Interview by Mercedes Arnold

MVM: Michelle, you can introduce yourself and your pronouns and tell me what you do. And Hannah then can you do the same?

Michelle Rech: I'm Michelle Rech, she/her, and I'm a floral designer in Portland, Maine. I like to make weird funky art. 

Hannah Hirsch: My name is Hannah Hirsch, and my pronouns are she/her also. I am an artist, generally painting, but I've been dabbling in some other mediums as well.

MVM: How has your life experience brought you to the art that you make today? 

MR: Wow. So I think my whole life everybody was always like, Oh, you're so creative, but I never really had a medium. I always felt like everyone already knew how to do things art-wise, and I was like, Oh, well, I'll never be good at that. But I always had been really attracted to bright colors and it wasn’t until college that my friend Jami Rosenthal, who is an incredible artist, would almost force me to make art with her. It really pushed me out of my comfort zone after the public school system really shook it all out of me. We were decoupaging lighters in her basement and something activated in me as we were putting the colors and patterns together and ripping up magazines. It was like a light was turned on. I knew color was a thing, so I was waiting to find that medium. It wasn’t until a few years after that that I was thinking that way and I started to do floral design randomly after working in a shop as a delivery driver. As soon as I started doing it, it was like, oh, I want to keep doing this, so that’s how it started. 

MVM: Where did you grow up? 

MR: I grew up in Minnesota. She's a midwestern gal. I've lived all over, my dad worked for 3M, so every few years we moved around. I think moving helped me be able to put together different vibes, having lived and having to assimilate in so many different places. I think now, this is the first place I've ever lived intentionally where it's I chose to live here, it wasn’t my family wanting to move somewhere. It's cool because Maine is so different than me, but I'm so attracted to the nature of it. It's kind of weird being this weird artist here, but I'm trying to figure out how to balance all that.

MVM: What do you like about the nature of Maine? 

MR: All of the nature, trees, the ocean, it's just very outdoorsy, and I’m more of an indoor cat, but I’m trying to be more adventurous, but I'm really into making really loud, bright things. So I think Maine and I are trying to figure out how to delve into this thing. 

MVM: Yeah, I was listening to a podcast and they were talking about how artists take two concepts and figure out how to merge them into one, and that’s their art. It sounds like that’s what you’re doing which is very cool. So Hannah, how has your life experience brought you to your art practice today? 

HH: So I grew up with a single mom who worked on horror movies, designing sets for Stephen King. She transitioned that career into teaching film and theater at a high school, so I was always around a lot of set design. That made a big impression on me. 

I did that obligatory year of college at UMaine where I just sort of went - but I didn't know what I wanted to do. I was an English major the whole time and then I took a couple of gap years and got very sick with a gut issue.  I ended up making a very drastic life decision, as one does when they are 20-something and they don’t know what to do.  I moved to Tampa Bay, Florida, and pursued interior design with the intention of maybe following in my mom's footsteps.  I always had a thing for historic architecture and I’m really into how different spaces can reflect the people that live in them. It’s super fascinating to me. Unfortunately, the design scene in Tampa is not what I was into and I again made a very drastic decision to quit college and reapply to the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor. 

While finishing my degree in Maine, I really started to focus on craft and how humans have utilized craft throughout history to shape their environments, and how localized craft can be. It can be so wildly different depending on what region of the United States or the world you're in. 

At one point I got really into rug making.  It was considered a dying craft up until now.  I interviewed a bunch of older ladies who are rug makers to write a book about their work as my senior capstone project. These 75-year-old ladies were sitting on a wealth of art in their homes that nobody had ever seen. I got really into that. I think because of that experience, I became fascinated with color and how they utilized color to make rugs. The range was everything from these amazing photorealistic flower rugs to work that was more in the vein of funky folk art. One lady had a life-sized crocodile rug in her house in the middle of the Northeast Harbor. 

It's such a shame to me that people don't get to see their work and that, you know, we tend to sit on our talents and hide them away, and I really saw that in that group of artists.  And that’s fine - maybe that art is just for them.

I was doing a lot of craft work at the time, a lot of woodworking, and didn’t really know what my medium was. I had never really considered myself a painter. When I moved to Portland after college, I started to dabble with illustration because it seemed very commercially viable to me, thinking I could do illustrations for menus or business cards or what have you. I was doing a lot of floral painting at the time, which is where I met Michelle. 

MR: Literally on Instagram. I was going through the Portland, Maine tag and then all of a sudden it was all this color and cats and flowers. I messaged Hannah and said I think we need to be friends. 

HH: I think that’s exactly what happened. I was in a crappy relationship at the time. 

MR: We both were. 

HH: Yeah, we both were, we really connected over that. My partner at the time and I lived in a very small place, and they didn't want me to do big-scale work, but I'd always been attracted to that. As soon as that relationship ended, I started making the art that I think I was almost afraid to make. Abstract art for me has been a very personal journey. It’s been very raw at times, and vulnerable. I think a lot of times, at least personally, I've held that inside because it can be extremely difficult to be publicly vulnerable with my work. How is it going to be received, you know? I think I got to a point in life where I was free enough to finally allow myself to be that for myself.

MVM: What do you think was the catalyst for that change?

HH: Oh, definitely getting out of that relationship. I moved into a place by myself for the very first time, and I think it was like, okay, I’m in my own space, I get to be who I want to be. I didn’t have a living room, I only had an art studio and I started making huge work with the intention that maybe it won’t go anywhere and that's fine. Maybe it's just for me. I definitely saw a steep decline in interaction with my work once I stopped painting cats as Queen Elizabeth. You know, fun, dorky little things that I think a lot of people can see and immediately relate to because people love cats - this is super quirky, this is fun. 

And all of a sudden I’m making these dark things, where I'm processing all of this stuff I had been holding inside. I took off about a year from sharing my work with people and I was fine with that, and only recently with the slight encouraging push from others, including Michelle, I started resharing my work, and it feels really good. It feels like my work is now coming from much more of a place of joy. 

MVM: Why did you stop sharing? 

HH: It felt like I had lost what the goal was. It’s almost like I suddenly had processed the trauma that a lot of my original work came from and was in a state of, okay, who am I now? And is it okay to just make it? Is it okay to make art from a place of joy? Is that still as interesting? Is it okay to explore themes that are less personal or lighter? I feel like in the abstract world, people really want a big story or some sort of real message behind their work. And with a lot of my work, I draw inspiration from memory, but sometimes I just want to paint fun things. I want the freedom to be both.

MVM: Michelle, were you attracted to Hannah’s art because of her use of color? 

MR: Yeah, it was her use of color, and obviously the cat brought me in, but a lot of it was a vibe. She had these magnets with eggs and shrimp on them, and they're still on my refrigerator. There was just something like about her brain that I was thinking, no matter what kind of art she makes, it's going to be so dope. So it's cool to be friends with somebody like that, where it's always evolving. She'll start making these really cool crop tops all of a sudden, and I'm just like, yes, Hannah, go off!

MVM: Michelle, I read that you are inspired by Fran Drescher. 

MR: I went to Catholic school and I was never given the space to experiment with my clothes. I was always playing a sport so even on weekends I was wearing a uniform. I wasn't putting together outfits, but I liked working on how I could use visuals and how I dress to express myself but I think seeing someone [Fran Drescher] be so unapologetically herself and creative and weird with a fruit purse or the way she combined things…To me, it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen but I didn't even understand that the way she dressed was a joke to a lot of people. I literally saw her as this beautiful piece of art.

MVM: She really stood out at that time. 

MR: I also watched Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Saved by the Bell getting ready for school, and seeing all the colors and different fonts they used, it was something that I always aspired to channel but I never really had the outlet to visualize how to make art for myself. I could appreciate it from afar but didn’t understand how to create it like that. 

MVM: Do you have any siblings? 

MR: I have two brothers who both live in New York City I’m the oldest in an Italian family. We're a marketing family, my dad was a marketing guy for 3M, so we’re all little salespeople. My brothers both went to school and took a more traditional route. I started interning in New York when I was first in college and found it wasn’t for me. It was supposed to be my dream job but after a few months of doing that, I decided, yeah, I'm not really into doing this. My brothers are rocking it in their careers and I took this bohemian sister route where I live in Maine and I’m making art all the time. 

We moved around quite a bit when I was at a pretty intense time in a young lady’s life, so my goal was just trying to fit in. When I moved to Maine, I came here and decided I’m not going to fucking doing that, I just want to be me. I’m going to start wearing things that I want to wear and doing things that I want to do and to stop comparing myself to everybody. A lot of people went a traditional route which is great for a lot of people, but as someone with ADHD and a creative brain, I didn’t know where to put all that energy and needed to take a different path. 

So my parents ended up living in New Hampshire and I lived with them for a bit to save money and get my shit together, I knew I was leaning towards moving to Portland or Boston, and Boston is too aggressive for me, so I was always going to end up in Portland. I think the universe has always tried to bring me to this coast, Maine is very similar to Minnesota in a lot of ways, but there's an ocean so it's way, way cooler.

MVM: What is your creative process like and do you ever get into a flow? 

HH: I don't always feel like painting, but I think that the most important thing I've started doing is opening the door to my studio. My studio is right off my kitchen so I can see it no matter where I am in my house. If I leave the door open, I can see maybe there’s a blank surface in there or a mess from the day before that I know my cats will start messing up, so I definitely have to go deal with that. Opening the door can be enough to take one step into the room and then maybe something will happen. 

I also find that sometimes picking a couple of colors can be enough to get me going. The most important thing for me to remember is that it shouldn't be tedious for me, it should be pretty playful. Some of my best work, honestly, has come from the tedium and being upset or trying to process something, but that's not a sustainable place to make art from, in my opinion. Work can evolve and become about that, but I think it always has to start with something that you want to do, something that's joyful. Nobody's making me pick up the paintbrush or the pencil, I have to want to do it myself. Even if it is about processing something that was harder for me, it has to come from a place of wanting to start. 

Take that first step to do it. Setting up my environment is definitely a big hack when I don’t want to get work done. I get distracted super easily, so the more I can sort of tunnel-vision myself into that workspace, the better. Then I find one of two things happen, I hit that flow state and things feel really good, or if not really good, at least it's been interesting. I used to try to push through when it wasn’t working or flowing, but I’m finding it easier to step away these days and give it space. Now, I’ve learned the lesson that sometimes it’s just not happening and that’s ok. Some days when I’ve felt that way, I’ve stepped away from my painting and come back to it a couple of days later and really loved something I would have absolutely ruined had I kept pushing. It’s a delicate balance for me of finding that flow state but also being able to step out of it before something gets overworked or I get overwhelmed. 

MVM: No one's telling you what to do and you never know how you’re going to feel day-to-day. I get very distracted as well and find it hard to stay on task sometimes, but I’ve learned a lot of patience. 

HH: Sometimes those distractions have led to such wonderful things. I keep a lot of books around that are full of images that I find really inspiring. If it’s going to be distraction time, I try to at least get distracted by something that's creatively liberating for me. Then sometimes I can really lead down a wormhole where I'm like, wow, I am really interested in this media. 

MVM: I need to do that more, I’m on social media scrolling. 

MR: Which is debilitating, because it's everybody's doing all this stuff and you compare yourself. I think, has this already been done? What am I doing? 

MVM: Exactly, and then imposter syndrome kicks in. Michelle, what about your creative state?

MR: Flow is a huge part of my art in general. For me, I think it's the only time that I'm really meditative with myself and I don't even fully realize that I've been working. If I have something that I'm working on conceptually, like a project coming in the distance, I'm like always thinking about it but it's at different levels. I feel like comes in waves or I find inspiration everywhere. 

For example, my fiancé was watching the World Cup the other day, and I don't know which game it was, I'm not like a sports girl. But one of the teams had orange, the other one had some pink on and there were blue neon colors. Something happened on the field and he's freaking out, and I look up and it's like a shot from above. It's this cluster of different players, and the colors look so dope, so I looked up and said out loud “show the shot again from the top!” He thought I meant to show the repeat but I’m just taking pictures of the colors on the field. I have all of these weird pictures of the soccer field with all the players from the top and he thought I was into the game but I was just finding color inspiration!

Inspiration really is everywhere, and I think flow comes in different ways. I think at the beginning, it seems like creativity is a switch you turn on, and then it’s on all the time, but for me, it really is an emotional thing. When I first started in the industry, I was working in a traditional flower shop. Goal-wise I was trying to assimilate into what they were doing because I had no understanding of the industry. I spent the last X amount of years learning from all these different florists and freelancing and trying to learn how to do things exactly the way they do them. The whole time I was doing weird stuff on the side. I would work at the flower shop and make a bunch of stuff based on a picture on a website that I didn’t design, it was like a paint-by-number style. Then after every shift, I’d go spray paint some shit and get really weird and the flow was so different from when I was making the website designs. All flowers are beautiful in their own way, and it’s so personal to me that I want my flowers to be more than something that fills the room. I want them to be an experience. I’ve noticed even men will see my stuff at a wedding or their own wedding and say, Oh, I’ve never even noticed the flowers before. That’s ultimately my goal, to find that flow of using different materials and creating something visually interesting. and it doesn’t need to be just flowers. I love getting food and candy and weird stuff, to mix it up. I think that adds to the visual experience. When I do get blocked it’s usually because I have stuff going on in my personal life where I feel a lot of pressure.

It’s hard when I feel the capitalist aspect of having to sell myself as a product. I am really lucky that my art is my job, but it also makes it complicated. This last year I've shared way less on social media as far as my art than I ever have because I was posting every day sometimes twice a day on my grid a picture or something that I had made and it was really fun to express myself that way. But as soon as that stopped being fun for me, I had to take a step back and figure out how to keep the art for myself and stay true to myself, and not be trying to fit into this floral mold. I don't want to be like everybody else, so yeah, it's very complicated being an artist. I feel it. I cry all the time.

Nothing is easier for me than when I'm doing something that's creatively enticing to me. I feel like I can make something out of nothing and find that sweet spot of dissociating because the more I overthink, the worse it’s going to be for me. With my art, if I'm overthinking that means that something's off.

MVM: How did you get into spray painting?

MR: Working in the flower shop, we were always getting the same things, that was the nature of the job. I’m in Maine and following all these accounts in California where they are getting these juicy roses and making all of these bougies, beautiful products. I was drooling in the winter. I knew I had to reinvent the materials that I was working with and create this interdimensional energy. I loved taking a basic flower and spray painting it chrome and pink and then putting together something unique and different with the same materials. 

I really like the challenge of having a floral chopped moment. If it's Saturday, and you're working in a flower shop and you’re left with the worst flowers left and people come in and they want something beautiful, so it’s up to you as the florist to create something amazing. That's when I really shine because, something happens in my brain where it's like, okay, how do I manipulate these flowers to create something else? I don't want to give them a subpar product. So it gets really weird really fast. Feels very creatively satisfying in those moments. 

MVM: When I saw your work for the first time, I was ecstatic over the colors!! You really do transport them into a different dimension with your floral arrangements.

MR: You totally get the vision! Truly that’s exactly the experience I hope to give people when creating and sharing my art.

MVM: Talking about your mission, I know part of your focus is on making your art accessible. Why is that important to you?

MR: One of the biggest things I realized while in the industry is that florals are a luxury and they are for people that can afford them, and a lot of the time they are not the ones interested in florals as a way of art or something bigger than what’s filling the room. 

I noticed when I was teaching floral classes in Boston a few times a week, we’d have buckets of flowers left over and I’d come back to my apartment building and I’d give everybody flowers and they were so grateful and excited and it felt like it was bringing interesting energy to the apartment building. Most of these people weren’t used to getting flowers and didn’t think they would necessarily deserve them. 

MVM: That’s a very weird concept, to feel like you have to deserve flowers. 

MR: There were a lot of dudes that I would give flowers to and a lot of times, they had this reaction of, Oh, I should be the one giving you flowers. After a few times of having that back and forth and explaining that flowers are to everyone I hoped I got the feedback that suddenly having to interact with flowers in their apartment, it made them realize it made them happy, it wasn't just this thing that's only for women. 

I feel like the people that deserve flowers aren't necessarily those that can afford them, I will always choose to take less money to make an impact. I am a high-end designer, and I use high-end products, that’s kind of my deal, but if someone reaches out to me and is really inspired by my art and doesn’t have a large budget for their wedding, I’d still talk to them and see what I can do. I find the challenge exciting. 

I have a lot of guilt about the waste in the industry, so it’s like how do I make a living for myself and feel good about it? I think balance is the biggest key to everything in life. I’d love to start doing more stuff in Portland. I’d love to have a percentage of my profits go towards teaching free kids classes. I’d love to be able to create a fun, creative space and give them a chance to be wild with florals as a way of expression. 

MVM: I agree, I think art is something to be enjoyed by and for everybody. 

MR: Yeah. Keith Haring was always really instrumental with that for me, the way that he was all about getting public art out. That was one of the first things that I really wanted to do when I started in the industry and finding like-minded creatives to make public art was super exciting. It’s definitely something I want to prioritize doing this year.

MVM: Hannah, I read your artist statement online and want to read it back to you, your work “Explores obsession, memory and the transmutation of anxiety and the fixation into joy relief and positive expression.” Can you talk about your experience with those emotions? 

HH: Yeah. So I was diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder two years ago now. It’s so interesting when you get a diagnosis like that because it really changes the lens through which you now view your life and all of your past experiences, it feels like this all makes a lot of sense.

MVM: Was it a relief in some way? 

HH: Totally. I’d always been holding on to a diagnosis of anxiety and depression, but that didn't ever feel right because my anxiety was so fixated and specific. Like, was oddly specific and wasn’t based in reality in a lot of ways. I think there's so much stigma and shame for folks with OCD. So many of the things were rituals for me to get rid of my anxiety; one, I didn't realize that they were rituals, and two, I was too embarrassed to even talk about them with my therapist. It took two years of having a good relationship with one therapist, to the point where I was finally like, Hey, so I do like weird things, when I get really, really stressed out, could we maybe talk about that? 

I feel like there's like a big misconception around OCD, where we've all seen shows where people are counting things, or washing their hands a million times, and that absolutely exists, that is real. But there's this whole other side of the spectrum of OCD where your rituals can be thought-based.  Like,  if I have an intrusive thought that makes me super uncomfortable, I will then focus on trying to rid myself of that anxiety by doing a mental compulsion where I review a memory 1000 times to try to remember if I did something awful, said something embarrassing, or put someone else in danger.  

I have so much anxiety around certain events that have happened in my life. I have dissected them so many times that they're only fragments of that memory that I'm positive I experienced. And the rest of it I don't even know if that really happened. I think, am I a bad person? Did I do this horrible thing, that I can't remember, and nobody else can remember, but I'm going to spend the rest of my eternity searching my brain for certainty that that happened? It was a lot for me to go through, not only getting that diagnosis but then seeking treatment around that. It's a very specific kind of treatment for folks with OCD, where we have to expose ourselves to our deepest fears and sit with them. It’s been one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life. 

For a long time, my work was trying to process all of that, trying to get out on paper and process memories that I was having obsessions about; the color of the room, or the way that felt, or maybe something this person said. I was searching for comfort in absolute certainty. I think once I really got into treatment, I realized that that pillar of certainty doesn't actually exist. The only thing that you can kind of do at that point is to sit with the uncertainty and feel your feelings. 

If you look at my body of abstract paintings, you can see the transition from being really tortured, to trying to find more joy and more playfulness and trying to take myself a little less seriously. Trying to really embrace the fact that nothing is certain everything is mobile and moving and fluid all the time. And not only that but find some comfort in the fact that other people experience this too. OCD especially, takes a long time to diagnose and treat. A lot of time, people are misdiagnosed as having extreme anxiety. People might be embarrassed to talk about it, or they're uneducated about it. I didn't know that checking every outlet and taking pictures of every switch on my stove before I left my home, because I was convinced I was going to burn my house down was OCD. Even if I knew I had unplugged everything, I thought for sure I was going to burn my house down and be responsible for loss and death. I didn't know that what I was experiencing was OCD until I finally talked to my therapist about it. 

For a long time, my work was about obsession, because it was all I could think about. Now that I've sort of moved past that and healed, I can't let that have the same hold that it had on me. My work has been about living with obsession and trying to find joy in my life around things that are actually kind of sticky and hard to think about, but that I now live with on a daily basis. If we live with stuff like that, we still have to find joy around it somehow, or if not joy, at least community and connection around it. Art being what it is, a visual thing that connects us all can be a really therapeutic way for me to feel my feelings. 

MVM: That’s a lot of growth in the last two years. I’m really proud of you and happy for you.

HH: Thank you, it’s been a journey. 

MR: I can’t wait to see how your art evolves even more from here. 

HH: It's taken me up until now to even feel good about openly talking about it. The last thing I want to do is be or act like I’m a spokesperson for folks because I'm not. I'm just a person that deals with it and has a little bit of experience now being in treatment. I’m no expert and have only experienced what I’ve experienced.  My first year in treatment was really, really hard. There’s an account on Instagram called Obsessively Ever After that I follow. It feels good to not feel alone. If it weren’t for social media, I’d still be convinced that I don’t have OCD. 

MR: The power of memes, man. 

HH: Haha right!

MR: I had a secret meme account until the pandemic and then when the pandemic happened, I was like, fuck it, I'm posting these on Electric Flora. I get so much feedback from people. I don't ever want people to think that I'm this perfect person or artist who has it all together and is really successful, because I'm a disaster. But that's what fuels my art and that's what I like doing I think showing vulnerability is really important in art, so I'm going to express that through memes and be less intense about it and less business focused. My Instagram is more of a living breathing art organism of expression.

MVM: Memes are so validating and I’m glad we have them because the internet can be a pile of shit sometimes. 

MR: I have very debilitating anxiety and depression and ADHD. When I started sharing posts that I deeply related to it was incredible seeing how much it also resonated with people. Like having body image issues relating to your mother. Anytime I have shared those experiences I would almost always get multiple responses from girls relating and having similar experiences which made me feel relieved to have a community that understands. It was like I could go back in time and kiss little fourth-grade me on the forehead and say, you’re not alone, baby, and one day you’re going to know that. It’s intense. 

MVM: Yeah, definitely. With OCD, it seems like more information is coming out and it’s not as regularly talked about, but it does exist and people do have it. 

HH: It can be difficult. It can be debilitating. It can be like you can't leave your house because you're convinced that even though you've unplugged this thing 30 times, it’s still plugged in and dangerous. It definitely is debilitating. I think it will be talked about more.  I've started paying attention to more of that internet space of therapists that are destigmatizing it and making it much more approachable, less shameful. That's been huge for me and frankly, it's taken me a long time to feel secure talking about it and sharing how much my work is influenced by it. But I feel like I have to pay it forward, because seeing other people do that saved my life. Where I was like, okay, this is actually something that's happening. It's very valid and you're not alone

MVM: Thank you for sharing, Hannah. I am really proud of you, I know talking about this is difficult, but your experience matters. Having someone share on social media and seeing them change their life, in turn, changed and saved my life. 

HH: You're not alone. It can be really scary, and it can feel like such a silly thing, it can be embarrassing. I feel like a lot of human connection comes from embarrassment. 

MVM: Oh yeah, we have all felt that way, that's why we have memes. 

MR: Connection and vulnerability. I feel like previous generations had a real resistance to being honest about how they feel about what they've been through. To see these newer generations shitpost their feelings, there's something very cathartic about that to me. 

MVM: Yeah, definitely. Ok, a couple more questions. Where do both of you see your work going? Do you visualize that? 

MR: This year is about getting reacquainted with myself and my art and being more intentional about doing things that I want to be doing for me and not giving away all my energy to other people. I really value all the freelancing that I've done over the last few years and I've worked with some of the best people in the industry. it really has been so instrumental in becoming who I am today. I want to take what I have learned and pivot it into the community. I want to be true to my art and find clients that are aligned with my values. That’s what’s going to be the most important thing for me this year. I’m hoping to make some weird shit in space one day but for now, finding balance in daily life is enough for me. 

HH: I’ve always had this goal, but particularly have been really trying to push hard to make a sustainable living as an artist, which I’m not doing currently. I make art on the side and I hustle really hard to make enough work so I can feel as if I'm being productive. But I've really stepped it up in terms of applying to shows and residencies, and open art calls. Man, I have never faced this much rejection in my life, it is humbling. It also feels like if I can take it and withstand this, I should probably keep going. Maybe eventually somebody will say yes. This year I’m trying to be braver and stick my neck out and vouch for myself and for opportunities that, earlier in my life, I would have shied away from. I hope to get some residencies and do some collaborations and do more public art. I’d love to make more connections in general and become a full-time artist. 

MR: Absolutely, go off, Hannah! It’s scary to make a leap. 

HH: It’s so hard. I feel super grateful for folks like you, this experience is super validating. A couple of months ago, I called Michelle and really needed to talk. We had this big sit-down talk where I was like, I feel like everything I make is shit, no one cares, my art is bad, blah, blah, blah. Sometimes it takes somebody sitting you down and saying, you've got to shut up and make the stuff.  

MR: I have art from all of Hannah's eras in my apartment and I can see all of it from my couch where I sit every day. I genuinely spend so much time every day individually looking at all of them. One of them is a cat painting, another is dark and twisty and then there's a bright one. Truly some of the best pieces of art I own. So it's like, no, you have to keep doing this Hannah I need to have a home full of your art.

HH: Thank you. 

MR: Accountability, buddy. Yes!

MVM: This has been so fucking great talking to both of you, thank you so much for sharing your stories and for trusting me. I love you both. 

Thank you to Michelle Rech and Hannah Hirsch for taking the time to talk with Maine Vibes Magazine and sharing your story and for creating the most insane and beautiful painting and florals for the Maine Vibes Magazine Issue 5 cover. AHHH! Seriously, thank you. Thank you to Mitch L. for supporting MVM and attending the interview.

Hannah Hirsch Web: https://hannahhirsch.com

Michelle’s Instagram: @electricflora

Hannah’s Instagram: @_Hannah__Hirsch_

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