Velvet Other World: Drawings as Prayers for Better, More Beautiful
"They transcend the biological body and become godlike in their freedom to embody anything."
Katrina Pisetti and Josh Allen once described the same dream from different corners of the room. Now, they draw together. They take charcoal, erasers, and paper and turn it all into the magical - impenetrable like diamonds, fragile like us.
Drawing Pöx: Your work examines body transformation and protection through ornamentation. What are you protecting against?
Velvet Other World: We use costume and pageantry to not only amplify the presence and impact of our figures, but also to create deliberate barriers that distance them from accessibility—similar to the way oversized garments like hoop skirts function.
At times, our figures appear protected from the perceived dangers of the outside world; in other moments, they are presented as coveted objects—fetishized, handled, and revered like sacred totems.
DP: It seems that in both instances - either by increasing physical distance or by transforming the self into the totemized and untouchable - there is a vulnerability to guard. What dangers do you feel your figures are responding to?
Josh: To a degree our heroes and heroines do not fear anything, they are impenetrable and immortal like diamonds or mountains. But they are imbued with a longing for peace, romance, and passion while making up a world that only exists in a dream, kind of like a heaven. I feel like our drawings resemble prayers for something better, more beautiful, and full of life.
Kat: I agree that I don’t feel like I have specific concepts of them fearing or hiding from anything. We are more interested in the idea of our figures exploring their power through their impenetrability. I think their vulnerability lies in the emotion in their eyes which is at times the only truly human part about them. They transcend the biological body and become godlike in their freedom to embody anything they desire with the “outfits” they wear but they still retain a humanity that we hope viewers feel they can connect with and maybe even see themselves in.
DP: Their presence is commanding but their eyes stop me - exposed, sometimes daring, sometimes disappointed. What of yourselves do they carry?
VOW: Both identity-expanding tech and post-human possibility point toward a radical shift from accepting the body as fate to treating it as fluid, evolving, and potentially unlimited.
The eyes represent the core behind the form - if you can change your body to any degree at what point are you no longer “you” or human? We use eyes as an anchor point for the humanity behind our figures. We could create a blob and as long as there are eyes somewhere that blob instantly becomes figurative.
Although we imbue our drawings with what moves us, our work isn’t really about us as individuals. We often gravitate towards dramas around longing, courtship, and exhibitionism through the lens of body modding and limitless expansion.
DP: What was it that made you want to work together? What did you see in the other that made you think - this speaks to something I’ve been drawn to; I want to see what it becomes between us.
Kat: We were always making work together without realizing it. In art school, we were constantly bouncing ideas off of each other and having never ending conversations about meaning. Our ideas began to echo each other—sometimes so closely, that others around us could see the thread between our work even back then.
We’re drawn to the same flickers in the dark—fashion, shape, shadow, light. Our individual work has always felt like two people describing the same dream from different corners of the room. We were already making the same kind of work without trying to.
When I came back to Rhode Island from Texas, we were together again, dreaming out loud every day. It started as play, a what-if, a hum in the background. But it grew into something inevitable. Like the work had been waiting for us to say yes.
Josh: We had this shared history of thinking and creating alongside each other during undergrad but never explored a collaboration. When we finally decided to make drawings together, something clicked and it felt so natural.
For me, I had always deeply respected Kat and her work. She’s a genius, and wanting to incorporate both of our minds felt like the right thing to do. We both had hit a bit of a wall with our individual practices and there was an aspect of each other’s art that felt like the missing link. Kat was making work about protection and eroticism through objects and the figure while I was making work about glamour and transformation through clothing and the body.
DP: When you look at your early drawings together and compare them to now, what quality has emerged over time that wasn’t there at the start?
VOW: Our early work is very much centered around a lot of glamour, portraits of royalty, and poetic, long titles. We were thinking a lot about the idea of romance and conveying emotion through the eyes alone. We also played with a lot more geometric, flat shapes as opposed to newer work that is more nuanced.
Our more recent drawings are more focused on texture rather than depicting obsessively ornate material. The characters have stretched beyond portraits and into full environments.
We are becoming more interested in blurring the lines between body and clothing. There is a lot more fusion of the body with object as the “outfit,” and their fur suits are more form-fitting now. The pieces are more sensual as well, and less about looking back in time but more about imagining what could come next.
In some ways, they are more active now, like flying, wrestling, and transforming into vehicles. Before, we kept ourselves more rigidly aligned with a specific method and aesthetic, but now that we have been making work for a while together, we feel more free to explore new ideas and see what else we can tap into within the VOW world.
DP: From untouchable, totemic presences to letting your figures grow restless inside their forms - more independent, more assertive. If you follow this thread forward, what do we see in the future world of VOW?
VOW: Romance and devotion will always be at the core of our work but we want our figures to have limitless expansion. There are endless possibilities for them to change shape, occupation, and exist in new environments. We have been playing with the idea of cut paper collage and utilizing craft materials like sequins as a way to introduce color, flatness, and a raking light. We are just getting started.
DP: As you expand - giving your figures and your hands new possibilities - drawing seems to remain at the core. Why drawing?
VOW: Drawing is the foundation of everything. It is the purest form of expressing ideas and what directly exists inside the mind and body.
Only using charcoal, erasers and paper is essential to our practice as it is simple, straightforward and allows for us to transform something simple into something magical.
Josh Allen (b. 1995, Andover, MA) and Katrina Pisetti (b. 1996, Salinas, CA) live and work in Providence, Rhode Island. Allen and Pisetti began their collaboration under the moniker Velvet Other World (VOW) in 2021. VOW’s charcoal drawings explore the transformation of the body through a focus on costume and form. In their collaborative practice, they explore ideas of plastic surgery, body maxxing, and body modification through the lens of costume. They also look to the history of theater, pageantry, and ceremony to dissect the constructive and protective nature of dress. VOW’s indulgent, pneumatic drawings are loaded with pattern, texture, and ornament that serve as an armor that shields the body. While playful, these grand depictions of their figures endow them with a near-devotional stature. Their dense, assertive imagery reveals forms that are simultaneously hyper-masculine and hyper-feminine, forgoing identity, and reconsidering the human relationship with the body. Each charcoal on paper piece is made through a buildup and breakdown of surface. VOW works with heavyweight paper that they are able to repetitively sand down and re-coat with layers of charcoal, reflecting their visual concepts of encasing and transfiguring the body.