Wesley Knight 0:00
This is a Kun V studios original program. The content of this program does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 jazz and more the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education.

Speaker 1 0:16
Let's get scratching. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the vibrant world of graffiti Park radio, where creativity knows no bound, we'll tap in with artists, educators, our proud partners and community stakeholders who believe in empowering the next generation of visionaries beyond the hidden alleyways abandoned warehouses and local city transits, where artists are known to leave their mark, graffiti Park Foundation has redefined and re imagined the persona a street Museum,

Speaker 2 0:44
good morning or afternoon or evening, good, good drive, whatever, whatever you're at doing right now, we're back with another episode of graffiti Park radio our last of the year. Yay, yay. We're excited. So you got Dan and Dan and Miss Anika here your host, well, hello. Good to be with you all today. And today we're joined by another very special guest, Miss Alex. How

Speaker 3 1:11
are you? I'm doing great. My first podcast. So I'm a little bit nervous here.

Speaker 2 1:18
We're just sitting around the kidney beam, niba, amoeba, table thing. So we're okay. We're just hanging out. We're talking, um, so Alex, where are you from? So

Speaker 3 1:31
my name is Alexandra. I just turned 24 last month, and happy birthday. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And I'm originally from Bulgaria, a very beautiful country, and I moved in the States in May of 2022 and I've been living of the end of 2022 in Vegas now, so two years and a couple months in the states in total. Wow.

Speaker 2 1:58
Where did you before Vegas? Where were you at? So

Speaker 3 2:02
me and my husband first went to Massachusetts. Okay, yeah, we were there for a couple months to work on the Cape Cod. And I worked in hospitality, actually there, okay, yeah. And

Speaker 4 2:15
what was it like out in Massachusetts? How did you get there? First from Bulgaria. That

Speaker 3 2:21
was my very first going out of the country, and I went straight to the US. So it was, like a very big moment for me. I haven't even traveled with a plane before that. That was like super big change in my life. And the first moment I'll never forget when I landed in America, I was like, damn, this is so different. I mean, I can this feeling of like seeing another world and the whole culture, it was totally different. And Massachusetts is a very beautiful state, and my first day, I was actually sleeping with a bunch of Russian girls because we were in a thing, like a camp, basically, and we were working students for this hotel there. And it was just like a bump of emotions and like culture hit. It was really interesting.

Speaker 2 3:19
Would you say? Were you all kind of experiencing that together in different ways? Yeah.

Speaker 3 3:24
So basically, we were people from different countries, like Russia, Serbia, Montenegro, like all around the world, even from the Dominican Republic. So we were basically students from different parts of the world coming to the US, experiencing things like that for the first time, and encountering the world of the USA, yeah. And also like trying to speak English, which is not our mother language, yeah, but it was a really nice thing to do, because you get out of your comfort zone, and then you actually grow so much as a person this way. Yep,

Speaker 2 4:04
do you remember the first time you met someone from Boston? From

Speaker 3 4:08
Boston? Yes, probably in the hotel. Yeah, yeah, because there's a lot of people from New York and Boston that come to Cape Cod.

Unknown Speaker 4:16
I can imagine throwing that, throwing your English

Unknown Speaker 4:19
off exactly. I was a little

Speaker 1 4:21
bit confused. Yeah, I can imagine. But hospitality, I'm sure, helped you just deal with how we function here in the country. I mean, customer service language, of course, and then just how people function. How did you decide to come to Las Vegas with that? Was that part of your

Speaker 3 4:36
move? So me and my husband were thinking of like actually selling in the US, but we weren't sure if we wanted to stay in Massachusetts, because Massachusetts is beautiful, but I felt like it wasn't the place for me to grow as an artist, because this is the thing I want to do for a living. And we were thinking one night, and we're like, okay. Uh, east side. We went to New York. New York is crazy. It's very cool, but it's crazy and crazy expensive. So we're like, what else we can do? Where we can go? And my husband, his name is Antonio, he was like, You know what? I was 2019 in Las Vegas, because he went to work before me and the same program years before, and he was with friends in Vegas for like, 10 days, and he's like, you're gonna love Vegas. Vegas. Vegas is the place for us. We're like artistic people. We like entertainment. We like to be out. And over one night, we decided to move. We packed our four suitcases and everything. We didn't know anyone, and we basically did this decision. And we got the plane ticket without knowing where we gonna sleep, what we gonna do. We just did it. And basically, on the plane, we met with this girl online, which she was Bulgarian. She helped us find a place to stay okay for the first days, and we started from there, basically from the zero, yeah, that's awesome. That's awesome.

Speaker 4 6:09
So your, your art, was always the impetus that was like your, your your, how you find your place in the world, and how you wanted to to go out

Speaker 3 6:18
and experience it. I can say for sure, my identity is an artist, and has

Speaker 4 6:23
it been that way for you your entire life? For Yes, that's amazing. Yes,

Speaker 3 6:26
art has been in all the moments in my life with me and the hardest and the most beautiful. And since I can hold a brush, basically I do art. So it's a part of me, for sure. That's

Speaker 4 6:38
amazing. So how did you get started? What was your first medium? And can you tell us about how you got started into art?

Speaker 3 6:46
I can tell you my first memory with actually starting as an artist. I was in kindergarten, okay, and it was a very vivid memory of me, like sitting on the little chair there, and we had like a little class, and the teacher wanted us to make, like, some kind of fruit, basically. And she didn't say how or like, she didn't say do this or that. And I just remember putting paint on my fingers and just starting doing grapes. And from this moment, I was like, I actually love doing that, yeah. And since, since then, I've been doing art, and I love doing it. I love the feeling that it gives me the meditative process of it and everything around it. I love

Speaker 1 7:30
that we are in the process of trying to instill that in students in the Clark County School District here and even beyond. So that's great to hear that. That's where you started. How do you channel your art now? What are some things that you're into now? I'm

Speaker 3 7:43
really into spirituality and wellness, and also like esoteric stuff. So my art is basically connected with this, with these topics, yeah, and I just like to read. I like to read a lot. I like to enrich my my mentality and learn about new stuff. And that's how I channel my energy. Basically, I find new stuff about me. Every day I try to meditate, do yoga, do different stuff to for me to become like a better version of myself, and that's my mantra. And with doing that, I also encounter like new styles in art. I become more creative. And I feel like this is the biggest channel that it gives me, like the esoteric stuff in life. Yeah, I love that.

Speaker 4 8:38
Well. So as as you've started to lean into that, have you noticed that your art has started to form a little bit more towards some of those beliefs, or towards some of those feelings? Yeah,

Speaker 3 8:47
for sure, especially like my color palette right now. As of now, I feel like my main art that I do for paintings is, I can say it's psychedelic. I love the neon palette. I love the colors mixing drawing stuff that are kind of surrealistic and yeah, also my trademark is the eyes that I do in my characters. So yeah, I can say that for sure.

Speaker 1 9:18
I absolutely know that. Notice that just the depth in those eyes and just the realness and the emotion that you see in those characters? Were you doing a little bit of that artwork on the East Coast, and did you see that change moving through the west coast and seeing how people's personalities were a little bit different?

Speaker 3 9:35
I've encountered a lot of people on the East Coast since I was working in the hospitality art is very praised on both sides, for sure, because New York side and like the East Side in general, with the west side, people appreciate art for sure. It's a little bit different on the east side, I didn't have a lot of time to actually practice my art there, but I. Was doing tattoos at home. Okay, wow. So I was doing tattoos on all the students, and that's how I actually started practicing on real skin before even starting as an apprentice somewhere. Wow, that's incredible. Yeah. So

Speaker 4 10:13
can you run us through the progression? So it started, obviously, like pencil and graphite. Then did you eventually get into oils or like acrylic painting. I've never gotten to tattoos or

Speaker 3 10:24
oils, but if we need to do it linear, so I started with paint. Okay? Paint has always been with me, acrylics and watercolor, watercolor I did as a kid, but now I'm not doing watercolor. I mainly do acrylics, okay? And when I graduated school, that's the time when I actually started working. Okay, so I had more income, and this way I was buying like spray paint, and that's how I got more into spray paint and like graffiti and going out doing like street art, yeah, and I've always done like digital work too. So I'm like a versatile artist, I can call myself. And after the digital work and graffiti era, I was one day at the office, because I was working in the office back in Bulgaria, and I was thinking, okay, how can I monetize my skills in the best way. And what came to my mind was being a tattoo artist, and I was thinking how to actually find like a place to start an apprenticeship. And I eventually bought my own gear and started learning from YouTube. I did some work at home back in Bulgaria, like home tattoos. And it was, like, a couple months I was doing that, and that's the moment when we moved to the US. Wow,

Speaker 4 11:47
wow. Yeah. And so the the materials that you bought, did you buy them on Amazon out there? How did you get your hands on the mountain Bulgaria?

Speaker 3 11:53
I was buying from other tattoo artists online, like I was trying to find, to find, like, the best places to buy it, because basically, it's super hard to actually order stuff that are based in us. Yeah, most of them. And it was from person to person, buying secondhand, just like finding my own resources websites. Yeah.

Speaker 4 12:17
And so then, did those materials travel with you when you came to Massachusetts, yeah, yes, they

Speaker 3 12:22
were in the suitcase. I had like a half section on my suitcase just with my tattoo here. Yeah, that's

Unknown Speaker 12:28
so awesome. So

Speaker 2 12:30
if you had to pick a favorite, whether it be acrylic paint, aerosol paint, tattoo, tattooing or doing, like, unique stuff, because I've also seen you do, like some crafting of different sculptures and stuff like that. If you had to pick a favorite of those, what would it be?

Speaker 3 12:46
That's a really hard question, because I love doing all of them. And the beauty behind every medium is that it still gives you the same feeling of this meditative process. And I I cannot really say which one I love the most. When I sit down and I start doing any kind of medium, it's just the same feeling for me. So I basically love any media I do. If it's something that it comes from my soul, then I love it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 13:17
So I think that's a good non Answer. Answer, yeah, all out. But something that has always stood out to me about kind of one of your pseudonym, or what you go by, is muse for the soul. Yeah. So you talked about the eyes, you just talked about, which are kind of windows to the soul, as they say, you just talked about, if you don't really, it doesn't matter to you, as long as it resonates. Can you talk to us a little bit about how you came up with that name for yourself?

Speaker 3 13:46
Yeah, that's a really interesting story. I was at school, actually, I was in high school, and I was doing poetry. I actually wrote poetry at that time, and me and my friend were talking like, Okay, you need to post it. You cannot just write it and have it for yourself. And we're like, okay. And she's like, let's do an Instagram page for the poetry. And I was like, kinda not having it, but I was like, Yeah, I'll do it. Okay. And we're sitting on the bed together with my friend, and she's like, You need to figure out the name. You need to have, like, a really interesting name for it. And I was thinking, like, what can I do that will resonate with the poetry that I do? Because the poetry that I was writing was basically from my soul, and I came up with news for the soul. And if you scroll down to my Instagram page, my first posts are actually poetry posts, and then I gradually started mixing poetry with my art as like, social media posts. And then I just said, like, I pushed the poetry back. I'm not doing it anymore, but I really stayed in. The Instagram field with my art only.

Speaker 2 15:02
That's awesome, Dan, and I literally refer to you as muse. Oh, yeah, Muse will be there. So that's that's cool, that that's been around, that's been a part of your artistic journey, journey since the beginning, not necessarily the finger grapes, but since you, since the social media age of Yeah,

Speaker 1 15:22
so who has been amused for you, who has inspired you and brought that artistic ability out?

Speaker 3 15:28
For sure, there is, like a lot, a lot of good artists, incredible artists, even in Bulgaria, in here, um, but just meeting people who actually, I feel like they get what I'm getting. They have the energy and they they understand, like, how the process of art works, and me being around this art community is basically my inspiration. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 15:57
yeah. I love to hear that. Yeah. And

Speaker 4 15:59
have you found a productive art community in Las Vegas?

Speaker 3 16:04
Of course, I do graffiti Park Las Vegas. That's the best art community here. I'm so thankful I am part of it, and those guys helped me so much since I'm in Vegas, and I had so many projects with them. And I was actually the way I found them. I was looking at Instagram. I was like, Is there a graffiti community here? Because some cities will have one. Even back in Bulgaria, there was one. And I was like, let's let me see if I can find something in Vegas. And I was basically writing Las Vegas graffiti community, and they came up in Instagram, and they had like a networking event, and me and my husband went to it, and that's how we met.

Speaker 4 16:50
I love it, yeah. And what was the first event? What was the first event that we met? I'm

Speaker 3 16:54
not sure if it was like an official event, but I remember it was like a networking event. It was just like an event to meet artists and to see what's going on

Unknown Speaker 17:05
there, like the old warehouse

Speaker 3 17:09
location, yeah, I don't think there was a class or even something else. It was just to meet each other, yeah, yeah. Which was perfect, yeah. Take

Speaker 2 17:17
it. So if you're an artist in Las Vegas or anywhere, and you find yourself in Las Vegas

Speaker 1 17:23
if you're interested, if you're so inclined, of course, in

Unknown Speaker 17:27
hanging out

Speaker 4 17:29
anyways. Well, I will say, Muse, you've been such an integral part of graffiti Park, especially over the last couple of years, and since you've been with us here in Las Vegas, I will say multiple staff members of graffiti park have tattoos from you, which is, which is awesome. I would encourage others to scope out her work on that front as well. And I will say is, you just got an award for us at our most recent Holiday Ornament painting party that we had last night, which was the overnight success Award, which obviously had a stipulation in the bottom of it, that there takes years to become that overnight success and and so over the course of this artistic journey, personally, with graffiti Park, all of those things involved, what has been one of the most influential or what one of the best pieces advice that you could give other artists that are aspiring to to get to Be that overnight success that you have found here.

Speaker 3 18:22
Thank you. Thank you so much for that word. Yes, I was really surprised, but I really appreciate it. I really appreciate it. And there is no overnight success. There is no overnight success. It's a lot, a lot of effort. And me and my husband, we actually did those little steps that we're doing every day. We call it the fundamentals, and it's basically like a list of habits that we want to incorporate. And the fundamentals basically are waking up early, going to bed early, working out, doing meal prep. First it goes to health. If your health is good, and everything else will come to place. So for success in any kind, in business, art, or whatever the field you're working in, I can say you first need to give attention to your health, because this is your body for this life, your only body, only mind. Not sure about that. That's not, yeah, we're not sure about those, yeah, but you only have one life, so you need to feel at best in this one life. And after you get that going, you'll feel more energized and you'll feel more happy to do anything else. And of course, there's other habits that can help you be successful, especially as an artist, yeah, which is painting, sketching, all the necessary stuff that you need to do us, effort for you to be more skillful in the field that you're working in.

Speaker 4 19:51
Yeah, 100% and I know recently, you just did a or this last year, you've done a challenge, which was to draw, to create everyday. Can you tell us about that challenge?

Speaker 3 20:01
Yes, it was actually the same month, December of last year, and I was at a moment which I felt like I wasn't doing, I wasn't achieving so much in the pace I wanted to. And I sat down, and I'm always introspecting, like always in my mind, like thinking, how can I better something about myself? And I thought about challenging myself so I can get out of my comfort zone and doing it on social media, because the pressure will be bigger this way, yeah, because people are watching on the stories. And I decided to do the paint everyday challenge, and I wanted to see what the outcome would be after I did it, and I did three paintings in that month. And I was surprised how much work a person can do if he's actually like, mindfully set to it. And it's, it all comes up to habits. It's all come up to habits. And I don't know if you read the book atomic habits. Yeah, yeah, the book for that, okay, yeah, yeah. It's really necessary in life to build healthy habits in order for you to get to do the things you want to and not feel pressured actually doing them. Absolutely, yeah.

Speaker 1 21:15
Well, what an inspiration and news you've been to us. Are there any projects or anything that you're working on right now that you're really into that is drawing inspiration?

Speaker 3 21:26
Yes, I'm actually working on my very first painting collection, and it's called Muse, and I'm doing pieces for it right now. I'm working on a very, very big canvas I've been working on month for months on it, and I want to finish it. I'm not setting like a time for it, but I'm basically like, I want to do a painting a month, kind of. And once I finish it, I want to be out with the whole collection, with all the pieces. And it will be a world of MUSE. It will be a world of characters that I designed in a world that's in my head, and I just put it on a canvas. Yeah, yeah,

Speaker 4 22:07
that's so amazing. So how do you draft some of these characters and some of these different alien like, I don't even know how to describe them. Yes, there's so many of them. If you go on to muse for the soul.com and check under some digital art, you'll see, I mean, she has some amazing, super graphic looking cats, and then a cartoon versions of herself and jackpot DJ. I mean, just so many different my favorite one. Yeah. So how do you draw inspiration for characters, and how do you make them all different and unique.

Speaker 3 22:42
So I've always been very drawn to drawing characters, people and faces, portraits. That's my main thing. I love doing that and my I don't know what my inspiration is, but I've always had this vision in my head of these characters, basically. And even in school, I was drawing like, these types of characters with the big eyes and stuff. I don't even know where they're coming from, but I'm just drawing them because I've always had them in my head, and I feel like that's what my soul is, and I want to project that in my work.

Unknown Speaker 23:20
That's so awesome.

Speaker 1 23:23
I love it. I'm just scanning through everything. It's kind of dumbfounded. I

Speaker 3 23:26
need to update my website. Actually, there's a lot of old stuff there. Yeah, you

Speaker 2 23:31
threw out the DJ. And she was like, whoa. She's like, the Jackpot. Jackpot. DJ is on there still. Um, what I was gonna say is, when you moved here, it sounds like there was some a really cool, inspirational platforms, like you growing up, and you've only been here for two years. So it's, there's a whole, you know, most of your life was spent in Bulgaria, as you were talking about, and obviously you had support for creating. You had those friends telling you to make that Instagram page. So what have what it has been the biggest difference in art culture, or similarity even going from a completely different country and art culture to where you're at here in the US? Yeah,

Speaker 3 24:12
so the difference is huge. It's a huge, huge difference. And I just want to say first, Bulgaria has amazing art, amazing artists the field there, and the level of art is like, amazing, I can only say that. But unfortunately, the monetization of art struggles a little bit there, and America us has a bigger field for people to be financially stable just from doing art. So that's a big, big difference there. But as for communities, again, because of people seeing that, it's possible to have basically a job as an artist here, the community is also bigger this way. So yeah, there. Is a bit struggle back in my country for like, communities, projects and stuff like that, and maybe that's why I'm growing even faster here. Yeah, I can say that that's probably the reason why. But I know Bulgaria has a lot, a lot of potential, and people are striving there for sure, in the art community. So if I'm able to go back to Bulgaria, I will, for sure, try to help the community there as well as much as I can from what I learned from from the US, and implement it there for sure. Yeah. So

Speaker 4 25:35
you would say that you've progressed faster as an artist in the States, you think, than you did in Bulgaria. Yes. Why so? Because

Speaker 3 25:41
finance, yeah, for sure. I was a I was working in an office back in Bulgaria, which I didn't like at all. I'm not an office person, and the opportunity for art projects is very, very like limited, and even if you go to an art school, people go abroad afterwards. Yeah, it's sad, but it's the truth. They go abroad. They look for a bigger field, either in Europe or in other continents. And yeah, I mean, here, with all this community, with all this help with even the content in YouTube, like everything's in English. Everything I learned is actually in English, and everything that I know about art and me developing skills is in English in my head.

Speaker 2 26:32
Yeah, interesting. How many languages do you speak

Speaker 3 26:36
Bulgarian English, German? And yeah. Well, we are in English German, yeah, because you

Speaker 2 26:44
hit me with some German yesterday, yeah. Well, I can speak my wiener dog. He's German descent, so he's a dash dog. Yes, he's a Dodson. That's what we call him. And then she threw some different languages. Anyways, um, you, so you got your your series coming up. If people are interested in finding that new series, or any of your other work, where can they go? What's the easiest place to find you?

Speaker 3 27:11
So I mainly use Instagram. It's Muse that for that the.so used for the soul. That's my Instagram and my website is also muse for the soul. I post on tick tock, but I just post the same videos from Instagram to tick tock. I don't use tick tock. It's not my platform, for sure, but, yeah, you can find me on Instagram. That's where I post everything. I post my events that are coming up on my stories. I post my tattoo work, everything, every medium I'm working on. You can see it there. Awesome.

Speaker 2 27:45
Do you have I know one of the big things, and we didn't really touch on it, and we're kind of coming towards the end here, but one of the big things that I always see you doing, especially with Antonio, is vending. And at these different shows. Do you have any events coming up where you guys will be vending?

Speaker 3 28:00
Yes, actually, at the end of this month, I'll be part of the live auction with the eyesight. They're doing a live painting, and the team this month is money. So me and most of the artists that we all know, and other awesome artists will be their life painting for the team of money. And I'm really excited because I went to see them last time. I think the last team was villains and everything has it had their own perception of how a villain looks, and they were doing like different work. So that's a pretty cool stuff you're doing, and I'm glad to be part of it, too. Yeah, can't wait

Speaker 2 28:46
to see, yeah, well, Muse, it has been a absolute pleasure. If you guys are interested in learning more about Alex, see, I just called you muse. See, you can call me muse, yeah, if you're interested in learning more, finding more about Alex, you can go to what she already mentioned. That's already that's here if you're watching it, put it right there. If you're interested in learning more about graffiti park or the graffiti Park Foundation, you can find us at graffiti park.org, or on Instagram at graffiti Park. Underscore, LV, this is our last episode of the year. We are excited to brought you all seven episodes of graffiti Park radio with six very interesting, very different and unique artists. And, uh, Alex, any last words,

Speaker 3 29:32
I'm so thankful for this, guys. It was an awesome project. You're doing awesome stuff, and I'm with you for it. I'll be helping. I'll be there for you guys. Thanks so much for having me. You.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai