SOON, issue 9: Kiera Coffee is 'Taking Care'
Kiera Coffee answers the 'Taking Care' questionnaire: "I can get very suspicious of advice."
Welcome to Something Out of Nothing, a newsletter about meaning—making it, finding it, offering it. I talk about the writing life, teaching, thrifting, books, travel, obsessions and idle interests, and much more.
‘Taking Care’ is a questionnaire about how we manage our inner and outer lives as creative people. A few months back, I stumbled on artist & writer Kiera Coffee’s apartment tour over on the Homeworthy channel on YouTube, and I fell hard for her delightfully particular devotion to making functional items beautiful through crafting and art-making. (That ugly hand cream jar that lives on her coffee table? Transformed! Through paper mache!) Kiera’s Brooklyn apartment, and the quietly merry way she led us through it (revealing, for example, the hidden scissors magnetized under the kitchen table, always ready for materials), kept me rapt with adoration.
Kiera Coffee is a New York City-based set designer and author. She has spent many decades writing about design for a variety of national magazines and blogs. Naturally curious about what makes visual life compelling, Kiera has published a wide variety of interviews and articles, including an investigation into how female prisoners decorate their jail cells, how adult-baby fetishists outfit their nurseries, where ruffled bed skirts originated. She has recently co-authored a monograph with Todd Oldham about the designer Alexander Girard called Let the Sun In. Some of her writing and set designs can be found on kiera-coffee.com. Also, her meandering art projects and mail-art endeavors can be found on Instagram @Kieracoffee.
Kiera! What’re you working on?
I’m working on a kid’s book about shadows. Shadows are some of the natural world’s best magic tricks so I find them a rich topic. I’m collaborating with a photographer and hopefully it will be an inspiring, unique, and beautiful book. In my spare time as I walk around NYC, I find myself creating alphabets out of litter I find on the street shaped like letters.
What is something you once thought about yourself that you no longer do?
I used to think I knew a lot. So much. As I got older, my view of the world widened and I realized I knew very little. Our hormones make us feel full of ourselves when we are young, make us itch to share, burn with intensity. I am still a product of my hormones (they have taken on a new color) but also I have matured. Once I got out of my way and saw how expansive the world was, I knew I’d never know the half of it.
What’s a habit or behavior that feels like taking care of yourself?
I am a creature of non-habits and love breaking rules. I can never join a gym because as soon as I do I get an exciting urge to never go there, to defy the agreement. Sometimes making my bed feels like self-care and other days not making my bed feels like self-care. That said, I have been in therapy for more than 30 years. It is important to my well-being.
How do you prepare yourself to write about or work on particularly challenging subjects?
For every project, I do necessary research, but I have learned to do very little mapping out of structure or emotional intent. Creativity is a process and for me, I do my best work only while I’m doing it. Not everyone is like this. Whenever I try to plan or prepare too much, everything goes to pot as soon as I begin, so really my prep work is to be skilled and practiced at the outset.
I once visited a women’s prison to interview a few prisoners about the environment of their jail cells. I ran a writing workshop while I was there, which I prepared for because you have to plan a class, don’t you. I also prepared a list of interview questions for one-on-one sessions with some of the women—I planned to turn those into the text for my article. I quickly saw that every writing exercise and every question I prepared was wrong. The tone was wrong or the topic irrelevant because I had no idea what those women felt or what prison was like. I realized in a few moments that I would never, as an outsider, know this experience. The best thing I could do was scrap my plan and listen. I learned to kind of, I don't know, grow extra ears, on that trip. It’s something I’ve used ever since. Artists must grow the largest ears possible and keep them open whenever possible. I did not publish an interview with those prisoners, I published their own writing, that seemed like the only fair thing to do. Every night after our writing class sessions ended, I drove furiously down a pitch black desert highway to get to my hotel (the speed limit was high in New Mexico but I exceeded it). I could have driven for hours. (P.S. I didn’t write the intro to that article, that got tacked on later without my knowledge.)
How do you recover after doing intense creative work?
I’m still learning this. Walking helps me release the intensity of a project sometimes. Being with other people also helps me. Maybe more important is the need to take small breaks during a creative process. When I manage to remember this, I’m better off at the end. Why wait until the work is over to pay attention to myself, doesn’t that sound stupid?
What self-care advice rings false for you?
Anything with a number in it, like “The 3 ingredients you need for good skin.” I hate for a complex thing like self-care to be reduced to numbers. I started following this woman on Instagram who gives advice about facial massage (face reflexology) and at first I loved her videos that showed where to massage a face to improve digestion, or whatever else. But then because she looked so serene and happy (who can be that serene) and because she was quite young, I started thinking, does she really know that this works or is she just repeating what she’s been taught? Has she seen the results of all of this work? Has she experienced the effects of face reflexology on ALL of these maladies? I can get very suspicious of advice.
How do you manage the way ambition feels?
This seems like a question with much subtext for you but I’m not sure what you’re asking. I don’t try to manage my feelings about ambition.
How can you tell when you’re coming up on burnout?
This is really clear for me. When every effort I make starts to sound bad or look bad, I’m burned out. Sometimes I can see it early, change tacks and reinvigorate the experience. But if that doesn’t work, I’m already a burnt crisp and I need to stop. If a job doesn’t allow for stopping, I try to get others to help. If that isn’t possible, I cannot do a great job and I start flubbing things, making things worse. That’s part of life; we get tired, miss the signs of no return, get pummeled by a deadline. I have plenty of artwork out there that I have ruined. So does everyone else. It’s okay.
What level of “seize the day” are you?
That phrase probably means different things for different people. I have waves of great enthusiasm for my own and other people’s ideas. When I’m alive with excitement, I try to move persuasively, do as much as I can, annoy people with my enthusiasm even, do ten things at once, go and go, knowing that some of what I’m doing or proposing or asking for might look embarrassing later. Those times are fun. Then, predictably, the wave ebbs and I have hours, days, or weeks of not seizing anything, of epitomizing seizelessness.
What’s the playlist of late?
I’ve been revisiting some Alice Coltrane music (that song Going Home is on repeat) for her very optimistic sound, some of which seems dated now but I even like that about it. Also I’m listening to shoe-gaze-y bands like Sack & Blumm, Laurel Halo, during my yoga routine which is slow and long and I need music that does not inspire me to jiggle to a beat but to stay still.
What are some forms of care that you’re discovering, or want to try?
I am always rediscovering that it is a good idea to like myself. Love myself even. I need constant reminding, it’s not a natural state for me but it’s seemingly vital. That’s a joke, of course it’s so vital! I also want to learn Tai chi, I like that it involves motion, and some nuanced dancerly skills, and I think I wouldn’t judge myself while doing it.
What is comforting to you?
Being in a room that is very near to a room where loved ones are talking and laughing. I can hear them but I am by myself in this room. That is true bliss.
Any stuff you’d like to shout out?
I have a book coming out on Oct 8th called Let the Sun In (Phaidon). It is about the extraordinary artist and designer Alexander Girard. I was the main author and collaborated extensively with lead designer of the project, Todd Oldham.
I am also finishing a novel, Old Maid, which portrays a complex woman in her late eighties who, in navigating the last chapters of her life revels in a flair for absurd drama, willfully gulps down large doses of denial, and participates very little in society’s idea of elderly people.
Are *you* a creative person? Or do you want to recommend someone for this series? Message me or email directly: asopkin@gmail.com.