The Power of Letters, Words, and Positivity, with Rylsee
When others see letters and words, artist Rylsee sees a puzzle. From the structure of the letters and the hierarchy of the words, to the composition of his illustrative translation, Rylsee finds meaning in every nook and cranny of the world around him. But more than just meaning, he finds a sense of optimism and hope. Listen to this episode of The Cultured Podcast to get a peek into Rylsee’s process and learn how one unfortunate ink spill inspired the future vision for his art.
Read the episode transcript below.
Transcript
Michelle Khouri 0:01
Imagine a world where letters, words, and phrases had personalities of their own and roamed freely- making us laugh, think and become introspective. Well, that world sits inside Rylsee’s head. And on this episode of The Cultured Podcast, we’re taking a trip into his brain to see just how things work when you play with letters and words.
Welcome to The Cultured Podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Khouri. And together we’ll journey into the unknown reaches of the art world. Hello, my babies! (singing) It’s been an intense year already! No, but truly, it’s been a super intense year. I hope your 2020 has been on and trucking. Because the energy behind this year for me so far has been bananas. I mean, truly. Super busy, super exciting, super intimidating, all the feels. And with that kind of intensity, it is especially a joy to talk to someone like Rylsee, whose real name you’ll find out in a moment, and why he’s called Rylsee, because he’s just a ball of joy. He is curious, he is playful. He is tongue-in-cheek. But he’s also pretty philosophical. So that all comes across in his work as an artist who works with letters and words and phrases. So, before I start spoiling it for you, we’ll talk about my inspiration because you really are going to love this interview and it’s going to make you smile. So if you’re in a moment of intensity like I am in, in a really good moment by the way, like happy things, this is going to lift your spirits and make you smile fo’sho. But first, my inspiration for this week is boxing. Oh, yeah, you heard me right. And by boxing, I mean the sport of boxing. So the aforementioned intensity of this year and how busy it’s been, actually drove me to start working out a lot more than I have been in the last year, which is a very good thing, because I needed some way to let out all this energy that I have coursing through my body. I mean, I literally have the most energy I’ve ever had in my life. And that can feel like a pending implosion, because you’re just carrying all this energy within you. So one thing I’ve been doing has been boxing, alongside of course, meditation. Both of those things hand in hand have really allowed me to center myself, find time for me, get out any anxieties or frustrations, and really harness the power of that energy in a really productive way. And my neighbor actually has been teaching me how to box. Shout out to Daniel! Yas! We go down there to the gym in our building. He teaches me combinations. He has a ball. I have a ball. And I’ve also just discovered this immense passion for boxing because it’s one of those mind-body-spirit sports. And so it really engages my creative mind because I have to be working on my stance, my technique. I have to be thinking about when a punch is coming my way, and if I have to, like dodge it in some way. And then of course, the brute strength of punching, and ducking and rolling. It is so much fun. And it also makes me feel super powerful. I mean, it, like, makes me carry myself differently, you know? So, Rocky 15 featuring Michelle is coming soon to a theater near you. But while you wait for the release of that cinematic gold, let’s talk to Rylsee because he’s actually doing some incredible things. Unlike my, you know, not-yet-in-existence movie. All right, here we go. Let’s talk to Rylsee.
So welcome, Cyril — aka Rylsee — to The Cultured Podcast.
Rylsee 4:29
Thanks for having me.
Michelle Khouri 4:32
So tell us who you are and what your art form is.
Rylsee 4:37
So my real name is Cyril Vouilloz. I’m a Swiss artist based in Berlin. I go by the name of Rylsee. This comes from an old nickname that my friends gave me, which is pretty much an inversion of syllables of my real name. SEE-RIL. RIL-SEE. Spelled different. It’s always difficult to describe it, but I guess I’m a letter artist, if you can call it this way. I play with letters. I distort them, destroy them. I make them funny, give them personality and life. As a kid, really like maybe seven or eight, I remember that I had this game where I was giving it to myself. I was like, “Okay, let’s try to draw logos from sports brands or cars.” And then I was trying to draw as many as I could by memory. I don’t know why I was doing this for. But I don’t know. I thought it was fascinating. And I still am fascinated by this.
Michelle Khouri 5:36
I think we’re so used to seeing logos nowadays, which is a scary thing, honestly. But we just forget the artfulness and intention that goes behind a logo and how difficult it is to create a truly memorable iconic logo. So it’s funny to me that at the age of, what eight, you were like, “Hmm, artful logos I’m going to try to recreate this.” You know, I think that already captures that you were sort of–you came out of the womb thinking differently about the world.
Rylsee 6:10
One thing that, as a kid I found interesting and that I still even teach to people is the amount of information that just some letters can have. And how much information they can give, you know, away to people. If you look at the logo of a restaurant, you almost did not need to enter to know what’s going to be served in it, the quality of the food, the kind of people you would find inside, you can tell maybe even the decorations.
Michelle Khouri 6:42
Right.
Rylsee 6:43
And you’re still on the sidewalk looking outside at the logo of the restaurant. And all these informations are conveyed just in a few letters, a few colors. And this is something that everyone has.
Michelle Khouri 6:56
If it’s doing its job, right? That’s like the whole point of the logo. So if it’s a good logo, that’s what it’s supposed to convey.
Rylsee 7:05
Mmm.
Michelle Khouri 7:05
You know, whereas sometimes we see these really bad, like uses of lettering and color and shape and form that make you think you’re going into something and then there’s that jarring experience of dissonance between what the logo told you you were walking into and what you actually experience.
Rylsee 7:26
But even these wacky logos tell you a lot about how they handled their business inside, I would say.
Michelle Khouri 7:33
Oh, I like that. That’s cool. Tell me more about that. What do you mean?
Rylsee 7:38
Is this brutal to say? No! A lot of people don’t realize that their logo is pretty much their face when their real face is not showing.
Michelle Khouri 7:48
Yes. Wow.
Rylsee 7:49
If you want to make some savings on your logo, because you have a cousin that once heard, like watched a tutorial of “how to do logo”, chances are that you won’t be well represented. Whereas if you asked the help of a professional, that would be like something that really suits you. And that conveys the right information and the right personality that you would like the public to see you as.
Michelle Khouri 8:13
I think that that also points to the fact that you do connect perception and psychology, with your own work and the way that you sort of mutate letters and play with their shape and forms and meanings to toy with your viewer. So tell me a little bit about when you started this form of artistry and what spurred you to do so.
Rylsee 8:40
I love people in general. And I love to, if I can say, study them. I mean, it sounds a bit intellectual to say this for someone who draws letters, but this is definitely something I’m drawn to. The psychology of how people react and I try to translate this in my work. It could be either in optical illusions or when I work with sentences, then I mix, you know? From thoughts, from things I read, things I hear in the metro or like in the cafe. Sometimes I just come across sentences, or think about something, and I’m like, wow, this deserves to be illustrated. And I don’t always do it right away, but I write it down in either my phone or most of the time, my sketchbook. And later on, I go back to it and try to illustrate it the best way as I can to make people laugh.
Michelle Khouri 9:31
Is there typically a theme around what grabs your attention, what kinds of phrases or signs?
Rylsee 9:38
Other people that have done articles about my work worded it better than what I would have ever done.
Michelle Khouri 9:45
Yeah. (laughter)
Rylsee 9:46
Because, you know, I do this quite naturally, you know? I observe. I see. I react. And this is how it end up on as drawings most of the time.
Michelle Khouri 9:56
Right. It’s second nature to you. Whereas as an outsider observer, it’s easy to, you know, sort of psychoanalyze you and your work.
Rylsee 10:06
100%. You know, often, it’s observation from our lives, the technology that surrounds us. With this technology, what the impact is on the social aspect. And I kind of make fun of it. A lot of people say that “Oh, but you’re mocking people,” but I’m like the first target of most of the observation I do, you know? So, yes, I’m mocking others and taking other people with me, but I’m my main– how do you call this the–I’m my own guinea pig, kind of.
Michelle Khouri 10:39
Yeah. In English, we call that the butt of the joke. Have you heard that saying?
Rylsee 10:45
The butter the joke?
Michelle Khouri 10:46
No, the butt of the joke.
Rylsee 10:48
At the butt of the joke. (laughter) Okay.
Michelle Khouri 10:51
Yeah. So anyone you’re making fun of this is the butt of the joke. So I guess what you’re saying is, most often, you’re the butt of your jokes.
Rylsee 10:59
Yeah, yeah.
Michelle Khouri 11:00
Yeah, so describe a recent piece for us so that we can sort of dive into it with the Cultured Crew and start analyzing what one piece, how one piece comes to life and the different meanings behind it.
Rylsee 11:14
Most of my words have quite a similar way of being creative. So I think a lot about things all the time. I’m in kind of a hyperactive kind of person. So I pretty much talk since I open my eyes until I close them. Even I speak when I go to bed. My wife goes banana sometimes, and my friend tells me often that the close friends tell me politely to shut up. So I guess I write down a lot of my ideas or questions I asked myself in my sketchbook and most of these sentences are circled around and these are, like, ideas. I like to imagine them as bubbles with the different ideas. It could be things that I’m thinking about or that I read somewhere. And that I have the feeling that this is something that deserves to be illustrated to be, like, laughed about with other people.
Michelle Khouri 12:08
So it sounds like, actually, you’ve found a really good way of managing this hyperactivity and giving it a channel. Right? It’s like writing down all these things when your wife or your friends are like, “I cannot listen to you anymore” You’re like, okay, cool–sketchbook.
Rylsee 12:26
Yeah, yeah. Pretty much. Yeah. And I always have it with me.
Michelle Khouri 12:29
Yeah.
Rylsee 12:31
Yeah. I know I’m tiring sometimes. So I leave people their time, but then I still have to externalize all these things.
Yeah, so write them down.
Michelle Khouri 12:43
You can just shut that off. Luckily, because it comes out through artwork.
Rylsee 12:48
Yeah, but sometimes I’m trying, you know? I’m a father to a three year old daughter. And then my life has obviously changed now with this new role in my life. And I think I have to learn how to meditate or something to like, sometimes shut my brain out because sometimes it goes crazy.
Michelle Khouri 13:09
Oh yeah, meditation would be amazing for you, that would be another one. And it would probably end up surfacing all these little thought bubbles in the same way that you draw them out in your sketchbook. It would probably come into your mind as visions and things like that. It would be interesting to see what comes forward if you meditate. Okay, so you put these thoughts down in your sketchbook and then walk us through the process.
Rylsee 13:33
Then there’s a second part I’m trying to find an interesting composition of it, how to give dynamic to the words and sentences. I usually, like, say it out loud to know how to give them a real rhythm, I would say. And the hierarchy of information within the letters, you know?
Michelle Khouri 13:54
Oh, oh, oh! Tell us more about what that means.
Rylsee 13:58
If you have a sentence, there’s always words within the sentence that are more important than others. Or you have a few eye-catching words and then this attracts you to read a bit more. And then with just these two words, for example, it gives the general topic of what the sentence is about. And then you have to read it the second time to get the point and sometimes even the third time to get the joke, you know? And that’s all these different levels of lecture that I like.
Michelle Khouri 14:29
Ooh, I love that. What’s an example? Give us an example of a recent piece, like a recent phrase, and the hierarchy of those words.
Rylsee 14:38
I was leaving whatever city, I don’t remember where, and that was a sad, gloomy gray day, a bit rainy. And as we took off with the plane, we went through the clouds. And as you know, when you get above two clouds, it was sunny. It was beautiful. I felt the heat from the sun slightly blinding me and everything. And I thought, wow, clouds are always so great from above.
Michelle Khouri 14:41
Mmhmm.
Rylsee 14:48
So this was my thought. I was, like, that would be cool to do. Something to illustrate this idea that clouds look always good from above. Then that’s where the work start. I had the sentence. I had the idea of something I wanted to convey. And then I started to work on the composition. You know? How to word it. Is it “cloud always look good from above” or the other way around “Cloud look always great from above” or, you know?
Michelle Khouri 15:36
And do you do that immediately? So you’re on this plane, you experience this moment, this inspiration. And then do you immediately pull out your sketchbook there on the plane? Or?
Rylsee 15:47
This one, yes. This one, I did it directly in the plane. I love to draw in the plane if I’m alone, because otherwise if I’m with my daughter, it’s like…
Michelle Khouri 15:56
Impossible. (laughter)
Rylsee 15:56
In this case, I played around with, like, different composition. There’s one with the — you can see a city and the letters are above the clouds but I thought that was a bit too direct. There’s another one that I did some tries where I tried to draw the vision like if the composition was seen through one of these windows and you could see a bit of the wing of the plane. But after two tries, I realized that that was not really giving anything to the composition. And then I finally found something that was actually quite interesting when you can read cloud and above that is an actually cloud texture, I would describe it. And, from far, you can clearly see “always great” or “look always great”. That’s the first thing I would say that you see that you can see is the words “always great”.
Michelle Khouri 16:11
Mmm.
Rylsee 16:26
And then you go a bit closer and you see the clouds and the “look” has eyes and instead of two Os. So it also kind-of draws the attention and the clouds are looking down at the plane, but also down to where you can imagine is below the clouds. So I find it quite interesting, the composition.
Michelle Khouri 17:07
And there already you start to–there’s a few themes that I’ve seen in your work in general. The playfulness. So the eyes do appear in your work a good bit. And they are, it’s almost like you’re personifying your words and making them little characters, but also mirroring your own audience or yourself in those eyes. And then also positivity. You’re a very positive person, and your messages tend to be very playful. They might poke fun, but they’re also uplifting in general.
Rylsee 17:41
I’ve been told that, yeah.
Michelle Khouri 17:43
Yeah, I wonder why.
Rylsee 17:46
I don’t know. I think it’s, I guess in life you can always focus on the negative or the positive parts. And I guess I choose my camp.
Michelle Khouri 17:57
Have you always been an optimist or do you consider yourself an optimist?
Rylsee 18:00
Well, I’ve been told that so many times. Yes, I am. Yeah. You know, one of my techniques that I explain to many of my friends is I do dramatic comparison. You know, let’s say, you have to go on holiday, you plan this and there’s an accident with the bus that you’re stuck in the bus, therefore, you missed the plane. Most of the people will be like, so pissed and everything, but I would be like, “Well, I could have had like, a bad accident or this plane could have crashed or I could have…” I don’t know.
Michelle Khouri 18:34
Mmhmm.
Rylsee 18:34
You know? You compare it to something so brutal that it would minimize the problem of the current situation.
Michelle Khouri 18:41
Oh, wow. I love that. You’re like, well, clearly, my fate was redirected or this was part of my path to be redirected off of what I thought was going to be happening. Yeah, I love that. I mean, it sounds like you go with the flow well
Rylsee 18:56
Well, I don’t think, like, I have a chance at another option anyway, you know?
Michelle Khouri 19:02
That’s exactly right.
Rylsee 19:03
I don’t know if it’s–I can’t remember if it was my mom or my granny. But I’ve been told, “Do not waste energy in trying to change things you cannot change.”
Michelle Khouri 19:17
Yes. 100%. Control is a total illusion which is hard for someone like me because I can want to grip life a little bit hard if I don’t feel like things are going just how I want them to.
Rylsee 19:30
Well, yeah, me too. I like to control things. I have always, like, ideas of how I want things to go and have it done. But in the end, most of the time, it does not go how I planned it or how I fantasized it because, I guess, I have a good imagination. So it’s rarely as good as how I imagined it. And I just learn how to live with it.
Michelle Khouri 19:53
I relate so much to what you just said. It’s ridiculous. I’ve never heard anyone put it like that. Like I have such a good imagination that the way that I fantasize about something is never gonna be how it turns out.
Rylsee 20:08
Yeah, man.
Michelle Khouri 20:09
So true. Okay, so I love this idea of things always look great above the clouds from above the clouds. So what was that final phrase you landed on?
Rylsee 20:21
Clouds look always great from above.
Michelle Khouri 20:23
Hmm. Wow.
Rylsee 20:25
I think it’s also quite optimistic because, you know, for me, it also shows that everything has two ways of being looked at, you know?
Michelle Khouri 20:33
Absolutely.
Rylsee 20:34
Clouds…if you’re on one side, like I’m today, in Switzerland, and it’s like pouring. It’s gray and everything. Just on the other side, it’s super sunny. So it’s kind of a nice parallel to everything that happens in life, I think.
Michelle Khouri 20:50
Absolutely. Yeah, I love that. Okay, so now what’s your next step with this work? For instance, do you usually catch yourself, like, what is that refining process look like with you? Does it take forever? Do you, like, nitpick things to death? Or are you pretty quick and deciding this is the final composition?
Rylsee 21:10
No, no, no, I’m quite fast. I would say. Usually, I do a few sketches. They’re like raw sketches that I always sketch directly with ink. Because sketching directly with ink, usually, like for two reasons. It keeps historical what you’ve been doing, then you can make one trial of a composition that is not great, but some elements are interesting. Then, if you keep them, you can take one idea of this, one idea of this, and make a mix for the next drawing. But if you erase every time you sketch something, then you can’t really get anything from the past experience. You know?
Michelle Khouri 21:12
Oh, yeah, absolutely. I never thought about that.
Rylsee 21:18
And the second reason is because by sketching directly, sometimes you can make mistakes, you know? Like a wrong line or something make you move or I don’t know, something happened unplanned. And sometimes it’s something really interesting because it would push you to take a path that you would not have taken otherwise. And sometimes it’s also interesting this way.
Michelle Khouri 22:18
Well, right, like drawing with ink is a greater commitment. I think it takes more courage because there are no, you can’t erase an error. So the fact that you look at that as part of the opportunity to shift your own perspective of, “Okay, well, I thought this line was going to go here, but now it’s here. So how do I turn that into a strength?” is really, that’s like very exciting to me. You know?
Rylsee 22:47
Sometimes it’s harder than others. You know, like, not long ago, I posted something on my Instagram as I was doing one of these like super glitch tight drawings that I do. And I was almost with older outlines ready to move on to the next step, and I don’t know, I just got distracted a split second and knock down my pot of ink on my drawing. And I was like, “No!”
Michelle Khouri 23:13
How long had you spent on a drawing at that point?
Rylsee 23:16
Too long for something that stupid. (laughter) And you know, I did a story about this on my Insta, but like, oh, how to ruin the drawing and one step or something like this. And I was, I was filming my beautiful neat drawing with this ink, dripping like going like bloop, bloop, bloop. And so many people wrote me being like, “Oh, man, but you should like try to do something out of this,” and ahh but like, don’t…I don’t know, they were really encouraging comments of people all over the globe. And I was like–well, at the moment, I was way too pissed and too tired. So I left this for the next day. And the next day, I did try to do something based on this problem, and it turned out so great, really. It actually inspired, like, what future series I would say. It brought, like, an organic kind of aspect to these digital-looking composition that I do and I really loved it. And I would like to develop this also for murals. And I documented the whole process and posted about it because I thought that that was really, first, I wanted to say thank you to the people who follow my work that,
Michelle Khouri 24:28
Yeah.
Rylsee 24:29
That decided to take just a minute of their time to write me and be like, “No, no, no, try to do something,” you know, and encouraged me. And then it was a really good thing to do. Yeah, so you never know.
Michelle Khouri 24:40
That’s super cool. Also, you said something that’s very important, I think for all creators, all artists, all creatives is that when something frustrates you and when you feel defeated by something, take a step back from it. Like, don’t be afraid to give yourself breathing room to process that frustration or those negative feelings because if you try to create in the midst of that, it’s not gonna result in something, usually, that’s, like, productive.
Rylsee 25:08
Right.
Michelle Khouri 25:09
But you were like, “Ugh! I’m just frustrated!” And you walked away and then you came back the next day. And this is what resulted.
Rylsee 25:15
Yeah. But this was definitely with the help of people. I cannot take all the thing on my own.
Michelle Khouri 25:22
But even when you don’t have fans, or followers, or friends, you know, encouraging you to move on, a really good way to defeat a moment of frustration and creative block is to just walk away and breathe. Take time away.
Rylsee 25:37
Yeah, I think accepting that it can’t always go the way you want or it cannot always be successful. I think it’s a hard thing to accept, especially in the social media era. But it is something that it’s important to keep in mind, you know?
Michelle Khouri 25:52
Exactly.
Rylsee 25:52
I read this sentence, the lyrics of a song. It was in France, so let me try to translate it. It’s from a rapper called Jojo. It says, “J’en partage que mes victoires et c’est bien ma plus grande defaite.” It means that I only share or talk about my victories and this is probably my biggest weakness.
Michelle Khouri 26:13
Wow.
Rylsee 26:13
I don’t know if it translate well but I found this, like, A. beautiful because it’s really a sensitive person that wrote this.
Michelle Khouri 26:23
Mmmhmm. And it’s vulnerable.
Rylsee 26:24
One hundred percent. Yeah. And also, like, it’s a good parallel to what we do with social media, or what social media makes us do, I don’t know which way. You know? We tend to only show the best side of our life. Even for me, like, my best drawings, the best thing I’ve done. But we leave only little space for like the moments of doubt. And the problem is that, quite often, when I feel these creative block when I feel not good enough for like this. And I can’t, or I don’t want to, create, I often end up scrolling on Insta and other platforms. This just makes me feel even shittier. You know? And I think I’m far away from alone in this case.
Michelle Khouri 27:11
Absolutely!
Rylsee 27:11
And that’s something that I try to get away from sometimes.
Michelle Khouri 27:16
But you know what? I’ve thought a lot about this. And I think people are starting to share more low moments, but also, this is a hard one for me, because why would I share with you my most, like, vulnerable moments? I’m a private person. I’m going to share right the things that I’m proud of, the things that make me joyful about my life,
Rylsee 27:35
You worked hard for. Yeah, of course.
Michelle Khouri 27:38
I worked hard for it. I’m gonna be like, “Oh, I love this moment. I’m going to share it!” So like, also, I’m a private person. So if I’m going through something, I have my own support systems and you can be damn sure I’m not going to share that with you because it’s none of your business.
Rylsee 27:52
Yeah, definitely.
Michelle Khouri 27:54
I think the message needs to be more about, “Understand that all of these glossy pictures are by people who are whole people with whole lives who feel like a loser, just like you do, often, and have their insecurities.” But I don’t think what we need to preach is posting more of the shitty stuff because then it becomes curated shittiness. Just like there’s curated joy.
Rylsee 28:20
Yeah, that’s the way of things. (laughter) I have a good sentence to respond to this: Create more moments that make you forget to post about them. Because I realized that the best moments that I spend with like my family, my wife, my friends, or just on my own or a party and everything, most of the best one I was so into it that I don’t have a single picture. And it doesn’t mean that I haven’t shared about it, or that was not good, or worth sharing. It’s just that I was so into it that I did not even need the confirmation of anyone external to this moment to confirm that that was a great moment, you know?
Michelle Khouri 29:02
100% I’m the same way. There’s an interesting segue here because I want to get us back on track. And it’s the fact that you’ve actually started playing with AR with your work, augmented reality.
Rylsee 29:17
I’m trying, I did a collaboration with this company in Paris that are specialized in this, Cool Monster. And I’m not really into, like, the doing part. So for some project, I had the chance to work with the team that understood and I did the drawing of how I imagined it, and they were helping me for all the technical part of doing this. And this is definitely something I would like to do more often. So if someone hears me here and is down to like, do some VR experimental stuff? I’m down.
Michelle Khouri 29:50
Oh, yes, let’s get that. I mean, I’m fascinated by augmented reality. So if we could get someone to partner with Rylsee and also with my company FRQNCY, you’ve got some goldmines here.
Rylsee 30:05
Yay!
Michelle Khouri 30:06
Make it happen and let’s augment our realities. It scares me but also excites me.
Rylsee 30:11
I’m in the same boat.
Michelle Khouri 30:13
Yeah. Same same same. Okay, so now let’s talk about where are you headed in the future? Like how do you see yourself evolving or playing or experimenting in the near future?
Rylsee 30:25
Definitely more volume stuff. I love to build things. I work a lot with wood and sometimes metal and I’ve done it in my last exhibition in Berlin. That was called Other Inbox that you can actually visit on on my website and VR activity. And I love to build stuff and play with spaces in general because I think my work even when I just draw and sketchbook on walls or anything, it has this 3d dimension. I call it like static movement. Even if it’s a static image, often you can feel the movement I think. I mean, I tried to to make it look like this.
Michelle Khouri 31:05
Like when the eyes of a painting follow you.
Rylsee 31:08
Yeah, on this side. Or I would say more It looks like a frame of inaction, almost. You know what I mean?
Michelle Khouri 31:15
Ah ha. Like you’ve hit pause in the middle of a moment.
Rylsee 31:20
Yeah, exactly. And then. So it kind of comes to me naturally to try to work more in something that people can experience. And it also leads me to VR kind of stuff. So I’m always between both. I like the VR for the experience. For example, or like, I don’t know, I dream about doing a whole exhibition in which I would work with, I don’t know, like a VR architect in building the room where I would do this VR exhibition, you know? So it’s an exhibition that would not really exist, but at the same time, it’s also something that someone you saw it, I saw it in a different country. Someone in Japan saw it as well. So does it mean it exists or not? Because we can talk about it, we can exchange, we lived it, but it doesn’t materially exist. So I’m also quite fascinated by this question, actually.
Michelle Khouri 32:17
But you know what, there’s so much in our lives that is exactly that way. You know, like ideas of culture, or nations or money. These are all things we experience that don’t materially exist.
Rylsee 32:31 Yeah, that’s true. I’ve never thought about this. But yeah.
Michelle Khouri 32:34
Where could our Cultured Crew find you?
Rylsee 32:37
I would say the most up-to-date is always my Instagram @Rylsee. We have brand called Sneeer with three E’s goes, “sneeer!” It started with a funny nickname that I had, like Sneeer is kind of my alter ego. So we thought that it would be a funny name for the merch. So it’s definitely most inspired by like the kind of humoristic playfulness that I have in my work. Our best seller is the “Too Shy to Rap” that I started years ago. And I like to base stickers around where I’m going and a lot of people can relate to this. So it’s quite fun to see people walking around with “Too Shy to Rap” you know? I am too!
Michelle Khouri 33:22
Yeah, that’s like the little like thing you have in quotes next to your name always. Rylsee Too Shy to Rap. Well, this has been such a joy Rylsee. I’m so happy we did this. And then we got to share some of that infectious joyful, optimistic spirit and playful spirit with the Cultured Crew. Thank you for coming.
Rylsee 33:46
Thank you a lot. It was a really pleasant experience.
Michelle Khouri 33:55
Did I not tell you that it was just a joy? I bet you’re sitting there with a huge smile on your face because I know I am. He makes me laugh. He makes me smile. And that joy, that, like, curiosity for the world around you, is so contagious, you know? So that’s why we need more people like Rylsee in our world to make us just take on that curiosity through osmosis. Alright babies, until next time, you know what to do. Keep it classy. Keep it curious. Keep it Cultured.
