Unafraid

Tintype by Margaret Muza

Dee’s passion project is a podcast about horror.

She and her closest friend have built this podcast together from the ground up. Each piece of the show is an aspect of the pair’s creativity and teamwork: the photography, graphic design, themes, interviews, even the cocktails they concoct to go with that week’s theme with names like Bloody Bathory. She delights in being deliciously creeped out, and even more in the freedom to create a show that answers to no one but her own authentic interests.

From an early age, Dee learned from her father that people are beautiful in their sheer humanness, no matter the particular shape they take. He had gone to art school and was a versatile painter, comfortable in airbrush, oils, and acrylics. He stopped painting years ago, and Dee misses his work.

Her mother is creative too, and Dee remembers watching her whip up elaborate Halloween costumes from scratch. Her parents gladly supported Dee when she was invited to be an “art docent”, children who show artistic promise and are invited to volunteer at the art museum.

So a girl who grew up watching her father paint and her mother sew never felt boxed in to a single creative pursuit. Now she’s a woman comfortable devoting her days to chasing light and form as a photographer and her nights to sketching vampires and ghouls. She’s learned to try it all, and she’s unafraid.