Cappuccino Thoughts 71: On Making Art an Everyday Practice with Mia Dunn
Meet Mia Dunn, Manhattan-based rug tufter, jewelry maker, and painter
Welcome to an ongoing series in which I spotlight New York’s Corporate Creative Class—amazing people making creative side hustles work alongside their corporate jobs.
Mia Dunn is a marketer by day and the co-founder of Mona Gems, a sustainable jewelry brand and a multimedia artist, by night.
Claire Akkan: How did you approach an artistic career?
Mia Dunn: I actually studied chemical engineering in college. But I realized as I came closer to graduation that most of the jobs available in this field were in remote areas that I was not interested in living. So I realized it was time for a pivot and I wanted to embrace the creativity I always had. I actually had the idea that I was going to become a patent lawyer because I had a science background, and I had an internship the summer before senior year in that field, and I was supposed to go back there full time as a paralegal after graduating, but I told them I couldn’t do it. I graduated with a part-time job and the intention to focus on Mona.
Art doesn’t feel like work because I’m always happy when I’m doing it. I am always working, but I get sad without making art.
If I don’t do art, I become a worse person.
CA: Tell us first about Mona Gems.
MD: It’s a sustainable jewelry brand my co-founder Mecca McDonald and I started our senior year of college using a biodegradable alternative to resin to make the jewelry. We started making earrings to sell to our college classmates. We recently outsourced a compost study and the jewelry will break down in 2-3 weeks if you put it on a pile of compost, compared with 500 years for plastic. We want to expand into fashion. Jewelry was a way to see if people would use an alternative to resin. To us, it’s about sustainability across all products.
CA: I went to one of your pop-ups and it was loads of fun. You also sold out of earrings! Tell us about your retail strategy.
MD: Pop-ups are really good for building community. You know that. People can see your products, touch them, try them on. We’ve also done some sustainability panels to build community.
MD: The artistic community in New York has also been great. I had an artist friend and curator tell me recently to raise my prices, and that was a good push to take myself more seriously.
CA: I actually went to Future Fair last week and saw one of your pieces! Tell us what that was like.
MD: It was really exciting to be featured in Future Fair [the New York City art show that took place in Chelsea last week]. My work actually sold in the first hour.
It’s a balance as an artist though to decide to make work for yourself or work you think will sell.
CA: I get that. When I started making bags, I wanted to make each one totally different, but I realized that most people want a black bag, so my last drop was almost entirely black bags. How did you get into rug tufting?
MD: Honestly, from things I saw online! It’s become a major part of my art practice over the last year. All the yarn I use is upcycled from thrift stores. I also took a woodworking class recently and I’m excited about the possibilities of tufting furniture that I make or painting on wood or making the frame that I tuft from. I think rug tufting is really nice because people find it more approachable as they start to build an art collection.
CA: How do you balance all of it?
MD: I work remotely for my corporate job, work on Mona Gems after hours, and make sure I do art every day.
CA: That takes a lot of discipline. I think people look at art and think it’s just about creativity, but it’s also really about discipline.
MD: I think it’s because I’m a Johns Hopkins grad [laughs]. I just sit down and do work. Enjoying the work helps a lot though.
If I don’t do art, I become a worse person.
CA: What inspires your art?
MD: A lot of my art is inspired by my identity being half-Japanese, half-American. I grew up in Japan and lived in Tokyo for my first 13 years. Japanese fashion and its different subcultures really inspire me. I love the self-expression there even amidst the strong cultural push to fit in. When I was 13, I moved to Hong Kong and lived there for 2.5 years. Then I moved to New York, before moving to Baltimore for college. I wanted to come back to New York to pursue my creative goals. It’s a very inspiring place to live.
CA: Where can we find your work?
MD: You can find my work on Instagram at @oilpaintstinks and www.oilpaintstinks.com, as well as www.monagems.com.
I also have an open studio on May 18th from 12-6pm at 373 broadway Unit 318 in Tribeca. It will be super cool because I work in a space with a bunch of art studios and they will all be awesome. It’s very special to have a space to do art, because it’s a lot to work from home and do art and everything else all from your bedroom.
CA: I get that. I run my bag brand quite literally out of my closet.
MD: That’s very New York.
Updates on the bag brand
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It’s been a good week in bag land! My ad ran in the “A Thing or Two” newsletter and it was a great return on investment. I had previously put $0 into marketing.
I also had a new store say yes to stocking the bags! I’ll keep it under wraps for now as we haven’t ironed out all the details and I want to make sure we actually make it happen, but I’m super excited! My biggest bag goal this year was to find a Manhattan store 👀.
I also ran out of labels! I spent a lot of the last two weeks processing the latest drop and getting everything labeled, photographed, priced, and up on the website. Running out of labels was an exciting signal because it means I’ve made more bags than I initially thought possible.
I am also very busy prepping for the next drop happening in the summer (and have already had one stress dream about it, so we’re right on track 👍). I will be doing a limited number of custom orders. If you have an old bag you loved but don’t use any more, getting it refurbished and relined is an amazing way to breathe new life into it. I’ve had a few people ask me to help them with this, and the results have been so good! Or, you can pick out a lining for a bag I provide. Email me at claire.akkan@gmail.com if you’re interested.
Look of the week
I spotted these two as I crawled off my cross-country flight to San Francisco. I appreciate people who travel in style! He’s sporting suede loafers (potentially the Summer Walk Loro Piana loafers I see every man over fifty wearing on the Upper East Side), brown pants, and a khaki blazer, plus he had a white button down. The picture is a bit hard to see due to the light, but she had these crazy blue sparkly ballet flat/loafer shoes with sparkly socks, tan slacks, a silk blouse, powder blue sweater, and elegantly knotted silk scarf. They really looked like a matching set! I think they’re going to be surprised by how people dress in San Francisco. (i.e., extremely casually).
What’s on the bedside table
Holiday Country by Inci Atrek felt like it was written for an audience of one (me). The book is about a young woman who grew up outside of San Francisco (!) with a Turkish mom and American father who spends her summers in a beach town in Turkey. This is a familiar story to me, as F. and I make the trek each summer to visit his parents in a tiny beach town on the coast of the Mediterranean. I laughed out loud when the main character, Ada, bemoaned the long flight from Turkey to Frankfurt, Germany, to San Francisco, the exact route I am taking this summer. So I don’t know if this book will have broad appeal. The plot is a little !!! —Ada falls for the man her mother was supposed to marry. But it’s a beautiful book on a sentence level. The rich descriptions and carefully observed nuances will transport you straight to holiday country. Four stars.
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This week I am….coming back from quick a trip in SF where I surprised my parents for Mother’s Day.
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