Janelle and Andrea love art--especially mixed meda. They live within it, they travel to see it and it makes them feel free and alive. From pussy willow branch curtain rods to birthing chairs and Indonesian doors to dramatic outdoor murals, they give permission to love what you love, and create with wild abandon. So many nods! Everything, Everywhere All at Once, Ann LaMott, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tracey Barnes, Meow Wolf, James Turrel, Christo, Shakespeare’s Ophelia, Meow Wolf, Clyfford Still, Denver Art Museum, Waldorf Schools, Bobbi MacGee Lopez, Boombox Design, ARTMA. You’ll hear:
-Why doll-faces put a cap on creativity
-How art can be a lived experience
-Why Andrea thinks art is the meaning of life
-Weird things that happened at the MCA Denver
-Good reasons to start painting a mural in your house
TRANSCRIPT:
Hi, Janelle.
Hey, Andrea.
Today we're talking about art, one of my favorite things ever.
Mine too.
I'll start with a little nod to spirit crowns Sophie Howell who makes these spirit crowns, which really just like never cease to amaze me. so I have a mini spirit crown. I call it a spirit crown, but it is definitely a lower version that I got at a clothing swap decade ago, probably.
It's like been in my costume bin for a long time. you know, it's like little roses with some gold chains on like a green wire. It's pretty flimsy, but it's lasted because it's just like, it can't be ruined very easily. So I used it on Mother's Day, like, a couple years ago. , brought it for my mother in law to wear. And I just recently brought it to choir because I had this great idea where I'm just gonna like, at each choir practice, I'm just gonna give someone the spirit crown. You know, for something they did or some solo they sang or recently my friend Deborah, I was like having a really emotional night at choir and I hardly have ever talked to Deborah.
I mean, I've talked to her, but like very minimally and just afterwards she came up to me and she's like, it just seems like you need a hug. She just gave me this big hug and I like started falling in her arms. And
the gray hair. Yes! Totally.
so this time I'm awarding the spirit crown to Deborah. Thank you so much.
at each practice, she'll pass it on to someone new for something you do. I love that. That's reminding me of 3 to 5 Club, with the cape.
right! it's the same idea! Yeah. Yes, I think maybe subconsciously I was channeling that. Remember that cape?
You introduced that cape, right? As a Burning Man thing. That was amazing.
Adding a little Burning Man flavor to business, straight business mastermind.
Yeah, and a nod to Three to Five Club, because really that is where Janelle and I bonded, even though we're not part of that anymore.
Okay. Art.
Heart to me is I'm telling you, it's like the meaning of life, because creation is the meaning of
Mic drop, everyone.
It's true! making something, that is, to me, it's the most important thing. You can be creating anything. Knitting a sweater, making a baby, building a house, offering a massage, the origin of art has always given me hope, because it's self expression, and that is my highest mission, is to help people self express. This is why I can go into a museum where I don't even like the artist and be perfectly happy. I applaud them for putting themselves out there, being vulnerable. yeah, I just like constantly want to surround myself with different forms of arts. And you consider yourself an artist, Absolutely. Yeah. Cause I'm a writer do lots of different pieces of art, but first we're going to take you down the road of. How we've discovered art and what it means to
I love art too. it's a defining part of my existence and I don't consider myself an artist.
But you are.
I am, but I also do consider myself a patron of the arts. So there's also that piece too. so there's a couple of inspirations that have happened for me was I haven't for a few years, but for a long time I was in, recurring member of both the dam, the Denver Art Museum, and the MCA, which is the Denver's Museum of Contemporary Art.
And at the dam, this is going back 15, maybe even 20 years, they used to have a contemporary art, committee wing, I'm not even sure what it was. But as a group, you could pay an extra 50. you get invited to things that this that the contemporary wing was doing. And one of the things that they offered were these salons where you could go to people's homes in Denver, who had incredible contemporary art collections.
So as you can imagine, they also probably had incredible homes. But I got to see these collections inside a home instead of inside a museum.
Totally
Totally different. I loved this so much. It was one of my favorite things to do in Denver for years.
I would have loved that.
And it turns out not only did I love it, but these visits had a huge impact on me because I look around my home and I now have a home filled with contemporary art. that people come and visit to see and to in and be inspired by.
Just like I was, and I was like, Oh, yeah, it's like living amongst art I didn't even know I had the dream for that until I had come into the reality of it.
Yeah, that's amazing. I'm like, why weren't we friends then? living so close to each other.
with someone I knew! Like, so unfair. But like, I'm, yeah, so glad that we came together. But that, yeah, that is amazing. And I think seeing art in someone's home also. In a different context, especially not in a museum, it's just a whole different thing.
It makes it accessible, in the way that even for all these fancy homes and fancy art, no one had a Picasso. To say that that's anything wrong with that, but it was a lot of money to spend on art, but it wasn't in these different homes. It was a way that it was like, didn't have to be right.
Like I have a lot of art in my home that I bought when I was traveling that, you know, cost.
10? 20.
but it showed that art could like elevate and lift and inspire. And it wasn't, it wasn't relegated to like, Oh, a special trip outside of the house. Yeah.
That's important. it feels like an important part of art is something you first mentioned. So many of my quotes go back to you. This one apparently was from Finland on letting go of form, which applies to seriously everything now. All the time. When I first went to the Clifford Still Museum here in Denver, I loved the paintings because they had no title.
They're all open to interpretation, right? Which at first, it bothered me because I love titling things like one of my favorite things to do. But when things do have a title, then you default to that image or that frame or that idea or topic. And I love the idea that like, and I think it probably my friend Amanda said this to me originally, she's like, my business is to do the art.
Well, people think of it and how they interpret it is their business. Like it's totally different. It's on two different sides. And I think Clifford still obviously had the same idea. And not surprisingly, this somehow can relate back to the Waldorf school, which I know I've mentioned many times on this podcast, where they don't allow, uh, mostly kids at this point, like under 10, To have any kind of character, or media on their lunchboxes on their t shirts, right?
So no Dora, no Spongebob. Whoa! That is not allowed. you know, you're supposed to have,
No advertising, that's actually like, no commodification. is a Burning Man principle. side note here, if you go to Burning Man and you're driving an RV that says Cruise America, you're supposed to, we tape over Cruise America. Even though everyone knows these are Cruise Americas.
But the idea is you're not promoting brands when you're at Burning Man.
Any brand of a car, you mean, just like,
Anything. Yeah, any I did not know that either. so yeah, this was a huge drawing point for me because I was like, Oh, because they really say, you know, please keep TV to a minimum. I mean, at the Shining Mountain Waldorf School in Boulder, you have to sign a contract saying you're not gonna show your Children any TV, which is too extreme for me.
But in general, you know, they're trying to cut down on that. And the idea is that as a kindergartner, my daughter made a doll. all the kids made their own little doll, They sewed them together and they had help and they called them their little ones and none of them had faces.
And that's true of all the wooden figures and all the puppets and all the shows at Waldorf too. And the idea is that when you put a face on a doll, then there's a limit on who they can be. but if there's no face, then it's all up to the children's imagination. And that's why there's no Dora, no character, or no Frozen, no Elsa.
Right, so there's no ceiling. So I've really been taught to let go of form, I mean, since the beginning of Waldorf, when I started sending my child there like 10 years ago. I mean, that just feels like it's very much a part of art is, is letting go of that form and just, it can be anything you want it to be. think too, I want to talk about mundanity because I had this beer with of my husband's friends, Brent, a very long time ago when we decided that creation was the meaning of life. And it was really weird because Brent and I had never gone out together, but like Boudreaux was like out of town and like we were like pushed together to have a drink.
We're like, Hi. Hi. It was like a little bit awkward at first. And then we ended up having the best time and he was like, Oh, he's like, you don't like the mundane. And I'm just like, no, I don't want something that's like been reproduced. But I had a really important aha moment then, because I also realized later after I said, no, nothing mundane.
I don't want a piece of art from bed, bath and beyond, for example. But then I, at some point got over that because I was like, you know what, if something in bed, Beth and beyond speaks to me and I love it and I want to look at it every day, why can't I put it in my living often that's not what I'm attracted to, but sometimes, sometimes the TJ Maxx thing is like, yep, love that.
That's what I want in my living room. So I'm just trying to like, release the judgment there,
So one thing that I want to talk about, in terms of about art itself, and you're talking about how Clifford still intentionally. Didn't put titles on them. Is that at the M. C. A. I took a class, called. Art fitness by Adam Lerner. Hi, Adam, the former director of the M. C. A. And this is many, many years ago, and it was like a three part.
Series where we actually went to, the MCA for one of the days. And then we went to two other galleries and he would walk us around and he would have us look at the art, it guide us on how to critically think about the art without saying, do we like this or do we not like this?
It wasn't about whether we liked it or not. It was, how did we feel? What did we notice? What could we take in? you notice the size of the painting? What are the size? If it was, if it was a very small, was it a painting that was like, you know, the size of your hand? Or was it something that was like bigger than you were?
If it was, if it was a painting or a sculpture, but what did size mean? What are the colors mean? What are the textures? What do they mean to me? Not as they mean in my mind. how do they make me feel? what does that evoke in me? he was teaching us how to look at the art through different questions that when we got to the underlying meaning, like something new totally revealed itself, It wasn't about did I like it or not like it, that actually was like the least interesting question we could ask. Oh, I like that part. The least interesting. You can ask is if you like it or don't like it. Cause it just shuts
Just shuts down. Yeah, then you like just you move on instead of like going in going standing really close to it. Standing far back from it, like seeing it in context to the room that it's in. What was the error? What were the materials? really looking at the piece of art through a critical eye.
and walking away and being able to describe the art, not saying I liked it or didn't like it.
And I think this is a great way to look at life, All things in life. There's a quote by Natalie Goldberg, in one of like my Bibles of life, the long quiet highway, where she really said she got to a point when she was learning about Buddhism, where she was like, wow, can we just not judge something?
Like, can we just hold it up, turn it around? put it on its side, put it on our head just examine it and not make a judgment right away. And that just opens your mind to so many more possibilities. So, and I think I see you doing that in life, you know, you inspire me to do it too.
And it's, it's a, it's a challenge because the world wants us to judge. it's definitely inspiring us and like pushing us to do that. But I really see you just do that very infrequently. Judge or like make an immediate, opinion on something. you're just like, well, I felt this way.
Or you're pointing out something about how you felt or the experience rather than, nope, not for me.
And I will also say learned skill
Takes
Takes time when I first met my Ex husband, was he was like is there something else besides good happy like and dislike that was the general idea the general idea again, for many reasons, he was the first to teach me something, in many ways of like, no, think differently.
It doesn't matter, like he's like, I don't care if you like it or dislike it. What else is there? Dig deeper. The other thing. so, and I, so I'm pointing that out because I appreciate and receive your compliment. And I wasn't always, I wasn't born that way.
Yeah, it was a learned skill. Got it. So how did your relationship with art begin? Like, with pieces of art?
So, my relationship with art began, that I can like, concretely remember, is, I was at an, an ARTMA event, and it's stands for Art for Morgan Adams, it's a non profit art auction, to raise money for children's cancer research, and the founder was a friend, and a photographer, and his best friend was a friend and artist, I knew, the family, and I was supporting them.
And yet the impact on me was huge. I was 25 when I first went and I got totally sucked in to the auctioneer. Have you ever been in the presence of an auctioneer?
once or twice.
listening to them talk. I was just like, uh, mesmerized. Yeah. And I was just like, go. I was like, started raising my hand.
And I was like, yes, yes. And in the end, that first art month I ended up winning. My first, yeah, my first piece of art because mine was the last hand raised for this particular piece of art that I was bidding on . And it was 500. And I was like, okay. And I woke up in the middle of the night later on.
And I was like, what did I just do? Like, that was so much money. And yet. I still have that piece and I have continued to buy original art ever since then. And in fact, that piece of art was a mixed media tree of life and it is currently in the living room of the goddess temple right now.
And that was my first relationship with it and then it ended up becoming buying art on my trips and travels became like part of the experience of my trips.
Yeah, that really resonates with me, too. what I want to note there that I heard is just like, you're like, wait, I'm gonna spend five hundred dollars on this thing that's gonna hang on the wall? And like, usually you spend five hundred dollars on something else,
Right. Even then, to be honest, 500 was a lot. At the time, like, that was also a high. If I had been at 100, it would've been like, okay. Yeah. But I had gone above my normal budget. On, on many levels.
Yeah, and so I think that that is, it's just interesting how we have just perceptions about how much things should cost, So for me, you know, when I was backpacking with my friend Nicole from Long Island, across Europe, I bought a lot of prints and paintings like stuff that I could just roll up and put in my backpack and it was, it was cheap. First, I just bought a print it was Ophelia in the water from Shakespeare. and that was probably like the first thing that I was like, Oh, that looks like a piece of art. It was just a print, but it was something that was more artsy. I still have that up in my house today.
Like it's so representative for me. And then got this piece in Greece, just at a random street market in black and white. I still have that today. I adore it. And then I found this, artist, Christine Pelequin in my twenties, I found her in Florida when I was visiting my parents.
And then I, yeah, I went on her website and I was like 600. there's no way I can do that, and I didn't buy it, and I so always wished that I would have. But I, like, couldn't do it. Like, you were like, and you did it anyway, I mean, you did it, and, yeah, and I, so I think there was, like, this thing, I was like, oh, afraid to love that, or afraid to spend money on it, like it was the wrong thing to spend money on, So I had to kind of get over that hump,
Right, there's a value, like, somehow, like, I don't know what your parents were with it, but like, oh, like, that is not the thing you're supposed to spend money on.
pretty much. I think there was something in me, and so I didn't for a long time. But I think that eventually that helped me get over this thing where I was like, Oh, art gives me permission to love what I
You said permission. I
I said permission. And I think it is this like combination of elements that helps me understand the freedom of what could be put together to build something completely different, Whereas before I was like, Oh, no, things are in buckets, they're in categories. Transcribed This goes with this, and this goes with this, and you can't mix them up. there was some kind of structure and order I liked to that, but I've always been attracted to mixed media, like newspaper and fabric and typewritten pages and coins and feathers and like, seeing how this is just kind of a, like a reflection of my whole life, like mixing the mundane with the magic and the trivial with the tragic.
And this, in a sense, helped me let go of form. Do you like mixed media too?
I learned on this episode, like, listening to this, listening to you, that, um, yeah, I love mixed media collages, different
textures. Yes, collages. Like, newspaper, like old things. That's always what attracts me. And because there's texture.
it's the texture that I think I'm really drawn to. Are
I love that too. I just, and I think there, it's also just like such an imitation of life because mixing stuff up Ann Lamott
She talks about just the finest and truest thing is that all truth, all life is a paradox. It's filled simultaneously with heartbreaking sweetness and beauty, desperate poverty, floods and babies and acne and Mozart all swirled together. I think that's really, you know, how I believe art is an imitation of life because that is what life is at any given moment.
It's everything swirled together, and you think that's not how it works, because Hollywood shows it a particular
Except in the movie. Everything, everywhere, all at once.
Oh, good one. Good reference. did you love that movie?
I really liked it, and I told you to watch it, and then you're like, oh no, not for me. I would want to watch it again, but yeah.
yeah, I watched it. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. You didn't love it. No. Okay. So living amongst art. So now tell me about your home.
Where we're at right now.
Which I also call the goddess temple so what I live in is I live in one half of a of a large duplex Memphis lives on the other side. We bought this place as a fix and flip project back in 2021. And at the time it was considered one structure. It was a zoned commercially and it was an architect's office.
all the floors were connected. And we bought it to convert into two residential places and the plan was to sell it. And then the plan was to move into one side. And then we get the plan ends up being that we got divorced and I moved into the other side. but it was a major project. And I'm someone that I would say, if you give me a blank canvas, I'm like, that is so overwhelming.
Scary. Yeah. Yeah. So much, so much. But if you give me like a canvas with like, paint these three colors and these three lines I can be like, Oh, this, this line should be thicker. I want this color over here. Like I can like work with So I remember walking through this house when it was under construction, like they just bought it.
And I was like, Oh my god, I was so overwhelmed. there's so many walls to put up in the in the because they brought it down to the studs. There had to be like floors that needed to be poured with concrete. it was such a blank slate. and I could not see the vision.
It's a hundred plus year old house and there was just so much, but Memphis and Boo Box, who are the GCs, on the project and boombox designed is absolutely incredible. She's just like a walking piece of art and they just saw inspiration and possibilities in every room. So the house itself became the art project.
Boombox and her team recycled the wood from within these hundred year old house and converted it into art, there's like a, like a mural, above the fireplace on Memphis's side all it is is the studs of wood from the house, right? And it looks super beautiful. she removed plaster from beams and kept them exposed because the wood itself is so beautiful.
The fireplace was custom designed by friends of ours. There are murals and there's lots and lots of LEDs and laser cut panels and custom barn doors that are designed by local artists. like, when I moved into it, it was already a piece of art. Like, I didn't, I wasn't a decision maker in any of that, what I just described, right?
Like, that was what was, like, we were going to sell the house, and these were all the things that the house was coming with, So I already got to move into a house that already had the bones of art. And then I got to fill it with art from around the world that I had bought. in my living room, which takes up an entire wall is a, triptych, a big door. That's over 11 feet tall and seven feet wide. and there's , two windows on either side of it. And they're teal and they're like several hundred years old. Memphis and I bought these in Indonesia. big art was inspired by Memphis. I had always bought things on my travels that I could pack in a suitcase or my backpack.
And he brought customs brokers into my world, where big pieces took months to ship across the world. But they're also incredibly defining of a space, these Indonesian doors, and we'll put a picture on Instagram if anyone wants to see them. Yeah, they impact the energy of the house. they transport me into another time into another country. They're so big. They're so immersive, like, I can be swallowed up by them. But they also provide so much color and vibrancy that the feeling of them. In this, like the story of me finding them and then bringing them here is its own piece of like, wow, I really did that. And then the other piece is that there's a feeling of,
like, you're the things that when everyone walks in, they're like, Whoa, they set the inspiration and impact. Of the energy of the entire house, Because everyone's like, where did you get these? How did you get these? We had to cut holes in the ceiling to put them in because they're taller than the ceiling.
what they evoke in all of us is a feeling of travel because they're clearly not from this country. Yeah.
in your old house.
and then I also love supporting local artists and art that they make the world a more interesting place and a beautiful place. And so the impact for me and living at how in a house full of art by local artists is that I feel like I'm living within creative energy. that is inspiring to me.
It's inspiring to others when they move in. And you know, there's a lot of beige and white houses out there, , and walking into my house, people are reminded that they can be big fully expressed with color, with whatever they want. It doesn't have to look like everything else. And it doesn't have to look like what's on the TV shows.
Yeah, I don't think I've ever heard you describe it that way. people can feel free to express in all their color, in all their shine, in all their sparkle,
Yeah, I mean, I used to be really afraid of putting, like, nail holes in the wall because I was like, oh, gosh. and now it's like, oh, no, like, that can be Someone can, just can, can fix that. Oh,
tell me about the mural that I just saw this
my gosh. there is a piece of art that is live and in the making, So, in our backyard, we have Two car garage in Memphis does, and it's connected. It's one huge four car garage. It's in the back of this duplex. And so it's a massive wall frames the backyard.
That can be seen from inside the house very
right, every window on the back of the house, you're looking out on this wall. And, , Memphis and I hired a muralist.
Bobbie McGee Lopez to create a mural that represents the energies of each side of the duplex that he and I are embodying or bringing in. And this is something that Memphis and I do really well together. This is the second mural that we've created. Like it's our art that in our vision that an artist has translated.
It's so cool. It's gonna take Bobby about three weeks. He's like a week in to painting it and it's like So much color. And there is like, my side is representing the feminine and this like bringing spirit into form. And there's organic, there's lots of flowers and it's greens and it's gold and it teals and it's tied into the colors of the doors that I just spoke about.
So when you're sitting in the living room and the teal couch, you see the teal doors and then you can look out and you see this teal, garden on the wall. It is, really exciting and the feeling that I have now that it's under some color on it is that when I'm sitting inside my house and I'm looking out, is that he has brought the outside inside.
This mural is really changing how I feel inside the house.
That's beautiful. and you've essentially created a room in the back of the house. Yes. You've extended the house.
And then in every window, then, is a frame for a piece of art.
Even right now I can see it. I can see it out the window.
that is framing that piece of the mural. Yeah.
Wow. I just want like brave hearts to know like this is, this is possible too. they're expensive muralists and they're less expensive muralists. And you actually can paint something on your wall. It doesn't have to be, it doesn't have to be like professional either.
have to hire someone. You can just do it yourself. I actually saw someone on Instagram, just like, with their kids, were home and sick, and they just did it themselves.
Yeah, and this is perfect, like, this brings me to the art living in, amongst art in my house, because about, gosh, I don't know. 10 years ago, we just decided to start painting and drawing on a mural on a wall in our house like in the living room. I mean, we just started doing it and at first there was no theme My daughter would draw on it, and then I would do something, and then Boudreaux would start painting, and then there was kind of a theme, and then we created this big swirl, and it was just so amazing for people to come in and be like, Whoa, what are you doing on the wall? Like, I was just like, no, it's just an open palette, like, you can draw something, here's some paint.
Open canvas. Like, talk about permission. Oh my, right? I kind of forgot about that. Like, I don't even think about it now because it's, it's not, it doesn't look like that anymore. I mean, we, we painted over it, and the piano is there now. But yeah, it's the ultimate permission that is so off limits typically for a child.
And then my daughter wanted to paint half of the wall in her bedroom and I'm like, why not? So she just painted a bunch of flowers in there and let herself get all dirty. And it was amazing. So in my house, it's a much smaller scale, which totally makes sense. to know in Memphis are both like incredibly tall people.
Memphis is like a big guy. Boudreau and myself and my daughter are Hobbity at best. We really are. Our house is tiny and we're kind of small people. I remember when someone super tall came in the house, it's like, um, maybe like duck in the doorways. yeah, but in a similar way, I have a lot of pieces in my house that kind of feels like my shrine or my altar. I have a lot of just little touches here and there, right? So I have my birthing chair that I bought that someone carved that's a hundred years old, and I birthed my daughter in her birthing chair, you know, I got it at, you know, a thrift shop in Athmar Park. I have these pussy willow branches that I found at the Friday store.
If anybody knows what that is, do you know what the Friday store is? No, I was thinking of the Tuesday store. I don't know. Oh, Tuesday morning. No. Yeah. Well, the Friday store is like this discount store that is in Arvada. That's no longer exists because left during COVID. it's like a convenience store with cheap organic food in it.
It's like this size of this bedroom. And they just had these, beautiful twisted pussy willow branches. leaning against the wall. And I'm like, Hey, are those for sale? And they're like, Yeah, I guess so. How about five bucks? So I use this as my curtain rods. and then I have doorknobs on the wall that my mom created for me, which I've probably talked about before.
These are something you'd probably think you could find like in Marshalls or TJ Maxx because they look like a perfectly upcycled piece. and my mom made them out of, you know, my grandma's, house doorknob, our farm doorknob, our old shed doorknob, and so she put it together with so much meaning. And then I have an entire wall mod podged with book pages that took me like four years to make, and I just slowly chipped away at it.
the reason why it took so long is because you were intentional about the pages. It is.
yeah, I didn't just pull some out. Like, yeah, I was intentional about the pages. there's Little House on the Prairie, there's Island of Blue Dolphins, Alice in Wonderland, Little Women, some Shakespeare, and toward the end I got a little bit more careless, but like, and then there's a poetry book from college, and so one whole wall is just all book pages. let's see, what else? I mean, I have a lot of little pieces from different countries. So from Africa, I have a switch plate that's covered with stamps from the Middle East, postage stamps. And then one of my favorite things that I even forget about now is, is the chandelier that hangs about in my kitchen.
Yeah, it is my favorite thing ever. when I saw this for the first time, I felt like, oh, I've been preparing for this my entire life. My entire life I've been collecting shells and rings and rocks and sticks and beads and bits of newspaper and, jewels that I would just kind of put away and be like, Oh, I want to keep that, but I don't know what to do with it.
And then I found this amazing artist, Tracy Barnes, who puts all of this stuff into a chandelier at my friend Gwen Pilara's house.
So she put this all together. It has all these, like the first ring I ever had, my grandma's jewelry, something my husband gave me on our wedding day. little newspaper like cutouts stuck onto a piece. I mean, turquoise. And so her husband's an electrician. He puts it all together. He adds the lights.
And then she got this piece of wood from Creed, Colorado, which happens to be the hometown of my one of my favorite authors, Pam Houston. And she put it together. And it's just like every I just I love it so much. Like it has so much
Yeah, I so much meaning and it is so beautiful. I don't know the meaning of any of the objects on there. And this chandelier, which is over your kitchen island there's like an effervescence, there's a lightness, there's a fairy quality to it. Like the different beads it's not a shimmering, but there, there's just something, it just, like I'm just so drawn to it.
then on top of that it's made of everything that's meaningfully beautiful, it's just unbelievable. Bye bye.
Yeah, there's like an exhale, maybe for it or something just like there's a like a breathability. That I like about it. so finally, then there is a photograph that is in my house that I walked into this yoga studio into kindness 10 years ago and was like, no, that's my photo.
Like that's supposed to be mine. I need that. And I remember asking them about it and be like, can I buy that? So women running, With like a bunch of like maybe a sorry on a lot of folds and she's running through a field and there's some flowers and this has been like my meditation go to image a lot of my life.
I sat first in the basketball diaries when Leonardo DiCaprio is shooting up heroin basically, and he's like super high. And he's running through this field of flowers, and I just love that image so much. And I just like lodged it in my head, and I'm like, that is like my dream sequence image. always go back to it.
And I was like, that's it. That's me. That's me. I'm running through the field of flowers. And, you know, a few years later, I'm just like, oh, yeah, I bought it. so sometimes it's just like a strickening of like, Oh, this was for me, like this was made for me to look at every day and seeing that familiarity and seeing the imitation, like the mirror reflected back to myself.
It's like, it's a reminder of my journey. It's a reminder of the motion of moving, and of being outside. so much meaning and emotion.
as we're continuing here, Brave Hearts, I'm just curious, like, as you think about your own house, right, we're kind of broadening, the traditional definition of art. I've mentioned, like, doors hanging in the wall in my dining room. You've mentioned a light switch that has, like, stamps on it.
And doorknobs that are made, you know, that are meaningful from your mom. It's like, there's such a broad range of what, you know, Um, and we're going to talk about what art is and why we want supporting it or surrounded by it.
Yeah, absolutely.
both of us mentioned that we bought a lot of art , while we're traveling, but I also want to talk about art. as the destination. I have traveled to go see art and a couple of exhibits. I just want to highlight James Turrell is a light artist and he had three exhibits simultaneously around the country in L. A., New York at the Guggenheim, and in Houston one year. And I traveled to L. A. and to New York specifically to see his exhibits. one thing in particular is he has something called sky spaces, where he essentially puts a hole in the ceiling of some place. and then like puts light around that and then just is lighting the, like the sky and the clouds and the stars and the sun are the actual like art. And then the light that he's put into the ceiling is impacting shade of the sky.
Oh wow. yeah, there's something about it because it's immersive. Like you often are lying down to take in the sky spaces as a light artist, he's also created art where he is trying to emulate the ethereal Shades of ombre of the sunsets of the sunrises that you're like these colors are so evocative and like are drawing you in You think only exist in nature and then he has spent a lifetime creating them inside like a room and You It's so beautiful.
It's so beautiful. Like I can feel my like self like leaning in as I'm describing it when I think about His art which is just again light and there's times where I've seen a sunset and instead of thinking Oh, James Terrell is so great at making something that looks like the colors of the sunset.
There's times that I'm like looking at the sunset. I'm like, wow, you're doing such a good job, like creating like a James trail. just something about his work. It's very compelling. I'm not giving any slight to two other things is I traveled to New York to see the gates by Christo when he had the, this exhibit, immersive exhibit through central park.
And then my other one I want to call is Meow Wolf in Santa Fe. There's also a Meow Wolf there in Denver. So the theme that I would say is that I really love immersive art experiences. where I'm somehow being invited to interact with the art in some way.
Yeah, me too, for sure. I mean, Meow Wolf was amazing in Santa Fe. That was the most immersive, thing I've ever, ever experienced. I had a couple of really immersive art experiences. One was at the Mark Rothko Chapel in Houston. Really just very meditative, just sitting with the art.
And it's just, it's hard to describe it. It was incredibly just the stillness and the presence of sitting in that chapel and drinking in the simple art while meditating was unlike anything I've experienced before. I just, I felt most outside of myself. it was really , quite sacred.
I would say. And I was alone. It was a lone trip, so I wasn't with anyone else. There was no pressure to leave. So I just felt really , like I could completely settle into the experience. I've loved Mark Rothko my entire life. I used to have his posters in college.
I actually have posters of him and have books of him in my car
and then I had this crazy experience at the Museum of Contemporary Art like 20 years ago. My husband and I, We're in fact under an influence, like we were both high at the time, which is totally weird. We never went anywhere high then, like that was, I didn't even, hardly ever smoked then, and of course it wasn't legal then. maybe we've been dating a year or something? Walked into the MCA, and there was an exhibit called, I don't know how to pronounce this, it was called like, Archipelago? Archipelago. Archipelago. I always say it wrong. Archipelago. Okay. Right, which kind of means an island. hmm. Yeah, a group of islands. So, no one else was there.
just interesting, because it was just kind of empty. And we wandered through, and what actually happened was that we realized the MCA was, in fact, Kind of playing with us because the whole idea of the whole exhibit we later confirmed was about boundaries. And there was confusion on where to go, like where the guests were supposed to go and where the people who worked there were supposed to go.
I think it was on purpose that it was fuzzy. And so we wandered in a couple of different places and then someone would politely tell us, actually, you're not supposed to be here. We're like, wait, but the arrows pointed us in here. and you could tell everyone was in on the joke.
Mm-Hmm. , like the whole thing was an immersive art experience. And so we kept thinking, are we supposed to be here? Do we belong or do we not belong? it was really just constantly about this, like crossing the boundaries, staying in your space, going into someone else's space. It was , one of the most interesting things that ever happened to us. we just felt like it was completely for us. Like, nobody else was there. clearly, they're just like, oh, we're gonna have lots of fun with this. are you listening? Is this one of your exhibits? It totally feels like one of yours.
a day we will never forget, for sure. And that's when I was like, oh, like, art does not have to be on a wall. this was something we experienced in our entire bodies. And granted we were like a little out of our element and so I think they just enhanced the entire thing. Right, So yeah, the moral of the story is art 📍 gives you freedom to do whatever you want and self expression is the tool to like helping, just helping yourself feel more free.
And it's not about whether you like it or whether you don't like it. It's how does it make you feel?
Go buy some art, go make some art, bravehearts.
Thanks for listening!
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