Today we’d like to introduce you to Savannalore.
Hi Savannalore, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
I consider myself a recovering academic. I’ve been an artist my entire life, but by the time I made it to graduate school, I had neatly folded and packed that creative part of my identity away. My story as an artist really begins with what I call my great escape from academia.
I moved to Austin with high hopes in December 2019 — and we all know what followed shortly thereafter. I managed to work as a barista for about a month before my coffee shop had to close its doors due to the pandemic. That same day, I also received a soft rejection email from a gallery job I’d been hoping for with the Austin Art Garage. They would have hired me, they said. But understandably, the news of the pandemic had changed things for the small business.
Suddenly, my new city was in quarantine and I was sitting on my living room floor in my barista uniform without a shift to show up to. In that moment, I hunted down an old sketchbook and began to draw for the first time in months. In all six years of undergrad and graduate school, I could have counted the number of pieces of art I’d made on two hands. On that quiet day in March 2020, I created over 30 drawings. Those drawings would become the foundation of an ongoing series I coined “beautiful trash.”
My first drawing tutorial on Tiktok went viral. The response I received was overwhelmingly positive, which awakened a creative ember in my soul. That creative ember had been asleep for so long. But I finally felt awake.
Fast forward to June of that year. Jake Bryer, one of the owners of the Austin Art Garage, contacted me again. They were re-opening the gallery and wanted to offer me the job if I wanted it. I was elated.
In the two years, I’ve been in Austin, I’ve had the opportunity to meet dozens of talented artists, display and sell my paintings, and inspire millions of people to re-connect with their creativity on Tiktok.
Two years ago, I was studying to eventually become an English professor. Now, I have stepped fully into the artist lifestyle I always longed for. The choice to abandon my schooling was scary. But it was the best choice I ever made.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It was absolutely not smooth. Not even a little bit. But life is kind of like a brain — you don’t want it to be smooth. You want all the experience and knowledge and wisdom that comes with rough terrain.
Like I said, the choice to leave my studies behind was scary. So scary, in fact, that I waited until I completed all my courses with flying colors. Then, when all I had left was a thesis to write and defend, I simply chose not to re-enroll.
School had created a toxic perfectionist out of me. For two years, I was a zombie performing the role of a high-achieving student I did not recognize. I sacrificed everything unique about myself in favor of a false academic costume I thought I needed to be “successful.” It might sound dramatic, but by doing this, I was emotionally poisoning my poor artist’s heart. I have some beef with the modern day education system for many reasons, but I have bigger beef with myself for allowing that system to sculpt me into an unrecognizable automaton (jokes).
I ended up working as a barista in my college town for two of the best people I have ever met. My boss, Donna, and my manager, Andrew constantly encouraged my art and treated it like it was important. They helped me reconstruct how I perceived myself. They are two of the reasons I now make art videos. I want to try and do for others what Donna and Andrew did for me.
My husband, Tanner, was also a driving force behind my artistic re-emergence. I didn’t always show up to support myself back then and Tanner’s pep talks got me through quite a few premature existential crises.
To some, I’m sure my road does look smooth. But I had to do a lot of really difficult internal work to get here.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I specialize in character illustration and abstract painting — I know these two things seem pretty unrelated at first, but I’ll tell you how they work together.
Let me start by explaining my philosophy behind “beautiful trash,” which is what I’m most known for. Many assume that I am insulting or making a joke of my work by using this name to describe the messy character portraits I draw. This actually isn’t the case!
I recently wrote on Instagram that beautiful trash is a liberating oxymoron that frees me from that toxic perfectionism I was just telling you about. I use the term to reclaim my art from those (myself included) who might shame it as a “waste of time.” To me, creating art is the equivalent of making sure a plant has adequate sunlight. It might be able to survive in a windowless room, but without the sun, its existence will be melancholy. Such is my relationship with art.
But in this productivity-driven society, setting aside time to create art is often an afterthought. For many people, it doesn’t happen at all. So sharing beautiful trash tutorials is my way of offering others — especially those with a perfectionist streak of their own — a permission slip to make something “bad” and celebrate it. One of my favorite writers, Anne Lamott, once said “write shitty first drafts.” I like to apply that sentiment to art as well. Beautiful trash art acts as a gateway into the creative flow state. No masterpieces required.
But the thing I’m the most proud of isn’t the style itself. I’m definitely not the first one to make messy art. The thing I’m most proud of is the world I’ve created around the characters I draw. It’s an imaginary world called Lava Lamp Coffee. I have a separate Instagram page dedicated to the beautiful trash characters and “conversations” I have with them.
Compared to my 260k on Tiktok, my Lava Lamp Coffee page is sitting around 1600. It definitely doesn’t get the same attention, but it is my favorite thing in the entire world. Lava Lamp Coffee is a metaphor for my imagination, the characters are metaphors for the emotions, thoughts, and dreams that all live there, and my abstract paintings are landscapes of it all.
Each piece of the puzzle helps me get a little closer to understanding how I exist as a person. Every piece of art I make fits into the Lava Lamp Coffee world somehow. My favorite days are days when guests at the Austin Art Garage ask me about my paintings and I get to share a little about my creative process with them.
Is there any advice you’d like to share with our readers who might just be starting out?
Yes, I do have some advice —- take the word “aspiring” out of your bio. Stop telling people you are an “aspiring” artist. Or an aspiring anything, really. Don’t talk yourself out of embodying who you really are. If you are ten years old and want to be an artist, you are an artist. If you are a fresh empty-nester who wants to resume painting after a twenty-year hiatus, you are an artist. You are your first roadblock. Then, share your stuff with the world! No more waiting to be “good enough.” Someone somewhere speaks your exact art language, but they’ll never find you if you don’t speak first.
Contact Info:
- Email: Savannaloredesigns@gmail.com
- Website: Austinartgarage.com and Savannalore.com
- Instagram: @savannalore
- Other: Tiktok: @savannalore
