Off the clock

3.5.2015 | Issue #12

We first caught wind of Courtney Moy, a Boston artist and fellow industry hustler, deep in the annals of Instagram. Her work has an immediate visual appeal, but what made us stick around was that faint tingly sensation you get when you recognize one of your own. For Moy, who works in a bakery by day and captures the rococo soul of mass food culture by night, restaurants are in her blood: her parents met in a restaurant owned by her grandfather, and she's worked in them her whole life.

“I grew up on the borderline of two cultures and two diets," she says. “I’m surrounded by food and think about [it] about 97% of my day, so I wanted to share my creative process and the jargon that goes on in my head both on and off the line.”

The dichotomy between her Chinese and American background has become a consuming interest in her work. Ongoing mixed-media sketches of her kitchen cabinet show white pepper alongside Domino Confectioners Sugar; Sriracha and sesame oil next to Nutella.

“I never expected to make the work I make now, but food is what stimulates and feeds me creatively. In the long run I believe that if you stay true to why you do something, you start to affect other people.

"Hard work has never scared me. I don’t carry a fancy title or work a standard 9-5, and I’m okay with that," she adds. "I’m working hard to be a voice for my community.”

Below are a few selections from her most recent series, Off the Line, which started as a daily type-drawing personal project and has grown into a favorite of the community she strives to represent. Anyone who mutters "corner" in their sleep should get a kick out of it.