Trenton ReynoldsIt's Saturday, February 16th, 2019, 2019, 2019, and this is room in the trees.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonThis is a podcast about living a creative life and taking some decisive action. Room in the Trees is brought to you by Trent Reynolds and me, Sabrina Ward-Harrison.
Trenton ReynoldsShow notes can be found at roominthetrees.com.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonPlease leave us a review and rate us on iTunes. And if you want to be a supporter, please go to patreon.com forward slash room.
Trenton ReynoldsAnd tell your friends.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonYes. And you can find us on Instagram. I met at Sabrina Ward Harrison and Trent, you are at Trent Reynolds Art, is that right?
Yep.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonAll right.
Trenton ReynoldsOkay, fine.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonOkay, fine. Okay, fine, I'll do this.
Lots been going on.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonI'm just, I'm joking about because I'm so happy to be doing this. podcast.
Trenton ReynoldsWe're committed. I'm committed.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonYes. Yes.
Trenton ReynoldsThis is a new beginning. Re-beginning? Season, you called it season three. Season three, yeah.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonIt's season three. And it's going to be a lot coming at you, folks. I was just in the grocery store reflecting upon when I put out on Instagram, what would be, people want to hear about what people's favorite episodes were. And, I was thinking about the apples, leather weather, and the apples, and the kind of the chicken and sweet potato thing. I did pretty heavily. I've made an adjustment about that.
Trenton ReynoldsAdjustment about the chicken and sweet potato situation?
Yep.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonWhat's the adjustment? Something, something, and I bought 10 of them today, was...
Trenton Reynoldspork tenderloin. I didn't know about that in my life. You did 10, you bought 10 pork tenderloins.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonYep. Yep. Yep. They were on sale. So I had them each individually freezer wrapped and I just didn't know. I always thought pork, I thought pork and I was like, no, I didn't grow up eating it. And it's tender and it's great.
Trenton ReynoldsSo do you know how many tender loins there are per pork, per pig?
Sabrina Ward HarrisonI think probably one.
Trenton ReynoldsDoes a pig only have one tender loin? No.
One loin?
Trenton ReynoldsOr are there multiple loins? I have no idea even where one would look on a pig for its loins.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonMaybe the loin is like the inner leg, the inner thigh.
Trenton ReynoldsIs that the loin? On both sides of a pig's body. I don't know. Not sure. We're going to have to check this out. We might have to edit this. We might have to check to edit this out.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonNo, stay tuned for next episode. We will have answers.
Trenton ReynoldsI'm sure there are plenty of people that would like to educate us on life.
Sabrina Ward Harrisontenderloins though you got 10 pork tenderloin yeah i'm on this i just i i i'm just on this kick like when i get on a kick i just get on the kick so um you're not joking that is a kick it's just protein it's just you know i like the flavor of them there's one that one of them is marinated in chipotle raspberry marinade and the other one is mesquite uh cherry like there's they're known for cherries here in northern Wisconsin.
Trenton ReynoldsThat sounds fantastic. Really good. I'm a fan of pork tenderloin myself. You are?
Sabrina Ward HarrisonYeah. I just never had it.
Trenton ReynoldsAlong similar lines, I have recently, as in the last two or three months, gotten into sous vide. Oh, what's that? It's, it's a style of cooking where essentially you, you cook stuff in hot water. You, there's a special device. It's this like, it kind of looks like a submersion blender, you know, like, but it's a, it's a heating element that you, that you suspend in water in just like a big bowl. And, and, and, and, and, and, And then this thing cycles the water through the bowl and heats it up at the same time. So it keeps the water a very consistent heat. And then you put whatever you're cooking into a bag, a plastic bag that's like a freezer, heavy-duty, non-toxic food bag. And you cook it for longer periods of time at lower heat. If you've never done it, it sounds a little strange, but it's fantastic for meat because you don't get dried out meat because you cook it at a lower temperature for longer. And then you just, when it's cooked and safe to eat, like it's cooked for long enough, you just sear the outside. Yeah. And so it's super juicy and delicious. And it's kind of hard to mess it up. How do you spell that? Sous vide, S-O-U-S-V-I-D-E. Wow. And I have cooked pork tenderloin sous vide. I have. And it was indeed fantastic. Because the problem that I've had with tenderloin, I've put it in the oven in the past and then I just overcook it. And it's a little bit dry. Anyway, sous vide. Definitely check it out.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonSo what are we going to talk about today?
Trenton ReynoldsWhat do we talk about on this podcast?
Sabrina Ward HarrisonWhat do we talk about on here? I think talking about decisive action was going to be something we're going to talk about.
Trenton Reynoldsabout. Yep. A little decisive action. I wanted to hear some of your thoughts about what you've been up to this past several months. You have been very focused, laser focused even. We've checked in periodically, so I'm kind of generally aware of what you're up to, but I'd just like to hear kind of what your experience has been and- things that you have learned along the way. I'm being very vague, but I'll kind of let you decide what, what parts of it do you think are worth talking about?
Is that fair?
Sabrina Ward HarrisonSure. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I've been definitely in a phase of life of very laser focused and very excited by what I'm learning and what I'm seeing. I'm experiencing with, um, my audience of great, great people. Um, I finished, so I launched the course on tethered and we, and that ended it's, um, be six months coming up this May, I mean, March 6th. And that was just such an incredible, incredible experience to have a window into, um, and be a part of and share with and with all these wonderful people from all over the world who kind of formed this fantastic community of support and expression and rule breaking and, warmth, I really have gotten, it got me really excited to kind of do more. I thought to have something to go from an idea to think, I want to help people untether to seeing, you know, people postings, you know, in South Africa or Germany or Bahamas or South Dakota, these, them doing these projects and having these experiences and taking them in their own directions has just been like Seeing that come alive has been so exciting to me. Really, really truly. And seeing them support each other, I think that's gotten me very excited in the future is forming these communities of people that are just thinking, having great ideas, great thoughts, insight.
Trenton ReynoldsSo I imagine one of, and we've talked about similar types of things before that one of the concerns about doing online types of education would be that you wouldn't feel as connected or present in the group and with people. Has that been the case or it sounds like you've found that's, that's kind of what I'm, I'm, I'm more interested in, or most interested in is that, yeah. Like what has surprised you about how it's felt to to do workshops Online rather than in person, which is what you've you know done in the past
Sabrina Ward HarrisonI think the getting over the self-consciousness part of it once you're over that Hurdle, which is pretty big, you know, just thinking I don't want to be on video and I'm self-conscious of what I'm saying As I'm saying it then you can just be yourself and then let your, your random and your silly come out and, and be okay, just like, just as, as it is. And so then I can really get into the, the mode and the being that I am when I'm in person with people. And the technology, I think it's, I think it's pretty satisfying to people that they're feeling connected with me and each other. And especially just seeing people connect with each other. You know, maybe that they had spilling open my books years ago and now they're older. But they have that similarity of... value and appreciation for expression. And there's a way in which people that resonate with my work resonate with raw, real authenticity. And to see people then bonding with that same force and energy is just really great. There's not a lot of people that are like, okay, I'm here to just learn this. I don't want to let my walls down. It's people that are really like, yeah, I've got... and she made one for the course. So what came from that is a sense of what I've learned through connecting with everybody was that they really want to be guided through creating their own books. They've always wondered how I put Spilling Open together and how I transferred, you know, took from my own journals and brought them into make creating pages with them and like kind of what I left out how I translated my writing from my journals and how I kind of chose the art that went with it and how that juxtaposition worked and how that flow happened and so I've never really I not really I never have shared that process entirely and from beginning to end So I am just putting it all out there and really looking forward to sharing that this next spring, this coming spring.
Trenton ReynoldsSo it walks people through your process and do you give them some, I guess, instruction or prompts or something to help them come up with their own pages?
Sabrina Ward HarrisonYeah, it's going to really start with the mental confidence and limiting beliefs and... sort of not knowing how to do it, but doing it regardless. And for me, it was a lot of my brainstorming, mind mapping processes. I have all those original big pieces of paper that I mind mapped out each of the... First, I did a huge list of all the things I wanted to have in my book. And then I would do this mind mapping of what... When I... As those themes start to show themselves. And then... So it's a way that there's... you know, the book looks like it's random and it's, but it's really has an internal structure to it that makes it work. And there's a sequence and then a flow to it emotionally, I think with the words and also with the color palettes throughout each section in the book. And so it's not just about like, how do I put a clock, you know, mixed media book together? Cause anyone can do that, but it's really, how do you, how do you decide what, You make larger for me, like what I would put in black ink, you know, in a heavy brush pen versus like in light and pencil, like a lot, you know, perpendicular along the margin, like how to work with the text that you have and how you evoke emotion with that. that text and then the imagery that, that comes with it. And also I'm a firm believer, like this is not a book that you need to go sit down and write it. It's got, I think it already exists within the parameter of your home. I'm the writing can become from what you've, things you've written in journals, you're, you know, it could be, it's all within you and around you. Like I never created new, like new photographs for spilling open. I didn't say, I'm going to go out and photograph, you know, just do this photo shoot to put it for the book. Like you can feel in that book that it's not done that way. It's like, kind of the alchemy of how images match up with the words is a really beautiful process in itself. Right. So...
Trenton ReynoldsThat's really interesting.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonReally excited about, yeah.
Trenton ReynoldsWell, it seems to me like one of the frustrations that you've talked about in the past, and correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like you've been frustrated in the past that sometimes people will take your aesthetic and basically make their own Sabrina, make their own Sabrina. basically a mimicry of what you do. Right. And that's kind of missing the point of your work. Right. Is that it's driven by, you know, the content. It's driven by something below that, its material existence. And for people to really capture the power of your work, they're going to have to plug into their own you know, their own content, their own... Does that make sense? Exactly. It feels like you're giving them a way, instruction not just how to use ink and how to paste down paper, but how to get at the root of what drives your work, and that is, you know, this really intense personal authentic experience. Uh-huh. That's really, really cool. I hadn't really... And that is not what I expected you to describe. So that's... And I don't even know what I expected you to describe. But I think that really seems like a pretty fantastic way to go. And I look forward to the variety that that will... you know, inevitably bring. I know. Yeah, I know. I know. It's interesting in like in college or in any art school you go and there will be like five art teachers at the school and, you know, you'll get students that kind of congregate around each of the different teachers and you'll end up noticing that all the students kind of make work that looks a lot like the teacher, right? And that's not necessarily a bad thing. You know, they're kind of learning how to come up with stuff that they like. But, you know, then when you see a student that really is able to go beyond and tap into something that's uniquely theirs, like there's something really that... that is special about that. And it seems like that's what you're going for is not to recreate little use all around the world, but to give people, empower people to, to do it, do the same thing for themselves.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonExactly. Exactly. And just also the freedom, like, like make it, make it. I remember our episode about make the ugliest painting you can find or the ugliest painting you can paint or something like that. There's a way, it's like, let this be the, like, let it just get it, like, get it, let it be, like, I want to say to my intern, Megan, I said, can we just call this Make Your Shitty a Shitty First Book or something like that? Like that great Anne Lamott line in Bird by Bird where she talks about shitty first drafts. Like, you just get it out, you get it down on paper, you just go, you just... do it. And, um, there's a way at which is like, there's, you don't, the preciousness is not going to help the book be any better. Like it's the exercise of making it like, just make it just, let's do this. Let's just, let's just do this. And I think the limitation when I made spilling open, if I'd had five years to make that book, it wouldn't be, it wouldn't be remotely interesting. It would be like, I would have second guessed and showed it to someone. I've been like, I don't, I don't know. I don't think I'm going to share that. But I had like, I just had to keep shoveling out. you know, spreads every week and, you know, bringing them in my car to the publishers and coming back doing 20 more. And there was not a lot of time to sit and wonder and, you know, it wasn't like sitting around on InDesign, you know, tinkering with whether I was going to justify it right or left. Like it just, it was, you just, it was go time. So.
Yeah.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonI want people to have that experience, you know, if they really do resonate with that, that work, I want them to have that similar level of exploration and force of action, decisive action. Again, there we go. Decisive action.
Trenton ReynoldsDecisive action.
Yeah.
Trenton ReynoldsAnd the one, the other thing that kind of stood out to me when you're just talking is, is that, yeah. you know, they don't have to come up with all new stuff. You know, that's, that's, that's, I think people feel this kind of pressure or anxiety about coming up with something new and fresh and something they've never done before. But, you know, like I have, well, it happens often in classes where I'll have a student that has done something and something's not right with it. And so they, they're, they feel like they need to do something new or start over or scrap it or, you know, like, when really they just need to take what they already have and just rearrange it a little bit, or, you know, or see it in a different way, or, you know, it's not they need to add anything to the equation, they just need to finesse it, you know, or rearrange it. Anyway, I'm saying the same thing over and over again, but I think that's a, that relieves the pressure of, you know, or anxiety about, you know, coming up with something that's, that's new and entirely different. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah. Cool.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonThe other, this other one thing that's happening is I decided I want to take a small, I don't think I've even talked to you about this, a small group of people And go have a friggin' true living experience in friggin' Italy. No, you didn't tell me that. Oh, I told you this? I'm going to take six people and just, like, concept-wise, just go live some life. Yeah. because there comes a point in time when you have to go live some life. So, right. So that's happening next September. And I have four, I've interviewed people, people can apply for it. And I'm interviewing people and interviewing people. And I've chosen four people out of the six spots. So it's been really, it's really fun. It's really, we're staying this I'm not going to give away the location, but this place that is, it's a little further north. It's near Verona, and it's just really exciting. So that's totally happening.
Trenton ReynoldsThat is fantastic. yeah so can people if people are if somebody's interested in applying to that um yes you can go
Sabrina Ward Harrisonwell well i'll put a link in the put a link in the show notes also in my bio on instagram i have a link tree where there's a few you click on the bio link and there's a few different links and there's one there for clicking on that to apply so it's very it is very expensive but it's um it's kind of a once in a lifetime scenario situation. So,
I'm, I can't wait.
Trenton ReynoldsWow. Yeah, that sounds wonderful. So, We were, Go ahead. No, you go ahead.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonI am excited about what we filmed. I am excited about what we filmed in Santa Monica a few months ago. For those of you who want to see Room in the Trees in action, we friggin' painted our butts off in Santa Monica at Trent's studio and filmed it. We had a great – AJ, this guy, filmed it. A wonderful woman named Kate has been editing it, and we are really excited to share it with you. This one is about a 20-something minute long, and we're going to have it be – Trent will tell you what it will be. But I just want to say how it's – there's not a lot of footage of me making art. at all out there. And this is, this has just been a really, this is, it was really frigging funny. And go ahead. What do you think?
Trenton ReynoldsIt is. Well, I, I would have to say the same is true for me. There's not a whole lot of footage out there making work, but, and it's kind of a disturbing in some sense to watch myself, you know, because it's always such an internal process. Yeah. You know, to see yourself doing something is completely different. But it was so much fun. It was so much fun doing it. And I really felt like it was a great learning experience all around. Like, just felt like it was, It was wonderful. And Kate's been doing a fantastic job editing. So really excited to get that out. This is new territory for us. So we're still trying to, you know, figure out what the right model is. This is, you know... we certainly don't have all of this figured out. So we will be curious to hear what people think and what the response is both to the video and to just how we are distributing it. But for now, I think what we've decided on is that we will make this video available to Patreon subscribers who are subscribing for the amount of $1 an episode, or you can just go and download it for a one-time payment at the website, the room in the trees.com. For $35. For $35,000. No, for... So for people who are not subscribers, you can download the video at the website roominthetrees.com for a one-time payment of $35.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonAnd what are we doing in that video? What's happening?
Trenton ReynoldsWhat are we doing in that video? We are... What aren't we doing in that video? I don't know. We do everything. No, we're a painting. We're making three big paintings together. So it's a collaborative project. We're working on the same three paintings at the same time, and it's a ton of fun.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonWith no plan going into it.
No plan. No plan.
Sabrina Ward Harrisonplan. No conversation about how collaboration works. It was so funny. I think your example about the Basquiat and Warhol, I've got to see that documentary about them working together on
Trenton Reynoldsa piece. Yeah, if you haven't done that, definitely recommend it. I don't even know what I searched for on YouTube, but I'm pretty sure it's... It would probably be pretty easy to find. Just type in Basquiat-Warhol collaboration or something like that. And it is so funny to listen to Warhol. You know, he just kind of has this stream of consciousness dialogue about how Basquiat is ruining his painting. Yeah. Anyway, it's fantastic.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonSo we're really interested in bringing Room in the Trees to life that way. So whether we start teaching a course that continues, or we're filming these sessions together, but the dimensionality, is that the word? Dimensionality. sure yeah just like okra okra okra
Trenton Reynoldsyellow okra
Sabrina Ward HarrisonI thought it was okra
not okra
Sabrina Ward Harrisonyeah so but what we the theme seemed to be decisive action yeah And that's what kind of feels like the title for this piece that we did, the video.
Trenton ReynoldsAnd we acted decisively.
Yeah.
Trenton ReynoldsI thought that idea of decisive action, I don't know. When you're making artwork, if you're not decisive, if you don't act out of confidence, even if you have no clue what you're doing, that tentativeness or that insecurity comes through in the work. Yeah. So I think there's something really important about decisive action. Like, even if you don't have no clue what's going to happen, you've got to act like you mean it, right? You've got to go into it with a certain amount of confidence. I think that's a really important idea. What would you say, what does decisive action mean to you?
Sabrina Ward HarrisonJust starting, just putting a color down that's putting just, just like everything
we did.
Sabrina Ward Harrisonit's just not letting things be too precious. It's just not that interesting. If you're just thinking, let me try it 17 other ways on scrap paper. The scrap paper is going to be more interesting than the piece. I'm sitting here with my hands on my hips, like just sitting on it. I have this look of like frigging decisive action in my hands and my hips. I'm talking to you right now.
Yeah. Yeah. Uh,
Sabrina Ward HarrisonOh, I guess decisive action is just where there's also so much joy. It's the aliveness. It's vivid. It's happening. Life is happening. You're in life happening. Like children, like your wonderful girls, they live in a life of decisive action.
Trenton ReynoldsYeah, absolutely. And I think there's something to it of, it's not just the kind of action, but it's like the attitude you bring to the project. It's like you have made a decision to make these actions. Yeah. And you're going to be completely there. You're not going to be in the future, like projecting this out and worrying about what it might be. You're not going to be in the past by worrying about how you've... never been good at drawing or never known how to paint. You're just going to be there and you're going to do it. And you're going to decide to do it no matter what. And without, you know, this, all this baggage in the past and in the future of what it might or has to be. Right. Right. Like, Right. If I had hips, I would have my hand on them. But when you get chubby as a man, you just lose your hips entirely and they just, you know, maybe I can loop my thumbs in my belt, take a very confident posture.
Yeah.
Trenton ReynoldsNo, I think decisive action, very important. Man, how do you teach that?
Sabrina Ward HarrisonOh, man, a lot of ways. I think... Well, I think my process that I did with folks on Tethered was definitely... I think I love taking people out of their comfort zone. Like, you're going to do this. You're going to get this. You're going to use these cheap materials. You're going to use this limited... Like, all limited, limited, limited.
So you can just... Not like...
Sabrina Ward Harrisonit takes away the sense of like it's almost too many choices can be debilitating. So, um, and I also think it's sort of sense of timeframe. Like we got this again, if we could have spent, you know, four weeks working on those three paintings, but we had an afternoon we had, I was there. We had an afternoon. We did it,
but, um,
Sabrina Ward Harrisonyou know, we didn't sketch it out first. How boring would that be?
Yeah.
Trenton ReynoldsAnd it was, there was anxiety involved. It was not, you know, completely free of... Oh, there's all kinds of anxiety. There wasn't, it wasn't tension free, right? Yeah. Anyway, I think people need to check this thing out because it is...
It's worthwhile.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonI was surprised by how much came up for me around thinking I had to try to resolve something with color. I learned a lot from doing that. I learned a lot. I thought about a lot of stuff after that. So we'll have a discussion. We'd love to hear your feedback about it and definitely let us know what you want to know more about and see us exploring.
Thanks for listening.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonJoin us next week for another episode of Room in the Trees.
Trenton ReynoldsAnd look forward to Decisive Action, a Room in the Trees experience coming soon for Patreon subscribers and on our website, roominthetrees.com. And now go out and...
decide
Sabrina Ward Harrisondecide decide you get some pork tenderloins there you go
Trenton Reynoldsgo get yourself a pork tenderloin cook it up
marinate it you eat that
Sabrina Ward Harrisonpork tenderloin decisive with decisive action
Trenton Reynoldsdecisively eat pork tenderloin
Sabrina Ward Harrisonyes and uh thank you for joining us we are excited to be back this is season three