Today we’d like to introduce you to Alexandra Sleeping.
Hi Alexandra, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I am an engineer who has always loved performance art, but lacked the courage to try. After some beloved friends strongly encouraged me to try comedic storytelling, I built out my performance skillset to complement my aesthetic skillset. I began producing community events when I realized that the only way to provide opportunities for marginalized artists in Austin is to create the opportunities ourselves. I have been working with local creatives as a model and artist since 2016, and when the opportunity arose for me to produce my own events, I applied my skills as an engineer to creative project management. I began co-hosting a show called the Feral Friends Association with my friend Kristina Puerto, and through that experience received the opportunity to produce, curate, and host events at a local coffee shop that reopened in the Fall of 2025. The events I host there have brought a vibrant community of artists to the venue, and this coffee shop has transformed into a community hub for culture and art. I am very grateful to the owners of Ani’s Day & Nights for supporting local creatives and providing a venue that we can safely gather and perform at. The events I produced there led to me producing an unofficial SXSW 2025 variety show in collaboration with the Satellite Art Gallery in New York City. This event made me wonder what other kinds of events I could produce, and I embarked on a year-long journey to produce a gallery exhibition with Bloodbath Studios. This gallery exhibition was meant to honor the community of underpaid artists here in central Texas through their involvement with Bloodbath as models, stylists, photographers, lighting experts, and editors. As I was working on this project throughout 2025, I was still producing my monthly open mic, and quarterly queer comedy showcase at Ani’s Day & Nights. As though i needed more to do, I joined the board of Austin Dyke March as an event coordinator. Being a community organizer is not new for me, i was the treasurer of a student humanitarian aid organization when I was a student in college at UT Austin. I joined a political cult for research purposes and contributed to the articles about said cult to better understand how vulnerable people are manipulated into such organizations and how to prevent it from happening. I also helped start the JPMC Workers Alliance at JP Morgan Chase, and have spoken with labor organizers at length about our cross-industry goals to support our communities and mitigate the harms caused by capitalist interests. After being laid off from my role there, I continued to help strengthen the coalition of workers across the world and helped set up conversations with reporters for my colleagues still at the firm. I am also on the Montopolis Proud neighborhood committee and will assist with this year’s Juneteenth celebration. I am not new to organizing, but I am new to organizing in the way that I am doing it now: through the arts. Many of us local Austin artists are striving to build an intentional community with one another, and I feel that slowly but surely, we are making progress. Today, I am on the production team for a fantasy variety show called Legend of the Realms, our first event is IMOLE: a Black Fae Day celebration at the Carver Center on May 9th from noon to 6:00 PM. We are working to provide funding to artists and healing through various therapy modalities to the guests at our events and the competitors in our show. I am so grateful to have found community with everyone I work with as an artist and friend, and am excited to see where this tumultuous year takes us.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
It has not been a smooth road; I definitely struggled with feeling like a fraud for being seen trying instead of being immediately good at everything I set my mind to creatively. I started a podcast for fun in 2020, still produce episodes, but it doesn’t always feel like I am a compelling storyteller. I had never taken a comedy class, and became a comedian. People laughed, and I questioned whether they laughed at me or with me. I had never produced an event outside of a house party before in my life and stumbled my way through it. My biggest obstacle has objectively been myself and my own self-doubt. Funding is, of course, another challenge for any artist. I am blessed to have a job that allows me to afford my art projects without too much additional funding, but this doesn’t mean I don’t seek sponsorships or apply for grants. Without funding, paying artists for their time and effort becomes exploiting them for what they can provide to a collaborative project. I absolutely have had disagreements with other collaborators because I have zero tolerance for exploitation. This exploitation is systemic in the arts and especially towards black and brown people, so even when we mean well towards each other, I find that there are challenges that arise when it comes to the prioritization of people’s time and needs while collaborating. Conflict resolution has been a big challenge for me too. I used to have poor boundaries with others and would grow resentful rather than communicate. I have since grown as a person, only to realize that sometimes, there is no good time to tell someone something they do not want to hear or believe about themselves through the lens of your lived experience interacting with them. I have certainly decided to never work with some of the people and organizations I have worked with in the past, and holding space for these people as colleagues is difficult. Continuing to work within a community of individuals and all of their lived experiences is always challenging, but understanding that everyone is on their own journey helps bring me back to what is important about the work we are doing. It is challenging and demoralizing to work within a capitalist structure in general. I am not trying to make art for money; I want people to feel something. Like many creatives, I have had a personal struggle with substance abuse, and getting sober while still creating and trying to build community was an incredibly isolating experience. I am still sober today, and find that I get invited to things less; my relationships rooted in substance abuse with other creatives have fractured. Choosing to live my life differently while still engaging in spaces that revolve around substance use has been hard, but I persist.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I am really proud of myself for continuing to be the multidisciplinary artist and scientist I always saw myself being as a child. I specialize in Data Engineering and have niche experience working within data privacy governance frameworks. My nosiness has been my greatest strength because I had never heard of the job I have today when I was a computational mathematics student, just hoping to get A job outside of teaching children computer science. I have played the clarinet since I was 9 and took a 15-year break until last year, when I added it to my comedy sets as a bit to leave the audience laughing and confused at the end. I do not know of any other comedians in Austin playing the clarinet during their comedy sets and asking a male audience member to kneel and hold the sheet music. I love comedic storytelling; it is a part of my family’s oral history tradition to share our lives through storytelling, and I try to bring the energy of listening to me tell you something hilarious at my kitchen table to the stage. I have been told that it is a unique form of stand-up, and it is generally received well. I am proud of how I transitioned from being a model occasionally to being in the Austin Chronicle, local magazines, and in fashion films shown all over the world. I don’t think it is a unique experience to be appreciated for one’s aesthetic and branching out into other talents, but I am grateful for that to have been my experience thus far. I am known for being tired, which is why my stage name is Alexandra Sleeping. I probably do have a sleep disorder I need medication for, but so far, it hasn’t become a huge negative impact on my life, so i’ll let it slide. I just want to be known for genuinely trying to make a difference in the lives of others, bragging on myself is hard, i’ll stop here.
We all have a different way of looking at and defining success. How do you define success?
Success is that rare feeling of relief and assuredness that you did the thing you set out to do, did it to the best of your ability, and you feel good having done that thing as best you could. That is success to me. I used to have really high expectations for myself, and it burned me out so bad that I have had to shift to accepting that we all have limitations. Working within one’s own limitations towards the best possible outcome is success.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.poolsideportfolio.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/poolside.chacos?igsh=eXUydnI0b2kzcWht&utm_source=qr
