We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful APRIL BLEAKNEY. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with APRIL below.
APRIL, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?
A bit on my background: I graduated from Kent State University with dual degrees (BFA in Fine Art, Printmaking/Serigraphy focus and a BA in History) at the height of the Great Recession in 2008 and it was rough out there for a recent grad. I worked a year of national service as an Americorps VISTA, followed by a few other nonprofit management roles in Youth Development. It was so hard to make ends meet at that time, I worked multiple jobs at once that left me stressed out, broke, and unhappy. All of this set the stage for me to take the plunge to starting my own creative business, APE MADE, in 2011. While I have officially been a self-employed artist and screen printer since then, I started making and selling APE MADE products as far back as 2009. The business began with both art and apparel, before the clothing line organically morphed into the focus due to commercial success. I continued to create personal work and exhibit, even while at the height of the merch-based end of the business. However, at about five years in, I made the conscious decision to intentionally shift my energies back into the fine art realm – focusing on public art, murals, commissions, residencies, and more personal work. I still create both art and apparel, but have made art my priority in recent years.
APRIL, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
Over the past 15 years, I’ve operated primarily as a one-woman creative business, with screen printing as my core, but with a breadth of experience and dabbling in both other printmaking methods, photography, and mixed media work. I am an analog woman in many ways and true to form, utilize only eco-friendly hand printing techniques in my studio while championing handmade and traditional processes. I believe in purpose-driven printmaking and share the love of this art form through teaching, public and community-based art projects, commissions and artist residencies. I am intentional in leveraging my business and my art in support of local social justice charitable organizations and fundraising efforts.
Thematically, my work often reflects the personal and the political. I have developed an artistic practice rooted in social consciousness and community engagement, always with an eye to the past and a hopeful wish for the future. My foundation in history is often utilized in artworks, whether through research or inclusion of historic imagery and stories. My love of photography is also paramount; I employ photographic elements within my artworks as figurative components, textures, or abstracted layers. I’d describe my aesthetic as bold, gritty, textural, loaded with meaning and layering. I sometimes supplement works with painting, drawing, collage, and stencil. I am increasingly drawn to these types of pieces for the fluidity and texture they bring juxtaposed with the hard flats brought by screen. With these techniques, I create intriguing and often highly detailed, textural visual tapestries with unexpected use of color, form, scale and pattern.
In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?
Pay artists for their time and talent, we see widespread devaluation of artists and creatives so often in our culture (asking for their time, labor, and work for free). If you’re able, provide physical space and opportunities for local artists. Always tag and give credit to artists when sharing their work.
Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?
Yes, loads!
Here are just a few that helped me guide my artistic and life path:
The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity, Julia Cameron (book)
Learning By Heart: Teachings to Free the Creative Spirit, Corita Kent and Jan Steward (book / workbook)
Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, Robin Wall Kimmerer (book)
Ava DuVernay’s Masterclass: “Reframe Your Thinking”
We Will Not Cancel Us: And Other Dreams of Transformative Justice, adrienne maree brown (b0ok)
Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype, Clarissa Pinkola Estés (book)
The Creative Fire: Myths and Stories on the Cycles of Creativity, Clarissa Pinkola Estés (book)
Grit: Passion, Perseverance, and the Science of Success, Angela Duckworth (book + TED talk)
The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness, Pema Chödrön (book)
Making Your Life As An Artist, Andrew Simonet (book / workbook)
A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster, Rebecca Solnit (book)
The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations, Toni Morrison (book)
You Can’t Be Neutral On a Moving Train: A Personal History Of Our Times, Howard Zinn (book)
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.apebleakney.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/apemade/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/apemade
Image Credits
The first image of me printing was shot by Daniel Lozada. All others are mine.