Meet the Maker: Sierra Rozario
Proud staffers wearing our Co-op Pride 2023 shirt, designed by Sierra Rozario.
Branding Coordinator Mac Dobbins and Artist Sierra Rozario with Earth Day 2023 tote bags.
Sierra Rozario is an illustrator, graphic designer, and musician living in Everett, WA. They like rollerskating, live music, video games, zines and comics, D&D, and a rotating cast of about 300 other hobbies. They have two best buds, a 19 lb. cat named Dewey who likes to eat plastic (bad), and a sweet Calico named Mable who likes to eat…butter. Sierra is a long-time co-op customer and the artist behind our Earth Day 2023 tote bag and our Co-op Pride 2023 shirt. We hope you enjoy this interview about their feelings and the process behind the art of the Co-op Pride 2023 shirt.
SIFC: Why is Pride Month important to you?
SR: Pride Month is important to me because it’s 30 days of explosive, electric, radical energy celebrating people who have been historically oppressed for just being alive. I believe in embracing and celebrating queerness every day, but Pride Month is a special time where we get to be collectively, ridiculously loud about our existence to the point that it can’t be ignored.
While I love Pride Month it’s worth noting that I’m not a fan of corporations taking advantage of Pride to sell garbage while simultaneously supporting anti-LGBTQ+ organizations and legislation. For most of us Pride isn’t about rainbow-saturated advertising and flashy corporate parades – it’s about queer love and joy and community and fun. With the onslaught of regressive anti-trans bills popping up all over the country it’s comforting and punk as hell to see and be queer people existing together and partying en-mass.
SIFC: Do you plan on attending the Everett Pride event this year ?
SR: Yes! There are actually several pride events I’m trying to make it to this year – there are lots of parties, dances, drag shows, and gatherings in our area!
SIFC: Tell us about your process in designing this piece.
SR: We wanted this piece to echo the values of Queer the Land, the organization that we’ll be donating a portion of the proceeds from the design to. While brainstorming I knew I wanted to communicate this idea of queer joy, community, peace, and abundance.
I thought back to an experience I had in 2020 during a sailing adventure when my buddy and I visited a farm owned by her friends – a collective of queer makers and musicians who grow their own food, raise their own livestock, and live sustainably in northern coastal Washington. While sketching out concepts I tried to reflect the way that day made me feel – completely at ease, blissful, independent, connected to nature and community, well-fed, secure, surrounded by people like myself.
From a design standpoint I worked with a color palette and visuals inspired by 70’s children’s book illustrations and cartoons. Frog and Toad are Friends, Richard Scarry books, Moomins, etc.
SIFC: What inspires you to create?
SR: I’ve always had a drive to just…make stuff. Any stuff. Shitty stuff and good stuff. From illustration to ceramics to paper crafts, making music, writing, animating, baking, crochet, whatever – I feel uneasy and restless if I can’t find outlets for my ideas and I jump between/abandon projects often. The Fluxus art movement has also been formative to the way I consume, process, and make art – I like to celebrate absurdity, fluidity, and impermanence, while poking fun at the pretension and inaccessibility of "high art”. Art should be accessible to everyone, not just for collectors at auctions and museums.
I feel inspired by so many different things but cartoons, anime, video games, fantasy novels, editorial design, independent comic books and graphic novels, and music have been the most impactful!
SIFC: You mentioned wanting to raise at least one chicken, do you have dreams of owning land and growing food yourself one day?
SR: I absolutely wish to own my own land, grow food, drive a funny pickup truck, and raise at LEAST one chicken (but maybe 3, or 10, so she has company). My ideal scenario is a farm in the woods, with a separate art studio, and a big ass outdoor enclosure attached to my house for my cats to run around in. I also want a dog, like a big dumb sheepdog to run around outside with. The kind of dog you put a little bandana and saddle bags on y’know?
Co-op Pride 2023 shirts are now for sale. Three dollars from every shirt sold will be donated to Queer the Land, a collaborative project grounded in the self-determination of queer, trans, and two spirit Black/ indigenous/ people of color (QT2BIPOC) and the vision of collectively owning their land and labor.
