005 - Finding Focus in Making Art

Jul 13, 2021

My Guest, Sas Colby is a visual artist with over 5 decades of creating, exhibiting, and teaching experience. Sas has lived in Berkeley since 1975. Her artistic practice has included textile art, collage, photography, and artists books - with words interlaced throughout. A member of the Bay Area Women Artists Legacy Project, Colby attended Rhode Island School of Design. Sas has had her work included in the collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

What you will Hear/Learn

[0:55] - Guest introductions

[2.10] - Sas tells us of unique materials that people use to create art, her advice to her students on this, what is the strangest material she has ever used to create art.

[6.58] - How creating art through a symbolic rabbit helped Sas in a trying moment of her life.

[10.49] - Find out about a Line Drawing Exercise which is a form of meditation.

[15.04] - Sas and I share our thoughts on situations where artists are not willing to share the ideas/visions behind their work.

[24.49] - Sas' feelings about the relationship between making art and bringing about social change in the world. Sas also talks about her projects and projects by other artists that bring about social change.

[37.15] - Sas advice to students who are aspiring to make art.

[40.03] - Why Fear is about the future and not the present.

[43.23] - Sas's answer to the question: What do you want people to remember you for in terms of what you've made in your career?

[44.14] - We wrap it up by talking about my reason for starting this podcast, lessons drawn from the pandemic on human connection and communication.

Quote

You know more than you think you do.

It's like when you write if you have a prompt, if you're given a phrase, and you go from there, well, I guess I could say in this drawing practice, my prompt was the rabbit.

That is the biggest gift that we can give ourselves, being in the present and paying attention only to what's there.

The class would be finished with these drawings. And some people would be transcendent because the experience had brought them into this closeness to themselves in a way that other things hadn't. Again, they let everything go, they were there in the present.