The World According to Alison OK Frost

‍Welcome to the third episode of The World According To, a podcast that explores the unique worldviews of amazing people. In this episode, I had the pleasure of visiting the world according to Alison OK Frost, an artist who takes troubling social and environmental images, and transforms them into delicate watercolors and post-apocalyptic scenes. These haunting and beautiful paintings help her and those who meditate upon her work to process the trauma of our times. We talk about painting in urban encampments, the importance of surrounding yourself with the right colors, teaching art classes over zoom, building a creative practice in isolation, and so much more. I hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as I did. Welcome to the world according to Alison OK Frost.

Names - 1:11

Michael Carychao: Can you tell us about your name?

Alison OK Frost: My maiden name, or my given name, is Alison Offill-Klein. I found when I was trying to kind of make art—you know, I tried shortening it to Alison Klein. You can't google Allison Klein, there's just too many. And I was having trouble with curators not being able to pronounce or spell my name. So when I got married to someone whose last name was Frost, which is very easy to pronounce, and spell, I took his name. But I wanted to keep some of where I come from. So I shortened Offill-Klein to OK.

MC: How does it feel to try on the effect of different last names?

AOK: That's a really interesting question. I feel like all of my last names have had cultural baggage for them. So if you see that I have a hyphenated last name automatically you're going to assume I'm from a coast, my parents are college educated. There's also something I didn't really think about until I moved to the Bay Area is that Klein is a very Jewish last name. Which I had never thought of one way or another when I was living in LA, or New York, just because there are large Jewish populations in it, it isn't a big deal. And then when I moved to the Bay Area, it seemed like, all of a sudden, there was a little bit of othering that happened. It felt a little weird in a way to change my name to more of a waspy last name. I sort of asked myself the questions, "Am I white-washing myself here?" And, "What, what does that mean?"

MC:   And yet, you've got OK in the middle, which is the opposite of having a normal name, it's actually an invitation, it seems to me, for people to challenge your—you know, you're obviously excellent—and so to challenge your moniker of OK.

AOK: I think it's really funny too, just because I have a lot of friends who are old punk rockers and they've got these last names like Dismal or Landmine, you know? I thought it was so funny to just have a completely value-neutral moniker.

All right, I am gonna put him up.

Rocco - 3:33

MC: So that was Rocco.

AOK: That was Rocco. Yeah.

MC: Rocco seems kind of on the young side.

AOK: He is. He actually showed up at my house last December. He was a very young, very skinny Pitbull, you know, mangy, covered in fleas, under-fed.

MC:  And you took him in.

AOK:  I didn't mean to. I was like, "Okay, you can stay in my backyard for one night." But I didn't want to take him to the shelter. Because there's so many pits there. And I didn't want him to be put down. Yeah, so he's been with me for about a year. I think he might be about two years old, something like that. And he's turned into such a joy. I mean, he's a lot. Especially with lockdown and quarantine and staying in my house. It's really nice to have this big idiot dog who loves...