Becoming Beer Baby
An Interview between Round Lemon’s community manager Bethan Jayne, and Artist Beer Baby.
Born and raised in Birmingham, artist Beer Baby talks about reaffirming her artistic style, running an artist-led collective, and the process behind her piece ‘Glowing’, which features in our Round Lemon X SHOUT Digital Shout Outs exhibition.
Your piece ‘Glowing’ is currently being featured in our ‘Round Lemon X SHOUT Digital Shout Outs’ exhibition, which is made up of spray paint on MDF board. What was the process like to create this piece, and why in particular did you choose to use spray paint?
There’s a little less decision making and more allowing chance and freedom of expression when I create, and painting Glowing wasn’t any different. I knew I wanted to paint something queer, but in terms of process I just put on some SOPHIE and let the colours do the work. Spray paint has been my go to medium to paint with for a while now. I love the fluidity, speed, and having synthetic colours already available to me. My connection to colour is expressed by making colour combinations, rather than mixing them. Choosing colour is one of the most important parts of my artistic practise.
You are both Birmingham born and based, which seems to be important to you as a creative. Do you think Birmingham as a place has had an impact on your practice?
It’s important to me as a person before being important as a creative; I’m proud to be a Brummie. However, Birmingham hasn’t necessarily impacted my practise, but moving back to the city after uni reaffirmed that my style and artistry fits me.
I first came to learn about your practice through your work with JUNK, which is an artist-led collective ‘challenging the ideals of good art versus bad art’. How was this group first established?
Yeah we are an artist-led collective, so after we all finished University and tried to pursue an emerging arts career as individuals we eventually came to a standstill and realised something was missing. For me since starting JUNK, my personal art career has more purpose. It’s like I had to do something else to know what was lacking in my own practise.
Me, Georgie and Sophie, are family; two of us together make up cousins, partners, and best mates. So it wasn’t difficult to get the ball rolling, once we stopped just dreaming whilst in the pub.
As a group you have quite a strong online presence, but recently you had an exhibition called ‘STATIC’ at Moseley Hive. How did you find the experience of holding your first in person exhibition?
It was mad; getting to big up artists outside of our Instagram was really fulfilling. I think myself, G and Sophs are in an agreement that when you come to a JUNK event it’s not about us it’s about the creatives we’re showcasing. After STATIC we’ve definitely got the buzz for putting on more in person arts events, really delving into every aspect of the arts.
What advice would you give to emerging creatives?
At uni my lecturers constantly attempted to underestimate my skill and tried to push me into using different mediums because they didn’t like spray paint. I didn’t listen because I was excited about the direction I was taking. So trust your artistic flare and you’ll find a style that reflects who you are.
