male announcer: On "Studio Space," host Rhynell Mouton visits with a collage artist who uses scraps of paper and found objects to create pieces with memory and meaning.

Then David Ferney takes a trip to a local potter's shed to visit a ceramicist who digs his own clay.

"Studio Space" explores Northern California's vibrant art community.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Rhynell Mouton: Hi, I'm Rhynell Mouton.

Teresa Stanley works in collage.

Let's find out more as we explore the artist's journey.

Teresa Stanley: I think it's just wanting to be an artist is one thing, but becoming an artist is really different because it involves this sort of total devotion to the practice and it becomes a way of life.

And once you start really pushing through ideas and making something uniquely yours, then you go, "Oh, I'm an artist."

♪♪♪ Rhynell: Teresa, thank you for having us.

Teresa: Well, thank you.

Rhynell: So can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your background?

Teresa: I come from Southern California originally and I moved to San Francisco and I lived there for a great number of years, and I moved here to Humboldt County in 1991, supposedly to take a one-year teaching position at HSU and, as a colleague of mine told me at the time, he said, "Be careful.

The redwoods have a habit of growing on you."

And here I am.

My one-year gig turned into a three-year and then it became permanent and I've stayed here ever since.

Rhynell: So you're primarily a painter.

How did that come about?

Teresa: I think I started making art, you know, from the second I could talk.

I just remember making stuff.

And my mom, she would just have a lot of found material that she would leave out, like, crayons and paper that I would cut up and not a lot of paint.

A little bit of watercolor.

And I just remember spending hours doing that kind of thing, and I just loved it.

So I sort of became the class artist and, you know, I-- art was always my go-to thing, but I did almost no painting.

I remember doing tempera painting as a child and I remember, in particular, using the color magenta and just thinking, "Wow, this is just amazing."

Physical sensation, using that color.

I really didn't know what to do with art and I think I considered lots of different things because I didn't know anybody who was an "artist" and I certainly didn't know anybody who was a woman artist.

But then I went to college and I took my very first painting class and that was at Santa Barbara City College and I had a wonderful teacher named Bob Frame, and I tell you, it was just like I put that brush on the canvas and I said, "I wanna do this for the rest of my life."

And I had no idea how I was gonna accomplish that, how you made your money, how you made a living.

Was that even possible?

I didn't see any women doing it.

Rhynell: I notice that, you know, you're--you do paintings and you do, like--you have, like, a very amazing, like, interesting style of art that you do.

It's like collages where you, like, take pieces and you paint them and you kind of put them together.

Can you briefly explain, like, what that-- Teresa: Yeah, I think that the idea of collage is--it's kind of interesting to me 'cause I always liked the idea of adding something that kind of disrupted the painting and that became a challenge.

Like, how am I gonna solve this?

Kind of rearrange it and organize it in the best way I can so that I can retrieve things when I want them so, for instance, here, I have a bunch of green pieces of paper and then this is blue, red, purple, and yellow, orange, along with some neutrals, and colorful bits and little teeny scraps that I'm using to make smaller pieces.

Maps are another part of my process.

I'm really obsessed with numbers so I've come across a lot of vintage what do you call it?

Flashcards that I cut up and use.

I find numbers very fascinating and magical.

I'm not a particularly mathematical person.

I find they are symbolic of many things that kind of pertain to my current conceptual interests.

I'm just really fascinated with this idea of structure and order as being a very rational and human activity.

And then these are drawings that my late father did.

These are mimeographs of electronics, schematic drawings, which have been a huge source of inspiration for me over the, oh, I'd say, past 20 years.

He passed away 20 years ago and he was a radio astronomer, and I'm just sort of fascinated by the language contained in some of his drawings that I don't understand but I believe it's just another way of mapping or understanding the world.

Rhynell: You look at the painting as it is, but then you kind of, the more you look at it, you find that deeper message and you find those deeper things.

So when it comes to painting or just being a artist in general, what are some things that you often dislike?

Teresa: The hardest thing about being an artist--the easiest thing is, like, being in the studio.

And so I started this notebook where I just got a bunch of random collage things out of the garbage.

I used tape, I used old catalogs.

This is actually blue tape.

I used all kinds of stuff, and I started doing at least one collage a day.

And I tried to do these without any kind of judgment or preconception.

I just did them, and I didn't try and make them better or worse, I just kept going.

And this sort of opened up this freedom for me and I think for a lot of artists and for a lot of people in general, the pandemic was an opportunity to get back in touch with what is really important to you.

There was a period in my life when I first started working with plants and flowers and bodies of water, where I was going through a lot of loss in my life, and so it became a way of connecting to the cycle of life.

And more recently, flowers have been more a vehicle for my, what I would term, popular term now, is environmental anxiety.

I'm always curious and interested in new ideas and ways of working.

Rhynell: What would you say your favorite thing, your overall favorite thing about painting is?

Teresa: Color.

And it goes back to being a little girl and picking up magenta paint and putting it down and I almost have, like, a physical sensation when I see color and combinations of color.

It just--sometimes it gets out of control, but--people say, "Ooh, too much color," but, you know?

Teresa: The world of the external, the artificial, the manmade, maybe exists more vividly in our imaginations than the actual natural world.

And I made probably 20 of these.

I think intentions for an artist's work are really important in that it organizes your thought and it gives you a diving board into the work.

Rhynell: When you're creating these paintings, are there things you're inspired by or is it coming from somewhere or-- Teresa: Yes, I'm really informed and married to narrative content and that came from my early years as an art student where I was really influenced by a lot of the work being made by, like, certain feminist artists who really wanted to tell their story and that has continued through a lot of artists of color, for instance, really interested in the idea of narration because they want to insert their story into the history of art, which has been so narrowly focused.

So even though I've always worked abstractly, I'm always thinking about things.

And this particular--or ideas.

And this particular series, I call my Greenhouse Series.

And in this body of work I imagined what was probably the last greenhouse on earth where plants were placed to protect them but in the course of being sheltered in this greenhouse, they mutated and evolved and changed into strange forms that are very removed from what they were originally.

The fact of the matter is that plants are extremely resilient.

They are disappearing but they have amazing abilities to adapt.

And I found that completely fascinating.

There's actually a flower in China that scientists have found that has changed its color so it can be better camouflaged from humans who try and hunt it for its medicinal properties.

So--and then of course, there's new information about how trees communicate with fungi under the ground and that ecosystems like forests are actually communicating with one another.

So these are all sorts of things that are informing me.

So within this greenhouse that I'm depicting, I just find these strange, you know, kind of mutant plant forms.

A lot of people say to me, "Oh, your work is very cheerful," and I think it is, but I think the cheerfulness also bears a certain sense of caution and certainly, you know, I suffer from the anxiety that a lot of us are about what the future holds in the light of global climate challenge.

But my working process is I never start with an idea, a concrete image, or a plan.

I prefer to work improvisationally, which is very challenging and sometimes maddening, but I prefer to work that way than to work with a plan 'cause part of my process is just a belief or a interest in finding things that I didn't expect.

So, what I do is I find random scraps of paper, and I start placing it, using blue tape on the canvas and moving things around until I achieve a interesting composition.

What I'm always looking for is something that's unusual and that's surprising to me, but is solid visually.

And I start with this sort of gray matrix of acrylic paint and sometimes I'll add acrylic paint into a painting, like here, these are patches of actual paint on board but all these pieces are pieces I've cut up from my own handmade paper or a few pieces of found images like the blue print and then the maps over here.

I characterize myself and my work up to this point has been largely a little more abstract but I'm really ruled by abstract sensibilities and I prefer that because it allows me to take license with space and form and color and allows me to work in a much more subliminal kind of poetic, intuitive way than a very structured or allegorical or symbolic way.

Like this one here is the angry flower, I always think of it, very angry.

And this one here has developed scaffolding arms that kind of are supporting other strange life forms.

I feel like artists' intentions are very interesting because I think artists have intentions for their work that may not necessarily be read the same way by other people and that's what ensures art's continuity and its vitality, that art changes in terms of its meaning according to who's viewing it, what age they're viewing it, what culture's viewing it.

So I think, as artists, we have to relinquish that sense of control and be prepared that people will engage with your work in many, many different levels and that's quite fine, that's quite okay.

If you wanna have a message, then you need a different, I think, vehicle.

Maybe advertising is--has a very strong message, for instance, so.

♪♪♪ Rhynell: What would you say one of your greatest accomplishments are in art?

Teresa: There's always someone smarter, richer, better looking, you know, more talented, more successful, whatever, than you are in any point.

And then there's always people who are less.

So I think the important thing, I don't really focus so much on these high points 'cause in a way, they're not the day-to-day reality.

They kind of happen and they're really exciting, like getting in a magazine or, you know, having a great show or whatever, making sales.

They happen and they're kind of interruptions and you get excited about them, and they're gone.

So you become sort of Pavlovian, like, "Where's the next one?

I want the next one."

But it has really nothing to do with true success or accomplishment, I think.

I feel so accomplished because here I am at my age and I'm still making art.

That's my greatest accomplishment is that I'm still working.

And then, and not only just working.

I feel like I'm still growing, and I'm still excited about what I'm doing in the studio and I'm still innovating, so.

Rhynell: Thank you, Teresa, for having us here at your amazing home.

Teresa: Thank you, Rhynell.

I enjoyed the conversation.

Rhynell: And thank you for joining us on "Studio Space."

David Ferney: Today we'll visit with David Zdrazil.

He's a potter and ceramic artist who's been working with clay for over 20 years.

I'm David Ferney and this is "Studio Space."

Dave Zdrazil: A big part of the esthetic of ceramics that I like are the small serendipitous things that happen during the process that can actually be a defect or something in the clay or the glaze but can also add to the piece.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ David: Thanks for joining us, Dave, it's great to be here.

Dave: Thanks for having me.

David: Yeah.

Dave: I'm really excited.

David: It says in your bio that you blend historic and contemporary esthetics while combining art and craft.

Can you expand a little bit on that idea?

Dave: So, a lot of my--the stuff that I make is kind of functional or it references function.

I try to use, like, more traditional techniques as far as mixing my own clay, making my own glazes.

A lot of the inspirations I have and the influences come from, sort of, traditional pottery esthetics that are found throughout different regions.

When you look at the history of clay, it's always--the esthetic has usually always corresponded with the materials that the artist had right there, because people weren't shipping clay around the world.

It's really interesting to look at just all these different places around the world that have a pottery tradition or art traditions that correspond directly to that.

And that's what I try to do with my work.

It's just a fun thing to show how to use the wheel as a tool to make something that's not necessarily round.

A lot of times, if I'm teaching a throwing class, I'll ask my students, like, "How do you think a--" I'll say, "I'm gonna make something square on the wheel," and they'll kind of look at me, like, "What are you talking about?"

And then I'll kind of do something like this.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ Dave: And because this is gonna be the bottom, and-- ♪♪♪ Dave: That off there.

So that's the basic beginning of this piece.

I'd let this sit for a while until it becomes a little more hard.

Then I'll come back and smooth it all out and I'll carve texture into it and then I'll flip it over and I'll carve some feet underneath here so it gives it a little more of a levitating feel.

Dave: So this would be, like, a finished one.

David: Yeah, one of the things that I love about your work that is really interesting is that you source all these local materials and, specifically, your own clay.

Dave: I use a lot of different clay, first of all.

So, some of it is commercial clay that comes from other places.

And some of it, it comes from other places in California.

And the clay that I get here, I--most of it, I just dig up right in our back yard, and so that's the really cool thing about Humboldt County, is there's tons of clay everywhere.

So anybody who's ever done gardening probably knows about that.

I've basically tried to take some of my glazes and tried to go back to the roots and make really simple glazes that I'm taking materials that are really basic and unrefined.

This one, for instance, this pot is--it's a stoneware clay that's a California clay, but then on top of it, for the glaze, I actually sprayed on some of the local clay where it has a lot of iron in it.

And then it wood-fired and so the wood ash lands on the piece and it fluxes to form a glass with the local clay.

So you get a lot of variation in the color and texture.

David: Yeah, it's very cool.

One of the things I noticed with a bunch of your work is that you've incorporated these wooden lids which are really beautiful.

Tell us a little bit about the wooden lid thing, where it came from and how that evolved.

Dave: Well, the--I was inspired by older pots, specifically more some Japanese pots that are--some of them are called mizu-sashis and they're used for tea ceremony.

There's various forms--sorry, I'm turning around here-- that would be kind of more like this.

Fresh water is scooped out of this in order to make the tea.

And I think that part of it is the sound so anyways, the--some of these ancient pots, whether they originally had ceramic lids that were lost or broken and then they had been replaced with wooden lacquered lids.

So lacquerware, like a black lacquerware lid, would be on a ceramic pot.

So that's one of the inspirations I had and I wanted to sort of try to make my own versions of that.

I thought it would be just really interesting and, as far as, you know, using the lids, I'm gonna grab this again.

You know, you can drop this on there and it's not gonna chip.

So I started working with some local woodworkers, trying to figure out just the basic things, like, can you make a lid?

Like, how should the form of the lid be?

What kind of wood should it be?

And these are things that are really pretty challenging because you take a raw piece of wood and it's gonna look a lot different than the finished piece of wood.

So you're thinking about how all this, the figure of the wood and so, the patterns and the colors in it, how they can match the pot, or not match the pot.

Woodworkers that I work with made some really great lids, but one of 'em whose name is Lane Thompson, he convinced me that I should just learn how to do this.

And he invited me to come over to his shop and use his equipment.

I'm really not that good at it but I'm pretty good at making small lids, basic things like that.

David: You've transitioned somewhat into making more stuff that are--is kind of garden related.

Can you tell us a little bit about that direction of your work?

Dave: So that's the sort of behind-the-scenes thing that helps me to pay the bills, really.

That I've been making gardenware, planters, and things for, well, probably 15 years and selling them at different garden shops.

David: Oh, so it's not really new, yeah.

Dave: Yeah, and I've always done a little bit of it, but now during COVID I've been doing it a lot more.

Since moving here in 2007 and discovering gardening and plants myself, and knowing that we live in a climate where you can grow almost anything, so you have all these people, you know, gardeners, farmers, people growing bonsai and orchids and all kinds of different plants.

I'm trying to focus more on kind of specialty pots that I'm making for those more collectible plants.

Basically, these are--I take about six different kinds of clay and mix them together.

Well, these are pots--a few pots I threw yesterday and they've been sitting overnight and they're ready to be trimmed.

So when I throw these pots with the mixed clay, they need to be trimmed and that exposes all the different layers a little bit better, so.

It's with ceramics, there's all these different points that you have to work with the material when it's wet and when it's getting drier and then, even, you know, when it's hard.

So, I leave these stuck to the--this is a bat.

And that allows me to trim it, so I can even turn it upside down.

David: Ooh, scary.

Don't do that.

Making me nervous.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ David: And these are some of your garden pots, some of the California pot things?

Dave: Yeah.

David: Oh wow, the color comes right out, the colors.

Dave: Yeah, it makes a big difference.

This is kind of like using a lathe where you're subtracting material.

♪♪♪ Dave: I like doing the gardenware and talking to the different people at the garden shops, you know, learning about the plants and everything, but I've also found that a lot of these people at the garden shops have a really good eye for curating the pots that they have in their stores.

'Cause they have--they deal with thousands and thousands of pots, you know, more than a lot of galleries.

So it's really interesting to hear what they have to say about pots.

♪♪♪ Dave: So, and then I just smooth out the bottom a little bit.

♪♪♪ Dave: These are kind of my standard line of basic pots.

This would be a small size and then I have four different sizes and then I'll also put extra holes in the side for orchid pots.

♪♪♪ Dave: Ever since I was a little kid, I would play with clay that I would find out in the woods where I grew up.

And it wasn't 'til, like, high school that I took, like, a throwing class and I did ceramics in high school and I really just became obsessed with it.

It's something that I couldn't not think about once I started doing it.

And after looking at all the different opportunities and really being encouraged by my parents to go to college, and thinking, "Well, you know, there's all these different things.

Maybe I'll major in biology or psychology or maybe I'll be an electrician or something."

I came back to art and ceramics and I just went for it.

I decided to just go for it and be an art major and really focus on ceramics, knowing that it would be a long journey to get where I am today.

David: Well, thanks so much for joining us, Dave.

It's been really great to learn more about your work.

Dave: All right, thank you.

Rhynell: For more information about these artists, visit Studiospace.tv.

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