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

Aistė, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

Two of my most recent mural projects this past summer and fall were incredibly special for me. I have had the honor to create a 650+ sq ft public mural for the Phinney Neighborhood Association in Seattle and another large private mural at the Northwest School for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Children in Shoreline, WA. These projects were meaningful to me because I was given creative freedom to express myself using my own artistic style while using themes of Deaf Art (also known as Deaf View/Image Art or De’VIA), which is a form of art that expresses the Deaf experience from a cultural, linguistic, and intersectional point of view. Most of all, I got to do this in my community in Seattle with the support of volunteers, local artists, and ASL interpreters.

Both of these mural designs use the alphabet and signs from American Sign Language (ASL) in an abstract way nestled among Pacific Northwest landscapes and wildlife. My intention with these designs is to highlight the beauty of ASL and the Pacific Northwest’s environment, and inspire people to learn about Deaf culture and its many rich sign languages around the world (each country has a unique sign language). As a Deaf person who started to learn ASL in my late 20s, this new language liberated me in ways I had never imagined. ASL opened up doors to not only a new language but also to the Deaf community and a sense of belonging.

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

My name is Aistė Rye (she/her) and I am a Lithuanian-American, DeafQueer muralist and illustrator. I was born in Klaipėda and spent my childhood in Lithuania, immigrating to Chicago in 2000. I hold an M.A. in Emerging Media Design and Development and a B.A. in Journalism from Ball State University. My journey as an artist began after a studio art class field trip to the Art Institute of Chicago. After a career in environmental marketing, I pivoted to public art and illustration in 2021 when I became a Marketing Coordinator at Stonington Gallery, Seattle’s oldest gallery exhibiting Pacific Northwest Coast Native Art, while taking fine art classes at Seattle Central College. During this time, I started growing my business Aiste Rye Creative LLC, providing illustration, mural design, and therapeutic art services to small businesses, schools, and nonprofits in the Seattle Metropolitan Area.

As a DeafQueer woman raised in post-Soviet Lithuania and coming of age in America, I engage with the world from a position that transcends multiple cultural binaries. As a result, my LGBTQ+ and woman-owned business offers creative solutions that meet unique business needs and elevate a business’s brand and mission. Projects range from branding design for an online presence to refreshing an exterior or interior wall for a brick-and-mortar shop that attracts new customers and creates a sense of place. Aiste Rye Creative LLC is known for high-quality customer service and expertise in visual design with a marketing lens that supports business goals.

I am most proud of my latest public and private commissioned murals at the Northwest School for the Deaf & Hard of Hearing in Shoreline, WA and the 63rd St. Mural for the Phinney Neighborhood Association in Seattle. I have exhibited artwork at Slip Gallery in Downtown Seattle, Basecamp Studios in Seattle, the Belltown Art Walk in Seattle, and the Anderson Center in Kenosha, Wisconsin. I feel incredibly proud of the group show I got the opportunity to curate titled DEAFhood: Reflections on Identity and Deaf Culture at Slip Gallery in November 2022. This group exhibition of 11 Deaf and Hard of Hearing artists expressed the Deaf experience from a cultural, linguistic, and intersectional point of view (also known as Deaf View/Image Art or De’VIA) via paintings, graphics, photography, mixed media, and GIFs.

I currently live in Seattle and work from my art studio in the vibrant Belltown neighborhood. Please contact me for general inquiries, mural design, illustration, teaching opportunities, and fine art commissions at aisteryecreative.com.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

The most rewarding aspect of being an artist is the creativity and tools I can use to create beauty in the world and help others–whether it’s piquing curiosity to question beliefs or instilling inspiration to create.

The sense of belonging I feel as a result of my art community is also incredibly rewarding. The professional artist community in Seattle is fairly small for a big city but many artists here are happy to share resources and opportunities and support each other’s career paths. I’m grateful for my art community in Seattle’s Belltown neighborhood and for all of my artist friends, teachers, and mentors who have lifted me up to get to where I am today. You can’t become a successful artist alone. Community support is a key element to any artist’s success.

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

A big lesson I had to unlearn as an artist and entrepreneur is people pleasing, and the idea that you must live your life according to society’s and other people’s expectations of you.

Since I was in college, I followed the safe path of what others wanted for me or what I understood as the “right” path. I continued to ignore my intuition of wanting to be a professional artist (since high school!) and justified other paths as more practical due to the opinions of the people who influenced me the most and society’s cliché perception of the “starving artist.” As a Deaf person, financial security has always been on my mind as not all work environments are accessible and supportive of Deaf people’s communication needs. This scarcity-based thinking and negative beliefs all caught up to me in my late 20s when I landed what I thought was my 9-5 “dream job” only to realize a year later that I still felt unfulfilled, burned out, and depressed. The money wasn’t worth it. I felt incredibly frustrated because I couldn’t think of any other career that felt fulfilling… until I started listening to my intuition.

Once I quit my 9-5 job, it took a couple of years to feel comfortable living a lifestyle that doesn’t follow the traditional work schedule. I had to unlearn the idea that “my level of income equals success” and had to redefine what success looks like for me personally–not what it looks like for others. I was quick to learn that we live in a society that doesn’t always financially value art equally to other essential fields. Yet, art is a necessity for mental health, happiness, and overall human survival. Since the beginning of human existence, art has allowed us to understand what it means to be human, to voice and express ourselves, and to bring people and ideas together. Art and creativity are essential to human existence.

Don’t get me wrong, the entrepreneurial path is not an easy one and looks different for everyone. There are many ups and downs and requires you to be adaptive, curious, creative, flexible, patient, and savvy. There is a lot of unlearning and inner work to do. But it’s a path worth taking if you are open to taking risks and if the work you do aligns with your values and gives you a sense of fulfillment and purpose in the world.

Like the poet Erin Hanson said, “There is freedom waiting for you, on the breezes of the sky. And you ask, ‘What if I fall?’ Oh, but my darling, ‘What if you fly?’”

Contact Info:

• Website: www.aisteryecreative.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aiste.rye.art/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aiste-rye/

Image Credits
Tatyana Kurepina Alicia Diamond