Today we released part one of our interview with Stephen Yusko. He’s a Cleveland-based artist who creates sculptures, furniture, and vessels, using mixed materials combined with forged, machined, and fabricated steel. Stephen also creates public art and jewelry. He has taught at several schools and universities, including Haystack School of Crafts (ME), Penland School of Crafts (NC), and SUNY Purchase, where he was a Windgate Artist-in-Residence. Stephen’s works have been in exhibits internationally, and among his many awards, he’s received four Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Excellence Awards. Join us as we unpack the many aspects of being a working artist! http://stephenyusko.com/
Today we released part one of our interview with Stephen Yusko. He’s a Cleveland-based artist who creates sculptures, furniture, and vessels, using mixed materials combined with forged, machined, and fabricated steel. Stephen also creates public art and jewelry. He has taught at several schools and universities, including Haystack School of Crafts (ME), Penland School of Crafts (NC), and SUNY Purchase, where he was a Windgate Artist-in-Residence. Stephen’s works have been in exhibits internationally, and among his many awards, he’s received four Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Excellence Awards. Join us as we unpack the many aspects of being a working artist! http://stephenyusko.com/
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Announcer:Welcome to the Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast. Making art work. We highlight how entrepreneurs align their artistry, passion and vision to create and pursue opportunities to capture value in the arts. The views expressed by guests on the Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily represent the views of the podcast or its hosts. The appearance of a guest on the podcast, the venture they represent or reference to any product or service does not imply an endorsement or recommendation by the podcast or its hosts. The content provided is for entertainment and informational purposes only and does not constitute business advice. Here are your hosts Andy Heise and Nick Petrella.
Andy Heise:Hello podcast listeners. My name is Andy Heise and I'm Nick Petrella.
Nick Petrella:Stephen Yusko is with us today. He's a Cleveland-based artist who creates sculptures, furniture and vessels using mixed materials combined with forged, machined and fabricated steel. Stephen also creates public art and jewelry. He has taught at several schools and universities, including Haystack School of Crafts, penland School of Crafts and SUNY Purchase, where he was a Wingate artist in residence. Stephen's works have been in exhibits internationally and among his many awards, he's received four Ohio Arts Council Individual Artist Excellence Awards. We'll have his site in the show notes so you can learn more about Stephen and his art. Thanks for being with us today, stephen. Good morning. Thanks for having me on. Why don't we begin by having you tell us when you decided you were going to work as an artist full-time?
Stephen Yusko:Well, I had a very long college career where I changed majors a couple of times and so by the time I got out I pretty much knew that this is what I wanted to do. And then I had the opportunity to work for some of my professors as an undergraduate student and kind of saw what that lifestyle could be from a university professor area or role. And then I had gone to Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina to do a summer assistantship for a couple of weeks. This school, these craft schools, are based with basically two-week summer sessions. So I was asked to go down and then be an assistant for a workshop and so many of my metal smithing heroes were at that particular session.
Stephen Yusko:I mean it was really kind of extraordinary that people were there not necessarily doing their metal smithing thing their spouse was teaching a workshop and they were there. So I mean I just met some really amazing people and when I saw that I was like wow, this is a lifestyle that I'd really like to be involved with. So I think right out of the gate from undergrad, I knew this is what I want to do and honestly, there's days where I still, even at my age I'm doing this for 30 years. But should I do something else? But I suppose everybody in their career has those moments, so it's been pretty good. I kind of equate this to pole vaulting. I pole vaulted in high school and rent track and when it works it's really great, and when it does it it's really not very good.
Andy Heise:Yeah, I empathize with that. Sometimes I would look out the window. Across the street from me is this beautiful library called the Lindahl Library and it's got these beautiful grounds. And I look out the window every once in a while. I see the groundskeepers out there doing the landscaping and the mowing and sometimes I'm like you know what that wouldn't be too bad for a while. Yeah.
Nick Petrella:Especially being a musician. We would always joke around about that. What would it be like to, just you know, work at a gas station where, when you just shut the door, you're done, you don't have to practice, you don't have to write yeah it would be kind of nice.
Stephen Yusko:I mean, I had a friend who always said art never sleeps. He said it may not occasionally, but it never sleeps. And you know, all the art are that way. You never really stop thinking about those things. That's right, yeah.
Stephen Yusko:But you know, this is what we do and I'm always envious of musicians, you guys. You know what I do is a step removed typically, unless I'm doing a demonstration or a lecture, you know. But you guys, I mean you have an immediate impact on your audience, whereas the visual arts you're, you know, no one sees me creating that necessarily. I mean you can enjoy the work in the gallery setting or wherever the work may be and you know, if you're wearing it it becomes public art that way. But you know, you guys have that immediate ability to really get one person completely moved or a whole group of people, you know, really moved, and I just I love live music. That I don't see in my own work. You know it's your opening and you know it's kind of cool because you still don't have that immediacy that you guys would have as musicians.
Nick Petrella:Right, but unless it's recorded, it doesn't last, and jewelry lasts forever.
Stephen Yusko:Right, yeah, but it was interesting during the pandemic. I know that that people you know really relied heavily on music and I'm just wondering like did musicians rely on visual arts, like this object, like man? I?
Stephen Yusko:you know like I need to hear, like during moments in your life you're like this piece of music really resonates with me, you know, and I just wonder sometimes, do musicians have an object like I just have to have this object because this is comforting to me? I know I certainly do. As an object maker, you know. I mean it's full of objects and studios full of objects that are really important to me, Whether you know whether I made them or someone else made them, or they're found, you know, as a stone out of the river or something. So anyway, I think about that. Sometimes it's like do musicians have objects the way non musicians have music?
Andy Heise:Yeah, I mean I know Nick Scott lots of gadgets. As a percussionist he's got all kinds of objects, but their tools really is mostly what they are.
Nick Petrella:But yeah, to your point. Yeah, you do as a, and I think a lot of percussionists are like that. Yes, they have these special sticks that they use and you know it's, it is comforting. Or you set up a certain way because it's consistency and, as I tell my students, it's going to get you a job and consistency, consistency is going to keep you in a job, Definitely.
Andy Heise:So metalworking metalsmithing actually? Can I clarify that Is there and this is the musician here talking. Is it metalworking metalsmithing? Are they neighbors Metalsmithing?
Stephen Yusko:is sort of the broad, you know review and then you know, within that big topic there are sub-genres, like you know, silver smithing, gold, black. You know metalworking. I mean, we're all, it's all the same. I guess most people I know would refer to themselves as metalsmiths workers only because maybe you know metalworkers with the UAW or something like that. I don't know.
Andy Heise:Oh right, gotcha Sure sure. Well, that makes sense. So metalsmithing is something that most people I know have never done. So how were you exposed to it and how did you get into it?
Stephen Yusko:Well, you know, as a career I kind of came to it in a roundabout way, but growing up, I mean, we had horses somehow. I don't know how my parents did that, but you know we had horses on a farm. That you know. We just we lived in Ashland, ohio and then had, you know, we ran. Our neighbor actually when we moved to Ashland, had horses on a farm and we became good friends with them so we ended up having horses on the farm.
Stephen Yusko:So the first metalwork I really saw well, the first metalsmithing I ever saw was my dad. He did heating and air conditioning work, so you know, making ductwork, tinwork and that sort of thing. And you know my dad still is an amazing tool guy and he's a really wonderful builder of things when bowls and cutting boards and you know charcuterie boards and whatnot. But he's always been building things. So I've been around tools my whole life. But then with the horses we took them to an Amish guy named John Kime and so that's the first time I saw blacksmithing and certainly as a, you know, junior high kid I didn't think, man, I'm going to be a blacksmith like John Kime. But I did see it and it was cool. So I suppose that was.
Stephen Yusko:My intro to metalsmithing was just, you know, crawling around in the shop floor with my dad making tinwork and you know, goofing around with things like that, and then watching John Kime you know his, you know, obviously the Amish, no electricity so it was really fun to watch. You know how all that worked and certainly that whole process, just you know, was always in the back of my mind. And so when I got my undergraduate degree, well, I went to undergrad to get an engineering degree and I quickly well, it wasn't so quick, after two and a half years of classes, I just finally realized that I, calculus and I were never going to be friends. I just I didn't like it, I didn't think that way, but I thought, well, I can just got this out, the work sounds like fun. But I ended up switching into the studio arts, metalsmithing and sculpture, which you know. I still get to design and build things. I just don't have to do the math anymore.
Nick Petrella:Right In your artist statement you state you make sculptures, furniture and vessels and, as we were speaking, you also make jewelry. How do you determine what you'll make? Is it orders first, or do you design first and try to sell it?
Stephen Yusko:Well, you know, I suppose it's what the deadline is screaming the loudest. You know, I mean if I think a lot of artists, if we didn't have a deadline we wouldn't finish anything. So, you know, I'll schedule an exhibition and so I'll have to make a body of work for that exhibition. You know, I'll be delighted to be, to be in some some exhibition or do this or that, you know, and I have to make something for that. So I mean, I suppose not quite so randomly, just floating through the stream of the art world, but a little bit like that. It just depends. You know, like I had a solo show for the sculpture center here in Cleveland of October of 2021, and I was going to give myself like four or five months to just build this body of work. But then an opportunity to do a project with the metro parks, to build the sculptures at the end of the Wendy Park Bridge, came up, and you know that's a project you just don't say no to. So obviously that got put into the schedule and it was really intense. So sometimes the scheduling just dictates what. What I'm going to do and like right now I have commissions for a wide variety of things a piece of jewelry, two vessels, piece of furniture and next year a big piece of corporate art. So it's just, you know it's.
Stephen Yusko:I like doing a wide variety of work because it just keeps it interesting. I know you know you guys were on an entrepreneur podcast so you know, I suppose you know you are, your listeners are going to want to hear more about the business and how all this stuff works. But I honestly, I just make you know if I have time to do anything. I would just make sculptures and be happy, but I love one of. They always influence each other, so smaller works influence the bigger works, bigger works influence the smaller works. So I like bouncing back and forth and it would be much easier to market myself as a maker if I said, okay, I am a furniture maker or I am, but I really like doing all those things. And so far, you know, it's worked out okay.
Andy Heise:So that commission work that you mentioned, how do how do those come about? Do the people come to your, your shows and exhibits and then contact you afterwards, or are you actively seeking out those types of, for example, like the public, the public art, the bridge project you did and then like say, for you know this corporate art piece you're doing?
Stephen Yusko:Well, both of those was very fortunate to just be asked to submit work. And I see, you know, I guess I've been doing this for 30 years and I've been in Cleveland for 15 years now. And so you know, within this little narrow niche, you know, people kind of know who does what and you know I, people know what I make and they know my aesthetic, you know whether it's small stuff or really large things, and so I've been really fortunate to get these kind of commissions. Now certainly, you know, like this, the solo show I had at the sculpture center, and then people came in and they bought work which was, you know, I mean, one of the reasons I started making furniture was because and I haven't made any pieces of furniture, and quite a while now, but but I was working for the St Louis Art Museum from 2000 to 2006 or so or 99 through 2006 or thereabouts, and I took a leave of absence in 2006 to go teach a workshop at the Pelham School of Crafts in North Carolina.
Stephen Yusko:It's called the concentration. So I taught the spring concentration for two months and when I came back to the museum after having worked there for seven years, I thought you know, I just if I don't go full time into my studio and make the commitment now, I'm never going to do this. And so I left the museum and went full time into my studio in St Louis, which was in an old brewery complex just south of Anheuser-Busch really cool building, you know, five floors above ground, three below, where they had cork walls where they would store the ice and beer, and it was just.
Stephen Yusko:It was such a cool facility. But but I knew I wasn't going to be able to make a living collecting my own sculptures. So I thought, well, you know, if I make furniture or tables, it's kind of like making a sculpture. I just need to have something flat someplace so that you can put something on it. So that sort of led to the furniture and then a line of vessels that went along with the furniture, because the vessels I was making wouldn't have really related to the furniture as well as I would have hoped. So I used some of the same materials that I was making the furniture out of to make the vessels out of, and so that sort of just you know, things lead to other things.
Andy Heise:So yeah, yeah, and so it sounds like those commissions were maybe a network thing. People knew, people knew who you were, people know what you did, and somebody said, hey, you should call. You should call Steven. I bet he'd be interested in doing this.
Stephen Yusko:Yeah, now the bridge project was in partnership with Steven Menka. We designed and built the swings, the swinging benches at Edgewater Park if you've been down there and so the Metro Parks reached out to us a couple years later which two years ago, to build the well, to build a design that was that they had had for the entryway to the bridge on either end. It's a 500 foot long bridge that goes over the Conrail Railroad tracks there. So, anyway, so we didn't want to build that design and so we offered to submit other designs and they approved one of those designs. So, yeah, we were. They reached out to us, the Metro Parks and the Wendy Park Foundation reached out to us to do that work.
Andy Heise:But yeah, yeah, and so I was looking at your website and you do, as you've mentioned. You do make some smaller functional items like jewelry, and I even saw some cabinet poles and things like that, but you don't. I didn't see a way to buy them online. I did see a price list, but how do you? So I was just curious if, like, not selling online is intentional, or if it's just maybe on the to-do list and not prioritized.
Stephen Yusko:You know when, when Kent, when I was asked to speak a couple weeks ago for their art without limits you know, artist as entrepreneur symposium I just thought why are you asking me? I have a six year old website that I haven't touched. I don't sell online. I'm not I'm not your model art business person. I mean, I have friends who are so much more business savvy than I am, but you know, I have made this career work for 30 years and so I thought, well, I am entrepreneurial in a lot of different regards, I'm just not the best at marketing my work that way. So you know.
Stephen Yusko:Andy it's as they say, it's on the list. But you know that website update has been on the list for six years now. So that's why I have Instagram and a Facebook studio page at Stevenusco studio, so people can at least see that I am not dead yet I do sell work, Matter of fact.
Announcer:I just got.
Stephen Yusko:Last month somebody reached out for some door pulls and so I was like, okay, I, you know, people still look at that site. It just it's new to somebody all the time. It's just not new to people who know that I haven't updated it in a long time. So I really, I really am going to update it in 2024. I just have to, because it's just silly to be at this point in my life and not be more business savvy with this type of thing.
Nick Petrella:Yes, or maybe you are a model art.
Stephen Yusko:Yeah, don't do this, oh God. Maybe it's maybe negative influence, you know no, no, no, no.
Nick Petrella:I mean maybe it's more common than than you think, than we think.
Stephen Yusko:I have talked to several people who said oh yeah, my website is really outdated as well, but it's not an excuse. You know, it's like you know. If you're well, we'll skip the examples.
Nick Petrella:But it will get updated.
Stephen Yusko:It has to.
Nick Petrella:You're either working in your business or on it Exactly, and most of the time people don't have time to work on it or they don't see the that'll make it.
Stephen Yusko:It's just, you know everybody, it's just what you're going to prioritize and I haven't prioritized that. You know it's like it's sunny, I better get on my bike and then, and then I'll do the website later. So yeah, I just I met with some, some collectors yesterday in my studio and one of them was giving me grief about the website again, as she usually does, and I deserve it. So you know. Anyway, now that this is on podcast broadcasting to some people, pressure is going to be on man.
Andy Heise:I have to like you're that's right, You're on record, yeah, yeah, and you know I don't bring that up. I was not at all, you know, trying to pick scabs, making no observations about the website itself. It's just selling online is a thing of itself, right, I mean? And that's just something that you're not, because if you're, you know it's one thing. You can be in your studio working and then here come the online sales and you go crap. Now I got to stop what I'm doing here to go take care of this over here, and obviously that's not what you want to be doing, Right.
Stephen Yusko:I mean a lot of the work that I make is not necessarily it's a lot of it has been one-offs and so you know I, like some of the other people you've had on your show that I've listened to, you know are more of an established business where they're making, you know, multiples, you know ceramics or textile works. So I don't really make a lot of production. I don't make any production items. I mean every blacksmith that I know makes a bottle opener and about twice a year I will offer up. You know I'm going to make a run of X amount of these things and you know people will buy them. Or I'll make, design some candle holders and put those up for a benefit for my friend Daniel, for the caravan school in Venezuela, to help raise some funds for that. So I do those things but it's going forward.
Stephen Yusko:It is something I want to do more of. You know I'm in a new studio. It's going to be more of a collective building and I know I see one of your questions. We'll talk about the studio later but yeah, so I think I want to have I think most successful artists have a range of price range and product range that they sell and so to be able to have some things that you know maybe this is a $70 item as opposed to a $10,000 item. You know, it's nice to be able to put your work in people's hands, like.
Stephen Yusko:One of the guys that I focused on during my talk for the Art Without Limits was Boris Balli, who is an amazing artist, entrepreneur, metal Smith, and he makes a lot of work out of street signs, recycle street signs, and so he makes these little key rings and those are basically his business card. You know he's he's gotten some really great huge commissions through having these very inexpensive or giveaway key chain key change that he makes. So I think it really is important to have those type of items and you know I will develop more of those type of items in the future.
Nick Petrella:Yeah, it's great. But you know this, and Andy's question kind of segues nicely into my question, which is with such a variety of offerings, how many channels do you use to sell your art? So we know it's not online, but are you in galleries? Do you sell direct through commissions? It sounds like. Do you have retailers you work with?
Stephen Yusko:I have, you know, in Cleveland I showed with the William Busta Gallery and Bill is not a gallery anymore but he was really the premier gallery here in Cleveland and I was really honored to be able to show with Bill. You know I do some local shows here and there. In January I have a show coming up at, the group show at the Sandusky Cultural Center, which you know is not a top line on your resume, the Sandusky Cultural Center, but it's an amazing little complex of facility that Charles Mayer runs and most artists I know that show work there, have sold work there and he always brings together a really nice regional group of artists to exhibit there. So so, yeah, so some of the sales are through exhibitions. Like I mentioned earlier, that show at the Sculpture Center really generated a lot of interest and sales and so that was really nice. And then you know, friends told friends. You know this collector told this collector.
Stephen Yusko:I have shown all over the country. I don't currently have one set gallery that I'm showing with. I'm sending a piece of jewelry, actually later today off to New York City for New York City Jewelry Week. It's through a snag conference, a snag exhibition snag, as the Society of North American Goldsmiths and so I was really happy to be to get into this group show. So the piece is going to New York for that. So, yeah, it's just. You know I, it's just a wide range, I don't have any prescribed. Like you know, 10% of my sales go to this right right.
Stephen Yusko:You know, it's just I'm out there, you know. I mean I do have, you know, instagram and Facebook Studio page so people see the work through that and it's just. You know, you just get out there into the world. I've been featured in some books and magazines. I mean Metalsmith Magazine last year did a really nice 13 page spread about my studio and my work and it was written by local writer, erin O'Brien, who's a really great writer. I mean I just I was so glad that she agreed to write this, this piece for me, about me. She's written about my works before in other publications like Cannes Journal, but she's such a great writer and I was really thrilled to have her perspective on my, my studio and my work.
Nick Petrella:Yeah, and the purpose of asking the question was really for young people who want to do what you're doing, because they may not realize the different sales channels and so just by identifying them, I think that would be helpful for the listeners.
Stephen Yusko:So it sounds like exhibits some galleries, exhibitions, gallery work online, putting your work on Instagram, having a website with click this button for a price sheet and sales. I think all of that is important and just any opportunity you get really to get yourself out there. Go into art openings. I mean, I look at going to an opening as a chance to just let people know, like, hey, I'm here, or if you're a jeweler, you wear your piece. I was invited to the Cleveland Orchestra Gala last month and I wore a brooch that I made, the one that's going to New York.
Stephen Yusko:I don't make a lot of jewelry. I started out making jewelry. I haven't made any for quite a while, but it's something I want to do more of. And so well, I'm here at the Orchestra Gala, I'm going to wear this brooch, and it generated a lot of nice conversations and actually I just took a commission to make a similar piece. So those type of things is just try to get yourself out there and advertise yourself, hand out a flyer, hand out a postcard, your business card with a picture on it of your work, and anything like that I think is really important to just let people know that this is what you do. And again, if you do one thing. It's easier, I think, to market yourself, but I do such a wide variety of things which is kind of fun because sometimes people like I just made a clapper for a big bell, like a big cylindrical bell.
Stephen Yusko:I mean I just do all kinds of weird stuff because it's fun.
Andy Heise:Yeah, right. So you mentioned collectors a couple of times. Do you stay in touch with collectors? Do collectors stay in touch with you? Do you have your list and you're like, hey, I've got this, I'm working on this piece. I think I know somebody that might be interested in it, what's that?
Stephen Yusko:Well, I think successful artists would do that. You know, they would have a blog or they would have a mailing list and they would send things out regularly to a list of people who have purchased their work in the past. I mean, ideally, Andy, I would sit here and say, yes, I do that once a month and I send this out to people. The reality is that I don't do that very well, but I do keep in touch with some of the folks who have purchased work and again, just through word of mouth and through friends, like hey, I have this exhibition coming up, I'll tell people who are in the area, would you like to go? And I'll be in the gallery at X-Hour. We're giving a talk at this time and blah, blah, blah. So yeah, I just think it's important to, just as with any field, to just cultivate your friends and collectors and try to keep in touch the best you can. I'm trying to be better at doing that. I think it's really important and it's just nice too, you know.
Stephen Yusko:I mean it's really good to have just a conversation, you know, with somebody. I had a friend of mine who's bought a couple of my works as an older gentleman and he needed help moving a bunch of his plants to a greenhouse and so I spent the day with him last week and just had such a nice time. And you know, I mean I met this guy through the art world and it's just really nice to have this nice friendship with him. And, like some of the folks who came by yesterday, one person has collected my work. She brought some friends by.
Stephen Yusko:Maybe they'll collect the works at some other time, but either way it was nice to just have, you know, a half an hour with them in my studio to chat about. You know what they're up to and it's just fun to have those relationships.
Andy Heise:Sure, so do you have your own metalsmithing studio or using a communal workshop space with shared resources?
Stephen Yusko:No, I almost always work by myself. I've had my own studio in St Louis. I had my own studio that I rented in a big like I mentioned. It is big brewery complex and I love the idea of being in a joint studio. Like graduate school was like the perfect example. You know, you have your own space kind of, but you're in a building full of other makers and I just love that. Where you can, you know, run up to the ceramic studio and say hey.
Stephen Yusko:Matt, take a look at this, you know it could be like a five second like no or yeah that's great, you know, but just having that impact, that input, is just really nice to have, where you don't get that in your own studio unless somebody comes to visit, you know, on a whim, where you call somebody or your partner comes over or whatever. But yeah, I have my own studio. So I was. I came to Cleveland in 2007 to work for Rose Ironworks. So they're a third generation run, pretty well known historic Ironworks company here in Cleveland. So they had a designer, an artist in residence named Paul Fair, who worked with them from 1929 to 1934. And then they had a long gap where they didn't bring in an artist in residence. Then in 2007, they brought me in to be an artist in residence. I'm certainly not of the the caliber of designer that Paul Fair was, but you know we made some cool stuff and that was. That was pretty fun. So my studio was behind Rose Ironworks. So I did work in Rose Ironworks. I worked for Bob full time for five and a half years or so and then just went full time into my own studio, which I rented, right behind them. So I've always had my own space.
Stephen Yusko:The new studio that I'm in I just moved last year at the end of the year in November into a shell of a building 19,000 square feet and I'm occupying 1800 square feet of that and it's just very, very much a work in progress. When I moved in it was just a disaster. There was no electricity, no gas, no running water, it's just. It's a wonderful sawtooth roofline building with great north facing windows 20 feet tall and the roof slopes down to 12 and a half feet tall and then back up. It's going to be an amazing space.
Stephen Yusko:My space is pretty much built out Spent a ton of work getting it ready but that will be more of a group space, so we'll each have our own individual space. But within this 19,000 square feet, you know it'll be this collective and there's a gallery that's going to be in there about 3000 plus square foot gallery for the people in the building to exhibit in and to have other exhibitions in there. So I've never worked in a space like that. I'm a little concerned that we're all going to make too much noise and I guess that's why we have noise canceling headphones.
Stephen Yusko:But I'm excited about the opportunity to be in a group building and to have that buzz, this collective buzz of makers, and I think that's going to be a really interesting thing. So but right now I'm the only person in there who's set up and running, so I kind of have the place to myself, which is really great.
Nick Petrella:Do you rent that? Are you part owner? I'm just renting it.
Stephen Yusko:Yeah, I just signed a five year lease when I found out I was going to move. I really I looked for buildings to buy and I you know, it's just such a that's a whole nother podcast about buying a studio versus renting a studio and I really want to own my own building. But, man, everything I looked at needed a new roof and roofs are stupid expensive. The thing that saved this building was that it's got. It's all steel, block and brick and the roof, the ceiling, is all cast concrete.
Announcer:So I mean the roof leaked like mad.
Stephen Yusko:It had to get a new roof on it, but it wasn't like a lot of the buildings I looked at needed all new timbers and the roof and it was just cost prohibitive. I mean, the roofing was going to be more than the buildings were worth in a lot of cases. And so, you know, at the end of months of searching this, this seemed like my best option and it's something I haven't done before and I think it's important, also as an artist, as a maker, to, or just as a person in general, to just throw a wrench in the works every once in a while. You know, like I've done these residencies and you know I'm like, why am I doing this? Like I could be home in my very well equipped studio and make you know, be much more comfortable.
Stephen Yusko:But I think it's really important to, like I said, to throw a wrench in the works and just put yourself in a different situation, challenge yourself a little bit and see what happens. And you know, I think that's how we really grow and I think that's really one of the most important things about going through life is that you just keep growing, you keep learning and you know I can stay in my own space and I know this. But you know you branch out. It's like, oh okay, this is another exciting adventure. What's going to happen? Who?
Nick Petrella:knows Yep, and sometimes the path of most resistance gives you the most growth. Exactly.
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