We’re guessing the world would look a whole lot different if bad ass women like Penelope Gazin had been well-represented inĀ animation and comics from the start. But Gazin has her hand in so many projects, it’s almost as if she’s single-handedly trying to make up for lost time. Her paintings, drawings, and animations have a unique staying power, and will almost certainly end up plastered all over the walls of your skull if you spend some time with them. Gazin’s sassy,Ā hilarious, and sometimes twisted images of alien babes and monster princesses don’t depart amicably.
You probably knowĀ Penelope Gazin from her Etsy store Penelope Meatloaf,Ā a platform that keeps her busy, and not to mention gets her name out there, by demanding massive numbers ofĀ enamel pins, patches, and zines bearing her creatures and slogans like “Eat it or Beat it.” Or perhaps you’re familiar with her work as one of her 9,000 or so Instagram followers, or even as a reader of publications likeĀ Vice, where you’ll find a number of Penelope’s illustrations.
But actually it’s animation that’s consumed most of Penelope’s waking hours in the past few years. Before finding her “dream job” working as an animator forĀ Fox ADHD,Ā the mega-network’s answer toĀ Adult Swim, you could find Gazin whittling away the surface ofĀ an animation tablet forĀ Robot Chicken.
Penelope loved her job at Fox but recently decided to walk away from it all. “There was a certain point where I felt like I had three full-time jobs, because animation jobs are notoriously long hours,” she explained. Ā “So I was working full time, then doing Etsy, and doing freelance illustrations for Vice Magazine, and then I was like, I donāt need to be doing this to myself right now.”
Instead, Gazin decided it was time to put more effort into her work as an independent artist. In April, she packed up her things and moved back to the East Coast where she’s from.
“I mean, I like LA, itās got a lot of great things, but I definitely like New York a lot better,” she explained. “Itās got a very different vibe that I feel like I fit in with.Ā I just started meeting people, but I feel like Iām more involved in the artist community here than I ever was in LA.”
Wait,Ā wasn’t LA supposed to be the new place to be for artists? “I wonder if theyāll be back?” Gazin mused. “Like, in two years I bet there will be a big reverse migration.”
But for now, we found Gazin holding it down at her apartment in Williamsburg, a place we were almost sure all the artists had left. But actually, Gazin’s fashioned her apartment into a small studio space. So there’s at least one artist here and that just means she’s smashing trends in yet another way.
Now that she’s fully devoted to her own work– though still doing freelancing gigs here and there, including a promo-animation forĀ Straight Outta Compton–Ā there’s no better time for an art show.Ā And on that note, no better name for a solo show than “Penelope Gazin’s Solo Show,” which opens Friday September 4th at Superchief Gallery in Greenpoint.
Penelope’s raw-power attitude comes through loud and clear in her work. Her subjects, mostly women (or some variation thereof) seem totally fine with secreting ooze-from-the black-lagoon out of every orifice of their body, and free from embarrassment about sporting third, fourth, and fifth eyes or pimples that have pustulated into full-on teratomas. In fact they’re smiling and maintaing excellent grooming in the process.
It’s not surprising then to hear Penelope say she’s inspired by “cheesy horror movies,” but a little shocking to hear real horror actually freaks her out. “I love horror, but I’m a baby,” she explained. “I can’t watch like Japanese horror films, sometimes they’ll make me cry. But I can handle B-horror movies, that stuff’s great.”
And that eye toward pulpy, B-movie aesthetic is exactly what makes Penelope’s images less icky-gross and more campy-cool.
“When I do use reference photos, I almost exclusively use photos from amateur erotica from the ā60s and earlier, which is why the women tend to have lots of hair,” she explained. “I often scour Tumblr for images and itās usually a look in a womanās eye that draws me in.”
But it’s not just the bouffants and beehives that Penelope’s lifted from erotica, her images can be prettyĀ steamy too. Bondage, masturbation, even the bawdiest of them all– old-fashioned romance– are all fair game.Ā “I’m most fascinated by my own sexuality,” Penelope explained of her muses.
Though unless you’re a priest, there’s no way you’d consider Penelope’s workĀ pornographic. There’s real emotion here: power, lust, love, and murderous rage.Ā “One of the reasons I like to do art is because Iām not great at talking about my feelings, and so I use art to express emotion,” Penelope explained.
For all the sexual freedom and freewheeling satire of her work, Gazin said it was only very recently thatĀ she finally became “uninhibited” in her creative process.
“When I was in high school it was like, āOK, you can be a little weird, but donāt do exactly what you want because youāre going to freak people out,'” she recalled, unraveling a memory of an art teacher stomping on one of her pieces. “My sense of humor is kind of dark sometimes. I would sort of censor myself.”
But an epiphany changed her practice altogether. “ThereĀ was a certain point, maybe two years ago, when I was like: Itās my job to be myself,” she said. “People have responded so well, the more Iāve opened up my brain and shared it.”
However ifĀ there’s one thing Penelope might describe asĀ off-limits, it’s men. With a few exceptions, her drawings and paintings are notably without dudes, a completely conscious decision. “Yeah, I find drawing men really boring. I rarely do it,” she explained. “Men’s bodies too.”
Despite having moved away from working for other people, Penelope still has a funny habit of calling her work “illustration,” even though most of the stuff hanging in her room aren’tĀ the results of a commission. “Because theyāre on paper and theyāre smaller, I tend to think of them as illustrations,” she explained.
This mental entanglementĀ with illustration might have something to do with the fact that Penelope’s work is imbued with a sense of humor lost on many Serious Painters. Her pieces have wayĀ more in common with the blood-n-guts-n-vomit world of animation and punk art’s unique blend of criticism and nihilism than with what you’ll run into at traditional white-walled galleries.
Penelope’s obsession with kitsch and low-brow art conceals the fact that she’s actually spent some serious time with Serious Art and even toyed with the idea of not doing art at all. “I always said, āIām not going to be an artist,’ mainly because I saw what my momās life was like. She just worked in her studio and I always thought I needed more structure than that,” she recalled. “So itās funny how I ended up like this.”
In fact, Gazin comes from a long line of creatives. Her mother’s a professional figurative painter, her grandfather has portraits hanging in the Smithsonian, her grandmother was an architect, and her brother, Nick Gazin, is a writer for Vice and doesĀ illustrationĀ work too.Ā “Actually everyoneās a professional writer or a professional artist in my family,” she concluded.
“All I used to do were these large oil paintings,” Gazin recalled. “Youāre supposed to get more patience as an artist as you grow older, but I think Iām slowly getting less and less patient.Ā I just need that immediate validation, that art-high within one sitting.” In fact, Gazin said that’s why her paintings are so small, so that she can complete them within a single work session.
AsĀ much as Gazin’s gone against the grain of her family in stylistic respects, her family life’s had an influence on her work to some extent. There’s an undeniable playfulness and youthful element in Gazin’s work, and it’s easy to imagine angsty teensĀ flipping out over the stuff. Ā “I had a pretty whimsical childhood in some ways, and I guess I have a lot of funny childhood stories,” she agreed. “I think I recognize certain ridiculous aspects of my childhood and use them.”
But while the comic-book quality of her work can make it feel sort of adolescent,Ā Penelope takes that mischievousness and blows it up into something far from naive. In many ways, her work embraces controversy while flirting with the socio-political.
When Penelope posted her “Coolumbine” piece on Instagram she recalled getting some pretty pissed-off responses.Ā “But I get so excited when someone insults me on my Instagram, it means you’re doing something right,” she said. “Sometimes I feel like I’m not getting enough, it feels weird when I go too long without someone trying to knock me down.”
This disregard for her detractors and tendency to feed off negative vibes, is partially what Penelope feels contributed toĀ her doing well in animation.Ā “I personally felt very comfortable in animation, I felt like I flourished,” she said. “At Fox I was like, āIām gonna do whatever I want, and if you donāt like that, you can fire me,’ but they responded well to it.”
Penelope says she learned this way of dealing with a male-dominated industry from growing up with brothers but also from women she admires.Ā “One of the women at Fox, she had a little bit of a bad rap,Ā and so many men were afraid of her, which I thought was great. People were like, āOh, sheās a bitch,'” she recalled. “But Iād rather be a bitch any day than be meek. I admire bitches. I admire women who men refer to as ābitchesā because it means that theyāre doing something right, theyāre being bold, and not being what anyone wants them to be.”
Compromise is not something Gazin considers often.Ā “I try to make art as if I were living in a cave,” she explained. “If no one ever saw my art, it would still look very similar. And whenever I donāt do that, I always end up messing up a painting or giving up on a painting.”
But there are some instances where she’s been forced to censor her work, at least by invokingĀ digital black barsĀ or confusing blur effects.Ā Gazin’s been a loyal seller on Etsy for years, but said some of her images led the apparently Puritan corporation to closeĀ her shop several times.
“TheyĀ shut myĀ shop down for three days because I was selling those Coolumbine pins,” she explained. “And I had one figure painting which was probably the least pornographic art piece Iāve ever made in my whole life and there was like a hint of pubic hair and, again, they shut down my shop.”
Penelope doesn’t exactly live to shock, but she does find censorship like this unworkable. After Etsy issued a crackdown on witchy shopsĀ (following in the footsteps of Ebay),Ā Penelope teamed up with her business-minded friendĀ Kate Dwyer (who also plays in a band calledĀ Feeling Feelings) to found an alternative to the original crafty, sell-your-own wares site. Witchsy— as in Etsy for Witches– is due to launch soon.
“Itās going to be a lot like Etsy, but no censorship,” Penelope explained. “You canāt sell bongs anymore, anything drug paraphernalia related [on Etsy]. You have to put black bars over any nudity. And thatās fine, I respect their right to run their company any way they want, but it kind of started out as an artist thing and now theyāre appealing to the general public and so it also has to be friendly for grandmas in Virginia who want to buy knit arm cozies or something.”
And while Witchsy seems like it’s lightyears away from Penelope’s career path as an animator and an artist, she’s pretty OK with that. “Having an Adult SwimĀ show of my own was definitely my ultimate goal when I was in animation school. I still have an idea for a show I want to pitch, but that’s just one thing on my long bucket list of things,” she explained.Ā “I sort of just wanna do and try everything.”