PHOTOGRAPHY BY TRIK 2303

INTERVIEW BY THE MARQUIS DÉJÀ DÛ (Click on any of the thumbnails for the enlarged pic.) Suffering Is Hip: First, give us a run down on who you are, where you’re from, etc. Trik: 26 yr old female. SIH: All-righty-then! Where has your work shown up? Trik: I’ve shown at a few galleries in Tucson and New Orleans. Magazine ads, campaigns on the sides of buses, several music CD covers. I prefer the act of poetic terrorism to formal organized presentations. I like to make flyers for bands, secretly recreating the flyer with all the same information but using my own artwork and designs, then I post them over the existing flyers. Since the invention of the Epson stylus photo 700 printer I have taken to printing beautiful postcard stock cards of my images and leaving them in public places, strangers purses, inside newspaper dispensers, public restrooms, random law offices and hospitals. My first inclination was people’s homes, and bedside tables, but I have found that I am much more creative with images than I am with coming up for reasons to explain to the officers why I am hiding under the bed covers of Mrs. Pendletons 4612 Prytania Avenue estate. This past year I have been working on an ad campaign for a local fashion designer and friend of mine, Lorna Leedy. So far four different ads and a fashion spread have been published in MAVIN magazine out of Seattle. It has been pure lube to see my images on glossy magazine stock. SIH: Say a bit about your photography, wontcha? Trik: During the summer of 1995 I took a course at the Maine Photographic and Film workshops in Rockport. There I learned the ins and outs of Photoshop in a 12 hour-a-day, two week course. It changed my life. Unfortunately at the end of the two weeks I had to go back to New Orleans and my bartending job. Living on day to day wages and spending most of them on glitter platforms, feathered frocks, and other mind altering sensations, I was never able to afford a computer or a couple of hours at KINKOS. All I had was a 35 mm that I would take pictures with. Working at night my days were free to wander through the ailes of THRIFT MART and collect strange obejects for pennies a day. I am too much of a lighting control freak with out any lighting equipment. So small objects were the most I could control. And even that was all haphazard. I would get everything developed at Wal-Mart, cuss the Wal-Mart lady out for turning all my photographs too yellow or cyan. I experimented with different colored light bulbs, shooting through panes of warped glass, reflecting images on mirrors and retaking pictures of pictures I had already taken then drawn on or abused with a miniature chemistry set. The results were photographs that looked like images that had been altered in photoshop, but in reality had never seen a computer. In ‘96 I got a job bartending at a cyber café by day, night club by night joint where I spent hours websurfing through a wide open T-1. I hadn’t learned HTML yet, but ever dreaming of the day I would have a computer of my own, I began setting up my photographs in such away that would allow space for text in the photographs. SIH: What other media do you use or plan to use? Trik: I don’t paint. I sculpt. I draw. I sketch. I illustrate. I carve small birdhouses out of mozzerella for low income Swedish children to assist in the study of wild norwegian fowls. I love am obsessed with fashion magazines. Shallow meaningless expensive beauty wrapped in glossy perfumed stock. Presently I am in the process of finishing up a set of curtains and lampshades made from X-Rays. I did this x-ray technician a favor and she hooked me up with a whole bunch of 11x14 x-rays of people with gunshot wounds to the head and pierced body parts etc. SIH: When did you first start exploring your subject matter? Trik:When I started, I couldn’t afford models or lighting equipment so I would wander the aisles of these thrift stores in Tucson. Tucson has hundreds of thrift stores. I would spend my lunch money on these little quarter and dime toys that had been thrown away and practice with my camera on them. SIH: What has been people’s reaction to your work? Trik: Strange looks mostly. Weak forced smiles. Slow nodding, while stepping backwards. SIH: Tell me something fabulously random. Trik: Ventriloquist Monk with Touret Syndrome. A monk that moves through the hierarchy of monkdom by making it look like everyone else is doing the talking. I am hereby officially offering that idea to anyone who can come up with something to do with it. I have been meaning for years to do some sort of story line or comic about a Touret Monk but I just never have, so why keep the idea to myself? Free to anyone who wants it. SIH: You are very generous. What are you working on now? Trik: Beyond Paradise II. It is a fashion extravaganza that some girlfriends of mine threw last year that was phenomenal. It won the ALFA award for best fashion event of 1998 in New Orleans and it was like the best photographic material I had all year. SIH: Ok, we have to ask this ... who/what is your favorite author/book? Trik: A) Nueromancer trilogy by William Gibson. (I’ve completed the trilogy thrice!)I know it is so envogue yet geeky now and not very underground or special. Keanu Reeves has a way of spoiling things for everyone doesn’t he? And I can’t say I was one of the first to be a fan of Mr. Gibsons either since I was like in 3rd grade when the books came out. But his books are just my favorite. Virtual reality blending into spiritual reality just rocks my boat. B) My favorite movie, that came from a book, that I really should read is Dangerous Liasons. But I haven’t read it. So that doesn’t count. SIH: I’ll give you a copy of it. If you were a twee, what twee would you beee? Trik: Twentee-twee of course! SIH: Anything else you want to add? Trik: Yes. For the record I do not think Frank Zappa was a genius. I used to nod along with those who said he was just because I figured they knew more about music than I did. Well, I have come to the conclusion that Frank Zappa really isn’t very special. SIH: Thank you. You are excrutiatingly fabulous. Trik’s photography was featured as the cover page for last season’s volume 2 of Suffering Is Hip

Visit Trik’s site, www.9thward.com for more triks n’ treats and a real flavor of hip happenings in New Orleans. TRIXTER TECHNOLOGIES trik@9thward.com