SPEAK Season 3 Episode 3: Dreams, Fashion, Art

A marker illustration of a colorful squares that represent the rainbow.
Featuring
Alyssa Wylie

Debbie Ratcliffe: Hi, this is Debbie Ratcliffe. Welcome to Speak Season 3, Episode 3. This episode is all about friendship, dreaming, and passion.

fin-xuan: Hi, this is fin speaking, and today I’m with Alyssa Wylie.

Alyssa Wylie: Hi, I am Alyssa Wylie, and my podcast is called Dreams, Fashion, Art. If you can listen to my first episode, that would be great. 

fin-xuan: So, dreams, fashion, art. Tell me why you chose this title. 

Alyssa Wylie: I really love art, and I love fashion, and I make all my dreams happen for me. I love shopping. I love wearing clothes or getting clothes. I’m really into fashion. 

fin-xuan: I think fashion is a good way to express ourselves.

Alyssa Wylie: Yeah, actually for me. The reason why I wear pink is to stop the bullying. No one doesn’t like to be bullied. It’s not a really good thing. Because we are all different in our own ways; and just be you, just be yourself. Love ourselves no matter what. We’re all beautiful. And we have to treat, treat each other the way we want to be treated.

fin-xuan: Right… So, you love fashion, you love dreaming, and you love art. 

Alyssa Wylie: One of my dreams is to meet the cast of Riverdale

fin-xuan: What is Riverdale?

Alyssa Wylie: Riverdale is a drama series on Netflix, and it really means a lot. It means a lot to me and what I have with my bestie. 

fin-xuan: For those of you listening, if you listened to the second episode, it featured Lizzie Langan. Lizzie talked about Alyssa in her episode. 

Alyssa Wylie: Lizzie is one of my closest, best friends that I ever really had for a really long time ever since we got into Riverdale; Riverdale really changed our lives for us to be really good friends. And now we finally are and that’s the best thing I ever had with her. 

fin-xuan: Wow. 

[Music Lyrics]: Let me tell you about two best friends, Lizzie. They love to watch Riverdale. It’s their favourite show. They go to Being Studio and make art together. Alyssa is the Serpent Queen; Lizzie is her best friend. 

fin-xuan: Can I ask you something? 

Alyssa Wylie: You sure can. 

fin-xuan: Was Riverdale one of the first things that you connected about? 

Alyssa Wylie: Yes. Riverdale is the first show I ever got into and I’m really happy to get to share that with her. It’s a wonderful experience to me. We always have our best friendship and we are stronger than ever. Yes.

She is so very special; because me and her, we love Riverdale. All we ever talked about, like, 24/7 is Riverdale. 

fin-xuan: What does friendship mean to you? 

Alyssa Wylie: Friendship really means connecting and getting to know each other, and talking about things that we like; sharing about everything that we love, and that’s the reason why I love being friends with Lizzie.

She’s, like, the best friend I ever really had. When I was growing up, I never really had one; before, I never did, and I really wanted one; and now, I finally get to have a real best friend, and that really means a lot to me; that’s something I don’t really want to give up on, not with Lizzie, no.

She’s too special to me. 

fin-xuan: Ah, that’s so beautiful.

fin-xuan: I think what is also really beautiful is that you and Lizzie come to the studio on the same day. And you get to make art beside each other. 

Alyssa Wylie: Me and Lizzie, we always make art together. We love art and I’m happy to get to do art with her.

fin-xuan: Who calls you the Serpent Queen? 

Alyssa Wylie: My bestie, Lizzie, always calls me that; which is Riverdale. I love being the Serpent Queen. 

fin-xuan: Wow, that’s beautiful…

Alyssa is an artist who grew up in Ottawa. She now practices art, dancing, writing, singing, and sports. She loves to watch movies, and TV and to spend time with her friends. 

Alyssa Wylie: And I love fashion, because I love wearing clothes, getting new tops and like style and colour. They look really good together.

And also I love art. I put a lot of time and effort into my art. I love dancing because dance is like art. I move my body like a canvas all over the dance floor. My dancing is one of the best things I ever had in my whole entire life. And that really means a lot to me when I dance. I don’t care what anyone else thinks or says about me. I don’t let that get to me. Not when I’m dancing, no. When I dance, I dance the way I want to dance. And it makes me feel good. It makes me feel happy. It makes me feel I can do anything; when I set my mind to something.

Dance will lift you way up, put you in a good mood and have fun, cause girls just wanna have fun. Just listen to your heart, and what your heart feels, or think of love. And I show my true colors. 

fin-xuan: Speaking of colours, I feel like your art, your drawing is so colourful. 

Alyssa Wylie: I can see that through my eyes when I close my eyes or I think about it inside my mind. It really helps me relax. When I close my eyes, I can see my future growing stronger, making memories with friends. I just want to enjoy my life that I have right now. And that’s something I really want to focus on in my life. 

fin-xuan: It sounds like you really cherish every moment. 

Alyssa Wylie: I always cherish my moments. 

fin-xuan: And what about your singing and songwriting? 

Alyssa Wylie: Songwriting, I write about my life; the things that are important to me, like my friends and the people I love. 

fin-xuan: Do you ever sing in front of people?

Alyssa Wylie: I have actually. My songwriting means a lot to me. 

fin-xuan: I would love to hear some sometime. 

Alyssa Wylie: Maybe I can sing on my podcast for sure. 

fin-xuan: That could be so fun. 

Alyssa Wylie: I don’t mind singing a little bit of one of the songs I’m working on. 

fin-xuan: That would be beautiful. Do you want to try it now? 

Alyssa Wylie: You’re important to me. You’re important to my life. You are important to my world and my everything. You’re always going to be important to me that I have friends in my life…

Those are one of the choruses of one of my songs I am writing…

You’re important to me. You’re important to my world and my heart.
It talks about, what things I’m going through and I try and express myself the way I want to express myself.

Alyssa Wylie: I’ve been singing like my whole entire life. And for me, I love it. 

fin-xuan: That’s so beautiful. Do you play any instruments? 

Alyssa Wylie: I do have a guitar. 

fin-xuan: When you imagine the song you just sang, do you hear guitar or sounds? 

Alyssa Wylie: I can hear a lot of sounds inside my head, yes. 

fin-xuan: What is your favorite kind of music? 

Alyssa Wylie: I have a lot of music that I like. I do like upbeat kind of songs or like maybe like slow kind of songs. 

fin-xuan: I know you like ABBA… 

Alyssa Wylie: Yes, I do like ABBA… I love Mamma Mia, but one of the songs I really like is called Dancing Queen, but, I am the Dancing Queen, because I love dancing. That is something I’m good at and dancing is like my superpower. I use it for good. 

fin-xuan: That’s so nice. 

Alyssa Wylie: Well, I am the Dancing Queen because I love dancing. Because dancing is like a big part of my life. And it’s something I’m really good at. It really keeps me calm and put me in a really good mood. Just be yourself and have fun. 

fin-xuan: One of the things that Lizzie was talking about, we looked at her photography, and a lot of it is nature. 

Alyssa Wylie: Nature is so stunning. And I find it like really beautiful when I take pictures. 

fin-xuan: Do you take pictures? 

Alyssa Wylie: I do, actually, yes. I like how it looks with different colours, like what I see outside. One of my sculptures that I did is called Rainy Cloud.

Sometimes we get rain, sometimes we get clouds. We get that in nature once in a while. It’s good to have it now and then. I remember the first day when I did that myself, actually. Yeah, it was a long time ago. 

fin-xuan: Wow. So, you called this sculpture Rainy Cloud

Alyssa Wylie: Rainy Cloud

fin-xuan: Yeah, I think it’s a beautiful rainy cloud. I think you’re right. Sometimes we need rain. 

Alyssa Wylie: Rain is also good for flowers to grow and to be loved. And we all want to feel to be loved and beautiful and pretty, gorgeous, stunning. We all want to feel that way. 

fin-xuan: You know what? I think you’re very poetic. 

Alyssa Wylie: Oh, stop it. You’re making me blush. 

fin-xuan: I think you’re poetic and you’re funny… I think the way that you speak, I can always like, see different things. 

Alyssa Wylie: I’m just showing my true colours. 

fin-xuan: So, the sculpture that we’re looking at, what is the white part, the cloud, made out of? 

Alyssa Wylie: It’s,  papier mâché. At first, we have a balloon, and I put all the papier mâché on top of the balloon, paint it all in white, and then after when I’m done with it, I pop the balloon and, create a little design on it myself.

I added some rain to it. It’s sort of like thread a little bit. 

fin-xuan: It’s really beautiful. 

Debbie Ratcliffe: Oh, it’s so beautiful. It’s got all sorts of colours falling from the bottom. There’s blue and white, and it’s like a rainstorm. It’s like a raindrop falling from the cloud. And the cloud shape is rounded. It’s white with patterns all over it. It has different colours, and squares. It’s made out of felt. I really like it. Very colorful. It’s got all sorts of colours. Beautiful. 

Alyssa Wylie: I love nature. Nature is so stunning. It’s so beautiful. It’s so breathtaking. 

fin-xuan: What is your favourite part about nature? 

Alyssa Wylie: I just like the way how it looks. 

fin-xuan: Something I think is really interesting about nature is that it’s always changing.

Alyssa Wylie: yes. 

fin-xuan: What is your favourite season? 

Alyssa Wylie: Oh, my favourite season has to be spring, summer and fall. 

fin-xuan: You don’t like the cold? 

Alyssa Wylie: Not so much, no. 

fin-xuan: Sometimes, it’s still beautiful. 

Alyssa Wylie: I find it is, yes. 

fin-xuan: So this drawing, we’re looking at it because it kind of has the same design as your rain cloud. 

Alyssa Wylie: It’s similar to that… I really like the way I did that drawing myself. I just really love the colours. I really like the colours of the rainbow, like all these different colours. You can actually see that. 

fin-xuan: I see all the colours of the rainbow, and there are so many shapes. 

Alyssa Wylie: You got all these different shapes and different colours. So very natural. I got squares, different kinds of small squares, big squares. Doesn’t matter what kind of squares are there. 

fin-xuan: Did you use markers? 

Alyssa Wylie: Yes, I did use markers for it. 

fin-xuan: I love it. 

Debbie Ratcliffe: Its shape is squared. There are lots of colours in the center of a white background. There are circles as well as squares and rectangles of all different colours… There’s yellow, oranges, red, blues, and purples. 

fin-xuan: Do you think colour brings you joy or inspiration? 

Alyssa Wylie: Yes, it makes me feel joy and happy when I see all these different colours… Show your true colours. 

fin-xuan: What do you think your true colours are? 

Alyssa Wylie: My true colour is pink. Pink represents me because when I was a baby I had a lot of pink things in my room. Pink is always gonna be my favourite colour. Pink reminds me of hearts; or, of love. I love pink hearts and I’m actually wearing it on my shirt. 

fin-xuan: Yeah. 

Alyssa Wylie: Actually, it’s my two favourite things, cause love is love.

Debbie Ratcliffe: I’m multiple colours. Blue is my favourite colour. It matches my eyes. I look good in blue.

fin-xuan: Nice… Let’s look at another drawing. We have this one, which is less colourful. 

Alyssa Wylie: Oh, that’s also part of nature that I also did. I love the sun because it reminds me of being happy. 

fin-xuan: The sun makes you happy… 

Alyssa Wylie: and I also did a tree. I love seeing brown trees or different kinds of trees. I like to see that too sometimes.

fin-xuan: Wow. What I love about this drawing is that you kind of use dots. 

Alyssa Wylie: It’s kind of like dot drawing. 

fin-xuan: Dot drawing. Yeah, it’s a totally different style. And I love that there’s still a little bit of colour, but it’s just the sun. 

Debbie Ratcliffe: Oh wow, I like it. A lot of pointillism. On a white piece of paper, I see a smiley face– actually, it’s sunshine, it’s the sun; and there’s all sorts of, like, dots all over the page.

fin-xuan: Did you see the solar eclipse this year? 

Alyssa Wylie: Actually, I did. 

fin-xuan: Oh, really? 

Alyssa Wylie: I’m really happy I got to experience that. It was so interesting. So breathtaking. I did wear those special protective glasses on my eyes. 

fin-xuan: Wow, I’m so glad you could see it. It doesn’t always happen. 

Alyssa Wylie: No, the one time like offering it for me to actually experience that.

fin-xuan: If you close your eyes, And you try to remember it. How does it make you feel? What do you see? 

Alyssa Wylie: Makes me feel kind of dizzy when I look at it. Actually, when I stare at it.  

fin-xuan: It was like half daytime, half nighttime…

Okay, let’s look at this one. It’s painting on fabric. 

Alyssa Wylie: This is one of the fabrics, that I have had for a really long time…

I drew different kinds of circles and added different colours to it. 

fin-xuan: Yeah, so I’m gonna read some of the text on this painting we’re looking at. It says “River Vixens, Pretty Poison, Riverside High Bulldogs,” and then “I’d rather be watching Riverdale.” Oh, and then it says “Serpents” and “Riverdale Queen.”

Alyssa Wylie: Me and Lizzie, we got into Riverdale, I think, in 2007. That’s when Riverdale first came out and that’s one of the best years I ever had with Lizzie. 

Debbie Ratcliffe: I used to watch Riverdale. I love Riverdale. It’s really great.

fin-xuan: What are we looking at? 

Alyssa Wylie: This is one of the other drawings based on the cloud that I did. I really love the design that I did; the squares in the cloud and the rain coming from the bottom. 

fin-xuan: Oh yeah, so we’re looking at a drawing of the sculpture. It’s almost like a brainstorm. 

Alyssa Wylie: Yeah, something like that, yes.

fin-xuan: Oh, 

Debbie Ratcliffe: That’s nice. It’s on a white background. Squares all over it. And then you have lines on the bottom of the drawing. Some squiggle lines, some straight lines. 

fin-xuan: It shows like the brainstorming of the sculpture before the sculpture came alive. 

Alyssa Wylie: Yeah, I agree with that. I like all these different designs, all these different colours, all these different kinds of circles, triangles, stuff like that.

fin-xuan: What I love about your sketchbook is there are so many shapes and colours. 

Alyssa Wylie: Yes, I love that too. I love all these different colours.

fin-xuan: I’m just so happy to have you on the episode…

I was wondering, so this drawing, you drew a dress and it looks like you did pencil, crayon, and pink stripes. 

Alyssa Wylie: I like stripes. 

Debbie Ratcliffe: Oh, I like the dress. It’s really nice. It’s on a white background, it’s got red, and purple lines, some thick lines, some small lines. 

fin-xuan: Is this a dress that you someday want to bring to life?

Alyssa Wylie: I would like to do that actually, a clothing line; i’ve never done that before. 

fin-xuan: That sounds like a big project that you could do maybe. Maybe you find a fashion designer or a sewer. I don’t know. 

Alyssa Wylie: I always want to be a fashion designer. That’s one of my dreams. 

fin-xuan: What kind of clothes do you think you would have in your line?

Alyssa Wylie: Oh, I like to wear pants or shorts; whatever makes me feel comfortable. 

fin-xuan: Maybe it would be like a mix of dress, pants, shorts. 

Alyssa Wylie: Something like that is fine. 

Debbie Ratcliffe: Before we finish your episode, we would like to ask you anything else you would like to share about yourself, your artwork, or the future. 

Alyssa Wylie: I have a lot of dreams. And I always love art. It’s always very important to me. I’m really happy I get to share my art experience and share my dream experience. And also it is about me and my life and what I want to do with it.

Alyssa Wylie: And I love myself just the way I am. 

fin-xuan: That’s beautiful.

Debbie Ratcliffe: What I think about in the future is me keep on being a good artist, and a good friend, and expand my artwork. 

Alyssa Wylie: Just enjoy your life. Just be you. Be yourself. Be loved, and that is the most important part to have in life. Don’t ever forget who you really are as a person. 

fin-xuan: I think that’s really great advice…

This episode has been a pleasure working with you. So exciting to hear about all of the things that you’re passionate about. And I believe that you are an artist in many different areas. And so it’s really great to hear about the ways that you bring different types of joy into your life. 

Alyssa Wylie: I love being happy and I love who I am and I  always try to have fun.

fin-xuan: Yes, and I want to thank you for all of your time and everything that you shared with everyone listening. 

Alyssa Wylie: And I am so very welcome that I get to do my very own podcast. And thanks for taking your time and doing this with me. I really appreciated that. 

fin-xuan: Thank you. How would you like to close your episode?

Alyssa Wylie: I do know one thing. Life will treat you the way you want to be treated and to be loved. 

fin-xuan: That’s amazing. Great. 

Alyssa Wylie: Awesome.

Debbie Ratcliffe: Thank you for listening to this episode of Speak, hosted by myself, Debbie the Dragon Ratcliffe. Produced by Rachel and fin. Being Studio and SPEAK thanks the support of the City of Ottawa for this season. 

fin-xuan: Special thanks to Chris Binkowski for music composition and C H U O 89. 1 FM for audio editing and mixing in this episode.

[Music Lyrics]: SPEAK… Speak is a podcast… Speak, by the artist of BEING Studio… Speak, your truth… Speak, your art… Speak, your dreams… Speak, your friends… Speak, your kindness… Speak, your challenges…

Speak, your victories… Speak, is accessible… Speak, is inclusive… Speak, is awesome… Speak, is us… Speak, is a podcast… Speak… 

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