Sell Out is a series by interdisciplinary artist Angela Fama (she/they), who co-creates conversations with individual artists across Vancouver. Questioning ideas of artistry, identity, “day jobs,” and how they intertwine, Fama settles in with each artist (at a local café of their choice) and asks the same series of questions. With one roll of medium format film, Fama captures portraits of the artist after their conversations.

Ziggy Mimloid (Queer she/her, Japanese Canadian) is the creative director of Blim. Follow her on Instagram @blimstagram, or visit www.blim.ca.

Location: Dalina Main st. Instagram @dalinavancouver

What do you make/create?

As of lately, or in the last twenty years, I strive to make and maintain a creative space (Blim). I create upcycled and handmade slow fashion apparel and facilitate a screen printing studio to help creatives, and non-creatives, to learn and create merch lines or any kind of project they feel inspired to do. We also sell the merchandise. 

I’m into the creative process. I like people to be aware of what it takes to make a garment and what it takes to sell a garment. To me, the whole slow fashion movement is about awareness and sustainability, but not in a way that’s preaching or shoving dogma down people’s throats, it’s just about being aware. 

Lately I’ve been aware of time, the construct of how important time is and how essential it is to everything. If we want to slow down the process of fast fashion, it’s kind of right there in front of you: just slow down. Slow the process. Slow the purchase. Slow the wear and tear. Just, you know: Slow. Down. And that sort of branches into everything; life philosophy, and how people should be living. I want, and work to create, a business that caters to that lifestyle. 

What do you do to support that?

I’ve noticed a cyclical process happening since we moved into Chinatown. In the summer season we cater to more of a fun retail situation because we’ve got tourism, events, and festivals. It’s when the city comes alive and wants to have fun. It’s a pretty small window in a kind of sleepy town. Suddenly the city changes for roughly four months. It becomes alive, and fun, and busy, and people are out and about; so many events, so many festivals, almost too many! We cater to that and that helps us move all the things that we’ve created over the down season. Once it slows down, and Oct-March rolls around, we get to slow down, and move back into the studio. That’s when I facilitate the creating side of it. The whole backend of it: workshops, building systems for people to make things at home, and custom works. I like this whole process: summertime we’re in the front selling and presenting all the things that everyone makes and then in the down season we’re in the backside creating, moving inwards, and regenerating our creative selves.

Describe something about how your art practice and your “day job” interact.

Basically, I’ve made my art practice my day job. 

When you graduate from art school your options are pretty limited. There’s this kind of sad statistic that like 2% of all art school graduates continue to make art after they graduate and I was just like, “Wow.” I’d like to think that’s changing. I think the world is changing in that way, finally realizing the value. In order to give anything power, people have to see the value of it first. I think people are starting to see the value in creativity and it’s no longer just for these lonesome outcasts the public can fetishize over. I think it’s becoming more integrated into society as an actual healthy necessary thing for everyone to do in order to maintain a happy life. That’s where the studio comes into play. We don’t only teach artists, we teach everyone, people – quote-unquote non-creatives – who just want to create. They feel comfortable enough to come to a space like Blim. They don’t feel like “Oh, I’m not creative enough to come here.” I’m like, “No, It’s for everyone!” That’s why I sort of left the art world, it was to reach a wider audience. I won’t say “left” the art world; I just sort of expanded. Yeah, let’s say that.

It was either the film industry or you stay in the art world, pursue the funded route – which I did for five years. I was a practicing artist. It was good to experience that. Then, for five years I worked in a commercial gallery where I learnt a lot about that world, which is very different from the art world. Both those experiences really helped me to move into my own idea of a creative space. Five years in the funded art world, five years in the commercial art world, and then I slowly started Blim. 

At the time, I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t have a business plan. I just had this little voice that was like, “Oh, here’s this cool space. You should sign this lease.” And I was like, “I don’t have the funds, or anything!” It was a really weird gradual process. “You should reach out to this person.” “Oh, now you should reach out to this person.” Things just slowly started to stack up. Everyone was like, “You need a business plan.”  I was like, “Ahhh... I don’t know.” I don’t like those things. I’m bad with forms. I don’t even think I’m very good at business, I just have a lot of ideas and I work hard. I keep the pot stirring. If something’s not working, I edit it, and I work on it until the energy’s working in that area.

My mom was asking me the other day, “What’s your secret? How do you do everything that you do? Mother and run a business? How do you do it?” It was funny that she’s asking me, because you know… and I’m like this is kind of cool. So, I said, “One: health. Maintain health. If you don’t have physical health, you have nothing right? When I get sick, I literally shut down for that number of days, I don’t try to continue doing anything. I just stop. Regenerate. Two: breathing. Learning how to breathe is integral, it leads into everything. If you’re living life hyperventilating, you’re gonna pass out. You have to learn to breathe. It helps the brain to stack up all the things it needs to do rather than panic mode and then it’s like you have to do everything. You can slow the breath down and your brain will follow. Your brain will then systematically stack what it is you need to do each day. It’s like the Buddhist mentality, the walking thing, when they do the one step at a time thing.” 

I didn’t realize this stuff until I got older. I don’t know, maybe when you're younger you’re sprinting through life. You’re just gunning it, “I’m going to get it! I’m going to do so many things!” I don’t know, once I got to this point in my life, now I’m like, “Ok, I don’t have as much energy but you know, I can’t stop. I’m just going to slow down and pace myself to the finish line.” That’s where I’m at now. You gotta take breaks. But not too long of a break. If you take too long of a break then it’s harder to get up and running again, which is what I learnt when COVID happened.

We were at the height when COVID hit, and then everything came to a stop. We were like, “We can’t come to a full stop. Let’s just slow down, but let’s just keep moving.” We were doing custom work, home packages, delivering things, and online workshops. We never closed, we just slowed down. That’s probably what saved us from ending completely. Also, our landlord was extremely helpful. We’re lucky to have him. I also feel like those types of things, if you breathe and listen to your belly brain, things will instinctively come to you in time. Like my landlord, who I’ve had for twelve years, Bryan. I swear, it’s meant to be. We were born on the same day! I think he's a huge part of why I’ve been able to go as long as I have up to this point. And he’s with me on it. He’s like, “I’m with you for as long as you are gonna do this.” That’s lucky. I hear so many horror stories about landlords and how they never give anybody a break. I’m really grateful to have Bryan as my landlord. That’s a big part. 

What’s a challenge you’re facing, or have faced, in relation to this and/or what’s a benefit?

When I was a practicing artist, I went into exhibiting and funding and all that, touring with art. It was moderately successful. I was getting the grants, and getting the shows, and that was, I’d say, pretty good. But it got to a point where if I wanted to continue getting the funding the government, without saying it, was basically saying, “Your work needs to address your Asian feminine identity.” And I was like, “Why do I have to make art about being a woman and being an Asian? Does a white man have to make art about being a male and white? No. Never. So why is that what I have to do in order to get the funding?” It just sounded disingenuous. Then it’s making all these artists, who are striving to make art, about the funding. It’s not about artists making art about themselves as artists. It seems pretty contradictory. Realizing that, I didn’t want to do that, I wanted to make art that I like. 

I was making happy art. It was happy like an A24 movie, happy with subtle undertones of critical commentary, it just wasn’t in-your-face. When you look at it at first, it’s attractive, it draws you in, you love all the colours, and then the more you look at it you’re like oh, ok, it’s saying something. Kind of like early Takashi Murakami’s work, when he was having a good time making art. I was frustrated with the art world at that point. I had a good run, five years is a pretty good run, and I moved on to something else: Blim.

Sometimes the things you are dissatisfied with will drive you toward the things you are satisfied with. For work, I either didn’t like the jobs I was working at or I didn’t see the business I wanted, so I was like, “I guess I’ll just make it. Because I’m not seeing it. There’s bits and parts of businesses that I’m really interested in, but they’re dispersed all over the world.” The irony is once you make it, you’re just so tired whenever you have the time off you don’t enjoy being there anymore because you’re too busy running it (chuckle). That’s not the case. After twenty years of doing this, I still love going to work because when I’m dissatisfied, I can fix things. I can edit things. 

Have you made, or created, anything that was inspired by something from your day job? Please describe. 

I like a lot of things so it’s hard for me to edit what not to do. I’m realizing it’s a life-long project. I’m still learning. It’s like this little rainbow garden, and I’m constantly pruning, taking away, adding, editing, cultivating; it’s constant energy work. Running a brick-and-mortar store is energy work. If you’re not in there moving the energy around and being there… I don’t know. I don’t know how some people do it without ever being there. Because it’s such a weird little clusterfuck – it’s got a lot of things – so it requires energy, working on this part. 

I’m repping about five different local artist’s lines. Even that, you go to certain stores in the mall, even these stores in the mall have to constantly change and work on things and re-merchandise. It's just done in a way that looks cleaner, because it’s done by this corporate whatever and they have this formula. I think it’s a similar thing, but because Blim’s just a single entity; it’s more organic. I guess that’s the difference. It’s more organic. I change it based on the weather. Cold weather-hot weather, festival season–non-festival season. Non-festival season will be less colorful and crazy. We focus on the graphic shirt line, that’s more of a staple, something we can consistently “pay-the-rent” with. It’s also fun because we get to work with different artists to create a new graphic. It’s something that everyone can always use, a t-shirt. People will always need t-shirts. 

There’s the Blim line, the original line I work with sewers to create. I do a custom upcycled Harajuku-inspired clothing line and fanny packs. Also, with the custom t-shirt line, I work directly with various artists to create a unique graphic shirt line. There’s other brands I carry, like Pattern Nation, By Tooth and Claw, Gazzy by Gazzo. In order to try and make things more unique with certain lines, I’ll do collabs. I’ll do an exclusive line with By Tooth and Claw that’s only available through Blim. So, I’d say those are my two art babies that I’m proud of, where I can say, “I did these! And they’re exclusive to Blim!” 

If I was to retire, it would have to be to someone who's just as dedicated and creative. People from the states come and say things like, “This is a shark pit waiting to happen, you should formulate this and make it the next Hot Topic.” I thought about that, and I was just like, “Ya, but then it would take away from the essence of it.” I’ve literally had people from New York, LA, and Tokyo come in and say things like, “There’s nothing like this. There’s snippets of this, in different places, but the way that you’ve put it all together as this entity, where people are seeing the back end and the front end and the process.” Ya, so I’m like, “Cool.” I always thought there’s always more interesting things elsewhere. I’ve had that New York Complex, “All the good things are in New York!” But then when a New Yorker comes in, and they think it's really cool, and say they wish they could have one, I’m like, “You don’t.” That’s validating in some way.

My point is, I think in order to have an organic living brick-and-mortar business, because it’s not online: it takes people. That’s the bottom line. It takes humans, other creatives, not just me. It takes the people that are interested, that are actually taking the time out of their lives to not shop on Amazon and be like, “I’m gonna go for a walk. I’m gonna explore my neighbourhood. I want something beyond the mall or online shopping. I want to explore.” All those things are necessary to create and sustain a place like Blim. 

Angela Fama (she/they) is an interdisciplinary artist, creator of the Death Conversation Game, photographer, and musician. They are a French/Italian/Scottish/Irish/Unknown settler with unclear lineage currently existing on the unceded traditional and ancestral territories of the Coast Salish xʷməθkwəy̓əm, Skwxwú7mesh, and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh Nations.

Follow them at IG @angelafama IG @deathconversationgame or on their website www.angelafama.com