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Chloe Niclas
3.7k Plays1 year ago
Chloe Niclas is an illustrator from Baltimore, MD. She is fascinated by the unexplainable and bizarre aspects of the world, often executing the otherworldly and impossible to feel within reach of existence. Her work has been recognized by American Illustration and the Art Director’s Club, and has appeared in The New York Times, Harper's Magazine, Politico Europe, and others.
Follow on Instagram @chloe.niclas
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Transcript
Podcast and Guest Introduction
00:00:03
Speaker
You are listening to something rather than nothing. Creator and host, Ken Delante. Editor and producer, Peter Bauer.
00:00:17
Speaker
This is Ken Volante with the Something Rather Than Nothing podcast. We have Chloe Nicholas here, an illustrator who caught my eye, the New York Times book review cover, and beautiful illustrations and art. Chloe, welcome to the Something Rather Than Nothing podcast.
Chloe's Freelance Journey Begins
00:00:40
Speaker
Thanks so much for having me.
00:00:42
Speaker
Yeah, it's a real pleasure. I would say that seeing I get excited by kind of fantastical images of worlds. So like when I was look at the work that you've done and that's been published, like I said, the New York Times book review Harper's
00:01:04
Speaker
and spirit box. Yeah, just incredible, incredible work. And I look at it and there's there's one in particular with these the spiral staircase. And as you go down through all these levels, there's just these magnificent worlds and levels that are within it and invoke it really quickly. So I kind of just drop in and go into that. Tell us how like
00:01:30
Speaker
You're doing this work for a bit, and New York Times Book Review is a beautiful, well-loved publication with magnificent art. How'd you end up there? What's part of your story in your work?
00:01:48
Speaker
Yeah, so starting off freelancing, I was emailing my work, just cold emailing to art directors. Editorial work is one of the easier places to start off as an illustrator. It's just like a one-off job for a magazine or a newspaper or something like that.
00:02:09
Speaker
And they were one of the people that I was emailing. And one day, the art director, Matt Dorfman, he just responded and he gave me an assignment for the cover. So and then and then that sort of started.
00:02:28
Speaker
a really nice working relationship. So that's been going really well. Yeah, I just called the emails with some images and an intro. And then yeah, I think they saw the images. I think they saw the images and move from there. Thank you. Um,
Early Inspirations and Projects
00:02:47
Speaker
One of the pieces here that I just wanted to mention as far as my interaction with some of your images, I love that some of them were tied to Choose Your Own Adventure books.
00:03:07
Speaker
Uh, I grew up in the eighties and, uh, those books were really prominent kind of like, uh, at that time there were kind of like D and D Dungeons and Dragons inspired books and fighting fantasy.
00:03:21
Speaker
And those books were so important to me. And again, going back to all the world's type of thing where, you know, just growing up in the city, just messing around and stuff. But I love books and those illustrations, both the words and the adventure within them. But the the the illustrations just were always so powerful and moving and fantastic. I almost always felt like, look at this drawing that's in this like paperback book.
00:03:48
Speaker
So I just want to tell you, when I saw those images, it kind of recaptured my connection to that. And I was just thrilled to see your work there. Anything in particular about that type of adventurous book series that you connected with? Yeah, that was one of my first assignments ever. I actually got assigned that in 2018.
00:04:15
Speaker
And at the time I thought I was going to be mostly doing like middle grade, sci-fi, mystery, fantasy genres for that age group. And I still would like to do that, but that was like what I was gearing towards. And so I emailed them and they responded to me. It was like the first response they ever got from a publisher or an art director. And
00:04:43
Speaker
Yeah, and what I really loved about it was that it wasn't just like a fantastical story, but it was also tying into historical figure, Mata Hari. And so that was really fun to learn about because I got to learn all about her and I listened to a bunch of podcasts about her and got to do a lot of research. That's what's really fun about
00:05:09
Speaker
about illustrating is that you get to learn in depth about each piece, each project that you're working for at a given point. And learning about that whole era of time that she was in and having to research the kinds of clothes and all the locations that things were taking place. And so it was definitely like a historical fiction fantasy
00:05:39
Speaker
genre of work. It's a lot of fun. Very imaginative. Yeah, well, thanks for bringing out those other components, too. And I saw the piece actually, yeah, of course, referring to Mata Hari. And I saw one image of Mata Hari and it thinks with the dolphin in it. Again, almost like the spiral funnel, but there's a world down.
00:06:02
Speaker
into the ocean, but it's fascinating to see within the spirals, feathers and natural pieces. And I just was looking at it, and this thing should not be, but is, it should be, you know, like very quickly. Beautiful image. What was it like putting that together, that process?
00:06:26
Speaker
I think that piece is one of my favorites that I had done for the book. I remember that piece very vividly.
00:06:37
Speaker
The request for that image was to have her writing a dolphin through a space vortex that was underwater. And I had no idea at the time, I was like, I have no idea how I'm going to draw this. I had never drawn anything like that before.
00:06:58
Speaker
And I realized just how many abstractions there are in making an image like that and like having that come across realistically it's like a combination of a wormhole and like bits of water and seaweed and like watery types of textures and
00:07:21
Speaker
Um, it ended up being a lot of fun and I just I was very intimidated by it at first and then it became The best piece of the book I think yeah it's it's it's it's it's really wonderful and I think one of the in hearing you describe it one of the things that I connected to was like in my head was um Yeah, the space the space ocean thing, right? Because how do you transport quickly between those two? But then I think about when i've looked at like underwater
00:07:50
Speaker
like the life that lives there in that whole world that's like underneath us. And it's always compared to alien like otherworldly. So for me, there's an inherent connection between those two, but they seem opposite. And I think that the art pulls it together is like, I didn't know that I was seeing that vortex. Obviously, there's a vortex there that brings in these components. But for me, it created that juncture of
00:08:14
Speaker
ocean, space? Yeah, same thing, kind of, but not. Yeah. Well, I think visually, if you think about it, there probably are a lot of similarities. If you look at a wave or a water vortex and then you see a wormhole in outer space, there are a lot of similar
00:08:35
Speaker
tone like similar tonal shapes going on just a lot of abstractions and the key was to like figure out the shapes of those tones and abstractions and then like kind of fit them together collage them together visually and yeah so it ended up working out pretty well so I was happy with that yeah space I definitely think that space and deep
00:09:05
Speaker
ocean are very similar in many ways. Yeah. I was thinking too about the darkness,
Artistic Identity and Evolution
00:09:12
Speaker
right? I mean, you go, it's so dark. And I also think about the inability for humans to naturally go into those places without some sort of tech to survive. It's true. Both of those realms are so mysterious to us. We both like to go and explore any of those areas. We need so much equipment just to survive.
00:09:36
Speaker
Yeah, I think I'm thinking now I'm thinking of some of the past episodes I dropped into some like marine biology a couple times and it's probably like there's an there's just a pursuit that I'm thinking about now that's kind of more similar than I thought. OK, Chloe, I'm talking about identity and talking about being an artist. I had a question about. When did you see yourself as as an artist? Was it?
00:10:05
Speaker
Feeling all of a sudden how did how did you have artists in? How do you have artists in your identity? I always I was always seeing myself that way When I could hold a pencil I was Enjoying drying since then and then by the time I was four I had a callus on one of my fingers from drawing for so many hours Yeah, it's always been that way since the very beginning I think
00:10:34
Speaker
You felt compelled. Did you recognize it early on as just something you needed to do or did you see it as to help with stress or anxiety? It was just a compulsion. You just did it. Yeah. I think it does change over time throughout the course of your life. As a kid, I think it was more a sense, it was more helping relieve stress or
00:11:05
Speaker
anxiety, and I was always very introverted. So I just liked to be alone most of the time and drawing. And then as you go through life, it kind of goes through phases. It was always there. It was always like, yes, this is probably what I'm going to be doing for the rest of my life.
00:11:27
Speaker
And then as you start to work in it professionally, sometimes then it can become the source of your stress because now you're under super tight deadlines for everything. But at the end of the day, if I wasn't doing it professionally, I would still be doing it for myself because that's what I like to do and that's what it's always been for me.
00:11:52
Speaker
Yeah, I used to stay up really late as a kid. If I couldn't get to sleep, I would go back and start drawing really, really late at night, listen to books on tape, still do that to this day with podcasts.
00:12:07
Speaker
Yeah, you mentioned that now. That's what I'm thinking. I'm old enough to know the books on tape, books on tape, 24 of them, or a 50-pack with the Stephen King book. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah. And then after it was cassette tapes, then it was on CD.
00:12:31
Speaker
Right. And then and then people had them. I never did this, but people would download them onto their devices and whatnot. People still do that. But for me, it's podcasts now because they're just ongoing and there's never there's no end point to podcasts. So yes, thank you. I'm going to zone in on a promo here with Chloe. Thank you very much. I love. Well, I've been talking more about podcasts on the show. And like when I got into podcasts, I said recently I
The Role of Podcasts and Art in Culture
00:13:02
Speaker
I didn't like, I wasn't into them. Like for me, it was the medium. Like it wasn't like I heard a bunch. Like I heard good podcasts. I'm not being like that. Like I heard really good podcasts, but I wasn't like into them. It wasn't a habit. It wasn't habitual and.
00:13:19
Speaker
You know, but when I started, it was like the medium itself. And now deep into this, I see myself as very much an advocate for this on some of the principles of like access. And, you know, one big piece to heck with everything else, like dropping into pieces of culture, like, or geek culture or weirdness or whatever, where people feel comfortable and there's hundreds of people dropping in and being like, let's talk about this shit.
00:13:47
Speaker
Podcasts do that and I feel that people can connect.
00:13:52
Speaker
I really do. I feel people connect and be heard and just hearing about how doing research. I've had a lot of conversations recently about people doing research where now they'll say, maybe not just say Google it, they'll be like, Oh, I'll check out a podcast of how to fix the carburetor or something. I don't know that would work. I can't fix anything. But you know, like, like you're talking about being like, I'm going to podcast this. And my goodness, if they've replaced both my addiction and your addiction to books on tape, I think that's what's happened. It's just transferred.
00:14:21
Speaker
Yeah, I think it is. I mean, but it's great. I mean, I definitely agree with you that podcasts feel so much more accessible and it's not so formal. Like it's a conversation. It feels like you're
00:14:36
Speaker
at least when I'm working on a piece, you know, like you spend so much time alone. And sometimes it's just very isolating. And when you're listening to a podcast, it feels like there's other people in the room with you. And you're like not alone, you're not so alone working, you're kind of like listening in on a conversation. So it's nice. Yeah, I also, I also think it's like something about like,
00:15:02
Speaker
Like talking about art and bigger questions, which sometimes can like open up for myself, like as the host, but for artists themselves. I know I've talked to artists and like they're they're struggling. Like they weren't feeling good. Like they weren't productive. I mean, think about as pandemic recently and like, what am I doing? And at times they're like, when I did the episode, they're like, you know, like what is art? They're like, this is why I'm freaking doing this shit. Like I know now, like.
00:15:29
Speaker
why I am, and it doesn't always happen that way. Everybody's different, but I think there's a hopefulness in art or in excitement. I wanted to, speaking of art, I have to ask you a couple of the bigger ones and just learn your ideas about what you dedicate yourself towards. The big question, Chloe, is what is art?
00:15:57
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's a lot of things to a lot of different people. It serves a lot of different functions. And I think like, just in terms of illustration versus fine art, there are different, slightly different functions there. I mean, there are a lot of parallels and overlaps. So there are a lot of similarities there. But illustration usually is getting paired with a piece of writing or
00:16:24
Speaker
something that's getting published in the case of an editorial, it's going alongside an essay or an article or short story, something of that nature. So it is fulfilling a purpose beyond just the image itself, which I think
00:16:45
Speaker
You know, in the fine art sphere, sometimes it's like just about the image itself, but in the illustration sphere, it's part of a larger piece that's going out. Yeah, yeah. I was talking in a recent episode with Lauren Redness and talking about the composition of the whole and think about all the disparate components of
00:17:11
Speaker
You know creating a book and such and there's the different processes you talk about where you immerse yourself And what is the image to you know to express and what somebody's doing? But there's a skill you have to have to be part of a component as part of a part of the whole so it's like a work You know that work process Do you like? Do you like Freelancing and
00:17:40
Speaker
And does that match kind of like your approach to how you think about art?
00:17:47
Speaker
I think, yeah, I mean, I personally, I really like to do my own personal work as well. And I like to freelance too, because I like working with art directors. And the great thing about that is that you're always learning about something new and different, and you never know what it's
Freelancing Benefits and Art Direction
00:18:04
Speaker
going to be. And it keeps things very interesting. You just never know what is next that you're going to have to learn about and then draw with that.
00:18:14
Speaker
And it's great to collaborate with art directors too because they're very smart people and they'll get you to kind of expand yourself in ways that you never thought that you would. But then making personal work is great too because you get to do whatever you want. I get to make the weird things that I want to make that I might not necessarily get the chance to make on an assignment.
00:18:41
Speaker
I get to, I get to kind of make things exist that I wish existed in the world. Um, that I can't, you know, but, but, you know, with, with assignments, you, you do try to channel yourself into them as much as you can, because, um, that's also what helps make it interesting for other people as well. Yeah. I always think there's something about like, uh, there's always, I always feel like a natural resistance to being,
00:19:09
Speaker
thrust into this I mean, you know, it's like within a range of of what I what I would want to do, but it's like thrust is always kind of like a oppositional component for myself where I'm like, at least initially where I'm like, No, no, no, I get that. I know I can understand that for sure. I think
00:19:27
Speaker
Yeah, but the thing about it is a lot of times the art director knows your work to a certain degree that they can match you with something that they think that you can do well.
00:19:43
Speaker
You know, sometimes it's really surprising. Sometimes it's like something that you never would have imagined doing for yourself. But then you take it on and then you realize like, Oh, like, actually, I could make this really cool. Like I could kind of inject my own interests into this and in this way or that way. Yeah.
00:20:05
Speaker
Yeah, so it's there are a lot of opportunities to do that. But yes, I mean, that's why I think that's why it's always important to also be doing your own personal stuff when you're not on an assignment so that you can fulfill your own artistic Yeah, and I think with talking about assignments too, it's like if you if you're I think I've been thinking a lot about this lately, like in a supportive environment.
00:20:29
Speaker
And you have eyes around you and people see what you can do because you don't know. You don't know all that stuff like none of us do, but who are cued into and see what you can do. So you get the assignment, you get the challenge and you're like a little bit of the same type of thing like, er, but then like get into it and then.
00:20:48
Speaker
every time I'm in that situation and I go through almost every single time I can think of when I know there's merit to doing it when I'm done I'm like I'm smarter than I was yeah like because I know more and I knew I'd like I learned how to deal with
00:21:05
Speaker
that reaction in in be pushed away. So when you have folks around you like that, like you said, the eyes of somebody thinking about your assignment, they're like, she doesn't know she can do this, maybe or connect these things, but she can't. So that's one. And then
00:21:22
Speaker
then that's good, right? Yeah, for sure. I think, yeah, there are a lot of great reasons to work with our directors. And they can see possibilities for your work that you might never have imagined for yourself. And if it's not, like, and not that this doesn't happen that frequently with me, thankfully, but like, if something isn't going that well, or if you're not really into
00:21:45
Speaker
the assignment that you're doing, there's a very definite end point to it. So it's like you finish it and then it's over with and then you move on.
00:21:57
Speaker
Yeah, I I wonder like I wanted to I wanted to ask you something It's like a little maybe of a little bit of a of a thought experiment. But one of the things Going back to recent conversation I had was I'm looking through a book in this instance again going back to Lauren redness in my head a book called Oak Flat and it's this incredible book and one of the questions I asked I'm like
00:22:24
Speaker
There's this whole world that's within this book, no doubt. And you hold it up and then, but you go within it and you take one disparate image. That's part of a continuum. It's almost like think about comic books or sequential art and then you pull it out and you show it and you display it in a museum setting. Museum setting says to me, Hey folks,
00:22:48
Speaker
bigger deal. There's a little bit of, you know, it's, it's on the wall. And I think about that thing as sometimes when I see somebody's work, again, how it's presented. Hey, New York Times book review cover, freaking awesome. It's compelling, drudgeon, but I think to myself,
00:23:06
Speaker
you and others. It's a sunny boulevard in LA. It's a great day. It's a good art district and environment. Somebody walks into the gallery, lots of light coming in, and in your room and display, there's 10 of those images displayed the way that you want them. I've become so fascinated with the idea and that type of experiment because for me,
00:23:32
Speaker
people who aren't like really into art need to be shown, like need to be presented in such a way and not artificiality. Like, look at this, behold this and look at it in this in this setting. And it's the same piece. Your work is, you know, discrete and in those pieces, but even taking a look at
00:23:58
Speaker
like choose your own adventure and then they like they're super big. I always think about how things are presented in how that impacts the artist in the audience. Do you think about things in those type of ways or did what I say is kind of like that idea
00:24:23
Speaker
Yeah, so um So I think that like for Assignments, you know, it's it's usually being printed in Something like a magazine or something like that. So there are like technical aspects to it you know, like thinking about like is this going to print dark or is this going to
00:24:48
Speaker
you know, is this detail not going to show up very well because it's very small and it's going to print at this size. So yeah, there are like very technical aspects to illustration that way. I think with gallery work, it's a whole other ballpark, right? Because then it's about the space that it's sitting in and the lighting and the way that it's all arranged and
00:25:18
Speaker
But what's cool about experiencing art in a gallery setting instead of in print is that you can get right up close to the piece and you can see everything that actually went into it in a lot higher resolution than you can if it was in print.
00:25:37
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I am. And part of it, too, I've learned on the show is like is not to assume like a reverence for institution. Right. Like because I've had conversation with the artists who like. Really got me into a good conversation about, you know, you celebrate street art as well, and there's exclusivity and all those type of things. I think in general, the reason why I was asking is I'm just really
Art Presentation and Audience Perception
00:26:04
Speaker
fascinated by how things are shown and displayed and their impact on people. I'll give you another example. I've had a guest on Brianna C. Martins, who does Spooky Girls. I was really into that episode, by the way. Oh, thank you. But here's this.
00:26:24
Speaker
So I'm deeply fascinated by the people and the ghosts and the history and how they're depicted. She's pulling out these spirits. I don't know what's going on. It's art. It's beautiful. But I saw just recently
00:26:37
Speaker
she had a post on Instagram where the whole thing was laid out. And it was enormous. She mentioned that in the show, but it was like, if you look at a massive bay window, that was the depiction. And I think about display. You see things on Instagram and you're like, oh, what an image. And you get pulled in. But then I'm like, she told me they were big, but they're like,
00:27:01
Speaker
you know, cathedral ceiling. I mean, they're just very big. And it was such a radical thought because I'm like, what was I look, you know, like, what am I looking at as far as the thing itself? I'm glad you enjoyed that episode. That was completely fascinated by.
00:27:16
Speaker
Yeah, you just kind of blew my mind too. I didn't realize that they were that big. I mean, because when you see, again, there's the whole context of scale, right? And that's a huge issue. That's a huge issue with Instagram is that a lot of times unless you make intentional efforts to show the scale of something, you might not know how big something is.
00:27:40
Speaker
Yeah, and her work is really interesting too because I also kind of am interested in those like old photographs That like and I saw her work too and everything. I just found it very fascinating
00:27:53
Speaker
Well, yeah. And after that episode, I picked up an old photograph habit that I didn't have before. And even on the episode, she was mentioning that she finds some of her photos. She's up in Massachusetts, finds them down in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, where I was born. And I'm like, oh, my God, no. I go over to a book store, browser's bookstore, a block and a half away and check out the ephemera.
00:28:16
Speaker
It's so fascinating. I've always, I mean, it's just really fascinating. And I've seen those, you know, in antique stores, they have like boxes of, you know, centuries old photographs in them, and they belonged, like, you just wonder who's who are these people and who
00:28:32
Speaker
were who owned these that they ended up here and like they're so anonymous the people in them and yet like they had full fledged lives of their own and this is like sort of the last record of them that people centuries in the future will see. Yeah in a box and it's like I think there's something in that once
00:28:54
Speaker
Once Brianna hooked me, one of the idea was like, I think if you're sensitive to it as well, right? I think about stories, right? I mean, it's all about stories. That girl has this face on it. She didn't get this one little thing that's captured. And now there's a whole story from 1902 that you're like, whoa. Absolutely. Like if you're sensitive to it, you know?
00:29:16
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, definitely. I mean, that's why I was so obsessed with them for so long. Even though there were people that I had no connection to whatsoever, each of those things tells a whole story. Every single detail in one of those images tells an entire backstory. I mean, anybody who is versed in
00:29:39
Speaker
in dissecting any of those images can tell you what time period each thing is from and then that tells you roughly the years that it was taken in and then about their lives because the details and their clothes and things like that. There's just infinite information that you can pick up from those.
00:29:58
Speaker
Yeah, we're going to have to do a old photograph rabbit hole. We'll figure that one out on the old photographs. I asked you your thoughts about what art is. And another question I have related to what it is, is what its role is and whether that role has changed, say now with things going on, does it feel different? But what is the role of art?
Art's Historical Role and Personal Fulfillment
00:30:25
Speaker
Yeah, well, I think I definitely think it has had a prevalent role ever since humans have been making it. I mean, if you go all the way back, like the first forms of art, like the early hominids making art, those had very significant functions in their lives. And it follows us all the way up into present day.
00:30:50
Speaker
And anytime that there's something, anytime that there's like sort of rupture in society or like big things going on in our development as humans, then it plays a role there too. And yeah, I mean, I think it also serves your own personal needs too. It's for the public, but also very much for yourself and fulfilling your own
00:31:19
Speaker
your own needs and your own things that you need to get out of your system and into the world. Yeah. Yeah. I hear that. I don't always ask this question because it, I think it's asked a lot and not that it's not useful, but
00:31:37
Speaker
One thing I am really interested in as far as seeing your work is what type of things you were looking at when you're growing up or now, the influences and things that go into there. I'm just interested in that. That's why I'm asking.
Childhood Influences and Philosophical Ideas
00:31:55
Speaker
Yeah. I remember when I was very young.
00:32:02
Speaker
Six maybe one of my uncles would babysit me a lot when my parents were working and he had a PhD in physics and math and so I would ask him about black holes and
00:32:17
Speaker
He would he would tell me about how like as something is approaching a black hole it gets stretched out it gets elongated because it's Speeding up as it gets closer and closer as it gets sucked into it like just elongates until it like sort of breaks apart and So the the question I would always ask him is like what happens if a human gets too close to a black hole and he's like well, we would get like really a
00:32:44
Speaker
elongated out a lot, but you yourself wouldn't be able to perceive that from your own if you were the person. But as a bystander watching it happen to somebody else, that's what they would see.
00:33:00
Speaker
I just remember at the time I was so mind blown by that because that's not anything that we would ever be able to see in our day-to-day lives. But that is absolutely what we would see in that context out there. And that sort of set the stage for the kinds of things that I would find fascinating for the rest of my life. The things that we
00:33:29
Speaker
Can't that we would never be able to see in our own day to day but that In a different context they're behaving in such a radically different way that we are not used to and that creates sort of a a jarring image almost yeah, I um, I always get a thrill and you know, like in talking art and philosophy and um, uh, you know science in in physics because I haven't done as many shows as as I want to but like
00:33:59
Speaker
something rather than nothing. I mean, you could present it as a science, you know, science, for sure. Not, I mean, I'm, I'm not sure.
00:34:10
Speaker
what I've done with something rather than nothing with the podcast. But I do support it. I think it's a good thing. But so you can approach it different ways. And I've had an episode with Dr. Emoryn McDonald, who's a PhD astrophysicist. She's even an animated character in a Star Trek. Oh, wow. Yeah, they animated her. So we all want to be animated, I think. But it was such a cool episode because I was able to really drop down into
00:34:40
Speaker
not a passing fancy, but something I've studied on the side for a long time, trying to understand because my background is formerly English literature and philosophy. That's awesome. Yeah. And labor. But on the science piece, what happened to me when I was studying philosophy, and let's say for the sake of discussion, these questions, the big questions,
00:35:05
Speaker
I, my head was in traps because there were like Western philosophy traps. I, my mind got out of some of these traps by, um, understanding Eastern philosophy and studying Buddhism, uh, deeply. And by being taught informally in developing my thinking on science and quantum mechanics and astrophysics spike, like talking to people being like,
00:35:35
Speaker
I'm interested in what you do. Can you talk at me for two hours in some homework? You know, like, and that's, so I always get thrilled when you're talking about like that thing that you can't see, right? The elongated person. And I think Mr. Fantastic or the Fantastic Four, I'm like, that's where Mr. Fantastic comes from. It's all stretchy. I'm like, that's what I think of. But
00:35:59
Speaker
I love talking about each of these different type of things, you know, art, philosophy, science, because if the question is bold enough, philosophy ain't gonna give you the answer to everything I've been asking or like try to ask. There's a lot of ways to think about why the hell it all is. All right, Chloe, sorry, long lead and I ain't gonna let you give you the chance to talk there. Why is there something rather than nothing?
00:36:25
Speaker
Yeah, so I've been thinking about this. So I think that there's a couple of answers. So the short boring answer is we don't know. The longer, more interesting answer, I think, is that
00:36:44
Speaker
I mean, if you go back to, if we get like literal for a second, we go back to the Big Bang, and we ask like, well, what came before that? Or like, did something happen before that? We don't know. But if it was intentional, if we look at
00:37:05
Speaker
if we look at the Fibonacci sequence and how that shows up in a lot of different patterns in nature. Tell me about it. Yeah, the Fibonacci sequence that shows up in flower petal patterns and in snail shells and in all variety of different patterns in nature, there's something about it that just almost seems intentional. It was meant to be designed that way.
00:37:33
Speaker
And I don't know, if that is the case, then maybe there's some kind of higher intelligence out there. But if there is, then I think that it's probably so abstract that it's so beyond what we're able to comprehend. And humans tend to project themselves, their own qualities, onto that kind of thing all the time.
00:38:04
Speaker
because that's what humans do. They fill in the gaps of what they don't know. But my guess, if there is something like that, then it probably is way beyond our understanding. And we might never understand fully grasp the magnitude of it and how it all works. And I think that there's a lot more to reality than what we are privy to at this point in time as well.
00:38:34
Speaker
I yeah, I'd agree with that. I really like the psychological components the answer because I really I really job with that about like, you know, there's like an agnostic undercurrent, right? Like that where I have this mind. Can I declaratively state that something cannot exist? And if I can't declaratively state that something does not exist, then
00:39:04
Speaker
you're left in a position of openness, I think, or investigation. And that's for me. I've defined myself politically as an atheist because when I'm in public and I'm dealing with people, I don't want to frigging get into the debate. It's not where I want to spend my time. What I do want to do is explore, explore the questions and have an audience and be able to get into it.
00:39:30
Speaker
you know, those kind of easy fights that are out there, at least for me, about the way somebody behaves as a religious person, those are all around us, you know, it's just like, how do we get at this question productively and with a curious spirit? And like I said, I love the psychological piece of like how we project ourselves, like,
00:39:52
Speaker
It's always something if like God looks like, uh, you know, 72 year old white man with a big beard, then I don't know. I mean, come on, come on. There's so much that we don't know. And like we're finding out more all the time about different things in the universe, but I think it's always good to keep an open mind. And, um,
00:40:17
Speaker
be open to the fact that we don't know how it all works as much as we might like to think that we do.
00:40:27
Speaker
A different question. You ever tried to depict the elongated person, the idea of the elongated person? I had thought about it. I just haven't gotten to it yet, because I'm on other assignments. But if I ever get a chance... Don't tempt you. Don't tempt you. We have deadlines. Well, if I ever get a chance, I will gladly take it on. That's really super.
00:40:56
Speaker
Chloe I want to I want to just chat or let have you tell some folks about maybe Where to find where to find your work What you got going on generally with with your art and ideas like that
Where to Find Chloe's Work
00:41:13
Speaker
Yeah, I have a website. It's chloe-niclas.com. And my Instagram is also chloe.niclas. And people might see my work in the wild as it gets published. I have a couple of things coming out soon that I don't think I can say yet because it's not published yet. Yeah, that's fine. But yeah, that'll be coming soon.
00:41:41
Speaker
Yeah, those are the places. Those are the places. The Wild, my website, and Instagram. Yeah. Yeah. I know your works wonderfully displayed on the website. And yeah, it's nice to see those pieces. And you know, as just pieces are in different spots, you got to pull them together for folks. So yeah. Yeah, really. Yeah.
00:42:07
Speaker
That's great stuff. So I really enjoyed chatting about philosophy, science, and this idea of the worlds that you talk about. I really just think it's expanded my, that ocean space idea. It's so marvelous, because it's like,
00:42:29
Speaker
When I think about the explorations and talking to you and thinking about this show, it's expansive on out. It's like trying to recognize what we don't know, which is like goes back to like philosophy is like, if you're smart, you know, you don't know shit. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Right. I don't know if that's how Socrates said it in Greek, but. Probably along those lines. You know where he thinks you're a schmuck. It's true.
00:42:59
Speaker
Yeah, that's our conclusion. Chloe, great, great fortune to you on everything you do. Love your work, and I'm very glad that the listeners will be able to come in contact with your thoughts. And everybody, check out Chloe Nicholas. You really enjoy her work. Thank you so much for having me. It's been a pleasure.
00:43:31
Speaker
This is something rather than nothing.