Meet Victoria Orlovskaya

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Victoria Orlovskaya. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Victoria, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?

As a small child, I thought the moon followed me. It made me feel special, like I could do anything. But one day, I learned that the moon followed everyone, and I felt an overwhelming sense of betrayal. That may have been the first mental hurdle I had to overcome. It might seem silly to some, but if you think about it, as a child, that realization was my first indication that I wasn’t as significant as I once believed. I was no longer special.

Growing up, I faced a slew of difficulties; financial hardships, evictions, domestic abuse, divorce. Then, in my early 20s, it was drugs, homelessness, and an estranged relationship with my parents. After that came depression, anxiety, and panic disorder.

I was always the blueprint of who not to be in my family. The black sheep. The problem child. The one who wouldn’t listen. The one who skipped school. The one with their head in the clouds. And it wasn’t just my family, it extended to my friends’ parents, my teachers, even my peers.

At my lowest point, somewhere in 2015, I looked up at the sky and the moon was no longer there. Just pitch black.

It’s not something I’m proud of, but I did attempt to take my own life. And in true fashion, I failed… just like everything else in my life. One large failure all around.

I wondered why was it that some people had loving families, beautiful homes, and clear career paths? Why were there people who had never known what it felt like to be belittled by their own body and mind? People with purpose, love, health, travel, and money.

Why was I not deserving of the same?
I secretly envied them and periodically asked why not me?

But maybe the moon didn’t follow only me, not because I wasn’t special, but because we all are.
Every creature, human, plant, exists with purpose. Every soul is meant to shine. Maybe there was no reason to envy others because even the moon and the sun shine in their own special way.

My path may be harder, but it may also be even more rewarding. Like the pull of a bow and arrow; the further the setback, the farther the arrow will go.

Resilience comes from a state of mind. It’s understanding that everything must be the way it is in order for you to become who you are meant to be.

And through all of this, I became closer to a higher power. To some, that may be God. To others, it may be the best version of themselves twenty years from now. And to a few others, it may be their younger self cheering them on.

Believe in yourself. Believe in your vision.
Albert Einstein once said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.”
Because being delusional enough to imagine that you can do anything you set your mind to; that is the driving force behind success.

I once believed that the absence of the moon that night meant I had been abandoned, unseen, forgotten. But maybe the moon was never gone. Maybe I had simply become the light I had been searching for. 

To glow in the quiet, to endure the darkness, to shine; just as the moon does, unwavering, even when no one is watching.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

I’ve always been a creative. Art has been my major since grade school. In high school I had a teacher who called my art sick and said I was a waste of talent, and so my passion for it faded. With no direction for what i wanted to do after graduating, I hopped from one community college to another, flunked out, and took gap years, trying to figure out what the hell I was supposed to do with my life.

Desperate for money, one day I took a job as a bathroom attendant for a marketing firm’s office party and it was there that I learned about the role of a creative director. It was a job that actually blended creativity with financial stability and I became obsessed to figure out how to get into that position.

I found out FIT had an Advertising & Digital Design program. In one month, I whipped up a portfolio of 12 pieces, wrote three essays, met the deadline, and got in. I learned marketing, creative tools, copywriting, branding, printing with dye cuts, even coding. And I owe so much of my knowledge to the program that helped me start my own brand. I graduated during the pandemic, landed an internship as an art director, then freelanced until I got a full-time job.

And then, something else hit me.

I watched my superiors work all hours, weekends, late nights; while barely seeing their families, while waiting for someone else to decide if they could take time off, while depending on someone else to write them a check. And the work was not fun. It wasn’t creative. It was dictated by account teams and clients who had zero creative vision. It wasn’t as fun as it had been at FIT.

I didn’t want the path to a creative director anymore.

I wanted to build something real. Something that allowed people to freely express themselves. And I had the money now to do it, but I wasn’t quite sure what ‘It’ was.

The idea came after my partner, Eugene Bell, and I visited Area 15, an immersive art experience in Vegas, Nevada. We saw a vending machine selling local trinkets and thought, why don’t we have this in NYC?

That’s when Mystry Mart was born.

Mystry Mart is an art vending machine with the mission to make art accessible, support local underrepresented and emerging creatives, and create meaningful connections between artists and their communities.

We currently work with 70+ artists and counting and sell anything from original works, to prints, comics, miniature figurines, keychains, pins, and other unique oddities. Each item in the machine is wrapped in our special chip packaging (fitting for a refurbished snack machine), where people get to “unravel the mystery” of the art pieces they receive. Each bag also includes the creatives’ instagram handles, so people can check the style of the art before making their purchase, but they wont know the context of the piece until they open the bag.

More than just a mystery, the name Mystry Mart also carries the message ‘try art’ hidden in the last three letters of each word. It’s a subtle nod to our mission: encouraging people to explore, experience, and support local artists.

In the beginning we had no machine, no location, no artists. Without a physical vending machine or proven success to show, many artists were hesitant to work with us. We were stuck in a difficult cycle: we couldn’t get a vending machine without artists, but we couldn’t gain artists without a machine. Likewise, we couldn’t secure a location without a machine, and locations wouldn’t take us seriously without something tangible to see. All we had were pamphlets and mock-ups of our vision, and somehow, we had to sell that dream to everyone else.

We went door-to-door, made cold calls, sent a ridiculous number of emails. One person even asked us to follow up in nine days, only to block our numbers. There were many days where I felt like giving up, but then I remembered who we were doing this for… the artists, and I owe it to my partner for encouraging me to keep pushing for the dream.

And then we landed our first spot with Brooklyn Art Cave, and from there we made the news on Timeout Magazine, and from that feature we got invited to place our machine with the Brooklyn Museum, and suddenly everyone wanted to work with us.

It has taken 2 years to make it to where we are now, and the thing we’re most proud of is that people want to continue to work with us. We have artists who have been with us from the very beginning, before the machine… they stuck with us through our hardest periods and not once complained when we had their work and still trying to figure out the logistics of our business.

With Mystry Mart we attempt to offer more than just selling work in our machines and gaining exposure, we strive to provide new opportunities to our artists. For example, Lizzy Itzkowitz, the artist behind the machine at the Brooklyn Museum, not only painted the vending machine but was also commissioned to paint a mural on the museum wall where the machine was hosted. Her work was further highlighted with a plaque featuring her information, which led to additional opportunities such as selling her stickers in the museum shop and an offer to teach art classes there.

For the future, we aspire for Mystry Mart to become a well-known name and staple in the art community nationwide, yet our ultimate goal is for the creatives we work with to outshine our own recognition.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

Absorb everything. I am very blessed to have attended FIT and for the curriculum that was built there by Joseph Staluppi, the coolest professor ever. I learned how to use adobe suites, how to create social media content, branding, coding css and html, ux/ui design, even how to properly print things even if at the time I thought “I’m never going to use this”. Thing is, you should absorb as much information as necessary. To be a successful entrepreneur, you must know how to do everything and anything that involves your business. Yes, you can hire people to do the work for you, but at the end of the day no one will care about your work as much as you do. If they decide to quit, you can still do their part. If you want to change something on your site, you can do it without needing to pay extra to someone else. And now, even things like coding should come easy with tools like Chat GPT. You just need to know enough of everything, even if at surface level to conduct the proper steps forward. Knowledge and research is key! Stay curious, ask questions, speak less and listen more and research research research.

Swallow your pride. Something I have struggled with is my pride. I hated to look desperate. If someone would ghost me on an email or DM, I would move on to the next. But sometimes you just ‘feel’ that there needs to be a partnership there, and I learned to be an absolute menace when it comes to getting an answer. I will email, call, send gift baskets, find you on LinkedIn and keep bugging you until you say yes or no. I’ve learned that if I want something, I can’t be passive about it, I need to take charge and keep pushing, because 9 times out of 10, these people never even received my email or heard my voicemail, and in fact they ARE interested. But only apply this to business. Do not use this approach in dating. Trust me. It does not translate well.

Be Delusional. It doesn’t matter if others think it can’t be done, it doesn’t matter if even you think it can’t be done. Do not create mental blocks for yourself and fake it if you have to. Pretend you’re living in a movie, a video game, a book, and you’re the main character and you’re the one with the power to write or choose what happens next. Journal, create a vision board; these will be the blueprints to start your journey. There may be hurdles ahead, but you were built for this.

Before we go, maybe you can tell us a bit about your parents and what you feel was the most impactful thing they did for you?

They gave me life.

My parents may not be perfect, but none of us come into existence with a guidebook. I love them despite everything that has happened. I am who I am because of them. They gave me the greatest gift of all… to live and be alive.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.mystrymart.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mystrymart/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/105002351/admin/dashboard/

Image Credits

Mystry Mart