FIEL VALDEZ AND PETER VATTANATHAM
ME, ME, LOS ANGELES
LENGTH OF RELATIONSHIP: 13 YEARS

Fiel Valdez and Peter Vattanatham met as students at UCLA, and although they’ve been together ever since, they’ve only recently joined forces in the official work partnership of Me, Me.

“What most people find unusual about us,” says Vattanatham, “is how long we’ve been together considering our age, and that we’re still as in love with each other as we were when we first met. There’s something to being able to talk about art and work and ideas and inspirations with another person you respect at any time. It just encourages the flow and process of creativity, imagination, and new thinking to continue even more.”

Their first real project as a pair is getting some looks: a book called Grafuck, celebrating artistic expressions of—you guessed it—sex. Other big projects are close behind.

“We’re working on something big right now, but all we can say about it is the project is for something in the travel/hospitality/ transportation industry,” says Valdez. “And we have something going on that involves a four-legged animal and many wigs.”

With two strong and often differing opinions, Valdez and Vattanatham usually end up agreeing to disagree. “We have our moments,” Vattanatham says of the colliding opinions, “but that just makes us stronger.”

Describing their life as “crazy-perpetual-easy-difficult-fun,” Valdez feels that spending so much time together is the best part of working together. “It’s not the only reason we’re together,” she says, “but easily one of the best reasons.”

For fun, there are movies, restaurants, and art shows. But they often find themselves making art for fun, which veers back into work. “We work on everything together in that we get the other’s opinion even on our individual projects,” says Vattanatham. The same goes for chores around the house. “Fiel does laundry and I put it away,” he explains.

“Work and play and me and we and life and love all sort of blend together,” he says. “It’s sometimes difficult to separate one aspect from another. I feel that we are very fortunate, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”