(rhythmic percussion music) - [Announcer] Welcome, everyone, to the Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series.

(rhythmic percussion music) (audience applauds) - Welcome, everyone, to the Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series.

My name is Chrisstina Hamilton, the series director.

Today we are so pleased to have with us one of the two Haas Brothers.

Simon Hass is here, present, here with us present to present the Haas Brothers.

I want to thank our partners for their support of today's program, Design Core Detroit, Detroit Public Television, and Michigan Radio 91.7 FM.

Just a couple announcements before we get going here today.

This Friday and Saturday, there is a terrific symposium going on, "The Ways of Water, Art and Activism and Ecologies Symposium."

This brings together artists, designers, activists, scholars, scientists, policy analysts, and urban planners and thinkers to discuss access to clean water and environmental justice.

This is a partnership between the University of Michigan Museum of Art or UMMA, and the Stamps Gallery.

And this will kick off on tomorrow morning.

Is that right?

Friday, yes.

Oh my gosh, we made it.

Tomorrow morning at the Stamps Gallery, and it will continue in the afternoon at UMMA.

And you can get more info at stamps.umich.edu.

And then please note, everyone, next week is a little bit different 'cause we will not be here on Thursday next week.

We will be here on Wednesday of next week with a very special event with Wynton Marsalis, truly one of our national treasures, yes.

Now, here's the thing.

Wynton makes wonderful music with his trumpet, but let me promise you, he also makes music when he speaks.

So this is not to be missed.

It'll be at 5:30 p.m. here on Wednesday.

We moved the day for Wynton, because he has a lot on his plate, and you know, sometimes you move the mountain to Muhammad.

Please remember to turn off your cell phones.

Note, we will have a Q&A today.

So when Simon's done speaking we'll move right into the Q&A.

You'll note there are, a microphone on a stand right here at the end of this aisle, one also at the end of that aisle.

So if you have a question, come on up to the microphone at the appointed time.

Now, just a few words of introduction of our guest today.

And a thank you.

Simon and I were talking earlier and I realized a gallerist in South Africa, Trevyn, who runs the Southern Guild, a wonderful gallery in Cape Town, she first brought the Haas Brothers work to my attention about seven years ago.

So big thank you to Trevyn today.

Described as boundary defying artist designers, the Haas Brothers, Simon and Nikolai Haas, are playful and at times irreverent, exploring aesthetic themes related to nature, science fiction, sexuality and psychedelia.

Their inventive use of materials ranges from copper, porcelain and fur, to technical resins and polyurethane.

Since founding the Haas Brothers in 2010, they have spurned arbitrary artistic boundaries and hierarchies creating playful and provocative world that merges art, fashion, film, music and design.

In 2013, the Haas Brothers began to collaborate with Monkeybiz, a South African women's collective known for their bead work who have also branded themselves the Haas Sisters.

The Haas Brothers have also established a partnership with a group of women from Lost Hills, California, a small art, a-la.

Whoo, tongue twister, sorry.

A small agricultural town with limited employment opportunities for women to facilitate the opportunity for these women to learn bead work skills, and then employ them for their bead work creations.

Their first solo museum show opened at Miami Beach at The Bass Museum in 2019.

And their work is held in collections such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the LA County Museum of Art, and Rhode Island School of Design Museum.

Please welcome Simon Haas.

(audience applauds and cheers) - Hi, how's it going?

Thanks for coming.

I want to thank Penny Stamps for inviting me and Chrisstina for the introduction.

I am sorry that my brother is not here today.

He's in Europe.

You got stuck with the more boring brother, but I hope I'll make it fun.

So a little bit of background on us.

We are from Austin, Texas.

- [Audience Member] Whoo!

- All right.

(audience laughs) We started our practice in LA.

I intended to be a solo painter, and my brother wanted to be a musician.

And we were pretty out of work and decided to just start making cabinetry and do odd jobs, which I'll show you some of those.

And I think the, our shortfalls in either of our own practices were sort of solved when we came together.

And that's how our studio really became what it is.

So I'll get started with some slides.

I mentioned our early work.

I wanted to show you guys some stuff that I don't generally show at this kind of a talk, because I think it's kind of interesting where we started.

We were really just doing fabrication for like music videos.

These are all for music videos.

They were on shoestring budgets, and just kind of done out of our apartments, and then a small shared studio.

But it got us enough local recognition in LA to become sort of the go-to, very cheap, (everyone chuckles) the cheap people who could make something.

Then we got approached by Johnston Marklee, a really incredible architecture firm who I think they just designed the, I wanna say the Menil but I'm not gonna actually say which one it is.

But they designed the drawing room in Houston at the museum there.

They were having us repair a bed by Geo Ponte.

And we fixed it.

We didn't have a good van, so we packed it into the back of our van, and it was hanging out the back.

And we didn't strap it down and it flew out onto the freeway and completely broke.

And it was a irreplaceable, priceless piece.

They were really mad at us, but they also gave us the chance to make it up to them by creating some furniture pieces.

So we made this desk here and that teardrop little table there.

Completely unrecognizable as our work today.

But some sort of early examples of a little bit of an exploration into material.

These were plywood covered in resin that we grinded in such a way that it felt somewhat natural.

Then amazingly, we got approached to make props for Lady Gaga's perfume campaign.

So we just made the masks on all the tiny guys that are crawling all over her, and then those plastic masks there in the video.

Not very interesting to work on, but a big deal for us because we were able to start saying that we had done that.

That led to us then getting tapped to do the Ace Hotel lobby, downtown LA where I did drawings on the walls.

Then we created the front desk here that's all painting.

Again, not really recognizable as our work.

Finally, we got asked to fabricate a ceiling made out of stainless steel for Peter Marino.

And I think that gave us a lot of credibility because Peter Marino is a massive architect.

This was a super difficult project.

I won't get into it, but we were just asked to make this insane reflective ceiling in Paris.

We built and installed it, and that led us to do a collaboration with Versace.

Which blew my mind at the time and remains kind of probably the most exciting moment in my career.

But this is, I think, when we really first started to get noticed.

So this was in, I wanna say 2012.

We did a full presentation in the Versace, Palazzo Versace in Milan.

And then that gave us enough money and clout to sort of start our studio.

The first works we did were sort of experimental light fixtures.

These stools, which are made from a really intense process of metal work.

We would take brass like hexagonal brass, what is that?

Pipe, not a pipe, a hexagonal brass thing that we would chop into little tiles.

I don't know what that's called, oh a rod.

It's a rod.

So a hexagonal rod.

And then we would chop them into little tiles and put them in a vice grip, hammer each one of them.

Sort of check it against a form that we had created.

And piece by piece, I'm not sure if you can see them, but piece by piece sort of make a honeycomb pattern that was wrapping around these objects.

The reason I wanted to do this was that hexagonal grids don't like to bend, and that was a challenge for me.

I have a brain that won't turn off when there's an issue that I could sort of tackle or solve.

And this is an example of that.

Then we made these sort of bondage faces where we would take pantyhose pour wax into them, and then like tie them up really quick.

Cool thing but just an active, a very active piece and sort of a precursor to the more sexual work we would wind up doing.

And then these.

We call these beasts.

I don't remember this one's name but I want to say it's Anus Morrissette.

(everyone laughs) Because it has a little butt hole over there, and big lips.

These aren't design pieces.

This is when we first started to sort of move out of design.

We were making furniture that was covered in fur that was very animalistic.

I should note, we don't use fur anymore.

I kind of regret it honestly, but it was a big piece of our, of our early practice.

But we wanted to create more humorous pieces.

We were making really funny furniture.

And then eventually the furniture sort of stood up on two legs and turned into these.

Another early piece, this is in London at Jessica McCormick.

Oh, and then this.

So this is probably my favorite process.

This is ceramic.

It's a process of brush work.

I brushed slip, which is very wet clay if you haven't used it before, onto the surface of a ceramic vessel until it started to grow sort of like a cave.

A lot of people think these are applied, it's actually just brush work, and it takes hundreds of hours.

And they frequently break in the kiln.

This is more my style of work where it's endless work and then maybe it gets destroyed, something about that I actually like.

This also a whole lot of work for a joke.

This piece is called Raisin D'etra, or Raisin Arizona, I can't remember which one.

So this was based on a raisin.

This is leather that is hand stitched.

We took swimmer fabric, stretched it over stretcher bars, and hand stitched a pattern that would when released turn into kind of like a prune, or raisin skin and then wrapped it on something funny like this.

So that curtain took 400 something hours to sew, and then it's just a sort of a jokey vagina curtain.

(audience laughs) Flanked by some large phallic lamps.

This was our sort of breakout Design Miami presentation.

So we had been showing a little bit at Design Miami.

There was a lot of resistance to anything that wasn't functional, and we didn't like that at all.

I remember at school the form versus function conversation always kind of annoyed me.

I like to focus on one or the other whenever I want to.

I don't think there's one that's better than the other.

So we decided to make a room full of like sex toys and these frames.

So I did paintings of two people.

You're not allowed to show paintings at Design Miami.

That might have changed at this point, but it was like illegal at the time.

So we sold the frames and just popped paintings into them.

And then we made these, that's like technically a light fixture.

That thing up here.

(chuckles) It's not really, it just has a screen inside of it, and it has a faint glow.

But you just go up to it and look inside, and there's a video screen.

Quickly just wanted to pop through some of the people who gave us courage to make the weird stuff that we make.

I won't go into it too much, but Nikki De Saint Phalle's, I think, probably our biggest inspiration.

I personally love Erwin Worm for his sort of visual jokes.

Mike Kelley who is from here right, is so bizarre and amazing, and funny and dark at the same time, which I really appreciate.

And then Keith Haring obviously, and Linda Benglis whose material applications have really inspired me.

And then a lot of nature stuff.

Mushrooms, this is formally, and in terms of psychedelics.

Niki and I were very much into a psychedelic experience, and that led to a whole lot of our work.

I overindulged now I'm sober.

(audience laughs) You don't need them to be creative.

That's the lesson I learned.

And I learned it a really difficult way.

But try it out if you feel like it, but I don't recommend it.

So these are some of the things that I'm obsessed with.

Just patterns that show up on shelves.

Patterns in a form like this flower.

And then just other patterns.

I'm like a pattern person.

And then some of the more like alien looking plants around the world, and then these.

So we do like to reference design history and art history, but some of the weirder stuff.

So up there is Catherine the Great's furniture.

She collected really bizarre furniture.

When we were putting sex into our work, we were like, oh, maybe there's no precedent for this.

It turns out that she went much further than we ever did.

And then I love these Venetian chandeliers.

I think that it's sort of like the opulence, and the colors totally unafraid to make something that's not just functional.

And then cartoons.

Our names, I mentioned Anus Morisette really come from the Garbage Pail Kids.

I'm sure most of you are too young to know what those are, but they were trading cards and stickers all with sort of pun names and really disgusting.

And then cartoons like "Ren & Stimpy."

This is a bench with its butt in the air that's very "Ren & Stimpy," and then "Futurama."

This whole series, we use this shape a whole lot, and we call it the Zoidberg Series, named after Dr. Zoidberg, because his mouth, well, they look just like his mouth.

(chuckles) And then this is a poor unfortunate soul lamp from "Little Mermaid."

And then Austin, Texas where we're from had a culture of putting giant weird things on top of buildings.

That's the first Whole Foods.

I grew up going there, it has like a big chicken on top.

There was something called Yours Birthday, with like a hippie, I mean, over the top hippie experience.

And then this Daniel Johnson mural, which has weirdly found its way into our work a whole lot.

And then the jackalope.

Sorry, I'm gonna get water really quick.

The jackalope, is a chimera, sorry guys.

(bottle crinkles) That we grew up seeing a lot of.

So in Austin there's stuffed armadillos everywhere, and there's a lot of stuffed jackalopes.

It's supposed to be a real creature.

It's obviously just horns stuck onto a rabbit.

(audience laughs) Actually kind of gross, but it informed a lot of our work.

So I showed you a beast earlier.

I wanted to tell you about why we did beasts.

That's a horrific picture up there.

But it's sort of to describe the Uncanny valley, which is, that up there is a robot that's a plug socket.

The plug socket is cuter than the robot.

I would rather look at that.

We grew up around tons of taxidermy, and we were trying to solve this cuteness issue with taxidermy.

That's why we did fur in the first place.

And in the middle is sort of a good example of when you add cuteness to a robot it becomes a lot more relatable.

So this was our response to that.

Somewhat cute, still a little creepy, 'cause it's taxidermy, but moving in a cute direction.

This is to show you the difference between me and Niki.

So my brother does these cartoons and then my personal work is super intense drawings, ultimately a lot darker, and a lot more heady.

My work by itself is I think somewhat unrelatable, very scientific, very much like me getting stuck on an idea.

And then my brother is a really energetic, super fun person who does things really quickly.

And the two of us being forced to sort of merge those is why our work is what it is.

That, oh sorry.

So Chrisstina mentioned a bead project in South Africa, and in Lost Hills, California.

I learned how to bead in South Africa when we were working with a collective of women there.

And I got really obsessed with it.

I was so obsessed that I spent four years trying to develop like a computer made of beads.

It's not a computer but it's in the sense that an abacus is a computer it is 'cause it's just beads.

But basically, I developed an operating system, or a language, a written language, that describes forms.

And all you need to operate it is to pull on a string.

You say what color is the string coming out of?

If it's black string on a white and a black, if it's white string on a black, that'll make a shape.

I tried to find all the shapes like that.

So this is a wall that I worked on.

It creates like flowers and shells, like really cool natural shapes.

That's me working on my wall.

People thought I was crazy, and it looks pretty crazy.

These are little petals for flowers.

And this is an assembled century plant made all out of little beaded parts.

So the way this works is that I'll design something.

I bring it to Lost Hills and I teach bead work to a very small group of women who are interested in learning the craft and having employment.

What's really awesome for me is that I think we had 20 different women working on this project, but they're able to do it at their own pace, and they each created a little piece of that that then gets assembled into a much larger bundle basically.

And for me there's a lot of emotional importance to that.

I've developed relationships with everyone who I work with there.

And just knowing that each of them contributed to this piece is kind of beautiful.

So this is it finished.

Those beads, oh the leaves also, same system.

It's adapted, it's a little bit less intricate than the bead work, but equally difficult.

So I'm interested in like basket weaving, and beads and crochet, that kind of stuff.

Niki is more like brute sculpting, like stonework.

We grew up carving stone.

I didn't like it.

He loved it, so I do this kind of stuff.

I began to try to apply those same ideas of logic to building ceramics.

So I mentioned the earlier process of ceramics.

I would then try to write little rules for how a line moves, and then create that in slip trails, which you can see over here.

It's not the best work we ever did, but I'm still curious about where that could go.

Here's an example of one of my drawings, a bead diagram.

And then this is one of Niki's drawings.

So this is, believe it or not, a show plan.

This is what we deliver to a gallery, or a museum when we're proposing a show.

And he's really like the vibe and I'm something else.

I'm there to like make sure it happens.

But he's like bringing all of the energy honestly.

This is another show plan.

I'm not even sure what some of them are, but very cartoony, and very, I think, visually humorous.

But the feeling there is really what we're both going for.

I think it's a positive happy feeling that I really value in what he does, that I don't really have the...

I don't so much have that inside of me.

So it's not to say I don't get happy just in work.

I'm like more intense.

So there's a really big benefit to working together, and I think collaborating in general, where I get to sort of draw from this, and he can draw from what I do.

This is Neil Tongue, some drawing.

This is a mural we did for a marijuana company.

(everyone chuckles) This was our show plan for The Bass Museum.

It changed a lot, but this is how it started out.

And then this is a rug we're currently making.

I wanted to show you this, because it is our work, we talk about it.

But really Niki created this.

And that does happen once in a while.

We conceive of something together, but occasionally one of us, or the other will actually execute.

And we don't generally make a distinction.

But when we work together we end up having things like this.

So this is a big set of little beasts.

Each one is supposed to have a personality, we call them personality portraits.

We really wanted to get a personality across without putting facial features.

I feel like even in painting when you leave a little bit to the imagination it can be a lot more effective, because the viewer is able to sort of project onto it.

So these are really just like little projection objects.

It's more about the viewer in this case than us.

We just sort of try to create like something funny.

And then this is a rug set we did.

That rug is based on the fruit stripe gum zebra.

I dunno if you guys remember that.

But we also, drawing on Texas, there was a theme of roadkill there.

So we wanted to make roadkill rugs of extinct animals, and then also, that zebra.

And then this is an example of, this is a tree we're gonna make for an upcoming museum show.

But Niki drew that and then I bring it into 3D.

I do a lot of work in Blender.

if you haven't used it, it's an incredible free 3D modeling program.

So I do that a lot.

I try to take what he's dreaming up and then I pop it into Blender to see if it'll work.

This, I'm showing again, just because I wanted you to see the process there.

That stretcher bar, the pattern I derived from, I dunno if you can see the little white chalk marks on the back of that.

I derived it by gluing a piece of leather onto a balloon an inflated balloon, and then I popped it, spray painted it and then took it off the balloon.

And I just tried to see where... whatever parts weren't painted I created a little line pattern.

We put that on there and then when you release, after you stitch it by hand, actually two people have to be doing this, one person on either side passing a needle back and forth.

We don't really do this anymore 'cause it's just too intense for what you get.

But when you release, you finally cut that off, it shrinks and then you get that raisin pattern.

So all that work for a raisin.

I don't know why.

These are some early lamps that we did.

Those are, the tops are plastic.

I really tried to figure out how to do this in glass.

I'm not good at glass, I still want to, but they're supposed to be like sort of flowing hair.

I don't know, again, sort of a little mermaid-y.

And then this is a set of the ceramics that we do.

This is a great example of where one of my surface processes combines with Niki's like wacky forms.

There's like a, I don't know if those are lips, or if it's a vagina.

That guy has like a pot belly.

We love to combine something quick, gestural and silly with like thousands of hours of work.

Just because I feel like they offset each other, and all of that time actually gets really encapsulated in the object.

A couple more of that.

And then this beast dining table.

This was, from our first solo show in New York.

It's a big dining table with a hole in the middle.

There's no reason for the hole except that we just wanted to put the tiles around the inside of it.

We also tiled the bottom of it.

So if you go underneath it you can see that.

A lot of work, again, you can't really see.

But we wanted to make a dining table with chairs where if people were not at it, it still felt like a party was happening.

So that's why we did those guys.

And then this is a just an install shot, not final photography, of our bead work.

In the back there's creatures, those are made in South Africa, and then in the front it's the Lost Hill's set.

So that's a good example actually of me and Niki.

So I'm like the nature guy, and he's the like the crazy animal person.

And then that's a big chair.

You can't really sit in it, but it's a chair throwing his arms up, kind of like the emoji that's doing this.

And the materials.

Sorry, I need more water.

We really go to great lengths to get the best materials, or the most storied materials.

My obsession with bead work was so intense that I didn't stop talking about it.

I went to the Venice Biennale, and I was just talking about beads to everybody.

Most people weren't interested.

One person was because she wanted to offload a lot of beads.

So I met someone who was in one of the original like five bead making families in Murano.

And she'd inherited a factory from her dad.

She hated her dad didn't want anything to do with the beads, and so she gave them to me.

We went to Venice and packed them up.

This is the original factory fully overgrown, it's full of scorpions.

It was raining intensely, super dramatic and romantic.

And the colors are so stunning.

I wish you could see them.

These are the beads we use for all of our work.

The colors were made at a time when there were no regulations.

So they are full of toxic chemicals.

Luckily, they're all in bead form, they're fine.

Making it as dangerous.

But there's like cyanide and lead, and all sorts of weird stuff in there.

But apparently cyanide makes a beautiful red.

This is us packing up, or sorry these, my team here with us were packing up all of these boxes.

We asked if we could just take them and send them to LA, and they said no they need to be crated.

Then I was like, "Well, they're already in crates," and they were like, "No they need to be crated," And it had to be a cash transaction.

So there was like, I think I dealt with the mafia, I'm not sure.

(everyone laughs) So what we're working on now.

We're sort of moving into a more environmental phase, meaning building environments that are fully engrossing.

And we're also getting into the NFT space, a little bit, begrudgingly on my part at the beginning.

But I do a lot of digital anyway so it made some sense.

Niki's really interested in NFTs.

We don't shy away from new media, so definitely something I'm worth, or that's worth like checking out.

I'm still not sure whether I like it or not, but we've definitely had fun doing it.

This is our first NFT.

It's a beast.

It's self-explanatory.

(everyone laughs) This was a dancing beast.

We had an idea to get different people to dance, and sort of map this onto the dancing, and I think that would still actually be really cool.

But we've moved on from this guy.

We just recently released a really big NFT project.

These are... Oh, I didn't mention we've stopped making those beasts.

I said we've stopped making fur, but we don't make physical beasts anymore.

Sometimes furniture, never the little toy size guys.

So we've sort of taken them and put them into the digital space only.

This was sort of cool because I was able to build a file that would spit out, I think it was like 1.3 trillion different beasts.

And really like all we do when we're making them is move horns around, and the mouth, and like the feet until it has a personality.

And this was exciting for me, because I got to see 4,000 of them that I had never, or couldn't have come up with on my own basically.

So we had a lot of people take personality tests, and that test generated one of these beasts.

This is another NFT.

We made this for amfAR.

It's sort of a long form one.

And the little object, this guy, this like lemur thing is going to be a lamp.

So this is its like origin story.

This was me sort of figuring out Blender, getting really obsessed with 3D programs.

And then we really wanna make spas.

This is an idea for a spa with a cold, the cold water and then heat all around.

I think it would be nice to be in.

I don't know if it's actually gonna happen or not.

This is a really weird sort of creepy hot room with a devil.

I don't really know what that is, but we wanna make it.

And then these giant street lamps.

So we're making a lot of these.

This is what we've been working on the most recently.

And it's sort of about playing with scale in a way that we haven't done before.

This guy in the middle is very small compared to those.

And I really want to feel like I'm in this strange forest of like weird Zoidberg things.

Oh, and then this.

So keeping with the Zoidberg theme, I wanted to see how we could move that into the digital space.

Not NFTs but just bringing a computer into it.

I spend most of my time on a computer these days, and I'm really interested in programming.

I'm also really interested in the physics that you can simulate.

I built a Zoidberg that has, how do I describe it?

It's kind of like a mechanical... You know those wooden snakes that you can like move like this?

So it's built like that and then it has a skin on it that's a bunch of springs.

They're all digital but it's built sort of like mechanically in the computer, and it moves really strangely.

So the idea here was can we build a template for a Zoidberg, and then run it through different physical simulations?

So the one you just saw is an invisible ball hitting it really hard.

I can play that one more time.

So you can see it's moving around a little bit, and then there will be that smack.

And we also are having them interact with each other.

And the motion is a little creepy, but when you freeze frame it, it actually makes kind of beautiful forms.

Like this one feels romantic to me, even though that was a like a slightly scary motion.

We also really wanted them to have like gross floppy skin.

That part was intense to build in the computer.

Anyone who works in 3D might know that there's a difference between soft body simulations and hard body.

Hard body is like what it sounds like.

It's hard things running into each other.

If you drop a marble on the stage you could simulate that.

I build all of this using hard body simulations, 'cause I have more control over it, even though it is technically a soft's body.

So that was a pretty interesting thing to work on.

And then this is a rendering of what it will look like.

We're essentially gonna make several sculptures that are an animation but broken into frames.

And this is one of those frames.

This is gonna be an eight-foot tall white patina bronze with a glass, glowing glass bulb in it.

And really this is about our current interest in emergence, and how can we bring our obsession with computers into our artwork in a way that doesn't feel as computer-y?

I'm not sure you would notice that this was made by a computer, unless I showed you the origin video.

But that's basically it I think.

Yeah.

So I wanna move into questions and answers.

(audience applauds) Thank you.

So if anyone has questions, I think Chrisstina's gonna walk around and help with that.

Oh yeah, sorry.

- [Audience Member] I don't know.

Oh, it is on, okay.

So would you say in your work as you continue, it seemed that there was a trend of.

(reverb squealing) - Whoops.

Oh, that's me.

- Sorry, it seemed there was a trend of you moving away from personal experience of objects to more public experience of objects, especially with the scale going up.

Is that true?

- [Simon] Sorry, could you say that one more time?

(crowds chattering) - Do you think in general your trend is moving towards more public experience of objects versus the personal gallery experience?

- Okay, so the question was are we trying to move into a more public experience rather than a gallery experience?

The answer is yes.

Oh, sorry.

(crowd chattering) - Hi folks.

Seven Lance, thanks.

For people that are not staying for the Q&A could you please leave quietly?

Simon couldn't even hear a person asking him a question through a microphone.

Thank you.

Go ahead.

- Thanks.

So the question was are we moving into more of public space instead of private galleries?

Yes.

Part of our whole thing, like as young artists was that we don't like how inaccessible art can be, so public is definitely something that we want to do more of.

That was a little bit of our impetus to getting into the NFT space also.

I do like that stuff is more accessible that way.

And our work is usually super expensive, and just sits in a house or a gallery.

So yeah, definitely.

Thanks.

Hi.

- This isn't like per se a question, but I just wanted to ask if you've ever seen the video "Live Forever As You Are Now," by Alan Resnick?

It reminded me a lot of like your more recent work within the digital space.

- [Simon] Oh cool, I haven't seen that.

- And also, oh sorry.

- [Simon] Live forever now?

- "Live Forever As You Are Now," with Alan Resnick.

It's sort of like a horror short, but it's also really funny.

- [Simon] Cool.

- I just think you'd be interested in it.

- Yeah, that sounds great.

I'll watch it.

- [Audience Member] Can you hear me?

- Yes.

- What do your parents think about your work?

- My parents are super weird.

They love our work.

They're both like even probably wackier than we are, honestly.

We grew up, my mom's an opera singer, and my dad is a stone carver.

So our house was only about creativity.

So they are a big support.

I'm lucky with that.

Yeah.

- Hey, so I know your brother's not here today, but I'm curious about collaboration.

How does it work when you two are working together?

Is it like one person is working on one thing, or is it really integrated with the both of you?

- That's a good question.

It does shift, but I would say that it's sort of individual work side-by-side, and we're just looking at each other's work.

And then we'll sort of spit ideas at each other.

And we're both, neither of us is afraid of upsetting the other person.

I think that's a really important part of collaborating.

And we both try to be cool about criticism, because we know that it actually will yield better work.

In college I hated collaborating.

I didn't like doing group projects.

Working with Niki has sort of forced me out of that and now I see the benefit.

But yeah, I would say we're working in tandem.

- In tandem.

- Yeah.

- One more thing.

So like when you do criticize each other, and maybe it gets a little heated, how do you guys like come together and kind of resolve that?

- Hmm.

I mean we've had fights over work.

I don't know if there's one way that it gets resolved.

We've definitely had like fights, but it's not worth it.

And we do have to work together every day, so we just have to resolve it.

I don't think I have good advice for that.

(chuckles) Thanks.

- I saw your work at The Bass like couple years ago.

It was fantastic.

Super inspirational like exhibit.

I was not expecting to see anything like that in a gallery, and I saw it and was like, whoa.

But I wanted to ask you work with so many different materials and so many different things.

In your studio how do you keep all of those, you know, practices intertwined together?

- Yeah, that's actually not easy to do, but I'm obsessed with R&D.

I try to keep, we do have a small team, and each person is sort of good at a different thing.

And I try to keep everyone really involved in my R&D processes and I think I explain it as I'm doing it all the time.

So that it's not foreign by the time it actually gets to let's make it.

It's definitely like if we were a factory it would not work, because it's not the most efficient thing at all.

But it's nice because anytime I find a new material or anything interests me we kind of have them all around.

I have sort of set it up so that I have the freedom to spend a few weeks or months just tinkering on something.

And I think it's really essential to have that for... You know, being so focused on the end product is actually detrimental in my opinion.

It is all about that discovery phase.

- Hi Simon, thanks for coming to talk today.

You mentioned in your own personal work with like the beading and the ceramics, how you sort of take like a scientific and like scientific approach and create those algorithms.

Could you talk about like how you generate that, and I guess like what inspires that scientific approach?

- Yeah, so there's a book called "Surfaces and Essences" that really blew my mind, and then another one called "Meta Magical Themas."

The author's name is escaping me because I'm on stage, but they're really incredible.

And it's all just about logic and linguistics, and weirdly, the first thing I wanted to do was be a linguist.

And so that doesn't really align with any of this stuff, but it is all about pattern finding, and sort of discovery.

And I think I found a way to move that into our work.

As far as the bead language that I made.

I learned JavaScript, it's not too hard.

You can make a lot of stuff with it.

and I sort of just took the principles of computing.

I never ran through a computer, it was just about if, then statements.

And anytime I get interested in the material I read all about it and I try to find its limitations, and then I'll like push on them a little bit.

- Thank you.

- Yeah.

- Hi.

- Hi.

- I wanted to inquire you about like growing as an artist, you and Niki.

Like how did you guys come to be successful and what advice would you give to us art students to become successful in art?

- So that's part of, that's a great question.

There's some things I wish, that I really wished I had learned at school.

The main part of that actually is the business of art, because it's essential.

It's something that I think artists really want to shy away from.

I don't personally like engaging with it, but knowing about it is pretty important.

But in terms of how we became successful, you know, I think we were just hustling and we didn't give up.

And I was living in our studio.

I lived in our wood shop actually like for the first two years that we were operating.

And we were just trying to make enough money to make whatever we wanted to make.

And I think it's being okay with being uncomfortable at least while you're young, just in the pursuit of what you want.

And I don't mean what you want career wise, but what you want to do.

I would be doing this probably either way and we just got pretty lucky.

The good thing is Niki is a really amazing salesperson.

I'm like kind of don't like talking to people, so thank God I had him.

But yeah, that's a complicated question.

- Could you expand on the, can you hear me?

Oh yeah.

Can you expand on the art you were saying that you shy away from?

Like the industry art?

What do you mean?

- I mean, galleries and clients.

It's really hard when you're presenting your work publicly, and your work is a real reflection of your internal state, to not take things personally.

And I think that the desire to have your work out there and be accepted because it's very personal can lead one to make poor business decisions.

I guess I would point to like a Faustian situation.

There's times where my wish to make something led me to make a, you know, get involved with people who would sell my work in a way that really did not work well for me.

And the reason it's tricky, I keep mentioning this, but it is very much in our psychology.

Like what we're making is not just a product.

When stuff goes south or if I like, if I start to feel sort of under the thumb of a business person, it actually wrecks my entire wellbeing.

So that's a pretty rough path to tread.

And then just best practices with galleries, what kinds of contracts you really should have.

There's a lot of people who wanna make money on your art and they don't really care about whether you're doing okay.

So that's just something to keep out for, keep an eye out for.

- Thank you.

- Yeah.

- Hello, can you hear me?

Okay.

I just wanted to ask, why did you decide to make NFT art?

- So we moved into that.

I was already doing digital and a lot of the work I was doing is just sitting in folders and no one sees it.

And I was excited by the prospect of getting to show that.

So it's sort of like a, it's a free gallery basically to put my work out there.

And I like the structure where artists are in control and get money back.

Secondary sales of physical artworks can happen over and over and you never make money on it.

It's sort of set up to benefit galleries more than artists.

So I liked that about the NFT space.

I think there's a lot of work to be done more socially with NFTs.

I mean as with most art world stuff, I think that's changing a little bit, but it's very male dominated, it's very white, definitely not gay at all.

So there's been like a struggle for me to feel great about participating in it.

But I also would like to push, I'd like to push that a little bit.

So that's a long winded answer for, so I don't know.

I actually don't know why we're doing it.

It's fun though.

(everyone laughs) - I was wondering if you could expand on like the clay things that you did with the slip?

Like I like how does it turn from slip into that?

- Ah, so, if you think about a cave, like just a drip depositing a little bit of material like over thousands of years, Slip is a really fast way to do that.

You can brush...

Okay, so like if you paint a wall and you paint it sort of quickly, you're gonna get an uneven stroke, and you'll have a bunch of little patches.

Those patches arrange themselves according to physics and all kinds of stuff that we have no control over, but they do self pack.

That's something I am obsessed with.

And if you just do it again, the material will self pack again, and then you do it over and over, and something will come out of it.

So I'm actually, there's so many processes that are iterative and just based on how a material will pack itself that I haven't explored.

Basically anything you do over and over is going to produce something, and that's fascinating to me.

- Thank you.

- Yeah.

- Hi.

- Hi.

- What advice would you give for students who are thinking of getting into installation, like maybe even long term?

- [Simon] Heading into what?

Sorry?

- Installation artwork.

- [Simon] Installation art?

- Yeah.

- I dunno if I have good advice for that, because I don't do it very much.

I guess just do it.

(laughs) Sorry, that's like terrible advice.

I mean a general advice is not to take too many people's advice on what you're gonna make.

If you really want to put it in there, if you wanna install something, you should just do it, whether or not somebody else is gonna be happy.

I mean, I was talking about it a little earlier, but I think you have to develop an incredible amount of mental fortitude as an artist if you wanna make it to protect the part of yourself that is creative and wants to do that stuff.

But also try to relate to other people, so yeah.

- And then you also mentioned like knowing how to manage the business world of art.

So as a student, 'cause we're young, we're in college, we're broke, how would you break into the industry?

- I would say that breaking into the industry requires that you have a lot of work, and that you keep making it.

And this is the case with any like company, it's important to reinvest.

As you make money, you need to reinvest in what you want to do.

So if that's buying materials or whatever, you just have to keep doing it.

And this applies to, my fiance is a writer, and I watch him struggle with sometimes Hollywood is like an impossible place with writing.

And I think that's maybe one of the hardest jobs out there, but there's a lot of disappointment, and then really incredible moments.

So you have highs and lows.

I think that in the low periods you need to continue making work, and then make sure you show it to people.

That's the only way to get work.

- [Audience Member] Thank you.

- Hi.

- Hi.

- You showed some sketches of show proposals that Niki did earlier and I'm curious to know a little bit more about like what it was like, sort of like applying for shows at museums or galleries.

Or is it something you get invited to do?

Like how did you first get started at that and what's the process?

- So we have gone to a place where we get invited, and those drawings suffice.

Early on, they didn't suffice.

It was important that I also delivered like a real schematic.

But I think over time people came to expect that sort of stuff from us, and for us not to really follow a normal rule with that.

So yeah, definitely include both if you're gonna propose something.

(laughs) - So in the beginning it was something that you like applied for, or?

- In the beginning we would go on meetings and just go to galleries and like hand them our work.

I mean cold calls like that are rough.

It's the same as if you're applying for a job at a restaurant, like it really sucks, but sometimes they'll land.

So I would just go to galleries and like fabrication jobs with as many material samples as I had.

I think that's important, having physical and sort of idea examples.

And you know, you just have to keep on doing it over and over.

- Thank you.

- Yeah.

- Hi Simon, thank you so much for your presentation and for being here.

Obsessed with you and your presentation and how authentically you show up.

So I was wondering more about how that authenticity shows up in your work and maybe some of the challenges that you might experience in showing up authentically.

- Yeah, it's not always easy.

For sure there's an appetite for a certain type of work, and not an appetite for other work.

I showed a side-by-side of Niki's drawings and my drawings.

I make extremely dark sexual drawings, and that's something I love doing.

And I do it all the time whether or not anyone wants to show it.

There's a lot of roadblocks with that.

So you are gonna run into stuff like that.

Staying authentic.

I don't know.

I think that there was a point where I started to sort of behave how I thought I should like on stage or whatever and I wound up feeling super empty.

So I only learned that by going through it.

I don't think I could have avoided it honestly.

But I guess if you're just, you know, something that I've learned in my program of recovery is to stay teachable.

And I think that's really good advice.

No matter what you're doing or how far you've gotten you have to be open to learning stuff, yeah.

- Hi, I just wanted to thank you for speaking.

And my question was how did you transition from more 2D focused art into that 3D realm?

And like how does that inform your art you make now?

- You know, I'm still obsessed with 2D.

That's a hard question for me to answer.

I mean, really when I do 3D work, it is kind of based on something two dimensional.

So even that ceramic process is, it's ultimately painting and the bead work is written down.

It's not actually a shape until somebody makes it.

So I'm still obsessed with that.

Moving from one to the other, I'm sure some people can do it.

I have a natural predisposal to 2D work, and my brother is naturally more 3D.

He loves to sculpt.

And I think he's weirdly too impatient to do a something like what I'm doing.

So my answer to that is I don't know, except that I have a partner who does that.

- [Audience Member] Thanks.

- Hi, thanks for your time this evening.

I'm curious about, so you mentioned you're into digital more and more, your thoughts on synthetic media, AI generated art, like Midjourney aesthetic diffusion specifically.

Do you consider that art?

And the, your thoughts on the ethics behind that?

- So I think that the art with Midjourney is in the programming.

I think programmers are ultimately very creative.

It's interesting 'cause when it first came out I had a period of where I could not stop just putting prompts into Midjourney, and seeing what would come out.

And it's definitely exciting.

But I never felt like what I was producing in Midjourney could qualify as art.

On the other hand, I do feel something when I see some of the pictures, they tend to be uncanny and scary.

And I think that I don't have a good answer except to say that it definitely makes me feel something.

So that that is moving towards art.

Whether the person putting in the prompts or the programmer is the artist is more the question for me.

Ethically, yeah, I'm seeing that like people are putting their own AI generated artwork in the same forums as as people who make physical work.

I don't really believe that it should be excluded.

I don't like the idea that there would be gatekeepers with that because that can extend to design art, all that stuff.

I think ultimately the audience will feel more from artwork that you've made as opposed to a Midjourney prompt.

And it'll go through a natural selection process.

- Thank you.

- Yeah.

- Hello.

- Hi.

- Thank you for your presentation.

- [Simon] Of course.

- I was wondering if you have a favorite Garbage Pail Kid, and who that might be?

- Oh my god, I don't know my favorite Garbage Pail Kid.

I put Adam Bomb on there.

That's the one I remember from my childhood the most.

I can't tell you honestly unless I was looking through all of them, but that one's of the less disgusting ones and still funny.

So probably that one.

(laughs) - Hi, I'm just like really interested in your work and kind of what you're doing.

I was wondering if like your company like ever has internship opportunities.

- We do, during the pandemic they've stopped, but yes we do.

And actually any of you guys can reach out to us at studio@thehaasbrothers.com.

I can't guarantee any of it, and it really depends on how much space and work and all of that we have.

But yeah, I definitely love internships, and yeah, so we're open to that, yeah.

- Okay, my question is, how did psychedelics like inspire you and would you ever do them again, or are you completely done?

- I can't do them again, because my life kind of depends on it.

But I have had times where I'm like, oh, maybe it could inspire something.

I don't ultimately need them.

If anything it showed me, like mushrooms showed me, that what I'm seeing in like the real world isn't necessarily real.

So that was kind of cool.

I guess, yeah just that you're... That reality is sort of subjective.

And that I guess gave me some motivation to, or like courage to just sort of manifest that for myself.

And you just see weird shit, and it's fun to to to like, you know, transfer that into something real.

But yeah, it can become a crutch.

And same thing with weed.

Both things like unlock something in your brain, but it's again, maybe Faustian.

You don't want to go too far that way in my opinion.

Yeah.

- Hello.

I was wondering because you're very detailed, like 2D, like explicitly dark sexual stuff, it's like very intense.

And then you have this super like, these monstrous sculptures that have such levity, but also kind of like carry these themes.

And also, you're kind of like dealing with this idea of like shame and sexuality, and trying to bring that into like a more joyous light.

And you kind of alluded to not being able to, like there's a lot of barriers to your more like explicit stuff.

I'm wondering if you've tried before like pushing the line a little bit more with these like monstrous figures?

Like how it's been, how you try to like tow the line between like all of this, like politics and being, being respectful with like the themes, while also kind of like maintaining that levity?

- Yeah, that's a great question.

Kind of hard to answer except that...

So my personal darker work is very personal and I could only do it alone.

And it is more me working through like who knows what from growing up gay in Texas.

So that's like a, it's a theme that I have going on, and the way I work through stuff is through art.

So that's kind of its own thing.

My desire to push into the artwork that I do with Niki is there, it comes up for sure.

I mean a lot of the beasts that we do, I didn't mention this, but they have like hidden genitals, and we will encourage people to like investigate the whole thing.

And it's sort of about can we normalize sex conversations?

But our work is about a shared experience, so if he hasn't experienced it, it's hard for us to really put it into our work.

Whether or not it'll combine more, I'm not sure.

I've tried really hard not to let my success with Niki prevent me from also exploring my work, even though I rarely show it.

Like basically it doesn't get shown, but it's just for me like very satisfying.

I don't know if that's even an answer.

- Nice.

Thank you.

- Okay, thanks.

- Hi, thank you for being here.

I'm curious about how you keep learning during your career.

Obviously in school you're having so many techniques and ideas presented to you all the time, but I'm wondering how you sort of bring that into your career even when it's more developed.

- Yeah, I read a lot.

I try to read about subjects that I don't know anything about.

And traveling is actually really important, whether it's far away or not.

Like I think just reframing your personal experience is pretty important.

Anytime I feel like I'm not getting anywhere it's probably 'cause I haven't moved at all.

So that's definitely important.

And then kind of forcing myself to have conversations with people is another good way to learn.

I tend to, anytime I hear something that I don't know, or think of something I'll like go research it and that's kind of what I do for fun.

So that's a good, and then I take criticism.

I said don't take criticism.

If it's from someone you respect, yes, that's a great way to learn.

I heard somebody say would don't accept criticism from somebody you wouldn't go to for advice.

Maybe that's a little too intense, but I think it's pretty good.

I think trying to hear, even if it hurts your feelings, trying to hear something like maybe there's a kernel of truth in something that somebody says to you.

Yeah, being open to hearing it basically.

- Thank you.

- Yeah.

- Hi.

Thanks for such a joyous talk.

My question was, what's your most fantastical, ridiculous dream project that you might just be able to do in this lifetime?

- I love that question.

I have always wanted to make a church, for some reason.

It wouldn't be a religious church.

I just love that architecture like this can serve a purpose of just getting you into a spirit or something, or making you feel awe.

I forgot the church, it's in France.

Oh, actually the Gaudi Church in Barcelona is probably the perfect piece of artwork in my opinion.

If I could ever do something like that.

Awesome.

And just that everybody gets to go there, it's way outlasted him.

That's like the kind of thing I would love.

- Thank you.

- Yeah.

- Wow, we made it.

- All right.

Thanks everybody.

Thanks for coming out, and thank you so much for joining us here, all the way from the West Coast, Simon Haas.

(audience applauds) - Thank you.

(audience applauds and cheers)