We were lucky to catch up with Wicked Wren recently and have shared our conversation below.

Wicked Wren, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you take us back in time to the first dollar you earned as a creative – how did it happen? What’s the story?

When I moved to LA, I was an intern. A man asked me to do a run to Trader Joes and buy peanut butter. As someone who enjoys peanut butter, I said, “fine by me”. The man requested “about 20 jars” and I was on my way to the Culver City TJs. I had never been inside of Trader Joes in my life, but there’s nothing about the store that really feels like a grocery store. It would be like if a lemon lacroix tried to tell you they were a lemonaid. TJ’s kinda more of a grocery accessory store. This is besides the point.

I arrive at the peanut butter section and unfortunately there are 4 options. peanut/no peanut + salt/nosalt. Wow. Do I do 5/5/5/5 to equal the 20 jars? Do I make a choice on what this man most likely likes? Do I make a choice on what I know in my heart is right?

I quickly rule out the no peanut salted option. You’d have to be a real sicko to get that. This guy is weird but he’s not that weird. The real meat of the issue presents itself: is he a chunky peanut butter guy? prolly not. if you’re doing chunky peanut butter you own that. This guy can’t handle chunky peanut butter.

Unfortunately this leaves me with smooth non salted. Wow. What does that say about me? He’s going to think I would choose 20 jars of smooth unsalted peanut butter for myself. About 20 minutes goes by and I decide on the 5/5/5/5 split.

Got back to the studio and he didn’t look happy with the result but he didn’t look unhappy.

The man paid me $13 to do this.

Wicked Wren, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m a vocalist, photographer, and I write about food. I unfortunately have a podcast and I even just got into that toothpaste that you kinda have to chew up. it’s like a tablet. It’s fine. Prolly works just as good but when it comes to tooth health, there’s sorta a power dynamic between us and the dentist ya know. There’s no way for us to really know.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I had a painting I was doing of a woman’s late cat. She loved the painting, but she kept having notes and notes and notes. This went on for months. She would nitpick about this one thing. This was frustrating since she loved the rest of the painting. She kept saying, “Jonsey wouldn’t smoke American Sprits, please remove that from the painting.” So i removed one of the packs from the table he was laying on. She comes back, “Please. remove the rest of the packs”. this back and forth goes on and on. I tell her outright, “this might be your cat, but this is my painting. and that cat looks like a smoker.” She looks at me and says, “…one cig… in his paw.” We shake on it I remove all the packs of American Spirits, while adding one tasteful cigarette in the paw.

She was happy, I was happy. The lesson learned here was to always ask this stuff ahead of time. This wasted about 3 and a half years that I will never get back.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

I really enjoy when folks see my art and then purchase it with their money. After they purchase it I receive the currency in my bank account and use that money for really anything. Recently someone gave me money and I used that money to buy lentils. I did the Kenji Lopez-Alt vegan lentil recipe, which is so good. I’m not vegan but I really try and eat vegan on the weekdays.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wickedwren
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@thecorncorner
• Other: https://wrenwords.substack.com/

Image Credits

Allan Amato