Casual Temple

TRANSCRIPT

(Transcript is auto-generated; errors are unintentional.)

00:00:02 Merrily

Welcome to Episode 37 of Casual Temple, and I'm your host, Merrily Duffy.

00:00:08 Merrily

Here at casual temple, we are discovering our connection to the unseen world of spirit and how that empowers us to know our true selves. A free and easy way to support the show is to subscribe and leave a star review on your favorite podcast platform we live to hear from our listeners, so consider shooting us a note on casualtemple.com there. You can also sign up for the mailing list where you can win a free reading.

00:00:29 Merrily

Really.

00:00:29 Merrily

Merrily and we draw a winner every month. So your name stays in until you win. On this episode of the Casual Temple, we're thrilled to chat with the incredibly talented Alessandro Keegan, a visual artist, writer and art history professor. We get to chatting about Alessandro's interest in meeting Mystic Art and how being a conduit is a huge part.

00:00:46 Merrily

Of.

00:00:46 Merrily

The process I love being able to chat with Alessandro about how his.

00:00:50 Merrily

Art reminds me of the ineffable qualities of the Kabbalah. So you definitely want to get his take on it. Get ready for some insightful discussions for this awesome conversation about creativity, self-awareness, and the mystical power of art with Alessandro Keegan on the casual tempo. We'll catch you on the other side.

00:01:10 Merrily

Welcome to the casual.

00:01:11 Merrily

Temple this week we're so very excited to chat with Alessandro Keegan, who is a visual artist, writer and art history professor with an MFA from the School of Art of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MA from the Brooklyn College.

00:01:27 Merrily

Trained as a gemologist, he worked at the Gemological Institute of America until 22.

00:01:32 Merrily

Now, based in Walden NY, Keegan's art explores psychological realms through abstract, geometric and organic imagery. Inspired by his visionary experiences and personal cosmology, mystical science. Alessandro, I'm so happy to welcome you here to the casual temple.

00:01:50 Alessandro

Hello, marilee. Hi. How's it going? Thank you for having me. I'm. I'm always happy to talk about.

00:01:53 Merrily

Yes, thank you.

00:01:57 Alessandro

My work and.

00:01:59 Merrily

Yes. And then I think or I messaged you and I let you know that I heard you a long time ago on this podcast that I've listened to since 2005 called Ghostly Talk and they had invited you on and.

00:02:11 Merrily

I.

00:02:11 Merrily

Was.

00:02:11 Merrily

What? And I took a look.

00:02:12 Merrily

At your work and I was.

00:02:13 Alessandro

Like, yes, that was a while ago. Actually, that was like.

00:02:15 Merrily

There.

00:02:16 Merrily

A while.

00:02:16 Alessandro

During COVID I think.

00:02:19 Alessandro

2020 maybe, you know? Yeah and.

00:02:22 Alessandro

I think they.

00:02:23 Alessandro

Invited me on the podcast because I had just given a talk on YouTube that was like a live talk as.

00:02:29 Alessandro

Part of the Brooklyn Book Fair on Mediumistic Art topic of Mediumistic art. So we might talk about Mediumistic art, which is relevant, a relevant topic.

00:02:31

Hmm.

00:02:41 Merrily

I agree. Yes, I heard that talk. It was really very informative.

00:02:42 Alessandro

Yeah.

00:02:44

Oh.

00:02:45 Merrily

I loved it.

00:02:45

Good, good.

00:02:47 Merrily

So, well, we just kind of start at whatever you consider the beginning of your path to creating your art and your writing and becoming a.

00:02:56 Merrily

Are history teachers.

00:02:57 Alessandro

Ohh yeah well.

00:02:59 Alessandro

So I think the the thing that I like to start off saying sometimes when people ask me like where does your work come from, where does the imagery come come from? You know, when did you first decide to be an artist? You know, that kind of question is that, you know, I didn't always want to be an artist.

00:03:18 Alessandro

Just I'm still not sure if I want to be an artist. Actually I'm just an artist. I'm stuck here now. But you know, I if you asked me when I was a small child, like 10-11 years old or something like that. What I really saw myself doing later in life.

00:03:38 Alessandro

I would say I was interested in science, so I wanted to be, you know, in in sciences. I loved, you know, biology and geology and of course I had a paleontology phase where I love dinosaurs as every kid.

00:03:54 Alessandro

You know astronomy, all of these topics were very interesting to me, and that interest in that never really left me. I think it was just that.

00:04:08 Alessandro

As I grew older later in my life, for my own psychological well-being, you know I had some, you know, pretty rocky ups and downs throughout my later childhood and adolescence and so forth, and even later into an adult adulthood, to be totally honest.

00:04:27 Alessandro

And you know, I think art played a larger and larger role in keeping my sanity and saving my life during those times. And I don't want to reduce it to therapy, to personal therapy, but it just became a more central way of.

00:04:47 Alessandro

Me.

00:04:48 Alessandro

Staying centered in my life and and keeping my life together. And you know by the time I was in college, I was like, well, I'm gonna just, you know, pursue this as a career, as absurd as that might be. And I had also been getting, you know, already in my early 20s, I've been getting a lot of positive feedback about my artwork and so forth. So it seemed like.

00:05:08 Alessandro

It might be something that I could do, but art was, you know, something that I just did.

00:05:16 Alessandro

I did. I didn't necessarily see that as my future necessarily, you know and and you know and and part of it was, you know, we were talking about visionary experiences right before, you know, we started talking and, you know, and part of it was these very profound visionary experiences that I had throughout my childhood.

00:05:37 Alessandro

In adolescents, some of them still continue to this day. But.

00:05:40 Alessandro

Not with the intensity or the frequency is when I was younger. For some reason I don't know whether that's like my brain is calcifying as I grow older, or what that is. But I think that some of it was that I needed some place to put those experiences and.

00:06:01 Alessandro

There was really no, you know, art seemed like the place where the weirdos would go, you know, that seems.

00:06:07 Alessandro

Like where you.

00:06:08 Alessandro

Know if you if you have things to say or some kind of experience that you know will be unacceptable in almost any other.

00:06:16 Alessandro

Other Ave. of life. You know, you could possibly be an artist, you know. And so I think that's what also was something that helped me gravitate towards that as a career.

00:06:21 Merrily

Right.

00:06:28 Alessandro

Yeah. So and then art history. You know, later much later in life, I got my masters in art history at Brooklyn College and very fortunate to get teaching positions very quickly and. And today, you know, in addition to being a painter, I also am an art.

00:06:47 Alessandro

Street teacher, which I've been doing for almost 10 years now. So long time. Yeah, yeah.

00:06:55 Merrily

Yeah. Thank you for walking us down this path of your both your both careers, 2 careers. I know if you, I know there was like.

00:07:02 Alessandro

Yes.

00:07:08 Merrily

This experience that you had had that you, I've told you before we started, I listened to like pretty much every interview.

00:07:13 Merrily

With you.

00:07:16 Merrily

That you had seen.

00:07:17 Merrily

Something in the forest. I don't know if you wanted to share that at all because.

00:07:20 Merrily

That was like opened up.

00:07:20 Alessandro

Yeah, I I.

00:07:22 Alessandro

Should you know I you know it gets harder and harder every time I retell this because it's like something that happened to me when I was like 16 years old or so. I don't exactly remember how old I was. It was like a very long time ago. But I had, you know, I had frequently had these like.

00:07:31 Merrily

Right.

00:07:42 Alessandro

Strange compulsions that seem to come from outside of myself to go into meditation or to start writing things or start drawing things. And in this particular case I had this compulsion to go into these this wooded area in my hometown of Nyack.

00:07:46

Hmm.

00:08:03 Alessandro

Where I grew up, that was right behind where the Nyack Elementary School was. I don't even know if that's forest back there anymore. You know, if if I went back there, but at the time, it was actually quite a dense fog.

00:08:16 Alessandro

Just and I went up this hill and I went past where the school was, into the woods and just went deeper and deeper in there. And there are these thorn bushes and this was at night. And I also like all throughout my childhood, I would go out for long walks at night. I I kind of always wanted to be out of the house. So I was like going for long walks. And I would just walk late into the night.

00:08:37 Alessandro

Sometimes.

00:08:39 Alessandro

Which you know, I don't know, maybe that's safe. I don't know. You know? But then I was, like, going into this dark forest, and there are these thorn bushes and kind of a clearing.

00:08:50 Alessandro

And it like I was just compelled to be like, that's the place I need to be, is where these thornbushes are. And I just kind of laid down on them like they were a bed and began to gaze at the stars above me. And that's when I got this very clear, almost a diagrammatic.

00:09:10 Alessandro

Image it was both in my mind and in front of me at the same time. One of those things that's very impossible to describe when you have these sorts of experiences.

00:09:23 Alessandro

And the you know.

00:09:29 Alessandro

It's going to be impossible to describe it visually, but I would say the impression that I received was that was that I was seeing the entirety of the universe and its its mechanisms, like how it was functioning and.

00:09:46 Alessandro

Its primary creation was being formed by two spheres on either end that were entities, or intelligences, or other worlds somehow, and one was kind of feeding information to the other, almost as if they were having like these.

00:10:06 Alessandro

Years for having a conversation, and it was coming through like these kind of rays of data.

00:10:11 Alessandro

The and the reality that we were seeing, like all all matter, you know, the vines around me, the sky above me, the earth, the soil, everything. This was a a kind of physical manifestation of the information language that was being transmitted from this one sphere.

00:10:34 Alessandro

To the other, I should say also I started taking psychedelic drugs at a very young age, so you know it would be very easy for someone to, you know, dismiss all of my things and be like, well, you also, you know, were you were stoned all the time when you were a kid, you know, and and fair enough. You know, I my mind was probably very fragile.

00:10:55 Alessandro

But you could also say that it made mean, perhaps more of a receptacle for these impressions, but anyway, so you know the what I came away from. This is that it seemed like everything in the universe was not created intentionally, but was almost part of a message.

00:11:14 Alessandro

And the actual message we could not comprehend or that we have no way of knowing that because it was going to this other end, this other entity, this other sphere, and we were just kind of like the residue of that. I mean, you know, this is again one of these things that's, you know, you could take this apart.

00:11:35 Alessandro

Dissect it and do an analysis.

00:11:36 Merrily

Totally.

00:11:37 Alessandro

But you know what I would say is the reason I mentioned that experience a lot. There were other very intense experiences that I had throughout my life. But the reason I mentioned that one a lot is because when I was like 16 or 17, I don't exactly remember the age I was at it when this happened, but it created.

00:11:57 Alessandro

A baseline for me to understand a lot of other things in the universe and other mystical traditions.

00:12:03 Merrily

Hmm.

00:12:06 Alessandro

And it also gave me an actual experience that I could that was real to me, that I could draw upon when judging the world around me or when I would be reading things like, you know, we were talking about Kabbalah. And, you know, all these other different mystical traditions or religious traditions, when I would be reading about these subjects, I could.

00:12:27 Alessandro

They had this resonance for me because I was like, you know, I was like, yes, I that's like that experience that I had, you know, and it does. And it does inform my art as well. You know it. You know, it's one of the kind of.

00:12:42 Alessandro

Founding experiences that I think about a lot when I'm trying to understand what I'm painting.

00:12:48 Merrily

Wow. Yeah. So amazing. Yeah, definitely. When I heard you explaining that and then we talked, you know, how I studied the call. And I'm like, Yep. Sounds like the two. The two pillars on either either side and they're kind of balancing the energy. Yeah, I.

00:13:02 Merrily

Was.

00:13:02 Merrily

Like, that's amazing.

00:13:03 Alessandro

Yeah. Yeah. And we were talking about this and I was saying, like, you know, it's a coincidence if any of my ideas sound like these other traditions, you know?

00:13:12 Alessandro

So it's, you know, it's just fascinating to me actually.

00:13:15 Merrily

Ohh gosh and so and the other thing it was reminding me of cause my husband Jason he had this experience where he was I think he was taking a nap. I always get it wrong and he's like you told it wrong. So but I I'll get.

00:13:27 Merrily

The highlights here, but.

00:13:29 Merrily

I think he was taking a nap and then he.

00:13:32 Merrily

Got the sense he was pulled out of his.

00:13:34 Merrily

Body.

00:13:35 Merrily

And then he was, like, taking up.

00:13:37 Merrily

Like 30,000 foot view of the universe and he said it looked like a machine and it was a beautiful machine and it had like, these bubbles coming in and out of it.

00:13:48 Merrily

Like it was making and the bubbles were popping and moving and stuff. And and then he and there was a voice that asked him this. Which is funny because I always think it was kind of a leading question. But the voice asked him, isn't it beautiful? Isn't this beautiful? And then he was.

00:14:04 Merrily

Like you know this.

00:14:06 Merrily

Is really beautiful.

00:14:08 Merrily

And then he had told me about that. And then I was like, oh, that sounds like you cause I'm studying the Kabbalah.

00:14:14 Merrily

There's actually each sephira there's a visionary experience you have that's associated with it, and one of them is the machinery of the universe. As you see, the vision and the the machinery of the universe was like that sounds.

00:14:26 Merrily

Like the machinery.

00:14:27 Merrily

You know, and he's not studying the Kabbalah, right? That I just think it's so amazing. Like, sometimes these things.

00:14:34 Merrily

Kinda. Yeah. They kind of go together and you have no.

00:14:37 Merrily

Idea about it so.

00:14:38 Alessandro

It's pretty, yeah. No, that's machinery of the universe. I love that description. And you know, for me, when I was.

00:14:43 Merrily

Yeah.

00:14:49 Alessandro

Late in Nineteens, I picked up Plato's Republic and there's a book in there. There's a like a passage in there that's called the story of ur. And you know, if I'm remembering it correctly off the top of my head, it's like this warrior who dies and he has a near death experience. And then he comes back from the near death experience.

00:15:09 Alessandro

And he describes the mechanisms of the universe that he sees during this out of body.

00:15:15 Alessandro

And there's like a spindle at the center, and the soles revolve around this spindle and there's emanations coming out of this spindle and it it Plato gives a very, you know, intense description and, you know, most people see this as allegory, of course. But when I was reading this, you know, I was like, that sounds very.

00:15:36 Alessandro

You know, resonant with what I had experienced when I was younger and.

00:15:43 Alessandro

You know, and I do see the world, you know, whether I'm right or wrong, you know, I don't know. But I do see the metaphysical, invisible forces of the world functioning a bit like a machine or having a kind of clockwork like efficiency to them.

00:16:03 Alessandro

And that doesn't, you know, discount spirit or God or any of these other religious idea.

00:16:08 Alessandro

Is right. It's just that's, you know that seems to make sense to me and that might also be because I have this, you know, scientific brain, that's like, you know, that's like it's you have to make it make sense in a mechanical way, you know.

00:16:19 Merrily

Yes. No, right.

00:16:23 Merrily

Yes, I very much align with that sort of thinking like it has to make.

00:16:26 Alessandro

Yeah.

00:16:28 Merrily

Sense.

00:16:29 Merrily

I have to understand it. So yeah, I get it. It might be through machines.

00:16:35 Merrily

But did you have? So as you know, you had this experience. You're becoming an artist. Did you have any support or guidance along the way, any mentors or people that?

00:16:48 Alessandro

You know, I I really you know, I I had definitely people who helped me a lot and I mean certainly I would not be able to be a professional artist and be making a living if people.

00:17:03 Alessandro

And you know, put my work in a show or, you know, you know, curate me into a group show and then, you know, my work was seen and so forth. Like, I would probably be some, you know, hermit, just making paintings in their garage or something like that. And I also especially remember, like, the one person who, like, really believed in me a lot when I was very young, was my high school.

00:17:26 Alessandro

Her teacher.

00:17:28 Alessandro

Is this alter? Who? Deborah Alter who? I'm still in touch with.

00:17:33 Alessandro

And you know, I I I actually though have to say like, you know, if I probably didn't have her as someone who saw talent in me somehow, I probably wouldn't, would not have had a very successful life or anything. You know, I don't know. I probably would have continued down a very self-destructive path.

00:17:43

Yeah.

00:17:52 Alessandro

Actually, you know cause honestly like I was kind of a kind of a misfit, a little bit when I was a young kid. I I, you know, had a small group of friends. I had a very misanthropic outlook, a very cynical outlook.

00:17:52

Oh.

00:18:07 Alessandro

I still have that a little bit today, but I take it in stride. You know, I'm, you know, I'm a dad now. I'd like to have some hope about the future and humanity and so forth. So you know, but, you know, it was I I don't you know, I obviously there's people who always help you along the way.

00:18:28 Alessandro

But I don't think I ever had, like a spiritual teacher or someone who would guide me or initiate me in any way. I think I really had to do a lot of things on my own and figure out things through trial and error, you know?

00:18:43 Alessandro

It is pretty rough. Yes, it's not the best way to do it, you know, but yeah, no. And and also, you know, and this goes towards like my attitude. You know, we were talking before the show and like you were saying like, I feel like I'm a heretic. Like I'm kind of outside the mainstream or the schools of religious or mystical thought. And you know, I'm fine.

00:18:43

Yes.

00:19:03 Alessandro

If people think that I say things that are heretical or unorthodox in some ways because I I never really felt comfortable with any kind of institution or any sort of organized system of initiation or anything, that's just me and I and I just.

00:19:22 Alessandro

You know, and so that's obviously also made it a little difficult for me to have any guidance, you know from other people or to guidance from other people. You know that kind of anti authoritarian streak that I have, you know.

00:19:27 Merrily

Right.

00:19:33 Merrily

Yeah, yeah. Jason and I were just talking yesterday, actually. He was mentioning it because he, I'm pretty sure you and I are close in age. I'm kind of the younger end of Gen. X or whatever.

00:19:44 Merrily

And Jason's like, right in the middle of Gen. X. So anyway, he was like, yeah, basically, Gen. X is like anti authoritarian, not like we want to do it ourselves.

00:19:56 Merrily

But you know, I think I think that that particular thing is a segment of Gen. X because as you know, I'm sure there's a lot of people who are that. When you grew up that were very happy to be in the mainstream or whatever.

00:20:09 Merrily

Umm.

00:20:09 Alessandro

Yeah, I definitely think it might be something of our generation. You know that I'm fine with that accusation. I'm. I'm like, typical anti authoritarian genex or. Yeah.

00:20:16 Merrily

That's cool.

00:20:19 Merrily

Yes. Yep. So that makes sense. Yeah. Again, I'm like resonating with what you're saying cause like I don't think I had necessarily guidance. I just kind of I had a little bit of guidance and people that I like their writing and stuff like that.

00:20:34 Alessandro

Yeah. And also I mean and also though I can't stress enough how important my high school art teacher was. I know it seems like it's so long ago, you know, but like.

00:20:40 Merrily

Really.

00:20:44 Alessandro

You know, like I think most adults or older people, you know, when I was growing up like with like, well, something's wrong with this kid, you know, they were like he, you know, he needs to be, you know, put away or something like that. Like, I don't think a lot of people were very open minded and, you know, sorry to get off on this rant here, but I this is something I've been thinking about, you know, cause a lot of times.

00:21:08 Alessandro

You know, I hear art students or even older artists as well who feel alienation from their families because they're making art or they're have they found a career in arts or they feel alienation from a community of some sort. And it's unfortunate.

00:21:29 Alessandro

Because we supposedly value art and what this the cultural contribution of art, it's in our society, but part of.

00:21:34

Right.

00:21:39 Alessandro

The reality of being an artist is that you immediately position yourself outside of society in some way. You know, I mean, you know the obviously there's artisans and craftspeople who have social, you know, societal roles that are very clearly defined. But the the kind of modern conception of an artist is.

00:22:01 Alessandro

You know, not very compatible with, you know, functioning, you know, society in a lot of ways. And yes, you know it's it's a yeah. It's hard thing to swallow, you know, but like it is it's hard to justify the existence of art, you know, in in some cases.

00:22:19 Alessandro

And you know, that's just kind of a reality of it. And so, you know, I think it's a rare person, like my high school art teacher who sees that kind of in, like, that kind of, you know, anti authoritarian, you know, nostalgic, rebellious spark within.

00:22:39 Alessandro

The artist and it's like it's like actually, that's exactly what you know someone should do, you know, or that that's actually fine behavior in a in a certain person, you know.

00:22:49 Alessandro

Like you know.

00:22:50 Merrily

What a night. What a wonderful way to like thank your art teacher. Yeah. I was thinking back to basically my favorite teachers in school world, my art teachers, because they're always the weird, the weird teacher, and they. Yeah. And they would always talk about, like, you know, either energy or they would talk about, like, your feelings just was like, not.

00:23:09 Merrily

What of the other teachers would talk about necessarily?

00:23:11 Alessandro

Good. I'm glad being an art teacher is available as a life option for those who cannot conform to society.

00:23:15

Yes.

00:23:21 Merrily

Yes. Ah, amazing.

00:23:24 Merrily

UM. And so I know that you do have some favorite artists. Like I mentioned, I listened to your mediumistic talk, which is amazing. Everybody should listen to it because it was very informative. But do you have some favorite artists that you I hate being inspired because some people get a little like?

00:23:45 Merrily

You know weird about that, but like some that you look at, you're like, wow, that's, you know, that's impressive.

00:23:50 Merrily

And then I appreciate that.

00:23:53 Alessandro

I mean, I'm.

00:23:53 Alessandro

An art history teacher. So history is like filled with art that I have an admiration for or that resonates with me. You know, it's it's really that is a difficult thing. I don't think I ever looked to an artist.

00:24:10 Alessandro

Your direct inspiration, though, at various times I'll be working on something and you know I'll step back from it and a.

00:24:21 Alessandro

An artist from history will come to mind and I will see something of them in what I'm doing.

00:24:24 Merrily

Hmm.

00:24:30 Alessandro

But I think if I had to, you know, Mediumistic art is this very weird category. It's not really an art movement. It's more of like a genre of self-taught artists or so-called outsider artists, right. And I think my connection to mediumistic art.

00:24:50 Alessandro

And my fascination with artists like Madge Gill or UM.

00:24:55 Alessandro

You know, or Hilma af Klimt, of course, who's become very in vogue in recent years. That was mostly because these were artists who were working from some kind of inner experience that was outside of the historical conversation or the critical conversation.

00:25:16 Alessandro

About art.

00:25:18 Alessandro

And I think most of modern art is or you know, as if you go to art school and you get indoctrinated into those institutions the way you're taught to think about modern art is that it's this conversation with a history that has been selected for you already, which is like modern art.

00:25:37 Alessandro

History, you know, and it's, you know, you have to have a conversation with post minimalism or you have to have a conversation with data or something like that.

00:25:47 Alessandro

And you know reference that in your work and have this self referentiality and rarely is there room allowed for the artist who just has this intense experience in life and has to find an outlet for it. You know, that is usually relegated to the realm.

00:26:07 Alessandro

Of that so-called outsider, you know the artist from the Prince Horn Collection, which is a German collection from the early 20th century of artists who were mentally, you know, people who were mentally ill and they were in an institution.

00:26:21 Alessandro

And this one doctor collected the art that they were making, and they're fantastic, beautiful works of art. And, you know, and that's kind of where this, you know.

00:26:34 Alessandro

Inexplicable passion to create something in the world has been relegated, and I just you know, as when I was an art student, I identified more with the motives of outsider artists or identified more with specifically those that were mediumistic or claiming mediumship.

00:26:40

Hmm.

00:26:54 Alessandro

As a source of inspiration.

00:26:56 Alessandro

I would also include William Blake in that category. Even though he's this major canonical artist from history. But you know he talks about visionary experiences. He worked in seances and made drawings during seances and stuff, you know, shockingly the author, Victor Hugo also made drawings during a seance. So.

00:27:16 Alessandro

In an automatic way.

00:27:17 Alessandro

Say so when I think about artists who I am in conversation with, it's those artists, not so much, you know, Frank Stella or, you know, RP Frank Stella, you know, Frank Stella's, you know, great work, you know, just passed recently, but.

00:27:37 Alessandro

You know, but like the modern canonical artists of history, the those works are fascinating to me. But I also feel like there's another alternative tradition that I resonate with.

00:27:50 Alessandro

And you know, and I would also say like art, historically, I also feel a very strong connection to the movement of romanticism from from you know from the late 18th century into the 19th century that William Blake was a part of Goya, you know.

00:28:04 Merrily

Yeah.

00:28:09 Alessandro

Sally, you know and so on and so forth, even though my work might not necessarily look like romantic painting from the 18th century, but that spirit of, you know, kind of.

00:28:22 Alessandro

Breaking with Enlightenment rationality and going into these places that were visionary or emotional or something.

00:28:29 Alessandro

That that to me is also a kind of an alternative history of art that I resonate.

00:28:37 Alessandro

With, you know, yeah, so.

00:28:40 Merrily

Yeah. So I appreciate and I think you you definitely go into how to how like the Mediumistic art and how they were receiving these messages. And when I was listening to your lecture about that, I was thinking about my sister and I went to a retreat recently to learn about this full of like, Filipino.

00:29:00 Merrily

Americans, because our mother is Filipino.

00:29:02 Merrily

And it was like figuring it was like finding your like indigenous roots. Right? And so I was like, what is it actually, you know, and the term indigenous was like, kind of put out there. And I was like, what is it actually, what is indigenous roots? What what is being indigenous? What is?

00:29:15 Merrily

The indigenous mindset.

00:29:17 Merrily

And then when you were when I was listening to her, like, I was like, oh, there's something about Mediumistic art receiving. And indigenous mind is also receiving. And that's what, like the indigenous person is considered more balanced, right, because you're receiver. But you actually put into the world. So it's just like more of a converse.

00:29:33 Merrily

Whereas like the Western mind is like I just put into the.

00:29:36 Merrily

World.

00:29:37 Merrily

Right. I don't receive because that's my ego. Doesn't want to receive, but I put into the world. So when I was like, oh, I think it's like mediumistic art or medium being a medium is literally listening and receiving. And being indigenous is receiving.

00:29:53 Merrily

So I was like, OK, so it actually like listening to your talk about it kind of like Click to those two.

00:29:58 Alessandro

Things for me, man, that's a great point. That's like, I really like that way of thinking about it. I actually hadn't thought about it explicitly in that way. But when you say.

00:30:10 Alessandro

That you know the the Western mindset of creating art is production. It's like this industrial post, industrial idea of just like making it, making it, putting it out, you know, Andy Warhol, all you know, mass producing prints and stuff. Yeah. And the mediumistic art taps into.

00:30:30 Alessandro

A different tradition related to indigenous cultures, or more ancient or more traditional cultures where the artist isn't just this maker of stuff, but is also a receiver of things like they have to be open to.

00:30:47 Alessandro

Messages or ideas? You know that I really like that way of thinking about it. Actually, I wasn't thinking about it that way, but now that you say it, I'm going to see it that way. Actually, that's very interesting.

00:30:58 Merrily

Ohh well, glad to put that out there. Yeah, but it. Yeah, it was like a back and forth thing. Conversation.

00:31:00

Yeah.

00:31:02 Alessandro

None.

00:31:09 Merrily

Thank you for that. Oh, and then, so I think you also mentioned the artist, Alina PBY, who when you talked about very interesting.

00:31:18 Alessandro

Alina peavey. Yeah.

00:31:23 Merrily

Stuff that was going on.

00:31:24 Alessandro

Yeah, she has just started to, I think, get some attention. Andrew Edlin Gallery in New York did a large retrospective.

00:31:34 Alessandro

Of her work.

00:31:35 Alessandro

And there is a catalogue that came out. I'm actually blanking on the author of the catalogue. I have it like right over on the shelf over here. But I I'm blanking on the the author, but it's, you know, the first really in depth it just came out last year and it's the first really in depth writing about Paulina Peavy's work.

00:31:56 Alessandro

Back when I did that lecture, I was just pulling on whatever I could find online. There were YouTube videos of her appearing on like talk shows as a novelty act.

00:32:10 Alessandro

From that I found on YouTube and you know and she is so fascinating. There's so many levels to her work, but she's actually ohh trained. Artists like she went to art school and you can see that facility, that ability, you know creating these translucent, luminescent.

00:32:30 Alessandro

Forms in her work.

00:32:31 Alessandro

But then she went to a seance and she started receiving the messages from a being that she called La Como. But she said this being was a UFO, so it appeared as like a I mean, I guess like a flying saucer to her. But it was a spirit at the same time.

00:32:52 Alessandro

And she would make these masks, these ornate, decorative jeweled masks. She would put them on, and by putting them on, she would transform her mindset and she would go into this trance state, which, you know, is very shamanistic, you know, of wearing the costume to go into a a different.

00:33:12 Alessandro

You know, to allow a spirit to enter into and so forth and lacoma would write to a paint or whatever she would apparently wear the mask while making her paintings, you know? And it it's. It's really a fascinating ritualistic idea.

00:33:27 Alessandro

I also, from the perspective of like you know, the UFO phenomenon, which has been in the news lately over the last few years with whatever the Tic TAC flying, you know, in the military videos and stuff, you know, it's an interesting perspective that she applies to the UFO phenomenon because.

00:33:37 Merrily

Right.

00:33:38 Merrily

Yeah.

00:33:46 Alessandro

She's viewing them as life forms, not as technological devices, but as these kind of spirits, manifesting as a technological device which resonates, I think more with my perspective and UFOs as well, actually, yeah.

00:34:02 Merrily

Yeah, kind of. What mine is too, especially again, going back to sort of your artwork, like the geometric stuff, it's you wouldn't think that some of those things would look like that or whatever, right, because you think of spirit being like a flowy BLOB, right?

00:34:18 Merrily

Not like a sphere or a diamond. You don't think that or a saucer? Yeah, but it's like, Nope. Sometimes I come through like.

00:34:26 Alessandro

That's. You know, that's interesting that you say that actually because.

00:34:30 Alessandro

Right now I'm in the process of writing. This is kind of like a preview of something that I'm doing in in the works. I'm in the process of writing a catalog essay for the artist Francis Makowski, who's a mediumistic artist and a mystical artist who shows it. Kevin Morris Gallery in New York, and.

00:34:50 Alessandro

You know, part of what my thesis is in this essay that I've been.

00:34:56 Alessandro

Reading you know her works are very biomorphic and solid and they have this kind of biological mass to them. My own work also has sometimes this kind of geometry mixed with something biological or crystalline. Sometimes it seems hard and solid and heavy and weighted. Sometimes it seems that theoretical.

00:35:16 Alessandro

And I find it interesting that there is this assumption.

00:35:20 Alessandro

In that the spirit or the metaphysical is going to be like auras of light, you know, and like clouds, like a kind of misty vapor or like a ghost or something. Yeah. When, you know, there's really, like, no, nothing to dictate what the forms of the invisible.

00:35:41 Alessandro

Should look like. You know, they can really take on any form and you know, and also you know, and I I'm also very skeptical that there even is such a clear.

00:35:51 Alessandro

Their separation between matter and and spirit either. I mean, you know, there's long traditions of the body being a source of mystical experience through meditation and Tantra and things like that. And and I also am not completely. And then, you know, and also like.

00:36:04 Merrily

Mm-hmm.

00:36:11 Alessandro

Even you think of indigenous traditions that you know are animistic and hold that there is a invisible nature to trees or water or stones, you know, sacred stones and so forth.

00:36:25 Alessandro

I'm just not. I'm personally not certain that there is this spirit realm that's in this ethereal place that's totally separate from the world, and then we're just in the coarse matter material, weighty, heavy world, and that these two are not interlinked or intertwined in some way.

00:36:36 Merrily

Right.

00:36:45 Merrily

Mm-hmm.

00:36:45 Alessandro

You know, so.

00:36:46 Alessandro

Yeah. So I, you know, yeah. Could the spirit take on the form of a technological device? You know? Absolutely.

00:36:55 Merrily

I mean, I would say like in that vein, I know this is my goofy example, but I listen to a lot of music and I would swear like my device, whether it's my car stereo or whatever, it's like picking the songs I would have picked next or it was. It picks like the perfect song right of whatever's going on in my life or whatever. Like, it's like kind of having a conversation with me.

00:37:15 Merrily

Of like through music and everything so.

00:37:18 Merrily

I don't know. Yeah.

00:37:19 Alessandro

Man, I mean, technology is getting so strange. I mean, yes, I you know, I I've been thinking about how technology is affecting us as metaphysical beings, you know. And by the way, you know, I talk a lot of stuff. This isn't all necessarily related to my art necessarily, but coming from the perspective I do.

00:37:29 Merrily

Hmm.

00:37:37 Merrily

Right, yeah.

00:37:40 Alessandro

You, you know, all of this kind of in the issue, you know, concerns me especially like someone who's an art historian and is looking at the way technology has changed society and culture and so forth. And, you know, I mean, obviously we are taking a shift towards.

00:37:54 Merrily

Hmm.

00:38:01 Alessandro

And.

00:38:02 Alessandro

A more technological society, a more material based society that's been happening for the last 200 years at least. And but I find it interesting.

00:38:10 Merrily

Right.

00:38:14 Alessandro

And I don't know you know what to make of this quite, you know, but I can speculate. I find it interesting that the more our technology evolves, the more it moves towards the things that are intangible or of the spirit. Artificial intelligence that's trying to emulate.

00:38:17

Yeah.

00:38:29 Merrily

Yes.

00:38:33 Alessandro

The thought processes of the mind or you know the you know and so on, so or the Internet that we're talking over, you know we are on opposite sides of the country right now, but our disembodied images and voices are being transmitted across time and space.

00:38:52 Alessandro

You know all of that 200 years ago would sound very fantastic and metaphysical or like something.

00:38:58 Merrily

Yeah.

00:39:06 Alessandro

Kind of industrial machinery mechanisms and moved more towards what I would say is a.

00:39:11 Alessandro

Kind of ethereal.

00:39:14 Alessandro

You know, information based thought based, mind based. It's it's disembodying us more as technology progresses.

00:39:23 Alessandro

Is.

00:39:24 Alessandro

And I don't know what that is going to signal, you know, in the future, I can guess. But you know, I think that's, you know, an interesting thing. And so maybe your car radio, maybe the, you know, the iPod, it's not iPods anymore, your iPhone shuffle or whatever, Gen. X or again, I'm saying iPods here, but like your.

00:39:37 Merrily

The.

00:39:39 Merrily

Yeah.

00:39:41

Yeah, yeah.

00:39:44 Alessandro

IPhone, you know, shuffle, you know, maybe that is now connecting with your mind in some way or maybe you are connecting with it metaphysically on another level that you're not aware of. You know, you don't know how you're subconscious or.

00:39:57 Merrily

Yeah.

00:40:00 Alessandro

Your oversold or you know you're you're dying on, you know, or whatever. It's interacting with the technology around you. It could very well you.

00:40:02 Merrily

Right, yeah.

00:40:08 Merrily

Know. Yeah. It's fascinating. Yeah, I do think that that's where a lot of our technological advances are trying to emulate. You said you're saying very well, like, trying to emulate.

00:40:20 Merrily

Spirit or like stuff that people have been experiencing on a metaphysical level. So that's really fascinating. And even I think you had mentioned sort of like how we even talk about things from the spirit, like getting downloads is hilarious because we're using, like, technological language.

00:40:37 Merrily

But I think because well, I was like, yeah, I think because that's the language that is perforated and that people can reach for, like, yeah, download, you know.

00:40:46 Merrily

That's what it means.

00:40:47 Alessandro

That's totally like a product of our time. You know, we would say, you know, I'm, you know, if Joan of Arc was alive today, should say I gotta download, you know, from big angels, you know?

00:40:49 Merrily

Yeah.

00:40:58

Right.

00:41:00 Merrily

Yeah, like, OK.

00:41:03 Merrily

Or even sort of the I tend to see like I have hypnopompic. It's hypnopompic. When I wake in the morning, I tend to have, like, these visions of the code, like I call it the.

00:41:14 Merrily

Code.

00:41:14 Alessandro

But like the hypnagogic state of like between waking and sleep.

00:41:17 Merrily

Yeah. Yeah. But I think it's the hypnopompic. So it's when I'm waking up instead of falling asleep, I know there's, like, the two terms I was.

00:41:21 Alessandro

Ohh.

00:41:24 Merrily

Confused.

00:41:24 Alessandro

OK.

00:41:25 Merrily

So hypnopompic I think is when you wake up, and that's usually what happens. But I always like, I'll kind of like the half awake and see like the code of like the door in my bedroom. Like it looks like.

00:41:36 Merrily

Code but it's like different symbols and it the symbols keep changing. Actually they keep changing what they look like, but they operate in a very similar. I call it the matrix code. It looks like that, but it's per object and it it's pretty weird.

00:41:51 Alessandro

That is fascinating. I am skeptical of the.

00:41:57 Alessandro

The rationale behind the we live in a simulation hypothesis, but you know, but I I think though like the we live in the matrix. The simulation thing. Yeah. This is again a.

00:42:00 Merrily

Ohh right.

00:42:02

Yes.

00:42:12 Alessandro

Attempt to put into the most contemporary language something that is a long tradition. Long held traditional perspective right about the immateriality of the world or the different veils of illusion in the world. Yeah, I would say, you know the perspective that.

00:42:33 Alessandro

I have moved more towards, you know, as I've been thinking about the nature of reality and where these different visionary experiences come.

00:42:44 Alessandro

Come from is less so the idea that this world is like a kind of illusionary realm of matter and that there is a better world or a kind of alternate reality, you know, and we're like sitting with like, alternate reality goggles on or something and you know.

00:42:58 Merrily

MHM.

00:43:05 Alessandro

Seeing this illusion and so.

00:43:06 Alessandro

But rather that there is actually one solid, consistent reality, but it just has multiple layers that are there but not perceptible or invisible and so forth. So not that it's all a simulation.

00:43:25 Alessandro

But if you're.

00:43:27 Alessandro

If your hardware, you know if you're. If you're rather no. If your software. If your brain software. Yeah malfunctions a little bit, you might perceive.

00:43:37 Alessandro

The other layers of this consistent universe that we're in, and it might might lead you to the conclusion that it's not real or that it's a veil or that it's, you know, glitching or something like that, you know.

00:43:42 Merrily

Yeah.

00:43:47

Right.

00:43:54 Alessandro

But, but I would I would err more towards the side of this is the real world, you know. But there's many different.

00:43:59 Merrily

Mm-hmm.

00:44:02 Alessandro

Levels, you know.

00:44:02 Alessandro

Just and and and.

00:44:03 Alessandro

You know, again, we were talk.

00:44:04 Alessandro

About having our our scientific minds like you and I both are kind of like air towards like being rationalist, scientific, even when we're in the face of undeniable strangeness and.

00:44:17 Merrily

Right.

00:44:18 Alessandro

And I tend to, you know, move towards the most objective empirical interpretation first before I speculate on things that are outside of my.

00:44:32 Alessandro

Experience and it it seems like it would be more plausible given the fact that we already know through quantum physics and so forth that there are multiple invisible layers of time and and space, you know, in reality and so forth. So.

00:44:53 Alessandro

You know it.

00:44:53 Alessandro

It's really not much of A stretch then to say.

00:44:56 Alessandro

That.

00:44:58 Alessandro

We might be seeing like, you know that isn't multiple dimensions, but it's like one world that has multiple layers to it, like a kind of cake, you know, or something, you know, and just most of them are invisible, you know.

00:45:12 Merrily

You just can't see them, yeah.

00:45:14 Alessandro

And maybe you don't want.

00:45:15 Merrily

To I know it's too much, man. I just give me the give me the basics. It's too much to think about.

00:45:18 Alessandro

Monday, yeah.

00:45:21 Alessandro

I'm probably better off just letting my perspective, you know?

00:45:25 Merrily

Yeah. Oh, and as you're talking about the layer. Yeah, because one of the experiences in these hypnopompic things I had the very first time I saw.

00:45:34 Merrily

So I call it the code, but the first time I saw it appeared on a piece of parchment paper like it was like a scroll in my bed. It was really weird, but then they were like it was like the code on it and it was switching. And then for whatever reason I asked, I was like, hey, can you rotate it like rotate it and it rotated and I saw layers. So it was like sheets of parchment.

00:45:41

Hmm.

00:45:54 Merrily

Like like it's all turtles down. It was all parchments down and it all had different code where I could see on the different layers of parchment and I was.

00:46:02 Merrily

Like what is this?

00:46:04 Alessandro

See, that's so interesting because it's responding to you for.

00:46:06

Yes.

00:46:08 Alessandro

Thought to your prompt nonverbal prompt. So to me, you know, obviously like I, I've had strange experiences. I don't know exactly what you're experiencing, but just as an outsider hearing this, it suggests to me that there is some connection between your inner self.

00:46:09

Yeah.

00:46:11 Merrily

Yeah.

00:46:24 Merrily

Mm-hmm.

00:46:29 Alessandro

And the outer perception that you're having so, but and now one person might say, well, well, this just goes towards this being a psychological.

00:46:32 Merrily

Yeah, yeah.

00:46:40 Alessandro

Non your dream. You're half dreaming half awake. I you know I've had, like, some paralysis where I've seen things or perceived entities and so forth. So that would be the more psychological response though. I would also say that I think it's very possible that on rare occasions.

00:46:47 Merrily

Right.

00:46:52 Merrily

Mm-hmm.

00:47:00 Alessandro

The universe or the the matter of perception that you have gets affected or distorted by what you're emanating. You know, by your own perception, you know, and it it is real.

00:47:14 Merrily

Mm-hmm.

00:47:16 Alessandro

But it's only happening because your frame of mind or your spiritual sleep that you're in. You know, we're talking about practicing the lesser banishing before this. Like if you're practicing rituals and so forth like that may.

00:47:27

Mm-hmm.

00:47:33 Alessandro

You know, give some kind of energy, you know, particle, you know, release that could distort the usual limits that are put on your perception of the world, you know.

00:47:38 Merrily

Yeah.

00:47:47 Alessandro

So and it could be reacting and and I think about this in regards to, you know, when I among other weird things like I saw you ohh when I was younger and I think about this sighting of the UFO twice actually when I was very young and I think about this sighting and I also think about other people who shared stories like that with me.

00:47:56 Merrily

Hey.

00:48:07 Merrily

Hmm.

00:48:08 Alessandro

Just so like, it's just something that kind of is shouldn't be there and it just enters into the world and?

00:48:14 Alessandro

Then it leaves.

00:48:15 Alessandro

And it's silent and there's no explanation. And you seem to be the only one who's like, right, directed by it, or concerned about it.

00:48:26 Alessandro

There was this other experience I had when I was very young, I.

00:48:33 Alessandro

Sort of. Just I sort of just put it into a bin of like, weird things. I mention every now and then when I want to mention something weird because I just don't know what to make of it, but.

00:48:43 Alessandro

I had been laying down in my room as probably.

00:48:51 Alessandro

Eight or nine years old, I don't know, been laying down my bedroom, maybe asleep. Maybe I woke up or something and I got up. And then just like playing this day, there was a large brown owl that was like 4 or 5 feet tall, a giant owl just standing in the room and.

00:49:08 Alessandro

Then it flew.

00:49:10 Alessandro

Up a lamp shade and somehow between flying from being this large creature to being up the lampshade, it's somehow compressed and then just like Wenning lampshade.

00:49:21 Alessandro

And I was just like.

00:49:22 Alessandro

What? OK, So what do I?

00:49:24 Alessandro

Do with that you know, and I just remember and I think like maybe I mentioned it to my mom and she was like ohh, that's weird and you.

00:49:25

Yeah.

00:49:31 Alessandro

Know and yeah.

00:49:33 Alessandro

Fortunately, my mother had I come from a long line of people seeing weird things, so you know, so fortunately, my mother would just be like.

00:49:42 Alessandro

Ohh well you.

00:49:43 Alessandro

Know when I was your age? I.

00:49:44 Alessandro

Used to see.

00:49:45 Alessandro

Faces looking at me through the window of our second floor bedroom, you know, and so forth. And I was.

00:49:51 Alessandro

Ohh, that's interesting, mom, it's not reassuring, but you know? But you know, it would be like things like that. Or, like, apparently my great grandmother saw elves and things like that. And so. So, you know, I've kind of put that into this category of just like, well, maybe there's some kind of invisible, you know, world that we can perceive sometimes.

00:50:11 Alessandro

But I also think that it was very possible that that was a artifact of my own.

00:50:20 Alessandro

Consciousness affecting the world.

00:50:22 Alessandro

You know, maybe something that I'm putting out and here's the other thing about media, Mystic art and the creation of art actually also is.

00:50:31 Alessandro

As much as I have opened myself up to channeled writings and drawings that have led to my paintings and.

00:50:40 Alessandro

With with I also think that by making paintings I've also brought some of those experiences to me, if that makes sense right? Like so I think it goes both ways. You know, it's like practicing a ritual. You know, if you have, let's say, a visionary.

00:51:00 Alessandro

Experience while you're meditating. You know, as I have, like I've seen like I've been meditating. And then like things will get kind of WAVY as I'm in this state of calm and then I start to see.

00:51:14 Alessandro

These kind of.

00:51:14 Alessandro

Like Crystal Orbs surrounded by metallic liquid.

00:51:19 Alessandro

And then I go and I start to like sketch something and try to figure out what this is that I'm seeing. You know, that's one Ave. that's one route, but I think I've also had the exact opposite where the things that I perceive when I'm in meditation or, you know or when I was younger when I sideline drugs and so forth.

00:51:40 Alessandro

You know, they look like things out of my paintings. And then I'm like, wait, did is that the thing that I painted or did I paint it? And now I'm transmitting it into my world or my my perception of the world. And I think it can go both ways.

00:51:53 Merrily

Hmm.

00:51:56 Alessandro

Is and, but that also doesn't mean that it's I I know. Also, here's the other thing I say also, it doesn't mean that it's not real because it's because I I I'm actually not concerned with defining reality, you know, like it to me, it's real. If it has an impact on your.

00:52:16 Alessandro

Experience if it affects your life. Yeah, it's to you that perception is real and you feel changed afterwards. That's the reality of it. Like there's no other measure for the reality.

00:52:28 Alessandro

Of it you know.

00:52:29 Alessandro

Obviously what I like.

00:52:31 Alessandro

To capture a phantom UFO tulpa thing in a jar and show it to the world, that would probably be something quite interesting for everyone.

00:52:43 Alessandro

But you know also then what would the value of that be either you know anyway you know so you know the the reality and this is also you know when I when I write about artists who are mediumistic or not that I never ask myself if they they're genuine or not. You know if they really talk talk to spirits or.

00:52:48 Merrily

Yeah.

00:53:03 Alessandro

If they really saw a vision or I never asked myself that because.

00:53:08 Alessandro

Well, first of all.

00:53:10 Alessandro

I identify with their experiences, so I know that those things can happen, but I also don't ask that because the art is real, you know, and the way that the art affects me is all that really matters at the end.

00:53:25 Alessandro

Of the day.

00:53:25 Alessandro

Or the way of what that art puts into the world is all that really matters, you know.

00:53:26

Mm-hmm.

00:53:29

Yeah.

00:53:30 Alessandro

So.

00:53:31 Merrily

I mean, I think that's a great way to explain it cause I yeah, I think everybody would love you know like if you capture Bigfoot, you know you could show everybody, here's Bigfoot. It's never going to happen. So you know but you know it's just the idea of the experience being valid being especially if it's changed life changing.

00:53:32 Alessandro

Right.

00:53:40

See.

00:53:51 Merrily

Right. And I think any person.

00:53:54 Merrily

You could ask them and they could tell you something, whether it be like mystical or even just like reading a poem and how it changed them, you know, so I. But I think again, sort of thing I'm always thinking about the Western world and and maybe the indigenous world. But the Western world wants you to have the physical wants you to have.

00:54:15 Merrily

Or it's not real, right? And then so I think especially in the time of of moving into sort of the new age of life, trying to figure out, you know, we need more of the balance of.

00:54:29 Merrily

Experiences and your feelings being real and valid. So I think that's.

00:54:34 Alessandro

Yeah. No, I think it's absolutely connected to that divide between the material and the spiritual that is uniquely Western. I would also say just like modern in general because certainly there is a time in Western civilizations, you know, if we go back to.

00:54:45 Merrily

Yeah.

00:54:54 Alessandro

You know, Ancient Greece or ancient Anatolia or something where there were different viewpoints held about the spiritual and the matter. But I think that that, you know, schism, you know, I don't know. Is Plato responsible for it? Is the card responsible for it, that schism between the physical.

00:55:13 Alessandro

And the spiritual.

00:55:15 Alessandro

And also you know, I do think that's a very modern perspective of like you know it needs to be something that we can do something with or we have to have some kind of practical application of it. And I think that this goes towards you know, what is the point of art.

00:55:26 Merrily

Hmm.

00:55:30 Merrily

Right.

00:55:35 Alessandro

What is the purpose of art?

00:55:37 Alessandro

And, you know, art can be whatever it is for anyone you know, no one has to make art. You know, if you make art and you enjoy yourself and you enjoy doing it, that's fine. You also don't have to exhibit art, you know, to be an artist or share art or anything like that. It serves different purposes.

00:55:57 Alessandro

In different cultures, art is sometimes part of everyday life, more so for other cultures than it is for.

00:56:05 Alessandro

Let's say New York in 2024. You know where it's more of like an economic system. You know, we see it's more of a an object, a commodity object, you know or you know the the more prevailing ideas that you know, art is something you buy and then you hang it in your home. And it's like a decoration or something like that.

00:56:25 Merrily

Right.

00:56:25 Alessandro

UM.

00:56:27 Alessandro

But I think that art ideally the the if you are going to make art and you are going to put it out into the world, the thing to consider is how that will affect reality actually, because I think that the creation of.

00:56:46 Alessandro

Art can in a.

00:56:49 Alessandro

Butterfly effect, like fashion shape, reality and shape perception. And I know that sounds like this very idealistic. You know, out there kind of mystical. And I'm not like this kind of you.

00:57:01 Alessandro

Know.

00:57:02 Alessandro

Raise your vibrations. Mystic kind of person. Really. Surprisingly, you know. But I just think that's very plain and and, you know, and it doesn't might not necessarily be like one painting that shifts reality. But you know, if we just look at the way.

00:57:21 Alessandro

Certain authors have changed language, you know.

00:57:24 Alessandro

Like.

00:57:24 Merrily

Right.

00:57:25 Alessandro

Dante changes the Italian language. Shakespeare changes the English language, or we look at the way you know, one artist might affect films. Early cinema in the 20th century, and then how that might affect the way television.

00:57:42 Alessandro

Broadcasting is being made. There is a cascade effect where art will find its way, even if it's really marginal. It will find its way into the mainstream.

00:57:54 Alessandro

And you know that can shape everything about our perception. I mean, the the Internet is a great example for this, you know, because it's flooded with images that are perceptually seemingly real but also unreal. And it creates this really just, you know, I I'm going to use a silly.

00:58:13 Alessandro

Example you know here I have to use it so the example but like you know.

00:58:20 Alessandro

I I've seen like.

00:58:23 Alessandro

Paintings that look like 19th century paintings circulating on social media and with the name of an artist, and it'll say, like 1898 or something like that, and I'll see this painting. And I'm like that, you know, I'm an art history teacher. That's not a painting from eighteen from the 1890s.

00:58:43 Alessandro

It looks like a painting, but the people don't look correct. You know, the subject matter doesn't seem correct.

00:58:46

Right.

00:58:51 Alessandro

And it's an AI generated painting. And you know, all you have to do is look in the comments underneath and someone will call them out on it right away. And so. But but. But, you know, increasingly, you know, the technology is going to flood your perception with things that are very hard to distinguish between.

00:59:11 Alessandro

Artifice and reality, you know. So what's the reality? Is it a painting? Is it an A.

00:59:15 Alessandro

Like, that's just one like silly example of that. And so like, you know, I guess I'm saying like, if you don't think art will transform the way you see reality, it will, you know, it might not be like one of my paintings is going to change you forever, you know? But, you know, art.

00:59:27

Evening.

00:59:35 Alessandro

As a kind of a medium that people use as a practice in society totally affects the way we perceive the world and and so like you know, I think that, you know, I I try to exercise some responsibility and I think you know, artists have to be a little thoughtful if they're going to.

00:59:55 Alessandro

Play in the game of history and put their work into the world because there is a cascade effect that does I I feel transform reality and transform culture. Certainly you know.

01:00:10 Alessandro

And you know and and that's I think that's like the purpose of art as a social function. You know, obviously there's other ways you can use art, you know, materially for your own personal enjoyment or for your own spiritual practice or, you know, however. But I think that that is how it functions in reality, you know, and getting back to what we were saying.

01:00:17 Merrily

Yeah.

01:00:31 Alessandro

About you know the value of.

01:00:34 Alessandro

Of art versus the value of capturing, you know, a UFO and a jar or something like that. You know those immaterial experiences we can never. We'll we'll probably never be able to solidify them. And if we do the most radical shift in the in how we perceive.

01:00:40 Merrily

Right.

01:00:53

Right.

01:00:54 Alessandro

Everything you know, our world would definitely be changed forever. But you.

01:01:01 Alessandro

But the art that is created by those experiences, whether you believe them or not, they are going to go into the world, they're going to affect other people, especially if they're particularly powerful works of art, you know, and I I see the, you know, Paulina Peavey.

01:01:17

Mm-hmm.

01:01:21 Alessandro

Mentioned who does these paintings from? Inspired by the UFO spirit and so forth like I see so many artists today, especially whose work looks a lot like Paulina Peavey. Now, did they look at her work and derive direct inspiration?

01:01:38 Alessandro

Possibly she's kind of having a a moment right now. Very possible. Certainly Hilma off Clint. Has she had that Big Guggenheim retrospective? She's definitely having an impact on art that's being created. How aware are contemporary artists?

01:01:54 Alessandro

Emulating those styles and those ideas and those images of their origins, you know that.

01:02:00 Alessandro

Helm off Clint was an occult practitioner and was very involved in performing seances and so. Where are they aware of Paulina PV's alleged origin of this Spirit Lake Como that's talking to her? Maybe they are a little bit on a superficial level, but what those artists created now is going to enter into the mainstream.

01:02:13

Hmm.

01:02:22 Alessandro

Like a kind of a virus, whether the.

01:02:27 Alessandro

Whether the artists creating those works understand that or not like they're injecting their work, they might be coming from a totally like secular art school. Like I'm just, I thought it looks cool and I just wanna, you know, imitate their style and stuff. And now when they're working up in a major gallery.

01:02:31

Right.

01:02:46 Alessandro

Something from far outside the margins of what was acceptable.

01:02:50 Alessandro

Goal, you know, 30-40 years ago has now started to leak into a bigger cultural conversation.

01:02:58 Alessandro

I don't know. I'm kind of going fun to.

01:02:59 Merrily

Yeah, no.

01:03:00 Alessandro

Rant there, but you know, but that's, you know, so. So that's why I say, like the art that is created is the important thing.

01:03:09 Merrily

Yeah.

01:03:11 Alessandro

Whether Paulina PV really speaks to a spirit or not, whether he'll off Clint speaks to the whatever she called them, like the secret Masters or the you know, whether that's true or not, it doesn't matter. We'll never know. And the.

01:03:21 Merrily

Great.

01:03:26

Yeah.

01:03:30 Alessandro

Only thing that really matters is whether we feel something genuine when we look at those.

01:03:34 Alessandro

Works of art.

01:03:35 Merrily

Hmm, yeah, I think. Yeah, I think that's.

01:03:40 Merrily

One like I never considered that, but it's wonderfully explained and it's made and made me think of there is this. I saw this clip of David Bowie and he said some I'm going to paraphrase because I have tried to find this freaking clip and I I'm going to still hunt for it. But he was being interviewed and he said something about like, and I think there's many.

01:04:00 Merrily

Points where David had, I don't know. He was just very prescient of what he was seeing. I think this interview was like in the late 90.

01:04:07 Merrily

But he said something like, well, culture. He's like, I see that culture is going to just regurgitate itself, regurgitating, regurgitating and so when you were talking about the AI painting that was supposed to be this artist and it wasn't clearly because you could identify why it wasn't, it was like that regurgitation of art. And he was like.

01:04:26 Merrily

So that he was saying something about artists like it's their responsibility of what you're saying.

01:04:31 Merrily

Of like creating the new thing, creating even if it doesn't get recognized until 70 years or whatever, or it doesn't get acknowledged 70 years later or whatever. It's just that it's it's good to keep that fresh because there's we we're in that state right now of regurgitation.

01:04:50 Alessandro

Of yeah, I mean.

01:04:51 Alessandro

I do feel like.

01:04:55 Alessandro

Oh, what's his name? Fisher. You know, there's this writer, Saint Matthew Fisher, Mark Fisher, who wrote about this in an essay that's very well known. You know, he he talks about, like, I'm probably butchering this, but, you know, he talks about, you know.

01:05:14 Alessandro

The 21st century being in a kind of stasis or loop and part of the example that it gives is retro style, retro music and.

01:05:17

Hmm.

01:05:23 Alessandro

So forth and that a lot of you know, he uses the example of bands that sound like post punk bands from the 80s that are indistinguishable from punk bands, and the post punk bands in the 80s existing today and and making music videos that also look like they were from the 80s, you know? Yeah. And you know, I.

01:05:32 Merrily

Yes. Yeah.

01:05:38 Merrily

That's right, yeah.

01:05:43 Alessandro

I do agree with that to some extent.

01:05:48 Alessandro

I you know, I I don't concern myself too much with the idea of the new. I think that that can kind of be a trap for artists a little bit to keep worrying about whether I'm doing something that's never been done before. I would say one thing to keep in mind.

01:05:54 Merrily

Hmm.

01:06:07 Alessandro

Is that you know, prior to really prior to the Renaissance?

01:06:15 Alessandro

I would say even even more so, like prior to the 19th century, really.

01:06:20 Alessandro

The vast majority of art was about upholding traditions, so most of history has been about, you know, generation after generation of artisans. You would have the master artisan and they would pass on their skill and and the way that your the quality of your work would be judged.

01:06:40 Alessandro

Would be how well you rose to the level of the person you apprenticed under, and so forth. So the idea of making newness or making things new and fresh.

01:06:53 Alessandro

Which, you know, I don't want to question David Bowie, cause it's definitely very trippy artist who I'm sure has a lot of does have a lot of amazing ideas, you know? But, you know, I think that this idea of newness or that you're going to usher in something that's never been seen before.

01:07:08

Hmm.

01:07:12 Alessandro

Sometimes I think that's a little bit of a false perception about history, but yeah, at the same time, though, I do think that there's another level of sort of.

01:07:29 Alessandro

Kind of recycling the material that's already been laid out already in terms of style and music and so forth. And I and I actually think in the last 10 years especially we're seeing almost it's kind of like a bottleneck of of art and culture where we're we're seeing almost all times all styles.

01:07:49 Alessandro

Existing all at once, but nothing that really pushes forward or in the new direction.

01:07:56 Merrily

Right.

01:07:57 Alessandro

And you know, and I I think like you know, I'm not like, I don't want to act like I'm some great cultural critic who has any unique perspective on this or anything like that. But I do think that that is partly the responsibility of artists to imagine something new. But I would also say part of that is the market.

01:08:17 Alessandro

As well, I think that.

01:08:18

Umm.

01:08:21 Alessandro

Both consumers of art and music are uncomfortable by things that are genuinely disrupting of the status quo, and so you're your own. When something new appears, it is only going to have a very niche, you know, community that's interested in it.

01:08:40 Alessandro

You know, so like, it's easy. Like in retrospect, you know, I can think about the, you know, for an example of, like, a band. I I like from the past, like.

01:08:47 Alessandro

Throbbing gristle or something, it's like.

01:08:49 Alessandro

Easy to like. Look back on throbbing gristle and be like, oh, they were so radical and ahead of their time. And it's like, you know.

01:08:57 Alessandro

At the time, people just thought they were crazy hippies, you know, or doing some weird art school stuff, and they were probably really dismissed by a lot of punk bands and and, you know, in retrospect, though, we see that that was a revolution, you know, that happened. And likewise, you know, you're probably not going to recognize.

01:09:05 Merrily

Yeah.

01:09:17 Alessandro

What is actually of this moment, or fresh or breaking new ground until you have that perspective of 10 or 20 years?

01:09:25 Alessandro

And you know and and also it's and the you know galleries and record labels are not gonna help it either because it's not just, it's not even just like the mass market, you know, like who's gonna buy records or who's gonna buy art and stuff it's also, you know, galleries are uncomfortable showing things that don't have a established.

01:09:45 Alessandro

Market or they don't see where the established market would be. They're uncomfortable exhibiting things that seem risky, you know, or, you know, the artist hasn't maybe proven themselves quite enough yet.

01:09:49 Merrily

Right.

01:10:00 Alessandro

And and likewise with, you know record labels as well. Now there's, you know exceptions to the rule. Of course there's a lot of, you know, people who take risks out there, you know. But you know, for the most part, you know, if there isn't an established market for, you know, something other than.

01:10:20 Alessandro

And you know, kind of retro electronic music, you're going to just see a lot of retro electronic music. You're not going to see, you know, anything like really breaking the mold, you know, or you, if you do, it's going to be on some small tape label or something like that. And, you know, and and that's, you know, so, so I guess what I'm saying is like.

01:10:40 Alessandro

Hardly. You know, that's our fault, you know if.

01:10:42 Alessandro

There's nothing.

01:10:43 Alessandro

New it's it's kind of the artist's fault, but it's kind of our fault, actually. You know, as as consumers and and also for those who are you.

01:10:52 Alessandro

You know, helming, you know, at the helm of institutional, you know, avenues for those artists to exhibit their work or sell their work and so forth. You know, that's my take on that, that David take. Yeah.

01:11:03

Hmm.

01:11:09 Alessandro

That's my response.

01:11:09 Merrily

Yeah.

01:11:10 Alessandro

To David Bowie there you know.

01:11:11 Merrily

All right, we'll see what he responds. Yes, I wait. The answer that was really cool. Yeah. I didn't think about that. But as you're again, as you talk about things on the call, yeah. This makes a lot of sense, especially like bands because I love post punk.

01:11:15 Alessandro

I await his response.

01:11:18 Alessandro

Yes.

01:11:28 Merrily

Music. And I was like, so excited in the late 10s when there was a lot of bands like doing similar sound, you know.

01:11:35 Alessandro

Ohh yeah and I have nothing against like retro sounds and bands. They're very cool, you know.

01:11:37 Merrily

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

01:11:40 Alessandro

But you know that if the things that are really weird, some of them become very successful, but right, you know, the vast majority of them will just kind of appear and fizzle out very quickly, you know.

01:11:51 Merrily

Yeah, for sure.

01:11:54 Merrily

Yeah. Yeah. It's making me think of Nick Cave because I saw Nick Cave in 1997 here in Seattle. It was great. And he's coming back this year.

01:12:02 Alessandro

Ohh man, I saw him around the same time. Actually we really are of the same generation.

01:12:06 Merrily

Yeah. For yeah, for real. I think it was the Bookman's call tour. I'm pretty sure that's what he was doing. It's just an amazing album.

01:12:14 Alessandro

Right around the same team. And I saw him with Julie Cruise opening. Fortunate, actually. So, yeah, I know.

01:12:18

All right.

01:12:19 Merrily

Julie, so great. Oddly enough, I saw them open with low and I think the leads from low she passed away, which is sad but.

01:12:20 Alessandro

It's very cool.

01:12:21 Alessandro

Yeah.

01:12:26 Alessandro

Oh yeah.

01:12:28 Alessandro

Yeah. Remember that band too?

01:12:31 Merrily

But I was like, oh, they're coming back around and it came coming back around. Awesome. I want to see the. Yeah. The tickets are like $800.00. And I was like, Nick, come on. I know. I was like, what happened?

01:12:31

It's.

01:12:41 Alessandro

Yeah, it's mainstream now. It's like.

01:12:46 Merrily

So that's.

01:12:47 Alessandro

It's like rumors going to Nick Cave.

01:12:49 Merrily

Shows like like. When did that happen? Oh my gosh.

01:12:52 Alessandro

Yeah, yeah, I know. Like, I mean, there are some, you know, there are some artists from the past that have still remained very on the edges of acceptability. Like I I kind of feel like you know.

01:13:09 Alessandro

Whatever, I don't want to criticize other artists and musicians and things like that. I feel like a lot of music that I grew up listening to in the 90s and the early 2000s.

01:13:12

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:13:19 Alessandro

I'm not on the same page with a lot of where those musicians went later on. Right, you know, I still like a lot of what David Tibet does with current 93 and so forth. It's gone. That and it still remains very, you know, difficult for a lot of peoples years, you know, which I appreciate, you know, but.

01:13:38 Merrily

Yeah.

01:13:39 Alessandro

You know that, you know, that happens, but you know, even those, you know, bands that you know, I thought was, you know, when I was in.

01:13:47 Alessandro

High school, I thought.

01:13:48 Alessandro

I have this, you know, love of, you know, current 93 and nurse with wound and throbbing gristle. Like, this is gonna, you know, be my own like secret passion and mine alone. This could never possibly become like a hipster thing that like a lot of people.

01:14:07

Ohh God.

01:14:08 Alessandro

Into and you know it didn't take long. It it very quickly, you know. Yeah, I would just like, I think like, you know, I went to art school and then like.

01:14:18 Alessandro

People had, like, you know, nurse with wound T-shirts. And I was like, what?

01:14:23 Merrily

I thought that was nice, yeah.

01:14:24 Alessandro

So you know.

01:14:25 Alessandro

But you know that. Yeah, it's fine.

01:14:27 Alessandro

And I also don't think there's anything wrong with that either. You know, I I think that's the the life of a work of art. You know it. And and this is also something like the art historian in in the, you know, talking about.

01:14:29

Yeah.

01:14:39 Alessandro

Esoteric music as much as esoteric art. Like you know that again, like I said, with like, these marginal mediumistic artists like Magic, Gill and tilma offline.

01:14:50 Alessandro

Helma offline was obscure in the early 2000s like she was exhibited, but she was obscure, and now she's this one of probably the most talked about artists from the 20th century, and you know, likewise with a lot of other even more, you know, sensational artists. You know, there was a time where no one cared who Frida Kahlo was, you know, but.

01:15:08 Merrily

Right.

01:15:09 Alessandro

Now she's like a phenomenon as an artist. Yeah. And, you know, that's the life of a.

01:15:14 Alessandro

Work of art it will.

01:15:16 Alessandro

It will, though a time will come when it will speak to a broader audience. So like you know, you know, using current 93 because that was like a band that was so inaccessible, I think to a lot of people.

01:15:30 Alessandro

You know, you know it. It still is not very accessible, but like it certainly has had like a resonance beyond this, you know, small, you know, weird punk scene in England, you know, from like whatever 4050 years ago or something like it's blossomed.

01:15:36 Merrily

Right.

01:15:45 Merrily

Right.

01:15:50 Alessandro

And you know, and the same with a lot of like noise music as well. Like, I was really into, like, MERS, ball and White House and even more obscure kind of stuff. When I was growing up.

01:16:03 Alessandro

Up and you know, and I remember in the early 2000s, there was like a small like kind of niche scene where you would have a few like noise guys, you know, making some harsh noise or something like that in a in a, you know, a basement or something like that. And, you know, that's become a real.

01:16:23 Alessandro

It has been a real scene for like the last 20 years or.

01:16:27 Alessandro

You know, and I think it was just because it was a, a, a genre that's time has come, you know, and it eventually spoke to a moment somehow, you know, and and and and it will probably and and I. And I'm not prone to speak you know I'm not qualified to speak about what's popular in mainstream music.

01:16:37 Merrily

Yeah.

01:16:47 Alessandro

Today, unfortunately like I just can't keep up with anything that's going on.

01:16:51 Alessandro

Pretty much anything that came out after 2010, don't ask me about it, but you know. But I'm. But you know, I'm sure that that noise. I'm sure that there's a line that through line that can be drawn from like Merzbow to like whatever the popular music is at the moment. You know the producers are thinking about that.

01:17:12 Alessandro

Kind of music. You know when they're working in the studio and.

01:17:16 Alessandro

And that's another way by which I see the most fringe elements of art having a a kind of ripple effect in, in culture and and society and reality as well, to take it more extreme.

01:17:29 Merrily

Right.

01:17:32 Merrily

Yes. Oh yeah, that's the way to.

01:17:34 Merrily

Look at it.

01:17:35 Merrily

Yeah. So just.

01:17:36 Merrily

Keep creating things people. Let's just keep doing that. You know, it's it's in there somehow. That's amazing.

01:17:38 Alessandro

Yes. Yeah, exactly.

01:17:43

Gee.

01:17:44

Hmm.

01:17:45 Merrily

Well, I see. Actually, we've chatted for a while. I did want to touch on a couple more things just so I know you worked as a gemologist and obviously of course, you know, once people could figure that out and then see your work, you're like like right there, it looks like.

01:18:03 Alessandro

Yeah.

01:18:03 Merrily

That I should have.

01:18:04 Alessandro

We mentioned that right out of the gate actually.

01:18:07 Alessandro

But yeah, for a brief period of time. So you know, like a lot of people who get out of arts.

01:18:12 Alessandro

School, you know, I graduated from the Art Institute of Chicago. But you know, that's that is a very prestigious art school. But, you know, it's not necessarily a highway into gallery success. And, you know, you know, a teacher.

01:18:31 Alessandro

The prestigious tenured teaching position you know for everyone.

01:18:35 Alessandro

You know, and so I, you know, I moved back to New York. I lived in Chicago and then moved back to New York, and I struggled to find work to find a job. And, you know, Simply put, I, you know, my aunt, who had lived in Manhattan for 40 years, had been working as the in the accounting department of the Genealogical Institute.

01:18:54 Alessandro

Of America in Manhattan on for what was on 47th Street. Then they might have moved their build.

01:19:00 Alessandro

But you know, and it's just kind of like I need a job. Like, what do you have and you know, and she and I did an interview there was they were hiring diamond graders. And I did an interview and they accepted me into a program that they were doing to train.

01:19:21 Alessandro

Diamond and gemstone graders, where you would get paid while doing a certificate program in gemology for like half a.

01:19:30 Alessandro

Year or so.

01:19:31 Alessandro

And so I did that and it was an intensive program. I made very little money during that time and I was hired into the.

01:19:40 Alessandro

Into the lab and I started out working with mainly diamonds, other gemstones as well, but working with diamonds and what you do is, you know, every single day for eight to 10 hours, you're in a dark laboratory with little cassettes of stones and a microscope and a computer. And you just look at the stones.

01:20:00 Alessandro

Under a microscope for, you know and and write a report on the computer. And there's also like a diagram you have to do drawings on and stuff like that. And I was not very good at my job, but I did that for, like, you know, almost three years.

01:20:16 Alessandro

And I skated by somehow. I was very depressed during that time. I wasn't getting a lot of sunshine. You know, I think I had a vitamin D deficiency cause I was in this dark lab. Yeah, and it would actually be like dark morning when I went into the lab, and it would be dark evening when I came out. So rarely saw the sun.

01:20:23

Hmm.

01:20:36 Alessandro

But I did spend a lot of time looking through the.

01:20:39 Alessandro

Microscope at the.

01:20:41 Alessandro

Crystal inclusions within stones, and so you know I, you know and this was.

01:20:47 Alessandro

This was over 10 years. I mean this is like 14 years ago. Maybe this is a long time ago, but you know, it's hard to not picture how that experience day in and day out for years on end would find its way into the kind of visual vocabulary of my work, you know?

01:21:09 Alessandro

Because the inside of stones is like the.

01:21:12 Alessandro

Kind of crystal prismatic universe all unto itself. Yeah. And I also, you know, developed these very mystical views while I was looking at these stones. It's hard to look into that world and not see.

01:21:28 Alessandro

Or not. Imagine or perceive some kind of invisible force moving through those kinds.

01:21:36 Alessandro

Of uh, you know, creations those crystalline creations, you know, they're matter. They're physical matter, but they absorb and bend and distort light in a way that is really, you know, fantastic when you think about it, you know? Yeah. So definitely was an influence on my work, for sure. But, you know, I wasn't really very happy.

01:21:57 Alessandro

So as soon as I got accepted into the graduate program for Art History at Brooklyn.

01:22:02 Alessandro

College I was like, here's my two week notice, you know, thank you. And I'm just out of out of there. But it was very fun. I did also. I worked in India for a time during that period, but it was just, you know, briefly I, you know, I worked in Mumbai and, you know, seven days a week, you know, it wasn't like a very, you know, it wasn't like I was a tourist or anything. I was just like working all the time and stuff.

01:22:12

Oh wow.

01:22:24 Merrily

All right, but.

01:22:25 Alessandro

But it was, you know, I don't wanna bad talk. My experience as a diamond crater. It was nice. It was a nice gig for a while, you know.

01:22:32 Merrily

Yeah, but yeah, I mean, I mean, I'm sure anybody can relate with like having a job, a jobby job and but yeah.

01:22:41 Alessandro

Yes, you know and and. But here's the thing. Also I think like the other thing I would say to other artists, you know, who might be watching this, you know, maybe it's like let everything in to influence your work. You know, sometimes people feel they have to just make art about art history or the art world or make it some lofty.

01:22:54 Merrily

Right.

01:23:00 Alessandro

Commentary on you know, economics and politics or something like.

01:23:06 Alessandro

But very likely the thing the the means that you have for communicating is right around you. It's in the nature of your life, you know, and and you know, whatever someone does for a living while they're making art might inform what they do eventually, you know, so, you know, I I was just like, you know.

01:23:25 Alessandro

Open to all of these experiences shaping what I do. You know, I think it's like all a combination of everything. It's not just one experience.

01:23:33 Alessandro

It's that, you know, shape the way my.

01:23:35 Alessandro

Paintings look. Yeah, yeah.

01:23:37 Merrily

For sure. Oh, that's such a great message. I I love that, especially for our young artists or any artists like just, you know, do your thing.

01:23:46 Alessandro

Yeah, no, I'm absolutely. And I've had people say to me like, you know, yeah, when you talk about like, how your old job influenced your work, like I just realized, you know, whatever I'm doing, you know, might be, you know, showing me something that I need to, you know, incorporate into my art. You know, I don't know. It's like.

01:24:03 Alessandro

Mopping floors or making sandwiches or whatever you're doing. I don't know. You know, I also work with, like, a a chocolate shop for a little while. That really didn't have any but.

01:24:13 Alessandro

It could have though.

01:24:14 Merrily

Could have, yeah.

01:24:16 Alessandro

It is.

01:24:17 Merrily

Oh, amazing. Yeah, I love that message. So the last thing you wanted, well, the last thing about sort of your art in your work is you have your sub stack which I subscribe to. It's I.

01:24:29 Alessandro

Adelon I say adelon, but yeah.

01:24:29 Merrily

Eidolon Etalon etalon eidolon. I'm adelon. It's amazing. Like you have. Obviously you can see from your, you know being a an art history professor and your experience and artist, just your experience as a human, but it's so detailed and in-depth like I love that stuff. So I always enjoy when you put it out.

01:24:49 Merrily

So what was sort of your?

01:24:49 Alessandro

Ohh thank you.

01:24:51 Merrily

Why? Why do you wanna also do like some writing with along with your?

01:24:54 Alessandro

Well, I've always loved to write and I was. I was hoping that that sub stack would become more of a regular outlet for me. Yeah, I post very infrequently. Unfortunately. You know, it's whenever I can and it's more of like it's more writings that I have like a passionate need to get out. It's not so much academic writings. It's not.

01:25:01

So.

01:25:15 Alessandro

Things that I might be doing on Commission to write, it's more of like I just have something that's in my mind while I'm painting and I'm working and I need to get it out. Some of those writings.

01:25:28 Alessandro

I also made well, you know, in a kind of altered state through meditation. So some of them are almost like free form automatic writings. And you know, so they're more personal and maybe should be seen as somewhere between an essay and a kind of poetic.

01:25:49 Alessandro

Pros.

01:25:50 Alessandro

Style, but you know and and lately what I've been doing now is writing shorter pieces so I can produce them more regularly and they are direct counterpoints to whatever I'm working on in the studio as a painter. And you know there.

01:26:08 Alessandro

Are a lot.

01:26:09 Alessandro

Of artists who are writers and they.

01:26:11 Alessandro

You know, maybe keep their writings private in a journal. I think that's a fine practice to do.

01:26:17 Alessandro

I do. I do think that I do recommend if you're a painter or an artist of some sort ID or recommend writing. I like to share the writings. I like to get feedback on them. I have like things to say and stuff, but I think that, you know, it's good to have a writing practice to clarify what you're thinking while you're working.

01:26:37 Alessandro

And you know, and people are always gonna ask you, like, you know, what's this painting about, you know, or like a gallery will ask you, you know, can you write a little bit about what you were thinking when you were working on this show or something? So like, it may come up where someone asks you. And having that writing practice is, you know, on a practical level, beneficial.

01:26:56 Alessandro

That way. But I also think that you know it, it will help to clarify in your own mind things that are sometimes coming from an very ethereal place. You know when you're just working with visual language, you sometimes lose grasp of of more tangible.

01:27:17 Alessandro

You know, linear thought and and language you know, lends itself more to linear thought, so it helps me in that way. I think keeping that sub stack as a.

01:27:27 Alessandro

As a kind of literary journal for myself, you know.

01:27:32 Merrily

Yeah, such such great practical advice so much.

01:27:36 Alessandro

You can tell it like a teacher who's used to like telling people things to do. You know it's artists, you know.

01:27:40

That's crazy.

01:27:43 Merrily

I love it. So kind of sort of the last couple things is uh, so do you have any projects or events or things you want to let?

01:27:51 Merrily

People know about.

01:27:52 Alessandro

Ohh yeah, I mean I guess I I you know, I I don't know when this is going to come out, but in October I'm gonna have a show in Seoul in South Korea at a gallery called the Untitled Void. I think it's going to be a two person or three person show I'm not sure but I have 5 paintings that will.

01:28:00 Merrily

Oh cool.

01:28:09 Alessandro

There and next year there's a show coming up at a gallery in Berlin. Kristin Hilliard, a gallery. And, you know, maybe some other things I don't know. And as I mentioned, I've been writing for the catalog for this or exhibition essay for this, for the.

01:28:29 Alessandro

Artist Francis Murkowski. And so I've been working on that essay. And so that's it. And there might be other things, you know.

01:28:37 Merrily

Very cool. Yeah, I just checked. And so this your episode will go out. I think the Wednesday, October 16th. So right in the middle there.

01:28:44 Alessandro

Right before that show opens and sold.

01:28:47 Merrily

Cool. That's really awesome, though. OK, so the last thing, are there any words of wisdom that you would like to?

01:28:54 Merrily

Share with the audience.

01:28:55 Alessandro

Oh boy, I feel like I've given all my advice back. No, I I don't know. You know, I also, I don't see myself as, you know, I I like to talk about art. You know, I'm an art historian. I'm an artist. You know, I can only really give my own.

01:28:58 Merrily

I know you're, like, 30 out there, yeah.

01:29:13 Alessandro

Perspective. You know, spiritually I can only talk about my own experiences, right? I'm not, you know, a a guru or a teacher of any sort, you know, spiritually. So don't take any advice for me. And, you know, in, in terms of, like, you know, as an artist and a painter, you know, I can only talk about my own experience and my own path.

01:29:34 Alessandro

Everyone's going to have a different path and a different journey. I think maybe there might be parts of what I say that might resonate with people that they can take something away from, but.

01:29:44 Alessandro

Obvious.

01:29:44 Alessandro

So you.

01:29:45 Alessandro

Know.

01:29:46 Alessandro

You know, I don't recommend to anyone do what I've done. You know it's not. That's my words of wisdom. Like, don't you know, try to become a diamond grater and then you know, parlay that into becoming a painter. That's a terrible idea, you know. So that's my words of.

01:30:00 Merrily

Ohh my gosh.

01:30:01 Merrily

Wisdom. So I will say that that's probably the most.

01:30:06 Alessandro

Yeah, yeah.

01:30:07 Merrily

That's so far. So I really love.

01:30:09 Merrily

Don't do what Alessandro does in.

01:30:11 Merrily

The end.

01:30:13 Merrily

Yes. Oh, gosh. Well, thank you so much, Alessandra. It was a pleasure. I loved talking about art with you it.

01:30:17 Alessandro

Thank you very much Marilee.

01:30:20 Merrily

Was really wonderful, so thank.

01:30:21 Alessandro

You. Yeah, I had a great conversation. Thank you very much.

01:30:25 Merrily

What a great conversation with Alessandro, who, in addition to being an artist, has very cool interest areas that align with what we get up to here on the case.

01:30:32 Merrily

Temple. So you will definitely want to check out his sum stack and Instagram to be up to date on his art and any projects he will be working on. If you are lucky enough to be in Seoul, Korea, be sure to check out Alessandro's art at the untitled Void exhibit this October 2024. Supporting the show is free and easy like follow and subscribe on YouTube or your favorite podcast platform. Or drop us a note on.

01:30:53 Merrily

Schedule temple.com. We'd love to hear from you. Thank you for listening and being an important part of casual temple.

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EPISODE 37 - Alessandro Keegan

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