The truth is, part of me has been dreading writing this month’s Deep Dive. I usually feel so full of wonder when I sit down to write, but wonder has been eluding me lately. As one of my students recently said, “January is the Monday of the year.” And that feels like part of it. But it’s also so many other things. I know I’m not alone with this…
I will say though, re-listening through January’s episodes was an easy highlight. I’m reminded of July’s mindset – vibrant, energized, full of that sunshiny mid-year hustle. And I’m reminded of the way these artists’ words have seeped into my everyday awareness over the past six months.
At this moment, I’m sitting in the SLC airport preparing to head to New Orleans for this year’s Diamond Empire Band producer summit. There’s a nice symmetry to it, as I first met the Big Easy almost exactly one year ago.
I was in NOLA during Epiphany, and had the good fortune to have been invited into the homes of three local families during my stay. I was so moved by the way all three homes were full of treasures—art, craft, various precious things. It was a revelation to me.
My child-self had an intuitive sense of the value of little things, a sense I learned to repress in later years. But seeing proper adults display memory-and-magic-imbued objects with pride shook me loose from whatever nonsensical strictures had taken hold.
I returned to the Beehive state one year ago, emboldened to re-embrace the treasure collecting of my girlhood.
Naturally, when I came across Kate’s work, I knew I needed to interview her! As she puts it, “my work is about collecting objects, whether they are objects I’m making, or other objects I find in the world that become precious.”
Kate and I bonded quickly over the “cuteness aggression” brought on by miniatures. As a child, I used my chore money to amass a respectable collection of Littlest Pet Shops. I loved organizing them, dusting them with a Q-tip, just admiring them. I didn’t need to enact imaginary play scenarios—it was more than enough just to behold and care for these little beings, their tiny accessories, each painted-on eyelash. Intoxicating!
I love the way Kate brings this ethos into her work with such playfulness, almost teasing. She presses her patrons to meet her in the values system she’s chosen – “My goal is to make a functional object that nobody will use as a functional object.” And she does it beautifully.
This playful stubbornness (or stubborn playfulness?) came to the fore as Kate confronted academic stuffiness during grad school. Amidst pressure to make work powered by heavy, heady, serious subjects, Kate wondered – “why isn’t joy a serious subject?”
“Things that give you contentment or wonder, those are very important subjects.”
Of course, I couldn’t agree more.
Joy, comfort, safety…it all comes through in Kate’s work.
If you ask me, it’s no surprise, no accident. Kate is committed to this sort of magic. She demands the freshest energy for her creative self.
“I will never go backward again, and I will never not make work. I will always allow myself to continue to grow, and change, and evolve, and make whatever I feel like making in that moment.”
Simple, but radical. Serious.
Zack marches to a similar beat.
He talks about his childhood wonders, comics and all that come with them—dynamic illustration, heroes’ journeys, delightful turns of phrase, story, other worlds. Insatiable curiosity. The Pacific Northwest. The idea of Japan.
A fellow playful+stubborn, Zack pointed himself toward an adulthood full of those same boyhood joys, crafted into a bespoke ecosystem.
It’s world-building writ-large, life-sized. “This is the stuff I want to do. This is what I need to do that. And so…let’s manifest that.”
A diversion –
It occurs to me that a frequent (often essential) precursor of wonder is wondering.
I think some of my January blues have been a bit tied up in a puzzle here…
I’ve grown accustomed to a steady drip of wonder in the classroom. It’s something I tend to find effortlessly.
Maybe chicken, maybe egg (this, that, the other), but I’ve been struggling to tap into the wonder motherlode this semester. And it feels like the students are the authors of the block…
It feels almost like they’re wary of wonder. If I’m right, I think I get it. At least I can imagine how and why such tightness may have evolved for anyone coming of age in…all of this.
I’m keenly aware that generational perspective is as true as it is false. What has been true for me and mine may not hold for them.
Still, I believe in wonder, especially for young creatives. I long for new tools, new words, fresh persuasive magic, fresh persuasion toward magic. I find myself searching everywhere for something that might land, or help me better understand this tension.
My thoughts wander to my students as I look back at my notes from my conversation with Zack, with all of his wonder, and all of his wondering.
I loved hearing Zack talk about his mother taking him, about age nine I think he said, to a subtitled Japanese film. Zack was so curious about the language—did these people think in Japanese? Were their thoughts inherently different because of it?
This is the kind of wondering I’m talking about. It’s the kind of wondering that led Zack to adventure around the world to learn what he couldn’t learn at home.
Of his time in Indonesia, Zack says “I got thoughts there that I never would have got around me.”
He told me about “Grue” cultures. Have you heard of this? In some languages, there isn’t a word for “green.” So…there is no green. There is only blue. What a thing! Naturally, there are far reaching implications on perspective, perception, and culture.
Zack talked about learning just how different thoughts really are in Japanese. How he is a different person in Japanese, with different mannerisms, different ways of connecting to others, etc.
It’s so easy to imagine that everyone thinks within the same basic framework you do. And it takes quite a lot of investigative wondering to realize this is not the case. As they say, you don’t know what you don’t know. And especially for artists, it seems imperative to want to know.
But really, it’s not enough to want to know. You have to learn to ask new sorts of questions, ones that won’t arise easily. You have to learn to crack your brain open a little to properly receive the answers. You mustn’t try to force them into the file cabinets already established and organized in your mind.
It takes practice. It’s creative. It involves a bit of trust, suspended belief.
It takes wonder. It takes wondering.
This is the work of artists. Of course it’s also theory, rhetoric, coordination, discipline, various masteries, every parameter of our myriad crafts, but at the core, it’s the job of the artist to wonder deeply, and to process all of that wonder into something shareable.
We process on behalf of others. We employ our creativity to synthesize ineffable truths into something our fellow humans can understand in a heart-to-heart, eye-to-eye, ear-to-ear, hand-to-hand sort of way. Like a wormhole, bypassing usual obstacles.
Ultimately, this is the service we provide. We devote our lives to the pursuit of these magics, and to gifting their fruits.
Kate, deftly and delightfully, gets her patrons grappling with form, function, art, craft. Her mission gets at something deeply human. Our precious things! Our little things. Our treasures. It’s an unassuming magic, but powerful.
For Zack, it’s storytelling, another medium as old as we are. And in his translation work, the storytelling must pass through his mind to make it from the first artist to the final audience. Mind-to-mind-to-minds. Again, powerful.
And as Mike puts it, “we are sharing what we do with the souls of people…because it makes them happy.”
Mike’s mediums have run the gamut, but he’s spent the largest span as a tattoo artist, now hand-molding leather. From what I can gather though, joy is just as much his specialty as ink or hide.
His work makes people happy. And his work is making people happy.
But before I tell you more about that, let’s go back…
Like Kate and Zack, Mike’s love of making started early. And like Kate and Zack, Mike’s playful passion has always had a streak of stubbornness.
Of following his taste, Mike says “that became my selfishness.” Even as a little kid, he was “protective” of whatever felt right to him when making creative choices. He demands this freedom for himself.
There’s something so precious to me, here. This stubborn streak. Increasingly, I believe it’s critical for an artist to apply “selfishness” to taste, to creative satisfaction. Prioritizing consumer desires during creation seems to gum up the gears for nearly all of us.
But then, there’s something mysterious here, isn’t there?
The selfishness of the initial creative delight nearly always seems to shift at some point to a buoyant generosity as we send our works to those they’ll work upon. Something inward, something outward. Wonder, wondering, and back again to wonder. Or maybe it’s the other way around? 🐔🥚
Math aside, I’m inclined to marvel at the balance of these things.
Of course, not every artist sets out to make an audience happy, but delight seems part of each equation, on the front end, the back, somewhere in the middle, sprinkled throughout.
For Mike, the art-making process is full of his bright selfishness, his personal bliss.
Ironically though (or maybe not at all), Mike doesn’t get to that space without connection. And he doesn’t get there without wondering.
“You want to know about where, what, when, why, how…crazy in love with everything.” And especially in love with people. For Mike, the drive to connect with others and the drive to make art are one and the same. They feel exactly the same.
The longer I chatted with Mike, the more I understood these to be two sides of the loveliest coin. He needs to connect with people in order to make art alone. And he needs to make art (alone) to build up the energy he employs to connect with people.
It makes perfect sense that Mike gravitated toward tattooing as a young man. He’d meet with someone to chat about their vision. He’d spend time alone, developing the design, following his own taste (that lovely selfishness), then spend the final step chatting once more, transferring the design to the body of a new friend.
And now, Mike communes with his leather and watercolor muses in the studio, then plants himself at Pike Place Market, a thoroughfare positively teaming with tourists of incredible variety, and works his second magic delighting strangers with heartful chit-chat, widest smiles, charm upon charm, story exchange, and of course, beautiful wares.
Again, his work makes people happy. And his work is making people happy. He’s got to do both to do either. Both are work, and both are joy.
As I’ve been writing these many words, I’ve been hoping for an answer. I’ve been hoping something will arise that will kick me back into wonder, that will show me how to awaken wonder in my classroom.
I also hoped that New Orleans might have the answer. By the way, I’m home now, no revelations having been received.
But in this moment…I’m thinking that maybe the lack of ease or clarity is the thing to consider.
There’s no doubt we’re in a time of sobering uncertainty. Joy and wonder may not come easily this season.
But I think there are some lessons here, and clues.
As artists, we could do well to think beyond a simple transaction and consider a broader creative ecosystem. What are we taking in? What is the magic we’re practicing? What are we putting out? Who are we reaching?
We must set aside some of our weary wariness and wonder about people, places, ideas, unfamiliar realities.
We must prioritize the beautiful things when and where we’re able. We can make room for our wholesome selfishnesses.
After all, joy is a serious subject.
And…I feel I have some serious work to do.
Here’s to tracking down wonder with purpose. If I find any shortcuts, I’ll be sure to share.
Wishing you lovely things,
Emily
P.S.
Here is a vaguely awkward picture of me stepping onto the streetcar in New Orleans with some of my darlings.
