Lyra Zoe

by Kita

When I think of color, or vibrancy, or life fully expressed, there is one person who pops into my mind no matter what. Her name is Lyra Zoe. A young woman who has studied many different mediums of art, and truly gone to exploring the meaning of art, she is truly an example of a cheerful, and vivacious young person. Always smiling and laughing, hers is a soul that seems to simply exude art.

  I have been watching her art grow over the years, and it has grown by leaps and bounds. There seems to be very little limit to what she can accomplish when she puts her mind to it. Paintings leap to life under her brush, sculptures tell many stories with her hands, and art becomes fashion, and more, a statement, with her guidance. She has truly immersed herself in art, in a way few people manage to.

  Lyra has sent a number of messages out into the world, but what I enjoy most about her art, is that it's so very versatile. Between jewelry and hair clips, and dance, and painting, and sculpting, she's worked a little on everything, and even created some things that seem to transcend titles. There is no one definition for artist. All art is art, and no one seems to embody that message more than Lyra. 

The Interview: 

 Kita: So what kind of artist do you define yourself as?

Lyra: A multitalented, multifaceted artist, I guess, because I use every medium that I can get my hands on.

Kita: What did you start with?

Lyra: I started out when I was a little kid, and it was mostly drawing, doing jewelry, and craft type art. Making little sculptures and cards, and it developed into drawing and painting. Then in college, in art school, it changed into sculpture and wearable art, costuming. So it developed into as much as I can do.

Kita: And when you first started, did you have goals?

Lyra: It wasn’t necessarily goals so much as, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” The answer was always, “Artist.”

Kita: What about now? What are your goals now?

Lyra: Now, I do. It’s not just do I want to be an artist, but I want to be a working artist. I want to be able to feed myself with my art, basically.

Kita: Do you struggle to find that ability?

Lyra: Yes, I definitely do.

Kita: What would you define as your biggest struggle?

Lyra: Well, I find it difficult, since I do so many types of art, to be superior in one medium. I’m okay at a lot of things, or pretty good at a lot of things, but I meet people that are excellent in one material. I don’t feel I have that, since I have so many interests. I just can’t put the time into each medium that I would want to.

Kita: Are the people around you supportive of your goals?

Lyra: Yes. My mom is an artist, and so is my sister.  They have been really supportive, and they’ve actually pushed me to find ways to use my art to support myself. They’re ongoing about that, they still haven’t reached that goal. I always grew up feeling that I could do art, that I could do it no matter what, and having somebody say, “Yeah, okay,” is great. I’ve known a lot of artists who parents are unsupportive and said, “I’d rather you do something else with your life.” It’s nice to have someone not only tell me to go for it, but to also understand why I need to do what I do.

Kita:  Because you do so many different kinds, do you find you struggle to meet the costs of so many different styles?

Lyra: Yes and no. Yes, because any art that you do, you have to factor in the costs of any materials. The more complex your artwork, generally, the more materials you’re going to need. And yes, because the more things you want to do, the more money you have to put down. But no, because if I can’t afford it, I can switch to a material I can still use that costs less.

Kita: As far as paintings go, what are your favorite things to paint?

Lyra: Predominantly, right now, I have two subjects. Those are people, and landscapes. It feels like, you know, “What else is there?” Well. There’s a lot. Predominantly, my work is figurative when it comes to dance. I mean, I am the figure. Costuming, I’m dressing the figure. Wearable art has a lot to do with human behavior. Sculpture is making figures or making something to go on a figure, or sometimes abstract. And painting is usually of dancers, recently, because I am also a dancer, or landscapes because I find them challenging.

Kita: Because you do so much, do you feel they seep into one another?

Lyra: Right now, I feel like they don’t, but it’s a goal of mine to make it happen. I want to overlap my different materials and the different knowledge I have of the materials to create something new. But at the moment, when I use a certain material, I only do one thing with it. And when I switch to a different material, I only do another thing with it. So, I really want to combine and overlap, I just haven’t mastered that quite yet.

Kita: So where does inspiration come from?

Lyra: All over the place. It depends on which medium. I know a lot of artists, and went to school with a lot of artists, and I feel like a lot of my inspiration over the last few years has been through artists that I knew. I enjoy looking through artist magazines, and when it comes to dance, I like watching dancers from other styles of dance that I don’t do. That helps me be inspired in my own style of dance. As a belly dancer, I like to watch modern dance, and the modern dancers help me to change little things in my own style.

Kita: So you also sell things on etsy. Do you ever find you struggle to make something marketable versus what you’d like to be making?

Lyra: Yes. The majority of what I put on etsy are things that I make to be marketable, and it’s funny because it goes back to the whole, “What do you want with art?” “Well, I want to feed myself.” “And how do you do that?” In art school, it was a very touchy subject, because you need to make the art that you want to make, not necessarily the art people want, so you can sell it. So it’s very back and forth. But I feel that I need to do both. I need to make art that will sell, so I can pay for the art that I’d like to make. On my etsy site, it’s mostly smaller things, things that won’t cost as much to make so that people are more likely to buy them, or things that people have told me that they wanted that I’ve made.

Kita: Do you find that running the business side of that weighs down on you at all?

Lyra: Yes. A lot of the time, it prevents me from posting things. Or trying to market things. I feel I’ve been able to help other people market themselves better than I’m able to market myself or my products. It’s probably one of the more discouraging parts of art. How do I get it out to people? How do I get them to want what I’m making and buy it? I have the hardest time figuring out how to do it.

Kita: Do you struggle to find balance between regular work and art?

Lyra: Yes, because what I want to do is sell my art as a job. Since that’s an ongoing struggle, I need a regular job as well. And when I have a regular job, it pulls time and energy away from my art because I often don’t have as much time as I want to, or the energy when I come home, to do it. So it’s either, have a job and feed yourself, or not. It seems like a lot of either, or. It’s really an ongoing battle to have a job that gives you enough time to still do your artwork.

Kita: Do you like collaborating with other artists?

Lyra: It depends. For dance, I like collaborative a lot better. I feel more inspired when creating pieces for more than one person. There’s a lot more layering, and ideas, and bouncing of ideas back and forth with another person. When it comes to painting, I prefer to be around other artists for their opinions, but to create my own pieces. I have a few other artists that I want to collaborate with, but it’s yet to come to fruition. It’s been hard to coordinate. I usually like to work on my own pieces, though, when it’s a visual art like painting or sculpture.

Kita: So what’s your favorite part of being an artist?

Lyra: Being an artist, I know that I am different. I am not only different from people as a whole, but from other artists. Because that’s the nature of being an artist, is being unique, of being able to have your own voice. Being able to say the same thing, but in a different medium. When it comes to making art, I guess it would be the way that it makes me feel. When I accomplish a project, or finish something, the gratification that I get, and how excited I will be to share with people. When it comes to making art, I have to do it. I can’t not do it. If I just don’t do one art form for awhile, at least I’m doing another type. I have to do constantly do something.

Kita: And least favorite?

Lyra: My least favorite about being an artist, is probably how many people don’t understand. They’ll say, “Oh yeah, you’re an artist, but what do you really do?” Or “So you’ve got an art degree. Now what?”  Or even, “You’re an artist now, but what do you want to be when you grow up?” It’s definitely a struggle to get people to understand the way you think. That is one of the hardest about being an artist. One of the things I don’t like about doing artwork is when something doesn’t turn out the way you envision it, or it takes several attempts to get it to work. You have an idea in your head, but you don’t know how to get it out and make it look like what’s in your head.  Or that once you do make it, people still don’t get it and what you’re trying to say.  Then again, when it does take a long time to get it done, when you do finally get it, it’s so rewarding. You’ll be yelling at your painting for hours, but you’ll go back to it and be so happy.

Kita: Do you ever get anxious to share your art with other people?

Lyra: Yes. The other night, I was painting this one piece, and I wasn’t even done. I’m still not even done. But I’d been painting it for a couple of hours, and I was really excited about this one part, since I had accomplished something I had never done before while painting. I wanted to share it with people, but there was no one around, so I took pictures and text messaged it to people that I know, who had given me support and critique in the past. I wanted to share, even though it wasn’t done, what I was making.

Kita: How do you like the arts community around here?

Lyra: Well. I feel like there are a lot of different communities, depending on what it is you do. So there is the dance community. And it’s not necessarily the dance community as a whole, it’s what kind of dance you do. So it’s the belly dance community, for me, and it’s kind of big, for what you would assume to find in Utah, but it’s also limited in a way. I feel the biggest problem with the dance community, and maybe even the other arts communities I’m in, is advertising to the general public. The general public does not know about a lot of what we do, so we are our own audience. As for painting and sculpture, there’s a lot of artists here, in Utah, and a lot of galleries and such. But still letting the general public know that you’re there and have people wanting to support that? A lot of people will tell you that you’re a good artist, but they won’t actually come to your gallery show or buy a piece from you. So that support, going by coming and watching a show, or going to a gallery opening, that’s the part the communities all seem to have a struggle with. 

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