My name is Ammunition and I’m a performing artist … I started about … when I was seven on stage … I was in various theater productions … and then about six years ago I was recognized as a solo artist … and I took it to the next level about three years ago and started upping the ante with my performing art … and that’s basically where I’m at now … Basically … where I perform in Chicago … anywhere from small bars to clubs … art galleries … I recently got booked to do some fairly large scale festivals … One which is called Spring Awakening that’s going to be at Soldier Field and I’m going to be traveling around this summer as well to Electric Forest at Lakefront Music festival on the lakefront at Montrose beach … So its starting to get pretty large scale … and I’m pretty excited about it … I’ve been hired all over the place to do my art … anywhere from a small window front to 4500 people at the Congress … So … it’s been amazing … When I started, about six years ago … my fashion style was more in the sense of fetish base … I wore a lot of rubber and patent  leather … fetish heels and over time it started graduating into a more urban gypsy apparel where I wear giant feather headdresses … but I still implement some of the edge to it … So I still wear leather pieces to represent what I came from but also with my style now which is more of a burner influence and gypsy influence as well … a lot of sparkle … a lot of texture … It’s expensive … but it’s totally worth it … Influences? … It depends … I have so many hats that I have influences in different arenas … When it comes to grinding … Candy Triple X … She’s the one who taught me how to do the fire arts and the grinder arts … When it comes to advanced tricks and more larger scale toys with fire the burner community has definitely inspired me with that … when it comes to musical influences it can range anywhere from industrial to electronic … dubstep … it’s pretty large suited when it comes to where I’m influenced but a lot of it has evolved from my childhood as well because my dad used to play a lot of different music from different musical genres … Sometimes I like to throw my fans for a loop and play something from the late 60’s or 70’s … throw the Beatles in between my electronic music … so it’s never really consistent … its across the board so I can keep people constantly entertained … Performance has definitely been my primary art form as of lately but I came from modeling as that being my primary art form where I was shooting anywhere from three to five times a week … now that’s been replaced by performing three to five times a week … And that can range from really angry angsty performances to I have so much joy inside and I have to share it with the world … It’s basically a collage of where I’m at at that point in time and that’s how I express myself now … is mainly through performance art … but I do like to go back to my roots and model as well and that’s basically just a time stamp of who I am right now so I can look back and think … “Wow … I really changed” … (laughter) … We’ve all changed and we’ve all evolved … I’m definitely very particular as to how I’m portrayed … when I first started out I shot with pretty much anybody because I wanted to get my work out there … but now I’m very particular about who I shoot with … I have to get references … I have to look at how my friends have been portrayed … I like to see my work afterwards … particularly right afterwards … like how when we work together I get to see where I’m at so in the shoot I can see where I need to improve on … or work on something else … sometimes I do shoots where I end up never seeing the work … it just goes directly to an art project … that kind of makes me a little neurotic … so I’m like … “Wow… this guy just captured me and I don’t know what I look like” … But I just have to trust that he’s using his artistic discretion …  It’s … ( referencing our work together) … definitely evolved from six years ago from when we first started … before there was a lot more color and it was a different part of me … so it captured my old self … which is pretty fascinating … but I’m in love with the work … it’s absolutely beautiful … I love to see how it’s been evolving over the years from color to black and white … where it’s almost … paying homage to the purist form of us … So … I’m really interested to see what this series is going to yield and to compare it to about six years ago … I love looking at the pieces and thinking… wow… that’s a part of me that’s probably never going to exist again … and it’s captured in something that people can admire … It’s really inspiring… When I first started … Model Mayhem was definitely a tool that I was using pretty regularly … like every day… and I found some really incredible artists using that site … over time I feel it’s gotten a little more flakier … so I haven’t been meeting people who are as serious about their work as I am … so I drifted away from that and I mainly work with people I’ve worked with repeatedly … I just go back to the same artists I’ve worked with … In terms of facebook I get an incredible amount of response through Facebook … It’s an excellent tool … I mean it can also be a very dramatic … ridiculous tool … but I’ve received a lot of bookings … a lot of recognition … photos that people have taken of my work that I didn’t even know existed … sometimes I get tagged and I see pictures of my work that are absolutely incredible that I didn’t even know existed … So it’s definitely … I feel like every artist should put themselves out there even though they there not so into being online and promoting themselves that way … but it’s made me a pretty popular niche in Chicago … So I would recommend it to anyone … I have two Facebook pages … I have my personal one and I have my art one so people don’t have to listen to all the complaining I do on my personal one … they can just get straight to the point … I’m performing here … I’m going to be here … so … it’s something that ebbs and flows over time … eventually Facebook will phase  out and something else will take over… and I’m basically just riding the wave of it and going with what’s hot for now… I think the next thing will have to be Google Plus … and people have been really bothering me about Twitter … because I’m not on Twitter  … and every time I mention that I’m not on twitter people think … “Oh my god … your not on Twitter” … I’m … “What difference does it make … you hear me post a million times on  Facebook … why do you need Twitter too … It’s one more place” … So it’s something I’m going to have to do because I’ve been hearing a lot of complaints … You need a Twitter account … you need a twitter account … So yeah … (laughter) … I definitely switch from a Clark Kent to Superman mode … It’s what I call it … I’ve always had a dichotomy in my life where there’s a conservative side and there’s the “Ammunition” side … I’ve always been extraverted to some degree … There are definitely a lot of situations that cause me to show off … and be a little more shy … When I was a little girl I used to set up my teddy bears on my bed so that they looked like an audience and I’d perform to them to like the Beatles … Frank Zappa … Led Zeppelin on my Big Bird record player … I’ve always had it in me … performance is in my blood and I come from a family of performing artists … My dad is a drummer and still is a drummer at fifty-seven  years old … so … he inspires me constantly with his drive … for expressing himself … so when I go on stage … or in front of a camera … there’s a different part of me that clicks into this auto drive mode … where … when I look back at it a performance video … or myself on camera … I think to myself … “How did I do that?” … “Is that really me?”… Holy shit … you know … (laughter) … I throw myself for a loop sometimes … and a lot of people will say … “You’re nothing like your stage persona … You’re so bad ass … You look bitchy… but then when you get off stage you’re like a total sweetheart and it’s just so different” … So there’s definitely a part of me that expresses itself … which is not entirely me … but is the me … the fantasy me that I want to be … so … it’s basically like putting on a costume for Halloween and being that character … but all the time … and the funny thing is … I don’t dress up on Halloween … (laughter) … People are always asking me … “What are you going to be this year?” … and I’m like … This year? … What do you mean… like…this week?”… (laughter) … I’m always dressing up … So … Yeah …