"Repetition is the Mother of Skill" ...If You Haven't Tried it a Thousand Times, You Haven't Tried

A hallway full of vintage cameras

Following a professional career in martial arts (and several broken bones), Tom Callos is pursuing a quieter calling in relief print making. This form of print making requires carving into linoleum, vinyl, and wood surfaces, inking that surface, and pressing paper to it to produce a printed image.

“I like paper. Paper attracts me.”

“I like people.”

Portraiture gave him the opportunity to work with people, research the lives of interesting people and recreate them. With a background in performing martial arts — with comedy — around the world, in tv and movies, Tom was facing a leg fracture following two hip replacements from jiu-jitsu training. He began using his printmaking and art making tools while struggling with the stillness of recovery. He set out to complete one thousand portraits. In martial arts completing one thousand reps of an exercise gives one proper entry-not mastery-into understanding a skill. 

A collection of paintings and a photograph of Tom with some of his former students

“Repetition is the mother of skill,” Tom says and his students usually completed this thought aloud as he said it. He has found there is a transformational power in practice.

“I get up in the morning to do the chores everybody else does, but I’m thinking about making something.”

“You bow in and you react or initiate your work. That occupying your mental space with thinking about art is the sweet spot.”

Childhood interests in reading biographies, particularly about scientists, combined with collecting stained beakers and other metal parts catalyzed his portrait obsession and the practice of slow looking. Now he enjoys reading biographies about other artists as well, people who have shared something remarkable and are examples of accomplishment. He has recently added a series on people of Boise, focusing on local folks with extraordinary qualities to help give back to his supportive artistic community. 

He enjoys adding movement, line and mood not apparent in photographic portraits. His study of people and their faces comes out in his prints. Exploring and experimenting with color is his latest challenge.

As in martial arts and performance, he seeks a balance between the formal qualities and informal expression. 

"When I think about making art that transcends the ordinary, just keep practicing."

He believes in the pursuit of making art to achieve the skillset he is after.

A collection of prints, the bottom row is from Tom’s “People of Boise” series.

Posted on his instagram profile:

“I have found a sort of spiritual practice in making art. It's a fine way to buffer the political disappointments, the estrangements, the angst of wars, the struggles of the times—and to embrace things beautiful, noteworthy, and uplifting. Looking back a bit, to chart the way forward — with just the appropriate amount of anticipation. Oh, and what a pleasure it is to listen to the art of Roger Waters.”

Website: www.tomcallos.com

Traveling and the Medium of Glass Play Prominent Roles in how he Conceives New Work

Filip Vogelpohl sits on a stool facing his workbench filled with collections of glass tubes, small handheld tools, some piles of broken glass and some burnt papers. As he notices me taking video of the burnt invoices, he says, “yeah that just happened the other day. That’s a very rare occurrence.”

Filip Vogelpohl examines a hole he just made in an olive oil bottle he is making.

Papers catching fire might be rare, but hearing glass shatter in the studio is pretty common for glass blowers, an unfortunate byproduct of spending so many hours working with such a fragile material.

A pile of broken glass on Filip’s workbench

After watching a friend blow glass in his shed, curiosity became a 26-year-long career path of working in glass. As the Boise art scene has developed and strengthened over the years, Filip has created a community around the studio space, Boise Art Glass, he runs. He has 14 employees, most of who teach glassblowing to the public. He sells glass pieces out of the studio gallery, at local markets and in stores nationwide.

An employee of Boise Art Glass teaches a student how to use tools

The curiosity that initially drew him to the craft continues to lead him to the diverse subject matter as he doesn’t feel obligated to be committed to one style. From chandeliers to memorial mementos, Filip adapts his approach to and is inspired by the projects that he takes on with commissioned work.

Various soap bottles sit on a shelf at the Capitol City Market in the Grove Plaza

He acknowledges that traveling and the medium of glass play prominent roles in how he conceives new work. Desert cacti, bull skulls, and the shapes, colors, and textures of different landscapes pique his interest in creating new sculptures.

Filip packing up at the Capitol City Market frames by blue glass horn like shapes

A Blend of Temporal Qualities of Nature and Time Spent with Friends, The Art of Ace Zappa

Tactile Studios is tucked amongst a park of Garden City storage units. This single storage unit serves a conglomeration of artists, the largest space belonging to Ace Zappa. The name of the studio is apt considering Ace’s background in sewing. She has recently reconnected with her long-standing interest in fiber-based work, experimenting with small patchwork quilting and larger crochet sculptures—two of which were part of recent exhibitions at the Idaho Botanical Garden. Currently she’s exploring ways to combine her love of fiber with her painting.

Ace gathers and accepts donations of materials to rescue them from landing in the waste stream. She’s at the point now, though, that she has to turn down many donations because of studio capacity. In her pursuit of space within her art, she has scaled her paintings larger and larger. The subject matter of her paintings is a blend of the temporal qualities of both nature and time spent with friends. She creates an abstracted version from her memories of those moments, resulting in a mysterious ghostly rendering of figures and nature scenes in house paint. She prefers creating suggestions rather than clearly defined colors and shapes. She allows the paint to drip and run after applying it, letting the material do what it likes. The gestural marks are loose compared to the small stitches she perfected in her previous life as a professional quilter. It parallels the shifting between micro and macro one can see in her paintings.

Her studio contains a salon-style display of multitudes of painted works on boards, while larger paintings remain standing against the walls. Collections of materials, elements from nature, and artistic knick-knacks serving as inspiration line her shelves and upper platform reachable by a narrow set of stairs. On the upper level, we pass a table filled with animal archeology—bones, skulls, spinal parts—some atop painting studies, and others filled with leaves and flowers. Motivational notes and affirmations are posted on the walls and lying between some of her paintings. One can imagine her passing along such snippets of wisdom to visitors, as she expresses interest in captivating and influencing future generations of creative thinkers.

If you are interested in seeing more of Ace Zappa’s art, visit her at Surel’s Place in December, where she’ll be completing a book project based on her art and daily journaling.

Prolific Public Artist on What it Takes to Create Art for Everyone - Amy Westover - Full Text Artist Sit Down

Grove Street Illuminated - Downtown Boise

What is your primary medium?

That's really difficult to answer. I work in a little bit of everything. I have worked in printmaking and sculpture, so materials of all kinds for that. But really over the course of the last, I would say, 10 years I've focused in on glass, kiln formed glass. So that's a serious interest. But I would say that I work in a lot of different materials.

What got you interested in doing art?

That's another difficult question to answer. I feel like I've tried to answer that question my whole life, but there's really, I think on a deeper level, when you're an artist, you're just an artist. I mean, maybe for some there's something that sparks a desire or a reason to begin creating. I just think that it's always just been part of me and part of who I am and something that I really feel like I have to do. And that's where I feel like I can contribute something to the world.

Where do you get the inspiration for what you create?

Inspiration comes from a lot of different places and sources. I feel like I'm a studio artist, but I'm also a public artist. And so as a public artist, oftentimes, that type of inspiration is driven by all kinds of different factors. There's a site and there's a connection to community and there is history to focus on or there's a desire for regenerating an area or a site in order to activate it. So those have a lot of different motivations, and a lot of different inspirations come out of that. In my studio practice there's a lot of different things that have been an inspiration over the years. Right now, I guess I could answer that I have really been focused on more sort of cosmological types of ideas and phenomena. I've always really been interested in reading and studying quantum physics and so that is kind of an endless source of inspiration. I think it's showing up more and more in my work, especially over the last probably three, four years. And I think on a conceptual level, there's just a desire to, through abstraction, be able to make work that is really kind of focused on this idea of lightness and being able to almost sort of have the artwork feel like it has a sense of its own light source. I'm far from really feeling like I'm achieving that, but that is something I feel like I'm playing with in my printmaking. I feel like I'm playing with that in my glass. I have been incorporating lighting more often into my public work and into some of my studio works.

Wil Kirkman mentioned he worked with you on Grove Street illuminated?

Yes, Wil, and I did work together on that and he's such an amazing person and artist. Actually that project, me using neon and working with him, that was the first lighting I really explored and it's just grown from there. Of course, with all the LED technology and sort of the soft, even lighting that you can get through the different products, it's really fun to incorporate that into public art pieces now.

What gets you up in the morning and willing to come to your studio to work?

Besides black tea? No, I'm always so excited to get to work in the morning. There's lifetime's of ideas and projects and things for me to do. Sometimes that can be a source of frustration, but most of the time, it is a source of motivation and inspiration. My husband, daughter and I we’re sort of homesteaders and we've been building a house. And so I don't really separate any of that from my sense of being an artist. So there's always something to do. There's always something to continue to explore and to learn and if I could come around multiple lifetimes and continue all of this, I would do it.

When you're creating something to fit a space or a concept, what's your process?

It can be challenging. But I feel like my process is really sort of a natural one. For me anyway. Over the years of working in the public art realm I feel like I've kind of honed in on what works for me to try to really activate or evoke, what that site needs to have or should have. I kind of look at it like a mathematical equation, right? That there's this answer at the end of it and I'm just trying to gather all the components that need to be part of that equation. There's no one right answer, because there's a lot of different artists that might come up with a different solution to that same problem. But for me, gathering all of those inputs is important. The first thing that I really try to do is physically spend time at the site. Not even with a sketchbook, just try to really almost forget about what the call to artists is, or what they're asking for, and just really spend time in the space or at the site and study the surroundings, study the patterns of people moving. Study the sun, where is it oriented? Where's the light coming through? Where's the trees? You know, all of those factors. I just try and like, soak that in and then I feel like if I really have a good basis with that under my belt, like physical presence in the space, then from there things start to just unfold. Then of course, there's other inputs. What is the desire that the public art call is asking for? Is that a historic site? Did they want some history? Oftentimes it just seems like there's a desire to reinvigorate a space and art helps do that. Space making helps do that. But the idea really with creating public art is that there is a chance for people to insert themselves into it, and that's what I'm hoping happens. If you look at Grove Street Illuminated, that was my first public art project and I think my first goal with that project was that I wanted the artwork to have a space for the person physically and mentally to walk into the artwork and be a part of it. I don't think that's ever left me as a public artist. Now that just seems to be part of the way I think. Maybe I just got lucky with how I started off in public art, but that is a big part of what I'm trying to achieve as an end goal. How I get there might just be kind of gathering up all of those bits and pieces of information and trying to find at least one decent answer.

Is there any advice you could offer somebody looking to become a public artist?

Yeah, come be my intern, I need help. I mean, I think the City of Boise and other public art programs have entry level type projects for people who are interested in getting involved in public art. I know the City of Boise was doing a public art academy, so there was a little bit of training offered like that, but ultimately, I think it is good for artists to sort of try it on for size. It's not for everyone. It sounds great to be able to have this chunk of money and to maybe do something larger that you might not otherwise be able to do just in your studio or in your own practice. But that's actually just a small little part of it. Being a public artist is being a collaborator. You have to be able to listen and take input from a lot of different people and sources and civic entities and organizations. You have to be able to stick with all the meetings and it's a lot different than going into your own little creative bubble in your studio and working. It's really putting yourself much more out there and relying on other people to be part of that collaboration. I think if artists already know that, they can do that. That's wonderful, dive right in. Go for it. Some artists may need to kind of try that part on for size; and starting out with an entry level project is a good way of getting your feet wet. Of course, I never had that opportunity. It was just, dive in headfirst. It was also sort of the timing for me as an emerging artist and Boise putting their public art program together. So all of those things kind of lined up and were serendipitous. I think there's a lot more resources now for artists to try it on for size.

Boise Water Shed Entryway Wall

How important is having a studio space for what you do?

Having a studio space is crucial for me. I feel so incredibly blessed to have the space that I have now. I have space to work on glass, I have space to work on printmaking, I have space to spread out with public art work and documents and plans and drawings. And then I also can reconfigure the space and bring out the ceramic stuff and get the throwing wheels going and so I have a lot of different things that I like to dabble in and I can kind of reconfigure the space for those things or for a larger scale project. I can move things out of the way and have the space to work on something larger. So for me, at this point in my career, it's crucial. My studio spaces or my creative spaces have taken on a lot of different versions over the years. Right out of college I just had a tiny little basement in a duplex I was living in, and it was maybe the size of this table, and that was my creative space, but I had to have that. You have to kind of carve out these little spaces for yourself. I just know that it was always really important to be able to leave my stuff there and come back to it. Having to clear a space off and bring everything back out, every time that you want to work is really challenging as an artist. Being able to just leave it there, walk away, go back home, and then come back in the morning and just pick up that thread where I left off is super, super important for continuity and being able to get something done. I bought a yurt at one point and had a yurt in my backyard as a studio space and that was absolutely wonderful. Very cold and hot in that space. You put up with a lot in order to carve out a creative space for yourself. So this space is absolute heaven, you know, I can have multiple projects going and be able to move around the space from one to the next and put a little input there, work a little bit over here. So it's luxurious.

Why do you think art is important?

I think art is important because it's a way to kind of reach down inside someone and pluck a chord. It's so hard to answer. I think that the world in general can become quite monotonous and almost generic. I think that we've experienced that more and more as we've moved into modern times. Maybe not. I don't know, it's hard to say. But no matter what time and space humans have lived, I think art has always had a very important role to play in keeping that spirit alive of music, of visual art, of dance, of theater. It reaches somewhere inside of us and plucks that chord. It creates that vibration and that frequency that we need to have reminders of constantly that let you know that we're alive and this is a unique experience. This is special. This is a complete miracle. So people say “Oh, to illuminate the human condition.” It's like, okay, I think of that in terms of a deeper sort of soul experience, you know? I think that art reminds one that we're more than just a physicality.

Is there anything you’d like to talk about I haven't asked?

Well, this is a project I've been working on for a couple of years, it started out with sort of smaller groupings of these glass tiles, maybe like in groups of four or six. And I call them slide specimens. The idea is sort of this intersection of science and the cosmos. The idea behind it is like, if I were to sort of space travel and be able to pick up little particles of dust from stars or comets or the sun or the moon, or you know, any other sort of supernova or something like that and then be able to bring it back and put it under the microscope and look at it. So there's sort of this micro and macro aspect to the work. It's sort of like thinking about the universe and the mystery of that, but then analyzing it under a microscope and trying to understand. Trying to get a visual view of what that might look like. So of course, all of this imagery is completely made up by me and the reaction that I'm getting by the process of firing the glass in the kiln and using precious metals like gold and silver or non-precious metals like aluminum. So there's this metallic aspect to it that is also reacting with the glass and creating the imagery in the kiln, which I have no control over. So I sort of help it along and then it does its thing and it comes out completely different every time. I started making these as a very small series and then it's just sort of grown into thinking about this on a larger scale installation. I came across an exhibition a couple of years ago called “Art of the Cosmos” and it was a woman in LA who was putting on the show. NASA was going to be partnering with a sponsorship, it was celebrating the final days of the Hubble Space Telescope; which those images have been very inspiring to me over the years. So I made this big proposal for the show, it was going to have 300-400 of these glass tiles all installed in a large-scale installation and, of course, the show was meant to be on exhibit March of 2020, so that got canceled. I was about halfway through production of all of these tiles so now they're sort of taking on a different meaning. I'm still creating them, but I'm not holding to creating this exact installation anymore. I'm just still making and making and we'll see what they turn into or where they go. A lot of people have shown interest in buying smaller sets of them. So some of that is happening. But anyway, we'll see what happens with it all.

Do you think art is something you’ll ever stop doing?

I will never stop making and creating art. It may change forms. It may change scales. It may change audiences. But no, I have far too many ideas to put out there and to work on. Art will always be part of my life.

Watercolor Artist Talks About Inspiration and the Importance of Art | Gary Don McCall | Full Text Artist Sit Down

What is your primary medium?

Watercolor. I really like watercolor. And earlier you and I talked about stained glass, acrylic and oil.

What got you interested in painting?

Way back in high school, they used to give you an aptitude test to see what you were good for. And for me they said, “You'd make a good artist or architect.” I didn't take their advice. 50 years later I lost my job, and I went, “Whoa, you got to do something, Gary!” So I went down to the local art store, Terry was still at Boise Blue in those days, down next to McU Sports. I figured I better get some lessons. There was a wonderful professor from Boise State, God rest his soul, but he had Paint/Draw on Cassia Street and then he moved over to Bank Drive. I met so many wonderful people in that class. So after the traumatic experience of losing a job, I put my focus on art and I started another business. Art not only pulled me out of my funk, it threw a rope down the hole, to paraphrase Das Energi, I climbed out and started a new business. I'm happy to say 10 or 12 of my family are running that business today. So art was a lifesaver for me, probably always has been. But certainly it was then.

Where do you get your inspiration?

Just looking around, driving around this town. There's so much history. Alexa Rose offers a wonderful opportunity to artists once or twice a year and I put in for a road trip. Just to go around and paint some of the old buildings, theaters, and bridges we grew up with before they change. I'm not opposed to change, but it's kind of nice seeing a little history before it changes and I think artists can grab that. They can put life to it, and somebody will go “Oh my god, I remember when I jumped off that bridge when I was a kid!”, or “I caught a fish under there”, or I was showing off for my girlfriend, and I about drowned. So, you know, good stuff. Just yesterday I went downtown, and I was down by Peace Valley, and I saw two little boys hanging on a rail and I went “Oh my god.” So I came home and I drew that. It was just something I wanted to capture. And so it's sitting on my art table.

Are there any Boise specific opportunities you feel you've had?

Boise and the whole Valley. Meridian with their Initial Point Gallery we've shown there at least three or four times. Beautiful gallery in city hall. I highly recommend it to everybody. City of Kuna, the City of Marsing, the City of Eagle give you so many opportunities with their small art and murals. Getting closer to home, the City of Boise, they offered the bus stops, they offer the traffic boxes. They just really, you can't go downtown without having your socks knocked off by seeing some of that public art. So yes, thank you Boise and the whole Treasure Valley here. We've even been down to Twin Falls, we did Art and Soul. Now, Art and Soul had a fairly high cost to get into it, but they gave out like $50,000. So there's some big prize money there.

How long have you been doing art?

When I got fired in 2000 is when I decided to just start doing it. So that's 21 years and so many opportunities. And like Scott Peck said, in The Road Less Traveled, if somebody says, “Gee, I wish I could do that.” I would say “You can do that! It just takes time.” Just sit down and do it. Everybody can paint. Everybody can draw it. We're all creative beings. So try it, you'll like it.

Why do you think art is important?

Art is important because a lot of the time it tells the truth. I mean, there's all kinds of art. But sometimes art tells us the truth. Right now down at the Boise Art Museum is the Mini-West Show. I grew up with Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, and all of those wonderful cowboys. But the Native Americans had a different take on these cowboy shows than I did and the art that's being shown at the Boise Art Museum right now shows you that. At the mini West show, there is a piece that's probably 24 foot wide, and probably five foot high, that is drawn by somebody in Japanese style art that shows that Minidoka camp, and the Boise Art Museum in all of their wisdom, put it up on the wall for everyone to see. And it's just a beautiful piece of Japanese art. And it's a piece of Idaho history that we all should embrace. If we embrace the good stuff, we should embrace the bad stuff. And that's what art does. I think besides being fun it tells the truth. While I'm at it, I would ask all of the viewers out there, when you see somebody's art, please don't say that it's cute. Artists have heard this so much. They're really tired of it. So if you could move up a step in your vocabulary and just say, That's interesting, that would be good. But please drop the cute, thank you.

What gets you up in the morning to create?

Well, I'm retired. I always got up early in the morning. I like coffee. I like to read the newspaper. I like to walk the dog. I like to play an hour worth of guitar. And I like to do an hour worth of yoga. Then after I get that out of the way, I have a free day, and you can only read so much. So I choose art, or art chooses me. I'm very fortunate in probably doing two or three pieces of art a week because I enjoy it and I like to see what's going to come out. One of my teachers, John Killmaster, always said plan out your painting, look at your composition, figure out what you want to do before you do it, and sometimes, I take that advice. And sometimes I don't. But good advice, John, thank you.

Do you think art is something you'll ever stop doing?

No. No, in fact, I'm reminded of Pissarro. Pissarro was a teacher to Cézanne and so many more of the Impressionists. He couldn't use his hands, so he tied brushes to his arms to paint until his final days. And I hope that I have a little Pissarro in me. Namaste. Thank you.

Emerging Artist Explains Why She Likes Working Beyond The Sketchbook | Roxy Albig | Full Text Artist Sit Down

Examples of Roxy’s illustration

What's your primary medium?

Well, I like to use alcohol markers a lot. Ink and gouache when I create more intricate pieces that I sell. That's my main medium, but I also like to spray paint. That's mostly my own personal enjoyment. I like to experiment with it a lot and feel like it's a lot more free than those really nitty gritty mediums. I don't know.

How long have you been doing art?

The answer is, you know, I've been doing it since I was a kid, but I started taking it pretty seriously when I was in eighth or seventh grade. I got a sketchbook and I was like, I'm gonna sketch every day, even if it's crappy. I want to be an artist. I want to get better. So that's probably when I started my career.

Are you going to school for art?

Yeah, I'm going to Boise State University for illustration. I guess, 2d art right now. Who knows what's gonna happen? Maybe I'll transfer to a school in a different state, but for now I'm just at BSU.

Where do you get your inspiration?

That comes from a lot of different places. I'm very inspired by nature and the world around me, including all the beautiful parts and all the really gruesome parts. I am also really interested in biomechanics and human evolution. My dad is a biology teacher at BSU and ever since I was a kid, we'd talk about human genealogy, and it's so fascinating to think about who we are and where we are going. And I just think that really fuels my creativity a lot of the time. It fluctuates depending on my mood for sure as well.

What drives you to create?

I think that right now, I'm doing quite a lot of commissions. So I'm getting money out of it. And unfortunately, that's the reality for a lot of artists. Where it's like, oh, this is just something I got to do in order to make money. But in order to be actually creative and make things for myself, I just feel like that is something that I physically need to do. Sometimes I don't have any other way of expression except for just painting when I don't have the words to say. So I have to express it with images. You know, that whole shebang.

Why do you think art is important?

I think it's important in a whole bunch of different ways. It's important to ourselves. I think everyone should be able to express themselves through whatever medium they need, because without it I feel like you're very repressed and aren't really true to yourself. Also I think it's really important that we as humans create art that is personally ours because it is very indicative of the time that we live in and it will be the way that other people in the future look back on us and see what our culture is going through at the time. So if it's going to be Pokemon, or if it's going to be political, or if it's just going to be some really strange, abstract art, no matter what, people will be able to pull through it the experiences that we have today, and I think that's very important.

Why do you think an artistic career is worth pursuing?

I don't know. Because I'm not really good at anything else? I also think that even though it might not be traditional, it's a job, and sometimes it can get tedious. It's still something that I take enjoyment out of, just putting my mind to a project and seeing myself grow as an artist is always good. And it always opens my horizons to things that I would have never thought of doing before.

Do you find it easier to do commissions or to create on your own?

If someone doesn't want to give you direction, most of the time, it's because they have an image in their mind of what they want, but they just aren't comfortable saying it. I mean, people who truly just give me the reins, that's awesome. But most of the time they're like, “Oh, I don't want you to do this. And I don't want you to do this.” So I would like for someone to commission me and give me some guidelines, be very clear with what your intentions are, and that way, maybe I can structure my creative process around that. I'm very happy when I get paid. And I'm more than happy to do commissions but it's not as fulfilling to me to do work for someone else. It's fun, but the emotional satisfaction and the gratification of being able to finish a piece that really speaks to me is like, that's the way to do it.

Do you have other artistic pursuits you focus on?

Oh, I do a million things. I have so many hobbies. It's kind of overwhelming. I am in a band right now called Teratoma. I'm learning how to mix music. I do roller skating, park skating, artistic skating. I do pole dancing. I have a whole bunch of different things I like to do artistically and I just feel like there's like a bunch of different artistic mediums where everyday I can just try and experience new things and experience joy from finding a new way to express myself. So I don't know, I like just trying different kinds of art.

Are there opportunities you feel you've had specific to Boise?

Sure. Like, I don't think that the art scene here is incredibly strong per se. People aren't willing to pay lots of money for art. I think it's growing as of late, but I think the art scene that we do have is very tight knit and I feel like I know most of the artists in the city and most of the people who are putting art up on their walls. Freak Alley was so cool. Like, even when I first moved here when I was a kid, I was like “I want to get on Freak Alley.” Like “I think that'd be so cool.” And honestly, that has brought me a lot of opportunities to do murals in other places. Pie-hole wants me to do their wall right now, so that's gonna be fun. I think when I was going to high school there were a lot of opportunities that they presented to get my work up in coffee shops and in the Boise Art Museum and, I think that's really special. It's not necessarily a huge wide range of people who are going to see your art, but it's kind of nice to know that there's some people who still appreciate it and it's like direct communication with the people around you.

What was it like to participate in Freak Alley?

Well, it's really fun. The ownership is transferred as of now, but Colby used to run it and he's super cool. He ran it exactly how it should be ran. He was very strict about it, but he also let people do literally whatever they wanted, regardless of levels of artistic ability or whatever. As long as you had a design that you wanted to put up, he'd let you do it. And I think that's so cool. That week where you can come in literally 24 hours around the clock and just work on your mural, I met a bunch of cool artists that I never met before. I made a bunch of cool connections and I just felt like I was working so hard on this mural the whole time. It gave me a lot of introspection on how I want to approach a piece and why I'm doing this in the first place, because it's not a paid opportunity. I had a great time and it really kind of made me decide that I like to make murals and I really like to make public art. 

Is there anything you'd like to talk about I haven't asked?

The spray painting that I've been doing recently, the muralisms I was talking about. I have just started doing that. I think most of my career I was doing sketchbook work and other very traditional kinds of artistic works. Ever since I started doing spray painting and murals, it's been such a release. I was telling you about making art for myself, it feels like I'm making these and it's a very cathartic experience where you just kind of make whatever you're really feeling on this particular day. It is nothing but for yourself. It's in my backyard. No one is going to look at it except for my neighbors. I think it's really just like, you can let go of all the preconceptions of why you have to make art and who will appreciate it and all the reasons that you're going to make art other than your own enjoyment. So yeah, I would love to do more murals and spray painting, it's just a completely different experience from anything else I've done before.

What is it about working on a larger scale that you find interesting?

I think it's that you have to use your whole body to paint and it feels more like dancing and like you're using every part of your body to make something instead of just sitting there hunched over drawing. I think you are immersed in this entire world that you're painting. It's so large in scale that you just feel like you can step into it, rather than just one little sketchbook page. There's something special about it. I think that it’s also on a scale where you have to step back and really look at the big picture of what you're making instead of just hyper focusing on some very small details. I think that there are a whole bunch of things about spray painting I like.

Roxy standing next to a mural she painted while we spoke

Do you have any mentors you've looked up to?

I just kind of wanted to start. I've seen a lot of muralists before who have done crazy works and honestly, when you look at their pieces, it looks so easy. And then you try it. It's just like holy crap. There's so much finesse and I mean, I have artists that I admire their works, but I am pretty self taught. I don't think I've ever taken any advice from anyone other than the guy at the local art shop that's like, “Oh, you know, they have fine tips for cans” and I’m like, “Really?” I mean, we have ElmsOne here who's amazing. I've only chatted with him on one occasion, but he's really cool. Pie-hole is the first big one I've ever done that someone has commissioned me to do and I'm like, “I have no idea how to price this.” So I reached out on a whim. I didn't know if they'd reply, but the guy was super helpful. I'm actually covering up one of their first pieces ever done on that wall.

Do you think businesses around here are becoming more receptive to having art?

For sure, yeah. I think that's super cool. I'd love to see art put on every little surface in the city if I ran it, but you know, I think that is super cool. I'm glad that people are getting more work here. I'd like to see more muralists come out of Boise and I hope that people are going to be able to become full time artists making money making murals, that would be ideal, right? But who knows what's gonna happen? For now I think it's going in a good direction.

Do you feel like it’s possible to support yourself with art?

I feel like you need to have one piece that really speaks to people and by some stroke of luck everyone decides that this is “it,” this is the image we're going to associate with Boise. I don't know, you might get lucky and make that piece one day and get enough exposure that people will be really into your art and stuff. But until that happens, I'm just gonna have to keep trudging away, figure out another way to make money.

Where did you get the idea to start throwing paint for your base coat?

I think that being messy and having fun is the number one best part of doing art. Where you don't have to think about everything you do to create a painting to make it perfect and correct. Sometimes I feel like I'm so limited by that. Where if you don't perform the correct steps then you might mess up an entire painting. Throwing paint definitely isn't gonna give you the nicest coat of paint possible. But honestly, I don't care. It's my own board. I want to have fun, get messy, make something and really just enjoy what I'm doing. I just think that's just the way to do it. I think that everyone should try it at some point. Have fun, throw some paint. Pretty cathartic.

Do you think art is something you'll ever stop doing?

No, no. Like, even if I don't do it as a job, I'll probably still do it in some form or another. I mean, life without art would be so boring. Like what is there without performance and without expressing yourself, other than just work and going to sleep? That sucks.

John Killmaster - Full Text Artist Sit Down

Enameled panels in John’s backyard

What is your primary medium? 

What I'm known for is enameling. Worldwide.

How long have you been doing enamel?

I began in 1974. It was a competition to do a piece on the exterior of the Boise Art Museum and surprisingly, I won the commission to do it. I proposed to do it in the automotive enamel they put on cars, which is paint. I thought, “Well, it'll last a while.” Harold Balazs was one of the judges from the Spokane area. He was an analyst and sculptor and there were two other judges. They chose me based on my little airbrush example. He said a better enamel is porcelain enamel. Why don’t you try that? And so he said, go up to Seattle, work at Pioneer Enameling, they'll show you how to do this. So I went up there, I learned about it, and then I asked them if they could do it. I had $5,000 and they said, “Oh, what you want to do will cost $10,000.” So I thought, I've got to do most of this myself. I came back and I designed the thing, blew it up full scale and cut stencils. Bought a spray gun and a compressor and went back to Seattle and I did the piece in about two weeks. It's on the Julia Davis side of the art museum. And it's been there for 40 some years. Yeah, it looks just about the same.

What got you interested in doing enameling?

Well, porcelain enamel is a utilitarian kind of enamel. If you have a stovetop, it's porcelain enamel. The interior of your water heater probably has enamel. It was considered an industrial medium. Most of the other enamels you call vitreous enamel and it's used by jewelers and other artists, small scale that kind of stuff. I thought porcelain enamel was just like poster paint and I thought, it's got a lot of possibilities that people aren't exploring at this point. So I pursued that and came to it with no knowledge of what couldn't be done. I discovered a lot of ways of working and the predominant method that I've come up with is granular spray, along with some other ways of working with porcelain enamel.

What is it about teaching that kept you doing it?

When I was an illustrator in Detroit, kids would come in for summer jobs from the University of Michigan. They'd get a job cutting mats, you know, doing those kinds of things. And they'd come into my studio area, which was about the size of this studio, and I'd be working on these car things and doing all kinds of illustration. They’d say “In our classes we never learned any of this kind of thing!” They were really interested and I was teaching them. I was doing my work, but I was teaching on the job. Later on I thought I could go into college teaching, because these are college students. I ended up coming here to Boise State.

Where do you get your inspiration?

Well, I have a pretty good imagination. I also love nature, so I came to Idaho. I had a choice of a couple other jobs. I thought, “I'm from Michigan, there's not a lot of real high mountains here.” I thought, “I'd really like to go to a northern place that had all this kind of subject matter.” I came here and the first thing I did was examine the area and got out and did some plein air work. Later on when I was teaching, I'd take my students out and we'd go here and there and meet up in the canyons and different places. It was really a camaraderie thing.

What drives you to get out of bed in the morning and come out here to work?

Actually, I don't get going until the afternoon, because I'm a night owl. I can't help myself, I’ve just got to do this. But I switch from one medium to another, so that I don't get bogged down and tired of any one thing. I do water color, I learned how to paint using gouache, I use oil. I use water mixable oil and I wish they would have come up with that earlier, I would have had my students use that. We mainly used acrylic, and the majority of my work is acrylic. I love acrylic because it's so versatile. It can go from thin washes to thick paint, to glazing, to detail, to spontaneity. So, my ideas, they just kind of come from drawing. Doing a lot of drawing. Over the years I've got sketchbooks full of drawings with potential paintings and I still use those.

Can you tell me about the process of putting together your book?

Well, first of all, you have to afford to do it. At first I looked into it and found somebody in town that would do it for maybe $30,000, so I kind of backed off from it. About that time my wife died and I thought, “Oh, mortality, I better shape up if I'm gonna do a book.” Bob, an artist who taught at Boise State, I went to visit him and he said, “You better do a book no matter what it takes. If you have a piece of land, sell it and do the book.” It just happened that one of my former students was in Portland and she is a graphic designer. So I asked her what it would cost for her to do the book for me and she gave me a price I was able to afford. Then I got a writer in town who was willing to do the writing. So maybe it cost me about 10,000. On the front of the book is an example of my tremor enameling. At the turn of the century I noticed my handwriting was really going bad. My sister said “What's the matter with you? You can't write a decent letter.” I said, “I don't know.” I went to a neurologist, he said, “You have an essential tremor. If you were a piano player, you'd have to give up because you wouldn't hit the right keys.” I said, “Well, it's not going to stop me.” So I made use of that tremor. It's a gradual thing. It makes my head shake a little bit. But the worst thing is, it stopped me from drawing. I couldn't do detail anymore. But the kind of drawing I could do with it, from the tremor itself, came up with these forms that couldn't be imagined. So I just let my hand do the drawing and then put it into a computer, and then cut it out with a plasma cutter and then I do the enamel. So thank you tremor for doing some of my art.

That's great perseverance. How important is it for you to have a space to create in?

I've worked in a lot of different spaces. At one point I was behind the furnace in a big old house. I was working on a screened in porch and then It got to be 20 below so I went down behind the furnace, but I was still doing stuff on the living room floor. So it's important to have it. The main thing is to have your equipment where it should be so that when you need it, it's there. And your supplies.

What's the story behind your “Kilnmaster”?

I built it because I couldn't afford a big kiln. I thought, “Okay, I'll go to the high school and learn how to weld.” I took a class in welding and bought the welder, bought the materials and built the thing. It cost me about $250 in materials and free labor. I built it over Christmas break. I had a book about kilns so I knew some basic stuff. I built it, turned it on and, usually the little kiln that I had made noise when you turn it on because the elements get brittle. Well I turn it on, no sound. I thought oh, it's not working. I spent $25 to get an electrician to turn it on and tell me what's the matter with it. He put his hand in there, turned it on and said “It's working perfectly.” So it cost me another $25. But it's been going ever since and I've taken the thing up north to do workshops, taken it to Boise State. I’ve taught a lot of people how to use or do enamels, large scale things. I have plenty of interest, but not enough support from the college, so I supply all the materials.

Why do you think art is important?

I think it's beauty and flowers and clouds and trees. People need this sort of thing. If they can control it by doing their own art, they can then satisfy this urge, this desire. When I was about four I made a little card for my mom for Mother's Day. That was my first work of art I guess. During World War 2 I drew airplanes all the time. I also made little airplanes. I did a lot of carving. I carved little boats. I just couldn't help myself. I was terrible with math. I just couldn't do math. My dad would get frustrated. He taught trigonometry and calculus and he was a school principal and a civil engineer. He gave up on me. I'm not going to amount to anything. He suggested I go into the greenhouse business and we built a greenhouse. But he only had it for a year and he died. So I was on my own at 16. I had a job in a store and I didn't like that at all, except when I decorated the windows. I thought, “I need to go to art school”, because that's the only thing I could really do. So I went to Detroit, I got a job and went to art school.

Do you think art school was good for you?

I went to art school for about two months. I lost my day job, so I couldn't afford to go to school anymore. I got a job in a printing place and I learned all about the printing business. I was working with airbrush artists, Retouchers. All the art, everything you see was retouched with airbrush. And so I learned from these guys, and they provided an opportunity to move on to a larger studio with a lot of illustrators, painters, and real competent artists. I had that job for a year and then I started doing freelance. In the evenings I did freelance and made enough money to equal what I was making all week. So just being around other students and other artists is the way I learned. I learned on the job, but I went back to art school at night when I could afford to and did life drawing and worked with some pretty good students. The whole thing just evolved and it was a positive thing all together. I always told my students, make sure you take some good artists, believe what they're telling you, don't question them. Gain everything you can from them. And also be diverse. Because you'll never know what opportunities are gonna come up in the future. Diversity is what I did, and I think a lot of my students took that to heart and learned a lot of different things so that they are still in the business.

What inspired you to teach?

Well, like I said, people were coming to the Howard Art Studio in Detroit from the University of Michigan. They weren't getting what they wanted and I was teaching them. So that inspired me to go on and I was thinking, well, I'll teach in grade school, but I didn't get into the program. My teachers were about my age. They said, “Well, why don't you become a college teacher?” So I went ahead, and in six years I got my four year degree and then I got a two year degree. I also taught a year when I was a senior at Hope College in Holland, Michigan. I was in a summer show and one of the guys in the show was a teacher at Ferris State University, he said, “Why don't you stop by and talk to the department head, show him your work.” So I did and they called me up while I was still a senior. They needed somebody really bad. They had somebody coming from California, but his wife decided she didn't want to have to deal with snow. So they needed somebody real bad. I didn't have any degrees but I had the ability. I was teaching painting, drawing, some design and perspective. That was my first experience, then I immediately applied to graduate school and did that. In the summer I got my undergraduate degree. In those six years I got an undergraduate, graduate and a year's worth of teaching and then everything opened up. I went on to teach fine art and I applied here and there. Dr. Peck at Boise State called me up and he said, “You want the job?” I said, “Okay.” So that's how that was settled. The next day a college in Colorado called me up and they said, “You're our number one pick! Do you want the job?” I said, “Well, I took a job yesterday teaching in Idaho.” He said, “Well, the fishing is a lot better there.”

What would you say to somebody just starting out their career?

I would say focus on your art. If it's a guy, don't focus on girls at this point and vice versa. Just really improve your art and then save your money, go to college, learn what you can, but work constantly. Go out and plein air paint. Find people that are also interested and they'll encourage you and you'll encourage them. My whole life starting at five years old, has been art. And I never had, except for that store job, to work elsewhere. I've been in art and it's paid off for me.

Are there opportunities you feel you've had in Boise that are specific to here?

Well, I’ve gotten a couple of grants. I guess because nobody else applied for them for one thing. I was aggressive enough to go to the gal who was running it, and got a grant from the Western States Arts Foundation and that led to a showing in the Smithsonian. I got to talk to Joan Mondale and met Walter and was in the first Western States Biannual, I represented Idaho. By being in Idaho I was in the newspaper a whole lot of times, people would come around and take pictures and they would write about me. I was in the Statesman off and on as a new guy, you know, a grass is greener guy. But after a while, that kind of wore out and then people that you knew move on and pretty soon nobody remembers you. So, that's life you know? Even by talking to you, it kind of regenerates me. Here I am again.

John using a hairdryer on a piece before firing it in his kiln

My goal with this whole project is to shine a light on who's out here.

Right, and that's really important. I think, sure, you can get to know the wheeler dealers, but having somebody legitimate that's willing to show what you're doing, to expose you, to re-expose you. Another thing I do is I'm on Facebook and I teach there. I get in groups where I know how to do these things, I show them my work. My approach to teaching was to demonstrate, but I also intimidated. I brought my work in and I said “You want to do this kind of stuff? You want to get this good?” I didn't hide the fact that I went through a lot to get to this point. “You're gonna have to do what I did, learn from me and learn from other artists.” You know, what it took with me was the right couple of guys that showed me how to do things. I picked up on it and went with it. So that's my approach, is to do workshops in this little place here. I had a gal from Boston this spring, and another guy from Jackson Hole came in to learn, and there's a lot of people waiting. I can't do it anymore in the heat of the summer. I’ve got people wanting to learn my things.

Is there anything you want to talk about that I haven't asked?

Well, I think people always say, find your niche, and that worked for me, but I have several niches. My first niche was the illustration thing, which I learned on the job being around other artists. And then it's a good idea to get a degree, just in case you want to teach. I know it's really competitive, but if you're really good, you'll get the job. Believe in yourself. Be inventive, innovative. Don't just follow what everybody else is doing. I had a chance to go to New York. I didn't take it. I came to Boise. I'd rather be a big frog in a little pond than vice versa. But then again, some of my friends did go to New York. I have all kinds of great stories about that I won't get into.

Is there anything else you'd like to say?

I think enameling is an area that has a lot of future and potential. It's glass fired on metal. It's a fast technique that is permanent. My sculptures, there's one in Portland and there's one at Boise State, they look the same as ever. It's an exterior medium the way I use it and long lasting. It's out living me, that's for sure. So I think if you're interested in this medium, take Delia Dante, take me, take some of my students that do it.

Do you think art is something you'll ever stop doing?

Oh, I've thought about it. I've been retired for 20 years and as long as I have energy I can't help but do it. There's so many things I haven't done that I'm continually looking for new ways of working. Like my sand enameling. I thought to mix sand with enamel, fire it, do three dimensional stuff, which isn't being done, and it works. I'm constantly looking for new ways and I've done that with painting too. I put acrylic water based paint over oil. Everybody says you can’t do that. That challenges me and I do it, and I've been doing it for 25 years. The paintings are as good as ever. So, no, I'll never give it up. I'm not that interested in playing golf or doing any of that other stuff. There's too much that art offers that it makes life really significant and enjoyable. What I'm looking for is my ultimate statement, my masterpiece. I'm on the way, yes, but I'll get there. I'm going to be 87, so I'm sticking with it. My sister kept doing little art things up to age 91.

Freelance illustrator Luan Teed - Full Text Artist Sit Down

A sticker pack designed by Luan

What is your primary medium?

My primary medium right now is kind of a mixture of things, but it's mostly digital right now. If I'm gonna go traditional, I really like pens, markers, kind of collaging things together type work.

How long have you been doing art?

Ever since I was little. I always loved drawing. It really started becoming very, very involved in my life when I started getting into anime. I really loved that style and the look and I just kept drawing from then on.I just thought, let's make it a career if we can. So then I got an illustration degree.

Was the art school experience worthwhile for you?

Yeah, I think it really was because I had a lot of time to develop an identity with my art and kind of learn what's out there, what I want to do, what I might not like, you know. It gave me the opportunity to experiment. So I really liked that. Now I feel more confident in what I want to do and in my style. I think there could have been a little bit more, I guess, life experience that I needed. Like getting more side projects. I think it prepared me as a person, as a human. And then as far as getting the more technical stuff down, I still need to work on that. I'm still practicing.

Where do you get your inspiration?

A lot of it comes from just a feeling. I really want to convey this in this way. How am I going to go about that? I really want it to be aesthetic, I want it to be kind of pretty. For instance, I really take inspiration from Alphonse Mucha, who is one of the artists I love because of the detail in their work and it's just so beautiful the way he creates these figures and the use of line. So I kind of want to have people see where my inspiration comes from.

What gets you up in the morning and ready to create?

Well, it's been kind of tough because of the recent world events. Right now I've kind of reignited the love of just going out and drawing people at coffee shops. I love just sitting down with my sketchbook and cup of coffee and then I get to stare at people and just draw them. I did that while traveling. I did that throughout school. Now that we are able to go out and be in the world I've started that practice again and I just love that life drawing.

How do you think your art has evolved?

I mean, if we're starting from the anime times, the best way to learn is by copying. So as far as what I've added to make it my own. I kind of feel like maybe it's, it's not realistic, but I'm not quite sure how to describe it. I still like the idea of the eyes being the focus. You know, the eyes are the windows to the soul type stuff. I really still like to have those kind of bigger on my figures. But I think the way I color and the way I draw with line kind of starts to get into the Alphonse Mucha type category and out of that simple, straightforward kind of anime look. I was able to be on the cover of the Boise Weekly and on the cover she's still got those big eyes. But what I love is kind of organic line work. It could be from any culture. And like, this is her mask and it's like a butterfly. It's got really cool eyes and is kind of organic looking

Do you have a primary subject with your work?

Yeah, so it's definitely had its different periods and stages. A lot of the prints I've created were trying to see if like, maybe if I focus on animals, maybe I could go into a pet portrait type angle. But you know, I realized that maybe that's not exactly what I'm wanting to do. So moving on from that, then I'm like, “Okay, well, let's keep practicing on humans and figures and all that organic line and a little bit of sparkle, aesthetic, cute, all that good stuff. Now I've actually kind of started to evolve into more of wanting to learn how to create assets for say, a company. So working within a company, like, do you need internal visuals? Graphics for a presentation, for instance? Do you need stickers for your onboarding with new people as a kind of merch? So I'm starting to think more in that way. That's how it's evolved, from this more fine art realm into more commercial and a little more businessy.

Luan working on creating a logo

Do you work on commissioned projects?

Yeah. I actually have a project right now with a local Korean restaurant here called KoKo Bell. It's really a nice couple doing their best out there trying to share Korean street food with Boise. I was able to talk with them and they're wanting to have me do a mural on their wall in the restaurant. In the past I've done Freak alley, of course. I've done some other murals inside businesses. And so that's just a whole other aspect of my art that I really love. I'm really excited to start working on this Korean food one. It's like a huge wall. So this is probably going to be the biggest mural I've ever done by myself.

Do you find it easier to work big or small?

Oh, small is so easy, just, you know. But bigger definitely takes a lot more. You’ve got to pick up all the stuff, move it over, pick it up, move it back over again. But it's such a fun challenge.

Are there any Boise specific art opportunities you’ve had?

The city of Boise does a really good job of having calls to artists. Like the electric box, I actually submitted some stuff that wasn't chosen, but that's okay. That's okay. And right now I know that they're running another one redesigning the library cards for the Boise Library! So, I think they do a good job of trying to have opportunities going as often as possible. There's the Wintry Market here. There are events that happen at JUMP. I think if you actually look for it, they're there, but it’s not always as obvious. There are definitely opportunities out there I really want to go for. Right now I'm still kind of in the process of making my own logo. I need to actually make some business cards. Once I have all that setup to go out into the world I'll just be; apply to this, try that, go over here. Do you want to be here? Can I do this for you?,

Is art what you want your career to be?

I realized long ago that if I didn't do art, I genuinely feel like something is missing from me. It just doesn't feel right. I always need to have the opportunity to create. Why not have it integrated with my lifestyle and my career? For a while I kind of faltered. I was like, well, maybe I could do something else. But then I realized, why not combine it? Because you know, right now, people can do pretty much anything they want. I should be able to combine my talents that aren't creative with my creative ones. But yeah, ultimately, I don't think I could not do anything creative, or with art.

Do you think art is something you'll ever stop doing?

No, I won't ever stop. Yeah, never. 

Lydia Purcell - Full Text Artist Sit Down

Lydia doing a balloon wall installation at a wedding

What is your primary medium?

Balloons.

How long have you been working with balloons?

Business wise I've been working with balloons for a little over two years but I've been playing around with them for four years. So two years before then before that.

What got you interested in working with balloons?

I owned an online party supply store for seven years. So I started getting into selling balloons and balloon garlands and that's what introduced me to the art of balloons.

Did you see other people doing garlands?

Yes, I did not invent this idea at all. Other people were doing it. It was mostly popular in larger cities and in Australia it was really big. So I just thought, “That's really cool, I wonder if I could add that to my party supplies.” Then I started to really like it and wanted to make bigger pieces, and you know, I just went for it.

What goes into making one of these garlands?

Well, from beginning to finish; I guess I need to visualize what I'm going to make so I know what colors I want or what colors the customer wants. Then I get to create the idea in my head. What it will look like. Then I just kind of know what to do from that. So I inflate the balloons and string them together and then add details if needed. Different sizes of balloons. So I kinda create patterns with them.

What's the most interesting balloon creation you've made?

Oh, I don't know. I'd probably have to say that I did a really big balloon installation on a coffee shop and it just kind of went all over. It was a really big piece that just kind of covered this coffee shop with all these really bright colors.

What is it about working with balloons that keeps you doing it?

That's a good question. I don't know. I just, I just really love it. I mean, some days I'm like, “I don't want to get up and do that.” But then when I get to work, I'll be like, “Gosh, I love my job.” I love most aspects of my job, you know. At first, being a business owner was hard. Like, I don't want to be a business owner. I just want to be an artist. I just want to make cool things. And now I'm embracing the business part too. So it's definitely becoming more and more fun the deeper I get into it.

What has the response been to putting your balloon creations out there?

Well, I was really scared of putting my business out there. Like I mean, I waited two years from when I really wanted to do it to finally doing it because I was afraid people would make fun of me or they wouldn't get it. There was no one else here doing it so I was like, “There must be a reason that no one else is doing it.” So it took me a lot of convincing to just jump and go for it. So when I immediately got a great public response to doing it I was surprised and shocked. And I think maybe six months in I had to quit my online party supply business because I couldn't keep up with both. And so yeah, it was really supposed to just be a sort of side gig I did and they became my full time gig. As far as how the community perceives me, I don't really know because I'm from the inside out. I've got terrible imposter syndrome. I'm just like, “No, my work is crap. No, I'm not great at all.”

Do you look at other balloon artist’s work for inspiration?

So yeah, I used to, just at the beginning, not really knowing what I'm doing. Because I mean, this job is, we're all making it up. Like, there are no rules. We're all making it up. So I looked at other people kind of for guidance, you know, like, what are you doing? How are you putting it together? What sizes are they using, you know? Now it's just like, I have a style now, and every artist has a style, and I can be looking through Instagram and see someone and know exactly who's work it is before seeing their name, because everyone has their style. So now, I can inspire myself because I just know what I like and how I like it to look and what colors I like to use, and what colors I don't like to use. Just two years of practice, practice, practice.

What do you do with the balloons once the party's over?

Unless the customer asked me to come back to dispose of their balloons for them, which is a breakdown, they can just pop the balloons when they're finished with them and throw them away and they biodegrade. I rarely use fishing line except when I need to hang something and don't want to see any sort of lines or anything like that. So the whole piece, as much as I can, is completely biodegradable and apparently compostable as well. There are mylar balloons which are not biodegradable, they can be returned to me to get shop credit and then I can reuse them.

Have you always been creative?

Yeah, I think so. I've always been really crafty and handy. I learned how to sew at a really young age. So I was making my own clothes and then that kind of taught me design ideas.

What has it been like for you to support yourself with your creativity?

It's really rewarding. It's really satisfying. My online party supply was also a really creative thing because I didn't resell, I made custom party supplies. So customers would come to me and go, “This is my theme. These are the kind of items I want. These are the kind of colors I would use” and I would create an entire set of party items for them. So I've been supporting myself through my own creative works and working with my hands for quite a while now. It is very rewarding. Before then I was a waitress and a student. I had to rely on someone else to pay me and I had multiple jobs and was barely surviving as a single mom. So when I decided, screw this, I'm going to decide what I do, when I work, when I get paid, how much I get paid, that was really rewarding. And I'm still doing that.

What's it been like for you to expand into a bigger space?

It's been good. It's been scary. Business moves are always scary, but also very exciting. So I'm still working on the space. Being kind of the only person that works on this job, it makes everything take a little bit more time, but it's been really good. I knew that my business couldn't grow if I stayed in a small space. I was like okay, this is as big as my business can grow. Am I okay with that? So I either had to grow or take a step back, because I just didn't want to stay in the same space. And not the physical space. I loved that space. I still love that space. So I just took the leap and decided to grow.

Are you trying to get more into the party stuff again?

Yes. So I'm kind of going back to the party supplies. And I have the party room, because I just really want to see all the parties to fruition, which is always really fun when I go to customers' houses. But usually I'm the first one there so I don't really get to see the end result. Bringing the DIY balloon kits back too and kind of combining them now.

You do classes on balloon tying?

I teach classes on how to make my DIY kits. A lot of people are afraid or intimidated by making a DIY kit. So they can take a class from me where they can learn how to make one and then that's knowledge that they have forever, so they can keep making their own balloons for their family events and celebrations.

Are there any other kinds of classes you host here?

Yeah, I mean, I just announced my party space a couple days ago, I think. I've already gotten bookings for people teaching classes on cookie decorating and things like that. I think they're gonna have crafting classes and things like that, showing people how to make things. 

Has it gotten busier over the last year or has it slowed down?

In the balloons and event industry we just have busy times and slow times. Because this is only my second year it's kind of hard to tell what the event trend is really. But springtime is always the busiest. May and June are always completely slammed because you have graduations and the end of school years. People love throwing baby showers in the springtime. Bachelorette parties because people are getting married in the summer. So it’s just busy. And then I think this year was even busier because the vaccines for COVID came out, so people were really excited to finally start partying. But yeah, it just depends.

Do you find it's all over the place for who wants balloons at their events?

I’d definitely say that I do more birthday parties. But that's because more people have birthday parties. Like, everyone has a birthday. It's a lot of birthdays. A lot of baby showers, people want balloons at their baby shower. So that's a really popular event to have balloons at. And then weddings are just kind of, I don't know, I feel like maybe I do two to four weddings a month. Not everyone wants balloons at their wedding and it takes some convincing to talk someone into believing that they do want balloons. A bride knows if she wants balloons at her wedding and if she doesn't know she probably doesn't.

What's it like working with fragile balloons?

They have their own personality. I do get my feelings hurt when they pop when I'm inflating them. I'm like “That was really rude. Like, okay, you don't want to be part of this. Alright.” But they don't really pop as often as people think that they do. With the summer heat that we've been getting, you know, they get a little bit angrier. But the balloons just don't pop that easily. I do buy high quality balloons, so it shouldn't happen.

Do you build displays in sections and then put them together on location?

Yeah, so in the back, you kind of saw a mountain of balloons back there and they're all kind of created into six foot sections and that's how I sell my garlands, in six foot sections. I just bring them there and I assemble them and put them together and create and design them on site. So everything's inflated, kind of ready to go, and then I just have to put it together.

Do you think artistic endeavors are something you'll ever stop pursuing?

No, I think I have to do something creative for the rest of my life. Yeah, it's another thing like, “Oh one day I’ll retire.” Will you? It'll be something else. Just like I first started with coordinating events and then I went into making party supplies and then went into balloons and then back into selling party supplies. This business or career choice I want to call it, it's going to keep changing and turning into something else.

Ben Konkol - Full Text Artist Sit Down

One of Ben’s award winning examples

What is your primary medium?

So technically, it's mixed media. Most of my end products are digital. But I always start out with a pencil under drawing. And I do digital line work in procreate, and I color in Photoshop, and I animate in Photoshop and After Effects. So it's kind of a broad range of things. So that's why I say mixed media.

How long have you been working in art?

Yeah. So I mean, I've been drawing and illustrating since I was a kid. But I got serious about it and started leaning into more professional illustration work about five years ago.

What's it like to support yourself doing art?

I think accomplishing things professionally within the world of illustration is super validating and exciting and intimidating and enthralling, and all of those things at once. And yeah, it's a whole range of things. But mostly, it's super exciting because illustration is such a meandering career path and it's so untraditional I think in the normal sense of a career. I think once accomplishment starts coming down the pipeline, it starts to get exciting and validating in a way that's different than like a traditional career trajectory.

Can you talk about your awards?

Yeah, so 2020 was a big year actually. I had a few successes submitting to award shows fortunately. I was able to get awarded by 3x3 Illustration Annual as well as, more recently, Communication Arts Illustration Annual and American illustration.

Has the recognition made a difference for you?

I think that it results in more traffic to my website nowadays. Squarespace gives you a really basic analytics tool if you run a portfolio site through them and so I've been noticing the numbers kind of jumping up a little bit and getting more consistent. Then also some more attention on the social media pages. I think the primary result from the award shows is a certain level of accreditation. It gives you a nice in to communicate with art directors at publications and they take you more seriously as an illustrator. And so it sort of starts to result in more commissioned work.

What's it been like trying to get your work out there?

Super hard and complicated and scary and, for the longest time, I thought that it wasn't going to be ready. It was hard to know when I had portfolio pieces that were good enough and consistent with each other. About a year ago I paid for an online portfolio review through 3x3 magazine and they have an editor who really knows his stuff and I was just chatting with him and at that point, he kind of encouraged me to just get going and I took that as my tipping off point. This was at the beginning of 2020. So after I had that portfolio review, I felt really encouraged and I decided to just start moving forward with all of my strength and start dedicating all my nights and weekends to illustrating. So it began with sort of getting some validation from an editor who had a credible reputation in the industry that I wanted to work in and from there it just progressed to gaining exposure to my clients and starting to get some commissioned work out of that.

Do you think it was worth paying for a portfolio review?

Oh, I mean, the best $35 I've probably ever spent. I mean, you know, every once in a while you have things that stand out to you in your memory because it becomes a turning point. That's one of them. I remember walking outside on one of the trails behind Camel's Back after my review with him, and I was like, holy shit, I could actually do this. This is something that I could accomplish if I wanted. Just because of someone's opinion. And I don't think it should always be that way, but it worked that way for me and encouraged me in the right way. I was like, Oh, my God, this is actually possible. It blew my mind. I was off to the races after that. And actually, I had done an interview with that same editor a year before, where he was like, “This is trash, this needs to go, you need to take this off your Instagram. Don't do this anymore. Your website's confusing in this way.” And it was actually mostly negative. But he gave me like 20% encouragement where he was like, “You got chops. You could do this if you want, but you need to correct these things, course correct here.” And so that's why I came to him a year later, because I had spent that whole time working on the things that he was telling me about in the first paid critique. So I guess, the best $35 I've ever spent, but also the best $70 I've ever spent.

What drives you to get up in the morning and work?

Well, it's hard to make myself sit down and work. Especially during the summer, I would so much rather be out on a trail somewhere sometimes. But there's a certain number I have in my head of hours that I want to work every week to accomplish my goals. Before I implemented that style of structure and regimen to my creative process, I wasn't seeing the results that I wanted to see. And then by doing that, I started to see the results that I wanted to see. So initially it was a lot scarier to invest that time because I wasn't sure if it was going to pay back. I wasn't sure if it was going to be worth it at all. But once I started getting even the smallest little successes it helped that snowball and helped build momentum and build motivation to get up in the morning and put in those extra hours to accomplish what I wanted to accomplish. Even now It's hard to find new motivation. I think, because your accomplishments start to look like something, and then you might start to feed into that rather than creating new things and engaging in the initial process that got you there to begin with. The advice that's never failed me was from my professor at Boise State in the illustration department, Bill Carman. He said, pretty much to the effect of, “Butt in the chair working longer and better.” You know, it's just putting hours in.

Do you think your time at school was worthwhile?

For me it was. I don't think people have to go to school for whatever they end up doing. Frequently that's not the case. I think that's becoming more of a dialogue around this whole thing. People are becoming more aware that you can kind of carve your own path. I personally found a lot of value in my education because it kind of opened up a new world to me that I wasn't aware of before I discovered my favorite illustrators in school. I discovered a career path in school and these are things that wouldn't have happened to me had I not gone to pursue a degree. So I think it definitely had value for me personally.

Are there any Boise specific opportunities you’ve had?

A part of the initial momentum that I've been able to enjoy as an illustrator here has been in large part due to the Boise City Department of Arts and History's public art programs, like the traffic box, and the various grants that they put out throughout their cycle. The first public art project that I worked on last year was a traffic box. I also worked on a transit shelter last year. So they have been awesome to work with. They have a really competent, engaging and well organized team over there. They provide a lot of opportunities that are really cool. The budgets are right, the work is put up in amazing places. It's fun to go see your work as a part of the environment here. So I would say that, yeah, the public art stuff has been really beneficial.

Why do you think art is important?

Man, that's not fair. I think art is important because it captures abstract concepts that we become detached from that are intrinsic to our meaning and our biology and evolution as creatures. I think it attaches us to those abstract patterns of behavior that are beneficial to us in life. I think music does that. I think visual art does that in different ways. But I think if you did away with that, life would be too rigorous and logical.

Is there anything I haven't asked you that you want to talk about?

Well, one of the main motivations for me when I'm interacting with people surrounding my illustration work is that I feel like if there's anything that I could put out there for people that are coming up behind me who are about to make a whole bunch of amazing work and overtake the field in some way is that, you can do that and you should. It's better for everybody if you engage in something that's meaningful to you and whatever your dream is, if it's inside of art or inside of music or something that's less traditionally defined, you can accomplish it as long as you're willing to put the work in.

Do you think art is something you'll ever stop doing? 

No.

Zion Warne - Full Text Artist Sit Down

A Front Window Example of Zion’s Work

What is your primary medium?

Blown glass

How long have you been working with glass?

I've been doing glass about 25 years full time now.

What got you Interested in it?

I used to do pottery and I actually wanted to be a pottery teacher. I went to Seattle to take a glass blowing class for six weeks and have been doing it ever since. 

What made you set up shop in Garden City?

I just saw the building and it was for rent and I was looking for a more commercial place. I was up in the mountains for about 10 years so it kind of seemed like a good location. 

What was it like doing glass in the mountains? 

Oh, it was great. It was perfect conditions. In winter it was nice. Big bay doors opened up so it was kind of like being outside in the winter. And having lots of snow. But it wasn’t quite as hot. 

What kind of glass do you use?

So what I use comes in little pellets that have already been melted once and so I put that in the furnace and it gets up to about 2,100 degrees and melts overnight. The furnace never shuts off. It's always over 2,000 degrees. It goes for a year or so at a time before you shut it off and fix whatever you need to fix in it. So yeah, it's a lot of fuel. I'm electric on the furnace and then the other ovens we do are gas. I use a lot of electricity.

Is it natural gas or propane?

It's natural gas. When I was in Robie Creek, up in the mountains for about 10 years, we were running everything on propane. We were doing about 1,000 gallons a month, which is not cheap. The electricity is a lot more efficient now and that's why I converted the furnace to electric. So it's a little better, but yeah, it's a lot of fuel of some sort.

A beautiful underwater scene made of glass

Where do you get your inspiration?

I get my inspiration pretty much either from previous pieces or just stuff that I want to make. Pretty much anywhere I can. Just the desire to make something, to make new things. Anywhere. 

What helps you wake up in the morning and decide to come make something?

What inspires me, I guess, to get up is to get my orders done so then I can make something that's not an order. Something that I want to make, it doesn't happen that often, but it does happen.

Do you have a set newbie project?

I keep it pretty open. You can do bowls, vases, paperweights, anything like that if you want to. And yeah, I'll help them out as much as they want.

How often do you do classes?

We do them pretty much any day Monday through Saturday.

Zion helping a student shape their project

What is it like working with super hot material?

It's pretty fun most of the time. Except that summertime is a little rough on the conditions. It's kind of like doing physical labor in a sauna, not always fun.

Are there special precautions?

A little, Yeah. You don't want to touch anything that's too hot, but after you work with it for a while you get pretty used to it, so it seems pretty safe after a while. You just have to drink a lot of water. That's the main thing.

What inspired you to teach?

Pretty much just the interest in it. Everybody wants to learn about it. Everybody's fascinated by it. I enjoy the teaching aspect of it and showing people something they've never seen before. It feels good to show them. I had an 85 year old lady cry in here the other day because she was so happy about finally doing it. There's not a not a lot of things that you can show an 85 year old person that makes that big of a difference to them. So it feels pretty good. 

What's it like having a storefront to showcase your work? 

Oh, it's nice. It's nice to actually have enough space. My last studio had a little tiny gallery space. I couldn't show everything. So now I'm almost getting enough stuff to fill up my little gallery here. So yeah, it's been nice.

Why do you think art is worthwhile? 

Well, that's a good question. It's very therapeutic for a lot of people when they do glass, but I've always enjoyed creating things and making things to show people and hopefully it might make them feel better when they see it or feel good about it, you know, enjoy it. 

Do you have a favorite piece?

Not necessarily. I've done a few big chandelier things that are kind of fun and big. One dragon that was pretty fun. But pretty much anything that's not a doorknob or a white light shade. That's what I do 90% of my time is make doorknobs and light shades. So anything that's not an order is my favorite thing I've ever made.

A chandelier in Zion’s Garden City gallery

How long does it take to make your pieces?

Most things take anywhere from half an hour to, you can spend several hours. You could do a whole day of prep work and make the piece and then lose it all in a fraction of a second.

How often does that happen?

It doesn't happen that often. When you're learning it happens quite often, you're probably breaking half the stuff you're making at least. After 20 years or so most stuff comes out pretty close. It definitely doesn't always work out. 

Do you like bigger scale or smaller scale work?

I like making big stuff, it’s fun, but it does take a toll on your body and whatnot. So I sometimes have to scale it back just to save my hands.

Are there any tools you particularly enjoy using?

Probably the most enjoyable tool is just a piece of wet newspaper that you can use and just form. It is actually pretty much like touching the glass with it. So that's one that is more enjoyable, but sometimes you can burn yourself.

Zion working a ball of molten glass before it becomes a tree

Are newspapers becoming harder to find?

Um, sorta yeah. I have a couple people that bring in their newspapers. The Wall Street Journal is the best. Not as much color in there so it burns better.

Do you think art is something you'll ever quit?

Nope, probably not. I'm all in at this point. And there's so many things that I want to make that I haven't made yet that I’ve got to start getting to it.

Jim Turner, Owner of Boise Mosaic Works - Full Text Artist Sit Down

What is your primary medium?

This is a fully functional mosaic workshop where 40 hours a week we crank out mosaics and products that incorporate mosaic.

What got you interested in working with mosaic?

I actually did an apprenticeship. I had worked in tile before so I had a background in tilework after I graduated from college. I did an apprenticeship that focused on wet application tile, so showers and tubs and pools and water features, fountains, things like that. But initially, as I think about it now, when I was living in Missoula, how I got turned onto it was by a guy who had a lodgepole pine furniture shop. He was doing these hodgepodge mosaic trout on top of these tables and at that time I was a fishing guide and he knew I was into fishing so he kind of brought me into it. He knew I had a background in tiling and at that time I was kind of doing spot jobs, because as a fishing guide you might work in winter doing something like that because you can't fish. So he brought me in and he loved fly fishing. He kind of showed me what he was doing. That was in the fall of 1996 when I was first brought into it. Lodgepole pine was huge at that time so we just kind of morphed those trout in. I mean, that's where I started and now you see here it is decidedly different. But that was a couple decades ago.

Where do your mosaics end up?

Yeah, so that's the beautiful thing about mosaic, it's super versatile and it's an industrial art for all intents and purposes. So that's part of the reason why some mosaic shops are successful and are working all the time because, you know, if you're just trying to sell a painting you kind of limit yourself from a market standpoint. What we have going here is we are able to sell our mosaics in mesh mount form. If someone says “I want that” and they see it online, we just have to tape it down, put it in a box and ship it and then it gets incorporated into the architectural design or wherever it's going. We have framed stuff that goes indoors or out but it's meant to be garden art. We put together these badass frames that are all hand done, they're almost works of art themselves, where the mosaic goes in, and then you can put them outside. Then the stones, you know, the first stone we did was for a That's Clever episode where we said hey, we got to do something different. In my apprenticeship for tile we cut a lot of sandstone. We did a lot of incorporation this way. It's kind of a cool way to incorporate mosaic because there's nobody else that does it this way. We've looked and tried to identify someone that does it similarly. We started doing those in 2006. It's another way to kind of move the art forward. We make no bones about it, we're tile setters first, tradespeople first. We sell it in so many different ways that the art part of it definitely comes second.

So can people order a mosaic and have their builder incorporate it?

Yep. That's usually what happens. People buy what are called panel mosaics and they will call and say, “Hey, we're building a house and we want this and this” and they have some ideas. Then they often have a designer or someone who's kind of driving the bus on what they're incorporating into kitchens and stuff like that and we get the specs from them. They generally give us a lot of artistic freedom and say “This is what we want” and as long as it fits, pretty much anything goes out the door. If we're going to sell one of these things ungrouted they meet NSF certification. So if we send it to a job in Ohio or something, they're going to be able to just put it right in there and it's going to follow all the specifications that anything you buy at say, Lowe's or Home Depot or a tile shop would require, just so we're not having any issues and it integrates really well. But yeah, probably half of what we do is installation work or architectural mosaic where someone will say, “We want this, these are the specifications, these are the colors that we want.” There's a lot of different routes to take when you're doing things like backgrounds and stuff like that. So customers really do participate in the design process, you know, as much as an artist will let somebody I guess. But they pick the colors and the backgrounds and their style. We do rainbow trout and brown trout and cutthroats and owls and bluebirds and monarch butterflies, and things like that. So people get to pick.

How do you get the ideas for your designs?

Really, they're pretty basic. I mean, truth be told, we're not doing anything that's too spectacular that way. Because the beautiful thing is, it doesn't matter what image you choose, it's always going to come out different. It's never going to be like the image, you know. Mosaic changes so drastically that even the most basic image can be turned into something that's pretty. Because again, mosaics have these design elements that you lose in painting and stuff like that, like joints and shaping. You can take something that's basically a coloring book image, and if it's done with the right palette and done with the right style, man, you can take something like a starfish, which is seemingly pretty basic, and with the use of color and things like that, you can turn it into something spectacular. The images are pretty basic, but we have a really broad palette. There's like 10 different blues and 10 different greens, 10 different reds and oranges and golds and stuff like that. Use of color, that comes after the technical stuff of shaping the glass and you can just blend red, orange, gold. The glass is so beautiful in and of itself that even the most basic squares with color transitions, that's the art. It doesn't always have to be a fish or a bird or something specific like that. It can be super basic squares, but just portrayed in a way with color changes that when you look at it from a distance, like wow.

How important is it to have a space to go and work?

Well, clearly we couldn't do it unless we had the space, so it's enormously important. And this is a commercial shop, even though it's at my house, the customers come here, by appointment only, but this has been an art workshop since 2001. So it's super important. It's a small business too. So probably one of the downfalls is that I'm always out here, you know, it's hard to get away from work sometimes because it's always present. But then it's a catch 22 If you've ever done any job like social service or anything like that, the crap you have to deal with here is peanuts relative to that.

What's it like being able to make a living from your art?

Yeah, it's awesome. I mean, again, it's the old adage, you know. I went from a job in nonprofits for people with disabilities to this. I had a huge hiatus and we closed the doors willingly because I took a job in the public sector and a nonprofit organization. I hadn't worked for a long time, a decade. I finally reached a point in 2018 where we re-opened the shop. I go to shows, we do Eagle Saturday Market, and we do shows like that. When someone says why don't you have someone else do that, you know, you can pay them to be in the booth. I do that to some extent, but really, no one's going to sell this better than me. And yeah, it's kind of one of those things, you have to do it. The shows are a great way to have connections with people and to be with people and to get them excited. For classes for example, if I'm sort of excited about the classes, people are going to be down with it. If I'm not excited about it, they're not going to be excited about it. Getting people turned on the mosaic in the beginner classes, man, it's tons of fun that way, and I meet tons of friends from around the world through art through instruction.

You teach people how to make mosaics?

Yeah, so I teach at the Gem Center for the Arts and I'm in partnership with The Lounge at the End of the Universe, Jen Adams, who owns that pub. The Gem Center, if I may give them a plug for a minute. It's a killer, community driven arts community, from studio spaces, to showing art, to galleries, to classes, to theater to music, they have killer shows there, they have comedy festivals and all sorts of stuff at The Gem Center. We were one of the first classes that was taught there. And before COVID, we taught wildly successful mosaic workshops at The Gem Center. And then through that, one of my students turned me on to the City of Star's art program, because I taught for the city of Boise for 12 years. So in the new shop, it's Gem Center, and I teach with the City of Star. We do everything out there and their art program is a little bit of a different animal because the city is involved. So they take a lot of the workload in terms of getting people signed up and the City of Star's mayor is responsible for the creation of the art program. He is eager to bring art to the public. He's eager to bring artists to the west part of Ada County and to their arts program. Having that political will and backing is important for teachers and for getting the community to buy into that. I think they have a really good thing going there.

It’s easy to forget how unusual the City of Boise’s programs are.

It's fantastic. During the Bieter times, I walked in off the streets to Rick Jenkins and said, “Let's start up a mosaic workshop.” So I taught for the city, for Rick, at Fort Boise for over a decade. We were rocking 12 or 15 students every workshop. We did two in the fall, two in the winter, two in the spring, and he supported that. He was in charge of the pottery lab, he ran the entire arts program, but he was in charge of the pottery studio through the city. I literally taught people from all over the world and the city kind of oversaw that. And it was interesting, it was good that way.

Why do you think art is a worthwhile endeavor?

I don't know, man. Because sometimes I even question whether it is. That probably sounds pretty cynical. But for anyone who's ever worked in social service, when you're knee deep in those jobs man? I don't know. It's sometimes hard to get excited about art when there are hungry people in the community. When there's so much discord. It's tough to celebrate stuff when we have so much other stuff going on. But then people argue that art helps us deal with that other stuff. That you're just kind of seeing it from a flawed point of view. That art is actually the link that helps us stay grounded. Music too. But you know, mosaic is the antithesis of playing a song because this takes forever, whereas a song takes two and a half minutes. But you know, I mean, I guess we do art and we love art. I come from a weird cynical punk rock background where consciousness is a curse. I hope it's worth it. But it's hard to celebrate some of that stuff when you see what you see and you're just like, I don't know… Anyway.

What gets you out of bed in the morning and excited to come out here to create?

So this is the third year of this shop and we're busy. And man, when you're working on stuff like this, this is my job. It’s what I do for a living, so you know, there are times I'm just so stoked about finishing these projects where I do have that sort of that, I don't know how to explain it, but spring in your step a little bit. You're ready to go. Because again, it's not always this way, but oftentimes if I don't have anything to do throughout the day, like cut stone or something like that, if I can just work on projects, it's fun as hell. We throw on documentaries and listen to tons of tunes, man. All the tunes are on YouTube in video form. Everything you could ever want, you know? So yeah, I mean it's good that way. Plus you know, I have a mortgage to pay. It's a real job. It's a “Job” job and there's a lot of 10 hour days and 12 hour days because if your name’s on the door you have to do that. But doing this, there's a lot of satisfaction after having worked 8 hours from 8:30 to 5. To come out here at 8 at night with the doors open in the summertime, owls are doing their thing, and working on stuff. Then it becomes more like, I don't know man, like real art.

Is the glass fickle to work with?

In the first shop, so I say the first shop because I've had shops before this shop, we did all ceramic tile because I was a tile setter and ceramic tile is bombproof stuff. Limited palette mosaic, not a lot of colors. But there was enough, and so I was a shaper. A tile shaper is known in the mosaic community for being able to shape hard porcelain ceramic into shapes and things. My hands are sore even thinking about it right now. So just before we closed the last shop, the last big project I did was a fountain that had these feeding trout on it. And they wanted glass. So that's the first project we did, back in like 2006 or 2007, that last project we did in glass. So when we reopened the shop, it was all glass. It is so shapeable. It's so forgiving, stable. And in three years, a lot of the stuff that we've cranked out has been a primer for me to get good at shaping. If you look at our work, I mean, all this stuff is refined down from a big sheet of glass. And when you look at the antenna on the butterflies and things like that, I mean we can shape those perfect shapes. And it's all done by hand. So we are trying to sort of emphasize shaping. We use this specific glass, Bullseye Glass from Portland, and some other brands of glass, we take this glass and shape it and make it a little bit different. We render it a little bit differently. You can tell the difference between our work and someone else's. The ceramic was so hard you know, and this stuff is just super forgiving. It's light. It's hard to explain, but you can shape it into some pretty specific shapes and we refine it. It's never going to be perfect. It doesn't matter how hard you work to refine it, it's always going to be perfect in its imperfections. But the patterning and the cool tactile feel you get, It's really cool that way I think.

Do you cut your own stones? 

Yeah. So I learned how to do that for a TV program. I was just finishing my apprenticeship with a local tile guy who was from L.A. His apprenticeship was from an Italian guy in Los Angeles, where he was responsible for a lot of the tile work in the municipal buildings in L.A. Tons of fountain work and sandstone and things like that. To be on this first show, they were looking for artists and we pitched him. They said, “Well, you know, we’ve had so many mosaics on this show, we're not really interested. It's just kind of hacky.” And I said, “No, no, we do these stones. We do something different. You’ve never seen this before.” And explained to them what it was without having done one before. So we pitched them with what these things are now and they said yes. So literally the first five pieces we did with the recessed stone, we call them mosaic monoliths. The first five we ever did were for that show. And the reason we did five of the exact same piece was so they could show throughout the production how it changed from start to finish. But it worked. My guy Greg said, “Now we'll do this, it's gonna be perfect, we can make this happen.” We'd use grinders and chisels all the time already and he was really responsible for pushing us in that direction. That was so long ago. Now it's probably 50% of our work. When it gets fused to the sandstone it's fused with Portland cement, which is a cementitious powder you've seen before. So when it fuses with that stuff, dude, it is in there forever. But the monoliths you know, they're kind of based on the glyphs in places like England and Ireland and on the French coast and Scotland, you know. That's kind of what they're based upon. But yeah man, it's kind of one of those things where not everybody can do it. You see a lot of mosaic stuck on the top of stones and it's grouted and flat. We do a ton of address markers. Yeah, address markers, and pilasters. Like when you are traveling down some old trail somewhere and there's, you know, a way marker, or mile marker. I love that sort of nostalgia. The only other people that I've seen that can do it are specifically trained monument people. We do a lot of flat lying stones, what are called center stones, for big patios with a mosaic that’s fused into the stone in the middle of this 300 square foot stone patio. Things like that, people are like boom, you know?

Do you do anything else with glass or just mosaic?

No, but I am now starting to learn more about fusing glass. Fusing is a little bit of a different animal, but this is Bullseye Glass and it's primarily created for fusing. Fusing is another one of those trades that there's an industrial component to. People fuse sinks and things like that. And so it's the same material, but it's heated in huge kilns with molds and all sorts of cool stuff like that. But otherwise, it's just mosaic man. I mean, it's kind of one of those things you have to give yourself to one component of it and just keep pushing. I'm hoping to go to the Chicago Mosaic School the next couple years because the shaping part of it and being able to cut stuff is one thing, but use of color and things like that, that's something that is good to learn about. You can cut straight lines till the cows come home, but if you use the wrong colors or you could have used them in another way you didn't think of, it's kind of a bummer. That's how you distinguish your work from other people. Because there's a lot of mosaic people in the world. There's a lot of mosaic people just in this town.

Do you think creative work is something you'll ever stop doing?

No, probably not. I mean, I don't know, I was super specialized in my last job and there's still a market for it. But you know, between this and music, the accordion music, the Irish stuff and the world music that the pub band puts out. I mean, we get paid money to do that and if you work hard and gig about, you know, so between that and this I just can't imagine going back to it. Like I said, I did it for 20 years, it's not like I don't have a perspective on it. I guess we'll have to see if my hands hold out, my elbows. Because it's a lot of repetitive motion in your arms. It's like playing the accordion, your arm is always bent so your elbows and your joints just get tired, man. And it's like double duty. My elbows are wondering, What are you doing, man? Why don't you just sit at your desk and not move at all?

Wil Kirkman, Owner of Rocket Neon - Full Text Artist Sit Down

What is your primary medium?

Well, obviously neon. But I do other things too, some porcelain enamel, which is basically powdered glass melted on to steel or copper, but mostly neon.

What got you interested in working with neon?

Well, I'd always loved working with glass. They had a nice program at College of Idaho where I attended. But many years later I saw an ad in the Idaho Statesman for an apprentice, and I was sick and tired of what I was doing. So I answered the ad and I fibbed a little bit and said Oh, I know all about neon. They hired me.

Is it complex to work with gases and glass?

It's simpler than one would think. You start with a glass tube that either has phosphor coating on it to give it color, or it's just clear glass. There are a couple of different main gases, we use argon and neon, neon being that sort of orange color that you see behind me. And argon is a blue gas. And between those two and the phosphor coatings on the inside, you can get maybe 120 to 140 different colors. So the color palette is fairly large. 

How long have you been doing this?

Oh, people ask me that and I don't even remember anymore. I've been at this location for 21 years and I had my own shop a couple years before that. So maybe 25-26 years.

Is neon lighting becoming obsolete?

Oh, completely dying off. However, there's still a call for it. It's much like what my landlord neighbor Noel B Weber does, which is the gold leaf, which, you know, it's fancy, but it's not a modern technique by any means. There are lots of people who just love the look of neon, and it's got a special glow and a look to it that people really enjoy and they're nostalgic for it. So there's a lot of calls from folks that want to either restore something or make something that looks vintage. And then of course, the vast majority of my work is wholesale work for other sign companies.

How often do you get to work creatively beyond commissions?

I try to make something once a month whether anyone wants it or not. Most of what you see behind me have been in shows before and just haven't sold. So like I keep them and once in a while someone will wander in and see something and go, “Oh, I gotta have that.” Plus, I like the pretty glow.

I imagine this is labor intensive.

It is, yeah. That's why it's so expensive. Because everything is done by hand. There's no jigs, no troughs, no help. I just follow a pattern kind of like paint by numbers almost. Something like that.

What kind of clients are looking for neon these days?

Other sign companies. I do work all over the state. One group was from Pocatello that drove in to pick up some glass that I did for them. But mostly other sign companies. What I'm working on today is a commission. I think it's gonna be a gift for a friend's birthday. But mostly it's wholesale work. Which is not very exciting. I've frankly never been busier than this last year and a half, which I find stunningly weird, considering.

Why do you think art is something worth pursuing?

Well, personal satisfaction, mostly. I mean, when I make a piece of art, it's first and foremost, it's because I want to make it. And frankly, I don't care if people like it or not, it's for myself. But on the other hand, I can also tell stories, I can show my inner feelings sometimes through the art. It's a process that I just enjoy so much. The creative process, like for most artists I think is the main goal. At least it is for me.

Do you host classes?

I don't really. I've done a few one on one projects with folks and young folks sometimes. Which is very satisfying. I enjoy showing people how it works and how it's done. There's actually quite a bit that goes into it. I've done it for so long it's just second nature, but it's always an adventure for someone to come into the studio and look around and go “Wow, this is great. How do you do that?” I get a lot of joy from showing folks.

How important is it for you to have a space to work in?

Well there are people that do this in a garage or a shed out back. For me I just need more space because I do a lot of work for other companies and so often there are racks of glass laying around all through the studio. You got to miss all of that. But yeah, the space is good and it's nice to be in a building that also has creatives working. Often I find that stimulating for the creative process.

Where do you get your inspiration?

Often just laying in bed at night. Or I'll have a thought, I carry a little notebook with me everywhere I go and if I have an idea, I write it down and if it's still valid in a day or two and makes sense, then I'll proceed. Right now I'm working on a series of skateboard neon art. There's one in the back that's finished, that you'll get to see later. But right now, that's been my main focus.

What drives you to get out of bed in the morning and create?

Well, that's where the espresso machine is. But I love getting up in the morning and thinking about my day and what I'm gonna do that day. I'm not a terribly driven person, necessarily. But I do love what I do, genuinely. So coming to work is a joy, not a not a chore.

What's it been like for you to support yourself with your craft?

I feel very lucky. Most people who are artists can't do that and they have to have another job to support themselves. So I'm very lucky that I don't have to do that.

Are there opportunities you've had being in Boise you might not have had elsewhere?

Oh, probably being a bigger fish in a smaller pond has been helpful for me over the years. I know places like Portland or Seattle or LA are still pretty big neon hotspots and there are a lot of neon artists that work out of those cities, at least on the west coast that I know of. And frankly, they're fantastic.

Do you have any work around downtown?

Everywhere. So the Veltex sign downtown is something I restored. One of the very first restorations. The Olympic Hotel, the wings at the airport. I don't know if you've ever seen those things. There's a few downtown art pieces. Amy Westover did a sculpture with sort of these curvy aluminum things that have neon inside to illuminate. And then tattoo parlors galore; Blackcat, Chalice, and a few others.

Do you think art is something you will ever stop?

Never, never. I will die with an idea in my head, I'm sure. wishing I could make it happen.

Richard Wilson - Full Text Artist Sit Down

What would you say is your primary art medium?

My primary art medium is decks of cards. I've actually been referred to as a decksmith, which I kind of like, you know? You have your Goldsmith that takes the gold and tries to make something else out of it, I take playing cards and make them as three-dimensional as I can based on the artwork behind them. 

What got you interested in cutting cards?

Well, first, I got interested in playing cards. It's kind of a tough one, I don't even know what was going on. I think when I was trying to get in through testing for firefighting and whatnot, I noticed that the dexterity of my fingers wasn’t exactly where I wanted it to be, especially with gloves on. I was trying to figure out some way to get that going without doing your standard up and down exercises kind of a thing. I ended up finding cards and magic and you have to pull them a certain way, and your hands have to be a certain way. I came across a video, it was actually Chris Ramsay, who's now got a TV show on, but back then he was just doing videos for fun. He did this thing called “cardistry” which is card flourishing and things like that. I noticed the deck of cards he was using was really nice looking. It was a theory11 Monarchs Blue. It was in the movie Now You See Me and I really liked it. I had no idea there was such a thing as premium playing cards. I looked into it, grabbed it. That was my first deck. I really love the tuck case, love the cards themselves, and then I found out there's this whole community of playing card collectors, magicians, cardists, and I kind of got into it that way. At some point, somebody was doing something similar to what I do. They were taking decks of cards, just the cards out completely. They were cutting, not random shapes, but they weren't following the art of the card and they were actually gluing the cards together on top and making a nice little thing that you can hang up on the wall. I thought it looked amazing. I contacted the artist and the price was not attainable for myself. So I just was like, “Well, I'm never gonna have that.” Over the course of the next nine months to a year, I got really involved in collecting cards. I have a lot of nice premium decks that I wanted to do something with so I decided to give it a try and cut one but I really wanted to focus on the art that the artists put into the decks. I don't use any glue. The tuck case itself is kind of like a shadow box that holds the cards. From the front side, it looks like a standard deck of cards, then when you flip it around you can see the three-dimensional aspect of it. So I just kind of tried it and I've been going ever since. 

You talked about dexterity bringing you to this, what keeps you going?

Well, you know, it's funny as far as the dexterity goes, I never actually got into cardistry. I kind of did a little bit. You see those guys that do it and they say, “Oh, yeah, I practice when I'm watching TV and it can be six, seven hours a day” and I just don't have that kind of time. It's just something different than what I do for normal work. I’m a firefighter/EMT, I'm a group fitness instructor, so everything is really fast paced, high energy, or can be. This is really kind of a small focus, I mean, the cards themselves are so small, and then the artwork within it, it gives me time to just kind of breathe and focus in on trying to get clean line work. Sometimes I don't even know how I'm going to cut the deck, I just see something and go, “Oh, that'd be cool if I did that.” So I start from that and I just kind of layer it out and sometimes it surprises me. You have magicians who use the cards daily, you have cardists who always do those flourishes and you have collectors. Most collectors that I talk to, they buy decks of cards, and they keep them sealed in the cellophane and then they sit up on the desk. I never wanted to do that. I had a collection going, I still do, but 98% of all my cards are open. That’s because I want to see the artwork the artists put into it. The tuck case itself can have similar art on the front and back. Sometimes the back of the tuck case is the same as the card back design. What I wanted to do was have it so that if you were a collector and you had a favorite deck of cards, you could have it where you could actually see what the back design and everything looks like. I sometimes throw in court cards and flip something around front ways, but you can see the art of the cards within while still keeping all your other collections sealed up. So really me opening up the decks and seeing what I like and don't like is kind of what drives me to go further into what can be done with this deck besides just having it sitting somewhere collecting dust and wiping it off every once in a while.

What’s it like creating something that is in demand all over the world?

It wasn't anything that I ever thought about when I got into it. I really thought, “I'll make a few decks and send them to some people that might like them.” Then it just, kind of blew up from there. I mean, I’ve shipped to Singapore, Sweden, Germany, Canada, the US, all over the place. To me it’s crazy that I have, just in my little small sphere of the card industry, people contacting me and wanting a deck of cards. Taking someone’s favorite deck and being able to create something for them to ship out and then they get it and they love it, it makes me happy. You know that these people are getting to experience that too. But as far as being able to ship everywhere. It's just weird to me that I would have stuff shipped all over the place. It's beyond what I ever thought would have happened from the beginning.

What is the most expensive deck you’ve cut?

I think the most expensive deck I've cut, the cost of just the deck itself sealed and everything was probably about $100. It really depends on the demand that's going on. Right now I have a deck that I really, really want to cut. It was $100 when I bought it. One of those decks on eBay right now is going for $400. And I still want to sit here and cut it. The playing card industry is crazy. If you already have a deck, you can send it to me. If I have the deck in my collection and I'm fine getting rid of it, I'll just charge you whatever the deck actually cost when I bought it and then I'll cut it up and now you have something that nobody else has. Especially when you get up to those decks that are costing hundreds of dollars, who else is going to spend that kind of money on a one off piece that can showcase as part of your collection? I have one guy I did a project for, Kings Wild Project, who did a five deck set based on money. He ended up showing me pictures at the end and he's got a couple uncut sheets of playing cards up there, he's got two of every deck up there, and right in the middle, in this nice acrylic case, he's got these five decks I cut that match everything else which nobody else has. So that's kind of a little bragging right that he has.

Do you find there's any particular kind of clientele that is looking for these cards?

Not really, it's more people within the industry and within the community. More just people within the community who are looking for something to add to their collection. There's actually been a lot of decks started up on Kickstarter and other crowdsource platforms like that where the person who actually designed the cards contacts me and we'll do something together. So they actually have their design deck also cut up along with everything else and it's kind of like a personal pride piece that they have. But I get all sorts of people from heavy collectors, to magicians, to people that are just getting started into collecting and think that it's kind of cool and have a favorite deck. It's kind of all over the place. I even have some people that somehow come across my profile or who I know personally that had no interest in cards before that are like, “I'm gonna find a deck of cards for you to cut” either for themself or like their brother-in-law is having a birthday or something. So it's fun. I mean, it's not something you see every day,

Have you found anybody else doing this?

Yes. As I mentioned before, there was a person, Dan Levin, he is based out of Southern California. He's an artist, his signature means something. He was the one that I contacted and found the price was just too high for me. There wasn't really anybody else doing it at that time. I really tried to make a harsh separation and make it my own style. There are a couple that have taken inspiration from me and they'll cite intricuts in their posts, but they do it differently. It sounds dumb, you have a pack of playing cards and you're cutting it up. But they're taking that and pushing the envelope. One of the guys was doing a double cut, so he was cutting one side and the other side. Somebody else right now is taking a specific brand of cards and he's getting multiple colors of it and he's doing different square shapes in it so it kind of has this wave pattern in it and he's making it his own. So of the people that are doing them that are unique, there's probably a small handful of us. 

How long does it take you to cut a deck?

You know, it's a little different from when I started to where I am now. If you go back and you look at my first couple posts versus my last couple posts, I feel like my style has evolved and gotten more intricate as I've gone along. But typically anywhere between three and a half to four and a half hours. Usually what people say is “Wow, that's a lot quicker than I thought it would be.” But yeah, I don't have a lot of time, I just cut them. Sometimes I'll start working on a single card and it'll take me an hour just to cut that one card. When you get 45 minutes into a card and then you go *boop*, “Ah, I didn't mean to do that.” your only option at that point is start completely over or make it work with the cut. Sometimes it happens. But yeah, I've spent an hour just cutting a single card. But I think I can get a deck done now, if I was quick about it, in three and a half hours.

Is there anything I haven't asked that you want to talk about?

There's little nuances within decks. I mentioned theory11 and their Monarch deck, I feel like they really work on the tuck case. So the box the cards go into is really nice and really worked on but the back seems to be fairly monochromatic. Then you go to somebody like Art of Play, or Kings Wild Project, where they really try to put the focus on the art of the cards. So sometimes it's an interesting balance. I'll get a deck and I'll have one idea of what I think it's going to look like and then I take the cards out and I go, “Well, I’ve got to figure something out. That's not at all what I thought it was going to be.” Or sometimes the tuck case, even on some of the more colorful ones, you take it out, and it doesn't match the back. So it's like a surprise. Sometimes people send me decks that I've never seen before and I'm looking at the tuck case going, “Wow, that's really plain, I don't know what I'm gonna do with that” and when I pull out the cards, I'm like, “Whoa, there's a lot to do with that!” Sometimes it's the exact opposite, it looks like there's gonna be a lot to do but I pull out the deck and I go “Well, Okay, time to sit and figure it out.” So it's interesting. I have cut the same deck multiple times for different customers but I try to make it so that each cut is different. So even though I have five of the holographic legal tenders from Kings Wild Project out there, each one of those cuts is completely different from the other ones. So it's not like just going through and having a laser cutter, I really try to make it so that each deck is its own individual thing.

Do you think art is a worthwhile endeavor?

You know, I've always been into art, I'm actually a musician and so I've always had that in there. I've always wanted to draw and paint, I've just never been that great at it. But art is really something that, there's just so much out there. You have tattoo artists, you have painters, you have sculptors, you have people that make giant things that are multi stories high and then you have me making a little deck of cards. There's so much to it and as much as everybody wants to express themselves and their individuality with tattoos and hairstyles and things like that, you walk into a house that is plain walled and it just seems empty. You start putting art up and it really starts bringing life into everything. I feel like the art world needs to be there because it helps bring life. Even when we're going through tough times, or when we're at the peak of our day, or week, or year. Those little moments we have that we can look at something and enjoy it, and just think, everything's gonna be okay. Then you have the people on the other side who are just creating things. With technology, everything is moving at such a fast pace but with art, people are starting with something small and then somebody else is seeing that idea and they're building on it and then pretty soon you have, it's hard to even put everything into its own little genre, there's almost a blur that goes across the people that are creating things and the people that love the creations they make. So it really is just about enjoyment; and I think without that we live in a pretty monochromatic world.

Do you think creating is something you'll ever stop doing?

No, I think there's always going to be something there that I'm either going to want to continue doing or to try. Whether it's going into woodworking or working with clay or trying to pick up paint. Different seasons for everything and I don't think there will ever be a time where I just won't have anything creative going on in my life. There's something that I'm always going to do, however small, or however big a project. Even if it's just building shelves somewhere to go in my house, there's still that process of making something. It's not all gonna be fine art, but no, there will not be a time where I'll just stop and be done with it.

Sue Latta - Full Text Artist Sit Down

What is your primary medium?

Well, I think of myself as a mixed media sculptor. So I work with metals, wood, plastics, text images. 

Where do you get your inspiration?

Everywhere. A lot comes from music. I'm a big fan of a great turn of phrase. So I will hear some little snippet of a lyric that just lends itself to being built into a sort of a visual. So a lot of things come from music. Every once in a while from a novel, or, you know, just walking around in the world.

What drives you to create?

I was born with it. I'm a maker. Basically, every part of my life is, in some way, creative. So it's the thing I can't not do. 

What got you interested in sculpting?

My undergraduate degree is in photography, and I was kind of a tried and true photographer. And then I took a sculpture class. For the university art degree you have to take everything and so I took this sculpture class, and it sparked some interest and I took a second one. I learned how to weld and the very first sculpture that I welded together, I sold that, and it turned a light bulb on for me. When I graduated from school I didn't really want to be a commercial photographer. I wasn't really interested in doing weddings and seniors. I started building furniture and then I just kind of took off from there. As I think back on it, I was always a builder. Like, when I was a kid, it was all about Legos, and Lincoln Logs and blocks, and, you know, building wheelchairs for my Barbies and crazy stuff like that. I actually built a butcher shop out of aluminum foil for my Ken to play. I dunno. I was always a builder.

How important is it for you to have a space?

It's ultimately important. I worked in my little teeny one car garage for about 10 years and that was fine when I was just a welder, when I was just building furniture. But when I went to graduate school I did a great materials exploration and I had studio space at school. Then I tried to add all the materials into my garage and it wasn't working anymore. I just didn't fit there anymore. It took a couple years for me to really figure out “Oh, I'm just gonna have to rent a space, I'm gonna have to bite the bullet and rent a space.” So in 2010 I did that. And I'll never look back.

What's your favorite part of the art process?

I like the starting and the finishing, and I kind of like the labor in between. So you know, the starting is really where all the idea development happens. In the finishing you get that sense of satisfaction. And then the labor is like, you know, you don't have to think about it, right? You just know where to go and you just got to get there. So I really like all the parts.

Are you able to support yourself with your art?

I have a variety of revenue streams. It just depends on the year how much income I make from each one of them. But I've built my life in such a way that I can live it the way I want.

Why is art a worthwhile endeavor?

I think that art is a basic human need. We as a species have had art since we stood up straight. There is no culture in the history of humanity that has had no art, which makes me believe that it is a basic human need, which is really the thing that separates us from the apes, which I don't know, they might have art too. I think otters make art.

What is it like for you to get to teach art?

I mean, I get a lot of satisfaction out of teaching, which was something I didn't know was true for me. I started teaching for the first time basically the first day I started graduate school because I got a teaching assistantship. I had no idea that I was a teacher or that I would be good at it, or that I would like it. I discovered I really love it. I feel like it's part of my Dharma, not only to be a maker, to be a creator, but to facilitate other people in their road towards being a creator. I think it's all one big thing for me.

Are there any Boise specific opportunities you've had?

I made a piece specifically for the Boise Visual Chronicle that is hanging in the Boise City Hall. I have a couple of other pieces that are in City Hall. I have some pieces in the Human Resources office that are very specifically Boise. The one that's in the Boise Visual Chronicle is also very specific, it's called "For the next five exits", and I took a photograph of this sign as you're driving east on i84 that said, Boise next five exits, which I think should actually be seven, which now actually the sign says six, but you know, the piece is called “For the next five exits” and it includes a lot of imagery from Boise, you know, the iconic imagery that we would recognize.

What got you interested in working with metal?

It was really that sculpture class. I learned to weld in sculpture class and then I just kind of went with it. I bought myself a little $100 oxy acetylene torch kit and just started building stuff. I built some great big structures for an installation art piece and then I started building lamps, and then it just kind of went from there. I was primarily a steel sculptor for about 10 years and then I just got kind of tired of it. There was an NPR ad campaign where they had these little sayings on bus benches. The one that was right by my house said; "Are you tired of what you already know?" I drove by that every day. And I was like, “Oh my god, I'm so tired of me.” So then I applied to graduate school, and I got accepted, and that was pretty life changing. It really just altered my view of myself as an artist and it broadened the possibilities for me of the kind of work I could do and the kind of materials I could use. It just kind of expanded my world. 

Where did you go to graduate school?

Boise State. I have kids and I'm planted here. At the time I was recently married and my wife owns her own business, and so this was my option. And luckily, I got in.

Do you have any advice for somebody just starting out?

What I always tell my students is “Try, try, try, apply, apply, apply.” And, this is the most important thing, Don't reject yourself, give other people the opportunity to reject you. That really is the best advice.

Do you think art is something you'll ever stop doing?

Artists don't retire. That's not a thing. It's the thing that we can't not do. I have already decided that if I get to the point where I'm old and can't muscle things around anymore that I'll become a painter. Paint brushes aren't as heavy as big sculptures.

Marianna Jimenez Edwards - Full Text Artist Sit Down

What is your primary medium?

I am a painter. I mostly work with oil and acrylic, but I do acrylic with mixed media. 

What got you interested in painting? 

I've been making things since middle school. In middle school I was really interested in photography at first because my dad had a Pentax manual camera and so I got interested in photography. But then part of me wanted to draw, so I kind of bypassed a lot of the preliminary drawing classes in high school, because I wanted to get to the advanced drawing and painting classes. In high school I took a lot of painting classes, as many as I could, and eventually I ended up going to art school for painting.

What was art school like?

Well, I actually was fortunate enough to go to my dream art school. I went to the San Francisco Art Institute, and that school is known for its interdisciplinary approach. It's a little bit more conceptual based. But going from high school to college, it was kind of a weird transition because I wasn't taught those intro level, “This is how you set things up” steps. It was kind of just like, “Go start painting. If you're an artist, you should know what you should be doing.” I mean, I had really good mentors while I was there. And that experience still kind of lives inside of me because it was a time when I had a lot of time to think and mess around with stuff and be around other people who were interested in the same thing. As far as getting taught how to market myself, I mean, this is like, late 90s, you know, I graduated in 2001. So it was that time where there weren't artist websites, there wasn't any social media. We were just putting together shows and hanging out together and trying to live the bohemian lifestyle. The main things I took away from being at art school were to trust yourself and make sure you keep a studio practice. I did take a couple of workshops on how to write grants and what's expected when you apply to galleries, but when you leave art school, you're kind of on your own, like, what do I do next?

Prints of Marianna’s work are available in our store! [El Aqua No Limpia Todo]

Where do you get your inspiration?

Oh my God, lots of places, but for a long time I've been very inspired by the textiles that are made by indigenous women in Mexico. Even before I started really thinking about that as a form of inspiration I used to always just mention it. I love the textiles from Mexico, my family's from Mexico. My paternal grandparents are from a part of Mexico, where textile is a big art form. They were from Oaxaca and I've always just been interested in that as a form of creating because, this blouse, there are different symbols that mean different things, women who make them, they make everything by hand. They dye the cotton, they work on a back loom where they weave the cloth, and then they embroider it. So that's one of my number one things that inspire me. It doesn't necessarily appear literally in my work, but it is there as kind of an underlayer of what's happening within other things that inspire me. It's kind of funny, but like space, planets, and the idea that we as humans can travel to space and that there are objects out in the universe that we can see with telescopes, all of these things come from disparate places, but they come together, somehow. I don't plan everything out, but they just appear and I think about them. I'm also really inspired by old photographs that I either find, or that come from my family members. Right now I'm using a lot of reference pictures from my family. Pictures that my parents took in the 60’s and 70’s and even before. I asked relatives to share pictures, letters, photographs and so that all gets embedded in there. I took a trip to Mexico a long time ago to archaeological sites where there are still remnants of Mayan and Aztec murals. The paintings of pre-Columbian painters have always been something that intrigues and interests me. Right now the way they look, they are distressed, decayed, they're coming off of the buildings. Before, the pyramids and these temples were completely covered with Chroma, with color, and now we see them and they're all whitewashed, they're all falling off. So that's been something that has always been in my mind and I try to not mimic, but try to mention or show that as something else that interests me as a form of painting. I'm also really inspired by vintage National Geographics. I'm like a big hoarder of National Geographics and the older the better. I like the old advertisements for different forms of technology like old radios and old cameras. There is the camera thing again, right? Coming from the initial inspiration to create is photography, so National Geographics kind of appear in my work. I like to find the pictures of things to kind of include in my mixed media pieces.

What gets you out of bed in the morning and wanting to create?

Wow, that's a big question. I want to say that when my son was born, I kind of had a wake up call, you know? I think the spark to create was reborn in me. Because my main motivation is to leave something that my son is proud of, kind of like a legacy. Like, “My mom made this and she was interested in these questions, she was interested in materials.” So, yeah, I think my son is my main motivation, showing him that you can dedicate your time to making your own things and to leaving behind your ideas and your thoughts. So, yeah, just being creative every day is what motivates me.

What makes art worth pursuing?

Again, I think, artists are the voice, right? We express things that other people don't think about expressing, or they don't take the time to. To give voice to people and ideas and things that don't get addressed because not everyone has the luxury to make things or the time or the money, or even the knowledge. So it's kind of a responsibility to be that voice. And that's how I think of it. It's not a game, It's not just playing for me, it's work that I want to have grounded in concepts and a message.

[La Astronauta]

Are there any Boise based opportunities you've been able to partake in?

Yeah, I was awarded the Alexa Rose grant in 2019 and that grant was initially for a trip to Oaxaca. In Oaxaca, Mexico there's a textile museum and they have an archive of tons and tons of different textiles from different regions of Mexico and from different time periods. I had arranged to have a private viewing of specific items and was awarded the travel grant from the Alexa Rose Foundation but that never came to be because of COVID. At this time last year we were supposed to be there. So I had to rethink that and we're doing a different project, but it's still related to painting and it's still related to thinking about indigenous textiles. Then there is the traffic box I applied for last year in January. I was one of six of the people who were chosen in 2020 and that project was carried out between April and June. It was installed in July and my traffic box is at Cole and Ustick. It represents the four directions. I run from our house over to that area and when I realized where it was going to be, the concept came to my mind. Each side of the traffic box has a different color and meaning for the different cardinal directions.

What do you think of art programs like the traffic boxes?

Oh, I think it's awesome. I think we need to cover everything with art, you know? I think it's a really great way to bring art outside of walls, a lot of times people aren't exposed to art. What I love about the Boise traffic box program is that each artist is able to do their own design so different areas of Boise have different artwork around. I think it's a great program and I hope that it is able to continue. I think it's a great way for people to get their artwork out and to showcase the creativity that we have here in the city.

What is it like to teach students?

Well, this is my 14th year teaching and I didn't get into teaching right out of college. I taught at some smaller studios first and then I worked with this other artist where I was kind of like her studio assistant and she would have students. I think it's really cool to teach other people. I'm really into this thing called teaching artistic behaviors. What that is, is instead of teaching students about how to make a recipe type of artwork; art where if you do this, you do this, and you do this, then you have some art. Instead of teaching them that way I like to show the students how they can come up with their own ideas, how they can apply concepts that we're learning into their own form of art making. And it's kind of in its beginning, because I'm at a new school, but I feel like over the next few years when students start to know me better and know how I approach the class, that we’ll get even better results. But yeah, it's fun to see kids get that spark and get excited about what they're making. Teaching is fun and hard.

[Safe Place]

Is there anything I haven't asked you about?

My mom was cleaning out her garage and I can't remember why I asked if I could keep things, but she started throwing away all of the envelopes to letters that were written between my family members when my parents immigrated to the United States. So I asked to keep several of them. And they're just like little treasures to me, because they are the handwriting of my family members. And all of the stamps, and I'm just, I'm in love with the designs from the stamps. From that time, you know, this is like the early 80s, sending these letters in the mail and typing addresses and stuff like that. So I put a lot of those in my mixed media pieces. They're meant to symbolize, to describe, communication during that time. We were still trying to connect to our family and I just want that to be solidified into my work as part of the meaning behind the imagery that's laid on top.

Is there anything else you can think of?

Boise is not a big city yet. I feel like if all the artists in Boise come together we could build a really strong community. I think it's starting to build with being able to connect with everyone on Instagram and social media and sharing ideas. I know [Boise Art Scene] put a meetup together. So I think if we all come together, we can help each other out, we can support each other, we can have shows, hopefully, when things open up again. I'm very interested in supporting other artists and helping and teaching. If anyone ever has a question or needs anything, I'm into sharing what I know and being a resource to other people.

Do you think art is something you’ll ever stop doing? 

Oh my gosh, no. No, I don't think so. I mean, not even, so this is gonna sound really bad, but I have a PowerPoint that I have saved for when students don't want to work on their artwork. I've only shown it one time, but it's artists with disabilities and what they do to create. So yeah, even if I lost an arm, or lost my eyesight, I feel like I would try to find a way to make art and to express myself, to create. Because it's been a part of my life since I was a little girl wanting to make things and just being curious about material. I don't think I would ever stop making art. I mean, I took a break from making art because of trying to understand how to be a better teacher in the classroom. I spent a lot of time focused on that, but like I said to you, when my son was born it reignited the spark to make my art. And yeah, I don't think that's ever going to go away again.

William Lewis - Full Text Artist Sit Down

What is your primary medium? 

Oil paint. I've been a painter for a long time. I occasionally do other other things as well. But yeah, painting is my primary occupation. 

What got you into painting? 

Wow, that's a big question. I think really from the earliest age I can remember I was interested in art, especially painting. From a young age I was just one of those kids that liked to draw and paint and I think in high school I decided I really wanted to pursue it as a way of life. 

What drives you to come to your studio?

That's another really good question. I think about that a lot. I think that it's sort of mysterious, what will compel somebody to continue on a path through a long period of time. I don't know if I have a really good answer for that, except I feel sort of compelled to do it. I think, to me, painting is kind of a way of knowing or a way of figuring out what I think or believe or what my response is to any particular situation in a way. So I want to know, I want to understand. For me, painting is a way of knowing. 

Where do you get your inspiration?

I think that varies a lot over time. The body of work I'm making now I think is pretty personal, in a way it's kind of an investigation of what compels me to make images and maybe thinking about where they come from. This is pretty much pandemic work that I'm making now, maybe the last year or so. For a couple of years previous to that the work was much more in response to things happening in the larger world. I think they're kind of satirical, angry paintings. Angry doesn't sound right, I think they were kind of funny, but they were maybe motivated by some rage about things happening in the world. So it varies a lot. I tend to create bodies or series of works. I work a certain way for a while until the energy runs out and then see what happens next.

Has the pandemic changed the way you work?

No, I wouldn't say so. Just in terms of, you know, how I go about it or my physical setup or anything like that is pretty much the same. I teach school as my day job, so that has been a little unusual with teaching remotely and in hybrid. But in terms of how I work here, it's been normal I guess you'd say, if that's possible. I think the work has changed. I think the work became more inward as possibly a response to the pandemic, but there's nothing overt in the work about the pandemic. I think it maybe took me out of thinking about what's happening culturally right now and more just reflecting on creativity. That's such a vague word, but the sort of mystery of where images come from and how other artists impact one's way of thinking and way of knowing. It's kind of been a way of processing that.

How important is it for you to have a space to go and create? 

It's very important. I've maintained a studio for a really long time now and I think it's important for a lot of different reasons. I have a lot of crap for one thing, so it's a place to have your stuff. I know that there is a trend in contemporary art for artists not to have studios and to make projects that use other resources and other people to help with the process. But I'm pretty hands on, I like to be the one making what I want to see. So yeah, it's really key to have my own space.

Are there any Boise specific opportunities you've had?

Well, I mean, to continue talking about space, I moved here from New York City, so having a space of this size would have been impossible. I mean, I had a decent space there, just out of sheer luck. But yeah, I mean, that's one of the great advantages to being here. I don't know, I think I found a different kind of rhythm and relationship to my own work. I've been here so long now that I don't really remember what a dramatic transformation it was. I certainly had a community in New York of friends that were painters and other other types of artists. It certainly is not an easy place to break into the gallery scene or whatever. But, you know, there's always a community of artists if you look around and you're open to it. I like Boise, I feel like I'm part of a community here of artists and curious people who support each other and are interested in what other people are doing. Definitely.

What's it like for you to help guide students on their path of art discovery?

Well, I don't know how many teachers you know, but teaching is a tough gig. No matter what the subject is. I think all teachers probably feel like they teach the best subject. I definitely feel that way. But it's challenging. Yeah, it's super rewarding when you feel like you are contributing to somebody finding a voice or figuring out a path for themselves. But it's also a grind. Teaching is a tough gig, for sure, but I like it. It's way better than any other job I've had and I've had a lot of different jobs over the years. I've been doing this now way longer than I've had any other jobs. So yeah, it's rewarding. 

Did you go to school for art?

I did. Yeah. I went to undergraduate school, I got a BFA. I went to a couple of different schools, but then I went to grad school as well. I didn't know I was going to be a teacher until a few years after grad school. An opportunity came along to get a teaching certificate and the other jobs, as I referenced, were not that inspiring. So I went in that direction.

Why do you think art is important?

Well, that's, of course, a huge question. The answer to which I suppose varies considerably over time, but like I referenced earlier, I think engaging in any kind of art making is, on some level, just a way of knowing, but also a way of being. So I think it can help one make sense of their world, their existence, you know, to create meaning in your life. And hopefully that experience gets communicated to others through your work. Ideally it is, I think, ultimately about connecting and demanding in a way that demands something of an audience or another individual. It's not just “Here, this is a gift for you.” It's like, “Here, struggle with this a little bit if you're willing to.” That's a really long vague answer to a difficult question. But what else do we have in life now where so many other things people have looked to as a way to bring meaning or feelings of security to their lives have become debased? I mean, when you look around the contemporary world, what's going to help us understand and give ourselves meaning if not art? 

Do you think it's important to look at what other artists are creating?

I think it's very rare for there to be somebody who makes compelling images that is not aware of both their contemporaries and of art that has come in the past. There are some, but I think it's pretty rare. I don't like the term “outsider artist”, but I think the great exemplars of “outsider artists'', if you were really able to investigate, weren't as remote or cut off from their contemporary visual culture as people might imagine them to be. They certainly didn't necessarily go to art school or anything like that. I don't think you need to do that, but yeah, I think you have to be visually aware of what's going on around you. Nothing comes from nothing. You're part of a larger conversation ultimately. 

Is there anything I haven't asked you that you wanted to talk about?

When the stay at home thing first kicked in and I was teaching from home, I started doing a lot more sort of smaller pieces, water based media, just at my home desk because I was there and I don't know, I felt weird coming to the studio. It just sort of worked out that I got into a kind of rhythm and that's when things started transitioning from the more satirical work I had been doing to what I'm doing now. So that's sort of a transitional phase. But this work started kind of curiously. Sometimes when I'm painting I have rags that get saturated with paint and oil and stuff like that. So sometimes I'll pin them to the wall to give them a chance to dry so I don't leave piles of dirty rags around and I just found myself kind of staring at one of them. The way one sort of absentmindedly stares at basically anything, as a way of inviting images to emerge. You know, cloud gazing or, there's the famous description that Leonardo wrote of staring at the water stains on the ceiling until an entire world emerges. So I found myself kind of doing that and at the same time thinking about what has influenced me, especially in terms of writers, I didn't want to necessarily try to take on other painters. I think maybe there's too much of an antagonistic kind of relationship between people that you admire as painters and somebody working in the same medium. So a few things kind of came together at the same time, sort of wondering “where does imagery emerge” and using this image of the rag as a way of having almost an emblem for that idea within each painting. Also thinking about how in the same way that an image will coalesce out of some random arrangement like that about how images sort of emerge from the substrate of a painting itself. And at the same time, thinking about these writers who have sort of occupied my mind in a way over many years. Especially writers, but not entirely, that just don't go away, that are always there and I think in a way, that's a great thing. The reason we read or look at any art is to help us engage the world in a way, but also you can kind of think of it as these super powerful forces that can occupy your mind, almost like an invading army. There's two ways of thinking about it you know, I think most people think of artists as just positive and an artists' relationship to other artists as being inspirational, but I think it can be a little more complex and ambivalent, I guess you'd say. So these paintings, I think, are a way of trying to grapple with a lot of these different ideas at the same time and I don't know yet whether it's been totally successful or not, but it's definitely keeping me engaged.

Do you think art is something you'll ever stop doing?

Yeah... When I'm six feet under. I don't have any plans of retiring if that's what you mean. I think everybody always goes through periods of being productive and being fallow and I think that's inevitable. But since I'm not doing it as a way of making a living and that's not my main goal, I don't know why I would ever stop. 

Rocky Canyon Tileworks - Full Text Artist Sit Down

What is your primary medium?

Kat Dellamater: Well, mainly the ceramic tile that I make. But also, we can't display it without Harry's steel frames, both the table frames and the wall frames.

How did you get started working with all of this?

Harry Dellamater: I'd been in the construction business for years and we were building an outdoor kitchen on our house and Kat decided she wanted to do some mosaic work on the countertops and researched different styles of tile. I found a place in Arizona called Santa Theresa Tile Works and they made similar flowers and animals and so forth and Kat thought maybe she'd like to try that. So we decided to send her down there and she went down for how long was it?

K: It was a week-long, intensive course and there were probably 10 or so of us there. One person was from Alaska, so I didn't get the farthest away award but it was a great time. I learned how to physically make tiles using this method and then I came home. We had a kiln that we bought used from a friend and Harry gave me a room here in his shop. I got started and haven't looked back since.

What's the process for creating the tiles?

K: They are high fire ceramic. I do it in a little different order than most people do with ceramics, I don't bisque my tiles first at a lower temperature. So the method I learned is; I roll out a slab of clay and I start cutting out the designs. When they're dry, I glaze them and they go in the kiln for the first fire. If they need black line details or any other colors they go in again at a lower temperature fire. Most things have been fired twice, some things have been fired many more times. That's the beauty of this method. I can keep firing them until I get them just the way I like them.

So you're able to build on top of layers as you go?

K: Exactly, I can layer colors on. I can't really change once I've started on a certain theme but I can make things pretty detailed, which can sometimes be a problem. I get a little too in depth into things but it comes out good. I like the way they turn out

What's it like being able to work together as a couple?

H: It's been really good. We met each other right here on this property 30 plus years ago. I was a home builder for many years and this kind of evolved into something that we could do together after I retired. That was when Kat started making the tile, and as you can see, this is no longer my shop, this is now Rocky Canyon Tile's shop. I've been shoved out the back door kind of but it's just great. I mean, we have a wonderful relationship and we are really enjoying sharing this. She's the artist, I'm the Muse if you will.

K: He's a fabulous support system. And by the way, we're making out the back door better.

H: Yeah. Improving my end outside back there. I get a little tent. *Laughs*

What does it take to fabricate the frames?

H: It's steel and you have to be able to cut it and measure, cut it, weld it, grind it up and put it together into something that looks nice. We have our frames powder coated so they're impervious to weather. They can sit outside and they won't rust. I've got a ring roller and equipment out here to where I can make a circle. And it's just a matter of cutting out the steel and putting it together. There's a guy in town that we have do the powder coating for us. The wall frames you'll notice are kind of coppery or different color. We make those colors ourselves, we stain the steel and it comes out with all kinds of different colors. Then I'll put an epoxy clear coat and automotive clear coat over the top. So again, it can be out in the weather all year round and the sun can shine on it. It's a good finish..

How long have you been doing tile work here?

K: We've been Rocky Canyon Tileworks for a little over 10 years now.

Where do you get the inspiration for your designs?

K: Well, obviously I like bright colors. But you know, it's our surroundings. I've always loved flowers. We are overrun with quail and lazuli buntings and goldfinch. I mean, we have all kinds of different animals and birds up here. We just love where we live, and how we live and I think it comes out in our artwork.

What gives you the drive to come out and work in the shop?

H: Well, I'm retired, I built homes for years and the shop is a great place to work. We don't have a big pension plan or anything like that. So this is a nice little supplement for my retirement and soon her retirement. And so, you know, we're making a living and working together and being on this site together and sharing it. That's all the motivation I need.

K: And I need something to do. 

H:Yes. 

K: So as Harry reminds me, it's better to use my powers for good rather than evil. The family appreciates it. So yeah, I love this. It's therapy for me. I love repetition so glazing 30 Bees at a time doesn't bother me. In fact, I love it. So I can't wait. Harry knows I come down here first thing in the morning. He has to remind me It's lunchtime. You know, this is a dream come true.

H: Sometimes when the kiln is done and she's going to open the kiln, It's like Christmas morning. She doesn't know what's gonna come out sometimes. So we come out in the morning and it's exciting.

How often does a batch fail when you're making tiles?

K: Well, just like anything, when you start out you get a lot more failures than you do successes. It was difficult at first because the way I saw the tiles in my head wasn't the way they were coming out. But, what do they say? 10,000 hours or 10 years maybe is what it takes. I don't have as many failures anymore and now that I have so many different designs and directions I can go in, a lot of them become “Yeah, I wanted them to look like that.” And so I go forward with them, I use them. But after you've put in this much time, I know how my glazes are going to react now. And thankfully it's usually just shades different from what I was going for and I've learned that I can adjust it in the next fire if needed.

I've heard glazing is one of the harder things to learn, what was your experience?

K: Well, the glazes are so much better now than they were when I was in high school. Of course a lot of times schools are trying to save money and use cheaper glazes, I use really expensive glazes and they just go on like paint for me. That's the way I think of it. I did face painting for a few years in some of the local Idaho City and Stanley craft festivals and things. So I knew how to paint. Brush technique is really important. But the glazes nowadays, they're fabulous.

How do you get your work to clients?

H: We can ship them. Some of them, hopefully, are local and we don't have to ship them or take them too far. But I build these frames so they can come apart. And then I build a big wooden crate these things will go in and we've shipped them all over the country. We've had inquiries to all parts of the world. Shipping is difficult when you're trying to leave the country but other than that, yeah, we've shipped some pretty big things all the way back east.

K: We have a really good shipping connection here in town. So they work with us and we can put things on pallets. We've only had one that we had a little problem with and we insure them to the hilt so yeah, so far so good.

How does the tile stay in place?

K: So we've kind of come up with our own way of doing it. Again, experience is a great teacher, but Harry uses an acrylic tile adhesive. We have a method now of flipping the tiles out of the frame. I build the design by dry laying the tiles into Harry's frame right onto the concrete backer board. When the tiles are all in and the design has been approved by the customer, we then cover the design with sticky backed clear shelf paper type material and put a board on top of it, lift it up, flip it over, take the steel frame off. That leaves the design upside down stuck to the sticky paper. Harry trowels the acrylic tile adhesive into the frame and we put it back on top carefully on top of the design and flip it back over. Then Harry peels the paper off while I make sure the tiles stay in position. He leaves it with me, I rearrange everything, make sure the tile is exactly the way I want it. After it's dried for a day, Harry mixes up the epoxy grout and applies it. That's where we've got a lot of our best videos on TIkTok and Instagram.

H: We get a good response from our grouting videos.

K: Everybody loves the reveal. So I grab the phone and start taping and Harry does the grouting.

H: And one other thing, the beauty of the epoxy grout is that it's impervious to moisture, it doesn't fade, it doesn't crack, it won't stain. It can sit out in the weather.

K: If you want to clean it, you can run a hose over it.

H: Hose it off, a light brushing and away you go.

K: It's amazing stuff.

H: Tile setters don't like it. When we first started making these pieces, we used regular grout, masonry type cement base grout. And really, grout tile work outside, unless you really seal it and take care of it, it really doesn't last. They'll fade and so on and so forth. So when people would ask us, “Can I leave this outside?” We would have to say no. So we kind of made some adjustments and decided let's go that way. So now, absolutely you can put them outside. The epoxy grout is fantastic for that. The glazed ceramic tiles are great. And the epoxy on the steel. It's all just set up to be outdoors.

K: So he makes it sound “Oh yeah, no problem.” Epoxy grout is very difficult to work with. It's unforgiving in that if you don't get it completely off of anything you don't want it on, it's there forever. And it sets up when it wants to set up.

H: It's a time limit, yeah.

K: You can't just mix a little bit and do a little area over here, you have to mix the whole batch and you better be ready to go. So it was a big decision when we decided to go with it. But we would never go back. Once you figure it out it works great and if you know what you're doing you get a good result.

Are there challenges working up in the mountains?

K: Yeah, wanting to leave. That's the only challenge.

H: We don't want to go.

K: Yeah, that's honestly another thing that factored into us not doing the art show circuit anymore. You know, we're just happy to stay here and make our artwork and sell it online.

H: We've got a good presence on the Internet now. We have what, over 61,000 followers right now? We have inquiries all the time. We do a lot of custom orders and in fact, we were shut down for custom orders until spring.

K: We will be open for BOSCO in 2021. We're members of the Boise Open Studio Collective Organization and will be open. It's the first two weekends in October this year. I'm not sure which weekend our region gets. But its really something people should be marking on their calendars.

H: There are a lot of great artists in Boise and the BOSCO tour is something that if you're interested in art in Boise, you just got to go. There's so many great artists in Boise showing how they make their art and you get to see all their studios.

K: We'll be open again, we'll have it by appointment only. We'll have everything just like this set up, showing people how we do each step.

Are there opportunities you've had specific to Boise?

K: Definitely Art in the Park.

H: And BOSCO has helped us. And again, the big art community. The other artists support  each other really well here in Boise. It's a really great community.

Do you think art is something you'll ever stop doing?

K: No, no, no, not at this point. It's getting worse.

H: She loves it. She'll sit in here, and again, she makes every single tile, every little detail on every tile herself and it takes hours and hours and hours. And she will sit down here for hours and hours, and just have a ball making these tiles. So it's something that she can do for as long as she can do it. And so yeah, it's been great for both of us and, and yeah, I'll keep doing it. as long as I can.

K: *To Harry* Thank you.

Is there anything I haven't asked that you wanted to talk about?

K: Well, we met on the property.

H: Yeah. Let's talk about our little story. 

K: Absolutely.

H: Yeah, go ahead.

K: So, on our Instagram page, we have a video that kind of tells our story, but in a nutshell, we met on this property.

H: 30 plus years ago.

K: Mutual friends. We liked each other right away. It ended up that when the friends moved away, we moved in. We've been working on the place ever since. We're really proud of the fact that we are carbon negative. You should talk about that. That is your baby.

H: Yeah, we have a great solar power setup here. We have a 5kW system that powers this shop completely. We have a welder and plasma cutter, the kiln. Everything we do in here is powered by the sun. We actually make more power than we use here in the shop. So we can use some of our credits on the house’s bill. We're generating more power than we're using and we're pretty proud of that. That's a good thing we all should be doing.

Kayla Morgan - Full Text Artist Sit Down

What is your primary medium?

My primary medium is ceramics. 

How did you get interested in working with ceramics?

I was first introduced to it in middle school. It was one of the required classes I had to take and I thought it was fun but I never did anything really serious after it until I went to Boise State University. I was in the art department and started taking painting and drawing classes and I had to take a three dimensional class. And I was like, “Oh, I really liked ceramics, I'll take that too.” And just totally fell in love with it. I didn't expect to, you know, I knew I enjoyed it, but I'd taken woodworking and some metals classes, and there’s just something about it, how meditative it is and how malleable the clay is. That was kind of what kept drawing me back to it. So that's where it came from.

What is your favorite component of pottery?

I think exploring different techniques and actually throwing on the wheel. It’s such a long process of what you go through from your ideas and inspiration to making and finishing. And I think probably just being on the wheel that’s my favorite part, actually being in the zone and not listening to the narrative in your head or what's going on in the world. And just kind of like, “I need to make a planter”, this is what I'm going to focus on now.”

Are you able to support yourself with art?

I am right now. I worked at a coffee shop all through college and never expected that I would be able to make a living off my art. But I've been really, really lucky and in 2019 I worked my ass off and went on sabbatical from my job. I was like, “Okay, it's October, I'm going to work my butt off through the winter, because that's the busiest season and see how it goes.” And then yes, I had three months of just working really hard doing markets, I did Wintry Market and then after that I had enough money saved up to pay my bills till maybe March. And then the pandemic hit. And I was like, “Well, I guess this is what I'm doing now.” So it worked out in a really great way for me. And yeah, I sell online and then usually through markets, but with the pandemic, it's just been online.

What gives you the drive to create?

I think it's just the way it makes me feel. It gives me purpose. You know, right now, I don't have a lot more than like, this is what I'm doing for my income, but it's also what I'm doing because I enjoy it. So it's partially that I have to be here to pay my bills, but then also it's just really grounding for me to be able to create. To have ideas and find inspiration and then make those into functional pieces that people will use in their everyday life. So, more of a selfish reason is just because I enjoy it, but I have the benefit that other people enjoy it as well. So it's worked out in that way and I think having this creative space has been a huge motivator to go to work and do the things.

How important is it for you to have a space?

So important. Before I had this space, I literally had my wheel in my large bathroom and was throwing in there and just kind of making it work. But it's already a very solitary medium anyway so it's been really great to have this space. Not only for the physical space and having room to store my pieces and have different work in progress. But a huge part of it has been the community aspect of having other artists around me to sort of bounce ideas off of, or motivate you, or just ask, you know, “Is this weird?”, “But is it like a cool, weird?” You know, it's really nice to have that sort of like minded group of people that I really missed when I was at Boise State. You have the people that you can talk about glaze recipes with and they don't pretend like they're really interested, but they're totally checking out. And I think, especially during the pandemic, this was the only place I would go and these were the only people I would see. So they've become like a family to me. I think it's really helped me personally, and it's helped my business. It's helped me feel like I'm on the right track, having a space that's dedicated to it. It's hard when you have it at your house because it's like, it's always there and it's kind of like, I could be working on this, but I also need to do laundry or whatever it is. So I think it's really important to be able to have a space where you come here to work, or you come here to just relax and think about what you want to do next. It's dedicated to your craft and yeah, it's been really great having it.

Where do you get your inspiration?

Mostly through nature. When I was younger, I would go hiking a lot and pick up rocks. I definitely have boxes of rocks at my house. But I would always find interest in the little things that are sort of overlooked and the small details. I mean we're in the gem state so it's perfect. When we're in the mountains I'm focusing on the quartz that's growing naturally and it has this lichen and moss on it. Or the high desert terrain, I really just find it from all around me and try to incorporate it into my work.

Do you do commissions or just original work?

Both. I do some commission work and I really enjoy that, especially if I know the person. It's really great because I can throw ideas off of them and really make it what they want based on what they know of my work. I also have dinnerware sets that are made to order; so it's like, this is what you're going to get. You order it, you know I need three to four weeks to make it and there's a balance between what I make that I know is gonna make money and what I make because it's fun and I want to explore. I prefer doing commissions or just making pieces and selling them wholesale to a store so people can choose what they like.

Why is art a worthwhile endeavor?

Art has been a worthwhile endeavor for me personally because it grounds me; it's almost like my therapy. It sort of gets me out of my head and centers me. It allows me to express myself in a way that I can't often do through words. Yeah, it's, it's been so important for me. Especially growing up, it was the only time that I felt like I was important or I mattered or like the things that I did mattered and I feel more myself when I'm creating. I think it's important because it's a way to communicate with people through different cultures and in different languages. You can see a piece of art and the artist might have had a different reason for making it or a different story but it communicates a message to whoever's looking at it and it becomes personal to them. So I think it's a way of connecting humanity and nature. And then for me, personally, it's been just really good to like, chill me out. I'm a very anxious person and it sort of grounds me and centers me in a way where I can deal with the world in my own way. I think I would be a very different person if I didn't have art in my life; I probably wouldn't be a very fun person.

Are there any Boise specific opportunities you’ve taken advantage of?

I’ve been a part of Boise Open Studios, BOSCO. We open up the studio and people can come and check out where we work and see what our spaces are, what our inspiration is and meet the people that make the things they like. That was a really good opportunity. So we signed up as a group and pretty much everyone in the warehouse here was signed up. So you went to one spot and you got to meet woodworkers, jewelers, ceramic artists, painters. That was a really great way to meet people and get them introduced to our work. I also received a grant from the Alexa Rose Foundation right before we moved in here and it basically made it so I could move into this space, which was awesome. I wrote about how I'm throwing pots in my bathroom and it'd be awesome if I had a real space because I was moving things from my house and then taking it to the pottery center, they would fire it, bring it back to my house, glaze it, then they would glaze it. Now I have everything in one spot. So yeah, having the Alexa rose grant was huge in allowing me to land this spot. I mean, there's so many different grants and different opportunities available and I'm excited this year to take advantage of more of them because getting that feedback from the foundation was like, “Okay, I think I'm good at this, but other people also appreciate it and want to see it grow.”

Is there anything I forgot to ask about?

Um, maybe my technique. I had mentioned that I was interested in rocks before and the landscape of Idaho. The technique I do is called agate-ware. You mix different colored clay bodies to create one piece. So traditionally, ceramics is one clay body and then you cover it with a glaze and add the colors after the fact. But with my work, I like to mix the different clay bodies together and that's what you see. I don't cover that with a glaze, it's exposed. It turns into really cool patterns and I can make the same form and use the same amount of clay body for each piece, but they're always going to be different. I think I like that part of it. That it truly is unique in that way, but it can be frustrating too, because it's like, I really like this pattern and I can try really hard to make that pattern happen again, but yeah. I'm drawn to mixing the clay bodies and exposing them once they're finished and then just putting a clear glaze over it rather than having a piece and glazing it after. I think that's because I was so bad at glazing at Boise State, which coincidentally, the glaze room at Boise State is named after me but I'm horrible with glazing! So I'm working on that part.

Do you think going to college helped you with your career?

I think it helped me figure out what I wanted to do because I started and I was like, “I'm interested in art.” And “I'm not really interested in a traditional nine to five career for myself.” I knew I wanted to do something I enjoyed NOW. I don't want to work my whole life and then reach retirement and hopefully have enough time left to really enjoy myself. I'm going to do it now. I think it introduced me to a lot of different mediums. I had great teachers. I had great cohorts. I think it was important in that way where I was able to sort of explore things in a safe environment and then after college, it's like, good luck. 

Will you ever stop making art?

Never. It might not be in the capacity that I'm doing now, ceramics is really hard on your body so eventually my body is going to give out. But I think I'm always going to be creating. Whether that's just hand building things. Yeah, unless I don't have my hands anymore I don't think I could stop creating and I don't ever see that happening. 

Matt Wolfe - Full Text Artist Sit Down

What is your primary medium?

My primary medium is borosilicate glass torch work.

What got you interested in working with glass? 

I took a lot of craft classes throughout junior high and I got interested in tying hemp necklaces and buying glass beads. Then I was actually fortunate enough to meet a guy that was making glass beads and when I saw him making them, I got pretty much hooked right away.

Where do you get your inspiration?

You know, a lot of that is pretty organic as far as what I create. It's been a mixture of what people have asked me to make. I definitely get inspired by making little nature work. I make a lot of aquatic life; Fish, sea turtles, octopus. And then I like the vessel work as well, like the shapes of vessels and trying to create a particular shape, classic vessel work. 

How long have you been working with glass?

21, almost 22 years.

What gets you out of bed and creating?

I'm still really mesmerized by the material. It's difficult. The difficulty factor working with it, it always keeps me interested. You can always up the scale of something that you're working on or just push yourself in a different direction. Going from a wildlife sculpture or something to a nice high end set of champagne flutes or a big vase or something like that. Definitely the difficulty of the medium combined with what you can make has always really intrigued me. That always keeps you interested. Going to bed you're thinking about projects, waking up you’re thinking about what you're gonna make in the morning.

Are there opportunities you've had specific to Boise?

There's not very many other people that blow glass or do flameworking like I do. The pool is pretty small. So exposure to the medium is kind of hard to get and it's a little bit of an expensive hobby. A basic setup is still several thousand dollars and you want to be able to make sure you're doing it safely and you can cover all your bases as far as not not hurting yourself. When I first started, there wasn't even any place to get classes or anything like that. So that's one of the reasons why we do our public demos. We offer classes and stuff like that.

Has the pandemic changed the way you work?

Certainly, yeah. We normally rely on sales at art shows, one that we do here that you’ve probably heard of is Art in the Park. You know, we do a lot of similar style shows like that and a lot of those were canceled in 2020. We've had to focus more on building our website, we have an Etsy store, stuff like that. Online sales is something that we had to focus on and, you know, in this day and age, you really should anyway. It's a public market that's open all the time so we just kind of rolled with the punches.

Do you think art is a worthwhile endeavor?

Art always, it's like, when you get inspired and something makes you smile, or you think “That's really beautiful”, you know? I've always thought that beautiful machines look good, nice cars look good. My crafts teacher was obviously a big inspiration for me, he made beautiful clay pieces. And now being around other other artists here in the valley, I get exposed to it all the time.I definitely really, really appreciate beautiful artwork, like getting a good painting, you know, can inspire you to make a good sculpture or something else. 

What do you primarily make with your glass?

Vessel work, bottles, cups, vases. I do quite a bit of jewelry work, pendants. I dabble in marbles and a little bit of sculpture. 

How long has this been your full-time job?

About 5 years now. I've definitely gone out on a limb before and I've failed a few times at running my own business. I’ve got a really good support system now. My wife is tremendously supportive and yeah, hopefully fourth time's the charm. 

Did you go to business or art school?

No, I've basically just worked a hodgepodge of jobs. I've done a little bit of everything; customer service, I did some wholesale distribution work, construction jobs. I worked in the food industry, a bank, I've worked a ton of jobs on and off through the years which has given me a lot of practical experience. But yeah, forming a business plan is definitely a big priority that a lot of artists don't think about. Making the art is half the challenge, the other half of the challenge is to sell it. We try to educate ourselves as much on social media channels as we can, trying to get an Instagram following and a Facebook following. We try to capture a lot of video content, pictures, stuff like that so we can put ourselves out on those channels. And then like I said, having a business plan. Again, my wife helps me with a ton of that stuff. She's amazing. And a big, big part of how I'm able to achieve success. 

Do you have a favorite part of the process?

Man, just the entire part of it. It's mesmerizing from start to finish. There's tense moments where you're right on the edge of finishing a project and know the failure could come at any second for a number of reasons. Yeah, it's just constantly a technical challenge and for me, it's kind of a soothing process to be in motion and working with it. 

What makes torch work different from furnace glass?

That traditional style is called soft glass or furnace glass and they'll start with a molten pot of glass and the whole time that they are working with it, they're cooling it down and then heating it up and cooling it down and heating it up to finish their product. I start with cold glass. And then I'll heat it up manually on the torch and use the heat, gravity, centrifugal force and some tools to manipulate the glass. The furnace glass is a little lower temperature and has a softening point of between 900º F and 1,000º F. And then the softening point of borosilicate glass, which is the type of glass I work with, is 1,510º F. The torch flame is about 4000º F.

How long does it take to cure the objects you make? 

That depends on what you're making. My annealing oven here, my kiln, I'll use that for preheating an item. So if I need to work on a piece of tubing, generally I'll stick it in the oven to warm up to temperature, the oven holds at 1,050º F, which is also the annealing temperature for glass, then, depending on how thick it is, and there are some other variables, but generally it’s based on how thick it is. You'll have it on a cooldown cycle too, so it'll ramp down in temperature and cool nice and slowly. I use that thing all day, it's another tool basically. A holding at temperature tool. For all my finished product, it sits in there overnight and I'll take it out in the morning.

Do you have any advice for someone trying to go full-time with their art?

It was a big leap of faith and definitely having a good support system helps. We have great friends that support us financially by buying our product. And then really just work hard, you’ve got to treat it like a regular job. Most artists don't get rich off one project, you have to make a lot of stuff. Try and become as well rounded as you can. Take classes, any education that you can get is super important. If you were a teacher or something, there's always continuing education. All that stuff's super important to remaining successful. Just stay driven. 

Do you have a favorite piece you've made? 

Oh, no, I don't really get too attached to the things that I make. There's been things that I've made that I'm proud of, and I've given some stuff to my wife and kids that are special to me. I mean, I'm working on that. I want that to happen and I definitely have some ideas that I haven't achieved yet I'm looking forward to and maybe I’ll keep one of those projects.

Do you think art is something you'll ever stop doing?

No, no. I mean, this is what I envision doing for the rest of my life. If I can make a little bit of money and do what I like to do anyway, I'm a project guy, I like staying busy and making stuff and working on stuff. I mean, my mind just works that way. Again, it's like a big puzzle. I just want to put all the pieces together. That's a lifetime's work.