December 11, 2018

Meet Dez’Mon of Dez’Mon Omega Fair

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to Dez’Mon.

Dez’Mon, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I was born and raised in The Carolinas.

Young, I always knew I would need to do something creative, anything creative into my adulthood.

Attended The Savannah College of Art and Design for packaging, at first, thinking that I had a future designing fancy water bottles or something. I was definitely that indecisive art student: trying on various majors, until I decided to move to Chicago, IL.

There I met a writer, who was also the principle of the Haute Closet and Dose Market. I became her fashion assistant. I loved it. I still like the idea of fashion styling. I loved it then so much, I moved to New York City for it, after only a year and a half in the cold and clean windy city.

I did a few things in NYC: between waitressing, I assisted a stylist with The Wall Group; I wardrobed some short films, videos and a feature length on my own. But after six years of rat-racing through New York: hauling on my back garment bags up and down the town, standing my ground in overheated email exchanges with PR girls, and fun, however superficial social gatherings, I felt burnt out or gross or tired or disillusioned or confused or mad or something. But, I knew I changed in ways I didn’t like.

Art making returned to me, it seemed, out of necessity. I drew here and there, in the past, to pass the time over the years, but nothing that serious. As I began to take on less fashion and costume projects, becoming less interested, I became more consumed in painting. F*cking pOssessed. Disappearing into my apartment for weeks, like a freak. Proliferating large watercolors on washi; it felt as if I was unclogging pipes long congested.

One day, a bit after I’d gotten into a rhythm, my new friend Lindsey Winkel had come over and seen all these painted papers every which way. I didn’t fully understand that she had an interest in curation, and directly enough, she just left the Williamsburg Public Library in Brooklyn, where they happen to be looking for art to hang in a large foyer. We organized and worked well together over the following month or so, then in a public space, a New York State building, my first exhibition: Remember The Year.

The night of the opening was everything to me. It reevaluated how I saw myself. I saw my capabilities change. I saw, in the round, a whole other vision, one closer to what felt of passion. Flashing forward, I’ve since started writing a three chapter body of work I’m calling Novel Sonics: poems, lyrically short narratives and chants, scored into a soundscape meditation, a sort of album, slash quasi-book on tape, accompanied by sound artist Coleman Moore.

And since, I’ve added installation, and within those installations, a performance.

I had no real intention at first, just needed some me time, so I bought some paper.

Visual art highjacked by life.

Now I’m in the process of looking for Expressive Art Therapy curriculums to pair with a solution-focused life coaching certification.

I’d like to assist others in recovering self via their own creativity.

Has it been a smooth road?

I have struggled to take myself seriously. Sometimes I feel as if everything that I’ve done was a waste of time. Am I still wasting time? Am I entirely embarrassing? Does it show? I struggle with doubt often.

So, as you know, we’re impressed with Dez’Mon Omega Fair – tell our readers more, for example, what you’re most proud of as a company and what sets you apart from others.

Well, I have this artist statement that’s been a pain in my a** for the last seven years. It never gets any airtime, so.

Painting, Poetry, Performance are set within immersive installations. Exploring memory, place, desire, and conflict. My autodidact work in the studio is an intuited pictorial dialog, abstracted from the heart to watercolor on washi: impressions of the self-emerging from the history of the body. Painting is focused on understanding art-making as a language attuned to the intuition; from embodying the present and reorganizing the past to fine-tuning and creating what is possible.

Materially, my work consist of water, watercolor on various weights and scales of washi. Rarely I use brushes: taking paint straight to a wet region; or inking dry; afterward, bringing in sprayed water to activate chemical changes. Using stencils, like book corners, shoes, eyeglasses, feet, vases etcetera to create familiarity, while water comes in to blur, enhance or rework shapes anew.

The translucent, yet strong washi converges the density of liquid watercolor creating many polarizing effects. A polychromatic assemblage of complicated line work unraveling; multi-colored saturations blurring and bleeding toward pleasure, using time as medium; adding and mimicking; never subtracting or hiding what could be considered ill or err; ten paintings at a time: stacking, rotating as they bleed into each other, creating a machineless printmaking, baring a string of like and unlike imagery.

My watercolor oeuvre averages a scale of 25in X 37in for now. Most of my easel, a found piece of rectangular wood: the curved, thinly layered cut imbibes seven years of watercolor; mothering over four-hundred thus far. Water applied to the wood reconstitutes the watercolor left in the board to spawn new motifs, so further work is made from the remains past painting, having an identity, amassing a conversation of its own; either close to what I had imagined or more discursive in ways that I continue to perplex.

Past becomes present, that is, the implication of the present becomes future. Galvanized by this meditation: the release of judgment to comprehend newly; understanding in renewal, what’s always been. Utilizing the patterns of synchronicity and symmetry experienced when painting with water: an ethos appears. I find that a painting will paint itself as life will live itself.

Let’s touch on your thoughts about our city – what do you like the most and least?

I appreciate the donut shop to cold-pressed juice ratio in LA county: I’m feeling crazed for sugar, I’m good; I’m feeling holistic, I’m good.

I do miss dramatic seasons, and it’s disappointing to know that the palm trees aren’t indigenous, so.

Contact Info:

Website: dezmonomegafair.com
Email: [email protected]
Other: Chapter II: A Perfect Bitch Karma, Let Me Remind You (Spotify)

Image Credit:
Jonathan Fasulo, Rich Costales, Jacob Sousa

Getting in touch: VoyageLA is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.