Trenton ReynoldsThis is Room in the Trees, a podcast about living a creative life. Room in the Trees is hosted by Sabrina Ward-Harrison and me, Trent Reynolds.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonShow notes including pictures, links, video and more for every episode can be found at roominthetrees.com.
Trenton ReynoldsIf you like this podcast, please consider showing your support. You can become a subscribing patron at patreon.com/room.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonPlease help us grow our audience by rating us or writing a review on iTunes. To do that, you can use the link. roominthetrees.com forward slash iTunes in any phone or computer internet browser.
Trenton ReynoldsYou can follow us on Instagram at Sabrina Ward Harrison and at Trent Reynolds Art.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonAnd now here's this week's episode.
Trenton ReynoldsI got a little bit of a body topic. Are you up for that?
I'm ready for it.
Trenton ReynoldsAll right. You tell me if this gets into territory that you'd rather not go to.
Okay.
Trenton ReynoldsSo as a father, you're constantly, you know, as a parent, you have to teach your kids how to talk about their bodies and Right. And so you come up with ways of referring to various body parts. And I'm curious, because I've noticed that there is one, okay, so you can say, you can use the medical terminology.
Right.
Trenton ReynoldsWe're all women at my house, except for me, so we say "PP" instead of "vagina." But we also use "vagina" when it's maybe a situation where you're talking about it a little bit more deliberately. What if, say, there's discomfort? You know, does your pee-pee hurt would be...
Okay.
Trenton ReynoldsWhat's wrong with your pee-pee, right?
Uh-huh.
Trenton ReynoldsLaura has used cooch before. But I come from a family of all boys, so this is terminology that just was not necessary. I guess we called, we used pee-pee instead of penis.
Yeah.
Trenton ReynoldsPee pee and poo poo. So can I ask what was it in your house? Did you kind of bounce between the informal pee pee and the more formal vagina or was it?
Sabrina Ward HarrisonI don't remember. That's a great question. I don't even remember ever talking about it or referring to it. That's interesting. I don't, it was, um, definitely came from a very prude, you know, family. Yeah. You know, pretty conservative. Yeah. I don't recall my mom. I don't remember us talking about it whatsoever. And I never had, I don't recall ever having, I mean, it must have had an issue with it at some point, but I don't recall like, the question like, what's wrong with your pee pee?
Trenton ReynoldsDoes your pee pee hurt? Yeah. They'll be itching and you gotta, you know, ask some questions to discover what the issue is. Do they need to go to the bathroom or is it itchy? You know, and anyway,
yeah.
Trenton ReynoldsThis parenting stuff is fascinating.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonIt's just I love getting to get a bird's eye window into a person occasionally. It's so great. Keep going.
Trenton ReynoldsYou don't really think of this stuff until you're presented with the situation, right? Even when you babysit, you're not usually the one that has to cover those topics. No. So there's no way other than just to – go through it yourself, I guess. So I'm not super comfortable with the term cooch and I don't know if I want my kids going through life, or especially in these formative years, referring to their vaginas as coochies. Yeah. Yeah. And then, and then, well, this is what I'm trying to get to for the anus, because sometimes there are problems with ani, anuses. Oh, wow. Do You don't recall, I imagine, then, what you would refer to your anus as.
No. No. Yeah.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonI just say your butt. Your butt.
Trenton ReynoldsYour butt, yeah. Does your butt hurt? Sometimes you need that specificity, though, of the actual... anus. And like say if you've got an issue with you know, heaven forbid pinworm. Not sure if you ever encountered that. I never did until Liv got it. But that, anyway, so anus is the only medical kind of polite terminology for that part of the body. Laura uses the word butthole.
Okay.
Trenton ReynoldsAnd when I was a kid, that was like you don't say butthole. Right, that was like a bad word. Inevitably, you'd call your friend or your brother a butthole. It's like it's a favorite name. But when it does and she says that, it always kind of like, oh, can't say that. It doesn't trigger the, like, this is a bad word, but it triggers that memory of when I was a little kid, you know, if I ever said that. So you can't say that in front of kids, right? Right, right, right. Because then they're going to start calling their friends about roles and, you know, whatever.
Yeah.
Trenton ReynoldsBut that's my question for you. I mean, this kind of like, well, what else is there? I mean, anus has the planet problem, you know, your anus. Because nobody calls it Uranus.
Yes.
Sabrina Ward Harrisonmore specific yeah i don't think we even said but i think my mom would just refer to it thumb and then um and then i don't remember for the china yeah never thought i'd be saying those
Trenton Reynoldswords to you yeah yeah here we are here we are parenting it's uh you gotta you gotta think through these things though because yeah Kid growing up saying the wrong things, I guess. Right.
Right.
Trenton ReynoldsBut yeah, we use bum. It's just that particular specificity when it is required. It's not called bum hole. Anyway, we don't need to talk about it anymore. There's something I've been just kind of trying to get to the bottom of why I feel so uncomfortable about that particular term. And, you know, the fact that there's just no real good alternative. of if you need to know some targeted language.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonWell, put it out to the audience. We'll maybe see if we get some good feedback.
Yeah.
Trenton ReynoldsOkay, audience, help me out here. What did you call it when you were a kid?
Sabrina Ward HarrisonOr maybe with their kids.
Yeah.
Trenton ReynoldsYeah. I think just maybe it could be reduced to my discomfort with the word whole. Like you don't want to...
Sabrina Ward HarrisonYeah. I think bum... How many different... Your bum, like how many parts... There's just really one part. So I think you don't need to get that specific.
Yeah.
Trenton ReynoldsYeah, maybe. I mean, I think, you know, apparently my parents didn't get that specific. Yeah. I can't remember them using anything more than bum. So how's it going?
Sabrina Ward HarrisonIt's good. My mom comes tomorrow. And I have to tell you briefly a crazy, scandalous thing that happened last week. I yeah I so I was contacted by someone to purchase two paintings of mine from for this man reached out to me through my website saying he oceanic engineer and his wife but they're celebrating a 20th wedding anniversary and she loves my work and he wanted to surprise her with he said my budgets between 1,000 and 15 thousand dollars do you have any art for sale available and I said I I could sell these two pieces they're each five thousand said wonderful I would love to purchase both of them and I don't want her to find out and we're actually relocating to the Philippines so we're shipping all of our things so it would be great if we could get these shipped with our stuff I was like okay great and I was just in the middle of doing a billion things. So I just was kind of quickly in correspondence with him. And he said, so can I send you a check? I'll send it, you know, USPS, like certified, something so he could track it. And he sent me the tracking number. He said, so I'll send you the check with extra money included for the shipping that if you could send the money directly to the shipper so that my wife won't find out about it because she handles all our finances. So I'm like, all right, fine. So last week, last Monday, I got a check for $16,000, $16,200. And he said, if you could take the wire, the $5,500 to the shippers, and then they'll arrange to come get the pieces on Saturday. I did that. The next morning I got a call from the bank saying the check was forged and it was a total fraud. So I was completely shocked. just like completely tricked. And then Megan, my assistant, looked up the email address and it's like there was actually a whole feed about this email address saying, don't take any messages from this person, this account saying that they're buying something because they love their life and they want to purchase some art. So I'm out $5,500 and, And it was crazy, man. And it was really, really weird. And it really threw me off because I was in such correspondence. And I was like, this is so amazing. You're doing this for your wife. And I inked out their name. I'm like, what's your wife's name? He's like, Rachel. I mean, it could have been a woman on the phone. I mean, who knows who this individual was that did this. But just to target women, female artists is just so wrong on so many levels.
Yeah, it is. Terrible. Man.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonYeah. And so what I found out by doing a police report is that this happens all the time and that people actually not only do they usually give you a fraudulent check, but they have some way of when they give you the check, not only do you not have the money, they take that money from your account. So they said it was actually lucky that they did not deduct $16,000 from my account, which I would have then been held accountable for, which is just nuts.
Wow. Oh, gosh.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonAnd I'm like, how do they do that? He said, that's what we can't figure out. So it's just, it was freaky. And I had to just, you know, like move on. But I would just want to warn people out there to be very careful around receiving checks for payments. And really, yeah. don't like I just was not paying attention and I mean it looked all you know it was like from a bank in La Jolla you know it was said with with a tracking number I mean it just was everything
Trenton Reynoldsabout it felt like legitimate so man that is rough yeah have you ever sold or have you tried selling much on craigslist no but i hear that's a huge thing too right yeah like yeah yeah so i i've gotten burned before by that like a similar type of situation on craigslist for much much much less money than that but yeah like anytime somebody would you know say well i'm out of the state right now, can I send you a check? And just to secure it, and I'll have somebody come by and pick it up. And, you know, there's inevitably there's some, like, squirrely type thing happening where they can't show up, you know, with cash or whatever.
Right.
Trenton ReynoldsIt was always, like, huge red flag. But that's – to have it targeted so specifically about – Buying art? I've never heard of that before.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonI know. So luckily I didn't send the artwork. I mean, I still have the artwork, but wow. So definitely a lesson learned.
Trenton ReynoldsBut how would you, what are other options? Would they wire the money or is there another way that would be more... secure when you're dealing with somebody long distance like that.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonThat's a good point. Yeah, I would say.
Trenton ReynoldsThat's what a check seems like.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonYeah, and I thought that's what it was. So that's, I don't want to spend too long on that, but that was just something, a big, pretty big thing.
Man. Yeah.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonSo today we're going to talk about our mothers and their influence on our creative life.
Trenton ReynoldsYeah. Your mom was coming into town and that just got me thinking about, I don't know about the role of mothers and, and creating those thoughts and appetites and the openness to, you know, I guess, that path.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonYeah. So my mom, both my mom and dad are really creative people, but my memories of my mom, the first things that overall really sums up her understanding about color and texture, which I always hold to it, is she would say, you know, you can design a whole room based off the color within one leaf, because it's always going to have the corresponding colors and there's going to be a palette within a leaf and all the tones and complementary colors. And I love that. And I love how she pulled nature. Nature was such a big part of her with with color and design. So we lived in a lot of different homes, um, throughout my childhood because we moved, we were just, when we moved to California from Canada, we just were renting in different places. We couldn't afford a, a house in the neighborhood we lived in. So, we would rent for two years somewhere, one year somewhere. And I, you know, my personality and my mom, we just loved that because it's like a new place and a new, we get to design and decorate and make it our own. And it was always a really fun thing to be like, go looking at different houses and, you know, And my mom's sensibility around texture and color really was really inspiring. I always felt very in awe of her sense of color. And also how she dressed. She really knew the colors, like the colors that – her colors – because there's a concept of color. I think there was a book in the 80s called Color Me Beautiful, and it was about each of us have kind of a season that our color of our skin and our eyes and our hair correspond to a certain palette of colors that look good on us.
So...
Sabrina Ward Harrisonand you're probably an autumn like my mom. So my mom has kind of olive skin, like a very, you know, like richer complexion of, I don't think that my skin is more of like a pink undertone. And so she wears these beautiful autumn tones and she could really wear like earthy greens and oranges and, you know, And she just would really put herself together in ways that I was inspired by. I don't remember my mom really going around the house in sweatpants or anything like that. She just, she always really loved to put herself together and enjoyed it. And I relate to that. She just was, from my earliest, earliest memories, the way she introduced textures. And when I was a baby in Montreal, she'd put all these things down at baby level on the kitchen floor, around on the cupboards really low that had sandpaper and little reflective mirrors and this sense of where I could really explore my world around me and have... experiences with things around me and how things felt in your hands. And there's lots of wood and playing with blocks and wood things and making dioramas and making kind of these magical little make it, you know, fairy, fairy lands outside and nature. And she really encouraged the exploration and imagination. You know, she never would say, well, Well, that's crazy. Like, I would come in and I'd have a whole backstory about what, you know, I found this stuff in the backyard. It's from the Indians. I know it's from there. And she just, you know, she would just go with it. It was really, it was very, very sweet thinking back on it. And her passion was early childhood development and childhood education. So she, you know, I think she really loved being there.
a mother.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonI always think it's amazing when I think about the summer of 69, and I think, I was born only six years later. You think how fast six years go by. I think that's amazing. That was a revolutionary time. My dad paddled down the Mississippi River in 69, and six years later, he was a dad to me.
Yeah.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonI was sort of pictured as these two different eras and there really, really weren't. It was not far away.
Trenton ReynoldsI think back to 1999. It doesn't feel that long ago.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonThat was 20 years ago. I remember also because I wasn't someone who's very good academically, but I remember once sitting in the kitchen in a little, we had a little booth in the kitchen and we, I had to do a report about pandas and I remember it so clearly because I didn't have much I hadn't really done a ton of research, but I sure made that presentation creative. I remember gluing construction paper behind each page. And so it made it look really cool, but there wasn't a ton of content in there. But I liked the idea of projects. I love the feeling of, you know, getting a chance to do a project. And another thing I remember is she volunteered at the Harambee Center downtown, downtown LA.
And...
Sabrina Ward Harrisonwe would go down and do things where you just use all, we always, they always use like found materials or old, you know, recycled things. We wouldn't necessarily use art supplies that were typical art supplies. Even when I see my earliest art things I made in kindergarten stuff, they were always like old bits of fabric, old bits of,
you know,
Sabrina Ward Harrisontrim, like fabric, trim, like ribbon and, you know not not your normal basic stuff lots of seeds and corn and things like that
Trenton Reynoldsi'm not familiar with the harambee center what is what is that i think it was a it was a place for
Sabrina Ward Harrisona lot of children in poverty i think it was a I'm trying to remember exactly what, I don't know if it's still around. I'll look it up. Harambee Ministries, it was over 37 years. Harambee Ministries has served a 12-block target area in northwest Pasadena, centered on Howard Street in Avero, a location once called Blood Corner. But with decades of love, dedication, and service, we've improved conditions for kids, students, families, and our community. Harambee means let's get together and push in Swahili. So I, she was, she's, she's amazing. She's really amazing. My mom is an amazing woman.
Trenton ReynoldsI have some memories of your mom coming on art field trips. Really? Yeah. I remember her being one of the, what do you call them? Chaperones.
Yeah.
Trenton ReynoldsAnd also remember, like I ran into her when I went to Portland for Emily's Robert Pfeiffer's wedding and had a pretty long talk with her then I think. But also just you know the few times that I went over to your went over to your house when we did Room in the Trees and I don't know there are a few few other times that I was up there, just being kind of amazed at how the house was organized. You know, what was on the wall, how it was positioned. I was like, everything felt like an intentional presentation, like whether it was in the library and the things that were arranged on the shelf, the fact that they weren't arranged necessarily just you know, books side by side, it was like they were placed, you know, and some books were on their sides, but it didn't look like they had fallen over. It looked like they had been intentionally placed up. You know what I mean? Like, I don't know, I just had never even had that come to mind where people would do that. And there was such just kind of a magic in that. Like, walking into that space almost felt like entering into, you I don't know it's like going into an artist studio or there's yeah of like these things can be used to express you know to to say something or to feel something whereas like in contrast you go into my house and my parents are very practical people you know there would be a print up on the wall in a you a reasonably priced Ikea frame or something. And it would be like a print that was seen in 50 other people's houses. And if you went up to our library, they were all the same oak bookshelf that my dad got, like 50 of them, because if you got a lot of them, they were cheaper. It wasn't like a visual or aesthetic presentation. It was like how he had categorized them. And it was just, you know, books stacked side by side in kind of like this is the biography section. This is the, you know. Right. Anyway, it was like everything was so just practical and sparse and plain. You know, I walked into your guys' house and it was like, whoa.
Yeah.
Trenton ReynoldsIt's like things meant, you know, like the posters up on the walls were like posters that your dad, of movies that your dad had been involved in or that you could point out each poster and it had some kind of meaning. Anyway, there was a richness just in how... uh, the space was organized. And I remember feeling the same thing when, when we visited your mom in Pasadena.
Oh yeah.
Trenton ReynoldsAnd in her space, like same thing you walk in and it's just like,
Whoa,
Trenton Reynoldsthere was such an ambience. And I, and you have the same thing, you know, like it spills over into your work, uh, I mean, not just how you organize a space, which is pretty magical. You know, all the places I've visited you at where, you know, you've organized an apartment or something like that has the same kind of intentionality and richness. That's kind of – when I thought about this, you said your mom was coming in town and I thought topics for a podcast. That is specifically what I was thinking about is like how – like my experience going into those spaces and then seeing how, you know, you have a very similar aesthetic, but it's not just about aesthetics. It's about a feeling. It's about an interaction with space and understanding of spatial relationships and their way color interacts with that and light and how people move through space and occupy it. Like, I don't know, like all that stuff just wasn't really on my radar.
Yeah.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonAlso, yeah, the concept of like having things on angles, you know, not having things on a grid and just, I'm always, I think that's interesting too. Like if I, because I will try and sit, like my mom's place in Pasadena is a very open floor plan, but she has all these little places within it, little moments, but they're kind of, it's nothing's on a real, like, You know, it's very interesting, very subtle things, decisions that I love as an adult now I can really notice.
Trenton ReynoldsThat's a good way of saying it is like moments, like these little orchestrated moments. you know, accents of experience. I don't know. I don't know how to describe that, but it's so wonderful. I mean, it's like in your books where you might be, like, flipping through pages more casually, and then there's, like, a little thing that just kind of scratches the edge of your eye, like, just kind of pulls your attention. And there's just this little, like, texture, this little bit of photograph or paper that catches your eye, and there's, like, this little... experiential moment that you have hidden in there in the larger context of the book. I don't know. I feel like that feels like a good description, these little moments.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonThat's kind of what I'm working on right now with my students about how we tuck in, how we work with within a sense of an internal grid so that there's a sense of, I call it a drop line, but even though there can be sort of a chaos or looseness and collage having there be some internal structure happening in a spread and and how to use photography so that you don't just have random pictures sort of taped down like there's a way that you're using the composition and the juxtaposition of things to make photography work within a mixed media piece and And then the sequencing of pages. That's actually what I'm teaching today about. So I have my books all with little post-it notes ready to go about that. It's always the challenge. How do you make these little nooks or let things gather and make space for the moments to happen but not have too many? and not have them too close to each other and not have them compete with each other.
Trenton ReynoldsYeah, I think of Sargent as one of the painters that did that masterfully as well. He would be really loose and brushy in areas. and then he would kind of bring you into like a facial feature that was rendered really realistically, or really tightly rendered. Yeah. And create that kind of, the positioning of that little tightly rendered eye within the larger context of the very loose, you know, emotional kind of brushwork created that, kind of sucked you into that specific. moment
I love his work love his work
Trenton ReynoldsI think there's some people that are just masterful at that creating little just like rewards like they reward your attention Like you can just brush past it and kind of get it appreciated on a large level, but it rewards you if you actually engage with it and you find these things that require you to invest a little bit more.
Right.
Trenton ReynoldsI think that's, that's masterful, hard to do.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonYeah, I was thinking, I was talking to the students about Rauschenberg and saying, you know, because I'm trying to... teach and talk about how to have looseness but intention at the same time. Like how do you have, like what Rauschenberg did, did he fiddle around and go this here and this here, maybe at certain points and that was really intentional, but how to have these grand gestures of movement and, and flow and, and, whatever and just it happening like stuff happening to a piece and then and then coming in with the sense of this this has to go right there this has to go right beside that this has to be like this and the both being very both are very important but you can't kind of go down the middle right I think that's so
Trenton Reynoldsinteresting it's hard hard for me to kind of wrap my mind around it right now but yeah this relationship between an imposed structure and then what kind of happens naturally or intuitively or a sense of freedom or trueness to the materials that you're working this very cool i'd like to talk about that more some other time like uh talking about different kinds of structure that can help you i don't know uh help you think of how you are organizing or creating a composition or organization of stuff. So topic for another time. I'd like to share, I'd like to share if, if you're all right with this. Well, actually, let me ask you, can you share with us some of the involuntary things I'm like, what is he going to ask me? Well, you make some noises, or you have... What? Do you know what I'm talking about? No. Like, you have... Like, your mom would do these little, oh, or when you're... When you're driving, like whoops, whoops.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonYeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Trenton ReynoldsI don't even know how to ask that question. That's so funny. There are some delightful little mannerisms or little involuntary vocalizations.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonAbsolutely, yeah. I completely inherited that from my mom. When she drives, she goes, whoops, whoops.
Trenton ReynoldsYeah, and we were driving around. I was driving, and I think...
Sabrina Ward HarrisonYeah, and I was... I know. It almost happens maybe more when I'm not driving. I wonder if I say it when I'm working with people, too, just in person.
Oops.
Trenton ReynoldsAnd there's little accents of other things that, you know, like, oh, oh.
Yeah.
Sabrina Ward Harrisonmy mom always would go we do a big thing where it's always like my grandmother did the same there's a bird here that has that same call so I always feel like it's like
Trenton Reynoldsfor some reason I have those types of noises associated with your mom I don't know if I've experienced it for some reason tander just through you but this little whoops
Sabrina Ward Harrisontotally I know because he's not a fluffy flighty person whatsoever but she she's how do you describe her she's she's um she's poised she's poised yes
Trenton Reynoldspresents herself very precisely somehow.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonBut she's just also really cute and sort of sweet. She's not intimidating or serious. She's like, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Trenton ReynoldsYeah, she's lovely.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonYeah, she's lovely. Lovely is the word for Lois. Your mom... Are we talking about your mom and creativity?
Trenton ReynoldsYeah, yeah. I don't know. I was trying to think of exactly how my mom... encourage that. She, as far as like actual things that she would do with her hands, she was always doing experiments. Like, she'd get on kicks and she'd want to find the best sugar cookie and she'd do like 16 recipes of sugar cookie. Wow! And, you know, or she got a kick on growing plants indoors, so she got like you know, all these grow lights and a bunch of different, what do you call them, terrariums? Yeah. Or little glass enclosures or whatever it is. And, you know, she was trying a bunch of different kinds of plants. Anyway, she had this kind of, when she got into something, like she loved researching and trying and tasting and, you know, I don't know, there's a certain kind of fixation and she would move from one thing to another very rapidly. Like she was horizontal in her interests. She would barely just go deep, deep, deep, deep on one thing. She just like kind of would do this thing for a while and really get into it and fixate on it for a while and then move to something else that caught her attention or that she got interested in for some reason. And oftentimes it was something that she was being asked to help with or to do for a church function or for a family event of some kind. So she just would go all out and really try to understand it and do the best version of whatever she was being asked to do. But similarly, I think that kind of attitude gave me a sense of permission, I think, to... Or maybe it's just, you know, it's hard to know what's nature and what's nurture. Right. The... this... I similarly will kind of get fixated on one thing and really lock in on it. And then mess around with it for a while and then something else will grab my attention. I'll get really locked in on that for a while. I tend to like... love everything and you know like and move around a lot and get interested in stuff a lot
Sabrina Ward Harrisonbut you're able to stay really focused and really do the research and i think that's a big characteristic i mean that's something i don't have any any none of my no one in my family has any of that so i think that that's that's specific that's interesting that's
Trenton Reynoldsnothing. There's this kind of like digging deep on that one, like researching it. Yeah. Getting all the information that's available about it and like really adjusting it. But then, you know, moving on to the next thing. I think that's probably my dad too is, he's a doctor. And I think when you go through training to be a doctor, that kind of changes you. I've seen now, two of my brothers went to be doctors, but there's this process that just grinds you into this way of seeing the world that I think is very data-driven and empirical. And so there's a kind of logic and scientific methodness about his outlook on life. And I think similarly, my mom's really a black and white person, very practical, takes things very literally. But I think similar to what you were saying about your mom, like when you would come in with all this backstory about some fantastical creature or something, some narrative that you'd come. up with. I think my mom always enjoyed that about me, like when I would come in with something new that I was excited about that she didn't really understand, she acted really interested in it. I could tell it delighted her that I was really into something. Obviously she sacrificed time and hours taking me to art classes and she's the one that signed me up for kids art and kind of helped foster that interest. I think her just showing that she really enjoyed that aspect about what I do. with my time. I don't know. It was that kind of reward that helped create the positive feedback I needed.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonYeah. And it seems like with such a big family, that would have been a special time that you two shared together with driving and going to those classes and feeling that love from her of support.
Mm-hmm.
Trenton ReynoldsAnd even still, like, before I started teaching up at this high school, I've been teaching up for the past couple years. I, for seven or eight years, was teaching private workshops and private lessons out of my studio and out of my home studio and and if she was happened to be in town close enough like she and my dad would just show up she would drag him out here and she'd want to sit down and she'd have her notepad out and want to take down notes of what I was saying and no way yeah yeah and it was always like you know they walk in unannounced you know unexpected and you know the two of them right white hair you know like They just, you know, she's got a very warm smile that I'm not smiling at every time.
Yeah.
Trenton ReynoldsSo even now, like I know she doesn't really appreciate a lot of the art that I make. She actually really liked the Green Man paintings. But I like, I still feel that kind of sense of her delight and joy. my having chosen to pursue this, you know, this thing. So I guess those two things, the kind of scientific, practical, you know, experimental, interested in lots of different things, tinker type of mentality. And also just the, like the delight in experimentation and delight in That I was making these unique things.
Yeah.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonI love that she came and took notes. I just love that.
Trenton ReynoldsOh, she takes notes. This woman is a note taker like you would never believe. She has... So many binders full of stuff that she's found online, printed out, annotated, highlighted, hole punched and then organized into white three ring binders.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonOh my gosh.
Trenton ReynoldsShelves of white three ring binders. She had this Rolodex, you know, one of the big circular ones with all the, you know, sections with letters and you'd have cards in the Rolodex. Most people would use that Rolodex and then alphabetize by last name. Like that's a pretty standard way of doing it. but not my mom. And it was always so amusing to me to try to guess at how she would arrange things in a Rolodex. Like, there would be a dentist that had the last name of whatever, you know, Garrett. - Yeah. - And so you'd go to the G's, wouldn't find anything, because it was under T for Trenton, my name, on a card at the very bottom be, you know, Dr. Garrett, because he was my dentist. You know what I'm saying? Like you'd have to try to guess at her kind of logic. Thinking. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, and sometimes it would get deep, man. Like you'd have to take five major, um, you know, mental steps to get to. You just roll through a Rolodex and there'd be these cards filled with just, you know, random bits of information, but it would all, you know, have this kind of logic to her that, you know, where she could flip to the right thing and know where it was, but like none of the rest of us could ever find information in that Rolodex.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonIt's kind of like you and your containers.
Trenton ReynoldsLove me. Yeah. Oh, that's another thing I get from my mom for sure. Really? The binders, the shelves, the binders that she has full of like, you know, her randomly/pseudo-ordered bits of information. Like, that's just like my containers. She loves containers too. So, bless mothers.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonAbsolutely. And it'll be fun to hear what, when your kids grow up, about them talking about Laura and just the fun things Laura has done and the model she's been for them.
Trenton ReynoldsYeah, it's been fascinating for me watching her and all the ways that she, I mean, just like your mom having these ideas to put bits of sandpaper at your level that you could these little experiences with the world. I think similarly, Laura has an intuition for that of providing them with moments or experiences that will just expand their sense of their place.
Sabrina Ward Harrison- She's awesome. She's such a cool mom.
- She is. - Yeah.
Trenton ReynoldsThat is. Do you want to share what's going on? What's coming up this week?
Sabrina Ward HarrisonSo my mom comes into town tomorrow and we're having a special time until Tuesday. I'm going to have a campfire outside tomorrow night in the backyard. And I'm just really, really looking forward to her being here. so yeah what about you guys what do you do you have plans for the 4th of July
Trenton Reynoldsuh we do we're going up to Utah uh don't know if you've ever spent the 4th of July in Utah but they they love them some 4th of July yeah serious parades and firework shows and we've got a lot of family up there so we're just gonna we're gonna spend a week up there with uh
Sabrina Ward Harrisonin-laws awesome we have um something here called shake the lake which is on this saturday i'm so glad my mom's gonna be here for it this is a really awesome fireworks show so i'm super excited for that it was like shake the lake shake the lake shake the lake Yeah, it's really, really beautiful. Last year it was during a thunderstorm, so it was like thunder and like lightning in the sky mixed with fireworks. It was so cool. Oh my gosh, this is amazing. It's really cool. It's amazing. So, yeah, I can't wait for it to get here.
Trenton ReynoldsBefore you leave that area of the country, if you ever happen to, you need to experience a firework show in Chicago, if you haven't. Oh, yeah. Because they do it out over the lake, and there's three kind of outcrops into the lake. Yeah. And they launch synchronized fireworks from three different points along the lake. Yeah. And it's just this, it's so over the top and all the, all the fireworks when they boom they ricochet that sound resonates in the, in the city off the buildings. Yeah, so it's just, it's just a very like intense experience visually and like sound wise.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonYeah, I honestly, I know, I honestly felt when I saw them here in Madison, I thought this is the hands down the best firework show I've ever seen in my life. It was so, I don't know, maybe the Midwest or something. They just, they really get into it. And the lakes, similarly they have them coming up, being set off on the lake. So they just reflect against the water. It's just so pretty.
Trenton ReynoldsThat sounds amazing. Yeah.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonAll right, I'm going to go teach my class.
Trenton ReynoldsThanks for listening. We'll be back next week. In the meantime, you can follow us on Instagram, @SabrinaWardHarrison and @TrentReynoldsArt.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonAnd check out the show notes at RoomInTheTrees.com where you can also get in touch if you have any ideas you'd like to share.
Trenton ReynoldsRate us on iTunes and share Room In The Trees with a friend. With a friend. With a friend.
Sabrina Ward Harrisonnow go and uh tell your mom you love her yeah celebrating our parents there you go yeah