A work of art doesn't have to be explained. If you do not have any feeling about this, I cannot explain it to you. If this doesn't touch you, I have failed to you. If this doesn't touch you, I have failed. That's by Louise Bourgeois and we're going to talk about that and many other quotes from her today. Look, we're just trying to get away from you know, as we've done a little chalk talk. Looking back at season one, realize that virtually every episode started with start off with one or both of saying man, I sure am excited to talk about this today. So we're just trying to break that mold a little bit. And this was the quote that kind of inspired this episode and kind of what we're going to get into today. Ty, so before we get into other quotes and discussing this, why don't you give us a quick bio on our artist of focus for the day?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I absolutely will love to do that because Louise Bourgeois is one of my absolute favorite artists in the history of art. I've seen a lot of her work around the world and I feel like every time I see a work of art of hers it's something new that I didn't even know she did or created. And she's French born, but a French American artist. She moved to the U? S in the thirties I think it was the mid thirties with her husband, had a tumultuous childhood in France. That was really really hard on her, especially after her father had an injury in the war, and learned how to sew and do things because her father had a tapestry factory. So she learned some skills and artistry at that point. And then when she moved to the U? S, she moved at a perfect time in the world.
Speaker 2:To be around art was when the ABEX movement was starting and the abstract artists in New York, and so we've talked about a lot of her friends. Uh, from Pollock to Rothko to de Kooning to all the ninth street women were all kind of around her. But she just didn't really fit in that group of painters right, Because most of those were painters. The overall percentage of that movement were painters and she painted and she did things and there happened to be conversations around that at times where those guys would say you're not a painter. How that affected her I don't know there's not much about how that affected her psyche, but she had a professor that told her you'd need to be a sculptor because you think three-dimensional, and so that really kind of encouraged her to really start taking these ideas and taking them to the third dimensional of form and so she made and made and made and made work, but you but had little shows and had things, but nothing truly happened to her until she was 70 years old and she ended up having a show at MoMA in New York that was a retrospect of her work and literally overnight Louise Bourgeois became a household name in the art world and it all follows Tate, Whitney, Venice, Biennale, I mean you name it Galleries, museums, public spaces.
Speaker 2:We'll get into some of her public works. Most of you have probably seen her spiders in her public works, but she really invested herself into her work as a form of healing and therapy. Somebody who dealt with trauma, someone who dealt with sexism, who dealt with all these subjects that really made her feel trapped and fearful and she took all of this and put it into her work as a way of expressing freedom from those things and healing from those things. So this is a great one for you and I to talk about. I think, a great artist. We have things in common with how we make our art and how she deals with her art, so I'm really excited to dive into these themes that tend to be really deep.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this was. I had an alternative opening for this episode, and that was going to be to make an 80s, 90s sitcom reference on a very special episode of Toy Meets World. Yeah, we've decided that we're going to open up a vein and get real with some of these quotes that we're going to discuss today. I was, of course, familiar with her work, but I was not aware of the abundance of fantastic phenomenal thinkers. She was about art and about life, and this could have been or heck who knows, could be a three-plus-hour episode. Just based on that. Having rewatched the documentary, which I highly recommend everybody go and watch it's available for free on YouTube Do you recall the title?
Speaker 2:The Spider, the Mistress and the Tangerine, something like that. Yeah, yeah, exactly yeah.
Speaker 1:So, if you get a chance, spend some time watching that. It's just the power of her personality is just so captivating. I don't know how tall she was, she looked like a priest.
Speaker 2:She was not very tall. Maybe five feet right, she might have been five feet, but maybe 30 feet in stature and character.
Speaker 1:I was just going to say that I mean her energy and her conviction with which she spoke. I can only imagine owned every room she ever occupied, and it's powerful.
Speaker 1:I wouldn't want to cross her in the wrong way. Let's just say that that's exactly right and just to. This is our whatever disclaimer that we sometimes forget to share. But we're not art historians and that's not the focus of our podcast. There's a lot of tremendous information about her work, her life. Our focus today is really going to be on how she thought about her life and her work, which are so inevitably intertwined as they tend to be, and so that's what we're into is just really dissecting great thinkers around art and just dissecting quotes by them.
Speaker 1:So we got this episode laid out in three acts and in the first act we're going to talk about just kind of why this whole idea matters, and the first quote of hers that I want to introduce or second, I guess, after our initial one, but it's very simple but extremely profound Art is a way of recognizing oneself. Art's a way of recognizing oneself and, as I was reflecting on this one, the reason I kind of wanted to kick us off or kick the conversation off with this one is because I was thinking about you know my experience, which is quite a bit different than yours, in that I came to art in middle age. I had already kind of gone through some of the things that happened when we, you know, get to that phase of life was at least the age of a full-grown adult when I started making art consistently, and so the reason I share that is because art really introduced me to myself in a way that nothing else could Like. When you talk about, can you say that one?
Speaker 2:more time, just that little snippet that you said.
Speaker 1:Yeah, art introduced me to myself in a way that nothing else could, and I've always been somebody who's very focused on. I've always been a learner, a reader, very growth-minded, done plenty of personal work, blah, blah, blah. But there were aspects of my personality that I didn't even know existed and certainly couldn't access until I got into the practice of making art. Consistently, I'm somebody, as I've learned, who is very I feel things very deeply, but and I'm working on this but oftentimes there's a disconnect between what I'm feeling and my ability to process those emotions. I'll talk more about that in a little bit. The mirror that became my process and the work that resulted from it changed the way that I think about life and the way that I think about the core of my being.
Speaker 1:At the risk of hyperbole, but art really introduced me to myself in a way that nothing else could and I guess I'll throw that back to you. What was your experience? Or tell me your thoughts on this quote and just what art has done for you on a personal, on a personal level. How's that for broad question?
Speaker 2:Yeah, We've talked about that a few times. Just the fact that when you're working on your work, you're really working on yourself, you're looking at yourself, like everything that's coming out is you as parts of you, pieces of you, memories of you, things you've accumulated, hurt, joy, you know. All the emotions just kind of get wrapped into that moment of solitude where you're emptying or filling or however you're creating. You know it's coming out in that story and I remember from you, know I started creating at a very early age because art was in my family. I had an uncle in the art world, I had a grandfather that loved art and loved poetry, and so I was around it.
Speaker 2:And I think the first time I really remember recognizing myself through my art was probably I had a horrible temper as a kid and I used to get really mad at my folks and I get really mad at my mom and I remember one time my mom saying go in your room and draw your anger. And so I went in my room and my mom I believe she still has this, so if I can find it somewhere it's a sketch of me drawing like this monster with curly hair and it says mom, but when you think about that right, that's really like emptying that emotion on the paper and that's how I felt, Like I literally was that angry that I felt that way. So I think that was my earliest beginning, but I didn't understand what that meant until probably after college. Over time, and as an artist, if you're always working, you're thinking a lot and I think it took those moments of deep, deep introspect and thinking to kind of figure that out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean this is. These are the types of I want to say conclusions as though it's definitive as that, but these are the types of conversations we have with ourself that ought to be ongoing, assuming that we're interested in continuing on a path of self-discovery and and and transformation.
Speaker 1:The next quote I want to throw in the mix there's so many, I mean we probably won't get to all of them that we've got on the docket here, but it relates to the previous. My art is a form of restoration in terms of my feelings to myself and others. My art is a form of restoration in terms of my feelings to myself and to others. My art is a form of restoration in terms of my feelings to myself and to others. So you brought up a lot of the tumultuous experiences and traumatic experiences that she had in her life.
Speaker 1:I believe it was said that I can't remember who said this in the doc, just because that's fresh in my mind from re-watching it but something to the effect of all of her art really being about exploring her childhood. It, but something to the effect of, uh, of all of all of her art really being about exploring, you know, her childhood. She said something to that effect as well. So again, kind of going back to my experience with I there, there are a lot of things that feelings I had towards myself and towards others and towards you know, specific experiences that, had you asked me before I started on this path of being an artist, I would have said, yeah, I've worked through that. I have restored my feelings around myself and others in that regard, and it wasn't until I got into my art that I realized oh, there's way more here. There's way more here than.
Speaker 1:I thought, and I think that it wasn't until I got to spend time with what I was making in my hands. And when it's going well for me, I assume for you as well, when it's going well for me, it goes from my heart to my hands and we're skipping the head as much as possible, at least for the bulk of the process. And I realized, as what I was processing was reflected back to me, that there were a lot of feelings that I had towards myself and towards others that needed restoring, you know, to the quote that I hadn't fully processed. You know, I was in a mode where, you know, I was in, I was in, in, in business, and I was in a mode where if, if I'm, and if an emotion wasn't, if I didn't deem it useful or productive, right, great, great way of, you know, processing one's emotions. Is this productive? Oh, it's not. Let's set, let's, let's push it down and set it aside.
Speaker 1:And I wasn't aware that I was doing that, but that is absolutely how I was operating. So, is this emotion useful, yes or no? If no, off you go. There's no need to even acknowledge its existence beyond dismissing it. And so for me to now be in a place where you know. My art helps me to restore my feelings and even just become aware of what they are. It's amazing. Yeah, it's, it's. I'm living in a different world than I was, you know, previously.
Speaker 2:And I think that's the reflection that I have seen, studying, watching, reading about Louise Bourgeois is I have seen the fact that if she did not have the opportunity to create the way she did, the restoration would have taken either a lot longer process or never existed.
Speaker 2:And so I look at her personality as a person of absolute strength and resolve, but with a temper that could harm right when you think of others. If there wasn't restoration involved and I know there's plenty of stories of her getting into it with curators and other artists and her assistants and people, so I'm sure you know she had a physical presence and direction where she wanted things to go. But if she wasn't able to have that restoration, what? How would her life have looked? Right Cause there's moments where she talks, where she disappears emotionally into the moment when she was eight with her father or older, and she used watch her disappear into pure emotion, whether that's like a sadness and you really feel it, or if it's an anger or, you know, a rage even at times. And then you look at her work and the process and how it comes out. Every little bit of that is completely worked out into pieces, from seams to sewing, to just the way she holds and moves the sculptures and things. It's completely constantly working itself out in an act of restoration.
Speaker 1:I feel like Well, maybe that's one of the benefits of not really being discovered or not discovered but publicly known until you're 70. She really had time to process and work through a lot of those different concepts and ideas to be able to tell a much more complete story. Right, we talked about that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's a few of us that kind of talked about that conversation Like what do you do for those 40, 50 years? And she taught like she taught in university, she taught at Pratt, she, you know, she was involved in the art world. It's not like she was a hermit and completely absent right and just hiding and making work. She was active and trying but as far as the recognition right and really being seen, she had the body of work to fulfill what happened when she exploded Right. Yeah, she could say yes to everything. I don't think I think if every museum in the world came to her, she would have a body of work that could go in a room. Yeah, I think if every museum in the world came to her, she would have a body of work that could go in her room. Yeah, that's astounding. That is a feat in itself.
Speaker 1:The story of curators coming in because she kept a lot of work at her home. Yeah, in Brooklyn, the story of the curator coming to her, getting a peek in the basement and her being like nope, nope, nope, that's enough. You've seen enough. Exactly, yeah, I've seen an entire basement full of decades worth of really developed work into something whole. I'm going to read that again, but hopefully better. Art is restoration. The idea is to repair the damages that are inflicted in life, to make something that is fragmented which is what fear and anxiety do to a person into something whole.
Speaker 2:What fear and anxiety do to a person into something whole. That quote rocked me. When I came across that quote, I mean I love the word restoration. It's one of my favorite words. It's just a magical, magical word because it's something we all, whether we're artists or not, are fighting for in life.
Speaker 2:And I think thinking through repairing those damages that are inflicted to you right Breaks you apart. It kind of takes you into pieces and uh, and that's what fear and anxiety do? They just completely pull at you from every angle and create little bits and pieces that tear you apart. But thinking of art and the restorative process of taking all of that and creating something whole out of it and that's what she did so well is, these are my fears, these are the thing her cells I've been in a few of her cells in different countries around the world and that's what she did.
Speaker 2:The cells are her fear and anxiety all encapsulated into one little thing that she can go in and out of constantly. It's freeing her from that fear. She's putting the fear and anxiety into that cell out of her and into that cell and that process is restoring. I can't imagine what it might have felt like for her, after one was finished, to walk out of it and then look right, you can physically look at that and kind of give that deep breath. You know, and and I think I did a series of oh gosh, 2017, maybe 2016 called fragments and I was really kind of dealing with that existential or philosophical idea of are we born whole and become fragmented, or we born fragmented and we become whole?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so I was thinking of my life and my trauma and my experiences and thinking, okay, are you whole when you're born, and then all those things break you apart, right, and then you have to re-restore, or are you born broken apart and then you're restoring as you go? And I don't think there's an answer for that. But it was my process of coming to grips with healing and trauma and things over time and trying to find those pieces and, through my art, create a restorative process for myself as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, there was a period of time where I, I, uh, I wanted to call, I wanted to name everything that I made Humpty Dumpty or call or name a show around it. So just that whole idea of, with Humpty Dumpty, taking all these fragments that had broken apart and trying to put them back together in a way that is as good and as we'll maybe talk about a little bit later better than it was before, is pretty interesting. And to your point too, about you know her life. She spent all of her life, which was a long one, processing and putting things back together.
Speaker 1:That had happened, you know, in her case, 80, 90 years previous, which to me is like that's a wild thing to think about how deep those, some of those wounds you know must have been to still be present enough to, how deep those some of those wounds you know must have been to still be present enough to I want to say access I don't know if that's the right word but to to still, you know, mine the depths of um for decades, for decades and there was a, there was something that she said uh, that really or not, that she said that somebody else said and it was in a different something I read on her, and they talked about how, uh, with create, with her creation, that each of the cells and I'm speaking of the cells that I just talked about, her installations they deal with fear, as she felt she was a prisoner to her emotions.
Speaker 2:So, for her, it was a form of catharsis, to confront this childhood trauma and transform that fear and take. Take that fear and anxiety and create strength and solace from it. Yeah, that act in itself taking fear and anxiety that make us feel so small and so alone and creating something of strength and solace formidable that's that commands a room Like just when I sat thinking of just the comparison of those two things like there's a deep, beautiful psychological something happening there where she's taking something that makes you feel so weak and so impersonable and so small and then transforming it into this massive thing of strength and solace that just sits on its own, that is bigger than anybody else's in the room, that just makes you weep when you see it, cause you just feel it. I mean it's just magic. To me it's magic.
Speaker 1:I mean it goes. It goes back to the quote that we opened with right A work of art doesn't have to be explained. If you don't have any feelings about this, I cannot explain it to you. If this doesn't touch you, I have failed. Yeah, and if you've experienced her work in person, you've probably been touched. I've not had the opportunity to experience any of her cells in person, you know, just just photographs. So yeah, it sounds like it definitely succeeded, you know, with with you and with your experience.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and here's the power of art over time is that? I think it was 20, I'm trying to think of what year Mandy and I were in Milan and Italy visiting her family. We were going to the Wes Anderson cafe that's in Milan and we found it but didn't know it was attached to the Prada foundation, their museum there in Milan. It's the cafe for the museum, but we didn't know. We just went to see Wes's thing and then we popped in and I was going up the gold tower. If you look up the Prada foundation in Milan it's an incredible looking museum and there's a tower that's pure gold that goes up maybe five stories, five flights of stairs, and at the time each room at the top, each flight of stairs, each room, was a Louise Bourgois installation or piece.
Speaker 2:And I had never seen any of her knit work before, the big figures that are knit and just kind of curled up and holding each other and they were so powerful but I had no idea what they were, what they stood for, but they moved me. And then, years later, when I fall in love with Louise Bourgeois and start studying her and really looking in, it's completely transformed that emotion and power even deeper for me. So you look back years ago, I saw it and it moved me and now that I'm really digging into her it's 10 times the emotion and the feeling I have, knowing what goes into those stories.
Speaker 1:I wonder how much the diversity of material and medium influenced her ability to mine some of those same experiences for so much time. You think about the. You know from, from. You know rolled steel. You know towers that go two, three stories high down to these delicate um. You know knit fiber, like the range is, is is tremendous, you know is is tremendous you know, but she was a vivid dreamer, right?
Speaker 2:So you think of somebody who's a vivid dreamer. You, you have to have every single thing at your disposal to try and create that feeling, that memory, that dream, that vision, you know? Uh, and I love how she says, when you're capturing a memory, uh, you have to be true to the memory, because the memory changes and the memory is going to be different for the other part of the memory, the other person of the memory, right, and so and she just talks about the depth that she goes into trying to really think about that memory, because you have to nail it, you can't fib, you can't, you know what I mean, you can't make it up. So you think of that depth, you have to be multidisciplinary with that depth.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right, you can't just go. I'm going to paint, and that's what she tried in the beginning and you know she, I think she would have got there eventually. But having that other person say you need to do this, this is where you're, you're going and to embrace it, but you can't capture those things with just one thing, can you? I?
Speaker 1:doubt it. I can't imagine how. I mean it's funny. You got me thinking about memory and how unreliable our memory really is. I mean, I was reading a random article about how you know eyewitness testimony used to be the way you know, but going back, you know pretty far right To to get a, get a conviction, to where now it's a, it's a lot less dependent on you know, in in in the courts because it is so unreliable, you know. Yeah, I think most of us have probably had the experience of whether it's with a sibling or a parent trying to like, piece together different parts of a story. You know that one one trip we took and then we stay at the hotel no, no, no. We camp that trip. No, no, I'm sure of it. We stay at the hotel that had the pool that wasn't working, and then we stopped at that diner. No, no, no, it's just. But you're kind of piecing things together and sometimes the truth just is dependent.
Speaker 2:Let's move on to Act Two and I think what we just talked about really moves into your quote for Act Two as well.
Speaker 1:So the idea with setting this up was why this matters and how this idea really captivated the two of us. For this second part of today's conversation, I really want to talk about what happened and kind of open to Bain for both of us. Personally, I'm going to lead into that with a quote from Louise and then share kind of how this idea sort of came about for us to discuss this today. But she said tell your own story and you will be interesting. Tell your own story and you will be interesting. Tell your own story and you will be interesting.
Speaker 1:And I think that you know, for me, one of the things that I have learned from sharing my story in recovery is the power of radical vulnerability.
Speaker 1:It is not something that came naturally to me until my life in escaping the clutches of addiction, depended on it and I realized, oh, there's no way for me to get better, for me to get through this, without just opening it all up and saying here's everything this, without just opening it all up and saying here's everything, realizing that, especially in that dynamic, that keeping things from other people and most of all from myself was only going to keep me sick and keep me in that behavior.
Speaker 1:So one of the things that I have learned every year this is April. As we're sitting here recording this, we're right between two of the most impactful anniversaries that I have in my life that really inform my work and things that I'm still processing and working through on a personal level. On the 16th, every April 16th, is my sobriety anniversary. So in 2002, april 16th of 2002, was the last time that I took a drink or a drug, and that was a big part of what informs my work and really my. I'm going to call it a fascination, obsession, a calling, whatever to really try and tell a visual, material story of transformation.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And you know. So for me again, like not to, I always go back to I can't remember where I heard this, but when I did it, it just it unlocked a lot of things for me. The worst thing you've been through is the worst thing you've been through, and so I share that because I think I needed to hear that, because I again back where, where I was living and how I was thinking, when I was setting aside every was oh well, there's so many people that have had it worse, which is definitely true. I want to, I want to make that real clear, like this is not like a whatever, a, a trauma competition to see who's been through the worst, the worst stuff, or so you know asking for, you know for sympathy, but these are, these are real, just real things that happen. You know, and I think that you know, from that radical vulnerability, you know one of the things that I learned again through uh, I'll just say it from from, from working in the 12 steps to completely transform my life into something that, a life that I didn't even want to be alive anymore.
Speaker 1:You know I've shared this a little bit before. I'll give the brief. You know history now. But I meth was my end of the road drug. I was absolutely. It's the type of drug that steals your soul. There's a couple of end of the line drugs. You know meth and heroin are pretty high in that list of.
Speaker 1:Once you get to that point, there's nowhere else to go. You know really from there other than jail or death or, you know, hopefully, freedom. You know from that addiction and so, starting from that place of I am nothing, I don't want to exist. It's a really interesting starting point to really kind of dig in and examine. You know it's a really interesting starting point to really kind of dig in and examine. You know, how did I get here and what happened?
Speaker 1:And I think that you know that's something that absolutely informs my work and it will inform you know, the rest of my life. You know much, in the same way that some of the things that Louise went through informed hers. You know she said I'll throw the next quote in here. I have been to hell and back and let me tell you it was wonderful. How's that for a quote?
Speaker 1:I think that for both of us I'll stop rambling here and see if you have any follow-up questions for me before I ask you to get vulnerable as well but I think that it's a trip you never choose to take. Well, but I think that it's a trip you never choose to take. Nobody books a ticket for hell intentionally, but we've all been to our version of it at time or times in our life for different reasons, and I think that one of the benefits of processing emotions and piecing Humpty Dumpty back together again, taking those broken fragments and creating something that can be whole again, is so tremendously valuable. You could look back and say I'm better because of not in spite of, but because of what I went through, if that makes sense.
Speaker 2:No, it totally makes sense and I have a quote to go into that. I mean, it's something that I heard her say and she said art is the experience, the real experience of trauma. Yeah, and I hadn't heard that one before until I was watching an interview with her. And she said that and I thought, okay, art is the experience, the real experience of trauma. And I went experience the real experience of trauma. And I went okay, I got to unpack that for a second here, because if art is the experience, why is it the real experience of trauma? And I thought, well, trauma isn't just negative. The experience of trauma is healing as well and overcoming as well, and restoration as well. Right, so it's not just the negative sides of trauma. The experience of trauma holds everything in the same bucket.
Speaker 2:And when an artist is creating their work, if they're sharing their story, it's going to come out, no matter what. If you're making art pieces of you, your story, who you are, they come out somehow. And other artists put more of their story into their work than others, or more of that emotion in. So I think for her, when she's saying that she's giving the rage, but she's also giving the solace, she's giving the moments of healing, she's giving the moments of anger and she's combining in some of her work. All of those things are encapsulated, for the viewer to experience when they view it.
Speaker 1:And it's so it's. It's really hard to have the perspective of oh, this is going to help me, you know, be better than I was before. I mean, that's the whole point of healing again is not just to get back to baseline, but to get better than we even were previously.
Speaker 1:This came up recently, I got a chance to speak sometimes and I was talking to a group at an alternative high school. And you don't end up at this particular school on a winning streak. You're not going there because regular school is going super well for you. And some of the things that some of these kids the principal was telling me have been through are unimaginable and horrific. And I tried and I'm pretty certain that I, that I failed to even introduce them to the idea of the, the fact or my belief I suppose it would be a better way of saying it that they have more opportunity to offer more to the world because of what they've been through.
Speaker 1:And I went back to my. I was walking out in the parking lot and, just like I know, you know when you're speaking, when you connect with people and when you don't, and I've had, you know, plenty of both experiences. And this was the latter. I was just like yeah, and I realized like they're still in it, right, they're just trying to survive right now, you know. And so I shared that because I think that there is a lot to be said for the distance, the perspective that comes from having some distance between the trauma and the healing. Of course we want to start the healing process as soon as possible, from whatever you know the thing is, but thinking about Louise's story, you know the benefit of having decades to look back and think and process. I'm now myself more than two decades removed from that experience and I'm still unpacking things like oh, for example, for the longest time my whole narrative was oh, I had great parents, great upbringing Like I just really was curious and and got caught doing something that and then and then I just couldn't stop.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And as time has gone on again not to turn this into a therapy session, but you know, as time has gone on, I've realized like, oh no, there's, there's way more to it than that. That that led me to, you know, use in a way that is, uh, is not, you know, normal or or healthy? And so, yeah, I'm not sure what was your experience like? Or, I guess, how has, how has your some of the things that you've been through, how has that informed your growth trajectory?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean it's informed my growth trajectory immensely and I, for years, I never talked about my trauma for years, and I think that's a very heavy male dynamic as well involved in that that. We want to handle it ourselves. I mean, I'd been through counseling, I'd been through, you know, numerous things over the years. Uh, because of what my trauma did to me in destructive patterns, and I think that, well, I know what changed it. I read a book and I'm going to read the quote, even though it's not Louise Bourgeois, just because it's what made me say what am I doing? I need to be a voice for men who've experienced what I've experienced, number one and to say listen, you need to talk about your shit, you need to talk about your past, you need to be vulnerable with it. This needs to be talked about. And so it hit my art right after I read this quote and it says stories are able to help us become more whole, to be named and naming is one of the impulses behind all of art to give a name to the cosmos we see. Despite all the chaos in art, either as creators or participators, we are helped to remember some of the glorious things we have forgotten and some of the terrible things we are asked to endure, and that's by Malon L'Engle. And when I read that quote I went number one stories help us become more whole. Can I help somebody else become more whole through my art by being vulnerable with my story? The answer to myself was yes.
Speaker 2:Not saying this is the answer for everybody, because I think as an artist, you only give what you feel like giving. If you don't want to give everything, don't give everything. And I don't think you should give everything. I think you should give up to a point and then let the audience then decide. But when I read, either as creators or participators in that art, we're helped to remember glorious things we have forgotten or terrible things we were asked to endure. And that word asked to endure pretty much means you didn't have a choice in a way to endure it, you know. And so I think that just really really like hit me. And she follows up Madeline saying I love. Therefore I'm vulnerable. A few more sentences in. And I, when I do have a love for people and I want to see healing.
Speaker 2:You know, I went through as a young boy. I was raped, and so I went through destructive patterns that were absolutely horrific from that point on, and I think art is the thing, like Louise, that helped me externally put that rage out without that rage destroying me. That was the point when things changed, and I think I read that quote and I did a series post fragments called Cosmos or it was called these Are my Shapes a conversation with someone. And the whole idea was a dream I had where I was telling my story to a room of people at a gallery. I was up on stage and I'm telling my story and it's sectioned into 10 year periods. At the time I started it, I think I was 41, maybe when I started the piece, and so every 10 years I built into the story and in this dream I'm telling everybody wisdom and knowledge I've gained and sharing these deep, deep truths, but nobody's paying attention. They're all on their phones. They're literally, like you know, taking pictures of selfies of each other and they're looking out the window. And so I ended up having this conversation with myself in the dream. Even though I'm talking to a crowd, I'm really having it with myself.
Speaker 2:And when I was working on this series, I came to four pieces that were in that period of life, of destruction, when all of my trauma had caught up to me, which we all know. When we've experienced trauma, there's a point where it catches up right, uh, where you hit bottom right, which you would say in in recovery, where somebody hits bottom. And I had hit bottom at this period of time in life and I was very destructive. So those pieces I didn't wasn't even trying to go that hard, you know, it just came out. I mean, I was telling the story and it was coming out interesting and I felt like I went back to hell in that moment. I don't agree with Louise. It wasn't wonderful. Hell and back right. For me it wasn't wonderful, but the process of putting it into my art was wonderful. And then I hated those pieces. I feel like I overworked them and all this stuff.
Speaker 2:And my mentor, mako Fujimura, came to my studio in Waco, texas, to visit when he was speaking at the university, baylor University and he came to my studio and he wanted to see work and I said hey, can I pull a couple pieces out for you to look at? And I pulled those four out. So I was working on them at that time and I said I hate these and he said that's the first time anybody's ever brought out work they don't like to show me when I visit. I thought I just need you. He said turn them around, let me see the back. So I turned all four around. I think they're seven feet by four feet. Turn them all around, put them against the wall.
Speaker 2:And he goes wow, I can feel that no wonder you have worked these. I don't know what these are about, but I can feel it. This is heavy. And he went oh, and I was like from the back of the painting and there was stains and marks and I'd sewn all these things. And so then I shared what they're about.
Speaker 2:And that's when he told me you know, it's up to you what you give. If you put these out there, you don't have to title them, you don't have to give any notion as to what they're about, you don't have to talk about those things match. You can see the fight, you can feel it from outside, but you're never going to be in the ring and know exactly what it feels like. So sometimes we need to treat our art like it's the boxing match in the ring and the viewers on the outside can only get close enough, but they can't get all the way in. I also at that point said you know what, I'm going all the way in for a purpose, and so since then I've spoken about my trauma and I've been really open and vulnerable with it, like you have as well, and so I think that's a mutual thing. Um, you know, I think that's why we both have, you know, a deep respect and admiration for each other and each other's work too, because we can feel it and sense that and see it.
Speaker 1:It I wonder about that, that that boxer um metaphor I and when, when you said it, I loved it, and then I immediately want to amend it. But but what I want to the way that I hear that is is that what's is what I want to change about it, or what I'm, as I interpret it in my own broken brain? Is it's going to bring people in or bring people back to whatever their own fight was? Slash is, in other words, I'll put this to you in a question when you experienced the cells in person, do you feel like you were experiencing her specific trauma, or were you feeling the weight of something so visceral that it connected you to your own?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I wasn't feeling hers at all Right, because number one, I didn't know the story. I didn't, like I do now Right. Yeah, I don't know the story, I don't know her, I didn't know anything about that. The clothing was actually her mother's clothing that she had kept all those years that was sewn into those things. But there was just something about going in to the cell and being in there and feeling almost as if you were walking into the trap, walking back into something heavy and then walking out and feeling free again. So there's definitely the the emotion of going into something and coming out of it in a deep way. I'm not like just an in and out, it was like an in and just disappearing into something that you knew was heavy, that you knew was difficult.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then coming out of it and feeling like the burden was now removed.
Speaker 1:And that, and that goes to our opening quote right Of like if you do not have any feelings about this, I cannot explain it to you. If this doesn't touch you, I have failed.
Speaker 1:So it's any feelings about this, not the prescribed feelings about this Right, yeah, and, and it's just about about being being touched, you know, by the work that's, that's so powerful, you know, and I think, hold on, I want to, I want to amend that. Uh, we don't know what, what she meant precisely, but that, that quote of um, you know being to hell and back and it and it being wonderful, I don't. When I read that, I don't, I don't think about, I don't think she would. That was great. I loved every minute of it. The way I read that and my interpretation of of what I think she was getting at is what it made. Pop the doors that opened for me.
Speaker 2:You know what it gave her as her ammunition for create. Yes, and that's right for me. I absolutely agree with that, because I would be a different artist if I had not experienced some of the things I've experienced. I'd be. I would be a different artist, yeah, yeah, you know now, would she want a different life? I think so.
Speaker 2:Sure, louise, right, and I think that's evident in moments when she's talking about her father, yeah, who changed drastically after the war, who treated her horribly, who treated her mother horribly. And I feel like when she talks about her dad, you can see the angst in not having the father she wanted and she continued to try to allow him to exist over time, before he died and I think, and then, after he died, she went into a really deep, dark depression after that and I think it's because she was yearning for the father she wished she had, that she never got from him. You know, and I talked with a few female artists in the room. We watched it all together, three feet. I was lucky I got to watch with three female sculptor and installation artists, multidisciplinary artists. It's like, oh, this is amazing. And they said, yeah, yep, I know that feeling.
Speaker 1:Yeah and shout out to it was Allison that brought this to the conversation the other day, right, yes, it was Allison. Yeah, so we had a little delay there. So I messaged Allison I said you know, ty and i're gonna have to talk about this. And it was right along that time when my you know anniversary came up and I was like, oh, this is this, is something that and that that we need to talk about. You know, I mean, it's not like this is like a. It's never fun.
Speaker 2:I never look forward to like telling my story and like I was in this, you know, but it's yeah but you know what it's done for others who have struggled or been through similar things, who may not have the makeup to be a voice for themselves or for others, and we 100% have the ability to be a voice for others. I absolutely believe in that so wholeheartedly that you have the ability to be a voice for somebody else who isn't confident enough to be that voice, and you build confidence in them by being bold.
Speaker 1:And I'm talking about the I'm saying this on your behalf, ty's talking about the collective. We like all of us, like you. Who's listening to us? Right now have the power, with your specific story, to impact people in ways that no one else could, because of what you specifically have been through.
Speaker 2:And here's the even more beautiful thing the power that your art can have in that moment, when you choose to be bold with your work, whatever that may be story, your trauma, your healing, politically, I mean. In so many ways, art has had the power to impact, influence and bring experience to things that need to be talked about, need to be shared or we need to be vulnerable with yeah, yeah, the next quote. Can I add something art wise real quick, before we get to the next quote?
Speaker 1:Absolutely not. This is a one-person show and you're working for me, pal yeah of course.
Speaker 2:So the series I was sharing about, where I had each piece, each body of work every 10 years. The titles read like a manuscript, so all the titles from the very first one to the last. If you put them all on a page it would read like you were reading a script. It would be like lines being read and it flows together from piece one to piece 16. I remember how many I made.
Speaker 2:Well, I had a show in Austin and I had a few pieces in the exhibition.
Speaker 2:And when we talk about the first quote about failing if somebody doesn't get anything from it, I came in the next morning early after opening night and it was during the Austin studio tour.
Speaker 2:And I came in the next morning early after opening night and it was during the Austin Studio Tour and I had two female artists who came up to me and said, hey, can we talk to you for a second? And I said Sure. And they said I don't know if this is right, but we're both theater students at UT, University of Texas, austin, and we were reading your titles and they felt like a script, a monologue, but almost a dialogue. So we stayed late last night and went back and forth reading together and we were in tears, wow, and I just I in that moment I stopped. It was the first moment I've had that deep of an experience with two artists, when I wasn't in the room, who experienced the work that way, without me talking about it, and so we sat and talked about it for a while, but that was, that was what she's, that was what louise is saying and it's so powerful when that happens.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, it's. That's a great segue into kind of the, our third and final act here of today's conversation, which is just talking about how, how the fragments, how the, how, the pain, how, whatever we've been through, shows up in the work, you know, and how it, how the work communicates. It without us, you know, even even being there. It without us, you know, even even being there. It's funny.
Speaker 1:You made me think about another, um, uh, an experience that I had which was, which was, uh, at that point for sure, the most meaningful moment I'd had around people experiencing my work in person, especially people that that were just there for for, you know, for for the show, that didn't already know me and weren't already going to say, oh, it's really neat what you're doing, you know what I mean, and so this was, uh, my, my, my first solo show. Uh, during the opening, there's a feature piece and if you're not watching on youtube, if you're just listening to us right now, just know that we also put this on youtube and if you want to see, you know, pictures of what we're talking about. That's, that's where you'd, you'd, but anyway, this is also a cue to the editor of this podcast that we can throw some photos of the piece I'm about to describe in there as well. But the feature piece.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'll remind you to send me that picture.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I will. So the feature piece of this show was a large-scale diptych. It was about six feet by eight and a half feet altogether and it was. It was. It was the opening.
Speaker 1:I was talking to a couple, uh, a pair of friends and, uh, they approached me and the first one said hey, we just wanted to tell you that the two of us had completely different experiences with your work. And she goes, I'll go first. This, for me, was a really, really heavy and dark and emotional piece for me. I can't stop looking at it, but I'm looking forward to when I'm not looking. It was dark and I said yeah, and how about you? And the other woman said I had the exact opposite experience. You and the other woman said I had the exact opposite experience.
Speaker 1:To me, this is extremely hopeful and uplifting and full of light and optimism for the future. And I said I don't care if anything sells, I don't care if everybody leaves right now and says you both just absolutely made my night and made this show for me, because you're you're both abs, you're both right, you're both spot on, like it's, it's all in there, you know? And and for me, I think this is maybe where our processes differ a little bit. I don't know what the work is about until the work tells me what it's about. I don't go into like, oh, this is going to be about, but as I've become a bit more experienced at and, I guess, just aware of the fact that I am processing feelings that I again, like I mentioned earlier, I don't otherwise have a straight path to or a door to really dig into, it's all going to come out and that will be what kind of tells what the story is.
Speaker 1:I mentioned having two sort of meaningful anniversaries in April. The other one is April 29th, and on April 29th of 2010 is when my sister was killed. She was 28 years old and she was shot and killed by a man that she was involved with. And I talk about this a lot less than I talk about my recovery. My recovery has a. There's a very purposeful dialogue around. You know people that are, that are. They're still struggling and much like your story earlier, one thing I learned is it is it's not hard for me to talk about, but it's hard for people to hear.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Like, like I mean, it took me a minute to recover from, even though you had shared that with me previously, but still, that's a lot, it's a lot, it's a lot, you know. And so I think that, um, I just bring that up because that's one of the that's one of one of the biggest things where, like, I just didn't have there's. There's probably a better way of saying this, but, but the way it comes to mind is I just didn't have the emotional toolkit to really process the grief that I was experiencing at that time, all grief is different.
Speaker 2:It's not the same and that's you know. You learn that when you go through healing or recovery and things, that grief operates in different ways yeah, based on different traumas and things. And so, yeah, it's a very different, based on different traumas and things.
Speaker 1:And so, yeah, it's, it's a very different, and that piece in particular was was one of the few where I was like you know, I'm at least going to spend time with the music.
Speaker 1:You know, I've got a playlist that was, that was Amy, amy's favorites, that always I don't listen to it, it often, but when I do, like it's a lot, you know, and, and that definitely came out in that piece in particular, and I don't know that. Yeah, I, and that's kind of the thing it's like. You know, back to like the, the and this came up in in the, the part one, I think, or part two, I, I forget, of the Pooch Coat conversation with all of the artists and residents that are there with you, of just again our opening quote, which has kind of been the glue that's hopefully tying this whole conversation together, but just the fact that a work of art doesn't have to be explained. Yeah, you know, and when someone comes up and as an artist, you've been asked this question, if you've been asked this question, if you've shown it to anybody, a version of, oh, what feelings about it? Does it touch you in any way? If so, then that's what it's about and I think, as artists, nathan, we're also editors and so we need to.
Speaker 2:We need to pick and choose how we edit Right, and that's not just the work, that's also the conversation around our art. And there you know and I think that's what Mako was really getting out with me in my studio that day is he was really telling me to be a really intelligent editor. Maybe there's a crowd where that work shows and you actually talk about the work and the depth, and then maybe there's a crowd where that work sits alone and nothing's ever mentioned and it's not even titled.
Speaker 2:That work sits alone and nothing's ever mentioned and it's not even titled, you know. And so I think as artists we also need to be very intelligent editors with how we present our work, how we speak about our work, and we're all different. We all want to say more or say less. You know, everybody operates differently with their work and how they are going to present that to the world and talk about it and share about it. Some people want to say nothing. Right, clifford Still and how he labeled his paintings. He didn't make emotional labels or deep stories. I'm a writer, I'm also an artist. Sometimes my titles are three or four sentences long, sometimes they're one word. But I think that's what you're kind of saying is there's a moment right where you kind of realized in your head you know what it's time to edit this conversation and keep it to. Why don't you just let me know what you think? Does it move you?
Speaker 1:Right, the last thing I want to do is take a person's experience from you know. Oh, this is both heavy and hopeful to.
Speaker 2:oh, that's a piece about his sister being murdered, and you have the power as the artist to do that to the individual viewer Right. You have the ability to change their perception of the painting by what you say.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so that's where, as an artist, being the editor is. How do you want to operate as an artist? Do you want to be somebody that does alter that conversation, or do you want to be the person that, like Louise, creates it and says well, I hope you feel something. If you don't, well, I failed, I'm going to go make 30 more. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:But it's a tough one.
Speaker 2:That's a really difficult one, because we are 100% going to be put in situations where we're with the audience and they want more, and they want to know more, and they want to know more and they dig in and it's how we respond to that. That, really, in the end, is our decision. But you usually don't get there unless you learn yeah, unless you've had it happen to you where, depending on the power of the piece, it can affect the rest of your night, it can affect the rest of your week, you know. And so I think it's really intelligent to know how you're going to handle situations as an artist. When your work is up on a wall and in a room, yeah, how, where do you want to place your vulnerability? Do you want to place it in you? Do you want to place your vulnerability Do?
Speaker 1:you want to place it in you? Do you want to place it in your title or do you want to just let the work speak for itself? No-transcript. This is something I'm very comfortable talking about on a holistic scale and something I'm very reluctant to talk about on a on an individual scale, right On a piece by piece basis, right Like I I'm. I love talking about how, you know, whatever my experiences, my perspective, thoughts, whatever ideas influence my process and the work that comes from it. And so, yeah, I guess I'll, I'll, I'll do that a little bit because it's, it's something that, again, the work reflected back to me, inform me what it was about.
Speaker 1:I never set out to make work that was going to tell the story of transformation. You know that that that I've been through. That was never my, my mission, but I do remember the day where, and, and you or someone looking at my work and now knowing my story, would have been like, really, dude, you didn't connect these two dots, like, and the answer is no, I didn't. It took me time to realize, like, that's, that's what I'm doing. So I guess I'm just reinforcing the point of me being emotionally and intellectually stunted, you know, in those ways, but when I realized it really came about, when I started working with trash and when I started working with things that had been discarded and I was journaling as I know you and I both do quite a bit of and I wrote out from discarded to discovery and I was like, oh, that's it. My work, fundamentally, is about transformation. It's about taking something that is or was broken, that's been set aside, that's been dismissed as being trash. You know, people rightfully, you know wrote me off and a lot of people have been written off, you know, as a hopeless case, nothing to be done with this one and again, largely because of my experience, you know, in the recovery community, I've seen so many amazing stories that just bring me to tears of people who have gone from.
Speaker 1:I'm just going to share this story I was talking to this morning. I was talking to somebody at the gym, another friend who's in recovery, and he was telling someone else's story. I'm not going to use any names because I don't actually even know this individual's name, but he's like I actually work with good friends, with a guy. He runs every day 10 miles a day with a 40 pound weight vest, but he runs on the route. He used to be homeless. He was homeless since he was 10 years old, has not had a place to receive mail until he's in his mid twenties. And now he's gotten off the streets and he's gotten sober, but he runs. He runs where he used to, where he used to live, and he now he brings food and money and water and he hands things to you know, like that's freaking powerful man, yeah, like that, that's transformation, yeah, that. That that's what it's all about.
Speaker 1:And I think that you know thinking about somebody who you know was, you know, ignored, right, look to now being somebody who's respectful, who's an example of you know what's possible with discipline, with growth, etc. It's unbelievable, it's so amazing. And so I didn't realize like, oh, I'm taking this garbage, I'm taking this trash amazing. And so I didn't realize like, oh, I'm taking this garbage, I'm taking this trash, and I'm processing the fact that, whatever other people thought about me, setting that aside, but that's what I thought about myself, I had written myself off, I had decided that I wasn't worth living in a way that honored or respected my health or my existence as a whole.
Speaker 1:So to take that and I don't know, we talk about mining the depths of experiences, who knows? But I can't imagine getting to the end range of that. I think that's a thing that's going to be explored with. Everything that I'm doing going forward is giving that material, giving that garbage a voice, giving it a new, a new story to tell, different than oh, I'm, I'm, I'm nothing, I'm not important. I am to be dismissed and shoved aside, the way that I once treated my emotions and and still do when I'm not in a, in a good place.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and just to reiterate this to everybody listening, you know we didn't, we didn't set out in this episode to go. You know we're going to talk about trauma and healing and you know, and all in our stories and things, it was the fact that we both just got absolutely floored by Louise Bourgeois and her voice and her quotes and her work and it tied into Nathan and I and our story so well that it was just it was a great marriage of an artist to talk to and I think you know there's so many corollaries between all the things that she has said and everything that we're talking about and you talking about, you know, using the discarded and bringing it to the table. And you know, I think that's why, with all of my sculpting, I use found objects for pretty much anything that I sculpt. When I'm working three-dimensional, they're all found objects and I think it's that mindset of you know there was a time where I felt like I was just tossed aside at the hands of somebody else and so being able to put that in, create something out of it, and having seen my journey going from something that was so broken and so just in shambles to actually growing up out of that into the something and a lot of my work, which, in a conversation with our friend Moxa from Spain here this last week he was like all your work seems to go up.
Speaker 2:Your compositions are all going up, and even in sculptures there are things sprouting or blooming and going up, and I had never thought of that before, it hasn't even crossed my mind. So, like you said, we're working and we're making things, and then these themes and these meanings can present themselves either in our own thinking, but there's sometimes where the audience is even feeding you things that you hadn't even thought about, that may have been happening in your subconscious, and so I think that putting discarded pieces together and growing into something that became something out of it is powerful for me, and I think that also goes into your next quote that you have here for me, and I think that also goes into your, your next quote that you have here, all right.
Speaker 1:So I had to. I had to dig a little bit here while you were, while you were talking, because there's a quote that I came across as I was preparing for our conversation that I I didn't include. I mean, let it just go, look, go go Google, you know quote and you're, I mean you'll, you'll be blown away by how many. And there's a. There's more than a couple that deserve a place on your studio wall. But this one to what you just said, ty, really struck me as well. She said horizontality. How do you say that? Horizontality, horizontality, sure, let's go with that.
Speaker 2:Let's do it, let's roll with it.
Speaker 1:Horizontality is the desire to give up to sleep. Verticality is an attempt to escape. Hanging and floating are states of ambivalence.
Speaker 2:Whoa, whoa.
Speaker 1:Whoa Damn, and I did become aware of this fairly recently.
Speaker 2:I got my emotions going pretty serious right there.
Speaker 1:I thought it might Wow, because this is something that I'll let you process, that I'll share, and this unloosed something for me as well. I did become aware of this fairly recently that almost all of my work has an element of reaching of, of reaching of, of stretching. There's almost always a vertical component to it. In fact, this is another piece, this is one that that has a little bit of both, but to me it is a, it is a reaching out. You know my, my faith, my spiritual practice is a big part of my life and a big part of my work, and for me that verticality is. It's an attempt to escape, but it's also an attempt to connect with the source, with a much deeper well of peace of mind and serenity than I am capable of generating on my own, by a magnitude of infinity.
Speaker 1:you know, yeah, I just wanted I, I thought about including that, and then when you, when you said that just now, I, I, I had to. So, now that you've had a moment to collect your, how does that, how does that hit you?
Speaker 2:I mean it's funny because you know I'm pretty numb to talking about my trauma. You know, these days after you've, you know you talk about it, talk about it and it doesn't hit you like the first few times you talk about it. You know, uh, but there there are times that things just I mean that quote really, yeah, really struck me, yeah, really struck me. Um, yeah, interesting that I'm so emotional right now. But I think there's things that there are moments in the past, you know, researching louise, where I've just been really moved deeply, yeah, uh, by her work, by her voice. When I hear her voice I get really emotionally moved. Yeah, by her.
Speaker 2:She's just an, she's an individual that I gosh, I wish I would have had the ability to sit with her, you know, would she have given me the time? I don't know, she was talking about somebody that's focused on making their work. Yeah, I don't know, I mean it really really hit me. And I think too, being at the end of a residency with, you know, former students or mentees in my program, that I've grown really close to personally and and having just the wisdom and the voice of somebody like like Moxa, speaking to your work and the things that he's seen and that they're seeing and that they're being moved, and you didn't expect them to be moved the way they've been moved by seeing your work in person and, vice versa, me not expecting to be as moved as I have seen their work. And you know, I think that was that quote was a culmination of a lot of things that have hit you know. Uh, so I'm excited to really dive into that one this week later.
Speaker 1:Let's, um, let's bring this conversation home with one, maybe, maybe two more.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've got a couple in the queue here.
Speaker 1:Is there one in particular that you wanted to go for it? Well, it's funny. So, as you were talking, I was like I would have. I would have loved to have asked her like will you be my art mom? And it's one thing to ask for a mentor. Asked her like will you be my art mom? Yeah, it's one thing to ask for a mentor, but will you be my art mom? Yeah, just like. Yeah, to have been in her presence and even, just you know, absorb her energy would have been yeah.
Speaker 2:I don't know how that would have worked, because I think you would have ended up moving things around all the time for instead of because I know watching Jerry, her assistant in the film. I'm sure that was a pretty symbiotic relationship that very few would be able to have because her drive was so heavy that I can only imagine 10, 12 hours a day, Jerry's moving marble and steel and rocks around and I don't know how much mentoring or mothering there would be space for. That's fair.
Speaker 1:But we can dream about it. You can dream about it, yeah, yeah, yeah, you can dream about it.
Speaker 1:So yeah, so I'll read this one. She said my mother was a restorer. She repaired broken things. I don't do that. I destroy things. I cannot go the straight line. I must destroy, rebuild, destroy again. My rhythm is not the same. My mother moved in a straight line. I go from one extreme to another. I'll take first crack at this one, because of the ones we've discussed today, this is the one I probably spent the most time thinking about, because it's taken me a while to and I don't fully understand it. I don't know if I ever will, and I'm okay with that.
Speaker 1:But why it is that I feel so compelled to destroy things, to pull out the essence of what I find important, to reflect back and share, reflect back and share. It's a brutal process what I put material through. I try not to personify these inanimate objects and material, but sometimes I do, and I think it's because of the past experience and the implied meaning that gets imbued in the material as I'm working with it. But I almost don't know how to work with the surface or how to work with the material until it's been degraded or damaged. I'm so just infatuated and attracted to that sort of wabi-sabi idea of know, idea of the beauty that is found as things degrade and rot and fall apart. You know over time that whether it's already happened in that material before it got to me, or whether it's, you know what I put it through that destructive process to then again break it down to just I've got this insatiable curiosity, like I just want to. I just want to burn it, melt it, carve it, rip it like what's inside there, and and that again is, is um. Again I've come to understand, didn't go into it this way, but came to realize that that's, you know, a big part of what I'm trying the, the mystery that I'm trying to unravel, as well as like what's in here, how did it get there and what do I do with it?
Speaker 1:Going forward, all right, now I've uncovered something, a material, a feeling. What do I do with it? You know how do I? Let's just keep it in the art material space for the moment. How do I take this thing that is very different than what it was when it was pristine and perfect and had factory edges on the shelf and looked almost exactly like all of its neighbors? Now that it doesn't, now that it is this thing that is unique to itself and is more interesting because of the damage. It's more useful. It's more to me important because of the scars, because of those things, that, again, the hell that we it didn't want to go through, but is way better because of that process. That, for me, is the riddle that I love attempting to unravel, with full knowledge that I may never get to the end. In fact, I'm a little afraid of what would happen if I did.
Speaker 2:Well.
Speaker 1:I mean that's.
Speaker 2:Kintsugi, that is the Japanese art of Kintsugi, and you know, treating something that is broken and repairing the history of the object rather than something to disguise it. Right, because so many times when something breaks, people try to glue it together to where you don't see the cracks. Yeah Right, no-transcript.
Speaker 1:I'm not sure if I've ever shared this with you. It's like one of three things that I would grab from the house if it was on fire apart from the human beings and of course, you know, leo, I'd take you too. Buddy, he's like whatever dude. Apart from the living things in my home, it's one of the three objects that I would run back into the house on fire to grab, and it's this dish. It's the china that my mom had grown up, so that in and of itself, has meaning to me, because, you know, for the important meals we'd pull out this, this particular set of China, and it's a plate that broke while, um, uh, my daughters were at grandma's house, and I don't remember the timing of it, but I had, I had shared this concept of, of of Kintsugi with, with Ella, with our youngest, and, and she just had this idea. She's like I want to make that with this broken, you know, plate, I want to make that for dad for his birthday, and so she got this, this adhesive, and then she painted the seams all gold.
Speaker 1:It's the most it's the, it is, it's like cause it touches on my, you know, my mom, my daughter it's. It means so much. And again to your point, and great, that's a great example. I'm glad you brought that up. But so much more interesting and so much more important because it was broken and of how it was repaired.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I want to.
Speaker 2:I want to add something real quick to that quote because, you know, because she talks about being the destroyer of things and obviously in that quote there's insane respect for her mother that she loved dearly, that got sick with the Spanish flu when she was young and died young. And thinking about, I want to talk about the spiders, her spider sculptures. Yeah, because she says you know, I repair broken things and there's times she talks about making things that are ugly and things like that, but to her they're beautiful and the spider right. Most people hate spiders, hate them, right. You don't, you want to. People want to kill the spider. People want to get rid of it, have animal. You know spiders are bad, but she felt completely opposite.
Speaker 2:And the reason she makes the spiders because they're her mom. Yeah, the spiders represent her mom, they're love letters to her mom who was clever and friendly. She says spiders are clever, they're friendly. Why are they friendly? Because they eat mosquitoes and mosquitoes bring disease. They're friendly. Why are they friendly? Because they eat mosquitoes and mosquitoes bring disease. So she also sees spiders protector. Yeah, so you think of walking under the spider right and the sculpture that's a form of protection as you walk under any of her spider sculptures. It's a form of protection as well, and I don't know. I just thought that was so cool because I'd never known that about the spiders and that reference. And here you know, she respects her mom and loves her so much and she goes from one extreme to the other. She says when she creates, but thinking of, we think of the spider as destructive, but she thinks of this creature as the ultimate protector and it kins it to her mom. I just love that.
Speaker 1:Well done. I mean, that's a. That's a perfect example and and probably a great way for us to put a bow on on our conversation today. I, but I love, I mean again like I don't know, I, I and I have experienced a couple of the spiders in person. I think I told the story on on that previous episode of just happening upon one on a on a on a run and just being completely blown away, just getting lost in a city I wasn't familiar with. But to the quote. Let's end where we started.
Speaker 1:A work of art doesn't have to be explained. I didn't need that explanation to appreciate and have a reaction and experience a meaningful one with the spider. I had a feeling about it, it touched me. Was it what she was going for? That's not even the right way of saying it. Was it what it represented to her? Not exactly, and that's okay. That's okay and in some ways maybe almost better, right the fact that it is open to interpretation. That's art, baby, it's subjective. You're going to like what you like. You're going to not like what you like. You're going to read into it and experience what you're experiencing, and I guess I just assume that most people do this. I think I'm just going to say this out loud regardless. I'm hoping that when I know that you do. But when a person goes to experience art in person, I'm guessing that everybody who's listening takes in the work first, before they read the card.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I do both generally, but I never read the card first because I don't want to be influenced by the meaning. It's like reading the last page of a book, exactly.
Speaker 2:Sorry, that was a jab at my sister. Okay, love you, jill, but yeah.
Speaker 1:It's a great way to build a podcast audience is just make individual jabs.
Speaker 2:Is make fun of people.
Speaker 1:One listener who may or may not actually be listening.
Speaker 2:Good stuff. I have something I want to read to close this out, if you don't mind, please. Yeah, this. I have something I want to read to close this out, if you don't mind, please. Yeah, this is something I wrote, I think, right after that series of art that I talk about in this. I wrote a blog post, and so I think this is a good way. This is a good way. It's short two sentences but I think it's really good Not to toot my own horn at all. I think it's right. It's something that moved me that I wrote.
Speaker 2:Whether it moves you or not is to be to be seen, but it says art is life, art is breath, art is story, art is observation, art is saying the things that others cannot say. Art is voice. So live, breathe and create.
Speaker 1:Art is all of those things and anything else that you want it to be.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:It's all forget. It's all of the above, and yeah, you know, don't forget, just make art period.
Speaker 1:That's it. I mean and and and experience art and um, and that's really. I guess I mean that's really what we, what we set out to do. I mean, there's plenty of great art podcasts that most of our listeners are probably listening to as well. We consume a bunch of other great art podcasts out there.
Speaker 1:What we were hoping to introduce as a conversation and hopefully today's episode was an example of that is just, if you are in the game of expressing yourself in any creative way, ie if you're a human being who's still taking up space and oxygen and have a way of expressing yourself, there's value to not just taking in a lot of art in all its many forms, but to also trying to get in the heads and hearts a little bit of the people who have made work that influences you personally, and there's never been a better time in history to have all of this information at your fingertips, most of which is for free or virtually free.
Speaker 1:So that would be our, if there's a tangible takeaway, to kind of throw your way as we kind of close it's like, just get curious about what we can learn from the people that have come before us and, to the extent that you're currently capable consider how, being radically vulnerable, as it's appropriate for you for where you're at right now. But sharing your story can impact others and also, in the process, can be reflected back to you in a healing and restorative way. It's incredibly powerful and it can't be underestimated.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Find us on Instagram Nathan Turborg on instagram and ty nathan clark on instagram. You can listen to us on spotify, on apple podcast. Anywhere you podcast, you'll find it, and for all the back episodes, they're all listed on there, from season one and season two. And please, find us on youtube. You can see our faces and you can see all the things we talk about, because we do put up video and images of the work, our shows, the artists we're talking about their work, et cetera. And hope you have an incredible studio week. Get to work. The end.
Speaker 1:Come on, come on, give that man his flowers, give that man his flowers, give that man his balloons.