ArtStorming the Art of Remembrance: Patricia Watts

A studio full of work can be a treasure or a ticking time bomb, depending on what happens next. We sit down with Patricia Watts, a curator, appraiser, and advisor, to talk about the behind-the-scenes reality of artist legacy planning and art estate management: the choices that decide whether decades of paintings and objects become a visible legacy or a private burden families cannot sort.

I want to take another minute to remind you listeners that ArtStorming is a listener-supported non-profit, and we need your help to keep the conversation going. Every dollar goes directly into programs that support our mission. That means more compelling stories, more in-depth articles, and a greater impact on our community. If you love what you hear, please consider making a contribution. Visit our website for more ways to engage, and thank you for being an essential part of our work.

We're going to pause here for a moment to speak to our listeners. if you like this content, and want more information on our guests, their projects and more indepth ways to engage with us, you can find us on ArtBridgeNM.org or our ArtBridge Substack. Please read, follow and share our content. Your subscriptions, shares and contributions help us grow our artistic community. Thank you and now back to our conversation.

 I want to take another minute to remind you listeners that ArtStorming is a listener-supported non-profit, and we need your help to keep the conversation going. Every dollar goes directly into programs that support our mission. That means more compelling stories, more in-depth articles, and a greater impact on our community. If you love what you hear, please consider making a contribution. Visit our website for more ways to engage, and thank you for being an essential part of our work.

 We're going to pause here for a moment to speak to our listeners. if you like this content, and want more information on our guests, their projects and more indepth ways to engage with us, you can find us on ArtBridgeNM.org or our ArtBridge Substack. Please read, follow and share our content. Your subscriptions, shares and contributions help us grow our artistic community. Thank you and now back to our conversation.

Music for ArtStorming was written and performed by John Cruikshank.

Transcript

Season Two Sets The Stakes

Speaker 7 0:00

Have you ever wondered what makes 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 Art Storming, a podcast about how ideas become paintings or poems, performances or collections. Each episode, I'll chat with a guest from the arts community and we'll explore how the most creative among us stare down a blank canvas or reach into the void and create something new. In our inaugural season, art Storming the City Different, we dipped our toes into the vast ocean of creativity with a focus on some of our favorite creators of Santa Fe, New Mexico. That conversation was enjoyed by artists and non-artists alike because it showed us how we can all benefit from learning how to generate something from nothing. Dream bigger, charter, new territories, and solve problems in new ways. In season two, we're gonna take that concept of generating our lives with intention to the next level. This season, we're talking about legacy art as legacy, and how the most creative among us tackle this rich and deeply personal subject. Welcome to Art Storming, the Art of Remembrance.

1:20

When an artist has spent a lifetime at the easel in the studio or on the stage, what happens to the world they've built once they put their materials or their media down? What does it take to turn decades of passion into a lasting public legacy? The answer to that question or those questions is part logistics. Part strategy and often involves a lot of complex emotions. Today, I'll be art storming with Patricia Watts, a curator, appraiser, an advisor who is pulling back the curtain on the legacy side of the art world. We're talking about why artwork shouldn't be moved away from its market. The technical magic of a catalog or is an a. And how to handle those tricky family dynamics that crop up when an estate is on the line. Now, whether you're an artist thinking about your own future, a family member of a prolific artist, or you've curated in amassed a collection of your own, this conversation is for

Patricia Watts On Legacy Work

2:16

you.

Speaker 8 2:16

So, today I'm art storming with Patricia Watts and I'm really excited to be talking to you today because even though we, we met at this women's, uh, networking thing that we've been doing for the last several months, and, um, I've known that I wanted to talk to you sort of peripherally, but then the last time when we were in our little breakout session, we all got to say what we were up to and. One of the first words out of your mouth was legacy. And I'm like, okay, that's it. Done. Because obviously that's what our whole season is all about. It's about remembrance and legacy and it occurred to me that one of the things that we really haven't addressed very specifically is what you are very specifically addressing, which is. the legacy of an artist and the importance of artists to consider their legacy beyond just the body of work. Like how do they turn that body of work into an actual legacy? And so, um, from what I understand from your brief introduction the other night, that's kind of what you're up to these days, helping artists do that,

Speaker 5 3:20

That's right. Um, yeah. But thank you Lily for inviting me and yeah, I'm glad that this finally worked out. So this is great. yeah, and, and this year particularly, I felt like I'm returning to it a little bit more because I do have. Other work that I do, I'm definitely wearing multiple hats these days. but what happened was in 2008, I curated a Rua Sawa show when she was still alive and I worked with a family and I saw how they. Really cared for her work and, made decisions as a family. And I was just like, this is the way it should be. You know, for artists that, you know, families get to be involved. And, uh, also living in Northern California, there were, were a lot of artists who'd never had, who'd been making work for like 40, 50 years. It had never had. Uh, retrospective or a book done on their work. And, after I left the, Sonoma County Museum as a chief curator there where I did the Salama show, I became the, uh, consulting curator for the Marin Community Foundation, invado, which was a very large, Building. It was an old airplane hanger site on a, a former military base. So I, and they had designed it, had a architect out of San Francisco, develop this really beautiful way of having workspace with exhibition space. so I was like, wow, you know, this could be an interesting way to, you know, find those artists and show. 50 years of work, I could hang a hundred and 150 pieces in that place. I was there for six years and I, I did several of those shows and uh, the first one was called Inner Worlds, and it was actually five of these artists.

Speaker 10 4:58

I was

Speaker 5 4:58

used to doing group shows. I guess I wasn't really ready for the, the solo show at that level, like 150 pieces. But, um. Once I did that and I did a, and I decided to take part in my budget that I was, you know, the money that I was making and make a book with that. And the woman who designed that

5:16

first book, inner Worlds, she put

Speaker 5 5:18

Watts Art publications on the back and. I was like, what's that? And she was like, well, that's your imprint. And I'm like, what's my imprint? And she's like, well, you're gonna do more of these. And I mean, since I've, I've published like 16 books and, the books that I've done just on, uh, monographs on artist estates, let's see here. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. You know, I've done eight of those specific monographs for, mature artists who are under-recognized. And, you know, I don't just. Do anybody, you know, this has to be work that I relate with, and I come from a background of art and nature, art and ecology. So all these artists have something to do. Their work is inspired by nature, including Ruth as awa. Yeah.

Speaker 8 6:07

Yeah, I, her name came up yesterday. I was at another women's gathering for International Women's Day yesterday. Okay. And, um, I was talking to a fiber artist and so obviously Ruth's name came up. 'cause even though she's sort of in that one foot in fiber arts, one foot in, I don't know, natural organic material arts. she uses all natural

6:27

fibers

Speaker 5 6:28

Crocheted basically. Yeah. Looped a wire.

Speaker 8 6:30

yeah, that's, that. That's incredible. And so how many of the artists that you've done your retrospectives on are now better known as a result of your having done these books?

Speaker 5 6:42

Let's see. Of those people so far. Richard Bowman is an artist from the South Bay that I did a book on in 2018 and, he was interesting. He painted with fluorescent paint

lili 6:55

does that last

Speaker 9 6:57

is that fugitive?

Speaker 8 6:58

I mean, does it stay over time,

Speaker 20 7:00

stay fluorescent?

Speaker 13 7:01

It does.

Speaker 5 7:02

And so, you know, he died, um, I wanna say like 2001, two, somewhere around there a while ago. And I worked with his niece. So in these situations, yeah, I've, I've worked with nieces and nephews, I've worked with daughters. I haven't worked with a son yet, but I, that's coming up. and yeah, this was a, a, a niece and. Ended up at a gallery in Los Angeles, the Landing Gallery in Culver City, which was a very nice gallery. And, um, they had me curator a a Richard Bowman show. And it was funny because the whole time I was working on the monograph, I was in residence in the Bowman house. So this niece has kept the house exactly the way it was when. Uh, Richard and his wife lived there. Dick was his name. so I got to live in the house while I was doing all my research, which was incredible. And so when we did the show, one of the things that they kept telling me was that he. I was like, well, was there a black light in involved? And they were like, it was very, not a straight answer, but you know, no, you know, you don't need a black light to see, you know, to look at these paintings. But, For the, the Landing Show, we had a blacklight party and the paintings came alive and I was like, there's no way that he didn't use a blacklight, but the book was already done, so that's not in the book. And, you know, little things like that are fun. I mean, I, I've always enjoyed, My elders, you know, like I have ants that lived into their nineties and I just loved hanging out with 'em and I always did, even when I was much younger. just to hear their stories and such. So, you know, I'm really not just, writing monographs about the art, although I do that, I'm really documenting their life. All the life events that influence their

Speaker 31 8:55

work. But

Speaker 5 8:56

I try

Speaker 26 8:57

and write

Speaker 5 8:57

these very kind of

Speaker 22 8:58

well

Speaker 5 8:59

researched books that a curator at a museum could. Say, wow, this is, you know, some in-depth research that I don't have time to do and make it easier for them to, you know, do a show and help write their own, books on these artists. I'm not trying to be the definitive expert on these artists. I'm just giving their work, life.

Speaker 8 9:19

yeah.

Family Dynamics Around Artist Estates

Speaker 8 9:20

Well, I'm sure there are so many people out there right now. In fact, in my family. I can think of one person right off the top of my head, my aunt, who is much very close in age to me 'cause of our generational weirdness in our family. But she has a huge body of work and she's never really done anything with it. And my young cousins have said to me often, like, what can we do? What are we gonna do with all this stuff when she goes And you know, unlike some of the artists that you probably represent, she has not been very. Assertive about getting, you know, she's not a well-known artist. She hasn't been in galleries. I think I, um, she's shown her work here and there, but never as a career artist. She's been a, she's been a perpetual producer of work and her work is very good, but you know, she's never really put the effort into doing that. But I'm sure there are a thousand artists like that in everybody's families. but then how

Speaker 11 10:15

do you advise people

Speaker 8 10:16

who have that family member who has a stockpile of work? Maybe they're well known, maybe they're, they've passed the arc of mid-career and they're sort of, you know, no longer front and center in the art world. Like how do you decide who, who to select and, and how would you advise people when they have a situation like that?

Speaker 5 10:37

I think when I started out, you know, I I had the space to do those shows and so the books went with the shows and, I. I have a a a a webpage It's watts art advisory.blog spot.com. I'm on it right now 'cause I need to reference all these books 'cause I started, uh, in 2014, uh, with Inner Worlds. And then I did a, a book for Harry Cohen. I worked with Harry before he passed. He was in his. Late eighties, making work still, you know, when I finished the book, I remember going over to his house and he made dinner for me and we're like celebrating, you know, the book being done. And he's like, do you wanna see some paintings I'm working on? And I was like, is this like a pickup line? You know, like we went into his studio and come

Speaker 8 11:21

see my etchings,

Speaker 5 11:22

right? Yeah. Like all these new paintings. I'm like, well. Those aren't in the book, you know, so yeah, he was an incredible man. And then Marge Rector, 50 years of non-objective abstraction. She was in Sausalito, incredible painter. Arthur Holman. went to UNMI was able to work with his, nieces and their respective husbands too. I put pieces in collections and I definitely, you know, I donated, three, I think down to the University of New Mexico Museum and a couple up here at the New Mexico Museum of Art. That was, lemme see, I did that book in 2017, so I think those donations were around 2018 before I moved here full time. And then the Bowman Show, which I mentioned Ferla, Richard Ferla. I spent two years on that book and, no family members. I chose to put that one together 'cause he had put a lot of time into, like a catalog resume, which went to the Smithsonian. So I was able to go to New York and do research and put some time into that book and. People still call me today. Like, you know, you need to do that show, and that that show will be done. It hasn't been done yet. But, um, and then a couple local people when I got here, like C Bergman who came from California and lived here for many years, she passed away. I worked with her, daughter, I never met c myself. And then Shirley Crow, who's in Tesuque, who I, did that book with her in 2022. But you know, everybody's, case is different and. sometimes the children of, the artist can have, a difficult relationship with the work at the end because it represents the time that wasn't spent with them.

Speaker 8 13:04

Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 5 13:05

And maybe the artist left words in their trust that they wanted, someone to do X, X and X. And so they'll hire someone to do that. I've done that. And then they just put it to bed and don't do anything else. And that's oftentimes for me, very sad. 'cause there's a lot of money in that estate that this

Speaker 25 13:24

artist

Speaker 5 13:24

probably would've loved to have. work out there, but, I think it can be emotional and difficult for family members. you know, oftentimes when an artist passes, there is some money there to do something with.

Why Markets Decide Value

Speaker 5 13:37

You know, one thing I always tell the families is don't move the art. Like if the artist spent a majority of their life in Santa Fe, don't move the art to New York City because you live there. And no one knows who that artist is there. So, I'm also a, appraiser and that's one of the rules is, you know, there are markets for artists and if you're outside your market, you're not gonna get as much money for a work or you know, the recognition that you will in your market. So it's important to keep the work close by to where the artists live a majority of their life.

Speaker 8 14:09

That's really interesting. And I, of course, that's the, that's the question that everybody, or that's another topic that everybody sort of assumes, is that once an artist has died, that suddenly there's this. Spike in the value of their work, which might be true for a known artist, but in the case of my family member that I mentioned, you know, if they've really never been out there in the market, they don't graduate to secondary market and suddenly become something just. By virtue of having died. So I think it's important for people to understand that there are career artists out there who deserve for that. now that there's no more access to the work, there's a limited body of work that's a typical market function. Right?

Speaker 5 14:50

a lot of people did not know who Ruth the Salva was. And even though in the Bay Area we knew who she was 'cause she did a lot of public art pieces, when the De Young did their show in 2008 right before my show, That show was supposed to travel to New York, to the Asia Museum. I can't remember the title of the museum, but. they turned it down because they said not enough people know who she is. And, you know, she died, what, three years later and, yeah.

Speaker 8 15:22

Well, that's so crazy because they, there's even a postage stamp with her artwork on it. So that was a function of her dying and then she suddenly catapulted to recognition.

Speaker 5 15:32

Yeah. A lot of people didn't know who she was. and yeah, I curated that show and told a lot of people about it, but everybody's like, huh, who's that? But after she died then it was like, oh, really? You did? Yeah.

Speaker 8 15:44

And was the the retrospective and the book that you did. Part of the reason that she developed that acclaim or what do you attribute that?

Speaker 5 15:53

Well, I did not do A book with that show, but The De Young did, and that, that's actually probably my favorite book on her. There's been a lot of books done, you know, with the MoMA show and, you know, there's, well the, auction House Christie's has, has done a book and, but, That first book is my favorite, the de young one. anyway, yeah, she had that good history. You know, she went to Black Mountain College, uh, she was good friends with Buckminster Fuller and Joseph Albers. In fact, I proposed a show in 2014 to Crystal Bridges to have the three of them in conversation. Oh. It was called the illusion of transparency. I, it's an incredible proposal. In fact, I had everybody on board, but then someone at the Albers Foundation, like the, the president of the foundation just, you know, said, I have another plan. You know, so they had to all switch gears and tell me they were sorry. But, yeah, because in my show I actually had, was it Ruth had made a bronze. Sculpture of Bucky's Hand. um, one of the children told me about it, and I was like, I'd like to put that in the show. And they're like, okay. But yeah, they, they had intimate relationships of, you know, giving each other gifts. And so I thought, well, that's interesting how the relationship between artists that develop and those things are important. And so when I do these books, I look at who their teachers were. You know, who did they hang out with, you know, or who were, what are, what were some of the events that they went to that changed their trajectory, you know? 'cause that's all important, even if they're not close friends. 'cause I think Ruth and, uh, Bucky and, Joseph had years where they didn't talk. But, it's those connections that. It really informed their work and kept them kind of connected and you look for those connections.

Speaker 8 17:43

well, and it also helps us feel like we're living in an artistic age. I mean, we look back at, at art history and we think about, who was in Paris in the 1920s and, you know, and you sort of feel like. If only I had lived in Paris in the 1920s, but living in Santa Fe is sort of the next best thing. 'cause it's like Paris in the 1920s all the time. right. And all these wonderful connections between artists. I mean, that's one of the things that I've loved discovering in the course of my 10 years of being here, is all the connect. Did pieces and who has been to dinner with whom and you know, who talks to who and all that. I think it's really cool and it is part of the legacy story, right? I mean, there's a sort of whole Santa Fe arts community legacy story that, that could be told, and I don't think anybody has really tackled that project yet as a community arts. Story, but um, what you're doing is

Speaker 5 18:37

sort of, doesn't have to be best friends, you know, like I think a lot of those artists from the North Bay, some of them had never heard of each other, you know, when they were younger. I mean, that's also when you look at the trajectory of a artist's career, you know, especially if you have children, there's gonna be years where you don't produce as much. Uh, I often find artists in their sixties are very productive 'cause they've mastered their skills. Um, they don't have the children at home anymore. Like, they can just focus on their work. They're not working a job. artists today, a lot of 'em are just painting full time, so that doesn't necessarily apply in that case. But, yeah, you, every family's different. It's different dynamics, you know, and if you, another thing, you know, if you don't have a child or a nephew or niece who really understand your work or. Are supportive. I, I really wouldn't put the family in charge of that. if you're serious about the work that you've made and that you want it to be out there in some form, even as a donation to a museum. it's very difficult to get into like a Whitney collection or Guggenheim collection, I mean, I felt like there are, are museums across. The United States, especially in the Midwest, who don't have some of these artists in their collections, that would be, you know, definitely well received and appreciated by the audiences, You have to, um, think about, where an artist grew up. Some artists, especially a lot of artists here have grown up in other states in the Midwest. So some of those museums might be better for their collections in the long run, just to show children who grew up in those same places, oh, this woman or man grew up here and they ended up in Santa Fe. And look at all these pieces that they made and they, they grew up here, you know, like I did. You know, that's a nice. pointed departure for, inspiring young artists.

Speaker 8 20:26

yeah. Well, so what's interesting to me about, um, what you're just saying now is that it seems like there could be an entire, profession that is really just in the same way that we have galleries that represent artists, that we have a professional whose specific focus is.

Catalog Raisonné And Digital Archives

Speaker 8 20:48

The legacy for the artists, like how do you handle the artist's estate once they're gone or even while they're still alive, to get them into those regional museums. Um, and I didn't even really know that museums were still taking art. I mean, it seems like they're, bursting at the seams and that unless it comes with an endowment to show it, that, you know, you could donate a piece of artwork and it would end up, you know, in the, in the basement archives and not on the wall necessarily. So,

Speaker 5 21:13

to Get it to the right place. And the right curator who understands the connection and you know, they may not be able to take, all of 'em obviously, 'cause that might be a lot. And that was the other thing I was gonna say, you know, when you start looking at these collections and how prolific some artists can be, I mean, I do am working with artists to archive digitally archive their collections right now. And some have a thousand pieces, one has 2000 pieces, you know, so we're gonna have to assess like. Do we do them all at this point? Or let's have a goal of like, you know, the best 500 over the next year or two years, and then focus on those being donated. I think, you know, being organized is helpful. A lot of artists. I find, but some aren't. you know, it does make it easier for families when the artist is organized, and has some kind of database system, uh, numbering system, you know, that's what a catalog resonate is. It's like a numbering system. So, even the, Ferra who I did this book on that had his, his was. Handwritten in a notebook and he literally, yeah, he had a numbering system and he would draw a drawing of each piece. So you had a visual to see, you know, so it wasn't like, you know, he was from the fifties and sixties, he wasn't taking, you know, iPhone images. So that was a, a wonderful piece of art in and of itself was his, his little catalog resume. But yeah, that you, you need to be organized at some level. Yeah, and then you have to provide for, where those pieces will land. Uh, a book that I suggest, to artists thinking about their legacy is it's called, creating a Living Legacy Call. It's put out by the Jim Mitchell Foundation, and you can find it online and you can download it. It's a PDF or you can buy a copy from them. But that's a good book for artists too. You know, look through and think about those things, what you know, where they wanna put their time and energy.

Speaker 8 23:14

So you said it's better that, that, artists not designate family members. So is there a particular profession like yours of people whose job it is to help artists with this cataloging and archiving, and what would one call that? I mean, art consultant is sort of a very broad term, but what would you call that profession or that niche?

Speaker 5 23:37

I call myself an advisor. I'm also an arts administrator at another level. as a curator I've developed relationship with artists who I've shown their work. So some of the people that I'm working with now and archiving I've worked with as a curator prior. It definitely takes time, you know, to develop trust and, yeah, the, the deeper I get into it, I think now that I have like over 10 years of doing this work, that, you know, people see me as someone who they could trust and at least to give them advice to start with it. You know, it can be expensive. A lot of ours don't have the money for this kind of thing, so it'd be great if a foundation came up with. Yeah. Ways to support artists to catalog their work and pay people like myself or others to help them.

Speaker 8 24:26

do galleries take that on in any way. I mean, we're sort of living in a new time where once upon a time the gallery sort of was that be all, end all for artists that took care of absolutely everything. And now so many more artists are taking that, functions on themselves. So are, but do you have relationships with galleries and that they say, Hey, here's an artist that we, you know, we've had in our stable or whatever for 20 years. We'd like you to. To create the catalog for them?

Speaker 5 24:55

Well, they have their own systems. Galleries do. I mean, in the last, couple months I've been interviewing different platforms that do archiving and one is, artist archives out of Colorado. And, it's really more of a way to sell work online, you know, independently of a gallery. I think galleries do use that. it's basically different software platforms that people can use to have, forward facing, public facing, visibility. Yeah, there's another one out of New York that doesn't have the public facing visibility, and I guess you can do plugins, but they really are catering to museums and registrars. I like that because it's well developed in all the different aspects you can upload to. Things that are associated to a piece of work. Like, you know, a review exhibition, history, you know, something that a registrar in a museum would wanna have all that connected with an artwork, besides just the image and the dimensions and the title and all that. yeah, I'm looking at a company outta Berlin, um, art Butler that I like, 'cause they can also create websites. So.

Speaker 29 26:07

I'm gonna spend a year or two to get all the works digitally archived, and if something is to happen to that artist, you know, you have to make those plans too. Like where does that artist want the digital archive to go? yeah, I mean this is kind of a new, new area. You know, I don't know if. Someone like the Smithsonian would pay for that. because the work's already done on the front end, and that's kind of what they do. They'll go into an artist studio and they'll pull all the ephemera and, things related to an artist and then they take it back and digitize it and make it accessible through their website. So, there are a lot of artists out there that need this help. So it's not like there's a lack of work to do, and it's not like we're flooded. You know, I guess galleries could even be doing it too, but I don't know, you know, again, it's trust and I don't think there's a lot of money in it. Maybe galleries don't wanna do it 'cause there's not a lot of money in it. but yeah, I kind of see myself more as a keeper. Someone that an artist can trust to make sure that it gets where it needs to be and, and is most helpful to their career. Because if you spend 40, 50 years making work, you know, you should have some way that you can leave it where it doesn't just Yeah, get thrown away. Or like the families just disperse it to family members and then it never goes anywhere. Especially if it's good work. Yeah.

Speaker 30 27:36

Well, and I, I guess, do you find that, obviously some of the conversations that you're having are with, as you said, the niece or the nephew or, or somebody, lower in generation, but for the artists that you work with who are still living, obviously they've gotten over the hump of being reluctant to think about there.

Getting Past Legacy Avoidance

Speaker 30 27:55

Own death and what's gonna happen to their body of work. I've been doing these dinners at my house called The Art of Conversation with artists and other, and non-artists alike. But I find that it's interesting that some artists are reluctant to talk about their body of work or as just as so many people are reluctant to talk about the end of their lives because it's as if they'll bring it on themselves or something. But you know, they've, they spend all this time working with galleries, getting into a certain point. But when it comes to, what are they gonna do with it later, you know, they kind of go deer in the headlights.

Speaker 29 28:27

Well, there's a, probably a, a age that it starts to become more important and depends on their health. if they're starting to show signs of aging health wise, that they know, you know, that that limits them and their capabilities, then they start thinking about it more. Yeah. If you're like in your sixties and you're in good health, you don't wanna have that conversation, you know, like, I can wait for that. Yeah. seventies, Seventies, maybe, you know, if you have health issues, seventies, it could happen. but often, when I do a studio visit and I see a lot of work, I'm like, are you archiving? And, you know, are you thinking about your legacy? And I just put it out there. I mean, some of my clients hadn't even. Discussed the stuff with her children yet, and I was like, you know, you, you really need to do that. You know, this is important. And so it would take like a year or two of saying that for them to go, okay, you know, let's do this. Yeah. Because it is, it's acknowledging that you're not, you're gonna die and that they don't wanna talk about that. Yeah.

Speaker 30 29:27

Well, and then the, I can think of, there's one artist in particular who I won't name, but I know that this particular artist makes a living selling their work. And so the focus is on producing work to sell the work to produ and so they can produce more work. And the last thing they need in their universe of things to think about is what are they gonna do with the work? And The conversations that I've had with this particular artist would seem that it was almost, arrogant to think that their work has any value beyond the fact that they sold it to somebody who's hanging on the wall. Now they have money to live on. And so that's, that's their sort of, uh, metabolism is their, is how they think about it. But they don't necessarily think of their body of work as significant or important enough that they would even. Sing it like that, you know, that they would constitute it like that. How would you, what would you say to an artist like that?

Speaker 29 30:23

you know, someone could invite me over and I could do a studio visit with them and look at all their work, and I could tell them, I think I could be pretty honest whether I think that they, how far they could go.

Speaker 30 30:36

Well, I mean, I think that in this particular case, I mean, this is an artist who's been selling, selling through almost every show that that person's ever done. And, you know, obviously huge collector base. So that in and of itself I would deem that, um, well, do

Speaker 29 30:50

they, if they're selling so much, do they have much work in their studio or, oh, well then there's nothing to archive. It's already out there.

Speaker 30 31:00

True, but, so how does somebody, address legacy when there's been that level of sell through? Well, I mean, it's still a legacy worth noting, right?

Speaker 29 31:12

If they're selling at that level, their galleries should be publishing books on them, right? So they have a legacy already. They have, you know, the books that have been done on them to go back, and. Try and create a digital archive of everything. That can be very hard once you've already sold a lot of pieces, especially with galleries that don't share that information, you know, so then you kind of tie yourself up that you may not be able to ever get those pieces into a museum show, be unless those collectors are active board members at a museum and you know. Rally to have a show of that artist work done and then they can loan their pieces. It's hard to find those pieces if, you know, that's, that's kind of the downside of artists that have sold a lot of work. Even with Farah, he made, he was very prolific and there's a lot available. There's a lot I still haven't seen and stuff keeps coming up and there's just no way I'm gonna find it. like it's been, a lot of his collectors have died and so I can't find, you know, like their children or wherever those pieces landed. Sometimes, yeah. When collectors die, they. You know, wherever they're living, the pieces go to the auction houses and they get sold for nothing. You know, like I've seen that happen, you know, I'm like, that painting's worth at least 20,000 and it just sold for $500. 'cause it's in a market that no one knows who it is or what it is. So, yeah. Um, yeah, I don't know. p. If you had a gallery and you've sold a lot and you've sold to some important collectors, it'll find its way. You know, it's not, but it is kind of hard if you haven't done a catalog resume. If that person just kept making work and didn't keep a, you know, like a checklist of very opinion that they made each year and all the information on it, then they don't have a catalog resume. And it's very hard to recreate that if you've sold a lot of your work.

Speaker 30 33:08

Well, and also one of the things that you just distinguished earlier was that. It's more than just a catalog of the work, because when you add to that, the narrative of that person's life and who they knew it, you know, sort of gives a very different picture to an artist. And I would think that even just telling that story, whether it's the biographical information or whatever, becomes an integral part of a, a book. Like what, like you're doing, is it not, or? Are they two sort of separate things that you've just integrated?

Speaker 29 33:38

No, no. I, I told stories around, images because it tells you like where they painted it, if they traveled somewhere and were inspired by an event that happened with, uh, Richard Bowman, he was down in, michan and. Potro, I'm not sure I'm pronouncing that right. Um, and he saw the beginning of a volcano that just came out of a cornfield and it really set him on a path of, painting about this kind of invisible energy. And, so that's, important stories, you know, and the people that he stayed with when he was down in Mexico when that happened, and like, you could. Look at the paintings and come up with all sorts of ideas about what the painting's about and the style and you know, like the brush stroke and, which was what a lot of, you know, art writers through the years and cur, critics and curators have come to write about work that they don't have a lot, they don't have the stories

Research That Protects The Truth

Speaker 29 34:36

on. You know, I, I could tell you a story about a kind of a folk artist who's become a big name and, um. I, uh, curated a show that I had his work in and he, and just since then, that was like six years ago, seven, well, or maybe it's been like eight years ago now. His, he's, yeah. In MoMA New York. Like he's showing up in all these shows and a woman wrote an essay about it and he was from Missouri. and he told stories. And a lot of 'em aren't true and they took it at face value. And that's a whole other thing about just scholarship right now. 'cause I think there's a lot of assumptions being made the. the truth's not there. So that's also a scary part for a curator to get involved within an estate of having no research done. You know, like that's kind of, that's the part that I'm trying to piece together and, and. Put them in the canon in a, in a way that, you know, you know what the important facts are. If it's, if that is something that a curator at a museum's looking for that fits a, direction that they're going with an exhibition, then that artist, you know, can be found. But, Yeah, we don't know. You know, and sometimes you can just base it on the, the style of the painting, the quality of the materials that they used, and you know, what era and who they were hanging out with, and put them in context that way. and I almost got my PhD like 10 years ago, and my friends were like, Tricia, you're smart. You don't need it. You know, it'll give you brain damage. And I was like, I guess I should be working more than, you know, going back to school at this age. So I. But yeah, I see it constantly like misinformation, with academics and it's scary. It's scary that we have, yeah, people making these leaps and they don't know, they've never traveled. You know, that's another thing I'll travel, you know, like Ruth Asawa was interned in rower, Arkansas. Well, I traveled there and went and walked the property and you know, like you, you really have to. Dive in deep to really understand an artist at a deeper level that is gonna be meaningful in terms of writing about them or.

Eco Art And Artists Ahead Of Time

Speaker 30 36:48

Well, there's another component to this that just is occurring to me that, one of the things that, at least some artists who are maybe more representational, Ruth Asawa being a little bit more tangential to this conversation, but because you're at this intersection of the environment and art. So many artists are making comments about the state of the environment in which they find themselves, which is documentation in and of itself. So as they, I mean, I remember a show at Site Santa Fe that wa, there were images of, I believe it was Cuba. I think it was Theresa Fernandez. and there were some images of Cuba That were painted when they first discovered Cuba and the topography of the land and the landscape was so radically different than we know it to be now because of, of all the development that's happened there. But in the same way when artists are cataloging the sort of the state of the environment or an environmental concern or issue that we are having right now, they're telling a very specific story that needs to be captured. For its own sake, right? And so you've got these very interesting interweaving stories of artists cataloging the environment, us cataloging the artist and so on and so forth. So be, it gets to be this sort of Russian nesting eggs kind of thing.

Speaker 29 38:09

Someone just sent me, actually a former professor from graduate school. Uh, I, uh, made a post recently on Facebook about, um, having a, you know, kind of like a apocalyptic dream. And he's like, well, you ever, have you ever seen that juror, painting of like water falling from the sky? It's like from the 14 hundreds. I was like, no. And he is like, well, John Berger wrote about it. Everybody knows who John Berger is in the seventies and. You know, like people probably didn't understand that painting, you know, like he had some kind of prophetic, dream and made it into a painting. They probably thought he. spilled paint on, like it was a mistake or something, who knows? But, yeah, context and time.

Speaker 30 38:52

well, given that artists are typically, I mean, one of the things I've explored in my whole first series is like, where do the, creative impulses come from? Where do they get their information, their ideas? And if you accept it in this sort of new understanding of quantum world, that there is this consciousness. that artists become a vehicle for, then the timeline isn't gonna be very precise there. So it makes, you know, this idea of prescient art or, you know, being able to live or interpret multiple timelines simultaneously. But that aside, you still have these actually really real time events where artists are. Making a commentary about strip mining or, you know, something that's very specific and turning it into a whole conversation about their interpretation of the world that they're living in right then and there, which is another part of what, what some of the artists that you represent are up to.

Speaker 29 39:46

Yeah, I mean, I, I have my own little category I call ti time travelers and. George Orr was a ceramicist around the turn of the century. The last, you know, 19 hundreds. And he made these super thin, pots. He was down in, Biloxi and he was kind of a crazy man. He had like a wild mustache and. but people thought he was just out there and I think, I feel like he was a ton traveler. 'cause I was like, how did he even think to make those, you know, like they weren't popular and you could literally find them like 10, 15 years ago, still in garage sales for nothing. And now they're, I don't even know where they're at now. I think, you know, 10 years ago they were like $40,000 for just, one pot. And, uh, yeah, I finally got to go to the museum, last year. that he has his own museum, but you know, yeah. Some, some people are just ahead of their time, you know, they just see much further and a lot of the artists. Yeah. I have Eco art space, which I came up with in 1997, a platform for artists who address environmental issues. And a lot of them can be that way, you know, prophetic that way. And, you know, one artist was doing a project called a High Waterline where she was. Taking a baseball line marker and marking the 10 feet above sea level line in New York City, along lower Manhattan and Brooklyn. And then like two years later, you know the big hurricane

41:11

hit

Speaker 30 41:11

I can't think of the name of it. Which one? Yeah, that one.

Speaker 29 41:14

That one, but then everybody thought, oh, you know, it's prophetic. Well, I don't know. You know, I just think that people who think about you know, the earth's, you know, cycles and what we're doing to it, you know, like we're putting chemicals into the environment, you know, like things are changing and you just have to kind of. You know, what do they say? There's like, there's multiple intelligences and some people just have that kind of naturalist intelligence that they pay attention to the, the earth in a different way than other people do, who are maybe more into math or, you know, engineering, so,

Speaker 30 41:46

yeah. Amazing. So, so do you represent, have any of your books, I didn't have a chance to investigate fully who you've done work on Any large sculptures or land art artists in your.

Land Art Ethics And Ego

Speaker 29 41:57

Uh, no, I kind of, I kind of stay away from land art.

Speaker 30 42:02

Say more. Why?

Speaker 29 42:04

Um,

Speaker 30 42:05

is it too ephemeral?

Speaker 29 42:07

It's a, there's a lot of ego involved in that and I, I think I'm more oriented towards, works that Are you, I mean, you don't necessarily have to be small because someone like, Lauren Bond with metabolic studio. She actually has a neon light that says artists need to create on the same scale as society has the capacity to destroy it, but that that's. Yeah, and it, it's a quote by another, a prior artist, Sherry, and I'm forgetting her last name, but, an LA artist. But, you know, that's a good concept when you're talking about, uh, sustainability or if you don't like that word. And, and that's not a favorite word of mine either. But, you know, regenerative being, holistic about. Your approach. And so things like what the guys were doing, you know, in the seventies, land art is a movement from the seventies. It's not a current, people like to throw that word around. And in England, they do use land art as a term to talk about like, work made in the land. Like it could be small scale, it could even be walking, you know, like, like an earth arch. But yeah, I have my own. Very clear distinctions about earth, land, ecological, eco art. You know, there's like maybe four or five different phases since the late sixties that, covered a range of just yeah. Of consciousness of our interdependence with the earth. Um, I think the land art was a, a little kind of like. Yeah. Ego driven.

Speaker 30 43:39

Well, so I mean, I, I think of what comes to mind in that conversation is I, I think of something like the Dia lightning fields, and then I think of something like Andy Goldsworthy, and I think of those two people in very separate camps. 'cause I think of the, Andy Goldsworthy is very, for the most part, very ephemeral. You know, the leaves are there and then they're not, and then the lightning fields, which is this sort of. acupuncture needles on the land kind of thing. Yeah. So, I mean, which is a, a different vibe for me.

Speaker 29 44:08

Yeah. Lighting field is not that destructive. I mean, they're just sticking the poles into the ground. So, I, I don't have a problem with that piece. I think when you start moving the earth and, carving it and making it your own as a human, um, you're not honoring the Earth's own. Aesthetics, you know, through geological processes and Yeah.

Speaker 30 44:33

oh, that's so interesting. And so would, how would you, so but that's different from say, how you would qualify cave dwellings that were created for habitation. It's it, because it's, those were. Utilitarian. They, you have a different relationship to that. I mean, I just am so curious about it.

Speaker 29 44:52

Well A cave is a Cave. You know, you, you're not changing that. If you're taking clay, which is what they use and make in Tolio, you know, like make paintings on the surface, uh, that's a form of expression that is not destructive. You're using natural materials. There

Speaker 30 45:09

are, well, what, what about something like raw Paulette, you know, his work up in, in the b you don't know about raw Paulette in the, uh, BLM lands up in near que. He was a Vietnam veg who came back and, and created these caves that were all in. Oh

Speaker 29 45:24

yeah.

Speaker 30 45:24

Period. Those sculpted white.

Speaker 29 45:26

I've seen those.

Speaker 30 45:27

Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 29 45:28

I haven't seen it in person, but I've seen images.

Speaker 30 45:31

Oh, they're amazing.

Speaker 29 45:33

So how was he taking a lot of earth to, to make those? Like would he, was he

Speaker 30 45:37

No, no, he was actually, he was, he was excavating the interior of these caves and so he would wheelbarrow by wheelbarrow take the, you know, it's a very soft. Kind of stone out there and then take it out and dump it on the land. So he was, but he was, it was like an a, a sculpture from the inside of, on the inside of the cave. So that was a, a different kind of thing. Huh. That's so interesting. I, I mean, I guess I've never given it as. this, well,

Speaker 29 46:06

that's a habitat, like you said, it's a, you know, he's using that to inhabit. But, yeah, some of the large land art pieces are, are really ego and interesting, and Indi indigenous artists are not fans of that work. Yeah.

Speaker 30 46:21

Right, right, right. Oh, wow, that's so cool. So that's, that's also a different category than say a large piece of sculpture that sits on a piece of land. So that's a, a different kind of, I. Uh, designation altogether. Right. A piece of

Speaker 29 46:36

Yeah. Like Kaiser bringing that big rock to lacma, you know, there's a lot of hubris in that too.

Speaker 30 46:42

Yeah. Or, or a sculpture park like Storm King. I mean, that's a, that's a more of a, an exterior museum, right?

Speaker 29 46:50

Yeah. But they have, they have, you know, changing exhibitions and a lot of, a lot of their pieces are ephemeral now. They're last a year or two. And you know, I know I have artists that are equal arts piece members who've done work there, like Mary Mattingly planted these palm trees to kind of talk about how. Um, you know, trees are migrating and because of the climate changing that, you know, nature's taking its own path, you know, and migrating in places kinda like humans do to to survive.

Speaker 30 47:22

That's so interesting.

Speaker 29 47:23

Yeah.

Speaker 30 47:23

I would think there'd be some really interesting stuff around birds too. I think we even have an exhibition at at the Vlam that's cataloging the loss of the bird song that, you know, you hear the birds that used to be able to hear and now you contrast it with what you can hear now. Okay. That kind of thing. Yeah. There's so many different things. So what, going forward do you see yourself.

Building The Eco Art Legacy Project

Speaker 30 47:45

How do you differentiate your eco art space work from this work that you do this legacy work? Or are they the same thing?

Speaker 29 47:53

Well, they're not the same thing. I mean, I didn't start the legacy work until you know, in 2014. So, I started eco art space in 1997 and I pretty much my whole career has been working with artists to address environmental issues. So, um, I think what happened was it was just kind of a confluence of. Um, you know, 2008 happened and my job as a chief curator at a museum ended, trying to figure out what I was gonna do next. And for a lot of people who turned 50, going into your fifties, you think you're old and you're trying to figure out like, who's gonna hire you when you're old. And I was like, how can I work for myself? You know, how can I build on my knowledge base that I already have and do work and be paid for it? And so that. idea of legacy work came out of that and I, you know, went to NYU, I got my appraisal certificate there, and started, you know, going to all the art fairs and just, really honing in on value. I'd never done that before as a curator. Like I wasn't concerned about value 'cause I was working with a lot of artists who were working, you know, ephemeral work, performative even. so I got into that world, into my fifties and then. I don't know. You know, I think I was ready to put eco art space to bed when I moved here in 2019, and I had worked for another membership organization for a few months. and then that didn't work out and I was like, well, why don't I just do that with Eco Art space? And I probably could have done it a lot earlier, but you know, it was right before the pandemic and it just took off. Like I had 500 members in like a few months, uh, between Amy Lipton and myself. We, you know, my co director, whatever she was in New York. we had worked with hundreds of artists in our career, so that was like a no brainer. Um, she passed away, unfortunately, and during the pandemic in December, 2020, um, you know, complications of getting treatment for cancer during the pandemic was hard for a lot of people. She suffered that. But, so yeah, I've had over 2000 members from 29 countries join and, you know, this particular type of artist who's interested in, you know, the, some of them have not been and are, really great in their skillset and like paint, you know, they, your painters, they're, you know, like more traditional even. Uh, something I wasn't really working with before. 'cause a lot of ecological work was ephemeral, for a long time. So, um, we have a wide range and I don't. Say you can't join for any, you know, specific medium. It's like, it's open. And even if you're not, what I call not there yet, um, I'll let people join. They may not get in the directory if their work is not really ecological. and we offer courses to help them get there, you know, so they can try, you know, working with natural materials or. Changing, you know, a lot of this stuff too is toxic for themselves that artists work with. So, it's kind of fun to learn about artists who've had a whole career and never had to like, buy materials. Like they just collect it, you know, like plastics or, but even the, the artists who work with plastics, you know, have to worry about their health too, like wear gloves and, um, so yeah, art can be toxic. Yeah.

Speaker 30 51:14

Yeah. Yeah, I actually, that's what, part of my personal history, I was a decorative arti artisan. I did decorative arts for a number of years, and one of the reasons I moved into the environmental space is that I got my liver good and pickled by using all the toxic chemicals that I was using in my studio on a regular basis, trying to create 18th century finishes in an accelerated way. Yeah. And so we were constantly manipulating materials. lacquers and all kinds of things and layering things. And God knows that the i, I started having these little mini seizures and that was my, indication that it was time to, stop and clean up my act and my body. And so I moved. That was the impetus for me to go from the decorative arts into environmental sustainability. And then it kind of goes on from there. But, it's interesting that I'm kind of circling back to this intersection of. Um, environmental concerns, and the arts. So that seems to be following me wherever I go, which is why I was so excited to meet you. 'cause you were the first person that I had met in a long time where that intersection was so clear, you know, where that was such a prominent part of what you're up to. And I mean, it would imagine that with this huge community and base of environmental artists that you would be. Available to them to catalog their work as they go forward. So this, this idea of legacy is something that could be a legacy project for you, I would imagine. That's

Speaker 29 52:42

what I'm doing. Yeah. I mean, it's gonna just, it's going to be called the Eco Art Space Legacy Project. And so, yeah, because like I said, even all the.

Speaker 27 52:53

The, just the legacy work that I did coming from the Bay Area, they were all interested in nature. So it's all there. They weren't, you know, living artists. So, you know, I'm making the eco art space archival part of the, the living artist network at this point. I think, you know, the ones who've already passed, we have lost like at least three or four of the kind of matriarchs and. Patriarchs of the eco art movement. but those estates are already, you know, cataloged and, so I think it's, it's better to start doing it before the artist dies.

Speaker 28 53:27

Yes. That's the, that's, that's the message we wanna

Memorial Art Parks From Golf Courses

Speaker 28 53:30

get out to people. And I don't know if I've had a chance to tell you, but one of the initiatives that we're doing this season and in tandem with this, um, art of Remembrance is I have a project that we're gonna be, Unveiling inside of our Remains to Be Seen exhibition, which is our companion exhibition to this podcast series. So if you know any artists that would fit into that category, let's have a conversation. 'cause that it's a 24 7 virtual exhibition. So we don't actually need the art, we just need images of the art and have their narrative tie into what we're talking about. And that would be a really great tie in. But part of one of the things that we'll be. Revealing in that is my concept for something called EM Fields, which is rewilding golf courses and turning them into um, memorial arts parks. Basically using, uh, natural organic reduction, green burial and just re landscaping the land using the infrastructure of the golf courses so that you have the greens and the topography of the land. To be major art installations and then, you know, using the rest of the a DA compliant and pathways and golf and uh, parking lots and all of that. So I'd be curious to have a conversation with you about, a little bit further about that. 'cause it seems like it might be a, an interesting way for us to intersect.

Speaker 27 54:41

So you're, you're proposing this like for, uh, the Southwest,

Speaker 28 54:44

I'm propo We have decide, we have yet to decide where we're gonna do the pilot project because we have to take into consideration which states have it legal to do the natural organic reduction, uh, green burials, where it would be most cost effective to do it where. There, there are a plethora of golf courses available across the United States that are for sale and for not a lot of money, all things considered in, in New York state. There's something in the 20 range of 20 something or plus, uh, golf courses for sale right now. And a lot of what's happening is they're expensive to maintain. New golf courses get put up instead, and they are these toxic, you know, they're toxic. Places and they're learning that, that having a house on a golf course is no longer necessarily a bonus. And so some of the real estate values are declining around that. So there it's lots of different layers to it as well as People who are collectors of large sculptures don't necessarily have a place for them to go. they die. So it's this confluence of different ideas. Oh,

Speaker 27 55:46

that's a nice project. I like that. Yeah.

Speaker 28 55:48

Yeah. So, we'll, we'll talk about that a little bit, We'll be unveiling that soon. But this has been great. I'm so glad, that we finally got a chance to connect. And is I feel like I've left a few threads out there for people who are probably thinking, okay, what's next for me? How can I, how can I take my family's. bountiful collection of art, of one particular artist say. And what would be my next step? What would you say a next step if it's not that well known an artist? What would they do with their work?

Speaker 27 56:19

another little piece of advice is that you really should find a curator or an art advisor, someone who. Has the expertise to come in, represent the artist or the estate. you know, if you wanna donate the work to a museum, when families try to do it themselves, it just shuts down because the institutions They're not gonna trust you, first of all. 'cause you're, that's not your field of study and you haven't been out there curating shows. but it, it's also messy. It can be messy 'cause they don't know if they take something that the other family member hasn't approved and then they're gonna get in a lawsuit like it, you know, there needs to be some vetting ahead of, you know, just trying to, give things to a museum that doesn't work that way. But, Yeah, just, you know, being organized, you need to have the information, in a form. It can be available to people from far away nearby, so they can make decisions around it, so, Yeah. I mean, and if you don't have a lot of supporter and you don't have a lot of money, you know, you definitely should write something up and put that as a part of your will or, uh, living trust and. then yeah, identify someone who you trust and maybe if that person can't even do that work, that they can, at least in the interim, find that person, to help you. Right. Um, yeah.

Speaker 28 57:44

Perfect. Well, that's great. And it just occurred to me I should probably do a similar, episode with somebody to advise people on their collections, not the collections of their own family members who are artists with that entire portfolio of work, but, a collection like I have, which is, a bunch of different artists. And how do you, what do you, what's the, what's the. Responsible thing to do around that. Great. Well thanks again, Tricia, and I look forward to seeing you in Santa Fe and we'll get together again really soon.

Speaker 27 58:15

Sounds good, Lily. Thank you.

Speaker 28 58:16

Okay, take care.

Closing Thanks And How To Support

Speaker 4 58:18

So thanks for joining us today. Art Storming is brought to you and supported by Art Bridge, nm. And listeners like you look for us on your favorite podcast platforms or wherever you listen. Your subscriptions, likes, comments, and shares. Help us to reach more listeners and attract the support we need to thrive in these challenging times. If you love what you hear, please consider making a contribution. We rely on your help to keep these conversations going. Every dollar you contribute goes directly into programs that support our mission, and we've been offered a matching grant that will match every dollar that you contribute. That means more compelling stories, more in-depth articles, and an even greater impact on our community. Please visit our website@www.art bridge nm.org and thank you so much for being an essential part of our work.