Kris's work is magical and meaningful. It's easy to lose yourself in her narrative-driven paintings and illustrations, and we've always admired how she's defined her own one-of-a-kind artistic practice. We asked her how to be an artist in our current hellscape world, and she delivered.
We saw in your email signature that you don’t do email on your phone—computer only. We are guilty of sending frantic, sub-par emails from our phones and hoping our ‘sent from iPhone’ signatures will absolve us. It’s hard to say no to certain ‘conveniences’ even when those convenient capabilities end up exhausting us. (Death via multi-tasking?) More and more we feel that our phones are like, our personal leeches of capitalism (borrowing this phrase we overheard a v. cool teen say recently). Anyway, as a studio that designs stuff for the internet we want to encourage mindful, positive use of devices. Tell us about your no-email-on-your-phone lifestyle. Did you hit a breaking point? Do you have tips for balancing things, or a wish list of how tech could work better for you as an artist?
My“No Email On Phone” postscript message actually started towards the end of my career as a Senior Designer in the fashion industry. I had sent out a horrific email reply without actually reading the entire email. I was having a personally bad day and traveling internationally for work. I didn’t do anything but exacerbate the situation and confuse the team working on my designs. Very disrespectful, confusing and rude for everyone who took the time to write to me about the issues and await my decisions.
I apologized to everyone on the email and then I had decided that I didn’t know how to read on a small screen and the phone keypad didn’t allow me to write out full patient sentences. So I made it a point to forever be sitting down at a big screen with a full keyboard and a full stomach to reply to all humans. Later in life when I no longer worked as a Designer the“NO EMAIL ON PHONE” postscript helped people to understand that I may be on a different response timeframe from them.
My only balance/tech tip is to actually make your life kind of inconvenient, learn to like life even when you are uncomfortable. Just leave your phone at home for small errands and see what it’s like to stand in line with nothing to do with your hands. Observe your own body and reactions to the world. Go and attempt to fix something before you buy a new one, and if you can’t fix it, take the time to take it apart to see what goes into it, so you understand how things get made. Also, just because you can’t fix it doesn’t mean it can’t be fixed.
I feel like a soft, privileged, able-bodied, hetero cis-gendered dum-dum.
Kris Chau
Do you have some go-to inspiration sources or artists you love right now?
Always!“Right now” I think doesn’t even factor in. I think these are people that inspire me, keep me moving, and sometimes debilitate me. Here are some I can name before my whole heart comes out of my mouth. James Kerry Marshall, Barkley Hendricks, Charles Demuth, Bernice Bing, Ruth Asawa, Sister Corita Kent, Hilma Af Klint, Alexander Girard, Toshiku Takaezu, Ako Castuera, Hellen Jo, Mansi Shah, Gabriella Sanchez, Lizania Cruz, Adee Roberson, Rob Sato, Graham Keegan, Nathanial Russell, Claudia Rankine, Leon Bakst, Georgia O’ Keefe, Fixed Air, Alice Coltrane, Chances with Wolves, Monde UFO, Ursula Le Guin, Octavia Butler, Jeff Chang, THE NAP MINISTRY, Llama Rod Owens, Angel Kyodo Williams, Pony Sweat, C’est Claire, Meg Fransee, DJ Jihaari. There is also so much uncredited art that I love from Indigenous Folks and the Folk art of so many peoples.
I just want to be clear, I am a good business person! I can be as shrewd as anyone else and I have a bite that burns, but do I want that life? No.
Kris Chau
We’ve read a bit about you building a new ideal of what success can be within our frenzied work-work-work culture. Can you break that down a bit for us, what success means for you and how you arrived at that? I believe your origin story involves fleeing the corporate fashion rat race…?
The corporate world is a world I didn’t think I would ever be in. So entering with no expectations to stay gave me room to observe and move around in that reality. All offices are mini-climates of the bigger struggles in the world. Before my corporate design job I was working at a bakery, freelance illustrating and working in retail. I learned how to design clothes on the job. I think I have a strong consistent moral compass. So somehow within that corporate structure, maybe because I had low stakes, I managed to push back when I felt like I had nothing worthwhile to actually present. This is like saying“the Emperor has no clothes” when you aren’t constantly trying to prove your worth.
What upsets me to this day is how we have normalized a system of bad values and pass it off as the“smart” or“right” thing to do. Competitive work environments create mediocre unimaginative work and a fake relationships. You have to feel safe to dream and you need space to make your best work. Burn out is NOT normal, we do not have to“earn” rest. (pls see NAP MINISTRY for more on this topic) I have had many people in this lifetime label me as“naive” or a“hippie” or a“bad business person” just because I didn’t give all of myself away to the idea of making“more money”. I just want to be clear, I am a good business person! I can be as shrewd as anyone else and I have a bite that burns, but do I want that life? No. I want to be myself, free and kind. Success is whatever keeps you free. For me I don’t need to make a lot of money or have a lot to feel successful, I just need time to do as I please and take care of myself. Feeling happy for yourself and for others shouldn’t feel so counterculture. I like thinking the best of people.
Feeling happy for yourself and for others shouldn’t feel so counterculture.
Kris Chau
Via some light Insta-stalking, we saw that despite the madness of the past few months, you’ve been keeping up your artistic practice and deploying it to help your community however you can. Do you see any opportunities for how other artists and studios can step up if they’re able? (aka how can we help??)
I now look at all my other work before 2020 as almost performative and safe. Before 2020 I would try to candy coat my dissatisfaction with the state of humans and the world through my art practice. I made a quiet point of drawing and painting Black folks and People of Color in my freelance and my paintings. When I had a small independent clothing line, I made it a point to put people of color to model the clothes because I was finally in charge. I’d think to myself, Wow, I’m so radical I got to quit my well paying corporate job that I was good at, to be a poor artist/freelancer who works out of a garage and takes the time to change these bad normalized values I am carrying. YAY ME BIG WHOOPEE.
Now in 2020 with the Pandemic and our Current Social Revolution of Black Lives Matters, I feel like a soft, privileged, able-bodied, hetero cis-gendered dum-dum. And I am open to being this dum-dum. I started learning again. Being mad and bitter at all the white folks in fashion, design, and art closed me off to my own learning. Since the world has slowed down because of the pandemic the inequities are very clear. What is happening to Black Folks, Indigenous Folks, Trans Women, and Immigrants, and our working class is not new. There is no normal to go back to. This is a good time to not care about what you/artists/people are putting out there, but what you are putting in here.(points to brain and heart) How did we get here? How much of this world of racism and inequities do I carry within myself? What parts of the system hurt me? What parts of the system benefit me? Am I re-creating these structures in my life? How am I aiding or preventing the destruction of this planet that allows us to live? I am re-learning what my practice even is?
…The Tibetan Blessings I made or the Black Power posters were for morale, and I just needed to connect with humans, and mail felt like the right medium.‘Seeing White’ the Podcast, is great for how we got here, but we need to see a more rounded picture for where we can go. We need to hear from Black and Brown Folks. For all white folks, you need to know that white supremacy hurts you too, and you’ve been conditioned on how to maintain the status quo. America needs to grow up. We need to feed ourselves visions of Black and Brown Joy and Achievement, we need to normalize love as our first instinct. Sounds corny but we are not in a time to be clever or savvy. We need to stoke our imaginations with what we can do to change everything. Because everything changed, which means things can actually change!
If that isn’t hope I don’t know what is. We can turn this Earth Spaceship Human Race around! I want whatever I can make, to be a part of the Resistance. I want to be a part of the imagination that can move us forward, or at the very least be a balm to our hard times. Making food for a friend or sewing myself a dress, and learning Spanish feels like my art practice now. Currently that feels more radical than painting.
