00:00
(audience applauding)
00:07
– Hi, Simon.
00:08
– Hi. – How’s it going?
00:08
– Great, how are you?
00:09
– Good, can everyone hear us?
00:10
– [Audience Members] Yes.
00:12
– We’re sorry your brother Niki couldn’t join us,
00:14
but he’s had some health issues, but he’s okay.
00:17
So we wish him well.
00:18
– It’s just me.
00:19
(laughing)
00:20
– I always like to start out with a little art history,
00:22
so I picked some things that I don’t think influenced you,
00:25
but which I see as ancestors, perhaps,
00:28
to some of your works.
00:30
Fantastic creatures is one category in which
00:33
that you all address, and there’s this amazing sculpture
00:36
in the Metropolitan Museum that’s usually up
00:38
by this French artist, end of the 19th century,
00:40
that’s a chimera.
00:42
And, of course, chimeras and dragons and unicorns
00:44
and all kinds of weird monsters have had a long history
00:46
in the history of art, but I think what’s interesting is
00:49
that artists who, at least in this case,
00:52
this artist also has this really strong sensitivity
00:55
to materials, and so I think the combination of that
00:57
in your work is really interesting.
01:00
And another one, this is a really weird one
01:02
that’s actually in, not by a well-known artist at all.
01:06
We used to call it Yoda when I worked at LACMA,
01:08
after they acquired this, and it’s by,
01:11
but it’s this really interesting,
01:12
strange-looking hybrid creature, sort of gnome-like,
01:16
that relates to this air of fantasy, also in ceramic.
01:20
But, of course, I think the real thing that I thought of
01:22
with your work is Gaudi’s amazing Park Guell in Barcelona,
01:25
which, of course, is made with broken tiles,
01:28
and it’s sort of a fantastic lizard,
01:29
and I think there’s many parallels to your work.
01:32
Do you know the work of Gaudi well?
01:33
– I’m obsessed with Gaudi.
01:34
– No, that’s good, I picked the right slide then.
01:36
(laughing)
01:38
– Yeah, particularly because my brother and I work
01:40
in a very, I’m more scientific, mathematical,
01:45
surface-oriented, and he’s very much about the forms
01:49
and the animalistic side, and I think Gaudi actually was
01:52
the two of us combined, and we have to come together
01:56
in order to do stuff like that.
01:58
But when I see Gaudi, particularly
02:01
at the La Sagrada Familia,
02:05
the way he hung his model upside down with sandbags is
02:09
more kind of how I think, and then the lizard, for example,
02:13
is much more my brother.
02:15
– Right, how did you,
02:16
why don’t you tell us how you and your brother
02:17
came to work together as artists, designers?
02:21
We won’t even worry about the categories ’cause they’re,
02:23
who cares about categories?
02:25
– I was a struggling painter, and I had studied architecture
02:29
also, so I had a background in some of it,
02:31
and my brother was a house manager.
02:35
And he was commissioned just to make a few very basic
02:39
furniture pieces, and he asked me to do CAD drawings
02:43
for him, and then we decided to work together,
02:46
and I did it kind of begrudgingly, actually,
02:50
because I wanted to keep on painting and cooking also.
02:55
But it worked out, so I’m glad that I agreed to do it.
03:00
But it really started out sort of as cabinetry manufacturer,
03:03
and very quickly, I think, both of us couldn’t just do that.
03:07
It’s not in our nature to just make
03:10
a square working cabinet.
03:12
– Uh huh.
03:13
(laughing)
03:15
When did you first sort of realize that you can have a go
03:18
of this together as brothers working collaboratively?
03:21
– We talked about it in 2009.
03:23
I mean, really, we’ve been working together
03:25
since we were kids, and we would build tree houses together.
03:30
We used to carve stone together
03:31
’cause my dad was a stonemason.
03:35
– And an artist too.
03:35
He would get, yeah, yeah.
03:36
– And an artist, yeah, exactly.
03:37
And so the two of us were always doing projects together.
03:40
We parted ways when I went to school,
03:42
and then when we wound up in L.A.,
03:44
it just kind of happened naturally.
03:46
– And that was about 10 years ago?
03:47
– Yeah, it was in, 2010’s when we–
03:48
– That’s pretty recent. – Officially formed.
03:51
I know, kind of recent. – Yeah, that’s pretty recent.
03:53
That’s interesting. – It still feels new.
03:54
– Can you talk, so your dad’s an artist.
03:56
You guys are both into music really seriously, I know.
03:59
– [Simon] Yeah.
03:59
– And you grew up, from what I know of,
04:01
in this fairly interesting milieu in Austin
04:04
around artists, filmmakers.
04:05
I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that.
04:07
– Yeah, well, my mom was an opera singer and a screenwriter,
04:11
and she was living in L.A.
04:14
right up until we were very young, as a screenwriter.
04:17
So she knew all kinds of really interesting people,
04:21
and my older brother is an actor, and he also did,
04:24
so we kind of grew up in a house where,
04:26
I don’t know if anyone knows Phillip Mahl,
04:28
but he’s a concert pianist.
04:29
He was playing piano in our house,
04:31
and then I called Terrence Malick Uncle Terry, for example,
04:34
which is really crazy–
04:35
– [Carter] Dude, that’s amazing, yeah.
04:36
– ‘Cause later on I became a fan of his films.
04:38
I had no idea.
04:40
And so we–
04:41
– [Carter] So he was around a lot
04:42
when you were growing up?
04:43
– Yeah, we were surrounded by really crazy people,
04:47
and so I think we just grew up with that
04:49
as our guide, basically, and our mom was singing opera.
04:54
My dad painted.
04:56
Nobody knew how to do anything financial,
04:59
anything responsible at all, (audience laughing)
05:00
and I’m sill kind of figuring that out, but it’s like, eh.
05:04
Yeah, we were pretty fluent in how to be expressive.
05:07
– But your brother wanted to be a hockey player,
05:09
if I have that correct. – Yeah.
05:10
– And he did play hockey, but you wanted to be a painter.
05:12
– Well, it’s funny.
05:13
He was the rebel by trying to do sports
05:16
and hold down a job, basically.
05:20
So he was being rebellious by being a hockey player,
05:25
and he was really good at it, and he played drums.
05:28
And I was a cook and then tried to paint,
05:32
and that’s my, that was very, very conservative
05:36
for my family, a very accepted thing to be doing–
05:39
– Interesting. – Which is funny.
05:40
– I think it’s, I have noticed in my career
05:43
in dealing with artists that many artists are great cooks.
05:47
It’s interesting, and I think it’s because they know
05:50
how to make stuff with their hands, and it’s also,
05:52
a lot of art is about transformation,
05:53
and that’s sorta what cooking is.
05:55
– I think it’s just a sensitivity to, I mean,
05:58
art is a combination of observation
06:01
and being able to just translate something
06:04
through your fingers, I think.
06:07
And, I mean, one of my, if I have a skill
06:10
that I would talk about, it’s the ability to feel stuff
06:13
with my fingertips and manipulate things,
06:17
so, and also to observe.
06:20
So I think anything that has to do with that,
06:22
I can kind of at least get kind of good at.
06:26
– And so that manifests itself early in your life
06:28
as cooking, most of the fingertip thing.
06:30
– Yeah, exactly.
06:31
– Which I can, I think I understand
06:32
what you mean really well.
06:33
– Yeah, like knife work.
06:33
I mean, if you watch a sushi chef,
06:35
they’re incredible with their knife, and that’s,
06:37
I think a lot of it is learned, but they probably have
06:39
kind of a predisposition to be able to do that also.
06:42
– Yeah, I would imagine.
06:44
– And definitely for me, it’s I love to feel stuff,
06:47
and, like, I love bead work.
06:50
– Yeah, we’ll get to that.
06:51
– It’s one of my favorite things, yeah.
06:53
– I wanted to just, to show one more slide of art history,
06:55
it’s not really, it’s pop culture history,
06:56
but surely Dr. Seuss, and you knew all about this
06:58
when I put this up, so maybe you can talk about these.
07:02
We all know Dr. Seuss, right?
07:03
– This book was really important to me.
07:05
I think that “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!” was important
07:09
and “The Lorax,” and “The Lorax” was my first understanding
07:12
of deforestation and how sad that is,
07:17
and I just loved him.
07:19
I love that he’s a spirit of the woods, and…
07:24
I think Niki and I are kind of into animism,
07:28
just that everything has kind of a spirit anyway,
07:31
so he’s like a really good,
07:33
he was my first understanding of that.
07:37
Plus, the Truffula treetops just are–
07:39
– Is that, what are they called?
07:41
– Truffula trees.
07:41
– Oh, okay.
07:42
– I think so.
07:43
Does anybody want to correct me on that?
07:44
I think that’s what they’re called.
07:45
(audience laughing)
07:46
– Do you feel like that just seeped into your unconscious,
07:47
and it all comes out in your work now?
07:48
– Yeah, probably.
07:49
– Yeah, maybe I’m just, they’re a very striking visual,
07:51
not that it’s, you’re not copying him, but it’s–
07:55
– No, but it is really similar,
07:57
and it’s so weird when I read.
07:59
I have a nephew now who’s a year-and-a-half,
08:01
and I read Dr. Seuss to him, and I just have no idea
08:05
where he came up with his weird rhymes.
08:08
I mean, it’s dark, but also just incredible.
08:11
He always throws in some darkness, which I think makes it
08:14
even more special ’cause it’s real,
08:19
but it’s really beautiful.
08:21
– And then this high-key color palette
08:22
is also very striking.
08:24
– It’s pretty wacky.
08:25
– Yeah. (Simon laughing)
08:26
It’s non-naturalistic.
08:27
I think we can say that for sure.
08:28
– Yeah.
08:30
– Great.
08:31
I wanted to, so now we’ll show some of your work.
08:33
– Okay.
08:34
– I thought we could talk about the “Accretions.”
08:35
There was a quest to ask about specifically this technique
08:38
that you developed, and so, and then this is also related
08:40
to the work you’re doing at the embassy in Niger,
08:43
if I have it right, so. – Yeah, exactly.
08:45
I think this is a great example of when Niki and I
08:48
come together to make something,
08:49
because the shapes are entirely his,
08:51
and I was the materials researcher for this.
08:55
– How does he come up with the shapes?
08:56
Does he–
08:57
– Very sexual.
08:59
He always says that he has not had very many sexual partners
09:04
and I have, so I don’t have to express it through my art.
09:06
(Carter laughing) (audience laughing)
09:07
And he expresses the, I’ll speak for him and say that.
09:12
– [Carter] Okay. (laughing)
09:16
– I mean, you can see the sexual forms,
09:19
and we also name them after,
09:23
we say call them fathers and mothers,
09:25
and there are certain, they’re just very sex-organic
09:30
and also kind of underwater creature.
09:33
He has a real talent for making an inanimate object
09:37
feel like it’s–
09:38
– Alive? – Got some–
09:39
– Got something, yeah. – Yeah, exactly.
09:40
Even if it doesn’t reference something.
09:43
– Does he draw the form first before it’s translated
09:45
– He does, yeah. – into three dimensions?
09:47
– Yeah.
09:48
– Does he just draw with pencil and chalk or charcoal?
09:49
– Yeah, now he uses an iPad– – Oh, yeah?
09:51
– ‘Cause I’ve kind of forced him to.
09:53
– ‘Cause otherwise I have to do the archiving,
09:56
and I like it to be digital (laughing).
09:58
So, but yeah, he’ll draw with anything,
10:03
and his drawings look a lot like Dr. Seuss.
10:05
They’re very cartoony.
10:07
Sometimes when we present a drawing to a client,
10:11
or if we’re doing a show presentation,
10:15
it takes a big leap of faith on the part
10:19
of the other person to let us do it,
10:23
’cause it really looks like a cartoon from the beginning.
10:25
– Yeah, right.
10:26
So talk about the translation.
10:27
So he comes up with the drawing and the form,
10:29
and then you, talk about your materials research
10:31
for this technique that you all–
10:32
– So this material, like I said, I’m just obsessed
10:35
with touching stuff, and I also like to read
10:39
about everything that I’m interested in.
10:42
So, as soon as I started to work with clay,
10:46
I actually used to live in our studio,
10:48
so I had the luxury of being there all night long
10:51
when no one was around.
10:53
And I was just sitting there with some slip,
10:56
which is very wet clay,
10:58
and an old leather-hard clay vessel
11:02
that had been thrown by somebody else,
11:04
and I sat there, and I was just thinking,
11:09
if I brush this forever, it’s gonna do something.
11:12
I know that it’ll self-organize.
11:15
The clay will pack somehow,
11:17
but I didn’t know what it was gonna look like.
11:21
And that just came kinda from observing
11:24
how quickly dry clay sucks up water, and I was like,
11:29
I know that it’s gonna kind of attach to it.
11:31
And I was thinking about caves a lot at the time,
11:34
and I wanted to make sort of
11:35
a handmade cave structure, basically.
11:39
So the first pieces didn’t look like this.
11:41
They just were a texture on a very basic-looking vessel.
11:48
But I continue to be really obsessed with self-organization
11:53
and that literally every–
11:56
– [Carter] Like the way nature might organize
11:57
itself or something?
11:58
– Yeah, that every material has a way of packing.
12:00
– [Carter] Right, uh huh, like crystals or whatever.
12:02
– Yeah, there’s always some way that stuff packs.
12:05
Spheres do it really perfectly, but if it’s not a sphere
12:08
it’s gonna do something really strange, yeah.
12:09
– Like bubbles together, yeah.
12:11
– So this, the way this is done is actually just
12:16
over and over a bottom-to-top brush onto a clay surface,
12:21
and thousands of layers later,
12:23
it has kind of grown these fingers.
12:26
– So it’s literally a question of brushing thousands
12:28
of times to get to, to build that up, yeah.
12:29
– Yeah, exactly.
12:30
And the shapes are completely determined by nature.
12:33
I know the person,
12:34
it’s like human-aided cave growth, basically.
12:37
And the inconsistencies in the person’s brush strokes
12:41
will cause some things to happen,
12:43
but they always kind of self-correct, which is interesting.
12:47
And the reason they’re pointing down like that
12:49
is that we brush bottom to top.
12:51
If you brush top to bottom they point up.
12:53
– Oh, oh right.
12:54
Have you done ones that do that?
12:55
– Yeah, but I like this.
12:56
– Oh, you prefer this?
12:57
– Yeah (laughing).
12:58
– Does it reach, I assume it reaches a breaking point,
13:01
or for lack of a better word–
13:02
– [Simon] There’s a limit.
13:02
– There’s a limit to what you can do.
13:03
– Yeah, it’s like an inch-and-a-half is a limit.
13:04
– [Carter] Okay.
13:07
– These are pretty far out in many ways.
13:13
Yeah, there’s definitely a limit.
13:15
I’ve done it with wax, and there’s no limit,
13:16
but there’s something about ceramic,
13:18
that the fact that it’s so fragile and useless
13:23
as a vessel is also exciting to me.
13:26
– Do you just fire these once then?
13:27
– No, these are fired three times.
13:30
– [Carter] Three times.
13:30
– Well, the ones that have gold are fired three times.
13:34
Otherwise, we do two firings.
13:36
One’s a bisque firing, and then we do a glaze fire.
13:39
– Okay, and how many of these would you say you’ve made,
13:42
or do you–
13:43
– I don’t know, we make,
13:46
it depends year by year.
13:48
They all look different too.
13:49
This collection is a year-and-a-half old, I think,
13:52
or maybe two years old,
13:54
and the current ones look not as fantastical.
13:58
– So when you first started making these,
13:59
were you doing them yourself, and then–
14:00
– [Simon] Yeah.
14:01
– So talk about getting a studio practice developed
14:04
with this, ’cause obviously, to ramp up production,
14:07
you have to have help, and then you’d be directing
14:10
this technique that you developed yourself from–
14:12
– Exactly.
14:13
So a lot of my processes are really crazy-making,
14:15
and, like, Niki, if I teach him to do it,
14:18
he stops after two hours.
14:20
He can’t do it anymore.
14:22
– Right, so you have very different temperaments that way.
14:24
– Completely, yeah.
14:25
– Yeah, yeah, that’s interesting.
14:26
– And I sort of need that methodical thing.
14:28
I need to just be brushing clay onto something.
14:30
– Is it like zen-like for you, it’s like meditation,
14:32
sort of mindfulness?
14:33
– Yeah, otherwise, I’m going crazy.
14:35
– [Carter] (laughing) It’s good you found this.
14:37
– I know (laughing).
14:38
Now it’s beads, so that’s good,
14:41
and they take even longer than this does.
14:45
Yeah, so this process, actually,
14:48
I taught it to Roan Florez, who works in our studio,
14:52
and she’s now the only person who ever does it
14:54
because she has the perfect hand
14:57
and the perfect temperament for doing it.
15:01
And, I mean, honestly, if I were doing it for this long,
15:05
I would also probably be tired of it,
15:06
but she’s obsessed, she really loves it.
15:09
And it’s interesting.
15:11
Not just anybody could get them to grow as long as they do.
15:15
If you leave the brush on for too long,
15:19
the brush will dry onto the petal or whatever.
15:22
I don’t know what they’re called, petals,
15:24
and it’ll pull it right off.
15:27
And if you press too hard, they also break,
15:29
so it’s such a specific thing, and she’s the expert.
15:32
– If it breaks, is there a way to fix it, or do you have to?
15:33
– [Simon] No.
15:34
– Oh, so you have to it right, yeah.
15:35
– [Simon] Yeah.
15:36
– It is all technique, yeah.
15:37
– Yeah, and you can’t really touch it afterwards either.
15:39
– So you feel like she can do it better than you can?
15:41
– Oh, for sure. – ‘Cause that’s just–
15:42
– I actually tried to do it again recently,
15:43
and I wasn’t so good at it.
15:45
– The painter Marilyn Minter once told me, she was like,
15:46
“The people in my studio can paint better than I can.”
15:48
She’s like, “I invented something,
15:50
“but then they can do it better.”
15:51
It’s interesting, so.
15:52
– Yeah, well, I’m interested in making a seed of something
15:54
that doesn’t require me to even exist anymore.
15:57
I want to have a process that is exactly the same
16:01
as when I first made it,
16:02
where it doesn’t matter who’s making that.
16:06
Now, Niki, on the other hand, it has to come directly
16:08
from his hand, and that’s another way
16:11
we’re really different, ’cause he’s not so process-oriented.
16:16
And his,
16:20
I don’t what it is,
16:21
his physicality is what makes our art have its spirit.
16:24
– Let’s see, okay.
16:25
Let’s look at more images.
16:27
These are more “Accretions,” right?
16:29
– [Simon] Mm-hmm.
16:30
– Are these a different era?
16:33
– Those are from the same sort of era as the last set,
16:37
and this is when we trying to make them look like
16:38
they were kind of popping these gold things out of them.
16:43
Very strange.
16:44
I mean, that one has almost a bird poop
16:46
(audience laughing) kind of a thing out–
16:48
– Right.
16:49
How did you, so clearly texture is a real interest of yours,
16:51
and you guys experiment
16:52
with all these different kinds of textures.
16:53
Sometimes you contrast them.
16:54
These are, and sometimes you come up
16:57
with completely different materials,
16:59
like fur and leather and stuff like that.
17:01
– [Simon] Yeah.
17:02
– Okay, let’s skip the.
17:03
So there’s some more “Accretions,” biomorphic art.
17:05
In nature, do you just look at natural forms,
17:07
or do you just sort of–
17:08
– [Simon] Yeah, all the time.
17:09
– [Carter] Yeah, in nature, or do you look at–
17:10
– Yeah, I love, I mean, California’s great ’cause I can go
17:14
to all kinds of different environments all the time.
17:16
– [Carter] Right.
17:18
– But I really zone out on, like, a leaf,
17:22
and I’ll sit there and look at the leaf for a long time.
17:24
– (laughing) That’s good.
17:26
I mean, you absorb it, I imagine, that way.
17:29
– Yeah, and I just wonder how.
17:31
I was in a cave, actually, in the Giant Forest in California
17:36
about a year ago, and I was like, how does cave bacon form?
17:39
I don’t know if you guys know that, but it’s where,
17:41
it’s this, it looks like bacon that’s hanging off the–
17:44
– Oh, okay. – Off of a cave.
17:45
– Cave bacon.
17:46
– Yeah.
17:47
– I never heard that term. (Simon laughing)
17:48
Is that a real term?
17:49
– Look it up.
17:50
It’s so cool.
17:50
– That sounds amazing.
17:51
– I really want to make cave bacon,
17:53
and I haven’t figured it out yet, but.
17:55
– (laughing) I’m sure it will come.
17:57
(Simon laughing)
17:59
I would have guessed the succulents are appealing,
18:01
you know, cacti.
18:02
– Yeah, I love succulents.
18:04
– Do you go to the Huntington Garden?
18:05
– It’s so great, yeah.
18:06
– That’s so amazing.
18:07
– The cactus garden’s great.
18:08
– Yeah, it’s incredible.
18:09
– Those are great because they’re so ordered.
18:11
I mean, they, and they look wacky,
18:12
but they’re still so ordered.
18:14
I feel like if our artworks were a plant,
18:17
it would definitely be a cactus.
18:18
– Mm-hmm (laughing).
18:20
Okay, here’s something different.
18:22
– This is pretty wild.
18:23
– [Carter] Yeah, this is pretty wild.
18:25
– So I was talking about Niki’s sexual–
18:26
– [Carter] What’s this called?
18:28
– We call it “Megabeast.”
18:29
– [Carter] Okay, okay.
18:30
– ‘Cause it’s a big beast (laughing).
18:34
– [Carter] Yeah, in many ways (laughing).
18:35
– And it’s really big.
18:38
I mean, this one’s interesting, actually,
18:41
’cause we’re known for our creatures,
18:42
and this is the only time we’ve ever done something
18:44
like this, and this is sort of, I mean, Niki would say
18:48
that we, that the beasts are portraits of either people
18:51
or kind of emotional states,
18:54
and they’re very much about those gestures.
18:56
If you look at this guy, he’s a little cocky, and–
19:01
(audience laughing)
19:02
– Pun intended, I would say.
19:03
(Simon laughing)
19:07
– And he’s imposing,
19:09
and this came from a period in our studio
19:13
where the two of us were kind of grappling
19:18
with the quick success that we had,
19:21
and I couldn’t really handle it,
19:22
and the two of us started fighting, and we had–
19:26
– [Carter] ‘Cause it was just 10 years ago.
19:27
It was like, that is fast. – Yeah, it was fast, yeah.
19:29
– [Carter] I mean, when you imagine.
19:30
I mean, that’s not that long ago.
19:31
– And I actually…
19:35
walked out of the studio halfway through this one,
19:37
which was crazy.
19:38
But so we were really fighting, and I think that we were
19:40
having an issue with our own egos,
19:43
and this sort of has come to represent a manifestation
19:47
of our ego, actually, to both of us.
19:51
– I mean, interestingly, it has a somewhat classical pose,
19:53
I mean, from art history you could see, if it was a human,
19:57
you could see a naked model posing for–
20:00
– Yeah, definitely.
20:01
– Michelangelo or whatever.
20:02
– I mean, it’s, yeah, it’s an art pose.
20:04
But when I look at it, I have almost pain flashbacks,
20:09
so it really is an intense piece,
20:14
but very much looks like all of our work.
20:17
But I think it’s a good example of how much emotional
20:21
and sort of situational stuff goes into every object,
20:25
and as we keep going, the shapes morph,
20:29
and they’re a really accurate reflection
20:33
of what our shared emotional state is.
20:37
– So the materials here, the contrast between the softness
20:40
of the fur and the hardness of the metallic, shiny brass,
20:45
or I’m not sure what it is, is interesting to me,
20:48
and that gives these pieces in particular their character.
20:51
– [Simon] Yeah.
20:52
– It also sharpens the genitalia, it sharpens the hands,
20:56
it focuses the eye on these certain body parts, and–
20:58
– Exactly.
20:59
Yeah, I mean, there’s no ignoring it.
21:00
This thing is so confrontational.
21:04
Even when I look at it in front of people,
21:06
sometimes I’m like, “Oh, no, I shouldn’t be showing this.”
21:08
– Right, right.
21:09
(Simon laughing)
21:10
Well, ’cause it uses a language that we’re, you know,
21:12
the soft, furry, stuffed animal language
21:14
is a child language, and then you have
21:16
this very upfront, out there, sexual part too.
21:19
– [Simon] Exactly.
21:19
– Has anyone ever criticized you for that?
21:20
– Yeah, I mean, people are like,
21:22
“Does it have to have a penis on it?”
21:24
or like, “Why are you doing that?”
21:26
But again, that’s actually, I think it’s just part
21:30
of being human, and I was talking about Dr. Seuss’s
21:33
throwing twisted stuff in there.
21:35
If we just ignored all of that,
21:39
then we wouldn’t be being honest about our work,
21:42
and I think that something interesting happens.
21:45
I think it’s why making furniture that isn’t furniture
21:50
is interesting too, is when you jam two things
21:53
into each other, or if I take this glass,
21:58
and I say, “It’s not a glass now,” your mind starts going,
22:01
“Well, what is it then?”
22:03
And I like that space.
22:05
I like the sort of gray zone or just a pairing of two things
22:10
that shouldn’t really be going together.
22:13
– How did you come up with this particular combination
22:15
of materials, and are those parts cast?
22:18
– They’re cast, yeah. – Like lost-wax casts?
22:20
– They are, they’re lost-wax.
22:22
The horns are ebony.
22:24
Those are hand-carved.
22:26
They’re materials that, you know,
22:28
Niki loves using bronze and ebony,
22:32
and for him, wax is the best sculpting medium.
22:36
So we’ll actually make a wax and then directly cast it.
22:41
– [Carter] So he sculpts in wax,
22:42
like that’s what he’s working on.
22:43
– Yeah, so bronze is a great medium for that.
22:45
And then our dad carves the horns, which is kind of cool
22:48
because he– – With what?
22:49
– Our father carves the horns–
22:50
– Oh yeah, yeah? – Out of ebony.
22:52
– [Carter] Oh really, okay.
22:53
– And I think that’s an interesting touch also
22:56
because he taught us how to carve,
22:58
and I don’t know, for me it means a lot
23:02
that every horn was made by my dad.
23:04
– That’s nice, yeah, good.
23:06
And how about the fur?
23:07
– The fur?
23:09
We just love that fur.
23:11
I mean, it kinda looks like human fur.
23:14
– I mean, did you come up with that material,
23:16
like as a solution to this?
23:17
– No, it’s an Icelandic sheep fur.
23:19
– [Carter] Okay.
23:20
– So it’s all natural.
23:21
None of this has a materials twist from me at all.
23:26
But we talk about, like in that case, the conception of it
23:30
is sort of a conversation.
23:32
This is a good example of when Niki
23:34
physically makes the thing.
23:36
– [Carter] Mm-hmm, let’s look at.
23:39
Here’s some more.
23:39
– These are cuter, for sure.
23:42
(audience laughing)
23:43
– These are very appealing, I have to say,
23:45
(Simon laughing)
23:45
I mean, very like Star Wars, you know?
23:47
– So, it’s cool.
23:48
It’s funny to have talked about that other one first
23:51
because what led us into making these objects
23:55
in the first place was we were talking
23:57
about the uncanny valley, which is, if you don’t know,
24:00
it’s about robots, actually, where,
24:03
there’s a robot upstairs who’s a good example of a robot
24:06
that you want to interact with,
24:08
but if you make a robot get too human-like,
24:13
your empathy kind of goes up, up, up, and then,
24:16
as soon as it looks like a person, it goes down to,
24:19
your empathy is zombie level.
24:22
And then if you make it cute, like, give it big eyes,
24:25
it goes way up to above human,
24:30
which is kind of incredible.
24:31
– [Carter] Yeah.
24:32
– And I was thinking about–
24:33
– [Carter] That’s called the uncanny valley?
24:34
– That’s the uncanny valley. – Interesting.
24:35
– The valley is the zombie dip, basically, that happens,
24:41
and it’s true, and I actually was sort of equating it
24:43
to taxidermy, which we grew up around.
24:47
– [Carter] Oh, that’s interesting.
24:48
– And my mom actually loves taxidermy.
24:49
– [Carter] Oh, well, that explains a lot, doesn’t it?
24:51
– Yeah, but I find it super creepy.
24:54
If I’m in a room with it, I really don’t like it.
24:55
– [Carter] Me too, yeah.
24:56
– And Niki wanted to use this fur because he found it
24:59
in Iceland in a gas station, and he was like,
25:01
“I need to use this fur,” and I was like,
25:03
“But I think taxidermy’s so creepy,”
25:05
and so we had this big conversation about it.
25:08
And we thought, what if we don’t include
25:09
any facial features at all, and we’re allowed to use horns,
25:14
and otherwise, it’s just about the gesture?
25:17
– Yeah, and then we have to fill it in as a viewer,
25:19
in a way, like where might the eyes, yeah.
25:20
– Which is great, ’cause that gives you space
25:23
to project onto it.
25:24
Then you get to have a relationship with it immediately,
25:27
and I think that’s kind of a special thing.
25:30
– So when you, obviously, in a museum context,
25:32
we’re not supposed to touch art, and please don’t,
25:35
but you sell these to private, and they’re so touchable.
25:39
I mean, what do you think about that?
25:40
Do you make them to be touched and loved,
25:43
like, to love your teddy bear, or?
25:43
– Yeah, I mean, we started off making furniture,
25:44
so it was supposed to be used,
25:46
and I think less and less people are actually using it,
25:49
but it is meant to be lived with, and if you,
25:53
I’ve heard of them getting a tongue bath by dogs,
25:56
and they’re still okay.
25:57
(laughing)
26:00
– Well, they’re probably pretty durable.
26:01
– They’re durable, yeah.
26:02
You just have to polish them up a little bit.
26:05
– Right.
26:06
When you mentioned earlier, when we were talking
26:09
about the previous piece, you had a fight
26:11
with Niki about that.
26:12
Does that happen often?
26:14
Is it hard to–
26:14
– No, that was really the only fight we ever had.
26:16
– Okay, right.
26:17
Otherwise, it’s smooth collaborating,
26:18
you feel like, overall?
26:19
– Yeah, we really respect each other.
26:21
We speak, like, we’re twins, so we just have a natural way
26:25
of interacting with each other, and I know
26:27
when he’s gonna do something better and vice versa,
26:30
and we just let each other run with it.
26:32
– [Carter] That’s great.
26:32
– When we fought, I think that that sort of
26:37
from-birth understanding faltered a little bit
26:40
because we were both so overwhelmed, and luckily, I mean,
26:45
I’m really grateful that we had a fight
26:46
’cause we’re back to like even pre-career happiness.
26:51
– I can’t think of any other twins who produce art together
26:55
that I can think of in the history of art.
26:56
I’m sure there are, but. – I don’t know.
26:58
– Musicians, maybe.
26:59
– [Simon] There’s probably some, right?
27:00
– Yeah, there must be some.
27:01
(audience members talking)
27:01
Oh, the Starn twins, yeah, oh.
27:02
– Starn twins, ah.
27:03
(laughing)
27:04
I mean, if you can do it, I think it’s really lucky.
27:06
– Yeah.
27:07
There’s another one. – Oh, this guy.
27:08
Hi.
27:09
– This reminds me of a creature
27:10
from “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” like, you know,
27:13
except it’s got a big hard-on.
27:15
(Simon laughing)
27:16
Didn’t see that in “Rudolph.”
27:18
– This was in the same period as the other big one,
27:21
and you can see, putting lips on, et cetera,
27:25
was a departure from what I was just talking about.
27:29
And again, as soon as you start doing that,
27:31
it adds an element of maybe creepy,
27:35
and we were just kind of playing
27:37
with how far we could push that.
27:39
But it was still during this sort of turmoil period.
27:42
– Do you see them as gender-fluid?
27:45
– Not this one.
27:46
(Carter laughing)
27:48
But, yeah, in general, unless it’s explicit,
27:50
then I think you can assign
27:52
whatever gender to it you want to.
27:53
(laughing)
27:57
– And then so here’s where we get to furniture,
27:59
and they’re a true hybrid between sculpture and furniture.
28:03
– Yeah.
28:08
This one, I think we named it “Anna Nicole,”
28:10
for some reason.
28:11
– [Carter] Oh, wow. (audience laughing)
28:13
– And so it has a special place for me.
28:15
I’m obsessed with her, and all of our names, actually,
28:20
are sort of funny.
28:25
And our idea there is if you don’t like the piece,
28:28
maybe you’ll at least laugh at how stupid the name is.
28:32
(laughing)
28:34
But yeah, this was a chaise, and it has big camel feet,
28:39
and it was pretty early.
28:42
I can’t say what year this was in,
28:43
but I want to say 2013, maybe.
28:46
And this was us pushing from furniture into sculpture.
28:50
So since we started as a cabinet company,
28:55
we had, that was really our basis for everything,
28:57
or it was our foundation, and then–
29:00
– [Carter] So it started functionally.
29:01
– Completely. – You really were making
29:02
functional things to sell to people to live with.
29:04
– Very plain, very boring,
29:07
and then we just sort of let ourselves explore with it,
29:12
and slowly it evolved into this,
29:14
and I was always just really excited when you,
29:18
if you put an extra leg on a chair,
29:22
it does something in my head.
29:23
I go, “Why is that there?”
29:26
And that’s all I want to do, really, is create
29:30
almost a visual analogy,
29:33
or we like visual jokes,
29:35
visual metaphors, and visual analogies,
29:39
and just pushing something
29:40
into where you have to start questioning something.
29:43
– I think this is unique ’cause it almost looks like
29:45
it could be a real animal, like a llama or a yak,
29:49
or I don’t know what, but something–
29:50
– I want to meet her.
29:51
– Yeah (laughing).
29:53
It does feel alive.
29:54
– It’s really comfortable.
29:55
– [Carter] Yeah, I bet,
29:56
(Simon laughing)
29:57
and are the horns ebony, those horns?
29:58
– [Simon] Sorry?
29:59
– [Carter] Are the horns ebony?
29:59
Did your dad– – They’re ebony, yeah.
30:01
– Your dad carved those? – So my dad carved those also.
30:02
– [Carter] Oh, nice.
30:03
I love this one ’cause this is like a herd,
30:05
(audience members exclaiming)
30:06
and this is like tour de force to me.
30:07
– [Simon] This was awesome.
30:09
– Yeah, ’cause then this also uses everything.
30:10
It’s got metal, it’s got,
30:12
does this have the hexagonal tiles?
30:13
– Yeah, so the table is made
30:15
from individual hexagonal tiles.
30:17
They’re all three-quarters of an inch.
30:20
They’re not very big, and they look like sort of a generic
30:24
hex-tile bathroom floor, except they are made
30:27
out of solid brass, and we hammer each one of them
30:30
into a shape to sort of fit onto a surface
30:33
and then grind them and miter them.
30:35
It takes– – That’s just insane.
30:36
– Oh, it’s nuts. – This is insane.
30:37
– It takes 20, 30 minutes to do one tile.
30:40
And what’s great is that you don’t see that they’re tiles
30:43
unless you get up close to it.
30:45
– Right, ’cause they’re flush.
30:46
There’s no grout, yeah.
30:47
– So it’s like, “Why don’t you just cast it in bronze?”
30:49
And no, I actually really love the confusion there,
30:53
and I like that,
30:56
that process in particular is about Niki doing something
30:59
very quick and then spending forever on cladding it.
31:03
– So the shape he comes up with quickly,
31:05
the table shape, yeah.
31:06
– Yeah, he just sculpts it very quickly,
31:07
and then we apply my process to it, and it’s like,
31:12
I don’t know why I like that so much,
31:13
but I just really, really like it.
31:15
And with this set we wanted to have a dining table
31:20
that looks, that’s being used
31:22
whether someone’s at it or not.
31:25
So the animals are all eating at it.
31:26
– [Carter] Yeah, so great. (audience laughing)
31:28
– It’s very inviting.
31:29
– [Carter] I want to have a dinner party
31:30
at this table, actually.
31:31
– I know, it would be fun, and–
31:32
– [Carter] Oh my goodness.
31:33
– Also, just considering the human element of having dinner.
31:38
It is, I hope that it’s fun or that jokes are made
31:43
and that there’s good icebreakers, and really,
31:46
if I sit down, I hope that it’s a crazy table like this
31:49
so that I immediately have something to talk about,
31:53
or I can talk to the chair across from me.
31:55
(laughing)
31:57
– How did you come up, again, with how you make the tiles
32:00
form to the curved surface?
32:02
That seems like a technical tour de force to me, yeah.
32:05
– [Simon] It’s super hard.
32:06
So, and actually–
32:07
– And I’ve actually felt one of these in your studio,
32:09
a stool, and I was kind of amazed by the whole–
32:11
– They’re pretty crazy. – ‘Cause they’re so smooth.
32:13
But you could see the shape.
32:14
– And we really don’t make very many of these
32:16
’cause they take so long.
32:17
– [Carter] I can imagine.
32:18
– And I used to make them all by myself.
32:21
Like, this was, I don’t know why I was doing this.
32:24
I would actually wake up in my bed
32:26
and have patina-ed sheets,
32:28
like I had been sweating out brass, which is terrible,
32:31
because I was grinding them all the time.
32:34
– [Carter] Wow.
32:35
– But I studied some blacksmithing at school,
32:37
so I was kind of good at forming metal,
32:41
and I was obsessed with hexagons
32:45
because they don’t like to bend.
32:47
They’re the most efficient.
32:49
I think you get the most surface area
32:51
with the least outer area, does that make sense?
32:55
– Okay, sort of. – Of any regular shape.
32:57
– [Carter] I’m not good at math, but yeah.
32:59
– And it’s also the most rigid of any regular-shaped grid.
33:04
And bees use them.
33:05
I think this is why bees use hexagons,
33:08
because there’s less wax and more space inside.
33:12
– [Carter] They’re very efficient in that sense.
33:13
– Yeah, they’re efficient shapes, so I’m all about them.
33:17
– Did you just discover that by reading
33:18
about geometry and stuff?
33:19
– Yeah, I was Googling hexagons and read that they don’t,
33:24
that the grids can’t bend, and I was like,
33:26
“I’m gonna bend some hexagons!”
33:28
(Carter laughing)
33:29
(laughing) And so, it turns out to be really hard.
33:32
(audience laughing)
33:33
And– – But you did it.
33:34
– Yeah, and so I, basically, I,
33:37
we have a system where you take a piece of paper
33:42
and kind of draw where you think it’s gonna go,
33:44
and then you hammer it until it fits.
33:47
And you’ll never find–
33:49
– [Carter] So a lot of it’s done
33:50
while you’re making the piece–
33:52
– All of it is done.
33:52
– [Carter] Just literally the hammering of the thing
33:53
– It’s all done that way.
33:54
– [Carter] to make it fit together, yeah.
33:55
– You start with one, and you have to move
33:56
in concentric circles out from that one.
33:59
If you move two together, you’ll never,
34:01
there will never be a good seam.
34:04
So, it literally has to grow over the surface,
34:10
and there are never any that are below,
34:13
except on very early pieces,
34:15
I don’t like squares in it.
34:16
So there are no squares.
34:17
Pentagon is okay,
34:20
and, like, seven-, sometimes eight-sided pieces are okay.
34:23
– Wow, okay.
34:25
Oh, I love this one too, ’cause this one’s like
34:27
more table than animal, but it’s still very animal.
34:30
– So this is, we made this at Anderson Ranch,
34:34
I think, in Aspen.
34:35
– What kind of wood is it?
34:36
– It’s walnut, and it’s all hand-carved walnut.
34:41
– [Carter] Did Niki carve it?
34:42
– Yeah, so the same visual language
34:44
without that process on it.
34:47
And again, just kinda goofy stances.
34:52
Actually, the stools are,
34:54
I sit on them sometimes and fall over.
34:56
They’re not really built for that.
34:56
– [Carter] (laughing) Is that right?
34:58
Okay.
34:58
(laughing)
35:01
– But just the feet of the chairs are feet,
35:06
but they look like Smurf feet, and again, just kinda–
35:10
– These really do feel animated.
35:11
– Cute, and yeah, exactly.
35:12
– And just, they absolutely do to me.
35:13
– That’s the whole point. – Which is sort of the magic.
35:14
– And that’s really my brother’s talent is like,
35:16
I could never reach that.
35:18
I try, and I never am able to make something feel like–
35:22
– But Niki can do it.
35:23
– Yes, exactly. – That’s his ability.
35:24
That’s great.
35:26
I thought this is amazing, yeah.
35:28
I want this tub, for sure.
35:29
– I love this thing.
35:30
– I don’t have the house for it.
35:31
– [Simon] This is wild.
35:32
So we go to Portugal.
35:33
We have to find the exact piece of stone.
35:35
We always use this–
35:36
– [Carter] Is that a single piece of stone?
35:37
– [Simon] Yeah.
35:38
– [Carter] I guess it has to be, right?
35:39
It’s marble?
35:40
– I think, it’s marble. – It’s a big block of marble?
35:41
– It’s Pele de Tigre, which it comes from,
35:44
our friend has a quarry there, actually,
35:46
that is super deep and really amazing, and it all has this,
35:53
we love this stone ’cause the grain
35:54
continues through the form.
35:56
And I love to see what character the stone had originally.
36:01
If it’s all white, you don’t get to see that anymore.
36:04
– It is a bit of a surprise ’cause you don’t know
36:05
what veining you’re gonna uncover, right?
36:06
– Yeah. – I mean, yeah.
36:07
– You can kind of get it from looking from the outside
36:11
of the block, but you’re not really sure.
36:14
And this is, the formal series is something
36:19
we call “Zoidberg,” which is based on Dr. Zoidberg
36:22
from the cartoon show “Futurama.”
36:25
– [Carter] Okay, don’t know that one.
36:26
– ‘Cause he has little.
36:27
– [Carter] Oh, okay.
36:29
Don’t know that one.
36:31
– We watched it as kids and were obsessed with it.
36:34
(laughing)
36:35
Really, it’s about feeling the stone,
36:38
so when you walk up to this thing,
36:40
you kind of have to touch it, and those knobs are very,
36:43
the scale is very touchable.
36:45
And the stone is also, it’s honed.
36:48
We never polish it, so it has kind of a skin.
36:51
– [Carter] So it’s not super smooth, yeah.
36:52
– Yeah, it feels a little like skin,
36:53
which is, it’s very sensual.
36:58
We just, stone was our first medium,
37:01
so we kind of started going back to that
37:04
and seeing how we would do it differently.
37:06
– It reminds me, now that I’m looking at it,
37:07
it reminds me of that famous photograph by Harold Edgerton
37:09
of the milk drop that pops up like a jeweled little crown.
37:11
– [Simon] Yeah, it’s like a little droplet (laughing).
37:13
– But it’s totally– – But weirder.
37:15
– And then this is a totally different category.
37:16
This is Dr. Seuss to me.
37:18
– Very.
37:19
So also, growing up in Texas, roadkill was a big theme.
37:22
(audience laughing)
37:24
– [Carter] (laughing) Yeah.
37:25
Taxidermy and roadkill.
37:26
– Uh huh, and I wanted to make roadkill
37:29
of extinct animal pelts.
37:31
(laughing)
37:35
But again, wacky.
37:37
The one that’s not an extinct animal is the rainbow zebra,
37:41
which is, it’s based on the fruit-stripe gum zebra.
37:46
– Oh, yeah, uh huh. (audience laughing)
37:48
– It was like we hunted the fruit-stripe gum zebra.
37:52
– And these are actual rugs that you can walk on, right?
37:55
– [Simon] Yeah.
37:56
– They’re meant to be used.
37:56
– You can put it on the wall or on the ground,
37:58
and they’re all, it’s hand-knotted.
38:00
They’re Nepalese, and we went to Nepal
38:04
and worked on them there.
38:07
And so it’s a dodo, a thylacine,
38:11
some kind of cat whose name I don’t remember, it’s extinct,
38:14
and a mammoth, and then the fruit-stripe zebra.
38:17
– Why don’t you talk a bit about your collaborations,
38:19
’cause you’ve done it with these,
38:20
and you did it with the bead work.
38:21
Maybe we can, I’m gonna find the bead work,
38:23
’cause I want to get to that.
38:26
Oh, there’s a good example of a close-up of that technique
38:29
where you can see how they hug the surface in the same way.
38:31
– Exactly. – That’s really amazing.
38:34
Here’s bead work, right?
38:35
– Yes, so–
38:36
– So that’s your current obsession, you’d said that.
38:38
– Yeah, and that’s been going on for a while now.
38:41
So we went to Cape Town and were just walking around
38:45
a design fair, and we met a collective that does bead work,
38:52
and they were really cool.
38:54
We walked in–
38:55
– Did you go to Cape Town specifically to look for people
38:57
to work with, or–
38:57
– No, we went to do a talk, actually.
38:59
So, and then we just were wandering around.
39:02
And when I went in, I was like, “Wow, these pieces are,
39:06
“they take probably just as long as our work does,
39:09
“and they’re animals, and they’re incredible.”
39:12
Actually, one of the pieces that was in there was
39:15
this many-horned antelope thing from “Princess Mononoke,”
39:21
and I recognized that, and I was like, “Wow, it’s crazy.
39:23
“This weird cultural reference has shown up
39:26
“in a traditional craft.”
39:30
And I just love craft so much, and I think that bead work
39:33
is one that gets overlooked really often.
39:35
I think basket weaving is another one.
39:37
Any kind of hand-done weaving gets really overlooked,
39:40
so I get super excited about getting
39:42
to dive into something like that.
39:45
So, we asked if they would want to work with us
39:49
and spent six months going back and forth with them,
39:53
going back and forth to Cape Town,
39:55
working closely with them.
39:57
They taught me how to bead.
39:58
We would all draw together.
39:59
– What does it mean to, they teach how to bead?
40:01
What’s the actual, what is that?
40:02
Does that mean you’re stringing little glass beads
40:05
on a string– – Yeah, one by one.
40:05
– One by one, oh, okay.
40:07
– They use a chain stitch that has two or three beads on it,
40:10
and they’re all next to each other.
40:12
There’s many ways to do it, but this is, it’s incredible.
40:17
Their method is super expressive,
40:22
and it was exciting for us.
40:23
We hadn’t used much color until this,
40:25
and they sort of introduced us to color,
40:28
and it’s the two of us and then a group of 25 women.
40:34
And we showed this collection at the Cooper Hewitt,
40:39
and the idea was to do transgressive design,
40:43
and for us it’s obviously not functional,
40:47
but we would take these mushrooms and call them umbrellas,
40:50
for example, in order to get them into a design fair.
40:53
– [Carter] Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, right, that’s great.
40:55
– Or if you call that thing a toy, then it has a function.
41:00
So that’s something we play with too.
41:02
But this was a really life-changing project,
41:08
and it’s gotten me completely obsessed with beads.
41:11
And we still are doing it, actually.
41:14
We’re gonna be showing some new works like this
41:17
in September in New York, which I’m excited for.
41:22
But also, it just changed our lives
41:24
because we’d never gone to somewhere like Cape Town.
41:27
It’s a really intense place.
41:29
There’s a lot of sad things happening.
41:32
We thought the way they were making money was not great,
41:38
like the amount of money they made for the pieces
41:40
that took as long and were as great as ours,
41:43
they were not making nearly as much,
41:45
and so we set up a whole profit-sharing system,
41:49
and it’s a completely different kind of,
41:51
for us it was kind of an experiment
41:55
in how to business also, because I think it’s important
41:59
that makers, A, get credit, ’cause I’m not the only one
42:03
who makes my work, and B, are paid really well for it.
42:08
So this was kind of our first step in that direction.
42:13
– So the collaboration was, you felt like
42:17
you were taking their, they were helping you
42:19
move your own work with their tradition
42:22
that they infused you with.
42:23
– Oh, completely, yeah.
42:24
I mean,
42:27
it’s equally us and them,
42:29
as far as the aesthetic goes, and you would have no idea
42:35
which part came from whom,
42:37
and I think that that’s kind of awesome.
42:41
And when we showed this at the Cooper Hewitt,
42:43
it was just a list of all of our names.
42:45
It wasn’t the Haas Brothers.
42:47
I mean, now it kind of happens,
42:49
though I wish that it was just that list.
42:53
And so that was something that we were sort of
42:55
experimenting with, and we’ve actually now taken this,
42:59
because I became so obsessed with beads,
43:01
we’re doing a really similar project in central California,
43:05
where I go and teach bead work
43:09
to women in farming communities where work is pretty scarce,
43:14
for women in particular.
43:16
And so I teach them beading,
43:18
and then we start working together,
43:19
and we have a whole collection of that coming out also.
43:22
– That’s great.
43:23
So I imagine it brings you to the point of art and craft
43:25
and the difference or not difference,
43:27
and I imagine you don’t care,
43:28
and you probably don’t see a difference.
43:29
– I don’t care, except for how people categorize them.
43:34
I don’t like that there’s a hierarchy there,
43:36
and that’s something that started for me when I was at RISD
43:39
and I was studying painting,
43:41
that a portrait is somehow above a still life,
43:44
that a history painting is really special,
43:47
when I found them so boring, actually.
43:49
– I think we’re done with that.
43:50
Hopefully, we’re done with that, yeah.
43:51
– But that’s a natural, that’s something that people do.
43:55
– It is art history, to some degree.
43:57
– Yeah, and I never was into that.
44:00
I don’t think drawings are any less than a painting,
44:04
and I don’t really think that something you live with,
44:08
like design, is somehow less than a piece of art either.
44:12
It’s just how much do you focus on function or not,
44:17
and I think craft gets the real, gets kicked to the side
44:21
all the time, when in truth, it’s sort of why we’re here.
44:26
I mean, without baskets and pottery, we wouldn’t be here,
44:30
so I think it’s part of,
44:33
and without technology, that’s so design.
44:36
– Well, and functional things have always been
44:38
the carriers of art.
44:39
I think it’s just part of human culture.
44:41
As soon as they made something to cook with,
44:45
they decorated it with a line or something.
44:47
– Yeah, maybe there’s not an emotional impact
44:50
when you see it, but for me there is.
44:53
When I see design works, there’s an emotional impact.
44:56
And I think the two go hand in hand.
45:00
They’re super important.
45:01
Craft is really, to me, the most important one.
45:05
– Well, people, it’s interesting,
45:06
because will talk about high art.
45:07
You know, you talk about a great painter or something
45:09
having a great craft, and they have great technique,
45:12
and it’s not a dirty word in that instance.
45:15
I think people, they create those boundaries themselves
45:18
in their heads–
45:19
– [Simon] Definitely.
45:20
– Like they do a lot of things.
45:21
– Yeah, and sure, it’s easy to fetishize a painter
45:25
sitting alone and doing his thing, and I get that,
45:27
but that’s not the only way to make art.
45:29
– But there are many painter and many famous artists
45:32
in our history who had huge studios,
45:33
and art’s always been about production and business
45:36
in many cultures.
45:37
– Exactly.
45:38
– Not every culture, but.
45:39
– And, I mean, I might be wrong about the exact origins
45:41
of this, but I think about beads
45:43
and how they were an abacus,
45:46
that that’s basically a calculator.
45:48
That’s beads.
45:49
Beads were, they were currency at one point.
45:52
I think that the Jacquard loom was the earliest computer.
45:57
I’m sure I’m wrong about that fact,
45:59
but I know that it’s a very early computer.
46:01
So weaving was actually like a form of computing.
46:05
– It’s a mind-body connection.
46:06
It’s what your hands can do with the material–
46:08
– [Simon] Yeah, exactly.
46:08
– And how your mind manipulates that.
46:09
– Yeah. – Yeah, great.
46:11
Well, thank you very much.
46:11
– Yeah, thank you, guys.
46:12
– Thank you all for coming.
46:14
(audience applauding)