Meet Ashley Joy Beck

Today we’d like to introduce you to Ashley Joy Beck.

Ashley Joy, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I was born to artistic wizards of sound and light. Both my parents are sound, and lighting engineers and they own a production company in the Central Valley called West Coast Sound and Light. They used to work IMATS (International Makeup Artist Trade Show) every year in Pasadena since it began back in the mid/late ’90s.

I started working for my parents tying power, climbing truss, focusing lights, operating the follow spot, plugging in monitors, mic-ing a stage and generally setting up/breaking down for events and rock shows around 11 years old.

From 11 years old to 14 years old, I was running follow spot at IMATS, and it was the #1 job I looked forward to. I wanted to talk to all the makeup innovators, listen to all the keynote speakers and I saved my money all year (I was making about $2 an hour with my parents) just to spend it those two days at the show.

I kept going every year and somewhere around 17 years old I started to seriously consider becoming a makeup artist. I began managing the retail makeup department at my local Kohl’s. I was already in heaven just cleaning all the makeup displays and occasionally doing little makeovers for those brave enough to let me practice my hopes and dreams on.

Quickly, I moved on to being a freelance makeup artist for Clinique which was not a counter position. I would get booked up with makeup appointments and just come in on special event days. I never had to ring anyone up, and I got to travel to San Fransisco on the weekends, get put up in a hotel, and work just 5 or so hours a day just doing makeup. It was pretty heavenly while I was in Jr College getting an art degree.

In 2007, at 21 years old I got married and moved to Temecula, CA. I began working full time at the Clinique counter in Nordstrom of Escondido. It was HELL. A totally necessary hell, cause boy I learned how to do makeup on everybody! Every temperament! Every age!! Everybody. And I really got sick of the selling. I felt like I was dying and I HAD to get out and do my own thing.

I had to go to makeup school in LA so I could start to build a network there and begin freelancing on entertainment jobs. I went to MUD Makeup Designory in Burbank and the next year was able to participate in the IMATS LA Avant Garde student makeup competition representing MUD. Watching this competition growing up was my #1 inspiration to become a makeup artist. The students always performed with such passion and they made such colorful, creative visions come to life in front of your eyes. This was before makeup competition tv shows and YouTube beauty gurus. I feel makeup is much more obviously a performance art now that we have those but I always loved to perform and to do makeup so to be a part of that competition was a dream come true. Just to be asked to participate was an emotional experience for me.

I ended up coming in 3rd in the international line up of 8 total artists. But it wasn’t the placing so much or the order of it that mattered to me. I got to participate. I got to be a part of that thing that inspired me originally. That was really exciting. And others noticed. After the competition, Dana Nye (Son of Ben Nye) came up to me. Took photos, introduced himself as one of the judges and asked if I used Ben Nye.

I was like…. uhhhh yeah ALL the colors are Ben Nye…… so totally stunned and slap happy from the whole whirlwind of a day. Dana shortly thereafter sent me a HUGE package of Ben Nye makeup in the mail. I was in shock again. Wow, he even sent framed photos of us together after the competition with bows on them!!!

Then MUD’s Career Services Amanda Brass (a light in the dark, thank you girl) hooked me up with a Cirque du Soleil job face painting wait staff for the Santa Monica premiere of Kooza. Ben Nye was providing the makeup. And I got to keep a bunch of it!!! My kit was now so stocked, and I was connected with some of the biggest names in the creative theatrical biz!

Shortly thereafter, another makeup artist (Kat Steinmetz SF) was watching me do makeup at the competition, and she reached out to connect me to her friend and photographer Sequoia Emmanuelle. Sequoia and I have not skipped a beat in constant creation together since. Not only have I done makeup for many shoots with her but she even asked me to be in her wedding, and I have done her makeup and modeled for her photos many many times. We are total creative soul mates.

Cirque trained me in theatrical makeup super intensely, and I worked a handful of events with them that lead to working with Empire of the Sun, Princess Cruise Ships and the Australian band PNAU. Not a lot of people know about them in the US yet, but they have been around forever in Oz, and they are just starting to really hit their visual stride.I feel I am able to participate in that with the blacklight body makeup for music videos and live performances. We opened the ARIAS last year, and we won an award for the first single I did the makeup for Chameleon. (In fact this year at the 2018 Arias that just happened we were nominated for 7 awards including Best Music Video!).

I also get to travel the world with Princess Cruise ships designing and teaching makeup for their theater productions on-board. That’s definitely one of my favorite jobs right now. I just got back from South Korea and Japan installing a new musical I designed makeup for called “The Secret Silk.” There was an all you can eat make your own ramen bar on board the ship. Really, truly, it cannot get any better.

I’ve also spent some time this year working on my other arts. They are all related, and while makeup is my primary money maker, I don’t think of myself as a makeup artist as much as an artist of many mediums. Acting, jewelry making and practicing Reiki are all super strong in my life right now, and I enjoy letting the creative energy flow into all of the different areas as much as possible.

I also find they are all very interconnected. If I do my own makeup, wear jewelry I made and send love through my eyes and hands into a camera lens as a model or actress they can even be combined in a captured moment!

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc. – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
I agree with how Sequoia answered this a few years ago. I don’t think anyone has a smooth road. Everything is TOTALLY perspective. You can look back at your past and see all the struggle and think oh that was totally toxic! How did I make it through? Or you can see all the pain and unique experiences it took to get you to where you want to be as stepping stones that helped illuminate what direction you really want to take for yourself.

I think for me, a lot of my struggles personally, in the beginning, had to do with those doubting ideas of, can I do this? Will I make it? Does anyone want to see my art?

And if there was too much time between good paying gigs it was really hard not to think that was how it was always going to be. But our job is really not to judge. And I learn that deeper and deeper every day. We are just to do. To keep creating, making things we enjoy the act of making. At least for me. That’s key. It’s not my job to say yeah, that was good or no, that’s not good, I need to be better.

NO! There is no “better” mostly because you can always do better so that’s no destination and it’s a silly goal because it’s inevitable to get better the more you do and practice something. So I think of everything I do as practice. It is my job to practice.

I will naturally improve and move past struggles along the way. We are all broken AND whole on a path while simultaneously present in the destination of NOW. We all struggle and we just keep creating and loving and creating and loving on repeat. Don’t fight the struggle.

Appreciate the grit for the mill. Honor the reflection of where you are at now and love every step of the journey cause you’re never going to be “there” with “them” doing “that thing that will make you happy and successful” if you can’t learn to love who and what you are now cause it’s cool to struggle. It’s a beautiful life transformer. It’s also cool to have gentle lessons. You can ask directly for them. I recommend it.

Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
That’s an interesting question. I used to think I was lucky. When I was really young, I thought God blessed me for sure. Now, I think everyone and everything is blessed with luck in one light and shit in the shadows. And I feel luck increases where it’s expected to.

But I agree with everyone who says that luck favors action. When you want something, you focus. That get’s luck on your side especially if you see it in your mind’s eye turning out well in the future. Whatever you invest mental and physical energy in increases. Is that luck?

Contact Info:

• Website: www.ashleyjoybeck.com
• Instagram: @ashleyjoybeck
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ashleyjoybeckmakeupartist/
• Other: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiga8fdX02VZwkIbsglsIcQ

 
Image Credit:
PNAU, Kira Divine, Bianca Poletti, Stephen Blahut

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