Though I have to be honest, I have to confess: I have post-poned this post for personal reasons. One of said reasons is because (ready?) making brief but sincere and truthful statements about people that will honour their awesome and not be overly glorifying or false which will also maybe come up on a search engine so that other people outside my personal network might be made aware of these cool women is, in truth, vaguely daunting. Some of these women I will have known for half my life, and still don't know at all; others I've worked with for less than three hundred and sixty five days and they feel like siblings. Either way, writing about other women is fun but challenging. Sometimes so much so that I'm not sure what I'm writing about someone is accurate, and sometimes because I feel like it's insufficient. Regardless, there will always be a "profile" because that's the point of the project, and even if it is a relatively small blurb, these faces still mean a lot to me. Maybe this way you'll learn a little bit about me, too. Basically, the bottom line is that I can't promise portraits posted on the regular, because of that whole 'writing about other people' bit, but also because I work a lot! For myself, in the service industry, and as an artist. Such as life and hustling in the big city. I hope you understand. I'm sure you understand.
But that's all, that's the end of disclaimer. This post isn't entirely about me, it's really about this beautiful woman I met almost a decade ago,
Kate Christine Miller.
Kate and I were introduced by friends of mine in Guelph (where she did her BFA) though she would describe herself as being from "warm kitchens and smoky basements and over invested basketball coaches and houses that all look the same, but not in a new suburban way, the Niagara Region. Now Toronto is [her] home."
She always seemed like a very successful human, you know, a real grown ass woman to me. She was someone who I admired from afar, hung out with occasionally, but didn't know all that well. Maybe I just always knew she was a fellow feminist because of the cool people, my then "older" high school friends, who introduced us. We've been moving in the same Toronto circles for some years now, and more and more, I see the cool things she gets up to. I feel like I learned a lot about Kate while I photographed her, and even more when she answered my questionnaire, actually.
Kate is passionate about working with and empowering kids (read: smashing the patriarchy) and has a few amazing gigs. She works with youth at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health, as well as at Delisle Youth Services in midtown, and works for the forever badass Shameless Mag.
One thing I really noticed was that Kate was pretty much always ready, from the moment I arrived to the one I rode away, to stare right into the guts of my camera.
She's got a sweet apartment set up on Toronto's west side where she practices drumming on a cool kit in her room and seems to take good care of herself and her friends.
'til next time,
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