Buongiorno! Thanks for stopping by. I am really excited to be here, despite my sleepy demeanor. I am not a morning person unless I’ve had a lot of coffee ☕️, and my morning routine is a little disrupted right now as I adjust to our new class schedule and my new commute. I will come alive slowly 🧟♀️.
I’m Monty– like “Monty Python” for the Terry Gilliam 👄 and John Cleese fans, or “Monty Burns” if you’re more of a The Simpsons person. I was named after my grandpa, whose name was also, surprise, Monty.
I’m originally from Canada, but I’ve been in the US for about a decade. I lived in Toronto for most of my life, studying Linguistics and Spanish language at the University of Toronto for my undergrad. While I don’t have a formal arts background, I grew up in an “arts” household — my mom is an illustrator, graphic designer, photographer and painter, and she went back to school in her early thirties, just like I am doing now 🙂
In the mid 2010s, I moved to the US, and since then I’ve lived in San Francisco, London, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Paris, and now, Brooklyn. Pre-PoD, I worked in Sales at The RealReal, Content Production at BeautyPie, Curation and Artist Relations at Saatchi Art and Cohart, and I consulted for a number of crypto-native companies in the past few years including Ledger and Danvas. I did a full-stack coding bootcamp during COVID, learning Python, HTML and CSS, and Javascript (I really loved it, and while I don’t remember much, I am optimistic that it’ll come back to me during this class).
I spend a lot of time on my computer, so I like to work with my hands and be “off screen” when I can — one example of this is the line of jewelry cases for crypto hardware wallets that I created, called BAGGS, designed to make the self-custodying of digital assets (like cryptocurrencies) more fun.
Along the crafting lines, my friends and I take turns hosting a “craft night” about once a month, because we wanted a more active way to hang out and a reason not to be on our phones. A few weeks ago we made apple dolls; they turned out really awesome and creepy:
Sometimes we really only end up making empty wine bottles 🍷.
I am really excited to be in this class and to learn how to build more “techy” products. I have a lot of specific ideas that I want to bring to life, but in general, I’m interested in experimenting with NFC-chipped objects that have interactive digital experiences. I’m curious about tracking and surveillance tech, as well as exploring tech that can help us disconnect from tech…if that makes sense. I see this class as an opportunity to dip my toe into this area of interest, which I’ve been intimidated to do previously simply because of a lack of experience and feeling like I’m not a math person. How dumb is that!
Thank you for creating a space for us to play and for coming along on this journey with me!