Hello. Welcome! Thank you for being here…
I thought to kick things off by taking a moment (or two, or three) to introduce myself... I’m Olivia — a photographer, content creator, storyteller, and creative producer, currently based in Los Angeles. I grew up in New York, and I was born in Toronto to a British fashion designer Mom, and a Caribbean chef Dad.
My first ten years in NYC were spent in the West Village, near Washington Square Park (aka the park in Larry Clark & Harmony Korine’s 1995 film ‘Kids’) — which was, in my life as it was in the movie, a whole character in and of itself. Kinda like how the city of New York was basically the 5th girlfriend on Sex and the City (or LA being the 5th girlfriend on, well, Girlfriends).
Later, we moved to Williamsburg and lived off the L train on the Graham Ave stop. When I moved out on my own at 18, the apartment (named after the wifi inherited from the former tenant, ‘Babetown’) was also in Brooklyn, between Bushwick and Bed-Stuy.
Mom moved us to New York so she could take her shot parlaying her successful but smaller-fish fashion label (self-titled) into a bigger-pond opportunity. And that she did… when I was 6, the “extraordinary ability” visa she applied for came through with green cards for the both of us, she secured a job at Donna Karan’s DKNY and moved us into our first NY apartment on Waverly Place. It was actually haunted by Lauren Hutton’s ex-lover; a story my Mom covers in her own Substack! (read it here).
It doesn’t take much to fascinate me because I’ll find the story in any and everything, I tend to collect interesting people as I go, and I’m a content hoarder.
As much as I resist the term, I suppose I’m what one would call a slashie. I've had several careers in my short thirty-something life; all different but related...
events programmer, director of marketing and membership, I’ve helped open a boutique co-working space in Toronto, and two member clubs in California, I did a stint as a tour manager for a recording artist, I’ve ghost-curated an influencer’s IG account, I’ve been a photographer, docent, barista, server. Many hats have been worn. Many tales to tell.
Of those many hats, an interview series called ‘Freshmen Friday’ was born back in my art-school days living in Brooklyn — inspired by what felt like a constantly revolving door of emerging artists’ and their creative concepts, kooky ideas, or just generally magical personalities. Mostly snapshot glimpses on Polaroids, some longer-form videos.
It was everything I wanted to do; being a curious student of life, purposeful and intentional socializing with people in my community, sharing those stories and perspectives that I hadn’t necessarily heard or seen elsewhere before, and getting to document it all visually. Having studied Photography in college (at the School of Visual Arts, 2009-2013) this became just the post-graduate project that I needed, and a never-ending source of material to keep me constantly motivated and shooting.
Having interviewed over 100 people for this project, across a few major cities, over a couple of years time, I myself had become a pretty good candidate for any business looking to have their finger on the pulse, and tap into these various creative communities in the cities that I was featuring on the blog.
So by 2018, I guess a consistent paycheck looked cute enough to me to put Freshmen on the back burner, in order to take a job at the company, meet some more great creatives, and make some incredible things happen, this time on a global platform. And girrrrrrrl,
I put my MF thing down, flipped it, and reversed it. OK?! Fast forward 5 years - 3 roles, 2 countries, and a pandemic - to May of this year (2023) when I lost my job. After having ignored a creative & entrepreneurial calling for long enough, I can say in hindsight that was truly just the push I needed. So here we are! (in many ways, back at the start 🙃)
Right now, I'm smack in the middle of trying to figure out what's next, and how to get there. With this newsletter (poor thing), I’m planning to pour into it nearly everything that I work on, think about, or create, with the hope it becomes the vehicle that I’ve been looking for. The medium to the message, so to speak. What’s the message you ask? That’s forever forming, I guess you’ll just have to stay tuned so we can find out together!
As I’ve grown older and have experienced more, I’ve distanced myself from my former blog’s concept - a Freshmen perspective, shrugging it off as a passion project in and of my frivolous youth. Yet, something switched, back in May. A desire to revisit the series, but this time expanding it so its coverage includes more experiences than that simply of the youthful & the emergent. I want to carry that idea through, so that it grows with my age, into something much more of an exploration of the imposter syndrome I and so many creatives I speak to carry around (sprinkled with some empowerment, of course).
As I talk about on my About page — this newsletter will be part research of that dynamic (somewhere between not good enough, and baddest bitch alive mentality), part breathing / living resume, and part picking up where I left off. I’ll once again feature creatives, conduct studio visits with artists, and I’ll even revisit past profiles — but this time, in my grown ass age, it’s more to talk about how, no matter where we’re at in our lives, we all have to push through our imposter syndromes to make shit happen. So thank you so much for rocking with me! Hopefully, you can gain inspiration here. 🙂
love the mentioning of "imposter syndrome sprinkled with empowerment", it's such a familiar cringe impression when looking at much of social media