Meet Marjorie Lair of Meowjie in Jefferson Park

Today we’d like to introduce you to Marjorie Lair.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Marjorie. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I have been making art since I was very little and I have always known I wanted to be an artist. I had a very active imagination and would make art things to entertain myself. I was very shy and introverted as a kid (still am), so I spent a lot of my time alone and felt very inclined to create my own reality. When I went to high school, I was introduced to oil painting by my art teacher and proceeded to paint primarily tigers and cats for the next few years. I then went to school at Eastern Illinois University and studied many different mediums but focused mostly on painting.

When I graduated, I moved to Colorado. I honestly stopped painting and making anything after that. I didn’t know what excited me anymore. I don’t know if I was just burned out from school, but I felt kinda stuck. About a year later I got my first art opportunity to live painting at the music festival. It was a really fun time, I got to do art, go see music (another huge part of my life), and meet tons of great people. At this time as well I was really starting to experiment with my art, I was determined to sort of find “my thing.” Last October my partner and I got an opportunity to create an installation for Farout Factory. We made a cat-dragon, which was twelve feet long and made out of feeling, fleece, wood, and 25 pounds of poly-fil stuffing. It had a little speaker inside that would play music and sounds. I’ve helped create more installations since then, and I developed a love for sewing, which I haven’t been able to stop since. It’s all just sorta gained momentum over time.

Has it been a smooth road?
When I first moved to Colorado, I had almost no money to my name and no job lined up. I thought I would just “wing it.” There were a few years of intense struggle working odd jobs, not being able to afford art supplies and not knowing how I would pay my bills most months. I just felt burnt out. I don’t know if it was from art school, but in the first year of living out in Colorado, I barely made any work. I just felt very lost.

I didn’t know what interested me anymore. I felt like I had failed. I was very depressed and just felt like I was maybe not cut out to be an artist. The thing though is despite feeling like I should just give up art, I knew it was still never fully an option for me. I never fully quit and I knew that I had to just keep going even if I didn’t want to. Well to this day I am so glad I didn’t give up because I never would have been the given the opportunities that I have had now and I wouldn’t be able to see what it’s like on the other side.

We’d love to hear more about your work.
I am a visual artist who specializes in primarily soft sculpture, installation art and painting. I create installation works for events and music festivals with my partner Kyle. Together we have created a cat-dragon, an angler fish, and we created the backdrop for the Odyssey Stage at the Underground Music Showcase. I also do live painting at events and festivals and just recently created my first mural with my partner. In my independent work, I make soft sculptures/wall tapestry type pieces that I call plush paintings. They are wall pieces that I create typically using fabrics and embroidery thread.

I use the same sort of imagery and narratives that I would make into a painting, just made out of fabric. I love using lots of textures and colors, and I feel like, through the use of fabric, it gives the pieces a whole new perspective and personality. I guess you can say I like to keep pretty busy and I enjoy working in a variation of mediums. I started using the name Meowjie as an artist name, and because it was my nickname in High School that sort of stuck even after I graduated. I got this name because I am a cat fanatic and cats are a recurring theme within my work. I am still fairly new to the game, but I am excited to see where things go in the future. My work is very influenced by music, fashion, cats, and honestly anything else that I feel like making.

How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
It’s interesting because a year ago I would never have imagined what I would be creating today. When I was in college, my Grandma gave me a box with all of her embroidery thread inside and some hoops because she wasn’t using them anymore. I really enjoyed creating embroideries and the act of sewing, but I always sort of saw it as a hobby or a nice break away from painting. I would make the occasional cat toy too. After making the cat-dragon, I just fell in love with sewing, and the ideas just came flooding in, which was something that I hadn’t really experienced in a long time. I am still fairly new to the game, but I am so excited at where my artwork will be in the next five to ten years. There are so many things that I want to do. I want to create more large-scale installation pieces for shows and events and potentially get into fashion as well. I don’t want to limit myself and thinking about what I’ve accomplished in just one year has me feeling very excited about the future.

Contact Info:

• Website: marjorielair.com
• Email: marjorielair@gmail.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/meowjie_/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/meowjie/

Image Credit:
Kyle Singer

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