Art Yap

What Keeps
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Theme Song: This is an art. Yap. It is an art. Yap. We're talking art. Yap. Ity y art.
Artfully, artfully, artfully, artfully. Yap. Yap. Yap. It's time.
Shawna Vesco Ahern: Everything is everything. I'm Shawna Vesco Ahern, and this is Art Yap. The podcast where I gab with Bay Area creatives about imagination, arts, culture, and everything in between. In this week's episode, I head down to the dump to trash talk. Pardon me. To talk trash with Deborah Munk, who's been running the Artist in Residence program at Recology San [00:01:00] Francisco for over 25 years.
And with Brian Keith Thomas, an incredible artist, educator, and deep thinker about materials, memory, and community. We talk about how trash becomes treasure, how art can teach sustainability through storytelling and the surprising ways objects hold history. There are stories about found mirrors. Lost objects, 19th century heirlooms and fourth graders learning to see garbage differently.
If you've ever wondered what stories live inside the things we throw away, this episode's for you.
welcome to Art app. Thank you so much, the both of you for coming.
This is the first time we're doing an interview with two guests. Um, with Deborah Monk and Bryan Keith Thomas, and so I guess we'll hop right in. For our listeners who don't know, Deborah, do you wanna tell 'em a little bit about the Artist in Residence program at Recology?
Deborah Munk: Absolutely. Thank you so much for inviting us.
I'm excited to be here. So the Artis in Residence program at Recology is celebrating 35 years this year, and [00:02:00] we work with professional Bay area artists and student artists who spend four months. Scavenging or responding to the site. Um, this is the dump or the recycling center, and we have three studios, one for students and two for professional artists.
They're very large. Um, artists take a shopping cart, they go into the public dump area, and then they take materials back to their studio. Throughout the residency, they speak to tour groups, so children and adults. And then at the end of the four months, we have an exhibition that's open to the public.
Shawna Vesco Ahern: Wow, that's amazing.
And this is actually my first time in here and I'm blown away by how large it is, and I just. You don't see in San Francisco, huge spaces dedicated to art and then you especially wouldn't think down at the dump. There's this beautiful space with people creating stuff. And you've been here since the beginning pretty much, right?
Deborah Munk: I've been here for 25 years. So the program was in effect for 10 years [00:03:00] before I got here. Yeah.
Shawna Vesco Ahern: Could you tell us about some of the changes you've seen over that time? has it always been this large? Has there always been this kind of interest and has social media impacted. People kind of like knowing about it and getting involved.
Deborah Munk: Sure. So our founder, Jo Hanson, was an artist and an environmentalist and an activist, and she had a street sweeping practice where she, she bought this house in the lower Haight. It was on a very windy corner, and she started sweeping and then she realized that all these materials that she was collecting were interesting. And she put them in these binders, um, which are now owned by the Fresno Museum. But they were a really lovely snapshot of the Bay Area at that, from the seventies to the nineties. Well, she expanded her street sweeping practice and eventually she was invited out to this site and she, when she came here, she was like, we have to get artists out here.
We have to, there's so many materials. We weren't recycling that much at the time. And so she pitched the idea to Recology. We said yes. We had just implemented [00:04:00] curbside recycling and since then we've always had an artist on site. And in the early days the artists that were here were environmentalists.
They worked in sculpture, they worked in mixed media. It was, it was what you would think, a junk art program. But over the years we've really moved away from that. So we are, uh, we are an artist in residence program. The theme. The thread that runs through all of the work is sustainability. But each artist comes with their own story and it's not, it's often not about, um, a sustainability that's like the nugget and the story wraps around that.
Mm-hmm. So that's a big change. We also work with artists who work in all disciplines.
Shawna Vesco Ahern: That's amazing. Um, tell us about some of your favorite pieces that you've seen.
Deborah Munk: I have no favorite. I'm sure you have like a bunch have favorites. I have no favorites. I love all the artists. Uh, the same, but some of the pieces that stand out are, um, Julia Goodman.
She works with paper and, um, she interviewed one of our former senior [00:05:00] managers and found out that women used to sort rags here on site until 1965, and it was a really tough job, right. Imagine Yeah. You know, cotton and all these, you know, dirty rags to sort. And so she wanted to honor the work that they did.
So she collected cotton sheets, she puled the cotton and made um, paper out of it and made these really lovely sculptures like paper sculptures with the names of these women in Boston. In using, uh, font from pre 1965. Wow. So like Emma Muzio, Rita Bianchi all, and some of these women's descendants still work at the company.
That's amazing. We, um, and her work is included in a traveling exhibition that we have right now through the Bedford Gallery. It's just landed in Michigan. Other works, uh, Andrew Young. Uh, crafted a life-size two scale Hummer out of styrofoam. That was shown at the airport, SFO Museum, where 5 [00:06:00] million people saw the work from 49 artists.
Sam Levi Jones works with encyclopedias. He ripped off the inside of the encyclopedia and flipped it around. So what you see looks very painterly, but it's not, it's just ripped paper. And he was thinking about. Who's included in our history books and who's not included, who's left out? Mm-hmm. Leah Rosenberg, one more.
Leah Rosenberg works in color and three weeks into her scavenging, she looks in the pile and she sees these very familiar objects. Mm-hmm. That turned out to be her objects that she made for another. I will not name institute. Wow. And she was horrified, right? Yeah, initially, but then she, she scavenged them, took them back, and then worked them into her
Shawna Vesco Ahern: and they found their way back to her.
Deborah Munk: Isn't that amazing? Her third week in, yeah.
Shawna Vesco Ahern: Is there a visual archive on your website or something where some of these live and we can access them? [00:07:00] Absolutely. They're all on our flicker. I can send you the links. Yeah, that would be great. Flicker. That's a bit of a throwback. I know. Um, we'll use it for storage.
You see this program continuing, right? Because we've had a lot of, you know, federal budget cuts and cuts to funding in the city, but this program is a legacy program at this point, and it's so important to the social fabric I feel of San Francisco.
There's no danger of this program going away. Is there?
Deborah Munk: We hope not, right? Yeah. We don't know what will happen in the future, but. This is our 35th year, and Recology is a really special company. In the old days, we were a garbage company, but that's not what we are. We're a resource recovery company. Mm-hmm.
But it's. It's unheard of for a company like ours, an employee owned company to host an art program, right. We deal with recycling and composting, all really important things, but to have a management that really understands how important this is to [00:08:00] education. Mm-hmm. For education, like, because the, so the purpose of this is to support artists, but it's also to educate children and adults.
We bring tours through the site, usually fourth graders. Um, thousands of kids, thousands of adults every year who talk to artists. Um, and I, and I, I know that the company and the city really understands how important that is. Um, we've built this amazing community of folks That I can call and reach out to.
And, you know, they'll, they'll show up like Keith has. And so yeah. Hopefully, hopefully we're, we are fine.
Shawna Vesco Ahern: And it must be so fun to see fourth graders come through here and then start thinking of. Garbage differently. Start thinking of the objects in their house differently. Start thinking of when they discard things, what they're actually doing in that whole process and what it involves at that age.
It must be really fun to kind of witness that. Have you had any fourth graders come back later?
Deborah Munk: Yes, I have a great story. So, um. Wow. [00:09:00] The fourth graders are amazing. They'll come into the studio and they'll go, I don't like that. You should do this. And it's like, and they're so honest, right? Yeah. They're, they have a lot of good feedback.
Um, one of our, one of, I did a tour for a college class and the professor came up to me and said, I came on a tour here in fourth grade, and it changed my life. Wow. It changed the life of my family because, you know, parents, they may not listen to us mm-hmm. But they're going to listen to their kids. Right.
If their kids are saying, mom, you have to recycle. Then they'll, they'll probably do that. And um, yeah, it's been pretty, it's been pretty incredible because, and I think that this program is the one of the best ways to teach people, right? Because instead of like hammering somebody over the head, recycle or perish, we're saying, come look at this story.
Come look at this incredible artwork. And then they're like, oh, and it's made outta recycled materials. Mm-hmm. Wow. So there's story on top of story. Message [00:10:00] embedded in other messaging.
Shawna Vesco Ahern: Yeah, I agree. Storytelling is definitely one of the best ways to connect with people and then to have that kind of impact and enter.
Bryan, Keith Thomas. How did you get involved with Recology?
Bryan Keith Thomas: Well, you know, I had a couple of students to come and, um, apply here at Recology and I would come and I would visit their studio, and now I would realize, I was like, oh, now wait a minute. I wanna come and play as well. Yeah. What's going on here?
You know? And then I would give them all this direction and I would kind of feel the space. I would look at the space, I would listen to what they had to say. They would tell me narratives of things that they stood in front of. Mm-hmm. And then they would, uh, respond to what they imagined they saw. Mm-hmm.
And then I would say, oh, okay, what? Let me see your things. They tell me this. And I said, well, no, let me tell you what this is. So then I'd give them more information about what they actually. Were looking at. Mm-hmm. But they were very attentive about the call and response of like, I found something, let me show it to you.
Let's have a conversation about it. Mm-hmm. You [00:11:00] know, and then being an installation artist, always, uh, listening and feeling about how an object will impact us by being close to it. Mm-hmm. Everything from a shoe to a comb, to a brick. All these physical things that we have a relationship with make us feel a certain way.
Shawna Vesco Ahern: Mm-hmm. You know, one of. When Deborah suggested that you come on the podcast, I sort of did a deep dive into your Instagram and your website and on your Insta, I saw a few videos of you getting ready for the Foresight exhibition. Yes. And you were out finding objects. You were at mixed Pickles. Antiques, yeah.
And you were sort of vibing around. The shop is sort of the only way I can explain it. And you pick up this beautiful resin cube that had a dandelion in it, and out of all of the trajectories you could have taken to discuss it. The ecology of the dandelion, the practice of resin encasing. You went straight to symbolic, you went straight to childhood, blowing it to make a [00:12:00] wish.
This dandelion is desire and that leap you took in that instant to just symbolic thinking. I'm a, I'm a literature person. Yes. And so I deeply identified with you in that moment because. I was like, here is a person who was reading these objects exactly how I read texts. Yes, yes. And it was this mix of like, this embodied intuition of how a piece felt or vibed with other pieces.
But then, like I said, just the slip into the symbolic, symbolic order. Um, so for the people listening at home who didn't do their homework, uh, could you tell us a little bit about your art practice, which is assemblage Yeah.
Bryan Keith Thomas: Uh, my work, uh, celebrates the luxury of what it means to have a life. What does it mean to construct something and then it stand before you and have a presence out outside of your own voice?
Mm-hmm. You know, to kinda have one thing next to another thing is a magnetic kind of force, and all of a sudden now it begins to speak its own language, kinda like an outfit. You know, you put your outfit on, you kinda look at it and you go, ah, [00:13:00] okay, it is done. You know, there's something about the relationship of where it has come from, you know?
But myself as an artist, I look at it, but because I kinda. You know, as a little kid collecting things with my neighbors, most of my neighbors were in their eighties when I was like five years old. So we would go and we would start collecting these kinda objects and things, learning about cars, learning about furniture, learning about time, because when you're around someone that's in their eighties and nineties, they are aware that whatever they used to be, they're not that now.
Mm-hmm. But it's still, it's, it's still a, like a part of them. So if I look at a piece of fabric, the first thing I think of is like, oh, you know who touched it? And how do I respond to the, to the, uh, beauty that it possesses? Mm-hmm. You know, so you think about something as simple as a tapestry and a stain in their cousins.
You know, we, you know, we call it patina, right? Why is that a patina? And, you know, you think about what is a patina, it is. The legacy of, from what I've come mm-hmm. You know, this water [00:14:00] has been in my life and it's kinda left this thing and it's part of the story that I, you know, that I tell. Mm-hmm. And being here at Recology, my, one of my biggest surprises was it wasn't as much about the stuff as it also was about the people holding the stuff.
You know, because we had the honor of taking our cart, going out to the, uh, to the, uh, resource library, to the junkyard and they kinda standing there and people would kinda drive up. We'd look at them and they'd look at us and there's always a few of us out there like, who's going get what? You know? And then people kind come really kinda quickly and get things.
And sometimes people drive up in their truck and they stop and they look around and they look at us. And there's been a couple of instances where. They look at me, I look at them, they said, I got something I think you might want. It's like, okay, what is it? Well, I've got this, you know, 19th century mirror.
You, you, you want it. Sure. You know, you know, and the biggest surprise was who imagined that you, you are so fully within yourself. Wherever you are, you're attracted some of the same kind of things. Mm-hmm. The same things that were in [00:15:00] my studio, the same things that I've collected around the world. Are the same things that I found here at ecology, at the, at the dump.
Mm-hmm. The same thing. My studio here was at the, my studio in my, in my home. And I didn't know that that would happen, but I also didn't know that the people also, uh, brought in their issues with their items. Right. You know, some, some people would throw them off the truck. Yeah. You know, and something would, would place them off the truck and sometimes they'll look at you and I'm sitting there kinda looking and, and because I move kind of slow sometimes.
Mm-hmm. I'm just watching to see how people interact with things coming off the truck. I'm gonna wait, let people go in quickly. Mm-hmm. And then I'm gonna slowly kind of look down and, you know, I mean, before I bend my knee, before I go down, I wanna make sure that, well, this is something I want. And then I kinda slowly look through it and there's always been some amazing, magical things there.
Mm-hmm. You know, and what I know is like many of us. They're, they're in relationship with us. It's like, I'm looking for you. You are looking for me. I'm there with an intent to see something that has a frequency that wants to come out and play.
Shawna Vesco Ahern: [00:16:00] Okay. There it is. Frequency that wants to come out and play. I was wondering if either at the start of a project, there's some kind of internal criteria for your object selection or if you've noticed now, after doing so many projects.
That you can look back and say, oh, I tend to select in this way. Or if you don't even want to think about it, 'cause then that'll throw the whole thing off. That's fine too.
Bryan Keith Thomas: No, you know. My stuff, like many of us live in multiple kind of periods. Mm-hmm. Some people live seventies, eighties, nineties, fifties.
There's a certain period, not just the time in which we live, we've kind of been here many times, if you can imagine. And all those lives kind of keep congealing and we living in multiple kind of dimensions. Mm-hmm. So I tend to live in like the 19th century. Mm-hmm. So I often find things around, you know, 18 something, you know, you know, you know, things that have that are.
Uh, what I call heirlooms. There are things that were made to be everlasting. Mm-hmm. Made for me to touch it. And for you also to engage in it. Mm-hmm. You know, the intent was a certain kind of love story, and those that did not have necessarily [00:17:00] that kind of love story, maybe even a piece of plastic, that piece of plastic next to that, you know, gilded, uh, uh, brick, all of a sudden create this earth mound.
Mm-hmm. That's, that's rather intriguing. Because they both moved in different times, but they're together now. And now we have to imagine a whole new conversation. Hmm.
Shawna Vesco Ahern: What's one of your favorite pieces that you've ever created? A piece that maybe you would never sell too personal or too precious?
Bryan Keith Thomas: There are things that I've kept over the years mm-hmm.
That, um, like there's a black few black couple black mirror paintings. Mm-hmm. Um, and I remember in grad school. Uh, I was being courted by collectors and didn't know it. They come over by the studio and, oh, with their black painting. I say, oh, not yet, you know, not yet. Uh, and then eventually, you know, I let one of them go.
Uh, now I realize there's a time to kind of keep it, but it's gonna leave you anyway. Hmm. And I want to participate in how it goes [00:18:00] back into the world. Mm-hmm. You know, my, my, my dream as an artist and a collector is to have all this stuff in, in my lifetime. Say, here, here it is, here. And keep things circulated.
It's going to circulate, you know, I just have you, maybe some control issues sometimes, and I wanna also, you know, honor what it's done for me. And also be able to participate in where it goes next. So I'm very sensitive to, to those things. So I have, so one of the Black Mirror paintings I still have mm-hmm.
Because this is what I call one of my master teachers. Mm-hmm. You know, it's still, I'm still learning from it. It still has nuances of change. Right. You know, when it is is in the room, it takes up a certain amount of space where it requires a certain nobility because it holds. All the years of me touching it and looking and listening to it, and every time I see it, it changes.
Mm-hmm. And that's what a mirror in general does. It is a living thing that reminds you that you're participating in this life.
Shawna Vesco Ahern: When you speak, I hear a full blown like existential philosophy. I hear a full blown [00:19:00] like aesthetic philosophy. And you mentioned that you were around five years old when you started collecting objects and kind of thinking about temporality.
In this really textured, complex way. When did you know you were a philosopher? When did you know you were a creative? When did it ever
Bryan Keith Thomas: It never, it never really occurred that, you know, I'm an artist, but I'm a being and listening to old folks. What happens is you come back and you speak to them and they would say like, I can't believe I lived this long to get this ugly, so what are you talking about?
You know, you know, look at my hands, look at my face. I, why am I still here? It's like, oh, I'm just kind of, you know, looking. And then slowly they transition. Mm-hmm. And then you see them again and they have fewer words. Um, and they begin to kind of speak them verbally and then they go away. What I recognize is a child very quickly is in every conversation, be in this moment because this moment is not coming back.
And old folks teach you. It's like, you know, baby be in this moment tomorrow is not [00:20:00] promised. Tomorrow is never gonna be what today is. Mm-hmm. So you learn very, very quickly to pay very close attention to everything and to speak your truth. Old folks teach you that because they've lived long enough to realize what once.
Is what was once. Mm-hmm. You know, and today is something, is something else, you know? And like a 5-year-old and a 85-year-old, they have the same, the same conversations, the same conversations. It's like, you know, I don't like that. Well, why? Well, because of this. It's like, you know, I'm black and many of the neighbors were white and they, and all these old white ladies had this stuff and they had black stuff.
Mm-hmm. I said, why you got all this black stuff? You're not black. Mm-hmm. And they, oh, well, um, well, I like black dolls too. I said, but why do you have it? Mm-hmm. You know, you know, well, you know, there's a person that, you know, I grew up with and she was my good friend and you know, and then their children would talk to me.
Mother said that she didn't understand why you were so upset about the Black Doll. I said, I'm not upset about the Black Doll. I just wanted to understand why she has [00:21:00] it, because I don't really see that many in my house. So why if I, I see all this black stuff in these white folks houses. So then I realized it's like, well.
Everyone has a connection and a narrative to this image. Mm-hmm. So this black image in these ladies' homes had an image and they had their own relationship with it. I had my own relationship with it. When I asked them what their relationship was, then I understood why they had it. Mm-hmm. You know, and then later in my life I started creating, when I realized I was black, because I didn't know I was black.
Mm-hmm. I realized that, uh, well what black was what it meant to have a culture and a community. Surrounded by things that spoke to you. Mm-hmm. Because that's what heirlooms do. You walk into a space and they have a, they have an aura about them that, uh, lets you know what to expect by their company.
Mm-hmm. You know, makes any room, you know, the objects that you, that every word that's been spoken over something is still in it. Yeah. You know, you know, uh, even [00:22:00] the first day of class, you as a professor, I kind of walk in and I'm looking my. In the room, and I'm feeling, and I'm so excited because people are art, art pieces too, but what we all as artists know is like, dude, don't be too real.
You, you look, but not too deeply. You have to know when to stop. Because what happens is you start looking for truth and you see it. But no one, no one really wants you to tell their truth completely. No one's gonna like you. So you have to kinda edit how much you see, because you could put someone in a, in a position that's not so safe.
Mm-hmm. You know, so if I asked about something often is something, you know of the skin that you apply to yourself. Mm-hmm. The clothing, the jewelry, you know, the posture, you know, you know, I may ask, uh, a student, it's like, uh, when you walk in, I noticed there was an absence of sound when you walked in. So tell me about the soles of your shoes.
Mm-hmm. And they were, oh, they said, well, you know, uh, these are my favorite shoes. I said, oh, okay, good, good. So then someone, the else makes kind of sit there and they [00:23:00] may look and I said, well. You very nice posture. I said, what is your legacy on expectation as it relates to how your body moves through the world?
You know, what is, what, what, what does that mean? You know, you, you, you know what that means. You know, when you at attention, what, what, what does it mean to you? What does it mean to be in the moment? You know? Oh, you know, and then they explained. Mm-hmm. What they have seen within in their work. And then we, and we make a connection between the things that they touch and they make.
Mm-hmm. Because you touch your body is, is the same, uh. Form that you also kind of touch a painting, that you touch everything, everything is connected, it's not disconnected, and
Shawna Vesco Ahern: it's a lot more effective than, how's it going? Absolutely. Yeah. It's, but it's, it's fun, you know,
Deborah Munk: Keith has the best questions.
It's fun. Oh my goodness.
Shawna Vesco Ahern: And I was wondering, do these greetings and introductions in conversations, do they go differently in San Francisco and Oakland than they have in Tennessee and other places that you've been? Do you notice like a
Bryan Keith Thomas: No, absolutely not. Absolutely not. I can be in a market [00:24:00] in Paris, a market in South Africa.
I, I walk up. The elders look at me, I look at them and we instantly know. Mm-hmm. You know, I can be walking around the lake and around late marriage and I'll see a little black lady, a little Asian lady or gentleman, and we'll, and we'll, and we'll look and we instantly, like, we kinda, we know. Mm-hmm. Um, um, you know, going around up around old people, you really learn to incorporate, uh, uh, nonverbal communication.
Mm-hmm. You know, how does one kind of speak and how does one have. A room for truth where you don't have to really say, this is who or what I am. It simply is what it is. And it feels good because the intent was to be a taliman of healing. Mm-hmm. You know, uh, and I think that's what Recology also is. It's a type of, it's a type of, for me, it's a black person, uh, reparations.
It's like, okay, I'm coming here. I'm, and I'm looking for my stuff. Mm-hmm. I'm looking for, I'm looking for things that want to kind of come with [00:25:00] me and, and, and, and when I say, come with me is that they may come with me, but I, you know, like, you know, Deborah, many people here, we also repatriate things.
Mm-hmm. They come to me for a season. It may be me for 20 minutes. For five days, for for two years. But when I see that, oh, I have something for you here. Mm-hmm. You, you know, you know, Deborah has been really wonderful because she's been very consistent in, in the community where, where if there was an object, she knows how to hold onto it and how to look and to see and says, I have something you might be interested in.
We may speak it, but she also has that connection between what to cannot put in our hands. Mm-hmm. So Recology is not just the people that are. Uh, driving up, dropping stuff is the people that are also part of the community here that are always holding a consciousness for what it means to build community.
Mm-hmm. And what it means to hand things, you know, you know, down and also receive things.
Shawna Vesco Ahern: Mm-hmm. I, I have to ask about this. I saw on the Recology website bio of you, it mentioned Laura Bush and a White House Yeah. Award of some sort. Yeah. Can you tell me a little bit [00:26:00] about that? Yeah.
Bryan Keith Thomas: Well, I've shown a few times with the, um.
Um, the Embassy and Arts program. Okay. So when you show the Embassy and art program, you can go to that country as a, uh, as a guest of the ambassador. Mm. So that's what that was. So we, and you also get, uh, uh, invited to like a dinner at the White House. That's the way they used to do. Mm-hmm. So, you know, so you get this formal limitation, they do a background check on you, and then you, and then you kinda go to the White House.
I did not, I kept the invitation and everything. I went through the background check, but I did not attend the um. The a dinner at the White House. Mm. Um, you know, but it was really an honor to think about what it meant to be an American and what it meant to be in a house that my folks built. And, you know, uh, and when you think about the White House, you think about.
Those that cleaned the White House, those that built the White House and those that closed their eyes in the White House. Right. You know, some very, you know, so it is a, uh, a, a castle of a fantasy, [00:27:00] construction of an American dream. And when I grow up, I want to create my own version of whatever the White House may be.
Mm-hmm.
Shawna Vesco Ahern: And I noticed one of the pieces on your website or your Instagram, it was the wooden paddles with Obama. Yes. And Lincoln, yes. Um, so this is a theme that you definitely,
Bryan Keith Thomas: absolutely. You think about, it's the church fan. You know, I was looking for an image that spoke about spirit. Mm-hmm. And movement and ritual and those hand fans, every culture has a hand fan.
Yeah. You know, so I made a wooden hand fan, and, uh, Obama and Lincoln are on it as our presidents, but also as a symbol of faith. Uh, hope expectations. And one thing that's wonderful about a fan is very spiritual because when it is moving, it is also moving hair, moving other things, and when itself is very spiritual.
Shawna Vesco Ahern: Yeah. Ruach breath, right?
Bryan Keith Thomas: Boom. Yeah. Yeah. So that is, you know, uh, and, and many traditions. Often, they're not [00:28:00] really expensive, but they're given, for example, at a church, at the beginning of service, they're, they're taken back up. They're used for advertisements, they're used for, uh, notions of expectation as it relates to like even a Chinese hand fan.
Mm-hmm. You know, the maiden on the other side represents different seasons as well as the beauty that you will see when the fan is removed. You know, so the, the hand fan and the images on it are very similar to a mirror. It is what you expect when you look in the mirror. You really expect to see something familiar there.
Right. You know, and you're gonna be in your feelings if you, if you do not, you know, that's why when you think of the constructed lands and it's like, you know, the vampire can't see their reflection, it's because as an immortal that you say it, that you understand yourself to be. You are beyond what the moment is.
You are simply time.
Shawna Vesco Ahern: What's next for you? Do you see yourself in a museum? Do you see yourself in a particular collection? Do you have aspirations of that [00:29:00] way or do you just kind of create and then see where it lands?
Bryan Keith Thomas: No. You know, I have works in a few museums. My dream is to participate in a museum with their, with their archives.
Sound like Fred will. Wilson, because I want to go in, look at the archive stuff and uh, listen to it and present an opportunity where it could also have, uh, life again. You know, like for example, the de Young Museum has, uh, African artifact. They have hand fans, I'm gonna go in there and ceremonially also bring my art that talks about the same thing with those things and reactivate them in a way where the community can be engaged and the very thing that is dormant behind glass all of a sudden has, has breath.
And when you, when something has had breath and you put it back in, something is going to vibrate, kinda like a body that's in a coffin versus a mannequin. Mm-hmm. There's a legacy that has been somewhere. And um, that's my dream going forward, is to participate in a museum with their permanent collection, to be able to engage in community [00:30:00] development and create new work.
Shawna Vesco Ahern: That would be magical. Magical. And then I see you have a piece here as well. Would you like to tell me about that? I'm definitely gonna take pictures of it for people. Listen, yeah.
Bryan Keith Thomas: The piece that you're looking at, um, was definitely about. Old and new aspects of patina and time. The image that you're looking at was an image that was found here.
Every ecology that, uh, Deborah also had within her archives that shared with me. So I made a print of it and, um, the, uh, technology that made the cutout mm-hmm. Was, uh, a digital technology that was, you know, thrown in the dump. The old piece of wood was, was not painted to the old. It simply was what it was.
And the pleasure was to work with a notion of the new pristine computer edge mm-hmm. And the old weathered, uh, time component and bring and bring those together and let it have kind of its own sense of ancient text. Mm-hmm. [00:31:00] Because when you look at the shape in the background, it appears to be something.
And it is something, it is. It looks like a cross. It looks like an X, it has it. Has its own, um, uh, imaginary force to it. There's also little pieces of silk in the, uh, piece next to the print. Mm-hmm. You know, so it's just about how time has a relationship with itself, the old and the new. Yeah.
Shawna Vesco Ahern: One of the things that stood out to me was these stark angles that you get on these cross looking pieces kind of juxtaposed to the knot and the waves of the natural.
Wood under there that has not been cut. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. More hard and soft. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Bryan Keith Thomas: We all have a lovely patina about us. You don't. You don't. You don't have a choice. It's called being alive. It's like, oh, look at him. Patina. It's called a mold. Look at me. It's called a scar. You know, you've been somewhere, you've done something.
Shawna Vesco Ahern: My next birthday, I'm gonna do patina themed. Let's go. This year I did kumquat. But [00:32:00] patina theme is patina, you know? You know facial patina, you know, everyone comes. No makeup. Yeah. There you go. Just sweatpants. It's gonna be good. Um, the time has come to ask the magic eight ball a question. A yes or no question.
She's never wrong, so you're gonna want to be careful with what you ask. Who would like to go first? Okay, here you go.
Deborah Munk: It's so much pressure. It's a lot of pressure. Okay, will, will our upcoming 35 year celebration at Minnesota Street Projects plug be a success? That's a big question. Out look good. Yay. Yeah.
Shawna Vesco Ahern: Also, I've been trying to get Debra Rappaport on the show, so drop a line. Oh yes. Drop a line and get her.
Bryan Keith Thomas: Will we as a world, one day live where time is not so important.
What [00:33:00] does it say? it? Is it Mr? What does that say? I can't, what does it say?
Shawna Vesco Ahern: My reply is, no. Oh, oh, interesting. Interesting. Hmm. Yeah.
Hmm. Well that's kind of good. 'cause then I read that as we're not gonna go extinct. 'cause to me, that'ss one time, would it matter?
Well, well,
Bryan Keith Thomas: it's a construct. That's why you don't understand it anyway.

Deborah Munk: I would love to mention that this summer we're accepting applications from student artists who are enrolled in college and universities in the Bay Area, and professional artists who currently live in the Bay Area throughout the summer. So go to our website.
You have to come on a tour first to see what you're getting into. And the deadline is September 1st.
Shawna Vesco Ahern: Okay, great. And I'll put that info in all of our show notes. Oh, very cool. Thank you. Perfect. Thank you. Well, thank you so much. This was a lot of fun. Thank you. This pleasure. This was really a lot of fun.
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