Marika and I first met through my girlfriend, Sasha Fierce, on our first official date. We were sitting at the fancy/sexy Corner Bar in the LES with a couple of overpriced hot toddies (I wanted her to think I had money). It was December, and the 2024 Spotify Wrapped had just dropped, so we pulled ours up. My list consisted of Joeyy, Chief Keef, Marlon Dubois, Xaviersobased… and Marika’s lineup mirrored mine. Sasha lit up as she compared our top artists and insisted we hang out that night.

A few hours later, we were climbing the stairs to Danny Cole’s colorful studio and apartment, swapping music and stories. Marika has a rare kind of gravity. She’s as kind as she is cool, and she talks to everyone like an equal. I’ve brought all types of people around her: Older people, younger people, jocks, art people, graff heads, corporate folks, gamers, and family etc... they all find a way to connect with her. That’s part of why our friendship formed so naturally. Not long after meeting, we started talking about making a book.

For the next nine months, we met regularly at her mother’s sunlit studio in Williamsburg. "Thunder Girl" grew out of those visits. It pulls from both old and new work: paintings, photos, memes, stray sketches, and scribbles from rehab. Together they form an honest, messy (in the best way) portrait of her life. The book has range. Some pages are serious and revealing, others are unhinged and fully fried. That push and pull became the heart of the project.

Our sessions were full of tangents. Marika’s archive is massive, and we’re both easily distracted. We ended up creating a kind of assembly line. She’d slide something across the table, and I would photograph or scan it. Every piece had a story, and we had fun figuring out how they spoke to one another. Once everything lived in InDesign, we spent weeks moving spreads around, searching for the right rhythm, the right order, the right chaos.

We hope you enjoy checking this project out.

Office Mag Article

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