I can’t make the same work forever and I don’t want to, but the creatures I’m making with Reibo Rammi have a weird hold over me.

TESS POLLOK: You’re a painter and musician, you’ve also recently forayed into design with Reibo Rammi. Do you see these practices as being in dialogue with each other in any way?

JAXON DEMME: 100%. I think the spiritual download I’m craving right now is going to happen when I start diving back into my music practice again. A lot of my work from the past three years has just been me recording on my phone while painting. I just have the attention span of an ant–do they have short attention spans? If I get bored with one thing I’m able to quickly move to another.

POLLOK: I get that. Having a manic cycle of production is kind of like being in sleep debt. Like, if you’re being really productive, there has to be a shutdown period after, or a phase where you shift your attention to something else.

DEMME: I can’t make the same work forever and I don’t want to, but the creatures I’m making with Reibo Rammi have a weird hold over me. I’m going through my Saturn return right now and also craving something new. Currently, I’m working on this series of five paintings in my studio that I started re-working after two years–it’s only now that I broke through the resistance to be able to focus on them again. It’s been difficult revisiting them because they feel, like, no longer me, but I want them to be finished.

POLLOK: There’s a give and take to that as a working artist because you have to let yourself change, let your interests fluctuate, but there’s also something to be said for being able to cross the finish line. I talk to a lot of people with similar problems, not wanting to finish something they’ve lost touch with, or feeling mentally done with a project before it’s actually over. You have to balance your flexibility with it.

DEMME: I have this really corny thing where I never give up on a painting. I would literally hurt myself to finish it. Like, I know for a fact with this current series that I can’t move forward until these are done. But it’s a painful experience to force myself to finish them, I’ll be in my studio for an hour and feel completely tapped in and then I’ll immediately fucking hate it and avoid the paintings for the next few days. I have to set fake deadlines for myself, otherwise I’d never finish anything.

POLLOK: A few months ago, you had a show at SPY Projects with Paz De la Huerta, that was her paintings with your sculpture. How do you feel about that work now?

An installation of Demme's work from her show at SPY Projects

DEMME: That was awesome. They were based on a sculpture series of dolls I made in sober living that I’d never shown before. They’re fucking amazing, they’re, like, curling over with wood glue and parchment paper. I had a lot of fun making all of their outfits. Their hats were my transition into the rainbow dolls I make with Reibo Rammi. Originally, I wanted to put the dolls in boxes and make dioramas out of them, but it ended up making more sense to just have them standing in their outfits.

POLLOK: Do you think working in miniatures is about control?

DEMME: I have no idea. I don’t ever know what I’m saying with my work; it’s more like I reflect on it later and only then do I understand what it is. Everything is so autobiographical, everything is happening while it’s happening. It’s almost like I can’t look at myself while I am myself, I can only look at myself later.

POLLOK: I have a very somber response to that. James Baldwin has a quote about how no one can ever lie about themselves because we all express who we truly are by how we live and who we become. He also says that at the end of the day, we pay for it all by the lives we lead. So, the shape of your life is really definitive of who you are. You seem like an artist who is motivated by their intuition.

DEMME: It’s a little woo-woo and ridiculous, but I feel like the only way I can make art is by connecting to my inner child. It’s all very intuitive and it’s all very spiritual. I’ve experienced so much loss in my life, I had to adapt to that mindset at, like, five years old. Art has always been there for me, it’s the only thing I know how to do.

POLLOK: What about Reibo Rammi? When did you start work on that project?

DEMME: I think its origin point was my senior year of college. My work used to be a lot darker. I remember I was in critique and a huge critique was that there was no color. I had a weird fear about color for a very long time. During college, I lost my partner in a car accident that I was also in. My work just became so dark afterwards. I had a hard time accessing anything happy, anything with color. I just became convinced that color was corny or commercial or something. During quarantine, I was cleaning out my aunt’s garage and I found these rainbow air fresheners that I’d collected a long time ago. I’ve always been interested in clothes and toys, I’ve been an obsessive toy collector forever, and the name Reibo just came to me. It almost sounded like a little kid was trying to say rainbow. It became this space for me to use color in a way that I felt comfortable with again.

I just love objects. It’s an obsession for me. I made Reibo Rammi because I want to keep my art practice separate from my commercial practice and it gives me the ability to do that. I’m so excited by Reibo. I wake up excited by it. I have, like, PowerPoints with 900 different slides of inspiration. It’s become an image collecting obsession of mine. I’m hoping to collaborate with other artists soon on more Reibo designs that we can release.

POLLOK: I feel like this is part of the larger trend of how art intersects with design, brands, and products. There’s such a movement towards having an ambiguous practice. It’s very world-building-y.

DEMME: Totally. I’m honestly so unaware of what’s going on with other artists and in the art world at large. I’m actually just an obsessive image collector. It happens so fast for me that I lose track of people’s names or their specific works.

POLLOK: Your mind is like a moodboard.

Pillows available through Reibo Rammi

DEMME: Yes! I think I’m actually very inspired by the ‘70s. When I’m generating weird pictures in AI, I always tell it to design things like they’re in the ‘70s. I love the colors they would use. I love the graphic design from that time. I collect a lot of books and magazines and a lot of them are from the ‘70s. I have all of my dad’s old collections, too.

POLLOK: What type of books and magazines do you like to collect? Or, what are some of your favorites?

DEMME: [Laughs] Would you still respect me if I told you I’ve never read a book in my life?

POLLOK: I can’t imagine it, but I respect it.

DEMME: It’s not something I’m proud of. I’ve always found it so seductive and fabulous when people love to read and they have tons of books. But I just don’t have the attention span.

POLLOK: I feel like your energy is that you’re a kinesthetic learner.

DEMME: What does that mean?

POLLOK: It’s someone who learns best through hands-on experiences. Someone who learns by doing. Kinesthetic learners don’t like to be told or taught how to do things, they just do them.

DEMME: Oh, that is so me. It’s been so frustrating.

POLLOK: Do you have any future plans for Reibo Rammi? Or any future art projects people should be aware of?

DEMME: I just reached out to the same collaborator I had on the last project, the pillows, and we’re just going to work together again and try something else. I think each project will be significantly different from the other, there’s not going to be a universal thread to any of them. I was just telling my roommate that this is my chill era, I’m very aware that what I’m making right now is relaxed. I’m resting. Once I lock in, that’s when my alcoholism will shine. [Laughs] That’s when I’ll become obsessed with all of it, all at once.

I’m really excited to start singing again and make some new demos. I’m also going back to my object obsession with Reibo Rammi. I’m so inspired by everything, even trash. It’s just ridiculous. I had to purge recently and get rid of a lot of stuff that was cluttering up my studio. My art teachers at school used to call me a bird because of how many objects I would collect. So I’m in a big collecting phase right now and I’m going out and collecting things that I like to look at. I’m going to start cutting and ripping them all apart to make new things. That’s probably when I’ll figure out some new characters for Reibo Rammi.

POLLOK: You’ve talked a lot about your manic cycles of production and the need to rest. How do you calm down when you’re too excited?

DEMME: I work out a lot. I’m very physical, my practice is very physical as well. My paintings are 20 pounds each and I’m constantly moving them around. I like being outside, I like to feel the heat and be sweaty. I wish I could work naked because I don’t like wearing clothes. Moving around is pretty much the only way I can calm down. My dog died recently, and the entire time I was jumping around to get all of the energy out. If I don’t do that, I feel very angry all the time.

I love the sun. That’s something about LA that really inspires me. I’m such a sun baby. The heat really does something to me. I’ve been kind of a hermit these past four years while getting sober, so I’m not fully immersed in any of the cultural scenes here. Sometimes it frustrates me that I’ve become a hermit because of how extroverted I am, but I like having a small group. That’s definitely something that helps me calm down.

POLLOK: How did getting sober affect your practice?

DEMME: It fluctuates day by day. Today you caught me in a headspace where I feel very accepting of everything. But tomorrow I might wake up, like, fuck everything. Make everything happen now. It’s a day to day thing.

POLLOK: It’s such an alcoholic instinct to want everything to be infinite all the time. Also, the desire to have everything stay the same forever.

DEMME: Totally. Bend, don’t break.

JAXON DEMME is a visual artist and musician based in Los Angeles. Her latest collection, Reibo Rammi, is available now online.

TESS POLLOK is a writer and the editor of Animal Blood.