How do you practice being intentional about who you work with?
I still consider myself a small business, even though I’ve had great successes. It’s still fucking me myself and I. I open up the gallery. I sit at the counter. I check people out. I’m fucking making stuff. It’s really hard and overwhelming. I feel like on Instagram, people put a lot of crazy expectations on other people and assume other peoples’ lives like, oh wow she had a commercial, this bitch must be rich. But I’m working hard every day to keep this place open, and if I were to fall short, I’d have nobody to ask for help. I just can’t wait until I’m in that next phase of my career where I’m able to hire help that’s ethical. I’m really big on that. Really, really, really, really big on that. If you’re paying $200 off my website, you’re gonna get quality, you’re gonna get love.
What are the challenges of running your business?
Especially after COVID, small businesses are pretty much designed to fail. That sounds fucked up, but it’s, like, real shit. We’re only being compared to Amazon, we’re being compared to Shein. We’re being compared to these people who have consumers in a chokehold. I feel like we’ve gotten so comfortable with instant gratification that people forget that some businesses are still people making shit by hand. It’s hard to promote your business, because people are expecting shit fast, ready, and done perfect. But there are so many moving parts to all of this you know?
Your work is so often about the personal, tactile experience. How did COVID affect that?
Well, first of all, I was fucking stuck. The first half of the pandemic I had a mental breakdown. I was like, bitch it’s over for me. My career is crushed, canceled, in a coffin. Because all of my shit is just touch. That’s literally what I do. The whole point of my experiences is having people coming in and touching and being immersed in it. I really thought it was over for me. But then I was like, I can still make spaces if people just don’t touch it. I do feel like my art has lost a lot of its element in a way. In the pandemic, I was blessed enough to open up an art gallery and I had events, but there were just so many precautions that I had to kind of police peoples’ experiences. I’m so anti-that, so it was a real struggle.
You debuted some pieces at Complexland last week, tell me about that.
I’ve done three ComplexCons, and they were always great, so I’m always down to do anything that Complex does. I did some other virtual spaces and the process is just a lot of digitizing shit. There’s just more technicalities and I really commend them for making that shit happen.
Fashion, Faux Fur, Furniture, you’ve got a lot under your belt. What can we expect to see next?
I’m about to drop a super, super, super fucking fire bikini. I haven’t shown it to the world yet. I’m only gonna say it here because they should be coming very soon. In the next two weeks, I’m going to start rolling them out. Now that I’m back in Los Angeles, I’m excited to shoot in the Psychedelic Collection more and also probably going to have an event at my gallery. So hot girl summer is 100% full swing. I’m making shit for all my bad bitches.