Making a Life Conversation No. 1 with Kaffe Fassett and Erin Lee Gafill on 20 June 2020

so hello everyone I'm Melanie phallic and welcome to making alights the conversation all sorts of technical issues in last 35 minutes including my Wi-Fi not working at all but now we're here and I think there are over 300 of you here as well so thank you we're gonna start with a slideshow that was going to show Nepenthe day which is the place in Big Sur where cave and Aaron both spent their formative years 25 years apart but we weren't able to work but I want you to imagine being 800 feet above the Pacific Ocean in a log cabin actually the log cabin that aaron is in right now that is where that is the home that cave moved into I believe as a preteen after his family moved to Big Sur and his parents built an amazing place called Nepenthe Bay in addition in adding to the log cabin they built a restaurant that has an amazing Jack the idea was that they wanted to share this beautiful place this beautiful view with people everywhere and they wanted to create a gathering place for creatives so I think what we're trying to do today is gather in a different way we are together apart and I think it's really special to be here with you I feel like having been to the penthe and knowing Cape Anne Erin I feel so honored to sort of be having things brought into their fold and I I just want to give you a little background I actually met Cape in the 1990s in the Shetland Islands we're on a rowing trip together and although I obviously continue to follow what he was doing for many years we didn't reconnect again for until about 20 years later and then I became Kate's editor there are a bunch of his books including in color which is Kate's autobiography and I of course felt so honored that he trusted me with something so special and I had the privilege of actually going to Big Sur and standing time and penthe with Kate and his family including Aaron and so I met Aaron in 2012 and I'm honored to call them friends and I'm incredibly honored that they agreed to be my first guests on making the life the conversation which is a outgrowth of my book making a life working by hand and discovering the life you were meant to live to get started I just want I think we're doing really well I want everybody to make sure that they keep their mics muted and that's really important if you want to talk to us in the chat which is in the bottom right corner please do so I would love to know where you're all from so please type that in if you can if you have questions those are gonna happen in the chat but they're gonna happen I want you to direct them if you can remember to do this to ask questions and that when you do that those questions will all go to Caitlyn recluse recluse otto who is right here and Caitlyn work Phoenix shop which is a treasure trove of boutique at Nepenthe and the Phoenix shop I'm glad to say is our bookseller partner and that's just part of the whole making a life the conversation it's a program so we're gonna start with just Caitlyn telling us about the Phoenix shop and then we're gonna come back to me and begin the conversation with Kate and Aaron everyone as Melanie said my name is Caitlyn Rick passado and I am live afire at the amazing Phoenix shop at Nepenthe a restaurant and I'm just really excited to be having both of these books here actually I've been both with me so this is the beautiful color duets as well as the absolute amazing making a life but I don't think my camera's picking it up very well here we are I just wanted to share the story that for those of you who don't know about us our shop was drained into existence by lolly Fassett and she was one of the founders of - been a pimp a restaurant and she was a really incredibly creative and generous woman she highly valued community and culture and she believed in building that through art and creativity as well as conversation and so when she envisioned the Phoenix shop she saw it being a place full of beautiful art made by local artists amazingly handmade objects from all over the world and so that's something that we really strive to uphold today over fifty five years later and so just thank you everyone for coming out today to support this event and for those of you who may be choosing to add one of these incredible books to your own collections thank you for my heart for supporting independent family so family owned stores such as ourselves so thank you and back to you Melanie if you have any questions for Kay for Aaron you guys you can message them to me I am asked a question and we will have that at the end of our conversation today okay so probably I think the probably the question and answer will be about community and I feel like I could talk to either of them for days so it's hard to minimize it to 35 minutes but let's try to make it really good I wanted to start with you Kane um we're celebrate the value of and importance of making by hand and your book colored wet so to start cave I just wanted to for you to tell everyone in case they don't realize where are you and then if you can tell us how the idea for color duets the practical painting practice that you and Aaron shared for over 12 years um how that began well I'm in my house in London I'm in in my big studio at with my work wall behind me which has lots of swatches of knitting on it because I'm making great big knitted patchwork blankets out of my swatches for different projects and the reason that we decided to make a book and an exhibition was that Aaron and I used to paint together all the time in Big Sur when I had a two weeks off one week I would spend in Big Sur with my sister and then she and I would go down to Mexico to a health farm called Rancho La Porta where we would have a wonderful time walking the mountains and eating good food so I would paint in that week before I went and I was always very happy to break off from my textile work and get into painting and Aaron would come and sit by my elbow and paint a slightly different angle from what I was doing and we would paint these things and after about six or seven times of going there and gathering these paintings together and realizing that we were painting the same objects over and over and over again I said wouldn't it be interesting to show the world these objects that we constantly come back and visit and do different poetic interpretations of these same objects and so it it just seemed like a good idea to have both of our point of views and our objects to be on display and so when we finally have an exhibition I'm hoping that we will have some of the objects there and the the props that we use certainly the paintings in Aaron first if you could tell us where you are and if you could tell me some of your straw August and fondest memories of this experience with your uncle well I am in my home which is our family home the log cabin at Nepenthe I mean literally on top of the restaurant if I threw a penny out the window might hit a customer on the head so I don't do that but we're really really snug up with the restaurant itself for anybody who's ever been to Nepenthe I'm right there and the things so exciting about having worked with caves you know painted with cave I mean it's like since my childhood memory of cave coming home from London or wherever he was traveling and just you drop everything to be in his presence I mean that was what you did because there was no one more exciting on this earth and so it has the thrill of that childhood memory has not dissipated when it's a cave come time to see my mom or to spend that time with her it's been just an incredible incredible privilege to say yes can I come and sit with you and paint at your side and learn from you and see how you do what you do Kate paints in acrylics I peanut oil he's been a textile artist who has inspired the world I get to have him to alter myself or you know a couple of hours every day for five days and I just take it as you know a gift from the universe and it's just endlessly educational not just the painting but the conversations we have the the stories that he shares with me the revelations that we come to the quiet moments between painting when we're just looking and you know my mother Holle you know she would paint with us in the beginning and it was so wonderful because she's a beautiful painter and I'm just gonna see if I can find a picture of here or her in the book Kaif and I dedicated this book to Holly because Holly this is Holly and Keith together when they were very young Holley was the one who you know she we'd all paint together initially and then she just got so busy running the restaurant that she abandoned the process the project which is very bittersweet because I would love for her to come back into that experience with Kaif and me she's a beautiful painter and I hold out that hope I I know you wrote about in the book um the fact that in between painting when you would take a break you would knit and I think there's a quote in the book of capes saying give me my knitting and I'm home so I'm wondering about how you feel with a paintbrush in your hand and how you feel with knitting needles in your hand and how those two things are the same and different and so let's start with cape and then go over to Aaron well I think in terms of fiber so when I'm painting a design that's going to be printed onto cotton I'm thinking about how that's going to be cut up and put into patchwork and when I'm doing my knitting of course I'm thinking about patterns and colors and constructions and it's just it's my way of being able to like I designed a Shakespeare play once as you like it and I sat down first of all and made little needle points and knitted swatches just to explore the color that was going to go into that production and that's just just helps me to think so textiles has always been a way that was much more immediate and a sensual way of coming to terms with color and when I went back to my painting after doing a lot of textile work I found that my paintings were much more interesting color wise because of the work I had done with the textiles so I think that working with balls of yarn and colored fabrics is a wonderful way of exploring color it's very immediate and very sensual yeah that you and Aaron both do is you teach quite a bit and I know when we were Chuck in meeting the other day you said during this period when you can't travel that you really really miss the connection with with the people who take your classes and and one thing that I think you come from this artistic legacy you know many generations back and when we look at your work Erin's work it's easy to feel a little bit intimidated like oh my work would never maybe be that good and that's something that I always in myself personally try to get away from because I know deep down in my soul that it's the process that is the real joy we don't do this for the it was only a finished product I don't know that the process would even be worth it so I'm just wondering if you can say something you know to our guests and to me to just bring that home that um you're not out there say look at me look at how great this is you're out there saying join me but also it there is nothing like starting to actually depict something on paper or canvas or knitting needles or whatever it makes you observe and think about pattern and color well it's not even a thought process it's just an immediate instinctive reaction of just grabbing things and I don't know putting fiber together is just it's so sensual you know and and so immediate it's just an extraordinary thing and it takes me right out of myself you know it's very interesting because see flow is a great photographer who photographed my first four books and I remember once him setting up the camera and going to take a shot of one of my myths against a wonderful background and he said oh I'm so excited I'm taking photographs I love it and I need just what he meant he was in his zone and that's the thing about you know what I loved about textiles you don't have to be perfect I mean there are people who dedicate their lives to being absolutely boringly perfect about quilt making knitting and it's just awful because they usually lack a sense of wonderful color and and abandonment but I love to see in textiles I love to see life well I think as you're speaking it reminded me about life but this instant pants make things it is an evolutionary birth rate that comes to us through our DNA as instinct to make the ordinary extraordinary and you know scholars and historians go back and and look at objects that remain from thousands and thousands of years ago they're not totally utilitarian they are you know beautiful they're clearly someone out of their way to make something special and it seems to me that as a society that those instincts are sometimes set aside a little bit and considered kind of frivolous you know that it's the focus is more on like making money or acquiring status yeah my sense is that that is not the environment that you grew up in that's not the environment that your mother created for all the people who who gathered there and I and I get the sense I mean I often say that making by hand and making things beautiful is our my that's part of my life line that's how I survive I couldn't it's a path to my own wellness and I'm wondering it's to get Aaron back into the conversation here Aaron if you could respond to that and then also talk to us a little bit about that beginning question about you know when you guys were painting versus when you were knitting and the other yes I do well I mean for me every I believe every every child should be taught how to knit because there's absolutely no quicker way to return to home base in your essential being then when you have a pair of knitting needles in your hands there is something absolutely anchoring and centering about it and I find that when I am in extreme stress whether it's being quarantined at home because of Koba 19 or during the time it's when highway 1 has been broken or mudslides have blocked us in for months and months on end and you've only been able to get out my hike out or helicoptering in or you know everything in the world is thrown up in the air and you don't know where you're going to land that kind of anxiety the idea of painting kind of goes out the window and I find myself just immersed in textiles knitting balling up yarn finding incredible comforts in that space within I'm within a minute or two minutes of just knitting a row and then the challenge in knitting with just or the gift which is this extremely gorgeous array of balls of yarn in different colors it tells you where to go it's just it's so immediate and so directive and as an artist I'm always listening to my paintings I lay down a brushstroke of color and another brushstroke of color and I listen to what wants to come next you know in terms of shape and tone and texture and knitting and and and the textile world offers you this in-your-face joy it's just this plethora of joy at available and it has never been about perfection I walk when I first went to London to visit cave when I was 28 years old if he did needlepoint I made a little needlepoint you know he was painting I did a little painting I mean I didn't have any pretensions at being more than just for the joy of doing it badly I don't think anyone saw in any of those efforts any sign of hope or promise but the pleasure of the pleasure of working in this arena of the visual arena whatever form or the handmade arena whatever the form connects and centers us and deeply heals us it's just unbelievable to me that it's not on the curriculum of of every human being because we need that and as we get more and more disassociated and disconnected how do we find our way back to that root and for me it's with a pair of knitting needles in my hand or we're making sourdough bread make bread arranging flowers everybody can find and hand finds for themselves some way in and I would just say that part of what we both teach and advocate is for people to actually sit themselves down and do that and not just defer it to some imaginary time in the future when they're gonna have this free time that doesn't really exist like take the time now it's it's the message I get from from cave again and again is you know no one's telling you to go write your novel or make your beautiful master she said no one it's really cares if you do or don't do it it's only if you care and you do it that you get that that product you know the book this amazing book you know colored us which we're so thrilled actually exists after years and years and years of painting and talking and imagining and you know that conversation that led to a conversation with the Monterey Museum of Art which said yes we want to do an exhibition of all of these paintings and everything else you've done you've been doing textiles and and otherwise to give an audience member or viewer visitor to a museum that experience of the product within the context of the life and now that would they weren't knocking on our door asking for that we thought it mattered enough to take it to them so I just say that you know believe in yourself and it's the message I got from cave from the beginning believe in yourself and listen to what you are you know you are hearing yourself say and out of that belief extraordinary things come you know just extraordinary moments that you share with other people and with yourself and so there you go you see the funny this makes me think about you and I had the idea to do this conversation the idea being that we've online for the time being and maybe for for a long time and then it could also be combined with in-person conversations and I was kind of talking about the fact the idea of doing it and I know this might be hard that might be hard I'm not ready and a friend of mine Ali I think he's listening um said you know what my advice is for you Melanie and she said I think you should just do it and you know as I sit here right now there's all sorts of thoughts running through my head about how the conversation goes on they just think it goes back to this idea if not now when you know like if you've always dreamed of doing pottery or spending more time knitting or writing or whatever it is that now is the time I wanted to her in the week caifa you cave and Aaron you both told me about certain images from the book that you would be interested in talking about and I want to start with cake with white on white I remember that they showed me a cover that had white it was like white with the painting on it and that was their first choice and I remembered ice was on the phone with Tom and I said oh really have you shown that to cave-like - I don't think he likes I don't think he's comfortable with white and then I was not surprised when I saw the final beautiful cover and it wasn't the white one and I'm not sure that they showed you the one but anyway it was it was kind of interesting when I said that to Tom and he laughed he's like but tell us about white on white and why you chose that as the as one of the paintings you wanted to discuss today well when I when I first got to London I was not planning to I was gonna be here for three months and I was going to go back to America and Here I am fifty something odd years later obviously decided I would say but one of the things that absorbed me was the idea of finding these beautiful pudding basin and white plates and white pitchers and jugs and and neutral colored things and bringing them together and paint doing these still life one after another after another and they were all white I was not interested at all in color and I mean if if any color got near me I was just not at all interested I it was just that pure white reflective kind of world with soft shadows and everything was it was a very interesting mood that I thought I got myself into it was partly inspired by gaudí going to Barcelona and seeing the part girl and the underneath of that is all done in sets of China that are broken up and you know plates and I don't know lost lots and lots and lots of wonderful round shapes and so forth of saucers and teacups and drugs that are stuck onto the ceiling of this wonderful church of this wonderful Park and that really inspired me and I came home and I was just I just got into this white world so that's why I was interested to to talk about that and this one painting that exists from that period and how did it change you clearly made the shift well I got the way the reason I change is I started finding this wonderful museum called the Victoria and Albert Museum which was this great treasure trove of decorative arts from all over the world and so there were these amazing collections of Indian paintings Indian miniatures and Persian managers and they were these tiny little paintings that were just stuffed with pattern and color and so here was these magical things of a carpet with Paisley's and then would be a woman with a an outfit that was covered with roses and then there would be you know her trousers would be striped and her little shoes would be plaid on them polka dots on her scarf you know all these different things put together but it was gorgeous and harmonious and wonderful and I just realized this whole magical mood that you can create with just one pattern following another and so I started going down to Portobello Road where there was this wonderful free market and every weekend I would haunt that road and I would find little rose covered teapots and little saucers and and cups and everything had patterns and then I would find a beautiful chintz tablecloth say that that was covered with flowers that was English or or I would find a patchwork quilt which was covered with lots and lots of different patterns cut up and put together and I would put these down and I would make these pattern on pattern intricate paintings and it just became I went from not being interested in color to being totally fascinated with the colors that were in these objects and what you're saying reminds me of something you told me what all those years ago in the Shetland Islands and we were talking about that landscape there and you told me about the fact that a bust you would talk to a bus driver who one morning he was driving the bus very early and the it was the most amazing light on the snow and everything looked pink and he saw that people on the bus were all reading their newspapers really struck by that and you said you know you feel like I can't remember the quote exactly but it was something like you know kind of your mission in life was to tell people like look up oh he the world and we need to talk about the fact of thinking all those things I'm Portobello Road and the way that you talk about color and the way you talk and I know you don't have a cell phone and you don't work on the computer and that's for all of us but certainly making a life where you could be tuned in in that way has been amazingly productive and it seems like inspiring for you I want to switch to Aaron and I want to talk to you about one of the images that you picked which surprisingly was not a painting and it was the hatbox quilt and I I'm hoping you can tell us a little bit about the quilt I know that the fabrics have a story that has to do with your grandmother capes mother and in the process of making that quote is important to you and I think you talked about if your your house were on fire that was what you would grab absolutely and it's true I'm just scrolling through the book trying to find that painting that that quilt but I'm sure it's here somewhere oh here it is so it had I'm a mom I had two kids I was running a nonprofit arts organization and working at Nepenthe doing the books and the what we call the cage counting money and I'm trying to do a million things at once as all mothers or single fathers or whoever's anybody who's taking care of living beings whatever whoever you are you know this dilemma of how to get it all done so I was seeing cakes first quilt book and it blew my mind this this pattern that he had in his in his book the hatbox just everything was in it it just reminded me of my grandmother and her grandmother who traveled to Europe in the 20s and 30s and lived you know lived a life or you would be actually traveling with hat boxes filled with glamorous has so it took me five years I went block by block it took me you know I would do 20 minutes half an hour and if I was lucky an hour a day cave would come home and say what's going on with your quilt and I would say well I could show him few more a few more blocks that I'd made but to me that's part of its beauty because most of us don't have that much time in our day to work on a creative project that doesn't have some practical purpose behind it and this speaks to me about how desperately I wanted to have a little bit more of that in my life during a time when it was really almost impossible I think that's very much the way it is for most for most people and it was just scraps from my group my grandmother has had in this house that I live in and still here now this enormous box that was built to keep the grizzly bears out of the provisions back in the 1920s when they were still grizzly bears in Big Sur and the lid is so heavy it takes two people to lift the lid it's filled to the brim with fabrics that go back 70 years and I just thought anything I need to make this quilt is in this Fox I mean it never really even occurred to me to go buy any fabric at all it just seemed like get into what you got so and that's the way we were raised you just look around if you needed something to do for fun or you were trying to create something for the Christmas tree because god forbid you would be going to shop for that there's no one had any money it was just find what you can and make do and the quilts for me was a artistic expression of all of that it was what do you have make it work find these beautiful juxtapositions put them together the imagery itself was so evocative of our family story going back generations and that kind of nostalgia and and then it's just the process of making it where it wasn't soon of sitting down in designing a quilt in a day and making it for sale or for a purpose per se other than the purpose of making something beautiful and each square was an opportunity to make something beautiful again and just try again and again put these things together and see how they speak to each other it's so nice and I have to say last night I was going through photographs from my time in Big Sur and I have I took a bunch of photos in your home including of your quotes and I think it was also your I think it was either you or Holly it was a frame with quark where you kept your earrings and I've still been planning on recreating that is that you were Holly that's my mom Holly yeah anyway um so kay let's move on we've talked about weight on weight and there are two paintings that use talked you'd mentioned wanting to talk about our rosy circles and green and turquoise study right start with either tell us what you want to tell us about those meanings well we could we could start with that little these circles which is this one I don't know if you can see it it's a little group of objects that are kind of circular in form most of them and the circle I could remember when I was first starting to do needlepoint I was asking somebody how to create a circle I think I wanted to do an apple or something and they they said oh you can never make a perfect circle inmediately just forget it well that of course was like a red rag to a bull I was like you know do a circle if they killed everybody and so you can see behind me is this big black and white circular piece of knitting that I like very much that's sort of grabbing the idea from an ancient proven textile so anyway the idea of circles is something that comes up and up and up in my work and when I was painting Ari I had this little um beige colored table and I was putting these little objects on it and they were just like kind of round things that were sitting in a desert you know of endless space and then these little circular forms and I just touched me I just was very moved by the tautness and the kind of excite that was created by this little pile of circular objects and and you know couple of them are our plastic fruit then Holly and her house and we painted them over and over and over again because they never brought but it was just kind of a joy to create that and then on the other page is Aaron's study of looking at the circular objects on that same beige card table so you can see the different angles that we were both working from and she added a few more little punchy oranges and things to the range mint and then the green and turquoise study now the green and turquoise study is something I really love I feel I picked that because I felt it was one of the paintings that really came off and I'm sorry that we can't show these you know properly but this is all about long tall shapes all these the necks of these bottles are very very beautiful to me just one afternoon I love sequences of things and patterns that are created by repetition of shape and so that was fascinating to me and then it cuts the coloring I really loved I loved that all these soft greens and turquoises and then suddenly punching in that little orange baz you know that really really strong sharp little orange and it's just you know fascinating I I just I did that was a painting I cut completely lost in the kind of mood of these lovely colors and and beautiful shapes I think when that was happening and you're getting lost in a painting and the process when you work side by side yeah like were there times when you were chattering away times when you were in silence were you playing music were you eating like what what did it feel like to be there well I'm a great advocate of talk radio and so fresh air on the radio America here in England we have Radio 4 which is just brilliant it's just a poetry readings plays wonderful interviews with all sorts of accents from all over these islands and I'm I'm fascinated by that I absolutely listen all the time to talk radio because he really absorbs my mind while I'm knitting or painting or whatever so I was listening to a lot of interviews on on fresh air in the public radio yeah and Aaron can you tell us first like from your perspective like how it felt for you to be in the room with cave painting and then also the talk about the two paintings that you chose to talk to for this conversation the sunflower over stay and perhaps with fruit Tim you know I would get there late he would always have set up already he was a halfway through the first painting by the time I would show up because I always had some reason why I had to stay home and finish getting a loaf out of the oven or a houseguest to meet breakfast or something so even though he'd come all the way from London to paint here and I live across the street from where my mother's studio is I was the one who was showed up late so I would be sort of trying to grab a coffee and get over and quickly catch up and Kate superfast and I'm a fast pane or two so he would really literally be finishing the first painting when I first started and I just wanted to get set up as quickly as I could so I can be dropping in to that space that he was already in it's it was such a high because the feeling of just focusing your attention in the concerted way on these objects and seeing them trying to see them and see what was happening with shadows and light and Colour a cool green on a warmer green against hot orange like the painting that cave was just describing that you know if you might walk by something like that and not even notice it but when you stop and you really take the time to observe and see which is what observational painting gives you it gives you that experience of presence and focus and attention to the moments you're in the lights the object the space all of those things are coming into your painting so it's like dropping into the most meditative but cozy and can you know friendly kind of space with someone else who you know is absolutely there with you or even further there and the delight of seeing cave responding to something that I might have just not even noticed and feeling like okay I need to I need to look again because there's something going on here that's amazing and magical and I don't even i'm not recognizing it and it might have been the second day or the third day or the last painting of all that all of a sudden my brain would kind of click and i would really see a flash of what to Kate as a parent all the time so I'm just gonna quickly go back to the sunflower painting which is one of my choices because it's always a kick for me when I do a painting and this is an example on me maybe I'll hold it up so if I get spotlighted I'm okay here we go I did the one that I'm tapping on this side and Kaif did this one so they're side by side in the book as part of our duets series and I was just thrilled with this because I loved being able to find the beauty in the nuance of those kind of unnameable grade colors in the background that really supported the vibrancy of the bright yellow sunflower petals and I was very pleased because you looked at mine and said oh I quite like how you did that and I was just like well my work is done I can die a happy woman the other painting is that I chose is this one which is on the back of the book and this was really for me the the tour-de-force painting because of the very last time we painted together we were in London and cave set up a still life I walked in the room and he said this is for you and he walked out and had to go and do a million other things I mean so many projects going on that he would steal time before painting with me there and I wanted you to have the best view of that you know yes it was a very cramped little studio and you got the specialist it was like the most generous gift because he set it up and then he sat me down right where I could just take it all in in the most perfect way and left me to do that and let me have that that moment and it's really a complicated painting full of all kinds of stuff going on just pattern this is the fabric this is the big one Japanese Obi we like old and he threw down the challenge and I did not dare walk away from it and there you go so I I wanted this painting to be if that was the last painting I ever got to paint with cave I felt like I had done him proud and you know I didn't come into painting feeling like I had much to offer except that I really enjoyed it and I loved trying really hard to do it you know so I feel like it kind of was that's how I began can I also to your talk Aaron this is the tin that we painted this these are the kind of objects I would find in the flea market and this beautiful little Tinh with fruit on it the boldness of these colors was part of that still life and so that's the kind of thing that attracts both of us as painters yes and the last thing else is just throw in there is when we were painting in California the last time we were listening to Krista Tippett and her program on being and if you're not familiar with it if you want to download podcasts it's a fabulous immersive hour of conversation with poets and philosophers and writers and it was a beautiful kind of atmosphere that Kaif and I would just paint and listen to Krista Tippett and on being and then break for a cup of coffee or my mom would make soup and we get to have a cup of soup together and eat lunch while she was working and that was another gift you know really bittersweet gift that my mom gave to us to have this time together while she kept the family business going and Nepenthe so mom you know this book would not exist without you that's that's beautiful I think we all Susan you know we all owe a lot to our families and in particular and our grandmothers and one thing that I found in my research for my book making a life you know a common denominator like among all the these different makers that I met with was that almost all of them talked about their mother or their grandmother having the biggest influence on on the choices that they made in their lives and then I'll just say I think the two of you should be guests on on being and I don't say that just to flatter you I think it would be absolutely wonderful so maybe we should start all of us should start emailing Krista Tippett now we are starting to run out of time so I want to open it up to questions and I'm hoping that Kaitlyn has gathered them I have we have gotten a lot of great questions from the audience I'm going to try to keep it about a few we don't have a lot of time one thing that somebody was wondering was do either of you have a formal art education I went to an art school that was a four-year course or you could go even longer if you wanted you and I lasted about six months I had a scholarship to go there and they were very upset when I left but I I just thought what I'm doing here is just drawing everyday and I could just go home and I could learn you know I could just put myself through the paces and observe life and record it that was my education but they also brought out the color wheel while I was in that school and that they didn't see me for dust I thought that was the work of the devil so I was out of there I was not interested in in theoretical color Aaron I took a drawing class when I was in when I was an undergrad but I had a baby somewhere between year one and year two and he became my great master project chai and he had a formal education all the way through master's degree in illustration so I learned a lot from watching him grow into that incredible artist and human being that he is the way I learned artistically was by sitting at the elbow of someone who did something I wanted to learn like kaif teaching me to do needlepoint or my grandmother who taught me to knit when I was four or take a class from someone who there was a local painter in Big Sur is a local painter named Rana REO who taught a lot of the women of Big Sur how to paint 2530 years ago I think she's still teaching and I when I wanted to understand oil painting she was my my teacher for three years and gave me a really tremendous grounding in the technique and so much more that's I used to this day and now I are in your offering classes on Facebook live right yeah I have a youtube channel called awaken the artist within and I offer free art classes there and I have a Facebook group that's private where people can join and be encouraged and mentored and share their processes with the rest of us we have about 350 artists who go through share share their work and it's really all about encouraging each other just show up at the easel and keep going all right so for the second question I'm gonna kind of combine two there was a curiosity of did you guys work before you made art and if so how did you make the leap and to being more of a full-time artist and as a full-time artist how do you really keep that creative energy growing and building kind of everyday well if I can start with Mike career I decided very early on that I would absolutely not work I would devote my time to my art and I would make that art pay if it killed me in the meantime and I almost started to death I mean I got I got incredibly low there was times when I remember inviting somebody to dinner I had a little one-room flat in San Francisco and I covered the walls with paintings and invited this art critic to come and have dinner with me and he didn't say anything about the paintings the whole time and I thought if he doesn't buy a painting I am going to have to just give up you know and and go back and live at home and so just as dinner was finishing and he got up to leave and he got to the door and he turned the door handle and need to look back and he said how much is that painting in the corner and I thought I [Laughter] was very very excited and I sold him the painting and I did I lived for a month on that and in that time I was able sell the paintings and so I've always lived off my work very not not not so true for me I have done everything from bussing tables to running a daycare center in Burlington Vermont to starting and running an arts education organization for families and Big Sur to me being that the daily person who goes and sits in a cage and counts the money at Nepenthe I have been working since I was 10 years old my first job was buttering the hamburger buns for our world-famous ambrosia burger at Nepenthe and I think Nepenthe taught me the value of work the value of community working with other people where you have that kind of pressure it gets the job done and you have that energy from other people which also is really helpful but I knew from a very early age that there was something I wanted to do that wasn't the dictates of an employer and even when my son was a baby and I was Tom and I were living on beans and rice and and the frozen wastelands of Vermont when I was 19 or 20 trying to scrape a living by I would take time to write articles and send them to magazines hoping to break in and get some money doing that or I would knit a sweater and sell it for a couple hundred bucks which was a lot of money in 1983 so I I always felt like there was some you had to carve out a little bit of time for yourself in that way so that that didn't just die and as I got older and more successful with the work I was doing financially I would say well what is this time you have left over for it's for putting into this creativity and then there was a moment when I just I was literally sitting on a mountaintop in Japan as a visiting teacher in Hama to Japan in September and it was 9/11 the few days after 9/11 and I remember painting from this little tea shop looking out over the valley below with my daughter and my husband and my guide and thinking the whole world was just given this flash of you know this devastation and then what next and I thought what next for me you know how do I want to carry forward in my life that I maybe need to reflect on and not just do what I've been doing and that was really a moment of decision that I would really do everything in my power to move into my painting life with full heart yep yeah I have before I asked the last question kind of for Keefe and Aaron and I just want to be to be able to tell our audience there's been a lot of questions Melanie as to whether this recording will be available afterwards assuming our technology has worked yes it will and everyone find out in an email so kind of a final question which i think is probably one of the the best ones to end on is Keefe and Aaron you guys both have such a long and beautiful legacy of being artists together and nurturing each other and so one question we got was what is one thing that you have each learned from each other and what's one thing that the other person is really influenced you in as an artist well I would say that what I've learned from Aaron is she's a very visceral painter you know she's really into the paint strokes and the atmosphere created by oil paint which is quite different and I used to paint in oil paint so I know kind of what that is and and probably I was a lot freer and more brush strokes and so forth when I when I was doing working with oil but so I I love that I love seeing that's why I loved her sunflower and and and said that because it would we had this wonderful life to it the the actual brush strokes are just losing with life so that's what I've learned from from Aaron is the is the attack she has on painting so Kate Kaif and I capes 25 years older than me so he has always been sort of this figure of accomplishment and and and this figure of inspiration since my first memory of being 4 years old and hearing him tell me stories when he would babysit me and my brother and our cousins and my mom was working and he take us off and you know just regale us with stories that were so touching and so heartfelt and I I just feel like Keefe he's you know the word inspiration is so overused they cave lifts the veil he he changes the energy in the room and he makes you see that things are possible that you might have just been doubting and didn't think we're possible and I remember this one time visiting him when I had this project in my mind and I said what what if no one thinks it matters and he just he'd been lying in the Sun basking in the Sun lying on the rocks on the beach and he's just as eyes came bursting open and he sat straight up and he said never ever think that don't ever think that you know if you start going down the road of what if no one thinks this matters you're doomed and I don't know if he remembers that moment but I remember thinking man if I think it matters then I need to put my energy behind it because that belief and that energy is what's going to convince somebody else that it matters if I'm with a waffling or kind of being I'm not sure you know how easy it is for someone else to dismiss you and the idea so that kind of that moment was really pivotal and it it really has stuck with me because you know keith has shown me I mean who could imagine somebody making a career as a knitter you know I mean forget it it's like that when Keith became the world's famous famous knitter we forget it it's not a career path with anybody so it's like what who are you and what do you want to do with this life that you get to have and then when you figure that out just man do everything in your power to stand up for that that is so beautiful in it and it really sort of leads me to I think it's a nice way to conclude which is you know this idea of making a living and making a life and how do we balance that and what are the small choices and the big choices that we make each and every day that affect or determine the life that we lead so if there's anything you know from my perspective that I could leave everybody with it's really just to believe in your dreams and and and really listen to your inner calling and it may be that you know you're not going to you know make a career out of your creative expression and that's fine but you are going to make a good life for yourself and it doesn't matter if the camp no full-time just don't let it be no time and think about when you scroll through your phone or you choose to watch something on Netflix or you choose to I don't know go to see a movie that you're not that interested in whatever it is I mean if you can really be clear on what your priority and for me I feel wholeheartedly that when we listen to our inner selves when we find a form of creative expression that allows us to be ourselves that we are on a pathway to our own wellness with that I'm just gonna everyone that making life the conversation the official program is concluding now I hope that we will have another in this series I am talking to the African American quilt guild of Oakland as possibility for a second guest and just to finish up I I just wanted to give both Kay and Aaron a chance to say one more thing if you feel compelled and then I am gonna tell you that Aaron and I are gonna stay on the call for about 15 more minutes I'm not sure if Cape is able to but if you want to hang around and ask us a few more questions that is a possibility for Aaron and me so I thought Aaron's point at the end there was a very very cogent and perfect the whole thing about believing in yourself and not not wasting your energy thinking about what other people think of your work you know I was once I gave a workshop in Scandinavia somewhere in no way actually and this I I was describing a quilt that I had made and I was pointing out to everybody in the room all the things that were wrong with it that were weak that hadn't worked that we chosen the wrong materials and so forth and joy and then at the end I said oh by the way somebody wanted to buy this quilt and I turned around said who was it one to buy it and this woman said not anymore that's perfect we can we can queer our pitch very easily so and and everybody has that thing of you know doubt of what they're doing don't put it out there don't point out the weakness in your work yeah I mean my mother my brother made a cake once and she she dropped it on the floor and then scooped it back up again and brought it to the table it looked perfectly fine and but she made the mistake of saying oh I drop this cake I'm sure it's gonna taste fine and I just remembered the game Oh mom you should never have told us you know I would add my two thoughts for a wrap-up our two one is if you are in doubt go into nature nature grounds you it grounds your soul it puts you back into an understanding of the universal perfection of this incredible universe we live in because we can certainly doubt that if you're watching the news you certainly are not believing that everything is perfect but when you go out into this world that we live in and you are experiencing nature there is a cosmic underpinning of rightness that can infuse you and bring bring you wholeness to go back into your life with energy and a sense of hope which we so desperately need right you know I don't know what what the what the flowers are like for the in America for this season but here in England I have never experienced such beautiful color and total abundance of the rose bushes are groaning with roses it's like ever before and so every little front garden as you as we take our hours walk every day it's just a joy to behold yeah the birds the birds here is what we know this is just Oh everywhere and the second thing you know is I mean it can get really low and nature can really restore you and you need to you need to be restored you need to find those ways you know the world needs your voice right now and you need to find a way to be available to that work second thing is just this community some people are just fine you know working alone and they can come up with all their own structures and systems and inspirations perfectly behind but the majority of us really benefit from having a community whether it's a virtual community right now which is what we have available to us but other people who are like spirited in that sense of you know wanting so much to find those connections with the things that you about you and I thinking are exciting and important if you can build a way to kind of connect with your tribe and to encourage one another it's it's a life changer it's so often I find that people bring their stuff - they bring their work into our private Facebook group where we share our paintings with each other and the whole room is respond so positively and someone went from being sort of wanting to throw the towel - all of a sudden doing ten more paintings and that encouragement is like just everything it carries everything so you know we need to encourage each other and we need to allow ourselves to be encouraged and we need to find our people to do that wherever they may be yeah cultivate good friends very important yeah that's fun be and be a good friend be encouraging yourself and ultimate people that encourage you absolutely forget about the ones who are always throwing rocks at you absolutely no names no names Caitlin are there any more questions I mean last few wrap up minutes Aaron could you say that last bit again forget the people who were throwing you that you yeah forget the people who are still throwing stones at you we call it we often it's certain times we're like we really cultivate all those people so we hold them so tight we sort of feel like oh they're setting me on my path or they're their third they're steering my boat they're they're giving me necessary critique or criticism and not to say that we don't need that too but you at some moments in time you may look around and realize there's certain people who are just absolutely draining your energy and always against you and always throwing you down and in a loving way sometimes but really if you are defeated that's the end of the game you can't even get up and improve something when you're just your soul has been knocked down you need to be connecting again and again with the energy to fight to live to fight another day and who are those people who you believe their presence and you cannot wait to get back and start a new knitting project or begin a new painting or try a new recipe or plan something in your garden I mean whatever the thing is those are the people who change your life those are the people who feed your life and feed your soul and I have learned it should be very careful about who I share a new work with because a lot of people are taught that the way you have our good could criticize you know the way that you are a good friend artistically is just by tearing apart something but that can be something at some point so it's useful but as a rule I would say that those those could you know the the desire to tear you down is pretty strong in people and that's just something I avoid I don't know I don't really find it useful I find it more useful to have somebody say oh my god carry on do ten more and then ten more iterations later I will have discovered something that perhaps they wanted me to learn the first time but I got there my own way by continuing to be excited about something and not just feeling just not despair over my failure to get there so that's just my my personal I mean that makes me think that when I was just starting out somebody and said to me get a really good sketch book a hardbound sketch book if it's nice and don't rip the pages out just keep working and keep going back and in an odd hour look at everything that you've done keep reviewing what you've done and that was marvelous advice because even you're very tentative little sketches in the beginning can have something a seed of something that you can build on I think this thing of working in sequences is so useful for an artist and whatever medium you're working in and you can see in caves work where he's he's taking the same motif and he's doing it again and again and again just trying different combinations of colors and textures and it's it there's no shame as a textile artist in doing say Persian poppies which is my obsession as a knitter just every Row is a new chance to try it again as a painter I do exactly the same thing he set up a still life and I paint one version of it and if I stopped there I would only have learned this much you know and then I'd be saying to people you know what do you think my little painting and it's all well you know whatever they think but if I do 10 or 20 and I keep being excited and learning something new and thinking what if I changed the background oh let me change the light or it's not something's not quite working let me change something to make the colors more harmonious by the time I've done ten iterations of that idea I have learned so much and this is the thing about the book color duets is that we were coming back every year and painting the same objects in the same room again and again and we were just endlessly entertained I think somebody in my family asked me ask hey fanned me don't you ever get bored looking at these same painting same things and painting them again and both capes and I said resounding no we never get bored because every time you sit down to look at something there is something to learn from it and that rooting yourself as a painter and observing and depicting the value of drawing is so enormous for the for a painter or for any human being to give yourself something to focus on and then just be with that and try to capture it in line on paper all you need is a pen and a notebook or a pencil but pencils are bad because they have erasers and wanna get away from that yeah that's why I love ink yeah so that's a practice for anybody that isn't necessarily to become an artist per se but rather is an artistic way to be present with what you see and those line drawings begin to build your muscles for observation and understanding of how things relate to each other and all that is so useful not just for your paintings or or the work you do visually but that time spent at say 10 minutes obscure seeing something or drawing something you are so present and you see so much more when you've done that it can transform your day alright so I think we've gotten to the end of our extra 15 minutes although I think we should all just tune into Aarons YouTube and Facebook classes for inspiration I'm gonna end the meeting in a moment which feels really weird like how do you gracefully exit zoom but I want asking if there's anything you would like to say to end it and if you don't have anything in particular you could just tell us what your favorite flavor of ice cream is but I would like you to have oh god I mean you know it's funny because I feel like we've just gotten started now you know talking about this whole thing of creativity you wanna stay out well no I I'll let you guys matter away but I'm just I'm very very happy that we've done this and I'm very proud of the book I think it's a beautiful little book and I think that anybody who's interested for instance in that wonderful Italian painter morandi who painted the same object in his room year after year after year spend his whole life painting the same object and it's kind of we take our cue from him and we're certainly never bored and thank you Melanie for hosting this wonderful thing and and and having the chance for Aaron and I to tell of our appreciation for each other yeah I'm honored to do it thank you so much Kate and Aaron and thank you to everyone who's been working behind the scenes thank you Tom my tech my tech guru husband everything by the book I would just say the big teacher when I don't have cable is his books and this book is an amazing opportunity to get to know Kate as a painter we don't there's no other art book that exists in the entire world that features cave as a painter and this is in cave has been painting since he was a child so this is really long overdue and what's kind of thrilling too is that the relationship between one artist and another artist of another generation is woven through every single page and there's no one way to do anything so in this book color duets which you can see is how one artist see something and how another artist sees it and there's a there's a beautiful difference that it really should encourage anybody to feel like they have their viewpoint and it's gonna be a little different or a lot different and it's valuable and it's when all those voices are being supported and heard that we have the most beautiful music so this book contains that dialogue and a visual way and also a lot of personal stories for anybody who needs a little inspiration wonderful by books yes alright I hope you all enjoy the rest of your day in the world and we will see you again back here on zoom' or in person or who knows where thank you I thank you Melanie

Channel: Making a Life / Melanie Falick

Views: 6,079

Keywords: making a life, kaffe fassett, erin lee gafill, color duets, making a life the conversation, big sur, nepenthe, phoenix shop, master class, creativity

Id: -9Uyg6e_KTo

Length: 76min 2sec (4562 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 22 2020