Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Sadie Levine. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Sadie, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

Everyone who knows me has heard my dating horror stories. My first kiss got back together with her ex the next day, in high school, I was asked out as a joke by someone I had a crush on, and the first person I dated in college revealed he was “practicing” on me until he met someone better. When I started using dating apps, things only got worse. I felt dehumanized by the people I went on dates with, and many of the men lacked basic social skills. Every so often, I met someone wonderful. But for the most part, dating was hell.

Unfortunately, this is the new reality of dating. Dating apps have worsened the already prevalent objectification of women in our culture and have bred incel mentalities, making adverse experiences incredibly common for women and femme people who date men. Studies show that compulsive dating app usage is related to a decreased sense of well-being.

Although it’s bleak, my friends and I are constantly joking about our dating horror stories. I call them after particularly bad dates, excited to recite the gory details and spin an uncomfortable experience into a funny story. It turns out that this coping strategy is supported by research. Using humour to cognitively reappraise negative life events can promote well-being and increase resiliency.

After realizing making light of my bad dates was good for me, I decided to take things one step further. I set out to make something that would make others laugh about how hard dating can be. The Blind Date Box is a line of narrative blind box toys that mimic the modern dating experience, featuring figurines representing different romantic catastrophes. There is a 1 in 100 chance of getting the “soulmate” figurine. The structure of this product mimics the modern dating experience by inviting customers to blindly select a “date”, reflecting the process of meeting up with a stranger from a dating app. In addition to the “rare” soulmate option, they may pull a figure that represents being ghosted, having a one-night stand, meeting a literal demon, and so on.

This project comments on the gamification of dating and the counterproductive capital interests of dating apps by satirically exaggerating these features in the form of a blind box toy. While bad dates can be upsetting, they are, at this point, nearly universal. Making the Blind Date Box gave all my negative dating experiences an outlet and, most importantly, it helped me laugh at myself. I hope it makes others laugh too.

Sadie, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I am a freelance illustrator, toy inventor, and teacher. As the child of a cognitive neuroscientist and an artist, I like to joke that I am the product of a union that should never have happened, my parents are opposites and separated shortly after I was born. My mother is a modern hippie, complete with a conversion to Tibetan Buddhism and a commitment to avoiding microwaves. My father is a workaholic, an atheist, and a rationalist. However, I see myself in both of them, and am fascinated by the intersection between psychology and art.

Like my father, I majored in Psychology during college. I focused on the science of dreaming and worked as a research assistant in a feminist and queer science lab specializing in gender/sex, sexuality, and social neuroendocrinology. During this time, my artistic practice was nothing but an inconvenient obsession, fuelled by a sporadic freelance editorial illustration practice. After the completion of my first degree, I got my Bachelor of Education. I enjoyed my time as a teacher candidate, but felt frustrated by the lack of depth in the art curriculum. I noticed the time I reserved for my illustration practice was slipping away to the demands of lesson planning. I wanted more from life. I wanted to teach in alternative and higher-level settings, I wanted to be surrounded by like-minded people, and most of all, I wanted to write picture books and graphic novels. So, I followed in my mother’s footsteps and decided to dedicate my life to art.

When I started my Illustration MFA at RISD in 2023, my undergraduate research quickly began seeping into my work. Now, psychology was my inconvenient obsession. I began exploring techniques for visually representing imagined fantasy, examining the intersection between psychology, art, and play. I dove into the world of children’s books, memoir comics, soft sculpture, and toy design. I began to grasp the stories constantly swirling around my brain and get them on paper.

My educational background sets me apart from other illustrators, as everything I make reflects my fascination with the imaginative capacities of the mind, and especially the complex beauty in the minds of children. I love the way kids infuse magic and weirdness into the everyday, and choose to draw the world from the perspective of my inner child. I hope that others find comfort and nostalgia in my work, as these are the emotions that overwhelm me as I create.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

At the core of my practice is a quest for human connection. Through to process of making art, we can make our inner worlds tangible and shareable. Like most people, I want to be known and understood. We all live in worlds of our own creation. Reality is inherently subjective due to neurological quirks in human processing. The reality I live in is particularly outrageous due to extremely vivid mental imagery (hyperphantasia) and a predisposition for magical thinking.

The scientific study of the human mind often forgoes the subjective and the visual. My work is an alternative exploration of the mind, offering a highly visual and personal narrative about the powers of fantastical thinking. Sharing my version of reality through art and writing is how I let others in. I hope that my audience will see aspects of themselves in my tangled web of fantasy, fostering the connection I crave.

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

It took me a while to get comfortable trusting my own creative intuition. I like rules, and I like pleasing others. When I took on a new project, I was focused on making what I thought the art director wanted. When I started my MFA, this predisposition only intensified. I was used to achieving academic success by following guidelines. Anyone who’s attended art school knows that the criteria of most assignments are intended to serve as a jumping-off point, and I struggled with this flexibility. I made work for others instead of for myself, trying to guess what they wanted instead of following my vision.

The artwork I produced while in this mindset was not strong, mainly because I wasn’t excited about it. I felt stuck, and drawing became a chore. I assumed this was just the reality of being a commercial artist. Then, I gave birth to Horrible Harold, and everything changed.

Horrible Harold had been haunting me for a while before he became a reality. He visited me in daydreams and sketches, begging to be born. For context, Horrible Harold is a teddy bear with exposed organs. I like to think he chose me to be his mother, kind of like how God chose Mary.

I had absolutely zero knowledge of soft toy construction before Horrible Harold was born. I had never even used a sewing machine. But I knew I was the chosen one, only I could usher him into the world. So, in my second semester at RISD, I signed up for an Industrial Design class titled “Soft Goods”. The class was intended to introduce students to the commercial process of designing bags, complete with a sewing machine crash course. My professor was a stern, unsmiling woman who had studied apparel design in Paris. She did not believe in Horrible Harold, she wanted me to design a handbag like the rest of the class.

“But why do you want to make this?” she asked often, “Who is going to buy this… thing?”

I stood my ground. My need to bring Horrible Harold into the world trumped my desire to please this authority figure. For the first time in a while, I was trusting my intuition.

It took many failed prototypes and meltdowns at the sewing machine, but by the end of May 2024, Horrible Harold was born. I didn’t care if my sewing teacher liked him, he wasn’t for her.

To my surprise, the positive responses to Horrible Harold were overwhelming. I had been unsure if others would connect with him as much as I did, but I learned that I was right to trust my intuition. Horrible Harold was personally invited to be in the Strange Fibres show at Bear and Bird Gallery a couple of months ago, where he lived happily in a glass terrarium before returning home to his loving mother.

Now, even when a project isn’t self-directed, I still make it for myself, not my audience. I have to trust that when I’m chosen for a project, it’s because the art director believes in my unique vision. Although I incorporate feedback and adhere to guidelines, I still prioritize the things that make me the most excited. Horrible Harold holds my hand throughout, guiding me towards the light.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://sadielevine.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sadiesartthings/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sadie-levine/
• Other: https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/masterstheses/1455/