Clothes collaborative

I had the lovely opportunity to work with Sam Fields and her team of textile of assistants with this installation/exhibit sponsored by Now+There’s Accelerator program. The work brought attention to fast fashion and the slowness that is undoing the damage that we are creating. Learning more about how our clothes are made, what they are made of and how to better care for them. Touching on some of the malpractice of the work: fair wage, environmental and social impacts and waste in high degrees.

One of my function as part of the team was setting up the shop, “performing” the slow and precise unraveling of donated clothes and labeling each cut from the garment. I was also able to participate in classes and free education. This taught me more about how clothes are made, what supports are needed for different types of garments and the most popular places for the production of clothes sold in the US.

I’m glad that people would stop in like it was a regular shop, say hi, ask questions and some people would ask about our scraps and other things we had going on like our weekly mending sessions where we taught people how to fix their clothes. One less expense and trip to the dry cleaners. We also did a clothing swap at the end of the project which was super fun! I got a few pieces for myself and some of my favorite scraps from my disassemblies.

The biggest thing this project taught me is the importance of knowing the process and how things are done, especially how they are made. I also learned a lot about myself and how thin is too thin to spread yourself. I was in college and working part time retail while also working on this project. It showed me how community feeds you (literally and spiritually) and how a network of people take care of one another. it would not have worked if the neighborhood had been against us setting up, it would not have worked if we were not a good team, didn’t communicate and learn to take care of one another. to work slowly with this group taught me so much about the importance of going slow and and taking my time instead of trying to speed though everything. That time was so pivotal for me in a lot of was so I will always be grateful to have participated

Tori Tori “Daily” Music video

Hello hello! How are y’all? I hope you are in good spirits! It’s been a while but i want to show you where i’ve been and what i’ve been up to these past few months!

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I had the amazing opportunity to do makeup for a music video!! Side Presents, who I’ve worked with on a few other occasions last year, invited me to design and execute looks for ToriTori’s video project and I was beyond words. Tori and I chatted about the concept for the video and styling so we could come up with something that matched the mood and tone. After coming up with a plan, I sketched out a few ideas. Here’s the face chart I created to get a better sense of which direction would be best.

Making face charts with these descriptions really helps the person embodying them set the mood for themselves and how they would like to approach the look. I always think of the attitude that comes with a look and especially for something like this that comes with a bit of acting, I love to add it in. It’s part of stepping into that new reality or storyline. The story of this video definitely read a bit sexy but sinister so with each look there were all varying instances of drama. Red lips for me always read sexy but darkening it made it more vampy. We ended up going for the Classic Sultry look for the video which turned out perfect! take a look at the video and tell me Tori’s isn’t absolutely gorgeous, and if you do, yous a lier 😜

We banged out a music video in a weekend and what a weekend. Cast and crew were amazing! gotta give it us for TLoui and Marly for inviting me to be apart of this project, feeding us goos, hosting us in both of their homes for the video and for keeping us on track. We had 3 locations for this shoot including a dance studio hiding under a hair salon! not to mention the crew was almost am all black production 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾 I love working with other black creatives in my city so it made me happy to make everyone look and feel good. Plus a pet talk from me will hopefully get you through anything or at least that’s my hope.

Cast |

Performing Artist: Toritori

Love interest: Junior

Dancers / Friends: Carmen, Patrice, Theralande, Marly

Production/Direction: HomeGrownHD | Christian & Rickey

Makeup Artist: Erica Imoisi

Get to Know Me: My interview with Dre

Hi y’all, it’s been a while but I’m back in action. I hope all is well in your neck of the woods. I’m excited, It feels like the world is picking up speed again and work has been picking up so we are getting there. I had the lovely opportunity to talk with Dre, an amazing portrait photographer in Boston last spring. (Instagram | Youtube ) Her work often focuses on black women and fashion and I was exstatic when she wanted me to be the first guest of her artist interview series called Sessions & Sit-Downs! This is a great chance for those who may not be familiar with my work to see more of the facets of my artistic expression. Check out our interview!

Fun Notes about the look I did: I wanted something that showed how i normally am, I really would rock this look to Home Depot or CVS 😂(which I have) specifically with my shirt. It’s from Lazy Oaf in collaboration with artist Becky Sloan, one of the creators of Don’t Hug Me, I’m Scared on Youtube. I used to stay up all night watching it and the matching conspiracy theories. This may be part of the reason I love chaotic memes and existential thought 😅 but it also opened up the door or what a creative project looked like in terms of medium involved and creating a series.
I hope you all enjoy the video and of course, ask me anything about my space, philosophy or style in the comments 😊

Signing off,

Erica ✨

Block Printing Trials

NEW VIDEO!

Starting off the week pretty well with a late night upload! I made a video using my block print that I have been carving and playing with the last week or so. I was playing with different inks and I tried a couple techniques for getting the best prints and as you can see in the video, not all of them worked out too well.

First I tried old screen printing ink I had lying around from high school with was chunky and a little hard to work with especially because it’s more meant for fabric but I wanted to see how it would perform on paper. The result was kind of iffy. I dried just a but too quickly and got in a lot of the cracks of my stamp which made it print pretty poorly even though it was the best version of it.

The second go round I used acrylic which wasn’t working out either. Not only did it dry too fast but it had the additional texture too it that I originally hated but now I think I might  use that that another project just to see how it looks or to play around with the little peaks coming off of it. I’m just glad I didn’t buy pricey in and I like the color blue so I’ll definitely get use out of it still.

The final try, I used ACTUAL block printing ink that I got from blick (go figure) and they came out much better! I still kinda messed up by dropping my brayer on the floor and in some cat hair but at least they printed pretty nice. Once I get a bit better at making them all look like a consistent set, I will add them to my shop along with a couple other new projects you should be seeing in the next few weeks so stay tuned!