Conversations with Gabrielle Huspeth

Today we’d like to introduce you to Gabrielle Hudspeth.

Hi Gabrielle, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
Like so many millennial teenage girls, Tumblr had a huge influence in shaping my identity. There was a moody yet dreamy aesthetic to everyone’s lives, and I wanted to be just like them. I thought if I emulated the photos I saw I could embody that same energy of feeling connected to myself. So, I made my first big girl purchase and bought a Canon Rebl T3i, which all the internet girls seemed to have at the time.

Seeing myself and the world through a mega-pixilated lens awakened something deeper in me. It was an escape from my toxic home, my feelings of self-hate, and my mundane existence. In the safe space of my room, I would make clothes and dress up as the characters that lived in the fantasy worlds of my mind. It was the medium of expression I was searching for and would shape my style of fashion, art, and photography.

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
As life would have it, trauma was the theme of my childhood. I’ve always had a strained relationship with my mother, and the passing of my father and stepfather before I was 18 was enough to convince me that God hated me. From a formidable age, I felt alone and developed a survival-based perspective toward life. This negatively impacted not only my schooling but the pursuit of my artistic dreams of photography and fashion. I suppressed my passions and obtained a corporate degree and career path out of fear and anxiety that the arts weren’t for me, and that I wouldn’t be able to make a living with it. It wasn’t until 2020 when the pandemic hit, that I was forced to sit with myself and the trauma that I had been avoiding for so many years. I was able to speak to the lost girl inside of me that had so many big dreams but let fear and uncertainty bury them away. Never again.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
During the beginning of the pandemic, I had a moment where I was sitting at my corporate job and I kept seeing the term sole proprietor. In basic terms, this is essentially an individual owner of a business entity who doesn’t separate themselves from the business. I thought to myself, “Is this really what we reduce our purpose to? What we materially own and the titles and personas that we try to embody?” I quickly realized that this could never be me. I decided to take the negative connotation away from that term and flip it into something that I could identify with. So, I traded the spelling of sole with s-o-u-l and decided to call my clothing brand Soul Proprietor. I set out with the intention to create designs that affirmed a life I identified with. Whether my pieces portray positive mantras like “Support Your Friends” or illustrations of myself as a fairy lost in a mushroom forest, they are an authentic expression of me.

After creating Soul Proprietor, I thought what better way to get back into photography than to do a shoot for my new designs. I bought a few film cameras and instantly fell in love with photos all over again. I felt myself breaking free from the sunken place I was in for so long, with a fresh desire to transform my mundane and conventional human experience into something raw yet surreal. I love storytelling through fantasy-like shoots that reflect the worlds my imagination travels to, and I love to transform myself and my subjects. I like to mix extremes and create art that can be ethereal, sexy, ugly, or even funny. I never want my style to be sterile. I never want to stop playing and having fun!

What’s next?
I want to keep collaborating with artists who like to experiment with their bodies and personas. Eventually, I plan to make a photo book and have my own studio. Maybe even make a film. Whatever I’m creating, I want it to be for me.