Meet Alice LeFae

Today we’d like to introduce you to Alice LeFae.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Alice. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
When I was a kid, I lived in Vermont which, if you’ve never been, basically means I caught a lot of frogs and ate a lot of dirt. In first grade, I lost a precious tiny deer figurine on the playground and I still think about it all the time. Wherever you are, Tiny Deer, I love you. I hope you’re having a good life.

I’ve moved on since then and now have an incredibly tiny fox figurine that I write adventures about. He lives a peaceful life inside a matchbox and once a year he goes on a journey to the top of a mountain for a secret and magical ritual where he screams. No one else has ever known about the scream ritual until now.

I lived in New York City for six years and worked a lot of odd jobs that involved meeting a lot of interesting people. I was a zombie at a laser tag arena, a birthday fairy, a stilt-walker, a juggler, a kid’s pottery teacher, a legal assistant, a possessed doll, and an aerialist among many other things. All these jobs taught me unexpected things and even if some of them were terrible and soul-crushing, my life wouldn’t be what it is today without them. I think the job at which I met the most wonderful people though was at a tea shop called Alice’s Tea Cup in Manhattan. Let me tell you, you have not seen a woman’s true strength until she’s working a New York brunch shift full of affluent families waving their Groupons like it’s a free pass to eat you out of house and home. My coworkers there became wonderful (and hopefully life-long) friends as well as prime examples of what it means to be both a strong and kind person.

The thing about New York City is that eventually, your train catches fire one too many times and you gotta take the hint and move on. I’ve been in California for about a year and a half now and holy cats, there’s a very exciting art community over here! I think every bad or stressful thing that happened before turned me into a more capable human and a better artist.

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Life’s been kind of rough, but it’s getting better all the time! I have a sneaking suspicion that my childhood was a little not good, but it made my imagination muscles work extra hard and now I’m pretty sure they could bench press an elephant.

My life went off the rails HARD a few years ago both professionally and personally because, unfortunately, the two were so intertwined that they became the same thing. Without getting into too many details, I’ll say it’s very dangerous to be a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed bundle of naivety and nerves surrounded by older men with authority complexes. I think any other obstacle pales considerably in comparison, even if I have to remind myself of this occasionally when I’m panicking about taxes or shipping orders or my cat pooping outside the litterbox again for no discernible reason. I’m very happy and lucky to have the life I have now, which consists largely of painting, writing, telling my cats how much I love them, and meeting dogs at art events.

We’d love to hear more about your work and what you are currently focused on. What else should we know?
I make things! I’m currently working on a series of portraits of inspiring women. Some of them are well-known, and some of them are not- for example, I just finished a portrait of Alice Ball, a chemist who is responsible for the first effective treatment of leprosy. She died at the age of 24 and was unable to publish her work, so someone else published it and took all the credit. That’s messed up! So I want to use this project to tell stories of women whose accomplishments were overlooked or smothered by history and cultural bias.

I try to paint things as small as I possibly can, which has led to creating fine paintbrushes using my cat’s hair, tape, and a pencil. My cat tolerates this exceedingly well. There are other tiny things I love making, too, like tiny sketchbook necklaces. The covers are made from upcycled leather and I love throwing in a mix of blank pages and other designs.

I also like to paint my cat, Pine Cone, going on adventures! He’s a large and fluffy cat but very timid, so I try to give him something to live vicariously through. I can’t even begin to tell you how much I love this cat- he’s the light of my life and number one muse. Mews, if you will. He has a sister named Switchblade who is a monster and always steals my art supplies, but I adore her.

What is “success” or “successful” for you?
I’ve been wrestling with the definition of success for a while and the conclusion I’ve come to is that it’s not a fixed point or a deadline, it’s about the process and the quality of the process. If you make a lot of money but treat people poorly, you’re not a success. You’re a failure. Take Jeff Bezos for example. Sure, maybe he’s successful financially but he’s morally bankrupt and that’s a different, worse kind of failure. It’s easy to put into black and white terms like that, but in real life and for normal people it’s very different. I’m always checking in with myself to see what kind of day or week I’ve had- sometimes I’m a success and sometimes I’m a failure but I’m always trying and that’s it’s own kind of success.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.alicelefae.com
• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/alicelefae
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alicelefae
• Other: https://www.etsy.com/shop/PipsqueakDreaming?ref=seller-platform-mcnav

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