Spotlight: e bond, Visual Artist

Step into the vibrant, idea-filled world of e bond, a multidisciplinary artist who blurs the lines between life, art, and creativity. Her work is driven by curiosity, process, and the joy of exploring ideas across multiple mediums, from paper to fabric to mixed media.

How did you find yourself on an artist’s path? Always there?

I was and am always there.

How would you describe yourself as an artist?

I am a human who uses the tools and thought processes associated with art making or creativity to gather myself and navigate life. It’s all one thing for me, art, life, creativity, making; there are no borders or boundaries.

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If I want to understand something better, I read about it, I make art about it, it’s just the way my body processes information and tries to navigate the world.

Do you feel that you chose your “passion,” or did it choose you?

It chose me. Most of the people and passions I love in this life have come without a choice and I actually love it that way, I appreciate the surrender. It feels like a gift.

The choice is in the commitment to stay or persist, but the initial choosing is never really up to me.

Is your work more content-driven or process-driven? Does an idea inspire a work of art, or do the materials launch an idea?

Ideas usually inspire the work, so the work is content driven but I am process-driven.

I am not as interested in the outcome so much as how I got there, and the process has a lot to do with the content for each particular piece as it has to serve that singular piece. So the process and the materials can change so long as they serve the idea well.

You work across multiple media. Do you have a favorite?

No, I don’t really have a favorite.

Maybe the favorite for me is simply having multiple mediums playing together in one piece? I like the options, so maybe my favorite is just a combination of two or more mediums.

When it comes to creating, are you more of a planner or an improviser?

Both equally, but separately and at different stages of the game. They don’t really cross paths.

Planning happens, improvising happens, but never planning and improvising at the same time. It’s like having the editor and the creator trying to work at exactly the same time. It rarely is a good time for me if that happens especially when I am playing both roles.

Showing the hand binding on a book made by e bond

Describe your creative space.

Messy, no empty tables, full of color, music or audiobooks playing, full of piles of paper, object-filled. Bookshelves lined with books and supplies, walls crammed with posters and art.

I love visual stimulation. Juxtaposition inspires me. I love to look. I love looking at things in relation to other things. I like stuff. Maximalist to the core.

How often do you start a new project? Do you work actively on more than one project at a time?

I don’t really know how often, I usually just have a list of things I am actively interested in printed somewhere or in my sketchbook and that’s only because my memory isn’t great.

I do work actively on many things at once. I don’t know that I’ve ever only been working on one thing at a time unless it’s a forced deadline of some sort. Again, I like juxtaposition, relationality, and that only happens when things/ideas/concepts/projects are bumping up against one another, in my life, in my body, in my brain.

Which part of the design process is your favorite? Which part is a challenge for you?

The challenge is convincing someone else of an idea’s worth, getting someone else’s buy in. I am not good at that part. That only comes into play if the end piece is for someone else. Otherwise it’s all my favorite.

If you had to choose, what do you love more: beginnings, middles or ends? And why?

This is one of my favorite questions to ask other artists. I love beginnings. They are open and full of freedom and possibility, all the things I enjoy. Where all options are viable, all dreams achievable.

I also just really love to ideate, to make lists, to draw sketches, to come up with 1000 ideas for one problem. It’s where I am most useful, most interested, most at home, when things are unknown and all questions are unanswered on the table.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve received along your artistic journey?

Maybe it wasn’t verbal advice so much as physical ways of working, so advice through action maybe?

I was trained as a graphic designer in undergrad but had been fine art before that, so the “way of working” in design was to come up with many possible solutions to one problem. This idea of, don’t stop at the first idea, make 100 more sketches, even if you come back to the first idea. The philosophy of ‘it’s never wasted time to explore’.

This way is slower and it takes patience and persistence but it makes the work richer, and deeper.

I never realized how some people don’t really explore multiple ideas before deciding on a solution. It’s sort of like walking the trails in a forest. When you’re in a crowded national park, let’s say, most people don’t realize you lose most walkers only a quarter of the mile into any path, so if you just keep going, you get to see so much and usually it’s wide open and empty.

Gelli plate print orange with mesh by e bond

How does your formal art education help your work develop? Does it ever get in the way?

It helps every day, mostly just because of the persistence thing.

So much of being an artist is just showing up every day and the formal education taught me to show up every day and to pay attention.

It also showed me the payoffs of when you do these things consistently…You see the progress in yourself. Thankfully, I have that feeling ingrained in me, so even on days when I really don’t believe I can do much of anything, I can fall back on the fact that just showing up is all I need to do for that day.

How has your creativity evolved over the years? What triggered the evolution to new media/kinds of work/ways of working?

I think evolution is harder for me to see because I am the one evolving, I’m too close to it.

If I were to guess, it’s usually the mundane, logistical things that have changed the work the most, like my physical location, the size of a workspace, proximity or lack thereof to certain pieces of equipment, etc…

One thing always leads you to another thing. When I work full time gigs, I don’t have a lot of time during the week, so that led me to doing daily projects to stay connected to my practice and so I could chip away at an idea in small intervals. The making of the work got slower but maybe it also got deeper during those times, it’s hard to say.

When I no longer had access to a letterpress or large printers, somehow that forced me to find another way of printing, which eventually led me to mono printing on gelli plates. I didn’t have the space or ventilation where I could use spray paint anymore, so somehow that pushed me into different mixed media techniques. I moved to California 13 years ago, and the landscape changed my work and my thinking drastically. I could go on and on.

e bond working on a print with a gelli plate

What do you do to keep yourself motivated and interested in your work?

I don’t really have to do too much, for me one idea, thought, question, project, always somehow leads to another set of ideas, thoughts, questions, projects. It’s never-ending.

The hardest part is just remembering all the things I want to make and not getting freaked out about the lack of time I have to make all the things.

Showing finished printed fabrics by e bond

Which of your creative accomplishments gave you the most satisfaction, and why?

My first fabric collection GLYPHS made me extremely proud because I really enjoyed that collection as a complete piece of art and was excited for it to be in the world exactly the way it was.

And more recently, I really enjoyed the collective work I made for a solo show in 2023 at a gallery space in Oakland. The show was called singularities and that body of work also felt like a lovely, complete thought that got to be seen and experienced.

Is there anything that you haven’t done yet that you feel compelled to achieve in the future?

I want to write a book(s), so many books, so many ideas.