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
Trenton Reynoldsroominthetrees.com if you like this podcast please consider showing your support you can become a subscribing patron at patreon.com forward slash room and now here's this week's episode
Sabrina Ward Harrisoni was just listening to your episode with robert gamlin on dabalon podcast what did you think great
Such a cool guy.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonYeah. I love the amount of times he says Prussian blue.
Trenton ReynoldsI thought of that when he was saying that. That's so funny. Prussian blue indeed.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonYeah. And then I also, I liked him talking about the paintings, about having someone look at a painting and hoping that, you know, the real gift for him is that it's for someone else that evokes a memory or. or makes them think about the time they were out in the field or something like that.
Trenton ReynoldsIt was interesting for me to take a moment to think about what painting does or what art does. Is it meant to be-- and it does all the things, right? It's not like it just does one thing. I think we often think of depicting, showing people stuff, right? Rather than kind of evoking their own memory, you know? Like as if we're not showing them something of ours, we're revealing something that's already inside them. I don't know. much. Kind of a, yeah, it was, it was a great conversation. I really enjoyed talking to him. Can we talk about the color of your hair? Or is that something that we don't want to discuss on there?
Sabrina Ward HarrisonThe color of my hair is called garnet.
Garnet. Garnet red.
Trenton ReynoldsNow, previously we have, we, we have, uh, described hair styles with, uh, vocalizations. Yes. How would you vocalize the color garnet?
Oh,
Sabrina Ward Harrisonyeah.
Trenton Reynoldsseduction yeah edge okay a little edge yeah little edge fantastic so you were you were uh is this a color you've used before probably i've never
Sabrina Ward Harrisonused this specific one before this dye but it's uh it's uh just really really bright and wonderful Yeah, I just love it. Because now that I – because of the hair initiative, years – began years ago, I now have hair that I can actually do stuff with. And so – but I don't – because I'm always having short hair, I never really got – knew much about how to style longer hair. Mm-hmm. And I want to have curls and volume in it. So I've tried hot rollers before, and I've tried different curly irons. But I got what's called the Chi Lava Ceramic Pro Spin and Curl. this thing, and I just practiced for the first time like a couple hours ago and I, I was doing it. I was holding it wrong and it just kept not working, but I figured it out. And you put a strip, like a little clump of hair in this thing. And it goes with this wind and it, it pulls the hair in and then spins it into this chamber. It's crazy. That sounds painful, but yeah, No, you don't feel anything because it, yeah, it brings it into this chamber and then you're holding this button and then when 15 seconds is up, it goes beep, beep, beep, and you let it go. And then you have these ringlets of hair. It's crazy. It's crazy.
Trenton Reynoldsyeah I love that
Sabrina Ward Harrisonbecause curling irons I always would burn my fingers or burn the ends of my hair and so this is giving me that volume and velocity that I really want to have That sounds like... So is it a tight curl? Well, it's ringlets, but then you, like, brush it out.
Okay.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonSo you have it, like, it's... Yeah, it's a tighter curl, and then you can just, like, run your hands through it, a comb, and it just kind of gives it this... you know, wonderful, you know, body. Body. Got it. Yeah. We're looking for volume and body. And this obviously isn't for something I do every day, but I do, you know, I do want to be able to do some nice things. I just usually wear my hair out and so. I'm experimenting with that
Trenton Reynoldsspeaking of hair initiative how much length do you have
Sabrina Ward HarrisonI have about two inches past my shoulders two inches past
Trenton Reynoldsyour shoulders that is significant yeah
Sabrina Ward Harrisonyeah it It's never been this long. My dad just keeps seeing me on Zoom or FaceTime. He's like, Sprout, you've never had hair like this. It's crazy.
Trenton ReynoldsI know. I don't recall ever seeing you with long hair.
No.
Trenton ReynoldsThere was a couple of things that I was thinking about. One, I wanted to just give you an update on Dots pretzels. Oh my God, yes. Okay. So there's a little story. Okay. Right when you're telling me about them, I was on Amazon ordering them. So this is Dots Pretzels, the mustard flavor, right?
Yeah.
Trenton ReynoldsGot a small bag. I didn't want to commit to anything big. No. Got a small bag. So they show up. I eat one or two, and I'm okay with them. I'm not in love yet, right? Okay. They've got a reseal thing. I put them on the counter. Okay. Laura comes home, she eats a couple, she's not into them quite yet. They stay on the counter. We bring them over to the table during dinner time, and Laura, I'm not even paying attention, right? I'm gonna have some with my dinner. right? Little supplement to what's going on on the table. I look over and Laura has eaten the whole bag. They're gone. Right? Are you serious? Yes. So I got, I got like, I got maybe five, maybe five pretzels. She ate the whole bag. I was warming up. Yeah. You know, I think I could have got there, but you know, she beat me to the punch and she just downed the whole thing.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonRight? They're really, really, really, like, yeah, you just try it and you're like, hmm, lots of different textures and flavors in that. And then you just can't quell your thirst for it. I don't know.
Trenton ReynoldsWell, it's like, you know, any good desert island food, you know, like you don't want it to be too overpowering. right? It was something that you can eat like all day, every day. It can't be too powerful or it gets too much, right? This is one of those things where it's just like, you could keep on going forever. It's the perfect, it's like not too overpowering where it's like, okay, I've had enough. But there's enough like excitement, a little bit, a little bit of zip. Yep. A lot of, a lot of just satisfaction and a nice, yep. Great texture. Anyway, that's the update with Dots. Did you order more? I have not ordered more, but we will. I'm a little concerned that we might develop a problem with Dots.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonYeah, I have to admit that I did. I personally did. I did. Like, Sean has amazing snack control, but he has to put all the yummy snacks up in a high cupboard. Right. and at night I get up there and I climb in there and I eat stuff
Trenton Reynoldsyeah I know I know you you have had in the past you'll wake up in the middle of the night to go get a snack yes that's what you're talking about here we yes you'll actually uh you'll climb well
Sabrina Ward HarrisonI'll And it feels so bad the next day when you're like, man.
Trenton ReynoldsYou know what I just remembered? I remembered you used to have these white chocolate cranberry. Yep.
Still get those.
Trenton ReynoldsDo you still get those? I still get those. I thought it was so funny you told me that you would just throw them in the refrigerator or in the freezer. Yeah. So you'd have to find them.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonYeah. And I would take them. They would be divided up in. packs of four of them in this one baggie. And I would go and I would take every one of them out and put them in their own baggie. Oh my gosh. And I'd recycle the baggies. I wasn't wasting them. But it just, it just was.
Trenton ReynoldsYou know what I was missing today as I was thinking, just sitting here in front of a
making art. Yeah.
Trenton ReynoldsHave you gotten a chance to make art recently? I know you've been busy with all the business stuff.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonYeah. I just wrapped full color life about three days ago. So no, I haven't, I haven't been creating a little while. I have definitely been in the mode of holding the space for other people. I'm loving it.
Um, but yeah,
Sabrina Ward HarrisonNo, I know that feeling for sure. Yeah.
Yeah.
Trenton ReynoldsSo are you finally feeling the kind of calm after the, you know, it's a lot of work, it's a lot of emotional investment in having these classes. Do you feel, are you back to equilibrium yet or is it?
Sabrina Ward HarrisonYeah, I'm beginning to feel it. It really was the word integration feel like it really comes to mind. right now. There was a lot of stuff going on before the wedding and the whole act of such a big momentous turning point in my life and then to come back and begin teaching right away. There's just sort of been this like, it hasn't had this slow integration time. Also with this was interesting. I didn't changing of the colors, I've always like, yes, I love the changing of the colors tremendously in the tree. but I didn't know how big of a thing was here to like chase the chase the the fire I guess like Sean the region by region it's on the news like oh you know they're peaking this week get up to this this you know county where they're they're peaking and so we would go biking and and just you know hunting these, in search of these trees that were popping.
Trenton ReynoldsSo peaking means like it's how colorful things are? Yeah, yeah. Interesting, huh?
Sabrina Ward HarrisonJust the terminology of like, you know, oh, that one's popping. You know, they're popping this week. Like it's a really big, and so to see the range of- see the range of of the color palette changing so the last kind of ride we took probably before winter's hit was the other day and just the you know the colors have gone from just bright bright yellow vivid on fire orange and red to just as deep umbers and you know gorgeous pumpkin colors and uh it's just been you're so much more present for it like it's a spectacle that is really beautifully acknowledged here. No one takes it for granted.
Trenton ReynoldsI love that. I love that idea of chasing the colors. Like yeah, there's a time limit on it, right? The sense of urgency, right? Right. I think in California everything is so much the same all the time that there is no like real urgency about going to see stuff, right? It's going to be a pretty ocean view every day all day, right? That's cool. And that also makes me think, I think growing up in California, you don't get the significance of the changing palette of colors and how that reflects your connection with your environment, right? Right. Like you see people talk about in fashion or whatever, like this is our fall line. Right, right. Yeah. You know, or people making artwork that is themed by season. And I don't know, I think you talking about that makes me kind of, well, I wish I had that variety, you know, or that... I don't know, those points of reference each year.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonRight, right, right. Because it's a spectacle. And even the way the light changes because all the leaves fall. So just where I live has trees around it. So when the leaves all fall, you have this much more 280, what? What would it be? I don't know. Whatever the, it's not 360, but it's the whole rounding of the front windows. You see, now you see the lake through where all those, the trees, you can see the lake, but all year round, but the whole other side of the house where the trees are drop, and then you see the lake all that way. So the palette turns into this almost black and white experience. with this pops of red for berries and things like that.
Yeah.
Trenton ReynoldsThat sounds awesome. Sounds beautiful. I love it.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonI love it here.
Trenton ReynoldsMy years in Chicago, every fall we'd go out to an apple orchard nearby for the colors and also just to pick apples. And I remember just loving the smells, the feeling, the light, the – Yeah. It's a beautiful time. Anything big coming up? Anything exciting? Anything-- or is the excitement the fact that you can relax and regroup?
Sabrina Ward HarrisonYeah, and I will have up a, I have an audio only guided free writing with me talking through the prompts for people if they wanted to listen to it. It's like a three-day journaling challenge, just totally free, but you can, I'm going to get it up on, the link will be in the description. my bio on Instagram, but it's just a nice, kind of listening to it on your phone and just a nice sequence. So if people wanna listen to that, they can go to the Instagram and it should be list in the link tree.
Trenton ReynoldsI thought maybe just to have a little something in here art related. I pulled up quotes from Art and Fear. You want me to read your... Can I read your quote? Yes. A quote from Art and Fear... that I just pulled up that I really like. The truth is that the piece of art which seems so profoundly right in its finished state may earlier have been only inches or seconds away from total collapse.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonSay that again one more time.
Trenton ReynoldsThe truth is that the piece of art which seems so profoundly right in its finished state may earlier have been only inches or seconds away from total collapse.
That's good.
Trenton ReynoldsThat's one of the beautiful things about art making and one of the infuriating and horrific things about art making is you're constantly on that line between success and failure of profundity and you know, whatever the opposite of profundity is.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonI love that word, profundity. I don't know if you said enough. What would you say the definition is of that?
Trenton ReynoldsHow profound something is. So how meaningful, how deep, how rich.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonSomething's profundity.
Trenton ReynoldsIt's one of the reasons I love art so much and I find it so meaningful is it's that exploration of and vulnerability of creation.
Yeah. Yeah.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonAnd I just, a shout out for your podcast, Dabalon, because it's just, it is really neat to hear you deep dive about materials.
That's been a lot of fun.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonYeah, it's really great. So what's been going on? I see the title lasers here.
Trenton ReynoldsLasers. Well, yeah. What I've been working on is a laser art making workshop. And part of the problem with this marketing is I really have no idea how to frame it for people because it's not something that most people would have experience with. Right. So it's like partly a problem of educating people like what it is that I'm even talking about because I'm not talking about like. a laser light show, right?
Sabrina Ward HarrisonRight, which is the first thing I thought of. I'm like, were you playing laser tag?
Trenton ReynoldsYeah, totally. I mean, of course that's what you're going to think, right? Because, you know, laser cutter engravers are such, you know, a niche thing. You know, when do you ever think of that unless you're getting your iPods, whatever, you're getting something engraved with like your name or something, right? Anyway, so that's what I'm doing. I'm doing a workshop using a laser engraver that I just got in the studio. Those have been listening to this podcast know probably for years now. I've... I've just been enamored with laser cutter engravers as a tool for making artwork. And so I'm doing a really exclusive small group for people, and we're going to spend all day experimenting with ways that you can use a laser cutter engraver to just open up more possibilities for your work. And I'm really excited about it. Yeah. So. I just want the marketing part to be over and I just want to be in the studio making stuff.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonYeah. What are some of the things people are going to get to experience with it?
Trenton ReynoldsWell, it's like what do you use a knife for? You can use it for so many different things, right? It's a tool. But what's hard to kind of get across is that it's this super empowering tool, right? you know, it's like the discovery of fire. All of a sudden, you know, it's like, what do you do with fire? You do, you do every, you can do anything with fire, right? You're not, anyway, maybe that's not a good example, but, but like, it's hard to wrap your mind. Like for me,
Sabrina Ward HarrisonI totally can't wrap, I would love to take the workshop because I can't, I can't wrap my mind around what I can picture engraving. Yeah. I can picture cutting holes out of wood.
Trenton ReynoldsRecently, I cut a stencil that's about two feet by three feet for an artist. It's those halftone dots that you can use to make a photograph. I cut a stencil for him out of just plastic, and he's using that as a stencil for spray paint and for dabbing these halftone dots onto paintings. So you could use it for stencils. You could use it for cutting woodblock or linotype, where you carve out the gray lines. clay type stuff to make woodblock prints you can laser images or you know even for something like that where somebody says well i like the carving part why would i want to have a laser do that well you could use the laser to just map out like lay out the drawing or you could use the laser in combination with using your hand carving tools where maybe parts of it could be You know, say you do a little line drawing in your iPad, you could laser that into your block print and then start carving into it with, you know, traditional tools. So it's not just like you have to use only the laser or only studio art making tools. It's like it's one more tool. Like it's another tool in your toolbox, right? Like I've been building up layers of resin and collage and paint on these panels. And then I'll do like a pattern on my iPad or I'll draw a pattern on just with black ink. and then I can engrave that pattern into this layered painting I just made and excavate through those layers. So basically just removing layers with the laser. Do you understand kind of what I'm talking about? Yeah. I'm just trying to really visualize it i know it's it's hard to that's the thing it's one of those things where you need to show not tell so yeah or like in one painting i cut this pattern out of like cut all the way through the wood cut a hole in my painting uh these this pattern of little um drippy shapes and then i cut those same shapes a tiny tiny fraction smaller out of plywood Okay. So those little shapes now fit exactly in where the holes I made in my painting. Right? So it's kind of like inlay. There's another word for it where you actually, you know, replace something with another material. It's not called inlay, but it's something like that. So it's like the level of precision you can get is just astounding. You can do rubber stamps. You can burn photographs into wood.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonWait, tell me about that.
Trenton ReynoldsHave you ever seen that? I mean, you can you could do it like a Google search for laser photograph on plywood or whatever. Basically, it just it's like wood burning. So if you want to do wood burning or burning paper, like I've used it to do burn drawings, line drawings on just drawing paper, which is kind of cool. But basically it just burns, you can take any photograph, any JPEG, black and white, and it burns the photograph into the wood. And you can get like super high detail. Wow. One demo that I did for the webpage that I put up on my website, I wanted to show just like a practical example of what you might do with it. So I kind of walked people through it. but the example that I did is I did a little line drawing with a black ink on a piece of Yupo paper. I just had a scrap on my table. What's Yupo paper? Yupo paper is just like a synthetic paper. It's like a, like a polyester, I think, or something like that. Plastic paper that people use to paint on and stuff. Anyway, it's just a kind of paper. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, so I just did a little doodle, take a picture with my phone, send it to the computer. The computer takes that little line drawing and turns it into a vector within seconds. So, within a minute, I've done a little doodle and it's on the computer ready to go on the laser. I use that little, that file that I've just made that tells the laser, gives the laser a path. I had to cut that little doodle shape I made out of the Yupo paper. There's a little bit of ink on the Yupo paper, and I have it cut out in a little tiny version of my doodle. But I could just as easily, and then I did... cut that same design out of, I could blow it up to two feet and cut it out of foam core or out of drawing paper. Or I could take an old painting and cut my little doodle pattern design out of an old painting and start using that as collage. Or I cut it out of styrofoam. I could use that as like the beginning of a relief sculpture. You know, like, wow. And this you can do, you know, I mean, you can go from your small little black and white doodle to cutting out a two foot piece of plywood, you know, in a matter of minutes. That's so cool. You know what I'm saying? It's like it's like this. It just speeds everything up and not you don't you could do one of them or you could do a hundred of them. Right. And it's. there's no limiting factor there, right? So what would have taken you before, you know, maybe you would have done a little doodle, you would have maybe projected and traced it onto a piece of wood, or you would have done like a grid to get that design blown up onto wood. And then you would have taken like a saw, uh, or a router to route your design out of wood, you're talking a whole day's work, right? But we've just done it in less than a half an hour, you know, in 15 minutes. You can tell, like, I get kind of jazzed about just thinking of all the possibilities. But, like, say you're a collage artist, You could have a photograph that you've taken or an image that you're appropriating or whatever that you're using on your iPad. You could basically decide how you want to cut that out. You could draw a line around the area that you want to cut that out. and then you could put the image in the laser and have it cut it out perfectly. So if you wanted to do highly detailed cutting of a collage element, you could have the laser do it, and you don't have to spend hours with an exacto knife cutting out the collage element.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonHow does it know the shape? Like how does it know the exact edge?
Trenton ReynoldsYou tell it. Like you have your pencil, your iPad pencil. Okay. Oh, I see. And on your iPad, you just, on the photograph, you draw around, okay, this is the shape I want the laser to cut.
Wow.
Trenton ReynoldsOr you take like a pattern, like a doily pattern. All those people out there using doilies. You take like a complex pattern and you could put it on top of your collage element and have the, cut out your paper, you know, So I'm thinking not just like a white piece of paper. It could be anything. It could be an old painting that you cut into, like a really complex pattern. And you can use that as a piece of collage. Or you could just engrave that pattern just as easily. You can engrave the pattern into the surface or burn it into the surface or have that pattern removed to excavate down through layers of your painting. Or you can do a combination of all those things. There's just so many... That's so many cool things to do.
Wow.
Trenton ReynoldsAnyway. Does it make a lot of noise? No, it's very quiet. There's a fan, a ventilation fan that makes a little bit of noise, but it's like you can easily talk over it. You can have a conversation in normal voice levels.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonI think it needs a name. It needs a personal name.
Trenton ReynoldsOh, gosh. It needs a name.
It needs a name.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonYou just let it tell you.
Trenton ReynoldsI will. You know, do you remember in high school I had, no, it wasn't in high school. In high school, I drove this old Honda Accord. It was red. We called it the Red Bullet. Or what was it? The Red Ruby? I can't remember now. In college, I had this Honda, or no, Toyota. Why am I forgetting this? Camry. I had a Camry. And it was just like a beige color. And I always wanted to give it a name like we had given that car in the high school. Yeah. But it was such a generic, bland car that I, it just literally never told me its name. It was just silent the whole time I had it for years. I couldn't name the thing. Anyway, I'll think of the laser name. But what I'm excited for is not to teach any one thing. What I'm excited for is getting artists in the studio and taking what they're already doing... Yeah. ...and, like, supercharging it. And, like, we can do, instead of just... doing one thing in an hour, we can do 15 versions in an hour, or we can try a bunch of different things that would have, you know, previously taken a ton of time and it just, just super, super charges everything. So anyway, enough with that. That's the workshop coming up. If you register, actually, Maybe I'll just make a special registration for Room in the Trees listeners. How about that? Yeah, that's a great idea. So coupon code if you are listening to this podcast and you want to register and if their space is still available. If you use the coupon code room when you register, give you 15% off.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonAnd where do they go to register?
Trenton ReynoldsThey can go to dablon.com forward slash workshops. Okay. dabalon.com forward slash workshop.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonSo it's an in-person workshop.
Trenton ReynoldsIt is in-person. And there will only be four spaces. If there's more demand, I'll have another, schedule another one in December.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonAnd I forgot, did you say it was one day or...
Trenton ReynoldsSo what I've been doing with all my workshops is I meet on Friday night for three hours, and that's a totally chill three hours where we just talk ideas, everybody in the workshop, and we just go around, and it's meant to be low expectation, just ideas. Yeah, neat. And so that way, everybody's got an idea of what they're doing on Saturday. Okay. and can prepare and know what to bring and all that stuff. So three hours on, five to eight on Friday, and then all day Saturday, like nine to noon, and then two to five, we have a two-hour lunch break.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonAnd you're in Santa Monica.
Santa Monica.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonCalifornia.
Trenton ReynoldsYep, and that's happening very soon. That's 20, 20th and 21st of this month, so not this weekend. Although I'm doing a live demo this weekend for those that are interested, you can come to my studio or watch via zoom infos on the website.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonThat would be neat for people to get to see.
Trenton ReynoldsYeah, so that's what I was thinking too. Maybe the best thing would just be to show people what I've personally been using it to do. Oh, I did a bunch of these little shaped paintings with resin. And the idea is that I'm going to hang them. And they're kind of semi-transparent, so light kind of makes them glow. Oh, neat.
Yeah. Yeah, anyway. Okay.
Trenton ReynoldsSo great to talk to you. Yes. It sounds like you're really, it seems like you got a lot of peace, and that's really good to hear.
Sabrina Ward HarrisonYeah, I do. I do. I do, and now I want to have some of those pretzels, but I can't.
Trenton ReynoldsWell, you got them local, right? You don't have to worry about it. thanks for listening you can follow us on instagram at sabrina ward harrison and at
Sabrina Ward Harrisontrent reynolds art please 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 And 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. ♪