Transcript:
Timmie Boose: Yoohooo. It's me Timmie Boose. Thanks for joining Adulting for Artists today, self-Improvement and inspiration to help you move forward with your creative life. This episode is brought to you by Grafing Productions, audio visual experts based in Northwest Ohio, and they have a live radio show featuring jazz every Saturday morning, which you can listen to at WCWA.com 6:00 AM to noon; that is Eastern standard time. So, check out Grafing Productions, WCWA.com 6:00 AM to noon on Saturdays. My guest today is Carol Davis from Santa Monica, California. She is a lifelong artist and has experimented with many mediums - most recently, mosaics, and she now has a selection of four online art classes suitable for families or individuals. We talk about her new online classes, her mosaics, creative problem solving, the dream of patrons, competing for your art and differences of opinions of getting glue on your hands. Carol Davis, welcome to Adulting for Artists!
Carol Davis: Thanks. Thanks for having me.
Timmie Boose: It's great to see you and I haven't talked to you for several years. I know Carol from Los Angeles, California, and we were in an art class together at Santa Monica College. And then, I also pet sit for Carol, her lovely dog Popeye and the bunny. And there used to be a fish, and I think I pet sit for you for three years or so, and I loved going to your house. It was so nice. It was decorated, so arty and comfortable. Oh, I just loved to stay in there.
Carol Davis: Thanks. It was good having you, you know, the bunny and the fish are no longer with us, unfortunately.
Timmie Boose: How long did the bunny last?
Carol Davis: Bill lasted for about six years and the fish Mr. Stimpy, he actually lasted for about four years; a gold fish. I took really good care of him.
Timmie Boose: Yeah, I think the first year I was there, the fish was there, but after that he was gone, but the bunny was there the whole time. I have videos of the bunny and Popeye; so cute. I would always be trying to videotape them in the backyard. Cute. Cute. So, you are now working on mosaics and you're giving classes online.
Carol Davis: Yeah, not on mosaics, on other things.
Timmie Boose: Okay. Tell me a little bit about that.
Carol Davis: Okay, so the classes came from I was doing these workshops with like Pre- teen girls - it was called. I'm a girl, what's your superpower? And it was kind of this experiential, like gain competence exercises. The first half and the second half was doing art with them. And I did that because when I was at age, I just felt so shitty about myself and I started really hating myself a lot. So, I wanted to hopefully make sure these girls didn't fall into that. The moms would pick them up or the dads and some of them would say, "You know, I would love to do art with my kids, but I don't know how to do it." Like, huh, okay, I think I can fix that, so then I made these videos. Originally I thought they can be done with family or none of that or by yourself. I include a question in case you're there with somebody else, or I say, ask the next first person you see stuff like, "If you were a worldwide wrestler, what would your name be and why?" If you're one of those wrestlers, what would your name be? Or one of them is, "If you were to give the other person a tattoo, what would it be and where would you put it?" So just like, you know, conversations started, especially if it's like parent and kid, you know, they sometimes--
Timmie Boose: Yeah, kind of fun things to think about.
Carol Davis: Yeah, so I picked four projects that were I think really fun and interesting and kind of open-ended enough so they can really make them their own. And the projects were, the supplies were easy to get and I videotaped those, which was really a pain in the ass because I had no idea what it was doing. So, I had to re tape them a lot of times. And then I built a website with the things on, and so now I'm trying to kind of market those. I'm actually, this is, I'm trying to be an adult about this. Like, I talked to somebody about doing SEO, you know, search engine optimization.
Timmie Boose: Oh yeah. What is that?
Carol Davis: I know. It's like, I'm learning all this adult stuff like keywords and keyword searching and all this stuff. And then, I actually got to hire someone who's not expensive to do my social media because I don't like doing that.
Timmie Boose: I don't like doing that either. It really can take up a lot of your time messing around with that kind of stuff.
Carol Davis: So much time. She's going to post every day on three platforms. So I'm like, yes.
Timmie Boose: Oh wow.
Carol Davis: So I'm doing that, and the projects are like, for example, one is a collage. It's called a pet collage. It's like doing animal collage. One is doing actually embroidery; I call them dangling art chunks. I think it's really cool. One I called exploding head where you take a picture of yourself and then you put like a big shape above it and fill it in with colors and shapes. And then, one is called I can't believe it's Finger Paint and you actually finger paint on a piece of wood and then you add detail to it and it looks very cool.
Timmie Boose: Oh, so these are videos that are on your website and what is your website?
Carol Davis: Thank you for asking. It's called launchpadartroom.com.
Timmie Boose: Okay. Launch pad art room, and is that up now?
Carol Davis: You know, it's up now, but yes. I'm going to say yes. I'm going to redo it but that shouldn't take too long though, but yeah, it's up.
Timmie Boose: And these are classes that you pay for?
Carol Davis: You get one free class which I put up, which is a collage of fruit; a piece of fruit collage. And then there's a package of four, although I might break it up into individual ones, and those you pay for. And you know, I know there's a lot of free art on YouTube and stuff you can take or even Pinterest, but these lessons are super detailed. I even give you a supply list you can print out. I write out all the instructions in case you want to read them. The shortest one is probably 18 minutes to about a half an hour long.
Timmie Boose: Nice.
Carol Davis: And there's music and stuff.
Timmie Boose: So you do the work, the artwork along with the class kind of?
Carol Davis: Well, I'm demonstrating it. Like I have the cam, you can really just kind of see my hands. So the camera's kind of over my shoulder, and so you can see me doing the work and I talk about it as I do it. So you can do it along with the video or you can stop and start it and or go back, and you have something you don't get.
Timmie Boose: I think sometimes when you actually pay for a class, you get a lot more out of it. It's like you're investing money, and so you'll take the time to actually work through it. You know what I mean?
Carol Davis: So I'm hoping. And they're not super basic. I mean, you do learn different arts skills and techniques in each one of them, so it does take a little commitment, but they're very cool. It's like, I always say at the end of the video, it's like the best part is you're going to have a piece of art that you can hang on the wall that you made.
Timmie Boose: That's awesome. And I like that you have a little name for each one of them.
Carol Davis: Yeah. That was fun. I like coming up with that.
Timmie Boose: That's awesome.
Carol Davis: Also, I have the mosaics too; that's a different thing, and I've been doing those now for about maybe five years. I have sold them, I mean, I learned how to do it by taking a little weekend, like Groupon. And this woman taught them in like her dining room and I did a weekend. I'm like, I can do this and I just started it, and I really, really like it.
Timmie Boose: Yeah. I remember a few years ago I went to, it was like a workshop or something you were doing to make mosaics and I made a mosaic.
Carol Davis: Oh, that was a little art opening that I had. And I would tie a little-- oh, you were there; that's right. You were there.
Timmie Boose: Yeah, I forget what it was exactly. It was somewhere in Santa Monica and I made this little, maybe like a 3X3 piece of wood with mosaics. I had never done that before. It was awesome.
Carol Davis: Yeah. That was a little-- I actually do improv, and so art, like kind of improv director guy. For some reason he rented a gallery space for one night and he had three different artists in it and I was one of them. Yeah, I did a little class for whoever wanted to do it. I forgot you did that. That's cool. What did you do? What does it look like?
Timmie Boose: I don't know. I think it was just some kind of design or something, but it was cool looking; I use to put candles on it.
Carol Davis: The glass is beautiful. I mean, I use glass, like we use for stain glass, this sort of stained glass, so it's not ceramic or anything, but the colors are really vibrant and bright and just really deep. The colors are just so great. I love that. There's a big warehouse down south here a little ways called Pacific Art Glass. It's just massive warehouse, just full of glass.
Timmie Boose: Where's that?
Carol Davis: It's in Gardena, California.
Timmie Boose: it's open to the public to buy glass.
Carol Davis: Right. I did buy big sheets of it, and then I break it up into little pieces and then I have these little nippers that I used to cut it into the shapes that I want.
Timmie Boose: That's awesome.
Carol Davis: For me again, yeah.
Timmie Boose: All right, so you have another website for the mosaics, right?
Carol Davis: I do. That one's called absolutemosaics.com.
Timmie Boose: That's a pretty good web name, absolutemosaics.
Carol Davis: You know, it's funny because my husband, he's a music agent and he started his own agency a while ago and he's like, what should I name it? And I said, name it absoluteartists.com. He doesn't have that anymore, so it's like, okay, I can use that name now.
Timmie Boose: He didn't? I was going to say that's a good name. Was it available?
Carol Davis: Absolute artists was available, yes, so was absolutemosaics was available too.
Timmie Boose: Wow. Usually like the first thing you think of is not available. Like I was going to call this podcast something totally different and it was not available. And I was really banking on that for the name. It was going to be professional amateur, but somebody already has a podcast called professional amateur.
Carol Davis: I love the name of your podcast. See, it's probably a good thing it wasn't available, right?
Timmie Boose: Yeah, maybe so. So, don't always settle on the first name.
Carol Davis: That's right.
Timmie Boose: Stays open.
Carol Davis: I mean, I say art is like a progression of creative problem solving anyway. I think that's really what it is. And I think if you come upon obstacles is actually a good thing. Or you make-- I say this in my videos. It's like, if you make a mistake it can be really great. It's like, wow, okay. So oftentimes a mistake is something you would never think of to do, and sometimes a mistake sucks. But like with your title of your podcast, I think it's much better the title that you have in my opinion, then I remember--
Timmie Boose: Professional amateur. Yeah, maybe you're right. Maybe you're right Carol.
Carol Davis: So you knew it was already taken anyway, so that means it's already kind of tired.
Timmie Boose: In fact, it was taken like four times. A lot of people use adulting in their name of their podcast also, I've discovered that, but its too late.
Carol Davis: Adulting for artists; nobody has that one, right?
Timmie Boose: Nobody has that one, no.
Carol Davis: It's a great name.
Timmie Boose: Yeah, so I'm dealing with all that social media and stuff like you and I am probably going to start shopping out for somebody to help me with that because, Oh my God, it's very time consuming.
Carol Davis: It's another, it is not as they say my zone of genius, for sure. It is not.
Timmie Boose: Okay, let's talk about-- you've got a family. You're married, you have a family, you have a house. To me, it always seemed like you have a dog. You were like, it's going to the other side when I would pet sit at your house. It was like, I was going into the other side of the world type thing. I don't know what to say about it exactly. I just thought it was really interesting.
Carol Davis: I mean, I have to say I lucked out because my dad died in like 1999 or something and he left us all a little chunk of money, and so that's how we were able to get this house. I never would have been able to save enough money to do it, so we did, we got [inaudible13:39].
Timmie Boose: And you said that your dad was an artist also, right?
Carol Davis: Yeah, but he was a doctor is why he had money to leave. If he was an artist he would have probably, I don't know. I shouldn't say that, there were a lot of successful artists, but yeah, he was a psychiatrist actually.
Timmie Boose: Okay, but he did art on the side. You said he always had a painting going?
Carol Davis: Yeah. He always have a painting, and he did often do those little park shows like in a park, they set up easels, he did those, but he had so many paintings. When he died, he had literally like a whole storage facility full of paintings.
Timmie Boose: Wow.
Carol Davis: But that was hard because I have three siblings and he had his wife and we all took as many as we could, but they were lot of paintings. I don't even know what my step-mom did with them. I didn't want to ask. I don't know what she did with them.
Timmie Boose: Yeah, you can't take them all. I mean like, do you feel like you have a lot of old work sitting around because I feel like I do. And also when I moved from LA, I abandoned so much stuff, I had just left a bunch of stuff. I gave some stuff away. If you're not selling the work, it becomes issue to store it.
Carol Davis: It certainly does. It does, yeah. I have some stuff and right now I am [inaudible14:58] because I have a bunch of shows lined up. But obviously, they're not happening, and I want to make more and I have ideas for more, but I'm sort of like, well I already have a lot, but I want to make them, so I'm going to start making them again just to do it. I have a friend who wants to do a commission and I keep saying, so when do you think you're going to get around to--? She just moved into a new house, so--
Timmie Boose: She wants you to do a commission for her?
Carol Davis: Yeah. I've done a few commissions.
Timmie Boose: Oh, that's great.
Carol Davis: One was really good; it was a friend of Bruce's, my husband and this woman's kind of an amazing entrepreneur. She has a hotel in Beverly Hills and she wanted one, so I did one for her, which is really fun.
Timmie Boose: Did she have like a photograph or what did she want a mosaic of?
Carol Davis: Well, this was almost harder. Like, she had seen my work and she's like, I love what you do, do whatever you want.
Timmie Boose: Oh, perfect.
Carol Davis: It was good, but there was also not that great, so I'm like, " I hope she likes it. What if she hates it?"
Timmie Boose: It's a little too open, a little too much creative license.
Carol Davis: I mean, I made what I liked and apparently she liked what I liked, and that's why she asked me to do it. So she liked it, I mean, I wanted her to be like ecstatic, like, Oh my God. I mean, she was like, "Yeah, it's good. It's really good." Like okay, you know, but she paid me for it, which is the most important thing, right?
Timmie Boose: Yeah, that's great. So, I noticed I'm looking at your mosaic website right now, and you frame most of them because they're on like a piece of wood and then some of them it's like, you have them floating in a frame.
Carol Davis: They're all framed actually. All of them are frames.
Timmie Boose: Some of them are frames like close to the borders of the mosaic. And then, some of them have like a lot of space before you get to the frame. You know what I mean? Yeah.
Carol Davis: I think what you're looking at-- what I do is, on the website, I sort of cut out the background when I put it on the first page. And then if you click on that image, it'll go to the page of that mosaic. And then, you'll see that they're all framed, like they all have frames on.
Timmie Boose: Well, I'm looking, okay; I don't think you get what I'm saying. I'm looking at this one, it's of like a few different colors of trees and there's a photograph of it and it's on like a beige background with a black frame around it. But I wanted to ask you because you don't have it behind glass, I don't think, right?
Carol Davis: No, it's not being on glass.
Timmie Boose: What is it attached to? What's the mosaic attached to it; it's just like a piece of another piece of wood or something?
Carol Davis: That actually took me a long time to figure out how to do that because I didn't want the frame to be right against the mosaic. I mean, initially I did that because some of them are really small and I thought they'd just be too small. So, what I do is, they're on wood, they're on plywood, so it's just kind of a long process where I get a frame and then I cut a piece of [inaudible18:05]. the frame is always bigger than the piece. So, there's a piece of fabric and I use like that fake suede, like ultra suede often, or sometimes linen. And I tape it to the [inaudible18:32] around the corner really tightly. And then, I use screws to drill the-- its just interesting all.
Okay, I go from the back, like into the Mason light into the wood of the mosaic. I made a few mistakes. Sometimes I used screws that were too long, and so they went into the glass and like knocked the glass off the front of it because the screw was too long, so I learned that lesson early on. So, I use the kind of short screws. So, that's how the mosaic is stuck to the background; it's screwed on.
Timmie Boose: Oh wow.
Carol Davis: And then I put it in the frame and then I put paper on the back of it so you don't see all the screws and everything. And then, I put the hanging wire on it after that.
Timmie Boose: That's awesome.
Carol Davis: It's a long freaking process.
Timmie Boose: Yeah. I'm always fascinated with how people finish their work because I always have a hard time doing that. I'm usually pretty basic like, Whoa, no, one's going to see the back of it, so who cares what it looks like on the back? Well, people do care what it looks like on the back you know.
Carol Davis: They actually do. They do care. They do look at the back.
Timmie Boose: And then do you sign your work?
Carol Davis: I didn't use to do it, but now I do. I sign the back, like on the paper part, I sign it.
Timmie Boose: Okay.
Carol Davis: I had a show actually before the global pandemic in this really cool kind of coffee house cafe. And I made a bunch of pieces for that show and I actually sold a lot because I was really adult in that when I did that. I really worked at like, I emailed everybody I know. I'm not kidding, including my gynecologist and my dentist; like everybody I knew in LA and then I made postcards, I sent out postcards and then I sent out more emails and follow up emails. And I also did put it on Facebook and Instagram and I got like a good crowd of people there. And then, there were like snacks, you know, the guy who ran the cafe, like took care of the snack table. It was lit really nicely. I sold probably about 12 at night, which was really good.
Timmie Boose: That's awesome.
Carol Davis: That's really, I mean the first one, this woman, my friend, and she's like, "I really liked that one." I'm like, okay. And she goes, "No, I mean, I want to buy it." I'm like, "Oh right. That's right. That's why I'm here."
Timmie Boose: I know it's so shocking sometimes when somebody wants to buy something of yours and you're like, Oh, I hadn't thought this far ahead about things.
Carol Davis: I know. Well, I had thought about like, I got one of those little square things and I had brought like stuff to wrap them in and tape. I had bags and all that crap.
Timmie Boose: Oh, that's good.
Carol Davis: No, I did think about that, but I guess it sounded like a nice time just visiting with friends and stuff. So it's like, Oh yeah, right. And then one of them, this friend of mine wanted, and I said, "Okay, I'll be back in a minute" because I had to go wrap up another one and then this other friend of mine came and went and that same one. And so, it was like, "Oh God, what do I do?" So, the second one didn't get it because the first one wanted it. So that was like, okay. That's kind of a nice dilemma.
Timmie Boose: Yeah, right. It's like a good problem to have.
Carol Davis: Yeah. And I tried to sell this second friend, this other one that kind of looks like the one. And she's like, "No, I want that one." Like, okay, darn it.
Timmie Boose: Does she still hate you now?
Carol Davis: She's hates me forever and ever. No, she doesn't, but I think she had a little too much wine to drink that night. She kind of walked off and I thought kind of a half, maybe not good, but we're fine. We've talked since then and all that.
Timmie Boose: It's like a competition, a competition of patrons to buy your art. I wish that would happen to me.
Carol Davis: I didn't have any one time in my entire life, so it didn't.
Timmie Boose: I'm waiting for that milestone Carol.
Carol Davis: It'll happen. It'll happen Timmie Boose, just believe it.
Timmie Boose: If there's ever any art shows again, you know.
Carol Davis: I know, right.
Timmie Boose: I'm actually in an art show coming up in a couple months in St. Petersburg, Florida, but it's like a themed show.
Carol Davis: What's the theme?
Timmie Boose: The theme is clouds. So, I have to figure out what am I going to do.
Carol Davis: How many pieces do you need?
Timmie Boose: Just one, but I'm struggling with my medium. You know, for a while I was painting a lot and now I'm not super into painting, but I also do graphic design. I always have, but I've never really merged my art with my graphic design. So, I'm kind of thinking of maybe making something that needs to be cut out of wood because I'm also tired of squares lately, like squares and rectangles, so I don't really want to just paint something on a canvas plus painting takes forever. Lately for me anyway, because--
Carol Davis: Setting it up takes forever I think, especially oil paints, like getting ready to paint takes for freaking ever.
Timmie Boose: Yeah, and if you screw it up, then you spend all that time and it's screwed up. I don't know, just thinking about spending that much time on something and I'm not that experienced with painting clouds, like, you know, they're translucent they're misty.
Carol Davis: You can do whatever you want. It sounds like you're going in a cool direction with it though.
Timmie Boose: Yeah, I think I need to get somebody-- find somebody with a CNC machine and--
Carol Davis: What is that?
Timmie Boose: It cuts things out like a laser cutter or something, so it can be cut into the shape of a cloud.
Carol Davis: Yeah.
Timmie Boose: I don't know. I'm still working it out. It's not until November.
Carol Davis: I like where this is going.
Timmie Boose: Got that right.
Carol Davis: Your piece is going to just be so different than everyone else's.
Timmie Boose: I want it to be kind of simple, you know, I'm trying to make things not too complicated. And then, if it's simple, and then maybe somebody buys it, maybe it's easy to make copies of, you know?
Carol Davis: Yeah. That's definitely, I mean, when I was doing my-- I don't even know if I mentioned this, but for a long time I had a business doing in collage art. To make it more functional and sellable, I put the collages on faces of clocks and I made placements and then I wrote little funny captions underneath them. But what I ended up doing to make it more sort of mass producible is I would make a collage and then I would do it color photo copy of it. And then, I would sort of embellish that, and so it looked kind of one of a kind dish, but it was easier to-- because I couldn't just keep making one of a kind and I was actually selling a lot of them at that time, so I was doing a lot of shows.
Timmie Boose: Oh, okay, and was that in LA?
Carol Davis: No, that was up in San Francisco, but I traveled. I mean one summer, actually my husband drove to Vermont. We did a house swap and I did shows all up and down the East coast, like I did a different show each weekend.
Timmie Boose: Oh wow.
Carol Davis: Yeah, oh van. It looked like it had gone through a fire, it’s kind of this burnt Coraine and they're like orange shag carpeting on the inside. It was like, that's cool.
Timmie Boose: That's cool. It sounds very romantic.
Carol Davis: It was fun. It was a really fun summer. I mean, some shows were better than others, you know? So anyway, that's how I was able to make enough to sell.
Timmie Boose: So why did you go to the East coast; because everything is so much closer together there or--?
Carol Davis: Just a little bit for summertime adventure. I've never been to Vermont. I was in San Francisco at the time, so, I mean I had a tiny studio apartment and it turns out she had this great big house in Vermont and I told her and she's like, she gets-- she has two kids and she's like, it's kind of a little, like, it is welcome to San Francisco. And we had this big kind of rambling farmhouse for the summer.
Timmie Boose: Oh, you said that you did a house swap?
Carol Davis: Well, we swapped houses, yeah, so it didn't cost any. Well, I had to pay rent on my place was really cheap.
Timmie Boose: Oh, that's awesome. It's really cool. You said in the questionnaire that I sent you, that you're working on some kind of a kid's TV show about animals.
Carol Davis: Yeah, right. I'm trying to do the two. Yeah, it's about, I don't know how much I should say. I'm so stupid, but it's about animals on different continents and it's about just like some animals that you think you know, they have this amazing traits. Like for example, the slot, they live in very damp area in the jungle, and so it grows this bacteria, this sort of green fungus actually on its fur. And they've been doing research and they've discovered like cancer fighting properties in this fungus that grows on slot fur.
Timmie Boose: Really?
Carol Davis: Yeah. I like that. To me, that sounds like so cool. Like, Oh my God. And then there's like this bird called the Arctic Turn that flies from the North South pole and back every year. It flies over a million miles in its lifetime.
Timmie Boose: And where does it settle? Which continent?
Carol Davis: In the North and the South Pole, both it lives half and half its life. So, it's like flying--
Timmie Boose: To the poles.
Carol Davis: The different poles. It flies from one pole to the other and back. And it's the only animal-- creature that sees two summers in its lifetime.
Timmie Boose: Wow.
Carol Davis: So, it's about like, to me, animals are just like- like even the ostrich, you think it's this kind of big, dumb animal, but it's really smart, and it's the fastest land animal in the world and it can kill you by kicking you. Because I'm going to describe it, they're like out in Africa with lions, they're like a chicken sitting out there. So they've actually developed these really strong defense mechanisms because they're very kind of vulnerable, but they're really smart. And they have the biggest eyeballs of any animal also.
Timmie Boose: Really?
Carol Davis: So, it's like stuff like that, that I find really interesting. And then, ultimately the goal is to get these kids to fall in love with these animals. And then, I want them to then take kind of stewardship over the earth. And at the end of every show recommended like an organization they can join or some sort of, you know, there's so many out there to help save these animals and then also to talk about how everything's interconnected. Like if you fuck up one ecosystem, it's going to ripple really around the world.
Timmie Boose: Yeah, that sounds amazing.
Carol Davis: Yeah, that's like the ultimate umbrella reason. So actually, working with this friend of mine who I knew from improv and she's helping me write this pitch and I'm like, why the hell not? Bruce has a few connections to TV agents and stuff like that, it is where he works.
Timmie Boose: Oh, that's great. I hope you get it made; that'll be awesome.
Carol Davis: It's called Seven Creator Seven Continents for now at least.
Timmie Boose: That sounds awesome. When you said improv, it reminded me that I did see you do improv once.
Carol Davis: You did? Oh my God. I forgot what you did.
Timmie Boose: Invited me to an improv thing. And I think you said you were going to be at a comedy show and I thought you were going to be doing like comedy. Like, go out by yourself and do comedy. I didn't realize it was improv, like, you know, all those people go up and do that. I think you were taking an improv class or something.
Carol Davis: Yeah, and--
Timmie Boose: It was summer in Santa Monica.
Carol Davis: Did I fucked or was it okay?
Timmie Boose: I don't know. I've been to a couple of those when the people I know take improv classes every once in a while I've showed up at those things and you know you're there to lend your supports. But, the people, they're not professionals.
Carol Davis: In other word it's-- Well, maybe that was early on. I don't know. I mean, I've been in some really good shows actually, so that could have been a bad one, yeah.
Timmie Boose: I think it might've been your first show.
Carol Davis: Oh, okay.
Timmie Boose: It was somewhere in Santa Monica and you had to enter in the door of an alley.
Carol Davis: Oh, right. Yeah, that was a long time ago. I've done a lot since then. Yeah, that was the very beginning.
Timmie Boose: Yeah, I've been to a lot of bad acting and comedy stuff when I lived in LA
Carol Davis: It can be painful.
Timmie Boose: It can as an audience member, but you're kind of like, thank God. I'm not on stage.
Carol Davis: Yeah. You know it's funny; I actually really like being on stage. I don't know, I guess this part of me that's, I don't know. I don't know what, but I'm an exhibitionist or something, but a lot of people get really nervous. I mean, I do too, but I also get really energized by it too, especially if after the shift, I know it went well. And sometimes they do sometimes. I mean, it's improv so--
Timmie Boose: Yeah, I've never done improv. I've never done it. It seems scary to me, you know, like thinking of what to do, just like in the moment. I mean, I used to be a musician and I used to go on stage, but I'd have my songs all practiced and ready to go. I wasn't making them up. That can get stale too if you know exactly what you're going to do.
Carol Davis: Thing about improv, you actually work really hard to be spontaneous so you work because you don't want to think about it. You don't want to have any agenda. It's like the ultimate, like a be in the moment kind of thing, and you kind of practice that a lot. And there's like certain techniques and it's not like you're just going out there; it's like, you actually kind of study it and practice a lot. So, it's not-- like you say, it's not just-- there's a lot to it actually. Especially if you're good at it, you know, it's pretty brilliant actually.
Timmie Boose: I know that's like how all those like Saturday night live people, they all start that way.
Carol Davis: Right, second city, a lot of them from there. And there's something here called-- Amy Poehler started one called-- I just forgot the name of it. I forgot the name. Anyway, she started with some other comedians.
Timmie Boose: Oh, that's awesome. All right, well, I'm glad that you delve into all of that kind of creative endeavors like that.
Carol Davis: I don't know if you want to delve into this, but just thinking about it because you have asked me before, like how do I, like, I don't know if I'm stuck, come up with ideas, if you want to? I was thinking about that because you had mentioned, you'd asked me that.
Timmie Boose: Yeah, definitely. I'm sure a lot of our listeners would want to know. What do you do when you're stuck?
Carol Davis: So I was thinking about when I took that class with you, like for me, at least what works, I just tell you the teacher about this. Like, if I have like a tiny prompt because she would give us prompts for projects. And for me, at least I just needed like a tiny prompt and I'm like, okay, now I can do something. And now like with the mosaics, I think my tiny prompts are like I live just like sort of the shape of nature, like trees. And it's like, for some reason I like Cypress, those hedges, like those like Italy, I just love the shapes of those. So I just take a lot of photos of things I find appealing, no matter what they are. And for a while I was into telephone poles, and so I was using a lot of telephone poles in the mosaics I made. And I for those, I actually start with a photograph and then kind of build different images from pictures I've taken. So it's almost like collage because I did a lot of collage, sort of like that way. And or sometimes I'll just like go on like Pinterest or something, and I'll see what other people are doing and I'll go, okay, that looks kind of cool; let me try that. And just by even trying it kind of loosens me up and loosens my brain. Like, okay, well I can do this with it. Like I don't have to do like, they did it. I can try something else.
Timmie Boose: Right. Yeah, I have some class I took recently. Well I bought it awhile back and yesterday I just started following along with it finally. And it's basically just how to get back to your intuition and do are without really thinking about it, just playing around.
Carol Davis: What did they suggest?
Timmie Boose: She basically, she has just like different pens and you know, a little bit of paint, splatter some paint on some water color paper and you know, mess around with a black pen, a metallic pen, a white pen, you know, I don't know; nothing really groundbreaking, but it made me get the pens out and mess around with some stuff.
Carol Davis: I think one key, like when you're talking [inaudible34:36], it's like, don't worry about it. It's like not everything you make has to be a masterpiece or gorgeous. You don't even have to even like it; it's like, just like you said, like you get the pens out and then you just start doing shit. Because I think it's, I don't know if if it's like a habit so much, but it's just like, you have to just do it and not worry about it I think. And I think the worry that it's going to have to look good or something can really hold people back.
Timmie Boose: I think so too. I mean, I've done painting oil paint, acrylic paint, watercolor. I've done like Sculpey magnens and I've done stuff with cardboard, so sometimes I don't even know what medium to use anymore. So I'm just like, I don't even know what to pick out, but the easiest thing is water color. Well, I mean, I wouldn't say I'm good at water color. I would just say it's easy just to get it out and get the paper out and just start messing around. And then, you can do pencils with, and you know, mix things together pretty easily, whereas like oil paint, you kind of need a little bit more preparation.
Carol Davis: Yes, and it's easy to have a set of watercolors around in a pad of watercolor paper. It's like you're right. Take up space and doesn't smell bad when you open it up.
Timmie Boose: Yeah, you can wash it off your hands. Like oil paint, like, oh my God, I don't have any turpentine. Well now what?
Carol Davis: Yeah, so it's like, yeah, I have stuff around that's easy to just get out and you know? It's kind of like exercising or something. Like, I don't know. I have this little mini trampoline that I jumped on and it's easy. It's set up, it's easy to go; it's almost like if you take away the obstacles to getting there. Like you said, just having a watercolor, it's something easy. I think people tend to build things up in their minds like, Oh God, I have to make this great piece of art, or it's like, I have to use all these whatever, you know, it's like, make it easy on yourself. Art collage is really easy. You just cut up a bunch of shit and glue it to a piece of paper, and now you can add if you want to add paint or whatever pompom. Whatever you want to button, you know, just--
Timmie Boose: I hate doing collage because I hate getting glue on my hands. I don't know. It like really bothers me like when my hands have glued start to dry them.
Carol Davis: I like getting glue on my hands. When I was a kid, we used to we put glue all over our hands and then peel it off. And then, you could see like your fingerprints in it and stuff. I like really like that.
Timmie Boose: I used to like to dip my fingers in like candles. Like when the candle wax is melty and then it makes little fingertip things.
Carol Davis: Yeah, that's fun too.
Timmie Boose: All right. Well, Carol, it's great to talk to you and tell us the name of the website again.
Carol Davis: One is called Launchpad Art Room; that's the one with the lessons on it, and then the mosaic is absolutemosaics.com
Timmie Boose: Great, and good luck getting all that together. And everybody check out Carol's classes workshops
Carol Davis: What is it called?
Timmie Boose: A class, a workshop; I don't even know. What's the difference?
Carol Davis: They are classes; they are online classes.
Timmie Boose: Online classes.
Carol Davis: Okay.
Timmie Boose: Tell Popeye I said hello and Bruce. All right, it's been great to talk to you again.
Carol Davis: Thanks for having me.
Timmie Boose: Bye Carol. Thanks again for joining the show today, everyone. Thanks to my guest, Carol Davis. You can check out her new art classes; they should be up soon at launchpadartroom.com, or you can check out her mosaics at absolutemosaics.com. Go to the Adulting for artists.com website and sign up for my newsletter. It'll be coming out eventually. If you would sign up for it, it would make me get it together, right? I haven't made it yet you guys. I'm trying to help you too help me too. Come on people. I'm also looking for a social media person. So if anybody is interested in helping out with the social media, you can contact me through adultingforartists.com or on Facebook, there is an adultingforartists.com page. Have a great week everybody. Get some stuff done. Try not to stress out too much. Try to get some artistic flow going, talk to you next week.