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: Ron & Dalit Holzman
The Holzmans' work offers important lessons about resilience, creativity, and finding beauty in the discarded. Hear more about this father-daughter duo on this episode.
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. Today, I'll be artstorming with Ron and Delete Holtzman, a father-daughter duo, who I met at the tail end of my first season.
Speaker 1:I thought I had already taped my last episode, but then I walked into a preview show at the CCA Waxman Gallery called Conscientious Objecteur, and I knew right away that I had to do one more. It's hard to describe what I saw, but the space was filled with these creations that, while made of machine parts, felt absolutely alive. It was like a steampunk wonderland. These objects were mounted on the wall, suspended from the ceiling, like life-size marionettes, and the lighting of each piece by these tiny little spotlights gave each thing a moment of its own. Gave each thing a moment of its own. The individual works of art were created by Ron Holtzman, but the installation itself, created by his daughter, delete, was a work of art in its own right. And then, the night of the opening, another dimension was generated by the addition of all these flesh and bone people meandering through this forest of joyful objects. It was magic and a wonderful tribute to the objects themselves, as well as the artist who created them. And so not only was this last show, you know, an incredible thing to add on to the end of season one City Different, but it's also the perfect segue to our next season, in which we'll be discussing the topics of lineage, legacy and remembrance.
Speaker 1:Be discussing the topics of lineage, legacy and remembrance. I'm here with Dalit and Ron Holtzman. Father, daughter, I'm going to call you a team, because you really are a team. I mean, I'm sitting in this garage right now, which is hardly garage, is like not, it might be the word for the exterior of it, but it's a gallery, and it is absolutely sensational. We are surrounded by Ron's work and since I've only gotten to speak to you for a very few minutes, I know so little about how this whole thing came to be. Has this been your property all these years?
Speaker 2:No, actually, dorothy, my partner and I, we met in 1998. And I had a one-man show at the Edith Lambert Gallery in Santa Fe and she and I just hit it off and we just became friends. She's a painter, sculptor, and so we had a lot of things in common and so we started dating in 1998, 26 years ago.
Speaker 3:And Dad was living out in Lamy. He was off-grid for how many years, dad, 25 years, 25 years at the very end of the road. So he was living out there. And then this is Dorothy's house, we're right, right here, and so they would spend, you know, sort of four days a week kind of together and do all their music things and their in-town things, and then he would go back out to lay me and sculpt and she would be painting here. Um, about 10 years ago their health, dorothy's health, really was not doing well. She had broken her leg and had a stroke, and then Dad was having his journey with cancer and the need for them to really live together became evident. So they combined homes and that's why we're here.
Speaker 1:And that was 10 years ago, I guess.
Speaker 3:It was, it was well 14.
Speaker 1:Yeah 14. So I can only imagine what it must have been like to move all of these bits and pieces.
Speaker 2:You know, it was something that I did gradually because I saw that Dorothy needed more of my care, so I needed to spend more time with her and, as a consequence, the garage, so to speak, became my working area, spending more time with Dorothy, and then, eventually I moved here because it was too difficult to go back and forth all the time, so I started incorporating my work here in the garage.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Well, I mean, it's amazing because you have all these bits and pieces and I don't know, I can't even fathom how you catalog the bits and pieces you know you really don't, because what you do is I have to see everything physically so that I know what I have and I know what I have available, so that I know what I have and I know what I have available. So it was more focusing on the specific objects that I had, and so I was more able to incorporate some of the parts and put other things away that I didn't need, so to speak. So, as you can see around, I have a lot of things out which were ideas or our ideas for new sculptures and these things kind of. They come to. They come together very, very quietly where I see two objects and and I start to think in terms of incorporating the two objects together without disturbing the integrity of each object.
Speaker 1:Right, because you don't use any.
Speaker 2:I don't do any weld or anything.
Speaker 1:yeah, I wish the audience could see what I'm looking at, because the Well you call yourself, the show is called Conscientious Objecteur, which I just love because in French there's the bricoleur, which is the term that is for somebody who collects lots of all kinds of different things.
Speaker 2:You know what I think it is. These things become kind of enigmatic to me where I look at an object and I think to myself this is a beautiful object. I don't want to disturb the integrity of the object, but by the same token, if you have several objects and you want to put them together, it's kind of like a gentle union, if you will, even though when you have the union it's still very temporary, because all these things can be taken apart, so everything is, so to speak, in a temporary state, if you will. So when you put these things together, they kind of become somewhat permanent and it just opens up your ideas as to what it looks like to you.
Speaker 2:And the secondary thing is, you're not concerned about what it looks like to somebody else, you're more concerned how it feels to you. And the secondary thing is you're not concerned about what it looks like to somebody else, you're more concerned how it feels to you. Somebody else looking at it is secondary to how I feel about an object, because I might see something that somebody else might not see at all. You know, because it maybe it forms, it's a recollection of the past, so to speak, where that reminds me of this and that reminds me of that, and it's kind of like an amalgamation of these things coming together but there's something meta going on here, because Dalit can respond to it.
Speaker 1:I didn't know anybody at that show who wasn't having a really viscerally joyful experience, because there's a quality of joyfulness in your work.
Speaker 2:That gives me the greatest pleasure. Let me tell you an instance. During the show, two gentlemen came up people in their, I think, probably in their 70s, and one of the fellows saw my pieces and one of the fellas saw my pieces and he kind of like, he went into kind of euphoria and he was saying to me I've been collecting all my life and here I see these objects together. And you know what he said you made my year and he's a sculptor. It was so touching, it was like the highlight of the show was when he said that, because I realized that I touch other people besides myself.
Speaker 1:Oh, and you absolutely do. And how long have you been sharing your work?
Speaker 2:Probably 50 years, over 50 years, I guess. A lot of it started when I was living in Israel. I was having a really hard time sleeping at night and I had a lot of these objects and I started putting these things together and what it did? It calmed my spirit. Oh yeah, so I think that's when it really all started.
Speaker 1:Well, and you just hit on something, because when it calms your spirit, that's what's so infectious, and I think that that because to have literally so many objects that really they all relate to each other in that calming spirit way and in that joyful way, but each individual object is a total, standalone object, and to be able to put all of these in one space and have them in conversation with each other, and so that's kind of your gig, you, you're the one who, who puts the dinner party together, right, right, yeah, they're all having a big party, they're having a big conversation so say a little bit more about how you got involved with your dad's process.
Speaker 3:I mean, you know just the collection aspect as a little kid like when we were, when we lived in the dc area we'd go to the Potomac River and we'd walk our dog. That's when Dad was starting to find a lot of the wood that's there on the wall. We would just collect those pieces and he started putting things together. It was always Dad's realm and it was so magical. As I got older, of course, I kind of took it for granted in a sense, and then as I got older, I really understood. I was like, oh wow, he's a real artist, it's really real. And my dad does enjoy smoking weed and I thought if I just smoke weed I'll be able to do it.
Speaker 3:I'll just be able to have the magic of the finding of them, you know, the magic kind of thing, coming together and in fact that's not the case, you know it's. It's so much more than that. He's his ability to be able to find things. Like if we go out on a walk when he looked in Lamy, we'd walking along and he'd just like bend down and there'd be like a tiny arrowhead, or he's always been that way he has an absolute magic for finding things, and so to be able to just I don't know, like not in the way that he doesn't force the union with things, for me it's like I don't know. I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 3:You know, when I was going into the space at CCA to hang that show it was, I had no real like floor plan I had. I kind of had a sense of like two, two pieces really like, and I knew I'd, you know, be a wall. Maybe I'd want to have some, but it was really like okay, I've got three days and I have to trust myself, and then the quality of the work and then my physical and functional ability, which is, I have to say, some of these pieces are large and, I imagine, quite heavy, and they dance as if they have no weight to them at all.
Speaker 1:Right, right, I mean, they have a gravitas to them, but without heaviness, that's right. And yet you're a petite woman. I mean, you were up there on ladders. I saw you as you were taking the show down. This was athletic.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was yeah, but thankfully that's part of my little wheelhouse that I have. So, yeah, it was perfect. It's like, yeah, dad's got his magic and I have my magic and it all works and it's interesting because, yeah, it's. It's really only been what dad, like, I think like in the last 10 years, where sometimes you know he'll be like ask me about a piece you know, and that's, that's been new that's been something, but I've embraced delete more in my thoughts about things in the last 10 years.
Speaker 3:Yeah yeah, and the process and we've like, because of all of the medical things, like I didn't end up growing up with my dad and it's really been like we started spending more, as is with most kids. You start having more quality time when, like after you're 18, right, it's like as you're becoming a young adult, you're actually forming a real relationship, and so that was happening. But then with the whole medical journey, um for for his body sort of falling apart, his face, all of these things, like you know, my dad is like almost bled out in my arms a couple of times, you of times looking into my eyes, and so what you end up finding in yourself and in your relationship is a whole new level. And so I think that's the thing. It's like there's no—we're both very strong individuals and we just really trust each other. I think that we recognize what each other's beautiful strengths are and yeah, I mean and that we're family. There's so many aspects of myself that I like just love and that I know that they come from my father.
Speaker 1:So the space of being able to just allow for that beautiful kind of interaction well, and then there's a third component to this, which are the pieces themselves, and you're breathing life into these objects over and over again. That's got to be like an entry point or an access to life-givingness for you for sure you, I think, when you're working with old objects.
Speaker 2:These objects were used for something in mind and they were designed for the utility of what they were designed for. But by the same token, there was a kind of a the artistic side of the object, that when you take these pieces apart, you're still feeling the energy of people that use these things in their hands. So I think a lot of that energy gets trapped in the objects. Let me tell you an example.
Speaker 2:I had the fortune, great fortune, of meeting a very famous man about 15 years ago, murray Gell-Mann. He was the Nobel Prize winner of inventing the quark and I met him at a Christmas dinner at Penn LaForge. He's a writer here in Santa Fe, and so he and I a gentleman probably. He was in his late 70s at the time I started expounding my feelings about these objects that I was working with and he was listening to me and what was amazing was that I had his attention and he probably thought I was totally nuts, but he was still taking in what I was saying because I was trying to reiterate my feelings toward these objects, because I was trying to reiterate my feelings for these objects, how they come about and how I feel toward them. So it was really a very I started being more introspective about the objects that I was working with, because I actually feel the energy from these objects and that's probably where it all started where I have an object in my hand and I can feel the energy still in that object.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and the beauty of components.
Speaker 3:I mean it's just like you know. That's the thing about mechanical Like. You know, like this, like this is nothing, but like I mean, like to me I was just looking at that before thing about mechanical like, even like this, like this is nothing, but like I mean, like to me, I was just looking at that before it's like tiny, it's a face, it's a lizard, like there's just so much and it's just so, it's so pretty, it's like nothing, but it's not nothing, right? I just think. And then there's so many things other than something like that. You know, it's there's just and it's also and they can't be used anymore, right, it's also.
Speaker 2:It's a recollection of the past, because we don't deal with these objects anymore. We're dealing in plastics, so the whole concept of objects has changed, if you will. Things are much more utilitarian, they're going to last forever, type of thing, whereas long in these old pieces they came from a fleeting past, if you will. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean to get a little quantum physical about it. I mean, here we've got these material objects, mechanical objects, you were just saying, and yet you are creating absolute poetry with them. There's nothing mechanical about the final product and so you've figured out a way to you know. It said once particle and wave it's. You know it's this beautiful transformation and it just must. It reflects so much. It makes me feel like I know you because you're somebody who can take the mechanical and turn it into bullshit.
Speaker 2:My soul is very much open to that, for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think that your willingness to do that out loud is what gives people access to this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it also makes me feel somewhat vulnerable, if you will, because but that's not important to me the thing is that I'm still able to express myself in a way that I wish to express myself, so nothing. So there's nothing really holding me back in my expression. Sometimes, when I'm working with an object, I think to myself don't over-embellish, because sometimes if you over-embellish, you kind of miss the point of what you're trying to get at, and sometimes I have a little difficulty with that. Just don't overdo it, you know, because it's overdoing it to myself, not about somebody else looking at it, type of thing. Sure, it's what feels comfortable with me within me. Well, that must be so interesting.
Speaker 1:I think the only thing I can possibly relate it to is getting dressed in the morning and putting on accessories and then taking them off because you got too many things going. But so how do you decide when the pieces must speak to you?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:So you're in dialogue with these pieces which so many artists have shared.
Speaker 2:You know, sometimes when you're working with one piece it's coming to you just like you're writing beautiful music.
Speaker 2:Other times you have to kind of put it aside because what it is is too overwhelming for you at the time that you're working with it. So sometimes what you're doing in order to circumvent that you're working with maybe two or three objects in the same evening, let's say so that your mind is still working on different objects, but you're much more relaxed, if you will, because you don't want to force the issue. That's the important thing is not to feel that you're forcing it, making it too contrived, if you will. But I don't have really a hard time with that. Periodically, maybe once in a blue moon type of thing, and what it does. It makes you scratch your head and be a little bit skeptical, but that's okay because then you can look back, Because no time element doesn't come into these things at all, Because the time is inconsequential, Because the pleasure you're getting and the comfort of your spirit during the time that you're doing it, that's the most important thing to you.
Speaker 1:yeah well, when you're looking at a piece that you've made long ago, or even some time ago in the, when you look at it, do you, are you able to get into the headspace that you were in when you were making it? Or oh yeah, so it does take you back to that story?
Speaker 2:For sure, because when I look at these objects I look at my history and where I was at the time that I created these things. So it's essentially it's a diary of my life's work, if you want to call it that, because it's a compendium of my thought processes and how things were affecting me at the time, wherever I was, you know. So it's like when I look at these things I can say, oh, I can remember that when Delete was five or six years of age and we found these two objects in the barn in Maryland, and we found these two objects in the barn in Maryland. So a lot of these things are, they're my living history, so to speak. You know what it is, lily. It's nostalgia in a really good way.
Speaker 1:In a good way. Yeah, yeah, and so do you have the same experience, or do you remember? Are there certain pieces that freeze you in time and it takes you back to when your dad finished that piece, or because you were involved a little bit later on? There's a lot of stuff here that.
Speaker 3:The ones that are, yeah, of the last 10 years, absolutely, yeah, like some of the wood that's here are things that you know I collected off of islands, you know, around the vancouver area, you know we'd go out in the little boat and I'd get up on the stand-up paddleboard and go over and collect wood and so, yeah, that from my own personal and like interaction with some of the materials, yes, but then, yeah, and there's some pieces in here that my dad like kind of put together there was like five that he did in a very short span of time when they first moved up to Vancouver for half the year, each year, and that was an extraordinary exciting time, yeah, so there are some the ones that are really older, you know, like Hope Springs, eternal that's right over there, the one on the big spring, or this one Mystified by the Recipes, the one with the really big. That's nostalgic to me. That reminds me of our dog, daphne. It reminds us both of our dog, our Dalmatian, that we had. She was 18 when she passed away, so you know we got her when I was three. So, yeah, there's definitely aspects, but you know it's, it's interesting.
Speaker 3:It's interesting, having been around item objects, that I wasn't in the process, I didn't create them, so they've kind of like, they're just, kind of, in a sense, I mean I love them but like their family, they're just, they've. They've been here always, so I don't even know it's. It's so interesting because I, at the show, so many people were like, wow, you were so fortunate to be able to grow up in the environment of having such a creative father and to have such whimsy, and I actually never thought about it. I really never was like, yeah, it just was always what it was. I never, it never kind of dawned on me.
Speaker 3:And then, you know, I was journaling about it after people were saying that and I was like, yeah, of course, of course it was wonderful, right, and also everything else that was going on in life and all of the dynamics of everybody and the family and all that stuff with the human family. So it's interesting, think I my entire personality is very geared toward wanting other people to be able to see my dad's work, because I know how much it's magic and so that's I'm, I'm a, I'm a real doer, I really move forward and so and I know that that's kind of how I interact with it, of just being like other people must other. You know it's incumbent upon me as an only child.
Speaker 1:Other people well, I think, when you, when you grow up with I love the use of the word whimsy, because when you grow up with whimsy and you go into the world and you expect the world to be whimsical and you see that it's not, then you get this appreciation for the, the magical world that is here, yeah, and I can totally see you wanting to kind of pull people in because of the. It's such, such a nourishing environment and there's so few places we can go that are full of stuff, especially mechanical objects, and find such nourishment right and it's not.
Speaker 3:I think that's the thing. It's like, as much as there's like the meta, as you said, of it and like the data said, like he's gotten introspective. At the end of the day, this is just fun, right, and this is like these come together. It's a lot of. It is kind of having a sense of humor about oneself. You know, there's just, it's just silly, it's kind of silly, but it's not silly. Right, it's just, but it's it's light and and and makes its mental health it's playful. Yeah, yes, it's like it's just, but it's it's light and and and makes its mental health it's playful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yes, it's like it's definitely art as medicine in a way, totally yeah.
Speaker 3:And to me, like my entire feeling in my life at this point, at 50, is sort of like if, if thing, unless it's falling in my lap, then it's like everything that's falling in my lap is the path right. It's just, it's got to be that obvious, and that's what I feel like for my dad. It's like if the things are like oh, you are meant to be together, like there it is, and I, I just it's so, it's so easy, and I'm just being like, oh, this is fun, oh, this is fun, oh this. And so the whimsy yeah, it is, it's whimsy and it's, um, yeah, and it's just likesy and its yeah, and it's just like lightness, it's just humor, a lot of humor in the family. You know what?
Speaker 2:I think it is really, when you come down to it, we must not take ourselves too seriously. You know because I think that's probably where I am is that as long as I can have a smile on my face, that's the most important thing, Because having a smile on your face frees you up, totally, Totally. So I think that not taking oneself too seriously is is the key to it all, you know yeah, well, that playfulness is something that you know, I think, we appreciate.
Speaker 1:The older we get, the more we appreciate this, this notion of playfulness and the harder it is to necessarily get back to that yeah because we get so layered and burdened and and yet again, you show us that all of these could be construed as burdens, but you turn them on their head and it's kind of like the. Tao of poo. It's like just another lovely, blissful day.
Speaker 2:For sure.
Speaker 1:And it connects and the piece that I got from you right now. I haven't hung it yet. It's still on my coffee table, kind of as a almost like a large paperweight, but it makes me smile every darn time I look at it.
Speaker 2:Now I want to tell you something about that piece. Yeah, Dorothy and I went to see Tosca at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
Speaker 1:Was it Pavarotti?
Speaker 2:Luciano Pavarotti, and that was his swan song, that was his last opera. So, anyway, while we were there, I walked past Steinway and I went into Steinway and there was a fellow working there, an older gentleman, and I said would you have any of the pedals from pianos that you don't need? And he said, yes, that's where one of the pieces came. Those pedals came from Steinway in New.
Speaker 3:York, so he brought out like a box of them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I did.
Speaker 3:I gave him a hundred dollars and he gave me a whole bunch of pedals, and that's how they're matching sets yeah, so then that's how it started and that's really unusual because dad, it's a, it's actually a series, and dad never really has anything cast, but he had the face of them all cast, so they're all identical. There's another one over there, actually, um, and with different pedals.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, you want to know what's so amazing about that, speaking of crazy things. So a dear friend of mine, who happens to be on my executive board, made a documentary called the making of a steinway, really, and so he followed the the process from start to finish of the making of steinway pianos and the artists who would come into theway and play on them and everything. And so, from you know, now I have to. I can't wait to show them that piece.
Speaker 2:I mean that's kind of a full circle.
Speaker 1:That is just incredible. That is incredible.
Speaker 2:Let me tell you something else. On the back of that piece I signed it with my mother's maiden name, r Rose. You'll see R-O-S-E on it and it was really. My history is kind of an interesting history, if you have time to listen to, of course. I was born in London in 1936.
Speaker 2:1939, the war started and so I had a brother two years older and a sister three years older Two years older than him Than I. So the war started in 1939. My father was conscripted into the army and they started bombing England and mom and dad decided they had to do something with the kids because there was all this anti-Semitism that was going on in Europe. So they decided in 1940 that they would ship us out to South Africa. So my mother, my brother and I and my sister, we went to South Africa in 1940. We spent the war years in Johannesburg and the interesting thing about this my history is that what they were doing when the war started they got the kids out of the cities. They sent them to small towns in Scotland and Wales and Ireland just to get them out of the city. So what happened was people went out to Canada, to Brazil, to South Africa when the war started.
Speaker 3:It was during you ended up in boarding school as a child.
Speaker 2:No, well, no. So what happened? So we 1940, we went out. It was the beginning of the Battle of Britain, so they were bombing England and so we went out of South Africa and the ship that was following us was torpedoed. But anyway, we got to South Africa and the ship that we were on six months later it was torpedoed. So why I'm telling you this story is because the government was not paying for you to get out of town. You had to find your own way, so to speak.
Speaker 2:So I had a very famous great aunt, my mother's auntie, and she was an opera singer in Europe. She was a well-known opera singer and she was given a diamond by one of the royalty I think it was Franz Josef. So she bequeathed that diamond to my sister, to my mother and my mother's sister. My mother's sister was living in Johannesburg, so my mother sold her share of the diamond to her sister so we would have passage to be able to get to South Africa. That's how we got out of England during the war. That's crazy.
Speaker 2:So I think what happened during this time? We were living in South Africa for five years very, very comfortably. There was plenty of food, there was no rationing and we got back to England and I was like nine years of age and that's when I had the hardest time in my life because there was so much anti-Semitism going on in England this is after the war that I was going to school every day and getting beaten up every day in school. So they put my brother and I in boarding school and the boarding school was run by a. It was a Jewish boarding school but all the teachers were Irish Catholics, so the discipline was terrible, terrible, and so it was kind of a time in my life where I really felt ostracized.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then we came to Montreal and Canada in 1948 so when you say we, that was still your parents and your siblings came to.
Speaker 3:Montreal, yeah his dad was gone fighting for 7 years. I didn't see him for seven years, so it was just mom and his brother, and then Julie, your sister. How much older was she, papa?
Speaker 2:She was four years older than I, four years older than you, but it was a very traumatic time in my life and it took me many years to be able to resolve it, if you will. So I think a lot of these things in my creative experience, if you will, I think there was kind of maybe some it had something to do with it. If you will, yeah.
Speaker 3:Sorry, you should talk about the gas mask situation. I'm always just amazed by that.
Speaker 2:You talk about the gas mask situation. I'm always just amazed by that. When I was three years of age, my brother and I were at home he was five and a man came knocking at the door. He was an air raid warden and he was dressed with a gas mask on his face and to a three and a five-year-old kid it looked like he came from Mars. It was such a terrible, traumatic experience for both of us.
Speaker 3:And then you had to have your own gas masks.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so as an aside to the story not a story, this preamble, if you want to call it, that is that everybody had to have a gas mask, no ifs, ands or buts. So if you left your house you had your box with your gas mask, Everybody, everybody. If you were out without your gas mask, the warden would come to you and fine you on the spot and he would sell. He would sell you a gas mask on the spot and you had to pay for it.
Speaker 3:They would fine you the price of a gas mask. You would have to buy it then and there.
Speaker 2:So the gas masks were made until 1954. This is 9 years after the war. Right, and what they were finding was the people that were making the gas masks were dying of cancer because the gas masks were made with asbestos and the kids ones they were Mickey Mouse masks were made with asbestos, and the kids ones were Mickey Mouse.
Speaker 3:So you're three years old, the filters were asbestos Asbestos, of course.
Speaker 2:So this is a looking back during the pandemic. This whole issue with wearing masks, not wearing masks right, and I said to myself this is a national emergency, everybody should wear a mask. No ifs, ands or buts, because they didn't know when the war started in 1939 that the Germans were going to drop poison gas over the population in England. So here we are in a pandemic where Dorothy and I what was happening? We were doing a world cruise. We were going from Miami to San Francisco all the way around. It was a 170-day. It was an incredible cruise. What happened In the middle of the cruise?
Speaker 2:They forcibly took us off the boat in Canberra, Australia, we didn't even have masks. We were in such a panic and everybody I mean because nobody knew what this whole pandemic was about, whether you could contract it from your next door neighbor or whomever you so everybody was in a panic. So it was like a flashback to the time when the war started in 1939 in England, where everybody had to wear masks, had to carry gas masks. So it was like what's the question here? If you have to do it, you have to do it. There shouldn't even be a question about it type of thing you know.
Speaker 1:Well, what's astounding to me is that such a traumatic situation in memory in your life and yet I mean a lot of these characters almost look like they're wearing gas masks and yet there's anything but trauma or terror emitting from any of these things.
Speaker 2:You know what I think it is. You turned it around. I think it's a liberation. Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1:For sure, because this whole story about the gas masks gives me a whole different access to all of these characters?
Speaker 2:Yeah, because that was a huge trauma in my life.
Speaker 1:I certainly understand. Wow, wow and wow. You must have gotten really what happened after. Now I have to know how you got back safely to the United States from Canberra.
Speaker 2:We stayed there for two weeks. Dalit was organizing this from Canada.
Speaker 3:It was nuts. Yeah, it was. Yeah, I was. And yeah, yeah, I was fucked up. Yeah, I mean, because they well, where was it done?
Speaker 3:You guys were at sea for how long, like they wouldn't let you die 70 days, 70 days without them, first class yeah, I mean, that's what was nuts right is that they were doing this really off the hook? And I'm just like God. The whole world is shutting down, dad, the whole world is shutting down. You guys are living, you know, because remember the whole cruises there were some that were like sick wards and people were like dying and they wouldn't let them ashore because they were quarantined.
Speaker 3:I mean, everyone was healthy on this boat and so it was like dad, you guys are in a very lucky situation, right, and you're, and you're, and you're first class. Like the world is not first class right now, like good luck getting toilet paper, and so, yeah, when they finally I think it was Perth right when they let you off, and so and not Canberra.
Speaker 2:I'm sorry.
Speaker 3:Perth, perth. And so it was, it was, it was nuts for me to be trying to prepare my father for what was about to happen. You know, I said dad, dad, you know, there's no, no groceries.
Speaker 1:and dorothy was already in a wheelchair dorothy was really were you here taking care of dorothy, or were he? Dorothy was with my dad.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and so that, and that was the thing too is like because her, her care, like she was needing more help with, you know, with food, and so you know it was wasn't assisted living, but it was kind of like assisted living on the ocean right for like five months or whatever. So, um, so it was, like you know, lovely lap of luxury, wonderful travel. They're huge world travels travelers like in their lives Dorothy went to like 180 countries in her life, dad like not many fewer than that, um, and so it was just a way for them to be able to continue travel, even though her health was declining, um, and to be able to have the help. And so, no, I was in vancouver in canada, and uh, and so I was just trying to describe to my dad what was going to be happening when they were getting off the boat and I just said, look, you know, no, groceries, like I, I had found where there was a convenience store. They were going to get an uber. You know I had scheduled the uber that was going to pick them up at the, at the cruise terminal, take them to an airbnb, like dad had never even checked into an airbnb before.
Speaker 3:So, and of course, everything was remote and even more remote now because of so I'm trying to describe the dystopian universe that he's about to step into. So I'm like there's a convenience store, I've called ahead. There's milk. If you can find some blueberries, like there's going to be, hopefully some dry cereal, that's all you guys are going to have for a minute. Like there's nothing that's open, you're going to be brought to. You know the, the Airbnb, this is how you check in. You know he got Dorothy there. He layered down on the bed, so then he and then he had to go out and get cash out of the machine. He, you know he's like. Now I mean again, it's like, and now he's in a hot environment like this is australia.
Speaker 2:You know he's run down and I had to rent a car had yeah, had to go, yeah, so had to go get cash.
Speaker 3:So, like I'm I'm looking at where my dad is on the find my iphone and he's got the camera on so I can tell him okay, walk to that next intersection, you're going to take a right and then you're just, you know, to be able to get him to an ATM to describe to him how to use the ATM. That's going to be safe because nobody's touching anything. Right, I mean, everyone's nuts at that point about like don't touch anything, um, and you know, and then of course, we hadn't, like informed the bank, and then, of course, we hadn't informed the bank, so then he couldn't get the cash and then he had to go get the car. So I mean, my dad is unbelievably resourceful and flexible, but at 84 years old, it's like Jesus Christ, you know, you're getting really—this is a lot of stress to be throwing at a human being. So now he's got a right-hand drive vehicle, which my dad has had experience on another human being. So now he's got a right hand drive vehicle, which my dad has had experience on. But again, when you're juggling everything else, it's like lagged and and it's just all this stuff right, and just like the shock. I mean, you know, you remember what it was like.
Speaker 3:But we all kind of gradually went down to understanding the gravity of the situation. They literally were in the most ridiculous you know, not normal even for them situation in this first class. So it's nuts and so, yeah, that's how we're managing it. I would wake up in the morning, it would be their bedtime. I'd be right, you know, when I, in the nighttime, I'd call them, it was their morning and I would arrange the food for the day with uber eats to drop off for them. I had groceries but they couldn't come for an entire week and you know how it was. We were all thinking it was going to end. So it's like, okay, stay maybe for two weeks, we'll see how it's going to be.
Speaker 3:And then Australia was the anybody that was trying that they were going to go stay, cause I was like, well, maybe you guys should head to the bush, like just kind of wait it out in a more chill environment, right. And I got in touch with some places there like to rent, you know short-term things, and they were like, you know, we want to know what they're coming from, what they came off of a cruise. No way Like people were saying absolutely not to people that were coming off of cruises. And it was like, oh Lord, you know, and Dorothy really was at the point where she didn't want to be flying at all anymore and I just said, dad, like you know, I was thinking about flying there. I was because I'm a US and a Canadian citizen. I had the ability to kind of to at least travel between those two countries, so I'd be like the only person in all of Albuquerque airport, I would be one of four people on a plane, you know flying. I'd be the only person at the border into the United States, at Peace Arch in Vancouver, like a huge part across.
Speaker 3:It was crazy times. But so then I was like, should I fly to Australia? No, that'll be insane. And we all felt like we were all putting our lives at risk too. It's like we were all very scared at that time, and so I was like, dad, you guys are going to have to do this. So they did 30 hours of travel, the two of them, and what was nuts is that they got to the airport. I had the whole itinerary in order to come through. I think they were coming through San Francisco and it was going to be this crazy level, all this crazy Perth, sydney, perth, sydney, sydney to San Francisco and then to here to Albuquerque. And so he, they get to the airport Again, they're like the only ones at the airport in Perth and it's late at night.
Speaker 3:He's got Dorothy in the wheelchair and five suitcases, huge suitcases, from being on a cruise around the world that was supposed to be for five months. So he's got this, he's got the wheelchair. He needs to bring back the car. He's gone to bring back the car. Nobody's at the desk. Some elder woman sees him, tries to help out. Is then helping with the and correct me if I'm wrong with it, but then it is is helping him to be able to get to, you know, the terminal. Get to the terminal, the airport, the airline has shuttered business just then. And there to the terminal, the airport, the airline has shuttered business just then. And there the airline. So guess they're not flying out.
Speaker 3:Oh, and I had informed, I had suggested, I'd counseled my father that he should probably take an out of van, and that's so, should Dorothy, because this is going to be an asshole of a travel right. So they'd done that. So now they're feeling chill and like, and now they're stuck there, no car, they've you know, five suitcases Like. So somehow my dad I mean I, I'm like I would have had a nervous breakdown if I was 30 in that situation to be this age, the age that they were and and somehow we managed, you know got back to the house so they had been renting and then they left the next day, the 30 hours of travel, you know, and just like flashbacks of what that time was like.
Speaker 3:Right, you know, I went down to Albuquerque, pick them up, put them in the back seat, you know, open up all the windows because we were all thinking we were all going to be contaminated. I got my mask on. Right, of course. Get to Santa Fe, get here, get here. Also, I had been here for three days. Their water heater had completely busted, like there were internal issues. So it somehow, again in Santa Fe, miraculously, people came and like everything was we're good to go, we have a working house again, and so, you know, I get them in and I strip them down. You know, in the shower, like, get it. You know, it's like the insanity of the time. Like, take their clothes in like a garbage bag. And you know, like with a mask, put them into the washing machine, and so on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, everybody was in paranoia. You know, it was unbelievable, we were all nuts.
Speaker 3:Remember we'd get mail and we'd like put it in the freezer Right right, yeah, I mean I do, yeah, I mean, I do, I actually do.
Speaker 2:And you know what that was all about, lily. We had a president who didn't even look at Fauci with any respect, and so he was creating a lot of this angst that people had. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean, yeah, and I have to say that in the back of my mind, as I'm hearing you tell the story, I'm thinking this is how somebody who is, you know, infinitely resilient, who has the capacity to think out of the box, and you know, it's like, if not for your ability to work, like with whatever you're given, I mean and that is one of the reasons I feel like having access to our creativity and having that as a muscle that we use all the time.
Speaker 2:For sure, it's a strength, it's imperative, for sure.
Speaker 1:And it's just like we have a religious practice or a physical practice athletic practice.
Speaker 3:Having a creative practice builds that resiliency to us, and there's no way that that wasn't a horrific scene, no matter what, but I can only imagine had you not had the flexibility and limberness to do that.
Speaker 2:But you know, something in the history of this country, it was always we were able to. It was can-do. We were able to do these things at one time where, you know, we had Rosie the Riveter, we had all these people that were able to work it out. I think we've lost a lot of that.
Speaker 3:We're starting. Some of it, I think, is starting to atrophy, and I think it is. It's so important too. One thing when we were talking before about the idea of like stepping away from something that might be a conundrum in terms of how it comes together Dad and I, we both do crossword puzzles and sometimes when I'm dealing with some of the hard, hard ones, harder ones, and I'm stuck and it's funny, I'll be lying kind of in bed and I'll be lying kind of in bed and I'll be falling asleep and all of a sudden the answers come to me and it's like that space of being relaxed and being disconnected. I think that allows for that plasticity and the creativity to come. And, as we know, you know, the idea of being disconnected and relaxed and away from information is something that people I don't even think you know. The idea of prioritizing that, I think, is becoming potentially less and less. Yeah, I'm kind of hoping that there might be a pendulum swing back, because we've gotten so far away from that Right right.
Speaker 1:That and especially, even with the introduction of AI, I think that this idea of having, you know, a face-to-face conversation, and even though this conversation is going to be conveyed over technology ironically I choose to do it without images and not in a video format because I think that ear-to-brain connection of the storytelling and the storytelling and a lot of what's being revealed in this panel discussion thing that I'm doing is this swing back towards makers and storytelling, and I think that that's such an important component Sharing information.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and sharing, absolutely, absolutely. So there's a part of me that wants to just pick randomly an object and have you say a little bit about it. Would that feel comfortable, I mean, or maybe you could pick an object, or maybe, delene, I'll make you pick the object, that's even better, your dad's looking at me.
Speaker 3:Papa, what, which, which object? Yeah, I mean like kind of, I think. I think usually what happens is that people want to know kind of what the components are, like a little bit about it or how it kind of came together, and that sort of thing that's marvelous.
Speaker 1:I mean, it sort of reminds me of a pirate. Since we've been on the great seas, that might be kind of yeah that's the Oryx of Napoleon.
Speaker 3:Dad, you want to talk about that over here?
Speaker 2:You know, I think what it is is that it's made of different things. The legs are from an Oryx yeah, I can see that and the Oryx. The interesting thing about the Oryx is that that Oryx was from White Sands, New Mexico, and in 1967, Saudi Arabia gave a herd of Oryx to White Sands, New Mexico, and since 1967, they've thrived. They've thrived because they love the desert climate and in White Sands they're thriving.
Speaker 1:I have never even seen a picture of that, but what an image. These orcs on that white sand. Oh, they're beautiful creatures, oh my.
Speaker 2:God, and I think probably what stands out with the orcs are the horns. They're beautiful creatures, oh my God. And I think probably what stands out with the orcs are the horns, because they're very straight and they're very. They look like legs to me. So I think that that was the first thing that started with that piece was that those are legs and that's the end of it. So the other, the goose, the goose necks are from a chair and when I saw that I could see the shoulders, I could see the arms and it kind of it started.
Speaker 2:The piece started coming together with that and the oryx horns and then the piece on the top, it's a. So when I saw that I could see that was Napoleon's tricolor, the hat that he wore, and that's how, essentially how the piece came together, because I had the, I had the concept, and the other, the head, is a hat, mold, mold, and so it just came. It came together very Magically, yeah, very gently, and that's how it grew and that was. I worked on that for quite a while. I mean, it was something that I didn't do overnight type of thing. It was something that it germinated over a period of time.
Speaker 3:But other pieces, you know, there's one in the corner. It's like quite an exquisite piece and I think it only took Dad like three days. I mean it was quick, quick. It's funny how the time can just vary. It's like things just sort of like come together and then, of course, as things are coming together, you're like that's the most exciting feedback. You're like, oh my God.
Speaker 2:It's kind of strange how it happens, because when you don't force something and it takes, it kind of grows very, very gently and it can sometimes germinate overnight when the whole piece comes together boom it happened.
Speaker 3:It's like Noelle says. It's like life is not something to be fought, but it's like a mystery to be revealed. It's a mystery to be revealed. It's like life is not something to be fought, but it's like a mystery to be revealed.
Speaker 2:It's a mystery to be revealed Also, what it is. It's a synchronicity, very much a synchronicity of something where it's meant to happen, type of thing, without much forcible thought behind it, type of thing.
Speaker 1:Well, you, know, what I picture here is like the workshop at night, and all these pieces are coming together and they're having conversations with each other. And I mean, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if you said that you went to bed one night and you came back and this piece had migrated from this part of the studio to this part of the studio to be and then like Toy Story or something you wake up, you open the doors and all of a sudden everybody pretends to be quiet Because there is so much life force like you said you can feel it, but it's not the least bit.
Speaker 1:Woo-woo, it is absolutely like you're in the midst of a frozen animation. That is like as soon as you look away, they're actually moving.
Speaker 2:It's very strange. It's not even enigmatic. It's even more than enigmatic, because it seems like kind of a predestiny, if you want to call it that. You know, it's kind of, and it's a of, that's right, and it's a very difficult thing to explain how these things happen, but sometimes they happen very magically. Yeah, you're right.
Speaker 3:It's funny too, because I think that's what? Because there's other people whose work kind of looks like this-ish. But it's funny because I don't know what it is. It's like it's not the physical fact that there's welding that makes it feel forced, it's it's like the whole the even bringing in that concept is what makes it all of a sudden feel forced. Yeah, where it's just like, where you can't just be like oh, how are things magically going to come together? Because I'm just on a technical level, right, it's like if things don't have the, you know, a thread to screw on, if there isn't some build, it's not going to happen Like end of story.
Speaker 3:It's not like, oh, I'm going to make it and it's going to. Well, it's done. It's like no, so it's funny, oh, it's funny. Oh, it's kind of makes me think about, like when I cook, right, where I love, my favorite way to cook is like whatever I have in the refrigerator and just like, then the magic happens. Or like the concept of like, you know, if anything that you grow in the garden in a certain season, or that's that's from the same region in the same season, is magic, it was meant to be together and so, like, as you're cooking, you're, there's no thought about that. It's going to be wrong because it has to be right yeah, like that.
Speaker 1:That was that way.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they were like they were born together so it's like I just feel like, it's like that, it's like as an artist or as a as as the you're just like a you're, you're like a facilitator and nothing more. Exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a good word.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I don't.
Speaker 2:I don't Facilitator Right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:So I don't know. So it takes. It takes away the pressure of like it's like you're doing the crossword puzzle. It's like, well, it's going to happen.
Speaker 2:There's that trust. Interesting the facilitation, I think you're right.
Speaker 1:Well, I think so many of the artists that I've spoken to have had the experience that when they're in flow, they are an instrument through which something else is coming and they just their arms make it happen or somehow like that, and writers and musicians talk about that same experience.
Speaker 2:But you know, again, it's an easy thing to lose your way, how so A lot of artists feel in a way, when they, especially if they have gallery representation, where they have to kind of like exceed, if you will, to the gallery owner saying, if you do more of this, this will sell more. So again, it's easily corruptible and I think that a lot of artists who rely on creating their art get a little bit corrupted because they're looking toward having to sell art, because everybody, the reality is the reality, the gallery owner has to make money. All these other things are there. They're kind of, in a way, preventing artists from being totally. It's like Gauguin he went off, I mean, where you have total freedom, where you don't have to think in terms of I gotta do this in order, to terms of I gotta do this in order to get that, I gotta do this in order yeah, yeah so I think it's an easily corruptible creativity, if you want to call it that yeah, I can totally see that, and you've had the privilege of not doing that.
Speaker 1:In fact, you know, at the last show you weren't even charging, but you were.
Speaker 2:You were not pricing your no, I and I intentionally did that on purpose, because I didn't want to even think in terms of. I wanted people to enjoy my work without thinking in terms of buying or any of this other stuff, because I thought it would adulterate it a little bit. The first night type of thing when I started creating my objects, I was creating for one person, myself, so I was very, very reticent to be able to share them with other people. You're still very, very selfish in a way, because I was doing this for me, not for anybody else, and I think that's the thing I've always felt. When I create something, I'm not creating for anybody but myself, totally one on one, where I have no ulterior reason for doing it other than my own internal satisfaction.
Speaker 1:So when a piece does leave your family, I'm happy now.
Speaker 2:Why? Because I've come to a point in my life where I want to share my things with people. So it's changed a lot in the sense that I feel that I'm much more myself now, because I'm willing to share, to share my creations, if you world with other people and the concept of like legacy, and well, I was just thinking that same word just came to mind yeah, like what and what, what that kind of means, and like.
Speaker 3:It's something that hit me as all of this was happening. And again because of the principle of like if it's falling in your lap, the people who ended up purchasing the pieces are. Some of them are already essentially like family to me, and now the ones that have the others have become family like. For myself as an only child, there was the reality of the fact that, as much as I love my dad's work, for me to have all of this at the end of the day is a bit much. Yeah, right, yeah, it's a bit much. And a bit much when nobody else can share it. If we can have a conversation and all love it, then it's not a bit much at all.
Speaker 3:It extends it my dad is continuing to live in this community that means so much to me, and that we're still holding him through his children, my brothers and sisters, these beings right, so that? So what? Yeah, the word legacy, like I've heard it so much that it's become a little bit more flattened or a little bit more binary or something like that. I I don't know, but it just really made me, yeah, what that really feels.
Speaker 1:Well, to me it feels like the conversation will continue Exactly, and it remains to be seen how the conversation will continue, for sure, and you're a writer, are you not? Yes, musician and a writer, yeah, Okay, well so musician writing two different media that lend itself to this same story?
Speaker 1:Oh exactly, and the legacy of just I mean, I was as you were all talking, I was thinking this is a whole philosophy. I mean, like you, could, you could? This approach to life? I mean this is more than a group of fantastically beautiful objects, this is a whole approach to living life.
Speaker 3:That, that's your story will be told as long as these objects are either together or distributed for other people to weave into their stories and so it's the gift that keeps on giving a hundred percent and I'm also one of the sculptures right and my kids are right and like that. That whole aspect of just like yeah, the inherited ethos around it is very present, you know, in the family.
Speaker 1:Well, that is. We're going to sort of close it there, because it's the perfect segue to my second season from the Santa Fe City Different Artists of the City, different to the next chapter, which is called Lineage and Legacy, and I can't think of a more perfect segue to this next season. So thank you both.
Speaker 2:So much you know. It was total, perfect. It was a great, a great morning really thank you so much.
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.
