Victoria, its so nice to be speaking with you today. As you know, I’m a big fan of your work. It’s so uniquely yours- I’m wondering how you would describe your style in your own words.

Adult teen angst™ Jk Jk.

I’d say my style is that of a creative problem solver, or tinkerer. For better or worse, it's all over the place. I have this natural curiosity to figure out how things work, a lot of emotional baggage, and a pretty active imagination. Witchoria is the manifestation of that trifecta.

Well said, I certainly see that thread running through your work. Let’s talk a little bit about your 'internet journey' with art. I get the sense we came of age in the same era of the early internet- our age group was kind of the last generation to remember a time before hyper-connectivity. Can you trace for us the path you took building an audience online, from the dial up days to 2020?

Oh god all the way back to the dial up era was many many many many moons ago. Ew, we’re old now. I’ll try to not make this a 10 page essay.

Let’s see… I opened Photoshop for the first time when I was in high school. All my friends were in bands and I am *not* musically gifted in any way, shape, or form. So the only way I could participate was to shoot their promo pics and make really shitty artwork for their myspace pages.

Then I go to college with no intention of going the creative route, then somehow stumble into graphic design and it just clicks. We had a really wild group in the program I was in, so I actually made a lot more sculptures and experimental videos/photography than I did, well… graphic design work. They really embraced letting us run with any grey areas we could find in our assignments. And I think the main thing I got from college was that spirit of experimentation and the ability to break rules without breaking rules, if that makes any sense?

Then I get a real job and let me tell you, nobody prepared me for how fucking uncreative creative work is in the real world. So a few months in I start to feel that itch again, and I have nowhere to exert it because I’m out of the safe haven of academia.

So I just started making things for myself after work, dumping all the ideas I have trapped in my head into photo manipulations. And there was this magical new app called Instagram that gave me a place to put it. I just kept putting things out there that I made, mostly just for my friends because I was proud of it, but then someone bigger looked back. They shared my work, and it kind of exploded. I never intended to build an audience. And I’ll be honest now that I have one I think it has really fucked up my ability to be as openly creative as I used to be. It’s like I have art dysmorphia or something now. Idk. But I’m thankful for all of the opportunities and people that it brought into my life. And I’m working through my weird IG hermit bullshit as we speak.

That experience you’ve had on your creative path resonates deeply with me. Firstly, that creativity is such a collaborative process- ideas bump and collide with others and create new forms of expression. The internet has facilitated those connections, made them more frequent and more accessible to people. And like you say, that comes with downsides too. Can you tell me what you think the positive aspects of social media are, and then some of the pitfalls to be avoided?

THE GOOD:

Having people interact with my work at a larger level definitely challenged me to be a better designer. If you make a mistake someone is gonna call you out on it, which sounds shitty, but it actually drove my manipulation techniques to the next level.

Not only did I get to meet amazing people (like you), sometimes I get to travel the goddamn world with them to shoot photos. For someone who didn’t travel internationally until I was in my late 20’s, that is still so fucking wild to me.

THE BAD:

We’re not content machines. Trying to keep up with that pace causes burn out and doesn’t allow enough time to foster new ideas.

Platforms like IG and Tumblr and all that shit seem to bucket people based on a particular aesthetic, and I feel like that traps people into only making things that is ‘on brand’ for them. Like, for me, I feel uncomfortable posting something unless it’s overtly surreal or heavily manipulated because that’s what people want to see.

THE UGLY:

The dysmorphia. I haven’t really been able to articulate this in words before but I’ll try. You work really hard on something and you post it, but it doesn’t get the engagement your other work does, so you start to feel like maybe you’ve made a mistake. And it starts to alter how you perceive your own work. And then you feel like nothing is ever good enough. So you just stop making work.

Or you get the trolls. And I’m not talking just random assholes on the Internet, I can deal with that shit. It’s the ones that are my peers that really get to me. People I actually respected until they came after me and try to tear me down for the things I make. The ego of some of these people is unfathomable. There is this strange possessiveness and aggression out there about technique that I’ll never understand. Like… C’mon… nobody can own shooting with gels, or color grading, or light painting, or making shit glow, or using typography. That might be part of why I try to do tutorials on everything I make because I think that shit is so stupid.

And there’s a lotta Photoshop haters out there, especially in photography culture. But a lot of these assholes that are mad at Photoshop need to check their fucking privilege. Not everyone can bankroll galavanting around the world with thousands of dollars of photo equipment. Sometimes you just have your laptop and the interweb and you wanna get weird. And I think that’s A-okay.

I launched this project as kind of a celebration of collaboration and community. How have those two concepts influenced your work and your life in general?

The creative process (at least for me) is so… in my own head. I mean let’s be real, I pretty much use Instagram as a weird diary where I dump my mental anguish on strangers. 🔥¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 🔥 But I guess we’re all having a hard time because why else would so many people connect with the work?

Anyways, to include another in your process, to allow someone access to that part of your mind, to have someone else challenge your preconceived notions about how you might create something…it's so intense and intimate and kind of fucking scary but you always come out on the other side a better artist.

And the way I’ve found nearly every opportunity to collaborate has been through an internet community, making connections through these things we put into the world. There is a vulnerability we allow ourselves to have online that I’m not sure translates fully to the real world. And it’s through that vulnerability that I’ve found my people. So I feel like there will always be a digital foundation in my perception of community.

And I don’t wanna end this on a super dark note, but I’m gonna be real. Social media as it exists now promotes a culture of lurking on all of your relationships. Where watching people from a distance mistakenly feels like you’re still in their lives. The algorithm is designed to keep you scrolling instead of truly participating. And you don’t realize how much you’ve missed out on until it’s too late.

So I’ve pulled back more. I’ve tried to spend more time off the feed and in the present. And I’ve been punished for it. I think I’ve lost nearly 15k followers in the past 6 months. Because I’m not a content machine. Because I’m not doom scrolling for hours each day. And that’s fine. But it’s just shown me how fucked up these systems are.