Process

process IDEAS AND INSPIRATION IN CONTEMPORARY DESIGN

MOLLY CRABAPPLE Artist, Illustrator and Reporter

The art of personal branding.

Color Psychology in Logo Design & Branding Explained.

Five Effective Ways to Deal with Creative Criticism.

What Makes A Good Logo?

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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Feature Story

Interview with Molly Crabapple

An artist, writer and columist for VICE. Molly Crabapple not only released a memoir, named Drawing Blood (HarperCollins), she also worked for New York Times, Paris Review, and Vanity Fair. Through that she has covered conflicting topics such as Abu Dhabi’s migrant labor camps, the impact the rebels made in Syria and more.

Read about her here.

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The art of personal branding.

Tips and tricks on creating a unique personal brand that will attract other empolyers. Also learn what projects to choose for an amazing portfoilio

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10 Must Know Tips for Creating Winning Visual Brand Identities.

Find ownable moments that can be a spring point for the brand. eg. a color, season, taste, feature, etc. Further more in this article you will find out what can make a portfolio people-centric

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10 Personal Branding Tips to Help Improve Your Online Presence Your brand should be a reflection of yourself, your skills and values.

Being aware of, and ultimately in control of, your personal brand is an essential component of building a successful career.

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What Makes A Good Logo?

A good logo is distinctive, appropriate, practical, graphic, simple in form and conveys an intended message.There are five principles that you should follow to ensure that this is so‌

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Color Psychology in Logo Design & Branding Explained In this article you learn about how designers can benefit from harnessing and incorporating it in their designs.

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5 Effective Ways to Deal with Creative Criticism Dealing with criticism positively requires a few skills of good self-esteem and some skills of boldness. In this article you get tips on how you take it, react to it and learn from it, and also when to let go of it and move ahead.

DEPARTMENTS

16 26 29 Branding

Logo Design

Color Theroy

VOLUME 10/ ISSUE 12

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MOLLY CRABAPPLE Artist, Illustrator and writer Interviewed by: Tina Essmaker

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Molly Crabapple is an artist and writer in New York. Her memoir, Drawing Blood (HarperCollins) is out VOLUME 10/ ISSUE 12 now. Called “an emblem of the way art can break out of the gilded gallery” by the New Republic, she has drawn in Guantanamo Bay, Abu Dhabi’s migrant labor camps, and with rebels in Syria. She is a columnist for VICE, and has written for publications including the New York Times, Paris Review, and Vanity Fair. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art.

I

Describe your path to what you’re doing now.

By the time I was 27, I was pretty successful, but I didn’t feel like I was doing work that was meaningful…my

’m originally from Far Rockaway, New York. When I

artwork was all about beautiful girls, night life, the

was eight, my parents split and my mom moved to Long

demimonde. Portraits of Myself and Lola Montez With

Island. I was one of those bad punk kids who would

Things Said About Us By Our Contemporaries, for a group

sneak into New York City, drink in parking lots, and steal

show at Postmasters Gallery in New York

cigarette butts off of the floor and smoke them. I even tried to dye my hair with Manic Panic without

bleaching it because I didn’t understand the mechanics of bleach. When I was 17, I went to Paris and worked at the Shakespeare and Company bookstore. It was amazing because I had a free bed in the heart of Paris for doing very little work, fairly incompetently. It was wonderful!

That experience showed me a lot of possibilities for life, and I am grateful to George Whitman, the man who created and ran it. After that, I traveled around Europe for a bit before coming back to the United States to go to college.

I returned to New York to attend the Fashion Institute of Technology, which is a terrible art school—please, no one go there. I dropped out after a few years.

When I was still in school, I started working as a model and burlesque dancer. I became a dancer because I was obsessed with Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and I became a model because it was the only way I knew for a 19-year-old to make $100 an hour. I didn’t have the discipline or work ethic to be a stripper. By the time I was 23, I had pretty much stopped modeling. I started Doctor Sketchy’s Anti-Art School, which was an alternative drawing program with burlesque dancers, drag queens, and underground performers who posed as models for people to sketch in bars. That exploded, and it’s now in over 140 cities around the world.

At 24, I was given the job of in-house artist for The Box, the most depraved nightclub in all of New York City. It was the most amazing opportunity. I was able to sit around and draw their customers as coke-addicted pigs and sketch their fantabulous performing models.

By the time I was 27, I was pretty successful, but I didn’t feel like I was doing work that was meaningful. I felt like I had eaten too many marshmallows: my artwork was all about beautiful girls, night life, the demimonde. I wasn’t doing work that I considered to be serious, and I was scared to do work that I considered to be serious because I was in the sex industry. That’s when I did a big project called Molly Crabapple’s Week in Hell, where I locked myself in a room in the Gramercy Park Hotel for a week and drew all over the walls. I figured I would know what I wanted to do after that.

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After that, the Occupy Wall Street movement happened, which was right across the street from my apartment. I had always been political, but in a sort of silent way, where I would donate money or help in a more practical manner.

I didn’t feel like I deserved to be vocal about politics because I was someone who drew girls with their tits out.

But when Occupy happened, it felt like a moment where we all had to take sides. I tried to help however I could, so I ended up doing a lot of posters for the protests. It was a life-changing time: my apartment became a press room, many of my friends were arrested, I was arrested, and a lot of us forged friendships with people who were involved in other movements in their own countries, whether that was Spain, Greece, or Egypt.

2011 was a magical year—it felt like people around the world were sitting in the squares of their own cities saying, “Enough.” Even though these movements have been replaced by austerity or extreme repression in many countries, I still believe that year worked an alchemy on those people involved.

I was rather angry after my arrest. Not simply because I was arrested—I had a relatively easy experience—but because the NYPD does this to people all the time, for nothing but existing while brown or black. Being arrested is traumatic, but most people believe it’s trivial. If middle-class white people didn’t convince themselves that being arrested or incarcerated is something trivial, if they realized how bad it is, perhaps they wouldn’t be so goddamn trigger-happy about it. (laughing) I wrote about that experience for CNN, and I was offered my own column in VICE shortly after.

Since then, I’ve been combining art and journalism. I have traveled all over the world: Abu Dhabi, Syria, Greece, Spain, Lebanon, and Turkey. I’ve written for the New York Times and Vanity Fair. All the while, I’ve used my sketchbook kind of like a photojournalist uses a camera. When Occupy happened, it felt like a moment where we all had to take sides…It was a life-changing time: my apartment became a press room, many of my friends were arrested, I was arrested, and a lot of us forged friendships with people who were involved in other movements in their own countries…

PROCESS DEC.2019

Writing about other people was always the hardest. I wasn’t

writing about people who

I met as a journalist…I was writing about my loved ones from a

decade ago. I didn’t want to betray them. It was fine to cut myself

open, but not them.

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Was creativity a part of your childhood?

My mom was an illustrator, but I’ve been drawing since I was four years old. In school, I was so non-functional as a student: I would draw during class and hand in test sheets unanswered, but covered in scribbles. Drawing is a sort of compulsion for me, like picking scabs. It’s how I interface with the world.

Was there a specific “Aha!” moment when you knew what you wanted to do?

Drawing is something I’ve always been into. I wanted to be a fiction writer when I was younger, but I wasn’t that talented. I wrote a terrible novel when I was in high school, which I luckily never put online, because it’s pretty grim.When I was 17 and needed to hustle money, drawing was what I did. I would draw people’s pets, their kids, or even their Dungeons & Dragons characters. Because I knew how to draw realistically, it was a simple craft that I could immediately turn into cash.

Have you had any mentors or influential people in your life?

I’ve had quite a few, actually. I met my best friend, John Leavitt, when I was 18. We were two rebellious, snotty, lazy kids, and we’ve been BFFs ever since. We pushed each other to be better and competed with one another. If his work was in the New Yorker, I’d say, “Aww, fuck you!” Then I’d try and do something to beat him. We’ve also collaborated on projects together: we ran a lot of Dr. Sketchy’s events together, and I did my first two books with John. We’ve been super tightfor years and years.The photographer Clayton Cubitt is someone else I admire. Are you familiar with his work?

No, I’m not.

He’s a photographer from New Orleans. He grew up in a poor family, but now does extremely high-end fashion photography.

He has also done an album cover for Die Antwoord and a viral project called Hysterical Literature, which is about women having orgasms while they’re reading. That is probably his most famous project, because about 20 million people have viewed it. His work is so beautiful and his level of craft is so extreme, but he also engages with everything in the world. During Hurricane Katrina, he snuck past checkpoints to get back to New Orleans to find his mom and help his community. He also set up a makeshift photo studio and photographed the survivors from the communities he grew up in.

The reason I love Clayton’s work, and one reason I think we’re such good friends, is because we see no boundaries between the types of work we do. A lot of people would say, “You do serious, gritty photojournalism,” or, “You do fluffy, beautiful fashion work,” or, “You did a video series about women having orgasms, and that’s sex, so that goes in its own box,” but he doesn’t see those projects as s eparate parts he just sees life. He has a massive hunger and greed for life, as do I. I find that so inspiring. I hate the idea that artists should only do one subject or one style. I love the gluttonous, Pablo-PicassoDiego-Rivera god-monster of modernism where you try to tackle the entire world with your art.

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PROCESS DEC.2019

I’ve been drawing since I was old enough to

make a mess. Drawing is more of a

compulsion than a vocation…I draw

because I need to. But when I was a kid in

school, I learned the twin powers of art to

mock authority and to please.

A person’s art is part of who they are, and someone can’t very well put himself or herself into different compartments. If you’re a photographer, then that’s what you do, regardless of what your subject matter is or where you’re taking photos.

Exactly.Ultimately, all we have is each other, and we have to take care of each other as communities, because I don’t feel like we live in societies that are going to do that for us. Original art for the cover of Matt Taibbi’s bestselling book, The Divide Was There Another Troy for Her to Burn, two-color silkscreen poster.

Do you feel a responsibility or a desire to contribute to something bigger than, or outside of, yourself?

I do, in a few ways. First of all, I’ve been so lucky to be a part of this community in New York and in the world, and to be a part of a community of people I love, whether they’re artists, writers, activists, or just fucking people.

Ultimately, all we have is each other, and we have to take care of each other as communities, because I don’t feel like we live in societies that are going to do that for us. My primary responsibility is to my community, and whenever someone is in trouble, sick, arrested, or even just has to move and is too broke to afford it, we try to have each other’s backs, because who else is going to, right?

One of my primary drives is that I fucking hate hypocrisy. I hate it so much. I hate hypocritical, comfortable, self-congratulatory bastards who are complicit in terrible things. I like to eviscerate them with my art, and I believe that’s why I like journalism, too: I can speak to those people very honestly and demand that they tell everyone the truth. They may or may not, but at least I get to ask the questions.

Speaking of community, is being a part of a creative community important to you? Do you have a lot of community here in New York, or is it mostly online?

I have a huge amount of community online. I’m lucky to have a tight-knit group of mostly women here in New York who I’ve been friends with for a long time: we party together, we make art together, we get fucking shit-faced drunk together which is why I feel like this right now. (laughing) One of my friends was hosting a reading last night and we stayed up very late. But I do have a much larger community online. I have friends in Istanbul and London and Paris. The Internet enables this experience where you might speak to people very briefly in person, but you fucking love them based on a relationship you develop corresponding online. Even if you only see to them twice a year, it’s no less powerful because you’ve been pouring out your souls to each other online. Then, maybe twice a year, you’re fucking hugging each other so hard and passing out on the floor from drinking whiskey.

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Have you taken any big risks to move forward?

One of the hardest pieces I’ve ever done was traveling to Abu

There have been instances where I’ve felt scared to do something,

Dhabi to write about migrant workers there. The United Arab

but those moments have been incredibly meaningful to me. For

Emirates (UAE) doesn’t have fixers the way other countries

instance, I wrote about my abortion for VICE when I hadn’t

do. Insulting the government is illegal, and since most of the

even told my mom about it yet. That was definitely something I

big construction firms have strong ties to the government, this

felt a responsibility to do: I felt like one of the reasons abortion

censorship extends to them. Consequences for insulting the

is so shitty for everyone is because women don’t talk about it,

government can be dire—I interviewed a dissident, Ahmed

and the media pushes this narrative of, “Abortion is for teenagers

Mansour, who spent eight months in jail for running a

who don’t know how babies are made!” Or, “It’s for women who

website that let people speak frankly. Emiratis are usually so

are raped!” Or, “It’s for horrific medical conditions where the

well-supported by the government that there is no reason

woman might die!” But if you don’t fit into those categories, then

why they would take your money to do something that puts them

what the fuck are you, a monster?! A third of women have an

at a very real risk. Everyone who isn’t an Emirati citizen, which

abortion, and obviously the vast majority of them don’t fit into

is nearly 90% of the population, can be deported for virtually

any of those categories. I wrote the article as a political message,

anything, even if they were born in the country. So they’re

but I was scared to do it. I was afraid of being stalked by crazy

generally afraid to work with a journalist. I was nervous before I

pro-lifers, honestly. (laughing) Yes, a bunch of people called me

went to the UAE because I didn’t know how I would do it. I can’t

“baby killer” online, but that’s not too bad.

drive, and I thought, “How am I going to get to these camps that are so far from the central city?” (laughing)

There are always people who will judge.

Yeah, but that article meant so much to a lot of women. Women

Do you normally travel alone?

from Northern Ireland who had illegal abortions wrote to me.

Yes, I travel alone, but I often work with local fixers who are

One man showed my article to his mother who had an illegal

often fantastic journalists in their own right–to do a story. In the

abortion before Roe v. Wade was passed. Hundreds of women

UAE, I met an incredibly brave, knowledgeable local who uses

wrote to me about it. Out of any of the meaningful things I’ve

the pseudonym Tom Blake. Between him and a translator, who

done, writing that article was particularly important to me.

I called Ibrahim in my VICE piece, I was able to get interviews

Slaves of Happiness Island illustration for a VICE piece on the

with the Louvre. I ended up being able to get the information I

migrant workers of Abu Dhabi I hate hypocritical, comfortable,

needed, but I was fucking terrified that I wouldn’t because the

self-congratulatory bastards who are complicit in terrible things.

UAE is so censored and surveilled. A month after that, I went to

I like to eviscerate them with my art, and I believe that’s why I

Reyhanli in Southeastern Turkey to draw a mural in the Salam

like journalism, too: I can speak to those people very honestly

School for refugee kids—another project I feel privileged to

and demand that they tell everyone the truth. They may or may

have been able to do.

not, but at least I get to ask the questions.”

I saw pictures of that online! That’s so cool.

You talked earlier about traveling to do journalistic work. Is visiting conflicted areas a risk for you, and how often do you go?

I started doing it pretty intensely in the past two years. My first big journalistic story was when I wrote about going to Guantanamo Bay in 2012. I visited the island twice, and it’s a fucking horrific place. Recently, in the last four months, I went to Turkey (which is not a conflict area) to do a project on post-Gezi protest culture by going to demos and interviewing people.

I’m usually a bit nervous before I go to a place that might be a conflict zone. Places like Syria are obviously dangerous, but I feel privileged to see what geopolitics looks like up close, to see what other people aren’t able to see. I feel so lucky that people who live in areas of crisis take the time to speak to me, or show me around, because there’s no fucking reason why they should. I’m grateful for that.

Thank you! I loved doing that. Those kids were so cool. I’m often skeptical of humanitarian aid initiatives where it’s a bunch of white people parachuting into a country in which they don’t know the language or the context, and they’re just doing unsustainable work. The teachers at the Salam School are also refugees, and they’re fucking brilliant. Many would be doing much more professionally prestigious things if life circumstances weren’t as harsh as they were. They give a stellar education to the kids. The organization I worked with on that project, the Karam Foundation, was founded by two Syrian American friends, and almost everyone on the trip to Reyhanli was Syrian or of Syrian descent. They support the school year-round: they provided Internet and computers for the teachers, and installed a heating system for the winter. I was especially impressed by dentists from a group called the Syrian-American Medical Society. They fixed every one of the kids’ teeth.

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That is wonderful.

Being an artist was a totally adult job that was

It was amazing. There were kids who had been

a normal and rational path to earning a lower

through terrible trauma and whose teeth were

middle class income. (laughing) Because of that,

It’ll turn out fine. It’s just about putting your ass in the chair and saying, “Okay, I’m going to hammer away at this.”

broken. The dentists not only fixed all the

I didn’t have to do what a lot of other people do:

Yeah. I’m almost done with the second draft,

cavities, but they also did cosmetic work, so a

convince their parents or themselves that they

but each draft is a major progression from the

girl whose front teeth had been broken off in the

can make a living as an artist. I said, “Mom, I’m

first. The first draft is not even English—it’s a

war could look like she used to before. And they

going to school to become an illustrator,” and

fucking pile of word swill that no other human

were doing it all out of a makeshift clinic in a

she replied, “Oh! That’s what I do!”

can read. I took that, put it into English, and

basement. They were such heroes. I worked with

asked myself, “What do I still want to say

some amazing people there. I met a children’s

Are you creatively satisfied?

with this?” I’m trying to make arcs, draw up

book illustrator from Damascus. My friend Lina

I don’t believe you can be satisfied and

characters, and put together scenes I’ve never

Sergie Attar, who runs the foundation and is

creative at once. Drawing art is hard, and

written dialogue before. With each step, I’m

an architect, taught all the kids the basics of

frustrating, and you’re constantly trying to

trying to chisel it out more and more from

architecture. At one point, they brought in a

find your next project. If you were creatively

the pile of suck that it originally was. Murals

Muslim boxer from Britain to do kickboxing

satisfied, then you wouldn’t keep doing it.

at Salam School for Syrian refugee children in

workshops for the boys and girls. It was great.

Drawing from Football Ultras protest, Istanbul;

Reyhanli, Turkey; photo by Mohamad Ojjeh,

published in Talking Points Memo

for the Zeitouna Mentorship program

Do you have any upcoming trips planned? tech-art event called The Conference in Sweden

That said, is there anything in the next 5 to 10 years that you’re interested in doing or exploring?

this month.

I want to do some big fucking murals. I’m also

I’m giving an opening keynote at a media-

There have been instances where I’ve felt scared to

do something, but those

moments have been incredibly

meaningful to me.

Do you finance your traveling through your personal artwork, speaking, or other work?

currently working on a memoir for Harper Collins, which will be coming out in the fall of 2015.

I get flown out for most of my trips, but sometimes I don’t. For example, the Karam Foundation project didn’t fly me out because they’re a charity, and spending all of your charity’s money to fly Americans out would be stupid. When I went to Abu Dhabi, VICE paid for that they generally cover expenses when I’m working for them. A lot of times, I’ll bundle projects: if someone wants to fly me out somewhere, I’ll look into other projects I can do in that same area so it’s cheaper.

making presuppositions. When you give advice to someone, you’re presupposing that this person has a fairly stable immigration status, that they don’t have a horrible, chronic illness that requires having health insurance, or that they don’t need to care for any sick parents or kids. Those are all circumstances I’ve never had to deal with, so I don’t feel qualified giving generalized advice for them.

The first piece of advice I have for people if they want to be a crazy artist like me is that companies are there to exploit you, and to extract as much labor out of you as possible while paying you as little money as possible.

Always treat companies with intense cynicism

Wow! That’ll be here before you know it.

can. The big mistake that will fuck you over in

Yeah!

years and years of your life until you wake up

life is being a team player, because you’ll waste one day having made some company a lot of

Sorry, I don’t mean to stress you out.

No, not at all! I just hate writing books so much.

I’m sure I’ll be happy when it’s done, but it’s like fucking torture. I’d rather hit myself in the hand with a hammer.

My family and friends are supportive, but my mother helped me become an artist because

Exactly. I’m on the second draft right now. I’ve

she is an artist herself. My mother influenced

forced myself to pick at the stupid thing for five

me with the idea that being an artist wasn’t just

hours a day. Last night I did a reading for some

some airy-fairy-foo-foo career that you couldn’t

people about working at The Box and New York

make a living doing. She went into an office

during the boom years, and they liked it. It’ll be

every day and drew pictures for packaging.

done at some point. (laughing)

12 Interview

I have advice, but with this advice, I am

and try to exploit them back as much as you

It’s overwhelming to think about a memoir because it’s your whole life.

Where do you even start?

Are your family and friends supportive of what you do?

What advice would you give to a young person starting out?

money and having made yourself shit. That’s what happened to my mom. She never made much money because she was one of those people who said, “I’m going to work hard and be talented, and then people will recognize my value and reward me!” No, actually, they will just take your hard work and talent to make money for themselves and discard you when you’re no longer useful. So be very cynical.

That said, you have to work hard for yourself. I don’t mean the sort of bullshit notion of hard work where white-collar workers sit someplace staring at a wall for nine hours a day in a display of obedience. I mean that you should probably spend a lot of your twenties doing art from the time you wake up to the

PROCESS DEC.2019

Kim Bookbinder illustrated for Drawing Blood

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Confronted Donald Trump in Dubai, VICE

time you go to sleep, and turning down a

world and just do art as a hobby so you still

promoting yourself, the truth is that the

lot of unnecessary commitments in service

love it. Stop clogging up the field for the

people who don’t promote themselves

of that.

people who need this like a drug.

usually have someone else promoting them.

First, because that’s what you need to

In summation: be cynical, work extremely

In Salvador Dali’s case, since he was a

do to be good enough so that when you

hard,

dear.

fucking twitchy weirdo (laughing) his wife

have inspiration, your inspiration will

Something else people won’t tell you is that

Gala promoted him because she was a

lead to something; and second, because

the reason people go to Ivy League colleges

well-connected and charismatic surrealist

it’s almost fucking impossible to make a

isn’t usually to get an education, at least in

muse. Maybe you pay someone to promote

living drawing pictures, writing words, or

the liberal fields. By going to an Ivy League

you because your family is rich, or maybe

playing music.

college, you’re buying an entrée into the

it’s because someone is making enough

Just the fact that we think we can do these

network of people who will one day rule

money off of you that they can invest some

the world.

of that money back into your career.

things for a living is an intense act of hope

and

hold

your

friends

and arrogance. If you want to be able to do

that, if you decide to stake your claim on That is so true.

However, very few people will ever promote you out of a pure belief in your

that path, then oh, my God you have to do

It’s literally trying to buy your place in

talent, unless they’re sleeping with you,

such hard work! If you’re the sort of person

the upper class. But if you, like me, don’t

too, so there’s no more shame in promoting

who fucking whines about being motivated,

come from a background where the

yourself than having someone else do it.

like some of the art students I lecture,

people you were surrounded with as a kid

then just fucking stop. I’m not interested

were ever going to be influential and you

in speaking to anyone who wonders how

don’t have either the academic or financial

to motivate themselves. If you need to talk

chops to go to an Ivy League school, you

about how to get motivated, then go get a

will have to build a network of influential

normal job in the normal scheme of the

people another way. If you’re ashamed of

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You’ll probably have to promote yourself in the beginning, because you won’t be that good at the start and you won’t be good for years, so you’ll just have to keep working at it. Accept that you’ll probably

PROCESS DEC.2019

do professional work that other people will see while you still suck. I have so much professional work from early in my career that is so fucking terrible that I don’t know why anybody ever gave me chances I cringe when I look back on it.

We also live in an era where a lot of the old, supporting institutions are either opening up or crumbling, so I suggest that people don’t try to distort who they are to fit notions of what’s professionally viable, because that paradigm is over. I suggest you focus in on your weirdness, your passions, and your fucked up damage, and be yourself as truly as you can. Express that with as much craft, discipline, and rigor as you can; work as hard as you can to build a career out of

I went to school for social work and am still paying off a small student loan, even though I don’t work in that field anymore.

I know people who owe much more than I do.In that scenario, you don’t have room to experiment or explore you have to work a day job or take on whatever work comes your way.

It puts you in a tough spot.

At least with social work, you need some sort of license or degree. There is no reason anyone needs to have a design or art degree. That is why I find the system to be even more cruel.

you love and that’s true to yourself, as

How does living in New York City influence your work?

opposed to doing what you think other

New York City is a hard city to live in

people want and burning yourself out

because it’s incredibly expensive, and it

when you’re older.

becomes more expensive every year.

Do you get a chance to speak to students often?

Agreed.

I do, but I’m skeptical of the idea of art

is so brutal. When I first moved here 13

school because I don’t believe what I do is

years ago, it was much cheaper, but it

scaleable. What art schools do in America

was still expensive. My first place was

is pretty cruel: they take a bunch of

called a junior one-bedroom, which

people and get them deeply into debt

was actually just a fucking studio. I paid

knowing that maybe two of them will

$600 a month, but that was with two

ever actually be able to pay back that

roommates. There was no light because

that, and then you’ll create a career that

debt by succeeding in the field that they hope to work in. I do speak to art students, but I try to give them the caveat that I find the whole system morally reprehensible. I feel better when I speak to students in Europe, where their education is being funded by the state. That gives students more room to be experimental and use school to find themselves. It’s a lot harder to find yourself when you have to make payments on $50,000 worth of loans.

Yeah, it’s fucking hard. The rent issue

all of the windows faced brick walls, and the shower was in the kitchen. The three of us hated each other by the end of living together. If we had stayed one more day, it would have been Lord of the Flies. In my next apartment, my room was the size of a large throw rug, but it felt luxurious because I had a door.

I tend to joke that the ultimate attainment of New York the fucking golden, glittering ring you reach for is when you have a washing machine in your apartment.

Or even in your building!

Yeah!

If you have a washer, dryer, and a dishwasher, you’re golden.

Exactly! In the suburbs, that’s not an attainment. My mom didn’t make more than $40,000 a year in her entire life, and living outside of the city, we always had a washing machine. Here in New York City, that $40,000 a year might not even get you within blocks of a laundromat.

Because of that aspect of living in New York, you become jagged, ready to

hustle,

and

desperate.

I

often

compare it to being a deep sea fish that explodes if it goes into lower-pressure atmospheres. Sometimes when I visit my boyfriend’s family in Western Pennsylvania, I think, “God, there’s so much space and room, and everything is so slow.

The crushing speed of New York definitely has influences my work, but conversely,

I

am

able

to find so many more opportunities

because

everything is here.

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VOLUME 10/ ISSUE 12

Scenes from Inside Aleppo

16 Interview

I’ve been drawing since I was old enough to

make a mess. Drawing is more of a compulsion

PROCESS DEC.2019

than a vacation.I draw becauseI need to. But

when I was a kid in school, I learned the twin

powers of art to mock authority and to please.

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VOLUME 10/ ISSUE 12

18 Interview

Slaves of Happiness Island illustration for a VICE piece PROCESS DEC.2019

What does a typical day look like for you?

I wake up around 10am, have a lot of coffee, and make a to-do list. I usually try to do my drawings early because they’re pretty easy for me. Then I talk on the phone with my mom. Then I go to a restaurant to type for about four hours and leave a large tip to make up for my obnoxiousness in doing so. (laughing) A lot of times, I’ll have a friend or a party over for whiskey at night and then stay up until 4am. Speaking of, I should probably get on with what I have to do for the day.

Of course! I just have one last question for you: What kind of legacy do you hope to leave?

I want to show artists that they can do everything in the whole fucking world.

focus in on your weirdness, your passions, and your fucked-up damage, and be yourself as

truly as you can. Express that with as much

craft, discipline, and rigor as you can; work as hard as you can to build a career out of that,

and then you’ll create a career that you love and that’s true to yourself

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