Speaker 1 (00:00): Coming up on Art Palace, Speaker 2 (00:03): Everyone has the ability to be creative. So the sort of creative building blocks that were inside Pablo Picasso, they're inside all of us. It's about how you arrange them. Speaker 1 (00:24): Welcome to Art Palace, produced by Cincinnati Art Museum. This is your host, Russell iig. Here at the Art Palace, we meet cool people and then talk to them about art. Today's cool person is Nathan Gabriel, co-director of Theater Xavier at St. Xavier High School. Speaker 2 (00:52): I got an art thing I can talk about. Are you ready? Speaker 1 (00:55): I mean, well, first of all, no, we are going to do this kind of the right way. Speaker 2 (01:02): I've got an art thing. Speaker 1 (01:03): Hey, hey. Speaker 2 (01:05): I saw some art on the way in. Let me describe Speaker 1 (01:07): It. Lemme tell you what I saw. Well just give us a little intro about who you are. I think that would be a good, good formal starting place. My name Speaker 2 (01:14): Is Nathan Gabriel, and most notably I am a teacher and a director of theater. So I teach theater and creativity. I teach at St. Xavier High School, and I also teach at Temple University online from a distance. The one in Philadelphia, I teach a creativity course there called the Creative Spirit. And there you go. So did Speaker 1 (01:42): You always plan on being a teacher? Speaker 2 (01:44): No. I originally thought that I would be a director, and I don't know if your listeners know this, but there isn't a lot of money in theater Speaker 1 (01:55): Is that? So I figured everyone was like, oh, that cash cow. Speaker 2 (01:59): Sure. Well, you get those students. I ask the students, tell me some perceptions you have about actors. We talk about the myths of the business, and one of them that always comes up is they all make a million dollars Hollywood fat cats. Anyway, in order to, one of the side hustles that I had while I was an associate artistic director was I taught at a modeling agency, a talent agency. I taught acting classes and I just fell in love with it. And I would come home less tired and more energized from teaching than I would from directing or anything else. It somehow gave me life and energy and Virginia. So my wife, Virginia started noticing it and she is the one who pointed out that I really seem to love this and this is something that I should think about doing. Speaker 1 (02:47): I mean, what do you think it is about teaching that you responded to better than directing? Speaker 2 (02:53): So the reason I wanted to be a director, what I am about to say is very idealistic, but I wanted to make the world a better place. I wanted to create art that sent messages that changed people for the better. And I found that a much more direct way to do that was to talk to them instead of making an elaborate play to try to draw them in. And this is not to say that I still direct, I'm still a director and I still believe in the transformative power of art. I want to get to that. Let's talk about Hamilton. But the teaching gets me there a lot faster and with more regularity. So if I direct a play, I basically get an hour and a half with someone Speaker 1 (03:42): To Speaker 2 (03:42): Try to convince them of something. Now I have a ton of tools, way more tools than I have in the classroom. I have lighting, I have sound, I have actors, I have a script. But as a teacher, I get to see them for an entire semester, day after day. And we do so many different things that it's much easier to reach people in that setting. Plus a lot of people, you walk into the classroom, they're a more receptive audience, a student is, they come in with the idea of, yes, mode me, teach me, change me. I am here to learn and I'm Speaker 1 (04:13): Over to growth. I'll leave a different person. Speaker 2 (04:15): Yeah, that's the hope, right? That's what you pay your money for and you're like, oh man, I really hope I learned something and I'm different on the other side of this class. Whereas with a play, people tend to go in for, they're hoping to be entertained first, and if a change occurs, great, but entertainment is still the foremost desire. Speaker 1 (04:38): You brought up Hamilton Speaker 2 (04:40): Earlier. Yes. Speaker 1 (04:41): So I know you've been really excited about it recently. Speaker 2 (04:46): Well, all right, so I talked about the transformative power of art. It's funny, this story is going to go back on everything that I just said about how it's really hard to change somebody's life with a single, an hour and a half story. So my wife and I saw Hamilton about six or seven weeks ago, and you could divide our life right now into pre Hamilton and post Hamilton. Speaker 2 (05:12): Really? Yes. So we went and saw Hamilton, and that started a full-blown midlife crisis for my wife. And this is not my words. I'm using her words. And so one of the big questions of the play is what is your legacy? What are you leaving behind? How are you going to change things? What are you doing with your life? For those of you who don't know the show, he's forever writing like he's running out of time, and it's all about his impending death and how much can he get done before he dies, which makes you as an audience member, ask some pretty tough questions of your own life. And my wife has started asking those questions, and it has put her life into a, not just the play Hamilton, but also the creator, Lin-Manuel Miranda. He's incredibly successful and using art to make a real change in the world. And he's an inspiring figure in and of himself. Speaker 2 (06:09): All of that together has put my wife into a tornado of change. And for those of you who aren't married, when your spouse is going through a tornado of change, you are, I don't even, have you ever tried to stand on a tornado and not be affected by it? You are going to get blown all over the place. I'm not exaggerating. I would say at least an hour and a half a day, we have talks about how are we going to do good in the world? How are we going to do more than we already do? I mean, the talks have ranged from career changes to moving out of Cincinnati. We currently are writing a book together now we are talking about taking the spare room of our house and transforming it into a place where underprivileged students can sleep. Maybe somebody has enough money to go to the art academy, but they don't have enough money to pay for room and board or something. We step in and give that to them for free. Our whole lives are currently up in the air, thanks to the play Hamilton. So yeah, Speaker 1 (07:13): Wowza. I know. Speaker 2 (07:16): So that's an example of a story doing something right, Speaker 1 (07:18): Right. Yeah. But you feel like that's probably, you seem to have more realistic expectations of what you're making Speaker 2 (07:27): In the world. I think it's the exception. Right? So that's the only play I can say that has ever happened to me with. Right. Speaker 1 (07:31): And you've seen a lot of plays. Speaker 2 (07:32): I've seen a lot of plays, not just here in Cincinnati. I've been to New York. I've seen plays on Broadway that I left kind of shrugging my shoulders about where, so yeah, I do ultimately think, I still think the most effective way to get to people for me as a teacher. But yeah, there is art out there that it'll change you. Speaker 1 (07:55): That's something interesting too about what you do in your day-to-day job and teaching theater at a high school. And do you still carry those aspirations into those kind of productions knowing that you are working with say, high schoolers ultimately, and that they are a limited sort of tool set in a way that you have at your disposal, obviously, even if they're incredibly talented teenagers? Speaker 2 (08:19): So that's one of the reasons I took the job, and that's still a question for me, is can that happen? I've only been a high school teacher for four years. I was all college before that. And one of the things I wanted to try to do was to bring real transformative theater to a high school audience. So the theater I work for at St. Xavier High School, they have an incredible theater program Speaker 2 (08:43): And they have a huge audience base. It's close to 3000 people see every single play, which is a lot for any high school, for any theater period. I've worked at semi-professional theaters that struggle to get that number. And so I feel an obligation as a director to bring something to them that is about their real life, is about really about the world that they live in and will speak to the community about what's actually going on. But what I am discovering now that I'm in the middle of it is I am really the only person interested in doing that. And that high school audiences, they'll go with you to a degree, but they still need to see little Johnny on stage doing something that's really why they're here. And so it's funny because I'll receive pushback from some faculty members when I talk about doing a show like Fiddler or something, and I'm like, oh yeah, and there's been a lot of antisemitism in the news lately. I think this is something that could speak to this moment in our cultural blah, blah, blah, blah. And I start talking about the social ramifications of whatever show it is that I'm thinking about. And I literally will have faculty members say to me, Nathan, this is high school. You just need to get 'em on stage. Parents need to see their kids do something and get 'em off stage. Speaker 2 (10:05): So that is disappointing, but it is also, I feel I still firmly leave. It's a missed opportunity that if you're going to take somebody's most valuable asset, their time, if I'm going to take two hours from somebody's life, I better have something to say at least. Speaker 1 (10:22): Do you think the students are aware of that kind of social motivation underneath it all? Speaker 2 (10:26): That's part of my job as a teacher, right? Speaker 1 (10:28): Yeah. Speaker 2 (10:28): So for instance, I directed Lord of the Flies back during the 2016 elections. And it's very much a show about what society are we going to have? Speaker 1 (10:38): How Speaker 2 (10:38): Do we choose who gets to be our leaders and what does that say about us? And I wouldn't be a good teacher if I didn't grab those teaching moments when they arrived and stop the rehearsal, sit down and talk about it. Speaker 1 (10:50): Yeah. You were talking about Xavier's, I mean, had this great theater program, St. Xavier, I should say, has had this great theater program for a long time. And I remember we went to a production of Sweeney Todd, in which afterwards we ran into the cast at ihop and I was literally starstruck. Speaker 2 (11:11): Yeah, you and our friend Beth were, you couldn't talk to them, if I remember correctly. You wrote a note on a napkin about how great they were and threw it at their table as you ran out the door and Speaker 1 (11:25): They ran away. Speaker 2 (11:26): You were too to a group of by. Yeah. And they still go to that very ihop, they have a lot of traditions at St x and one of them every single night of the production, there's a really specific restaurant in the city somewhere that they will go tonight's skyline night. But it's not just any skyline sky, it's really that skyline. And it's been that way forever. That's what I'm discovering about St X, is that it's really old. So if I can give you, Speaker 1 (11:52): It's like the oldest, Speaker 2 (11:53): It's got Speaker 1 (11:54): Some crazy, I can't remember, but it's one of the oldest high schools in the city or something, isn't it? Speaker 2 (12:00): I'm tempted to say the country, but this is a pretty old country. So they were, but let me give you it into some kind of context. We can Speaker 1 (12:08): Also just look this up too. Speaker 2 (12:10): I know the exact, it's 1831 is Speaker 1 (12:12): When it was founded. Okay, cool. Speaker 2 (12:14): But if you're like me, numbers don't mean much. I need some sort of landmark to understand when something is, so St. Xavier High School is older than a Christmas story by Charles Dickens. Just it was out about Speaker 1 (12:30): 20 years Speaker 2 (12:31): Before that got ridden. It's older than the New York Times. The other day for Memorial Day, they did a thing where all the students sat in silence and they read the names of every single student who died in a Speaker 1 (12:44): War from Speaker 2 (12:45): St. Xavier, and they had to start at the Civil War. And in my mind was just blown. I was like, how Speaker 1 (12:51): Old is this school? Yeah, when was Speaker 2 (12:54): The Civil War? I studied theater, Speaker 1 (12:59): Don't know these things. So Speaker 2 (13:01): That was really, and so with something that is that old, what I am learning is that you get an enormous number of traditions. And the idea of tweaking them at all is almost sacrilege because we've been doing this Speaker 1 (13:14): Since 1831, Speaker 2 (13:17): And we're not going to change, Speaker 1 (13:18): To put it in perspective, for us that's 50 years older than this institution as well, Speaker 2 (13:23): Other than the art museum. Speaker 1 (13:25): We were founded in 1881, and the doors didn't open. The building wasn't finished until 1886. So yeah, you're older than musical hall. You're older than most institutions in this city that we think of. So that's great. It's Speaker 2 (13:40): The first thing we did was when we decided to set up Cincinnati was Speaker 1 (13:43): Build high school. Tell me a little bit more about your classes on creativity and what those are about. Speaker 2 (13:52): Yeah, so now you're, you're asking about the crux of my life, actually, this is one of the big ways that I define myself as a person and that I exist in the world. And the more I learn about creativity, the more I realize about Speaker 1 (14:08): Myself and Speaker 2 (14:09): About how I have been working all these years. And I had never had words for it before, but when I start reading about descriptions of creative people and the way that they work and the things that they do, I'm like, ah, now it makes so Speaker 1 (14:20): Much more Speaker 2 (14:20): Sense. It's almost like reading a psychology textbook when I read these things. So I teach multiple courses on creativity. I teach the creative thinking and I teach something called the Creative Spirit Spoiler. They're really the same course at two different places, but it's taken from a wide variety of text about creativity. And the thrust of the class is that everyone has the ability to be creative. So the sort of creative building blocks that were inside Pablo Picasso, they're inside all of us. It's about how you arrange them. And I'm also really fascinated with the brain Speaker 1 (15:00): Just Speaker 2 (15:00): In general. And so learning about how you can harness the power of the brain to do something creative sort of on demand and to create a landscape where creativity can occur by design, that's really fascinating to me. And I'm finding that it is useful and helpful to people who feel stuck in their lives or feel stuck in their jobs or feel like they have insurmountable problems the way out is a creative solution. Speaker 1 (15:29): Yeah, no, that's interesting. I actually was talking about this on the show not too long ago with one of my former professors and talking about my experience going to the art academy and how one of the best things I got out of that experience was basically being forced to be creative on demand a lot. And especially in my early, the first year or so where it was rapid, alright, well you've got four projects to work on. And up to that point, I'd been able to spread out my creative output in that way where, well, I'm going to work on this thing and then something else will come up. And this was like, there's no time. You have to make something right now that really makes you start figuring out how you work and what your system is. I don't think it's the same for everybody, certainly, but I did figure out within that year, oh, these are the things I need. This is how I work and this is what I need to do that. Speaker 2 (16:26): And you are largely correct that it is not the same for everybody. That's one of the big lessons is that creative minds, I'm listening to something right now, are reading a book right now called Wire to Create, and they're like, yeah, the creative Mind is a real mess. And everybody's really different except what's kind of fascinating is there are these things that everyone can do Speaker 1 (16:52): To Speaker 2 (16:52): Create a space where creativity is more likely to occur. Speaker 1 (16:56): Okay. Speaker 2 (16:57): So to, if you are trying to have a creative thought, what you need to do is do a gently busy activity that does not absolutely focus your mind and will allow your mind to wander. So showering at this point in our lives, we know how to shower. We don't think about it. Our brain turns on autopilot, but we're also warm and comfortable, and there's no stimulus for us to look Speaker 1 (17:22): At. Speaker 2 (17:23): We're just staring at probably a white tile Speaker 1 (17:26): Wall or Speaker 2 (17:27): A curtain. And that they're discovering is the ideal space for the creative mind because the mind isn't focused on anything else. And it'll end. The process is called right brain roaming, but your right brain goes into your left brain and starts smashing facts together that don't necessarily belong together and creating original thoughts. Speaker 1 (17:49): That makes a lot of sense. I mean, in my own experiences, and I'm sure a lot of people have said like, oh, this was one of those shower moments. You hear that all the time of people saying like, oh, I was in the shower and I thought I was just thinking of this. And for me, other things are like another one that you hear about is washing dishes. Speaker 2 (18:06): Those are my two big ones. Washing dishes, shower, bike rides are huge for me. And dog walks are huge for, I was Speaker 1 (18:11): About to say, dog walks are my other one. I would say actually the only thing that probably keeps dog walks from being more productive for me in that way is that I use that time to also to listen to a lot of podcasts. So I do have something that I am actively sort of thinking about and is taking my attention in the way that a tile wall doesn't. Speaker 2 (18:32): Right. No. Yeah. And sometimes I agree and not doing anything I think is important. And it's something that we as a society are just really bad at. We always got to be doing something. Our TVs now travel with us in our pockets, and Speaker 1 (18:48): So the podcast as well, Speaker 2 (18:49): And forcing myself on the drive here, my instinct was to listen to an audio book and I said, you know what? Maybe I should just drive. Speaker 1 (18:58): Yeah, yeah. No, that's totally true. I think I'm totally guilty of that, of any downtime I fill with things, especially podcasts or my vice of things I listen to a lot. And it's probably a sense of, and I've actually, one of the things I've recognized in myself recently is that if I start to feel like Speaker 2 (19:20): I need Speaker 1 (19:22): To listen to something, it's somehow a duty or something, but I don't really want to, that's always like, what am I doing? Why am I keeping this thing? It's almost like another job or something. And I've just had to start being like, nah, I, I'm cutting this out. I don't need this thing. And I'm just holding onto it because out of some weird sense of duty or something. Speaker 2 (19:43): Well, you've always done that way more than I letting the listeners in here. Russell and I are friends outside of this Speaker 1 (19:49): Room. I was about to say, we probably should have. I feel like there have been hints of we are not just, we didn't just meet probably people probably had that sense. Speaker 2 (19:58): So Russell and I, old friends known each other since high school, lived together for a time being. And so I know a lot about him and he and I have really similar interests, and we listened to a lot of the same things, but I would abandon them way before you and I would talk to you and you're like, yeah, and you would almost be sad about it. You'd be like, yeah, I'm still listening to that. Speaker 1 (20:17): It's not good, but I'm still listening. Yeah, I know. And I'm trying to get better about that because it really, and I will hold on to stuff and I'll be like, it's just not the same. Speaker 1 (20:29): But yeah, I mean, when we are talking about the differences in people, what they need to be creative, one of the things, what I was thinking about the differences in me and say versus a lot of other artists is that for me, I have to know what a thing is about before I make it. I have to know what is this about? What am I talking about? What is the point? And a lot of artists don't have that thought. And there are a lot of people who are, say painters who can go into a studio and just be like, no, I just sit in front of a canvas and it's color and it's paint, and that just takes over. And that's the thing and that's what it's about. But for me, something usually has to really be about something. And that idea is what then tells me what kind of form the thing needs to take. Speaker 2 (21:21): I'm very similar as a director. I need to know what it is the show is saying thematically, and then I suit the show to support the theme. But you're right, there's an academic term for what you're talking about called thinking. It's one of the most ridiculous Speaker 1 (21:39): Academic terms I've ever heard, but that's what it's called, Speaker 2 (21:41): Where people think and tinker Speaker 1 (21:44): At Speaker 2 (21:44): The same time. And there's a lot of creatives, not just in the arts, but everywhere that are like, let's start on it and see what happens. And that happens to me to a degree midway through making something, I'm like, oh, this is what it should look like. It's not what I envisioned, but that's fine. But yeah, there are people that are discovering the meaning of what they're doing. Halfway through, I set out to design a better potato chip, but what I'm really designing is the thing that goes on guitar strings to keep the oil from That's a true story. Keep the oil from your hands, from destroying the string. And they figure it out halfway through making something else, and they're like, oh, look at that. Speaker 1 (22:29): And obviously I don't want to make it also sound like I'm so completely analytical or something. There's obviously a lot of intuition that's a part of that process, but for me it is that sort of the big question that gets me going. It's like that's the start of the engine for me. And then once I'm on that path, then it kicks more into just intuition and obviously, oh, okay, so then this looks like this and this feels like this and I know what this is going to be, and then I'm much more fluid, but I just need that thing to start me off. Speaker 2 (23:01): So what's kind of interesting about what I was just reading about this the other day, writers have a creative process that's different from everyone and scientists are discovering their process. The process for writers is similar to other writers, but not similar to everyone else who's working in the creative fields. And one of the big things is there's always some sort of incident in the real world Speaker 1 (23:24): That Speaker 2 (23:24): Starts a writer up and they spend a good deal of time at the beginning of their process writing and trying to figure out what it is they have to say about that incident. They're searching for that meaning and trying to take the intangible ephemeral experience and put it into concrete words. Speaker 1 (23:44): Yeah. Well, I think that's probably, I kind of think more people should do that, but I think that's, yeah, I probably am certainly not that driven. I feel like a lot of times it's sort of like I figure out what the thing's about to start and then halfway through I kind of realize it firms up a little bit. You know what I mean? Then I start to see, oh, okay, now I understand why I'm doing this thing Speaker 2 (24:10): Right now. I'd like to ask you a question. I'd like to flip the interview Speaker 1 (24:13): Table. Speaker 2 (24:14): What? So a play will have between six months to a full year for a director to prepare for it working at the super high end level, you get a full year, sometimes lower end, you get about six months. A movie takes years to plan out. And it's like, and a lot of this is research. What are we trying to say? How do we say it? How long does it take for a work of art? Let's stick typically here. So let's say a painting. What is the prep time and execution time? Speaker 1 (24:47): Oh gosh. I mean that would be really hard to say because again, there's so many different ways of working. I mean, obviously scale is going to affect that. It takes a lot longer to make a painting that is 10 foot wide by six feet tall than it takes to make a two foot by three foot painting. There's just a practical element of like, well, I'm covering more space, so that is going to take more time. And again, the different types of work, I mean, I know there are people who work meticulously in planning the image and that's how they work. They are creating this whole idea and sketching it out. And then they have this sort of very finished polished idea, maybe similar to the way, I don't know, a more traditional film or something might be conceived of is I have the idea in my head and now we're going to do the steps to make that thing happen. But then there's a lot of people who are open to the experimentation of painting and realize, oh, I thought this part was unfinished, but it's actually, it's the most interesting part of the painting. And what if I painted over all this stuff? That was the intentional part, and now this is the focus. I mean, there's lots of people who work like that. Speaker 2 (26:03): Yeah, Picasso was like that. They were discovering that he had many paintings underneath his paintings. Speaker 1 (26:11): So I mean, that's like a process, but it doesn't mean that's everybody's process. So I mean, there are paintings that happen probably in a day, and there are paintings that happen over months, and there are paintings that happen over years. Speaker 2 (26:23): So what I'm hearing from you is deadlines aren't a big part of the art world. Speaker 1 (26:26): Well, they are. If you have a show, I mean, that can be a part of it too, because there are people who have exhibitions planned and they have a gallery and they have like, okay, well you have to get this show up on this Speaker 2 (26:38): Day. Well, that's what I'm talking about. So what would be a reasonable amount of time to approach an artist and say, can you create something Speaker 1 (26:44): For Speaker 2 (26:45): This exhibition? Speaker 1 (26:46): I mean, again, it's all about scale. I mean, if you were doing something, I think probably if you said, oh, you have a month to do something, most artists would be like, if you're paying them well enough, would figure out what they could do in that time. Right? Yeah. I don't think there's really any way to say, oh, this is how long it takes. Because obviously you can do things at different sizes and scales and adapt the work. I mean, that's the way I work is sort of say, well, this is worth my time to do this. This is worth the money to do this. And Speaker 2 (27:14): No, I don't worry about budget and money too much as an artist. That's never been something that I've ever been the numbers really, they drag me down my whole process. But I love working within constraints. So we recently took a show to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and that has a ton of constraints associated with it. Where you're going to work is going to be the size of a cracker box. You get literally 30 minutes to set it up and tear it down, and then the rest of it needs to be your performance. And so working within those, plus you need to fly it across the ocean to Scotland, whatever you're building. So you're like, okay, so not set heavy. And working with those kind of constraints I find is a lot of fun because you're like, what can I make with a constraint of zero set, but still be interesting and tell a story and stuff like that? Speaker 1 (28:13): Well, and I think I am also repeating myself from a past episode, but I mentioned this I think in that same episode that I maybe mentioned earlier with my professor Gary Gaffney. I had a teacher at the academy who taught a class called Creative Processes. And one of the things I always took away from that class was that limitations actually help creativity flow. Speaker 2 (28:35): Yeah. That's something that I teach as well, that constraints enhance creativity. And I think it's because we live in the real world, and you never make anything without a constraint. Even if you are a super billionaire who has all the resources in the world, there's still going to be the constraint of say time where it's like, how much time can you devote to making this project? And even if it's just a hobby, how much time is your spouse going to give you in the garage to make this? How big is your garage? There's always a constraint. And I think that's something that people don't understand. There's really gross industry terms like blue sky solutioner where companies sit down and they say like, Speaker 1 (29:21): Alright, guys, Speaker 2 (29:22): No Speaker 1 (29:23): Constraints. Speaker 2 (29:24): Tell me what you're thinking. If you had one month to raise profits, what would you do? And those generally tend to produce really ridiculous, unattainable, Speaker 1 (29:37): Not helpful Speaker 2 (29:39): Ideas, whereas people who work within constraints and are used to that, that's where the true creative breakthroughs come from. Speaker 1 (29:48): Yeah. Well, I was thinking we could go look at a work of art right now, if you would, and it is actually by a St. Xavier grad, and I think it's a pretty creative thinking piece your face when I said that. Speaker 2 (30:07): I'll take credit for that. Speaker 1 (30:09): Yeah, let's hope. It was somebody I taught. Speaker 2 (30:11): Pretty Speaker 1 (30:11): Sure you didn't. He's older than your parents. So we were looking at this piece out on what we call the laboratory. Speaker 2 (30:37): Sure, that's a great word. Speaker 1 (30:41): I think we mostly use it because we have another balcony that we call the balcony, and so as to not confuse them, but it's sort of the area that wraps around the Great Hall on the second floor in his home to mostly the wolf collection and a lot of other decorative arts. And so we were looking at a piece by an artist named Paul Mariani called The Premonition. So you're not looking at a picture of it anymore. What do you remember about this piece? Speaker 2 (31:06): It was dark, scary, deeply rattling to your core where you felt like you were looking at something that went beyond. So because the imagery in it was almost abstract, it made no sense why all these dark images would be right next to each other. You definitely immediately understood that it was actually about what's inside a person and not necessarily about the outside world. Speaker 1 (31:35): Okay, well, let's go back a little bit sort of already into analysis of it. It's Speaker 2 (31:40): Where I live, Speaker 1 (31:41): But let's tell people what it is because they cannot see it. So first off, you called it a painting earlier and there is some paint on it, but that's probably giving people maybe a different idea of what this thing is because if you had to describe it in another way, what would you maybe call it? Speaker 2 (31:58): What instead of a painting? Yeah. Oh, no, it's like a stained glass window, but of horrific imagery. Speaker 1 (32:04): Yeah, it's this piece of, I think maybe multiple panes of glass. I'm not sure how many, if it has multiple layers or not. It feels like it does. It feels pretty like there's depth to it Speaker 2 (32:14): Maybe. Speaker 1 (32:16): But yeah, it's this light box that has, most of the images are in glass, and some of it is leaded in the way that stained glass is, and the imagery is that you've been describing. There's this sort of house on the far left side of it which has a window, and there's just these eyes peeking out of the house, which look very cartoony almost, but they're kind of also very sinister looking eyes. You don't think so? Speaker 2 (32:46): I didn't get the sinister near here. Let me see that picture. Speaker 1 (32:49): They read a sinister to me. Speaker 2 (32:50): No, they are, let me see, because I was thinking Speaker 1 (32:53): About the eyes. No, they're not Speaker 2 (32:56): Sinister. Speaker 1 (32:57): Okay. We disagree on the eyes. Speaker 2 (32:59): They're almost catlike, and I think that's where you're getting, but they are more of a neutral eye. It's somebody, to me, they're fearful eyes because whoever that person is hiding in the shadows and looking outside and not going outside, to me, they are afraid eyes and they're hiding in the shadows. Speaker 1 (33:20): I think your analysis of that is probably more keeping with what probably the artist intended and probably what they think about the piece too. I think why I read them as sinister is that kind of cat-like that they do feel cat-like, but that they're at the height of a human, so they feel sort of monstery. No, I hear you. But you're right that they're not in the way that if this were a Scooby-Doo villain, they're not interned, they're not tilted off, they're Speaker 2 (33:43): Not angry. And it's funny because they're kind of drawn neutrally or drawn, they're kind of however you make glass stuff. He's made them neutral eyes, but the fact that they are hiding a person in the shadows makes you think that person is afraid. Speaker 1 (34:01): And so there's, on the outside of this house, which is by the way, a really bright orange color, it has a red roof and a kind of California style roof, that kind of rolling tiles. And then outside, there's a pitchfork leaning against the house, which is also a really weird image with this shadow of the pitchfork cast onto the house. Then we have this landscape, which is actually most of the picture. If you really look at the real estate of this image, the house is a really small part of it, but it actually makes a really big impression. Speaker 2 (34:37): The vast majority of this picture is a hellish landscape that is completely barren with writhing snakes coming out of the ground. It looks like they go on for Speaker 1 (34:50): Infinity, but Speaker 2 (34:51): There's probably about Speaker 1 (34:52): 25 Speaker 2 (34:53): Of them in the picture, three volcanoes with Speaker 1 (34:58): Lava Speaker 2 (34:58): Running down them. And there is a bunch of smoke in the air, and it is a black sky with some red peeking through and way off in the distance is an unforgiving moon Speaker 1 (35:13): Or sun. I mean, who knows? Speaker 2 (35:15): It can't make it through all the pollution. Speaker 1 (35:17): Yeah, it's just a circle is so who knows what time of day this is. It is really, it is a really strange sky, and the sky to me appears to be mostly made of just sort of layers of glass that are, the color seems to be mixed into the glass, and so it's got that it doesn't appear to be painted on top of it. When people say stained glass, typically that means the glass is stained literally with color. So it's a clear glass that's colored, but this appears to be colored glass. The reason too, it's hard to know exactly what we're looking at is I took a picture here so we would know what all of this is made out of, because Paul Mariani works in glass, but he really is pretty experimental and will combine materials in ways that are not necessarily considered orthodox or he's very free in how he works with things. So this is glass, copper foil, lead, salter paint, graphite, silicone plywood frame and light box. So there's a lot of materials going on here, and it's kind of hard to know where one starts and one ends because he's painting on the glass, he's drawing on the glass. I think the shadow of the pitchfork might be the graphite as far as, I don't know. It's really hard to know. Speaker 2 (36:42): No, but looking at that shadow, it looked, yeah, you're probably right. Speaker 1 (36:45): That's kind of what I've assumed. But who knows? I mean, he could be using graphite in other places. It's really a really strange image. Speaker 2 (36:55): It's an unsettling image. I had a visceral reaction to it when I first saw it, which drew me to it. I don't know. I've been saying negative things about it, but I think it's probably a phenomenal piece of art. I love it and sort of wish it was in my own home, but it is undeniably upsetting. Speaker 1 (37:16): Well, and that's totally what the artist intended, and I'll try to read this from the label. I think this gives a little bit of insight into where the artist was coming from. But it says this piece was made in 1981, and it kind of points out that this was made around the time of the Cold War and the threat of nuclear. And you're shaking your head, I don't buy it. Speaker 2 (37:44): No, I didn't buy any of that. Speaker 1 (37:46): Why not? Speaker 2 (37:46): Well, so I have two reactions to it, and I think for this work of art to still be, so I didn't know any of that when I looked at it, right. But I still had a big reaction to it. Totally. Which means all that stuff might have been accurate at the time, but it is now. There's something, the more interesting thing is the universal elements of the work of art to me. So I have two reactions to this. One is an objective one. The other is subjective. So objectively it's about fear. The person is afraid to go outside because outside is hellish. And so sort of objectively that resonates with me as it's probably about, if I were to break this down, I would say it's probably about the parts of ourselves that we're afraid to explore, be it your sexuality, or that you are just a jerk and you're afraid to do some sort of introspection about it. Speaker 2 (38:51): But whatever it is about yourself that you're not willing to admit exists that's going on. And I get that from the pitchfork, which implies that somebody is supposed to be outside in this working. You are supposed to be outside tilling this soil writhing with snakes, but he's too afraid to do it, or the person is too afraid to do it. They're going to stay inside the house. And so it is about the fear of the darkness keeping you from doing what you have to do. That is my objective analysis. Subjectively for me, I just finished reading a book called The Demon Next Door, which I never read these. It's a true crime story, and it is the true story of a serial killer. And that was equally hard for me as looking at this painting, was to hear about the things that this person did. And it's a part of human beings that I wish didn't exist and that I hope don't exist inside me, but I'm afraid that they do. And even in talking about the book with other people, I'm almost afraid to explore the possibility that the things that this person did exist inside all of us. Speaker 1 (40:12): Well, I think also when you started shaking your head about the Cold War stuff is I think probably Paul, we actually brought Paul here for a lecture not too long ago, and I can't remember if he did discuss the literal what inspired this piece. And he probably even mentioned it then. He probably has talked about that possibly. I can't remember. But I think what you're picking up in is that this is a piece that does not live in 1981. There's nothing in here that really ties it to a time or a place. And because it is so general, even I described that house as very cartoonish, it feels very symbolic. And I think that's why you're connecting it with all a much more psychological reading of it, which I think is fair. Maybe the artist was inspired by the Cold War, but that's not really what we get here, is it? And I don't think a lot of people who walk up to this piece will really come away going like, oh, Speaker 2 (41:15): Clearly Speaker 1 (41:15): This is about the Cold War. No, this is the 1980s all over. No, no. Yeah. There's nothing in it that connects it to that other than the fact that that's when it was made. But when you look at what the artist has made that's not there, Speaker 1 (41:28): And this is a tendency of a museum, is to take the artist's word for a lot of times and Well, that's what the artist said. That's what the artist intended. But you also just look at the thing. The thing is doing something else. And so I think you're right to sort of go like, nah, that's not that. This is something about something deeper than that. And maybe that fear, maybe the fear he felt in that moment, that same fear you're describing of afraid to go outside, afraid of the darkness in people. That's all there. If we're talking about the Cold War, that's still relevant, but it's like he's selling it short almost, or we're selling it. Short Speaker 2 (42:08): Intent is really useful in trying to understand where the artist was coming from. To me, it almost doesn't matter. So as a teacher, I always have to grade things. And I often, whether I'm dealing with college students or high school students, I often have to tell the students what they've just said when they made a work. I am like, oh, well, what you said was X, Y, and Z. And they're like, oh, man, what I intended to say was A, B, and C. And it kind of almost doesn't matter what they intended to say, because the work stands on its own. And your interpretation of it or what the work is saying trumps what inspired the work. Speaker 1 (42:51): And I think about that a lot. When I think about the just messages and media and things that are say, homophobic or misogynistic or racist that are Speaker 2 (43:03): There. Speaker 1 (43:06): You can't take that away from them. And maybe the people making those things were like, well, I didn't intend it. I was just living at the time, and that's what I did. But it's like, yeah, but you did. That's in there. And I think that there's a lot of those messages and things that people say in media and art that are not intentional, but they're just as powerful even if they're unintentional. Speaker 2 (43:33): So I have a question for you. Speaker 1 (43:34): Sure. Speaker 2 (43:35): Once again, I'm going to flip the tables. Oh man, Speaker 1 (43:38): You want to play Terry Gross. Now Speaker 2 (43:41): Why glass? Speaker 1 (43:44): I'm not sure in this instance, other than the fact that he had a history of working with glass, he was a really important figure in creating sort of this art glass movement along with a lot of other artists. But so maybe part of it is just that's what he was used to working with at the time. But I would say for this piece, how it uses glass well is in the glow, especially in the depth that creates in the sky, I think would be a hard thing to create in another way, I think the glass in this instance helps create this sort of otherworldly feeling. One of the things that really is extra powerful at maybe is making the blacks even blacker. Usually the base of black is compared to white paint or something, the whitest white of a page, which is being illuminated by a light in the gallery or something. Here we go from literally something glowing with the sun to this really deep, dark black sky, and that wouldn't be possible with any other medium. So Speaker 2 (44:58): I agree with everything you just said, and thank you. I hadn't thought of any of that, but I had one more thing. So mine goes right back into the meaning of it. It doesn't exist. As soon as the light is off, as powerful and unsettling as it is, it comes and it goes very quickly, which I think goes back to my personal interpretation, not the subjective of my objective interpretation of this is about the inside of a human being, or that will just be a flash of this. And then without any warning at all, the ground is just filled with snakes. Speaker 1 (45:33): Well, that's interesting. Yeah. This is not a piece that I don't think I've ever seen it turned off necessarily. I mean, I'm sure if I just walked through that gallery at the right time, I would be able to see it. So I think it does probably almost cease to exist without the light on. I don't think it would look like much of anything. I'm pretty sure this image would almost Speaker 2 (45:52): Disappear. That's one of the notable things about stained glass windows in general, right at night, they almost don't exist. And then suddenly the sun comes up and you're like, my goodness, this has been here the whole time. Speaker 1 (46:03): You have to be in the right place at the right time to kind of experience it. And it also, that made me think of almost the way you described it made me think of it in kind of theatrical terms too, of the idea of turning it on and presenting it and having a duration of this thing is on now. This thing is off now, which is another thing that, I don't know if that's really a part of it, but it just becomes a part of anything that has a light source really, I guess. So, yeah, again, I don't know how much that was really considered when you mentioned the volcanoes, one of the things that makes me kind of laugh about them kind of funny, kind of weird, it adds to the just general strangeness and the dream quality of this piece is that I think when you first look at it, you describe them as volcanoes because they feel like that. But then Speaker 2 (46:51): When you really Speaker 1 (46:51): Look at them in terms of how they are scaled with the snakes, Speaker 2 (46:57): They Speaker 1 (46:57): Wouldn't be in the relationship to the house. They wouldn't be that big, Speaker 2 (47:01): Actually. Speaker 1 (47:02): So it would just be like three little hills almost. So it's a really strange thing where they can be both three little hills and three giant volcanoes in the background all at once. It Speaker 2 (47:11): Goes right back into that abstractness of it that I was talking about, that you want to place it inside of a human instead of some sort of realistic portrayal of anything in the outer Speaker 1 (47:22): World. Well, it feels so dreamlike to me in the way a real actual dream feels and not the way like, oh, there's a marketed chicken or something. A lot of people render dreams Speaker 2 (47:36): Is absolutely over the top. No, absolute. You're like, oh, there were volcanoes, but they weren't really volcanoes. Speaker 1 (47:40): They were Speaker 2 (47:40): Little hills. And I was supposed to work outside, but there were snakes Speaker 1 (47:46): Coming out of the ground. Speaker 2 (47:47): Yeah, yeah. It's very dreamlike. Good call. Speaker 1 (47:49): And even the way the house doesn't quite fit with the rest of the landscape, well, there's this house, but it was almost like a cartoon house. You can almost hear your coworker describing this to you and thinking you're like, what are they on about? Speaker 2 (48:06): And it's funny because when you describe it, I'm sorry that everyone can't see this right now because describing it doesn't Speaker 1 (48:12): Bring home Speaker 2 (48:13): The unsettling nature of it. Speaker 1 (48:16): It's also, I think this is another, obviously this is sort of our mo at a museum of like, you should see art in person. But I also think this is a piece that even now, because it's too noisy out there to really record, we're looking at a picture of it. And I feel like looking at an image of this does not also do it justice, because seeing it in person and the sort of way the light is moving through, it is an experience in itself. And I think that's true of all art, but it is especially true of this piece. Yeah, I agree. Well, did you have any other thoughts, Nathan? Speaker 2 (48:52): Just that I had a really delightful afternoon. Speaker 1 (48:54): Oh, great. Yeah. Thanks for having me. Well, thank you for joining me. Speaker 1 (49:04): Thank you for listening to Art Palace. We hope you'll be inspired to come visit the Cincinnati Art Museum and have your own conversations about the art. General. Admission to the museum is always free, and we also offer free parking special exhibitions on view right now are Paris 1900, city of Entertainment Art Academy of Cincinnati at 150, a celebration in drawings and prints and GI Leia. Join us on Sunday, April 14th at 3:00 PM for a free gallery experience featuring dance, inspired by art. We'll be joined by poems to explore the museum's collection through movement. For program reservations and more information, visit cincinnati art museum.org. You can follow the museum on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and also join our Art Palace Facebook group. Our theme song is Al by Lau, and as always, if you enjoyed what you heard today, why not write us a nice review? I'm Russell Iig, and this has been Art Palace produced by the Cincinnati Art Museum.