We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Tessa York a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Tessa, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?
The most meaningful project I’ve worked on to date was partnering with Send Chinatown Love, an incredible nonprofit whose mission is to create a digital community for New York’s Chinatown restaurants by creating support and assistance to combat ramifications of the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. The piece featured matchbooks of their many merchants and 100% of the proceeds were donated to these businesses in need. I was raised in San Francisco, a city with a vibrant Chinatown community and later I was privileged to spend time traveling throughout China working with local product development businesses. When xenophobia and racism surged in the Chinese and Chinese American communities, I felt a call to action to share whatever support I could. I was thrilled to connect with SCL and lend my creative abilities to raise money for their organization. This limited edition print ended up being my highest selling piece to date at that time.
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?
I refer to myself as an accidental artist when I tell the story of how Meet Your Matches came to be. I spent over 12 years working in the corporate fashion and retail industry. While creative by nature, I considered myself more of an analytical business focused person more than anything else, working in buying offices for names like Gap, Kate Spade, Le Tote, Lord & Taylor & most currently, Nike. In March of 2020 the company that I had had contributed to for five years was forced to file bankruptcy due to the pandemic. Once the shock wore off, I found myself very lost. I had spent over a decade defining myself by the career I had built and felt a disconnect with my purpose and identity.
I needed to find joy during a time of so much despair for so many which led me back to an instagram account I started in 2018, mostly followed by friends and family, showcasing my matchbook collection post by post. I’ve collected matches for years and there was something soothing about not only tapping into a creative outlet but also inundating myself with reminders of happier times: restaurants filled with people, the buzz of busy hotels, the smells of baked goods wafting from little cafes. Nostalgia of life before things turned upside down.
For whatever reason, maybe people having more free time to spend scrolling Instagram, I started to see a lift in my following. Within months I was being asked if I sold these as prints. I would always say no, this is just a hobby and other cavalier responses. Suddenly it hit me, why wasn’t I selling these as prints? I was an unemployed business minded person with plenty of time to start a new venture. Even luckier for me, my brother, a not so accidental artist but rather an incredible talent who makes his living by his creations, was able to help guide me on how to turn my photos and designs into professionally printed pieces.
As the business continued to gain traction a natural link between the restaurant industry and my matchbook art was formed and I realized this could also be a vehicle for charitable action. I was an early follower of ROAR, an organization providing substantial relief to restaurants and their workers in New York City. I figured out ways that I could run flash sales and promotions on instagram to raise funds for this organization. At this point I was spending full time hours working on prints, custom pieces and new ways to collaborate and contribute to my community.
I never thought an object as common as a matchbook could lead to so much good and while I’ve returned full-time to work in my original industry, I keep this business running because it brings myself and others joy and allows me to meet like-minded people wanting to make an impact locally in their communities.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
The biggest lesson I had to unlearn in launching this business is that success has many faces. I had a very measured, regimented view on personal success and the success of others largely in part from my background working for major corporations and climbing the ranks. From launching this business I see achievement so differently now. I’ve retrained my mind to see winning as a personal journey, not a competition with others. If you always measure yourself against what others are doing, you’ll be so preoccupied watching their journey that you’ll miss the train on your own.
Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?
The biggest disconnect I’ve seen between creatives and non-creatives is often over artistic approach. 90% of the customers I work with on commissioned pieces are delightful and I’ve made great connections with. I truly adore my clients. It’s one of the best parts of the job to meet new people and be trusted to create something so personal. But from time to time there’s the person who thinks they know more about the artistic process than the artist does and that often translates to push back on pricing or assuming certain requests are a quick or simple thing to make. I always think people would never walk into a department store and start telling the sales associate that a pair of jeans were easy to construct and the brand is asking for too much money, you’d either purchase them or not. I think this is something people should keep in mind with artists. We all have our own craft and the price of one’s time is immeasurable.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.meet-your-matches.com/
- Instagram: @meetyourmatches
Image Credits
All images my own.