Rising Stars: Meet Desirée Brothe

Today we’re excited to be connecting with Desirée Brothe again. If you haven’t already, we suggest you check out our prior conversation with them here.

Desirée, always such a pleasure connecting with you and thank you for sharing your stories, insights and inspiring messages with our community. We’re looking forward to getting the download and what you have been up to since our last interview, but first can you briefly introduce yourself to folks who might have missed the prior conversation.
My name is Desirée and I’m a visual artist based in Cheyenne, WY. I own Magpie Creations, under which I make paintings, illustrations and mixed media work, as well as a variety of printmaking pieces. I love playing with materials, learning new techniques, and then applying those to methods I’ve used for years, so my studio is full of art supplies. Most of my paintings are of birds, but sometimes I add in another subject or two. I like to think about how we engage with the world, how we impact it, and how it impacts us, and I use a lot of symbolism in my work to reflect this. My illustrations range from flora and fauna to commentary on humanity, continuing on that theme of reflection. My mixed media work is often sculptural, and ranges from serious and introspective, to just fun and weird. Finally, my prints are the most ever-changing, and I’m actually in the process of rethinking how I want those to look and feel, and how they fit with the rest of my work. I love lino block printing, and focus on the bold shapes and textures that come with that process. But I also love drypoint and collagraph, and the textural details that come with that.

Because of my love for various media and play in art, my portfolio has a tendency to feel all over the place to me. But it comes together based on tone, theme, and approach, and I feel good about that. I have been honing this process for a long time, and I feel like I’m at a good juncture and on the cusp of finding a little deeper ‘voice’ and version of myself in my art.

I recently did a podcast interview for someone, and was surprised in discussion of my creative journey as I shared it, and how it felt to talk about the years of growth and change. I’ve effectively been creating something since I was 4 or 5, and the development of that process through the years: great elementary arts education; opportunities for growth and development beyond the regular high school programming; an art teaching degree in college, have all been informative to how I work now. We can all say this, sure, but it’s always fun to look back and think about where we came from and how we have built that story and process over time.

Great, so let’s jump into an update on what you have been up to since we last spoke. What can you share with us?
As I mentioned, I’m rethinking, and reflecting, a lot on my work and how I make it. I had an opportunity last January to take myself on an artist retreat, where I holed up at this great little place in North Ft. Collins (shoutout to Kestral Fields Studio), and just made art for the week. I took everything from painting materials, printmaking stuff–including my press–illustration tools, and mixed media things. I wasn’t sure what I was going to want to work with, and wanted my options. It was an interesting week. I worked a lot at both of my professional jobs, and didn’t really have time to plan the week like I normally would. But I also wanted to allow myself the freedom of not planning for a change. Of course because I finally had time off, I got sick right away. So, never one to waste an opportunity, I got a lot of projects done that week and I slept and watched a lot of movies.

That week away doing nothing but relaxing and making art set the tone for 2024. I created several projects, some fully complete and some that would be fleshed out in the coming months. One was a series of 7 line-drawn portraits on Trekkel gothic wood panels, with gold leaf icons behind their heads. Each one had a word associated with them: Value, Usage, Knowledge, Creation, Memory, Loss, and Passage, and represents a derivative of ‘time.’ Time is my most valued commodity, and my obsession with it has waxed and waned through the years. These “Muses of Time,” as the series is called, helped me to look at time from a new perspective, where ‘time’ itself is still wholly irrelevant, regardless of how we place emphasis on it.

The other project that came out of that week was an illustrated flash-fiction story called “Helen & Kate.” One of the upsides to getting sick and being in my own little world was a fever dream, where I developed the Helen & Kate concept. It was a dream about two young women, who were traveling around for work, staying in little motels and going out to cocktail bars between gigs. In the story itself, we get a sense that one of them wants to be more than friends, and the nature of the work they do is deliberately ambiguous. When I woke up, I immediately typed the story out, and started storyboarding the illustrations. It quickly became an obsession that I worked on throughout the week until I got it all right. Over the coming months, I put watercolor to the analog images, cleaned them up in Procreate, and formatted it into a book. Encouragement from one of my good artsy friends, Bria, who owns a gallery downtown, helped me to work with a local printer to get the books printed. We launched Helen & Kate with a book signing at her gallery in November of last year, and this has helped me tick off one of my long sought goals: figure out illustration and publishing to start making books.

In the end what I learned is what I do want to be making, and what I don’t. I stepped back from monetizing every single aspect of my art and instead refocused on the simple joy of making it. This has helped me so much, as we flash forward to a year later. Now, I’m still focusing on play and the process of making art before the monetization. This is always hard because I don’t have a lot of storage space and a lot of the projects I’m thinking up are going to be sculptural, so what then do I do with the ‘things’ if I don’t manage to sell them? I don’t know, but I’m not going to worry about it. I’m going to paint a bunch of new birds in new styles and see what I like. I’m going to take these weird little ceramic sculptures of 17th century people and play on an ‘eat the rich’ concept. I’m going to take my partner’s 3-D printer stabilization cast offs and turn them into a dystopian city. I want to have fun with art, and make things just because, and worry about the rest after. At least for a little while.

We also want to give folks a chance to get to know you a bit better so we’ve prepared a fun lightning round of questions. Ready?

• Favorite Movie: The Fall
• Favorite Book: The Gift of Asher Lev–Chaim Potok
• Favorite TV Show: So many! Twin Peaks, Dr. Stone, Apothecary Diaries, Superman & Lois…
• Favorite Band or Artist: Neko Case, Tom Waits, The Cannons, Bully
• Sweet or Savory: Savory
• Mountains or Beach: Both
• As a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up: Free to imagine and make all the things.
• French Fries or Onion Rings: Fries
• Favorite Cartoon growing up: Ahh! Real Monsters and The Wild Thornberries
• Favorite Childhood movie: Twister
• Favorite Breakfast Food: So many pastries.

Life is often about tough choices – can you talk to us about your thought process, strategy or philosophy when it comes to making difficult choices or tradeoffs.
In November, I quit my job that was giving me the biggest stress and contributing heavily to my burnout and depression. This came after several months of giving way too much to too many, and trying way too hard to do all of the things. I work full time for a local arts non-profit, and this work, coupled with the other arts-based full time job, plus running a business, was just not going to be a forever strategy, and it turns out that that strategy needed to end right away. Following panic attacks and out of stress and frustration was born the ability to make choices that would otherwise be risky and overthought. I filed an LLC for a new venture: Magpie Consulting. For years in my professional working life, I’ve not only focused on community development, arts advocacy, and public arts programming, but I’ve also done a lot of organizational facilitation including strategic planning, board training, and other resource development. I have long wondered what working partially for myself in addition to the arts non-profit that I love would look like, and it’s time I figured that out.

Making these hard choices is never easy, but I’ve found out that I’m pretty risk-averse and while I am a planner and like to consider possibilities, I also possess a significant level of F-it, let’s see what happens. This is one of those moments. I’ve checked out a ton of books on creative entrepreneurship and consulting to rethink how I want to own a business, and I’ve thought really hard about what I want to be doing and offering for services, and with my art. I also think a lot about what I don’t want to be doing, which has become almost more important. I’m working hard to get honest with myself, and not use other aspects of my life for avoidance tactics, which I’m really, really good at.

I don’t know what this leap is going to bring, but I’ve already started working on some contracts and just launched a new website, which is also making me reconsider how I present myself as an artist. It’s a more enthralling and exciting path than the one I was on, and allows me the flexibility and freedom I need to make choices that are better for me.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://magpiecreations.art
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/creative_magpies/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Creativemagpies

Image Credits
All images were personally taken by me, Desirée Brothe