STAYING CREATIVE WITH LUCI PINA

This week we catch up with SS21 collaborator Luci Pina who's illustrations are featured on our Twin Peaks Longsleeve and Sheriffs Department Hoodie. Luci's impressive portfolio consists of research based work deeply rooted in her own interests and beliefs. 

"Driven by a need to engage with and celebrate black culture, her work often taps into the political, and notes surrounding heritage with a responsive, layered and intuitive approach to drawing and media; which sometimes extends to the personal and the sentimental."

Tell us about you - How did you get into image making?

I've done art throughout school and university so the transition to the things I do now have sort of happened through education and exploring different avenues. I did an illustration degree which really got me making images in the way I do now.

What are your favourite themes/points of exploration?

I'm really interested in research based practice and responding to different aspects of art and culture be that music, film or text so I tend to start projects from a need to learn and engage with whatever subject it is I'm looking at. This started in my final year project at uni where I looked at hip-hop culture and history as my starting point and that led to a really fun and extensive exploration of different albums from the 90s - early 2000s and acted as a baseline for the way I approach all of my projects now. It always starts with research and engaging with the subject then drawing lots and picking out elements from reference points. That's probably still my favourite project to date, I had such a good time working on it and I think it really shows, brings back sweet memories of the last few months in the studio at uni.

Can you tell us about your contribution to our new collection? What were the inspirations behind it?

Ah - really loved working on the project for SCRT, it felt like the baseline of it was so in line with the way I work anyway that it was just about doing that research and drawing from reference points in relation to Twin Peaks, which I'd already seen and loved. It was just about picking out symbols, quotes and phrases that I felt embodied what the show is about. I guess the exciting thing about it as well, is the idea of seeing those ideas coming to fruition on a physical object which is lovely - nice to have that tactile aspect to the work and it's definitely inspired me to think a bit more about how my images can exist outside of a page or a zine.

Any new, out-of-comfort things you’ve been trying? How did they come about?

Yeah I've actually just finished doing a little animation piece in response to this amazing Leeds based poet's work. I saw him perform it a couple times and got the itch to make something and he was super down to let me do that. It was definitely a challenge, the whole animation process is so different to the way I'm used to make work - it requires a lot of patience (which I don't have a lot of ahah) but I'm super proud of it. 

What advice would you give for an upcoming creative in your field?

I think that generally when I think of young creatives I just wish there was less resistance and less preciousness around making/ making it, or always making work that is good and that gets recognised, especially in online spaces. I think people seem to care too much about instagram and end up making for the platform as opposed to using it as an archive and that can just really diminish the joy of making. So advice wise i'd say make for the sake of making, share it when you want to and play! And just generally embrace the idea of making ugly, messy and unfinished things because they end up being more interesting than something super polished you spent ages working on and didn't enjoy.

And a nice one I got from uni was to make the work you want to be commissioned for!

Favourite film / film that influenced you most?

Honestly, I don't watch that many but Babylon (1980) comes to mind and it's a sick film, really inspired my UK reggae project with it's intersections between race, music and culture. It's essentially everything I want my work to be, and visually it's beautiful! Such an amazing insight into the rise of reggae and dub sound systems in Britain.

To see more of Luci's work, follow her on instagram here.