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

Alright, Jaydee thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Did you always know you wanted to pursue a creative or artistic career? When did you first know?

It was a time of exploration of my art projects at about 2016 and seeking for ways to improve the “Sins” series for the Avenue 50 Studios art project.

Actually, I don’t have that childhood story like most kids do. It did not begin as I would imagine the story starts off like picking up a paintbrush or pencil to make art at age 5. To me, it felt like finding who I really am and what I would pursue whether a practical career or towards an artistic direction took quite a while to figure out.

But the most memorable was when I started finding ways to improve the “Sins” series for the Avenue 50 Studios art installation.

Jaydee, 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?

I’m very transparent about my journey and pretty much in the beginning was not very easy. I felt like I was all over the map and couldn’t decide what major to pursue. I really did not know where I was going at first. It was after taking some classes at a local community college in Long Beach. This is where I felt the answers were still in progress. So I took a Criminal Justice class, thinking that I would be a police office or a sheriff. My first thought was, perhaps to pursue photography and make a decent living, I can take crime scene photos and hopefully gain more experience in the darkroom.

But honestly, my counselor said that if this route was the one, then why does my eyes light up when I talk about the joy of using the darkroom. In order for me to pick a major and investing on this journey I knew that it would have set me back much more and my family were anti-art. I was asked to take nursing, hospital work, law, medicine, accounting, and anything that would make more sense than art. But I was stubborn, and still majored in Bachelor’s of Fine Arts in Art Photography at California State Long Beach in 2004. And it was the only way I was going to graduate. I couldn’t live my life knowing I hated what I would do every morning. The sins project took place in 2016, and it required making glycerin clear soaps, and I was thrilled to do this, but I started making pleasant soaps thereafter, and here I am today! And making more batches each and every week and this time people actually purchase them for themselves or for their family and friends.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

During my second year, which was 2018, my accountant said if you are going to make $600 a year making soaps, then you might as well give up. And my heart sank and I sat in my bedroom dwelling on his comment. Plus, no one was supporting me at the time including some of my family members and friends. Everyone I knew was tired of hearing me talk about soap making and the only one who saw the light for me was my brother Ron. Not even my boyfriend was nearly interested in seeing me do this for a living as he is just as practical as my mother. So, I wrote a sentence at one of my soap making forums and I started to cry after I wrote that I was giving it all up. In the next few days, I put all my soap making things away. Then a few weeks have gone by, I struggled and I had to make a batch of soap. So I used all the oils that I had purchased so they did not go to waste and the materials were so expensive. I kept making more soaps and I also sold a few bars to my coworkers. I even brought even more pretty soaps and arranged them nicely on top of my desk for people to smell and they ended up buying most of my inventory for Christmas presents.
After my Christmas sales were done, all I can think of was to retort and say, “Hell with it Mr. Accountant! I am NOT going to listen to you! I am going to keep working my daytime job as much as I can so I can leave soon. And that’s where I felt that I had to keep my spirits up. I could not rely on anyone but myself and sometimes motivating yourself helps tremendously.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

The most rewarding is when your customers trusts you and makes you feel like a million bucks! I’m not kidding, every moment that I meet people at my markets, I often feel super happy of their positive responses and that means everything to me. I even ask them for feedback, even if it is not great. I had one customer tell me that my Tea Tree Soap did not help the bumps on her face. And I said sometimes that’s the tricky thing about skin, it does not lie. But it takes time to find out what soaps it likes. And I’m honest, if they find another soap that works for them, I tell them to keep using what works. They don’t have to purchase mine, and they can always alter it to a bar that is plain, like my Unscented Goats Milk Soap. Just keep it simple, no fragrance, no other essential oils, and not all essential oils are good. Just because it’s steam distilled by a plant doesn’t mean it works for anyone’s skin. We are all made differently and that’s the beauty about our routine, we can simply change our ways and find a better solution.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.aeridesgeneralstore.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aeridesgeneralstore/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aeridesgeneralstore
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaydee-dizon-49a1574
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@aeridesgeneralstore
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/aerides-general-store-torrance
• Other: https://cargocollective.com/jaydeedizon

Image Credits
Crediting a friend Todd and his daughter Emily taking the beginners soapmaking class, @themessageclothing (IG handle)