Jennicakes' Interview with Rachel of Medium Reality!

Jennicakes' Interview with Rachel Hospodar of Medium Reality and Pandora's Trunk Show

little boxes, little boxes
little boxes made of corrugated
little boxes for The Sampler
little boxes all the same....

Rachel Hospodar is the talented, trash-loving artist behind Medium Reality, and the hostess with the mostess of Pandora's Trunk Show an eclectic bi-monthly fashion/arts party here in San Francisco. (And if you ARE here in San Francisco, don't miss the Pandora's Trunk arts and nonprofit discussion salon at CELLspace on September 13!) A Sampler Contributor, Rachel got a load of our stacks and stacks of white mailers recently, and she was like, "Whaaaaaaaaaaaat?" So she paid a visit to Sampler Town, paints in tow, to bring a little color to our little boxes! Here's what she created:

I'd like to be able to say that Rachel and I are old college buddies, but we hadn't realized we've been classmates/neighbors for much of our lives until our chat over AIM a few days ago. Oops!

For more exciting revelations, read on!

I feel like I should congratulate you on running maybe the most cleverly named art/craft event in the city - Pandora's Trunk Show. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

Heh, thanks. The show has evolved a lot over its year and a half long history. I'm really glad the name was able to grow with us, because it's nothing like when it started. It's amazing how much support has come out of the city over such a little thing.

How often does it happen?

It's pretty much bi-monthly, although the schedule does flex a little bit to accommodate holidays and my calendar - infrequently enough that I have time to do merchandise for the show, but often enough that it's a little bit of a presence in the city. It's nice to have that continuity.

Awesome! What's your favorite thing to make? Do you have a favorite?

I got access to laser etching machines and have been laser etching my photography of San Francisco onto wood and fabric. The wood becomes collage paintings and the fabric becomes clothes (mostly ties and menswear/unisex, lots of jackets and shirts). I really like making clothes for guys because they are so appreciative - there's not a lot of it out there I like selling paintings and apparel right next to each other. Having motifs that go across both make it all makes sense to the customers.

San Francisco shows up in a lot of your work! Are you a CA native?

Nope, grew up and went to college in Pittsburgh, Pa. I traveled extensively around the US and San Francisco was the place that I settled on. It's a really unique city. I like to explore and reveal the sense of character in a place - it's around us all the time but people tune things out and don't realize how it's affecting them anyway. It's the little things that give places their flavor and character.

OMG, I'm a Pittsburgh native!

No way!! Where did you go to high school?

Moon.

Heh heh. My cousins live in Moon.

And then I went to Carnegie Mellon. You?

Me too! Crap! I was in school of drama 1998-02!

Wow! We were there at the EXACT SAME TIME!

!!!! What did you study?

Creative writing. I actually worked for drama, though; I was a theater usher.

That is too weird. That's so rad and funny. Er, maybe we can edit that to sound more eloquent, heh!

So, do you think Pittsburgh influenced your art sensibility? Or is it all SFO?

People often compare Pgh and San Francisco, too, as they are both cities sort of integrated into hills and bodies of water - it makes a place that is more intricate and full of interesting crannies and strange places. I think the geography lends itself to the hidden in both places. Pittsburgh's such a gritty blue-collar town that definitely shaped me. There is also an understanding of poverty that frees you to find value where other people do not, like all the scraps of paper that I pick up off the street and use as my materials.

Yeah, I totally agree. Sometimes, when I'm here, I feel like I'm in a different world, and other times I look around, and I think, "Wow, I could be back home right now."

It was actually very strange when I went to college; even though I was in the same town all of a sudden the makeup of my social surroundings changed drastically. I felt kind of out of place in such an upscale, whitebread environment.

Yeah, it was weird going to college in my home city, and feeling out of place all of a sudden!

I think it's really cool that you're into trash.

There's so MUCH of it! We can make so many of the things we need out of it, it's amazing to me.

Are you attracted to items that have a "past"?

Oh, very much! I think that the objects around us have a lot more control of our mental state than we think; our environments are kind of subtly brainwashing us all the time whether it's weathered antiques or billboards. I think that if we all surround ourselves with items of intrinsic quality and durability it will inspire us to seek and create those qualities in the world.

When I became a vegetarian (which I'm not anymore) I spent a long time first just noticing when I ate meat, to see its impact on my life and wean off of it slowly. Now I do eat meat occasionally, just way less than most other people in the US. I've been doing the same thing with plastic. Plastic is important and powerful but I have tried to drastically reduce its presence in my life. I rarely buy new things. Then when I do have to, I make sure to get something that will last and hopefully is even made somewhere decent.

So it's important to you to create things that are sort of part of the landscape?

It's important to me to take control of that which is already affecting me, the visual world I inhabit.

I love what you did with the Sampler boxes. Are they your visual representation of Sampler Town?

Yes! I picture you guys in a sort of circus land of delight!

Hahaha! Yay!

Maybe there are dancing dogs or something. We will have to make further explorations into Sampler Town. Carousel horses for sure.

Yeah, we need more animals in Sampler Town!

Your room is almost tall enough that you could have giraffes in there. But I don't know how they'd get in. You will have to bring it in when it is a baby and never let it leave.

Yes, I am liking this giraffe idea!

Maybe a giant one of those claw games, only it would have to be one that anyone could actually win.

If claw games had samples, they would be so much better.

You could put the samples in little plastic bubbles. Ooh, or in those quarter machines!

OMG, quarter machines! I need to talk to Marie and figure out how we can make this happen. It would be a really good re-use project, to take an old, unloved toy machine and fill it with Samples!

Let's talk about some of your recycling projects, like how you made a dress out of old boots.

Recycling is like a challenge to me. To have something that is no good for its first use, like on boot, but still has a lot of intrinsic value, good materials or aesthetic appeal or structure you can use, and turn it into something appealing and useful.... it always feel like winning a game or solving a puzzle.

Yeah, making a dress out of a boot sounds like something that would be on a game show. And yours is beautiful!

Thanks! I've made two different corset tops out of old boots too. It's really fun to do. After the last one my sewing machine needs some servicing, though.

Heh,that game show would be a funny one. Like the cooking shows but with sewing. I know there are one or two, like, that focus on the fashion world, are there any that are... craftier? Kind of like Junkyard Wars

I think there was one, and it sucked, because the crafts weren't so good?

Mmm... just needs to be rock stars of crafts, then.

I don't think the mainstream media knows how hardcore we crafters are.

Maybe Maker Faire would let me stage craft wars in the same hangar as robot wars next year. *That* would be fun.

That would be amazing. And such an inspiration for creative recycling!

Sherry? Can you hear me? Heh. I'm so going to propose it.

Do it! You will have the endorsement of Team Sampler!

Hooray! I wonder if it's too late to do it for Austin.

Maybe you should wait till next spring, so everyone can go into training?

Heh. I wonder what spring training would be like? Everyone making themselves a uniform? Carving their bats from various materials....

I think you are on to something!

I wonder if real spring training has the mimosas that we will have.

Will we have to fire our own champagne glasses?

Heh, no, you can make them from broken Goodwill ones, all Frankenstein.

Sweet!

We should keep the butt-slapping thing, though.

Oh, granted.

I applied for this residency recently at the San Francisco dump. There's a lot of competition but if I get it I can have all the free trash I want. A lot of my daydreams have trash in them recently.

Did you love that Oscar the Grouch song when you were a kid? "I Love Trash?"

I can be something of a grouch, but I was never that into Oscar. I was more of a Big Bird kind of girl, all clumsy but well-meaning.

Ha! Good to know! Thanks for talking to The Sampler, Rachel!

Thanks for having me. Can't wait to see it in print! make sure to use that picture of my flexing my muscles next to it!

Done! See you at spring training!!

--slap!--