Interview: Rachel

Today we’re joined by Rachel. Rachel is a phenomenal artist who does a bit of everything. She writes both fanfiction and original work. She does a fair amount of visual art, mostly drawing using a variety of mediums. As if that’s not impressive enough, Rachel has also done quite a lot of work in theater, both on stage and behind the scenes. It’s clear she’s an extraordinarily talented and passionate individual, as you’ll soon read. My thanks to her for taking the time to participate in this interview.

WORK

Please, tell us about your art.

I do a ton of art! I write original stories and fanfiction for a variety of genres. I draw, mostly in the traditional sense, and I have a background in theater where I performed, directed, stage managed, was a set designer and constructor for anywhere around 12 productions.

What inspires you?

I am inspires by many things. My drawings are often spur of the moment. They could be inspired by fandom and I’ll create fan art, or be very whimsical and I’ll create some sort of abstract painting.

My writing is often angsty or very light and touching (there’s not much in between most of the time, haha). Fanfiction is inspired by the movie Rise of the Guardians, Spider-Man and Deadpool and occasionally Supernatural! I hope to have more content for these fandoms in the future, and maybe other fandoms, but I have been focusing a little bit more on my original content. I write short stories that are fiction or real-life event inspired. I also have some poem(ish) writing and I’m working on developing my voice. I never want to stick to just one genre because I find so much expression in several forms of writing.

What got you interested in your field?  Have you always wanted to be an artist?

I’ve been drawing since I’ve learned to hold a crayon. Writing I’ve always loved and have wanted to create more of. I love reading and when I discovered fanfic, it was an instant attraction. In recent years, I’ve decided I’d like to make publishing a novel one of my life goals.

Do you have any kind of special or unique signature, symbol, or feature you include in your work that you’d be willing to reveal?

Honestly no, because my style is always changing and taking on new forms. From paint to markers to pencils to charcoal to fiction to poems I’m always shaking it up.

What advice would you give young aspiring artists?

Do it! Do it over and over again and take pictures of the work you draw because one day you can look at an old picture and compare it to your growth and see where you’ve come from and where you are now!

And write of course! Write anything. Your thoughts, your dreams, your observations, your ideas, write it all! Drown in your words. And remember you don’t have to write in order. Sometimes, writing the beginning is so hard, so write that middle part! Write down that action scene and big plot twist and get it out of your head to clear the clutter. Fill in the holes later after you get that burning inspiration to write that one scene because the rest might become easier after doing that.

ASEXUALITY

Where on the spectrum do you identify?

I identify as a cis gendered female with she/her pronouns and panromantic asexual.

Have you encountered any kind of ace prejudice or ignorance in your field?  If so, how do you handle it?

Absolutely, I had a long term relationship end because I began to ID as ace. My parents don’t fully understand my sexuality and I come across it in social media a lot. I just remind myself that I am valid, I’m not alone, I have support from friends, and that I can get through peoples ignorance because I know who I am.

What’s the most common misconception about asexuality that you’ve encountered?

I have been called a plant (as in I will only reproduce with myself, which never made sense) and that I’m prude. I’ve also been told that I just “haven’t met the right person” which is to say I’ll feel sexual desire and attraction when the right person comes into my life.

I’m not a late bloomer. I’m ace, and that’s okay.

What advice would you give to any asexual individuals out there who might be struggling with their orientation?

Don’t let other peoples judgement and opinions weigh you down. Seek allies. We’re out here and you are a valid, wonderful and a real person. You are not broken.

Finally, where can people find out more about your work?

Oh! Look me up! On…

Tumblr: FrostedDragonHeart (Eternal Believer) and wrayghtings (Endless Words)
Fanfiction.net: FrostedDragonHeart
Fictionpress.com: FrostedDragonHeart
Instagram: rachelart_s

I accept DM/PMs on all of these so please feel free to chat with me!

Thank you, Rachel, for participating in this interview and this project. It’s very much appreciated.

Interview: Nicole C.

Today we’re joined by Nicole C. Nicole is a wonderful young up and coming artist who does a lot of acting. She also professionally models. For acting, Nicole does a number of theater arts: musicals, plays, one acts, and improv. She’s clearly a very passionate artist, as you’ll soon read. My thanks to her for taking the time to participate in this interview.

WORK

Please, tell us about your art.

I am a part of my theater group in my high school, this is my 7^th year being in theater, I’ve been in countless productions including, Musicals, Full plays, One acts and Improv Shows. I recently won an award from my County event for directing a short skit. I am working with a talent agency that has allowed me to book modeling gigs and auditions in LA/Hollywood

What inspires you?

When I’m on stage I get to be someone else, I become this character that gives people the opportunity to feel things they may not feel in their day-to-day lives. When an audience member comes up to you after a show and tells you that they were laughing so hard they were in tears or that they cried because something touched them, a warm feeling bubbles into your stomach just to know that you did something amazing, that not everyone can do. It’s the relief of looking around after a long day of building sets and arguing with cast members about props and saying, we did good. That is inspiring.

What got you interested in your field?  Have you always wanted to be an artist?

I was placed in drama at a young age because I was shy and scared; I was stuck in my shell. I didn’t want to be in front of people until I realized I liked talking to a crowd knowing someone out there is understanding what I’m saying. Drama got me out of my shell and boosted my confidence.

Do you have any kind of special or unique signature, symbol, or feature you include in your work that you’d be willing to reveal?

Before a show, I always pray. Not even as a religious Dear God don’t let me screw up kinda way, more so of, please, to the good spirits around, aid us in this journey and help us out.

What advice would you give young aspiring artists?

I would tell them it’s okay to be scared, that fear is there for a reason- to push you forward and help you feel calmer and more accomplished afterwards.

ASEXUALITY

Where on the spectrum do you identify?

I am a panromantic Demisexual.

Have you encountered any kind of ace prejudice or ignorance in your field?  If so, how do you handle it?

I have not

What’s the most common misconception about asexuality that you’ve encountered?

That we aren’t real, it’s all an act, or we have trust issues

What advice would you give to any asexual individuals out there who might be struggling with their orientation?

Who cares? You date who you want to date not whom other people want you to. If you’re scared talk to someone, be open with yourself, explore if necessary. You are valid and real and wonderful. You will be okay.

Finally, where can people find out more about your work?

My Instagram at raincloudingg or Tumblr at raincloudingg.

Thank you, Nicole, for participating in this interview and this project. It’s very much appreciated.

Interview: Tempest Wisdom

Today we’re joined by Tempest Wisdom. Tempest is a fantastically talented actor who is studying at University of Chicago. She specializes in physical comedy and improv. Tempest also has aspirations to direct one day. It’s very clear that she loves acting, as you’ll soon read. My thanks to her for taking the time to participate in this interview.

WORK

Please, tell us about your art.

I am an actor at the University of Chicago! I am interested in many styles of acting, but I am most interested in (and best at) physical comedy and improvisation. Most recently, I played the twin brothers Antipholus & Antipholus in Shakespeare’s “Comedy of Errors.” Right now, I am most involved in the University of Chicago’s Commedia dell’Arte troupe. Commedia is a VERY old form of Italian masked comedy that uses stock characters and scenarios to create humor. One of my friends in the troupe (our artistic director!) says that it’s improv with the hard parts taken out — you already know your character and the basics of the scene, so you’re free to play! Commedia was an extremely important and influential moment in theater history: it gave rise to everything from modern clowning to ballet. You know the word “slapstick?” That’s Commedia, too. “Harlequin?” Commedia. “Pants?” Even that comes from Commedia.

My character specifically is a lover. His primary occupation is being vapid and pretty and in love. One of the neat things about having stock characters is that I am playing a character who has been embodied literally countless times by countless actors since the 1600s. I am from a long line of lovers, all of whom are their own versions of that basic character skeleton of “pretty, vain, not the sharpest knife in the drawer.” My character even crops up in fiction! The vampire Lestat from The Vampire Chronicles played a lover with the same name (Lelio) in a Commedia troupe once upon a time. Something tells me our interpretations are a little different.

Basically, my art involves doing silly things with my body and face to make people laugh. I cannot think of anything better to do with my time.

What inspires you?

To be completely honest, I am incredibly motivated by attention and laughter. But if you’re looking for a more serious, artistic answer, I am fascinated by the performative aspect of theater, by which I mean the relationship between audience and performer and how to give a genuine performance onstage, whether you’re doing intense realism where you have to genuinely believe that you’re standing in your living room, arguing with your real-life wife despite the fact that there is a room full of people staring at you and you’re actually yelling at another actor or whether you’re in a musical and have to find a way to make speaking directly to the audience and singing and dancing and holding for laughs a natural, real thing to do while allowing yourself to believe that your character is a real person and that this IS your day-to-day life and that it is all true and immediate and your emotions are genuine. What it means to be onstage and be watched is very interesting to me and is actually going to be the subject of my thesis project next year.

What got you interested in your field?  Have you always wanted to be an artist?

I have no idea. I don’t think I ever considered the possibility of NOT being involved in theater. My mom is also an actress, so my sister and I grew up listening to musical soundtracks and that kind of stuff. I’m also just very, very extroverted, so this is a pretty natural outlet for me.

Do you have any kind of special or unique signature, symbol, or feature you include in your work that you’d be willing to reveal?

I think the beauty of acting is that if you’re doing it right, YOU are the special signature!

What advice would you give young aspiring artists?

This is a really great question because I actually want to teach theater for a living so I love being asked stuff like this! Of course I want to say all of the “follow your dreams, don’t give up, keep creating” stuff that is super important to know, but I have a couple more specific things to say that I don’t think are said enough. Thing #1 is one of the most important things I was told by one of my mentors: you are enough. A lot of aspiring actors seem to think that you need to try so, so hard all the time and be Acting all the time or you’re not doing enough, which is simply not true. You bring more to the table than you think you do, and you don’t need to Shatner it up to give a good performance.

Thing #2 is another really important thing to remember: fail. You are going to. A bunch. You’re gonna make terrible art and you’re gonna fall flat on your face onstage and you’re gonna feel like a total loser. It does not make you a bad actor or director or improver or whatever it is you do. What it means is that you were taking risks, which is part of the process and what allows you to make really great art. Being vulnerable onstage is a HUGE part of performance, and you aren’t really vulnerable if there’s no risk involved. If and when you fail, do it spectacularly. Don’t just stumble and try to brush it off and pretend that you didn’t. Instead, stumble and trip and fall all the way down the stairs and accidentally rip your pants and EMBRACE IT. Apologize for nothing.

ASEXUALITY

Where on the spectrum do you identify?

I am asexual and somewhere on the aromantic spectrum, but who the heck knows where.

Have you encountered any kind of ace prejudice or ignorance in your field?  If so, how do you handle it?

Theater is a pretty queer industry, and UChicago is a pretty queer campus, so people are generally knowledgeable and accepting. I have had to explain what asexuality is and what it means for me, specifically, but those are usually conversations with people who are curious, a little uncomfortable, but love their queer/LGBT+ friends and want to be good allies to them. I pride myself on being a forceful personality, so I don’t think anyone would ever challenge me to my face about, for example, identifying as queer as well as aro/ace. In general, my experience has been that people are kind and educated, and if they aren’t, they are more than willing to learn.

What’s the most common misconception about asexuality that you’ve encountered?

I’ve noticed a tendency to conflate asexuality and aromanticism. I have a memory of before I started identifying as aro-spec, when I made a joke about pick-up lines or something like that, and a friend of mine was like “but aren’t you ACE????” It really annoys me when people don’t get or don’t accept that a lot of people experience romantic and sexual attraction differently and that one is possible without the other.

What advice would you give to any asexual individuals out there who might be struggling with their orientation?

I would say that labels are great and validating and all that, but don’t worry about justifying yourself and your experiences to anyone but yourself. I definitely don’t identify with everything I’ve read or heard about asexuality, and I DEFINITELY don’t identify with everything about aromanticism. And that’s cool. There isn’t a citizenship exam or a diagnosis or anything like that. That can be kind of rough if, like me, you REALLY LIKE LABELING YOURSELF, but trust me, it feels way better to base your identity off of your experiences rather than some kind of nonexistent “you must be this tall to ride” scale.

Finally, where can people find out more about your work?

In all honesty, the internet is a great resource for general Commedia stuff— learn about our stock characters, look at pictures of the masks (they’re very weird!! I really like them) and check out some filmed performances. As for my stuff in particular, we have lots of good photos on our Facebook page at U of C Commedia. I’m the one pouting, usually. I’ve also included some pictures of the production of “Comedy of Errors” I just starred in, which was GREAT fun. The rest of those pics are on Facebook at University Theater at the University of Chicago.

Thank you, Tempest, for participating in this interview and this project. It’s very much appreciated.

Interview: James Hastings

Today we’re joined by James Hastings. James is a phenomenal filmmaker who also dabbles a bit in music and comedy. He’s a freelance cinematographer, though he has a wide range of interests (and also happens to be a fellow fan of the great Buster Keaton). James is also working on writing a feature. It’s always fantastic to see aces in film. My thanks to him for taking the time to participate in this interview.

WORK

Please, tell us about your art.

Oh man, I do all kinds of stuff. My main bag is my work as a freelance cinematographer, but I also do covers and write comedy music for fun. I run a sketch-comedy YouTube channel called Cinema Wagon on which I do videos with my improv and industry friends, and in addition to all of that stuff, I’m currently in the writing phase of a feature film that I hope to produce independently in 2018.

Bagman, Production Shot 1, photo by Chris Ertman

What inspires you?

A lot of my sketch-comedy work comes from the mildly obsessive way my brain works. An idea or an interaction that I had will get stuck in my head for a while, and I’ll replay the situation that created those ideas over and over again in my mind, but with something going differently each time, and it either becomes really entertaining or I just stop thinking about it until it pops up as part of another cycle of that process. That, or I’ll see a cool shot or think of a visual, then knock out a story to fit around that shot so I have an excuse to try it out. The people that I’m friends with also bring really good, creative stuff to the table all of the time as well.

Bagman, Production Shot 2, photo by Chris Ertman

My visual style is really informed by the works of Julian Smith, Edgar Wright, Ciaran O’Brien, the Kids In The Hall, The Coen Brothers, Charlie Chaplain, and Buster Keaton. I think the Edgar Wright and Julian Smith influences come through a bit more in my visuals than others. I’ve also been trying to look at and learn more from renaissance art and how the visual composition of those pieces worked.

Bagman, production shot 3, photo by Chris Ertman

What got you interested in your field?  Have you always wanted to be an artist?

I initially wanted to be an animator. I grew up watching cartoons from the 50’s-90s, and I thought that it would be super cool to make things like them. As time went on, I got more into the theatre world, and that lead me to an interest in special effects makeup. Because of this, I found the Indie Mogul YouTube channel back when they were doing Backyard FX, and as I learned more about the rest of the filmmaking process, I went from wanting to be a special effects artist to wanting to direct my own films. Around that time, my dad gave me his old Mamiya ZE Quartz film SLR, and I started learning to take pictures with old photographic lenses, and I realized that I really love the process of working with a camera. I also finally accepted that I’m a terrible animator around that time, and my career trajectory was pretty well set.

Bagman, production shot 4, steadicam, photo by Christina Estillore

Do you have any kind of special or unique signature, symbol, or feature you include in your work that you’d be willing to reveal?

I have a prop zombie head named Thomas that I made in my time learning FX makeup that I like to hide in the background of the occasional shot. It’s not a consistent gag, but it pops up in most of my indie projects. There’s also a running joke amongst my peers about my propensity for shooting with wide-angle lenses. (12mm and 28mm are two of my favourites.)

On the post-production end of things, I have a set of “woosh” sounds that I recorded at the age of 14 in my bedroom that I have used in almost every project on which I have been in charge of the sound mix. Sometimes, it’s subtle, sometimes it’s very noticeable.

Bagman, still 1

What advice would you give young aspiring artists?

This one is tough since I’m still pretty young myself, but I have two pieces of advice that really helped me.

The first one is specific to cinematographers. It is not your job to make the images of a project look the way that you want them to. It is your job to help the director get what’s in their head onto the camera’s image sensor. You’ll be bringing ideas of your own to the table for sure, but at the end of the day, unless you’re also the director of a project, you don’t get the final say. The sooner you can learn to collaborate effectively, the sooner you’ll start to get called back to work on more projects.

The second one is a little more general, but it was important for me to hear. If you’re just starting out, you probably suck at what you do. That’s okay. Everybody sucks at first. The important thing is to power through that sucking and never stop trying to learn how to be better. As long as you’re trying to improve, you will. It may take a long damn time, but it will happen, and you won’t even notice until you look back at your old work and see your progression.

Contract Killer, frame grab

ASEXUALITY

Where on the spectrum do you identify?

I am a grey-romantic, sex-repulsed asexual.

Dead End Town, 2012

Have you encountered any kind of ace prejudice or ignorance in your field?  If so, how do you handle it?

It really depends on the crew that I’m working with.

Some of the older, more established people in the industry aren’t really familiar with the concept of asexuality, but it also never really comes up when I’m working with them. If it does, I tend to blow it off by saying something like, “I care more about my craft than relationships.”

Relentless, on set, photo by Dan Chomistek

Younger crews that have been coming up at the same time as me have been far easier to explain asexuality to if it comes up, but again, it’s pretty rare. People hire me because of the way I make things look, not the way that I feel (or don’t feel) about other people.

It’s probably easier for me as a white, cisgendered man in the industry to deal with it than other groups of people, though.

Pee Break, frame grab

What’s the most common misconception about asexuality that you’ve encountered?

I think the most common one that I’ve encountered has to be the idea that asexuality is just a lack of maturity. I’ve also heard a lot about it, “going against human nature” as well. Standard stuff. It got old fast.

Realistic Musicals, frame grab

What advice would you give to any asexual individuals out there who might be struggling with their orientation?

I actually had a pretty easy time coming to terms with my asexuality, so I don’t have much advice specific to asexuality.

I was a bit of a social outcast when I was younger, though, and when I finally did develop a group of friends in my high-school, it turned out that I had a lot of other stuff to work through. It really helped me to talk to them about those things. If you can find an outlet like that in real life, great! If not, there are all kinds of resources about asexuality for you to check out.

If all else fails, just know that you’re not broken. You’re valid, and there’s a veritable crapload of people like you. We’ve got your back. Take care of yourself.

Recalculating, frame grab

Finally, where can people find out more about your work?

I take set-photos on Instagram,
http://instagram.com/jawmsie

I tweet about all of my finished projects, as well as the occasional BTS schennanigans,
http://twitter.com/jawmsie

And I release all of my comedy sketches on the Cinema Wagon YouTube channel.
http://youtube.com/c/cinemawagonvideo

Thanks for checking out this interview, and I hope you enjoy my work if you do check it out.

Bagman, still 2

Thank you, James, for participating in this interview and this project. It’s very much appreciated.