Transcript for Episode 088 – Potter, Alleghany Meadows (Carbondale, Colorado, USA)

Recorded May 11, 2020
Published July 14, 2020

Full recording here: https://wisefoolpod.com/potter-alleghany-meadows-carbondale-colorado-usa/

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Matthew Dols 0:12
Please pronounce your name correctly for

Alleghany Meadows 0:13
me. My name is Allegheny meadows.

Matthew Dols 0:17
And you were born and raised in California. Yeah, that’s

Alleghany Meadows 0:20
correct. I was born in Berkeley, California in 1972.

Matthew Dols 0:24
You’re only one year older than me. I’m 4647. Yeah,

Alleghany Meadows 0:30
I think Yeah, I just turned 48 years old. It’s amazing time. It’s a interesting thing that we’re involved with.

Yes.

Matthew Dols 0:40
Good and bad, depending. But yeah.

Alleghany Meadows 0:42
All right.

Matthew Dols 0:44
So one of my big questions that I always start with is basically sort of how did you get to your path, your creative path? Was it family? Were they creative? Teachers, life experiences? How did you sort of find your path in your creative industry,

Alleghany Meadows 0:59
it’s a great thing to think about where we come from. I was born in a very alternative culture. in Berkeley, we lived in communes had a ton of freedom. And we were able to sort of spend our days figuring things out. And I think that fascination and that, that freedom, rather than a fear of the outside, but the freedom and the fascination and the tools led me to sort of find the greatest satisfaction in life in solving, solving things and figuring them out. You know, rather than being cooped up in a house or in an apartment, I was, I’d be given a song and a hammer and nails and say, I have a good day, you know, go make something go figure,

Matthew Dols 1:42
you know, go do what you want to do. And what age were you given a saw and a hammer?

Alleghany Meadows 1:49
That’s like six years old? I mean, that’s illegal now. Yeah, no, you’d have to sign a waiver as a parent to give a handsaw to your kid, right. But now I remember, I think I was five years old, and my mom gave me a socket set. And it was a really nice Craftsman socket set. And I was like, wow. And then so I started taking things apart, which could be a problem sometimes if you don’t put it back together. But I feel like part of the foundation that has allowed me to become an artist and an entrepreneur, and you know, someone who just loves figuring things out is, is from that really early childhood time have given the freedom to sort of try things and the freedom to fail with those, and then to try to figure them out again, and it became a responsibility as well, you know, sometimes that was something that actually had to get fixed. And those skill sets could have led me many directions, I could have, you know, I could be a mechanic, I could be doing all kinds of things that still fulfill that inner need of solving and figuring out, but somehow, through my mother was an artist, a painter, she went to Corcoran in the 50s. And I was able growing up and through high school in Mendocino, California to have many role models who were making a living as creative artists in their studio and putting their work out into the world. So it wasn’t just engineers and mechanics and people in a more sort of traditional sense. And in American culture, at least, who I could see being successful using that skill set, but it was artists, you know, somebody making sculpture or making art cars, or in high school, I worked for a potter during the summer, and really fell in love with that process and the community that came in around in the surrounding community, much more so than say, My mom’s community and painters who they always sort of would pose with each other and be nervous with each other and the potters would just often they would build kilns and equipment that were much bigger than what they needed. And the whole point of that was that you would need help from other people and they would bring their work and you would fire the kilns together and create this thing that’s much larger than an individual.

Matthew Dols 4:06
It is an interesting medium, the you know, pottery, Clay, whatever you want to work with ceramics guys have they are very often them and printmakers I often find to be the most sort of communal group working kind of artists versus painters and photographers and other people who are very individual kind of people because a lot of your equipment is reasonably expensive, basically.

Alleghany Meadows 4:31
Yeah, printmaking very much process oriented as well. And I totally agree, and some woodshop you know, and so going to something like Anderson ranch Art Center, where I grew up in Mendocino there was a small art center called the Mendocino Art Center, and it had a printmaking program and it had a fiber arts program and a ceramic program. So in high school, I was fortunate enough to be able to enroll there and learn, learn pottery, or start to learn it and sort of that The seeds were set for me at the end of high school, realizing that pottery held more challenge and more reward than anything I had experienced prior to that, and I really wanted to work with ceramics. I had been to museums and San Francisco, the the young and the Asian art museum and had seen work for many different centuries, where people were asking similar questions of their culture and of the material and trying to make make what they thought was beautiful, or what they thought related to their culture at that time through the materials they had available. And I sort of delve into that process. And a teacher, I’m sorry, a friend of mine, his father had been to Princeton, and was a doctor, but one of his classmates had written a book called The road to Miyama and I can’t remember the author’s name right now. But as a young woman, she had gone to a village in Japan called Miyama and had apprenticed with a potter and had written a book about what that was like. And I believe that was in the 70s, that she had done that. And so when I was in high school, I was read this book, and I thought, Oh, my goodness, that just sounds incredible. Like, what an experience to step into a completely different culture and world. So that influenced me amongst many other stories and books in Asian Studies, and Zen Buddhism, to want to go study abroad in Japan.

Matthew Dols 6:28
It’s interesting, you and I seem to sort of run in similar spheres. Actually, I went to the Corcoran, much like your mother. And I actually went to the San Francisco Art Institute as my graduate program. Brilliant. Yeah, we’re sort of in the same running around the same neighborhoods.

Alleghany Meadows 6:45
That’s great. Well, there’s some really good creative things going on in those neighborhoods.

Matthew Dols 6:50
I mean, I thoroughly enjoyed my master’s program, that to me, that was the best education I got of all of them, nothing personal to all my other education. But that was the best one that I got. Now, you’re also a teacher and you run, you run workshops, you run a gallery you run you have many different things going on, I saw you I think it’s called saw, and then you have a bunch of other stuff, please tell me. So how did you get from wanting to be a potter to running your own gallery creating your community outreach programs, being a teacher all these kinds of things? Because like, that’s, that’s a lot of things on your plate.

Alleghany Meadows 7:31
Yeah, I don’t tend to say no to many things, which, even when they’re in my own head, you know, we have these, these brainstorms that, it’s like a lightning storm, right? And then it’s a new idea, and how do we how do we weed those out or filter those out and, and allow the the most significant ones to marinate for a while and, and bring them to fruition? I think so one thing that I think is a benefit to my various projects is I grew up incredibly monetarily poor. And there wasn’t, things weren’t handed to us. So we were given tools, you know, there was all this creative thing. But there was a there were a lot of financial struggles as well. And so I have learned that I want to make a living and I want to have that aspect of Where does my food come from be somewhat comfortable, I don’t want to stress about you know, do I have enough money to go to the grocery store. So my approach to being you know, to art, often, you know, I’ve chosen to be a potter because pottery has, it’s somewhat of a commodity, it has functional pottery, is an art form that because of the utilitarian nature, it can appeal to a wide audience, somebody doesn’t have to be confident in understanding their perception of the world to see a cup of mine and and think, Oh, I might be able to really enjoy drinking coffee out of that. So in a way, it’s somewhat of a gateway drug to the art world Very much so. So through that practicality that has led me in many directions to the commitment to want to make a living. So the entrepreneurial parts of how do I market and sell my work after graduate school in I went to school and Alfred University in upstate New York, and I realized after graduate school that I didn’t want to go be a professor full time because I felt like for me to really understand how to be a potter and or how to get back to academia. I needed to be immersed in my studio and immersed in in the field for a while and try to understand what that was and to, you know, find my own way of being in it. So we settled here in Colorado, and little town called Carbondale. And very quickly I realized that I needed to figure out where the best market was for my work, and how to communicate with my audience. And

Matthew Dols 10:13
that’s a huge question that all creative people need to take some time and think about, because I find that oftentimes Not always, but oftentimes, artists best market is not where they live.

Alleghany Meadows 10:27
Yes, very true. And my experiences, there is a great market here where I do live, but not enough to sustain us. You know, we chose to live a half an hour from Aspen, Colorado because of the potential market. So what I did, though, a friend and I, couple years after graduate school, we decided, I believe it was his father gave him an old airport shuttle van that he had the, you know, this huge Dodge van that barely ran. And we made enough work to set up these sort of Tupperware home sales around the country. And we taught workshops at universities to help pay the gas and pay our expense. But then we would have a show or sale in somebody’s home. So a friend of his in Dallas, Texas, she invited 50 of her closest friends, and we set up work all over her kitchen and living room. And people came and they bought work directly from us. And then we moved on to a place in Tennessee, and then a roommate of mine in college, his parents lived on Central Park West. And we, they did the same thing for us. And, you know, at each venue, we might sell 20 to 50 pots. And so by the time we got home back to Colorado, it’s three weeks later, and we were really ready to be home. But the idea of taking our work out to these markets was really pretty solid. So a few years later, I found myself in 2001, I bought an old Airstream trailer that was available locally, thinking it would be a great guest house and and actually thinking that I could remodel it. And it my mom could live in it because she was still, you know, an aging hippie artists who was traveling around and didn’t have a stable place to live. Well, September 11 happened and the world kind of turned upside down and priorities. Everything shook out. And she looked at it and said there’s no way I could live in this. It’s you know, it’s really trashed. And it was needed. You know, it needed to be gutted down to the frame. But I was teaching in North Carolina, with that same friend who had the Dodge ban, we went to teach an eight week class at Penland school up in the mountains. And it’s called the concentration. Yeah, isn’t that amazing place?

Matthew Dols 12:41
Yeah, I lived in Wilmington, North Carolina for a while.

Alleghany Meadows 12:44
Oh, incredible. Okay, so Penn lands this little, not little but sort of art isolated artists retreat, where workshops are taught, and they have lots of different levels of programming. But it was there that I realized I should turn that Airstream into a traveling gallery, showroom, I could use it my own house, but I could also take it to cities, universities, museums, you know, take it to an educated market. And that really led me on a path of trying to, you know, starting to understand what a gallery is, because it was never going to be about my own work. It was a larger group, there were six of us involved in the beginning. And I found that, you know, if six of us each no 20 people, there’s 120 people who potentially could come rather than one person only, and only 20 people. And this is, you know, pre website, type days pre social media. So our advertising really was through ceramic communities and our communities and different towns we would go to, this is now the 19th year of that project. And it for one reason or another, it has continued on it hasn’t grown to be some financially successful thing. It’s just constantly been a source of income and education and outreach. I mean, it’s sort of, it fulfills me on lots of different levels. As an artist as a creative project. There’s so many things to figure out what it would be for me, it takes a similar energy that my studio time takes.

Matthew Dols 14:16
Well, that’s one of the big things that a lot of artists or young artists or even artists who haven’t found a way to be successful or whatever yet have a difficulty with, which is that balancing act of how much time and energy to put into creating work and how much time and energy into the business of the arts, whether it’s marketing, public relations, sales, whatever, like trying to find the right balancing act for that is very difficult for many people, myself included.

Alleghany Meadows 14:46
Yeah, I totally agree. And I actually struggle with that balancing act continuously. I mean, it’s not. There isn’t a clear path figured out, but I can say that air streams or other trails. layers are an amazing way, like if you’re a young artist, and have lots of ideas, and not necessarily a market or galleries representing your work there is it is so great to work with other people form somewhat of a collective and figure out how to show your work. The idea is to get your work in front of an audience so it can communicate. An example recently, last year, I was in another project called saw, which is studio for arts and works, was trying to sort of figure out a way to clean up a bunch of other equipment and things that we had out in the yard of this 20,000 square foot building with 25 artists. And so there were some other stuff, I just needed to figure out where to put it. And I was gonna buy another shipping container, because those are kind of cool. And I called somebody who has shipping containers locally. And he’s and he said, You know, I don’t have any right now that I have these semi trailers, you should come check them out. So I go over to his lot. And there’s a 26 foot semi box trailer for 15 $100. It’s watertight, it’s got wheels. And he has a semi driver lady who charges 100 bucks to move it. So I saw that and the wheels just clicked and I thought wow, there is a gallery space for saw 1500 bucks, I spent another 600 on some track lighting, and I lined the inside with a particleboard OSB and so we can hang work on it. And we have eight foot high, actually nine foot high ceilings, eight foot wide, 26 foot long, and you walk into it, and it’s this incredible, it feels so much bigger than it is. And it’s an exhibition space where our building we didn’t, we’re all about studios, we didn’t have gallery space, but for a group of, you know, three or four younger artists to find a semi trailer and figure that out and each put $600 in and some sweat equity. And they have an exhibition space and they can then now with social media, you can you could invite 500 people once a month and have an opening, right?

Matthew Dols 17:12
Sure. All right, yeah. I mean, the idea of doing collectives seems to be something that I’m hearing more and more about the the artists are beginning to realize that while the romantic idea of artists in the studio smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee and stuff, it doesn’t really exist anymore. And in these days, a lot more of it is about finding your community and sort of building your networks and tribe or whatever you want to call it. And and you know, doing it the way you’re talking about where exponentially you know, 10 people are gonna know 100 people instead of just one person knowing 10 people.

Alleghany Meadows 17:55
Yeah, definitely. I mean, which I love this conversation and brings up something that a mentor of mine, a sculptor who lives here, named James Searles, I heard him say this about 10 years ago, that a healthy, sustainable art community, it has education. It has a place where artists can make work or places like studio, and it has a place to exhibit and show what what you’re making. And it potentially has a collector base or a support base, that might help put money into that sort of experiment and system. And I think it’s really like I teach in universities quite often where I’ll be visiting artists, or I’ll teach for three or four days or a week, and often students will, will ask, you know, alright, how like, they want to jump forward to the marketing, how do I market it, which is very important to understand. But I think the primary fundamental thing before that really can be approached is how do you how do you express yourself? What do you want to say, through the world? And it’s really, with so many things available now that appear to be finished and polished, you know, as far as through Instagram, or through the media, where we have images flooding, that look like they’re finished and figured out. And for a young student? It’s, you know, how do you find something that you’re, that you would live and die for that you need to say that you want to say to the world?

Matthew Dols 19:27
Well, and that it’s the unique thing that is sort of original and sort of, yeah, I keep using these words like authentic and things like this, but like, their own unique vision on whatever it is. So whether no matter what the topic is, or whatever the medium is, they’ve got to add something to the vernacular. They can’t just keep repeating what’s already been said.

Alleghany Meadows 19:49
Definitely. Yeah, very well said. And it’s a huge challenge and it probably has always been a challenge. I just feel like right now we are rather than running Receiving a magazine once a month, that shows us what has been edited by the curators of the magazine. And they’re choosing to highlight and write about. Now, you know, with a couple touches of your thumb and your finger, you can see many things that are self published in self that self edited. And that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re good or mean that they are coming from a deep well, I think, when artists can dig deep in and really investigate their own questions,

Matthew Dols 20:33
I remember being an art student, and basically me and all of my co students and whatever colleagues, we only knew whatever our library had, or what was out in the magazine that month, or what our teachers somehow introduced us to. And we didn’t know anything beyond that, really. But these days, with social media, and the internet and all these things, like, I feel like there’s so much more than is necessary that our we’re a bit overloaded and oftentimes either intimidated to make works, or start a new idea or whatever, or simply fearful because like we the society has changed into this sort of cult of personality. And this cult of likes and favoring your followers and all this stuff that doesn’t really have a direct relationship to quality.

Alleghany Meadows 21:28
I definitely agree. that’s a that’s a big challenge. I feel like as a young student, though, I don’t. I don’t know that quality was any easier to find, as a young student for myself either, though, and that was the in ceramics. That was the interesting thing. I had some very good teachers, but when I would pick up the magazines, there were some often things in there that were just horrid. Oh, yeah. You know, and I think why in the world, would anybody choose to spend time on that. So you know, sort of how we develop a critical eye, is probably one of the best things are skills or tools to be able to move forward for a lifetime of making art and figuring out how to put it into the world?

Matthew Dols 22:16
I worry for the next generation, like, how are they getting that critical eye? If there is being created through social media?

Alleghany Meadows 22:27
Yeah, I do agree. I think the risk anywhere for our for, let’s say how to say this with success. And, you know, sort of, Okay, so social media posts that might have a bunch of likes, might lead somebody to continue to try to make social media posts that are similar to that, because that might get more attention. The same thing could have happened 20 years ago, 30 years ago, 100 years ago, easily where an artist who’s working and struggling to figure out their vision and their voice. And then they hit a couple pieces or a body of work, that gets a lot of attention and success by the marketplace. And then they start moving continually in that direction, and they lose the vitality. And the vision that made the first body of work so good,

Matthew Dols 23:22
right, but you’re using the term body of work. And all this. And I agree with that. And the issue that I have with that is is that bodies of works that were well received, they would take a year to two years to create it before they can even be on exhibition or in a publication or whatever. The stuff that’s happening now is so fast that there’s no time to reflect.

Alleghany Meadows 23:47
I totally agree with you. I definitely do. I mean, there are people I have a friend and I who were in graduate school together 2324 years ago, we were calm to think just the other day on an artist to young artists that we know that’s now in the same graduate program that is sort of posting daily social media, images of all these questions and works in progress. And it is a very different, the different approach to refining a body of work over a period of time, like you just said, and and then choosing how you want to put that into the world. I mean, you’re essentially bringing somebody in almost a reality TV style where they get to watch your creative process and your failures. But the challenge is that when those creative questions are put out, and then one of those gets lots of attention. As a student, it can inform somebody or influenced them to head that direction to what the wider world thinks is your best work rather than your deeper personal questions.

Matthew Dols 24:58
Well, but to certain things. Don’t you still have that even in your own work because you produce utilitarian pottery, mostly, I’ve seen some sculptural works as well. But I mean, anytime any creative person is working, so I’ll use you as an example, since we’re talking about you, that the you go out, let’s say, you go out in the airstream and you go around yourself and stuff, and then you come back and you go, Hey, you know what the things that were this color, or this size, or this shape they seem to sell? Well, I mean, that ends up influencing you to maybe produce more like that, or more in that size or more in that color.

Alleghany Meadows 25:36
It does. That’s a very good point. It also though, like, for me, I am committed to making cups, that’s something that’s really important to me, and the way that that cup is held by the user, by the viewer, physically held touches their lips, there’s something really fundamental to me about that, being able to communicate through those moments. And so for me, I found that a cup can, I can make almost anything within that five by five inch realm, and it seems to find a home. So there are times where I think maybe for me, the clearest example of what we’re talking about is I do accept commissions. And so I will accept a commission to make a set of dishes for somebody. And we will base it on the what I’m currently working on the glaze palette that I currently have the forms and shapes, and we’ll design it together out of those. But I am often approached by people who will ask, you know, Hey, can you make whatever this is, and it’s out in left field? And my answer, luckily now is well, no, this is the scope of my work right now is in front of us. And we can, if if this doesn’t appeal to you, I’m sorry, you know, I’m not going to make something that’s outside of, of what I’m currently working on. The reason I’m able to do that is that I sort of have a deeper vision, you know, that happened through my education, and some deeper questions that I’m not willing to compromise on. You know, what does it mean to make art? What does it mean to make what I want to make in the world? And so there is a balance being you know, somebody you know, being utilitarian Potter, there’s definitely a balance in there, because I want the work to go find homes.

Matthew Dols 27:27
Well, I saw you also have this interesting to air stream library, which sounds super great if I were living near you, which I’m not but so tell the listeners a little bit about the library.

Alleghany Meadows 27:39
Yeah, in 2009, at a ceramic conference in Phoenix called in Sica, which is about education, ceramic art. The economy was in the toilet and a group of six of us who are, you know, friends, and you know, some one it was my professor, one of my professors from graduate school, sort of different generations, we got together and tried to kind of brainstorm like, how could the art stream project, do some things that were more about social outreach? And one, Linda Sikora, one of my friends and teachers, she said, Well, what about a library, and three of us younger folks there ran with it, it was like, wow, that’s brilliant. Sure, we can lend artwork, and it can communicate, it can do everything it needs to do to be fulfilling as an object, except it won’t be based on monetary exchange. So we’ve, we started this, we invited 13, Potter’s younger and established to contribute up to five cups each. And we built these beautiful boxes that are really designed like a lending library for nice art books, where they’re, you know, they’re appreciated, and they’re protected. You can borrow it for a week and the exchanges, you have to submit a photograph of it in use. And that’s, that’s the creative exchange. That doesn’t, I have used it here locally a number of times. But we, we tend to ship the entire project to a host. So currently, as we speak, it’s actually at mica in Baltimore, the Maryland Institute College of Art, it’s actually they’re on lockdown in their library because nobody’s in the building. But we had set up I shipped it to them in January. And we had set up where the art stream was going to be on tour of the east coast in March, and would have been a two day visiting artist and the library would have been open and in use, the host tends to keep it for a month. And it’s in circulation during that time. And it’s been hosted by individual small art groups to single professors and classes to larger libraries to museums. And the only cost for the host is the shipping charges to get these three crates that hold the whole library. So we’ve left it at mica and hopefully They’ll be able to open up in the fall, we’re not sure what the future looks like. But there aren’t libraries spent a bunch of time figuring out how they wanted to integrate. You know, it literally has a typewriter that comes with it and return due date stamp. I mean, it’s based on libraries when I was a child, and when I was in college, where there’s a little blue card that goes inside the jacket. Now, libraries are obviously a little bit more digital in the way they lend and scan codes and things like that. And so the mica art library, put together how they wanted to circulate it. And hopefully, the world changes back to a way where we can circulate, you know, cups that were are used on our lips. And, you know, obviously, there’s a different health standard that will be met some of the hailong the way there. But it’s really an exciting project.

Matthew Dols 30:50
It looks really great. I hope it comes to Europe sometime.

Alleghany Meadows 30:54
That’d be fantastic. Speaking of Europe, about five years ago, a place in Northern Europe, in Scandinavia was interested in the art stream coming. And so the one I have is 30 feet long and pretty cumbersome. And so at that time, I found a 20 foot smaller Airstream and remodeled it, and collaborated with an artist friend at Colorado State and Fort Collins named del herro. And he had his digital fabrication class, approach the interior of this Airstream with you, I was sort of the architecture client. And it was amazing for them to, you know, how they built out the inside with a Baltic birch, and just really beautiful ways to think about displaying art, and ceramics and you know, small, three dimensional objects, but the goal was to put it on a ship and Houston and send it to Europe and then get a vehicle there and go on a tour. So we’ll see what happens in the future. Okay,

Matthew Dols 31:53
well, I’m hearing if you come through,

Alleghany Meadows 31:56
that’d be amazing.

Matthew Dols 31:58
So one of the things that I’m interested in with through this podcast is basically I’ve been in academia full time academia for 1520 years. And I realized that I’ve lost touch with like, how practicing artists do the business and run the business and how they make a living. You know, I’m often giving students like, advice, like, Oh, yeah, do this, do that. And then I’m realizing like, I don’t do these things, and I don’t know if they work anymore. So my question to you is like, how do you how do you juggle and create your sort of diverse incomes? Because it sounds like you have a lot of different sort of income streams? And then how do you balance that with your public relations in your business? And then of course, your time creating work itself? So they basically how do you run your business?

Alleghany Meadows 32:48
Now, it’s a great thing to contemplate and talk about. And I should say, I also have a family of three children and and wife and their life is full pets, any pets. So yeah, we have 20 chickens. Two bunnies. A few days ago, we got a pony for our 11 year old daughter, two dogs, hamster and a guinea pig.

Matthew Dols 33:13
So yeah, okay. Life,

Alleghany Meadows 33:15
yeah, the whole life, just that one little part is a full life. But how I make a living. So for a long time, that’s evolved over time. For many years, it was primarily my own studio. And the art stream started to become a vehicle, literally and figuratively, to be able to sell more of my own work, but also to sell other people’s work. And it, it went out of the realm of a collective and into I own it, I’m responsible, I take 50% of sales. And I do my darndest to make sure that I send artists checks rather than sending their work back. So I’m trying to figure out, you know, with a group of people helping out as well, it’s not just all my own effort, but you know, it’s sort of a quasi collective where I’m, I’m the one responsible, basically. So the art stream led to an invite to start a land base gallery in Aspen by developer who had some space, and they couldn’t figure out how to fill it. And friend who had worked with me on our stream and had also been at Anderson ranch together, Sam Harvey and myself started the Harvey Meadows gallery in 2005. And we had this idea that the Aspen community would support ceramic art, and that would be a great way. You know, we didn’t see the work that we loved being shown there. It was mostly blue chip. And then there’s this sort of whole aspect of Western art being shown and we just thought, Wow, what a great opportunity for us to put the work we love into this. And through his and my friendships and connections we were able to open with work like by Betty Woodman and Peter vocus and Some of the greatest of our heroes said, Sure, we’ll do this, we’ll send you five pieces. And it was based on the art stream having been successful and proven that, you know, I could run a business. So we ran a brick and mortar gallery as well. As there are I ran the art stream and I also had family, smaller family at that point, one child, and my own studio practice, the gallery and Aspen had some successful years and some slower years, and but it was never reliable enough that the other projects could be put away. I’m sure that if it was incredibly financially successful, we could have hired people to help and it would have changed life dramatically. But what it did is it added another intense project to the list. The same year, I started the gallery, I was given a small amount of money as a down payment to try an architect friend and I found this warehouse building that used to be a chainsaw shop. And we decided, yeah, let’s borrow money, they were giving out money at that point. You know, it was

I don’t know why they gave it to us. But it was great. It was basically loans, you know, you have a small down payment, and they would loan you money. So we bought this derelict warehouse, picks it up by ourselves with a couple friends helping him started renting out artists spaces, and he put his architecture office in there. And so that saw and over time, you know, he needed to move on, various things happen, and we had an offer to buy it from us. And I knew that if I took the money and put it in my bank account that it would be gone. So that little bit of profit, I was lucky enough to find a building that was in foreclosure and buy a much bigger building, and take the leap to just go for it. And so now that’s what I saw is now is a bigger building, and I’ve got 25 artists spaces, myself, if that’s where my studio is, as well. And the idea of the real estate things is that someday, I might be able to quote retire. Because as a self employed artist, there’s never really enough to put into a 401k or any kind of retirement. But the real estate, in theory, if it goes along, okay, and 25 years, it’s it’s paid for. And perhaps it can still generate income, you know, so if I’m 70, and not able to work on all of these different projects, still, I can have a you know, some supplement to the income. Two years ago, I stepped away from the gallery and Aspen, I just could not deal with 15 years of back and forth, you know, it’s a half an hour away during Super easy traffic. And in the winter during a snowstorm during the holiday season. When it’s busy there, it could take an hour and 20 minutes for me to get home. And it just started to wear on, you know, time. And and you know, actually I had a very close friend who was young in his 30s he passed away a car accident. And it just helped me to start to examine how I was choosing to spend my time. And if it weren’t all in tomorrow, am I living, making choices right now about how I want to spend my time to the best of my values? And you know, to my own heart? Am I really listening to what I want to do. And so it became pretty clear that I didn’t want to drive up and down the valley all the time and continue that there are parts that I missed tremendously, but you know, so yeah, I think I answered part of your question. Sorry, I’m a little bit of a Rambler this morning. No, no, it’s great. I

Matthew Dols 38:41
mean, okay, so but along that alright, how do you sell your current work? So do you have galleries representing you? Do you sell through online? Do you use social media? Like what’s your personal avenue to get your work out into the world?

Alleghany Meadows 39:00
So this year is different. But up until now, the primary way I sell my work is through the Aspen farmers market. And my Airstream is parked on the same spot on the street every Saturday between you know, tomatoes and vegetables and a glassblower on the other side and just I’ve been doing that market for almost 20 years since before I had the airstream I did I was one of the first craft vendors up there. And there are people that were five years old and would come in and see my work and now they’re getting married and they’re asking for a set of dishes for their wedding. So from June 15 to October 15 every Saturday, that’s how I’ve made my living and even running the gallery and saw and all these other places. My studio work had to still generate about 50% of our income. So the pressure was always on for me to work in my studio. And I do show and galleries around the country. And now I’m going to be figuring out what’s next because there’s a strong chance that the Aspen farmers market will not be allowed to happen this year, as far as the virus and Aspen was a hotspot with all the travelers coming through, and it’s spread locally pretty rapidly. So we’re not sure what this summer looks like. But the fascinating thing for me is that, so I was ready to take the art stream on tour. And it has my work in it this year, it had 35 artists total, including myself, and we had everything ready to go and it was March 10. And we cancelled for thank God, we cancelled and didn’t continue Forward, march 12, I decided to create an online gallery for art stream. And we have a web designer who has been doing the website for a long time, and she’s super familiar with how to create an online sales platform. And we opened our online gallery Eight days later. And it’s been incredibly successful, sold almost 700 pieces of pottery, through a computer. And it’s an amazing new thing. I’m learning so much about how it functions and how it works and what you know how to express myself through it. So one thought is this summer that if the farmers markets not happening, each Saturday, I will upload 10 to 20 pieces, as if it’s another, you know, Saturday market offering, and continue that engagement, you know, and ship the workout, or perhaps there’ll be local people who come pick it up, if I set it outside, you know, we’ll see how the world evolves. But it’s a it’s an evolving platform for how I sell my work and continue to find homes for it and make a living

Matthew Dols 41:53
well, and that idea of doing online sales that are sort of time based, like putting in exclusivity saying these items will begin to be on sale at this time. And then once they’re sold out there sold out, people love that stuff.

Alleghany Meadows 42:09
It seems to be engaging, you know, people are really excited to see what’s coming next. And there’s a freshness to it, which everyone engages me, I keep going on there as the person running the back end of the whole thing. I go on there and and like, Oh, you know what one piece is sold today. And it doesn’t mean somebody’s buying a large quantity of work. But, you know, it seems like still, you know, there was a lot of excitement about the online gallery in March, April. And now it started to taper off a bit, which is fine. But, you know, later today, I need to ship 15 boxes of pottery to people. And you know, it’s, it’s fantastic. So we’ll see what evolves for the future. I do think it for me, it’s very important to be able to exhibit my work locally. And I will continue to ship work out nationally, and see how this online thing works. Now starting out from scratch right now to create an online gallery, I think would be a huge challenge. You know, I started art stream online, but it’s been 19 years of building goodwill and building following and being known throughout the country as a place where you can see relevant and, and high quality art, you know, so I’m a curator. And that sense of being a gallerist, or gallery owner. And that track record is what allowed the online thing to succeed quickly and not have to be built up from nothing.

Matthew Dols 43:38
You brought up two topics there, which is one reputation, which I believe the arts are not even just the arts, creative industry. So all creative industries, reputation is everything. Because if you ever, if in any way you have a bad reputation, your entire career could be ruined in whatever part of the creative world you’re in. And also the need to start to build your network locally. And then that local network will then introduce you to farther networks like the peak creator, I find that creative people if they think about building their local network first. And they do a good job of that and build a good reputation that that network will sort of become the growth the foundation of an additional network that will go farther and farther out into the world.

Alleghany Meadows 44:35
I completely agree. And you know, being on both sides of that having a gallery or had a larger gallery for a long time. My approach to to this is that the artists that we would choose to work with were basically business partners. We were in it together. And you know, I still I’ll hear people ripping on galleries and there are Some galleries that have done very dishonest things and are non reputable, obviously, and they’re artists who also have, you know, fulfill worn that hat. But for me, you know, it was so important to want to work with people. And obviously, I needed to be engaged by their aesthetic and what they were making. But you know, like an example would be, yes, the artist is giving half of the Commission, usually 50% to the gallery. But nowadays, if an artist, let’s say there was a piece in the gallery, that’s $500. And then the artists might have their own website. And if they didn’t have the same price, then let’s say they only had it for 400 for a similar scale piece, then the person who’s interested in buying it or interested in viewing it would start to lose trust. It’s not about the individual sale, it’s about the long term trust that you brought up, and how do you know these long term relationships? You know, it’s not about like, Yes, I want to make $500. Today, it’s about how can that person continue to tell their friends and to support us, and to say, like, wow, these guys really, I like working with them. They’re a pleasure to work with, I trust them, I trust the value of what they have. And so if somebody can look online and search for an artist name, and they find similar work for 20 or 30%, last at a different place, it erodes that trust and that relationship,

Matthew Dols 46:33
it’s difficult because there are like, I mean, I ran into this out of my own stupidity, because I put work on different online outlets, you know, artsy, and those kinds of places, Saatchi and all these things. And I accidentally put different prices on different websites, even though it was very, very similar size and, and quality of works. And, and I got called out on it, some people were like, hey, why is it cheaper here than there? It’s still you. And I’m like, because I’d simply messed up, like, I made the mistake.

Alleghany Meadows 47:07
Yeah. And it’s great to learn from our mistakes. You know, I mean, the whole point of, of these are to approach with, you know, high integrity, and try our best to, you know, make the work we want to make and put it out into the world, then running a gallery and becoming very, very close friends with people who, I would say are collectors, I just started to understand that it’s really about relationships. And the gallery is the conduit between an individual or a group, collaborative artists studio practice, and what they’re figuring out, you know, we’re the conduit and the relationship builder, to somebody who might want to live with that work, and might want to pay for that work. And that’s a really, it’s an amazing thing. I mean, the way we perceive artwork is so affected by the context in which we first meet that artwork. Okay,

Matthew Dols 48:00
I have a question on that. Okay. Nothing personal. Don’t take this personally. Oftentimes, people see ceramic artists, especially people who do dishware and cups and stuff more as utilitarian and functional forms of art. Your words you’re using are things where you’re referring to it as an art piece first. So in your mind, when you create work, is it Are you thinking, how does it function? Or how is its aesthetics or its intention, or its concept or like, which is the priority for you in your creative process?

Alleghany Meadows 48:40
So I believe that how something communicates is the content. And what I’m trying to say, if I was painting on campus, I would be trying to communicate through that through my choice. All it’s all about choices and communication, what am I trying to say? And so if I’m choosing to communicate through a cop, that is the content, all the layers that I can put into that cup. Ron Nagle is an artist shows with Matthew Mark, now, he works on small scale cups. And granted, they aren’t necessarily you’re not going to put tequila in one of them. But these are that’s the content that’s part of the content of the work is scale and form. And then you can layer all these other sets of expression within that. And so for me, there isn’t a hierarchy on whether you can physically pick it up or not. I feel like it’s about communication and relationship. So if I had a Ken price sculpture in the gallery that was in the shape of a cop or in the show have, you know, sort of this sexual fantasy type of thing that he worked on for a long time? You know, for me, it’s about communication. Okay,

Matthew Dols 50:10
but what I want to break it down to just a realist, pretty straightforward answer on this. If, if you have made a piece and somebody purchased it, which is do you feel a sort of a higher respect for it, it being used every day, or it being put up and on display,

Alleghany Meadows 50:31
I intend everything. You know, let’s just continue with coffee cup, I intend for that. I make it so that it’s higher level of communication is when it touches your body. And what you see down on the inside of the cup, as you’re drinking, and the way that your fingers hold the texture. To me, that is a really important thing.

That cup

when somebody slips, it drops. And it’s, and it breaks, and it’s gone from that form that I had intended. And it still has this emotional relationship to them. Right? So for me, it’s about that relationship. So there are pieces of mine and museums. And those don’t get to experience that level of communication. But in the same way they get to experience they’re stripped of that physical touch, and they experienced the visual communication. So I pay strong attention to that, as well. But no, my, I think my highest, the most intimate times in our day, when somebody is sitting in their pajamas, waking up drinking coffee, that’s where I want to be. That’s where I wanted them to touch what I’ve made, you know, and I think, for me that I have a shelf of cups made by many different people who I have relationships with or have a fascination with their work, and I don’t necessarily know them. And I learned so much during those moments. But it doesn’t devalue. You know. I mean, for me, that’s like saying, so there’s a collector that passed away that lived here named john powers. And he has one of the largest collections of Jasper Johns drawings, and he built the museum for the work here. But many people of that generation, he had incredible work. And not just, you know, large scale Warhols, but actually small drawings with notes that said, you know, dear john, and Kimiko, thank you for your support. And it’s a drawing that he would give them, you know, people. And so, at one point, I was in his house, and having this amazing dinner, I went into the bathroom. And there’s this phenomenal little drawing, when you’re sitting on the toilet that you get to experience now is that less important or more important than the nine Warhawk geishas over the dining table that were a portrait of his wife? Kimiko. You know, like, for me, I love that there could be this thing in the bathroom that is just loaded with content.

Matthew Dols 53:11
I think the highest form of flattery is to have a piece of artwork in somebody’s bathroom. I know that sounds ridiculous. But it’s the place you contemplate it’s the place you relax, it’s it’s a quiet place. And it’s a place that everybody in the house experiences. So like if you choose to put a piece of art in a bathroom, that is where that’s something you want to see and think about and engage with every single day, multiple times a day.

Alleghany Meadows 53:38
Yeah. And can you imagine taking a cup of coffee and with you to the bathroom?

Matthew Dols 53:42
My wife?

Alleghany Meadows 53:44
No, but really, like, those intimate spaces, and those intimate moments are where I want my artwork to be comfortable. And so that’s why I don’t make my work. I consciously don’t make it challenging. Right? I don’t want somebody to be like, God, this hurts my hand. I want them to have through comfort, be able to see what I’m up to and experience what I’m up to. And through familiarity. You know, there there are people. I have a friend and client in Philadelphia and he called me one day and he was like, you’re not going to believe this, but I can’t find my cup. And I was like, come on, you gotta have some other cups in the house. And he said, No, I every day for the last year I use your cup that my wife gave me and I can’t find it. It’s not the dishwasher. You know, you got to send me another cup like this is not going to work. And I realized like, wow, you’re really dependent on this familiarity of this one ritual to sort of, you know, experience the world.

Matthew Dols 54:47
Oh, yes, I have buy one tea mug that I use every single day and when it breaks, which it inevitably will I will be very sad but you know that you move on and you you find it New ritual. So it allows you to then create something new through the loss of one thing. So there’s a certain amount of sadness when you lose your, the your one coffee cup.

Alleghany Meadows 55:12
So I have this kind of fun theory, that when we first get like when you first got that cup, you had a certain relationship to a certain new activation, with your fingers with your mouth with how much it held, there was something that brought you to want to use that cup. And so my theory is that the, I believe the actual piece changes through time, and through familiarity and through us, and that, that objects are alive. And I’m sure I’m not the only one who has this kind of idea. But this, that these objects are these sort of almost sentient beings that we have this relationship with. And our perception changes with that over time. But that the, the, the cues, and the colors and the forms, they physically evolve through a patina of experience, or a patina of memory that comes into it. I had this experience where I picked up a tea pot I hadn’t used in years that have been packed away. And my first thing picking it up, was remembering somebody that I had had tea with about a decade ago who had passed away. And so those layers of experience are in the work. And they’re you know, they’re a part of it.

Matthew Dols 56:32
I recently saw I think on social media somewhere, somebody somebody was asking, how do you clean out the stains at the bottom of a teacup? And I’m sitting there like, why would you want to clean those out? Like that’s the that’s the story of the teacup like it’s it’s now got this nice patina inside this fish shows us. But Pete some people feel the need to clean these things away. I thought that was a little sad.

Alleghany Meadows 56:56
That’s brilliant. Yeah. What are those layers of youth?

Matthew Dols 56:59
All right, one last little topic I want to touch on. So you do workshops. And you’ve taught and you still teach? I mean, obviously at the moment and some questionable issues with teaching. But well, what’s your sort of position on where academia is these days? Mike, my personal opinion, keep in mind, I’m from academia to a certain extent. I’m very disillusioned with it at the moment, because I think that the general art education that’s offered is generally very expensive. And it does a great job of teaching, craftsmanship, concept skills, all these things. But it does not effectively prepare these young creative people. For the real world, the business, the contract laws, the you know how to do work life balances, how to create real cost, return on investments and costs. I mean, all the business stuff, they don’t effectively teach that. And I feel like we’re creating a whole generation of young people who are going to have high expectations until the real world is going to sort of slap them down and say, You don’t know what you’re doing.

Alleghany Meadows 58:17
Well, let’s see, I don’t think it’s any different now than it was 30 years ago. You know, this is an ongoing issue, right? of, you know, not necessarily learning some practical aspects. That said, I think they’re in the ceramic field, which is the one I know the most, I think there are, there’s an incredible amount of amazing work being made right now, perhaps more so than any other time. It’s diverse. There’s not a hierarchy on what process makes work better. It’s about concept. And you can use any process and necessary be it’s lip casting industrial to sort of digging your own clay and you’re using the primordial hand to make something. It’s about concept. So do I think that education could have seminars where people learn more practical things? By all means, yes. in graduate school, I got a lot of that there was a great graduate seminar where we had to put together portfolios and our statements and try to understand how to communicate with galleries. And you know, that was a seminar that was really important. No, it didn’t show us how to track inventory in spreadsheets. Where I, you know, I think a small business class would be a great thing, you know, sort of intro to small business could be a great thing for many, many people to learn. And not just artists, but across the board, you know, how do you do that? I have only taught one university, you know, full semester and it was a year ago now, I taught for the University of Georgia in cortona, Italy, so it was not exactly reality but It was a semester long art program, where we were learning Italian art, I was teaching ceramics, there was painting printmaking photography, Women’s Studies class was also offered, you know, so it was a academic semester. And at the end of it, there were a few graduating seniors who really wanted more information. And so I organized a little roundtable of the seven faculty. And a bunch of students showed up who could ask us the sort of what next type of questions that were more what you’re talking about sort of a little more nuts and bolts, not just aesthetic and process. I think academia could really improve by teaching people after maybe it’s the last semester of art school, or the last year of art school. And, you know, I think it to be wise and not have it be a part of the aesthetic for me, but have it be in sort of balance with that would be really important.

Matthew Dols 1:01:05
But you and you also the way I found you in the first place, you do workshops at places like Anderson Ranch, and so on. How do you feel about workshops? I’ve only participated in one in my life as a as a participant, and I’ve never run any myself? How hard are they to?

Alleghany Meadows 1:01:22
Like,

Matthew Dols 1:01:23
I imagine as a let me take that back a step. How did you even get to running work?

Alleghany Meadows 1:01:34
Wherever you want, the

Matthew Dols 1:01:35
question is like, did you put together a proposal to a workshop? place like Anderson ranch? Or did you or did they approach you? So like, how did it even start? So like, you know, like, if there’s a person listening that has the abilities and skills to do something like a workshop at a place like these, you know, Anderson ranch or something like that? How do they even get to do it?

Alleghany Meadows 1:02:02
Well, I think there’s a big variety of ways. There are some places that accept proposals, I think, to put together a proposal of what you would want to teach and why is a really good exercise. And then, you know, it’s almost like making a new body of work, and then trying to figure out where you’re going to show that, right. So if you have a process or a passion or a way of viewing things that you feel like is an important thing that you want to put into the world. You know, how are you going to put it out there? For me, I, I sort of my education was in an art center in Northern California and Mendocino. And so a few years after I went away to college, the director there said, Wow, I really like what you’re making, do you want to come teach a workshop. And so it just kind of led back to that, and then at Anderson Ranch, and I mean, I’ve taught workshops in many, many places. But at Anderson Ranch, I came. So after undergraduate, I went to Nepal, I had a Watson fellowship to go study the potter’s in Nepal for a year. And while I was there, I met the director of Anderson Ranch, he told me about the artists residence program, and I applied for that and landed at Anderson ranch. And when I was 22 years old, wait a minute, when you were in Nepal, and you happen to meet the director of the Anderson Ranch, yeah, that’s a good story. I was the director of ceramics and sculpture. So I was living in this very remote village. And I knew that Anderson ranch was bringing a group of American artists to come work with Potter’s in Nepal for a week and a half. And because I was there and I spoke the language fluently, I organized, some on the ground logistics for them. And through that, I was able to meet them. But I was living in a little grass and clay hut. And when the when the group came to the village, and it was it was great. It was a great way to meet in such a remote context, or unfamiliar context. So my workshops through places like Anderson ranch and haystack, mountain school, a lot of those places, you know, they invite somebody. So if you’re out there working, and it doesn’t mean you’ve taught a lot of workshops, but you’re just out there in your studio, making work putting it out into the world. I know it haystack, I was on the board there for nine years and a lot of recommendations, you know, the board members would write out recommendations of who they think might be good teachers be established or new artists, students who are there get on their evaluation of every workshop, they get to write recommendations of who they think would teach a good workshop. So it really is about the community, like you alluded to or mentioned earlier that starting locally and building you know, as young artists building a local group and local following, in a sense, paying attention to anybody who’s really interested in your work, and figure out how to get your work out there that grows on itself because one of those local people might go if you want to teach workshops, they might actually go by Students at Anderson ranch and then they could write your name in of like, Oh, you know, so and so would be a great teacher here and, and would teach about, you know, XYZ. So one thing that I’ve doing that I’m a little bit sad about, but it might actually happen is in this September coming up, I have a workshop slated at Anderson ranch where my visiting artist is an amazing creative chef, here at a restaurant maspin. And he’ll currently dodge exactly, thank you. He’s phenomenal. And he will come into the class and talk about his aesthetic and his needs as a chef and what he’s trying to present to his his audience who comes and experience his art form over an hour and a half period and moves on and consumes his art form, which is really pretty amazing. And then the workshop after three weeks will end in us having a meal on work on pottery dishes that we’ve designed in response to a menu he’s presented us. So I really hope the world has opened up enough that we can do that this September,

Matthew Dols 1:06:08
I’ll be sure to put a link to it in the show notes for this podcast,

Alleghany Meadows 1:06:12
thank you. But those kinds of things could happen anywhere. You know, a, there are lots of like in pottery, there are lots of chefs and restaurants, looking for unique ways to present what they’re making, rather than a sort of plain white generic plate. And so for young artists to approach a restaurant, and see if there could be a working relationship. And it may be that it’s a little bit of income. I mean, I did that when we first settled here in Carbondale, I went to a restaurant that had on its menu, an offering called random acts of cooking. And I thought, Wow, that sounds amazing. And my wife and I, it was our anniversary. And I called and I said, you know, is there any way I will pottery, can I bring you some dishes that you would serve our meal on, because that’d be really fun. And when I brought in and met the chef, I brought in a box of pots. And he looked at them, and he said, I’ll only do this, if you’ll make me 20 of those. And 15 of these. And I thought, Wait a minute, that’s not why I came in. But I’d be delighted. So it started an ongoing relationship. And in the beginning, we traded my work for meals, rather than him having to, you know, come up with what I needed. And then eventually he bought work as well.

Matthew Dols 1:07:26
Nice. love it when those relationships grow like that.

Alleghany Meadows 1:07:30
Yeah, and it’s really back to any medium and figuring out how you want to approach an audience, how you how you can get your work seen and experienced, whether it’s in the bathroom, or in the main hall of the gallery, right? Or both? It could be it could be both.

Matthew Dols 1:07:50
Okay, any topics you want to touch on that we haven’t touched on?

Alleghany Meadows 1:07:54
You know, there’s, I think one good thing recently a student reached out and was doing an interview as a project, they needed to interview an artist and, and she asked me sort of what do you what is your main advice for how to succeed? And, and I think this is gonna sound funny, but I think you need to figure out your strengths and weaknesses. And I’m not talking about how you hold a paintbrush, or how you what kind of, you know how you see things. I’m literally talking about therapy, I think the more you can dig in to what derails you and what makes you thrive on a personal level, the better chance of succeeding in anything but especially in art, because in art, you’re forging your own new way. You’re not following along, it’s not a set career path, or it’s not a set path, like working at a bank. So there are so many unknowns that are headed your way that to dig into your own personal start to unpack your own baggage as soon as possible, I think is probably the best advice I could give.

Matthew Dols 1:09:02
Well, I see for me, I keep thinking about the fact that I’m not or at least I don’t seem to be because I don’t get rewarded with any grants or residency. So I think I’m not a very good writer about artworks when I try to write artist statements and grants written residency and things like this because you know, I it’s not that I’m a bad writer, I think I’m actually a very good writer, but I don’t seem to write correctly for their needs, for whatever purpose and so like knowing what you’re good at your strengths and your weaknesses are even within your sort of endeavors, like some people might be really great at social media and other people might not be some people might be great at writing statements or grants or residency applications and others not so accepting that you’re not going to be everything in your in your industry and focusing on what you do really well is a great thing, but I Fortunately, we don’t all have the money to hire other people to help us.

Alleghany Meadows 1:10:04
Oh, that’s well said. Yeah, it does take capital output. So how you figure out but there are there other podcasts, you know, there’s, you know, other ways that are free that aren’t as intense as one on one therapy. But there are definitely ways to I think, dig in and just try to understand, you know, strengths and weaknesses.

Matthew Dols 1:10:24
Thank you very much for your time.

Alleghany Meadows 1:10:26
Thank you, Matt. It’s been a pleasure.

The Wise Fool is produced by Fifty14. I am your host Matthew Dols – www.matthewdols.com

All information is available in the show notes or on our website www.wisefoolpod.com