This week we were able to talk with Ettie Wahl, director and local creative who works around Seattle. She talked about her personal life and how it has steered her towards a career in film and has inspired her works. She told of how she came from a long line of painters, and although she is not one herself, she draws a lot of inspiration from her family line. She left us with a parting thought, the natural world oftentimes inspires us and those moments contribute to our story. She wanted us to sit with that memory and explore the feeling.
I would say that I find myself inspired by a myriad of experiences and am constantly inspired by the people I meet. I believe that being queer has allowed me to experience the world through a very different lens and introduced me to people who if I had not met, would have sent me on a very different path. Additionally, because I’ve lived all over the United States and abroad, I’ve met many queer people who have different ideas of queerness and what struggles they themselves have lived through. I think what I find most inspiring about these people is that although we have similar lived experiences, we live extremely different lives with different values.
A lot of my personal projects are centered around this idea of queerness not being as generalized as lets say a rainbow t-shirt at target. It is very nuanced and varies between economic class, region, and sub culture. When I’m working on something that represents a story that is not mine, I try to represent that emotions I feel or whoever feels and channel it into a visual form.