Wise Words on Culture, Family, and Art From the Modern Ms. Frizzle
Freaks Will be Freaks
“I’m happy when I’m inspiring others with my weirdness. I want to create a world where freaks can be freaks, where it’s okay to be different. I’m happy doing my own thing, being my own person with the way I talk, the way I dress. I want to inspire others to create.”
Leyla Havok is the CEO of Dark Realms Entertainment and successful local artist. She not only has art up in different places around the valley such as The House of Used, The Grid, and Gotham City Comics but was even stopped during our interview by someone who recognized what he called her ‘bad-ass art’.
Dimming the Brightest Light
Leyla shared with me her ambitions and aspirations of wanting to inspire others along with the challenges that have brought her to where she is.
“Sometimes I have to cover myself or act a certain way so I don’t make the wrong person uncomfortable who may want to give me a chance. It’s sad to say but I have to dim myself sometimes to get people to give me a chance, to get in, and then I can blossom, and be myself once they get to know me and are comfortable with me.”
The Struggle is Real; Let’s Talk About it
“Growing up, I couldn’t hear out of my left ear, I had tubes and a speech impediment. I had to attend special ed classes and it was hard to grow into my own when people were always saying ‘you can’t do this you can’t do that’”.
Cultural Inspiration
“It’s also not unheard of, super sad, and common, when your black in a Mexican family that there is a little bit of a race issue because you are not the same skin color.”
“Not talking about it is the most damaging, there’s a lot of blaxicans out there that feel the same way without a lot of voices for us and this is sadly just now being heard of. I think its important that people know this is a thing for my family and other families.”
Building Confident Humans
“I’ve had a lot of people, every color you could think of, reach out to me, thinking they weren’t anything because of the color of their skin or hair and watch them start to really embrace who they are at a young age. Nine year olds coming out of their shells, which is amazing because we don’t usually see that until high school or even later on.”
The Inspiration of the Inspiring
“Seeing a kid get inspired by you is the most blessed and touching thing.”
Leyla has been an influence in the community in different ways, talking at elementary schools where she feels she relates to Ms. Frizzle and working with youth in different ways.
Leyla says her biggest inspiration by far has been her mother.
“My rock has been my mother, defending all three of her chocolate babies to the end.”
Living for Sunday Mornings
“A lot of people shut us down from day one, thank God my mom spoke up for us, gave me that voice to be bold and to speak up. She can be spicy but she made me who I am.”
“Growing up we didn’t have much but every Sunday morning my mom would take me and my siblings to Michaels where we would get to have a chance to pick out these little dollar boxes along with any paint we wanted and gems.”
“We decorated them like little treasure chests. I would get so intricate, I absolutely loved it. I grew up without a father so those moments where my mom took time to do these special projects with us meant so much.”
Not Just an Icon; Creative Coper, Leyla Havok
“Art saved my life with the issues I was facing with school, family, and race.”
Leyla brought up more recent experiences of how she used art to cope through hard times telling me:
“Whenever I am really going through some things or am stressed, I zone out through painting.”
“You hear about people getting a massage, getting their nails done, my form of that is painting.”
Get Lost
“I get lost in my world and it brings out possibilities of the future for me which is why I believe it is so important in getting lost in whatever your outlet is.”
“When I’m painting, each stroke, each line, whatever color I use, how the eye is, I honestly think ‘Oh my God, this is gonna be so cool. What if I put it in this shop?’ Or I think, ‘this is going to be great for my daughter one day’ I just think of positive things.”
Monster Ball
Stay tuned the next couple of days for details on how this influencer has helped the actor community and to get information on her Monster Ball she is putting on this coming Saturday!
