty hard to just act the same the whole time. Once we started touring—doing a little bit less DIY touring, and doing more support tours—every time we’d tour with someone I would take it more seriously in a certain way because of who we played with. Cherry Glazzerr–they take it so seriously. I mean, everybody takes it so seriously! Before this tour happened, I remember Girlpool coming to Chicago and they wanted to do a DIY show as well as their other one. So we played Wally’s World—this crazy, insane, death trap, DIY space in this basement. That place was amazing, and it went on for a really long time. I saw so many good shows there.

But even at that DIY show I remember talking to Harmony (Tividad) and Cleo (Tucker) about it and thinking, Wow they take it really seriously. This is cool. and I lodged that in my brain. But then, Cherry Glazzer—they take it really seriously. I feel like Clem (Creevy) in particular takes performing really seriously. Where as Palm—they’re amazing performers as well—but I feel like the most important thing to them is constructing the song. They’re careful and cautious as well as being experimental. What they end up with is decisive, I feel like. And then Eve (Gerasimos) improvises live. They take their musicianship really seriously and take assembling something interesting really seriously. Jillian (Medford) from Ian Sweet takes songwriting really seriously. I don’t know, everyone just makes me take it more and more seriously.

How important to you is the community of people that you’ve found through playing music? Are the people involved a big reason why you make what you make?

I mean… yeah they’re all of it. I wouldn’t want to do it alone. As much as Lala is my vision and I want to control that, it’s still about fun. You have to have fun people around. I want other people to have fun too. I don’t know, I’ve never understood how people could work with people that they dislike. I always think about it as, This is my favorite thing, and there are ways that my favorite thing can

be ruined, and that’s like colossally bad. haha. There are certain things that I do on guitar that are my favorite thing to do live, and if there’s some situation in which it gets messed up, it feels like so disappointing, because I’m like “This is my favorite thing! This is the thing that releases me.” Especially as a sober person—to be totally blunt, I can’t get high anymore, so these are the things that bring me to a place that is as satisfying. This is the only place in my life where I can feel a similar way. So when they don’t work, it’s really distressing. If you have people you don’t like to work with or who you don’t trust or who don’t believe in you, then those things aren’t going to happen either. Not to say that it’s just to serve myself.

I think it’s part of what we always talk about together, about being honest. How can you make something and be honest with it, if you don’t like someone who you’re making it with or who is in the situation in someway? There’s something fake there. You have to be pretending to like someone usually to continue to work with them if you don’t like them, haha. Maybe it’s silly, but it seems like it would seep into the product or the experience if you had to do that.

What role has your other project, Blanket, played in your creative life throughout the past couple years you’ve done Lala Lala?

Well Blanket is even more instant gratification than Lala is, haha. I started it because, when Abby and Karla (Bernasconi) were Lala there was a lot of group decision making and everyone had different schedules and stuff, so things weren’t getting made fast enough. I mean, the speed was fine. I just want things instantly. So I just started recording things on my own. I mean, I probably would have done it sooner, I just thought that I couldn’t record anything by myself. Once I figured out that I could, I went into a frenzy. Now I just make it really quickly. It’s really messy I don’t pay attention to certain things, there’s off-key singing in it, and weird sounds. I think Blanket is the most “authentic” if we’re going to use that word. It’s really just me and it happens instantly, and I don’t even show it to people, haha. As much as I try to make Lala without other people in mind, Blanket is truly that way, because usually no one sees it. I have a whole thing on my computer which is “Blanket B-Sides.” I put blanket on Bandcamp—no one ever sees it anyways—but I have an even further Blanket that is totally secret. Maybe one day I’ll put it on the internet. But it won’t matter, because no one will see it!

Interesting… Maybe Lala is more the experience of performing for me, and Blanket is more the experience of making the song. I’ve never thought of that before, haha.

But I think that’s true. I don’t perform Blanket ever because I don’t like to.

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“It’s odd to have a permanent product from a time that was shrouded in darkness.”

What was the process like making your first full length album, Sleepyhead?

I don’t know, I think of it as an accident… I don’t remember even setting up the recording of it. I do remember recording it, mostly. It was a very bad time in my life and very close to when I got sober. It was very much the pinnacle of me drinking and doing drugs at a completely insane rate. It’s very strange. I feel really disconnected from it, because I mean, a different version of me made it. But I didn’t think about making it at all. In my memory it just happened. It was just songs that I happened to have around. It was old songs and songs that I had just written, and I feel like maybe I just thought it was time to record something, because it had been a while since we released a tape.

We made it with Dave Vettraino in his basement at Public

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House Recordings. It was me, Abby, and Karla, and all of the tracks, overdubs, and mixing was done in that basement. It was just dark… Doing drugs in the morning and not sleeping all night. Another thing I feel disconnected from is people feeling certain ways about aspects of it.

To me it’s just associated with the experience of making it, which was shrouded in darkness, haha. Which is odd.

It’s odd to have a permanent product from a time that was shrouded in darkness.

Did you release the album while you were still going through that era of your life?

No, I released it at a weird time too. I had planned to shop it around, but then I just didn’t. I was pretty freshly sober and I feel like the first six months of my sobriety I was very confused. I drove to Badlands in South Dakota by myself.

I drove across the country, and eventually I was driving

back, and I remember I was in a motel with my friend who was driving back with me, and I decided to put it on Bandcamp at like one in the morning. I think it was like nine months after I had made it, and I just put it online. I also had no perception of how things “worked” or something. I mean, I’m glad I did that. I don’t regret it. I was just like “Well, I don’t know. I’m just going to put it on the internet. I’m sick of this being in secret.” Also, the longer you wait, the further you are from it emotionally. Especially something that was such a drastic difference in my life.

How has the project changed for you in the process of becoming sober and going though these big life changes? How has that transition in your life effected your creative out put?

I’m just intentional now, where as everything was an accident before. I just feel like I mean it now—or maybe I meant it in a different way before. I just think a lot more.

It takes longer, because I think for longer about different things. Recording Sleepyhead I was like, “I don’t care about the tone.” I feel like most tones were suggested by Dave or I was just like, “I don’t know. I just want it to be distorted.” Now when I’m listening to a song I’m like, “I really like the sound of that snare. I’m going to save it to this folder to reference later. I have a vision for things. Not that it’s necessarily cohesive—but for a song, I’ll just care about it more.

What was your experience like playing in Surf Curse for a couple of their tours last year?

I love playing in Surf Curse. It’s so fun! I thought that it would be really easy because I didn’t necessarily have an emotional attachment to the songs the same way that you do if you write them. But I think that that’s actually what makes it harder, haha. It was really really scary at first.

I hadn’t played lead guitar in a different band. Now that I write lead parts for Lala, it’s different. But at the time, I really only played rhythm guitar. It’s cool, I actually surprised myself—and Nick (Rattigan) always says that I surprise him with how quickly I learn things. I surprise myself with being able to do them at all. But it’s just really fun.

They’ve been doing it for so long just the two of them, that it’s so nice to even let another person into that. And it’s not like you’re just a hired person. As much as you are, you also aren’t. They’re letting you into their world and being generous and including. I just have so much fun playing in Surf Curse, haha. Also, their fans are really enthusiastic. They’re very young and just like “Ahhhhhhh!!!!!” and you can’t not react to that energy. You can’t be like “Ugh.” You’re just like “Yes! Yes! I also feel that way!” I also love the music. I really love what they do, and they’re such good performers in their own way. I have only nice things to say about them.

“I just have so much fun playing in Surf Curse, haha. Also, their fans are really enthusiastic. They’re very young and just like ‘Ahhhhhhh!!!!!’ and you can’t not react to that energy.”

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Who are some people who’ve been really supportive or influential over the time that you’ve been playing music?

Nick has always been really supportive and influential. I feel like I learn something from the way that every band we’ve toured with performs, about how to perform or how to engage in it. But yeah, Nick has been there the whole time. Emily has been around since I started the project, with White Gold and Super Magical, and then playing in Lala and teaching me a lot about DIY and about how to do it. The band The Funs—who are Philip (Jerome Lesicko) and Jesse (Rose Crane). Philip runs Manic Static, which was the label that first put out Lala. They’re just amazing.

They’re just super real people who really really care about it, for no reason other than that they do. They’ve always been super supportive. Even putting out Sleepyhead just after I put it on bandcamp. They were like, “Can we make a tape of it?” They put out a Lala 7” and they also put out Melkbelly and NE-HI. They’re around Chicago and they’re almost like a legend in themselves. They’re really inspiring. They’ve been a band on and off for like 10 years.

They just work really really hard. So that’s someone. Touring with Cherry Glazzerr and Ian Sweet is another time I felt like, I want to do this forever. for sure. But in a different way. I think before I was like, I want to party and play music forever. This was more like, I want to travel and perform forever.

My parents have always been insanely supportive. I’m

very lucky in that way. I told them that I didn’t want to go to college, and they were not excited about that. Then I did go after a year and when I dropped out, they were also not excited, haha. But they have always been excited for me in other ways. It’s nice that, as much as I felt like an outsider in school, I would come home and they were always supportive. My mom would be like, “They’re jealous.” and I would be like “I swear, they’re not jealous.

They just don’t like me.” but she always believed in me in that way. She’d be like “No, you’re just cool and weird.” and I’d be like “They don’t think so!”

When did you start writing the songs for your new album, and how did your approach it differently from the stuff you’ve made in the past?

Very simply, I use to write a song in a single sitting and be like, “That’s done. I’m never touching it again.” I spend a lot more time on songs now. I mean, sometimes a whole song falls out, all ready made. But sometimes I write different parts and keep them for months until they fit somewhere else. I think the very beginning of when I started writing them was when I started doing Blanket. So like a year ago or something. But many of them were written in the past couple of months. Again, it was just with more care and attention that I would write songs that were more planned or thought out. Like I was saying earlier, the content is different. It’s more secretive, I think.

A lot of it is about being sober and about death and para-

“I use to write a song in a single sitting and be like, ‘That’s done. I’m never touching it again.’ I spend a lot more time on songs now.”

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noia. But I sort of resent the idea of that becoming the narrative of the album—this death that was in my life. If I say it, I feel like people are going to be like, “…and the loss of a close friend.” Like I see it in the end of a sentence in a blurb about the album. I hate that, and I don’t want that. I resent that being a part of the narrative of the album, but the reality is that it’s a lot about death and paranoia from that. For me it’s also a lot about re-learning things, as a different person.

What has the process been like recording it so far?

Well it’s not quite done yet. We recoded most of it at The Funs’ house. We did basic tracking for a couple of days.

Then my bandmates Emily and Ben (Leach) left, and me and Dave, who recorded Sleepyhead, did a lot of guitar and synth overdubs. Then we did vocals at his house.

Then we’ll be mixing at Decade studio in like a week.

You mentioned earlier that the process of making Sleepyhead felt really “accidental.” Did the intentionality you had making this record effect the way it ultimately came out?

Definitely with the arrangements of the songs. Also, with the lyrical content. If there’s something that I don’t necessarily want to show, I’ll cover it up. I call it “thesaurus-ing it out,” where you make it impossible to understand in a certain way, or you make it cryptic. I guess people could figure it out if they thought about it a lot.

What do you value in the art that means a lot to you?

In music, what I’ve noticed I truly really love is if it’s very guttural or if it’s instinctual. Whether it’s the lyrical content or the arrangement of a song, or like how something sounds, it’s an instinctual feeling. Palm makes me feel that way. When I watch Palm live I get that feeling and it’s really overwhelming. Or like, Future Islands—I’ve only seen them live twice, but when I listen to them I still feel that way. I think the only thing that’s consistent is that it’s an instinctual, overwhelming emotional feeling. But then I think about other things that are important to me, and it’s more like… Like with WHY? Yoni Wolf has a very specific ways of communicating. A lot of what I like about it is that it’s really smart. It’s emotional, but it’s really smart. But then I think about Kate Bush and it’s like… The Dreaming is one of my favorite albums of all time, and it’s because it’s totally mind-blowing, the way that it sounds. It’s very mystical, and her lyrics are mystical and magical in a way that I don’t understand, and I really appreciate it. I think that I like music that is grand or something? OMD (Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark) is another band like that.

Totally! It seems like what ties all of those things together is that it’s all work that wouldn’t be made by anyone other than the person who’s making it.

That’s a really good point, hahaha. Yeah! That’s totally it.

How the fuck would anyone make Palm, other than those

“If there’s something that I don’t necessarily want to show, I’ll cover it up. I call it ‘thesaurus-ing it out,’ where you make it impossible to understand in a certain way.”

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four people. No one else in the world could make it, that’s why it’s so interesting—in addition to it being exciting and just sounding cool and good.

I feel like with other art it’s instinctual in a different way. It’s rare that I find the conceptual content of art that interesting. Not that I think conceptual art is stupid—I really don’t at all. I just find that that’s not what I gravitate towards.

It’s like a totally different thing maybe. It depends. I don’t know, I think you just have to go for it, whatever it is. That’s my never criticism of someone. Even if I really dislike what you’re doing, if you’re still really just doing it, and you really like it, than that’s cool. So you should keep doing it, haha.

What hurdles do you still see ahead of you? What do you still struggle with in making the work that you make?

I mean, lots of people do this, but I’m learning my instrument as I write on it. I don’t have any formal training in guitar. Playing in Surf Curse, I had to get better. I had to level up to fulfill those things. So I feel like the longer I do it, the more I’ll get better at it. But other people do that. Palm is all self taught, and they’re great! I feel like the larger scale something becomes, you seem to have to struggle a little more to stay connected to it, because it starts to be taken

out of your hands and taking longer. Even literally making an album, there’s a label’s time line. Clem said in her She Shreds interview about Apocalipstick, those songs were from so long ago that she was glad they were out, so that she didn’t have to wait any longer for something that she didn’t necessarily relate to anymore. But that’s not necessarily a complaint… because it’s all good, haha.

But that’s something that I see. If you’re promoting something that you’re emotionally connected to, it’s better to stay connected to it. Even if it’s far away, you’re still going to have to promote it. You’re going to have to continue to talk about it, even if it’s not anywhere near your current state of mind.

Are there any projects you’d like to embark on, that you just don’t have the time or money for at the moment?

Umm… Yeah, I mean I’m trying to learn drums. But I’m never here so it’s hard. There’s actually a lot of stuff. I make lists like this all the time. I have a creative goal list.

There’s this folk album that I very lightly started working on with my friend that I would love to do. I don’t get to do visual art as much as I would like to anymore. Even just learning stuff, haha. Just having time to learn everything that I want to learn, haha.

“I feel like the larger scale something becomes, you seem to have to struggle a little more to stay connected to it, because it starts to be taken out of your hands and taking longer.”

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MATTHEW VOLZ

by MATTHEW JAMES-WILSON

Unlike many artists, Matthew Volz’s various creative pursuits have been driven by the desire to ask questions most people

don’t want to know the answers to. Since growing up in Queens, New York Matthew has has always had a fascination with both the city and its residence. After finishing college at the School of Visual Arts, Matthew’s first big creative undertaking was crafting the visual style of the legendary New York punk-folk band, The Beets, led by South American singer/songwriter Juan Wauters. Over the course of the band’s life span Matthew conceived everything from the band’s album art, to their videos, to their live show, creating stunning stand-alone works of art to accompany the band’s existential but endearing music. After the band’s eventual dismantling, Matthew has continued to make idiosyncratic comics, videos, and illustrations, finding creative satisfaction in his personal work along with his work for other bands.

Throughout his career Matthew has made beautifully uncompromising work exploring everything beautiful and fucked

up about humanity, while treading the fine-line between high art and low art. Through his unique writing and distinctive sense of design, Matthew has made a bounty of memorable stories and images, all with the most common and affordable art supplies available. The thoughtful and charming perspective of Matthew’s work first caught my attention while I was growing up, listening to many of the bands he has worked with. After meeting Matthew for the first time last fall at a gallery show I organized, I was keen on asking him everything I’ve always wanted to know about his art. Luckily this spring I got the chance to visit him at his home Far Rockaway, where the two of us drank mate and discussed the past, present, and future of his work.

Where are you from and where do you live currently?

I’m from Queens, New York. I grew up around the Whitestone/Bayside area. Now I’m in Far Rockaway, New York.

What was your experience like growing up in Queens?

It’s weird, as you get older you see more neighborhoods and the different shit that’s there. I had a good time in Queens. There was always stuff to do. As a kid, I had a house with a bunch of people in it that was always fun.

I had older brothers and a sister. Nobody really goes to Bayside though. Why would you go there? If you’re in Bayside after you get out of high school or college or whatever the fuck you do, it’s kind of corny. Not to diss the town but, it’s like devoid of culture. It’s cool I guess, but I spent a lot of time in my room. Now I don’t have anybody how lives there, so I don’t really go back. What’s still there? VIPizza? The White Castle? I don’t really hold it dear to my heart, you know? Me and my mom never liked Bayside—just everything about it. My mom is from East New York, and even the architecture and shit like that in Bayside was cheesy to her.

My aunts and uncles and cousins are all from Brooklyn, so we’d go to Brooklyn a lot. They’d live in Bensonhurst, the Italian neighborhood. I never really saw a divide between Brooklyn and Queens—it just all felt like the same thing. But, since I’m a kid from Queens, Manhattan is the city. If you’re like “Oh, I’m going to the city.” you mean

Manhattan. So that was cool once you got older. I remember being is sixth or seventh grade and going to West 4th Street and being like, “Wow, this is fucking cool.” Little things like that open up your eyes and you realize all of this shit is right here. Then you see a Martin Scorsese movie and you say, “Man, that’s fucking over there! And that’s fucking right there!” so you become this little historian because the shit your interested in is happening right there. I’m really prideful of New York, but not just because I’m from here. If I was from some corny town I’d be like “Fuck this town. It sucks.” But I really like it here and I’m proud of what’s been accomplished here and that Queens is the most diverse borough, and stuff like that.

What was it like to see New York change as you grew up here?

Yeah, where I lived is almost completely Korean now. But that’s just the beauty of New York. It’s always changing.

Right now it’s Koreans living there, and then it’ll be someone else, and so on. People complain “Oh these hipsters are ruining the neighborhood.” and to some degree, yes, hahaha. I agree with that, but at the same time, how much are you going to talk about that? Someone’s like “BedStuy is not what it use to be!” and I’m like, “Yeah no shit.”

I remember, I bought a turntable in Bed-Stuy when I was in high school. I had been to other parts of Brooklyn, but I hadn’t been to Bed-Stuy, cause Bed-Stuy was fucking hardcore at the time. I had $300 in my pocket when I was

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going down there, and then coming back I was carrying the two turntables on the subway, and I was like, “I’m going to get fucked up.” It was like “You don’t belong here.” and there wasn’t anything wrong with that. I was just like “Yeah, I don’t belong here. I’ll get the fuck out.” haha. I respect that kind of code of “What are you doing here? Beat it!” But now it’s not like that—which is good. For the person who’s there who like witnessed their son getting shot, and now sees a vegan cupcake place, they’re like “Oh, thank god!” But for the guy who’s from fucking Kansas and just moved to New York it’s like “New York changed!

I wish it was like the 90s.” Motherfucker, you weren’t here!

People died—people got killed for dumb shit. So there’s some good and some bad with the change. If you’re going to come in and open up your vegan cupcake shop, go for it bro! But don’t be a dick. You’ve got to respect the culture of the other people who were there before.

Did you have an art of music community at your disposal when you were growing up? When did you start making your own art?

Nah, not really. As far as a community of artists—no. Most of the kids I hung out with didn’t really draw. But I’ve always enjoyed drawing. When you’re kids you have drawing contests or whatever it is. There was this kid around the block from me named Arthur who was really good. He was a Romanian guy and he had a really nice style—kind of like Sam Keith, with a lot of detail. He was dope. I was good, but I didn’t have the detail down. I had the cool concepts. I could win and be better conceptually, but maybe not in detail. I figured that out and thought, Yo, if I have better ideas or better situations and me shit is funny or flipped in a different way, I don’t need to architecturally render a fucking building. That’s what was the fun part about art to me—with your limitations, you could see what could you do and how could you do it differently?

There are a few guys like Pablo Picasso who could draw the perfect human body, and then fuck with it because they’re the master. I’d like to try to be the master, but in the mean time, I’m going to fuck with it so that you think I’m the master, haha.

Then I got into film. I love movies. I use to watch whatever I could get my hands on. Then I started filming, and I’d edit between two VCRs, and I was very inspired. I loved Scorsese and Warriors and shit like that. At the time, someone would put you on to a movie or a documentary or something and you’d be like “Whoa, this is fucking sick!” So that was really exciting to me. Just filming people and being able to edit and capture things—I was really drawn to that. So I had drawing, and I really liked that. but filmmaking was like, “Wow, this is fucking cool.”

You could shove a piece of paper in front of someone and they wouldn’t give a fuck. But you sit someone down and put on the TV and everyone will watch it. It’s cooler, it’s more direct, and it hits everybody. Throughout high school I would just film and film and making little things,

but I was also drawing too.

I remember in church I would draw a lot. My parents were Baptist and we’d go to this church that was like two and a half hours or something like that, and it seemed like forever. They had these envelopes or whatever and those little pencils, so I would just draw the craziest shit. If you’ve got two and a half hours, you can do a lot. Sometimes it would have to do with what the guy was saying. I wasn’t into this pastor though. He had a little too many sports references and it was a bit corny. I just wasn’t into it. But that gave me a lot of time to draw. I developed and I got so much better. You just have to keep drawing and fucking around.

Try different styles and you’ll figure it out.

When did you decide you wanted to pursue art professionally, and how did you decide on going to School of Visual Arts?

When I was in high school I was drawing, but I was really excelling at film. People were really feeling my film stuff, so I thought, I like film and I enjoy doing this. I could take this to the next level. I made a compilation of stuff and I sent it to SVA and I got accepted into the school, so I went there. It didn’t really have the structure though. It was like “Go out and film!” but I needed someone to say “This is this, you gotta edit on the beat…” and all of that. I wanted to get all of that shit, and I really wasn’t getting it. When I first got their it was the last year that they still had Steenbeck editing bays. Do you know what those are? They were those big fucking machines for editing with film. After my class, they threw them in the garbage. So I caught this old dude who taught us how to use them and I loved it! I was in the last class that got that experience. That was a really cool thing that I took away. But filmmaking wise, I didn’t learn shit.

Then 9/11 happened while I was in school and my mind wasn’t on film anymore. Film seemed self-indulgent. People were worried about “We’re going to get drafted to the war.” and all of this shit. People were dead and it was just really heavy—especially in New York. It was this horrible feeling. You’re mad and angry, but you don’t know why.

So my mind went away from art, you know? It’s hard to go “I have this idea for a movie and it’s about a guy who travels through time…” when you have ladies going “Where’s my son! Where’s my son!” outside. Suddenly in my head I was like, I have to get a job. What am I going to do. In film you won’t get a job—that’s basically what they tell you, haha. But with graphic design you could get a job anywhere right away. So I thought, Okay, graphic design.

That’s the shit. I didn’t know computers—I didn’t know shit—but I went to graphic design anyway. I was terrible. I guess I wasn’t terrible, but I wasn’t good at it. There were a bunch of Japanese girls in my class who were fucking incredible and everything they did looked super pro, and my shit looked kind of sloppy. I would be envious of them because their shit was measured out, and then they’d be

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envious of me because my shit was all over the place.

They were like “Damn, I wish I could have that freedom.” and I was like “Dude, I don’t want this shit.”

All and all I had one class I appreciated. It was these two guys from Iceland and Germany and they were dope. The cool thing about SVA is that they hire people who are in the industry to teach, and these guys were definitely not teachers. These guys had their own little company and they were cool. I would chill with them and go to their studio and I really liked those guys. But that was just about it.

I think it’s so dumb to send kids to college right after high school. I wish I could go to college now. I wasn’t ready for college! If I had kids I’d be like, “Go do shit and see the world!” They should make motherfuckers go to work.

Put them in a restaurant for half a year, then have them work at some other place—that should be mandatory! If you work at a restaurant and you’ll see people not tip and not treat people right cause they’re dicks. They’re dicks because they haven’t ever worked in one themselves Yeah I feel like it’s really important to have a job that forces you to understand how much of labor and the economy is based around mindless or repetitive tasks. Going to work, dealing with customers, making sure everyone gets what they asked for, and cleaning up at the end of the day only to start all over again the

next day—jobs like that really give you an understanding of how so much of society operates.

Yeah! It should be mandatory. You have to learn that stuff at some point. I’m still learning shit right now! People change man, and that’s why it’s even more crazy. You’re a young cat but, you already seem like you’re on the path.

I didn’t know shit at that age. I’m still kind of going through it. I realized—and not really in a profound way—but you see people and you think that at that age you’re suppose to have it all together. Get the fuck out of here. If that were true, I already fucked up. So I just realized, oh this is just life. You go through shit and your try to figure things out.

Then next thing you know, you’re fucking dead! Nobody has the answer.

How did you first meet Juan Wauters, and when did you start working closely with his band, The Beets?

My friend from High School, Freddie Zamora, was from Jackson Heights and I was chilling with him sometime after high school. I had met Jose (Gracia) who had lived down the block from him and Jose went to, I think, Laguardia College where he had met Juan who was living in Jackson Heights as well. They had taken a class together, and they both liked the same music, so they decided “Okay, let’s get together and make music.” Around

“I’m not that kind of guy who was just going to tag along, and I wanted to have a purpose, so that’s when I got into doing lights and making banners.”

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“The first album cover has Carlito (Carly Colón Jr.) who was a wrestler at that time. Juan was watching SmackDown a lot—and so were his two brothers—and he was like ‘Yo, we’ll put Carlito on the cover.’” that time is when I met Juan. So they were playing music together, and I just hit it off with Juan. I was doing art and video shit and I was doing an art show near the Queens Bridge projects. I was cutting felt and gluing it and making some weird shit. I was working at an x-ray place, so I was taking x-rays and putting transparencies behind them. He was doing his drawings so I was like, “Yo come on, let’s do this show.” and I got him in on the show. His English wasn’t so good because he was still learning. Then from there I met his family and we just because good friends.

He played music and had the band The Beets, but I didn’t really make or play music, so we started doing videos. Before he had The Beets I did a video with him in his parents basement and that was really cool. Then we just started making more stuff and doing shit. Once The Beets started to play shows, I brought a camera and started filming. I really don’t like filming live shows—it does nothing for me.

Then I went on tour with them and was filming and doing little stuff. I wanted to do something for them if I was going on tour. I’m not that kind of guy who was just going to tag along, and I wanted to have a purpose, so that’s when I got into doing lights and making banners. I was already doing their art work, but there was no reason for me to go on tour. So I decided to make banners and a whole stage

show with lights and all of these rigs going. I was always trying to rig shit out, whether it was with dimmer switches or lamps or whatever. It was dope. Now I can go into a place and people will know me and they’ll say “This is the guy who fucking blew out my system.” haha.

How did you approach making artwork for the band?

How did you decide what you wanted The Beets to look like? Did Juan give you free reign?

Yes! That’s tough actually. The first album cover has Carlito (Carly Colón Jr.) who was a wrestler at that time.

Juan was watching SmackDown a lot—and so were his two brothers—and he was like “Yo, we’ll put Carlito on the cover.” Spit in the Face of People Who Don’t Want to be Cool was this thing he use to say. Then I drew the back and I drew Undertaker and shit like that. That one was Juan’s idea to put Carlito on the cover.

For each Beets album I had written a song, which was really cool. I like to write stuff, so I would write a song. I use to give Juan lyrics all of the time. I’d say “Hey, what do you think about…” and then he’d turn it into a song.

The song “Broken English” on that first Beets record is

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one. On the Stay Home record the last song, “Flight 14”, is another one. That one has a guy scalping a dude on it.

I remember when that happened, I sent in the art to Mike Sniper and he was like, “You’re going to catch a lot of shit for this cover.”

What was your experience like going to shows in the DIY scene here at the time? Do you feel like you had a different way of looking at it, being a New Yorker who grew up here?

To be honest, I didn’t really feel like a part of it. I think the same goes for Juan and the whole crew. We’d come in, we’d play a show, and then we’d go. We saw the whole Brooklyn scene happening, and in a sense some of it was cheesy, but at the same time there were all of these people and it was a thing that was happening. That was how you could play shows. There were cool people, but I really distanced myself from it. I wasn’t really involved. Jose (Garcia), who was the bass player, got more involved because he was getting girls and shit, haha. He was really getting down in the hipster scene, haha. But I didn’t ever really go to see other shows. I would go to see a friend or whatever, but I wasn’t so involved in it. I remember Showpaper was a thing, and it was that guy Joe Ahearn’s thing, and he was cool. Todd P was a guy who was doing stuff.

I don’t know… Joe was cool cause he was a nice guy, but his dad made Wild Style, and when I found out I was like “Holy shit!” I thought that was the coolest thing in the world.

You have a really unique voice with your writing and your way of image making in general. How long did it take you to develop the style that you work in now?

What has influenced the way you make work?

I’d say comic books. I’ve always loved comic books.

Who was my shit? My favorite guy was Barry WindsorSmith—he’s the best. I love his watercolors stuff, and I try to base mine around his. Then I guess just other comic books. I wasn’t so into most superheroes, but I loved X-Men. X-Men was my shit. I love the stuff from the 80s. The Chris Claremont X-Men run from the 80s—that was all about outcasts and weirdos and it was different.

Mutants were a stand in for racism and sexism and all of that stuff, and they attacked a lot of issues.

I feel like X-Men is one of the few superhero comic series that most people who end up making “alternative comics” really admire or go back to. It’s so much about humanity and disenfranchisement and these themes that aren’t really specific to superhero comics. Even having a woman of color as one of the main characters seems so groundbreaking and foreign in comics.

her powers away, and she wanted to fucking kill him. She has no powers even though she’s a fucking goddess, and so she started coming to terms with herself as a human being. You’re reading this in a fucking kids comic book!

She becomes a new person and she gets a mohawk and she becomes cool as fuck. Then she says “Fuck you” to Cyclops and is like “I want to run the X-Men.” Then he’s like “But you don’t have powers.” but she’s like “Fuck you!

I’ll fight you.” and kicks his ass. Then she becomes the leader of fucking X-Men. After that she goes down into the sewer and fucks up the Morlocks and becomes the leader of the X-Men and the Morlocks at the same time!

Yo, can you get more badass than Storm?

I also really loved newspaper comics. I loved Calvin and Hobbes as a little kid. I use to go to the scholastics book fairs or I’d order the books. I’d cut them out of the Sunday newspaper—I had a whole collection. I remember when the last one came out and I was like, “Fuck…” Far Side was done too, and I was looking at the paper and I was like “This is fucking trash.” Like how do you compete with Calvin and Hobbes? It’s kind of like having Scottie Pippen and Michael Jordan and then being like, “Okay who do I have now? Karl Malone and John Stockton???” It was good but, it wasn’t fucking Calvin and Hobbes. Everyone would see that and be like, “Man, I have to step my game up.” It’s like when you meet a guy from the 80s who says he dabbles in guitar. He’s fucking shredding, because his pinnacle is Eddie Van Halen. But then later, the standard gets lower. Bill Waterson is on another level. I read that as a kid and I loved the art work. His watercolors also inspired the fuck out of me. At the time it was also a way to weed people out. You could be like, “This guy doesn’t get Calvin and Hobbes? He’s a fucking herb.” So it was a good lesson in that way too.

There are a couple things that transcend. It’s the same thing with The Simpsons. I can’t remember who was saying it, but you could be dumb as a fucking rock and love The Simpsons. “Oh haha, Homer fucking fell.” But you could also be a Harvard dude and still love The Simpsons. The same goes with wrestling. You could be a redneck motherfucker with a confederate flag going “Stone Cold!” But you can also be an educated dude and be like, “Dude, I love the theatrics and the story and everything about it.” So The Simpsons and wrestling are two huge influences also. When you have something that only the educated people will get—it’s like “Well fuck, you’re leaving out a whole section.” So it’s cool when you make something that everyone can take something from. That comic was read by kids and adults, and I think that’s awesome. Maybe in a way that’s something that I strive for. It’s not just “Oh if you know the art scene, you’re going to like this.” I want the everyman kind of shit.

Dude, Storm is my favorite X-Men character! She was so sick. My favorite run was when Forge made a ray that took

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If you have the sort of spectacle that everyone can enjoy, you can insert the thoughtfulness or intellect that gets people to think about that they’re looking at in a much more subversive way.

I mean I’ve never thought about how much of an influence on me Calvin and Hobbes was, but it really was. It was funny and it makes you think a little bit. Sometimes I’ll read independent comic books and I’ll be like, “Fuck this shit.” It’s too heavy handed. I’m not having fun reading it. But it’s hard to do that. To make something funny and entertaining, and making you think Wow, that’s really cool. Books do that more for me. It’ll take me forever to read because I’ll get caught up. I’ll write a sentence down sometimes after I’ve read it in a book. That shit is crazy, and that’s where writing can get so insane.

What materials do you use for your work? What are the steps in executing a drawing?

I have micron pens, and I’ll use mechanical pencils—like these Bic ones. And then, umm… Just water colors. I mean, to be honest it just stems from, you know, what’s cheap. I never understood having all of these paints and shit. I didn’t use oil paints cause I thought it was going to take forever to dry. I always thought in my head “Oh, you had to learn all of these paints.” But a water color set, you

just buy for $1 at the 99 cent store, so it’s really available.

I’ve seen guys do really dope shit with watercolor, like Bill Waterson and Barry Windsor-Smith. Everyone who paints goes, “How the fuck do you do watercolors? I hate watercolors because if you fuck up, you can’t go over it. I got watercolor paper and shit, and sometimes I don’t like the way the watercolor set on the watercolor paper. It’s too dense, or whatever the fuck it is. When you buy the Xerox paper—the cheap shit you put in the printer—the page curls up, but the colors are more vibrant. So I end up drawing on shittier paper, because I like the way it looks better. So the set up for it is super easy, but then if I want to do a bigger thing or a more respectable thing, people think “Wait, that’s just a piece of paper. That’s not good.” It’s so dumb.

With the watercolors I get, the hardest one to get is the flesh color. You have to buy the kind that’s in the more expensive set. But you can turn around and look. You can see it’s the most basic shit. I know they have watercolor tubes ands shit, but I’ve never really fucked with that. Someone told me about gouache—I almost feel like a dumbass when I’m like, “I don’t know what the fuck this thing is.” It’s the same with filming. People will be like “Are you filming 16:9?” and I’m like, “Yeah… I don’t know.”

“It’s kind of within my aesthetic to be on a budget.”

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“I like people, so different characteristics of someone will come up. I’m also from New York, so there will often be a type of New York character that I find super interesting.”

Your work almost falls more under folk art I think. Part of it’s uniqueness is that you’re figuring out a way to do it with resources that have certain limitations.

Yeah, I’ll take that! It’s kind of within my aesthetic to be on a budget. Even with the light show, that’s what I could get at the 99 cent store or at this place Bulb America—that place is probably out of business now. But it was the best store in Long Island City and you had to make an appointment to go there. It’s where I use to get all of these lighting board and weird shit that’s completely discontinued because of LEDs. I just did the lights in Texas for Mac’s show in this big venue. I didn’t do it at Austin City Limits because it was on television and they do their own whole thing. But I did it the next night at The Mohawk. That was really cool because, the guy Edan (Wilber) from Death by Audio, he works there now. It was so cool because I had banners and all of this shit, and he went “Whatever this guy wants, give him carte blanche! Anything he wants, it’s aloud! Help him with it too!” It was the complete opposite of everything I’ve ever done. So that was like, “You’re the man Edan!” it was so cool. The light woman was like, “Yo, here you go. Take over.” I have to lie when I go to places where I’ll use their boards. They’ll be like “Do you know how to use this board?” and it’s like the most complicated board. But I know, even though they have ten thousand

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different options, when you go, “Yeah, I just want to manually control those four lights.” once they show you that, don’t touch anything else. So I just say “Oh, is this the MC77? I’ve only used the MC76. Can you show me real quick where…” and they go through all of the stuff I’m never going to use. But all I care about is the filament bulbs.

What themes do you notice coming up a lot in your work? Is there any subject matter that you feel like you often revisit?

I guess a lot of it in a way is about people. I like people, so different characteristics of someone will come up. I’m also from New York, so there will often be a type of New York character that I find super interesting. I meet interesting people all the time. Yesterday I helped my friend Weasel pick up garbage in Howard Beach. We’re under this bridge and this guy comes up and he’s just staring at us cause we’re blasting music and picking up garbage. So this dude—I guess he lives under the bridge. He’s comes over and he’s smoking a clove cigarette. Then this guys started to annoy me because he was just standing there and looking at us. Weasel says to him “Hey, what’s up?

What’s going on?” and he says “I fucking hate the garbage!” This guy lives under the bridge so it makes sense

“The ‘Sanity or Not’ video was dope, and I really liked making that. That was cool because it brings in a lot of shit that I love.” that he’s angry, but he just keeps saying that he hates garbage. Weasel said, “Yo I’ll throw you some money if you help us clean.” and he’s like “No! You’ll take my bike!” and he’s just fucking pissed. Then finally he goes “Ah, fuck it.” and he jumps over and he starts helping us pick up the garbage. So he was cool, and we started talking to him. He’s telling us about living down there and we say “If you need anything, it’s chill.” The cops come down and they post up—they’re assholes and they’re just looking at us while we clean up the garbage. The guys starts telling us about how these kids come down and start fires and then the cops come and they take his shit. There’s a Hindu church there that leaves their garbage there. They put chickens in boxes taped up and leave them there as a sacrifice. So the dude under the bridge is like “Whoa, these assholes are leaving these chickens here.” and he started taking care of the chickens. So when we left we were like “Alright, we’ll see you around.” and he’s like “Okay! My name is Mohammad by the way.” and then we walk away. But then he say “Yo, come back over here.” and we walk over and he’s like “Do you know who I am?”

I said “No… Mohammad right?” Then he goes, “No… I’m the chicken man. You’ve never hear about me?” and I said “What!? No.” So he was like “Yeah, look me up on Youtube man. Look up chicken man.” We get in the car and the first thing I do is pull up “chicken man howard

beach” and I press play. It’s the daily news, and it’s a whole ten minute documentary on this guy.

That was just yesterday! There are fucking characters everywhere. People’s attitude and the way they feel is inspiring. I feel like you can always relate to someone. I like the idea of how people change and what a “good person” is and what a “bad person” is. But I’m drawn to it in a funny way.

A big part of what you did for Juan and The Beets was all of the videos you directed, and you’ve done other videos for a bunch of different bands as well. How have you approached your music videos, and which ones that you’ve made stick out to you?

I think I’m proud of all of them. The “Sanity or Not” video was dope, and I really liked making that. That was cool because it brings in a lot of shit that I love. I love wrestling and I was able to cut a promo based around that. Also people got involved with the video, and that was huge to me. I worked with my friend Sean Heeney and his sister from Bayridge. To get Siobhan and Sean in a videos—that means something to me. I remember going to Siobhan’s parent’s house in Bayridge and filming it right where you walk into her house. They’re wrestling and she’s in make-

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“She was like, ‘I want to do a cooking show!’ and finally I was like ‘Oh alright, yeah let’s do it!’ So we set everything up and filmed this cooking show.” up and the neighbors are like “What the fuck are they doing?” That all makes it more special to me. I like to capture that sort of aspect of it. Her mom would be walking to the bathroom at 3 o’ clock in the morning, while we have Siobhan rolling a blunt and doing this whole speech! It took like eight hours. The sun was coming up when we were finishing. But that shit makes it worth it. When it comes all together, it means something. So that one was really cool.

We filmed a Beets video in Rockaway, and that was fun because it was more of a production. I really liked the “This is I” video for Juan that his dad doesn’t like. That was cool because it was more conceptual and it had a different approach. The promo videos are more fun. When you have a song, you have to go with the song and whatever. I guess the videos I do aren’t always like that. A lot of people will just listen to the lyrics and be like, “Oh okay, I’m going to do a video about this.” But I don’t do that. Working with Juan, he’s always down to act and he’s really good at it.

He’s open to whatever, and he’s never going to be like “Well my song is actually about…” he’s really cool about it. So that gave me free reign to do whatever the fuck I want. All of the ones for Juan were just really fun to make.

The Walter TV one was really good because I had a guy with a fucking drone who works for my brother come over, and we got a special shot. It was like, “Wow!” I thought that was really cool. Getting this dude Lennox (Brown) and my friend Maxine (Vulliet), who’s fucking awesome,

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was great. Having them and having it all come together was cool. It was for Pierce (McGarry), and he’s a filmmaker too who I respect. He’s got really cool visuals in his videos and he’s just a really creative dude. He actually filmed a show here a couple summers ago. He’s inspirational because he’s doing his thing, and then him asking me to do a video—I take that as a big honor. He gave me props and was like, “Dude, I like your shit.” and he knows I respect his shit, so I knew I wanted to make a phat video.

Then it ended up coming out really dope.

You’ve done a few non-music related videos too, right? Like you did that Kiera’s Kitchen video with Kiera McNally.

Sometimes things will just happen. Kiera will be here cooking and shit—she’s a really good cook, she makes amazing food. So she was like, “I want to do a cooking show!” and finally I was like “Oh alright, yeah let’s do it!”

So we set everything up and filmed this cooking show. It came out really cool. It has Cola Boy in it also. It’s cool when you put yourself in that situation. We were like “We gotta film this now, so we’ll do it like this. Cola Boy is here, so we’ll use him.” and then you would write it on the spot.

Having an idea and seeing it come into fruition is amazing.

There’s this level of immediacy to your work that allows it to always feel exciting and low stakes. When

ideas come, do you feel like you have to get them out as soon as you can?

No, usually I write shit down. I have that box over there of different ideas written down. So I’ll write it down, and if I don’t know what I can do with it right at that second, I’ll put it in the box and I’ll know I can go back and pull it out and think, Oh yeah! Some of it is stupid shit, but if you can take that one line that you thought of and turn it into something, that’s great. In the moment I will have thought of something—maybe it’s an idea for a comic strip or whatever the fuck it is—but you can change it and morph it around to whatever you’re doing. Filming stuff is hard because you have to plan everything out, That kind of aspect of it is tough for me. So I do like a little bit more spontaneity and just being like “Hey, let’s go for it.” in the moment.

How did you start doing comics for Lucky Peach?

This dude Peter Meehan—he’s mad cool and he’s really pro. He’s a food writer for the New York Times. He’s the dude. I’m not as well versed as other people as far as how chef shit goes, but him and David Chang have their whole crew. The two of them started the magazine together. Anyways, he hit me up through email because I think I had my info in The Beets record and he had one of The Beets records. He hit me up and was like, “Hey man, can you make me a custom t-shirt?” and I said “Yeah, no doubt! I could do that.” I told him the shit I usually draw. I was like “I can draw a gory thing, wrestling…” and whatever the fuck else I said. He was like, “Well, I like food.” and I was like, “Okay, I’ll make something with food.” It just seemed like a random email, so I didn’t put

“Other places would be like ‘It needs to be one panel, and this has to be…’ but he was just like ‘Do whatever the fuck you want!’ That was insane.”

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too much thought into it. Then six months later he hit me up and was like, “Hey man, do you have that shirt?” and I thought, Aw, I’m a fucking dick. I told this guy I’d make him a shirt. I had something sketched out, so I was like, Okay, I’ll do this and then I’ll get it to him asap. I made a shirt and it had a hot dog and a hamburger and it was a whole comic strip on a shirt. This was right before I had an art show with John Malta, and for that I had like 20 t-shirts that I had drawn hanging on the wall, and I made two tapestries. Then he gave me his address, so I took the shirt to Manhattan and just rang his doorbell. He answered the door and I was like “Yo, here’s your shirt.” and he was like “Oh cool!” Then he invited me in and we sat down, his wife was there, and he was playing music. I also brought him a Beets and Beach Fossils poster, and I said sorry cause I felt like a dick. We talked and had a nice time and then I left. Then he hit me up and was like “Hey I made this article for the New York Times Magazine food section.” I think it was online or whatever. I opened it up and it was about how he ordered the shirt and it had a picture of the shirt. He mentioned that I was having a show coming up in Chelsea. I just thought, Wow, this is cool man. and I thanked him. From that we just kept in touch though email and stuff.

I remember I was touring with Juan and he hit me up and was like, “I’m starting a magazine, and I want you to do a thing for it.” I haven’t worked for that many people, but you can’t get cooler than that. Other places would be like “It needs to be one panel, and this has to be…” but he was just like “Do whatever the fuck you want!” That was insane. For one he told me the issue was about Ramen, so I sent him a seven page story about a guy who’s a giant who keeps growing, and people are building him a giant ramen. It was a whole crazy little comic, and they printed the whole thing! I was like, “Wow, this is fucking awesome. Is this how the world works?” But he’s just a cool fucking dude and he was into my stuff and I was just super grateful of that. We stayed in touch and he’d be like “Hey can you make a piece for this?” Because he knows that Juan is from Uruguay and I drink all of this mate, I did a thing about food in Uruguay. Then he had comics on the Lucky Peach website and he was like, “Yo, do you want to contribute comics?” and I was like “Of course!” I’d send him stuff and he’d be like “Yo bro, it has to somewhat have to do with food.” hahaha. So I’d be like “Okay, my bad.” haha.

It’s cool that your work has both this high brow audience, with editorial projects like what you did for Lucky Peach, as well as this low brow audience, with the type of subject matter you’re talking about. Do you think at all about the audience you’re reaching or what you want them to take away from your work?

That’s weird, I don’t know. If I make something, I don’t really think about “Oh, this crowd is going to like it.” or whatever. You know, I’m a tough critic, so if I like it, I think

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a lot of people will like it. If I look at it and say “Wow, this is funny. This looks good.” I think a lot of people will like it.

I really don’t like to put shit out. That’s why I don’t have a million fucking pieces. I just want to show the best pieces.

But I think over all I want to reach the regular person. If the dude at Stop & Shop can read it and laugh, then I think other people will also laugh. I’m not going to target the super intellectual crowd or whatever. I’m going to target somebody like me. I don’t consider myself a dumb person, but I feel more like a self educated person. Even though I have an education, I feel more self educated. I’m a guy who’s interested in a lot and I get obsessed with things. So I’m trying to appeal more to that person. There are people who, after they finish high school, they never pick up a book again. They don’t have an interest in it.

That’s crazy to me. If people are like “Oh, I listen to this kind of music.” I think that’s dumb. I’ll listen to every kind of music. I don’t like to be too judgmental.

When did you move into this house in Far Rockaway, and what has it been like to live in an environment with so many artists and musicians coming in and out?

I moved here about four years ago. Mac had found the house on Craigslist or something like that. Me and Juan were living in shitty places and he hit us up and was like, “Yo, do you want to move in?” I said, “No question!” and that’s it–we were here. So Juan plays music, Mac plays music, and I was doing art work. It’s been really cool.

Even though I’m doing a solitary thing, I really enjoy being able to go into the kitchen and have Mac playing guitar or Tall Juan (Zaballa) working on his thing. I’m not a musician, so I’m not getting involved and being like, “Hey, what are you working on buddy?” but it’s cool to have them all working on stuff. We don’t get involved with each other’s shit unless someone is like, “Yo, can you give me a hand with this?” or whatever. But we’re getting influenced by people doing creative shit. Motherfuckers are in their room playing guitar all day working and working, and that energy is contagious. It’s really cool just having that. From that you have all of these people staying over. Sometimes there’s a band coming through who is going to stay for a week, and then you’ve got another whole element. I like talking to people and I like meeting people.

What projects have come together just because of the people who’ve been here at the same time?

Well Pierce and all of the guys who play in Mac’s band, they have other bands together. Pierce was working on a pilot for a medieval TV show that was really cool. I don’t know what happened to that. But he would be working on that. Then Peter (Sagar) who does Homeshake would come over and all of those dudes would crash here. Then Alex Calder would come. Mike Collins who has his thing called Drugdealer, he’d come here and watch movies all night. He’s involved in a lot. He was working on a documentary and I was talking to him about how he was go-

ing to come here to film shit. He’s got his hand in a million things. Even Yuki (Kikuchi) coming here and doing photographs and staying over. Yuki is a dude who photographed Mac, and then he was in the house, and part of his life is involved with our lives. So there was all of that.

Plus, Mac put the address of this place on the end of his record, Another One, that he recorded here. So then we were getting all of these people coming and looking for Mac. We’d invite the people in the house and make them coffee or whatever and he would talk with them or whatever. But Mac was on tour a lot, so it was mostly me and Kiera at the house dealing with these people. I’d always let them in and be like “He’s not here, but come in and have a coffee.” So that also added an element of having strange motherfuckers just lurking around. It’s funny.

Rockaway is mostly Irish and Black. That way is more Irish, and this way is more black. So I’d just be sitting in the kitchen, and I’d see a white kid walking up the street and I’d be like, “I know where this guy is headed.” There’s like a mass exodus from the Beach 67 station, haha. For the most part everyone is pretty friendly.

Who are some peers or contemporary artists who have been inspiring or motivating for you?

Most of my friends who are artists are all musicians. But as far as artist-artists, I have my friend James JaJac who is a school teacher and he makes really cool shit. My friend John Malta. Sadie Benning is really dope. She does these paintings now that are fucking dope as fuck. They’re like these big clay things. Juan’s ex-girlfriend introduced Juan to her to help move shit. Juan became her Assistant, helping her put things together and stuff like that. I would help once and a while to move something for her, and then we became friends. I actually knew Sadie because I took a class when I was studying film—it was like on underground film or something like that—and someone gave me a tape of her work. When she was 16 years old she was making these amazing videos. Because of her films I got this Pixelvision camera, and I loved it. Her shit was off the chain. Her father is also a very well known experimental film maker. She also played in the band Le Tigre.

Haha, now I’m trying to think of all the artists I know. My friend Rob Anderson does cool drawings. Marina Pinsky—she’s my friend Serge’s sister. We’ve been friends with her over the years. We’ll go to LA and see her and go to her studio and see what she’s working on. She’s always working on some crazy shit. Then someone hit me up over email saying “RSVP to this dinner in honor of Marina Pinsky” at some place in Manhattan. I was like, “Fuck it! Yeah, let’s go.” I show up and it’s just art world heavy hitters all talking about Marina’s amazing show. I was just like “Yo, what the fuck? You’re doing it right now!” She’s cool. I really fuck with her stuff. But there are so many people that are doing cool shit. Even the crew that you have! I see those dudes, and I don’t know them, but I

dig all of the people putting out comic books. What did I buy… I bought Cola Boy a pin from Tommi Parrish of a burning cop car as a gift. That stuff is really cool.

What stuff are you working on at the moment, and what do you hope to do later this year?

I have three things that I need to fucking get done. The worst thing about me is, I go to work on something, and then someone will be like “Yo, can you help me with this?” and I’ll get distracted. Just last night I was talking photos of Tall Juan at 3 o’ clock in the morning dressed as a clown. I get sidetracked big time! That’s the downside of having a bunch of people doing shit here. I’ve been writing this comic strip about a dog named Claro. It’s about a stray dog who looks down on dogs who are house dogs and he’s really anti-masters. He has fleas and they torture him. It’s cool! I’m trying to figure out what the fuck to do with it. I don’t know how to put it out, but I keep writing it.

They’re kind of crudely dawn in black and white, and it’s just mad simple. I want to put them all together because right now they’re mostly just the boxes with words in them.

This show called Meanwhile Back in Queens is with that guy Lennox (Brown), that’s definitely going down. Within a month we’re going to start filming and doing shit. It’s going to be cool to just get episode one. That shit takes a long time, but I’m not trying to make Ken Burns shit or whatever. I know the audience, so it’ll probably be 10 minutes max. People don’t have the patience. Also, when you’re working with people who aren’t actors and you give them a monolog, it’s not going to fucking happen. So you have to work within that. I think it should be really good and interesting and funny.

Then the last thing is something I’ve been working on for years. It’s stupid to say “Oh, I’ve been working on it for years.” but I really have, but just in putting it together.

For me, even over art, it’s about the story. When I read a story, the art could be shit, but if the story sucks its a total wash. But having a good mixture of both—you need that!

I remember being a kid and buying a comic because it had some really phat drawing, but then I’d read the comic and I’d realize it sucked. That feels horrible, even if the art work gets you in. So I want the story to be first. It’s the same as being concerned with sound in a video. If your sound sucks, you’re fucked. You could be using a fucking security camera, but if you have bad sound, it’s unforgivable. So story is really important. I don’t want it to be like, “And then he realized it was all a dream.” Fuck you, don’t do that to me. I want it to have a little substance and something people can relate to. But I have to say to myself “Bro, what the fuck are you doing? How long are you going to write this stupid thing before you actually execute it?” So now I’m lighting the fire under myself. I have to get the first story, which takes place in Africa, done. If I can do a page a day—that’s how I have to think about it. But my day is so unstructured that I really crave some

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“I have to maintain my integrity or whatever you want to call it, by putting something out that I can stand behind.”

sort of structure. I use to watch the sunrise before going to bed and then wake up for the sunset. Psycho shit like that, you know what I mean?

Where there specific things that you wanted to do differently from your college professors? What did you try to impart on your students?

For everything I have to work, get money, and then pay for the supplies. I’m always in this process of, “I’ll do this so that I can get that.” You’re building up to be able to afford to do that, so I’m always just working to be able to do the next project. I would love it if someone were just like, “Yo, you need some money for that? Here you go!” but unfortunately I’m not sure if that’s going to happen. Right now, Mac is doing a show in Central Park, so I’m doing a poster for that that I have to finish in a couple days. It’s cool because I’m doing silk screened stuff now, so I learned how to do the color separations and all of that shit. Mad people will hit me up because I’ll make custom t-shirts for Mac that he’ll wear on a TV performance. He was on a TV show with John Cena, so he was like “Hey, John Cena is going to be on this show.” and we talked and decided it would look like this. Then he’ll wear it and people will be like, “Oh, I want that fucking shirt.” People will say “Hey can you make me the John Cena Mac DeMarco shirt? I’ll send you money.” but I don’t really feel comfortable doing that. Mac is my friend, so I’m not trying to profit off of his thing on the side.

If he asks me to make a poster or a t-shirt or whatever, I’ll gladly do it. But I’m not going to make something and then charge someone on my own. But I maybe want to make some of my own shirts and sell them. I guess I have a web-

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site and a store on there, so why am I not?

What hurdles do you still see ahead of you with the work that you make? What do you feel like you still struggle with as an artist?

I’ll always do what I want to do, and I won’t really give a fuck about the money. I’ll work at some job or I’ll do deliveries or I’ll do this and that. But I never think, Oh, I’m going to be an artist and I’m going to pay the bills with that. I’ve never had that mentality. I’ve always had the idea that I’m always going to work on the shit that I want to work on, but I have to do bullshit job A or bullshit job B too. You just have to hustle. I have to sell records on the street? Okay, I guess I’ll sell records on the street. That means I can work on this thing, and I like to do that, so it’s worth it. So that’s a hurdle for me. You have to do both. I see kids come to New York and they’re like “Oh, I’m going to be an artist.” and I think that that’s dope—I encourage people to come to New York and do all of this shit. But they come, they spend all of the money they have—like $3000 or whatever—in two months and then they’re back wherever they were. You have to hustle here. It can happen—someone can be like, “Okay, I want to buy your drawing for a million dollars.” But most likely, you’re going to have to work.

I have to maintain my integrity or whatever you want to call it, by putting something out that I can stand behind.

Because then, you don’t have that feeling of, Oh, I need to do it this way because I need to pay my rent. Nah, I’m already paying my rent delivering fucking muffins! That way I can say, “Fuck you, I don’t want to do your fucking drawing.” It’s cool! So that’s the big hurdle.

ERIC KOSTIUK WILLIAMS

by MATTHEW JAMES-WILSON

Canadian cartoonist and illustrator Eric Kostiuk Williams’s work is the sum of its many seemingly disparate influences.

The Ottawa native has been crafting his own unique comics since his formative years in high school. But after moving to Toronto for college and immersing himself in the city’s historic queer art scene, Eric’s life and community have become a fundamental part of his work. With his visually dense and cleverly written books like Babybel Wax Bodysuit and Condo Heartbreak Disco, Eric has explored the ways current economics and his surroundings have inherently shaped his identity as a young adult. With just the handful of books he has both self published and put out with indie powerhouses like Koyama Press, Czap Books, and Retrofit, Eric has developed a distinctive voice that feels urgently necessary in modern comics.

I first met Eric at TCAF (Toronto Comic Arts Festival) a few years ago, and I’ve been a fan of his work ever since. This

winter we reconnected in Toronto once again, this time at his apartment in Parkdale. Over the course of a couple hours we talked about what role comics have played in his life, how he’s seen Toronto change overtime, and the inescapable similarities between cartooning and drag.

Where are you from and where do you live currently?

I’m from Ottawa originally, but I’ve lived in Toronto for a bout a decade. Here kind of feels like home by default now, which is nice. I feel like I did my actual growing up here.

What part of Ottawa did you grow up in? What was your experience like growing up there?

I grew up pretty downtown, which was actually really nice. I had access to the sort of art things that were happening—not that there is a whole lot. My high school job was actually working the front desk at this non-profit art school. I worked with all older people who would take me out to the little opening or dance parties. Ottawa felt really sleepy for the most part, so having a tiny glimpse of the fun stuff that was happening towards the end of living there was really nice. But I was ready to move. It was kind of a stifling place in a lot of ways. Coming to Toronto was so exciting—just seeing the diversity and how much was happening here.

Other than the non-profit was there any sort of art community or music community you had at your disposal while you were still in Ottawa?

I was pretty young, so I think like there was some cool stuff happening, but I felt like I didn’t really have access to it, which was really frustrating. I had friends in high school, but creatively I felt like I was by myself a lot of the time. I spent a lot of high school just drawing in my basement and kind of fantasizing about something more exciting.

What role did comics play in your life early on? What was your entry into reading them or making your own?

They were so big really early on. I don’t even remember how it started, but I was into reading them from a really young age. I think I was drawing comic strips as early as eight or nine. It helped because, being in school I had kind of a hard time and I felt picked on or like I wasn’t good at a lot of stuff. I kind of gravitated towards it as this solitary thing that I could immerse myself in. My parents were actually really great. They realized it was actually something that I was into. So instead of putting me into sports, they found a Saturday cartooning class at the non-profit art school that I would end up working at. So I took that class over and over again because it was just a one semester thing. The instructor was this amazing guy—really wacky and irreverent. Me and a few other kids would take the class over and over again, and I ended up taking it over like five years from the age of ten to 14 or 15. So that was the thing that I would look forward to. He encouraged us to make our own comic.

He let me use the school photo copier to print my own comics and hand them out to friends.

My first visit to Toronto was actually in high school. I went to Fan Expo and had my own table in Artist Alley when I was like 16, haha. It’s so mortifying to think back on. The comics were so bad, haha. But it was a really formative experience. I was out of my depth, but also excited to be there. It kind of made me want to take it more seriously one day.

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“At the time I didn’t really see other auto-bio comics about stuff like that—like coming out and navigating different queer scenes.”

What type of comics were you into at that point as a teenager? Were you mostly into superhero stuff, or were you aware of the Canadian comics scene that was going on?

Growing up it was definitely Marvel stuff all the way. A lot of that stuff is still really close to me, X-Men especially. I feel like, growing up queer, there’s a lot of sub-text in XMen and they’re sort of “freaks” as well. That meant a lot to me growing up. But it took a while for me to stumble on to alt-comics or any of the stuff that was happening in Canada. I remember one year for my birthday my dad got me the Louis Riel graphic novel by Chester Brown. I was

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like, “Ahhh, this is boring.” at the time. I’d appreciate it later on, haha. He also once got me some of Joe Sacco’s stuff, and I think that was kind of the first stuff I really liked that wasn’t superhero oriented, since it was his comics journalism. It was so exciting to see that they could be about anything.

But I feel like I didn’t really get a sense of what was happening in Canada or in the independent world until I went to TCAF (Toronto Comic Art Festival) for the first time when I was like 19. That’s where I saw Koyama Press stuff for the first time. That’s where I saw the first issue of Lose, which I have somewhere, haha. I was just like

“Whoa! Everyone is just doing it for themselves and figuring it out!” It was something I was starting to do in high school a bit, but seeing people do it more seriously was so inspiring. It’s really cool. It was a really exciting time. I feel like the kind of economic difficulties and doom hadn’t caught up with everybody yet, and it still felt kind of fresh and new. I feel like with Lose #1 especially—I feel like it had the same kind of energy for my crowd as Eightball probably did in the 90s. It was just like, “Oh, this person is just doing whatever they want, but really well.” and that was really exciting. I went to OCAD (Ontario College of Art and Design) for illustration and I was a few years below Patrick (Kyle), Chris (Kuzma), and Ginette (Lapalme), and Wowee Zonk was the cool shit that we were all kind of sizing up or whatever. I think art collectives were a big thing at that moment and that was cool.

What led to your decision to move to Toronto for school? What was your experience like at OCAD? Well, going to Fan Expo really opened my eyes to what Toronto was like. I think we took a family trip here later in High School. I was looking at it a bit more like Hmm, could I live here? That became my number one goal. I didn’t even care where I went to school, I just wanted to end up here. So I did one year at the University of Toronto and I was going to study Humanities or History or something.

But I remember showing up on the first day, and they had this huge clubs day set up. I remember looking around for an art club or a comics club and there was nothing. I just had this moment of being like, “Oh no… This is not the dreamy expansive university thing I was hoping for.” So I realized half way through that OCAD was a much better option. It was a lot of work at U of T and I had this moment of being like, “I’m either going to have to put comics away for a few years, or I have to take it more seriously and dive in.” I always joke that when I came home for the holidays, I had to tell my parents that I wanted to switch schools and it was kind of felt like coming out to them or something. I remember my mom being like, “How long have you known?” haha. But they were super supportive.

It was so outside their world—like they’ve both worked in civil service their whole careers. So I think they wanted me to try a regular university, but were ultimately really supportive, which was great.

I ended up going into the illustration program. I met a lot of amazing people. I think that was my favorite takeaway from it. It was the same challenges and constraints you’d have at any university, but they weren’t super keen on comics when I was there. So even though I was at an art school I was having to do comics on my own time a lot— which I think was actually good training for the real world.

It’s kind of unrealistic to have blocks of time laid out for you to do comics. Everyone is doing them in the evenings or whenever they have a spare second. So I’m thankful in retrospect that I didn’t get the time to do it there. But it was frustrating at the time.

What impression did you get from the rest of the student body there? Did your classmates seem to be taking their work really seriously, or were you excited about the work that was coming out of the school?

We were all really pushed to do editorial illustration, because the instructors who were teaching us were from a generation where that yielded a lot of work. I think the reality is that editorial illustration kind of sucks now, haha.

It’s a lot more all over the place in terms of the jobs people are getting. A lot of my classmates were trying to fit that mold, but were all kind of realizing that it maybe wouldn’t lead anywhere. So, that kind of made me want to do comics even more! I was like, “Well, none of this seems super practical, so why not just go for what I really like.” I think they all appreciated comics, but they were kind of shy about getting into them, because it’s really hard at first— or at least it seems that way. There are so many ways of doing comics, I don’t think it’s necessarily that hard. But I think it can seems kind of monolithic and intimidating from far away.

How did you develop your voice as a writer early on when you started making your own comics? Did you start out writing auto-bio stuff or were your more interested in fiction?

In high school a lot of my comics were kind of thinly veiled rip offs of my favorite comics and TV shows, haha. I feel like that’s a great place to start. Then as your own voice starts to creep in there, it morphs. In university, at U of T during my first year, I was doing a lot of really hammy political cartoons about the 2008 election. When I was at OCAD, school assignments were busy and I was kind of “feeling myself” and going out a lot, so I didn’t really have a whole lot of time time to do comics. So when I came around to them again I had lived through a lot, and the idea of putting it all down seemed really exciting and felt important and potent. I had done a lot of growing up in the span of like two or three years. At the time I didn’t really see other auto-bio comics about stuff like that—like coming out and navigating different queer scenes. The two worlds felt almost incompatible before. This social life of going out and meeting people, and then what I had done growing up, which was such solitary comic making. So bringing them together was kind of rad. I still think those early ones are the most fun I’ve had making stuff.

They were so literally my own voice because it was often stream of consciousness and in their own little world.

I think as time has gone on, I’m still kind of figuring out my voice as a writer. I’m trying to do more fiction, but I find anytime I try to do fiction it comes out as auto-bio anyway—which I think is the case for a lot of writers. Write what you know! I think trying to step into a totally different brain when you’re writing for a character or navigating characters who are shitty would a cool challenge. I don’t know. I’m excited to keep figuring out writing. It’s always

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kind of a challenge, which is a good thing I guess.

What was it like being in Toronto and living on your own for the first time? How did that change the dynamic of your personal life and ultimately what you were making work about?

Well it was a really big 180. When you’re growing up queer in high school, you’re kind of like not a real person sometimes. For me anyway, I was just trying to live under the radar—which is true for a lot of people growing up, regardless of orientation of whatever. But being in a bigger city and meeting like-minded people was great. I also moved here not knowing anybody, so it was kind of this opportunity to be like, “Who do I want to be?” You don’t really get that too often in life. I had a lot of fun with it. I think I was more extroverted in those years than I actually am as a person. Yeah, it was kind of a whirlwind. I kind of fell on my ass a lot. I made a lot of mistakes, and hung out with people I wouldn’t necessarily hang out with now.

But it was really fun and formative, and it made for a lot of great material, haha.

I would never want to do it again necessarily, but I do occasionally fantasize about living somewhere else and being able to do that all over again. But I think that would

actually be a lot of work and it would be stressful. I like everyone here, so… haha. It was cool when I first moved here because I was on campus, so I was really close to Young Street and the village. I think my favorite part of the carte blanche “living somewhere new” scenario was that I realized, Oh, I could wear whatever I want because, no matter how weird I think I look, there’s always going to be someone dressed even wilder within a three block radius.

It’s such a special thing, and I really hope the city doesn’t ever lose that. I talk about it with people all the time here— I think the Young Street area has no predominant demographic. It’s really everybody.

What was your experience like finishing school? Were you worried at all about entering the real world after graduating?

I’m really grateful for the way that timing worked out. Even in my first or second year in OCAD, I was very aware of the cliff you feel like you’re going to fall off as soon as you’re done. I had heard stories from friends who were a bit older, and it always just felt like this looming thing that I wanted to avoid as much as I could. I kind of transitioned slowly out of school, which seems really weird. I did my thesis, but then had some left over credits that I needed to complete before I could graduate. So I actually had this

“I also moved here not knowing anybody, so it was kind of this opportunity to be like, ‘Who do I want to be?’ You don’t really get that too often in life.”

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great last year of school where I was only taking one or two classes. I would recommend that for anybody if you can! It gives you the chance to start doing more personal work and work whatever jobs you need to work. But you’re still occasionally at school and seeing your friends still. So I couldn’t be more grateful for that. I feel like I didn’t have that experience of finishing and being like, “Oh, what now?” As early as second year I was starting to do a little bit of freelance work for local newspapers, and I was self publishing my auto-bio comics in third year I think. It felt really nice to be starting an early baby-career while I was still in school. It was a lot of work at the time, but I was so happy to do it that way.

When did you start developing your series Hungry Bottom Comics and how did those comics deviate from the work you had made prior?

I was doing a few one pager gag comics that turned into the first Hungry Bottom Comics. She was very down to let me sort of hijack her class to do more work for that.

I was very thankful for that. So I did these assignments within the parameters of what she was asking for, but then I made them kind of part of it when it came out. The title of the comic came from this guys I was seeing who made a derogatory joke, calling me that in a shame-y way. It kind of stuck with me over time, but then I kind of had a moment where I thought it would be funny to turn it around and make it my own. I don’t know, I’m kind of a shy person sometimes, so it felt fun to do something provocative and out there. It felt like a good push for myself. So I had a ton of fun putting that together. I’m always thankful for Fiona for encouraging me. When I did my first TCAF that spring and sold the first copy, she was actually sending friends of hers over to say “Hi” and that’s how I met Michael Comeau for the first time. So, I can’t say enough nice things about her. She’s the best.

What were the first jobs you started doing just after school? What were your expectations as far as what you’d be doing to make a living while making your comics?

Yeah, it was scary. Like I was saying earlier, having some older friends, I was kind of watching that happen for people. When we all graduated, a lot of my classmates didn’t really keep up with stuff. I kind of stopped hearing what they were up to, which was such a bummer because they were all really good. But when I was in school, I did a bit of freelance work for Xtra, which was this queer newspaper that doesn’t exist anymore. I also desperately needed a job when I was first living in Toronto over the summers, and I kind of stumbled into this restaurant job that I’ve had ever since. It’s been a really great fit for me actually, because everyone who works there—more so when I got hired—were queer or artists or actors or musicians. So I think having that job was when I first actually found my Toronto friend group, which was really great. As school

was finishing up, I was realizing how practical it would be to stay in that job. When you’re serving and earning tips, you can work part time and kind of live off of that. So for the last four or five years, that’s kind of what I’ve been doing. I work there like three days a week. I don’t live super well off, but it gives me the time to do comics and to not worry about them paying the bills. I take freelance work on every now and then. When it’s fun, it’s really great. But when it’s for an advertising client that’s not interesting, or when I’m not into the project, it feels way worse than working at the restaurant. At least at the restaurant it’s more compartmentalized, and when I’m done, I’m done.

Where as for this, I’m doing work and doing what I love doing, but in the service of something I don’t agree with or I don’t find that stimulating. I’m interested in taking more freelance work, and I want to be picky about it, but I know that that’s not a luxury many people can have.

Yeah I feel like people leave school with this expectation that the best or most fulfilling work they’re going to make is work for clients, and that’s rarely ever the case. Sometimes it’s better to work in a way that provides you the time and space to make your most interesting work.

No totally! You have so many constraints in those situations. Especially at an ad agency, the work isn’t even your concepts sometimes. It becomes the collective idea from everyone putting in their two cents and being like, “Well, actually…” I did storyboards for an ad company once and it was the worst. The money was so good but I was like, “I can’t ever do this again. This is so horrible.” I would recommend for anyone starting out—if you can find a restaurant to work at that isn’t horrible, It’s kind of the best. It’s such different work than comics or illustration, because you’re on your feet and talking and running around a bit.

Then when you’re done with that, you can come home and nurture the other half of your brain.

When did you start becoming more aware of the comics community happening in Toronto specifically, and when did you start meeting other contemporaries?

Did that affect your attitude about what you were doing or what you were a part of?

Oh definitely. I think the biggest influence it had immediately was just seeing the way people were going about self publishing? I think I started going to Zine Dream as a fan around the time I was going to TCAF as well.When I was working on my first auto-bio comic, I remember getting a blast email from Jesjit (Gill) being like, “Hey, I’m starting a new business. If any of you are interested in self publishing in low print runs, let me know.” It was kind of this really surreal timing because I just started thinking about, Oh, how am I going to start printing this. So that was really awesome, and I’ve been working with him a bunch with self published projects since then. So I think seeing the way people went about self publishing was

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really inspiring. Also getting to know people better was demystifying of the whole comic making experience a bit. When you’re in school hearing about other cartoonists when you don’t know about that world, you’re just like “Oh, they’re such hot shit! I could never do that!” But then when you get to know them, you realize, even if some of them have bigger names, they’re all working various jobs and dealing with the same stresses as you are. I think there’s a lot of solidarity to be had there and I was really happy to see that side of it a bit more.

It was so funny when I was doing the first Hungry Bottom Comics. I did it because I didn’t see anything else like it and I wanted to put it out there. Then I remember, when I did the launch for it at Glad Day Bookshop, Maurice Vellekoop showed up. He was someone who’s work I had heard of a little bit through Fiona, but he asked me a question like, “Who’s work were you inspired by when you were making this?” and in a bratty way I was like, “Um, nobody’s!“ But then I saw his work more and kind of realized that there’s a huge context and history of queer cartoonists in Toronto and all over the place. So, even if I wasn’t directly influenced by it in the first place, knowing that it was in the air and around was really inspiring. He’s actually become a really great friend over the years, and I’d count him as the closest friend I have in the Toronto comics scene. He’s a really amazing guy, and as someone who is a bit older too, I think he has a lot of great wisdom to impart. But also, he has a lot to learn from me as well, being that I’m from a different generation. So that’s really awesome.

I feel like Toronto is really unique in that, there’s a whole lineage of great artists who are from here or made work here, but it’s still just small enough that you can easily meet those people or you can feel like you’re a part of the community more quickly.

Yeah, that’s totally true! Although I do still have a bit of that imposter syndrome. But you’ll be walking around at the grocery store and you’ll be like, “Oh, there’s Chester Brown down the aisle buying eggs!” or something, haha.

It’s pretty funny.

Your comics have this really incredible range of themes and influences, from Jack Kirby’s art style to drag culture. Your work is often the result of mixing so many disparate parts and then still making something that feels personal. What are some of the different elements you try to infuse into your work?

Well… it’s just the life I’ve lived man, haha. No, but it really comes out of growing up with the most superhero-y of superhero comics, and then going to Toronto and being really inspired by seeing drag queens and getting to know them better. Queer art is really inspiring. I remember in my early years living here and being out and wanting to learn my history a bit. Seeing this whole lineage of queer

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artists—especially in the 70s and 80s–who were doing amazing shit, like Leigh Bowery or Klaus Nomi. Specific to Toronto, there was a really cool queer art scene that I feel like I’m just as much a part of as the comic scene. It’s a lot of people who are inspired by those same things, but doing a mutated local version of it.

There’s this really great multi-media artist who tragically passed away really young a few years ago named Will Munro. He did silkscreening and he worked with Michael Comeau a lot. He also threw parties and was a great DJ. He started doing queer nights outside of the village and kind of created this whole scene out of nothing. He really inspired all of his peers to make their best work and get galvanized to do as much as they could. So there was this window of a few years where there was just a ton happening creatively in the queer scene. Then, of course, it kind of came to a halt for a bit when he passed away in 2010, and that was exactly when I was starting to get interested in all of that stuff. So it was a very surreal moment. I was bummed about it because it was this amazing scene that I felt like I had just just missed out on. But as the years have gone by, it has been able to rebuild, and his spirit really kind of lingers on in the scene. A lot of the friends I have now are people who were really close to him. Right after he died there was a big push to make it into history and to write about it a lot. I think that was really important, but also made it feel too stowed away or calcified. I think in people’s grieving about that scene, they had this sentiment, Oh, this scene was amazing, and now nothing great will happen here again. So I’ve been really happy to see people grow out of that a little bit. So that’s made a really huge impact on me.

Thinking about drag—I feel like there are so many parallels between drag and comics. Both art forms are super marginalized and thought of as low brow. But I think that puts both art forms in this positions where they’re like the court jester archetype in society. They’re both so outside of society that they can actually comment on it in a really transgressive way. I think they’re two of the last true punky art forms that we’ve got. When a queen is painting their face or exaggerating their eyebrows or something—that’s totally like a comic character. It’s so fun. I’m obsessed with it. In the second Hungry Bottom I drew this sequence encouraging my friend to get into drag. He always had the personality for it and was even doing special affects makeup. I kind of gave him a gentle nudge, and then like two weeks later he just blew up. Now he’s one of the biggest queens in the city, and goes by Allysin Chaynes. So we always kind of bond over that. In the beginning I was going out more and sort of encouraging him to do that, while he was just silkscreening alone in his apartment, and now he’s doing it full time working five days a week.

Every time I do a comic launch, I have him do a performance. I think for every single one, he’s been there.

I remember when I was first getting to know Annie (Koyama) and she just saw that in my work and recommended that I get in touch with Sasha Steinberg who was doing kind of similar work in New York. And in the years that I’ve known Sasha, he’s gotten into drag a lot more seriously and then ended up getting onto RuPaul’s Drag Race and winning! So I think that was a really cool moment for everyone in the comics scene and seeing how different scenes can overlap. Stuff like that makes me so excited.

Is there anything else that’s inspirational for your work that’s maybe more difficult to pick out?

Well I think music has always been an influence too. I didn’t realize it, but I was recently going through some Mark Bell stuff, and he use to do these music video comics where he would take song lyrics and do kind of a trippy sequence to them. I think I absorbed that at a young age and it’s something I’ve incorporated a lot in my work.

I remember when I was at OCAD I was always scared of color, because I had done black and white stuff all through out high school, so at first my colors were very muted, because that was always kind of safe. I’d do a light green and beige or something. Then, maybe indirectly through the kind of kitsch, garishness of drag, I was inspired to think, “Oh, color can be anything. Why not go for it?” I got the chance to do a comic in full color for the first time with Babybel Wax Bodysuit. I really just kind of went overboard with it. Every page I wanted to challenge myself and use a color that I would never use before. I think I always played it safe doing complimentary colors or whatever, so I wanted to go for really clash-y ones also.

I think that that lends back into music as well. I find record covers really inspiring. The most eye popping ones are sometimes the ones that are the most wrong or fucked.

The cover for The Knife album Shaking the Habitual— when you see it in person, the color combo is so wrong it makes your eyes hurt a little bit. It kind of vibrates in a way. The record even has a pull out comic inside too.

I remember you made those two costumes for the characters in your most recent book when you did the launch for it. When did you start incorporating costuming into in your work and book releases?

I think it kind of crept in early on. When I was doing the auto-bio comics, I was like 19 or 20 and going through this phase of going to vintage stores and buying really kooky stuff. So I thought it would be really fun to draw those specific outfits in there. Then I thought about bringing it full circle when I launched the first one. I wore the same outfit as I drew on the poster for it. I thought it was a funny play on the idea of being the character in the comic.

When I started drawing more fantastical stuff, like for the Koyama comic, and for the Babybel comic, I thought it would be funny to try and be the character from those as well. I guess it goes back to the fact that, even though those comics are “fictional,” they’re still auto-biographical

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in their sentiment, so it’s kind of like putting myself into it, in a way—especially for the launches. For the Babybel comic launch I bought a red morph suit and made myself into a Babybel cheese. I think that, plus having drag performances is always a fun way to shake up a comic launch, which isn’t always the most lively kind of thing. It’s also another way of bringing together different scenes.

For the Koyama comic, since these fantastical characters are living in Toronto, I though it would be fun to make costumes for them and photograph them in the city, just to be like “It’s fictional, but it’s also super real.” which goes with the themes in the book. I had seen the sculptural work of Phil Woollam around town for years and always admired it. I kind of went out on a limb and sent him an email being like “Yo, do you think you could make a costume of the braid character?” So Annie helped finance it and I got to be there for a lot of the process of him making it. It was so cool and gratifying to see it come to life. I spray painted it gold after in the park across the street from my house.

It’s nice to have them around. I’d love to bust those out sometime again.

Who are some other peers or contemporaries who you feel like you’ve sort of come up with around the same time? What other artists have been really motivating for you?

It’s kind of an even split between people here and people online. The way we’re scattered out in Toronto, I feel like I interact with local peers as much as peers in New York or whatever. I was in school at the same time as Sab Meynert. We had the same thesis class and I feel like we really started doing our thing at the same time. I remember in second year we instantly recognized each other as having our own thing outside of school. They’re traveling a lot now and are kind of doing their thing, so we don’t really get to see each other super often, but even through we’re not really close now, I really admire them and love seeing what they’re up to. Having shared those years together was really great. Also, I think Michael Comeau is one of the folks I see most often now. He has a very similar sphere of influences as I do. He’s really into queer culture, but also super heroes, as well as nightlife stuff. So we’ll get together and gab about weird shit for hours. He was one of the first artist’s who’s work I really saw around town, so getting to know him and call him a friend was kind of an honor and really sweet. The online scene is just as nurturing and amazing. Kevin Czap has been doing amazing stuff with bringing people together and doing the Ley Lines series that I got to be a part of.

One of the best comics experience I’ve had ever was doing the queers in comics conference in San Francisco this spring. There’s a lot of people’s work who I kind of knew online, and I don’t know, it made me feel like I was with my people or whatever, you know? It was people making queer comics of multiple generations which was cool.

Photograph by Greg Wong

Justin Hall put it all together. Rob Kirby was there, and he’s been doing comics since the 80s and 90s. He was one of the first people to review my stuff and broadcast it a bit. Mari Naomi and Jeremy Sorese were there. I didn’t actually get to see her, but Sophia Foster-Dimino was there as well. So there was a really broad range, and so many people that I had never heard of before, some of whom had a specific history with queer comics in the Bay Area, and then others who had just been living there for a few years or traveled. It’s so bitter sweet seeing people at things like that or at TCAF and you wish that you had them in the same city all of the time. But then I think at the same time, it makes me really value the time I do get with all of you. I would worry about getting too busy and taking everyone for granted if they all lived here.

How did you start developing your most recent book, Condo Heartbreak Disco? What did you feel like you needed to get out or communicate when you first started working on it?

I think it really came out of living in a city long enough to see it change. I’d been working at the same place for a

long time, kind of watching the clientele change slightly as the neighborhood got fancier. Also, being priced out of apartments and having that happen to friends—I feel like the last few years there has been this feeling throughout the city of things changing so quickly with developments.

Toronto is kind of unique in that way where, it doesn’t really have a sense of it’s own history like other big cities do. Here in specific developers are given carte blanche to do whatever, because there aren’t as many precious buildings that we want to preserve—like Honest Ed’s is getting dismantled as we speak. So I was having a lot of feelings about that, and I didn’t see a lot of people really engaging with it in a creative or critical way. Personally, I was also getting to a point where I was more in my mid20s and the kind of romanticism of being young and in a new city was kind of starting to wear off. I took these kind of fantastical spirit characters that had sort of popped up in my auto-bio comics. The braid character in particular is kind of this abstract Leigh-Bowery-esque spirit thing that gives guidance to people and stuff. I wanted to take those characters and plop into a really real but surreal kind of experience of facing an eviction and dealing with the changing city. It felt like a really nice way to kind of

“I think it really came out of living in a city long enough to see it change.”

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“I was having a lot of feelings about that, and I didn’t see a lot of people really engaging with it in a creative or critical way.”

tackle that and try to make sense of it.

At what point did Koyama Press approach you about putting out the book? What was it like working with Annie as an editor?

I originally thought about doing it as three floppy comics, like I had done with Hungry Bottom Comics. But when I was drawing the very first page, I took a photo of it and put it on instagram. Then 30 minutes later I got an email from Annie Koyama being like, “So, do you have time for coffee next week?” and I was like “Oh shit!” She invited me to pitch it to her, and I think the themes really resonated as someone who has been in the city for all of this as well. So I was really happy to end up putting it out with her. It’s kind of been a dream since I’ve lived here, to work with her.

It was a big step forward for me, and a big learning curve in a lot of ways. But Annie was great to work with. She’s really supportive. I’ve said this before at some point, but what I love about the books she puts out is that they’re very weird. She really encourages people to go for their own voice. She was super hands off in the editing pro-

cess. The only things she and Ed Kanerva would really step in about would just be grammatical stuff, or I’m sure if there was any content that was really bad or stupid they would be like, “Umm…” haha. It was cool. It was a lot of pressure though. It was this scenario I had always envisioned for myself, and then it was actually happening. I focused on it really intensely, and looking back on it now, the anxiety comes off in the work a little bit. I’m still really proud of it, but it’s hard to look at it now, haha. I can just feel the stress of having to do it.

It was an interesting process because I was quite early on in the idea when we agreed to do it, and their was this moving deadline. So, while I’m happy with how it turned out, I’d be really interested in the future to try and work without a deadline or just be able to develop things at a more of a leisurely pace. Of course, there are the sides of publishing that are a little scarier with distributors and marketing, but I think they’re really nice about shielding their artists from that. They really try to take the anxiety off of you on that end. Your job is just to do the work and promote it to some extent. But they took a lot on, which is great. I had such a good time working with them. At the time, we agreed to have it out two years from when

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we made the deal. But at the time I was like, “Ahh, 2017.

That’s like science fiction time. That’s never going to come around.” But time has a way of going by really fast. It’s so weird to have it as a project that’s wrapped up now. It was the main part of my life for such a long time.

What was it like to finally put it out?

Well it was a really different experience from anything I had done. With the auto-bio stuff, there’s a sense of control with it because it’s like an extension of yourself and you’re writing your own thoughts. But with something fictional, there’s definitely more room for interpretation. On top of that, since it was put out with a publisher that was reaching a much larger audience, releasing it was a lot of fun. I pushed to do launches in a couple cities, which was a new thing. I got to do festivals in Stockholm, Chicago, and in Brooklyn, which was new for me as well. For the years before that, I had just been doing TCAF pretty much. While that was huge in itself, because it’s one of the biggest festivals of it’s kind, after a certain amount of time I did feel like I was selling to the same people, or I had plateaued with the crowd that was coming to see my work. So it was fun stepping forward and reaching a whole bunch of new people.

It’s always a little nerve racking as well, I guess. I feel like the comics I do are kind of their own language, and not necessarily the trendiest. Especially with Condo Heartbreak Disco, I made the pages very dense because I feel like that kind of conveyed the intensity and atmosphere of the big city. My partner and I jokingly call it reverse vertigo where you’re looking up at a big building and feeling kind of overwhelmed by it. So that was kind of the spirit that went into it, and that’s kind of the way I’ve always worked. I think it’s weird to do something that’s short and dense and to have worked on it for like a year, but then have people read it in like forty minutes, and maybe read it with the same pace in mind as they would for a comic where you’re just kind of breezing through panels in an almost film like way. That’s really linear, where as with my stuff, I love doing pages that force you to dwell on it a bit and explore the crevices and details you might be missing. So much work goes into it either way, so I like the idea of compelling the reader to slow down a bit with it.

I think it’s also part of my personal ideology. There’s so much being put out into the world that must be consumed so quickly, that I love seeing stuff that requires a bit more reading time. But I wish I put some kind of disclaimer at the start of the book being like, “Take your time with this.”

I think the other thing that is true of comic making always is that you won’t always get a ton of feedback, because reading it is such a personal, solitary thing. A lot of the time people will read it and be like “Oh, that was good.” then they’ll put it on their shelf and that’ll be the end of it.

It’s not like if you’re a performer or a musician or a drag queen even, and you’re performing for a crowd and get-

ting that perception right away. It’s never as gratifying as you wish it was in some ways. There’s a lot of anxiety around doing published stuff for the first time. There’s certain ideas of, “Oh, well automatically, it’s going to be a big thing.” But sometimes it’s not right away, or sometimes it is, but it doesn’t play out the way you thought it would. It’s been interesting. I’ve learned a lot I think.

Do you feel like the comics communities you’ve operated in have always been accepting of queer voices?

Have you seen a shift in the audiences and authors that are coming to comics?

It’s changed so much, even in just five or six years. I think it’s gotten a lot more queer and a lot more young. I’ve never been to SPX, but I hear that that’s the best for that. I feel like everyone is queer there at this point, haha. When I started doing TCAF in 2011, even then they were pushing to make it very queer friendly. I think every year it would be a little more diverse. I’ve had a lot of instances of people looking at the cover of my stuff and thinking that it’s not for them because it’s queer, when actually, I think the stuff it has to say is pretty universal. There’s still a little bit of tension, I think. I don’t know… I saw this article recently that was saying like “50 percent of people are still secretly homophobic.” and I was just like, “Well, to be fair, how do you even assess that if people are secret about it?” I don’t know how they got that statistic. But I do feel it sometimes though. I think gay comics do get pigeon holed too much sometimes. I once noticed in a comic shop that my autobio stuff was put into the gay erotica section, when it’s not that at all, haha. But I think in the last couple years, the pendulum has swung in a good way. I almost wish I was starting now or something. I feel like it would reach such a bigger audience or something.

That’s an interesting point you mentioned about people not buying your books because they assume it’s not for them. Part of he hardship of coming from a marginalized or “niche” group and making work about that is just simply not being able sell to as many people because they assume they won’t identify with any of it.

There can be a pressure to make things as universal as possible, and I don’t agree with that. I love things that are not universal. Sometimes I even love stuff that I couldn’t relate to at all. I think there is a real importance in that. Being able to step into someone else’s brain who might think differently from you, and trying to understand it, even if you end up disagreeing with it, is important. There’s this cultural theorist, Camille Paglia, who is super smart and well spoken, but has a lot of fucked up views. I sometimes read her essays, preparing myself mentally to spar with it or something. I feel like that’s so important, and something no one does anymore. She might have certain chauvinist views, but she really cares about making an argument and phrasing herself well, so I love seeing that

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and reading it and getting mad at it. If I disagree with this, then why? I hope people don’t lose that. Right now I think we’re drifting too much into our little corners.

What ways do you think your personal philosophies or politics filter into your work? How do you try to make them more or less evident in the work?

Yeah I mean, I can’t help but make work that ends up being political in some way. Since I became aware of stuff that happens in the world, it’s just kind of all I can think about. I think part of that came from growing up in Ottawa where it’s such a government town. I’d over hear my parents talking about world politics, and that would be kind of the hot gossip in town. It would be like, “Oh, the government did what?” haha. So it was always kind of around me.

Having faced discrimination myself and having friends who have had it off so much worse, it feels really important. I think comics are such a potent medium for expressing stuff like that. I’ve always been inspired by seeing how they’ve been good for that, just over time. Seeing political cartoons coming out in the early 20th century that were so scathing and spot on and could be about right now as well. As someone who has the privilege of having the time to make comics and the relative comfort to devote time to comics—I don’t know, I feel a pressure to make them feel like they matter to me and to other people. Even when I try doing stories that are kind of silly, they end up taking on a bit of a undertone or something, haha.

What are you working on at the moment that you can talk about?

I’m starting to do a monthly webcomic for my friend’s blog.

It’s a really weird, funny thing. He has run this kind of celebrity gossip and meme blog since the early 2000s. He’s been earning a bit more from it, just through advertising algorithm stuff. He’s been saying how he has wanted to invest in original content, so he’s kind of letting me make a comic every month about whatever I want, and he’ll put it on the site and pay a little bit for it. So I’m finishing up the first one right now, and I’m kind of brainstorming what I’m going to do for each one coming up. I think they’re going to be slightly political or cultural, but with humor as the main thing. I feel like I want them to be funny, but scathing and stuff. Then eventually I’d like to collect them into a book. Maybe something perfect bound. There’s maybe a publishing deal with that with a smaller publisher, which would be really great.

Then, more long term—I don’t want to talk about it too too much because I’m still so in the beginning stage, but when I was in San Francisco for the comic conference I got to see The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence do their annual easter pageant in golden gate park. They’re this charitable organization of drag nuns who have been active since the late 70s or early 80s who are now world wide. They’re always fundraising for people living with

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HIV or other causes. It was a really inspiring day seeing the festival, and I want to do a long graphic novel about that day and about them. So I’m hoping to go down there and interview them actually. Taking it all the way back to Joe Sacco, I kind of want it to be like my comics journalism venture, but with all of the drag and metaphysical stuff in the mix as well. So I can’t wait to get started on that. I think that’s something where I want to take a lot of time on it and make it really long and see where it goes.

I feel like it’s a way to bring together everything I’ve done so far, in a way.

Are there any projects that you’d like to embark on that you don’t have the time or money for at the moment?

Yeah, totally. I’d love to be making so many more comics than I have time for. I’ve always wanted to try and edit a group comic or something. But I don’t know if I have the wrangling power in me. As someone who has been on the other end contributing to anthologies, I have so much respect and empathy for editors who have to be like, “Okay… I needed this like three weeks ago.” But I would love to do that because I think we need more of those. I love all of the stuff that came out in the 90s, like when Drawn & Quarterly use to just put out a monthly anthology. That was amazing, and it would be great to see something like that. I’d love to see a return to the kind of small press idealism that I saw when I first moved here.

So I’m going to get super rich somehow and finance it all.

What hurdles do you still see ahead of you as an artist? What things do you feel like you’re still trying to overcome or get better at in your creative practice?

Personally, with the way I work, I still find that it just takes a long time. I work almost completely traditionally and do a lot of detailed line work. So I’ve always kind of had an inner struggle about wanting to speed things up and work in a more streamlined way, but also not lose the detail that I have a lot of fun doing and that I think the people reading enjoy as well. I wouldn’t want them to think that I’m getting lazy or something. I’d love an excuse to do something completely different stylistically. Then, more broadly, economically it’s always hard doing work because it’s an industry that no one is really making money from. It’s hard to feel like you’re really growing something when you’re kind of always back at square one financially.

It’s not easy or comfortable, and I wish it was a little more so. I would love for magazines to take more exciting risks on freelance opportunities and to get more creative. I feel like a lot of them really—if they haven’t disappeared all together—they’ve become so much more conservative and careful about what they commit to. It seems like a lot to ask in these trying times, but I still want it. It could be so cool.

STUMBLE ON TAPES

by M AT T HE W J A ME S -WI L S O N

Los Angeles based filmmakers Roxy Campos and Melissa Ramirez have spent the past five years capturing a subset

of LA’s sprawling music scene though its development. After meeting in film school and bonding over music video directors and their local DIY scene, Roxy and Melissa began Stumble on Tapes as a way to hone their skills as directors and camera operators, while documenting young performers during the infancy of their careers. In the summer of 2013 Roxy and Melissa launched their youtube channel and started shooting guerrilla-style outdoor live sessions with local favorites like Girlpool, Franky Flowers, and Bobby T. and the Slackers. Despite their humble intentions at the start, Stumble on Tapes has become a dedicated labor of love for both women, and the two have consistently shot performances, music videos, and interviews, providing a platform for under exposed artists from in and outside of LA.

I first discovered Roxy and Melissa’s work the same way I imagine many of their fans did. Years ago as a naive high

schooler, browsing youtube for new music, I came across a live session they shot with Surf Curse on the porch of the Big Joy Records house in Echo Park. In the years since then, their video series has been responsible for introducing me to so many incredible acts from Southern California, and their approach to what they do has been hugely influential on the magazine as well. I’ve wanted to interview Roxy and Melissa for a long time and finally got my opportunity to sit down with the two this winter.

Together we discussed how the project has evolved over the past few years and what’s still on their horizon today.

Where are you from and where do you live currently?

Roxy Campos: I’m from the San Fernando Valley and I now live in Echo Park, Los Angeles.

Melissa Ramirez: I was born and raised in LA and I still live here.

What was your experience like growing up where you did?

Roxy: I grew up in the valley, so my experience there was very suburban and very quiet. But also there were a lot of good homies, and a lot of good parties, haha. But yeah know, it still feels like home.

Melissa: I grew up in Montclair which is next to Pomona.

I always loved music videos and as soon as I was 14, my friends wanted to go to shows with me. Thats all we would do. We would be on 2nd Street all day every day, just trying to hang out with friends and meet people. The Glass House was all ages, so we could go to shows there every other day. Luckily our moms were cool enough to drop us off and pick us up, which was really nice.

Roxy: I did not have that experience at all! My parents didn’t let me go to shows or parties until I was like maybe 17. I’d go over to friends houses, so that was a thing. But I’d never really go to concerts. I can’t even remember my first concert… I feel like my first concert ever was probably DIY show.

Yeah when did you guys both start going to DIY shows? What was your entry into that world? Did you have a friend or a musician who introduced you to it?

Melissa: I really loved my high school because we had a stage area in the quad and they’d let bands play there every Friday. It was just all of my friends, so they’d play shows at school and then they’d be like “Oh, we’re going to play at this party tomorrow! You should come!” and I would just go to hang out with everybody. I just felt like I grew up in Rock ’n’ Roll High School, haha. I know that’s cheesy, but everyone played music so I always had access to that, which was really cool. So I started going to DIY shows through the bands I met in school. My friends just had shitty punk bands and I’d go and hang out with them.

Roxy: I think it was in high school. I became friends with the emo kids, and they all played instruments and were in bands, so I just became their groupie just because I thought they were so cool. I just wanted to be a part of there scene so I went to a lot of their shows. A lot of the shows were at school or at houses. Then I started to meet other bands. Then they started playing shows at The Cobalt in Canoga Park.

Melissa: God, that’s so far away…

Roxy: It’s so far!

Melissa: That’s like an hour away from here.

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Roxy: we just started working on each other’s movies and projects or whatever we were working on. Melissa would always be helping me and vice-versa.

Roxy: It’s not quite an hour away.

Melissa: Oh, well you were in the Valley I guess.

Roxy: It’s like 45 minutes with no traffic.

Melissa: That’s the deepest you can get in the Valley.

Roxy: The venue doesn’t even exist anymore. But yeah, that was where we’d go to shows. It wasn’t really meant for bands to play there–I’m not really even sure what it was meant for, haha. But there definitely wasn’t a real stage and it was bad sound-wise.

Do you feel like living in and outside of Los Angeles had an affect on your perception of what you wanted to do when you were older? Did the entertainment industry here make it seem like that was something you could easily pursue?

Roxy: Oh yeah, for sure. I mean, Hollywood is like down the street essentially. That glamour and that Hollywood lifestyle definitely had an influence. But I didn’t know what exactly I wanted to do, I just knew I wanted to be a part of it. I think living here in LA has definitely influenced

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that creativeness more so than if I had grown up in a smaller town—I would think.

Melissa: I’m the opposite, I don’t think it influenced me at all, haha. I just loved music videos and in high school I joined the after school program that had a camera and an edit bay. I would just borrow that shit and shoot my friend’s shitty videos. They were so bad. But I didn’t even think about movies in that way, I was just always into the idea of making music videos.

When did each of you start making your own videos?

Roxy: For me it was definitely in High School. I think in eighth, ninth, or tenth grade I joined the drama team. I think, because everyone is so creative in those classes, that just sort of led to making short films there. Our assignments including shooting short little skits and improv. That’s also where I realized acting was not for me, haha. But I still loved the process of making all of that stuff, from set design to props to costumes to even editing. Just getting my feet wet for the first time in that way was very exciting. So high school was definitely where I found that I wanted to do all of those things. Before that I knew I wanted to be involved in the movies, but I didn’t know what role.

Melissa: I made music videos in high school in video production class. I had a guitar class, and I remember somehow my guitar teacher saw one of my videos and he loved it. even though it was terrible! I mean, the tripod was in the shot and stuff like that, haha. He showed it to the class and I almost dies because it was so terrifying.

But then he submitted that video to CalArts and it got me into CalArts and all of these other schools. I was just like “What!? People are so supportive. I could actually do this thing that I love doing in my free time.” People supporting me just sort of spiraled into me going to art school.

You two both met in art school, right? How did you first meet each other and when did you start working together?

Roxy: Yeah we met in college at The Art Institute. I think we met maybe…

Melissa: Our third year? It was like later in college.

Roxy: Yeah, she was a little bit ahead of me in classes because it was by quarters. But we still had common classes together. I think we gravitated towards each other and bonded over Tegan and Sara.

Melissa: Yeah that was like our favorite band, haha. Then our best friend Alex was my best friend in all of my classes and her best friend from the Valley. He played music, so we somehow all ended up going to the same parties.

We were just like, “Wait, we all love the same things! We should do something together.”

Roxy: Then we just started working on each other’s movies and projects or whatever we were working on. Melissa would always be helping me and vice-versa. Our friendship grew over that. As for music, we had very similar taste. It’s a little scary sometimes, haha. So that love for music sort of bonded us even more. It just sort of made sense. It’s just so easy to work with Melissa.

Melissa: Yeah I think one year I was like, “Let’s just get all of our tax money and buy a camera. We can just use the thousand dollars that we’ll each get and buy a Canon 5D. We need to just own it.”

Roxy: That’s what I love about working with Melissa.

We’re both so similar in that sense where, when it comes to things that we want to work on she’ll be like “Do you want to spend a thousand dollars?..” and I’ll just be like, “Yeah I want to spend a thousand dollars with you! Let’s do this! Lets go half and half or try to figure out how to

Melissa: People supporting me just sort of spiraled into me going to art school.

make it work!” haha. I think that shared passion is also another reason why it’s so easy and why we’re still working together.

What was your experience like at that school? What was the rest of the student body like?

Melissa: I loved the school because I loved the people and the access to equipment, but they were really just pushing us to do only narrative storytelling. I just really wanted to shoot music videos, so I felt like nothing I made in college I actually liked, after spending all of this money and time. So when I got out of college I was like, “Fuck narratives! All I want to do is make music videos!

I haven’t done one in four years!” So that’s kind of I think how this project snowballed too.

Roxy: Yeah, I wasn’t as clear as Melissa was about music videos. I’ve always been into narratives, and short films have always been what I wanted to do.

Melissa: Her shorts are really good though. I feel like she has a knack for them. I just don’t like writing.

Roxy: But music videos are so much fun because you

can do it more quickly and it’s a three day shoot, compared to a month long shoot. There’s a lot less commitment and you can still produce a cool thing at the end of it. But yeah, I just wasn’t as clear cut as Mellisa was, and I really wanted to direct movies.

When did your project Stumble On Tapes begin?

Roxy: So we started it in a summer like five years ago in 2012. I think all of our friends were in bands and we had access to a bunch of content that we could make.

We had just bought this camera too. We were really influenced by those La Blogothèque “Take Away Shows” and figured that that was the best route to take to practice our filming skills and to become more comfortable behind the camera. We were just like, “Well we have bands, and we have this camera. Why don’t we do something similar to these Take Away Shows and record acoustic versions of these songs by bands we love.” We could do one take so that we didn’t have to think about it for too long. It’ll be natural and organic and it’ll be fun.

Melissa: I think there was one day where our best friend Marine gave us a zoom recorder, and we were like “Oh shit! We can do this now!” and that same night we were

Roxy: We were really influenced by those La Blogothèque “Take Away Shows” and figured that that was the best route to take to practice our filming skills and to become more comfortable behind the camera.

hanging out with our friends in a backyard and asked them to play something for us. Then that ended up being our first episode, and we put it online. We thought, This looks great! even though it looked terrible. But we realized it could actually work.

of right now. I think cassette tapes were also starting to come back around, so we thought about putting that in.

Roxy: Yeah, we were just like “We just need to practice and get our arms a little stronger.” We didn’t have a steady-cam or anything, so we were like “We can totally just hold it and be as steady as possible and make minimal movements.” For us it was just a reason to keep shooting. And it definitely helps to pay attention to your mistakes so that you know where you went wrong and you learn. That’s helpful with anything you do I guess, right?

Roxy: Yeah, so that’s how the name came. We wanted other people to stumble on us and other music that we love, in the hopes that we would expose them to something cool.

Melissa: Yeah I think you were like, “I can picture the logo! It’ll be a cassette tape with a face.”

Did you have a specific goal with the project when you first started it? Has that changed at all over time?

Melissa: I wanted to have “stumble” in it because I wanted people to go and watch a video and then stumble onto other bands we loved, so that way everyone kind of won.

Then Roxy was like “That sounds too simple. What about Stumble On Tapes because you’re stumbling on music.”

Melissa: I think our goal was just to gain more access to other bands who we could eventually also shoot. The goal was “Let’s shoot this really simple video for no money in daylight so that we don’t need equipment, and it’ll take an hour instead of a whole day so people can do it on their lunch break rather than having to take a day off of work.

Then eventually, if we do good work, they’ll want to do a music video with us for some sort of budget later on.”

Roxy: I mean, it wasn’t like those were our only options.

We went through so many names that I can’t even think

Roxy: Yeah, I think the goal was to eventually become confident enough in our skill set to be able to make music

Where did the name “Stumble On Tapes” come from?

Melissa: I wanted to have “stumble” in it because I wanted people to go and watch a video and then stumble onto other bands we loved, so that way everyone kind of won.

videos rather than these live sessions. That was the idea.

Then having access to bands meant we could ask them if we could make their videos. But we didn’t realize that we would enjoy making the live videos so much. I don’t think we had the intention of it lasting this long, I guess.

I thought we were just going to practice until it got good and then move on from it, but it’s nice to have this constant thing that we get to do every now and then.

How did you start approaching bands, and who were some of the first people you filmed for the series?

Melissa: We just went to a lot of shows, and we would just ask bands we liked. Sometimes we’d be really nervous and we’d just email them the next day, because we were too shy to talk to them about the show. But it always ended up working out.

Roxy: We definitely got some rejections where the band wasn’t into it or we didn’t have enough stuff to support particular bands.

Melissa: Or sometimes bands don’t like playing acoustic.

They’ll respond like “Ah, we love you guys and we love these videos, but we don’t want to sound like an acoustic band, because that’s not what we do.”

Roxy: Or sometimes people ask “Can we at least have one amp?” I remember there was this one band that we actually ended up saying, “Alright, fine you can plug in.” to, and then it ended up not working out. So we realized we should just stick to our rule about making it acoustic.

It’s so much fun when it’s done that way! Who was it that took out the huge upright bass?

Melissa: I think that was Franky Flowers.

Roxy: Yes! We were so taken aback that they were so open and that they went out of their way to make sure everything was acoustic. They brought out the upright bass and we were like, “This is what we want all bands to do!”

Melissa: They all went out to find the correct instruments to portray their sound. That’s what we’ve always been into. We’ve always been like “You can play drums on a skateboard or pots and pans! It doesn’t matter to us. Just do something creative.” We want people to have fun with that. But it’s hard to get people to go that far.

Roxy: Yeah… Just seeing that vision through. Some of my favorite songs are the alternative or acoustic versions of songs. When you watch a live band you’re like, “Wow! That song sounds so much nicer slowed down in that way than it does on the album.” And not in a bad way—just in a different way. It’s refreshing.

Melissa: We’re music fans so, of course we own your album. But when you find that rare b-side or a different version, you’re just like, “Oh shit! That’s awesome!” So that’s

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kind of what we were trying to do.

Where were you going to shows or what was going on in the scene at the time? What felt exciting about the bands you were watching and then working with?

Melissa: We were going to Pehrspace a lot. That was the number one place because all of our friends could get shows there pretty easily and we could work the door and get in for free. It was really easy and Pauline (Lay) was the best!

Roxy: The amount of bands that are here in LA and the scene that we’re in—there’s a lot of cool music out there, so I think the fact that we were meeting people that had other friends that also had similar taste in music and played in similar bands and what not. It was exciting just to get introduced to new music. It was kind of like we were also stumbling on bands, and that was really fun. It still is! Even now, there are so many bands out there that it’s kind of hard to keep up with. But it’s always cool when someone introduces you to a band and you’re like “Wow, they’re really good!” and you can just work with them and make cool stuff together. Like with Nick (Rattigan). That’s a perfect example of that.

Melissa: That just snowballed.

Roxy: I feel like if it wasn’t for Stumble On Tapes, we wouldn’t have met Nick or had that excuse to talk to him.

Now it’s become such a special relationship with him. I love that guy. It’s nice to be constantly working with him and getting that trust with someone. His music is amazing.

Melissa: Yeah, he’s my favorite musician. It’s cool because he’s just my friend and I work with him, but I’m also like his biggest fan.

Something I noticed the first time I came to LA was just that the scene here is so much more diverse than the other ones I’ve been in. You have kids from different backgrounds playing the shows, running the shows, promoting the shows, and attending the shows. Do you feel like that has an impact on the way the scene operates or how you feel being a part of it?

Roxy: I don’t know because I’ve never known any different. I live here so it just feels normal to me.

Melissa: Yeah, I think it gives you a sense of comfort wherever you go, which is cool.

Roxy: It’s interesting that you say that, because I’ve always just assumed that New York would be very similar to LA, or just like any major city. So I’ve never really thought about it in that way. I mean, if anything I think it just keeps getting younger here. The younger kids are really stepping it up here. I don’t know if it’s just that we’re older now that we realize the age.

Melissa: I mean, when we were younger we were 16 and going to shows, and these kids are all 16 going to the shows. But now these are the kids that are like booking the shows and getting 300 people to the shows! I’m just like “What!? How are you doing that kid?” It’s amazing!

Roxy: The power of social media and the internet—I feel like we were at the beginning of all of that.

Melissa: But now, that’s their world.

Roxy: Yeah, the younger kids—that’s all they know how to work.

Melissa: Like Rene (Contreras) is promoting the band Cuco, and they’re amazing! Cuco is like 19 and I feel like he’s going to take over the wold because his music is so good. He’s just a teenager from Hawthorne. It’s insane! I also feel like so many people really encourage everyone else too. Even Faye (Orlove) opening up Junior High and encouraging teenage girls to make the music or videos they want or learn how to do sound or work with power tools. That’s a really empowering space!

Roxy: I wish I had that space growing up! I want to say I’m confident saying those spaces did not exist when I

was that age.

Melissa: Or at least, we didn’t know about them.

Roxy: Yeah, I feel like in the community or in our scene, everyone supports each other and shows up for each other. I think that’s special and amazing and something you want to nurture. It’s great, what it’s become.

Melissa: Every summer we volunteer at Girls Rock Camp.

We do two. For one we teach how to shoot music videos.

Then our friend runs Chicas Rockeras which is a South East LA version that we do a class for. It’s amazing to see seven year olds or eight year olds pick up a guitar and feel comfortable with it in a space. That’s the kind of confidence they’re going to take with them forever. Those are also the kids who are going to put on the shows when they’re 16, you know?

Roxy: To be in that and to support that in any way is nice.

What has been your process for finding the spaces and figuring out how to shoot the videos there?

Melissa: We would just sit down and make a list of all of

Roxy: Then I think for the Girlpool video we shot it at the Pink Motel.

The moment I saw that I thought, that’s where I’d want to shoot them.

Melissa: We would just sit down and make a list of all of the locations that were well lit and where we could have at least 30 minutes to an hour before security kicked us out, and then we’d propose those to the bands we wanted to shoot the locations that were well lit and where we could have at least 30 minutes to an hour before security kicked us out, and then we’d propose those to the bands we wanted to shoot. So we would just be like “Hey, we want to shoot at the LA River or at LACMA.” and then they would just pick usually.

Roxy: Or we’d be like “Where are you from? Is there a landmark in that city that maybe you want to showcase.” because we wanted it to be personalized to them and make them feel comfortable. So it was a mixture of both. It was a mixture of us having a wishlist of places where we’d like to shoot or that we thought were cool.

Melissa: Or even something that just worked. For the Surf Curse video we shot—Nick (Rattigan) and Jacob (Rubeck) were in town and they had like an hour left, so we were like “Well we just have to do it in Sean’s (Solomon) front lawn cause that’s all we have time for.”

Roxy: Then I think for the Girlpool video we shot it at the Pink Motel. The moment I saw that I thought, That’s where I’d want to shoot them.

Melissa: That’s still the only location we’ve ever paid money to have.

Roxy: But it was worth every penny.

Melissa: Yeah I think so too. We paid like a couple hundred dollars for an hour or something, haha. Cause they shoot big budget magazine shoots there.

Roxy: We got a deal though. We definitely should not have gotten that deal, but we did. I think it was like $200 for an hour in the pool. But it was great. We were like, “Man, we need higher budgets to do everyone.”

What other professional work have you done while you’ve been doing Stumble on Tapes? What kind of impact does that have on the videos you’re making for yourselves?

Melissa: For me, being a camera assistant on a features taught me a lot about camera work—like what equipment to use or what not to use. I don’t know, I don’t think our personal work is affected to much because it’s so different.

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Roxy: Who isn’t a big fan of She Shreds? Everything that they’re doing is amazing, so we were like, “What!? You guys want to do that with us?”

Roxy: Maybe the business side of it, a little bit? It’s probably helpped with figuring out ways to get our stuff out there that we didn’t know before. If anything they just give me the funds to do what I want to do, haha.

sick of it, so I just started working at Warner in their postproduction house. But now I work at Sony in their stills department. We actually have the same job at two different studios.

Melissa: Yeah we could steal hard drives and equipment for this project, or use their printers to make our zines, haha. Often it’s just tools that they don’t know are useful to us in other ways.

Roxy: It’s so boring. It’s definitely a desk job, so it’s a lot of managing calendars and phone calls and meetings for my boss. But you’re also the first one to look at unit images that come though, so it can be cool—and sometimes not cool—to see a whole movie in picture form. While I was working on Jumanji, I essentially saw the whole movie before it came out, but it was all in picture form. You see movies differently working in the photo department, I guess.

What are your jobs at the production companies you work at? What other stuff have you done for a living in the past?

Roxy: Well I was a server for eight or nine years or something, off and on. I also interned at a lot of production companies and did a lot of shorts working as the production designer or set decorator. Then I got the job I have now at Sony which was like my first real job where I felt like an adult for the first time because I got benefits and it’s a nine to five, haha. But before that it was freelancing wherever I could or whatever I felt like doing and had time for.

Melissa: Yeah, I just freelanced on films. After that I got

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Melissa: Yeah, you just do all kinds of random stuff that has to do with photography. Like today, I had to look up a bunch of old Back to the Future images for the Washington Post because they’re doing a feature on it, so I had to send them images for that. You know how Universal Studios does those horror nights or whatever? I had to give them images from all of our sets from all of our productions, so I had to look at stills from all of these horror movies that we’re currently shooting so that they can recreate them. That was fucking terrible, haha. Some of them

Melissa: Ask anyone you know with gear to let you borrow it. Then if you don’t know how to use it, tell them to teach you how to use it. People are happy to lend you stuff if you’re really excited about something. were so gruesome!

How did your video series with She Shreds Magazine come together?

Melissa: I think we asked them if they would promote or release one of our videos. I don’t remember which video, but we were like, “Hey, we made this video! Would you be interested in releasing it through your magazine?” Then they didn’t reply to us for months so we thought, Oh, they must hate us. We’re terrible, haha.

Roxy: We should quit!

Melissa: Haha yeah, Obviously we’re not doing this right!

Then three months later they replied and were like, “Hey guys! Sorry we got busy working on our thing. But we love your videos and we were wondering if you’d want to do a series with us. We could put your own Stumble on Tapes page on our website, and you guys can just release stuff through that.” So we were like, “Fuck yeah!”

Roxy: That was a huge surprise, and it was also super cool because—who isn’t a big fan of She Shreds? Ev-

erything that they’re doing is amazing, so we were like, “What!? You guys want to do that with us? Yes! I hope we don’t let you down.”

Melissa: They’re really sweet and amazing. I don’t know how they do it, but they just do it and they do it right! But we got to choose the artists we wanted to include in it, and for the people we didn’t know, they helped us. We gave them a wish list and were like, “Okay, we want Courtney Barnett…” and all of these other people we were obviously not going to get. But we just thought, You never know!

So then we just started filming all of the female bands coming through town.

What zine projects have you done? I noticed you two have tabled at some fairs in the past.

Melissa: The last three years we’ve been doing LA Zine Fest, and all we really do is we just make a photo zine of all of the bands we shot that year. With every episode we do, we also shoot portraits of the bands and we have these beautiful photos that don’t get used anywhere. So we thought, Oh, this would be a nice outlet for that.

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Roxy: Before Melissa would make these zines for her personal images, and it just sort of sparked the idea, “Why don’t we make zines of the videos we’ve been doing and maybe include some photos we didn’t use, like outtakes that would be cool for people to see.” So that all came from Melissa’s idea to make zines.

Melissa: I just like the idea of good photos sitting somewhere, and as a fan, I’m always looking for images of people I love, so I thought, Maybe people who love these bands would actually love this! For LA Zine Fest one year we made this cardboard box and painted it like a TV and put an iPad inside so that you could pick a video and put on headphones and watch it. People would just come to our table and watch all of our videos in front of us. It was really bizarre and fun, and it looked really cool because nobody else was doing that.

What do you see as some of the common hurdles for people who want to do DIY filmmaking? What do you think people often have trouble with when they start making their own videos?

Melissa: I think one of the things that really stopped us was being shy. We were too shy to ask bands we wanted to work with, and I think it took so long for use to finally get the courage to be like “Hey, would you like to do this thing with us?”

Roxy: “Come on, we’re worth it!” haha. Yeah, we always felt like we weren’t up to their level.

Melissa: It’s so silly! If you believe in someone, they’re stoked to work with you.

Roxy: Now looking back, there were so many missed opportunities because of that fear of being rejected by a favorite band of ours. So definitely that.

Melissa: I feel like 99 percent of the time, bands are like, “Hell yeah, let’s do this thing!”

Roxy: Always ask! There’s no harm in asking. Also, be authentic in asking. We were talking about it earlier, but sometimes people find weird ways of asking for things, rather than doing it in an honest way. I’ve always been like, “This email needs to sound professional! It can’t sound like my voice!” but that’s so false. It should sound like you when asking these people.

Melissa: And just shoot it. It doesn’t matter what it looks like, as long as you do it, because you’ll just get better from there.

Roxy: Yeah, you learn a lot from actually doing things.

What advice would you give about shooting practically when you don’t have a lot of resources at your disposal?

Melissa: Ask anyone you know with gear to let you borrow it. Then if you don’t know how to use it, tell them to teach you how to use it. People are happy to lend you stuff if you’re really excited about something. You never know. We have a camera, and 90 percent of the time, it’s just sitting under our bed and not being used. People are always happy to lend you stuff.

Roxy: I wouldn’t say 90 percent… haha.

Melissa: Haha, yeah. But I’m just saying, we don’t shoot everyday, so that camera is not being used. Also, ask for help! We know nothing about sound, but we know a lot of people in bands who like know a lot about sound. So we’re like, “Hey, can you mix this thing for us?” or “Can you teach us how to use Pro-Tools?”

Roxy: Yeah, it all goes back to asking. With filmmaking you usually need a whole team and it’s hard to do solo, so it’s all about asking for help.

Melissa: And if people see that you’re excited—we’ve had a lot of equipment given to us because people just believe in this thing that we’re making, and that’s awesome.

Roxy: That’s true, people have been very generous to us.

Melissa: We have a ton of lights and a ton of sound gear that people gave given to us because they were like, “You would use this. I know I wouldn’t use this, but I know you will.”

Roxy: Me and Melissa’s number one argument is over me shooting for the stars and suggesting things that there’s no way they will ever happen, and then Melissa bringing it back down by shooting all of my ideas down—but in a realistic way and for good reason. I just can’t help it, I shoot big and think big.

Melissa: She’s like on a five million dollar budget and I’m like on a $10 budget, you know, haha.

Roxy: Yeah, but I just can’t help it—that’s just the way my mind thinks. I think it would be cool, so let’s just try really hard to do it.

Melissa: We always try to pick a location that will give us a lot of production value, but will cost us nothing. So then, if we do have any money, we’ll use it on a good camera or a good lens. We don’t want to waste money on lighting or all of this other stuff. We want to use it for a good camera because I honestly believe a good lens is the most important part to me. So I’d rather spend $300 on a really nice

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Roxy: It definitely forces you to think a little bit more creatively or a little bit more out of the box when you have limited resources.

lens than pay $300 for a location. With a good lens, this apartment will look nice.

Roxy: Yeah, it definitely forces you to think a little bit more creatively or a little bit more out of the box when you have limited resources. Everything happens for a reason, and sometimes you’re given this location, these people, and this time, and it’s all about finding a way to make that work.

Melissa: Sometimes you don’t and you just have to go for it and hope for the best. Like, we shot Mitski at the lake and we wanted to shoot her on a boat, so we had to ask permission the minute she was there. It was super awkward and weird, but the kid who was there was like 19 and didn’t know what we were asking so he was like, “I guess it’s okay. My boss isn’t here, so do it until they tell you otherwise.” and we were like “Great! Great answer.” haha.

Roxy: It’s only me and Melissa most of the time, so one of us is holding the camera and the other person is doing literally everything else. Also being mindful of that and knowing that we have to set it up in a way where it’s just us two working on it behind the camera.

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What was the process like working on the visual album you made with Nick Rattigan for the new Current Joys record?

Melissa: It was cool. I think we shot the first video in my apartment one day before he left for tour. We just did it in one night. Then when he got back from tour he was like, “Oh, let’s go get tacos!” So while we were eating he was like, “I want to shoot three or four more videos before the album comes out. The album has to be done in a month, so I don’t know if we can do three or four by then.” Then we were just like, “Well what are the ideas?” and he told us and we were like “Those are all easy! Those will take us three hours each. That’s nothing.” But then we realized, “That’s just five videos and the album is only nine songs.

Why don’t we just do a visual album and do all of them.”

He was like “Do you think we’ll be able to do that?” and we were like, “Yeah, let’s just try to do two videos a day for like two weekends. Then we’ll be done. It’ll be so easy.”

Roxy: But honestly, it’s Nick’s brilliant mind. He came up with these simple ideas.

Melissa: Yeah, he thinks like us. They were all simple and done in one take.

Roxy: But in a very honest and beautiful way. Even though most of those videos, if not all of them, involve minimal movement of the camera or it’s just on a tripod, the whole video still plays out like that. It was cool working with Nick in that way because I always like working in that way. The simple, slice of life, raw moments are so beautiful, and his music matches that very nicely. So, with those ideas that he had, we just helped him make them come true. That was fun. Usually people want quick cuts and different movements, and I don’t think this would have worked if we had to do that because of our limitations with time. But because they were so simple in that manner, they were able to push them through.

Melissa: I was just thinking the other day–you know how we shoot those one take sessions? I feel like a lot of the music videos people have asked us to shoot are more like one shot clips, like the videos we did for Moaning, or the one that we did for Doug (James Sweeney) was kind of the same.

Roxy: We’re great at one take videos, haha.

Melissa: Haha, that’s what they think. It’s interesting.

Roxy: I’ll take it, haha. I don’t think that way at all, but it has been opening my eyes to that a little bit, like “Oh, I guess you can tell stories without moving the camera so many times and you don’t have to have tons of edits. It’ll still be cool.”

What to you hope to contribute to the music community that you’re a part of? What role do you think your project is filling?

Melissa: I think we just kind of want to record this era in time, you know? Even now, a lot of the bands we’ve shot– three fourths of them don’t exist anymore. But we have this tiny little documentation of this moment in time in Los Angeles. That’s really cool.

Roxy: That and I just want to recreate MTV, haha. I want music videos to come back. I just miss having that channel where you could see everyone’s music videos and you knew who was working on what. For me, that was so important growing up, and now that’s kind of lost because of youtube and having to search for everything. So my secret goal is to make an LA MTV channel, haha.

Melissa: We go to a lot of music video festivals thinking,

Melissa: we were like, “Yeah, let’s just try to do two videos a day for like two weekends. Then we’ll be done. It’ll be so easy.”

Maybe these are going to be our people! but they always play stuff that’s not our type of music, you know? We’re just like, “Uhhh… This is not good.” haha. We’re still just like “Where is it!?” We still just haven’t found our music community. We’ve found our music community, but not our video community I guess.

Roxy: I feel like, bands need content and we want to make that content.

What are you guys currently working on at the moment and what do you have on the horizon for next year?

Melissa: There are two bands that we’re trying to see if we’re going to make music videos for at the moment.

Someone we’ve done a session for that we really love, but they tour a lot. Then we’re trying to convince Nick to let us rent a movie theater and screen the Surf Curse Live at The Smell video, because it’s probably the most beautiful thing we’ve ever made. It’s amazing! I think we could easily get people in the seats, but I don’t know what their plan is. It just sounds so fun though, haha!

Roxy: I kind of want to make a short film. I don’t know yet.

I always have ideas or fantasies of making music videos, but for songs that already have videos, haha.

Melissa: Roxy wants me to shoot a music video with her dancing in it, hahaha.

Roxy: Yeah, I also kind of want to star in a video too. I feel like music videos are so magical. I want to make a music video referencing a bunch of other videos, but starring me in the video, haha. I’d love to one day maybe make a feature.

and sit in front of the computer for another five. I just have no desire.

Roxy: I personally hate it because it calls out all of my mistakes. You have a vision going in, and you shoot it, and you think it’s going to turn out a certain way. But then when you’re sitting and you’re editing it, you’re like, “Well, we’re going to have to cut that, because that didn’t work.”

I feel like that’s such a dream crusher for me and I’m so sensitive.

Melissa: Yeah, it’s demoralizing, haha.

Roxy: I can’t handle that. I’m just like, “Can someone else do their magic on this?” I can probably sit through the final cut and the tweaking stages of it. I just hate editing.

Is there anything that you feel like you still struggle with or want to improve on in your work?

Roxy: Where I would like to improve is upping our quality of work. Even if it’s color grading or getting better at lighting, I just want to improve our quality of work all around.

Melissa: It’s tough because it’s just the two of us doing everything, and we can only get so good at doing everything. Sometimes you have to choose one thing and then just get really good at that one thing. So I think it’s around the time where we start getting more crews, but it’s hard because we don’t want to depend on anyone else’s time, you know?

Roxy: It’s also hard because we can’t really offer them much in return. It’s one of those things where they have to be into the idea as much as we are. We’re very much committed and dedicated to this stuff.

Are there any projects you’d like to embark on, that you just don’t have the time or money for at the moment?

Melissa: For them it’s like, “We’re giving up our weekend…” whereas for us it’s like, “Fuck yeah! We’re giving up our weekend!” haha.

Roxy: For me a short film or a feature. I don’t know what needs to happen as far as funding, but that would be key.

Also I need a story, haha. But I think that’s a future goal of mine. I’d like to sit with an idea for a bit and flesh it out in a more practical way. But for now I want to continue practicing by doing music videos before I try making a huge narrative film.

Roxy: “We finally have something to do! Yes! Let’s do it!” haha. So it’s just kind of hard to find people.

Melissa: I just directed a little sci-fi short last fall, but I need to edit it, and I just haven’t. My nemesis is the computer and I haven’t sat down to do it, haha.

Roxy: Through this project we’ve also learned that we don’t like editing.

Melissa: At our day jobs, we’re in front of the computer for like nine hours, and the last thing I want to do is go home

142 APRIL•FATE

Melissa: We like being self sufficient, and that’s all it is.

Photography by Matthew James-Wilson

FUNHOUSE at The Drawing Center

FUNHOUSE at The Drawing Center

Mark Wang @ FUNHOUSE

G.W. Duncanson Thu Tran @ @@Paper FUNHOUSE Jam 5

Laura Perez-Harris @ FUNHOUSE

Monica Ramos @ FUNHOUSE

Sarah Lammer @ FUNHOUSE

Matthew Thurber & Lilli CarrĂŠ @ FUNHOUSE

Matthew Thurber & Jack Reese @ FUNHOUSE

Kelsey Wroten @ FUNHOUSE

Whit Taylor @ FUNHOUSE

Ben Passmore @ FUNHOUSE

Jim Schuessler @ FUNHOUSE

David Schilter of KuĹĄ @ CAB

Killer Acid @ FUNHOUSE

Abby James & Arianna Rose @ FUNHOUSE

Molly Gross @ FUNHOUSE

Gabrielle Bell @ FUNHOUSE

Cameron Cuchulainn & Keenan Cuchulainn @ FUNHOUSE

Steph Davidson, Matthew James-Wilson, Walter Green, & Hannah K. Lee @ FUNHOUSE

Steph Davidson, Walter Green, & Hannah K. Lee @ FUNHOUSE

Gina Wynbrandt @ FUNHOUSE

Gary Lieb @ FUNHOUSE

The Drawing Center Staff @ FUNHOUSE

MoCCA

Joohee Yoon @ FUNHOUSE

John Malta & Sibobhan Gallagher @ MoCCA

Austin English of Domino Books @ MoCCA

Anna Haifisch @ MoCCA

Ben Passmore @ MoCCA

Tom Kaczynski of Uncivilized Books @ MoCCA

R. Sikoryak @ MoCCA

Kendra Yee @ CAB

Gabrielle Bell @ MoCCA

Daniel Zender @ MoCCA

Paul John, Michael Glody, & Leah George @ MoCCA

Rebecca Mock @ MoCCA

Sophie Page, Haejin Park, & Paige Mehrer of Plum Press @ MoCCA

A.T. Pratt @ MoCCA

Patrick Crotty & Jane Mai of Peow Press @ MoCCA

Wren McDonald, Patrick Crotty, & Jane Mai @ MoCCA

Krystal Downs, Alex Krokus, & Bryce Gold @ MoCCA

Nathan Yaffee & Shea Strauss @ MoCCA

Jodi @ The Hideout

Bunny @ The Hideout

Bunny @ The Hideout

Follies @ The Bootleg

Ian Sweet @ The Bootleg

Behavior @ Highland Park Ebell Club

Lunch Lady @ Highland Park Ebell Club

Lunch Lady @ Highland Park Ebell Club

Lunch Lady @ Highland Park Ebell Club

No Age @ Highland Park Ebell Club

No Age @ Highland Park Ebell Club

Nick Rattigan before the Current Joys A Different Age release show @ Lodge Room

Current Joys @ Lodge Room

Nick Rattigan @ Lodge Room

Matthew James-Wilson, Reed Kanter, & Nick Rattigan @ Lodge Room

Numb.er @ The Echo

Numb.er @ The Echo

Froth @ The Echo

Froth @ The Echo

Moaning @ The Echo

Moaning @ The Echo

Moaning @ The Echo

DÆVA @ Secret Project Robot

DÆVA @ Secret Project Robot

You Should Check Out...

By Matthew James-Wilson

Bands/Musicians

E Ruscha V

eddie ruscha’s debut album under the new moniker e ruscha v is as fuzzy and vibrant as its beautiful cover art suggests. the los angeles based electronic composer has been putting out transgressive noise, shoegaze, and synth-pop music for nearly three decades. ruscha got his start playing bass in the groundbreaking southern california experimental pop band, medicine, in the early 90s, and has since released scores of projects under different names including dada muchamonkey and secret circuit. he’s had a consistent career creating lush soundscapes, favoring analog synths and live instruments, and his newest release this winter, who are you, proves to be a new milestone in his career

who are you is a dreamy departure from ruscha’s past few electronic projects, full of fluttering production and an incredibly wide range of instruments. the album borrows sounds from different pockets around the globe, employing african drums, classical guitars, distorted synths, and even wind chimes all across the album. at points the album borders ambient music, but never meanders too long on one groove. over all the album is a thoughtful marriage of electronic music’s past and electronic music’s present, never planting a foot too deep into one camp. if you’re a fan of 80s pioneers like the durutti column or more contemporary synth composers like kaitlyn aurelia smith, there’s probably something on this album for you to enjoy!

Beabadoobee

i came across london based singer/songwriter beabedoobee at the end of this past winter while i was deep in youtube hole searching for new music. the first song i discovered was the wistful opening track of her debut ep, lice, called “home alone.” it’s hard to discern what separates great bedroom pop from the rest, but something about beabedoobee’s thoughtful vocal melodies and uncluttered production shows serious promise for the young songwriter. despite it’s brief four song track list, lice captures a aray of emotions with clever lyrics and simple chord arrangements. after listening to the ep a few times over i was shocked to discover that beabedoobee has quickly built up a sizable fanbase of listeners without the help of any labels or management. it’s exciting to see what’s possible for young artist as the internet makes it easier and easier to share your music, and i’m curious to see what beabedoobee decides to do with that opportunity next.

Free Downloads

Unreleased Alex G Compilations

despite (sandy) alex g’s critical and commercial success after putting out two full length albums with domino records, it seems as though his core diehard fanbase remains to be the young people who have been sharing and archiving his music since the beginning. for any average listener it’s easy to surmise that alex giannascoli has had a staggering output of well documented releases since 2010’s race. but thanks to the hard work of several youtubers, forum lurkers, and reddit users a bounty of unofficial compilations have been assembled, collecting unreleased rarities, demos, live recordings, and side projects from as far back as 2009 and as recent as 2017. i’ve discovered some of my favorite (sandy) alex g songs through these comps (especially the spectacular c-sides album) and it’s an incredible testament of how the important songwriters of the internet age will be preserved.

Other

Kill Your Idols while i was in la this winter i watched kill your idols, a documentary on the lineage of new york’s no wave scene, for the first time. the film follows a chronological timeline of bands that hover over the line between punk and noise music from new york, starting with suicide and concluding with bands like black dice in the early 2000s when the film was made. the film documents so many interesting bands and gives a poignant look at how musicians feel about their predecessors and who they’ve influenced. given how much pop has taken over independent music in the past few years, i think it’s about time for no wave to make its comeback once again.

Gabe Wax

gabe wax is a phenomenal young producer who’s engineered albums for indie giants like fleet foxes and cass mccombs, as well as new up and comers like soccer mommy and ought. just this year he even won a grammy for his work on the most recent album by the war on drugs. i feel like gabe is going to have a hand in shaping the sound of indie music over the next few years, and i’m excited about some of the projects he’s working on now that’ll come out later this year and next year.

THANK YOU: KENDRA YEE ZEKE ASZMAN SOPHI GULLBRANTS CHRISTINA RONQUILLO SEAN SUCHARA JACKSON JOYCE MATHIEU LARONE RACHEL O’REGAN SHINYEON MOON MADELEINE UNDERWOOD JESSICA PETTWAY HELEN LI LARSSON MCSWAIN LILLIE WEST JOSEPH FASOLINO ERIC KOSTIUK WILLIAMS MATTHEW VOLZ XIA GORDON ROXY CAMPOS MELISSA RAMIREZ PATRICK KYLE ZOE ZAG CORRINNE JAMES LEESH ADAMEROVICH ARIEL DAVIS GABE FOWLER MOLLY GROSS REED KANTER LIZZIE KLEIN JOSH DA COSTA SEAN SOLOMON JILLIAN MEDFOD GINETTE LAPALME NICK RATTIGAN JACOB RUBECK GRETA KLINE ANNIE KOYAMA HANNAH K LEE STEPH DAVIDSON WALTER GREEN LESLIE LASITER KURT WOERPEL NICK DUNCAN SIENA EDWARDS SONIA JAMES-WILSON...

LIAM BETSON ELYSE WEINBERG GABE WAX BEVERLY GLENN-COPELAND JENN PELLY MATTHEW THURBER JUAN VELASQUEZ ALEXANDRA ZSIGMOND SASAMI ASHWORTH MICHAEL ZILKHA MICHEL ESTEBAN AMBAR NAVARRO STEVE MALKMUS NICK SANTANA PERO BELL BARRY MCGEE JUAN WAUTERS

E D I T E D BY M AT T H E W JA M E S -W I L S O N