interview with Indigo

Indigo is a Vancouver based stencil artist who, after just over a year of playing the roll of active artist, had succeeded beyond what many established creators hope to do in their first 5 years. Mind numbing attention to tiny wrinkles in a smile, shadows that envelope an eye and wisps of hair floating in proximity to the gentle wrinkles in a coat jacket, all these items are taken to a blade, cut in intricacy and finally joined back together in a multitude of layers creating an image that looks so effortless.  The attention to these details is what makes her work sought after and respected. Images of a shattered society, images of emotion, images of the human condition, she wears them all and has made many sacrifices to translate them for society...like a gift.

Indigo’s studio is held in the palm of the human condition; Vancouver’s lower east Hastings St is notorious for it’s diminished conditions in both the buildings and the people who live there. Everything that Indigo does is very real, from getting a cup of coffee to taking the bus home from her studio, but she brings a certain light to this area of the city.  Compassion and understanding for the fine balance that can put someone in those conditions are prevalent in each one of her stencils.

Each one of my visits to Indigo’s studios has been in the same area and I get the sense that it’s not just the cheap rent that draws her to wade through the freezing air of helplessness and addiction. It seems that each of her pieces are not just a spray of paint, but a moment in someone else’s life that has been broken down, layer by layer until it becomes art.

wlfmrs: Tell me about the European tour your took last year.

Indigo: Ok, I initially decided to go traveling because I got an invite for a residency in Moscow with an art institute based in Berlin but was opening one in Moscow and I decided that since I was going, I would visit some other places along the way. I decided to go to New York since I had a friend who lives there and it was pretty cheap to fly there. I decided to do some research as to what was going on while I was there and found on Facebook, the MBP Urban Art Festival going on in Bushwick. There event page said more artists to be announce so I sent them a message to tell them that I was going to be in the area and they let me do some painting there.

From there I went to Paris but before I left I saw a message by C215 that said he was looking for an artist to come paint some walls.  I sent him a message and eventually got hooked up to do some painting there.

I booked by ticket that was for Vancouver to New York, New York to Paris ended up being in Paris for longer I expected. What was to be a little under a week ended up being in France for 2 weeks. I did a bit of traveling around to other areas to visit family and paint with some friends then made my way to Berlin. When I got there, I kind of already knew I wasn’t going to get to Moscow because I couldn’t get a Visa.  It was going to cost too much since I didn’t get the paper work before I left.

I did some more traveling around, stayed with friends and did some painting and then eventually realized I was running out of money.  I decided to stay in Berlin because it’s so cheep there.  Also, the whole time I was looking for walls to paint but they were so hard to find. The whole city is just covered in paint.

Then I was introduced to Jaybo, who gave me a space to paint the back yard of where his studio space is so I spent the day painting there then decided to go straight to London. I had an invite to paint in Amsterdam with some artists for a project with crack for your eyes.  Thanks to my friend, Remi/Rough, I also got a chance to paint at Cargo London, which was amazing. They are great people and have a gorgeous venue and I’m really happy I got to do some painting there. They are where one of the original Banksy pieces is under Plexiglas.  So on this wall was Banksy, me, Netta, someone else then Shepard Fairy had a bit of the wall at the end.

From there I went to Amsterdam for the weekend and painted a production wall for a show that Crack For Your Eyes was putting on.  It was such a tight schedule. The show was literally happening and we ran in carrying our pieces right after paint them.  

While we were staying there, we got a great deal with the hostel that we where at that they gave us really cheep rates and we would paint some murals in two rooms and the courtyard. So all I did in Amsterdam was paint. I didn’t even really see any of the city.

I had done all that traveling and was now stuck in London without enough money to get a ticket home back to Canada. Thankfully, my parents bailed me out. My mom was adamant that I could not be stuck in Europe and bought me a ticket home.

wlfmrs: That is a crazy trip! How long were you gone in total?

Indigo: Two months. 

wlfmrs: You were gone for two months and painting almost the whole time, what there ever a point where you just sat back and realized where you were at and the company you were in?

Indigo: Oh yeah. When I was in Berlin, that was the time when I was painting the least and the first bit of being in New York.  It was pretty steady the whole time though. I spent a lot of money on paint.  Painting on the same wall as Banksy and Shepard Fairy was a trip for sure. There were many moments of disbelief along the way.  Especially painting with C215 was pretty big for me. I got to meet a lot of inspiring people. I’ve talked to a lot of artists and most of them say that the artists who they hold highest, they don’t really want to meet because they don’t want to be let down or something but I’m the complete opposite of that. I am way more interested in process than the end product so going to see these people’s faces when they paint and watching it happen teaches me so much.

wlfmrs: Tell me what happened in San Francisco. How did all that come about and what projects were you working on?

Indigo: Well, it rained the whole time. I was suppose to paint an outdoor wall with Chor Boogie and Jae54 and Max Ehrman but it never happened because it never stopped raining. Sometimes there would be sunny breaks and we would be like ‘ok, should we get started?’, then two hours later it would be raining again. So eventually two days before I left, a friend who owns Culture Skate, which is where we were suppose to be painting on their back wall, he said that we should just paint inside so we got to paint inside.  It was rad and I’m glad I got to get some work up but I didn’t get to paint with anyone else which was something I was looking forward to. 

wlfmrs: What is it that inspires your work?

Indigo: It depends on the piece that I’m working on and sometimes it’s just a general mood that I feel I want to work with. Like the pieces that are at the Ayden Gallery, I didn’t know going into what I wanted to do and it’s all about finding a photograph that matches what I want to portray. 

Sometimes I want the image to be more topical and make a statement about an issue that I feel strongly about without being too over the top.  It’s just another point of view.

wlfmrs:  Tell me about the inspiration behind your piece with Paint Your Faith and what being a part of this project means to you.

Indigo: I’m really excited to be a part of Paint Your Faith Vancouver. I am excited about having it in my city and to be painting with such a talented group of artists. I’m not particularly religious myself but I do feel like I am a very spiritual person.  I come from a multicultural family that encompasses multiple religious and spiritual practices, and that has really helped me to grow up with an understanding of how many belief systems have common threads that tie them all together.  I am working with the idea that everyone and everything is connected, and that the energy in each of us and the world around us never ends, it just changes into a new form.  I think this project is really refreshing and the church is being so open minded about artistic license to create something that means something to us and is not necessarily based on church philosophy. There are obviously guidelines but it’s pretty open.

Indigo, along with Peeta (Italy), Faith 47 (South Africa) and Titi Freak (Sao Paulo) will be painting live during the week of April 21-27^th at 55 E. Hastings, Vancouver BC. Please visit PaintYourFaith.com for more information.