Art is a therapeutic practice. For Keely Majewski, better known by her alias “Poi,” the work has resulted in internal and external restoration. The experience of creation is a way to work through and convey her mental space, while the resulting figures—despite their alien visual style—have become a great source of identification for thousands of supporters. From her beginnings in traditional art to 2D digital art, music journalism, and finally, 3D art, we caught up with Majewski to hear about her trajectory and what the future may hold.

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She’s Creating a World

Keely’s beginnings

At that time, Majewski was still mostly doing 2D illustration on her tablet, and she took on the arduous task of self-learning 3D design in Blender. Today, she blends both practices—which were initially very disparate processes. “Now it's actually very intertwined with each other, because my pieces are kind of 50-50 3D sculpted, and then I illustrate on top of it digitally,” she says. “So it's utilizing both of those aspects, which is the most comfortable for me. I've always wanted to kind of bridge that gap between those two things once I started learning.” “I always have a sketchbook or sticky notes or something with me that I sketch ideas down and can kind of pull from,” Majewski continues. “I start with a sketch. I go from there—having an initial concept and then I go straight into 3D. Being able to visualize what the form is going to look like, the composition, the colors, just laying that all down. And then once I render it and get the lighting how I want it and all the small technical details, I move it over to my tablet and just illustrate right on top of it. I add quite a lot of fine line details to my pieces, a lot of contrast and shading and stuff that I don't normally do on the computer. I tweak it and get it exactly how I want it.”

Keely “Poi” Majewski Isn’t Just Making Art

Long before she started concocting the many characters who inhabit her sprawling interconnected world, Majewski just liked to draw: “I've always had an appreciation of art, even since I was a little kid. I've always enjoyed drawing, just with pencil and paper and doodling.” Her father was an oil painter and “used a lot of traditional mediums like charcoal and sketching with pencil and paper,” she tells me over a recent Zoom, adding, “I had this history on that side of my family. His mom was a painter as well. My mom's side, she's always been very creative. I was very encouraged to pursue creative endeavors, which I really appreciate and I'm thankful for. So it's always been intertwined in my life in some way or another.”

While entering high school in South Florida (where she resides to this day), the now 28-year-old Majewski tried out for an arts program, which she was accepted into and loved at first. However, “I will say it did push me away from arts for almost six years after graduating,” she says. “I completely took a break and I really focused on writing—which was another passion of mine—and really focused on journalism from that point. I even ran a magazine (O BOY! Press) where I would interview music artists, visual artists. It wasn't until around 2019 that I actually started getting back into digital art—2D art.” At this juncture, Majewski had never done any 3D design work. “When the pandemic happened in 2020, I sat down and I decided I'm going to learn 3D,” she explains. “Since I had a lot of time off from work, it just kind of went from there.”

THE WORLD

If you rounded up 100 people and had them pore through Majewski’s work before asking “what do you think this is inspired by?”, odds are you would get 100 different answers. And this is largely because of the many swirling influences that have informed her work. She most vocally references a sort of 2000s nostalgia—an aesthetic amalgamation of Bratz dolls, antiquated video game graphics and some of the vivid color palettes of anime. The resulting concoction leaves everyone with different things they love about Poi’s art. “Her work is incredible—it’s a blur of reality and fantasy that feels up close and intimate,” says Lisa Sahakian, founder of jewelry brand Ian Charms, when we asked her what drew her to Majewski’s work.

Keely publishes her work on Instagram under the moniker @PoiandKeely. “Poi,” she tells me, was a nickname from her childhood. As she was developing her work, she liked the idea of the project being a collaboration between her alias and real name, hence Poi “and” Keely.

Of the less technical aspect of her process, Majewski explains: “I've always been really into figure drawing, even before 3D and even before digital art. So that kind of naturally moved into what I'm doing now. When it comes down to making a character, I really try to diversify who I'm creating in a respectful way. And also a lot of the inspiration for the character comes from just the emotion that I'm feeling at the time. A lot of my mental space goes into my work. It’s the mood that I want to come across in the piece that is the most important to me when I first sit down to make a character.”

Keely’s beginnings

“Her work is incredible—it’s a blur of reality and fantasy that feels up close and intimate.”

“I've always been really interested in the early 2000s aesthetic when it comes to fashion,” Majewski says. “Dolls really come into play in my aesthetic. If you look closely at my pieces, you can see the joint marks on the arms and the legs, very inspired by early dolls, like Bratz dolls and Barbies. It’s very fashion inspired, but also early 2000s video games, like the crappy PlayStation graphics. I've always loved that. It's nostalgic for me.”

KEELY MAJEWSKI

“It’s the mood that I want to come across in the piece that is the most important to me when I first sit down to make a character.”

She also draws a lot of inspiration from tabloid magazines of the era and their vibrant visual style: “I really liked tabloid magazines, teen mags, from the early 2000s, like FRUiTS. I loved those. I would spend hours looking at those and drawing the outfits in them. I'm not very into celebrity culture, but old school fashion and stuff like that is definitely cool to look back on.” It’s clear that Majewski’s figures are not from our world (although they certainly exist symbiotically with our world), but one is struck with a clear epiphany when viewing her work: They are all from the same world. “I definitely see my pieces as very connected,” she concurs. “I have a visual in my head of them all just existing together, all these characters in the same world. I’m just pulling together—almost pulling inspiration from older pieces of mine and work as well.” “It's definitely been an interesting journey to get where I am now,” Majewski tells me, before adding with a chuckle: “Especially with how frustrating it was to learn Blender.”

Gratitude and the future

“It's just been such an experience, and my favorite part of being able to sit down and just create something every day is being able to express myself and just exactly how I feel in that moment,” Majewski says of what she likes most about being an artist. “Also, being able to present diversity and different aspects and emotions to people that they can look at and relate to. So many people have told me that they've been able to relate or feel better about themselves by looking at a piece or another of mine. It makes me so emotional, honestly, that I could be able to give some more representation that I feel like deserves to be out there. I definitely feel like that should be a goal of many artists, to be able to offer that kind of comfort to people.”

One of the pieces that put Majewski on the map was her collab with Rosalia in 2020. “That was one of my first big pieces that I did for somebody, and it still blows my mind that it happened. I look back and it just feels very surreal. I loved working on that piece.” When Majewski worked on this piece for Rosalia, she had only been producing 3D art for under a year. “It was like, ‘the pressure is on’ kind of feeling,” she says with a chuckle. She also recently did a project for Ice Spice, one more of many impressive collabs over the past few years.

I’m curious to hear some aspirational collabs for Majewski, which she has a quick answer for, before turning more broadly: “One of my favorite music artists is Tyler, the Creator. I've always been a fan of his, and I really feel like there could be something there. I'm just really open to working with most people. I feel like I can really transform my work to fit theirs and also fit my vision as well. So, I'm just really open for the challenge, honestly.”

“I loved all the people I've worked with, honestly. I feel really honored and blessed that so many people have had a very open mindset when working with me, and our visions kind of align with each other,” Majewski tells me when we turn to some of her impressive client work over the past few years. “I feel very lucky in that aspect.” “I will say one of my favorite people that I've worked with this year would definitely be Melanie Martinez,” she continues: “Especially with her character that she released for her Portals album. It was so much fun and so different to work on that character, to be like a mix of a human and a fairy. It's very obscure and I really love that.”

The collabs

For the future, Majewski is eager to start to bring some of her work in physical spaces. “I'm very much a homebody, so I feel like it would be cool to see it out in the world,” she says. “For next year, I really want to focus on getting into some gallery spaces and expanding in that kind of industry.” She also recently launched her webstore, where you can find prints of her kaleidoscopic work. “I’ve been focusing on that, releasing merch and everything. I want to focus on that next year as well.” On all of the success, Majewski tells me, with her smile clear in the tone of her voice: “It's all very unexpected. I've been kind of living the dream, and I'm just so grateful. Every day, I can't believe it.”

By: Charlie Kolbrener

Lisa Sahakian

Images courtesy of Keely Majewski