The Descent
Chaotic and joyous, the games of Lily Zone are sewn from her life’s rough fabric
Lily Zone found a cult following online after the release of Crypt Worlds in 2013. Communicating an inescapable sense of isolation, yet also endless amounts of joy and crudeness, Lily creates virtual worlds that help her process life. She generates personal, lonely worlds built out of the half-seen images of pop and consumer culture, mixed with the feelings of coping and trauma and guided by highly sensitive sensorial experiences.
It’s a five-hour drive from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, where Lily awaits me, smoking a pipe on her porch in a rocking chair, wearing a straw hat and gray polka-dot socks. The day begins clear and bright, a tentative spring sun illuminating the rows of trees that line the road, their branches still dark and brittle from winter. But as the 300-mile straight shot down I-76 W stretches on, seemingly endlessly, a thick fog creeps in, obscuring the orderly divisions of the Pennsylvania expressway. A storm eliminates all remaining visibility, getting worse with each mile closer to Pittsburgh. The world descends into some vague, hazy void—a reminder of what lies beneath the surface of any sunny day.
