New Album Art For Hedonist

For those of you who don't already know this, for each song that I write I also do a painting to convey visually the concept behind the song. I'm currently mixing my song Hedonist which is about a time in my life when I was in an abusive relationship. The strange thing about abuse is that it's a vicious cycle that perpetuates itself. In my case, I was being abused mentally and physically, and instead of breaking the cycle of abuse by leaving the situation, I stayed and medicated myself by indulging in various forms of hedonism, the most notable being alcohol, drugs, over-eating and sex addiction. My drugs of choice were enough of an escape to make a terrible situation bearable enough to endure despite the fact that I was squandering my life away and my addictions were transforming me into an entirely different person. Unfortunately, that person I became was someone who didn't give a fuck about anything, and the intelligent, creative, passionate person that I truly am was buried for several years.

My artwork for Hedonist is a visual representation of the concept of an addiction transforming a person into and alter ego and simultaneously mutilating and destroying the individual who has allowed themselves to remain the victim.

Cover Art for Hedonsit - The Birth Of Venus De Milo

Costume Design For The Hedonist Music Video

As much as I love trying to promote the hell out of my music video Lapdance Romance what I really love to do is make music videos. As a visual artist and a musician music videos are the perfect medium for a creative such as myself. My next music video Hedonist is what I'm now focusing my attention on.  The music video/song is about a descent into insanity and using various forms of hedonism to escape the pain of domestic abuse. 

Today I came up with a costume design that I'll be wearing in the video. I'll be wearing it in the scenes that take place in the Hedonist's padded cell. 

The Hedonist in her padded cell

The song is based on my own experience with domestic violence and how enduring years of abuse fractured my psyche into different people - The Good Girl(the real me), The Hedonist(the alcoholic me) and The Lunatic(the mentally ill me). The two costumes below are The Hedonist(left) and The Good Girl(right).

The Good Girl

The Hedonist

Hooray! Lapdance Romance Is Now Live On The Interwebs

Well, here we go...It's finally done and out there. It looks amazing, sounds amazing and everyone did such an awesome job.

Lapdance Romance Credits:

Music: Borg Queen
Directed by: Arcelia Ocana M
Assistant Director: Karenzilla Poon
Director of Photography: Lily Sanchez
Story by: Niko Koupanstis
Production Design: Jenny Kirby
Hair & Make-up: Jen Hansen, Sheri Taylor, Audrey Marc, Julia Thompson
Cast: Jenny Kirby, Dan Garrett, Carla Nivala, Dave Bains, Jen Hansen, Jen Yan, Kristie Walters, Celia Weston, Keith Walters

Buy This Song At Any Of The Stores Below!

iTunes
Google Play
Amazon 

Designing Sets Within A Theme

I am a theme whore! I love theme parties, theme rooms, theme stripper costumes, you name it. If it's got a them, then it's automatically 100x more awesome in my book. Today was spent designing the padded cell set for the Hedonist music videp, but I wanted to experiment with designing with a theme. In this case, the theme is HEDONIST. So, what I did was ask myself, what kind of a padded cell would a hedonist be locked inside? The answer is this one.

The Hedonist's Padded Cell

I'm not too sure yet as to which padded cell design I'll be going with because I really love both concepts. The concept seen below is the padded cell of what I call the broken down lunatic. I love this one because I'm a huge fan of showing the song lyrics being scrawled in blood on the walls of the padded cell a scene in the video. 

The Broken Down Lunatic's Padded Cell

Ugh! So many creative ideas, and it's so hard to choose a direction. What do you think? Which padded cell do you like better?

Getting Creative With Lyrics

Today was mostly spent doing some more set design for my Hedonist music video. Today's set is a padded cell in an insane asylum with the lyrics for Hedonist written in blood. How creatively macabre is what I say. Peace out.

Inside My Mind

The next music video I plan to make is for my song Hedonist, which lyrically is 3 distinct voices having a conversation inside my head. How I visually want to convey this is by using a psychiatrist's office as the symbol of me having a conversation with myself. I've done up a few set designs for said office. One is an ornate office, which would appeal to a hedonist, and the other is a more surreal setting. Both sets are decorated with actual paintings I've done as a form of art therapy. Prints of my are for sale here.

Transferable Skills

So I hate my day job, and most people do, but I am grateful for the transferable skills I can apply to doing the awesomeness that is Borg Queen. During the day I work as an interior designer which basically involves me designing kitchen's and bathrooms for fussy middle aged women and helping solve the dilemma of which shade of beige they should paint their walls. Ugh.

However the bright side to this is that I've got some wicked design skills and software that I can transfer over to doing much cooler things like designing sets for my next music video as seen below. Behold the psychiatrist's office that is yet another carefully crafted symbol of what goes on in my mind as I have conversations with myself as a form of my own inner cognitive behavioral therapy.