- Good afternoon. Welcome to the Bloomington Rotary Club's weekly celebration of service. I'm Steve Wicks,
- and I'm covering today for President Tracy Yovanovitch, who's traveling. Please silence your electronic
- devices. One of our sweetest members, Jim Cryway, wanted me to share that today is National Chocolate Chip Day.
- Let's start with the Where in the World. This is the new segment that Tracy has introduced. So today's
- focus is on Saint-Pierre and Miquelon. It's a self-governing overseas collectivity of France. Saint-Pierre
- and Miquelon is an archipelago of eight islands located 12 to 15 miles south of Newfoundland.
- 6,000 people live there. Historically, it's been driven by fishing, cod. In Prohibition, it was a hot
- spot for smuggling. And now it has a growing tourism industry. So there is a Rotary Club of San Pierre
- and Miquelon, relatively new. It was chartered in 1989. The club has 21 members.
- It is the only French-speaking club in Rotary District 7815, which comprises of the maritime provinces
- of Canada. So Rotary Club members work closely with other local service organizations and also the local
- radio station. They've raised money through Bingo to help eradicate polio and establish a free local
- library. So Saint-Pierre and Miquelon. OK.
- Brown will deliver today's reflection. Thank you, Steve. You know, I used to take the miracle of vision
- for granted. And then two weeks ago, I had cataract surgery. And all of a sudden, I got very interested
- in vision and how vision works.
- And it turns out that that's the most common surgery. There's like four million cataract surgeries every
- year. There's probably several people in this room who've had that surgery. If you haven't had it yet
- and you live long enough, you're probably gonna have it at some point in your life. But I have a new
- appreciation for vision and I started looking back old biology books and thinking, well, what is actually
- going on in the eye? How's that work?
- And it turns out that light is reflected from the surfaces that your eyes are pointed to. A small sliver
- of the electromagnetic spectrum, visible light comes at your eyes. And what's coming at your eyes is
- the reflected light, not the absorbed light. So you're seeing a representation of something, but you're
- not seeing that thing. You're seeing a reflection of it. Reflection, right?
- So we see reflected light. We see a small sliver of the world. And the light comes through the sclera,
- the corneates, the irises change the pupil allowing different amounts of light in. And it goes through
- this liquid and it flips. And it flips upside down and backwards when it hits the retina. So that image
- is not upside. It's not right side up. It's upside down. Your brain splits that data.
- to both sides of your brain and it crosses, the optic nerve information crosses in your brain. And then
- it goes to various parts of your brain, not just the visual cortex, but some of those places in the
- brain that worry about whether you're about to be eaten by something. So we can get very excited by
- an image that relates to danger, for example. But it turns out that 70% of the receptors in your body
- are in your eyes. So vision is obviously very important to us
- And when you're actually looking at something, your eyes are not focused in one place. Right now, it
- looks like I'm looking in the middle of the room, but my eyes are flitting all over the place trying
- to make sure there's nothing coming from the side that's going to eat me. And that flitting around creates
- lots of different images. And the time between the flitting is a blank space. And your brain fills that
- in. It predicts what you might have seen and fills in the gaps.
- And this can result in all sorts of interesting illusions. In one test, they told people to count the
- bouncing basketball in a scene. They missed the fact that there was a gorilla walking through the scene.
- They missed that gorilla completely because they were so focused on that particular information. So
- what we see is more like an art film cobbled together by a biased committee and trying to interpret
- sensory data in real time, which is virtually impossible. There's so much data coming through there.
- So my vision is suddenly clear and bright. I switched from nearsighted to farsighted. My brain is still
- 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
- here to admire a purple pink thistle blossom. I'm not sure I would have done that three weeks ago, but
- a new appreciation for
- what's in front of me. So what else am I taking for granted? Well, we're pumping blood to every cell
- in our body 24 seven. We communicate in a language that we can speak and write and hear, and we can
- reflect on our own thoughts. And we can truly see and know and love people that are
- that are near us. So those are all amazing things that we sometimes take for granted. As miraculous
- as vision is, it's only a shallow reflection of reality, less than skin deep. We need all of our senses
- and all of our ability to communicate to truly see each other. We travel together in an infinite hall
- of distorted mirrors in our pursuit of reality, truth, and meaning to truly see
- We must go beneath the surface. We must crash through those mirrors using all of our senses to truly
- see each other. It may not be time for you to get a lensectomy yet, but it is never too early. It's
- never too late to see the reality hidden in plain sight in the form of that bundle of miracles sitting
- next to you.
- Thank you, Bill. Lynn Schwartzberg will introduce today's guests. Thank you. I would love to welcome
- our wonderful guests today. First, we have the lovely Ann Bright, a guest of Jim Bright. Please stand
- so that we can recognize you. We have a guest of our speaker.
- Henley Wolin. We have Bill Yarber, a guest of Hank Walter. And we have Jeremy Pennington, also a guest
- of Melanie, our speaker. And then we have one that's a little bit hard to read. It's Nathalie Blaise.
- Are you here?
- Hello. Thank you all for joining us. Do we have anyone online? Lynn, we do not have any guests online.
- Thank you, Joy. And to all of our guests, if you're interested in learning more about Rotary, we would
- be happy to share and just speak with someone at your table. Thank you. Thank you, Lynn.
- So before we move on, I'd like to add a couple of comments about two of our guests. First of all, Bill
- Yarber is the Senior Director of the IU Rural Center for AIDS STD Prevention. Professor Yarber first
- proposed the Ryan White statue and has played a big role turning that idea into reality. So we're happy
- to have him here today.
- And then Natalie Jenner-Blaze was our club executive assistant for seven years. And she continues to
- help our club from afar. Unfortunately, she is in Bloomington due to the death of her father. We're
- happy to have her back. We just wish the circumstances were better. But Tyler, if you could go ahead
- and put up the PowerPoint.
- Okay, birthdays and anniversaries. Bill Perkins had a birthday on August 2nd. And then three anniversaries
- to observe. Steve Engel, 15 years. Club treasurer Mark Peterson, three years. And young Bill Oates sitting
- over here, 38 years. Announcements. So here a few days ago,
- Jill, our executive assistant, sent out an email asking people to sign up for volunteer roles for the
- fall quarter. So please follow the link and do that. We need greeters. We need people to do reflection.
- We need people to introduce guests and so on. And there might still be a couple of spots left for this
- quarter. So please sign up to volunteer at our weekly programs. Secondly, Club Service Project, the
- Hoosier Hills Food Bank on Friday.
- Fun time, we had a crew here, a crew there from 10 to noon, another crew from noon to two. We shoveled
- lots of pasta into two pound bags, but we did it in an air conditioned room. So we got a great deal.
- But we were there, Duke Energy had a lot of people there. Liz Irwin, club member and Duke Energy
- representative spearheaded our efforts as did Michelle Cohen.
- one of our community services co-chairs. So thank you for all the work done on Friday. And here are
- some pictures. Pictures are from the morning session. But the middle picture, you can see what it looked
- like inside the pasta room. And now we have the fun
- and fortunate activity of introducing a new member. So Patricia Cox and Lynn Schwartzberg, if you can
- both come up front. Stand next to me. And we're going to start with Joy Harder reading Patricia's bio.
- All right, can you all hear me? Great. Hello, Patricia. Hello. On behalf of the board and membership
- of the Bloomington Rotary Club, it is our great pleasure to welcome you as the newest member of our
- club. We look forward to the fellowship that we will share, as well as your participation in the club
- projects that make our club
- community, country, and world a better place. Though Rotary is not a political organization, Rotarians
- are vitally concerned with good citizenship and the election of effective leaders to public office.
- While Rotary is not a religious organization, it is built on those highest principles that have served
- as a moral compass for people throughout the ages.
- Rotary is an organization of businesses, professional and community leaders pledged to uphold the highest
- ethical and moral standards. Rotarians believe that worldwide fellowship and peace can be achieved when
- people work together and uphold the Rotary motto of service above self. Rotary activities exemplify
- the partnership, respect and generosity
- that one would expect from people who believe that they have a responsibility to help others. Patricia,
- you have been chosen for membership in the Bloomington Club because your fellow members believe you
- to be a leader in our community and because you possess the qualities to champion the message and principles
- of Rotary. You are a representative of your vocation and talent within our club and community.
- You now become an ambassador of Bloomington Rotary, carrying the ideals of service to all within your
- sphere of influence. Our community will know and judge Rotary by your character and service. We will
- also look to you for inspiration as we strive to become better Rotarians. Now we will pin you with a
- distinguishing badge of a Rotarian, your Rotary
- pin. Well, I will hand you the pin as opposed to attempting to pin it. Okay. And we, we ask you, Patricia,
- that you wear your rotary pin with pride in your many endeavors and as a symbol of our recognition of
- your contribution towards a better world through your rotary membership. Fellow Rotarians, please rise
- if you are able
- And welcome our newest Rotarian, Patricia Cox. And I got things a little bit out of order. So Lynn,
- can you give us a bio for Patricia? Oh. Patricia Cox.
- is a mortgage loan originator with German American Bank and has several years of experience in real
- estate, helping individuals and families achieve their goal of home ownership. She combines her knowledge
- of both lending and real estate to guide clients through one of the most important financial decisions
- of their lives. Originally from Colombia,
- Patricia is bilingual in English and Spanish and enjoys serving a diverse community. She also has background
- in psychology, which has given her a passion for understanding people and building meaningful relationships.
- Patricia lives in Bedford with her husband Mike, and together they have three children, Mia, Jake, and Mariah.
- She enjoys traveling, working out, spending time with her family, and being involved in her children's
- activities. She previously served as PTO president at her daughter's elementary school and believes
- that giving back and supporting the local community are just as important as professional success. Patricia
- is excited to become part of Rotary, where she hopes to build lasting friendships, serve the community,
- and contribute her time and skills to meaningful projects. Welcome.
- Thank you, Lynn and Patricia. Rotary is an international organization, and it's pretty cool,
- least to me, that in our club of 160 members, we now have three originally from Columbia. So Patricia
- joins Claudia and Whitney. So congratulations. Welcome. Thank you so much. Well said. You're done.
- Thank you. Thank you, guys. OK.
- Bill Brown will come up and introduce today's speaker. I am delighted to introduce our amazing guest
- speaker, Melanie Cooper Pennington, a sculptor based in Bloomington, Indiana, where she serves as area
- head of sculpture and senior lecturer at Indiana University.
- Her practice spans intimate figurative studies, large-scale installations, and public sculpture, using
- the body as a framework for exploring emotional experience, endurance, vulnerability, and transformation.
- Pennington received her MFA in sculpture from Indiana University in 2016. Her work has been exhibited
- nationally and internationally, including solo exhibitions at the International Center for the Arts
- in Monte Castello de Vibio, sorry,
- for you Italians in the crowd, in Italy, New Harmony Gallery of Contemporary Art, Artlink Contemporary,
- and Eiffel Gallery. Recent group exhibitions include ACRE projects in Chicago, Distortion Gallery in
- Beacon, New York, and the Grunwald Gallery of Art. Her work has been supported through residencies and
- fellowships at Sculpture Space, Vermont Studio Center, ACRE, Anderson Ranch Art Center,
- and Haystack Mountain School of Craft. Pennington has completed public sculpture commissions
- and installations for Indiana University, which is pretty close to us here in IMU, the Kinsey Institute,
- the Chicago Sculpture International Sculpture in the Parks Program, and the Indianapolis Arts Center,
- including major figurative bronze commissions honoring Alfred C. Kinsey and, of course, Ryan White.
- Her sculptures are held in the collections of the Kinsey Institute,
- the Fort Wayne Museum of Art, Indiana University, and the International Center for the Arts in Italy.
- Let's give a warm rotary welcome to Melanie. Okay, wow. So how do I sound? Check, check, check.
- A little more? Let's speak a little louder. Speak with a little more authority.
- Hi, everybody. This is a little bit of an intimidating crowd. But I'm very excited to be here. And I
- will let you know you are guinea pigs in a way for a new talk that I'm about to give, because I wanted
- to share with you both sides of my practice as a sculptor. So ready? Buckle up. Here we go. And
- I recently heard that Charlotte Zitlow had a way of always being ready with a question. So in honor
- of Charlotte, I will frame this talk around two questions. The questions are, how do I, as an artist,
- give shape to the invisible? And why do I have two different ways of doing so? Oh, how do I click?
- This one? Do I go down or left or right? Right?
- Do I have to point it over here or over here? Anywhere. Okay. I'm honored to give this talk to you wonderful
- group, the Rotary Club. Bill Brown and I first bonded over our mutual love of sculpting the figure about
- 10 years ago. Did you know he sculpts? Asked to see his Abraham Lincoln. Sorry.
- That was back in my early days here as a graduate student at Indiana University. Little did I know then
- that I would become a professor here and am now the area head of the sculpture department. And what
- I teach most is figure sculpture. It's an area that's fallen out of academic fashion, but I still believe
- is one of the most effective ways to teach students how to think three-dimensionally.
- This is me when I first discovered I could sculpt at age 19. And then this is my studio when I was a
- graduate student at Indiana University in the central stores, if you guys remember that building. I've
- titled this talk, Giving Form to the Invisible, because that's how sculpture saved me, quite literally.
- And it's the goal behind every piece I make.
- It's also how I know when a piece is finished. I was a very, very sensitive young person who didn't
- feel safe to share feelings out loud. Clay became a radical tool of communication. It could hold what
- my body couldn't. I could mold it into forms that carried the weight I couldn't otherwise put down and
- somehow that lightened the load.
- Hold on. So, I have two bodies of work. Figurative and abstract. First, my early work was figurative.
- I spent my formative years as a sculptor studying anatomy with the cowboy sculptors out west for a week
- at a time in Colorado and Arizona. And with anatomy teachers from the New York Academy of Art. I had
- small children.
- So this was the doable way to get an education in anatomy. I was never satisfied with a piece until
- it felt alive, breathing, until it touched something in me while I looked at it. This was natural for
- me. I could feel intuitively how posture and body communicate emotion. Those subtle gestures, even as
- minor as the masseter muscle in a jaw, with just a little bit of tension,
- can communicate things about a person's interior world. I could feel all of that. Probably many of you
- can too. Turning that into sculpture takes technical skill, a solid understanding of the biology of
- a body in addition to the ability to recreate it. But it also takes something harder to reach, depth
- of feeling, an awareness, and dare I say, a willingness
- to feel the agony and the ecstasy of being human and to extend that feeling outside of oneself to reach
- out and get inside of your subject. Speaking of cowboy sculptors, I got to be one briefly when I did
- portraits of my paternal grandparents shortly before they passed, literally like a month before
- my grandfather passed.
- He and she were both cowboy and cowgirl from rural southern Arizona. They drove cattle, they did horse
- breaking, and he was even hired as a yarn teller for ranches. And she was a journalist. So this is called
- The Yarn Teller and the Dream Weaver. This was one of my very first portrait pieces. While it was wonderfully
- gratifying to make pieces like these, the realistic figurative work,
- At the end of the day, it is still only recreating something that is already there. And artists sometimes
- want to create new things. So just as we are now turning to my abstract work in this brief talk, I turn
- to abstraction in my career. Like many of my heroes who also began with the figure and pushed it further,
- here is Constantine Brancusi. Some of you might know he is most famous for this, Bird in Space. You
- can see it at the Art Institute in Chicago.
- and Isama Noguchi, Japanese American sculptor, love him, famous for this piece of furniture, but also
- all of his modernist abstractions. So they started with the figure, they went outside of it. I pushed
- myself to do the same. My studio work turned towards abstraction and anthropomorphism in my very first
- year of graduate school. I removed faces, hands, and feet.
- the things that tell you exactly who and what you're looking at, to focus on the feeling of a piece
- instead of its likeness. I leaned into my cowboy roots too, and my love of myth, giving these forms
- hooves, bodies built to hold something much more intimate and fierce. Why abstraction?
- I find that realism gives all the answers. The fingernails are there, the curl of the hair, the glint
- in the eye, but abstraction makes room for questions. I'm interested in the less comfortable side of
- being human, physical ecstasy, emotional trauma, the parts that don't resolve neatly. My friend and
- mentor, Malcolm Smith, he teaches ceramics here, once told me,
- that abstraction slows the read. It slows our understanding of what's happening. It asks for more time,
- more investigation. That's exactly why I build hybrid forms and why I keep trying to give shape to the
- invisible. This is the largest piece that I ever created.
- In both bodies of work, I am always looking to give form to the invisible, and both bodies have enjoyed
- some publicity, but naturally it is the public commissions which thus far have gained the most attention.
- So despite my interest in the abstract, I continued to teach portrait sculpture for 15 years, believing
- it to be both important and foundational for good art making. I am still shocked
- by how frequently art that is sometimes famous violates the basics of anatomy purely out of ignorance.
- Perhaps you have seen figures that don't look quite right. And it's good that I kept up my skills because
- as most of you know, I have recently had the honor of doing two important figures in IU's history.
- For me, these were both special and I accepted both deliberately. Referring back to the title question,
- how do I give form to the invisible sides of a person?
- Or how do you capture the spirit of a person? And to add to that question, who is worthy of
- being memorialized? Because I have the privilege of having an income as a professor, I do not rely on
- commissions for my bread and butter. And thus, I don't have to do them. This means I can hold onto my
- goals as an artist even when the work is representational. And the invisible is what guides those choices
- for me. I have to feel aligned with any work I spend so much time on.
- And I don't want to burden the landscape with more commemorative bronzes unless I believe in the reasons
- to make the sculpture. I pursued the Kinsey Commission because his research made the world question
- what it had decided was normal in terms of sexual behavior. He didn't accept society's normal as fact.
- He investigated people's actual experience and reported what he found. That reporting sparked a sexual
- revolution.
- and made room for a broader, more tolerant understanding of human sexuality. The Kinsey scale showed
- that people aren't purely one thing or another. There's a gradient. There's abstraction in that.
- I love that. For the sculpture, I knew that realism would be the right way to honor both the man and
- his alma mater, to place him among the other memorial sculptures on campus. I also wanted to involve
- the viewer directly
- I placed an interview chair beside the piece and made sure Kinsey's gaze would meet the sitter's eye
- to eye. That's the invisible part, the experience of being seen. I speculate, and I've witnessed, that
- people's reactions to sitting in that chair echo their own comfort or discomfort with their relationship
- to sex. Try it sometime.
- Also, the title of this piece, which I put here, is one of the questions from his 330 questionnaire.
- When it's warm outside, do you prefer to sleep in the nude? All right. All right. Good job. So there's
- been real controversy about this piece. The day after the unveiling, I was harassed across every web-based
- platform I'm on for over a year.
- to the point that the Bloomington PD had my address on file and my kids had to strip location data from
- their devices. It made me confront my choice to memorialize him. Some accused him of being a pedophile
- and a predator. I did my own research and came to believe those accusations misread his methods and
- are not founded. I believe the Kinsey Institute's work is essential and its researchers are some of
- the bravest, kindest people on campus.
- My next commission was Ryan White. And by the way, both this piece and Kinsey were made possible by
- Dr. Billy Arbor, who's here. Amazing. I competed for the Kinsey commission and was selected.
- I worked on it. Bill funded, helped fund that piece.
- And then he came to me and said, let's do another one. I think we should do Ryan White. So he is 100%
- made that possible. And he wants to do more. Okay. So Ryan brought a different set of challenges. He
- was loved by the world and became famous enough that everybody had seen images of him. And most terrifyingly,
- unlike Kinsey, Ryan's immediate family
- was alive and involved with the sculpture. And they would know immediately if I hadn't gotten him right.
- And in his case, that included capturing the invisible. I hesitated before taking this one on. In addition
- to the challenges of his fame and family, there were other issues. His age, young kids are hard to sculpt.
- The ravages of AIDS and what that had done in terms of his growth in his body.
- which was normal but also not normal. And there were a lack of usable photos, which was essential. I
- had only one profile photo from either direction. But I could feel something when I read his autobiography.
- I could feel his spirit. And when I can feel something, I can sculpt it. I decided to do it, to make
- the invisible visible.
- For Ryan, that meant giving him physical form on IU's campus and finding a way to carry his message
- forward too. I knew I needed to show the sparkle in his eyes, his kindness and his strength. These were
- essential and ephemeral qualities I had to capture in his likeness. His unassuming manner, his frank
- call for people to be better and to do better towards one another,
- which genuinely changed how the world understood HIV and AIDS. I've spent hours over years studying
- how to sculpt pupils and irises to carry soulfulness into a portrait. For Ryan, that mattered more than
- almost anything else in the piece. Showing his mom this piece is absolutely, cry, one of the highlights
- of this experience. She cried for four minutes when she came into my studio.
- and it has solidified for me the purpose in making commemorative portrait sculptures. I also built in
- an action to this piece. The public loves interacting with art and I didn't want Ryan to fade into the
- background of campus. I partnered with IU Dance Marathon on a series of prompt cards
- Students now pass notes of encouragement to each other through the sculpture. There's literally a slot
- and there's a set of cards with prompts. You can go right now. I encourage all of you to go write a
- note and leave it and it will be posted online and you can also take notes of encouragement when you
- visit the sculpture. It captures the same thing I circle back to in my work and what I tell my students.
- Being human is difficult. Just keep going. Don't give up.
- tomorrow will be different than today. Now, you're going to get a sneak peek of my next project, which
- might come to life in Bloomington next year. This one will bring both halves of my practice together.
- It will be representational in one sense and abstract in another.
- The Eternal Vine was selected for the Trades District in Bloomington through the CCC Lilly Grant. It's
- going to be the Indiana grapevine shaped into a wandering, circling Ouroboros, cast in bronze, 18 feet
- wide and 10 feet tall. This piece holds a few things at once. First, its construction is based on modern
- technology
- It will require 3D scanning and CNC technologies to create it, fitting for a piece sited in a tech park.
- Second, it represents Indiana's natural landscape. I hike a lot. Grapevines are native here, the kind
- that they snake through the woods like snakes through the trees on a forest walk. And third, it's local
- histories. Actually, if you go back, this is the emblem for the Showers Furniture Company.
- from tree to trade was their logo. And they were the largest furniture manufacturer in the 19th century,
- and they were the innovators of veneer, just super cool. It's also good entrepreneurship for the tech
- park. But lastly, it's a two-sided symbol. It's a symbol of renewal, a snake shedding its skin, and
- it's a warning against overconsumption
- against ignoring the natural world and the people in it in the name of greed. This was my proposal
- originally. Someday I still want to do a fountain. We're not doing a fountain. Instead, it will look
- something like this. So I build a small model and then enlarge that through different
- renderings with Photoshop and this. I'm supposed to get a contract any day now. We'll see. That's why
- I can show it to you. I don't have a contract. Okay. Last, well, almost done here. To come back to my
- own personal work. The Vine isn't only something I'm building for a tech park. It shows up in my studio
- work too as material and metaphor. This piece is called Use Your Words.
- It's built from real vine woven through wrestling figures drawn from ancient Greek wrestling statues.
- Think Hercules. It's about the importance of communication and personal relationships and in politics.
- The idea that fighting physical or otherwise isn't the answer. And I want to close with one more piece.
- This one is called a sleep in the boat. It's one of my favorites. It's four feet.
- by nine feet. All of my beasts are about nine feet large. It's a woven willow basket cradling a resting
- figure, a mother curled in on herself about to give birth. It's about resting in the middle of creation,
- even the act of making a sculpture, a life, anything. We need to pause in order to move forward. A place
- It's a place to lay your head down before the next thing begins. With Kinsey, the invisible thing was
- his research, the truth of people's actual sexual histories hidden behind. Oh, it's gone. Last slide.
- Hidden behind what society had decided was normal. With Ryan, it was his courage and kindness.
- in the face of extreme fear and discrimination. With the vine, it's the metaphor itself. Greed, renewal,
- warning, all carried inside a form that looks at first like a beautiful piece of nature. In each case,
- the invisible thing already existed. You just couldn't see it. My job as an artist is to bring form
- to the invisible. Some of what's invisible doesn't have a name yet though. That's where abstraction
- lives for me.
- Not because I'm avoiding the truth, but because I haven't found the words for it yet. Clay let me hold
- that unnamed thing before I could speak it. It still does. This is why I teach both in my classroom
- and why I think both matter. Realism teaches you to see clearly and render what's already there. Abstraction
- teaches you to sit with what isn't resolved yet, to make room for a question before you have the answer.
- That's what sculpture has always been for me, not only a monument to someone else's story, but a way
- to hold my own. Thank you. And now you get to ask me questions. And after, bye. Hello there.
- sculptures cast here in Bloomington? No, they are not cast here. There are, there's a dearth of foundries
- in this part of the country. So I actually cast my work in Arizona, which has given me reason to stay
- connected to my Arizona family too. But it makes it complicated. Yeah. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
- I think you said you had only one photograph of Ryan White. And could you tell us how old was he at
- that time? Well, I had more. I had probably 300 photographs. I had only one from this profile when he
- was 13 years old and one from this profile when he was 16 years old. So I was having to adjust his dimensions
- and then having to guess
- many things about how he looked. And it took three months to get that face right. And it still wasn't
- right three weeks before his mom showed up. So I had a mini, my husband knows, I wouldn't come home
- until he was breathing. It was hard. It was a lot of work. Yes.
- Hi there, my name is Katie and my husband is an abstract painter and so this is where this question
- comes from because I remember meeting him and not knowing how do I even approach abstract artwork and
- then talking with my parents who are very like what you think of like blue collar and they're like what
- is what is going on here you know so I was wondering you know what sort of advice or feedback do you
- give to people whether it's students or people you interact with about
- you know, how to interact with abstract artwork, whether it's, you know, like me, I wasn't unsure. I
- think for some people I've met, including my parents, they feel intimidated by it. Like, what do I even
- do with this? So just any guidelines you give the folks to interact with abstraction. I love that. That's
- a great question. And what I do is I say, don't try to understand it here. Just how does it make you feel?
- How do the colors make you feel? How do the lines make you feel? Where in your body do you feel, like
- if you notice like a Franz Kline painting, it's just black, right? But it's got like this kind of violent
- energy. So like, what does that do in your body? And then does that tell you something about what the
- piece is about? It might. But yeah, it's all about listening to the physical sensations of the body.
- One other little thing, so for when I teach figure sculpture, the way I teach students how to get into
- the emotion of a piece is we practice, we have a stand and I'll have everyone shout out a feeling, right,
- like sadness, and then they have to move their own bodies into that feeling. So that then you have to
- sit there yourself, you don't just say it, tell a model to do it, you put your own body
- in the position. And then you're like, oh, and then you can stand back and look at it. And you're like,
- it's round. Round shapes are softer, sadder. Triangle shapes have energy. They go north. So shapes have
- different squares and rectangles are solid. So even just a basic shape can give you a feeling. And if
- you notice in paintings or in sculptures, they'll have directional energy. And you can deduce from that what
- the feeling of the piece is about. I'd just like to know where around campus we can view your sculptures.
- Yeah. Well, just down the hall here in the reading room is Ryan White, right by the fireplace,
- place of honor. And then the Kinsey sculpture is behind Lindley Hall. But like on your way to the science
- building, it's kind of hidden up there. It also lights up at night.
- so you can go see him and visit him at night and sit in the chair and tell him your sexual history.
- Hello. I'd be interested to know if there are some projects that take more time or what kind of time
- do you allocate maybe for each kind of project and why? Yeah, that's a good question. Ideally, I have
- about a year for every project just mentally. I think Kinsey was a two-year process.
- Ryan was a one-year process. But again, as I said, I ended up with only three months to sculpt it. It
- depends often on the deadlines. But yeah, I need at least six months, generally speaking. And it depends
- on the scale of a piece as well. But I love having at least a year. I love just to start projects and
- just have them sit in my studio. And then I can come back and you see it differently every day. So the
- more time I have, the better it'll
- It'll be, and you have to be in the right place mentally for Ryan. I had to not sculpt Ryan when I was
- anxious or when I was worried about what people were going to think of the sculpture. I had to literally
- really only approach the piece with confidence and otherwise I would mess it up. Well, I'm just going
- to jump right in on that question and add a second.
- level, do you work on more than one thing at a time? And how do you get your mind into that place of
- realism, abstraction? Well, like right now, so I've worked very hard on Ryan all year, and that's really
- just wrapping up. And what I've noticed in myself is I need a break from realism.
- So I'm starting to, I start, the easiest way for me is I do large scale drawing in my studio.
- 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
- work with smaller maquettes just to get back into my feelings. But yeah, I'll usually have two or three
- 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.
- The dream, if anyone has a warehouse or a barn, they wanna, so I could have multiple parts, but yeah,
- that's how I work. I have a comment and a question. The comment is, as I parked at the Atwater Garage,
- 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
- after today's meeting. Yes, you do. You gotta try it. It's different.
- The question is, it's been a couple of years, but we had the director of a group in Salisbury that they
- have the sculpture garden. And the type of work that they do there, is that anything that can dovetail
- with what you're doing, or is it just very different? No, it's very similar. I mean, it's all iron.
- Generally speaking, they're iron and aluminum. Actually bringing a class to sculpture trails this fall,
- that was Jerry, probably.
- And that's wonderful. They make all different types of work, but it's great because it's outdoor. It's
- a wonderful public, like for new and professional artists, you go and can cast your work there in iron.
- Iron is a different process than bronze. I'm not gonna go into all of that right now, but yeah, I hope
- to do a piece with them someday. I don't know what it would be though.
- How old were you when a light went out of your head, and you said, I'm going to be a sculptor? And then
- my other question is, at what point did you involve Ryan White's mother in Cigna Added? That must have
- been kind of anaerobic for you. Well, the story, I love the story of, so when I was young, I was always drawing.
- but I was always frustrated. So I was someone who would, wanted to be an artist, thought, hoped, maybe
- I was an artist, but was only able to copy things that I, you know, and I would open the book, I would
- get like the books on her, how to draw an eye and how to do all this. So I remember actually putting
- out to the university at age 16, like, I want to be good at a real certain thing in art, please.
- And then I went to college and I ended up taking a class from the, you know, you hear about the good
- professors and I tried to get into one of his classes and it was full. So I went to another one of his
- classes which happened to be sculpture and he happened to have changed his own practice from abstraction
- to realism that year. And so I picked up a piece of clay, it was figurative sculpture and I sculpted
- a whole body just like that, age 19,
- it was all right there. And it was like, I heard the voice of God, like, this is it, you know, kind
- of a thing. And it was like, I just fell immediately in love. I think more people have the gift of working
- three-dimensionally than realize it. And I tell this to students as well. So like, if you're good with
- Ikea furniture, you should try sculpting. You know, if you can imagine what the back of an object looks
- like, you should try sculpting because you,
- We don't have as many opportunities to discover this about ourselves. We have drawing, sure, but clay
- is very forgiving, very fun, very tactile. So that was sculpture. And then, yeah, I've never been more
- anxious maybe ever in my life than to share the Ryan sculpture with Ryan and his sister, Ryan's mom
- and his sister. And I have also literally never been more relieved
- I mean, really, you should talk to Jeremy. I don't know. He might have a better perspective on it. And
- or talk to Bill, because it was a journey of knowing I didn't have it right. And I've done other talks
- where I show how not right I had it. I show the process. And it really took a lot of effort. But then
- when I did have it, I was hopeful
- And then when she walked in and just, she was just like, this is it, this is him, you did it. I'm 100%
- overjoyed. It was amazing. And it's wonderful because now I walk in, I mean, I'm still, I haven't even
- been here much. So I just walked in today and I'm like, oh, he looks so good. You know, I can't believe
- I did it. I'm like, I did it, okay.
- All right, next one. At one point I had a boyfriend whose father was an artist. And he told me that
- he thought artists were always more liberal because they're faced with nothing and have to create something.
- Whereas people like doctors are conservative because you do what's been proven to work and so forth.
- I gather you think that's correct.
- I'm just doing what I do, having, and this is why this talk was interesting to me, having the two sides
- of my art practice, right? I see the responses that people have, and I see who tends to like the realistic
- work and why, and I see who tends to like the abstract work and why. And not to throw my mom under the
- bus, but she still doesn't understand the abstract,
- work because she likes to know exactly what's going on. And there is more conservative thinking with
- my mom than with some of my friends who are more comfortable with the abstraction. So I think it is
- about practicing Henry Moore. Some of you may know the artist Henry Moore. One of the stories I loved
- about him was that he would wander the beach and he would pick up objects or stones or bones that looked
- foreign to him.
- that he wasn't sure about. And he would hold them in his hand, spend time looking until they got more
- comfortable to him as a shape. And he would expand his understanding of that shape just by spending
- time with it. And this is my experience with otherness, with people I don't understand as well, with
- art I don't understand as well. You have to be willing to slow down
- take time, not understand it, be curious, and guess what happens? It gets more comfortable. You have
- a broader understanding. It's kind of wild. So yeah, I'm kind of an evangelist about it in some ways.
- Okay, I gotta stop, but thank you. That was fun.
- Melanie, thank you. So many things to like and take home. I love your evangelism. So impressed by your
- personal bravery after the Kinsey statue. It shouldn't have been anything you'd have to deal with. But
- love the concept of your giving shape to the invisible. And I especially enjoyed the picture of your
- grandparents a month before your grandfather's death. They just both look so full of life. So thank
- you very much.
- In honor of your talk, a donation will be made this quarter to CJAM. I'd like to thank today's volunteers,
- Sarah Loughlin, who was supplanted by Natalie Blaze today, Lynn Schwartzberg, Bill Brown, Joy Harder,
- Judy Schroeder is the reporter this month, Michael Shermis, Lynn Schwartzberg again, Joy Harder again,
- Bill Brown again,
- double duty Hank Walter and Jonas Chang on photography. Our next meeting will be here in the Georgian
- room, August 11th. President Tracy will be back. Constantine Dirks will be our special guest discussing
- the trying times of the Declaration of Independence. Please join us. And Tyler, if you would please
- share the graphic for the four way test and please stand if you're able and join me.
- of the things we think, say, or do? First, is it the truth? Second, is it fair to all concern? Third,
- will it build goodwill and better friendships? Fourth, will it be beneficial to all concern? And fifth,
- is it fun?