Latest / WIPTHENRIP / Episode 7 - Deborah Roberts
Transcript
- Ryan: As long as America keeps being America, my work will be ever always in play. Yeah. Well that's how I'm fortunate. Hi everyone, I'm Sydney. And I'm Ryan. And this is Whip. Then Rip. And for our seventh guest, we have Austin-based internationally renowned artist Deborah Roberts. To support the pod, like, share, subscribe, add a rating and review, and sign up at patreon.com slash whip then rip. Stay tuned and see how our conversation goes. This category is what's frustrating, broken, or irritating in art and culture right now to you. Hmm, Dad, where'd I start? well, I don't know. I I think for me, this kind of you know, this is everything I always wanted. So I'm like Dolly Party, I'm not gonna bitch and complain about all the things that come along with it because of the good things that happen, but For me growing up, the craft of being an artist was very important. You know, taking the time to learn your craft, to to explore, to always be explorers, you know, and to figure out the best way to get good art to the public. That's the way I was taught. And I find in the art world, people don't do that. They're finding the easiest way possible to do stuff, the sloppiest way possible to do stuff. The unoriginal way of doing things and and the gross the jealousy of the whole thing I find very distasteful. That's my gripe, my main gripe. I've had really good people and met great people in the art world. But this this doggy dog stuff can I guess can make you salty if you allow it. ⁓ and I try not to allow it to make me salty, but I can be crunchy. So I I kind of like try to stay away from it as much. I think that we all can ⁓ do really good work and maybe there's some times where we slide into other people's work. But once we're acknowledged that someone says that, I think it takes talent and ⁓ I guess a sense of fair play to get out of that. You know, to move yourself out of that that category. That's been my main gripe in the art world. Other than that, I really don't have that much more to say about, you know. I mean those are big those are big ones. I feel like I'm curious about like, do you think that's all tied to, you know, ⁓ money ultimately? Yeah. It is. It is. I think that there's so much money to be made in the art world that ⁓ people say I'm just gonna get paid. Whether or not for me is different. I mean, maybe because I was a starving artist for, you know, thirty years before thing anything happened. So for me, it's always been my process and getting the best work out possible to do the research, to do the build on the what I'm gonna say, you know? So for me, seeing somebody cut cut corners or or or cut people in particular. What's the difference between like somebody being inspired by your work versus like appropriation or like what what frustrates you? Is it like that people are straight copying the way that you like distort figures or is it the collage element or what is it specifically? I don't know. I think s some people can't paint, draw, or do anything, so c they jump onto collage. And okay. ⁓ and then I think ⁓ Who is doing very good at Collage, and then they do it, and then they say, ⁓ I love Rome Beardon. Well, if you look at the history of ⁓ R Rome Bearden, his work he did Cityscapes. He did a bunch of farms and ⁓ and oftentimes jazz players and things like that. ⁓ he didn't do white backgrounds often. Very few times he did. The Stark white backgrounds came around when my work started. even you look at Hannah Hawk, she didn't do that. She even used color backgrounds. And her and her pictures were very small. I started doing large big canvases of collage. I think the problem really is is that we don't recognize collage like we do painting. Like it is a, you know, it's a medium. So All paintings don't look alike. So therefore all collage shouldn't look alike. I mean so if we look at it as a medium and not as the process of collaging, they shouldn't ever look alike. You know. You know, and like I said, you could look at Monet and Monet and you can look at different, you know, artists like that who did the expressionist work, yeah, but you can tell the difference. You know, even to act of painting. And so that's the the key that I think that people don't talk about enough that this is a medium. This is a medium. So artists shouldn't be doing the same work that looks that people are c so confused by. And so that's that's the only thing that I have to say. Yeah. It sounds like it relates to technique again. And I think that's something that's always stood out to me about your work is like just the level of ⁓ skill. I I think there are moments for me where hopefully this makes sense, but it's like you almost forget what the medium is because it's so skillfully done, you know, where it there's it's seamless. And so you're you're there. And I think that happens with all the best artwork where it's like you're just there with the image. And that's not to take anything away from the formal element, right? Like part of what can be exciting is the formal questions being raised. ⁓ but also I think particularly because it's portraiture or more often than not. I feel like you get lost in a certain kind of narrative. And it one of the things that seems to be missing that you can almost like feel more than you can see it. It's the technique, but it's also the depth, you know, where it's like the surface. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. It's surface level and it is a cool image, maybe, but it isn't ⁓ Speaking to anything else, and I feel like that is something you know, I was saying to Sydney, yeah, go ahead. No, that's that's I was just gonna interject. That's where the money comes in. So let's say I my work is, for example, three seventy five and you love the work, but you can't get it or the work like I get a lot of time people said, I could have got it at this price and now I'm kicking myself. But when you get something that looks so similar and it's still in that price point where you can get it, you go ahead and buy it because you really technically love to live, maybe, or you just love something that looks like that artist, I don't know. But so so you buy it and it's just like knockoffs or any type of, you know, not n you know, non name brand products ⁓ medicine, you know. It's just like it worked but is not the original work. Yeah. You know? Right. And I mean I've come to terms with with what's happening with that situation for me. It's making me think about ⁓ you know, appropriation and like collage falling under that umbrella generally, right? ⁓ but also it strikes me that there is again it's about depth, it's about the purpose. Because I think about somebody like Sturdiment, you know, who is doing a one-to-one copy of like Warhol or a one-to-one copy of like Klaus Oldenburg, but that the fact of it being a copy is the point. Right. Whereas this is somebody who's trying to pass it off as their own. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well that's it's so much, you know, right now, like even getting w the work for Paris together, is that that notion that now there a bunch of lawsuits coming up. I mean Michaeline Thomas is in a copyright lawsuit. I d ⁓ I think was it Elizabeth Payton? I can't think of my last name. Yeah, I just saw that. Yeah, that's Yeah, she's now in a copyright lawsuit. Yeah. And it's like, I was worried. I had a beautiful face on this one work and I worried it looked too much like the tr the person. So I just stuck another face on and that don't look good. But I was I really have to you really have to now think about that people might start coming after you. for images that look like them or the photographer or somebody. And which is really hard because the whole objective whole object of c ⁓ collage is the appropriation of different pieces and putting them together to make formulate a new work. So it's getting crazy. So complex. I I don't know if you followed that Supreme Court ⁓ case with Lynn Goldsmith. I had gotten into a little bit of a like online ⁓ back and forth with her because just almost to be cheeky, just for myself, I made my own version of the Prince painting ⁓ and posted it. And she came at me and was like, You have to take this down. And you know, who who am I? I'm just some guy, you know. And she was so wrapped up, and it was like before the case had been decided that. ⁓ she was so wrapped up in this idea that like this is my image. And never mind that it's also an image of Prince. I feel like nobody ever talked about that, right? That it's like, well, you know, you're you're also profiting off of an image of an artist and all of his work. ⁓ anyways, it's so complex and and I think it's sad. I don't know if you've ever read ⁓ it's Elena Kagan wrote the dissent, ⁓ because the Supreme Court. ruled in Lynn Goldsmith's favor. And Elena Cook Kagan wrote like a what's actually a really and I'm not a you know, I I follow what happens, but I don't usually read ⁓ the things that come out of the Supreme Court like that. But her dissent is really beautiful, talking about how ⁓ harmful that is to the arts and how exactly what you just described that it's like if I have to be afraid every time that I am referencing something or or pulling Even in art school, I feel like all of my professors are like, look at these compositions from art history and like use that as an outline for yourself. And I mean, I I teach at the university too, and that's what art history is all about at the same time. Like, you know, putting yourself in this conversation with all these historical people and like trying to reinvent the wheel as best as you can. So it is really complicated. It is. Yeah. But but Not being a clown and just doing something and trying to pretend you're somebody else. Yeah. But I'm with you. Like when you talk about BNA or somebody. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It it's weird. It's and and you know, and it's sad. You know, at the end of the day, to me, it's very sad for someone to do that. And ⁓ yeah. But if the Arborel accepted, I've done my part, you know, like when I think of ⁓ people send me stuff all the time and they said almost This guy's really ripping off your work, this guy blah, blah, blah, blah. And now there are some things that are very reminiscent, but it's totally different in the way that that's why I said that we can skirt each other's work. I mean, yeah. We all have. We've all skirted work before. But when you go all the way into someone's practice and start actually reproducing that practice and the way they cut, the way the the the clothes are the same thing, you know. the text based work of new work and now I'm doing text and that that that person doing text. I mean it's not organic. You know, if it's not organic, it's not real. But now to me it's up to the art world to to make noise about that. But the amount of lawsuits are popping up and it's just it's just crazy. It's wild. Yeah. And it does start to feel with the lawsuits like a control of free speech, you know. And goes along with a lot of this other trying to not say shit, but I'm just gonna say the other shit going on with ⁓ in this country. And it is making me think too that like the histories that you're talking about in your work, like your own history, black history, you know, yes, art history. It's like that's also something that I think you can or a viewer can feel in a way that, you know, in that copycat work, maybe it's there on some level. Like I don't want to completely say anything about another person's internal world, but I think that that is something that you know, is lacking as far as I can tell. And you wanna believe that an audience can tell the difference. I think that's the part that feels so disappointing. I know. I know. That has to be some of it is the most disappointing thing that you can't actually see the difference. Come on. ⁓ But I don't think people want to do the work. You know, the actual work of looking and saying And if it's something they want and and they wanna get it. But I always say that multiple art worlds and this person exists in the art world that I wasn't a part of. But ⁓ you know, I can see that they're they're encroaching in places where high art normally lives and the the type of work that they're doing is not considered high art, I don't think. But I don't know. I I just wanna do this for another ten years and then I wanna go somewhere and sit down. Yeah. I try to be Betty Zar, you know. Yeah, I know I mentioned in my email, like it ⁓ you I think are yes, obviously you you're a huge figure in the art world in general, but also when I think about Austin art, I feel like it's making me think about ⁓ kind of regional art in this town. And how a lot of times I'll see that with people who are just starting out who, you know, they'll be doing often what you'll see is the kind of like ⁓ knockoff abstract expressionist work, right? That it's like you're too late. Like you know, I know. I know. And and I'm curious, like when ⁓ you know, if there is a point at which like You were feeling more like a regional artist and like if you came up against the I I'm just curious if you've how you found that community in Austin ⁓ specifically. Yeah, I don't ever thought I was a regional artist. I thought I was a local artist. That's why I hated it. I hate the term local artist. ⁓ my God, if anybody say that I just you because I felt like I felt like Austin, Austin like with the blatant at that the contemporary, but it used to be art house and then the Austin Museum of Art, which now contemporary art house is the same thing. And women in their work. ⁓ then there was Mexicarte and then Undercarving Museum. And once you had shows, well you didn't have shows in the Bland Museum. And and being a local artist, you never had shows if you wasn't white. I mean if you were black, you didn't have shows that's contemporary. But so So once you had these other shows, like either ⁓ Women Underwork, the Carpenter Museum, The Mac or anything like that, then you were done. You had to figure it out after that. You had to create something, you know, energy. Because the the other ones, while I used to make this analysis that that Austin was a plate and that right the the carpet museum for black artists was the meat on the plate. But in order to make a complete meal, we needed the vegetables, we needed the potatoes, we needed the bread, we need all of those things, the the soda, the drink, whatever, to make a full meal. So that meant that the Vladin Museum had had some responsibilities to to the artists in Austin. They they had it because they are part of the tech dollars, pay for some of that. Definitely the contemporary Austin. They definitely had some responsibility to low to Austin based artists. That's why I say Austin based, not local. And when they didn't do that, it made it extremely hard to get out of here. And so I would, you know, like try to go to Houston, try to go to Atlanta, do a lot of home shows, hit to Chicago. But I I was never regional. I was only, you know, Austin based, you know. Until I went away to school. It's a great distinction. Yeah. Cause I Sydney and I all talk about that about, you know, you know, on the one hand it's sad because there's a part of it that's like you don't want to overinvest in Austin, right? And I think that in some ways no, don't get me wrong. I think it's gotten a lot better. And I'm actually curious like what it felt like to then go back and have your contemporary show, you know, after yeah. Well, actually maybe let me ask you that first. Yeah. Was that good to go back and be like, all right. And you've done a lot already. Yeah, sorry. I think I was invited because of the success. I don't think it was it would have happened otherwise. Although I will tell you this Heather Pasante did come to a studio visit right before I went to New York. She did. And Han Julia came. But I didn't know what that visit was about. I thought you know, people will come and see the art. And and Lewis Grotches, he came from the contemporary. He came ⁓ and saw my work about four months before I went to New York and had the Bit Blow up. So I don't know. The Contemporary Austin was different in a way. You know, I thought it was okay to do that show and but I people would come to me and why don't they give you upstead and downstead. You're capable of doing that whole build, why didn't they do it? Blah, blah, blah. They put you on the outside. But it really didn't bother me at that time because I had the world. And you know, this was a little part of it, a very small part of it. And I had the overall arching world, you know, asking for my my work. So I mean But that's inspirational, you know, because I think that being able to be from Austin, go through, you know, years and years and years and years of working and then have the world ⁓ acknowledge you and then be able to come back and show that work here. I think for everybody who saw it, who's working here, like that's that it's exciting, you know, for for the viewer, you know. And I but I now that you say it, I am like, yeah, it's a little come on, why not that second floor? It's not that big of place. I know. I mean, but you know, I j it's just awesome, like they say Jesus wasn't accepted in his hometown. So I mean, ⁓ I just I just you know, it was it was okay. It didn't you know, I had so many things on the horizon and it was more at that point it was more than I ever had thought that was gonna happen. You know, I had already been in the studio medium in Holland, I've met all these things. you know, so worked to B Barack Obama and Michelle. I mean, it was just yeah I mean it was the list was so long that having to show here and then COVID happened, but having to show here was a you know, I'm not saying it wasn't a big deal, but it wasn't it was and also that's right. Yeah, yeah. And that's really in a weird way what I mean is inspiring. And I I know in the interest of time we gotta keep going, but I have to ask, did you get to meet the Obamas? ⁓ no. No, I tell you, I did not get to meet the Obama and I still want to. I'm not in the library, which I I was contacted very early on about being in the library. So I don't know how to work that. But the sad thing about the Obamas when when they get to work is that for me, that I thought was sad was they said, because he was still president, that you could you could tell people they had to work, but you couldn't advertise it. So I got a friend who who's like this and I just told her and she just told she told everybody. I mean for you know no New York Times, it was all over and I didn't tell anybody, you know? Yeah. And that's phone. So Yeah. Maybe maybe we'll do a clip and tag the Obamas and see if they see it. Yeah, just acknowledge. But a friend who's very good, Amy Cheryl's very good friend of mine and she said, I saw it, I saw it at work, so it's in their house. We know that. But ain't nobody invited me. So the same time. Obviously her painting of Michelle is yeah, iconic, amazing, all the rest. Yeah. ⁓ Cindy, do you want to throw to the next category? Yes. Our our next category is the good stuff. So what feels exciting, alive, or worth paying attention to right now for you in the world? The good stuff in the world. Ooh. Everyone gets stumped on this one because everything's like so bad right now. I think h being healthy is good stuff. ⁓ it's the number one thing. ⁓ but you mean in the art world or just in general world talking? It could be either. Yeah. Yeah. ⁓ I mean I would I would just say good health is always good. Good for natural health is even better because I've had ⁓ you know ⁓ Food insecurities, housing insecurities and things like that. So that part of it is really great. ⁓ I guess that I I think the best part for me right now is all the things that happen within the world. I have an audience where I can speak to it. You know, I can I can do a painting relating to this or relating to that. And ⁓ and it helps move move the the dialogue. And I I tell people all the time that the George Stanney work that I did was the most important work that I've ever done because it it just this little boy who wanted to be an artist, who was who was executed the f their first child executed on the United States, now lies in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC, the student museum. He got all this all these amazing big museums. that his image now exists there and that's because of me. And that's that to me is is that I I don't think I'm ever gonna do any work more important than that work. So that's the good thing about it. ⁓ it's really hard right now to talk about what's good in America. because it's just don't feel like a lot of good stuff. Even though we don't have bombs ⁓ flying down But we just right now, I think a lot of people are frustrated, discombobulated. We just don't know what to do. We're we're on edge and we we we blow up things that are really small, but we make ⁓ massive. And I don't know what it's gonna take to bring us all back in harmony. But we're definitely out of harm out of shape. We've been that way for a while now. Right. Do you do you have faith that it'll shift? ⁓ back to a better place? I know that's a loaded question, but Well, I'm a humanist. I believe in human beings. So I think that and I'm a Christian, so I think yes, that it will change. But what it changed in my lifetime, I don't know. It doesn't feel like it. Yeah. It feels like it feels like the bad people are winning. And and the good people I and I'm not a Republican, but I'm just gonna say John McCain, no matter what you say about him and how he voted against Dr. King's birthday and all that jazz, but at the end of his life, you know, he did the right thing. He was the patriot. And and what you can't find in the Republican Party, and I don't want to get to politics, but there's no real patriots that that America and not the slogan America first, but really America comes first. And that's all of America. And you don't find those people anymore. And no matter what, even in nineteen sixty seven with the Voting Rights Act or the you know, the exaggerates in the schools, you know, there were people who were staunch Republicans, staunch racist, but they knew for the betterment of this country they had to move that stuff forward. That to me is a patriot. And I don't see it at today. Yeah, I I've got two kiddos, a twelve and a ten year old. So I think about that, you know, a lot. 'Cause I I think for me that's the reason I have to stay optimistic. You know, it's just like I have to believe that there's a world, you know, for them. ⁓ that daughter in that? Yeah. That daughter a son and a daughter. Well, she now she's how old is she? She's ten. She might as well be fifteen the way she acts. Right. Well I understand ten. So but but if you look at the whole idea of what's been put in place for her and her body, is that some of the judges are gonna last 30 years. They're thirty-five. He's put them in conservative judges who're gonna decide what happens for her and her body are in place for thirty something years, unless they get by a car or something. But it's like they are there. Fingers crossed. And they got Yeah, fingers crossed. But yeah. We don't want the FBI out of coming. But yeah, but like, you know, so so even though these people voted, it's gonna affect your child down the line. Yeah. And that is what, you know, when Obama said it's gonna take maybe four or five decades to come out of this. And and that shad. Well, I was gonna ask you w well, we all live in Texas, right? And you mentioned that you potentially have a another place in a different state, but have you ever thought about not living in Texas just because it is such a red state? Right. Yeah, I I came back to Austin when 'cause my mom was alive and then I went. But ⁓ you know, I like I moved into this this this place because There's some development on my street I can't live in front of. So I did purchase another lantern. I'm building my forever home here. But I travel enough where I don't feel all of this all the time. And it be it. And if it becomes oppressive, I will move. And I will move. But I think I'm gonna live at probably the last couple of years of my life, maybe longer, depending. I'm gonna live long. You know, I wanna be able to walk. I wanna live in Malta and Italy. ⁓ you know, and you know, fall off a side of a rock when it's time for me to go. Yeah, I was tempted to get into, you know, this question about what art can do as far as the future and kind of how you see art's power in that. Because, you know, when you talk about the George Stenney work, ⁓ And that memorialization, but also the I guess lesson is the word that's coming to mind, just that that ⁓ remembrance and and and pointing at the horrors ⁓ that have ⁓ come before, you know, do you see that sort of work, but also just maybe art more broadly as having the ability to shift things ⁓ toward a I don't know, a better direction change my Yeah. I do. People people sometimes say we don't need art. Well we do need art. We need art very much. It is it ⁓ just like we need literature, you know, it's a way of escaping, it's a way to see beauty in a different way. It's also a way of educating people. ⁓ the first marks on the wall were art, you know, it was a language, it was visual marks. at they told stories when they were just simply grunting. They were, you know, arrows and circles and, you know, things like that. So of course it's gonna educate us and move us forward. So we definitely are in a part of the future, but it's also illuminates the past and the present. And it's a it's an artifact. Art becomes an artifact for this time period. ⁓ my hope and prayer is that And two hundred years somebody gonna look back at this and just think we were the most prehistoric animals that existed. That our thoughts and ideas of how we treated people and treated the planet was so far believed that that we can't even believe it. We can't fathom that. And that is the hope. I don't wanna be like a James Baldwin f by fire next time and we still living in that time sixty years later. We still you can change Negro or colored to black and African American and it'll still be the same. It's nothing has changed. And that's what I don't want to happen. I hope that I hope that when they look back on my work and said, Why does she feel that she had to talk about beauty? Why does she feel she has to talk about women's bodies or or treating people as human? I mean, really? It's just like we think about the f the person just imagine if today we take all the knowledge and the experience we have and be teleported back to cavemen age and somebody's huffing and puffing and grunting and writing on the wall and you just pick up the chalk or the instrument and you write it out. They probably stone you to death. They think you're a a monster or something, some medieval witch. Yeah. But That just tells you how far we've gone, have come and hopefully we're gonna come through this. And I think art is the perfect way to do it. ⁓ besides literature, of course, and movies. Yeah. I hope I hope I was gonna say I hope you're right, but I I I do I think I believe that you're right. I think that there's something about Yeah. It feels like we're being pulled backward, but I wanna believe there's almost like a spring action in that where it's like we're being pulled backwards so we can launch forward kind of thing. Well I don't know. When I thought COVID nineteen happened, I thought that was a way of of shifting us the you know, we all had moved for it, right? So this is huge, this is worldwide. I thought it was a way to sh turn us this way, but in essence it did the opposite. Yeah. It's turned us this way. And it's odd. I mean, I was I mean, I was scared to death. I was scared to death. I don't want to get it. But yeah, I thought it was a way that collectively we had to all sit down. We all had to sit down, everybody. And but it did the opposite. I don't know, it's weird. And when when the government started cutting checks, I I thought the same thing. I thought, ⁓ wow, this is a n this is a new day. Yeah, you know, if it were actually up to the people, right? ⁓ and not ⁓ you know other forces maybe it would have gone that way. I think that's part of what ⁓ yeah continues to be to be frustrating. ⁓ yeah yeah all right so I think our next category is ghosts. So this is influences, histories and lingering presence shaping your current work. Or really in work. Yeah. Yeah. Well you know what I I'm I have made a eat it. that I was gonna stop talking about Hannah Hawk and ⁓ Romeo Beard and I'm just gonna stop it, you know. And I used to say I I'm ⁓ I inherit, you know, the next torch, but they were their own people talking about their own things that were happening in their own time. And if I do believe that that collage is a medium, I'm gonna talk about now. I think Carrie James Marshall is doing some amazing work. Yeah ⁓ in awe of that work. Amy, of course, Amy Sheryl is doing amazing work. ⁓ Catilde Jimenez in Mexico is just beautiful, beautiful work. There's so many people out there who are subtly talking about the things that that are going on in the world without knocking somebody over the head with it. And those artists are the ones who I think that people are gonna unpack in maybe fifty, sixty years from now because it's like my work, I think there's some subtle hints at things that people are seduced by the colors and the patterns and the little girl and yet to see all the other things I'm talking about in that work. If you really look at it, there's other things that exist. So so so yeah, so I'm inspired by by that type of The word maybe is elegance, you know, with I was trying to place like its depth. You know, when we were talking about the difference between, you know, a knockoff and and the original I'm realizing you're talking about a certain kind of elegant a certain kind of elegance in the way that perhaps a message is delivered. And and that seems like across the artists you just mentioned. ⁓ Well, it's it's I think also You can't reach someone sometimes with a cold fist. Now, it happens. And sometimes you need that cold fit. But I think that artists who are reaching across race and cross gender to ask for a conversation and not blaming, shaming, or crucifying someone, I think those artists to me have more power than the ones who are out there you know, and and we do need some of that. that are in your face and telling you what it is. We do need some of that. But I think too much of that is divides people too fast. Because the first thing you do is like, that's not me. ⁓ you're like, boom. There's no way you're gonna reach me. Yeah, I mean, only way you reach me is, hey, I have a snicker bar because that's it. Other than that, I'm not talking to you. If it's something that I feel that doesn't affect me, ⁓ that affects me and you just like Like the target ad. The target ad. I mean there was no one in the room to tell them that that was a very racist trope. And then put a little black kid in it. And so it tells you there's no diversity, there's no I mean, they're already in trouble. It's like I'm already sinking. Let's take put let's take teny, twenty pounds of ton tons of of of dynamite and put it on top of me. It's like they're asking For bankruptcy or something. So I don't know how they could not have seen that. So things like that always stirs up a lot of, you know, angst in the world. It makes me think about all all the the yes people, you know, the yes men, yes women. You know, I I used to work in ⁓ I would did window display in New York and it was essentially working in retail. And I just remember being in some of those meetings and somebody would present. the stupidest idea you'd ever heard, right? Yeah. But if you were not of a certain rank, right, if you were not like in that hierarchy, you didn't have enough authority. You just kind of kept it zipped. And I always imagine in those rooms there's some dumbass who, you know, just happens to have the title and then all of but I I feel like those yes people are such a huge part of what keeps us in a difficult place. Let's put it that way. Right. ⁓ Yeah. And I and I can't beat them up. I I was in a committee where something similar happened like that in Austin. And I knew it. And I didn't say anything. I knew that it would be a problem. I knew it. And of course it was a problem. So much so it just blew up so bad and they had to redo the whole committee again. And I was still on the committee. I don't know why. But and this time when I saw it, it was happening again. This time I stepped up. But I I understand everything you said there. There may have been a person in that room who saw and heard all of that and did not respond because they couldn't, you know, and or felt like especially if they were black or a person of color, the last thing you want to be in that room is black and a person of color. Because automatically you're the black person. You think everything's about race. You can't coach no more. You can't do all these things. And they may have been in the room and couldn't say anything. And or didn't have the courage to say anything. So all of that. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. It's ⁓ it's money again, you know. ⁓ yeah. I mean not just that. Not just that. But yeah, I feel like ⁓ and and I I do feel like having that experience in my younger years where I didn't speak up and it was never anything that I can think of that was that serious, but just really it was more just stupid ideas. but not necessarily harmful ones, right? But you know that taught me. It taught me like okay you just have to do it ⁓ and take that risk. But like you're saying, not everybody is in a room where they can take that risk. And it's like like you said, you can't yeah. Yeah. I feel sorry for ⁓ if they can't do it. I do. Yeah. So Were you saying you Hanahoak and Romere Beardon, you're not talking about them anymore? I'm not going to lead with that anymore because it's just it just puts us in this whole thing because Echo Ishawn, you know, he's a ⁓ curator and a theorist out of London. When I was in a c ⁓ talk with him at Santa Site Santa Fe, he said, No, no, no, he said, You're not a beneficiary of them. Your work is totally and he the way he broke it down, I I need to go back to the recording and start writing some of that down because his analysis was to say that while they did work and their time and they moved the medium forward, you're now doing work and your time and you're moving the work forward. And and sometimes we always feel that we have to go back and find who was there before us, you know, who's the father of contemporary art. you know, who did this and that. So I'm gonna start really pushing that idea that that that collage is a medium. Just like if you look at Michelin Thomas in my work, it doesn't look the same. ⁓ Gachi Muto in my work doesn't look the same. It's a medium. It's a medium, it's not to close to. So so so that's what I'm pushing. But I'm I'll I'm giving homage to those people. You can I mean even right now I got Hannah on the floor here. trying to put my books away. And I love that work. I mean, I she's a German. You know, she was the only girl in the, you know, a group a whole bunch of men. And she had to fight for her identity. I love that idea. What's not the love about that? And she was under the Nazi regime too, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I guess that well, I wanna say that's a whole other story, but unfortunately not as far off. We're not. We're not. We're not. Unfortunately. So our next category is guts. So process risk and what it actually takes to make the work. And I'm also curious how you feel making work for a show and if you still feel like an immense sense of pressure. Cause I feel like a lot of artists like have to navigate those feelings and don't exactly know how to process it. So I would love to hear how you process like making work for a show. Okay. Getting doing research, I did a two year research for the work for the flag show. And I would go in that and say this is junk. And I know other artists who told me that who are real good artists and say, this is so boring. They're gonna say it's boring. They're gonna say it's junk. I kept saying pig fee, who gives a damn Why are you doing these pick fe you know, I I know why I was doing it. I knew, but it I felt that it was gonna fall flat. I I I was nervous as hell. ⁓ you know, you right there a lot of people tell you yes, yes, yes, to things that because they don't want artists to get in a depression, I guess. And it's very it's very hard. I don't feel that much it's weird. I don't feel the the amount of pressure because the work is going to Paris. And I can always, you know, be comforted about they just didn't get it. They're Parisians, they just didn't get it. We have a different background. So I can use all of those as as things to nurse me if my feelings get hurt, right? But nothing can compare you to getting ready for a show in the United States or even in London with with very triggering triggering work. So You got to have guts. You have to stick to your guns on certain things, even if they fall flat. And which is hard to do. ⁓ because believe it or not, you are a market. You know, Deborah Roberts is a market. You know, Derek Fedor is a market. And that marketplace w and there are individuals that depend on that market to be successful. And not just you, but you know, galleries and the staff and all of those. So when you do something so far out of that, you're putting all of that in jeopardy. You know, your market. What is it gonna look like when you you do a work, a show that you fall completely flat on it just falls flat. So that's a lot of pressure. And I tell people all the time that yeah, you see the the shots with, you know, ⁓ Lapita Nango, you see all these people with celebrities and things like that, and you say, ⁓ that's the that's just a little bit of the good stuff of it, but it's a tremendous amount of pressure. And not only that, it always has to be at that top level. You can't dip. You know, you dip, you dip and dip and dip and so you always have to kinda actually bring it up, up and upper and up and up and upper than that. And so each time you have to shoot you have to aim higher. And ⁓ you know, I was working on a beautiful piece, ⁓ Because the the fish and the nigger. And they said, ⁓ you can't use niggers in Paris. It's very, very derogatory. You're gonna get people gonna be very angry. And so I'm an American and I understand that. But that's the title of the work. So I made the choice I made the choice of not submitting, not taking that work to Paris. Because that's the title. And that's part of the work that I'm doing. So so I could take it there. And maybe get some attention or maybe you know how people sometimes people do pictures with you know, like throwing the finger and stuff like you said, what are you five years old? You know, and you said you're just doing that as shock value. I'm not a shock value artist. That's not what I do, but I'm trying to teach you that the fish and the black body has inherited the Atlantic Ocean based on slave tree. So that's the conversation I'm trying to have. And so yeah, I need you to pay attention when I'm talking. And but I don't know, and even now I don't know if they're gonna get the connection. So I'm worried. ⁓ a little bit worried, but I know this gallery sales to Americans, so I'm not, you know, like too worried. But I know that the I've done work that I think are for American audience and for London audience. And and maybe maybe Berlin, maybe some German places. ⁓ I don't know if it's for Tokyo. ⁓ I don't know if it's it's for South Africa. But yeah, should be for South Africa. But so so yeah, you live with a lot of AIDS about that. And then you got to decide, I mean I mean, how much you wanna do. I mean. I mean, you have to You have you have to be delusional. We all know that. We're all doing great work. We're delusional. We're not all doing great work. But if we don't tell ourselves that our important work, if we don't tell ourselves these delusional ideas, then we would be trapped under a table all the time. You know, wondering if ⁓ a brick is falling, you know. So I'm curious when you say we all, I first heard that as artists, but do you mean Everyone? I think a lot of people in different professions feel like that. You know, I definitely know writers do. You know, you're putting something out ⁓ for consumption and you don't know if it's gonna be spitchy. It's too hot, it's too cold, it's too bland, it's is is it's just right or it's not enough, you know. So all those things play ⁓ you know come into play. Yeah. Does that stuff ever get in your head when you're deciding what to make? Like so once it's made, it's like you have a choice in front of you. But do you ever feel like all of this what you were saying about needing to go up, up, up? And then also the subject matter, have you ever felt like you needed to hold back or do you feel like really connected to, you know, what you know you need to do? I do hold back. I hold back and and and having Like all that stuff, the doubt have a have the house in in my head. It has ⁓ its own address, you know, lights are on all the time and the bill is real high, the electric bill is real high. But yeah, I mean you feel that I hold back. Sometime I drew a kid I got a a kid in my drawer in in my studio who looks so monstrous. I can't show him. And because I don't want people To think that is black people. Because I felt like that. That's what people were seeing. And when I did it and it was done, I said, I can't show this. And I don't show it. It's too monstrous. I'm we're not that. And so I can't show that. But you've held on to it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, because it's a beautiful work. You know, it's just I don't want that to be the work that's on the cover of some book or or you know, somebody's searching back through my work and it's on cover New York Times or it's on New York magazine, that picture. Yeah. You know, that is being projected out into the world, you know. Even though I created it. I created it based on a whole different region. But I don't want that to be the thing. Speaking of books, I heard you talking about the book that came out with two different covers. ⁓ it sounds like in a way it was sort of related to that, maybe that it was like the one we could sell or the versus the one that told the truth. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it was and and and and I think David was really he he really was thoughtful in the way he approached that remain because I wanted a black book with a black legs under burlap, you know, I wanted like dun dun dun dun. I didn't want this putzitual Deborah Robert little kid, you know. Hi. Right. You know, I I wanted something. And then so he said, let's do cool two covers. And and of course the the little girl ⁓ in the with the green dress and upside down America that sold. And then little boy, the little kid in the burlap back I mean Sack with cotton coming out, that eventually has start catching on. But they're the same picture. And they're the same picture because both of them are saying that is something upside down about this picture. And whether it's the enslavement of the black body or this little girl with the upside down America. There's something both things are saying the same thing. But peop it's a way that people are viewing it, you know. And and I'm okay with that. Yeah. It sounds like maybe people understand that they are complicit ⁓ when they see one image and the other one maybe they are it's easier to agree or something. Right. Yeah. It is. That's why I I talked about, you know, color theory and Joseph Abers. And that's what I wish people would say ⁓ she's a student of Joseph Abbert. Nobody's seeing that or Kirk Schwitter. Nobody sees that. But but The play and the seduction of color can do lots of things. It would change your mood. I mean, I could be in a dark room and somebody come in with a very yellow, you know, a very yellow vase and it's like, ⁓ my God, you know, it's just now I see yellow all over. But I didn't see yellow before. And someone walked in with a yellow vase. So color could be very s seductive and that's what I When I was in grad school, I was trying to figure out and Joseph Aberts, you know, helped a lot. I have a side tangent before we go to the last category. ⁓ I'm curious your experience navigating your relationships with gallerists and also institutions like museums and like the differences for that, and how you had to learn to be a business person for yourself without, you know, being taught any of those things. Dolly Parton, you know, so much things have been coming out about Dolly Parton. In one interview she said, People look at me like I'm a dumb blonde. She said, First of all, I'm not dumb and I'm not even blunt. You know, so that I love that. That's the same thing that happens when a woman tries to do art as a business and not romantic. And I understood very early on that this was a business. And so When I approach different people with contracts, with doing art as a business, I don't sell I don't make contracts with galleries because we have a gentleman's agreement or something, that's the best thing. I don't always do everything right, but I I understand that these these are mere these are the ideas that I have about my work and this is what I need you to do. And and and it sometimes it works and sometimes it don't. My gallery in London closed. I had galleries that yeah early on in my career just simply closed in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Just close. I paid someone to go and pick up my record today. There's no gallery here. And then he went and he asked around and they said the gallery closed. It took all the art. So so those days can happen. So I think that people artists, which we hate to do, cause it's it doesn't feel good to be a business person. It's a different part of the brain, you're exercising and navigating a different part of the brain. But we got to realize that this is our livelihood and if you don't take care of it, you're gonna that's why it's like some lawsuits out right now about people wanting their artwork back or or galleries framing a whole bunch of work and then when you say, Hey, I'm ready to go, they want you to pay for all that framing that you never asked for and things like that. So there are ways in which the galleries can help and and definitely grow your career, but there's also some relationships with galleries that can hurt you very much. Bless you. Thank you. That can hurt you very much. Just gotta be smart about it. Right. And it doesn't stop, it sounds like. It just gets more complicated. It gets more complicated to the matter zero that are gone at the end of it. You know, ⁓ when things were fifty dollars, there's a difference and the way that you're treated at when something is five hundred thousand dollars, that's a big way difference in the way you are treated. So ⁓ the idea is is to act as if that you're the fifty dollar artist and and don't take all this stuff personally and all the things like, ⁓ I'm the best, I'm the greatest. They ⁓ somebody just said, yeah, open up a dead your bag, hey, you know, ⁓ coming down the Chanel scarves and like, ⁓ they love me, they love me. And then you don't look at it, they've made like what, three million dollars that year off of you. And they just give you a a a thirty thousand dollar thing. So so you have to just look at it in the sense that just stay as calm as possible and do your good work. And all the kind of fall into place. But you have to do the business part of it. I mean Like I forgot about you guys today, but I had it written down, you know, all the things I had to do today. And I I like make a hotel reservation, do this and I have a whole list I have to do. And I wish just somebody else was doing it, you know. That actually might be a really good segue to the last category, ⁓ which is growth. ⁓ so the way I have it written down is just what are the solutions you see. ⁓ And it could be in regard to that business, those business questions. It can also just be, I always joke that it's a little like, where are you going to be in five years question? ⁓ where I'm gonna be, I'd rather do the five years. ⁓ I hope in five years that I'm at a place where I'm doing amazing work, that I'm not pressured to do work in the two year span that I'm given opportunity to really grow this work to be something really special. And that sh whoever I'm working with at the time understand that that in the long run, the Faye Day is a journey. That it's gonna if you allow the work to really grow, it's gonna turn into something amazing. And that's what I'm hoping for. I'm hoping, you know, that that that the work don't fall off, that it don't fall out of favor, that it still is recognized for what it's trying to say. You know, it's so I said this earlier on and I'll say it again. I never thought this was gonna happen. I dreamed I dreamt of it. I thought it would happen way after I died. Some little some little art historian was gonna be stomping through something and come across my work just like Vivian Myers and and and say, ⁓ my god, she existed here and it was so great and there's so much of it. You know, so that's what I thought would happen. So the fact that this has happened Next year would be the tenth year, then I am so forever grateful. And if it goes away, I'm okay with that too. Because I just didn't think this was gonna happen. Yeah, it's a good way to look at it. Well, you know, I want to say that I think along with that elegance thing, along with the craft, like there is something that I often find ⁓ feels like it's getting lost, which is the idea of work that has a timelessness to it. And obviously you're Your work is rooted in specifics in a lot of ways. But on the other hand, I think that to me, why it's kind of a f well, I don't want to say impossible, but really hard for me to imagine that that would happen, that the work would fall off, is that it feels like it transcends, you know, twenty twenty six or whatever that particular like that ten year span, you know? So my thing is is that you know, it's it is what it is. I hope that it it continues and that people see it. But I told this guy C CNN as as long as America keeps being America, my work will be ever always in play. Yeah. Well that's unfortunate. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. That idea of timelessness not entirely a good thing. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you so, so, so much ⁓ for taking the time and ⁓ we both yeah are so stoked and admire your work so much. yes. Thanks again.