Latest / Corpus Christi Originals Podcast / #67 | Charles Ligocky

Transcript

#67 | Charles Ligocky · Corpus Christi Originals Podcast

0:00
SPEAKER_01: What's going on, y'all?
0:00
SPEAKER_01: Copus Christie Originals back at it again, coming to you live from the produce uh sound studios downtown Corpus Christi, Texas.
0:06
SPEAKER_01: And uh yeah, we got here today Charles Lizgoski.
0:09
SPEAKER_01: What's going on, man?
0:10
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, how are you doing, man?
0:11
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for having me on.
0:12
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, appreciate it.
0:13
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, cool.
0:13
SPEAKER_01: So you knew you knew some people that came through the podcast.
0:16
SPEAKER_01: That's how we got.
0:17
SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes, yes, yes, of course.
0:19
SPEAKER_00: Um Scuba Steve, Chris Ambraze, um Mata Zamoda.
0:24
SPEAKER_00: She was like one of the very first that you had interviewed very long time ago.
0:28
SPEAKER_00: Um, so I'd honestly I thought, you know, I kind of been hiding in the dark for a while.
0:33
SPEAKER_00: So I was like, let me let me go on, let me message you, see if you'd want to have me on, and we're here.
0:39
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and you found my my email address.
0:42
SPEAKER_00: I found you, I I am old school.
0:43
SPEAKER_00: I I like to I like to um I I like to live behind my email address.
0:48
SPEAKER_00: If I don't have to go out in public, if I can be behind my email, like that's awesome because everybody I work with, they live behind an email.
0:56
SPEAKER_00: Right.
0:56
SPEAKER_00: So I just I'm old school.
0:58
SPEAKER_00: I like I like to be behind the email.
1:00
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, right now you'll you'll be I think you'll be the one of the first ones to email us uh to to come on the show, which is cool, man.
1:07
SPEAKER_00: Your your your inbox you made a notification.
1:10
SPEAKER_00: I was surprised you even got the email.
1:11
SPEAKER_00: You even noticed it came up.
1:14
SPEAKER_01: I was like, oh shoot, I got an email, and then yeah, and you would find out you were an artist.
1:19
SPEAKER_01: I was like, oh yeah, I like talking to artists, uh just kind of learning from what they do, like even talking to Myra, just learning the type of stuff that she does.
1:26
SPEAKER_01: And we were talking earlier about like street art and stuff like that, how you gotta go through the trenches or whatever.
1:31
SPEAKER_00: You have to go through the trenches, yeah.
1:33
SPEAKER_01: So you were into that type of stuff, right?
1:35
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I guess when you started out, like when I started out, but would you say graffiti or spray paint?
1:40
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, same thing, same thing, right?
1:42
SPEAKER_00: Same thing, some same terminology.
1:45
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, um, uh it was about 20, 2011, and uh, we were in um San Antonio, and there was a gentleman downtown by the Alamo, he was painting and he was making these uh planetary solar paintings with spray paint, and that just blew my mind.
2:00
SPEAKER_00: I had never decided to go down a creative avenue before then, and I saw that, and I thought, well, let me go back, let me try this out.
2:08
SPEAKER_00: And I tried it out, I liked it, and then it just gradually grew before that.
2:13
SPEAKER_00: I was, you know, painting.
2:15
SPEAKER_00: Then I would start painting on canvas panel, picked up the spray can, you know, did the street stuff for a little bit, then started painting larger canvases and just continued from there.
2:26
SPEAKER_01: That's cool.
2:27
SPEAKER_01: So you you experiment with experimented with different canvases.
2:30
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's interesting.
2:31
SPEAKER_01: And you still and then you found uh one that you liked, or how how does how does that come about when you as an artist, like you do acrylic, right?
2:39
SPEAKER_01: So how is it the same type of canvas that you paint on?
2:43
SPEAKER_01: You know what I'm saying?
2:44
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it it's it's a hundred I like to use hundred percent uh duck cotton.
2:49
SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm very you know, you can use linens or you know, um like a cotton mixture of a canvas.
2:55
SPEAKER_00: I like to use 100% uh duck cotton.
2:57
SPEAKER_00: Oh, right, or 100% uh pure cotton.
3:00
SPEAKER_00: Uh and then so I'll get like a gesso, which is kind of a primer.
3:04
SPEAKER_00: Like if you're gonna prime the walls of your house before you go and you put a paint paint color on.
3:08
SPEAKER_00: It's the same concept.
3:09
SPEAKER_00: You just you have a you know, if you have a two by two canvas that you want to paint, you have it, the canvas stretched over the stretcher bar, which is the wooden frame behind it, and then you just stretch that over, and then you layer it with a primer, right?
3:23
SPEAKER_00: Of uh gesso, and then you let that dry, and then you go on, you do another layer if you want, you can sand it down to make it as smooth as you want, and then you can just start painting from there.
3:32
SPEAKER_01: That's so cool, man.
3:33
SPEAKER_01: Awesome.
3:34
SPEAKER_01: Uh CPL Ziggy music, Charles in the House.
3:36
SPEAKER_01: Uh, this isn't the D Diaz the by the way.
3:39
SPEAKER_01: What's up, Anthony Diaz?
3:40
SPEAKER_01: Appreciate you, man.
3:41
SPEAKER_01: Hey, Anthony.
3:42
SPEAKER_01: Appreciate you being here.
3:43
SPEAKER_01: Lisa Legoski, also me corazon, she says.
3:46
SPEAKER_01: My mother, yes.
3:47
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's awesome.
3:49
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's interesting to me how artists can like uh you find your canvas and you how duck cotton, like how do you you obviously got it seems like you gotta keep uh learning stuff as an artist, like stuff like that.
4:02
SPEAKER_00: Yes, always always, always learning.
4:04
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's um the materials that we can use to make art with are endless.
4:10
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, you there are collage artists or artists that only do watercolor, there are artists that use oils.
4:15
SPEAKER_00: I like to use acrylics.
4:17
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, there's just a plethora of materials that we can use.
4:21
SPEAKER_01: That's pretty cool.
4:22
SPEAKER_01: Wow, so you grew you were born in Corpus.
4:25
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
4:25
SPEAKER_01: Grew up in Uvaldi.
4:26
SPEAKER_01: Uh, can you share uh your I guess your journey from growing up in Uvaldi to becoming uh I guess internationally recognized artist?
4:35
SPEAKER_01: Because you have stuff everywhere, don't you?
4:37
SPEAKER_00: That's what the paper says.
4:39
SPEAKER_00: Okay, right, right.
4:40
SPEAKER_00: No, yeah.
4:41
SPEAKER_00: Um growing growing up in Uvaldi, it was, you know, it's a small town.
4:45
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, it at the time when we were living there, probably had maybe about 30,000, 40,000 people.
4:51
SPEAKER_00: Um, it's a very close-knit town.
4:54
SPEAKER_00: Everybody knows everybody, you know, your neighbor knows your neighbor, you know.
4:58
SPEAKER_00: If you go to the store, you know, everybody knows your mom and your dad.
5:01
SPEAKER_00: And uh it was nice going to school that way because a lot of friends that we had were you know mutual friends.
5:07
SPEAKER_00: We had some friends that knew our parents and our parents knew them.
5:10
SPEAKER_00: So it was real easy to make friends and you know just be a kid.
5:16
SPEAKER_00: And um painting was kind of not the thing to be um looked upon in Uvaldi because you know it was a very uh farming, industrial, oil, oil-rich town where if you know there's people that you know work hard, you know, we we don't have time to be creative, yeah, exactly.
5:39
SPEAKER_00: You know, yeah, yeah, yeah.
5:40
SPEAKER_00: But um the school system, they had a little art program, and there was a teacher there where it was seventh grade, seventh grade.
5:50
SPEAKER_00: Her name was Sandra Hopper, and she I would not follow her curriculum.
5:55
SPEAKER_00: I would kind of go off and do my own thing.
5:58
SPEAKER_00: And she noticed that I wasn't following her curriculum, I wasn't doing the assignments like the way she wanted me to do them, and so we kind of veered and we started creating other projects for me to do so that way I could still get a grade.
6:12
SPEAKER_00: So we would do certain projects, and then um I would take the projects home with me, and they just lived on my walls, and then um we had done some uh a mural in the art wing, and so that's basically how I got to pass art class.
6:26
SPEAKER_01: Wow, crazy.
6:27
SPEAKER_00: Because I I wasn't uh I was a terrible student going to school.
6:31
SPEAKER_00: I was a terrible student.
6:33
SPEAKER_00: Um but that was the only way she could get me to pass art class.
6:37
SPEAKER_00: But she was also the one big, you know, person to you know push me to you know be more creative and you know adventure out and you know, broaden my horizon to exploring with different mediums and working on different things.
6:49
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, I I give her a lot of credit for pushing me to be be creative.
6:56
SPEAKER_01: How does that how does you being creative and artistic does it do you find that it helps out other areas of your life and not just ours?
7:04
SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes, yes.
7:05
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, being creative, it allows me to uh think more um intuitively.
7:11
SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm able to focus more on something.
7:13
SPEAKER_00: I'm very uh meticulous if I've have one project that I'm working on, you know.
7:18
SPEAKER_00: I'm I like to focus on this one project.
7:20
SPEAKER_00: But sometimes I can also scatter out and I can have 12, you know, 14 other projects that I'm working on.
7:26
SPEAKER_00: So it's just like I finish this project, move on to the next one, move on to the next one, and then by the time I'm almost done, I've already started, you know, 14 more.
7:36
SPEAKER_00: It's it's a never-ending cycle of just projects.
7:39
SPEAKER_01: Do you ever like do you ever like start a project and like like don't finish it or do you yeah, yeah, yeah, that's it.
7:45
SPEAKER_00: I'm saying, bro, yeah, like I hear you on that one.
7:48
SPEAKER_00: I I have some projects that are on the back burner that I'm just I have not I haven't touched them yet.
7:53
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna get to them, but I'm not there.
7:56
SPEAKER_01: Is it hard?
7:56
SPEAKER_01: Is it hard for you to like go back to to there to finish it?
8:00
SPEAKER_01: Like, does it take a lot for you to go back there and finish it?
8:02
SPEAKER_00: No, it it takes a lot of mental will for me to go back and do it.
8:05
SPEAKER_00: But once I'm there sitting, sitting or you know, working on the canvas or making the drawing or whatever I'm doing, it's it's easy to it's easy to work once I have it in front of me.
8:14
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but if it lives on like a shelf or in a cabinet somewhere that I know where it is, I'm just like I'm not gonna touch it.
8:21
SPEAKER_00: Just pass by it again.
8:26
SPEAKER_00: I I know it's there, but I'll come back to it.
8:29
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, uh Karina Gomez says, shout out Miss Hopper.
8:33
SPEAKER_01: It's awesome, man.
8:34
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so uh we were talking on messaging, and you were mentioning like dark themes and that type of stuff.
8:40
SPEAKER_01: Uh so what draws you to those types of subjects?
8:44
SPEAKER_01: I guess is that part of your outside of your art or your art?
8:47
SPEAKER_00: You know, I I think you know, a lot of a lot of the work that I do is um I like dark themes.
8:54
SPEAKER_00: So I like you know, hearing about cults, I like hearing about you know the murderers, the serial killers, the you know, the paranormal.
9:02
SPEAKER_00: Um and just growing up, you know, I would be with my mom and we would always watch horror movies growing up.
9:09
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, the Jeepers creepers, the Michael Myers, the you know, all the old school horror movies.
9:15
SPEAKER_00: You know, growing up, I was just accustomed to always watching a horror movie.
9:19
SPEAKER_00: Like it was just something that was ingrained in me.
9:22
SPEAKER_00: So it naturally creating work.
9:24
SPEAKER_00: You know, I had periods where I would just make flower paintings or I would produce, you know, brightly colored works, abstract works.
9:32
SPEAKER_00: I think it was just a a transition.
9:34
SPEAKER_00: I had to go through certain areas to finally get to where I am, which is you know, painting um dark thematic paintings.
9:42
SPEAKER_00: It's it's what I like, it's where I've transitioned myself into, and I find it uh comforting to be able to make these make these works.
9:52
SPEAKER_01: So when that when the that that stuff happened in Uvalde, was it easy for you to like make a painting for?
9:59
SPEAKER_01: Did you feel like you had to make a painting in relation to that?
10:02
SPEAKER_00: Uh it was hard.
10:04
SPEAKER_00: It was hard.
10:04
SPEAKER_00: Um I did not make the painting until six months after the incident.
10:09
SPEAKER_00: Um I felt that there was a need for me to make a painting, but um, I just didn't know what it was.
10:18
SPEAKER_00: And I sat on it for about six months.
10:21
SPEAKER_00: I couldn't think of an idea of what to do.
10:24
SPEAKER_00: I I didn't know what to paint.
10:26
SPEAKER_00: Um and normally where I draw inspiration from his, I find pictures or something.
10:35
SPEAKER_00: There's some paintings that I have that are uh photographs of crime scenes.
10:39
SPEAKER_00: So there are some paintings that are taken from the crime scene photographs, like the Heaven's Gate cult that was taken from the crime scene photo after everybody had you know off themselves and had uh the cops that came in and took pictures.
10:53
SPEAKER_00: I had found some of the crime scene photos and took those and I made the Heaven's Gate uh cult painting.
11:00
SPEAKER_00: Um so when I did the Valde painting, it was a lot of um digging and I ended up finding security camera footage.
11:09
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
11:10
SPEAKER_00: And so I took the security camera footage and I just um transferred it onto a canvas and I just made the painting from there.
11:18
SPEAKER_00: And um we worked with a uh we show we exhibited I exhibited the painting at Produce 2023.
11:26
SPEAKER_00: And um then I worked with a friend who's an artist who he's a Mexican artist, Gustavo Ramos Olivetta.
11:34
SPEAKER_00: He's starting the museum in Acunya and um working through him and the um exhibition team, we've we're gonna donate the painting to go and be cataloged into the museum.
11:49
SPEAKER_00: Um they're gonna create a very great educational program for the children that you know live in Acunya.
11:56
SPEAKER_00: Um he's very um he's very um philanthropic.
12:02
SPEAKER_00: He wants to uh uh teach children the values of art and art history.
12:07
SPEAKER_00: So I think including the painting in the collection will be a great piece to have there for educational purposes for the children of Acuna and for people around the world.
12:17
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's cool, man.
12:19
SPEAKER_01: But so is he one of your mentors or one of the artists that had influenced your your work?
12:23
SPEAKER_00: No, I met him I met him by pure chance.
12:27
SPEAKER_00: Um my first uh solo exhibition I had was in um Uvaldi, Texas.
12:35
SPEAKER_00: It was uh by a a gentleman, he was a professor at the junior college there, uh Abel Korsto Acosto Ortiz, and he had started a gallery, and uh it took me about a year to get an exhibition with him.
12:48
SPEAKER_00: You know, of course I brought, you know, I was 16 at the time.
12:53
SPEAKER_00: I had brought, you know, my terrible paintings to a gallery establishment, and he told me that it wasn't gonna work out for me to come back in a year.
13:02
SPEAKER_00: And so I took that and I went back.
13:05
SPEAKER_00: I painted some more, I came back, he said, Yeah, you can have a show now.
13:08
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
13:08
SPEAKER_00: And uh he met he had a friend who owned a gallery in Del Rio, uh Edrian Jesús Farcón, and um he invited me to have a show at his gallery, and I went um had made some paintings for the show.
13:23
SPEAKER_00: I think I made about 10 paintings for that show, and then we had the show in Del Rio, and then this little frail uh man comes in and Adrian brings the the man over to me and he introduces me.
13:36
SPEAKER_00: He goes, This is Gustavo Ramos Rivera.
13:39
SPEAKER_00: Um, I didn't know who he was at the time.
13:42
SPEAKER_00: And he introduced me.
13:44
SPEAKER_00: I introduced myself to him, and he told me, he goes, just come to my house in Mexico.
13:48
SPEAKER_00: Oh wow, come to a party.
13:49
SPEAKER_00: I was like, okay, sure.
13:52
SPEAKER_00: And then he just turns around and he walks out, and then Adrian um told me he goes, Well, you're gonna go to the party now.
13:58
SPEAKER_00: I was like, I I I'm going to the party now.
14:02
SPEAKER_00: And we had had another uh friend who owned uh a chain of hotels down there in Del Rio, and um the party had come around.
14:11
SPEAKER_00: Are you gonna go to Gustavo's party?
14:14
SPEAKER_00: And I said, I don't know who this man is, I don't know who he is.
14:18
SPEAKER_00: And um he said, Well, he's a international, he's a worldwide uh renowned Mexican painter.
14:25
SPEAKER_00: I was like, I didn't know that.
14:26
SPEAKER_00: So I started looking him up.
14:27
SPEAKER_00: I was like, oh wow, this guy he really is.
14:29
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, he does uh shows in Switzerland, California, all over the world.
14:33
SPEAKER_00: He's been in art basil, you know, he's been in all the big art fairs.
14:36
SPEAKER_00: I was like, well, now I'm I'm gonna go I'm gonna go meet this man.
14:40
SPEAKER_00: I didn't have a passport.
14:42
SPEAKER_00: Oh so they said don't worry about it.
14:45
SPEAKER_00: I didn't worry about it.
14:46
SPEAKER_00: I went, I went to Mexico, and um we went to the party, I met Gustavo, and we're in he it's uh he renovated his parents' house in Acunya, and it's just a real nice contemporary home.
14:59
SPEAKER_00: The walls are you know, glass walls, and then you turn around as soon as you walk in, there are these humongous Diego Rivera paintings on the wall, and I'm just like, I don't belong here.
15:09
SPEAKER_00: Oh wow, you know, like I'm 17, I paint chicken scratch, and I'm looking at a Diego Rivetta painting in an international renowned artist's home.
15:18
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I don't belong here, but that's just where I was placed, yeah.
15:24
SPEAKER_00: And um then the party hit um began, and professors, politicians, a bunch of other people started coming in.
15:34
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I have no idea who these people are.
15:36
SPEAKER_00: I'm not fluent in Spanish, yeah, so you can only imagine like how out of place I felt the entire night.
15:41
SPEAKER_01: Wow, crazy.
15:42
SPEAKER_00: Uh we had um we had dinner, we had a great time, they had a meeting about how they were gonna form the museum, and um at the end is when they all found out I didn't have a passport and all the eyes lit up, and um so we were loading all the stuff up to come back over to Del Rio, Texas, and Gustavo comes to the window where my friend is driving his friend, me, I'm in the passenger seat, and then our Adrian.
16:12
SPEAKER_00: And he goes, If he doesn't go back, call me, we'll get him back.
16:18
SPEAKER_00: I was like, uh I don't belong here.
16:21
SPEAKER_00: Um so we go and we drive up to the border checkpoint.
16:26
SPEAKER_00: She does not believe me.
16:28
SPEAKER_00: She does not believe me.
16:29
SPEAKER_00: I had my school ID, I was still in school.
16:32
SPEAKER_00: I had I went as far as to get my birth certificate.
16:35
SPEAKER_00: Oh my god.
16:36
SPEAKER_00: I didn't have a passport.
16:37
SPEAKER_00: This is my first time, and um, they had just said, come on, it's fine.
16:41
SPEAKER_00: So I thought, okay, yeah, sure, I'm gonna go.
16:43
SPEAKER_00: Um, she doesn't believe me.
16:45
SPEAKER_00: And she is questioning the driver, she's questioning me.
16:49
SPEAKER_00: Is this really big butch Polish lady?
16:52
SPEAKER_00: Oh wow.
16:53
SPEAKER_00: She she doesn't believe me.
16:54
SPEAKER_00: I I'm an American, she doesn't believe me.
16:57
SPEAKER_00: And I look behind the van that we're in, and there are border patrol agents with their assault rifles and their canines.
17:03
SPEAKER_00: They surrounded the van, and like, they don't believe me.
17:06
SPEAKER_00: I'm not going back.
17:08
SPEAKER_00: And um, she let me off with a warning, and she said, Next time you come back, have your passport.
17:15
SPEAKER_00: Okay, and I told her, Yes, ma'am.
17:17
SPEAKER_00: And next time when I went back, I had my passport.
17:20
SPEAKER_01: Oh shoot, wow.
17:22
SPEAKER_01: Man, that's crazy, man.
17:24
SPEAKER_01: I like that little button you got there.
17:25
SPEAKER_01: Is it like a agave plant or something?
17:27
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's uh my sister gave it to me.
17:28
SPEAKER_00: It's an agave plant.
17:29
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, right on, man.
17:30
SPEAKER_01: Dig in the jacket, too, man.
17:32
SPEAKER_01: Thank you, thank you.
17:32
SPEAKER_01: Nice jacket, bro.
17:33
SPEAKER_01: Wow, so you're so that that was at 17 and yeah, that was that was 17.
17:39
SPEAKER_00: I had I had just got into just into the art scene.
17:42
SPEAKER_00: Um, that was I had just had two shows.
17:45
SPEAKER_00: I what was it like having your exhibition at that like at it's uh I I want to say it's um you get like a serotonin release, but it's um it didn't feel real.
18:00
SPEAKER_00: It didn't feel real.
18:01
SPEAKER_00: I still feel like I didn't do it.
18:03
SPEAKER_00: I did.
18:04
SPEAKER_01: Crazy.
18:05
SPEAKER_00: But um it was it was just it was nice to have the camaraderie of all the people there.
18:10
SPEAKER_00: You know, we it was a packed house, you know, everybody showed up, family, friends, acquaintances, and there was a lot of people that you know I had made connections with.
18:20
SPEAKER_00: I I think uh what I enjoyed most about having the first very beginning shows was the camaraderie and you know being able to make connections with different people.
18:29
SPEAKER_00: I think that was the best part.
18:31
SPEAKER_00: That was the best part rather than seeing the paintings on the wall.
18:34
SPEAKER_00: Granted, seeing the paintings on the wall was that's that's the best feeling you'll get as an artist to see your work physically in a gallery setting while people are walking around viewing the work, as opposed to you just staying at home.
18:48
SPEAKER_00: You know, you made the paintings and you're looking at these paintings 24, 24-7, you know, year-round.
18:54
SPEAKER_00: It's nice to actually see somebody view the work and you know enjoy it for themselves.
18:59
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I was looking at your website and there was images like like digital pictures, but then there was another picture where you could see them hanging on the wall.
19:07
SPEAKER_01: Like someone like the one with the uh with the lady with the face.
19:10
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
19:10
SPEAKER_01: It's in somebody's like dining room or something when I was.
19:15
SPEAKER_00: They had purchased that painting after we had the that was also exhibited in um produce.
19:21
SPEAKER_00: Uh somebody had approached me and it purchased a painting after the show.
19:24
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
19:25
SPEAKER_00: And um, yeah, it we took it over there, we hung it up.
19:29
SPEAKER_00: We we had originally he had put it in multiple places in his home.
19:33
SPEAKER_00: And I think now it was originally in the dining room, but now I think he has it in his home office.
19:39
SPEAKER_01: Nice.
19:39
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and that's it it's just real nice to be able to see the work, you know, hanging in collectors' homes, you know, people that enjoy the paintings actually get to live with the pieces as opposed to me trying to figure out what to do with them and keeping them in you know storage rooms all over the place.
19:54
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, right on.
19:55
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I can imagine how they can stack up.
19:57
SPEAKER_01: You got so many different works and stuff like that.
20:00
SPEAKER_01: Does that that particular painting does it have a story?
20:03
SPEAKER_01: It does.
20:03
SPEAKER_01: Do all your paintings have stories?
20:05
SPEAKER_01: They do.
20:06
SPEAKER_01: Interesting.
20:07
SPEAKER_00: When when we start in the very beginning, when I start working, I make a lot of abstract work.
20:12
SPEAKER_00: Um that's more of a me trying to give an expression of I want you to create a story for yourself.
20:21
SPEAKER_00: And then I think what happened was I had got um exhausted with telling people to create your own story for yourself.
20:30
SPEAKER_00: And because I felt like it was too engaging, I feel like maybe it would be better if I gave you a narrative story.
20:36
SPEAKER_00: And there's a lot of stories that I have, so I figured I might as well start making narrative paintings.
20:42
SPEAKER_00: So the lady with the long-gated face, um I was a kid and we lived on a uh 400-acre farm that was owned on my father's side.
20:57
SPEAKER_00: And there was a house on that farm that had been moved from I believe it was uh Victoria or Portland.
21:05
SPEAKER_00: Uh my grandfather had purchased the house, moved it to Uvaldi.
21:09
SPEAKER_00: And um, you know, neighborhood kids and stuff would come in, sneak into the house, vandalize the house, you know, and do a bunch of do a bunch of stuff to it.
21:20
SPEAKER_00: They they basically ransacked the house.
21:21
SPEAKER_00: It used to be a really beautiful house.
21:23
SPEAKER_00: Oh wow.
21:24
SPEAKER_00: Um there was one night where we were all outside and you could see cop cars swarming the farm that we lived on, and they were all driving down to where the house was.
21:37
SPEAKER_00: The house was down in an embankment through a creek, and it was behind a forest.
21:42
SPEAKER_00: So you couldn't see the house from where we were living, but you knew that the house was over there.
21:47
SPEAKER_00: So cops were just driving, they were going down there, they were going down there, and um Border Patrol showed up, and um my mom runs outside, my dad runs outside, they don't know what's going on.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: Um and so I follow my mother and I'm probably about eight at nine and I get out into where our property meets the field where we would grow corn and um watermelons and um stuff like stuff stuff like that and I look up and I look into the distance where I know the house is and I see this woman in a white dress walking out of the the embankment and she's coming up onto um to the floor level and then the cops pull up right in front of her and then they take her and they arrest her and they put her in the back of the car and then they take off.
22:45
SPEAKER_00: And um later come to find out they were pushing um illicit drugs through the house.
22:51
SPEAKER_00: So crazy so the woman with the elongated face, that's where that painting comes from.
22:57
SPEAKER_00: It's just that memory of just looking at her in the distance, and she's just in this white, you know, see-through dress, and it just it it's burned an image into my mind.
23:08
SPEAKER_00: I I I can't get it out of my head.
23:11
SPEAKER_01: It's cool.
23:12
SPEAKER_01: And and and your writings are um are they like poems or is it just like uh like a because I looked at a few of them.
23:20
SPEAKER_01: I sent you a lot.
23:23
SPEAKER_01: I was like, dang, but yeah, I kind of just kind of skimmed through them and looked through them to be honest.
23:28
SPEAKER_01: But I was just like uh at the beginning, I'm not a reader to begin with.
23:31
SPEAKER_01: I'm more I watch videos just to be honest.
23:33
SPEAKER_01: It's that that's just my how I my brain is, and mad props to the people that actually read a whole entire book like in a week or in a day or whatever.
23:42
SPEAKER_01: It takes me months or whatever just to try to finish one.
23:45
SPEAKER_01: But anyway, do your do you are yours uh narrative stories are they like poems or are they just like however you guess decide to write it?
23:55
SPEAKER_00: Because it seems like kind of poem ish, the ones that you some kind of say some of them have uh poem uh poetic uh motifs to it, but most of it is just narrative stories.
24:07
SPEAKER_00: Um like where we're living right now, I don't have enough room to make the work that I want to work, but my brain still wants to be creative, so I've started just doing the stories just out of need to want to do something creative.
24:20
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, keep keep the juice, keep it flowing.
24:23
SPEAKER_01: That's cool.
24:23
SPEAKER_01: Uh, who do we got?
24:24
SPEAKER_01: Kaylee Roo.
24:25
SPEAKER_01: She said, Oh hi.
24:29
SPEAKER_01: Uh exhibitions and project.
24:31
SPEAKER_01: Uh, so you had your first solo, so Romania, we talked about that earlier, and you had so it's uh a recent group exhibition in Romania.
24:41
SPEAKER_01: And uh can you talk about the recent exhibition in Romania and its connection to the Ukraine conflict?
24:48
SPEAKER_00: Um, so the exhibition, well, the exhibition in Romania didn't necessarily have a connection with the Ukraine conflict.
24:57
SPEAKER_00: There was a curator that was seeking out artists to participate in a group exhibition, um, and Romania just happens to be on the uh the border of like uh Moldovol, which is on the border of Ukraine, uh which borders Ukraine.
25:14
SPEAKER_00: And um they were seeking artists to be a part of an exhibition, and um I sent uh some stuff in and before I didn't hear anything back.
25:26
SPEAKER_00: It was like two months, and I thought, I'm not gonna be in the show, you know.
25:29
SPEAKER_02: Oh wow.
25:30
SPEAKER_00: So we go on and do other works, you know, make other projects.
25:32
SPEAKER_00: I get an email out of nowhere with a certification from an art dealer and uh art critic saying, Thank you for participating in this exhibition.
25:41
SPEAKER_00: I was like, I did an exhibition?
25:43
SPEAKER_00: Wow, and um that's how that just happened.
25:48
SPEAKER_00: No, there there really was no interesting thing behind that.
25:52
SPEAKER_00: It was just there was a show going on, I submitted some work, um, and I didn't even know I got selected like three or four months after I got a certification saying thank you for participating.
26:05
SPEAKER_00: I didn't even know what happened.
26:07
SPEAKER_01: How did how did you find that?
26:09
SPEAKER_01: Um, I guess when to send that, send out your work, how how did you come across that?
26:14
SPEAKER_00: That that one, there are multiple websites.
26:16
SPEAKER_00: I think that there's one site called Art Rabbit where uh curators, like people that are hosting exhibitions and are seeking artists to partake in exhibitions, they put a call out that they're seeking artists.
26:29
SPEAKER_00: You can either seek artists from where you live, or you can seek international artists and you just wait for people to send in submissions and then you feed through, you see which works are gonna fit the you know the criteria of the show that you're gonna uh put on.
26:44
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and then you go from there.
26:45
SPEAKER_00: Oh wow, and then you'll gather your artists, maybe your 10, 15, and you'll email them back saying, Y'all are gonna participate, here's when we need the work by, here's the dimensions.
26:56
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, then you know they do the commission rates and stuff like that.
27:00
SPEAKER_00: And you'll either now it's been interesting since COVID is because we're doing everything electronically.
27:06
SPEAKER_00: We're not physically having to send work.
27:09
SPEAKER_00: Um, which before we were physically having to really wow wrap up paintings, put them in shipping tubes, which is it it's awesome because you still have to have the physical work there.
27:18
SPEAKER_00: But a lot I like to also partake in the shows where we can just do a digital copy.
27:22
SPEAKER_00: Oh wow.
27:23
SPEAKER_00: You know, I still get to partake in it.
27:25
SPEAKER_00: I don't physically have to expend a lot of money to ship work internationally, and I can still participate.
27:31
SPEAKER_00: And um it's able to go into smaller venues.
27:35
SPEAKER_00: I think like the one in Romania was a real small art gallery.
27:38
SPEAKER_00: Wow, it was probably about the a little bit smaller than the studio that you're in.
27:42
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
27:43
SPEAKER_00: And um they didn't have they had brick walls, so they didn't have a way to hang the works, so they had just kind of like framed all the little pictures and they had them on like tables all over the gallery.
27:54
SPEAKER_00: Um so it it's it's real cool to be able to work with curators and especially work with curators when you don't even know that you're in the show.
28:02
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, okay.
28:03
SPEAKER_01: Wow, yeah, we were talking about that earlier.
28:05
SPEAKER_01: Curators, I was asking you, what's a curator?
28:08
SPEAKER_01: Interesting term, but how do you so and you were curating a uh an exhibition, weren't you?
28:14
SPEAKER_01: Did you say that?
28:15
SPEAKER_00: I curated uh early on through um the art gallery that was in Uvaldi, which was uh art lab contemporary.
28:23
SPEAKER_00: I curated some shows.
28:24
SPEAKER_00: There was a show I curated with uh Maido Zamoto's work.
28:27
SPEAKER_01: Oh, right.
28:27
SPEAKER_00: And there was a few other little shows that I curated, and um I kind of stepped out of curating shows.
28:33
SPEAKER_00: I I liked more working with the curator for you know my own shows.
28:37
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
28:37
SPEAKER_00: It's I it's easier for me to just focus on what I'm doing as opposed to figuring out all the logistics to and now I gotta find artists, now I gotta bring in artists, I have to also take care of their work.
28:50
SPEAKER_00: I'm also responsible for the work, you know.
28:52
SPEAKER_00: If I if I focus on myself, if something happens to one of my paintings, it's it's okay.
28:56
SPEAKER_00: Oh wow.
28:56
SPEAKER_00: I would I would feel terrible if in the logistical process something happened to you know, your painting, and then I would I would feel terrible about it.
29:05
SPEAKER_01: Wow, man.
29:05
SPEAKER_01: Man, what does it feel like when somebody purchases your painting?
29:08
SPEAKER_00: It's interesting.
29:10
SPEAKER_00: Um, it's it feels um reassuring that people like this.
29:16
SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm not just crazy, I'm not just a crazy guy sitting in my dark room with a candle faking paintings.
29:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, people actually like this and they want to live with it.
29:25
SPEAKER_00: Because I I I I live with it all the time.
29:27
SPEAKER_00: You can ask my wife, you know, we we have paintings all over the place.
29:31
SPEAKER_00: It gets maddened sometimes.
29:32
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
29:33
SPEAKER_00: So when somebody buys something, I'm like, yes, I don't have to figure out where I'm gonna put this now, or what storage room does this go into now?
29:40
SPEAKER_00: Or yeah, it's nice that people want to have these things with them to be able to live with them in their own places, and it's it's it's nice, it's comforting.
29:48
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, how did you how did you uh land on the style that you landed on?
29:51
SPEAKER_01: I guess your own style, because um, it's not like uh like like like the faces are different, like that one you were uh you sent me, it was like on a on this type of paper, the ruled paper, like those faces.
30:04
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, yeah, you know what I'm saying?
30:06
SPEAKER_01: Yes, exactly.
30:07
SPEAKER_00: I was bored at work and I was not working, I was drawing most of the time.
30:14
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, um, I had the liberty to have a desk job, so I just would draw.
30:19
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
30:20
SPEAKER_00: And um I think it was um just out of um I guess necessity to change.
30:29
SPEAKER_00: I think that's what happened.
30:30
SPEAKER_00: I think that's where the paintings where I'm painting now.
30:33
SPEAKER_00: I think it was just a change.
30:34
SPEAKER_00: I hadn't painted for probably almost eight months.
30:37
SPEAKER_00: I hadn't made a single painting.
30:40
SPEAKER_00: And the Heaven's Gate cult was the first painting I had made in like eight months.
30:44
SPEAKER_01: Heaven's Gate cult.
30:45
SPEAKER_01: What that was something that happened that was in the eighties.
30:48
SPEAKER_00: Oh I I could be out my timing could be wrong.
30:51
SPEAKER_00: I believe it was 80s or early 90s in California, where the mothership was gonna come down, and we were all going.
30:57
SPEAKER_00: If you were a part of the cult, the mothership was gonna come down, you were gonna ascend, and you were gonna go to the higher place.
31:03
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
31:04
SPEAKER_00: Um but before then, you had to put on, you know, your black Nikes, your black Nikes put on black jumpsuits, you had to hop in bed.
31:12
SPEAKER_00: Black Nikes?
31:12
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, black Nikes.
31:13
SPEAKER_01: What the heck?
31:14
SPEAKER_00: And you had to like Cortez Nikes?
31:17
SPEAKER_00: No, the the the the black ones with the the white check mark, and the soul was the whole soul's white.
31:22
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
31:23
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
31:23
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the cortez, the Cortez, yeah, yeah, yeah.
31:26
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think the Cortez is like those, yeah, like you're describing it's white.
31:30
SPEAKER_00: Decades.
31:31
SPEAKER_00: Oh, decades?
31:32
SPEAKER_00: Decades, yeah.
31:32
SPEAKER_01: Decades.
31:33
SPEAKER_01: 1997, Anthony says.
31:35
SPEAKER_00: 1997.
31:36
SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Anthony.
31:36
SPEAKER_01: So they gotta wear the Nikes, they gotta wear what else?
31:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you had to wear an all-black jumpsuit, and then you had to lay in bed, you had to put a sheet over your head, and you had to take uh some pills.
31:44
SPEAKER_00: Well, and you had to die.
31:46
SPEAKER_00: And then the uh and then the mothership was gonna come down and y'all were going to ascend.
31:50
SPEAKER_00: No way, and it's just the the um the mentality behind it was the one thing that intrigued me.
32:00
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, there's here's a here's a guy who created his own cult, and he's able to convince people to bring them in.
32:08
SPEAKER_00: They were a bunch of uh co computer computer people.
32:13
SPEAKER_00: They worked on computer programs, they created websites, they did a bunch of stuff to computer programs, and um they had to bring in money, and they lived in a very luxurious house.
32:25
SPEAKER_00: It's all great.
32:26
SPEAKER_00: Um, and I I don't want to give too much of it away if nobody has heard of the Heaven's Gate cult.
32:31
SPEAKER_00: It's just a real interesting dive to get into.
32:34
SPEAKER_01: No, no, I mean I'm interested in it.
32:36
SPEAKER_01: I like that type of stuff too.
32:38
SPEAKER_01: Like, I mean, I watched videos like that on YouTube, like uh like cults, uh murders, like investigations, and I'm into like that.
32:47
SPEAKER_01: That's why I'm asking.
32:48
SPEAKER_01: It sounds pretty cool too.
32:49
SPEAKER_01: So you made a painting off of that or off of the um the crime scene.
32:53
SPEAKER_01: The after, yeah, yeah, yeah.
32:54
SPEAKER_00: The the aftermath.
32:56
SPEAKER_01: The aftermath.
32:57
SPEAKER_00: Um I I think the aftermath is more um intriguing because we're able to have a snapshot of where there's nobody here in this picture anymore that can tell us what happened.
33:12
SPEAKER_01: That's so crazy.
33:13
SPEAKER_00: And so to have it uh encased in a painting, I think is a it's a the a beautiful thing, I can take something tragic and I can encase it in a painting and it'll live forever is a reminder of things that have happened and where we where we should not go.
33:36
SPEAKER_01: Like a like a footprint, like uh footprint.
33:38
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, right.
33:39
SPEAKER_00: Uh a tragic footprint.
33:41
SPEAKER_01: Tragic footprint, yeah, for sure.
33:42
SPEAKER_01: Uh so uh we were talking we were talking about uh like doing it digitally or whatever for exhibitions, right?
33:49
SPEAKER_01: Uh how do you feel about the uh I guess the um uh the importance of digital art and maybe NFTs, uh have you considered exploring these mediums?
33:58
SPEAKER_00: No, no, not NFTs.
34:01
SPEAKER_00: Um I'm not too aware of how the NFT works.
34:06
SPEAKER_00: Um it doesn't intrigue me.
34:09
SPEAKER_00: I I I I I wish it did, you know.
34:11
SPEAKER_00: It seems interesting, but it's just for me, if I can't physically create a painting with my hands, I I I don't feel like it's something that I would ever venture into.
34:25
SPEAKER_00: It's just not my cup of tea.
34:27
SPEAKER_01: To actually own it physically, yeah.
34:29
SPEAKER_01: It's kind of like like we have I have Amazon Prime and I buy movies on there.
34:33
SPEAKER_01: And I remember when we had to actually own the disc, you know what I mean, the DVD or whatever it was.
34:38
SPEAKER_01: No, we don't own it, or even tapes.
34:40
SPEAKER_01: You remember tapes?
34:41
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you don't own it anymore.
34:42
SPEAKER_00: It's the same concept, you know, you don't own this piece of art, you can't put it on your wall, you know, you can't you can't physically hold it.
34:51
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
34:51
SPEAKER_00: Um, so that's just not something that I think I would ever do.
34:56
SPEAKER_00: I need to physically, I need to be able to physically grab my painting and throw it out the window if I want.
35:00
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, right on.
35:01
SPEAKER_01: Uh so yeah, you're currently working with the uh Zine Collaboration.
35:05
SPEAKER_01: Is it Zine?
35:06
SPEAKER_01: Zine.
35:06
SPEAKER_01: Zine collaboration uh with female artists from New Zealand.
35:10
SPEAKER_00: Yes, the Pantybag Collective.
35:13
SPEAKER_00: They're a group of four female artists.
35:15
SPEAKER_00: They live in New Zealand and they take them.
35:17
SPEAKER_00: I don't I don't know if you're familiar with the the gold, the gold children books where they had the gold spine, and you know, it was a child.
35:24
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
35:26
SPEAKER_00: They go around and they find.
35:28
SPEAKER_00: I guess New Zealand just has a plethora of these books and thrift shops, and they get the books and they uh prime them, they gesso them, and then they start doing uh collages on them.
35:40
SPEAKER_02: Oh wow.
35:41
SPEAKER_00: So we I had reached out and we had made a connection and we had talked for a little while and we had decided you know we're gonna work on a collaboration.
35:50
SPEAKER_00: So they sent me um a book and I'm still currently working on it.
35:55
SPEAKER_00: Like I said in the beginning, it's one of those 15 projects that I walk by every day.
35:59
SPEAKER_00: Um I'm going I'm going to finish it, but it's just we're we're it's not quite done yet.
36:05
SPEAKER_00: And then when we get it, I'll mail it back to them.
36:09
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
36:09
SPEAKER_00: And then they'll make a high definition scan of the book, and then they'll mass produce it into little zines that are probably about maybe five by six inches.
36:18
SPEAKER_00: That's cool.
36:19
SPEAKER_00: And then we'll distribute them.
36:20
SPEAKER_01: Right on.
36:21
SPEAKER_01: And zine is like short for magazine?
36:23
SPEAKER_00: Zine is it's it's mag it's like a shorter version of a magazine, and a lot of artists and like punk rock bands would create them as like advertisements or you know, flyers for events and stuff.
36:34
SPEAKER_00: Or if artists wanted to, you know, get their work across a bunch of people, but they didn't have you know a lot of money to mass produce their work, you could take a couple of your drawings and go down to Kinkos because um in the 80s and the 90s it was prominent for artists to just be stuck at a Kinko's making you know Xerox copies of all their work, and they would combine it into a booklet, and then they would just hand it out to people in the streets, and that's how you would be able to get your work across.
37:02
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
37:03
SPEAKER_01: Is there a difference?
37:04
SPEAKER_01: Uh have you noticed a difference in collaborating with uh with people from different cultures?
37:08
SPEAKER_00: It's interesting to see some of the way that they produce their work.
37:14
SPEAKER_00: Um a lot of other people that I've worked with, they are very more f focused on uh the figuration as opposed to where me, I like to focus on color.
37:26
SPEAKER_00: Um so it's just interesting to see the styles um mix with each other.
37:31
SPEAKER_00: You know, if an artist focuses a lot on figuration, then I have to figure out how am I gonna fit the color around this.
37:38
SPEAKER_00: And there really uh was this is actually really probably the only second collaboration that I've done.
37:45
SPEAKER_00: I worked with a fashion group out of Audiborg, Sweden.
37:49
SPEAKER_00: Um, we did a look book.
37:50
SPEAKER_00: So they had sent me some uh clothes and we had uh made some painting backdrops and stuff like that.
37:57
SPEAKER_00: We had created a photo shoot and we created a lookbook for them for I think it was like their winter edition or something like that.
38:04
SPEAKER_00: Um so this is like actually my only real second project working with other artists.
38:09
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
38:09
SPEAKER_00: And it's just it's freeing.
38:12
SPEAKER_00: You know, there's no um criteria that we have to meet.
38:16
SPEAKER_00: You know, we just create what we create, send it back.
38:20
SPEAKER_00: If we need to tweak it, we tweak it.
38:21
SPEAKER_00: If not, we roll with it and we push on to publishing it.
38:25
SPEAKER_01: Crazy.
38:25
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
38:26
SPEAKER_01: Do you feel that the I guess in that I guess in every community there's always like people saying stuff about other art or even music or whatever.
38:35
SPEAKER_01: Well, I don't like country music or whatever.
38:37
SPEAKER_01: Um do do people say that about your art specifically?
38:40
SPEAKER_01: Like I as you know what I mean.
38:42
SPEAKER_01: How do you have that?
38:42
SPEAKER_00: I've never had anybody, you know, deliberately tell me, like, hey, I don't like your paintings.
38:46
SPEAKER_00: You know, I've just had people that you know you you you can see that they don't get it, they don't understand it.
38:52
SPEAKER_00: Um and some of them they'll they'll ask me, you know, what does this mean or you know, what does it represent?
38:58
SPEAKER_00: I'll be able to tell them.
39:00
SPEAKER_00: And um either they like it or they don't.
39:02
SPEAKER_00: I mean, everybody has their own, you know, niche, the their thing that they like.
39:07
SPEAKER_00: You know, some people like country, some people like rockets the same thing with paintings, painting, yeah.
39:11
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's crazy.
39:12
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, the like Myra's stuff is different I was talking to Myra, her stuff is different.
39:17
SPEAKER_01: It and she bases her stuff around like color, and she we were getting I was talking to her about that, which was interesting.
39:24
SPEAKER_01: Uh, like this color means this and this color means that.
39:27
SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of theory and stuff behind certain art pieces, and rather than just oh, that looks nice, you know what I mean?
39:34
SPEAKER_01: People don't some people don't go deep into that part of art, you know what I mean?
39:38
SPEAKER_01: Um, there's just kind of service level, you know what I mean?
39:41
SPEAKER_01: And to be able to understand uh go like just looking at your stuff, I'm like, oh, that's got a story.
39:46
SPEAKER_01: And then I looked at your website, I was like, I knew it had a story.
39:49
SPEAKER_01: That's really cool, man.
39:50
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so how so your website is uh Ligaki or Ligoski, sorry, I keep what I'm saying.
39:56
SPEAKER_00: Legoskistudio.com.
39:58
SPEAKER_01: Is that that's your dad's last name?
39:59
SPEAKER_00: That's my dad's last name.
40:00
SPEAKER_01: No way, that's okay.
40:02
SPEAKER_01: And yeah, Legoski.
40:03
SPEAKER_01: There you go.
40:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there it is.
40:06
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so that this one here is like on the on the very first um page of your website.
40:12
SPEAKER_01: Um and it's facial expression.
40:14
SPEAKER_01: There's actually you have like three or four of those, don't you?
40:16
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, um that that's part of a series I'm working on.
40:19
SPEAKER_01: It's called um go to work on the left-hand side, yeah.
40:23
SPEAKER_00: It's in work.
40:24
SPEAKER_01: Is that first that the it's called the you can click on that first picture and it'll take you to all the ones that look like it.
40:31
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the horrors within the old one.
40:33
SPEAKER_00: There you go.
40:33
SPEAKER_01: Dude, that one right there, the very first picture under the uh horrors within.
40:38
SPEAKER_01: I love the color on that one, dude.
40:39
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
40:40
SPEAKER_00: Um I once heard a story of the deserts of New Mexico, yeah.
40:47
SPEAKER_00: So there's about there's gonna be 20 paintings in this series.
40:52
SPEAKER_00: I think right now on the website.
40:53
SPEAKER_00: There's about 13.
40:55
SPEAKER_00: So I'm still working through it.
40:57
SPEAKER_00: I'm trying the the problem is I'm trying to keep them all the same format, so they're all like 16 and a half by 20 inches.
41:04
SPEAKER_01: Why is that?
41:04
SPEAKER_00: I just I'm just critical of it.
41:07
SPEAKER_00: I just want them all to be the same size.
41:08
SPEAKER_00: Oh, cool.
41:09
SPEAKER_00: I just want them all to be the same size.
41:10
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you're the you're the artist, of course.
41:11
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, I guess.
41:12
SPEAKER_01: There's no reason why they're that one's cool right there.
41:14
SPEAKER_00: That's actually a uh portrait of my dad.
41:17
SPEAKER_01: No way! Yeah digging the hat too.
41:21
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he doesn't he he doesn't wear cowboy hats, he wears a baseball cap.
41:24
SPEAKER_00: I gave him a cowboy hat.
41:25
SPEAKER_01: So 16.5 by 20.
41:28
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, what's that one there?
41:30
SPEAKER_01: I saw that.
41:31
SPEAKER_01: I was like, oh shit, it's on top of his mouth.
41:33
SPEAKER_00: Hush and do I saw oh yeah, it's it's that one's a little bit more of a darker topic.
41:41
SPEAKER_00: Uh there's um nice.
41:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I think with crawling under the floorboard, we stop right there.
41:50
SPEAKER_01: That's cool.
41:51
SPEAKER_01: And uh and so you put do how do people do people purchase these from your website, or how do you go about like selling your your works?
41:59
SPEAKER_00: Um, we do we do shows, or I'll partake in group exhibitions, or I'll host my own shows, we'll sell the works there.
42:07
SPEAKER_00: Or um there is a contact page where if you want to buy a painting, you could just send me an email and we'll work it out.
42:13
SPEAKER_00: Email, there we go.
42:15
SPEAKER_00: Just send me an email.
42:16
SPEAKER_00: Uh I don't work with a gallery right now, so I'm not held to a contract.
42:22
SPEAKER_00: So like there's no gallery that sells my work for me.
42:24
SPEAKER_00: I'm just kind of on my own.
42:26
SPEAKER_01: So so is that I guess that's that could be one of your goal, one of the goals as an artist to be, I guess, commissioned by a gallery.
42:33
SPEAKER_00: In in the beginning it was, you know, to be commissioned by a gallery, but at this point, I kind of like where I'm at, you know.
42:40
SPEAKER_00: Like I said, I like being the man on the mountain and staying in my little house.
42:44
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, what is that?
42:46
SPEAKER_00: I like I like staying in my little cabin on the mountain and making my work while everybody kind of, you know, everybody lives their life below the mountain, and I'm up top, and I get to just create and I get to work on it.
43:00
SPEAKER_00: And if people see my work, they see it.
43:02
SPEAKER_00: If they don't, they don't.
43:04
SPEAKER_00: I'm not on social media, I have just the website.
43:09
SPEAKER_00: You know, I used to be on Instagram and stuff, which was a good way to connect with a lot of different artists, and but now it's just strictly a website.
43:16
SPEAKER_00: You know, you uh you have to go find my work if you want to look at it.
43:19
SPEAKER_00: Oh, really?
43:20
SPEAKER_00: And I like that, you know, it's it's it's a journey, you know.
43:23
SPEAKER_00: It's um it makes you want to see the work.
43:26
SPEAKER_00: So that's why there's only a website.
43:27
SPEAKER_01: Oh, right on cool, that's cool.
43:29
SPEAKER_01: Thanks, thanks, Maya, for putting that up there.
43:31
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
43:32
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, is there any pieces that you want to talk about?
43:34
SPEAKER_01: Oh, dude, look at that one.
43:36
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, Elmer Food.
43:37
SPEAKER_00: Elmer Food.
43:37
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
43:39
SPEAKER_00: That's uh there's gonna be a series of five works, and this one is gonna go over uh World War II.
43:45
SPEAKER_00: Oh wow.
43:46
SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna have all of our um, you know, all of our main characters fighting in World War II.
43:52
SPEAKER_01: Warning images.
43:54
SPEAKER_01: Oh, which one's this one?
43:55
SPEAKER_01: Paintings nineteen through twenty-three?
43:58
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, about twenty nineteen to twenty three.
44:00
SPEAKER_00: 2023, these were painted.
44:01
SPEAKER_01: You I see I noticed you use that that kind of I don't know um like magenta or whatever color.
44:07
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's it's a very it's a pink that I like to make.
44:10
SPEAKER_00: It's prominent in all my paintings.
44:13
SPEAKER_00: I like I just like using it.
44:14
SPEAKER_00: When I started working, it was a very pastel pink and now it's kind of worked its way into a magenta.
44:21
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that is uh broke back mountain.
44:22
SPEAKER_01: Broke back mountain.
44:23
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes I wish the waves would shift and the earth would fall apart.
44:29
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
44:30
SPEAKER_01: You you like you like that movie?
44:32
SPEAKER_01: Oh nice.
44:33
SPEAKER_00: It it had it has a in it has an ending that I was not expecting.
44:37
unknown: Really?
44:37
SPEAKER_00: It's a very sad movie.
44:39
SPEAKER_00: Oh no, wow.
44:40
SPEAKER_00: There's there's the Uvalde one right there.
44:42
SPEAKER_00: Yes, yeah.
44:43
SPEAKER_00: So this is the one that will be at the Maka Museum in uh Ciodada Cunha once the museum is built.
44:49
SPEAKER_01: Nice.
44:51
SPEAKER_01: That's cool.
44:53
SPEAKER_01: Uh and the one from uh the one that you were talking about.
44:56
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there's the one from uh the Ukraine one go down that one there, right?
45:01
SPEAKER_00: Yes, uh Putin looking through the the brick wall of the school that they bombed when they did the first invasion of Ukraine.
45:11
SPEAKER_01: That one was interesting, the the father dearest Ohio Billy.
45:15
SPEAKER_01: Like the faces melting, right?
45:17
SPEAKER_01: Is that what it is?
45:18
SPEAKER_00: No, there's so there was a that one there, Ma.
45:21
SPEAKER_00: Uh there was a Ohio University serial killer.
45:24
SPEAKER_00: He would go around and he would attack women.
45:27
SPEAKER_00: Um he had a tragic childhood, tragic childhood.
45:30
SPEAKER_00: Um it it kind of w when you there's a documentary, and when I find the documentary, I'll send it to you.
45:37
SPEAKER_00: Um there's one documentary on him, his name is Billy uh Mulligan, and his dad was his stepfather was very abusive to him.
45:47
SPEAKER_00: And um so he his stepfather would make Billy dig his own grave.
45:52
SPEAKER_01: Whoa.
45:52
SPEAKER_00: And he would s stick a pipe over Billy's head and he would urinate down the pipe.
45:58
SPEAKER_01: Oh my god.
45:58
SPEAKER_00: So that's where that painting comes from.
46:01
SPEAKER_00: And it it kind of makes you understand why some people would turn to to do some dark, dark dark things.
46:10
SPEAKER_01: Wow, very interesting.
46:11
SPEAKER_01: Uh Michael J.
46:13
SPEAKER_01: Barreta says, Sending love from Houston.
46:15
SPEAKER_01: Nice.
46:16
SPEAKER_01: Uh Karina Gomez says, so cool, can't wait till it's done.
46:20
SPEAKER_01: I guess they were talking about one of the other projects you had going.
46:23
SPEAKER_01: Cool.
46:23
SPEAKER_01: Might keep scrolling, Maya.
46:28
SPEAKER_01: Wow, that's so crazy how you can oh this no, that's the one, right?
46:31
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's uh Heaven's Gate painting.
46:33
SPEAKER_01: I was wondering about the Nikes.
46:36
SPEAKER_01: The things we talk about.
46:38
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
46:38
SPEAKER_01: Dude, how do you come up with the titles for these?
46:41
SPEAKER_00: Is it like a it it's it's a it's a um hit or miss, and I I literally walk around my house thinking up these titles in my head.
46:49
SPEAKER_00: So my my my my poor wife, her hurt crazy, crazy husband is walking around.
46:55
SPEAKER_00: I was gonna think strange things, but it's I'm coming up with titles for paintings.
47:00
SPEAKER_00: I say them out loud or I say them in my head, yeah, and it it usually so the title process begins before I make the painting.
47:08
SPEAKER_01: No, really, yeah.
47:09
SPEAKER_00: So I think all these things prior to when I make the painting.
47:13
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
47:13
SPEAKER_00: And so what I'm doing is I create a title and then I try to find a story that would match the title.
47:20
SPEAKER_00: So the things we talk about in the dark was some uh title I had heard or and I had found it, and it resonated with me.
47:27
SPEAKER_00: I was like, I need to find something that co that can correlate with it.
47:31
SPEAKER_00: And so when I found the crime scene for the Heaven's Gate uh crime scene photo that resonated with me, I was like, this this image belongs with the title.
47:40
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
47:40
SPEAKER_00: So that's usually how a lot of the work starts.
47:43
SPEAKER_01: Uh can't imagine walking into that scene, like if you're investigating or wherever, just man, that would be crazy.
47:50
SPEAKER_01: Go ahead and keep scrolling, Maya.
47:53
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's the one is that's that's the one that was in that dining room, right?
47:57
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
47:58
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, like that.
47:59
SPEAKER_00: Lorraine in the white nightgown.
48:02
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, I was looking at that one too.
48:04
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
48:05
SPEAKER_01: I started leave it there, Maya.
48:06
SPEAKER_01: I was starting to like look through your website, I was like, dude, this is there's gotta be some stories to these.
48:11
SPEAKER_01: And I was like, what is this about?
48:13
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, I think you know, a lot I think a lot of people, you know, we've had our bouts of depression and stuff, you know.
48:19
SPEAKER_00: I I suffer from depression and anxiety, and you know, I've through you know, my wife, you know, I've been able to go to find therapy and find help, and you know, is that working for you?
48:31
SPEAKER_00: I mean it is, it it's working wonders.
48:32
SPEAKER_00: You know, before I was a very angry person.
48:34
SPEAKER_01: Really?
48:35
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I was angry at you know, God and everybody.
48:37
SPEAKER_00: I was angry at myself, I was angry at a bunch of people.
48:39
SPEAKER_01: Do you think it's because the way you were raised?
48:41
SPEAKER_00: Or I mean uh you know, you know, I'm I'm not gonna say that, you know, growing up I had a wonderful childhood.
48:48
SPEAKER_00: But um, you know, it it has a lot of different factors, you know, growing up, um social environments, friends, other family members, um your own family.
48:59
SPEAKER_00: I think we all have our own struggles that we deal with.
49:02
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
49:02
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, growing up and getting older, finding help and therapy has been, you know, a very good thing for me.
49:09
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
49:09
SPEAKER_00: It it it all and creating also creating paintings also helps me as a form of therapy to be able to you know get something out of my head.
49:17
SPEAKER_00: I need to encapsulate it, I need to paint it.
49:20
SPEAKER_00: That's put it on a canvas and norm normally it kind of dissipates.
49:25
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
49:26
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's awesome.
49:27
SPEAKER_00: It's nice.
49:27
SPEAKER_00: It it's it's very relaxing, it's very therapeutic.
49:30
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's cool.
49:31
SPEAKER_01: Uh and so all this, so you're talking about like anger and all this stuff.
49:36
SPEAKER_01: Like when you when you were in the process of dating your wife or then eventually becoming married, is this something that you were I know it's not something that you want to talk about, right?
49:45
SPEAKER_01: When you're dating somebody, right?
49:47
SPEAKER_01: But did you feel like, oh shoot, I should probably say something about this?
49:50
SPEAKER_00: Or no, she brought it up to me.
49:52
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, she brought it up to me, and I was very, I was, you know, very naive.
49:56
SPEAKER_00: I was very unaware of where my mental state was.
49:59
SPEAKER_00: And she helped me a lot to find out, you know, I needed help, you know, this is you know, this is not right, you know, my outbursts or anger or my depression or my anxiety, I don't have to feel this way.
50:11
SPEAKER_00: No.
50:12
SPEAKER_00: So through her, I was able to find help, and it's it's been wonderful.
50:16
SPEAKER_01: Did it get to the point where it it you might have done something to her?
50:20
SPEAKER_00: No, no, no.
50:22
SPEAKER_01: No.
50:23
SPEAKER_01: Some people, I mean I can imagine.
50:26
SPEAKER_00: There are some there were some there are some relationships that should people should not be together.
50:31
SPEAKER_00: And my my my parents were those people that should have not been together.
50:37
SPEAKER_00: But uh yeah.
50:38
SPEAKER_01: Oh man, this is because some good stuff here, man.
50:40
SPEAKER_01: I like your paintings.
50:41
SPEAKER_01: Go ahead and keep scrolling out.
50:42
SPEAKER_01: So this uh this is to the this is already completed, this this particular section of work.
50:49
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, okay, okay.
50:50
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, these are paintings that were just made between 2019 and 2023.
50:54
SPEAKER_00: You know, they weren't specifically for a series, they were just paintings that I had made.
51:00
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
51:00
SPEAKER_01: I like that one where the ground has different different uh lines to it.
51:04
SPEAKER_01: Go ahead and go go up.
51:06
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that one right there.
51:07
SPEAKER_01: No, up, up one more right there.
51:10
SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah.
51:11
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's pretty cool.
51:13
SPEAKER_01: And then the house is on fire.
51:15
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
51:16
SPEAKER_01: I was then I heard the black goat sing.
51:19
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
51:21
SPEAKER_01: Man, this is good.
51:22
SPEAKER_01: This is a good show, man.
51:23
SPEAKER_01: Thanks for coming on.
51:24
SPEAKER_01: Is there anything you want to share?
51:25
SPEAKER_00: Um no, I think you know, we've um we've covered a lot of topics.
51:30
SPEAKER_00: Um any particular questions you have?
51:34
SPEAKER_01: Um, not really.
51:35
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I got some questions.
51:36
SPEAKER_01: Uh, our art, uh art as a medium of social commentary.
51:42
SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah.
51:44
SPEAKER_01: Explore how your paintings address current uh events, society issue.
51:48
SPEAKER_01: We kind of went over that, uh, such as your piece on Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine.
51:53
SPEAKER_01: Uh, how do you see your role of how do you see the role of artists in the current political climate and social movements?
52:01
SPEAKER_00: That's a good question.
52:02
SPEAKER_00: Um right now, I believe that artists, we should be using what's going on right now and our talents and our mediums to be able to encapsulate what's happening on all fronts, you know, on you know, the political side, on the social side, on personal sides.
52:21
SPEAKER_00: I I think it's a good thing for us to be able to catalog what is going on in the world.
52:28
SPEAKER_02: Interesting.
52:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's you know, like the Uvaldi piece or you know, the Vladimir Putin painting, you know, it it's something that needs to be catalogued, um, so we don't forget, you know, where we can go as a society if we let things get out of hand.
52:42
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
52:43
SPEAKER_00: So like a form of journalism or a form of journalism, more more in a visual pictorial way.
52:49
SPEAKER_00: Um, you know.
52:50
SPEAKER_00: I I I think that that's the beauty of it.
52:53
SPEAKER_00: We can we can catalog and journal what's going on.
52:58
SPEAKER_00: And I think having a visual image is you know very impactful so people can uh you know understand that this is where we do not need to go or we don't want to go here again.
53:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
53:08
SPEAKER_01: Do you consider pictures like uh art?
53:11
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
53:12
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I can I consider photographs art.
53:15
SPEAKER_00: I don't partake in photography, but I like it.
53:17
SPEAKER_00: It's it's a very nice medium.
53:19
SPEAKER_00: And I love uh journalistic photography.
53:21
SPEAKER_00: Of course, that's where a lot of the a lot of the inspiration comes from are journalistic photographs, you know, photographs of war, photographs of crime scenes and stuff like that.
53:30
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there's a movie, uh I think it's called Civil War.
53:32
SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
53:34
SPEAKER_01: It reminded me of that movie.
53:35
SPEAKER_01: I just watched it.
53:37
SPEAKER_01: Very awesome, interesting movie.
53:39
SPEAKER_01: How they're just kind of trying to make it to watch DC and they they get you know caught in these you know gunfires and all this other stuff.
53:46
SPEAKER_01: And in the meantime, they're journaling, they're journaling, they're taking pictures.
53:49
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, it's so crazy.
53:51
SPEAKER_01: Well, uh the intersection of art and community.
53:55
SPEAKER_01: Um talk about the importance of community in your in your work or uh uh from local exhibitions to in Evalde to international collaborations.
54:05
SPEAKER_01: Did we touch on that?
54:06
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we touched we touched on it.
54:08
SPEAKER_00: Um I think the the biggest takeaway is that I think communities as a whole need a place where we can bring you know children, young adults, adults, people together to view art in a in a place where we can all have open discussions about it so that way we can understand that art is just not something that is seen as highbrow or you know for the elite or you know for people with money.
54:40
SPEAKER_00: You know, art is for everybody, whether it's you know, murals, paintings.
54:44
SPEAKER_00: If you there's a place where we can all come together to have you know time to talk about what's going on, especially like what happens with Art Walk.
54:52
SPEAKER_00: You know, a lot of people come down here to Corpus to go to the art galleries and partake.
54:57
SPEAKER_00: That's beautiful.
54:58
SPEAKER_00: That's exactly what the mission is for driving art and community is to make everybody whole and one with the art.
55:07
SPEAKER_00: So we can all have a open conversation, meet friends, um, not be you know secluded, um, not have a closed mind, have the ability to talk about what we want to as a whole, and have art be able to help us along the way in educating people and enlightening us.
55:25
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, wow.
55:26
SPEAKER_01: Uh Ronnie Martinez, thank you for joining, Karina.
55:29
SPEAKER_01: Uh, appreciate you all for the comments.
55:30
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's interesting to me because growing up you really don't like the art class is the actual introduction to actual art.
55:39
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, for everybody, you know, you go to your you go to your generic art class, you take your generic art course, that's your introduction.
55:45
SPEAKER_00: It is and some people, you know, some children, like for me, we grew up in a small town, our art course was very limited to what we could do as opposed to where if we were going to school in New York, you know, our art course would have been way more extravagant.
55:58
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
55:59
SPEAKER_00: Um, but I think for people to be able to partake in, you know, art walks, going to art galleries, you know, especially taking like your children to museums at young ages, you know, is very impactful, very impressionable, especially on the young mind.
56:12
SPEAKER_00: When they see art, it doesn't mean that they have to grow up to be a painter or a writer, it just under it helps them understand that I can be creative in any field, and I can use my creativity, whatever it is, to better myself.
56:25
SPEAKER_00: And it's it's a very good learning tool.
56:28
SPEAKER_00: And I think that as a community we should help and strive to want to have that connection with art.
56:36
SPEAKER_01: Yes, yeah, definitely.
56:38
SPEAKER_01: Uh, and like and I think like here in South Texas, I mean, because you have like Hispanics or whatever, some people, some families may be like, Well, don't do art, you need to actually work.
56:49
SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
56:49
SPEAKER_01: There's a more there's less of an importance on that and more just like you know what I mean, like just bringing income in and stuff like that, and they're like, Well, why are you wasting your time on this or whatever, whatever?
57:00
SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
57:01
SPEAKER_01: So I think for a young kid, just telling them, like, even just you being inspired by your teacher, like, no, go ahead and try it out, you know, do it.
57:08
SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
57:08
SPEAKER_01: It's it's encouraging, you know.
57:10
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
57:10
SPEAKER_00: And I mean, you know, growing up, you know, my my family was kind of the same, you know, ideology.
57:15
SPEAKER_00: They they were very um open and very um encouraging of my creative practice, but they had grown up so long to be, you know, you have to work to make money to pay the bills and stuff like that.
57:26
SPEAKER_00: But it was, it was very, it was very freeing and very nice of my parents to say, just be creative, just do what you want to do.
57:32
SPEAKER_00: You know, there wasn't a you gotta work, you gotta do this, you have to make money, you have to go to school, this is what you have to do to proceed in life.
57:41
SPEAKER_00: They were just like, no, be creative, do whatever you want.
57:45
SPEAKER_00: And so they just let me run around and paint and be creative, and naturally, of course, you know, working and stuff if it falls into place.
57:53
SPEAKER_00: But being able to be creative when I was younger, it's helped me out a lot as I got older.
57:58
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, definitely, man.
58:00
SPEAKER_01: I think should have some fun for even if it's not selling it, just some form of art, picking up a guitar, oh yeah, whatever, you know, like just this this little drawing that you did here.
58:09
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's just you know, it's just a little sketch, you know.
58:12
SPEAKER_01: You can just do stuff like that and it helps your your mind, your brain, you know, overall.
58:17
SPEAKER_00: The one thing I would like to say is, you know, there's no um if you're gonna go into art for you know the monetary value, then you're doing it wrong.
58:27
SPEAKER_00: You're going in it the wrong way.
58:29
SPEAKER_00: Be yourself, do it because you want to do it, don't do it because you think that there's a monetary value or some fame attached to it.
58:36
SPEAKER_00: You know, just do it for yourself.
58:38
SPEAKER_00: Be honest and be open with yourself creatively in whatever field it is you do.
58:42
SPEAKER_01: Yes, sir.
58:43
SPEAKER_01: Thanks for coming on the show, Charles.
58:46
SPEAKER_01: Yes, sir.
58:46
SPEAKER_01: Uh, we got another show coming up here in a few minutes.
58:48
SPEAKER_01: Wonderful.
58:49
SPEAKER_01: Thanks for coming on the show.
58:50
SPEAKER_01: Is there uh so we find you uh legoski.com or is it Ligoski Studio.com.
58:55
SPEAKER_01: Legoski Studio, L-I-G-O-C-K-Y, S T-U-D-I-O.com.
59:01
SPEAKER_01: We'll leave a link in the description.
59:03
SPEAKER_01: Uh, is there anything else you want to share before we go?
59:05
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for having me on.
59:06
SPEAKER_00: It's wonderful.
59:07
SPEAKER_00: I love what y'all are doing.
59:08
SPEAKER_00: Keep it up.
59:09
SPEAKER_00: It's it's it's beautiful.
59:10
SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
59:11
SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
59:11
SPEAKER_01: Thanks a lot, you guys.
59:12
SPEAKER_01: Stay tuned.
59:13
SPEAKER_01: Uh, we got uh runhat podcast in the next hour, so uh stay tuned for that.
59:17
SPEAKER_01: Otherwise, see you guys later.