WEBVTT 00:00:00.642 --> 00:00:09.213 - Good afternoon. Welcome to the Bloomington Rotary Club's weekly celebration of service. I'm Steve Wicks, 00:00:09.213 --> 00:00:17.703 - and I'm covering today for President Tracy Yovanovitch, who's traveling. Please silence your electronic 00:00:17.703 --> 00:00:26.846 - devices. One of our sweetest members, Jim Cryway, wanted me to share that today is National Chocolate Chip Day. 00:00:27.106 --> 00:00:36.797 - Let's start with the Where in the World. This is the new segment that Tracy has introduced. So today's 00:00:36.797 --> 00:00:46.865 - focus is on Saint-Pierre and Miquelon. It's a self-governing overseas collectivity of France. Saint-Pierre 00:00:46.865 --> 00:00:55.710 - and Miquelon is an archipelago of eight islands located 12 to 15 miles south of Newfoundland. 00:00:57.122 --> 00:01:05.612 - 6,000 people live there. Historically, it's been driven by fishing, cod. In Prohibition, it was a hot 00:01:05.612 --> 00:01:14.184 - spot for smuggling. And now it has a growing tourism industry. So there is a Rotary Club of San Pierre 00:01:14.184 --> 00:01:20.926 - and Miquelon, relatively new. It was chartered in 1989. The club has 21 members. 00:01:21.442 --> 00:01:30.121 - It is the only French-speaking club in Rotary District 7815, which comprises of the maritime provinces 00:01:30.121 --> 00:01:38.968 - of Canada. So Rotary Club members work closely with other local service organizations and also the local 00:01:38.968 --> 00:01:47.479 - radio station. They've raised money through Bingo to help eradicate polio and establish a free local 00:01:47.479 --> 00:01:51.102 - library. So Saint-Pierre and Miquelon. OK. 00:01:51.330 --> 00:02:03.989 - Brown will deliver today's reflection. Thank you, Steve. You know, I used to take the miracle of vision 00:02:03.989 --> 00:02:16.647 - for granted. And then two weeks ago, I had cataract surgery. And all of a sudden, I got very interested 00:02:16.647 --> 00:02:20.542 - in vision and how vision works. 00:02:21.058 --> 00:02:27.212 - And it turns out that that's the most common surgery. There's like four million cataract surgeries every 00:02:27.212 --> 00:02:33.190 - year. There's probably several people in this room who've had that surgery. If you haven't had it yet 00:02:33.190 --> 00:02:39.110 - and you live long enough, you're probably gonna have it at some point in your life. But I have a new 00:02:39.110 --> 00:02:45.323 - appreciation for vision and I started looking back old biology books and thinking, well, what is actually 00:02:45.323 --> 00:02:47.550 - going on in the eye? How's that work? 00:02:47.778 --> 00:02:54.967 - And it turns out that light is reflected from the surfaces that your eyes are pointed to. A small sliver 00:02:54.967 --> 00:03:01.882 - of the electromagnetic spectrum, visible light comes at your eyes. And what's coming at your eyes is 00:03:01.882 --> 00:03:09.003 - the reflected light, not the absorbed light. So you're seeing a representation of something, but you're 00:03:09.003 --> 00:03:14.206 - not seeing that thing. You're seeing a reflection of it. Reflection, right? 00:03:14.370 --> 00:03:22.085 - So we see reflected light. We see a small sliver of the world. And the light comes through the sclera, 00:03:22.085 --> 00:03:29.799 - the corneates, the irises change the pupil allowing different amounts of light in. And it goes through 00:03:29.799 --> 00:03:37.589 - this liquid and it flips. And it flips upside down and backwards when it hits the retina. So that image 00:03:37.589 --> 00:03:44.030 - is not upside. It's not right side up. It's upside down. Your brain splits that data. 00:03:44.322 --> 00:03:50.828 - to both sides of your brain and it crosses, the optic nerve information crosses in your brain. And then 00:03:50.828 --> 00:03:57.083 - it goes to various parts of your brain, not just the visual cortex, but some of those places in the 00:03:57.083 --> 00:04:03.339 - brain that worry about whether you're about to be eaten by something. So we can get very excited by 00:04:03.339 --> 00:04:09.720 - an image that relates to danger, for example. But it turns out that 70% of the receptors in your body 00:04:09.720 --> 00:04:13.598 - are in your eyes. So vision is obviously very important to us 00:04:14.626 --> 00:04:20.893 - And when you're actually looking at something, your eyes are not focused in one place. Right now, it 00:04:20.893 --> 00:04:27.159 - looks like I'm looking in the middle of the room, but my eyes are flitting all over the place trying 00:04:27.159 --> 00:04:33.798 - to make sure there's nothing coming from the side that's going to eat me. And that flitting around creates 00:04:33.798 --> 00:04:40.251 - lots of different images. And the time between the flitting is a blank space. And your brain fills that 00:04:40.251 --> 00:04:44.222 - in. It predicts what you might have seen and fills in the gaps. 00:04:44.610 --> 00:04:51.738 - And this can result in all sorts of interesting illusions. In one test, they told people to count the 00:04:51.738 --> 00:04:59.077 - bouncing basketball in a scene. They missed the fact that there was a gorilla walking through the scene. 00:04:59.077 --> 00:05:06.065 - They missed that gorilla completely because they were so focused on that particular information. So 00:05:06.065 --> 00:05:13.054 - what we see is more like an art film cobbled together by a biased committee and trying to interpret 00:05:13.186 --> 00:05:20.111 - sensory data in real time, which is virtually impossible. There's so much data coming through there. 00:05:20.111 --> 00:05:27.241 - So my vision is suddenly clear and bright. I switched from nearsighted to farsighted. My brain is still 00:05:27.241 --> 00:05:34.303 - trying to get a handle on that. In a few weeks, I should be used to that. But I had to stop on the way 00:05:34.303 --> 00:05:41.365 - here to admire a purple pink thistle blossom. I'm not sure I would have done that three weeks ago, but 00:05:41.365 --> 00:05:42.942 - a new appreciation for 00:05:43.042 --> 00:05:53.417 - what's in front of me. So what else am I taking for granted? Well, we're pumping blood to every cell 00:05:53.417 --> 00:06:03.689 - in our body 24 seven. We communicate in a language that we can speak and write and hear, and we can 00:06:03.689 --> 00:06:12.318 - reflect on our own thoughts. And we can truly see and know and love people that are 00:06:12.450 --> 00:06:20.018 - that are near us. So those are all amazing things that we sometimes take for granted. As miraculous 00:06:20.018 --> 00:06:27.888 - as vision is, it's only a shallow reflection of reality, less than skin deep. We need all of our senses 00:06:27.888 --> 00:06:35.608 - and all of our ability to communicate to truly see each other. We travel together in an infinite hall 00:06:35.608 --> 00:06:41.662 - of distorted mirrors in our pursuit of reality, truth, and meaning to truly see 00:06:41.762 --> 00:06:49.367 - We must go beneath the surface. We must crash through those mirrors using all of our senses to truly 00:06:49.367 --> 00:06:56.896 - see each other. It may not be time for you to get a lensectomy yet, but it is never too early. It's 00:06:56.896 --> 00:07:04.651 - never too late to see the reality hidden in plain sight in the form of that bundle of miracles sitting 00:07:04.651 --> 00:07:05.630 - next to you. 00:07:14.722 --> 00:07:25.953 - Thank you, Bill. Lynn Schwartzberg will introduce today's guests. Thank you. I would love to welcome 00:07:25.953 --> 00:07:37.296 - our wonderful guests today. First, we have the lovely Ann Bright, a guest of Jim Bright. Please stand 00:07:37.296 --> 00:07:44.190 - so that we can recognize you. We have a guest of our speaker. 00:07:44.322 --> 00:07:57.790 - Henley Wolin. We have Bill Yarber, a guest of Hank Walter. And we have Jeremy Pennington, also a guest 00:07:57.790 --> 00:08:11.127 - of Melanie, our speaker. And then we have one that's a little bit hard to read. It's Nathalie Blaise. 00:08:11.127 --> 00:08:12.958 - Are you here? 00:08:15.778 --> 00:08:25.977 - Hello. Thank you all for joining us. Do we have anyone online? Lynn, we do not have any guests online. 00:08:25.977 --> 00:08:36.177 - Thank you, Joy. And to all of our guests, if you're interested in learning more about Rotary, we would 00:08:36.177 --> 00:08:44.990 - be happy to share and just speak with someone at your table. Thank you. Thank you, Lynn. 00:08:45.570 --> 00:08:52.061 - So before we move on, I'd like to add a couple of comments about two of our guests. First of all, Bill 00:08:52.061 --> 00:08:58.427 - Yarber is the Senior Director of the IU Rural Center for AIDS STD Prevention. Professor Yarber first 00:08:58.427 --> 00:09:04.981 - proposed the Ryan White statue and has played a big role turning that idea into reality. So we're happy 00:09:04.981 --> 00:09:06.494 - to have him here today. 00:09:12.290 --> 00:09:19.381 - And then Natalie Jenner-Blaze was our club executive assistant for seven years. And she continues to 00:09:19.381 --> 00:09:26.403 - help our club from afar. Unfortunately, she is in Bloomington due to the death of her father. We're 00:09:26.403 --> 00:09:33.494 - happy to have her back. We just wish the circumstances were better. But Tyler, if you could go ahead 00:09:33.494 --> 00:09:35.390 - and put up the PowerPoint. 00:09:38.434 --> 00:09:50.092 - Okay, birthdays and anniversaries. Bill Perkins had a birthday on August 2nd. And then three anniversaries 00:09:50.092 --> 00:10:01.749 - to observe. Steve Engel, 15 years. Club treasurer Mark Peterson, three years. And young Bill Oates sitting 00:10:01.749 --> 00:10:08.286 - over here, 38 years. Announcements. So here a few days ago, 00:10:08.450 --> 00:10:15.102 - Jill, our executive assistant, sent out an email asking people to sign up for volunteer roles for the 00:10:15.102 --> 00:10:21.885 - fall quarter. So please follow the link and do that. We need greeters. We need people to do reflection. 00:10:21.885 --> 00:10:28.602 - We need people to introduce guests and so on. And there might still be a couple of spots left for this 00:10:28.602 --> 00:10:35.123 - quarter. So please sign up to volunteer at our weekly programs. Secondly, Club Service Project, the 00:10:35.123 --> 00:10:37.406 - Hoosier Hills Food Bank on Friday. 00:10:37.826 --> 00:10:45.924 - Fun time, we had a crew here, a crew there from 10 to noon, another crew from noon to two. We shoveled 00:10:45.924 --> 00:10:53.865 - lots of pasta into two pound bags, but we did it in an air conditioned room. So we got a great deal. 00:10:53.865 --> 00:11:01.491 - But we were there, Duke Energy had a lot of people there. Liz Irwin, club member and Duke Energy 00:11:01.491 --> 00:11:06.366 - representative spearheaded our efforts as did Michelle Cohen. 00:11:06.690 --> 00:11:17.646 - one of our community services co-chairs. So thank you for all the work done on Friday. And here are 00:11:17.646 --> 00:11:29.149 - some pictures. Pictures are from the morning session. But the middle picture, you can see what it looked 00:11:29.149 --> 00:11:34.846 - like inside the pasta room. And now we have the fun 00:11:34.978 --> 00:11:47.363 - and fortunate activity of introducing a new member. So Patricia Cox and Lynn Schwartzberg, if you can 00:11:47.363 --> 00:11:59.870 - both come up front. Stand next to me. And we're going to start with Joy Harder reading Patricia's bio. 00:12:03.778 --> 00:12:12.633 - All right, can you all hear me? Great. Hello, Patricia. Hello. On behalf of the board and membership 00:12:12.633 --> 00:12:21.400 - of the Bloomington Rotary Club, it is our great pleasure to welcome you as the newest member of our 00:12:21.400 --> 00:12:30.343 - club. We look forward to the fellowship that we will share, as well as your participation in the club 00:12:30.343 --> 00:12:32.798 - projects that make our club 00:12:32.994 --> 00:12:40.684 - community, country, and world a better place. Though Rotary is not a political organization, Rotarians 00:12:40.684 --> 00:12:48.149 - are vitally concerned with good citizenship and the election of effective leaders to public office. 00:12:48.149 --> 00:12:55.839 - While Rotary is not a religious organization, it is built on those highest principles that have served 00:12:55.839 --> 00:12:59.646 - as a moral compass for people throughout the ages. 00:13:00.770 --> 00:13:09.258 - Rotary is an organization of businesses, professional and community leaders pledged to uphold the highest 00:13:09.258 --> 00:13:17.587 - ethical and moral standards. Rotarians believe that worldwide fellowship and peace can be achieved when 00:13:17.587 --> 00:13:25.595 - people work together and uphold the Rotary motto of service above self. Rotary activities exemplify 00:13:25.595 --> 00:13:28.798 - the partnership, respect and generosity 00:13:28.994 --> 00:13:36.350 - that one would expect from people who believe that they have a responsibility to help others. Patricia, 00:13:36.350 --> 00:13:43.424 - you have been chosen for membership in the Bloomington Club because your fellow members believe you 00:13:43.424 --> 00:13:51.134 - to be a leader in our community and because you possess the qualities to champion the message and principles 00:13:51.134 --> 00:13:57.854 - of Rotary. You are a representative of your vocation and talent within our club and community. 00:13:58.786 --> 00:14:07.427 - You now become an ambassador of Bloomington Rotary, carrying the ideals of service to all within your 00:14:07.427 --> 00:14:15.983 - sphere of influence. Our community will know and judge Rotary by your character and service. We will 00:14:15.983 --> 00:14:24.540 - also look to you for inspiration as we strive to become better Rotarians. Now we will pin you with a 00:14:24.540 --> 00:14:28.606 - distinguishing badge of a Rotarian, your Rotary 00:14:28.738 --> 00:14:37.704 - pin. Well, I will hand you the pin as opposed to attempting to pin it. Okay. And we, we ask you, Patricia, 00:14:37.704 --> 00:14:46.251 - that you wear your rotary pin with pride in your many endeavors and as a symbol of our recognition of 00:14:46.251 --> 00:14:54.881 - your contribution towards a better world through your rotary membership. Fellow Rotarians, please rise 00:14:54.881 --> 00:14:56.222 - if you are able 00:14:56.674 --> 00:15:12.256 - And welcome our newest Rotarian, Patricia Cox. And I got things a little bit out of order. So Lynn, 00:15:12.256 --> 00:15:20.670 - can you give us a bio for Patricia? Oh. Patricia Cox. 00:15:21.058 --> 00:15:27.192 - is a mortgage loan originator with German American Bank and has several years of experience in real 00:15:27.192 --> 00:15:33.695 - estate, helping individuals and families achieve their goal of home ownership. She combines her knowledge 00:15:33.695 --> 00:15:40.014 - of both lending and real estate to guide clients through one of the most important financial decisions 00:15:40.014 --> 00:15:42.590 - of their lives. Originally from Colombia, 00:15:42.946 --> 00:15:49.762 - Patricia is bilingual in English and Spanish and enjoys serving a diverse community. She also has background 00:15:49.762 --> 00:15:56.577 - in psychology, which has given her a passion for understanding people and building meaningful relationships. 00:15:56.577 --> 00:16:03.518 - Patricia lives in Bedford with her husband Mike, and together they have three children, Mia, Jake, and Mariah. 00:16:03.682 --> 00:16:09.911 - She enjoys traveling, working out, spending time with her family, and being involved in her children's 00:16:09.911 --> 00:16:15.960 - activities. She previously served as PTO president at her daughter's elementary school and believes 00:16:15.960 --> 00:16:22.491 - that giving back and supporting the local community are just as important as professional success. Patricia 00:16:22.491 --> 00:16:28.781 - is excited to become part of Rotary, where she hopes to build lasting friendships, serve the community, 00:16:28.781 --> 00:16:32.894 - and contribute her time and skills to meaningful projects. Welcome. 00:16:50.946 --> 00:16:59.243 - Thank you, Lynn and Patricia. Rotary is an international organization, and it's pretty cool, 00:16:59.243 --> 00:17:08.343 - least to me, that in our club of 160 members, we now have three originally from Columbia. So Patricia 00:17:08.343 --> 00:17:17.175 - joins Claudia and Whitney. So congratulations. Welcome. Thank you so much. Well said. You're done. 00:17:17.175 --> 00:17:20.030 - Thank you. Thank you, guys. OK. 00:17:20.194 --> 00:17:30.437 - Bill Brown will come up and introduce today's speaker. I am delighted to introduce our amazing guest 00:17:30.437 --> 00:17:40.883 - speaker, Melanie Cooper Pennington, a sculptor based in Bloomington, Indiana, where she serves as area 00:17:40.883 --> 00:17:47.070 - head of sculpture and senior lecturer at Indiana University. 00:17:47.682 --> 00:17:54.524 - Her practice spans intimate figurative studies, large-scale installations, and public sculpture, using 00:17:54.524 --> 00:18:01.566 - the body as a framework for exploring emotional experience, endurance, vulnerability, and transformation. 00:18:01.566 --> 00:18:08.342 - Pennington received her MFA in sculpture from Indiana University in 2016. Her work has been exhibited 00:18:08.342 --> 00:18:14.985 - nationally and internationally, including solo exhibitions at the International Center for the Arts 00:18:14.985 --> 00:18:17.310 - in Monte Castello de Vibio, sorry, 00:18:18.114 --> 00:18:25.895 - for you Italians in the crowd, in Italy, New Harmony Gallery of Contemporary Art, Artlink Contemporary, 00:18:25.895 --> 00:18:33.452 - and Eiffel Gallery. Recent group exhibitions include ACRE projects in Chicago, Distortion Gallery in 00:18:33.452 --> 00:18:41.158 - Beacon, New York, and the Grunwald Gallery of Art. Her work has been supported through residencies and 00:18:41.158 --> 00:18:47.742 - fellowships at Sculpture Space, Vermont Studio Center, ACRE, Anderson Ranch Art Center, 00:18:48.386 --> 00:18:54.299 - and Haystack Mountain School of Craft. Pennington has completed public sculpture commissions 00:18:54.299 --> 00:19:00.975 - and installations for Indiana University, which is pretty close to us here in IMU, the Kinsey Institute, 00:19:00.975 --> 00:19:07.460 - the Chicago Sculpture International Sculpture in the Parks Program, and the Indianapolis Arts Center, 00:19:07.460 --> 00:19:13.818 - including major figurative bronze commissions honoring Alfred C. Kinsey and, of course, Ryan White. 00:19:13.818 --> 00:19:18.142 - Her sculptures are held in the collections of the Kinsey Institute, 00:19:18.370 --> 00:19:29.252 - the Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Indiana University, and the International Center for the Arts in Italy. 00:19:29.252 --> 00:19:39.495 - Let's give a warm rotary welcome to Melanie. Okay, wow. So how do I sound? Check, check, check. 00:19:39.495 --> 00:19:48.030 - A little more? Let's speak a little louder. Speak with a little more authority. 00:19:49.058 --> 00:19:58.376 - Hi, everybody. This is a little bit of an intimidating crowd. But I'm very excited to be here. And I 00:19:58.376 --> 00:20:07.878 - will let you know you are guinea pigs in a way for a new talk that I'm about to give, because I wanted 00:20:07.878 --> 00:20:16.734 - to share with you both sides of my practice as a sculptor. So ready? Buckle up. Here we go. And 00:20:16.994 --> 00:20:25.098 - I recently heard that Charlotte Zitlow had a way of always being ready with a question. So in honor 00:20:25.098 --> 00:20:33.365 - of Charlotte, I will frame this talk around two questions. The questions are, how do I, as an artist, 00:20:33.365 --> 00:20:41.388 - give shape to the invisible? And why do I have two different ways of doing so? Oh, how do I click? 00:20:41.388 --> 00:20:45.278 - This one? Do I go down or left or right? Right? 00:20:46.338 --> 00:20:55.745 - Do I have to point it over here or over here? Anywhere. Okay. I'm honored to give this talk to you wonderful 00:20:55.745 --> 00:21:04.806 - group, the Rotary Club. Bill Brown and I first bonded over our mutual love of sculpting the figure about 00:21:04.806 --> 00:21:11.710 - 10 years ago. Did you know he sculpts? Asked to see his Abraham Lincoln. Sorry. 00:21:11.906 --> 00:21:18.242 - That was back in my early days here as a graduate student at Indiana University. Little did I know then 00:21:18.242 --> 00:21:24.334 - that I would become a professor here and am now the area head of the sculpture department. And what 00:21:24.334 --> 00:21:30.791 - I teach most is figure sculpture. It's an area that's fallen out of academic fashion, but I still believe 00:21:30.791 --> 00:21:36.030 - is one of the most effective ways to teach students how to think three-dimensionally. 00:21:41.154 --> 00:21:48.944 - This is me when I first discovered I could sculpt at age 19. And then this is my studio when I was a 00:21:48.944 --> 00:21:56.889 - graduate student at Indiana University in the central stores, if you guys remember that building. I've 00:21:56.889 --> 00:22:04.911 - titled this talk, Giving Form to the Invisible, because that's how sculpture saved me, quite literally. 00:22:04.911 --> 00:22:08.382 - And it's the goal behind every piece I make. 00:22:09.026 --> 00:22:16.675 - It's also how I know when a piece is finished. I was a very, very sensitive young person who didn't 00:22:16.675 --> 00:22:24.476 - feel safe to share feelings out loud. Clay became a radical tool of communication. It could hold what 00:22:24.476 --> 00:22:32.354 - my body couldn't. I could mold it into forms that carried the weight I couldn't otherwise put down and 00:22:32.354 --> 00:22:34.878 - somehow that lightened the load. 00:22:38.626 --> 00:22:47.053 - Hold on. So, I have two bodies of work. Figurative and abstract. First, my early work was figurative. 00:22:47.053 --> 00:22:55.644 - I spent my formative years as a sculptor studying anatomy with the cowboy sculptors out west for a week 00:22:55.644 --> 00:23:03.988 - at a time in Colorado and Arizona. And with anatomy teachers from the New York Academy of Art. I had 00:23:03.988 --> 00:23:05.310 - small children. 00:23:05.602 --> 00:23:13.085 - So this was the doable way to get an education in anatomy. I was never satisfied with a piece until 00:23:13.085 --> 00:23:20.717 - it felt alive, breathing, until it touched something in me while I looked at it. This was natural for 00:23:20.717 --> 00:23:28.349 - me. I could feel intuitively how posture and body communicate emotion. Those subtle gestures, even as 00:23:28.349 --> 00:23:33.886 - minor as the masseter muscle in a jaw, with just a little bit of tension, 00:23:34.210 --> 00:23:42.687 - can communicate things about a person's interior world. I could feel all of that. Probably many of you 00:23:42.687 --> 00:23:50.917 - can too. Turning that into sculpture takes technical skill, a solid understanding of the biology of 00:23:50.917 --> 00:23:59.229 - a body in addition to the ability to recreate it. But it also takes something harder to reach, depth 00:23:59.229 --> 00:24:03.838 - of feeling, an awareness, and dare I say, a willingness 00:24:03.938 --> 00:24:13.438 - to feel the agony and the ecstasy of being human and to extend that feeling outside of oneself to reach 00:24:13.438 --> 00:24:22.664 - out and get inside of your subject. Speaking of cowboy sculptors, I got to be one briefly when I did 00:24:22.664 --> 00:24:31.433 - portraits of my paternal grandparents shortly before they passed, literally like a month before 00:24:31.433 --> 00:24:33.534 - my grandfather passed. 00:24:34.562 --> 00:24:42.053 - He and she were both cowboy and cowgirl from rural southern Arizona. They drove cattle, they did horse 00:24:42.053 --> 00:24:49.763 - breaking, and he was even hired as a yarn teller for ranches. And she was a journalist. So this is called 00:24:49.763 --> 00:24:57.763 - The Yarn Teller and the Dream Weaver. This was one of my very first portrait pieces. While it was wonderfully 00:24:57.763 --> 00:25:02.782 - gratifying to make pieces like these, the realistic figurative work, 00:25:03.458 --> 00:25:10.219 - At the end of the day, it is still only recreating something that is already there. And artists sometimes 00:25:10.219 --> 00:25:16.852 - want to create new things. So just as we are now turning to my abstract work in this brief talk, I turn 00:25:16.852 --> 00:25:23.613 - to abstraction in my career. Like many of my heroes who also began with the figure and pushed it further, 00:25:23.613 --> 00:25:29.992 - here is Constantine Brancusi. Some of you might know he is most famous for this, Bird in Space. You 00:25:29.992 --> 00:25:32.798 - can see it at the Art Institute in Chicago. 00:25:33.794 --> 00:25:41.899 - and Isama Noguchi, Japanese American sculptor, love him, famous for this piece of furniture, but also 00:25:41.899 --> 00:25:50.005 - all of his modernist abstractions. So they started with the figure, they went outside of it. I pushed 00:25:50.005 --> 00:25:58.190 - myself to do the same. My studio work turned towards abstraction and anthropomorphism in my very first 00:25:58.190 --> 00:26:02.878 - year of graduate school. I removed faces, hands, and feet. 00:26:03.234 --> 00:26:13.323 - the things that tell you exactly who and what you're looking at, to focus on the feeling of a piece 00:26:13.323 --> 00:26:23.412 - instead of its likeness. I leaned into my cowboy roots too, and my love of myth, giving these forms 00:26:23.412 --> 00:26:32.190 - hooves, bodies built to hold something much more intimate and fierce. Why abstraction? 00:26:33.122 --> 00:26:40.880 - I find that realism gives all the answers. The fingernails are there, the curl of the hair, the glint 00:26:40.880 --> 00:26:48.561 - in the eye, but abstraction makes room for questions. I'm interested in the less comfortable side of 00:26:48.561 --> 00:26:56.167 - being human, physical ecstasy, emotional trauma, the parts that don't resolve neatly. My friend and 00:26:56.167 --> 00:27:00.958 - mentor, Malcolm Smith, he teaches ceramics here, once told me, 00:27:01.186 --> 00:27:11.168 - that abstraction slows the read. It slows our understanding of what's happening. It asks for more time, 00:27:11.168 --> 00:27:21.055 - more investigation. That's exactly why I build hybrid forms and why I keep trying to give shape to the 00:27:21.055 --> 00:27:26.622 - invisible. This is the largest piece that I ever created. 00:27:31.426 --> 00:27:38.047 - In both bodies of work, I am always looking to give form to the invisible, and both bodies have enjoyed 00:27:38.047 --> 00:27:44.796 - some publicity, but naturally it is the public commissions which thus far have gained the most attention. 00:27:44.796 --> 00:27:51.417 - So despite my interest in the abstract, I continued to teach portrait sculpture for 15 years, believing 00:27:51.417 --> 00:27:56.574 - it to be both important and foundational for good art making. I am still shocked 00:27:57.218 --> 00:28:03.647 - by how frequently art that is sometimes famous violates the basics of anatomy purely out of ignorance. 00:28:03.647 --> 00:28:10.263 - Perhaps you have seen figures that don't look quite right. And it's good that I kept up my skills because 00:28:10.263 --> 00:28:16.442 - as most of you know, I have recently had the honor of doing two important figures in IU's history. 00:28:16.442 --> 00:28:22.933 - For me, these were both special and I accepted both deliberately. Referring back to the title question, 00:28:22.933 --> 00:28:26.366 - how do I give form to the invisible sides of a person? 00:28:26.658 --> 00:28:32.495 - Or how do you capture the spirit of a person? And to add to that question, who is worthy of 00:28:32.495 --> 00:28:38.967 - being memorialized? Because I have the privilege of having an income as a professor, I do not rely on 00:28:38.967 --> 00:28:45.439 - commissions for my bread and butter. And thus, I don't have to do them. This means I can hold onto my 00:28:45.439 --> 00:28:52.165 - goals as an artist even when the work is representational. And the invisible is what guides those choices 00:28:52.165 --> 00:28:56.606 - for me. I have to feel aligned with any work I spend so much time on. 00:28:57.090 --> 00:29:04.317 - And I don't want to burden the landscape with more commemorative bronzes unless I believe in the reasons 00:29:04.317 --> 00:29:11.201 - to make the sculpture. I pursued the Kinsey Commission because his research made the world question 00:29:11.201 --> 00:29:18.290 - what it had decided was normal in terms of sexual behavior. He didn't accept society's normal as fact. 00:29:18.290 --> 00:29:25.380 - He investigated people's actual experience and reported what he found. That reporting sparked a sexual 00:29:25.380 --> 00:29:26.206 - revolution. 00:29:26.338 --> 00:29:33.447 - and made room for a broader, more tolerant understanding of human sexuality. The Kinsey scale showed 00:29:33.447 --> 00:29:40.275 - that people aren't purely one thing or another. There's a gradient. There's abstraction in that. 00:29:40.275 --> 00:29:47.385 - I love that. For the sculpture, I knew that realism would be the right way to honor both the man and 00:29:47.385 --> 00:29:54.494 - his alma mater, to place him among the other memorial sculptures on campus. I also wanted to involve 00:29:54.494 --> 00:29:55.902 - the viewer directly 00:29:57.186 --> 00:30:06.116 - I placed an interview chair beside the piece and made sure Kinsey's gaze would meet the sitter's eye 00:30:06.116 --> 00:30:15.224 - to eye. That's the invisible part, the experience of being seen. I speculate, and I've witnessed, that 00:30:15.224 --> 00:30:24.508 - people's reactions to sitting in that chair echo their own comfort or discomfort with their relationship 00:30:24.508 --> 00:30:26.718 - to sex. Try it sometime. 00:30:27.362 --> 00:30:36.108 - Also, the title of this piece, which I put here, is one of the questions from his 330 questionnaire. 00:30:36.108 --> 00:30:45.027 - When it's warm outside, do you prefer to sleep in the nude? All right. All right. Good job. So there's 00:30:45.027 --> 00:30:54.292 - been real controversy about this piece. The day after the unveiling, I was harassed across every web-based 00:30:54.292 --> 00:30:57.150 - platform I'm on for over a year. 00:30:57.634 --> 00:31:04.349 - to the point that the Bloomington PD had my address on file and my kids had to strip location data from 00:31:04.349 --> 00:31:10.999 - their devices. It made me confront my choice to memorialize him. Some accused him of being a pedophile 00:31:10.999 --> 00:31:17.455 - and a predator. I did my own research and came to believe those accusations misread his methods and 00:31:17.455 --> 00:31:23.912 - are not founded. I believe the Kinsey Institute's work is essential and its researchers are some of 00:31:23.912 --> 00:31:26.430 - the bravest, kindest people on campus. 00:31:33.346 --> 00:31:44.831 - My next commission was Ryan White. And by the way, both this piece and Kinsey were made possible by 00:31:44.831 --> 00:31:55.511 - Dr. Billy Arbor, who's here. Amazing. I competed for the Kinsey commission and was selected. 00:31:55.511 --> 00:32:01.598 - I worked on it. Bill funded, helped fund that piece. 00:32:01.922 --> 00:32:10.396 - And then he came to me and said, let's do another one. I think we should do Ryan White. So he is 100% 00:32:10.396 --> 00:32:18.787 - made that possible. And he wants to do more. Okay. So Ryan brought a different set of challenges. He 00:32:18.787 --> 00:32:27.926 - was loved by the world and became famous enough that everybody had seen images of him. And most terrifyingly, 00:32:27.926 --> 00:32:31.166 - unlike Kinsey, Ryan's immediate family 00:32:31.426 --> 00:32:39.090 - was alive and involved with the sculpture. And they would know immediately if I hadn't gotten him right. 00:32:39.090 --> 00:32:46.901 - And in his case, that included capturing the invisible. I hesitated before taking this one on. In addition 00:32:46.901 --> 00:32:54.711 - to the challenges of his fame and family, there were other issues. His age, young kids are hard to sculpt. 00:32:54.711 --> 00:33:00.478 - The ravages of AIDS and what that had done in terms of his growth in his body. 00:33:01.058 --> 00:33:09.248 - which was normal but also not normal. And there were a lack of usable photos, which was essential. I 00:33:09.248 --> 00:33:18.006 - had only one profile photo from either direction. But I could feel something when I read his autobiography. 00:33:18.006 --> 00:33:26.197 - I could feel his spirit. And when I can feel something, I can sculpt it. I decided to do it, to make 00:33:26.197 --> 00:33:28.062 - the invisible visible. 00:33:28.962 --> 00:33:36.135 - For Ryan, that meant giving him physical form on IU's campus and finding a way to carry his message 00:33:36.135 --> 00:33:43.595 - forward too. I knew I needed to show the sparkle in his eyes, his kindness and his strength. These were 00:33:43.595 --> 00:33:50.840 - essential and ephemeral qualities I had to capture in his likeness. His unassuming manner, his frank 00:33:50.840 --> 00:33:55.646 - call for people to be better and to do better towards one another, 00:33:56.258 --> 00:34:03.829 - which genuinely changed how the world understood HIV and AIDS. I've spent hours over years studying 00:34:03.829 --> 00:34:11.703 - how to sculpt pupils and irises to carry soulfulness into a portrait. For Ryan, that mattered more than 00:34:11.703 --> 00:34:19.576 - almost anything else in the piece. Showing his mom this piece is absolutely, cry, one of the highlights 00:34:19.576 --> 00:34:25.406 - of this experience. She cried for four minutes when she came into my studio. 00:34:25.506 --> 00:34:34.160 - and it has solidified for me the purpose in making commemorative portrait sculptures. I also built in 00:34:34.160 --> 00:34:42.898 - an action to this piece. The public loves interacting with art and I didn't want Ryan to fade into the 00:34:42.898 --> 00:34:50.110 - background of campus. I partnered with IU Dance Marathon on a series of prompt cards 00:34:50.498 --> 00:34:57.082 - Students now pass notes of encouragement to each other through the sculpture. There's literally a slot 00:34:57.082 --> 00:35:03.474 - and there's a set of cards with prompts. You can go right now. I encourage all of you to go write a 00:35:03.474 --> 00:35:09.931 - note and leave it and it will be posted online and you can also take notes of encouragement when you 00:35:09.931 --> 00:35:16.642 - visit the sculpture. It captures the same thing I circle back to in my work and what I tell my students. 00:35:16.642 --> 00:35:20.350 - Being human is difficult. Just keep going. Don't give up. 00:35:20.770 --> 00:35:31.228 - tomorrow will be different than today. Now, you're going to get a sneak peek of my next project, which 00:35:31.228 --> 00:35:41.585 - might come to life in Bloomington next year. This one will bring both halves of my practice together. 00:35:41.585 --> 00:35:48.286 - It will be representational in one sense and abstract in another. 00:35:49.026 --> 00:35:57.510 - The Eternal Vine was selected for the Trades District in Bloomington through the CCC Lilly Grant. It's 00:35:57.510 --> 00:36:05.995 - going to be the Indiana grapevine shaped into a wandering, circling Ouroboros, cast in bronze, 18 feet 00:36:05.995 --> 00:36:14.644 - wide and 10 feet tall. This piece holds a few things at once. First, its construction is based on modern 00:36:14.644 --> 00:36:15.550 - technology 00:36:15.970 --> 00:36:23.441 - It will require 3D scanning and CNC technologies to create it, fitting for a piece sited in a tech park. 00:36:23.441 --> 00:36:30.699 - Second, it represents Indiana's natural landscape. I hike a lot. Grapevines are native here, the kind 00:36:30.699 --> 00:36:38.099 - that they snake through the woods like snakes through the trees on a forest walk. And third, it's local 00:36:38.099 --> 00:36:44.574 - histories. Actually, if you go back, this is the emblem for the Showers Furniture Company. 00:36:45.506 --> 00:36:53.779 - from tree to trade was their logo. And they were the largest furniture manufacturer in the 19th century, 00:36:53.779 --> 00:37:01.815 - and they were the innovators of veneer, just super cool. It's also good entrepreneurship for the tech 00:37:01.815 --> 00:37:09.693 - park. But lastly, it's a two-sided symbol. It's a symbol of renewal, a snake shedding its skin, and 00:37:09.693 --> 00:37:12.766 - it's a warning against overconsumption 00:37:12.994 --> 00:37:22.807 - against ignoring the natural world and the people in it in the name of greed. This was my proposal 00:37:22.807 --> 00:37:32.818 - originally. Someday I still want to do a fountain. We're not doing a fountain. Instead, it will look 00:37:32.818 --> 00:37:41.342 - something like this. So I build a small model and then enlarge that through different 00:37:41.442 --> 00:37:49.154 - renderings with Photoshop and this. I'm supposed to get a contract any day now. We'll see. That's why 00:37:49.154 --> 00:37:56.867 - I can show it to you. I don't have a contract. Okay. Last, well, almost done here. To come back to my 00:37:56.867 --> 00:38:04.730 - own personal work. The Vine isn't only something I'm building for a tech park. It shows up in my studio 00:38:04.730 --> 00:38:10.174 - work too as material and metaphor. This piece is called Use Your Words. 00:38:10.978 --> 00:38:18.632 - It's built from real vine woven through wrestling figures drawn from ancient Greek wrestling statues. 00:38:18.632 --> 00:38:26.361 - Think Hercules. It's about the importance of communication and personal relationships and in politics. 00:38:26.361 --> 00:38:34.165 - The idea that fighting physical or otherwise isn't the answer. And I want to close with one more piece. 00:38:34.165 --> 00:38:40.318 - This one is called a sleep in the boat. It's one of my favorites. It's four feet. 00:38:40.578 --> 00:38:49.660 - by nine feet. All of my beasts are about nine feet large. It's a woven willow basket cradling a resting 00:38:49.660 --> 00:38:58.829 - figure, a mother curled in on herself about to give birth. It's about resting in the middle of creation, 00:38:58.829 --> 00:39:07.998 - even the act of making a sculpture, a life, anything. We need to pause in order to move forward. A place 00:39:08.194 --> 00:39:18.236 - It's a place to lay your head down before the next thing begins. With Kinsey, the invisible thing was 00:39:18.236 --> 00:39:28.277 - his research, the truth of people's actual sexual histories hidden behind. Oh, it's gone. Last slide. 00:39:28.277 --> 00:39:37.630 - Hidden behind what society had decided was normal. With Ryan, it was his courage and kindness. 00:39:37.986 --> 00:39:45.294 - in the face of extreme fear and discrimination. With the vine, it's the metaphor itself. Greed, renewal, 00:39:45.294 --> 00:39:52.463 - warning, all carried inside a form that looks at first like a beautiful piece of nature. In each case, 00:39:52.463 --> 00:39:59.423 - the invisible thing already existed. You just couldn't see it. My job as an artist is to bring form 00:39:59.423 --> 00:40:06.384 - to the invisible. Some of what's invisible doesn't have a name yet though. That's where abstraction 00:40:06.384 --> 00:40:07.358 - lives for me. 00:40:08.002 --> 00:40:15.257 - Not because I'm avoiding the truth, but because I haven't found the words for it yet. Clay let me hold 00:40:15.257 --> 00:40:22.301 - that unnamed thing before I could speak it. It still does. This is why I teach both in my classroom 00:40:22.301 --> 00:40:29.978 - and why I think both matter. Realism teaches you to see clearly and render what's already there. Abstraction 00:40:29.978 --> 00:40:37.374 - teaches you to sit with what isn't resolved yet, to make room for a question before you have the answer. 00:40:38.338 --> 00:40:53.630 - That's what sculpture has always been for me, not only a monument to someone else's story, but a way 00:40:53.630 --> 00:41:07.710 - to hold my own. Thank you. And now you get to ask me questions. And after, bye. Hello there. 00:41:07.810 --> 00:41:16.445 - sculptures cast here in Bloomington? No, they are not cast here. There are, there's a dearth of foundries 00:41:16.445 --> 00:41:24.754 - in this part of the country. So I actually cast my work in Arizona, which has given me reason to stay 00:41:24.754 --> 00:41:33.470 - connected to my Arizona family too. But it makes it complicated. Yeah. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. 00:41:38.594 --> 00:41:47.481 - I think you said you had only one photograph of Ryan White. And could you tell us how old was he at 00:41:47.481 --> 00:41:56.545 - that time? Well, I had more. I had probably 300 photographs. I had only one from this profile when he 00:41:56.545 --> 00:42:06.320 - was 13 years old and one from this profile when he was 16 years old. So I was having to adjust his dimensions 00:42:06.320 --> 00:42:08.542 - and then having to guess 00:42:10.178 --> 00:42:19.294 - many things about how he looked. And it took three months to get that face right. And it still wasn't 00:42:19.294 --> 00:42:28.230 - right three weeks before his mom showed up. So I had a mini, my husband knows, I wouldn't come home 00:42:28.230 --> 00:42:33.950 - until he was breathing. It was hard. It was a lot of work. Yes. 00:42:35.010 --> 00:42:40.706 - Hi there, my name is Katie and my husband is an abstract painter and so this is where this question 00:42:40.706 --> 00:42:46.516 - comes from because I remember meeting him and not knowing how do I even approach abstract artwork and 00:42:46.516 --> 00:42:52.440 - then talking with my parents who are very like what you think of like blue collar and they're like what 00:42:52.440 --> 00:42:58.194 - is what is going on here you know so I was wondering you know what sort of advice or feedback do you 00:42:58.194 --> 00:43:02.238 - give to people whether it's students or people you interact with about 00:43:02.338 --> 00:43:08.391 - you know, how to interact with abstract artwork, whether it's, you know, like me, I wasn't unsure. I 00:43:08.391 --> 00:43:14.624 - think for some people I've met, including my parents, they feel intimidated by it. Like, what do I even 00:43:14.624 --> 00:43:20.977 - do with this? So just any guidelines you give the folks to interact with abstraction. I love that. That's 00:43:20.977 --> 00:43:27.390 - a great question. And what I do is I say, don't try to understand it here. Just how does it make you feel? 00:43:27.778 --> 00:43:34.996 - How do the colors make you feel? How do the lines make you feel? Where in your body do you feel, like 00:43:34.996 --> 00:43:42.497 - if you notice like a Franz Kline painting, it's just black, right? But it's got like this kind of violent 00:43:42.497 --> 00:43:49.715 - energy. So like, what does that do in your body? And then does that tell you something about what the 00:43:49.715 --> 00:43:56.862 - piece is about? It might. But yeah, it's all about listening to the physical sensations of the body. 00:44:00.450 --> 00:44:08.024 - One other little thing, so for when I teach figure sculpture, the way I teach students how to get into 00:44:08.024 --> 00:44:15.819 - the emotion of a piece is we practice, we have a stand and I'll have everyone shout out a feeling, right, 00:44:15.819 --> 00:44:23.319 - like sadness, and then they have to move their own bodies into that feeling. So that then you have to 00:44:23.319 --> 00:44:29.790 - sit there yourself, you don't just say it, tell a model to do it, you put your own body 00:44:30.274 --> 00:44:37.429 - in the position. And then you're like, oh, and then you can stand back and look at it. And you're like, 00:44:37.429 --> 00:44:44.585 - it's round. Round shapes are softer, sadder. Triangle shapes have energy. They go north. So shapes have 00:44:44.585 --> 00:44:51.603 - different squares and rectangles are solid. So even just a basic shape can give you a feeling. And if 00:44:51.603 --> 00:44:59.102 - you notice in paintings or in sculptures, they'll have directional energy. And you can deduce from that what 00:44:59.842 --> 00:45:07.448 - the feeling of the piece is about. I'd just like to know where around campus we can view your sculptures. 00:45:07.448 --> 00:45:14.265 - Yeah. Well, just down the hall here in the reading room is Ryan White, right by the fireplace, 00:45:14.265 --> 00:45:21.871 - place of honor. And then the Kinsey sculpture is behind Lindley Hall. But like on your way to the science 00:45:21.871 --> 00:45:26.750 - building, it's kind of hidden up there. It also lights up at night. 00:45:26.914 --> 00:45:34.633 - so you can go see him and visit him at night and sit in the chair and tell him your sexual history. 00:45:34.633 --> 00:45:42.428 - Hello. I'd be interested to know if there are some projects that take more time or what kind of time 00:45:42.428 --> 00:45:50.301 - do you allocate maybe for each kind of project and why? Yeah, that's a good question. Ideally, I have 00:45:50.301 --> 00:45:56.862 - about a year for every project just mentally. I think Kinsey was a two-year process. 00:45:57.282 --> 00:46:03.838 - Ryan was a one-year process. But again, as I said, I ended up with only three months to sculpt it. It 00:46:03.838 --> 00:46:10.587 - depends often on the deadlines. But yeah, I need at least six months, generally speaking. And it depends 00:46:10.587 --> 00:46:17.144 - on the scale of a piece as well. But I love having at least a year. I love just to start projects and 00:46:17.144 --> 00:46:23.764 - just have them sit in my studio. And then I can come back and you see it differently every day. So the 00:46:23.764 --> 00:46:26.014 - more time I have, the better it'll 00:46:26.530 --> 00:46:34.905 - It'll be, and you have to be in the right place mentally for Ryan. I had to not sculpt Ryan when I was 00:46:34.905 --> 00:46:43.444 - anxious or when I was worried about what people were going to think of the sculpture. I had to literally 00:46:43.444 --> 00:46:51.738 - really only approach the piece with confidence and otherwise I would mess it up. Well, I'm just going 00:46:51.738 --> 00:46:55.966 - to jump right in on that question and add a second. 00:46:56.482 --> 00:47:04.112 - level, do you work on more than one thing at a time? And how do you get your mind into that place of 00:47:04.112 --> 00:47:12.044 - realism, abstraction? Well, like right now, so I've worked very hard on Ryan all year, and that's really 00:47:12.044 --> 00:47:18.238 - just wrapping up. And what I've noticed in myself is I need a break from realism. 00:47:18.338 --> 00:47:24.508 - So I'm starting to, I start, the easiest way for me is I do large scale drawing in my studio. 00:47:24.508 --> 00:47:31.072 - So I'll do, I put up giant panels of vinyl and pastel, and I just kind of like work it out, or I'll 00:47:31.072 --> 00:47:37.899 - work with smaller maquettes just to get back into my feelings. But yeah, I'll usually have two or three 00:47:37.899 --> 00:47:45.054 - things going at one time. But if it's large, I don't have a huge studio, so I can only do so much at a time. 00:47:45.442 --> 00:47:52.168 - The dream, if anyone has a warehouse or a barn, they wanna, so I could have multiple parts, but yeah, 00:47:52.168 --> 00:47:58.960 - that's how I work. I have a comment and a question. The comment is, as I parked at the Atwater Garage, 00:47:58.960 --> 00:48:05.686 - so I have to walk past the Kinsey statue, so I'll have to see if I'm brave enough to sit in the chair 00:48:05.686 --> 00:48:10.302 - after today's meeting. Yes, you do. You gotta try it. It's different. 00:48:10.786 --> 00:48:17.068 - The question is, it's been a couple of years, but we had the director of a group in Salisbury that they 00:48:17.068 --> 00:48:23.289 - have the sculpture garden. And the type of work that they do there, is that anything that can dovetail 00:48:23.289 --> 00:48:29.330 - with what you're doing, or is it just very different? No, it's very similar. I mean, it's all iron. 00:48:29.330 --> 00:48:35.612 - Generally speaking, they're iron and aluminum. Actually bringing a class to sculpture trails this fall, 00:48:35.612 --> 00:48:37.182 - that was Jerry, probably. 00:48:37.858 --> 00:48:45.643 - And that's wonderful. They make all different types of work, but it's great because it's outdoor. It's 00:48:45.643 --> 00:48:53.503 - a wonderful public, like for new and professional artists, you go and can cast your work there in iron. 00:48:53.503 --> 00:49:01.288 - Iron is a different process than bronze. I'm not gonna go into all of that right now, but yeah, I hope 00:49:01.288 --> 00:49:06.654 - to do a piece with them someday. I don't know what it would be though. 00:49:16.866 --> 00:49:26.443 - How old were you when a light went out of your head, and you said, I'm going to be a sculptor? And then 00:49:26.443 --> 00:49:35.928 - my other question is, at what point did you involve Ryan White's mother in Cigna Added? That must have 00:49:35.928 --> 00:49:46.334 - been kind of anaerobic for you. Well, the story, I love the story of, so when I was young, I was always drawing. 00:49:46.882 --> 00:49:53.775 - but I was always frustrated. So I was someone who would, wanted to be an artist, thought, hoped, maybe 00:49:53.775 --> 00:50:00.668 - I was an artist, but was only able to copy things that I, you know, and I would open the book, I would 00:50:00.668 --> 00:50:07.427 - get like the books on her, how to draw an eye and how to do all this. So I remember actually putting 00:50:07.427 --> 00:50:13.918 - out to the university at age 16, like, I want to be good at a real certain thing in art, please. 00:50:16.482 --> 00:50:23.213 - And then I went to college and I ended up taking a class from the, you know, you hear about the good 00:50:23.213 --> 00:50:30.077 - professors and I tried to get into one of his classes and it was full. So I went to another one of his 00:50:30.077 --> 00:50:37.074 - classes which happened to be sculpture and he happened to have changed his own practice from abstraction 00:50:37.074 --> 00:50:43.804 - to realism that year. And so I picked up a piece of clay, it was figurative sculpture and I sculpted 00:50:43.804 --> 00:50:46.270 - a whole body just like that, age 19, 00:50:47.106 --> 00:50:53.435 - it was all right there. And it was like, I heard the voice of God, like, this is it, you know, kind 00:50:53.435 --> 00:51:00.208 - of a thing. And it was like, I just fell immediately in love. I think more people have the gift of working 00:51:00.208 --> 00:51:06.727 - three-dimensionally than realize it. And I tell this to students as well. So like, if you're good with 00:51:06.727 --> 00:51:13.309 - Ikea furniture, you should try sculpting. You know, if you can imagine what the back of an object looks 00:51:13.309 --> 00:51:16.094 - like, you should try sculpting because you, 00:51:16.194 --> 00:51:24.169 - We don't have as many opportunities to discover this about ourselves. We have drawing, sure, but clay 00:51:24.169 --> 00:51:32.221 - is very forgiving, very fun, very tactile. So that was sculpture. And then, yeah, I've never been more 00:51:32.221 --> 00:51:40.040 - anxious maybe ever in my life than to share the Ryan sculpture with Ryan and his sister, Ryan's mom 00:51:40.040 --> 00:51:45.278 - and his sister. And I have also literally never been more relieved 00:51:45.698 --> 00:51:54.361 - I mean, really, you should talk to Jeremy. I don't know. He might have a better perspective on it. And 00:51:54.361 --> 00:52:03.024 - or talk to Bill, because it was a journey of knowing I didn't have it right. And I've done other talks 00:52:03.024 --> 00:52:11.602 - where I show how not right I had it. I show the process. And it really took a lot of effort. But then 00:52:11.602 --> 00:52:14.462 - when I did have it, I was hopeful 00:52:14.850 --> 00:52:23.537 - And then when she walked in and just, she was just like, this is it, this is him, you did it. I'm 100% 00:52:23.537 --> 00:52:32.223 - overjoyed. It was amazing. And it's wonderful because now I walk in, I mean, I'm still, I haven't even 00:52:32.223 --> 00:52:40.994 - been here much. So I just walked in today and I'm like, oh, he looks so good. You know, I can't believe 00:52:40.994 --> 00:52:44.030 - I did it. I'm like, I did it, okay. 00:52:44.610 --> 00:52:53.114 - All right, next one. At one point I had a boyfriend whose father was an artist. And he told me that 00:52:53.114 --> 00:53:02.384 - he thought artists were always more liberal because they're faced with nothing and have to create something. 00:53:02.384 --> 00:53:10.973 - Whereas people like doctors are conservative because you do what's been proven to work and so forth. 00:53:10.973 --> 00:53:13.950 - I gather you think that's correct. 00:53:14.466 --> 00:53:22.085 - I'm just doing what I do, having, and this is why this talk was interesting to me, having the two sides 00:53:22.085 --> 00:53:29.923 - of my art practice, right? I see the responses that people have, and I see who tends to like the realistic 00:53:29.923 --> 00:53:37.469 - work and why, and I see who tends to like the abstract work and why. And not to throw my mom under the 00:53:37.469 --> 00:53:41.278 - bus, but she still doesn't understand the abstract, 00:53:41.442 --> 00:53:48.370 - work because she likes to know exactly what's going on. And there is more conservative thinking with 00:53:48.370 --> 00:53:55.229 - my mom than with some of my friends who are more comfortable with the abstraction. So I think it is 00:53:55.229 --> 00:54:02.226 - about practicing Henry Moore. Some of you may know the artist Henry Moore. One of the stories I loved 00:54:02.226 --> 00:54:09.428 - about him was that he would wander the beach and he would pick up objects or stones or bones that looked 00:54:09.428 --> 00:54:10.526 - foreign to him. 00:54:10.658 --> 00:54:18.830 - that he wasn't sure about. And he would hold them in his hand, spend time looking until they got more 00:54:18.830 --> 00:54:26.842 - comfortable to him as a shape. And he would expand his understanding of that shape just by spending 00:54:26.842 --> 00:54:34.934 - time with it. And this is my experience with otherness, with people I don't understand as well, with 00:54:34.934 --> 00:54:40.382 - art I don't understand as well. You have to be willing to slow down 00:54:40.834 --> 00:54:49.823 - take time, not understand it, be curious, and guess what happens? It gets more comfortable. You have 00:54:49.823 --> 00:54:58.901 - a broader understanding. It's kind of wild. So yeah, I'm kind of an evangelist about it in some ways. 00:54:58.901 --> 00:55:03.262 - Okay, I gotta stop, but thank you. That was fun. 00:55:12.226 --> 00:55:19.512 - Melanie, thank you. So many things to like and take home. I love your evangelism. So impressed by your 00:55:19.512 --> 00:55:26.798 - personal bravery after the Kinsey statue. It shouldn't have been anything you'd have to deal with. But 00:55:26.798 --> 00:55:33.943 - love the concept of your giving shape to the invisible. And I especially enjoyed the picture of your 00:55:33.943 --> 00:55:41.017 - grandparents a month before your grandfather's death. They just both look so full of life. So thank 00:55:41.017 --> 00:55:42.078 - you very much. 00:55:42.306 --> 00:55:51.466 - In honor of your talk, a donation will be made this quarter to CJAM. I'd like to thank today's volunteers, 00:55:51.466 --> 00:56:00.199 - Sarah Loughlin, who was supplanted by Natalie Blaze today, Lynn Schwartzberg, Bill Brown, Joy Harder, 00:56:00.199 --> 00:56:09.017 - Judy Schroeder is the reporter this month, Michael Shermis, Lynn Schwartzberg again, Joy Harder again, 00:56:09.017 --> 00:56:10.558 - Bill Brown again, 00:56:11.554 --> 00:56:18.298 - double duty Hank Walter and Jonas Chang on photography. Our next meeting will be here in the Georgian 00:56:18.298 --> 00:56:25.174 - room, August 11th. President Tracy will be back. Constantine Dirks will be our special guest discussing 00:56:25.174 --> 00:56:31.786 - the trying times of the Declaration of Independence. Please join us. And Tyler, if you would please 00:56:31.786 --> 00:56:37.406 - share the graphic for the four way test and please stand if you're able and join me. 00:56:43.074 --> 00:56:51.089 - of the things we think, say, or do? First, is it the truth? Second, is it fair to all concern? Third, 00:56:51.089 --> 00:56:59.262 - will it build goodwill and better friendships? Fourth, will it be beneficial to all concern? And fifth, 00:56:59.262 --> 00:57:00.126 - is it fun?