Just Make Art
A conversation about making art and the artist's journey with Ty Nathan Clark and Nathan Terborg, two artists trying to navigate the art world, just like you.
In each episode, the duo chooses a quote from a known artist and uses it as a springboard for discussion.
Through their conversations, Ty and Nathan explore the deeper meaning of the quote and how it can be applied to the artists studio practice. They share their own personal stories and struggles as artists, and offer practical advice and tips for overcoming obstacles and achieving artistic success.
Whether you're a seasoned artist or just starting out, "Just Make Art" provides valuable insights and inspiration to help you navigate the creative process and bring your artistic vision to life. With their engaging and conversational style, Ty and Nathan create a welcoming space for listeners to explore their own artistic passions and learn from two artists working hard to navigate the art world.
Just Make Art
Artists, Stop Seeking APPROVAL and Focus on Your Craft!
Can an artist truly live without creating? Join us as Ty Nathan Clark explores this compelling question and offers an intimate view of his creative journey while Nathan prepares for his much-awaited exhibition in Munich alongside the talented Kit King. Through the lens of cherished literary works by Lewis Hyde and Rainer Maria Rilke and the poetic brilliance of Theodore Roethke and Allen Ginsberg, Ty shares insights into the transformative power of turning inward for inspiration. Together, we unravel the essence of inviting past artistic influences into our work, embracing the natural flow of creativity, and celebrating the raw authenticity that emerges when we connect with our inner selves and nature.
This episode is a heartfelt celebration of the artist's journey, filled with profound reflections and inspiring moments. Ty delves into the necessity of pursuing art as an intrinsic need and the value of self-discovery and solitude in fostering true creative expression. Highlighting a captivating encounter with artist Edward Povey, we discuss the importance of focusing on the soul and authentic creativity over seeking external approval. Let this conversation inspire you to prioritize your genuine artistic vision and find solace in the undeniable magic of creation.
Books:
The GIft: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World - Lewis Hyde
Letter to a Young Poet- Rainer Maria Rilke
A Small Porch: Wendell Berry
Where Nathan is Showing in Munich January 2025:
https://www.benjamin-eck.com
Kit King:
https://www.kitkingart.com
Edward Povey:
https://www.instagram.com/edwardpovey
Send us a message - we would love to hear from you!
Make sure to follow us on Instagram here:
@justmakeartpodcast @tynathanclark @nathanterborg
well, I'm alone today yes, it's just me, ty as we are approaching here in the states thanksgiving and nathan is in the studio working on last minute changes and last minute updates, photographing his work and prepping everything for his upcoming exhibition in January in Munich, germany, at the Benjamin Eck Gallery with the amazing artist Kit King. If you don't know Kit King, you should definitely check her out. I mean, her work is absolutely insane. I cannot wait to see photos of this exhibition. This is a massive one for Nathan. It's super exciting. He is in the mix big time and if you have prepped for solo exhibitions, group exhibitions, where you've had multiple works, you know that there is a lot of things to get done in that process before you ship work out. And for Nathan, of course, his work is quite heavy each piece, so he's got to get that stuff crated up and shipped over the pond to Germany, and so that's in January and you'll hear a lot more about that coming up from us and probably in the next episode we'll discuss that a little bit too. And his preparations and deadlines and just the grind and the pressure of getting work ready with a deadline for a show. So I thought I'd jump on this week, since we don't really have the ability for Nathan and I to do one of our normal episodes.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to jump on and I'm just going to read a few things to you that inspire me from my past and things that really do mean a lot to me from two specific books. I'm going to be reading from the Gift, a book by Lewis Hyde. It's titled the Gift Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World Absolutely fabulous book. I will definitely put both of these books in the show notes as well, and I'm going to read a few things out of the Gift. I'm going to read something from Theodore Retka and I'm going to read something from Ellen Ginsberg so both poets, both who have won multiple awards for their poetry and their writing over the years, and so I'm excited to read just two little inspirational bits out of that book. And then I'll be reading from Rainier Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet another one of my favorite books, and I'm excited to read a little bit about that as well. And then I'm going to jump into something that I also came across today that really inspired me and discuss that a little bit too. So, all right, let's get rolling as I jump into the gift by Lewis Hyde, these two sections here. This is from a Theodore Retka lecture that says I was in that particular hell of the poet, a longish dry period.
Speaker 1:It was 1952. I was 44 years old and I thought I was done. I was living alone in a biggish house in Edmonds, washington. I had been reading and rereading not Yeats but Raleigh and Sir John Davies. I'd been teaching the five-beat line for weeks. I knew quite a bit about it, but write it myself, no. So I felt myself a fraud.
Speaker 1:Suddenly in the early evening, the poem, the dance started and finished itself in a very short time, say 30 minutes, maybe in the greater part of an hour. It was all done. I felt I knew I had hit it. I walked around and I wept and I knelt down I always do after I've written what I know is a good piece. But at the same time I had, as God is my witness, the actual sense of a presence, as if Yeats himself were in that room. The experience was in a way terrifying, for it lasted at least a half an hour. That house, I repeat, was charged with a psychic presence. The very walls seemed to shimmer. I wept for joy. He, they, the dead poets, they were all with me. Wow, I know we've talked about this at times, the fact that I love to invite my dead peers, my heroes, my idols, into the studio with me on a regular basis. And I do feel as if there are times when I just really hit a piece, like I really nail it, just like Retka's saying there, and I feel like they're all surrounding me and cheering and clapping and talking about the piece with me. So when I read that moment years ago, it just blew me away. And then he goes on to say such moments of unwilled reception are not all there is to the creation of the work of art. Of course, notice Rettke, I'd been teaching the five beat line for weeks.
Speaker 1:All artists work to acquire and perfect the tools of their craft and all art involves evaluation, clarification and revision. But these are secondary asks. They cannot begin, and sometimes they must not begin, until the materia, the body of the work, is on the page or on the canvas. The Kula prohibition on speaking of the value of the gift has its equivalent in the creative spirit. Premature evaluation cuts off the flow. The imagination does not barter its engendering images. In the beginning, we have no choice but to accept what has come to us, hoping that the cinders some forest spirit saw fit to bestow may turn to gold when we have carried them back to the hearth. Allen Ginsberg has been our consistent spokesman on that phase of work in which the artist lays evaluation aside so that the gift may come forward. This is Ginsberg.
Speaker 1:The parts that embarrass you the most are usually the most interesting poetically, are usually the most naked of all, the rawest, the goofiest, the strangest and the most eccentric and at the same time most representative and most universal. That was something I learned from Kerouac, which was that spontaneous writing could be embarrassing. The cure for that is to write things down which you will not publish, which you will not show people, to write secretly, so you can actually be free to say anything you want. It means abandoning being the poet, abandoning your careerism, abandoning even the idea of writing any poetry. Really abandoning Giving up is hopeless Abandoning the possibility of really expressing yourself to the nations of the world, abandoning the idea of being a prophet with honor and dignity and abandoning the glory of poetry and just settling down in the muck of your own mind. You really have to make a resolution just to write for yourself, in the sense of not writing to impress yourself, but writing what yourself is saying Wow, that's pretty incredible. Sometimes we just need to create for ourselves and only ourselves, even if it's awful, even if it's shitty, even if it embarrasses the hell out of you, who cares? Nobody's going to see it, but you. That's how to be completely free and what might come out of that. That's how to be completely free and what might come out of that. We don't know what's going to come out of that, because we don't do that very often, but I love those little clues from Kerouac that he taught to Ginsburg, that Ginsburg just then took to his poetry, that collaborative element, that network, that friend, that confidant that you can talk back and forth with and take those things back to your studio. It's just absolutely incredible, man. I love that. It's just beautiful.
Speaker 1:I want to now go to one of my favorite passages in Letters to a Young Poet by Rainier Maria Rilke, who's one of my favorite poets, and honestly I wasn't too sure what I was going to talk about today, but I was sitting on my couch this morning at 5 am with my little puppy, cash, who was sleeping on my lap, and I was reading Wendell Berry poetry this morning one of the best nature poets that has ever existed, very, very deep, spiritual poet, who writes incredibly about nature and things around him and I was like, oh man, I got to share some from Rilke because he's also one of my favorite poets. And so this book is actually letters that Rilke is writing to a young poet who went to the same academy as him and I think this poet was 19 years old at the time and discovered some of Rilke's works and knew that Rilke went to the same military academy that he did, and so, after reading some of Rilke's work and really becoming a fan boy of his poetry, he decided to write a number of letters to Rilke asking him for advice, and I know we've talked about this book multiple times. For Nathan and I it's very influential. And so this is a letter in 1903, okay, in Paris that Rilke writes back after the poet asked some questions about getting noticed and the audience recognizing him. The audience recognizing him.
Speaker 1:Here we go. You ask whether your verses are any good. You ask me you have asked others before this you send them to magazines, you compare them with other poems and you are upset when certain editors reject your work. Now, since you have said you want my advice, I beg you to stop doing that sort of thing. You are looking outside, and that is what you should most avoid. Right now, no one can advise or help you no one. There is only one thing you should do Go into yourself.
Speaker 1:Find out the reason that commands you to write. See whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart. Confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write this. Most of all, ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in a scent, yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple I must then build your life in accordance with that necessity. Your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and a witness to this impulse. Then come close to nature. Then, as if no one has ever tried before, try to say what you see and feel and love and lose.
Speaker 1:Don't write love poems. Avoid those forms that are too facile and ordinary. They are the hardest to work with. Rescue yourself from general themes and write about what your everyday life offers. You Describe your sorrows and your desires, the thoughts that pass through your mind and your belief in some kind of beauty. Describe all these with heartfelt, silent, humble sincerity. And when you express yourself, use the things around you, the images from your dreams and the objects that you remember. And if your everyday life seems poor, don't blame it. Blame yourself.
Speaker 1:Admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches, because for the creator there is no poverty and no poor, indifferent place. And even if you found yourself in some prison whose walls let in none of the world's sounds, wouldn't you still have your childhood, that jewel beyond all price, that treasure house of memories? Turn your attention to that. Try to raise up the sunken feelings of this enormous past. Your personality will grow stronger, your solitude will expand and become a place where you can live in the twilight, where the noise of other people passes by far in the distance.
Speaker 1:And if out of this turning within, out of this immersion in your own world, poems come, then you will not think of asking anyone whether they are good or not. A work of art is good if it is arisen out of necessity. That is the only way one can judge it. So, dear sir, I can't give you any advice, but to do this Go into yourself and see how deep the place is from which your life flows. At its source, you will find the answer to the question of whether you must create. Accept that answer just as it was given to you, without trying to interpret it. Perhaps you will discover that you are called to be an artist. Then take that destiny upon yourself and bear it its burden and its greatness, without ever asking what reward might come from the outside, for the Creator must be a world for themselves and must find everything in themself and nature, to whom your whole life is devoted. But after the descent into yourself and into solitude, perhaps you will have to renounce becoming a poet. If, as I have said, one feels one could live without writing, then you shouldn't write at all. Nevertheless, even then, this self-searching that I ask of you will not have been for nothing. Your life will still find its own paths from there, and that may be good, rich and wide. That's what I wish for you more than I can say.
Speaker 1:No-transcript, wow, wow. That is one of the most powerful pieces of literature writing advice I've ever read in my life and he's basically saying can you live without making art? Can you live without creating? If you can't, then chase it, run after it, go for it with all your being. And if you can't find anything to create from, if you get stumped, if you hit a dry spell, go back into your memories, your childhood memories, and pull from there and I love how he says and get close to nature, get outside, go for a walk around the lake, go to the beach, the mountains, walk around the city, get out into nature, sit by a tree, bring your journal, gosh, I mean, I can't tell you the impact that that has on the soul. And everything he's talking about is the soul, that deepness, that depth of things that come when we're completely inhabited with ourselves and everything around us and paying attention. I love that. It's just. Oh man, every time I read it, it's just. It hits me harder and harder and harder.
Speaker 1:And what is the really big thing to take from that? Quit asking, quit caring about what other people think about your work. Sure, we want the audience to give its approval and tell us what they think of our work, but don't let that be your focus. Don't worry about the likes on Instagram. Don't worry about how many people are commenting on your pieces when you show them. Don't worry about that. Just make freaking art. Anyways, get that book. I highly recommend it. I'll have it in the show notes again as well. You're going to hear us talk about it probably quite a bit over the next hour long. We do this podcast, so this morning I came across this incredible moment from the artist Edward Povey I think that's how you pronounce it P-O-V-E-Y. Edward Povey, probably Povey and it blew me away, so I'm going to play it for you. You're going to hear him say it and then I'll discuss it for a minute after that.
Speaker 2:If an artist's goal, if their ultimate goal, is to really reach people, reach other human beings, then the only way to do it is to forget about them completely. Forget about them. We don't know others. We can never know the masses, the public. We can never know them. So forget about them, because the only way to them is to make paintings that come completely from yourself and your own world, your own experience of being a human being, and that is something that most human beings on the planet will be able to relate to. So forget about them.
Speaker 1:I listened to that probably 20 times this morning and I just kept going back to that as I was thinking about what Ginsburg and what Retka said, and then what Rilke said as well, and I was just thinking about, like you know what? Why do? Why are we so concerned with the follow? Why are we so concerned with that social media audience? Why are we so concerned with all of the people around us? And I just had to kind of think about that myself, like forget about the masses, forget about the follow, forget about those things. Make paintings that come completely from myself, that come completely from my world. When you are devoid of all of the focus on the outward and you start to completely focus on the inward and you create from there, most human beings will relate to that and they will show up. They will start to show up. So something to really really think about. That's my closing thoughts for you Go inward, forget about the outward. People will be drawn to that, because that's where truth comes from, that's where real comes from.
Speaker 1:I hope you have an incredible holiday for those of you in the States. I hope that you have an incredible rest of the week and weekend to everybody else around the world. Thank you so much for listening to us. We'll be back with regular scheduled programming in two weeks where Nathan and I'll be back together talking about some really fun stuff that we have prepped for you. So check us out on all places you can podcast and make sure to watch us on YouTube. You can watch all of our video broadcasts from each episode, where I put some fun B-roll and things in often and we will see you soon, say hi. We'd love to say hi and chat with you. We'll see you soon. Have a great week. Bye.
