welcome to my portfolio ! ミ☆

My name is Harley Claes, and I am a counterculture archaeologist — excavating inner worlds and pressing them into physical relics. I construct mythologies within the realm of my creations, mapping out surreal pockets of history that exist outside the purgatory of time, and I build temples from the wreckage of what mainstream culture normally discards. I am a misfit archivist of imagined antiquity — novelist, poet, collage-maker, and keeper of the psychic underground. Somewhere between the Beat poets and a surrealist fever dream, I have been exploring and slowly building the same universe my entire life.

What you have entered is not merely a portfolio; it is an archaeological site. What you will find here are the excavated ruins of my interior world, made visible through paper, collage, sound, and ephemera. Every creative artifact is a counter-spell against cultural amnesia, and each of my diverse creations is an act of resurrection.

all my mediums ! ミ☆

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ Creative Journals– Notes from the interior:
musings, studies, and my ritual practices.

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ Visual Artwork– Surreal and Kitsch illustrations. Each piece is a portal, a gateway to another imaginary lands reminiscent of my inner world.

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ Handmade and Digital Collages– Cut-ups with a grunge, anachronistic, or often unnerving aesthetic, an assemblage of fragments with disembodied poetry that is often philosophical or surreal.

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ Poetry– Excerpts of my poetic ruminations shaped by longing, visionary observations, and inner excavations.

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ Junk Journals– Chaotic archives stitched from paper scraps, ephemera, and private rituals.

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ Dried flower terrariums– Dried blossoms and preserved worlds. Terrariums, pressed flowers, and herbal amulets — tiny green altars that encapsulate the essence of real nature bouquets

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ Small Business Creations– Objects designed with rarity, care and intention- created to sell as a unique offering.

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ Zines– Portable worlds carrying visuals, poetry, essays, art, and fragments meant to inspire the reader.

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ Novels– Long-form visionary and fictional lands where my characters, worlds and ideas slowly become entangled. These stories are cities of my various interior landscapes.

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ Poetry Collections– Constellations of poems echoing across themes of identity, transformation, and desire. Each collection has its own emotional climate, capturing a moment in time.

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ Designed Clothing–Patterned aesthetics printed onto fabric meant for daily life. These garments are statement pieces meant to stand out.

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ Music– Genre-bending, but often shoegaze-soul inspired, I capsule various moods and memories through this medium. Each album is an emotional environment meant to be lingered in.

✩₊˚.⋆☾⋆⁺₊✧ Works in Progress– Glimpses of the novels, zines, and other projects of mine that are still unfolding —drafts, concept pages, and the flicker of my ideas that are not yet complete.

my philosophy ! ミ☆

My philosophy is as follows: Creation to me is almost a spiritual process, artistic rebellion is a way of life, and beauty — true raw and uncensored beauty– is a revolutionary act. I aim to spark a new creative renaissance influenced by old literature, fashion, and art - a counterculture where creative projects are full of depth again. I have always envisioned an ambitious generation of artists who build temples out of their passions, who blend the sacred with the profane, and who use aesthetics not as masks but as confessionals.

I draw my creative lineage from the Beat poets and the surrealists, From the romantics to the lost generation, and am also heavily influenced by the writing of Anais Nin, Lawrence Durrell, Lenore Kandel, Bob Kaufman, and Allen Ginsberg. As for collages, I am heavily inspired by the old school unnerving tumblr aesthetic. Visually, retro kitsch, grungey antique, taboo themes, and pastel surrealism haunt my work. I resonate with the dreamers who refuse the ordinary, the counterculture icons who dare to rebel against the algorithm and create something undoubtedly unique. I am haunted by the old school existentialists found in smoky cafés, by vintage manifestos and retro fashion, and the secret lives of forgotten revolutionaries. I channel the heartbeat of subcultures long gone, filling endless notebooks with my literary ravings and collages, forever producing relics influenced by past eras. Every book, collage, zine, and project I make is a rebellion against modern day cultural amnesia.