Transcript for Episode 152 – Sculptural Furniture + Functional Object Designer, Laura Kishimoto (Denver, CO, USA)

Recorded February 10, 2021
Published March 4, 2021

Full recording here: https://wisefoolpod.com/sculptural-furniture-functional-object-designer-laura-kishimoto-denver-co-usa/

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Matthew Dols 0:12
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Laura Kishimoto 1:01
Yeah, I’ve had to do a lot of video lectures this semester with COVID. And it’s a really humbling experience to have to sit and listen to yourself instead of just forcing yourself on other people.

Matthew Dols 1:14
Just to be clear, so you’re teaching at where.

Laura Kishimoto 1:18
So I’m teaching at Red Rocks Community College. And it’s actually I think it’s considered to be the third largest woodworking program in the US. And because it’s a community college, there is like an actual community. We have all sorts of students we’ve had literal rocket scientists, we’ve had people who design robots that perform surgery, and then we also have like, fresh high school graduates and a lot of military veterans. So while it’s not a university position, I’ve really enjoyed it because I kind of experienced so many perspectives from the students.

Matthew Dols 1:57
Sure. Take a step back. I always start the podcast with something stupidly simple. Could you please pronounce your name correctly for me?

Laura Kishimoto 2:06
Laura Kishimoto

Matthew Dols 2:08
And one of the first things actually I wanted, I always asked us to get started just to sort of learn a little bit about your sort of your childhood, your background, how did you even come to being creative? Parents, teachers, like what was the thing that led you down that path?

Laura Kishimoto 2:22
Well, I mostly come from a family of scientists, pretty much everybody in my family is in immunology in some form or another. But my parents were always really encouraging of having a creative habit and drawing and painting. And my dad in particular, when I went to apply for colleges, I knew I was good at drawing and painting, but I had never really felt particularly inspired or really, like I had anything noteworthy to contribute. And so when I was applying to colleges, I was just applying to regular universities. And my dad kind of took me aside when I got into Thursday. And he was like, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity, you could always come back and pursue another field later on. And I think he was kind of largely influenced by the fact that his brother had tried to pursue a fine arts career, and ended up going back to school to become an architect instead. So I think he was also like, sort of a repressed artist, my dad, he always wanted to be a photographer.

Matthew Dols 3:30
Being a photographer sucks, I’m afraid.

Laura Kishimoto 3:33
Yeah. It’s not very rewarding, I guess.

Matthew Dols 3:36
It is nowhere near as glamorous as the movies and books and other photographers make it out to be like that. Not in my opinion. Anyways, maybe other people think it’s incredible. But I don’t see the lore of it. Because it’s it doesn’t exist, like the way the way we think about a photographer is how it was like from the 1920s. Still, even the 80s, maybe early 90s. That industry is going away very quickly, unfortunately, now, and you went to race day? Yes, I did. I love race day grade school, one of my mentors actually went there as well. So like, I’m a huge fan. One of the things I want to know about about you, you’re probably one of the youngest people I’ve had as a guest at this point. So I’m very interested about well, but I’m very interested about that perspective, because I’m a professor so I’m teaching people like you. And I’m interested is like how is the educational system working for you these days? like did you feel when you went out? Did you feel prepared when you left at the both craftsmanship, but also sort of business minded? like whatever you needed to do your career?

Laura Kishimoto 4:49
I wouldn’t say that I did feel prepared professionally or craft twice. But wristy to me was a it was much more about sort of like discovering Like I had never done any sort of three dimensional art before, before I went to RISD, dia hadn’t even held a hammer. And then when I went to Thursday, I was using a hammer to, to jack open the washing machine sensors to get free laundry. And my professors kind of introduced me to three dimensional art and how to think, spatially and how to consider an object from every conceivable viewpoint. And that was a real aha moment. For me. I had always struggled before that with abstraction, and not just sort of taking stuff that was right in front of me. And once I realized that I could set a specific intention for a piece. And then nobody actually had to know about that intention, it just had to like, create, like a harmonious feel to the object. And once I realized that everything wasn’t reliant on that one viewpoint, and I could just keep turning it and keep working each viewpoint of the object. That was like a huge revelation to me. So I don’t think I walked away with professional skills from wristy, but I definitely feel that I walked away with a lot of spatial reasoning, a lot more sort of aesthetic identity, and just kind of joy out of creating a three dimensional piece.

Matthew Dols 6:24
You seem to have a very cohesive aesthetic, like I really love some of your one that works. Which one’s the one I really love the, the You, Me chair and the vaulted stool that those generalist statics have sort of exaggeration of things. And the, the, the choice of materials, I’m a huge material snob, like I love good materials, like nobody, like I’m sitting here trying to decorate my new office. And I’m trying to find a piece of leather and I’m trying to being such a snob about like, which kind of leather to use. And like I used to do woodworking so to have a little bit of working knowledge, wood, I’m such a snob, I love a beautiful, good, exotic wood far more than they do like your average woods. So that’s sort of one of my questions is like, why do you choose the materials you choose? Because like, you could go with extremely exotic stuff. And you know, of course, which is very expensive. But you you seem to choose to work with more. pedestrian woods, I don’t know what kind of word but to it like sort of,

Laura Kishimoto 7:34
yeah, domestic hardwoods,

Matthew Dols 7:36
common woods, my guess is a good word for it. So why do you choose to work with sort of common materials and then make exotic shapes from them, instead of maybe doing some you know, something else with more exotic materials,

Laura Kishimoto 7:51
I would say primarily because like form, above all else is the most important thing to me. So if I use a more exotic wood or something with like a particularly burly pattern, I find that it pulls away from what I’m trying to achieve, rather than adding to the actual piece. So I tried to pick out words that have sort of as minimally visual, or I guess more of a subtle visual effect, tried to pick words with really straight grain lines and kind of a subdued look to them to highlight the play of light on the surface of the piece, especially when they start bending or twisting it around.

Matthew Dols 8:36
So you take light into consideration.

Laura Kishimoto 8:40
Yeah, I sort of see it as like designing multiple simultaneous objects. So I want the piece to look just as strong and as powerful and full light as it does with like a raking, low light.

Matthew Dols 8:58
Shooting. Okay. I have a question for you. Sorry, if this comes off as weird or awkward. You’re young, you’re you’re have a much younger generation that I’m 47 I feel like I’m sort of on the other end of my career than you are. But really, we’re only 1515 Yeah, it’s

Laura Kishimoto 9:18
not so bad.

Matthew Dols 9:19
It feels bad. You feel horribly young to me. I feel horribly old talking to you, but it’s okay. But my point is, like, when I was your age, I had very strong opinions of like my career goals, what I wanted to do where I wanted to go, all this kind of stuff. So I’m wondering for you, now, you know, so that you more or less I call it still recently came out of school. So like, what are your career goals at your age and your position?

Laura Kishimoto 9:48
for a really long time, I did have the impression that merit would drive success, which I realized after a few years working outside diversity that it does not But I’ve been really lucky like, I seem to always happen to get a show or happen to get a client every single time, my schedule is opening up. So I’d say my long term goals would be to have a line of work that is more accessible to the average person with the average paycheck that still has my aesthetic, but requires less giving absolutely everything I have, like emotionally and physically. And putting that into an object. And then once I sort of sort out that line and have it a little bit more hands off, for me, I would like to continue to concentrate on museum quality pieces that are excessively dramatic and not very functional.

Matthew Dols 10:51
Good. Okay, lovely. Well, I mean that, but that’s the sort of thing like, okay, I looked through your website didn’t really see any prices. So like, do you sell your pieces?

Laura Kishimoto 11:02
Yeah, I wouldn’t say I sell them with a great regularity. But I get by on commissions and speculation work, I had both, you made chairs, or two out of three union chairs bought by museums this past year. So to me that sort of like, they couldn’t go to a better home, because there, people will be able to walk around and view it from 360 degrees, no one will sit in it.

Matthew Dols 11:34
That’s what I was about to ask you. I mean, I do I appreciate the desire to be in a museum. But once it’s in a museum, especially considering you’re designing sort of functional things, it will never serve its function again, it becomes an object that will never be interacted with again. Are you okay with that?

Laura Kishimoto 11:55
Yeah. So, function has always been sort of my weakest point, the first woodworking project I ever made was a table. And if you place an object on the surface of the table, it roll into the center of the table and fall through a hole in the center of the table back onto the ground. So I’ve never made function a priority, I think, in part because I desire like a really engaging form so much, I will always compromise function. And to me, building a piece that looks like a chair is much more about sort of using the universal archetype or motif as a chair that everybody could recognize. And building off of that sort of abstracting what a chair is.

Matthew Dols 12:47
But like, when I when I looked at the vaulted stool, I was, of course, this is me projecting. I saw like a gothic cathedral kind of patterning to it. But that’s because my father is a priest. So they you know, I see I see religion in almost everything, how we are, you know, kind of thing. So I mean, like, so you talk about function or form over function. But so where do you find the inspirations for these

Laura Kishimoto 13:15
for the vaulted store in particular, it was Gothic cathedrals, I was reading. Yeah, I was reading Ken Foley’s Pillars of the Earth at the time, and I was getting like really just excited, excessively excited about Gothic architecture, and barrel vaulting, and all that. And it was during my upholstery class at rusty. So I wanted to sort of highlight the fact that upholstery can be a hyperbolic geometry. But the the strength of upholstery is that it doesn’t need to be a two dimensional curve. I take a lot of inspiration from origami and paper folding. So I wanted to do something that like played with the surface area of the piece. And hyperbolic geometry is where basically at the, the origin point zero comma zero, the surface area is zero, and then the surface area expands exponentially in every direction as it comes out. So if you think about like lettuce leaves and stuff like that, the edges of the lettuce leaves will start to curl in on themselves because there’s so much more surface area towards the outside of the leaf. So kind of combining those two the love of hyperbolic geometry and then the excitement about Gothic architecture. I wanted to make a bent lamination frame with Danish cording, weave in and a pattern through the frame. And then upholstery on top of that, that’s very

Matthew Dols 14:53
intricate.

Laura Kishimoto 14:56
That is functional though you can sit on that store.

Matthew Dols 15:01
So you’re saying I couldn’t sit on a chair like the you me chair like I can’t sit in it. Because you represent have people in them, the functionality of them,

Laura Kishimoto 15:11
I actually did do a photo shoot of the chair with someone sitting in it just to prove to everybody that you can sit in it. But you would never sit in it for comfort, you would sit in it as like a throne to like, Lord power over everyone else.

Matthew Dols 15:27
As we all do that sometimes. No, I also, I noticed also in your CV that you were, you want a lot of awards and had a lot of sort of interest in your work in 2013 2014, sort of like read around when you were coming out of school. And I’m wondering, did was there some any sort of like, like, any amount of pressure sort of put on you, because like you’re winning awards, and you’re winning awards, to continue to sort of really push forward and innovate to make sure you sort of keep winning these these opportunities.

Laura Kishimoto 16:05
I guess there was pressure to stay in the fine arts and not try to pursue a field in more like industrial design and that sort of thing. But I also felt like I had sort of stumbled on to one of my greatest strengths. And I really wanted to play up that strength, then move to a company where I would sort of constantly be mediocre at what I did.

Matthew Dols 16:34
I’m all for it.

Laura Kishimoto 16:36
Yeah, I did have at the time, I was a little bit overwhelmed. Like for a while I tried to join a gallery, and I was just totally unprepared for how cutthroat galleries can be.

Matthew Dols 16:50
Absolutely, that that entire aspect of the industry is very difficult. I mean, you have to be a certain kind of a creative person to desire and be able to successfully participate in the gallery scene industry.

Laura Kishimoto 17:10
Yeah, the gallery, I was never really signed to an exclusive contract with the gallery. But the gallery owner just told me point blank that I shouldn’t expect to ever make a living off the fine arts and that I should just marry rich. So I’d be supported by a wealthy husband. Wait, hold on. That’s a joke that we used to say back in late 80s. And 90s. Like me, people are still saying that to you these days. I mean, he’s the only one who’s explicitly said it to me. But he was, he was like a fairly unpleasant person he would. He was really, really paranoid about me going behind his back and selling directly to people. So he would always kind of like, tell me about people who had screwed him over in the past. And like, how I got I couldn’t do that.

Matthew Dols 18:06
Sadly, that’s very common in the industry as well. So yeah, his paranoia is probably duly noted. But, so Okay, so you have worked with galleries, though? Or was it

Laura Kishimoto 18:22
just the one gallery, just the one gallery? To me, it was a fairly off putting experience, because when I did sell a chair through them, he gave the client a discount that I hadn’t discussed with him. And then I got half of the discounted price. And it wasn’t enough to even cover the cost of building the chair. I think I ended up making like, less than $5 an hour for that chair.

Matthew Dols 18:51
Yeah, the Yeah, the discounting that galleries do is something that really should be addressed that people don’t talk about it enough. Like they don’t, a lot of people let a lot of artists don’t even know that galleries do that. Like I worked with a gallery in San Francisco decades ago. And the owner was incredibly supportive of the artist. And anytime she offered a discount, that discount came out of her side, never out of the artist side. That’s incredible. It was incredible. And of course she ended up closing your doors because well, she was such a giving person and she couldn’t keep that business model going. But you know, it’s that kind of a thing where like, if a gallery chooses to give a discount well the gallery chose to give this kind of should come out of their part not out of the artists. Like it’s hard enough to be able to as a practicing artists, like it’s hard enough to be able to come up with a good price that you like, my dad was on an episode previous and he’s his professor used to say, you set a price that will make it so you’re not sad. You’ve lost this So like, if you set that price at a point where you’re not sad to have last never seen this piece ever again, because it’s now gone from you. And then you have to double that for a gallery. Yeah, the prices are generally outside of the realm of the sort of what should be the price in the market for your stuff. because realistically, the first price, the pre gallery, 50% is probably closer to what should be the retail price. And that makes it really difficult for artists oftentimes to work with galleries unless they can sell consistently so that you can sell volume and so therefore, lower prices.

Laura Kishimoto 20:41
Yeah, and I’ve always struggled. Yeah, I’m quite slow at building stuff. So volume is not a strong suit of mine.

Matthew Dols 20:51
Okay, how long does it take you to make a piece?

Laura Kishimoto 20:54
Well, the image here is my most labor intensive, and that would be working. Probably 40 or 50 hour work week for three months straight on the image here.

Matthew Dols 21:06
Got like constantly, like all day, every day, are we talking with dry down times and stuff like that. Also,

Laura Kishimoto 21:13
it does include glue times, because they’re over, I counted at once, I want to say that there’s like 77 individual glue ups in that piece. So that’s like 77 pieces that have to get milled after they glued, get glued up and get edge detailing and all that. So it’s it’s a constant sort of cycle of waiting for glue to dry and then like, quickly trying to plain and and, and melva pieces, and clamp them onto the jig so that I could do the next set of glue ups.

Matthew Dols 21:47
So I mean, under that thing, you would only be able to make four pieces a year.

Laura Kishimoto 21:52
I’d say that’s pretty typical for me. Yeah.

Matthew Dols 21:55
Wow. Okay. Okay. But I want to take that baby step because like, in my mind what I started thinking, what you’re saying right now is I start thinking you’re more of a sculptor, who happens to work with sort of functional scope forms. Because you’re also saying they’re not functional so that you can really yours golf. So I guess the question, but my point is, is like, how would you define yourself? Like, there’s a difference between how the public define somebody versus how they define themselves? Like, I hear you as a sculptor who happens to work with traditional functional materials and shapes, but they’re not traditionally, folks.

Laura Kishimoto 22:37
I guess I would typically identify as a designer, I usually say, sculptural furniture and functional object designer. But I’m also very much a woodworker. I think that wood is an incredibly restrictive medium, because it keeps trying to remember that it was a tree. So there’s a lot of qualities about wood that you have to work around and that you have to compensate for. So for me, that technical aspect has always been really important, as well, which is why I wouldn’t go all the way to sculpture. But

Matthew Dols 23:17
perfectly fine. It’s how you define yourself. I don’t believe you ever answered me prices.

Laura Kishimoto 23:24
Oh prices? What was the question again?

Matthew Dols 23:27
How much are your pieces? Oh,

Laura Kishimoto 23:30
well, though, you may chairs the most expensive one, because it’s the most labor intensive. So I’ve been selling that at 12,500. And then typically, I tried to price all of my pieces by the number of hours that went into them and the materials that went into them. So it’s usually lower end of the spectrum would be about 12 $100 for the vaulted school.

Matthew Dols 23:54
Okay, I won’t ask to trade artworks with you, then you’re out of my price range, it’s fine. Because like, I would love to have a piece of yours in my home, but that’s too much. Okay, you mentioned that term, something noteworthy to contribute prior to going to Thursday, now that you’ve gotten out of school, do you feel like you have something noteworthy to contribute?

Laura Kishimoto 24:18
I do feel that if I had gone into any other field, particularly if I had gone into the sciences, or I was also considering ASL interpretation. I would have always been in the middle of the crowd. So by going into woodworking and by going into the fine arts, I felt that I had found sort of a unique way to contribute and make a lasting impact with sculptural form. I suppose. I’d found a bit of a niche.

Matthew Dols 24:56
You out. You seem to phrase that like a question. So I’m like

Laura Kishimoto 25:01
To me, one of the most important comments I’ve ever gotten was from a friend who had only ever known me. Personally, he had never seen my work. And the first time he saw my work, because I think he had always assumed I was a pretty quiet, soft spoken, not very like assertive person. And when he saw my work, he was like, Oh, this is your ego, like, this is where you speak the loudest. This is where you’re the most unapologetic?

Matthew Dols 25:31
Are you a soft spoken? person?

Laura Kishimoto 25:35
Technically, my voice is soft, which sort of automatically filters in people’s brains. So I can say something that’s quite harsh. Or mean, and people will automatically like filter and they won’t actually remember me saying something mean to them? Because they’ll just remember the tone of the voice.

Matthew Dols 25:53
Yeah, see, my tone is the opposite. When I say something nice, people think I’m saying mean things. It’s very difficult. I know. Alright, so you’re out of school you’ve been out for I think, what’s five, six years now? Something like that?

Laura Kishimoto 26:10
2013. So a little bit more. Seven? Yeah, seven, eight years.

Matthew Dols 26:15
Okay. How is my hat? Basically, I’m not in America, I’m not at your level of career. So like, how is the industry treating you these days are there a lot of opportunities has, has the pandemic affected your opportunities,

Laura Kishimoto 26:34
I haven’t done really all that much work at all during the pandemic. Partially because since I’m teaching part time, we had to rapidly figure out how to teach woodworking partially online. So that just sort of ate up a lot of my mental bandwidth was reorganizing those classes and making them accessible to everyone. I’ve been working mostly on spec work in terms of personal work this year, and haven’t really been prioritizing, getting any particular projects finished

Matthew Dols 27:09
to apply for grants, or residencies, or any of these kinds of things.

Laura Kishimoto 27:13
I do really enjoy residencies. Because I do feel somewhat isolated in Denver. I don’t think that there’s a huge fine arts community, or at least I haven’t found it yet, in Denver, and I miss being in school and having that really insular environment where you’re constantly surrounded by really ambitious and driven people. So I love residencies for that reason, and that you can, you’re around people that inspire you, and that you could bounce ideas off of. I haven’t applied for one recently, though, because I just got a home and I’ve been building a shop in the home.

Matthew Dols 27:52
Sure. Makes sense. But yeah, that I mean that, that, gosh, I mean, being in school is such a magical time, like the resources that are available, the inspirations, the people. I mean, and the thing is, everybody takes it for granted. They’re always like, Oh, this is what art it being an artist is like, it’s like the end. It’s never like that again, like that is the best time of your life.

Laura Kishimoto 28:21
It really is. Yeah, I always tell my students like you have to take the opportunity to fail spectacularly while you’re here because there’s nowhere else will will be easier to fall like straight on your face. And there’s nowhere else where you’ll be able to like Learn as much and recover from complete failures.

Matthew Dols 28:43
Oh my God, if I went out now and did an exhibition that was a complete failure, be ruined. Like it would you know, it would take me a decade to get past that bad reputation but like you fucked something up in school big deal and go for the next assignment make something better, but like, Man school was those magic times I loved school so much. Probably that’s why I’m still a teacher. I love being around school so much.

Laura Kishimoto 29:11
Yeah, honestly, it informs a lot of the reasons why I’m working at Red Rocks is it just makes me so happy to see people in counter woodworking for the first time or encounter bent lamination for the first time and see what their brains think of because they don’t know all the rules yet.

Matthew Dols 29:30
Absolutely. I love woodworking. I love the smell of woodworking. I do I mean I’m a photographer. I miss the smell of a wet darkroom. I miss the smell of a clay studio that I mean all these different places they have these very distinct smells that when you don’t have the opportunity to go in them, you’re like, ah, fond memory. What residency is have you done

Laura Kishimoto 29:52
so far I’ve only done two. I did the residency at Anderson ranch and Aspen. Colorado. And then I did a newer sort of upcoming residency at Buffalo Creek. It’s right near Tahoe, California and Nevada right on the border.

Matthew Dols 30:11
Well, and what were your experiences? Like? I’m a huge fan of the whole residency. Like I mean, so you know, where they were they sort of solo where you sort of went into did your own project where they communal where it was all about engaging with other people like what were the the experiences of your residency is like,

Laura Kishimoto 30:29
well, both times I met really inspirational people that I still keep in touch with and that I was able to, especially Anderson match, I feel like they encourage you to explore new mediums and like, take advantage of the experts that they have there on site. So I did a little bit of experimentation with Cooper clay while I was there. At the time, I had no idea. The properties of paperclay are like making it self raising or supporting it while it’s firing in the kiln. And then at the Buffalo Creek residency, it was a little bit more independent, because the woodshop was actually an entire like, mountain over from where all the other artists were. And there was no air conditioning. So I would work. I would start work at like 6pm. And I would work until probably like 5am or so when it was the coolest? And then I’d come back to the resident the house and usually meet up with the ceramicist because by then he was getting up to start his workday.

Matthew Dols 31:34
Who did you work with it at Anderson ranch.

Laura Kishimoto 31:38
I say my closest person, or the person I was closest with was calling wine neck, I know probably mispronouncing his name, but he had actually graduated Thursday. And he was making these geometric forms. And then using slip casting to create sort of attaching nodes for those geometric forms and build out these giant kind of sculptural chandelier pieces. And then, Fabio Serrano was the woodworking department head at the time. And Mark 10 was the intern and he later became the new department head Rizal. Hicks was the ceramics department head and she helped me a lot with the paper clay.

Matthew Dols 32:24
I’m just asking because I’ve had some other guests from the Anderson ranch actually on the podcasts.

Laura Kishimoto 32:29
Yeah, I think I listen to that one.

Matthew Dols 32:35
Which leads me back to a question that you are a comment that you made about like that, that you thought the art world was about merit, but you’ve learned differently. What have you learned that is, is not merit based.

Laura Kishimoto 32:51
I guess I’ve learned that so much of it is about building your brand identity and creating a consistent image of yourself. And then also, so much of it is just I guess what I would call CEO time, like figuring out your taxes, like recording your receipts, building your website, making invoice forms, like all that. And then all of it is done on the fly with no, like, formal education behind it. So you sort of constantly have imposter syndrome.

Matthew Dols 33:27
I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t feel any. However, I also. However, I also know that I know nothing about business. I am a horrible business person. And I will admit it straight up front.

Laura Kishimoto 33:42
Yeah, I feel like

Matthew Dols 33:45
because you weren’t trained in business, you don’t know how to do run a business. You were trained in being an artist.

Laura Kishimoto 33:51
Yeah, and learning through trial and error. I’ll do something repeatedly wrong until it goes right.

Matthew Dols 33:55
What’s an example of something that you feel like you did wrong?

Laura Kishimoto 33:59
I guess the biggest example I can think of was equating self sufficiency with being like a real artist. So thinking that if I made every single component of a piece like that made the piece more of an art object. And so realizing that I should really outsource as much as possible to experts who know how to do it better, and faster, and cheaper. And trying to build a network of people that I really trust and respect has probably been like the greatest learning curve for me.

Matthew Dols 34:39
Yeah, I just figured that out two years ago. I mean, it’s one of those things like there’s this romantic idea of artists being in their studio hand producing every single thing. And, and I’ve realized in the past, just in the past two years, probably just since I started doing this podcast that it It’s the smartest way, which I think is the difference. Like, the smartest way to do this kind of stuff is to have a group of people that you trust and people, you can pass certain things off to who are experts in that part of the field, whatever. But basically, the idea that being an artist, as the romantic idea of that is that we’re these individual loners off in our studio smoking cigarettes until, you know, days, days long. And but realistically, it’s more about actually building community and finding people and building a network. And that’s more almost more important than the hand production and all this kind of stuff. These days.

Laura Kishimoto 35:46
Yeah, I watched this TED talk that was really influential to me, which was called when ideas have sex. by Matt Ridley, have you seen that?

Matthew Dols 35:56
I have not, but I will now.

Laura Kishimoto 35:59
So it’s all about how, like sort of humanity’s greatest strength is our communal mind, and the exchange of ideas and building on top of other ideas, and that I believe his quote was self sufficiency is poverty. So if you know how to do everything by yourself, it consumes all of your time and energy. And ultimately, you’re never going to be as good at it as people who specialize and things. And he gave the example of like a computer mouse. And he said, nobody in the entire world knows how to build a computer mouse. Because you don’t know how to mine for petroleum and rare metals, and do the circuitry and the software engineering and all that. So I kind of came away with that thinking that outsourcing is amazing. And also that there should be no stigma to copying, because copying is how people exchange ideas without having to like, physically be present with each other. If you copy someone’s work, who lived hundreds of years ago, you’re kind of tapping into their mindset, and figuring out what they were thinking at the time. And then you build off of it and you create your own work. Based off that mindset.

Matthew Dols 37:18
Be careful with the word copy.

Laura Kishimoto 37:20
Yeah, there,

Matthew Dols 37:21
there are laws about that. So it’s, it’s in tribute to, you know, honorary, I don’t know what the words are these days, like, you know, in in, in honor of this person, kind of thing more than

Laura Kishimoto 37:36
copying, copy, a copy and more as a, as an exercise, not as a way to make a profit off of something. But if you say see a particular technique that you’re inspired by, and you try to recreate the technique, just by being a unique person, you’re inevitably going to come up with your own take on it. Oh, yeah,

Matthew Dols 38:00
don’t get me wrong. I’ve done the same thing I did, to two series of works when I was in my bachelor’s program, that I thought they were so innovative until my professors like oh, that’s just like Robert hein. Again. Same thing 30 years ago. And then another time, I did a whole series of work and somebody’s like, you know, that looks just like interest con and look just like fucking it just got like, it’s amazing how, how influenced we are without even knowing we’re being influenced, like, it just sort of seeps into our brain. And then we’re just like, Fuck, we, I’m mimicking somebody’s previous work, you know, hopefully building on it, making it somehow unique and special to me. But sometimes we fail at that miserably as well. But

Laura Kishimoto 38:47
I think we’re kind of we’re all working with the same biology. So if we try to make something completely original, inevitably, we’re gonna make something that looks exactly like what someone else made. Previously,

Matthew Dols 38:59
somebody else who was trying to be incredibly original. Well, there’s also the issue of that, which is funny, I was just talking with somebody else about this that we’re being we’re constantly being encouraged to break the molds be original, be unique. However, they also want you to work within a certain structure, which is the art market or the arts industry. So you can push the limits so far, but you can’t push it too far or else you’re outside of the industry. So like there’s this fine line of where you you how far you can push and how far they don’t want you to push simultaneously.

Laura Kishimoto 39:39
Yeah, I think because most of my work involves freeform bent lamination. I think one of the reasons why it comes off as more unique looking is that it’s just so labor intensive. Nobody wants to do it because you can’t make money off of it.

Matthew Dols 39:56
Well, okay, let’s get back to the nuts and bolts of it. How do you make money If you’re not making money from selling your art,

Laura Kishimoto 40:02
so with the art that I can make, I can usually break even for my costs as, as an artist, so covering all of my professional costs, and then with teaching, I can usually break even with my personal expenses. So I don’t make a lot of money.

Matthew Dols 40:22
It’s a good start, but that’s not going to help you out in long term. But, yeah. Something you talked about earlier, which I didn’t follow up on. You said you sold a piece? Well, you said you sold two pieces, two museums in the last year. I’m always fascinated. How does that happen? So like, I’m sure you didn’t like write a letter to a museum? I’ve got a I’ve got a piece available. Are you interested in buying? Yeah, you know, kind of silly. How did that come about?

Laura Kishimoto 40:49
Yeah, like both of them were kind of interesting, because they both were a stack of coincidences. The chair that I sold directly, was came from meeting, Darren Alfred, who’s one of the directors at the Denver Art Museum, meeting him at a show in Denver, where I was auctioning off a sculpture, and just happened to meet with him and talk with him. And he was like someday, like, we’re gonna build it afford one of your chairs. And then like five years later, he contacted me. And he’s like, okay, we can afford your chair now. Because they got a donation. And then the other chair, had originally been sold to a private collector. And then this year, they sold or donated the chair to the museum and North Carolina.

Matthew Dols 41:46
Yeah, those are lucky.

Laura Kishimoto 41:48
Yeah, they’re very lucky.

Matthew Dols 41:50
Yeah. I mean, for a museum director to know you well enough to say someday we’ll buy your thing. It’s pretty good.

Laura Kishimoto 41:58
Yeah, he was his are a really great guy. Now I’m, like struggling to remember the name of that show. But like, every year, the Denver Art Museum has a show where artists donate work. And every year, it’s based off of a theme. So I believe the theme when I was participating was cut. And I made a small sculpture for it. And it was, it was exciting in that like, a couple women got into a bidding war over it, and then ended up paying the full price to win the bid. And then kind of heartbreaking in that the woman who won the piece, then put it in her closet and never like looked at it ever again.

Matthew Dols 42:42
Okay, how do you know that? And why did that happen?

Laura Kishimoto 42:47
So a friend of a friend happened to know her have a friend who works at Tara, which is a sort of medium platform that brings attention to women and art and design. And she happened to know the person who bought the original piece and confided in her that she had never taken it out of her closet. Well,

Matthew Dols 43:20
it’s being it’s being kept pristine. Let’s look at that. We can think of it right. earlier. You also mentioned brand identity, the need for brand identity. How you doing on that? Do you do good jobs with your website? Do you use social media? Like what are you building your brand identity? Well? Is that a thing? Do you even care?

Laura Kishimoto 43:47
I wouldn’t claim to be especially adept at it, I’d say that the most powerful social media platform for me has been Instagram because rather than kind of like shouting into the void, like when you’re on Twitter, or Facebook, it’s a lot more about the images and being able to search by hashtags and look for sort of the magic pieces and choosing which parts of your story you want to like visually tell so Instagram is definitely my go to social media but I wouldn’t say that by any means. I’m especially good at building a brand.

Matthew Dols 44:28
I’m horrible at it so I know person to say like oh yeah, it’s easy. Anybody can do it. No, I find it incredibly difficult. I find it incredibly difficult because a my probably much like you my production is not very fast. Like my I feel like my pieces take a lot like a long time because they take me like a month to two months sort of off and on working on them and you’re not like you three months for a single piece but like I said In the old days, when I was a kid, we were probably even born that we, you know, like an artist would pull out a series every two to three years. And that was fine. But like these days with social media and the internet and everything around it, but like we’re expected to be constantly producing stuff like on a weekly or even a daily basis, not only do we have to be making amazing artwork, but we have to somehow documented half figure out the right hashtags for whatever you decide whether to put it as a post or post it as a story or like Jesus Christ. Like it’s way too many things for me to worry about.

Laura Kishimoto 45:42
Yeah, I I definitely have never wanted to post things for the sake of posting it because especially with woodworking, everything is always becomes like the same kind of yellowy brown color, which like, when you look at all the pictures at once, you’re just kind of like you like that’s, that’s gross looking. It just looks so repeated and kind of mundane. So I try to only post pictures of moments or pieces that are really important to me. And I know that that isn’t how Instagrams algorithm works. It works better if you post regularly.

Matthew Dols 46:21
Don’t start me on my algorithm, rocking the algorithm. It’s the bane of my existence. because it keeps changing. I figure out how to use the algorithm to my advantage. They change it on me.

Laura Kishimoto 46:39
Yeah, it hasn’t been I don’t think it’s been very well managed since Facebook bought them.

Matthew Dols 46:43
I don’t know. I have no idea. I just know that I can’t seem to make it work to my advantage. Like, under any circumstances, but all right. last little thing are actually Well, two things. One, you were saying that you were building a studio in your home so so the one of the questions I always wonder about like people who graduate from school and don’t necessarily like go to apprentice or work in a in another workshop where they have like resources and stuff. What have you done? So like since leaving school, because not only did you leave school, but you left the region where your school was answer set up somewhere new. Were you working in some group studio? were you working at some other company to use their resources? Like how are you even keeping productive

Laura Kishimoto 47:30
after I left Ireland, or rather while I was still in Ireland, one of the graduate students while I was an undergraduate, Jason McCloskey contacted me and asked if I would want to work with a company I had interned for coder design to keep making custom cabinets for them. So like, hand cut dovetails, like hand plane, sliding drawers, that sort of thing. And so for me, it was kind of like, Oh, 300 days of rain to 300 days of sun, establishing myself in the mountains where it’s warmer and drier. We’re all really important. And then knowing Jason and having at least one person here, so I worked. For five years in Jason shop, I worked at first for coder design. I worked a bit for his companies, which are foot studios and cuco. And then I also did my personal work as well.

Matthew Dols 48:32
And you are You said you’re building a studio in your house in your new home?

Laura Kishimoto 48:38
Yeah, I’m sort of I’m making a shop that has been completely customized for bent lamination. So every single surface is co planar. Because it’s only 750 feet. Every surface is co planar. So all like large objects can be rotated from one surface to another. The joiner is one of the longest machine beds but very narrow, which is great for jointing laminates pretty like basic machinery, but I’ve tried to sort of customize everything to like my particular experience of woodworking.

Matthew Dols 49:19
I have a tough question. Because I’m springing it on you. It’s a random question. I’ve recently began asking people are there could you name three creative people so they could be designers, they could be artists, they could be whatever you want, that you think more people should pay attention to.

Laura Kishimoto 49:41
I think most people that I would name would already already fairly well known. But sort of my personal inspirations. I really like the architect Thomas Heatherwick. I love his philosophy of giving back to the public as much as possible with everything that he builds I like the fashion designer Iris Van herpen because of how uncompromising she is, and how she just like, nothing is ever functional. Not you would never, like wear something casually of hers, but like, it’s just a complete devotion to experimenting with the materiality of things she works with, with like laser cut plastics, and silks and like, shaped tools and stuff like that. And yeah, I guess another famous person would be like, Santiago Calatrava is a huge influence for me. I just, yeah, you’re saying all

Matthew Dols 50:41
these people are famous? I’ve never heard any of these.

Laura Kishimoto 50:44
Oh, okay, cool.

He’s another architect, and does a lot of hyperbolic and parabolic geometry in his buildings. I’ve only been inside a few of them. But they’re just, it’s sort of the feeling as when you’re in a church, and that it like, the building comes off as like, so powerful, and sort of filled with space and light that it’s like, it’s an emotional experience just to stand inside the interior and like, look at how it was built.

Matthew Dols 51:19
Great. Last question I asked for everybody is any advice for young people out there listening that want to elevate their careers?

Laura Kishimoto 51:30
I don’t know how great my answer would be. Because I don’t think I’ve especially elevated my career. But I suppose that if you’re considering a career, sure, yeah. If you’re considering a career in the fine arts, like, you have to get a lot of joy, and a lot of energy from that to fuel you because it’s never kind of a financial payoff. And because you’re always sort of, it’s just so easy to have like a W two and W four and straightforward income and all of that. Like, I guess another thing I would say is that there’s a lot more out there in terms of careers than what is presented in art school.

Matthew Dols 52:19
Absolutely, yeah. And it’s funny because like, I just had a podcast with a museum technician. Like you, there are so many tertiary industries, like you don’t always have to be an artist to work in the arts, you can do so many other things. It’s there’s lots of opportunities that I wish I knew about when I was younger. At this point, sadly, I’m too old to change.

Laura Kishimoto 52:46
I did think of one more thing. So I wanted to mention that, for me, working in wood, because it’s so restrictive has always been a source of inspiration. And then also, I sort of feel like if every decision is in the artists hands, the overall effect of what you make can just seem a little bit too contrived and too human. And so for me, like being informed by my material has always been really important, like seeing how it bends and curves. Or, like if I twist it in one particular direction, how does it change the entire form of the piece? So for me, I always like to take some of myself out of the decision making when I’m designing something because I want to make something that looks a little effortless, and that looks a little bit like it just kind of grew organically instead of being built by someone

Matthew Dols 53:50
flashy, that makes me think about like, how do you get your resources? So do you go to like Home Depot and Lowe’s and buy your wood? Or like, have you ever thought about literally like you live in Colorado, go out to a tree farm and like choose a tree and build it or do like, have somebody playing it and cut it down for you like I mean, do you you know work with for you tree farmers or do you buy it sort of like in stores.

Laura Kishimoto 54:18
So I’m mostly work with a new year, which is great a lumber that while the wood is still completely saturated with water, it’s sliced instead of cut. So there’s almost like Zero Waste when they’re producing it, because they’re just slicing it with a knife instead of cutting it with the kerf of a blade. And all of my sources for veneer on the East Coast because that’s where I’m from. So I’ll order a quarter of a year from the east coast and I mostly work with that material. Colorado’s a bit or I would actually say very limited in terms of native tree species. We pretty much just have pine and Aspen. And then beetle kill is all the rage which I personally just absolutely hate the look of. And I don’t harvest my own trees I, the designer I worked for Joseph Walsh would actually go to France, pick out logs and then get them sawn into veneer sequentially, meaning it keeps the original order of the tree. But Colorado, the hardwood species are just so limited. There’s not really a demand for locally made veneer.

Matthew Dols 55:36
All right, are marvelous. Thank you very much.

Laura Kishimoto 55:39
Yeah, thank you. This was fun. Okay, so two people that I think should have more attention, or both people that I met through Thursday. The first would be one of my professors named Barry Kobayashi. She is sort of also amazingly uncompromising in her work, like, all of her stuff is all about form and play of light. She does a lot of experimental steam bending and bent lamination. And she’s really informed by her experience of being a Japanese citizen and living in the US. And then the other artists would be Vivian Chu, who was a couple years above me while I was an undergraduate. And she apprenticed for a really long time for an artist’s name. Ursula love on writings, road crews, a chainsaw artist, and does these like massive monumental pieces that are like, really kind of sublime to look at. And then Vivian took that, and she has been making these really interesting self portraits, out of layers of plywood, or foam. And kind of deliberately, skewing isn’t the right word, kind of deforming the portraits, either kind of like visually, like smearing them or having the effect of like the wood being in a way around her face. And they’re sort of all about her developing identity as a queer artist.

Matthew Dols 57:23
totally random question. I can edit this out if you don’t want to talk about it. I’m a white man from America. You are, and I apologize if I even phrased this wrong, but like you are of Asian descent. So

Laura Kishimoto 57:41
yeah, my dad is Japanese, Japanese, okay.

Matthew Dols 57:44
Is that any sort of a barrier or any sort of as a come up as any sort of a problem or a concern? in the arts world for you?

Laura Kishimoto 57:55
I think it creates a very specific projected identity, particularly if people meet me in person, they, again, hear that soft spoken pneus. And they assume that I’ll be quite submissive, and not very egotistical, I guess. And it’s an interesting dynamic, because like, I’ve had people tell me that my work is very masculine. Because I think it and I’ve had the opposite. People told me feminine but I think because it is, kind of creates a stark contrast between how I like physically take up space in a room versus how my furniture takes up space in a room. People are often a little bit weirded out, there’s a very specific personality type I tend to infuriate a tends to be like, late 30s, early 40s, white guy who, to him woodworking is an extension of his masculinity. And so, if I, like, don’t take shit from this particular personality, it makes them so angry and just like develop a bitter hatred of me. So, yeah, it’s definitely been. It’s been a really big influence in my identity, and how I present myself. I actually had a show, it would have been in 2019, called Making a seat at the table. And it was a collection of all female woodworking artists. And it was deliberately scheduled for 2019 to be 100 years after, like the women’s right to vote, or at least the white women’s right to vote, started to gain serious traction. But it was incredibly moving to be part of that show and see all of these artists. Well, first of all, like the pool of artists, I was like, Oh, I shouldn’t know this. Many People, because I knew so many of their names, it was a much smaller world than I had anticipated, but also to just see how incredible their work was. And to see it all in one room. They hadn’t had a show like that, I think since the 70s of all female woodworking artists. And it made me realize like how important that sense of identity is, to me to kind of always be the person that people well, if I, if I say, like, I walk into a woodworking shop, if I’m with a male friend, I’ve even had a male friend in a spinning chair spinning around in circles, just kind of like waving, waving things around to amuse himself. And they’ll still help him first before they helped me.

Matthew Dols 1:00:52
Oh, yeah, there’s a lot of sexism in the arts no matter what in what part of the arts you’re in. But I would imagine, I mean, I’m a photographer, and I just recently had a conversation with somebody else. So like, sexism in the photography industry is just as bad. Like, everybody assumes that the man is the photographer. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s getting better. But still, like, if a man and a woman both walk into a room, and somebody is expecting your photographer, they assume it’s the map. And it’s a rain, you’re having the same kind of thing. Like, if you had a man walk into a woodworking room, they’re going to assume that it’s the man, you and it’s, I don’t understand where it comes from, other than just like history. But like, I don’t understand why it’s continued to be thought that way.

Laura Kishimoto 1:01:39
Yeah, I guess just visibility. Yeah, for me, especially in teaching. There tends to like, there’s a bell curve of personality types. But on the extreme ends of the bell curve, there’s the very intimidated, very quiet, like asks a lot of questions for reassurance. And most of the time, that tends to be my female students. And I have to kind of like, build them up and give them that confidence and teach them to like, own their right to be there. And then there’s the opposite ends, which is the guys who have usually they have carpentry experience. And they’ll be doing stuff like cutting a board, while just holding it in midair, in front of a chop saw, and just endangering themselves and the people in the class. And they’re just so loudly arrogant, that one of my first goals is to just break them down completely, and like crush their egos, and make them realize that they’re not as amazing as they are. As they think they are.

Matthew Dols 1:02:50
Oh, yeah, I mean, it’s it’s a tough, it’s a tough industry, for anybody who’s not that tradition. I mean, you know, it’s so sad I I’m your I’m part of it, I guess is the hard part for me is like, I’m a I am a white male, American of European descent, like I’m the the system that everybody’s hates, basically. And there’s nothing I can do about it. That’s what I was, how I was born. But like, my best bosses, I’ve always been women. Like, I love having a woman as my boss. They are the best bosses I’ve ever had in any job I’ve ever had. I hate working for men, because it then becomes like a pissing match. Because they always think I’m out for their jobs and all this kind of crap. And I’m just like, No, I’m just trying to do my job really well. If I happen to do your job better than you will that just happened. Like, that’s not my intention. But like, I love You’re having a women be in power above me. I think it’s magnificent. And I don’t understand why it’s not just like, to me, it’s not about like when I look at an application, because like we had some some Dean positions come in and like, I kept I would, I would just look at the credentials, like it wasn’t about gender. It wasn’t about ethnicity. It wasn’t about any of that stuff. It was just like, hey, this person knows what they’re doing. Like they have this great idea. They have this great credentials. Fabulous, good person, let’s interview them. And I don’t understand where this whole like, I, I know, it makes me sound like I’m somehow horribly evolved. But I’m not. I’m sure I’m not at all in many ways. But like, in many ways, I just don’t I try my best, I guess like not to even notice these things. And I’m always surprised when other people point them out or make them bigger issues than I think they need to be.

Laura Kishimoto 1:04:56
Yeah, I think a lot of it is Sort of, there’s multiple layers of expectations. Like, for me, a lot of times, especially when I’m working as an instructor, I’m always on guard. And I’m always kind of ready to defend myself to get the amount of respect that I think I deserve. And just kind of, I guess more often expecting the worst of people.

Matthew Dols 1:05:30
Sorry, I just made a gesture that nobody see. But like, I, I’m always expecting the worst of people. But what I hope for the best, but plan for the worst, so like, you know, like, I’m always expecting everybody to be negative and bad and not have positive feedback. And I’m always pleasant. And therefore, hopefully, I’m always pleasantly surprised when they do give good feedback or positive results or whatever. But like, I was the troublemaker in school, I was the kid that almost got I almost got kicked out of high school for God’s troublemaker. And he said, like, I’m all I, you know, like, even to this day, I can’t walk by a police officer without getting concerned that I’ve done something illegal that for some reason, they’re suddenly realized that I’ve done something illegal, like decades ago. So like, I’m always concerned about that kind of stuff. But like, I don’t understand where that comes into, like, ethnicity, or gender or any of these kinds of things like I, I guess, I just hope that we evolved more faster. And I guess we haven’t,

Laura Kishimoto 1:06:37
I do think that like, there’s always overwhelmingly like a positive trend forward, like, people who were really depressed about the 2016 election and like all four years that happened after that, like, I feel like you’re, they weren’t remembering that, like, eugenics was incredibly popular in the US and like, the 20s and 30s. And like people were being like, unwittingly, sterilized. And, like so many Japanese woodworkers that I admired came out of the internment camps that the US created during World War Two, and they didn’t create any internment camps for the Germans. And we could go all the way back to the

Matthew Dols 1:07:22
reservations and how we’ve treated them as well. My God, like America has just constantly been, you know, crushing anybody who’s not white, European descent, whatever to in the long pass that hit male as well, like, but but I guess I just sort of hope that we can do better.

Laura Kishimoto 1:07:44
Yeah. And I think that like, we are always doing better. Like it’s, it’s always kind of the best time to be alive, the present is always the best time to be alive, because it’s always so much more tolerant than the past was. And do you have so many more opportunities than you would have in the past?

Matthew Dols 1:08:04
yet? No, my previous teaching position was I was in a Muslim country, in the United Arab Emirates, teaching Muslim women at the college level how to produce art. I mean, 20 years ago, that would never have been in those women, like at all. And so there is progress. But I’m just always surprised, I guess, sadly, surprised.

Laura Kishimoto 1:08:30
Yeah, the show that I was in the making a seat at the table. They were simultaneously writing a book. Their names were Laura amazing dierdre visor. And they had kind of overwhelmingly found that women in woodworking and Fine Arts would almost always be in an educational job to supplement their income. And it was far more common for men to kind of strike out and take the leap and establish their own company, which I thought was really interesting.

Matthew Dols 1:09:06
Are you going to make your own company?

Laura Kishimoto 1:09:08
I don’t know. I mean, technically, I have my own company. I have my own LLC. Great. Okay. I don’t know if I would ever necessarily be able to be like, financially successful, just dependent on the art that I make, because I work so slowly and very inefficiently.

Matthew Dols 1:09:29
But you talked about how you’re going to outsource and you’re going to make some affordable versions of your stuff. So like, there you have the plans.

Laura Kishimoto 1:09:37
Yeah, that is what I would like to move forward with. Yeah.

Matthew Dols 1:09:41
Okay. But okay, this is my thing. So you’re, you’re a talented designer, you make beautiful things. However, you’re you can’t do it cost effectively or make it affordable for the general thing. What I find is difficult is that there are no there. And like I say there are no opportunities because I’m sure I’ll get some I’m saying like, but like, there’s very limited opportunities to get help to be able to sort of do that that transition, because I mean, basically, what you need is you need like a CEO or a or some some investment capital or so you know, some business person to basically come in and say, okay, you have great skills, you have great talent, this is the way to make it this way, this way, this way, and this is how much money it’s gonna cost to do it. And here are the financial backers who will help you create this thing. And art school does not teach you any of that.

Laura Kishimoto 1:10:38
Yeah, I took a business class at one point. And it was really strange, because the woman running the class was primarily gearing the class towards a service based business. So she was talking about how you could build up multiple tiers of your business. And the highest tier would always be one on one time. Because that’s the most valuable service that you can offer with someone as your full attention. And the lowest tier of service would be like a class of say, like, 15, where you’re teaching people or you’re running, like a yoga or meditation thing. And I was like, but what about physical products? And she was like, uh, yeah, like, you can have like multiple tiers of products, stuff that you’ve outsourced more stuff that you’ve built personally. And then she was emphasizing how to attract clients, you have to present your business as a necessity in their lives. Because people will always find money to spend on necessities and not on luxuries. And I was like, but what about luxury physical products? That’s what I make. And she was kind of like, she never really gave me a satisfying answer about that.

Matthew Dols 1:11:55
Don’t get me wrong. I mean, I’m in academia. So are you so? I am I’ve never taken a quote unquote, business course in academic or I’ve never known anybody who teaches a business chords that is actually helpful for the arts.

Laura Kishimoto 1:12:14
Yeah, right now I’m taking a tax bootcamp for the arts.

Matthew Dols 1:12:18
Okay, fine taxes, I totally get, that’s fine. But me, I mean, like a business model, like how to run a business that is an artistic business, whatever that you know, for, whether it’s, you know, designing furniture, or being a painter, or whatever it is, like, I’ve never come across an actual beneficial course. Because they all just give these vague like, Oh, you need to use Instagram more. Be sure to put this on your website for search engine optimization. None of that is fucking useful. Okay. Like, I mean, I want somebody to like, I want the CEO of like Amazon to come and tell us how to do it. I want Jeff Koons to come and tell me how to do that shit. Because like he pulls it off. Well, don’t get me wrong. I don’t love his work. Love his business model.

Laura Kishimoto 1:13:05
Yeah, he’s very successful as a brand.

Matthew Dols 1:13:09
Absolutely. Yeah. Not great work, but great business. Yeah, I’m very disheartened that like, there are not a lot of people that offer that ability to sort of transcend the creative nature of being an creative person in whatever field or industry you’re in, into a business.

Laura Kishimoto 1:13:35
Yeah, I’d say almost everybody I know who I would consider to be really successful in art, either had a partner who was equally invested in the business, and they could build each other up and have each other as resources. Or they kind of become almost completely divorced from the actual creative process and they’re just in like a more managerial position where, because they’re the only one who cares enough to keep everything going. The neither of those, finding a partner would be ideal, but it’s really really difficult.

Matthew Dols 1:14:12
I wouldn’t even know where to start to look sad Yeah.

The Wise Fool is produced by Fifty14. I am your host Matthew Dols – http://www.matthewdols.com And the audio for this episode was edited by Jakub Černý. The Wise Fool is supported in part by an EEA grant from Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway – https://eeagrants.org in an effort to work together for a green competitive and inclusive Europe. We would also like to thank our partners Hunt Kastner – http://huntkastner.com in Prague, Czech Republic and Kunstsentrene i Norge – https://www.kunstsentrene.no in Norway. Links to EEA grants and our partner organizations are available in the show notes or on our website https://wisefoolpod.com