misled.lore
I've been chasing creative endeavors
for as long as I can remember...
As a 90's kid, I would invent imaginary groups and try to emulate what I saw on TV and heard on the radio. I would obsessively memorize sounds and patterns I was hearing and seeing around me. When I was six, I got a Talkboy tape recorder—the one from Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. This, alongside my obsession with Mel Blanc (the guy who voiced every Looney Tunes character) would lead to my love for recording. I was constantly imitating accents and voices I heard around me, and playing them back at faster and slower speeds. I would cut out scraps from magazines & newspapers and create collages. I would lose hours in a day, and it was the best thing in the world.
As I grew older, my love for creativity only deepened. In middle school, I found an escape in art and music, where I could lose myself and evade the chaos of everyday life. I was always drawing, creating, and experimenting, but I struggled academically, never quite fitting into the conventional mold.
High school was tough—I was still trying to find my place, and the pressures of fitting in while dealing with my own insecurities led me down a darker path, which would ultimately include drugs & substance abuse.
After years of battling addiction, hitting rock bottom, and feeling like I was losing everything, I realized I needed to make a change. That realization led me to rehab in 2014, where I began the process of healing and rediscovering myself. It was there, while working through the 12 steps and attending NA meetings, that I started to reconnect with my creative roots. The energy I once poured into destructive behaviors was now being channeled into something positive.
In 2014, some months after I was getting out of rehab, and hitting NA meetings pretty hard, I unofficially started something called “Gutterfly.” Gutterfly was born out of my recovery transformation—a reflection of my journey to embrace the gritty and imperfect parts of myself, and turn them into something meaningful and powerful. It became a symbol of my resilience, and a way to express the raw, unfiltered energy that had always been a part of me. Through Gutterfly, I found a way to reclaim my creativity, and it became my stage name, my outlet, and my reminder that even the ugliest parts of our story can be transformed into something beautiful, like a writhing caterpillar that becomes a butterfly — Gutterfly.
In 2015, while going to college, I started freelancing under the name "That Bell" and launched a site called thatbell.com. It was a terrible name—I think people associated it with Taco Bell, and it didn’t roll off the tongue at all. Let's continue getting lost...
In 2018 I changed the name That Bell to Bellewprints, a more thoughtful reflection of my name and my work as a screen printer. It was a literal interpretation, playing off my last name and the blueprint-aspect of design work and being a screen printer.
Simultaneously in 2018, my lady and I started an occult themed Etsy shop initially called Cellar Door Design Co. We sold laser engraved spirit boards (Ouija Boards) and other hand crafted and up cycled items. The name was a mouthful and a nightmare of a domain to spell. We also weren't a "design co." by any means.
Near the end of 2019 after some reflection, we rebranded Cellar Door Design Co. to BlackGreil Occult, something shorter and more memorable. We had a .com domain for Blackgreil for a while, but as of early 2024, we've streamlined our operations solely to Etsy.
Then in 2021 come’s Dirtyramens, an experimental side project my friend Mike Arntz help me start. It reflects the nostalgic skate/hip-hop/punk/ and Cleveland-vibes from early 2000's. Dirtyramens came about when I was tired of producing corporate-like work and wanted an antithesis to all that. I’ve always loved creating brand identities and developing aesthetics around new concepts, but wanted a playground to make a mess in. Since we couldn't get commissioned by someone else, we started our own. We used to have a separate e-commerce platform for Dirtyramens, but have since migrated here to Misled.Media.
Finally late 2023, Misled.Media came into existence when I was juggling 3 different websites, and I realized I needed to figure out a way to bring all these creative endeavors together under one roof so-to-speak. With everything going on (and a baby on the way), I felt lost—a recurring theme in my life. Misled.Media is a culmination of everything I've been working on—a space where all my passions coexist in a singular creative cess pool.
This is the final frontier (everything is subject to revision)
Misled.Media is essentially the result of Gutterfly-ing my creative chaos into something cohesive and powerful, while aiming to leave room to expand in the future.
We still run BlackGreil on Etsy, I continue to operate as Gutterfly [216] for my music, and all our Dirtyramens merch has found a home here. My professional screen printing and design services are also part of this mix.
This is me; this is Misled.Media. An elegantly unrefined, expertly unconventional, and creatively unorthodox commitment to embracing the entirety of everything that has been and that will be. Here's to getting lost more often.
Welcome to the show.
