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Sally Mars (guest host Melissa Oliveri)
190 Plays4 years ago
In this special episode, Melissa Oliveri guest hosts an All-Minnesota episode of Something (rather than nothing) with guest Sally Mars!
Sally Mars is a writer and photographer based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her work appears in numerous journals including Kalliope, Talking River, Elysian Fields, Illiterate, Scheme, Shots, Reflex, The Rake, Churn, Whistling Shade and in the hardbound collection Series of Dreams. Two of her stories have been adapted into live action films; a third into an award-winning animation.
Her stunning photography and writing can be found at https://www.sallymars.com/
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast & Guest
00:00:02
Speaker
You are listening to something rather than nothing. Creator and host, Ken Zalante. Editor and producer, Peter Bauer.
00:00:18
Speaker
Okay, here I am sitting down with a phenomenally creative and very kind person, who I am proud to call my friend Sally Mars. Welcome to something rather than nothing. Thank you, my friend, Melissa. So, um, well, let's dive right in. We'll start at the beginning.
Is Creativity Inherent?
00:00:38
Speaker
Were you an artist when you were born? That's an interesting question. I'd say to an extent, aren't we all
00:00:47
Speaker
when they're born. If art is the act of kind of using creativity to communicate, I think babies are naturally endowed with the ability to do so. So not to evade the question, but I think where we're all born with an innate creativity and a need to express ourselves and may or may not do so as we grow in different mediums, even
Natural Creativity and Support
00:01:17
Speaker
engineers or scientists or raising a child, I think is an extremely creative act for many people. But in the framework of your question and how I believe it's intended, I would say I was naturally creative, attracted to making things, and not discouraged from doing so. So my answer would be yes.
00:01:40
Speaker
Well, I like the not discouraged from doing so because my follow up question was going to be those people. So I agree with you that everybody is born with some kind of creativity in them. And then those people who later on feel like they're not creative.
00:01:56
Speaker
you know, where was that lost along the way? But you kind of answered it by saying, you know, you were given that space and that permission.
Societal Norms vs. Creativity
00:02:05
Speaker
And maybe if people who are stifled with, you know, oh, you need to get a real job, or, you know, that's not serious stuff. I wonder if that somehow plays into it sometimes.
Art as Communication vs. Realism
00:02:17
Speaker
I think when you're, for many people, and I've always wanted to, I've always had this sort of fantasy about starting some sort of
00:02:26
Speaker
outreach or charity that goes into schools and talks to little children about art and helps them understand that art isn't the ability to draw and recreate something realistically. Art is the ability to communicate
00:02:42
Speaker
how you feel in any medium or what connects us or an idea or that inspires us to think and that in that we are all artistic or have the opportunity to be. But I think when you're little or at least when I was little
00:02:57
Speaker
being creative or artistic usually meant that you could draw well. And when I was little, I could draw well. And so because of that, I think that was reinforced. I think there's probably artistic little children who love to draw and who draw and their drawing is quote unquote behind or they don't know to add a neck or whatever it is, it's more childlike.
00:03:27
Speaker
where they make a person green. And because of that, people are like, oh, they're a bad artist. And I think that kind of thinking is what maybe stifles some people. So I think
Rebellious Art in Childhood
00:03:42
Speaker
the ability to draw probably helped others to encourage my creativity. So I will tell this story. When I was in,
00:03:52
Speaker
First grade, like I was a good drawer or whatever in first grade world and we took a trip to the zoo and after the zoo. We were encouraged to paint with temper paints.
00:04:06
Speaker
one of the animals we saw and so I painted a giraffe and in my mind's eye I can still see the giraffe I painted on like that newsprint paper with temper paint and I made it brown with yellow spots with black inside the spots and and a long neck and and I was very proud of it and maybe I was naturally rebellious or I don't know that the teacher came over she was actually a substitute teacher
00:04:31
Speaker
kind of a longer term substitute teacher and her name was Miss Denazi. And so the kid used to call her Mr. Nazi and she'd get really mad, but Miss Denazi. But she was looking over my shoulder and she was like, that's such a beautiful painting. And I said to her, I think I'm gonna put big red feet on it.
00:04:51
Speaker
And she said, don't do that. Don't do that. You're going to ruin it. And I was like, okay. And she walked away and I took the red paint and I put big red feet on it. And so I thought I made it better and I was very proud of it. And unbeknownst to me, when I went home, she took scissors and cut out my giraffe and cut off the big red feet and mounted it on another piece of paper and put it up for parents night.
00:05:20
Speaker
Oh my gosh. She cut the feet off my giraffe like rude. Think about it like this adult was so annoyed by the actions of a six year old that she had to like take scissors and cut the feet off. Correct it. Yeah. Yeah. So sometimes society is just one big Miss Denazi who's like cutting the red feet off your giraffe and
00:05:42
Speaker
And sometimes it's the, you know, it's the prize from the newspaper because you made the football player look like a football player. So, yep. So, yeah. So, born an artist, yes. And then encouraged in my expression rather than discouraged, yes. And I think that's just as defining.
00:06:03
Speaker
Yeah. So what would you say your art is? I know that you write. You're a phenomenal photographer.
Photography as an Artistic Focus
00:06:12
Speaker
Is that what you consider your art form? Or do you also still draw? You should recreate that giraffe with the red feet, by the way, if you do. You can't recreate things. But my favorite means of expression used to be
00:06:33
Speaker
drawing and then painting. I went to college as a painter and as a printmaker, printmaking is basically drawing in a concentration that allows you to focus on it because they didn't have a drawing major, but you could be a printmaking major, which if you do certain mediums like lithography or intaglio to an extent, like it's like drawing, it's like drawing and printing multiple. So I went to college for that and I did
00:07:02
Speaker
I loved it. I was always a rebel, always getting in trouble. I was one of the good drawers, if that makes any sense, because I could make things look real. And at a certain point, I think it was probably my third year, my junior year, I lost all interest in that. And when I did, I just started making things rougher and faster and less finished and more
00:07:30
Speaker
I don't know, expressive or hostile really in a way because that's how I felt when I was 19, 20. And when I started doing that, I was very discouraged.
00:07:44
Speaker
in my senior level printmaking class. I had a professor, I won't name his name. He was an older gentleman and he did these really beautiful pastoral landscapes in his printmaking. And we had a very small class on that level. It was maybe, I don't know, six students. And he began the first day and he said it was kind of a self-directed class to some extent where you would work and then you'd have a critique every week. And on the first day of class, he announced that
00:08:14
Speaker
He said, I grade on a curve. One of you will get an A, two of you will get a B, one of you will get a C, one of you will get a D, and one of you is gonna fail my class. That's what he said. And so I raised my hand and I said, Mr. O, shouldn't it be your goal as a teacher that everyone in the class deserves an A?
00:08:44
Speaker
And with that, I got the red ass, as I call it, like none of the other students wanted to look at me, talk to me. We had critiques every week. He sort of attacked some people's work and I would
00:08:57
Speaker
vehemently defend against whatever it was he said, whether he was right or wrong. No one wanted me to talk about their work because I was the cursed child. At the end of the semester, I did hand in the largest portfolio of work, if anyone in the class, and I was the recipient of the F.
00:09:19
Speaker
Oh and um you know he decided that on day one probably yeah of course of course so you know i had to kind of petition like the department to change it to a d which i did and that enabled me um uh to graduate because otherwise i would have failed and lost those credits but so um that push against
00:09:43
Speaker
realism into or repeating the world into self expression is is a is a creative battle that I fight still, I think. So I love to draw on paint. And then after college, I had a boyfriend who oddly I tune it must have been traumatic because I can't remember his name though I can picture his face and I know that's weird through and
00:10:09
Speaker
I got him a camera at a at a thrift store pawn shop for his birthday because he wanted to be a photographer and it looked kind of fun. And after we broke up, I bought myself a cheap camera. And once I got a camera, I realized that that was what I had been trying to do was capture a moment. So while painting or drawing and photography dovetailed for me and kind of overlapped, I found myself as a painter.
00:10:39
Speaker
trying to get closer and closer and closer to a single moment. Like I'd have to complete a painting in one sitting. It was about one period of inspiration and exactly how I felt at the time. And when I found a camera, it became a more literal expression of the physicality of creating a moment, capturing a moment, if that makes any sense. Oh, it makes total sense. Yeah. I think as a writer,
00:11:08
Speaker
You know, it's something I've done on and off. I think there were a couple events in my life that kind of coaxed it from me a little bit more. I had a job in an office making where the practitioner made artificial eyes and he would travel all over to make artificial eyes for people.
00:11:29
Speaker
And when he'd
Spontaneity in Writing
00:11:30
Speaker
leave town, I, I am. Yeah. You know, and it was creative, right? You paint and match color. He was, you know, he was the boss. He was the main person, but, um, yeah, he traveled and then I'd be alone in the office for a week. I took a straight office job for a little while, you know, trying to fit and, um, he'd be gone. So I just started kind of writing. And, um, in, in those early incarnations, I kind of did more fiction, always short.
00:11:58
Speaker
And then I found as a writer through the evolution, I was kind of trying to do the same thing I was trying to do visually. I was trying to convey a moment, convey a moment. And while sometimes I'll do some longer form where the story itself has an arc over time or an arc over episodes, I think that idea of
00:12:21
Speaker
of having a moment and having someone else maybe understand just how I felt within that moment is what I try to convey in both photography and writing. And I do both in tandem and find inspiration in the same things to do both.
00:12:40
Speaker
That's beautiful. Yeah, and you do it so well. Later on, we'll talk about where to find your work, but I would invite everyone and hope everyone goes to take a look because you convey those moments perfectly. People, the reader feels like they're right there.
00:12:58
Speaker
living it. At least I feel that way when I read your writing. And I just saw you have a website now. And the photos on there are phenomenal. So we'll get to that in a little bit. But first, I'm curious, why do you think you create?
Art as a Release Mechanism
00:13:21
Speaker
That's a good question. Why do I create?
00:13:25
Speaker
I think teapot whistles so that the steam doesn't make the pot explode, and I think I create for the same reason.
00:13:37
Speaker
The world around me creates steam and the way I keep my pot from exploding is to create something. For me, it makes me feel purposeful and it makes me feel dutiful to an extent because I think the fact that other people have taken time to create artwork
00:14:01
Speaker
has proven so meaningful to me as a person who takes in their work. So I feel like the act of creation is sort of giving back what so many others have given to me in terms of taking in
00:14:17
Speaker
um creative product or creative endeavors of others um creative thought uh so that's part of it but it's it's also like how i i don't want to say blow off steam exactly it's kind of how my world stays together like i mean it's it's how i figure it out but it's also how i understand myself in some ways
00:14:43
Speaker
Yes, it's not even a conscious decision. Like, oh, I should clean the house. It's like, oh, you see a crumb on the counter and you just kind of naturally wipe it off, or at least I do. And I guess the art of creating something, sitting down and write a story, I'm usually not planning on it. And I have no preconception about what I'm going to write going in. It's like, oh, the keyboard and time, and I'm going to remember something.
00:15:14
Speaker
So would you say your inspiration, how does that come about for you? Like you just said, you have time in a keyboard and you sit down and something just comes to you or do you see something in your environment that sparks something or how does that process work for you? They're a little different for writing. Sometimes it's, the writing's a little, well,
00:15:42
Speaker
more indigenous to me because I don't need anything to do it. Sorry, dog. I don't need equipment. I don't need to see something or be sparked by something. I have memory. I have, to some extent, empathy. I have imagination.
00:16:11
Speaker
And I can just kind of do it at will. And when I have to do it for, for example, for my nonprofit. Let you know about money. Yes. And we can touch on that too. Yeah. I write for that every day, basically. And
00:16:28
Speaker
I try to personify what that particular organization what my engine is it's not someone else's it's not a rescue that's interchangeable with other rescues it's.
00:16:42
Speaker
It's my rescue and my husband's rescue, and therefore it has my voice and my husband's voice and the voice of the artistic collaborators who are also involved with it, because it is a community effort. But every day I write for that, and every day I just sort of sit down, make the time, and just kind of do something. I don't go in with a plan. I don't really write in advance. I just kind of channel the moment. That's about the only way I can describe it.
00:17:12
Speaker
When I do it, it's easier to do it because of my particular work ethic.
00:17:17
Speaker
on a personal level, it's easier for me to do it when it's quote unquote for something. Like when I have a deadline or something I have to do or someone asked me to do something, it's easier for me to find the time space to do it because it feels like duty. When I'm doing it for myself, it wrongly feels, I would say self-indulgent, but I have to override the part of my work ethic that says you should fold that laundry before you sit down and do this thing.
00:17:47
Speaker
So that's a little battle I fight. But with the photography, I feel like every day I see things that I mean to photograph.
00:18:04
Speaker
but I don't do it every day. I am most effective as a photographer when I leave my environment, not in a touristic way per se, but when I turn off the noise of the laundry and the phone calls and the things that feel obligatory and allow myself the space to do this one creative thing and focus on it.
00:18:26
Speaker
I always joke that I'm a really terrible taker of snapshots and family photos and like I'm humble at that because for me, when I take a photograph, one of my art photographs, or I don't know the right word for it, but when I take one of those, it's really deliberate and focused and thoughtful. It's not a snap. And it's something that I really have to put a lot of
00:18:52
Speaker
energy into, not kinetic energy, almost sort of like still sturdy energy. And I find that a lot harder to do at home, not because the visual stimulation isn't there it is, but because the distraction is too great. Because the writing happens in a different way in a smaller space for me usually, or in the middle of the night, or, you know, first thing in the morning when you're waking up and a piece of a dream made you think of something that you can tap into.
00:19:21
Speaker
it's easier to fit that into my everyday life. So my inspiration isn't really big things, it's little things. Sometimes when I taught photography, I once gave an assignment called the beautiful mundane, and I
00:19:45
Speaker
should just title my life that because I think it's all the sort of not exceptional things. It's the way that such lovely small things can be regular and part of your reality that I find so beautiful. It's
00:20:04
Speaker
It doesn't have to be the world's most beautiful orchid. It's that the world created tiny little purple flowers from creeping Charlie in your grass. The way that dust highlights a sunbeam coming into your house, the way that the legacy of
00:20:27
Speaker
humanity has created these walls around me and the space in this room and the warmth within it. All those little things that are, I guess, sometimes taken for granted are wondrous to me and provide inspiration to me very readily.
00:20:46
Speaker
I love it. I love those small things. And I tend to see those small things too. And I don't know if you feel this way. Sometimes I feel a bit lonely because I feel like nobody else seems to see the things that I see. Do you ever get that feeling like you're the only one noticing that this branch twists exactly like this? Yes, it can be a lonely,
00:21:14
Speaker
feeling, but for me, loneliness is a normalized feeling. For me, I find it more remarkable or noticeable to me that I do share than that I don't. So it ebbs the loneliness and it makes the connections I am able to make with someone who sees the world like I do, such as yourself, for example.
00:21:43
Speaker
it makes it feel like extra extraordinary because it's not everywhere and while the beauty is everywhere to me noticing it isn't everywhere and it's that act of noticing that is even more beautiful. Yeah I think there's something really cool about
00:22:06
Speaker
being with someone who doesn't see those things and pointing something out, you know, that, yeah, and then sharing your photographs or your writing I think does that. I think photographically, like I go to a lot of interesting places, but I have this very, very intense and innate need to personify my experiences.
00:22:34
Speaker
I think if the listeners could see my house, what they would see behind me is a personified space. It is not a color other people might choose or like. It's full of objects that have no significance to anyone but me. Some people might call it cluttered. Some people might call it busy. But to me, it is a reflection of the fact that I exist.
00:23:03
Speaker
Photographically, I might be in some amazing place in Mexico or Texas or wherever that's very beautiful and very visual. And I find myself always trying to break it down to the things that were my experience that I saw that weren't the same things as other people saw.
00:23:27
Speaker
For work, once I found myself in this very beautiful area of the Yucatan called Merida, Mexico. It's a very beautiful colonial town with a really interesting and rather unique kind of look. My clock's gonna bong, I'm sorry. Okay, that's okay. I love the sound of it. Fantastic. Yeah, I love things that don't need power.
00:23:49
Speaker
Yeah. I was in the Yucatan in Merida working and I was working with a Mexican crew and the crew was from Mexico City. So they were very excited to be in this part of Mexico because they could do the tourist things that they never get to do while they're there and they wanted to go to Chitsunitsu. So Chitsunitsu is a big ruin and it's very popular to go on a day trip from Cancun or from some other places and
00:24:15
Speaker
it is really epic and really beautiful and also really touristy and when we went it was so kind of beautiful and striking and everyone's taking pictures and I was like oh my god I just can't take the same pictures everyone else is taking I can't do it and and at first I had bubble gum in my mouth so I was blowing bubbles taking my bubble and
00:24:35
Speaker
putting it in front of every picture I took of every room. People say, you're ruining your pictures. And I was like, oh, that's kind of ironic. But, you know, eventually I became obsessed with a trail of ants that were carrying leaves like an ant highway.
00:24:51
Speaker
And I started exploring the ant highway and like, I know you would do the same thing in the same circumstance. I think it probably went like four or five miles and it would go like around trees and up a branch, back down. And that's what I became obsessed with. And that's what I sought to capture ultimately in my photographs, not the ruins themselves, which were beautiful and which I couldn't ever possibly capture. It was the small thing that defined my own experience.
00:25:16
Speaker
That's amazing. I love it. I love that. Yes, I would take pictures of the ants too, you're right. So earlier you touched on briefly about your nonprofit and I think this is part of your art. At least it's what I associate with you as well. So maybe you could touch on it a little bit. It's a dog rescue called Mut Mutt and Gin. It is.
Inspiration from Mexico: Dog Rescue Nonprofit
00:25:40
Speaker
I started it with my husband.
00:25:43
Speaker
It is maybe, it will be three years old in February. I do travel to kind of remote places. Mexico is one of them. And I had an experience while I was there. Now it's probably four years ago. And I had taken a trip to an area on the Cabo Sorrentes that
00:26:09
Speaker
it's kind of more remote and you're traveling to roads and you're on this kind of backcountry and it's rural and there's beaches that are very dramatic and no one's on them and I was with my driver friend who lives in Vallarta and we were driving to this place and
00:26:27
Speaker
there was this little farm that you have to cut across to go to this beach that we wanted to see and so he negotiated with the farmer that we could cross his land and then the farmer said yes and I think we traded him some coca colas or something and then he left and as we were crossing his land there was a little black he had many dogs that were running around which is typical in Mexico and
00:26:49
Speaker
he had one dog a little black dog and it had a chain around its neck like a toe chain really big and the dog was probably you know 12-15 pounds and and he was tied to a tree on a short chain with this giant chain wrapped around his neck and he was so fearful
00:27:09
Speaker
that if you went over, the other dogs were all friendly and running around and this dog, like when I looked at him, he went onto his back and peed himself. He was just terrified and scared. And he was chained to this tree and my heart was crushed. And all I wanted to do was get that dog. And I wanted very badly to get the dog.
00:27:32
Speaker
and but he had this giant rope around his neck and we didn't have a bolt cutter and you know the farmer had been nice to us and went and cut across his land and we didn't understand the purpose of this and my friend wasn't as concerned as me and i'm freaking out and i'm like okay well where's the nearest place we can buy a bolt cutter and and you know it's starting to get a little dark and it's really like an eight-hour round trip if we get the bolt cutter and then we have to drive back and you know i'm going through these logistics and and
00:28:02
Speaker
I had to surrender to the fact and it was a really profound feeling in real time, but that there was literally nothing I could do to help. And feeling so completely powerless and without a solution or an idea of a solution or even pretending there was some solution was very hard for me. So I told the dog that I would come back for him.
00:28:30
Speaker
And I tried, I'll be honest. I went back two weeks later. And the first thing I did when I landed was I got my driver friend and hired him and I said, take me back out to see where that dog is. But the dog wasn't there. That doesn't necessarily pretend of a sad story, but I think it was probably a really sad story.
00:28:56
Speaker
At the moment, I couldn't do anything to help that dog. I decided to kind of create a way to help other dogs. And one of the things that happened to me that happens to many people who are vacationing in areas that have in particularly a lot of poverty, but sometimes just different cultural considerations is you'll see sad, what I call sad dog stories. You'll see a sad dog story.
00:29:28
Speaker
With my inspiration being that little black dog, I did a lot of research and I, in that area initially, Viarda, and I found some partners and I vetted those partners and created a system so that people who were on vacation could essentially bring a little street dog home with them and I would place it in a rescue with another rescue organization. And I couldn't save my little black dog, but I was gonna save other dogs. And I was going to moreover, try really hard to save other human beings the experience that I felt
00:29:58
Speaker
when I saw something really sad and felt like I couldn't do anything about it. So I was creating something to do about it. And so when we started it, we thought, well, if we do one a month, if we do 12 a year, that's a really big deal. And
00:30:15
Speaker
And we'll be proud of ourselves and we'll raise the money and we'll do this. And we thought that would be really good, 12 the first year. And the first year we ended up doing like 50 or 60. Last year in 2021, we did over 600. Wow. I know. It wasn't intentional to grow like that, but the need exists. And our charity basically
00:30:42
Speaker
looks to be nimble and flexible and do whatever's needed. So in a place like Tijuana where we have a lot of relationships now there's a lot of kind of humble dog lovers like you or me who want to do something but maybe they don't have the means or support so we give them the means and the support so that they can help a dog and then we'll take that dog to a nice life and then not only that but we'll show them the dog's nice life so that they understand that their work
00:31:11
Speaker
um has merit and pays off and bears fruit so that they feel inspired to keep going because some of those people in a place like Tijuana or even Los Cabos are like facing things that I can't imagine facing ever much less on a daily basis.
Collaboration in Nonprofit Work
00:31:27
Speaker
I mean I saw one sad dog story and
00:31:29
Speaker
you know four years later I'm still grieving and picturing it and you know I work with people who see terrible dog stories every day and are trying to do something about it and I support them and and try to make it so it's easier for them to do something about it and so that it's easier for rescues that have more means and different audiences and are in different places like Minnesota or New York or the Pacific Northwest to say well yes we'll take that little dog from Mexico and help it
00:31:58
Speaker
So it's a symbiotic relationship where we all work together. I think if you haven't worked in the nonprofit forum, there can be a weird competitiveness, whether it's for attention or money or credit. It's hard to understand how it happens because for me, it's so
00:32:25
Speaker
clear that we're more effective, whatever our goals are as a community of nonprofits, whatever our nonprofit seeks to do, we're more effective when we work together. So we try to connect the dots and bring people together and make things happen. So that's what we do. Our motto is we help people who love dogs find dogs love. We help people who help dogs find dogs help. And that's kind of what we do. I love it. I love it.
00:32:54
Speaker
In particular, your write-ups for the dogs and the way you tell their stories is...
00:33:01
Speaker
Well, we're back at art, right? And you're writing, but you really do convey their moment in a really unique way. I think you guys are a really, really unique rescue. It's a creative thing that you're doing and a good thing. Yeah. And obviously you're making a big difference, you know? I hope so. I don't know if it's big, but it's, you know, I think every
00:33:30
Speaker
Every act of good a person tries to do, there's no scale to it. It's just good. So hopefully we can join into that. We can tap into that idea that it doesn't matter how big it is or is it like it's good and that matters.
00:33:47
Speaker
I agree. Yeah. Well, I think those hundreds of dogs and all the happy hundreds of families that took them in are probably, I hope so. I think that's big. It's like a ripple effect, right? Right. I love it. For each dog, for each of those 600 some dogs last year, you know, there's probably at least 10 people who, from the person who saved it to the person who vetted it to the person who
00:34:14
Speaker
you know, kept it for a few days for the person who transported it to the foster, to the family that adopts it or the person that adopts it, at least 10 people probably got a real spark of joy out of it. It's amazing. And then all the people who see the happy endings too, you know, either through social media or just through you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
00:34:42
Speaker
I get this kind of ties in my next question to what we're talking about, which is the role of art. What do you think the role of art is? So you use it for yourself, like you said earlier with, you know, letting out the steam or, but also you use it for, you know, your rescue and to help convey messages to people about these dogs in this instance. So what do you think the role of art is? Well, I have a,
00:35:09
Speaker
I've thought about this a lot. So I actually have an answer or a definition that I work
Art as Timeless Communication
00:35:16
Speaker
with. I would say what I do with the dogs is creative and it's a creative act, but it's not quite the same as art necessarily because for me, art is how human beings,
00:35:35
Speaker
communicate with other human beings about the human experience across time. I think it's a, you know, language changes, visual cues change, music changes, everything in the world changes, how things look changes, but the human experience itself, the experience of love, grief, rejection, fear, joy,
00:36:05
Speaker
is a human experience. And I think every human being will experience the full realm of emotions and emotional states of being. I think we as observers of other people's lives sometimes say, well, that person shouldn't be sad or that isn't a tragedy or that person should be happy. But to the person experiencing
00:36:29
Speaker
those states that being, they're very real and very authentic, and there's no way to judge them. I think the thing that's universal across time is that experience, is that emotional experience. And I think art is the means by which we convey those experiences across time, across all boundaries, across language, across culture. So that's what I think it is. It's almost like a beacon.
00:36:56
Speaker
Yeah, it's like a language everyone speaks. That's kind of how I see it. I mean, I can look at a work of art or read a poem that was written 500 years ago and still understand what the creator was conveying on a very kind of emotional, experiential level. And I think that's its purpose and also
00:37:26
Speaker
why it's so important. I think when we understand that the experience of our humanity is universal, not just across our world at our moment, but at any given moment, it kind of creates an interconnectedness that is the antidote to loneliness. And I think that's what artists ultimately serves to do.
00:37:54
Speaker
kind of desperately needed in these times, I feel like, too. And I'm sure this has happened in history before, but we're in it right now, I feel like, where we have to go back to the basics, you know, and just think of the human experience versus what we're experiencing right now in our daily lives. Exactly. Go a little deeper. Exactly. I think
Childhood Thoughts on the Universe
00:38:18
Speaker
Dennis Johnson, the novelist and the writer wrote a book that I didn't really like exactly called Already Dead, but it was conceptual. The novel itself was a concept. And the concept was that this one guy was injured and dying. And he was explaining in his moment how alone he felt. And his letter that he writes about his extreme loneliness is found by someone
00:38:47
Speaker
who feels just as lonely as that person did in that moment. And that loneliness itself can be something that binds us and proves that we're not really alone. Like in other words, the experience of loneliness in its universal nature connects us. And I really enjoyed that concept within that novel. And I think about that kind of a lot.
00:39:15
Speaker
like that our isolation connects us to other people who are isolated or our loneliness connects us to everyone who's lonely or our joy connects us to everyone who's joyful and you know it's we're much more alike than different.
00:39:34
Speaker
So a Propo these days too, where we have been, everybody in some form isolated, you know, at least at some point in the last couple of years. Yes, yes. I mean, I think about like, I like you live in Minnesota, and I think it wasn't that long ago, whether we're talking about the indigenous people who were here or the settlers that were here, simultaneous and after, like, they probably went a whole winter.
00:39:58
Speaker
without ever seeing anyone except this really tight little group, maybe their immediate family. And they survived and thrived. And what the act of seeing someone in the springtime after, you know, either passable what it must have meant to them. And I just hope that when this ends, that we all can share what that experience must have been like when after a long, hard winter of the soul, you know, the roads to one another are passable again.
00:40:29
Speaker
Yeah, it's going to be beautiful. You can't wait. Yeah. Well, I hope it makes us all less angry and soft. Yeah, I think there's going to be great art coming out of all this too. Yeah, I'm sure. I'm sure. I mean, I won't lie. It's been a productive period for me, not photographically so much, but definitely with the writing because
00:40:55
Speaker
I do have fewer of the distractions. My work's been slower. My day job's been slower. You know, I'm not doing other things more, and so I can focus more on those things.
00:41:08
Speaker
And it's been a productive time. Looking forward to, you know, I've been very happy inside my egg and I'm looking forward to, you know, being the chip that emerges from it. I feel I've been very productive too in artistic ways during this last couple of years. And I wonder sometimes if part of it was the introspection, there's a chance to actually do more introspection. And even though I sometimes crowdsource,
00:41:36
Speaker
you know, inspiration from the outside world. But in this case, a lot of it came from the inside, which is kind of interesting. Yeah. And like, I don't know. I mean, in terms of writing, I've been mining my own memories to a very
00:41:57
Speaker
fruitful and heavy extent during these times because the normal things that might inspire me like, oh, you know, observing someone at the post office or, you know, seeing a letter on the ground or whatever it might be, those have been, those experiences have been absent. So I've been tapping into sort of this, a lot of introspection. You know, I've been wondering how long that can last and thinking like, oh, I need to make some new memories that I can draw from.
00:42:27
Speaker
Yeah, it has been odd with the, you know, my dad up in Canada, we don't see each other much, but he'll call and I mean, we really have nothing to tell. It's just been very redundant the past couple of years.
00:42:43
Speaker
So, well, I'm winding down on the questions here for the podcast, and this is kind of one of the big questions, is why do you think, why is there something rather than nothing? Why is there something rather than nothing? Well,
00:43:04
Speaker
When I was a little girl, I used to get very, very frustrated about the concept of the universe or the idea of nothing because I would be like, well,
00:43:15
Speaker
you know, if it ends, there has to be something after. Like there, you know, it can't just end. And I would sort of like in my head picture, sort of like a thick glass bubble with the universe in it, like this white empty space behind it. And then there has to be something behind it. And I contemplate things like infinity or the universe. And I get very frustrated about it. And one day it occurred to me that nothing is something.
00:43:42
Speaker
And once I realized that I felt much more calm. So when you ask, why is there something rather than nothing? I'd say there is only something. There is no nothing, because nothing is something. And I don't mean to be a riddle. No, I feel the same way. Nothing is something. Yeah. Yeah. So there's something rather than nothing, because there's no such thing as nothing.
00:44:12
Speaker
That's beautiful. It sounds hopeful somehow. I love that. Well, the last component of this chat is how can listeners connect with you and your art? So where can they go or how can they reach you or see what you do? Where's a good place to go?
00:44:34
Speaker
My name is Sally Mars, Sally with a Y, Mars like the planet, which is in and of itself a great gift to me in my life. My maiden name was Knight Crouch and 12 letters and four consonants squished together in the front. And like no one ever, I grew up with no one ever wanting to say my last name, like, and, um,
00:44:57
Speaker
When I got married and changed my name, it was like little things like having a reservation or going to the dry cleaner and people would say, Sally Mars. And I'd be like, yeah, like no one ever said Sally shnide crowd. So.
00:45:12
Speaker
So my name is Sally Mars. My website is sallymars.com. That's where my photography and my writing live. If you're interested in dogs, dog rescue, or my literary work surrounding dog rescue, that's mutmutengine.org, right? .org.
00:45:36
Speaker
And we'll share the links too, so people can click directly. Mutt with two T's, Injun with an E-N-G. But we are most active on Facebook. Facebook is our most active forum just because there's so much interaction. And while we're on Instagram as well, and we have a beautiful Instagram page that we're proud of,
00:46:02
Speaker
the ability to exchange or to write or to have language attached to the images is more prevalent on Facebook. So if you go on Facebook and you look for a Mutt Mutt engine, you will find it. I suggest you go to Mutt's Facebook and to Sally's website. Go take a little time out of your day and have some me time and do some reading and look at some pictures. And maybe, who knows, you'll end up with a new furry family member
00:46:32
Speaker
or anything else, like maybe you'll just feel a little less alone when you're done. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Oh, well, Sally, thank you so much for being here and for helping me man the ship. Well, Ken Vellante, who runs this podcast was out. I really appreciate your time and thanks to you and to Ken and to anyone who is listening or listens or will listen. I really appreciate
00:47:02
Speaker
that you listen. Beautiful. Thank you. Have a great night. Thank you. Bye. Bye. This is something rather than nothing.