Less Arc, More Contact: Karl Unnasch

In this episode, Karl Unnasch joins Matthew Fluharty for a conversation on his creative process, rural community, and bridging difference between cultures and geographies. Husk, his metal and stained glass sculpture of a crushed Busch Light can, is included in the High Visibility exhibition.

A rugged farm upbringing streaked with a penchant for the surreal: This has been the driving force behind the work of Karl Unnasch. With decades of expertise in wood, metal, stonework and stained glass, phantasmagorical combinations of media have become his hallmark. Backed by a comprehensive education in the arts (MFA 2003), his notions morph into works that toy with nostalgia, knitting together sources of collective memory while ringing with an element of his own whimsy.

Unnasch’s smaller-scale work has been exhibited as far as Europe and acclaimed in publications such as the New York Times and Art in London Magazine, while his larger-scale, award-winning public art has been featured on the likes of NBC’s Today show, Reader’s Digest and Voice of America. For over a decade, Unnasch has focused primarily on public and architectural art, typically incorporating backlit stained glass into sculptural installations. His work adorns educational facilities, banks, theaters, libraries, museum grounds, businesses and public gathering spaces across North America.

To dive deeper into Karl Unnasch's work:
http://www.karlunnasch.com/

For more information on the High Visibility exhibition at the Plains Art Museum:
https://plainsart.org/exhibitions/high-visibility/

High Visibility exhibition site: https://inhighvisibility.org/

In this conversation, Karl mentions the following works:

Operant, at the Rose Kennedy Greenway in Boston:
http://www.karlunnasch.com/project-pages/operant/2019-05-operant-an-oldowonk-cataract-stained-glass-dump-truck.html

Ruminant, in Reedsburg, Wisconsin:
http://www.karlunnasch.com/project-pages/ruminant/2013-10-ruminant-stained-glass-harvesting-combine.html

Slumgullion, at the Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa:
http://www.karlunnasch.com/project-pages/slumgullion/2018-10-slumgullion-the-venerate-outpost-philbrook-museum-tulsa-log-cabin.html

At the conclusion of our time together, Karl mentions some music that has been moving him lately:

Sturgill Simpson:
https://www.sturgillsimpson.com/

Waylon Payne:
https://waylonpaynemusic.co/

The HU:
https://www.thehuofficial.com/

We are grateful for the support of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts. 

Transcript

Matthew Fluharty: 0:07

Hello, you're listening to high visibility. This podcast welcomes into conversation artists, culture bearers and leaders from across rural America in Indian country, and is produced by art of the rural and Plains Art Museum. Our podcast is produced in conjunction with a high visibility exhibition, a collaboratively curated effort currently on view at Plains Art Museum through May 30 2021. My name is Matthew Fluharty, and I'm the organizing curator. In the month ahead, I'll be with you, along with other hosts from the Plains Art Museum and beyond. As this podcast shares the richly divergent stories, lived experiences and visions of folks across the continent. You can learn more about visiting high visibility exhibition and dive deeper into the artists and works included here by visiting plains art.org. We welcome folks to also check out the show notes, where we'll offer artists websites, alongside images of their work and further resources and connections. We're grateful for the support of the Andy Warhol foundation for the visual arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts in making this exhibition and podcast possible. Today we're talking with Carl Luna. from his home and studio in pilot mountain, Minnesota, a town located within Dakota homelands, called creates public structures that often incorporate stained glass, wood, metal and other materials. Through placing rural narratives within the ecological, social and historical traditions in each site. Call create structures with playful, nostalgic, and often provocative illusions. While many contemporary artists have incorporated vernacular elements of their lived rural experience into their creative vision, do produce work that so subtly offends cultural expectations of subject matter and form carlu nosh His work has been exhibited widely in North America and beyond, and has been featured in outlets as diverse as the New York Times are in London magazine. NBC is today's show, and farm show magazine. His work adorns educational facilities, banks, theaters, libraries, museum grounds, and public gathering spaces across North America. This conversation was recorded in mid February 2021. In a moment when the insurrection at the United States Capitol felt more like an unfolding condition than a memory or a piece of recent history. throughout those events, I thought a great deal about husk. Karl's contribution to the high visibility exhibition. husk is a large scale stained glass and metal sculpture of a crushed bush light can an object found so often littered in ditches, roadsides, in lots across rural areas. Carl sees its presence is what he calls a multi layered stereotype. One that in a painful and contradictory way communicates rugged individualism, ecological disregard, in a lot of emotional and spiritual damage. Along the way in this conversation, we also touch on his upbringing on a multi generational self sustaining farm and on what his daily life looks like now in his rural community. Carl references a few pieces that we'll share on the show notes so that folks can dive deeper. The first is operant a mixed media installation at the Rose Kennedy Greenway in Boston that acknowledges the construction workers and laborers who created the city's Big Dig underground interstate connector. Another is ruminant a stained glass installation within a corn combine in reedsburg, Wisconsin, and also slum Gallian a reclaimed log cabin installation, the future stained glass art glass and resin bonded textiles. This located at the philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa, Oklahoma. So without further ado, please settle in and enjoy our conversation with Carl who nosh. So, Carl, welcome to high visibility.

Karl Unnasch: 4:25

Yeah, thank you. Thank you. I'm looking forward to this. Thank you.

Matthew Fluharty: 4:28

It is really great to have you as the first guest. And it's an honor to have husk on view at the Plains Art Museum for the high visibility show. I think as I've just been thinking just as one person in the midst of the last couple of weeks of life in this nation husk has come up a lot and I know we'll get to husk later on in our conversation but I'm grateful and I'm just really excited for our conversation today. Because I think you know your work touches on indirect and and in indirect ways, a number of the elements of like what a academic might call morality, but it does so went away with force in humor, and humanity that really disarms a lot of those concepts. You know, and I, I was even thinking about that, just to give our listeners some context. In the days leading up to this conversation, pretty much every cliched thing that happens to a first podcast episode happened. And it kind of culminated hours before we were going to talk with my realization that the mic and the monitor system we were using, wasn't working. And this moment came upon me as I was racing, to a big box store that's on the outskirts of my town to pick up this microphone that I think perhaps to, to some audiences, you know, I live in Winona, Minnesota, you live in pilot mound, some folks might assume that our experiences of morality are the same. However, even a couple of miles down the road, how we're living and how we're experiencing community are sort of vastly divergent, you know, and it took me back to a moment when I was in conversation with Mary welcome, who is another really powerful artists doing work across rural and rural urban space. And she talked about the gradients of rural experience. One of the ways of thinking about at least being centered around how far you are from a Walmart, which was, I didn't go to Walmart to pick up the mic, but it was close, like this, the same, the same species of place to pick up this mic at the last second, it made me think about all of the ways in which, you know, because your work is taking place, in galleries and in public spaces all around the country. It made me think about the ways in which you're probably often called upon to speak to the rural experience, and to speak to those gradients of rural life that are wildly diverse, although they're often only portrayed as being one dimensional.

Karl Unnasch: 7:14

I have one experience that stands apart with being able to bridge the gap between urban and rural that that is the reason it's it's comes it comes to the fore hairs, it's very precious as it's called out of the blue to provide a piece for the Rose Kennedy Greenway in Boston. 2019, Lucas Cohen, the lead curator contacted me and reached out and said, Hey, I'd really like to see a piece of yours out here. And for the public to experience I'm like, Whoa, I mean, you get one, that's the first big one you get when you look at it, and you go, alright, who's who's pulling my leg here? This is this is obviously more junk mail and you dig into it, and then you do the, you know, the back checking online, you're like, Oh, this is random by Nicola is like it? Is this legit. It's like that disbelief of Holy crap. Alright, this is important, I guess. So contacted back had a conversation or two, and found out it was totally legit. And it's like, Okay, once that's okay. And I was like, okay, somebody actually wants to listen to somebody from out in the sticks, apparently. And that's, that's a good thing. All right, I'm on I'm up. Let's do this. So I'm happy to provide that. So meeting him going out to Boston meeting, meeting with Lukas just sitting down and holding pull ever finding out where your connections are with this person. As far as from cultural familiarity. Being able to have a conversation, most times that I've had conversations with the curators and artists that come from a metropolitan area, there's really not a lot for me to provide because it feels and this is, you know, obviously I'm a little jaded here, but consistently, I felt like there's really not much for me to offer, because I don't consistently live in their backyard, and not a metropolitan artist. I'm never going to be a metropolitan artist. I don't want to be a metropolitan artist. However, when I found out that Lucas was from Detroit, and we had some Midwestern sensibilities that lined up, we found out that, you know, aside from stereotypical unexpected contrasts, we actually had plenty in common that we could find common ground on and that just reaffirm this like I'm doing the right thing, in a way it was like, it's I use kind of a welding analogy is, is that familiarity helped provide less arc and more contact, to be able to get a more firm adhesion of how we could communicate. So we We carried on, shuffled left and found out, you know, I developed an idea that was relative to the site and relative to the place and relative to the region that I actually had some familiarity with. And out of that was born, the the piece I did for them with the dump truck in the in the stained glass, and then in the junk class in it.

Matthew Fluharty: 10:23

Carl, who were the artists? See, when you are you were when you were in the early stages of your own development, who you found, even though they might have been coming from a different context, and, you know, maybe weren't, weren't raised in the upper Midwest, like where you found that those same values? You know, that the question you spoke about earlier of, sort of looking at a scene and feeling the value and wanting to be a positive contributor, towards a sense of community that's deeper than just an individual? I mean, were there was there an artist or a work that kind of bridged that gap between being, being a young person in a community to, to being someone who wanted to create work to contribute to that artistic conversation? Was there a moment like a moment like that for you?

Karl Unnasch: 11:09

Not Not, not as an artist, not not a not a creative problem solver. It was always, it was always somebody who ended up being fulfilling like a sage role in the community. And it depended on the community as well, like paying attention to some of the old farts, the old cottages that would reach out, I mean, these are guys, you know, get a full, full Chyna to tobacco juice, and then spit on the ground. And then look over at a kid that, you know, toss their cigarette down, he goes, you pick that up feel just son, and the kid give a look, he goes, That's not where you got it from. So feel just and put it in your pocket. And, and the kid would listen to that person and more often than not, and do it. And it's not like a matter of I didn't never, I never saw that as somebody trying to control somebody else. I saw it as someone caring enough about where their footprints lied. And trying to let someone else know, hey, you're part of this too. I think people that I gained, gained some knowledge from were the ones that took the time to think through that a job isn't done. Until you clean up. Then you get to go have a sip of whiskey. You don't get to do that until you sweep the floor until you clean up till you put your shit away. So artists, I've gained excellent knowledge and skills about how to navigate the art world by dealing with artists. But to be a better artist, I had to step away from artists and become a better me I had to end this is my motto now is be your damn self. And me sticking with that if I can stick with that. I think I can weather any storm. So Carl,

Matthew Fluharty: 12:59

I think it was in Winona, Minnesota, where you first began to work with stained glass as a medium of expression for your sculptures. I mean, what was that a springboard from your early work towards the more contemporary pieces now that audiences might recognize.

Karl Unnasch: 13:18

I answered of all things a newspaper ad when I was going through undergrad, and when I was at university, and I knew I didn't want to work in any sort of factory slash, quote unquote, regular job. But yet I answered an ad for a regular job. But I happened to be in an interesting industry. And it was stained glass industry. You know what? No, no, Minnesota is calls itself the stained glass capital of the United States, back in the day used to have the most stained glass companies per capita of any sin. And a lot of willen Hauser still based out of there, or at least its mother companies based out of there because I know they've gotten pretty big and eaten up all the smaller companies. I learned in a day, how to cut glass, how to pull apart an old window to fix it, and how to put one together I learned that in a day. And to this day, you know, 30 years later, I still haven't perfected it. And that's okay. Because it's a craft based medium that takes it has it has the capability of being anything from a hobby that fulfills someone for their entire life, or an unrelenting quest for someone to perfect themselves like the Judas factor. who still I would bet as much as she is the creme de la creme of the stained glass world as far as I'm concerned. When it comes to fine art craft, but I will still bet that she says oh I still have a lot to learn. stained glass. fits that. That that is the key Did that lock in my brain where I sit there and go? Okay, what am I going to try to do this, this this this week? What am I going to try to incorporate into a window that's going to challenge me? And at the same time, the people that see it from the hobbyist mindset that goes, Well, that's really isn't that nice? Isn't that nice to the people that on the high end that go, Hmm, I see that you're bringing some of these skills from that era. And at the same time, this glass comes from cocoa, and then other glass is coming from the spectrum company out west. Oh, okay, I see why you blended those glasses together. So you put why you put that one, and then all of a sudden, it gets hyper analyzed. on the high end, I get that, for me. I'm bringing something that has all those aspects. And the the and that, that that goddamn nostalgia, of living really, in a country church, you have that little taste of high end craft, in this house of worship, where people come together in a community to have some sort of genuine exchange, as a group, as a tribe, as a as a as a, as a game plan, whatever, you know, whatever term you want to use, that's there there. The emphasis of their learning and their expansion and their growth as a community. So why not use that in a sculpture? why not bring that into the fine arts world and really knock it out and start questioning everything you do with the questions that come from using it, it generates more questions than answers. And I think that's key as well. I cut one piece of glass, it'll be room temperature, I'll have a nice oiled wheel, I can score it, I can snap it, and it'll just sing. That stuff just sings when it pops open. All these fulfilling aspects when you do it, right. It's like riding a bike, and you finally as a kid, get the training wheels off and you're like you feel that zone of balance, you're not tipping left, you're not tipping, right, you're, you're going straight down on your bike. And when you can do that, with cutting state just cutting stained glass alone, I don't have to be a master artist at anything, just learning how to cut glass alone is fulfilling in in and of itself. But getting to that point where you feel it, and it becomes inherent. I know a lot of other artists that do a lot of repetitive actions of their work. Once you get into that zone, and then the flow starts, oh, boy, that should just sings and you can hear the music coming off it to bring that into your work is intimidating in and of itself. And a lot of people will never realize that all the things we do that they never realize what it takes to get to that point.

Matthew Fluharty: 17:41

Carl hearing you you talk about the process. I mean, the one one goes through with stained glass, it takes me back, I am going to I'm going to say this line and probably run over over the car a couple times just and make them make a mockery of how it actually sounds. But this, this line that William Butler Yeats has an A poem, where he says essentially, you know, we, we might work a month on a line, just for it to appear as if it was a moment's thought, you know, it has to, has to feel unfiltered, almost like, like it comes from a different place beyond toil. It takes me back to those notions of joy and fulfillment, you know, the ease with which we, when we see work that is really well achieved. We know the work is there, but it also takes us somewhere beyond it as an audience. And thinking about this actually takes me back to the first experience I had with your work, which was the ruminant the Grand masticator, which was in reedsburg, Wisconsin, I believe it was a collaboration with art slink reedsburg I believe the worm farm Institute was also involved with an element of that. And in thinking about that piece, and then also thinking about the work which which came after it in your own creative chronology. It does, it again centers around this zone of nostalgia in a way that's different than the way I think that nostalgia has been really weaponized in rural areas in the last six years or so. And I think we you know, we see in a style that can actually be productive and creative and it can be an element which can bring forward human and community relations that are not necessarily restrictive and judgmental. I mean, it can be an appeal an appeal to the past but also an appeal forward into the future. I've just given you my like poetic back of the jacket quote for the book on ruminant but I mean like Could you just share a little bit about like about that piece and how it how it came about and especially how it sits now in reedsburg as well like how it just functions in everyday life.

Karl Unnasch: 19:50

That was a big stepping stepping up point of future large work. undertaking that was a good was a was a really great start. It If I could use one word to describe it, it's a tribute it's in the longer version of that answer is it's a tribute to all of the the people, not necessarily farmers, but it's it's obviously it's agriculturally centric because it's a combine means combine harvester. But it's specifically from an era that I recognize as having some of the last great vestiges of the, of the, the, the gentlemen farmers and the and the country wives, you know, to go with back with that nostalgia now. Obviously, that's, that's the mythologized way of seeing a point in history that I existed in at a coming of age, and experiencing it firsthand, literally, by, you know, doing all the work that entailed being a self being self sufficient farm. In that time, in the in the mid 80s, the early 70s, a mid 80s tribute needs to be given to the people that bust their ass. So if it's a salute to blue collar work, so be it, if it's a salute to, you know, better times, so be it, you know, I accept that I, that I've signed up for that, because guess what, there were better times, there were because, and I mean, that, that the people that existed in plied their trade, using this combine, going to these country churches, and, and confessing their sins and, and praying their peace, and hoping for better times in in grace that they needed to just get by because they were writing their own playbooks to, to try to survive without a lot of outward support. And we all know that, that that is, that is the Laura Ingalls Wilder version of driving a tractor. But there's a lot about it that created, you know, a good lifestyle for a lot of people, it was a better time than the people that had before leading up to that, you know, I wasn't, it wasn't anything to walk around and family reunions and see, see people missing fingers and hat and having lost an eye or living with a limp. You know, scars are everywhere. And there's a reason because they earned them. You know, that's why I think in and I can speak to this too, you know, if we're gonna go sociopolitical for a second, I can see why people have a hair acrosser asked about, you know, being open arms about change in the rural areas, and being afraid of what's coming next. Because there's a lot of them that worked so hard to get where they are, and they're scared. And I tell this to people on both ends of the spectrum, politically, you're dealing with really scared people, and they don't have a playbook anymore, to tell them how to survive this, what's coming, because they don't know what's coming. But they think it's bad. And they're convinced it's bad, because they have no other recourse but to sit there and guess. And they're left to guess. Now, I'm not going to vilify it as many people as I can about, you know, all the political crap that's been going on. Because guess what I'm in, I'm in the thick of, you know, the rural area. So I have to deal with these people on daily basis, I don't have the convenience of living in a place where everyone around me, I can look around, I don't live in a heavily urbanized place where I can look around and go, Okay, I feel safe here. Because I know we have a network of systems in place that's going to keep me safe. When I'm out in the country, it goes back to knowing your neighbors, if you know your neighbors, you know how to deal with them. That doesn't just mean that you know how to help them. You also know how far you can tread.

Matthew Fluharty: 24:02

I think what I think is powerful, about, about the way that you're using nostalgia in your work, just, I mean, just really just based on what what you just shared is that you can take one step into a an envision nostalgic, rural scene, and there are so many of them. I mean, they're culturally, just at the edge of the table. But I think in your work, and I think also in the ways that you talk about your work, what's revealed very quickly, is how layered both are orientation to that past and that nostalgia, whether we're from a rural place or an urban place or suburban place, but also how layered the actual react reality was in terms of that experience in the past. And if I could shift gears just slightly here. I mean, that's sort of Sort of indeterminant kind of liminal space, also, in a strange way is kind of analogous, I think, to the space that your work occupies really broadly, in that, as you were sharing earlier, your work, I love this example, you know, your work has appeared both in the farm show magazine, and the New York Times, and innumerable art publications that are that are embedded within sort of the structure of the arts and cultural, you know, ecosystem in this country and beyond. So this work itself kind of is situated between on one hand, really conceptual conversation about what the pieces and maybe what what it echoes in sort of the artistic or cultural tradition. Yet it also is just by virtue of who you are as a person, really authentically situated within the rural experience that you have growing up where you grew up and living, where you live. And slum golian is a piece that for me, it really just it's kind of a balance between those two things in a very powerful way. And what I love about it, and if you'll allow me this, is I just want to read a short quote that you wrote, sort of in the materials related to the peace, which explains some elements of what slim golian is up to. And then there's the whole Converse, there's the whole story about how the peace came into being itself, which is like really fascinating to me. But But first, here's what you wrote about slumgullion. You said the American log cabin offers a stack of associations. It's served as a home in which to spend a lifetime as a temporary dwelling for laborers. And as a gateway from urban chaos. This stood as a symbol of rural gumption, nationalistic pride, abject poverty, political clout and colonial incursion. And here we're talking about a stained glass and sort of multi material sculpture that is down in Tulsa at the philbrook. And I love this because we're talking about a log cabin, but your language itself exposes how, how deep, how complicated, and how divergent so many of those resonances are even within the concept of a log cabin. Um, so that's a very large preamble for talking about slim Gallian. I'm curious if you could kind of leave us with a thread into this piece. And maybe first leading us into how did this piece come into existence in the first place, what what's the backstory behind it

Karl Unnasch: 27:42

was on a fishing trip with my buddy Koop, northern Wisconsin. And I was in the middle of rebuilding an actual log cabin that was on my, at the time my parents farm I grew up on we use that building for as a chicken coop but also as a building to where the heifers could have their calves, especially in the wintertime. So we can throw bedding in there to stay warm enough so that they would have a decent place to, to have their calf. So it was it was a multi use building. But we all knew that ever used to be someone's home. Even as a kid I recognize the the value of knowing that without knowing. Because when you're told these disparate things growing up without any other context other than what you're doing everyday, when you're picking shit out of this old log cabin. You're still thinking at least I was in the time doing it that repetitive act. I looked around I was like, people lived in here. They slept in here. They who knows they might have had their kids in here. And I just like, this was someone's home. And it's solid, solid structure, simple construction that held that held up through the test of time. No code. No, no rules other than this is how gravity works. This is how a sharp blade works. This is how trees grow figured out. So what's that that transgression between I don't know. I wouldn't call it transgression. This is transformation of evolution between a Earth and a boat or a cave and architecture. And I was on a fishing trip in northern Wisconsin. Stopped at this place along the road jeans, antiques, and furniture Emporium. And it was basically roadside junk shop on on the highway leading up to Eagle River and went inside. There's this old cowboy walking around who was the owner obviously. And he had that interesting swagger to him of very comfortable in his own skin. As I was looking around, I was looking around for any kind of old hinges, iron hinges, or hasps, or, or anything that would shout out, hey, this needs to be incorporated, because it would look really good and do a good job functionally, as a component of the cabinet and rebuilding. So I was looking for hardware. And the old guy saunters up to me, he says, Well, what can I help you with? And I'm like, I'm looking for this and I'm doing this cabin I'm doing as he goes, you like log cabins? I got one for sale. And I'm like, No, shit. Okay, let's go. Look. I dropped the downpayment on this thing to hold it for me, because I knew that it wouldn't go anywhere. I recognized the footprint. I saw the logs firsthand, they were all jumbled all over. But I could see that they were in great shape. And he showed me a picture of his son as a construction guy, and he and his son had salvaged it. So I'd respect for that, too. And his son had taken a picture of it, as it was re stacked after it was pulled apart. So I never even got to see a picture of it in its, quote, unquote, original form. And even from that picture of two sides of it, I could see that it was it had value. Long story short is I knew Scott stolen and mentioned it to him in passing few years prior is like, if you ever run across someone who wants to turn this into an art piece, you let me know. And I will do the damnedest that I can to make it bombastic. Well, at the time, I didn't realize that he was going to head down a road and actually be one of those people that he was supposed to talk to. He ended up working his way and he ended up being the director, president of the philbrook in Tulsa. Any he hollered out he goes, Carl is like Hey, what's up? He goes, you still got that log cabin. I was like, Yes, I do. He goes, let's talk as like, Okay. And through some meetings and understanding how we wanted to go about it, we figured out how to turn it into something useful for Philbrick, and give it a permanent home.

Matthew Fluharty: 32:14

So slumgullion physically is a really great metaphor for how from a distance, we have an orientation to something but then we get closer and we realize how layered and how complex and oftentimes how beautiful something is. I mean, could you just kind of narrate for us, for folks who haven't been to Tulsa to the philbrook? What the pieces that came out of this amazing story. I mean, from a distance, it looks like a cabin, and you're like, Oh, this cabin is lit up with stained glass. I mean, that is that's the one sense sensory perception that an audience member would have standing maybe 2530 feet away what when they walk into the experience,

Karl Unnasch: 32:53

well, on the right day, if it's daytime, and it's bright enough while you walk inside, and the first thing that you're going to have happen is you're going to be inundated with color from every every direction except for maybe the floor and even I tried to work some of that into it has to be this overwhelming symphony of color from every angle from the windows from the walls from the ceiling. And that has to come through with stained glass in the in the windows themselves. From the ceilings. Clear it's a clear decking made of polycarbonate with resin cast cloth as singles. So you're basically sitting under or standing under a quilt that is a ceiling if it's working right. And then the lanterns as well that are made from reclaimed colored glass are hanging, you know, all over the ceiling. And with their little flickering orange lights to sparkling and flickering, plus all of the resin bound cloth that's tucked in the walls. During the day the lights filtering through but at night, the LED lights that are embedded in them turn on to so it glows from within and without. And the chimney to the even though even though the fake fireplace has a reclaimed and Glass Menagerie to it. There's a quote that you gave to craft magazine. You're on the cover of craft magazine into the large feature on this piece. And you said I made the ceiling and roof ostentatious to get people to look up literally and metaphorically. It's something people don't do a lot nowadays. And I read this quote in preparation for writing about your work for the high visibility newspaper. And what struck me is that husk sculpture, which is included in the high visibility exhibition at the Plains Art Museum, is asking folks to think almost literally and metaphorically about the act of looking down Can you lead us into Some of the life experiences and inspirations that led to the creation of hoskin for folks who can't come to the Plains Art Gallery yet. We welcome you to go online to in high visibility.org to check out the piece itself, but this piece is in keeping with some of your previous pieces in that it it is stained glass and steel. And it is as one draws closer to a much like slim Gallian. One realizes that it is literally and metaphorically to use you just use your words, a representation of a crushed bush light can. How did how did you approach this piece? Where did this piece come from for you as an artist? It goes back to constantly seeing trash riding the backroads. You see trash in the ditches. So let's let that be an inspiration. So I look at that. And now I'm, you know, pandemic starting last March last. I get back from California in March, I started going for walks. Even though I'm used to living the country, I also self quarantine for two weeks after being away from my week, my family for a week. So I'm going on to three weeks not being around my family, and they're right there. So I'm like, okay, you know that this is gonna be hard. But you've lived through blizzards, you know what it's like to live out in the country, you better start getting busy getting busy. So I got busy and cleaned and built and worked on my house and made more work. But also I had to move my ass and get away from the place that I was tied down to have the studio in the house. So I'm out the country and go for a walk, go for walk in and wave at neighbors as I go by a holler out. So at least get some of that going on. As I'm walking. I may as well make myself useful, I get busy getting busy. So I bring bags with and I pick up trash as I go. And once my bags full, I turn around and or once my bags are half full, I turn around I head back home. So I knew how to gauge how far I was gonna walk didn't matter for the time or the distance. It's what my bags would let me allow me to how far to go. I got back and I noticed that the the high frequency of things that I saw were bush light cans like it, it blew away. All the other things that I was picking up. It was mostly pushed like cans. I was like, Okay, this means something. Let's think about it. Couple whiskies later, I think, you know what, that's the preferred beverage of the people that I'm familiar with. In my region. I'm like, Huh. And then I got to thinking about why that's the thing we do as artists, we have to ask why otherwise, we just accept without knowing we provide our own context, we fill in the gaps. Well, I'd rather fill my gaps and with something that's a little more familiar. So I start thinking about why well, it's the cheapest for the buzz. It's it's not a terrible flavor for beer, but at the same time, it's you know, near water. So you can drink quite a few is still say you're drinking beer, and not, you know, drive in the ditch, you know, let's be honest, these people thrown these out, or our booze cruzan. Just like we all grew up doing. Not saying it's right or wrong, I'm saying this is what it is. So it's an observational standpoint. But also, I'm immersed in it because I've done my share of booze cruise. And however, I can honestly say I've never thrown a cat out a window. And that's the thing, you know, I live by the rule of the litter, you throw in the back of the truck. And then they pile up in the back of the truck. So anyway, I started taking pictures of them in situ before I picked them up. So these untouched, found objects with the context of only where they're discovered. And they start becoming my own little truffles, my own little morel mushrooms, my own little gnomes out in the woods. And everyone is different. And everyone is it's in its own different context. So I've been posting one on Instagram per day since I started doing that. As of today, I think I'm up to 308. And I'm thinking it'll probably be just a year's worth, and we'll call it good to go with the length of the time that I started doing this for the piece. I started looking at the shapes, I'm very familiar with a crushed can shape it's also a, you know, something straight out of the vernacular context of this is what is a finished fetishized object from my culture, if I could say that, but yet it's a chunk of litter that pisses me off, but yet, it's also a corporate item for someone to make more money off us, you know, poor folk out in the country and yet it's also beautiful. And yet, it's a malleable object, and yet it could provide inspiration. And yet, I can still turn that into this dynamic concept of what it is that I'm and getting to death. So I bought a 30 pack of bush light, got a friend to come over and we drank a few and got to be in a chemically induced state. And then I say, right, I want to make some sculpture now, I'm gonna make some mcats. And I started making the cat in the studio, like you do. And each can became the potential object but with be trying to crush it into an interesting, yet unfamiliar, yet familiar shape at the same time to find that good blend of sculpted, yet happenstance. And I got to thinking about culture, and thinking about the dying Gaul, which is one of my most favorite human figure base sculptures that I've ever come across and seeing the different versions of them. And thinking about a rebellious dying culture that just will not give up, which is what a lot of, we see coming from the culture that I'm in this and I'll be and I'm going to say it out loud. This white massage dentist, patriarchical culture is dying, thank God. So my commentary on that is, the people that I see around me that are digging in with their tooth and nail to not let go of this nostalgia are the new dyeing galls. And this is a perfect representation. So I considered the shape and form of this Viking is biking biker type vandal guy, but figure dyeing, yet still trying to push away from gravity and one last effort. How can I transfer that to the shape of a crush beer can and that took 30 to arrive at that I can definitively say it took a 30 pack of bush like literally to get to that point and picked out the right shape after vetting it through some. Which one do you think which one you think and getting a survey from people of all different backgrounds, which one looks like a finger with its knee up as kind of bent over as well, that one and then I wanted to know why they thought that. And that's how I came about turning it into a larger than life version of that bush like and like and, and and pixelating it like is done by fracturing the surface and just paying attention to it for what it needs to be for the stained glass to do a job to abstract it enough. So that again, just like the log cabin, you've you can see it as beer can but at the same time is it's still a contrived form for its own reasons. And that plus you know, we anthropomorphize these cans anyway, it has a mouth as a head. Now, when we talk about beer, like, Alright, let's play with that humor side, because that's what I do in this stuff, too. I may be very serious in long winded about my answers, but at the same time is I'm still a guy who drank a 30 pack of bush light in order to make a really cool sculpture. I mean, that's all part of it. That's that's important. We got to get there.

Matthew Fluharty: 43:37

So Carl, when when we look at husk, and I think the range of references with which are within this sculpture, I mean, on one hand, we have the dying Gaul. We have the process we have we have you walking the roads, picking up the cans, engaging physically with the cans and sort of transforming that experience into the piece that we see at the Plains Art Museum. We have all of that, you know, and I think especially for folks who might be listening to this, who have maybe less intimacy with rural areas. You know, there's also it's a fact it's hard to get around in that almost like a historical marker. The Bush like can in a ditch, smashed on the road, hanging out like on a corner in a downtown block in rural America. Really, is it it's a talisman it's a way of letting you know that you are in a rural area. It's one of it perhaps the most uncanny sort of universal experiences of rural America is the bush light can and I think for folks maybe who maybe live in metropolitan areas that probably He sounds profoundly farcical, and it is maybe on some level as well. But it's it's pretty much a truism. You know, you know, you're in a certain spot when you see that bush like hand on the side of the road, when I register with that is, is the bush like him, but also a whole host of more emotional resonances from my own life. I mean, it's just been an object that is present in the landscape in a way that feels unsettling, but also very familiar. And I guess, Carl, what I'm wondering is the degree to which that is also sort of a set of associations that you're working through, and thinking through in this piece?

Karl Unnasch: 45:46

Yeah, yeah, that's, that's pretty much on the market. It's, it's a joke. And just like any other comedy, like, for the truest form, there's, there's tragedy and comedy, that's what makes it comedic, because we have, if we don't laugh at ourselves, then then we fail. as a species as it is, as a self centered species. It's a running joke. Within the within the culture nailed the defensive pride of drinking, cheap as beer, not just here, but anywhere, you know, in that regard, everyone has their has their talismans to use your term. And yeah, it is a it's a, it's a definitive indicator, given the frequency of it, I see it as a signifier of one of the major fundamental failings of ourselves as a species. And what I mean by that is, I see it as how we can't even have enough self love self respect. When we blatantly, you know, whimsically throw a bit of trash out the window that has such a prideful connotation to it, it's, it's, it's like, if I could slap myself with the rubber chicken, and die crying, that's what that is, to me. As if I if I represent our species to some alien race, you know, a person is so you know, real bush light, that's my drink, you know, I'm gonna have that, you know, and I don't need anything fancy. Okay, well, there's a lot of pride in that statement, you know, and I say this, because I was once that person, but also, I still drink bush light with these people. You know, it goes back to digging in the garden and making sure that you're grounded, you got to know that you cannot step away and still judge you have to, you have to take your licks like anyone else. And in bringing it back to what I'm saying is, I see and hear that proselytization of a statement, and then whimsically just throw it out the window. It's like, what happened to that pride in that moment, you have so much pride to identify yourself, you have so much pride to say what you stand for. But then on the same token, you throw it out the window in the ditch for someone else to pick it up for you. Wow, that's, that's some that's a Greek tragedy right there to me, at a fundamental level. So how am I supposed to walk into a big Metropolitan art opening? How am I supposed to go in there and be able to meet someone I if I can't even think, to not throw shit in the ditch. That That to me in maybe I'm just too utopian. But you can't get on a high horse. If you're trotting it through all the trash you through.

Matthew Fluharty: 49:12

So, Carl, I'm really grateful for all your time today. And I think as we as we come to the end of our time together, and hopefully we're not riding off on high horses. Hopefully they're medium sized horses. I just want to ask you a final question that, you know, we're really fixing to ask a number of our guests just to keep this range of associations going. You know, which is what? What music what books, films, artists, are you thinking about right now? I mean, where it is, your creative space, sort of resonating with some new associations and new connections. what's what's been inspiring you lately?

Karl Unnasch: 49:56

Um, you know, I gotta admit, I'm digging My innerspace right now, I'm doing the best I can to do a lot of self reflection, self improvement even. I'm trying to check myself. And to make sure that I'm doing you know, I'm walking the walk here. And that means it goes back to me talking about, you know, do I want to be right? Or do I want to be correct? And a lot of poker, a lot of people think they're both Well, I want to make sure I am. So I want to be correct about being right and correct. So to do that, I'm going to have to really ask myself a lot of personal questions that once I kick off, you know, once I'm once I'm exit stage left, I can honestly walk out with my head held high, not prideful, but just say, Okay, I did okay. To do that, I've got to make sure that my house is in order. And to do that, and I'm, I'm trying to see more of who I am. I'm investigating certain aspects of my personality that have been a challenge over the years and in trying to steer the battleship a little bit. So that that's not a problem anymore. That doesn't hinder me as much, I'm trying to get rid of my distractions a lot more. So I can even take things to the next level, and be better at what it is that I that I'm passionate and think that I can be mindful enough to do right by the rest of the world. So that said, I'm looking into I'm reading a book right now about giftedness, by Davidson, paczynski. I think it came out, but 10 years ago, it's got some nuggets in there, that's helpful. And it's helping to explain some of the things I just talked about some of the things I just alluded to here as far as like, what's what's made my life more of a challenge, and how I can correct my course so that it's not such a challenge, and I can actually have better focus on the things I want to talk about. So that's my reading right now. As far as music goes, um, it goes back to I'm digging some, some Americana in this. I mean, I discovered you know, just by accident, No One No One put in front of me when, when you when you're in your studio alone a lot and you have access to Pandora, you really try to make the most of it. And I'm really digging some of the new stuff I'm finding new for me but probably not new for a lot of people in the audience. Waylon Payne sturgill Simpson people whose stories kind of fall alongside the the, the the gravel road, where I'm traveling and where I've traveled, and what helps make my story so far. And that's and that's good. And I'm also digging, well, I'm digging some weird and cool fusion stuff that that Have you ever heard of the group that who Ah, you the Who? from Mongolia, I need to hear this traditional symphonic Mongolian metal. It's like some of the most fun farmboy punk I could ever wrap my head around. And it goes back to my earlier days of pop metal back in the day when I was riding the school bus. And I can't help but be attracted to it. But the thing is, is that it's these are just four four or five six guys who are symphonic Li trained in traditional folk, Mongolian string instruments and whatnot. And they are blasting they kept them in this is 10 years ago, they started you know, really getting mainstream, but I can't help but sit there and just listen to their stuff. And it just it's visceral. To me. It's like this, this. It's primal. And it speaks to, you know, you can hear the you can hear the civic pride, you can hear the nature you can hear, well, literally sometimes you can hear the wild animals that they incorporate into the same music and, and the open ended stories from getting this con all the way to their love for the female spirit. So I'm thinking that you said is it Who are those you spelled h you the who it's I don't I wish I knew more. I wish I had the time to dig, dig into more about them. But I'm still I'm still trying to absorb what they're doing for me. always seeking always curious, but also finding things that I have some connection to, you know, trying to make that trying to bridge that gap with an arc that isn't too long, but just enough so you can still get a solid weld.

Matthew Fluharty: 54:34

This is a really great opportunity, as we're sort of closing out our time together to welcome folks to also check out the show notes on the high visibility.org site for our conversation together so that they can immediately introduce themselves with the work of the who and a number of these other associations that you've so graciously welcomed forth to us. Oh, over our conversation together. Carl, thanks again for your time and for this conversation today. And thank you so much for your work within the high visibility show. It's It's an honor to have your perspective and all of the lived experience that comes forward in husk in the space of the Plains Art Museum for the high visibility exhibition.

Karl Unnasch: 55:20

Thank you. Yeah, I appreciate it. It's, it's been a heck of a journey. And it's still going on here. If I if I'm not being too forward here, I do want to give props to a couple people that helped make us haskap into the fabrication was done by a good friend, Sam spitzkoppe sartell St. cloudways. In Minnesota, he's a masterful artisan of the weld art. I got nothing but you know, full on. bear hug, respect for him. And then also, obviously, you know, big thanks to Nicole and all her patients for helping me out, getting all the all the unseen stuff done. I wouldn't be able to do that without her. And also a shout out to Mike samito. Out Mankato way, who way back in, oh, gosh, they 2015 showed up at my doorstep. And I took him in to show him a few tricks. And then we've been solid friends ever since. So he's been a big help on a lot of the stuff I've done with these projects. So it's not something that I just do by myself, even though the idea is is comes from my own experiences. We have to remember that that there are people that help us along the way and I think it's important that we shout them out. totally right.

Matthew Fluharty: 56:37

You've been listening to high visibility podcast produced by art of the rural and Plains Art Museum. Please join the conversation at plains art.org