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Breanna Cee Martins
1.7k Plays1 year ago
"We're all living in a haunted house, and we're all being haunted by it."
Breanna Cee Martins paints the mirage of an America that never existed, for people like her and entire swaths of the population of this country. The artist’s watercolor paintings fall away from the viewer like a half-remembered dream; images of ghostly and phantom children, coming together to explode in kaleidoscopic colors.
Working from found black and white photos, the images metamorphose into Technicolor nightmares, the old made new. Children dressed up as monsters, and monsters dressed up as children; these monochromatic visions glow with infernal light, watching the viewer, watch them. Posed family photos capture the conflicts raging beneath the surface; the pause or unease creating narrative tension, a rift between what is expected and what’s seen, and better left unsaid. They are images captured from the afterglow of a fading star, an apparition of our world growing dimmer amidst the passage of time.
These paintings confront you with pleading eyes, asking the viewer to delve deeper into the question, does this familial imagery have personal meaning to you?
Or, is it evocative of an emotional scene you might have remembered, yet never experienced?
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Transcript
Introduction to Podcast
00:00:02
Speaker
You are listening to something rather than nothing. Creator and host, Ken Zalante. Editor and producer, Peter Bauer. Brianna C.
Exploring Imagined America through Watercolors
00:00:19
Speaker
Martins paints the mirage of an America that never existed for people like her and entire swaths of the population of this country. The artist's watercolor paintings fall away from the viewer like a half-remembered dream
00:00:32
Speaker
images of ghostly and phantom children coming together to explode in kaleidoscopic colors working from found black and white photos the images metamorphose and two technicolor nightmares the old maiden new children dressed up as monsters and monsters dressed up as children these monochromatic visions glow with infernal light watching the viewer watch them
00:00:55
Speaker
Poe's family photos captured the conflicts raging beneath the surface, the pause or unease, creating narrative tension, a rift between what is expected and what's seen and better left unsaid. There are images captured from the afterglow of a fading star, an apparition of our world growing dimmer amidst the passage of time. These paintings confront you with pleading eyes, asking the viewer to delve deeper into the question
00:01:21
Speaker
Does this familial imagery have personal meaning to you?
Artistic Heritage and Identity
00:01:25
Speaker
Or is it evocative of an emotional scene you might have remembered yet never experienced? Brianna C. Martin's so excited to have you on the show. Hi.
00:01:42
Speaker
I saw your images on Instagram and was immediately enthralled by them. The beautiful color and the what's underneath, too, in reading about your process with the photos. Before we get into that, I wanted to ask you about you as an artist.
00:02:12
Speaker
Have you always been an artist? I mean, were you a little kid running around being an artist? Or did you have a moment where in your development you're like, yeah, yeah, I'm an artist. I'm that person. I'm actually a third generation artist. So I'm going back to my grandma.
00:02:29
Speaker
through my father and through to me. So it was a little bit expected in a way, but I knew that being an artist was more than a family business. When it became clear that I can't help but to make art, I don't know what to do besides make
Inspiration from Photographs and Americana Themes
00:02:55
Speaker
art. I don't know how to live without
00:02:58
Speaker
it's or without creating it so it's become kind of it's my you know my soul yeah yeah your way of expression i um uh in in talking about the and thank you for that and talking about the the images um uh there's a delicacy there um you can you can assume the or start to
00:03:27
Speaker
feel the people that come through and how you present them with the watercolor. Tell us about, I mean, you just told me that you find some of these photos in the city I was born, Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Before we got on here, you mentioned in that you find photos. So, so tell us about that. Like, tell us about finding the photos and how you make these these beautiful art pieces. Oh, yeah.
00:03:52
Speaker
A lot of them come from found photos either bought or traded. Sometimes I get submissions from people who like my art, who will send me photos that they think appeal to me. Really, it's a lot of going through boxes and boxes of old photos of people, strangers, and looking for ones that, like,
Emotional Connections and Artistic Influences
00:04:20
Speaker
come out to me. They always kind of like jump. And usually while I'm like sort of sifting through, so you can just kind of picture me in a thrift shop going through a big box of photos and I'll go through and I'll make a pile of like definitelys and possibilities. And really it's about like finding this sort of
00:04:46
Speaker
inferred narrative that I go for, a certain amount of context in the photo that can create a storyline in the viewer's head or even just in my head for myself. And those are the ones that I really kind of like glom onto the, sometimes I think of them as almost, if not iconic, if like a template of
00:05:17
Speaker
Americana, you know? I'm working on a large one right now that has a girl showing off her brand new bike and her little sister sitting on the steps and just looks so miserable and jealous with her hand on her chin. And so it just kind of gives me this story that popped from the image that I try to really make present in the finished product. So each of them are kind of their own little story.
00:05:46
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I wanted to ask about the emotion and the, you know, so when I, when I, when I look at, when I look at those, those images, um, you know, there's a magic in the art. There's a magic where, um, the, their, their stories or faces or something, uh, comes through.
00:06:04
Speaker
Is it an emotional connection that you make to wondering what's going on beyond? You know, like the images that you see, are you looking for that type of thing? Or does the mystery come to you? You're like, what is going on behind this? What do you think attracts you? Or do you look for something in particular? It's really kind of, it comes together in two ways. You know, like there'll be my intention behind the piece.
00:06:34
Speaker
And that's always inherently attached to the photo and what's contained in the image. But they dovetail and move together. A piece I recently put online was pulled from this idea of a green inferno, these bubbling green flames. And I wanted it to be that the
00:07:03
Speaker
inferno was of like the plant base. It's like a cold fire, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The color is I started thinking a lot about the Disney like cartoon associations with like purple and green, you know, Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty and how she appears in this kind of cloud of like green flame. And then also there's a horror movie called Green Inferno that is a like
00:07:33
Speaker
uh ecological um cannibal movie um i really uh i didn't i wouldn't say i enjoyed the movie but i did kind of i liked that sort of um description of a jungle or like overwhelming wildness as a green inferno and so those all those things and those ideas kind of
00:08:00
Speaker
dovetailed and started to move through the piece as I worked on it and as I kind of played with the perspective and figuring out really what was like important to me.
Challenging Nostalgia with Haunting Art
00:08:12
Speaker
I have some strange arbitrary rules in painting that I like go by like for myself as a way of working where I don't change anything about the photo.
00:08:26
Speaker
I had like a period when I was first starting out where I did some portraits and then I would put like a monster behind them or something. And it was just a little bit too contrived for me and like what I was going for because I really, I would like these to be kind of a subtle horror, like a subtle spookiness to them, you know, where you see them and they look and you're like, oh, it's a bright colored picture of kids.
00:08:55
Speaker
But then it's sort of that like sort of slow dread. And because of the nature of the found photos, a lot of them are staring at you. And so I've done paintings where sometimes the people in the painting are staring almost over your shoulder. And I'm currently working on a painting right now of a baby lying in grass. And there's a shadow falling over the baby.
00:09:24
Speaker
The painting is called Under a Shadow of Death. And the shadow is theoretically the viewers, the photographers, the observers. So it's kind of pulling you into it. So that's what I go for. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And thanks on that. I saw that the painting you referred to in the green. Just in my head,
00:09:55
Speaker
uh, when I painted, um, just once or twice, uh, you're helping me articulate it, but there's some sort of green churn or green energy or something that I dabble with. Uh, and I, I love that. I love that so much. I, um, I, of course your Instagram is called pretty spooky girls. And there's a ghostly aspect to all you do probably by the very nature of it. I mean, what comes through is.
00:10:20
Speaker
while it's bright and colorful, our mind quickly gleans that it's from somewhere else, or maybe another universe, it's familiar, it's not familiar, and that's the ghostly piece to it. So it's very powerful in that to draw the viewer in. I say it's fascinating and beautiful art, and that leads to the question I have for you, and the show gets into,
00:10:45
Speaker
third generation artist. You talk about how important art and creating is for your mind and navigating the world. But what is art for you? Like, you know, this is what you do, but what is it? Art for me is not even just
00:11:06
Speaker
a self-expression. I mean, it comes from that, but it's really about expressing an idea or sharing a story. I create these pieces and the current series I'm working on is called American Carnage, which is sort of born of the idea that America
00:11:30
Speaker
We live in this historical chain of violence from the very early days of this country. It's been a very violent and sort of haunted past. And so through these paintings, I'm trying to express that idea that the sort of glorified forties, fifties, sixties, the idea of like this America as this sort of shiny,
00:11:58
Speaker
veneer really, we're looking at it through rosy colored glasses. And once you get past these white picket fences and underneath the green grass, there's a rot and malaise to it. And it's a mirage. And so by painting these ghosts of America, essentially, I'm trying to give voice to the idea that
00:12:26
Speaker
only by re-examining our history and like re-contextualizing what we sort of like thought of as normal or has always been this idea that we can like start to understand our present and then finally be able to move forwards. And so for me, art is a way of sharing that idea and it's something I think is important.
00:12:53
Speaker
And so that's why I paint and that's why I share them is to try to get that idea out in my own way. And that's why art is essential to me. And that's why I'm making it and why I can't help but make it. Well, thank you. Thank you for the idea and thinking about what's behind it. And I completely agree with you.
00:13:23
Speaker
And I do think it's a glossed over part of the US of A, the blood, the dislocation, historically. And it's uncomfortable, right? And I think the ghosts or the images or the faces that were there start to tell a different story. And I believe that's...
00:13:49
Speaker
For me, that type of art and the radical inflection that you do really, there's some great power in there. I wanted to ask you in relation to that, that puts the importance of the art that you do and how you think about it historically.
Audience Interactions and Personal Connections
00:14:10
Speaker
What do you think this the role of art is now has the role of art changed or, you know, as long as humans been doing art, the role of art is this. So the question is, what is the role of art? I think the role of art is. Anything that the lettuce have, you know, I don't think
00:14:38
Speaker
that art can be anything more than like the footprint that it's allowed to have culturally. But I think that that footprint can encompass everything. And it can be nothing to someone else. It's probably the most subjective possible thing, you know? And so I try to use
00:15:03
Speaker
my art in a way to express these ideas while someone else's arts role might be for a more like commercial purpose or someone else's might be just for themselves, just painting at home. And so I think art's role is everything and nothing all at once, if that makes any sense. Yeah. Yeah. I dig that. I dig that. All right.
00:15:31
Speaker
Tell us, uh, so, so, so tell us, tell us a little bit about this, right? So you got your paintings up and, uh, and people, you know, or seen them or they, they give you a reaction. What's going on with your person moseying on in and taking a look at your paintings? What, and when it's new, when it's new, I mean, I saw your stuff. I'm like, I'm down, love this stuff and consume every image, but what about the, what about other folks? What are they, what do you think they're thinking when the, when they count these spooky images?
00:16:01
Speaker
Well, it's been very interesting as far as getting to an art opening as the artist. You're kind of a little bit anonymous, especially if it's like a bigger show where like no one actually knows what you look like. I've joked that one of these days I'll just wear a shirt with my paintings on it so people know that I'm the one who faces one woman.
00:16:25
Speaker
Getting to overhear people's reactions and their encounters with the art has been really rewarding in terms of sometimes people, it reminds them of themselves at a younger age. I've heard so many people say, oh, this reminds me of my sister at that age.
00:16:46
Speaker
sort of what I go for is the long read and the short read where you walk in and you see this brightly colored image of kids who are a little bit anachronistic like you mentioned from another world almost. And then you start to find personal like ways into it like relating to it through the fact that we're all children at some point. We all have these memories and as this like unique product of
00:17:13
Speaker
like a very American childhood, you know. That's what can kind of draw in a viewer and then sort of having that creeping dread that comes from when you're really examining the paintings, you know, because the children I'm painting are in danger. I grew up with
00:17:34
Speaker
missing posters on milk cartons. And the idea that I could just be gone any moment and also exploring this tradition of like the American short horror story from like Hawthorne through Poe, through Lovecraft, through King. And the idea of this very American sort of creeping backyard suburban horror, you know?
00:18:04
Speaker
like a town that gets converted to vampires but no one notices you know or like just sort of these ideas of a very like American hunting is kind of what like I try to have be the spirit of the painting literally sometimes um they're a little bit uh of conjuring from
00:18:27
Speaker
Like it feels a little bit like you're bringing the spirit back of the person sometimes a little bit because of the nature of the watercolor, they kind of seem to paint themselves. So that's... Yeah, I wanted to jump in on that. I wanted to ask about that. So, and it might be a strange question, but moving towards it with the, you know, you got your black and white photograph and I would look at that and I'd be like, as far as creating something from that, I'd be like, well,
00:18:57
Speaker
What was there? What's the color? How does it come out? And then the colors come out from there. What do you intimate or see within that photograph? How does it connect to the color that comes out? That's a really good question. The color really kind of comes from, I always sketch the images. And even when I first see the photo, I'm kind of starting to pick up on what I think the color
Color Choices and Artistic Technique
00:19:28
Speaker
could be sometimes it's a little bit more analytical in terms of right now. I've done a series before that was like the sort of 60s Crayola color box colors. So there I was kind of just fitting to a color to the piece and I had like the range. But a lot of times this really is kind of about like the swirl of a color and like what will put the color together with the image.
00:19:57
Speaker
Sometimes it'll be me trying not to be so literal in terms of if it's a beach scene, doing it blue, you know? Sometimes I have to try to stop myself. I definitely have colors. I very much love and use too much, especially turquoise. I think I use too much. That's totally fine. That's totally fine to use too much turquoise. No stops from here.
00:20:24
Speaker
Yeah. And sometimes, yeah, it kind of becomes a little bit of trying for me to do something unexpected. I've noticed I do the least amount of yellow paintings. I think yellow is really hard for me to get like depth and shadows in. So if you go through my paintings, you'll notice that a lot of the times the yellows I use are really kind of like
00:20:52
Speaker
I don't just write up there against a shade of orange. Gotcha. I tried doing a lemon yellow painting before and then you couldn't really see anything in it. So. Yeah, I love I love I love hearing about the, you know, with the with the color, too. I I've I started painting by myself, you know, like learning to paint and I've done some things that I really enjoy and others have enjoyed. But one of the things I found fascinating was
00:21:21
Speaker
I had never painted, right? And so when you start painting, a lot of different things happened that wouldn't have happened before. And one of the big things was color and my relationship with color, like the colors I enjoy seen in the world weren't, they just didn't correspond to the colors that I wanted to use. And that was just so earth shattering once I started. And it's interesting you mentioned yellow because
00:21:47
Speaker
I started to use a lot of yellow, but it's not a color I ever like seeing. I like yellow, but it was nothing that really jazzed me or excited me or moved me. But when I started painting and creating myself, I'm like, God, I adore this yellow. So I had this completely different relationship to it in creating. So it created a completely different dynamic in my experience of the world or how I understood, because I'm like,
00:22:17
Speaker
the things that I like or don't like might be inflected. And so I have one other confession. I can't deal with glitter. Glitter is my kryptonite because I can't put it all back. It's permanent. You can't find it. It's all these spaces drives me nuts. But a couple of times I tried it to use glitter in painting and I loved it.
00:22:44
Speaker
um just to kind of accentuate and i'm like i have control of the glitter my kryptonite is in my painting so colors and materials and painting for me really just kind of switched my head around um and i yeah and something i find interesting is that you know my paintings can are are monochromatic but they aren't just one color um most of them include
Large-Scale Paintings and Impact
00:23:14
Speaker
five or six different shades of a certain color or different kinds. And for me, it's really interesting trying to, it feels a little bit like pulling wool over the eye of the viewer in like kind of a pleasant way, like a magic trick where I'm trying to get sort of these elements of like traditional academic painting, like a cast shadow or a turning
00:23:44
Speaker
to create form, but I'm using only one color. And so it's really about kind of like figuring out what I can twist and how I can contort it and make it look like the whole painting is out of one color, but really it's out of these multiple different shades of a whole sort of range of the color, you know? And then that's what creates the paintings. Because if they're all just like the same single tube
00:24:11
Speaker
Pink I wouldn't be able to get shadows. I won't be able to get Like these sort of the deflection of the eye or something. Yeah. Yeah, exactly And so it's really about kind of like twisting all those to become this new thing Yeah Yeah, I um, well, thanks for talking about the the the color there too and and in in that um, I uh, I uh
00:24:42
Speaker
I've seen that in there, but I'm become fascinated with the those type of inflection. I guess the main thing is I got to get. I'll talk to you later. I got to get an original so I can stare at the thing reading itself and not a photo, not a photo. I got to go right in. So I know I know I'm going to be very funny, especially these larger ones I'm working on. There's definitely an element where they kind of like swim. You sort of like get like.
Geography, History, and Haunting Themes
00:25:11
Speaker
Absorbed into the larger ones and the I'm working on one that's 11 feet tall right now And I can't wait to see it up on. Oh my gosh, really? Wow, like as itself because I think it will really be kind of a portal into This world so I'm really excited about that The girl it's um this one. I don't know if I'm not sure if you've seen I posted it a little bit. Um, the previews uh, it's the girl on the bicycle and
00:25:40
Speaker
And she's actually taller than me and I'm tall. I'm like five nine. But yeah, it's like bigger than me. And I think in person, it's really going to be sort of monumental, you know, like monument sized, a little bit like encountering a large like bas-relief or like a statue in a town square or something where just kind of like looking down at you.
00:26:12
Speaker
I'm excited I get a I I think about two and on the just for me and thinking about I Don't know maybe the people in the history and the ghosts. I'm out on the west coast I'm out in Oregon now, but you know steep there in New England and
00:26:30
Speaker
You and I know that that's a different beast, some more time, different geography. I would say older ghosts. There's a lot of that to that in the region. And I know, thinking about searching for photos and stuff, I can just really picture it, like out there and how it feels.
00:26:58
Speaker
Bit different. I love that with the New England you mentioned one of the piece I just didn't want to forget because you dropped in there Hawthorne and I was thinking about the theme that you were talking about where You know, it's the it's the veneer and I'm right with you I'll travel any journey like getting beyond the veneer or going to the board finding out which is now, you know, like ambiguity III really I really enjoy You know
00:27:26
Speaker
I really enjoyed that journey. One of the things I was wondering, is there something within, in talking about Hawthorne, he had, I think, the same type of thing, or some of those classical New England writers. The surface was there, and the roles were there, and the societal roles was there, and the priest was there, and the religious leader was there, and then he went into the forest.
00:27:56
Speaker
or then you went back behind things. And that's where everything else was. And that's like in that tradition, I think of some of the authors that you had mentioned was that the ghosts and the horror or the strange stories were over and somewhere back behind. We might say, well, maybe back behind a picket fence in the house, that that's the horror or the mystery of the woods and the untamed aspect of that.
00:28:28
Speaker
And do you find in exploring and exploring that those other things that which is behind What do you find it says about the veneer I mean you get back behind the veneer, but what what do you think it says? About about the facade of society Yeah, I think the veneer is
00:28:55
Speaker
the protection. I think a lot about early settlers, pilgrims, and how terrifying it must have been, even just growing up in New England and going to the edge of the forest and standing at it.
00:29:19
Speaker
the sounds and the shadows and the way it stretches back and back and back. And in Maine, there's parts of the woods where you can go to, and if you just start walking, you won't know when you're in Canada, you won't know how far away you are from home. And it swallows you. And so I just think about sort of that veneer as the protection, you know, those,
Cultural Significance of Ghost Stories
00:29:47
Speaker
those wooden palisades, the sharpened chunks of trees with the spikes and stuck into the ground to protect the village. But as a person in that time, if you're believing in witchcraft and you believe that these creatures can slip their skins and steal a baby for their poultice, what's the log wall gonna do to protect you?
00:30:17
Speaker
You know, so I think of that veneer of religion, society, civilization is sort of, it's all about the stories we tell ourselves, you know, and that goes back to the whole like American carnage idea, especially something I talk about a lot is there's a trope in horror of like the Indian burial ground, you know, like the Amityville,
00:30:45
Speaker
Horror house was haunted because it was built allegedly not actually native burial grounds Yeah, but if you think about the nature and the history of this country The whole country is an Indian burial grounds and Yeah We are all living in a haunted house, you know, and we're all being haunted by it and it's a very unique American
00:31:17
Speaker
veneer of the sort of course of our history, which is a very short history. But the fact that in America, like we're all haunted, I feel, every small town has its house that you're not supposed to go by at night because something like that happened there. And every town has its own like unique ghost story or
00:31:43
Speaker
If you park your car in the cemetery at night with a girl, then you can see a ghost behind you in the rear view mirror or something. And then every region has its own cryptid, its own creature, its own mothman, its Jersey Devil, its own obscure creature that haunts the woods just out of the sight of headlights. And it's a very unique,
00:32:12
Speaker
Experience as an American now we're surrounded by these Stories and that's what I try to really share through Like the writing I do on my page. Um just in terms of for instance, I got a tip one time about a like ghost bus from a school bus of children that had gotten hit by a train and that allegedly appears at this intersection or researching that I found
00:32:43
Speaker
three or four other instances of buses full of kids that got hit by trains. And then that brought me to a bus in Texas that crashed into a quarry and half the children drowned. And then that is another ghost story. And it's sort of these stories are all around us. And I don't know if we tell them to ourselves to reconcile ourselves with grief and loss and
00:33:13
Speaker
horror and the little cuts through the veneer of our lives, but so much of it from mass shootings to serial killers is a very unique proposition. And so for me, it's a little bit like ghosts are just around us all the time. Whether or not it is a literal manifestation of something paranormal
00:33:43
Speaker
For me, it's more like all these ghosts are stories and they're all just hanging in the air all the time. And if you like pull the thread of one, you've tried to find others.
Art as Dialogue and Resistance to Absence
00:33:55
Speaker
And so I think maybe the veneer of like a Hawthorne story, you know, of like a priest with a secret is us trying to tell ourselves that like everything's all right and that we can sleep at night. Yeah.
00:34:13
Speaker
Yeah, I there's something I thought about with the, you know, the black and white and brought the color. And I was thinking about it in terms of indigenous and native folks. And it has to do about depiction and moving towards color because
00:34:28
Speaker
I've interviewed many indigenous artists on the show. I've had 16 from over 20 different tribes. And there's this horrific history that there's a frustration on it not being reconciled or dealt with. But there's also the fact that peoples have persevered, that peoples have
00:34:57
Speaker
vibrant cultures, vibrant music, vibrant language, vibrant, active. And so the color and the presentation of that becomes very important. We're not talking about, yes, the ghost story is there, but with the color and the culture and the now for indigenous people, that's also really there as well, too. So there's something that seems to me about moving from the black and white to the color that
00:35:25
Speaker
I think you've given the story life again or making a proposition about what's going on there to evoke folks. So it's an exciting part of creation and seeing how you talk about it and think about it because it's like revivifying something for presentation. Like I'm back. Yeah. A little bit of conjuring, a little bit of. That's a better word. The kaleidoscopic.
00:35:55
Speaker
like view of things and just kind of recontextualizing them because it would be very easy for me to do these in black and white or sort of like muted tones. And I definitely played around with that a little bit, like when I was starting out. But for me, really, it is about trying to give breathe some life back into these like old ghosts, you know, and make them new again. Yeah, I got the big question for you. And I think you dipped into it already. I'm going to ask it again because I don't want to give you
00:36:23
Speaker
tell you that your answer was your answer, but why the big question is the question is why is there something rather than nothing? Because nothing is an absence. And I can't imagine not being full, just being filled with life.
00:36:52
Speaker
And so to resist the absence, to resist the nothing, to resist the void, I create and I create things and I throw them into a void to see if I can fill it up.
Where to Find Martins' Artwork
00:37:11
Speaker
Yeah.
00:37:13
Speaker
I'm on the, me and many others on the other side avoid trying to grab what you're throwing. So, Rhianna C. Marins, tell us, tell us, tell us where to find your art, how to encounter your art, you, what you create, where do folks go, because it's gonna be really important for
00:37:34
Speaker
listeners here to take a look, to take a close look at something I'm fascinated with. But what do people do to get to you? Thank you for my thing, go to my website. It is Brianna Martins dot com. I have my Instagram, which is kind of my main way of sharing stuff from the studio, which is funny because I've amassed a lot of people who are very interested in it, but it really just kind of started as a casual thing of me
00:38:04
Speaker
Well, I take a lot of pictures of my work as I work, so I might as well share them somewhere. So my Instagram is pretty spookygirls. I'll be having some show announcements coming up soon so that people can see my work in
00:38:18
Speaker
And I also have a shop that is on the way so that will be online soon as well Okay, these are all the things we wanted to hear Yeah, that's that's not that's that that that that that's great and and I think you know like finding on Instagram I mean I again, you know The
00:38:41
Speaker
I'm a, when I look at things, I think a lot and I drop back into the story that's behind. So your, what you do just pulls me right in to, to think about those
Closing Thoughts and Personal Reflections
00:38:50
Speaker
types of things. And, you know, talking about art is,
00:38:53
Speaker
can be an odd thing for some, right? To be like, I just got to do the shit like I just got to, you know, create, I don't want to talk about something's and nothing's and why the hell the universe is and that stuff. But I think that it engages things like we chat about history, color, ghosts, living, nonliving, ambiguity, and
00:39:14
Speaker
I learned early on and what I was fascinated with, it wasn't like, as an example, it wasn't what Texas or Mexico was. It was like, what's going on at the border? What culture is it? And I'm not talking about immigration. I'm talking about at borders when things become one thing and they're not another. What is that going on? And that's where you live in your art. So I'm going to hang around there.
00:39:43
Speaker
Yeah, the border between living and memory. Absolutely. Right around where I try anything out. Absolutely. Well, folks, I recommend that you hanging out with us on the podcast here, but definitely check out Brianna's paintings and places that she mentioned. And I wanted to thank you so much. For me, I got to tell you, it's always a personal kick for me to
00:40:11
Speaker
talk to folks on the east coast because west coast is like a completely different universe and i'll talk to anybody about that anytime it's like it's it's beautiful wonderful and strange but it ain't like the other side and so i'd like to uh i like to connect back with you and um in in uh you know catch you and catch you in uh massachusetts and and talk about
00:40:34
Speaker
you finding old photographs in the thrift store and making great art out of them. So I really wanted to thank you for coming on to the show and talking about your art and life and really appreciate you and what you do Brianna. Oh, thank you so much. I appreciate you.
00:40:53
Speaker
Yeah, thanks. And look forward to so much more. Everybody, check out the shop when it comes up. Keep an eye on updates and take a look through all the incredible art you'll find on Instagram and on our page. Brianna, thank you so much. And I hope we get the chance to talk together soon again. Absolutely. Thank you. Great.
00:41:22
Speaker
This is something rather than nothing.