A Cloud in the Ground and Other Beautifully Weird Goodbyes - Daniel Wheeler (S2:E20)

What would it change if we treated death as part of our creative life instead of a topic we avoid until we have no choice? I sit down with Los Angeles 3D artist and sculptor Daniel Wheeler for a candid, funny, and deeply tender conversation about memorial art, funerary sculpture, and the ways physical objects can help us carry grief without shrinking our lives.

ArtStorming is thrilled to announce our official partnership with Zeitgeist Dance Theatre and Francisco Gella Dance Works! Like us, they believe in pushing creative boundaries and amplifying vibrant artistic voices. Zeitgeist Dance Theatre and Francisco Gella Dance Works are dedicated to advancing contemporary dance and dance education in New Mexico and beyond. Together, we create a powerful, shared space where art thrives and audiences can connect deeply.

Music for ArtStorming was written and performed by John Cruikshank.

Transcript

Creativity Questions And Season Setup

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.

1:21

Today I'll be art storming with the brilliant 3D artist and sculptor Daniel Wheeler. For those of you who follow this podcast, the name Wheeler may sound familiar because I did an episode earlier this season with Daniel's sister-in-law, Deb Todd Wheeler. It was Daniel who introduced me to Deb, and as you'll learn in this episode, they share a tragic loss that led them each into entirely different and incredibly beautiful expressions of that grief. But even before the sudden death of Daniel's nephew and Deb Todd's son,

Lili 1:56

Lucas,

1:57

Daniel had been working in and around the theme of mortality. In this episode, we dive

Speaker 2:03

into his

2:03

extraordinary work with memorial art. We'll talk about

Meeting Daniel Wheeler In 3D

2:07

a five-part wooden urn designed to travel across the country, a painted plaster conch shell designed to

Speaker 2 2:13

decay naturally in the soil,

2:15

a piece of pink granite towed behind a sailboat, and a tattoo. Through these tactile tributes, he's developed a deep philosophical and life-affirming relationship with death. In this conversation, he shares how creating physical objects can help us reassemble the people we love after they're gone, and why a life well-lived leaves a beautiful wave behind it. Here is my long-awaited conversation with Los Angeles artist Daniel Wheeler

Lili 2:44

So we finally get to do this. I'm so excited

Daniel 2:48

It's about time.

Lili 2:49

Yeah. So, I am ArtStorming with Daniel Wheeler, and this is, been long anticipated, my dear, because I think we started talking about, I don't know, a year... No. Was it two? I was trying to decide, is it two years ago or a year ago? But thanks to you, we had a very popular, conversation episode with, your sister-in-law, Deb, and, thanks to you for bringing her to us. and I was trying to remember. I met You through my sister, and I think my sister met you through Ursula? Is that how you guys met? Okay.

Daniel 3:23

We met at a dinner party at Ursula's house, and, and I don't know how... with your sister, as usual, we drilled right down, and some- somehow we got talking about stuff that I make, and she said, "Oh, you need to talk to my sister Lily." So that's how that happened

Lili 3:42

Yeah. Yeah. so since that's how it started, why don't you, I'll be my sister and say, "So Daniel, what kind of work do you do? Tell me."

Daniel 3:52

Oh, so and I probably said the same, vague answer, which is, essentially that I do things in 3D. and then the real variability comes in, about the context for which I make them. So they run a gamut from, set design to, architectural scale installations to performance to, I make, industrial design stuff for people. I make furniture. I make sculpture. I make, memorial things and funerary things. I make love objects. I've made Valentines every year for my wife and daughters for every years of their lives, sculptural Valentines. anything 3D basically at a- at almost any scale with, a variety of materials and processes involved. I

Lili 4:44

So I know what got my sister's attention was when you said memorial arts objects, obviously. So her ears just started to fire up. and, we did jump on a call right away, and we talked about what you do when we made that first connection, but I hadn't started the season and so it wasn't time for us to do this yet. But luckily we had another phone call, I guess it was last week or a couple of weeks ago, in which we were doing a FaceTime and I got to peek inside your studio and see some of the projects that you're up to. So since the listeners don't have the benefit of visuals, walk us through a little bit, maybe focusing on some of your memorial arts objects or your memento mori projects that you're inspired by that you showed me in your studio. And I'd also love you to talk about the one thing that really piqued my attention, which was the beautiful vessel that you made out of wood for a family, and I'm gonna let you describe it, but it was a f- I think five petaled piece of sc- three-dimensional sculpture of a flower. But I'm gonna let you describe those projects

Why Funerary Sculpture Is Ancient

Daniel 5:45

okay, so I'll just dive in. from a historical standpoint, the beginning of sculpture is memorial objects. that's, that is really the bottom line. people have been making vessels for death and/or celebration of people's lives sculpturally for thousands of years. the pyramids, really everything that's, that we know of, in terms of great sculpture has one way or another related to, the passing of people. and so there's that historical background. from my vantage point, it came about accidentally. I was, about to embark on a project where I was designing and building a chapel for a school, and it was a true multi-faith chapel. So s- I was proposing that project, and a friend of mine who's a collector, lost his son, to, to cancer, and he's somebody who already, owned my sculpture and w- we were friendly, and he asked me to make an urn for his son And so I dove into the project not knowing really anything about what, what it would entail. but I found it incredibly rewarding. and at the same time my mom was dying of cancer and, she knew what I was doing both for the chapel and also for this client, and she said, you, would you make one for me?" at the same time I started designing a piece for somebody who was still alive and then designing a piece for somebody who'd lost a child, which is-- those are two, hugely different, setups. And, I found them both incredibly, moving projects, both because, I cared a lot about them, one. Two, they were asking me to bring everything I could to something that meant a lot to them. it wasn't just somebody saying "I need a bookcase," or, "I need a, crazy sterling silver caviar dish," or something like that. It was somebody saying, "This is my last thing," or, "This is my child's last thing." it was a little daunting of course, but it, but also I felt like I could bring everything to bear without worrying about, anything that the art world usually worries about, which is, irony and fear and, self-aggrandizement and all the things that the art world is famous for. so I found them both incredibly moving, and they wanted really different things. the person who lost their son wanted something truly different that they could live with, that they would, put on a mantle or someplace and display. And my mom wanted something that would be interred. So in the discussion we, we-- My-- The-- One of the first things we talked about, my mother and I, was like, so how long do you want it to last? we're putting it in the ground, it's, it can either decay or not. And if you want it to decay, then there's one set of materials, and if you want it to last forever, there's some other sets of materials." and so that was one of the first questions. And, And then, it progressed from there. And the other one, was more about, a sculpture that would reflect some larger tone of this young man's life. in that case, I went for a more, not intellectual, but a more conceptual framework because this was the family that I was making it for, and that's the way he believed. Now, eventually, that man also asked me to make his urn and, And that man's still alive. I made his urn 18 years ago. and the prompt in that case was like, "Make me something that I wanna live with for the rest of my life. Make me an interesting sculpture that I wanna live with that when I die, my ashes will become a part of." And the other part of the prompt was, "I want it to be in five parts, and I want each part to go to different branches of the family." which, at first I thought that's a, an interesting request." but so then I went with a kind of a trunk metaphor, a trunk of a tree that was separated into sections and, was this kind of interesting figural form. and he's still not in that thing. Still living in his house. He's 94 so that was that. and I found myself getting, by word of mouth, more projects. Generally, they were projects that were a situation where somebody died too soon,

Lili 10:24

so I wish we had visuals here because that piece can be seen on your website, that piece that you made for the gentlemen, and

Daniel 10:31

all of the ones that I've referred to can be.

Lili 10:34

Okay, great. s- since we don't have the benefit of visuals right now, for people who are, can't wait, you could

10:40

go to

Lili 10:41

Daniel's website right now and take a peek.

Daniel 10:43

This one looks like a, the one we're talking about now looks like a twisting trunk of a tree.

Lili 10:47

Oh, yes, I remember that one

Daniel 10:49

and where I replaced branches that came out with pewter castings, and they were knobs that went to stainless steel canisters in each one. And so you'd unscrew these branches, and then put the ashes in the canisters. And the-- each section of the tree, if you think of a trunk kind of split in five parts, they would unlock from each other and exist as separate entities. so that was the first... believe it or not, I've done two five-part urns.

Two Five-Part Urns With Purpose

Daniel 11:20

the second one that you're talking about is, was a different situation. It was a, woman who lost her husband, actually, interestingly, to the same kind of cancer that the first kid of the collector died of. I never thought about that before. But anyway, the, her prompt was, "He lived in five cities over the course of his life. That meant a lot to him. We wanna deposit ashes in each of those five cities. Will you make a five-part urn that will detach with five separate containers that w- can be taken on a plane," hence no metal, "to these locations, have the ashes, loosed and then brought back to, to where they live and reassembled in the, in, in a sculpture?" S- And then the other part of the prompt was his favorite wood was cherry wood. So in that case, I used the cherry blossom, which has five petals, as a kind of the image, and I built each petal as these kind of, roundish vessels that, And this was all made of cherry wood. and they come apart and go back together, and they have each city's name on them, so.

Lili 12:37

It's, such a gorgeous piece. It's so gorgeous. And then I'm curious, so what did you and your mom settle on before you went off and became sort of this creator of these things for everybody?

A Conch Shell Built To Decay

Daniel 12:47

in her case it was a, So it, it was connected very strongly to the chapel I was making. I was working on a, a water feature for this meditation room in the chapel. And in the water feature there was a large conch shell that I cast, I sculpted in plaster and then cast in, in stainless steel. And the, and that conch shell became the center of this water feature, and she loved the shape and she loved the idea of a shell. And then we started talking about shells as both markers of the beach where she spent a lot of time, but also the shell as a temporary house for a creature. the house that one sheds when one dies. And so she liked the metaphor of the shell as a kind of a reminder of the house of the body. and in her case she wanted something that would decay not too quickly, but not too slowly. So we made it out of painted plaster and it, it... And I filled it, closed it, finished it, and then we buried it. And it's, I'm sure it's, now all part of the soil. that was 13 years ago, so

Lili 14:01

Wow. Wow. And so then, the, word about this got on the street, and so you started being contacted by people for, to do

Cemeteries, Rules, And Pink Granite

Daniel 14:11

what, yeah, what I say is that generally it's people who die out of the course of things that ask me to do this because their family wants to do something remarkable or different. I made a grave monument for a 24-year-old kid who died suddenly of a brain aneurysm, and it's in this context of this gray cemetery. And we made this thing out of, Halila limestone and Greek marble, and it's white and tan and full of color and shape, and it looks like an alien, spaceship landed in the middle of this cemetery. But it's, who this man was. He was a spectacular young man and, he died very early, and the parents wanted to honor him in a way that felt, different than the run of things. that tends to be the jobs I get for this kind of stuff.

Lili 15:35

Did you get any pushback from the cemetery on that? 'Cause I've heard that some cemeteries are a little bit, particular about what

Daniel 15:42

they

Lili 15:42

allow.

Daniel 15:44

they did, but they pushed on through and they got-- I didn't have to deal with that. I was only making the thing. But, interestingly, I'm working with another cemetery. So my grandparents died, in the '80s, and they... And the cemetery is an old cemetery in Massachusetts. And, I went to visit their grave some years ago and noticed that the slate, gravestone that they made was delaminating. who makes a slate gravestone out of two pieces of slate? I... And I just thought, "This is wrong." and so I got this crazy idea to, 'cause my grandfather lived, had this place on this island up in Maine. And I said, I should just go and grab a pink granite rock off the island and make a headstone out of it." And I told my uncle, I said, like, "You know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna be up there, this summer." I'm g-- This was years ago now. "I think I should get a rock and redo their headstone." And he goes, "He always wanted that." and I didn't know that. So my friend and I were sailing up there. We we, we, like, anchored off of this island. We rode in this plastic dinghy to the island, and we walked onto the beach, and I say, like, "All right, we're gonna get a huge rock. How about that one right there?" And I dragged it across the beach on a boat dolly, and we put it in... We almost sunk the dinghy.

Lili 17:13

I was gonna say, how on earth did you get it back?

Daniel 17:16

tu- we tied it to the back of a sailboat, and we towed it back to the harbor. it took us three days to get back to the harbor, and I put it in the back of a minivan, and it, it-- and put it in my cousin's garage, and it's still sitting there. I've gotta do it. I still haven't, 'cause we had pushback from the cemetery, so that'll get done someday. But,

Lili 17:37

Wow. Do you think that cemetery will come around?

Daniel 17:40

They will. They will. But it's gonna-- It-- We just need to slowly... these things don't happen quickly, as you can imagine,

Lili 17:48

Yeah.

Daniel 17:48

cemeteries don't move that fast. Yes, it's just gonna

Lili 17:53

to be... slow moving

Daniel 17:55

it's a natural slab of pink granite that is a-- looks like the top of a sailboat, maybe the-- with the sails. And, I have to build a load beam for the bottom, but I'm gonna just sandblast the type right into the rock, and it'll be very simple. and that'll be set. We, we gotta set it, we gotta set it in concrete 'cause it's, it's in New England, so the frost has a way of toppling things over. But those are just little technical things that have to be done, so

Lili 18:29

Yeah. it's actually, it's one of the things that I learned from one of my other episodes was, how often they have to build entire vaults underneath, to hold the coffins because otherwise with the fri- freezing and thawing of the land, there can be a lot of, upheaval and a lot of toppled tombstones, and that's why... I always wondered why there were always all the toppled tombstones in old creepy graveyards, And it's because the land continues to do its thing, and the stones are just sorta there. So would that be for, your, both your grandparents, or w- do you have something different in mind for your grandmother?

Daniel 19:00

it's both of them. Yeah. they are, they're both under the same headstone. and interestingly, as an aside, I also made an urn for my father who died some years later. and they both wanted to be, they wanted to have at least part of their ashes interred, and so they-- my- since my mom died first, they made the headstone. It's a classic slate New England headstone, but it says her name, and then underneath it, it says her husband, and then his name, which is the exact opposite of the way all stones in those cemeteries are done. But they did have to get special permission for that, Yeah. I know.

Lili 19:39

so obviously you ha- come from a legacy of people who are, think a little bit outside the

Daniel 19:43

Bucking the trend a little bit. Yeah. Yeah.

Lili 19:46

That's a- that's awesome. And so did it change? I'm s- I'm so envious because y- my sister, and I may have told you this, but, one of the origin story for this whole podcast series is because both my parents died without the forethought and without anything suitable for them to be interred or, even just their vessels for them. And so Mom got nothing, and Dad got a brown hermetically sealed box, and we, that got buried in Tipton, Oklahoma, in a shallow grave 'cause it was freezing cold when we found out that we were goi- anyway, it's this whole long story. But, and then the story that my, that is so funny that I've said before, but my mom died out here in Santa Fe. Our family, like yours, is from the East Coast. the directive was for us to ship Mom's ashes back to New York to the cemetery that the family goes back, way, way back in. And m- my sister, as you know her well enough to know that this is so typical of her, she didn't wanna follow the directions because she knew Mom would like to be here in Santa Fe. And so she sent part of the ashes back to New York, and she kept some of the ashes, and she spread Mom's ashes in the foothills of the ski mountain. And then five years later or so, when my family couldn't make up their mind whether Mom was gonna go into Greenwood or whether she was gonna go into the other smaller family cemetery, they thought, "Oh, Polly wanted to be back in Santa Fe anyway," so they sent her the ashes. And she couldn't remember where she'd sprinkled the ashes the first time, so she went out again on a hike and sprinkled the rest of the ashes. And so Mom's a- sort of sprinkled all over the place, which is perfect for her, too. it's, in a way it's the perfect way for my mom to go. Dad, not so much. But I started to say is that I'm envious that you, that both of your parents had the forethought or that your family got together to make that decision, and that they have been, those tributes exist for them. And, I think that ha- that, makes me wonder, do you have something designed for yourself, your wife, your kids?

Daniel 21:42

Interesting question. I have a thought for myself. I haven't figured out how to make it yet. I haven't

Grief Design And Reassembling Memory

Daniel 21:50

thought about the, th- my wife and my kids. it's an interesting, it's an interesting equation because some people are, let's see. What's the best way to say this? Their personality is averse to having those discussions, and some people are fine with it. and I find that they're very fruitful discussions usually, but some people just can't... They just can't figure it out. and also there's a tendency in grief to, to be unable to make decisions, and so that happens too. And when people are in it... one of the things that I found really great about doing this work is that a design project when you're grieving is actually a pretty useful way of getting through the grief, particularly if the design project is about the person you've lost, because it's a kind of a sideways way to approach the management of grief. it's just disconnected enough where you can start to, talk about the person, because you're talking about color and shape and, tone and, material and all those things. This is something I've learned in the process of doing it, that, that I've come to this kind of understanding that when you lose somebody, the, absence is the thing that causes the grief. mean, that's an obvious one. But then what happens is, as you move through the grief, you kind of reassemble the person in your mind, and the process of healing has to do with that assembly, because that person then has to exist in your own self somehow, because they don't exist out in the world. And to create a thing that represents that person is a, an exercise in reassembly. this is something I, would never have known other than the fact that it happened in the processes. um, I find that it's a... You can facilitate that reassembly by, by gently asking these questions in that process, and people find some real relief in that.

Lili 24:05

I would imagine that there's another component to this, which is, in the case of my parents, Nobody expected them to die so young. They were both in their 50s. Daddy was just 50 And so part of the reason it might be difficult to have a conversation about this is that p- obviously people don't like to talk, think about their life being interrupted. And in the case of you thinking about what you would do for your daughters, they haven't had their full lives yet. So how do you contextualize somebody or put somebody's memory back together again that hasn't finished doing the

Daniel 24:36

No, it's

Lili 24:37

their life? Yeah. And so obviously nobody wants to think about that

Daniel 24:42

My, my brother's eldest son died suddenly at 18, and, they did very different things. I helped with some parts of that. but it's a very-- it's a different game altogether when somebody that young dies. and you're right, there's, there's-- it's one thing to be at a place in your life where there are things that are forcing you to think about the end, illness or just the aches and pains of being an old person. it's inevitable, and it's there. The-- And it's hard for children to have to address their parents' desire to talk about those things, because of course, they don't wanna deal with it either. But there's something that's really fruitful in those discussions, and I feel like-- one of the things that a hospice nurse told me once was that if you are open to it, people die generally how they live. There's a tone, there's a bell tone to the way that somebody dies that is, related to the way they lived. And it doesn't mean that it's, if you lived an easy life, you have an easy death or whatever. It's not as simple as that. But if you. look carefully at it, it happens that way. And that makes total sense to me. we, our story's our story from the beginning all to the end and, having watched children be born, and in retrospect, I can see their, their characters even in their births. so it-- to me, it, it is completely logical that the process of dying, either the process or the accidental action or whatever it is, somehow connects to the way that people die. so I don't know. I-- You know, this is one of the things about sculpture is that it, it allows us to, deal with some of these passages, in a way that's, abstract, doesn't have to be narrative, but it can physicalize the way we feel about, about that kinda loss or just h-how we feel about that, part of a life 'cause the death is part of it, too. So,

Lili 27:04

I mean, What you just said was so interesting about, That as soon as somebody is born, they sort of have this essence to them that is uniquely theirs, and, you've seen that in your daughters. anybody who's grown up with somebody, there is that immutable quality that those people have, and if they are gonna die the same way, that makes it a little easier in terms of my thinking of if I did want to, commission something, a piece for myself or for my sister, it You don't really have to it's not like the eulogy. You don't have to have the whole life story in order to capture the essence and I love that sculpture, like poetry, can just have an essential quality to it that would be suitable for that

Daniel 27:49

of

Lili 27:49

it doesn't necessarily have to

Daniel 27:50

yeah,

Lili 27:51

tone. I love that.

Daniel 27:53

It's it's, To me, I think I use this in a statement on my website, but, if you look at the wake of a boat or, actually if you look at any movement through space, celestial bodies, doesn't matter, things that go through space create, waves. And, so let's just use a boat for an example. With a boat, not only do you have the wake which we know of that goes behind the boat, and it's no accident that's called the same word that the Irish call the thing that you do after somebody dies. But also a boat creates what's called prow shock, which means it's the pushing of the water off the prow of the boat, off in front of the boat. And I would say that a life does exactly the same thing. It creates a prow shock around the birth, and it has waves in the aftermath as well. And the same way that they say that, babies come in with gifts or bread in their arms, I think you go out with gifts as well, and those gifts get, get delivered to the people. They either-- Those people either take those gifts or not, but they're there. And, my wife's mother passed recently, and one of the things I said to her when she was going to the, to the house to start working on, on the stuff is I said, "Look, I know you're gonna feel terrible about this, and there's a lot of emotional things that you're gonna go through, but in there are a bunch of reveals. There's stuff to be learned, and there's stuff to be seen that you didn't know about, and those are the gifts that are buried in there. So try to stay curious about when those things will happen, 'cause they're gonna be there." And, um, and I think if we take that approach to the whole project, w-we get more out of it. I found my mother's death to be one of the most intimate and beautiful things I'd ever seen. But it sucked too, you know? So it was painful and awful and all the rest, but it was also really deep. it wasn't easy on her. It wasn't easy on anybody

Lili 30:06

Yeah. Well, and that you had the opportunity, as you said, to work through some of that grief by creating the, having created the urn for her in advance. did you learn anything that you wish you could have incorporated into that project since you did it before in advance of her death? Was there something that you learned in that loss process immediately following, or were you

Daniel 30:30

Hmm

Lili 30:30

pretty aligned with it?

Daniel 30:33

Interesting. I don't think, I don't think I would say that,

Rituals For Ashes And Keepsakes

Daniel 30:40

I learned anything that would've changed the way that I would've done the thing. I did learn a whole lot of things. and one of the things that was beautiful was that she, she said "I want half my ashes to go in the urn and be interred 'cause I know my husband wants to be interred eventually, and so I wanna be there with him. but the other half, I want you to divide up among my grandkids and my family, and they can each do what they want with those ashes." And we did that all in one evening, and it was a spectacular evening, and everybody did something completely different, and that was pretty great to watch. And so- So it was her gift that we got to watch each person do their thing too, right? So that was pretty cool. Um,

Lili 31:35

it occurred to me that probably 13 years ago there weren't as many options for what one can do with cremains. now they have all these not that you would've been able to do it in one night, but, you can turn them in, put them into a vinyl album of their favorite piece of music. You can put m- turn them into a diamond. There's a company called Parting Stones here in Santa Fe where they cr- turn into these beautiful, smooth river rocks. You can bury them in a ball of a tree. there's so many cool creative things that people can do now. But I love that, that it was a, just even a quiet, subtle family gathering where everybody just really had this very connected moment to share

Daniel 32:12

Yeah, it-- we-- I talk a lot about when, I'm really fascinated in about, different, grieving rituals. And when you think about the cooling slab, the way that people used to deal with bodies after they died, they were-- it was in the home. And, and there were so many things that were connected to, the physical nature of the home that were related to that. for example, I don't know what it's called, but they used to put these niches in narrow stairways, um, so you could take a body around the stairway. because once you got the body in a coffin, you weren't gonna just tip it up and slide it down the stairs. you had to get around the corner. And so people, people had to deal with the physical aspect of dying all the time. And, when that was the case, people had a lot more matter f- matter of fact, discussions about this. I remember when I was a kid, I read, As They Lay Dying by William Faulkner, and one of the amazing things I'm only thinking about it now actually as we're talking is, this kind of notion of, what do you do? What are the requests of people on their deathbeds? And, in that book, the husband, who was never a very good husband, goes through literally hell and high water to get his wife's body to this town, that she wanted to be, buried in. And, you she did it as a punishment in a way, just to make him, do this thing for her that he'd never done before. and the ironic and awful thing about it is he succeeds. he just makes this shit happen. And, and it tortures absolutely everybody. so it's, such a-- And I remember thinking at the time, what a q- what an amazing metaphor, right? And, so you know, everything's d- everyone is different,

Lili 34:14

Wow. so now that you've done, you've had a few of these rodeos, d- is it, I know you still do a lot of other projects, but what percentage of your work would you say is dedicated to either this theme or actual commissions of this type?

Daniel 34:31

so interestingly, I really haven't had a commission specifically for a while now.

Lacrimingo And Laughing In Darkness

Daniel 34:38

I've made two, urns as part of the recent body of sculptural work that I've done. And, I'm really intrigued by how they are related to, by people who are coming to see it as sculpture, right? so in my sculptural practice, right now I'm making a lot of work that has death, wrapped around and interwoven with other themes in it. but, but as part of them. And the work is about, carnality and being alive in a body and the physical and sensual nature of being alive. but that includes death, of course. And, so I'm, I've made one urn, that is also a sculpture and it's not for anybody. People always ask is this for somebody?" And I, I say n- no. But it's if you could s- ask the same thing about any of the other sculptures that I made, they're not for anybody either, but hopefully they are for somebody, somebody's gonna buy them and they'll go away. and I would say the same thing about the urns. And I'm working on a second one now that, is, I really love. It's gonna be in a show in the fall. and I call it, or my wife named it Lacrimingo, because it looks like a cross between A crane and a, what the Romans used to do, make these things called lacrimas, which were these little glass jars for tears. So y- it had a little lip, and you would cry into the, into the vessel. It's like a little amphora, and then it had a little cork. And, they were little bottles of sadness. I always loved that image. So I've made this huge bottle of sadness that looks like the body of a heron, and then it has these dumb little spindly legs, and they stand in a, pool of... It's all, the legs and the pool are made of stainless steel. and, so it looks like it's standing in a puddle of tears basically. and because the wood that I used for the body is this kind of pink carab wood, my wife goes, "It's a lacrimingo." that's its name now. and I think that embodies the kind of the notion of what I'm talking about. this shit is funny too. it's dark, but it's dumb and funny and deep and, ridiculous and tragic and all of the above all the time. and not only am I not afraid of that, but I think that's where we should be living. It's where we should be, or it's where I wanna live. Let's, I'm not gonna say should. It's where I wish we had more discussions about, it's like the, the-- We were talking the other, last week about the movie Weekend at Bernie's. just this kind of thing about, it's a ridiculous idea, but what makes it so funny is because it's so damn tragic. And if you can't laugh, you're screwed. so anyway, so a lot of the work that I do now, some of the memento mori things, they also have a dark sense of humor to them. And, I just think it's part of it,

Lili 37:38

Well, and it also speaks to, again, that that's who you are. And so this is your self-expression, and it makes sense that you would be exploring this. it's indi- of all the things that we've just talked about so far. I would expect there to be elements of humor, and I haven't met your wife yet, but I in advance adore her, and I love that, that you and she have that rapport, and that she is so supportive of your work. It's just, it's so great. And, do your daughters get it?

Daniel 38:05

Oh, yeah, I think they do. they know I'm weird, but like they, they get it. I make these sculptural valentines, and some of them are really bloody weird, and some of them are just totally sweet. and, some are their favorites and some are not. But they, they get one every year and, I'm looking at a couple of them right there. but, I actually f- I can tell you my idea right now for what my urn will be. H- also has a sense of humor. So the idea is I wanna make a ceramic cloud. It looks like a cloud, and it will have my ashes that will be buried. 'Cause I love the idea of somebody digging a hole in the earth and throwing a cloud in it. the kind of ridiculous, contrast is, And I've made a bunch of sculptures where I've carved clouds out of stone, so this kind of idea of opposing ideas and contrast between the literal and the figurative. And

Lili 39:04

Yeah, it's very surrealist. I love it. I love it

Daniel 39:07

it is a little surrealist. Yep.

Lili 39:09

Well, and on that note, I wanted to ask you about the piece that you're working on right now for the parade in LA that has

Pret-A-Portage Parade As Cortege

Lili 39:16

kind of a funeral procession element to it. Say a little bit more about that and describe it for the, for our listeners

Daniel 39:24

So, the L.A. County Museum has just opened this new building, designed by Peter Zumthor. it's a almost a billion-dollar building, that's had a lot of detractors, but, I think it's an absolutely marvelous, bold, interesting, Building one, but also what it says about art and how it deals with art, I think is really interesting. and to celebrate its opening, they're gonna do, a parade around the campus, and they've asked a bunch of artists to apply with different ideas for how to present their thing, whatever that is, in the parade. So what I proposed was this thing called, Pret-à-Portage, which is a spoof on pret-à-porter, and kind of fashion runways. and what it is is a cross between a cortege, which is a funeral procession, for a fallen warrior. It was usually with, riderless horse with the, stirrups in backwards and the boots, empty boots facing the wrong way. and it's this kind of ceremonial, procession. it's a cross between a cortege, uh, a runway spectacle of clothing and whatnot, and, maybe a Trojan horse being pulled into Troy. it's a sculptural equestrian monument without a horse and without a rider. and it's all made of, salvaged street trees. It's all wood, cardboard, paper, cork, linoleum, found pallets, sawhorses. And basically I made this wheeled rearing horse with a saddle on it. The horse is actually a Ponderosa pine trunk that's been hollowed out. and it's also a riff on the kind of the myth of the West and the expansion of the West, the fact that it's, this is long dead and it was never really true to begin with. and so what I'll be doing is I'll be towing this thing. I'm gonna be wearing a costume of... it's changing because I just tried to build this thing and it didn't work. But, I'm gonna be wearing a costume covered in, paper shopping bags, sewed to this thing, and I'm gonna be wearing these huge wooden boots and carrying these two staffs and this wagon thing will be strapped to me and I'll be basically the horse pulling the cart of the horse, and clomping along. It's got a headdress. thing I'm wearing is gonna be like a cross between a Western duster and chaps and like some ceremonial wizard outfit, covered in bells and made of paper. So,

Lili 42:13

well, the shoes that you did, which like look like clogs, but definitely, you can hear the clippity-clop just with them sitting on the

Daniel 42:20

they do clop. But also they're based on a, like a... And I don't know who the designer was, but they're based on these elevator boots that were made for some, design show back in the '90s, with these kind of holes cut out. Anyway, so I modeled them on that, and they're made of redwood. and they have these kind of straps that look like Roman sandals kind of things. so I'm riffing on all this stuff at once, and I don't know whether anybody will, grok any of it But I'm having a ball doing it,

Lili 42:52

it's so great, and it's so perfect again for our theme here because part of what we're talking about is legacy, and I love the boat analogy that you used about the wake and the prow and that's such a beautiful metaphor for the legacy that we have through our life. And I just love that you're playing with interrupting toxic legacies, bringing attention to, the falsehoods around certain frameworks that we create to protect ourselves from having to face anything too difficult or too dangerous. and at the same time, you have such an incredibly beautiful and sensitive way to bring people really into a confronting of the inevitability of death. And, so even though you've got th- that humor interspersed, underneath it all is this very tender, and what I think easy access to a conversation that a lot of people, like you said, don't like to have

Daniel 43:45

Yeah. this has always been a, an issue for me. I've been arguing, in the art world for sincerity

Sincerity, Kotsubashi, And Fire Ashes

Daniel 43:51

for a long time. it's not a hip position to take. and, I really think that, look, visual irony is very important. Dramatic irony is very important. But emotional irony, I really, I can't-- I don't accept that. I feel like it's a hedge against fear and, an excuse for being mean to people. I'm sure I've been accused of being a rube and too earnest and all of these things. But, that's where the humor comes in, and that's the inherent "fuck you" that's in that humor is like, you know, "I'm sorry. fuck all y'all. I think life is beautiful, and caring about this stuff is important, and therefore, I'm not willing to make a joke of it. I am willing to goof on it. I am willing to criticize it. I'm absolutely willing to, play with the, the ironies of living in the world. But I don't think a stance of irony is very good for this. and what the funeral and memorial work has done for me is it's, given me permission, 'cause you have no permission to be ironic w-with somebody's grief. You, you-- There's no room for that. so it, it's given me permission to work within that realm, and therefore, I've taken the permission to do the same in my work that's, supposedly not about that stuff. another example of something like that is that Last year-- we had these big fires in LA, about a year and a half ago now. And, the time, I was working on this piece that, I didn't know was gonna be about the fires, but it turned out that it was. I was, In Japan, when they cremate somebody, the fires are not as hot as they are here. They also don't crush the bone matter the way they do here. so you end up with these big chunks of bone left in the ashes, and they make a ceremonial, process of putting those chunks into the urn. They start with the feet bones, and they work their way to the head, and they do that with, these long chopsticks that are called kotsubashi. And it's a two-person job, and they're only used for that. And I always thought, it would be cool to make some oversized kotsubashi that were made of hands and that looked like a posthole digger. And so I was carving the hands for this thing when the fires happened, and I knew I was gonna make these long arms that looked-- I wanted them to look like oars, and about the same scale. but I-- and I didn't know what I was gonna make them out of. And then the fires happened, and my friend's house burned down, and he asked me if I wanted to come, get some of the wood from the trees, that burned. And he had these rows of Victorian box. they were small trees, and I got a bunch of those, and I made the arms of this thing out of his syzygium wood. and it's displayed in almost like a ceremonial display of ceremonial tools that has these kind of, museum supports. And, the piece is called Post Whole, Whole, And, the idea was you could use these things to sift through the ashes of your home and pick up the stuff that is not completely melted. because so many people were sifting through these toxic ashes to find their silverware and their jewelry and, there's humor in that piece, but it's also very real, you know? and, and could even be a tool. And so that idea of things being tools for your life, that's kind of-- part of the things I said at the beginning, I make, I also make sets for dance companies, and, the sets I make are things that they actually use, that they, their bodies are on. And so I've always been very interested in props and things that we interact with bodily. so tools, things that you hold, things that you touch. and these are tools for grieving, right? That's all they are Sir

Lili 48:13

Yeah. Well, one of the things I love about the work that you're doing and one of the objectives of, the, exhibition that we're doing called

Tattoos And The Next Indicated Thing

Lili 48:20

Remains To Be Seen, which will be, showing people a collection of ideas of these memorial arts objects. But the whole idea here is that Maybe to try to support people to shift their thinking from this being something that you think about after somebody has died to, as you've done, thinking about it, bringing it into one's life. And I wish that there was a rite of pa- passage when we turned, 21 or 30 that, that we actually started to think about this. And not because it's morbid or not because we should confront the reality that we're all gonna die, but because when we do think about the mark that we wanna leave behind us, the echo, the wake, whatever you wanna call it, it informs how we proceed with our lives, and it helps us be a lot more intentional. And, the idea of having an object, and even so what if the art object that I picked when I was 21 no longer feels suitable for me when I'm 51, Get another one, and so then you have a whole collection of things. Why can't an art collection be things that you select with the same kind of intentionality that you do for your art collection or your, where you go to school, you know, all these choices that we make and that we curate our lives around. But we fall off the, off the end when it comes to thinking about our actual end and how we want to be remembered. So that's why I appreciate so much that meeting you and seeing what happened so organically in your life is, feels like just, it just felt so right for what we were doing with our project.

Daniel 49:49

what you just said makes me think of a thing that a friend of mine said. So I shared my studio for 18 years with a woman, who's a sculptor. she, lost her leg-- she became a paraplegic in a car accident when she was 18, so she was in a wheelchair for the rest of her life. She made wild, cool stuff in her life. she died during the pandemic kind of quickly. but this is a woman that, was covered in tattoos and I once asked her about tattoos that she'd gotten when she was young, And does she ever regret the tattoos that she'd gotten when she was young? She said, "No, my body is a map of my living, and if I regretted something I did when I was 18, I would be ess-essentially saying, that I don't accept who I was at 18. So I wear those dumb tattoos on my arm from when I was 18 proudly because I was 18 once." and I loved that. I think that's as good as it gets, right? it's like make your decisions who you are at that time. look, I was proud of-- my whole life I didn't have tattoos. I'd made it through rock and roll, art, and everything else, and I had no ink until my nephew died and I wanted to memorialize him on my body. so I didn't carry, those stories on my body until I was in my 50s. but when I started doing that, it was with real intentionality. I knew what I wanted to talk about and I wanted it to hurt, and I want it to be written on me. and I see it just like any other thing one makes or does. you can either do it intentionally or not. I'm not judging people who don't do it that way, just saying that's the way I would do it,

Lili 51:39

it makes me wanna do a whole segment on tattoos because I read another story about a woman who had, it was some random number of days, but it was, significant to her. She went into a tattoo parlor and Her daughter had died, of an overdose, but she had been clean for X number of days. And the mother had the number of days that the daughter had stayed clean before she lost her fight tattooed on her arm, not so that she would remember how... That she lost her, but how hard she fought for those number of days. And apparently, her request leaving the tattoo parlor was that she gave the tattoo artist some sum of money so that it would cover the cost of Anybody who wanted to get a tattoo to mark the number of sober days on them, was gifted that tattoo. And I think something like a year later, there were hundreds, and everybody had a photograph of, a, an image of the, of their tattoo on the wall. And so you walk into this tattoo artist's, parlor, and it's a whole wall of people with numbers. And I just think that's absolutely one of the most beautiful stories. I'd love to find that tattoo artist.

Daniel 52:49

I mean, this whole thing is based on my nephew's life. this is a phrase of his. and it turns into wire, with flowers hanging from the wire, and that's based on a thing that they did for his, funeral. they hung wires all around the church, like many of them, and they hung thousands of flowers from the wire. And the notion of, the cut flower is it's the kind of operative metaphor. So this whole arm is all about potential and there's his initials, and then this is a flower hanging dead. But then these are cherry blossoms, that are in bloom. These are passion flowers that are also budding. But it's all about, on this side, it's all about potential, and on this side, it's all about reaching the potential. So It was all inspired by a loss. and when I did it my kids were like, "Dad, you didn't like just go get a tattoo. You went crazy." and I was like, "Yeah, but like this was, uh, it was cataclysmic thing and I knew I carried it in my body, but I needed it to be made a surface thing, and I wanted it to hurt a lot, and it did. but all of these things that people do to manage loss, in any way that they work for people is what one should do. One of the things that we said after that, and I remember saying this to my brother a bunch of times, "Don't just put one foot in front of the other." 'cause you kinda have to get through life when you're in that crazy fog of grief. I said, "Just do the next indicated thing." And the thing about next indicated is that it implies your agency. It may not be your agency, but it implies that you have the agency to decide what's indicated. And that might just be, "I gotta scream right now," or, "I gotta go sit in a corner and, bang my head against the wall." Or it might be, "I need to go work," or whatever it is. As long as you decide it's indicated, just do that

Lili 55:00

Well, what's so extraordinary about this is that since we talked to Deb, your sister-in-law, and we know the story, some of our listeners

Deb’s Return To Making Work

Lili 55:06

who tuned into that, just to, to refresh their memory, most of the episode was dedicated to the loss of, lucas, and the extraordinary, outpouring of support that showed up in the chapel. I didn't remember about the hanging cut flowers, which just is so moving. And then because the church was so filled, the shrine was created, and I think it's something like six or seven years hence, people continue to bring cut flowers as a tribute to this young man. And her, her episode was just beyond incredible and amazing. And so I love that we circle back to, to touch on it. And, know, I think that

Daniel 55:45

one more thing about her on this because, because she said to me at a certain point, she said, I don't think I'll ever make another thing." and I thought to myself, "Ah, what a tragedy," because this woman can make things, and she has a beautiful mind, and it generates stuff. and I thought... But what I said was, "Okay, if that's what it is, then and you need help clearing your studio or whatever it is, I'm in, whatever you want." but in my mind, I was thinking like, "God, no. Please, no. Don't stop." And what she did was she moved inexorably towards making the stuff she's making now, which is amazing work and is as sensitive and as smart and as, deep and reflective and active and practical and all the things, that it could possibly be. And I'm so glad got there. it's super cool. 'cause it's always a loss when people decide to stop, particularly people who have a lot to offer like she does. you know, it is an amazing story

Lili 56:58

Well, I'm, I'm glad her journey didn't end there. And for so many, a catastrophic loss is the beginning of a journey, of kind of coming into that creative agency that you pointed to. And so I- one of the reasons that we're doing this this exhibition is because we have one room that will be filled with objects of, uh, vessels, and I hope we'll have some of your pieces to show there. And then, um, the other room is for art that was created that was inspired by a catastrophic loss like this. And so many of the stories that we're telling during this season are those incredible moments of beauty that come out of the depths of despair and the life continuation process that it points to. And I'm so thrilled that We finally got to have this conversation, and it was everything I knew it would be.

Daniel 57:49

Yeah, me too. Thank you

Lili 57:51

Yeah.

Speaker 4 57:53

So thanks for joining us today. Art Storming is brought to you and supported by Art Bridge, nm. And listeners

Support Art Bridge NM

Speaker 4 58:00

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