WRITTEN BY TAYLLOR LEMPHERS PHOTOGRAPHY BY NAOHMI MONROE
Here’s to the life of living paycheck to paycheck. Here’s to the life of taking side-hustle after side-hustle to make it by. And here’s to the life of creating beautiful, wonderful, terrible things, things that make people feel, make people think, and most of all, make people live. Such is the life of the artist. Glamorized as it may seem – images of people sipping black coffee in a trendy espresso bar with their sketch book may come to mind – any of us who live the creative life can tell you that it’s one part incredible, and one part downright frightening. One moment, the instability of it all is exhilarating. The next, we’re craving the neatly carved paths of our friends who chose to be doctors and accountants. If you have the opportunity to meet creative and poet ARIELLE ESTORIA (and I hope you do), you experience the full spectrum of the artist’s life in her presence. Her candidness and openness about the struggle that is the creative journey is so refreshing, and all the while, she infuses a little sparkle and beauty into the mess of it. She can trace the beginnings of her journey as an artist back to her childhood, sharing that she’s always been creatively driven. “I was that kid who dressed up in plastic heels and pranced around making up songs under her alias name ‘Erica Wallace,’” says Estoria, “and then I became that little girl who loved monologues and acting.” She then became a teenager who “fell in love with the art of storytelling in different forms, first with acting and writing.” For Estoria, her thoughts made more sense when they flowed onto paper. She’d often find them spilling out of her mind as tiny quotes and phrases in the margins of her notes.
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A few weeks away from college graduation, Estoria reflected on her initial plan for post-grad life. “I was going to continue working at a university investing in young college women. I loved student development and the residence life part of my experience in college, and I wanted to continue that.” But she couldn’t shake the feeling that this plan felt like the ‘wrong’ one. Something else seemed to call her. “I felt this tug that I was supposed to do something a little crazy: be a creative.” Thus began this now three-year journey for Estoria. She’s lost track of how many odd jobs she took on her first year out of college (5... 6?) Much of her pursuit of the creative life was “just diving into everything, saying yes to everything and hoping something good would come of it all,” explains Estoria. “It was unpredictable, hard and I felt like a whirlwind 99.9% of the time (still do) but so much of it involved letting go of my need for control and for a “plan” and it ended up being pretty beautiful in return. I was going to live this unpredictable, crazy life no matter what it took.” And it’s taken quite a lot. Estoria, like any other creative, can testify to just how difficult being an artist can be, far from our romanticized views we held as children and wide-eyed college kids. “It is so freaking hard!” Estoria affirms, “no one really tells you that being your own boss, living that free, creative life is expensive sometimes, and stressful.” She has many crazy stories ranging from scams, to not being paid, to attorneys, to moving in with a family to afford living anywhere near LA. “I have all the stories. They make this building process what it is: crazy and beautiful.”
