Artist: High in the Bay
Website: highinthebay.bigcartel.com

Meet Mildred and Pacolli. When preparing the interview, I asked Pacolli about their DIY stance and how it is trying to make a living out of it. The answer makes a pretty good introduction: “It’s nice to make a living out of art, we get to do different things like showing our art in galleries, doing commissions and High in the Bay. We do what we love and that’s sweet! It can be a struggle sometimes because it’s a very unstable life and you just have to learn how to live with it. It comes and goes, you just gotta keep on working hard and not get too crazy. We do commercial jobs too, it would be very nerve wrecking to make a living by only selling original art these days.”

Who?
High in the Bay, 2 years old. Art shop online ran by Mildred and Pacolli.

What?
We make a bunch of zines, shirts, prints, hand painted porcelain, stickers, and all sorts of art all the time. Having it available online is an easy way to get your art for whoever is looking for it anywhere in the world. Most of the things are made by Mildred and me but we do get some prints and other stuff from artists when we travel and when artists come over to our studio. We’ve been working on collabs and we intend on expanding our ideas and bring awesome people with us.

When?
I’m more a night time person than Mildred but we do a lot of High in the Bay stuff in the morning, like packing orders and going to the post office. We really don’t have a routine. I need many hours of daydreaming before doing anything really. Mildred usually finishes what he started before going for another project, and I’m more likely to be painting 8 panels at the same time. When we paint together it goes back and forth until the painting is done.

Where?
We live and work in a sunny studio in the Tenderloin, San Francisco.

Why?
I used to organize a party/art sale/concert at my apartment in São Paulo (Brazil) since 2007. It was always so much fun and it was a great way to show people what I was doing, so I started to get friends from abroad to send me their zines and prints to sell at the parties we called Bendgy. When I moved to San Francisco in 2010 I really missed all that get together energy and that simple and unpretentious way of showing art. It’s harder to organize parties and concerts in our studio in SF, so we opened High in the Bay as an alternative to that. Having Mildred on the team makes everything smoother, we have a lot of fun making one of a kind art objects and sharing them with people.

How?
We work very freely, and we’re always painting or cooking and dying paper to draw, sanding wood panels and stuff like that. We both like to use all sorts of media. It depends on the mood you’re in and what you have in hands, it goes from scrap paper, porcelain house ware, spray paint, markers, wood panels and we love screen printing and recently got into block printing too.

Find High in the Bay here:
Portfolio: highinthebay.bigcartel.com
Facebook: HIGH-in-the-BAY
Tumblr: highinthebay