Fall 2023 we opened our first retail space, Doll Funeral, in Toronto. With the intention of a photoshoot studio and shop environment. It has since transformed into a very busy slightly larger shop and I’m back building sets for shoots in my dining room (a fair trade, honestly!). Just before the shop opened my 15 year old kitty (Atticus, who some may remember from our blog etc) passed away and then two weeks after our opening my father did also. When I think back to fall 2023 it’s a blur of grief, stress, and trying to function in a new retail space while feeling like I was underneath 3 miles of dirt. It sucked.

One of my dearest friends has always said Art Saves, and he has been right innumerable times during my life. Art Saved me again this time. I crawled out from the ground into 2024 bleary and bruised, with about as much emotional regulation as a toddler has. While planning memorials, wakes, and sorting my father’s belongings with my mom I ran a business, did shoots, hosted events, and managed a shop. It may sound frivolous but what kept me moving during the worst weeks was making art. It was building this weird little world of Gloomth/Doll Funeral and the community around it that gave me a lodestar, a light to move towards while it felt like things were otherwise collapsing around me.

The thing about mourning in modern life is it’s largely invisible. Suddenly all the Victorian traditions of black garb and arm bands to indicate one is living with a new loss make sense. In modern life you just walk around fucked up and looking rough, and most strangers you encounter can only assume that’s your default (haha…). I haven’t written about fall 2023 publicly here or really anywhere, it was all too immediate to write of coherently. Grief is transformative, and very clarifying- you don’t experience it and remain the same person you were prior.

Without my friends, models, and shop staff I couldn’t have gotten through 2024. There have been some incredibly dark moments this year, and just as many dazzling highs. We had amazing turnouts to our Clown Party and Angel Party, as well as many Closet Shop Days! I’ve done shoots this year that are some of my all-time favorites! I’ve met so many amazing people through this new space, and it’s reinvigorated my love for what I do. Doll Funeral/Gloomth has saved me this year, and I am so grateful you’re a part of it.

As we’re facing a dark year ahead in the world beyond ours, all I can do is turn again to art and creating and urge you to do the same. We’ll get through this together- art + community + love, always.

Happy new year.

xo -Tae