Speaker 1 (00:00): Coming up on Art Speaker 2 (00:01): Palace, Speaker 3 (00:02): I remember walking into the wood shop with a log and a chainsaw. Speaker 1 (00:23): Welcome to Art Palace, produced by Cincinnati Art Museum. This is your host, Russell eig. Here at the Art Palace, we meet cool people and then talk to them about art. Today's cool person is Christian Schmidt, our artist and residence at the Rosenthal Education Center. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Is that a big enough question? Speaker 3 (00:50): Well, yeah, that's a good place to start, I guess. Speaker 1 (00:53): Yeah, Speaker 3 (00:54): I mean, a lot of people will know who I am. I've been around this town, but I'm an artist and I work at a library now. I'm a library worker, and I was a teacher for many years. I taught college students. But yeah, I've been just kind of bumping around Cincinnati for, I've always lived here and made art here and done various things. I've worked with the art museum, I guess many times over the years doing programs, and I've shown work in the museum. But in that kind like Ray Johnson way where I feel like I just sneak it in, it's not officially, Speaker 1 (01:34): Oh wait, I want to hear about this. What are some secret exhibitions? Speaker 3 (01:37): Oh, well, I will say that. Well, no, I won't talk about that, but I have stuff in the education center now, and it's not, I guess you wouldn't say that it's in the museum, but it is in Speaker 1 (01:54): The museum. I think you can say it's in the museum. Speaker 3 (01:55): It's sort of like when someone says like, well, you're not the Frank Sinatra. If your name was Frank Sinatra, well, you're not the Frank Sinatra. Well, I am the Frank Sinatra. To me, Speaker 1 (02:06): I think for the purpose of whenever you make work on your CV or resume, you absolutely were in the museum for that purpose. Yeah, Speaker 3 (02:16): Well, it shows up on the CV that way. Speaker 1 (02:18): Yeah, definitely. Speaker 3 (02:20): I don't have subcategories of where it was in the museum, but it was also in the bathroom or something like that. Speaker 1 (02:26): Right, right, right. Speaker 3 (02:28): It's in the museum. Speaker 1 (02:30): It's Speaker 3 (02:30): Technically in the museum. But yeah, I mean, I've tried to work in an educational spirit making work and then interacting with people, whether it's children or adults, and yeah, I've been doing that for a long time, and now, like I said, I work in a library now, so I get to do a lot of artistic things there. But yeah, that's generally, that's basically who I am. I guess Speaker 1 (02:56): That's what Speaker 3 (02:56): I'm doing. Speaker 1 (02:56): I was just thinking about all the sort of ways you intersect with us. We're recording now in a space that was the former art academy where you went, we are reviewing that. This room is actually, the bathrooms would've been, the bathrooms Speaker 3 (03:11): Is appropriate. Speaker 1 (03:12): Yeah. Right. When did you go to the art academy? Speaker 3 (03:19): I went from 1990 to 1994. Speaker 1 (03:24): Okay, so it was still not just physically connected to the museum at that point, but administratively connected to the museum at that point too? Speaker 3 (03:32): Yes. We did not have direct access to the museum. Something happened. I'm not clear on the, I guess back in the day, you were able to actually just walk through a door and the old, you went up here too, right? Speaker 1 (03:48): Yeah, I graduated in 2003, and they moved maybe two years later downtown, so I completely up here as well. Speaker 3 (03:56): So on the first floor where the printmaking studios were, there was a door at the end of that hallway Speaker 1 (04:02): And Speaker 3 (04:02): You could just walk through that door into the museum. But in my memory, and I may be kind of confabulating here, but in my memory, there was just a chain on that door. You could not walk through it. Something happened now you could walk outside and around and go into the museum proper, but the direct access, Speaker 1 (04:22): The Speaker 3 (04:22): Very direct access to the museum was not available. Speaker 1 (04:25): So I remember hearing, I don't know if I'm telling tales out of school at this point, but I know from talking with Kim Krause about his time at the academy in the seventies, Speaker 1 (04:36): That it was absolutely the Wild West and people would just hang out in the museum in the middle of the night and drink and stuff, and it was like insane how little regulations or seemed to be on anything. He was like, the museum was a very different place then you have to understand somebody maybe swept the place once a week. It sounds like a totally different world from what we're used to now and probably what had already become pretty different in the early nineties. Of course, that was right around the big renovation that was happening in the museum, probably when you started in school would've Right. Been a few years before the renovation was complete, I would think. Right. Speaker 3 (05:19): I don't have a lot of memory about that, but yeah, you're probably right. And I think what he was saying, yeah, that probably was, I think we were sort of experiencing the last ripples of the last vestiges of that kind of Speaker 1 (05:33): Spirit, Speaker 3 (05:34): Because I do remember that I thought I was constantly arguing with certain entities about being able to draw in the museum that we had been banned from doing that for some reason. Oh, Speaker 1 (05:48): Really? Speaker 3 (05:48): And so, not to toot my horn, but I do remember being someone who was allowed to do that, and it had been a long time since a student was allowed to do that. So I remember going in with charcoal, with paper, sitting in front of a thing and drawing it, and apparently that hadn't happened in a long time. There must have been some incident or incidents. Speaker 1 (06:08): Well, yeah, you must be a trailblazer because by the time Speaker 3 (06:11): I'm a trailblazer. Yeah. Speaker 1 (06:12): I was in school that was like, we did that as part of classes that was pretty regular in my drawing one class or whatever. We went and set up for a week in the museum and drew from objects. Well, Speaker 3 (06:26): You're welcome. And again, my memory is always questionable. I'm very transparent about that. But I do remember someone saying to me that they were lifting the band or something like that. It was going to be able to happen again. Yeah, definitely. We had a good time there, and I think that I spent a lot of time in the museum. We weren't able to just walk right in, but I felt, I always thought it was cool that we had a museum, Speaker 1 (06:55): Museum. You just had to walk around a corner essentially was what it felt like. It was the same thing when I was here. We were physically connected by then, we were not run by the same administration, but we still were over here quite often because of proximity. And I ended up getting my work study job in the museum so that I could just walk around the corner and go to work for a couple of hours shelving books, Speaker 3 (07:22): And I worked as a guard for 10 days Speaker 1 (07:27): That long. Hey, Speaker 3 (07:28): I was really bad at I, I think I was tired, but I just think I was really tired. I was doing it, I think it was open Wednesday nights, and I remember sitting on a stool in the room with the de Kooning. There was a Kooning painting, and I just remember staring at the Kooning painting and wondering if it was still wet. It was so thick, and in my mind I thought, if you just touch that painting, it would probably squishy. It was so thick. But yeah, Speaker 1 (07:56): I don't since, for about that point, 40 years or something probably. Speaker 3 (08:00): Yeah. Yeah, 40 years that had been, Speaker 1 (08:03): But Speaker 3 (08:03): I don't think I was a good guard. I think that I didn't care if people walked off with work, so they might've fired me. Speaker 1 (08:14): They might've fired you. Speaker 3 (08:15): I've always had a tenuous relationship with time, the amount of time that something sits on a wall. And so maybe in my mind I was like, yeah, that can go. Speaker 1 (08:29): Something Speaker 3 (08:30): Else can be there now. So they probably caught wind of that attitude, and Speaker 1 (08:34): Yeah, they're like, this guy's no good. But you've had other art related jobs you work with. I don't know if it was directly with the Nam Jex studio, or was it with Sowe in association with that? Speaker 3 (08:46): I was associated, yeah. I didn't work directly for the studio, but I had friends that worked for Sowe and put together MG Pick sculptures, so I was in that circle Speaker 1 (09:00): Of Speaker 3 (09:00): People. That was an interesting time. I never had a job where, and I've always had a weird relationship with making other people's art. I made a cardboard replica of the robot in front of the C A C a few years ago, and even that felt strange. I had never done that before. I replicated someone else's work. So yeah, I don't know what that job must have been like, but I definitely was in that was around people that were doing that. Yeah. Speaker 1 (09:30): I feel like you told me something one time about hunting for the pieces that would go into it was that I've talked to multiple people who had, we're in some way connected to, so I might be confusing things too. Speaker 3 (09:42): Well, no, I think I went on an excursion with somebody to buy some Crosleys Crosley hunting, and I don't remember a lot about that, but it was, yeah, I mean, we were all, he was a big figure when I was in college. Speaker 1 (10:03): I think I talked with Mark Patal about it before about his work with him, and it was just seemed very interesting how much freedom they had to kind of do whatever they wanted. It was so surprising. He would be like, yeah, I mean, we would give sort of a rough idea and then we'd put it together. And it sounded from his position, it sounded like Nam June Peck was actually more interested in the video work that was happening, and that's what he was doing in New York. And then the actual sculptures were kind of like, he would be like, yeah, that looks good, and sign off on it with usually minimal input, Speaker 3 (10:41): Just the frame around the painting. That's an interesting, I used to be, I was so grouchy about Nam June cake when I was younger, and I've gotten less grouchy about, I just don't identify with that way of making, but there's certain people where just on the surface, when you look, I remember watching a video of Frank Gear just crumbling up a piece of paper and handing it off to an assistant and saying, make that, and when he said, make that he meant a building, it's like, okay, there must be like 37 steps between the crumpled paper, but for effect, that's what they're showing. Or Speaker 3 (11:19): Dale Chihuly dropping paint on a piece of paper and just saying, alright, let's get that into glass. So I don't know, as I've gotten older, I've thought, and it's funny, as a college teacher, you're sort of in a time machine because you're often arguing with your younger self, like an incarnation of your younger self. You're like, oh, it's me. But 25 years ago, and I remember arguing with students about like, oh, if the artist's hand isn't in every aspect of what they're doing, that it's not authentic. And just thinking, well, there's a centuries long tradition of the artist studio and Speaker 1 (12:00): Apprenticeship Speaker 3 (12:01): And such. And as I've gotten older, I've thought, yeah, it'd be interesting at least to scribble stuff on a piece of paper and just hand it off, and then it appears incarnated as this thing that you kind of had nothing to do with, but the people that are working for you understand the spirit with which you work. And so they're able to create that. So yeah, that's like Nampa, I could totally imagine that. He was like, yeah, just stack the TVs and Speaker 1 (12:36): Give me a check. Just give me a check. Well, I mean, it sounds like you and other people I've talked to, it's like, didn't have any trouble making these things because in that spirit, because you also knew this is not what I would do at all. This is not the work I would be making, and it's a pretty clear distinction between the work you make and the work that Mjpic makes. And so for you, it's not hard to understand, but I think when an outsider's like, but that's, somebody else did that, but it's like, yeah, but they didn't do it for them or they were doing it in the spirit. To me, it always reminds me of the animators working on Snow White or something. It's like they probably would rather be doing something else. So it's like ultimately, yes, this is Walt Disney's thing and it took an army to do it, but they're doing it with that vision in mind. Speaker 3 (13:28): Well, we know now that they were doing other things. They were paying the rent, but then they were making secret secret projects, and animators still do that, and they were mischievous too. Disney animators are famous for hiding things inside because those constraints can be very inhumane. You have to let the steam out in some way, and that's just how they did. I totally understand that If I was Nampa, if I was 19 and I was NAMM June, I would want build the TVs wouldn't be the notion of sending a crew out to find structures for my sculpture. I just didn't get that, and I understand why young people don't get that, and to me that was one of the more fun and interesting arguments that it would come around every single year. I taught freshmen, mainly when I taught college, I seem to teach freshmen or seniors, so it was interesting to teach freshmen when they're just fresh into art school and they've never had these kinds of conversations before, and that a good one. That's a really good one because I think that it doesn't make sense. You have this person telling you, well, different artists have different ways of getting from A to z. Speaker 3 (14:49): I remember when I was in college learning about what's his name, who had himself shot Speaker 1 (14:56): Chris Burden? Speaker 3 (14:57): Chris Burden, Chris Burden's later work got very sculptural and he had this piece that was about the military and he had 5,000 models submarines hanging in this gallery. When I learned that he hadn't made the submarines, he had just had studio assistants put them together. So from the moment of conception to the moment of construction or manifestation, he didn't touch anything. And that took me decades to come to grips with, which is maybe an evolution of thinking, but I'm still kind of the same person. I always was like, I tend to make things way harder for myself than I need to. The road is never a straight line. As I get older, that's gotten frustrating and has actually affected my body and my mind, but as a young person that struggle to come to grips with that was really hard and it is something that I've thought about for many years. Speaker 1 (16:02): How do you think you make things harder for yourself? Speaker 3 (16:05): Oh, man. I mean that c a C project, I just was simply asked to make 15 models of the NAMM Dream pick robot. If you're in Cincinnati, that robot, Speaker 1 (16:16): It's Yeah, metro robot. Speaker 3 (16:17): The metro robot. Hindsight is 2020. Speaker 3 (16:20): So I decided I was, I was making stuff out of cardboard and I was like, this is the expectation. This is why I was hired. But I had a set amount of time and I decided that not only was I going to make all the models out of cardboard, but I was going to make them paper models so that every part of that thing started as a flat piece that was either folded or tabbed together into a three-dimensional piece. This is 3000% unnecessary, and yet where my mind was at when I started that thing, and it turned out, I mean, it turned out to be a nightmare, and it was no one's fault but my own. I actually had wrist damage from cutting things. I was cutting hundreds and hundreds of these pieces. It was stressing me out, and I think that I'm actually want to talk about this because it's like I haven't really talked about it before, and I want people to know, especially if there are young people listening, like young art students or people that are trying to figure it out, just try to keep part of your brain laser locked. Speaker 3 (17:19): Ask yourself this question, is there a more efficient way to do a thing and does it matter? Does it really matter in the end, we all do this too. We all say to ourselves, well, I know other people might know, but I know what, Speaker 3 (17:35): And I think that maybe it's just my development has been slow. I think other people come to this realization earlier where it's like, because when I got done with that thing I had, it was months later, I was processing it, and I don't think I shared anything about this project. I didn't put it on Instagram. I didn't really tell anybody about it. I just was, I was sucked dry by this thing, but three months later, I was like two by fours. I should have made them out of two by fours, just chopped two by fours into blocks, put some little dinky dos on them, given it a nice paint job, and I would've been done in three days, Speaker 1 (18:22): Two Speaker 3 (18:23): By fours, and I think it was probably me rehabbing my house and taking a two by four off the wall and just being two by fours. Speaker 1 (18:38): Yeah, I think I definitely, I don't even know whether I should share this. I feel like now just, it almost sounds bragging, but I was like, I think I definitely came to that realization a lot sooner than you did, Chris. Speaker 3 (18:49): Well, good for you. I Speaker 1 (18:52): Think I came to that realization after my first year at the art academy. I remember at a certain point, I had a rule that if it didn't fit into the hatchback of my Ford Escort that I didn't make it. Speaker 3 (19:09): See, that is so evolved. That Speaker 1 (19:11): Was a requirement for making work was that it had to fit into my car because after the first year of having to borrow trucks and things to get big pieces to school, I was like, screw this. So if the assignment was you have to make a four by four painting or something, then it split into two by two sections. Everything would be modular so that it could fit. Speaker 3 (19:37): I mean, you have every right to brag about that. That's extremely advanced. I mean, even to this day, I go to Home Depot and I'll get a piece of plywood and just think, I'll figure it out. Once I get outside, somehow it will magically fit into the car. Speaker 1 (19:54): Oh, man. I remember spending so much time at Home Depot where I would make them cut stuff up into really specific sizes there, and they hated Speaker 3 (20:00): Me. They Speaker 1 (20:01): Hated me. Of course, they're just trying to chop it down in the most basic things. I'd be like, okay, now this one needs to be 38 and four eighths because I'm going to take it home and just reassemble it into something. So I'm making them just use that ripper to make these fine cuts. I remember at a certain point they're like, this isn't for precision cuts. And I was like, it's fine. Speaker 3 (20:23): Russell's over in the tool section. The staff is like, does somebody hear a compressor Just turn on? He's over there power nailing substrate together for a painting. This guy's really getting his money's worth, Speaker 1 (20:37): But maybe this also just comes out of my own laziness too. That was sort of partially why I abandoned painting and moved to drawing was because I realized it was a lot easier just to roll up a sheet of paper than it was to have to build canvases and stretch them. After one semester of stretching canvases and stuff. I was like, no, no. Speaker 3 (20:59): I hate this. Tubes are where it's at, baby. Speaker 1 (21:01): Yeah, Speaker 3 (21:02): Tubes are where it's at. Speaker 1 (21:03): Roll it up, Speaker 3 (21:06): Roll it. Well, when I would teach freshman foundation classes, there would always be that student who you'd say like, okay, cut a circle out of a piece of paper, and they would cut the circle out of the dead center of the piece of paper Speaker 1 (21:20): Instead Speaker 3 (21:21): Of in the corner corner, and you would have, to me, it was always my poisonous mind would just be like, why can't you figure this out on your own? But then the more optimistic, empathetic side of my brain would say, well, this is a definite teaching moment and a metaphor and just being real and just realizing, well, again, like I said at Home Depot, you're still buying wood that doesn't fit into your car because you're lazy. You're lazy in the mind in that moment. You're just like, I'm not going to project into the future and think about how that's going to affect what the outcome of what I'm doing. And so to me, those little mundane things were actually the best part of teaching. I would say, all right, now check this out. We're going to cut this circle in the corner, and now you've not wasted this whole piece of paper. Plus there's at least two vectors on this circle that you don't need to cut. They're connected to this side and to this perpendicular side. And did I see the light go on? No, not usually, but sometimes the light is latent. It turns on later. Maybe they remember like, oh, yeah, he was really trying to do a thing there with me in my first year of school. Speaker 1 (22:42): Yeah, there's definitely, I think there's probably a lot of those really basic lessons that I totally took to heart in an art school. I mean, goofy things like Gary Gaffney's glue lecture and stuff like that, that he would give every year. But I really do think I walked away with a good understanding of there are a lot of different glues out there, and you want to pick the right one for the right job, and it's something I think about still today. Well, you don't want to use that glue for that, that that's not going to do what you needed to do. Speaker 3 (23:14): I mean, shout out to Gary just as recently as maybe two years ago, Gary handed me a jar of glue and said, try this. I think this glue is more appropriate for the application that you're trying to do. Speaker 1 (23:29): Really? Speaker 3 (23:30): Yeah, he He's the glue wizard. Speaker 1 (23:32): Yeah. Speaker 3 (23:33): He loves no doubt. Speaker 1 (23:34): Yeah. Yeah. He had a whole collection there and he went through and sort of explained, and so I do think about it a lot of, but yeah, we can't use that for this. And it's something, even when we're doing a summer camp project or something just like a free activity where we just aren't going to put out a bunch of stuff and be like, your kids glue it to it. I kind of go like, well, you can't put those big pompoms out because that glue is never going to hold this to this, and the kids are just going to be upset because the pompoms are going to be falling off. And it's like, it would be better to, we either have to give them a different glue that works for this or just take out the pompoms. Speaker 3 (24:12): Well, and I know I've talked to Gary about this teacher to teacher, and even teaching college, you would always see that student that would just pull out the old glue stick. I'm going to attach this to this with a glue stick, and it's like pushing a bird out of the nest. Sometimes they got to fall on their head and just, there's nothing more humbling than having a critique and some chunk of the thing you built just falls off in the middle of a critique. And I'm not going to lie, and I'm sure other teachers would admit this too, sometimes that's going to happen and you let it happen. Speaker 1 (24:49): Yeah, you see the omen, Speaker 3 (24:54): You see it wobbling, but you don't say a word. It's like the moment will happen, and that's where the epiphany will occur. Speaker 1 (25:06): They'll definitely learn it better if it's in the middle of a critique, everyone's staring at it when Kerplunk Speaker 3 (25:13): Humiliation, it's the greatest teaching tool. I remember one critique, I was in a painting critique where whatever painting I'd made just fell off the wall. And I think there was a visiting artist who made some crack about how being like, well, that's a metaphor. And then we didn't talk about the painting and it just sat on the floor, and then I sadly picked it up and walked out with it. The whole thing was a performance. But yeah, I mean, there's a whole spectrum of thought on that, the right tool for the job. I mean, even students with rusty exact knife blades and you've got to change that blade, and they're just like, but I don't have money for blades. I was like, well, you can't guess what, no Chick-fil-A for you today. New blades are your destiny. Speaker 1 (26:04): Yeah. They go dull within five cuts of it. It's like, okay, it's time for a new blade. You got to keep switching 'em out or it's, you're going to kill it. It's going to start dragging. Speaker 3 (26:15): You got to do what you got to do. Again, the truth, we all know the truth, it's we just don't want to do it. We're worried about the price, we're worried about the time, but you know what needs to be done. Speaker 1 (26:28): Yeah. I think with something like a blade for cutting foam cord, it is always just being lazy about the time because I mean, maybe somebody can't afford the blades, but they're not expensive. It's just simply like, I've got to open this thing up and I've got, Speaker 3 (26:49): Well, I tried to game the system too. I was like, I found a cheap exact knife brand, and I thought I had figured it out. I was like, oh, man, for the price, for the price, the price of these, I get twice as many as X Exacto brand. And then I was like, oh, no, X Exacto really is a good brand. You really do get what you pay for. So I ended up back with X exacto. But again, that's the journey. Live and learn. Hopefully you're in the moment, you're paying attention and you listen. You're being observant and you're using that as a catalyst for your thinking. But even when I use power tools, you keep using that circular saw blade, even though it's way past its prime, and then it goes and it goes and it's rusty and it's screeching and it's not actually cutting, and then it explodes or it flies off the saw, or you cut your finger off and then you're like, all right, fine. I'll go buy a new blade. And you put that new blade in, you're like, it's just like butter, and you need to carry that thinking into the future. But for some of us, it's a heavy load to carry. It's not easy to move with it, but I think hopefully it catches up to you and you're just like, okay, from now on when the blade is gone, it's gone. I'm going to get a new blade. And again, it's a metaphor for other ways of thinking. Speaker 1 (28:06): Yeah. It's also probably that's the unfun part of making something too generally is the maintenance of it and upkeep. That's not the reason almost anybody is there. You're not here for that. You're here for the making, for the doing. And so yeah, that's probably another reason. It just gets shoved to the sidelines. Yeah, I don't want to worry about that right now. I want to just make this thing. It's going to an impatience. Speaker 3 (28:32): I was talking to a former student the other day about in an art school, who has the most important job and who is the glue? Speaking of glue, who is the glue that holds any art school together? And it's the shop tech person. It's whoever that person is. They do everything. They get hired to work 40 hours a week. They end up working 400 hours a week. Not only are they supposed to be taking care of all the machines, but they're teachers. They have to be teachers. That's the person that's in the wood shop at nine 30 at night showing someone how to cut a joint patiently, maybe more patiently. It's a lot like being a parent because oftentimes the last person your kids will listen to is you, but somebody else can say the exact same thing, but just because they're new or different or have a different vibe, your kids are rap attention to what they're saying. But yeah, at the schools I've worked in the shop tech, that's the person that's changing the bandsaw blade. Just these things that no one notices or Well, you notice if you notice, but there's no expectation that you notice no horn is being blown about it. The reason why you're cutting that wood so clean is because that person changed the table, saw blade and just did those thousand countless things, and it is the most boring. It's the thing none of us want to think about, but you got to change those blades. Speaker 1 (30:08): Well, yeah, the wood shop tech never gets to have these grandstanding moments that a professor does either. So yeah, they totally don't get that glory or that romantic thing. They're just there quietly doing their work. Speaker 3 (30:21): Well, it's such a more authentic legacy though, because I absolutely, I'm going to shout out like Jack Henon, who was the shop, ran the wood shop when I was at the art academy and worked for many, many years at the art academy, became facilities manager and just took care of everything. Speaker 1 (30:41): But Speaker 3 (30:42): I don't know if he would ever remember this, but I'll tell a Jack Henon story just about the humility and power of teaching in places where, yeah, again, there's no glory, there's no spotlight. But I remember walking into the wood shop with a log and a chainsaw, and it was like a Saturday morning, and I walked right past Jack and he watched me, his neck craned, and followed me as I walked by and I walked over to a table, put the log down, I maybe put some goggles on maybe and started pulling on this chainsaw, and I just heard from the other side of the room, no. And then I looked up and that kind of like, oh, whatever could be the problem here, which is a reaction that as a teacher I saw many times and did he say, no, you're not going to carve that log or get out of here. No, there was none of that. It was patient instruction. And actually, I don't think I made a single cut that day, which was frustrating to me, just like I just wanted to get into it. Speaker 3 (31:57): Severed limbs be damned. I just wanted to do the thing. And so I don't know if I ever actually carved that log. I think that he may have successfully steered me away from it, which that was always another tough conversation as a teacher, when you're dealing with a student, they have this really specific way or that they want to do something in your mind, you're just like, man, if I could just get it through to them and just like, this is the wrong tool. This is the wrong material, or this is the wrong process. You can still do what you want to do, but if you do it this way, it's going to be so much more satisfying or the thing's going to have more strength, more integrity, and it's tough. Sometimes you just got to let, they need to fall on their face. Hopefully they don't cut their fingers off with a chainsaw. Speaker 3 (32:46): And I'm very thankful 25 years later that he was there, but not only that he was there, but that he took the time to show me how to do that. And I think when I think about that sort of episode as a teacher, that's really what kept me going through many hard years of just wanting to quit teaching, just thinking, well, you do make an impact. It just doesn't register. Sometimes for 20 years, the best teaching happens outside of class. I think with people like that, these people that do the real work and hold schools together like that, Speaker 1 (33:22): Something I always remember Tony Bachelor saying in one of my classes, which was just like, it was a class all about creativity, which I remember being really cynical about when I sat down for it. I just thought, you're going to teach me how to be creative. It just sounded so horrible. The idea of turning it into a checklist or something of this is the process, but one goes about when they want to be creative. It sounded terrible, and it was a really good class, and I learned actually a lot from it. And I remember one of his lessons was just know your strengths play to them. And I was like, oh. It was genuinely a revelation to me, even though I don't think I had been, it was something I think I knew subconsciously that I was probably already doing subconsciously, but that idea of you, every one of us has something we're better at than other things, and there are things we are less good at, and so don't do those less good things. Or if you suck at drawing, you don't have to make this project a drawing. Do something else. Do what you're good at. And I was like, huh. Speaker 1 (34:38): It's just the simplest thing, but it is kind of a revelation, Speaker 3 (34:43): But sometimes it's sort of like, can you teach someone to not be ashamed? He's like, just don't be ashamed of what you do. I've been thinking about this recently in just the last, I don't know, three months or something. I've been thinking when I was 14 or 15 and I was starting high school, I was so singular in my vision for what I was going to end up being. I thought I'm going to be a cartoonist or an animator. That was what I wanted to do. Chuck Jones was my guy. I wanted to make cartoons like him and work in a studio and just work as an part of an animation team. And I really threw my energy into that. I used to do. And so when we had assignments in high school, mine were always kind of cartoony. I used to take a lot of flack for that. It's just like, oh, here he is again with his cartoons. And so that probably had an effect on me. I've probably felt kind of shamed by that. And I definitely went down different roads. And one thing I've always known though is that you can't make someone else's work. At least to me, it's not possible. My brain will always course correct and say, this is not natural to you. This isn't what you're meant to be doing. But there's no shame in the game of trying something on seeing Speaker 1 (36:11): If it Speaker 3 (36:12): Fits. And I think a lot of art students do that, and that's a wonder to behold. But I think that with age and dedication, discipline, I think most artists end up where they're supposed to be. You gain confidence hopefully, and you're surrounded by people that don't needlessly tell you that what you do is insignificant or unimportant. Hopefully, you're not completely destroyed by art school. If you decide to go to art school, you survive that. But no, I think Tony's advice is definitely true. It's just sometimes the journey to get to that realization. It's not necessarily going to happen when you're a freshman or sophomore in college. I remember taking that class too, one of those old standbys, and Speaker 1 (37:01): I just, yeah, I think it was a required, yeah, everybody had to take it. Speaker 3 (37:04): Yeah, I think I was a total creep in that class. I just think I was so adversarial. I'm not going to mention was my, I remember who my teacher was, and I hope she's forgiven me for if she remembers, probably not, but it's probably my ego thinking that she actually remembers me in that class. But yeah, I was creativity. That's the last thing I need to learn. That's why I'm here, baby. You Speaker 1 (37:33): Want me to Speaker 3 (37:33): Teach me that? But again, these things register latently sometimes. I remember being in another class where we had this project where you had to keep a marble moving for 30 seconds without touching it. That was the, and this blew my head off. I was like, this doesn't even make any sense. So you don't touch the marble, but it moves. And I remember we were timed. It had to move for 30 seconds, and so you're presented with this challenge, but of course the project is way more than just the simple thing. You're supposed to be pushed into these places that are uncomfortable. I remember doing this really again, time management, like terrible time management. I remember skipping Thanksgiving, my mom being furious with me because I skipped Thanksgiving. I had to finish this thing. I had managed my time so badly and I didn't get it done. Speaker 3 (38:31): And when I showed up to present my thing, the marble fell off the table and I basically got an F on the thing. And the teacher, I said to the teacher, could I try to do it again? And he very graciously allowed me to try it over again. And he said something like, look, I watched what you were doing. I watched you in class. I didn't say anything to you. Well, I did. I tried, but you just weren't having it. You got to think differently about how you're going to get this done. Think way outside. Don't think about making a masterpiece. And this is the thing, I always try to tell college students, you're not going to remember any this thing that you think is so precious and that you're thinking is going to be in the Louvre. It's going to be in the garbage. Somebody else is going to pull it out of the garbage and recycle it into their Speaker 4 (39:23): Project. Speaker 3 (39:26): If you're going to be doing so many things, this is just going to be a blink, just a whisper in time. So I did, I totally changed my thinking and I stopped thinking about objects, and I started thinking about what is the simple challenge here to keep this thing? And I made something that was way outside of my box, and again, it didn't work, but he ended up giving me like a C because I had sort of really, really tried to change the way I was thinking, which was kind of the point. That was the point of the whole thing. Speaker 4 (40:00): Well, let's go to the galleries now, and I want to look at an artwork that connects with your installation in the education center, if that's cool. Speaker 3 (40:10): Okay, Speaker 4 (40:10): Awesome. So we are now in Gallery two 19, and we are looking at a painting that has a real long title. It's called The Artist's Mother, Lula Mae Hinkle, making Original Quilt by Nan Phelps. I cannot imagine that is the actual title of this piece. The Stinks of Museum Giving Titles to me. You can kind of tell when they're so bland and unexciting. I'm sure Nan Phelps, if she had named it would've just called it Mom or something like that. Mom's Quilt. Yeah, exactly. A more succinct title. Certainly. So I wanted to look at this piece because this is one of the pieces that you chose to be some inspiration for your installation in the Rosenthal Education Center, or rec as we call it, and we'll probably abbreviate from here on out. The painting is of the artist's mother. She's sitting in a chair. She has this elaborate quilt on her lap, and then next to her is this little in table that has a bible, a portrait of her husband and a VAs of flowers. So those are kind of the main images that make this up, but it's really, it's like the way it's painted. That is what makes it so special. So I'm just curious, what attracted you to this piece and what's your relationship with it? Speaker 3 (41:41): Well, I don't know how long this has been hanging in the museum. I know it hasn't been in this room for forever of, this room is relatively new, but Speaker 4 (41:53): Yeah, this installation, I am not going to know exact dates either, but it was probably sometime around 2014 or 15, Speaker 3 (42:03): Something like that when Speaker 4 (42:04): This was redone as a folk art gallery. This was not always a folk art gallery. So folk art, if you aren't, it's kind of a tricky thing to define actually, because in general, I would say you might think of it as work made by self-taught artists, people who did not go to art school and were not kind of a part of that formal system. But then there are exceptions to that too, where there are people who are kind of considered folk art that sort of were trained, but then they have chosen to work in this sort of style. So it gets complicated. But this painting is definitely a self-taught artist. Nan Phelps lived in this area as well. Kentucky I think is where she's from, Speaker 3 (42:55): And this is my favorite. I'm sure a lot of people say this, but it's probably my favorite room in the museum. Just pumpkin colored walls and just the objects that are in here are just the best. Speaker 4 (43:07): I always love that it's right next door to the most conservative gallery too. Speaker 3 (43:11): It's Speaker 4 (43:12): A real yin and yang here. Speaker 3 (43:14): It's a warm, cold feeling. Speaker 4 (43:17): Yeah, Speaker 3 (43:18): I love this painting, and specifically her hand is the first thing that I noticed. She has this kind of, it's out of proportion, it's kind of claw, and it's just so dramatically contrasted against her dress and just the gesture is so great. Her face, there's a little pop to the smile, which is very, knowing. There's just the big eyes. I mean, I could rattle off 276 little details about this painting that I love. But no, I love this painting. It's such a humble, just unassuming portrait of someone doing just every day and yet extremely artistic work. You put this up against some of the bigger, maybe more male-centric portraits that are on the other side of the wall. This, to me, is way more powerful than some of those. It's just the art of making the quilt, the amount of time that takes. There's just so many little details. I mean, the portrait of her husband, her little, would you call that a brooch on her Speaker 4 (44:38): Neck, Speaker 3 (44:39): On her dress? Speaker 4 (44:40): I'll call it a broach, but I don't know anything. I don't know much about fashion either Speaker 3 (44:44): A penant, maybe a penant, and it's a folk styled painting. So the perspective is wonky, and you can't tell if she's sitting in the chair or floating in front of it. But as a person who's been a painter off and on the transition when there's a word for this too that I don't know, but the towel on top of the table when it goes from horizontal to vertical and folds down, I just love that transition. The painting of her husband is just so funny. The longer you stare at it, again, nothing is sort of sitting right in space. The husband is sort of like a tiny man who's behind the table. He's not necessarily another painting inside of a frame. Yeah, Speaker 4 (45:44): I think it's because he's has just as much sort of contrast as she does that black and white is, if I was trying to make that look like a photo and not, or an actual little person, I would probably put a little layer of glaze of that kind of brown over it or something to make it a little less high contrast, to make it just a little flatter. Speaker 3 (46:09): He's popping. I mean, he's definitely, the Reverend John Henkel is popping right out of there's, but I see all of these as being very, I mean, intention is usually in favor of the person looking at the painting. I can sort of decide what was intentional and what wasn't, but there had to be like when Nan was painting that she had to have a twinkle in her eye. Just when you think about the act of painting and the little tiny marks that she had to have made to make her father's eyes just wink donk, there had to be just, I don't know. It's such an endearing painting. There's parts of it that are so delicate, like the lace around her wrists and some of the details in the quilt. It's a powerful painting, but it's got my favorite kind of vibe, which is, it's about work. It's about an important person, but it's not screaming off of a wall just, but man, once you get close to it, you can get in there. It takes you on a journey for sure. Speaker 4 (47:21): It has these really great areas of intense detail, and then they're allowed to kind of rest against these really expansive areas of just black in the dress and the gray of the wall. And so when you have those flowers, which are all so detailed up against that gray wall, just so it makes them so much more vibrant and active, and the same with the quilt, which is so intensely detailed where every little pattern is painted excruciatingly, and then you just have this very dense black right up against it. And I love that. I think that's what makes this painting exciting to me. The lace you were mentioning. So it's such a nice balance of those two ways of working. Speaker 3 (48:10): Yeah. Well, when I made my piece for the wreck, I duplicated the quilt pattern much more simply than what she's got here. But when I cracked the code on the pattern, I was so satisfied with myself because it's one of those patterns where your eyes can kind of shift. You'll see the sort of compass Speaker 4 (48:33): Shape, Speaker 3 (48:34): But then you'll notice the, I think it's an octagon. There's different ways. There's different levels of perception. You can sort of focus on this or that a lot of quilts do. There's sort of these overlapping patterns that contribute to each other. But yeah, the quilt is awesome. And what I love about paintings in general is that you can sort of get in the head of the painter, or at least think you are, and just think She was really into painting this part, but when she got to the Bible and had to do the pages, she was sort of like, Speaker 4 (49:15): Yeah, yeah. But Speaker 3 (49:16): Then there are other parts where she's just like, I'm just going to sit here for a while and really throw everything I have at this. There's the wrinkles on her face, and then the shadow under her fingers on the hand, I guess, holding the thread Speaker 4 (49:38): Or Speaker 3 (49:38): The needle. She didn't get it there. She didn't nail it, the color. It's not where it should be, but that's okay. But then there's other areas where you're like, wow. Again, the table cloth that's on the table, it's so delicate and perfect. And then the flowers are amazing. I guess those are moms that are in the vase, and then the vase itself just almost disappears. Speaker 3 (50:07): The color is so complicated and the texture on the floor, I mean, I'm all, but then the arms of the chair, you're kind of like, eh, not just sure about that. So I can appreciate that it's a level of empathy because when I make art, I'm less confident about doing other things, some things more than others, and my interest, it ebbs and flows. Sometimes I'm like, oh, I'm super into doing this and I'm not so into doing this, and that's okay. It's nice to see that. It's very honest. It's very human thing to see in a piece of art. Speaker 4 (50:42): We actually, there's a weird story I've heard that she submitted a painting to be exhibited here at the museum, and the museum was so disbelieving that she could have painted this, that they sent her to the art academy to be tested and to make sure is this legit? And it's just like this world sounds so alien to me of both the idea of artists just sending things to the museum to be put into an exhibition, not how things work anymore. And then also that the museum would be just like, we don't believe you made this go next door to our school. And what the Art academy has some sort of artist laboratory set up where I'm imagining Phelps with electrodes on her head and drawing Speaker 3 (51:35): Or something. Yes, she's going to be tested to see if she has acrylic paint running through her veins. Speaker 4 (51:43): It's such a weird, weird idea. But if it was a different world, just like we were saying how the museum was different in the seventies, it was different in the fifties, and everything has changed a lot in all of these ways. Speaker 3 (51:57): Well, some of my favorite artists over the years have absolutely been affected or inspired by folk artists. I think about someone like Margaret Kal who was part of that beautiful losers group. She was obviously affected by folk art techniques and traditions, folk art's. One of those things where it, it's all about self-awareness. I don't think you can declare yourself a folk artist or you can't really declare yourself an outsider artist. And these classifications, I guess, are important for museum type situations, just being able to put things in categories. But I, I've always thought I kind of have the heart of an outsider artist just because this is just me talking about me. But I think I have two qualities that a lot of outsider artists have or a lot of folk artists have, but they're not aware of, which is obsession and compulsion, just making art about obsessively and compulsively about the same things over and over again, which I think I do, but I can't call myself an outsider artist. I'm not allowed to do that. But yeah, full car to me is just the subject matter is usually very, very humble. It's often rural, Speaker 4 (53:14): And Speaker 3 (53:14): Here she is knitting a quilt, stitching a quilt together. That's a rather folksy thing to do. There's a dignity to the painting. And again, it doesn't take itself too seriously. There has to be a knowing wink when you look at the portrait of her father sitting on the table, and who knows, psychologically we can go down the rabbit hole and just think about, well, okay, he's positioned next to the Bible because he was a reverend, but does the scale of the two figures mean something? I mean, what was her relationship with her father? He's gone. Are the flowers about memorializing him or obviously she's getting the attention, and so who knows? Speaker 4 (54:08): But Speaker 3 (54:09): You can determine how far you want to go with that. But that stuff isn't so much important to me as just the aspects of dignity, the dignity of work, the notion of what is an artist and who calls himself an artist and who doesn't. My grandfather, I think, was an artist. He was a tool and die maker and machinist. He didn't like calling himself an artist. He didn't like other people, or he didn't like me calling him an artist. But it's undeniable. I mean, there are things that happen every day that nobody knows about that have so much intention and skill and importance, and I just gravitate towards that. I gravitate towards things like this documentation of a quilt being stitched together. I just think that's so important and worthy of being in a museum. Speaker 4 (55:09): You mentioned the kind of out of proportion hands and things, and I'm like, one of the things that's made me think of is just like, why is it that sometimes when I see maybe a high schooler or something draw a person and everything is sort of out of whack, and it may be funny, but it's not charming in the same way as this, and there's something that's like, I don't know what it is. What is the secret that makes something that's kind of a little out of whack feel charming and not sort of just upsetting? Speaker 3 (55:49): When you're in high school and you're working on a self-portrait and one eyeball is three inches high and the other eyeball is an inch, you just don't know what you're doing. I mean, there's no Speaker 4 (55:58): Other way. Speaker 3 (55:59): There's nothing charming. There's nothing intentional about that. It's just like you just got work to do. But yeah, here the things being out of proportion, again, I don't even necessarily think that it's intentional, but there's a confidence behind it and it just works. I don't question that. Again, there's aspects to this painting that the more I look at it, I just think, wow, her nostrils are red, and I don't know about that. I don't know if that's working for me, but man, those eyes are so intense, Speaker 3 (56:37): And it's maybe about the dignity and wisdom of age that's coming through. I mean, we all have relatives that stitch. My grandmother made Afghans every year, and it just always blew my mind. I just would think just thinking about the intricacy of them and how much time they took, and she just made them over the year. It was just a thing that she did. And I was hoping to get Star Wars toys and things like that, but I also, I wanted an Afghan, and finally one year I got one, and it was one of the most special things that I've ever gotten. But in her sort of river of time, it was just a ripple or just a drop. But again, the integrity of that and the fact that this is probably her 1000th quilt. It's very powerful. Speaker 4 (57:30): Well, thank you so much for stopping in and talking with us today about all of this, Christian. Speaker 3 (57:35): Well, you're welcome. Was very fun to do. Speaker 1 (57:44): Thank you for listening to Art Palace. We hope you'll be inspired to come visit the Cincinnati Art Museum and have conversations about the art yourself. The museum is currently open, but please visit our website for the most up-to-date information about operating hours and museum policies. Current special exhibitions are paintings, politics, and the Monuments Men, the Berlin Masterpieces in America and American Painting, the eighties Revisited. And if you'd like to see Christian's installation in the Rosenthal Education Center, it will be on view until October 31st. You can follow the museum on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and we also have an Art Palace Facebook group. Our theme song is Fra Musika by Blau, and as always, please rate and review us to help others find the show. I'm Russell Iig, and this has been Art Palace produced by the Cincinnati Art Museum.