Michelle Villas has a way with words—not by writing them, but by turning them into visual stories as the art director of Southbay magazine. Now she’s moving beyond the computer and back to her roots, exploring handcrafted art pieces that reflect her lifelong love of typography.
Growing up between New York and New Jersey, Michelle stayed close to home when she enrolled at Jersey City State College. “My mom was very practical about things,” she recalls. “She didn’t want me to just study painting. She wanted something creative but grounded.”
Michelle initially pursued art therapy, but a professor—who later became her mentor—suggested she might not have the temperament for it long term. She pivoted to graphic design, quickly realizing it was a better fit.
“There’s power in words. Giving them space is freeing.”
“My course load was almost entirely art classes: painting, drawing, life drawing, photography, sculpture,” she says.
It was also there that she met her future husband, Lloyd, a photography major. “The art department’s a small world. We were in a group show together; that’s where we first crossed paths.”
With Manhattan just a few miles away, Michelle regularly hopped on the PATH or bus to immerse herself in the city’s cutting-edge galleries and museums. It came as no surprise when she chose New York City for her first job, working as a designer for a local magazine—though at the time, she never imagined publishing would shape her entire career.
After many productive years in the city and while raising a daughter, Michelle and Lloyd decided it was time for a fresh start in California. Within months of settling in Redondo Beach, Michelle was hired by The Golden State Company to design custom publications for a major client.
“It was great. I was living right on the Esplanade, so I had the best commute ever,” she says. A few years later, she was promoted to art director of Southbay—a title she’s held for the past decade.
Michelle remembers her years in Jersey City as an incubator of creativity, when she, her husband and friends shared a studio space filled with photography, painting and experimentation.
“You get busy with family and work,” she explains. “I put my personal work on the back burner, telling myself, ‘I get to be creative at work.’”
During the pandemic, that creative itch returned. “I started buying supplies and experimenting,” she says. “And eventually I found the style and method I’m practicing now.”
Working primarily with ink and watercolor on paper, Michelle describes her approach as “very fluid.”
“I wanted it to be the opposite of what I do in print,” she explains. “In magazines, you embrace white space and clean lines—organization. With my personal work, I lean in to the materials, the fluidity, the unexpected. I enjoy the chaos and see what happens.”
Words play a central role in her pieces, created using stencils. “They’re pretty much all Helvetica, which is funny because it’s not a font I’d ever choose in real life,” she says.
She applies the letters with watercolor or ink—intentionally imprecise, without a grid. “Then I dissolve the letters with water, almost erasing them.”
The goal, Michelle says, isn’t readability but interpretation. She writes and layers in a stream of consciousness that gradually breaks down during the process.
“The words come from songs, movies—different places—but they’re things that live in your head on repeat,” she explains. “Last week I was having a rough day, and I just let everything go into the piece. By the end, the tension was gone. There’s power in words. Giving them space is freeing.”
In a relatively short time, Michelle’s renewed creative journey has led to both professional and personal commissions, including a poster design for Indivisible Arts’ Water & Wood exhibition last year. Her work has captured mantras, marriages and memorials alike.
“When someone asks for a painting, it feels like an invitation into something deeply personal,” Michelle says. “There’s a real connection to what these works mean, and now they have a place to live.”
See more of Michelle’s work on Instagram @just_ink_on_paper.
