Creative Chat with Sabrina Sims

“Anything can be your art practice.”

Welcome to another Creative Chat, featuring a true Renaissance woman: artist and game designer Sabrina Sims. 

As a New York–based professional artist (find her online at starlyart.studio), Sabrina works across genre and media, including zine-making, fiber arts, installation work, live coding, games, synth music ... you name it, she probably does it.

I was so thrilled to sit down with Sabrina to talk about her creative practice and process, how community informs everything she makes, and her thoughts on DIY as both aesthetic and philosophy (also: what the heck live coding actually is). Here’s a teaser:

Sabrina is endlessly inspired, and I'm sure you'll come away inspired, too. You can grab the episode transcript here. Enjoy!

xx, aa

[ Teaser video transcript; dialogue playing over music bed ]

sabrina sims: Anything can be your art practice. This is, like, just one way for you to do it, if that, like, speaks to you.

allison arth: Now on the Little Oracles podcast, a Creative Chat with artist and game designer Sabrina Sims.

aa: Do you think of yourself as a creative; like, is that what you do every day?

ss: Yeah. Being an artist is my job. I don't know, I feel like the word passion is loaded. [laughs]

aa: [laughs] Yeah.

ss: But it's like— I feel like for me, it's just, like, a way of living.

aa: Can you tell us, what do zines represent for you? Why zines?

ss: For me, like the thing that defines zine is, like, a work that is do-it-yourself, and it’s very centered about having a way to share information and art that is, like, accessible, and kind of outside of the capitalist system of art.

aa: You're talking about DIY as both an aesthetic and as a philosophy of creation.

ss: I think the, like, egalitarian nature of it is like the essence — just it being connected to, like, community work. I feel like everyone benefits from, like, writing being less intimidating.

aa: So what does your creative practice look like?

ss: I bounce between projects, and that process actually, like, helps me, like, connect different concepts together. If you ever, like, wanna make something, find a way to, like, be creative in a way that feels like it's for you, not just because there's like a certain way that it feels like you have to do it.

aa: Find Little Oracles wherever you get podcasts.