Repost: Magical Quarantine Project

This is a repost from my old blog. After a year of living through a pandemic, it’s nice to see what we were up to last year.

Soooo, I said I was going to make a video to explain this, but I just haven’t had the time.  So I thought I’d take a few minutes to write it out instead. 

When the quarantine started, a bunch of artists and photographer friends encouraged others to keep creating and to not let being shut down be a reason to not do great work.  They were tagging everything with #createnomatterwhat.  That’s a good one!

To not get myself down during the quarantine, I dug deep into my playlist.  I got a surge of my favorite 90’s Mexican pop music.  Oh yeah!  Somewhere in there “La Calle de las Sirenas” by Kabah popped up.  I LOVE THAT SONG!  It’s the song of a whole Hispanic and Latino generation!  It especially reached out to me during that time because it spoke of this magical world. 

That day I played the song once.  Then again.  And again.  And I kept playing it for God knows how many times.  I’d say no less than 75 times.  Every time I played it, something kept happening to my brain.  I kept thinking of, “How can I create this world?” Because, hello?  What’s the point of me being a graphic designer and photographer if I don’t create the world I want to see?

So, I put together my ideas.  Within a couple of days I had my plan mapped out.  I was going to create photo scenes for the lyrics of this song.  

I started with a scene I planned for Aria.  I wanted to reference the cheesy star cutouts from the original music video, but from there I wanted it to be Jessica Alexander magic all the way.  You can view the video HERE (Hello 90’s weirdo fabulousness!).

Then, putting aside my own lack of confidence, I turned myself into a mermaid sprinkling stardust to the world. 

I think we did good!  So now I need to get down & dirty and do my scenes for the rest of the song.  I’ve already got the plan, I just need to do it.  I’m so excited about this project! You know, because in a world where we can be anything, I choose to be magical!