Seattle-based artist and restorer Debra Broz talks about:
…living in Seattle, where she moved to from Los Angeles a year and a half prior to our call; how Seattle is full of rule-followers who are also anarchists/anti-capitalists; how she found her Seattle studio, where it was important to have decent heat, especially for her sculptures; her reasons for leaving L.A. for Seattle, and some of the lifestyle differences between the two cities, and how welcoming Seattle has been to her as a new artist; how various sites, specifically Colossal and the Jealous Curator, have been huge in growing her art & design-focused Instagram followers; her pacing and general approach towards her IG feed, where she’s made peace with the fact that she can only go as fast as she can go, nor does she want to try and gamify the system, and how, ultimately, IG is a “feel bad machine;” how Instagram has been punishing people who use it to have sales; the “enshitification” of apps (including IG and Tik Tok) and how it’s made our experiences on them so much worse; her sculptures, made from ceramic figurines, which were originally made for American middle-class homes; how the best places to find her sculptural elements are “out in the wild,” i.e. thrift stores, as well as friends giving her objects, which is her favorite way to acquire her materials; the “if we look for what we need, we’ll find it” serendipity that’s a driving force in Debra’s making process; and how the meme, “I didn’t realize being an artist was making the same thing 1000 times until you die,” is a sentiment very familiar to most artists.
BONUS Patreon footage of this episode includes: the history with Broz’s last name, pronounced “Bros” like “Rose,” which of course eventually arrives at “Bros before ‘Hos.” Her restoration business, the other side of her studio work, where she works with clients restoring their precious objects and keepsakes of all kinds, including one client who has his Picasso-edition ceramics restored; the breakdown of her income from artwork sales to restoration sales, which depends on the year but is often about the same; her attitude about work, which she loves to do, but not the hustling part when she’s looking for shows and clients, her compulsion towards making whether sculptures or restoration…
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