Coco Spencer is a mixed-media artist with an emphasis in analogue collage. Originally from California, she is now based in Chicago. She loves collaboration, feel free to reach out.
Thank you, Coco, for submitting your art
Support Coco by visiting the website cocospencer.com and following their Instagram 💖
Ellie Day is an artist from Essex, UK but currently she studies Fine Art at Swansea College of Art and hopes to continue developing her practice on a MA Fine Art course in September 2021. She works with phrases, texts and combines it with traditional painting methods as well as digital. Her work is straightforward, soul-stirring and makes you smile and say “YEAH”!
Ellie describes herself and her work as “conversation, spotlight, documentary, inquisitive“.
Read the interview with Ellie to learn more about her work, creative process and inspiration.
Before the pandemic, I assumed I had an endless stream of material due to being surrounded by the public the majority of the time. I would work my way through the list I had been making of overheard phrases, rarely returning to previously used sentences. When we all went into lockdown, I found myself going back to quotes I had picked up early on to spend more time working from them than I would have before.
I would say the biggest influence the pandemic has had on my practice is that it has pushed me to provide more thought to individual sentences and, when normal life returns, to appreciate the time spent around lively crowds full of hustle and bustle.
From April 20th, you can find my work over at @exquisitecadaverproject ’s online exhibition titled ‘With my two eyes.’ This particular exhibition will be exploring ‘relationships with one’s self and surroundings.’
The phrases that I use within my work are picked up from lots of different places and situations. Before the pandemic, I was often travelling back and forth to university on trains and crowded tubes, this became the main source of material for me. Passers by on the streets and in shops also heavily contributed to my ‘overheard in public’ list.
However, now I have found myself using a lot more quotes from family and friends due to being at home and away from the public. Now and again, I will hear phrases that really stick out to me. The person saying them may have not even given them a second thought, but by including the sentences in my work, I feel I’m providing them with a spotlight, a moment in conversation that would have otherwise been overlooked.
For me, an absolute master of picking up on people’s character is Ricky Gervais. Even just the slightest movement to comfort ourselves in uncomfortable situations or a gulp at just the right time can make the punchline, particularly in The Office UK and Derek. I listen to music whilst I’m painting. My favourites would probably be Led Zeppelin, Amy Winehouse and Janis Joplin, ‘Down On Me’ has got to be my number 1! I also recently finished reading Strangeland by Tracey Emin. I would definitely recommend this book, a rollercoaster of emotions.
I am inspired by artists that really explore that rawness of life in their work such as Tracey Emin, Nan Goldin, Jenny Holzer and Barbara Kruger. Ed Ruscha, John Baldessari and Laure Provoust also stand out to me among many other text-based artists.
I would say my environment does influence me, something that has changed considerably over the past few months. Previously, I had been working in the university studios in such a creative environment. Everyone had been following their different paths that their practice’s had taken and being surrounded by this every day was inspiring. Now I’m working from home, I’m finding that watching online artist talks and discovering new artists has helped me maintain a creative mindset.
However, this isn’t always the case and now and again I will definitely find myself lacking the motivation to produce new work. I know this feeling will pass and I try to keep that in mind as much as possible. Funnily enough, I tend to find that when the weather is nice, something very rare here, I feel less of a drive to work as I want to switch off and be outside in the sun!
I will usually have a sentence in mind that I want to work from. Exploring some ideas regarding colour and mark making in my sketchbook, I then can think about how to develop it further. Depending on my aim for the piece, I will either work on a paper painting that I add text to using Photoshop, or I will start painting on canvas.
Before I returned to working with text alone recently, I was creating work that heavily relied on taking photos. I was focusing less on what I was hearing and more on what I was seeing. Although, the photos were only used for drawing from, they still played a big part of my practice at that time. I really enjoy street photography so this is definitely something to consider introducing back into my work!
Thankfully, as I’m currently at university they have provided us with talks from guest artists that have really helped me get back in a creative mindset if I’m struggling at that time. It goes without saying that we are all going to experience moments where we are far from feeling creative and putting the pressure on ourselves isn’t going to help.
Switch off for a few days, maybe watch some inspiring films or start reading a book about an artist you’ve discovered. I know this is something that has helped me in the past.
For sure, although I tend to not provide thought or worry about what others think about my paintings. I sort of just put the work out there and then move on to a new piece.
I don’t think there is a final say about an artwork as we all hold our own opinions and there isn’t any that are more important than the rest. That’s all they are at the end of the day, opinions and views. Definitely not ‘final’ as well. You could have seen an artwork that you really didn’t like and then years later you go through a life changing experience that has altered your view and allowed you to fully relate to the work. I would say it’s ever-changing.
I would say my main creative goals for this year is to really push the boundaries of this new series of 100x100cm canvas paintings and to continue my studies on a MA Fine Art course.
I don’t think there is ever a point that anyone could, let alone should, stop evolving. It’s something that just happens without our knowledge most of the time. As people we are always changing and adapting, whether that’s because of our surroundings or the personalities around us. All of these factors feed back into our ever-evolving practice.
I’ve been told to take every opportunity that could benefit my work and to apply for lots of open calls to showcase my work and meet new creatives!
Support Ellie and her work! Check out her website and Instagram
The prints with her work will be available soon at https://www.instagram.com/mlart20/
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Even though all these pieces point in a different direction, all of them were inspired by the feeling you get when some breeze blows in your face and you just forget about your problems for a minute and feel alive.
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Northwest is a unique experimental-pop band located in London, UK. Currently Northwest spends their time in Spain where they recorded a series of the live show videos.
The band consists of two members Ignacio and Mariuca who are self-taught, open-minded and extremely interesting, talented and creative people and artists.
They explore different genres and dimensions and are in full control of their work. Northwest often collaborates with other creatives and recently they founded their own label Tempel Arts.
Read the interview to learn more about Northwest and their unique world. The questions are answered by Mariuca.
Art is the most human thing there is.
We’re doing fine but, like many of us, quite tired of this situation.
It did. We obviously lost a very important part of creativity, which is performing live and connecting with our listeners face-to-face, and also some very important basic rights, which obviously affects you mentally, but we decided to focus on the positive side of things and, as a result, gained a lot of time for creation and reflection.
We finally had time to accept commissions for soundtracks and things like that, to learn new instruments and software, write new songs… think about life in general, gain perspective. One of the best things we did was finally founding our own record label Tempel Arts, which was something we had in mind for years.
Humans are complex and have different ways of self-expression and communication, and we’re no exception. We love music, but we also love cinema, visual and performative art, literature… When we decided to create Northwest, we sat and wrote down on a piece of paper what we wanted Northwest to be. We both wrote a very similar thing. We wanted Northwest to be a vessel, a playground or a lab where we could play, experiment and express ourselves as freely as possible, and that’s what we’re trying to do.
Regarding our background, Ignacio has been doing music all his life. Before Northwest, he had a band called Al Berkowitz and released several records with them and on his own as well as soundtracks for documentaries and short films. At first, he taught himself how to record, produce, play instruments… which I find very impressive in a time where there weren’t YouTube tutorials. Later in his life, after finishing his degree in psychology, he got a BA in musicology and a master’s in composition.
And I, studied digital design and during my time at the university I founded a video production company with my best friends and started making music videos for free for our friends. Even though I’ve been writing songs all my life, I didn’t start making music properly until very late in my life (I was almost 25). Like Ignacio, I’m self-taught. I have never studied music. Actually Ignacio taught me how to play 4 basic chords on the piano and that opened a whole universe for me. I started learning more on my own and from then on, I dove deep into production, engineering, recording, etc.
We’ve been living in London for the past 5 years but right now we’re in Spain. We came here only for a couple of months but because of COVID we decided to stay longer.
Yes, I think you cannot write in a vacuum. Everything around you affects you, whether you like it or not, so the environment is a big part of the music you end up creating.
When COVID happened all of our concerts were cancelled. We had been working for a long time on this live show and we felt sad and frustrated that our listeners couldn’t see it because of COVID. We talked and decided that making a live recording would be a nice thing to do. They cannot come to see us but we can try to bring the live performance to them, even if it’s virtual.
We were going to do it in La Nave Que Late which is a restored warehouse that our friend Mela uses for all sorts of events but then she showed us the derelict warehouse next to it, which they use for storage and even though it had no electricity, we felt it was the perfect place. In the middle of the concert it started raining and because it’s an abandoned warehouse, there were leaks on the roof. We decided to continue even with the rain falling down on us. Luckily no gear was harmed and the whole concert with the rain has something magical about it. We were also super lucky to have our very talented friend Álvaro de la Hoz behind the cameras.
We don’t want our music to be scary! Hahah but I guess some of the harmonies and effects we use, that are normally found in contemporary music, are associated with darker more auteur kind of cinema because of film directors like Kubrick, so it makes sense that you feel it that way, even though it’s not our intention. Lately, we’ve also been very into soundtracks composers such as Colin Stetson, Bobby Krlic or Mica Levi who usually work in the “new terror” genre (films like Midsommar, The Lighthouse, etc) so I guess some of that might be reflected in our music.
Over all, we’re greatly inspired by artists and bands like The Beatles, Radiohead, Portishead, Fiona Apple, Elliot Smith, Mark Hollis… we admire them because they make timeless music and they have never been afraid to experiment, and that’s what we’re trying to do as well. We actually made a mixtape and a playlist with some of the artists that have made us, if anyone is interested.
And answering your last question: yes! Both Ignacio and I write and compose soundtracks for films, documentaries, podcasts… The majority of them are unreleased because they’re being shown in film festivals but you can listen to some of them on our record label Tempel Arts.
Northwest is a 50/50 collaboration. We don’t have a fixed position in the band but until now, Ignacio has been in charge of the production and I have been more in charge of lyrics, but we both write the music and we’re open to completely switching or mixing positions in the next records.
We both like to work alone, so each of us would compose or write something in solitude and then we will send each other what we’ve been creating and then the other one will take it from there and vice versa.
That’s really cool to hear!
All songs by Northwest are very heavy layered, there’s hundreds of instruments and vocals happening at the same time, so it takes us a lot of time to record, produce and mix them. Normally, years.
Yes, it is fun. At least for us. We’re very lucky to be making music in 2021. Nowadays, thanks to the internet, the advanced and affordable technology there’s available and the second hand market you can have a totally professional (and portable!) studio for like 2000 euros.
So answering your questions, we recorded around 90% of it on our home studio (which travels with us, like you said), then we recorded a tube organ in a church in the middle of the English countryside and some vocals and piano in the studios of City, University of London where Ignacio was studying his master’s degree at the time.
I think, it just occurred naturally. We never consciously said: “we’re going to look like this”, we just naturally gravitated towards what compels us aesthetically speaking. But it’s an ever changing thing like the music we make. It will evolve with us.
I wouldn’t call ourselves theatrical performers, but thanks for the compliment! It’s true that we work very hard to do the best shows and videos we can but, since we’re completely self financed and don’t have any corporate support or an advance from a record label, we normally work with very tight budgets and limited resources which forces us to really use our imagination.
I used to get very upset about not having money to do all the things we had in our mind but, with time, I’ve learnt that the best art comes from limitation. That’s when creativity really shines. Some of our favourite videos have been recorded with one crappy camera with no money in 1-2 days.
Thank you for this question. I think it’s very bad how obscure the financial side of music is, so thank you for giving us the opportunity to shed some light on it. We wished somebody had explained to us these things when we started.
We started earning money from music around two years ago. Before that we financed everything with our savings, with other jobs (cleaning toilets at a b&b, teaching Spanish & guitar, coding websites…) and grants (I was lucky enough to earn a grant for my animation project Fotogramas). Then, when we started making money from music we were able to finally finance music with music. Our income comes from different sources (mainly royalties, streaming, the negotiation of rights of use of our music in TV and films, records and merch sales, donations from our listeners and commissions).
We definitely had to fight for it, and we’re still fighting.
Ignacio was very sure that he wanted to devote his life to music from a very early age. It took longer for me to realize it, but at 24 I remember feeling that if I didn’t try I’d regret it for the rest of my life.
Anyway, it took us both a long time to really take it seriously because we both grew up in an environment where music (and art in general) was, at its best, a nice hobby to have but never a full time job. We didn’t have any reference. We didn’t know anybody who made music professionally and our parents, even though they were very supportive of our artistic side, didn’t encourage it as much as a career choice. We all saw people like Thom Yorke on the TV but nobody in our inner circle believed that life was within our reach. And when nobody sees that possibility you also become blind and start believing that’s out of your reach.
My father actually is a great musician, but he, of course, had a day job. My mother used to tell me that I sang out of tune hahah. She now regrets it and is super supportive, but I always tell her that she was right! Of course, I sang out of tune, I was 12 years ago, but I had the rest of my life to get better at it. That’s the thing. You don’t have to be born with an otherworldly freakish talent to pursue something. It’s good to have an innate talent, but it’s nothing if you don’t work on it. Working hard is everything. It’s also the only thing that gives you the confidence you’ll need to fight those outer (and internalised) voices that tell you: you can’t make it.
I think, the sole existence of music is a surreal thing. If you think about it from an evolutionary perspective, it doesn’t make any sense at all, but it also makes perfect sense hahah. Art is the most human thing there is. It’s older than civilizations, the coin and the markets. It comes by default.
It’s a way for humans to communicate with each other above borders and languages, and it’s quite an effective one. It goes deep and to the core very quickly. It touches something very primal in us.
I remember listening to my favourite artists when I was young and feeling truly and deeply understood, less alone in the world. I still feel that way.
Start with whatever you have in hand.
For years, my only way of making music was just writing the lyrics on a piece of paper and composing the melody in my head. I didn’t know how to record, how to play an instrument… so a paper and my memory was all I had for years.
Then, when I was 15 I discovered post-rock music and I would put lyrics and vocal melodies to Mogwai and Russian Circles songs.
Then at 19, my parents bought me a second hand laptop that had Garageband and started making funny songs for my friends and so on so on…
Ignacio recorded a whole LP when he was 17-18 with the microphone of his computer.
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Thank you Ignacio amd Mariuca for taking your time and answering the questions and providing with the photos. And you definitely got a new fan 🖤
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“A Year of Dreaming” is a project by Dominika Jezewska. It is a year long project (2020 – ongoing), during which I create a digital artwork every single day using photographs taken with my phone, VR sketches – created in Tilt Brush and GravitySketch, Procreate, Adobe Fresco, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Dimension, and Adobe Aero. No expectations, no plan, pure visual experimentation to test the limits of each medium and explore them further, to discover new landscapes and worlds in the process, teleporting myself through a dream into a different dimension every single day.
You mentioned there are no expectations when you start creating, but once you start, do you get a certain vibe from work and want to go in a certain direction?
With this project, A Year of Dreaming, the goal is to let myself create as freely as possible, the only condition being that I do it every single day for a year. When I sit down to it, sometimes I look through my folder of pictures, VR sketches and see what catches my eye, other times I start with loosely sketching in VR. Once I’m in the editing stage I follow the visual bits and pieces that feel the most interesting to me, explore them more, and eventually I land at an image that feels right and that’s where I stop.
With other projects I usually have a quite well developed concept, do thorough research, and have a general idea of how I’d want it to look and feel before I actually start creating. But at the same time I rarely go into a project with a clear, set in stone idea of what I want the finished product to look like exactly. It never turns out as you imagined it at first and forcing it to be that way only results in lots of frustrations. Actually, experimenting and trying new things and approaches as you go along always results in the finalized project being so much better than you could’ve imagined when you first started.
What realities and other worlds inspire you?
I love stories of all kinds: books, movies, history, music, listening to friends telling me about their day. Each and every one of those is a separate reality, an individual world that you get a glimpse into. It’s the most inspiring thing out there for me because the only reality you truly know is your own. When someone lets you see a piece of theirs (imaginary or real), it’s very special, you’re being let in on a very precious secret.
What photos do you take? Is it something planned or random? And do you take a new photo every single day?
The photos are completely random. I love taking pictures of the sky and clouds, but basically whenever I see interesting shapes, light, reflections (anything really) I immediately pull out my phone and take a picture (my photo library is all over the place). You never know when that little unique moment you caught will turn into something bigger. However, I don’t aim to take new ones every single day, there are days where I don’t take any new ones and instead I use what I already have in new ways.
Do you have any advice for beginner artists?
Be kind to yourself, never stop experimenting, and observe everything!
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Dominika Jezewska is a multidisciplinary artist and designer. She graduated from Parsons School of Design in 2016 with a BFA in Fashion Design and has an extensive background in fashion and 3D visualization. Forever immersed and fascinated by the world, she spends her time exploring realities + everything in between in her art practice, imagining and dissecting the relationships between humans, objects and space. Especially interested in the little things and subtle messages which make up the fabric of the subjective realities we exist in, she explores the possibilities and what ifs crafting pockets of alternate realities which exist at the intersection of art, design and technology and appear in different forms ranging from wearable avant-garde fashion art pieces to installations and mixed reality environments.
Wild Things Zine 