I think being on that other side of understanding though, like how to run a meeting, how to write notes that are very clear in creating a project timeline, getting a deck set up, understanding who are the power power holders in a team, understanding how to pitch all that stuff. I learned all of that being in a corporate background. And when I decided to fully freelance and become an independent artist, all those skills really came into play. But like, of course the artist side of me was like, “All right, how can we create new systems that are both efficient and life giving”? So I feel like I was able to kind of see the ingredients, take the pieces that felt right, and then modify it in a way that's supportive of my life and the people that I work with. So I'm taking it both as a win and a loss. But I think it was helpful for my journey, for sure.

If you were someone like that, knowing everything that you know now, what would you do to get started?

I love that question so much. First, mentorship is the thing I would recommend the most. I think mentorship gives so much, gives you so much power and also a realistic point of view of what journey you're about to embark on. And I don't think anyone can succeed alone. Definitely not. I have had so many mentors throughout this journey, and I credit all of them for all the things that I know, even how to set up certain spreadsheets, how to plan a year of projects, like all these different things that I would have not known if I just Googled it. Like I would not have known the real world applications of it. I could YouTube how to make a spreadsheet, but like, what's the purpose of that? To create an art practice. If I don't know an artist doing that? So if I was younger, I think I would definitely recommend seeking out mentorship opportunities. There's so many women focused, AAPI focused mentorship programs out there because there's people like us who are like the older siblings who are like, We need this for the next generation. So I would definitely recommend mentorship because that shows you. All right. What aspect of the industry do I actually want to do? Is that desire? Is it graphic design? Is it packaging design? Is it art direction and advertising? There's so many pathways, but you wouldn't know that right away. Hey, and then from there I recommend YouTube. Honestly, I still go on YouTube to learn technical skills all the time. Pay $10 workshops once in a while to have accountability and it's live. You can learn new skills that way. And also a lot of it is collaborating with other designers. That's what this(ArtCee) is all about, right? So yeah, get your friend from high school to do a photoshoot in the back!

When it comes to you and your mentors, because it sounds like you had a lot of amazing mentor relationships, how did you go about even starting that conversation?

That's a great question. I've done it in all kinds of ways. In the beginning of my career, obviously I didn't have as much audacity, so I just sort of waited for people to come to me and that could work to a certain point. But in how I I'll just give certain examples of how it happened for different mentors. So in my first advertising job as a designer/art director, I had a senior copywriter and a senior designer who would always watch out for me. I didn't ask for it, but I think a big part of it was because I was one of the two P.O.C. kids in the intern group and they were also people of color in the advertising agency. So shout out to them. I still text them to this day and they're still like, “Loisse, you deserve more money”, you need those people in your life.

Honestly, you need people to be telling you, reminding you to know your worth, and then to tax too, especially if you're freelancing or writing at your service as a business. So in that situation, I am so thankful for them. But I actually was also part of this internship program called Multicultural Advertising Internship Program. They had a rigorous application process. So there's different levels of entry to different mentorship programs. But this one was particularly intensive. We had to do a video, we had to do an application to interviews. It was pretty rigorous, but they would basically guarantee you internship positions at the top agencies all over the US in advertising. And to this day, the alumni are still very tight, like the cohorts still meet up, etc. So if you meet people out there, say hi, thank you. So one of those, the senior copywriter, was a product of MAPE so he watched out for me. The other senior designer was the one who looked at my portfolio and was like, “Let's hire her”. And so it sort of just naturally became that they would schedule check-ins with me once a week and they would just ask like, “How are you doing? Is there any way we could make things better for you?” And they didn't have to do that. They were not required to do that. So you older people with established careers and industries, reach out to the young ones because they're the ones they're kind of scared and nervous and you just have to make the first step and maybe they'll really, really, really benefit from it. So those two, that is sort of a very structured one. But recently I got mentorship from a Filipina badass, Gina Mariko, she's based in San Francisco. She owns her own events company and she does community events all over San Francisco. And I was like, Who is this woman? I like Stargazer on Google. I think she knows this. And I saw all her, all her different websites and was like, I need to talk to her. I'm in this phase of creating my own business structure and like, I don't know how to do this exactly, but I know this is my next step. And so I was working for a nonprofit at the time who was creating a mentorship program where you would just tell them who you wanted as your mentor and they would connect you if they knew them. And so I told them, like, “Do you know Mariko?”, and then we had a professional mentorship relationship for about a year. It was scheduled, and she was paid once a month. We'd have an hour to talk and consult and then we wrapped that up. We became friends, we hung out in the bay and she hired me for her POC Food and Wine Festival out in the Bay. I did the branding for that with her. And so and to this day, we just text once in a while to see, “what things are you doing?” Where can I help like that? And I think the biggest part of keeping mentorship relationships is just to treat them as a great person and excuse me, be kind and also pay attention to what they're doing and add to that rather than constantly feeling like you have to take from this mentor because they're people too. They don't want to feel like you're always taking from them. And also if they give you advice, use it. People have sought advice from me and then they never use it. And it is really sad and exhausting to constantly repeat that. I wanted to give insight on both sides because I've been a mentor and a mentee. But there have been times where I just like them on Instagram and I just start commenting on their posts, then we start DMing and then we become sort of mutuals, and then we become friends. Then I travel to where they are, and then we hang out and then we do a project that's sort of like, “gosh, I guess she signed up!”.

Going back to somebody who might be looking to either start or establish a creative or artistic journey for themselves, would you recommend it for somebody who maybe is interested in art, or just doing art as a hobby? Would you recommend going into corporate or getting a creative job, or do you think that there are still other ways to succeed as an artist without having an official corporate title? 

This is such a great question because it shows how diverse our needs as people are, and my answer will not work for everyone. To me, I don't think you have to have a corporate background at all to succeed in design. I also don't think you need a university degree to feel qualified to call yourself a designer. All it is you go to a room and learn things, right? You can do that anywhere as long as you have good teachers. So to me, I think the biggest support that I had starting out was having a community of people who were just as passionate about it, who were training themselves, who were learning things outside of the classroom, who were going out to meet and have coffee with these creatives outside of the industry. They were the ones going to art shows, art galleries, etc., and really putting themselves out there in the ways that they could to learn about the industry and also meet people in the industry. That's exhausting, of course, So you have to take care of yourself in this process because you can very easily chase after what everyone else is chasing and not check in with what you actually want.So to me, I think it's more important to find a creative community around you who is super inspiring and super ambitious also, but keeping in mind wellness, that's my always asterisk because creatives could burn themselves out very, very easily. So long story short, no, you do not need a corporate background, you don't need a university degree. But it's really important to stay consistent, have good people around you and check in with yourself about where you're going. And then you just do that over and over and over. Something will happen and something will happen. It will happen. It always does. 

When it comes to finding a creative community, start with us(ArtCee), where we're a platform that is designed to just not only for you to not only find opportunities as an artist/creative, but to also create those opportunities to initiate those collaborations and for everyone to be able to find each other and help each other out, and it be a mutually beneficial growth in everyone's journeys. And so I absolutely love just from our side that your answer was community and collaboration, right?

Yes, I always like to say this is going down. I always like to imagine if I lived in a pre-colonial village setting, how would I still be an artist? I ask myself that and I think I still would because in our hearts and I think we in our minds and our hearts and our bodies, we tend to gravitate to the things we really resonate with. And so I think in those times, there weren’t universities, there were no corporate offices, there were no music festivals, there is no like all these constructed definitions of success about being an artist that didn't exist. And I think how would I have learned? I would have learned from the other artists in my village. I would have had to practice and go out into the woods and find materials. I would have had to lean on other people's knowledge for me to learn. I think it's the same thing now, and we're driven by that innate feeling that we need to create. So I like to think of it that way.

Can you talk a little bit about how your background, your heritage influences your art? Tell us what's your background!

I am a Cebuana. I was born in Cebu, in the Philippines, and so I identify as Cebuana and Filipina and Filipino-American. Depending on the crowd, really. Cultural identity and labels is its own story. The difference between saying I’m a Cebuana and Filipina is that a lot of it is really giving honor to my family. I would say in the background that I had, which really still involves my day to day. So I grew up in Cebu City and I would go to the province a lot in Balamban and see my dad's side of the family. And I just draw so much inspiration and power from my relatives. And so to acknowledge exactly where we're from, I think is really important and to realize that I am connected to a very real family tree because we are so disconnected here in the US that it's super important for me, like you said, the power of words. So Cebuana is very intimate to me and then Filipina to me. It is more so like drawing power from our shared cultural identity. What better, more that is more broad and more about our global identity in the world. So like when I say that I identify with like, our country's issues, our cultural things, our toxic behavior, our good behavior, all those things, and then Filipino American is that label to me is more identifying that I have a privilege. The homeland Filipinos are not able to claim. And so I can never say in in a let's say like I'm in a boardroom of home homeland Filipinos who are talking about their experience, etc., I'm never going to say I am from here too. I'm a Filipino that's grown up here for my whole life. Like, I cannot say that. And I could never understand the struggles of that. And so Filipino American is more just to understand that I have a lot of privilege growing up and with the access that I did, but also acknowledging we have a Filipino-American history as well, like we had to fight to also stay here and be here, that Homeland Filipinos also don't understand. And that's okay. We just have different backgrounds. 

Let's talk about Miss Life is Beautiful muralist over here! Life Is Beautiful is an annual music festival that is held in downtown Vegas or downtown Las Vegas, and Loisse had the incredible honor of last year in 2023! Can you just talk a little bit more about that experience and about your art and inspiration behind what you decided to paint?

Well, what a story this one is! First, in terms of getting the opportunity, this is how important community is. So Randall, who Sunshine knows, is another amazing creative creator here in Las Vegas. He was the one who was like, “I see your work. I think it would be perfect for this opportunity”. So they did a call for artists and he was the one who put the application literally in front of me and was like, “Loisse, apply to this!” I would not have known because I'm a newcomer to Vegas and still getting my feet wet, understanding the culture out here. And so for him being like, “Do it.”, so I did. And in terms of coming up with the idea, there was a whole process, of course, where we collaborated with the organizers and they were like, “These are your parameters. This is like a ten by ten or eight by eight wall. It's going to be in the middle of the grounds.” That's where my design background rolls in. And also my corporate background was like, “All right, these are the parameters, these are the deliverables, deliverables, those, right? Like, what are we delivering? What is the timeline, how are we going to do this, etc.? What's the budget?” And making sure it had all those in a row. Because for me, I create my art best when I understand and like the context of it. And so the biggest part of this is the idea of like, “What do I make for a music festival?” This is actually also my first mural. So this was kind of a tall order. I've done large scale graphics before, but they were always printed but never like me out there painting. So I knew I needed to have something that was really close to my heart. If my hands were making it, I'm like lugging paint. They're like, It has to be something I'll still love from beginning to the end. So actually came up with the idea on a plane, in an airplane, as you do, as you do right on the way to New York City, because I used to live there and I see my friends there a lot and I host events there.

And I had like a lot of pressure in my head, like I need to come up with an idea like this awesome opportunity. I can't like, I can't do this wrong. And I had a totally separate idea of doing posters and just pacing them onto the wall. yeah, that was my initial idea. Yeah, because I love posters. But I knew that was a comfort, a solution. I knew that was not true to what I wanted to do. So on the plane, I was going through a lot at the time as well, and I often seek out insight from my past relatives just whether I think of their memory, what they've said to me in the past, and specifically the two that came to mind is my Aunt Paulette and my Lola, Lola, Palda and these two women hover over my head all the time whenever I'm going through things. And during that time I just kept imagining them like even before me being on this plane. And I would always like, think, what would they do? What would they do? Like, what encouragement would they say to me right now? And then on the plane I was like, “Wait, what if I just paint them?” And I was again thinking of my parameters, people are out here trying to get photos. That's what they want, right? They want something that feels connected to them. They want to feel centered in their experience of going to the music festival. And they also want to feel good about themselves because they're like decked out and like, really like people's outfits are always so colorful, etc.. Like, I was thinking about that. So the symmetry of my tita and Lola was this perfect to like frame the humans. They're like on the ground. Yeah. And I was like, almost like, Look, this is how I feel. I hope you feel this too, with this painting. And so, yeah, that's how I landed with the hands hovering over you. And you can stand right in the middle. And I made sure the scale of them would be so, like, large and, like, you can feel them sort of going around you and I. And then in the center, you can take your photo, do whatever you need to. I had clouds kind of like surrounding you that were backlit, so I could have that more of like that ethereal feeling, and showing this connection of heaven and earth in a way. The spiritual plane, the earthly plane. I wanted to cross those.

And then you brought your mom, right? I saw that you brought your mom to her first music festival. How was it for her?

I think she had a lot of fun. Yeah, I brought my mom there, and crazy- her hair. She has both a lot of white and black hair. And in my painting there's sort of a streak in the hair that's a different color from like most of the hair. And then when I was looking at my mom and her side view, she has the same streak of like, black hair against the way. It wasn't intentional, but she was matching. And I was like, this is insane. Like just being able to bring my mom to a project, especially because we used to live far away from each other like she can go and enjoy it and like, look at the art herself. Like, that was such a moment. Literal, full circle, ancestral. I was just like, “This is the matriarchs just watching over me right now, including the one that's right in front of me.”

You talked about how you went to school for design, then you had your whole corporate girly era, and now you're full time entrepreneurship. What's your business called?

So it's called Geez Loisse Studios. Yeah, she's an LLC!

Before we move on to that a little bit, can you talk about how important it is for freelancers? If you think it is for freelancers to consider just starting a business?

For freelancers, for anyone who is a creative & wants to start freelancing, I think a big part of it is understanding that you're going to build your own systems and that can be both exciting and really overwhelming at the same time. But just know that you can figure it out on the way. That's sort of what I did. And also knowing that I need help is a big part of it because a lot of the time, when we don't know something, we just avoid it until it becomes an issue later. And one of those things when I first started was like, how much do I charge as a freelancer? I don't have a salary anymore. And I thought that I would have to just like, I won't talk about this. I should hide this hourly rate thing, or hide my rates basically until I figure it out. But then I realized, wait, I could talk to a financial advisor and they could tell me how much I should charge. And what I did was I looked at free financial advising online and they had a free consultation. And in that one hour the advisor was like, as a freelancer, you just have to pay 30% taxes, account for insurance, account for this, account for that. She had a calculator spreadsheet and she doubled my hourly rate from what I thought I should have been charging. And this was like, really? I need to be charging almost $100 an hour. That's a crazy number at that time. Especially because I was like, No, I'm just doing this for fun. And because she empowered me with facts and figures, I was like, Yeah, why would I not charge this? Like, why would I pay for someone to pay me? At the end of the day, if I charge $30 an hour, all that money would go to taxes. Months, I'd get paid $5. That's less than minimum wage. Yeah. And so when you account for the systems that are in the world, I think you feel more empowered to, like, either charge more or set up like a different business system, a different way of accounting for your projects, etc., and not be afraid because it's based in reality too. So just know when you start. It'll be a lot of confusion and a lot of unknowns, but just ask for help along the way.

Geez Loisse Studios now has a merch line! Tell us more about how you got inspired to start a merch line for your brand.

Honestly, in terms of how I landed on Geez Loisse Studios, was that I didn't want to work alone anymore. So most of the time freelancers are solopreneur is right, or you do one service and that's all you do for at least the majority of your time. And I knew that I wanted to make systems that allowed me to do other things beyond graphic design. And so I've always loved merch, I've always loved music, merch drops for my favorite artists. I love going to concerts, I love streetwear in general, and I have been testing with merch ever since I've been in college. I took a screen printing class and have loved it ever since. So it was sort of a natural evolution to be like, Guys, look, this is beyond me now. This is a thing that we all can attach our own meaning to. You could wear it for your workouts, wear it for yourself, wear it for your cool outfit. Like, I just want to be part of people's lives in a different way, aside from just art and painting. And so I usually do studios. So it really is sort of like my jumping off point to try all kinds of different things. I'm really excited to hire other people to get on the goal of adding color to the community, which is my home countries’. So all the colorful baddies out there let me know if you need to work on something together.

I just found this out, do we have a former Thespian over here? Is it even former? Because once you're in, you're in for life, right?

I just want to say theater changed my life, period. And I want to start this story by going back to when I was like eight years old. And even then I was like, I want to be a fashion designer. I already have that in my mind. I wanted to be a creative. But the whole asterisk on that was, I hate public speaking. I had stage fright. I had such social anxiety at that age. And I was like, If I could be a fashion designer, but if somebody, somebody else could explain my ideas, that would be great. But in school and this is why arts in schools is amazing and should continue to get funded is we would do plays in elementary school and once I played like a book, I book for some reason, if I only had to sing and like have a script, the social anxiety went away and that sort of continued even into high school where I did theater for three years. Of the four years I only did not do the freshman year because I had social anxiety about it. And I was like, I look up to the Lord, Yeah, sorry. I mean, you're going to a new school, you crushed me. And shout out to my older sister, who is the one who, like, literally pushed me into the audition room and got me started. The first audition was “Much Ado About Nothing” to the class. Then we did the Odd Couple, which is Seussical.  We did a girl version and a guy version. I was one of the two in the couple. yeah. So fun. But my favorite was Gertrude McFuzz. I was a bird in love with Horton the Elephant. I painted the sets, I made their costumes because we were very scrappy, but I was able to touch all these creative, artistic things, and work on my public speaking and my delivery and seeing like it was just like theater. It was like my playground. And when we would have warm ups, it's like, “Project! Project! Enunciate!” like pronounce routines, right? Like that taught me how to be a better speaker and gave me like we were talking about it, the audacity to speak and use my voice loudly in rooms when I felt like I was supposed to be in the background. So that was really a bootcamp Again, foundational. Yeah. And now it comes out during karaoke, but that's really all we got to go. We got a lot of Asian time then, you know, say less say less. But theater changed my life. Shout out to Miss Moon, who was my director all those years. She changed a lot of people's lives. 

You may or may not have heard this question before, but if your life was a movie or a musical, what would your opening song be?

You know, maybe think about like if you walked into a room, my God, what would that song be?

That's hilarious. That's a good question, actually. Good Morning, Baltimore from Hairspray. I think that song just captures how your view of life shifts your mood because she's literally dancing with rats! So it makes me so joyful. And even like in the scene, it's infectious. I love that song. I think that's me.

Tell us where we can find you. What kind of people do you want to work or collaborate with? 

Yes. I would love to collaborate with both businesses, organizers and artists and arts and cultural institutions like museums, etc., who are really excited to give art to their community and make meaning that way. So I've worked on creating posters for plays that are about racial, racial, generational trauma. I have made art about the border. I'm talking about immigration issues, but I've also made art about just joy,love and family. So anything in that breadth like if you really love color and boldness and vibrancy, like I'm your girl, please email me. Yeah, you can find me on ArtCee and geezloisse.com. So I don't know if you can see the spelling of leaves that come and you can see all the work that I've done so far and more. And I'm also on Instagram @geezloisse. 

Thank you again for joining us. If you have any final thoughts, feel free to share. 

Well, just keep supporting ArtCee, there is so much heart and intention that has come into this work. So just know that this is built on so much love for the community. It's not just like a business that is just passing through like this is rooted, so please support them.