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.