Beepy Bella's World

June 08, 2020

It’s Beepy Bella’s world, and we’re just living in it. Meet Isabella Lalonde, the idealist and mixed media artist merging the gap between our childhood treasures and adulthood secrecies with her brand Beepy Bella. Through her handmade jewelry made of iridescent pearls and precious beads, Lalonde normalizes our guilty pleasures.

Demodernizing from a virtual art gallery, Beepy Bella presents Beepy Bella's Fairytales, a hard-cover print book with collaborators ranging from Lalonde's sister creating a vinyl soundtrack to her favorite Instagram artists showcasing their personal portfolios. The book of fairytales showcases a new level of illusion and personality. Along with the book, Beepy Bella shows their commitment to the current cause by hosting a donation raffle for Reclaim The Block, an organization that divests from the Minneapolis Police Department and invests the funding into alternative communities.

In a realm of nymphs and fairies, Lalonde takes us on a trip filled with ethereal irregularity and imaginative wonder in the book. And even though the pages are bursting with glitter and rainbows, it was far from easy to bloom for this New York-based artist. Growing up between Paris, Switzerland, and New Jersey, it was difficult for Lalonde to find her own identity. “Every time I moved, and I moved around four to five times when I was younger, I felt like I lost my identity, and I had to rebuild it. I think part of why I love escapism is because it's the only thing that I feel like saved me during that time," says Lalonde. "All of my external scenarios are changing, my styles, and my thoughts are changing. But my inner escape, my inner imagination, and appreciation for nature still lives and is still is thriving.”

Interview by Tiana Randall
Photos by Isabella Lalonde

Get to know Lalonde as we pick her brain below.

First and foremost, who and what is Beepy Bella?

Beepy Bella is handmade, one-of-a-kind jewelry that's based on fairytales, fantasy, and inner utopias. My main goal when I was making jewelry or when I first started was that I wanted to bridge the gap between adulthood and childhood. Being 24 now, I feel like I've recently grown enough from my childhood self that I can feel that I am a different type of person now. And I'm growing into adulthood, but there's definitely things that I don't want to lose from childhood—like fantasy, believing fairies are real, magic, potential, and everything. And I think that's sort of like escapism and surrealism really helps me to cope with everyday life. Especially just living in the city. It kind of helps calm my anxiety and feel more at peace. You know, it's like this cathartic method, every necklace I make is like a painting. Because I don't design it beforehand; I look at colors, and I feel them. I definitely think I have synesthesia, so I can taste and like feel colorways. And I have words in my head, so there's all these like external senses that I'm using. It just helps tying it to my past. I always have considered myself a fine artist before anything else. I went to Parsons and studied fine art for four years and I felt like jewelry is this continuation of my art practice. I approach it more as sculptural elements and one-of-a-kind artworks rather than commercial products.

So you talked about this utopia—what do you envision in this utopia? What does it look like to you?

I love this question, because I think something that I try to invoke in every Beepy Bella piece is for the wearer to attain and manifest their own utopia. So I just want to like clarify that this is just my utopia. And I hope that the person who is wearing my jewelry can use that piece to bridge into their own. But basically, mine is just a world full of nature—gorgeous, like streaming little waterfalls and actual real-life unicorns. And you know, the trees can speak to you, and you can laugh with them, and the fairies can dance, and there are sparkles before you go to bed. And when there's rain, you see the midnight sky rise. And just this whole world of positivity and little things that make me feel safe and happy. It's this whole idea of scale. One of my favorite movies is the Studio Ghibli movie Arietty, and tiny people live in this gorgeous fantasy cottage. You just see this girl and her perspective as she walks through the garden and sees little blades of grass or like huge gigantic trees and ladybugs are like these giant monsters. So I really love this idea of like playing with scale and viewing the world from a different perspective. I think in my personal utopia, I definitely would be like a really tiny, small creature, and I would love to see how like blades of grass would be like soaring above me. I think I would really love to just feel more cozy in the world.

What three icons or what three people would you bring to this utopia, dead or alive?

That's a good question. Someone who inspired me when I was younger was definitely Dr. Seuss. I really loved his illustrations and his playfulness with words. And I think that definitely exposed me into this whole whimsical world. And then I definitely just have like favorite artists. I have an actual Google document that I keep of my favorite artists. Let me pull it up. Let's see. [Pulls up document] So one of my favorite artists is Laurie Simmons—she creates really cool different collages and photographs with dollhouses. She used different everyday objects and then placed them with these doll house legs on the underneath. So it had this really weird scale effect. And she also makes these really cool collages. One of my favorite series of hers is the Cafe of the Inner Mind, because I love that it showcases inner thoughts while in a different reality. I feel like that's something I relate to—I'm always thinking about my fantasy world, even though I'm, like, at the office. Another one of my favorite artists is Anika Yi. I would love to have her there. I mean, there's so many people, like Anna Mendieta obviously. I would love to have a little tea party with her. There's a lot of different artists.

So you're from Switzerland, Paris, and New Jersey. Has that inspired you in any way?

I think that is the root of my obsession with escapism and fantasy. French was my first language, and then I moved to the US and completely lost it. I'm not as fluent now, it's so sad. Every time I moved, and I moved around four to five times when I was younger, I felt like I lost my identity, and I had to rebuild it. I think part of why I love escapism is because it's the only thing that I feel like saved me during that time. All of my external scenarios are changing, my styles, and my thoughts are changing. But my inner escape, my inner imagination, and appreciation for nature still lives and is still is thriving. I was able to deep dive into my own creative fantasies always. I feel like my super power as an artist is being able to live within my creativity rather than my external surroundings. So when things were harder to get through and adjust to, I always had that inside of myself. It really helps me to just grow in the way that I wanted to. Like, when I moved from Paris to New Jersey, I'd go every single night on a walk at like 9 p.m., and I would just walk past all these trees into this pond. And I would just look at trees, and be like, "Wow, I really feel their energy." I really feel like trees hear everything. And they know all the secrets. And I just remember thinking and feeling that deep appreciation for the magic of nature around me.

That's eco-feminism.

Yeah. I love that. I looked it up in high school and college, because I was like, "Oh, what is this thing that everyone keeps telling me about?"

So Beepy Bella is releasing a book, Beepy Bella's Fairytails. Can you tell us about that?

When I was studying fine art, I created a Bella magazine initially, because I love graphic design, and I love looking at old book covers. That's one of my favorite forms of inspiration for my artwork. The thing that made me instigate doing the book now is that I was realizing that I handmake and create all of my own designs and imagery on my Instagram.

As an artist, that's something that comes natural to me. The world of my imagery being consistent is really important to me. So I have all these extra images that I just never had time to post on Instagram, didn't feel comfortable posting, or felt like they were too repetitive in a way. And I was like, "What can I do with them? Because they're good, and I don't want them to be left unseen." So it was like, "Why don't I just create a book of all these images, essentially outtakes of artworks that I've never got to post on social media?"

And how did that evolve into the creation of each page becoming a cohesive book?

That eventually evolved into having an open submissions with my social media followers where they could submit any fantasy-based artwork. And that's something that I feel really happy and appreciative about, because this whole fantasy and escape for a long time was an internal process and an internal part of myself. I didn't really share that in class or with others that much. So this was the first time as an artist that I felt like I was opening up my fantasy to everyone around me. And one that they could also participate in and bring their own fantasies into mine. It was a really inspiring time where people were sending me collages of mushrooms with fairies and everyone just really got the prompts! Like they're thinking in the same way as me, and I've never had that before.

So what are some of the messages or ongoing themes of this book?

This book is meant to bridge the gap between adulthood and childhood. I wanted to make people feel more comfortable as adults in indulging in their childhood curiosities of the world while still keeping that spark alive of imagination and fantasy. That's what this book represents to me and hopefully to everyone that reads it or sees this as an unleashing of imagination. You can go wild, you can go crazy, explore all the experimental parts of your mind and your thoughts. Don't be afraid to be anything but yourself, even if it's weird or too quirky for others.

I also wanted to reuse all of my old photo shoots and repurpose them. And I think that's another point about sustainability that isn't really talked about in the fashion industry—content. The carbon footprint of making content for photo shoots, traveling there, lights, production... I just think about carbon footprints of editorial photo shoots. So, I wanted to repurpose and recycle my shoots and create them in a new context so that they can be digested in another way. We should be more open to seeing content repurposed in different ways, but it shouldn't be outfits you only wear once once on Instagram. And it's just, as a matter of sustainability and consumerism, basically breaking that cycle and being more comfortable with seeing things multiple times on social media.

Don't be afraid to be anything but yourself, even if it's weird or too quirky for others.

But I feel like it was just like a really nice way to also hold something in your hands rather than in your phone that I created. My mom also wrote a fairytale for it. She was self isolating the South of France and wrote a little story about a fairy who lives in a poppy flower. In terms of physicality, the book is like a nice deep purple, eggplant linen cover with a silver foil design. So all of it is metallic and shiny, which is kind of just to like replicate my jewelry and metal work. There's a few parts to this project, because once I was creating the book, I was thinking about an all-sensory experience, just tying in back to the utopia. I was like, "How can I help the viewer and the reader deep dive into fantasy of their own making while reading this book?" So I had my sister create an ambiant soundscape to listen to as you read the book, and it times out perfectly—it's kind of like this all-sensory experience. We actually are producing the soundtrack on vinyl, which is coming out early June, and it's also a nice purple eggplant vinyl. And we hand-created the cover and the artwork for it. I'll be selling them as a bundle when they're both completed.

During quarantine on May 1st, we did launch the book virtually as a gallery online with GMO gallery. It is our new platform that was created during quarantine by my partner to make art more accessible. So it's basically this whole 3-D world that has my different pages of the book hanging as paintings, and you can walk through the space. There's gigantic mushrooms. There's a huge castle that has all my photo shoots in it.

So what's next for Beepy Bella?

I just created socks, which were a new sort of accessory that I was really excited about. They're neon pink, neon green, and like a purple Argyle sock with my logo on it. Something that I'm obsessed with is actually shoes. And I love how socks can really be an extension of your shoe. It can really make an outfit so much more eclectic. And I think that's also part of my inspiration as an artist, and self-expression has always been the way I dress. I find a lot of therapy in creating my outfits, because it also references that fantasy world, the world that I see myself living in when I do have that like surrealist escapism in my mind. That is something that I do with my jewelry too; I try to bring in that element of style. Like, you can be wearing just a white tee shirt and jeans, but you'll have like this Beepy Bella necklace on and people will be like, "That's so wild." It's a really crazy piece.

In terms of collabs, I just had one with Haejin Park, who is an amazing Brooklyn-based illustrator, and she does mainly watercolors. She watercolored some clay pendants for me, and I strung them, and we had a double-string necklace, which was kind of like the state signature of that launch. I'm also working on creating some logo necklaces. So basically just my signature pearl necklace, but having my logo custommade with some stones.

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Blending her background as a poet and visual artist, Sneed’s work reflects on themes of identity, nature, and connection. Her paintings capture the beauty and spirit of the animals she encountered, alongside reflections on her own experiences as part of the African diaspora.

This exhibition marks Sneed’s first solo show with Dashwood Projects and will be accompanied by a new book, also titled Speaking Tongue, to be released in December.

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Tiebreaker - Alvin Armstrong

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The Things People Are Ashamed To Take Photos Of: The Photography and Films of Yuhan Cheng

Yuhan’s latest exhibition of photo and video work titled 窗子外 Outside the Window, Inside the Tank 鱼缸里 takes its namesake from what could’ve been a mundane encounter. A month after moving to New York City from Chengdu, China, they stumbled across an abandoned fish tank left curbside. It reminded them of “the rotating fish in a tank that faded into the background of their mother’s home in Chengdu”, a thread connecting childhood familiarity that transformed into a symbol of greater significance in adulthood. A tank is a world within a world; a microcosm secluded from the broader chaos of the outside. Since then Yuhan has captured the other kinds of “fish tanks” closest to them in their photography and short films. Not literal ones necessarily– but intimate confined spaces in Chengdu and NYC where time stands still.

In the midst of taking snapshots of loved ones, Yuhan decided to turn their tender but examining lens on themselves. They realized shooting self-portraits unraveled a deeper understanding of their own nonbinary gender and queer sexuality. Yuhan admits in one of their short films “I hide from looking at my own body.” Yet, in the seclusion of their room which doubles as a dark room, Yuhan began to develop their first nude photos chronicling the subtle wounds; bitten cuticles, bruises, and scrapes they’ve accumulated involuntarily, once again documenting the things people choose to hide.

窗子外 Outside the Window, Inside the Tank 鱼缸里, debuted at FAR-NEAR Studio Hours a gallery in Chinatown focused on expanding the art world's view of Asia and Asian artists curated by Lulu Yao Gioiello. The event merged Yuhan’s works from the past three years, including 70 photographs, three short documentaries, and one installation. There was something uncanny about the gallery’s atmosphere – from the dollar store teal green curtains obscuring every window to the clusters of framed photos mimicking how photos of relatives are displayed in one’s childhood home, to the darkened lighting that was both disorienting and cozy. All these details were meticulously chosen to imitate the rooms depicted in Yuhan’s films and photography. In other words, the audience was invited to Yuhan’s “fishtank”, to share the odd balance of comfort and unease of being known intimately. We talked to Yuhan at Cafe Reggio to understand how their latest body of work came into being.

Initially, I was exploring my friends’ identities through the lens, but slowly, it became a tool to confront and understand my own queerness and gender identity.

Ora Margolis— Were any memories/childhood experiences you had in Chengdu important to how you've developed as an artist?

Yuhan Cheng— Growing up in Chengdu, especially in a military household, shaped and gave me a source of contention how I understood my identity. There was always a sense of conflict when it came to my body and feeling like I didn’t quite fit the expectations around me. This tension has been a driving force in my practice, pushing me to explore identity and belonging in my work.

Tell us a bit about your latest exhibition Outside the Window, Inside the Tank at Far. What headspace were you in when taking these photos?

YC— Outside the Window, Inside the Tank is about the fluidity of self; our bodies, our environments, and our identities. The idea of water as both a symbol of confinement and freedom is central to the photos and film that comprise the exhibit. This fluidity much like how I see my experience moving between Chengdu and New York, where similar feelings follow me no matter where I am. Water mirrors the body, the frame, and the room, which are all containers of the self.

Previously, you’ve said you wanted the exhibition space to look "like your room". How did you make that happen and why is your NYC room important to you?

YC— My room in NYC is an extension of my identity. It’s where I feel vulnerable and where I explore myself most openly. It’s a manifestation of my sense of self. I recreated certain elements in the exhibition—the green sheer curtains, the dollar store shower curtain with bubbles, and the center installation depicted a self-portrait deteriorating in water, reminiscent of a fish in a tank. This room, like any other room or container, magnifies the tension of self-exploration.

Has your idea or comfort with your gender identity and /sexuality changed since you’ve delved into photography?

YC— Yes. The process of photography and filming has been a mirror to my own understanding of self. Initially, I was exploring my friends’ identities through the lens, but slowly, it became a tool to confront and understand my own queerness and gender identity. The process of photographing my queer friends and then myself allowed me to come to terms with who I am.

How did you and Lulu Yao of FAR-NEAR Studio meet, and what makes her a good collaborator?

YC— We first connected when I reached out with my series Princess of Funan River. Lulu understood the struggles and complexities in the work and she invited me to expand on those ideas with her. Our collaboration has worked because Lulu truly resonates with the themes I’m drawn to, like fluidity, transformation, and the intimacy of navigating belonging.

After completing Fish Tank and Remnants of an Amateur Film, what kind of movie do you want to make next?

YC— Right now, I’m more focused on writing. I need to understand what I want to say before making another film. Writing helps me find clarity;it’s a crucial part of my process.

What kind of camera do you use and why?

YC— I use a Canon AE-1. I started with it and I still love it. It's small, spontaneous, easy to use, and light. It allows me to capture moments naturally without overthinking.

What's your biggest fear?

YC— Being disconnected from my sense of self, from others, and from the things I love.

When do you feel most like yourself?

YC— It’s during those fleeting moments when I complete a project. That feeling fades quickly, leaving me searching for the next project to reconnect with that sense of fulfillment.

How do you want people to feel when they interact with your art?

YC— I want them to feel whatever resonates with them. I don’t want to prescribe the experience; it should feel right for each person.

Your work focuses on the close knit communities that surround you or various metaphorical “fish tanks”. What communities do you feel closest to?
YC— The queer artist community, both in Chengdu and NYC, has been a source of comfort and understanding for me. There’s something about shared struggles and shared creative language that feels like home.

What's the biggest difference between living life as a queer artist in NYC and in Chengdu?

YC— In both NYC and Chengdu, I’m learning more about myself. NYC offers a sense of freedom, while Chengdu is home, a place of comfort and history. Neither place defines me but both are significant parts of my path.

What are your next moves/goals?

YC— I want to continue exploring both film and photography, expanding my narrative style and experimenting across mediums. During my show, I found new ways of seeing my photographs such as by adding a window screen between frames or letting a self-portrait fade and grow mold in water. These approaches allowed me to see my work not just as 2D images but as 3D objects.

I want to keep pushing the boundaries of how photo and film can interact, and I’m also interested in trying photojournalism. My focus remains on collaborating across mediums and continuing to accumulate experiences that I can translate into sincere honest work.