Who Am I?

Artsy Starleta is a pseudonym and common screen name for Josefina Zavaleta. I am an artist based in the SF Bay Area and have a myriad of interests, skills, and ongoing projects.

(he/they/she)

- The sidebar, if you're not viewing on mobile.

I've been using computers since the late 90's, but I didn't get online until around 2000. I have very fond memories of old fansites and web shrines, which is where I was first introduced to the concept of fandoms. As you can see, I've never recovered.

I kid, I kid. I try to celebrate my love for the art that inspires me and the communities that get built around them. I understand they get full of fanatical assholes, but you really don't have to search very far to find fanatical assholes in any community of human beings. I'd rather focus on the great things rather than wallow in the misery (though I am known to bitch about shitty people from time to time).

I learned HTML back in middle school in the 2000's, though I never ended up hosting the little sites I used to make. I'm glad I've rectified that so many years later. I strongly encourage anyone who's even mildly interested to give it a try! I'm not the type of person who's generally "into" coding, but making websites has become a very fun passtime!

As you can probably tell by now, I have the tendency to swear pretty casually. Sorry if that offends you, but I'm not inclined to change that.

I love creating art, I love running my mouth, and I love collecting things, so you'll find all of those things, here! I'm particularly interested in animation, manga, video games, and theme parks! I'm also someone who exhibits intense and restrictive intersts (aka - I'm autistic) so be prepared for me to focus on like maybe a small handful of things at a time. I don't lose my love for old hyperfixations, just so you know, but it's hard to focus on them as intensely when something else has my attention.

I also make picture frames for a living, so you might see references to that from time to time.

A Disclaimer

I am a mentally ill queer person of color. This paints everything that I create. I cannot hide those aspects about myself because they become obvious upon consuming what I create, so I've come to accept that there isn't really a way to retain my privacy when it comes to those things. If you are fundamentally Not Okay with those things, just leave. Just leave me alone. I know you probably won't, but leaving me alone would benefit you just as much as it would benefit me, so just leave me alone. If you are someone looking for an ideal representative of any or all of these identities, or you're looking for the specifics of everything I am in order to deduce whether I even qualify as "oppressed" enough to be able to call myself any of these things, then you are probably going to be disappointed. I never asked and do not want to be a representative of anything. I'm just me. I'm probably going to have thoughts, feelings, and experiences that contradict your own. And you're going to have to make your peace with that if you want to consume the things I create.

Thank you for understanding, and I mean that with any degree of sincerity or sarcasm that applies to you.