Lori Walsh: It's not easy to launch a new book into the world when everything seems to be either crumbling in crisis or standing painfully still, but this might just be the book to help you with both of those challenges, at least, in full disclosure, it's really helping me. It's called You Are An Artist by Sarah Urist Green, she's the curator and host of PBS's The Art Assignment and she joins us now on the phone. Sarah, welcome. Thanks for being here.
Sarah Urist Green: Hi, thanks so much for having me.
Lori Walsh: I can't be neutral about this book because I love it so much. So there's my opinion laid bare.
Sarah Urist Green: Oh, thank you. Well, I mean, I certainly could not have predicted a global pandemic when writing this book. I've been working on it since 2013, but I'm so glad that during this time that is so difficult that it might be a help for people.
Lori Walsh: And I'm deeply sorry for the problems that come into play with this as far as a book tour and getting awareness about the book out on the street. However, it also feels like it's a really timely moment because a lot of people are trying to figure out what's next and can I do some art at home or what does that even mean? Am I an artist? What is art? And boom, it's all here in this book, and in the video series, The Art Assignment as well. Are you finding that sense of timeliness alongside the struggles of what you've lost with an in person book tour?
Sarah Urist Green: Yeah, definitely. I mean, we have pivoted and are having a virtual book tour, which you can learn about and join by going to theartassignment.com and looking at our tour page. But yeah, I have actually seen, over the past few weeks, so many people who don't normally have the time or the bandwidth making things. And my book has 53 assignments in it and they're all drawn from artists who work in many different ways all across the country and the world. And they're really designed for people who don't have special drawing skills and who don't have fancy, expensive art supplies. And they're prompts to get you working and doing and making things at a time that is so full of anxiety.
But I think and I hope that these things could be something that you can do, either alone if you're alone, with an older person, or of course with your kids. I know my six and ten year old are at home with me and we are having to be very creative finding ways to pass this time.
Lori Walsh: You said something in one of your online videos about combining, all of us are combining our lives, our work lives and our home lives in ways that we never had before, and for people who are artists, sort of combining them with their children. And there are some artists you've talked to who have always done this.
Tell us a little bit about some of the artists in this book and how they approach that challenge.
Sarah Urist Green: Well the artist that I think you're mentioning is the artists Lenka Clayton who found it a challenge when she had children, how to sort of negotiate being a parent and being an artist and having a teaching job and doing all of this at the same time. And she did an art project where she started to gather all of the objects that she prevented her toddler son from swallowing. So she had this child who loved to put everything in their mouth. And then she started to just take them from him and save him in that moment, and then she started to make a collection of them. And she arranged them into an installation and made a book called 63 Objects Taken From My Son's Mouth. So there's a small way of just sort of paying attention to what's already happening around you and finding ways to make it into something fun and meaningful.
But she offers an assignment in the book called lost childhood object, and this is actually something that you could do with someone who's close to you or even far away, where you describe an object that you loved when you were a child but you lost or no longer have, and you describe each of those things to each other and then you make them out of materials you cobbled together at home and then share them with that person.
So you know, art can be a way to pass the time and it can also be a wonderful way to connect with other people, either in person or virtually.
Lori Walsh: That connection, yeah. Tell us about emotional furniture. Because when we talk about art supplies, and some people, great if you have a closet full of art supplies and you just want to get them out and play, absolutely, there's lots of assignments in this book that can use those art supplies. For people now who are like, "I can't go anywhere and I'm trying not to order anything, can I still be an artist?"
Sarah Urist Green: Yeah. Yeah. The emotional furniture is precisely what it sounds like. It's an assignment offered by Christoph Niemann and it's to arrange furniture in three different ways to convey three distinct emotions, envy, melancholy and confidence. And I know this sounds crazy, but when you try it, it's really amazing what can be done. I mean, even with just a lamp and a chair and a side table to see what kinds of emotions you can come up with and convey by stacking them or resting one on the other. So it's just a small thing that you can do with what you have without going out and having to buy anything.
Lori Walsh: Yeah. And talk about whether or not that is art. For the skeptics listening who say, "Well, is rearranging this furnish furniture art? Some of these things that we're doing, how does this make me an artist? I'm not creative." Let's talk a little bit about that point of view.
Sarah Urist Green: Yeah. Well, I think, first of all, you don't actually have to consider these activities art to enjoy them. So if you draw your art by boundaries narrowly, that's okay. I think we all get to decide what we think art is. And I happen to draw my art boundaries very widely and that's because I've met so many different artists who make art in different ways that have been meaningful for me.
So I think in society, we tend to think about artists or depict them in the media as people who are sort of touched with divine inspiration who are unlike the rest of us, and the artists I know are regular people who deal with the same problems that we all do. And they make art anyway and they work at it anyway. So I think that they don't wait for creativity to sort of hit them or to overflow. It's something that they work at and it's something that they just sit down and do.
And an assignment is a great way to get started if you don't have something that you already want to do. It's a great way to just sort of like have that first note that you can start playing with.
Lori Walsh: Yeah. This morning, one of the prompts I did was lining the books up by the spine with the authors there and posted that online. It was the best part of my morning. I was just running around the house. Of course, I'm the kind of person who has a ton of books.
Tell people a little bit about that. And then I want to talk a little bit about an archival project that's happening in South Dakota right now, where people are being asked to send images and writing and things into the state archives to document this time. And I wanted to talk a little bit about quality. So books first, book spines first-
And then let's talk about how to see the world a little bit more like an artist to sort of build your confidence and say, "I want to document this for the state archives, but I also think I can do it a little artistically."
Sarah Urist Green: Book spines. Yes. This art assignment was devised by the artist Nina Katchadourian and it's called Sorted Books. And it asks you to choose a person you know or would like to know better, peruse their library, and create stacks of books that form a kind of portrait of the person by aligning the book spines so that their titles can be read in order. And then you take photographs of them.
And obviously we cannot peruse other people's libraries as freely as we usually can, but this can be definitely done as you did with your own books. And it's something that we've been doing around our house these past couple of weeks and had a lot of fun with it, to create a self-portrait, to create a portrait of a another person of your family. It's playful and it's working with materials you already have. And by sort of taking that picture and putting it on social media and sharing it, it's also a fantastic way to talk about your experience of this time with other people and to start a conversation and to connect.
But I'd love to hear about what's going on in South Dakota.
Lori Walsh: All right, so the state archives is just saying, "We're collecting images and stories now. If you have something, send it in to us," and they have some guidelines. So my sister's getting married this weekend via Zoom, so can I document that somehow?
Sarah Urist Green: Wow.
Lori Walsh: Right?
Sarah Urist Green: Yeah. Yeah.
Lori Walsh: And people I think are having fun with this, but I think some advice from you as far as, you know, how do you make it a little bit better? How do you look at the project artistically and say, "I'm really doing this to document something, but it's going to be around for a long time and I would like it to be it's best."
How do we see, as an artist, as we look in the world that we're living in and the experience we're having right now and we try to preserve it for not only ourselves but others?
Sarah Urist Green: Well, I'm a big believer in trying things a few times. So a lot of us have phones in our pockets with cameras on them and it can be an amazingly powerful tool. So I think thinking about this challenge of documenting your experience, of course the first thing that might pop into your mind is photography, and that can be a wonderful way of representing a time.
And if you do take some photographs of the time, take the same photo, 10, 20, 30 different ways. Change the light, move your position, take a deep breath in and hold your breath while you press the photo button to like make sure that you're being as still as possible. Rest your camera on a surface, rest your phone on the surface so that it's a stable. There's like little things you can do to kind of take it up a little. Slow down, take a lot of pictures and then look at them after. Crop them differently. Decide on the best shot.
So if you're going to that approach with photography, great, but then also think outside of the box. Maybe you want to create a book stack that reflects this time. Maybe you want to make a rug out of old t-shirts that you've dragged out of the closet. That's another assignment in the book using this hand knotting technique, and maybe that's a document of the time. Maybe it's a collection of objects you found on the sidewalk during your daily walk.
So I encourage people to sort of think outside the box, think about what they're already doing and pay attention to ways they might present that in a creative way.
Lori Walsh: This changes who we are and how we experience our days in such a profound way. In our remaining time, Sarah, tell us about the virtual book tour, because I'm looking at the list of where you and John Green, your husband were coming. And you're not coming, you were never coming to Sioux Falls or Rapid City or anywhere in South Dakota anyway, but now we get to participate in ways that we couldn't have before. So how do we join you virtually?
Sarah Urist Green: Yeah. So you can go totheartassignment.com, our website, and look at the tour tab and see. We'll be having a series of virtual events on YouTube through their live streaming and also on Instagram Live. And yes, would it have been great to have in person events this week? Of course, but it's really wonderful to have this platform to be able to reach wider audiences.
We had our first event last night on YouTube and it was really, really wonderful and fulfilling to see people from around the world coming together for a bit of time to meet some artists, to talk about art and to be connected. So I'm really excited that I'm able to do the virtual tour. And while there's so much wrong with this moment, I'm really trying to focus on what is right and what is possible and how we're going to get through it.
Lori Walsh: Do you think we will remember the art that we make during this time for the rest of our lives?
Sarah Urist Green: Oh yes.
Lori Walsh: It has a different weight to it. We've just got about 30 seconds left, but it has a different weight to it, doesn't it?
Sarah Urist Green: It really does. I mean, I know that I've been making things. I've been making paper weavings with my kids. We've cut up the newspaper that had images from hospitals on it and made it into a paper weaving. I will always remember this time and I'm so glad that I'll have art to document it and to stay with me.
Lori Walsh: Well, this book came at a great time for me personally as I sort of struggled with how to do this job and do it well, and also find some joy. And then this landed on my desk and I'm so thrilled to have it in hardcover right now, as well as the digital videos that you create. So Sarah, thank you so much for all that you've done for us and all that this work is going to do in the world during this difficult time. We appreciate you.
Sarah Urist Green: Thank you so much, Lori.