Sofie Birkin is a queer British artist currently living in Denver. Her work explores transhistorical narratives of femininity and queerness, focusing heavily on themes of fantasy, community, intimacy and empowerment, in dynamic scenes and vivid color. She’s been commissioned by companies like Apple, Google, Facebook, Planned Parenthood, Nike and The New York Times. Sofie has published work available both domestically and internationally including a permanent installation at Meow Wolf’s Denver location, Convergence Station.

In this episode of How Art is Born season 2 Sofie and host, R. Alan Brooks discuss her journey to becoming a professional illustrator (and all her stops along the way), her interest in the narrative around domestic labor, her creative process, and more. 

Welcome to How Art Is Born, a podcast from the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, about the origins of artists and their creative and artistic practices. I'm your host, R. Alan Brooks artist, writer, and professor. Today I'm joined by Denver based illustrator, Sofie Birkin. Say hello.

Hello.

Okay. So Sofie, to start us off, can you tell us a little bit about who you are?

Yeah. I am a British illustrator and I've lived here for about eight years and I've been working as an illustrator for about five years. And I guess I'm also an artist, but I'm only just learning to call myself that

. Well, okay, so that's interesting. What is the distinction for you between illustrator and artist?

I think illustration, I don't wanna say illustration is inherently commercial because I really love, and I respect illustration as an art form, but I think that there's a very big element of design to it where it's like for a purpose and it's meant to illustrate something, right? Tell a story in some way and to convey information. Whereas I feel like fine art doesn't automatically have to do that, right? It can, but I feel like there is a little bit more kind of leniency with it. And I love both very much. But I feel like it, because I used to work at a graphic design agency and my background was in fashion design and just that whole kind of design world that working, creating art to a brief is something I've done for a long time. Something I'm really comfortable with and pushing myself out of my comfort zone to make much more personal work that's more vulnerable and maybe not as pleasing to everyone automatically is something I just really wanna make myself do now. Yeah.

Do you find that you're taking, so all the work that you've done before, you said to a brief, it was something where somebody gave you some description and had to serve some function.

Right. Exactly.

So now in creating your personal stuff, are you writing out a description of what you want or how are you approaching it?

It's funny. I actually do that and I hadn't thought about it in that way, that I am essentially writing a brief for myself, , because I feel like anytime I want to do something, there's always a lot that I have been learning about around it. It's like something I take a really big interest in. And then because I have so many thoughts, I just want to contain them all within one place and try to understand myself better. So I do end up writing out, I guess, the way I would want to describe a piece of work once it was finished. And kind of going backwards from that.

Yeah, that's interesting cuz with writing scripts for comics or movies, , which a lot of times people start with what is the statement that tells with the whole things about.

Right. Exactly. Yeah.

And that's kind of what you're doing now.

Yeah, I guess it is. And yeah, it's not something I've really ever had much of a knack for, but I have tried to make some little cartoons and outlines for hypothetical graphic novels that I've never materialized and things like that. And yeah, that process is actually pretty similar of, I've done lots of storyboarding as well for animation, which is the same kind of thing.

Okay. Yeah, I actually wasn't aware of that part of your career.

Oh yeah.

So how do you like that? The storyboarding for animation?

It really depends. So I used to work, like I mentioned, at a graphic design agency, Grit Downtown is absolutely great, and I loved it. And a lot of the story boarding for that was pretty arduous because it wasn't my style I was working in and it had to be, a lot of it was a story boarding for actual real film as opposed to animation. And so the drawings were more realistic. But I have been working with the same animator Vincent Comparetto for years, and every time I get a freelance animation gig, I work with him. And that's really fun because we work really well together and I can think about what I know he will make something look like and we can communicate very easily. So I really enjoy doing those storyboards. We've actually been working on a piece together for, well, two pieces for Planned Parenthood for the last few months. Yeah.

Well, okay. So when I'm looking at your art, I notice that there's very, well, it has a very distinct voice even though you're illustrating, as you described it, it's still very much your voice in a strong way and highly emotive, powerful colors, that kind of stuff.

Thank you.

Oh, no problem. But I wonder how you got there? What kind of started you down this path? What spoke to you in the early days of art?

I think when I was, So I got very, very lucky with my old job because I was originally trying to do, like, lean more towards a graphic design. And my boss at the time was like, Hey, you're pretty good at drawing. Do you want try being our illustrator? And I was like, Fuck yeah, that sounds awesome. And so I got tons and tons of practice in, but I was working in different styles all the time. They, like, our kind of art director and creative director would figure out the direction they wanted to take, and they would give me a lot of source material of a lot different artists. Maybe it was historic stuff or just someone else's, and just be like, do this kind of a thing, which was great, and a really good learning experience. And then I got to a point where, I mean, I have this Pinterest board that's illustration inspiration that has about 9 million images in it. And I started to feel really itchy about, Oh, there's all this work I love so much, and I don't feel like I have a distinctive voice at all. And I started trying to develop it and seeing what I liked in other people's work, not in the way of copying it, obviously, but just all these different elements of what I really like, how this person frames up their figures and the way this person uses color online and just kind of spiraled from there. And I think, yeah, it's developed over time, obviously.

Well, this is really interesting cause I feel like a lot of artists in various disciplines are like, How do I discover what my voice is? And so for you it put together the things that resonated with you, , and then processed them through your own creative soul. Yeah. And this is what came out

Very, I think I undertook it very methodically. Yeah.

Do you feel like that's sort of a common theme with how you approach your art?

Definitely. Yeah, I know. I think part of the reason I've been so hesitant to call myself an artist for so long is when I was in more formal art education, even in high school and things like that, the way that I understood art and was taught to understand art was as this very kind of loose free process and you know, see artists in movies and they're just throwing paint at canvases, and it's this raw expression of emotion. And I kind of don't really think like that. And I think a lot more not, how do I phrase this in a good way? I like to put things in boxes. I could never make a sketchbook that was just amazing drawings and pictures and just this big collage. It was always kind of neatly laid out. And I really thought that was to my detriment. And I think when I realized, no, I can use that to my advantage and make that work to create what I wanna create, is when I started being able to develop my own stuff.

That's cool. You're really touching on something. So I find a lot of artists, because inspiration is so unwieldy and unpredictable, they're afraid that any type of technique that's put on top of it, or any type of order or formality is mathematizing the art too much and it will take away the purity of it.

Right, exactly.

I run into that with writing. For me, I have to outline things very formally in the way that you're describing. But then I tend to think of the outline as a map if, and I decided we were gonna drive to Mexico or something like that, right. We could plot out where we're gonna go, but while we're following that plot, we can say, "Oh wait, there's a sign that says world's biggest piece of yarn," and we can stop and be Check that out.

Yeah, exactly. That's exactly how I like to go on vacation.

Yeah. . Well, so when you are coming up with a formal plan for how you approach art, do you find new things, new things come up in the actual execution of it?

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, there's this piece, collection of pieces I guess, that I've been working on and just thinking about, I mean, kind of daydreaming about for the better part of two years. And the whole time I was kind of concepting it, I want, is that a word? Concepting? Conceptualizing is what I meant to say. The whole time I was conceptualizing it, I was thinking it was gonna be kind of quilts. And I started putting it together and I was like, I want so much more going on here, because now I'm looking at all these other fabric artists and I'm like, why not bring all of these historically feminized crafts in? Why not do bead and embroidery and painting on leather and things like that? So yeah, I think once you start rolling on something, your idea changes a million times and snowballs into something much bigger than it starts as.

Yeah, okay. Yeah. So for me, structure is a way to execute or to carry me forward into places, because you know, can't depend on inspiration. It's fleeting by nature. And so there's so many people who come up to artists and are like I have an idea for a thing, and this idea's revolutionary, I just need somebody to do to make it. But the idea's not the hard part, the making it is the hard part.

Absolutely.

Yeah. And so they be like, You're come up to a musician I got a great song, but you gotta write it or. And so I think it's interesting to hear about how different artists, which essentially what this whole podcast is about, how different artists approach their art and what things are like, okay. Cause I think a lot of us come into this expectation of this is how it should be, as you mentioned earlier, . And then you start finding the things that are true to you and what works for you, and suddenly a whole new world kind of opens up.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. All right. Well, so there's this thing where that I wanted to ask you about where artists have this intangible goal of one day I'm going to really be an artist, but it's not clear and when so and so hires me, or when I make X amount of money or when I get published or whatever that thing is. But they're not really thinking about a clear thing, . And then when some of those things happen, they realize that they still are basically the same person. You're somebody who has done some pretty high profile kind of work, Apple and Playboy, and a lot of really cool stuff.

Thank you.

And so I wanna know, what did that feel like to you? And the larger question is do you feel like you've made it?

Oh man, that's such a big question

It is. Yeah.

I think, oh God, I'm gonna sound such a fucking Capricorn . But have pretty tangible goals in the sense that I think the thing that is the unknown quantity is, I guess I dunno exactly what it would look like to be considered a successful fine artist, right? Because I think that that's very different for everyone. But I do know that I, as much as I do really enjoy doing commercial work and I get some great opportunities, and it's a lot of fun and that's awesome, but I don't know that I see it as my kind of forever long-term goal. I would like to get to a place where on one side of things, I could essentially build a brand out of my personal work and just make and sell things like art prints, merch, that kind of stuff, just to sustain myself, , so that I would have the time to pursue fine art and not have to be super prescriptive about what that looks like.

Obviously it would be very cool to just have gallery shows and sell work and things like that, but it's more about, I guess, I don't know that I feel like I've made it, but I've had a lot of really wonderful experiences and I think I've satiated that desire for whatever you want to call it, right? Those kind of name brand type things. So what I really wanna do is have the time to make work that I think has a lot of integrity, something that I really love. And if people like it and they resonate with it, that's awesome. And if they don't, that's okay, because I'm still allowing myself to create what I want to create.

So yeah, that's really good. So I guess for myself one of the things that I think of for myself, and I tell people who are trying to figure their own stuff out is that being an artist is a journey. just really everything in life and you'll hit different destinations. But I kind of think that the idea of making it is false because at different points in your life, different things are important. Just like you were talking about, and you've had the name brand stuff, now you want to pursue what it is to be fine artist and the things that are attached to that. I think if somebody as an artist has a clear goal of I wanna make a living a clear goal. Yeah. And you can treat it that way. You can be like, Okay I need to make X amount of money in order to survive or whatever.

And I've done that year on year, and I always set myself a goal like that, and I felt like,

Oh cool.

But I feel like I'm now at a point where I'm like, okay, I can earn slightly less money next year and I can make more stuff that I love and care about and have fun doing it. And that seems great to me.

That balance between commerce and passion.

Yeah, exactly.

That's really cool.

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Okay. So we're gonna go back. I want know what was the first kind of art that ever really spoke to you when you were young?

When I was young? Honestly, probably fabric art, which I feel like, yeah, I was kind of just briefly mentioning and I know, well, I guess fabric art and digital art, because my dad was a graphic designer for a long time. He was actually a teacher when I was a kid, but before I was born, he was a graphic designer and did illustration and he had very, very old Mac at home with Photoshop on it and everything. And when I was, I think, started using Photoshop when I was about nine and he was teaching me how to use his Wacom tablet. So obviously very privileged experience to be able to do that. And that got me really into that side of things. But my mom, it works as essentially a tailor because her side of the family owned this very small, very old men's suit shop in my hometown. And they do alterations in the back room, right on the suits. So I spent all my time in there as a kid, and there was just sewing machines and just sewing paraphernalia everywhere. And it was the nineties. I didn't have an iPad with me to do things on for fun, so I just made stuff, little purses and dolls clothes and things like that.

So it, some people have a separate moment of when Art first inspired them and then when they first started creating art. But it seems like for you, those things were kind of merged.

Yeah. I think I've always done it. Yeah. I've always been getting in trouble on all my school reports for doodling all over everything and drawing all up my hands.

yeah, I would do that too.

Yeah,

. Okay. So then was there a clear time? Did you always know that you were going to be an artist for your life, for your profession? Or was there

No definitely not. I didn't figure that out until I was in my twenties. Oh, okay. Yeah, because I was just a pretty nerdy indoor child, to be honest. And so I was always drawing things and making things and things like that. But I also was very academic and I think loved my dad, but he hated being an art teacher so much. And so the constant refrain when I was a kid was like, Do not become an artist. Because if you become an artist, you'll end up doing this and you'll hate it. Just like I hate it. Go be like a lawyer or something. A lot of parents are, especially then. So I took a pretty academic path in school and I always enjoyed art, but it was always the side thing when I did my GCSEs, which is the kind of two year exams you do from 15 to 16 in the uk you get to choose different subjects. And I desperately wanted to do media and textiles, and I wasn't allowed to do them because they weren't academic enough. And I had this little trade going where my friends would pay me negligible amounts of money to do their media coursework for them, make magazine covers in Photoshop and things. But yeah

That's quite a hustle.

I applied to to college to do history and social and political sciences. When I was in high school, I decided I was only gonna apply to two colleges. I was like, "they're the only ones I wanna go to, and if I can't go to them, then I'll do something else." Did not get into either, which is a blessing. And then I was trying to figure out, I took a gap year to figure out what I was gonna do and just work odd jobs and things like that. And while I was doing that, I took a class with my dad's coworkers wife, who was a very successful milliner. So she made these amazing hats for all these theatrical productions and stuff in London. And I did a six week hat making course with her. And at the end of it, I was like, Absolutely hooked.

Absolutely hyper focused. Did not realize that at the time, but I was just crazy about it. And I was like, What? Can I go do this in college? Can I make this my job? And she was like, Mm, "wouldn't recommend it if you ever wanna pay rent in your life, but you could go and make shoes." And I was like, Wait, what? She was like, Yeah, shoes are basically hats for your feet. . It turns out that that's not, that's not true. That's an absolute lie. They're way more complicated than that. That's really funny though. Yeah, I know. She really wrote me into that one. And so there's a great shoe making degree you can do at London College of Fashion. So at that point, that's what I ended up going and doing. Cause it was one of those ones that they advertise it as you're in industry, business management, you'll be super employable, also a lie . So yeah, once I graduated,

Well, how long was that program?

It was four years.

Okay so it,

It was a bachelor's degree. Yeah.

And so you came out with fashion, was it fashion illustration?

It was fashion footwear design and production. So we learned how to design shoes and to make them, I have an entirely medieval set of skills. Wow. Yeah, it was cool. I actually really enjoyed my degree, but when I graduated it was like, okay, this is gonna be actually a little more difficult to pursue than I thought it was gonna be.

I imagine , but I've never talked to anybody who's specialized in this. So it's interesting to me. Was it all kinds of different, was high fashion shoes to sneakers

You could kind of choose? Yeah, there wasn't many sneakers just because if you wanted to do sneakers, that was actually an entire separate degree. Because there's just a lot more and a lot different things that go into them, right? Like the patent cutting is completely different. Obviously there's a huge technical aspect to them, more than a pair of high heels or whatever. But some people chose to specialize in men's footwear or children's footwear. And I did women's fashion footwear.

Okay. . So you come out and don't, there's not jobs. The jobs that you were promised, they're not there.

Well, so I moved to the US pretty quickly after I graduated. So had I stayed in London, I think I probably would've founded a footwear design, junior design position somewhere. Something like that is what I would've gone for. But I moved to the US and I couldn't work for about six months just for immigration reasons.

Where'd you move, by the way?

What's that?

Where in the US did you move?

Right here.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, directly to Denver. That place I lived on in Baker was the first place I lived . So I moved here and I was like, This is amazing and I wanna stay here and it's great, but also what the fuck am I gonna do for work? And by the time I did get my employee permit thing employment permit, I meant to say I had a million odd jobs I did. So there was one point when I was working a hundred hours a week doing five jobs, I was printing things onto baby clothes and I was putting rhinestones on the heels of bridal shoes, which was very particular form of torture . And I worked at the Esquire, which was great. I loved it. I did so many things because was there was just no, I think there's more now, but there was no fashion industry at the time for me to get into. And then I decided to pivot and try graphic design because I saw everywhere I looked there was a hundred graphic design jobs listed. And that's how I got the job. That turned into an illustration position

This is such an interesting journey. Okay, so you're here. The industry that you were hoping for didn't really seem to be there. So you made this switch into more graphic design stuff. And you touched a little earlier about how you moved from graphic design to concentrate on illustration . But I wanna know, I guess why when you had that opportunity, why was illustration so appealing to you?

It was honestly kind of a fluke. Because I already enjoyed drawing and I already did a little digital illustration as a hobby. Really nothing major. And honestly, it was absolutely terrible. I still have it all saved, wasn't great but it was just something I did for fun. And so when I put this pretty hasty graphic design portfolio together, cuz I was just applying for internships at first, I was like, I'm desperate. It was kind of obvious to me that I would just make little illustrations for them, right? Also, I didn't really know what I was doing when I got my job learning that people actually used Shutterstock, not just for photos but for type faces and things like that blew my mind. I thought that everyone was individually creating type faces for every project . Like I had no idea how any of this worked.

So I was like, I'll just do a hundred percent of the work for myself. And then in the interview for this position, literally, and I asked him this and my old boss does not remember this happening. And I'm like, this was a life changing moment for me. , I can't believe you forgot this. But as I was walking out of the door, he had looked at my portfolio and he said, "Hang on, you can draw." And I was like, yea I can draw. And he said, "we need an illustrator. Do you wanna just do that?" And I was like, Yes,

So I don't think probably for about the first six months I worked there, a single thing I did got used. Every day. I was like, I'm gonna lose this fucking job. I can't believe I'm still here. But yeah.

Okay. So when you moved into that position and , were there types of illustration you liked more or less? Were there certain things that appealed to you?

Yeah, definitely things that were a little more graphic. And not that I necessarily got a huge amount of opportunity, but I had always just loved drawing people more than anything else. I was never doing anything particularly abstract, but I knew that there was a lot of work that I was saving. And when the things you love are not quite where you're at with your skill set yet, so you just keep trying for them and it just falls a little bit short every time. But it was a lot of these really amazing graphic illustrators like Marylou Faure and Laura Callahan and people like that.

Okay. So when you were working for that company, is that what led into you doing some of the bigger name brand stuff or what was that path?

So when did I start freelancing? I think I started picking up freelance work around 2018. And the first gig I got which was a little bit of friend nepotism I guess. I had a friend who's a freelance journalist and she had done some work with Cosmopolitan Magazine and she basically had a friend there and was like, give my friend who's an illustrator a job. Oh that's cool. It was really nice of her. And they were do those sex position columns that are "10 sex positions to send you to the hospital." Absolutely ridiculous. But they reached out to me and they were like, We want to keep doing the same thing and we want to illustrate the positions, but we want them to be a lot more diverse and have a whole representation of body types and things like that and different sexualities and things. And I was like, Okay, fuck yeah.

That's awesome. So that was my first big freelance gig. And after that I just would pick things up as and when I could. I was working three days a week at the agency, so I had a little extra time. And then in 2020 actually, which is wild to think about cuz it was right in the thick of the pandemic. And I was like, Is this the worst decision I'm ever going to make in my life? . I just got to a point where I could not balance doing both anymore. Cause I had so much freelance stuff going on, which was obviously really nice. So yeah, I quit. I went freelance full time. My boss was great. He was, get to the end of the year. If you wanna come back, you can come back. Gave me a really nice safety net to land on.

Okay. So now you're at this point where you're exploring fine art and you're getting comfortable with calling yourself an artist

Just about

. So what kind of themes are you finding yourself interested in exploring as an artist now?

Obviously all of my work is very queer and I feel like that is what people most often want to talk to me about. Yeah. But yeah, I feel like anything I made would be . You know what I mean? Even if I was like, I'm gonna do fantasy comic strips, they would still be super queer. Cause that's just the world around me , and that's my people. But one of the big themes that I'm super interested in at the moment is domestic labor and the overlap between domestic labor and artifice and industry . I'm like, how can I summarize this without going off on a huge tangent for an hour? , I think it's really interesting that we have this whole kind of mid century period that we think about as this relic of the past where you have all this new technology being developed and it's all described as being able to liberate women from the burden of domestic labor.

You've got washing machines and Jell-O and things like that, but what they're really doing is they're just raising the bar. So it's like this will stop you from having to do all this housework, but what they're doing is then they're selling you this idea of what a clean house should be or what a good mother should be. So you have Jell-O being like, We have this amazing convenience food. Are you tired of standing over the stove and cooking for hours? This will be so quick and easy, but they're advertising it with this incredible towering jello monstrosity with shrimp climbing up the sides and something that would take fucking hours to make. And it's all kind of under this veneer of artifice, these ads that you look at from the fifties of happy housewives and things like that. And I think we're all familiar with those images and some of them are so explicitly misogynist that they're self satirizing.

So we can look at them and it's easy to try and create distance and be like, Oh my God, can you believe we used to be like that? But I think that that pattern has repeated itself with every generation because if you look at the eighties, you have women overwhelmingly entering the workforce more than ever before. And there's this idea of this kind of bombshell in a power suit who can have it all. But under the surface of that women were doing just as much domestic labor as before, doing both things. And then you have beauty standards and diet culture skyrocketing. So it's this burden of labor has actually been increasing. And then you come to now, and there's this thing that I've seen people calling the fourth shift of you're doing, the women are still statistically doing the majority of the housework still generally in the workforce there are still all these kind of beauty standards to a adhere too.

But then on top of that, there's the burden of emotional labor of being a therapist and a mother to a partner. And I just think you look at that now and I think about all these kind of family influences and you have these very fucking hardworking women who are filming themselves, making all these beautiful lunches for their children and their husbands and neatly stacking name brand products in these little boxes that you can buy on their Amazon storefront. And it's a full-time job on top of a full-time job. And it's seen as really glamorous and aspirational. And I'm just, the way that those all connect to each other and the way that pattern keeps repeating itself, but we still try to distance ourselves from it is really interesting to me. So that's what the things I wanna make are about.

That was a good explanation.

I'm sorry if that was very long.

No, I'm telling you it was good. I love, So I'm often talking about how to me, art at his height is something that takes the intangible thing and makes it tangible so that we can wrestle with it. Art fuels so many social changes and societal shifts are so often fueled by art, whether it's songs, paintings, poems, whatever it is . And so for me, inherent in a lot of the work that I do, it's trying to grab onto something about oppression or racism or sexism or something and humanize the people who are feeling it and communicate that experience to the people who are not feeling it.

Yes, exactly.

And so it's really cool and interesting to hear all of the insight that you just gave into the themes that you wanna explore . So for you exploring those themes are, I mean, you work specifically visually. So is it about capturing a moment that expresses that? How do you break that down?

So I have one of them nearly finished and what that looks like for me right now, and this might change completely I'm sure as I keep going on this process, that a lot of new things will happen. But basically I've been creating these kind of images of women in domestic settings, that are vary anachronistic. So I love anachronisms, I have tons of that in my work. I think just little moments from different points in time. So you maybe can't age something. So the one that I have right now has this woman who looks very kind of a 1950s housewife kind of thing. And she's on this old fashioned telephone, but there's, I've forgotten the name, the person who designs mugs that say things like blessed and you know what I mean? They've got the spidery black writing on them.

I know what you're talking about. But I don't know the person.

Target core kind of thing. So she's got one of those in front of her, which says I think perseverance or something on it. And then she's got a little instant part above her head and all of these, and then this big jello in the front, which has beta shrimp. So I'm just trying to create images where you can't really date them. You might look at it at the first glance and be like, Is this the fifties? But then you're like, No, she has a cell phone and I wanna do that. By all of the images and symbolism around these women, do you represent a certain kind of domestic labor , whether that's a burden of cooking or childcare or whatever it is. And I wanna nod to the expectations that we put on women and the ways that we historically dealt with them.

So the one I just did, I found ads for this actual prescription medication that they were dulling out to. So I was called Nervine to Stop You being Nevy. And all the ads for it are, I can't remember what they say, but they're all kind of, now you can enjoy housework again. They're very dystopian. Almost . Yeah, exactly. Being medicated to manage the burden of labor that's placed upon you. So that's kind of what that's looking like. Okay. And I want to use a lot of, because I am really interested in artifice and advertising kind of what that does, I wanna represent that visually with really gaudy bright colors and a lot of artificial materials, a lot of plasticy fabrics and bright neon colors and things like that.

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Well this is great cause I wanted to ask you about the media that you work in. So when you're approaching something like this, you write a brief,

I write a brief

, and then what's next? What's your process?

I'm very type A, as you've probably gathered by now. So I sketch everything out and plan everything out. This is, I've done other fabric pieces in a similar way before, and it's almost like a kind of paint by numbers where I will generally plan the colors I want, go down to creative, or I have a big suitcase full of scrap fabric and kind of find decent color matches. So I have a limited palette and then create essentially stencil pattern pieces that I can transfer on and essentially quilting. Okay. Yeah. , but very planned.

So your illustration stuff, , is that digital or traditional?

It's all digital. Yeah. And I love digital illustration. Yeah. I'm not trying to get away from it, but I think something I really enjoy about it is how well it can translate to other mediums. Whenever I do murals, , I create digital illustrations and then project and paint them so they're super clean and I know exactly what they're gonna look like.

Yeah. Okay. But for this particular project, it's textiles, . So then you sketch it out and it's kind of like quilting. Are you putting them on canvases or how do envision it being done?

So it's like, I'll print out the pan pieces, cut them out, trace them onto fabric, cut that out, and then basically kind of base them all together on batting fabric. And my sewing machine is really doing some hard work. so many people who have seen the things I've been making are, Are you doing this by hand? I'm like, Absolutely the fuck not, . That's a lot of sewing. So

What kind of sizes is there are we looking at for these pieces?

The one that I'm working on right now is about about to show you when I'm talking into a microphone, it's about 24 x 36. So it's pretty big. I would love to make some really huge pieces, but I'm really concentrating right now on things like the beating and the embroidery I really wanna get good at. And obviously it's easier to do that in smaller areas.

So for my own art, I'm so invested in the relationship between words and images to communicate a message. So it's really interesting to me to hear you talk about such big themes and expressing them through these different types of media is... when a piece is finished , do you have a desired response or effect that you want it to have on the people who are viewing it? Do you write something to accompany it or how do you envision it?

Yeah, definitely very into writing things to a company, things and hoping that people read them. When I go and look art myself, I love that shit. I love a really detailed description. I wanna know the context and I wanna know about the artist, and I wanna get a fuller picture of what they really meant by that. And that's something that I think, again, I was pretty old when I realized that existed and was out there and I could appreciate art from a more academic perspective almost rather than just purely visual. So that's something I like to do in terms of how people receive it. That is what I am trying to let go of, right? Because so much illustration and so much of the work that I have done has been very user friendly. And I think, I was actually chatting to my partner about this the other day cuz they were like, This is such a big theme, how do you put that across? And I kind of said, I don't know that I need to. Providing something for someone to read so they can know where I was coming from. That's I think, really worthwhile and really enjoyable for me. But ultimately, if someone looks at it, they can take whatever they want to take from it. I'm just kind of letting go of that and hoping people get something out of it.

I love that cuz so much talking with all these different artists in this podcast, there's so much of figuring out what, for each person is the balance between the cathartic nature of our art, the thing out that's important to us and what impact we want it to have, if any, . Cause some people wanna communicate a message, some people it varies. It varies quite a bit. And I think it's a cool thing to find where you lie in that stuff.

Yeah, it's tricky and it changes a lot. I think also something I really love about more traditional crafts and things like that is that there's such an element of love and labor and handy work that goes into them that I think a lot of people can find them just really visually beautiful and there's something kind of wonderful about them. And you don't necessarily have to have full context or a full kind of idea of how you feel about a piece of work to just be like, That's amazing. Yeah. So a piece, very, probably my favorite piece of art by Liza Lou that I'm actually, is it called The Kitchen? I'm saying it's called The Kitchen and I'm double checking myself. But it's from 1991 and it's a full scale, entirely beaded kitchen. I mean, you can't actually walk into it, but hypothetically you could walk into it, it's like to scale and it's entirely encrusted with beads and it's absolutely fucking amazing. And even if you had no idea what she was talking about in this piece, you would just be just the sheer amount of work in that. It's very cool because the piece is about labor as the process and labor as the outcome because it's this domestic setting of a kitchen and it's a very kind of sixties looking kitchen with cherry pie in the oven and things like that. But it's also the fact it took her five years. That is the statement in and of itself. It's about giving labor dignity, which I think is fucking cool.

Giving labor dignity. So I like to ask everybody what it's like for you when you experience fear as an artist , and what you do to work through that fear.

I think my biggest fear is probably not reaching my own potential. I have ADHD , and I'm sure a lot of people with ADHD would absolutely relate to this, that I can be my own worst enemy. I have missed opportunities before because of procrastination. There's so many things that I want to do. And if I'm not careful, I can get so carried away with concepts and ideas that I never find time to actually execute anything. And I am very busy, which is great and I'm very grateful for that. But obviously I have to find time around that. And so the balance for me is when my work quietens down and I have time, am I burn out? Am I gonna use that just to relax and recharge a little bit? Or do I throw myself into making something? And obviously I always wanna throw myself into making something, but I have to take care of myself and all that kind of thing. So yeah, I think the thing that really scares me is, will I just waste time? Will I get to a point where I'm like, I don't conceivably have all the time to make everything I wanna make.

Well, what's your process for moving through that fear when you feel it?

I think it's, for me, it's just how do I phrase it? I mean, I have therapy every week. I spend a lot of time processing how I'm feeling and working through it. And it's all basically about giving myself more grace and just telling myself it's okay to relax and take some time and you'll get to it. Because sometimes that kind of internal panic of like, Oh my God, I'm being so called lazy, or I'm not doing what I should be doing. And that makes it 10 times harder to start. So just letting go and being like, Okay, you know what? I've been working really hard and I'm tired and I don't feel creative right now. And that's okay because I will feel creative and productive at a future point is the best way for me to get through it, I think. Yeah,

That's good. Nice. All right, well, so what do you have on Horizon? What's coming up?

Oh so many things. Well I did just get finished with a big thing, which was my partner runs a comedy show every month and they got this grant from Eventbrite to throw a two day comedy festival and I did all the decor for it. So that was really, really fun. And that was a huge job. So just got off the back of that. And then I'm doing Untitled at the Denver Art Museum in January, so we're working on that right now, which is exciting cuz there's some stuff I've been wanting to do that's gonna tie in really nicely with it. I just signed off on another gig with Apple, which is fun. What else am I doing? I know there's other things and I'm forgetting them. Oh, I might have a personal show in February. Not a hundred percent yet. I'm waiting to hear back on a grant I applied for. I'm trying to not get my hopes up.

I hear you. We're crossing our fingers for you.

Even if I don't, I still did work I really wanted to do to apply for it. So that's all good. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So

Where can people check out and follow your stuff?

Mostly Instagram. Okay. I'm about to try really hard this winter to have a fucking TikTok cuz it feels like obligatory at this point, which is a little depressing, but I'm sure I'll get into it eventually. .

So on Instagram...

Instagram, which is Sofie burkin illustration. Okay. Sofie with an F.

All right. And then the last question I ask is what's inspiring you these days? What are you watching when you listening to, what, what's inspiring you creatively?

I am an absolute podcast fanatic. Yeah. I listen to You're Wrong About a lot and Maintenance Phase, a lot. And they both talk a lot about the kinds of things I was just talking about and a lot about diet culture and things like that. So I find that really, really interesting. And obviously it's October, so I'm just consuming an insane amount of horror right now. cuz I love it. So that too. Queer horror. Feminist horror. Love that shit.

Hey, well Sofie, I appreciate you taking time to talk to me.

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you.

Yeah, it was a cool conversation. , this was your first time talking to a microphone

I know, it's very big, thank you,

.

That's a stupid thing to say.

. Special thank you to today's guest, Sofie Birkin. Thank you to our listeners, please be sure to subscribe to How Art is Born, wherever you get your podcast, for more episodes. And if you can leave a review, it really helps us out. Check out MCA Denver on YouTube and subscribe there too for behind the scenes clips from today's episode. Don't forget to visit MCA Denver's current exhibition, The Dirty South on view now.