Transcript
Speaker: You are listening to something rather than nothing. Creator and host Ken Valente. Editor and producer Peter Bauer.
Speaker: This is Ken Volante with something rather than nothing and I am very excited this episode to be able to talk to Raven Juarez, educator, teacher, artist, wonderful artist. And what I wanted to do is, Raven has an artist manifesto and I love it and I want to introduce you to Raven by her words. Raven says,
Speaker: My art doesn't ask much of the viewer except to be present with it. It asks you to be still and patient. Are you in the moment? Are you really here? Are you real? Or are you rushing towards some imaginary finish line, trying to get it? What is it to hold all the humanness of yourself, even the stagnant parts, the ugly parts? How do you present and perform the obvious truths you are still unfolding, still squinting to see?
Speaker: Saving and un -naming the private pieces is the hardest part. How to move through the world without your trauma, written all over your face, but also without shoving it into a hidden quarter of your mind, or worse, down everybody else's throats.
Speaker: All these are lessons I'm trying to teach myself. All these teachings that I know are already woven generation by generation into my DNA. I am asking you to watch me untangle the story of Raven. Child, imaginary, dreaming, daughter, greever, fighter, woman, teacher, friend, sister, healer. Raven Juarez, welcome to something rather than nothing. Thank you so much. I'm really excited to be here.
Speaker: All right, so you're born into the world. Are you an artist then?
Speaker: I believe that every child is an artist. That's a famous Pablo Picasso quote, and it rings true for me. I believe that art is just another natural way of human communication. And I think it starts as early as we begin having language, as we begin processing the world and getting a sense of ourselves. So I think definitely, yeah, I think we all are.
Speaker: What the interesting thing about childhood and kids is like, I always say that like babies babble and babies scribble. And then just as their language and their sense of the world starts to develop and unfold, so does their pictorial language, so does their unique style.
Speaker: And for the majority of our young, young lives as artists, we're using that art, that motion, that mark making, that experimentation to connect with ourselves and make meaning of the world around us. And it's only as we start to get a little bit older as kids where we kind of have that adult imposition on it. We're like, oh, that does look like a boat. Or you did such a good job staying inside the lines that the art
Speaker: the purpose of it starts to change. And that's why so many people around like 10 or 11 start to be like, that's right when like the egos in the place where you can kind of put yourself next to someone and compare and contrast and be like, oh, mine's not as good as theirs or mine's not perfect. And that's where a lot of people start to be like, oh, I'm just not an artist. I'm not good at art. And they kind of abandon this natural pictorial development that they've been working on since before they had consciousness pretty much before they had memory.
Speaker: And I feel like people do like one of three things. They either decide I'm not an artist around 10 or 11, 13. They're just like, I'm not doing it anymore. I'm not good at it. It makes me feel bad.
Speaker: Or they'll be like, I'm going to kind of copy and trace and take on like these generic cartoon styles that are really easy to replicate that are kind of cookie cutter. And that gives me that satisfaction and that gives me that praise, which is fine and good. And then there's a rare rare selection of people who like push past it and continue their own developmental language, their own personal
Speaker: I think I keep using the word language, but that's what it is. And that's really rare and it's hard to do. And that's not what I did. I definitely was like more of the cartoon, this is what's simple. And it took me a long time to kind of reclaim and start again. But what's really interesting is no matter when you stop drawing or stop drawing in your own language or painting in your own language,
Speaker: You don't regress. Like whenever you start again, you'll pick up right where you left off and the possibilities and your potential is the same as it always was. And you can just continue right where you left off. And that's so fascinating. I know in just
Speaker: you know, our brief conversations. There's so many fascinating things that open up, honestly, you know, with children and possibility. And I think one of the things when you were talking that popped into my head was in using language overtly as a term,
Speaker: I think for myself, let's say myself, I stopped. I never saw myself doing art, but I stopped doing that around 12 and I started doing that around 45. All right. So on the thing of time and development and what was there.
Speaker: And, uh, one curious thing that I wanted to mention to you, just, you know, maybe a point of personal privilege, but on the point, I always throughout my life, no matter what, what I was trying to create something to draw, some never felt I had any aptitude. But one thing I always did is I made elaborate, uh, geometric shapes. So my mind was processing rectangles, trapezoids, squares, all that type of stuff. Now, when you're talking about what is art or what's within life,
Speaker: I mean, I never knew what that is, but I always did that for decades and decades and decades, but I just did it on notes. I did it in a meeting and doing that. So that was probably the only thread that developed, didn't really change, but just became more elaborate in me repeating the patterns. So I just wanted to mention, I'm just so deeply fascinated with the question of language development or picking things back up again. Well, do you ever notice and think about
Speaker: Why maybe like to me what i feel like is if you're repeating the same structures repeating the same kind of patterns that tells me that something inside of you was needing structure was needing limits was needing.
Speaker: boundaries and to make sense of things and like you're putting yourself really like if you're in a meeting maybe you're feeling a little anxiety maybe you're feeling a little bored you're like kind of creating a little world for yourself that's ordered to live in for your brain like it happens because somewhere you needed it like I did the same thing I drew on every homework assignment I ever had it was my biggest complaint from all my teachers was
Speaker: She did half her math test and the other half is all these little people walking up and down the numbers. And it's because I got scared and I didn't feel good about my math. So I just went into this little world where I'm a tiny little stick figure crawling up and down and sliding down the seven. I think it's natural and normal to follow that. I don't know. You know what I mean?
Speaker: Yeah, no, I really do. Raven, I wanted to, I know as we talk, we're going to kind of go into a couple, you know, particular holes that you and I would talk about, but I want to hit a couple of the conceptual questions because they're just so big in the cast of Big Net. What is art? You spend a lot of time with developing art and others and for yourself. What is it that you're doing? What is it?
Speaker: I think that what it primarily, at least for me, my primary function of art is it's a way to connect your inner self to your outer self. It's a way to kind of be, it's a way to like build a bridge or how to a line between the soul, the
Speaker: The internal truth that makes who you are, and then the person, the way we present to the world and the way we connect with others and that line is really important because it's like, I don't, I don't teach art to kids so every kid can become a famous artist and so every kid has like technically perfect skills in every way I teach it so they know this is the kind of person I am this is kind of learner I am this is the kind of
Speaker: challenges I like to take on and this is how I handle those challenges. Are you the kind of kid who if you make a mistake on your art you decide to cut it out and make a new thing or do you cover it up and build a new world around it that way or do you get upset and crunkle it up and reach for a new piece of paper and you need to reach for some support for that? I think that art just teaches us a lot about ourselves and a lot of metaphors in art when we're working. Oftentimes when I'm making a piece
Speaker: I'm so, so, so much more focused on the process over the product. I honestly don't ever know what I'm going to actually make, but I notice when I'm in that stage and I finally get in that zone, so much metaphor between what's happening on the canvas or on the paper, between the things that I'm actually struggling with or the things that are becoming challenging or the things that are wonderful that are happening in my life. I see it reflected.
Speaker: I think that that kind of introspection is a type of therapy and I think it's a gift you can give to yourself. Even just sitting with a ballpoint pen and a notebook piece of paper and just letting your hand move and noticing what feels good. And then when you make something ugly and you notice it feels bad, that's all really important information for building an understanding of yourself. So I just think of it as a tool and as a language.
Speaker: I do think that I have something that is a little different in the art world, which is, and I think it's why I became an art teacher, is my whole life, in every art class I can imagine or remember, the art teacher was telling me I was doing it wrong.
Speaker: And I remember even being as young as like a kindergartner or a third grader being like I understand the assignment and I'm choosing to do it this way because that's what feels good to me. And that's the feeling that really motivates me to empower my students today is that I really want them to feel that same feeling and not feel like
Speaker: their creativity is something that can be measured or that can be graded. It's an intrinsic, sacred part of the self, and it has to be honored. And thank you for saying that. I think the nature of the discussion and a lot of my work is around the education system.
Speaker: in talking about development, whether it's language, processing emotion, all these types of things. I wanted to say that what I've encountered in doing the podcast and going deeper into the art world is that I am shocked at how much we've cut off kids from that development.
Speaker: Um, now you could look, I mean, I'm not, you could look at it at public schools and arts are de -emphasized and what's tested is valuable and arts not valuable. Therefore, you know, in that system, we can look at it many different ways, but the sheer fact is that development in art is cut off for most everybody.
Speaker: and not even to mention indigenous and native peoples. So in me saying that, that kind of feels heavy. You work within that, like what's going on now and what do we do about something that seems to me and you fundamental for development, knowledge, emotion, what do we do now to like, this is important.
Speaker: I mean, if I knew that I would be doing it. I think that it's just, um,
Speaker: I think that we're honestly in a really interesting time in history where this generation, I think that like millennial Gen Z, I think there's a lot going on right now with people kind of feeling empowered to challenge a lot of the systems in place and challenge a lot of the systematic oppression and issues that we're having. And I think we're going to see kind of a renaissance in the next few years.
Speaker: at least I hope to and I hope to be a part of that. I think that even just like the students that I've had the privilege of watching them get a bit older and grow a bit more as I've become, I've been teaching almost 10 years now. So some of my students are like big kids. And I hear all the friends, their parents say like, oh, they told their art teacher,
Speaker: um actually I'm the artist so this is how I meant to do it and this is I'm an artist so just trust me on this like and I love to hear those stories of kids having that integrity and feeling empowered and feeling like um they don't have to color inside the lines to make something valuable and they don't have to make their art recognizable or uh
Speaker: It doesn't have to be representational to be valuable communication and to be a valuable contribution to the world. But I don't really know about how to fix it on a greater level. I think that I'm just trying to do my part kid by kid. And I really think that trying to put that into my own art
Speaker: Um, something I wrote about in that same piece you read from was I really want to make art where people look at it and think like, Oh, like I could do that. Like it would take a long time, but like I physically with my hands couldn't make that. And that's the thing is it's not really about the skill or the, um, ability to render something perfectly. It's about.
Speaker: the intention and the action and the processing and the feeling. And if I can spread that to even a few more people year after year after year, then I feel like I'm on my way. I'm in my purpose. Yeah. Yeah. I am.
Speaker: I've been asking this question lately. I'm not going to ask you it, but I want to just tell you about it. And I want to mention a statement. I've been asking guests lately about what they think their art is and what other people think that art is. It's a super clumsy question. And I like kind of how I've bumped around with it. But I want to mention something. I want to mention a very specific experience I had related to your art piece to explore that question.
Speaker: So last year in the Pacific Northwest and other areas, uh, and, uh, the, the fires, uh, the forest fires. Um, and my experience of that at that time, and we're in the pandemic and everything now I'm an East coast kid. I don't know forest fires. Like I don't, that's like hurricanes. That's what I know. And.
Speaker: Uh, I go outside and the smokes are coming in and I'm like, I go up to somebody, I happen to pass somebody. I'm like, what do you do? Like, I think there's a normal thing. Cause I'm like in Pacific Northwest, I just have to adapt to like, we don't know what to do. Like this hasn't happened. And the smoke's piling in. I'm like. Fear. So long story short, uh, that entire time I was terrified as a human being, terrified. And I told people I was terrified, not everybody. I saw your painting.
Speaker: and I forget the title of it, but it was the forest fires. That's how I felt, Raven. That's how I felt your painting. Now cool, profound, yes. How is that possible?
Speaker: Um, I think it's possible because all people are, I believe, very connected. I think that we're all sharing a consciousness. I think that we've got electro wires that we can't see like running through us. And I think that the human experience is very universal. And I think art kind of lets us have that window.
Speaker: I didn't feel afraid of the forest fires actually like the real ones. I was worried about the smoke because of my students and we couldn't go outside and I was worried about how we were gonna get their willies out staying inside all day. But I think that fear
Speaker: And the metaphor of it, again, that painting that you're referencing, I know the one you're talking about, that one came, I didn't plan for it to be a forest fire. It came out of a pure emotion of fear and things that I was processing at the time and things in my past I was trying to run from. And the thing about memories is they're kind of like a forest fire. You can't really hide from it. You have to put it out.
Speaker: If you hide from it, you're just going to get burnt up. So I think what you're picking up on is the intention and the emotion that I put into that piece and you're kind of layering it over your experience. So I think that's amazing.
Speaker: Yeah, I appreciate. I mean, it's truly personally appreciate your response to that because, you know, it's it's exploring that. And yeah, it was so raw. I mean, think about the raw experience that I said. It wasn't me being like, oh, I wonder how the next months go is is me saying, am I going to die because by fire? That's that was my experience. Just an honest experience. I hadn't seen it. Hadn't experienced. I'm like,
Speaker: Yeah, the unknown is the scariest things, things you haven't had the chance to overcome previously are the scariest. It's always the first experiences that are the most rocking, I feel like. My first tornado in the Midwest. I've never been through a tornado, but I'm sure if I experience one, it will inspire a lot of art because I'm pretty afraid of them since I saw them. I had imagined it would inspire a lot of art. I haven't begun my tornado journey.
Speaker: in painting. Raven, I wanted to ask you what or who made you who you are? Hmm. Would it be weird if I say I think I made me who I am? I think that I've done a lot of, I mean, there's a classic like nature versus nurture thing, but I think that
Speaker: part of my work as an artist has been kind of like picking and choosing what influences, what experiences, what memories I'm gonna let define me. I think I've had a lot of time where I kind of was just in the washing machine and it was just happening to me. But I think right now I just turned 30 and I'm a place in my life where I'm like, I think now I'm at that place where
Speaker: I'm deciding. I'm choosing which of my family traits are useful to me and which ones I'm releasing. I'm choosing which of the memories are useful to me and help me grow and which ones I'm not going to give power to anymore. I'm choosing which people in my life help me and sustain me and inspire me, and I'm choosing which connections that I can let go of and send love and light, but I don't need to give my energy anymore too.
Speaker: I think that's where I am right now. However, I will say my grandmother Yvonne is my mom's mom. She's where I get my Blackfeet heritage from. She pretty much raised me when I was a little toddler. I didn't go to preschool. I was with her until I did go to school. And
Speaker: She passed away a little more than a year ago. And I just feel her with me all the time. I feel her talking to me. I feel her guidance and her love and her protection. And I owe a lot of my strength and my resilience and my identity to her teachings and her love. So I'll say that. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know,
Speaker: I think in the first party answer, I was thinking about just kind of like, you know, just modern existential, like we have the responsibility to make and create who we are, and it's there, but it's you. It's you doing a lot of the work, because it feels like we're doing a lot of the work sometimes. It is work to be alive. So learn to be is quite the fight.
Speaker: Ah, yes. I saw that. Who's that quote from? I'm sorry. I forget. That quote is from my favorite band. They're not a band anymore, but they're called Big Tree. And they actually went to Sarah Lawrence College a few years prior to me. And I just became obsessed with them in my college years. And that line always comes to my head several times a day. It's from one of their songs. Yeah. Could you repeat it one more time? To learn to be is quite the fight. I like that a lot.
Speaker: All right. So, uh, you and I are talking and people are listening to the show and, you know, obviously our connection, my connection, your connection to art and why do it, you know, uh, is, you know, clear as clear as out there. But, you know, why, why in general, why should, why should people create things? Why, like, why, why create things like what's going on with that?
Speaker: I think because it's good for you. I think because it's a natural human. It's the same as like, why should we breathe? Why should we eat? I think it's part of being a human being on this planet. We're meant to... Some people think of art as like a greater communication. I have something to say to the world. I have something I want people to know. I have something I want to bring attention to. And I think that's very true. But for me, the prime thing is
Speaker: paying attention to yourself and communicate with yourself and have a moment where, I mean, art is therapy, art is healing. That's just true. And everybody has something they need to heal from. I don't care where you're from, what your life experience has been.
Speaker: to be a human is fraught. It's an intense experience. And it doesn't have to be drawing or painting. It doesn't have to be just music or singing. I think of art, it exists in so many ways. There's transient art.
Speaker: There's art that exists for a split second because you arranged the things on your desk in a certain way and it brought you some peace or you played in a sandbox with a child or you picked up stones at the beach and you left them in a pile. I think that we're always naturally creating and it's just our value systems are a little weird now because we're saying this is art and this is just trash or this is art and that's just you playing around. But I think that art exists in every facet of human experience. It's just you have to know how to look for it and value it.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, I um And I think a lot of times in some of the comments you mentioned about you know the economic system and what's what's valued what's deemed valuable and you know has value attached to it and stuff that kind of Is de -emphasized at the very least, you know, we could say is the emphasized but you know artists always push through and I do believe with uh, what you were saying I believe there's a generational shift I believe
Speaker: And when I've talked about seeing the activism, one of the things I think with the younger generations, I think there is a large number of them calling total bullshit on some of our systems, including racism. And I think it's something to hold up because I think generations previous, I speak as a white man, did not do enough frigging work. And that is part of the legacy.
Speaker: But I see a different approach. I see trouble, but I also see consciousness of like kids saying, that's a real weird bullshit system you had in place like that you carried on. Yes, it feels different. And I'm hopeful on that.
Speaker: I feel it too. And I am too. I think we have to have hope. And I think we have to, I mean, capitalism, I mean, this whole individualistic system that we're living in, I think is so counterintuitive and so counterproductive to the kind of world that actually would be beneficial for our species survival and for our spiritual survival and growth. So I think art's a huge tool in that. And I think it exists in many ways that we're not even privy to yet. I think that
Speaker: I think that I mean I just see the way that I mean I spent a little bit of time yesterday. I had set up a big art project for a three year old girl who I see for private sessions, and she did a little bit of it but she wasn't that interested and.
Speaker: That's normal, three -year -olds, you know. But she wanted to sit on this little bench, and she found the smallest little piece of chalk. And she noticed that when she rolled the piece of chalk over the table, it left like a tiny little trail. And we spent, I think, like 20 minutes just rolling this little piece of chalk back and forth between us, leaving these little tiny trails. And I was thinking, what a beautiful piece of art that no one will ever see we're creating here together. This is connection. This is a moment we're sharing that we're both,
Speaker: In my mind, I feel like we're both just the small, the whole world's gone. We're both just a small little blue ball rolling back and forth. And I think that there's supreme beauty in art in those moments. And that's those kind of moments that I would love to show the world. I think there's so much value in the way children see and interpret and create. And some of it's just small and subtle and light. And some of it, I just feel like if I could show
Speaker: the masses that beauty, it would change a lot. And that's something I'm really working on. I'm actually doing some collaborations with kids right now, where I have the parents, I work with the kids, and then I take the art home and I kind of add to it and then I give it back to the parents. And the purpose of that is because I think sometimes parents, adults, anyone will look at a scribble or look at a mark and be like, Oh, that's kind of cool. I guess it's cool. My kid was learning to draw.
Speaker: You know, but my whole thing is like, no, like they can draw like, look what they made. Like an eye, like highlight what is truly magical and sacred about what they are doing right now. And then that in turn.
Speaker: When I sit down to work, I, I'm learning to not have this like overhanging cloud. Like I want it to be like this or other people's art looks like that. I can kind of see myself as my own art student and be like, no, but look how it is right now. Look at the beauty of what you just made right now. And just like live in that. Oh, that is, that, that, that is, that is wonderful, but in good, like, as far as your approach, you know, the, it's also being able to see that and cap, like in your, to know that and that,
Speaker: That that that helps. You know, and for me, teachers, you know, we talk about the kids like I've worked in, you know, so I'm a I'm a union guy. I've worked in collective movements. I've been in social justice cause most my adult life and many of them with teachers. And to see when when there's been struggle in conflict, I'm referring to some sometime in Wisconsin revolt when I was working in Madison, Wisconsin.
Speaker: Um, I saw my teachers, all the creativity was out. I'm like, I had no idea. I was like looking around, look at all these artists. Cause there were, there were, there was this, and the motion was like all the stuff, all the creativity that teachers do in the classroom. Now we are around the Capitol and protests and the signs were brilliant. And it was like pre meme, like just, just creativity.
Speaker: And that creativity, like I saw it fueling the resistance that we're involved with. I was like, well, I never had that experience before, but I saw my, like, my God, my teachers are such creators. They're so creative and it was wonderful. Creativity comes out of necessity so often and it's because something needs to come out. Something has to be exclaimed, you know? Yeah. Got to get it out.
Speaker: I want to, Raven, I want to take advantage of your education in some research I know that you've done on this point of
Speaker: kids in development and languages. And I know you studied different approaches, different ways of looking at child development, connection to arts, children in art. I just wanted to kind of open it up for you to kind of like explain something. I was deeply fascinated with kind of very different thinking about how kids can develop.
Speaker: Well, one thing that's really interesting that I studied a lot in college and I think about it all the time, it's really relevant to the work I do now is, you know, Piaget's developmental levels, you can kind of cognitively map where a child is.
Speaker: from their development. And it's really interesting because even though each child of course has their own style and their own inspirations, they all start with the kind of the same building blocks. It's certain kind of scribble patterns that become close shapes, that become radials, that become symbols, that become representations, but it all builds up and up and out.
Speaker: And something I think that's so interesting is you can look at a piece of art by a child and follow that stuff. But when something's disrupted, if there's a trauma or if there's something that happens, you can see it. You'll be like, why is this five -year -old been drawing like a three -year -old for two years? What happened in that time where something was disrupted? Or you'll notice, oh, my six -year -old suddenly drawing like she was
Speaker: like how she was drawing when she was four, or, you know, emitting certain features, emitting certain, when you can like kind of diagnostically look at something and say, okay,
Speaker: cognitively we know she's drawing she's capable of drawing like this however this is happening instead or she's regressed in this one way or suddenly she's pressing super hard harder than she needs to push these are all like tools you can use to kind of get an internal language of that child and
Speaker: There's a lot of research and thinking about that for kids, but it's really true for adults too. You can notice when you look at someone's drawings, there's secrets in there. You don't realize everything you're giving away in the way that you represent things.
Speaker: And that's why for me it's really personal to share my art because if you're really looking you will see my secrets and that's why I say my art asks you to be still with it because there's stuff in there. It's kind of like having your diary on display.
Speaker: And so that's why I think that it's really important that we do pay attention to the way children are drawing. It's an alert system. It's an important way to, I mean, I've had students when I was back in Brooklyn where I noticed from their work that like maybe they needed some intervention, maybe they needed some help with their family, maybe there was a reason to have like a pause.
Speaker: And those suspicions turned out to be correct. There's a famous anecdote that I think is really interesting that I learned about in school. There was a child who was having some kind of problem at a boarding school. I don't remember what it was, but he was actually pooping in a place he wasn't supposed to poop. And it kept happening and happening. And they brought in the suspects, and they were like,
Speaker: Okay, we know one of you has done this, like don't worry, you're not in trouble. And they gave all the kids just some like paper and pens to color with. While they were like interviewing them one by one, but the interviews were not real, then they just went and looked at their drawings and all the kids have drawn cars, but only one kid had drawn a car with an exhaust pipe and smoke filling the whole page.
Speaker: So like, who do you think it was? Wow. That is wild. Yeah. So it's, and I, and I, like I said. The secrets, right? The secrets, right? You don't realize what you're giving away in your art all the time, but it's there. Oh my God, I'm frightened. I'm frightened now. Exactly. Me too. And I'm a Reggio inspired teacher. I follow the Reggio Emilia approach, which is, um,
Speaker: uh early education philosophy but i believe it could apply to all grades and some places it does and that's a belief that children have 100 languages and it's the teacher's job not to kind of funnel information into the child but rather watch and observe and notice the ways that that one that child
Speaker: expresses themselves and learns through those 100 languages and reflects their interests and reflects their curiosities through those expressions and then you follow their lead and you follow their line and you notice oh like
Speaker: this child is always looking out the window. What are they looking at? And instead of being like, come here, notice what I'm trying to teach about the ABCs. You say, let's all go to the window. Let's bring our sketchbooks to the window. Notice what each kid drew and noticed. And then those become the explorations for the rest of that week or that year. It's a little bit more holistic and child centered.
Speaker: And it's also really rooted in the fact that we see the children already as complete, competent citizens whose opinions, whose perspectives are just as valuable as an adult just because they don't know everything.
Speaker: that we know about adult society like what is that they're not adults in training they're already living in the world as themselves and their citizens and they're a part of the conversation so a lot of the work i do is like validating their experience and
Speaker: I think that it's really powerful to do that through the art because young children aren't always capable of verbally expressing themselves But what they can do is what they can do and that's where I want to meet them Yeah, and I know like for our system what you're describing would feel like
Speaker: a radical shift. I think with things like this, I feel truth in what you're saying. You can change approach. You can integrate aspects that are very positive something.
Speaker: if we think about it and learn about it, but I find that a lot of times it'd be like, that's not the right way. And so it ends up being isolated or unique to being here. And we don't kind of like integrate, you know, some of that. And I think it can be particularly important for, for art as I learn about art, uh, as I've gotten old, I've always studied art, but I've always done independently and more intensely lately. It's just something I really see as like, you know,
Speaker: the role of art, you know, the role like where it stands. And as far as the education components, I think in the approach that you mentioned, there seems to be so much possibility or understanding of potential rather than not meeting the metric. By the time you're five, I mean, kindergarten kids go in and they're tested before they go into kindergarten. So you're tested before you even go into school now. So you don't even enter school without a test.
Speaker: Yes, and I think that that's a I think that that's a huge
Speaker: huge issue, honestly. And I think it's a big problem because you can't measure on a test. You can't measure somebody's, I mean, well, it's basically erasing the opportunity for kids to show us how brilliant they are. And not every child is brilliant in a way that has been measured before. You're kind of limiting what our species is capable of by only having these certain boxes to check off. Like you don't have a box for every kid and every kid shouldn't be in a box.
Speaker: And that's how we're going to solve big problems in humanity is by I mean, if there was a box for it, we would have solved those problems. But we don't have like, it's a catch 22. And it's one of those things that keeps me up at night. And that's why I really think that like through art, kids get that sense of like, this is who I truly am. And even if the world doesn't see it, I know I can sit down on a piece of paper and like connect to myself and have that conversation with myself and find that inner power again. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: I have a big question for you, Raven. Sure. My coffee's hitting me now. I'm all jazzed up. Yeah. Yeah. Why is there something rather than nothing? Because there has to be, man. Because if there's nothing, then there's nothing.
Speaker: And.
Speaker: I think that just being conscious in a body on this earth, that's the thing. It's not so much what you do, what you achieve, what you can show. I think just the act of feeling in your body. It's hard to describe, because once you're thinking about it, then it's not the thing anymore. But do you know what I'm trying to say? It's the simple act of being conscious as a living, breathing,
Speaker: entity and sharing that space with other entities is the thing. And I think we get really caught up in life racing towards some imaginary finish line, like I said in my writing, but really the thing is just being present in the moment. And like that is, that's why we're here is to, is to learn how to do that and to learn how to do it authentically in a way that does harm to no one in a way that, um,
Speaker: is is divine and I think it takes a whole lifetime and probably more to get there but it's got to be something because why else would it be yeah uh you know let's get the drum roll or something right there thank you Raven um
Speaker: I wanted two things. One, tell the listeners where to find your things, where to find things that you, or if it's physical or online. The other component is tell us anything cool that you run into art -wise, like reading or show or anything like that. So just open, tell us some cool stuff.
Speaker: Oh, okay, I've got cool stuff. Well, I'll start with me. If you want to find me on Instagram, it's Raven underscore in the trees, all one word. And that's kind of a mix of my personal work. It's mostly process. Honestly, I'm a really slow
Speaker: artist and I don't produce a lot. I think I get out like maybe two full paintings a year maybe and then like a bunch of little sketches and like that's how I started was I had just like sketchbooks upon sketchbooks and somebody asked me to have an art show and I was like I don't have any art all I have is like all these random little things and so I spent like the next three months just cutting up my sketchbooks and gluing them to canvases and painting over them and like Hobbes
Speaker: scrabbling together, something that I thought looked like an art show. But I think I've moved beyond that. But if you look at my Instagram, you'll see it's a lot of just scraps and scribbles and stuff I do with the kids. And I just got engaged. So there'll probably be a lot of those pictures as well. So that's me personally. Thank you. And my website is Raven Juarez dot com. R A B N J U A R E Z dot com.
Speaker: Um, I have a gallery page on there of some of my favorite pieces, but my shop does need to be updated. So maybe hold back on the shop page until I have a chance to put up some of my new work. There's, there's not a lot in there at the moment. And, um, moving forward.
Speaker: Um, I'm really excited that me and my cousin and one of my best friends in life, Asia Tail, we're collaborating right now for the Bellwether Festival at the Bellevue Arts Museum. We're going to be creating it. Wonderful. She is so wonderful. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. I love Asia. Um, this is one of her pieces behind me. Um, so we're collaborating. I thought so. You can tell, right?
Speaker: Um, so we'll be collaborating on that and that opens in early September, I believe September 9th, and we're going to be doing the installation right at the entrance. So we're super excited to indigenize that space and just really, um, I don't want to say too much about it, but we're really excited about that project and we've got some cool plans underway.
Speaker: um and let's see what else is happening my students are going to have an art show next week but that's just for the moms and dads but i'll probably post that on instagram too i honestly think that the work my students have produced this year through the pandemic has been so interesting um i'm seeing just so many like in the classroom of course it's always a really enriching experience but
Speaker: We made art kits this year and I sent them home every month for my students and then kind of prompted them over Zoom and most of the work they were doing with their families. And I'm seeing so much of the family, the security, the safety elements
Speaker: in their artwork. It's got a different energy to it. I feel like a lot of the artwork I've seen in past years with my young students is very collaborative. I can see how they're learning from one another. I can see how they're making memories in the shared space that's really theirs in their autonomous world because I really do strive to make their learning environment feel like it's theirs. But the way the work has been through this year, I see them processing
Speaker: so much of like gratitude for their family and the safetiness in their home and this just has a different, there's a different flavor to it this year that I didn't expect and it's been really gratifying and beautiful to see them kind of taking these memories, taking this special time with their parents that maybe they wouldn't have had otherwise and you can see it in the art and I was so afraid this year that the kids would just
Speaker: they would miss something or there would be like a lack or there would be something we couldn't get back. And I realized through their art and what I'm seeing them bring to me is they actually gained something from that special time, from this feeling of being totally held and protected. And I see it in their art and it's really beautiful and it's so special. So I'm excited to share the work that they've been doing this year.
Speaker: It's going to be exciting to see. And I pick up in particular on even in the story example with the poop, right? But just the art and what it shows, the sensitivity to what it reveals is a deeply fascinating part of your description.
Speaker: uh, tell us the cool stuff, uh, cool art. Uh, yeah, like anything I've been thinking about asking what, um, cool artists that you're seeing. Haven't been out in the world much lately. Well, I haven't been to an art show in a really long time. Like I haven't had much of a haircut lately. You know what I mean? Like I just, um, you know what I, you know, what I did as like,
Speaker: I was just like, I'm 48, like I've changed so much lately as far as like what I do and what I create. And like what I do is really my job, like union rep and all that stuff. But I was just like, I can wear my hair, I can wear whatever clothes, like I wear whatever clothes I want, not nothing like silly or garish, but I'm like,
Speaker: this is cool. Like I'm beyond like something about the pandemic in my age. I'm just beyond. I feel like I just got to that pace myself where it's like I feel like my whole life I've had like this idea of the kind of woman I'm trying to be or I'm trying to trick people into thinking I am and I'm always just trying to like build that
Speaker: um that outer layer and then I think just in like the last year with the pandemic and my age and everything I'm just like I already am like there is no there is no striving there's no tricking it's just this is what it is and it's so freeing I feel great and I I'm
Speaker: I think it'll be a lifelong goal to get there with my art. I feel like I've talked a big game today about being like, oh, I'm in the process and oh, I'm in the thing. But I'm still struggling. There's not a single time I touch pen to paper that I'm not like, well, that's horrible. What are you doing? How are you tricking everyone and thinking that you're an artist? But that's literally part of it. That's part of the process. That's why it's work. And when I can get to that place, I'll probably stop painting because like,
Speaker: Uh, I think it's a lifelong journey and I think it goes hand in hand with, uh, how we present ourselves in the world and how we feel about ourselves. I think my biggest, like, I think one of the things I know, one of my biggest problems and like, uh, kind of like in relationship with like my own art, cause everybody has their own struggles with their own art. Like I know it. And I feel it's a journey of me working through it and it has to do with me. Looking for validation, external.
Speaker: like affirmation or telling me what it is or who I am, like just a, and I think sometimes like, honestly, whoever they are, but if artists are, they come from the gut and they're like, fuck you world, I don't care. Like I love them so much. Yeah, those are the ones that really get you. I want like, I want so bad in this realm to be you to be like, boom, this is what I did, whatever. And like, we all want to
Speaker: You know, and, uh, so I know my biggest journey has to do with. I make the particularly with painting. I put it out there and I have strong reactions to it. I love you. And like, and other ones I'm like, I'll allow you over here for a little while. I have strong like responses to it. And I'm trying to move my relationship more towards an internal process. You did it and it.
Speaker: doesn't matter Ken, like I'm trying to get to that realm of it. It's a journey. It is a journey. I feel that so much. I feel like so much of my work, like I've had one canvas out here that I've been painting for like four years and it's gone through many transformations and I've actually really loved every layer of it but I can't stop working on it because I like
Speaker: the feeling of ruining it, if that makes sense. Like it kind of is like a lesson to me. Like it's growing alongside with me and I don't think this painting will ever be done, but it feels good to kind of, it's kind of that same feeling when you scribble all over a piece of paper and it's just like satisfying. It kind of gives me that feeling and it teaches me to just be present and to just
Speaker: enjoy the feel like I do you ever get in that feeling where you've been it takes me a while to get there but when I get there it's like this is why I'm alive and it's just like I am in that painting and I'm like existing as part of it and that's the feeling that I'm trying to get to and I feel like that's where I do my healing that's where I understand myself that's how I can build
Speaker: Like those are the lessons whenever I'm like in that way. I'm like, Oh, I've got to remember this next time I'm with the kids so I can like tell them like it doesn't matter if the paint's wet. I don't know. Sorry. I'm rambling now, but there's just so many lessons to learn by being in that fluid process focused.
Speaker: and they teach me that like I learned from the kids how to just enjoy it and just experiment with it and you ever noticed kids will work on a painting for like hours and then they're like I'm done and you're like oh like this is so and you want to talk about it and they're just like I'm doing blocks now goodbye like I want to be like that I want to just be like
Speaker: That was my experience I had and I'm not looking for your validation But like I made it and like I'll get or like that's why kids like draw you picture and just be like here You can have it and it's like oh, but you work so hard on it. Don't you want to take it home to your mom? They're like no She has some you know, like I like that
Speaker: And so many of my, like, I don't know if I should say most successful paintings, but to me, like the ones I feel most successful about from beginning to end were ones where I literally watched a child make something, kept it in my head, went home and tried my best to copy them and then expand on it. Like I literally be like, I saw this girl dip her brush into every single one of these colors, rub it around, spill water on it, and then it dried and it looked really cool. So I'm going to go home, get those same colors,
Speaker: spill water on it, let it dry and then build a painting on top of that. And I think that's like my secret recipe. I think that the kids have given me my art career in a real way and more so than any formal training I've ever had. And that's why I can't stop doing what I'm doing. I will always, always work with young children in the arts because it feeds that part of my soul that I need. They are my teacher and they help me connect to the parts of me that I need to focus on and heal and grow from.
Speaker: Yeah. And that connection and how you can learn, you can learn and figure out an approach that might be helpful for you. And I like, you know, there's a certain playfulness or randomness or a kid surrealist like aspect. And for me, my favorite
Speaker: paintings that I do are the ones that are ludicrous, where I've given up on. And I give up on my paintings in two ways because I symbolically represent it.
Speaker: If I can't do whatever I'm trying to do, I will put a cross or a UFO in it. I'm like, maybe the cross will invoke or maybe the UFO invoke. Those are only two things that it means for me. I laugh at the painting because I'm like, okay, I was at the end of me trying this. When I get too precious with my paintings, I always just say, just mess it up. And then when you fix the mess up, that's where it will be, you know?
Speaker: That's how we get over it. That sounds like really great guidance. Yeah.
Speaker: No, go ahead. And then the solving of the problem becomes the art. And the solving of the problem, however you choose to do it, that's the metaphor. I always feel like it kind of shows you where you're at. Like, are you in the space where you're going to trace around it delicately, or are you just going to X that motherfucker out and just be like, you're done? And then you build something out of it. That becomes the outline of a bird or a hand or an eyeball. I think that all the paintings that exist
Speaker: in the future for me already exist inside me now. So it's just, I got to invite him and not be afraid. Yeah. Yeah. To have that, that openness. Um, I've learned so much from you, Raven, and you're, you are a teacher and you know, far, far bigger sense of, you know, the common use of the word. Um, thank you.
Speaker: I appreciate the explorations I've been allowed to go on with you both conceptually and for me, why art is important or like answering the big questions about them, but knowing that you will never answer the big questions about humans, like kids, development, dealing with trauma. And I started the podcast, it was kind of philosophy and art, but
Speaker: It's philosophy, art, and healing. And it doesn't matter, 33 % a piece, it doesn't matter. For me, it's all the same. And I think the way you talk about it is such an integration. It feels good to look at art the way through your eyes. And I just appreciate that.
Speaker: Thank you so much. It's been so much fun. I love to nerd out about this stuff. So thank you. I really appreciate the opportunity. And it's been great talking to you. I actually really appreciate the opportunity just to think about those bigger questions. And I just always appreciate to be with people who can indulge me in that way. So thank you.
Speaker: you know I think you also captured that sentiment and we got the nerd out so amen right thanks thanks so much um thanks so much for your time Raven and uh gosh um
Speaker: Each painting and not your process or your process, but each one that comes out, I'm sure everybody will cherish. Thank you for the work that you do with kids and for your art, putting that in the world. Thank you for saying. All right. Take care, Raven. Bye. This is something rather than nothing.
