Not everyone can say they’ve been to the Big Apple, but ZELDA PETRAS, a 25 year-old FEMALE has lived in WEST VILLAGE, MANHATTAN for 13 YEARS. This is the city of dreams and SHE knows it, because they came to NYC to be a PAINTER / PERFORMANCE ARTIST. Living in the city means they meet all kinds of people, but everyone always seems to think they look like KRISTINE FROSETH. They even got away with free cab fare once because of it! [violet, 24, she/they, est, self harm & abuse]
LINKS: statistics & pinterest board
NAME: Zelda Desdemona Petras
PRONOUNS: She/Her
DOB: November 25, 1996
ORIENTATION: Bisexual
RESIDENCE: West Village, Manhattan
HOMETOWN: Upper East Side, Manhattan
OCCUPATION: Painter, Sculpter, & Performance Artist
MARITAL STATUS: Single
NATIONALITY: American
CURRENTLY
Zelda, personality wise, is deeply free spirited - but she generally can cast a mysterious figure in some ways. She’s secretive about some personal issues, but other times she is excessively tender and honest. She’s a romantic, but she cannot commit to herself much less anyone else. She’s warm and inviting, but somehow (until you know her well) you will always sense some distance in her. She’s very maternal to friends, but occasionally needs to be reined in and taken care of too. She’s very spontaneous and doesn’t really have a shy bone in her body. Her self destruction streak runs deep, but she does her best to conceal that from others. She lives in a townhouse in the West Village with several roommates and a rotating cast of folks on her couches and guest rooms. She’s made a little artist commune of her own. A safe place for people like her, for runaways, for people who lack her privilege. She’s made her own little family. Her current dream is to sell her work under a pseudonym and make a profit and acclaim entirely independent of her family name.
BIOGRAPHY
tw: self harm, drug abuse, & (implied) sexual assult
Zelda Desdemona Petras was born into wealth. Her grandfather made his money from running five star hotels in Europe, and her father is a big deal film and theatre producer with that money. Her mother, now reduced to a trophy wife, was an actress in England before they met. One day she was reciting sonnets at the Old Globe, the next she was lounging by a pool in a penthouse with a baby in her stomach from a man 30 years her senior. When Zelda was younger her mother still worked (and therefore wasn’t around often) but is now convinced that she’s “past her prime.” Zelda’s parents intended her to be an actress as well, and she starred in short lived television show as a child. However, Zelda hated acting. She despised it. And thus, she made herself an absolute terror to work with on set. The show was cancelled after just one season. She did a couple small roles in some movies, but eventually her parents gave up the dream.
Her mother and father were both furious with her, but they tended to be anytime Zelda spoke her mind. For her entire childhood, Zelda was punished for expressing any negative feeling. Though she was always a pretty well behaved girl, her feelings festered and became like poison inside her. So she gave expressing her feelings with words and began to express them through art. The paintings and drawings were rarely pretty back then, but boy…there were a lot. As a teenager, Zelda started running away from home. It was getting worse and worse as she got older. Her parents just pretended nothing was wrong, but it was there scrawled over all of her walls. She began to self harm, but it got to the point where that no longer served any relief. So she left.
She was well acquainted with a scene of artists in LA and lived on couches for as long as she could before her folks would drag her back home. She couldn’t seem to manage to stay out of the tabloids. While she met many good people, she met more bad ones than she would admit. A 17 year old alone with primarily people older than her? Unfortunately, bad things were bound to befall her. These people listened to her, they shared their feelings with her, and so she trusted them. She began experimenting with drugs, which wasn’t completely uncharted territory, but became more intense. Long trips on any psychedelic drugs she could get her hands on. It was all fun and games and sparked creativity until…until it wasn’t. Until she had a terrible memory lodged into her brain forever.
Zelda went home on her own accord. By then he parents had pretty much given up on keeping track of her, but let her come home none the less. She finished high school. She got clean. She went to therapy. She healed some of her wounds. Her art started to become what she had always strived for but could never quite reach. She hunkered down and really focused on the medium she’s always liked the most - sculpture. Making something with her hands, something with form and weight, made her feel more in control. And people liked her sculptures. People bought her sculptures.
By the time she was nineteen she had enough money to move out on her own. Her own money, made from things she created. While her family own property in both New York and California, she had been living mostly in NYC for several years. She got out of the Upper East Side and migrated to the West Village. She made pottery, she painted, and she became deeply inspired by performance art. She learned how to use the fame she had never desired to her advantage. Sometimes her pieces were laced with political messages, and other times she would do something seemingly pointless - like sleep in a glass box in a museum for a few hours a week. Getting people to listen when she had things to say, but also when she didn’t, was deeply empowering.
CONNECTION IDEAS
artist friends who live with her (any kind of creative type) or just folks who might need a place to stay for a bit
she’s been in ny most of her life, so some childhood friends maybe?
people she knew when she was a runaway
actors/people she worked with as a child who probably still think she’s a nightmare of a human being hehe
flings! maybe someone she’s on again/off again with
past relationships (we love angst)
folks who have bought her art
anyone who works in the art world
someone she drags into her hijinks
