one of the great things about making art is that you get to make things and then listen to those things and pay attention to those things yep, I, I agree.

Same, 100% sincere agreement.

Next quote we're adding a lot to this, and thanks for listening.

I guess just go listen to the original or watch the original video.

No, so one thing that came to mind for me on that one, ty, was just the call and response relationship with the work, something we've discussed many times before and certainly something that we'll come back to certainly again.

But it's just that, you know, think about music, about public gatherings, that call response relationship between you know two active parties, you know in the, in the equation, and there's something about that that as time goes on, my relationship with the work deepens, and the more I think I know, the more I realize I don't.

And so that's where the listening is so important, right?

Yeah, you talked the other day about.

You texted me something to the effect of what was it?

We should pull it up.

What did you text me?

When, what day and what time?

Yeah, what word did you use, though?

It was battling?

It was fighting, yeah, fighting, yeah.

Yeah, all of the above, yeah, and I just I think I responded with a pithy little.

Have you?

Have you thought about just sitting down and listening for a minute?

You didn't need to hear that from me, but it's okay.

I mean that's.

I feel like that's.

All I'm doing right now is just being excited Number one about making art, right Cause I get to, like she says, but just listening to everything and trying to pay attention to what I'm listening to.

Yeah, and it's, it's right now.

Everything is changing every day.

I'm playing with new things, I'm adding new stuff, I'm taking away, I'm deconstructing, I'm reconstructing, I'm listening, I'm looking and then I'm just kind of going okay, where are you going?

Where are you going?

Oh, okay, Rewind right back, try again, move on next thing.

So I mean, even this morning before you and I hopped on and I was rearranging things and looking at stuff, adding some pastel, getting some oil sticks out, like making some stuff, and then going oh, that definitely wasn't where it was telling me to go.

Okay, later today, after we're done recording, I'll go in and F around with that stuff.

But it's so fun, it's so fun.

I don't care, it's so fun.

And as both parties change, the conversation changes.

Yeah, you know, it's easy to sort of get stuck in a certain mode of like, oh, this is maybe where this is headed, but then, in Arlene's words, make these things, then listen to those things and pay attention to those things.

So all right, we've done something.

The things that we're having conversations with have changed, so the conversation itself needs to change, and so the listening and the paying attention is is critically important.

Why don't you give us a quick intro on our featured artist of the day?

I'm super excited for this conversation.

Yeah, a lot of really fun stuff we're going to unpack today.

Yeah, this was a great find.

Obviously, you all know that Nathan and I are massive Art21 fans, so this is a great little short that they did on the artist Arlene Sheckett.

And she's an American sculptor known for her inventive and gravity-defying arrangements and experimental use of diverse materials.

Perfect for Nathan, right, everybody.

She was born in 1951, and her abstract figurative forms often function as metaphors for bodily experience, the human condition, touching upon imperfection and uncertainty with humor and pathos.

That's from her artist statement, and New York Times critic Holland Cotter wrote that her career has encompassed both more or less traditional ceramic pots and wildly experimental abstract forms, often displayed on fantastically inventive pedestals.

And he says this is some of the most imaginative American sculpture of the last 20 years.

Her work has been in so many places, from the Met to the National Gallery, art LACMA.

She's exhibited in the Whitney Institute of Contemporary Art, boston, the Frick Collection, and has been awarded so many incredible things, like the Guggenheim Fellowship, she won the Joan Mitchell Grant, I mean, her list just goes on and on.

And she's a native New Yorker and lives and works in the Hudson Valley.

And this was an incredible discovery, nathan finding Arlene.

I don't know how I haven't seen her before or come across her before.

But, like you and I were saying earlier, we're absolutely in love, completely in love.

Yeah, no, we'll talk a lot about this, but just, I definitely feel the kindred spirit and a lot of the things that she shares in the way that she thinks about and talks about her work.

Uh, we'll come back to the pedestal part in particular, because that really unlocked something for me just in watching, watching this video as we prepared for this.

So let's get into our next quote from the art 21 video, which, again, we always cite our sources and reference people back to the source.

So this is a phenomenal video.

Of course, that's not just the quotes that we're going to share audibly, but the video of the work and our process, and if you're an art nerd, like Ty and I are, you'll love watching the way she works and the entire process.

It's absolutely fascinating.

So here's our next quote.

I was thinking I have to have a real appetite for ugly.

There are so many points where this thing is just hideous and yet I have to believe in it and I have to go on with it.

But it might be something good.

Right, that's what I was saying when we opened, like that's how I've been, like just going, uh, yeah, there's nothing here and it just looks terrible, but I have to believe in it.

I have to believe in it because I'm going here for a reason and a purpose.

Inside it's pushing me there.

So, no matter how shitty it looks right now, how horrible things are coming along, I have to believe in it and go on with it, because it might be something good.

Yeah, and watching her.

I don't want to be mean about it, but I you know.

You showed me a couple of pictures.

It does look shitty right now.

I don't want to be hard.

I'm kidding, I'm joking, I'm joking.

What did we talk about?

Curtis elephant skin right Rhino skin, rhino, skin, rhino, skin.

Here we go.

But watching her with the clay takes me back to art school, and I started out in ceramics.

I started out in clay and worked with clay for a long time and just seeing her work with the clay like it was bringing back so many memories of those moments where you're like this is just a blob, this is nothing, it's just form upon form upon form upon form, with nothing that's truly come to life yet.

But it's leading to life.

It's leading from these moments of just wet glops of things with fingerprints and thumbprints and movement in it.

That is leading somewhere and I just love, I love, I love when people work with clay talk.

There's just it's, there's a, it's a different personality and it's something that I just absolutely adore hearing artists that work with clay talk.

I think we have to have that appetite for for ugly, at least a tolerance for it.

I thought about this a while back I don't remember when this sort of like popped to mind, but I realized that every piece goes through a very awkward adolescence.

That's how I think about it.

If you ever looked at somebody's photo wall, or if you go to a graduation or something or a wedding where they show the right every.

It was Ella's first day of school today.

We took first day photo right.

But as, as things progress, even adults every adult right goes through this, these awkward phases where you're like and everyone probably has like that, those those two or three years, great middle school, whatever you're like, can we just leave those pictures off right?

I mean, at one point I had braces, I had a bit of a mullet.

I don't know how this happened in my school, but there guys would get a perm in back.

So I can.

Now you're going to make me share this photo.

I will, I'll find it, yeah.

You're going to have to send it to me.

That'd be great, um, but, uh, so braces, um, short buzzed hair on the side, some lines, okay, okay.

And then short buzzed hair on the side, some lines, okay, okay.

And then a little bit of a mullet in back with a perm okay, that's not ever going to be my profile photo.

That's not.

That's not a phase of life.

It should be.

It's just funny.

It should be, yeah, it's funny now, you know.

But we all, we all as people, go through these, this adolescent phase where we're changing from, we're transitioning from.

You know one phase of life when we're you know we're transitioning from.

You know one phase of life where you know, cute, adorable kids, everything's just like the work, everything's free, it's nothing but possibility, and then, before it gets to be, it's fully formed, you know, finished thing, it's, it's something else and, in her words, ugly, hideous.

But it's that belief that it's going to be coming back to the work, it's that belief, it's that faith that it could be something good which, even if we really break down the way she thinks about it, it might be something good.

It might also not, and that's okay.

We have to accept that possibility as well.

But it's that belief, that faith that it might be something good that carries us through the hideous ugly phases.

Well, and I think I like that she uses the word an appetite for ugly.

So it's just like I mean thinking about.

There's a natural desire, yeah, there's an appetite for that, and she has to have it Absolutely, because starting with an idea is always ugly.

If you don't have an appetite for what that beginning part is, which is the hardest part to work through, there's an ugliness to it, it's an awkwardness, it's a not natural moment the new idea, the new thing, and so if you don't have an appetite for it, you skip it, you move on, you go on to the next thing and keep searching for what feels comfortable or good, and I think that's why the artists like Arlene get to the places where they're going, because that appetite is so strong and it's always pushing them Absolutely.

It's something the other source we're not going to talk about it too much today.

We're mostly going to reference the Art21 video.

But the other great podcast that I would suggest people listen to if you would like to hear Arlene discuss her work more, is the Freeze Masters podcast.

We'll reference that a couple more times because there's some really interesting things that get discussed in that that aren't covered in this art 21 video.

But she talks about how and I'm going to paraphrase here but she discusses how the process of discovery for her is is crucial to her work, especially for a career that's that's spanned, you know, as as long as as her size.

She's in her seventies Now.

She's been at this for a long time, but she she says in that podcast it's like if I, if I, had to start work knowing how it was going to turn out, I would have gotten bored a long time ago.

It is the discovery of what it's going to become.

That is where the excitement and the interest she talks about, the joy of discovering how a piece is going to evolve over time, which is, yeah, I love that.

That's the natural order for the artists who have made it.

Like that story is just repeated throughout history.

That love and that search for discovery is the artists who have made it and who've had a long, lasting career.

That's there.

I was just reading this morning about a young Picasso right after he moved to Paris and he was copying Toulouse-Lautrec.

It was his hero.

So everything he was doing was almost an absolute copy of Lautrec, and then a couple other things started to influence him.

And then the blue period came and so other artists started to.

But there was like this search, he's in love with this, but then this new place in Paris and these new artists and writers that he was around in Paris at that time started to influence this direction.

And then all of a sudden you have Picasso's Blue Period, because he's just constantly searching for that discovery and then he goes oh, that's it.

The really out of control part is this thing that I slave over or I play with will dry for several months and then it will go into a kiln of over 2,000 degrees and that's nuts.

And then all bets are off.

Been there so many times pulling broken clay out of the kiln, pulling the pieces that just all bets were off at that moment, cause you just don't know, like you're hoping you have all the air bubbles out of the thicker parts, you're hoping you have reinforced moments within spots that have more weight or less weight, but then at the end of the day you put it in and you just wait and, honestly, all bets are off.

Did did it fire the way you wanted it to?

Did it actually do the things you were hoping?

Was your structure reinforced?

Were you able to?

You know?

I mean every little thing that goes into that.

And then the next step too, just the glaze.

Sometimes the glaze doesn't come out the way you want to, it's completely, and then it's ruined because it's not the way you wanted it to.

And I think that's what I love about, as I said before, artists that work with clay, is there are so many unknown factors that with a painting, I can always paint over it.

But for a sculptor and somebody working with clay, if all bets are off and it breaks in the kiln, you're back to square root, one again and you got to refigure it out or move on to the next thing, and there's just a big daring element within that that I just find wonderful.

And just the fascination with the process is what really strikes me about that.

That particular quote, because you know, obviously at this point she has been working with you know, ceramics and it deeply engaged in this process for quite some time.

And just to hear the excitement and just that pure curiosity, it's nuts.

It's 2,000 degrees.

It's nuts.

When I heard her say that, I was thinking about and I haven't been working with metal casting certainly as long as she's been working with ceramics, but every single time I fire it up, and copper, primarily, is what I've been working with up to this point, and the melting point is 1,984 degrees, to be specific.

But it's crazy, it's like I'm melting metal and it's absolutely fascinating to think about, like how is this even possible?

No, just the, the alchemy of it is is so exciting and fun because you can influence the result, but you can't fully control it.

It's a lot of life, really.

There's things we can influence, very few things that we can control, and so it is one of those, one of the many things about the artistic practice that I think mirrors a lot of things that are valuable to understand about life as a whole.

But just, yeah, I can influence this, you know there's, there's things that I can certainly do.

There's, there's, there are variables that I can try to control, but the outcome we'll see, and that's part of the excitement as well, that's part of the discovery that we were just talking about.

I'm literally staring at one of my ceramic pieces from my freshman year of college.

That's just like sitting here on my shelf.

It's a whole.

Let me grab it.

If you're listening, you're going to have to listen to us, or you can pop over to Spotify or YouTube and watch the video version, cause I'm going to show you here.

Listen because I'm going to show you a piece here.

Listen to you being a professional doing a live read.

But she got me excited, like thinking of these old pieces that I used to do in college and these figures, you know, when I was a huge.

Well, I still am a huge tool fan, but all of the tool videos inspired me to do all these little figures.

And then I just look what's that?

Did you make that pedestal as well?

No, that was an old something that I found in a trash can.

A little ready-made, yeah, a little ready-made, but yeah, I mean gosh, everything about that is just.

I love the nature of all.

Bets are off.

I'm going for it.

If it works out, it works out.

If it doesn't, it doesn't.

But I'm going to keep rolling for it.

If it works out, it works out.

If it doesn't, it doesn't.

But I'm going to keep rolling.

I have this reference book that has photographs of every work and then notes on what I did.

If one glaze is under another glaze or on top of it, it will be chemically completely different and fire completely different.

This is a great example of the intelligence of a seasoned artist, to me Like keeping a reference book on every work that she has and the notes on what she did.

She's keeping this record of things so that she knows how to keep going and how to keep doing it.

Well, you know and I mean that's we've talked about this that we both keep track right.

I have a record of all my work.

I have notes on work.

I have little essays on work and bodies of work that I've written.

I video everything I do.

I'd say 90% studies.

I don't really video as much, but 90% of everything I have video records of, so I can go back and see how I did it, what was I using, how did this work, what didn't work.

But I think too, if you make it how wonderful that the world gets all your notes and all your records and all those images and all those things, right, if you become a historical figure in art, in history, the fact we can go back and read Jack Whitten's notes from the woodshed and read all of his notes in his journals on the things he was doing, like those things, like what a gift to the world.

That's just my own personal opinion.

I'm like, hey, artists, what if you are the next person that makes it?

Please record everything so that some 20-year-old kid finds it in a used bookshop or an art store and then studies you and you inspire their life and their journey as an artist.

We've officially made our obligatory notes from the woodshed reference for this episode and I think we're on a really good streak with that.

We got to check that box.

You know, one of us has to swear so that we can maintain our explicit rating.

Check and check.

We're good, it's all gravy from here.

You know, it's one of the things that she references in that Freeze Masters podcast that I love was she was talking about inspiration and she said she just kind of addresses the misnomer of artists, just you know, being inspired.

And she said a boring scientific method.

She's like it's just scientific method.

I record all the variables, you know she writes it down, tracks what works, what doesn't, and I think it's just to me the the studying of her own practice and process.

You know we have to be experts at our own craft and knowing what we're doing that gets the results that we want and those that we don't.

And this is something that I did not do when I first started.

It was just wild experimentation and let's just see what happens.

And I made a lot of progress in terms of figuring certain things out, but I got to a point a few years ago where I was like I have to start recording these things, because it happens all the time where I make a lot of elements and pieces that I don't know what I'm going to do with them or how they're going to coexist with other elements that haven't even been made yet, for example.

But there's nothing worse than coming back to something and being like, oh, that's phenomenal.

And being like how did I?

What was the ratio?

Because there are, because there are so many variables.

You know I don't work with glazes, but you know, when she was talking about just the sequence of things, even if all other variables remain constant, the sequence of things, the timing of it, all of it matters, and so really studying our own practice and really putting in the time I mean that's something I think that that has helped me just in an attempt to, you know, mature as an artist is to put in the time to be able to test and record these things.

You know, I've got some sculptures that I'm working on right now and I've got a piece that's that's getting really close and I don't know how exactly I'm going to finish it, and so I spent the last week just making four individual, you know test pieces that you know are are close to what's going to be the finished piece, so that I can test A, b, c and D.

And then there'll be their paths will diverge and then I'll do another step Right.

But it's all about just recording it and really making those decisions intentionally, with the ability to replicate or revisit them at any point down the road.

One day I just felt how happy I was here and how I was actually getting to live my fantasy that, being an artist working in a studio, I had created both a farm and a factory.

In the studio I had created both a farm and a factory and when I thought about it, the essence of that desire was really wanting to know how things were made.

So there's two parts of that, ty, that really stuck out to me.

That all is one quote, but there's two distinctly separate takeaways for me, anyway, the first thing that jumped out to me was just the intense gratitude that we ought to carry with us every day.

Yeah, I have so many just pinch myself moments where it's like, is this real?

Do I really get to just do this all the time?

I mean, it's it's, it's such a gift to be able to in our words, you know, live my fantasy, and I think that that is a it's a great default mindset in general to to find things to be grateful for.

To be thankful for, of course, but I think it's especially important when we're not feeling that, when we are like you were the other day, fighting with the work, feeling like nothing's working.

You know, believe in all of the you know shitty voices in our head that are telling us all the lies about how this sucks.

We suck, blah, blah, blah.

To come back to like, yeah, but I get to do this and back to what we were talking about before, with just the belief that it may, it might not be working right now, but it will, it will again.

So just the thankfulness and just that gratitude of like, wow, we, we get to do this.

All right, yeah, let's suit back up and try again tomorrow.

Like you said, like the other day when I sent you that message and I was like I'm battling, I'm fighting right now, but I was able to step back because of time and go.

But man, I'm so glad I get to fight, so glad I get to battle.

I mean I'm spending an entire day cussing, pointing, standing, looking, messing up and really literally in a fistfight with these two paintings and then going.

I get to fight with paintings all day long.

Yeah, and I think I like that she says one day I just felt how happy I was here.

It's like there was a moment when it clicked.

Yeah, right, and I think for so many of us it's part of being an artist is learning how to wait.

Like we talked about patience a few episodes ago, I think, and we just talked about how patience is so important.

The real art of art is patience and that really is learning how to wait.

And I think to me her saying that it's kind of like all of a sudden, one day it clicked.

Because we're all fighting at some point as an art, as as an artist, we're fighting through something that is so hard to try to get to the point where we're really happy in the moment and no matter what's going on, if we have to go to work in the morning and we're working on our art at night, we need that moment to click where we just go.

I'm so happy that I get to do this and the moments I get to do it and I'm here and I always tell artists that have gone through my program who work full-time jobs, part-time jobs, multiple jobs figure out a way to tell yourself at work.

I'm so glad I have this job.

That is pain for me to make art.

I'm so glad I have this ability to wait tables.

I'm so glad I have this ability to do X, y or Z, because it is pain for me to make art.

The second part of that clip that I really enjoyed.

That, I think, is kind of a separate idea, at least for me, is.

You know, when I thought about it, the essence of that desire was really wanting to know how things were made.

And this comes back to just that insatiable curiosity that I think we all have.

I mean, that's one of the most common characteristics that all artists share.

For her, it expresses itself in that how are these things made?

It's one of the cool we're not going to play this quote but one of the cool stories she shares, you know, in this video is just, even as a kid, just always wondering like where'd this come from?

How was, how was this even made?

You know, and that's just a really it's a cool sort of origin story.

Thinking back to our Leonardo Drew episode, you know, where he talks about just his fascination with different things and the things that he's exposed to, you know, in childhood, you know, living near the dump, and just how those things really they make very impactful imprints on us.

That, again, just the blessing that is to be to be an artist we get to spend time with and explore and pack as adults.

It's, it's, it's incredible.

Well, in the right, in the middle of the first quote we talked about and this one, in this last quote she says I created both a farm and a factory, and she talked about it as a child.

My parents say what do you want to do?

She said I want to work in a factory because she had that interest in how things are made.

So I want to work in the factory and find out how all this stuff's made.

But I love that.

She says it's just like one day oh my gosh, I've created a farm and a factory.

She created a place that cultivates growth.

Yeah, right, a farm, like you're growing things, whether that's crops or whether that's animals, something that's you're planting a seed and you're growing it to its full, and then it's a factory because, at the end of the day, she made something that she's putting out into the world for somebody else.

Right, the factory.

So I just love that.

Her childhood caught up to her, her childhood dream of wanting to work in a factory.

Well, she actually created it.

Yeah, I don't know.

It's pretty awesome.

I laugh when I heard her say that because my she laughed too.

Yes, she sure did.

From the ages of, I think, maybe just for two years or so, but when I was between two and five maybe two and a half, three years, but very impactful sort of toddlerhood years we lived on my uncle and aunt's farm, my mom's brother, and we lived like a half mile down from the main farm house and like an old house that hadn't been lived in and hasn't been since.

There was cardboard on the windows to keep the cold out in the Minnesota winters.

But I would ride my Hot Wheels and so if mom lost track of me during the day whatever three, four years old so I would get on my little Hot Wheels and I would ride down to the main farm and I would watch my uncle and my older cousins, you know, feed the cows, milk the cows.

But being in the tool shed because when you're a farmer almost everything happens.

Unfortunately, the age of the family-owned farm is going the way of the dinosaur.

But for a family-owned farm you have to do everything.

You're fabricating, you're welding, you're fixing everything yourself.

Every trip to the implement to do a proper repair is really expensive and those farmers aren't making a ton of money, most of them.

So it was just so interesting to see to be in the tool shed.

What's, what's this for, uncle?

No, what's this?

What does this?

Do you know?

And just the imprint that that makes, uh, but I would tell my.

I remember telling my mom and dad I want to be a farmer.

You know, when I grow, because I was just fascinated with everything that was involved in, not just whatever raising corn or having a dairy farm, but everything that went around, the whole mechanics of it, the whole machine that was working farm.

It left an imprint on me for sure.

I love every kind of industrial architecture, industry in general, tools.

What some person might think of as mechanized and frightening, I think of as mechanized and fascinating.

Okay, I mean, this just lit me up.

What was it made for?

How was this meant to be used?

And then, how could I?

Where my mind goes is, how could I misuse it?

I was at there's a new, a new store in my area called Acme tool, and so, you know, I spent a lot of time on.

I spend a lot of time at home Depot.

I buy a lot of my tools, you know, online if I can't, if they're more specialized.

But this Acme tool place, uh, they've got like proper industrial tools for you know, real, Are they down there as well in Texas?

Yeah, Are they over?

there, okay, yeah.

So I should have recorded this.

So I'll go there looking for one thing in particular that I need, and then I'll just walk around and Dream about how you could utilize everything else.

Yes, and I'll ask an employee I usually look for the older the employee, the more they know.

You know, if it's a young kid, they're just it's a job and they've never used these tools.

But so the other day this is this last week I found this I mean you can usually tell by like the size of their wrists how grizzled their hands are.

I was like, okay, larry's my guy, he's welding, he's this guy's seen some shit, he's used a lot of these tools, right.

So I was like, hey, what's this for?

Just like a little kid, just like, hey, what's this for?

I mean, I know enough about tools to have a general idea, but just asking like, okay, how does it work If it's a rotary tool of some kind?

What's the RPM range?

Like, how does so?

I'm not in most cases obviously gonna, you know, start, uh, become a general contractor and start using all these things for their intended purpose.

But it's just that like, ooh, what could this be?

You know that fascinate, that, that that thinking of it, as you know, mechanized and fascinating is just, you know, that's that's where I feel a real kindred spirit with Arlene, when I was growing up working construction in high school and college, just as a grunt on job sites.

This brought back a memory for me I would.

One of the common things when you're building homes is using expanding foam for installing windows or really all over the house just for insulation purposes, and it's a really fun.

I've got some.

I use it in the studio now as well, but it's so fun because it comes out in a liquid right.

It expands, it hardens, and so what I would do while I was on the clock and getting paid to do the work is I would use the expanding foam.

Or if somebody else had done something on you know, installed some windows in a certain area, I'd clock at my mind and then during the coffee break or lunch break I would go over with my utility knife and I would just carve out little sculptures and make little installations.

So it was like all right, how quickly can I hydrate and get some food in me and then play for the remaining whatever 10 or 15 minutes that I had before the foreman said, all right, gang back to work.

But it's just so fun.

You know, I mean the YouTube rabbit holes that I go down.

I learned way more about what I want to try back here from you know tutorials and YouTube videos on everything from manufacturing to fabrication.

To what was I watching the other day?

Yeah, it was a lot of uh uh, auto body part fabrication for, like, restoring old vehicles, and how they take you know sheet metal and make you know fenders or any parts that they couldn't buy even if they wanted to.

Yeah, and it's just the the, the fascination with that and like again, what?

What?

It's funny, I told larry at acme the other day I said yeah, he's like what do you do?

I said so, I kind of explained my yeah, he's like what do you do?

I said so, I kind of explained my thing and he's like oh, okay, and I said yeah, so for me, if I can get like 20 to 30% of the skill of a proper you know trades person, that that's, that's enough for me If I can just get it to work and get a little bit.

Yeah, exactly.

So I was talking to him about welding and he's like well, so I was kind of picking his brain about rebar, which I I've.

I got an amazing batch of rebar from a demolition site that I um let myself onto and uh yeah, you sent me pictures.

Yeah, um, and so I was asking him some questions about that, cause he had some experience with with well, and he goes.

So he's kind of walking me through it and and he goes.

I mean you got to be careful.

This might not be structurally sound and I was like it's all right as long as it stands up, I'm good, this is not going to be.

you know, this is not a motivation situation Correct and so, again, just getting to that 20, 30%.

You know range of skill, but it's it's going back to that fascination with the um, with the manufacturing, with the mechanization, how things are meant to be made.

That just lit me up.

Yeah, when I was in Marfa for the Marfa Invitational a while back, our buddy, eric, and I were at the Arbor's print shop and Robert Arbor was Donald Judd's printer and he's one of the most known printers in our history who's printed for numerous historical figures, and so he had a lot of different toys and different things in there, and eric and I, of course, were geeking out over every little possibility we could use it for in our work.

Could this work for us?

And he had, uh, I think it was an atomizer or forget what the name of that gun that we sent you pictures of, and we were looking it up on eBay where you can take two different materials and it melts it and sprays it out onto things.

So you can.

It's an incredible tool.

And he had shown us how he sprayed it on insulation and foam and it made it look metal and gold and silver and platinum and so, but, yeah, any of those things you know, eric and I were going, oh, I bet we could.

Oh, how would that work on?

Ooh, that work on canvas, could we?

You know so, but I love that.

It's on my wishlist for sure.

It is not, uh, an a cheap or affordable toy.

No, not at all.

I was joking with Eric.

I said you know what if we made like some balloon animals and then we sprayed it with this shiny metal material?

I mean, has anybody done that?

I mean we could actually sell it just like in gift shops in the world and just it's funny.

The installation is the whole thing, and that's a very big idea.

I think actually I'm an installation artist who makes objects.

In that scene there's a guy walking around her work in a museum who looks exactly like.

Nathan Felder, by the way.

Nathan, for you he did?

He did Right, I had an adult take.

I'm like, is that?

Is that Nathan Felder?

Something funny is going to happen here really quick.

But so this gentleman is walking around looking at the work and moving through, as she says, the installation is the whole thing and that's a very big idea.

I think actually I'm an installation artist who makes objects, that whole.

I kept rewinding that back and kind of listening and looking because they're sculptures, right, and they're not.

It's not a full room with like one thing that you kind of walk in and move around right, like a typical installation would be.

But yet the way that she's viewing how somebody is going to view her work, she's defining who she is as an artist.

She's saying, yeah, I sculpt, yes, I use clay, but I'm not a ceramicist, I'm not just a sculptor, and I love that she's actually defining herself, because I think it's really easy for us to get wrapped up in how somebody else defines us as artists, or how history should define you, or what this, whatever, whatever, whatever.

And I'm always encouraging artists that go through my mentorship program.

No, no, no, let's define yourself.

Don't just say I'm X.

Let's figure out, like, what are the things you love, what are the emotions that are going into it, what is inspiring you, what are elements that are wrapped up within you from history, and let's figure out a way to define yourself, and I love how she does that.

I just think that's really important.

I think it's absolutely wonderful when I heard her define herself, and that plays into the next quote as well that we'll talk about in a minute.

I wanted to reference something from the Freeze Masters podcast, so she goes into depth with the interviewer about her relationship with how the work is experienced to your point, about installation, specifically the viewing angle and the height at which it is seen, and hopefully you all will go and watch this R21 video as well, but you'll notice that pedestals are at very different heights.

Some of the pieces are on the floor, Some of them are at eye level even for me and Ty and everything in between, and so she talks about how she wanted to.

When she was trying to figure out how these were going to live in space and how they're going to be seen, how she wanted to have control over that and really direct the viewing angles and the experience, and she said so I realized I just had to make my own pedestals, and so the pedestal is part of the work itself, and so it was a super wide range of metal and plexiglass and wood and cement that she uses for that purpose.

But that really that really unlocked something for me and and I think this, this, this is why I mean selfishly, why we do this tie, these conversations that we have, even if we weren't, you know whatever recording it and putting it out into the world.

But it's like we can learn so much about our practice by listening to other artists talk about theirs.

Yes, so what that unlocked for me.

So, as I've been moving into sculpture, that's a thought that I've been really wrestling with is like, okay, how, based on how, how tall or big they I mean something's gonna hang on the wall you put it at whatever the appropriate height would be for the space.

Pretty simple, Sculpture's different, you know, and so I'm just like how are these going to live and exist in space when they're seen?

And this just unlocks something for me.

So, again, it just goes to when we can listen to and learn from masters like Arlene who have been doing this for over five decades, that's how we can really accelerate our own understanding of what we're trying to do.

Like that, really, for me, I will.

I will think about this and I will reference this for years to come, just because we are actively in the game of studying and learning from others.

That's the magic, you know, of really diving into and we talk about all the time, whether it's, you know, reading books, listening to interviews.

I mean we're we're super fortunate to live in an age where videos like this exist.

I mean, imagine if YouTube and video, whatever formats like this, had existed for the last 200 years or 2000 years.

I mean, how amazing would it be to be able to see and hear the greats that we can only really study the work and maybe some of their writings from years ago.

It's such a tremendous advantage that we have in the modern era, so take advantage of it.

Well, we learned last week or last episode.

Roberta Smith said once the work leaves your studio, it's no longer yours, right, and we talk about that at length.

But there are certain things we can control as artists.

We can control the work, what we're making, how we're making it, but we can also control how that works displayed.

Yeah, and you should control that.

If you're a sculptor, you have even more emphasis on how your work is displayed than a painter, right, unless you're painting something that's supposed to be on the ceiling or on the floor or whatever.

But for a sculptor, right, for an installation artist, you have to control the setting.

Like that's part of the piece, that's part of it.

So I've talked to you about this, I've talked to Allison about this, our friend Eric, other artists in my program who sculpt and do things like you need to make sure you have complete control over how it's lit, how it's featured.

Is it hanging from the ceiling, is it on the floor, is it up against the walls and in the corners and middle of the room?

You need to control those things because once it's out and there, you can't control how the viewers thinks, what they think about it, how they view it, all those things, but you need to have it in its right natural setting and how you intended that work to be shown, and I think that's what she did.

That's the beauty of the pedestals is she knew there's still another step missing here.

For me, I need to create the pedestals because I want my work to be viewed as an installation, not as a sculpture, on a 24 by 24, four foot pedestal right.

No, it's all different Low, high, wide, big, all those things and I think that's she figured it out and said no, no, no, the essence of my work isn't just the work, but it's how it's displayed as well.

I want to make something more than an idea.

I don't want anybody to be able to describe the pieces too easily.

I want to make things that are more open-ended than that.

That's the big challenge.

That is the big challenge, like that's what keeps me up at night.

That, right there, I do, I want to make something that's more than just the idea.

That, right there, I do, I want to make something that's more than just the idea.

I want to make something that you can't just answer right away.

You can't have like a oh that's it, walk away.

Right, I want it to be open-ended.

I want somebody to walk away and then have to come back.

I want discovery, I want things in there.

You know, and as a painter, that's that's a.

That's a big, big challenge, I think.

I personally believe that sculptors, three-dimensional artists, have a lot easier way of doing that than painters.

Because it is three-dimensional, it can be viewed in multiple things.

A person can move around it and see from four, five, six different angles and continue to search and fight, rather than just a two-dimensional plane, which is why I still love to sculpt.

But to me, that just brings such an even greater challenge of how do I find things in material, not just how it looks in the finished product, but by adding material and adding texture, and adding layers and different types of mediums and things, non-traditional elements, into it in order to allow those moments to happen.

Yeah, I'm always saying yes to new situations.

If I keep creating a closed system, then I'm not uncomfortable enough to push some boundary.

Here we go.

I mean, that's it so much, goodness.

Oh, you know the the.

The important thing about that to me is is what we want to avoid in order to get what we want.

We want to avoid a closed system.

We want to avoid something where it's.

This is what it is, this is how it goes, and we're staying on the interstate, the well-worn path, and so what we want is to continue to keep pushing boundaries right.

So, acknowledging what we don't want, acknowledging what the potential obstacles to what we want might be, in this case, falling into a certain I don't want to say groove, but the trap of replicating a slightly different version of what we've done, you know, indefinitely.

That, to me, is that's why we're doing this, that's what gets me fired up, that's what gets you know, seeking that discomfort, something we've talked about many times, you know before.

But we have to seek that discomfort in order to push those boundaries.

It's necessary.

I hate comfort.

I really do personally, I just don't like it.

That's the thing, though you don't hate it.

We all.

We all seek comfort.

I mean, that's not.

That's not.

I'm going to one of the rare moments where you and I are going to disagree.

You love comfort, we all Let me lay it out for you.

We're wired for it.

I never stayed at one job too long Okay, because the second and even in in businesses that I started, or even in places I've gone and helped build the second, I got comfortable.

I was out.

The challenge didn't exist anymore.

I've lived plenty of places all over the world, constantly moved, constantly gone to places, new things.

Even as a kid I even had mentors who were like I'm really worried about you.

I remember the first teacher who was one of my heroes growing up, in fourth grade it was my dad's best friend as well.

This was on Mr Davis' deathbed because he had cancer.

It was my first experience with cancer and death as a child.

But fourth grade actually I think it was seventh grade I was sitting on his bed at his house.

I was in the living room and I was just kind of the last chance ever talking with him.

You know, time was coming and I was sitting with Mr Davis and he said you know, ty, I'm really worried about you.

And I was like why?

And he's like because you have so many things you like and so many avenues you want to chase and you're always fighting comfort that I'm worried, you're never going to find something.

This is like seventh grade, right and he was saying you're very good at a lot of different things that you have a passion for, but find something and really stick with it and really go for it.

That's lasted with me to this day, mr Davis saying that on his deathbed like justa monumental moment in my life.

I still talk to his daughter, nikki we're the same age pretty regularly and she's followed my art all these years, but I have my whole life.

I've found like when things start to get comfortable, I get very uncomfortable and I think it's because I have this pursuit of growth that I've always had kind of burned in me, this pursuit of discovery and new things, and so anytime I feel stagnant and that can be from anything, that could be from my own personal faith, that can be from my own personal like journeys, all these different things If I start to get comfortable, I don't want to be in a place of diluted personal growth where I get stagnant, my thoughts get stagnant, what I'm learning becomes stagnant Because all of a sudden I'm in that comfortable zone and I feel like I'm going to die, like I really have, I don't know whatever that is within me and my character, personality.

I feel like that's death for me, and so I think that's also for my art, kind of a superpower that anytime I start to feel comfortable, I switch.

Yeah, all of a sudden I go.

I've been doing this too long.

I'm starting to kind of get into a zone of comfort here.

It's time to just switch.

You know, and I there's been a detriment to that at times because I've I when I go back and I was cataloging all my work, I was like I sold almost every single piece in that entire collection.

Why didn't I keep making it for another six months, right, and make more money off what was working?

Well, it's because I got to that point where that comfort started to kind of come in and I went no, no, no, no, it's time to grow complete cutoff and just move on.

So, um, but I think that's.

But because of that I'm pushing the boundary, some boundary Don't know what that is, but I'm pushing that boundary because I don't want that boundary to creep up on me.

I want to keep chasing it.

Does that make sense?

It does, yeah, and I mean you're more of an expert on you than I am, so I'm not going to tell you what's true for you.

I was referencing, more broadly speaking, just the human nature what's baked into our DNA from, just from a survival standpoint, you know, you think about Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

I mean, a lot of basic things need to be in place.

You know our physiological needs, you know safety needs, et cetera, before we get to the pinnacle of self-actualization, right?

So there's a lot to be said for just acknowledging that, as humans, we are oriented towards safety.

And what I'm hearing from what you're saying is that you have prioritized the pursuit of growth, would argue as a, as a preeminent expert on you, I would.

I would tell you that because you've prioritized what discomfort does for you, it's more natural for you to get out of comfort, right, or to to almost be put off by it, because you're so consumed and excited about what discomfort does.

Yeah, Well, it's kind of like I think it's Carl Jung who said if you don't act, then you're stuck in this hell, Right.

So it's like that.

If you're not constantly like pushing and actually doing something, then you're stuck in that.

And I've always kind of viewed that as like and maybe comfort's not the right word I don't want to not be growing.

Yeah, Yep, I don't want to not.

I was telling Mandy this the other day we were sitting and talking about it because I have a five-week residency coming up and it's like I don't want to stop traveling.

And as I get older, right, those things become less and less.

And all my artists that I love and I'm reading, they're constantly traveling, they're constantly experiencing new cultures.

They're even the ones who couldn't afford it or forcing their way to go be in another culture and do things.

Right.

Jack Whitten spent every summer in Greece sculpting and doing ceramics and that part of that culture, just like, captivated him and help, you know, it helps his work grow and move and change.

And so, you know, I kind of fall into that and it's not easy.

It's easy to do that today.

You can hop on a plane and go anywhere you want, but financially it's not as easy to do that today either.

So you know, you get kind of caught in that.

I got to figure out oh, I need to go to Houston, when do I need to go?

I need to go do something like that extrovert in me which we'll talk about this probably next week, when you're here at my house at my studio and we record a few episodes.

But that, uh, that forced introvert in me, the real me, the extrovert house, is fighting that all the time, constantly fighting and pushing me to go.

You need to go, you need to go.

But then it's like, ah, but I need to work 10 hours today, I need to get all this work done in the studio.

There's constant battle which is going to be a good conversation next week.

I'm excited to have it because we are on opposite end of that spectrum for sure.

Yeah.

You know, what you're saying reminds me of a book that I'm just wrapping up right now.

I think I might've referenced it a few pods ago the Explorer's Gene by Alex Hutchinson.

Yeah, I'm going to do a little solo episode on it because there are a lot of really interesting parallels into art and our practices as artists.

But I'm going to share a quote from that Exploration is the anti-habit, the antidote to a diminished palette of life choices.

We're wired to seek out the unknown, to embrace the challenges we find there and to find meaning in the pursuit.

So I will co-sign your reframe in terms of, of, of, because you needed me to do that to move about your day.

But uh, you know, it's that's what.

It is right, it's the, it's the challenges that we're seeking out, finding meaning in the pursuit of possibility, of what could be, what could.

That's, that's what it's about.

Yep, thanks for joining us.

That concludes today's episode, does it no, or?

doesn't it, it does, it does hey, all right, hey, that's it thanks for joining us for today's episode of just make our podcast.

You can find us on youtube.

Definitely go watch this Art21 video.

It's phenomenal, and I would also recommend checking out that Freeze Masters podcast as well.

That's on all the podcast places that you would find.

And join us next time for whatever's next.

Actually, we know what's going to be next.

I'm coming to you in just a few days.

We're going to record a couple of episodes live in that very studio, so I'm excited for that, yeah.

So go be uncomfortable in your studio today.

Here we go, all right.