When I was in seventh grade, I stayed up all night doing a painting.My seventh grade art teacher, Ms.Rasmussen, had given an assignment.I lived in L.A.I lived in the Barrio in East L.A.I was very fortunate to live there.But I stayed up all night.
She asked us to paint the rain in Los Angeles. And I was fascinated by the way the cars, when their red lights went on at a stop, how it looked like the light was going into the asphalt, like a knife almost.And I tried to paint that.
And I stayed up most of the night doing that.We lived up above the street and I could look down.And I brought it to Miss Rasmussen and she said, you're not good at all at art.So that took care of that.
Hey everyone, welcome back to the Arts Life Podcast.I'm really, really excited for my guest today.I'm talking to Judy Tuolstoy.She's a visual multidisciplinary artist, writer, and teacher.She's based out of Santa Fe.
Her work's in private and museum collections nationally and internationally. And I love that she uses the power of visual art to connect us to the deeper part of ourselves.And this is where I just love what she's doing.
And it connects a lot to what I'm always trying to teach.And so I'm so excited to dive into this.She spent her life exploring, helping people discover this unique creative vision within themselves, right?And so I can't wait to dive into it.
Welcome to Art to Light, a podcast for the creatively curious.My name is Nicholas Wilton, and each week I'll help you rediscover not just the art of your life, but the art in your life.
Join me as we explore that perfect blue at twilight, the wild frontiers of art making, and the extraordinary joy of finding your way as you go.Judy, thanks so much for joining me today.
Thank you for having me, Nicholas.
So give us a little backstory on your background.You use so much different materials, glass, and you write, but kind of give us a little bit of your history, so then we can dive in.
Yeah, just kind of your journey's been really interesting.You know, you managed to avoid art school, which is amazing, but you've learned so much in different places and different schools.
And I mean, going the glass Pilchuck and these places like this that had an impact on the kind of work you're making now.
So I had no idea I was an artist, none.I grew up in a very tumultuous period in America.I was born a month before we entered the Second World War, so 1941.
And I grew up in a household where my parents were communists during a period when this country was terrified of communists.And again, creating a fantasy of the other that simply didn't exist.
the overthrow of the government, come on, the Communist Party could barely organize itself.To imagine overthrowing the government, forget it, forget it.And yet there was so much fear and fear in the household.So I grew up in a very angry household.
And what I learned, it was interesting, Nicholas, When I was in seventh grade, I stayed up all night doing a painting.My seventh grade art teacher, Ms.Rasmussen, had given an assignment.I lived in L.A.I lived in the Barrio in East L.A.
I was very fortunate to live there.But I stayed up all... She asked us to paint the rain in Los Angeles.
And I was fascinated by the way the cars, when the red lights went on at a stop, how it looked like the light was going into the asphalt, like a knife almost.And I tried to paint that.And I stayed up most of the night doing that.
We lived up above the street, and I could look down.And I brought it to Miss Rasmussen, and she said, you're not good at all at art.So that took care of that.
Yeah, that's a common story, right?Thank you, art teacher.
So I learned two things from her.How not to teach, that's number one.And number two was, I learned something else that often experiences like that in life are very, very hard for us.
But when you look back from what, I'm 83 now, when you look back on it, she was doing me a favor.It was in a harsh way.If I had been in touch with the unconscious the way that art has allowed me to be in touch with it,
In the turmoil, the FBI was banging at our door at all hours.My father would go into hiding for two years at a time.It was a nightmare.The Rosenbergs were executed during that period. and I identified with their children.
That was just all the cops and robbers stories that you see in movies.If I had tried to do my art during that period, I don't think I would have survived.Instead, I took my energy and I became student body president.I won the American Legion Award.
the daughters of the DAR, Daughters of the Revolution Award.I became outstanding in these different ways and within community, building wonderful things together.
At my last high school reunion, a couple of years ago, and we'll have another one this coming year, so we're in our 60th, you know, 65th, I asked my friends, and I said, were you guys aware that my parents were communists?
And my Mexican friends all said, y hola no.And we all had Mexican accents back then.Y hola no, we didn't pay attention to that stuff.My Japanese friends, who had all been in the camps when they were young, we knew, Judy, and we tried to protect you.
They had never said a single word. So my growing up, I was also very lucky though, because we were so poor, because my parents didn't understand the capitalist system at all.We lived in a duplex with my grandparents.
And I had a grandma who was my storyteller, and who loved me unconditionally, and whom I loved unconditionally.And I was very fortunate that way too.Again, the negative turned positive.
I'd come home from school, and my grandma would have something cooking on the stove. Jewish immigrant from Poland.My grandpa was a tailor, Jewish immigrant from Lithuania.And I was very, very lucky.I had my other grandmother I didn't know as well.
She struggled in a whole different way, but my grandma Rosie was magic. So I was very fortunate to have somebody like that.
I had a lot to figure out once I left home, and I've done a lot of healing work on myself to put generational wounds, to heal those, and to heal my own woundedness.And art has been a central part of that.
I didn't study art because I didn't know, again, the teacher had shut me down, so I studied English literature. And back in those days, as it should be today, Berkeley costs $70 a semester for tuition.
All of us got a wonderful education in different parts of California. It was 70 bucks a semester.
So you felt the pull towards painting or visual arts, but you kind of were around the edges of it a bit and did creative things.But writing wasn't off limits because that teacher sort of condemned this for you.And wow.
My parents always took us to art museums.Culturally, I was so rich, both multiculturally, the way I grew up. Though they didn't have a lot of money, we would go across town to West L.A.
where there were a lot of small theaters, very inexpensive, and you'd see wonderful, wonderful plays with wonderful actors.So I was brought up very rich culturally.I never felt poor.None of us felt poor.Our lives were so rich culturally.
I know that you studied at Pilchuck and these different places.
I didn't study at Pilchuck.I was an artist-in-residence at Pilchuck.I was doing blown glass there with a brilliant gaffer.They invited me to come to Pilchuck to be artist-in-residence, which gives you access to everyone and everything.It's magic.
So I started my art journey really as a teenager doing glass.I worked in a glass studio in San Rafael in Marin.It used to be called the Glass Depot, and we were building windows, but guest teachers came and spoke.
Narcissus Guagliata, he came and had a huge impact.
Narcissus has a big show opening, I think, somewhere near L.A.right now.
Yeah.It's such an odd way to go into art.I mean, I was always drawing as a kid, but it was this glass thing.So I never got to Pilchuck, but I knew what was happening there.So when I saw that you had been artists in residence, like, oh, my goodness.
So how did you kind of go back into art?How did you reenter that?
Okay, so let's see.I graduated from Berkeley and then my first husband, I got married. And we drove back to Massachusetts where Michael had a job at MIT Lincoln Labs.
And so I applied to Harvard to a program they had there called the Master of Arts in Teaching.And much to my surprise, I got in.And I spent a year then studying, again, English literature, a couple of education courses.It was a great program.
It paid for itself. Your student teaching was full-time.That's where I learned to read.It was full-time and it paid for itself.The first semester you took all graduate courses in your major, so mine was literature.
During the summer, you team talk with five other students with a master teacher critiquing your work.And then in the afternoon, you had two education classes.
And I never was interested in taking an education class because I felt like you had to teach to learn how to teach.So I had this great teacher.He never made it to the final, though.They kicked him out.And he became Ram Dass. No, really?
He was my education course teacher.Oh my God.Richard Alpert in his three-piece suit in his sports car with his crew cut.
Such a darling man, such a dearly man.I saw him years later and I said, hey, you never made the final.I took my son Aram to hear him speak.And he said, what could I do?They kicked me out.
So it was an amazing year and going into full-time teaching, I learned how to teach.I was very, very lucky.Then we moved back to the Bay Area and I started having children.At one point, we lived in Palo Alto.
And I had three boys at that point, all under five.It was going a bit nuts.There was a Van Gogh exhibit in San Francisco, a huge exhibit.And Michael and I got a babysitter and drove up to see it.
And by the time I had finished walking through that exhibit, I was sobbing.I couldn't stop crying all the way for an hour to Palo Alto. I just cried and cried and cried.And I sat down and I did my first drawing since I was 10 years old, 11 years old.
And later, when I was reading, and I wrote on the back four statements, nothing is enough when you are too hungry, the search for proportion, Jewish hand, meaning both the tribulation, the positive and the negative, and how does one come to peace with that?
We'll sing for whom it pleases to be born once again.I wrote those four statements on the back, very simple drawing of a tree, And there was no turning back after that.
And later I read him one of Van Gogh's letters that he hoped that his work would open the wellsprings of a person's heart. And he did that.He did that and he could never even have imagined the effect that he's had on people.And it opened my heart.
That exhibit opened my heart.And I started doing art.That was it.There was no going back.The unconscious simply erupted.And I had to find a way to be in that territory without being overwhelmed by it.
I was actually talking about this today to people, you know, because people will be sharing what they're making or talking about something and the tears will come up and they invariably say, yeah, I don't know why I'm crying.
But it's because it's so truthful.It's like the soul is truth and I'm just curious, you know, like sobbing,
I don't know if that's how you think about it, you know, it's sadness, but it's just an overwhelming sense that this has been so true for you for your whole life.It's like almost mourning the time or something.It's like it's just so true.
I totally agree.When people cry in my workshops, I say, that's where you need to be.And they say, I'm so sorry, I'm crying.People always apologize.And I just say, no, no, those are true.What's happening, your tears are about truth.
You have hit a fundamental truth about yourself.Feel it, be with it.And you've had the same experience.
Yes, and sort of shepherding people through that to hold them, to make it okay.
Yeah, and I'm just curious, I'd love to hear how you, this sort of, the art through the sadness, the wounds, the healing, because they don't necessarily want to stay there too long, but it's necessary.It's like the soul always pulls you
through to the unknown, through the darkness to make the art.And just curious how you talk about this or how you help people or how you sorted that for yourself.I'm always at a bit of a loss to describe it or, yeah.
You've described it very, very well.I had to make it safe for myself to do the art. That was the first part.I had to make it safe for myself because the unconscious material would just erupt so strongly.And I didn't know what to do with it.
So I went into therapy.But I also did a lot of art relating to psychological work in myself.And I've never shown that work. It's really interesting.I felt I had to work it through.
There's a book I'll be doing called Making Breath Visible, my third book with Radius, and the subtitle is Making the Sea.Where does art come from?
And I will devote a chapter of that to my psychological work, as well as chapters to other people's work. But I will devote a chapter because I feel I can look at it now and see it from a distance.I'm not caught in it.
I don't need anyone to fix it for me.But when I was artist-in-residence at Healdsburg Elementary School in Northern California, we had incredible art programs back in the 80s, incredible arts programs.
We had a brilliant poet who wrote not only our budget, but helped with any of our applications for funding.A poet's the best at a budget, because poets don't make any money off their work.So they have to really know how to do a budget.
So we used to get incredible grants.And I was working with a whole group of sixth grade boys who were already alcoholics. They'd come to my classroom and I could work with them with art for healing.
And there was a point where I realized, oh, I see what I can do.I can give them a sense of safety that they've never felt in their life. It's only an hour a week, but if you don't know safety in your body, you cannot return to it.
My job was to give them a sense of being totally safe in that classroom, working with clay,
working with other materials, that they would know that then, and whether they were in their 20s or 30s or 40s or 50s, and it was then time for them to heal what needed to be healed, they could come back to that place.
And I think my workshops is to create that sense of safety.And don't you find, Nicholas, after a while, it was really interesting how you trust your intuition.Like, I'll start with an exercise with Clay, with everybody.
But very, very quickly, as people say different things about their work, I actually have them write stories and read them.I can see that each person has to take their own path.
And I have learned how to trust that intuition over time so that when I see an image or I hear an image that somebody has said, I can reflect it back to them. and help them see it.
And I never know, I think, and you probably know this too, but it's so exciting.I never know where they're gonna take it.Always surprised by what people do.And I learned how to reflect things.I had a dear friend, Anne Dreyfus was her name.
And she was a brilliant therapist.She died at age 42, unfortunately. And Annie said to me one day, I was living in Healdsburg then, I'm going to teach you how to give workshops.And Annie had grown up in a very artistic home.
Her father was Henry Dreyfus, the industrial designer. And Annie lived in the Bay Area.And Annie said, I'm gonna teach you.So we invited friends to come, and we did a workshop.
And what Annie taught me was, she said, you need to let it come into you, and then you reflect it back in a way where the person can see who they are.And that's what she taught me. Bless her, bless his soul.You know what I'm talking about.
And it's been a life practice.
We can't see our own work or ourselves really without the reflection of the other.When you're talking about the emotional, psychological, you know, physical, the safety,
I teach these seven-day retreats, and we just started one three or four days ago, and I have coaches that help me, but it's all about creating that safety for the group, and it's so important.
one of the ways that I do it is I kind of reflect back to them what it is that they're here for, and what it is that they're struggling with, because it kind of unites everybody.
Everyone is struggling, but we all think we're on our own, but when we feel that others have the same challenges, it just sort of normalizes it, but it's absolutely essential, and it takes a little while to kind of get everyone to feel
that are eligible, that they can do this thing, and that they're safe.So I love that.And these kids, for them, you make it so whatever they do is okay.Whatever they make, I'm sure.
They probably haven't even done any art before, so it must just be a whole new world for them.
A very different world.One day, I remember the boys, they said, can we throw clay at the wall? And I said, okay guys, but only little pieces.They were throwing out a wall and the door opens to my room and it's a school custodian, Bruce.
And I'm thinking, oh no, oh my God, you don't want to get on the wrong side of the school custodian when you're doing an art class. And Bruce looked, and he looked at me and he said, can I do that too?And he came in and joined the kids.
Oh my God, that's so.Now that's a blessing.So amazing.
Isn't that wonderful?And things that happen like that, and I'm sure you know this Nicholas, when you're in the right place doing the right work, magic happens in the world.
Yes, and if you have a wise teacher, if you have someone who's perceptive and noticing, they can just turn it and make it so possible for you to grow into who you want to become or
as so many people share and you experience, you just get completely shut down.But that was okay.
It was okay because I found a positive way, though at the time that felt awful.The energy still found a great way to go out into the world.And when it was time, when it was safe, I was able to come back to it.
There was a period where I was showing in San Francisco and L.A.and I rushed a piece for a show in San Francisco and my dealer from L.A.saw the show and he told me the show made him feel sick.It was the same like the teacher.
And I'd been thinking about, I had my daughter by then, so I had four kids I was raising, and it wasn't a great marriage.It was a long marriage, but not a great one.I was thinking of maybe pulling out of showing.Well, that settled it.
I pulled out of showing for 15 years.
Really?Because of that remark?
And I decided that I would work in my studio.By the way, later, this particular dealer, probably 20 years later, called me and said, Judy, I have to apologize.
I had found out some things from my teenage years that I had totally blocked, that were tied in with the priest, and I took it out on you. And I said, that's okay.I had to pull out of showing.
So I kept doing my art and I thought, okay, three to five years, I'll show again.I'll have a full body of work that I'll want to show.Well, it was 15 years until I showed and I had huge series of works.
What's interesting is because I didn't show Nicholas, I would have been willing to sell like one or two or three of those series. Let's say it's a 10-part series of six paintings.One might have sold, two might have sold.
I had the series completely intact, and they're being bought now completely intact, and books are being done about them by the proper foundations, and they're totally intact because I didn't show.
I love this lines that you wrote that artists taught me that walls and doorways are the same thing.There's just this, I mean, I could just see it in your smile.There's just this, yeah, but whatever you give me, I'm going to flip it.
There's going to be a positive way through and this is such a, artful way to exist.The hardships come, the heart breaks, but the art is generated, the possibilities that come out of this healing and flipping it around.
I mean, my whole story of, you know, I had the train wreck of losing all the money and my marriage and everything. what started Art to Life and actually I got everything back and all, but it was art that brought me back to the surface.
And there's something so powerfully healing about it.And I know this is your world.I mean, you've done so much work, your themes, you take on challenging the Holocaust and there's so much healing and so much suffering,
I wonder also if you were able to just go so much deeper without having the public getting in the way to just develop the work and go to such a scale, right?
Yes, absolutely.And all the work from that period is narrative.It's images.It's not abstract. Once I moved to the Hopia Reservation in 93, and I still wasn't ashamed, but then my work shifted.But during that 15-year period, it's story within story.
It's like the literary came into the visual.And at the same time, there was another, you mentioned the Holocaust, Viktor Frankl, who wrote Man's Search for Meaning.I remember reading
him in realizing, when I was four years old, the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.I remember I was four years old.I remember something horrible happened.What Frankel said was, he put the Holocaust together with the atomic bomb.
He said, Auschwitz showed us what man is capable of.Hiroshima showed us what's at stake. This man survived Auschwitz.He lost everyone and everything.And he still created a life and created the concept of lobotherapy.You have to give life its meaning.
Life will not give you meaning.Very powerful, powerful concepts for a man who saw the worst of humankind.But when he put those two together, I don't care how we justify what we do as countries.The reality is,
that those two events were so amazingly destructive.And part of my art has been, how does one help heal even this much of those events?And it's just been a basic part of some of my work.
I know that you did some work where you were working on this idea and healing and you painted the red and the black and the kind of Nazi colors.
And tell us about that because I love that we can begin something without knowing where the hell we're going.And it's so brilliant.And I don't know much about this, but I know that it's so powerful.And tell us about that series and how that went.
Thank you.So in 1984, I was having a really rough time.My marriage had collapsed.My kids were largely grown and friends said to me, you've always wanted to go to the desert.And so they helped me.
I packed up my little VW Rabbit and I spent the next month camping in different campgrounds through the southwest. cooking and being, and I hiked all day.I was trying to find myself again.I truly had lost myself.
But I would have been 1982, so 41 years old.And I would just, you know, National Park campgrounds.When I came back, I was so moved by the light in the Southwest, the most magnificent light.
And oddly enough, in the middle of it, I also, at Chaco Canyon, met the man who is now my husband, Philip Tawalat Siwa.He was encamped in the next campsite.
And a few weeks later, we got married, but we met at Chaco Canyon.
Oh my God, that is wonderful.
He was living in Washington, D.C., I was living in Northern California.We met at Chaco. When I came back, I started working with pastels on paper, trying to capture that light and what I had experienced.
I did about a hundred of those, and then I felt this need to paint.I hadn't really painted that much before. And I called John Annesley, who lived in Healdsburg, who was a brilliant canvas stretcher, John.
Yeah, I knew John.Did you know John?Oh, absolutely.Yeah, he built all my stretchers, and I spent so much time with him.
He was wonderful.God, you know, when John was dying, I talked to him that week, and he was laughing.And I said, well, my son Aaron was really good friends with John Jr., they grew up together.
Okay, so he was laughing and I said, how are you doing?He said, I'm so curious to know what's there.Because John, I couldn't believe it.He was just, we had the most wonderful discussion.He said, I have no idea what's awaiting me.
Listen, aren't you stretchers the best?
Oh my God.He's the best.Totally.Yeah.He was bar none.Yeah.But the conversations with him were the best.I always thought, how can this guy run a business?He just talks to you.You just go up there.
It's practically have lunch with the guy and you're just buying some rabbit skin glue, but he just loved art and community.And that's amazing.
And he was so pleased that he had reached 80 years of age, and the company had existed for 50 years, that he could celebrate those two.And then he left the company to his workers, and they're running it now, and they're wonderful.
Okay, so I called John, because I didn't know how to stretch canvas at that point, and he stretched a six by four foot canvas for me. Well, let me explain.First, he stretched these four by five and a half inch canvases.
And the way that I was trying to capture the light was with little dots on these giant canvases, millions of little dots.And I was so busy doing that one after another, and they were called Songs of the Earth from Space.
Music's a really important part of my work.Sound, the texture of sound. During that time, Philip calls me from Seattle, where he's with Noah.And he says, I want to learn how to paint.What should I do?
And I said, why don't you do what your ancestors did in their Kivas?Because Philip's father was Hopi Indian.His mother was Appalachian coal mining.Two very Americans.I said, why don't you do what your ancestors did in their Kivas?
So the ancient Hopi, they are not called the Anasazi, that's a Navajo word that means ancient enemy.
The Hisatsinom, the ancient Hopi, their ancestors, the ancient ones, would paint these huge murals in their kivas, in their underground religious places.
They would hold ceremonies and eventually they would whitewash over the mural and paint another mural.And in some kivas, there were a hundred layers of murals where the ancestors had danced.
And as a Jew, where my people have wandered all over the world, it was so powerful to think of being in the presence of your ancestors' hands centuries in this place.So I said to Philip, look, why don't you do what your ancestors did?
He lived in a little apartment, set up your camera, go to the art store, don't get fancy, just go to the art store, have an easel or something, buy an easel or something, buy a canvas that's already stretched, buy acrylics, white, black, red, yellow,
Blue.Do not look at color charts.Just start painting.Buy some brushes.Paint something.Take your camera when it's ready.Photograph it.Whitewash it.Put in a roll of 36.Do this for 36 paintings.
Then when you get that developed, set them out and look at what your process is, what stories have arisen for you, what images, and you'll have some idea then of where you might want to go.So of course he didn't do it.
I got off the phone and I thought, whoa, that's a great idea.John, can you stretch me a six by four foot canvas? And he did.Brought it home.So I'm doing these tiny dot paint, these huge dot paintings.
And I decided I have to work gesturally on these other ones.And I don't whitewash in between.I let one image become another, become another.So the first one, and I know that when I finish this painting, it will be all white.
I will start with white and I will end with white.None of the images, whether I love them or hate them, will ever exist except as a memory in a photograph.And I did that in 1985, the first one, the white one.
In 1986, I felt the need to do another one.I did a black one.And in 1987, I did a red one.Each one of them have about 100 photographs.It was an amazing process, Nicholas.They were really good paintings.
Some of them were really bad, I mean, ugly feeling to me, okay?It didn't matter what I felt.If a painting really disturbed me, I would make myself sit with it until I could find a sense of order in it that let me continue.
If it absolutely blew me over with its beauty, I would sit with it until I could let it go.And usually it was about three days whether I would continue or let it go.It didn't matter if I liked it or didn't like it.
It was about a three-day process until I could continue.And it was a power.I learned how to let go.It was such a powerful process.And the first one I worked on at the same time I was doing the dots.So that was about a six-month process.
The second one, the black one, was a two-month process.And the third one, where I was dealing with Jewish rage, the rage that I had inherited, that was a two-week process.
You can stay in that state, you can't do it, I mean, two weeks was enough, but it was powerful.And the woman who I then started therapy about that time, and my therapist said, you have painted the therapeutic process.
And it was incredibly therapeutic, letting go, coming back in imagery to the same place and letting go, like a spiral.You know what I'm talking about.
Yeah, revisiting it, letting it go, revisiting.
and not even realizing that you're revisiting until you have the photographs to look at and see.And I have gone, so these were for me.I wasn't showing during that period.I finally showed them from the red painting in 2019.
I painted them in the red painting I did in 1987.
I showed in the photos, I think we blew them up 24 by 18.Yeah, I had a big show at the Center for Contemporary Art here in Santa Fe.I put them perpendicular to the wall so you could walk down and walk around.
It was really powerful, but I never planned to show them.And then I decided it was time to.So when I worked with like 800 kids over the semester at Healdsburg Elementary, I thought, how do I teach them that there are no mistakes in art?
That a mistake is actually a doorway that can lead to someplace.So I had them do it with clay, letting the clay keep changing.
and writing down what the clay becomes, and then creating a story from that, and then working with images that come out of the story.So it's not about holding on to something, it's about letting go and letting it inform you.
And that's how I was able to translate that into clay with the children.Because I couldn't get paints and canvases for 800 kids.It just wasn't going to work.So that's the continuing painting.
And I think Ivy and Susan, there's a chapter on it in their book.
Yes, your brain on art, yes.Beautiful, wow.
And you know, these kids, I love it because they all have a little lump of clay, but it's the story and the meaning that they apply to it that makes it their own, and they can just open up a whole world, you know?
And here's this literary part, the stories that you weave in it.
I hadn't even thought of that, that literary part.
There was one professor who brought that all together.His name was Alan Ran Wong.
And Alan said, he was my Chaucer professor, not just Chaucer, just medieval English literature, which is an incredible time of storytelling in our language, an amazing time of storytelling.
And Alan, he said, I thought everybody's grandpa threw paint on canvas. So he grew up watching his grandpa paint.
And he told me that his grandpa has such severe arthritis that they had to wrap the brush with cloth around his fingers when Noir was old.So then he'd paint every single day like this, which was amazing.
And then Alain grew up with his father, Jean Renoir, the great film director. And Alain was a cinematographer for him as a teenager.So he learned to see the story as alive, as cinematography.That's what he brought.
And he put together, it was the only time in college that the artist in me came alive, not in producing anything. The part of me that was that was listening and learning from Alan Renoir, who could put the visual and the written all together.
Yeah, and all your work has this, the titling, the words, so poetic, all of it, it's just beautiful.And I know that you speak of this, the generational wisdom, and you're a grandmother now, and working, you have seen how you've been working.
By the way, for those of you listening, Judy's got this amazing TikTok, I guess your grandson put this together, TikTok channel, it's got over 100,000 followers on it.Gma Judy, I think is what it's called.
But it's this beautiful collaboration, sort of multi-generational.You were telling stories about your grandmother and I love this, the passing down of wisdom and the stories that go through time and it's just remarkable.
You know, Nicholas, I'm sure you know this so well.During a retreat like you're doing, you learn so much from what others are doing, right?You're teaching and you're learning at the same time.
So with my grandkids, and it's Caleb who I spend a lot of time with, we collaborate.A book that I started when he was 12 called Frog Dreaming, He's now 28.
In the last three years, he helped me edit it so that people didn't get lost in the dream world as they go through the book.And it's almost done now.What I find, I learn as much from him as he learns from me.We actually taught together last week.
And it was just, his insights are so wonderful.And I find that this young generation, it's no longer about the elders.
I mean, I've had certain kinds of experience where I can really be helpful to my grant, but they've had such different experiences because of this technological world that we're in.
that I can learn from them, not about technology, but about ways of seeing.Caleb was here for three weeks, and I started teaching him how to work with glass.
and we're gonna do a residency together for five days up in Portland, where we blast together.And again, it was such an exchange, and I'm so grateful.
When we taught together, I'm just grateful to be able to have that kind of exchange, because you're learning.Somebody once asked me, how would you define a good teacher?
And I said, if you're not learning the whole time you're teaching, then you're not a good teacher.
Absolutely.I mean, I get constantly, it's like, how do you have so much energy?It's like, you guys, this is just an absolute wonder what's happening out here.
Outside this door over here, there's just a giant tent with all this art being made and it's all different.Even though we're all using the same pieces of wood and the same colors,
It's crazy, and it's just all different stories and experiences from people all over the world.
I mean, it's just a wonder, and I think it's that curiosity, and young people have this, but, I mean, you embody this, and I think this is where the energy comes from, is this curiosity, and it's like Don Anisley.It's just a miracle.
Yeah.It'd be like, he was truly curious.He said, so curious, what's it gonna be like?
and laughing, just, it was magnificent.I can't believe it.Of course he did your stretchers too.
Yeah, no, absolutely.And here's the thing about John that, and early on, I just had a lot of questions.I couldn't find a lot of people that would share information.
And he was an odd kind of, it's like he wasn't really doing art, he was an artist support. But he knew a lot because he made stretcher bars with the most famous artists.So he was this arbitrator of information and he'd share it with everybody.
So it was great.I got to learn about how people that were farther ahead of me did their shows.He was just very generous.
Yes, he was.That's John Annesley's good soul.
Yes.Right.Oh, my God.So good.
Any other questions or thoughts?
Yeah.Yeah.I want to kind of as we're kind of wrapping up here, I knew this hour was going to go by so quickly and there's so much more.But this kind of relates to it.Right.That the things that what art has taught you.
And I started with this when we began that you said that art has taught me that walls and doorways are the same thing.
that art has taught me that an image can be transformative gift of healing, and art has taught me that what we see is only a fraction of what is there, and art has taught me that the longer I make art, the greater the mystery.
Oh my God, I just love that, and there's just something so hopeful about that and so buoyant.I was curious when you said that and where you are in this, and you just hold these still, I imagine.
Oh, even more so.I mean, I was talking to a woman when I was in Sedona and she said, she's probably in her 50s.And she said, I have such a fear.I don't want to grow old.And I said, oh, growing old is an incredible gift.
I said, I'm freer now than I've ever been in my life. and that it's just such a gift.And here in the studio, it's like total freedom, Nicholas, total freedom.
And I've been through enough things in my life where I know what matters, really know what matters.And there's a freedom of accepting that I will never understand the mystery where art comes from.
It is such a powerful force, and what you're doing with so many different people, I mean, everybody has that expression in themselves.Some of us has to live it three, four hours a day.
I mean, I have to make work, or write the books, do the different things, but everybody has it. One of the things that I'm working on now, I documented, I have no idea why I did this or how I did it.I was raising kids, I was doing my art, everything.
I documented all the programs that we had.I documented when I was artist in residence at the University of Hawaii, when I was artist in residence at Pilchuck.
All those and all the different artists who come into the programs in Healdsburg High, where we worked in the physics class and the chemistry class with art, all the way, all the different grades, I documented all of that.
And I'm going back into it, so I wanna do a book that allows people to see how they can enter art in any place in their life. And it's not about showing, it's about recognizing who they are through it.And I'm thrilled that I documented all of this.
slides, everything, and the kids work.The TikTok that got the seven million views was a piece that a child had done and who was 10 years old.How interesting, I just realized something.She was almost the age I was when I was slammed down for a
And she did a piece, it's called Jima Judy, Anna's Piece, I think.It's something like that if anyone wants to look at it.She did a piece where a teacher could have shut her down because it had to do with a woman giving birth and the babies.
This was at a public elementary school. And she brought it up partway through.We were working with the concept of masks.After showing a slideshow of masks, I gave the kids clay.I said, can you make a figure and make a mask for the figure?
She brings up this woman giving birth.And she says to me, is it OK if I make this?And I said to her, this is art.You make whatever you need to make.Of course it's OK. And she made it, and she made the masks.
I won't say anything more about it, but if people want to look at that TikTok.And that went massively viral.Seven million views.Boom.Also, Caleb was a card magician for about 15 years.
And he said to me the other day, he said, you know, when you're doing card magic on the street, you can either confuse people, they'll either feel confusion or wonder. And what you want is wonder.Like from the inside out, he knows how to edit.
Yes.Yeah.They're beautifully edited.The stories, the pieces.
So perfectly edited.And he only Some people have on to, he said, no, I only do it for my GMA, because Caleb knows me so well.But he has that ability.
I think how we learn from everything we do in life and how being a card magician has taught Caleb the ability to edit.
Right?Better than if he had studied English lit.
or video editing, right?You know.
He didn't study that.He wanted to create wonder rather than confusion.
Oh, man, I love that.That is beautiful.
It's so much fun talking with you.
Oh, my God.So good.Judy, thank you so much for coming on today and sharing all this.For those of you guys listening, we'll provide links.Go watch Judy's TikTok channel.It's amazing.And links to her work.
And obviously, for those of you listening, this is produced on YouTube, and we'll have visuals of her work as well.Judy, it's been so great.Thank you so much.
Oh, it's been one.And realizing what happened with that 10-year-old and what happened to me and how... So, Nicholas, being with you this way, of course, I end up learning and realizing things.So thank you so much.
Have a wonderful, what's two more days?
Two more days.Yeah.And you'll love the end.They don't know this yet, but they're making art.And then at the end of the retreat, they tell their story.They lay the work out.
We're doing sequence, we're doing multiples and they'll lay them out and they'll tell the story of their art. and what they've gone through and who they are, and more importantly, who they're becoming.
And it's just incredibly emotional, it's beautiful, and it's transformative.So that's kind of the culmination that's going to happen in a couple days.So it's really great.
It's beautiful, Nicholas.What a pleasure.
I look forward to meeting you in person.I will definitely look you up when we come out to Santa Fe.It'll be wonderful. Hey, thanks for listening to the Art2Life show.
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