The Days Grimm Podcast

Ep.229 Kevin Titzer - From Pillar to Post

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Kevin Titzer Interview 

Sculptor, Storyteller & Visionary

In this episode of The Days Grimm Podcast, we sit down with world-renowned sculptor and Evansville native Kevin Titzer. Known for his intricate wood sculptures, hauntingly detailed figures, and international exhibitions, Kevin opens up about his artistic journey, creative process, and the stories behind his work.

We dive deep into Kevin’s early inspirations in Southern Indiana, his experiences exhibiting art across the U.S., Canada, and Europe, and how his storytelling through sculpture has captivated audiences worldwide. From his unique material choices to his reflections on culture, memory, and identity, Kevin shares invaluable insight into what it truly means to live as a working artist.

Whether you’re an aspiring artist, an art collector, or simply curious about the creative process, this episode is packed with wisdom, humor, and inspiration straight from one of today’s most compelling sculptors.

👉 Don’t miss this chance to hear from a visionary sculptor who continues to push the boundaries of contemporary art while staying rooted in his Midwestern heritage.

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UNKNOWN:

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02:

Hello, hello, hello, everyone, and welcome to another thrilling episode of The Days Grimm. My name is Brian Michael Day. My name is Thomas Grimm. Thomas, where are we? Rather, who's joining us today? Joining us today is someone we met almost a year ago at the premiere of Sack Race with Knives. I think pretty close to exactly a year ago. The artist himself has stated that the biggest part of the creativity, if not all, is good problem solving, making you of resources around them kevin titzer the man what's up sir

SPEAKER_01:

hey thanks for having

SPEAKER_02:

me uh fellow uh west sider uh i believe

SPEAKER_01:

west sider now

SPEAKER_02:

west sider now not always a west side we're gonna get into that we're gonna get into that but uh fair enough i thought it was so it was uh what's the serendipitous is the term i think i'm looking for because we had met yes at the sack race with knives and we watched the premiere or well we when we saw it was at a planetarium which it's just a cool experience so cool dude like super sick but we stopped and chatted for a little bit after with Jordan Barclay and I believe was Thomas there or was it just Jordan Thomas Bernard wasn't there he wasn't there but Barclay was there and everything was you were super awesome and I was like man we gotta link up I'd love to get you on the podcast I wanna talk about this stuff and then you were kind enough to invite me over and we sat and chatted and you walked me through your workshop which is super awesome but it just so happened to be he lives like three minutes away for me I was like dude this is so perfect so anyways yeah so welcome to the day's grim and we are currently shooting in the Jasper I don't want to get it wrong what what's the proper name of this establishment

SPEAKER_01:

Jasper Arts is fine

SPEAKER_02:

Jasper Arts I know some people might think this is a Rick Rubin episode but it's not I don't get that reference Rick Rubin's podcasts are pretty set up artsy look I Oh, very open? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. We have your latest piece behind us, but before we dive into this, we wanted to know a little more about Kevin. So I'll do my best.

SPEAKER_01:

Were you born in Evansville? Born in Evansville. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Not on the West side though.

SPEAKER_01:

Not on the West side.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay. Okay.

SPEAKER_01:

Grew up on the North side.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay. That's like the new West or the, I don't know. They're the same. They're pretty close.

SPEAKER_01:

And then I went away for a long time and I came back and then my wife and I bought a house on the West side. So now I am a West sider.

SPEAKER_02:

Welcome, brother. Welcome to the West Side. Welcome to Skis, Grippo, and Bush Light, and whatever else is popular on the West Side. So, like, were your parents artists or creatives in any way? No.

SPEAKER_01:

No, I was the weirdo. I was the weirdo in my family. Although my entire family, very blue-collar, everyone works with their hands, and... You know, when you grow, I guess any kid growing up, it's like, oh, why am I so different from my family? You know, and you go through your teenage years and I'm adopted. I have to be adopted. Yeah, woe is me. Right.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

But once I became an adult and kind of realized what the skills that I have and use are the exact same as I watched my family use for practical things, you know, I just use them in a different way. Some days I wish I was more proficient with the practical things. But it's all It's all about creative problem solving. And the same creative problem solving that I use to make goofy things like this, my dad was a brick mason all of his adult life. So a lot of creative problem solving goes into that. So I fortunately realized that I was much more similar to my family and my roots than different and actually learned so much from example growing up.

SPEAKER_02:

So did the angstiness kind of float away at that point where you were like, oh yeah, this makes sense? You know what I mean? They're creative as well, just in a, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, yes. I I think so. You know, it was... it was comforting in a strange way. Maybe not strange way. You know, I felt connected, much more connected to my family and my roots.

SPEAKER_02:

When did you have that, like, realization? Like, late high school before you went to college, or? Probably mid-20s. Gotcha. So, like, already in college. Yeah,

SPEAKER_01:

yeah. I wish I would have been a little smarter earlier, but, you know, those things come to you when... When they do.

SPEAKER_02:

So you went to USI. Did you start as an art major?

SPEAKER_01:

You know, technically, I... I took art classes. So you were not an art major. Um, I, I have a bachelor of science. Nice dude. Me too. Yeah. Sick. So, um, yeah, before, um, I graduated from high school, I, I actually did get into the art Academy of Cincinnati, which I was super stoked about. Right. Um, first, uh, neither one of my parents went to college so I pretty much was on my own to do all the paperwork and everything and I'm all proud of my dad. Breaking the mold. Yeah. He took one look at how much a private art academy was going to be and I was quickly going to USI.

SPEAKER_02:

And that was Cincinnati Art or what was it? Art Academy of Cincinnati. Art Academy of Cincinnati so shout out to those so it's a private school

SPEAKER_01:

yeah yeah yikes and at the time yeah I wasn't happy about it but you know once I graduated without student debt I was like oh my god you just gave me a huge gift yeah thank you for the the leg up

SPEAKER_02:

so when you were at USI so you didn't you weren't an art major but like did you have like a mentor or somebody that influenced your art early on at USI because you weren't always doing

SPEAKER_01:

no No, no, no. No, you know, USI was great. And the faculty who– everyone that I had are now gone. Yeah. Some of them literally. Oh, like they're no longer with us. Right. My wood professor, John McNaughton, was instrumental in recommending me to my first gallery in Louisville. And that kind of kick-started the entire thing. Wow. I never looked back. He's passed. He was a huge influence. Lenny Dowie, who was in charge of the clay department, he was a huge influence. influence his wife and dowie who they're both in the movie as well um his wife and dowie was actually my high school teacher so he

SPEAKER_02:

got handed off from the wife

SPEAKER_01:

yes yes um they were hugely influential um in a lot of ways they were uh surrogate parents to me and um poor

SPEAKER_02:

dad creative dad

SPEAKER_01:

instead of rich daddy poor dad yeah But... Yeah, Annie was my high school teacher my senior year, and that was her first year teaching high school. And so she was kind of figuring it out. Yeah. And she had already been in the art world with Lenny, and he was showing his work in Chicago, and they were doing it. So she came at it with the attitude of like, yes, this is a legitimate way of making a living and a legitimate way of living your life. And that was a, you know, a revelation for me. It was, you know, one of those... They showed you that you could make a career out of it, not just a hobby. Sure, sure. It wasn't like, oh... You might as well say you're going to the moon, kid. Kind of attitude. It was

SPEAKER_02:

tangible. It was in front of you. So was this like the trigger pull? Is this when you were like, now I'm doing this? Or was there another point?

SPEAKER_01:

No, that was it. I don't think I ever... I always made things. I was always... I grew up with a garage full of tools around me. You know, I couldn't help but make things. Right. And everyone else in my family were creating things or fixing things or, you know. It took me a long time to get through my head that not everyone's dad just makes an addition to your house. Right. Yeah. Or, you know, just because he wants to.

SPEAKER_02:

Or built a brick oven in the backyard for fun, you know.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. It's like, oh, you don't hire people to do things. You do it yourself. Yeah. You know, kind of thing. I just took that for granted. I was like, oh, the world doesn't work like that? Oh. okay well um

SPEAKER_02:

so this first break in the louisville thing uh is that from where you were starting with like early small sculptures a lot of those figurines that like are on your site and stuff like that

SPEAKER_01:

yeah yeah and i and i'm still still making that kind of work it's definitely um evolved over the years i i hope it's better well

SPEAKER_02:

it's cool because you use multiple material it's not just like wood whittling like you mentioned like uh like ceramics and pottery and then you're also using like I think one of them I saw had just like a bunch of old scissors or like metal that you made a beard out of and I'll pull several of these on screen throughout the episode for people but I mean they're so unique and you don't really see anything like it it's like it was so funny Tom I really wish he would have been there the day that you were kind enough to invite us over I forget what he was doing I think you had like a Dungeons and Dragons thing to go to or something I've never played it but it But it was so cool seeing your workshop, and you walked me in. You prefaced with something. I don't remember what it was, but it was like a warning or something, and we walk in, and there's just all these dolls, and it was super, super cool. You had a partially put together piece in there, and it was just really, really neat to see the dolls is what sticks out in my memory. You have so many different... I don't know the word I'm looking for, but different builds, I guess. Sure, sure. I remember there was like some prosthesis or prostheses involved, which is really neat, like different prosthetic hands and stuff. It was really cool. But that's just, so to get to when you take that break and you start doing these, like how do you land on, and I think I've asked you this in person after the sack race with knives, but how do you land on like the characters that you build? like the ones that are hanging in the shop and the ones that, how did you get to that? You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01:

Sure, sure. You know, I tried lots of different things, you know, when I was in school and I kept circling back to, I have a hard time being interested in making anything that doesn't have a face, right? And I don't know where that comes from. I've got a thing with teeth, too. I do a lot of really crooked teeth. Yeah, that

SPEAKER_02:

was in Sack Race with Knives. There was one in there. Or is it the thumbnail for Sack Race with Knives? He's got jaggedy teeth. I

SPEAKER_01:

can't remember. Yeah. Okay, the origin story of the figurative stuff. Yeah. Okay, I've told this story before, but this is where it all started. I'm very curious. Well, it's when I was in school, and it comes from pure laziness. Okay, let's hear it. So I was taking a wood class from John McNaughton, I mentioned, and a clay class from Lenny Dowie, and I had two finals and i thought what can i do one project that will count for both of my finals so i made a bunch of clay heads and i made a bunch of wooden bodies and i put them together and i got away with it i i turned in the one project for both finals and i got i got away with it and then i was like hey i need to make more of these

SPEAKER_02:

uh can i ask how did they They grade you on both of them.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, I totally sailed through. It

SPEAKER_02:

was great. Did anybody ever approach you with these figurines and ask to do any stop motion or anything like that?

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, people have asked me about it, but that's a whole other can of worms.

SPEAKER_02:

Because you're going to have to, I mean, I imagine you'd have to make the joints articulating. Oh, that's not the problem.

SPEAKER_01:

I could build puppets for other people to animate. But doing the camera, there's way too much math. It takes way too much time. I'm just...

SPEAKER_02:

I'm actually

SPEAKER_01:

glad

SPEAKER_02:

you brought this up, Tom. Are you a stop motion fan? I am. Because your art speaks to that clearly. It has that kind of vibe of like, these are the puppets or these are the faces or these are the heads we're going to use in a stop motion film. I think we mentioned that during the sack race with Knives. I'm not sure. So after Louisville, how many other of these small installations do before you do something massive like behind us, these big immersive installations?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, so I do the gallery work. So I did my first gallery show in 97. So that's how long I've been active. And... And not that I haven't had lots of twists and turns along the way. Right. So I kind of built up– let's see, the last time I– I actually went through my records and tried to figure out how many figures. Some of them are just heads of different, you know, just like how many pieces. And this was several years ago, and I had come up with... 600 individual figures. And I know I've done several more hundreds since then. Good night. But I've made a lot of them. And now

SPEAKER_02:

that you mentioned 97, that was your first installation. No,

SPEAKER_01:

no, no, no. I wasn't doing installation work. I was only doing small figurative pieces for galleries. Okay, that was your gallery work. And this is

SPEAKER_02:

just one piece in a gallery, not like a whole room like we're now dedicated to your piece, right? Right.

SPEAKER_01:

No, that, that would in 97, I did my first show. Gotcha. And

SPEAKER_02:

we mentioned this with Cooper when it comes to like displaying your art and setting up the vibe of the room, if you want to call it, how much were you involved with that in the early years of like, like this, this is like a blank room and your piece draws all the attention.

SPEAKER_01:

Right. Like how. No, the, the early, the early days, it was more of just making individual pieces and they were be put on the walls. And they

SPEAKER_02:

put them up for you and you didn't do anything with like the aesthetics of the room or the lighting or anything? No. Not

SPEAKER_01:

so much. It wasn't until I actually, I lived in Canada for 10 years. Nice. What

SPEAKER_02:

took you to Canada if you're

SPEAKER_01:

Um, the oldest reason in the world, I followed a woman. I thought he was going to say

SPEAKER_02:

maple syrup. Uh, okay. So was that woman your wife?

SPEAKER_01:

Uh,

SPEAKER_02:

no, no. Okay. Okay. Okay.

SPEAKER_01:

So that was a whole other life that has

SPEAKER_02:

since. But how hard is it? How hard is it to establish a name here in the Midwest as an artist and then just to pack up and move to another country and reestablish yourself?

SPEAKER_01:

Um, I'm sure it's different for everyone, but it, it brought every to a screeching halt for me was it almost like

SPEAKER_02:

starting a new like completely yes here's my name and here's my work like you just have blank resume essentially

SPEAKER_01:

that was my experience okay

SPEAKER_02:

so what'd you do until you were able to get your footing and

SPEAKER_01:

um i i luckily got hooked up with a gallery up there and they were very good to me and um they really took uh uh my path in a whole new direction. And the installation work would not have happened if I wouldn't have been in that situation.

SPEAKER_02:

Can you expand on that a little bit about how did they kind of nudge you in the installation

SPEAKER_01:

direction? Well, they didn't necessarily nudge me in that direction. It was circumstance. So I'll give you the cliff note version. Okay, please. Because I want to get in the weeds. So I'm I'm living in Canada. There's a small gallery. I'm living in the middle of nowhere. I'm not in Montreal. I'm five hours north of Montreal. Okay. In the middle of nowhere. You're in the bush. I'm up there. Yeah. You can go further, but I was pretty far up there. And so I'm trying to figure my stuff out and everything. And this very small gallery, local gallery, likes what I'm doing and offers me a show. And I'm kind of like... What do I want to do? One

SPEAKER_02:

second. Can we get over here, Tom? What happened? Quick edit. Quick cut. Camera's getting warm. Is it back online? Yeah. Maybe pull that light.

SPEAKER_01:

No, no, no, I understand. I'll back up a little bit.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, so you're north, not quite in the bush. You can get deeper. Right. But you're north a ways.

SPEAKER_01:

Right. Uh... So this small gallery is interested in my work, and I'm kind of like, do I really want to do this? And I talked myself into it just saying, well, I like deadlines. It's a good excuse to make a body of work. So I do a body of work, show it in this very tiny gallery, and it goes over really well. I sell almost everything, which was great, but that's not the best part. A direct of the theater director shows up at the gallery and there's a really big tradition in Quebec of puppet theater. So he sees my stuff, which are not puppets, but influenced. Puppet-esque. Puppet-esque. That's fair. Same ballpark. Yeah. I'm not offended by that at all. And so afterwards he comes to me and he says I'm starting a new production I want you to build my puppets and props and I said I don't build puppets and props he's like that's okay you'll figure it out like okay what else do I have to do so it was this really interesting stage production he was from Mexico and it was a collaboration between two theater companies one from Guadalajara Mexico and Quebec in Saguenay, where I was living. And I was the only American. So it was French, Spanish, and English all swirled together. You guys got the whole North American continent

SPEAKER_02:

just really getting after

SPEAKER_01:

it. Yes, unity. Nice, dude. Nice. So I work on this production. I've never done theater stuff before. It's like this amazing opportunity. I got paid to do it. I spent a year on this thing, building stuff for them. I got to do things that I'd never built before. Got to go on tour in France with them. Golly. And then the director... also runs a puppet festival in Guadalajara. And he said, well, you know, we're going to also premiere it in Mexico. Your job is over because you've built everything. Why don't you come to the festival and do an art show? I'm like, oh, okay, that's cool. And I said, but I don't have any work because I've been working for you for a year. Dude, I'm all tapped out right now. Yeah, exactly. And he was like, oh, that's okay. That's okay. Just come down a month in advance You'll make something. This guy seems very nonchalant.

SPEAKER_02:

He's like, no, you're fine. You'll be okay.

SPEAKER_01:

Just figure it out. Sometimes you need that energy. Yeah, just no

SPEAKER_02:

stress. It's fine.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. So he's like, it'll be fine. So I go down there. But that kind of thing can also bite you on the ass.

SPEAKER_02:

100%.

SPEAKER_01:

So I literally show up at the airport and the people who are helping to drive They literally pull me aside. I've got my bags and they're like, well, we told you you had four weeks. You actually have two weeks.

SPEAKER_02:

And is this where that two week deadline has stuck with you ever since?

UNKNOWN:

Yes.

SPEAKER_02:

So Guadalajara birthed the two-week ingestation, whatever, period.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, and they take me into a space that's about the same size as this, and it's empty. And I have two weeks before this festival starts, so I'm like, oh, my God, what am I going to do? So I got nothing. So I'm... I'm going to go out on the streets and start pulling stuff, you know? And, um, yeah, And then there was also a subtext of there was an earthquake down there recently. So probably

SPEAKER_02:

quite a bit of collateral.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, it wasn't that in particular because it was actually in Mexico City. But everyone was freaked out while I was there. It was palpable. You could feel the energy. Everyone knew someone that it had affected. The just anxious, pent-up energy. So it was like... that energy in that story is going to affect whatever i make so i made this house structure and it was you know it was like this two-week fever dream of just like first thought best thought i have no time you know i'm like freaking out just go go go go go go and it was You know, I spent 20 plus years doing studio work, the little tiny fastidious work. And now I'm just like, by default, and it's this room size house. And this is like

SPEAKER_02:

the first time you used reclaimed materials?

SPEAKER_01:

No, no, I've always used reclaimed materials, but I've never used, I had never made something that

SPEAKER_02:

big. Right. And roughly, I mean, not exact, but rough dimensions. I mean, how big, how large was this thing that you built in? two weeks like 20 by 10 like like 15 by 15

SPEAKER_01:

um 15 by 20, yeah. And you did that in two weeks. The size of the Unabomber's shack.

SPEAKER_02:

I love that reference. That fits our show and our crowd very much. Did you include any Easter eggs in the very first big one? Yes,

SPEAKER_01:

yeah. They were... my figures kind of tucked in same with like sack race with knives yes so it was kind of like a transitional kind of thing so um and and at the time it was let's just say um between our two countries were not great. And we'll just leave it at that, right? Right, yeah. And so I show up and they're like, who is this crazy American pulling trash into the gallery? Who's this guy

SPEAKER_02:

dumpster diving back

SPEAKER_01:

here? So it was fascinating to watch, you know, like the light bulbs go off, like, oh, okay, I get it. I see what he's doing.

SPEAKER_02:

Right.

SPEAKER_01:

And then when I would explain, this is partially about the earthquake, They were genuinely touched. And especially since I was an American and they weren't getting a lot of love from America at the time. So it put a whole other context in it as well. I'm not trying to pat myself on the back. That's just like the situation. That's what an artist

SPEAKER_02:

does though, is like finds a way that they can touch the community and then bring it to life. I mean, each one of these installations, like all this is material from Du Bois County, from the local county that you've sucked in and made this. amazing head that's behind you right that's

SPEAKER_01:

that's intense all of that and then they they recognized stuff from the streets and it was like oh he he's made something literally out of pieces of our community and then that was when i got the light bulb moment and i was like no one has ever reacted to anything that i've made like this before i need to do more of this what year is that

SPEAKER_02:

Is that like a 20-odd one or something?

SPEAKER_01:

No, that's... I want to say 2013. 2013? Wow, okay. Give or take, somewhere in there, mid-2000s. Okay.

SPEAKER_02:

So you get a fire in your belly after doing this, and you come back to the States or you go to Canada?

SPEAKER_01:

No, no, I was still living in Canada. Okay. And then I kind of had the revelation, oh, okay, if I travel different places, I'll find different things every time. You

SPEAKER_02:

didn't come back to Canada and immediately pop one up in this little bitty town? I

SPEAKER_01:

kind of did. I kind of did. You're like, what's around snow?

SPEAKER_02:

Let me make a...

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I did two. One in a neighboring town, and then I got invited, oddly enough, to an anarchist festival, which was just this crazy thing that I did. I love

SPEAKER_02:

that. Dude, Unabomber reference, anarchist party, I'm loving everything I'm hearing. So what did the piece look like from then? And maybe you can send us a message of that piece

SPEAKER_01:

afterwards, and I'll pull it up on screen. For the second The second one? The anarchist. Okay. In Quebec. Okay. And he dressed like a Viking. I like that. Swear to God. Why does it keep shutting down?

SPEAKER_02:

Help it breathe a little bit. Do we need to just move that light entirely? It's never overheated like this before. What the hell? I'm so sorry, Kevin. Staying on top of it and turning it on and off. I'm checking it periodically as well. I'm so sorry. Okay, so back to the anarchist. Those Norwegian cabinets. Yeah, so the guy's property, he's building these Norwegian cabins, and he dresses like a Viking?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, all the time. It's like his deal. That's just

SPEAKER_02:

his regular attire.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. So it was up on this mountain, and it's this very political thing, and my original idea was, okay, I'm going to build this thing, I'm just going to burn it. I've always wanted to do that. And that fits. It totally fits. But then there was a fire hazard during it. And I go up on this top of this mountain and the wind is just whipping, whipping. And I'm like, oh no, screw doing the fire. I got to work with the wind. So I worked vertical and the top of it has all these flags and spinners and different things. And the whole structure sways in the wind and everything. And on the inside had like chimes and different so it was like this whole sensorial experience but yeah that's one of them I did in Quebec

SPEAKER_02:

that's ingenious because like like you would like you were just saying I would agree with you I'm gonna build this thing and then I just have this Viking guy shoot a flaming arrow yeah and you know what I mean like set it ablaze that would be the most anarchist thing ever but then you go up to you know an elevated point you're like oh the wind is like it almost like spoke to So

SPEAKER_01:

these really, it's me reacting to the situation, reacting to whatever. I never know what kind of materials are going to be available to me. So it's always very improvisational. That is insane. So does this

SPEAKER_02:

Norwegian guy take you to Norway after? No, I got myself to Norway. So after Canada, where do you travel to next? Because you've been all over.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, I've been to a few places. I saw

SPEAKER_02:

on your website, was Vietnam on there or Thailand? No, Thailand. Thailand was on there. Norway, was it Switzerland? No, Germany. Yeah, and you're referencing kevintitzer.com, right? Yes. On the CV. You do have quite the extensive list, by the way, of...

SPEAKER_01:

Well, thanks. There's always someone who's done more, though.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, your work definitely stands out. And now that we're on to the actual part in your life where you start doing these installments, I want to talk about the elephant in the room. This guy.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

I mean, this monstrosity.

SPEAKER_01:

Indeed, indeed. Yeah, I just started, you know, this is the second of, it will be an ongoing series now. I worked my way through the house structures. I think I've done six or seven. I'd have to look. But in January, I got an opportunity to do a residency at a place called Highway 16. Sanctuary. And it's run by this artist. He does work under the name Shrine. Shrine. And amazing, amazing work. And... He bought a five-acre parcel of land out in Yucca Valley in the Mojave Desert. And he spent a lot of years doing Burning Man and festivals and different stuff like that. And he had all these pieces that he needed to store. So he bought this piece of property to store his own stuff. And after a while, he thought, well, I think I'm going to start inviting other artists to make permanent pieces. And so I was lucky enough to get an opportunity to go out and do something out on the property. And originally, I had planned to do a ship. Like a boat. Do a boat. Yeah, I was like, I was already like, I don't want to do a house. I want to do something else. Maybe I'll do a ship out in the desert, you know, something ironic. And... when I was flying out there, it didn't sit right with me. So I thought... The boat. Yeah. I thought, maybe I'll make a giant head inside a boat. Yes, that's the idea. This is wild.

SPEAKER_02:

Dude, what I would pay to just spend a second in your brain.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, it gets crazier. Hold on, I'm going to do

SPEAKER_02:

a cat inside of a head in inside of a boat

SPEAKER_01:

well it's it gets more interesting because um i had told um another person who's involved with with their organization they had asked me well you know you're we're hiring you to come out here what are you going to make so i i told this person i was going to make a boat so um so i i show up and i'm talking to shrine and everything and the first day and i say You know, I know I said I was going to make a boat, but I kind of think I'm going to make a giant head in the boat. And he went, oh, my God, really? I was just waiting for you to stop. I was waiting for you to finish your thought because I was gonna tell you last night I had a dream that you were gonna build a giant head. That's crazy. I can't wait to see what you make. He had a dream that you built the head. Yeah, yeah. So I had to make a giant head. At that point, my hands were tied.

SPEAKER_02:

That is, again, second use of serendipity on this podcast, and I'm proud of it. I'm here for it. Wow.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, he was stoked. It's fate. It's fate. You got to make the giant head. I did want

SPEAKER_02:

to make like an interjection here of like, what's it feel like? This is the first place that like your art stayed at. You haven't had to tear down afterwards, right? The one in California. Right. So like we never, we skipped over like, what's it feel like to spend two weeks of just like nonstop eat, sleep, breathing, gathering materials, making this, and then having to tear it down after, you know, two months of it being in a gallery.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

I

SPEAKER_01:

don't have any problem with it.

SPEAKER_02:

Has anybody offered to buy a massive head like this? No, but I would surely welcome it. So that is feasible. If I know a guy and I say, hey, there's a 20-foot tall head that you

SPEAKER_01:

can buy. Well, sure, I'm not going to argue with someone who would really want it, but it's not really... And I'm trying to think how many rabbits I could fit in

SPEAKER_02:

this.

SPEAKER_01:

It's not really... Whenever I do a big piece, see, this kind of work is really a bookend to my studio work, which is very fastidious and archival and stuff like that. And sometimes that kind of work can make it kind of stir crazy. So being able to go somewhere and just kind of just go nuts and first thought best thought and not have to worry about this is not going to be bought or sold this is an ephemeral piece of work that has a limited shelf life that is a totally different work mode and energy flow to work underneath and then I can like blow off all that steam and then go back and do the little tiny fastidious work right and the motivation for doing something like this where it's ephemeral you've go in knowing this is temporary. it gives me it allows me to to work a lot more loose um i i just kind of like i mean it's this work is safe it's not going to fall on anybody you know um but it's a lot rougher than than i would normally work in the studio and i like the idea of i typically use an analogy of like going to see a band you can go see a band and even if you've heard Absolutely, yeah. Absolutely. But it's like a

SPEAKER_02:

more meaningful memory. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

I would hope so. So, and, and I'm not trying to, you know, boost my own work up, but you know, it's like that. Oh, stop. Your

SPEAKER_02:

work is phenomenal, brother. Jeez Louise.

SPEAKER_01:

That's an aspiration.

SPEAKER_02:

No.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. And I think to give people a moment. That's

SPEAKER_02:

an excellent way to look at it. And then also it was funny when you were talking about it being like having an expiration, like having that expiration. The first thought I had was it's almost like, a being that you've birthed you've watched to grow you've helped grow it you've put it on display you've shown the world this child or this adult or whatever this being and then it comes to termination and you're there for that too it's kind of a weird dark that's where my brain goes I don't know I'm in a dark head space I guess but so do you have like a number for how many heads you'll produce?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, there's the ideal, but we'll see what reality

SPEAKER_02:

brings. Have you been to Easter Island? Is that the one with all the concrete heads?

SPEAKER_01:

I haven't, but it's definitely like a bucket list type of thing for me. You gotta

SPEAKER_02:

go there now and build one of your heads, you know, see if you can...

SPEAKER_01:

That would be the ultimate.

SPEAKER_02:

That would be pretty sweet if you made like a one of these that emulated one of those with like the big nose and the big... Yeah, dude. God, that's great. But you did say this is an installation or not an installation, a story, right? I forget the exact phrasing.

SPEAKER_01:

I think it'll be a series. A series. There's... I kind of started a narrative with the very first one. Okay. That... is going to thread through all of them as they get going. Can

SPEAKER_02:

we cover the series of what you're trying to capture from like... Like what's your core? What's your foundation? You just basically said like you found a backbone or the spine or the brain or whatever you want to call it behind the heads that like every piece of built from. Are you going to disclose that or is that just like an artist's secret? I tend to

SPEAKER_01:

frustrate people when they ask me questions like that. You're

SPEAKER_02:

like, hey, it's an Easter egg. Figure it out after four of them. All right, we'll just pretend like you didn't ask that question.

SPEAKER_01:

No, no, no. Well, it's like with my small studio work, it's a natural question. People want to know, well, what are you trying to say? Or what were you thinking? Or all those kind of questions which is just curiosity. And I frustrate people because I never tell them, you know, because legitimately it's not important to me. I do have a rationale for—I don't just make things randomly. I do have a rationale for why I'm making something, and either it's me working out something in my head or something else going on in my life or a viewpoint about what's going on in the world or something like that. But to me, that's irrelevant to viewing the art. if I were to say this is what was going on in my life when I was making it and this is the stuff that I was working out, then that is the only thing that piece will ever be.

SPEAKER_02:

You're not giving people their own creative interpretation of the art.

SPEAKER_01:

No. And particularly when I'm making studio work, that's work to be bought and put in someone's house. It's made to be lived with. So I would rather in a way I'm like stealing the opportunity for you to look at that every day and create your own story and I find

SPEAKER_02:

that yeah I did this with my tattoos where I just went in there and picked them off the wall and somebody what's that tattoo mean I just made the story up on the spot and then somebody else would ask what's that tattoo mean completely different story on the spot but it is I see what you're saying like you would almost you leave it into their interpretation which

SPEAKER_01:

And some people think that's a cop-out.

SPEAKER_02:

No, no, no. I relate it a lot to... We spoke briefly before recording about I.M. Cooper. Love the guy to death. So great. He's had similar responses when I've asked about certain... like a certain piece in particular he had showed me or whatever. Um, and he's like, you know, essentially in short has given me that exact kind of answer is like, well, it's not really up to me. It's up to, you know, Joe blow or whoever's going to buy this. Um, but yeah. And if I may, when I look at these, all of your works so far, minus the figurines, like the two installations I've been to now or have seen, like nostalgic. And I don't know if you get that often, but that's what it, that's what it brings to me. Like, right. Child in the nineties, eighties, kind of like,

SPEAKER_01:

yeah, you, you, I think a person would be hard-pressed to use rusty materials, old materials, and not have some sense of nostalgia. Yeah. And so I've got to own that.

SPEAKER_02:

But even the way the faces are formed, or the other installation was more of a home type of piece, but this one reminds me of characters I've seen in films from when I was a child. They just kind of remind me of the stop-motion type of Disney films and stuff I kind of grew up with. Do you ever keep just one little piece from several art installations? I do. Do you? What is the story behind that? Such a good question. I

SPEAKER_01:

don't know. Sometimes I... I don't know if it's just keeping a memento because I know it's going away. Okay. And it's a little reminder that there's certain– elements that I just have a connection to it's like and it's I don't know the sack race with knives piece I mean I mentioned in the movie if I could save anything I would save all these there was a lot of garage sale signs like handwritten they were wonderful I did I

SPEAKER_02:

saved them all do you like like right now on the piece behind you do you already have a piece picked out that you're going to keep or do you find it when you take it all down?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it would probably be I pick something out when I'm taking it down. Gotcha.

SPEAKER_02:

That's pretty neat. And then like... I mean, we saw the stop or the time lapse you made before it. We'll include some segments through the episode. But like the drum that's on the right side, like how do you know like, hey, I got to put this piece in first before I build the rest of the stuff? Because you had your frame up and then you put the drum in. Yeah. Which again, we're including this. If you're watching this interview on YouTube, you're seeing it now. But like in two weeks, that's an excellent question. You have... a lot of the stuff you're going to work with sure the foundation the ladders kind of are going up yeah and then you kind of get like this tp structure going and then it kind of blossoms out but yeah once you get up to like i can't see what this silver drum is over here it looks like an oil can or a gas can it's an acetone it's an acetone can yeah so how do you how do you get to that and you're just like this has to go in here somewhere or like i knew that this had to be on the temple of the head or you know what

SPEAKER_01:

i mean well i i kind of um in a sense i kind of defer back to my my upbringing because i you know in the very beginning it's purely structural because i i know i'm making this giant weird thing it better not fall on anybody you know that's a liability i'm never gonna get booked for i'm gonna be the guy who killed children in a gallery and i'm never gonna get booked to do a gig again

SPEAKER_02:

That's so horrible. But also, that would be true. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

So to begin with, I have to make it structurally sound. So that's the boring answer. In the very beginning stages, it's just like, how am I... I know I'm going... The higher I go up, I'm going to have to make it stable. So it's purely... Just making it safe and making it stable. But there is a tipping point of, okay, now I know it's stable. Usually it's like when I can climb on it, like free climb on it. I know it's not going to kill anybody. Then I can get a little looser with the materials and do purely aesthetic things. Then it

SPEAKER_02:

turns into a Tetris game of what looks good and fits here. Yes. Okay, okay. I'd like to know how you made this nose. It's so unique. It looks like a bunch of pieces. It is. I

SPEAKER_01:

can honestly say that was the most difficult part. What is the base of

SPEAKER_02:

it? Because you see in the time lapse that this weird triangular pyramidal type of structure gets adhered to the face. And then you take some of that green, I don't know what that is. It's metal. Metal. It's rusty metal. And you just kind of bent it to the

SPEAKER_01:

nose, I guess? That's actually the third version of the nose. Oh, man.

SPEAKER_02:

Homeboy's had a lot of

SPEAKER_01:

nose jobs. Okay. Yeah. Young Michael. I had... I actually– I had a full set of table and chairs, and I busted them all up. And you can see remnants of– Yeah, the tables. Yeah, the furniture. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. And the internal part of that nose are parts of chairs. And then it's covered in wood and then covered in metal. But that was one thing that I did– vaguely intend to do because it's making a reference to the region. There's a history of furniture making in the region. So I wanted to make some kind of reference to, it's a subtle reference, but it's there. Okay. Okay.

SPEAKER_02:

And, and like on the backside, which I'll include some footage and there's a whole bunch of like old film plastic canisters. Like there used to be like a film place around here or.

SPEAKER_01:

No, no. Um, a friend of mine, just by coincidence, uh, A friend of mine who, a Kurt Hubler, he, well, coincidentally, at the opening of Sacrifice with Knives, he walked up to me and said, you need to do something in Jasper. And that was seven years ago. So he's been an advocate for me up here. And sometimes, you know, projects just, they take time. They take time to gestate and everything. So he was really...

SPEAKER_02:

Does that mean we got to get out in 10 minutes? Okay. All right. Cool, dude. No, just the library. Just so everybody knows, the library is going to close in 10

SPEAKER_01:

minutes. Take your library books back. So he was an advocate for me up here as the project gestated. And he was an art teacher in Boonville. Oh, no way. Coincidentally, he was retiring and had to clean out the studios the week I was starting here. So he was like, come over to Boonville and get a bunch of stuff. So he's the one that gave me the eyes, the drum, a bunch of like some of the best stuff I got from Kurt.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh my God. And the eyes are notorious. We did talk about that. I don't know if you were in the room, but I can't compliment you enough on the eyes to this thing. And now that I'm looking at it from the angle I'm looking at it now, you can see that it like almost magnifies some stuff on the inside here, which is really cool. But they just, They're bright blue orbs of some sort, and you painted them to look like these beautiful eyes. That's probably my favorite part about the piece. You said this is the only project you finished a day early.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

In

SPEAKER_01:

my entire career.

SPEAKER_02:

What'd you do that last day? Did you just stand around it and look to

SPEAKER_01:

see if you could add anything? I was really kind of like, I don't know what to do with myself. I'm usually like, scramble, scramble. Literally like hours before the opening. And yeah, I guess I'm going to go down to the schnitzel bunk and have a beer. You have

SPEAKER_02:

a favorite, like when you go to a town, you're like, oh, I want to find this sort of item. Even a favorite material to use? No. Just wood?

SPEAKER_01:

No. Well, like the head I did in Southern California, there was no wood, really. That one's like 98% metal. But it'll last in the desert. Sure, sure. It's appropriate for the setting and the situation. But that was like, I had never made something out of that much metal. And it's just literally like put together with wire And it's circumstances dictate what I'm going to make. How many

SPEAKER_02:

tetanus shots do you get a year?

SPEAKER_01:

Probably not enough. Not enough for that piece,

SPEAKER_02:

dude. Speaking of going back to that piece, though, I meant to ask. Hopefully we've showed it on screen already by now. Maybe we show it again. But the piece in California, that was California, right? The one that you put in the desert? Yeah.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

What happened to the boat? Cause it was just a head. The

SPEAKER_01:

boat just went away.

SPEAKER_02:

The boat just went away. I meant to ask you, cause I was like, he said a head in a boat.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

He only showed me the head. Is there a boat somewhere too? But

SPEAKER_01:

the guy that I had, you know, clarified, I'm going to make a boat. Uh, he showed up to the opening and he said, where's the boat, dude?

SPEAKER_02:

He had the same question I had. I feel like me and Shrine, Shrine and I would just get right along. So what, uh, like as you've done these over the years, Have you seen anybody that's come to an art exhibit that just mailed you something that's like, look what I did. You inspired me. Has anybody sent you any? No. How about flip of the coin to that question? Did you ever find through your decades of doing this, have you found someone along the way that... didn't obviously you've been doing it this way for a very long time but is there somebody that helped you know add something to how it is what you do or or was there somebody that helped spark this from the initial your your style if you will I don't know the proper way to ask that question you know what I mean but is there another artist that kind of like that you looked at and you took something from and you were like I like that I or how he did it or she did it or how they portrayed this or the way they tell a story or anything like that. Has anyone ever kind of like added something to you and your art?

SPEAKER_01:

You mean as far as like... Inspiration. Inspired over the years? Yeah. Whether that's someone historical or someone living or... Yeah, someone historical, contemporary...

SPEAKER_00:

Too

SPEAKER_01:

many. Too many to list. You know, I just am a sponge, really. I'm always looking for new ways of doing things. Really, one of the very first people that really kind of was an unlock for me was Alexander Calder.

SPEAKER_02:

Historic or contemporary?

SPEAKER_01:

Historic. And it was

SPEAKER_02:

Alexander Collier?

SPEAKER_01:

Calder.

SPEAKER_02:

Calder.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay. Do people know him for the mobile? Like

SPEAKER_02:

in a bassinet?

SPEAKER_01:

That's the funny thing. He actually invented the mobile. made it. Yes. He was just like,

SPEAKER_02:

babies need something to look at.

SPEAKER_01:

Well... I'm not quite sure if there were hanging things above babies' cribs before Alexander Calder, but he was the first one to make art that moved on its own. And that's what a lot of people know him for. But in his early life, he made Calder's circus, which was a huge, huge influence on me.

SPEAKER_02:

What about contemporaries? If you had to just choose one that just kind of springs to mind, maybe we can look up and just kind of maybe even learn a little bit about them. As a podcast, we're just now starting to do informational episodes, so it might be cool for us to look one up. Do you have a contemporary that you kind of watch, you've watched along the years, or...

SPEAKER_01:

I'd say, yeah, my friend Chris Sickles.

SPEAKER_02:

Chris Sickles?

SPEAKER_01:

He's been a very good friend of mine for a lot of years, and he lives just outside of Indianapolis. And he does a lot of book illustration under the name Red Nose Studios. Okay. And he's been very... encouraging and I think we kind of commiserate a lot over the years um But we're two Indiana boys that are close in age and can kind of relate to each other. Well, and

SPEAKER_02:

you guys are making it. You're making it, man. You're doing this thing that you love, and you've become very, very efficient and pretty well-known internationally even.

SPEAKER_01:

I don't know about that.

SPEAKER_02:

Where do you see artists fitting into society today in the digital age? I mean, people are doing digital art, and it's all over the place. the place and then you're doing like big hands-on installations like

SPEAKER_01:

I think that's above my pay grade. Or probably, maybe just for better or for worse, not in my interest.

SPEAKER_02:

Gotcha. What about, we'll pivot off that to music. Do you listen to music when you build these? Sure. Oh, I've always wondered about this. Is it just like a specific playlist? Like when you go into one, it's like, hey, only this type of music? Or like, what's your playlist look like when it comes to one of these?

SPEAKER_01:

I don't know. God. I don't know. I really don't know. I don't have a good answer for that one because as soon as someone says, what kind of music are you listening to? My mind goes instantly blank.

SPEAKER_02:

Are

SPEAKER_01:

you kind of

SPEAKER_02:

like an anything kind of guy? Old stuff and new

SPEAKER_01:

stuff? It's kind of like... Music is used to get your mind where it needs to be for the immediate task. So if I'm doing really tedious, repetitive work, it may be something very mellow. But if you're doing stuff that's more engaging or bigger, it's something more aggressive. So I just have an ongoing Spotify list Okay. I like something. It just goes on the list and I keep listening to the same list. It has hundreds of stuff on it. I'm a

SPEAKER_02:

huge, I love rep and Spotify. They are absolutely great. Yeah. What do you, what do you think the most challenging part of your creative process is? Documenting. Uh, explain that a little bit. What do you mean?

SPEAKER_01:

Uh, without a doubt, documenting. Oh, just

SPEAKER_02:

like actually

SPEAKER_01:

like

SPEAKER_02:

filming and photograph,

SPEAKER_01:

photographing. Yeah. Yeah. Cause I'm not a photographer and, uh, 2D artists have an easier time because they can, like, one shot, it's lit well, boom, they're done. I make things in the round. I may have to take five, six, seven, maybe ten shots to get the entire thing, all the little detail and stuff like that. And it rarely... comes out I mean I literally have people come to my show still and they're like I had no idea it looked like this and I've seen pictures I've seen pictures I mean I thought that when I

SPEAKER_02:

walked in I've seen pictures of this head all week preparing for this because I knew we had it coming up and I walk in and I'm just like pictures just don't do it justice I the first thing I said when I walked in was wow I mean in the another prime example who wasn't that there was an article about the sack race with knives, or maybe it was an older article that I saw when you first did it. I'm not sure. But it was like a news for you article. It may have even been news for you. I'm not sure. But it was a spread of several pages. And I was like, wow, that's really nice. They did close-ups and then far away and then looking through stuff. And I was like, man, that's neat. And then you see the documentary and you're like, that's totally different from what I was expecting. This thing is like magical. Like it's insane. And the same here, it's just, we're going to add stills and we're going to add some footage of us walking around it, but it just. Sure, I appreciate that. And Sacrace with Knives was like, was that like the most extensive one of your works have been like just filmed from start to finish?

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely, literally the first. And it's

SPEAKER_02:

won countless awards as a film, not

SPEAKER_01:

even as your art. Well, not countless, but.

SPEAKER_02:

Infinite awards. more than my hands more than my hands and toes you know he's not a good counter is what that yeah more than 20 more than 20 not strong at math infinity it's one infinity awards so it was it was amazing film and then shout out to uh the evansville uh museum for putting that uh film preview on that was amazing and then barclay that shot most or all of the documentary

SPEAKER_01:

uh a lot of it a lot of it uh Every once in a while, he would hire a crew, but for the most part, it was him doing handheld. That's got to

SPEAKER_02:

be, if you could do that for every installation, I'm sure you would, right?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, sure. It'd be nice. So it

SPEAKER_02:

sounds like you need to hire a

SPEAKER_01:

videographer. I think people would get a little bored of that much documentation. So that's why I did the time lapse this time. to kind of mix it up a little bit.

SPEAKER_02:

And where can people just last mention of Sack Race with Knives because it really was an amazing piece. Where can people watch that film again since we've referenced it umpteen

SPEAKER_01:

times already? It may be a little bit longer because I know Jordan is still entering it in film festivals. Oh, is

SPEAKER_02:

he really? Okay, nice. I was not aware. I thought it was cut and loose. No? Okay.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

There might be a site out there where you can go and view it, like Vimeo. I know the trailer is available. Such a great, I'm so glad we went to that. It was so amazing.

SPEAKER_01:

But just to jump back just briefly to documentation, it's totally my deficiency in being able to document also. It's not like, oh my God, people don't understand kind of thing. But as far as the installation work... you can't replace being in the room. No. I mean, that's just a sensation, you know, you have to be there to know, you know, standing next to this thing is a sensation that can't be documented.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, and like what's crazy is like I was sitting here and, you know, I got camera experience and I'm like, if I were to film Kevin making something, how would I do it? And I'm sitting there and I'm like, it was like my mind just runs endless. Like I'd be like, I'd be putting meta glasses on to record first person view. I'm putting like three 360 cameras in the room. GoPro on my chest. I've got a GoPro on Kevin. You've got a camera with a time lapse. You've got a camera in every corner. Alright, you're on. You're hired. Alright, our going rate is$5 an hour. No, I'm just joking. It would be killer to just be a fly on the wall to watch it happen though. Well, that's like one thing that's like crazy just as like a creative to think about is like it would be like a once in a lifetime experience just to like walk in and like live next to you while you build one of these for two weeks and just nonstop, like, Hey, Kevin's waking up. I'm waking up. Like just to,

SPEAKER_01:

I'm not, well, you, you can have that dream, but I'm not, I'm not quite sure it's, it would be as good because there's a lot of like,

SPEAKER_02:

Hmm. And that's perfect B-roll, you know? Put it in a folder, 100 gigabytes of Kevin staring at his piece, you know? So back to the time-lapse thing, though, in the creation of, and again, the name of this one is From Pillar to Post, right? Yes. Up here in Jasper. So while you were creating this, living in your home on the west side, were you just making that, I wanted to ask this earlier and totally forgot until just now, were you making that drive every

SPEAKER_01:

day? No, no, no. They were great. They put me up. They let you just sleep here? Yeah, yeah. I was in a hotel room. That's how Kanye makes

SPEAKER_02:

his music, and that's how Kevin makes his

SPEAKER_01:

art. Dang. It was great. I had 24 access to the building. I was a stone throw from a hotel room right next to Schnitzelbach. That is nice. I launched there every day. It was great. It was a great gig. Shout out to

SPEAKER_02:

Schnitzelbach. Is there anything from Schnitzelbach in the piece? No. No. Oh, bummer. Do you have a... I know we mentioned that the nose was intricate. The eyes are very powerful. Do you have something on here that's in your head right now that you just remember that one thing and it sticks with you and it's like a favorite item in here? I know there's only like 9,000 items in here, but is there one that you're like, oh yeah, that little lock trinket shaped like a heart on the back of the head? You know what I mean? That

SPEAKER_01:

one stuck out to me. I have a fondness for the kick drum. The kick drum up here? That's in the head, and a lot of people have commented on it. Most people have commented on the eyes, but then they lock in on the drum, and that's just one of those random items that could not have guessed I would have had access to. And it was like, oh, wow, I'm going to... get as much out of this as I can. I'm going to stick this cake drum up here. I have to put this in the most, you know, the least obvious place. I'm going to put it as high as I can. And that's

SPEAKER_02:

actually a good mention. How much are we missing by not seeing, you know, the crown of the head? Not much. Not much? Okay, there's not like a secret little... Hey, not much as far as you know. Well, uh, I mean, these heads just blow my mind. This one doesn't really have teeth.

SPEAKER_01:

No, he did. He did, and it just didn't work. And sometimes you just have to move on. It's like that's the good part about the two-week deal where it's like keep on moving, keep on moving, and the teeth weren't working. What did you

SPEAKER_02:

try using,

SPEAKER_01:

may I ask? It was wood. I mean, he had separate teeth in there and I could have made it work, but it would have eaten up too much time.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, because at that point with two weeks, I mean, you have to weigh out your options. Like, do I want these teeth to be super gnarly or do I want to finish this chin and move to the ears?

SPEAKER_01:

Which is another prominent... I learned, you learn really quick when you're making a face this big, you have to nail the expression. If he looks weird or it just doesn't look right, it blows the entire thing. Nothing else matters if you don't nail the expression. I hope I nailed the expression. He's alert.

SPEAKER_02:

Big ol' eyes. I'm maybe the wrong person to ask, but almost like he's making an inquisition. I don't know. Am I close?

SPEAKER_01:

Hey, that's your call, man. There

SPEAKER_02:

we go. Exactly, dude. Exactly. That's what I'm talking about. Is there anything that you, like, hope people take away from your art? Maybe not, like, the message of the meaning, but just, like, from your art in general. Oh, like a good take home. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Indifference is death. So I always strive to have some kind of reaction. I don't care if someone hates my work. I think it makes a bad reaction. It touched them in some way. I would love to make someone indignant. But to have someone walk in and just, eh, yeah,

SPEAKER_02:

that means I failed. I get what you're saying. There's no visceral reaction.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah. Boring is terrible. So to reach someone on some kind of level, whether it's positive or negative, it doesn't really matter. Do

SPEAKER_02:

you think if you would have stayed in Evansville and not moved to Canada, you would have made it as an artist to where you're at today?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, I don't know where I've made it at this point. I mean,

SPEAKER_02:

you're doing installs and

SPEAKER_01:

month-long exhibits. The only thing I can say about that is I doubt seriously I would have been doing installations.

SPEAKER_02:

follow-up question and then i have like one don't let me forget i've got one really good final question before everything but uh so if if evansville called and they said we want to do a residency downtown we want a giant head on i don't know you know what i mean but would you entertain that and do you think something like that is

SPEAKER_01:

absolutely you know i'm actually um

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, did I just stumble onto something

SPEAKER_01:

here? No, no. Oh, dang it. I was like, dude, are they calling my voice? Yeah. Give me a call. Yeah. Shout out,

SPEAKER_02:

Evansville.

SPEAKER_01:

No, to be working this long... it's best to diversify as much as possible because it's not an easy gig. It's like I'm not burning the world down. I'm not making a ton of money. I do fine. I pay my mortgage. I'm doing fine. But You have to have several plates spinning to make it work. And that's why also doing the gallery work is one source and doing this kind of stuff is another source. You get hired to do this kind of stuff. The gallery stuff, that's all spec work. It's all speculation. You never know if you're going to get anything. Sell out or sell nothing. Yes, or sell anything. There's so many reasons why to give someone not to buy a piece of art you know kind of thing but another avenue that I'm trying to pursue is doing more of the permanent stuff

SPEAKER_02:

More like what we did and what we've seen in California. Leaving your legacy. That's what's next

SPEAKER_01:

for Kevin. I don't really care about that. I've got a family. I need to contribute and everything. I need to have an income and everything. And to have as many different avenues that I can generate. This adds more ubiquity.

SPEAKER_02:

Was there a point where you realized that as an artist? Where you're like, hey, I can't just do... art installations i have to diversify was like was there like a moment that you were just like i have to experience

SPEAKER_01:

uh just hanging in as long as i have and and um just having reality you know smack me in the face many many times you know it's like oh just learn learn to not do this again you know like learn what not to do that's the only thing I've ever you know yeah been able to do

SPEAKER_02:

life is good about reminding you like hey man remember this happened a couple years ago yes there you go so earlier we jokingly mentioned Easter Island and how that'd be a super cool residency for you is there anywhere that like you were like top five places you would love to be like have a residency at for a couple months

SPEAKER_01:

oh again there's too many right now I'm kind of obsessed with Ireland I would love to go to Ireland I would love Limerick in particular. I'm like super into this specific podcast right now. And the guy is based in Limerick. Do tell. What is it called? Do you know? The Blind Boy podcast. Okay. Are you familiar with him? How thick is his accent? It's pretty thick.

SPEAKER_02:

Dude, I've talked to some people in Ireland and they sound kind of normal through the nine to five hours. And then after nine to five, they just go to the bar. It gets worse. And then they go home. And yeah, if you caught them... After the bar, it was, it might've been

SPEAKER_01:

English. Unintelligible. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

But it makes sense to them. That's all that matters. So like on these places, like, so like, say you, you, they book you in Ireland. Like, are you, how much research are you doing on the area? Like on the plane ride there? Or are you prepping beforehand of like.

SPEAKER_01:

So when, when I blow into a new city, new country or whatever, um, I don't know where to get materials. So just through the process of asking around and explaining to people who I am and what I'm doing, people tell me stories. People, you know, when I explain I'm making art out of your community, well, that usually stokes up, you know, local pride. Oh, yeah. So they start telling me about their place. Yeah, there's an old furniture

SPEAKER_02:

factory. You'll find a ton of stuff. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. So it's much more satisfying and interesting and a process of getting those stories firsthand from locals than sitting on the internet. I wonder if you could

SPEAKER_02:

send out a flyer to the area and be like, hey, here's a donations box.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, no, no, no, no. No, I've made that mistake. Oh, really? Because there's junk. I like working with junk. And there's trash. Like McDonald's wrappers. Yeah. Somebody's

SPEAKER_02:

like, wait, I can get rid of an old bed frame without having to take it to the dump.

SPEAKER_01:

Some people, they don't quite understand what I'm doing. Yeah, the vibe. of what I'm looking for. Or it's like, oh good, I get to clean out my garage and take all my stuff and it's like, eh. And

SPEAKER_02:

find like a damn dead raccoon in there. You're like, what the, what am I doing with this? Skin it, make a hat. Yeah, boon it up. Okay, so I had, I have two more questions. The first one, I'm trying to think how, where I was going with, well, I'll ask this one. So from pillar to post, how did we get to that? How, or rather, do any of the names have, that you've given, have, they have some significance, right? They do. Is it improper of me to ask from pillar to post? How did we land on that?

SPEAKER_01:

No, it's not improper. And it's usually... Usually the titles are more vibey. Okay. And I like colloquial phrases a lot. I'm always throwing out these antiquated phrases, and my wife is like, what are you talking about? What does that even mean? Just pulling shit out. Yeah. And, um, but it's interesting. It's interesting to me. You know, um, I, I like language. I like words and I like old phrases and, um, and from pillar to post. I mean, it has kind of a couple of different meanings, but it's kind of like, um, being, being rushed or hurried or nervous or, you know, you've, um, those, those people, you know, it's like we, we were in such a rush when we were traveling, we got dragged from pillar to post. Pillar to Post, you know, that's kind of the context of it.

SPEAKER_02:

It fits with the two-week crunch, nonstop, happen to eat, sleep, breathe the art. Was there ever a moment in this from Pillar to Post where like, you know, you're at the hotel, you just wake up in the middle of the night and you're like, I got to get to the studio and you just get up and come in here?

SPEAKER_01:

No, no, I think those days are gone.

SPEAKER_02:

So you treat it like a 9 to 5 or like a 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. or whatever.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I pretty much have office hours, you know, when... around five o'clock i'm done i'm tapping out um yeah you know you burned through or most people most people burn through that kind of stuff in their 20s and 30s doing all-nighters and not that i can do it if i absolutely have to if i have no choice you know but for the most part um it has diminishing returns

SPEAKER_02:

yeah you hear a lot of creatives that are talking about like at a certain point if you're losing something versus if you just go and take a nap or come back to it later you're gonna have you're gonna get more done in that six hours instead of having to go back and fix your mistakes yes

SPEAKER_01:

for sure for sure i was really bad at when i would push it i would hurt myself that's when i would get hurt i'd cut get cut or something like that and then i would be like okay now it's time to stop but if you push yourself so far that you're not paying attention and you get cut, it's like, well, maybe you shouldn't have done that to begin with.

SPEAKER_02:

Is there any advice you would give to an artist out there that wants to get into just making their art more public, like getting out there? I

SPEAKER_01:

have no advice. I love the honesty, man. I

SPEAKER_02:

love the honesty. Find your own way, you know?

SPEAKER_01:

And I mean that, you know, I'm saying it half-jokingly right now, but I do mean that I have been making this thing up for 30 years. And literally when I started that there was no functional public access to the internet it was a different time and I'm not trying to be like oh in my day you know you know I'm I'm 53 you know it's like when I was a kid we still had you know dials you know the phone was still on the oh yeah yeah on the wall and everything you think the

SPEAKER_02:

internet changed you as an artist It

SPEAKER_01:

changed the business. You know, I think I've been in it long enough where the business has changed about three times. And I've had to adapt over the years and for better or for worse, you know. sometimes better, better adjustments than others, you know? Oh yeah. And, um, I, I, I'm still, I'm still learning, um, learning. By the

SPEAKER_02:

time you get it figured out, it shifts again. I

SPEAKER_01:

don't think I'll ever figure it out completely, you know, but that's, you know, I would like to think I'm a lifelong learner, as my wife likes to say as well, about herself. I

SPEAKER_02:

mean, that's the point of life, right? They say you can't teach an old dog new tricks, but that's just, that sounds like death. Like if you're not learning or trying to improve something, you've died. Like people, we got walking zombies all around

SPEAKER_01:

us. Sure, absolutely. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I like the old cliche, if you're the smartest one in the room, you're in the wrong room. You're in the

SPEAKER_02:

wrong room. Yeah, agreed. And that's kind of a steeple of what we do here at The Days. Yeah, we're the dumbest in the room. We are always the dumbest in the room. I mean that, and it's been true almost everywhere we've gone. On the opposite, when we aren't the dumbest in the room, it's not a good time. That checks out. Not awesome podcast. No, I'm joking. I love all of our guests that we've ever had. They're all phenomenal. And I have a blast every time we do one of these. Your pants will be on fire. What? No. Every time we do one of these interviews, Kevin, I'm sure you've made, hopefully you've made it to the end of an interview that you've watched that we've done where we like to ask, you know, in this journey of art at any point, Was there a moment where you seriously, like truly, genuinely considered throwing in the towel, tapping out, giving up? I'm going to go to carpentry school and do a 9 to 5 or whatever. More importantly, in that moment, what was your motivation that... pushed you through and brought the Kevin Titzer that we have before us today

SPEAKER_01:

I've had that experience many many times does one

SPEAKER_02:

stick out

SPEAKER_01:

um You know, when I did the first installation, we'll just keep on theme here. Okay. I remember a specific evening in Mexico where, you know, I said I'd never done that before. And I remember a specific night where... I just melted down. I just melted down. I was like, what am I doing? I can't. This is crazy. I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know how I'm going to finish this. You know, classic, like, imposter syndrome. I haven't slept. I'm in another country. You know, it's just like I just melted down. I just melted down completely. And I remember getting on the phone with the director. The gentleman you met in Canada. Yes, who got me down there. And he talked me off the ledge and everything. And I eventually got it done, got it done and everything. But it was a genuine, like, I don't know who these people think I am, that they have confidence that I can get this done, but I don't have any confidence that I can get this done right now. And then it turned out being... the most amazing experience that I've ever had thus far, making a piece of work and totally pushed me into a new direction and has really changed my life direction in a lot of ways. And if I would have just crumbled in that moment and given in to those initial feelings of self-doubt and So many things would not have happened to me, including getting married. You know, to that point. Did you ever thank that gentleman for

SPEAKER_02:

helping you get married, essentially? Okay, good deal. I was going to say, when you have those hard moments now, you just think back to the very first installation and it just pulls you through to keep going.

SPEAKER_01:

You know, you just, I haven't thought of that until this very moment. You actually pulled that memory back out of me. We

SPEAKER_02:

actually emphasized that on the way driving up here. I said, I want to drive into some Kevin memories did I not say that I said let's get down to what made Kevin and I'm glad we pulled that out for you hopefully it's a good memory

SPEAKER_01:

yes absolutely absolutely because so many so many things and that gentleman's name again was do

SPEAKER_02:

you recall Well, we'll just

SPEAKER_01:

leave it ambiguous. I got you. We'll just let

SPEAKER_02:

it go. You don't have anything else on the books for 2025, but what's next for Kevin?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, I've got a couple things that are... brewing right now that i don't want to mention because they're not completely locked down um but what does that

SPEAKER_02:

process look like for you trying to find your next gig are you do you have to reach out to all these places and be like

SPEAKER_01:

hey yeah i'm a one-man band in that sense um so there's there's a couple things that i'm pretty sure they're going to happen they're installations um the only thing that's really locked down uh completely is i'm doing a gallery show in Sedona. So that's definitely going to happen. Got

SPEAKER_02:

to see how far away that is from Flagstaff. And then you got to drive up there and go to the Drinking Horn Meadery and tell them I sent you.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay, I'm on it. They'll

SPEAKER_02:

send you home with a couple bottles probably on us and then we'll get the bill. Yeah. Great. Family establishment, fermented honey, Viking guy, you know, Norwegian area. You'll like it. They're great. Yeah, shout to those guys man you got any closing comments shout outs anything you want to mention that wasn't mentioned before we wrap up

SPEAKER_01:

um I really appreciate you guys taking an interest in what I'm doing. Oh,

SPEAKER_02:

we're huge fans.

SPEAKER_01:

Um, thanks. Um, it's, uh, you know, I, I, I'm just taking it one day at a time, one day at a time. And I'm really thankful for the, the life that I have and, uh, the family that I have. And, um, Life's life's

SPEAKER_02:

really good. You know, it's better with you in it. I'll tell you that. Cause this, I mean, and I was just thinking like, man, if Kevin wasn't around, who would be making, no, no one would be no one. You're it's wild. I'm thinking how cool it would be for like one of these places to get like after it's made like a photo and then like printed on the back of a shirt or like many figurines of this would just be like a unique thing to like take with you. Like if I came and saw this. We gotta get you making t-shirts, Kevin. I need a Kevin Titzer headpiece t-shirt immediately. Tom, let's get on that. We gotta make this happen. Okay, okay. You can do my merch. Let's make this happen, dude. Kevin, seriously, thank you so much for taking the time to sit down and talk to us. Yes, I appreciate it. A year in the making and I'm glad we finally got you. And thanks for bearing with the technical difficulties. Yeah. Not a problem. Tom. Not a problem. Terrible. Tom's crappy camera no it's actually a really nice camera but seriously I can't thank you enough I'm so appreciative I meant when I said this world is better for having beautiful pieces like this in it and the figurines are phenomenal and your future endeavor your future avenues moving forward I hope they go just as well and it's an honor to not only seeing your art but to actually meet the artist and get to know you it's a privilege so folks at home if you're watching this I believe by the time this comes out you may have another week uh to come out drive up to jasper if you live in jasper and you're a fan of the show get on over to the art center take a take a stop in and check this fella out um because it's you can look at it through the podcast but it's not the same as being here as we've iterated numerous times so um but yeah we're very thankful to uh the jasper art center we're very thankful to kevin um but i think this is another thrilling episode of the day is grim My name is Thomas Graham. My name is Brian Day. And this has been Kevin Pitzer. Thank you so much, sir. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.