Shakrah Yves
// Artist & Costume DesignerSHAKRAH YVES is an artist, costume designer, performer, and singer based in San Francisco, California. She is lead vocalist for the Cat’s Meow Band, a 1930’s jazz group, Director of Costume Repair at Beach Blanket Babylon, active member of the Bay Area non-profit arts community, and costumer for Youth Performance Workshops. Shakrah is an interdisciplinary artist working in painting, costume, performance, and media. Her experimental films and videos have screened locally in San Francisco and nationally throughout the United States. Shakrah has received several awards and grants at CalArts and California College of the Arts, where she also completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Media Arts.
Website: www.shakrah.com
Photos: Heather Hryciw & Jana Busbin
Interview:
Art, music or any creative expression transforms our ability to love and forgive. To paraphrase the novel The Alchemist, our deepest desires and dreams, not the things we are told to want by our parents or society, but the things that we deeply want and we don’t know why, those desires originate in the heart of the universe, and if you really work for them the world will conspire to help you.
I believe that we each have a creative spark that lies dormant. Perhaps we all won’t be pop stars; maybe one’s spark is baking amazing cupcakes. We all need to pay attention to that inner voice that tells us to make something. I used to worry that being an artist was selfish. I enjoy doing it, it gives me pleasure, so therefore it can’t be entirely good. (Martyr complex here.) Making art is like a lyric from a great old American spiritual song, “This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine…”
Sharing art, dancing, and music is a gift. It’s a gift to those we share it with and if you have that spark, it’s your duty to share it. This brightens one’s little corner of the world and starts a wildfire that spreads from one person to the next, spreading inspiration and making the world slightly more interesting. It’s really scary listing to your heart and following through. We expose ourselves, and we are vulnerable. I find that the things I’m most frightened of failing at (singing, dancing, showing a painting, or making a costume for a client) are the things that give me power, energy, and joy. When I pursue them, the world says: “Yes, we want you to do this!”
I think that when we are authentically ourselves we deeply accept ourselves, and in that we love and forgive ourselves. When we nurture ourselves we have a greater ability to love and accept others. We are more able to love and accept others’ weaknesses and to support their goals, even if they seem far- fetched. Go climb that mountain, open a vegan pastry shop, take up knitting —whatever it is that gives you joy.
It’s easy to commodify art in the pop realm, but I think that when art reveals our shared humanity, we are moved by the same notes and colors; we are all vulnerable; we all struggle to find joy and love. Art can remind us of our ability to create community in cooperative art projects and can empower us to create art, take political action, and look more deeply at our own lives and feelings.
I have only been singing professionally for a year and dancing for six months. I have been painting, making costumes, and doing performance art for several years, and I think my art will continue to transform my values. I’ve always been very self-critical, perhaps to a fault. When I am preparing for a show, I sing for an hour every day and dance for at least thirty minutes every day. I agonize over the details of every costume. With each successful project and each performance, I grow more confident in my abilities and I learn that I can do it. I don’t worry about failing any more. There is no failing; you simply learn from your experiences. I have started to forgive myself when things do not go perfectly and to deeply know that I am good enough, smart enough, and skilled enough.
Anything that I want to see in the world, I must create myself, and I know that it is a gift. As I become my authentic self, I shed layers of fear and start to feel deeply that I am loved and become less critical toward others, which is very important. Keeping a band together and a dance group of twelve people together is not easy. One has to be flexible, forgiving, communicate effectively, work hard, be reliable and fair. The greatest gift that making art with others has given me is community. People: that’s what life is about. Amazing, beautiful, talented people to collaborate with, expand my ideas, help me to create something even bigger than what I imagine on my own, and I learn from them.
“The greatest gift that making art with others has given me is community.”
– Shakrah Yves, Artist & Costume Designer
