A conversation with Skylar Simmons
Transcript from episode seven of the Good Folk Podcast.
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SPENCER GEORGE: Hello, folks. I am Spencer George, and this is the Good Folk Podcast. Today I am excited to introduce you to the wonderful Skylar Simmons, an artist and Zine creator from Clinton, North Carolina.
Throughout high school and summers home from college, Skylar created various public works for the city, ranging from murals and sculptures to a painted community piano. Skylar attended the North Carolina Governor's School for Art, which greatly influenced her interest in interdisciplinary collaboration. She recently graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University's School of the Arts with a BFA in painting and printmaking and a minor in art history. Skylar moved to the Southern Pines area in January of 2021 with her partner, musician Sean Diesfeld, and their dog, Freckles.
Although she is trained as a fine arts painter, it has been the music community in the area that truly inspires her and helped guide her into graphic design and the launch of her art account @PAPR.text on Instagram. There she continues to help artists explore mediums, collaborate with others, and tackle DIY projects they may have thought were out of reach. Accessible art is highly important to Skylar and has always been a part of why and how she creates.
In August, Skylar released S!Ck, a monthly zine project to promote the music and art scene of the Southern Pines and Aberdeen area. S!Ck prides itself on accessible, creative, and thoughtful designs that bring people together to form stronger bonds within the community and grow the arts that define the culture of the Sandhills area. We are especially honored that Good Folk will be included in the September issue of S!Ck, dropping this Friday. Those of you in the Sandhills area can find copies at a variety of local businesses or you can check the pages out online, which I will link in the description.
This is a conversation about arts access, who gets to call themselves an artist, the power of DIY independent creation and the experience of bringing together community in unexpected places. It's about harnessing the power of art to share the stories, places and people that are important to you, and about those moments when you discover that there have been cool places right in front of you all along and you just have to ask, who knew? I hope you enjoy.
SPENCER GEORGE: I want to kind of get started just with a little bit about your own personal background. So you mentioned in your bio, you're from Clinton, and I'm wondering if you could tell us a little bit about your exposure to the arts growing up. Did you always want to be an artist? Did you feel like that was something you had access to or knowledge of? What was that like?
SKYLAR SIMMONS: Yeah. So I'm actually from a small town called Clinton, North Carolina, except I'm from a smaller town that is a little closer to Roseburg, North Carolina, which is an even smaller community called Beaver Dam. I didn't really grow up being around artists, but my grandfather was a doctor and my mom worked in his practice. And so I'd come home from school or from being babysat or anything, and she just gave me scrap pieces of paper. I'm, like, sitting at this random desk in the middle of them being in business hours, like him seeing patients and stuff, I couldn’t go home and so I would just doodle. And that is how I spent, like, all of my childhood.
I had some really supportive teachers throughout grade school. In middle school, I visited Richmond for the first time and didn't realize I was on VCU’s campus until later on. Like years later, I'm looking at colleges and I'm like, I recognize that place. It felt like this moment of like, oh, that's where I'm supposed to be. I just graduated in the spring with a major in painting and printmaking and a minor in art history. And that was actually a more impactful minor in the grand scheme of things that I ever thought it would be, because I was always really bad at history, and now it's like the predominant part of my research basis in any of the things that I create.
SG: I took an art history course. I was not very good at it, so I have a lot of admiration for you for that. A lot of my friends were art history majors in college. You're describing these degrees that are all art forms, and they're all kind of different art forms. And we are going to talk about the zine, obviously, and I want to hear about your journey into zine making. But how did you choose printmaking? How did you choose these things? Did you have any experience going into that? Because printmaking is incredible, and it's also something that you don't tend to know a lot about unless you really seek it out. So how did you choose that?
SS: Yeah, I guess my first start in it was… I was big into the Sampson County Arts Council would have these summer programs for kids, and that was my first experience doing screen printing. And then in high school, we did block printing. I always really liked it, but I was more into the painting aspect of things, especially in high school. And luckily, the painting and the printmaking programs are put together. Like, you could focus more in printmaking or in painting, but there's an overlap no matter what, which is really cool because it forced me to try out some of these things that I was like, oh, I’d never use that. And now it's a predominant part of my career. Which, thank goodness, VCU set it up that way. Because it has these two different modes of, there's painting, which has this kind of high art, sort of white cube etiquette about it, where it's like paintings are for people that already appreciate art. And then I feel like printmaking and other more accessible forms of reproductive art are for the public, and that is what I'm more interested in.
Throughout middle school and high school, I was really active in my community. I have a few sculptures and painted murals up in the downtown Clinton area. So that was always like, really nice that even whenever I was a pre-graduate of high school, they're like, taking a chance on this kid just being like, oh, I want to make art. They're like, okay, here's a project. We need this, like, alleyway to look nice. And I would go and do it.
SG: That's amazing. I've never been to Clinton, but I'm going to have to go and check some of those out. I'm interested— I am a folklorist, that's what I'm getting my master's degree in. And I do a lot of work with public folklore and public art projects. That's a huge focus of my research. I am really interested in what you're talking about, of art for the public versus art that is for private consumption versus art that is for corporations, because I feel like those are three very distinct fields of art making. Could you elaborate a little bit more on what you mean by art for the public? What does that mean to you?
SS: Yes. I would like for more people in their day-to-day lives to be able to go through and navigate, like, their own personal world and have a moment with an art piece, whether they recognize it as art or not. But it's just this moment of like, oh, that's a cool thing. Like, that's the highest bar level of getting someone to appreciate art in their regular day-to-day lives in the public is then to have this cool moment with a piece, whether they realize it or not. Because I think a lot of times it's glossed over with advertisements. Like, someone spent a lot of time putting the ad together, but there's not really designer credit. And at the same time, you see something that's trying to be marketed to you, so you kind of immediately shut it down in your head as being of value, to a degree.
I think that spans into a few different things, whether it's like cuisine or murals or the kinds of conversations I try to have. And I've actually noticed recently, the more the world has opened up and going to bars is okay again, and anytime someone asks me what I do, I'm like, oh, I'm an artist. And they're like, oh, what kind of art do you make? I have a friend that does watercolor. And I kind of do the spiel where I info dump art history and try to explain what minimalism is to a person that really probably could care less.
But I love to talk about what those kinds of metaphors mean to them, and if they were to be in an art gallery, what that experience would be for them, even if they've never gone to something like that, because it's something to take time out of your day to go to an art museum. And like, museums and galleries are set up for people that already know they want to go see art.
A lot of times our working class and our laboring class— shout out to Labor Day, that just happened— our working class and our laboring class don't have that kind of time or know what they want to go see or want to go explore. So they're almost limited in this way of like, well, I don't have the luxury of appreciating art. I don't think it's a luxury. I think it's a cultural necessity.
SG: You just explained what I've been trying to put into words for, like, eight years, so well. Thank you so much for that, because you really put it so nicely of, like, art is not a luxury. It is a cultural necessity. And unfortunately, most of the time, it's not treated that way. Careers in the arts aren't often treated that way. It's something that is seen as a hobby more often than an actual pursuit.
I have two questions kind of off of this. I'm going to start with one, which is, I also went to school for my art form. I'm a creative writer. And it's always so interesting when you meet people and you try to explain— I mean, now I study folklore, and you're like, this is so important and so meaningful to me. And then you're, like, in a bar trying to tell somebody, like, what you do, and they can't wrap their head around it.
I think for me, it was kind of hard sometimes to be a writer in an academic setting because it felt like all of my grades and academic worth were very dependent on my artistic creation and I find that a really difficult way to make things. I'm wondering what it was like, your experience with arts in academia, did you feel supported as an academic person studying the arts? Did you feel like that was something that was challenging? Do you think it's helped you kind of looking back on it, having a degree in these things? Because there are plenty of artists who are like, I'm not going to go to school. I'm just going to make my art. And while I can recognize that my degree has led me to a lot of good things, I can also be like, man, I wish I had just taken the money and invested it in Good Folk or literally anything else.
SS: No, I totally get that. I don't even know where this pressure came from because it wasn't rooted in family or anything. There was no one breathing down my neck, like, oh, you have to make A’s and stuff. But I always felt like I had something to prove. I think, because early on in my life, I was labeled as “the art kid”, so no one thought I was actually smart.
I've always been good in an academic setting because I have that internal thing of, like, I have to prove myself. And I guess going into VCU knowing the track that I wanted to do and some of the things I wanted to accomplish, it was easy. Until abstraction came up, and then that was just a concept, like, the freeness of the concept of abstraction troubled me so bad. I remember being in a critique, and I had classmates, and it was an experiments and painting class, and I remember being in this class, and I wasn't even on the docket of being critiqued. It was someone else's work. But I thought it was just so amazing and just expressed everything that needed to be expressed in the most abstract way possible.
And I just started crying. I'm like I'll never understand. I'll never do it right. I'll never get it. And I had to step away. My roommate at the time, still a really close friend, she goes and finds me in the bathroom, and she's like, hey, dude, what's wrong? And I explained what my hardships were with not understanding what abstraction was or how it worked. She was like, you know, we're all just kinda, like, making things up when it comes to this abstraction thing. And that was the weird thing that clicked for me in that moment of, if you're able to explain the significance and what your intention might have been, even if you don't accomplish it, you're probably going to push through that threshold of knowing this is a valid piece of art, and this is why it is important.
If you're able to explain the significance and what your intention might have been, even if you don't accomplish it, you're probably going to push through that threshold of knowing this is a valid piece of art, and this is why it is important.
I guess in that way, I got to be really creative. But then given that same breath, my same professor of that class was trying to push me to explore more. I actually opened up a suitcase and I painted on the inside, on the outside, and I had nails driven through it. And so the lighting played with the way the nails were on the surface and the shadows. And he was mad at me because he said it wasn't a painting, that it was a sculpture, because it was a three dimensional thing. And I was like, I thought we were experimenting. What are you talking about?
I think that was one of the few instances that I had where there was this standardization, but at the same time, it's kind of like this glass ceiling standardization where I eventually talked my way through, like, well, this is why it's a painting, because I said it is. That's literally the only reason it was valid. And I even talked to another professor who was amazing, Gregory Volk, who is an art critic and just an amazing human being. And he was like, who said this to you? And turns out the grad student that was critiquing the work was also his student. He was like, I'm going to have to have a talk with him.
Yeah, it was nice because as we came out of Covid, I went in and had, like, a normal freshman year, sophomore and junior year got interrupted by Covid, and then by senior year, everyone, specifically my grade, but within the entire program was so desperate to have each other again. We knew what it was to take for granted the community that was around us. And my close friend that I mentioned earlier, Ophelia, she started Concept Treehouse, which was this artist collective. we'd meet for a few hours in our downtime and just talk about concepts of work or different aspirations we have or the art industry on these different levels, whether it's galleries or public art making. That was really helpful that we all had this moment together of feeling the same thing, even though separately, and we came together and made something from it.
SG: In so many ways, I feel like that is what it means to be an artist. Exactly. To have all of these separate experiences, but to come together and make something of it. That's how I describe, so often, my artistic practice. That collective sounds very cool. I want that.
One question that I have for you is hearing about your experience with art history or experience in academia, it is always brought up often that the art world is this very kind of high and mighty, highbrow, exclusionary place that, exactly like your professor, going well, that's not a painting. Museums are places that, even if they're free and they're accessible to all, a lot of people are still afraid to walk in the door because they're like, that's not for me. I don't understand that world Especially in the field of art history, a lot of times I feel like that kind of general belief prevails, of, well, this is a sign that I'm cultured, and I'm knowledgeable about the world, and I'm sophisticated, and if you don't understand it, it's your problem.
How do you navigate that as somebody who wants to break into the arts, but maybe didn't grow up a lot around the arts? Or how can we get past this idea that the art world is this kind of exclusive place?
SS: Yeah. I believe in growing it together. In the same way that I get excited about seeing something by Gerhard Richter, I get just as excited seeing graffiti on, like, the side of a train in a train yard. My efforts are in making active engagements of being like, this is art. You are an artist. No matter what it is you create or how you create, as long as you're creating something worthwhile and that you enjoy doing and appreciate it and it has some sort of significance in this world, that's meaningful.
I read a few things back in school. One was Bruce Nauman’s text called, The First Man Was An Artist. And that's kind of like this mantra that lives in the back of my head and tickles the nice parts of my brain that are, like, keep doing the thing you're doing, it's worthwhile. But yeah, it's a difficult world to navigate, and a lot of times I say I'm like, oh, no, I don't want to be a gallery artist. And then I've got a painting up in a gallery right now in Richmond. So it's difficult, but I think it's possible to bridge practices and to engage with people that don't realize that art has a significance or an importance.
My efforts are in making active engagements of being like, this is art. You are an artist. No matter what it is you create or how you create, as long as you're creating something worthwhile and that you enjoy doing and appreciate it and it has some sort of significance in this world, that's meaningful.
And also about what you're making, or the way in which you make I think will touch different audiences. Like, Noah Davis is an artist and he passed away at a fairly young age, he was in his thirties, and I adore his work. He was very underappreciated, and he got into this really interesting professional relationship with a woman that would commission like, Josef Albor’s art and all of these super expensive museum commissions to show in his family's gallery that they set up. And after his passing, it was kind of like that age old tale of the whole starving artist that then makes a name for themselves after they've passed. It was kind of that story. But it's been in the past twenty years, ten years, honestly.
I don't know that I fully have an answer for it. It’s not that I'm against it, nor am I indifferent from it, but I think there is a way to grow and foster culture around us so that it's not so far of a reach that if I'm handing you a zine this day and then I'm like, come see my show at the MOMA, it's not like, outlandish that anyone's like, oh, no, I wouldn't understand what was there. Well, you understood this part. You're going to get this. We're closer than we think we are as a culture and as a society, to understand and appreciate traditional and contemporary art forms.
SG: It's just kind of opening the door. Right. For a lot of people, like, once you get them in the room, that's a lot of the hard work. But that is so often the hard part, is just opening the door and getting people to understand, like, you have a place here, too, right?
SS: Yeah. And something that I've noticed, too, is while a lot of times somebody that's, like, everything is art, I know I wasn't always that way, but I also know a lot of people, whether they're in the art world or not, will go to a certain place and stuff and see something, and they're like, oh, well, that's just so ordinary and so plain. Like, that's a painting of a bowl of apples. They kind of discredit these really wonderfully made paintings that present the ordinary, which I just think is, like, an interesting critique of what it is we're making, which I vaguely talked about a little bit. Like, what you're making and how you're making it does affect how it's received. I always thought that's an interesting perspective of this level of judgment without having a bunch of knowledge about the topic.
SG: It's almost like it reinforces this idea that the only good art is, like, intense, highbrow art, because the ordinary can't be seen as art. I know for writing, this is, like, a huge thing where people are like, oh, you know, like your journal entries, that's not writing. Like, you have to have this really long novel that took you years to write, and it was so intense and so difficult, and it deals with all of your hardest pain. I think in so many ways, it's really revolutionary to just be like, no, my diary is art. My painting of the lamp I look at every day is art. Because art is everything, right?
And I'm with you that it's so easy to just be like, art is everything. I think when we're very young, we see that and then you get into this jaded— at least for me, I was like, no, I'm too cool for that. I'm only going to make really serious art. And then it's like, what is serious art, at the end of the day? I don't know.
I do want to move in to the zine, because you just released this amazing zine, and I would love to hear about it in your own words. I could talk about it, but I think it's more exciting if you tell us a little bit about it and about how this project got started. Y’all can’t see it, but you also did a ton of graphic work for this, which I would love to hear you talk about as well, because it looks amazing. I am so excited about the content and what you're doing with it. For people who don't know, could you tell us a little bit about the project?
SS: Thank you so much for that little introduction. So I actually started with a not real zine, which is something I posted, I only made two copies of it. It's called S!Ck, and it's mainly based on the band that I work really closely with called The Violet Exploit. The first edition was just a combination of a lot of posters and other designs I had done for separate projects.
I'd done it while home, at home, kind of, like, had this cold. I was down for the count for two days. By the time I was feeling better, I had already sent it to Staples, got it printed, and I go all excited to Casino Guitars, where my boyfriend Sean works. And I'm like, look at this thing I made. And they're like, oh, wow. This is actually, like, kind of a really nice quality. You could do something with this. I was like, oh. You're making a good point.
I hadn't really intended for it to be a bigger thing. I left my two copies there at the guitar shop. And then people just started messaging and, like, hitting me up. Like, oh, my gosh, I want to see this. Where can I see this? So I was sending everyone to this local business, and then people wanted to participate or contribute or have an ad. And I myself started going around and just pitching this to a bunch of local businesses, saying, I will make this ad for you, 100%. You don't necessarily have to give me any information, but your agreement that you'll help me pay for printing costs and it helps support the art. I include local bands, some of my peers that are still up in Richmond. And then I'm able to kind of showcase and practice my own abilities through Photoshop, doing all the advertisements.
It has grown into this really crazy thing. I had expected or intended to do a hundred copies my first run, and then I did a hundred and twenty. That released on the 20th of August. And it just kind of keeps taking off. People are super excited about it. It's funny because, like, these other subculture or counterculture, which I don't really like the description of counterculture, which means almost as if it's not of culture, but it is its own culture, anyways, are messaging, wanting to participate. There's also this partial hope that other people start making their own, which I haven't seen yet, but it's like a building block, really.
I was able to include nine local businesses. Multiple friends and colleagues participated in this event, as well as spaces, which was cool. We have an area here, and Vic, you might know this, Create Studio in Aberdeen, which is actually a hairdressing salon by day and then at night, or like, whenever it's not their business hours, they open it up to be whatever. People want to host an event there. They want to have a music show, an art gallery, auctions, live concerts. It's an adaptable space, which I think was really inspirational to me. The owner and I, we've had such short interactions because they're just such a busy person, Chaz. But I want to connect more and kind of extend that appreciation of, like, hey, your business and your flexibility and your willingness to work with anyone was super inspirational for me to start this.
I myself have only lived in the Pines area for about a year and a half. It'll be two years next January. So I just throw myself into things that will make me feel a sense of community. And the music community here has certainly done that, and it's helped being very close with one band. But doing so has allowed me a lot of opportunities to meet and network with these other people and find these other avenues and also grow with the music community at the same time that art is kind of having this flourishing in the area.
SG: There are so many amazing things in what you just said. Number one, we should team up and host a zine workshop. This has come up in multiple podcasts. I totally agree with you, I went to Barnard, which is in New York City, for my undergrad, which has a huge history of zinemaking. We have our own zine library. We have a zine club. It's incredible. And you get students who come in— I mean, I knew about zines before college, but I didn't really know. And they have their own Zine fest, and people come and they make them and they sell them, and it's so cool.
I used to teach in public schools, as many of you know, taught middle school for two years. And we did a lot with zines. I know Victoria, you all did as well. And my students loved this. I gave them free rein. We did a whole project, and I said, we're going to make a zine. We talked about the history of it, we talked about how you can do it. And I had students who were making guides to their favorite cheeses and deep dives into a TV show they really loved. It was so fantastic.
I would love— because you are an art historian.— if you could talk a little bit about the history of zine making. And I agree with you about counterculture, it's such the wrong word. But there is this kind of, like, radical bend to the history of zine making that it has in so many ways been used as a way to go against traditional publishing and say, you know what, you don't think this has value? Let me show you the value it has. I'm going to do it myself. And so many modern zine makers are just making them at home and printing them at Staples, right? You don't have to have the traditional publishing press. You don't have to have, like, the network and the connections. Anybody can make a zine. Could you touch on that history?
SS: Yeah, so I know a bit about it. It's been a few years since we had talked about it, but I think my most recent remembrance of what zines were and my personal start and experience of it was block printing and block printing, like, individual pages on a single sheet, folding them together, and then passing out like, these wallet size zines to just people on the streets. We were doing that my freshman year about endangered species of plants, which is random. My professor went a little into the significance of the grunge punk and music culture. And so I know that's what I personally associate it with a lot, and people have compared my zine to those punk-era zines.
I've seen some authentic ones, actually, up in Richmond. If I could remember the name, I'd say it, but it was a record store that archived a bunch of old era zines. And looking through those, like, this is just so cool. Like, just these random grassroots things.
Yeah, that is my understanding of the starting point. There's another artist that does something called Fake Flyers, who's been significantly influential to my stuff. His name is Nathan something. I wish I could remember it. But kind of these grassroots, like, interjections into thought and culture and disseminating at, like, this ridiculous amount— I'm such a fan of.
And what you were saying about, like, teaching at a school. I am currently a substitute teacher at high schools. I was a permanent sub for a science class back in the spring while I was finishing my degree, and now I'm back doing that. But I take the zine in with me sometimes and I'll just pass it around to students. Or I also go to the Sandhills Community College and drop off about sixty copies out of my a hundred and twenty or so and just, like, hand them out to students. And I'm like, if you don't want it, or if you finish reading it and you're not going to hold onto it, give it to a friend. We're getting this to as many people as possible through activating friendship and community.
So yeah, that was my personal history with zine making and a very vague history of zine making, I'm sure you might actually know more than I did. Our school wasn't big on zine making. I wish it were, but yeah.
SG: I think that was great. I definitely don't know any more than you do. I know a little bit about the history of it, and I watched a lot of documentaries to prepare to teach this massive zine unit. But it's fascinating.
For somebody who wants to make a zine and has no idea where to start, what they need? How do you start a zine? How did you start a zine? I mean, you've told us, but what are the steps?
SS: Well, first you have to have your materials of what you're going to put the pages in. I do have another separate one that I made while I was in school, and I actually within the pages was using old film, like photo film. So you hold it up to a light or over white paper and you can see through it, but also see the image.
You have to have— typically— a topic. In my case, the topic is like, Band Artist, is what I have dubbed what my career is. So that's now a coined term, Band Artist. And having your topic, arranging your pages, which probably is the most time consuming, getting them printed and then getting them stapled or put together, fixed together, some people will sew them. The printing processes— that could be screen printing, which I've done. It could be block printing, which I've done. Or just sending it off to a printer or printing it yourself at your house.
It's one of the most accessible ways to put out a lot of information at once. I think that's why I like it a lot. Whereas a painting or a mural maybe says one thing and you pass it every day, a zine is something that you can hold on to, you can take with you. And at least my copies, they're half sized sheets, and it's actually only five sheets of paper, but that covers twenty pages worth of content, which includes the cover in the back.
It takes me— if I really focus on it and I have all my material at once, it only takes me a week. But between getting sponsorships and doing interviews and stuff— which as of right now, I conduct myself, other than the help of actually, an old student named Andrew Sellers has started writing for me because he's pursuing journalism— really it just comes down to having all the information and then I take like a week of just putting it all together before I send it off to print.
SG: It's so cool. It's such a cool process. If you've never made a zine go on YouTube. Like, pause this podcast, go on YouTube, search, like, zine cutting tutorial, and you can take one sheet of paper and turn it into zine. And it's really fun. That's my challenge to anybody listening.
Skylar, that leads so nicely into the next thing I want to touch on, which is this element of community that you're talking about. And the way in which zines get shared through community. They're really dependent on community. Like, in your case, it is spotlighting a very cool community.
It is so interesting to hear you talk about Southern Pines, because I probably moved, like right before you moved in. And I lived there during Covid and did not find a huge art community, felt like I was kind of on my own, aside from a lot of my coworkers. And, in a very wonderful way, too. I loved living there at the same time that I found it really challenging.
What has it been like integrating into this art community that is now emerging? Ffor people who are not familiar with the area at all, there are so many new things that have opened in the last few years and reopened that are really bringing a lot of young artists into this area, which is super, super cool to see.
SS: Oh, that's a really good question because it's hard to tell if I found my arts community. Like, of course, you walk into like, Sandhills Community College common room and you kind of look around and you see some crazy colored hair and people wearing a lot of black and you're like, those are the art students. And of course, I was like, correct about my guesstimation in that moment.
But at the same time, there's still a lot of people I haven't found. A lot of this can be word of mouth. Through Create I was able to see Dance Perspective, which was this beautiful photography showcase, and also had live performances of music in the after-hours of it. And through that I was able to meet a lot of people I'd never met before, who are creating an art style that I haven't really considered doing before. The skate community has really had a big come up, and I would say the military community has brought in a lot of younger folks. Yeah, they're bringing in wherever they're from, but at the same time, themselves. And I've seen how they're engaging with the spaces that they're in.
Going from a very small town that I lived in before and then huge Richmond, Virginia, which was such a culture shock, this has been a nice in-between. And it feels really attainable that even if it hadn't started before, and maybe it's on the cusp of starting, or it hasn't started at all, and I'm kind of like making up that we have this really avid arts community when it's not even crested on what it could be— I want to help document that.
I love being a fangirl in the way of, like, I will support you no matter what. If you are pursuing something that you put your all into, and— I’m also at the age where, I’m twenty two, what’s the worst that could happen? I've spent $600 to pay for zines, have less than broken even, to try to support what I think is worthwhile? Other people that have shown me support or helped me get other commissions, spaces that feel are super supportive for different inclusivity efforts, whether it's LGBTQIA+ community or BIPOC individuals.
People have been throwing around the word progressive a lot. Like, I've heard multiple conversations about like, oh, this area is becoming more progressive. And I don't know. Like, that's such a political term when we as people could just be very cool with each other and do very cool things, and that is what I would prefer to see, as opposed to like, oh, every decision is a political statement. I don't think so. I think it's important to enlighten people or to shed some light on ignorance that exists in certain areas.
And I think artists and creatives are more apt to think in that way and process what they see and are doing in their lives day to day. They're a little more aware in that way. So then the duty kind of falls on those people, which is a little burdensome, because then you're the spokesperson of whatever's going around in the area. But at the same time, it's worthwhile. Like, if I know something, why would I not tell you what's wrong or what's right? I want the zine to exist as this sort of conduit of creativity, but also goodness that is around us and keeps coming up.
SG: I really love that you brought that up, and I think that's such a great way to put it. There's something really interesting to me that happens with these very clear political lines drawn around rural spaces and, at the same time, these very clear lines often drawn around artists, where like, artists are supposed to be very progressive people, often generally painted as quite liberal, very on the Democratic side.
It feels like if you're going to be an artist in a rural space, you're always going to have to butt heads with that community. And in my mind, what art really should be able to do is bring people together and to create a community regardless of those lines. Because you can't say you can only be an artist if you have a certain political affiliation, right? While many artists may tend to fall to one end of the spectrum, you can't make that assumption and you can't exclude people out of an entire practice based on this one thing.
I think that's what's so hard when you're working both as an artist and as a community builder in rural spaces, which so often is the role of artists in rural spaces, who kind of have to go in and say, I'm going to find my community. I'm going to put myself out there. It's not necessarily as inherent or as natural as it might be in a larger city. But I can't worry so much about my art being political. It has to be— community building, I mean, it is inherently political, but it doesn't necessarily have to be, right? It can be more about, here are a lot of people with good intentions doing good things. How can we bring those people together? If that makes sense.
SS: Completely. No, I completely agree.