Where does an artist find relief from the New York art scene? Artist Jamian Juliano-Villani goes on a research trip into Manhattan, prowling two famed New York City institutions—the Strand Bookstore and Times Square—in search of the unpredictable found imagery that fuels her acclaimed paintings. Typically a creature of habit within her Bedford-Stuyvesant work space, Juliano-Villlani knows that putting in the studio time and trawling the internet can only be so inspiring. Seeking source material in the used book carrels at the Strand Book Store, Juliano-Villani says, “It can’t just be the most obvious reference; it should from somewhere specific. And it really only happens in books. On the Internet everything’s everywhere. It feels like it’s more mine, if I get it from a book.”

Later Juliano-Villani tours a more unlikely site of creative influence: the Ripley’s Believe It or Not! in Times Square, filled with a random assortment of exotica and hoaxes. Mirroring the slippery balance between good and bad taste in her own work, Juliano-Villani is fascinated by how the museum style presentation of these objects blurs the line between low and high culture. For Juliano-Villani, Times Square is a necessary antidote to the pressures of conforming to the art world in which her work resides. “I think anyone that is an artist is constantly feeling the guilt of [the pretensions of art-making] so that’s why I like these other weird elements of life, and especially life in New York,” she says.“No one cares, no one’s looking; you can act however you want, you can be whoever you want.”