Arty Guava’s illustrations mirror her desire for a calm, tranquil, and joyful mindset. When your eyes fall on her imagery, it certainly brings a sense of calm. From the relaxing colours she chooses to the abstract body shapes she forms, it brings you back to the core of simple joy.
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HANDMADE JEWELLRY BU KAIJA HEITLAND
Featured Artist of the Kaija Heitland explained in her interview with Hannah Seraphim that she was raised not to waste anything.
“The idea that we live in such a disposable culture that it extends to the way we raise animals, and how that has allowed us to disassociate with our food, that we find traditional practices, abhorrent, really confuses me” - Kaija Heitland
Kaija’s self-sustaining practices are transferred to her art and echoing the imperative connection with nature. This month's mix is a reminder to pause, close your eyes, and appreciate nature. Plugin your headphones and connect!
Métis artist Kaija Heitland sews fox fur trim to deer leather moccasins keeping her hands busy as she talks to SAD Mag about her multidisciplinary artforms. From her full-time job as a tattoo artist to her traditional Métis clothing and wildcraft designs through Indigenous Nouveau to her jewellery line By the Thorne, Heitland is always creating. "I really do feel that true artists have to create. Otherwise, they'll explode. That's such a truism for me that I know that I just have to keep creating constantly," says Heitland.
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THE TRENDSETTER (9FT X 6FT) BY KC HALL
Featured Artist of the Month KC Hall shared in his interview with Hannah Seraphim that he dedicates much of his time to revitalizing Indigenous culture, language, and pride with youth in his community. This includes teaching kids how to spray paint their name in their language or word of choice onto a canvas, facilitating a youth skateboard building workshop with artist, filmmaker, and lands-based educator Calder Cheverie.
"I want [Indigenous youth] to set the greatest example they can for our people...They can be successful artists. They can do whatever they set their minds to.” - KC Hall
The inspiration for this month's playlist is KC’s grafitti artwork ‘The Trendsetter’ and his vision of a future tied to rewriting Indigenous history.
The unique mix of traditional artistic style with Hall’s colourful and abstract additions makes for eye-popping art. Two themes you’ll always find in his pieces are the Raven and a rope. “I use [the Raven] because it is part of my family crest and our lineage. The Raven has so many different stories behind what he’s done. The rope signifies every single thing I have created is tied together as one,” says Hall.
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The Ori, The Connector from the collection Dance of the Summoner, reclaiming and alchemizing Nigerian and Afro-diasporic deities, orishas, and sacred traditions.
Odera Igbokwe [oh-deh-rah ee-boh-kway] grew up in a childhood full of creativity and play. “Making art is very much something we’re prone to do as children, so for me, that was very much my safe place as a super-expressive creative child. I loved dancing, I loved playing, I loved my sister and me pretending to be Sailor [Moon] Scouts or Power Rangers,” Igbokwe reminisces as they sit in their studio surrounded by collections of their paintings over the years. Now, a professional painter and illustrator, Igbokwe channels that same energy into their work today. “It’s always been about building a life that spans creativity at its core foundation. I never have to think ‘time to get creative,’ as it’s really about constantly flowing in and out of creativity,” says Igbokwe.
While at Brown University at the Rhode Island School of Design, Igbokwe’s childhood influences of cartoons, comics, and video games transferred through to the art they made. They took this inspiration into their concept art: “I was just scratching the surface of the storytelling mediums that I loved growing up and being like, yeah, I’d love to do that but make it my own and feature black people, isn’t that an amazing idea? I think as I rested in my education, I scratched more of the surface. It was more about the storytelling of personal story and identity interwoven with illustration and painting,” Igbokwe describes.
The influence of pop culture nerdy fandom (as described by Igbokwe) is evident in their work, intricately mixed with their exploration of storytelling into Afro-diasporic mythologies and Black resilience. These intersectional themes come from Igbokwe’s focus on identity and otherness. “It’s [about] being a child of Nigerian immigrant parents, a child of diaspora not really knowing where to fit in, of being queer within those spaces, and figuring out gender identity and being like, yeah I’m nonbinary, but I don’t want to take up too much space because male privilege and male passing privilege is a thing,” says Igbokwe.
Mami Wata from the collection Dance of the Summoner, reclaiming and alchemizing Nigerian and Afro-diasporic deities, orishas, and sacred traditions.
Igbokwe’s art aims to allow those who feel othered to feel seen: “I recognize more and more that what I value the most is the intimate connection of feeling seen between a viewer [of my art] and myself.”
The process of creating these themes within their work is an emotional journey. Though, it’s evident that a joyful resilience comes through many of Igbokwe’s paintings. Through earthy, rich, and vibrant colour palettes to the embodied movement in the stillness of a painting, Igbokwe creates magic with each stroke of their brush.
When asked what their superpower is, Igbokwe pauses to contemplate. From someone who has delved deep into comic multiverses, the question seems daunting. However, when it comes to Igbokwe’s artwork, they know exactly what magic they bring: “It’s treating all these different aspects and very different intersectional energies with respect and dignity to create something that is both old and new. With a lot of my work, I like having the abstract feeling of not necessarily knowing where or when you are, and sometimes I think my work is envisioning the future. But, a lot of the time, it also looks like a very distant past. Merging those things, whether it’s time or cultures across the African diaspora in one cohesive piece, is what makes me excited to create.”
Cortex Prime, illustration by Odera Igbokwe
Burning Pyre from a collection of illustrations for "Snow Globe Skyline".
Since moving to Vancouver in mid-2017, Igbokwe had just started getting acquainted with the art scene before the COVID-19 pandemic began, and racial unrest grew with Black Lives Matter protests erupting in North America.
From this lens, Igbokwe has received some of the most attention and “success” (as they use their fingers in quotations) in their whole career. “On one hand, it’s like, oh yeah, thank you so much for supporting me and looking at my work and listening, but on the other hand, it almost feels like a blood sacrifice. Oh, you’re paying attention because you’re finally recognizing all these things that we’ve been saying for hundreds of years.”
Igbokwe refers to their intuition to ensure that they are authentically moving through the world: “It’s important for me to really have clarity and purpose and not necessarily respond immediately to the moment and know that as I’m creating, I’m thinking of a lifetime of a body of work, as opposed to ‘how do I respond and capitalize off this terrible thing right now at this moment.’”
Illustration for "FIYAH: Magazine of Speculative Black Fiction" Issue 16: JOY (Fall 2020 Edition)
During times like these, Igbokwe finds their work to be “foundational, generative, and healing. It kept me from spiralling off the deep end too much. I feel like productivity can be such a myth and toxic thing, but when productivity is linked to just creating new things, then I have to recognize that also brings me joy and is a foundational part of who I am.”
So, what’s next for Igbokwe? Recently, they just completed their Black Crown collection, which is a series of drawings, paintings, and mixed media studies exploring the styles, textures, and functions of Black hairstyles across the African diaspora. They are currently working on a new collection to be released close to February and have signed four different gallery shows in 2021.
Keep up with Igbokwe on Instagram and visit their website here.
PHOTO BY EMILIE BORODINE
Few people are brave enough to take the leaps that Vancouver-based ceramicist Emilie Borodine took to land her career.
Since taking her first pottery class two years ago, the France-born founder of Sowhere Project has made a full time business out of selling her handmade ceramics.
“It was crazy! Not something I would say to everyone, like ‘Just quit everything and do it,’” Borodine admits. “But I think it's what I needed at this stage in my life, I needed a break but wasn't immediately expecting anything from it.”
Years of travelling and living abroad have made Borodine somewhat of a minimalist. So when wanderlust brought her to Vancouver from Wellington, New Zealand, her interest in pottery stemmed from a home decor debacle.
“How can I fill up my house without having any belongings?” Borodine recalls. “So I’m like ‘Let’s do plants.’ Well now plants are growing, so I need planters.”
She describes feeling like time had stopped during classes, to the point where she had to be asked by her pottery instructor to leave at closing time.
“I love this feeling of being completely disconnected,” says Borodine.
So when she saw one local artist was subletting their work studio for the summer, she jumped at the opportunity to take it over. While it’s challenging to sleep next to a pottery wheel, today Borodine’s studio is also where she calls home—living in an east Vancouver building full of artists.
“Vancouver is really welcoming,” says the self-taught success. “People just love seeing someone who’s really enthusiastic.”
Borodine attributes her zeal for ceramics to the learning curve that comes with taking on a new craft as an adult.
BY EMILIE BORODINE
“When it’s not your trade, you’re just learning the technique, not exploring a style. It’s nice to experiment, but you need the technique,” she says. “When it’s like that, you’re just a blank canvas, you are raw.”
Her collection of goods, handmade with locally sourced materials, include earring holders, wall hangings, to-go mugs, and intricate vases. Breasts continue to inspire many of her projects.
“We all have breasts! Sometimes men have big breasts, so having something we can all identify with ourselves,” Borodine explains of her muse.
BY EMILIE BORODINE
BY EMILIE BORODINE
Several people have thanked her after seeing their own bodies represented through her work.
“They're like: ‘Thank you for making me feel like my breasts are pretty!’ I'm like ‘Of course your breasts are pretty!’ So that message, for me, makes me want to keep working. For people who had maybe surgery because of cancer, or with breastfeeding, it's really important to them.”
Whether they love it or they hate it, Borodine says people are vocal about her work.
BY EMILIE BORODINE
“Some people will really scream ‘Boobs!’” She says, adding that others have reacted with judgement over humour. “It brings a reaction, and I like that because it makes people speak about it—not to necessarily sexualize it, just being comfortable with it. It’s just a body, it’s normal.”
In a pandemic twist, her artist gig has held up despite safety measures cancelling several regular markets. The societal shift inspired her to put focus more on her Etsy shop. Previously, she had shied away from social media, but after picking up her presence, Borodine finds she’s able to connect with people who may be too shy to approach her in-person at markets.
Amid the global uncertainty on what lies ahead, Bolodine hopes her future will involve collaborations with organizations she shares values with—donating partial proceeds from her sales to benefit causes like sex education, environmentalism and feeding the hungry.
BY EMILIE BORODINE
BY EMILIE BORODINE
“It's a long journey, so I would say I don't know what's next. I just know I still have a lot of things to learn from it.”
PHOTOGRAPHY: QUEER INTIMACIES SERIES BY JOY GYAMFI
Featured Artist of the Month Joy Gyamfi shared in her interview with SAD's web editor Becca Clarkson that photography for Joy is to be able to show people what I'm seeing. A tangible way to highlight the beauty that might be overlooked by ourselves, like saying – "Do you see how great you look? This is how I see you, this is how others see you." - Joy Gyamfi
The inspiration for this month's playlist is Joy's photo series "Queer Intimacies" and Spotify playlist series "Consensual Makeout Party". This mix is filled with intimate beats that balance sensuality, and strength, to allow you to carry a perfect tongue locking rhythm. Let's get cozy because this will spark any makeout session!
