We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Silver Kitsune a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Silver, thanks for joining us today. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?

Mostly the best way to learn art is to just… do it. The only “right or wrong” way to go about creating is if you are unsafe in your choice of methods, materials, or results. Art did not spring to life fully ready to be produced. There is no tree out there that produces, say, acrylic paint in tubes. Everything you know about how to make art is the result of years of R&D.

I started learning how to build costumes and props from a very young age but it was never something I had intended to pursue full time as a career. I think knowing what I do now, I would have focused on those subjects at university rather than pursuing the field that my degree is in. If nothing else, it would have saved me countless hours on Google trying to describe a particular fabric or technique that I didn’t know the formal name for!

I think the ability to conduct research is the most invaluable skill you can bring to the table as a creator. So often I see that US schools fail to teach the fundamental ability to *find what you’re looking for* and it’s honestly an essential skill in every facet of life.

On the flip side: formal education in general is extremely pricey in the US. Despite knowing that taking classes might help me develop and stretch myself further, it’s not a real option as a commission based creator.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I can give you my “official” biography first:

“An internationally published burlesque performer with a wide range of acts, Silver has been performing since 2010 on a variety of stages throughout the United States.
Spotted running wild in the mountains of North Carolina, this clever vixen was soon lured onto the stage with shiny objects and crunchy treats. They dived into burlesque in the same fashion that explorers have tackled uncharted wildernesses for millennia: because it looked like a hellova good time.
With a wildly creative mind, a rear of nigh callipygian perfection and an inability to recognize the phrase “can’t”, Silver has been taking leaps of artistic faith in their acts since they first set rhinestoned heels to stage.
Taking their name from the Japanese word for ‘fox’, Ms. Kitsune is an innovative performer who depends on their own mixed bag of dynamic artistic experience to bring about imaginative, ecdysiastic acts.
As graceful as their name, Silver spends their time off-stage battling the forces of boredom, refining their performances and nerding out over multiple fandoms.
Silver is the owner of The Bifrost Arts Collective and a founding member of The Flamingo Revue in Charlotte, NC. Dubbed ‘The Longhaul Trucker of Burlesque’ as one of their many nicknames, Silver goes where the stage beckons.”

Honestly, I never envisioned becoming a professional performer. I was in the band all through school and up into college, but I wasn’t a soloist by any means. I wasn’t a dancer, I didn’t have any specific feelings about working as a stripteaser, and I didn’t even wear make-up at all until I started performing. I kinda fell into the burlesque industry. I applied to a festival on a dare from my fiance and was hooked on the rush of a crowd the first time I set foot on stage!

Following those lines, I always knew how to sew. A combination of a highly artistic mother and years of 4-H taught me to that. I made jewelry fairly seriously from my pre-teens onward and even before that I was always making things, drawing, painting, writing, cooking, carving wood, etc… I was just a highly creative kid in general. I still can’t seem to feel good in my life if I don’t constantly have something creative going on. Once I got out on my own, I started by really throwing my all in to Halloween projects and leather-work, then I moved on the making dresses and costume pieces for my twin sister’s Renaissance Faire character, and then when I started performing I realized that everything I liked or wanted was going to be way out of my budget. So I started teaching myself how to do stage costuming. I had worked as a freelance copywriter/editor in college and after so it was very natural to apply that to my social media work as a performer/fabricator and then, in the last three years, as a producer. Once I started producing I realized that I’d need to learn graphic design so we could promote shows and products. During the pandemic, when most of the performer work stalled (which also means that no one was ordering costume commissions) I started teaching myself video production/editing which is another really fascinating aspect of modern performance production.

I would say that the ability to do be a jack of all trades is definitely my strongest suit as an artist. I can start something from a singular point and follow it through all the way to the end while still keeping the entire thing “in house” so to speak. It’s a really powerful feeling to have, that kind of multitude of hats in your possession.

That octopus style of work can be really challenging to describe to potential clients/employers, however! I like to joke that Silver Kitsune (performance entity), Foxy Fancies (fabrication company), and The Bifrost Arts Collective (production company) are like my own Holy Trinity. It can absolutely get overwhelming but it’s not really in my nature to be able to do only one of those areas of creation at a time.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

The mentality here in the US is that the arts are not a valid form of “serious” work. Unless you are some kind of superstar with your name on all the marquees, you aren’t really seen as having a “real job.” Which is a mindset I find baffling: after all, we constantly consume art. In our fashion, our media, our music, even down to the paint on our wall… all of that comes, first, from the mind of an artist. As a society I’d like to see three things come to the forefront of of the creative field:

1) I’d like to see artists actually valued for their work. Paid for their time, their energy, their effort. I want to see it become normalized that the value someone sets on their work is what it’s worth. That acting like a price is unreasonable is as inexcusable as trying to barter down the tag on a new car.

2) I would love to see a heavier emphasis placed on accessibility. The pandemic is still going, but post vaccine roll out, the enormous strides that were taken to put high quality digital content out there has taken a back burner. The arts industry is stuffed full of performers and audience members who benefited not only from sudden access to virtual shows, but also to things like subtitles. I’d love to see ASL interpreters added to shows without being a second thought. Venues rated for access as par for the course instead of an afterthought. Taking a few seconds to type in the Alt Text to social media posts… the list goes on.

3) Inclusivity as a matter of course instead of something that has to be re-learned over and over again. Humanity is a broad spectrum of everything from race to gender to ability and our art should reflect that. Especially in casting for the visual arts. People need to *see* themselves in art. We, as humans, have this deep longing to view ourselves in the things that move us, and without inclusivity, that is an basic part of existence that is continuously unmet for so many.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

I’ve definitely had to unlearn that everyone works at the same pace/is able to produce in the same way as myself.

I tend to think of myself as pretty much square one in a lot of ways. I don’t particularly view myself as being highly focused, driven, or on task (I was recently diagnosed with ADHD, which has definitely impacted my view of self and caused me to reassess a lot about my working life), and I don’t tend to see my knowledge base or abilities to be very remarkable. Unlearning that “everyone knows everything I do and I’m not really doing anything someone else can’t” outlook has been incredibly difficult. It’s not exactly a matter of self confidence, it’s more that I’ve always been surrounded by highly gifted and artistic people, so I never felt like I stood out to begin with. It was my normal.

It not only affects my working life -which, since I didn’t start out to be in the arts professionally, I tend to run more with the more rigid structure of an accountant than the more flexible ebb and flow of a creative- It also prevents me from seeing opportunities for myself to advance or expand because I didn’t have a realistic view of what only I could uniquely bring to the table.

It’s a work in progress.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://thesilverkitsune.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lesilverkitsune/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lesilverkitsune/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/lesilverkitsune
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZR-XVxY-psupK7P6253h7g
• Other: Foxy Fancies Shop: https://www.etsy.com/shop/FoxyFancies The Bifrost Arts Collective: https://thebifrostartscollective.com/

Image Credits
Charles Bailey RTSY Silver Kitsune SWR Stungun Photography