smagik

In the summer of 2023, I was as excited creatively as I have ever been. During what turned out to be a five month long hiatus from the film industry, due to the SAG/ WGA strikes, I participated in a workshop with a graphic designer and branding specialist on how to use AI in personal branding. I wanted to take over twenty years of working in a costume department, where I helped create characters and tell stories through clothing, and to pivot towards helping people create a character, or brand, of their own and to tell that story with image, font, and color. It was REALLY fun.

But now, only two years later, everything feels different. The middle section of the Rio Grande, which runs through Albuquerque, ran dry for the first time in memory over two months ago, the film industry, still my main hustle, is falling off a cliff due to the aforementioned strikes and AI, article after article tells me how it takes 16 ounces of water to create a single AI image, data centers are ruining communities and draining their resources, and fascism fueled by big tech is coming for all of us in ways we couldn’t have imagined in 2023. This is NOT really fun.

Two years ago feels like two hundred. 2025 feels like one hundred already.

Not fun, but here we are. So, how to respond? I am leaning into creativity and the idea that we are innately creative beings with unique ways of seeing and interpreting the world and this is something that can never actually be taken from us (which terrifies fascists because they can’t control it). What was it I loved about creating images with AI and using those to tell people’s stories? It was the same sense of not knowing exactly where I was being led that I have when I hold a paintbrush or start writing a blog post. I have an idea and then I see where it leads me… As I let go of this new medium that had me so excited and turn back towards things I have always loved (polaroid cameras, collage, buying entire albums rather than renting, mythology, the study of Astrology that helps me put current events into historical perspective, nature which is literally perfect, animals, my garden, and whatever I can do right here in my city and my neighborhood, for my neighbors) I remember the power I do have. I don’t need some AI program for this, I have my own.

It was with this intention that I revamped my website www.smagikstudio.com this summer. And that was fun! Please check it out! It feels way more aligned with where we find ourselves now; fighting fascism with all of messy, human creativity we can muster.