Swirl Girl

Hi Hot Literatis,

It's me, hailo, your fearless leader. I wish I never had an Instagram so that I could make everyone think I was 6'2" with a country accent.

So I have this personal theory that the coolest people and the coolest artists are deleting Instagram. That they are tired of creating something within the constraint of a predetermined pixel size.

But that then poses the question of how one can find cool artists anymore. I spent one evening scouring student publications and campus literary mags looking for somebody, anybody, doing something actually unique.

That's how I found Swirl Girl, who is currently a student at Barnard. We met briefly in Manhattan to discuss her art practice and who Swirl Girl is, and sure enough, within the first five minutes, she confirmed that she'd deleted Instagram because it didn't feel great anymore.

PENNY, IN HER OWN WORDS

I'm from New York. I grew up in Manhattan. Lately, I've been thinking a lot about the role of social media. I actually disabled my Instagram, which was a really big decision. It's such an easy platform for sharing artwork and keeping people updated, but for a while, it started to feel like a trap.

SHARING WORK AND THE INTERNET

I realized I wasn't being creative enough with how I shared my work. It was too easy to just post a photo of a painting and move on, which started to feel less fulfilling. I began asking myself: What would it mean to disable my Instagram? Would it push me to be more creative in how I share my art? Would I be okay without that constant access to being seen?

I'm still figuring it out, and I won't say I'll never go back, but it's been really good for me. Now, I have a newsletter with about 115 people on it. It's literally just an email chain where I share what I'm up to, but it feels so much more intentional. The people reading it are actually taking the time to listen to or look at what I send, rather than just scrolling past it. It's definitely an experiment.

ON AN UPCOMING EP

I've been thinking of when my EP comes out. I really want to distribute CDs around. I want to just hand people things. Like, hand people a poster. I don't know, just experiment with more physical media. But I think the two can work together. I don't think it's a competition, since the internet has so many things that are so awesome about it.

I do feel like a lot of my work is definitely inspired by internet culture. And I think that there's a lot to be gained. So, I guess it's just a balance.

It's so saturated with so many people posting their work that there's no way to parse through, or for anything to stick. And so I'm really trying to think of ways I can be distinct, or I can, like, distinguish myself, I guess?

VISUAL ART AND CREATIVE PRACTICE

Well, I would say I have always been a visual artist. Painting has been my main medium for a lot of my life. I started taking it more seriously in high school. I think it started to become more of an important part of my life. But I also dabble in a bunch of stuff. I love photography. I make zines, and I love art books.

Books are a really nice way of blending a lot of photography, and collage, and different mixed media works. But I also love to make my paintings, big paintings. For my thesis this year, I think it will probably be a lot of big paintings. Then I also do music. And that has been the recent development. I kind of just started making music for fun. And then I really liked the project I made last summer.

I actually recorded a whole new EP with my friend. And it's completely different. It's all folk music, very stripped down, guitar music. Now I'm like, oh, I want to go back to what I was doing before. But I do really like the songs. And so they'll come out at some point. They're just so different. Music is just fun. And it's such a collaborative process.

SCHOOL AND CREATIVE COMMUNITY

I'm gonna be a senior. Or I am a senior. I don't know why I said I'm gonna be. It's only been two weeks of school. Yeah, I'm a senior.

I study visual arts and art history. So I'm doing a lot of art in school, and making a lot of music with friends. I started this collective called Sonic O with my friends, and basically, we just put on a bunch of shows last year.

They were super DIY. They were in apartments. It all started with equipment from WKCR, which is the radio at Columbia, so the shows were all set up and engineered by ourselves. I played a bunch of shows for Sonic O. I feel like being in school is helpful because it gives me a direct community of different artists and people making things. And it makes things easier to share.

It'll be really interesting to navigate once I graduate, and see what role art will play in my life. And how far I want to push it, like, as a career. Or as just something that is a huge part of my life. So it's a journey. Yeah.

INFLUENCES

I listen to music all the time. I listen to so much even while I'm painting and making things, so it must have a strong influence on everything I do.

A lot of it comes down to friend recommendations and word of mouth. For instance, I love the band @ right now, literally just the "at" sign like that. I also went to a concert recently for Ear, this incredible electronic duo. I love seeing live music, and I'm deeply inspired by my friends who make art. One artist who's a huge inspiration of mine is Tracey Emin; I was fortunate enough to see her show at the Tate in London twice this year. School is honestly a massive inspiration, too: just learning about the world, reading, and thinking. It all blends together to make up who I am. But music is definitely the thing I'm constantly consuming, both consciously and subconsciously.

SWIRL GIRL AND SPIRALS

I've loved spirals ever since high school. It started as a bit of a fixation. To me, spirals are such a beautiful symbol; they're found all over nature and feel so ubiquitous. I also feel like time moves in a spiral rather than something linear. I like thinking about how things are circular. My work is abstract and doesn't fit neatly into one genre or box, so "Swirl Girl" just felt right. Sometimes it even feels like a persona or entity outside of myself. When you're making art, you don't always know where it's coming from. It feels like this other side of you. I just really love the name and feel it suits me.

CURRENT PROJECTS AND PROCESS

I'm working on mixing my EP right now, but it's fully recorded, so all the heavy lifting is done. I'm mostly just collaborating with my friend Hadassah, who's mixing it. I also have my thesis project for school this year, which came with my own studio space. I'm so excited to have a space I can use for the whole year to paint and experiment. I'm not much of a strict planner; I prefer to just make things and see what comes out. But I've been thinking a lot about process versus product lately, and what making art really means to me. It's such a personal habit; I don't really know how to live without doing it. Now I'm navigating what it means to be tasked with a year-long thesis project when my natural process is so loose and feeling-based. On top of that, I'm filling a sketchbook with writing that I hope to finish by the end of the year. It'll be so fun to look back through the whole thing.

See more of Swirl Girl's work at whoisswirlgirl.xyz.

IN SUM

I, hailo, believe in this next generation. I think they're going to be so sick, so smart, and so talented. And here on Hot Literati, I'm trying to build a space for them, for us, to find one another.

xo

hailo