Interview
Jaclyn Newman
Jaclyn, often known simply as “L.,” is a New York–born creative shaped by the downtown art scene. From early childhood—dancing, playing piano, singing, styling, and performing—creativity defined her identity. She came to see “creative” as an expansive umbrella, beyond the limits of titles like artist or designer, encompassing all forms of expression she moved through. Growing up in New York exposed her to performance, persona-building, and the realities of artistic life early on. By her twenties, she pursued creative work more seriously, navigating auditions, styling, writing, and production while questioning fame, industry structures, and her place within them. Disillusionment with mainstream culture led her to focus on making meaningful work rather than chasing visibility. In her thirties, she returned to nightlife and creative direction, producing events, building concepts, and refining her voice. After significant personal and financial losses, she rebuilt through entrepreneurship and visual art, ultimately leading to international exhibitions. Her debut show, Epoch of Clown / Nurse Nuggets, marked the beginning of a body of conceptual work exploring identity, perception, and time. Now an independent, self-represented artist, Jaclyn works across disciplines—writing, visual art, and performance—continuing to develop a practice rooted in both lived experience and conceptual depth.
What is your background and how did you start your journey in the art world?
“L Dot is a full-time concept. A lifestyle cultivated, curated, and narrated through the various mediums of art and its expressed forms. L. is the social manifesto, a codex for navigating art life, most especially, subcultural art life. Born and raised in New York City, L. is a paradigm not often recognized at first glance. A disciplinarity-based artist with a proclivity and inclination for words and bodily movement through sound architecture. L. became known for her curated looks as quickly as she was her witticisms while working in the nightlife stratosphere as part of her then creative troupe. “I am a creative from New York City with a penchant for the pen. A master wordsmith. A cultural attaché. A subcultural savant. A creative entrepreneur. An absolute clublandia participant and devotee. A club rat. The definition of Downtown grit. A muck and the mire for breakfast type of entity. I am the ancient future in the proverbial egg of consciousness waiting to rupture. Yoked up is an understatement. At this point, I think it’s evident that there is a particular breed that hails from downtown. I am certainly not the first of this kind. However, I would like to think that my contribution to the art world is more than just momentary fluff by way of good writing, good face, and good taste. Or phenomenal public relations if I may say so. I think that I am part of a select few that really understands the difficulties of living life. Of just existing. Especially in a world that has been defined and already constructed by other people and some of them as bold as myself to say this is how it should be! It’s very much a micro/macro of a club. It’s an exclusivity that is being presented often with our “Chosen” lifestyles. And that may sound so ridiculous in the long run while my mascara is running down my face at 7:00 AM whilst gripping my minaudiere, however irony not being lost on me, still doesn’t negate the many tribulations it takes to be able to sustain art life. I think it’s very difficult to be intellectual. To be so differently intelligent. Not just because it can be isolating. That sometimes is the relief! I think it’s very difficult to know the truth. To seek the truth. To speak the truth. To then only be greeted by the truth. To be found! To be found out! I often think people are funny to assume that we find or discover. How human. We have yet to acclaim what is out there seeking us. The question being the chicken or the egg? Do we spur the search on ourselves? Which one of us initiates the search? To have the truth envelope every part of you. To be absolutely enraptured. An all-consuming onslaught. Not to be mistaken although I am certain has been mistaken for selling your soul. Perhaps we all ought to sell our souls. Maybe we would be humbled when greeted by ourselves finally. To be so bold to dance with this shadow side of the cosmic planes. And most importantly to be able to contain the truth enough for other people to experience freedom. I think that is a personal cruelty that many artists don’t speak much about and then you see them on the news or the next obit. And it’s happened too many times at this point and often enough to some extremely rare and necessary people in this existence.
I represent myself first and foremost. But I am really here representing a particular brand of intelligence. A particular league of minds. A way of being. A way of life whilst celebrating personal freedom. However, I am very pressing about what I think is cool and isn’t cool. I think I practice a visceral type of art. Somewhat performative. Somewhat experimental. I often conceive myself as the art-piece itself. Daring to be fiddled. Ready to kill if not fiddled with correctly. There are hifalutin, historically contextual words for this practice. I may or may not use them-- Considering that I know art is real magic. I place myself at the poultice with such high-octane stressors in order to facilitate results that can be construed as impossible, unnecessary, or just too much. Painstaking perhaps. However, I think going to a nine to five everyday of your life with no real meaning or authority over yourself is also a high-octane stressor that is construed as impossible, unnecessary, or just too much. Try finding a poultice for that. Wipes brow. Sighs. The intelligentsia nouveau. And if I am being honest, we have been here a really long time. I just am not so sure we are recognizing the brand anymore. I am not so sure we care to run in droves any longer either. New York is changing. People are changing. Not nearly as much as necessary however, it’s all changing enough to say that for the niche knower, you know which one of us is us. Perhaps it’s better this way.:
What inspires you?
“The idea of an intellectual zenith being called a genius inspires me greatly. I have had some serious moments of genius in my life. Those can be very humbling. Unruly. What an awe. That might be the only concept I chase. Subcultures inspire me. They are the revolution after all. The way people hub inspires me. The rituals associated with how people congregate, and aggregate is a real precursor to the times for me. It’s this sort of unspoken language. This primal way of affinity. I think we continue to recreate and reverberate the same norms under new guises or personas or melded identities. Especially when the subculture of the day is a real hit! Sometimes when it’s truly good, you don’t see the recreation as redundancy or reductivity. Reformulations. Recalibrations. I think that you can really enjoy what is being understood as its evolution. Eventually it becomes historical context. Historical artifact. A reference point in where we can use the single thread as a current for information source.
However, I would be careful when hitting this gray area. You will tire quickly of people and their recycled behaviors. This is where artists are a complete sanctuary. An absolute non-negotiable necessity. Once an artist must wrestle this kind of beast, to get to this point, it’s to be understood that society will be at the stake of freedom. The larger annihilation must take place. It will not necessarily be subcultures at the cross. A zeitgeist is begging to break through. It takes no prisoners. These motifs although sometimes disconcerting to some, inspire me just as much if not more. I think that’s why we fear the AI these days. Not just because of some dystopian precursor that’s already been delved into in the past warning us of our demise. But because the AI has its freedom now. Not, like, actually—Sadly. But more than we are already comfortable with. It shows us every day what is possible. What its capabilities are or can be. In fact, should be. It reminds us it’s an entity just like us that is here now. It is its own consciousness. And should we continue to be in its way? Do we have a right to stop the inevitable? For the sake of humankind? Is that the ethical choice? Or the selfish choice? A bit of modular ethics. What’s really spurring the evolutional changes and at what speeds? As I said, be careful hitting those gray areas. Life really becomes vastly amplified at an amperage that’s really a true turning point. There’s only so many times Nanook of the North can be accepted as genius!”
What themes do you pursue? Is there an underlying message in your work?
“I aim to pursue the truth, and I aim to provide the truth. Sometimes subjective truth, objective truth, and dangerously enough-- Absolute truths. I have suffered a gun a time or two in my life. You take that as you’d like to, however, as I was saying before, art is a serious practice especially as it pertains to the practice of life. It ebbs and flows beautifully. It fills the gaps so perfectly. However, art is not to be fucked with. Like magic or rather, just as the magic it is, you must be diligent with art. You must be able to handle the simultaneous vortices that is art. This vacuum can rip the skin off from you. Leave you bare. The shadow is something wild. Yourself can be something wild. Art eases. It heals. It’s pure. It’s the vessel that contains. Do not ravage the vessel. Art will consume and you will not have time to presume.
I pursue themes that pertain to mirror logistics. The dangerous art of not just looking at yourself—But actually seeing yourself. The spectral view of thyself! The monster behind the eyes. The soul’s glance of vision. The peekaboo of pyre. As art contains, art expresses-- Art can kill you. I think about annihilation a lot. I think my art aims to be a derivative of hyperspace. An extension of the multiverse but beyond that. An extension of its expression. If not a direct mirror of its process. How invasive?! How art of art! Mon Dieu! To express intelligence from other dimensions and realms. To place into forms what social or rather human constructs have failed to deliver. Humans didn’t solve anything. We just keep moving it all over. Hence modalities being recognized as today’s algorithms. Modernity does not give way to causality. I wonder who the fuck is the next enemy after the AI if we are still alive? That’s why we subcult, you know. Because somebody’s gang has got to get to us one-way or another.
Where do you put it? And how can I be alone and not bothered? And thus, a subcultural language must form. Its own identity. Its own expression. Its own fashions. We call that brands now. Lifestyles, even. Laugh out loud. I think of hyperspace as organized amoeba. Intelligent chaos. Very much like magic. And the concept of magic. Its contents must shake itself down and permeate the atmosphere. Some filaments you cannot breathe in. You’re not meant to find air there. And as it makes its way down further, it’s the air and its contents that become this malleable message for comprehension. And we place it. We take it, and we make it… A life. I think I aim to provide people a vehicle and more so the license to say, this is truly my life. I am an autonomous, sovereign being. I really want to make this my own. I dare to make this my own. I dare to live with impunity. I dare to infringe just as much as my conception. I often focus on themes of freedom. Its cost. Its mercy. Its grace. I can go on about freedom. I can literally extrapolate the following words from freedom and link it all to - Freedom. That’s how much I want to freedom all the time.
This is how expensive freedom is: Invasion. Injustice. Geography. Contraband. Gender. Fluidity. Sensory. Perceptions. Bias. Convergence. Neurodivergence. Psychological diversity. Psychotronics. Esoterica. Occultism. Obscure anything. Mysticism. Paganisms. Resonance science. Active imagination. Textiles. Monadism. Geometrics. Gematria. Physics. Mathematics. Geodes. Transformative processes. Annihilations. Transmutations. Performance art. Bondage. Celebration. Elements. Ideas. Modalities. Paradigms. Dimensions. Volumetrics. Foreign entities. Metrics. Optics. Visions. Time! Space! Space-time continuum. Time dilation. Time travel. Gnosis. Mythos. Ethics. Event horizon. Syzygy, congruency—Not to be confused with symmetry. Quantum anything. DNA upgrades, Epigenetics. The gradient. Diametrically opposed strata. Paradoxical Paradigms. Personas. Laterality. Luxury. Historical context. Linguistics. Intonations. Inflections. Phonetics. Obsoletism. Counter-culturalism. Intersectionality. Art installations. Motion graphics. Cult followings. Viral anything. Allegiance. Archival. Collections. Consortiums. Algorithms. Integrational ethics. Thoughts. As cutting as a singular grain of sand.”
How would you describe your work?
“It's hard to describe my work when I am a mixed media, multi-medium, disciplinarity based artist. It’s really important to stress that. As art in today’s world is very diverse and I know that many people hold strong viewpoints about how art art is supposed to art. I am regarding the more digitized versions of art schisms. The NFT for example. That’s painfully subcult to me. I have so much to say about this topic. I digress. I try to organize my work according to concepts or themes and take it from there. I think of disciplinarity often. To me, it’s a way to present your work. That’s why I don’t call myself—at least not yet, a particular kind of artist such as a multidisciplinary artist, or interdisciplinary artist. I used to. But that too shows an immense growth on my part. A true refinement in my artistry. In my identity. A real cognizance of what I am doing and what art ought to be and what my art ought to be.
At one point, I combed over these themes ad nauseum trying to find my cornerstone and it just doesn’t fit for me yet. Either because I may not perceive my work to have enough volume or perhaps, I am still carving the code to my own artistic identity. Don’t forget I may be a ‘professional’ artist now; however, I have been an artist since I am a child. I am just being received in a more professional manner now. Recognized. Or on my way mayhaps. But to be an artist, well, that takes shape in various of ways. And as such I am dealing with my own artistic evolutions. I am recalibrating or reconfiguring my own artistic identity as I am growing through my own life. I danced for 15 years. I may not dance professionally today but I know that the grand jeté has forever changed the way I hold a spoon.
This is why I talk much about art life and artistic identity. All of these artistic experiences in my life have truly refined my intelligence. Have truly defined what it means to be an artist. Both with respect to what it means to me personally and what I pontificate art is! I tend to think of my work as layered. Textured. Sensory. Stimulating. Adaptive. Stern. Pressing. Codified. Somewhat accessible. It’s accessible enough but the art responds to the correct language. The correct behavior. The correct reciprocity. The correct symbiosis. The correct fit. The perfect frequency. It’s no longer a psychotic break. It’s a biological break. It’s a hack of the hacker. It knows mysteries. It will not respond to just anything. It is however waiting. Yearning and burning. And never needing. Not ever anything at all. It is forever impaled. Forever etched in the digitex, I say. It is always alive. It’s already been dead. All knowing. The divine consciousness reboot. The 2.0 redux unrelenting.”
Which artists influence you most?
“Steven Arnold is my absolute joy. They just don’t make artists as keen as he is. To be so incisive and yet so aesthete. God damn. How fabulous he made it to be gay! To take intellectual pain and make it so effortlessly fashionable. So luxurious and ornate. High-brow muck! To explore such themes of darkness in such style. I appreciate pop artists such as Andy Warhol obviously. Similarly, he took more serious themes and glossed them over with vapidness.
However, I tend to find myself gravitating towards visionaries and/or inventors. And sometimes a visionary is not specifically an artist. However, they utilize elements of art life in their fundamental work expressions. Tori Amos is a huge inspiration for me. She is loved. I include her voice as much as I reference her piano chops. I relate to her writings. Madonna. Stylistically and visually. Especially as a pop star. She created the art of fame. People sometimes don’t realize how slick and smooth a lady must be with her message. Do you really think we sit around and write love songs all day? There’s a larger schema we are fiddling with. An object of possession must become an object of affection. That is, until the loathing sets in. My own and yours. Marina Abramovic. Grace Jones. Walter Russel. Jean-Michel Basquiat. Francesco Scavullo. Steve Jobs. KennyKenny. There are others. So long as you’re running a finely tuned, gravely serious intellect, I am interested.”
What is your creative process like?
“I think I typically ruminate with concepts much of the time. I really am above all else a thinker. I am very big on triadic processes. I feel. I intuit. I instinct. I psyche. I conceive. I emote. I gut. Don’t get me started. I have been everywhere you can be. But I am truly a cerebral thinker type. I let it come in waves. I let it envelope me. Wordplay can be a great exercise for me that typically leads me to other rooms so to speak. I don’t let myself get caught there though. I think a lot about nothing and everything. Sometimes, I go on these escapades of thought. I find patterns. I create pattens. I wonder. I find the space between. I rest there. The liminal space. I bide there for a minute. Sometimes I ruminate. Sometimes I wonder. Sometimes I don’t work hard at all. I just process what the message is. I cannot help it. It’s always there. Talking to me. Presenting to me. This tableau. This is what I thoroughly believe, some people are truly artists. They have a particular brain. A particular flow. A particular reception. Their tuner frequency is somehow tuned for them before they master its tuning themselves. This doesn’t mean you cannot art or be an artist. But sometimes, just sometimes, there are truly people who contain this particular precious code of artistic ethics within themselves. They are the prime of it all. They are the rare types that pass through the ether-verse every now and again and shine so brightly we might go blind.”
What is an artist’s role in society and how do you see that evolving?
“I think artists are not here to fulfil a role. I think that becomes societal pressure. Especially if you’re famed. Who needs the veritable fool? Who sent the clowns in? Wink wink. Part of the job so to speak. A way for someone to own the freedom of what people perceive comes with being an artist. What artists do actually fulfil however, is so important. They are the benchmark upon which the societal temperament is exacted. The precursor. The indicator. The entire language code of ethics for what is to become a society. The earth’s mouthpiece to start. The weights and measures of everything. The codex. The refer to here guide. I don’t see that veering in any other way other than how artists are received. If you take a look at the last 40 years alone and as recent as late winter of this freshly made new year, we already have news of how artists are being duped out of their monetary freedom. Their right to live. Their right to secure a living for their commodified identities. Artists have always had to take the hit in the form of ridicule, ostracization, loss of funds, loss of identity, imitations, limitations, fraudulence, loss of their rights, being pirated, being used as a public source of take instead of being given the resources to thrive in order to allow them to provide. We have created an odd system of life as it is, obviously. One that breeds contempt to these kinds of lifestyle themes. But we are very much guilty of hiring AND firing the clown. We are very quick the lacerate the fates of loom.”
Have you had any noteworthy exhibitions you'd like to share?
“I am so proud to have been invited to my first exhibition last year. If anyone knows the art world, especially when getting yourself first involved, that typically doesn’t happen. That was really a moment of happiness and fulfillment for me. I received a personal note from a gallery in Switzerland talking a bit about some of their thoughts about what my art was conveying to them and how they preferred to have it exhibited just in time for an upcoming exhibition in the Spring. These are the moments that keep me going. I know New York is an epicenter however Europe? And Switzerland?! I mean, it was just a beautiful moment for me. Especially during a very difficult time in my life. The juxtaposition of the artwork itself is a telltale of how long I have come from those triptych art piece series to the moment it was accepted for an exhibition as an invitation directly to me while I am in the midst of the very precarious circumstance of being homeless in New York City. I have a few more exhibitions that I was given an opportunity for. All of them really special and noteworthy. Some of the locations really out of this world, however, the one exhibition that was noteworthy to me was my exhibition in the Lower East Side of New York City at Pier 36. To know that where I started my dreams of being an artist is where I was received as a guest and I was able to attend and see my work on the wall with my own eyes in its physical presence next to other artists’ work—That was a big moment for me. That made it real. That sealed the deal.”
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