GOBLIN.SHAWTY
A Letter from the Artist
Hey everyone, my name is Zee [as far as you are concerned]. I'm a 24-year-old artist from Southern California. It's taken me four years to finally feel comfortable calling myself an artist. At heart, I'm a writer with a passion for graphic and text-based art and design.
I've always had this weird case of imposter syndrome when it comes to pursuing a creative practice. This was certainly a learned behavior, as I was a creative child. In middle and high school, I tried very hard to excel in art classes. Because I wasn't the strongest at traditional mediums (painting, drawing, ink work, etc.), I thought I lacked the elusive spark that took someone from an art enjoyer to an Art Person™.
I am technically a historian by trade. I've always been a strong writer, able to pull from various texts and seemingly disparate elements, coalescing them into a new unified perspective. This skill set naturally lent itself toward strong academic writing. I just so happened to enjoy history class more than English, so BA in History it was.
In 2020 I finally decided I wanted to give art a real earnest try. I bought a four pack of journals plain gridded notbooks and committed to trying to fill one before the year ended. I did collages and wrote little pieces on my typewriter about anything I found particularly interesting or notable that week. It was part journaling, part sketchbook. Collage was where I really hit my stride. I could piece together existing work into something new and uniquely mine. My projects often start as an image and a feeling or a word and an idea. With images, I'll have a central piece I want to spotlight, and layer on secondary and tertiary images and accent to convey the interconnection between them that I see in my mind.
As a student of History, I was tasked with looking for continuity and change; identifying the drivers behind both. In my art practice [and in life] I do the same. I'm always striving to piece together the fragments to the some unspoken puzzle. I have an underlying desire to concretely grasp what this [waves hands vaguely] is all about. Alas, this continues to evade me. But with each project I feel closer to uncovering some larger universal truth.
In recent years, as I moved away from paper collage into cyanotype in last year and linocut this year. I began to think more about specific words and concepts that are particularly tacky—stuck to the inner walls of my mind—and how I could use art to exercise them from my subconscious.
A friend of mine recently asked how I come up with ideas, and I told them the same way most people do. Art, to me, is about putting a spin on references. The more interesting a reference you have, the more distinct your work becomes. However, cool references an artist does not make! Looking at you Basquiat imitators…
Anyways, I have an affinity for diving deep into obscure subcultures, usually centered around spirituality, science fiction, and esoteric ideations. My most recent deep dive was into the Cybernetic Cultural Research Unit, which I came across while researching Mark Fisher, one of the references listed under John Karborn's recent project "The Seeker". I'll save you the woo-woo details until I publish my next collection of work, but concepts like "cultural feedback loops," "hyperstition," and especially "syzygy" really burrowed their way into my mind. Syzygy specifically has become this years obsession word [former years being Entropy in 2016 and Equanimity in 2020] and the basis of my current project.
Disclaimer: The CCRU eventually devolved into modern-day alt-right accelerationism [yikes!]. I happen to also know a lot about from my Political Science days [an interesting bookending of my interest]. But hey, inspiration strikes in the most unlikely places.
Some Sort of Conclusion
As you can see, I love a good tangent and letting the tides of my stream of consciousness envelop me. To conclude…I have a lot of ideas. They are sticky and pervasive in my mind all the time, and the only way to quell the disquiet is to put them on paper. As always, I hope this made sense! I will continue to throw my voice into the ether and hope that I find someone for whom the bell tolls.
Best,
Zee
FKA Goblin Shawty