We recently connected with Jay Orellana and have shared our conversation below.

Jay, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s talk legacy – what sort of legacy do you hope to build?

I have a deep yearning and appreciation for the practice of documentation. My work is submerged in the act of preservation of nightlife, hills and valleys of personal growth, queer life, family and the communities I am physically a part of. I only pray my essence, what I do, how I lived, my work, will help string the lines of legacy lost through poverty, queerphobia and racism to the future. So much is lost and will never be recovered again. Perhaps, just maybe, I can either move culture forward and be apart of new lineages.

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

For the majority of my life, I was heavily pushed to find work that was pragmatic and rooted in certainty. I won’t get into the nuances of being first gen and poor, but it had a whole lot to do with that. Fast-forward to me working throughout college, finding utter and complete despair at my job at a hospital. In a fury of annoyance, I ran to a nearby Bloomingdales and chatted up the MAC manager, pleading with/urging (posturing with a confidence I didn’t really have) her to take a chance with me and hire me. I had no super strong inkling toward makeup that I was aware of (later on it all kind of clicked for me that I’ve always been obsessed with the process of transformation, aesthetics and storytelling). For me, there was no inspirational I’ve-wanted-to-do-makeup-since-birth, just curiosity and a willingness to try everything in life out. My desire to ‘try everything in life out,’ is undoubtedly rooted in being powerless of knowing my own histories or not being able to experience things according to my whims. I grew up extremely religious, am Salvadoran which has its own loss of history (I don’t know a single salvadoran who can trace their family tree past 2 or 3 generations, and queer (need I explain how much queer history has been expunged from history?) Anyway, I thought I’d be a cashier. Turned out I had my first makeup appointment an hour into my first shift.
While a natural affinity for color matching was helpful, my journey was definitely riddled with questions to my peers and a willingness to take it in. Time passed and I began taking drag, which I had only done casually before, a bit more seriously. I had always photographed friends and family since my youth, but this work suddenly felt important in my mid to late twenties when I really started to delve into the lost histories of my people (intersectionally speaking). Community and the inheritance of responsibility of maintaining culture is work I take seriously. Drag is a vehicle. Photography is a vehicle. Storytelling through makeup is a vehicle. Video work is a vehicle. Writing is a vehicle.

Days of reflection have allowed me to realize that I’ve always been on this path. Albeit stifled, I caught my breath eventually.

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

Witnessing how people interact with my work. performance and transformative makeups are experienced in an instant, but they’re somewhat intangible once the day or experience is over. there’s something very special in that initial, fleeting interaction!

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

Being honest, imaginative, respectful, open to feedback and kind have taken me further than any algorithm has.

Contact Info:

• Website: JayOrellana.com
• Instagram: @1900Jezebel