007: Jenny Kendler

[Music] Hi, this is For Round Background with Noah Scalen. I'm an artist, author, and corporate creativity consultant, and today I'm interviewing Jenny Kenler. She is an interdisciplinary artist, environmental activist, naturalist, and wild forager who lives in Chicago and various forests. Jenny holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, as well as a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art. She currently helps run the artist residency acre and the Art Research Activism Initiative deep-time Chicago. Jenny is also the first artist in residence with the Natural Resources Defense Council. In this hour-long conversation we discuss protected knowledge, imposter syndrome, finding your community, online platforms, and more. I couldn't have made this podcast without the support and encouragement of my Patreon supporters. The regular writing and reflection I've been doing for my Patreon page has gotten me thinking deeper about the issues that artists have to contend with. I wanted to talk with other working artists to get their perspective and once I started having these conversations, I realized that other people could benefit from them as well. If you enjoyed this podcast, please leave a comment and let me know what resonates with you and give it a thumbs up or a five-star review wherever you listen to it. And of course, if you're not already a Patreon supporter, I hope you'll check it out at patreon.com/nowascalen. Whereas little is $2 a month, you can get access to my studio and practice, including content available nowhere else. Well, welcome to my podcast. Thanks for coming on. I know it's been a bit of a work to get you here. So, and you're in my studio, which is very exciting. Yeah, it's wonderful to be back here. I love this space. Yeah. So, yeah, it's been, we were talking that it's been a little while since we've seen each other in person. So, a good excuse is doing a podcast apparently. Yeah, actually, that's a great way for people to get together. Right, yeah. Just start a podcast if you haven't seen your friends in a while. So, I like to contextualize how I know how I know folks since my podcast so far as mostly people. I know though, I actually know I've actually now interviewed a few people that I don't have it known. So, I shouldn't say that. But, you and I have known each other a long time. So, we go back to. Yeah, I wish I knew how old we were, but I mean kids. Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. Maybe even pretty young kids. Yeah. So, we know each other through. Synagogue. Yeah, the synagogue that our parents attended. At the time, sort of the very liberal, very alternative synagogue. Yeah, I thought a bit more as like a liberal social club, rather than any kind of religious institution. Yeah. People were like, "God, no!" We should say that. I know, it was optional. But. The bagels. That's important. We. priorities. Yeah, no, it's the only place where I was asked to teach Sunday school when I was in. I guess it was in college. And I said, "I'm an atheist." And they said, "That's fine." That's what it was like then. Don't think it's like that now. Good old orami. So, yeah, we go way back. And we've. And we've since then. talked together, worked together, we've been friends together for a long time and. sort of talked art a lot. And so, you were somebody I definitely wanted to have on this podcast to talk about art with. The sort of concept here is really about the nitty gritty of. of the practicality of art. And making and living, making art, or possibly not making and living, or even prioritizing art making. And it comes from me sort of doing it later in life. And even though I always thought of myself as an artist, hadn't really. prioritized it, or put that into practice in a way, until more recently. And then, because of that, felt like I was. out of tune in some way. I was like, "What am I missing?" And so then I wanted to talk to people I knew about how they did what they did and what the secrets were for them, or not secrets. Not the. Yeah, right. But the stuff that doesn't, I think, get discussed, but is actually important for artists to talk about. Oh, yeah. No, I think secrets is actually a good way to say it. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of protected knowledge in our world, which I. That's one reason I like that you're doing this podcast, because I'm attitude towards that is that that's kind of BS. So I like to be, you know, an artist that really. thinks it may be an existing Neneco system, and we all do better when other artists and creatives are doing better. But that's certainly not the model that a lot of people are using. So that. Yes, I look forward to discussing a lot of these, otherwise oftentimes undiscussed things, which sometimes are like the money bit, the survival bit, the how do you make things happen? Yeah. And at least when I. I'm very comfortable to talk about this, because when I do talks, especially to groups of younger people, or students, I always say like, "Nothing's off-limit if you want to talk about how did I fund this project, I'm happy to talk about that." And people like, "Really?" Because usually people like to pretend that this comes out of thin air. Which is. Yeah, which is so unfair and so wrong, and I do think it's a mistake for. to treat. I mean, I guess. Well, there's a lot in my head here, but, you know, I think treating art as a commodity, it. There is a version of art that is that, and the Galilee world is that, and there's sort of, you know, this sort of thing. But. Art and capital is. Yeah. Yeah. Bedfellows. Strange, bedfellows. For a long time. For a long time. And it's not my favorite, but it's a thing. And, you know, in some ways, it may be, and, you know, historically, I mean, certainly, how so many artists survived, and how so much art got made. And, you know, it's. So there's a certain level of necessity to it, but. But yeah, I mean, I think, at. Anyway, so we're on the same page with that. Right. And when I talk to young people, you know, similarly, I'll. You know, a lot of times, so I'm saying to them too, like, they're looking for advice, and I'm always saying, you know, I can tell you my story, but my story isn't the. There's no version. There's no version of copying my path. Right. to get somewhere, because mine is full of all these totally random things that happen that never gonna happen to you. Not. You're gonna have other random things happen to you. I can give you advice about how to approach those random things, but. Right. Like, they shouldn't just make skeletal hands for 360. Yeah, it's just not gonna work out. It's not gonna work out. Yeah, and so it's like to say, like, what was within that, you know, why do stuff like that, and how do you get a benefit out of it? I'm working on talk right now about sort of the other side of that, like, how you present your story positively, but that there's always the parts you leave out, and there's, you know, there's another story always there that's like, here's all these failures. You know, there's plenty of success. You can look at the successes only and see where they went, and you can say there's all their side. Yeah, I mean, I think it was really valuable work to be done and kind of analyzing, you know, there are. The one. When we were saying there's like the secret way of being successful in art world, the not-seeker way is the way that you talked about, which is like, you know, selling paintings for tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars through Luchip galleries, and that's the one narrative that people kind of get pounded over the head with, at least in a, like, a fine arts art school. And I think it's presented as success, and I think that what's hard is that that's a very narrow, very, extremely narrowing, right? There's like, I mean, there's like, I mean, I mean, it's interesting to everybody. I mean, that's certainly not something that, you know, some people shoot for that and don't make it, and maybe need to find another way, but I think for a huge amount of artists that I know, that's not an interesting career path to them at all, and comes with a whole bunch of compromises that people don't necessarily want to engage in. Certainly that's what I'm learning, and sort of investigating that is like, wow, that's a very specific path. It is, and so I think there's some real value in kind of thinking about how can we index and understand the other paths that people take to success, because those are the ones that are not, that are not made visible that people don't talk about. And so, you know, you're saying your, your story's not universal, but I think that it would be really interesting to try to figure out, like, what are these commonalities that, right? That other people have in common. Yeah. So, let's back up. Did you, so you coming from an interesting family, I come from an art family. I mean, so like there's no, there was sort of, I was a given, I was gonna be making art being creative in some parts of it. No, I think it was really jealous, like that you had these awesome art fans. It's, I get that it's a really rare special thing. So great. I appreciate that. Well, our kids are gonna have them. They have no choice, similar. But it's interesting to watch, you'll see, I mean, so you have a baby, you know, my daughter is now six, and to see her, sort of becoming your own person who's not also like, oh, because I like this, you like, you know, she has her own path too, which is really interesting. But, so when did you sort of go, oh, art, that's for me, because I, you know, I saw you have a, you know, you got a BFA, and an MFA in art. So you didn't sort of cast about, at least at that point. So when it's sort of like, gee, I'm all in on visual art. Yeah, actually, my mother tells me, and she's thinking about babies, and my second word was picture, which is a really kind of strange second word for baby for the first one was cookie, also a two-cell of a word. And I do still like cookies. And pictures, so there we go. Yeah, so yeah, I think I just like came out that way. I feel very, it feels very clear to me that there was some kind of genetic predisposition towards image making. that was obviously the earliest kind of interest in art was around drawing and painting for me, which is the kind of things that are accessible to kids, but that was like an always thing. Like as soon as I knew that there was a word artist, that was what I was, and it wasn't like a thing of, that's what I want to be, it was like I'm an artist. And there was a time where I was also wanted to be a naturalist. I thought I would be one of those thought, but I would be the artist that sailed around on a ship and drew the new birds and animals and plants that were encountered. And then I realized like that's not a kind of job that you can have anymore. And also was like, you know, worryingly intertwined with colonialism, so probably good that didn't work out. But yeah, I just, I always wanted to be an artist. That's just, that has just been the thing for me. And so yeah, even in some ways looking back, I wish maybe I had gone to us an undergraduate school that had more of an environmental science component to it too, because I've ended up for my work, which is deeply intertwined with that, having to really teach myself all of that. But yeah, I was always, it was always clear to me that. And your parents were supportive? Yeah, my parents are in the sciences and in medicine and thank goodness they were, these progressive liberal teachers who are, yeah, really supportive. I feel very lucky actually literally thanked my mom for that yesterday. Because I don't think that that's necessarily been common for other friends and my new parents that came from really different walks in life. They were, they were always supportive of me. You know, they would, I got our supplies from Ramburth Day and they helped me to find a person in the neighborhood who taught me watercolor classes and we would go to the art museum here in Richmond where we have the really wonderful BMFA weekends. And so yeah, I was really lucky. But I think also like their backgrounds in science is part of the reason that I make the kind of work that I make. Yeah. Well, it's great that they did support you in that because I think, you know, I've taught for a long time in art school. My parents taught for ages in art school. And they'll talk about it. And so now I talk about this idea that like it's a pretty special thing if you're in art school because somebody is willing to spend a lot of money for you to do a thing that ostensibly isn't nest, you know, there isn't a career path where you're, you know, guaranteed a living. Yeah. And that's, you know, there's a lot of families who are like, no, if we're going to invest in this education for you, you better come out with, you know, right. And I think that it would be easy to like look at a family like mine and think that's how my parents would have been. But my parents are very lucky, again, very privileged to do work that they love to do. So my father is a researcher and my mother's recently retired family doctor. And for them, those are their dream jobs. Yeah. And so I think that they were supportive of their child also wanting to do their dream job, even though, you know, maybe it wasn't going to be something that they saw as financially viable. That wasn't luckily the main issue for them. Yeah, so step one, yeah, turns out I'm scrappy as hell and I figured something out, but I mean, you know, it's a time of the path thing. I'm like being step one, be lucky and be born in the right family of parents who support you. Step change. And it's not. Yeah. So you end up at Micah, right? Yeah, Micah, the male one is too college-wide. And it's where I went to undergrad. What did you focus on there? It was called literally general fine arts. All right. Yeah, so it's a great multi-media educational platform for young artists who aren't necessarily sure that they want to do exactly one thing. And turns out that now a day is I would describe myself as, you know, either an interdisciplinary artist or a conceptual artist, that was the right path for me to not be focused on specifically painting and drawing or specifically printmaking or sculpture. So you were allowed to sort of explain experiment, try different things. When you left school, where you. Did you feel like you had sufficient information knowledge to sort of strike out as an artist? Oh my god, no. Can people see my expressions through the podcast? You can hear it, yeah. What do you think? No, the art schools that I went to, and I went to SAIC for Graduate School, and if you want to talk about that separately, that's fine. Yeah, we can roll that in. Yeah, I don't think that they prepared me, yeah, school, art, and studio Chicago. I apparently have a preponderance for educational institutions with really long, unwieldy names. Right. Mike, I, even as a comment in it, you know, but yeah, I don't think that they really do a good job of preparing artists for the quote, the quote, real world. And maybe things are changing because I noticed a lot of things in arts pedagogy are changing and becoming much more radical and really exciting. But certainly when I was in school, which was a number of years ago at this point, which I guess we should say for the podcast that I graduated from undergrad in 2002 and from with my graduate degree in 2006. Doesn't go that long ago. Yeah, well, I know, it's because we're all wrong. But yeah, I think that they, you know, I'm the professional development classes. I remember taking, we're taught by people who really had never struck out for real in the art world. And so they were things like, here's how you can register your artwork for copyright, which is something I've never had to do. Despite, you know, my work is being shown at museums, et cetera. I actually had to register art for copyright, but it's because of legal issues and I have a lawyer do it. So that's the answer. You don't write exactly. And I mean, you know, it was like literally filling out some form and triplicate. And then I was like, here, just doing this to kind of fill the time. It's not really, you know, I was not taught anything was particularly useful. And then, you know, the things that I did really need to know that I think honestly any like, I would say quote successful working professional artists would actually have known to teach people. Those people want teaching the professional development classes. Yeah. And so, and I think again, because there is this sense that this knowledge is protected, which is really the yes. And so even for students who are just protected. And does this deserve it? Yes, yes. Restricted. Yeah, I believe so. Yeah, I mean, I don't want to go too deep down that path, but I think it's interesting to think about whether why that's the case. Like, why would an educational play educational arena that would still be something that people would sort of withhold and is it because the teachers that were working wanted to sort of protect their own, you know. Yeah, I mean, I would say in my graduate school experience, there was some truly wonderful generous educators that I worked with. But there was also a lot of people who genuinely felt competitive against the students. And I think that I think it's because there is an economics of scarcity, this perpetuated in the art world. And so, in the same way that it, you know, that's a common feature of most, you know, slices of the capitalist economy that there's this idea that there are these very, very, very limited spots. And certainly if you are talking about the roster of artists, rappers on a very particular blue chip gallery, there are very limited spots. Right. But the thing is, is that there's not, you know, it's like, it's like this great poster that's been going around, you know, that like you don't have less rights when somebody else gets rights. It's not pie. Right. Like, that's the same thing with artists. Like, you don't get to be less, you're not going to be less of an artist if there are more artists. Like, wouldn't the world be a better place if there were more artists? There's room for everyone to be successful in different ways. Right. I think that that's the reason. If you understand that there's a spectrum of ways to be successful and not this one band that's that's right. And I think that unfortunately, even though you would talk to many of these people and they would say like, oh yeah, we're not really, we're not so into capitalism. You would still find that they're operating under this very particular methodology about the scarcity of a certain amount of spots. And, you know, and yeah, there's not that many great tenure track positions and there's not that many museum shows at big institutions, but there are so many other ways to have successful and flourishing careers. Yeah. And I think that, you know, yeah, some of these professors are doing a disservice. So, so you did undergrad, there was like a little break between going to graduate school. Yeah, it's a couple of years in between. So you decided to go to grad school? Why? So I was like a really determined, playful kid and I like I knew I wanted to go to an art school for undergrad. I knew I wanted to take two years off because I wanted to have some quote again quote real world experience. And I knew I wanted to go to grad school. And so that was, it's not like I made that decision post undergrad. I was already. Yes, exactly. So, and I wanted to travel in between and it ended up going to London for a while. I ended up, so that if we're talking about, you know, how to sustain myself economically, I was bartending at that point. And then when I came back, I actually worked for VCU doing video editing and design in their design permit. And so that was actually using the skills that I had learned in art school. So I knew because premier like inside and out at that point, I was using that. But yeah, I really, I wanted to go to graduate school. school because I, it seemed to me that that was where things got serious. Yeah, about art. And again, yeah, yeah, and I mean, this is, this is again the perspective of someone who was very young and not very experienced in what the art world or these like all of these adjacent art worlds are. And I don't know, I think maybe looking back, I might have made a different choice. Is it, wouldn't it gone or gone somewhere else? I think, I think I would still have gone. I think it might have been better off in a different department, especially. This might be too personal to be relevant to your average listener, but I actually, I went to the, I was in the photography department because that was the type of work I was making at the time when I applied. I think I would have done better in a different department that had a different ethos, say fibers or sculpture that just has a different kind of approach to art making that was not so media focused and so rigorous and a kind of particular aesthetic. That was more about ideas. Yeah, I know other people who talk about their grad school experience as sort of like having an expectation of one thing and getting a different thing out of it and feeling like, what I really wanted was, was this thing. Right. But you're young enough in an experience stuff that you don't actually know what that is. You don't necessarily know how to ask for it right there. Right, for making. Yeah, and I feel like it was a galvanizing experience for me and I think I probably wouldn't be making work that I now think is good if I hadn't gone through that. But I also kind of think like I could have gone like a way better education and I don't know exactly how much of that was me, how much of that was the department, how much of that was particular. Well, and I'm probably being, of course, like, yeah, you could look at departmentally, you could look at in terms of the timeline, like at any time this could be a different school. Yeah, and also the things that I was interested in, you know, which are the same things that I'm interested in now, making work that talks about human beings relationship with the natural world that looks deeply at non-human animals and thinks about alternative modes of consciousness and deceating human exceptionalism. That was not particularly well received. That also I think is a, that is very much an era-based thing and I think that's different now. But it was seen as like really quite un-serious and maybe a little silly and maybe then a little gruely. Oh, yeah. To be interested in animals and nature. And so I think I struggled because of that. I think goodness now, that's absolutely not the case. We have all these wonderful departments bringing up that are specifically focused around art and environment. And yeah, and things have changed really quickly in the last few years around that subject manner as we are, you know, sitting in the midst of the ecological crisis, this extinction. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, I think that like my educational story is complicated because there's a lot of different reasons why I feel unsatisfied with what happened. But I also think, you know, I just like tried to take even some, even a lot of what I think was maybe the negative part of that experience and then use it towards something. Yeah. I mean, I think ultimately that's the best you can do is like you have this set of experiences that are very codified because it's in school and you do what you do with that, right? I mean, like for better or worse, like you could have gone to different, different school, but you may have benefited more from having whatever struggles with that, right? Right. I mean, to the cruiser of course. Right. I mean, like, you know, to that point. So what do you feel like, you know, I mean, you don't have to say like the big whatever three takeaway, but like what do you think is now looking back on experience? What do you bring forward from that education into your work? Wow, that's a really great question. I'm not sure that I've given it a ton of. You can think about it too. Because I know sometimes it's hard to just. I mean, I think that when I think about like, like, okay, so what negative thing actually ended up being a positive thing, there were a number of these kind of interdisciplinary critique panels. It's something particular that SAIC does. I don't know if other schools do it where they bring together people from all the different departments and they do critiques with you once a semester. And those were awful for me. I had a couple, like, older white dude professors who really just berated me in a way that I think was actually pretty sexist. And that gave me a taste of what things were like, you know, outside the hallowed world, you know, walls of art school. I mean, Miko was like this very like safe, space, sweet bubble. And then SAIC was a really different experience. So in some ways that was really positive. And I remember that was an emotionally difficult experience to feel like you were being attacked by people that were supposed to help you. And then, you know, a white and other people on the panel defend me at all. But I remember at the end of that having this really clear thought where I was like, glad that you hate my art. That probably means that I'm doing something right. And so I think that that sense of just reaching an internal decision that like it didn't matter what other people thought about the work that I was making or the fact that I was interested in non-human animals or loved nature and was interested in beauty. All of these things were deeply uncool when I was in graduate school. But I think I learned to be like, I don't care. I mean, yeah, so you're good. I don't care that they think that I'm just going to keep doing this. And you and I share that I get in that we were raised in a way that we have a certain level of self-confidence around our beliefs and that we've been encouraged to have them and to sort of act on them. And it makes a difference because similarly, I know I had some situations like that in my own schooling and great work where people were, yeah, it's like this is what is this. And yet my response was similar to yours, which is to say, it's not for you then. And that's fine. I'll find the people who it's for and it's going to be good because I won't have to deal with people who don't get me. I'd rather, the thing is specifically, to your point about preparation for real, they had like a show your resume to the teachers and your portfolios trying to prepare you going to the world. And my portfolio resume were just wacky and like I literally made my resume on neon yellow, neon orange and neon green paper. And there was a little dude with a knife in his back and there was knife for each bullet and the teachers were just like, what is? That sounds like a very nervous. Yes. And they were like, we're not, well, who would want to hire you? This is horrible. And then like one teacher who was like, my favorite teacher was like a sound design teacher was like, I'd hire you. That's cool. And that's who I'd want to work with. And see now I didn't have to work for a bunch of people who I wouldn't want to work with, who didn't understand me because I made a resume that looked like what they wanted. Right. But that's not for everybody to have that level of confidence around who they are. Right. So if we're going to start this task that I set us up boiling down, what it is that artists do that are very successful that don't necessarily fit the traditional mold as one thing they do is they find their community. Yeah. Right. And yeah, don't just keep making the work that you know you want to make, that you feel driven to make. Yeah. And it is so hard though. Oh. Yeah. To trust that. And to make a living. And so. Right. Let's fast forward a little bit. So I talk about the education, mostly because I still have a little bit of a left over. I saw I did theater undergraduate. I love it. I think everything I learned I've used, it's super practical. It was a great education. Could I have learned better things in a different setting, different way of sure, but I didn't do grad school because I didn't think of myself as the fine art path as something for me. And I just went into the world to make a living, similarly practical. Like I'm going to, I got to have a job and print making, which my parents did was not a job and I'm not going to even think about something like that. So yeah, so I was on a very specific path. So I just didn't do the grad school thing. And then now I feel like, did I miss the super essential thing? That was the key to like when I try to write a statement. And I'm like, I don't know what people supposed to say about this work. I feel dumb. Like I don't, my stuff is too simple. Like there's not. Well, you know how. Yeah. So, but you know, I know what you're saying. Like you're, you know, and I think everybody does this in post-Russian room. It's that feeling of like, I don't belong at this party. Like I don't really, I'm just lucked into this series of things. Right. That's very common among I think like people who are like, you know, make their own world, right? But everyone's know I look outside of that and go like, whoa, wait, I don't want here. Yeah. So I think it's like, what other way would you want to be really lucky? Yeah, I mean, I mean, I just can't enjoy someone else's party. No, never. I mean, I think the tricky part is to say that like I have, you know, most of the time I walk with confidence and I feel good about what I do. And then periodically I look, I'm like, it's all nonsense. And I don't know why anybody thinks this is that good. What am I doing? And, you know, and you sort of cycle through that and then you can go out. Right. I guess I can say safely that like graduate school wouldn't help with that. And I think that just being a probably due to being a thoughtful human being. Right. And not missing some sensual, yeah, I think I always, I always say graduate school is like the same way I feel about having children that it's not something I would ever try to talk someone into. Yeah, that's like maybe you just know that it's the thing for you or not but Yeah, I would say like for younger people who are struggling with whether or not they should go to school Like don't do it and yeah less or until you feel like you really need to and there's and you kind of know why Do you think grad school though as a prerequisite for Certain level of success in the art world. I don't think it's a prerequisite. I think it's helpful I do think that unfortunately there's still a lot of name recognition The thing that I think was far in a way the most helpful for me In terms of my you know, I'm just keep using quotes quote career. I just don't like that word Is the kind of things that I made so and I think that there are other ways to do that So that you know my peer group Because of course like the way that I started out as an artist was showing at Parliament galleries and DIY spaces and you know me and my friends putting together something Renting a space or doing like the banners for a while pull loose or You know like taking over a gallery that we saw was gonna go to funk and then putting up our own solo shows You know like those kind of really scrappy things that you do and you kind of need a community yeah to help you do that But but but of course graduate schools not the only way to make a community It's just the way that I ended up making mine I thought that an undergrad would I mean because theater school is all about being scrappy and making things happen in school Mm-hmm And so that was a great thing to be able to do Yeah And also you know being part of like the punk subculture right my sister and I was talking about that the other day that we We know we can pull off pretty much anything on any budget on any timeline because of those experiences in the sort of DIY punk world and also in the art school We're like we're like yeah, you know what like You've just certain level confidence around right when you're creating for food not bombs and you're like you have $15 to feed 150 people and the dumpster we're gonna make it work. Yeah Dumps to bagels dumps to bagels. I said some dumpster sushi and it's not that bad So So you get out of school and you are like I'm gonna be an artist because you know since you were a baby What's your what's your career path? How do you what do you do? Yeah, I mean I think that this like this idea that you It really is reasonable to start small and work with what you have right around you at your disposal And I think that in some ways people artists these days are Done a disservice by the internet because they have so much information of their fingertips that they feel like they're supposed to be way ahead of where they are And I guess I would just be like yes, it's okay to have like a Parmig gallery show. It's okay to put your work up at a coffee shop, you know Yeah, and people who are gonna feel like they're They need to be way ahead because they see the model I was actually like I guess maybe lucky enough that I wasn't really seeing the models because I think that's a There was not as much exposure I think that's a really good point because Not well, I was gonna build on that so It's interesting because you're saying about knowledge right that like you should feel like you know more But also you feel like you should be more successful because people are like literally going I just set up on Instagram and now I'm super famous and I've got all this that in the other and you're like And those one in the millionaire does it don't have any money. Yeah, super rare and I would content. I don't know about those specific cases But generally people that are like super successful have worked really really hard for that to happen and And they've pointed themselves towards it and done a lot of work even when it seems effortless. There's a lot behind it. They've worked even harder. Yeah Like it was effortless Yeah, and of course like yes, there is these narratives of people getting plucked out of You know graduate school. Yeah, I'm an undergrad to be in the Winnie by a Neal But but I think that yes, it's incredibly rare. I think that Those people also may have already worked really really hard in some own context And I also think that those narratives just get way too much weight in America because we're obsessed with celebrities. Yeah. See our president um It's not Yeah, I guess I just think I just think that like that's it's like focusing on The genie and the lamp as your career path like that's just right. It's just like probably not gonna happen And is that even what you want like I I think being and actually honest looking back on it I wanted to succeed on my own terms and I even see Places where I made it a little harder for myself because I wanted To do it. I wanted to know That I succeeded because of what I knew how to do and not because of some kind of chance or circumstance or right place right time or like charisma or anything like that Yeah So I kind of want to just maybe don't But no, I mean, I think that that just does a very brief anecdote like that's why I didn't go to school in New York um partly because I Had the sense that I would not Uh Concentrate on school. Mm-hmm. If I was in New York um But yeah, I don't know I think yeah, this is some deeper psychology maybe I don't like us, but but I think like it was it was really important to me to know that the way I was gonna get there was gonna be the authentic way And it's probably a reaction against seeing people get so obsessed with these kind of you know um rags to riches So I produce accessories. There's so deeply unappealing to me that I went so far in the other direction that I was like I am gonna make this myself Stitch by stitch You know So help me out way I mean, I kind of want to pursue it, but I this because it's really interesting to me But I also feel like I'm like how there's other stuff I want to get to too. So um We'll see if it comes back naturally. Okay, so But it's just because I think it's it's it's a fascinating thing to think about because again It just has to do with personality and sort of situation around what's happening So you get out of school you you want to be an artist and you I know about sort of a later piece Which is other people's pixels. So and we should talk about that. So I want to get to that I want to see what the connection is to like what did you do to make a living out of school? Um, well actually be so we started other people's pixels. Well, I mean, graduates. Okay, so There was no gap there was born in 2005. So it was in the second year of my schooling um, and so that was uh Initially I actually wasn't really doing anything for OPP. It was mostly Brian Who's my husband partner Brian Kirkbride amazing sound artist experimental musician and software programmer expert in there um, so yeah, we so bit of context for that. Mm-hmm Tell people that don't know other people's pictures. Yeah, so other people's pixels is a um web platform for artists to Create and manage their own websites um, you're listening to probably know what square space is and it's essentially Like square space but a totally targeted at fine artists and fine art portfolios and from my Way before had I not been programming my site myself and then hiring people to build ones for me That's where I would have ended up as on your platform, which I like my father's still on that nice chuck um, so Yeah, and so that basically um, there was a little bit of luck involved Uh, but there was a lot of careful thinking about exactly the issues that you're interested in talking about on this podcast Which is how do you Survive as a creative person in yeah talk about I mean, the castles you know to building a product for artists that was absolutely necessary and in some degrees is still necessary that like you know It's changed we're in a changed world at this point, but you know the fact of matter is everybody needs a way to show their art and Yeah, how do you know? Yeah? How do you start it? How do you know that it's gonna make you a living? What are you doing when it's not or if it's not? Yeah, I don't think that we I don't think that we At the very beginning that it was a way to make a living. I think that um Brian and I both are just people who look we're just problem solvers and we're like people We'd like love to help you know, we're always like oh such and such organization needs something something Can we help figure that out? That's just how our brains operate And so we saw that there was this very clear issue Which is that our friends in school Needed to show their work on the internet, but could not afford to do it in the way that was possible at that time So in 2004 2005 if you wanted a website you needed to either be able to totally code it yourself Which a lot of people that we knew were not interested in doing that It's not fun. Yeah, like it's too. No. Thank you um Or you needed to have about a thousand dollars like to start with a designer um And uh web developer you needed to pay for your hosting you needed to do things that seem really complicated at the time like There was no to be clear there was no in instagram and oh there was there was no face I don't know if there was like be answering those portfolios. Yeah, so there really wasn't a lot No that at the time there only other People doing anything akin to what we were doing. We're doing really hoki flash templates that just did not offer anything to people who are actually serious artists Um You know, they were like kind of appropriate for a wedding photographer No, she not wanting to tell you just different aesthetic. It's just different. Yeah, so So yeah, so you need like a thousand dollars to start and then of course you could expect that it would be hundreds of dollars every time you needed to update it and that would be a really slow and really difficult process. And we heard from people all the time that why did do those things or like I traded a painting and bought some beer for the kid in the design department but he's lost my stuff or he's not answering my emails. My dad had somebody build him, a friend of mine built him an entirely flash portfolio website, it's beautiful and I tried to argue him against it because then second he wanted to change something, I was like you have to hire somebody to do it every time. Right and that was very much the way that the internet operated for artists at that time. So it was, you know, it was it was really like a bad situation. People either couldn't afford it or they would get kind of mired in something that was not able to be updated. But at the same time people in school knew that they needed this, that this was like absolutely something that was important for them in their careers. Yeah because we shifted out of like carrying around slides. Right. And it was sort of the next tier. Yeah so just again to date me I applied to undergrad with slides. Yeah. But by the time I was in graduate school I'm pretty sure I used mini-juts. I did sound design using mini-juts. Yeah so yeah so we just saw a really clear need and that was that was the initial impetus for it and then I would say though very shortly after that when we realized how much people liked this, this light bulb went off and we were like oh this could be a real thing. So we better do it. And that was very intentionally about freeing ourselves from this kind of track that a lot of artists get in where you desperately want to be an artist but you're not making any money doing that and then you're working a nine to five doing something else that's hopefully related to art maybe at a gallery but maybe you're a barista or maybe you're working at a corporation and you're coming home exhausted every day and you don't have any time to make your art. So we really clearly saw that and I had always thought prior to OPPO I would be a professor which also thinks like an awesome job but is definitely hustle too and there just aren't that many great jobs out there. And so we thought this like you know artist turning a business is a real chance for us to kind of free ourselves from what otherwise seemed like a really difficult path ahead if you were only looking at what the standard options were. And how so you're in grad school so I mean I assume you still need to make a living and you've got this business that you're starting and you're seeing it becoming viable. How long did it take for this to become like at or I guess I'm making assumption here when how much of your time did it take after you're done with school did it become a full time job. Yeah it became a full time job and way more than that for a number of years but it wasn't it was not I mean it was not very long until we were paying our rent and that was like that was like when that light bulb moment went off and we were like oh yeah let's do this. So yeah and there were definitely I mean running your own businesses difficult as you know and there are it's amazing to be your own boss if you're an artist because you can have really flexible time so you can you know plan projects around when you have a show coming up etc. But it's also really challenging because everything is your responsibility. And to go back to the education piece you're generally not taught how to be an entrepreneur not a business in arts school. I was not taught how to use quick books and it's weird because I mean basically I think I can generalize it pretty much every artist has to be it to some degree you know their own business. They should be yeah yeah and I mean again you know that maybe that's not an ideal world scenario I wish that we had a you know yeah just just to state my position I am an artist that runs a corporation and I think does a pretty good job. It's a pretty good job of being an artist pretty good job of running a corporation with the corporation that we run operates as if it was a socialist country and gives people we are fortunate enough to be able to afford to pay our employees well and give them you know we pay for their healthcare 100% which is like you know as we believe healthcare is a human right and everybody gets really great maternity or paternity leave but I'm not necessarily a huge fan of capitalism I don't think that this is the way that artists in a perfect world would be supporting themselves. I think that you know we should have a lot more public funding for arts and I learned recently that the city of Berlin has more public arts money than the entire United States of America so shame on you. No I mean that's the other thing is you know in terms of education is getting out of this country and seeing what happens in the rest of the world or certainly in Europe around art and being like oh right right discovering that how poorly we pay teachers how poorly we treat artists how poorly I did see full yeah I mean Elizabeth Warren was saying that I'm so tired of hearing what the wealthiest country in the world can't afford to do right so that said I think I may obviously be coming off with a you know shades of an idealist but I'm also practical and I think that artists who don't take a look around and really realize the system that we live in end up getting instrumentalized by that system and if you burn out can really easily get kind of when I think you know chewed up so if you don't empower yourself yeah. Yeah I think that it's very easy for people to not be artists anymore basically if you don't think about economically empowering yourself if you're not going to be an artist for very long. Yeah well I like it and it's interesting because I think you could say like there's a lot of tears of the way that artists get abused and used and creatives too just sort of generally like you know you get hired for free labor. It's a thing that you are good at and then what he wants to pay you but also like you can see that happening on a you know maybe as a governmental level what we're talking about but also you can see it you know coming back to the art world in the way that artists are used by galleries or artists are used by institutions or what and like it's it's it's such a big continuity and it's not something you've been given that education about. Right but I also think and I think artists are taught though that talking about money is sort of like nasty you know that that's again part of that kind of you know the secret things that people don't want to talk about and I think that it does our community or real disservice because again we you know if we don't talk about the financial realities in the current art world not only are we less prepared to change them if we think things should be you know should work in a better way but we also are you know not going to be able to do the work that we want to do in the world if we don't kind of face the realities of the way that this operates. Yeah and at the same time like you can't do the work you want to do if you can't keep a roof over your head. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean so to that and you so you started your own company which is amazing and it's successful and it's running now for many years you're still doing it. How many employees do you have actually two and a half? There's a half an employee which half no so better. Obviously. So it's interesting because we have that parallel my sister and I run a business together we have some part time employees but we you know it's us two full time people and it's how it's our primary income source. I worked for other people for a few years and then started my own business as a design firm and then shifted it we shifted together over to this consultancy. So yeah finding this specific path of like hey entrepreneurship, make business, make a living in service of still doing your creative work it stays related in that you're working with other artists because you're helping them create their sites and it keeps you connected to that community. Our is like we're teaching our creative stuff through our consulting work and we make art that then we translate the learnings of that art to those people so there's this for me there's a sort of back and forth of like the incentivizing of making art even if it's not financially incentivized like it's required by my job which I like because then it's like I have an extra excuse like I'm not like taking away valuable time from something to make art because the making art is essential to the work that I do. So setting that up on purpose. So you do this company you make a living doing this company and then you make art. Do you have any financial sort of component to your art making are you looking to make any income or some income from your art is that a priority at all. Do you when you look at your your your balance here are you trying to do that or is there. So yeah that's a good that's a really good question. I'm part of the reason again that I started OPP was to free my work to be able to operate in the way that I knew I wanted it to which was to talk about environmental issues and I had a strong suspicion that that was not going to be particularly commercially viable. So you know by me yes but also at that time right I was just saying yeah well yeah where I'm still not so much I was was reading an interesting article about the current Miami Basel art fair and they're saying like oh even though you know the I believe was the with Wayne Estonian Pavilion one for an opera about climate change the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale they were saying oh yes no collectors still are not injured. didn't work about climate change, they find environmental art to be, I'm not sure they use the word bummer. Like I'm setting. They don't want to know. Yeah. Yeah. So, so even though now you're seeing their obsoleses, I guys start around environmentally engaged practice. It's not translating into commercial sales. So I think I was still right. I'm not that less than myself because I infuse my art with my politics and they are inseparable to me as I know it is with your work. And at the same time I start working with a gallery, I'm so interested in pursuing that and finding like, oh the reality of that is that you have to make art that sells. And so then trying to figure out where is my balance in that? Like what am I willing to do to make art that sells versus make art? I'm never not going to make art I like or passionate about, but is there a version of my art that might sell? Could I make some of my living from that? But so have you completely divorced that or are you yeah, where are you with that? Well, so first I just want to say really quickly that I think NATO Thompson, so something really interesting about that, which is that he about political art, essentially not necessarily having market forces and why you see artists kind of increasingly tending towards abstraction and I don't necessarily mean like a like formal abstraction, but like abstracting away from political context or trying to find a way to have a work like look really abstract. But then have this kind of tokenized message, you know, it's just that he you know he talks just really, really clearly about kind of the more quote abstract the work, the work is the easier it is to have it become kind of a market product. And so so yes, the inverse of that is like the more politically or work maybe chances are you might have a more difficult time marketing it and that I makes a lot of really clear sense if you think about why that would be the case. I mean you want to hope that there's people who care about these and they are definitely are they're definitely are but I don't think it's like the de facto norm. So so yeah, so for my artistic practice, my goal is currently that I should be at least breaking even. Okay. So there is so example. Oh yeah, there's a lot of capital that flows through my artistic process and I like to think about that is like, you know, the money is coming in, it's going out, where is it going? That's actually really important to me. I like to make sure that the money is coming from an ethical place, it's going to an ethical place like, you know, if I need to pay a fabricator, how can I be sure that that person is like, you know, maybe also another artist doing work in the community or the materials that I'm sourcing are from ethical places. So I kind of think about this this flow through and I basically for the last five or six years have had a separate bank account essentially for my art, which really helps that tracking process. So I kind of like watch. See, you're making sure that at the very least it's not a exactly exactly it's going a little bit up somewhere started. But yeah, I wouldn't say that that burning burning money is not really the goal on that side of things. But not, but not, but I do need a lot of money to make these projects. And so, you know, like we, I worked on a project last year that was funded by Andrew Mellon Foundation grant that was $140,000 and not all of that was going to the artistic portion of it. But sometimes there's really significant chunks of money coming into these things. They just don't usually stay with me. Yeah. But they're the way that I get to do the work that I want to do. So they become, you know, translated into materials and fabricated budgets and programming budgets and that to me is the income that I want out of that. Yeah. Yeah. That makes no, that makes perfect sense. I think it's a good way to look at it. Yeah. And I don't want to pay for that out of my own pocket. Yeah. You want the project to be funded. Yeah. But you're saying that you, you got a grant. So I think that's a good question. Then as where is this money coming from? So are you more grant focused than sales, you know, focused gallery, focused, you know, where you're sort of selling commodity versus applying for grants? I know you've done residencies and you've gotten some, you know, those opportunities come from that set of work that goes into it too. So how much work are you willing to devote to get that return to? Yeah. So that's a really good question. So I also, this is not something I learned in school, but something that it took me quite a while to figure out is that the, for the type of work that I make and this again, will be one of those things work like my particular path won't suit everyone, but there's actually a lot of money for public art that doesn't necessarily exist for if you want to fund an individual artist gallery based project, which I think is how a lot of artists coming out of school are thinking about working. It's pretty hard to get, you know, open-ended money to, you know, non-restricted grants to fund artistic practices. There, you know, since the NIA stopped doing that. There's just not a lot of money to just fund any art project, but there is money to fund particular projects in particular locations coming from all different kinds of sources, whether it be, you know, private foundations or, you know, municipalities, park districts, museums, doing public art programs, and that really sued it myself and my work. I was really, really, was and I'm interested in working in the public sphere. So that's the primary way that I support my work sometimes it's grants, but usually it's, usually it's the public art money, or it's, you know, museum budgets to do. So, so separating that out, so grants different than public art money, because that money has been allocated by government city. Right, so I guess a grant, because a grant may be for a specific project, but oftentimes grants are open-ended in certain ways. Whereas, like, the public art money would be like, you, you get a commission through whatever process that happens through which there's many different processes and how to talk about, and then the money exists specifically to make the project, rather than, like, say, to pay your rent while you make art. Right, I got you. Yeah. So how do you just, how do you discover these opportunities? How did you come, you know, how did you start, and then how do you do it now, and then also how much time do you spend doing it? So I just started small, and I think that that like, you know, people are going to be like, "Wow, that's boring." I want like a magic narrative, but it's not a magic narrative, it's actually a really practical narrative that anyone can implement, which like I was describing earlier, you know, when I got out of school, I showed my work in places that my friends ran, or I made my own opportunities by, you know, we pasting things or doing just like little insertions of work in inexpensive ways into all kinds of contexts, and it just built really gradually, and it's like not a, it's not an exciting, like, you know, oh my god, to the end of the book, and oh my god, surprise! It's just like the normal way. Well, it's the way you actually got to end of opening, which was turning a page one at a time. Right, right, right, and exactly, and like, and now I'm doing kinds of projects that I want to do, so I'm like, you know, have done projects with the Museum of Contemporary Art and the All-Bright Knox and the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, and I've done, you know, a few, um, biennials abroad, and I'm showing my work in the places that are really exciting to me that have the kinds of audiences that I want, and that can offer the kind of institutional support that I need to create complicated projects, which is the thing I want more than anything, more than the financial ability, and the way that I got that was just working really diligently, really being really focused and doing it one step at a time. Knowing you wanted that, and working incrementally. Yeah, and also I think like being, um, pushing myself, being ambitious to say like, okay, scale it up next time. Like, what is, I don't mean necessarily in terms of physical size, but like, how can I do this in a more compelling way? How can I take a little bit of a risk? How can I push this and not just keep doing the same, same, same thing that I'm really comfortable with? But always like learning and doing something new, and the other thing I'll say that was really important to this otherwise like, you know, there's no secret. Narrative is, um, being easily responsible, doing what I say I'm going to do, being professional, having my shit updated, having an updated resume that I can send in five minutes when I get an email from a curator, having, um, being good at, you know, editing things, um, being a good collaborator, acknowledging the people that I'm collaborating with at the museum, um, and, uh, being easy to work with, like, in terms of just not being a dick. I don't, I don't want to under emphasize what you've just said to people because I think that I've similarly experienced that I don't, I didn't realize how rare that sort of thing is is until I start having gallery people saying, thank you for responding and providing the right resolution image or whatever. I think it's getting rarer too. And it's like, I find it almost impossible to get like, people that actually even read an email in a cogent way. And no, I think that, like, to be clear, like, that sort of behavior is super valuable in the art world that like, if you can follow through, mm-hmm. and do the things you say you're gonna do and show up on time. - Yeah, I think it's about, think about it as being a good collaborator. Remember that if you want to work at a large scale at big institutions, these projects are not accomplished alone. I also would just think that there's this myth of the artistic genius like, like drinking and swearing, laboring alone in his studio and I'm using his idea, that I just want to totally blow up. I think that that was never real because most people had lots of people supporting them, like their female partners and a lot of people. - Completely uncredited, yes. - Right, and so that's not a real narrative. The real narrative is that it takes a village, it takes a lot of people to make large-scale successful work and it's not only will it not serve you to not acknowledge that work, but it's wrong. - Yeah, it makes a level. But also, you may get an opportunity. - Yeah, be a good collaborator. - You may get an opportunity at whatever level, but you won't get another opportunity if that's not the set of behaviors you bring to the table. - Yeah, or I think you know how you get what you have want, if you get fortunate enough to get your work in front of the eyes of a curator at a museum that you want to work with and how do you get another show, they talk. - Yeah. - You don't you don't send your work unsolicited around, unfortunately that's generally frowned upon. What happens is that people who are museum professionals see each other conferences or our friends already and they say like, you know, not only was this work really great, but this person was a treat to work with. - Yeah. - And so it matters. - Yeah. - It matters and it's also just like, you know, good practice of being like a decent human being. And working against this like really crummy narrative, it unfortunately is the way that some people are very successful in the art world is through, you know, climbing over the dead bodies of their peers. But that's very much not the type of success that I would ever want. It's not the type of career that I want, it's not the type of work that I want to make. - Yeah. - So yeah. - Yeah, I think it's a good point. - The knowledge that people that help you treat them, treat them right, elevate them, crack up them. - Well, and it's to your point, like you want to be your art profession, you want to relate to who you are as a person and if you're trying to be a decent person, like these things have to be aligned. - Yeah. - Yeah, I feel like we, like that is such a good point. I feel like we're almost we're wrapping it up on that bow, but putting that bow there, even though I think there's more to talk about. - I mean, I think we covered, I mean, well, you know, the last thing I'll ask you, and I think it was sort of implicit, what we're saying, but, you know, the big question is really success. Do you feel like you are successful? Whatever that means to you as an artist. - Yeah. Yeah. And I think that I felt like that when I was just showing out an apartment gallery too, because it felt like the appropriate place for me and for the work that I was making, you know, that I, you know, I know that, I don't know, this is less an intense thing to discuss. Let me think. The most important thing for me and my work, because my work is really message-driven, I really want to have an audience for it because I am incredibly passionate about the environmental justice issues that are behind the work. And so, to me, success is finding ways to have that audience. And I think that I may also have some more traditional versions of that word success, you know, the names of, for example, museums on my resume or whatever, right? That's not really the, that's not so much the important part to me as being able to have work that actually reaches people that gets in front of people's eyeballs that doesn't just sit in a closet somewhere. And so, I like to think about it that I keep one foot in the artwork because artwork is a really good way to distribute culture. It's a system that I have a lot of problems with, but it's a system that exists to bring art and culture to the public's awareness. But I also like to have one foot that goes other places. And so, I guess I'm saying that because I want to push back against what people might think a, you know, capital S definition of success is and just make it a little bit more complicated. You know, to me, success is being able to make my work and have it turn out at least mostly the way that I wanted to, which I think that's a whole other discussion, but you know, it's never quite what you think. So, to be able to make things, sometimes these really complicated, really difficult things have them become real in the world in whatever form that is. And then for people to see them. You know, and I don't, I don't necessarily care if that's at a farmer's market or, you know, out of museum with white marble columns. That's not, that doesn't define success for me. It's more about whether or not I think that the work is authentic, is like fully realized and is hopefully making meaning inside of people's minds out there in the world and really ideally helping to provoke some social change. That's difficult and that's maybe a subject for another day. But that, yeah, that's, that's success to me. Thanks for listening to foreground background with me Noah Scalin. If you want to know more about Jenny Kenler, check out our site JennyKenlor.com, which will also be in the show notes. And if you want to help me make more things like this show, please consider becoming one of my Patreon supporters at patreon.com/noescalin. And of course, please rate and review this podcast wherever you found it. The music used on this episode is Flying High 2019 Hip Hop Remix by Jan Tracks. [Music]