Latest / FROM THE INSIDE OUT by BETH ARNOLD / INTZERVIEW WITH: JO-ANN MORGAN - ART REFUSES TO LOOK AWAY

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INTZERVIEW WITH: JO-ANN MORGAN - ART REFUSES TO LOOK AWAY · FROM THE INSIDE OUT by BETH ARNOLD

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: Hi, welcome.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_02: This is Beth Arnold from The Inside Out: Notes from a Liberal Southern Woman, and I am welcoming Joanne Morgan today, who is the artist behind the stunning and deeply moving exhibition The Morning After, which I wrote about in my piece, Art as Activism.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_02: And her work uses quilting to confront violence, grief, public trauma, and the human cost of the times we're living through.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_02: And it does so with extraordinary power, beauty, and grace and compassion.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_02: So welcome, Joanne.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much for being here.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_02: It was really an honor for me to write about your art.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you did a terrific job.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's really um moving to me as an artist to have have someone interpret it in a way that is, I don't know, satisfying to what my intentions were.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, good, good.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I don't want to I I don't mean it must be interpreted exactly like I think.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes people have see different things in it, but that it was successful in it evoking a response like yours.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I I mean, how much more I mean it truly was so moving.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, everybody in my group cried when we went through the exhibition, and and no wonder there were boxes of tissues.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: So that was a late thought.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: So someone realized that people were coming it out of the show with little tears.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: So they someone mentioned it to me.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: We ought to put a clean.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, let's do.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you know, once you once once you start and keep going, is the power builds.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you see one image after another, and and it's just it just grows inside you.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_02: But I want to start by saying, asking you, you had an artistic life before your academic.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, oh no, first I'm I'm sorry, I'm going to uh give a little bit of your background first.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_02: Joanne Morgan is Professor Emerita of African American Studies and Art History at Western Illinois University.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_02: She is also the author of the Black Arts Movement and the Black Panther Party in American Visual Culture and Uncle Tom's Cabin as Visual Culture.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_02: Before her academic career, she worked in fine art and sculpture, and in recent years, she returned to making art in a new form, powerful, quilted works that bear witness to gun violence, war, separation, and other tragedies of our time.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_02: So now to the first question that I want to ask you.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_02: You had an artistic life before your academic career.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_02: How do you see this work in relation to that earlier self?
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's an it's an evolution.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: It uh I I went to art school.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: Uh for many years, I was a painter and had art shows, and I've just always been in involved as an artist.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I reached a point where I felt, well, you know, I kind of know something about what I'm doing.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'd really like to share it.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so I went and got a college degree uh in in studio art, an MFA to be able to teach.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: And along the way I discovered there was a part of me that really hadn't been satisfied, and that was the intellectual part.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I got very interested in the history of art, got a doctorate, and went on to be a a college professor for over 20 years.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: But each, I mean, it's all kind of a con continuum, you know.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's always about the arts and finding out for myself how they fit into people's lives, into history, what motivates one to do it, w w what are the the the ways people work, just a lot, a lot about art.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um I didn't just start art when I started doing this medium, but I did just start this medium um really just well, during the c coronavirus.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: So it's kind of like a new thing altogether, despite the decades of making paintings, sculptures, and teaching art history.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I uh I hadn't really been making art when I was a the last few years I was a college professor because I was writing books, and that's creative and and satisfying.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_02: It's all art.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_02: That's art too.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: But um, you know, time on my hands, locked in.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, real literally.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I I'd always thought, well, maybe when I when I quit teaching, I will go back to making art.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: So I had seen a quilt show here in I live in South Carolina, Conway, South Carolina.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: There's a museum, and they had a quilt show.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: And in the quilt show was um like a history of local quilts, and it just a lot of things were there.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I r I'd always kind of liked them, but I'd never really had a relationship.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: There was one in the show which I I I've been thinking about recently that I think might have had more of an impact than I thought.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: And also it connects me to my mother's South Carolina roots in an interesting way.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: There was one on the wall, um scraps of fabric, not even neat and no no pattern to speak of, just this hodgepodge of fabric pieces that were dark colors and made of wool.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I I looked at it and I thought, oh my God, that's what I had on my bed when I was little.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I read about it on the wall what this was.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: It was the kind of quilt that well women made during the depression and I guess continued into the 40s.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: And they literally used the scraps of men's suits.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: And it was like because m the Depression, people were very poor in South Carolina, at least my family was.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: And and so it was a way to make a quilt, uh, uh reuse things if if you didn't have a whole lot of money.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that that I saw, right, the month before I bought the sewing machine.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: Now I didn't plan to make quilts like that.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: I it just reinforced in my mind the kind of special nature of what a quilt is.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: So um I could go on at length.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_02: Well, well, what I'm so in awe of because I I am a non-sewer.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_02: My mother was a very fine seamstress, and my grandmother was a quilt maker.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_02: So I come from a family of women who sewed, but not me.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_02: It was like, oh no, I don't want to do that.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: Are you from South Carolina?
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_02: No, I'm from Arkansas.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_02: But um, but my grandmother, oh, I have so many quilts.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_02: But anyway, so I come from a family of quilts, and I love quilts, but um, but I didn't want to do that.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_02: So for you to pick to have a sewing machine and and start sewing as a new form of art for me is like, wow, that's uh intense and interesting and and so creative.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_02: But but let me ask you this.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_02: So when you returning, so you returned to making art when you started doing the quilts, uh, did that feel like coming back to something essential within you, or did it feel like you became someone new in your art?
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I thought it be felt new, um, completely new medium.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know what my content would be.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but as I uh developed my subject matter, I realized it did connect back to things I had done, yeah.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, way back when I was first painting, figurative, a certain way of working um using shapes.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, um my cat just jumped on my lap.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'm looking at it all.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: I meant to check him out, but oh no, we're happy to say hello.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, what what what is your cat's name?
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um this sounds so pretentious, but I was writing an article on the movie Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley at the time I I got him, and the main character's name is Ezekiel Rollins or EZ Rollins.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: So I named him Ezekiel Pollins.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, I love that.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, that's perfect.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_02: That's perfect.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I have my dogs locked up in a room so they won't bark during our interview.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: He's in uh Ezekiel, though.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, all right.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so how did uh quilting become the form that could hold all of this for you?
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_02: Because I mean, these pieces are so move, they're so moving, they're so powerful.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, how did you work into that?
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um I have two influences of what the content became.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um one is fairly straightforward, is um I I it was the time of the coronavirus, and I thought, well, what might I do of of any importance or any not importance but significance uh for for this time?
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought I wanted to create like a being.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um I won't use the word saint or deity, but kind of that, or um doll or teddy bear, a personage that gives comfort, Barbie dolls even.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so I I I set about to create a I called her Our Lady of the Corona, Nuestra Dama de la Corona.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: I love that, I have to tell you.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: And so I did a I did three, four, I think.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: And they were terrible, and I've never I don't show them.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: But um I had worked out a strategy for how I would work.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: The I the tear, the way I do the tears that are um Yes, yeah, that are yeah.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: I gave her attributes of gloves.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: I was wearing gloves in the beginning when I go out in the world.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_02: Me too.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_02: Me too.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: Mask, um, the heart symbol, which I personally like, and a crown.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: Corona, La Corona is the crown.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: So that's way at the beginning, that same month I started, although I didn't use this subject matter for about f three months, Brianna Taylor was sh was killed.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: And that was on my mind.
• 11:28
  unknown: Yeah.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so the first work I really did that I thought was I would show, it was a a memorial to Brianna Taylor, but it's not a portrait.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: It was Lady Corona, and I I installed her at a protest, going, hands up, don't shoot.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: And and I don't know, it was successful.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: Now, where did I get this idea of a memorial?
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: That comes from the teaching I was doing right before um, you know, uh back in I I stopped teaching in 2019.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I I was with the Department of African American Studies, and I taught at a school in Western Illinois, Western Illinois University, the name of the school, which was just north of Ferguson, Missouri.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, wow.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: That was when Michael Brown was shot.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just a little bit north, and you know, it really resonated as you happen.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: He was um only 18 and he was planning, he graduated, he was gonna go to college at a trade school between where we live, Ferguson and Macomb, Illinois, where the university was.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: It was just really, it felt really close, and our campus did a demonstration.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: We marched around, and then we I f we laid on the ground for a minute or we saw people spoke.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so this idea of the memorial, I'd seen um photographs of Mike where Michael Brown was shot, how they erected a memorial, um, they did a kind of ritual where everyone brought a red rose and laid it, and and just a lot of interaction with the community.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: Which sounds perfect.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: You know, wonderful.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: That was on my mind.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'd been thinking about it even before that, though, with all the portraits that were done of Treyvon Martin, for instance.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, that was because my my class clientele, they weren't clientele, but my class um was predominantly well, they were college age, and I taught, you know, mostly freshman sophomore age, so they were 18, 19 year olds, and they were mostly from Chicago because the even though it was three and a half hours away, there was a train ride you could take from Chicago directly to the downtown of this town.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: Oh.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: So I had a lot of a lot of uh students very aware of current events, shall we say.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I used current events in the classroom.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the idea for the memorial.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no, I think it makes total sense, and that's another thing actually that I loved about your pieces because some of them were portraits.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_02: I I happen to be listening to uh Virginia Roberts Gefrey's book right now, and it's such a a powerful book.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_02: She's not reading the book, and I don't know who is, but it's still the content of that book is so disturbing and so awful.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: I read it, I got it right after it when it was.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_02: So, I mean, I'm so your piece of her I thought was wonderful, but I I I did think that it was terrific that you that some of the scenes weren't just uh portraits, they were scenes, you know, the mother with uh from Uvaldi who uh you know had the tattoo on her arm.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_02: So I thought you approached these terrible, terrible events in such interesting and compelling ways, as well as again, I'm gonna use the word moving.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, there it is.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that one.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my gosh, look at that.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, and both both of the ones you have up there.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_02: But I mean, that of course you've already for all of us, because there were so many children killed there, but uh, but each every each incident that you've done is, you know, like I mean, just awful.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, terrible.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_02: But um anyway, okay, so what does it mean to use something as intimate and associated with comfort, family, and memory as quilting to address this violence and grief?
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_02: Because what is so prominent in your pieces too is the grief, not just of the family and friends, but for all of us.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: It worked out well.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know, I mean, it wasn't like a a really calculated thing that this medium would be so perfect for it.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: I did like the medium for that aspect of comfort.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I, you know, e right when I was beginning to do it.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: I just I'd witnessed over the years how women respond to quilts.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, let's see, my first college job out of grad school was in rural Missouri, Nevada, Missouri.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: I taught at a two-year women's college.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I furnished my house with things I bought at auctions.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: Every weekend I'd go to an auction.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: It was wonderful.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: It was also a great way to to learn the community and just be out amongst the people in the classroom every day.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: I bet.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: And because it well, you're from Arkansas, yeah.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_02: And and I went to school in Fayev, which is northwest Arkansas.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_02: So I don't know how far Nevada is up from It's just north of Joplin.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_02: That's what I thought, so it's not that far.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, well, the women there would they were invariably quilts.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um I couldn't really afford them though.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: They went for decent for me, it was out of my budget.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: I bought a couple of the Afghans I could afford once in a while.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: But that idea of the homemade thing or the thing that the whole fascination with why people collect what they do, what because it's comfort what you collect.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: Usually it has something to do with your childhood.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: And the quilts, the way they would if I had a piece of fabric, which you'd think I would.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: Right, well the best I can do.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: But but they'd there'd be like a swarm of women over around a quilt going, picking it up and and touching it and turning it, just you know, just touching it, yeah.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: Intimate with it.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: And it just it just made an impression.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I I didn't ever think I'd be doing quilt art, but I just was so fascinated with with the importance of quilts to to mainly women, men too, though, sometimes.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_02: I I understand that.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_02: Um what's his name?
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_02: Fire there's a famous guy who's making quilts now, famous actor.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_02: Harvey Firestein?
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_02: Is that his name?
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_02: He's making quilts now.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, really?
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, he is.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_02: Interesting.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_02: I like them.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: So the the idea of of the comfort aspect of the quilt was related to the create art at the beginning of the coronavirus.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: Then the idea of the memorial came in later.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I already had the medium that I liked.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: And and they they they just were in sync, I thought.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_02: But how hard was it really for you to learn how to sew with a machine and all that too to do the intricate things that you do?
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I too.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh my mother sewed.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: She didn't make quilts, but sh when I was real young, she had sewn dresses for me.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: So we had a sewing machine in the house.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um then she was a nurse, so you know, she worked full-time, and I didn't get too many dresses after about age eight.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: But um I I um were I went to school, and when I went to school, we were still learning um in eighth grade, I think they called it home economics.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, that's what we called it back then.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I learned to sew, sort of, you know, we made a draw-string apron.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_02: I think I think we made an apron too.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_02: And and by the way, my mother quit making clothes for me when I kept, you know, being uh kind of a little, you know, bad about it.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I don't like that.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_02: Don't do, you know, so that's when my mother quit sewing for me.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: I hadn't touched a sewing machine in what?
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not good at quick math, but yeah, oh yeah, yeah.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: And hadn't really no interest in it.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: It was just time on my hands, and the idea of the same quilt show that had the this historic quilt had a competition.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: Some there's a quilt, I learned how many people do quilts now, but a quilt guild and a competition.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: There was a People's Choice Award, so we got to vote.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: Oh wow.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: I looked really carefully.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: There must have been like 25, 30 of these little quilts from this quilt guild.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I looked at them and I just found, I mean, as a critical art teacher, I I really had an issue with the imagery.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: But I ended up probably picking the least the least popular because it had some expressionistic quality.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_00: But I just thought, man, I could do that.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I I thought it'd be fun to try.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I thought I would draw with a sewing machine, you know, I would just do line stuff.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: Right, wow.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: So there was a potholder, that was the inaugural quilt.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: There were two potholders.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: Then there were some placemats, a table runner, and then I got brave and got a big piece and did the three really bad lady coronas.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so by then I'd kind of learned it was I made it too hard for myself.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: As I've done it over time, I realized.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to sew everything right on top of the surface.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: Like the figures.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: Well, here's a recent one.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my gosh, that yeah.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: I could I did the whole figure and the baby aside.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: And they're as one piece.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: And then I sewed the whole thing onto this background that I had made.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_02: So it's sort of an applique, I guess.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's an applique.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: In the beginning, every piece, even the mouth and eyes, I was, you know, pulling this thing.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, that's what I was imagining you doing.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, oh my gosh.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_02: In the beginning.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: Now I do pretty much everything separate.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and kind of keep track.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_02: Well, how okay, this, and I haven't read this anywhere, so I don't know if you've ever spoken about this, but have you been in touch with the families of some of the people?
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um have they seen your pieces?
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: I um let's see.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: I I made cards, little greeting cards, five by seven, blank inside, each portrait on the front and a blurb about what it did on the back.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I looked up the funeral homes.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: It right, I this took a year and a half, so it's well let me think.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's a it's a year and a half after the events, maybe two years after.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um I contacted there were two there were three funeral homes.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: One was in San Angelo and just had one child, but between the two.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: I sent a packet of these cards to the funeral home and asked if they would forward it to the families.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, oh, you never heard wait.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: From any bad feeling they didn't bother.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, oh, I bet you're right.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my gosh.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, I was I was telling this story at the museum.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: I had there was a a a gallery chat, and people there gave me two good ideas that I'm about to act upon.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: I just finished a work of art, which I just want an artwork.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_00: I won't say it's a work of art.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: I finished the quill.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, it's a work of art.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_02: I think you can definitely say that.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_02: It seems yeah, no, you can say that.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well, why don't you contact the local paper?
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, that's a good idea.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: Sinc.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: And the other said, what about the school?
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: They would have addresses, probably.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: So that I could get things forwarded to the friends.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: Because I really do want to share them.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_02: I I think they I I really want them to see these pieces.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_02: I think they would be blown away by what you've done.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_02: And also I think they would be so grateful.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_02: I don't uh in that someone cared enough.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, we all care.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_02: We we all these events are not they're devastating to them, but they're devastating to all of us.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_02: You know, this is terrible what's happening in our culture.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_02: So, but uh I really I'm and I'll have to think of some see if I come up with some other ideas for you to get in touch because there must be maybe groups or something.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_02: Um they this these people need to see your pieces, you know, they really do.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_02: I think it will be comforting to them.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_02: There's the point.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_02: I think it will comfort them.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, well.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, at first I thought I felt intrusive, like to try to contact them.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: And then I felt guilty that I've like used their tragedy for my own production.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_00: But and and now I realize no, you know, I I need to the I I like the two ideas.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna pursue that and see where that goes.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, because you know what, I know I understand what you're saying.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_02: You don't, but you did not exploit them.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_02: What you did was honor them.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_02: These are these are pieces that honor what happened to them and it honors their spirit spirits.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_02: This is my take.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_02: It honors their who they were and it honors their spirits, it honors their families and friends, and it gives, I mean, they are seen.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_02: You have given a vision, I mean, for them to be seen and heard in a way.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, so I really hope that that can happen.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_02: But um, anyway, so um what was it like for you emotionally to make these pieces?
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_02: Because there are such tragic events that are happening.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I get asked that.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: That there's like about three questions I can count on being asked whenever I speak.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um and that is maybe not always, maybe not always, but it you know, it begs the question.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: It really does.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: You think, oh my god, how could you work with that and not feel the impact constantly?
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: But when you're working, it's it's about um hmm.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: Is it brown or dark orange?
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's the it's the one thing at the moment.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: However, the emotional part is when I'm I'm looking into it.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: Like I'm looking at pictures, I'm thinking about what I might do.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: And once I had decided to do the Uvalde series, then each each child I would look up the their funeral announcement was mainly where and and yes, that's very emotional.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: The beginning.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: But that's the that's I'm it's supposed to be.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'm supposed to feel it, and I suppose what is the you know, one girl had a cat, right?
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: And that m really moves me.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: As you saw, I have the Siamese cat.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: So that's emotional.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: But then once you get there with it, then you're kind of in connection.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_02: Right, and I would I'm gonna say because uh this is for me, writing is processing something.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_02: So is that making this art is is are you also processing it in a way?
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but um not emotionally, okay, but um, like I used the phrase art my art making is a kind of activism.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: Oh so what I'm processing is I need to say something, I need to share this with other people.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: People need to re you know, reflect on this.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_02: In fact that's the processing.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_02: I think your whole career has been an a career of an activist.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_02: You know, your books, your I mean, and I'm sure in some of your teaching, the books, you know, it it it just had to be that because art is activism.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I I that's what it is.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it changes the world, it changes the culture.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_02: When bad things are happening, artists create, and this moves the dial for us culturally.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, why don't you show a few of your uh pieces so that people if they haven't seen um because they're there's at random, I don't yeah, yeah, just yeah, just one more thing about emotion.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, go ahead.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: That if I feel an emotional response to a subject, it's when I'm just casually looking at newspaper photos that I read online.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and like I'm just about to finish this work, so I'm thinking, well, what'll I do next?
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm looking, and I just saw one yesterday, it was a mother hugging her child.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: The article was about how 27,000 children have had their parents deported.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh or some terrible story.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, oh no.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_00: It was in The Guardian.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: The Guardian, I'm really Right.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_02: The Guardian is a great source.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_02: The Guardian is a great read.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we have wonderful.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, absolutely.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_00: It was a picture of the just the the hug.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_00: And the the way the hand was at the back, it was it's kind of like the style I do of a hand, like I could imagine stitching it.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_00: Some some gestures I couldn't imagine.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I just thought, oh yeah.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, because I was you know it's so sad.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: This little girl being hugged by her mother.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, my gosh.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no, I mean, me too.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, okay, but let's let's see a few of your uh that's when I know this one this is gonna be.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's when you know it.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_00: Oh.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: And this is response to the George.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, you can't hear me with my Okay.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'll just show this is in response to George Floyd's killing.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if my voice came, but they're both on the topic of George Floyd.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_02: This this is a good way.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_02: If you do it like that, that's good.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_02: We can see in here.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_00: So here is Courtney Ross, who was his girlfriend who testified at the trial.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: Now, how do you do a memorial to George Floyd?
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm not gonna do him on the ground with the policeman killing him.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: That it maybe someone else could.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe someone else that's their style.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: Certainly, cartoonists are doing well with it.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: But the point for me was how wide an impact a thing like an unexpected p tragedy, a police killing, can have on the community.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a girlfriend and her son, they're affected.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: There's this woman from the community that uh made friends with Courtney Ross because they were sort of like sisters in the struggle.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: This girl woman's boyfriend had been killed by police.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, wow.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they fell in.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: This is his daughter.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: So a little picture, a picture of his 10-year-old daughter.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_00: I call this Daddy Changed the World.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's what this child told Joe Biden when she met him.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and I love that.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, uh they're both so wonderful, really, absolutely.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I've done a lot of tributes in the beginning.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um maybe these two.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I I love those two.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_00: Elijah McLean was killed by um, he was killed in police custody, actually, it was a ketaman overdose that was injected into him.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my god.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: Gentle spirit on his way home.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I learned he played self-taught played violin for kittens in a pet store.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_02: Oh.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: So they would be calmer.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_00: Oh.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: This is a young man who'd gotten, you know, uh he'd I think he moved to Seattle, but kind of not well, he came home during coronavirus to visit his mom, got a FedEx job, and was, you know, making a life in Memphis.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um he liked to skateboard and he liked to take pictures of sunsets.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: He was killed by.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_00: That's a famous case.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_00: His name is.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_02: Oh yeah, I remember that so well.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_02: It was so horrible.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: So that is a portrait, but skate, you know, it's called the Tyree Nichols Memorial Skate.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_02: But you know what?
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_02: It you've you've done really what a lot of cartoonists do, or illustrators, I guess, instead of showing the exact event, showing the sort of the repercussions of what happened, the, you know, is uh maybe a stronger way to approach it for people to take it in and make it a memorial too.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_00: Like Ahmed Arbory Memorial Run.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_00: I won't show you all of these, but the the it's called elegy for Elijah.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I had that's Lady Corona that I had created.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_00: I had I sent her.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um there a lot of those memorials have Lady Corona somehow acting out something in memorial.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I love anymore.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_02: Uh well, why don't you show us one more?
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_02: Or yeah, one more group.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: The Uvaldi series that we've got to do.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yes.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_00: Just a a lovely little child.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_00: This, by the way, the her name is Jackie Casaras, and she was uh um commemorated in that film All the Empty Rooms.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: Oh.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_00: So I think her mom would like to know that there's this.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, I absolutely.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_02: I think every one of these people would love to know about this.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_02: I think they would feel, like I said, comfort.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: These children, it's a part, it's a pair.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um Annabelle and uh Xavier, and um they were boy the well, they were in the tenth grade, and one day she came home and told her aunt, who was there, Oh, there's this boy in my class, he seems really nice, he smells really good.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_00: I guess they weren't cologne.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that the cutest?
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_00: They became boyfriend and girlfriend, and they would text each other, I love you, each night.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_00: Oh.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_00: And this one made me cry.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_00: But I read how their parents were comforted that they'd been together.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_02: We we all are comforted, I mean, by that story.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that they were together.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, really.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_02: Um, were there any one piece or or uh or a few pieces that were especially hard for you to do or were yeah, a lot of them are it has to do with the material just not working out.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_00: And lately um I mentioned how I'm I'll do m much of a figure, not write directly on, and then I'll applique it.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I've gotten a lot more ambitious, and um I did something that had six figures in it, and that was that took quite a while.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_00: So the they're they're a little harder lately because that I'm getting more ambitious with content.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_02: And did any of your pieces surprise you?
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_00: Well, they they all do really because they evolve.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I start with an idea and I just finished a piece.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_00: I could turn the screen around and you could see it.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_00: You think that would be?
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, yes, no, we'd love to.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_02: And he goes, in fact, I want to ask you what you're working on because I feel like you must be working on I'm gonna say Alex Pretty and uh Renee Good, but maybe you're not.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_00: But I uh in my own way, yeah uh, but not exactly.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, okay.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_02: Look at that.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, that's beautiful.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_02: Tell me about that.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_02: I love it.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_00: You can't really get this thing without messing up.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_02: No, but I can see, we can see enough.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_02: That is absolutely I love the fish and the bird.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_00: That's the bottom.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, yes, look at that.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_02: The sea and the sky.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_00: And then the birds are a la late-minute thought.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_00: Like I didn't know I would have birds in it.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, I love them.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know I would have fish in it.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I love the fish.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_00: But as it was, it was to be a man, a fisherman, and his son with the water in the background.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, I'm just it's beautiful.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_00: Just finished.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, there's do you want to tell us just fine-tuning like cutting threads I'll be doing.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_00: Do you want to tell us who they are?
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_00: Well, um, without my saying anything, would you want to venture a guess?
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm probably gonna call him the fisherman and his son, but I may call him the Colombian fisherman and his son.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, oh, oh yes, okay.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, absolutely.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, I I love it even more.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, that is amazing.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_02: That's uh okay, it's the image itself, the piece itself is gorgeous.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_02: I absolutely love it.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_02: And what that is, is also I'm um so thrilled that you have uh approached that.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_00: So um his name is Carranza.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_00: I forget it.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_00: I I wrote it down so I wouldn't forget.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_00: And on on the run here, I I forget his name, but it he's one of the fishermen that was on his way to being maybe rescued from a boat that had been shot down by us, and and then they shot him and killed him.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_00: Oh.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's still in the news because the family is suing.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I'm glad they are.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you know, uh good for them.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_02: There's uh I think there's gonna be a lot of lawsuits in a lot of different areas.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_02: And that's good.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_02: That's good.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_02: Um okay.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_02: Do you worry that we as a culture are c becoming numb to violence because of all the gun shootings, all the violence that's around us?
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_00: I do.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I read a headline maybe in The Guardian, I don't know where.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_00: I was just sort of I mean, there I I don't even remember where it was just this week though, about sort of a reference to the 12 people shot in wherever, whatever.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I forget the even focus of what the article was.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't read it.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_00: But the idea was I whoa, 12 people were and and killed, I think.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_00: There was some kill.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't hear about that, and then I realized, yeah, you don't anymore.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_00: You don't hear about everything.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_00: We're it's just no longer news.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_02: Including the school shootings.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_02: There are many school shootings we don't even hear about because they're not horrible enough, I think.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_02: You know, they're not enough people killed.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_02: But uh I don't have the statistics in front of me, but I know the number of school shootings in this country every year is unbelievable.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_00: So I think about a lot of things that we are becoming numb to.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_00: And um it's just, I mean, the the news of things I forget what this reminds me of.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_00: If I could come up with a metaphor.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_00: Well, yes, I can.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_00: Go ahead.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know the movie The Pianist?
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_00: Like first, you know, well, we can't do that anymore.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_00: This is restricted, and then that no, better not go there.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_00: This is restricted.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_00: And gradually the lives are are are circumscribed down to well, you're staying home, and the next thing you know, well, we're re-relocating, okay.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_00: Get your time.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_00: They they didn't exactly know what how horrible uh it would be, because it was just grass, like the frog in the hot water.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, well, it's sort of the takeover of fascism.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_00: I think we're we're like the frog in the hot water.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um the Kennedy Center, losing the Kennedy Center.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_00: I think every day is something that I love is being lost.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_00: Uh uh And for all of us.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_02: For all of us.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_00: And and we think, well, we'll we'll fight back and we'll do this.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_02: And uh I mean, the White House itself, the white a piece of the White House being torn down.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, th that was just unbelievable.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_00: I mean the I used to teach um in the beginning, because I have a degree in art history, I got jobs in the what did they want, the survey of art history, or even worse, art appreciation.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_00: Which is fine, because it's entry level and and you know, you're opening up people to new ideas.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_00: But I used to show the architecture of Washington, I forget what, was it Capitol, I Supreme Court, and ask them, well, w why do you think these choices were made?
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_00: And no one's ever really thought about that.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_00: But it was reinforcing them the this Greco-Roman tradition, right?
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_00: And well, why would it be look why would it look like um a Roman architecture?
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, it was a republic.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_00: Ah, yeah.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_00: What other choices might there have been?
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then I f throw up an image of Versailles, right?
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_00: Why didn't this was con, you know, this was around, why wouldn't they choose this?
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_00: Uh uh, because no one's ever thought about that.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_00: But that was my like baseline entry level people to think about architecture.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, how how wonderful.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, here we are.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my gosh.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_02: Oh I mean, it's so awful, but I mean that what they're throwing.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's anyway.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um okay, as an activist artist, do you feel that part of your work as an artist is to make people stop and really look and feel?
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you can only hope.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_00: But they definitely have a um an intent.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_00: That I don't I none of it is just decorative.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_00: There's always a reminder, uh, reminder this happened, and is there anything we can do about it and just remember?
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um regard this.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_00: Regard this.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_00: Think about it.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_00: And it can't I I'm I'm not like didactic, I I hope.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I don't want to like bat people over the head with where they're supposed to go with it, but you know, just reflect on this.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_00: Is there any I um heard heard a statement recently that I'm really toying with and liking, and it was um James Taliaferro.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_00: I hope I say that right.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_00: He's running for Senate in Texas.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_00: And he was being interviewed, and someone asked him.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's Telurico, but Telurico.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, Telurico, thank you so much.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um about I don't know, it probably had something to do with ICE and how do how do you or something bad.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_00: And and the question was, well, how do how do you process that or how do what should people think about it?
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I I've I I'm not doing it justice, but the point I that got in in that got in there somehow was he said, well, I he was a seminarian, right?
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right, yeah.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_00: So he says, Well, I'm reminded of the Bible passage.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um Blessed are those who weep.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_00: And um I I thought, huh.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_00: And he went on about how it means you have empathy.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's I looked up the Bible verse, I Googled it, and it's it's a bit broader, but as with many Bible verses, open to interpretation.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_00: But this idea that blessed are those who weep, who have feeling for humanity, who feel shared concerns, um is it's it's something I'm liking a lot as far as um, I don't know, maybe a title of a show.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_00: I always have to come up with a title rather than just Fabric Memorial.
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, oh I love that.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_02: And you know what?
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_02: That is one of the hugest problems that we have now is that there are certain people who have no empathy, and that has created a huge amount of this current destruction that we're going through and mess.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_02: So I think that's a I think you're right right on the money with that.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_02: That is that is that is perfect.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna ask you one more question.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_02: What can art do that argument alone cannot?
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it comes at people in a new way.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, it's hard to convince someone just verbally in like a debate, you know, because you know, it's it it's like a ping pong game.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_00: Each one's gonna bat the ball back.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_00: But art kind of sneaks up on you.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you don't expect it to look like that, those colors.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um it can catch you off guard.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I speaking broadly, that could be music, theater, yes, yeah.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_00: What other arts written?
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_00: Although it's words, it's a a presentation of words rather than.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right, right, right.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, actually, I'm gonna ask you one more question.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_02: Um, what do you most want people to understand about the morning after?
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_00: Well, um I uh I like it that people are responding to it um the as in the body of work.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, in the body of work.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_00: And um I want them to remember things, um, and um not just you know, next, next, you just been our our last five years and these things that have happened and and you know they've they're important and they've they've shaped us.
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't really have an intent, but I do know from having had several shows that it has an impact on people.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm fairly confident that that's a good thing.
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_00: And what I can't always sh, you know, direct the response, but I know there will be one.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_02: Well, and I can tell you from my own personal experience that you can't just casually look at this exhibition.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_02: You can't like if you were in a gallery and you were tired or whatever, you might casually look at some of the paintings some more than others.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_02: There you can't casually look at any of these.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_02: You must read the paragraph and you love it.
• 49:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and you have to do it, and then the story, the story uh here we are with words, but it's the you're you're putting a story on on your quilts.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_02: Your your quilts are stories.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_02: And um so you can't, and you very much get the the story with the quilt, but it's also uh those the paragraphs you wrote were also really important for people to understand what was happening.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_02: And um, and you have to pay attention.
• 50:17
  SPEAKER_02: You can't not pay attention.
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you have to pay attention.
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_02: Well, Joanne, this has been so great, and thank you so much.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_02: Well, maybe we'll do this again sometime, but anyway, it was terrific, and uh thank you.