Paige Woods (she/her)
Age: 31
City: Bellingham
Lived here for: 5 years
Originally from: Stanwood, Snohomish County
Notable: Multimedia artist, singer/songwriter, mystic
What are you doing artistically now that you’re most excited about?
The last two months, my artistic life has been devoted to the Heron’s Nest. I’m a resident artist here. It’s the first time that I’ve had a space where I have somewhere to put my art on a consistent basis that’s not a one-off market or a farmers market. Being able to work here once a week, I get to meet the people who are interested in my art.
Tell me about your cyanotype prints. I understand that’s not an easy medium to work in.
It’s very tricky. It’s a — I’m not going to say “ancient” technology, but as far as photo printing and developing goes, it’s something that dates back quite a while. Each piece takes me anywhere between 30 minutes to an hour and a half to get fully — “cooked” is the word that I want to use, but I don’t think that’s the technical term — “developed” is probably a better term.
Do you consider yourself a visual artist first or a musician, or do you reject the choice?
They both fuel each other so well. For instance, the cyanotypes that I have displayed on the wall here right now are also themed, and each one of them has a hand-stamped copper quote on it from my favorite feel-good songs. A lot of music does inspire my art, and a lot of my art inspires my music, and I can’t really exist without one or the other.
How would you categorize your music? I think of it as blues or folk, or maybe singer-songwriter.
I think that’s pretty accurate. I find it very hard to describe my own genre of music. It’s easier for me to say, well, I’m influenced by this singer-songwriter or this jazz artist or this funk music over here. Or, I listened to The Beatles for 12 hours and thought a chord progression in “Hey Jude” was really cool, and so I manipulated it and turned it into a new song.
You do card readings from something called a daydream oracle deck, which you created yourself. Is it similar to tarot?
The difference between a tarot reading and an oracle reading is with an oracle reading, you’re always going to get the good stuff. It’s like the sweet, younger sister of the tarot. Tarot can spit out all sorts of stuff that you really don’t want to hear.
Where do you hope to end up on your life’s journey?
If I could continue expanding what I’m doing right now, I would be very satisfied. I wake up every day and I’m happy and I’m excited that I get to live this life that I’ve created. I would like to see myself just do more, and learn more, show up more and just keep enjoying what I’m doing.
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