Patty Wallace

Patty Wallace is part of the Living Legacy Project at the Burchfield Penney Art Center. Click here to listen to her artist interview. 

Patty Wallace is a photographer, painter, and media artist whose work has appeared in galleries and museums across the world as well as in various publications and on television. She lives and works in Williamsville, N.Y.

Wallace studied visual art and media at the University at Buffalo, where she earned a BA in Studio Art and an MA in Humanities. She has exhibited her work at various galleries and museums including CEPA Gallery (sometimes in collaboration with Gary Nickard) , Big Orbit Gallery, and Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, all in Buffalo, N.Y.,  Kunsthaus am Hofgarten Gallery (Munich, German) and the Puffin Room Gallery (New York City). Her photography is in the collections of the Burchfield Penney Art Center, the Castellani Art Museum (Niagara University, N.Y.), and Light Work (Syracuse, N.Y.).Wallace has received many awards and grants from organizations including the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Benton Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Her professional experience includes photographing for the Andy Warhol Foundation and the Brooklyn Museum.

Listen to Patty Wallace's Living Legacy Project interview at the Burchfield Penney Art Center.

Transcription below: 

LLP Artist: Patty Wallace
Interviewer: Heather Gring
Transcriber: Jordan Anthony
Date recorded:  April 21, 2014
Date transcribed: June 13, 2020

HG: This is the Living Legacy Project interview with Patty Wallace on April 21, 2014. And Patty, thank you so much for coming in today to participate in this project. And to get right into it, can you talk a little bit about what inspired you to want to be an artist or to pursue a career in the arts?

PW: Yeah, I guess I never really thought of doing anything else. But I grew up in a very cultured family. My parents were to theater and to take us to plays and I always took ballet classes and started me off at art school right in the beginning. And we used to walk to the Albright Knox Art Gallery. And I was really interested in other cultures. It's my father's scientist, and he worked at Roswell Park and everyone he worked with were from other parts of the world, and I was just fascinated by their culture, and we'd go to dinner at their houses, and we'd have the their food and listen to their music and it was just so I think basically—I did think about this, you know, and it's really my parents, you know. They really encouraged me. We always had books and artwork up and aesthetics were important…and history. So, I think that's pretty much what inspired me. Also, when I was little, I used to draw in my, in my father's books that passed down. Antique books I used to draw on the end papers of these antique books. And finally, they got a clue and got me some paper so I wouldn't like ruin all of their antique books. But having books around, really, with all these great illustrations I remember just like staring at them and playing with them. Cartoons too; Saturday morning cartoons, I loved them, especially the really old ones, like in the 20s.

HG: Yeah. When you were a kid, did you see yourself wanting to be an artist or did you just know you wanted to like do something creative and fun?

PW: I wanted to do something creative and fun. I used to think that I'd like to be an actress. Because I was a ham. And I got attention. You know, I wanted attention that way. So, I wanted to entertain. So, I think of art as a form of entertainment. And when I went to acting school, I enjoyed it. But I discovered I really wasn't a very good actress; I was better at directing. I was more visual. And now I could probably act because I have more confidence. But back then I thought I would rather direct. I'd rather, you know, tell people where to stand and how to light. So, I think that being allowed to play when you're young…I was in the Buffalo Theater Workshop and had audition for that. That's a good example of why the government should really step up and help fund youth programs. Because that was sponsored by New York State. They don't have it around anymore. It was like, you know, an arts foundation and it provided opportunities for kids who couldn't otherwise afford to participate in these things after school so that really a lot of people who came from Buffalo Theatre Workshop are really famous now. Christine Baranski, for example, she's an actress. She was one of the older ones. I was the youngest one. And Tom Fontana writer, saying elsewhere, you know, so gives kids an opportunity. It's amazing what they can do. Great opportunity. Yeah, absolutely.

HG: As you went through sort of like your adolescence and that sort of thing, were there other opportunities of after school programs?

PW: Yes! Guess where it was… at Buff State [SUNY College at Buffalo]! I used to get these to have classes here free where our teachers, or students, would practice on kids if they wanted to come for class, and they were free. So, I used to get on a bus. I’d take the Grant Street bus, Hertel to Grant, and walk over here. And I learned so much; we didn't have art in my school. We had a little bit of art. I went to a Catholic school we had a little bit of art, music. I like music a lot too, but we just didn't have the opportunity to provide it to us through the school. And I had a blast. We met a lot of other people who were from all over Buffalo, the area. But I thought it was a great opportunity. And the police athletic league on Austin street used to have art classes. So, any anytime there was an art class, I would leave my parents would put me there, Albright Knox on Saturdays, they had that the Saturday thing, I was always involved, somehow, whatever we could get our hands on.

HG: You're very much a product of the art scene in Buffalo in many ways.

PW: And also, being married to Gary Nickard. He's an artist and a musician and he was the director of SEPA gallery. So, we met a lot of people. I mean, our house was a constant party. People would stay with us. I came home one day, and William Beckman was sleeping on my couch. And I said, “Oh, that's nice.” And he goes, “Oh, that's Bill Beckman. He's just taking a nap like, “Oh, cool.” So, but what was nice is that a lot of these people are Jim Welling. And these people laid around with became friends. So we had all these great connections, so we could kind of branch out, meet people so that by the time we moved to New York, we knew a lot of the people from SEPA from Buffalo from that experience, and then of course, through Hall Walls almost in SEPA, were next to one another. So, we're all kind of together was nice.

HG: It’s nice and you have a network that then can both keep you rooted in the Western New York Community but also, like, spiral outwards and have these impacts far beyond and keep you up to date.

PW: You know, these grassroots groups are always new and fresh. You know, it's not like going into A mausoleum and with a flashlight. This is always something new and bright that opens up.

HG: First, I'd like to talk more about maybe your earlier experiences with education and where you went to school, maybe after high school with your college experience…

PW: Actually, I had a couple of high school teachers who are really great inspiration skill wise. They really taught you how to draw and paint and the elements and principles of design. And so how use those tools and put things together, and they were old timers, they were like these old guys that had worked in the ad industry in New York. They knew how to use airbrushes and stuff like that. So that was kind of cool. And everything was analog. There was no digital, it was analog. And I love the craft of things. I like making things and playing with things. And I think Gary's the one that really taught me the concept how to go about making something out of it, you know, thinking about ‘What is what does it mean?’ You know, ‘What do you want to say?’ So, I went to Geneseo for my first year of college, and I took photography and painting and anthropology because I also was thinking about anthropology and archaeology because I love the idea of digging and finding treasures to find treasures. And then I found out, when I came back to Buffalo, I met some friends Gary was going to UB [SUNY University at Buffalo], about media study. And I thought, “Oh, media study filmmaking. I love film. I love movies!” I could tell you everything about any genre of film, I love film. So, I said, “I want to make movies.” So, I came back here, and I went to UB and I studied with some great people. And I was lucky enough to have studied with Paul Sharits, Hollis Frampton, and he was just a who we'd have classes at, like, Sign of the Steer. And Brian Henderson who is a great inspiration… I learned a lot about how to put pictures together. Lighting, looking at film taking it apart, analyzing it. And Ernie Gehr, Jack Goldstein… Jack Goldstein… Oh my, I just wanted to be him. His work was just so transcendental. I mean, he just really those guys were right on the cutting edge. Pun intended. Haha. Then, and as far as education as far as photography and lighting, I learned a lot from Pat Bazelon. And I had to make money somehow, so I worked for her as an assistant. She photographed all the steel mills and Buffalo and grain mills and architectural photographer mainly. She had a lot of big clients. And she and I are the ones that wanted to move to New York. She lived in New York. She's from England originally, but she wanted to go back to New York. And we went back and worked at the Brooklyn Museum. And so, she taught me it just about everything about photography about lighting, using hot lights because she was in the film industry. So that's that media study is what got me really good at lighting. I mean, it was a long time ago. There's new equipment and, you know, other techniques now, but I would say that, you know, working with somebody who is a professional is a really, really good way of learning how to do something, you know, cooking, painting. You have somebody lean over and show you. “Hey, you know what, instead of mixing black into gray, try gray into black.” And it’s like, “Wow, where were you? I needed you before this.” So, I think it's really important to work with people. As long as they’re willing to share information with you.

HG: Here at the Burchfield, we have some really significant components of Paul Sharits’s archive and Hollis Frampton’s. Can you talk a little bit more about the role that either of them played in your early development or your work or…?

PW: Well, I think because Paul Sharits and Hollis are both about sequence. And I think we tend to be by nature literal. They kind of helped me become nonlinear at the same time. And fortunately, I worked with Maryann Faller after Hollis passed away, I worked for her organizing his photographs. And so, I had an opportunity to see all this other stuff that he had created. But I think that kind of time and sequence thing really is so filmic. And that really edged its way into my own work, and it influenced me really. Same thing with Sharits; the thing I liked about Sharits was the sound. And so, I was kind of torn. I was torn about “God, what do I want to do? There's so much do I want to make movies or to be a musician? Do I want to make clinking sounds and show passage of time? Should it be an illusion?” And then I thought, you know what, maybe we're taking this all too seriously. Maybe we should just have fun. And, and I took it so seriously, I was like, so worried about what other people think about what I was doing. And I think that you shouldn't second guess yourself. Just be yourself. And it just falls into place. If you're true to yourself, it's gonna work. But I think it inspired me not just thinking that Ernie Gehr. Same thing with this film. And I think it must have been a movement at the time to show the illusion of time and sequence. Asking me that, it’s just like, “Oh my god, that makes sense. That's why I did what I did. I was all about the secret stuff.” One day, I was taking a painting class. My teacher said to me, says you know what? “You're trying to try to say too much in your painting you should make. You should be a filmmaker. You got to say so much, “Yeah, I guess you're right.” So, I wound up doing paintings or films or movies. So, I just kept going back and forth. What I would do is I would take pictures, and everything was about the television set. Oh, everybody was into semantics and Lévi-Strauss and, and all philosophers and Derrida and Walter Benjamin, and so everything was all about ‘Deconstruction’ was a big word. So, let's all get into that. And but it was fun in that you're learning something new. You don't want to be static because I wanted to keep moving. And, and I was lucky that I was actually when you think about it, because some people would say, “Why don't you get a job, a real job.” It is like, to me, that's the hardest thing you could possibly do. I got A's in a 4.0 in physics, and I'd get a 3.0 in art because it was just so hard to discipline yourself to think you're thinking beyond just black and white numbers. You know, it's deep. That's like the fourth dimension. I teach. This word over there on that side it says ‘displacement.’ I think that's the other word that Hollis in shirts were about was displacement, put one thing in exchange for another thing and create something else. And then that creates a story in motion. And I think that's kind of like what I what I like is the idea of a story in motion.

HG: Did you sort of experience that moving through the media study program and then starting to develop your career?

PW: Well, I'd say that the main obstacles being a woman, you would think by now would have changed, but it really hasn't. It's an uphill battle for women. There's just no way there's a bias. There's a bias in the art world. There's a bias in the fashion world. There's a bias everywhere. And it's real. I mean, if you look at Sotheby's and you look at the auctions, all these male artists are selling for millions of dollars, and there's maybe two females in that auction list, you know, and they're like, Agnes Martin, and I don't even see Georgia O'Keeffe up there, you know, and there's there hardly anybody new. They're great, incredible, but they're just not taken seriously because they're women that's still a very biased society. And so actually one of the other things I wanted to do was be a chef, because I'd like to eat. And I like to cook, I like to create, because again you entertain. So, I like to please people, because I want attention, because I have a big ego and I need to be stroked all the time. But I like to make people happy. And so, when my mother went back to work, when I was about 11, they handed me a Julia Child cookbook and said “Hasta la vista. Just make sure dinner is on the table by seven or whatever.” and I was like, “Okay,” I said if you bring me the ingredients, I'll cook it because they saw that I took an interest in cooking, my mother was a pretty decent cook, but my grandmother, I kind of grew up with my grandmother to stay with her when my parents would work, and she was amazing cook. So really pleasure. We like luxury we like to enjoy. And we're not into the fast food. Yes, if it's like, greasy and salty, and you just got to have it. But, you know, it's kind of it was like survival. So, I thought, well, I would like to be a chef. So, I started cooking, I started cooking French stuff, and everybody raved about it. I thought it was great because people don't. And you know, back then it was hard to get ingredients. And one of the reasons why Gary and I, we say this, that's not true, but we say that. One of the reasons why we left Buffalo was we couldn't find any fresh cilantro. So, we said that's it. We're out of here. We had to go all the way over to Grand Street to Puerto Rican bodega to get to get cilantro. So, we said that's it, we're gone. When I was 19, I was invited by my father's former boss actually was his boss at the time. Dr. Harker: David Harker. He was the head of the crystallography department at Roswell Park, friends with Herb Hartman and all those guys. They'll worked on a team together. Well, his first wife, when I went to a transfer to Nardin Academy when I was in seventh grade, and those kids had been learning French, and I didn't know French at all, and his first wife was a white Russian was born within the Kremlin walls. Her father was the I'm pretty sure he was the Attorney General to Czar Nicholas. So, she grew up in a royal setting before the revolution, of course, and they spoke French. Russian was spoken maybe to your servant, but you didn't really speak Russian. Everyone spoke French. And this was because appear the great monitor to westernize Russia, and she spoke fluent French. They were here in Buffalo, and she offered to tutor me for free so that I could catch up to the other kids and I would go once a week this is how much just a little bit of help than I tell my students this 10 minutes of somebody helping you to make such a difference of anything you want. Math, whatever you want to learn Photoshop for one hour, she would have me read from a French grammar book kind of little French kids learn from and then she would ask me questions and correct my pronunciations. And at the end, my reward was a glass of cranberry juice. By the time I got to high school, and college I was taking like third level French, just because of this one hour a day. Well, she passed away. Dr. Harker were married and his she always said, “You've got to go to France.” This is Mrs. Kate Harker, “You've got to go to France. You would love it. You love the history, love the art.” And she passed away and then his second wife said “You know what? We would like for you to come and visit with us. You could drive around with us figure plan out our map.” He was giving lectures all over France. In a way those people were like, a second set of parents to me. They were older more than be more like my grandparents and… mega snobs.

They were both like came from very high families in California, parents were doctors, but they were very, very cultured. So, they taught me a lot and they took me to all these places I ate the most incredible food. And I thought France was the most incredible place. I said, “I'm never going back to The States never just sell the kids sell the house. I'm staying in France.” Just to see the difference in the culture and, and the aesthetic, how everything is so important. Even the poorest neighborhoods, people had gardens, beautiful gardens, you know, they could have just a pot of flowers. And I thought that was great. So, we went to all these places, like, I was really into the Middle Ages when I was young. I know probably from movies, I used to think that I was a princess and I was gonna be rescued by a guy protecting me against dragon or something like that. And I was really romantic about stuff like that. And I actually liked the Pre Raphaelites love the pre athletics. I was like, Oh, I want to be in that story. I want to I just want to be one of those people. I guess now it'd be like a Harry Potter type, person or whatever goth kids are into. Anyway, seeing the stuff going into Chartres and seeing the windows and going into Notre Dame, and going to see these castles are… Carcassonne in Toulouse. It's like wait a minute, you go in my street. It's like, “Oh, that was built in 1960.” You go to Europe, and it's like, “No, that was built 1016. Oh, that's where the Visigoths poured boiling oil onto the Crusaders.” You know, I mean, it's just was so enlightening and going to southern France… have you ever been to southern France? It’s around the Massif Central. I said, this looks like [Paul] Cézanne’s paintings. And they said, “That's because this is where he painted, and the colors really do exist.” I was like, “This is amazing.” That experience was just phenomenal to see this to expand and know that you know not to be provincial. My students, I tell them, “Stop taking pictures of your lockers, get on a bus and go downtown. Go to the lake. You can walk around the canal. Take pictures get out.” And the other thing I would tell people too, is that wherever you are from, go away for a little while. Go away, you can always come back. Just don't burn your bridges. And then you can come back. And buffalo has a big repatriation…or expats. I think they call it what's not so bad here now. Now, it really is. I mean, you know, you have Wegmans, you don't need anything else. So, one of the things I liked about living in Brooklyn, we lived in an Arabic neighborhood. And they were like, Saudis, and Palestinians and Egyptians, all different kinds of people. And they were not conservative. They were very liberal. It wasn't oppressive. And I was just telling my parents last night about this place we go into and they give you a piece of pastry like baklava or some kind of bird's nest, say, Come in, have a cup of tea, and the cats would be in there and they kept these big ovens and talk and I thought what a great attitude to be a community minded people would talk. They talk about politics, talking about food, their families. And I think unfortunately, the way we live, when we live so far apart from one another, we don't get together and sit on a stoop and chat. Find out what's going on in the world, or connect but we go in and say, “Sammy, I'm making chicken tonight. Or lambs.” Oh, okay, I'm mixing the spices. And they mix up all the spices and then you'd have like these barrels of pickled lemons preserved lemons and now preserve lemons are all the rage. I noticed harissa… all these exotic things, but I loved that I just, I guess I just wanted to be my favorite books. My favorite movie, not because of the filmmaking or anything, but because of the story is out of Africa. I loved the idea of explorers of adventurers. I love the idea of going to places like Africa, or Asia or exotic places that I haven't been seeing other people seeing animals, you know, the smells. And I used to read all the books I used to read your book about Stan Livingston, or Darwin. I mean, that to me is just blows my mind, you know that discovery of evolution. And so that kind of inspired me. Funny thing, too, is guess what inspired me, even though I'm not religious, I love a religion because I love the iconography. I love the pictures. I love the Indian… I think I'm more spiritual. I mean, I love the idea of St. Francis and, you know, helping the poor but all about nature. My favorite quote is, “You can see all of heaven in a wildflower.” And I thought, well, that's that says at all, and he said, don't put down this little bird because he's a common bird. He's looked at him, and he they are beautiful. We just take so much for granted. One of the reasons why I got into that was my brother in law died. Well, a couple people died at the same time. He was an artist actually. He's in the collection here, Krishnic art (23:05). He died from AIDS. And fortunately, we had him around for a while so we could party and travel and have fun and celebrate. And he was in… he would be like the ever-ready battery when all of a sudden you think, Oh, this is it. We got a call from the hospital and then all of a sudden, I'm taking them to Key West. And we're like dancing on a dock. So, and Gary's taking them to Italy and, and all this stuff. So, I think it kind of hit me. When we came back from New York. I got really depressed because I thought, Oh, I'm a failure came back because Gary got a job at UB, and to take care of Chris. And things. Were just kind of petering out. Gary's get tired of New York. It's more fun to visit unless you're a millionaire. And I ran out of things for me to photograph. So, I said, Okay, let's go back. My parents are there. My mother and my mother really wanted me to come back. So, Chris died, and I was that on top of coming back, I got really depressed. And I just did a just a funk. I did some work. That's what jobs I taught it. You'd be taught, I took Maryann Faller’s position for a semester, and then I taught foundations first semester. And that was fun shot on a different goal album cover via Ron and did some other, you know, freelance stuff. And I said, you know what, I think I need something. I'm getting older. I need insurance. So, I need something that's more steady. So, I said, Oh, I'm gonna bite the bullet and I'm gonna go back to school, get my teaching certification. I already had my master's degree. So, I didn't have to go through that now. They have to go and get it. Masters. And so, I decided to do that. And I thought, well, you know, I had done work with SEPA when I came back, working with kids in schools, doing projects like taking teaching about careers. We did little photojournalism programs, and mostly Buffalo city schools. And that was fun, and I can do this. So then eventually, I wound up getting a job. It took a while. There were no jobs, I did struggle. And ironically, every job I've ever applied for where I've had an interview, I've always been hired some jobs I've actually walked in, and there were no openings. And I've said, I need a job. And they said, “You're hired.” And this one instance, this person did not hire me right away. And I was like, “What's going on here? Wait a minute, do you know what you're getting here?” And they didn't hire me. So, then the next year, and I kept pursuing it, pursuing it, pursuing it. There was another opening in the district that I found out where to mouth wasn't advertised. They never called me back and said, “Hey, are you still looking for a job?” What's going on? So, I was teaching it up. And then I got a call from two other schools. I got a 300 or 300 on the New York State test. So, they go by ranking and then the buffalo cities Schools. Cheryl Jackson came in first. So, she got the first choice. Someone else came in second and I came in third, her first choice she wound up going into teaching at Kensington high school. I think she said her first day, some kid whipped the eraser at her head, and then the next person ever more than went and then I was the next one. And so, I was asked to go teach at two schools in Buffalo traveled to travel between two schools. And by that time, I had been hired. And you know, when it rains, it pours. And then I got hired. I was also I walked in and during an interview that you were supposed to apply for beforehand, for West Seneca and I said, I didn't have an application. I don't have anything, but I'm here and they said, come right up in front of the line. Principal interviewed me and said, I want to hire you. So that's why I was still shocked at this other district hadn't hired me, like, “What's going on here?” Well, I think it's something with connections somebody else they probably a friend of a friend, they came first so you know…

HG: What would you say that you bring to these experiences that helps people to see your skill set. So clearly. I mean, we're in a time now where it is another situation of a dearth of jobs, especially in the arts, and to have that sort of confidence sounds pretty rare. Yeah. But it's not just confidence. It's also experience.

PW: Experience is really number one, to get as much experience on the ground level. And you got to be persistent and people don't come looking for you. Nobody comes looking for you. Nobody needs a headhunter anymore. I mean, there are headhunters for like big corporations and stuff, but not for the arts. And I mean, they're cutting arts and music out of a lot of schools. And it's shooting ourselves in the foot. They're not helping people that are helping our culture and I'm worried about our culture. I'm worried about African American culture and worried about the immigrants and worried about them maintaining their traditions falling into this trap of things and you know, coming paring corporate logos and identifying themselves through a corporate logo. And, you know, capitalists love that. Let's push that as much as we possibly can. Because kids are big customers. So, and they identify with things that are not that are not real. And the media doesn't mirror the culture, the culture mirrors the media. So, they're trying to act like what they see. They don't understand that they're actually being used. And they can't separate the fact that say you have figure like Beyoncé, and this beautiful woman, beautiful voice. Well, first of all, you can't just by dressing like her become her, she works her butt off, and she's been working her butt off since she was like, 15, you know, and they came, she came up with the hard way. It doesn't just fall in your lap. You have to be realistic. So, I think that our society is that of entitlement. And it's like, you know what, it's the law of physics, you can't get something for nothing. You have to, you know, even people who are born into money can be miserable. The other thing I would highly recommend, and this is what any successes that I've had, have come from connections. Like I said, nobody knows you're there, you have to make yourself known. So, you know, I've never had a dealer come into my studio and say, oh, knock on the door. Go, “I hear you have some interesting paintings come in and look at them.” No, I would get “Oh, so and so has recommended me to look at your work,” but they don't come after you. You still have to after that. Say, they would introduce you to the art dealer curator and make yourself known. I think the biggest criticism I've gotten from a dealer was that I didn't have enough work. He said, “You know, the problem with selling is that we have to show that you produce,” and I thought, “Well, okay, I don't know how many paintings did Mark Rothko make?” Not that I would ever compare myself to Mark Rothko. But, you know, and then I've had other and then other artists to talk to other artists, people who are really into it, and I've heard from female artists. My best friend is an artist and she's pretty successful. I don't know how you measure success, but I mean, she shows a lot and she sells, and her work goes for good money. And she's recognized and she said, reviews and art form and stuff like that. And I remember I worked for Michael Auping at the Albright Knox or he's in Dallas now Fort Worth. And he said to me, he says, “You'll never know if you're a good artist in a way this is the only history will tell.” Because you could look at, you know, like the let's see Jackson Pollock, who nobody took seriously. You know, a few people. And then you have the PR that we're saying, “Is he trying to pull a joke on us?” And then you have somebody who needs to write about it and say what he's actually doing. But you need that history in order to decide, but good old grit is the thing that works. And I think with anything, but I think it's even harder for artists because I think Americans look at…not just Americans, but they look at art as something that's something you don't really need. And they're very opinionated about it. It's not open minded. And so, you have to be true to yourself and develop your skill. You can have a great idea. But if you don't have a skill, it's going to look bad. And no matter how brilliant it is. I have worked in the physics building Fronczak Hall with Gary Nickard and Reinhard Reitzenstein, right, since then, we just kind of work well together, because we're into science. But we're not good enough at science so that we would rather do a simulacrum of science. We're more into the aesthetic of science. So, I did a series of paintings. They commissioned us to do some work for permanent installation. I did a series of paintings that have physics formula written on them, and I did that a long time ago. I think I did it because I just liked the aesthetic of how that lettering looks. So, what I would do is I would take in the old days, I would take… and I think actually you guys have one painting. These deer heads are clashing. The formula for that is about two bodies in cosmology, two bodies that are drawn together by gravity. And so, I put that on there. And then I had another one that actually, I sold to a museum in Memphis, I think it is. And I'm not sure but I think flying fish records bought it because it's a painting flying fish, but it has the formula on it. And here's an example of bias in in the art world with women. And I've had this happen a couple of times, and I've actually had people act shocked. And that is that one painting, the deer head used to hang in, in our apartment in Brooklyn, a huge, huge ceiling, huge walls, and it sat next to a Barbara S photograph, and people would come in and it was mostly men. Both would come in and it was mostly men, curators, or who were friends and one of the things that I found with some people was that you're not allowed to be more than one thing. If you're good cook, you can't be a good artist, too. Not everybody, but and I don't know where that mentality comes from, because I also have people who think that it's great that somebody can do more than one thing well, but unfortunately, I didn't have enough confidence and I let them get to me. And they would come in and say, I had this happen to me with a different painting in a show, say, “Who did that painting?” And I'd say I did. And all of a sudden I get, oh, why cause women can't do a big aggressive type thing and paint with ferocity and the habit a couple times, oh, my God, I'm really I can't believe this because I've always been told you can I can do anything; I’m equal. No, I mean, unfortunately. And I think that that's why some women give up and just say, you know, I'll just stay by the wayside and then if a woman is assertive, they're called different names. Whereas if a man himself, you have to be assertive. You don't have to be aggressive. But if a woman does that, she's considered aggressive. That's like, “Oh, she’s nasty. She's a bitch, you know, and she's got major ego.” Now, it's a two edged sword there. So, you have to be careful and not be discouraged. Because I've had, you know, I've had people tell me friends and where I've been around thousands of artists, I've applied for 200 grants, not me personally. But they'll say they've applied for 200 grants. They don't give up and then they got that one grant. So, you keep working at it and working at it. You can't give up and then later on, as you get older, you start realizing what the priorities are. And you might want to talk to an older artist and say, “Well, what would you go back and do differently?” And they might say something like, well, first of all, make yourself schedule. My biggest problem is time. My personal problem is time. I don't have time, because when I make art, and I'm sure many other artists do this is that I can't just go in and spend a half an hour and then leave, I have to go in and get into the zone. Because it's for me, it's like meditating or It's fun. It's enjoyable. It's also painful but, but there's nothing like that one painting that I did the five fish one I think was one of them. I remember I painted that in the in the vault over we're halls used to be nice to have a studio there. And I remember coming out of the studio, panting like a beagle, just chasing just chase rabbits through a field. And I thought, there's no feeling like this is better than drugs. And anybody who does drugs is crazy. You pick up a guitar, cook, run something else because there's nothing like that adrenalin. And then you know, it's good. You know, it works. And sometimes you work on it, and it's because you didn't put yourself into it. Or maybe you don't have the skill that you're trying to do. So you need to go figure that skill out or pay somebody to do it for you, you know, I don't do my own, I used to stretch my own canvases, nobody could do them as well. And I couldn't afford, you know, for someone else to do it. But now they make them really good gallery stuff. And it doesn't matter anymore. I used to be into mixing the rabbit hide glue and putting it on the canvas. I loved the whole process. And then I thought, “Well, you know what, I'm just delaying. I'm getting into the craft.” I think it's good to do that. Like, like when you're in school, so you know what the process is. And you should do that, just like cooking, you should know how to, you know, don't just open up a bag and pour it out. You should know the process of how it got there. And you appreciate it more. And that's the fun part. Like actually my moon pictures, the first moon picture that I did, and the reason why I got into the moon while…we're also growing up we were into astronomy, we had a telescope and when we go out on the porch and look at stuff and my brother and I would try to find planets and we were interesting into nature. And when I think about it, my students are not very curious. Like, do you know, I'm giving you information that took me 50 years to get, and you're getting it for free? Now, I was like, “Well, I don't know, maybe I would have been like that when I was their age.” But more likely not. But I think that's something that's learned. It's taught that knowing stuff is fun.

HG: You know, you also have to be in an educational system that reinforces that learning is not work. And a lot of these kids are growing up at a time where, you know, they're never taught to love to read, because reading is always a chore.

PW: Exactly, you know. So, it's in some ways, it's them in some ways it's the system's there and that's true. Well, and I tell kids, you know, with math, I struggled with math in the beginning and then all of a sudden I got it because I had so people helped me, link my brother, some other people, my mother, and it's like, I missed a step. And once you miss a step because it's not intuitive, you have to go back. So, once you once you go back and get help, but math, I love math now, because it's like a puzzle, you are figuring something out. And this is a challenge. And if you look at people from other cultures, they don't get into the math. Like we get into it, they go for the basic stuff, fractions most important things. And I watched a program where there was there was a Japanese classroom, their textbook is about a quarter of an inch that our textbooks are like, you know, five inches thick. And what the teacher did was they showed what the difference between our cultures was that the teacher would put the answer on the board, and then you had to come up with the problem. And I thought that was brilliant. And they said, that's how they learn. And they're competitive, but they win. They win with accolades, you know, it's all intrinsic. But I think we get hit over the head because of our curriculum that's pushed on us. These teachers don't want to have to teach this stuff. Same thing with reading. I see kids who love to read when it's something that they can relate to. And one of the problems was reading in schools too, when they’re little, teachers read to them. They need to have the kids do the reading. And I think kids will actually enjoy reading when they're little because it's all fun. It's great stuff. But something happens. And I think you're right, it becomes a chore, because now it's about testing. Now, they're worried that, you know, it's like, “Who cares?” I know, the most successful people on the planet didn't do well in school.

HG: But that's not really offered up as a perspective the same way from the school system. I know.

PW: Well, you know, Sir Ken Robinson, have you ever listened to any of this? You should listen to him on Ted, or he's an educator, philosopher, kind of guy, English guy. He's really absolutely brilliant. And he's funny. He was talking about how there are, you know, the different intelligences and we're all meant for different things. You know, you there's no way I'm going to be a pharmacist. I can't think of anything more boring, but you might think that that is brilliantly fun and wonderful that you can help people because you differently. And he said that there was this girl in England who the mother asked the counselor if he would come and talk to the teachers and the counselors about how they could get her to do better in school because they were friends. And he said, Sure, you know, come and see what we can do. So, they were all there and they're talking, and then the counselor and the mother and he went out, discipline. We're going to go out here for a minute, which is going to have a little chat. And he said that there was music playing in the room. They had left the girl in and he said that he happened to look through the window through from the door and saw her dancing. And he said, “Ah, she's a dancer, enroll her in dance classes immediately.” And the mother did. And now she is forgot her name. But she's a famous choreographer. She, she did Cats in London. You know, I mean, that's what it's about. It's like, you know, I have, I have kids who just, they just want to work on cars, they love that they love the mechanical stuff. They don't want to know necessarily what a capital of Burma is. Although it's a good idea to know those things. I just meant that for hypothetically, but I just heard somebody talking from the business point of view on the radio, he said that it's fine to go to Harvard for philosophy, you're probably going to do okay anyway, because you wouldn't have gotten into Harvard if you didn't have some kind of money or skills or whatever. But actually, you're better off going to a much more inexpensive school community and learning a skill. There's a huge drought as far as our dearth of people who don't know how to do things like tile, lay tile, make bricks, make jewelry. A lot of this stuff is outsourced. That's the other thing. I'm gonna tell you something funny, the older I get… Winston Churchill said a young man who isn't a liberal has no heart, said an old man who wasn't a conservative has no brain. I thought in a way, he's kind of right. But I think what happens is that you become more aware of what's going on, and how we're being screwed into thinking when we think we got a nice big piece of the cake. We don't even have a corner of the cake. My father has this theory that the people who were in charge of the world live out on a yacht in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and they're the ones that are running everything. And I talked to Gary about this, and I thought, well, you know, capitalism should be a good thing, but it isn’t. It's not working because it doesn't treat people fairly. It's like, “I’m more equal than you are.” There's this privilege and keeping the people down and then when I saw and this is actually not that new, that percentage of the one percenters. I remember learning about that a long time ago. And people getting away with paying for politicians, either side, anybody I mean? When I think about the BP oil spill, whatever happened to that, why aren’t they talking about that? They gave $800,000 to Obama and to the other party to hedge their bets. But that's to take money from a foreign government as a foreign government. How did they get away with that?

HG: So, I want to talk a little bit about your work, being both a painter, and a photographer, and a film maker. How do you identify with all these different mediums that you work in?

PW: Well, it’s hard because I think it's kind of like, I want to be able to do a lot of things so that if I have an idea, I think, “sound. I might do an animation.” Or like take film footage from let's say some nature. I did a lot of nature stuff. And I would take it and add like, different like a strange kind of music to it like I had kangaroos hopping. Actually, this was Tony Conrad's class, I would take film footage of kangaroos hopping and put it to like, the German marching music. And then I had the Germans marching and I had it to the Skippy kangaroo stuff, but that was as a student, but now I like sound. I'm really… I play guitar. I really like music. And I play guitar and I like sound effects. I always thought it would be cool to be a Foley person. You know the people that make all the sound effects with coconuts together and stuff like that. I want to be everything. If there's no way you can do that, though, I don't think that an artist should have to be just a painter, or just a photographer. I think you're an artist, and you use whatever medium you want. And I think that that's becoming more how everything's evolving. Because I remember a long time ago talking to some German artists, and they said, “You can't do that. You have to be just a painter, or just a photographer, you can't be both.” And I thought, well, that's baloney. You're an artist. It's like, I'm a chef, you can't tell me I can no, I can only cook Chinese food. I can cook French or cook, whatever. I want…Japanese. And so, I think that in some way, the art world is fascist. You know, they're just like, so controlling, and it's like, you have to do it this way, or it's no way and like, there's no rules. I mean, the rule is, is that it should have an idea and that's it. Have some kind of an idea. And whatever if it's successful or not, whatever, that's, that's another story. But I think art is about play and curiosity and finding out what's making that thing making the bushes shake. You turn around and it stops. And it's like, wait a minute, I want to find out what's in there. And I got really into bird watching because I know how these things happen. I think it's just like, like I said, I think when you're when you're little to look, my first adventure as a thief was when I made was to watch my grandmother dig up bulbs, and replant them and work in a garden. And so, I thought, “Oh, that's, that's something I want to do.” So, I would go to our neighbors and I dig up the bulbs, and I bring them home, and I plant them in our garden. And we lived upstairs for my aunt and my aunt would say, “Where are these flowers coming from?” And I didn't realize that you’re not supposed to steal people's bulbs. So, I just wanted to do that. I think I like to see change, you have control over something, you know, I'm making a plant grow by planting seed and then watching it grows fascinated. So I think the digging soil, if you watch a kid, for example, my art classes, I teach him how to draw. And I try to get them to get the technique down. And they keep saying “I can't draw, I can't draw, I can't draw.” So if you can put a pencil down on the paper, drag it across the paper, you draw it, you know, it's how to train yourself to look at and nobody's born knowing how to do it. It's like a language. And this is just the skill later and you can change it, you do whatever you want. Because it's a form of communication. It's like writing, okay, where you put the words and how you put the words it's gonna make a difference and what kind of information you want people to get. Same thing with music. And, and then I thought, you know, problem with art, visual art. Maybe because of the internet now it's a lot more accessible. It's not accessible. You can't see it. You can't. You have to go see the Mona Lisa, the actual Mona Lisa, you have to be in the loop. If you want to hear Miles Davis, you don't have to go to the blue note. You can just put that CD on and listen to miles there's you're not gonna experience them in person anymore. Of course, he’s not around anymore. But that reaches the entire planet, my art is not going to reach entire. So, then I started thinking what is something everybody sees? Everybody sees the moon, the stars, the clouds, everybody sees animals. Okay, so one day, I said, “Maybe something… maybe the moon I want everybody to see. I want to paint the moon.” And I think because I wanted to do something tedious to develop my skill as a painter and prove that I can do it so they don't have to do it anymore. Now I can just start throwing paint around, but thoughtfully, you know, like, even Jackson Pollock when he was drinking his paint, he was conscious about where he was dripping his paint because you could make a mess. It could look like mud. But his were beautiful, like mine designs. And so and then you know that to do that feel so good. So, my kids when they see something like that, like, “I want to do that, I want to do that.” And when we go outside and we do it, I mean, they're in heaven. Because there's no judgment. You know, there's no, it's just, it's just action. And it's like dancing. I heard the other day was the reason why people like music so much is because it makes you move. And humans want to move. They love the act of dancing. Moving around. So anyway, I went on Gary's computer screen. He has this big monitor. And there is a telescope that you can access through NASA so you can look at the moon, what not live but kind of live. And so, I clicked on the site, and there's nothing there. Oh, I just saw black, some scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, and all of a sudden it starts coming in. And it's huge. And the detail, the resolution is so amazing. It scared the crap out of me. Oh my god. It's like standing right outside the moon. And I was like, “This is unbelievable. This is like the sublime.” This isn't a vacuum. This is us, we're out in space. We're in, you know, people are talking, arguing over stuff. And it's like, there are supernovas that are exploding in the universe. What are you reading about? You know and looking at this.

I think it's kind of like eating it. Now I need to eat it. So, I'm going to paint it. It's kind of like a fear of fear of nature, fear of the unknown, of the sublime and, and death. So, I took some pictures from the telescope, you can do this cool thing where you can go over the planet. You can go over the moon, and they'll show you different vectors. You can look at it from above from the side and go into craters. So, I decided to isolate one I thought, Okay, this is going to be good exercise …off pure insanity. And what I decided to do I used to sometimes I would project and trace just to get a basic placement. It worked out and because then I, you know, I don't consider it cheating. I just consider it. I'll pretend them for me or I'm using a camera obscura. So anyway, I just wanted to get the basic placement because I'm not used to this yet. And then I said, Okay, now I'm going to now I'm going to start painting without doing that, because I don't like the look of the projector. I don't want it to be too perfect. So, I started doing that and that forces you to look even harder at what you're painting. So, I started doing it with birds’ nests. Now all my neighbors are bringing me birds’ nests. And I'm drawing these nests and I'm going in and out and all these little tangles. And I think in a way it's kind of like knitting, and that you can do and but you can't watch TV at the same time, I used to edit film and watch TV at the same time. You can't do that. You can listen to stuff, you can listen to music. Some of my paintings have a name like that first moon painting is David Sedaris. Because I was listening to David Sedaris when I was his first book and laughed so hard. You can't listen to David Sedaris at the gym because you'll be running on the treadmill. And also, you burst out laughing and people look at you like you're crazy. And I wanted to get good at painting so I could say I could paint in practice. No, you know, we kind of learned how to paint in college. I think we learned more how to draw. And I had some good drama that she was a good drawing teacher. Harvey Braverman excellent teacher. He said, I was just, I was his best and worst student at the same time. Because whenever I worked, it was the best work, but I was too lazy. And I thought “No, that's true.” It's because you know if it's giving up, you know, if you don't know what you're doing. So that's why that's why developing skills is really helpful. Because even if you don't have a good idea, you can sit down and just practice drawing a leaf or something like that. Look at How-To book or look on YouTube, see how to draw something. And it's like, wow, look how much further I've gotten. Just from doing that. When I play guitar, I do that I'll look up a song and I'll look up how somebody plays it. And everybody plays it a different way, which drives me crazy. So, I just give up. And I just figured out my way. So I think textures and you know, in teaching, you get better, hopefully, at what you do, and working with textures, things that you can touch, but also going back to the moon… Okay, so now everybody sees the moon. But now everybody's gonna see this painting. And it's a darn good painting, even to the state. Like what to think about, you know, when you look at something that has You go back and still say it still works. I did a painting once. I was getting into just putting like rough surfaces down, and then painting on top of them. And I was doing this kind of weird, creepy, animals and I did this animal. It was like a prehistoric marsupial. And then I got from I got a lot of books, a lot of animal books. And I kind of like the idea of cartoons. And I do like, some pop surrealism stuff. Those guys are really good. I mean, they're really skilled. You have to really skilled to draw like that, and they practice all the time. But it's kind of not my thing. It's a little too cartoony. So, I did this painting of this creature, and he's looking at fireflies, and I just made it up. And I think I got that from like, you know, looking at illustrations, and this oil painting and wax and stuff. And he’s looking at fireflies and he's going like this with his eyes open fascinated like he sees these fireflies in the glow from the firefighters lighting his face up. And to this day, it's in our house to this day It makes me laugh. I had it in a show. Actually, it was in the Albright Knox. Some woman called and asked me how much how much I wanted for it. And I think I sent $1,000 or something like that, which never, it was about this big. I said, “I'll take $1,000,” she says “What? That's way too much money.” I just got I'm like, Oh my God. I was like, “Okay, 800, that's too much. By the way. What do you think it should be worth? You know how long it took me to paint this painting.” So, I said, “Well, you know, think about it.” Probably I'm not gonna go any lower than that. And I thought it's not meant to be. It's a matter of fact, the flying fish painting I was talking about, when it was sold. I was actually kind of disappointed. I thought, “Oh, I'm never gonna see it again.” Well, I have transparency of it, but it's not the same thing. It's like seven feet by three feet. And I thought it made me so happy to look at. And that's how I felt about this other painting, was that to this day, when I look at it, I just laugh. I did another painting like that a smaller one. And I went with my friend to a…I forgot the name of the place… some fancy art supply place in Brooklyn that builds frames and canvases. And they had this beautiful square canvas with linen on it for $50; on sale for $50. And back then that was a lot of money for me. So, I said, “Heck, I'm gonna buy it.” And I decided that I was going to put another kind of weird prehistoric creature on there. It's like, they're all furry, and they have buck teeth. And, you know, and this one, he's looking at bees. He's looking at a beehive and the bees are flying around his head and he's got this goofy look on his face like, “Oh, cool bees.” And that makes me laugh. Probably my biggest inspiration, I think starts when you're little, is from the cartoons that we used to watch. And they were like, those 20s cartoons with like jazz music and jack teagarden type of you know, muted horn. And I just love that the way that stuff looked. And so, I didn't like I didn't like when that kind of canned looking, not very well drawn stuff like the Flintstones, it wasn't. I could tell the difference between the styles. So, then I decided, yeah, I want to continue to do the saw. I'm really getting into charcoal. That just now I mean, it started like three years ago. Charcoal drawing paper, love paper. Really nice drawing paper. I think. I just love the materials. And I love…I like it started with a nice base, and then now I'm adding like, “Oh, this little bone would look good on here.” It's almost like making a direct bow in a way like a magic trap. Whoa. I'm gonna start adding like all These magic elements, feathers and I even have, I bought some cheese that's wrapped in chestnut leaves from France. When I unwrapped it, I saw this these leaves on all these it looked great on a painting or stuck on a piece of paper. So, I had these leaves… well, the first set of leaves my dog ate business still had cheese on it. So, the other set I have in the refrigerator, to keep them from drying out. And I'm going to be using those on putting those down. So, I think that came from Picasso, seeing him… I don't know if it was the movie or photograph because I'm absolutely in love with Picasso. His boldness and sexuality is, you know, absurdness, but he's so smart. And that he took a fishbone he had eaten a fish and like a flounder the spine, the bone structure stays intact. So you can just pull it right up in the meat will stay behind the fishbowls and then I think you've dipped him in ink or something like that, and then laid them down on a piece of paper and made a print with an event. That is play that is so much fun. Where do I sign up? Where do we get a job like that? You know, I want to be able to win the lottery. So that's all I can do is just play with the stuff that that's how things are discovered. I mean, that's what you know, in the case, somebody probably touch some charcoal from having, like, a fire and you get on your hand and then you touch a wall and you say, “Oh, look what happened.” And I also like the challenge of not having fancy stuff, you can have it, but it's there if you need it, but I would rather you know, Pat Bazelon…I used to drive her crazy because she would have the most the fanciest and most expensive equipment, like tripods and light stands and clamps and I'd say, “I'm gonna use that branch over there.” And I'm going to put a piece of cardboard from over there and I'm going to tape it on with masking tape and when look ridiculous, but it worked. I was like, I'd rather improvise, because I need the challenge girls on board. I think that's, that's why artists make art because we're gonna be bored. You know what kids say to me, they come in, they come in the next day to school. And they will come over to me with their sketchbooks and they'll say, look what I did last night, I was so bored. And they open it up. And it's like, amazing picture and I'm like, see, that's what they need to do. Instead of relying on a video game or whatever, I mean, even video games in a way that kind of like porn. It's like, it's like it stopped already. It's a little bit relief. It was a little challenge. And in some games, some video games are not video games, but apps you can learn a lot. I learned a lot from Angry Birds. And I'll tell you how angry birds teaches you not to keep doing the same thing over and over again. Try something different. It's not going to work if you have this thing. In your head, where you think, “If I do it again, it's gonna work this time.” You know, like a snuggle at I call them a call, like lotto stare, like a scratch off your numbers and the numbers aren't there. But if you stare at it long enough, maybe the numbers will change. No, it's not gonna change. So, give up, try something different. Try something radically different. And every time I've tried something… radically different success.

HG: So, anything else you'd like to say about your art and why you create what you create?

PW: Like I said, I'd like to play with things and do a lot of thinking, a lot of thinking, and then even more thinking, and then I stare out the window, and I look at the sky. Sometimes I'll do a storyboard. When I do photography, what I usually do is I'll draw stuff before I set up a scene. I have a set of pinhole pictures I'll show you that from different residences. Then I'll plan out how I want my work to make a set of graphic. Really, if you think about it, you know Gregory Knutson (01:01:47). You know, when he first came out, I was really jealous. I'm so jealous of him. Because I thought, “Oh my God, he's, he's figured it out. He's got this great stuff.” And then I decided, yeah, it's not really me. You know, it's him, and then he does these big films still type pictures, thinking, No, you know what? I'm over that. Let him have that. I'm more now into spirituality. I just want to be I know I'm going to wind up back in the ground. So, I'm just preparing myself. And looking like, to me art is a portal that takes you into another place of ideas and thought, and otherwise it's just an illustration. And illustrations are fine, but they have a different place. You know, it’s very conservative like even when I used to draw in school I used to draw small and my teachers would say get a big pad…draw it big be more expressive big lines, big lines, but I was like too tight. Because I was worried about… I wanted things to be realistic looking. Gary and Reinhard got me involved. Gary helped me a lot. He got me involved with a UB and doing the Commission for the physics department. And I was a good fit because my work was already about science. And I had done physics formulas. So, what they did was they just told me what formulas they wanted. And I had the paintings themselves our skies from other paintings like Constable, or I just kind of either stole a little section out and painted it or borrowed a little bit from here and there, but I wanted to look kind of atmospheric. And whenever I saw an opportunity, looking for work, and I said, oh, they're looking for birds’ nests, or they're looking for artists who work with mixed mediums in an abstract way. Okay. I'll send some pictures or people over to the studio or ask people for their advice. And then they can direct you. They might say, “I just happen to know that there's a show in California right now.” Or juried show. That's always that's a good thing to get into also, because the people who jury the show are usually curators from another from another gallery or Museum, and they'll see your work and you'll go, “Oh, this person's interesting. Watch for them.” And now, I recommend, you definitely have to have a web page. I have a webpage, but it has nothing on it. So, I'm going to be putting that's why that file is small, because that was going to be the stuff was going to put on the webpage. So, you should have a web page and now with the way the internet works, you could have links you had people go to your stuff, and now you could sell work online. I actually bought work online. It's time! This job is a soul sucker! And you know, by the time you get home, I mean you're dealing with 123 14 year old kids Teenagers today, most of them are at like 14-year-olds, and then the eight this new APPR stuff that they put on us. It's kind of tough. And I don't want to make excuses. I, I don't want that to be my excuse. And I think it's because to me making art is the most important thing anybody can do. You have to make art some way, whether you're a writer, or you have to connect something. I mean, if you look at other cultures like Japan, they worship their creative people. Go to Mexico or wouldn't have to pay taxes if I lived in Mexico because ours don't pay Texas artists don't pay taxes in Ireland, artists or writers. The trade-off is you have to donate something, make work and donate or whatever. And I thought, well, that's really important. And then you maintain traditions, but I just feel that even my female friends if I, if I think about how they're kind of marginalized as artists, they're around the big guys who smoke cigars and hang out with Larry Gogan… You gotta find a way around that. Going through the backdoor, make friends with the wife, you know, it's sexist, but it's…we don't have that much time. So, I think that about promoting yourself, inviting people over, for example, like the from the university, people are in town, go see the galleries that are here. They say to make yourself a big fish in a small pond first before you try to hit the cities. Now I even know lots of galleries who are moving out to California because they can't afford to be in New York anymore. And California is where they're buying art. So that tells you something. The other thing is that you're competing with the graduates from Yale who have like you pay all that tuition to go to Yale so that you can be assured that you're going to have your thesis show is going to be at like Matthew Marks gallery or something like that. And then you're in like fun. So, the school that you go to makes big difference. Being a trust fund kid helps. I think it comes down to the product. If it's a product, it's like, what are you presenting? How do you want to get? What do you want? When I was little, and I used to be in art school and people would ask me, what kind of artists do you want to be? And I used to think it would be fun to be an illustrator, you know, to draw birds. And I actually went to college with somebody whose father was a bird illustrator for Encyclopedia Britannica. And I thought, “How exciting!” You get to travel all over the world and take pictures of birds and draw them like Audubon, you know, do other stuff. And the stories he would tell about going to Costa Rica, bird you see people that meet Indians and natives. Well, that would be exciting or working for National Geographic, but it's so hard and you're gonna watch out for bugs and, and actually, one time we went to Northern Ireland in 1989, for the anniversary of Bloody Sunday, and there are all kinds of journalists there because they had festivals and music and protests and we went with the Irish People Newspaper. And we were with real photo-journalists, little tags where they could get into anywhere. And this one guy was a friend of Gary's bill bigger, healing around wound up getting killed at the World Trade Center. He ran in with the firemen get images and heat the building came down on him. So interestingly, his camera survived. He had a film camera and a digital camera. And both of them they were still images on there. And they found him about some days later, but he was he wasn't evaporated like a lot of other people. That was said, you know, you go to you never expect to get killed in your own city, but Palestine have been shot at by Israeli soldiers, Palestinians and all kinds of stuff. So anyway, we're in Northern Ireland. And at that point, this is exciting because there's like you're not allowed you're not supposed to take pictures and there's the British soldiers and then the Ulster Soldiers, and we went to this one protest where these kids were tearing off tarmac off the street, and they were throwing it at the soldiers. They were in these tanks are these things that called, say ‘Pigs’. They're kind of an armored car, and they shoot plastic bullets at people back. And I thought, “This is really exciting.” I was not scared. I kept taking pictures. And I've had my camera out of a chip shop, and I'm taking pictures. And these little boys came up to me and said, Hey, you want to get some good pictures? And I said, Sure, come with us. So, I started running with them. And there's hundreds of people running, the tanks are coming down the street shooting. And one of the kids I was with got shot in the leg and they dragged him off. And I just kept running. And I said, “Oh my god,” and it felt fun and exciting. And I'm running and running and running. And I don't know how I got over a fence, but I got over a fence and I could hear Gary and these other people going, “Where's Patty? Where's Patty? Where’s Patty?” And I was already on the other side of the fence before they got there. I just said I don't know how I got here. Okay. I love it. So, you can see how these journals become addicted to the rush of that anyway. So, the pictures from something like that and experience, you send them out, you send them to places with a little story. And this is what I was told, did some work for Town and Country magazine. And they said, “Bring in your work. Let's see your slides.” And then you start getting little jobs from something like that. Look at Nancy J. Parisi. She started off doing little jobs. And now she's doing really great stuff, big stuff. And so, you start out small, take whatever you can get. The other thing that I was taught is never, never pass up an opportunity show. Even if it's in a bathroom, show your work, make that the most incredible bathroom that you could possibly imagine. Never pass up an opportunity. And once I get this new body of work together, I'm gonna start cashing in my chips. So, I'm going to contact the galleries I used to work with because it was a big hiatus when I started teaching. So did things, did show with Gary and Reinhard and we also had a show in Montreal, the birds’ nests and the moon, work with other people. But like I said, “Take what you whatever comes your way.” Well, you know, I don't know, folks, oh, I don't know if that's worth the effort. Unless you can get people to come and look at them. come there and look at the work. Otherwise, there's gonna be oatmeal all over your painters, you know? Like, I don’t like that painting. Pllth. So, when I was in high school, I auditioned for a musical at our school, and I didn't get the thing. They did offer me to be a voice offstage. And I thought, “No, I don't want to be off stage.” And I went home and told my mother, she says, “So did you get the roll?” And I said no. I said, “But they offered me this thing to sing offstage.” And she said, because I had this real. They wanted a real flourish, she kind of voice and I said, I told her about it, she says, and you didn't take it. She said, “Don’t you ever do that again! You take that role, and you blow them out of their seats with that voice!” And I thought ‘she's right’. Because when I was in sixth grade, and I was in Buffalo Theater Workshop, before that, I was in sixth grade, I was in a little play. And I had like, maybe five lines. And after the play, people were coming up to me, “You are amazing. You were fantastic.” And that's why, you know, you've seen these actors and like, in movies, like they're in it for like, two, three minutes, but they blow everybody else out of the water. That's your craft. You need to like, suck it up. And so, I'll never do that again. And I think about even like, artists have talked to me, Doug and Mike Starn actually told me I showed at the gallery that they showed at in Soho. And it was a pay to play gallery, where you know, you join it, and they told me…and I was working for them at the time, and we're also friends and they were really, really nice, nice guys. They're always giving good advice anytime you need it. Their first show in New York was at the same gallery. And they said, “Never pass up an opportunity, even if you have to pay for it. Because the whole point is to get people up to look at it.” So, I think that's the problem is to get people to you got to get people to see your work, somehow. Now with the internet, it's so much easier, phenomenal. You know, if we had that back then that would have been really helpful. put the word out, you know, Rich Tomasello?  Well, he's a colleague. He works in Lafayette. Now, I've known him for a long time, he actually went to the high school that I teach. His teacher was one of my colleagues. And he's got the right attitude, and you could grow, and you get better and better and better and better. And one of the things this is like if you make a body of work, and then you don't show it, or you stop… you have to take it seriously. Like it's a job. It's your life. It's your career. I don't consider teaching my career. I’m an artist first; teaching is for health insurance. And I'll do the absolute best I can. I mean, maybe I could do a little bit better, but I don't have it in me. I try. You know, I mean, there's so many things are super bureaucratic. I'm just not a bureaucrat. I hate all that paperwork. I think with art two is that you can connect anything through art, anything, music, literature, math, everything, your design and I start out the day with the first day of class, I say everything you have, because somebody designed it, somebody created that with a certain aesthetic, depending on where you live and what your culture is. All of that is it's all learned. Something is a symbol for something. Look at Doc Martin shoes, or boots. And you see if it's paired with something it means one thing it's paired with something else means it's a signifier. And if you can master that and start freaking be observant. I think one of the problems is that parents discourage kids. Going into art because they think you're not gonna make any money. I think now, you have a lot better chance of making money in art because of design that they don't outsource, where they make it, maybe. But you still need designers. I have a lot of students who are designers, and they love it. They designed everything from like really cool furniture, that some of them are graphic designers, some of our environmental planners for cities, and so you got to know and you got to get out there and watch a lot of movies because they have to accomplish… each picture is a is an artwork, each frame, well good movies. Some of my earliest paintings, I took pictures off the television screen of like Hercules movies with Steve Reeves, the Italian ones, the recording ones. And I actually liked the green of the television screen. I thought that that worked well but then what I would do is I would paint those, I painted them in monochrome. I think because I was just fascinated by, you know, mythology, and the campiness on kitsch of like ‘spaghetti’ of the mythology movie. Like that close up with a whole group, a woman's green face with the Medusa snakes, fancy hairdos, you know, pop culture, though I think just about everything can be interesting. It's just how you approach it now you got to market yourself you have to treat yourself like a business and record everything and go “Oh, now I wonder where that photo went.” Donate your artwork.

HG: What's your feeling on that about donating to auctions and that sort of thing?

PW: Well, after a while, it depends Gary's against it. It depends on how much you can afford to give up if it's something like a print, photographic print, or an archival digital print. Yeah, but after a while, and I think it depends on the on the place, you know, I definitely people who helped you succeed, like SEPA and Hall Walls. I think that that when you get really big worried about that people who are really big, I say Cindy Sherman, if you start getting to one place, you're gonna have to give to so many others. And I think that becomes a burden on the artist. So, Doug and Mike Starn, I think SEPA at the time they asked me to ask Dr. Mike if they would donate a piece, I think was to see but so I asked them, and they said, You know what? They never showed us. We would if they'd showed us, but they never showed us. “They never showed you? Oh, my God because they used to show everybody you know all the new the newest people as well.” That's a good lesson. Well, I was in a show at Halls a million years ago and donated an etching, and it wound up in William F. Buckley’s house. You know who he is?

HG: Yeah.

PW: He’s so conservative, I always thought that was funny. Yeah, probably because I think it was the Triceratops goes with communism. So, he probably had a funny take on it.

HG: Are there any other needs that you can articulate that you've experienced throughout your career that the larger community can provide you with?

PW: Venue, definitely need feedback. Yeah, I think that the publicity, it's always good. Like I said, with, you know, with the internet now, everybody can see your stuff. I have an Art Net a couple of places that I look, and I go, “Oh, my God, that's my friend!” And they're selling, they sold the original, or they still have the original but to make prints from that you can buy for $150. And you think, “Wow, that's great.” But I think that what happened to artists is that they have I think that they've done a big disservice to art with Sotheby's and Christie's with this overblown pricing of art like it's 100 million dollars for a living artist? It's like…that's crazy. What where's that coming from?

HG: Yeah, it's art as a as a product… and capitalism.

PW: I mean, that's just, I mean as a corporate logo, Jeff Koons, I think is an abomination. Because he's bought right into that. He used to be a bad boy, but now he's just one of them.

HG: What do you think about Shepard Fairey and Obey?

PW: Well, it's interesting. I think he started off with a good thing. But now it's like Banksy.

HG: And now, yeah, and definitely, like, it's so fascinating about the Obey thing, especially is that a certain point it really became this brand clothing line.

PW: Mm hmm.

HG: That now everybody's wearing it without getting the joke. Oh, yeah. You know, like, everything says Obey.

PW: Right. Right.

HG: And even the labels they Obey propaganda. Yeah. And but it's but it's more like it's Nike. Can you still call it a critique if you're making money hand over fist from it?

PW: No, no, no. When I went to high school, I went to Nardin. The girls were rich, and I wasn't rich. So, I couldn't afford the kind of clothes those girls wore. And the real preppy and they would wear Papagallos shoes and they would wear sweaters with monograms on them and I'm like, “That's not me.” So, you decided to come the X-class. And I would start hanging around with girls who are like me. We go to Toronto and buy, like, cool skirts or stuff that was like, I want to I don't want to say mod, but more non-preppy, you know more individualistic, and because preppy is like a uniform. And it means “My daddy has lots of money.” We even had a girl who had driver drop her off at school. And I take the city bus, they haven't been green pass and I get on Hertel and take the city bus. My brother went to Canisius we take the city bus to downtown what get off the bus on Elmwood and walk to school. I mean, we could survive. We know how to survive. But there were other kids like that which was good. And Nardin was actually was pretty good school. But they didn't have art. There was no art. Now they do. Yeah, a lot of prep. A lot of private schools did not have art. You have to take that separately somewhere else because it's about prep about getting into college, but it was. And then I transferred to Amherst later on because we moved out to Amherst, and it was right down the street. And I went for driver read and typing. And I fell in love with this school. So cool. They had scuba diving and like, I want to take scuba diving and he had art and that my art teacher who was one of my biggest inspirations. Like I said, the role timing taught you how to draw and right we used to cut our own mats. You know, even now, I think what teachers are doing is that they are they're doing everything for the kids. I tell my colleagues, “Don't cut mats for the kids, how will they learn how to do it if you do it for them?” But they're in a hurry, and they want to be able to do it and make sure it's done right. But we learned how to measure when or how to use math, drawing, or how to measure the math board. I tell the kids go ahead and use your phone if you need to use calculator for that. But you should still know how to do that yourself. This is part of the process. You know, we didn't have those, so we have to do it the other way. But we made slide rules and stuff like that. I have no idea how to use a slide rule, but I know other people do. I know a lot of photographers used to slide rules. When I first started at the Brooklyn Museum, they show me how you use a slide rule for when you use a bellows on a camera that takes longer for the light to travel through the bellow. So, you have to measure the distance from the object or to the front of the lens to the back of the thing, and then figure out your F-stop and shutter speed and all that stuff. I'm like, okay, but after a while, we got figured out. Actually, somebody taught me before there were light meters. If you have two lights shining on something and you want to make sure it's even. You put a card up and you make sure that the shadows area. Aha. So, you don't even need a light meter. It's like “Well, that's pretty cool.” You need to be able to have some tools in your in your pocket. I don't hardly use my phone. I use my phone mostly for apps. I don't even call anybody… once in a while. Texts take too much work. Don’t text, just call me. I think it's, you know, it depends on what you're used to and what you grew up with. It's not about the medium, it's about the message. I feel as though I want to just keep experimenting and not be afraid. And you know what, if something doesn't work out, put it in the closet and keep working. And then working with found objects that's really become, you know, fun for me because I hate waste. Just hate this. Like, I want to throw this button away. I want to keep it, or this could go into a collage. And I tell my students and anybody else really, but good art is clever. A good art is something that's you go, huh? Look at it. And sometimes it doesn't work. Sometimes it does not That's going to work. I don't go ‘aha’ for every Picasso. I do go, ‘aha’ over every single Mark Rothko. But that's because I get what he's doing. If you don't know what the artist his intention is, I think that can be hard. Gary was in London a couple years ago, and he said he was standing in front of a piece at a Mark Rothko show, and a little boy, this is just, you know, this is the difference between Americans and Europeans, this little boy said to his father, “What's painting about?” and his father said, “The imminence of death.” Wow, that's amazing! Here, I can't imagine somebody say. So that's the other thing is like being innovative. That's what I think about really good comedians is that they are so good at observing. That's why you laugh because she's like, “I missed that. Wow, they are really sharp!” And you just take it for granted and the way they present it is hysterical. You know, I think one of the other things to that I've become very aware of with teaching teenagers is what happens at home and how they are neurotic because they think they should have something that they don't need. And they feel as though they're failures if they don't have it, or they'll just give up. It's like, “If I can't have it, that that's going to be who I am.” Like, people who think that they're going to have children, because they are an extension of themselves, are doing that child big disservice. It's the worst thing you can do. And then that child then comes to me, and I'm thinking, “Oh, my gosh, there's no way I can undo this.” And not just me, but other teachers, and everything. They think everything is just gonna be…everything's done for them. I don't give handouts anymore. You have to write. I’ll write on the board, or I'll project it, and then you have to write it down. And I tell them why. So, even if you lose that sheet, the fact that you wrote it down means that you actually read those words. Otherwise, they all leave their sheets on the tables. And I don't want to enable them. I want them to learn and I tell them “This if this is for you, this is not for my convenience.” I said, I printed out thousands of Xeroxes for people and realize it was a waste of paper. If I print out it's like two sides, I just don't want to waste any more. I think that's driving me crazy. I love things, like, I'd like animations and short films and I love telling the kids you know, every everybody's an artist, you have water on the table and you start pushing it around, make it into a pattern, or salt. And I like not being dependent, like “Well, I can’t do it. I don't have the right tool.” That's not true, figure it out. The only thing is this year, in particular, kids are extremely wasteful. And so, I gotta put an end to it and things are disappearing. In paint brushes are getting mucked up and not rinsed out. So, I'm putting them away. We have to figure out some other way of pain and I told him at the beginning of the year that I said, “When we've run out of brushes, what we do is we're going to have to go out and we're going to collect sticks. And then we're gonna have to capture squirrels. And we're not going to hurt the squirrels, but we need to cut off some of their fur from the tail, section squirrel, there's squirrel, hair. And you attach the fur to the end of the stick. And you have to wrap it with wire,” and they look and they sit there like this. ‘Really?’ I said, “Yeah, do you know how to catch a squirrel? Do you know how to catch one? You climb up a tree and act like a nut!” So, I tell them, that's what we're going to have to do. We're gonna have to… like you're gonna have to start making their own brushes. That's all there is to it.

HG: The last question that I tend to ask is: What advice do you have for emerging artists? Another form of that question that I like to ask sometimes is to say, “What advice would you give yourself when you were just graduating from UB with your M.A.?

PW: Don’t be lazy. Don’t take things for granted. You gotta work hard; things aren’t just gonna fall into your lap. Stay away from the party mode, cause you’re at that age where you’re with your friends and you’re going out for beer, and you’d rather be partying than working. Because being an artist is just as rigorous as anything else—if not more, because you’re starting off with a handicap. I mean, ‘artist’ is so vague…it’s not like you’re gonna be a helicopter pilot. Stick with one medium for a while. And if you’re really serious about becoming an artist, get a book or something. Start a portfolio. Take your work seriously. Take care of your work, also. If you have to work a day job, work a day job. Don’t use drugs. Wear sun-tan lotion. You know, it’s good to be around other people with other ideas. That’s what I loved about college: you’re around people from all over the world, and you learn so much from other people… it’s crazy… they think high school is the end all! I say, “You’re not even going to know these people after you graduate. When you get to college, you’re gonna be so happy and so excited.” But you know, they’re not preparing the kids well enough. Gary told me that they’re having a hell of a time; they don’t know how to read well, and they’re being socially promoted though school. And someone told me that employers are not looking at how you did in high school or college—they want your SAT scores, cause that’s the telling feature of whether or not you have any kind of smarts. Because teachers are faking the grades to get the kids through. They have to; they’re forced to. They’re being told to change the grades in some instances. You know, this country is doomed if we keep doing that. Teach them from the beginning. You know, I go to the supermarket and meet college students, it’s like, “Where do you go to school?” UB. “What do you study?” Communications. “What are you gonna do with that?” I don’t know. Okay, you’ve gotta start finding out what’s related to that, or else you are just gonna be checking out groceries for the rest of your life. Unless you want to do that…it could be fun… you know, if you’re a writer and you work at night. It’s a great thing to do, and you make decent money. So, you need to focus. That’s the key thing. Make it your priority to focus. Don’t make it about boyfriend-girlfriend relationships. You know, a lot of people have actually changed their paths because somebody else influenced them, then they break up, and they’re in a place that they don’t want to be. So, you have to take that into effect too. I’ve seen that a lot. And don’t smoke too much pot. I have seen creative people lose opportunities because they had no motivation. Brilliant, smart, educated, but they got too much into the relaxing mode. It really does affect you. I’m not advocating or saying “Nay” to it, I’m just saying to watch out for that. I can thing of a handful of people who lost out on opportunities because of that. Get out of the house as soon as you can and stay out! If you can, move to another city. Even if it’s only temporary. Unfortunately, with art, it’s like, unless you paint horses, and ranches, and mountains, you really need to be in a bigger city. Buffalo is okay, but again it’s not a very big commercial art venue. There are only a couple commercial art galleries here, so it’s like kind of hard to be an artist here. A lot of people go into teaching positions here—especially in university, because that allows them the time to paint and make art, and the things are there. Getting into the university scene might help. I actually went back to school after graduating with my master’s degree to do workshops so I could use the equipment in media study. I’m surprised, I actually did like digital stuff. I like animation, I did go into it when I was a young person, so…you know what? You need to learn as much as possible. Then you need to decide what you want. Keep saying, “I don’t know what I want,” and then you’re gonna be saying that when you’re 90. All of a sudden, time has gone by, and you’ve wasted all of that. And the other thing is, that, I don’t know about this generation, but the women in my generation were like, “Oh, I’ve gotta get married, I’ve gotta have a baby, I’ve gotta do this or that,” like, no, that’s a career crusher. There are lots of babies in the world, and there are babies that could be adopted, so it’s like the guy can have his kid and still have his career. You’ll get these really big artists, these guys, and their wives are like debutantes or whatever. They’re not…they need somebody to take care of them. It’s hard to take care of somebody. I always tell Gary and other people, “Don’t marry another artist unless they’re a conceptual artist. My basement is packed with scientific equipment, you can’t even get over you the washing machine! Why did I marry an artist? He should have been a poet. If you’re gonna marry somebody, marry somebody who works small…unless you work small. One of you has to compromise…or get a bugger house. Did you ever hear that George Garland thing about buying a house? He says, “So, you buy a house. Then you buy stuff. Then you buy more stuff. Then you need a bigger house, so you can put all that stuff into the bigger house. Then, you buy more stuff, and you buy more stuff!” And it’s true. It’s like…I like minimal. For example, if I run out of socks, I just go out and buy more socks. I took one of those tests that say, “How lazy are you?” and I got ‘lazy-ish’ cause one of the questions said, “If you run out of underwear, do you go out and buy more underwear?” and I said, “Yes I do!”

HG: Sometimes that’s the way to do it.

PW: I just don’t have time to do the laundry, it’s just faster to go buy it. Oh! Travel! Travel as much as possible. If you think you don’t like to travel, do road trips. Do road trips with friends. Spin a thing on a map and go to Denver or Nashville or Detroit or something and take pictures. Take lots of pictures. Also, keep a journal. You should really keep a journal. That’s very important, even if you don’t look at it again. And, you know, because you come up with really great ideas and then later you find your note and you think, “Oh man, why didn’t I do that? I should have done this a long time ago, what was I thinking?” Especially when you have those lucid moments after a couple of beers and you’re thinking “Oh, I should do this, I should do that.” Adopt an animal if you can…or 2…or 3…or 4…or 5…. I think one of the biggest factors for anybody who is creative is self-confidence. I think that’s why the successful guys, you know, making billions of dollars, it’s that they have major egos. I think that’s to cover up the fact that they’re insecure. So, they make up for that. But that’s how our society is. That’s capitalism. Think about big artists in Europe: they don’t live in big mansions; they live modestly because it’s about the work. It isn’t about the superstar, the movie star, it’s not about being celebrities. Even now, the kids in our culture want to be celebrities. They propose to go to a prom and post it on YouTube. They turn everything into wanting to be on TV. That’s not what’s important. But they don’t listen.

HG: Patty, thank you so much for coming in and participating in the Living Legacy Project. I feel like this has been a great opportunity to just pick your brain and hear about some of your thoughts and experiences. I enjoyed all the different places this has gone.

PW: Oh, you’re welcome! It was fun. NPR next. Oh, I have another piece of advice! If you’re an artist or a writer, get an interview on NPR. It’s amazing…don’t you learn so much?

HG: It’s amazing, yeah.

PW: I go out and buy the book the next day!

HG: Thank you for participating in the Living Legacy Project at the Burchfield Penney Art Center.

PW: Oh, well, thank you, it was a joy to be here.