Transcript for Episode 154 – Glass Sculptor, Kait Rhoads (Seattle, WA, USA)
Recorded February 11, 2021
Published March 11, 2021
Full recording here: https://wisefoolpod.com/glass-sculptor-kait-rhoads-seattle-wa-usa/
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
Matthew Dols 0:12
Today, my guest was Kate Rhodes, my first glass sculptor to have on the podcast and we got to talk about things like the blown away TV show which I was watching on Netflix. How difficult glasswork is as far as taking a toll on her physical body itself. The issues of gender disparity in the hot shop, I believe that’s what they call it. The back that all artists are planning for the retrospective exhibition and you know, in the line of like legacy planning, and the fact that career goals are an important part of our industry, because if you don’t know what you’re trying to achieve, it’s really hard to achieve it, and how I still aspire to my retrospective at Guggenheim or MoMA. The wise fool with me, Matthew Dols, as your host is supported in part by an EA grant from Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway in an effort to work together for a green competitive and inclusive Europe. We would also like to thank our partners humped kassner in Prague, Czech Republic, and Coons central in a in Norgay in Norway. Links to the EEA grants and our partner organizations are available in the show notes. Could you please pronounce your name correctly? For me?
Kait Rhoads 1:38
Kait Rhoads. The last name is like the roads you drive on. When I say it, people hear rows a lot because that D gets lost.
Matthew Dols 1:50
Yeah. But Kate is a not a traditional spelling also.
Kait Rhoads 1:56
Well, you can’t blame a girl for using fashioned spelling on her name, nor being in love with Elvis Costello in the late 80s and loving the way his then wife Kate or Reardon spelled her name. I have a little Irish in me, but it’s not a family thing. My full name is Catherine, but because when I was young, I had such a temper. Kate kind of stuck. And then I just kept the business name because why not?
Matthew Dols 2:25
Fair enough.
Kait Rhoads 2:26
And I’m happy with that. Because I don’t like being called my full name so much by everybody.
Matthew Dols 2:32
I only go by it like in written documents. Very few people call me my full name out loud. Yeah, I can’t think of anybody that does. So I’m always fascinated about how people got to be creative. So childhood, Where are your parents creative? How did you come to being creative in the first place?
Kait Rhoads 2:53
Both my parents are creative. My Mother, she got very close to graduating from VCU, Virginia Commonwealth University. I believe that’s when she got pregnant with my brother, and 1966. So she’s, but she was very creative. And after my father and her parted ways, she made a lot of wooden sculpture. And she painted it. She was a painter when she was younger. But when we were kids, we’d ask her to draw things for us to color in. And also, I was so hyperactive like that I had to be taught how to do macro made to keep my focus somewhere constructive. And I helped my mom with netting, helping when she wouldn’t have to she had a net, she would lay out in the river. And we would catch eels and stuff and eat them. So I would help her with the net. Probably just sitting by and tying things and and tying them because I was a little young, but But yeah, she’s definitely an inspiration.
Matthew Dols 4:02
So you were born in Richmond, but then you moved.
Kait Rhoads 4:06
My father did a Semester at Sea when he was in high school. And then he wanted to live on the water. Like that was it he wanted to be gone from the family. But that was a problem because we have a family business in Virginia. It was a department store. So Miller and Rhodes. We were the roads part of Milliron road so my father had to go to business school and so he did that and he did his time in the business and then he had a boat belt and we moved from Richmond to Gloucester which is closer to the water and on the Chesapeake Bay or a tributary of it near the James River. So yeah, we moved on a boat and we sail up and down the inland waterway to Florida and the Bahamas and then the Bahamas for a year or so and the Virgin Islands for Five years we did some traveling in between and it was really incredible. So my mother had to entertain us a lot. But my dad was able to take care of the boat and stuff and I used to not tie on the boat as well to keep me busy. They like focus my energies doing that too. And sanding is not my favorite thing. But tying ropes. Yeah, that’s fun.
Matthew Dols 5:22
Well, I was gonna say sounds like a little fidgety. Are you?
Kait Rhoads 5:26
Like when you live on a boat with your family? There’s no escaping anything. So yeah, there’s there’s a lot of psychological pressure and neither my parents are very suited to raising a healthy family. So it percolates. It percolates. Yeah.
Matthew Dols 5:45
I can’t even be in a four bedroom house with my parents for very long. So like, I could not imagine a small boat.
Kait Rhoads 5:52
No, yeah, you know, they just love that life. And I was so fortunate to be able to grow up in nature and like slipping in and out of it. And in that time in the 70s, in the Bahamas and Virgin Islands, the there hadn’t been a huge bacterial set in that killed a lot of stuff. So the life the water life was amazing. And I mean, I went to local schools, we, we lived in local communities, we dealt with racism, and it was very, I was so young. There was a lot of stuff that went way over my head. But yeah, it’s like a pressure cooker being on a small place together.
Matthew Dols 6:34
Yeah. Okay, wait, just to be clear, because you brought up racism. You’re white, somebody in your family, any other ethnic background?
Kait Rhoads 6:44
No, but when you live on the islands, it’s not you’re definitely a minority. Okay. And it’s interesting. It’s just I grew up in the situation where I was part of a five, I only went to school for three years, but I was there was only 5%. Other kids, then the people who grew up on the island and stuff or the 5%. White, as compared to 95%. The other way, I was young, so I’m sure I was racist. I’m from Virginia. And I also experienced being a minority in my school for that tiny snapshot of time when I was young. I just think about it more these days because of how inequality is brought up a lot more. And we’re asked to wrap our minds around things in a different way.
Matthew Dols 7:34
I just wanted to clarify it for the listeners, because they can’t see what you look like. So you were basically the you were the minority in a community, so Moyles, bit more sort of racism against you, even though you were the quote unquote, sort of white privileged people, but not necessarily at that community.
Kait Rhoads 7:55
Yeah, in that community. My dad had to go to prison because he was accused of stealing a boat that our friend and him like went to get one night and so he had to go to prison for six months and be apart from the family. It’s on his record, he can’t go back into the it took it took the anyway, it’s there’s lots of interesting stories, and he had a lot of good stories from being in prison to and talking to people there.
Matthew Dols 8:21
It was.
Kait Rhoads 8:24
It is what it is, you know,
Matthew Dols 8:26
it’s your childhood. You don’t know any different? No, I know. My, my parent, my father’s a priest. Well, Minister, I don’t even know how to say it right, Reverend? And people are always like, oh, what’s it like being a ministers kid? And I’m like, I don’t know. That’s the only life I know. But it’s fine.
Kait Rhoads 8:42
Exactly. You don’t know any different and everybody’s looking at you like, waiting for the horns to come out.
Matthew Dols 8:50
They came out. Yeah, they went away. They could they come out in dimes.
Kait Rhoads 8:55
We all have hormones. We all go through rebellious phases, or maybe a certain percentage of us anyway. Yeah. But my dad’s super good with wood and taking care of boats and he really loves. He really loved to be on the water and just loved that whole thing. I think my folks were really ballsy going on a boat. I found out later we had like secret compartments for guns. And we might have sample the 45 gallons of cruzan Rum that were smuggled back under a tank underneath the stairs in the boat a lot when I was in high school. You know, it was really around all you were smuggling. I think so. Yeah. My dad like cruzan Rum. He was part of he bought into like a store for boats and marine store while we were in the Virgin Islands. And you know, he did he got involved with business and did stuff there and my mom ran a bareboat business, a diving business as well. So I started diving when I was nine And certified when I was 10. And leading people on dives, pretty much after that for the next like, since I was 10 to, I think 11 you know, pretty young, but it was super fun spent a lot of time in the water and underneath the water, and night diving and burst something in my head, whatever, like it was just great.
Matthew Dols 10:22
And then after that you move to towards Washington, DC
Kait Rhoads 10:26
tappahannock, which is on the Rappahannock River. So itself, if you go out towards the water from DC, it’s on a nother Little River south of the Potomac, and little finger Lake area. That’s a place that my family had gone to school and the male counterpart of that school so I was there for four years and, and then I went down to Florida to school, in college and studied theater, I’d like theater, writing and art. And so I kept going with that there and sort of cut out writing and then cut out theater and just stayed with art. And then from there, I transferred to Rhode Island School of Design for painting. Although I knew I wanted to do sculpture, I did bronze casting jewelry, I made some jewelry, pretty bad jewelry, and Florida, did photography, painting, sculpture, and then wanted to get like a serious education. So I went to Thursday, because I knew I’d get some good connections or something. And I didn’t like their sculpture department, there was like this funny time in a sculpture department where they didn’t have a head. And so like look like Risley can look pretty cerebral anyway. And I dated some guy that was in the glass department. So somehow I got involved with glass. And I have a lot of issues that stem from being with my family so closely, that disappeared when it when I started to work with glass. So I cuz glass needs a lot of concentration. So anybody who has PTSD, they can really bite into that complexity of handling, working with other people to make a piece of art. And the glass is so visceral, that some people just have an instant connection. And I don’t think it’s a super smart connection, because glass is super hard. But it’s one where you suit and certainly fall in love. And I did with glass. So that’s where I started my romance with that material. And education in it too. So yeah.
Matthew Dols 12:39
Well, that’s one thing I noticed about it, because I was watching was it blown away on Netflix? Yeah. Yeah, very entertaining some magnificent creations being made there. But one of the things that I noticed is like, I’m a photographer, and for years, I didn’t understand how like, they were the I thought that artists were the solo people that sit in their studios, and they pined away for days on end and do this thing by themselves. But But I’ve realized that glassblowing it takes a minimum of two people to do pretty much anything really. Yeah. And so it’s a it’s much more of a collaborative communicative process to be able to do glassblowing. Because from what I understand, at a bare minimum, one person is sort of working on the molten glass while the other might be moving it or blowing it or doing something else with it to I don’t even know what the shape it form it whatever.
Kait Rhoads 13:35
The usual Italian team is five, five people on a pizza. So the way that I’ve learned with glass, and that I adapted so well is that because I loved theater. Like I don’t like to be the actor, because I don’t like being looked at so much. But I do like being in the supporting role, which is funny, right? I don’t know, if you if you’re an introvert extrovert, it’s like, it’s like you survive by people not seeing you when you’re young. Then when people see you, it’s not so positive for you, even though you think it might be. So I like the teamwork it took to make a production happen and that you could you didn’t have to be that person in front of the camera in front of the crowd. But I liked being even part of the chorus. you’re capable of feeling that incredible energy that all those people looking at you can give you and you understand about it coming in and how actors can really like use that energy to create magic. And I know that that can happen and I’ve been on stage and done it myself. So with glassblowing It was like this synergy of like a partnership. You know, like I can work with people to do something Which I know how to do and I feel safer in a group. And so I’ve really like formed a bond with my working buddies in school to I mean, I’m still friends with the surviving one now we see each other every week. But yeah, as far as the drama and everything the hosts have blown away, Catherine Gray was in graduate school when I was undergraduate. And so I’m very familiar with her. And I’m so happy that she’s out there as an example of glass blowing, or glass sculpture, not just glassblowing, although this, this centers on glassblowing. She’s a sculptor that uses a lot of different materials, but she’s so intelligent, and I’m happy that she’s the one out there like, helping to establish these boundaries for this reality show. So it’s just interesting. It’s interesting how it’s changed the lives of my friends if they’re on the reality show. And even if they don’t, when the controversy has brought them so especially now where people are stuck inside, and virtual life is the only life to a certain extent, because we can’t give up our TVs. And we’re a lot of us are stuck in places we didn’t imagine we’d have to be in for so much time. A day, you know, but it’s all interesting. So rusty was great. And, and I got exposed to have amazing, amazing glass workers, the heritage, there’s wonderful, I was working for my teacher Michael shiner, he would give me advice. So within my first year of working glass, I was assisting Delta Hoolies team and Lena tala Piatra at like a gig on the East Coast that they were doing. And being a woman in a male dominated field, there’s a lot of stuff you have to wade through. And I just have to learn my lessons three times, because I’m a little, I’m a little impaired when it comes to judgment sometimes. Yeah, but I battled my way through it. Because glass is so interesting, I freaking love it, it’s like, as a material, it can do so much. And you have to have so much control to be able to get what you want, in a lot of ways. And I think when I was younger, I needed that, to be in my life like that. And to spend so many years learning how to be a good glassblower. When we were young, we imagined we would be the most successful glass person that we knew. And it’s interesting when you go through life, because the ideals that you set in your head, at whatever age you’re at, you still keep those ideals, they’re part of you. It’s not like you move past them. So I laugh a lot, because he’s like my friend, I can say like, Oh, you know, like, it’s really hard for me to get over wanting to be you even though my work is, in some ways a lot different. We still revere the same virtuosity of the Italian glassmaking. But he’s definitely an Italian guy, but not anyway. It’s just funny, the layers of life.
Matthew Dols 18:15
You said so many things there, I’ve got to come back to all this. Okay, so first of all, I would understand. I was actually the host of a television show about photography, a competition of photography. And I was always wondering how it affects people on sort of on the other side. So like, How does it feel? Having an art form that a lot of people maybe just didn’t understand or weren’t necessarily sort of super interested in or engaged in, suddenly be on the sort of the tip of everybody’s tongue because of something like this popular TV show blown away? has it affected you? Have you seen any results of this or out with the changes?
Kait Rhoads 19:00
Definitely, with my friends who’ve been on it, you know, the show grooms them, and in that, they tell them, you know, after you go through this, your social media is going to explode. So you need to and they kind of help them like clean up their websites, prepare things, prepare their minds, because, I mean, I know that some people get like death threats because they’ve, they’ve cut out the person’s favorite person that was on there, you know, you have to steel yourself for the positive and negative, yes, you’ll you’ll get a lot of attention. And, but also, as a woman, if you succeed at something, there’s always a little friction about your success. So you have to be a little bit careful. But I think that as far as changing me, I can talk to people more about things but you have to understand that they keep those people in a place where there’s not Very good assistance like that. It’s like a pressure cooker that they put these people in, and they’re working with a finite amount of time. They’re getting no rest. And it’s like, that’s not how you find out who’s a good glassboard. That’s how you make a good TV show. So, yeah, I mean, it’s about glassblowing. That’s great. And people understanding the heartbreaks. Because there are a lot of heartbreaks. And it’s very hard for people to make a living with glass, because it’s so darn expensive. But you get like, you fall in love with it. And that’s the and that’s a big thing. And I like that they show the passion of the people that are doing it, instead of just focusing on like, oh, there’s that thing they made. It’s so perfect and lovely. Because with glassblowing there with the male domination, there’s also like a sportsmanship takes a lot of strength to do it. And I think that that kind of gets broken up in those because they have like a good gender balance, at least. I like how they follow the the people and learn their stories. But it’s like a weird slice of glass pie. It’s not like any reality show. It’s, it’s something under pressure or dramatic. It’s glass isn’t always about the drama. Like that’s what you want to avoid is drama while you’re working, although some people are a little more prone to it than others. So
Matthew Dols 21:30
that’s in every creative field. Actually, that’s in every life. There’s always the drama queens. But yes, you brought up sort of like gender roles and how like if glassblowing is male dominated, and you’re not male. Give me some more insight on that. Well, I just want to clarify a I’m male. B, I don’t know anything about the glassblowing industry, like about as much as I know is a few friends of mine over the years have played with it, but I don’t I you are literally like the first glass blower? Or are you a glass blower even for that? Like what is what do you call yourself?
Kait Rhoads 22:12
Well, I try for the sculptor thing, because I have I haven’t been good at taking care of my body over the years and he really needs to be an athlete to get the longevity out of it. But it’s because it’s dirt, it’s it’s hard to stand on concrete, and do a lot of lifted twisting and stuff that’s one sided, I became a yoga teacher in 2007 to try to help me balance out my skeleton which bends a certain way now, because everybody turns to the right to work when you’re at the bench. And it’s like you know, I’m gonna be crippled for life later on. But I did love to be in the hot shop, but I I can’t carry as much weight I’m not as strong as other people. My skeleton is not put together the best so runs in my family buy a lot of dislocations and stuff like that. So, but I love glass and with working in glass for so many years, I can now become the director of what’s happening and I can get other people to do the hands on stuff. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn’t. And I miss it a lot. I don’t blow that much and I have a hard time doing that every day now but I used to do it seven days a week for years. So
Matthew Dols 23:31
okay, well I will try my best to remember to call you a glass sculptor
Kait Rhoads 23:35
instead of whatever but I can blow glass and with glass blowing there’s soft glass and hard glass hard glass of bore silicate and you can think of that more as scientific glassmaking Pyrex or also you have to think that is also what pipe makers work with so for the legalization of marijuana in America is kind of cracked open this rebel glass rebel as these people who make bongs and pipes and specifically like $200,000 pipes and stuff that’s that’s been the hot trend and glass for the last seven or eight years. It has a lot to do with the money laundering and, and drugs and an art art has always been used as money laundering. But also this outsider art that’s grown and I mean you have to have good seals and good good habits to be able to make bongs and things so I’ve actually taken lessons to work with Bordeaux and I specifically love because I’ve I studied a little furniture design this and that’s why like lades I wanted to learn how to use a glass laid. I was in Michigan for a while and it Michigan there’s a lot of pharmaceutical companies and over the years they would have in house science tipic glass workers so that they could create all the stuff they needed in the lab. But they would job that stuff out more and more that those people kind of band together now when they’re older, and they teach these young pipemakers, how to work the glass, because if you don’t have good seals and scientific, good habits, it won’t work. So anyway, so there’s that section of glass. But the male dominated domination in the field. I mean, I think that just comes from Europe, and in particular, Venice, and Italy, in Europe, there’s people from both genders that work last and in Italy, too. But in traditionally, on Toronto, like women don’t do that. So much so. And I had a Fulbright to be I was in Italy for a year studying sculpture on Morocco. And I had people look at my pictures and be like, you didn’t make that, like, you know, and I just keep a low profile. And I’ve learned that over the years, it’s like, you have to prove yourself over and over in the glass world. Because there’s this team of people, they all want to work together. There’s lots of testosterone out there. And as a woman, it’s like you don’t have that endless amounts of testosterone. Or if you come from a family where you have high testosterone, you want to challenge and like be in the mix. A lot of people settle down into group workings. Because you want to get together with a group of people, they know what you want to do. And you guys make that choreography to make your artwork, you get it down, you want to work with them forever. Because that team’s work and good. Right? So a lot of teams work that way, or you lose a member to go do something you bring somebody else in Xu Li Inc, is a factory, they work with a lot of different teams. But as if you want to be a successful artists, it’s good to have like, a lot of people married their teammates, a lot of people just have a good friendship and come to work with those people. You have your own studio. So you invite people in you maintain that progress forward, and men are more comfortable with men in a lot of those situations. So it’s hard to break in as a woman, I think there weren’t a lot of people who did that before. But they don’t really stay as contributing members of that glassblowing world forever, you know,
Matthew Dols 27:26
okay, so I understand how that could have be an issue in the, what’s it called foundry for DRI? What’s the right word for the
Kait Rhoads 27:34
Oh, like in the hot shop
Matthew Dols 27:35
in the hacia? Okay, I understand how that could be an issue in the hot shop now. But I also want to know beyond that. So like, when you go to let’s see a gallery or to have an exhibition, or to meet a collector or curator or anything like this, does gender play a role at that point of the industry,
Kait Rhoads 27:55
the gallery owners that gave me opportunities the most were women. I’m single, I’ve never been married, I went through boyfriends. But sometimes gallery owners would see that as a danger. Because you could decide to have children and you would stop making work. So why invest in an artist that’s going to do that I had that explained to me by gallery owners and their employees as well. And so it’s like, you know, when there’s an old school thought, it’s, you get a thought in your head, you learn something, you have an idea when you’re done, it’s hard to erase that and a lot of ways like racism hard to erase beliefs that we’ve held for our whole lives or whatever. Systems supporting systems. And then, yeah, just getting along, like how what’s considered getting along How much? How much can you show of your real self in a situation? Like, that’s why you’re friends with the people. You cut your teeth with sometimes because they really know who you are. And I think, because I suffer from PTSD, it makes it harder for me to get along with people when it’s an abusive situation. And a lot of the European way of teaching in the way I was taught is like, you get yelled at, to be taught, and that doesn’t. But I, as a teacher, I use that same method even though it doesn’t work for me because that’s what I was taught. And, and I never went to school when there was sensitivity training. Like when I was in grade school, when I was in kindergarten, no one ever talked about anybody else’s emotions. And so a lot of the only 52 Okay, but I really feel like my communication skills and the way they the way people are taught to communicate now it’s it’s like something you really have a vocabulary you have to really bite into to be able to survive. Even I’m a workshop teacher more than I am a university teacher, although I have done that for a semester, even in workshops, the, it’s just a bit of a minefield for an I don’t want to call myself old, but someone who’s learned a totally different way of working to be very considerate and loving, although I try to be compassionate and kind in my daily life to a high degree because I am sensitive myself. But I can also pull over my cloak of Fuck you. Because you need it. When you’re with a bunch of guys who were all worked up about something like it’s I grew up with very few female cousins, or siblings. So I was used to that kind of fight. Okay, wait,
Matthew Dols 30:56
I’m gonna clarify that are I’ll expand on that. I was teaching in the United Arab Emirates as a white American man, I was teaching Muslim women art at the university level. I had to put on a facade for that because a classroom of 20 women is as difficult I would imagine, as a group of unruly men towards a woman as well. So I understand that issue. Like I, for many years, I took on the the sort of the persona of like, I don’t wanna say arrogant, but like, sort of like the, the teacher leeway like like the I did the Socratic method, kind of an idea where I tried to push them to figure out the answers. Like I hate teachers that spoon feed and coddle students. I think that’s a waste of an education time. But that’s just my personal opinion. I never yelled though, that’s a bit. That’s because I worked for the government universities, I guess of those workshops, I might have yelled, that would have been kind of fun. But I’m interested in the fact that you run workshops, because for years, people have always been like, hey, Matt, what are you going to run a workshop, I’d love to take a workshop with you. And I’m like, I don’t want to do fucking workshops. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love the idea of running workshops, the act of running a workshop magnificent. What I don’t like about it is the marketing the public relations, they all the other things that the basically the that you have to attract is not always do you have to be skilled and talented in your medium, then you have to be a skilled and talented teacher. And then on top of that, you have to be a skilled and talented marketing, public relations person, good coordination, good business skills, all these other things. And that just seems like too much for me,
Kait Rhoads 32:47
I have to say in response to that, that when I teach it’s added educational play, like work with craft, it’s taught a lot workshops in the summertime, so you, you have Penland or hastac, or pilchuck asked you to teach and they take care of all the other stuff, I mean, more and more, you have to do the publicity to draw people in, but they take care of all that for you because as an artist, you that’s an issue for artists don’t don’t bother doing that I do have friends that do do that. So that they get all the money but they do it on a smaller scale. And they are like some of the best glassblowers in the world. So you know you can organize that yourself or your wife organizes it for you actually is more like it but usually let the institution take the brunt of that
Matthew Dols 33:36
well and I’ve always wondered that Okay, so like, if you do it on your own, and you keep 100% of the revenue from the workshop versus let’s say going working with a institution and the institution I don’t know if they read I’ve never done one so theoretically what they think there’s
Kait Rhoads 33:54
no talk that they just have they just pay you a certain amount.
Matthew Dols 33:57
Oh, okay. They don’t
Kait Rhoads 33:59
they don’t talk about how much money they get. They have to run the facility and sometimes they’re multi multi dimensional multi media teaching facility and stuff so all the money maybe doesn’t go equally depending on because you probably have a teaching fee and then you have a studio fee like what student like a medals or glass or paper everything costs different and you know, there’s they have their systems for figuring things out,
Matthew Dols 34:28
right but I’m wondering like down the end of it so like, because like Okay, so let’s say you freelance and do your own workshops. When you get to keep 100% of all the income do you earn in the end sort of like you earn more money, even though you might have less students than if you work with an institution that gives you a flat fee.
Kait Rhoads 34:49
It depends on your shop, and how many people you can fit into your shop. So my friends, they have a smaller shop. So they would just have like For students, tops, but then I have friends who have built bigger shops, thinking they can run private classes. So they would have. But schools they only have three stations or four stations to work on or seven stations in different areas. So not all of them are on the same. So a lot of classes classes are orientated around how much time can be given. Because the it’s it’s so expensive to heat the glass and melt the glass. And so it’s all about like getting the maximum amount of time to each person and fair to the teaching assistants who don’t get paid anything really. And you know how to take care of everyone in the class. A lot of it’s like that’s up to the teacher. But yeah, I don’t know if I answered anything.
Matthew Dols 35:48
Not really not not where you didn’t answer my question. You answered a different question. So that’s fine.
Kait Rhoads 35:55
Yeah, I’m not super linear going through a cleanse although I’m not in the strong part right now. I backed out of it a bunch so I wouldn’t be to
Matthew Dols 36:05
a cleanse you mean like
Kait Rhoads 36:07
admired admired from reality? But just it’s restricted eating like no sugar, no alcohol, no wheat, no. Dairy. No,
Matthew Dols 36:16
yeah, there’s got what do you eat? Like That sounds like my whole diet,
Kait Rhoads 36:20
lots of greens, lots of greens. And make your own food and not get processed food too much and, and then you can go meatless for a while and you can go like, not solid for a while, too. And just taking the end of 2020 and squeezing all the frustrations out for a little while.
Matthew Dols 36:42
It’s a bit yeah. So okay. So in relevance to the quarantines and all that. Well, no, wait, you’re in Washington, right? Yes, Washington State just to be clear on that.
Kait Rhoads 36:52
Yes. Seattle, Washington State, Pacific Northwest. And so I’m on, I can look down onto the Puget Sound from where I live right now. Luckily, I bought a house December 31 2020. And moved out of my studio, which was fine, but it was next to the baseball and football, places of worship and has become more and more isolated and funky. And there’s we have a large homeless population in Seattle. And no I bought a house and I’ve been working through trying to renovate during quarantine and and get my studio up and running squeeze 3000 square feet worth of stuff into 1000 square at 1500 square feet. It’s it’s kind of like a sausage process. But it’s it’s been really good. And I have a garden which makes everything so wonderful.
Matthew Dols 37:47
All right. Let’s move on to some other sort of more artistic creative topics. First of all, I want us to jump back to a thing. bongs do you make them? Nope. Okay, great. Moving on. Next topic.
Kait Rhoads 38:01
They’re tough. I’ll tell you the last time I tried to make one was in art school. And just when we were putting the spout on a sixth grade class came to visit and watched us do it. And after it, it’s like tough to make it right. Okay, and it’s not the right kind of glass. Our soft glass won’t take heat, like the hard glass does. So I did not go down that route. Because I’m trained at Rhode Island School of Design and stuff. Although I have friends that make bongs for Barneys Barney’s
Matthew Dols 38:38
and they went to Christie. I knew of a lady glassblower who made glass dildos, like yeah, I mean, I’m all for it. Whatever works for you. Oh,
Kait Rhoads 38:47
yeah. I got friends from misty who do that too. I listen to Italian masters tell me stories about how when they were kids, they made hollow and Murano for the ladies so you can put the warm water in it. Nice. Okay. Which is funny. But that’s a that’s a time honored glass. Use. Absolutely.
Matthew Dols 39:12
I support it. 100% Okay, I work on paper. So and I’m always bitching about how now I never have enough space or ability to store my work. Well, I am utterly fascinated. How do you store glass other than very carefully.
Kait Rhoads 39:33
We had a big earthquake here in 2001. I was in grad school or in Italy at that time, and many of my friends who have beautiful studios and had all their workout, lost a lot of their work. I have made some larger installation pieces. Starting back to 1995. I have been storing crates giant crates for years at, okay, you know, decades. So that’s almost three decades and like, three years, four years, there’ll be three decades, I’ve been storing huge crates, so you put your glass in the safe thing. So you got your double walled cardboard, and then you’ve got foam, or if you’re shipping, you’ve got to double box it as well, my work, I think a lot now, well, that’s not true. Yeah. And in the last 10 years or so I’ve been or 15. Making larger scale work means you have to have a crate for it to go in, and then you stack in crates, and it becomes a little bit crazy. And it’s difficult to take care of all that stuff. So you have to go through it and make decisions about what to keep and what to smash, because you can’t afford to store it all. And if you’re an artist, you’re packrat, that’s a problem too. So you have to have a lot of square footage. So living in the center of Seattle right now is not the smart idea where I live now I have basically 1500 square feet for myself and my studio, and my business. So I have a 300 square foot storage space. That is because I started moving after COVID started, I couldn’t get rid of a lot of stuff. So my storage space is full of books and clothes, because I still haven’t gotten to them to get rid of them. Because it was really scary in the beginning COVID. So you didn’t know what you could do. Now goodwill is open and accepting things. And so it’s it’s better. But as an artist, you do have to think about your babies, like I have no fruits of my body babies, but I do have lots of sculpture babies. And you know, that’s why a lot of people get a container and put it on their property. But I don’t have a big property. But I’m planning to build more storage containers outside to put stuff in. I have so much packing material. And so if you have paper, I finally did get a file drawer for all my drawings. And I’ve done printmaking, to digital printmaking, super fun, and my projects and my maps of pieces. And it felt like I finally arrived to get a file cabinet like a file cabinet for my drawings. I’m
Matthew Dols 42:32
bitterly envious of you. I still don’t have a filing cabinet. I want one. Well, sadly, actually a filing cabinet won’t work because some of my work is twice the size of filing cabinet. Right, right. Yeah, so but some of it well, I there are filing cabinets that exist that can fit most of my work, but some won’t.
Kait Rhoads 42:50
And then there goes another issue too. Because the way that you when you become an artist, or you start identifying as an artist, you start getting ideas about where your life should be at different time periods, which you’re laughing at. And I know it’s like we thought we’d be here, here and here. And like, well, I’m still preparing for the retrospective. So I’m keeping all of my you know, you have to winnow down how much stuff you keep about yourself. And I’m not good at banging my own drum, but it’s like I’ve got boxes of invitations and different things that Who the hell cares about but just in case the Renwick needs it, which is a high craft library.
Matthew Dols 43:37
But it’s really sad because I previously on the podcast, I had a guest who did legacy planning, like that was her career to help artists plan their legacy. And from our conversation, I was just like, Fuck, man, I actually have to keep more stuff, cause like, I’ve gotten rid of too much. But like, it’s really made me think a little bit more about like, at least keeping, keeping the best of around, you know, even if I just put it in storage and don’t talk look at it for decades. But I don’t want to get rid of it. Because it was a very interesting concept that she talked about, which is as living practicing artists, it’s our job to keep all of our stuff. So whether these are like journals or sketches, or whatever, you know, it doesn’t even mean the finished piece. Because those things in a best case scenario, you know, if the legacy plan goes well, will end up in a library or a museum’s collection, which will then make it so that future scholars will be able to do more research on you and your place in the canon. But if none of that exists, future scholars can’t research you so therefore you won’t be placed into the candidate so like the way to be part of sort of art history. is to basically create a set of material objects that can be passed on for future scholars. And I love that idea.
Kait Rhoads 45:11
Well, I have to think that the first artists that made me really think about things was Robert Mapplethorpe, I went to see a show of his with some friends of mine who loved him so much at the Getty, and LA, like the new and improved, I went in 2000 It looks so different than even a few years ago, but in reading about different stages of his life, as an artist, like his lover was wealthy and his lover passed before he did. So Robert Mapplethorpe was able to create an entity that took care of his artwork, after his death with this money. So when I go places, I can see Robert Maple Thorpe’s work because there’s, there’s a foundation that it takes care of this work, and sends it out when it’s right. So like, Oh my gosh, how can I, in my family like there’s I have no offspring. So my arts my offspring, do I isolate my money from going back into my family at my depth, and, you know, purchase enough land that I can afford a foundation that I can have my work taken care of, so that it has a voice posthumously, and people because I don’t talk about a lot of my, how my life fits into my work completely. I was told never to talk about weakness, especially with, with your artist statement, you don’t talk about weakness, like, you know, so there’s like a whole list, you know, like, you’d want to go with strong things not like, it’s interesting, like that kind of indoctrination that you get. And for me, I think a lot of my stuff is personal, it’ll take me a long time to untangle myself enough to be able to really talk about it. So I’m looking forward to seeing how I mature as an artist and, and how my communication skills ramp up. But but sorry, I meandered. Getting back to me before I really got to see that if you want to have a lasting effect in your craft or in your you know that making sure your work doesn’t just crumble into nothingness, like I have seen happen to my friends who are geniuses and pass away, like their family doesn’t know what to do. And then the work gets lost. And it’s like, No, no, no, no, you need, I keep every sketchbook, I keep all the announcements, I keep all my acceptance letters, I keep all my rejection letters, all that stuff can’t be thrown away. And I feel like I’m dragging it around to some degree. But I’m also like, this is my way to the future. I send my catalogs each time I make them. Or they’re made to the Corning Museum of Glass, they have a fantastic library. They’re also in Venice, there’s a new foundation there that is started by collectors in Switzerland. And they are accepting masters papers like a glass masters papers and designers, papers are usually not the famous glass usually as a designer and a master. So the designers are focused on more but to receive a family’s papers, that’s like, huge, but they are trusting it to this foundation because it’s not run by Italians, and that they will take care of this legacy because Venice has a huge legacy and glass.
Matthew Dols 49:04
Oh, yeah. I mean, I prior to discussing this with this previous guests, I had never it was Amy Patek was the lady that did it. There’s the legacy planner, I had never thought of that or like I, I guess I would assume that somebody else would just sort of take control over these things. And I didn’t realize how much of an active role as a living artist that I need to take in that legacy, for lack of a better word,
Kait Rhoads 49:31
legacy planning, they call it for artists,
Matthew Dols 49:33
I love it. I’m all for it. And I’m like I’m even doing stupid things like with the podcast, I now have a book and like I write write my notes in the same book and like in the book, I put the name of the guest and I put the date that I that I do that the conversation so that like they can see all my notes. You know, later on even if we didn’t get to talk about the topic, I had the note that I wanted to talk about a topic. I mean, I’m getting a bigger kind of OCD. about it. It’s kind of weird. I shouldn’t be doing that. But anyways COVID No, no, it’s so funny. Everybody keeps talking about like, oh COVID affected this infected that and all that. I’m like, you know what, I’m an artist, like, I’ve always been a recluse. And so like COVID just means you all are now living my lifestyle. Like, I’ve always been like this. Nothing’s changed. For me. The only difference is I’m not going to art openings. That’s about it. Other than that, I’m pretty much living the same life I lived before COVID. But as said, that’s my sad story. So you mentioned it your house, you said that you have your your living space, you have your studio and your business? Is your business selling and whatever, exhibiting your artwork? Or do you have another business?
Kait Rhoads 50:52
Yeah, it’s just making art, you know, my art making business. It’s you through taxes and understanding how to separate my life. You know, that part is part of me. So my garage is not for cars, it’s for my kilns and things. I’m used to living in my own studio. So like, I have altered my living room and I had an extra bedroom, I took down the wall, separating it from the hallway, I put up plywood walls there, I put plywood walls up in my living room. And I, I would prefer like I like big open spaces. So I can have different projects. With the PTSD comes the OCD tendencies, I also have a really hard time staying in a linear line. So if I get frustrated with one thing, I want to have another thing right there to work on. So I like having five projects out. And being able to ping pong in between things really helps to allow my creativity to flow better. So it means I don’t get a living space as much. But with my purchase of the house, it was a little bigger than I could afford. So I turned my basement into an apartment. And I’m currently renting that out. Although I don’t know how much longer that will happen. And because COVID is so pernicious and the air system is shared out probably just there’s a big leap to like cross my fingers and say, Okay, I’ll just pay for the whole thing. But I’ve been investing in the last 567 years with making larger scale work of a higher price point. Because to survive through hard times, you have to having different price points in your work means you don’t put all your eggs in the same basket. I’m a bit of a nervous Nellie in that regard. With wanting to do five or six different series, it helps if I’m working on a piece for 300 hours, if I have a piece I can work on for 20 hours. And then another piece that I can work on for two hours. So I feel like I’m making progress somewhere with jewelry, making progress somewhere with finishing a small piece making progress with the big piece over a larger amount of time. Yes, it just works better. For me,
Matthew Dols 53:19
it sounds like an incredibly logical business plan. It makes complete sense. I mean, I noticed Okay, so on your website, which I will link to in the in the show notes that you have five galleries that sell your work so that but you make everything from jewelry to large scale installations. Like how do you manage like, basically the what I’m getting at is like you don’t seem to be selling through your own website or basically you’re on your own you sell through a gallery or some sort of other business. How do you manage to sort of, I don’t know, you may know cobbled together a living out of that.
Kait Rhoads 53:58
Well, I do have a website to sell from but that is called Kate roads design calm. Because it’s for smaller pieces. And it’s part of a larger plan. So it’s not the idea in the last 10 years or 20 years is that oh if you have if you make high art high priced art, people don’t want to see that you make lower priced art. When I have visitors to my studio, and I have my jewelry out and my art out I have usually men asked me like why do you have that stuff out there cheapens your work? And I said, Well, you know, you’re not a woman. So women were art. I made my small pieces. I’ve always made jewelry. But when I started making my large scale pieces, people couldn’t afford them, but they loved them. So I started making things that had lower price points so that people could still get something that would remind them of that. big piece that they loved, because that’s how my brain works. And I enjoy being out. Yeah. So it’s a lot of I spend a lot of time on my work some pieces, I want to spend less time, some pieces more time, the price is different accordingly. And these days, it’s being I’ve been told that it’s better to link my shop to my website, because we’re so virtual, we want to see what everybody can do now, all in one, one thing. And so I’m working up, I’m cooking up what I need to do. And then I’m going to talk to my web designer, who’s my friend, and we’re going to be changing things. But it’s like I dropped my blog, I used to do a blog, because that was really popular back in the day. Now, I don’t do it anymore. We still have to get rid of those links on the website. There’s always something to clean up. If I can add and subtract myself, I can have some fun, but if I need someone else to do it, I usually wait a longer time and then lump do that and pay for it at the same time.
Matthew Dols 56:03
We all do that. Yeah. But okay. Sunday, I’m interested in that. Okay. So you make large scale, expensive work, you make small scale jewelry, which I have to admit looking at them. They’re not that they’re not that cheap. I mean, I understand they’re on the lower price point, but they’re definitely not cheap. So well. Yeah, they’re not. It’s just a fact.
Kait Rhoads 56:26
No, there’s a there’s a good reason for that. Because,
Matthew Dols 56:28
yeah, I
Kait Rhoads 56:29
mean, it takes it takes a long time. It’s a specialized thing. I have specialized toys not quite every time you touch the glass. Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, but it is a it is like if I make something for $120, that’s much different than making something for $65,000. You know,
Matthew Dols 56:50
so just what I’m trying to get to here. Okay. So over the course of, let’s say, let’s say a year in your business, like what percentage of your sales is the large scale? And what percentage is small scale? And then I’m assuming there’s maybe a mid range set of works that you also do so that like somewhere No, like, basically, like, is 50% small scale as far as your income and then like 25 and 25? For the, the really, you know, large scale and mid range? Like, like, how, basically like, how much are people buying the different ranges?
Kait Rhoads 57:28
I’m just going to pull up my profit and loss standard for last year.
Matthew Dols 57:31
That’s amazing. But you don’t need to be that
Kait Rhoads 57:34
fiscal year. Well, I mean, because I can’t every year is different. And what’s good for me is if I can sell a large piece, I don’t really make much money. So but I would say so. So jewelry last year, I made close to 4000. Yeah. sales for sculpture. More like 40,000
Matthew Dols 57:59
Okay, no way is that like mid range sculptures or large sculptures or st lumped together as one,
Kait Rhoads 58:05
let’s see. 9000. So one of them is if I can sell my, my work myself, I can keep on 100%. Sure. If I sell through a gallery, I only get 50%,
Matthew Dols 58:20
such as the system Yes,
Kait Rhoads 58:21
such as the system. So like last year, I had a sale for a midsize wall piece. So that was a $40,000 sale, I get $20,000 for that, I get so out of that 40,000 20,000 was from a large scale piece, like 9000 was from a vessel, which is kind of a big vessel. And then, you know, the 4000s for jewelry, and I had a moving sale. So there’s some pieces of vessels and smaller stuff that I sold. So nothing like that big really, in in state retail less than 2000. You know, it just it just depends like, some galleries are good at selling some things for a while, and then they get a different owner. And then they’re no good at that anymore. Or you’re trying a new gallery or you’re
Matthew Dols 59:12
Wait, hold on. No. I was fasting. You just said in state sales was you said zero. Is that right?
Kait Rhoads 59:20
Oh, in state sales. It’s like maybe 2000 for vessels and larger pieces or 4000. I sell stuff in Europe, too. So I’ve been trying to focus a little bit on the European market. Because I like the idea of being internationally renowned. And I was worried I’d have to leave the country at a certain point. So I wanted to start expanding my range and just to make it a softer landing in case I had to go.
Matthew Dols 59:51
No, the reason why I asked about that though, is because I’ve sort of learned this thing over a series of my own life mistakes and career mistakes that I’ve made which Is that I was I in the beginning I thought, um, you where you live should be where your collector base and your existing exhibiting base and all this kind of stuff. And I have, over the course of my career, I’ve realized where you live has almost nothing to do with who buys your work or where they buy your work like I most of my collectors are in Chicago, Illinois, New York City, Germany, and France. And I have lived in none of those four places ever in my life.
Kait Rhoads 1:00:34
Yes, a lot of my sculpture ends up in Florida. My sense, and I do a lot of big seaweed, which isn’t like a giant thing in Florida. But the fluidity of my work, people who love the sun and light and color and being close to beautiful places, tend to have the money to and want to put the work there. I Pacific Northwest, I’m way better. I used to be way better sales in New York, then because I’m classically trained from busy, I think that’s the European flavor of my education. And so, in the Pacific Northwest, where I live, it’s like, Wild Wild West, as far as the art history for this area. It’s difficult in the glass community. If you don’t fit into the good old boy system, sometimes you’re left on your own. Like I’m not married into the good old boy system. So and I suffer from memory issues. So I don’t remember people’s names very well. And that says, Matt, yeah, thanks, Matt. I it’s good. I, you know, name tags are good for the first couple days. Just Just joking, workshop, workshop talk, but, and I think that makes it harder for me to remember the people that have bought my work. I remember how people make me feel, not how they look or their names. And so it’s better if a gallery can do the talking for me, but slowly, like I just tried to keep integrity in what I do, and how I treat people and how I treat clients. And it’s very difficult to do in the art world. Because once you get involved with a gallery, like they should have a part of you. But I broke away from my gallery like seven years ago, because I felt they didn’t give a crap about me. And because how many hundreds of artists do you have to unless you’re somebody who really sells things yourself, or your work sells really well, then it’s hard to get attention from a gallery. So I didn’t feel like they were supporting me. So I had to do my own thing, which I don’t know how smart that is. But so I try to have my space for people to come and look at work. I have galleries come through that represent me like you said, I’ve five galleries. I mean, now it’s a virtual world giving virtual tours. And but I’m so lucky, I think because I have a few years before we’ll actually start coming into each other’s houses again, I think. And I need that time to slowly turn this house into a functioning workspace, where I have dirty space. I have office space, I have jewelry space, I have space for other things. I have workspace we can transform. And it’s it’s not exactly what I want. But I I love improving the garden and improving the way things look and bringing it up to a vision. And who knows, then maybe I’ll move on somewhere else that’s better and further away, or
Matthew Dols 1:03:47
I don’t Oh, yeah, I’m looking forward to buying a plot of land outside the city and building some like, big place with multiple barns for my wife and I’d have in different locations and stuff. Like it’d be great fun. you mentioned earlier and you sort of brought it up again, career goals changing over the course of our lives. So like, I remember being a kid and my goal was to have a retrospective at the Guggenheim. That was my by the age of 50 that I was planning on and at the age of 50. My friend Billy, who was my childhood friend, he was working in film at the time. So he was going to make a documentary about me that was also going to be on exhibit at the same time, because we’ve known each other since we were like two years old. So you would be able to create a great documentary. Needless to say, I’m two three years away from 50. And I am nowhere near a Guggenheim retrospective. And of course, Billy is also not working in film anymore. So that whole goal is sort of shot to hell. So like, how did you so my and of course mine was also like to be a superstar like he wanted to be like the pinnacle of a movement and he wanted to be the representation Have a have a time period and all this kind of stuff and you went into all this kind of crap. And now I’m like, No, I just, I just want to make enough money to continue to do what I want to do. And I’ll be perfectly happy. How have your chain goals changed?
Kait Rhoads 1:05:18
I remember making a choice. When I was I did college for eight straight years after high school. So I remember, in my first college thinking, I should leave here and go and do art because I meant to do that. And then I thought, oh, I’ll just stay here with my friends and like, finish this passage of life with them. And then I’ll go on to do my art. And, you know, this is what I want to be this painter or, you know, I was in Florida dreaming dreams at a mediocre liberal arts school and and then when I went to Thursday, I looked at my choices. I dated some glassblower Oh, I should tell my friend Thurmond state and how he changed my life. And I thought to myself, glasses, very rarefied and small, as an art medium. And when I look at painting, painting is so big. Like, what do you want to do? Okay, do you want to be a big fish in a small pond or a small fish in a big pond? And I don’t know if that affected my choice. But it has. And I went with, I think I was in love with glass, it was just going to happen. So yeah, I went with the glass and I, in the business longevity, secures you a place I think I’m always bewildered that I’m included with some of my peers. And some of the people that I worked for and respected so much, when I moved to town, I feel very fortunate to be able to show work with them and to be in this group of artists that work with glass that have accolades from this part of the country. As an artist, you know, that the way you feel about yourself and your position in the art world changes, monthly, like as a woman growing up in a patriarchal system, as I get older, it’s really harder for me to hold on to the idea that I’m this incredible artists, nobody else thinks like me, like it’s it’s just harder and harder to hold a crisp artists ego together, you know, and I think that’s good for me, and learn humility. And I see, if you can’t keep that artists persona together, you can disappear very easily. And you have to be drawn towards the light to a certain extent, I’m very competitive. And I feel that way, about being chosen, but or successful, but yet, I’m passed up a lot for things that I think are successful. And then I go into my studio, and I take these slices of glass, and I put them in my kilm. And I take them out of my kitchen, and I wash them and I think Oh my God, I’ve least I’ve done one thing to move my life forward, that feels good. I’ve like made these things beautiful. And now I put them in a jar and I put them on the shelf. And there they are. And it’s about creating beauty. I think in my life that makes me happy. harmony, and beauty. I feel so much that life is hard for me to understand, and to move through in a successful passion, a pattern or like I see my guy friends and they like oh, get a girlfriend and they’re in love and they have a family and they’re an artist and and it just doesn’t seem to be for women. There’s this. It’s not the same kind of path. So I don’t know I just I try to follow my curiosity as a person. I volunteer a lot at the Seattle aquarium or I used to I look at plankton I talk about the science of the ocean, how important algae is and seaweed. My life has flowed in different areas and different ways and you can’t help that that happens to you. And I think it’s finding happiness becomes more important to me in my work and outside of my work because I think sometimes I am good at slogging through things or Glass people are masochistic. So it’s like I put myself in a position you are who you are, you find out through your friendships, you put yourself in a position where you are overextended, or you put yourself in a position where you can focus on yourself. And again, in the patriarchy, women are not taught to focus on themselves. So it’s like, bringing yourself back to that navel gazing, to make work and to communicate whatever emotional thing I’m trying to communicate at the time. I, you know, I think it’s a good reason to keep going. And that’s, uh, as an artist, you just have to allow your, your vision of who you think you’re going to be in the 20s, with who you are, who you become when you’ve gravitated towards in your life. And, you know, sometimes you have, I’ve been very fortunate, through my family support, I can keep sleeping in a bed, and I can, I can still follow my dreams artistically to a certain extent. So I can take, I don’t take risks as much as I used to, because once you have a good thing, then you keep going at it. So you see a lot of glassblowers, once they’ve developed that thing that they do, then they do that thing for a long time. Because, gosh, it took so long to learn how to do that, and a lot of r&d and development, and you add new things into your repertoire, slowly, you experiment, you test it out, you try not to like spend $20,000 on one thing at the same time. And then it being 2008. And then you’re in debt for 10 years, you know, you try not to do those things, but sometimes you don’t know what’s happening. So as you get older, you try to be savvy and back yourself up, I guess that’s why I have like the different objects that I make at different price points, like whatever thing screams at me at the time, that’s going to help support me and keep me following my life’s path. I want to do that. But learning how to reach out for the things that you don’t have in your life or the things you’re not good at, to help you to get to your further dreams. That’s something that I think happens over time, you really have to be open to people helping you. Because as an artist, you can’t pay people to do stuff so easily. There’s so much to learn out there right now about how to survive and how to communicate and how to have the right website and how well you can’t put shipping on it anymore. Shipping has to be included. So you have to raise your price to get to tell everybody about it. You got to there’s a lot of communication that goes on with creating a identity as an artist and as a artist that sells their own work to create faith in that from collectors that that you have integrity and that you’ll do the right thing. I think it just takes a lot of determination and commitment.
Matthew Dols 1:13:04
Indeed. All right. I got two last questions to wrap this up here. First one would be Do you have the names of the three other creative people that somehow you think are worthy of a little bit more attention?
Kait Rhoads 1:13:22
Boyd’s a geeky. He’s currently teaching in Japan right now. But as a he’s one of my best friends. And he’s a very polite Hawaiian man who does not bang his own drum. But he is one of the finest glassblowers out there. And his design ability is like, bang. And so him and his wife, Lisa Berkowitz have the design line to tone. So you can find, oh, my goodness, I’m going to muck that up, aren’t I? Should I look it up? So I’m going to say the right thing? Sure.
Matthew Dols 1:14:01
You’re welcome to look it up. I will put links to all these people if I can find them online.
Kait Rhoads 1:14:06
Two tone studios is their name. Another unsung person that let’s say, it’s like I want to he’s male. So say female and my my friend Jennifer Caldwell, she’s, we talk a lot. She’s a shy person too. So it’s like this difficulty with putting yourself out there. So if you’re a shy person, you know, yeah, I
Matthew Dols 1:14:31
only have a shy person that you talk to a lot, but it’s okay.
Kait Rhoads 1:14:35
Well, no, we don’t talk a ton, but you learn in the glass community, who you trust and who you don’t trust. Because you learn that so then the ones who you do trust you trust and we survived by sharing information, oh, this vendor is not working anymore. That person’s not trustworthy. We have to like, know what’s happening in our community. So you get your You’re people who have the finger on the pulse, and then you share your information with them. And then everybody tries to help each other out. As far as like, we’re talking about Yeah, yeah, I’m not part of the good old boy club, but I am part of the I would say good old girl club, good old girl club, there is a Glasgow girl club, new girl. Yeah, the new girl club. There’s not a ton of members at my age bracket, but there’s a fair amount. And I think we’ve learned here to be generous with our information with each other. Because the more you hold in and try to keep secret, the more you stifle, as well, like you have to think of it like a tree, you have to a tree branches get so I have to do a lot of pruning coming up, you know, you need to let the light and you need to let air come past and, and being in an educational system. As a artists, you’re so fortunate to have the sounding box of your peers and your teachers. But in real life, you have to make that for yourself. You have to choose those people from your medium or the people that you really, really, you know, respond to and you need to make them part of your community. I’ve been Kiki Smith’s ta I’ve been to her place. I she knows me by name, like you know, there’s people out there that you can rely on. You just have to believe in yourself. And I know it’s hard to do through a lot of distractions these days. But yeah,
Matthew Dols 1:16:35
okay, do you have a third artist?
Kait Rhoads 1:16:37
So there’s two. There’s an unsung artist, like all my besties
Matthew Dols 1:16:42
but I’m trying to think of I feel bad call another unsung artist, but like an artist that you once you wish the public would notice more.
Kait Rhoads 1:16:51
And then there’s Karen wilin. Brink Johnson. She’s just got a huge soul. And she’s an amazing, amazing teacher and wonderful person. And for so many people who their life’s work, and happiness is being in the hot shop. I feel so bad for these days like, hurt, she really shines in that regard. And her technical abilities are like no other. I have friends that are definitely Sung. So that’s for sure.
Matthew Dols 1:17:21
But they’ve already got the attention. I don’t need to give them more attention.
Kait Rhoads 1:17:27
Well, and some are good at accepting the attention and using it to further their career. And some aren’t, you know, just aren’t. So yeah,
Matthew Dols 1:17:36
yeah. All right. last little bit is I always asked for you’ve already given a lot of advice, but I generally sort of ended with asking for advice as well. So any advice you have not given yet that you think that maybe the next generation or somebody that wants to follow in your footsteps might benefit from,
Kait Rhoads 1:17:53
of course, I have to say that stubbornness is a virtue to a certain extent, if you have a vision in your head of how you think your art should be, it’s always good to work to get that out there. Please don’t take one person’s opinion to the moon, you really need to listen to your gut, and yourself. Of course, if someone is more educated, you try to go down that pathway with what they’re saying, to understand what they’re saying. But you don’t need to adopt that as your motto creed for the rest of your life. You know, making art is supposed to be a happy thing. Don’t let it be something that rules your life in a negative way. Because the whole concept of the artist in the ivory tower suffering for their art is not a healthy one. And you can see social media has changed that for so many people. So now it’s a healthy blend of what you show and what you don’t. And keeping some things private for yourself. I guess that would be an end to love yourself and take care of yourself. Like that’s the most important thing is to not sacrifice so much for your art that you don’t have anything left for you. And good luck with that if you really love what you do.
Matthew Dols 1:19:14
Marvelous thank you very much for your time.
Kait Rhoads 1:19:17
Matt, it was a pleasure. Thanks so much and keep the East Coast spine going on wherever you are. That like I’m just talking about our background common background with spending some time in the same area of DC Arlington and there’s a lot of ad stuff for sure. Watching Life of Brian for the first time watching like so many being super into. What was it Phil Collins that was he was still in the band Genesis was huge, and it was a great time of my life very confused. I think most of my life’s been pretty confusing, so I just try to ride with it these days.
Matthew Dols 1:19:59
My dad Showed me Life of Brian for the first time. So if that tells you about my family,
Kait Rhoads 1:20:04
well, what an amazing film and in the 80s with the money, Python, I would have to go watch bootleg copies of it at my like Latin teachers house, sometimes he would even. I mean, it wasn’t what we wanted your kids to say.
Matthew Dols 1:20:19
Oh, no, no. Okay, wait, my Latin teacher in high school, Mr. Bell, I can say this because I’m pretty. He’s passed away so I can tell the story now. He was he actually was a monk. And he was kicked out of the monastery because he was also an alcoholic. And he ended up coming and teaching at the public high, high school, Latin high school teacher. And on his desk, he had this little monk doll like he was nobody was just like a monk on his desk. Great. Follow up,
Kait Rhoads 1:20:49
follow alcohol. No,
Matthew Dols 1:20:50
even better. You push the head down on the monk, and a big penis came out from between the robes,
Kait Rhoads 1:20:58
of course, and he had that in the class in the class Yes,
Matthew Dols 1:21:00
for decades. And none of the the administration ever could figure it out. But all the students knew it was classic.
Kait Rhoads 1:21:09
Did he ever do it in front of class? Or was it just the rumor? Oh, no, he, he or you people would do
Matthew Dols 1:21:14
a poll would do it. And he’d be like, stop doing that somebody will see.
Kait Rhoads 1:21:20
I had an Episcopalian priest who was female in my high school. And she’s gay. She came out as gay. And they did. She’s a bishop. She’s turning into a bishop now, but she was amazing. I loved theology. I thought it was so interesting and and then I’d like studied the Qur’an and my school to understand other theology and had like all these, like, come back to Christianity. There’s hope for you. I’m like, what I just studied it What?
Matthew Dols 1:21:50
Yeah, that’s the Virginia word theology means to studying of religions. It doesn’t mean you have a belief in any particular it just means studying something all theologies like. Yeah, my father has his doctorate in theology, even though he’s actually an Episcopal Reverend.
Kait Rhoads 1:22:09
Oh, Episcopal? Wow, man, my school. I went to chapel six days a week. We had Saturday off and Sunday was church for real Z’s. Yeah. But I was always even in St. Thomas. I was at an Episcopalian school where they would chastise us for F and around and
Matthew Dols 1:22:28
chapel. My dad was not that pretty. So I promise My dad was the cool one. He was he was so much like, I went to him when I was having a problem with cocaine. And I said, Dad, I need you to get me into rehab. And he said, and he just turned to me in a nutshell, he basically just turned and said, tough shit, you got yourself into it, you get yourself out. Wow. tough, tough love,
Kait Rhoads 1:22:53
understanding understanding. Well,
Matthew Dols 1:22:57
I mean, it’s a longer story, but he was he was understanding and he was doing his version of tough love to sort of say, I have faith in you to correct you know, self correct your own life. You’ve made some mistakes, but now that you are aware of the mistakes you’ve made, you can make you can correct for them. And so, in the end, it was the thing that motivated me to finally quit. So I mean, I, you know, good for him. He knew how to manipulate me.
Kait Rhoads 1:23:25
Well, my stepbrother is addicted to cocaine. And he’s been in and out of prison and and had a rehab. last couple of years, he had open heart surgery, and he lost his foot, you know, because of diabetes setting in and it’s like he still quit
Matthew Dols 1:23:44
21 years ago now. So
Kait Rhoads 1:23:46
see, no, you’re like it worked for you. But sometimes it’s harder for some Oh, absolutely. I
Matthew Dols 1:23:53
don’t know how I did it. I even did it. Cold Turkey. No Narcotics Anonymous, no, nothing. I just I just locked myself in my house for three months. cut all ties to my old friends and my old job and then got a new job and moved away. But like in
Kait Rhoads 1:24:12
Malta, it’s hard when all your friends are doing. And I was in Florida in the 80s. So that was part of my repertoire. Like I went to college at 17 I learned a lot about drugs and alcohol, Lucena, gins, things like that big party school. And like I learned that I had to leave that behind in my life because it was great. And I liked it. But the results weren’t good. Results really weren’t good. So Ironically, the the year that I was doing heroin, was the only year in my entire collegiate career that I got straight A’s. Yeah, my friend and I we would not do any of our homework and then we do coke and get it done in two nights for like mid semester and stuff like That was not ideal. And I’m lucky that I’ve never experienced heroin, my rusty roommate odede, once or twice, and I had asked him to get some for me, so I could try it. And he didn’t. And I thank him. Thank Him, thank him because I would have gone down that rabbit hole. Hugely. I have so many friends here in Seattle that like grew up with kids in high school with giant holes in their arms, because they’d been addicted to heroin and oh, I never shot anything up. Like That was my line. I would snort I would smoke. I would do any of that bank Shut up. I was like, I just want to try to snorts like, Oh, no.
Matthew Dols 1:25:43
Yeah. The good old days?
Kait Rhoads 1:25:48
Well, when you’re in your 20s shit can happen to you that you can recover from. I just think it’s, it’s harder as you get older. And definitely with glass. There’s a lot of alcohol issues, because people like us socialize and dehydrate their bodies after they’ve been sweating all day. So But at a certain age, it’s like I can’t do I can’t do this.
Matthew Dols 1:26:10
Like it doesn’t Well, at the time, I was a roadie toying around with rock and roll bands, based at the 930 Club. And, but then I decided to quit. And I was just like, I can’t continue this job because my job was do drugs, set up for bands, do drugs with bands, break down bands, and then buy drugs for everybody else in the crew and all that good stuff. So it was just a it was a time in my life. It was a lot of fun. And I’m very lucky that I got out without being arrested. And, and I was able to move on. And you know, it’s still still with me. But I mean, again, 21 years ago,
Kait Rhoads 1:26:48
but it colors it colors your life. I mean, I have a friend of very high artists, and one of the things he started out doing was being a roadie for Husker do. And like, so Yeah, exactly. So Exactly. Yeah, yeah. So you guys had it. Like, he loved it. He loved that experience. And he was at like the pinnacle of music at that time. But then like, he had to go and do other stuff to, you know, whatever. Go to risky teach at Yale.
Matthew Dols 1:27:18
rough life.
Kait Rhoads 1:27:19
Yeah, rough life. But yeah.
Matthew Dols 1:27:22
Here’s one of my little babies. Oh, I’m seeing an egg shaped it looks like it’s made out of like what looks like bolts shapes kind of thing. Like we’re not bought nuts. Nuts.
Kait Rhoads 1:27:34
Here. Well, they’re hexagonal. They’re hexagonal forms. But, but you can. So they’re hexagonal units that are woven together with copper wire. But the special thing about them is that when I heat them, they turn conical. So you can think of them a little bit like Rome, the keys, the rocks in a Roman arch being keyed together to fit into place. So this is how B cells are made. With hexagon, they make them in a hexagonal form, and also the skeletons for coral. colonies are hexagonal tubes. So they just fit together and they’re really strong. When they’re all together like that.
Matthew Dols 1:28:16
Could you remove the wire after you’ve sort of melted it all together?
Kait Rhoads 1:28:20
Oh, there’s no melting. Oh, okay. They’re all loose. If you guys can hear that.
Matthew Dols 1:28:28
I can hear it.
Kait Rhoads 1:28:29
That one. They’re loose. This one. They’re really tied down. So I have a I’m holding a sculpture that’s some stainless steel squiggle. And then in between the stainless steel squiggle, there’s a flat plane of my glass hollow murrini. Blue. Yeah, they’re woven together. Yeah, this one’s a blue. Oh, and it’s, it’s, you know what this is, it’s like a test. I want to make this the size of a Calder. and have it be outside like so I’m testing to see, like, what kind of forms would be wonderful if they were like 20 feet tall. So I like to think of where public art could go. Although it’s hard to put glass and public art. I do like working with the community and public art together. So even if I do glass, I try to involve my community. Then here’s a weird one. I made a piece like this before and I called it calyx so it looks like a bunch of volcanoes joined together and a pelt and wrapped around. So now it looks a little bit like a water bear or a tardigrade. So it has that sort of inside and outside happening at the same time. So it’s a little bit of a like there’s a little squeeze, you can see they’ll give in the work. So it’s all separate pieces just bound together with copper wire which has a good memory. I try not to make my work too flexible that it can flex back and forth like this because that would snap So, I’ve worked with having the metal supports in it sometimes and to make it larger, but But yeah,
Matthew Dols 1:30:08
just wanted to throw some visual aids into an audio podcast I totally understand.
Kait Rhoads 1:30:13
Or just talk about the construction a little bit that comes more from engineering from nature, like how Buckminster Fuller, fuller things of thought of his way of engineering things. He looked at nature. And he learned from nature, how the nature engineer things, and he mimic that in his architecture. It’s taken me a long time to kind of figure out exactly why he’s so cool, but that’s one of it. But he was an engineer, but it was more of a bio engineer. So I do believe in what is it? biomimicry that if we survive as a species, we have to learn how to mimic how nature does things and to adapt our lives to that because this rectilinear existence does not work with nature. So we’ll see how it goes.
Matthew Dols 1:31:03
Yeah, Buckminster Fuller is one of my life dreams to be able to buy one of his designs as per home design, and build it. Oh, wow. By the
Kait Rhoads 1:31:13
Oh, that geodesic?
Matthew Dols 1:31:14
Whatever actually, the one I’m the one that I love is a underground one that goes in a spiral and like light comes all the way through it. It’s absolutely stunning.
Kait Rhoads 1:31:24
Is that in Israel? Is that
Matthew Dols 1:31:26
somebody has built it since that? Yeah, I mean, I remember seeing it when I was like, 20
Kait Rhoads 1:31:30
look up. Friedrich keesler. He was a German architect. And he dealt a lot with like cave structure. And he has this beautiful piece that’s like underground with an Oculus, and tiered steps coming up. And then this obelisk coming to meet that Oculus. Oh, my goodness, like, I maybe at one point, you’ll be able to go and see the great work, the great Earth work that’s going on by James terell. I understand we had like a 50 year project, but they’re trying to shorten it so they can get people in to get more revenue so they can keep going with it. So you’re exactly right. You know, you have high ideals, but you need the money. So that’s how it goes. But it would be fun to he does a lot of that interior space exterior space. And I often think of my pieces, although they’re small as architectural models. On the boat, I used to build a lot of cities out of no paper and tape.
Matthew Dols 1:32:33
Nice. Alright,
Kait Rhoads 1:32:35
anyway, thanks again.
Matthew Dols 1:32:39
I hope you’re enjoying and learning from the podcast as much as I am. If you like the podcast, we would appreciate a five star rating and a nice comment would be greatly appreciated. Please tell your friends to listen and subscribe. Also, you can subscribe on Apple podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. If there’s someone that you admire or respect in the art world that you want to hear me talk to please send me a message through Instagram. I will do my best to get them as a guest. Additionally, if you have any questions for future guests, like for me, I want to talk to somebody who does exhibition design, like talk about flow of traffic, where to put the right artwork, what the you know, the optimum heights are wall colors, temperature, all this kind of stuff. If anybody knows somebody like that, I want to know the answer to those questions. So I’m wondering for you, what are the things that you want to know about that I could possibly find for you. Send me your questions, and I will do my best to get them answered for you. In the near future, we will be starting a newsletter. So please sign up on our website wise fool pod.com. And no matter what you’re doing right now, try to make it fun.
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