INTERVIEW WITH THE ARTIST

LUCIA PASQUALE: What are you currently reading?

VANYA TRUONG: I am currently reading House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. It’s very strange and slightly haunting. I’m also re-reading Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre because I was feeling odd about myself again. Both books are very emotionally overpowering for me, so I am reading them in little breaths.

LP: What musical artists inspire you to create?

VT: I recently got into witch house this year, and CRIM3S is one of my absolute favorite groups now. CRIM3S, Daughter, and Made in Heights are the three groups that I can always listen to regardless of mood, so I’m often playing them when I do my art.

LP: If you could go on the adventure of a lifetime, where would you go?

VT: My adventure of a lifetime would be a voyage to the moon. Going to another planet in our solar system would be too scary for me because of the time—and if I go to one planet, I’d want to visit all the others (but then I’d spend too much time in outer space and grow old, or everyone I know on Earth would grow old and either way I’d have a panic attack). I want to see the Earth as a green and blue orb afloat in all that vast sparkling blackness, to just feel swallowed whole in that great expanse. And then I’d go back to Earth and look at the moon with different eyes.

LP: By sunlight or moonlight?

VT: Moonlight. There is a soft kind of silence that spreads over everything at nighttime, even in louds places like cities that don’t sleep. I love taking walks at night because I can breathe easier, and my eyes just drink in the surroundings better.

LP: Favorite quote?

VT: Ask her what she craved, and she’d get a little frantic about things like books, the woods, music. Plants and the seasons. Also freedom.” -Charles Frazier (Nightwoods)

Vanya Truong is a sixteen-year old living in a foggy town by the Pacific Ocean. She spends her time walking through forests, watching crime shows, compulsively collaging, sulking, and existential crisis-ing. Vanya wants to be able to live in the present and is also waiting for aliens to come abduct her, so that she can teach them how to skateboard.