Mindkiller Unknown

Heather Gabel has always worked as a visual artist, but over the past four years she's discovered the joy and catharsis of musical performance as half of the dark electronic duo HIDE, who recently returned from a tour in support of their E.P Castration Anxiety. We drank a large amount of coffee and discussed true crime, a*****e sound guys, Hannah Hoch, Eve Libertine, parenting, Hollywood, and that amazing feeling you get when you realize that you can just start a band and people will find out about your shows and come see you.

Aay Preston-Myint has worked diligently for many years to build his thriving fine-art practice, but he's also devoted a tremendous amount of energy to collaborative projects that have improved the quality of life in Chicago for his fellow makers, and queer artists in particular. As one of the founding organizers of Chances, a series of dance parties, Aay helped to create a nightlife space where it was cool and safe to be both weird and queer,  fostering community and funding creativity with grant money raised from the proceeds. As a partner in No Coast, a print-focused collaborative, an Editor of the arts and literary journal Monsters and Dust and an organizer of the Chicago Art Book Fair,  he's learned valuable lessons about management and communication. We discussed the highlights (and a few low moments) from his multi-faceted career, and discussed strategies for letting go of criticality and getting in touch with the outside world- a tall order for introverts.

Over the course of our 16-year friendship, I've been in constant awe of Carrie. She's a brilliant artist and fellow musician, and she has a knack for problem-solving and tackling difficult tasks fearlessly. In the wake of a recent divorce, however, her coping mechanisms were severely tested. Realizing that she'd become isolated, Carrie reached out to a group of female friends for support and discovered hidden reserves of power she didn't realize she possessed. Although she's an atheist, she embarked on a spiritual journey that led to a thriving magickal practice. Since it's Spring, a time for new beginnings, I was excited to check in with one of my dearest friends to learn about her fresh start.

As an undergrad, Janice Lim studied studied printmaking and photography, but she holds a graduate degree in art restoration, and she currently works at the Field Museum of Natural History making display mounts for rare and precious specimens including (currently) dinosaur fossils from Antarctica!!! She's also a highly skilled tattoo artist, and she garnered fans as the drummer for Civilized Man and Gula Gila, two influential Chicago bands. Given her many interests and talents, It's no surprise that she and I broke my record for longest recorded interview, and I loved every minute of it, even the heavier moments when the conversation turned away from lighter topics (old acid, drumming in a skirt) to more difficult subjects like grief and loss.

I am fascinated by funny people. Gina is both funny and fearless, qualities that make her a world-class cartoonist and an extremely engaging interviewee. Her book Someone Please Have Sex With Me was excerpted in the 2015 edition of Best American Comics and has been translated in Spain, Norway and Denmark, and she has continued to explore the themes of lust and longing in subsequent mini-comics. I'm so thankful that Gina traveled across the city to talk to me about, among other things, her apartment, her job, her art-making process, boys, capitalism, Puerto Rico, Dancing, fashion, isolation and the internet. And I learned the term "chuckle-f*****s". At the end of the interview, you'll hear Nuestro Planeta by Kali Uchis.

Molly Colleen O'Connell raids sewers and circuses to bring her trolls, clowns and eccentrics to vivid life. Via performance, painting, sculpture, video and cartooning she creates elaborate habitats and mindscapes that put the viewer in close proximity to creatures from the outer realms, but she imbues them with so much love and pathos it's impossible to come away unmoved. Buckle your spacewig chinstraps and get ready for an in-depth conversation about creativity, comedy, terry cloth and so much more.