Today we’d like to introduce you to Lady Beaver.
Lady, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I am an artist and performer at the Hive Gallery in downtown Los Angeles, as well as a high school art teacher. The origins of the name Lady Beaver came about in 2013 when I first started teaching full time, as I needed an art alias to protect my job as much of my art is inappropriate for children. The name Lady Beaver has origins going back to my childhood, however, from when I was watching the comedy film “Loaded Weapon” with my mom and sister. I was about ten years old, and there is a scene in the movie parodying the scene with Sharon Stone in Basic Instincts, where she uncrosses her legs and exposes her lack of underwear. In the parody, when the actress uncrosses her legs there is a beaver puppet in the chair. I asked my mother why there was a beaver, and she told me bluntly, “Beaver is slang for vagina.” This was one of the funniest things my seven years old sister and I had ever heard, and we were rolling on the ground laughing so hard we were crying. I was inspired, and at ten years old made a drawing of a woman sitting on a toilet, her legs spread open with a toilet paper roll strategically blocking her crotch, shooting beavers out of her vagina. My sister had that drawing hanging in her room until she graduated from high school.
Growing up, my family used to have dance parties in the living room, especially when company would come over for dinner. My dad gave me his old video camera when I was 11, and I started filming the living room dancing, as well as making sketch comedy. I was obsessed with Saturday Night Live, Jim Carrey, and Ren and Stimpy. Humor always attracted me, and throughout my life I have embraced humor and comedy as a way to heal or escape from darkness. I looked forward to nights where my mom and I would watch Seinfeld together and would laugh about mundane things and behaviors of characters in the show. I became interested in human behavior based on these influences along with my childhood experiences and started drawing comics in high school about my supposed enemies, and sometimes my friends too. I developed an interest in storytelling with drawing comics and continued making narrative artwork afterwards.
I have always dabbled in performance from a young age, which included dance, choir, musical theatre, piano and trumpet. After being sexually harassed in band my junior year, I dropped out and took a Drawing and Painting class my second semester. I loved my art class and would stay hours after school to work on my projects. My teacher called my mother at work to tell her that I had real talent and that she should support me in having a career path as an artist. I applied to college as an art major, went to UC Santa Cruz where I fell in love with printmaking and received a BA in Art in 2006. While at UCSC, I explored human behavior in my art with the concept that humans are all animals. One series of artwork I created depicted people dressed up as animals with the actual animals they were dressed up as, in the animals’ native habitat. I took a performance art class and created an alter ego named Anita Bradcock, which was an early version of Lady Beaver; a strong, sex-positive, confident woman who I occasionally dressed up as at open studios. I loved being in school, and after graduating from UCSC, attended graduate school at Pratt Institute, where I received a MFA in printmaking in 2008. While at Pratt, I often used animals as my subject matter to discuss more deviant aspects of human behavior. I created a narrative linocut series inspired by my father’s marital affairs but using walruses. The premise of the series is that the husband walrus has sex with a walrus prostitute in a hotel while his walrus wife and kids wait for him at the dinner table at their home. Printmaking also allowed me to play with various mark making and textural patterns, and creating a balance between reality and the abstract became another important duality represented in my artwork.
The theme of the beaver made itself present again while at Pratt. After seeing a bunch of The Vagina Monologues posters around campus, I decided to create a series called The Beaver Monologues, which featured a cartoon beaver hugging a vibrator, a beaver getting its stomach shaved with a razor, a beaver getting sprayed with a water hose, and a beaver puking up fish. I loved how a cute cartoon animal could also represent something dirty or sexual. This duality continued in my artwork and eventually led me to become Lady Beaver. I also identify with the beaver as a builder, a sculptor in the animal kingdom who manipulates its environment and changes the flow of energy. At my MFA thesis show at Pratt, I had made beaver stuffed animals, beaver curtains, beaver t-shirts, and had four 4 x 4’ woodcut prints of The Beaver Monologues on the wall, along with some other woodcuts and screen-prints of animal characters with their own narrative stories, including a rags-to-riches bee and stripper kangaroo. I had a video installation of me dancing in and out of school, by myself and with others, sometimes in costume. The video installation featured me dancing in the art studios at school, in my classrooms, in my friends’ homes and with my family. I was interested in the balance of work and play in the art studio and called my thesis show “Dance It Off.” I also did performance art at my opening, where I danced with three people dressed up as my beaver, bee and kangaroo characters.
After Pratt, I worked as a graphic designer in a t-shirt screen-printing company for a year and taught art at two summer programs. I decided to move back to California and got my teaching credential in art at Mills College in Oakland in 2010, and taught middle school and high school art there for two years. In Oakland I started primarily drawing and painting, and an artist friend introduced me to The Firehouse North gallery in Berkeley, owned by Tom Franco, another UCSC alumni. At The Firehouse North gallery, I hosted a drawing night for four years, showed art in group shows, curated a printmaking show called The Devil In the Ink, and did performance art in the front window for some of their openings. I started making mini paintings with paint markers and drawing autobiographical comics that I turned into zines to sell at the Oakland Art Murmur. I reunited with my artist friend Danny Scheible at one of these events, who is an alumni of UCSC and creator of Tapigami. Danny invited me to move to Sacramento and do an art residency at Exhibit S Studios. I accepted and taught art classes out of the gallery, hosted and performed in music shows, made music videos, and made a large body of work for my featured solo show, called “The Hole.” The Hole was a narrative body of work, which encompassed the unseen, the unattractive, and the taboo, as well as a break of consciousness or a separation from reality; the gap between thoughts, the bardo, the abstract.
After my residency at Exhibit S Studios came to an end, I moved to Los Angeles in 2014 to pursue my career as an artist and performer. I performed stand-up comedy for six months at various comedy clubs and took improv classes at the Upright Citizens Brigade. After graduating from their long-form improv program, I hosted an improv show at The Clubhouse in Hollywood for five years called Minor League Harold Night where I performed bi-weekly and booked other teams to perform as well. I continued making music videos, as well as sketch comedy and teamed up with writer Steve Waldinger to create improvised comics called Comicprov, where I would draw comics and Steve would fill in the words afterwards without a pre-conceived plan. We drew live commissioned Comicprov comics at various conventions in Southern California, including DesignerCon, LA Comic Con, WonderCon, Melt-thology, and LA Zine Fest, where I also continued to sell mini paintings and comic zines. At LA Zine Fest, the owner of the Hive Gallery, Nathan Cartwright, saw my art on one of my zines and asked me to show my work for the annual line art exhibit, Line Attack in May 2016.
After substitute teaching and making commissioned paintings for two years, I got a job teaching high school art full time at a small charter school in Koreatown in Los Angeles in 2016, where I’ve taught Drawing & Painting, 3D Art & Design, Printmaking & Design, Improv & Sketch Comedy, Yearbook and AP Art & Design. I became a resident artist at The Hive Gallery in June 2016 where I have an art studio and show wall, along with over 40 other resident artists. The Hive Gallery has been open for 15 years, is the longest-running gallery in Gallery Row in downtown Los Angeles and has a new show every month which features up to 100 artists locally and internationally every exhibit. In 2018, I became the video liaison for the Hive Gallery and started curating a collection of short videos for Hive Movie Nights, made by artists in the community along with my own music videos which have headlined the events. I have met many other amazing artists through this experience and have been collaborating with others on paintings, animation, and music videos. For my last music video premiere at the Hive last March, I showed The Spirit of Sedona co-starring flyingstardust, which featured art and animation by various artists including Sawyer Hurwitz, Chris Hixon, JSalvador, and Elizabeth Meggs. I am currently working on a painting with tattoo artist Jesse Jacobellis for the Hive Gallery’s December show and have continued working on animation projects with JSalvador, creator of Super Emo Friends.
In 2020, I became the art director for musician Ava King, whose most recent music video is Drive It Like You Stole It, where I also appear as an actor/dancer. I am currently working on art direction for Ava King’s next music video, Leave Me On Read, and actually played trumpet on the track as well. I have been dancing every day for over the past year as a performance art and self-love practice and post my dance videos online in hopes of spreading joy, humor, inspiration and positivity. My next music video, Why I Dance, is about this very topic and will also feature animation as well as live-action dancing and costumes from yours truly.
Has it been a smooth road?
One of the particular struggles I’ve had with my art is with my autobiographical comics ending friendships and relationships. I started drawing autobiographical, or “brutally honest comics,” back in 2010, which usually consisted of one page “episodes” of whatever was happening in my life at the time. Several friends and family members have been embarrassed by the way I’ve depicted their behavior in my comics and were very angry at me.
One time I called my sister and asked her what I should draw a comic about, and she started saying all these ridiculous funny inappropriate lines, such as, “If you don’t remember my sister, then you’ll probably recognize her by her lips, and I’m not talking about the ones on her face.” I drew a comic of my sister saying all this to me on the phone, and after she saw it on Facebook, she was so angry that she called me in the middle of the night and threatened to get me fired from my job, and gave me a panic attack.
I drew an entire graphic novel about my relationship with my ex when we were together, called Beaver Kisses. When we were first dating, I told my ex I wanted to document our relationship in comics and he was very supportive and even helped me with some of the storytelling. However, as time went on, he told me the comics made him feel like he had no privacy, that everyone knew what was going on in his life, and that he came across as an asshole in my comics. The comics became triggering for him, and one comic bothered him so much that after he read it, he cried and threw his phone. He broke up with me a week after the printed graphic novels arrived in the mail, just before I was to debut them to sell at DesignerCon. At the event, after I would sell a book I asked if I could personalize it, and on the last page where it reads, “And they lived happily ever after,” I added, “…Just kidding.”
One of my comics actually broke up another couple! I drew a comic about a trip I went on with some friends where a buddy of mine asked me if I wanted to cuddle with him that night. He explained that him and his girlfriend had an open relationship so she wouldn’t mind. Well, apparently not, because she saw my comic about it on Facebook and broke up with him. He was super pissed at me, and I had even warned him I would be drawing what happened.
Please tell us more about your art.
Lady Beaver is my identity as an artist and performer as well as my business/company, and my goal is to inspire others. Much of my art depicts some sort of balance/duality, human behavior, and often utilizes storytelling. I specialize in drawing with paint on canvas using acrylic-based paint markers, and my style is cartoonish, dark and quirky humor. My philosophy of drawing with a confident unbroken line and use of symbols is inspired by artist Keith Haring, and many people have told me my art reminds them of him. I also write music, direct and star in music videos, draw comics, perform comedy and performance art. I am known for my dark humor, female sex-positivity, storytelling, and positive energy. I am proud to empower women to have a voice in areas where they are often marginalized or shamed for speaking their minds or being forward about sex and sexuality. What sets me apart from others is my openness and oversharing nature about my life or human behavior I’ve experienced or observed. I enjoy giving people a different perspective or lens for how they view humanity through my own personal experiences.
How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
I try not to concern myself with the industry or monetary self-worth when it comes to my art. My main goal with my art is to inspire others through the sharing of my gifts and talents with the world. However, I think people often forget that everything man-made has been designed by an artist. Andy Warhol had the perspective that everything made is art, from our advertisements to our lamps to our buildings to our soup cans. Creative problem solving is an important life skill, and studies have proven that people who do not express themselves die earlier of stress. The biggest trend I can anticipate is being the best version of myself through any given situation.
Contact Info:
- Address: The Hive Gallery and Studios
729 S Spring St
Los Angeles, CA 90014 - Website: www.ladybeaver.com
- Phone: (213) 955-9051
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: @ladybeaver
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LadyBeaverArt/
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