"The more each one of us anchors ourselves into our agency and our power and our impact on the world, and our ability to collectively gather with others that know that in themselves - or that we can inspire each other to keep being courageous - that's the best of Aries."

"Art is a weapon. It is a tool to dismantle supremacy."

- CHANI NICHOLAS

Chani's message is clear, potent, powerful, and irrefutable. The tools you offer are vast, accessbile, transformative, and exactly what the world needs. And the delivery of all the above through your digital media channels and printed material are a mastercraft of evocative symbolism, immersive storytelling, and gorgeous dreamscapes rapt with goddess-warrior spirit - offering a portal straight into the rich potential of personal and collective transformation.

I believe I see and feel you, Ramisha. The wealth of .....become one of the tools I trust and rely on most that has supported huge personal evolution as an artist and human. And I believe I have a deep value alignment, the razor sharp technical skills, a shared vision of art as our weapon/tool, and the renegade creative spirit that you and Chani need on your team.

To paint a picture of what brought me here, to you, and why - I wanted to share the story of two projects: my very first design job, and my most recent collaboration.

I am so grateful for your attention!

CHAPTER ONE: HOGAR INFANTIL

I landed my first design job at age 11, unpaid of course - a job I was offered by my mother, who at the time was president of a board that oversees operations and fundraising for a home for orphans on a ranch in Chiapas, Mexico called Hogar Infantil. The job was designing the layout for Hogar’s quarterly newsletter that goes out to 2,000 international donors whose contributions keep the ranch’s housing for 80 kids in Mexico’s poorest state running, along with funding their school through university, breaking the cycle of poverty through education.

The year was 1992 and we had just road tripped 3,000 miles home to rural Oregon after spending 2 years living at the ranch in Chiapas where my parents were onsite directors for Hogar - managing care and education for these Mexican and indigenous girls and boys at the edge of the Mayan jungle, and where my 3 siblings and I attended school in the local village with our new brothers and sisters - and spent weekends with them swimming in crystal canyon rivers and climbing to the tops of Mayan temples.

The Hogar newsletter production was real cut and paste work and a total family affair. I was way into computers, so I created a template in Microsoft Publisher and typed up my mom's beautiful ruminations on life at the ranch - always with an an intimate profile and backstory of a selected new kid or long-time resident heading off to university - leaving placeholders for photos and our logo. Then came my favorite part.. I got to sift through all the photos my mom shot and developed, then select, crop, and meticulously paste everything onto a final hard copy with a glue stick [this was way before home scanners were a thing] before taking to the print shop to make 2,000 copies. Hot off the press, the entire family would sit in a big circle in our living room for hours, tri-folding the beautiful news, and stuffing, labeling, and stamping all 2,000 envelopes.

Looking back on these formative years, I envision a cauldron into which my parents poured their values of a deep dedication to doing hands on, impactful work. The pure artistic joy I felt through crafting our newsletter and pushing it out to the world was another ingredient that went into the mix, along with the relationships, love, and sense of home that carries through to this day. This cauldron's resultant potion has been a fueled my walk through life - as a creative professional and as a human being - and has provided a base recipe that nourishes my spirit, and manifests through all the work and projects I am so grateful to have been able to cook up over the years..... The most potent and decadent of which happens to be the most recent: a magical alignment to collaborate professionally with the person I hold most dear.

CHAPTER TWO: SHE AND I = AQUEMINI / THE BIRTH OF SOLANI MEDIA

Thirty years after our famly road tripped back to Oregon from southern Mexico, I found myself on another 3,000 mile road trip; this time with my bestie / eternal valentine / cosmic twin, Ruchi, whom I met in the fall of 1999 during orientation week our freshman year at NYU... babies, but with shared eternities between us we both instantly recognized and felt.

I was trusting my intuition and answering an internal call to move out west to Los Angeles, leaving my best friend and long-term home in NYC. Ruchi endorsed my move on one condition - that we drive together from Brooklyn to Venice Beach. So I gave up the lease on my Greenpoint flat with the palatial private outdoor space, and we hit the road.

Ruchi is a poet, a storyteller, an Emmy-award winning documentary filmmaker. And on the open road together she a Spielberg-produced docuseries for Netflix that premiered at #1 - the very last in a decade-long string of successful projects that fell short of their potential, reach, and impact due to a broken, patriarchal process... 

As With my experience launching a string of successful projects, from company setup and branding, visual identity, graphic design, and capital raise, it was a no-brainer. I designed our pitch deck, which landed us a $250k check from the first investor we approached, and we were off to the races, developing a short list of incredible projects we had in the pipeline.

Ruchi said "did you see Chani is hiring? are you thinking about applying?" Yes and yes.