ArtStorming
Ever wonder what makes really creative people tick? Where do their ideas come from? What keeps them energized? What kinds of things get in their way? In each episode of ArtStorming, we’ll explore how new ideas come to life, and how the most creative among us stare down a blank canvas or reach into the void and create something new.
Host Lili Pierrepont takes us on a journey of discovery; inviting us to ponder what drives and sustains the creative spark within each individual.
With great appreciation for music written and performed by John Cruickshank.
ArtStorming
ArtStorming the City Different: Carla Caletti
Step into the vibrant world of Carla Caletti , where we explore the fusion of nature, ancestry, and artistic expression. Carla shares how the Santa Fe River, with its lush landscapes, inspires her sculptures and gives voice to ancestral connections that shape her work. As she discusses her unique materials and creative process, she dives into the significance of recycled items, transforming them into beautiful figures that embody stories of resilience and identity.
Music for ArtStorming the City Different was written and performed by John Cruikshank.
Ever wonder what makes really creative people tick? Where do their ideas come from? What keeps them energized? What kinds of things get in their way? Is their life really as much fun as it looks from the outside?
Speaker 1:Hello, I'm your host, lili Pierpont, and this is ArtStorming, a podcast about how new ideas come to life and become paintings, sculptures, plays or poems, performances or collections. Each episode I'll chat with a guest from the arts community and explore how the most creative among us stare down a blank canvas or reach into the void and create something new. Today we're trying something a little different. My next guest, carla Colletti, approached me after hearing a few of the art-storming episodes of her fellow artist friends. She'd been asked to do a show at El Zaguan Gallery at the Historic Santa Fe Foundation, and was also asked to do an artist talk. She asked me if I'd be willing to partner with her for that talk, so that it was more of a dialogue rather than a straight up talk. I thought, sure, why not, and let's maybe make it a live podcast. So the gallery was game and we decided to give it a whirl. But here's a crazy side note I think it was the day before I was supposed to go in and do a little dress rehearsal for the mic setup and I got a like on one of my art storming posts from another art podcast that I'd never heard of before, called Art and the Raw, and it was in Santa Fe.
Speaker 1:I had no idea there was another active podcast in Santa Fe. In looking into it, I discovered that it had been airing for almost three years. I reached out and sent a private message to the sender thanking them, introduced myself and suggested that we should meet. Well, I couldn't have been more surprised to discover that the podcaster was the manager of Elza Guan Gallery, ann Kelly, with whom I'd be coordinating the artist talk for Carla. Wait what? Why had I been invited to do the podcast with Carla when Ann was right there? Well, it turns out that Carla hadn't known either that Anne had the podcast until after she asked me to do it. So talk about gracious. Anne Kelly was so lovely about it all and made what could have been an awkward situation an incredibly sweet experience. So before I move on to the conversation with Carla, I just want to give a shout out to Anne Kelly and her podcast, art in the Raw, available on YouTube. Check it out. So back to Carla. Here is the taped version of the live conversation I had with Carla at El Zaguan.
Speaker 2:All right, I'd like to thank everybody for joining us today at El Zaguan, which is owned and operated by the Historic Santa Fe Foundation, a 501c3 nonprofit. I'm the gallery manager here at El Zeguan, ann Kelly, and if I didn't thank everybody for joining us already, I'm going to do it again. We really appreciate you. Today, we're going to be hosting a conversation between artist Carla Coletti, whose beautiful work is gracing our gallery right now, and she will be in conversation with Lili Pierpont, the podcast host of ArtStorming. The podcast host of ArtStorming. Thanks for joining us, and if anybody here is interested in purchasing any of the pieces from our current exhibition, you can speak to either Carla or myself after the talk today and we are a nonprofit as I mentioned.
Speaker 2:So all of the proceeds from all of our art sales go to the artists that we're showing, as well as the foundation, and we also, if anybody is looking for any Valentine's Day gifts, that is coming up next Friday. We do have some chocolate from Kakao out there in the gift shop, so I'm just going gonna plan that and everybody's for now, yeah, oh, and I should also mention that um Lily is recording this conversation so you'll be able to listen to it later on her podcast once it's all edited. So thanks again and I'm going to turn it over.
Speaker 1:Great. I feel like we should add that there will be a Q&A at the end. First of all, can everybody hear me without the mic? Okay, that's great. We'll talk for about 45 minutes and then at the end there'll be an opportunity to ask questions. Artstorming has been in circulation for almost a year now. The first season has been interviewing Santa Fe creatives, and Carla fell into that category, of course, and she was also kind enough to approach me at the gallery event that I had for the first 16 artists that I interviewed.
Speaker 1:On this podcast. It's available on all your favorite podcast platforms and it's a little different from some podcast formats in that I will be probing into Carla's creative process, Not so much about the technique that she's using, although we can use the Q&A period for that if you have questions. I'm really trying to understand how all the creatives that I speak to, but today Carla, how she accesses the creative field and what that experience is like for her. So we'll just kind of, this is all shoot from the hip and we haven't prepared any questions. So with that, hi, hi, oh, I'm sorry. Bree is the new puppy. She's the new co-host of ArtStorming. Hopefully you won't hear from her at all, but it's easier than leaving her in the car. She's just a babe hi, carla.
Speaker 4:I want to thank all of you for coming and for Ann Kelly has been an amazing gallery manager through the whole process of the show and I'm very grateful for this opportunity to be here at this historic foundation and I'm so glad that you were open to trying something a little different, because you usually are in the artist's studio, correct? And so this is the first time you've had a live audience.
Speaker 1:It is the first time I've had a live audience, so that's a total experiment. Thank you for being our guinea pigs, but here we go. Here we go. So tell me the inspiration. For before we get started to deeper question, tell us a little bit about what we're seeing on the on the walls around us, because this is a particular collection of work, right, just to contextualize it for people who can't see it.
Speaker 4:This is primarily work from 2024. I work up along the Santa Fe River on an old compound that used to be the Santa Fe Prep School, and adjacent to the river trail is a forest. So I spend a fair amount of time out in nature. Sometimes I'll take the sculptures out with me and we'll sit by the river and I'll photograph myself with them. And on occasion I'll take them into the forest and photograph them and people use the easement and they'll stop and inquire what are you doing?
Speaker 4:I feel like at that point I'm kind of in the witch category.
Speaker 4:I feel like at that point I'm kind of in the witch category, but it's been really engaging to talk to some of the locals who pass through and talk about my work. So it's very much connected to the natural world and part of my experience in the natural world is I'm able to connect to my ancestors, to sort of the invisible spiritual world that I access more easily in nature. So all of that is infused into this work ancestral connections, animism, nature and in addition I'm responding to the world at large. So I may start the work from my own interior landscape, as I call it, but by the time I'm finished. I realize I'm actually responding to a particular event in the world or a population of people that's having a hard time, so it becomes evident to me usually once I've finished the work. But this collection is a lot about protection and care and respect of those that have passed and of, as I say, these populations in the world that may be having a hard time or there's a situation going on I'm responding to.
Speaker 1:So say a little bit more about your ancestors, because we're here in Santa Fe that term is very loaded here when you talk about your ancestors. So say a little bit more about that, and how well loaded, in the sense that we're on ancestral grounds we're living.
Speaker 4:Oh, so I'm talking about my, in particular, my maternal lineage. I connect to a lot in terms of the work they did, my ability to feel close to them. I have conversations with them, are they?
Speaker 1:alive or the conversations are through the ethers.
Speaker 4:They're not alive. So this is my mother, my grandmothers, my great grandmothers For instance, the piece here with the pink skirt, I call that one Flora. My mother's name is Flora and my great grandmother, her grandmother is Flora and her. So this is a homage to them, to honor them. And did you?
Speaker 5:know them growing up.
Speaker 4:Uh, my mother, yes, and my great-grandmother I met as a young girl, but she died shortly after. But they both grew up on some land in northern cal that has been in my family for six generations, and so I situate them there still even though the fire in 2019 ravaged the entire property and it hasn't been rebuilt. So when I say ancestors, I'm just literally my you know my people who have died.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's what most a lot of people do mean when they refer to their ancestors. So I just had a wonderful conversation with two native artists and they they both have slightly different takes on the impact that their ancestors have on their work. So it's wonderful to speak to an Anglo person who also has that. And at my uh last guest, deborah Toffa, her husband is Italian and she was talking about how she took her family to Italy and was feeling a sadness about the fact that, a happiness and a sadness that her children could connect with the land and pick the olives and take them to the same olive grinding place or olive oil place that they'd had for centuries and yet her she had felt ripped from that opportunity herself. So I think the conversation around ancestors is a really poignant one it is.
Speaker 4:And, speaking of the land, so the property that I was referencing, where I work, it's very similar to the property where my grandmother, great-grandmother and then I visited. I didn't grow up on it, so I've been able to return to that same somatic place in myself that as a young girl, I would go down down to the creek, as we called it, and I would sit by the water and I would talk to these inanimate beings. That I felt as a little girl. And so to be on this property the last year working and to return to that period of time it's like everyone was gathering there it's been really extraordinary. I'm not sure I would have accessed this in the same way had I not been on that land working.
Speaker 1:Wow, and so do you draw the colors? I mean, we talked a little bit off mic the other day about the way you use your media. Say a little bit about that and how that connects you with the land.
Speaker 4:Well, not so much. Well, the palette in general is a little softer than I worked in the Bay Area. I used a lot more reds, it was a little more intense. So since I've been here six years, things have softened. That said, I used to be an interior house painter and so I just used whatever leftover paint I had. And, that said, I used to be an interior house painter and so I just used whatever leftover paint I had. And that really has kind of informed my palette.
Speaker 4:Believe it or not, if I have yellow, I'm going to use yellow, but if I'm out of it I just move on to something else. So I don't necessarily think this needs to be a certain color. I just start working with what I have Now. The blue belt on the skirt in the back, I knew that needed to be kind of a bright blue and so I put that on, and then I used a little heat gun to remove some of the blue, so it didn't. So it had a little heat gun to remove some of the blue, so it had a little age to it. But there'll be small points that I define as needing a certain color. But in general I just start working with what I have. I have a lot of. At one time I had a lot of this gold and yellow, but I'm out of that now, so I don't really work, I don't know.
Speaker 4:Well, the other thing I'm noticing is that now, so I don't really work.
Speaker 1:I don't know Well, the other thing I'm noticing is there's a relationship definitely between the figures and the figures in the two-dimensional pieces and you know, sort of that patchwork quality of combining textures. And the other night at the opening you were wearing a fabulous skirt that you had fashioned out of little bits and bobs, so talk about those. A little bit, oh, out of little bits and bobs, so talk about those a little bit.
Speaker 4:Oh yes, bits and bobs, that's about what this is. So I make these sculptural pieces out of all recycled and found materials. They all have a bottle cap face, and that started when I was working along the railroad tracks in Berkeley and I started to find them and they serve as a purpose for me. Now. These figures occupy multiple dimensions in my mind and so not having a specific face affords that mystery for me. So I grew up with a wonderful grandmother who took me to her, the thrift store where she worked every almost every saturday, and I worked there as a young girl, so really early on I I got into um, what now?
Speaker 4:it's so popular to upcycle and recycle, but I would find all these treasures and, you know, show up in junior high the next day with bright red cords and people were like, where did you get those? And I got them at the bargain box thrift store. So I've always been drawn to reusing, and I made the first sculptural piece in 2015 as a sort of a protective guardian for me for something I was going through, and then, a couple years later, I started making them just out of scraps I had collected. I use all different kinds of armatures. This one actually is an upside-down chalice that I found at a thrift store and you told me you use Barbie dolls too.
Speaker 1:We had a conversation about that. A conversation about this is the whole thing the whole.
Speaker 4:Barbie doll yeah, well, the only one in this show that is a barbie doll armature is the one on the far right of the trio. There it was an experiment to refashion.
Speaker 4:I can see her little pointed feet and she does move the arms, go up and down, so she's kind of exciting. But you know this oddly when people ask me well, you know, how did you become an artist? And I didn't grow up with artists. In the family my all the men were engineers we we lived in a rural community but what I did have was Barbie dolls with my friends and we played for hours and hours and hours and hours in grade school and we created worlds and we created ensembles and we gave Barbie these powers and we gave Barbie these powers. So I never, until last year, really made the connection that these are my version of that. I imbue these with superpowers and I make these ensembles. But if I think about the hours that we logged playing Barbies, it was in me and so I feel like that was actually somewhat an inspiration for these.
Speaker 1:Well, so when they go out into the world to collectors, how does that relationship continue?
Speaker 4:Well, I do this fun thing where I ask people if they're comfortable to send me a photo of where they've placed in their home, and so it's just for me, a photo of where they've placed in their home. And so it's just for me. And I have this wonderful collection of images of how people have situated them in their home, next to special things, on shelves in a nicho.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I feel myself compelled to. I would want to do elf on a shelf where, like, I'm taking pictures of it all.
Speaker 4:Yeah yeah, it's like Amelie with the gnome Exactly.
Speaker 2:Actually.
Speaker 4:I want to take one of these traveling when I go to Europe someday and do that just place her in all these different situations, because it's so fun to take them on walks like I say out in nature.
Speaker 2:I'm sure they're very conversational.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and then one day I was coming back down on Upper Canyon Road and I was carrying one of a larger one that's somewhere else and I was just walking back down the road towards my studio and people would go, or hey, hon or there's that witch again or there she is, oh, or what the hell.
Speaker 1:Well, because they sort of do have a voodoo quality. I mean, I what? I know nothing about voodoo culture and I certainly wouldn't want to speak out of turn.
Speaker 4:But they have this. I try not to use those. They do have some powers, I feel, but I do try to stay away from the appropriating Okay, well, no, but it's a natural inclination to associate something.
Speaker 1:Well, sure, I mean in the collective unconscious, and so many cultures use figures and imbue them with qualities and whatever. So I don't know that there's. I don't know where we go with that. It gets kind of difficult. Leave it. They're colorful, they're cool, but do they have names? I haven't had a chance to look at the placards.
Speaker 4:I was naming them specifically. They're gender neutral, I think of them as they mostly. Sometimes they're more female, but I used to name them like a name, a formal name Before you started no everything is named after Paintings, sculptures.
Speaker 4:I don't have any sense of what I'm doing until later, and then I'll force myself to come up with a name. Yeah, so this one is she's yard relic, a wonderful metalsmith's friend of mine. Let me scrounge through her pile in this yellow propane little propane bottle. I couldn't believe she let me have it. So I immediately. She said, oh, let me guess you're going to make a figure out of it. And I immediately saw a form, a body form. So now, whenever I'm moving in the world, I'm always seeing heads, arms um torsos, and they all have a purse that holds certain messages or potency, and and that's fun to make each one a little purse so the form it.
Speaker 1:You just play with the form and then all of a sudden it starts exactly I'll just.
Speaker 4:This actually isn't bad, it's a little mini one. If I had some little scraps right now, I would just start. Well, I'd start whipping around some fabric on here, and I see it in nature. I see it when I'm in urban environments or in shadows, oil spills on the road. I'm rather obsessed. I see forms everywhere.
Speaker 1:So when you're staring at a blank canvas, what happens?
Speaker 4:Oh, it's not blank very long. Say more about that. Well, I immediately will just throw down something after I've primed it and I've added some wax texture. I will just immediately put down. Usually it's on the far right of the canvas.
Speaker 1:Well, actually, most of the figures are on the far right of the canvas.
Speaker 4:I'm not needing to say much about it. But, more importantly, I don't know what to say about it, but I'll just put maybe a bit of paint or a little piece of magazine paper that's been waxed over and painted and that, immediately, is the basis for the form. So it's often the head is usually last, it's usually the chest that I start with and I just start building it.
Speaker 1:And when does the communication start? When the heart center is established. Or Communication, yeah, the communication with the canvas.
Speaker 4:Oh yeah, as soon as I put something down, yeah, yeah. And then I will often scrape away a lot of what I've done because it's too dense and I want it to feel older and more textural. Or I often will go back in and paint over things or add color. But initially it used to be intimidating, but now I just put something down and start because my work is such that I can't really mess it up. In a way, I want to mess it up.
Speaker 1:And when you leave for the day your studio, does it come with you? Do you leave it?
Speaker 4:Oh, I do a new thing which I'm not sure is great, but I take a photo of it and then I'm lying in bed at night going, oh that color's terrible, I have to go back and change that skirt color. So I do work with photos of it so that when I go in the morning I know what I'm going to do.
Speaker 1:Well, you're not unusual in that. I know a lot of artists who will take a photograph of their work and they turn it upside down to see how it works. Yeah, that's right, I've heard people do that.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I don't think there's a wrong way to do it. Oh no, just that I get a little compulsive. It's good to step away and really not work for a while, but, um, I feel like I do work all the time in my. I'm always working, and do you work one piece at a time or do you?
Speaker 1:like? No, I like to work on multiples, and so you're having multiple conversations. I say conversations, you know working, and do you work one piece at a time? Or do you? I like no, I like to work on multiples, and so you're having multiple conversations. I say conversations, you know that's, that's my word, yeah, or is it with a? With a?
Speaker 5:canvas at a time.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think they start having conversations. I'm not aware of a conversation that's interesting, so is it.
Speaker 1:I mean, I've had so many different conversations where the artist is talking about when they get to an impasse with a piece. You know they have to wrestle it to the ground and they get into this like argument with a piece. And I've had artists say they just get totally pissed off, leave the studio and or put it in the next room and say you're banished for the moment and have to move on.
Speaker 4:I mean, so it's so interesting to hear the different relationships, right, well, okay, I'm self-taught and I would say the first 15 years I did that, but in the past 10 years I have more of a confidence and a language. I have a more certainty about what I'm doing. Not that it's needing work or that I might have to deconstruct it, but I don't have those throw downs anymore. Oh yeah. What a great harmonious thing, well, as of right now. Right Gosh, I might have just cursed myself. I better have another drink.
Speaker 1:And how did you decide what scale to work in? Well, because you've got everything from teeny tiny to pretty massive right.
Speaker 4:Well, um, when I left the bay area, I had several four by six canvases that were blank, because I had had them for a year and I was entirely intimidating. It's very difficult for me to scale up, so it's been a practice. I'm more comfortable with it now, but it is easier to work on the scale. There's an immediacy in the scale and the scale and the larger ones are different in that I haven't taken the time to make them as textural or layered as I thought I needed, but as they get larger, I've decided that having some spaciousness is okay.
Speaker 1:Well coming from an architectural painting background. That makes sense to me because you're used to working on on walls right and so you're not. It's not as unintimidating to have a lot of negative space.
Speaker 4:Right, I had never didn't make that good one. Yeah, no, it's what I like about having conversations with people. I always learn more about my work and how people might be seeing it. Yeah, that is true. Yeah, my daughter is here, her, her dad and I did large interior walls together with washes, and you know, if you made a little mistake, it didn't matter because that was part of the texture. So I think that did. And then I went out on my own and did some smaller projects. But yeah, I didn't think that probably did inform that I'm comfortable with space.
Speaker 1:Well, and the gesture I mean, because it's one thing to move your wrist back and forth on a canvas, it's another thing to get your whole.
Speaker 4:I mean these larger canvases require you to use full body motion, which has got to feel a little different than working into. They're hard, yeah, yeah, it's a lot of work and, um, I a lot of times will use a rag, big brushes. Um, I'm not doing a lot of wrist work I you you know I do a lot of scraping.
Speaker 1:I'm really rough with how I apply work, so have you done a wall again since you've started canvases?
Speaker 4:Well, not since we moved out here. Our homes in California always had what's more common here these colorful washed walls. But since I've been here, I like the white walls.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, it would be really fun to see what you would do with a blank wall.
Speaker 4:Well, this is my blank wall for now. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I see some relief underneath the texture. Is that deliberately applied, like some artists will hide a message underneath in the underpainting?
Speaker 4:Yeah, do. This was because this was about the fires in Los Angeles, so this is remnants.
Speaker 1:Architectural remnants yeah, very interesting, and so do you ever hit a bump in the road and you don't know what piece is coming next All the time, and how do you move past that?
Speaker 4:I'm not worried about it anymore, but there's definitely times where a day, a week, a month where I'm like that's it, I don't have any more, I've done it, I have nothing left.
Speaker 1:And then how?
Speaker 4:does that shift? That's a really good question, and what I say to people is I keep showing up to my studio every day, whether it's close to every day as I can, um, I make a mess or just sit there, read something, listen to music, look on my phone, but I'm in my, I'm there.
Speaker 1:And how do you know? I mean, are you there eight hours later and nothing has happened? Or do you sort of give yourself a little time out?
Speaker 4:well, it's not quite that linear. I don't know how to answer that. I might start something and then take a little walk, and the showing up allowing time for nothing to happen and being out in nature are all things that clear my mind.
Speaker 1:Well, I think it's really important. One of the reasons I've been doing this podcast is because I think it's very helpful for people who are non-artists, as well as other artists, just to hear how to, to make it more commonplace to sit in those spaces where nothing's happening, instead of kind of getting freaked out about it or worrying that you know you've painted your last painting and the muse has gone and never going to come back. So I mean just getting more comfortable with that, that space, and knowing what you need to keep feeding it so that changes mean right now being here.
Speaker 4:that's what's helped. But we had the fortune to go to New York City at the end of mid-December and I didn't realize how much I was craving and thirsty for all that stimulation and the culture there. So I mean, if you're able to expose yourself to a different environment for a period of time. I came back and quite quickly Anne said, what about this show? And I'm like, oh, yeah, okay. Well, some of this work fortunately was done, but I just went for it. But I was all jacked up and inspired. So that was really helpful because I was feeling a little bit of a lull prior to that trip. I didn't know it.
Speaker 1:And so, now that you know that, can you see yourself regularly scheduling trips to get a large city buzz? Or can you access that just by closing your eyes and going back to your most recent experience in New York and calling it up that way?
Speaker 4:No, I think it's day by day and it depends on what opportunities come up. I can intend for some things to happen, but I'm pretty excited. I have a lot I do right now wanting make again.
Speaker 1:That's, that's sort of backpiled in your mind in terms of wanting to get it out here more okay, yeah but it's, it's in there and it's wanting to come out, yeah, and I think it's a it's.
Speaker 4:it's going to be a new series. I think it's going to have more of a uh uh, a little more this, as I say as a calmer, this has been really healing work for me being here in New Mexico and doing this work, but I think I'm ready, in part because of what's going on in the world. I feel like I have some things that I want to speak more directly in response to.
Speaker 1:And when you look back at older bodies of your work or older series, can you viscerally imagine yourself in that embodied, older self? Or do you just look at the work and it's like it's been born. It's out there in the world, no longer connected?
Speaker 4:I'm happy about those pieces, but I don't really long for that time because it was hard at the beginning. It was painful. Actually I didn't know what I was doing. I never have taken a formal art course, so I just really was winging it, making up things.
Speaker 1:Do you ever look at a piece and think, damn, that's good.
Speaker 4:And I've also thought I can't believe someone bought that. I mean, I still I feel like a beginner today still and I hope to feel that way when I'm 80 and still painting. So I I don't really have too much judgment, except on occasion when I see something.
Speaker 1:Except every night when you take a picture of it and you're sitting in bed thinking why the hell did I do that?
Speaker 4:Well, that's more just like oh, that color, it's not like the whole painting, well, that's right, I was teasing.
Speaker 1:It's sort of just an artistic critique, really.
Speaker 4:But my work at the beginning it's not so dissimilar to what I'm doing now. It just was a little more defined. I've gotten into really deconstructing the figure making um. A couple of years ago I was doing a lot of like amputated arms and legs, um, some more distortion. I'm kind of bringing bottom parts not here back in a little bit more um. But at the beginning I was only painting women. For a long time I only painted two men, and it was my father and Lucinda's father, and it was just women and they were giant heads with large eyes and for me I was always trying to create agency for myself as a woman and that was what that was about and that was. It went on for about the first 10 years.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's so interesting because I was talking to who I think it was Rose Simpson that went to a talk of hers and she was talking about some of the armless figures that she had and it was very deliberate because she wanted women to be thought of as beings, not doings, and because so much of what we contribute to the world we do with our arms that she just sort of wanted to have a meditation of, you know, the armless, just beings, which I thought is really beautiful. But it's such an interesting that that that shows up in more than one artist's work and that's obviously like a phase, not a phase, but you know something that we a passage that we go through.
Speaker 4:It is, yeah, I mean, I still I don't always put feet, some of them no faces, and that's similarly to what you were just talking about. These, they're more than the face, they're more than the appendages, it's their essence, their being, their beauty, their power.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I feel tempted to ask your daughter a question, but that would be a departure.
Speaker 4:Oh, would that be okay?
Speaker 1:No, it's just really interesting that I mean you were talking about the ancestry and imbuing these figures with autonomy and agency, and obviously it's a beautiful thing to pass on to a daughter, right? I mean, that's what we. I don't have a mother, so my mother has gone for a long, long time, so it's lovely to be able to see that continue. I mean, she's giving it to these figures in the world, but she gave it to you too. I don't want to put you on the spot, but since you're in the room, it goes, it's.
Speaker 3:It's important to me that that you know shows up. Sure I can. It's picking up. I think just being here today and being able to hear you talk so openly about what goes through your mind when you paint and when you make this work is really special for me to see, because I didn't know so much of the ancestors that you talked about at the beginning. But I see that in you and I feel honored that I get to see that in everything that you create. It does feel like an honor really. That's great.
Speaker 1:The maternal lineage and the animals say a little bit about, since they're represented. I mean, I'm assuming they have animal-esque qualities.
Speaker 4:Oh yeah, I'm a big fan of part human, part animal, that mythical language. I went through an early phase when I was going to museums where I was fond of the surrealists.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Leonore.
Speaker 4:Carrington yeah, leonore Carrington. Oh wow, I totally see it. Yeah, so that I was like someone does that, and it was only later that I began to, but it resonated with me. It was something I might have seen in a dream or imagined, so for me they're kind of beings from another world, and that's my favorite place.
Speaker 1:So have you ever worked in writing too? I mean, I ask that because Leonora Carrington, she's such a wonderful writer as well as being a painter.
Speaker 4:Well, I did do a series of poetry books that I sold at City Lights Books in San Francisco handmade chapbooks of poetry, and they were stories that I was making up based on these found black and white photos. So this was before I had started painting. So I think I'm always looking for creating a story that has more relevance for me today, you know, and it's dispelling these familial or cultural limitations. So I have done poetry in that way. Say more about the black and white photographs.
Speaker 4:Well, I would go to thrift stores and you know how they have the boxes of these gorgeous vintage photos. So I would grab handfuls and then I would make a copy of them in these books that I printed and I would prescribe a story that I would weave through the pages of these different families. A lot of them, of women working it reminded me of my mom came from a poor family and the women you know, they all had to work really hard on the land, making their own clothes in the orchard, picking, you know, apples and whatnot. So I would gravitate towards those images At the time. I haven't spoken so openly about the ancestral. I've kept that really to myself until today, but that's partly why I said that. I mean, I don't really necessarily need to speak to that, but it is an important part of my work now and maybe because I'm here where it's more acceptable In San Francisco I probably wouldn't have felt as comfortable using that language.
Speaker 1:Well, I think it's also it may be in part that just as you mature with your work and you become more sort of fluent in what it is, these concepts are that you're playing with.
Speaker 4:Every time I write an artist statement I learn more about what I'm doing, and I've actually replaced this one yesterday because it was already slightly outdated just from being with the work here for the past three weeks coming in. So it's constantly evolving evolving.
Speaker 1:I'm always amazed when an artist can do a series of work and not want to change every piece when they go to the next body of work. Because you know you now you're sort of a new person, you have a new thing that you're wanting to play with, and there was to resist going back and bringing what? What? The new series of work into the old series of work, if it's still hanging around.
Speaker 4:Okay, so this one was hanging around. I couldn't believe it, so I did decide to make a change to it. It originally only had two figures. The middle was um empty space and it always bothered me and increasingly I felt like there's not a connection between the two figures on the right and left. So for this show I added that middle. I think after Anne came to do a gallery visit, I snuck that lady in there. But now I'm happy with them. They're like a little clan. So if I do have a piece laying around too long, I paint over it. I don't keep work like a lot of artists do. If it doesn't sell and it's with me for two years, it's a new painting.
Speaker 1:It's fair game and I'm noting that twos and threes is sort of an important thing for you.
Speaker 4:Increasingly, I'm coming out of my solitary phase. I think that's why that one was important to me, because I did singular figures for a long time and are the three-dimensional figures?
Speaker 1:are those just grouped in threes and twos by coincidence, or do you see them as triptych-type pieces?
Speaker 4:I love when they're all together. So any combination. I think we did that just because, like in a curatorial sense, it worked to have the groupings they do like to be together. I will say that and do you play Barbie with them. Yeah, she's a little lowly over here on the right.
Speaker 1:She's really quite fabulous, and I mean you said that, you. I mean, do you create a context for them as well, like you used to in the Barbie days, or are they just more separate figures imbued with their own?
Speaker 4:I really do them quickly and I'm not a formal seamstress I whip, stitch, and so I'll just start whipping around things and adding, and then, if they're sitting for a week, I'm like, oh, she needs this trim on the skirt or her beads, or what is going on here. Oh, this purse needs fringe, oh. And so I listen to a lot of world music, or music from all around the world when I'm making these, and so I think that is influencing some of them culturally, but they really just kind of make themselves in some ways. I don't think about it too much until, like the paintings, towards the end I'm like, oh, those beads don't work, something like that, wow because they really are.
Speaker 1:When I think of it again, I can't get this Barbie thing out of my head because I'm just thinking of, like the Barbie dream house and these look so great with your paintings. I mean, pick any one of these up, that's a painting, right?
Speaker 4:so they almost need to go together a little show, yeah so if you buy a page, I will give you a little discount on a figure, just like. Look what happens. I'm getting away from the mic too, but you know it's like when they're super like the shadow of this.
Speaker 1:It's like a little diorama. Didn't you want me to insert myself in your work?
Speaker 4:Yes. I actually love that. When you said the shadow and, as a matter of fact, this figure, that's marvelous. It is marvelous. Okay, well, we'll see what happens.
Speaker 1:Well, we've gone about 45, so should we open it up for some Q&A. Are there questions? Because if not, I'll just keep asking the questions.
Speaker 3:I've got a question, oh good, great, continuing on what we're talking about. My name is Vivian and just seeing your doll up against your painting, have you thought about actually doing more three-dimensional with your paintings by applying one of your dolls onto it?
Speaker 4:I did. I did one day try that and I was uncomfortable with that texture for some reason that I don't know yet, so I may try it. I think, making the for the recycle art fair, I made a giant skirt and the whole ensemble was out of recycled fabrics and I think that was essentially my know, my large version of these, and I'd like to do more of that like large ensembles, more like Nick Cave's sound suits. That's my hero, nick Cave.
Speaker 4:I can't believe you know Nick Cave sound suits. He has some right now in Chicago made out of ice and he just posted them and he said hurry and come see these because they're gonna melt. Oh yeah, oh, how cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and they're, they're deconstructing yeah, so he had a show at the Guggenheim last year. I think it was that I saw. And I also saw in Chicago the retrospective. I didn't see the Chicago show, I saw the one that was at what's the school? It's Stanford.
Speaker 5:University.
Speaker 1:He had a show at the Stanford Museum a few years back.
Speaker 4:If you want to look him up, nick Cave, not the musician. A lot of times I'll say Nick Cave and people are like, oh, dark clothes, Nick Cave the musician. I'll say Nick Cave and people are like, oh, dark clothes, nick Cave the musician. He's an extraordinary artist out of Chicago and he has an entire warehouse. Imagine this, eight feet tall. Yes, that's what I want to do. I don't know how to translate it. I mean, it's been taking me years to translate just to four by six with the paintings. But I think, vivian to your I. I think not so much in the paintings, but I want these to be big a room. Oh, and is martha here? Yeah, so a woman I met at the opening named martha. She said what about if you made an ensemble that resembled the figure of each painting and you had them shown with the paintings, and it would be like a fashion show. People would be walking through.
Speaker 4:And then I would have my music.
Speaker 1:Well, that's my Barbie dream house.
Speaker 4:It's all back to Barbie, really.
Speaker 1:But it would be a fabulous runway, isn't that?
Speaker 4:I know Because being in the fashion show at the Recycle Art Fair. Have any of you been to the Recycle Art Fair? It is so fun and it was so fun to embody this and walk down and be wearing it, so I'm really excited about the scale, but the armature I'm not a natural with metal or wood, so I'll have to figure out how to get that Mannequins baby oh yeah, big.
Speaker 1:Barbies right, that's what they all need.
Speaker 4:Oh gosh, where do you find them now? We used to get them out of the garbage in. San Francisco, but large-scale mannequins, that's, you know, life-size mannequins. I mean, we'll get back to that. I do have a seamstress bust full-size in my studio that I built, the piece I made for the Recycle Art Fair, and I'm about ready to start another one, but I could see these taking a year to do each one. Sure, yeah, good question, though. Thank you for asking Any other questions.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, what is the?
Speaker 5:relationship between your backgrounds and your dreams.
Speaker 1:Ooh, I'm going to repeat the question so that my other listeners what's the relationship between the background and your dreams?
Speaker 4:I think it has to do more with my waking life. I haven't dreamt much for many years. I used to as a younger person. So my literal dreams, unless I'm just not remembering, and it comes through. They're very dreamlike, some of the backgrounds. I think that's more how I perceive one aspect of the world in the waking life.
Speaker 3:Thank you.
Speaker 1:Say a little bit more about that.
Speaker 5:I mean you talked about?
Speaker 1:I mean, I know you talked earlier about the fires here, so that was definitely part of your waking experience. And then earlier you mentioned people who were impacted by the world, and so how would something like that and not to put you on the spot there, just like if there is something that jumps out at you how would something like that, and not to put you on the spot they're, just like if there is something that jumps out at you, how would something is? It is?
Speaker 1:there a landscape that I mean I see some what could be construed as a horizon line. You know that almost looks like dividing water and land, but I understand the question. It's really interesting because they do have a very kind of dreamlike quality they don't always have a ground that they're standing on. They're kind of floating in space.
Speaker 4:Right? Well, they're abstract figures in an abstracted landscape. They're not necessarily tethered to their physical ground. Here I'm increasingly removing. In fact, most of them don't have feet, right? Oh yeah, no, that's not true. The one in the back with those fancy pants has shoes oh, are those still good? And here this flora piece has shoes, but they're very small. But that's part of it. For me the work is not entirely dreamlike, but it's not entirely here, but it's very visible to me as something in present time here, so it's the in-between space.
Speaker 4:Yeah, liminal space. I used to use that before, it was hip and now I don't like to say it as much. But the work really is about the liminal space and the qualities of transport through that. The piece in the back, maybe to answer the question more specifically, it's called well, the Space Between, it's called well, the space between, and that is a new piece that is for me, speaking to our desire to connect and the space between that keeps us from doing that for various reasons. Um, and the one figure on the left has the wing, so there's like connecting to a mythical world. The figure on the right is reaching out, so that's an example of how it might be responding to the world.
Speaker 1:So let's stay with that piece for a minute. So just with that piece. It seems like you're trying to express something. You know that somebody tried to reach out another figure who has sort of an ethereal quality. You mentioned a wing Like is that something that you were grappling with emotionally? And then you just put it on purpose?
Speaker 4:Oh, no, not at all. So this is all I'm basically coming up with it now, almost um, no, really I don't. They just come about and, as I'm looking at it and I have thought a little bit about what it meant, um, and that's how I got the title, but no, it's not something I'm ever conscious of. These figures come about and then I assign some type of narrative for them for the sake of showing work and selling it.
Speaker 1:So if the convention wasn't to name it and the convention wasn't to talk about it so that somebody else would get it, you wouldn't need to have made up all that stuff you just said well, I didn't make it up.
Speaker 4:Well, I mean, I mean I, I well, let me reframe that. I think there's sincerity in it, but it it's not really as important as the peace.
Speaker 1:Well, that's what I meant to say was that the peace lives for you as it is, doesn't require an explanation, it comes through you, it happens Increasingly.
Speaker 4:I find the titles difficult. I used to love naming them and now I really struggle with it Because it narrows the meaning of it for me.
Speaker 1:Totally got it.
Speaker 4:And, as a matter of fact, I think maybe even the viewer. Now, what are some of these called Conjuring?
Speaker 1:Conjuring, conjuring Displaced Boat woman.
Speaker 4:Well, displaced is literal. I mean, I'm thinking and seeing, hearing about displacement all the time and feeling for that, all the time and feeling for that. So after I saw him in this state, this figure, I just knew that's what it was. So that one was a little easier, and both of them, that was also easier. These two I had taken one of the sculptures I make these boats out of bark in my studio and then I'll put dried flowers in them and I will take them to the Santa and sending them down with a prayer.
Speaker 4:And I usually take one of these to stand by. And as soon as I got back after doing multiple boat launches, I just went in and made this piece and I'm like she's the boat maker. Did I say boat woman, boat woman? Oh, I think I meant boat maker, but either way, she's about boats. But so that was infused. I was like, oh yeah, I'm a boat maker, I just went and did that and this was sort of an inspiration. So was she a self-portrait? Not at all. She just was part of the group but I hadn't made her yet cool. Well, any last questions or comments. They're so beautiful.
Speaker 1:I just have to say that first comment is that they are so beautiful make sure that gets on the podcast.
Speaker 5:They are so beautiful, oh make sure that, oh yes, and I work with wax and I know how hard it is and you say you're untrained, but you, you master, I think, the ability to use that um technique and so um that ability to layer and take away right.
Speaker 5:And then one more comment I love, I love is I'm here on Wednesdays with Ann and she came back from your studio visit and she was also just and she said that your floors in your studio are an art piece. Yeah, and if only we could have those floors in your house.
Speaker 4:Well, I can't claim all the credit for those, so the property is very old and there's been multiple artists in that space. But it's partly why I love being there, because it has all that history and layers and texture You've added to it for sure, Thank you. Thank you guys so much for coming and being such a great audience. Yeah, thank you guys so much for coming and being such a great audience.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thank you. Anything else?
Speaker 4:and if anyone wants to talk with me about a specific piece, I'll hang around for a little bit. Feel free to.
Speaker 1:All right, that's a wrap. Well, thanks for joining us today. Please like and follow us on artstormingorg, where you'll find a list of our shows, a transcript of this episode with links to the guest page, as well as our other projects. Artstorming is brought to you and supported by ArtBridge and listeners like you. Look for us on your favorite podcast platforms.
