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: Matthew Chase- Daniel
Matthew Chase Daniel shares the journey of Axle Contemporary, a mobile art gallery housed in a renovated 1970s delivery truck that brings artistic experiences directly to communities across the Southwest. For fifteen years, this innovative platform has broken down barriers between high art and everyday people by parking outside grocery stores, appearing at flea markets, and traveling to rural areas typically overlooked by traditional galleries.
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? 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.
Speaker 1:Today, I'll be art-storming with Matthew Chase Daniel, and it almost happened by accident. I had Matthew on my list of potential guests, but what sealed the deal and made the interview actually happen when it did is a perfect Santa Fe story. Now, santa Fe is big enough that you can go for years without seeing someone you know quite well, even when you're in the same general circles. And maybe it's because Santa Fe art Circle is so huge, or maybe the people I know are just on different schedules and they're pulling into Trader Joe's just as I'm pulling out. But today was one of those small world Santa Fe encounters. I was picking up a prescription. The line was really long and I noticed that Matthew was several people ahead of me. Now, I wasn't trying to jump in line or anything, but the point is there was plenty of time to say hello.
Speaker 1:I usually see Matthew at events, and it's often across the room, and he's often engaged with a visitor to his gallery, which you'll hear about shortly, so I rarely get a chance to chat with him in depth. Anyway, we started the usual catch-up banter and then I remembered that I had heard or seen that he had a radio show, and I asked him if that was still going Well. The time passed very quickly, we each had our prescriptions and walked our conversation out to the parking lot. Naturally, I asked him if he'd consider being a guest on ArtStorming and he said sure. And when we started to do the calendar thing, he said, well, I'm free now. And I said now well, I guess I'm actually free now too. So this is what that now turned into. So I'm here with Matthew, chase Daniel.
Speaker 2:Everyone's got a podcast.
Speaker 1:now they say it's a new thing. So as an introduction I'll just say that the last time you were here at this house probably sitting in that chair- we were doing another project together, which was through Axel, which I'm going to make you talk about.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And it was with an artist, stephen Osher, and we created this like trippy thing inside.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was called Iris and you went in through the back and there was a tiny room made out of mirrors with this ball, glowing ball in the center that flashed incredibly bright light in different colors. So you get closed up in there A component to it, where the floor was vibrating.
Speaker 1:So it's a sensory experience and so the people had a two minute experience. We stopped experience and it would do so that people had a two minute experience. We strapped.
Speaker 2:They had to sign a release in case they died in there and we monitored their brain activity.
Speaker 1:And then we had this little what do you call it? What did I call it? Like a little breakout session. Afterwards, I had used these blow up chairs when we were in the rail yard.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, that was wonderful and a little space there and talked about the experience. Yeah, and the flashing light experience. It's sort of like a psychedelic experience and sort of like a meditative experience. It really changes your sort of psychological reality for a little while and maybe for a long time, and Stephen continued to do research and work with that sort of stuff um he and I work together.
Speaker 2:Um, the lena wall is a thing I curate on the corner of lena street and second street, which is where steven's studio is, so, um, so we were involved in that because he's engaged in that and very supportive of that. When we have opening events and artist talks and stuff that all happens in his studio.
Speaker 1:Which is a great space.
Speaker 2:Yeah, which used to be Cloud Cliff Cafe restaurant the bakery is still in the back, but the front, what used to be where people would sit and eat, which my wife Julie worked in when we first moved here 35 years ago, is now Steven's studio, and Stephen has a show up now at G2 Gallery on Chipsy Alley on Kenyon Road. Yeah, but it's up to the middle of this month, middle of February.
Speaker 1:Check it out, me too. I just want to insert here, because it's just so much fun, that the way this is even happening is that we were standing in line at Walgreens waiting for prescriptions and we bumped into each other, and that's the cool thing about Santa Fe is, you know, you can just be going about your day and these, this, this wonderful overlap of people, all come together and we all actually live here in addition to doing all our various artistic endeavors.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Pedantic things like go pick up prescriptions at Walgreens.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And then we get something spontaneous like this to happen.
Speaker 2:And they did it fast for me at Walgreens. They didn't have it filled and they said, oh, you have to come back in four hours. And I said can't you just do it now? And five minutes later it's done.
Speaker 1:I see Small town.
Speaker 2:Ho, small town, not know is a mobile art space gallery in an old 1970 aluminum delivery truck which has raised ceilings and lighting and windows, and my friend jerry wellman and I have been running that since 2010, so that's 14th. We're in our 15th year, I guess. And uh, we mobile gallery. It's a mobile gallery. Um, sometimes we have like group shows, mostly in in the summer, works on the wall, works for sale around different themes. Sometimes we have installation art. There's nothing for sale. You just look in the back. Those are more in the cold weather so we're not sitting in there. During COVID shutdown we started doing printed wheat-pasted art on the exterior, so it was a COVID-safe thing. People could walk by or drive by.
Speaker 1:Like a la JR.
Speaker 2:Yeah, or any wheat-paste street art kind of thing. So each artist who does it designs work to use the space. It's usually not just like a rectangle of print of a painting or a photograph stuck on the outside. It's on all four sides and between the windows and on the doors and wrapped it's a whole wrap thing and we print those and glue those up. The artist just does the design work. So we did that during COVID in 2020, 2021, but we really liked it so we keep doing that. So those are sort of our three things the outside broadsides work, the installation work and then the group shows inside.
Speaker 1:And that's a nonprofit organization.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we run it. There's actually two organizational structures there's an LLC that does the day-to-day operations and there's a nonprofit that does the grant writing and the fundraising and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:You often park in a central location at the rail yard or something, but you can take it around to various different sites, so it's genuinely mobile.
Speaker 2:It's very mobile. Yeah, and it's right. So if there's an exciting event happening we can be there, if we're invited or if we want to be there. And then other times we're outside a coffee shop or grocery store or on the plaza or on Canyon Road, all over town, down by the Genevieve Chavez swimming pool, and sometimes we take it out of town. So last year, in 24, we did two big projects. One was on the Navajo Nation and we were in Utah, Arizona and New Mexico during the month of June going to different places with Diné artist Rafael Begay and that was sort of a social engagement interactive project and there was photography on the outside and on the inside and he was with us the whole way. And then there was more photos on A-frames, sort of like realtor A-frame signs outside, and we were at flea markets and national parks and art events and different things all around the nation
Speaker 2:which was great. And then in the fall end of August, september, beginning of October, we did the final portion of our traveling portrait thing, where the inside of the gallery is set up as a portrait studio and we take portraits of people and print them right there, give them out for free to the people and then also glue copies on the outside of the truck. So we've, during the last 12 years we've traveled all around New Mexico. Each every two years a different area for a month or two, take pictures of the people in that area. So this last one was in southeastern and south central New Mexico.
Speaker 1:What I love so much about what you do is that it really is. Has you can see the direct community impact.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:In a place where so many arts organizations can be accused of being somewhat elitist, and that you know being supported by donors who then become their audience, you know you guys really are, have a huge and broad reach and you're bringing artwork to attention that might otherwise get overlooked, so you're doing a huge community service, Thank you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think a lot of our larger art organizations really want to do that community engagement and they're a little stuck because there is culturally. It's a little difficult to get people to show up in your fancy museum or gallery and if we just go park outside the grocery store where people are getting groceries, they might just peek in the back and maybe they see it for two seconds and they get a little hit of something that's interesting. But maybe they're more engaged and they come and talk to one of us and we spend an hour having a conversation and they take more time looking and so it's a tricky, useful way of getting people engaged. And we didn't necessarily have a big mission or plan. It sort of evolved that way For us.
Speaker 1:We started at thinking it was kind of a silly, fun idea and let's just do it Because, without thinking it, that's the best way for things to emerge, because then you don't really have this whole projected idea of what it's supposed to be like, whatever right, we didn't have a business plan, we didn't have a big mission, um, we didn't actually think it was a good idea.
Speaker 2:And I think that's a important thing for, you know, young people in the arts, um, and in all sorts of business is, if you have an idea that sounds really stupid, maybe there's a grain of something really great in it. Um, because it's hard to find something that hasn't been overdone. You look on the internet. Now you want to start a mobile art gallery. There's probably hundreds out there, even though you've never heard of it. You thought you invented it. So anything you think of that's not the sort of thing that other people are already doing might be worth exploring.
Speaker 1:Well, how did you and Jerry come to the idea of it in the first place? So you had to get the truck.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It had to be a little bit thought through.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, we're both working artists and I was working on a series of portraits of artists working in their studios series of portraits of artists working in their studios and so I spent a few hours with him while he was making some drawings, taking pictures of him, and we started talking about this. I live out on Las Vegas Highway a little bit and there where they sell firewood and rocks on the side, there was this 1970 International Harvester, big flatbed truck, yellow and red, and I just thought it was the most beautiful thing and I wanted it. For no reason I'm not a person who generally wants to collect a lot of things, but I wanted it. So I was telling Jerry about it and he had a little travel trailer and he was thinking of hanging some little small works of his and parking it somewhere. So he was like, oh, what if we opened an art gallery, you know, bought this International Harvester? So we contacted the owner and it turned out it wasn't the right truck.
Speaker 2:And then we were sort of off and we were looking at airport, um, shuttle, bus things. You know. We wanted something easy to walk into and, um, not too intimidating, and uh, so we settled on step vans cause they have the interior stairs there. It's not too high to get in. Like a flat bed all of that. And uh, then we looked around and we found the truck for sale on Craigslist in Colorado Springs and brought it home and spent a couple months lifting the roof and building the walls inside and then we had a show and people loved it and then we had another show. Now it's been about 200 shows.
Speaker 1:That's so amazing. Did you show your?
Speaker 2:work. We have shown some of our works, but it's never been, I think, that first show. Maybe we both had work, and then also Paula Castillo and Eliza Naranjo-Morris I think it was maybe the four of us. It might have been more you showed Paula's work because that's pretty big Paula's work were drawings or digital drawings. Big Apollo's work were drawings or digital drawings. Sort of related to, but not exactly the same as her sculpture.
Speaker 1:Wow, and so you've been here long enough that you've cultivated all these relationships with artists and as an artist yourself. Were you ever a showing artist?
Speaker 2:here in Santa Fe. I show in a gallery mostly in Los Angeles Craig Kroll Gallery in Santa Monica but I have shown here. Victoria Price used to show my work and Evo Gallery used to show my work, and then I've had pieces in other shows over the years.
Speaker 1:Which side do you like? Being on better, being on the creative?
Speaker 2:side, or the promot, the promoter, promoter side no-transcript, how to say. I wasn't that motivated to make more objects to put out in the world, partly because it was isolation and just like I don't need to make this for who, for what, but partly it was like a huge buying spree, because people were cooped up. Yeah, and a lot of people are like oh my God, I can just stay home and make work all the time. That's great. But for me it was the opposite. I was like I don't need to make anything.
Speaker 2:And it never came back. It used to be. I was sort of driven to it. I had to go out in my studio and go outside and be constantly putting things together, like going on a vacation and lying on the beach in the sun was the worst thing I could imagine. So I'd go on a beach vacation with family or whatever and I'd bring some pliers and some wire and some needle and thread and find things and put them together and make things, you know, while I was there.
Speaker 2:So I have made things since that time, but less driven to and more interested in sort of what I do at Actel and through the other things I'm involved in promoting and helping other people get their work out in the world, because there are tons of people out there who are very excited to make things all the time. Yeah, but they don't necessarily know or everyone always needs help getting it out better and more. So I do my podcast radio show on KTRC Coffee and Culture and I do curate the Lena Wall on 2nd Street and Lena Street and I'm on the Rail Yard Art Committee choosing art, helping choose art for the Rail Yard Park. So stuff like that is gratifying. It's gratifying in a different way, but it feels like a nice service to the community in a way.
Speaker 1:I think a lot of what I talk to about when I'm talking to the artists on this show is like how they access the creative field and what that feels like coming through them as the medium. But you know, there's there's a there's a bigger component to that which is bringing art, you know, going into the field, literally, of artists and bringing that out to the public. So there's another tier of that and it sounds to me like that's really you're finding your satisfaction in that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know, if I go to galleries here in Santa Fe or New York or LA or wherever, I might see a hundred different artists work and there might be one or two, if I'm lucky, that really thrilled me and inspired me. You know most of the art I see. I'm like, oh, after. You know, when I look at art all the time every day, most of you get I get a little jaded, like it's rare that something really stands out and inspires me, and when it does, I'm very excited to help that.
Speaker 1:I can totally get that, because there's a certain, you know, we talk about, like how does the authenticity come through? And I think for me, for a lot of people, because I do see a lot of artwork and I can be pleased by it, you know, but for something to really kind of slap me in the face there's, there's some kind of struggle or something. It doesn't have to be like existential struggle, but there's, you can, I can feel there's something in real time happening, that's, that's extending beyond that particular work so yeah the energy of the artist going into the work, and then it's still going.
Speaker 1:It hasn't just landed.
Speaker 2:Right, and there's something also in looking at work where you can see things. You've learned a certain language and you can look at stuff really quickly. I was doing a studio visit a couple of days ago and there was the work of an interesting artist who passed away and his widow is trying to find home for his big five foot by five foot paintings, of which they're about 20. And they were showing the woman and the other artists were showing me the work and moving them because they're so big and there was one good spot to look at them. They were moving in and so tell me when you're ready to look at the next one. And they moved when I was like, okay, I'm ready for the next.
Speaker 2:Okay, and it was like a few seconds, like you get a great hit on something and get a sense of it. You're not necessarily sitting there living with it. You know that's a different way of engaging with art, but, um, just, I feel like I've learned a lot about looking at art in just through the practice of doing it, as well as through school and talking with other artists. I went to college in liberal arts and I studied sculpture and photography and anthropology and ethnology Did you have a school role as an artist, yeah.
Speaker 2:So I finished school I was in New York and then I moved to Paris and finished school there and then worked as an artist right away but also worked renovating houses and apartments in Paris and in Nice and in Bakersfield and in Boston and here Eventually ended up here by the time I was 25 or so so that was soon after that and did a lot of renovations and historical renovations on adobe houses and redoing kitchens and building fireplaces and stuff, just pretty much independently what there is.
Speaker 1:That seems to be a connection, but, because I come from an interior design background too, there's something about like experiencing spaces in a three-dimensional way, especially when you're engaging with the, the creation of those spaces. That gives you a, gives one like a three-dimensional way of understanding the world, and I think it really does inform how we look at art.
Speaker 2:Yeah, especially at sculpture, yeah, yeah. No, I was studying sculpture and working on houses I mean making sculpture and working on houses and at one point I considered going to architecture school. I went and visited a bunch of schools in California and thought about doing that as a way of sort of combining the two, and then I realized I was much more interested in making art and not, you know, working with clients figuring out what they wanted, but more of a pure experience of making what I wanted somebody, a creative like that, who?
Speaker 1:is sort of um I think summers had a great term of compulsively creative and and somebody who I'm calling them the civilians of the world, you know, who are just kind of they can appreciate it, but they don't have that like drug. What?
Speaker 2:what? Where's that? Oh, it's. Uh. Who knows, it could be some dysfunction, psychological dysfunction, of like hunger in something yeah it's the same. You know we're making all the time, or we're eating all the time or having sex all the time, or whatever the function dysfunction is that drives us to try and work something out. You know, some people go to psychotherapy and that's really meaningful to them and I've done some of that and it's been great. But I work a lot out.
Speaker 1:It feels like through the, through the making and just that the creatives have in my observation and my own honest, personal experience is that you know, it becomes a lot easier to invent your day like if you're used to creating from nothing and you're not afraid of making mistakes. You can mistakes, you can problem, solve the little stupid things of the day a little bit easier, because things don't have the same weight.
Speaker 2:You're used to throwing something at a canvas and if it doesn't work, you do it another way. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I feel like that kind of emboldens people I mean creatives.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the last few months, you know Axel had our last show was maybe the beginning of december and we don't have something else until beginning of march, and that usually takes a lot of my time. We usually don't take that much time off in the winter, and so I've been finding myself bored a little bit, which is very unusual for me and just like waking up in the morning and like I don't know, I'll check my email, I'll look at social media, whatever.
Speaker 2:Prescription and do a podcast Right, and it's a little unusual and difficult. But I'm also sort of trying to relax into that boredom and allow that to be the sort of let something percolate to the top in a way that I don't when I'm super busy, just like getting the next grant in or writing the next press release, or painting the next wall, or driving to the next town or whatever for the other work I do. And so I think you know, I feel privileged that I have the time to be bored and that I don't have a nine to five job these days and I can wake up and feel bored.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, you know, nine to five. I mean, I'm sure the work you do exceeds the nine to five bracket.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's more than 40 hours, it's all. Yeah, all I do. Yeah, more than 40 hours, it's all. Yeah, all I do, yeah, and recently there's a bunch of pinyon trees that have died around where I live and so I've been cutting them and trimming them a little and flipping them upside down and peeling all the bark off of them and putting them in the landscape. It's odd, it's compelling to me. I'm not sure you know, I don't have a great explanation for why it's interesting, but it's interesting and so Is it because you're engaging with a natural material which is different from your normal medium or Well, I've cut a lot of trees for firewood, so it sort of grew out of that.
Speaker 2:It was like a dead tree that I wanted to come down because I didn't want it to fall on a fence or whatever. So I was cutting it down and then I was like, oh, what if it was the other way? And so maybe don't cut it up first. And then the bark beetles, you know, make it, so the bark is loose. So then I would just, with a little hatchet, taking off the bark and cleaning it, and then it's like these beautiful natural forms.
Speaker 1:and then it's like, okay, so I'll haul one, you know, drag one behind my truck up to this little meadow space, and yeah, I mean, I think I, I think those of us who sort of traffic in the creative field forget that you know it's, it's, it's not a common thing to do when you're out like chopping wood for firewood and then all of a sudden be deep ensconced enough in the project that you just think to turn that, flip the thing over.
Speaker 1:And then you, you know, you strip it up its arms and whatever you call it yeah, yeah and then all of a sudden, something else is emerging, but that takes a particular type of curiosity in mind and, like every, every, yeah or is is is taken for granted. Nothing is just a normal thing. Everything is a potential art project. Yeah, maybe that's just because I'm bored because I stopped smoking weed and it's something is is taken for granted. Nothing is just a normal thing.
Speaker 2:Everything is a potential art project yeah, maybe that's just because I'm bored, because I stopped smoking weed and it's something. Um, no, I think, um, yeah, I think it's an openness to think about that. I don't really believe that, like creative people, artists, people are like some special breed that other people aren't. I think it's just a choice of how to engage and how to look, and taking that time Like you're not just there cutting the wood because you need the wood. You're cutting the wood because you need the wood to heat the house, but you're also engaged in the physicality of it and looking at the grain of the wood and looking at the bark and the different kinds of wood and the bugs that ate it and what their little grubs look like when you're peeling the bark and just an interest, and it's an interest in science and ecology and art and nature and all those things.
Speaker 1:I mean, yes, we all have that capacity, and one of the reasons I'm doing this project is so that we can all remember that we all have that capacity, something that is reserved for one particular group. But I think it does involve disengaging from the little square thing that we are mostly attached to and getting back doing something that involves engaging with something outside of technology.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but technology can be a way in too. I just made a video of there's a new installation by James Gould called Sprickle, which is this strange little looks like a barn or greenery in the middle of the rail yard park, and I spent a week on and off helping him install it, and while I was doing that I shot a bunch of video of him and his helpers um putting it together and I just you know it's something to promote it on Instagram, and so that's using my little, my little rectangular machine in a creative way.
Speaker 1:And.
Speaker 2:I really enjoy that making, shooting video, editing video and with social media and all that. As much as it is a distraction, it's also a great way to put out things like short films.
Speaker 1:Another case in point that you know you're just one of those animals that, no matter what tools in your hand, you're using it for some kind of creative, it's just how you're wired.
Speaker 2:Right, I put in the screw helping him, and then with the other hand, then I'm like, oh, I need to shoot more video, you know, back and forth.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:I think it's staying busy too. I'm I'm not great at being still maybe. Well, I'm trying. Why? Why am I trying? Well, like what I was saying before about boredom, like, just like, oh, you're bored, you don't know what to do. Don't just don't just do something yet on instagram and doom scroll.
Speaker 1:Just sit there and and stare at the wall, drink your coffee and do you know like, and do you know, when that moment happens, that you've been still enough that something comes through? Can you feel it happening?
Speaker 2:yeah, usually just like something pops up, like that little message that's on my screen or who knows what those are, or I think, oh right, I have to call blah, blah, blah. And then I go to find my phone and make a call, or so often in the morning I'll wake up and I'm lying in bed and just being still and then all of a sudden like oh right, I remember that thing, I better do that, and I get up and start doing that.
Speaker 1:So well, that's me like. You're like it's like all part of the process, it's all part of the creative process. So you don't distinguish between random everyday shit you gotta do and and and the creative work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's all. Yeah, I mean bookkeeping. Maybe it's a little different, but I've learned to enjoy that too. There's a satisfaction, yeah, no, there's a satisfaction when you do this and you do that and you figure out all the math and you're like, okay, well, that works that all works brain integration thing going, because I mean you know not bookkeeping, uh-uh I don't know I mean I can do it, I have to do it. It's one of those yeah, if you have to do it, you may as well enjoy it. It's like grant writing too.
Speaker 1:No, can't do it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's a satisfaction. Yeah, and I've done. Yeah, I've done it for Axel and for the Lena Wall and for projects I'm involved in, but I've also done it for hire for other organizations over the past few years, and that's a lot harder to do when you're not embedded in the organization and know all the details by heart to try and write about what someone else is doing.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, I guess, when you're passionate about a project and you want to get it done. You know that obviously is a lot of juice for right getting it done, whatever it's going to take. Yeah, yeah, so I totally well. What's what's next in terms of exciting projects that you're cooking up?
Speaker 2:Well, axel has a show by Inge Hendriksen which is sort of these biomorphic, brightly colored abstract forms that hang from the ceiling and come out of the walls and the floor. So it's an installation and that'll be up the month of March, maybe into the beginning of April, around Santa Fe, and then in April and May we have work by Jameson Chase Banks and Animkewa White Eagle, which is so it's a show about dioramas and about this proto-dinosaur fossil which is named after George O'Keefe and there are thousands of them, I think, found up at Ghost Ranch, which is why they named it after her up near Abq. And so Jameson Chase Banks has carved in cedar a life-size figure of this dinosaur creature and so we're showing that. And then we're going to different schools and places in Abiquiu and around Santa Fe and he's running workshops with the kids about making their own dioramas, about different things.
Speaker 1:Is the dinosaur you know talking about how old Santa Fe is? I mean, I've recently seen this new information about. You know the footprints that were found under white sands Under white sands, yeah. How old this is, and so you know it's pre-ice age. Yeah, We've been here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, the dinosaurs. I don't think they're dinosaurs and people mixed together up in those fossils. But yeah, it's about a lot of things I can't really say. I'll know more once we show the work.
Speaker 1:And how do you decide who's next?
Speaker 2:Well, that show. This is the second year we've worked with the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum. A few years ago they bought a truck, sort of like Axle, and outfitted it as a traveling workspace and it opens up and they have tables to do projects. It's called Art2Go G-O, like Georgia O'Keeffe, so we've been working with them doing a mobile artist-in-residence where an artist we together people at O'Keeffe, chic, lake Corcolis and Beth Murphy and Jerry Wellman and I together choose artists, invite them and if they're interested they get paid a stipend and do a project with the George O'Keefe mobile thing for a while and then do a show in Axel. So that's how that one came about. Others people send us submissions. We have an email link on our homepage where people can send us proposals for installations or to show us their art for group shows. So usually when we do group shows, jerry and I come up with a theme, but sometimes we have guest curators or partner with other organizations that we approach or they approach us to do a project.
Speaker 1:It's all very unscripted and fluid how things come to us entity that goes between a significant institution like Georgia O'Keeffe Museum and, you know, hanging out in front of a grocery store to just engage people with the arts. And my experience in Santa Fe is that a lot of the larger arts organizations are a little bit siloed.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And there isn't this, you know overreach that I feel like there could be, and what could we do if there was more?
Speaker 2:Yeah, sometimes I feel like we're sewing, like we're a little needle dragging a thread and driving around and pulling these things together and weaving something together. And we adore working with Georgia O'Keeffe or Sight Santa Fe or the Folk Art Museum or the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture or countless big cultural institutions that we've worked with over the years, but also working with things that aren't perceived, you know, grocery stores and coffee shops and just and being on the street and available and accessible and unpretentious. So we try and break down those barriers and our feeling is those organizations are really trying to break down those barriers too. They don't mean to be silent, it's just the nature of the history of the museum and the collection and the art gallery.
Speaker 2:You know the fancy New York art gallery where I go to a gallery in New York and Chelsea are singing. I walk in and there's someone behind the desk sort of typing on their computer and the walls are all white and it's all very clean and cold and I feel intimidated going in there. And why would I feel intimidated? There's nothing that should intimidate me, but I feel it nonetheless.
Speaker 1:So there is. Maybe it's a little bit intentional in new york to kind of create this mystique of high art exactly, I really object to.
Speaker 1:It's one of the reasons I got into the field. That I got into is to kind of break that down a little bit, because when a 22 year old you know kind of gives me attitude about like what am I doing in her gallery, excuse me, yeah, I have a whole thing about that. But I'm wondering do you think that it sounds like you're sort of like a pollinator, like a bee that goes to these flower institutions? Do you think more pollinating small organizations would be beneficial to Santa Fe as a community to get even more of those connections happening?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I think there are things there's little alternative art spaces and music spaces, and I don't even know what they all are, but they come and go and graduate and become bigger things or close down and the people move away. You know there's a whole range of things. So I don't think I think the more of those the better. But I also think it's very hard to make it work. Like Jerry and I run Axel and we hire an accountant to help us file our taxes for a few hundred dollars a year and we pay for insurance and otherwise we do all the work ourselves, whether it's writing press releases or social media or curation or even a lot of, you know, changing the alternator in the vehicle or whatever.
Speaker 2:So, and both of us are older and have had other careers and have some money, so we don't need to pay our mortgages on our houses with the money we make from running Axel, and so we're in a privileged position to be able to do what we do. And if I were 25 and didn't have other resources and tried to make a go of it, I don't think that would be the smartest way to go, but maybe I mean we do, jerry and I have been doing it a long time and he's a little older than I am. We think about what Axel will be in five years or ten years, and how can we bring other people in who can do… To carry it on when we're done, or to help us so we can do less, or whatever it is. So we're always on the lookout for how that could be, and it's not easy to figure out.
Speaker 1:Have you noticed sort of the direct impact that you, as that coordinating, you know that uniting thread has had on the community, uniting thread has had on the community? I mean, what underserved communities have you really been?
Speaker 2:able to feel like you've reached. Well, we mix it up a lot, so some of the communities we reach are well-served communities. They're people who like art and who go to art galleries or who are on the plaza or Canyon Road a lot of tourists, I think. But then there's also people who don't do that on the south side of town or, you know, the west side of town or at grocery stores, and so it's just people of all walks of life, economically and racially in every way might come by and racially in every way might come by.
Speaker 2:What's most remarkable, I think, is since we've been in Santa Fe for so long and Santa Fe is really an art town people aren't that surprised to see art in an old truck on the side of the road here, belen or Lordsburg or Clayton or Las Vegas or you know, we've been all over the state of New Mexico or Monument Valley in Utah or the flea market in Shiprock.
Speaker 2:It is a surprise and people are thrilled and inspired to see that there and really appreciative that we bother to drive out Democratic communities and they might be really conservative you know Republican voting communities in southern New Mexico but all feel in general and there's occasional exceptions, but rarely ever people are thrilled to see us there and appreciative that we're there, see us there and appreciate that we're there, and you know. So we've gradually also made all these connections with people in each of these little communities where we've wanted to go. So we contact people and they help us and now it's easy for us to go back there. So, partnering with other large organizations that are trying to get their work out in the world, it's really nice that Axel can help do that. Like, oh yeah, we can go to Hobbs, we know the people down there who will help and you know, whatever it, comes down to relationships as much as the art that you're actually bringing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the relationships allow us to get it out there, because we can show up somewhere in some town and park on the side of the road and that's fine. But if there's an article in the local paper or everyone gets an email from someone they know, or it's on. And social media has really helped too, because we can pay for boosting of a Facebook event in some little town, you know in Deming or something, where anyone who's on Facebook endemming will see that we're going to be there. And before there was social media that was impossible and we can do that for 20 bucks or something.
Speaker 2:So I forget what your question was. But yeah, who do we reach and how do we?
Speaker 1:I think it's so interesting because we tend to in in our culture, materialistic culture, tend to get so focused on measuring our impact with dollars that are raised or whatever. But your perfect example, the anti-version of that, where you're really focusing on literally expanding your reach and how many communities can you you touch, how many relationships can you forge?
Speaker 1:right and I think that's a really important um uh role model for for what organizations like ours arts organizations you know are about, because at the end of the day, you know it's, it's about reaching as many people and letting them know that they are important, that this is theirs too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And I find that democratizing of the yeah, and when we have to report for a grant and say how many, what the numbers are, that's very difficult because we don't count the numbers. And the majority of our stuff there's nothing for sale and there's never any fee to participate. Everything's offered for free and occasionally we have work for sale and that helps support our organization for sure, when we sell stuff but that's not the we don't have to sell stuff in order to pay the rent and the staff and all of that. So it really frees stuff up to be more for the community, Whose lives you're going to touch in the doing of that. So it really frees stuff up to be more for the community.
Speaker 1:Whose lives you're going to touch in the doing of that right? I mean, how many young emerging artists have resulted from being present when your truck comes through town, and they just happen to be in the right place at the right time?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we've been doing it long enough. I mean, I've run into, you know, 25 year olds who like, oh my God, this has been my favorite thing since I was a kid. You know, I'm so excited, you know, and it's just like, oh my God, that's so. Doing something for a long time really is satisfying that way. But the you know, your podcast, my podcast, those sort of things too, are great ways of inspiring people and getting work out in the world in a way that you don't know. Just having these conversations, giving people an opportunity to speak about their work, and not just like their creative work, but just like their lives and like how it fits all together. Like you know, we've been talking about a little bit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I think it really is important. Do you think can you ever conceive of a situation where you had a whole fleet of axle trucks, or would that kind?
Speaker 2:of space, but we didn't really want to bother trying to figure that out. But anyone who asks us, we've had people say can I pick your brain, how do I make this work? I want to do it in Tucson or something. And we say sure, and we spend an hour, whatever it takes, and sit down and have coffee and tell them, answer their questions and tell them what we know. So there's a giving and a sharing in that way, doing it ourselves.
Speaker 2:And people used to say so when are you going to get a real gallery? You know, brick and mortar gallery? I'd be like no, I don't think we're, we don't want to do that, because there's this thought that success is growth, right, so you start your food truck and then, if it's really successful, you open the real restaurant. And so, axel, we had to really resist success being measured by growth, because we didn't want to sit in a brick and mortar gallery for eight hours a day in order to sell art and then worry about the rent and all of that. It was better to keep it contained in what it was better to keep it contained in what it was.
Speaker 2:We did have an idea, which we haven't done and probably won't do, which is to have some sort of creative carnival traveling that goes town to town throughout the Southwest with 10 or 20 different vehicles that are outfitted as stages and galleries, like a circus. A circus, yeah, and we find some, like you know, prearrange it, but some empty lot on the outside of town and set up all the things and have a bonfire and hang out and everyone you know camps out there and then the next day there's a big event and you know, for a weekend.
Speaker 1:I mean, the reason that that excites me so much is because, you know, when I started Santa Fe Arts Club during COVID, when we were, all you know, cooped up, you know I made it arts plural because I wanted to engage the music arts and the performance arts and dance arts and all that. And what would be so much fun about a caravan of things to have, like you said, these stages with you know sort of a dance focus and a theater focus?
Speaker 2:or a music focus right, and a magic show and whatever. Yeah, yeah, we've talked a bit with um joe west, who's a musician here, who's great um musician and performer and impresario um, and he's excited about it. But the thing thing is it takes someone maybe you're the person takes someone to organize it. Like there's insurance, there's, everyone needs their vehicle. You know it's a lot of work.
Speaker 1:When you call these things, one of those pop up things called oh God, there's a name for it where you know, a flash mob, a flash mob and kind of one gorilla.
Speaker 2:Does it still have to? I guess we still have have to. We have to get people to show up. Uh, yeah, who knows, there's a million ways to do it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you should do it, lily well, I think we need to talk about yeah, okay, I really do, because I think that I mean at least once a year and and we can't really talk. We can't talk about it here because it has to be a surprise if it's going to be in the spirit of flash mob, which I think it really could be fun, a whole bunch of, I mean, because I know choreographers who would love to be involved, I know some musicians who would love to be involved and you know, we just like decide on a day and like we just show up and we do it yeah, that's possible all right.
Speaker 1:Well, maybe we'll talk about that. Um again, there are more ideas than there are hours in the day right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's good to have ideas and throw them around.
Speaker 1:Yeah, why not? I mean, I think the most important thing that could come out of all of this is that obviously we're living in a time where there's a lot of tension around and there are a lot of unknowns. Really I haven't noticed, but but we're gonna have to keep it light, we're gonna have to stay engaged in a way that's you know that's not the doom scrolling and this and that and and what better way.
Speaker 2:I mean this is one of the other great things about the arts is that you know it can kind of take us outside of that realm of that life is going to hold a handbasket and kind of introduce something new and unexpected, and we'll just need to yeah, you got to keep, keep and I think it's important to engage with not the doom scrolling but the doom and see where the opportunities are to make a difference and have activate those um, and it's important also to get away from that and do things that are like you say are light or fun or yeah, yeah, and I guess that's not.
Speaker 2:That's not to um deny that there's bad stuff going right and to some degree we're implicated in the bad stuff and we need to take responsibility for our role in society and what we do. And so I don't think we can ignore the bad stuff or just say, oh it's bad, I don't want to look at it. We have to look at it, but then we have to do other things too.
Speaker 1:I mean, that's sort of the thing that the artists can do is we can say this is another, another channel through, you know, the dark and stormy is to look it straight in the eye and be in action in retaliation or whatever. It is whatever. So well cool, anything else that we haven't covered.
Speaker 2:No, that's everything I could ever think of.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm really glad I bumped into you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this has been fun.
Speaker 1:Well, we'm really glad I bumped into you. Yeah, this has been fun. Well, we'll see. Hopefully. The sound quality I think I got my mic turned around and your voice is louder than mine, but whatever, this will be great and yeah, so look for us on artstormingorg and what's your podcast?
Speaker 2:If you look, Coffee and Culture with Matthew Chase, Daniel you can find it. Or you can go to my website, chasedanielcom, and that has links to all the different the Lena, Wall and Axel and my own artwork and all things.
Speaker 1:Excellent, cool, all right, well, we'll end it there.
Speaker 2:Okay, thank you so much. Thank you, lily.
Speaker 1: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. Art Storming is brought to you and supported by Artbridge and listeners like you. Look for us on your favorite podcast platforms.
