Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Maya Doss. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Alright, Maya thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.
In January 2023, I left an unhealthy relationship, quit my job, and decided to focus on pursuing my dreams of “being an artist”. For me, this meant making art full-time. This was a huge risk for me to take! At the time I split rent costs with my roommates, including my ex, which meant my rent cost was going to go up. Plus, I was deciding to try making all of my income off of my own creations. Talk about pressure! Navigating this was all so exhilarating, rewarding, and fascinating to me, but definitely turned the heat up when it came to making sales. I lasted for eight months solely making money off of art. I did this through vending at local shows and events, fulfilling commission requests, and giving spiritual guidance with the oracle deck I made with my own artwork. I would make prints of my most popular pieces, create stickers, jewelry, and paint second hand treasures, like jewelry boxes, to give them a new life. I began to have a dedicated following of fellow creatives and supporters of the arts, always coming to check out my booth and website for my latest creations.
After the 8 month mark, I decided to get a part time job to end the burn out of creating art for profit, because at that point, it created too much strain on my artistic process for me to stay in tune with my creative voice. While some may see this as a failure on my part, I saw it as an essential part of my evolution. I learned so much about myself, my community, and about business in this experimental phase of my life.
I am currently fighting for my dream of being a full time artist once again, using grants and my education to push me forward in my journey so that I am able to bring my visions into the 3D. I am currently working out the details for my first ever gallery showing which I am calling Resurrect.
I named my collection this because I have had the personal power to rise from the ashes, to take a chance on my life again after immense pain. I believe that a risk we take on ourselves is a risk worth taking. Resurrect will be taking place in March at Cornerstone Center for the Arts, and I could not be more proud of the pieces being shown. What may be perceived as a small step for some is so encouraging and important for others, like me! I have been working for 10+ years on my art, with all of my efforts culminating into enough work to create a curated collection ready to fill a gallery.
No one told me in the beginning of my journey I would “make it” anywhere, or that anyone would even like what I made enough to offer me an entire gallery space. It was always my dream and hope though, so the pay off is so rewarding and empowering. One day I will probably do even more and this chapter will seem so small and sweet in comparison, but I thank the younger me who took that risk to do art no matter what challenges she faced and to fight for her dream. I am just trying to make our world more beautiful by bringing art to the forefront of every aspect, including my day to day life and career. I aim to continue persevering and learning as I go, not only as an artist but as an entrepreneur, so that I can continue to create artwork to empower and inspire people in my community and beyond.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
As an artist, I alchemize my experiences and rich inner world into visually vibrant artwork to help heal and inspire the masses. I am a multidisciplinary artist, having done a bit of everything in 2D, 3D, and 4D artforms. I received the On Ramp Artistic Entrepreneur Accelerator Grant in 2023 from the Indiana Arts Commission, have my own art business, and am studying Studio Art at Ball State University. My art is often inspired by my own personal emotions and life experiences, the beauty of nature, spirituality, psychedelic visuals, and death and rebirth cycles. My artwork awakens our own divinity by bringing art, beauty, and aesthetics to the forefront of day to day life. I am deeply inspired by the wonders of nature, so I share the beauty I see through not only subject matter but also by what I choose to make art out of; I believe strongly in the magic of breathing new life into something that would otherwise end up in a landfill. In a time where consumerism has replaced intentional design and aesthetics with convenience and mass production, I reimagine, reinvent, and redefine 2nd hand treasures with my artistic touch, alchemizing trash into treasure.
I have used ingenuity to transform my artwork into merchandise so that my art is accessible to more people, including fellow creatives and lower-middle class people. I create art because it is intrinsic to the human experience, the one unifying act amongst every culture since the dawn of man, and I create art because I want to heal myself and others with creation energy, beauty, and emotional resilience.
My unique artistic eye orchestrates line, color, pattern, and shape harmoniously, constantly exploring new ways of visually expressing my visions. Themes of nature’s beauty with abstract and surreal twists give my artwork an edge many people appreciate. Throughout my work is a symbolic, archetypal language so that my art holds a cross-cultural resonance and a deeper understanding can be developed through each person’s personal experience with it. I have always been inspired by the strange and unusual, the spiritual and universal, relationships between visual elements, and each of our individual perceptions in our collective story.
Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?
Misconceptions I have had people assume about me is that I do art because I am from a rich background in order to have so much time and energy to make artwork, that I must think I am more special than other people, or that I must be a lofty, naive dreamer with no foot in reality. These are all inaccurate and harmful projections. Passion for the arts is not without the use of my healthy, curious mind, always on the hunt for knowledge and my resilient, compassionate heart that must cope with the aches and pains of living this harsh life. My therapy since before I knew I needed therapy has been creating art. I have personally healed myself by creating art through the most painful periods of my life. I spend hours and hours and hours that other people may spend watching television, talking with friends, or playing video games into drawing, painting, and collaging. Not to say that leisurely activities such as these shouldn’t be enjoyed, just that I have found my craft and creativity are strong because I exercise them so often.
Art is sometimes seen as a frivolous pursuit, as something only for rich people or people who refuse to grow up. I contest this harshly. Art is the poor man’s food, and every man’s right. Art is how we heal ourselves and each other. Art is how we tell our stories, how we connect, and how we transform the mundane into magic.
I hope non creatives understand that creating art is interwoven into our human consciousness. It is a deeply human experience and is completely personal to you. Art comes in so many forms- sculpture, music, theatre, design, architecture, dance, animation, etc. It is hard for anyone to deny the importance of it in our culture. I want them to remember that the integration of art into our life journeys is crucial for us spiritually, mentally, and emotionally, and that supporting and uplifting artists is supporting and uplifting your community’s culture. I want everyone to remember we need all types of people to have a thriving society, so every type of person and their unique interests should be celebrated and integrated for the betterment of our culture.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
This is less of a story from my journey specifically and moreso a story that also encompasses my mom’s role in my life and how her resilience has shaped me. My mother and father met in the Air Force, and had me in their very early twenties. My mom is a 2nd generation immigrant, and my father was a poor boy from the countryside. Coming into this world, I felt the weight of my parent’s problems because of the depth of my love for them. I watched them struggle with each other, with finances, and with family issues, so I always tried my very best in everything I did to try and make them proud, consequently being described as an old soul from a very early age. My mom always wanted to be an artist when she was a little girl, and she always encouraged me to make something of myself before becoming a mom- to get my education and find out who I was first. I understood at a young age that this being my mom’s wish for me meant she always wished it for herself. I watched her work so hard as a nurse and student her entire life to take care of my siblings and I in the long stretch of my father’s addiction. She tried everything in her power to hold our family together until she could no longer. In these times she encouraged me to work hard, go to college, and become a traveling nurse, or an art teacher that all the kids would love.
I always knew my mom’s intentions were from a place of love and concern for my well being, especially when she was battling breast cancer and my father was more lost than he had ever been before. Knowing she would not always be there to look out for me, she probably does want me to find a steady job with insurance and paid vacations, to do what is more safe and assured; however, through the years, no matter how hard I have tried to change my path to make others proud, or the shame I have felt about wanting to be an artist before anything else, I have never been able to let my dream of making art go. It consumes me too much to only have it as a hobby. When I venture elsewhere, or have periods of struggle with my mental health, it is always art that resparks my inner flame and makes me feel impassioned for life again. I cannot imagine a life doing anything else.
I feel that now, six years after high highschool, I am in a place where she sees me for who I am and feels proud of me for what I am fighting for. She tells me she lives vicariously through me and that I am brave for working to make my dream a reality. I now better understand her sacrifices, the intense reality of the world we live in, and am trying to carve out my own path and find creative solutions to these real world issues I have and will continue to inevitably face. Artistic entrepreneurship is resilience and a self-mended heart packaged up in visually appealing packaging. I know that what I am doing is helping not only me and my mom heal, but my community as well because of how people respond to what I do. Bringing my art into the world is what I am meant to do, and nothing has or will stop me. I am the furthest reach of my ancestors, their dream. I can’t let them or myself down- I am stronger than that.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.mayadoss.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/mayad0ss