We recently had the chance to connect with Rachel Cooley and have shared our conversation below.
Good morning Rachel, we’re so happy to have you here with us and we’d love to explore your story and how you think about life and legacy and so much more. So let’s start with a question we often ask: What makes you lose track of time—and find yourself again?
Sketching for the joy of it! During times of difficulty and strain, drawing helps me to find my center of balance again. By being present in the moment and focusing on the process of building up a drawing, my mind powers down from overthinking and truly relaxes into a soothing flow state.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
I am a freelance 2D animator/storyboard artist/filmmaker originally from Central NJ. Currently, I am working on a series of animated instructional videos for UCLA’s Oncology Department to assist head & neck cancer patients through their course of radiation therapy treatments.
My filmmaking and animation style combines my technical knowledge of filmmaking and high level draftsmanship to create impactful, engaging audio-visual pieces. No matter the medium- illustration, graphic narrative, animation- the goal is effective communication, audience connection, and thought provocation.
Outside freelance projects, I am currently producing my next animated short, “Judgement Day”, a natural comedic horror story that any women can relate to: a teenager purchases a pregnancy test for the first time with the support of with her corky best friend. Together they weather a well-trodden rite of passage and come face to face with the inherent, terrifying vulnerability of their biological sex- the potential to bare children.
In addition to this short, I am creating a graphic novel series written by my creative partner, Keon Garrett, about a space-time traveling pirate and his circuitous journey toward righting his wrongs.
Outside creating, I am an avid reader, Dungeons & Dragons player, fitness enjoyer, and dog lover. I have BAs in Biology and Art from Hamilton College and an MFA in Animation from UCLA’s School of Theater, Film, & Television.
Thanks for sharing that. Would love to go back in time and hear about how your past might have impacted who you are today. Who saw you clearly before you could see yourself?
My mom saw me clearly before I could see myself, which I don’t think is much of a surprise, as a person who has been with me from my first breath and heartbeat; success and failure; injury and recovery; breakthrough and breakup; disappointment and celebration.
As a toddler, she noticed my discomfort in a room crowded with people- I was attempting to escape my highchair via backflip to find refuge from a chaotic dinner party. My mom saw my erratic squirming and panic. In response to my distress, she took my high chair and spun it to face the wall. She knew I was claustrophobic even before I understood what that was. My features instantly relaxed and my tiny body slumped back into the high chair without resistance. I was at ease.
My mother nurtured my natural inclination to scribble and create. Never once did she deter my need for creative expression and saw its healing, calming, focusing proprieties work through me. As adult, when I am going through a particularly rough time, she reminds me to just draw and sketch without any greater goal or project in mind. To sketch just to sketch because “it’s always the happiest and most at peace” she sees me in.
I had a terrible speech impediment. I went to speech therapy from the age of two to about sixth grade. I have a theory I was born without the part of my brain that intuitively understood the connection of mouth shapes and tongue placement to the production of different sounds. For example, how you need your tongue pressed against your top teeth to pronounce a “da” sound for the letter d- I needed someone to teach me this. Interestingly, this natural confusion I have with mouth shapes really challenges me as an animator when I have to mouth sync characters.
My speech impediment taught me an important lesson in communication, in listening, and continuing to move forward despite being misunderstood with an open mind and heart. I think I integrate these lessons unconsciously in in all my art and approach to life. My mother always took the time to listen to me and sometimes couldn’t understand me at all. This was frustrating. I usually threw a tantrum, but my mother never stopped listening or trying to understand with an open, unjudgmental heart.
As an artist, I am in the communication business. With any project, I am always asking myself “What am I trying to say?”. This constant check-in to the message of the artwork leads to further refinement and clarity of the final version. I would argue how you communicate an idea is almost equally as important as the idea itself. And on a higher level, there aren’t really any new ideas. How you communicate and express an idea is the actual art itself. That expression is the novelty that only you can bring about through your own individual, unique life experience, identity, background, history, conditioning, education etc. The way you communicate is an expression of your being.
The speech impediment prevented me from communicating clearly. My mother saw my desperation to be understood in those strained moments. Despite the frustration, my mother’s patience and calm persistence reinforced that even though I wasn’t understood yet, what I had to say was important- that the act of expression was important. I think this basic idea I have carried with me. I know my art may not be understood always, but it is important that I make it anyway and to keep evolving.
What did suffering teach you that success never could?
Suffering taught me to live life with a staggering generosity. The fact is it is difficult to be human, even in good times. I do not know what a person has been through or is currently going through so it is best to be generous- with your attention, love, possessions, kindness. At the end of the day, life is not about you but the people around you. In the act of opening your heart you become more open to life itself.
In 2019, I was in a terrible, debilitating depression, which took me the better part of two years to recover from. This period I felt like I was disconnected from my own body. Decapitated. Dissociated. Something was terribly wrong. I did not feel joy. Or even sadness. It was just this numbing restlessness. Anxious, swirling thoughts. Like a restless leg syndrome of the psyche. This depression started after I graduated college. A result of a buildup of denying, berating, and fighting my true self. I was not aligned with my deepest values and desires while, at the same time, feeling shame and doubtful of them. What a wild feedback loop of powerlessness- I wanted to be as I was but everything I was exposed to told me to devalue it. I continued on “keeping on” in the same way. Probably, because I did not know how to proceed in another way, or maybe there wasn’t an option to, or that I wasn’t aware there were other options. Whatever the case, living in sustained misalignment led to a psychic implosion.
Everyday was exhausting just to get through and living was unbearable. I slept a lot. I understood why people considered killing themselves- it’s exhausting. And I also understood why people persisted in continuing on- the hole my absence would leave in the lives of those I loved gutted me. Despite being one of the most harrowing points in my life, it was also the most enlightening because it brutally forced me to face myself.
Like earning the trust from a wild dog, I sat with myself everyday offering myself scraps, beckoning myself out. It bared its teeth, snapped its jaws, snarled and spat, yet I continued. I faced the rawness and pain of my heart with patience and open presence. Eventually, the wounded, scared animal came out of its hiding place and its aggression cooled to calm acceptance. From there, I was able to soften and unravel it. You learn an awful lot from listening. From observing. From taking things just as they are. I understood a new connection and way of being had to be made and growth was the only way out. So I started to climb out of the hole.
A lofty success doesn’t achieve this kind of hard reflection and subsequent transfiguration because a success does not force you to face yourself. If I was always at the top, I would have never found myself- my true self- at the bottom of that hole. Success only reinforces the patterns and habitual routines you have been living by, good or bad. That is what suffering has taught me.
I think our readers would appreciate hearing more about your values and what you think matters in life and career, etc. So our next question is along those lines. Is the public version of you the real you?
My goal is to be so completely myself that it makes other people feel safe to fully be themselves. All our lives we think something is wrong with us, but the truth is we are exactly who we are meant to be- flaws and all. I find that creativity works like a channel and when I am not fully being my self either by withholding or altering some part of myself that it blocks this channel and I have trouble creating artwork or artwork that I think is meaningful or effective.
My hope is that the sincerity of my being is reflected in my art and public version. That I come as I am.
Okay, so let’s keep going with one more question that means a lot to us: What are you doing today that won’t pay off for 7–10 years?
I am constantly learning and refining my craft as a storyteller- through making short films, reading, writing, storyboarding, and film studies. Via the accumulation of all these projects, knowledge, and experiences, my skillset strengthens and the messages I want to communicate refine. Like rain weathering a mountain, it may not pay off even in 7-10 years or even 50, but this foundation that I am meticulously building will help me make a master work someday. I am hopeful and I am grateful to perform this work everyday- like chipping away at the marble that will be a statue. It brings me great purpose.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.rachel-cooley.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/artofcools/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachel-cooley/
Image Credits
Myself
so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.
