Studio Diary #20 - Where I create what doesn’t exist, interrogate my masks, and bring Zuzu to life
This is where I share what I’ve been up to behind the scenes to move my art career forward - the good, the bad, and the as-yet-to-be-determined. If you want to read the whole story, you can catch up here.
April has been something of a transformational month for me. I feel like the coming of Spring has brought with it a wave of fresh inspiration, courage, and boldness, and quite frankly, it’s been making my tits tingle with possibility!
Here’s what happened in April…
April’s Rose, Bud, & Thorn
The Rose is something that went well, the Thorn is something that didn’t go so well or is challenging, and the Bud is something that is still percolating…
ROSE
One of the rosiest things to come out of this month was the creation of a new Artist Mastermind!
Over the course of the last couple of years I’ve found a huge gap in my network: artists who run online businesses. I know a ton of artists (who look at me blankly when I start talking about YouTube and mailing lists), and I know a ton of online business people (who don’t get the high-wire balancing act of trying to squeeze enough art and enough business into every week).
But now I have gathered a tiny group of artists who run businesses just like mine, for problem-solving, idea-testing, accountability, general support and knowledge sharing. We have our first call in May and I cannot wait.
If the thing you want doesn’t exist, sometimes you have to create it.
Secondly, over the Easter hols my brilliant photographer husband took two days out of his very important chillaxing schedule to do a photoshoot with me. Ostensibly a ‘brand photoshoot’, what we really wanted to do was capture the essence of my alter ego Zuzu in all her glamour punk glory, and holy fuck did we succeed!
The images we captured are the first time I have seen my vision of Zuzu made flesh - my alter ego came to life, and it was mind-blowing to see my authentic self revealed through the act of choosing the mask I wore. Like I’ve said before, she’s me, but dialled up to 11. I love her.
BUD
I’m sure it’ll come as no surprise that seeing Zuzu come to life has had a knock-on effect on a whole bunch of other things in my life and my art. I’m evolving rapidly - as a person, and as an artist. And I’m learning more and more about how I want to show up, what I want to say, and what I want to stand for. There’s going to be some really exciting stuff happening around these parts over the next year, and I can’t wait to see how it all pans out.
Meanwhile, I have a couple of events coming up soon which are going to be awesome.
The first is a panel discussion on the topic of Art as Resistance with my friends designer Kerstin Martin and musician Valerie Day (of Nu Shooz fame). I told them the story of my liaison friend coming to my finnisage (read that here if you missed it), and it planted the seed for this live discussion about how important it is to both consume and create art in troubling times. You can find out more and sign up here. It’s going to be a really valuable and uplifting conversation.
The second is an exhibition at Riccos Sluseholmen. I showed my Je Suis Wibbly Wobbly collection there a couple of years ago, and they’ve invited me back for another show - and this time I won’t be showing in the back, I’ll be taking over the whole of the main room. Dates and deets to follow, but I’ll definitely be showing some of my larger work, as well as some never-before-seen pieces too.
THORN
When you’ve spent upwards of 40 years masking and creating a persona that enables you to stay safe (no matter the cost), the process of unmasking enough to be truly authentic is slow and brutal.
I’m incredibly fortunate these days to have relative safety in my day-to-day life, although it’s taken many years of it to unclench enough to realise it. The process of automatically censoring out the weirder and more potentially ‘offensive’ parts of myself is deeply ingrained. It’s a practice that has undoubtedly protected me over the years, but it also makes me feel itchy and like people only ever get to know these fractured parts of me, instead of the whole. It’s also hugely detrimental to my art!
I’m getting much better at it in my IRL interactions, and Zuzu is the tool I’m using to help me feel safe enough to share my three-dimensional self, on the internet and also in my art. I’m getting closer and closer but it’s a long and bumpy road, for sure.
In other news
I was delighted to be invited back onto The Biz Book Broadcast for a third time! This time we had a cracking chat about thinking imperialism and habit formation, triggered by the eye-roll inducing business book Atomic Habits by James Clear.
