WunderPod
On the WunderPod, Mer and Wolf have intimate and broad-reaching conversations with a wide range of creative guests about the wonders of existence: unscripted, unrestrained, and uncut.
Contact: wow@wunder.media
WunderPod
Wolf & Mer - The first rule of art night is…
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
This week, it’s just the ol cowboys on a light ramble. Wolf and Mer catch each other up on what they’ve been creating lately. The episode’s ending is smooth as molasses, so that’s something to look forward to.
Reach out at wow@wunder.media
Copyright WunderMedia
Uh including some girl in the back, I don't know who it was, who was working on writing something and she was trying to figure out how to write about some specific expression. So she was having people like make this face for her. Do you remember this?
SPEAKER_01I do not remember.
SPEAKER_00So that she could just figure out the words to describe it.
SPEAKER_01Wow. When you look at the night sky.
SPEAKER_00Be prepared to think and feel anything.
SPEAKER_01There are no forbidden.
SPEAKER_02Not knowing what's out there. Great, let the dogs out. Let's do it.
SPEAKER_00Welcome to the Under Ood.
SPEAKER_02The Wonder Od.
SPEAKER_00With just Wolf and Mare.
SPEAKER_02Just the two of us this week. It's gonna be great. It's gonna be so great.
SPEAKER_00I just don't know you very well, and I just like, God, I have so many questions for you. Like, I really want to know what makes you tick.
SPEAKER_02It's the clocks.
unknownThe clocks that'll be ticking.
SPEAKER_00So, um, you know what, for kicks, let's both say something about ourselves. Like, I'm mayor and I um went camping over the weekend, and there was the the fireplace was decommissioned in the lodge where we were camping next to, and it was fucking cold, and everyone around us was cold, and they're like, Yeah, we decommissioned the fire until the fall. It's subtle lodge, subtle lake lodge.
SPEAKER_04Oh, because everything's so dry.
SPEAKER_00Maybe, but like, ugh, it was 40 degrees. It was cold this weekend. It's like you guys, and so Jenna and I were sitting on the couch, we were having a great time, but we didn't have any blankets and there was no fire, and so we had our raincoats over us to keep us warm. Oh, yeah. I'm like, this could be like the vibes could be so much better if there was just a raging fire right next to us. Come on. And so Jenna brought this little game called Tinder blocks, it's like tiny mini, it's like a the size of a deck of cards. Okay, and you use little um tweezers to um see how high you can stack this little uh fire. So there's logs and then there's little red blocks and little yellow blocks.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_00So you it's kind of like Jenga. You're just trying to see how high you can stack it, and it gets more and more precarious. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, until it all falls down. So it's really cute and tiny, and that was the that was the only fire that we got. And so that's what I wanted to share with you today, Wolf.
SPEAKER_02Well, thanks for sharing that. Um I'm gonna share that. I've been working on finishing my studio space.
SPEAKER_00And so that it can be full what?
SPEAKER_02Um it it was basically like finished to like garage level, you know, kinda. Like it didn't really have a ceiling and didn't have enough insulation, there's no like heater AC in there really, and the doors don't really close on like the doors are uh not sealing. Um and so I want it to be a finished condition space that I can work out there all year round, use the whole thing.
SPEAKER_00And paint so you working means painting.
SPEAKER_02Oh yeah. And painting, um coloring on photographs. Coloring on photographs.
SPEAKER_00Throwing plaster.
SPEAKER_02Sometimes. I haven't done that in a while.
SPEAKER_00I know. But I will never forget it. What else?
SPEAKER_02Um making music?
SPEAKER_00No, you do that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, so that will be part of the thing, is like there's basically the the studio is like 500 square feet. So it's not very big, but there's a small room in the back that's probably like you know, 80 square feet or something like that that I has a door on it that I built um to have like one little bit of conditioned space in there so that I can work in the winter a little bit, like a little space heater and stuff in there. And um, and then the other, you know, 80% of the space is just kind of whatever. So the intention is to finish the other 80% of the space so that I can do my art out there and the little room can be all the music stuff. So I can get it out of my house and into there, which I think will feel really, really great.
SPEAKER_00Um, yes, yes.
SPEAKER_02So anyway, that I've been I've been putting the hammer down on that and probably will be for the next couple of months.
SPEAKER_00But could you put the hammer down on hosting another art night soon?
SPEAKER_02Yes. As soon as I have some space in there to do it. Right now it's a bit, a bit crowded because everything is chaos as I'm moving things around to do the construction work.
SPEAKER_00Chaos, you say.
SPEAKER_02Chaos.
SPEAKER_00Wolf likes to host art nights, and that means everyone shows up with their own art project and they work on it. So one time, this was so funny. One time there were there were like ten people in there and they all had their own medium that they were working on, including some girl in the back, I don't know who it was, who was working on writing something and she was trying to figure out how to write about some specific expression. So she was having people like make this face for her. Do you remember this? I do not remember so that she could just figure out the words to describe it.
SPEAKER_01Wow.
SPEAKER_00Like the variety going on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very fun.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, the variety is always fun. Some people bring their own stuff, some people are just making with stuff with whatever's there.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And then you provide pastels and paper and paints and all that. Super fun.
SPEAKER_02It is very fun.
SPEAKER_00I'd like to invite you to invite me to do that.
SPEAKER_02Well, thank you. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So you're working on your st studio.
SPEAKER_02Working on the studio. Um and uh in the meantime, because you know, I'm still making art, I'm making very tiny art. I'm making You're making tiny art. Tiny art.
SPEAKER_00Since when?
SPEAKER_02Since like nine months ago, probably.
SPEAKER_00What?
SPEAKER_02Or no, a year ago.
SPEAKER_00What?
SPEAKER_02What?
SPEAKER_00What do you mean tiny art?
SPEAKER_02Well, there are I all my art right now. No, not that it's tiny. Not as tiny as your tiny fire.
SPEAKER_00Oh.
SPEAKER_02But um, no, all my work right now is like four by six inches.
SPEAKER_00Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_02So uh pretty tiny compared to like the fact that my paintings before were like three by four feet.
SPEAKER_00And so two things, two thoughts, two questions. So one thing is is that that you're printing four by six photos and coloring on them? Yep. Okay. And then the second thing is, does this mean you can enter a bunch of stuff into the tiny art show?
SPEAKER_02Yes. Um in the fall. Exactly.
SPEAKER_00So at High Desert Museum.
SPEAKER_02There you go. Nice plug.
SPEAKER_00Thank you. Thank you. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um yeah, uh by the time when this comes out, it will be the day after the um applications go in for the $20 art show.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Which uh, if you're in the central Oregon area, is uh very fun. I don't know. Remember the dates. It's in October at the High Desert Museum, couple nights. Um there are thousands and thousands of local art pieces in the show.
SPEAKER_00And they're small. They're like the size of your hand.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. They're all that size or smaller, and they're all twenty dollars.
SPEAKER_00And it's only a five-dollar entrance tick for your ticket. Yeah. It's very affordable.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, super affordable. Great way to get some Christmas gifts, great way to add some art to your home.
SPEAKER_00Walk out with really cool treasures.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, huge range, very diverse selection of works. Yeah. Um so yeah, so I'll have, I mean, I'll have a ton of pieces that could go in that. The I'm also doing a collab on some of these with uh friend of the pod, Maddie, who was on uh a couple episodes or a handful of episodes ago. So she writes poetry, as you might remember. And um lately she's been doing her poetry with a typewriter, which is very cool. And so we try she came over maybe like a month ago, and I had a whole bunch of pieces, and I was like, I think it would be cool if if you typed with the typewriter poetry, like a few lines over top of some of these photographs. And so we did a bunch of testing to see like what papers worked better and like how it might work, and um found some systems that worked. Yeah, I'm really excited about this. So I just got I don't know, like a hundred prints of different stuff. Um, it should be getting her today, actually, that um for her to add some poetry to.
SPEAKER_00So does she type it right onto the with the typewriter?
SPEAKER_02Like you feed the photograph into the typewriter, you know, and then just like type directly onto it, which is cool because each one is individual, right? Like obviously the prints are are repeated, um, but the way the words and how they sit on there will be totally individual, and then I'll probably paint on them a little bit as well to add some more differentiation. So there'll be individual unique pieces of art, and some of those might be at the Twin Dollar Art Show.
SPEAKER_00Oh my gosh. Okay, and so what does she write about for these? What does she what poems does she put on here?
SPEAKER_02I don't know yet.
SPEAKER_00Well, are they gonna be about the photo? Or are they just gonna be something she wrote ahead of time?
SPEAKER_02It's a mixture. Well, we were experimenting, and some of it was she brought some poems she had written and was pulling lines from them that she felt like were relevant. Um, or like and she was looking at the photo and she's like, oh, this reminds me of this line in this poem and pulled it out and put it on there. Um some of them she was just coming up with something new.
SPEAKER_00I love her writing so much.
SPEAKER_02It's yeah, it's really lovely. It's really lovely. Um so anyway, so we'll see. I don't know, we're trying it out. It's a bunch of copies to give it a try and see what comes out of them. But I think I've talked to a couple people about this and I've gotten a lot of positive response. So about the idea of like I ha I've had a couple of I work at a uh art frame shop, right? And I've had a couple people, I have my art a couple pieces, uh small pieces in the shop. And um I've talked to a couple people who have who've talked about my art there, about those and about okay, I'm trying this poetry thing, and people have been really excited about the poetry combo.
SPEAKER_00So yay! How is your art doing in the shop?
SPEAKER_02It's not selling at all, but that's okay.
SPEAKER_00Does it feel good to have it up?
SPEAKER_02Um I I feel totally neutral about it.
SPEAKER_00Are you sure?
SPEAKER_02I guess I feel better about it being at least semi in public versus just sitting in a drawer. Yes. You know, like that is better.
SPEAKER_00Do people does it catch people's eye?
SPEAKER_02No. Oh, I don't know. Not not noticeably. But I'm also not sure that I have it displayed in the best way. There could be some improvements.
SPEAKER_00There's probably a lot of stuff competing for attention.
SPEAKER_02That is also true. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Sick. Okay. Well, um, I think you kind of cheated because I was gonna ask you what you've been creating lately, and you already told me.
SPEAKER_02I'm already there. But what have you been creating lately? What you've been doing.
SPEAKER_00Well, is there anything else that you wanted to share that you've been working on?
SPEAKER_02No, I think that's that's that's one of the more exciting components.
SPEAKER_00Okay. What have I been working on? Um I don't know how creative this is, but yeah, actually, you know what? It requires a lot of creativity. Gratitude. And then other than that, um I started a Substack a l a while ago, maybe a few months ago.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00And I've only posted two things, but I'm really proud of both of them.
SPEAKER_04I love that.
SPEAKER_00And I've been trying to figure out what I'm gonna write next, and I've started multiple posts or articles or whatever. And none of it is the first two just came out so fast.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, one of them was on Envy, that's the title of that. And then the other one is something like, is it called Tiny Hands?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, I think so.
SPEAKER_00Um about my little tattoos on my inner thighs. Um those two came out so fast, and I I had them I I had them from rep draft to post within a week. But I've started four different ones since then, and none of the they just feel like fragments.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And then the last one that I wrote, I wrote about a very difficult thing I'm going through. Uh and I have a lot of anger about it and pain. And I didn't feel like I could share it in the raw form that it came out as.
SPEAKER_02Sure.
SPEAKER_00I need to mess with it a bit.
SPEAKER_02Why do you feel like you can't share it in the raw form?
SPEAKER_00Because it's about someone I love very dearly who is not able to be friends with me right now. And I don't know if they will ever want to come back, but it's very, very, very shitty. And I just wrote a bunch of stuff and I was surprised at what came out. Um obviously I feel a lot of feelings about someone that I've been friends with for a decade.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um almost like a family.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00More than just friends.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And so I mean, I wouldn't want to hurt their feelings. Totally. And I wouldn't put their name on it or anything. Sure, sure, sure, sure, sure. But still, it just feels a little too like too public. Yeah. But maybe there are some pieces of it that I could snag and just do something short on it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. But does it have any similar themes to some of the other fragments that you've written?
SPEAKER_00Oh, um, the unpublished stuff?
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Well, I'm noticing that the stuff that I've been writing has it's pretty much all about my perspective on something that is either changing or that I would like to change.
SPEAKER_02About yourself or about the world or my perspective.
SPEAKER_00About how things are. Okay. Uh one is I wrote last week, I think. I don't know if I told you about this. I was writing about how upset I get when I'm having a conversation with someone and they don't look at me. They don't make eye contact. Oh, interesting. Did I tell you about this?
SPEAKER_02I think I remember you mentioning this, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Oh it's really hard. Um I feel like we're not communicating if they aren't mak making eye contact with me. I'm like, why are we even bothering?
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And I get very like the FaceTime preference for you suddenly makes a lot more sense.
SPEAKER_00I love a FaceTime. I know, now I see why. I can do a phone call. I can do a phone call, but I just love, yeah, some face-to-face.
SPEAKER_03Exactly.
SPEAKER_00And it's funny because um earlier this year, Brendan and I, and you were in the room in your Santa hat. Brynden and I were discussing what we need from our friendships.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And he was going through his list. He has some specific stuff, and I was like, Oh, I didn't know that about you. Good to know. Um I'm happy to know this because then I can be a better friend to you. And then I was going through my stuff, and I said something about like, I I was like, I need we need to communicate with words, we need to exchange information, um, we need eye contact. And he's like, Oh, okay, eye contact. And I'm like, oh no, no, I don't mean that literally. And then I was like, oh wait, I do be fucking 100% mean that literally.
SPEAKER_04Wow.
SPEAKER_00And it was I didn't know that.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00When I have I just I just feel like people aren't hearing me and that I'm not hearing them. I feel like there is incomplete communication, a chasm between us.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And the eye contact is the bridge.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that makes sense.
SPEAKER_00Now neurodivergence plays a part. And some folks can't do eye contact. Um someone in my family just informed me that they have always had a very hard time with eye contact, making me very uncomfortable. I didn't know that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00And this goes back to me um being aware that people will always surprise me, even when I've known them my entire life.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00But um, I'm I'm never gonna fully have anyone fully mapped out.
SPEAKER_02Totally.
SPEAKER_00Anyway, so that's one thing that I talked I wrote about in there. The other thing, and this is a vi this is like my hu this is a huge struggle for me right now. Yeah, is when someone comes in the room or when I come in the room and we're about to have a chat, I say hi to them, or I say what up, or hello, or good morning, or I see you, or whatever. And if they don't greet me and they just go into the conversation, I cannot handle it. I had a boss once, and well, before I say that, my friends and family, the people that I hang out with the most, they do that. They they don't do that. They will greet me, they'll be like, hey, what's up? And then we'll start talking about this stuff. But some people don't abide by that s norm or rule. Um and I've been noticing in the past year-ish that um it really unnerves me.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00I had a boss once who would come into the office in the morning and just start barking orders.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And so I actually told her, hey, when you come in, can you just say good morning or hi before you start talking to me about what you want me to do? And so she did. And it made a difference.
SPEAKER_04Wow, so thoughtful.
SPEAKER_00But some for some folks, they just don't do that naturally. And I I do it automatically because it's just like an obvious like, I want you to feel respected. I want there to be a foundation of respect before we have a conversation of any kind.
SPEAKER_02And just to like, I mean, to me, I feel like it's also important just to make sure, like, oh, we're we're like at least semi-connected. We know we're talking to each other. And right, like I can, even just from that, right, I can get some valuable sense of like, where are you at this morning? How are you feeling? You know, just in how you respond to those questions and say hi and stuff. Exactly.
SPEAKER_00There's someone that I have to interact with sometimes a few times throughout the week, who will just ask me a question, but he's not looking at me. And I'll literally I don't know who he's fucking talking to. Even if I'm the only one in the room, yeah, I'm so confused. I also think it's very rude. Um and then he also doesn't like say hi.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00So it's just like when we skip over those basics, I'm lost. And I'm also I'm like, oh, you're so rude, even though um that might not be what's going on. Sure, sure, sure. So this is something that I'm really chewing on. Anyway, so I I wrote about it and I just didn't really feel like I had like a neat and tidy way to wrap it up.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So it's just hanging out in my drafts. But uh as far as creating, I would I would like to keep that Substack going. Nice. I have one paid subscriber who told me that they will pay the monthly subscription thing if I post at least one thing a month.
SPEAKER_02Oh, nice.
SPEAKER_00As like a an encouragement, a motivation. And I'm like, oh my gosh, did you know you're my patron?
SPEAKER_04What?
SPEAKER_00Cool, huh? I have a patron.
SPEAKER_02Very cool.
SPEAKER_00I know. It's five dollars a month, but still.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's so I feel like it mattered like at that point it matters more as like a conceptual thing than of monetary. I mean, monetary, obviously, is okay, sure, nice, but like it's more about like that they care enough to put something pretty concrete towards what you're doing.
SPEAKER_00It was really cool.
SPEAKER_02It's very cool.
SPEAKER_00It's my sister Mia. So sweet.
SPEAKER_02So sweet.
SPEAKER_00Thanks, Mimi. So anyway, that's what I'm working on.
SPEAKER_02Nice, very exciting.
SPEAKER_00Well, today was today was a well, today was a shorty.
SPEAKER_02All right. That's the time we got today. Thanks for listening to WonderPod. Um, we really appreciate those of you who take some time to listen to our show.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, here's the thing. Wolf and I, we have always had conversations that we enjoy, and we were just like, why don't we just start sharing these with people? And so it feels nice for some people who are listening to it regularly.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, we really appreciate you guys listening and and when you leave comments, it's always really fun too. Yeah. Um, or if you just you know leave your comments IRL with us when you see us, that's nice too. That feels really great too. Anyway, thanks for listening, and uh, we'll be back next week. Something new.
SPEAKER_00Right. We'll be back next week. Next week. Okay. Bye. Bye bye. Wolf, that was really bad. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.