SPEAKER_01 0:00

I tell them you have to give yourself permission. That your boss is never going to invite you to quit your job. It's not self-indulgent. It's just taking the reins of your life into your own hands.

SPEAKER_02 0:13

My guest today is Wendy Chen. Wendy is one of San Francisco's greatest living artists. Honestly, I don't really want to talk too much about what the conversation I had with her was. I want to talk about how it made me feel. There's this thing that happens when you spend time with a truly great artist. You don't just want to stand there in awe of their art. You want to go home and make more art yourself. That's exactly how I and everybody on the crew felt talking to Wendy. Wendy makes it seem almost easy. She makes it feel necessary to make art. Wendy's obsessed with the day-to-day, what it feels like to quit your job, what it feels like to run a working art studio, what it feels like to pay the bills with the art that you make. Especially if you're thinking of committing your life to art, you have to listen to this conversation. With that, I bring you Wendy Chen. Wendy, thank you for being on the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 1:15

Thanks, Chai, for having me. I'm so excited.

SPEAKER_02 1:18

I've been looking forward to this for for weeks. Um so in those weeks, I went through and I read the book twice. Uh, and just last night I'd read it, the whole thing, uh, beginning to end. And um I've been thinking about uh you listen to the podcast, so you know we try to find a word. We try to find an idea about each person that we have on. And with you reading your book, I just became really fascinated with this idea of self-identity and of sort of self-narrative and how much doing anything in life requires adjusting that self-narrative. Um I want to start with this because I actually found that this was the only this was the thing coming out of the book that I kept thinking about. I was like, why she doesn't talk about this enough? Which is let's talk about your family. Growing up, what do you think your family's uh you know, every family tells itself stories about itself.

SPEAKER_00 2:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:09

What do you think their self-narrative was? How do you think your parents, how do you think your family saw itself?

SPEAKER_01 2:15

Oh, that's a good question. So I'm Chinese, um, and both of my grandfathers were generals in the nationalist army. So I come from a long line of military, military everything. All the males in my family military. I'm the black sheep of the family. So both grandfathers were in the nationalist army and had to flee to Taiwan in 1949 with Chiang Kai-shek. Um, and then I was, I was born, so I was born in Taiwan, but I'm not Taiwanese, I'm Chinese. Um, so there's a little bit of that story, you know, generals in any army around the world, it's a little bit, I don't know if upper class is the right word, but it's like we kind of came from this felt like there's a lot of dignity and a lot of like saving face. So there's a lot of that Chinese stuff. And then when my grandmother came to immigrated to the US in the late 50s, it was kind of like starting from scratch again. My grandfather had died and they were starting from scratch. They were full-on like immigrants in New York City in the 50s.

SPEAKER_02 3:16

Wow. Yeah, because there's these two sort of very powerful polls there, right? One of like this, yeah, this sort of like um moral kind of like upstanding thing that a lot of military families have. Yeah. But also then sort of being feeling like you're kind of an exile, right? Um, oh man. Um, what how did you how do you think you saw yourself growing up? As a kid, if I had, if I could magically ask you then, what do you think most people think of you? What what do you think, how do you think the world sees you? What do you think you would have said?

SPEAKER_01 3:45

As a kid, I was a military brat. Yeah. I was an army brat. Yeah. I mean, it it's it's a little bit of a myth and a fantasy, but you know, the army says a lot about, you know, likes to talk about it being a meritocracy. It doesn't matter the color of your skin. Um, I think that's why my father ended up joining the US military and excelling there in his ways. Um, so I grew up in the military. So it's supposed to not be about class or race or anything. Um I didn't feel in touch with my with being Chinese at all. My mother never taught us Chinese because she was too busy learning English.

SPEAKER_00 4:22

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 4:22

Um, and learning how to cook and all the things you do. Um, so you know, and I didn't learn Chinese even until we happened to be living in China for one year in during my high school years. So yeah. And at one point we moved to Hawaii when I was a teenager. Um, sorry, in grade school, we moved to Hawaii and I remember feeling like an outsider even there. Yeah. You know, I was like, I look like I'm from here, but I don't know anything about being in Hawaii and I don't speak Chinese. So um I've always felt like an outsider. That's kind of my narrative.

SPEAKER_02 4:55

Yeah. Well, see, this is I'm glad you said that. Um have is this the most inside you've felt sort of like in your life? Inside? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:05

You still don't feel inside. No. Oh my God, no. I mean, I didn't go to art school, and yet I make a living as an artist. Like none of the rules that they teach you in art school were taught to me. I'm having to make it up as I go along. And it's so fun. I've realized that I like being an outsider because it means you get to self-define and make your own rules.

SPEAKER_02 5:23

Yeah. Um what at what point did this sort of um idea for you form that you wanted to be? Because the first identity you talk about in the book, right? Is of being this uh like cool mission record store owner and kind of, you know, being around artists, being around musicians. Uh at what point did that become an aspiration for you? When did you even start to think that that's a cool thing and I want to do that?

SPEAKER_01 5:48

Yeah, that's a great question. So it was in high school. So when I was in high school, my parents decided to send me to the most, it's like the most prestigious high school in Hawaii called Punahou. Obama went there. Barack went Barack as their most famous student kind of thing. And I was so against I was like, I don't know why, I just want to be a local, you know. Anyway, so they sent me there and I immediately felt like an outsider because I hadn't gone to Punahou school since kindergarten, like everyone else had. So I'm like, oh, I'm an outsider. And that was when I started listening to college radio and going to thrift stores and like learning about punk rock and all of that. And once that happened, I was like, this feels better than belonging. So ever since high school.

SPEAKER_02 6:29

Did you have anyone that you wanted to be like? What did you have your sort of guys and gals that you were like, that's a cool person? And I I hope to be like that when I'm older.

SPEAKER_01 6:38

No, I didn't have that. I didn't. I think I had a really vague sense that the music where I was a college radio DJ. So I had this vague sense that the music world like held something. Um and aesthetics are so important to me to me. So like music and visuals and film, all of that is so important to me. The fact that there was a world where you were supposed to focus on that felt so good. So I think I just sort of vaguely was moving in that direction.

SPEAKER_02 7:05

And then you come to this is another thing that I just find so interesting about your life story is the ability to there's a certain type of person that I think is really good at this, at being able to um being uh finding a world that you like and then moving into it and being uh I guess getting good at that world, right?

SPEAKER_03 7:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 7:26

And uh becoming a like sort of a pillar of that world. You see, you you know, you become interested in music and then you cut to your you own a this legendary record store in the mission, right? Um I I mean I have so many questions about the record store part of your life, but I guess I'll just ask uh what was that like? What was it like to do that for 14 years?

SPEAKER_01 7:47

Oh, it was it was divine. It was so amazing because it was San Francisco in the 90s when anything was possible, rents weren't out, you know, in the stratosphere, like anything was possible. And you know, the the the main tenant of punk rock is is DIY. It's do it yourself. So you get to create your own world. You get to say, this record is important to me. I'm gonna order 50 of them and sell them to my customers, or, you know, whatever. Um, many examples of defining um the rules of the world and the rules within the community and all of those things. You get to define that for yourself. You get to contribute.

SPEAKER_02 8:24

What was um, do you think that your uh perception of San Francisco? One thing I love about uh hearing you talk is you love San Francisco and I love San Francisco. Yeah. Do you think you're in your head, San Francisco is still that? That the San Francisco that you experienced when you moved here and running a record server on the mission?

SPEAKER_01 8:40

Yeah, I think a lot of it also had to do with me being in my 20s and 30s when the world still anything is possible and you don't have to settle for anything. So there will always be 20s and 30s living here. So yeah, kind of. Um, I don't know if the music scene has gone more underground than it was before, or no, it hasn't even gone underground. It's on the internet, but that doesn't mean that it's not still localized and that you still make music with your your buddy, you know, in person together. So I think it's probably still there, but I don't feel it as much because I'm in a different stage of my life.

SPEAKER_02 9:17

Um I tried to cut down my the music part of my questions. I had nine at some point, which is I'm only I only allow myself 20 in any interview, but I cut it down to two. Okay. The first one I have for you is um when you're making art now, um, and let's say you're not playing anything, is there music going on in your head? Are you are you humming to yourself? Is there anything playing in your head by default when you're making art?

SPEAKER_01 9:44

Oh, if there's not music playing?

SPEAKER_02 9:46

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 9:48

No.

SPEAKER_02 9:49

No, never. Is it just completely flow state, quiet?

SPEAKER_01 9:52

Yeah, it's kind of flow state. I mean, I'm alone with my thoughts, which is wonderful, but they probably aren't about music. Music is for listening to. Second question would be But when I'm listening to music, I'm not just hearing the music. I'm thinking about the world that the music comes from and the conditions under which that music was made. And that is an incredibly rich, fertile um place to put your your mind when your hands are busy.

SPEAKER_02 10:21

That that is uh so I recently uh committed to having a record player and having records. And so we're in this process now and we're sort of limiting ourselves to only buying two to three records a month. Otherwise, I'm gonna that's where all my money will go. Um and I'm finding it's yeah, it's sort of a lost, um lost activity to sit and listen to music, not as just like it's playing in your car when you're driving.

SPEAKER_01 10:44

Yeah, and to listen to a full album, yeah, instead of just like random song plus random song kind of thing, to listen to a full album the way the artist intended it. Yeah. Two sides. Yeah. It's crazy.

SPEAKER_02 10:56

Um if your work were a genre of music, what genre?

SPEAKER_00 11:04

Oh, that's impossible, Chai.

SPEAKER_02 11:07

You can you can do multiple. It can be hybrid of multiple genres.

SPEAKER_00 11:12

That's impossible that's wow, we're gonna have to cut all of this out.

SPEAKER_01 11:19

This will give me no fucking idea. Wow, that's a great question though, because it makes me think I mean, I mean I know very much what my art is about, and I know a lot about music, but I've never thought about relating them in that way. You know?

SPEAKER_02 11:34

You know, it's funny. I was concerned everybody asks you this question.

SPEAKER_01 11:37

No, nobody asks me this question. So, so um, can I just think out loud? This will probably not make it onto the podcast. So, like one of the one of the genres of music that I love, and there are so many, is um this. I don't even know if there's a name for it, but it's this genre of music where in the 60s and the 70s there were bands outside the US and the UK that were obsessed with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and would make their version of like great rock music or great kind of um beautifully written songs, like the Beatles kind of thing. So there were bands from Peru and Cambodia and Brazil um and Jamaica that were making that kind of music, but it's still got the um, you know, there's a time and a place. So it's still there, it still bears like that feeling of having come from Peru or whatever. And I love that kind of music.

SPEAKER_02 12:34

Oh my God.

SPEAKER_01 12:35

I yeah, like there's this whole genre called Cambodian Rocks, and they were Cambodian bands in the 60s and 70s making what sounds like rock music. It is rock music, but it's their version of it. Music is so universal in that way. That's what I love about it, and I love everyone's specific little angle on it. I could talk about music forever.

SPEAKER_02 12:55

I would love that. I just honestly, I as I was working on this, as like I we should just do an episode. It's just Wendy talk about music.

SPEAKER_01 13:01

It'd be so fun. Well, I told you my favorite thing that you see on the episode. We could listen to music and play tricks to each other.

SPEAKER_02 13:06

Um the royalties would kill the podcast, but we would I would love it. That would be a great way to go out. Um, have you ever seen uh Conan on his last episode? Um, he was mad at whatever NBC for sort of canceling his show. And so he said, I'm gonna make the most expensive episode ever. Is this his last? And so he just plays the Rolling Stones all the way through. It's just satisfaction playing basically the whole time. Uh, we're gonna do that if we ever get canceled.

SPEAKER_01 13:32

That's nice. But um that's making me think, though, I wonder, I could probably come up with a deeper, more fulfilling and satisfying answer for you after a few days of thought. But that example that I just gave you is making me think that, you know, with the music there, they were riffing on an establishment kind of genre, right? And and putting their own take on it. And in some ways, you could say that I do that in my work too, right? Um, I started off by making a macrame plant hanger, you know, 10 years ago. Um, and so uh macrame is a classic craft practiced by people all over the world. Um, and I've now taken it so far from macrame that it has become my own voice and my own style. But in the same way, I was sort of riffing on started with the classic. And then you kind of figure out who you are through the doing of it.

SPEAKER_02 14:25

The analogy I immediately get there is because you in your book, you talk about how like you sort of outgrew the language of macrame, right? Where you're like, no, I need to go beyond this. I it it's not enough vocabulary here for me to fully express myself.

SPEAKER_00 14:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:38

And it that is a I've I've heard a couple of like I've seen these clips of, you know, basically men that are my dad's age in the 60s in India, you know, wearing skinny suits and basically dressed like the Beatles and doing that. And one really interesting thing is they bring in new chords from from Indian instruments, right? And so there's this, there is this really interesting sort of parallel there. Um I will, despite my strong desires, I will move past music for a second. Um, so you at some point you sell the record store and you you go through this process, you become and you join the original iTunes team, right? Um I once again, Apple is another area of fascination for me, but I have uh I have sort of a personal question. How did it feel to do that? Did you're did you feel uncool? Was that at all like something you struggled with? Did you feel like, oh my God, I was like a minute ago, I was doing I was doing the literally the coolest thing in the world, and now I have a desk job. Was that like a hard part of it for you at all?

SPEAKER_01 15:39

No, not at all. No, I've uh because Apple had been a passion of mine, like personal computing had been a passion of mine since my dad brought me home an Apple IIe when I was a sophomore in high school. So um to this day, I wonder what my life would have become had I continued learning programming. Like I learned how to program in basic and made a video game. Um, but I had been fascinated with that world. So for me, I was exiting one super fascinating world and entering another equally valid, interesting world. Yeah. I mean, I think that probably there were a few people in the scene, in the punk rock scene and the music scene that were like, she sold out, but I never saw it that way at all.

SPEAKER_02 16:21

Yeah. It well also like uh I'm really fascinated by the ways in which Apple affected you and your thinking.

SPEAKER_03 16:28

Right.

SPEAKER_02 16:29

I mean, one thing I uh uh I sort of get all through reading about you and kind of hearing you talk is you have a designer's, you among other things, you also have a designer's view of art. And do you think that came from Apple, or do you think you kind of always had that?

SPEAKER_01 16:43

I think I probably already had it, but I that all got cemented at Apple. Like Apple's design way of thinking definitely has affected the way I approach some things or has affected um the way that I appreciate knots, right? That each one, each knot is has been designed to do one thing and to do it perfectly. And that's wonderful.

SPEAKER_02 17:06

Yeah. Also, just this focus on like materiality, on craft. Because you know, when you read the Steve Jobs book, that is the content theme, right? It was like his dad's a carpenter and they talk about how the parts of the cabinet are built that no one sees. Um, and all of that, I I I I get that a lot from you when I when I hear you talk about this. Because there's this emphasis like, no, no, how does the piece live beyond its aesthetics? How long does it last? How does the material age? Um, on that point, what was what was Steve Jobs like?

SPEAKER_01 17:34

I never met Steve.

SPEAKER_02 17:36

Really?

SPEAKER_01 17:36

No, I never met Steve. Um Apple's a huge company, and there was no reason for me to cross paths with him. There are stories though. Yeah. There are stories. I won't repeat any of them, but there are stories of like, you don't want to cross paths with Steve in an elevator. Like you don't want to don't cross paths. Anyway, um, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:53

What do you think anyone uh that wasn't him? And I'm not talking about him being a dick. Um I'm talking about specifically his uh obsession with music and obsession with with art. Do you think anyone but him could have built iTunes, could have kind of built iPods?

SPEAKER_01 18:13

Yeah, that's a great question. I think in the same way that I'm very comfortable with making my own rules and creating my world where, you know, frankly, I get to succeed in that world because I laid the groundwork for what success looks like in that world. I think Steve was the same way, you know. Um, you know, thinking about Apple sitting at the intersection of liberal arts, right? Of the meeting of math and science and aesthetics and regular people and all of that, like that approach harmonizes with my approach to my life. So he was wonderful in that way. I keep learning lessons from him. I read the Stanford commencement speech at least once a year and get so much out of it. And the satisfying thing about reading it is going, oh yeah, I did that. You know, where he talks about in the commencement speech about how you cannot connect the dots while you're in that moment. You can only connect the dots looking backwards. I feel the same way. When I look at my life and go, wow, music and then like, you know, computers and design and all of that at Apple and um and and what I do now, it all make it all makes sense.

SPEAKER_03 19:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:20

Whereas, you know, my parents looking at my life were probably like, that is so random. What are you doing? Where are you going?

SPEAKER_02 19:26

You know. Yeah. Well, randomness is my favorite part of your story. Or uh what appears to be randomness, but if you read it, and all of it makes sense because the dots connect looking back.

SPEAKER_01 19:34

Yeah. And when you're an artist, you you know, if art is about self-expression and in in not all ways, but in some ways it is, in many ways it is, then we all are all our combinations and results of our various passions and experiences and traumas and all the things in life. That's why I always say, I'm glad I didn't start making art till I turned 48. Yeah, I was 48 years old, because I had something to say. You know, I'd lived life long enough to have um a developed aesthetic, a point of view, an opinion.

SPEAKER_02 20:08

Yeah, I um, oh man, so many threads to put there. There's a lot. One is uh it's sort of irrelevant to the rest of the conversation. I don't think people realize how seminal that Steve Jobs 2005 Stanford commencement is to a certain kind, to a certain kind of person, it is our Sermon on the Mount. Truly, right? Like it is, I was very lucky. I got to give uh a commencement at Berkeley last year. And I wrote it and I forbade myself from listening to it because I was like, it's just gonna be the same. And then I wrote the the thing. And I was like, it's the same fucking speech. Like I just, it's you put a you put a mic in front of me and tell me to inspire a group of 20-year-olds or whatever, 22-year-olds. That's what I'm gonna say because that's how kind of critical that speech is to a certain type of person.

SPEAKER_01 20:49

Yeah. I mean, I think about that whole era where Steve kind of I'm sort of obsessed with the whole earth catalog era, right? Late 60s, early and mid-70s, when anything was possible. And utopians were the same as early technologists, were the same as craftspeople and hippies. Like it was all the same. Um, anything was possible and you could make it with your own two hands. I love that era. So the more I dove into that era and thinking about it and reading about it, um, you know, and I'm thinking about Steve, who was fully part of that, you know, when he was still barefoot on the Reed campus and he was a fruitarian. Like I love that era. Um, so the more I thought about that, I started coming across stories that have that now inform my work of the meeting of craft and early technology. And these are stories that nobody knows about. And that's what I think informs a lot of my work now. I mean, I not just informs it, I literally make work about that.

SPEAKER_02 21:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:40

Uh well, I I get it anytime I encounter Yart, it's a truly, I think, I think it really comes through. Like that sort of sensibility. Um, my the closest thing I have to a spirit animal is that video of uh Steve Jobs riding his motorcycle barefoot and his hair is just sort of flowing. I think it's my that's My, I don't know if it's my it or whatever the other one is called, but I I think about that video all the time. And it's the same sort of sensibility. It's this he was obsessed with his BMW motorcycle, and this is you know very much Zen in the artist motorcycle maintenance era. And uh it's this kind of like um view that machines and progress and uh technology didn't have to necessarily uh curb your humanity, right? Way it didn't have to make you less human. And it was, I think it was a blip in history where people had genuine optimism for what technology could do for the world.

SPEAKER_03 22:32

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 22:32

And I'm I'm very, even though I didn't live it, I'm I feel very I don't know if there's a word for being nostalgic for things that you didn't actually go through, but I'm very nostalgic for it. Um I'll I'll bring this back to you. Okay. Um so you you do this thing, right, where you're at Apple for for I mean damn near a decade. When you leave, uh the thing I've been thinking about a lot is did you feel um guilty, isn't the right word? Did you feel at all like, oh man, I'm being so self-indulgent by by um not at all.

SPEAKER_01 23:03

No, no, how is it self-indulgent? I felt like I was saving myself, yeah. Right? I was 46 when I left Apple, and I was like, if I ever want to give myself permission to focus on my own creativity, I gotta do it now. Let me do it before I turn 50, otherwise inertia might set in.

SPEAKER_02 23:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:20

Yeah. I felt that I owed it to myself.

SPEAKER_02 23:23

That's that's really interesting. I think, okay, so this actually weaves into my next question, which is I imagine a kind of conversation you must have a lot is people coming to you and either for themselves or for their partners or whoever, being like, Okay, I really want to quit my job to be an artist. And they're basically trying to get you to talk them into jumping off the ledge. Yeah. Does that happen to you fairly often?

SPEAKER_01 23:45

All the time.

SPEAKER_02 23:46

What do you tell them?

SPEAKER_01 23:47

I tell them you have to give yourself permission that your boss is never gonna invite you to quit your job. Your parents or your partner are never gonna be like, stop collecting a paycheck.

SPEAKER_03 23:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:58

Yeah. I tell them that you have to give yourself permission and you're allowed to give yourself I give them permission to give themselves permission because that's what I had to do. Um, it's not self-indulgent, it's just taking the reins of your life in your into your own hands.

SPEAKER_02 24:13

Yeah. Um so those those early days, right? You you quit Apple and uh you're trying out different different mediums or different media, uh, you're trying out a different, you're still finding your your voice.

SPEAKER_03 24:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:26

Um was that I read that part and started to once again, I guess, feel nostalgia for something that wasn't even my life. Where I feel like in creating anything, that's the best part. Um My question to you there would be Is that is that the freest you've ever felt with your art? The sort of early days where you didn't even have a style. You were not Wendy Chen yet.

SPEAKER_01 24:49

Yes. When you I fully believe that when um, you know, that the the Zen saying about in the beginner's mind, um, in the in the expert's mind, there are very few options. I'm butchering this. And in the beginner's mind, in when you have beginner's mind, you're free, right? Anything is possible. So I was fully in beginner's mind for those couple of years before I found knotting, um, before I before or before I committed to to the life of being in full-time knot tire.

SPEAKER_00 25:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:16

Um, so when I was trying wood carving and wood turning and stone carving and LED lighting and ceramics and all the things, like you name it, I took a class in it. I took like 12 or 13 classes over the course of a year. Um, yeah, anything is possible and it's wonderful. And even when you decide that you don't love something, like I took ceramics for a year only to real, like so that I could realize I hate doing working with ceramics. It's so good because I've learned something about myself. Now I know. Um now I don't have regrets and I never tried it. It is being in that beginner space is the most wonderful. And I spend a lot of time now that I'm pretty established. You know, I've been doing this for 10 years, trying to get back to beginner's mind. And it's it's not hard. You know, it's not hard. Uh all I have to do is open up a book and learn a knot I've never learned before. And that immediately plunges me back into beginner's mind, which is the best place to be because you're not limiting yourself.

SPEAKER_02 26:11

This is uh see, I think you just nailed what um I was gonna bring this up later, but um uh one thing I found very charming about your book and kind of how you talk about art is there because you you it's you know the book is effectively written as like a manual, right? For uh in parts of it are like a manual for you know, go out and make your own art. And I was I was reading and I was like, oh, it's so sweet that she thinks I could do this just as like that as if the only thing kind of holding me back here, like these like you make no mention of your your skills and of your of your chops, right? Which I think is like a very it truly is like Steph Curry being like, no, you could shoot like me too, man. Like and I I just remember being like, oh, how kind of her to like write to me as if like, oh yes, Wendy, I also will mean the moment. Like, um, but I I I think sorry, that I guess that's more just a comment than than like a question. I think um one thing I'm curious about, because again, I love this period in people's stories when they um when you've given yourself permission and you stop feeling guilty about it, which does seem to be uniquely like a brown person problem. If you stop feeling guilty about it and you stop, you're like, no, this is what I'm supposed to be doing. And now you're you're there alone, just working on stuff. Like I remember for me, I became obsessed with this little hummingbird that used to when I started working at my company because it would show up. I would every day I would go to my living room and open up my computer and start working on it. And this little hummingbird, they're very industrious birds, and they would come in and sort of fly right next to the window and just get to work. And it pulled a proper nine to five, and then it would sort of go away. And to this day, I just I the hummingbird was my core guy. Like I feel a lot of kinship to it. And uh, but so I'm I'm very nostalgic for like everything that happens in that period, uh, and all the different sort of forces that are you know at play, like pulling at you. Um, I wrote down this is I can I'll give you this if it's easier for you. I have six sort of emotions here. And if you can, it doesn't need to be perfect, if you can rank how much these were all sort of at play for you in those early days when you're you've left Apple, you're now a full-time artist. How much were these? I'll read them out for for camera too, uh, is fear, uh, guilt, curiosity, ambition, uh, joy, uh, and boredom, or rather the avoidance of boredom. So you can if you want to take a look at that, that is my list of six at the very bottom. Warm Intro is brought to you by WeFunder. WeFunder created this thing called the community round that lets you raise money directly from your community. So instead of going to VCs and rich people, angel investors, you can go straight to your friends and your family and your customers. And, you know, this is not a traditional attribute. I used Wii Funder for my company three times. We ran three rounds on Wii Fund and we raised over a million dollars. And I found that it completely changed how everybody felt about our business. Our customers all of a sudden didn't feel like they were just customers. They felt like they were owners in the business. They shopped with us more, they told their friends about us. My team felt like what we were doing was important because our community had shown up to invest in us. I tell every founder I can find to go raise a WeFund around. Especially for companies that care about community, there is nothing greater you can do than letting that community invest. Go to WeFunder.com slash join to check it out.

SPEAKER_01 29:39

Yeah, I see them. Um I love that you have this list. Um, it's it's been a journey for me to be able to even identify emotions and the thoughts that create the emotions that we have. Um, and the fact that you're um sitting here younger than me and and are even able to identify things like this is I'm really impressed. Um, but we can talk about each one.

SPEAKER_03 30:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:04

There wasn't a whole lot of fear for me. Um again, when I quit my job, I was 46 years old and I had already made like a financial plan. I have a financial advisor and I was like, am I allowed to quit my job? And we just made a plan so that the basics, like, you know, rent and food would be covered for a year. So I didn't have to, so that money wasn't top of mind all of the time for me, which can be a huge hindrance to making art or focusing on your own creativity. So there wasn't a lot of fear because I knew I was fine. I was also doing a little bit of tech consulting with startups at the time, helping them get their apps onto the app store. So I was kind of covered. So like fear around money, not at all. Um, again, I was in beginner's mind just trying things. So there was no fear around like who's gonna see me, who's gonna see the shitty work, the art that I'm making, right? There's no fear around that because you're a beginner. Yeah. You know, um, no one's looking, no one cares. So there was no fear of what anyone else would think, which I really think the fear of what other people will think is what stops most people from doing things in the world. Um, so I can't, there wasn't a lot of fear. Wow. I didn't never really thought about it in those terms, but I'm I'm happy to, in answering your question, realize that there was very little fear.

SPEAKER_02 31:19

Well, one uh real a really great thing you see in the book is um rather, your financial advisor said it too is nothing is insane with a plan. And I like that, I like that one of the first essays in your book is about okay, here's how financially you set it up so you can be free of fear. I I find that to be um very helpful. Uh, how about guilt? Any guilt?

SPEAKER_01 31:37

No, no guilt at all. No guilt at all. No, and it's funny that earlier you were like, that's a brown person thing. Like I don't know what you mean by that, but um, but I want to hear. But I don't think um maybe it's because I had already owned a record store and and like squeezed every drop of joy out of that that I had, right? I had lived a full life in the music world. And then I had been, I had lived this really full life at Apple, including like saving a little bit of money and buying a house, like doing those things that, you know, like I was adulting there. So I had done that too. So like once I had lived these two really full lives, I was like, fuck it. I can do whatever I want. Not that people have to earn it and live two full lives before they focus on their own creativity. You can do that at any time. But really, like for me, I was like, yeah, I did the responsible thing. I did the super cool thing. I'm just gonna do something for me now.

SPEAKER_02 32:30

Yeah. Do you uh are you impressed at all by people who uh at 22 go off and uh sort of become full-time artists? Are you are you impressed by them at all at the level of like, oh, you didn't you didn't feel like you needed to earn it? You didn't feel like you needed to kind of uh yeah, earn it for yourself.

SPEAKER_01 32:49

You didn't hesitate. You didn't hesitate. You just already knew. You already knew that's what you wanted to do. Yeah, that's always really impressive. Um, you know, when I made films in my 20s, I majored in film in school, like I didn't have anything to say yet. So, you know, the films I made were really well received and played all around the world, but I kinda didn't feel like I wasn't in flow with with my median. Um, so when I do see young people in flow, yeah, that's lovely. Like in my 20s, all of my friends are musicians and I lived with musicians and they would come home from their like um painting job or whatever, doing like the working in the trades and pick up a guitar instantly.

SPEAKER_03 33:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:30

Because it made them feel so good. And I didn't have that thing that like made me feel so good and was so compelling and made me feel so fulfilled in all the different ways that art making can make you feel so complete as a person. I didn't have that then, but I knew people that did.

SPEAKER_02 33:45

Wow. Um, how much was curiosity uh leading you at that time?

SPEAKER_01 33:49

Oh, um around this time around the time you've just become full-time. It was all a curiosity. Yeah. Yeah. Because anything is possible. And I, you know, I had I had been collecting knotting books since I was a kid. I had two or three of them, pick them up at thrift stores. Knots are cool, but I literally would never even open up the book and tie a knot. I was just like, that's cool, the same way I would pick up a cool record from the 60s in Brazil and like this is cool kind of thing. I would pick up the nodding books. So anyway, um, when I decided to really dive into knotting, I was like, oh my God, it's a whole world. And it ties everyone together from from sailors to rock climbers to surgeons and doctors and like and and knitters and weavers and like everybody, every occupation, every culture crosses the gender line, all of it, crosses history. Um, I was like, this is a whole world. How can you not be curious when you discover a whole new world? Yeah. Yeah. It was so fun.

SPEAKER_02 34:46

I I I also find it the one of the most helpful parts uh of like listening to you about this is uh how good you are at sort of setting up your own kind of self-motivation and knowing what makes you move. Like my therapist told me this story one time, and I was thinking about it and as I was driving here. My therapist told me uh that he has a son who, when he was younger, would um sort of go through these mood swings and but and also in parallel, separately was a sort of like voracious reader. And my therapist found that with his own son that like he could kind of correlate how happy he was with how high the stack of books was next to his bed. And the more that he had to just kind of the more that his son was able to flow through his brain, uh, the happier he was. And I I was like, man, that is a and you talk about this a lot too. You discovering that the thing that drives you is curiosity. This is one of the other ones, also, is like you knowing that you're a person that gets bored of stuff is such a critical insight to me. Um, because then you can build for that and you can build for not getting bored of the work that you've done. And I think, yeah, I mean, it that it makes perfect sense that um the knots are the thing you you kind of find then. Um I've one more emotion there, I think, to ask about, which is ambition. Um, how much ambition did you feel for what you were doing at the time?

SPEAKER_01 36:09

Oh, that's a great question. And what do you mean by ambition?

SPEAKER_02 36:13

I guess how much maybe the word is more intentionality. How intentional did you feel about? Okay, I want to be an artist.

SPEAKER_00 36:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:22

And I want people to like what I'm doing. I want to have an audience, I want to get paid well for it. Any of that?

SPEAKER_01 36:28

Yeah, not at all. Um, and that's because I didn't know it was possible. So what in 2016, when I decided that I would learn one new knot every day, at the beginning of the year, ambition was not part, like I didn't think it was like becoming an artist was not the goal. The goal was to find a voice. Um, I think of every knot, if you think of them as each one as a letter in an alphabet, right? Or um, or a word in a foreign language, like if you were gonna learn Spanish and you learned a word of it every day for a year, by the end of the year you're fluent. Um, so that's what I was that's how I thought about it. I was like, this is an exercise in self-education. I'm gonna educate myself. And yes, I'm really self-motivated, motivated when it comes to like creating a little program for myself to do it. This was also in the early days of Instagram when people were doing like hashtag 100 days of, you remember that? 100 days of cupcakes or 100 days of whatever um as a way of like um teaching ourselves the habit of creativity. Anyway, so that was already in my brain. Sorry, I know this is a long answer, but and I also have always appreciated time-based art or instructions-based art, like Yoko Ono's um has a long history of instruction-based um art. Put one nail in a board every day for until you feel like you're done, kind of thing, which I actually did. I made that. Um, so so that's the groundwork, that's where I was coming from when I was like, oh, I'll teach myself a knot every day for a year. Now I've lost my train of thought. Where was I going?

SPEAKER_02 37:56

Oh, well, we were talking about ambition, but I think you answered it perfectly.

SPEAKER_01 37:59

So yeah, I wasn't, I didn't think becoming an artist was not part of um the was not the goal at all. It was becoming fluent in a new language. But then by the end of the year, when I got so much attention from book publishers and press and, you know, the world of social media and all of that around what I had done, um, I I realized, wow, I'm fluent in a language now. Now I get to tell stories. That's what you do when you're fluent in a language. You get to sing, you get to write poetry, you get to speak and tell stories. So that's what I do now. Um, I don't even know if I answered your question.

SPEAKER_02 38:33

You answered it better than I could have ever hoped for. I um uh I'm curious about the moment that you first gave yourself license to call yourself an artist. And if you remember that. Oh, I totally remember. I have a good music reference for you here, which is and I've I've loved this quote forever, which is uh Keith Moon uh said one time, who among saying many insane things, he one thing he said was, I started calling myself a drummer well before I'd ever touched a drum set.

SPEAKER_00 39:01

Really?

SPEAKER_02 39:01

And I just I love that idea because I do that. That's part of my ADHD. I that specific one. I told everybody I was a drummer after taking one drum class. And so because to me, there was something about making that statement about myself. That one didn't pan out, but but the other things like I do think there's something about standing up in front of someone and saying, Oh yeah, I'm a podcaster. I podcast. And it's it makes it more real for you. It sets some kind of like sort of accountability. It Yeah, it just and I think like hearing your voice say that and you get a feeling for like what that how that comes out. Do you remember the first time you said to someone, yeah, I'm an artist? So that's what what am I doing? I'm an artist.

SPEAKER_01 39:40

Yeah, I totally remember. I was this was way early on, so maybe 2018. So a couple of years after this, um, I was in an a cab in Boston going to install, um, going to make a work. We made it on site at an IBM office in Boston, and the cab driver was like, Oh, why are you here? And I was like, I'm an artist. Wow. I totally remember that. And um, my friend Cheryl, my best friend Cheryl was coming to assist with me. And she was in the cab too, and it struck her as well. Like she totally like clocked the moment. It was pretty great. I can't mind if you waited that long. Um 2018. Yeah, because this wasn't intended to be a work of art. Like a few months into it, I as I wouldn't, you know, nail each knot to my living room wall at the time. I realized, like, oh, this is a growing amoeba of knots. By the end of the year, this is gonna be art. So I recognize that this was my first artwork. But again, I wasn't thinking about that. I was thinking, like, can I make a living being a person who makes things? I wasn't thinking, can I make a living being an artist? Again, it's just it took a while. And I still, you know, think about and and and invite debates and conversation around the difference between art and design, art and craft. Because what I'm learning about the fine art world is there's a fucking hierarchy between art and craft that I reject. But so there's a lot to talk about there. But so, you know, when you given those conditions, like is it art, is it design, is it craft, what is it? Am I just, you know, the word maker was kind of a big deal in like 2013 too? Like, am I a maker? Um, am I making products? Am I making art? You know, all of that. I I was swimming in a lot of those questions like everybody else. Yeah. So to call myself an artist ahead of time would have been, I would never have thought to do that. Because what if I didn't like being an artist? You have to do it first before you decide if you're gonna commit to it. What if I didn't love that world? Yeah. What if I didn't love who I was while doing it?

SPEAKER_03 41:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:40

You know, that's why I decided to stop um making products because I didn't like who I became and what my daily life was like when I was making products.

SPEAKER_02 41:52

This I will say is um uh perfectly in keeping with the type of person with the Steph Curry telling me I can shoot a three-pointer. Because I would have told people I was a basketball player the minute I touched a basketball. And I would have told people I was an artist that when I looked at a chord the right way. And so I think there's a very important sort of lesson in there of like, yeah, this like Keith Moon hack can only take you so far. At some point you do need to get good at the and I I like that again, it's it's something that um both that like you wanted to get to a point where you felt worthy of the term and the term felt worthy of you. Um which yeah, I wish more people did that. Because it's I'm kind of coming around in my own little monologue here, but like artist, entrepreneur, maker. There are a couple of these sort of squishy terms that when people feel uncertain, they sort of latch onto them. And I I wish they didn't do that so much.

SPEAKER_01 42:50

Yeah, like why the rush to identify as anything. Again, sorry that I keep coming back to my age, you know, but I'm 58 now. Like I I truly, you know, they say like you don't give a fuck anymore. And it's true. Like, I don't, I'm not in a rush to identify as anything or to find an identity. I already know who I am because I've lived this long.

SPEAKER_03 43:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:12

So I truly have nothing to prove. Um, as much of a cliche as that sounds, it's true. Well, I'm kind of gonna make you not totally can I say so. That brings us to the uh another emotion that you mentioned, which is joy. Yes. Joy drives what I do now. I've intentionally designed my life and my practice and my team and my space here. It's all intentional. And the overarching goal is maximum joy. I think about it all the time. Yeah. Because why, you know, why not? Like, really, what is the ultimate goal? Like, I'm not in this because I have an ego and I want my name on the side of buildings or whatever. Like, I want my daily life to be filled with joy. It's not just about the finished artwork. Works that I make, right? Because someone else is going to live with those. It's about how we feel while we're doing it, while we're making the things, while we are conducting our lives. I'm lucky enough to have two full-time employees who are totally on board with me as far as um forefronting joy. And so we design our daily lives and our work lives around joy. Um, I I'm I'm I'm harping on this because I feel like I don't hear people say it enough. Like you're allowed to say joy is the goal.

SPEAKER_02 44:27

Yeah. Yeah. It also, I saw on Instagram a um a post where you were wearing a sweater that said um uh it's uh craft becomes art when a man calls it that. I'm I'm butchering it, but it was some version of that, right? It strikes me as a very also male understanding of art, right? To be like, no, you you very much cannot have joy if you want to be like a serious artist, right? You have to be a troubled sort of like tragic person.

SPEAKER_01 44:56

Yeah. Yeah, that's ridiculous.

SPEAKER_02 44:58

Yeah, exactly. And I I find that I mean, we wanted us to record this episode here because it's such a joyous space, among also being beautiful and all that, but it's filled with joy. Every corner of it is filled with joy. Yeah. And I um so yeah, I I can uh that strikes a chord with me. Um so speaking of chords, uh, this was the I that was the most heavy alerted.

SPEAKER_01 45:20

A chord, but then a chord, chord, chords, there's never gotten that before. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 45:26

That was a pure purely accidental. I deserve no credit for that.

SPEAKER_01 45:29

No, you just can't help your brilliance. Can't help it.

SPEAKER_02 45:32

Thank you, Wendy. Um, but you go through on the topic of brilliance and on the topic of chords, uh, you know, you go through this process of like trying out a bunch of different mediums and uh um you arrive at knots.

SPEAKER_00 45:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 45:45

And um there's a lot to talk about there, but one bit that I find really um um powerful is when you're describing this process, and again goes back to the Steve Jobs speech, right? But of falling in love with something and then later realizing why you fell in love with it and how everything in your life led up to you falling in love with it, right? Um lot to talk about there. Why, why call why do you think you fell in love with knots now looking back?

SPEAKER_01 46:22

I could, you know, keep going on this like lofty, you know, th like trajectory that we're on and talk about journeys because you're you're appreciating my journey, right? And sometimes I talk about knots as the journey of the line, right? And every knot, the journey of the line is unique. And that's what makes that knot that particular knot, right? The journey of the line is unique in each knot, and I'm fascinated by the journey of the line, just as I am fascinated by everyone's journey, including my own, through life. It's all unique. So that's a little bit too tied up with a bow and perfect kind of thing. What was your question?

SPEAKER_02 46:57

Um, what in your life, um, in your early life, do you think planted the seed for knots being um the thing?

SPEAKER_01 47:06

Well, my mother taught me how to make a macrame plant hanger because she was learning, you know, in the early 70s. I must have been less than 10 years old and we made macrame plant hangers together. And I remember loving the craft, like it just feels really good while you're doing it. It's very different from weaving, it's very different from, you know, any other pursuit like ceramics or whatever. There's something really satisfying about it, and it agreed with me. And that's why I say everyone should try everything because there'll be the medium, like the format, the material that agrees with you. It agrees with your brain and your hands, and and you'll know it when you hit it.

SPEAKER_03 47:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 47:40

So within five minutes of me in my at for age 46, taking a macrame refresher class, a plant hanger class, within five minutes, I was like, oh my God, I remember. I do love this. I love this. It's like it agrees with my body and my brain. Um I forgot your question.

SPEAKER_02 47:56

No, you answered it. You are you it does, you don't need to know it. You you answered it. It's uh an idea that I find really powerful in what you're saying.

SPEAKER_03 48:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 48:06

Is uh I uh my my wife Wendy's here, of course, uh listening uh to this. And one thing I talk about all the time, anytime some bad shit happens to us, is you just kind of let it wash over you. Good, bad, weird, you just sort of let it wash over you, right? Not not I'm not saying inaction or or I mean this is now getting into my own sort of experiments with Zen, but it just it all just becomes a part of you. And then it comes out in the most beautiful ways later on, right?

SPEAKER_03 48:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 48:33

Um, and I like not knowing where something came from. Yeah. Like we went, we went back recently to India and to Rajasthan, where my family's you know, that from that part of India. And I had forgotten, I was had started to feel like a little individual. I'd started to feel like, oh, the mustache and this like way of grooming is very much me. And Royal Lynn feels it's a motorcycle edge. And I went to Indian and I went to Rajasthan, it's like, oh, it's like every uncle. And it to me, it's there's nothing cooler than a Rajasthani Indian uncle with a big mustache on a motorcycle and like a turban. Like goat herders will do that. And I like that moment of being like, oh no, I'm not so unique. And I am a product of all of these things that I have sort of encountered and been around. And I don't always, I can't always relate. But it's there's a there's an odd joy also in finding, no, no, no, this was this was a happy accident or this was a through osmosis, the something that came in. But I get I if I was a better interviewer, I'd rather have a question at the end of that commitment.

SPEAKER_01 49:31

I love that. I love that that you're you're you're um bringing it around to what we were just talking about, which is that um at some at some points in our lives, being unique or being really um a rebel or being or whatever, like all that identity stuff, like matters so much to us, right? Because we kind of don't know who we are yet or we're still experimenting. But then you come around to like, you came around to like, this is actually just what I like.

SPEAKER_03 49:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 49:59

This is just what I like. And I don't care if it's I look like an you know an Indian uncle or whatever, or in fact, I you I in fact. And I don't care about um what's cool or what status or anything like that. That kind of comfort with yourself is so wonderful. It's so wonderful. And it sounds like you found that earlier than I did, but I I have it now.

SPEAKER_02 50:25

Well, I think uh it also is so deeply tied to being able to make good art, right? That I think the strong feeling I get when I watch a film from a film student, right? Um, or I watch, oh, I, you know, uh would read a book written by a younger person. Again, uh my greatest, my favorite artist of all time, Bob Dylan, was 24 when he wrote all my favorite songs. So I it's obviously possible for for young people to do great poetic things. But there is something about how you know that is a that's sort of a boomeranging thing we're talking about emotionally, right? Where you start off um uh at a place, you start to then dislike that place or want to distance yourself from that place. And you you're like, no, no, I'm not like everybody. I'm punk or I'm this or I'm that. And then you go around and then get to the embrace, right? And I think that is a much more, which is why I love that. I think it shows your incredible maturity as an artist to be to that. When I ask you about the genre of music, I was fully expecting, because I'm my my dumb 31-year-old brain was expecting you to be like, I'm a punk rocker. But but you have respect for the places you came from. And you're not just like sticking up a middle finger to to your sort of influences, which I think is again a really beautiful thing that you can only get with uh like it's what separates young people art, right, from like more sort of like adult art. Um, but anyway, I'm I no, I I get you.

SPEAKER_01 51:50

Another way of saying it, this phrase is occurring to me as you're talking, is like, I have nothing left to prove, I just have a lot to say. Yeah, I have things I want to say, but I have nothing that I have to prove. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 52:01

Um, that is actually a perfect place for me to ask you this. Now, um you did the uh year of knots was 2016.

SPEAKER_00 52:09

2016.

SPEAKER_02 52:10

It is now 2026. You've been 10 years, right? You've been making um knots this whole time. I have kind of a strange question to ask you there. Do you ever feel encumbered or locked in um to the knot as a uh as a medium? Do you ever feel like, man, I really want to go try X, but I'm Wendy Chen. I'm like kind of the knot person.

SPEAKER_01 52:37

Oh, no, not at all.

SPEAKER_02 52:38

Never?

SPEAKER_01 52:38

No. Uh-uh.

SPEAKER_02 52:39

It's so impressive.

SPEAKER_01 52:40

No, because from where I am, like anything is possible. You know, Ruth Asawa said, my favorite artist, Ruth, said, um, you know, um, a line can go anywhere. She famously said that. Or maybe it's only famous to me, but she said a line can go anywhere, which is kind of beautiful, right? Yeah. Um I think what she was talking about in the in the context of her homework was that, you know, by making wire sculpture, she was making lines, but you can make room-filling things. You can suspend it over people's head. A line can create volumes and space without it feeling weighty, right? Um where am I going with that? What was your question?

SPEAKER_02 53:18

Do you feel encumbered by the knot?

SPEAKER_01 53:19

Oh no, not at all. I mean, when you're an artist, you get to like I don't call myself a fiber artist. You're a knot artist. I'm an artist. So it can be anything. I could go off and make any other kind of thing, and I know that we'll still it will still contain my voice. My voice is what remains consistent, no matter what the medium is or what the form looks like, right? That it's the voice is consistent. Even if I did stay with knots for the rest of my life, I could happily do so because there are so many more to learn and so many things to do with them. Um, you know, there are almost 4,000 documented knots in the world. This is only 366. This is a tiny fraction of them. Um, whenever I want to feel humble again and go back to feeling like a student instead of fancy art lady, I learn a new knot and that puts me in a beginner's mind. And then I think about what does this knot want to become? Um, I want to help it find its ultimate expressive state, which is what I do in my artwork now, right? I take one knot at a time, only one knot type ever in any single work of art that I make. And I play with scale and color and repetition and composition, but especially scale because I love going big. Um, I'm helping it find its ultimate expressive state. So I could do that for every one of the knots on this wall and the other, you know, 3,500. Like I'll never run creatively dry, I never get create, I've never get creatively blocked because there's so much to do. And then outside of the knots themselves, it's, you know, there's just so much to do.

SPEAKER_02 54:45

Yeah. Um, can we talk about Ruth for a second?

SPEAKER_01 54:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 54:48

Um well, what does what does her work, what does her life mean to you?

SPEAKER_01 54:53

Oh, don't even get me started. I mean, there's so many things to say. Um, one of the things that I like to think about with her is that um she was working in craft and had the temerity to call it art. She knew it was art and she also knew that it was craft at the same time. And, you know, I alluded earlier to like the ongoing forever debate about that and what is craft's place in in fine art world. Um, so she was just, she seemed really unbothered by it. Um, also, she um was a citizen of San Francisco. You know, she made public artworks here that had nothing to do with crocheting wire, right? She made statuary sculpture, she planted gardens, and that was her art. She carved wood and that was her art. So she wasn't limited by the medium in any way or what she became famous for in any way. Um, and she was also really into education. So she started, you know, um art programs at various schools and just all the things. Like, so she was like, she, and and in that way, what I'm trying to say is outside of the art that she was making, um, she was doing all of the other things. Her life was a life of creativity. It wasn't just the pieces she made.

SPEAKER_02 56:08

Have you had anyone say to you that you might be the new Rutha Sawa or you might be another generation's Rutasawa?

SPEAKER_01 56:17

No one had said has said that, but I I take I when I see myself doing things um or learn when I see myself learning, when I feel that I am learning a lesson that she taught, you know, that feels really good. Um when I get to see my work at, for example, SF MoMA next to hers, or even in proximity to hers, um, which I got to have that experience last year, it is the highest honor. Uh there's a thing you she truly showed what it's like to live a life as an artist, not just how to make art, but how to live a life.

SPEAKER_02 56:47

Yeah. I there's this thing, uh, it's kind of a small point for me to bring up right now. But uh in that MoMA thing, uh you say you made this point that I my my dumbass had never thought about, which is how uh the medium that she was playing with, and same for you, is so often seen as women's work.

SPEAKER_03 57:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 57:05

And that in its own was a political statement. Yeah. Um, but I I yeah, I think to be to be clear, that was me saying you might you might be the news with Sawa. Uh so yeah, I I I believe it.

SPEAKER_01 57:16

I I'm I'm I'm feeling extremely seen right now. Very flattered today.

SPEAKER_02 57:22

I'm glad. Well, it's it's I I think if enough people haven't said it, they've thought it. And maybe it just feels weird to say that to a person you just met. But you know, um, I've gotten over that with 15 episodes of this podcast. Um so I actually want to um uh this is gonna take a little bit for me to set up.

SPEAKER_03 57:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 57:40

Um, but uh a theme I picked up on uh uh in the book, and you sort of just touched on it right there, um, is you you know, when you start off as an artist, uh, even if you weren't calling yourself that, but when you start off on this journey, right? You're making uh things that are uh uh have utility, right? They're like very specifically utilitarian objects, or you make a you make a light, and they're of course beautiful and have a ton of story and craft behind it, but they're util they they provide some core utility. Yeah. That you make these spoons, but and in addition to being utilitarian objects, they're physically smaller objects, right? And a theme I have seen uh in your art is as you've sort of uh matured as an artist and as you've been doing this for longer, um you've sort of let go, and it it connects to the product, making products versus making art thing, but you've sort of let go of needing your creations to have provide like kind of clear, small, obvious utility. And they've gotten physically larger. And there's obviously the a really critical point there is they've gotten physically bigger than you.

SPEAKER_03 58:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 58:47

Right. And I think that um the thing I picked up on when I was reading that was uh, oh, that is a level of um feeling worthy. To be like, no, my stuff doesn't need to also scoop ice cream for you. It can exist as art on its own, right? And it can it allowing it, it it is allowed to occupy space, right? And that it is that is its worth. And I thought that that was a really beautiful evolution of being like, yeah, no, it doesn't need to provide functional utilitarian value, it doesn't need to get neatly packed into a drawer, it will be a whole wall in your goddamn office campus. Uh, and you will pay for it and you will come and look at it. And I just find that to be like such a beautiful sort of m journey in it. Is that do you find that as you feel more worthy of your art or your art feels more worthy, that you feel more comfortable taking up more space with it, or just physically more space?

SPEAKER_01 59:52

That's a beautiful question. Um, let me think about how to answer that. Uh will you ask it again?

SPEAKER_02 59:57

Yeah. It's uh your pieces have gotten bigger and have less of a need to provide functional value, right? To also be an object you use every day. I it's actually like even in the book, I sorry to set it up too much again, but you know, there's this early part of the book is very much uh there's this obsession, I would say, which I share by the way, of like elevating the everyday and like little objects that can uh that can brighten your day and provide a lot of beauty, which again, I share that obsession. Yeah. And it's a very, you know, it's very Diterams-esque, which we somebody we it's very Zen, it's all of that, right? But as you go along, uh there is this really beautiful sort of like zooming out of the lambs to go from this like, oh yeah, no, what I'm doing is elevating the the everyday, to be like, no, it to go from I guess the essential to the spectacle, you know? And it takes a lot of courage to feel comfortable being a spectacle or to creating a spectacle.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:00

Yeah. I think the way that happened was I'm always my first audience, I'm always my first viewer, right? So um, and I sometimes I say that I'm making work to impress myself first and foremost. And if it impresses other people, that's just a bonus. And that's that's great. That's how I can make a living. But I have to impress myself first. And so um yeah, making something, making work that's physically larger than my body just feels right. Um not only because I'm so I have so much, I'm pretty self-assured, you know, and my level of self-esteem is high. And that comes from inside, not from the outside. So, you know, when I make work that's big, I'm impressing myself. So there's that's burst. Um, but also as I've gotten um, as I've gotten closer to and um am now fluent in the language to to tell my stories in, the stories want that scale. Like this part of the reason that I make work so big is because um a a com a theme that runs through much, not all, but much of my work is um telling stories of women's work, um, women's work, craft, where craft intersection intersected with early technology in the late 60s and early 70s, right? Where Navajo weavers were actually assembling circuit boards, where little elderly, little old ladies, they called them, the elderly weavers were actually hard making the hard-coded memory boards for the Apollo Guidance computer. Like nobody tells those stories anymore. Um, and women's work is associated with this meticulous bent over this kind of stuff, like emitting, crochet, that kind of thing. So it's frankly, I think it's the simplest, most obvious way to make art out of those stories is to make it huge so that it's undeniable. To make it at the scale of memorials, right? We want to memorialize this invisible labor that women have done for fucking centuries. So when you memorialize something, yeah, you make it big.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:02

Oh man, that's that's awesome. I love that. I love that way of thinking about it. Um, do you feel uh you've sort of already answered this, but I am curious about it. Do you uh maybe you can give it even a percentage? Yeah, but how fully expressed do you feel now? Do you feel like your art and your, I guess even your persona, your public persona or one-on-one persona, how well do you think that conveys how you feel inside?

SPEAKER_01 1:03:30

Yeah, that's wow, that's a great question. I mean, my first initial answer is to say I'm doing a really good job. Like 95% of like so there's that way of saying it. Another way of answering it is to say that 100%, like I'm my values are I'm fully aligned. Like in all the aspects of my life are aligned. So there is no friction there. So like I I believe in what I'm doing and my values are being expressed through the work that I make and the way that I work with my staff and run the a studio. Like it's all fully aligned. So maybe that's one way of answering it.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:06

I I um Yes, I'm living out my values. And so in living them, that is expressing them.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:14

I have a related question. I asked this to every single person that comes over for dinner at our house. And I can't believe I've never asked you on the podcast, but I really wanted to ask you.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:23

And uh it's I haven't found the more elegant way of setting this up, but so I'll just set it up how it is. Um, if I had ran a focus group, right, where a hundred people who didn't know you and didn't know your work came and sat with you for five minutes, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:04:38

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:39

And then they left. And I surveyed them on what did you think of the person you just met? Right. Or what what what were the words that come to mind when you think of that person? And then I sort of plotted it on a scale this big, right? Um and you know, this is like word cloud things they'll do in market research. Yeah. Um what do you think would be the biggest words? What do you think people that what do you think strangers think of you if you don't they don't know about your art and they don't know about um how accomplished you are, any of that? How do you think you come across as strangers?

SPEAKER_01 1:05:09

What do people say when you ask that? I mean I think I don't I d I it it it feels strange to answer the question. Like it's it's none of my business what other people think. I spend very little time thinking about what other people think.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:26

That that's what I was hoping to get out of.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:28

That's that's beautiful. Um so this is actually a perfect uh moment to ask my final question of you.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:36

Oh, final question.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:37

Um and I'm very happy that you're holding um some cord and working on a knot here. A beautiful line that your book opens with, which is quote, um, is Clifford Ashley's definition of a knot, right?

SPEAKER_03 1:05:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:51

Uh which I I I can imagine you're sick of repeating it at this point, but the idea that a knot is any complication in a stretch of line, right? Um it's not hard uh from there. You don't have to be a poet from there to see the obvious analogy to life and to specifically your life, right? And how like the the career as a record store or the career at Apple, these are all complications in the line, right? Um in in every sense of that word, right? Um I have a very simple question to end with this, which is how many more complications do you think are yet to come on the line?

SPEAKER_01 1:06:30

Oh, that's such a good question. I think about that. I think about um, you know, I I think about my um my audacious attitude towards life. The way I talk about it is that I'm omnivorous. I'm just want to have all the experiences and all the things that life has to offer, right? So now I've had three full lives and my partner's always joking, like, when's your next life? When's the full what's the fourth one gonna be? Yeah. Like I don't know. I think that I think this is probably it for me because it's so open-ended. When you're an artist, when you when you finally give yourself permission to identify in that way, then anything is possible. You know what I mean? Like because artists do self-define. Um, we are audacious about like whatever we decide is important to us is what we're how we're gonna make the work and what we're gonna the stories we're gonna tell. So, with that lens, whatever else I choose to do in life, you can still be an artist and do those things. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:26

Yeah. Wendy Chen, beautiful, audacious complications in the line. Um thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:33

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:34

This is so great.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:35

So fun. I love speaking with you and I.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:38

Warm Intro is produced and edited by J Wan Moon and Alex Echo. Hosted by me, Chai Mishra.