THE IMPERFECT SHOW NOTES
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There have been times when I have sold all my art supplies and said I’m done with this. This is too hard, but it doesn’t take long before I pick so I’m not saying it’s been a life without doubt, but it’s been fairly sustained in spite of a lot of obstacles.
Achim Nowak 00:25
Welcome to the MY FOURTH ACT PODCAST. I’m your host, Achim Nowak, and I have conversations with exceptional humans who have created bold and unexpected lives. If you like what you hear, please subscribe on any major podcast platform so you won’t miss a single one of my inspiring guests, and please consider posting an appreciative review. Let’s get started.
Achim Nowak 00:58
It gives me great pleasure to welcome Laurie Fader to the MY FOURTH ACT PODCAST. Laurie is a painter. She holds a MFA from Yale and has been the recipient of many honors, including a Pollock Krasner award. Laurie has exhibited in the United States and overseas. She has taught at Pratt Institute in New York and the Maryland Institute of College of Art in Baltimore. Laurie was also a co founder chair and associate professor at the Kentucky school of art in Louisville. At the age of 70, Lori finds herself riding a powerful wave of creativity and support after recent residencies at gentel vcca and the venerable McDowell, Laurie is currently spending an entire year as a fellow at the Roswell Artist in Residence foundation in Roswell, New Mexico, where she is creating, creating and creating. Hi. Lori Achim, I am just delighted that we get to have this conversation now. You and I are of the same generation, and when I first met you, which was at McDowell last summer, I was struck by, really, what I just read, which is my sense that, you know, there’s a burst of creativity flowing through you, and the universe is giving you spaces and places to do this work. And at a time when some people say, Gosh, really, at my age, you’re totally going for it. And I look forward to this conversation now, when you were a young girl, a teenager growing up, and, you know, had to think about what you were going to do with your life. What were you thinking about? Laurie,
Laurie Fader 02:56
I have never thought about anything else. I mean, I grew up in Pittsburgh, uh huh, the youngest of five. My was an executive for US Steel. My whole family was very straight up Republican. There were no artists, but I was identified from a very early age. I won awards picked out in Pittsburgh from public schools to go to the Carnegie Museum and take classes, really, from like the fourth grade, all the way up through, I think, the seventh grade. Then I went to pre college at Carnegie Mellon, and then I was an exchange student in Italy, and that’s what really drove it home, you know. And not only the magnificence of the work that I was exposed to, but the friends from the AFS group that I went with, they were more sophisticated than me. A lot of Jewish New Yorkers. They were kind of on their path, and I started to understand what it meant to possibly be an artist in this world. That was the tipping point, and I never really looked back. There have been times when I have sold all my art supplies and said, I’m done with this. This is too hard. But it doesn’t take long before I pick out. So I’m not saying it’s been a life without doubt. I certainly been full of doubt, but it’s been fairly sustained in spite of a lot of obstacles.
Achim Nowak 04:39
The moral of this introduction is, you’re an artist. So I mentioned to you, you know, getting an MFA at Yale. And just want to test this, because I have a theater background, like, if you went to Yale in theater that was an incredibly exclusive club. It was. Hard to get into it sort of sent you off to immediate opportunities in New York. That was Yale in my theater world. What was Yale like as a painter to study there?
Laurie Fader 05:12
It was the same. Students were incredibly ambitious and focused. It was aggressive intellectual. It was intimidating, terrifying for me in the beginning, and I was stunned that I even found myself in the program. I mean, to give you an example, yeah, I had an old boyfriend who was a doctor, who went to Yale, and he convinced me to apply, and I went up to the campus with him, just because he was meeting with some of his colleagues, and I broke into hives. Never before in my life have I done that. But I was so nervous, my entire face broke, yeah. So then I find myself in the program, I think it was incredibly exciting. It was just to be immersed in a world of so many different brilliant creatives, all kind of pounding you down and building you up.
Achim Nowak 06:22
So my immediate thought was, as you’re describing this, I’m gonna call it elite environment. If I were in that, I could seem as a stimulated, excited, challenged to do my best work, or, yeah, or I could go, geez, do I belong here? Did they make a mistake? Like, who am I to be here? How did you, in your heart and soul, manage being in this exalted environment?
Laurie Fader 06:49
First of all, I’ve never been afraid of hard work. I kind of take joy in it. And I knew people that got destroyed by the program, literally, their work got smaller and smaller and smaller till they just quit in the end. But everybody in my class is still making art, as far as I know. And you know what they do is you sort of fall in under the mentorship of a couple of faculty. And so I had WILLIAM BAILEY and Jake Berto, and they were both incredibly different, and they would come to my studio and give entirely opposite critiques, but I love them both, and I knew they had my back, and these dreaded pit crits, where the student would stay silent, and the entire faculty would just have at it in the most, you know, unforgiving way. I knew they had my back. And the first year there was, like one summer between the two years, and I just worked my ass off, yeah, and I came back with about 20 paintings, and Mel Buchner stood up and said, Well, looks like a lot of perspiration and no inspiration.
Achim Nowak 08:12
Ouch.
Laurie Fader 08:15
I never forgot it. I never forgot it. And I think that can happen. You can override your kind of organic, natural inspiration, and just like muscle your way through and it and you still want, but it was, you know, I’m just incredibly grateful that I had that opportunity.
Achim Nowak 08:40
When you moved to New York, and you and I, we haven’t had this conversation, but we were probably there at the same time. We landed there around the same time you could still afford to live in New York back in the 80s. But I would imagine you’re coming from Yale, there’s a pressure to to make it quickly. How did you manage sort of, oh, I’m in New York now, and I’m, I’m going to have a career as as a painter.
Laurie Fader 09:10
So I moved to New York when I was 2120 I thought I would be there for six months, and 26 years later, I was still there. So I had a kind of a pre Yale life there until 1983 and I was single, and I was exhibiting, and I went to NYU and working and just relishing every minute of the city. And then post Yale, I moved back, and now I had a husband who was also a painter from Yale, and one child and another on the way. So the second chapter of New York was extremely different, and I. With at least as much ambition, but much, much more limitation in my ability to just create so two toddlers, living on a nickel, teaching in three different colleges, sometimes seven classes a week, my husband was no better than me at making a solid living. And, you know, but there was still, you know, I was winning. That’s when I got the Paula Krasner. That’s when I got a Gottlieb. I was, you know, showed at 55 Mercer, and I was hanging in there, and I was with, you know, a group of people that just bought everything I made and but then 911 happened. That’s a story we don’t probably have to go into it, but it happened. And then there was a buyout in our building. And then there was, you know, my back went out. It everything just converged, and it was time to leave. I just had to get out, get my children out. Leaving the city was really tough on my career. Yeah, and the ones that stayed, they’re doing alright now. I mean, it would be great if I left and immediately got a tenure track position, but that’s not how it worked. Yeah, it was like many more years of raising two children. My two kids and my husband all have significant learning disabilities, so there was that too. It was just a lot of considerable maintenance and effort just to keep things at Ground Zero. It was just a lot of teaching. It wasn’t without satisfaction and joy, but it was really hard. Work finally led to moving to Louisville and starting our own school, because we just couldn’t seem to get the cherished full time position,
Achim Nowak 12:02
yeah. How did you? Well, let me say this way, I from theater. Yeah, it was sort of a joke, but not a joke. People say, if by the mid 30s, the big career hasn’t happened, then you go shoot. Will it ever happen? Or else, do I go now you ended up going to Baltimore, which is a city I know well and love, but it’s completely different in every aspect from Manhattan or the other boroughs, right? How did you feel being in Baltimore again, city I love very different also career wise. How did Baltimore work for you?
Laurie Fader 12:47
Teaching at mica was thrilling. Yeah, I just adored my students. I really love teaching. We move from a stone’s throw across the river from the World Trade Tower to a carriage house in the woods with a creek and a horse next door, a kind of rundown carriage house. A lot of work, yeah, there was, like a very quiet kind of isolation, and I could drag huge canvases outside and paint on them, but I was also teaching at Goucher and community colleges, and the summer would come, and then we wouldn’t have income. And always applying, applying for everything. And I started to go on residencies. But, you know, every time I went back to New York, I felt I was embraced, you know, it was home, and all my old friends were still there, and it was still happening, but it was always this question of survival,
Achim Nowak 13:51
yeah, yeah. I want to jump ahead to you. You know, when I met you, you know, we’re at McDowell, which is a venerable place where you feel very privileged to be invited. You had just done a bunch of other residencies, and the work just seemed to be pouring out of you. Work is extraordinarily beautiful to me, and I had a sense that you made some decision or commitment to yourself, like, Okay, I’m going to do it now. Am I reading that correctly? Is that what happened? You
Laurie Fader 14:27
know, it was one of those things that when one door closes, another one opens. When I was 65 Yeah, in Louisville, after building a school for eight years and leading it and writing the curriculum I got, there was a big change, and the they hired an outsider to come in and get the school through accreditation, and I was abruptly fired. Oh, I wasn’t even allowed to contact my students. It was like mid. Semester, I was given a a year’s salary, but it was so stunning. I kind of curled up for a couple years, and then COVID happened, yeah, but then my work, I considered for a while accepting another position that was offered to me, but it was like hardcore administration going to yet a smaller town. And I just decided, this is who I am. This is my gift. I’m going to do it. And so I just painted and painted and painted and paint it, and then I had more time to do residencies, and my kids were gone, and it wasn’t even really a question. I mean, it was a question I considered, well, maybe I should go to Africa and work with but many conversations with my brother, but these residencies just kept opening up for me. And the residencies are people and support and network and yeah, and then shows, and they were extremely helpful, just probably for the psyche more than anything else, and to have that privilege of not being a caregiver, yeah, not having to do all those daily things and just paint, yeah, it poured out. It gushed out of me, yeah,
Achim Nowak 16:35
one thing that struck me when you and I met last summer at McDowell, there was a group of us who are the elders, yeah, around for a while, and there was a group of, I’d say, younger creatives and different different disciplines in their 30s, whose careers were just popping. And you felt a generational difference in terms of how we think about career, what matters to us, but you’re also confronted with it. You know, you’re confronted with a whole, say, the gestalt of being a professional artist, writer, composer, filmmaker, those are all people that were there. So as you’re in exalted environment with young hotshots and elders and thinking about Laurie’s work, or Laurie’s career, or maybe, do you think about career? Does it matter? Is it all? Is it just about the work? Gushing for now, how do you process all of that stuff.
Laurie Fader 17:42
Of course, I think about career. I mean, however you define that. I mean, for me at this point, I wish somebody would take a chance and pick me up and represent me. Yeah, and I know, the older I get, I don’t know, there’s a lot of older women now finding having their day in New York now, yeah. And I don’t have anything to lose, quite frankly, so I’m chasing rainbows. I mean, the thing is just so elusive, but I’m still I just have this grit and kind of grinding hope that the universe wants to see my work and is driven. I mean, right now, I feel like I’m as driven and productive as I was in graduate school, the work is just beckons me. This is like a really amazing opportunity to have a full year with support to and a one person show in a museum at the end of the year and curators coming through. I just have kind of a faith that something’s going to finally come through.
Achim Nowak 18:45
Let’s explain to our listeners. We talked, you mentioned residencies, and for listeners who don’t know that, they’re very competitive to get but these are very established places where you submit what you want to do, you’re competing against a whole bunch of other people. A few people are invited to to come for two weeks, four weeks, six weeks, do some work. Very often you’re wined and dined. Sometimes you’re not, but you’re taking care of to do your art. But where you are right now, Lori, which is the Roswell artist in residence program in Roswell, New Mexico, which is, you’re invited for one year, supported to do your work, which is extraordinary, because I would imagine this year will change your life. It has
Laurie Fader 19:34
to. I think it will, yeah. I mean, I am in Don Anderson’s office as we speak, and he was the mastermind behind this program, and he made his money in oil. It has a very interesting history how this place started, but now it’s six houses and a little cluster in the middle of a kind of a desert. Mm. And each house has a big studio, yeah, and we’re given money for art supplies, money for groceries, everything’s taken care of. And it’s a very diverse international group, very kind, very driven, but our no two people are doing anything even remotely similar. We’re all visual artists, wow. But from Zimbabwe, from Iran, from Mexico, New York, which is its own nations,
Achim Nowak 20:34
yes, and me,
Laurie Fader 20:37
and there are elders here and younger. It’s a very diverse group,
Achim Nowak 20:42
since you mentioned your family and you left Louisville for a year, and in my mind, possibly longer, to really just live, breathe your art, and I would imagine that changes your family when you say, I’m taking off for a year. What’s it like to your you know, you were 69 when you were offered this opportunity to say to your family, I’m taking off for a year. I’m going to be just an artist that taking care of me. Bye.
Laurie Fader 21:16
Well, my husband, who was a painter and started an art school. He understood that I couldn’t turn it down. Yeah, he was worried for himself and my son, so I basically left him in the care of a really good caregiver, and my son, who has his own disabilities. But it seemed like it would work out, and it hasn’t very well, yeah, but here I am. I mean, I don’t have regrets. I’ve spent a life supporting my family members, yeah, and they’re, frankly, if I stayed and didn’t take opportunities, I’d be stuck for my own future. Yeah, I have a will to keep trying to carve out something for myself.
Achim Nowak 22:17
What if anything are you discovering about your work and what Laurie wants to say, as Laurie has all this time to let it come through learning Well,
Laurie Fader 22:33
when I was untrained, I did paintings from my imagination, and they were these kind of surreal landscapes. And then when I got through a lot of training, Yale was all like, you don’t know anything about how to put a painting together. And it was formalism, and it was perceptual, like working from observation. And so then when I moved back to New York, I I ended up painting on the streets and putting together, assembling these big ink drawings and then building paintings out of them. It wasn’t till I went to Louisville that I stopped working from what I saw, and I went through this huge transition, kind of went inside and started painting from my memories and from my imagination and creating these dystopic landscapes inhabited by often female protagonists, persevering and they’re they’ve become more and more extreme and lush and terrifying. Yeah, I think as the world is just tumbling toward of very challenging, environmental, epic and political you never know when you’re in the middle of your work if it’s good or not. You just don’t have any perspective. You’re just doing it. And sometimes, you know, I’m outside and the studio lights are on, and I can look in the window as I’m walking by outside, and I think, Damn, that stuff looks pretty good.
Achim Nowak 24:23
I am glad that you have those moments. Lori, good, yeah, you describe your work beautifully because I’ve seen your current work and you articulated it. And part of what I just want to add to your description is you, you work in different scales, but at the very large scale, pieces really also, besides being very beautiful, just esthetically, have a raw power to it that makes them so incredibly compelling. And at the same time. You know, because I think they’re very private, they’re dark as a consumer, I go, Oh, I could see that in my living room. You know, this is the consumer. You go, yes, it’s very personal. It’s primal. There’s a dark side to it, but it’s beautiful. And I could see that, you know, being displayed, it’s not private in that sense, you took us to this beautiful moment where you described seeing your your own work from the outside.
Laurie Fader 25:27
That’s a long distance view. It’s like a duality, because so I’ll invent foliage and trees and rocks and water and a certain kind of color and layer and layer, and becomes inhabited. It starts like scrambled eggs. It starts like hectic and I literally dig in little places where you can walk into the space. So like a theater. Yeah, it’s like a ricochet. Like, do I really want to be here? Yeah, I want to go into that color. But what is this thing? Is this a prophetic kind of a painting, or is it a dark, psychological, troubled kind of thing, or is it just a gorgeous, invented place. You know? Well, my plan is that you keep looking and looking and looking and you go this way and that way. It’s
Achim Nowak 26:32
all of those things I was thinking as you describe it. Now you’re in Roswell for a year,
Laurie Fader 26:41
three months in. Yeah,
Achim Nowak 26:43
three months in. So there’s a power of just being in the moment and letting it pour. But I can’t imagine that you’re not also thinking about when this year is over. Do I go back to my family and take care of them? Do I continue on this path, how do I reconcile all these different facets of my life?
Laurie Fader 27:06
I think part of the time in the studio is time to be applying for the next thing. And I mean, I’m getting old, to apply for certain things. You know. You look at the pictures of who are the current residents, and they’re all under 45 you know, but not all of them. And I’m trying to make options, I’m in good company, because there’s not one person here that’s not worried about next year, yeah, because it’s a big deal to take a year out from your life. Yeah, whatever that life is, unless you’re taking a long sabbatical. But none of us here are doing that, so I’m just following the work, and if the work gets to another level, maybe it’ll be picked up. Maybe I’ll get another long term residency. Maybe I won’t my house in Louisville. It’s a big question. Yeah, I don’t have an answer for it at all. Now,
Achim Nowak 28:15
you alluded to this before, and because you and I know each other from a residency, but maybe describe the the experience of, in this case, being with five other visual artists, and the sort of conversations that happen, and the sort of community that you have there, and how that impacts you.
Laurie Fader 28:42
Just extremely interesting interactions. I mean, even a subject like dream, yeah, if I talk to my Zimbabwe family about dream, their culture is built around dreams. My fellow residents at his sister calls him all the time and talks about her dreams that involve him, and the same with my other friend from Tehran, she’s got a different take on that, and Certainly Guillermo Galindo, the Mexican who’s quite celebrated in Mexico. He works with Dream and sound and place displacement and kind of post apocalyptic sensation experiences. So you talk to him and conversation trips into Marxism or something else. But it’s quite different from my like minded friends in New York, who are all oil paint on canvas. People, right? This is such a I don’t know. It’s just a fascinating cultural mix. And then there’s the extended community of people. That have been here before and chosen to stay Russia and China, and, you know, all kinds of nationalities represented there as well. So, I mean, we’ll get together and have potlucks or barbecues, and it’s just everybody’s we’re all just people. We’re all just artists trying to bump down the road, when it’s one on one and you you’re going to the local Walmarts, it’s like, wow, this is like a whole different way of thinking about this. Yeah,
Achim Nowak 30:33
you beautifully described. As we wrap up, as an artist who just turn 70 is in the middle of a year of just creating, creating, creating, creating, based on what you know. Now, if you were to whisper a few words of wisdom into the ears of young Laurie, not to change the course of your life, but just to impart wisdom. What would you want her to know about life?
Laurie Fader 31:05
Well, I would want her to to get serious about her capacity to make money and live get off of the side of the cliff and raise children in an environment that wasn’t so dicey like that. Yeah, and it could be their choice of a marriage partner or choice of a career. I don’t know. I mean, I love my life, but if I were younger, and I could see my life just the challenges, I don’t know. I mean, I’m just in awe of people that have managed to have just a normal sense of security and happiness, and it’s like most of that is sort of eluded me. And I think I was thinking in preparation for this that I have my birth family, and things have become difficult there, and I have my marriage family, and that’s challenging. I think these days, my real family is my artist friends, yeah, because we all understand each other. We’re all quirky and neurotic and and driven by nonsensical things. And there’s a there’s a terrific community in that, yeah,
Achim Nowak 32:36
I can’t imagine that people who are listening to us aren’t curious about your work and want to take a peek. Where should they go? Look to check out the work that you do? Lori,
Laurie Fader 32:47
probably the most recent, the freshest stuff is coming out on Instagram. So that’s Instagram at LC fader. And then, of course, I have a website, and it’s just my name, Lori, fader.com, I com,
Achim Nowak 33:03
yeah, I urge you all to check out the Instagram. It’s a great way to see the work that’s being created right now in Roswell. It’s stunning. Lori, thank you so much for this conversation.
Laurie Fader 33:18
Yeah, this is great. Thank you. Love you. Love you too. Bye.
Achim Nowak 33:25
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