Where are you from?
Born in Salt Lake City, Utah. My dad’s family is whitebread Mormon and my mom’s side is Japanese.
What's this stuff about?
The dynamic, agonizing, cathartic, alchemical, sexual experience of being a woman in this time and place. In confrontational conversation with Western Art History’s dull idea of being a woman.
Music that sounds like your work?
CocoRosie 110%. It’s uncanny, it’s as if someone took my visual language and vision and transmuted it into sound and lyric. I also have to shout out of Montreal. They held my hand growing up creatively (I’ve seen them 14 times as of now). I feel like their funky upbeat psychedelic music juxtaposed across the surreal dark self-deprecating lyrics feeds my dark surreal symbolism that I contrast with punchy bright colorways.
What's the point?
It’s alchemy, I’m transforming my personal trauma and the world’s collective pain into something new, something kinder, better, brighter. Through being real about it first, and then reclaiming it and finding my power in it. Turning shit into gold.
Influences outside of art?
I love pop culture, the celebrity of musical artists, especially radically feminine or those that push gender boundaries in their work.
After school I want to…
Keep making and keep having engaging conversations about my work and other’s work. Further art accessibility to all communities.
How do you choose your subject?
Oftentimes I paint myself and in painting myself I invite others to see themselves in me, and me in them.
Why stick to paint?
It’s exciting to take back a medium that is so iconic to the cannon of the female nude, the cannon I want to tear down.
Challenges in your work right now?
The tension between sex-positive and objectification. I have always thought that sexualizing myself or my work is cut and dry empowering because I’m doing it on my terms, but I am realizing it’s more complex than that. Especially when you consider how diverse an audience and their reaction to anything erotic (subtle or not so subtle) can be.
Technically I am working on breaking down the barriers I’ve internalized between stylistically what belongs to “illustration” and what belongs to painting or “fine art”. I have both skillsets and I want to let them cross-pollinate each other.
Grad School?
Most definitely after I get some breathing room in the “real world”.
The G.O.A.T. is ?
Nicki Minaj. A shining example of how women in art and culture (and everything else) have to outperform men in their respective field tenfold to get the same recognition. This used to make me bitter but now I embrace it as a challenge.
Chicago taught me?
The midwest taught me the true definition of emo and a deeper understanding of Bright Eye’s music (lol). But in all honesty a new Midwestern Americana that’s different from what I knew living in the Wild West. City wise I have met the most talented and driven artists here, and we’re everywhere in the city. There is so much making going on in Chicago and along with that making, there’s also a strong sense the community celebrates, supports, and encourages all this creativity.
Instagram?
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