Sabrina Ward HarrisonThis is Room in the Trees, a podcast about working artists and working with artists and related goods and services. The following was recorded on June 27, 2017. This is episode 46, Life Path. Room in the Trees is hosted by Trent Reynolds and me, Sabrina Harrison. Show notes, including pictures, links, video, and more for every episode can be found at in the trees.com. If you like this podcast, please consider showing your support. You can become a subscribing patron at patreon.com forward slash room. And please rate us on iTunes. It really helps us reach a wider audience and we just love reading them. And it's really supportive, gentle hug. of encouragement.
Trenton ReynoldsOh, gentle hugs.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonYou need gentle hugs for encouragement.
Trenton ReynoldsCarrie Scott is an extremely knowledgeable curator and art writer living in London. and let me tell you why Carrie is especially remarkable. She sends you a direct message on Instagram one day and you find out that she is somebody who bought your books and read your books when you know at the time you publish them is about the same age and understands your work on a very intuitive intuitive level and has very personal connection to your work. And she also is somebody who has this history and has developed skills in this arena of representation. So she's kind of the perfect person to show up at this time in your life. You're ready for it. And then she shows up and she loves your work and understands your work. And she knows how to get it in front of people who are going to respond to it and appreciate it as much as she does. I think that's amazing.
Sabrina Ward Harrisongreat to have Carrie join us today. She added so much to the conversation. It was a lot of fun. So without further ado, here is our combo with Carrie.
Trenton ReynoldsWhat time is it in London? Wine time.
Carrie ScottBring it on. My children are asleep and so yeah, it's that time of day. Oh, for some reason I
Trenton Reynoldsthought that you were, this is your first kid, but this is not your first kid.
Carrie ScottOh, no, no. No, no. I've been around this block once before. And this time, I'm not letting go of my life. Yeah. I really am sort of glad you are recording because the truth of the matter is, the first time I was like, no, I'm going to focus on being a mom and I'm going to stop. and I'm gonna just be a mom, and then about 2.3 minutes into it, I was like, I'm miserable. This is the worst thing I've ever done. Who am I? Where did I go? And you know, second time around the rodeo, I was like, okay, ready? I'm gonna hold on to my life, and I'm gonna keep doing the things. And that's not to say that I haven't made every sacrifice under the sun, because you have to when you have a child, but. yeah you just learned how to build in the time for yourself
Trenton Reynoldsthat's a whole conversation in and of itself and I think there's so many people out there that are fighting for that right it's really really hard balance to find
Sabrina Ward Harrisontotally Trent has three kids
Carrie Scottno it is it's a it's a thing I mean and that's also it's a thing of life right it's that like how how to be selfish when you need to be selfish and how to be selfless when you need to be selfless and you're a better person if you can figure out how to do that when you need to do it
Trenton Reynoldsyou know yeah well and if you don't have any strength yourself you have nothing to give others right whether it be your kids, students, or, you know, whomever you're working with. So that's, it's tricky to find the balance between nourishing yourself and maintaining your own sense of purpose and identity, and then also being that for other people. Amen. Hard, hard, amen. And we're done. And they're not here. so I think we should just jump into our discussion on the Star Trek The Next Generation and dig into I was trying to think Carrie of the thing you were most likely to be the least interested in that's it you've just got it you've literally just got it
Carrie ScottI hate Star Trek if you've done Star Wars I would have been like Star Wars I can hang
Trenton Reynoldsoh Star Wars I was gonna do Star Wars no Star Trek
Carrie Scottno I never got into it
Sabrina Ward Harrisonever watched it. No. Never. Don't get it.
Carrie ScottMaybe it was the outfits that alienated us. I don't know. That one man was so ugly.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonThis is weird. Which one man are you talking about? It was down to aesthetic. This weird ears, like kind of long weird weird face whereas if you compare
Carrie Scottlike you know come on Indiana Jones what was his name Harrison Ford like that's an aesthetic you want to look at
Trenton Reynoldsyeah but there's some funky looking creatures in Star Wars too though
Carrie Scottno but they're good funky
Sabrina Ward Harrisonyeah we're looking at the men
Carrie ScottWell, but no, but if you think about Chewbacca, I mean, he was good funky. Or Jabba the Hutt, those rolls of fat. I mean, Lucian Freud, his entire career is based on that, right?
Trenton ReynoldsI would love to see a Lucian Freud version of Jabba the Hutt. Possibly be the greatest painting ever.
Carrie ScottListen, it would be. But no, Star Trek, sorry. No can do.
Trenton ReynoldsAll right. I can't either. I don't know Star Trek either.
Carrie ScottCan we start with you two telling me how this goes? What do we do? How are we doing this? We're doing it. We're doing it. We're in it.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonYeah, the story's happening. So do you know any background about the podcast and why we're doing it? Yes, of course. Oh, you do? Okay. No, I didn't know. So we're old high school friends from art class, like independent study, sort of fifth period. And so the way we do it, do it is we pretty much it's like it's it's definitely uncut just talking we will edit we'll be like and that's not for the podcast just to feel free to go wherever you want to go with it and we can cut out stuff um so basically in the middle of the night when
Carrie Scotti'm replaying this in my head and i'm like do you know what maybe i shouldn't have said that
Sabrina Ward Harrisonyeah yeah yes yeah exactly yeah but feel free to talk about whatever you want and we just talk for about an hour and then we're done. And yeah, so it's not like, it's not so much an interview, but more a conversation and we're just kind of, it's a bit more popcorn style of just, but there are, you know, things we're kind of love to ask you about and talk about. Great. I got things I want to ask you two about. Oh, you want to start with that? Sure. Okay.
Carrie ScottSo if I'm like summing up the pile of books I'm staring at, which you authored, Sabrina Ward Harrison, there's an element of like wanting to help, right? Like help your readers, help sort of of liberate your audience from the noise in their head. And so my obvious sort of question or concern is the podcast trying to do that as well? When you guys thought about it, were you thinking, you know what, we wanna give people the sort of freedom that you two seem to embody anyway to just, think and do and make? Is that why you guys sort of set out to do this?
Sabrina Ward HarrisonI think for me, my answer would be, I don't think we set out. We set out to do-- I think, again, it's like make what you most want to find, which I feel strongly about. And I think this was the kind of podcast I wanted to find, a really real conversation between friends about not just-- directly serious, it's like living with as an artist and it's a creative person, but also just talking about random stuff about how it's just hard to be human. It's just weird and being introverted. And so the format of this feels a little bit the way a book is intimate. It's just a one-on-one experience similar to listening to a podcast. It's just like, it's something you're doing on your own.
Trenton ReynoldsI think it's a matter of degrees, right? I think we knew going into it that it would fill a role or come across in a certain way, but I don't think that was ever really the focus. I think we both listened to quite a few podcasts and we liked the format, we liked the way, you know the kind like who were some of the podcasts that we originally modeled after it was
Sabrina Ward Harrisonoff camera off camera right right right sam jones great photographer i don't know that one long format conversation basically yeah he interviews he's a photographer and he interviews
Trenton Reynoldspeople that he has photographed. And it's just very similar sitting down with a having a conversation and you hear Sam Jones just has natural curiosity and he asks questions as they come to his mind or as he's thought about it beforehand but it's not this regimented or like highly polished program. It's a you know it feels very very much like two friends just chatting.
Sabrina Ward Harrison- And especially 'cause he's interviewing a lot of very well-known actors, so it's not the feeling like you're, it's secretly just a pitch for some new movie coming out. - Nice.
Carrie ScottNick Knight, one of the artists that I work really closely with, he has a video sort of interview series where he sits down with models who are not in pictures that he's taken, but, you know, it's... Who can I think of a good example? Like, whatever, whoever sat for an Irving pen, whoever sat for Irving pen, these iconic images, Karen, I can't remember her last name right now, which is really terrible. me talking about her shot with Tim Walker and it's the model's perspective of what it's like to sit for these huge names in fashion photography. I love that. Yeah that's interesting. It's just nice when you turn the perspective for a second and then it's not all about the photographer or the brand. but actually it's about the person sitting and what it's like to sit there and pose.
Sabrina Ward Harrison- I love that concept, I love that. What's the name of it?
Carrie Scott- They're called subjective. Nice, really nice.
Trenton Reynolds- I feel like that gets at, I'm sorry, go ahead.
Carrie Scott- No, go, go, go, what does it get at?
Trenton Reynolds- Well, I think this all ties into the idea I don't know what brings us together in this conversation. And that is like this ability that the internet and other technologies that are coming up give us to turn the camera away from what it's been able to focus on in the past. Camera or whatever, our attention. And to get more, I don't know, personal, close, I don't know, I just think it changes the relationship that we're able to create between an audience and content creators, I guess, if you're going to say it that way.
Carrie ScottSo, but Sabrina and Trent, because Trent, I read you're an artist as well. Is it not just a bizarre mix? medium for you guys? It's not visual.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonNo, it's perfect. It's perfect. It is perfect. It's perfect. Because it, Trent, you can share yours. I feel like it's critical as creative people to have a conversation, continue the conversation if you're not in the studio working your people. You want to be able to talk about your work. You want to be able to talk about where you're stuck the kind of monkey mind that can get going um the what monkey mind the monkey mind the like crazies in your head of like self-doubt and critical critic you know self-critic stuff going on um but i think artists really need to um because you don't you don't have co-workers, you don't have sort of sidekicks that are helping you, or just creating beside you. So, and also being kind of introverted people, I feel like it's helped me even, it's helped me develop my voice a little bit more outside of the books. You wouldn't hear my voice, and so to bring that to something that I'm actively sharing and kind of over sharing a little bit spontaneously and I like that quality to it because I think obviously I overshared a little bit in my books in a way that I think was helpful so it I think it's an it's an
Trenton Reynoldsintroverts medium. Like, um, I think if you were like traditional media, like a, like a TV broadcast or making a polished, like documentary or, or, uh, a show where there, where the audience that's being performed to is this unknown mass, right? Like you don't really know who that is. Whereas with this, it's, it can be just about a conversation and that's it. And then, and you can publish that, but it was never, what drove the communication or what drove the creation of what we're doing was never anticipating what everybody wants, right? Or what a demographic wants or this unknown quantity. Like, I don't know, I always feel like, I feel really overwhelmed by the thought that I would try to engage, a huge amount of people in a conversation. But just talking to Sabrina, I get that and I'm comfortable with that. And I can kind of wrap my mind around what we're doing here. Whereas I think if I had in my mind that we were trying to cater to this mass audience, I don't think we could feel comfortable. I don't think we could really exist in that place.
Carrie Scott- See, but that feels so contradictory to me, right? So I look at artists and I think you guys are such, you're extroverts in your ability to like, just be brave and put your own stuff out there, like your own voice, right? What I do is I sort of hide behind the artist and I champion that artist and I use my ability to like, sort of wave the flag for you guys and talk about what it is you're doing, but I'm standing behind you. You know, I'm not putting, it's not me I'm putting out there. And I recently turned, I just started doing a show, like a TV show, and I'm the presenter and I'm in front of the camera and I don't know the audience, but again, because I'm talking about artwork, it's not scary because I can, like I use the crutch and I use your bravery to do that. I don't know, I'm not sure if that's entirely making sense But I just I feel like it would be more frightening to. To draw something or write something down and and put it out in the world than what than what it is I do, I don't know.
Trenton ReynoldsBut what you're doing is the same thing, though, to a certain degree, you're you are presenting an opinion, you're presenting yourself. right and and there's going to be criticism there's going to be some kind of audience that's going to give you feedback about that isn't that just as daunting my funny old accent
Carrie Scottare you english or american come on girl be one or the other i was gonna ask you that very thing
Trenton Reynoldsbecause in some of the videos i watched some of the videos on your site and inside it seemed like yeah I just couldn't tell where where it was coming from
Carrie Scottlisten I've got different versions of myself and it depends on the day
Trenton Reynoldshey man I'm okay I'm okay with that
Carrie ScottI was you know my mother is sitting in within earshot bizarrely and she doesn't know live anywhere near me but um she she moved me to the states when i was sort of four ish um and uh and i lived there for i don't know until i was 30 however many years that is 27 um and then I came back but I had these like very British parents and I spent my life ping-ponging back and forth because my dad stayed here but I have my my stepdad and my my mom are thoroughly British and I've married the most British man on the planet oh my lord I mean I have two children called Arthur Monty. How did that happen? That's excellent. But you know, when I want to be badass, oh, I'm American. There's no, if I need to stand up to someone, I'm American. If I need to be polite, I'm a Brit. So you could probably go back through all of my interviews and be like, oof, she was all guns blazing in that one.
Trenton ReynoldsThat is awesome. I never really thought it.
Carrie ScottI just, you know, I can just put on a different outfit if I need to.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonThat's really cool. That's really cool.
Carrie ScottWell, it is cool until my son has started to say things like water. He sounds like he's from New Jersey. And we're going to a wedding this coming weekend. And he keeps on saying, we're going to a hotel, Mom. I'm like, what? It's amazing. And otherwise, he's so posh. It's like, chapter, mummy. Yeah, so anyway, poor kid. He's going to be all sorts of screwed up.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonAnd don't, isn't what your second son, Monty, have dark hair?
Carrie ScottYeah, I've got my fault. and pepper boys. I'm so thrilled about it. My little feminist men that I'm raising. One looks like an Aryan prince and the other one is like the deepest, darkest Jew. Great.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonYou are so... I really like... This is really fun. and we're at the beginning of our friendship and our relationship. I appreciate your humor a lot. It's good. It's very funny.
Carrie ScottWell, and that's the weird thing, right? Is that you haven't known me for years. I've known you since my 20s, right? I mean, you've been with me since my 20s. You helped, I mean, you literally helped my sister through her teens. means. And you certainly helped me through some stuff. So that's even more bizarre, right? But before, and we're talking before Instagram, before Facebook, before MySpace even, you were this entity in my life. And I always appreciated your sense of humor and your voice and your I don't know, so it's slightly surreal for me now. And life is surreal anyway because I haven't slept in four months. But, you know, that we're having a chat and I'm helping you do stuff and that you think I'm funny. I mean, it's amazing. Trent, what do you do?
Trenton ReynoldsBesides cooking. Being a dad.
Carrie ScottBesides the three children. The three children, not one, not two, but three. How old are they? What are they? Who are they?
Trenton ReynoldsThey are three girls. And I come from a family of six boys. I'm the fourth of six boys. So the raising girls has continued just to be, you know, constantly over my head.
Carrie ScottI'm really glad you know Sabrina. I think she's going to help you with that. Yeah.
Trenton ReynoldsNo, it's-- I love being a father, but I make art. I've got a-- just moved into a new art studio with four other artists in Santa Monica and teach art at Santa Monica College. And then in August, I'm going to be starting a new teaching job at a private high school up by the Getty in L.A.
Like up in the hills? Mm-hmm. Nice.
Trenton ReynoldsYeah. Yeah, it's a beautiful campus. And that's pretty much it. That's what I do. I make a podcast. with Sabrina.
Nice.
Carrie ScottDo you, have you sort of shied away from the gallery world in the same way that Sabrina has?
Trenton ReynoldsYou know what, we've talked about this, Sabrina and I have talked about this before. I went to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and had a fantastic experience there and there's this pipeline that I'm sure you're well aware of like at your final you know thesis exhibition they usually have an early viewing day for galleries to come in and go around and look at look at the work and that's where a lot of people a lot of artists coming out of grad school will will find or start relationships with galleries in the area or you know elsewhere and um i had a gallery approach me that was they were interested in my work and um and it was a series of paintings that i just served a purpose but they weren't really they weren't meant to go beyond that. And I just felt like I dropped the ball a bit and kind of missed that opportunity. And I guess, I don't know, I've, I've felt like I've, my work hasn't been in a place, or I haven't been in a place or, you know, I started having kids and that. prevented me from really pursuing that in any real way. So I'm not, I haven't avoided it as much as I've, you know, just life has happened and it just hasn't been, you know, part of the path that I've been on.
Carrie Scottwhich is you know i i forever wonder what the role of the gallery is um and what what it is now you know when when i was silly and naive and it was 2008 and the world was falling apart i was like uh the gallery system's over you know the white cube it's boring it's not for us it's not it's not our generation's way of receiving or transmitting art. And I really had felt like a used car salesman. I can't remember if I said this to you, Sabrina, but that, you know, you were representing the same sort of 8 to 12 artists, and every 18 months you had their work done. up again because that's the rotor of the gallery. And you're like, okay, go again. Sell this work again. Whether you believe in it or not, do it again. And I was like, this is not why I got into art. This isn't how it was supposed to be. And so I did sort of say, well, hang on. I can just help artists do special projects and this can be okay. And and none of it was actually as deliberate as all that. It sort of happened to me, and I just went with it. But I still wonder what the role of the gallery is. And if you look at the really sort of successful galleries right now, they're changing it up. They have the white cube. If you look at someone like a Hauser and Worth, they have their white cubes, and they have them in Zurich and in London, and L.A. and New York now. But then they also have this farm in the middle of Somerset where they're doing amazing. Yeah. And then they're opening a hotel in nowhere Scotland where I think artists will start doing residencies. And the artists are also doing residencies in Somerset. and all of a sudden there's this space, there's this need for getting away and seeing art outside of, seeing it living. And I'm excited about that. And if they're doing it, everyone will follow. But I think maybe a bunch of us are following anyway, or starting anyway. You're curious about what, sorry.
Trenton ReynoldsI'm curious to hear, you've talked about the white cube and how there's this kind of sense that we're going away from that. I'm wondering how you would describe or the story that you would tell to summarize the trajectory of the gallery and what it has, where it came from where it's going. Oh, God. That's like real trauma. Yeah, I know. It's huge. It's a huge thing to cover, but you have like an overview or the high up view of what that looks like?
Carrie ScottThe potted history. I mean, I'm thinking like, I can't remember his name, Edward something, wrote an essay on Orientalism which was all about the beginning of the gallery and somewhere in my brain, I'm sure I could access this information.
Trenton ReynoldsNot the official history, just the history according to Carrie.
Carrie ScottThere we go. Let's do that. I mean, in my head, it's Paris and salon-style hanging of tons and tons of paintings. And it's where sort of Manet, Monet get for now. because their stuff looks like trash and is you know it's not the beautiful beautiful figurative perfect work and if you think about someone like Picasso right he he cut his teeth on doing almost like medically precise painting you know they're so hyper realist they're Velasquez they're they are perfection and then he he riffs it apart and lets himself go. But the gallery itself, I can't remember where it goes from that salon style ornate, you know, because at the turn of the last century that's what it was. It was all, you know, brocade and wooden walls and, you know, the frames were more important than the work almost, right? And then all of a sudden it gets pared back. But where that happens, I don't know. And that would be, I mean, I'm gonna hang up the phone and say, that's a show in and of itself, whether it's a podcast or a TV show, it should be a thing, you know? When does it become about this big stark cube? And in fact, if you look at someone like, white cube, the gallery. When Jay Joplin set that up, his whole intent was just to have a white box, one artist, one show, and he was doing however many shows a year that he represented, and that was it. So it was one work, one artist, one cube. So it's pretty young, this idea. like a big white box where you just show the work um and where where it go i mean i just think we're over it i think we're over i mean this will really get me into trouble but i'm certainly over walking into a gallery and being dismissed i think everyone is i mean it's almost a sort of a cliche to talk about that aspect of the gallery world, that it's this closed down system.
Trenton Reynolds- And it establishes a relationship of power, right? Like that you're going into their space, they have chosen what's important to show you, right? And that's what creates the monetary value of what it is, the product that they're offering. And that's tied into a larger conversation that involves publications and schools and, you know, all this other stuff. And the word that you used in one of your videos that kind of jumped out at me was that things are slippery, slippery. more slippery more slippery and that uh the that you actually do have a physical location that people can go to and they can walk in the door and be presented with objects and and this experience but it's not as clear what that experience is meant to be and i think therefore is not as clear what the power dynamic is there like who is meant to be the one that is the decision maker.
Carrie Scott- Which how awesome is that though? And that's happening across the board. If you think about magazines, it used to be once a month you would get Vogue and it would come in and you would look at your pictures that had come out and the clothes that had come out, and that was it, right? And if you're a model in Vogue, your voice is nothing. If you're a photographer in Vogue, your voice is delayed by however many months past the shoot, sort of three months, whereas now the model is more important than the magazine the model has more followers on instagram than all of the circulation of the magazine the the photographer same deal has has more currency online than the magazine so all of a sudden the whole power dynamic has shifted and that's that's true of the art world. If you look at a Hauser and Instagram versus their artists, whose voice is louder? It's the artist. So you're transmitting. You're skipping that middle person. And so the gallery has to be smarter. And that was the thing that in 2008 I did this project as part of Nicole Kleisman Gallery where we went to W Magazine and Mika Rottenberg wanted to do a really expensive but beautiful video installation and we needed to raise capital to do it so W backed it then we sold work off the back of that and then she did this whole big project and I suddenly thought well hang on that that has to be a more interesting there's like a triangle there right so there's the magazine so tons of people will see it there's the gallery where a minority sadly will see it um and then it'll have an online presence where people more people than the magazine would see it. And I just think you have to and actually, Sabrina, that brings me back to you because I always felt like or I was wondered why why choose the book? Were you so smart that you thought, you know what, I got to get this out there and the easiest way to do that or the fastest way to do it is in book format. because if you had done if you had done it in galleries it would have been like you know a slow and steady wins the race yeah
Sabrina Ward Harrisonwell I for me I think I felt kind of called well, once I was spilling open, it was like, this is what I do. This is what I do. There's a lot of things I can't do. A lot of things I can't do. Clearly cannot do and don't even want to try to do. But that felt like it kind of came out of left field to some extent. It happened very quickly, and it – That's just what the shape and I and the designer part of me. I just absolutely love composition and design and initially went to school to be a graphic designer and photographer. So that would have been my path. I actually would have chosen and I think I would have been that's where I felt that's what I do like once I started doing graphic design and come working within kind of given a problem to solve graphically with images and text to be emotionally evocative that's what I knew how to do and so I knew how to take take that and create visual that I could create that visually for people I think
Trenton ReynoldsThe problem with some of this is that we're coming at it from two different angles. One is the young Sabrina that is going to school for the first time and trying to figure that out and life hasn't happened yet, right? It's still in front. And then now we're talking about this as if there was a certain amount of intention to happened but I'm sure at the moment you know she wasn't there was no internet right there is no other there was no other option in front of her to really be too deliberate about you know like she knew of a publisher she dropped off the pages on the publishers doorstep you know like that's kind of what was was there to do you know and I think the same with this podcast like it's not that we're thinking, you know, maybe just because there's more awareness now of what podcasts are and how it might assist in reaching a larger audience. It didn't really cross our minds as we were talking about it, like, "Oh, this is going to, you know, reach a larger audience, and then we can build into this, and, you know, and like this great plan. It really never wasn't like that. Like we were just having conversations and then we heard, we know we were listening to other podcasts and we realized, hey, we should record our conversations. Maybe other people would like to hear us, you know, what we have to say. And then it, you know, it's just kind of that, the circumstance, combined to create this thing. And it's the same with art making, right? Like, you make a painting and then after the fact, 20 years later, people look back and say, "Oh, look, he was very intelligent in doing this." You know, "He put these two colors together, and that was exactly the right thing to do because, you know, he anticipated the war of such and such." And really, you know, and I've heard this over and over again. I've watched so many documentaries. love them and I love just going to artist studios and I spend a lot of time talking with artists and rarely is it ever that calculated or, you know, conscious. It's, I really do think that there's something to this idea that artists are the mirror of society, that, you know, artists are just reflecting the unique set of circumstances that, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, around us.
Carrie ScottSo true. So true. But I do, but I think people like to pretend there's a plan and an answer. And I'm forever saying to people, I just, I don't know, you just get there. That's how you end up. There's this amazing,
oh God, who is the quote?
Carrie Scottit's not what, when, it's all about what is, that you can't get back, no matter how much you backtrack and delve into the past, you can't actually figure out how you got to where you are. It's just what is. Mm-hm. And it's true. It's, we're here.
Trenton ReynoldsAnd that's the difficulty of your job though. I think that's what I would like to hear you talk about is that it is your job to put this messiness that is art and artists into some kind of context and present it in a way that's comprehensible and accessible. So it's interesting to me that you are playing with this tension between the inherent messiness of art making. you know, the messiness of our time where power structures are being questioned and toppled and all this stuff. And you have to figure out a way to create a TV show, to create a space, to create an online, you know, a website and present all this in some kind of comprehensible, meaningful way, you know. And that is part of the dynamic between the art and society is, you know, the people who are in the art world. able to somehow crystallize meaning from, you know, from the stuff that's just kind of happening. Do you see that as your role?
Carrie ScottI do. I absolutely do. So, but I think, I think there's a... I don't know I think there's a I think if you're open to sort of listening and looking that you can then pull people along with you to listen and look and that's really my only job you know I can put together a sort of five-year plan and say to an artist where do you want to get to and we can together say okay this is where we want to get to and you can get there you know you can white-knuckle through anything and you can try and you can try and you can try and I believe that you know if you work hard you get to where you want to get to but that on the way if you can just help people to stop and look
you've done it.
Carrie ScottBecause actually, that's all it is. It's like, just stand in front of this thing and think about it. And if I can pose four questions that make you stop and look,
then I'm done. That's it.
Carrie ScottSo it's really, it's more that I'm like a... Yeah, you're just helping people stop and look. It's like slowing down almost.
Trenton ReynoldsSo I understand that intellectually, and I think it's a beautiful, wonderful idea. I really do. That really strikes a chord with me. As somebody coming from the side that I am, I'm on the artist side, how does that-- what does that actually look like? Like, I don't know, maybe this is overstepping and Sabrina or Carrie, let me know. I don't know. You know, I don't want to, whatever, over-ask. I always over-ask. I'm an over-asker. But Carrie, what does that mean for you and Sabrina? Like, how do you take Sabrina and get people to stop and look. I mean, is that, are you calling people? Are you, like, I just don't understand. Does that make sense? Like the actual mechanics of that?
Carrie ScottNo, it does. It's about hustling. I mean, when people ask me what I do, if I've had a glass of wine, I'm like, like I'm a hustler. I'm an art hustler. It is. It's calling people. It's sending emails. It's saying, you know, I can't tell you how many times I have written to a curator at a top museum who has ignored me. I mean, just verbatim ignored me. And now he's like, oh, okay. That girl actually I mean, he pretends like I've never written to him before and that this is the first time I've met him, but he's now paying attention. So it is, it's cold calling. I'm a salesperson, ultimately, and I just choose to do it in a slightly different way. So I've chosen to do it by helping artists outside of the traditional gallery model, whether that be the TV show, whether that be participating the podcast, whether it be helping them build a website, whether it be doing like non-traditional exhibitions or traditional exhibitions. Like it's figuring out the best way to help their work be seen. And it's totally calling people, you know, it's calling interior designers, because you think, do you know what? This work is beautiful, and if people want it to be easy, they can think it's easy, and those interior designers will put it up on the wall for a couple shoots, and it'll appear in a house and garden, and then all of a sudden someone will buy it. You know, it's like, I keep saying hustling, but it's hustling.
Trenton ReynoldsBut there's a, so it's not entirely... there's this business side of it, right? Whereas there's just the, you know, wanting to make money for both yourself and the artist, you know, it's a living, but then there's also this aspect of it where it's just, you know, like you said, you want to get people to stop and look and, you know, just have this, there's an experiential side. How do you see that? Or how does that dynamic work?
Carrie ScottWell, I've never... There is, you know, art for me isn't art for art's sake. It just, it isn't. And for as long as art's been made, there's been a commissioning person. Think about the Medici's. Mm-hmm. you can go back further than that when there were cave drawings, right? Those were a way to communicate. And that's what it's always been about. So the business of art is the is the business of making it and the business of selling it. They're they are so intertwined that they can exist. without the other. So I have no problem with it being a business. I just think that there's a way to do it with a bucket load of integrity and there's a way to do it without. And the used car salesman version is how to do it without, I think. And that's, I mean, that's pretty, I'm being quite damning of the gallery world which is scary and i may call you tomorrow and say do not put that out there but equally why but equally if you look at the path i've taken i yeah that's what i've done um can you tell us a little bit about your
Sabrina Ward Harrisonpath that you've taken
Oh, God.
Carrie ScottNo. It's boring. It's dull. I worked for the best gallery in the whole world.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonWait, back up, though. You studied at school.
Carrie ScottI studied English and art history. I mean, in high school, I wanted to be an artist.
Hmm.
Carrie ScottAnd then I went to this amazing little liberal arts school called Dickinson where if you wanted to be an artist you had to take art history classes. And my mother was pretty good at saying, "Just also do something practical." with literature. Anyway, I did enough credits so that I could have had a double major, but I focused on my English degree in the end. Then I went to work for Condé Nast Travelers online site straight out of college. I thought it was like my dream job. I was so happy I was at Conde Nast and you know that was it. I was part of the magazine world and I never had to leave. And then I quickly realized that that wasn't the right formula for me because it was too formulaic, like what I did there. And then I, oh and then September 11th happened and that was big and scary and I had to, I just had to had to do something. I mean, I had to like shake my version of reality up. So I decided I was going to go to grad school at the same time that Gerhard Richter had a show at MoMA, his first retrospective. And I realized that I was spending more time staring at his paintings than I was doing anything else. And that was the only thing that I was doing. was making me feel better. So I was like, I know I'm going to go to grad school. I'm going to write about travel from an art perspective. I've got this all nailed out and everything's going to be fine. I have no idea how I'm going to pay for it, but everything's going to be fine. And I wanted to get as far away from both New York and London as I could. So the West Coast was the answer. And then I ended up in Seattle knowing absolutely no one and was like, what have I just done? This is crazy. Like, this place is backwater. This is not a city. Like, I ping-ponged between London and New York my whole life. Where am I? Yeah. But it was the best thing. I mean, it was amazing. And the program was good, but the best thing was that I met... I met some people that were like living and breathing art, you know, and I worked for James Harris, who I still maintain has one of the best eyes in the business. And he. You know, his program is beautiful. The way he looks at art is beautiful. The way he approaches his business is beautiful. I think he goes bankrupt every other month, but he's he's amazing. And it was it was incredible working for him. It was him and I, and it was sort of him and I against the world. And we did some amazing things together. When I left him, I was heartbroken.
But I felt like,
Carrie Scottyou know, I had been recruited to go back to New York, and if I was gonna make a success of this I had to be in New York and again I did two years in New York and was like ah no get me out of here this is awful it was like con day all over again I was like I was back in a big machine and it was formulaic and it just didn't work and you didn't have any freedom so in Seattle I could you know I ran a name nonprofit at the same time as working for Jim I was writing and in New York everyone was like no no you can't do all those things You have to just, you're just, you're sales. You're a director of a gallery, you're just sales. Sell, sell, sell. And so, thank God for 2008. Like I was there at another shaky moment and I just thought, when Nicole fired me that was a good start she didn't fire me she let me go because of financial stuff and I was like okay I'll just try this and again to give my parents their due my mom was like okay but and away I went. So that's my sort of part of history.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonSo you came to London.
Carrie ScottWell, I also came to London because I was head over heels in love with this four-year-old man. He's four years younger than me. So that's why I call him a four-year-old. But he, yeah, I was sort of like, okay, I've got, I have my own business. Ha ha ha. Which I really didn't. I mean, I think I was making like $200 a month. But I was pretending I had my own business and that everything was going to be fine. And I was eating into the tiny amount of savings that I had. And yeah, my now husband kept saying, well, you can move. You've got both passports and you have your own business. So why don't you just come? And at the same time, Jimmy Moffitt, who's the head of art and commerce, which is a company that represents some of the biggest fashion photographers in the world, he said to me, "Oh, I've got this photographer in London who needs some help. Would you ever consider going?" And I was like, "Yes, because I can figure out the boy and maybe this will be good for business." Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's where I come back to the like, there is no linear what is. It was all a big messy thing and you just go with it, right?
Trenton ReynoldsI think that's what feels to me like why you and Sabrina make such a good fit. I mean, you've approached your career or your life very, very much the way I feel like Sabrina talks about approaching her artwork, you know. And my life, too. And your life, yeah. Yeah. And I think it takes a very specific kind of person, a personality to... to be able to deal with living in the question, you know, and not forcing an answer, not forcing a narrative or relying on somebody else's narrative, you know, the willingness to kind of exist in a slippery space, you know, like just to kind of be suspended for a while and allow things to happen as they need to happen as you would want them to happen.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonAbsolutely, yeah. And either people get that or they totally don't get that. You can't spend your life trying to tell people, uh-uh. Yeah.
Trenton ReynoldsBut Carrie, as Sabrina's representative, what do you want-- or as an artist, let's just say an artist generally, a representative. What is it that you want the artist to provide you? Or what's the relationship there? Like, are you just kind of checking in every once in a while to see if she's produced something new? Or, I mean, Clem Greenberg going into the studio and trying to force the artist to create the work that supports his theories? You know, or like what is what do you what you want that dynamic or relationship to be?
Carrie ScottI mean, I think ultimately it's custodial. That that I'm. Thank you. helping it get out there because you guys should be too busy making. And I should just be taking it and figuring out how to put it in front of as many people as possible. And I could expand on that, but I think that's probably the sweet spot, really. It's just how do you get important work seen?
Sabrina Ward Harrison- I have a question, just tying into the last bit about how you then started working with Nick Knight and the idea of working with someone's archive. Isn't that kind of what a bit of your, can you explain? And also when you and I start talking about working together, there is an element of like, there is an archive of all this work from all these books.
Carrie Scott- Yeah, and I love that part, so I love the puzzle. I love the like, digging through and trying to, you know, piece together the puzzle and make it in a way that isn't quite as messy as maybe it is in your heads. I think also artists hate looking back. I don't know if you feel that way but um so I'm sort of the person that should look back and artists are too busy making to do it so. I think that's another big part of my role, and it's something I truly enjoy. So, and again, I enjoy it not just from being able to look at a whole bunch of beautiful stuff, but that puzzle of... And actually, maybe, because we keep talking about it, but maybe looking back and trying to say, Oh, how did we get here? How did we get here? What were the steps? yeah
Trenton ReynoldsI think as an artist I know like I've had this devil narrative talk in my head that I lost my chance when I didn't jump on the train that was provided me at my last MFA thesis show. kind of sense of vulnerability when they think of a relationship with somebody who's going to become their representative and I don't know it's feels like you know you're putting your precious things in somebody else is care. And do you have a sense for that? Do you have a sense that...
Carrie ScottWell, even more so, not only are they putting their voices in my hands, but there's also the financial side of it. Right. Like if I don't perform, they can't keep doing what they want to do. And it's that basic. And it's that scary. So actually... Yeah, I mean it's petrifying for me in so many ways.
Trenton ReynoldsI'm sure you've seen gallerists who have not, you know, had integrity and not cared for that relationship as they should have or respected their role in that relationship. Do you feel like that is something...
Carrie Scottmake it happen with integrity and with the hustle. So it's both sides, right?
Sabrina Ward HarrisonIt is and I haven't allowed both sides. I've been so like, I can't, I don't, I just don't. Sabrina, make some money. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. I don't want to, I don't know. See, now I feel shy putting that in the podcast because like I deserve to be. I put, made so much work for people and I, and it's still that vulnerable of like, eh, and it's just like, it is tied to it and I have to embrace that. And that's what's inspiring is working with somebody that knows and understands why I made
Carrie Scottthe work I made. And that's deeply, yeah. We're products of, you know, the breaking of the canvas was not very long ago right the so this is all new that or or the the idea that like art can exist without commerce was this thing that the artists fought and fought and fought for um or that the narrative was fun that they fought for it but jackson pollock was still selling paintings for huge amounts of money right warhol was selling paintings for huge amounts of money, but they were like, no, no, no, no, no.
We don't have to.
Carrie ScottSo it's this funny, I don't know, it's all new. It's a really new thing that I don't think any of us have worked out. I don't know where I'm going with that thought, but it's somewhere.
Trenton Reynoldsin there. But I think something that you've brought up several times now is this idea of integrity. And I think that needs to exist on both sides of that relationship, both in your, on your side, where you are taking on this stewardship over, you know, these, these artists work and how they are presented to the world and where they're presented. But there's also got to be integrity on the artist's side that they don't kind of start to make decisions based on things that aren't authentic or that aren't true to themselves and like even if you give them the opportunity to do something that would be lucrative but not necessarily in line with where their heart's at right they need to be able to have the integrity to say no.
Carrie Scott- Absolutely. And annoyingly, I work with the most stubborn artists in the world, I think, who all of them, I'll try and bully them into something, and they're like, "Nope." Sabrina, you're one of them. - I'm excited, I wanna be. - Which frustrates me in the moment, and then I have to be like, "Okay, just go with it for a second."
Sabrina Ward Harrison- Like what's an example for you and I?
Trenton ReynoldsThat's a tough question. That is a tough question. We haven't had a big one yet.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonWhat would be an example or something?
Um...
Carrie Scottyou know I think there is an opportunity this is a real one that we we could exploit what's in your storage unit because it's all gold and we could throw it out there now I don't think we should but there's a part of me that thinks we should. So, but I don't think we should. - Yeah. - So that's not the best example. I'm trying to think of a really good one.
Sabrina Ward Harrison- How do you, that's one question about that because my reasoning for that is like, there's, I do think the stuff, the storage unit, like the archive of the, work from the books that I protected and kept as holes, that has value. But then when I think about all the work I photograph that is I'm like, that's just some shitty screen print. It's like, which I should.
Carrie ScottIt's not like think about. You know, Louise Bourgeois, you look at her stuff now. And every sketch is important. Hmm. And yes, I did just compare you to Louise Bourgeois. So that's huge. We'll just do that. We'll just own that. Yeah. Putting it out there.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonOh, I want to be mindful of your time. Yeah, we just did an hour.
Carrie ScottThat was fun, though. Can we do this again? Can we do one just about parenting? Yes. Yes.
Trenton ReynoldsYes, for sure.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonThat was really cool. I look forward to the next episode with you. Tough. Talking parenting.
Trenton ReynoldsYeah, episode on parenting coming soon. And thank you all for joining us for another week. So happy that you're there listening, and thank you for all your feedback. If you're interested in one of the True Living experiences coming up, please go to the website. Write us on iTunes, please. If you want to support the podcast, we would love it if you would... Contribute at patreon.com forward slash room. And now, get out and tell your story.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonYes, yes, yes, yes.
Bye. Bye.