Jim Draper (part 1) - Origin Story & Radical Naturalism

Part 1 of 2. This episode discusses Baroque Jacksonville, Jim and the Jags/Cowford connection, his Mississippi roots, the Jax art scene of Murray Hill in the 90s and the Feast of Flowers project and Cummer exhibition as the  prototype for his upcoming Taxodium project. Also, how Radical Naturalism is you! Follow Jim on his Substack: https://substack.com/@jimdraper (artwork by AI, which is very radically natural)

Season 2 of Floridation discusses art and culture in Northeast Florida with a different artist or culture maker each episode.

Thanks for putting a little a Florida in you. Y'all come back now, hear?

Transcript

Jon 0:11

So uh thank you so much for joining us today, Jim. Uh Will and I are in the studio uh today with Jim Draper to talk about his work

Introducing artist Jim Draper

Speaker 3 0:22

in life.

Jon 0:23

Um radical naturalist.

Speaker 0:26

Yes.

Willis 0:26

I had to prove that I remember.

Jim 0:27

Capital R or Capital N.

Speaker 3 0:32

Uh Michael is also in the room hanging out with us. Uh he's not on mic though, in spite of his name. Um and uh Michael's a good friend of the cast also, uh Jim's partner, and um we are gonna talk about the radical naturalist stuff. But let's do it. I want to start it, I want to kind of start it off just sort of with sort of at a high level. I hear you do art.

Speaker 0:58

I I uh I paint pictures. Okay. Yeah. It's uh I you know it's I use dip a brush and something and you know just wiggle it on. Wiggle it on, wiggle it on.

Speaker 3 1:08

That's what I do. Nice. So um tell me a little bit more. So like pretend we just met at a party and I heard from somebody else at the party that that you do art, and I and I'm gonna ask you all the naive questions, like what does it look like?

Speaker 1:25

Why don't you why don't you start with how long does it take you? Oh, how is that is that that's always a great how long does it take you to do that? I I don't know. Are they trying to like assess value? I don't know. I'm just gonna pay more than that. I mean I only pay minimum wage when you're at a bar and somebody brings you a drink. How long did it take you to get here? Exactly. I mean, I don't know. I don't know. Strange way to quantify someone. A while. Uh I paint pictures. I've been painting pictures for um uh not to give anything away, but uh probably 60 something years maybe. Um I um I have I mean if it matters, I have an undergraduate degree from University of Mississippi called Ole Miss in 1974 and drawing and painting, and then one from University of Georgia in 1978 in drawing and painting, which um if you want the paper, I can give it to you. I don't it's worthless.

Speaker 3 2:24

We'll put it we'll put it all online if if someone doesn't trust the work

The Jags mural downtown, origins of the prowl-prints, the Spanish cows of Cowford, Healing Palms

Speaker 3 2:29

and they need the credentials.

Speaker 2:30

It seems to matter more than it does. Um it matters to uh select a few, but anyway, that's where uh that's my uh my CV so far.

Speaker 4 2:38

Yeah.

Speaker 2:39

I've uh in Jacksonville, I've I've made pictures in Jacksonville area since early 90s. Yeah.

Speaker 3 2:47

Uh one of them you'll appreciate this. Do you remember on that Calford steakhouse building back in the day when there was a Jaguar, a giant jaguar painted on it? Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2:58

This guy. Oh, yeah, that was the opening season of the Jaguars.

Speaker 1 3:01

And um Yeah, I remember there was a little bit of an outcry when they did they demolish that bill or they just on the uh wooden panels that were sort of and it looked like it was in a box, sort of. Yeah, yeah. That was there was a lot of people loved that.

Speaker 3:16

Yeah. Well, and uh they did. And uh it was interesting because that was 1995, maybe the opening season of the Jaguars. And um, yep, so we um the guy named Frank Walmart and I went around town and we I I it was an effort and an initiative by the downtown chamber of commerce. Okay. Um and so uh they asked me and Ann Bannis, who I work we both were teaching at FC, then it was FCC J, now it's something else. Um and so we um so I went over there and it's interesting because I'm a broke, I'm a Baroque art band, and uh Bernini. And so interesting that a lot of people don't know is that that was um actually based on Bernini's uh um uh the uh ecstasy of St. Teresa. Oh wow at the uh uh San Carlo San Carlo alla Quattra Fontana in Rome. That was the you've got the patrons watching this drama that's unfolding. Okay. And so yeah, I designed um the building with the jaguars in it. Ann and I worked on together, but I designed that, and then I had this idea of this escape hatch, and the jaguars come out and they go down Bay Street to the stadium, and so I designed these footprints.

Speaker 1 4:36

Oh, those are really famous.

Speaker 4:38

And it's really interesting because I've been I've had many tutorials on people telling me about the footprints, about how to do them. I'm like, well, you know, I've never I have never heard of such. Tell me more. Tell me, tell me about how did how who's who started that? Oh, nobody knows. Nobody knows.

Speaker 3 4:56

Anyway, um, so anyway. I love telling, I didn't know all of that depth of it, but I love introducing people to your work that way because I I've been into I've been tapped into your work for a long time. We've known each other for over 20 years.

Speaker 1 5:12

Yeah, that would be like someone like my entry point into well.

Speaker 3 5:16

The funny thing is, like, you know, what yeah, you've seen his art now, like doing the research and stuff, and like like just these dense um pictures of natural landscapes where it just feels like it's it showcases a thing deeply, but there's layers and layers of depth behind it. Right. And then people are like, who's Jim Draper? And I'm like, Do you know the Jaguars mural? Yeah, and that's like and then they're like, Oh, he's great.

Speaker 5:39

Do ball, do baller. Exactly. I I'll tell you a quick side note. I went to a football game once. I'm not a I mean, I just I I I don't care, I just don't know much about it. It's just not my world. Yeah, and it was fine. Somebody gave me tickets, and it was fine. They have these little steps in the stadium that are like six inches and they're oddly placed. Yeah. So I went up, I thought, okay, I'll just go get a beer. I can deal with if I get a beer, I can deal with it. Yeah, so I went up to this place where they sell beer. And the beer is like not a cup, it's like a fucking gallon of beer. And so I walked it was bucket night? Every night's bucket night in the stadium again, apparently. The only other well, uh yeah. Anyway, I was walking down these stairs and I was sitting, you know, there's people around and all, yeah, and these people that I can't remember who it was that gave me the tickets. I was with all these people, and there was this woman sitting there, lovely dressed, had on a white blouse, until I made missed the step, and my beer went up in the air and hovered in the air for a while, then landed on her blouse. Until then, I didn't know that she had a bra with bra with strawberries on. She was completely, completely saturated with beer.

Speaker 3 6:56

Right. It could have been a 16-ounce saturation, but it had to be like a 32-ounce.

Speaker 7:00

No, I think I think that's four gallons. So anyway, it was the Home Depot bucket full of beer. Anyway, I said, I want to die. I just I want the whatever this is to open up and swallow me a whole lot I want to die. I want to go away. I don't want to be here anymore. She said, it's football. Who cares?

Speaker 3 7:18

And then I she's like, this happens every game.

Speaker 7:22

That's why she wears fruit and fruit bra. It's there's somebody has a like a bingo card. Blueberries, bananas some week. You never know who's gonna saturate you. So anyway, that was my anyway. What were we talking about? That was my um that was my um your Jaguar. Jaguar story. But it was fun. I mean that that Jaguar mural was kind of was fun. It was a fun thing to do. But I based it on Bernini and on bloke art, which a lot of people don't know, and the the idea of this kind of interaction and the you know the the building drama and the yeah, the these jag these b cats are caged in this.

Speaker 3 8:02

Yeah. I mean, it had an Italian vibe to it architecturally.

Speaker 8:07

It was arts windows. So what did they do when they uh uh Jacques Clemp, who put the Cowford Chop House, he called me and said, Jim, you want these back? I said, uh anyway. I I got them back and I gave them to um uh Fresh Ministries, and there's a building they're reinstalled. Uh Turk, you didn't that used to be I might be wrong, never mind. No, it's over there on A. Philip Randolph. There's a building right there at the Overpass on A. Philip Randolph. They've been reinstalled. Fresh Ministries is a great organization. They do these um aquaponic gardens. Oh, cool. That they're they're kind of do these prototypes and they get them to undeveloped, underdeveloped countries and food shortages, and they're like this. It's a very cool thing. So anyway, I gave them to them and they installed them. Are they hiring? They could be, yeah. I yeah, well, you they have they you can go there on a certain day and get free lettuce if you if you're if you're in bad shape. Which we noted. Let me I'm writing it down. Yeah. Um so anyway, that was um that was it. And um and I've been I I don't know, I just I kind of did the thing. After that, I was had this kind of um successful run with the thing called Healing Palms that I did, which was a run that I did starting in the late uh late 90s. And yeah, I still see them all over town. I mean, I did a lot of them.

Speaker 3 9:30

Yeah, there's a series of them in Mayo, I think. Mayo's got some. And there

The art scene in Murray Hill in the early 90s

Speaker 3 9:35

used to be the front the glass ones in the airport. I don't know if that's still there.

Speaker 9:39

That was uh I don't know what they did with them. They called me and they said uh that's another interesting story. It's like being a an a local art. I I just did airports. Yeah. A local artist uh in Jacksonville is fascinating because you're the you know the guy. Yeah, we'll call him. Anyway, yeah, so that airport thing. Um they I got this phone call. Hey Jim, we got an idea, but we don't have any money. Um so we they had this, that was after 9-11, and they had to do the quarrelling, corraling people. We do the security, yeah. I guess I guess that was the birth of TSA. Yeah, look where it's gone. Um and then uh so anyway, the um so they had these glass panels and they need to have a thing on it. So uh so I had this whole idea thing, and it was it was fine. Yeah. Um but uh but they gave me, I think I got three thousand dollars for that, which was interesting.

Speaker 1 10:37

Are they still there?

Speaker 10:38

It probably cost more than that to produce.

Speaker 3 10:40

Oh, I didn't I didn't produce them. I just did the design. I'm saying it costs budget-wise. Oh my god, thousands, hundreds of thousands.

Speaker 10:49

Uh, some not a lot of mine. I don't know.

Speaker 1 10:50

That was my introduction to you because I used to date a girl that worked for the Cultural Council. Is that even still around anymore? The actual council?

Speaker 10:58

Yeah, it's I don't know anybody there, but yeah. Yeah, who is it? I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 11:02

Well, her name was Susan Demodig. Well, she worked for Bob, I think his name was was the head.

Speaker 11:06

Yeah, Bob and I. Yeah, we're we're all good friends. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, Bob's in Asheville. We we we uh we we visit often.

Speaker 1 11:14

So okay, cool. Yeah, I just I just remember her pointing that out. She's like, that's that guy I was telling you about. Were they palms? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's that's interesting. So they just took your work and then someone else did the uh yeah, I designed a piece.

Speaker 11:26

It had to be certain certain sp specifications because it has to be a laser cut. Well, it was uh they did a a thick interesting, they did a thick rubber stencil and then sandblast it. So they had this like inch rubber stencil that had to be like vector done and all. So I had to get I got a graphic designer to help me figure out how to do the couldn't just take a JPEG. Oh JPEGs. No, this is big business. We don't do JPEG overhead projector tracing. This is vector right, yeah. Right.

Speaker 3 11:58

I bet usually the people at the airport that are running this project are trying to do it off of JPEG.

Speaker 12:03

They're trying to do JPEGs, but JPEGs just don't cut it. I'm sorry. Yeah. This is a very sophisticated city. We've passed JPEGs back in the days.

Speaker 3 12:14

But we're not allowed to have like the AI memory. Oh no, no, no, no.

Speaker 12:18

That's too no no no and certainly not waste DEI AI, which is even worse. Yeah. DEI AI. Love it. Those are artificial aliens that are in.

Speaker 3 12:35

So I have um I want to kind of establish like when when we're talking about like you as a local artist, like you were uh a local artist that few people knew about that was doing real relevant work probably in the late 70s in this town. Not here, but uh yeah, because I didn't get here until the 90s. So when were you I knew that you and Oscar Sen and uh Gunnell and you know, y'all all were like like old school, the art scene, uh young people in Jack's.

Speaker 13:10

To a point, but I see I was they were more than I was, and then Oscar left. You know, Oscar was gone for quite a while. He went to California and then came back. And so he came, he was back about the time that I got here. But I was I was up the coast in South Carolina and the islands in South Carolina before. Okay, and I didn't actually get to town until the early 90s.

Speaker 3 13:31

Okay, so I met you soon after you got to I think I first actually met you when you and Steve owned the art uh the art supply store. Raw materials, yeah, yeah, which is history, yeah.

Speaker 13:43

Yeah, that was a long time ago, right?

Speaker 3 13:45

Like that feels to me like it was mid-90s. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 13:48

Then after that we had um Brooklyn Contemporary Art Center and Pedestrian Gallery was all going on about that time.

Speaker 3 13:55

Yeah, yeah. Okay, so um, so then you were like emerging in Jacksonville, you were just starting to do work here.

Speaker 14:04

Yeah, uh yeah, to a degree. And really, after so the first thing uh presence I had was on um Edgewood. George Kinghorn, where George was uh director at Voca for a while, uh, and then a woman named April Glover, who is moved to she moved to France, George moved to Maine, but we had a a kind of exhibiting studio on Edgewood next to what was then a restaurant called West River. Um now it's uh like a biscuit place, I think. Maple oh yeah, across from what was then the Hubbard House. And now I actually think even Maple Street is gone now, right? It's like a taco place now. Yeah, it was across from a place called the Hubbard House, which was this thrift store, and there was a I remember the Hubbard House there, yeah. Yeah, prescribing pharmacists was next door, which is really cool. I went there all the time. I know. Um I need a little okay. Yeah, um and um West River was this really cool restaurant that Liz Grenemeyer did way back. Okay, uh, and then so this place was next to it, and then it became it was a great little Thai restaurant at one point. I do remember that. Uh yeah, uh Trell worked there for a minute. Yeah, yeah. Um and then uh anyway, we had a uh exhibiting studio kind of thing. We had these killer shows. Was this pedestrian? No, this was Draper, Gleber, Kinghorn, Studio Gallery. Oh sounds like a law firm. This was back, uh yeah, this was this was uh '95.

Speaker 4 15:41

Yeah, okay.

Speaker 15:42

And um, so we had uh these kind of amazing shows, and then um they were kind of out. I mean, for the time and place they were out there, and it would they would, I mean, people would be like, Oh my god, this was this was kind of crazy.

Speaker 4 15:55

Yeah.

Speaker 15:55

So then after that, every that kind of disbanded. The building uh there was a problem with something and something, and so

Origin story - from Missippi to Jax

Speaker 16:02

classic Jacksonville. Yeah, so it's that's when Steve and I did Pedestrian, which was on this building that's um a law office now on Park Street. Right. That went on for a while.

Speaker 3 16:13

Then uh I remember that one. That one, like I went to a lot of cool shows there.

Speaker 16:18

It seemed like there were a lot of people. When we would have so many people there, the building would actually sway. Uh we'd have like we'd have like 500 people in that building. Yeah. It was just kind of crazy.

Speaker 3 16:26

And it was always like such it was such interesting work.

Speaker 16:28

Yeah, we had we had we had a show a month, and they had we had really incredible shows, people from all over. Yeah. Jeff Whipple's first show was there. We had Tonya Barbieguas at a show there. We had um, I mean, people that, you know, just crazy stuff. And um, so anyway, then that uh and then raw materials, eh, and then then we crystal.

Speaker 3 16:52

We talked to Crystal last week and we talked a little bit about the place you had on King and how cool that spot was. Do you remember uh in the in the in the uh oh yeah, the old White Wave. Oh my god. Yeah, we got that after Whiteway moved out.

Speaker 17:07

That was kind of apparently the proto-cork. Yeah, we had that because Zonf was next door. Yeah. So uh we had that um we got that from and that that guy that owned Whiteways. I mean, that owned that corner. Well, it was called Whiteways Corner. It was at the Nasrlah building. It was yeah, remember those cool lights that they had, and that was called Whiteways because those lights were so bright, they called that Whiteways. Uh yeah, I didn't know that either.

Speaker 3 17:34

And um I just assumed it was a racist thing. Yeah. Well, the great White Way. I mean, you know, it is that.

Speaker 17:41

They didn't turn the name down. No, no, no, no. Oh, let's don't call it that because it's not correct. Uh no, it's Jacksonville. Right, yeah. Um so um, so anyway, um, yeah, we got that building and Sammy, who is wonderful, Sammy um Whiteways, I can't remember his last name now. Sammy, he died recently. Okay, but he Whiteways was fine, it was just a neat restaurant. I loved it. Everybody, you know, with their well we got that building, and they moved, Whiteways moved up this way, up somewhere up. They had a landlord conflict. Yeah, well, that was the landlord. So anyway, I got I said the building was awful. And so I said, uh, you know, what would you take? So it was like uh we got two bays in that building for like a thousand dollars a month. Okay, whatever. Anyway, we went in, it was awful. I have never seen so many rats in my life. There were a hundred thousand rats in there. Jesus. And so we finally abated the rat problem, or they did as much as we did, and then we oh cleaned it and cleaned it and cleaned it.

Speaker 3 18:49

There was we'll end up having to cut all this because that'll cut the rat. Do you want to just like s peek sternly at them?

Speaker 1 19:01

Do you want to say if you ask them to say again?

Speaker 3 19:07

Alright, I'll do it.

Speaker 1 19:08

What do you want me to do? Do you want to do that?

Speaker 3 19:10

I'm gonna ask you to go out there and shake your fist.

Speaker 1 19:12

Oh, hey.

Speaker 2 19:17

Hey!

unknown 19:18

How are you?

Speaker 2 19:19

Oh my goodness, what a great.

Speaker 19:26

I know, I know. We gotta do something. That's all we gotta have a long talk. Are you okay? Yeah, I'm good. I'm good. Ancient. I'm good. It's fine. We'll have a long talk.

Speaker 5 19:37

I don't like hearing a bad talk now. I don't like hearing back.

Speaker 19:42

No, I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm I'm great. I'm great. We just have to have a long talk. Yeah, it's good. I got I'll tell you everything. Uh but you've been mentioning a lot of it. I'm having a big show with the comer.

Speaker 4 19:52

Okay.

Speaker 19:53

And so uh we're talking about auxiliary things.

Speaker 5 19:55

Oh so good. Yeah, it's good.

Speaker 19:58

Yeah, it's good.

Speaker 5 20:00

Who was your favorite?

Speaker 20:02

What is that?

Speaker 3 20:04

Um, do you know I'm in my own parts thing right now?

Speaker 20:10

The what?

Speaker 2 20:11

Uh I'm the artist and justice for chemical parts.

Speaker 20:14

Oh, good.

Speaker 2 20:14

So I've got the key to the attention of Friday if you want to go up there with me.

Speaker 20:20

That's cool. Have you ever been in the house?

Speaker 4 20:24

We went up there.

Speaker 20:26

The house is cool. No, it was closed. Yeah.

Speaker 4 20:28

Why don't you talk about it?

Speaker 20:31

Well, we got it with Friday, we got we'll talk.

Speaker 2 20:33

I gotta meet uh the park rings are gonna Friday because you should show me some.

Speaker 20:37

That's tomorrow's Friday. Yeah. Okay. And then we're gonna go to the house.

Speaker 3 20:41

I have it until the end of April.

Speaker 20:42

Okay, well we'll talk. Yeah.

Speaker 3 20:43

Um I'm doing Ixia Plant Walk with Besting on the 4th of April.

Speaker 2 20:48

And that's the Firefly timing. Okay.

Speaker 5 20:51

If you want to come, I'll try that too.

Speaker 20:55

I'll tell you.

Speaker 2 20:57

Just in case. Okay.

Speaker 21:00

Use it.

Speaker 2 21:01

Talk about crazy shit. We didn't say anything mean. Talk about crazy shit to other people.

Speaker 21:07

We've been talking crazy shit anyway.

Speaker 3 21:09

Do you want tea or tequila or anything? I'll let you guys do your thing.

Speaker 21:14

I'll talk to you later. Love you. I'll talk to you. I love that jacket.

Speaker 2 21:19

It's great. I can put a drill in the house.

Speaker 21:22

Yeah.

Speaker 3 21:28

Keep it down out there.

Speaker 21:31

All right.

Speaker 3 21:33

It's my own fault. I didn't tell you to put it in the newsletter. That's a good idea.

Speaker 21:39

You didn't have the red Lincoln thing.

Speaker 3 21:42

My dad actually has some old MBC on air side of the glass and metal.

Speaker 21:49

Wow. Anyway.

Speaker 3 21:54

I gotta wait for it.

Speaker 1 22:00

But I think that might be a little bit more. We've also had a few different instances where we forgot to lock that door and people going to see someone else.

Speaker 3 22:11

Barb, you know how Barb does like theater stuff in here? Babs. Yeah. So they would that's why it says not an entrance on the door. Oh, you probably didn't see that because we had it propped open. But um yeah, we would be in the middle of doing a podcast, and then just these middle-aged white ladies would start walking through. That's all you need. That's all you need.

Speaker 1 22:29

That would uh if you wavered him through, but he'd be like, the entrance is around there. Just let them go through.

Speaker 22:35

Say, uh, you know, tell me your philosophy. Have a seat. We've been waiting for you. You're here. Yeah, we're here. We decide if you make it to the next level here. Right. Babs has us as like the gatekeeper. I know who sends you.

Speaker 1 22:53

That would be that should be the podcast thing. Just see who walks in there randomly. Totally. We've been waiting. We've been waiting. We've been waiting for the weekend.

Speaker 3 23:01

Honestly, we could do that on an open studios day. We could just like leave that unlocked.

Speaker 1 23:06

Yeah.

Speaker 3 23:06

And people try to come in this door all day on Open Studios Day. We'll just be like, yeah, yeah, you have to sit down and get through the interview. Tell me your story. There is a gauntlet.

Speaker 23:16

Yeah, tell me your story. What are you wearing?

Speaker 1 23:21

No, I really think if you told someone, tell me your story, I think they would really probably be like, No one's ever let me do this before. Right.

Speaker 23:27

Oh no. Right. And then you'd find out their realtors. It's so interesting about stories that people do. Yeah. I mean, more often than not, if you're if you listen, people will tell you their story. Totally. Sometimes it's all people have.

Speaker 3 23:41

Well you got. Well, that's all I got, frankly. All any of us have. So we got interrupted. Okay. Um, what were we talking about?

Speaker 1 23:51

I don't know. Just the White Way and uh the roads.

Speaker 23:55

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 23:55

Crystal has that's all this, all this.

Speaker 23:57

Perfect that Crystal and all this. It's all backstory. I mean, I've been here, I've been here for 30, whatever, 30 years.

Speaker 1 24:04

Can I ask what uh brought you here? I don't know if you mentioned that already.

Speaker 24:08

Gravity as much, you know, it's it's it's a long story, but yeah, but basically uh there was no um they just it just kind of wound up here. Uh long story short short, I was up the up the coast in Beauford, South Carolina, which is not with children and all this, and it's not a good place to live, but I think we wanted to be here, but not you know, the

God hates artists

Speaker 24:32

islands are just kind of kind of odd, you know. It's just the low country. The low country.

Speaker 3 24:37

Yeah. And it's still military. It has a lot of aspects that are similar to Jacksonville in a way.

Speaker 24:42

Except it's uh it's it's kind of a yeah, it's weird, but it's old south. It's old south, and it's also very back then now it's gotten very progressive as far as not progressive as attitude, but progressive as commercially. Yeah. But back then it was just kind of like are you slow?

Speaker 3 25:02

Are you naturally more comfortable in the south or are you less comfortable in the south and that's what keeps you here? I mean, I know you you you came up in Mississippi.

Speaker 25:13

So I'm uncomfortable in Mississippi, I can tell you that. Okay. Not not for any reason other than um I just can't I can't do it anymore. Um it's so anyway, I I don't know that I'm uncomfortable. I don't know that I'm uncomfortable anywhere necessarily. Okay. I'm um I you know, I'm comfortable in the South because you're not, you know, you get too far away and you're such an anomaly, like you know, the the fetish thing. Yeah, it's kind of like, oh give me a break. Yeah, you know, I I yeah, I talk funny, but you do too. Whatever. Yeah. Um but it's it's also um, you know, uh I I've been thinking and looking a lot about Mississippi and the old days. I mean, my father, I mean, my family's been there for hundreds of years, and um and nowhere else. I mean, it was just like and all, you know, very Anglo-Saxon, you know, very much the southern way. You know, yeah. Carolinians at first, and then you know, then migrated Western expansion into Mississippi. Um and um I don't know, it's just kind of interesting. I mean, it's a lot of uh there's a lot of misinformation, I guess. I mean a lot of there's a lot of reality, but there's a lot of my father, who was born in in that area in 1912, probably had a better education. I mean, daddy could, you know, daddy could read Latin. He could, he wrote beautifully, both both in penmanship and in language. Um I mean you're part of Mississippi's where Faulkner is from, right?

Speaker 3 26:58

Right.

Speaker 26:58

Well, Faulkner's up the road a bit, but but it's like it's and Eudor Royalty and you know, all these other people. I mean, it was it's actually a very strong, um, kind of a very quiet intellectual community there.

Speaker 3 27:11

Um weirdly, like kind of fundamental to Americans' literature legacy.

Speaker 27:16

Oh yeah, uh yeah. And uh so um when I was a kid, interesting, uh I got fascinated with with Mississippi authors, and I was in sixth, seventh grade, and so I was a little fat boy. And I would walk across town on um on Saturday morning to the library, which I mean, walking across town was like four blocks, it's not don't cry, but um to the mid-Missippi Regional

Feast of Flowers exhibition at Cummer and Radical Naturalism

Speaker 27:39

Library, but it was probably sweaty as hell. It was hot, yeah. But anyway, I needed to sweat, I'm unless I was a little fat kid. Um and so uh, and it was a plank building. You know what a plank building is? It was board, it was a wooden building. That's what I assume, yeah. It was made out of planks, yeah. Um and so the um so the um the uh the library, there was a library in there named Miss Mary Jones, and Mary Jones was probably four feet eight, and she was probably uh quadruple decob. She had these enormous breasts that occupied most of her body, and she had half glasses, and uh I don't remember her hair. She had kind of a bob hair, she didn't have a hair pulled back in her body, she was but she had these half glasses, and then she had a her library assistant was this lovely lady named Cora Odin, who was born with one leg longer than the other, or one leg shorter than the other. Oh my god. And so she had a built-up heel, and she wore these black Oxford shoes. This is a cast. And and she would she would clump, and on that plank floor, she would clump, clump, clump a distinctive watch. But she was just a they were both just the sweetest, lovely lady, and they adored me because I was odd and fat and and interested in Leonardo da Vinci and all those things that they liked and nobody knew about. So I would go there and I got on this kick of reading Mississippi authors. So I I discovered Tennessee Williams, and the plays were easy to read for a sixth grader. Lord knows they're full of some stuff that sixth graders probably would be not.

Speaker 3 29:19

Just Tennessee Williams's character.

Speaker 29:21

I loved them. Yeah. So anyway, I would go there and I would check out Tennessee Williams' plays every Saturday morning and my Michelangelo and Leonardo picture books, and that was my week was doing that. And so one day Miss Mary looked over her half glasses at me and she said, Jimmy, does your mama know you're reading this? I said, No, ma'am. She said, Well, we don't need to tell her, do we? So that's what my opinion of banned books is. Yeah. If it weren't for banned books, I'd be dead a long time ago. Yeah. You know, and it was something about reading those awful stories, those awful plays like like Summer and Smoke and Suddenly Last Summer, and all those plays are just so, you know, cannibalism and just all this just stuff that it made me feel okay. Yeah. And I think that's what stories do. They make you feel okay about a place, wherever you are, and there's there's stories of everywhere, wherever wherever you are. And so that just make you feel better about being there. Totally. When you see how bizarre the world can be. Yeah, yeah. And it's just like, you know, it's it's just that. So I think that the um I think that that does and I and I so I've always practiced storytelling in both um in in all dimensions, and literary and and uh two-dimensional and and whatever. I I I actually feel like it's a community of story being told.

Speaker 3 30:45

I do want to get into talking about your writing, um, but I first want to understand where from that boy in Mississippi to um painting in the swamps in Florida. Like what's the maybe short form narrative of like that of that journey? Yeah.

Speaker 31:06

Yeah. I mean, a lot of it is, I mean, I grew up there and then, I mean, the town was the town was like 5,000 people in the middle of nowhere. Fort County was 14,000 people. So we were surrounded by swamps. I mean, we were surrounded by the Yakanookinee River ran on the edge of town. Did you draw and paint those? Uh-uh. Okay. No, I started I started painting um just I felt the need when I was in junior high, and my parents bought me um a paint set on the that's another long story, but I got a paint set, and so I just started painting all the time. And I just kind of taught myself out. We didn't have art in schools. I mean, that's what why would you have art in schools? That's just ridiculous. It's a waste of time. That kids will think it's important. So yeah, oh yeah, and then it might change their career trajectory. Right.

Speaker 3 31:57

God forbid, some child comes home and says, I want to be an artist.

Speaker 32:00

Yeah, instead of being a plumber, which you can make some real money, they you might do something else. Right. So um, so I started uh painting, and I uh I did more people things, more peopled paintings then uh for some reason, which is unfortunate because I really couldn't draw paint people very well, but I learned. Yeah. Um, so then I I eventually wound up. Um I went to a little college called Millseps College my first couple of years, and they didn't have an art program. And then I moved, transferred to Ole Miss and graduated from there, and got really I had a teacher named Jerry Allen, who was a painter who was just a phenomenal painter and a wonderful person, kind of a mentor. And we still communicate when I when my mother was still living in Oxford, I would go back there and you know it was fun. Uh he was uh he's just an amazing. But I remember the day sitting in his class when we had drawing class, we had these things called horses, and you'd sit on them and you you know he came and kicked me off my horse and said, Let me show you how to do it. And he he did, he made a mark, and I was like, Oh my god. And it's like there's a quote from uh Cezanne about when he figured it out, he said, My eyes were permanently seared. And it's it becomes that when you under you see something so backing up a little bit, backing up into religion and all. So if you read the Ten Commandments, the second the second commandment is that thou shalt not make any images. It's they've been translated to graven images, but the second commandment really is that not to make pictures of any living thing, of anything because artists are mag they're magicians. So you take a rag and some colors or a piece of paper and some chalk or something, and you it's transcendent. You turn an inanimate object into an animated object. You're manifesting. You're manifesting, so you're you're making magic, and you can people go, and I've seen it. I mean, I see people go, and I did, I've done it, go, you can do that.

Speaker 4 34:05

Yeah.

Speaker 34:06

And so it's so because only God creates life. Artists create life. So that's why God hates artists. Like a God. God hates artists worse than he hates fags, which is interesting. I don't think many people know that. But it was like that there's no anti-fag thing in the uh in the in the Ten Commandments. It's all artists, but yeah, but the second commandment, it was important enough that you're doomed from the beginning. So you have to take so being a southerner, you're defeated. Being a condemned by God, you're doomed. So you start out defeating and doomed, so what else you're gonna do?

Speaker 4 34:39

Yeah.

Speaker 34:40

Yeah.

Speaker 4 34:40

Yeah. I don't know.

Speaker 34:42

Anyway, I love that. Um I don't know. I'm just so intrigued with the idea. I've always been I've always loved the the the the dramatic, the murky, the dark, the the the nastiness, uh that feeling when you step in that goo, these get between your toes, and then just that and the fear when you got a water moccasin coming at you, and the and the all that stuff just you know it's sticky and nasty, and bugs are eating you, and it's like something like, oh my god, this is what heaven must be like.

Speaker 3 35:09

So, in a way, you painting these things is macabre.

Speaker 35:13

No, it's only macabre to you if you think it's macabre.

Speaker 3 35:17

Well, no, because based on what you're saying, like these are the things I'm afraid of, and these are the things that like have something scary about them.

Speaker 35:24

Maybe, yeah, probably. And so it's kind of like facing your fears, too.

Speaker 3 35:28

Yeah, I mean it's like being real with reality, right? Like, kinda, yeah, yeah. A tree can be a swamp can be deadly, right? A sni a snake is literally poisonous.

Speaker 1 35:38

And somewhere in your taxodium uh artist statement, you do mention something about humans. I forget what it is, like on the like slipping and crawling the swamp or something like that. I forget it. So it wasn't it's it wasn't like a scary thing at all, though. But yeah, well

The Andalusian Cows from Spain to Cowford Chophouse

Speaker 1 35:51

it's uh there's a mystery to it.

Speaker 35:52

And I'm there is some mystery, and there is mystery, but I'm more comfortable with that mystery than I am, you know, trying to figure out you know how to drive 90 I-95 to South Carolina. You know, I mean I that's a big mystery that I've gone like yeah, where in the hell are these people going? And yeah, what's their hurry? Yeah, looking at them and they're little right, the little small I'm always in the wrong lane for the their little small car with more noise than it should have. Where could they possibly be going?

Speaker 3 36:23

So anyway, so that brought you to like painting these natural objects. And did that did doing that work lead you into kind of this thinking around radical naturalism? Or do you think that was always there?

Speaker 36:39

So I did a I did a big uh exhibition at the Comer in 2012 and had this wonderful assistant named Stacy Boucher, and we were here in Cork.

Speaker 3 36:47

I miss Stacy so much.

Speaker 36:48

Oh, I love Stacy. Um, we were here in Cork, actually, and we would um so Stacy um So is this Feast of Flowers or before Feast of Flowers? This is before Feast of Flowers. We started in 2000. Uh the show opened in 2012. We started in late 2010, early 2011 working on it. So we would lay big pieces of brown paper out on the table and we would just brainstorm about all these different things. And so, and we would also did a lot of reading, a lot of research, and a lot of philosophical statements from others. Um, and even I think Spinoza was might have been where we got the idea of radical naturalism. But um, but we started that's where I was first as a term, and then I uh actually uh looking it up uh uh on Wikipedia and internet, I admit, I mean that's how you look up stuff. Yeah, um, it was uh a reference to Caravaggio, who I've always adored Caravaggio, the Italian um Baroque painter. And so uh the idea of uh naturalism vis-a-vis storytelling. And so I got this idea, uh, so I just kind of embraced that idea that I love the term because I love using the word radical because it makes people uncomfortable. Right.

Speaker 3 38:05

You can put it in front of anything and it changes the world. You can be a um uh radical conservative.

Speaker 38:10

You can be, yeah. And and you know, I but I love I love the word, and um, and I just started embracing the word and uh reading some other there are a lot of a few papers around. It's not I didn't invent the word, it's I appropriated it. Um I think probably applying it to the body of work. No, yeah. Oh, yeah. You're supposed to steal. Yeah, of course. That's why God hates you. Another commandment. I'm I'm I'm known to to break. And I can list some others. Um it's like a checklist to you. It is a checklist. It's like, oh, I haven't done that. Almost done. I haven't done that yet, but I really don't want to.

Speaker 3 38:48

I just can't covet my neighbor's wife.

Speaker 1 38:51

But I'm a completionist.

Speaker 38:54

Whatever. Um so anyway, we got um um so I started really you know thinking and kind of embracing that as a philosophy. And also the the philosophy allows you to um you know have some kind of um I'm not religious at all, and I and I haven't but liturgy is okay. Liturgy is great. I love I love the form. I love the form. I love the um the idea that the idea of it things. I love I love all of the notions that are that are in in all religions. And uh I'm a huge Joseph Campbell fan from way back. I mean back when the Billy Mowyers interviews first aired. I was I was like enamored with Joseph Campbell. I'm like, this guy gets it. So yeah, yeah. So a lot of it is kind of goes to that, but it's also the idea that um the my the main thing in and working on the Feast of Flowers exhibition is that so on that, this is another little bit of a regress. So Feast of Flowers was an exhibition that came out. Uh the Florida State Department was seeking uh cultural uh exhibitions or performances or whatever that celebrated the 500th anniversary of the discovery of Florida. And so that was been before DeSantis. Well, this was no, this was celebrating Ponce Leon, you know, white folks white folks landing here. And saving it from the saving. Sure, okay, okay. So so and big S is the right word. Yeah. Um so um, so anyway, we got um so my idea was to paint a picture of Florida before 1513, before Pastor Leon, whoever he was, whatever he did before that happened.

Speaker 3 40:55

So tell real quick, just give us a little bit about like Easter, the naming of Feast of Flowers.

Speaker 41:02

Uh so uh uh people say that Florida was named because it has so many flowers. Well, they couldn't see the flowers from the ocean. Yeah, Feast of Flowers was first pointed the the telescope or what you call

Collections of past work, religious themes, natural metaphors

Speaker 41:15

it, uh spyglass first saw the Florida peninsula on April thirteenth, fifteen thirteen, which was Easter Sunday. And so it was tradition in Spanish the conquistador language. Whenever you discovered something, you named it for the Roman Catholic Feast Day, when that was the Feast of Flowers, which is Easter Sunday. Yeah, Pascua de Florida. Right but ironic. Ironic. And so unlike St. Helena Sound in South Carolina was was spotted on St. Helena's Day, which was Constantine's mother.

Speaker 3 41:50

But that wasn't as uh, you know what I mean, the name, the idea that like Poncilleon was about to eat this country.

Speaker 41:58

Well, and that's what the that's what the irony is, that that and after the discovery, I mean Poncilleon supposedly was looking for the fountain of youth, but the fountain of youth was supported by gold. I mean, what he was looking for was wealth. And he was looking for wealth, he was looking for indigenous people he could capture and enslave, and he was looking for gold, and that's all that that's all they were after. Yeah. So anyway, going through all that, and we found things like in that the Feast of Flowers um uh the digital anthology that we put together, we had things like the the requirement of of 1513, uh Il Requirmamento, which the which was the I guess it was a papal encyclop encyclical that allowed uh that absolved the conquistadors because they offered salvation to those who there was no me tooing them as they raped and looted. Yeah, so they could uh but they the only problem was they were they were just a they were they were they were charged to read it to the inhabitants, but they read it in Spanish to people who had never heard of a word of Spanish. So they would say you have the opportunity to turn yourselves in, convert to Catholicism. Or if you don't do it, then whatever happens to you is your fault. And they're just nodding. So it's just no, and we've we've continued that tradition. We we we do that. So um, so anyway, um so in all of that, so you created this body of work.

Speaker 3 43:23

So it sounds like that you're talking about the di I remember the digital publication. Uh-huh.

Speaker 43:28

And then you wrote the opening story in it.

Speaker 3 43:30

That's right, yeah. A surrealist thing. Um, and then you also did a huge show at Comer. Huge show at the comer. And that was work that was both in the publication, but like people got to see in it's full glory.

Speaker 43:43

Yeah, and it was it was a good show. I was proud of the show. And it was but it was about what Florida was like. It celebrated native plants, some native plants, native not so much native peoples as just the the idea of of natural Florida.

Speaker 1 43:57

I saw like on your website, is that the one they had all your Artifacts on a table?

Speaker 44:01

No, that was no that was a radical naturalism exhibition. I'm a bone picker. Okay, yeah. Yeah, there were bones. Okay. It's not a lot of them illegal too, but it's not to tell anybody.

Speaker 3 44:13

That's interesting. We talked about illegal uh collections last time.

Speaker 44:17

Yeah, we do that. I'm glad you do it. We're on Lord. He's got parakeet feathers like a mug. Somebody needs to talk about it. Yeah. At least he's not making robes out of them. Well. And waving weaving human hair into it. Ooh, you didn't think of that.

Speaker 1 44:33

Good.

Speaker 44:33

You could do it. There's always time.

Speaker 1 44:42

Would there not be the Spanish cows in Central Florida that you painted without him?

Speaker 44:50

No, they wouldn't be. And that and and that's that's the point.

Speaker 1 44:53

I mean, you you, you know I just never knew there were wild cows in Central Florida, man.

Speaker 44:58

Well, and I had a show, I had three shows in southern Spain in Andalusia, which is where the ships were loaded that came um, you know, not only Columbus, but all the subsequent ships that came over were loaded in Andalusia.

Speaker 3 45:10

All those smallpox blankets.

Speaker 45:12

All those yeah, all that. And well, even yeah. And so um that's where some of the catt cattle escaped in the you know late 15th, early 16th century. Never heard of that. And went wild. And that's when the during the that skirmish, little skirmish we have with the north, uh, they would go and round them up and and cross bring them to Calford and cross the river at Calford.

Speaker 3 45:36

So the cows that you're talking about, are they the same cows that you paint in the work that's hanging in the rest of the Cowford Chop House? Yeah.

Speaker 45:45

Those are those are Spanish cows.

Speaker 3 45:47

Which I want that just to be clear in here that we have like you had a mural on the outside of this abandoned historic building.

Speaker 45:55

And now you have a beautiful work on the inside of a beautiful steakhouse in this restored structure. That was cool. Yeah, that was that was kind of but that was part of the conversation. Jacques said, you know, look, I'll give you these, but you know, let's talk about doing something on the inside. So that was very cool. Um sorry, so I didn't mean to take you off.

Speaker 1 46:14

You had to do you had to complete this.

Speaker 46:16

Yeah, I just wasn't trying to do that. So I had these. There was a gallerist, and there was a whole kind of a cultural entourage from me from March RVI that came to town. So I took them to lunch at at, or I didn't take them, somebody paid for it. I couldn't, but um we had we took the the university. I was at UNF, so the UNF paid for it. Uh took them to Cowford for lunch, and that's where we were showing them the cows that were Andalusian cattle, and then that's where the gallerist from Mijas uh and the curator from Malaga came up with the idea of we had these exhibitions there. So I had three exhibitions and uh out in the perimeters of of Malaga. Wow. With uh Andalusian cattle. Neat.

Speaker 3 47:02

So that's super cool. It was fun. It was it was a good thing. And that was that that was before the Feast of Flowers stuff. After. That was after, okay.

Speaker 47:14

So um I did a whole series, meanwhile, after all the time I've been working on this this idea I call produce, which is about the fact back to the land kind of thing, the fact that you know, so it always intrigued me with uh European colonialism. So we had these people, these French people that that were parked out on the St. John's River and they were starving to death. And I thought, you know, you're sitting on a place where people have lived off of that river for thousands of years. Yeah. How do you starving it? How are you starving to death? And what what's what's wrong with you? They're like, no, no, we do not eat that. Yeah. And then, you know, my God, virtually anything. Right. Snails, but for God's sake. Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3 47:59

So it just has to be prepared with one of the noble cells. Yeah, I guess there's there's there there weren't enough butter. Um so uh but they could have gotten butter from the Andalusian anyway. Wait, wait, wait.

Speaker 48:10

No, not then. That was before that. So uh but anyway, and all that gets so interesting. So the produce thing, I did this thing because I would go hike up in the Upper St. John's, south of here in the Upper St. John's estuary, and you would see like Wake Lake Woodruff, and you would see these massive expanses of pasture land that had once been freshwater marsh that were part of the St. John's River that fed thousands of people for tens of thousands of years. So I did this idea. Healthy strong people. Yeah, yeah, exceedingly healthy people, yeah, six feet seven to seven two, you know, they were exceedingly healthy. Um so uh you know, that idea of like, you know, you got these people that, you know, these little nasty short people that come in and they can't figure out how to eat stuff that's here. And they had gator, they had all sorts of it's everything. It was just a it was a banquet. Totally.

Speaker 1 49:07

Yeah, I looked at that on that on your page, the produce collection. You had like a duck named Clover, uh Lamb named Mary, of course. But so I I didn't I didn't understand the produce thing about it, but now I'm that came from.

Speaker 49:19

So I've always been back. I mean I grew up in Mississippi. We had animals. I mean my grandparents had pigs and chickens and all that. So I I I like the idea of farming. And I used to have chickens that I loved, and I I like the idea. I like those ideas. I'm not opposed to animal husbandry and or or eating meat. I'm not opposed to that at all. Yeah. But it is ironic that um that these people that that these people dammed up an a uh a river that was providing tons just because you just go pick it up. You just you didn't have to do anything, you just picked it up. Yeah. So they were they they dammed that up to make it so that's a pasture land for an imported species to go that's not as productive as what the marsh was. Right. And so it's just like it's it's just kind of stupid. Yeah. And um anyway, ignore in the Americas. That's where all the I've had all these collections, like the produce was a collection. Liturgy was this collection about uh uh the idea of um uh you know this object of devotion, and that's where a lot of this the things like the shells and sharks seed and all that is just this thing that you can look at and think about it. Yeah, so that was where the the liturgy collection came from.

Speaker 1 50:35

Yeah, I was curious because I I I watched your uh you had a talk at the Comer where people were sitting. I didn't know someone asked you about the liturgy, and I I was lost because what does liturgy mean like in religious context?

Speaker 50:48

It's like a repeated Yeah, liturgical it's it's the didactic, the liturgical, the liturgical

Preview of part 2

Speaker 50:53

information is the uh you know, like I believe in God the Father Almighty. You know, that is the it's the ceremonial documents. Okay. And then the um uh so that's what um so anyway, I just play on I love I love playing on the idea of religion and the idea of nature, and that's part of the radical naturalism, is that you know the difference like between you know contemporary culture and radical naturalism is that that and I think it is ultimately our salvation as a species, is that we look at ourselves as part of nature instead of diminutive over nature. So if you think about yourself as a natural entity, and you're you know, like you hear people say, Oh, I don't ever go out in nature. Well, we're having a natural experience right here. This is natural. We're natural organisms, we're having natural experiences. You can't avoid nature because we're natural, right?

Speaker 3 51:52

Uh we all came up on the same planet.

Speaker 1 51:55

Yeah, we're all from the same one that I screenshot it. It states emphatically that nature is not elsewhere, we are fully implicated in it. You participated in biology, in it biol biologically. I'm sorry I've had a couple shots, ecologically and historically. And I was gonna ask you about that, but you just explained it.

Speaker 52:14

Yeah, and so that's what so if you think about that as a concept, and there are there are buzzwords that just kill me. Like I hate the word stewardship. I mean, you hear people in the environmental community say we're gonna be good stewards of the environment. Well, and that's a biblical oriented, yeah. Yeah, and it's just like, well, so the stewardship implies that it's high charge. I hate another another word I hate is natural resources. Oh god, yeah. So natural resources human resources, yeah. Natural resource and human resources, it implies that those are things that we can do with to make a objects to be commodified. They're commodified. And it's that whole commodity is the and it's and it's all kind of a neocolonialist attitude. It's like we're we're uh we're we're colonizing everything. We colonize people, we colonize nature. And I it seems to me like if we just said, hey, what's gonna make you happy? Let's see, let's all get happy together. Right. Let's get our needs met together. And then I it just seems logical. And I think I think the biggest, the biggest uh and I've been in an environmental movement since the 70s. And you know, I think it's time to put the floppy hats and the guitars away. I think it's just time to, you know, have frank talks about what the reality is. You're ready to gun up. Not gun up, but I think I think it's like look at look at the real problem. I mean, the problem is is attitude. The problem is that we consider ourselves that we are good stewards of nature. Well, we're we're participants in this drama that is natural, that is um, you know, we're participating in this drama that it that if we don't wise up and play the game with our other natural entities, we're gonna lose. Obviously. Right. I mean, we're losing it. And you know, it's just like I mean, I in a way, nature will survive us.

Speaker 4 54:06

Yeah.

Speaker 54:06

Well, it's it I used to think that. I'm kind of at the point right now, I'm kind of at the point I'm not real sure. I think nuclear annihilation is gonna be kind of a different trick.

Speaker 3 54:16

But anyway, maybe not. But I think so. You're against this Iran thing? I'm just kidding. I'm not going there. Sorry, we don't we don't let's don't go there.

Speaker 1 54:24

You mentioned in that talk, like you you went heavy on you know how the Bible says like we have domain over everything, and that's what the way that most humans act is like animals are here for uh torture. And then I love you you signed off with the phrase something about the you called us evolved primates. And I was did you catch any flack for that from that talk about it?

Speaker 54:47

You know, something about me. I think it's because I'm big and white that people don't bother me about. So I mean I say this really very radical stuff, and people go, Oh well, he's white and confident.

Speaker 1 54:58

So I just one of those two, either you're big or cute, either one. But I was impressed that you went kind of hard at the end there. Like it was the talk was really good. And uh oh, I have one more question before I forget. The triptych, is that sort of religious too, or no?

Speaker 55:16

Yeah, they're altarpieces and uh as an art art history. Oh, well, I taught art history. I studied art history, I taught art history. I'm not I didn't pursue an art history career, but I've always been enamored of um and a storytelling. So the so I was at um years ago, I was up in uh New York at the Cloisters, which is a which is a little uh museum of several monasteries that were brought over from Europe and cobbled together up in the up on Fort Trion, up at the northern end of the of Manhattan. And uh it's a wonderful, wonderful thing, but it's a it's a repository of medieval, uh medieval and early uh medieval art for the most part, early Renaissance, maybe, but um anyway, in that there was a little room, um you go through this little portal, this little wooden door, weird little wooden door, and there was this um uh painting in there by an artist named Joseph Campan, C-M-P-I-N Campan, and it's the um Annunciation, which is a three-part painting. Uh you would recognize it. There's a the painting to the left has two um has the patrons that are on their knees with their hands clasped, and uh then there's the um because there's uh nobility and suffering. Oh yeah, there is nobility in it. Yeah, and there's there's there's there's nobility and privilege too. Um and then um the center panel is Mary kind of laid back with a beam of light coming in and impregnating her, and then the far right is uh Joseph, a much older Joseph, in his shop building a better mouse trap. And that's what so anyway, but I love that idea of painting about it's a narrative. I mean, you've got this whole story that imposed there, and there's even a uh a thing called narrative perspective. So instead of the table, like that we're sitting in front of this table, instead of this, if you want to say what's on the table, you don't look at it in perspective, you tilt the table so you can see all the stuff on it. Then that all the stuff because you you forego the rules that were later established on the road.

Speaker 3 57:26

All of a sudden you're able to have an aerial view.

Speaker 57:28

Right, and you can view view things differently because the narrative matters more than the art, more than space, space doesn't really matter. It's like form's idea of space doesn't matter as much as getting enough the story told on a flat surface.

Speaker 4 57:43

So I like form is function in a way.

Speaker 57:46

Yeah, and I like that idea of the narrative and then and the so and I like the ecclesiastical formats of telling, you know, of telling the story because it's been the most effective. I mean the the artists from the ages, from the Byzantine forward, told a very compelling story through the visual imagery to an illiterate population. Arguably the whole all of internet is nothing but language. It is, it is nothing but language, yeah. And it's the image, uh, and it's like if you embrace it, and if you embrace it, and so I embrace the ecclesiastical format. I don't know if that's a word I invented or not, but I do embrace that altarpiece format. So you got three panels, and so the panels, and the story may not be literally, it may not be linear, it may not be blah, blah, blah, but it's like you get the picture. Like I have one that has uh I did a huge striptych. You're standing on a uh a trail, uh, you look down and you see water lilies. Up a ways, I see a rattlesnake. I look into I look up and I see a Yopan Holly. So it's just like you know, there's not necessary a like this begat that. It's just like this is an experience. And so I portrayed it and for and told the story visually, and the story I received visually, I relayed visually. The story is what it is.

Speaker 1 59:08

Yeah, even the one that it's just it's just I think it's just a one piece, but you have the water lilies, and the this is another thing that you taught me. What's it called? A bladder wart. You said covered the surface. Yeah, and then you have the reflection of the tree.

Speaker 59:23

So when it's one you've got everything, you've got this entire, and that painting is about uh there's a ripple on the surface. So the painting is about this thing you can't see. Again, trans is that idea about religious things, about you know, you're it's just like the enunciation thing. You can't mystical, you can't really see what's going on, but you have to know what's going on. So under the surface, there's a plant called bladderboard, which is a uh subaquatic carnivore, and it has these little bladders, and they they eat larvae, they eat mosquito larvae out of the uh predators, literally predators, yeah. And so, but you can't see them. Yeah, so it's I love all that kind of stuff. It just kind of I you know, yeah. That was cool. I I mean it's just kind of like, but people go, huh? A lot of some some people don't, but a lot of people go, huh?

Speaker 3 1:00:13

So I w did I didn't mean to interrupt you. No, no. Um, so I want to get to Taxodium before we're done, but before we get there, I want to talk a little bit about your writing. Okay. Um, because I think that it was I think that people that have known you for a long time as a visual artist in town, you and I have known each other from doing the Shanty Boat workshops. Like we've done those things in parallel and we've always talked about writing. So it wasn't unusual to me, but I found that a lot of people were surprised when I said that you'd published a book and they were like, wait, it's like an art book? And I was like, Well, it's like it's short stories, it's kind of uh fiction stories, you know what I mean? And um, and it felt to people like a departure, but you said something to me that it was really uh just really stuck with me, which was it's all painting. Yeah, like it's the same thing. I'm just telling a story in a different medium. I'd like you to I'd like to know more about it.

Speaker 1:01:06

Well I started uh a friend of of John and ours, uh John and mine named Lynn Skapiac Harling is uh is a um uh had a had for years a workshop up on the Trout River and this plywood and tin box, and John knows it well because he would help keep it afloat, um, that was sported by big blue barrels filled with air. Yeah, like beverage barrels or something. Yeah, beverage barrels. Yeah. Um so um uh you would go up there and it was it was so weird because you would step onto the boat and things changed. There was a leveler, it was a like all of a sudden everything went away. And I love those workshops. I went to them for years and years, and um there were fiction workshops, and we had a formula. She was very, very professional, very formula maic with her teaching skills. And I told her at one point, I said, you know, I I've adopted your teaching skills and teaching art classes because it's the same thing. It's it's there's just no difference. Instead of instead of writing with a with a brush, you're writing with words. I mean, it's just the same, it's all the same. And uh, you know, you're communicating in a way, whatever way you have to communicate. Uh words are uh more difficult symbols, I think, because there's more people who read than look at paintings, frankly. And they can have so many different meanings to different people. Right. Words are crazy. Words are crazy. Symbols are crazy too, but they're all it it all is, but anyway. But I I didn't know I could do it, kind of. I always wanted to be uh a writer, but I was always kind of told that I was illiterate. I couldn't spell, I couldn't, I just and I just couldn't figure out the the the stuff around writing. And so uh it took a couple of workshops and and Lynn's she'd cuss at you and do all these, you know, her teeth would fall out and just and but it was wonderful. I mean she's a she's incredible. It was acute cruelty. Oh, it's yeah, she's very the most amazing, the most engaging teacher, communicator I've ever seen in my life. Yeah. And so um, and she championed me and helped me, and she'd just say, God damn it, Jim, you're gonna have you know, she would she would tell you what you know, you're she'd give you what for. She would what for. And um, so um anyway, so I started doing these stories, and I'm a performer, I think, and I love making people laugh. And some of the stories that I did kind of got a rise out of people, yeah. And um, and so and I like just kind of going there and not giving it totally, and so and it's such a vision of the South.

Speaker 3 1:03:39

This is kind of why I was asking you about the South earlier, because in it you can kind of see your dichotomy of what you love about the South, yeah, and what also like you sort of disdain about like kind of the just the the echoes of uh of uh previous philosophies and stuff that seem to negate everything that's beautiful about people, yeah.

Speaker 1:03:58

Yeah, and it's and it's kind of it is that kind of that razor blade you walk down of the south because if you you know you go either way, and people do.

Speaker 4 1:04:06

Yeah.

Speaker 1:04:06

Um so anyway, I the name of the book is Shantyboat Hymns. Shanty Boat Stories, Shanty Boat Stories, Shanty Boat Stories. There's a uh one of my favorite stories in it, it's called Hymn at Rock Creek, which is a baptism gone bad, and they do. We know that they do often. Um maybe usually. But I hit uh the book is about assumptions. I mean, the the the the stories are about these erroneous assumptions that we make more often. This and that just seems to be, and I kind of got the theme after I read it through myself after I'd written it. I said, this is all every story just about is about somebody assume something that's not right. And so that's kind of what we do. We just, you know, we call we make uh assumptions inspired by culture that are more often than not wrong. And uh and you know, the bottom line is that there's good lurking underneath all of it. There's a good, there's a good there's I I do feel that there's a general goodness in the world. There's an I'm you know, I'm I'm exceedingly optimistic and feel that there's good, but it's often, you know, the the thing we have to get over is the fact that you know we have all these these weird weird things that are just kind of keeping us from from just observing good and and working with it.

Speaker 3 1:05:33

And is the is the good um linked to more to nature maybe than it is to like human progress? Progress in the traditional sense, cities.

Speaker 1:05:44

Well and that's that's the thing. Uh it it's all nature. It's just like good making human progress is nature. Yeah, we're part of it. Good nature and bad nature. I think as a species, our downfall is the fact that we don't uh We don't consider other species and as we move forward.

Speaker 3 1:06:04

I always found it interesting that uh one point we were talking about uh people being afraid to swim because of sharks, and you were like, sharks don't want to eat you. They don't like the way you smell.

Speaker 1:06:16

No, no, people are nasty. Human meat is nasty.

Speaker 3 1:06:18

So humans just go around thinking everything wants everybody wants to eat them.

Speaker 1:06:22

And then you know, it it isn't that uh significant hubris to think that we that everybody wants to eat it. How many people do you know have been eaten by anything? Snake bites in the United States of America. Snake deaths attributed to snake bites are like four a year. And most of those are Baptist churches. And those are those are Baptist Pentecostes. So um, I mean, uh I did this, we used to do these uh paddles in the Everglades. I would go down, we'd be a little group, and you're just uh one day um uh we had paddled, uh John Ladd, a good friend of mine now, we had paddled, I think 19 miles. We paddled up the fact we started at dawn, sun came up, dolphins jumping, and we paddled across Facahatchie Bay up into the Facahatchie River basin, um, and then back. It was just a glorious day, exhausting. Um, and then I got back, nasty stinking. You know, you you couldn't get out, so you had a lot of issues on the boat that were just nasty. So you just uh so and I I had taken a folding chair out into the Gulf and set the folding chair in the water, and I got my clothes off and I was I had shampoo and stuff. I said just I had to get clean. Yeah. And so I had all set up, and this dang shark came up, and this this uh hammerhead shark came up, and I was in probably three feet of water, and this hammerhead shark came up and just like nosing around. I said, I kicked him in the face. I said, It's my turn.

Speaker 1 1:07:54

I mean, those are festive, aren't they?

Speaker 1:07:56

Oh yeah, they're awful. I said, I don't care. I'm nasty, I stink, I'm tired, go away. I kicked him in the face and swam off. So I never heard of that. So it's kind of like it's not the way it is, you know. The two most dangerous animals in the woods are the the worst one, is one you might have heard of called Homo sapiens. Yes, uh, and the second is pigs. Pigs will eat you. Oh, yeah, boy, terrifying. And so the everything else, you know. Yeah, I'm much more afraid of people than I am sharks. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 1:08:33

So that uh that's a great transition into um I part of what I am interested in uh in this in these conversations with artists is uh understanding like where artists go to kind of center themselves and find reinvigoration. And like we talked to Crystal, and she told us about different places and and kind of like walks and engagements with water that she'll undertake because that helps her center and refocus. And knowing that, like you're talking about uh the trips that you'll take out in the Everglades that when you'll go kayaking and stuff, like um, I'm interested in helping people discover these natural aspects of Florida. Like, where where are places that you can go and access nature and it helps you feel outside of that human system of progress idea?

Speaker 1:09:26

Um well, there's trails all over. I mean, we've got in in Duval County, we've got more public lands than any other city in the world. I mean, I think we've got, if you think about the Temuquin Preserve, there are trails all through there, Bells Point, Tiger Point, there's Roosevelt Conservation Area, there's there's you know, the within a 10-minute, 15-minute drive from wherever you are in town, you can get to Julian Ton Durban Creek's wonderful. And it's uh and it's a quite a lesson. You've got six something miles of trails down there, you've got you know, trails all over. Um, and you don't have to be as aggressive, but but I do this thing. I I used to do these walks when I walked more, I need to watch again in Springfield and go up into north side, and I do these things call they call them dystopian walks, where you just walk. And I'd like to see to me, it's very inspiring to see stuff come up through the cracks in the sidewalk. To me, that's that's that makes me gives me a lot of hope.

Speaker 3 1:10:26

You're saying like when weeds are coming up, like that's radical naturalism.

Speaker 1:10:30

Well, it's the fact that there's something in there that wants to live hard enough that's growing in those awesome environments. And so I'm really interested in that. As I mean, so you you've got a nature walk there, walking down the sidewalk instead of like, oh, look at those ugly weeds. Like, isn't that wonderful? Yeah, I love that stuff that grows on the side of buildings, a spleenworth, it's little ferns. That to me, that excites. They are ferns, huh? Yeah, they're it's a spleen worth called. That's to me is as exciting as going out in the woods. Yeah, it's just different. Right. I do like to go, I like to go in the wet places like the Swanee River is the most miraculous thing. I mean, I love the Everglades, but the Everglades is it's compromised, you know, by now. But the Swanee River is one of the most amazing things that you ever uh go. And they're there, you can easily rent a kayak and be supported to go on a little paddle down the Swanee. Yeah. Uh and I used to spend a lot of time on the Swanee. Okie Fanoki is wonderful. Yeah. Take a boat ride in Oakie Fidoki.

Speaker 1 1:11:27

Can you sing the lyrics to the song completely?

Speaker 1:11:30

Way down upon the Swanee. Do you want the unclean? Uh you want the original Stephen version? Yeah, what's the original? It's funny because Stephen Boston never came to the Swanee River. The original um uh river he had in mind was the PD River up in um up in uh northern South Carolina, the PD River. But you can't sing it. I mean, try try singing that to the PD River instead of the Swanee, way down upon the PD River. I mean, it sounds nasty. Yeah, grass.

Speaker 3 1:12:04

Yeah, grass. It just doesn't work. Yeah. Swanee sounds great. Yeah, Swan's great. And now it's like it's our state song.

Speaker 1:12:10

Swanee, you know, it has it, it has miles, it's got legs. Yeah. He knew it.

Speaker 3 1:12:16

So um what are you oh did I answer your question? Yeah. Okay. Um now so what are you working on now? Tell us about tax.

Speaker 1:12:25

Uh a new body of work. It's not new, but the name is new. Um, I love Linnaean classification, which is the genus species or the the using the uh Latin uh names for all species. And so our ball cypress, which is a wonderful plant, uh, is called is taxodium dysticum. Uh so I'm working on so I I picked it uh uh as a moniker because I want people to become interested in using proper names. Not because they're not focusing on cute, but because it's universal. So you can talk about taxodium and somebody in Sri Lanka who's a botanist is gonna know what you're talking about. Or they can look it up. Right, right. There's a universality too there's universality, and I love that uh they call it globalization, I guess, in some circles. But I I do like that uh you know the you know having things that that everybody knows what you're talking about, so there's no mystery. So taxodium. So I had this idea about uh, you know in the United States, I mean people redwood, redwood, redwood, and redwoods are glorious. And we went out to the Sequoia a couple of years ago, and red you know, they're magnificent, but you know, in the south we've got these these incredible bald cypress trees that are just you know, they're mythic. They're thousands of years old and they're just uh incredible plants. And I started thinking about the fact that uh the metaphor, I guess you'd say. I mean, there was a a Crystal and I went out into uh the I can't think of the name of the place, but we we went, she took me to a tree that she knew down where the Santa Fe River, which goes underground, comes up, and there's a tree there called Big Dan, 2600 years old. Wow. That's crazy.

Speaker 1 1:14:18

And you you talk about you say it's like predates like the Byzantines.

Speaker 1:14:22

Yeah, yeah. And it's and so I'm like, you know, this tree has been standing there while the the last of the pyramids were built, while Rome was the Etruscans when it was when it was a seedling, the Etruscans were in the town. So you think about this tree has stood there for all that time and it's still standing there. And it's just like it makes you it puts it into perspective. It's just kind of like, you know, we're not so great. And it it kind of negates uh little fiefdoms and borders and tribes and all this other. It's like so much of human history has just been like something that buzzed by whatever, whatever. It's just you know, like like, you know, I mean, who are the Etruscans? I mean, they're gone, right? More or less. Um and so I mean, even even where it's standing, I mean you the Temuquin were not the they were not the earliest tribe that they saw. They would have seen the tribes that predated the Temuquans. So you've got all these civilizations that come and go and the tree's still there.

Speaker 4 1:15:23

Yeah.

Speaker 1:15:24

And so I it becomes a sentinel uh as much as a um an object. It becomes uh and I've also been uh really interested in this. Uh there's a a German author named Peter Wolbian. W H Obian Wolbian. Anyway, Peter Wobian. And his book, um, he has a couple of books about uh Hidden Hidden Life of Trees, Secret Anyway, there are a couple, there's several books. He's an S German essayist and their compilations. Um and talking about trees, you know, the community of trees, trees taking care of each other, and all these things. It's just fascinating uh communication.

Speaker 3 1:16:06

This is mycelium network type stuff, yeah.

Speaker 1:16:08

Okay, that they uh and also they nurture their young, they have all these things. So you've got this object that doesn't move, it's just very it's there, but it just it has all these same, you know. We can we can give it human characteristics, right? Like in Lord of the Rings. Yeah, yeah, just like Lord of the Rings. The little guy that crawls around that's just so nasty.

Speaker 3 1:16:34

The dirty mushroom wizard or whatever is that you remember? Gall Gollum. Oh, Gollum. Oh, okay, yeah, yeah. I remember that guy too. Yeah, I know him.

Speaker 1:16:43

Um anyway. Um, but taxodium to me just kind of becomes this this kind of uh truly living metaphor, and that you've got this, you know, this thing that that it's there. And it's um I do this thing about the the cypress doesn't apologize for its knees, it just it just sends them up. It's like who cares? They're my knees. It's just like right, there's no need to apologize.

Speaker 3 1:17:08

Well, and it also like can be so much better at church with all those knees.

Speaker 1:17:13

Exactly. Yeah, yeah. More to more time to pray. Um so anyway, um, so I've been working on so I've I'm working on this uh exhibition now, and I don't want to give too much of it away, but I'm really excited about it. It's gonna be at the uh the Commer Museum in 2028, opening in May, opening around Memorial Day and closing after Labor Day. Awesome. And uh it's gonna be in the Mason Gallery, which is huge, and I'm I'm I'm working toward it, and it's two years away, but it's only two years away. Yeah.

Speaker 3 1:17:47

So I've got uh probably So you're gonna wait a year and six months and start working on it?

Speaker 1:17:52

As I do. No, I'm actually working on it. Um but it's uh but along with it, I'd like to have, like we did with Feast of Flowers, which that was the most fun part of Feast of Flowers, was the the you know, the collaborative digital anthology, which brought in all these other voices.

Speaker 3 1:18:08

And it made it so exciting too. I mean, you had like Jeremiah Johnson recording stuff and like there's so many mediums.

Speaker 1:18:16

And uh and we had just a blast doing it. David and Betsy would would come to the studio when I was over here and we would work into the night. And it was just it was a community. And I I feel like I I feel like I don't own anything. I feel like it's I want everybody to benefit uh with all of them. We always do. And Crystal and I worked forever on a lot of the a lot of the project for this. And I think that's what uh and that's part of that whole taxonium idea. I mean, you don't see one tree standing by itself, you see a forest, and you see, and I think that's that's the beauty of uh and you know, we've got a very healthy art community in Northeast Florida, and uh we've got a lot of you know, really interesting people. That's kind of we're kind of have more than we you would think. I mean we should. Right. It's kind of interesting because now I'm I've spend half the year um in North Carolina and then get down here and used to, you know, I would go in Biscotti's or somewhere like that, and I knew everybody, and everybody knew me, or I knew 80% of the people.

Speaker 3 1:19:18

Now it's just like five points is so strange now.

Speaker 1:19:22

It's just weird, and then you go and then people and then you people and who are you? And what do you do? Do you paint pictures? And how long does it take? How long does it take? How long did that take you? I don't know. If you want to come sit with me and bring a stopwatch. You can use your phone now. It's very very handy to do that. I should I'm about batteries always have to hit because I leave stuff.

Speaker 3 1:19:47

You can show people just like a time lapse of you working. It took uh 16 hours, but you can watch it in 16 minutes. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1:19:55

Bring it to you fast, fast and full. I mean, it is weird. I mean, you know, when the doctor takes your appendix out, how long did it take you to do that? Yeah. How long? How what was it? What is it like? What did it look like? Maybe people have money on it. You can bet on that now. Yeah. I guess you're good. I guess you're good. I guess you're good.

Speaker 3 1:20:13

That taxodium work's gonna take Jim 18 months. I think he can do it in 16.

Speaker 1:20:22

Well, anyway, I think but anyway, I'm real excited about the project. And it's kind of um, I don't feel like uh the commerce show is gonna be a huge uh uh a huge part of it, but I feel more than that that it's um you know, I feel invested in the project, and I you know hopefully I can do more writing about it. I'm trying to trying to segue, and some of my fiction, you know, works in with it. Okay. And I think it's kind of like the uh so I I'd like to produce uh you know more, but I I think it's it's I'd like to you know produce some books, films, whatever. I'd like to do a lot more with it.

Speaker 3 1:20:59

You want it to be sort of multimedia also? I do, and it's so you sent me some links, some Instagram stuff about like people uh amplifying the sounds that trees make.

Speaker 1:21:13

Yeah.

Speaker 3 1:21:14

Is that related to the taxodium work?

Speaker 1:21:16

Is that something distinct? Uh my son James is is is really interested in electronics, and he's playing with sounds, and he's he's building synthesizers and doing all this stuff with sounds and and you know uh collecting sounds and then taking those collected sounds and making them into something else. So um part of the there's gonna be a soundscape that's produced to go with the show.

Speaker 3 1:21:41

Okay. And it's gonna be when's that gonna drop? It will be on the show, it will be on Shop with Spotify.

Speaker 1:21:46

It'll be on the show open. Yeah, no, we're not we're not giving it away. It's not gonna be a mixtape. But um, so it's gonna be so that you walk through the exhibit, yeah, and he's got these uh sensors, you know, those just they they're the cheap and easy things that when you walk by it'll trigger uh switch and then have a sound that with the idea that you have a cacophony of sounds, so that if you have a big crowd, you've got all this, you know, woodpeckers and frogs and gaitors and stuff making this racket. And then if only one person's in there, it's more intimate. Much like it is in the woods where you've got a very intimate experience. So anyway, that's gonna be part of it. And I don't know.

Speaker 3 1:22:30

So, how did James capture these sounds of the trees?

Speaker 1:22:33

We haven't yet. I've captured a lot of them. I've got a lot of video that I just took this on my phone. Okay. And we're gonna we're gonna ramp it up about getting um I've got a friend in over in the panhandle that used to live here named Kevin Songer, and he actually goes out and spends the night in swamps and all, and has these wealth of information. And I use when I had the last show at Auburn University at the Jewel Collins Smith Museum, I used his uh sounds as a soundtrack. It didn't work because the I mean it it was so quiet you couldn't.

Speaker 3 1:23:08

I mean, technology as soon as there were people in the room you couldn't hear and he drowns it out.

Speaker 1:23:12

So we're gonna we're gonna uh louden it up a little bit. Yeah, I mean Mississippi make it turn up the volume, I guess.

Speaker 3 1:23:19

Yeah. You can have every now and then just like really loud like bird calls that'll quiet everyone down and they'll realize there's just like, oh, who is that?

Speaker 1:23:27

Who is that? A gator splash.

Speaker 3 1:23:31

Yeah, exactly. Release live gators into the camera.

Speaker 1:23:34

Uh I had thought about that. Snake snakes on a blank cop mouse. Yeah, pythons, they're invasive. Oh, that's right. That'll be on the free Tuesday. Release the pythons. That'll be on the free Tuesdays.

Speaker 3 1:23:49

Give the kids six dollars per python that they catch.

Speaker 2 1:23:53

Yeah.

Speaker 3 1:23:53

Um cool. So um until that work and that show is out, is there a way now that people can kind of um experience your work, find um well, I've got a well uh here in town, uh I've got a kind of exhibiting studio over on uh East 8th Street uh with David Nikashi.

Speaker 1:24:14

And so we have events there every now and then. Um I don't show much other than that. Uh I've got some we can find you online.

Speaker 3 1:24:25

Uh it can be finding online.

Speaker 1:24:26

Okay. Jim Draper uh at weebly.com. Okay. One one.

Speaker 3 1:24:31

We'll put that on uh the description and stuff.

Speaker 1:24:34

Um but the web thing is kind of just gotten in is hard. And it anyway. I mean, I'm just saying if somebody's out there and they hear about you, they're like, I want to buy that now. What I've been having the most fun with and most success with lately is Substack. And I do like the way the platform is handled. It's gymdraper.substack.com or jimdraper at substack.com.

Speaker 3 1:24:59

We'll share that too, because I think that is you that is like you put beautiful work on there and you publish to it pretty regularly.

Speaker 1:25:07

I've got close to a hundred um posts on there. You scroll back through and they and it's all still up. Yeah. So you can scroll back through. But I do like that platform. It's I I'm a huge Heather Cox Richardson fan, and she trusted and and Aaron Parness and all these people that are that are kind of the hip and cool oh yeah, it's it's it's happening across mediums too.

Speaker 3 1:25:28

Like it's a very successful platform.

Speaker 1:25:30

So um, and it uh hopefully they don't sell it to some whatever. They will, but have it while we can. While we can, and it's just embrace yeah, dance with what you got. That's right. Uh I think that's the saying. But um, yeah, I mean uh and I I've got here and uh I've got some paintings. Uh uh there's a happy medium bookstore. Uh I've got some paintings that I just dropped by there. They're having to think about mushrooms. These are some nice.

Speaker 3 1:25:59

That's over uh on Park Street by Park and King. Uh-huh.

Speaker 1:26:02

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I was I did a post about uh doing mushrooms. Said uh I I made that up, by the way. Uh it's fiction, but it seems it seems real. Um he said, uh what you doing? I said, I'm just sitting here sitting here on the side of the mountain doing mushrooms. And he's like, What? Yeah. Painting mushrooms.

Speaker 3 1:26:25

Last week uh I did bring some mushrooms and I kept them in the middle of the table in case Crystal wanted any, and she didn't, and then I thought that's probably an inappropriate um offering for the podcast.

Speaker 1 1:26:38

This ain't the 70s, bro.

Speaker 3 1:26:40

No, the 70s, I don't think you can get mushrooms as easy as now.

Speaker 1 1:26:44

You don't know.

Speaker 3 1:26:45

I guess I don't know.

Speaker 1:26:46

They grew in the woods.

Speaker 3 1:26:47

Or they were in pastures actually, those days.

Speaker 1:26:49

Yeah. Spanish cows. Spanish cows in Florida.

Speaker 3 1:26:52

So that's if that's how you the ones I have right now, Mark Eslin grew. Up in uh Georgia. Thank you, Mark.

Speaker 1:27:00

Thank you, Mark. No, Mark. Um, anyway, what else you want to ask me?

Speaker 3 1:27:08

Um, I'm at the end of my questions.

Speaker 1 1:27:13

The link that he gave me was jimdraper art.com. Is that one not updated as much of the week? No, there's not.

Speaker 1:27:18

Yeah, that's just there's just yeah. Uh all of that is gonna get reined in at some point.

Speaker 1 1:27:24

Well, the thing that has your email on there, like if you want to contact you, that's what's important.

Speaker 1:27:28

Yeah, that's it. But that subsect, I'm just really, really enjoying subsects.

Speaker 3 1:27:32

And through the subsect, can people also find their way to your book and stuff like that? Okay, yeah. So, and those will probably also be at the happy medium bookstore. Do they have do they carry your book out? Okay.

Speaker 1:27:43

You know, sometimes there's something about wanting, you know, like you say esoteric enough and you say hard to get, and it's just kind of like you're you're like that, you're like that girl in high school that's just uh yeah.

Speaker 1 1:27:54

Yeah.

unknown 1:27:55

Yeah.

Speaker 1 1:27:56

I do have one more question, and you can we can cut it earlier, but we You were talking about the librarians uh in the Plank building. Have you thought about writing about those characters?

Speaker 1:28:07

Yeah, a lot of those real stories from Mississippi I have to be very careful about because they're too real and they become I don't want to um I don't want to make them I mean they're funny a lot and that's not that's just the tip of the ice I mean I've got narcoleptic plumbers, I've got all sorts of things. But a lot of it is um I don't know how to handle it. And a lot of it it's just like painting something that you're too close to, you can't really see it, and it and you you lose a lot of there are a lot of assumptions that I make about the reader or the viewer on something. So I it's kind of like I'd rather I don't know. Yeah, some of it pokes his head up. It was just good.

Speaker 1 1:28:46

I was entranced when you're telling that story. I was like, oh, this is he must have wrote a short story about this.

Speaker 1:28:50

And I might, but I but I don't want to become a um it's not it's not like a Dave Berry-ish kind of thing. I got you. You know what? I totally understand. Totally get you. Whatever that I'm great for him, but I just don't want to I don't want to be too anecdotal.

Speaker 3 1:29:04

I'd rather be we have a bunch of Florida authors that do that sort of thing.

Speaker 1:29:07

Yeah, yeah. I'd rather be I'd rather be a little bit more um I'd rather have a very I have a like and Lynn, our friend Lynn taught me this about having you you you have a thing you're gonna tell, you have a very specific goal, and you you do everything you do to get to that goal. And sometimes the the trivial anecdotal stuff kind of gets in the way of your storytelling.

Speaker 3 1:29:32

And she'll tell you, she'll say, stop jerking off.

Speaker 1:29:34

Yeah, and she'll tell you that. And it's and it is that so it so that's that's kind of like understood. Parts of it, yes, they they wick through. And they're a lot in all that that collection of of Shannon Boat stories, there are a lot of anecdotes in there that are bits and pieces of different characters, and they seem real because but I they're compilations. Gotcha. But everything feeds the narrative. So you're you're doing it to a to narrative. Not sometimes sometimes I you can tell by what I talk, sometimes you get real cute, and a lot of it it's not cute. You know, a lot of it you just want to be, you know, you're you're you've got a a mission to tell the story, and the the story you need to support your story instead of let the tail wag the dog.

Speaker 5 1:30:20

Yeah.

Speaker 3 1:30:21

Right. And then you get like a little excited about something you think is funny or clever, and that's when Lynn will be like, stop jerking off. It's just so tedious.

Speaker 1:30:30

Just it's just gross. And so you you uh I love uh I mean I love having Lynn. We talk every few days, and I just love having Lynn to to bounce things off of. Yeah. I publish sometimes I push the gun and publish stuff on subs like, why the hell did you print that? You can't spell or shit. She said there's spaces between the words, there's there's I just what I don't know. Too many commas. Too many, yeah. Run on sentences. She is a wonderful editor, and she saved my neck on a lot of things because a lot of it's just illiterate. But um, anyway. She thinks I'm a good writer though, which is encouraging.

Speaker 3 1:31:09

Yeah, totally. And she's seen a lot a lot of writers around it. She is not, she's not one to mince words. Yeah, she would tell me she didn't need to quit.

Speaker 1:31:17

Yeah. Stop.

Speaker 3 1:31:18

Yeah. She I've been in uh workshops where there are people that are actively like publishing, self-publishing, and trying to get people to buy them. And she's like, You just need to stop.

Speaker 1:31:29

You just need to stop. That was not ready. Real quick, we have one funny story that it was funny. So I had I wrote this story that's in the book. It was it's called um Um Smell the Roses, and it's about this this morbidly obese man, blah, blah, blah, who's hadn't seen his penis for several years. And so he goes through his rigmarole to do that, and then long story short, it has a very bad ending. It's funny, it's nasty, but it's funny. And so she has these guests that'll come in and look at the workshop to see if they want to take it. So this man, this very buttoned-up man, came and he'd already paid his deposit. And so that was the night that my that story was read. We read round Robin around the room. So that's the night the story was read. After it was over, he he got his money back. He said he was fine, that's the nastiest thing in the world. And and so we we laughed about that. And she said, You if she said, if you can't take that, you need to go.

Speaker 1 1:32:29

But also better than having no effect on someone at all. Yeah.

Speaker 1:32:33

I I I thought it I I felt like I had shot a basket or something. Yeah, exactly. He's still thinking about it. Yeah, he got under him so bad.

Speaker 3 1:32:42

And now he can't write, and that's probably a blessing.

Speaker 1:32:45

It is a blessing, it is a blessing because anybody that didn't think that story was funny, it's something wrong with him.

Speaker 2 1:32:50

Every time he gets out his pencil and he sharpens it up and he gets out his pad, and then all he can think about is that fat guy that can't see his dick.

Speaker 1:33:01

It is a funny story. Um, but I don't know. I mean, the the stories are and some of them are just awful. I mean, I read some of them like, oh my god, I can't believe how crazy printed that with my name on it. Um and then uh, but they're real and they are about, I mean, they're effective, and they're they're like um because of the shock value, and it's not intended to shock, but it kind of is.

Speaker 3 1:33:25

Well, it's sort of like me calling nature macabre earlier or whatever. There's something like powerful about standing naked in a room full of strangers, right? That like it's terrifying, but you get used to it.

Speaker 1:33:37

Right, right, right.

Speaker 3 1:33:38

And that's like important sometimes. I've never gotten to phase two. I never have. I think I've had people paid to go out the door problem at not. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for spending this time with us. This was great.

Speaker 1 1:33:56

Um shout out to Mike also.

Speaker 3 1:33:58

Michael, thank you so much for being here. Um awesome. I'm gonna hit pause and we can talk about it.