In Conversation with Danielle Mužina
Danielle in the feverdream studio
Introduce yourself!
Hi, I'm Danielle Mužina. I am a painter from Cleveland, Ohio. I grew up in the North Collinwood/Euclid area, and I'm the ninth resident artist at feverdream.
How would you say your overall experience at feverdream was?
Yeah. So I thought that my summer residency at feverdream has been one of my favorite experiences at an artist residency ever. The fact that it's been artist run and artist-centric, focusing on things that working, practicing artists really care about, like building community. Being able to offer events and knowledge that respond to their work and the needs of their community. Access to talking to a lot of different artists, in house, and in the Greater Cleveland area has been really great. I've got a lot of momentum going from all of the things that all the feedback that I was able to get from all the different artists and community members that I was able to interact with. So, it's been really fulfilling.
So your cup is pretty full right now?
Yeah. My cup has been super full. I'd say at the end of my residency, my cup feels super full in the way that the community event that I did really, I think, is going to feed my work for a really long time. And I came into this residency from a position of, you know… I was working in higher ed for a long time, moved to Cleveland to take care of my mom and was working as a co-founder for a DEI education company. But in 2025, the climate around that had me feeling really low. Especially with everything–all the rollbacks on various rights and attitudes towards any aspect of social justice. Being able to have a space to sort through that in painting and in my practice, was really, really, really important to me as a Clevelander, as an artist, and I think just as a human.
What would you say you learned about your artistic practice during your stay?
In the studio
Yeah. There was a time where I think I saw myself, as especially as a painter, there's very few national painting conferences, like there are for printmakers or ceramicists or whatever. So I saw myself as a lone wolf. And I've had people say to me in the past that I’m kind of more of a leadership oriented or artist activist kind of person. And I think for a while, especially working from home, I did get into this lone wolf kind of mindset. But the residency and working with so many other people, some that I did and some that I didn't–and brainstorming the source material for a lot of the photos for my work and the direction that my work is moving in and the mural itself has been really powerful in reteaching me that A. I'm a teacher B. I'm a person that needs to be in community with others to make sense of the world and that see that I want to uplift more than just my own read on how to move through things like community and crisis. You know, I have my own story. My own perspectives. And there's no way that I can know the internal world of every single person who came to my workshop and and the like. But still, just witnessing what others or how others responded to the prompts that I gave them was really powerful.
And I think one of the things too, that I said in some of my critiques and just conversations around feverdream have been that my participants really caught me off guard with the level of maybe hope or solidarity that they brought to the way that they structured images. I think I tend to focus on the barriers to working together or the inequities that arise when in any kind of effort. Or just like interpersonal tensions. And they showed so many ways that like people who do and don't know each other can structure joy or shift power, or kind of be at a loss, but still building towards something else. And I'm still sitting with that.
How do you think you see this opportunity as a boost for yourself as an emerging artist? Did it set you ahead?
Yeah. I think it's definitely been able to set me ahead in just the amount of feedback that I've gotten. The number of different people I've had the opportunity to have conversations with about my work. From various parts of Cleveland or various stages in their own artistic journeys. All of those connect us and connect what we're doing and how we're going about it. And interconnects all these different people who have different networks or trajectories or ways of viewing how to even work or live as an artist right now especially. I think for me just the immersive element of that has been grounding and motivating.
Did you experiment while you were here? What did you experiment with?
One thing going on in my work has just been like…so much has gone on in the world in between the time that I started my current series, The Pink Apocalypse, after Dr. Blasey Ford's testimony. Mostly like thinking about responses to my experiences as a survivor and my late in life lesbian coming out story. There's been so much that's happened since then. And my work, you know, instead of just focusing on one aspect of society or injustice has sort of expanded, with the growing, looming sort of strength that we face nationally and globally. And my work has been trying to figure out how to respond or grapple with those big questions.
Having the residency gave me sort of like a big, wide open space to ask some of those questions within myself and within my community more fearlessly. And having a big expansive time to approach that question in a lot of different ways has been really powerful and introspective and I still don't have the answers but I've already learned a lot and I'm seeing so many new questions to ask as we move forward, and as I move forward. And the residency also, I am a painter who normally starts in acrylics but then moves towards completion and a painting in oil. And I think that realizing that my solution to the painting needed to be different based off of the kind of paint that I was working with freed me as well to see different formal or structural or compositional solutions that maybe weren't as formulaic or habitual as maybe they had gotten to be. And so I found myself having interesting conversations with myself about finish, mark, texture and surface and I think that too opened different avenues for these really bright fluorescent colors that I've been using. And yeah maybe more singular, centralized compositions rather than really all over [compositions]. Which I felt a little bit self-conscious about with a couple of my paintings where there's sort of like a figure holding like a diamond or rhombus shape open into a portal to somewhere else. I thought I'm a more is more person but some of the work that I've made over the course of the residency has been a bit more direct. And it's been interesting having conversations with other artists in my critiques about how those images are working differently.
How would you say you surprised yourself during your stay?
Well one thing that surprised me was how long it takes me to paint corn. But other ways I surprised myself over the course of the residency: I think there were times where I was feeling really down about where my painting was at. Especially in acrylic. But I just pushed through and went Well, Danielle you've been doing this for over half a lifetime. You're going to figure it out. And I went Okay. And I watched myself do things also rather quickly while juggling the residency and two jobs over the summer where I had to learn to trust myself quicker than I had to then I had been doing. And that's kind of empowering as well.
And yeah I definitely surprised myself in… Or maybe I re-remembered myself. Because the workshop that I gave here really just filled me with a lot of hope, drive, and momentum. As an educator and as an artist. I felt like I really just had an avenue to fully being myself. And I hadn't felt that for a really long time. Is that too vulnerable to say anything?
No.
Okay. Okay, good. [Laughs]
What would you say is your favorite piece that you made here and why?
That is a tough one, Maxmilian. Okay, let me think. So the painting that has my friend Beau, holding this diamond open to this image that his group made in the workshop where everybody is sort of creating these tableau. Offering their diamonds to him or placing them at his feet or behind his head or around his chest. I was really struck by that image when I saw it and I had to resist the temptation to just make that the painting. And instead Beau is sort of offering us that image. In this really powerful like Look at this. But with a little bit of swagger in the way that he's holding it as well. That was the first one that I made where in the series of a few paintings where the diamond was becoming a more direct offering or portal in the work. Interesting things happened for me in making that painting. And I had to wrestle with the fluorescent colors in new ways. And then solving the painting with these flat diamond shapes, compared to the really intense depth or rendering in other areas was exciting to work on. And I guess in the spirit of the work and the community and what all those things mean. How we move through moments like this. My friend Beau is also an artist, a musician [named] LadyBoy. And our conversations about art, being artists, living through 2025 as queer people and amplifying each other have been so grounding so being able to make this painting amplifying Beau, amplifying himself, and how other people are amplifying him in the image was really powerful.
What's the main thing you'll remember about your time here in Tremont? What’s your biggest takeaway?
I think that something that the fever dream residency does maybe better than any of the other residencies I've been at is really prove that the residency doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's like living, working artists and a community of people with artists having an opportunity to do something that really matters to them. And the format of a community event or having the support from the residency, and the board to bring in artists that they think would be great in conversation with you to connect you with other arts organizations in the area–it felt really immersed. And there's been lots of different reasons that I've loved various other residencies I've done from materials, setting, whatever. But here I really think it's the people and the ethos and just like the felt level of support and also just realness. Real genuine care about the artists that feverdream represents. I felt really supported just as an individual. And really encouraged or re-encouraged, especially at kind of a tenuous moment in my life that what I'm doing matters. And I should keep doing it here in Cleveland.
What was something that had you most nervous coming into this residency program?
Yeah. Practically, mentally, socially or?
I mean which one of those categories had the most poignant, anxiety inducing thoughts?
I think I was worried that working so hard to support myself in the fall of capitalism and doing my residency immersed in that, I was worried I wouldn't be able to be present. But instead I felt really hyper-present every time I was here. I feel like the pocket of space that I was working in was super cozy and comfortable. And there was a lot of flexibility for my random schedule as a working artist to be as productive as possible for me as the resident. And then I think another thing I was really worried about was as a person who left Cleveland for seven years and just came back two years ago: feeling like an outsider. But instead I felt like everybody at feverdream has just been so open arms with connecting me to other artists, creatives, opportunities, and spaces. Anything from art stuff to just cool places to go thrift. So that's been really nice.
Final Crit
We organized a couple of critiques for you, had multiple visiting artists, and then a final review/critique. Can you just talk about why critique is so important and why it should be important to other artists?
Critique is so important. And I think especially for people who have gone to art school or been in our community in ways that they had structured critique in their lives. Or people who live or have lived in areas that are super dense and the support and structure that there is for artists to get feedback about their work. Sometimes we lose sight of how easy and inbuilt that was. And when you're making your work and you change, the world changes, or your materials or your pigments change or where you're living changes. You're just one body and just one set of eyes and set of experience and mind. You need to know how your work feels and looks and communicates with other embodied people.
To be able to see yourself and what you're doing, where you're going, authentically. And that's not just for the things that your work maybe is missing the mark on or is obfuscating in terms of what it's trying to accomplish conceptually. It's also like what are you not seeing in your work that you are doing and that you deeply care about that's so inbuilt to the work that your cards are so close to your chest that you can't read them anymore? Having other artists or community members look at and respond to and ask questions and the work helps you see what you do already have and what you are already saying as well as telling you Oh well here are some other ways that you could do this effectively or other ways you could go about that that you might not be seeing. But yeah, I mean, I'm a teacher, so I'm always going to say that there are so many ways that we have agency and have a voice. And something really important to say that we take for granted. And I think critique is important in that way, too.
What’s something that's from one of those critiques that has stuck with you?
Yeah. This is such a tricky question because I've loved all my critiques for different reasons. Like a couple of broad themes that stick out to me are conversations I've had with Maxmillian, about the way that shapes sort of tesselate. And with some of the other artists like Sarah and Katy too about how the rhombus shapes in my work work conceptually and formally to sort of stabilize or destabilize or open up through tessellation like the picture plane. So I'm definitely still thinking about that.
A really powerful moment that I had with Sarah Curry was just in talking about the insistence of the color pink in the work. Wanting to be heard as serious and as important, especially in the setting of this work. And also just in our world. The way that she just talked about or saw me so clearly trying to make qualities like vulnerability or care loud within societal collapse as valid ways of leading or helping. And seeing how the color pink in my work isn't supposed to just be soft. It's supposed to be urgent, hot to the touch. Or it draws your attention, or it's completely otherworldly.
Do you have a favorite artist right now?
It's so hard. I hate picking favorites, you know, I really, really hate it. So I love Gisella McDaniel. I love the way that her work addresses issues of violence and missing and murdered indigenous women as well. I love her color. I love that she interviews all of her subjects and gives them agency as to how their body is represented. And then some of her paintings you can also hear clips of the interviews that she does with her subjects. You know, the way she tackles survivorship with agency feels really important to me. And I just think she's a dynamite painter. I can never get enough of her paintings. I just found out too, that she had a mural in Cleveland. I think in the Clark-Fulton neighborhood a couple of years ago, too. And she's Detroit based and another rustbelt painter who I think is completely dynamite. Always tracking what she's doing, for sure.
And so then while I'm a painter, one of my favorite artists of all time is Janine Antoni. She's a sculptor, photographer, and performance artist. And the way that she uses the body in comfortable and uncomfortable ways in her work and makes these strange interventions. And new spaces or new ways of figures relating to each other are really interesting to me.
She has this one image where she's wearing a dollhouse like a skirt almost. And there's just one spider in one of the rooms of the house, and she's levitated in a web in the room as well. And so your perception of what is the real time and space and also what the role of the spider and what the role of the sort of maternal almost Madonna del Parto pose that she has is really powerful. So I love that in her work as well.
What is something was a constant source of inspiration for you and your paintings during your time here?
Besides the people in my work, I think a constant source of inspiration has been just like revisiting–I talked about it a lot with one of my larger paintings of the wallpaper–Jose Esteban Munoz’ Cruising Utopia. It's a really, really beautiful book from queer theory. And the beginning of it is like talking about how queerness is a horizon. It's something that we can never fully arrive at because there's always a time in the future that is queerer. That we can always build to a better, more expansive place. And it's always beyond what we can see or feel or know. And so for me, thinking about how what I see and feel and know in some ways is Oh God. There's still always these hidden entryways, another door or another frame or something just beyond in the everyday and in the extraordinary of the people around me and within myself. There's always something else and it still exists, even if it's not here, that we can touch and we can feel its pull. And that's been really guiding me in terms of hope and in terms of how I'm thinking about the work and what the figures are doing in some of the images.
Do I sound like a douchebag? Do I sound unrelatable or anything? No? Okay.
Final Crit
What would you say is your advice for applying to opportunities like this?
Yeah, I think you should apply it to anything and everything that you think is interesting. No matter where you kind of judge yourself. If you're like Oh, I've been doing this for like six months or I've been doing this for 30 years. Whether you think Oh, I'm too fresh to this or I'm out of practice or I'm irrelevant now or whatever. Again, feedback from other artists and what people can see in your work changes and is unexpected. And there's so much that you're doing and saying that again you don't know how it's going to resonate with people. And if you get rejected from one thing, you're not going to necessarily get rejected from something else. So I think: go for it.
Then the other thing is when you have an opportunity like this, you have no choice except to just like go all in. You have to cut loose in terms of not being afraid of making a mistake or not being over or hypercritical of your ideas. Because you can trust yourself as to what you put down when you're in the studio and in the residency and in the opportunity. But you can't hold back. Otherwise you're not going to make any work. You have to just go for it. And be ready to surprise yourself. Be ready to be frustrated. Be ready to have good days and bad days in the studio. But you just have to have faith in yourself and you’ll already have all the things you need. The people that chose you for the opportunity once you're there they want to see what you're going to do.
Now after the residency, career-wise, what are you looking forward to or working towards right now that you want to share?
So after the residency, I am going to be stepping into being a middle school art teacher at Old Brooklyn Community Middle School for the first time. And I'm really excited and I feel like I'm bringing so much energy and excitement from working with adults in the kind of community programming that I did here in working with people in my community. And now I get to work with youth in my community. I'm seeing so many ways that I can channel some of those questions and some of that energy. I think working with youth is going to be such an exciting turn for me. Excited to show the students my work from the residency on the first day of class tomorrow. And that'll be really sweet.
Is there any technique that you discovered while you were here that you enjoyed? And if you did, how did it change or transform your work?
Yeah. Not to name drop, but this guy Maxmillian really convinced me in like the power of the Golden satin glazing liquid. Not to be a lifelong Golden girl stan. But I used to sort of layer a lot with the open acrylic and high flow. But the satin glazing liquid and the heavy body golden paint together does really nice stuff. For me, that in combination with what I was doing with open acrylic gets me more of what I was looking for in an oil painting more. Because it's more opaque and added a level of difference in the sheen across some of the surfaces in my paintings where it sort of mattes out. And then with my iridescent and metallic it creates more flickering across the surface. And that's been such a nice thing. And it keeps my painting able to be messy and extreme and drying really fast the whole way through an acrylic. So it's exciting.
That was shown to me by our first resident Nolan. So he deserves the name drop. What's your favorite thing about making art?
My favorite thing about making art is knowing that when I'm doing it, I don't need anything else. I don't need to be at a different point in my life. I don't need to have more money. I don't need to live somewhere else. I don't need to own something else. I just need to show up. And when I'm doing it, everything that I'm trying to understand is there with me. Through eyes, body, mind, and hands. It's just such a great way of being extremely alive, responsive, and present as a human being.
What would you say is the main difference between teaching a child and teaching an adult art? Is there any difference?
Something I would say is so powerful and I wish that we could hold on to longer is [that] I think that the older we get the more–it's sort of a double edged sword right? At some point we think we know the answers or we think we know how to do something. And sometimes that gets stuck or formulaic because we're like Oh, I'm already an expert in this, right? And so you stop investigating new ways to do it. And that can limit you, as well. So I think that working with kids, they don't have as much ego about certain things or how long they've been doing something or what's the right or wrong way. They just kind of go for it and respond on the surface. And then at the same time a kid doesn't feel like they have to have a show at a big name gallery in New York to feel like they're an artist, right? They're just like Yeah, I'm an artist. This is my second body of work. I have a zine coming out, right? So they believe in themselves a little bit more.
I think we could hold on to that. A. Yeah, you're already an artist. But then B. Maybe you also don't always know what you're doing as an artist even if you've been doing it for 50 years. Maybe there are still ways to look at the world and what you're doing in ways that surprise you or make you feel playful or uncomfortable or wild. Not that one is better than the other, by far. I love working with people from 2 to 92 or whatever.
The last question that we have is what advice do you have for an artist when it comes to surviving an accidental three hour long crit?
So, I did have this critique that was going through a kind of a rotating door. Almost like a Black Mountain College experience of a crit that keeps unfolding your work for three hours. Longest critique I've ever had. I went like This is what's happening right now. And you do have to stay mindful of What have I already said? How much can I trust that the person who's just walking into the door now can pick up on the conversation or how do you loop someone into what's already been said? I will say living through a three hour long critique I think I had to summarize and unpack this three hour critique to my girlfriend for like six hours after that. Just so that I can remember what was said. Because normally even in grad school if you get an hour for yourself, that would even be really long. There's so much to remember. But three, dude, that was an experience. I feel like I want a diploma from a feverdream.
