DESIGNER OF INTEREST, LIENE DOBRAJA

"From Opera to pop, stage to screen, drag show to dance piece no project less worthy than the next of her attention . . ."

What makes Liene Dobraja so intriguing and why are we talking about her here at the Graphic Voice? The Latvian Born artist and designer is not only worthy of our notice because of her various successes as a young international working in her field, but more interestingly because the question one is forced to pose when admiring her portfolio is where have you come from and why weren’t you a rock star?

Glitter Galka, Headpiece

Caca Chinel, Social Poster Project

Liene Dobraja 

Designer of Interest

At the Graphic Voice we delight in diverse, eclectic, narrative driven design, which springs from a place of honest reaction and interaction with this faceted and somewhat overwhelming world that we live in. As a Manhattan based designer Liene is no stranger to intensity, but what sets her aside from the maddening crowd of cookie cutter designers is her kaleidoscopic perspective and what it took to foster it. Nonetheless in design, a rock start she is steadily becoming; mainly because she feels no urgency to conform, leading us with her voice, unafraid of judgment, to places we didn’t know we wanted to go.

When your trajectory reads: Graphic Designer, Audio-visual media artist, DJ, Costume Designer for stage and film, Accessory designer,  gay advocate, and you are still in touch with all those aspects of your arsenal, it’s safe to say your craft is cross disciplinary. But what ties the fields together is integrity, curiosity, and simple unfiltered fabulousness.

Rigoletto Poster, Graphic Design 

Rigoletto, Costume Design 

Magic Flute/Higglety Pigglety Pop, Costume Design

Graduating from the Art Academy of Latvia, her interests soon grew to art as social commentary with the creation of Caca Chinel, a series of fashion magazine styled photo shoots featuring herself as the model, with ‘shit’ as the subject. After spending time living in Berlin, Liene had begun to work as a costume designer in theatre, an interest that brought her to New York, to complete a Masters in design for stage and film at Tisch, NYU.

The Lipstick Stain, Costume Design (Short film)

Blackwell, Costume Design (feature film)

Since then, her costumes have graced many stage and film productions, including Rigoletto at the National Latvian Opera under the direction of Margo Zalite. Her most recent venture is a line of accessory headdresses that are undeniably ostentatious, unabashedly colorful and refreshingly uncontrived, selling under a version of her artist pseudonym Glitter ‘Galka.’ They were seen just last week at Coney Island’s mermaid parade.

Glitter Galka, Headpieces 

Her work ranges from Don Juan to Drink Slay Love; from Iphigenia to the House of the Flying Boob. From Opera to pop, stage to screen, drag show to dance piece no project less worthy than the next of her attention. Liene is gracing us with a boldness that gives completely of herself in unrepressed honesty.  In a city driven by consumption, that often entraps other designers into commercial and narrow corners, it’s refreshing to see someone tell us over and over, this is me.

Please visit her website for a look at her portfolio www.galka.lv

Also visit Glitter Galka on Etsy GLITTER GALKA ETSY STORE and Instagram @GLITTERGALKA

theQV IN theEV / DRAW THE ANXIETY OUT

“My master plan is to draw the anxiety out of the city with beauty.“ – Jim Power

Walking the streets of the East village it isn’t hard to look passed the ice-creameries, fancy espresso stores and boutiques brought on the steady wing of gentrification, and still feel that a spirit lingers here of the place it once was; that regardless, this essence of artistry, bohemia and the free spirited is reinvented.

Resident artist Jim Power, cements history with his mosaic public art on sidewalks, stoops, lampposts, planters, storefronts, and interior and exterior signage around the neighbourhood. He has been doing this for over 25 years. His mosaics, alongside other graffiti and street art of the pavements of the EV, so subtly fashion the landscape. As I walked I was struck by a particular lamppost that spelled “slow down,” and urged me to stand a while and examine the mosaic and to seek out more.

Mosaic as a medium for this neighborhood is a perfect metaphor: taking the broken fragments of varied types of tiles and then putting them back together to form a more beautiful whole, one which has a new meaning. This is the village’s residents exemplified.  The graphic style is rough but striking, organic yet composed, eclectic and u-nified. Old plates with marbles with Moroccan tile and fine china, all in the mix; it is exciting to understand that this imagery provides such aesthetic and narrative potential, and is concerned more with speaking to you than having you think it is trendy. It is our responsibility as artists, as with Jim Power,  to remember that our visual outcomes are connected to thought, to idea, pose questions, tell histories. And moreover, do not just serve as sirens, tempting our audience into aesthetic submission.