During the first weeks of the pandemic, my stand-in lover was the Criterion Channel. We went to bed together every night.

Curling up with my laptop to bask in “time enough at last,” I devoted myself to the catalogs of Jim Jarmusch, Edward Yang, and other auteurs to resolve longstanding blind spots. I was especially drawn to films by Eric Rohmer and Yasujirō Ozu, whose work shared a reverence for the quotidian. Not until I was locked away in my sixth-floor apartment did I too realize the beauty in the everyday. I yearned for normalcy as much as intimacy.

The movie that sticks with me most from those gray days, however, was Andrew Haigh’s “Weekend.” The quiet narrative follows two men whose Friday night tryst blooms into something richer over the following two days. Hyperrealism was never so romantic or as true to me. In a time when I was all too aware of the outside world, I craved those nights and weekends when the outside world disappeared in someone’s embrace.

Unlike a good chunk of the queer canon, “Weekend” lacks overt eroticism, its sex scenes anything but salacious. Though much of the movie is spent in bed, our two leads talk far more than they fuck. The pair lounges on the sofa, idles in the kitchen, and lingers in doorways. The narrative comes alive in these amorphous moments as we see ourselves reflected. Onscreen portrayal of queer joy is one thing, but depicting the mundanity of our lives advances “Weekend” into rarified space where awkward and thoughtless moments steward us toward profundity.

During this same stretch of 2020, I encountered the art of zacharyiswackary on Instagram. Bursting with color and punctuated with painterly interplays of light and shadow, his charming illustrations starred beefy, scantily clad men. While some inspired fantasies of encountering Wolverine or Thor in the dark room at the Eagle, the vignettes strayed from the lurid sexuality of, say, Tom of Finland. Not only did Zachary’s figures honor the truths of body hair, bellies, and even economic scarcity, but they were enlivened by the nuances of their postures and poses in the confines of interior space. Everyday bodies were contextualized in inconvenient doorways, a cramped sofa, or a bed pressed right up against a window overlooking lives in another building just within reach. I felt less alone as I considered the shapes of unobserved bodies, soothed to realize we really are more alike than we think when no one’s looking.

Wielding expertise in illustration and filmmaking, Zachary Brunner divines a whole world from a single cel. Examining his pieces invokes a rush of sonder, as we recall how our own bodies look and feel when we rest our head upon a partner’s thigh, shoulder, or belly while we scroll our phones or endure a tedious subway ride home together. The honesty and intimacy of his work celebrates the blessed boredom we all understand and sometimes even crave. In glorifying queer joy and everyday tedium, Zachary’s titillating portraits reveal a provocative revolutionary potential.

Here, Zachary and I discuss sexy superheroes, the physicality of drawing, and how the personal becomes political when making queer art.

How old were you when you started drawing?
I’ve always been doing it. I come from a creative family. My mom was a fashion designer and she was kind of my first illustration teacher. My father went to school for opera, so I also grew up playing piano. I was always surrounded by art.

What did you like to draw?
The first five years of my life, I was obsessed with the Wicked Witch of the West and I would draw her all the time. I just loved her. I was her for Halloween I think two or three years in a row. I was just obsessed. “The Little Mermaid” I also was obsessed with.

What kind of notice did your drawings receive?
I was probably like four or five, and I was already drawing and I was already obsessed with “The Little Mermaid.” We would have arts and crafts activities every day, and I just went up to my teachers one day and I was like, “I’m going to have everyone make a mermaid.” I remember everyone got to go outside and play on the playground and I stayed inside with the teacher. I was teaching her how to draw a mermaid tail. She drew the tail and I was like, “No, that’s not right,” so I drew it correctly for her. It’s so weird to think about because I’m so introverted. I can’t believe I did that.

Did you study art?
Not really. In high school, I was so bad at math that I was in so many remedial math classes and I had no time for any art. I didn’t take a single art class in high school, and then in college I went to the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan for film.

How did you get into filmmaking?
When I was like 10 or 11, I started doing stop motion animation films and then when I got to middle and high school, I realized it’s so much easier to just have real people acting instead of doing stop motion. I just fell in love with filmmaking because it’s so many different art mediums in one. I would compose the music for some of my own movies, and I was learning how to do prosthetics and special effects. I really wanted to be the next Peter Jackson and make the next “Lord of the Rings.”

Why did you pivot out of filmmaking?
The business side and the financial side of making movies, especially as an independent filmmaker, is so expensive. I’m also pretty neurotic and I like to have full control over everything. After I graduated, I wasn’t really sure what my direction was going to be, but then I ended up getting a comic book illustration gig right out of the gate and I just never really looked back. That led to a storyboarding job and then that led to more opportunities.

Tell me about your comic book gig.
I worked with a writer, Jim Krueger. He’s won Eisner Awards before, he has worked for Marvel and DC. He wrote “Justice,” which is one of the big “Justice League” comics. He had a continuation of the Cinderella story, but very dark—”Game of Thrones” meets Cinderella. That was the first book that I did. He was like, “I have this story if you want to illustrate it.” At 21-22, fresh out of college, it’s like, absolutely. Because he worked at Marvel back in the ’90s, he was like, “I have a friend from Marvel who works at Mercedes-Benz and he is looking for a storyboard artist. If you want, I could hook you up with that.”

What do you do for work now?
I’m a sketch artist for an agency that designs movie posters.

Is your work creatively fulfilling?
It’s very creatively fulfilling, but it’s hard. We work 10-hour days. I don’t have as much time for my own personal art, but after four and a half years I’ve gotten a better balance. I love to draw and I love movies, and it’s just a really cool fusion of those things. I’m a huge “Star Wars” nerd, and we work on all the “Star Wars” TV shows.

What’s your favorite project to date?
I don’t know if you saw the show “Pluribus….”

I haven’t, but I loved those subway ads with all the yellow.
Right, it’s her face screaming. That was my painting. That was really cool to see because we do a lot of illustration like that, but oftentimes the client doesn’t go for it. I had done that a year ago and then I saw the billboard and I was like, “Wait, did I draw that?” Nobody told me that it was up there.

Whoa, you had a billboard moment!
The billboard was right outside of my building, too. It was very surreal.

How did queer bodies become a focus of your work?
The first big thing I did was a gender-bending series where I was drawing superheroes. Mostly X-Men. I was trying to make a point showing the double standard. Women are portrayed in these really skimpy, highly sexualized outfits and men never are. It wasn’t sexualized or anything, it was just men wearing women’s costumes. I came out when I was 22 right after I graduated college and I feel like it took me a while to embrace my queerness. As I sort of became more comfortable with myself, my art also expanded. When I did that X-Men series I got some negative responses that just made me want to be even more explicit.

How did your work evolve?
I feel like my stuff got funnier and sexier and skimpier. For a long time, I was just doing nerdy pin-up/pop culture stuff. Then during COVID, I started my main series, my Boyfriend series. At first it was just a couple living in the same place during COVID. It was a couple making bread, or giving each other haircuts, or just sitting on the couch. It expanded into just regular everyday life after a while, trying to capture a normal queer experience. We’re just normal people. It’s mundane, and I feel like we need to show queer people doing that.

Your drawings caught my eye during COVID because your characters lounged and posed in all the same irregular ways as I did in my apartment. How did you hone such sensitivity to the ways our bodies actually look?
I don’t think it’s conscious. I do pose for a lot of my own drawings as reference and I’m always trying to get the correct angle. I don’t want to just draw a very upright person sitting with two legs on the floor. You want to give it some character and some story, but also you want the drawing to have movement as well. You don’t want it to just be a stiff thing.

How do color and light help with storytelling?
Color informs the mood. I love to use a light ray to add depth and sculpt the characters. It helps them also break away from the wall or the background. It’s like a spotlight to highlight something in the composition without being so overt. I also really just like the contrast. It’s a hard challenge trying to understand how light interacts with things. You kind of have to think in a 3D space, and that’s one of the most fun parts about drawing. When I get to the lighting, every drawing is going to be different because every person is in a different position or the angle of the light is going to be different.

What are your go-to tools?
I have a tablet, so I just draw right in Photoshop. I used to draw by hand on paper with micron pens, then scan it and color it digitally. After years and years realizing how much money I’m spending on paper and pens, I’m saving so much money by just drawing straight on the tablet and so much time. You can get so much more detail by being able to zoom in, especially now with my old eyes.

Would you say your process has changed?
Drawing digitally on a tablet, you do lose some of the technique. The tangibility of being a part of the thing you’re creating is definitely lost when you’re working digitally. I feel like I’m constantly trying to find a way to mimic reality digitally. I’ll find a favorite brush that I’ll use for like a year and then move on to a different brush. For a really long time, I was using something that looked like a graphite pencil and I loved it. Now I’m looking at it and it just looks bad. Now I’m using something that looks more like an ink pen. I’ve been using Photoshop like this since 2011 and I’m still not really happy with the look of digital, especially the line work.

What’s it like using Instagram as the main platform for sharing your work
It’s been wild. I didn’t really expect it to resonate with so many people. I started a store not really knowing if it would pop off, and the fact that people buy this and put it in their apartment is insane to me. I’ve had a lot of really beautiful messages from people being like, “I would do this with my ex.” They’re like, “This drawing really reminds me of my husband who passed away a couple years ago.” It’s weird because it’s so personal to me and it’s interesting to see how it becomes so personal to other people as well.

Does your work always feel personal?
Pretty much everything I do is based on real experiences that I’ve had, which is probably why the intimacy feels real. It’s based on real moments that I’ve had with exes or my current boyfriend, where we’re just sitting around watching TV together. Because I’m dating someone who lives in San Francisco, I just did one dealing with a long distance relationship for the first time. I drew something of us recently saying goodbye at the airport, and seeing other people be like, “Oh yeah, I’ve done long distance. It really sucks.” I just drew it because I was crying hysterically on the plane ride home. It just came to my mind and I was like, “I need to draw this.”

How do you make the personal accessible?
I’m not necessarily trying to do it for other people or for likes. Drawing is how I’ve always communicated my feelings. If I’m depressed, I draw something. If I’m really happy, I draw something. If I’m horny, I draw something. That’s just an outlet for me to express myself better than words can.

How do you see your work fitting into queer liberation?
All queer art is revolutionary. Being out is a revolutionary act, and it’s important that our lives are documented. It’s important that the queer voices are out there for the younger generation, but even for old conservative people who don’t realize that we exist. Growing up, I was obsessed with comics and I remember going to comic book stores and seeing posters of Catwoman and Jean Grey and these hot women with giant boobs. I remember my friends having posters of hot girls up on their walls and just feeling like, “I don’t know why I’m not responding to this the same way that my friends are. There must be something wrong with me.” A lot of what I want to do is make the art that I wish I could have seen growing up.

Well, us little gay boys did at least have “Batman & Robin.”
Oh, right. Exactly. My favorite movie.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The same ten questions, a million different answers

Where do you find peace?
In my studio and sometimes during my 11-minute meditation.

Is there a piece of art you can’t stop thinking about?
I got invited to do an art exhibition next month, and this idea of doing reworked textiles or upcycled textiles keeps coming into the fold. I keep thinking about that. I don’t know how that’s going to be translated yet, but I know that that’s going to be an aspect of it.

What was the last exhibition you went to see?
It was Andy Coolquitt at McLennon Pen Co. Gallery in Austin. He got to exhibit some work at Las Cruxes. He was one of the artists that I really admired and I invited him to do a show. I was so flattered and honored when he agreed to do it. He’s just such a brilliant mind and there’s so much humor and lightness to his work that’s also very intentional. He’s building his home as his masters thesis project while he’s at the University of Texas in Austin. It’s going to be his life’s work, but he still works on it and he’s amazing.

What’s the best meal you’ve eaten recently?
On Christmases, it’s our tradition to make tamales and pozole verde. Not to toot my own horn, but I’ve gotten the recipe and the ingredients pretty down. We have a family recipe, but I kind of zhuzh it up with my own flavors, and my family was saying how they were the best tamales they’ve ever had. That was such a big compliment and I was also like, “Hell yeah, this is probably the best meal I’ve eaten in a while.”

What’s your favorite thing to wear right now?
I’m channeling my inner Betty Woodman, so I’ve been wearing my little head scarves in the studio. I’m really into Chinese-embellished house slippers right now as my comfy. They’re just such a game changer.

Which unread book on your shelf haunts you most?
Ta-Nehisi Coates, “Between the World and Me.” His work can be very intense, but he’s such a powerful storyteller. I read “The Message” at the beginning of last year, and I just think he confronts a lot of hard truths—racism, colonialism—and I think it’s just important to read a lot about people’s lived experience. It really broadens your compassion for people. I keep it on my coffee table so that I can remember to read it when it’s time, but it’s been there since last year.

What’s your beauty secret?
Staying hydrated. Lots of water. Daily moisturizer and then SPF, very important. I do gua sha massage every morning and sometimes night. It’s my ritual, the 10 minutes I have to myself every morning and every night.

What’s your favorite scent?
Going back to rituals, sandalwood and sweetgrass. I burn sandalwood and sweetgrass every day to open up the four directions, the cardinal points. I pray to my ancestors and to my spirit guides just to be grounded and get centered. Then I’ll use sandalwood oil as a base for my body.

What’s your dream vacation?
Taking a year off just to travel all of Southeast Asia. I’ve been to Thailand, so if that’s any indication of what it’s like, I would love to just explore all the other countries. It was mindblowing. I’m obsessed.

What’s love got to do with it?
Love is the message. I think love is the essence of life. I truly believe that, and I think that if we led with love, not only for ourselves but for others, I really do believe that that would decimate a lot of issues in our world.

This interview has been edited for length and content.

When this newsletter launched in 2024, an interview with a ceramicist was at the top of my wishlist. Their work may fill each of our days, but the craft is one I always observed as an outsider. In middle school, several close friends of mine took a pottery class together every week while I dissociated my way through whatever sports practice I was enduring that season. In more recent years, my friend Gina has accomplished that elusive dream of honing a hobbyist craft alongside her weekly workload. Enrolled at Brooklyn Clay, she’s steadily built a catalog of pretty and practical work reflecting her progress as a maker. All this is to say, I never once had an opportunity to try my hand at ceramics—until recently.

Lucky as I am, I happen to know a brilliant ceramicist right here in Brooklyn. I paid my friend Aziza Mirzan a visit at her studio in South Williamsburg this spring for an afternoon of the basics. Aziza gave me a meticulous rundown on all the materials, tools, and machines required for various methods of making ceramics. My mind raced trying to retain the names of all the delicate blades, needles, sponges, and even clay types at our disposal in Aziza’s small but mighty space. She even threw some clay on the wheel at the last minute for a quick tutorial, yielding a sinewy but sturdy vessel rendered with enough swiftness to leave me agape.

Perhaps most memorable of all was wedging. After Aziza let me take the slab roller for a few spins, she coached me through the process of kneading the clay with force to resolve any air bubbles and ensure plasticity. The meditative potential of the practice began to emerge as I rammed my clay into the board for minutes on end. I then dampened my hands to reshape my ram’s head into anything that resembled a functional object. After much titivation, I soon completed an approximation of a mug, personalized as much by its awkward form as it was by the signature I etched into its bottom. I of course walked away with a deepened appreciation for the demand of the work, but I also grasped a sense of its rich reward. To reshape the earth by hand into an object of function is nothing short of alchemy.

Verónica Ortuño possesses an intimate understanding of the possibilities awaiting us in the clay. Founder and creative director of Casa Verónica, she stands before a vibrant portfolio of distinct objects crafted through vibrations exchanged between her and the clay (literally). Verónica’s Mexican heritage inspires her to enrich her work through longstanding artisan traditions while her history as a punk musician grounds the practice in catharsis, free expression, and authenticity. Oh, and her pieces are cool as hell, too.

Here, Verónica and I discuss becoming both a maker and a business owner, fostering artistic community, and honoring the emotional resonance of her craft.

(Special thanks to the brilliant Tara Kugelman for this one)

Where did you grow up?
I was born in Santa Ana, California. I was there till ’96, and then in sixth grade, we moved to Houston. My dad had passed already at that time, my mom remarried, and she just wanted to start a new life. Texas seemed like the natural next step.

What were your early creative outlets?
I would sew a lot with my grandmother. She made a lot of our outfits growing up, so she taught us how to sew clothes for our Barbie dolls, how to embroider on linen napkins and tablecloths. Aside from that, I joined school choir from kindergarten up until high school. Being Mexican, there’s music all around you all the time. That felt natural to me.

When did ceramics become part of your life?
My family would always go to Tijuana and get pots to cook the beans in. My grandma would make beans in this really tall terracotta pot on the stove. Fast forward to 2017—I was doing an interiors project in Detroit, and I went to the Detroit Institute of Art. I got to see all the ancient ceramic and glass pieces from before the first century. Thinking about just how many lifetimes, how many different hands they had gone through, how much they’ve traveled. It made me think a lot about that time as a kid. These pieces do live for so long. They travel so much, and I can’t believe these shards of pottery and glass are still here. It was a really spiritually moving moment for me. That really shifted something internally for me.

You began practicing in 2019. Where did you learn?
I took a three-week class at Laguna Gloria here in Austin. They just taught basic handbuilding techniques. They offered wheel-throwing, but I was just so terrible at that so I stuck to handbuilding. Then I went to do a few residencies and I worked with the indigenous communities in Oaxaca. I really got to see that process and that’s when it really took off for me.

When did you begin to refine an aesthetic?
I don’t know that my aesthetic is refined. My aesthetic just evolves with me. It follows the stages of my life and where I am. I feel like my aesthetic is very experimental. Sometimes it could be really fluid and I get into a period where I’m really into sculptures or figurines. Then I get really into more functional pieces or lamps. I was really surprised at how much people gravitate toward the lamps. I didn’t think of myself as being someone who would design lamps so much, but they’re really fun to make.

How has your relationship to material evolved?
I would like to keep exploring the wheel at some point. Right now, I commune so closely with handbuilding. There’s a lot of meditation, there’s a lot of grounding in my practice. There is a spiritual connection there. Actually, the very first time that I touched clay while I was doing the classes at Laguna Gloria, it vibrated. My whole body vibrated. It had this power to it that kind of scared me. There’s a very deep connection with earth that I didn’t even notice was there before.

Did you ever experience this spiritual resonance while making music?
At its core, the ethos of punk is just creative freedom and creative expression. I was 17 when I started playing punk music, and that just blew my mind wide open at the possibilities of what you can do not only in music but in your everyday life. That was foundational. It gave me a lot of confidence to experiment with so many different influences. We live in a system where you need to have one thing that you’re good at, or you need to be perfect at this one thing. Music really just decimated that idea for me. Just being in that space with different artists and friends, it really moves you.

Community clearly matters a lot to you. Is that why you launched your collective, Las Cruxes?
I was fortunate enough to tour with the bands I was in. We got to do some national tours and international tours. We were playing a lot of DIY spaces and galleries. Coming off of those tours, I would come back home to Austin and we would play house parties and clubs. There was a big need in Austin for a cultural hub, like a DIY all-ages space that was open to the community. I really wanted to support my creative peers that I had met along the way, whether they were doing art, whether they were doing a fashion collection. I had this idea that I can create a space where I am having these shows, where there are zine releases, retail space, gallery space, workshops.

You were very ahead of that trend.
They’re everywhere now, right? Now, you see a lot of concept stores and experiential spaces. In 2009, that was far less common. It was needed in Austin and I felt like I should do it.

What were some lessons learned at the helm?
I was so naive going into it. I was mid-20s, and I just didn’t have the financial literacy to open up a business. I had gotten a small $3,000 loan from a friend in the punk community, and then I maybe had $300 that I used to do the buildout. It was all just learning as I went, but that was probably one of the biggest challenges. Just be intentional in what you’re doing and see the long game of it because it’s a lot of work. I do think that knowing what you stand for is also very important. It was just to have a space with a lot of soul and being authentic to who I was. While it wasn’t a moneymaking endeavor, it really spiritually filled me. It was a big labor of love.

How did you get from your initial classes in 2019 to the launch of Casa Verónica?
Through Las Cruxes, I was already into interior design and architecture, and I had gotten this opportunity from an entrepreneur in Detroit who had a music venue. He wanted me to do a few spaces for him. I didn’t go to school for interior design or architecture, but he had visited Las Cruxes, so I went and did those projects. Then lockdown happened. I had just taken a class through the ceramics portion. I was like, “Well, crap. How am I going to subsidize income here? I need to figure something out because I can’t travel to do my interior design work. I no longer have the brick and mortar.” I thought, “You know what? I’m home. I should just build a little shed and just create some pieces and then try to sell my pieces to clients.” So I did.

What was the reception like?
I launched the first collection and everything sold out online. It’s far less stressful than doing interior design. Less liability. It just felt like a clear sign to pivot. I really listened to the signs. I was doing interior design and ceramics for a year, and ceramics just filled me up so much more. I needed to simplify because I’d also just gotten pregnant. It was like having two babies.

How did you want to distinguish yourself as an artisan?
I was just trying to be creative for myself because when I had Las Cruxes, I was supporting a lot of other people and I was kind of losing my creative voice. I felt detached from myself, like my own spirit was diminishing. When I talk about the clay vibrating, I’m like, “This is something that I do need to tap into. Maybe this is going to help me find myself.” I was finding myself again so that I can make things for others.

Does it ever actually feel like work?
Yeah, you do have to be present. It is spiritual, it is a form of therapy for me. You have a lot of time with your thoughts. You’re by yourself, whether you’re listening to music or not, and it really helps me clarify my thoughts, my ideas, my voice, my message.

Are there any ceramicists in particular that you admire?
Betty Woodman. She really changed what’s possible in ceramics and just the scope and scale of what you can do with clay. One of the indigenous families that I did go visit in Oaxaca is José García Antonio. He got glaucoma in his 50s and became blind. He was a potter before then, but after he got glaucoma, he started speaking through his hands. It’s such a beautiful way to translate your work. Anytime I go to Oaxaca, I go sit and talk with them and see their process. The entire family helps out with making pieces.

Are you still making stuff in the shed or do you have a new space?
I’m really trying to get out of that 100-square-foot space. When I first started, I was just trying to stay within budget. I do keep it simple and I only have what I absolutely need and use, but I’m trying to save funds right now so that I can make a bigger space. My dream would be to have a two-story space where operations are up top and then all production’s downstairs.

What are the essentials in there with you?
Just the shelf so that I can have all my bisqueware. Everything is made in small batches, so there’s a section for those pieces and then just works in progress. I may have a few little inspirational pieces that I’m into. If I’m into Romanian glazed bowls, I’ll have a little shelf that has that so I can reference it, but it’s pretty small. I have one table where I do all my handbuilding. I have another table where I have my slab roller, and then I have my tiny hobby kiln in the corner. Somehow I’m able to fit all this stuff.

Your catalog is so colorful and eclectic. What are the throughlines across your work?
Presence is a big one. Having respect for craft and, in turn, having respect for time. I really try to communicate how important my family is—respect for my ancestors, respect for land. While on the surface, pieces may just seem like pretty objects on a shelf, there’s a lot of depth there and there’s a lot of care.

How would you advise other artisans struggling to find their voice?
A big one for me was allowing myself to fail. You should be good at what you do, but I think fear keeps us from experimenting or trying new things. It’s actually okay to fail because when you fail, there’s a lesson learned. If you give yourself grace to fail, you just learn so much. I really do hope that I serve even a small example that following your dreams and experimenting is possible. It’s not always easy, but it’s possible.

What’s next?
I’m a Sagittarius, so I’m always thinking in the macro. This year I’m really trying to ground and simplify and really appreciate the micro. I’m trying to really live for today, finding a lot of presence and a lot of simplicity, but also really harnessing that weird, freaky energy from when I was younger. I’m shifting away from the more expressive pieces to more functional pieces right now, and I kind of want to get back to that freakiness. The weird stuff that maybe not everybody understands. I want to harness that energy a little bit more.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The same ten questions, a million different answers

Where do you find peace?
Nature. It’s been raining here a lot lately and I just love rain. It reminds me of Seattle, and I miss it so much. If it’s raining, I’ll open the window and lay in my bed and just listen. Even mornings when it’s not raining, when it’s dark outside I’ll just open the windows and listen. It’s beautiful and peaceful to me.

Is there a piece of art you can’t stop thinking about?
It’s probably one of my pieces called “Nova.” It’s in an iteration of the “Light of a Star” collection. I changed the process a little bit in which I sculpt the fabric onto the canvas. I love the color. It’s like this kind of reddish rust tone and it’s just beautiful.

What was the last exhibition you went to see?
At the Nerman Museum, Jeremy Scott had his past multitude of Moschino collections fill the entire museum. It was the most amazing thing to see his work up close and personal.

What’s the best meal you’ve eaten recently?
I don’t like to cook. Also, I generally eat healthy so it’s nothing exciting. I’m usually like meal prepping, doing chicken every day.

What’s your favorite thing to wear right now?
Anything sweats.

Which unread book on your shelf haunts you most?
I’m more into film, more of a gamer.

What’s your beauty secret?
Drinking lots of water. I don’t really use creams or anything. I have always used Dial soap and water. That’s it. My whole life with my skin, it’s been pretty simple and it worked.

What’s your favorite scent?
I’ve been leaving conditioner in my hair. It’s like a Moroccan oil and it’s just as good as any fragrance. But when I was wearing a fragrance, it was probably like Dior Sauvage.

What’s your dream vacation?
I cannot stop thinking about Italy. I need to go to Venice before it’s fully gone, and then I would like to go to southern Italy. The last time I went, I went to Cinque Terre, which was superb, and I hiked between each of the towns. The views were amazing along the coastline and I was able to get good exercise, too. It was just beautiful—the culture, the food, the wine.

What’s love got to do with it?
Everything. I feel like love translates to just being intentional. Everything we do should be as intentional as we can make it.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Whenever I stare at a blank page and inspiration fails to strike, I summon advice from one of my favorite writers, Alexander Chee. In his seminal text “How to Write an Autobiographical Novel,” he dispenses both practical techniques and anecdotes of the writing life to steward readers and writers. One note in particular stands out:

“I found that writing in the present tense acted as self-hypnosis. Discussions of the use of the tense speak often of the effect on the reader, but the effect on the writer is just as important. Using it casts a powerful spell on the writer’s mind.”

The efficacy of this trick was undeniable the very first time I enacted it. Struggling to find my voice in a writing group, I decided to write two pages recapping the minutiae of my previous Sunday in the present tense and second person. Words not only poured out of me as I penned my postmodern summary of errands, meals, microaggressions, and existential thoughts, but my peers found resonance in reading the piece as well. The repetitive “You” became a mantra clearing fog from my mind with its echoes. This technique remains a fixture of my practice as an efficient means to enter a flow state—forgetting hunger, aches, or even thoughts while held in a delicate suspension of lucidity.

When the Guggenheim Museum hosted its Hilma af Klint retrospective in 2019, I discovered just how deep these states can take us. The landmark exhibition remains in my memory as my most satisfying visit to the Upper East Side vortex. Satisfying my thirst for abstraction, color, and witchy women, af Klint’s work also invited us into her spiritualist practice. Painting transformed the artist’s body into a vessel through which to articulate messages of transcendence and love from the spiritual realm. This practice also generated visions of the future so specific that even the firmest skeptics struggle to explain them away.

While I don’t conjure spirits, I do believe we all possess depth that cannot be accessed freely. I do believe these varied states in which we transcend consciousness are a privilege bestowed upon us when practice becomes ritual. Filled with noise and microplastics, our bodies require special commitment to unearth our own inheritance. Call it hypnosis or call it flow, but no matter how much a practice (or psychedelics) can liberate us into transcendence from our minds and bodies, there are those whose intuitions run even deeper.

Kansas City native Markus Palu is one such artist—excuse me, Renaissance Man—whose sensitivities are rewarded with vividness. Across a spectrum of mediums, he is guided by a profound intuition that not only elevates his perception into realms beyond this one, but also illuminates direction as an artist and as a man. When beckoned to move forward, Markus looks inward and proceeds with grace.

Here, Markus and I discuss sketching, sewing, painting, building, and the worlds that await inside ourselves.

Why did you begin calling yourself a Renaissance Man?
I really adopted it in my late 20s because of a dream that I had. In my dream, somebody called me a Renaissance Man. I didn’t know what a Renaissance Man was, so when I woke up I did some research and I really just resonated with the term. The jack of all trades is somebody that was a master of none but was good at many things. A Renaissance Man was somebody that had the capacity to master multiple things. I do feel like I have the capacity to attain that. I have this capacity to pick up many creative outlets and master them.

What was your earliest creative outlet?
Sketching. I was a really huge gamer, and I remember sketching female characters produced in my imagination. I remember always sketching women that were dressed in elaborate gowns. I always loved seeing how the garments they wore draped and billowed.

Were you more inspired by Princess Peach or Chun-Li?
Probably more Chun-Li. I always gravitated towards sci-fi. “Dune” and that kind of costume design was more the vibe that I leaned towards. I’m definitely an escapist. All my life, my imagination was such a safe space for me.

What did you dream of becoming?
I wanted to be in gaming. Straight out of high school I went to school for video game design at the Art Institute of Seattle, which is where I met my really good friends. They were in the fashion program and, through hanging out with them, something awoke within me.

You decided to pursue fashion design instead?
At the time, I didn’t want to go back to school and start over from scratch. It wasn’t until a decade later in my early 30s that I went back to school for fashion design.

So what was the arc of your education?
I stayed in Seattle for about a decade, and then I moved back to Kansas City. That’s when I went back to school for fashion and got my associates in apparel design just at community college. Then I ended up getting a scholarship out at FIT, and that’s what took me to LA in 2020. I was there for about three years and switched over to the technical side of fashion design because I thought it would make me a better designer. My least favorite part of the design process is the technical. It’s too mathematical. I’m more of a storyteller.

Where did you find inspiration?
My inspiration was really just texture. I love texture, I love movement. Anything that felt like it was alive or just had some sort of organic feel. Creativity is such an intuitive process for me, and even when I was in fashion school, I never looked to other designers or trends. I believed I could tap into it intuitively. It would just naturally happen.

Did you find LA creatively fulfilling?
LA was an eye-opening experience. It was probably one of the most challenging seasons in my life, but also the most fulfilling in many ways. I went there thinking fashion is what I want, this is what I’m called to do here. I ended up leaving school and working for somebody that was in fashion. My savings was running out, so I was like, ‘I need to do something. What am I good at?’ So I started to just do intuitive art for clients.

What is intuitive art?
Basically sketching for people and getting intuitive messages for them. Just looking three months into their future and then drawing what I saw. I would have a vision and then I’d draw it and give them the interpretation.

Is this when you got into painting, too?
My housemate at the time was a vintage furniture business owner, and he was starting to bring in other artists in the LA area to sell their work. I looked at one of the pieces and I was like, “I could make that.” I had never painted really, so I started to explore it in my bedroom. It was a super small space, so I had to move my bed out and just lean it up against the wall so that I could paint on the floor. It was chaos, but it worked.

How long have you let your intuition guide you?
I’ve been super intuitive since I was very young. It’s such an important part of my DNA. From a very young age, I was very sensitive to the spiritual realm and I just saw things and experienced things. I would have dreams about the future and it would come true. I just knew things about people and they didn’t have to tell me. I see into the spiritual realm with my eyes open. I’ve seen a lot of dark things, but I’ve also seen a lot of light. I just feel like intuition has been such a pivotal core thing.

It doesn’t make sense to a lot of people. Same with my life, too. I feel like such a nomad. I just never had one place that felt like home because I’m constantly just going where the wind blows or wherever feels right.

I first learned about you through your photography. When did you get curious about that medium?
I started taking pictures when I went back to school in my early 30s for fashion. It was just with my iPhone and it was just to capture anything mundane in everyday life that I thought was beautiful. It was just to capture beauty and to communicate it to the world.

Which mundane things attracted you?
Whenever I felt like something stood out to me because there was an intuitive message in it. The reason I posted it or captured it was because it was speaking to me and I felt like there was a deeper message in it. I believe the people that view my stories are maybe meant to see it. They’re intuitively guided there to receive the message that is being seen.

Your photos caught my eye because of how you explore light and shadow. Why is that a recurring theme?
I like more moody lighting, so I’ll generally shoot early mornings or when the sun’s setting. It’s really just what I see in the moment.

How do you apply this approach when photographing products for a client?
A lot of the clients that I’ve worked with have just given me creative control. I’ve tried in the past to ask what their needs are, what they need for their stills or their social media or website, but a lot of times they’ve just trusted my eye and what works for me. I’ve been very fortunate.

What are you shooting with right now?
Last year I got a Sony α7 IV. I don’t know nothing about cameras, either. This is my first professional camera, so I’ve been teaching myself on YouTube and just getting out there and shooting.

Does your process vary across mediums?
It’s just intuitive. I like spontaneity and just being able to start a process differently each time if I want. Whatever comes, I just embrace it if it feels right. I don’t like boxes and never have. That’s the beauty of all creativity. It should just be flowing and it shouldn’t have necessary structure. It should just be.

What’s your favorite medium?
It was set design. When I was in LA, I had a summer I freelanced for a company who did visual design for resorts and casinos. I had the opportunity to creative direct a project for a casino doing their Year of the Rabbit celebration. I got to do all the sketches and design from the ground up. Each room had to have decor and specific sets that spoke to that year. I got to use my imagination at a capacity I hadn’t in a while. I felt like a child again.

What are you focused on right now?
I’m really just focusing on building community. I’ve set up this creative organization called Of Commonwealth. I wanted to build it to give back to the community wherever I am and support them through creative means. What that looks like right now is with photography. I’ve been reaching out to local businesses and seeing how I could serve them and give back to them by providing my photography skills—if they need any stills for their socials, website, an event—and doing it for free just to give back. Right now in my life, art is great, but there has to be a bigger meaning to it. I need to feel like I’m leaving a mark on the world around me through creativity.

How lucid are you when you’re creating?
When I’m sewing, I’m just zoned out. I’m just off. When I was doing a lot of acrylic, I would have the blank canvas and I would see something in my mind’s eye on the canvas. I would just paint that part, take a step back, and then I would see the next thing in my mind’s eye.

Tell me about synthesizing your work in textiles and painting for your “Light of a Star” series.
I had been painting acrylic and plaster and playing with other materials, but this was the first time I brought in textile. I was just thinking about the different techniques in fashion design that produced something sculptural or had some texture. I thought of pleats, so that was the starting point. That started with sewing linens onto a raw canvas, and what I would do is buy a couple yards of the linen fabric and then sew line by line. It’s an intuitive process. I’m constantly maneuvering the fabric, but I’m sewing line by line and adjusting the fabric until it feels right to stop or turn.

Do you paint the linen?
I don’t paint it at all. After I sew all of the fabric, then I stretch raw canvas onto framing. Once that’s stretched, I’ll take the linen that I sewed and I’ll sculpt it on top of the raw canvas to where I like the flow of the fabric. Wherever it’s indented or dips and meets the raw canvas, I’ll hand-stitch it so that it holds it in place.

What do you want “Light of a Star” to express?
It’s about hope. That series is very special to me because it came to me in the most challenging season of my life. In LA, I was going through a bunch of relationship things and I was the most depressed I’d ever been. I felt so lost and I was about to get evicted. My work wasn’t selling, and I remember just sitting in my loft staring out the window in the morning having my coffee, and I was like, ‘I need to come up with something new. How do I bring my fashion background, my education, and my sewing skills into painting?’ When I was sitting there daydreaming, I started to experiment with linen. After I finished my first piece, I took a step back and it just reminded me of the Sahara—a desert landscape.

Why did that resonate?
It just made me think of being out in the middle of nowhere, feeling lost, feeling like you didn’t know where your life was heading. Like you were in a really dark place in the middle of the night and all you needed to do was look up the North Star to find your guiding light. There is a way out and you’re going to find your way back.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Editor’s note: Markus has also recently illustrated a children’s book, “Everyone Thinks I’m Stinky.” Check it out here.

The same ten questions, a million different answers

Where do you find peace?
I find peace in doing art. I also find peace in just being around my family.

Is there a piece of art you can’t stop thinking about?
There’s several pieces. I tend to work on three or four pieces at a time.

What was the last exhibition you went to see?
I’m part of a group show at the gallery where my studio is located—the Bunker Center of the Arts in Kansas City. I have a couple pieces installed there.

What’s the best meal you’ve eaten recently?
Probably some bean soup that my wife made. I’m a bean soup guy and mostly a vegetarian.

What’s your favorite thing to wear right now?
I like drawstring pants and loose-fitting shirts, but I also do a lot of shopping at thrift stores. I got this vest at Goodwill and every time I wear it, people go, “Hey man, where’d you get that vest?” It kind of looks like Crocodile Dundee, but it’s constructed a little differently. I think I wear it well. At least people tell me I wear it well.

Which unread book on your shelf haunts you most?
I’m a big fan of “Dune.” I’ve read “Children of Dune” and a couple others, but I have a whole stack of them in my office and I keep saying I gotta get to them. I’m missing pieces in the story.

What’s your beauty secret?
Mainly it’s to eat well and hydrate, and I love sitting in a sauna.

What’s your favorite scent?
Probably something like sandalwood. I’m an incense guy. They don’t let us burn incense in the studio spaces, but I like to do that if I do art here at the house. I like to have some incense going and just kind of meditate on that.

What’s your dream vacation?
My dream vacation would be to go to someplace like Bali. I want to do an art residency in Barcelona. There’s several that hopefully I’m going to apply to and attend next year. I might not come back.

What’s love got to do with it?
Probably everything. I love doing art. I didn’t love being a lawyer, but I love doing art. I create stuff. I create whatever I can get my hands on. Loving what I’m doing is so profound and so important to me.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

All I ever wanted to do as a kid was grow up. In an often dark childhood, I romanticized the promise of autonomy, privacy, and an entire world certain to unfold at my feet. As I now ripen into my mid-30s, I’m surprised how often I think of my boyhood and how stricken that time was with desperation for a life of my own. The more I try to do right by that little guy, the more I understand why we call those youthful visions of the future dreams.

To access the path toward my own independence, I interrogated every authority I respected at school or in my community. “What do I need to do if I want to go to this university, work at this publication, leave this mark on the world?” I discovered far too late how many of these authorities misled me. Whether it was academic deans or seasoned journalists a friend of a friend knew, the vast majority never steered me toward my dreams. They encouraged me to conform.

In a capitalist system, it comes as no surprise to us now that even at a liberal arts college, those in power insist we carve out space within the confines of the framework they occupy themselves. Capital is the only factor to consider. No reward is worth the risk and no value is placed upon fulfillment or experimentation when it’s not making somebody money.

At every single stage of my life, people have expressed awareness and even pride in deciding to sacrifice passion for profit. Too many boys at my high school espoused the shithead mantra of “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” An undergrad classmate with undeniable finesse behind the camera bemoaned his plans to pursue a business degree as the more practical choice for his future. After many steadfast years climbing the ranks as a performer, a former neighbor made his Broadway debut in 2022—only to relocate two years later to work in pharmaceutical sales.

A certain amount of privilege comes with being able to pursue a creative career, but that doesn’t terminally disqualify everyone else from practicing their craft. My friend Mik is a big inspiration, somehow finding enough hours every week to commit full-time to both social work and playwriting. My buddy Pancho spends his days teaching kids and his nights playing shoegaze punk in a band that recently toured London. Several of the inspiring subjects profiled for this very publication support their artistic careers with corporate gigs. It’s an exercise not in selling out but in sustenance.

No matter how unstable the world around us feels, exercising one’s craft is always available and always worthwhile. It’s for this reason I am such a fan of Darryl Hines, who heeded his calling as an artist after three decades practicing law. Through colorful and vivid mixed media artwork, Darryl explores his family history and unpacks generations of lore that preceded him. His work not only tells his story, but the stories of ancestors whose struggles and injustices resonate still today. By honoring his own passion, Darryl honors all those before him who never could.

Here, Darryl and I discuss psychedelic murals, ancestral trauma, and the reward of discovering oneself as an artist and as a person.

Where did you grow up? What influence did it have on you?
I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio, and my greatest influences were my mother and father, both of whom encouraged me to create art. Also, I was part of a gifted art students program while in high school that provided guidance and classes at the Cleveland Museum of Art. My father wanted me to go abroad and study art at the Louvre. He had been to Paris during World War II and he thought that my going there to study art would allow him to realize his dream of actually going inside the building—something he wasn’t allowed to do as a Black G.I.

How did you express yourself creatively growing up?
I was known throughout my large extended family as “the artist.” Whenever there were projects like creating posters for my grandmother’s church or painting murals in my home or in a relative’s home, I always got the call.

Any memorable commissions?
I had an Uncle Charlie who was very creative—could build and make anything. I always sensed he had something artistic running through him. He was quite a character, so he would make stuff and then kind of disappear for a while. He’d build a cabinet for you and then he’d disappear for weeks.

What did you make for Uncle Charlie?
He asked me to paint a mural on the wall in his apartment. That was probably mid-’60s, I was maybe 15 or 16. He wanted something really wild. “I want something psychedelic,” he said. “Just do your thing and let yourself out.” I painted this gigantic bloodshot eye on the wall. He called my mother the next day and he said, “I came home drunk and I saw this bloodshot eye and it scared the hell out of me.”

That’s nuts, I love it. What was your inspiration?
Thinking about his character, I just thought it’s something that would get his attention. I made it real colorful with the veins and it was kind of realistic-looking.

When and why did you decide to become a lawyer?
I had an experience my junior year in high school. I was selected by this foundation to go to the Chautauqua Institute in Chautauqua, New York. I was there for a whole summer with a lot of New York-based artists. Some of the artists I met were just so amazing and they were struggling. I’d look at the work and think, ‘There’s no way I could make a living doing this.’ My 16-year-old self was not that confident in terms of what I could do, so that kind of pushed me away.

I had always thought about law in the background. I used to watch TV shows like “Perry Mason” growing up, and I asked a friend of mine who was already in law school when I was an undergrad. He told me, “Law school requires a lot of writing. You should get a degree in journalism or communications.” I got my BA in journalism/communications, then went to law school with that.

What was your plan?
I was really thinking I could be an investigative reporter. I did a radio show later on called “The Law and You.” It was to promote my law practice, which was pretty cool.

Where were you based at the time?
I opened up a practice in Columbus, Ohio, and that’s where I did the show. I got clients from that. I’d bring on different people who would talk about different subjects related to law.

What kind of law did you want to practice?
I had the need to give back, to help people. I did that for a while as a legal aid attorney for about two years. Then I taught at law school for a year, and then I went into private practice, and then corporate, and then back to private practice. The last thing I did as a lawyer was my own law practice.

Was art in the back of your mind all those years?
I wasn’t even considering art. It was something that was like another me. Another place and another time. The focus was on family, and then the law was so demanding that I didn’t have a lot of time or energy for anything else. I didn’t attempt to do anything art-related, except to doodle on a legal pad or help one of my kids with a school project, for more than 30 years.

What was the impetus to return to art?
Once my kids were grown and finished with college, and I thought my family was pretty much established and secured, I just started thinking, ‘What about me?’ I was exhausted by the system. I was kind of like Don Quixote, fighting dragons that were really windmills incapable of being defeated by my puny efforts trying to expose them.

How did you grease the wheels after so long?
It started with pastels. I’ve always liked the ability to blend and work with tone. I went out and bought a set of pastels and I did some pieces. I did one pastel of the late blues artist John Lee Hooker and it turned out really good.

When did you start showing your work?
There was a gallery in Atlanta called Besharat. I decided I’ll just go down there and show my work. So I go to the gallery and [owner Massoud Besharat] wasn’t there. He was over in Europe, but his secretary said, “Just leave the work here and when he comes back, he’ll take a look.” About a week or two later, she calls me and says, “He’s not really interested in the paintings, but how much do you want for the John Lee Hooker portrait?” I hadn’t even thought about it, but I gave him a price and they actually bought it. Later on, I went down there. He had a big party and my artwork was hanging in his house. That inspired me.

From there you went to the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA)?
I earned my MFA in 2022 at the tender age of 72.

Why go back to school?
I think I took one art class in undergrad, so I just wanted to have that experience. It was great to be in a class or cohort with other artists and be able to bounce ideas.

Whose work inspired you?
Robert Longo. I really liked his drawings. I always felt like drawing was my strongest medium, more so than painting. I don’t have a lot of patience working with oil. I tend to not wait for things to dry and I make it muddy and sloppy. Barkley L. Hendricks is someone whose work I enjoyed and I got more exposed to Kerry James Marshall. I also looked for Jack Whitten, who was more raw in his work and presentation. Hale Woodruff was another artist whose work I really liked because of the narratives that he created, particularly when it came to African Americans and the history of enslavement.

When did you decide to explore racism and violence through your work?
It’s kind of twofold. As a lawyer, I started doing civil rights law. I handled a couple of police brutality cases and I started seeing what’s going on. As a student in the early ’70s I was exposed to a lot of that. I was at one point very involved with the Black student union on campus. We shut down the administration building, so all those things reverberated in my work later.

How did you want to approach it artistically?
People don’t want to revisit history or don’t want to be reminded of the atrocities that have happened. That drew me to, ‘Okay, how can I tell the story? How can I express myself and how can my art have some meaning, if not to anyone else, at least to me?’

How did you carry that into your work?
My own family history plays a large part. Part of my current inspiration is the well-documented history of my paternal grandmother’s family history that has been traced back to 1735 when our ancestors were kidnapped from Africa and sold in Yorktown, Virginia. Our family tree has been purchased by the Smithsonian. That whole history has intrigued me and caused me to dig deeper.

Speaking of family, I know that you’ve used some of your mother’s old textiles in your work? What inspired that?
Coming back from the MFA program, I went back to Cleveland. A lot of my mother and father’s belongings are still there in the house. My mother was a very good seamstress. She would make my sister’s clothes, dresses. Her old sewing machine’s still there, and a lot of the patterns and materials that she used are still around. Even though she passed in 2001, my sisters kept that stuff.

Why is textile your preferred medium?
Two or three years ago, the law school that I attended commissioned me to do a portrait of a distinguished attorney who’s now 105 years old. When I was working on the portrait, I showed another artist and he said, “The problem with this is that you’re trying to finish it before you start.” In other words, I’m rushing through it. I ultimately finished the painting, but it made me think I need to slow down. That’s what textile does for me. It makes me slow down. It’s not about slopping paint on the canvas. It’s one stitch at a time—or, tufting is one loop at a time.

What kind of tufting do you do?
I’m using embroidery techniques. I really like those.

Your portfolio has a lot of mixed media work. How does mixed media help you as a storyteller?
There are some limitations in terms of expression with tufting and embroidery. Even though I do want to slow down, I don’t want to take a year to complete a piece. Because I’ve worked primarily at a large scale, it takes a while. To incorporate a little bit of painting, like figurative kind of stuff, helps me with the composition and also inspires me to see the finished product.

Was there a piece you made early on that signaled you were on the right path?
One in particular was a piece I did when I was in grad school at MICA. It’s a painting of Mike Tyson when he fought Evander Holyfield.

Oh man. I remember seeing that close-up shot of Holyfield’s ear in the newspaper….
It’s funny because I saw the image. It was a photo reference. The Mike Tyson piece was something I just did to break away from the seriousness of some other things I was doing. Artists in residence or collectors or curators would come make studio visits when I was at MICA, and I would try to show all these cool pieces. Everyone would come back to that one because I used tar, I used burlap, I used just all kinds of stuff in there. I put it in my thesis show and a couple days after the opening, I got a call from our director. “Hey Darryl, we have someone who wants to buy that Mike Tyson piece.”

This gentleman’s a film producer in Hollywood and an avid collector and he bought that piece. He also sits on the board of trustees at the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Hammer Museum in LA. He has it in his home right now in the Hollywood Hills.

What do you consider your signature piece?
I think my signature piece is a large textile and mixed media piece. I attempt to recount the experience of two ancestors: a mother and daughter, Tab and Amir, who were kidnapped from the Gold Coast of Africa and sold into slavery in 1735. Their stories have been well-documented as a part of my family’s oral history and also the family tree I spoke about earlier. Adding a visual narrative to their stories, we realize how horrific an experience it was but also a story of their resilience, as their direct and living descendants now number over 5,000 people and included the late tennis star Arthur Ashe.

How do you advise the viewer to hold tragedy or violence when looking at art?
I did one piece about the Igbo tribe, who chose to drown themselves rather than submit to being enslaved. Someone who doesn’t know the history might just look at that and go, “Oh, you’ve got a bunch of people walking in the water.” I want you to see the work and maybe understand the history. I try to steer people towards the history and hopefully beyond the artwork itself. Go online, read a book, do something to understand the narrative. Some people think that slavery wasn’t so bad, that people were enslaved and never resisted. That’s crazy. There’s so much out there I didn’t know myself, even though I consider myself a student of history. I’m curious and I always want to learn.

What advice do you have for anyone considering a pivot into a creative field—at any age.
We work and sometimes it’s just a job. We gotta have a living, we gotta eat. But if you are drawn to something else and you find a way to express it, then do that. Find out what you’re passionate about. That’s where I am. Even at this stage in my life, I wake up every day thinking I can’t wait to get to my studio and I can’t wait to start working.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The same ten questions, a million different answers.

Where do you find peace?
I don’t think I found it yet. I’m quite a restless person. I find peace in the idea of being old. I really can’t wait to get into that stage of peace. I think about it all the time—retired and knowing myself fully. I wish I could do this now, but it’s just so exciting. I’m constantly around new people and new places. My life has evolved so much in the last three years that I can’t even grasp peace.

Is there a piece of art you can’t stop thinking about?
It’s the image that I have as my profile picture everywhere, which is this self-portrait of Magritte. It’s a ham slice with an eye. I feel it’s me. I was at Wegmans the other day, and it has a deli section with so many hams and there was this ham called “Celebration Ham.” I looked at it and I’m like, ‘This is me.’ I’m a Celebration Ham.

What was the last exhibition you went to see?
I went to an exhibition of Luigi Ghirri, a photographer from the town where I grew up. I love his work.

What’s the best meal you’ve eaten recently?
I’m a great cook, so I guess the best meal I produced this week was actually this dinner that I cooked for my friend. One of my friends here just recently became vegan, and that became very exciting to me. I cooked this fantastic vegan meal with all the vegan dishes that I know that are traditionally Italian. I was so happy because it’s so embedded in my Mediterranean culture. It’s such a biodiverse place and veggies are just so different and colorful.

What’s your favorite thing to wear right now?
I got it in the Amalfi Coast, but it’s a vest from the Alps. It’s the kind of vest that shepherds wear, it’s just quite Japanese in the cut. It’s also 100 percent wool.

Which unread book on your shelf haunts you most?
It’s a book called “Tell Them of Battles, Kings, and Elephants.” This book is about Michelangelo and Leonardo being in Istanbul. I love that kind of fiction.

What’s your beauty secret?
Eating very good quality stuff. I cook everything.

What’s your favorite scent?
Cardamon and sandalwood.

What’s your dream vacation?
Growing up I was so into the Egyptians. I would kill to go there, honestly, I’m just so into that.

What’s love got to do with it?
Love? Oh my God. Everything. I guess I’m a very passionate person. That’s why there’s no separation between what we do and what we are most of the time. If there is not a connection to what we do, then why are we doing it?

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The last few weeks were madness. Too many meetings and deadlines and stories to file. Too many openings and parties. I’m tired. I’m not getting enough sleep. I’ve probably been drinking a bit more than I should, too. I roll my shoulders and correct my posture all day before a laptop screen in coffee shops, bars, my dining room, and the Center for Fiction. Exhausted as I am, though, I move through my days never more sure of my purpose.

After a brief corporate intermezzo, I’m fully back in the swing of pounding the pavement and chasing leads to speak with creative people about their work and why it matters. Even on the grayest mornings, I wake up confident I am not betraying my own interests. I can at least hit my alarm (or snooze) with certainty I am once at least doing what I’m meant to do.

The past year unfolded like a series of Herculean tasks. As I reintroduced myself to my peers and machinated new streams of income, I needed also to confront who I was. I tried to examine my daily habits without judgment to establish a groove. I dreamed up sexy and exciting pitches when my inbox looked meager. I showed up in email and in person to reaffirm confidence in editors, designers, and friends in the quality of my work. All this occurred against the slow dissolution of a lingering situationship, the promising birth of another, and the ultimate demise of that one too. Meanwhile, my roommate found himself embarking on a fruitful collaboration with an artist we’d admired since our early days in New York. Oh, and two of my siblings had babies and another began music school. The world spun on around me, and I feared I wouldn’t keep up.

Too many hours this year were wasted in desperation for approval, and speculating who may actually like me or my work only made it harder to like myself. Humiliation hit like a bomb whenever I was overlooked for a story, a site visit, or a party, augmenting some days into full-blown misanthropy. But after waves of self-indulgent pity, the work always awaited. I had no choice but to spend every day in the practice of telling stories. I filled days with interviews and meetings before settling in to write at myriad third spaces until I got kicked out. This became a habit, then a routine. Positive feedback and pay are good reinforcement, but the pieces I author are reward inherent—a testament to the slog.

All the hours spent on craft are an investment in ourselves. When we explore our passions we explore ourselves, but inside us all resides a voice that seeks to do us harm. No matter our talents, when it comes to sow doubt, it’s tempting to listen. Self-doubt has defined a lot of my year, but in equal measure, so has the pleasure found in just doing the work. It’s humbling, educational, and I’m grateful to do it.

Committing to the work not only leads us through self-doubt, but it enlightens us to our purpose even when we aren’t sure ourselves. Just ask Syracuse Architecture professor Rosita Palladino. Her career demonstrates that, while our creative paths may vary over the years, they lead us back on the right course if we are willing to trust the process. Bonding over Mediterranean heritages imbued with fondness for nature, food, and study, our talk illuminated the obvious and imperative bond between architecture and ecology—as well as the connectivity of all things. They say those who can’t do, teach. Rosita proves otherwise.

Here, we discuss battling self-doubt, building gardens, and the essential duty to find joy in what we do.

Did you have any relationship to design growing up?
I don’t think I had any kind of relationship to design or constructing. The path that I decided to pursue professionally and academically was more of a logical decision. I felt that I wasn’t enough of an artist.

What was your impression of architecture as a profession?
It’s quite an intellectual endeavor and it’s portrayed that way. The classic architecture student back in Italy is very intellectual and very cultured. There’s definitely more direction to practice here, while back home is more of an intellectual space. Since I was not at all interested in design or showed any inclination toward design when I was growing up, I always felt that I was less of an architect than my colleagues.

Were you more of an outdoor kid?
I had a clear relationship with nature. This was actually the first assignment that they asked us to produce at GSD [Harvard Graduate School of Design], which was called “My Ecology is My Nature.” It took me two months to write. It was only 700 words and it was such a deep question. I grew up partially in the north of Italy and then I was going a lot to the Amalfi Coast. My parents are part of this migration that happened in the ’80s after a terrible earthquake in that area. They moved up north and they opened a restaurant. Growing up, I was spending my school here in the north and then going down in the south where my grandma had beehives and wasps.

We love bees at sub_letter! What did you learn about them as a kid?
The only thing I clearly knew was that if a bee stings you, you have to use a tomato. You can heal stuff with plants.

Did living in the Mediterranean impact your interest in ecology or design
There’s this synergical relationship between material construction techniques and topology. It’s like one sort of knowledge. Where I’m from, there is this kind of dry stonewall called macère, and that construction is repeated over and again as a system to keep the agriculture in place in the hills. It’s also the way all buildings were constructed. That clear connection between topology, material, and construction technique is something that I’m really attached to. I try to make sure these three elements are always speaking to each other as I build.

Why did you make the decision to pursue architecture?
I grew up in a restaurant, so I was always with people. This restaurant was in the back of a theater, so I also grew up with dancers and actors and play directors. On the other hand, I had this fantastic literature and Latin literature professor in high school. Through this fantastic man that I’m still in contact with, I really learned what it meant to be intellectual in a way.

How so?
I learned for the first time that things are connected. It gave me a critical mindset of connecting different subjects, which now sounds so silly, but back then it was crazy. At the same time, I was very good at math, always being very logical, very rigorous in the way I was doing things. I thought architecture was the best idea. You do a little bit of everything. Probably it was a non-decision—they told me it’s related to the fact that I’m a Libra. I cannot make full decisions.

Why did you find such richness in interdisciplinary study?
I like the idea of connecting things from multiple perspectives. I always have these moments of realization through people, and this kind of connects to my practice. I don’t like to work alone, I think it’s sterile to work alone.

Which professors impacted you most while studying at Politecnico de Milano?
My third-year interior design professor was a PhD student under Andrea Branzi, a very important architecture theorist. He taught us a lot about Ettore Sottsass and the radical movement of the ’70s in Italy which, again, our idea of ecology comes from. That studio was about Ettore Sottsass’ “Metaphors,” which is this late work that they’ve done about constructing this very synthesized architecture in a remote space in Spain. They were installations—something in between ephemeral architecture and land art. I just got excited and I built my first thing that year.

What did you build?
In 2018, in my third year of architecture school, with a group of friends that are still my closest friends, we built this thing [“A Fence to Stop Time”] in Lanzarote, which is a Spanish island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, quite close to Morocco. It was just so real, so beautiful.

What was so meaningful about this project?
Learning about the radical movement and the power of self-building and self-organizing, and of an architectural imbalance with its environment. Not only materially but also culturally, and deeper connection of architecture to the land, to the people, to its ritual. That was the way I started approaching ecology with that specific meaning—not necessarily through an environmental dimension, but the ecology of architecture. It took me a few years to get there.

That was the big moment for you?
Another important moment was my thesis. That was my third year, and then I did my thesis in my sixth year. I wrote a thesis about the Amalfi Coast, specifically my small village. It was called “Greetings from the Hinterland.” The Amalfi Coast is just so touristy and the amount of money… it’s insane. This small village is so rural and so disconnected, so I was really trying to understand what happened. This really reconnected me to my land that I felt partially disconnected from because of multiple reasons.

Like what?
I didn’t fully grow up there, but my family was from there. Back then, people from the south segregated socially, and growing up in a small town in the north, I was always trying to hide that I was from the south. I was always shy or embarrassed if my parents were speaking dialect. Only after I moved to Milan, I really learned that those things make you special and there’s no need to fit in. Through that thesis, I understood the potential of designing with a clear eye to ecology.

Tell me about some of the projects you developed synthesizing architecture and ecology.
With the first project in Lanzarote with my friends, we then got access to another project thanks to our professor. We built this ephemeral garden for Milan Design Week in 2019 [“Pratofiorito”]. It was a huge group of us. I was so happy when the professor asked me to be the coordinator. I never felt like the greatest designer of my group of friends, so when I received that role, I was like, ‘Wow, am I good?’

What was the story behind the garden?
It was related to the slow food movement. At the time, Italy was working on Bee the Future, so repopulating urban areas with bees to fight against biodiversity loss. We built this garden with seedlings in a piazza. We tried to activate the space and we designed these fantastic beehives and they looked kind of Memphis-style. We designed radical beehives and we really had bees coming into our garden.

How did this project help you with your confidence as a designer?
During my masters, I was really into understanding why I believed that I wasn’t a good designer, or at least why it was so difficult for me to design. I was doing a lot of research then to produce something so small and so irrelevant, so my masters was really trying to understand who I was and maybe that research was more my thing. I practiced interior design because this relationship to ecology starts from the interior design school in Italy. Historically, the interior design school has always been the one less attached to an institutionalized idea of architecture. There was definitely more freedom to experiment and do crazier stuff.

Oh, I didn’t know you had practiced in interiors.
I did some interior design in a firm in Lisbon and I loved it. I love choosing material and doing small projects like renovation. Then I wrote this thesis and I realized that I wanted to do research and I got into GSD. I met my partner, and the last project we designed was last year in Rome.

Yes, how did you and your partner Manuel Bouzas come up with the idea for Cabane 7L?
This project chose us. It was a beautiful garden in Villa Medici, this Renaissance villa on top of the Pincian Hill in Rome where the Academy of France is. We just built this observatory that was an homage to the oldest pine tree that was planted there in the early 900s.

What did you want this design to express?
We looked at the pine tree and I told Manuel, “Hey, doesn’t this pine tree remind you of the pine trees of Villa Rufolo,” which is a villa in Ravello, in the Amalfi Coast. This pine tree had the best view of the city, the pine tree of Villa Rufolo had the best view of the gulf. He said, “Oh my God, we have a project.” The question was what have those pine trees been witnessing in those years? That’s why we decided to do an observatory and have the best view you could imagine in Rome, but also in the garden of the villa where you were unable to be seen because of these very tall bushes.

That was a great culmination of my research at GSD. I knew exactly what I wanted to tackle with my design. It took me four years of research and practice, but also personal research to get to that design clarity.

Did you always have a feeling you’d return to academia?
Yeah, forever. I like designing, but I like creating better. How we connect concepts, it’s still designing. I think it’s an education that can really allow you to be free. All that I learned can be applied to anything from cooking to writing.

What’s the main thing you want to teach your students?
Design should be fun and a practice of joy, of coming together. I was really trying hard to make design something to solve problems, and I think that’s quite the narrative back at GSD. Now my research is really focused on celebration and on the architecture. These beautiful moments of coming together and celebrating and building something together. It’s just a beautiful way of being in tune with the world, so I would love them to not take it as seriously as I took it for so many years.

Are those principles non-architects can heed as well?
Things should be serious and should be rigorous, but they should be joyful—especially in a discipline like architecture. There’s a frivolous dimension of it that I think should be celebrated instead of neglected or translated into something more meaningful than it actually is.

Does your work give you hope for the future?
At GSD, I was in a terrible mood all the time. We were talking about climate change, social issues, and that became a burden that I couldn’t sustain. We were adding to the design field things that I feel are too difficult to solve. We can make them visible, we can make them approachable, but we cannot solve them as designers ourselves. We were constantly facing those terrible challenges and I felt helpless.

Recently I understood that maybe what I cannot solve falls under art. It’s something that can be represented or sublimated. This process of taking something so painful and making something out of it, I have to think about design. Design is something to connect us to the world—to the material world, to the cultural world. It reconnects with the idea of ecology. Material technique and typology and rituals and all this stuff is connected. It makes things a little clearer or at least the connection between things clearer. There’s hope in that.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The same ten questions, a million different answers

Where do you find peace?
Yoga.

Is there a piece of art you can’t stop thinking about?
I’m curious about the bronze statue of a Black woman that’s in Times Square. I really like art that disrupts the visual narrative that gets forced on us in this country where we only see bronze statues of white men on horses. Just to see an everyday woman who has an everyday body, just having that honor placed on her as a bronze statue is pretty incredible.

What’s the last exhibition you went to see?
The last one I went to was the closing of the exhibit that I was part of at the BronxArtSpace, which was pretty amazing.

What’s the best meal you’ve eaten recently?
Something that I made on Sunday. I am a very good cook, if I say so myself. It’s rare for me to go to a Mexican restaurant because I know that I could cook just as good for not those prices.

What’s your favorite thing to wear right now?
Dickies. I mean, they’re classic, they’re simple. You can dress ’em up, dress ’em down even if there’s things on them. Sometimes I wear them like four days in a row.

Which unread book on your shelf haunts you most?
I pick it up and I put it back down, and I just can’t get through it even though I’m supposed to like it. “This Bridge Called My Back.” It’s referenced so often in Chicano literature. If you’re Chicano, you’re supposed to have already read that book by the time you’re 25.

What’s your beauty secret?
I grew up using a bar of soap as your shampoo and as your face and your body wash. I pretty much have brought that into my adulthood. I only have a bar of soap that I get at Whole Foods, and I just use that for everything. It’s called Good Soap.

What’s your favorite scent?
Patchouli is my favorite scent. Anything earthy, musky. I really enjoy. I don’t like floral or artificial smells.

What’s your dream vacation?
A place that I’ve been wanting to go for a really long time is Thailand, but then I feel like “White Lotus” just ruined that for me. Now everybody wants to go to Thailand.

What’s love got to do with it?
I don’t know. Nothing but heartache and a lot of work. A lot of work that apparently I’m not very good at.

You and I have that in common. It’s all good.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

For a month late last year, divinity was my central muse. It began when a couple friends and I gathered to watch Martin Scorsese’s “The Last Temptation of Christ” only a few days after I happened upon a copy of Colm Tóibín’s slim novel “The Testament of Mary.” It was a curious coincidence to have two pieces of art in hand that both tell familiar stories through a provocative lens exploring the humanity of their religious protagonists. To my surprise, both humanized portrayals of holy figures made a far more compelling case for divinity than years of servitude in Catholic school ever did (sorry, Mom).

In Scorsese’s 1988 film, Jesus is plagued by fear and conflict. He hears voices and wrestles with lingering affection for the woman he loves but left behind to heed what he believes are messages from God. Later in the film, as he dies a martyr on the cross, Jesus’ despair manifests in a vivid hallucination where he experiences the ordinary life he could have lived instead. Tóibín casts a similar gaze upon Mary, rendering her more accessible than ever. She is not a virgin who gave birth and not a selfless matriarch all too glad to let her son die in her arms. In this icy portrayal, Mary is spiteful as she reflects with cynicism upon her son’s legacy. She is disgusted by his ego and reviles the remaining followers as well as their certainty of his return even years after his death. “If you want witnesses then I am one and I can tell you now,” Mary tells an uninvited gospel writer in her home, “when you say that he redeemed the world, I will say that it was not worth it.”

It’s important to remember that, for all their deification, these holy figures were human like the rest of us. Saints are real, similar to us in more ways than they are not. They were not strangers to fear, scarcity, or even uncertainty. Some of them probably struggled with mental health. Some of them were probably queer. We classify their work as miraculous, but miracles happen every day whenever anyone follows in their footsteps. Feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, sheltering the poor, protecting the persecuted are at the foundation of so many everyday lives, particularly in our most marginalized communities. In a world that memorializes arbiters of division and hatred, such righteousness only becomes more urgent each day. Are the selfless practitioners who exercise justice and love in our communities not also saints?

The vibrant work of artist Gabriel García Román does not issue a criteria for canonization, but it does immortalize the actions and identities of queer activists in a holy framework. Among a catalog of distinctive multimedia art, Román’s ongoing “Queer Icons” series draws upon Christian iconography and enlivens the mode with color and texture as well as commentary from the subjects themselves. I was privileged to visit Román’s studio in the beautiful Bronx last spring, where I witnessed a practice as worthy of reverence as those of his subjects.

Here, Gabriel and I discuss his visual language, his collaborative process, and why queer representation matters.

Did you always want to be an artist?
I didn’t consider myself an artist until moving to New York in my mid-20s. When I was a kid, we didn’t have art classes. We didn’t have music or any of those things, but what I attribute my creativity to is my parents. My dad was somebody that had a curious mind, and would find a broken iron and take it apart and put it back together just to see how it was made. He was a problem solver. I consider artists to be problem solvers.

What was your creative outlet growing up?
When I was in high school, I was an architecture major. I was building models and making floorplans and renderings.

Why architecture?
I’ve always been interested in home improvement shows, even as a kid. I was always fascinated by the way things were made. I remember being like 10, watching “This Old House” and watching them restore an old home and being fascinated by all of the different crafts that are required to lay the brick, to install a window.

Whose work did you respond to when you were young?
I grew up in Chicago in the ’70s and ’80s when there was no money in the city, no infrastructure, nothing. The school systems were really bad, so there was no art in schools. The only time that you would go to a museum is during the field trip in school, so as an adult, I never went to a museum in Chicago. I wouldn’t have even known where galleries were. I moved to New York at the age of 26, and I met somebody who introduced me to galleries and museums.

When did you first own a camera?
I didn’t pick up a camera until I moved here. I had no access to a camera before that. There’s hardly any pictures of me in my early 20s. It was that same friend who took me to my first galleries, who—I don’t know what he saw in me, but he was like, “You’re very creative and you should look into at least exploring that.” He lent me his camera, and that was the first time that I actually had access to a camera and started using it.

What was your day job at the time?
I worked for a software company. I do tech support for them, and that’s what’s been sustaining me the entire time I’ve been in New York.

Do you remember the camera model you had?
It was one of the first digital cameras. It was a point-and-shoot. Once I became serious, then I bought one of those 35-millimeter film cameras. There were a lot of community dark rooms, so it was easy to just dabble and start taking pictures. I started taking continuing ed courses at like Cooper Union and SVA. That’s where I learned how to develop my film and process and print my own photographs.

What were you photographing?
I had grown up in Chicago where there’s a huge Mexican population and because the population is so ever-present, my culture is so ever-present. I never really prioritized it, I guess, and then when I moved to New York I realized that there isn’t a strong Mexican population here, at least 25 years ago. I was feeling lonely and I was feeling homesick, so I just started taking photographs of myself as a lot of iconic figures of Mexican culture. Then it just bloomed from there. Since the beginning it’s been mostly portraits.

When did you start photographing other people?
This was probably like 2001. 2001, I was photographing myself and then I started photographing a particular friend of mine, Alba. She loved getting her photograph taken, so we just became a duo. I was drawn to her because she has a very interesting face and she has vitiligo, so her pigmentation was disappearing and we were documenting all of that. I have tons and tons of photos of her. We’re still really close.

Were there any photographers who inspired you in those days?
I’ve always been drawn to fashion, so I do remember David LaChappelle being somebody whose work I really was drawn to. Even then I didn’t realize how impactful his visual language was for me. Also, Philip-Lorca diCorcia.

What did their work make you want to explore?
Lighting. Filtered light. Where the light is coming from, and how it’s hitting the person’s face, and what patterns it creates. All of those things are important to me. I love Lee Friedlander, and even one of my favorite photographers, who’s not a portrait photographer at all, but William Eggleston. His colors are so saturated and he always shot in positive film 120, so all those rich colors shine through.

When did you decide to focus on becoming an artist?
I had sort of a midlife crisis at the age of 33. I was at this job that I didn’t like and in a relationship that was sort of towards its tail-end. We were in couples therapy and I was feeling very complacent. The therapist encouraged me to find something that would bring me joy and I said going back to school would really do that for me. I was taking only continuing ed courses before I decided to go back to school for studio art. I went back to school in 2005, I think, and then it just really catapulted everything. I already knew how to develop my film. I knew how to do even color photography, so I was able to go straight into upperclassmen studio courses and skip all of those other things. That really helped me create a visual language.

What is your visual language?
A lot of colors and patterns. I always challenge myself in trying to blend patterns and colors that are typically not put together and then make it look visually pleasing. I’m really drawn to the Renaissance/Northern Renaissance because of how the painters were able to create all of these lush velvets and brocades with their paintbrush, and you could see every single detail. Jan van Eyck is one of my favorite painters because of the amount of details that he’s able to put into one painting.

What are the key components of a “Queer Icons” piece?
The person who I’m photographing, number one. Once I select who I’m going to take a portrait of, then I give them a list of suggestions of what they could wear that’ll make my job a lot more interesting when I’m working on the piece. I always tell them to wear something that makes you feel powerful, that you feel comfortable in, but also make sure that it’s able to reflect light or create textures or shadows so that, when I photograph the person, all of the shadows that get created from the fabric are accentuated. Then when I put my decorative paper overlay on, it just makes it pop even more.

How do you choose your subjects?
When I started this project, I first started photographing my friends and friends of friends. Then I met somebody who completely shifted the project and made me realize that just photographing queer folks of color and taking their portrait and putting it on a wall wasn’t enough. I needed to photograph modern day people that are actually working to bring justice—whether it’s immigration justice, carceral justice, food justice. All these things that affect communities of color, and even more so queer communities of color. Those are the folks who I started asking to be part of this project.

How do you decide on poses?
I was referencing a lot of religious posturing, then I moved on to just letting the person dictate how they want to be represented. I say words to help them get to that point—honor, bravery, defiance. All of these things I want them to embody so they know why they’re being photographed and I know why I am photographing them. We want the audience to also understand why they’re being photographed, why that person is in that portrait. We want them to be defiant, to look defiant, to look honorable, even royal at the same time.

Why is that important to you?
As folks queer folks of color, the only time that I ever saw my community represented is literally on HIV medication. Never somebody that’s noble. It’s always somebody that’s downtrodden. This population needs somebody to admire. I wanted to create a body of work that completely shifted that idea, and I wanted to create a visual narrative of our community that you don’t see.

That’s why I wanted to put the halo behind the person. I don’t consider my work to be religious. I’m borrowing religious aspects, but there’s no crosses. There’s no doves or any of that stuff. I’m just borrowing the halo because for me, growing up Catholic and going to church and we would hear about all these stories of saints. They were human beings that did something for the betterment of mankind. Then they get canonized and they get their halo. I always saw that as a badge of honor and that’s what I was doing.

How do you come up with the text for each portrait?
When I started exhibiting some of this work, there was no text. It was just the portraits. Then people were asking me, “Who are these people?” Already as a disenfranchised community, we’re often silenced, erased, or somebody else is speaking for us. I found myself doing the same thing, speaking for the person whose portrait I took. I decided that I wanted to bring that person in and amplify their voice and their story. That’s when I invited them to write about themselves around their portrait. All of the text you see is actually written by them. It’s their handwriting, their words, and I don’t have any say so on what they write or how they lay it out. That’s the fun part for me. I tend to be very micromanage-y, and that was also an exercise for me to learn to let go and trust the other person. It’s going to be their words and it’s going to be how they decided to format it. Just don’t write on the halo and don’t write on yourself.

How does that process work?
Once I take their portrait, I basically forecast where the halo is going to be in Photoshop. Then I email them a copy, they print it out, and then I’ll create a border around here and say, “Okay, write anywhere on the gray area.” I ask them to use a sharpie, then they’ll have a month or however long to write whatever they want to write. Then they just scan it, email it back to me, and then I’m able to just pull out the text and make a screenprint so they’re not literally writing onto the original piece. I size it to the size of the print that I’m going to make, and then I just screenprint that. The process is called photogravure. Chine collé is the collaging and silkscreen is the text.

The frames are also pretty distinctive. What’s the inspiration?
The frames are my take on Rococo frames. Frames that you see in cathedrals are very ornate, but instead of curves, I’m using straight, clean lines.

How do you make them?
Because I grew up in an immigrant family, we don’t throw anything away. We reuse everything. Around the same time that I started this project, I also started dabbling in making furniture, making woodwork—again, going back to architecture and building things and watching home improvement shows. I have a huge backyard, so I bought a table saw and I just use my backyard as my woodshop. I made a coffee table, I made all sorts of furniture, so I had a lot of scrap wood laying around. I just started cutting up that scrap wood and using those as the details for the frames.

What joinery do you use?
It’s glue.

They’re pretty clean for glue.
I’m a double Virgo. I’m very meticulous, very processed. I like making things slow. Even when I cook, I like to cook and make everything from scratch instead of buying something from a can. Similar to my work, I like to do everything from the beginning to the end and take my time, making sure that it’s done properly rather than to slap things together.

You also have a really cool catalog of sculptural work. Does your process vary between mediums?
I feel like it’s the same thought process. It’s colors, textures, but number one is handwork. I love working with my hands, and I love getting my hands dirty, getting injured, getting a cut. That doesn’t bother me.

How do you think your work stands out today?
I am making things that bring me joy in hopes that somebody else will also identify with it. When I speak at schools, what I want people to take away is to be as vulnerable as you can with yourself, with your work, and don’t follow trends. Just follow your heart and just do what you truly believe. I feel like people have a good sense of when somebody is doing something because it’s in their heart versus something that’s a trend. I feel like a lot of younger folks get misled. They want to be the next famous person, so then they have to follow whatever a famous person is doing. I work inside of a bubble and then enlarge occasionally or let people in through my social media.

I love your Instagram. What kind of utility does posting provide for an artist?
I do that as an exercise for myself because I have a really hard time being vulnerable with friends, with family in real life. I have a hard time doing that, but social media allows me to be anonymous but not really be anonymous. I’ll make a video, I’ll share something, and I’ll just post it and walk away. I can’t believe I just exposed myself like that, but then I get messages from people who then read and identify with my story or identify with what I just shared. That makes me feel like I did something right. I helped somebody else understand that what I’m struggling with is something that either they can come out of just like I’m coming out of it, or we have the same struggles so it makes us closer.

In a climate of diminishing queer visibility, why is it important to make queer art?
Queer art is necessary because queer folks exist and our stories are just as important as anybody else’s. When I was growing up, there was zero visual representation or queer representation at all. If there was, it was very subversive or very closeted. I’m thinking about Liberace, Richard Simmons. They were so overtly gay, but nobody ever talked about them being gay. That’s the society that I grew up in and I felt stunted. I felt like I was an outsider, and I think it’s important for queer art to be out there for younger folks not to feel alone. Even if you’re in a big city, it doesn’t mean that you have access to your queerness. It takes visual representation and having our stories out there for the younger people to know that it’s okay to be gay and that it’s going to be okay.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The same ten questions, a million different answers

Where do you find peace?
Central Park, alone or with my dog, Pharaoh.

Is there a piece of art you can’t stop thinking about?
I’ve been following the recent collection of Schiaparelli. I talk about it a lot. He’s bringing all that good stuff that used to make me fall in love with fashion.

What’s the last exhibition you went to see?
Recently I went to the circus with my boyfriend. We wanted to do something completely different and fresh. It was sort of scary, sort of like “Mad Max.” It was very fun.

What’s the best meal you’ve eaten recently?
Molokhia, something I always cook from my home country. Ancient Egyptians used to eat it. It’s a soup and you put it over rice. It’s out of hemp and it’s done with chicken broth. I eat it with grilled chicken or fried chicken. It’s so comforting. Very yummy.

What’s your favorite thing to wear right now?
I’m getting very adventurous with my outfits. I’m focusing on styling myself these days and the theme is color.

Which unread book on your shelf haunts you most?
“Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty.” I had this book for a while and I didn’t have the time to read it.

What’s your beauty secret?
Working out every day is the main thing. I lift weights, go to the gym at least five days a week.

What’s your favorite scent?
Maison Francis Kurkdjian OUD Silk Mood.

What’s your dream vacation?
I would love to go to Italy at some point. Rome or Sicily.

What’s love got to do with it?
My freedom is the drive that makes me do whatever I want. Go to a new place, try to change everything in my life. My freedom is very important, so even if love would interact with it….

So, as long as you have your freedom, you’re open to however love manifests?
Yeah.

I love that. I feel that I’m the same way.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Believe it or not, I’ve never worn a dress. Aside from a legendary Elizabeth Holmes costume I donned for Halloween 2018, I’ve never even done drag, either. The opportunities have just never arisen and I don’t seek them out, though I do ponder how it feels to wear one when wedding season rolls around each year. Under oppressive summer sun, I envy anyone not sweating into layers of a tux they had to rent because another friend or relative had to make it black-tie in late June.

I had never contemplated the politics, the posturing, the whole damn world inside of a dress until I watched “Phantom Thread” for the first time. Now one of my favorite films, Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2017 masterpiece presents us with a medley of dresses from a bygone era more sculptural than stylish. High necklines and conservative (but stately) silhouettes reanimate the past, and the film’s many glimpses into the technical labor behind haute couture renders their composition akin to alchemy. As beautiful as the dresses in the film are, it’s clear they are not crafted with pleasure in mind. Like our megalomaniacal protagonist, they embody repression.

Since watching “Phantom Thread,” it’s so obvious to me now that dressmaking is choreography. It informs and sets a precedent for both fantasy and reality. To admire a dress and consider its very composition is akin to understanding an architectural complexity as capacious as a building.

A far cry from the sterilized gowns of Reynolds Woodcock, the six collections of Maison ElMadawy burst with life like orchids in bloom. Expressive, eclectic, and very feminine, these dresses are the handiwork of designer Mohamed El Madawy. Mohamed is one of the gentlest souls I’ve ever met, so it’s no wonder his delicate fashions evoke so much life. His practiced hand yields a vernacular both distinctive and playful, vivid and dreamlike. My imagination is stirred every time I see a Maison ElMadawy dress, provoking a much more inspiring feeling of envy.

Here, Mohamed and I discuss early and enduring influences, artistic integrity, and balancing expectation with ego.

Do you have any early formative memories with fabric?
It started with my dolls when I was very young. I was very fortunate that my mom would let me play with Barbies, so I’d get one and start creating everything from scratch. I’d take the clothes off and start using plastic bags, napkins, all kinds of things to create bags, dresses, jackets. I was obsessed.

What made you want to change their look?
It's like clay. You can really play with it and you can do lots of things with it. My mom saw that this was super creative, and she loved it and she kind of encouraged it.

Did you also like to draw?
I loved drawing when I was young. I started drawing faces a lot before diving in on all the details.

I’m assuming you progressed to figuratives from there.
Yeah, exactly.

Were they usually feminine?
Yeah, it's always been geared to women.

How did your mother dress when you were growing up?
When I was younger, she was very glamorous. I loved her clothing, I loved her jewelry, I loved her shoes.

Was she expressive?
It was conservative, but I kind of love the colors she used to wear. I was really fond of her glasses. I saw things from the ’70s and the ’80s that are so crazy now. Popular and avant-garde, we call it.

How did growing up in Cairo impact your own sense of style?
I was actually born in Kuwait. This is basically what I was experiencing in Kuwait. When I came to Egypt, it was kind of like a culture shock for me.

How old were you?
I was about seven or eight years old when I came back to Egypt for good. I remember my childhood as sort of depressing. I didn't have that much freedom to express my creativity. I was judged by my cousins and my family. My mom kind of didn't want me to express that part of me so much.

Did you always plan on pursuing creative work?
It didn't really seem realistic. I started drawing outfits and clothing when I was in high school. I had so much passion seeing designers doing their work in Egypt. I felt like I could do much better even though I had no expertise, but I just felt that inside of me. I always had the hope. I never lost it completely even though there were no fashion schools in Egypt.

What inspired you back then?
There was a very famous TV performer during Ramadan. She is like the diva of the Middle East and Egypt. Her name is Sherihan. Sherihan used to be an inspiration for Lady Gaga. She was a source of lots of inspiration for me in design. I started to draw a lot of her outfits.

What did you decide to study at Ain Shams University in Cairo?
I studied commerce.

Did you like studying commerce?
No, so miserable. It was better for me than studying law. Those were my two options, actually, based on my grades.

When did you start working in fashion design?
I started work with a couture designer, and I met him after graduating from school. His name is Soucha Mlihigue. He's a Tunisian designer, but he's based in Florence, Italy. He worked a little bit in Italy and then he came to the Middle East. He got the great opportunity to work with a famous singer and then he became so famous and I was so lucky to intern with him.

How old were you when you interned?
I interned when I was 23 years old. It was a great chance. People would pay money to work with him, and he just picked me. He thought I had really good potential and I started with him in 2003-2004.

How did this work inform what you wanted to make?
He actually influenced me so much. Even though me and him are very different, my perspective of fashion completely switched when I started working with him.

So your own ideas were refined through working with him?
At the beginning, I was observing and taking in everything, and so impressed and so overwhelmed at the same time. I wanted to learn as much as possible. Gradually, I started to have my own skin, wanting to explore my own vision and that's when the issues happened. In the middle of those eight years that I worked with him, we started kind of co-designing. We had our conflicts for some time and then I just wanted to separate because it wasn't fulfilling me as much anymore.

Did you appreciate collaboration or did you feel like you were capable of making better work on your own?
He didn't appreciate collaboration. I would have stayed in the fashion house forever if he just gave me a little bit of space to express my vision, but he didn't want that. When your ideas are so vivid and so shiny that you cannot hide it anymore, it's just crazy that you can’t get any credit for it. It's kind of like something’s growing and you try to keep it small as it was a few years ago, and this is not possible. You're not going to prevent that process. It's happening anyway. It's inevitable.

When did you first get to show your own work ?
I started from scratch and I did my first show in the same year that I split from him during Fashion Week in Senegal. I presented my sketches, my collection, and they accepted me.

What was your plan when you arrived in New York shortly after in 2012?
I came with a little bit of money after I sold my collection between Senegal and Egypt. All of the collection that I presented on the runway was sold—that was very popular and successful. When I came here, a friend of mine had a belly dance costume business that he offered me.

“Why don't you make handmade customs? That would be so hot and very in demand. The performers, they'll be so amazed with the idea.” I did this for a while and then I started collecting money for school. I went to school at Parsons for two years and that's when I started to do internships with Vera Wang, Bibhu Mohapatra. I worked with KaufmanFranco for a while. That was beside working on my own brand, too.

How many collections have there been since you moved to New York?
Six collections.

What’s the throughline across your collections?
I'm always thirsty to present unpredictable romance in my clothing—unpredictable elements even in the texture. Within a limited budget or limited access to resources because making couture is not cheap. It’s really expensive. When you look at it, you say, “Oh my god, this is really luxurious. I'm afraid to touch it.” That's exactly what I'm striving to do in every dress I am creating.

What’s it like getting a label off the ground here?
It's really tough. I didn't imagine that. I had very high hopes. I didn't give up or anything, but it's really tough because it's so competitive and people don't easily digest extreme creativity in art. Since 2012, I did great work here, but I feel like my potential could have been way more if the environment was a little bit different.

How so?
If the environment was like Paris, for example, not a conservative society. In America, they don't put art as a priority. You think it's very appreciated and it's everywhere. You see art and everybody’s into art and into fashion, but what is popular in fashion here is streetwear. Not what I'm doing. Not haute couture. Not this intricate work that requires hours and hours of creating. If I’m a young Schiaparelli starting in New York and I have no funding, I'm not going to be able to do anything. I have to have investors and a lot of people who believe in me to be able to make it here.

How do you feel about streetwear?
Streetwear has a great potential. There's a lot of competition, but you can totally do it. There is a huge audience for it, but also it can be manipulated in a ready-to-wear way.

What’s your relationship with material like nowadays?
There's lots of potential to connect with different textures and materials because of technology. I feel like it's a revolution happening with textures. It's crazy. The essence of what I usually use would be like silk—organza silk, taffeta, shantung. I love to use a lot of tulle, chiffon, crepe—all this kind of traditional, luxurious couture fabric. But there's also new textures and technologies done in nylon, and other things that I would definitely do something out of as well.

What’s your studio set-up?
My studio is my bedroom, where I really create my patterns and my ideas and my collages. I manufacture the garment in Midtown. The beginning of the construction of the garment will be definitely done in a sample room, and then I start the rest of my work later.

Is there a different woman in mind for every dress or is it the same woman in mind each time?
For a long time it has been one of my best friends. She was my muse and she used to model with my stuff a lot. We came here together, we had adventures together. Then it changes and I picture Tilda Swinton when I’m drawing. She's one of my muses as well.

Tilda’s a great model!
She's amazing, and I have a feeling that she would be a fan of my designs as well. She would understand it.

Do you have a dress in the portfolio that you feel best defines you?
Yeah, I do. I don't have a name for it. It's just inspired by the Arabian Arabesque collection, inspired by the elements used in Egypt in the 20th century. I love it because it's so modern and timeless—very intricate work. I did it when I was in Egypt, and I brought it to America and it was in a lot of magazines. I'm very proud of that dress.

What does it mean to you?
I always look at it and I remind myself I'm talented. It's good to have that, right? Because you forget sometimes. You get used to it, and maybe I feel like I'm not enough in my work. I feel like I can be way better. I am a really tough critic on myself, and that kind of brings me down and people can feel that even though I think I have talent. Some people have that great confidence that makes everybody around them realize it, even though they’re just 10-percent talent. How you believe and how you carry yourself as a designer really matters a lot.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

In the final weeks of 2020, my former roommate Mika and I went out for dinner one Friday night. We spent the days prior taking rapid tests as we prepared to brave the rising tide of the virus after a merciful summer in the clear. We walked down Amsterdam Avenue from our apartment on Broadway, passing other masked neighbors in respectful silence until we arrived at an unassuming doorway along the upper 140s and rang the buzzer. The two of us climbed a flight of stairs to the top floor, where we removed our shoes and entered a small apartment overflowing with color and a rich, toothsome aroma.

It was there that we first met Karina Garcia and Lalo Rodriguez. Through the neighborhood grapevine, Mika learned the two fine dining professionals—whose past workplaces included Eleven Madison Park and Cosme—were navigating furloughs by launching a takeaway menu of Mexican dishes for vegans and omnivores. Dishes ranged from bone marrow dressed in a decadent birria to offerings like jalapeños rellenos that imbued personal family histories.

What stood out as much as the food was the apartment. The living room transformed into the intimate supper club evoked flexibility and warmth, accented with a medley of eclectic objets d’art composing Karina and Lalo’s own story as they welcomed guests into their home for one seating each night. Nestled into the corner, a piano rounded out the room. We learned of Lalo’s passions as a jazz musician, and he even sat with us at the end of the night to play a recording from one of his recent sessions.

Since our first visit, the supper club known as Cocina Consuelo has augmented into one of New York’s most distinct and in-demand eateries. Karina and Lalo have since moved apartments, but the flair of the original space that ensconced diners during the darkest days of the pandemic is reanimated across their restaurant, which is located just down the street. Like the cuisine, the interior is crafted with Karina and Lalo’s own hands and resources to create an experience for the neighborhood defined by openness and honesty. Spearheading both the dishes and the design was well worth the time and effort, as Cocina Consuelo has since fielded universal acclaim from outlets including Eater, the New York Times, and the Infatuation. Now a neighborhood staple and a citywide institution, Cocina Consuelo beckoned me back this past winter, as I made the trek to my old neighborhood to spend a morning catching up with Karina.

Here, she discusses the inspiration behind the design, the community input that helped shape it, and how the space reflects the food.

What was your budget at the start of construction?
Well, I didn't have a budget. I didn't have no money. Everything came about by the skin of our teeth. God was definitely in there because when we signed a lease to this place, we signed it with all the money we had.

When did you sign?
We signed the lease in August, but we didn't start until September. That's September 1st, 2023, and we didn't open until August of 2024. Literally a year of building, and a lot of it was because of budget. We didn't have the money to pay for everything as fast as we could, and then that delayed everything else. It just made it a whole mess, but we wanted a reflection and an extension of our living room in a lot of personal ways. We didn't have money to buy the things that we needed, but I didn't let that stop me from the things that I wanted. I still bought $40 plates and $40 beer glasses. I don't know if that was the best thing to do, but I didn't let that stop me.

What specific ways did you want to reflect your old apartment?
The colors. We want it to be very bright because Lalo and I are very happy. We wanted our personalities to be translated into the space.

Yeah, I’ve never known you not to have some kind of floral pattern on.
The colors that are in the space are from our palette of colors from the brand that we built Consuelo around. A lot of those colors are muted. The red is a little muted—it's like a brick red. The yellow, too, is not super bright, but when we saw we’re off this corner, we came up with the idea we have to make it stand out.

How did you know this was the right spot for you?
I grew up a block away, so when we were looking for spaces to open Consuelo, we wanted to be within the neighborhood. It had to be somewhere in West Harlem. This is where I grew up most of my formative years, so when we were walking around one day, we saw that the spot was available. Actually, the whole road was available. We had the chance to pick and choose. The one on our right was too small—smaller than this. The one to our left was too big, and this was literally in the middle and also in the middle when it comes to budget.

What did you want to create for the neighborhood? For New York dining in general?
I love this city, and I've been to many, many places outside of the U.S. too. I feel like New York would be such a brighter place—it’s such a magical place already, but imagine if at least the first floor or the last floor of all the buildings were different colors. I think it would just make you smile. I feel like the buildings could use more color, so instead of using one color, we made sure that we had different colors on the outside. The chairs have to be primary colors that anyone can recognize, and it just brings joy because it brings you back to learning colors.

What did you look for in collaborators for the design?
We did everything pretty much on our own. We had someone from the neighborhood who had an idea for the track lights, but other than that, we did most of the ideas on our own. Literally, we were working with the budget that we had as we were getting the budget. At one point we came up with the idea of having the tiles. We got the tiles when we got the money for the tiles. That's how everything was building, but we didn't necessarily have an idea of the finished product. We just were building it as we went.

What inspired you to install tiles in the kitchen?
A lot of kitchens in Latin America, especially Mexico, have a lot of tiles.

You and Lalo obviously know how materials need to function from all your years working in kitchens, but was there anything that surprised you about designing a kitchen?
There's a lot of regulations. It's not like you could just do whatever you want. It has to be within code within the city and then all the permits that you have to get for everything. You want this, but you also have to request permission to do it. That was definitely something that I didn't think of.

What is the biggest misconception about opening a restaurant?
The prices behind the food is something that took so much work for Lalo and I, and I'm sure other people who have done it before. Diners in general might find it crazy or outrageous, but when you think about everything that goes into opening a restaurant and creating a menu—from buying food to manipulating the ingredients, to then hitting the table, then having a space like this that looks so much like home. . . . People might find the prices a little too high, but it's a combination of everything.

You also engaged your diners and your followers on Instagram about a lot of the fine details. Why?
Back then we had maybe 3,000 followers, and most of those followers were people that we actually knew and dined with us or we had some sort of connection with. We wanted to make sure that we include the thoughts of those people and they could actually have a say on how the place looked. We were asking people, ‘Do you like this glassware? Do you like these wine glasses?’

How did you source the items you eventually shared with us?
We wanted to make sure that a lot of the things that we use here are handmade. Our glassware is handmade. Our plateware is handmade. The silverware is from the U.S. The ceramics are from Sweden, and they’re handmade.

The artwork also definitely reflects that. How did you want to display it all?
Again, the vision was just making it seem like our apartment. On one of the walls is masks. The other one is paintings and pictures, and that's how the apartment was set up. We just wanted to bring as much of the feel that we had in our apartment here.

Where did all the artwork come from?
It’s such an interesting array. Some of them are from Mexico that we bought and brought back. Some of them actually were gifted from our guests that come here. Some of them are a gift from my mom's husband. Some are from our trips to Brazil when we go to the African market. Just things that we like.

How does the design complement the food?
It's just a homey feel. A lot of people say that my food is fancy, but I don't see it as such because I’ve eaten at fancy restaurants and I don't see it. If I had to compare them or how they feed off each other, it's just being very intentional and very detail-oriented. We think about it and we put a lot of intention into it before we put a piece up. That's the same way that we do the food.

What did you know you wanted to include in the design no matter what?
We were going to have this corner, this sort of altar with our flowers and the piano. We knew we would do that.

Why?
‘Nichos’ in Mexico are very common. It's something that you see a lot in homes. Everywhere, pretty much. We have some people that were very instrumental in our lives—in Lalo's life, in my life—and they've passed. We wanted to make sure that we gave them a space that was very intentional and was dedicated to them.

Is there an aspect of the design you find customers are most attracted to?
People love the window. Some people don't even notice the piano and if they do, they don't think it's working. Of course it works! If I'm going to put a piano here and it's going to take all this real space, it's going to work.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity

"The luminous and shocking beauty of the everyday is something I try to remain alert to, if only as an antidote to the chronic cynicism and disenchantment that seems to surround everything, these days. It tells me that, despite how debased or corrupt we are told humanity is and how degraded the world has become, it just keeps on being beautiful. It can’t help it." – Nick Cave

The last few years of my life have been spent in grief.

Instead of all-consuming misery, it’s proven a fertilizing experience. In an effort to interrogate its values, virtues, and pitfalls, grief has invited me into the minds of innumerable poets, memoirists, and novelists who have also wandered in its wake. When something is lost, we are bestowed with room to cultivate. When we till the soil, we come into our power as stewards. We are alchemists, redeeming what was once barren with new life.

As I write this, I feel an acute void in me. There is an ache so deep it feels elemental. In our current duress, it’s hard not to recall the uncertain days when we tried to weather a danger so pervasive we felt powerless against its spread. We were, however, united in the effort to try. It was clear we were all each other had.

It’s been five years since the pandemic. The further we get from those days, the vaguer all those heightened feelings become. We find ourselves, in 2025, only removed from our collective trauma by a few unremarkable years blurred together in a kaleidoscope of fits and starts. All of it is now punctuated by a genocide our government continues to proliferate as we descend into an authoritarian state.

Like many others, I found unexpected peace in the quietude of early lockdown. I was soothed by evenings of stillness, bathed in the colorful light of nature documentaries projected on my living room wall. I returned from visits to policed grocery stores with heaps of verdant herbs and vegetables whose flourishes embodied a hope I wanted to consume. I stocked up on ingredients for elaborate meals once too time-consuming to prepare (most notably Molly Baz’s chicken parmesan, which took three hours). I recall even feeling verklempt as I laid down on my sofa that first weekend in March with a copy of “Lolita,” overcome that we had time enough at last to devour the books gathering dust on our shelves.

After three full months of gray isolation and a soundtrack of sirens always in earshot, I welcomed the embrace of summer, and it was the best summer of my life. With low caseloads, I biked tens of miles every single day across the open roads of Manhattan. I did yoga in my sundrenched bedroom and I strolled beneath the canopy of Riverside Park to the Fairway on 125th Street (RIP) and the invigorating banks of the Hudson River. I spent Sunday afternoons masked beside neighbors at the Ralph Ellison Memorial listening to jazz musicians from across Harlem perform standards and improvise with the accompaniment of birdsong. I laid in the shade of a dozen city parks kissing the man I adored after months starved for even the most thoughtless touch. After a barrage of death, all of us declared that we were, indeed, alive.

The two books that stand out to me most from that summer are Daniel Quinn’s “Ishmael” and Jacqueline Woodson’s “Red at the Bone.”

In Quinn’s novel, a man cynical of the modern world responds to a newspaper ad seeking individuals to help save the planet—only to discover the ad was placed by a talking gorilla named Ishmael. Through a philosophical badinage, Ishmael shifts the narrator’s view of the world, arguing that humans are in fact symbiotic with all of nature and responsible for correcting the devastations wrought by our exceptionalism. He urges a change in behavior on a global scale, from breeding and consumption to ethical distribution of resources.

“Red at the Bone” is a tight, poetic portrait of a Black family reckoning with all of its legacies, including the losses it endured in the bombing of Black Wall Street in 1921. The narrative does not outline a path toward revolution as much as it champions the power of resilience and the mercies unearthed when we rebuild upon ruin. Beneath rubble, a gleaming can shine through.

That summer, I also became involved with a local mutual aid network, stocking neighborhood fridges and supplying clothes and other essentials for neighbors both housed and unhoused. Growing close with so many former strangers affirmed for me what it means to be in community. We were a tapestry of colors and complexities bonded by an obligation to take care of our home. When we found ourselves in the streets, we felt stronger in solidarity with one another. We marched as part of a broad collective that seemed to compound each day. Specific terms for liberation and reform were declared, and it was empowering to look together and see that we outnumbered our enemies.

Writers—most recently Ta-Nehisi Coates—have already begun to examine just what the impact of all that awareness meant. When mainstream Americans actually reconsidered the structures they existed within, and chose not to look away from the abuses they augmented, we the people threatened, at last, to topple a capitalist framework sustained through systemic oppression. Responses both progressive and damning were issued from swarms of bodies in cities across the U.S. Even some of those still wary inside their homes broadened their scope with anti-racist texts and grassroots organizations to support. Some sat by their windows waiting to cheer on that day’s impassioned mass as it passed. There was a palpable sense of momentum to see this work through, and we began to share a unified vision of the future.

The virus loomed over it all, and not until the following summer would we have space to process the toll of what we endured. I will never forget my legitimate shock in 2021 that spring really had bloomed after an endless winter. In late December 2020, a nervous breakdown delivered me to my hometown, where I sat at the bedside of my dying grandfather for five months. Mortality was never before so tangible, but in the expanse of those hollow days, I came to see the mental and emotional framework I built for my own survival was really a cage. It was imperative I confront my ego and free myself of debilitating fear and anxiety. Devoted to therapy, philosophy, and meditative exercise, I found a way to safely acknowledge repressed traumas from years of abuse. I cried more in five months than I had in five years, and the swell of catharsis in my body was euphoric. As if building a cocoon, I dared to envision myself a more actualized person, and I forced myself to believe I would burst forth renewed.

Once vaccinated, I reveled in the embrace of friends and family again. The rigid scaffolding of our lives gave way to verdurous leas and perpetual sunshine. Reunited with our communities, we partied our asses off and amused ourselves with a new prospective partner every week. But in the afterglow of much-needed hedonism, we found ourselves victim to a new, less merciful strain by the fall. We suffered through hiccups in recovery, while markets prodded us back into offices and consumerist habits. Before we even realized it, we were back in a familiar current pushing us along at a dehumanizing pace. Deprived of basic balance, normal life again became entwined with disparity. Against our own will, we found ourselves returned to the former world order, its poisons more numbing than ever.

It’s been years since I’ve watched a nature documentary, and I crave summer afternoons in the park all winter like a consumptive. I still cook every day, but risk bankruptcy whenever I go shopping to make something fulfilling. Even the raspberries I buy for my oatmeal stir more guilt than glee as of late. Of course, I remain a ravenous reader, but these days I do so less to expand my mind and more to deafen myself to the unrelenting horrors outside. The sirens have quieted, but so have the streets.

My recent interview with Luke from the bee collective stirred me far more than I expected it would. Not only was he resolute in launching an ecological business at the dawn of the pandemic, but he did so with an ethos predicated on imagination. Through a practice grounded in hope, he opens himself to new possibilities each day. It reminded me of a time not so long ago when my own understanding of imagination expanded after I engaged with the writings of abolitionists like bell hooks. hooks speaks to the uses of imagination as if it were a muscle. Imagining love as the order of the day not only conceives the depth of our greater potential, but it illustrates what must be dismantled to get us there. When we imagine as a collective, our powers become a radical means for upheaval.

In a 2022 post, viníciux da silva defines the value of our minds while framing hooks’ radical imagination as a tool for liberation and racial justice:

“Radical imagination is also an act of refusal. A rebellion. Imagination does not bow to what is said to be ‘unrealistic,’ imagination remakes the world and has the revolutionary potential of reimagining the present, inventing the future. When there seems to be no way out, the radical imagination summons us to create escape routes, map the catastrophe, and bring into the world what once seemed impossible.”

In his recent book “The Message,” Coates also speaks to how we possess the resolve to initiate change on a legislative level. “Policy change is an end point, not an origin. The cradle of material change is in our imagination and ideas,” he writes. “We have the burden of crafting new language and stories that allow people to imagine that new policies are possible.”

As obvious as many solutions were in 2020, to devise a new world order requires imagination. We were imagining a utopia that can only be achieved outside of our asphyxiating systems of control. Imagination not only paves the road ahead but charts an entire atlas. With commitment, we see that, like a virus, these actions spread. Joining forces with peers buoyed us with support to amplify a shared vision and perhaps even speak it into existence.

Instead of employing my mind to anticipate catastrophe, I try to access my imagination with intention. I find peace when I imagine a future where everyone feels safe in their communities, and where communities resemble their organic structures prior to capitalism, when they were bastions of collective support in childcare, food security, and circular economy. I try to sit in the space of an imagined future where resources beyond policing are dispensable in a crisis and there is articulated value placed on literacy and transparency. We don’t depend on inequitable systems because we rely on one another.

How do we reinvoke imagination in a world designed to snuff it out?

To start, I think we do this by telling our stories. When we hear stories, we imagine, and humans are very good at imagining. Telling stories makes space to come into community with listeners, and community becomes our boon. A community-oriented approach is a solution-oriented approach—it is expansive and inclusive. hooks affirms that community can be founded anywhere at any time, and is strengthened by a sense of mutual giving. “Through fellowship,” she writes, “we learn to serve one another.”

Of course, a blog post is just words. This piece is reducible to virtue signaling. As a writer and a journalist, I believe it is my obligation to signal my virtues in pursuit of action—for myself and for anyone who reads what I write. Coates concurs, “virtues should be signaled, and the singalers should act to make their virtues manifest.”

I possess an urge to scream into the void as loud as I can and demand that we come together, not in commiseration but imagination, manifesting all that must come in order for us to prosper. We emerged from the quiet not so long ago and poured into the streets side by side. We demanded a revolution and sometimes even left destruction in our path to shake others out of slumber. I never let go of the hope I accessed in those days, and I refuse to forfeit it now.

Right now, we are at an impasse. This moment is the precipice of something very good or very bad. One of my only comforts is in the cosmos, where Pluto lies in Aquarius for the first time in centuries. It is an alignment characterized by a revolutionary spirit that stokes human transformation, global collaboration, and the interests of collective good. I feel compelled—with history to corroborate—to believe that wickedness cannot survive under these divine terms. Again, we have seen before that there are more of us than them, and the universe has bestowed us with its support.

I grieve everything we lost and everything we are sure to lose, but I continue to find solace in the words of those who illuminated paths forward for me in many a dark night: Kristen Radtke, Sheila Heti, Anthony Veasna So, Ocean Vuong, Jenny Odell, Andreas Malm, Richard Powers, and, of course, bell hooks. In receiving their words, I understood my own experience better. When we leave something behind, we gain something too.

Grief is not restrictive but evolutionary. I’ve felt it rise and fall in my body like a wave. I’ve seen it beyond myself, mobilized in protest and solidarity. I’ve seen it expelled in a single tear. A shattered window. A keening. The image of the cocoon, one we romanticize for its purity, holds a far more self-evident truth. Novelist Pat Barker sums it up best: “The process of transformation consists almost entirely of decay.”

Works Cited
Coates, Ta-Nehisi. The Message. One World, 2024.

hooks, bell. All About Love. Harper, 1999.

Barker, Pat. Regeneration. Viking Press, 1991.

The same ten questions, a million different answers

Where do you find peace?
With honeybees. It’s a meditative process.

Is there a piece of art you can’t stop thinking about?
There’s a documentary called “DamNation.” It’s about how dams have just destroyed the environment in a lot of different ways. It's the history of dams in America, how dams have completely been a catastrophe for Native American tribes that built their societies and culture around flowing rivers. Then they connect it with this art piece and this environmental activist piece, so it has multiple compelling components.

What’s the last exhibition you went to see?
Last year's Beecoming Home project.

What’s the best meal you’ve eaten recently?
At just a typical Mexican restaurant, I was celebrating the New Year and the start of the new Beecoming Home project with my friend and partner Sarah Scott. She was in town from England, and so while the meal was fine, the reason and meaning behind it made it a celebratory meal.

What’s your favorite thing to wear right now?
This is the one time that you don't see me in overalls, jeans, and a sweater. Especially in the cold, I'm wearing some sort of flannel, sweater, and overalls.

Which unread book on your shelf haunts you the most?
I am very dyslexic, so reading is not my typical thing. I do a lot of audio books. The book that I used to read every year, and didn't read last year and haven’t started this year, is Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book, “Braiding Sweetgrass.” I've read it a bunch, but it's in the haunting category. I need to get back and reread it.

What’s your beauty secret?
Getting stung by bees is great for your health as long as you're not allergic. When you get stung by bees, because of the poison, your body makes a whole lot of white blood cells and they respond to it and that's actually rejuvenating. Also, I'm not sitting behind a computer. I'm outside doing stuff all day. I'm sweating and doing physical labor, which would be its own beauty technique.

What’s your favorite scent?
Light smoke. I make my own incense cones so I can get that smoke smell all the time, and then I put other ingredients in my smoke, which gives it some unique flair.

What’s your dream vacation?
Great Bear National Rainforest in British Columbia.

What’s love got to do with it?
Everything in life is pretty fantastical when you actually see what you're looking at and what's happening in nature. That would be my love, just trying to turn being in nature into this romantic way of seeing the world.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity

Since downloading TikTok in the early days of the pandemic, I’ve affirmed that even the briefest scroll rarely feels unproductive. Beyond the memes, music, and activism my algorithm has embraced over the last five years or so (holy shit), I’m always grateful for an opportunity to go down a rabbit hole and learn something new. Whether it’s the history of corporate Memphis, Spooky Lake Month, or the legacy of Huey Newton’s peacock chair, it’s a nice surprise whenever the internet hellscape yields something earnest to consume.

Imagine my shock, then, when one evening I discovered that a video I’d just enjoyed about sculptures crafted to function as beehives was created by someone I knew from my childhood. Luke Howard and I spent some of our adolescent summers on the same pool deck with a bunch of other misfits in Bethesda, Maryland before losing touch. After I slid into his DMs, he informed me that he was now based in Columbus, Ohio and founded the bee collective in 2020. A key facet of the business is its annual art exhibition, which was launched in collaboration with Dr. Sarah Scott. Dubbed “Beecoming Home,” the series invites artists to create a work of art to house a habitat for bees. Artworks are placed inside one of Luke’s honeybee hive each spring and worked on by the bees until they are removed in the fall. I was amazed I had never seen anything like this before, and I was eager to dive in.

Talking with Luke was more than educational for me than—it was inspiring. Building and preserving these habitats is not only noble, but it’s far more accessible than us city dwellers may believe. Throughout our interview, Luke cited a quote by Wes Jackson, a soil scientist and co-founder of the Land Institute, as elemental to his practice. I’ve included it below for you to ponder, as I think it informs my discussion with Luke as well as the obligation of all Americans to right the wrongs of early settlers who failed to steward the landscapes they colonized.

“We must give standing to the new pioneers, the homecomers bent on the most important work for the next century—a massive salvage operation to save the vulnerable but necessary pieces of nature and culture and to keep the good and artful examples before us. It is time for a new breed of artists to enter front and center, for the point of art, after all, is to connect. This is the homecomer I have in mind: the scientist, the accountant who converses with nature, a true artist devoted to the building of agriculture and culture to match the scenery presented to those first European eyes.”

Here, Luke and I unpack this urgent message, explore the bond between art and ecology, and demystify what it really means to “Save the Bees.”

What catalyzed your appreciation for nature?
I was a farmhand for two or three summers and a few winters during high school. It was a 365-acre dairy farm, and then it was converted into a horse farm basically for wealthy people to house their horses. But it still was a working farm, and 30 to 50 acres were converted into houses to sustain the farm, and we had one of those.

How was your appreciation fostered while attending Ohio State?
Ohio State's a land-grant institution. They have a big agricultural program. I went there to play lacrosse, and then when I didn't know what to do with my life, I found the environmental economics degree with specialization in sustainable agriculture. That's where I refined my interest in nature.

What was special about the program?
I graduated the second year that the major ever existed, so they were still kind of figuring it out. I didn't want to be a farmer. The big job push that they were going for was sales reps for solar energy or recycling. I knew I didn't want to do those things and pollination was a huge topic. It was just kind of becoming trendy to talk about bees and the importance of them. “Save the Bees” and all that.

Why did pollination stand out to you?
I didn't feel like we were really talking about what pollination was. There was a grasp that we need bees but not fully why we need bees, and that's still prevalent today. People know to save the bees, but they don't know fully why or the big scheme, and pollination just made a lot of sense as a keystone that keeps the whole world together.

If we don't have pollination, then plants don't have sex and therefore we don't have fruits and vegetables and also just cool flowers to look at. I thought maybe educating in some form would be a cool route to go.

How did you learn the beekeeping trade?
There's four or five beekeeping associations in Ohio that I know of. You join and you take an eight-hour intensive weekend training, and then you're technically certified to be a beekeeper. A lot of states, you have to do minimum-six hours training to be a certified beekeeper, which is obviously not a lot of training, but it's at least something. The real benefit is in that group you find a mentor, and so I found mentors in Tom and Fran. They were a retired couple that had 60 hives at the time.

Oh wow.
I just went out to their property and, basically for the first year, helped them keep bees. It's very traditional in that sense—find people that have been doing it for 30 or 40 years, befriend them enough to where they let you work on their bees and teach you the way of doing things. Then you buy some bees from them and start your process. I'm still in a group chat with them today and I started keeping bees eight years ago, coming up on nine years.

Did anything surprise you about those early days?
Beekeeping is super weird. Bees communicate via pheromones, so every time you lift the lid off of a hive, you're releasing all of that smell. Every time you do it, you kind of stress out the bees. You have to let them be while also tend to them. There's a lot that happens in a hive that you'll never know or understand. You have to make a lot of guesses, so there's a lot of forensic work that you have to do without a clear picture.

With beekeeping, you should be humbled all the time. You can't ever fully get the whole picture no matter how much you want to study and research and know them. Hope for the best and use your intuition as best as you possibly can while also staying humble.

When and how did the bee collective start to take shape?
I started beekeeping five years before I started the bee collective. The official date of when I formed the bee collective was February 2nd, 2020. Sweet time to start, but also not a bad time to start a business because the only things that we could do during that year were outside.

What was your mission starting out?
The mission is the same as it is now, which is to plant pollinator habitats in urban spaces—generally that is vacant and unused lots. The second part of the mission is to provide environmental education for the city of Columbus. In our urban spaces, we have a lot of land dedicated to humans and very little space dedicated to ecology. The typical American way to think of nature is nature's out there and we live here.

It's happening all around us. We are a part of this planet, and so planting pollinator habitats in our urban spaces is trying to bring that back into the fold. Same with why people are interested in native plants now. We can do a lot of stuff in our urban spaces.

How do bees tend to do in urban spaces?
Ohio State did research on honeybee populations in rural, suburban, and urban areas. They figured out the honeybees that actually did the best were in our suburban areas because they got some benefit of rural without the downsides of rural and then some benefit of urban without all the downsides of urban. Second-best were urban bees and worst were rural bees.

We are absolutely not trying in our urban spaces to create safe spaces for our pollinators and for species other than ourselves. What if we tried in our urban spaces to make them more inhabitable for other creatures? What if we could turn our cities into sanctuaries versus these concrete jungles?

What does the bee collective headquarters look like?
I have about 1/3 an acre of land in downtown Columbus with a barn on it and an Airstream. It butts up to the train tracks and the train tracks have conservation easements, so there's about 30 feet of woods on either side. If you ignore all the city and you just look at the bee collective property, you could trick yourself into thinking that you were looking at a barn in a rural area.

Why did you decide to try making videos for Instagram and TikTok?
I'm not really social media savvy. On my personal page, I post once or twice a year. You're supposed to post when you're trying to do a business and I wanted to get people to our events, so that's really all it was. Then two years ago, we went a little viral with some stuff—emphasis on a little bit.

Well, viral enough that several states away I found your videos promoting the sculptures. How did that whole thing start?
The first year that we did it was 2022. I live and work in the biggest art community in Columbus, so I have a lot of connections with the artists there and I wanted to do this project. The first year I just reached out to friends and acquaintances that I knew would be interested in the idea. I just pitched it to them and I was like, ‘Hey, I can't pay you anything, but I have this project and I think it's cool and this is the mission that it supports.’

What was your pitch?
You get to make art that gets to interact with another species. I wanted to create a unique way to care about our environment that was more fun and not doom and gloom and make actionable change. Art is a really good way to inspire people, and I thought it was a really good way to get the message out there. By creating this art project, they get to share their stories and through stories we can create a better connection with the land.

Did the interest on social media enable you guys to expand the number of collaborators?
Social media has single-handedly helped us go from a local project to a multinational project. Last year and this year opened it up to my entire social media channel. Last year we worked with artists from six states and Mexico. This year we got 61 submissions from at least 12 states and four countries. We selected people from eight states and two countries.

Which countries are represented this year?
Colombia, Canada, Mexico, and Norway.

What have you learned from these artists and their work?
The theme every year is “Home,” because the project is called Beecoming Home. That is mostly inspired from a Wes Jackson quote and he's amazing. He's a soil scientist in Kansas.

The secondary theme was “Light and Dark.” Everyone has to submit what their story is, and you just hear people tell full stories about their childhood and massive life experiences. Random strangers writing to other random strangers, being super vulnerable about why they're making this art.

That's really what I responded to in the work you were sharing. Not only is it about ecological preservation, but it's also broadening the scope of who can access this and try it for themselves.
Art and preservation has always been the goal as this project continues to evolve. It's the Wes Jackson quote that I get back to. It's about becoming native to a place.

European settlers came to this country and never tried to become native to the place. They brought what they knew and they moved it here and they just supplanted themselves in a new area and never tried to understand this place at all. It's pretty easy to see the ripple effect of that in our society. Most Americans, we don’t really understand or know or appreciate the place where we live—the land that we live in.

Why does Wes Jackson’s philosophy resonate with you?
He talks about the responsibility and duty that we have as new homecomers to become native to the place and to create, he says, a massive salvage operation where we learn how to live on this land. That we see living on this land as art. Whether you're a scientist or a doctor or a lawyer or an accountant, you can be an artist because you can plant native flowers and you can go outside and identify the trees in your backyard. Merging art and ecology to create something different is bridging that connection of how to see the world. To see it in a more romantic way that even your backyard is a romantic place to see and envision and learn.

If we start seeing nature and our backyards as more artful places, then we are going to grow a reverence for the place and an appreciation for where we live, no matter where we live. That is really what this art project is all about.

How can people start to put that quote into action?
Remembering their childlike sense of wonder when they go outside. Go into your backyard, into the alleyways, and be curious. That childlike sense of wonder of what is possible is seeing the world a little bit more artistically.

It’s sad that we all forget that sense of imagination because I think it’s actually an important part of our survival.
Whenever you have free time, every month do the same exact one-mile walk and just take in how different the nature is. Just see how it changes every season, every month. That is part of that childlike sense of wonder. Instead of just doing that walk to get your steps in, do that walk looking at every flower and every tree and asking questions about why is this there.

What does your average week look like? Is there an average week?
Beekeeping during the wintertime is getting ready for the next year. Beekeeping during the summertime is just keeping up with the bees. In the fall, it’s preparing for the winter dearth—and that's just the beekeeping side.

I do freelance fabrication work. I build native bee boxes to sell commercially as a way to bring in revenue. Native pollinator habitats that I create throughout the city need different maintenance plans. I remove honeybees and wasps from people's houses, and that's some of the videos that I make too—humane extermination.

How many bees do you have?
For honeybee hives, a beekeeper is going to keep beehives and those are going to be boxes stacked on top of each other. During the wintertime, each box has about 10,000 and during the summertime, if they're healthy, about 50,000. I have about 30 hives at any given year, so in the summertime….

Is that an usually high number?
I am still a hobbyist beekeeper. You need hundreds of hives to be a smalltime beekeeper, and real commercial beekeepers have thousands of hives. That's why the art project is about 15 artists, so that I'm using roughly about half my hives for the art projects themselves and can move them around when I need to.

What is the difference between honeybees and native bees?
Honeybees are not native to the United States. European settlers brought them over. There are roughly 4,000 unique species of native bees in the U.S. They're more reclusive and not as showy as honeybees. They don't make honey, so we don't find them as enjoyable. I keep honeybees, but for the pollinator habitats that I create, those are intended for native bees and to bolster native bee habitats. Honeybees don't really need to be saved. Our native bee populations do need to be saved and the number one way to save them is creating more habitat.

How does your work make you feel about the future?
What the “Save the Bees” movement missed was educating people that there's a whole lot of other bees that need our help and literally it's as easy as planting more native habitat. That's what the art is about—a little bit of a critique on the original environmental movement. The shame/guilt movement didn't work and I think it didn't work because we hadn't created that reverence and appreciation for where we live.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity

Where do you find peace?
I find peace in the bath and while I'm biking. I look forward to warm weather so much because biking I find so meditative. I do it all the time, even if it's freezing cold because it helps me to clear my mind.

Is there a piece of art you can’t stop thinking about?
There's a photo that I took that I am so in love with. It's the one I got of the Rise Up for Trans Youth rally of @novalikestar. It was the first photo in my little carousel. She was wearing the trans flag face paint, and she's just so beautiful and so mesmerizing.

I had to get creative with that shot. I wasn't anywhere near her. I was really far away, and I was actually frustrated initially because I didn't think I got the shot. I just remember seeing her in the crowd, and I was so eager. There was someone who kept stepping in front of the shot, too. I had literally a second to capture her and I got it.

What’s the last exhibition you went to see?
I went to the Whitney for the first time and that was really cool. I went to see the “Edges of Ailey” exhibition and it was such a beautiful moment because I went with my friend Qween Jean. She's one of the main reasons I am the photographer I am today. She helped awaken my queer identity and helped me just realize who I am as a person, so it was really cool to go and experience that with her. It just felt like one of those moments—a cemented sort of moment to be witnessing this exhibition together, and it was really cool.

What’s the best meal you’ve eaten recently?
Weirdly enough, when I was recovering from norovirus, I had a craving for a seafood crab boil. That was my first meal treat for myself after enduring that horror.

What’s your favorite thing to wear right now?
My grandma got me silk PJ’s for Christmas and I'm obsessed with them. I spend so much time sorting through photos, so it's nice to get home after covering a protest, and just get into my comfy jammies and then edit for hours and hours.

Which unread book on your shelf haunts you the most?
I have ADHD, so I'll start a book, read some of it, and then forget about it. But right now, “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck.” I know that I can get so much from that book. I give a fuck too much about everything, so it'd be helpful, but I’m not reading it because I just forget.

What’s your beauty secret?
I drink a fuckton of water because I think that helps to keep my skin clear. Also castor oil is magic, especially in the winter.

What’s your favorite scent?
Gardenias and lavender. Those are my dad’s favorite flowers, and he would always have them in our backyard. I remember it would just be so exciting when they were in bloom and smelling so amazing. We would just go sit out there and smell them.

What’s your dream vacation?
Italy looks beautiful. I've never been. I think I would probably shoot the shit out of it. I've also always wanted to go to Ireland, fall in love with an Irish man, and just be in green, rainy Ireland amongst the country folk. That sounds very dreamy to me.

What’s love got to do with it?
We know love has everything to do with everything. My tattoo on my arm actually says “Lead with love,” and that's something I try to practice every single day. I learned that from Qween Jean too, but I just think if we all tried to lead with love, the world would be a much better place. Loving each other, having empathy for one another even if you don't agree—finding that balance. I think that that's the answer.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity

An alleyway. A cyclist. A staircase.

These are the objects that compose the defining image of photographic maestro Henri Cartier-Bresson. Named only for its setting, “Hyères, France,” the 1932 photograph may not evoke much drama upon first glance. But an understanding of Bresson’s own philosophy elevates the photograph from observational to extraordinary. Beyond a perfect demonstration of the rule of thirds, the shot captures the impact of “the decisive moment.”

An instant becomes more than just animated. As the biker whips through the alley, the photo distills the ephemeral and sudden. The image becomes greater than the sum of its parts and the very essence of a moment is immortalized.

Outside of war zones, perhaps the most daunting place to capture the decisive moment is the streets of public demonstration. The frenetic atmosphere of a protest is rich with passion and fraught with discord. A place where we transcend our bodies and move as one in hopes of not only finding fellowship in action, but finding ourselves mirrored.

Madison Swart and I met in the streets this past summer during a Pride march in Brooklyn that had evolved into a jubilant dance celebration. Since last summer, I have witnessed Madison document and report a wide range of singular moments, from an unfolding neighborhood fire to the crowded scrum of Christopher Street following the National Park Service’s erasure of the trans community at the Stonewall National Monument. Her work as an independent photojournalist is characterized by fervor and ingenuity to not only distill the truth and hold power to account, but to honor and amplify collective action as well as the emotion propelling it. Her practice is a demanding and imperative artistry.

Here, Madison and I discuss organizing, objectivity, and unearthing empathy in unlikely places.

When did you first become interested in photography?
My parents were actually the first ones to realize that I had a good eye. I would just be doing photoshoots with my friends on my little flip phone, and I would be composing these weirdly good images with this little tiny square. My parents were like, ‘Wait, this is actually a really good photo!’ After that, they got me a tiny little point-and-shoot, so I was the person who was doing the MySpace photoshoots for all my friends. People would be hitting me up like, ‘Can you take photos of me?’ And I was like, ‘Cool, why not?’

I got my first big girl camera, my DSLR Nikon, in high school. That's when I started to seriously get into it. It was still photoshoots with friends, but they were less silly. They were more purposeful. There was still that element of not planning and just going on adventures and shooting, but I started to get better at figuring out how to craft an image and what I was really looking for. Then in high school, weirdly enough, I was a photojournalist for my school newspaper senior year, but I only signed up because I had a crush on the editor in chief.

Were you just shooting digital or film as well?
I never shot film. I was always digital. To this day, I don’t really do film.

Did you pursue photography after high school?
I went to film school. I applied to different schools for photography, and then I applied to different schools for film. A lot of the photography schools were looking for more fine art photography, which wasn't really me. Film just really spoke to me. I thought it was less constricting.

Why didn’t fine art photography feel right to you?
I don't really think of an image and then compose it. I see it and then I shoot it, and a lot of what they were looking for were people who could compose in that kind of way, and that's just not the way my brain worked.

So you did four years at Columbia College in Chicago. Then what?
I was still shooting. I always had a camera on hand. That's always been an extension of me, just wandering around taking photos. Chicago is such a beautiful city. I hadn't gotten into photojournalism then, but I would still do photoshoots with friends. I did some behind the scenes photography on friends’ film sets. I was doing a few internships in film production. I still really wanted to be a director.

How did you end up in New York photographing public protest and civil rights movements?
I just moved to New York on a whim seven years ago, and it was probably one of the best decisions in my life. I wasn't really shooting that much because I kind of lost the inspiration. It did take a bit for me to get that back, but I didn't get into photojournalism until 2020 with the George Floyd protests.

You were in California at that point in the pandemic, right? What made you fly back?
I was quarantining at home with my family because I moved back just during the COVID peak. I remember just watching TV, seeing how mainstream media was covering everything and focusing on the protestors looting and rioting. It was such a big frenzy where I could feel like they were trying to scare us. It felt inauthentic to me. There was something missing.

Did this impact you more as an activist or as a storyteller?
I wasn't an activist then. It was just something that was telling me that I was meant to go back to New York, and I was meant to be on the streets documenting. It was insane because I've never felt this kind of calling before and I remember it was so strong. Something was just like, ‘You're supposed to be out there. You're supposed to be shooting and documenting this.’ It was a surreal experience because it was still the peak of COVID and I remember having a conversation with my dad and stepmom in the kitchen. COVID was still really scary then and we were crying. I was like, ‘I don't know how to explain it, but I have to go to New York and I think I need to leave tomorrow. I have to be there.’ It ended up being one of the best decisions I ever made, because I went out there and I fell in love with photojournalism before I even knew what I was doing.

How did you know who to follow or where to go once you arrived?
Justice for George on Instagram. I think I Googled protests in New York, and then eventually you find one page, and then you start showing up. Then you follow organizations, they post other people's, and then you get into this web. It was a slow start at first, knowing where to go, but there were protests happening every single day at that point. You just had to meet people, but it was scary at first because I had never done that kind of thing and I get social anxiety from crowds, which is kind of ironic. But when I have a camera, it's much more manageable because I have something I can fixate on.

What equipment are you usually carrying?
I shoot on a Sony a7 III. That's my baby. I do stills on my camera, and then I usually do video on my phone, and I'll just prop that up on top of my camera, and then I'll record when things go down. Then I have my GODOX flash, which I only really use at night, and I have my portrait lens and I have my wide to zoom lens.

What kind of physical demands are asked of you as a photojournalist?
You have to be able to run. If you can run to keep up with a protest and to get away from the cops and everything, you're in better shape than you think. It is a huge physical strain because you're doing this with a fuckton of equipment. You're holding a camera in one hand and sometimes I am holding my phone in the other doing video. I'm very stealthy, which is good for me. I might be short, but I'm very quick and I know how to move through people really fast.

How have you learned to navigate crowds and compose the best possible photos?
You have to be hyper-aware of every single thing that's going around you, and some days it's easier than others. Showing up to events early is really helpful for me because I am very short, and I have to scope things and see where I can stand and get vantage points.

When it gets super tight, you have to just experiment. Sometimes there are points where I am too short and I can't get the higher vantage point that I want, so I have to get creative. Sometimes to shoot people, I'll go lower and go through people's legs. Sometimes I'll have to go through arms and zoom in. You can't get grumpy because you can't control every single scenario, especially when you're documenting events where there's lots of people. You have to learn to be adaptable and go with the flow, and that's one of the biggest technical things that I've learned. It's important to get a good mix of both wide shots and also portrait shots, too.

That’s a lot to balance.
This is one thing that my ADHD really helps me with. A lot of this work is a mixture of luck, timing, and composition. Timing is a really big factor in being at the right place at the right time. There are ways where you train yourself to know what to look for, but other times you just get lucky.

How do you manage your schedule?
I have a day job, so I can't shoot in the afternoons of weekdays. It's mainly weekends. I follow different organizations—Within Our Lifetime, I'll show up for anything that they post. I’ll follow people and see things posted, so then I screenshot and then add it to my calendar. If I think it's going to be worth going out to, I'll see how many people are engaging with the post the day before. I'm also in different Signal groups with other photographers too, so we can tell what is worth going to and what's not.

What have you learned from other photographers you’ve met in the field?
The biggest thing is how everyone has their own way of seeing. I love watching how different photographers move through a space, how they anticipate moments, and what they choose to frame. It’s a constant reminder that no two perspectives are the same, and that’s what makes this work so powerful. I’ve also learned the importance of community—looking out for each other, sharing opportunities, and uplifting each other’s work. The best photographers I’ve met aren’t just great with a camera, they’re great collaborators and storytellers.

How do you learn to anticipate?
When I first started going to protests, I’d shoot sort of aimlessly, not really knowing what to look for, but over time and by learning from other photographers on the ground, I’ve learned to recognize and anticipate flashpoints—usually moments of conflict like arrests, fights, or heated debates between opposing sides. I’ve also realized how important it is to be fluid and always moving so I can capture as much as possible.

How do you maintain objectivity?
I have always been intrigued by storytelling and by humans. That's why I studied film.

It is hard when I'm going and covering things that in my heart I don't agree with, but I do try to just remind myself to connect with the humans around me. Even though I don't necessarily believe what they're preaching, I believe that they believe in what they're preaching, and that's what I tend to fixate on. It's not my job to agree or disagree. It's my job to document and to do it in a way that's respectful. It makes me grow not just as a human, but as a photojournalist, to cover the things I don't agree with and to find the humanity.

How do you define photojournalism for yourself?
I'm still kind of figuring out what that means for me. There's maybe this question of ethics with photojournalists as well. You have mainstream media and then you have independent journalists, and I’m figuring out where my personal line is with the work that I cover.

Right now, I'm not making any money off of this work. I do it because I love it and I think it's important, but also I am trying to find a way where I can bridge that gap, where I can get paid for that work. But at the same time, I don't feel comfortable selling out and working with certain mainstream media outlets. I'm trying to figure out what kind of photojournalist I am, where I can still keep that integrity because there's no such thing as an unbiased lens. That just doesn't exist. We're human beings. There's always a level of bias to it.

Are there any misconceptions about the work you do?
There are a lot of people who will see that I'm a photojournalist and see my press pass and become wary because they have issues with mainstream media. I think it's really important to differentiate between independent journalists and people from bigger news corporations, just because our alignments are a bit different. A lot of us are on the ground documenting because we know how important it is to capture and document the truth. It's not about the money for us.

Does your work give you hope?
Independent journalists are really important in specifically fighting fascism, and that gives me hope. I think that the work that we do is very powerful, and as long as you have people who are going to keep the people in power accountable and not afraid to expose them, I'm hopeful that we can continue to create a more honest and open world. There are a lot of scary things going on in our country right now, but the power of media and the power of journalism is not something to brush aside.

Do you consider your photographs artwork?
Photojournalism is an art form. It’s also a responsibility because it’s an act of advocacy. Producing work that makes people stop, think, and feel. That empathy that we capture is important for people connecting in this crazy world. If we prioritized empathy for other human beings, I think it would solve a lot of problems that we have—not just in this country but in the world.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

An attempt to distill Katie Kitamura’s upcoming novel “Audition” is an attempt to distill one’s own consciousness. Readers become so confined by the narrows of our unnamed narrator’s mind that her fixations and fears begin to mirror our own anxieties. And as far as narrators go, this one is as unreliable as they come.

We meet her during lunch rush in FiDi. A trepidatious rendezvous with a young stranger who is not a stranger at all. Few words are exchanged. Internal woes take precedence and then swell when her husband, Tomas, arrives but then abruptly departs. What did he see? What didn’t he see? What does he know? What does he think he knows?

This amorphous—if not mundane—opening scene is the perfect introduction to “Audition.” Unbeknownst to the reader at the close of the first chapter, the questions haunting our narrator will soon haunt us, too.

Synopsizing Kitamura’s fourth novel without exposing any of the cards she holds is daunting, but I’ll say this:

A nameless actress of midscale prestige attempts to distance herself from an enterprising young man as she frets over an impending stage production. Her futility against distraction grows more pronounced as the boons of her personal life transmute into a boobytrap.

Across a tight 200 pages, Kitamura weaves a web of ambiguities that compounds toward points unknown. Quotidian tasks like ordering breakfast pastries or walking home become so routine in the narrative that soon they are taut with suspense. Distrust is sown every time the narrator dismisses a cold idiosyncrasy as innocuous. Descriptions of her own apartment become inconsistent. Normalcy begins to resemble masquerade, shrouding the clues needed to crack open the conceit behind everything.

To read “Audition” is to chase a dangled carrot on a treadmill, turning pages in hot pursuit of a great revelation. Both a pointed comedy of manners and a slow-burning thriller, the text evokes the cinematic, surrealist horror of Buñuel or Aronofsky in its skewed portrayal of reality. That is, before reality goes out the window. Or doesn’t.

A mercurial mystery, “Audition” dares readers to exist in the mind of an insecure protagonist whose relationship with reality muddies in correlation with our confusion as to why. The complex architecture of Kitamura’s house of cards is an apt framework for such a decadent, and even kinky, exploration of identity. It’s a first-rate social satire reminiscent of Edith Wharton’s existential tales of repression.

Like this review, “Audition” is an exercise in contradictions. It is a delicious kind of deceit. I could try to further examine the novel’s intricacies, but instead, I’ll let Kitamura do the talking.

“It is possible to be two things at once. Not a splitting of personality or psyche, but the natural superimposition of one mind on top of another mind. In the space between them, a performance becomes possible.”