Jeanie Yoo and Gwyneth Giller on making art, making money, and doing nothing for Girl Talk.
Jeanie Yoo is living several lives all at once. The Ridgewood-based artist and model is funding her art with her face—squeezing studio time between flights to LA. In the weeks leading up to her latest show, she was running on two hours of sleep, installing work, and catching red-eyes for campaigns. Somewhere in between, Yoo shares a small piece of wisdom from her Notes app that reminds us both that crying might just be the key to feeling alive.
Growing up, it turns out, doesn’t necessarily mean getting it together. Sometimes it means seeking whimsy from your local willow tree, or accepting that your mom might still be the person who shows up when you need her. Together, we discuss maternal imprints, missed periods, the existential threat of the cloud, and why girls should always do nothing.
Gwyneth Giller: You were saying that you just moved. Where did you move to and from where?
Jeanie Yoo: I moved from Bushwick, and I moved 15 minutes away to Ridgewood.
GG: Where did you live before New York?
JY: I grew up on Long Island. I went to school in Rhode Island and was there for four years, graduating in 2024.
GG: What do you do for business, and what do you do for pleasure?
JY: I model and paint, both feed into business and pleasure. Lately, I feel like my modeling has been funding my painting.
GG: Beauty pouring into beauty.
JY: Sometimes one picks up while the other falls off. I’ve also done a lot of assisting. I worked as an artist’s assistant after graduating, but my boss moved to Madrid.
GG: We recently published an article that my friend Jo wrote for Elephant. She interviewed artist assistants, keeping them all anonymous, and got all the tea because, as you know, there’s so much to be said. I’m curious what your experience was like?
JY: Oh, I loved it. I was really lucky because my boss, Linus Borgo, was incredible. But, I think a lot of young artists in their late 20s and 30s don’t necessarily know how to be bosses yet. When they first get their first “eager to please” assistant, they don’t always know what to do with them. You’re learning how to help them while also teaching them how to accept help.
GG: Such a good point. We’re all just trying to figure it out.
JY: I really enjoyed having an excuse to make someone’s life easier.
GG: Have you ever taken the Myers-Briggs Personality Test?
JY: Oh yeah, I’m an INFP.
GG: I’m an INFP too! We sound really similar in that I’m also desperate to help people. Every time I go over to my friends’ apartments, I find myself casually grabbing paper towels and wiping down surfaces.
JY: That’s exactly how I am. I have to stop myself sometimes, I just want to help them so badly.
GG: Help-maxxing. What else are you maxing this summer?
JY: Adult-maxxing. I’m doing a lot of adult shit. I had a Global Entry appointment earlier today.
GG: What inspired you to do that? That’s sooo adult.
JY: In the weeks leading up to my show, I started booking modeling jobs in LA almost every week, which was amazing. But it was funny because it was the one time in my life when I really needed to stay home and lock in.
GG: Traveling for work can be so tough.
JY: I narrowly missed a lot of flights.
GG: Have you ever actually missed a flight?
JY: Yes, the first time I did a modeling stay in LA, my mom came with me.
GG: Aw, that’s cute.
JY: We both missed the flight because I packed my entire life for some reason, and my bag was also overweight…
GG: My bag always exceeds 50 pounds.
JY: My last flight I almost missed too because for some reason, I always have to cook something elaborate right before leaving for the airport. I refuse to eat airport food. It’s so expensive.
GG: Oh my god. And your roommates are like, okay… the dishes.
JY: I did my dishes! I’m literally back from my job in the next 24 hours.
GG: Can you share who it was for?
JY: It was for Nike.
GG: So cool.
JY: They were definitely a dream client. I had been wanting to work with them for years and, of course, they confirmed me in one of my most stressful weeks. But I couldn’t pass up the opportunity, I’m glad to have made it work because they’re an incredible team.
GG: How’d they approach you?
JY: One day, they were like, “Hey, can you go to the nearest Nike store, go into the fitting room, and try on these pieces? Feel free to step out, find some good lighting, and have someone film you doing a little walk and twirl for us.”
GG: That’s…humbling.
JY: Sometimes you have to do some silly things for the job. I actually made my ex film it.
GG: [Laughter] Okay, love. Wait, I’m also obsessed with the story of you and your mom going to a modeling job together. Are you guys close?
JY: I signed with a new agency in LA, and it was a two-month stay. My mom really wanted to come with me. She’s awesome and was like, “I just want to hang out,” but I knew she really wanted to scope out the area and make sure everything was safe.
GG: Typical mom behavior.
JY: She’s very supportive of me. I’m the type of daughter that’s always trying to prove to be independent, but my mom wants to help me so badly.
GG: You are adult-maxxing afterall.
JY: She’s tricked me into letting her help me many times, and it’s genius.
GG: You know what’s crazy? When your mom is pregnant with you, some of your cells cross the placenta and remain in her body for the rest of her life. But her maternal cells only remain in our bodies for a couple of decades. It’s called microchimerism.
A mother and child can carry pieces of each other long after birth. We grow into our own individual people, but in a tiny biological way, we never completely leave each other. Isn’t that kind of bittersweet?
JY: Wait, so then right now I don’t have my mom’s cells?
GG: You have her DNA, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you have her cells. I could be getting this wrong. But I think there’s a difference between carrying someone’s genetic information and having their actual cells in your body.
JY: I believe that.
GG: It makes me kind of emotional. Are you an only child or do you have siblings?
JY: I have two older brothers. So I’m the baby girl.
GG: Lots of protection.
JY: My mom’s very much like, “you’re my one baby daughter”.
GG: When was the last time that you cried?
JY: Actually, it was with my mom. I had to leave for the airport on the day of my show’s installation, and I’d planned out this whole to-do list: hit the stores in the morning, pick up supplies, and get everything installed before my flight. I’d only slept two hours. I was starving, stressed out, running on two hours of sleep, and being so grumpy. Then my mom walked in and said, “I got you Chinese food!”
GG: Your nervous system was probably fried.
JY: I’m eating the Chinese food as she drives me to the airport, just sobbing.
GG: You’re just a girl.
JY: Thankfully, I had really amazing people who were so patient with me.
GG: And you did it. The show looks great.
JY: I’m really happy with how it all went, but my body was in full-on stress mode. The morning after the opening, I woke up and got my period. Then I realized it was three weeks late, and I hadn’t even noticed.
GG: Wait, was this in June?
JY: Yeah.
GG: Did you see that thing about everyone missing their period, getting two periods, or getting theirs early in June? Thousands of women reported it, and no one seemed to know why. It happened to me, too.
JY: Oh my god, it’s the moon!.
GG: After something super stressful, what do you do to relax and brain rot?
JY: I think I just needed to stop myself from brain-rotting because I’d fallen into a bit of a hole. I remember being so excited for life after the show because I had all these projects I wanted to work on, but instead, I was dealing with so much anxiety and scrolling. So I actually just got a Brick recently. Do you know what that is?
GG: Yeah, I see ads for that all the time. Should I get it?
JY: It’s really great; I was traveling a lot and reading more.
GG: What have you been reading?
JY: I’m reading this book my friend got me. We did a book exchange, it’s called My Brilliant Friend.
GG: Oh wait, I just read that too.
JY: Do you have a girl best friend who is your opposite?
GG: I feel like all my friends and I are painfully similar.
JY: Yeah, it’s a very specific female experience, growing up in the 50s in Italy but I think any woman would love to read it.
GG: Okay, finish the sentence: girls should always ______.
JY: Hm…I don’t know; girls shouldn’t do anything.
GG: [Laughter] In feng shui, women being lazy in the house brings abundance.
JY: I’ve seen that.
GG: What’s your current life motto?
JY: My current life motto is probably “Get the fuck out of the house.”
GG: What do you do when you want to be whimsically indulgent?
JY: I go to the nearest willow tree.
GG: That’s whimsical as hell.
JY: There isn’t much nature on my walk to and from my studio. I really love willow trees, though, and there’s one right by this bar called Boobie Trap.
GG: I love Boobie Trap! I don’t really go there anymore, but when I first moved to New York at 18, it was where I went with my fake ID all the time. It’s where I had my first date with my ex-boyfriend, too. So many milestones happened there.
JY: Beautiful. I should go there more often. It’s such a landmark for me on my way to the studio.
GG: I wonder how it’s doing. Maybe I’ll stop by one of these days and see.
JY: The willow tree is just north on that block; it’s the wrong direction to my studio, but when I’m feeling indulgent, I’ll go say hi to it because it’s sweet.
GG: If your notes app was deleted, would you be worried?
JY: I would freak out if it got deleted.
GG: It’s crazy to think about our digital footprint and the fact that when we’re 80 years old, we’re going to be able to go back into our notes apps and read those things.
JY: I have this theory in my brain, for some reason, that our clouds are going to be destroyed. Like, the cloud isn’t meant to withstand a full lifetime.
GG: I kind of feel that way, too. It feels a little perverse that we can have these things forever without ever holding a tangible, physical object.
JY: I should print them.
GG: Speaking of, what is your favorite earthly possession?
JY: That makes me scared to say because I feel like I’m going to lose it. My favorite physical object is probably this bracelet that I got in India.
GG: Where in India were you?
JY: I was in Old Delhi, Agra, New Delhi, and then I went to Jaipur for like two weeks.
GG: I did New Delhi and Jaipur too. It was the most magical experience.
JY: I want to go back really badly. I want to go south to Bangalore because I have some friends from there.
GG: That’s fun. I’m always thinking about ways I can convince my friends to go to India with me.
JY: It’s not easy to convince people to go to India, for some reason.
GG: Do you have a note in your app that you’d feel comfortable reading?
JY: I have a whole note in my phone of things I want to remember, like life advice. I haven’t opened it since last year.
GG: Perfect.
JY: I like the first one: It’s good to revisit movies that made you cry.
GG: I love crying.
JY: I wrote that down when I rewatched the entirety of Everything Everywhere All at Once on my phone in my dorm room.
GG: Such a crazy movie to watch on your phone.
JY: That was the second time I watched it. The first time, I was on a plane and cried. Then I watched it a second time and cried again, it made me remember why it’s good to cry.
GG: Girls should always cry. That’s how I’m finishing that sentence.
JY: Wait, yes!
GG: It’s so alive.
JY: Alive-maxxing.
Written by Gwyneth Giller.
