Fancy meeting you here ….
On All Hallows’ Eve in 1998…
Yep. We’re going back that far. Buckle up.
Despite being told that her due date would be sometime between late November and early December, my dear sweet mother ended up going into labor on Halloween night. In Key West, Florida. At Fantasy Fest. With Drag Queens. “But Ali, how exactly did you end up showing up six weeks early, how could the doctors possibly have been so wrong?” I’m so glad you asked. See, when I was born, I had really long fingernails. Like, really long fingernails. And the doctors think that, more or less, I heard the music and sensed the thinning of the veil and decided to claw my way out of the womb and into the world on Halloween night. If you know me in person, this probably explains a lot. If you don’t, this tells you pretty much everything you need to know.
Since then, I’ve been a Halloween-loving creepy kid who is almost always holding a pencil or covered in paint or thinking about the dark, macabre, & mysterious things in our world and how intertwined they are with life & beauty. Also dessert. I’m usually thinking about dessert.
The Method to the Magic
WithScreamAndSugar came to me both in a spark of genius one night and over the course of years and years of finding myself and the ways I liked to best express myself through art. After facing job insecurity in 2020 (who didn’t?), I turned to art to help support myself. The name, with scream and sugar, came from the idea that my whole personality is overall a little sweet and a little spooky (and that my blood is about 30% coffee on any given day).
Since its inception, WithScreamAndSugar has been a queer-friendly, BIPOC/AAPI-friendly, pro-feminist environment built on exploring the creepy and the kooky (and the mysterious and the spooky) that lives within us all. What was once just art inspired by goofy puns - which still make an appearance on the regular, much to the dismay of many - has evolved into a place where life and death converge, mysticism and magic weave together, self-tenderness opens doors to understanding the unseen, and where peace exists in the spaces between the shadows and the light.
I am so happy you’ve found your way here with me. Come and stay awhile.
♡ Ali
"I suppose the picture-habit (which I seem to have) is as bad as the morphine or whisky one . . . "
- Isabella Stewart Gardner, 1896
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