On this episode hosted by co-curator Rob Bell, July featured artists Julie Chen and Alyssa Marzolf DeWitt share insights into their creative journeys, highlighting how their individual backgrounds and life experiences shape their art. Alyssa's series addresses contemporary issues such as climate change through innovative photography, while Julie reflects on cultural observations stemming from her familial connections. The episode encapsulates the interplay between personal narratives and artistic expression, illustrating how art serves as both a vehicle for communication and a means for processing complex emotions.

Links:

• alyssamdewitt.com
• linktr.ee/artist.juliechen
• instagram.com/behindglassroc
• behindglassroc.substack.com

And welcome back to the behind the Glass podcast.

I tried to come in with that deep, quajay voice that he usually starts.

Oh, I gotta say, it's feeling real good, Rob.

It's feeling nice.

But bringing some of those plants and beats vibes to the show a little bit.

Little bit.

I don't know if Kwaji is actually sick or he's just getting me back for the last part because I left him hanging last time.

Sent me a text earlier like, okay, now it's your turn.

But I'm happy to be back.

Got here with Chris, here with the July crew.

Yeah.

Of behind the Glass, as you all know, now we do these podcast episodes and after the opening now, which I think has been working out pretty well.

Yeah, I think so.

It's.

It's a very different experience because everybody's actually had the chance to, you know, experience being in a gallery versus talking about.

Yeah.

I think the most of the time, people are like, I'm not sure where I'm getting frames from.

I'm not sure how I'm going to hang things.

I don't know what's going on.

So now.

Now people have gone through the whole experience and also got to talk to so many people that night because that you learned so much.

Even if you've already shown some of the work, you always learn something from the people that show up.

Exactly.

And I think.

I mean, and we'll talk to both of the artists, but I would imagine it takes away some of the anxiety that you have going into a show of how it's gonna go.

And now all that's been done, you can kind of chill out and kind of talk about the experience and more than that, just your journeys here.

So happy to have our two feature artists, Julie Chen and Alyssa.

Come on, Rob, you got this.

Mars off the wit.

It's a hard one.

Don't worry about it.

No, but I had it in my head pre show.

Then we got.

Then we got to talking.

Rob, things go right out.

Alyssa Mars, off the wood.

Thank you.

Two great artists who had two incredible exhibitions in our first Friday at Farmhouse, and it was a really good show.

I always say that, you know, when we curate these shows, we don't always know what people are gonna bring, but somehow this cosmic thing happens when, whether we have two or three artists, it always ends up being a very similar vibe.

Yeah.

It's something.

I think the way I like to describe it is even if they're not very similar, they end up in conversation with each other.

Yes.

Right.

Whether or not it was intentional or not.

Like, just because also the.

From the element of being in the same space.

Yeah.

Is that you end up comparing and contrasting.

And it's like, as somebody who loves tasting, it's one of the best ways to explain what's different from something is to have something next to it.

Yeah.

And then you make up your own connections, your own story.

Sometimes when you see things together with.

Which is one of the great things about being together in a gallery.

You know, it's awesome to have a solo show.

Like, I love a solo show, because you get to have a complete message, and everybody gets to see the one thing.

But bouncing off something is also a great way to experience art.

Absolutely.

And if.

And it's also great when you come.

You might come for one person.

Exactly.

And then you get to see the other artists, and then it's that little surprise.

Right.

Like, I came to, you know, support this artist that I know, but, oh, my God, I discovered this other artist who I didn't know, and that was great.

So it's that exchange of energy.

And I just want to point out that it's not that I didn't know Alyssa's name.

We were just talking about the pronunciation of her middle name.

Yeah.

You just got hung up.

I got hung up on the pronunciation.

I don't want people to think, well, why is he hosting the show?

No, he knows.

So let me just clear Rob's.

Like, the name's got consonants.

It's got vowels.

I'm so close.

And then she told me at the end, there's an L in it.

And I'm like, I've never seen an L. Yeah.

I didn't notice me off, too.

And then I looked.

I said, oh, there is a L in it.

So that.

That just got in my head.

So it's a soft apologize.

But let's start with you, Alyssa.

Sure.

And I was really happy to see because a lot of times we get artists who bring work to behind the Glass, and it's their five best pieces or their five pieces that they really want shown.

Or maybe they've never had a show before, and they're racking their brain of which five pieces represent me.

And I've never shown before.

But you did something that was very cool and different, which you had.

You brought a series.

Yeah.

Something that was very conceptual.

Can you tell us a little bit about that decision to.

And correct me if I'm wrong.

Did you shoot this specifically for sort of.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I have kind of two sides of my photography Because I own my own photo business.

So I have a business side where I do a lot of editorial, branding, portraiture, Plug, Plug, plug.

It's Alyssa DeWitt art.

But it's basically just.

It's mixed in with my other stuff so you don't have to go find it.

It's all together.

And then the other side is more like documentary fine art.

And that's because I went to school for ad photo at RIT for my bfa and then I decided I didn't really want to do like fashion and magazine stuff and ad stuff and marketing and I wanted to do like fine art photo.

So I went to grad school.

So now I have both degrees in kind of two different places, two different aspects of photography.

And the long term project I've been working on is about Lake Ontario.

And I've been working on it for a long time, but it's gearing up a lot lately.

But it's a dark topic for me, for everyone.

But it's a heavy topic.

I have to kind of like trick myself into learning about.

It's about climate change specifically.

So I have to kind of force myself in like tricky ways to research it.

Cause it's just, I don't want to know, but I do want to know at the same time.

It's a weird place to be.

So when, when I got contacted to show at behind the Glass, I was sort of like, I'm going to pause on the Lake Ontario project.

And also I had been simultaneously planning a shoot with the hairstylist Erica Stoy, who I've worked with two other times before this project.

And we had done a food and hair project.

She's a hairstylist and we put food in people's hair.

Great.

We did not eat it after, but we ate the leftovers.

Okay.

We didn't waste leftovers.

But yes, it was amazing and so fun.

And it was just a creative collab.

Nobody, like everybody did it out of the passion for doing something new and different.

And basically it's like an exercise where you practice something brand new on someone and if you mess up, it's fine because there's no client.

Right?

Yeah.

And then we did another one with flowers and hair, and that one was also great.

So I saw her again and I'm like, she's like, let's do another one.

And I was like, I want to do metals and hair.

Because I got inspired by this one image.

I think it's from like New York Fashion Week where someone has like iridescent tinsel.

Oh, cool.

Tied to, like, every hair.

F. And then, like, slicked back.

It was just like.

It almost looked like a helmet, but not.

Wow.

And so we worked off this one photo, but then I inevitably ended up making it about climate change because I'm kind of immersed in that right now.

And so we had models come re and Bri, funnily enough, and they were great.

But it's still.

It's sort of like a fashion editorial piece about sort of what would it look like if.

What does fashion look like in a time where all we have is the things we really, really need and, like, Mylar blankets, emergency blankets.

So the series is called Emergency Blankets, and I use the emergency blankets as, like, the floor in the whole shoot.

And then I looked up emergency blankets and learned about their use, like, what they're for.

And it was sort of a tiny aspect of kind of climate change or like that survivalist type mentality.

A lot of people are into survivalist stuff, stockpile stuff like that.

And so it's just an.

Kind of an offshoot of the same idea, but a lot lighter and easier to handle.

But it's still.

I used climate change data as the.

Titles, and it's an interesting contrast that you mentioned.

You know, you think about an emergency blanket.

Yeah.

And something that you need.

And then fashion is usually thought of as just style.

Right.

It's like an extra thing you worry about, like, when everything else is taken care of, usually.

Right.

But it always survives everything.

And it gets a very big budget still.

And it's an interest.

It's interesting because it also has climate change aspects in fashion, like the fast.

The fast fashion versus, like, the eco type fashion.

Yeah.

And it's a weird time to be an artist.

And it's just.

I feel like it's just.

There's a lot to work through.

And that's just one of the things I use my photography to work through.

That kind of fear of climate change and learning about it as I feel like I'm comfortable as I go.

What got you into climate change as a topic?

I think that's a very good question.

Both my parents were farmers.

I think that had a big impact on me.

Paying attention to nature, understanding impact of dairy farms on nature, which is where my family were, both dairy farms.

And then in 20.

Forget his name.

Chris.

I think his name is Chris.

And the town and the village were fighting because the village along the river needed to be moved to a green space in the town.

And the town said, no, we don't want you to move here.

The entire town needed to move.

No, just basically the street along the river, which is in the village, it's.

Like the main street.

It's like part of the main street.

Yes.

They needed to move this.

These people in these businesses out of this flood zone because this is the second time, Right.

And they don't have money to fix it the first time, let alone the second time.

So they.

There was like a political clashing.

I don't know if it's political exactly, but town and village clashing over saving part of the village and the people who live there.

And as you probably know, if you have.

If you live in a flood zone, can't really sell your house.

And now it's had damage twice.

And you have to.

I believe you do have to report that when you sell a house.

So it's not like you can just move, like sidestep, you know, to the next town over, whatever the case may be.

And I was like, wow, I am seeing kind of the granular aspects of it unraveling while I was photographing it.

And then working with a journalist was amazing because I didn't have to talk.

I let him do all the talking.

And it was a really great experience.

But it also opened my eyes to what could actually be happening on a very citizen level or resident level.

Not that I live there, but it's in New York.

It's like three hours away.

Well, and I find it completely fascinating because that's also.

That's like a microcosm of what's happening in Florida.

Yeah, exactly.

Where the entire state is.

Basically all is subsidized by, you know, the residents are subsidized by the state because the insurance companies won't insure the houses.

Like, that's.

That's starting to happen in the Midwest with hail too.

So, like all those little examples can, you know, bring that whole together.

So one, we definitely want to talk again when you have that whole project out about Lake Ontario.

Yeah, yeah, that would be amazing.

Just because it's a fascinating topic and so much history, too, especially the history of eco.

Like, Lake Ontario is one of the lakes that was defined by chemicals, chemical dumping for so long, and then it wasn't right because of all that work and all the politics and everything else.

So it's just there's so many layers of Lake Ontario as a core of a community.

Yes, it's a huge.

It's a huge space.

Lots of places affected by the lake and it includes, if anything happens with the lake water, it goes into the basin, which goes all the way to the Finger Lakes.

And that's just the basin.

So, yeah, it's a.

It's a thing we need to be like, really talking about, I think.

So when you're, when you're creating pieces, we're talking about the small looking at the whole.

How do you.

Do you work through that ahead of time or do you take the pictures after and review them and find the bigger message through the small details in a picture?

Do you do that ahead of time or like, is that a process after?

I mean, for the series at behind the Glass?

Yeah.

Or generally.

So the series up at behind the Glass is sort of a very planned shoot.

I plan it to a certain degree and then I let it go so that it kind of organically works.

And it's not.

Doesn't look too forced, but it was a set in my studio, so it's obviously posed and lit with the Lake Ontario project.

That's a very good question.

I shot a lot of images over many years thinking, I don't know what to take photos of.

I'll just go for a walk and bring my camera.

And I'd end up at the lake.

I'd take a few photos, I'd look at them later.

I didn't think about was mixed in with other photos of other things too.

And then I typed I did like, you have spotlight on your.

On your computer to search.

I typed in lake and it was like 412 photos or something.

Some of them are of other lakes, but still I was like, is this a project?

And then I, I make.

I made like digital contact sheets and printed them out real tiny.

And just eventually, after a lot of waiting, it kind of dawned on me, like, this is, I think, what I really care about.

I just didn't really know it until years after I started the project.

So.

Yeah, there's so many ways of tackling projects like this, Rob.

Like, it can be so many different ways.

Sometimes a project reveals itself to you.

That's exactly what happened.

Yeah, I love how organic you went about it.

I mean, certain projects that I've done myself, it's this pressure you feel sometimes when somebody says, do a project or you think in your head, I want to do a project.

And it's like,.

It's almost like you can't look directly at the thing that you're passionate about sometimes because it's too obvious.

Yeah.

That's kind of how it was.

And it's not really even about the lake for me.

It's more about.

It's about knowing the problems and not doing anything about it.

And after a while, it just started to think, I think I do need to at least try to do something.

And I just kind of chose this as my own way of going about it.

Well, it's interesting.

I want to tap back into a little bit of your background.

So you said you got this degree in more of a.

More of an ad sense or more of a marketing degree when it comes to photography.

Yeah.

And then you got the storytelling kind of documentary side to you too.

How do they play off each other?

Because I know when you are taking photos for ad or to market something, it is in a way where you're almost trying to sell it.

Right.

You're not selling something when you're telling a story.

But I'm thinking back to your photos and behind the glass, how those tell a story.

But they could be ads, too, for something.

I mean, not that you're selling emergency blankets, but.

Right.

No, I get you.

It's like, to me, I looked at a lot of fashion photography and a lot of editorial, which is sort of like fashion with a story.

Basically, the people are still usually supermodels, and the photographers are still usually the top, you know, kind of celebrity photographers or high fashion.

And I have certain skills to draw in the eye that.

That.

That slick advertising fashion stuff does.

Yeah.

Like, oh, what is that?

It's usually real poppy, has a contrast or has like a.

A beauty to it.

Even if it's kind of like a morbid beauty, it's still something about fashion that gets you to look.

And then after you're caught looking, then you kind of are forced to understand the idea.

And a lot of my advertising work is sell.

If it is selling something, I want it to look.

I want it to look like a place or a space or a feeling that you can relate to, not a high fashion photo.

It's a very.

It's a very fine line between, like, going too far and making it look, like, cheesy.

Yeah.

And going too far the other way and having it just be like a photo of nothing kind of.

I'm not sure.

I don't know if I can combine them super well, but I tried it behind the glass.

I was kind of going.

I did the titles like it was fine art.

It also really Helped with the meaning.

The titling is hard for me.

I don't know about you, Julie, with the titling.

Your titles were great because.

Thank you.

They were explanatory and beautifully written.

And I'm just like, how do I make this a title?

And mine are very, like, factual and, like, you know, just matter of fact.

But that works because the work itself is like, what is that happening?

What is happening?

And who.

Like, what am I looking at?

Well, I'm wondering if having those two kind of disciplines act as, like, checks and balances.

Yeah.

For each other.

Because sometimes I think you can, as an artist, you can go too artsy and lose people.

And then sometimes if you are kind of going the ad route, you can go too cheesy and, like, put people off, so.

Or you can go really cheesy and win people over.

There's like.

And it's also.

There's certain trends that come and go of, like, what amount of cheese is.

Is acceptable or cringe.

We're gonna call maybe nowadays cheesy is a little bit different.

But, yeah, I do think that's true.

And I think the RIT aspect gave me a technical proficiency that sometimes I actually.

It's hard for me to break away from it and make things that have more expressive feelings and less technical accuracy.

That's, like, something I actually struggle with sometimes.

But, yeah, there is kind of two sides to my brain, naturally, I think, and both sides of my photography kind of happen regardless of what I do.

But when they meet in the middle successfully is like.

That's like, the hardest thing for me, I think.

And I'm maybe sort of subconsciously trying to mash them together and see what happens.

Yeah.

So why photography in the first place?

Why'd you choose to study that at rit?

That's a cute story.

I was in high school, and I had applied to RIT and one other school, and I said I'm just gonna put photography, illustration, and graphic design on my application.

Because they let you pick three.

Or actually, no, I put undecided on my application, and RIT Admin called me.

Admissions office called me and made me pick three.

And I had just taken a photo class the year before, so I liked it, but I only took one class.

Right.

But I put that down graphic design, because I had taken a Photoshop graphic design class, which you would not do in Photoshop these days.

And then I put illustration because I like to draw.

But once I got my acceptance letter, I got accepted into photography, so it was almost like I planned it.

It's just like earlier I made a slight plan and I just went with the flow because I'm not actually very good at drawing or painting in the way that I can't do anything realistic.

And photography is the one thing that I can do well that isn't.

It's not completely done with your hands.

I like needed that little machine aspect to help me.

And I'm not very good with words either.

Photography kind of helps me say things without saying.

Without saying them.

Yeah.

I'm a very emotional person.

If I have to say certain things like I'll cry.

I can't like get it out so that.

Yeah, there it's.

But it's basically honestly photography.

Took a class in high school.

Highly recommend.

If you have a dark room or even a digital photo class in, in your school or in your community that you can take.

You should because it's very.

It's a great tool to.

For self expression and you don't know that you need it until you start.

And then it's like, oh my God, I can't stop taking these pictures of whatever it is.

Self portraits is a lot of how a lot of people start.

Yeah.

Very addictive.

And I've always said that photography for me always feels like drawing with your eye.

Yeah.

I always tell the story.

The only class I almost felt in college was drawing.

It's hard.

It's hard for a photographer.

We're not made for that.

And it was ridiculous because I'm like, how are you going to really judge me on this?

I can't do it.

No.

Like judge on your progress, I guess.

Yeah.

But you know, with the, like you said with the technology you kind of get to do it with your eyes.

You can find something that works for you.

Yeah.

You can make it as hard as you want.

Like a pinhole.

Yeah.

Or something with a lot of bells and whistles.

Or you can make it as easy with like an autofocus point and shoot.

It's just very accessible and not that scary to get into.

I think that's another thing.

I'm like kind of a shy, like an introverted extrovert.

I want like, I don't want people to look at my drawings unless it's allowed.

Like I have so many drawings I'll never show anyone but.

Because I still love to draw but I feel like I look back and I'm like, oh, that's so embarrassingly bad.

But like I like it, but it's not.

I hope no one sees this.

Whereas photos they take, I'm like, who Wants to see it.

I just get so excited to show people and see what they think.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's got to be an incredible feeling that.

Did it feel good to have people look at the work that behind the glass?

Yeah, Yeah.

I. I.

There's definitely a little out of my comfort zone, this project, so I wasn't really sure what to expect in terms of, like, how people perceived it, but it was overall positive, and it was a really fun time making it too, which is.

I feel like part of the reason I wanted to do this was purely just to create something with other people.

So I usually create by myself, and it's hard to find people that you work well for me, at least work well together with that, follow all the way through, and give, like, consistent results.

So I'm.

I'm sure me and Erica will probably do another series soon.

She wants to do a potluck beforehand or something or right after.

I'm like, girl, one thing at a time.

We'll put.

Put.

Make the potluck part of the photos probably.

But, yeah, it's just one of those rare groups of people that working together, like, makes me feel more inspired instead of, like, drained of energy.

Well, we can definitely see.

I could definitely feel the fun popping off of the frames when I looked at it.

So everybody listening, please go check out Alyssa's work.

Go get you a smoothie and a chicken sandwich from Farmhouse.

And the work will be up through the end of July, so go check that out.

We're gonna take a quick break, Chris, and then we'll come back and talk to Julie about her work.

All right, welcome back to the podcast behind the Glass.

We got our July crew, and now we're gonna kick it over to Julie Chin.

How you doing?

Hi.

It's good to see you.

Good to see you.

So your work was my cup of tea.

Not that yours wasn't.

That's all right.

They were very different.

They were very different, but I just love the streetscapes and the architecture.

The street life.

Yeah, the street life, the people.

I mean, that is really my jam.

So tell us a little bit about what you brought to the gallery.

They were the last surviving siblings of hers, and I felt like I need to see them before they die.

Right.

They needed to see you also.

Yeah.

Could be speaking from.

Yeah, yeah.

So I.

So I flew out to Taiwan, which was where they immigrated to after Myanmar.

And, yeah, it was an amazing experience.

You know, I'm So I was so blessed for my cousins to, you know, take me around Taiwan.

And I hadn't taken photos in a long time, so I was determined.

Okay, you know, this is the perfect moment to bring my camera, take some shots, and just, like, try to get back into my photographic eye.

So, yeah, it's hard not to want to take photos there, you know?

Yeah.

Especially when, you know, I didn't grow up there.

You know, it's not.

It's not my culture in the sense, you know, I'm.

I'm, you know, Chinese American through Myanmar.

It's.

It's.

It's a certain mix.

But then to go to Taiwan and be immersed in that culture, I just, you know, really was, like, blown away by certain things I was seeing.

So.

Yeah, so I brought six photos at the gallery upstairs.

And they really are just, like, certain observations, sort of cultural observations I made while I was, like, walking around with my cousins, you know.

So some of them are at night markets, and some of them are just, you know, walking around towns and villages.

Yeah, so you say observations.

Can you tell us, give us some insight on, like, observation you made and decided, oh, this is interesting.

I want to take.

Oh, my gosh.

So I think.

I think for a lot of people, like, I think my favorite photo is sausage fingers.

Yeah, me too.

Right.

So.

So there's this.

Of this, you know, kind of like, big guy, and he's handling, you know, at a.

At a counter, he's handling a big, you know, strand of sausages, sausage links with a big pile right in front of him.

And, you know, this is at a night market.

It's open air, you know, it's like open air to the street, and it's a pile of meat.

And on top of that, you know, I'm walking through this market and it's like stall to stall to stall.

I'm seeing vegetables, underwear, sausages, fish dresses, you know, like, next to each other, open stalls.

So there's just, like, really, really unusual.

So this guy's handling these.

These sausages.

And then I did a double take.

Like, that cigarette is hanging out of his mouth.

He's got this cigarette, but, like, just at the very tippy tip of his lip.

That's how you know a real cigarette smoker when he hold on to it like that.

Yeah.

Would it really be a true night market if there weren't at least one guy?

Right, so, yeah, so.

And it's not like he's, like, actively.

It's just kind of like dangling there and.

And like.

And the ash on it was like, so long.

It was like half an inch long.

And I was like, potentially.

And he's like, right over the pile of sausages, and I'm just, like, hanging on, like.

Like, I didn't want.

Like, my cousins kept walking.

I was like, I didn't want to leave.

I wanted to see.

Is it going to fall into the pile?

Are you outside of your mind?

Mind?

That's hilarious.

I love that observation so much.

But, you know, like, with the, like, health regulations and whatnot, you know, you.

You don't really see that.

I. I don't really get to see stuff like that.

You know, Did.

Did it make you feel American?

Yes.

Have that observation?

Yeah, right.

Yeah, definitely.

That was.

That was one of those things that.

That made me feel very, like, American, for sure.

So your mom grew up in Taiwan?

No, actually, she's from Myanmar.

Okay.

So our family's from Myanmar, formerly Burma, which is, you know, in a state politically, so it's.

Unfortunately for a long time.

Yeah, it's run by the military militia, so the junta there.

It's one of the reasons why we left.

So.

Yeah.

So my.

Both of my parents are from there, but they.

They knew each other, but it was.

It wasn't until their 30s that my dad proposed and then convinced her to move to the States, even though, like, they basically barely knew each other.

So.

Okay, so.

But.

But so culturally, you know, there's.

There's a. I. I am exposed to a lot of Asian culture through my parents and what they took with them.

And also, you know, they settled in New York City, so New York City, Chinatown and whatnot, you know, so I am familiar.

But it's, you know, through, like, Chinese American culture that I'm getting that Chinese culture.

And then my parents divorced, and it was just me and my mom in Brooklyn.

So, you know, I like to say I was born in the Bronx, not the Bronx Zoo, but.

But I was.

But I was raised in Brooklyn and with a single mom, so.

And I'm an only child, so it was the two of us in this apartment, so.

So actually, a lot of my.

A lot of my art has to.

Has to do with my mom.

But.

But a couple years after she passed, I just felt the urge to get back into it, and I just decided, okay, I'm gonna.

You know, I'm gonna.

After that Taiwan trip, and I took these photos, you know, I was like, okay, I'm feel like I should, you know, get back into creating.

Yeah.

And at the time, I was just.

I was teaching.

Teaching architecture in Connecticut, but I decided to go to grad school, and then I found myself in.

I didn't know what I was going to do, but I found myself gravitating back towards my mom because as an only child, I was the one who took care of her.

Yeah.

So I was her caretaker at the end of her life.

I held her hand as she took her last breath.

Breath.

So that was just such an incredible gift to be able to be there for her.

And it just affected me so deeply that, you know, since then, I've been doing a lot of art, actually.

About grief.

Yep.

About loss and, you know, very therapeutic.

Yeah.

And good for you.

Good for you.

Yeah.

So.

Yeah, most of my art.

Yeah.

Is not photography right now, actually.

Most of my art to be.

Yeah, exactly.

So most.

Most of my art is actually centered around grief and loss.

And, you know, some locally folks might know me from my telephone, which is.

I can't forget.

Okay.

Which is a phone that's mounted to a wall, and when you look at it, its line is connected to a jar of my mother's ashes.

So when you pick up the phone and listen, it's actually a voicemail my mom left me on my birthday years ago.

Girl, that's so much beautiful.

Though we talk about sometimes on some of the other shows, there's this mental.

There's this mental gap between lowercase A art and capital A art that people worry about a lot.

Like, am I making important art?

Right.

Am I making.

And then do I consider things that are fun and bouncy and interesting art?

And, like, you're.

You're describing something that's just, you know, just is out of you and is really trying to say something.

Yeah.

How do you differentiate?

Do you go out and try to create something like that?

No, I don't like how.

No, it's an urge.

Like, it just needs to come out.

Right.

It's like.

And.

And that's the funny thing is, like, it's an urge.

It needs to come out.

And I do a project, you know, like.

Like that one.

Or like, there's another project, idol of angle, which is basically.

It's like my mom's nickname from her generation, but it's basically a figure that I made of my mom's, like, with my mom's clothing that she left behind.

Makes the body.

So it makes a body.

And then I made masks of her face made of paper, clay, and her ashes.

And so I made six masks from different periods of her life.

And.

And I felt like I really, I was struggling to represent her because she's not here anymore.

And I really wanted to make something that really kind of tries to pull in all that she was right.

So I wanted it to move and I couldn't figure out the animatronics, so I ended up making it a costume.

So I actually perform in it.

Oh, wow, that's amazing.

So that's another one.

I'm known.

So I'm known for those two projects, I would say.

Yeah.

And those two projects, they just really just.

They were just building up inside of me and just needed to come out.

And then after I make a project like that, I was like, oh, wow, that, that's, you know, so meaningful, so powerful, you know, what's the next big thing?

Yeah, and if it's not there, it's not there.

That's right.

You know, and I can't force.

Yeah.

The next big thing to happen.

You know, just got to kind of like, let it come naturally.

So I just, you know, so what do I.

What am I doing in the meantime, you know?

So I actually started a ceramics practice.

So I'm like, I'm interdisciplinary.

I'm all over the place.

How would you describe those intersections of what you do?

Because it feels like you decide the medium based on.

Exactly.

Yeah.

It is the emotion.

The emotion.

The emotion kind of starts to piece together different ideas that gel into some sort of concept, and then the concept needs some sort of material and media for it to come to fruition.

So then I'm like, okay, if I don't have the skills, then I have to, you know, figure it out.

Yeah.

Right.

So when.

When, after I was working with paper, clay in my mom's ashes, I decided, okay, maybe I should explore actual, like real earth and clay and work with my mom's ashes with clay.

And then I started taking lessons and then I just fell in love with ceramics.

And then next thing I knew, I found myself like, falling in love with making vessels.

Wow.

So,.

So basically just two weeks ago, I delivered two urns.

My first two urns that I made for someone for.

Yeah.

So this is not art.

This is like, this is like a craft.

A custom made, like, custom made urns that I made for a good friend of mine, my.

A former neighbor of mine from Connecticut for her husband who was my neighbor.

And, you know, we.

We love them dearly.

Wow.

And you know, when.

When she and I, we were chatting once when I was visiting, and when I mentioned that I wanted to make urns and stuff.

She's like, will you make one for Peter?

I was like, absolutely.

And she also has ashes of her friend Nancy, too.

So she wanted.

She wanted urns for both of them.

So I. I made her a set of urns.

When you're.

When you're doing that, how much of it is your own artistic expression, and how much of it is kind of trying to cater to what that person might want?

So I start.

You know, part of the thing was, after I fell in love with making vessels, I felt like I needed to make my mom the perfect urn.

So I just started practicing making jars and stuff.

And then people liked the jars and.

And then.

And then, you know, Marsha was like, oh, I really like that one.

Can you make something like that?

Right.

It wasn't the right size, but I had an idea of what she wanted, so I just made something bigger.

And, you know, knowing it was going to be Peter, and I asked her, like, what specific colors do you think would speak to Peter, Right?

So that's it.

So she gave me, like, a palette, and I kind of, like, brought a certain style that I thought he would like.

Right.

And then her friend Nancy, same thing.

I asked for a palette.

And I knew a bit about Nancy, too, because she was also a ceramicist, also an artist.

So.

So I made something different for her because I knew her personality was, you know, different from Peter's.

So.

So that's one of the things that I. I'm, you know, building like, that I'm doing.

I'm.

I'm building another one.

I'm in the process of building another one.

So I'm.

I'm trying to get into making custom urns because, you know, I've been processing a lot about how we treat our dead.

And, you know, I'm fascinated with all the different ways, like, different people, different cultures honor their dead.

So, you know, what are.

What are the ways that, you know, we.

We can do that?

You know, what is something I can do to help people with that?

You know, So a lot of, like, the art in the projects that I try to do, I've found ways that art can help me through my grief and my loss.

So I'm trying to figure out ways that I can make my art help others.

When you.

When you say it helps you, is it more of you processing, or is it a distraction from the grief?

Processing.

Processing.

Yeah, I did.

Oh, yeah.

Like, the two projects I mentioned earlier, I processed so much, especially when I'm sitting there and I'm making like I'm looking at my mom's photos, like portraits of a certain period of time for her and I'm making that same face with her own ashes and thinking about that's wild where she was at that point in her life, what was she going through, what was she thinking?

And my mom, she didn't have it easy, you know, like I already mentioned, she came from Myanmar.

There's a lot of turmoil.

She was born in wartime to begin with.

And then, you know, and then she had some horrible luck with relationships.

So she's had her heart broken so many times.

So, you know, all these traumas, intergenerational trauma through war and displacement, but then also these other personal traumas later on in her life.

It, it just helped me empathize with her so much more.

And growing up, you know, because it was just the two of us in a one bedroom apartment and you can imagine what the teenage years were like.

Right.

You're pictures from when me and my mom didn't.

So it helped me like really forgive and understand what she was going through, you know, and all those, especially those years that I wasn't born yet.

Right.

So to really understand her background.

So that helped me kind of forgive her for certain things, but it also helped me a lot forgive.

To forgive myself as well and some of the things that we had been going through together, you know.

Yeah.

So before we, before we close out on plugs and everything, you know, for, for a topic that is so aggressively personal.

Yeah, right.

It's like intensely aggressively personal and you're processing these deep, deep emotions with layers and layers of history and relationships and everything else.

This is also something that's going to be perceived by others.

Yeah.

Is that something that comes into your head at all during the process that somebody else, somebody might want to be perceiving it?

No, no, just like are you thinking about the audience for this at all during the process or is it something that you really reflect on after when you hear people, you know, interacting with it or hear their, their reaction to it after is because it's.

I was just thinking about the audience like they're not involved and then they're so involved in the process.

Yeah.

So I'm also a designer, so I have a design background, architecture, graphic design.

So when you're a designer, especially when a type of designer to design space, you should be consciously aware of the experience that you're designing as well.

So I am always thinking about what is someone going to say, see what is the angle that they're Going to see it from.

And so I'm.

I'm thinking, you know, about the aesthetics, the proportions, the, you know, the composition of everything.

And then I'm also thinking about layers, like, what are they seeing from afar that's going to draw them and pull them in closer to find out more.

Yeah, right.

Also think that grief and death and longing is just a topic that everybody can relate to.

Yeah.

Just, you know, we've all gone through loss.

We've all gone through that longing for.

To understand something or somebody close to us more.

So I think no matter how you present it, it's gonna.

When you deal with a theme like that is gonna connect.

Well, I mean, I definitely.

One time I did a project where it was a pile of my mom's shoes, right.

And one shoe that was suspended above the pile.

And that was all about.

So towards the end of her life, she had a.

She had pancreatic cancer, so she was dying, but she had a slip and fall that hastened everything.

So it.

In the middle of the night, one slipper, the shoe, it just like slipped, like, went somewhere in the room.

Don't know where.

So there was this only one shoe left.

So.

And for me, it was a piece about regret because I bought her those shoes and they felt bad as I was like, were they too slippery?

Did, you know, and all these other what ifs came up.

But the thing about that is that, you know, it was installed.

It's been installed in multiple places.

But if someone has no patience or curiosity to just read the title or read, you know, a little bit of the description.

I literally had a guy walk up to it with his hands in a pack his pockets and was like, bunch of shoes and just walked away.

Gosh.

Oh, geez.

Even if you had a title and description on the billboard, it sounds like that guy wouldn't have got it anyway.

Yeah, that's true.

I don't see any Jordans in that picture at all.

What's going on?

What is this flea market?

One of there's.

And one of the visiting artists at my grad program, he came by and he.

He told us to reward the curious looker.

So it's really.

It's really.

You know, when I.

When I think about that, you know.

Yeah.

I mean, art is subjective, and you're gonna win some, you're gonna lose some, and it's just.

But the people who do get it, yeah, they will get that reward.

They will get that feeling, you know,.

I think that's also.

That's also how something special happens.

Yeah, you never.

It's something I talk about a lot with just food and drink in general.

But generally speaking, you can't fumble into greatness.

Yeah, you can't accidentally make something great.

Yeah, you can accidentally make something good, but you can't make something great on accident.

You can't make something existentially awesome accidentally.

It has to be on purpose.

Right?

Intentional.

And that's like, and that's where those layers come in too is that's how you build a relationship with somebody.

Like when you have those parasocial relationships that we all have with creators and other things like that, it's not the one line.

It's that little line that you remember and then they call back six weeks from then that you remember, like, oh, that's a good one.

But those are the things.

When somebody reads that and they feel that, they're going to feel it different than somebody who didn't.

Or if you just laid it out like shoes fall.

Not good.

Yeah, yeah.

Like that's.

It's not going to hit somebody the right way.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Well, I like to think that our behind the glass audience is a bunch of curious lookers.

So please come and check this work out from Julie and Alyssa at Farmhouse Table, downtown Rochester on the second floor.

It'll be up until the last week of July.

Please come check this work out.

But before we get out of here, give you both an opportunity to plug your work.

How about we start with Alyssa?

What you got coming up and where can people find you?

So you can find me on Instagram @lyssamdewitt photo and my Lake Ontario project, A Body in Light.

Lake Ontario.

A Body in Light is going to be part of Fringe Fest, which I'm really excited about.

My first time doing Fringe Fest and it's going to include two performance events with music and poetry.

So I'm really excited.

I'm gonna announce the performers soon, but not yet.

And yeah, so, and my website is alyssamdewit.com if you want to go check out my other work, including the Bloomberg News story I shot and some of my older work that I worked on for many years.

Long term projects I really am proud of and I think that's it.

There's some great pictures up there by the way, just looking at them.

And also go to Rochester Fringe.com the Fringe Festivals from September 15th to the 26th in downtown Rochester, New York.

So check that out.

More from that on the One Short Podcast Network soon.

And Julie, how about you?

Where can we find you?

What you got coming Up.

Well, Thursday the Yards Collective is having their summer members show and I've got a piece there, piece of ceramic.

So on top of making urns, I'm also kind of doing things that kind of relate to being Chinese, Asian American.

So I've also been making ceramic fortune cookies and dumplings and kind of doing a little tweak on them.

So you kind of have to come and see to find out.

Exactly.

So they're not just, just those things.

But then I also have a piece over at Hall Walls in Buffalo.

They're having their members exhibitions open, opening on Friday at 6 o', clock, 6 to 10.

And I brought my first jar that I ever made.

So yeah, so it's, it's kind of different from the style that I'm doing now, but it's really funky.

It's kind of mcm.

So what's the mid century model?

Yeah, she looked at me like I.

Was supposed to go, that's a design thing.

Now that you say it seems.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's a little mid century modern look, a little funky aesthetic.

Sounds good.

I love that aesthetic, actually.

I just never.

Not well enough to know its nickname.

Yeah.

So yeah, the first jar I ever made, it's there.

So it's a little guy.

But you know, if you check it out, you should be able to find it.

Cool.

That's awesome.

That's awesome.

And then later on in September, I'm gonna be doing the Harvest Moon Festival.

I just signed up to be part of the crafters, artists and crafters that are going to be there.

So yeah, so I'm gonna bring my stuff and bring my cute little fortune cookies and dumplings there.

Sounds good.

Good.

Can't wait.

Well, congratulations to you both for the work you got coming up that you're showing and thanks for coming here and being a part of this and being a part of the behind the Glass family.

Like I said, one of one of our best shows and enjoyed the conversation.

Thank you for hanging so much.

That was fun.

Yeah.

This has been a presentation of the lunch room or podcast network.

Call your mom, call your dad, call somebody you love, say something nice.