RINGLEADER: The business side of things is the toughest aspect of it all. Just to pull everything together when it comes to sourcing and printing – whether its for art or clothing – is such a hurdle to figure out and to expense.

NASHID CHROMA: For sure. Like, I think the other aspect of my personality – and I'm sure the people who follow me might have a sense of it – but I've always been very entrepreneurial.

Let me show you guys the studio.

RINGLEADER: Yeah, this whole place is sick, man. A home and a studio with a separation of space that still seamlessly transitions from one to the other. It’s fluid, and the light is insane.

NASHID CHROMA: Thanks, man. I appreciate it. So yeah, I can show you – this is the iPad I work on. I was talking to Afsha about this, but one of the things I really miss when I first moved out of my place in Scarborough – I was essentially living in a closet on the third floor of a skinny Toronto house – but it had a brick wall.

And it was very cozy and I was just in bed all the time on the iPad grinding away. And now I don't have a nook like that and I'm trying to figure out how I can reestablish that into my working environment or spaces that I’m productive in. So, I've been working on the couch a little bit more just to loosen it up ‘cause I remember back then, even though it was hard, it didn't feel like work, you know?

Right now it feels like work. So, the thing that I'm really trying to tap into is how do I make this fun? Fun and productive is that sweet spot that we were trying to float in. And it's so hard to get there sometimes because trying to be so professional about it takes out the fun.

And then when you're having so much fun, you're like, ‘I'm just doing this for me.’ That's not really for what we want to do. I think that's the beauty and the fun of what we – everyone in this space – kind of tries to do, you know, just going back and forth. The unfortunate aspect is that simply sometimes it's not going to be fun.

RINGLEADER: Yeah. You’ve got to push through those periods of time and work and get something done. The creative process in general is always nice when looking back because the outcome is fun, and hopefully something you can stand on. The vision from the outside is really cool and it looks like of course it had to have been fun. But yeah, you're going to have those really difficult, tumultuous spaces where it's like, ‘I need to do this, I have to push through it,’ but it's really hard.

And sometimes you push through something and it's really hard and you come out the other side and it just didn't turn out. It's one of those things, you know. You're going to have those times and those spaces where you're trying to get something done, but if you’ve gotta do it, and you force it, you can tell that it was forced.

NASHID CHROMA: Consistency is definitely the common denominator in everything. Like I have talks about discontinuing my entire catalog 'cause I feel frustrated sometimes with the expectations that people have of me - what they want me to produce and the style that I'm working on, when I have all these other ideas in my head, and that'd be really fun just to explore. But then this is still a business and it's supporting our livelihood and so I have to be strategic about it and that's where, even though I might be getting a little bit bored with the style, how can I re-ignite it with like something interesting for myself to make it fun, but then also discover new aesthetics? One of the things with digital art is that it's frowned upon, but a lot of people also frowned upon pop art and pop culture art when they were first bubbling up.

So, I'm doing both. The digital art in a fine art space. It's difficult to gain rapport in certain spaces because of the openness of it. There's no exclusivity. So when NFTs were kind of circulating, they gave digital art a platform. Some merit people can invest in, own it.

Judith Hill | Ophelia's Electric Soapbox

RINGLEADER MAGAZINE