ELIO, VALENTINa, RUBY
This weeks On The Verge, we continue our series of the Create.Repeat team in New York, interviewing strangers in the park. We came across these incredible three artist selling their art and jewelry and we couldn’t help but sit down and chat with them.
Elio, 17 – makes pins, buttons, jewelry, upcycling, photography
Valentina, 18 – makes wash paintings, sustainable fashion, upcycle thrift
Ruby, (they/them) 20 – puzzler, collects trinkets to create jewelry, collage artist
Why are you a creative?
E - My brain is so messy, and art and being creative is how I express that, I feel like it's the only way to get out the jumbled stuff in my brain that goes on.
V - I am creative because I can’t see myself doing anything else. I have been drawing since I was really little and it has always been my favorite thing. I think also being able to put on paper the things I can’t express with words. And I love making sick designs.
R - The process of sitting on the floor with shit I have collected, it feels really nice to organize it into something beautiful. And the connection part of getting to sit in the park and talk to humans who like things that I like, is just really invigorating.
What do you hope to create that would be repeated in history?
E - This feels very spring of me – I love life, and I love people, and I love things – so for me it is less about the longevity of my work and more about how my things can make people happy in the moment. I sell stuff in the park, and it's so fun to have these small moments in the present with people and to watch it bring them joy.
V - That’s hard to say because I feel like I do focus a lot on legacy and what I want to leave behind in the world. I think for me it is making fashion that is really fierce, feminine and sustainable. Something that will go back alongside mother earth – I feel like there is a separation between sustainable fashion and alternative fashion and I really want to close that gap. Also, I really want to make a horror movie later, I am going to college for film and I want to make a really feminine-oriented, trippy movie that mother fuckers will love. When the horror isn’t women dying, and it’s empowering, and badass.
R - I want a museum. At the end of my life, I want a bunch of rooms that represent every era of my life and it’s filled with my crap, like my hair cut off and filled in bags and framed. But I don’t think that is for other people, I think what I want to leave behind for other people is making lasting connections with other people and spreading joy and encouraging creativity. But my life journey is collecting shit and filling a building with it.
What do you feel like you are on the verge of?
E - I feel like I am constantly on the verge of the next big thing. I am very neuro-divergent and I hyper fixate on things a lot, so it’s like I get a little vision of what I want to make and then I focus on that until it is done. Just the other day, I was like I want to make a leather harness and I have never worked with leather before, but I bought a bunch of scraps off ebay and just taught myself one day for 5 hours and I think it looks pretty good. I am on the verge of the next strange little obsession. I am also on the verge of building my own house with my own hands – everything is so complex, I want to make things simple. I am on the verge of making things make sense.
V - I am on the verge currently of going to live in the woods with a bunch of cool artists. I just got back from working on this farm in Hawaii and I am on the verge of doing that again in a creative and intentional way.
R - I feel like I am on the verge of more self discovery. I think that every year that I get older, I come into myself. And I am so excited to keep growing. Like I am excited to be 60. I am on the verge of settling into myself more and finding all the new ways that I can exist and take up space.