(light music) (light music) - Hello, and welcome to Monograph.

I'm your host, Jackie Clay.

Today, we're at Vinegar Contemporary in Birmingham.

I had the opportunity to attend the opening for the recent multimedia instillation by artists, Brandy Shaw in collaboration with Celeste Pfau.

We'll sit down with both artists in this episode.

We'll also talk with VINEGAR Co-Directors, Melissa Yes and Ann Trondson.

- I see you.

I see all of you.

Then come, they respond.

Let us build together from the ashes.

- Welcome, Brandy Shaw.

- Thank you for having me and I'm happy to be here.

- Tell us a little bit about yourself, tell us about your practice.

- So I am a physician by vocation.

That's my main gig that I do during the week.

I'm also a lifelong writer/poet, my main genre has been poetry.

And that's been with me throughout my life, even with medical training and all of the other things and pursuits that I've done.

I've been meshing all of that together over the years.

- So I was so excited I was able to attend the opening last night with my family.

What do you want visitors to experience if they're able to come to this show at VINEGAR?

- Yeah, so thank you for coming.

That was a really exhilarating time 'cause I have never had an opening before.

This was my first opening to anything.

Each piece is trying to represent some aspect of power that I think digital storytelling can have.

So I showed my first piece, Solitary Third Place, in what I consider draft form and had to really work against the instinct to go and revise everything and just go with the feeling that it seemed to give people when I've showed it before, and just understand that something can be first and in that version and that's okay.

Then I would say The Red Truck is more of a traditional digital story.

I actually should say that my first collaboration with an artist is in that piece because my daughter actually drew the pictures of The Red Truck storybook.

And then the digital poetry.

And so another solstice is probably the most close to digital poetry where I just wrote a poem and I was like what images can I put with this that when I close my eyes and hear the words what would go along with this.

And then Woman in the Alley is really my big attempt at narrative advocacy.

And that's what I see being one of the most powerful things that digital stories can do, that it can make people aware and it can ask people to act.

And that really goes along with this grander idea I have of that this can lead to creating a platform, a valuable space for digital storytelling here in Birmingham where we can create something like a community storytelling lab that can bring anyone in the community into a place where they can have the equipment they need, the skill-building they need, the mentorship they need to just feel affirmed and encouraged to tell stories.

But one thing I hope is that people could tell their stories and find a way to share them that changes hearts and minds.

- I know you're beginning to also blend the work here you do privately as a writer and the digital storytelling that you're beginning with your practice as a doctor.

So tell us a little bit more about that.

- Yeah, so I have had the honor of being able to create an inaugural course at UAB, which is where I work with the medical students there.

So I started an elective through my home department, which is the Department of Family and Community Medicine at UAB where I invited medical students to start exploring what story work could be in medicine, getting outside of the typical interviewing and information gathering that's really quite rote and protocolized and really about seeking answers and more about seeking context and creating more of an affirming space for their patients.

So the course is actually called Holding Space: Power of Storytelling in Medicine.

We have a lovely nice sized group right now of four medical students and they are paired with community storytellers.

And one point of the course is that each year that it happens is that we'll be inviting people from traditionally marginalized populations to come have a platform to tell their stories because one unfortunate thing about storytelling is everyone's not invited to be a part of it in our society.

And the first half of the course has been for community building, rapport building, voice finding for everybody.

And now this second half of the course, the students are paired with a storyteller to work on a digital story collaboration.

The goal being for the storyteller to be able to tell a story that needs to be told about their health journey, their lived experience and the students being in a role of advocate and support figure and affirming force and less about trying to be in the paternalistic role of medicine and trying to guide things one way or the other.

- Thank you so much, this was fun.

- Nice to be with you.

- Up next, we have multimedia artist Lily Siegel whose colorful work also pushes conventional storytelling.

(light music) - I don't know if there's really a specific way that I am a filmmaker because I feel like I came in from visual art.

So I feel like that has a lot of influence on how I approach filmmaking.

(light music) I never really was a person who watched a bunch of films or was really interested in film, so I feel like I'm always learning about it.

Yeah, I feel like I say, oh yeah, I'm a filmmaker, but honestly, I'm like last year just watched The Godfather and whatever.

(Lily laughs) (light music) I actually started out as a visual artist in high school.

So I went to the Alabama School of Fine Arts and then I graduated and then actually on a whim it seemed at the time, I chose to study film at art school.

And then I quite enjoyed it and I actually was good at it, too.

(Lily laughs) (light music) Yeah, I think all the stuff, it is quite a broad range and you're like, well, what the heck does she actually make and what exactly links all of this stuff together?

But I think it all comes from a place of honesty and relatability.

That's something I always strive to put into my work, which I think I really learned to ask about honesty in work and whether you're being honest to yourself and artists.

And I think other people can definitely tell if you are or if you're not.

(light music) (light music) I have lots of people who I look up to, but no, I never really had a role model.

I hope to be a role model.

I'm sure there's another person out there who could relate to me in some way.

I hope there is.

I think I've been using art and film as a therapy for myself, work things out through film and art.

I think that's really been happening my whole life, whether I've wanted it or not.

This medium just so happens to be the medium that I'm expressing myself in right now.

I feel like I'm self-realizing myself.

It's taking a long ass time to do that, picking apart each I can see as I go.

Like, well, what does it mean to be an American?

In my school now, which is largely British people and people from the EU, what is it like to be that one American voice there and not just American but Korean American from Alabama, a Jewish voice as well.

God, what did I miss?

(Lily laughs) Adoptee, disabled, whatever, what does that mean?

So each of them I have to pick apart and I'm still working through it.

It's a lot to handle.

And I feel like that's how I relate to people perhaps is unique is the universal.

(light music) So I moved back to Birmingham after I graduated.

I swore never to come back here and then I spent two years here and actually I liked it.

But yeah, every time I come back to Birmingham, it's full of nostalgia and happiness and I have good friends here.

I think it's taught me a lot, even though Birmingham is full of all of its complicated history and present and I think future, I don't think there's really anything quite else like being from Birmingham.

(light music) - Hello, I'm here with Brandy Shaw's friend and collaborator, Celeste Pfau.

Welcome, Celeste.

- Good morning, I'm happy to be here.

- Do you work with collaborators often?

What is that relationship like?

- I do, I make a very clear effort to try to collaborate with as many people as possible every year.

I think it's a really interesting way to grow and push my own work.

I really appreciate the feedback loop or the friction that occurs when you're collaborating.

I feel like a visual artists are expected to just work alone.

And in a lot of the performing arts fields, there's a culture of collaborating.

It's a given that in a theater production, there's gonna be a lot of people behind the scenes working together, as well as in certain musical performances.

And in this particular collaboration, Brandy wrote the poem and she had specific imagery she wanted to explore.

The whole process felt very collaborative.

It wasn't like she handed me the poem and then we met a few months later.

So we met multiple times to figure out what kind of imagery this needed.

She and I also knew that the poem didn't need to be oversaturated with imagery, giving it space for you to process the words.

So I wanted to be really careful about what images I did bring up.

In this poem is in a way full of emotions that are a little hard to process, but in a good way.

The poem is addressing a lot of things that have happened this past year.

And I really wanted to make a piece that was paying respect to some of the loss.

I'm really interested in the tactile world and physically making things.

So I asked her if she'd be okay if I could make a small physical instillation with some of the parts that I used in helping make the imagery for the movie.

So that's how this instillation came about.

I would not have made this instillation in this way if it had not been for Brandy and this poem.

It's an actual live processing synthesizing of feelings and emotions and things going on.

And Brandy is really good with words.

I am not as good with articulating a feeling.

So that's why I have turned towards making things out of materials and visually trying to evoke a feeling.

And every single material you use has a feeling or an essence.

So when I make an instillation piece, I'm really thinking about, okay, what if I bring in this piece of wood and it's burnt or what if I bring in an actual bird's nest that I found?

So essentially, all the materials on this wall behind me have a hidden meaning.

- Do you have any advice for people who are creating together, some advice for collaboration, things that you do that you feel like really feed the process?

- Collaborating has been such a pleasure with so many different people and every single time that I collaborate with someone, it's different.

It's almost like when you have different friends in your life and each friend brings something out of you and you have that specific chemistry with each other.

So I would say when you are collaborating with someone, really think about what is it that they have that is not your strength, and really honor that and embrace it.

And what is it that you have that you can offer?

Or you can also make the metaphor of a potluck in a way, like you're going to this potluck of a collaboration and you're being like, this is what I can offer at this moment in my life.

And depending on how many people are collaborating, if you do this in an honorable, open and transparent way where nobody feels taken advantage of, you can make something that no one could have made by themselves.

That's where I keep coming back to collaborating with people and different people and different types of artists is because it's always a surprise ends us happening in the end.

- Thank you, thank you for sharing all these details about the instillation, about your collaboration with Brandy.

Now, we'll go to a segment that gives us more details on Celeste Pfau's practice.

(light music) (light music) - One thing that I love about being an artist is that I can forage things that are not being used or being thrown away and I can create out of them.

(light music) My name is Celeste Amparo Pfau, I am a mixed media artist with an emphasis on the natural world and community.

I've been working with natural materials since I was in pre-school.

I collect these natural materials and then create these unique compositions with them.

It's very therapeutic and humbling.

I am looking and touching and smelling each seed, each leaf, each branch and paying respect to it.

(light music) Some pieces that I have vary in materials and techniques.

The pieces that I have out here, they are a combination of printmaking and drawing and painting, as well as sewing.

And they are honoring the human connection to the natural world.

(light music) Every type of medium has an essence to it.

People have told me to, "Pull back, just focus on one thing.

"Focus on one medium."

And I do focus, it's just that I tend to work a lot better and get more excited if I have at least five to 10 projects going on at once.

Some of it is printmaking, some of it is a sculpture, some of it's just gardening.

So all of the different experiences and ways and modes of making influence each other.

And they start to have a conversation with each other and with you.

(light music) I might have an idea of what the final piece is gonna be, but a lot of the time, it turns out to be something completely different.

And I've come to peace with that.

It's part of the process and I enjoy it.

Why else would you make the work if you already knew what it was gonna be?

(light music) By getting the chance to do something again and again, you start to see a pattern.

And the pattern is put in the time, work, be honest, you have to be honest, you have to be interested and curious and usually that's a recipe for something good.

You don't know what it's gonna be, but if you have the right kind of intention, it will lead you where you need to go.

Creativity is fueled by adapting and reacting to what's going on.

(light music) I think face masks are a really interesting way to show work because where you nourish yourself is your mouth, where you breathe and exhale is your nose and mouth.

It's a very special part of your face.

And how cool is it to create something that somebody can go share with other people that can feel close to?

And I think that's one of the biggest parts about creating work on fabric and on clothes.

People can really play with it.

There's a power in creating costumes, unique costumes as well as regular clothes that make art relatable.

(light music) Connection is the most broad theme I'm interested in exploring with creativity.

Connection between imagery, one element to another, how they connect when you're seeing it visually, but also connection between me and the person that's seeing the work, and two, I love creating in a community.

So even though I make a lot of work by myself, I do a lot of work in relationship to other artists in the community.

So I'm hoping that by interacting with people, whether it's in person or digitally, it's feeding the work in a positive way.

(light music) The thing that I love about Alabama and especially Birmingham is that we are an extremely diverse community.

Creativity comes in a lot of forms.

And those forms can sometimes interact with each other.

A lot of scientists come here to study the organisms around the rivers and the forests.

And it's an extremely biodiverse state.

It just shows me that biodiversity is the way.

And it can teach us as humans how to embrace diversity in our world, racially, socioeconomically, thoughtwise, religiously.

At the end of the day, even though maybe not everybody gets along, can all use their skills in different ways to create something very strong.

It's actually healthier for everyone.

The natural world, it has taught me the value of having a role in the greater ecosystem.

Meeting all these people, I'm learning about all these things about Alabama's biodiversity and history and natural world means that I have work to do the rest of my life.

(light music) - Hello, we're back at VINEGAR in Birmingham.

And we're here with their co-directors.

- Ann Trondson.

- And I'm Melissa Yes.

- So look, what is VINEGAR, who is VINEGAR for?

- The premise behind VINEGAR is that we're both really interested in art that pushes the boundaries of its medium.

And so we're also both really interested in social activism and things that are gonna push culture to a new place, a new awakening.

- We select work for this space, et cetera, is really interested in work that does offer something to the community.

Experiencing art is often a very positive experience, but what else can it be?

- You've also really supported artists directly in creating community, not just through the physical space but through virtual space during COVID.

So tell us a little bit more about your residency you had recently, this past summer?

- It was a free program and we brought in guest speakers for a series of four weeks.

We met every week and we listened to two speakers each.

We had curators, community leaders, artists, poets.

And so it was this integration of listening, learning, reflecting, going off into your studio and doing things afterwards if you so chose, but most importantly, digging into the questions that matter and doing it together in community.

And we found that it actually it went beyond our expectations.

We felt like we actually somehow found a community in a virtual space and it was really a rewarding experience.

- The artists that came, came from all over the country, which was really surprising that we had people interested in what VINEGAR was doing from other places and that they were interested in this topic.

It was also a real celebration of Birmingham.

Almost all of our speakers but two were from this area, or from Alabama.

So that also felt really important to build a platform for people to lead.

- Just thinking about timeline here because you said it's been a year, which means that a big part of your time as Vinegar Contemporary in this space has been shaped by COVID.

So what are the things that have changed from that plan you made to what we get to experience now?

- Oh my gosh.

So we had a whole year's worth of programming set up.

We had artists from all over the world coming to do projects here.

And then we had our local artists that we were already working with as well that would be doing other projects, but throughout the community.

So we were working on both of those.

So as soon as COVID hit, we canceled all programming for the rest of the year.

- After the communities were figuring out how we can coexist with this virus, we brainstormed ways to open the gallery back up.

And of course, social distancing and masks are center of that.

And inside became this space where individuals up to three or four people at a time can come see the work, but everyone else who's waiting to come inside hangs out by the fire pits, makes s'mores, social distances, bundles up.

And it's been actually fun and it actually benefits the work I think because sometimes when I go... Well, usually when I go to art openings pre-COVID, you go to the opening and you can't see the work 'cause it's more about the party.

And once you're inside with the work, you either have to move around people to see it or you just can't even see or hear the work because there's just a party happening right amongst it.

And this COVID situation has given us the opportunity to have the social engagement out there while people can come into this space and be quiet and still and actually focus on the work and who knows?

I don't know what we'll do after COVID is behind us, but this might influence how we move forward.

- Thank you both so much.

Thank you for your generosity in hosting us in this space and this is a beautiful exhibition, thank you for having us.

Also, thank you to Celeste Pfau and Brandy Shaw for sharing their work and their instillation here in VINEGAR.

We'll see in summer 2021.

Don't forget to follow us on YouTube and on Facebook, bye-bye.

(upbeat music)