Interview with Kathleen O'Connell

SEQ CHAPTER \h \r 1UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM Interview # O'CONNELL, KATHY O'CONNELL, KATHY (19-) Book Artist At UW: Interviewed: 2018 Interviewer: Sarah Lang Index by: Transcribed by: Teresa Bergen Length: 4 hours, 23 minutes First Interview Session (July 12 2018): Digital File 00:00:01 SL: Today is Thursday, July 12, 2018. I'm Sarah Lang with the oral history program at UW Madison. I'm speaking with Kathy O'Connell, book artist, UW alum, and associate professor of book arts and letterpress at Middle Tennessee University. Kathy is in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and I'm at the University Archives in Steenbock Library. Kathy, you grew up in Plattsburgh, New York. Could you tell us a little bit about your growing up there? KO: Yeah, so Plattsburgh, I don't know, talking about Plattsburgh is sort of like, I think you have to think about where it is first. SL: Sure. KO: And like growing up there, I didn't really think about where it was, it just seemed normal to me. But it's in the like top part of New York. And it's like an hour from Montreal. And it's in the corner that's near Vermont. And it's got a big, beautiful lake and it's just north of the Adirondack Mountains. So I'm saying all that because it's kind of remote, but it's really pretty. So I grew up there. I have a sister. My parents are both there. My parents were both teachers. I mean, growing up was kind of just like, it was cold in the winter, colder than in Wisconsin. (laughs) And there wasn't, it's a really small town. I think we had like maybe twenty thousand people sort of in the heyday. There was an air force base there that closed in the early '90s. Yeah. It was just sort of an interesting place to grow up, I guess. What else can I tell you? SL: What did your parents teach? KO: My parents were, so they're both teachers and they taught in the Peru New York School District. And I find that funny because later I moved to Peru, but I think we get to that later. That's a different conversation. So my mom taught fourth grade and my dad taught like I think seventh and eighth grade science classes. But science classes, for the most part. He was a science guy. SL: And are you older or younger than your sister? 00:02:29 KO: So I'm two years younger than my sister. My sister is also an artist. She's a painter. And we actually went to school, to college together, actually. We overlapped for a couple of years. And I think we only took one class together. But I think I mentioned the thing about my parents being, well, we're talking about my family, that's why I'm mentioning them, but my parents being teachers. Because when people ask me, they're like, "Well how come you and your sisters are both artists? Like, were your parents artists?" And they were, I think they were sort of encouraging of our creativity, but they weren't artists, per se. So then I always think like well, where did that come from? I actually don't know. My grandmother, my mom's mom, did a lot of crochet stuff. And then my dad's mom, so like my Greek grandmother, Yaya is what we called her, I always sort of leaned towards, like I think she had a lot to do with how we both ended up being artists, I think. But she was really an amazing embroidery artist and needlepoint, and she could sew. And she did a lot of, I just remember her doing a lot of things with her hands. Like I have so many memories of her ironing. Like I kind of find ironing clothing really satisfying because it reminds me of her. But also like she always had cut flowers and things with floral patterns on them in her house. And then at Christmastime she would make us these beautiful cookies and baklava. Like all of her embroidery work and needlepoint stuff was like these really pretty like floral things, or nature, and birds. And they had all these different kind of sewing patterns. I don't know a ton about embroidery, but it's like French knots and different kinds of stitches. So some looked fuzzy and some were 00:01:00 more open. It's just really cool. So I think like that probably had a huge influence in how my sister and I make art. But I don't know. It's so hard to say it was definitely this thing or that thing. SL: And what about, did you end up doing any of the crochet work or embroidery work? Did your grandma try to teach you or your sister? Or not really? KO: I, you know, it's really funny. I don't have like, I don't think I have any memories of learning, maybe she did. Like I remember her teaching us how to make pom poms one time. And we kind of got into that for a while. Making, like completely pointlessly making a bunch of pom poms. And I think we made, I remember her also showing us how to make, or she got us some kind of kit that you could make paper flowers out of. But actually, I still think about that sometimes because it's very satisfying and it's so kind of connected to what I end up doing now. But yeah, it wasn't like the kind of embroidery work that she did, I don't remember 00:02:00 ever sitting down and having her show me that stuff. I know, this is a bunch of years ago now, I tried to teach myself how to do that because it's so related to what I do with like book binding stuff. So I kind of connected to it in that way. I'm actually about to start a secret project that involves embroidery. But I'm not going to talk too much about that yet. (laughs) Also no longer secret. SL: Well what about when you were growing up, how did you get interested in art? You said that your parents were encouraging of your artwork. What were you doing? Were you drawing, or can you tell us a little bit about that? KO: Yeah. I think they were encouraging. But I also think like probably a lot of people's parents were encouraging about them drawing. I think. I mean, I don't know, it's hard to say what was normal. But yeah, I always enjoyed drawing and colorful things. I guess I just appreciated patterns that were on, you know, it was the eighties. Everything was like neon and all these colors everywhere. I think I just always appreciated that stuff. I do remember going, like when I was, I don't know how old, maybe I was six years old or something, but there was some art summer camp. And the guy that taught this, whatever class it was that I took, and I have no idea what the class was or what the summer camp was or really, I mean, I was like so little. But the guy that taught this was a musician from the area. His name was Roy Herd. And I just remember like being a little kid. 00:03:00 He was like the camp counselor leader. And he just showed us interesting things that I still remember very vividly. Like he showed us how to start a fire with like a stick and a shoelace and some lint. Which like starting a fire with two sticks. I just found that like as a physics thing, like how things work and that you could actually make something from nothing. Like it was so mind-bending to me. But then he would take us on these little adventures. And we'd go for walks. And then instead of walking around the perimeter to get to the door of the fence, he would just find a spot in the fence that you could like shimmy under the fence. And it was sort of this like happy mischief-making class in some way. Like I think that was probably not the point of the class at all. But I remember sort of like thinking, oh, yeah, there's all these rules to follow. But then you can kind of skirt some of them sometimes. And that like kind of magical 00:04:00 little act was really exciting to me. I don't know, and I still remember that like all these years later. That's still such a, shimmying under the fence and just like the smoke coming out of the bottom of the stick that was spinning around, and thinking, what?! (laughs) What is that? So that was sort of a, I think I took a comic book class at that summer camp, too. But again, it's sort of like, I don't know how unusual that is. I look at my friends with their kids, and they're going to camp, too. So I don't know how unusual that was, I guess, but I enjoyed it. (laughs) 00:09:37 SL: Well what about in grade school, for example? What kinds of classes were you taking there? What were you studying there? KO: Oh these are good questions. Let's see. You're like bringing me back so far in my mind. I don't know. I think I always had really, I remember having really good art teachers throughout the whole time that I went to school. I don't remember anything like completely in particular about any of that stuff, though. It just seems like, I really enjoyed other things about school. I loved learning. I loved reading. Like math scared me, but I was really good at it. It was just 00:05:00 sort of like a little bit intimidating. But I liked that it all worked out. I don't know. Like school for me, it was sort of like, oh, this is kind of all magical. And then, other things at school. Oh, the dawn of the computer in the classroom. That was a thing. I remember when we got a computer in our classroom, and I was like, what, it's a magical, pixelated thing. And there's some program where you could draw. Oh my God, I haven't thought about it in so long. You could draw like a spider web or something if you programmed it correctly. It was so archaic. But like really kind of fascinating, because I knew it was like a very new thing and I was really excited about it. (laughs) So I was like, what's that? I'm curious. SL: Do you remember how old you were when the computer was introduced into the classroom? KO: I think that I was in first grade. So however old I was in first grade. Maybe I was like seven? 00:06:00 Let's say seven. That sounds like a good age. (laughter) So it's sort of like, yeah, I think about that sometimes because I'm teaching college students now. Everybody's attached to their phone now, including me. I remember when the computer was like this new, unusual, special thing. And it was sort of like you hardly got to see one, or use one. And it's just funny now, you know, it's always in your pocket. SL: And what about your art classes in, well you said you had good art teachers. Do you remember any projects that you worked on? KO: You know, I'm trying to think about this. I'm like I'm sure there were like the usual projects with like glitter. (laughter) You know, I kind of remember, like I don't really remember art class, per se. But I do remember in kindergarten this very satisfying experience of like writing your name in glue and then dumping a whole plate full of like green or blue glitter on top of the glue and it sticking. And thinking that's magical. And shiny. And also the act of, like the calligraphy thing was, I guess as I remember it now, 00:07:00 like satisfying in thinking about letterform and glue. It kind of makes me want to go get some glitter and do that again. But yeah, I don't know. I remember that, but it wasn't really art class, per se. I'm sure there was some, nothing is like, I don't think anything, because I was thinking about sort of this whole conversation today. I was like what, why, my memory is terrible, first of all, really terrible. And then the second thing is like the things that I truly remember are the things that were, like especially, I think it's something where it's especially sort of like delightful or they provoked some kind of more intense emotional reaction from me. Like I do remember the glue and glitter thing, and the letters. But I don't remember art projects. 00:13:56 SL: Well you mentioned the computer being introduced into your classes. Did you have cable? Cable TV. Because I'm just thinking of like you said it's the '80s, I'm wondering if you like watched MTV or if any of 00:08:00 that influenced you when you were growing up. KO: Hmm. I remember watching a lot of like PBS stuff, educational. My parents were really like they were very particular, maybe protective is also a good word to use, about what we watched on TV. I feel like all bets were off on Saturday morning, though. But that was just cartoon stuff. I do remember watching Saturday morning cartoons. I remember Sesame Street and like all that good PBS stuff. I was always, yeah, I guess there's some things on Sesame Street that I just found very satisfying. Like all those pretty colors. (laughs) I realize I was like really into those colors. But like they did so many creative art things but at the time it just seemed so how things were very seamless. And now I kind of can appreciate it for being, well, no. That's actually kind of this great cultural thing that you got to experience because that's what public television was offering at the time. I don't know if we had cable, though. Like I think we did. We got cable at some point. 00:09:00 I don't know when that was. But like I can recall MTV was definitely prohibited. And then as my sister and I got older, we totally figured out we could sneak and watch MTV and not get busted. I don't know. I don't know. it wasn't really, I have no idea how old I was, a teenager, probably, by the time I started watching MTV, I think. SL: Well, I watched Sesame Street, so I know what you're talking about. I think I know what you're talking about in terms of some of the sequences. But for people who may not have seen those, can you talk a little bit about those? KO: (laughs) Probably. Like some of the ones that I remember, I think it was, I want to say it was Picasso, but maybe I'm making things up. But somebody was painting on a piece of glass. The camera was on one side and the artist was on the other side. And it was just like this very satisfying experience of seeing painted lines being made by somebody. I remember that being really satisfying. And I also remember there was like one of the counting little skits that was on there. And maybe there were foam letters, or there were cut out letters in some form that were moving around the screen. You know, like I don't think, no one thinks about this stuff at the time. It's not like you know what you're going to turn into later in your life. But like of course I loved that. I love that stuff now. These 00:10:00 chunky letterforms that I can pick up and print sometime. That's so, it's still satisfying to me. And it's funny that even as a kid I was like, yeah, that's all right. (laughs) SL: Well what about in high school, then? What, did you know, when did you know that you wanted to be an artist? Was it then or was it later? 00:17:53 KO: I, yeah, high school was, yeah. Here's like the short answer is, I got to high school and I got bored. And like so the whole time I was taking art classes, I was good, like I was good at art classes. But I was a ridiculously good student in everything. But I really liked art. So I think for me it was a little bit like I enjoyed the act of doing it. It was a little bit I think also like therapeutic. But I remember things like in high school how this all went, I think I was in, I think it was eleventh grade I finally was just like, I am so bored. This is not--like it wasn't challenging to me anymore. I was like mentally very much so over high school. So I actually asked my parents if I could take college classes. Like if that was even an option. So we figured out that I could. So then I did. And I was looking for, and I think this was like a combination of A, I'm bored in high school and I would like something to do with my time. And please distract 00:11:00 me from things I don't want to deal with right now. But the other part of it was like a little bit strategic. So I was sort of like well, I'm going to go to college anyway, so why not just start sooner rather than later. So I was such a weird little kid, sometimes I think that. Like who does that? I don't know. So I started taking college classes. But I wanted to take more art classes. Because I'd sort of like I think taken probably all the art classes at the high school. So I was looking for an art class to take. And I had wanted to take ceramics because I had done that in high school and I liked doing it. Like you could take some kind of natural material. And then you make a thing, and you heat it up, and then it's like an actual object. It was so amazing to me that you followed this process and then you had this object at the end, making something that was nothing. So I wanted to take ceramics. But that class was full in the art department. So because I was not an enrolled student, like I had 00:12:00 absolutely last choice to get in. So the department told me, okay, you can either take like we have a space in this class and a space in that class. And the one class was basic design or 2-D design, and the other class was introduction to printmaking. And I didn't know what either thing was, but I was like, well, what are those, I don't really understand. So they sort of described the one thing and they described the other thing. I'm still like oh, I still don't really know what that is. But the printmaking thing sounds weirder, so like I'll take that class. And little did I know that that would change everything forever. So I was in high school. And taking a college level printmaking class. SL: And Kathy? KO: I also, I think I took like maybe public speaking and some other class, also. I remember the public speaking class. I don't remember what the other class was. But anyway, so I took the introduction to printmaking class. And I must have been like 16 or 17 years old. SL: And where did you take the printmaking class? 00:22:01 KO: So this was at SUNY Plattsburgh. SL: Oh, it was at SUNY Plattsburgh. KO: It was. Yup. So I don't know, it was 1997. I guess I was, I have no idea 00:13:00 how old I was in 1997. Sixteen? Seventeen? Seventeen. It must have been 17. Anyway, so I took this introduction to printmaking class with Diane Fine. And that was when I met Diane. So I'm in this class. She didn't know I was still in high school until like towards maybe the end of the semester. And I loved it. Like it was insane. I think I had probably been there like two weeks, and I'm like, this is a thing you can do? This exists? And you know, I can come into the studio whenever I want, and I can just make things, like a bunch of prints. I was like completely sold probably after like two weeks of being in there. I was like, oh, man, this is wild! So I have so many memories of working in the print shop, it's still there, in Plattsburgh. I just was in there all the time. When I first started, like the other kids that were like maybe juniors and seniors in college, they were printing lithography or something. And I remember seeing that for the first time. And I thought I was witnessing some kind of like magical I don't know, happening or something because of the way that it works. And I didn't understand like the science of it. But anyway, so that first printmaking class that I 00:14:00 took was an intaglio class. So we were working on zinc plates, and just working through the basic intaglio processes. And I just, everything about that place, I loved. I loved like the process. I loved that space. I liked Diane. I was like completely challenged by the whole experience. I liked being sort of incognito as a high schooler. And it was just like really fun. And I also found out some point in that semester like the, I think my sister's boyfriend at the time was in that class, but I didn't know. (laughs) So I thought it was really funny later, that I'm like, "Oh, I already know your boyfriend. He's in the class that I'm taking here." I don't think she liked that as much, but that was okay. Like yeah, it completely changed so many things in my mind. So I ended up taking, I guess that must have been 00:15:00 like my senior year of high school, I took two semesters' worth of printmaking. SL: So how did that work with your high school schedule? KO: You know, I don't remember how that all worked out. But I think, I was thinking about this the other day. The way I had understood things is like back then, I don't know how much of this was actually true or what people told me, or my parents told me, maybe it wasn't entirely true. But the truth that I understood was that the high school wouldn't let me graduate early because I had to take--I don't know what things, exactly the technicality was, like the kind of degree that I was graduating with. I don't know what it was, but by the time my senior year rolled around, I was taking like mostly just kind of elective stuff. And I was taking an AP Calculus class. I had such a good teacher for that calculus class. I think I got like a 99 or something in that class, which is 00:16:00 ridiculous. I think about that now, I'm like oh my God, I don't even understand, like it's so far away in my mind all those equations and thing. (laughs) Whatever. Yeah, maybe I was taking a Shakespeare class, because the man that taught that was really kind of this great teacher. I had really good teachers. I got really lucky. There were very few kind of awful teachers in my education, which is pretty incredible considering it was all public education. I was really lucky, actually. And I think maybe I was taking an art class, also. But I had to take, the one class that I think I actually had to take was physical education. And I don't really, I'm still to this day like what was that all bout, really? Like I couldn't just fulltime enroll in college at that point? But apparently I couldn't. So, anyway, whatever. I mean, it all worked out anyway. Yeah, so I think the rest of my schedule probably was study hall. So they let me, I think they let me leave early. I left early. (laughter) 00:27:19 SL: I just was curious. Did you have to have any like permission form or something like that like to be off campus? Do you remember? KO: I think about this stuff sometimes and I think like, maybe it was 00:17:00 just like my small town. Or maybe I did have some kind of permission slip, but I don't remember bringing them, or maybe I wasn't even involved in that, although that seems like I probably would have been the delivery person of such a thing. You know, maybe, honestly I don't remember if I went in with a letter and said, like, listen, I'm taking college classes, this is how my schedule's going to work out, I'm going to take off after whatever hour in the morning, and on these days I'll be back and on these days I won't. I have no idea. I don't know. I would imagine something had to have been communicated there, but I don't know. SL: Well, what was Diane like as a teacher? KO: Oh, like the best teacher ever. (laughs) She was like, I mean, she still is, she still is, she's like the world's best mentor or something. It's so funny to go back in my mind that far to like when I first started knowing her. I thought she was just like, I guess I just thought she was a fantastic teacher, like I could understand her. I saw that she was really interested and passionate about what she was doing. She was also an artist. That was super inspiring. I felt like I could talk to her. And she was, at that point, probably, she was probably the first adult that I actually felt 00:18:00 like I could have a conversation with. Because I was kind of like terrified of my parents forever, and like of adults, actually, in general, forever. But Diane was probably like the first adult that I felt like I could actually talk to about whatever I wanted to talk about. And I was just so fascinated by the whole process of, that you could make art and see what she was doing. So for me it was like I could see how she was as a teacher, but I could also see how she was as an artist. And I thought that that was remarkable. Even like as a 17 year-old, I understood how, that that was a big deal. Which is kid of funny, be a 17 year-old's completely clueless about so many things in so many ways. But I don't know, yeah, she was like the best teacher ever. (laughs) SL: Did you connect with any of the other students in the class? Or did you keep 00:19:00 to yourself? KO: I did. I did. You know, it's kind of funny to think about, like I just don't ever think about the past. I hardly ever think about this. But I was super intimidated because I was incognito as high schooler in a college class. But it was somehow like, I don't know, I have enough nerve to just make it okay. And I think that I a little bit of that is just how I was anyway. Like that was always kind of a thing. I could always get along with people in general. I mean, I still can. But I feel like that experience of sort of feeling like I am out of my comfort zone, because I certainly was very intimidating. But I feel like that experience was maybe the first time that I was like all right, well this turned out okay. So when I found myself in my life in that same kind of situation later, however many times it's been, so many, when I'm like what am I doing this now. Okay, okay, well, I'll be fine, 00:20:00 I hope. (laughs) I think that was kind of like the first time that I really felt like completely out of my normal element. But little did I know I was actually just stepping into my normal element. But it would take a while to find that out. I don't know, it was sort of just like I guess I just did what came naturally to me, which is just kind of talk to people. And certainly I think I was probably at the beginning really kind of shy about it, but once I kind of figured out like, I probably figured out like A, nobody can tell. Like nobody knows that I'm still in high school. Once they figured out it was like oh, whatever, it doesn't matter. And then when people did find out, most of them just thought it was kind of like hilarious and great and unusual. I don't know. I mean, it sort of was also like well, I was making interesting stuff, I mean, for that era. And I worked really hard and I was doing well. So it was sort of like who could say anything against that? So I don't know, it was kind of, I guess like in my mind it was still a thing. But not that much. After time went by, it was fine. I do remember 00:21:00 working in there with like one of, some of the seniors that were in that class. Or in the printmaking area. And I just remember thinking at the time like oh my God, these guys are way, guys and gals, I should say, way older than me. Because when you're 17, people that are 22 are like so much older than you. (laughter) And I just remember this one woman was always also in the print shop. Her name was Anne Polashenski, I think that's her last name, Polashenski, and I think she worked for Pace Editions printing in New York for a while. And maybe got her MFA later. Anyway, but I just remember like she and I would always be in the print shop together. And I think she was getting ready for her senior exhibition maybe at some point that year. And we would always just sort of like switch off who was playing music on the stereo. But we kind of got along in that like we knew we were a bunch of years apart, sort of at very different ends of the printmaking career there at that college, but like it was totally okay. We still, that whole concept of having this like print shop community to me was like a new thing, also. And I, like that was such a positive experience for me that I got really lucky. Because that could have been a terrible experience. But I think that became a really kind of meaningful thing to me. And also, I think so much of that has to do with the way that Diane treated the studio space, also, that it was a studio community. I mean, I certainly take that into my studios wherever I'm working, 00:22:00 also. It's hard to make work if you're someplace where you're not comfortable, where there's weird egos happening. (laughs) I don't know. 0:35:22 SL: So how many college classes did you have before you actually were in college? Before you graduated high school? Or when you graduated high school, how many college classes did you have? KO: I had, so I had two printmaking classes, I can say that for sure. I had a public speaking class. And I feel like I took an English or a writing class, also, but I don't remember. So at leas three, but maybe four. SL: And did you take printmaking with Diane for both of those classes? Did you have another teacher? KO: I was also trying to remember this. At some point, Diane went on sabbatical. And I don't know if that was the second semester of that year. It might have been. But it might have been maybe like my freshman year of college. I honestly, I don't remember. I'd have to go ask, I'd have to go fact check that one with Diane. (laughs) But at some point I did take a printmaking class with another, like a former SUNY Plattsburgh and a former Madison student, Rachel Davis. So she taught printmaking at Plattsburgh for, it was a semester. But I don't know if that was the other semester that I was in high school or not. It might have been. SL: And what was it like being in her class? KO: It was--because it was all still really new to me, regardless of when that semester actually was, if it was my freshman year or if 00:23:00 it was like the year in high school, it was all so new to me and so many things were happening. I think it was the year that I was in high school, honestly. But it was all just like this positive thing. It was just reinforcing this idea of yeah, this is what I want to do. I love this. This is ridiculous. Like I can't even wrap my mind around the fact that I'm like, this is it. Like there is zero doubt for me. And there's so few things in my life where I'm like no, that was it. So yeah, I don't know. It was sort of, it was a great thing. Rachel, the way that she taught the class was definitely different than how Diane taught it. I think like the projects that we did were like, like I think we made a sculptural, there was some kind of sculptural thing that we did. So it just got me thinking about printmaking in a very different way than how Diane thinks about it. Which, but it was all just like, it's all good. All of this is a good thing. Like I didn't feel weird loyalty in some way one way or the other. (laughs) SL: So when it came to officially applying or college or colleges, did you, how did you do that? Did you just go to SUNY Plattsburgh? Or were you thinking of other places? KO: I, okay, yeah. Yeah. (laughs) So in my mind, I was like, I want to go to RISD. It was RISD that I was 00:24:00 like, I want to go there. And I don't know why I wanted to go there. I think it's because they had really good, they did really kind of fantastic advertising at the time. And I probably went to some art, I went to some art portfolio review at some point in that last year of high school And RISD had something there. I don't know. I mean, I was a good art student. In high school, here, I'll throw this in here. In high school, I'm just remembering this, we also had like a juried high school art show and I had some work in that. And I got best of show for this little paper cutout picture of a monkey that I did, which I only remember because I found this piece of paper recently while I'm trying to look for something else. So I did, that was just kind of this funny thing. Anyway, so getting back to picking colleges, I think at that art fair probably RISD had some good, you know, nicely printed, great imagery, well designed ephemera about advertising their college. But you know, I'm looking at the price tag of it and I have no sense of reality. And happily my parents were like, you think about that all you 00:25:00 want, but you can go to SUNY Plattsburgh. So my parents were like, no, we can't afford that. They didn't really come out and say we can't afford that, or you're being completely impractical. But there also wasn't like, we didn't butt heads on that factor a lot. Because I saw the price tag and I recognized that it was quite expensive to go to school at RISD. Happily, I think I probably would have butt heads more with them if I hadn't already been at SUNY Plattsburgh and studying with Diane. Because that was a very tangible thing that I understood what it was and kind of exactly what it would be like. I mean, more or less. Like I at least knew what that print shop was. And I knew that four more years of doing that wouldn't be so bad. So I don't know, I didn't really put up too much of a fight about the money thing. And around that time, also, my parents were separated and I was very aware of the fact that like money was a huge issue for them. But especially for my mom, and watching 00:26:00 her sort of like struggling with money stuff and all kinds of other things. It was a little bit like sort of in our family and maybe personally, like kind of emotionally messy time. So it was also like moving away that far and sort of doing that is like maybe too much of a thing. I don't think I could kind of unpack it like that as a 17 year-old. But like I kind of just knew, so I didn't really put up too much of a fight about going to RISD or not. But I did have like manage my way to move out of my family's house. And I was like, "Well, I'm going to go live in the dorms, at least, because I've got to get out of here." So that was sort of our compromise. So I went to live in the dorms at Plattsburgh and went to study art. SL: Were your parents separated at that time? Were they living in different places, or were they in the same house? 00:43:04 KO: So--(laughs) oh, we're talking about this. They're cringing right now, and they don't know why. So they separated, so my mom and I 00:27:00 moved out of, my sister had gone to college already. And she went to Plattsburgh, but she was also living in the dorm. So my mom and I moved out of my dad's house and I think that was in 1996. It was a rough time, so I've kind of like blocked it out. But at some point, we moved back into my dad's house. And I think it was right before, maybe it was two or three months before I moved out again to go to college. So it wasn't that much time that we lived, that I lived back there with them in my dad's house. So my mom eventually moved out again. And then my parents are, yeah, we'll put this on the record. So my parents are separated. They live apart from each other. But they are still married. So I've never been able to fully wrap my mind around that. But if that's what they're choosing, then that's what I can tell you. (laughs) SL: And you said your sister was at SUNY Plattsburgh. Was she studying art there? KO: I think she went to school originally and she was a psychology major. SL: Okay. KO: And then I think what happened, because I feel like at some point it was my job as the little sister to tease her, I think like at some point I started studying art there. And maybe it was around the time that I was either deciding that when I go to college, I'm going to be an art major. I think she switched her major over to be also an art major. I think she'd taken art classes. 00:28:00 So it's not like I actually influenced any of that. But I like to tease her and tell her that I did. (laughs) 00:45:25 SL: Did you have classes together? KO: We had one class together and it was, I think it was, no, I know it was a Sculpture 1 class because I think I'm going to remember this correctly. But I'm pretty sure that in that class was my sister, my sister's boyfriend at the time who's now her husband, who's also a painter, also [unclear]. Interestingly, he also, I think, had my mom as a fourth grade teacher, as did his sister. And I don't know, I don't think he ever had my dad as a teacher, because I think he switched schools. But anyway, tangent. So I think my sister was in that sculpture class, her husband, now husband, Brian. I think my best friend at the time, Janelle Taverne was in that class, and I think her sister, who's name was also Jennifer, I think she was also in that class at the same time. And then, yeah, it was just such a funny class. Like two pairs of siblings in the same class. It was just odd. I don't remember a ton about that class, except I know I really liked that class a lot. I know that much. I don't remember any good like 00:29:00 weird incidents though of drama or anything that remarkable. (laughs) SL: Did you end up staying at Plattsburgh for the full four years? KO: Yeah. So, right. So I went through the four years of college there afterwards. I did study abroad for a semester. I went to Florence, Italy, at a school called the School of Lorenzo de Medici. And while I was there, it was like, it was Florence, Italy, like I studied Italian. And I did not know Italian before I went there. SL: And when was this? KO: That was in the fall of 2001. So, also a really strange time to be abroad as an American, also. So I had been there maybe, maybe I was there a week, and just before September 00:30:00 eleventh. And sort of, it was like, I think we were on our, or we took a lunch break because I was actually in my, I was doing a drawing in my printmaking class, actually, and somebody came downstairs and was like, "Oh, this crazy thing happened, like this plane flew into the building," blah, blah, blah. So we took a break and then during the break I just was like very confused at what I was seeing on television. It was the most surreal thing. And at the time that was very strange also because you know, so many of my friends and family here were just glued to their televisions just watching all of this news coverage about what had happened. And I did not have a TV in my apartment. And I think my only access to media, really, was you know, walking in the street and seeing the newspaper covers in Italian and seeing what they were talking about, which I kind of understood. And that I would go to the library somewhat regularly to read, I guess it was, it's like an international version, I don't know, it probably 00:31:00 still exists, of the New York Times to see what they were writing about and what was going on. It was scary and sort of like, it was just such a weird time. And it's sort of hard to distinguish about like what part of that very influential moment was just being abroad and what part of that was because something really crazy happened while I was abroad. Or that something really crazy happened anyway, and it was also magnified because I was abroad. It was such an odd experience. And maybe because of this, or maybe it's separate from this, or who can ever say, ever, no one can ever say, like the, so I was working with this, what was I taking? I was taking Italian class and then some other class. What was it? I don't know. And wine tasting, because I was in Italy, of course. And I was taking a drawing class and a printmaking class. Oh, 00:32:00 the other one was introduction to opera, like an opera appreciation class. Very Italian of me. (laughs) So my printmaking professor was also my drawing professor. And it's this wonderful artist named Lucy Jochamowitz. And I think her work is absolutely, like I'm such a huge fan of her artwork, and I hope we get to talk about her again, because she comes back into my life in this very interesting way later. But so I first met her in Florence and she, we had so many interesting conversations. And like so I did a bunch of etching with her in that class, and of course enjoyed it because it was a new perspective. But it was also working in this very different kind of studio space. And working with a lot of students who were just not that serious about what they were making. But I loved it because she had her own way of doing things and different equipment, and a different way of thinking about things. A little bit more traditional. It was also the first time that I had worked on copper, so I was really excited to be learning 00:33:00 something process-wise that was new. But really what I learned so much about was actually her drawing class. And I think it was like Drawing 4. In that class were four students. And there were two of us that actually showed up to class regularly. Like the fourth person hardly ever showed up to class. I don't even understand that. And then the third person came to maybe half the classes. So the other woman that I remember being in the class was this woman from, I think she was from Bogota, but she was from Colombia. And we just had these really kind of intense conversations not just about drawing, but about artmaking and it really like just completely changed and influenced and like made everything about the art making experience so much more profound for me. And like I felt like when I left there I felt like I owned something that I didn't own before I left. So when I left Italy, I felt like I am now an artist and I can own that. Like I don't even feel like, like I know I'm still in school and 00:34:00 I've just finished this thing. But the way that I'm thinking is like art thinking. Like this is this thing that I'm doing now, and this isn't going to stop. So that was really empowering. And so of course like the people that are there when you do that, which happens to be the former Lucy, and then when I came back, my professors that I was working really closely with at Plattsburgh. I had one semester. And I was like, all right, well, this is the semester. I make a bunch of work. I'm going to do my thesis show. And then I'm gone. So it was really like that last year of being in college was just like this huge leap forward. And it was really great. I mean, I think about it now and I think about being in Italy and I'm like, man, I was like a kid. Like 21. Really on my own. In some place where I don't speak the language, I don't understand how this stuff works. It's not the United States. It's totally different. Even if it were the United States, I'm from a tiny town. It's pretty remarkable that I did that, that I went into it completely clueless and just super naïve. Which 00:35:00 is--if I had known how hard it was going to be, I would have never agreed to do that. But I'm so glad I did. (laughs) 00:54:47 SL: Can you talk about what made it hard? KO: What made it--what was the question? SL: You said that it was hard. KO: Oh, hard, yeah. SL: And I imagine part of it was the language. But could you elaborate a little bit on that? KO: Sure. It was like, okay, so I, so there are many layers of it being difficult being over there. I think, I guess maybe I should give a little backstory here, which is Plattsburgh, I mentioned this, is an hour from Montreal. So like growing up, we went on some field trips to, I remember going on a couple, like one, I think this was in eighth grade, we went on a multi-day field trip to Montreal and then we went to Quebec City. And I think it was with, like the students who were studying French. So I studied French. I grew up near Canada. I thought all Canadians spoke French, when they don't, it turns out. But I studied French because where it lived it made sense to me. So when we would go on these field trips to Canada, to Quebec, I just was so fascinated by just how you could go so close to where I lived, and all of a sudden, everything was just different. Like everything was in French. All the signs were in French, everybody spoke French. It was really cool to me. So like growing up, the Canadians would come down, and you know, we'd be surrounded by French Canadians. You'd hear French every so often. And I didn't 00:36:00 appreciate that as being a strange thing, ever. But I appreciate it now. I love it. I actually love going home and when I hear Canadians, I'm like, oh, the Canadians, I love you guys. (laughs) But also like half of the, all of the signs, I think all of the directional signs in Plattsburgh are bilingual. They're in English and in French. Which again, growing up, that did not even occur to me as like being unusual at all. So I grew up with this sort of weird idea, I guess, of well, there's always people that are slightly, you know, speaking some other language around here. That's like a thing. So I think that like that beginning of traveling to other places with different cultures didn't seem too unusual to me. So I think when I was 20 I decided like oh, I want to go travel. I don't know where I want to go, but I want to go somewhere. So my boyfriend at the time and I decided we were going to go to Italy. So we actually went to Florence, and we went to a few other places in Italy. And it was really the first time I remember actually being completely out of my understanding of reality. And we had so much fun, 00:37:00 and we ate the most amazing food. Sort of like the things I love about traveling still. Just seeing really beautiful things and eating incredible food and trying to figure stuff out. Seeing how people live. So after that trip, I was like, you know, I want to come back to Florence to study. And so that's how I decided to study in Florence. Like I thought, being somewhere versus vacation, like I'm very aware that that's a different thing. But I thought because like I had already seen the place, like it wasn't a huge leap. The language factor was really challenging. So I had a really amazing language teacher in high school, also. Mrs. Rizos was her name. And I studied French with her like probably, actually that was probably another class I was taking my senior year of high school was French or Spanish or something. So I studied French with her for a long time. And I think she probably also was like, you're bored, you should also study Spanish. (SL laughs) So I studied, maybe like, it's true, I studied like maybe a semester or two semesters' worth of Spanish with her. Like I think I 00:38:00 didn't come into the intro Spanish. I went to the second level one because like I kind of understood what the language structure was. They're pretty related. So that was okay. I just, I don't know, that whole language thing was always a little bit fascinating to me. So going to Italy to study Italian, I was like, well, it's new. But I'm sure it can't, I mean, she said it was going to be the same as Spanish and French. And I'm like, okay, I can kind of figure those out. And she was right. It was. So I think before I left, I got some like language on CDs, like studying things to learn a little bit of Italian before I went. But really when I got there it was like oh, you're now on your own. And I had a, I was the only person from my school that went, so I didn't know anyone there. So when I got there it was really a matter of all right, well I had made an arrangement for a really too expensive but very fun to live in apartment. Like I didn't know anybody that was going, or how to get in touch with potential housemates. So I lived by myself. Which I think that part of it made it 00:39:00 really hard. But in another sort of angle of that, it was also gave me like an incredible amount of time to sort of think and make artwork. And that was like a good thing and a bad thing. It was mostly a good thing. But you know, then it was like oh, you're overthinking some things. Like you need to go, move on. (laughs) But I made so many things while I was there. Anyway, so the hard part, the language thing. Like I remember when I got there, there was no toilet paper in the apartment. And I'm like, oh, God. I don't know where the store is. I barely even understand how to unlock the door, because there's all these crazy keys and they're weird shapes and I don't know what order you have to put them into the door in. I don't know where the store is. I don't even know the words for "toilet paper," or how to ask for toilet paper. So you know, it's all pre-Google translate. You're like in your little phrasebook, trying to figure this out. Again, very little internet. I had to go to an 00:40:00 internet café. Also, it was kind of pre-email being a super thing. Anyway, so I figured it out, and it worked, and I got my toilet paper. And it was sort of like little by little, I figured out how to do stuff. And I think that process of like taking for granted what was really simple in the United States, or in my culture, let's just say that, because that's actually probably more true, in my culture and in my language, I took all that stuff for granted. And I all of a sudden like having that kind of pulled out from underneath me was really a difficult experience, because that was truly the first time that I was like completely on my own. Because there was no, like I didn't have, at that point, I didn't know anyone there. My family was far away. And then sort of as an added bonus, like there's some huge terrorist attack in my country, which hasn't happened for many, many years, not in my lifetime, how do I deal with it? So it was like kind of psychologically a difficult time. And I think that wasn't 00:41:00 just mostly, just those circumstances that I was working in. Because I went to Italy this year, and I just felt like I've had all this life experience since then, and it was like so, I didn't want to leave. It was just so wonderful to be there. And all these things that I love. Like the language thing is still a factor, because I don't speak Italian. But it was just different than it had been originally. But I think we'll get back to that like a further point in the interview. SL: Sure. So you said that when you got back to Plattsburgh that you were getting ready to make a lot of work and have your show. KO: Yeah. SL: Can you talk a little bit more about that? 01:04:10 KO: Sure. So when I came back from Italy, oh, this also was the first time where I learned how to travel internationally with really large quantity of artwork. (laughs) Like how to shove as many things as possible into some kind of container so that the artwork wouldn't get damaged, but you'd still be able to bring it all back. 00:42:00 Which is now like one of my magical superpowers, I think. (laughs) That was like the trial by fire, first time I ever did that. I came back from studying. I made, I think about this now, I was aware of this at the time, also. I really treated that time in Italy, for two reasons, because it was also my senior year of college and I knew when I came back I would have not that much time to get together all my work for a show. So I treated that time that I was in Italy really as also sort of this residency. And I don't think I had the vocabulary for that at the time. But I thought like I am going to try to learn as much as possible and sort of like absorb as much as possible while I'm here. And I think that's probably like true of all of my philosophy of living and learning that it's ever been. But I think that was the first moment where I was consciously like I'm going to try to like take advantage of this time and space as much as possible. So I came back with just an absurd amount of artwork. And when I came back, I made even more. So happily, at the time, I was probably still working like 20 hours a 00:43:00 week this whole time while I was back in the states. But I had this job--and I do want to talk about this job, because it's actually also really important for the whole story--so the whole time that I was in college, I worked on a ferry boat, or ferry boats plural, actually that crossed over back and forth between New York and Vermont on Lake Champlain. So I had this job. And I by that time had hours that were, like I picked up shifts. So it was basically if I could work, if somebody called me, I would have work. And usually people wanted to take the weekends off. So the shift work was kind of great because I would finish maybe at three o'clock in the afternoon. And I would have all of the afternoon to go make artwork at the print shop, or do whatever I had to do, of uninterrupted time. It was beautiful. So when I came back from Italy, it was really like, yeah, maybe I'm working a lot, but I'm also making a lot of artwork. So that kind of shift work that I was on was very convenient to my life. And then sometimes, I think at that point, so are you ready for me to go off on a tangent about working on the ferry 00:44:00 boat? SL: Sure. 01:07:49 KO: So that was probably the craziest job I've ever had and maybe will ever have. I don't know. I've had some fun experiences. But so I worked, that was the whole time I was in college, that was my job. I had like another job that kind of overlapped that for a little while. But that was really my main income for the time I was in college. So I was a deckhand, among other things, while I worked there. And those, the car ferry across the lake, they run all year round, from the winter to breaking ice, if there's ice. And I have so many, like an insane number of stories about working there. Which I will not get too far into because that could be like a whole other hour, two hours, six hours of conversation. But I actually love that job. So I worked there I think between 1999 and 2002. And those boats just like, they went back and forth all winter. And I would work with all kinds of people. It was kind of a great blue collar job. Really unusual. I ended up doing so many crazy things that I would never have ever thought or imagined doing. Like at some point during that job I ended up rescuing like 75 people off of a boat that was up on a rock that went aground. SL: Oh, wow. KO: At like 00:45:00 three AM. Just like insane things. I'm like really, this is what I'm doing now? Okay, why not? (laughs) So that was sort of like one of the more wild moments. But there were so many characters that work at that company. I'm sure many of them are still there. Some of them have moved on. It was just something completely fascinating and mesmerizing to me to work at a place where you really just go back and forth between two points all day long, and there's like three crossings on that lake. They had a main office in Burlington, Vermont. So I spent so much time in Vermont also during that time. And it's just like, to see, to watch repeatedly, with the sunrise. Like if you'd be on the morning shift for a summer, like you would see the sunrise every day for a few months until your shift changed. And then it would be like you'd see the sunset every day for a few months. There's something really beautiful about that. And just being in nature, even though you're on this like manmade, loud, exhaust-belching boat made of steel in the middle of the thing, full of cars and car exhaust. But it was just like so beautiful and real at the same time. Like it wasn't maybe always the best place to work. There's like plenty sexual harassment to go around, and just like shenanigans and just the 00:46:00 things that went on there, just insane. That could be its own novel. I used to actually think like someday if I go down the route of becoming a comic book artist or somehow depicting like this would be the thing that I would want to depict because it would be an endless source of story and material to talk about. (laughs) But I think I also bring it up because every time I go home, I cross over on this boat. So I can't just forget about this, the place where I used to work. And just like some fun other things, like they had me working in the office, in the main office, sometimes in the winter. And I'd be like the only person down in this area. And they gave me the combination to their main safe. So I'd be like dialing in whatever, and have thousands of dollars in my hands. (laughs) And I thought, you know, I'm like 20, and how this is happening. But, okay. I mean, it all worked out. It was just a wild time. Anyway, so I 00:47:00 also bring up that job because, so, working on all of those boats, you, I don't know how this works, exactly. So it's like time officially working as a deckhand. So you basically build up hours. And so by the time I was done working there, I had so many hours built up. And these hours, it's not like pay hours, it's hours of like credit, if you want to call it that. So by the time I left there, I had enough hours where, that were recent enough that I could have sat for my captain's license. SL: Oh, wow. 1:13:18 KO: Yeah. So I was studying to get my 100-ton captain's license. So I was studying like the rules of the road, although the water. Rules of the water. Just sort of like studying that stuff. And then the part that I was most concerned about, which I find hilarious now, was the machining, engine, repair stuff. And I didn't ever study that stuff because I sort of was on the line of like oh, well, maybe I'm just going to go take a class, also so I can just review all this information. And then after the class is over, the final test is like you're taking the licensing test. So I had sort of this backup plan in my mind, and that was it, which was I'm just going to be a ferry 00:48:00 boat captain and see what happens from there. But that was my backup plan for if I didn't get into grad school. (laughter) So I think about that sometimes, right? It's like I was going to apply to grad school. Happily, I got in, so I have that option. I'm like, all right, well, I guess my backup plan isn't happening. But I think even if I hadn't gotten in, I don't think I'd be ferry boating forever. I mean, what do I know? It's not how it happened. But I am still like epically fascinated by ships and boats and all of that like whatever, whatever that magical thing was at the time, I still appreciate that and understand that thing of like cold weather and water and being in a boat. And there's something really, really beautiful about that that I probably never, ever will be able to give 00:49:00 up, or not appreciate. But anyway, I always think it's important to talk about that place because it's such an important weird spot in my memory. I think about it a lot. It comes up a lot. SL: So you mentioned graduate school. Can you talk a little bit about your applications and where you were looking at in terms of different schools? KO: Sure. So I'm trying to remember how this all went. Diane was really like, I honestly think like if I had not met Diane, I have no, she and I talk about this. Like I have no idea what, I have no idea. Like I wouldn't have known what to do, or if going to grad school would have even ben an option. So you know, I think sometimes about that factor. And I'm just like, I was completely clueless. And not like, why would I? There's no reason why I would know better than that. Like there's nothing in my life that would have made me--it's not like I missed something. It just didn't exist in my life. So my meeting Diane was just, I don't know, good luck 00:50:00 or destiny or whatever it was. But you know, working with her, I could see what she's doing. So I'm sure this is still true, but at the time, it was just like there's something really beautiful about seeing somebody that's passionate about doing something, and that inspires you to do your whatever version of that is. Like it wasn't that I thought like I want to be Diane. It was I could see myself doing my version of that, whatever that ended up being. And I sort of thought like--you know, mainly this is only because Diane sort of like, have you thought about going to grad school? I'm like, that's a thing you can do? It was really only because of that that I was like, oh, well, it's a thing you can do. Okay. Well, what does that look like? So I didn't even know what questions to ask. Like I didn't have the vocabulary. It was like Diane sort of gave me all of my vocabulary and showed me what things could look like. And it wasn't even like she had to pull out an example. It was like 00:51:00 I had been watching it for years. So I mean, I guess when I started the kind of thinking about going to grad school, my plan was, well, I am going to apply to grad school. I made a bunch of work. But I also didn't, I don't think I even, I don't know how much I planned this or not. I'm not even going to pretend like I planned this. It was like by the time I should have been applying to grad school, I didn't have any of the research done or applications like figured out, because that was also the era of making slides, and pre-digital applications. So it truly was like, I think my students do this sort of thing now. They're not making slides. It's definitely like a labor process of getting all the materials together, asking for different stuff. And it's a lot of work. But having to do the part with the slides for me was like okay, this is really expensive and so time-consuming. But that's just how it was. So, it was what it was. So when I started looking for schools, Diane was, of course, a really important part of that discussion because she's got way more experience in 00:52:00 the field than I had. I mean, still does. At the time, and I mean, I see what my students do with me. I would say I have my finger more on the pulse of what's going on. Maybe not as much as I would like. But certainly I could give them advice that of course it makes sense for me to give them. So I mean, I have a lot of conversations with her. And she went to school at Madison. So that was, I mean, it was on my radar. It was sort of like she had gone to school at Madison. She was still in touch with Rachel Davis, who had more recently been in school at Madison. One of Diane's really good friends, Tracy Hahn, also was, I think probably teaching the class that I ended up taking with her at the time, but was at the Silver Buckle Press at the time. So 00:53:00 there's definitely connections to Madison that were still fresh for Diane and current. So I think that was good. She was a really good resource for that. I also applied to Arizona State University in Tempe, or Tempe [pee], depending on how you pronounce it. And I did end up actually getting into that printmaking program. And I think at the time, those were definitely like my top two choices for grad school. So I was pretty psyched that I got into both of them. I went to visit Madison at some point. I also remember, oh, I also remember meeting Tracy Hahn. She came to speak at Plattsburgh at some point. And I think this might have been in my last, it was either right before I studied abroad or the semester that I came back. But I heard her speak about her, she traveled to Ecuador and I think she was working on a papermaking and bookmaking project with like an environmental, there's some environmental science like studying the native cloud force there, something connection, I forget what it was. But I thought her talk was so interesting. I'm like, you can travel, and you can make books and paper, and there's 00:54:00 printing involved. And I was just sort of like, that sounds so dreamy. And I thought it was so great. And so Diane's like, well, Tracy Hahn is at Madison. I was like oh, well, okay. Like she seemed great. So I went to visit Madison. I think I got accepted and went to visit. I stayed with Rachel Davis when she lived in Madison. She gave me a tour of the campus and a little bit of Madison, I'm trying to remember how this also went. I just, I remember some moment where like we were, I think we walked from her house to campus. So she lived on the westside. I also remember at the time I got to Madison and it seemed like absolutely huge to me. So I don't know what it was. Anyway, I met up with Rachel and we walked from her house to campus. And I just remember walking up the back stairs of Bascom Hill, getting to the top of Bascom Hill and looking down that big lawn. And I was just like, what is this magical thing? And there was this really fun moment where I'm looking down Bascom Hill and I see like all the buildings and I'm sort of like, this is what university is meant to look like and feel like! And it was such a funny and geeky and cliched like weird romantic feeling. But I was completely sold at that moment. (laughs) So I probably met like some faculty members that day and saw the facilities. Like I think I remember meeting John Hitchcock that day and I saw some of the facilities there at the campus. And it was just like, it was huge to me. Everything was just like bigger than life. And there were all these people teaching printmaking there. And there was all this like great history of printmaking. And this campus was so impressive. And this city seemed really like so 00:55:00 interesting to me. I just, I don't know, it just felt like that's where I was supposed to be. So I actually never, I was broke at the time, also, but I never visited Arizona State. And I think about this sometimes. (laughs) Like there's all these moments of just sort of casual coincidence. So I never visited Arizona State. I think if I had been maybe less convinced by Madison I would have made that work somehow But somehow I convinced myself that it was just so far away and it seemed like just a way bigger city than I could mentally handle at the time. I don't know, I mean, whatever. I chose Madison. It's fine. It's funny because occasionally I go back and I think about this because like now working in sort of book arts, letterpress land, it's a very small community. So you end up meeting a lot of people. And I've definitely now worked with and overlapped with at least one, but probably more of the people that I would have been in school with at the same time. Like the professors that were there and people that I would have worked with. And I think it would have been completely great, 00:56:00 but I mean, it would have been completely different. So I feel like I made the right choice. I had my moments of doubt during grad school, but that's like a whole other like normal part of the process. (laughs) But yeah, I don't know, it just seemed like these great facilities, and there's all this excitement here, and it feels like the right place to be. And I don't know, these people seem really smart and fantastic. I think it also helped that Diane went to school there. and so did Rachel Davis. And I don't know, it was just very kind of like there's a good history here, I feel good about this. 1:27:02 SL: And was Rachel teaching? Or what was she doing here? KO: I don't know what she was doing at the time. Maybe she was working at the children's museum. I know she did some work with them. you know, honestly, I don't remember what she was doing at the time of that visit. Because that would have been 2003, maybe, or 2003, the beginning. I don't know what she would have been doing at that time. SL: But she wasn't teaching then. You didn't take classes with her at UW Madison. KO: No, I didn't. No. She was just giving me a tour. Yeah, I actually don't 00:57:00 know what she was doing at the time. And I'm now like, did I stay with her? I feel like I stayed with her at her house, but then I also remember being at some weird like cheap motel. But I don't know if that was another time that I was in Madison visiting. (laughter) SL: And so when you got here, I take it that, did you plan to, you got your degree in printmaking. How did you get exposed to the book arts? KO: Yeah. So yeah, I studied printmaking. I had been making books already. When did I start doing that? I don't know. Probably with Diane. But I think I have this kind of like tendency beforehand. Oh, we can throw this back to earlier conversations about like the computer being in the classroom. So because my mom was a fourth grade teacher, she had a computer in her classroom, which gave me like maybe more than other kids access to this computer. So I feel like having that extra unstructured time to figure out how stuff worked was 00:58:00 really good. And for whatever reason, I think my parents were also kind of curious about this technology thing. But we did have a computer at our house. And I remember we had like a print shop, I think actually the name of the program was Print Shop, and you could choose from like unlimited number of typefaces and borders on things. And then you could print out, I made a lot of birthday and holiday cards on Print Shop. SL: Oh, yeah. 1:29:44 KO: So you could print them out and then fold them into four quarters. And that was incredibly satisfying to me. Also I've completely forgotten about this experience till just now. (laughter) So then you'd peel off the little dotted, perforated strips at the side. I loved doing that, actually. So in some ways I feel like if I had known that that was a thing that you could do, I would have been doing that before I went to school. But made birthday cards instead. That's fine. (laughter) But yeah, I think when I was studying with Diane I would make some--because we would talk about this. We would talk about art books. She would show them. I think we had to do a project where we 00:59:00 made like a folded print. And it maybe was, the project was, I think we did a folded print. And then I think also there was some other project where we all made a folio that went into a book. And then as a class we bound together our books. Which was like, I do remember that being like oh my God, you can sew a book. So I was always the student, of course, it's like no shock to anybody, I'm sure, which is like, I was always the student like, "Can I help you? Oh, you're going to letterpress maybe a title page for it. Like do you need help with that?" Like I'll totally help you print that because I don't know what the letterpress is and I'm really curious. So Diane definitely showed me like her, because she has a little letterpress studio, but it's like under a staircase at Plattsburgh. And I think I remember her, she was going to help me letterpress something in a book that I made. Like it was probably really like my first artist book artist book that was more than a folded sheet of paper. It was. So she was going to help me drop some text into it. And so the trade off, I distributed type she taught me how to distribute type and then I did that in her studio for like a tiny amount of time now, in retrospect. I'm like oh, I got a good deal. (laughs) But then she helped me print all of the text to go in this book that I made, which I forget the title of, but 01:00:00 I can picture it. I don't remember what it's called. But anyway, it was the year 2000. So I had been making artist books in undergrad. So when I went to Madison, it was sort of like for me, of course I'm going to study printmaking. I love printmaking. Also there's this whole class you can do, letterpress printing, and you can make books in it. And like, of course I'm going to take those classes. Like I think my goal when I was in Madison was like learn as much as possible. But I was also like the super student. That was like my whole motivation and everything. It was like, learn as much as possible. I mean, it still is So I don't know, the act of learning is so satisfying to me. So I mean, I guess when I got to Madison, I was like, all 01:01:00 right, well, I'm going to do this printmaking thing, and then I'm going to do this book thing. And the book thing was hard, because I would make an artist book and then I would show it to the rest of my cohort, who wouldn't be book art people. And it was a little bit like lonely (laughs) because people were like, "Oh, you made a book. Oh, that's so cute. The book." And then I would be like, "But it's really kind of fantastic and a big deal," and blah, blah blah. But it was certainly not the cool thing to be doing. (laughs) SL: So were there other people who were in the printmaking, or on the printmaking track, who were also taking book arts? Or not many people? 1:33:46 KO: Yeah, there were. So I'm trying to think. The first semester that I was in grad school, I took a class with Tracy Hahn. And it was an art of the printed book class. We made books and we learned how to print letterpress. And we letterpress printed in books, basically. And it was like, I was so like, I don't know what my problem was, but I was probably like the worst student ever. And I think it was like, just by weird circumstance, I just felt like I was disappointing everyone, even including myself, the whole time. Because I don't know what was going on, but I like couldn't get out of bed 01:02:00 in the morning. And I think the class was probably like this morning class. But I was physically, my body was like not having all of this drastic life change. But I still made work, of course, and I tried to be a good student. But I just felt like for my standards, like oh my God, I'm failing at life right now. But I learned so much in that class, and I spent so much time thinking about how not to disappoint Tracy Hahn because I just and still do think the absolute world of her. And I was like, oh, you're one of Diane's dearest friends, like I cannot disappoint because I feel like if I disappoint you, I am destroying years of like my relationship with Diane. So I had all this personal pressure on the relationship. And also, sort of like in my defense, Tracy was such a, and is, such a particular and really good letterpress teacher. And very precise. And I'm so grateful for this, because it's actually made me such a good printer. But I was just so intimidated by her, and I think that just made me even more nervous about everything else. And so when things were going wrong, I just even blew up more. But I 01:03:00 absolutely loved this idea and process of like folding paper, making book structures. She taught us so many structures and she taught us how to print so well. And there's just something so magical to me about starting with these little pieces that are dirty and old, and then combining them together and being able to write something and print multiple copies of it. It was like the same kind of, like when I first learned etching, and printmaking. Etching, let's just say. It was that same feeling kind of repeating itself, only it was with paper and books. And it was such a great experience. But it was so funny also at the same time because it was so intimidating. And so it was like this experience, but it was magnified and dialed up. So it was taking that class with, who was in that class? So that was Sabrina Ogle, Amanda Mathenia, Carrie 01:04:00 Waters was in that class, and I think, actually I think David Pavelich. Isn't he the head of special collections now? SL: David Pavelich? Mm hmm. 1:37:40 KO: Yeah! So he was in that class. (laughs) And it was a small class. There might have been one or two other people in there, maybe. I can't remember, it's so long ago. But what I really remember was being in there with my dear friends Sabrina and Amanda. And I think the only way I really survived grad school was with those two kind of like a combination of like supporting me as good, decent humans and friends. But also really kind of inspiring the work that I was making. Sabrina and I, especially, like we spent so much time together working in the studio sort of making, like teaching each other things and just talking about making and sort of giving feedback in important moments. And then just sort of being good humans to each other. But that thing was like so, having all your cohort there was so important. I kind of got off on a tangent thinking about those guys. Yeah, so that book making class, that was so important. And I think around the same time, I also started working at the Silver Buckle. So it was like a whole other layer of wanting to learn letterpress and then also like not wanting to disappoint Tracy Hahn. (laughs) Which I say that and I laugh now, because I definitely got over that and don't feel that way now. I love Tracy. So, yeah, 01:05:00 that class was really fantastic. But I think you asked me another question and I like talked myself over onto some other topic. (laughs) SL: No, that's fine. I was just wondering kind of in I think other eras there was a lot of kind of back and forth in between, like you could study painting, you could do printmaking, you could try a bit of everything. Was it like that when you were studying here, or was it a little different? KO: Hmm. That's a really good question. I did not perceive (laughs) I might be answering this diplomatically. I did not perceive that there was a multidisciplinary, that students were encouraged to work in multiple disciplines. I did not perceive that at all. But I will say, I very much enjoyed my cohort. And I would say sort of also the people the years above and below me. We all learned from each other. We all learned from each other. But I really enjoyed the group of people that I went to school with. I went to school with some pretty amazing people. And I think about this now and I'm really, there's quite a few of them that are still practicing all sorts of things, a variety 01:06:00 of things. We had really kind of wonderful conversations between each other about making art and about all kinds of things that went beyond sort of whatever media-specific thing was. And I found that, those conversations to be really important. I also found that those relationships were really important. Like there's just a lot of people that I really, I still communicate with them about what they're up to, and see the progress that they're making via whatever, social media or actually talking or, you know, if they're succeeding and I see them in some distant third-party publication where I'm like, oh, yeah, I went to school with that guy. That's great! He's doing all right. Really, I think that part was actually, I would say equally as important as the actual professors that I studied with. I really learned so many 01:07:00 things from my peers. SL: Mm hmm. Well who were some of the professors you did study with, besides Tracy? 01:42:41 KO: Yeah. So, let's see. Tracy was, I was going to talk about Tracy for a second. So Tracy is sort of like my Diane Fine. Tracy Hahn was my Diane Fine of grad school. Just, I don't, in a different way. I mean, it's like apples and oranges. You can't compare the two things. Different time period of my life, different sort of pull. But just a really important influence in probably a lot of what I do, even after the fact of grad school. So, let's see. Like yeah, I mean, let me just go a little bit further about Tracy. She taught me a lot of things about, and I guess this would fall under also the guise of when we talk about the Silver Buckle Press. Just things that are outside of what one would learn in a class. So I learned so much from Tracy about being professional and being diplomatic and being like I don't know. She's so smart and so wise. And I just feel like I was a total heathen before I met Tracy Hahn, and now I'm a way better human because of her. (laughs) Which like even, it kind of even goes outside into like not my, like my personal life. I just feel like she's just made me a better human. Yeah, I have like so many good things to say about her. Nothing bad to say about her. Except that like she was really intimidating. But 01:08:00 I've already mentioned that. (laughs) But I've talked to her about that and she just thinks it's funny. Who else? There was Jim Escalante. So I took paper making with Jim and a book arts class. I think it was like book structures, maybe. I really remember making paper with Jim. I just have so many kind of like leading memories of Jim in grad school. I just thought he was like the, maybe the most encouraging of, and I mean this in kind of a, like all of the people that I work with sort of serve their own functions in fulfilling these roles. But Jim might have been the encouraging person. We talked a lot about like practical things. I think he probably would admit to this, also. He's very comfortable talking about practical things and solving problems. Which I always love that. Like seeing his problem solving and practical things, because 01:09:00 I feel like that's such an important thing to talk about. SL: Can you give an example? KO: Like you know, if you're building some crazy book structure and you want it to do X, Y and Z, but you don't want it to do this other thing, what does that look like? What materials possibly exist in the world that are going to solve that problem, are going to make it do what you want it to do, like fold a certain way. But also make the sound and feel this way. But also be light blue. He would sort of be able to figure out that, like how to solve that problem, or at least how to talk you through solving that problem. Does that make sense? SL: Mm hmm. KO: So like some of that stuff, but then it would be also more practical things, like how, I can't even think of like, because I feel like the examples that I think of all come from like my post-graduate school life, which is when I, like I talk to Jim, I'm in touch with him still and we talk a lot about like going up for tenure, or like more academia problems. So I'm like oh, what did we talk about in grad school? Oh, I don't know. Jim was always like, I 01:10:00 knew if I saw Jim I would be somehow encouraged in some way. But I loved taking paper making with him because he has such a like good sense of humor about everything. He's just so sweet. Jim. Love him. I worked with Fran Meyers, also. That was, I learned so much from working with her about etching. I loved etching. I still love etching. But I really loved working with her sort of in terms of the way that she always brought new information into her class. Like I felt like I learned a lot of skills in her class that I didn't already know, that were a new context. But we also, we talked a lot about making art and conceptual things, which I really loved. I always thought, like I was really intimidated by her, also. I think I spent a lot of time in grad school being intimidated. Which wasn't, I don't think, a bad thing. I think it actually made me want to do more and be better. But I just felt like oh, I don't want to let her 01:11:00 down. I want her to also feel proud of me. I mean, and I think in the end like it all worked out. But there were some bad moments in there, of course, of self-doubt. But I don't know, I worked very closely with her the whole time I was in grad school. I mean, I would see her often. I also, I think it's also kind of I saw everyone in the printmaking area fairly regularly because I had a project assistantship. And so I think my second year there, yeah, it was my second year there, I would always be in the etching studio because I'd be refilling all filaments and mixing all the whatevers and the acid and all the stuff. And then I would TA for Jack Damer's class. So it was sort of like I had contact with everybody. But I practically lived in that building. So it was like I was always there. Who else did I work with? John Hitchcock and Elaine Scheer were also on my committee. I think everybody that was on that 01:12:00 committee, they just really, I had separate conversations with them about sort of different aspects of things. But really it was like, I made these really great, meaningful relationships with all of them. They really helped me. And I don't know how much, because I think about this with my students, like how much does a professor know that they're mentoring or helping their student? Like I don't know if they always know. I mean, I know I don't always know that I'm immensely helping somebody. But later they'll come back and tell me. But all of those relationships were really important. I had really great conversations with all of those people. And of course the people that I was, my cohort, also. So. SL: I wanted to ask you a couple of follow-up questions based on what you just said. 01:51:10 KO: Sure. SL: You mentioned feeling intimidated and having some self-doubt. How do you, and I guess how did you deal with those feelings? Which I think come along with being an artist. KO: Yeah. Well, I think (laughs) 01:13:00 there was a lot of like angsty moments, and probably quite a few tears, and swearing. But I think, you know, I had the realization when I went to grad school that maybe I'm leaving my undergrad school and maybe I'm sort of at the top of the pile. I graduated with some great people, actually, that I went to undergrad with. It's a little bit like surprising because it's such a small program. But a few of us really have succeeded and gone on to do some great stuff. So when I got to grad school I realized oh my God, I'm in school with the top people from whatever program they're coming from. And they're from way different backgrounds, for the most part, than I was from. That was very intimidating to me. Because I also felt like I am from a tiny, tiny place in a remote corner of New York State. And like what do I know about anything? I was going to school with these people who had like insane amounts of money and therefore like all of these other opportunities and resources that I did not have access to. And like while some of that certainly gives one an advantage, I think it's also not always an advantage. So I mean, I don't know. I was intimidated by sort of all of those different facets because I just didn't, I just didn't have confidence. I mean, really, what it boils down to is confidence, or maybe it's also ego. You know, over the course of being in 01:14:00 school, it was sort of like okay, well, I have to either figure out how to do this or like, I don't know. I either have to be okay with what I'm doing and confident about it, or it's like not the right thing to do. And I think once I, I did finally figure out like oh, I just need to get to the point where I can confidently talk about what I'm doing and I know why I'm doing it. And once I got there, I sort of was like oh, that's what's supposed to happen in grad school. And I don't actually know if that's what's supposed to happen in grad school. But for me, it was like go, learn as much stuff as you can learn, make as much art as you can make, have those conversations, get the feedback, feel really crappy about that, feel completely insecure until you find the thing that makes sense to you that you don't feel insecure about and you can talk about and that's like going to be 01:15:00 satisfying for you to pursue. So it's sort of like a lot of things have to coexist at the same time. I don't know what everybody else's process was of getting wherever they got to. But for me, that's what I needed to do. So once I figured that out, I felt like so much better about being an artist. But getting, it's funny, because getting there it's sort of like I think you can be really successful at some things and then really not successful at other things. So it's sort of like for me it's been this really weird, and I don't know what other people's experiences are, but for me it's been sort of like as a human, like I didn't grow up with all the confidence in the world. But sort of as I found confidence through doing some art stuff, and through traveling, and all that Italy stuff, and all the things I've done since then, like the one thing kind of feeds into the other thing. So 01:16:00 as I became more confident as an artist, I think I also became more confident as a person. But then, you throw yourself into the job market and all that goes away because you're talking about like a completely different forum. So it's sort of like this bizarre, I don't know, cyclical form of torture of some kind. (laughs) But I mean, it's sort of like, again, then you get a job and you're more confident about it. And then you're like all right, I was doing this thing, it's validated, whatever, move on. I mean, it's a process. Whatever. But I don't really, some people can segment, I guess, their artmaking life from their job from their personal life. And for me, I'm like oh, boundaries, it's not really there. (laughs) So, I don't know. It's kind of been a, it's an interesting 01:17:00 process to figure out how to deal with that. But I think everybody's got to do their own way of getting to wherever they have to get to. I don't know. That's just sort of how it was for me, though. SL: Yeah. Thank you, Kathy. KO: Yeah. SL: I think I just want to ask you one more question before we wrap up today. KO: Sure. SL: You mentioned that you were a teaching assistant for Jack Damer. Can you talk a little bit about that and what you did? KO: (laughs) Um, I, um, yeah, I taught, TAed for Jack Damer. I think it was for, I don't remember, this is so long ago, I've also blocked it out. I don't know how much I want to talk about it. I did my job and I was good at my job. And it definitely took, I guess I can equate this to other things that I've done more currently. Which is, when you work with difficult people, sometimes, when I work with difficult people, I don't know what other people do. But when I 01:18:00 work with difficult people or have to deal with difficult people, which I would say Jack is a challenging person to work with, I have the magical power to be able to get through it if I know it's a finite amount of time. So my relationship with Jack was perfectly fine. And I did my job well and he was happy about that. And I have good stories to tell about it. And by good, I mean entertaining. But that's, I don't know, I don't really have much more to say about that. (laughs) SL: Okay. I understand. (laughter) I think we'll end there. 01:58:56 End First Interview Session (July 12 2018) Begin Second Interview Session (July 19 2018): Digital File SL: So today is Thursday, July 19, 2018. I'm Sarah Lang with the Oral History Program at UW, Madison. I'm speaking with Kathy O'Connell, book artist, UW alum, and associate 01:19:00 professor of book arts and letterpress at Middle Tennessee University. Kathy is in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and I'm at the University Archives in Steenbock Library. So Kathy, last time we started talking a little bit about your work at the Silver Buckle Press. I know we wanted to talk a little bit more. Can you kind of bring us up to speed with that? KO: Yeah. So I know we did talk about this, and I'm a little bit like oh, okay, where did we leave off with it? So since we last spoke, I've been thinking about like how important it was that time at the Silver Buckle Press, and how working there, so I worked there when I was in grad school. But I also worked there when I came back to Madison the second time. And I think both of those occasions were really, really important. So while I was in school, it was like working there, learning how to print the right way, how to do like big editions. Just so many things, just all 01:20:00 kinds of professional practices. And working with Tracy Hahn doing all that stuff was really important. She's such a, like she's so amazing. So I think when she was my professor in our book arts and letterpress class, I was completely like intimidated by her. And I spent the past week thinking like no, no, it was like, I was so intimidated by her, but it was because I was so in awe of her, and how much respect I have for her. So she's like an incredible printer, but she's also just an incredible human being. And the way that her professional behavior, and the way that she's such a great mentor, but also I was in awe of her just sort of as like she knows so many things about so many things. Just about letterpress and printing and book arts and art history and printing history, but also like all kinds of cultural things, and just how to be like a really decent human being. But also like a really great professional. There's like so many layers of like just being in awe of Tracy. So I wanted to make sure 01:21:00 that I mentioned that. So I had her, also as a role model. And I was thinking about this today when I was kind of going over my notes again of when I met Tracy, I was like this 23 year-old, completely unworldly naïve human. And I think about when I have my students now who are 23, and I just think like oh my gosh, I had no idea. And I knew I had no idea. But it was such a great moment to meet her. So I think working at the Silver Buckle was, I don't know if I mentioned this before. But when I worked there in grad school, we did so much work with Special Collections in the library. And I think, it was so interesting for me. I had no idea about anything that existed in the world. So seeing that overlap of like the library and printing history and all those amazing things that are up in Special Collections, just super interesting stuff. Just old books, but then like they have an incredible like old book Meggendorfer collection that's up 01:22:00 there of like all printed and beautiful movable, objects, paper, all kinds of things. Just being able to be around those things was super fascinating to me. So I was really interested in that. And also that sort of, I'm always fascinated by how I learn things in just sort of dealing with people. So dealing with like the people up in Special Collections, just the different kind of thing going on in the library, or librarians. And that was sort of my introduction to that world, which I find really, like it's this whole other level of sort of thinking. And I really appreciate that. I sort of feel the same way about graphic designers. It's like they think a little bit differently, but I get it, and I can make that connection to it. So that was really my introduction to library stuff. But also, I mean, so many things about printing history 01:23:00 and typography. But also things like we restored a printing press one summer. And I just started to learn things about mechanics. And I found that really interesting. And then just doing sort of all the research about this was going to these places that were just ridiculous. Like a warehouse just full of old printing presses. And printing presses stacked on printing presses, maybe like three high. And just the weird places that you wound up just from letterpress and how that cosmic, that little micro-cosmos is so goofy. It's such a strange little world. So that was sort of the intro to all of those things. And I still find that stuff super interesting. I mean, I'm still doing it. So I think, I've been thinking about, and I've thought about this many times, like that whole time at the Silver Buckle, I always felt like it was just sort of this diamond in the rough, and it was kind of tucked away in this part of the library. And a 01:24:00 lot of the people in the art department didn't know about it. So I felt like I was doing something that was sort of like relatively unknown, completely underappreciated. But I just felt like I was getting my money's worth out of it. I liked working there so much. It was sort of like this thing I did that not that many people knew about, but I liked doing it. And I was learning an insane amount of things. So I also wanted to talk about like the Silver Buckle is now on long-term loan to the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum. And it's been like sort of an interesting--when I learned about that happening, I don't think I was entirely surprised. But I don't know, it's so funny, you come up with these, people throw things at you and you're like oh, here's my reaction to that. Oh, it's surprising even to me. I realized how I was a little bit like protective of that collection. So I think it is what 01:25:00 it is. It is where it is, and that's fine. I think that's probably all the right decisions that could have been made given the situation. But when that collection was moving, I was definitely like, "How's the move?" I was texting, like, "How's that move going?" And I actually went up to the Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum to help Tracy do some install of the press up there, of the Silver Buckle. And it was like, you know, dirty moving things. It was very dusty and physical and moving type, and tightening all the screws on the cabinets to make sure that nothing's going to like fall over. And that kind of physical labor that's like gross, but I like it. So that was, moving up there. And I will say, I feel like if that's what it's going to be, then that's great. So I do love Hamilton. And I'm still very protective of the Silver Buckle up there. But I love going up every year, which I think I get up there every year now, and seeing that it's there. 01:26:00 It's sort of like this nice, like I like knowing that it's still around. So I like to come back to it. And then I think it was last summer I was up there and did some printing with Tracy. Also we made a print that was, or probably still is, in the Hamilton shop, whatever that is, commercial shop, on their web. It was fun to go back up and print with Tracy again at the Silver Buckle, just in a new geographic location. But inside of a building that's full of also things and people that I love. So I mean, that's okay. (laughs) That's okay. Yeah, Silver Buckle. That kind of sums it all up. 00:09:52 SL: Kathy, can you remind us when you were working at the Silver Buckle? And then when you helped to move the Silver Buckle to Hamilton? KO: So, (laughs) so I have to remember this. So last year was 2017, so that's when we were printing. So it must have been 2016 (laughs) that I helped move them in. I have a terrible memory. And then I worked at the Silver Buckle when I was in grad school, so I think that's 2003 to 2006. And then I went away for a year and I came back to Madison, and I think that was 01:27:00 2007, 2008 that I was at the Silver Buckle. SL: Okay, thank you. KO: Yeah. And I had a good title when I worked there the second time, which was like artist. (laughter) Which I thought kind of was nice and general. It was good. SL: Did you do anything different the second time you were there? Were your responsibilities different? KO: They were, because I was working there, I think it was, oh, this is terrible. I don't remember this. I think it was halftime. And I was doing, I did like a web design project for them of trying to get an updated website for them, which is no longer on their website. I actually don't know what's on the holding spot for that Silver Buckle part of the webpage. Yeah, so we did this kind of like fun, more visual web update for them. It was also like, I don't know that much about web design. So we had, I think, a couple of students working for us, if I remember this story correctly. So that was happening. And then we had the usual kind of printing projects that we did that was also happening. SL: And then you mentioned working with Special Collections. KO: Yeah. SL: Do you recall what kinds of projects that you were working on then? 00:12:04 KO: I remember we did a, oh, goodness. I don't remember exactly what the involvement was, but I do remember there were a lot of, a lot of pieces. Oh, there's a few things, actually. There was a--I think it was a movable book exhibition that they did. I think they had a bunch of work from the collection of like the Meggendorfer pieces. I just remember they have this beautiful color because it's 01:28:00 all printed paper. I think it was all litho. And then, I was impressed by how, like it was in such good condition. Being sort of sold as a toy originally, it's kind of amazing that it's still like in working order and not super damaged. I don't know. My toys always kind of got mushed. (laughter) But I remember that. I just was always fascinated by old books, and history of science books that were up in there. I don't know, there's sort of this nice little, it's very formal, there's sort of a ceremonial aspect of going up, all the way up to Special Collections. There's a special elevator and you get up there to the top of the building. And anything where you have to wash your hands beforehand and leave your possessions, except for a pencil, separately. I always loved that ritual part of it. It just makes it seem a little bit more special, but it is. So I don't know. I'm such a sucker for that stuff. (laughter) SL: Well, speaking of, well, the other thing is we were going to talk 01:29:00 about your assistantship to Warrington Colescott. Could you talk a little bit about that? KO: Sure. So that was also, when I came back to Madison the second time, I got to work with Warrington. So I feel like my entire life is, except for when I lived in Peru, my entire life is really divided into academic years still. (laughs) So I was trying to remember this. And I think this was when I lived in Madison. So it was 2007-2008. So I think Fran Meyers asked me if I would be interested in helping Warrington to print. And I of course was like, oh my god, yeah. Yeah. You don't even have to pay me. I'm fine. Whatever. It's going to be fascinating. And I feel like there's so many experiences in my life where I'm like, yes, I will do that. Pay me nothing. It doesn't matter. So I just remember driving out to their house and it was fall, I do remember that. And so they lived kind of out in, I think it's Hollandale, Wisconsin, I think. So they would make, they had this whole like routine that they had, which is they would make coffee in the morning. We would print until lunch. Oh, and the coffee, I remember, had this really fascinating flavor that never will be duplicated. (laughs) SL: What flavor? (laughs) KO: I don't know. I think they had well water. So it was this kind of very sharp like, I don't know, coffee and well water flavor. But it was very distinct. (laughs) So we would go print until lunch. And then at lunch it was usually some kind of delicious and simple lunch with wine. There was always wine. Sometimes there was too much wine. And then we 01:30:00 would go back to print. So it was sort of like this magical balance for me. I think they were very used to drinking wine at lunch and I was not. So there was always this fun balance of trying to figure out like can I keep up versus like where's the point where I'm rude, where I'm not rude? So it was kind of hilarious to keep up with that, but then go back and print afterwards. SL: And who was at these lunches? KO: It was just Fran and Warrington and myself. The dog was running around somewhere. So it was fascinating to me because I really hadn't met Warrington, I don't think, before that. Like maybe I'd seen him in passing or just a quick introduction. And of course I'd heard stories about him, and seen his work from all of the places. So it was for me super fascinating to be working with him at his house. And then to see, also, like it's always fascinating to see how other artists work. Especially somebody who's been doing what they've been doing for so long. Also because he's just an amazing printmaker. It's sort of like working with somebody who knows the craft that well was just super interesting for me. So what I really learned from him was like all of his stencil 01:31:00 rolling. He did so many layers of stencil rolling and like all the poupee wiping. SL: Can you explain that? 00:17:51 KO: And then just the way that he kind of had, made changes and things was really interesting to see how he thought. So, yeah, we had a really good time out there. We made, I don't know how many prints. There's a couple of prints in that big book that he put out not too many years ago, but I have a copy of. And we made I think a Christmas card also we editioned for him. So it was fun printing, because the plates were pretty big. It was just fun printing with him. So I saw him, I'm trying to think of when I last saw him. I don't know what year this was. But I saw Warrington and Frances at a Japanese restaurant in Madison. I don't know, this is now a bunch of years ago. But I was having dinner with actually Tracy Hahn and her husband, Mark Gurnstein. So we said hello to Fran and Warrington. And Warrington, I'm always impressed, I mean, Warrington is, and at the time was, rather aged. But he's 01:32:00 so sharp. He's sharp as a tack. And he was like, "Oh, yeah, so are you going to come back out to print? Would you want to come back out to print?" And I was like oh my god, if I lived here, I would so be out at your house helping you print all the time. We had a lot of fun. So it's not like, while we were printing, there was definitely, we were listening to music. I have all these funny memories of it. But when you're printing with somebody like that, doing production stuff, especially, once we figured out how all the technical stuff was doing, we're just pulling copies, we got to talk a lot about all kinds of things. Politics, or he would tell me stories sometimes. And I would kind of kick myself that I didn't keep a journal of what we talked about or how it went. I wish I had. And we talked about making art and printing and all kinds of things. But there was one thing that I remembered doing. And it was really funny, actually. We listened to a lot of classical music. And we were sort of just being silly. And we were imagining that, we were sort of like inventing an opera that would go with the music that was playing. So the opera was like there was a print shop, and there was a master printer. And then all of the printing assistants were pulling proofs, and the music would go 01:33:00 along. And then when, like there's this great kind of climax of the music, you're like oh, that is like all the assistants have finally pulled like the good proof, and the master printer is happy. And then it was like the music would get happier and repetitive. And it would be like now they're doing all the editioning. So it sounds like really crazy to even talk about that. But it was, we were cracking ourselves up because it was just so goofy. But it was really fun to just kind of pass time like that. Because the labor of printing gets a little monotonous after you do a bunch of copies. So it was labor. And then I remember another day, there was like, they had to go run some errands. I think they were in Madison. So I am like so, I'm maybe too well-behaved for my own good. So they had me make lunch for them one day. So they left me at their house. We were tasting coffee. And the dog was probably there. I don't know, the dog was always running around. It was like a black poodle. And maybe they left me like go mix some ink and then go make lunch, or we'll be back for lunch. So I was probably mixing ink. And then I was just kind of like hanging around. And then I had to make them lunch. And I just remember being so just full of anxiety that I was like oh, I have to make them lunch. I do not want to disappoint them. There were so many things of just not wanting to disappoint. I think there's a theme here. (laughs) So I made them lunch. And they were so happy. They 01:34:00 didn't care. They were totally happy. And we had lunch and drank wine. The other thing I remember about working at that studio was there were a lot of solvents and like no, I don't remember any ventilation. SL: Oh, no. (laughs) 00:22:29 KO: I mean, kind of after a while you've no idea. You're completely nose blind to the fact that you're probably inhaling some toxic stuff. I just remember like when Warrington was showing me how to clean his plates, I think it was either lacquer thinner or acetone or both, I don't know. But he just dunked some of that onto the plate, started rubbing it around without gloves on. And I just thought, wow! Wow. But Warrington's still alive. So that practice, I'm sure he's done that for many years. So, anyway, that was just a fun, I don't know, it was a little wild time, working with Warrington. I enjoyed it. It was fun. SL: Thank you. Thanks for sharing. 01:35:00 So we were talking a little bit about Special Collections. But I also wanted to ask you a little bit about your experiences at the Kohler Art Library. Can you think of any times that you used the Kohler Art Library during your school? KO: Yeah. So when I was an undergrad, I remember seeing like Diane Fine showed me, like she would show us slides. Because it was in the era of actual slides. So slides of books. And then she would show us some artist books that she had from her personal collection. She had, I think probably things that either were collaborations of her work or with other people. I do remember seeing a book that she made with Tracy Hahn, and then another book that she made with, oh, I'm picturing it. Oh, now I don't remember what it was. Maybe it wasn't a collaboration. Anyway, the book is called Rubies and Pomegranates. I love that book. So I remember seeing those. And it was sort of like, you know, I tell this to my 01:36:00 students. When you see an artist book, it's a little bit easier to understand what it is than if I sit here and I talk at you to explain it to you. So--and I feel that same way about seeing pictures of things versus actually seeing the thing in real life. So I remember when we went to the Kohler Art Library was in Tracy Hahn's class at Madison. So it was my first semester there, very early in the semester. We went to the Kohler and it was like, oh, those are the books that I saw in slides in the studio in Plattsburgh. Here they are in real life. Oh, and I get to touch them. So it was real like magical. It was like I was in Willy Wonka's chocolate factory or something. So that was, it was kind of just mind bending for me. So I remember Lynn [unclear] was pulling all kinds of books. She pulled all these things for the class to look at. And I was just like, what? What? These are all so different and so amazing. But the 01:37:00 one that I really remember being fascinated by, the one that I saw in a slide in Plattsburgh but then was actually at the Kohler was Julie Chen's book Bon Bon Mots. And I just remember seeing the slide and thinking hey, wait, that's an object but it's also books. Like, you can do that? It was so funny to me because I just thought it was like, that that's a thing you can do, that's cool. I want to do that more. So when I saw it in real life, I was sort of like oh, like that's what that is! I didn't even understand how that thing worked. And that was one book that I do remember very vividly sort of seeing and experiencing. And then, yeah, it was just like, I was kind of a huge fan of Julie's work after that. Well, probably before that, too. But that sort of like sealed the deal because I could touch the books. And she's always doing cool stuff, so that's good. Julie, ah. Anyway, so we went there, like we went to the Kohler a bunch of times. And every time we went, I would just see, it would be like a new thing. And it was all magical. I don't know. It was like I would go, you could just go and you could go look at a book and figure out how it was made. I am so fascinated by 01:38:00 that, being able to do that kind of thing. So when I didn't understand, and this is what's really kind of, there are so many things in my life where I'm like wow, you're so clueless sometimes, Kathy. So like that collection is really amazing. And I thought that that was like a normal thing, that like universities would have these amazing artist book collections, or amazing special collections. Or like to that level of amazing. And that's not true. As it turns out, they don't all have things like that. So I can now fully appreciate like holy crap, that's such a great collection. And I wish that I lived closer to it so I could bring my students there especially, but so I could go look at the stuff, too. Because it's so, it's hard to get to see those things. And when you have that many kind of beautiful artist books in one place, it's kind of this magical thing that I, I don't know. It's undervalued. Completely. But like so many good things, are just off 01:39:00 the radar and undervalued. But one of the things that I do remember seeing, and I think this was actually from the time when I taught there was there was a bunch of books from, I think from, they were from Cuba. I think it's the Bahia Press, maybe, was the name of it. But it made me think about books also again a little bit different way of sort of like they don't have to be as maybe deluxe as I would love them all to be. But there is something really beautiful about all the handwork that was done on the books that were in that exhibition that I appreciate now, also. Like just on a whole other level of still being like--it's just apples and oranges. You cannot compare the two things, but they're both really beautiful and, I think, really important to see. Yeah. It's such a nice resource. I'm jealous that I'm not there. (laughter) SL: Well, the Kohler Art Library has some of your books as well. And I wondered if you could tell us a little bit about some of the ones that are there. For example, Potluck is one 01:40:00 that we have at the Kohler. Could you talk a little bit about how that came to be? 00:30:10 KO: Potluck was a book that I made with my students. It was a collaborative project in my class. And I think it was, I mean, it must have been my letterpress, or the printed book class. So it was the class that I took when I was in grad school, I ended up teaching. So the bar was set rather high for teaching that class. And I think it was a pretty small class. I don't remember all the details of it. I know I have a copy of that book in my office currently. But I don't remember. I think there was, I'm not even going to make up. I remember that Dennis Peterson was one of the students in that book. And he's still a great artist and printmaker. And he was really fun to work with. Yeah. That book. What else is in there? Um, let's see. 01:41:00 Meditation in Traffic is in there? SL: Yes. Mm hmm. KO: Talk about that one. So, Meditation in Traffic was one of the books that I made after living in Peru. I will get to talk about Peru, I know, later. So I lived in Peru for a little while and I spent quite a bit of time on foot. So when I wasn't on foot, I was usually in a bus. And occasionally in a taxi. Living in Lima. So Lima is a pretty large city and it has some really interesting traffic that every year seems to get slightly more annoying. But I kind of love it, actually, I kind of love the chaos of it. So the traffic jams in Lima would get kind of crazy. Like they were very unpredictable. In the morning there would usually be like a good one. And then the rest of the day, sort of they were random. It wasn't like rush hour in the evening, specifically. I guess there is one sort of 01:42:00 maybe around 6:30, seven o'clock. But just in Lima, at least, maybe this is all Peru, but everyone likes to honk their horn. And it's sort of like, you can kind of translate the horn honks. Like this is, I'm here, I'm also stuck in traffic. And the reciprocal like I acknowledge that your car honked its horn, and so I'm also here. So it's a lot of like, it's just a lot of car horns and then occasionally people yelling. And then there's usually some traffic cop directing traffic and they have a lot of whistles. And then, you know, sometimes I would be stuck in the traffic. And sometimes I would just be like on the street walking by and kind of like really psyched that I was not stuck in the traffic. So I spent a lot of time walking around Lima. And I realized there's a sort of fun thing that would happen where I'd be stuck in traffic, maybe in a car. And I would just start daydreaming, because there's nothing else to do. I'd be walking, and I would watch all this traffic. And I would kind of like visualize all the cars making their way around each other, parking, and all of sudden the road would be clear. So one of the things that was really fun in Peru was that people had these driveways that were, they were decorative. It was really fun. It would be like a cement 01:43:00 driveway, and then somebody had gone and embed stones, river stones, like very smooth ones, into the cement in these patterns. And the patterns were, there were all kinds of patterns. And it was funny, because I had walked over or by these sidewalks for years. And then one day I started looking down. I'm like, oh, yeah, this house in my neighborhood, this has got all these like big circles, and then all the little dots with the stones around them. So I started paying attention to everybody's driveway, which is really fun. So that book, Meditation in Traffic, is full of, like on one side it's just a bunch of patterns that are based on driveways. And 01:44:00 then on the backside of this accordion, it's a bunch of pressure prints. And then some more pattern. But that pattern on the backside is more like, there's some dots on the backside. But all the pressure printing is just sort of like a translation of all the car horn sounds. So I was thinking a lot about how do you translate that kind of audio chaos into a visual chaos. So it's very fuzzy, and it's sort of like you can't really get rid of it. Also I think around that time, so many, while I was starting to pay attention to this stuff, I had a studio. And it was on a corner of the street. And every like afternoon for hours and hours and hours, you would hear the cars start to build up there and all the car horns honking. I usually waited for all of that to stop before I would go home for the evening so I didn't get stuck in the traffic. It's just really, I don't know, the traffic was so kind of influences 01:45:00 your decisions on if you're going to go somewhere or not. And it still does that when I go back down to Peru now. I still think well, I'm going to leave at this hour because I'll avoid traffic. Or it's going to take me the same amount of time if I leave a half an hour later. That's Meditation in Traffic. What else is in the collection? 00:36:12 SL: And I wanted to ask you a little bit, because that one is so colorful, can you talk about maybe how you chose the colors for that? KO: Oh my goodness. That's a good question. I probably used to know the answer to that. (laughter) I think that was, so all of that book started with, I think I've been doing this process for a while where I start just doing drawings with gouache. So 01:46:00 that one, I have all of the drawings that the imagery is based on in gouache. But that's a really good question why those colors are what they are. I think, you know, when I was in Peru, I spent a lot of time thinking about trying to make a living. And I'm sure we'll talk about this later again. But one of the things that I learned while I was down there is that, so in the US, I think this is true where colors, things that sell better are typically like blues and greens and violets, that kind of color range. A lot of blue. Blue's a very popular color here. In Lima, that's not true. So in Lima, the popular colors are more like reds and oranges and warmer colors. Whatever. It is what it is. I don't know why. I'm not going to get into the psychology of that. I found that sort of difference to be really interesting. And so I think, I don't think this was a conscious decision, but I think I was working with those colors more because I love the color red. And so working with sort of all these reds and oranges and then purples was really appealing to me. But it also made sense sort of because it was about Peru and it was kind of working in that vein. It just kind of made to work I guess in those colors. Where I cannot imagine that book being blue. I just can't imagine it. It just doesn't make sense with the subject matter or any of, any of it. I love blue, but not for that book. (laughs) SL: Thank you. KO: Yeah. SL: So as far as the other books at the art library, I know Exit Door you contributed to? KO: Oh. I don't know if I contributed to that inasmuch 01:47:00 as, because that's Katie Garth's artist book that she made, was it last summer? I think it was last summer, 2017. So Katie Garth is a UW graduate. Silver Buckle Press person also. Katie's just magical. So I met Katie, I mean, Katie tells me that I actually met her when I was a visiting artist in Jim Escalante's class some, a million years ago. I don't even know when that was. But I remember best meeting Katie in that. We decided to be roommates at the Hamilton wayzgoose. And I, this has to maybe five years ago, this was, maybe 2013, that sounds possible. And yeah, so Katie and I sort of just, that's how I've met her, through letterpress, through the Silver Buckle, through Tracy, through this wayzgoose at Hamilton. SL: Can you explain what the wayzgoose is? 00:40:04 KO: Oh, yeah. So the wayzgoose is, yes, fun word. 01:48:00 (laughter) It's a fun word to say and write and drop every now and then casually. But it's basically like a letterpress gathering. So I think the easiest way to describe it would be it's like a conference, so it happens at the Hamilton Wood & Printing Museum in November of every year for a few years now. And historically, the wayzgoose is like when the master printer would hold a feast for all of the people printing under the master printer. So it's a little bit like a conference, but definitely like with a nod to some of the camaraderie in there. So it's a pretty, I would say it in terms of how conferences go, it's like the perfect size. It's not too big, it's not too small. But it feels a lot like a family reunion. SL: How many people are there? KO: I think they cap at like 150, 01:49:00 maybe. I don't know. I'm making up numbers. But it's not super big. And also, the letterpress community isn't super big. And I would say like also on the whole, everybody's super kind, which is really beautiful. And a lot of the people that go there are actually graphic designers. So there are talks that people give, and presentations. And there's workshops ahead of time, also. So if you go, it's like I don't know a ton about design history, and I feel like I've learned so much about design history going there. And I really appreciate that. So I learn a bunch. But it's also the people that I like. Just, you know, the thread that sort of follows through every single thing in all of this as I'm writing this, thinking about the past, I'm like, it's all about these people that I love. So there's really good people that go to the wayzgoose that just can't 01:50:00 wait to go hug every year. (laughter) SL: So you met Katie there. And that's how you became connected? KO: Yeah, so I met Katie there. And I don't know how we decided this or how, I don't remember the details of it. So Katie came down last year to be an artist in residence where I teach at Middle Tennessee State University. So she came and worked in the studios. And it was also good for me, because it kind of motivated me to go make a bunch of work at the same time. So she came down and she made that beautiful book. And I think my role was that I, I don't know, facilitated that. Kind of like harassed her while she was working. But that book is really stunning. And I like to think, I'm like man, Katie Garth is about to go to grad school. She hasn't been to grad school yet, which I forget all the time and it blows my mind. But yeah, so she made that book and it's so fantastic. I'm a little bit jealous of it. But she did leave me a copy, so--(laughs) I wish I had made that book. (laughs) SL: So I 01:51:00 know you're also, you were a part of Folium, which was a project of the College Book Art Association. Can you talk a little bit about that project? 00:44:04 KO: Yeah. So that project was, the College Book Art Association, I'm pretty involved with them. And they were working on a fundraising project that would incorporate sort of the skills of their members. And I think it's a lot of current board members, or former board members now. And we made prints, an edition of prints, to go into the portfolio. And I think, I don't remember what year that was. (laughs) I want to say 2017. But I could be wrong. Yeah. I don't know, there's not a ton of backstory on that. SL: Sure. And then did you want to talk about the books that you made in Peru now? Mixtura 2012 and Fabulous Reales? KO: I think it might make more sense to talk about them when I talk about Peru. SL: Okay. That works. KO: That works? SL: So before we get to that, maybe we can talk about Chile and your residency there. Your printmaking residency. KO: Sure. So, let's see. How did this all happen? So I was thinking about how the heck did all this happen? So when I was in undergrad--I guess is should back up. So at some point, I got bit by the travel bug. And all I wanted to do was like see the world and travel. And I don't know if it was really a temporary thing, because that's what I still do. But (laughs) at the time, it seemed like maybe this is just like a thing that will go away. So when I was in college, I wanted to go see something. So I did some traveling. I think I went to, I went to Italy, went to 01:52:00 England. I studied abroad in Italy. Maybe there's something else in there. In 2006 I went to do a residency in Venice, and then did some traveling also around there. And then I ended up in, I guess I liked traveling at that point. So I think the first time I went to Chile was in 2004. And I went again, I think in 2005 and then in 2006, I think, was when I lived there for like five months. And then I think I went back to visit in 2007. So I ended up there. And this sounds like such a wild, like how the heck did you end up there? So when I was an undergrad, there was an exchange student from Chile that was an art student. So he was friends with like my group of friends, and we were all really close and really hung out all the time. So I thought like, of the conversations that I had with him, he was sort of like, "Well, the best way to see any place is to like find somebody that lives there and to have them show you." And I was thinking like yes, I can see how that would make sense. So I actually was like well, okay. So in 2004, I went to Chile. And I went to visit him. So he was back there by that point. And it was so like, I 01:53:00 realized when I got there, I really need to know some Spanish. This is not Europe, where a lot of people speak English, or you can usually find somebody that speaks English. So I, I was actually really embarrassed that I didn't know how to speak Spanish when I was down there in 2004. But I was fascinated by this place, because it was completely like, completely interesting to me. So I spent some time, like he showed me around Santiago. He showed me around Valparaiso. And Villa Del Mar, because I think his dad lived in Santiago, his mom lived in Villa Del Mar. He had some friends in Valparaiso. And then we also went to, I think where he was actually living at the time, which was this small town called Navidad. So I got to see a bunch of stuff. So I was so 01:54:00 just like mortified that I did not know Spanish. So I came back to the States and I was like all right, that's not going to happen again. So I got some CDs and I got a book and I started studying. And so when I went back in 2005, I went with a few friends of mine. And we worked on, I think I painted a mural that year. So I was still like oh my God, my Spanish, it's still terrible. (laughs) But it was better. I saw improvement. So we traveled around and saw a few other things. So when I came back to the States, I was like all right, I'm going to learn Spanish. This is going to happen. So I actually went back to the UW and asked around kind of informally if I could sit in on a Spanish class. And I found someone teaching Spanish who may or may not have been a graduate student, and convinced them to let me sit in on a class. So it was very unofficial. So I did. And the class was like Monday through Friday at eight am. And it was a bunch of, I think, college freshmen. And I went to that class every day and I completely 01:55:00 participated in that class and did all the homework. I think the only thing that I didn't do was like maybe there's an official midterm and an official final. And I didn't do those because I was not officially a student. So I did that every day of the week while I was also doing everything else in grad school. So it was kind of funny because it was like this weird situation where I was a grad student but incognito as an undergrad freshman. So it was like the reverse of the time that I was in high school and classes--it's really kind of funny. But when I went back to Chile in 2006, I definitely could speak some Spanish and get around on my own. So it did the thing that I needed to do. So-- SL: And how long did you stay in Chile each time that you went? Because you said later you were there for five months. But what about your initial times? 00:51:26 KO: It was like kind of quick trips. Like I think maybe we went down for, 01:56:00 I don't know, like maybe two weeks. Yeah. It wasn't a big amount of time. So I went back in 2006 for a chunk of time. And the only reason I ended up doing that was I had a position teaching, I had a position that was like pending funding at, maybe it was a studio manager position. In Vermont, actually, is what it was. And the funding didn't go through. So I found myself with--and I think I was in Venice at the time that I got this news. So I found myself in this position of well, here's a chunk of time that I have nothing planned. Maybe I should go somewhere. So kind of my backup plan was I'm going to go move somewhere, not here. So that's why I ended up down in Chile. So at that point, like I had made friends with other people there besides the original person. I'm trying to think how this all went down. So the guy that was at Plattsburgh, his name was Alex, Alexandro, sorry. And he introduced me to a bunch 01:57:00 of people down there. The most important being this family that was, the Reas family. And I'm actually still in touch with them. So the mother, Rosa, has a, like, Misha, Francisco, Sergio, Christo, I think there's four of them. I might be missing, I hope I'm not missing a sibling there. So she has some kids ranging in age. And so she was also a teacher. I think she's the head of the school now, of an elementary school. So when I lived down there, I knew her. So interview as living in this town called La Boca de Rapel. And she lived in this other town called Navidad. And they're neighboring towns. But there's a pretty big hill in between them, and it's a pretty far distance. So somewhat regularly I would walk, bike or hitchhike. Occasionally I'd take the bus, but not much. There's a lot of hitchhiking. Don't tell my parents that. It wasn't super far. But sometimes people would pick you up, and it was usually good in those days. (laughs) So that's how I would get between the two towns. And really, it was like I sort of was just making my life there and speaking in Spanish. So every day I would come down to Navidad during the week. And I would go work at a little studio space to work in, make art. And I would do a lot of drawing. And then I would usually do something at some point like the kids in the school. So we, at some point we made plans for, I was teaching the professors English. This is all like super informal. So I was teaching the English professors English. So all these professors would come from the area, like the regional schools, and they would gather at the one school, and we'd sit and have a 01:58:00 conversation about English for a while. And that would be it. Then I would do on occasion like some art workshops with the students. And those were always really fun. So the one that I just remember doing with them was I managed to set up a screen printing workshop so that the kids would come in groups, and I would screen print. And then we all went back to their classrooms and they drew pictures on top of the screen prints. And I have a picture of this somewhere, because I forget what the print said. But the screen prints that we did, so we talked a little bit about protesting. And so you know, it's sort of like I talked to the kids a bunch at this point, so I kind of knew what they liked and what they were interested in. And also being in Chile and learning about their history, and their political history, and then like the United States role in that political history is really kind of intense and just, it's very intense. And complicated. But the fact that I was there, I was sort of like all right, well let's just make some posters about peace. And then the plan was like to go carry the posters out in the street. And the kids took it from there, which was so not of my doing, but it was beautiful. So the kids marched in the street. And they were yelling like all kinds of things that were really fun and sweet and what you do when you're a kid. And they marched right into the city hall and they just, they were on it. It's like they knew what they needed to do. And it was really beautiful. And I was really worried that the people were going to get angry, but everybody 01:59:00 loved it. So that part was really incredible. 00:57:05 SL: What were they protesting? KO: It was just like they kept yelling like, "Tenemos paz," which is like "We want peace." And it wasn't against anything in particular. It was sort of like, we would like to maintain this, this like calm and this peace that we have now. Like we're little kids and we just want more of this. That was, yeah, it was incredible. It was one of those things that you can't--it went perfect. I mean, it was perfect. It was really great. My job was just to watch, watch that happen. It was really fun. So that was one of the highlights of living down there. It was super hard to live there. So that like whole hitchhiking, walking, biking between the two towns, that was, it's hard. It's just hard. It's like not hard, it's draining. It's draining. It's difficult. The language barrier was like still an issue. The Spanish that they speak in Chile, I mean, I know this now, but the Spanish that they speak in Chile is still really hard for me to understand. They use a lot of slang. And the accent is very--it's just challenging for me to hear it still. I really have to train my ear to hear it now. Which at the time was even more difficult. So that part was really hard. But I 02:00:00 think that time being there was really important for a few reasons. (laughs) It came in handy later when I moved to Peru. But just that whole experience is really interesting. It was a lot of going back and forth between these two towns. I ate lunch almost every day at Rosa's house. It was a lot of like really dense bread and stew. It was always stew. (laughs) SL: So when were you there? Were you there in the wintertime? KO: So it was, what months were those? I think I left in, I think it was December, January. Was I there for Christmas? I don't know. December, what's December, it was into summer. Like winter to summer, that path of the year. Maybe it was like July to December. Is that five months? (laughter) Sure, let's say it was that. So winter into late spring. And it's interesting, because when it's springtime, I 02:01:00 was there for Christmas. Because yeah, I was there for Christmas. Because they had a fun, because the town is called Navidad, Christmas Town, they had a fun reenactment that happened in the town. Yeah, it was kind of great, actually. (laughs) Yeah, so that time was just really, really, really, really challenging for me mentally. Maybe also physically. But I did get really close to that family. So that was a pretty special thing. And I haven't seen them in a long time. So one of the things I learned on that trip was that if I ever do something wild like this again, like go live abroad, I need to do this with somebody, and I need to be in a city. Because the towns where I lived were very small. It was very beautiful, though, but very small. Very small. Yeah. So that was Chile. SL: Thank you. So I know that when you got back, you started teaching. And I think you first started at Plattsburgh, right? 01:01:08 KO: I did. Yeah. SL: Could you talk about how that happened? KO: Sure. So in, I guess this is 2007 now, Diane Fine went on 02:02:00 sabbatical. And she knew this was going to happen, so she had asked me actually ahead of time. Which is why I knew I had a finite amount of time where I was not obligated to be doing anything because the other job didn't work out. So I did a sabbatical replacement for Diane at Plattsburgh. And that was really my first time in an academic classroom like for an entire semester in that role. And it was definitely, you know, throwing myself into the deep end, like every other thing that I've ever done. So I think I was teaching four classes. And I was so green. And it was kind of like, did all the things that you do when you first start teaching and you don't know any better. But it was fine. I still enjoyed it. And I don't even know what those things are. I don't know. Like just not having I guess the best answers that I can come up with now for my students when they give me weird excuses. Or it's sort of like no, that's not how this works. I guess I don't have the wisdom, I did not have the 02:03:00 wisdom at the time that I have now. (laughs) So I think also while I was working at Plattsburgh, I ended up doing work for the place in Vermont that couldn't hire me originally. So I taught some workshops over there in Burlington. That was fun just because it was nice to, it was a nice way to be back in the town where I grew up, but not feel like I was stuck in the town where I grew up, or I would never leave again. It felt very temporary, also. I actually had no idea what was going to happen after that. But then I figured something out. So after that, so should I just go into talking about how I ended up going back to Madison? SL: Yeah. 01:03:28 KO: So Tracy Hahn called me at some point in there. And her parents had just moved to Madison from Kentucky. And her parents were elderly at the time and they needed help settling into their house. So I actually went out there to Madison again to help them. And again, I thought it would be kind of a temporary thing. And I actually don't remember how the one thing, I think I went back to New York at some point. But anyway, I have no idea how this went, honestly. But at some point I was contracted to be an artist at the Silver Buckle. And I think it surely had a lot to do with the 02:04:00 fact that I did not know what I was doing. But it was also due to the fact that I think Tracy had to take time off to I think help her parents. So that's how I showed up there. And then because I was there, I luckily got contracted to do some adjuncting work in the art department. Which is how I got to teach the art of the printed book class. And then I think it was, I don't remember the name of the other class. It was a book arts class. And that was a blast, actually, because it was, I think the beginning of me teaching book arts. I thought up to then that I, well, even then, actually, including, but I thought I was going to be teaching printmaking. I knew I wanted to teach in academia at that point. Or I was pretty sure, anyway. But I thought I'd be teaching printmaking because I studied printmaking, because I'm also a printmaker. So it just seemed like a strange additional thing that I did for a long time. 02:05:00 Like how could I possibly teach this, also? But yeah, I do also do this. I don't know. I sort of at that point was sort of trying to try on that role as a book art letterpress person. Which you know, now I realize oh, it's all the same thing. It's all the same thing. It's just a label. Yeah, so that was my time out at Madison the second time. But it was nice to come back, again, nice to come back. But it also felt kind of temporary. (laughter) There's a lot of like temporary things that happened in there. SL: So how did you approach teaching book arts? Did you kind of do any of the same things that your professors did? Or did you decide to take another approach? Can you tell us a little bit about that? KO: Yeah. That's such a fun question. So I think this is still true. When I teach now, which is like I have a clear example of this, actually. So I teach currently three classes regularly, which is--well, two classes regularly. Letterpress 1, Book Arts 1, and then occasionally I teach a 2D 02:06:00 design, sort of like a foundation class. And I'm going all the way to what I do now, because it's connected, which is I had a fantastic printmaking teacher. And so I use that sort of as a basis for the structure of my projects. I had a fantastic book arts teacher and I use that information of how I structure my classes currently. So I had really good examples for those two things. And I definitely used that information when I taught at Plattsburgh. And I used that information when I taught at Madison. I think my classes were probably structured pretty close to what they were when Tracy taught them. And maybe a little bit of, not that different, I think, from what Tracy taught. Or what Jim also taught. So what I never had a good example for was my 2D design class. First of all, I don't remember it that well. But second of all, I don't think my professor was like all that invested into teaching it. He was not an amazing professor, I would say. (laughs) So I didn't really have a good role, a good example to follow. So 02:07:00 teaching that class is still, I mean now, less so, because I've done it enough. But it's still probably one of the more challenging classes I teach because I had to become that role model for that class, and had to sort of like pull things from my colleagues when I see what they're doing that I can kind of latch onto or that I understand about what they're doing. So yeah, it's sort of a really interesting thing. Like when you have a really good teacher, I'm incredibly lucky that I've had a very long chain of fantastic teachers my entire life, and very few, very, very few awful teachers. And the ones that were awful were so clearly awful that it was very easy to dismiss them. Yeah, I don't know, yeah, it was very helpful to have had good role models in those two courses, especially. SL: And then can you tell 02:08:00 us, after Madison, you made your way to Oregon, right? 01:09:24 KO: So at some point in there, I don't know if this email came from Barb Tetenbaum or the Oregon College of Art & Craft or through Tracy, I don't remember any of that stuff. So I did find out that Barb Tetenbaum was going on sabbatical for a year. And she was looking for a sabbatical replacement out at Oregon College of Art & Craft. And I thought, being the clever one that I am, I don't know. I thought, you know, let's acknowledge the reality here. I taught at SUNY Plattsburgh and I taught at UW Madison. I went to school at SUNY Plattsburgh and I went to school at Madison. Maybe I should try to put something on my resume that's not either one of those schools. So I thought like also it would probably be fun to be out in Portland and, whatever. So in adjunct land, this is what happens. So I moved out to--so I applied and went out there, so obviously they hired me. So I went out there for the 2008-2009 academic year. And Portland was fun. I really loved living there. I knew it was going to be temporary, so I just tried to like enjoy it to the fullest potential. And I met some of, of course it's like the story of everything. Like I met some people. They were really fun. And we had fun and I had a good time and the food was good. I enjoyed teaching there. I really enjoyed teaching there. Yeah. SL: And can you tell us what kind of classes you taught? You taught book arts classes, right? KO: Sure. Yeah, I did. So 02:09:00 it was really interesting. At the time, I don't know what it is now, it's bigger now. But they college was, and Oregon was, really small. I want to say they had 150ish students total. Which was actually kind of nice. It's a private school. I am the product of all public schools. I teach at a public school now. So it's very different than what I was used to. But not in a bad way. I think it was kind of fun, actually, just to see another thing. Also, it's sort of like its own special thing. It was a blast teaching there. So I knew so many of the students because I was there somewhat regularly. And it's just 150 students. Your students are bringing their friends and they're talking and they introduce you. And you end up meeting practically everybody. So I did like that kind of very small community aspect of it. I worked with this woman, Inge Bruggeman, who's just fantastic as a person and a book artist. So I really enjoyed meeting her and some other people that are book art people that are out there. Diane Jacobs being one of them, or another one of them. It was such a different dynamic there. So I was teaching book arts classes. Oh, I don't remember their titles. I think one, I think in all of my classes, the common theme is we make a lot of stuff. We just make a lot of stuff. And then we talk about how to put information into those things that we make. And I think that was where interview as beginning to kind of understand how to teach book arts better, in a 02:10:00 little bit more sophisticated way. Also, the students that I had there were like really good. They were amazing crafters. And they were mostly enthusiastic about what they were doing. So I really appreciated that. And just as an experience. I think also they had me teach or co-teach another class while I was out there, which was like how to find attachments and connections, I think it was called. Which is literally about like how to attach and connect things to other things. So I can't remember what I did in that class. It was such a fun, weird class to teach. But at that point it was sort of like any student that I had know at that point was probably in that class. So it was really fun teaching out there. I had a good time. SL: And then you made your way to Lima. Can you tell us how that happened? 01:14:24 KO: I can. So this was 2009, after I got done teaching at the Oregon College of Art and Craft. So I moved to Peru because I was in a relationship with a Peruvian who went back to Peru. So I was actually moving down there to go do that thing. And we got married later that year. And then we lived in Peru for, I think we moved back in, well, when I started teaching. So 2012 was when I started my job in Tennessee. So we were down there like three and a half years. So when I moved to Peru, I had already learned when I was in Chile, I need a big city and I need to do this with somebody else. So I'm like, well, that checks two boxes there. Okay. I guess I can do this again. So I moved to Peru. And I knew that it was going to be, like I'd never been to Peru before. So I 02:11:00 remember the first couple of days I was in Lima. I think my jaw must have been on the ground. I remember driving from the airport to the apartment, and I was like--(laughs) None of the cars are in their lanes. Like there are clear lanes marked on the road. What is happening? Everybody's like hovering over a dotted line. I'm so confused. So that was also sort of the beginning of my understanding of Lima was of how people drive. So driving is really a thing in Lima, which is maybe how it's like leading into that book later. And just, there were so many things. It's completely different than Chile, and it's completely different than 02:12:00 where I was living in Chile. So I was totally fascinated and terrified of this place. So it was like this small, slow process of figuring out how to get around. So while I was in Peru, I was trying to figure out how, I didn't know how long I was going to be there. I thought forever. So like what am I going to do with myself? So I do what I do. Just like figure out how to get around. Meet some people. So a family friend introduced me to--this is how this chain, it's a beautiful chain--chain happened. So a family friend introduced me to one of her friends. And she's an artist and her name is Monica Cuba. So Monica introduced me to one of her friends. And his name is Moises Quintana. And then Moises introduced me to Cristina Dueñas, who had at the time the print shop, the Taller setenta y dos, that's the word that looks like Taller 72. So that's how I met Cristina. So all of those people in that chain are still good, close friends of mine. So Cristina was working at the studio, at the Taller. And so she, we were talking and sort of I was telling her my story or whatever. So she suggested that I write a project proposal and that maybe there's something I could come work at the studio in some kind of residency format. And so I did that and made my proposal. And at the time I was working 02:13:00 on a series of etchings that were about these pre-Hispanic pyramids that are in Lima. They're called huacas. And I am still currently fascinated by these structures. But at the time it was like, what? Like driving down the road and all of a sudden there's a pyramid. And so now that it's been, I still go down to Peru. So I'm still driving by these things. And over the years like pyramids have been more restored, and it's just been really fun to see the transition of some of them complete like unpronounced, wavy dust heap to an actual kind of restored kind of pyramidy form. It's really lovely to watch. Anyway, so I was working on this series of etchings, which was my proposal. And then Cristina was like, "But yes, of course, please come work here." And that was really the beginning of my relationship with her and with the studio. So I worked with them off and on for a few years. And they did all kinds of projects. I think at one point we did a print exchange for them or with them. And then there was other things, but I'll get back to that. So I was also, while I was in Lima, like 02:14:00 trying to find a way to make a living. So I found a studio and I started teaching book arts out of my studio. So at first I thought oh, I'll teach printmaking. But that got a little bit complicated in terms of that already existed. (laughs) But no one was doing book arts stuff, at that point. That's not true anymore. So I started a little book arts studio and I was teaching binding classes out of my studio. And I was also trying to find like some other maybe more viable option of employment. So another friend of, another friend of the family introduced me to, there was a graphic design studio called Ekino in, I don't know if I was living in that part of Lima at that time. But it was the part of Lima where I had my studio. So anyway, I met, when I went to go interview for this position as like, I don't know what the title was, like junior graphic designer, I met, who's now one of my dear friends, this man named Alex de Hues. So I worked with them, and especially with him, at that studio for a while. And I realized that, like it was really an important thing for me to do, but I'm not a graphic designer. Also, I was working with a bunch of like 20 year-olds who were way faster at doing 02:15:00 things than I was. And I think, also, like my command of Spanish at that point was still not, I mean, it's still not phenomenal. But the conversations sometimes when you're doing creative brainstorming, I would lose them on occasion because they would be talking about things that I'm like oh, I don't get that cultural reference. Or it was a lot of things that I just didn't know because I didn't grow up there. So that was kind of challenging and interesting. But it was actually a really good thing because it was sort of an interim period of time that I worked there. After that, I left, and a lot of people that worked there decided that they wanted to take my book art classes, and they told their friends. So it was actually like the best advertising scheme ever. (laughs) But, so I still stay in touch with that studio and with Alex. He actually worked with me on one of the projects that I'm going to talk about in a second. So at some point also while I was in Lima, I was looking, I ended up at a comic book conference sales event. I don't really even know what it was, it was like the telephone company had this event happening. SL: The telephone company? 01:22:37 KO: Yeah. So, yeah, so in 02:16:00 Lima, things work differently. Like the telephone company sponsors cultural events. (laughs) I'm like, we need more of that. So that was officially one thing about Lima that I was just like oh, sign me up for that. We need more of that. (laughs) So I met another good friend of mine at some point in there. His name is Amadeo Gonzales and he does a lot of comic books and that kind of stuff. And I've done some collaborations with him at some point in all these years. But I just want to mention him because I'm trying to think when I really started working with him. It was probably after, I think it was after, it was more recently, the last few years. I don't know. Anyway, we'll get back to him, I'm sure. (laughs) So anyway, I married a Peruvian resident, or married a Peruvian. So while I was living in Peru, became a legal resident. And we could probably spend like three hours going over stories about that paperwork, which I won't do. And then after I lived there for a while as a legal resident, I became a Peruvian citizen. So I am actually now a citizen, which is fun. And I go vote in their presidential elections, which is always entertaining. So also important to know, although less entertaining, was that I got divorced in 2015. (laughs) SL: I'm sorry. KO: No, it's 02:17:00 okay. But I still, and this is the part that I'm always like trying to make some weird peace with, but I don't know what it is. But so I'm still a Peruvian citizen and I still maintain that citizenship. And now, this is no longer an issue. But this used to be, in my head, an issue, which was like, but I still go back and forth to Peru all the time. I go back every year and I still have all of the friends there, and working on projects. So it's kind of this thing that is, like it was bigger than that. It was bigger than that marriage. It's for me a super important thing. And such now, after all these years, such a huge part of like what I do. So it's important to talk about that, I think, and make that note. So anyway, I also want to talk about you know, all of that evolved. But the studio that I was working with also had some big changes in there, also. Maybe a divorce, I don't know. So I worked on, there was a few projects that I worked on with the Taller de Grabado, which was, we did a, when I first got 02:18:00 there and met Cristina, shortly after that, they had an exhibition of an artist book that they had made with a bunch of artists working in their studio, and then a bunch of artists that were working in another city in Peru, Arequipa. And another person whose name, I think this is true, yeah, she told me this a long time ago, Franci Quentas did all the binding of this other book. And I should know the name of it. But I don't remember the name of it. I can look it up if we need to fact check this. (laughs) Something poemarios, there's something about poetry in there. So that book pre-existed before I ever showed up. And they were just exhibiting it when I was around. So that was sort of in the studio's history. And then I show up and I'm like Miss I can make books out of nothing. So the studio kept me around, I mean, I think the just liked me being around anyway. So we had worked on, like I had printed there for my residency. And then we did a small portfolio exchange of small prints, and had an exhibition with that. Then just through conversations, you know, they were talking about how they were interested in the book. And I thought well, I'm here, let's do something. So we started working on, we had a meeting one day and they were telling me the ideas for the book. Then they wanted to do, 02:19:00 and I thought well, let me see what I can design. So I made a couple of maquettes for that book. I tried to come up with something. I was also like not the expert in doing collaborative artist books. I might be now. (laughter) But so I designed a book for them that I thought would sort of be easy to kind of work between a bunch of artists. And I don't remember how many artists are in Fabulous Reales, I want to say like ten? But maybe it's more than ten. So I designed the structure for that. I worked with them on that book. And that was the book that we finished, I think, in 2011, I want to say that was the first book that I did with them. But also what I loved about that book, which made me want to do a second book, was I taught everyone how to bind the book. And so while I did a majority of the binding of all of those books, the artists themselves came to the studio and did a lot of the binding themselves. And I would help them, sort of like show them how to do it and coach them through it and help whenever things went wrong. But I loved spending that time there and it was like people were telling stories. And 02:20:00 it's stories about things that I would probably never hear about you know, people were telling stories about do you remember when this happened or that happened, or where were you when these things happened, or what was it like in your family growing up? Oh, for me it was like this. For me, it was like this. So it was like stories about, and it was women that were there. Just these women's lives that were just like the daily life. It wasn't anything like monumental. It was just sort of what things were like and stories from the past. And it was for me super interesting, because it was a way of sort of connecting in some other way that I wouldn't ever be able to find, I think, normally. Or I mean I guess that is my normal. So I guess I did find it normally. But it was beautiful. I really enjoyed that. So when we started talking about the next book, I was like yes, sign me up. We can do this. So the next book that we worked on seemed like it happened immediately after that. I think it did. Which was we probably came up with the idea, like we usually do, while we were sewing the books together for Fabulous 02:21:00 Reales. So the next book was called Mixtura. And that book we were talking while we were binding about, so there's a big international food festival in Lima. And so a little side note to that is, anytime you're in Peru, and it may happen less now. But at the time, it was ah, you're a foreigner. What's your favorite thing to eat? So the main question that I get, was asked in the taxi, was like oh, you have an accent, you're not from here, what's your favorite thing to eat? So Peruvians are very proud of their food and their cuisine, which I love about them, because they should be, and it is delicious. And I also love eating. So it just kind of is this fun question that it's easy to talk about, also. I mean, who doesn't want to talk about delicious food? Even if you just like ate some insanely huge meal, you're still talking about delicious food the whole time. So we decided to make a book called Mixtura, which was about like the different ingredients that would be in food, because it sounded like Mixtura, the food festival. So that's how my idea more or less was born. So we started working together. So I took all the information I learned from doing the Fabulous Reales project, which was, all the things that I would improve. (laughs) I guess it's like, you know, the things I would improve. This would have made my life easier if I had planned this ahead of time, or designed this into the structure. So I tried to incorporate that information into Mixtura. So Mixtura, we also, so we worked smaller. (laughs) That was one of the things. And we worked with a 02:22:00 graphic designer. And the graphic designer that we worked with was the daughter of the director of the studio. But also I knew her because she had taken some of my book arts courses. Paula Libernardi. So she was like so fun to work with. And we really didn't get to work with her all that much. But she did such a good job with the design of that book, and all how nicely printed all the text is in that book. And I love that part of that book. I also love that it's red. (laughs) Let's see. So shortly after that, so I guess in the process of making that book, I moved to Tennessee. So maybe it's like we started in Lima when I lived there. And then I have to come back to Peru. I think I had a grant to come back to Peru to work on that book. So we finished that book and probably like maybe had to take a break in there of the next book. But I think somewhere in the interim between Mixtura, and the next book which we did, which was [Spanish], the studio kind of also got divorced. So Taller de Grabado, which has an interesting history by itself kind of stopped existing. I don't know if they have plans 02:23:00 to ever exist again. But they had been around for a while, at least since the '70s. And then, so what happened was the actual place is still there, the physical space is still there on this Calle Los Angeles. So what now is there is that Cristina Dueñas took over this space. And she essentially has, it really was a divorce because half the things went one place and half the things went the other place. And it was split up more than in halves. But essentially Cristina got her chunk of the settlement. There's no lawyers involved in this. SL: Were there partners? Was it two partners? 01:35:05 KO: No. It's like, it was, I think there's, I think there was four people involved in this, like a collective. Honestly I don't know what, I don't know what happened. And it's one of the things where I'm sort of like I don't need to go pry my nosy business into it. But there was some kind of discrepancy. A press left, another press left, a press stayed. So things were divided, I think it was maybe like a difference of opinion. So the outcome was Cristina Dueñas started her own studio and the other studio does not exist anymore. So I know one of the presses went to somebody in town. I 02:24:00 don't know where. Something's in storage somewhere. People do or don't talk to each other. I don't know. So anyway, I know that Cristina asked me to, she told me about the studio. And okay, it's now called Pace, [Spanish]. So I was like, okay, well, what are we doing now? So we have a new project which is called Mi Ciudad, Mi Hogar, which is My City and My Home. Or I think actually part of the title is in English, My City, My Home. So that was the first collaborative book project under the TRESS heading. And then after that book, that book is really like, it's hard to produce. So I guess I should talk a little bit about how these books are published, which gets, we try, like it's a bunch of artists working and making their print editions. And then I go down to Peru and I try to prepare some things ahead of time. But some of the stuff it's just like not possible to prepare ahead of time, because I don't know, maybe I don't know what materials are going to be available or I don't know, I don't have materials, I buy materials there. There's all kinds of scenarios for 02:25:00 this. So I tried to prepare a bunch of things for this book, [Spanish]. And as much as possible, so some of the stuff, it's like materials you order ahead of time. So I got really good at figuring out how to design a book so that many artists could participate. No one measures the same measurements. Even if you give them all the same measurements, everybody's like version of a centimeter is different. But I knew this. So I was like okay, well, I'm prepared to trim everyone's print one millimeter on all four sides. You know, that's like 400 things to trim, and all these things to fold. So as I'm designing these structures now, I think about like how many ways can people do this to make me more work, so what kind of things to make. And then a lot of the artists that I work with on these books are repeat artists. So I always know. Like this person is going to be spot on, because those prints that he sends are always like, they're actually the right measurement. And then this person, I know that 02:26:00 I'm going to be trimming all of her prints. But she's going to leave me a nice big border so I don't have to fuss with if I'm going to trim off part of the image or not. So it's just interesting spending that much time with other people's work. When it's your own work, you know all the nuances because you've spent the time with it. But it's interesting spending time with just work of other people, because you get to know the nuances. So I find that really interesting. But that book, [Spanish] was super stressful to make because there were so many issues we had with getting things to print, and that designer, who was Alex de Hues, so he came and helped with this project, also. Getting the designer, getting us to get the information to him on time so he could design it so we could print it out. Then we had issues printing. It's just like problem solving, problem solving. It's the book that didn't want to be finished. So I have a lot of artwork packed in my suitcase. And I travel 02:27:00 down to Lima with it. And I pray every time that I don't get stopped at customs and have to pay money for importing artwork. So there's a lot of like potential ways for things to go wrong. So I'm really good at traveling with books in carts and books now. I'm good at packing things like that. And then a few pairs of pants to wear while I'm down there for a month. So usually what happens is I go down for my set amount of time. And I try to have a few extra days of just down time and not making a book. But for this one situation, this one book, we couldn't finish in the amount of time. So it really made me stressed out and sad, because I wanted to be having fun. Instead I was doing all this like problem solving. Which is fine. It's just the nature of the beast. I've made peace with it now. So we took some time off after that book because I needed to just not do a book for a while. And then I went back to Lima, I don't know, whatever year that was, before we made Raices. So while I was in Lima, 02:28:00 and I think this was 2016, I think. Anyway, so I was in Lima in 2016 and I ran into Lucy Jochamowitz, who was my professor from studying abroad in Italy in 2001. So how does that happen? Well, so, it should not have happened. But it did. So what I maybe didn't mention before when I was talking about Lucy last time is that Lucy is actually Peruvian. And she grew up in Peru but lives in Italy. And I met her in Italy. And never having thought about visiting Peru at that point. And I had lost touch with her over the years. But somehow got back in touch with her. And I think it had to do with, maybe she was in Lima giving a book arts workshop at the Catholic university and some of my friends were taking it. And they all figured out that like maybe I knew her. And then she happened to visit the studio where Cristina was working. And they figured out that they knew each other from back when they were in art school together for maybe like a semester. And then Cristina pulled out some of my prints. It was like, "This is Kathy O'Connell's stuff." And Lucy's like, "I know her. She was one of my 02:29:00 students." And so the world is very small. (laughs) So when I showed up in Lima in, I think it was 2016, just for the regular trip. And I think probably the plan, I don't know, I think it was just like a social visit. But Cristina told me like, "Oh, you know who's in town? Lucy!" And I said, "No way! I haven't seen her in like 15 years." So we ran into her at an art opening. Not hers. And it was just really fun to see her after all this time. Because she looks the same, and I probably look similar, and we were not in Italy. So it was beautiful. She happened to be in Lima at the time because she was having an exhibition. So I did get to go to her exhibition that year and we had dinner with her, also. It was just nice to see her again after all this time. So I'm bringing all that up because I at that point, I think, was like, no more art books. Can't do any more books. And then Cristina was like, "Well, what if we ask Lucy to be in a book?" And then I'm like, okay, one more book. We can do one more book. So we designed a new book. I think that year. We invited Lucy to be in the book. And she said yes and she invited one of her friends, whose name is Marilena Sutera. So we invited the artists to participate in the book. So the new book is called Raices, 02:30:00 which is Roots. And we finished it last summer. And it's cool. (laughs) It's really cool. We haven't had an official, we waited a long time to have our official sort of launch of this book. It ended up being in March, and it was in Italy. So this book, we presented in a town called Porto San Giorgio in Italy. So I went to Italy last March and stayed with one of the artists, Marilena Sutera. And then she went to academia with Lucy way back when in Rome. Or Florence, wherever they were. I don't know. So I stayed with her and met her and then we all went to this other city and met up there and presented the book to an audience at this beautiful opera house. It was crazy. It was so fun. So it was really fun to show everybody that book, and then everybody talked about sort of different stuff at this presentation. I talked about the process of making the book. Lucy talked about the history of art. And then Marlena talked about her print that was in the book and how it was connected to where we were in the town where we 02:31:00 were. So it was really beautiful and also like never did I think that things would take me in such a weird loop. (laughs) Like a weird, beautiful loop. 01:45:57 SL: So you mentioned in talking about Peru, when you were working on a book, that you were headed to Tennessee. And can you talk a little bit about how you ended up at Middle Tennessee State University? KO: Yeah. So, when was this? They probably put out their call, let's see, knowing MTSU, they put out their call in like October 2011. That sounds about right. So I saw this job posting. And I think around this time we had sort of thought in Lima, like I don't know if this is sustainable, can we stay here in Lima? It was a little bit of reevaluation of life goals. So in my mind at that point, you know, I was teaching out of my studio. And it was really a hustle to get students, and to figure out how to keep students, and you know, right at the end I was kind of like oh, man, 02:32:00 I'm making rent. This is like a victory for me. And I moved. But, so in 2011, before I got to the point of making the rent finally, I really was trying to figure out like well, what do I want to do with my life? And I thought well, this whole, I like teaching. There's no gray area. When I stopped teaching, I missed it. A lot. So, okay, I do want to teach. The good thing about academia is you can do things like teach, but you can also have this research practice. And when you have a research practice, you can get grants. And people, essentially like in my layman's terms, people pay you money to go travel places so you can make art. Which really was kind of, and is still, like how I run my operations. Like can somebody just, can I make art and travel? That's what I want to do. How do I fund this? So I started looking for academic jobs again. And I knew in academia there's sort of this mystery clock that's ticking. If you haven't been doing the teaching thing, or in academia somehow for a while, it starts to look suspect. Or could look suspect. So I knew that if I wanted to do that eventually, I would 02:33:00 have to start applying. So I started looking for jobs, and saw the listing for the position I have now at MTSU. And when I read it, I thought like oh, man, that's the job. Why is it in Tennessee? (laughs) Like, I can do that. I'm all those things. So I had a certain amount of confidence about that part. But certainly like the expected amount of desperation, I'm just trying to find a job, if I'm being honest about it. So when I actually came for an interview at MTSU, that's a whole other story by itself, it was like oh, well that really is in Tennessee. And that's what that's going to look like. Well, okay. We'll see how long that lasts. But I'm still here. (laughs) SL: Can you talk a little bit about how you felt when you were visiting that area? 01:49:48 KO: Yeah. So, it's interesting. So Murfreesboro, when I first got here, I had a very odd experience of getting here, which was, so they flew me up from Lima, which I thought like okay, they must really want me to come work here if they're flying me up from Lima for like three days. Okay. Am I even mentally ready for 02:34:00 this? I got here. It was a holiday. It was President's Day. It had just snowed. It like never snows here. But in my mind, I don't know any of this stuff. So it was a holiday. I flew into Nashville. It had just snowed. Nothing is happening. It is dead. Because it snowed, and nobody does anything in Tennessee when it snows. It was like a heavy frost. So I'm like wow, pretty quiet. (laughs) So I went to visit Hatch Show Print, which is in Nashville, which is this really great letterpress shop. And they've been super kind of important in how I exist here in their awesomeness. So I visited them. I came down to Murfreesboro. I was supposed to get a tour of Murfreesboro. I'm going to take a little detour in the story, because this actually did inspire an artist book and a really weird thing. So on this tour of Murfreesboro, there's like a real estate agent came to pick me up. And we were about to drive around to see the city. And I'm looking out the window and I hear him say, "Oh, that had to hurt." And I look over and I see a man sprawled out on the street and his bicycle. So he 02:35:00 just got into a bicycling accident. So the guy that I'm with-- it's a bad one--so he pulls over his car. And there's another car, it's sort of like parked. And I was like, did somebody hit him with their car? What's going on? Anyway, so the guy that was giving me the tour, not affiliated with the university at all, as on the phone with 911. He used to be a medic in the Marines. (laughs) And he hands me the phone. And I'm like oh my God, I hate blood, what is going on, oh my God. So I'm walking over and I'm like the go between, between the medic and the guy on the phone. And this kid is laying on the ground. And he's like completely unconscious. He's bleeding out of his ear. And I'm just like, okay. Well, I'm in action mode, okay. So I'm doing the communicating between the 911 people and the medic who's giving me the tour of Murfreesboro. And I was like, all right, well, this is happening now. Now he's not responding. He's bleeding out of his ear. Like, okay. So the guy is completely unconscious. And then he sort of like starts coming to. And he freaks out. And he's getting a little bit like violent about it. And I'm like, okay, don't, like if he's violent, just let him be. Just let him do his thing. And so I'm like hailing down the ambulance. And the man who fell off the bicycle is sort of like in 02:36:00 this state of complete like he doesn't know what's going on. And he's sitting on the curb and he's groaning. And he's sort of like dragging his finger around the curb and they're asking him what day it is and he doesn't really know what day it is or like what the hell is going on. So I'm just sitting there. I'm like, this is crazy, this is crazy, argh. So the ambulance gets there. We get back in the car and we continue my tour of Murfreesboro, which is now a five-minute tour of Murfreesboro. And then I get dropped off at the art building for my job interview. (laughs) So I show up to my job interview and I'm like in total shock because I've just seen some man bleeding out of his ear, like messed up in the middle of the street, like hailing down an ambulance. So I'm like, yeah, I've had an interesting morning. So this thing happened. Everybody's like, what? Who is this lady? Why does she have this crazy story? Do we really want to hire her? Oh my gosh. So that was my job interview. I made a book after that called Monday when I got back to Peru because it was such a 02:37:00 crazy like, I don't know. It was weird. So (laughs) that was my job interview. I liked the facilities. I liked the people that I met at MTSU. And I was not impressed with the town at all. I didn't really even see much of it. So it was kind of hard to judge. But I just thought like all right, it's Tennessee. I'm going to go Google some things about it. And I'm like oh, okay, like Tennessee. There's an article in the New York Times about Murfreesboro about how you don't want the mosque to be built. Great. All right. I know what I'm dealing with. So, it is that. It is that. But I will say since I've lived here, even the last two years, especially, but since I've lived here it's changed so much. It's not the same place I moved to at all. And yet it is still. So it's definitely still Tennessee, and I'm definitely not from here. But there's, like everywhere I've lived, like the time I lived in Peru, like okay, it's definitely Peru and I'm definitely not from here, but here I am. So I think I've kind of made peace with it, I guess. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. SL: Well, what about your students in the program? Can you talk a little bit about what the program is like and who's taking classes there? 01:56:05 KO: Yeah. So I got to MTSU in 2012. I teach book arts and letterpress regularly. Once a year, sometimes I teach a 2-D design class, which is always my challenging thing. I've mentioned that earlier. 02:38:00 (laughs) So in the book arts and letterpress classes, most of my students are graphic designers. I have the luxury of being what I call the island of book arts and letterpress, which is, I found mostly a luxury. So I think it means I have less meetings to go to. And I'm only answering to myself, which is a good thing, although occasionally gets lonely. But ever since I've been in the art department, our whole thing has been changing. Our whole curriculum and how things are counting and what our students are like and where they're coming from and enrollment and all this stuff has been changing. So I would say no, it's been sort of about every two years there's some big change. So when I first got to MTSU, my students were still mostly graphic design majors, and they were older students, I would say. And I also, I mean older in terms of age and maturity, but also older in terms of, they were all seniors. About to graduate seniors. So they were much more directed, I think, in what they were doing. And now that's changed. I would say my students are, maybe they're the same age. But they're not as mature. And they are not seniors. They're mostly juniors, I would say, 02:39:00 that I get in my classes. Still mostly graphic design majors. But I work with all the other majors, also. Because I don't like to--well, because they can enroll in my class. But I like that I have a variety of students in there. It keeps it more interesting, I think, for everybody. SL: What other majors are taking your classes? KO: They're all mostly, I would say, but the majority are majors. Occasionally I get an art minor. I've had students in biology, like one time. And then I've had a couple of recording industry students. So because we're so close to Nashville, we have a really fantastic music recording industry program. But generally, they're all art majors. Yep. It's not a, I would say, there is no book arts or 02:40:00 letterpress degree. Sort of like curriculum-wise, I've allied myself with the printmaking area. But nothing on paper really ties me to anything officially at this point. So it's been really like I'm going to do what I do, and I'm going to see what my students are doing and sort of tailor what I'm teaching to make them more awesome. And that's been working, and everybody's really happy with that, including like me, my colleagues and my students. So whatever I'm doing is working. (laughs) SL: Do you know how Middle Tennessee got to have your position? Was somebody teaching book arts and letterpress? 01:59:47 KO: I can make up a history of things that I can piece together for you. So the woman who had my position before me, her name is Janet Higgins. She's also a UW graduate. Interesting. She, I believe, is in Minnesota somewhere. I have never met Janet. When she retired, I think she had been in the position maybe 30 years. SL: Oh, wow. Okay. KO: Yeah. And she was, I don't think interested in putting any baggage on me about the position. Which I truly appreciate. Although I would love 02:41:00 to know more about the history of how it all came to be. But I know it's because of her. At some point I think she was into, like I think she was teaching some textile something. But at some point, they have a couple, they got a couple of printing presses and a bunch of type. And I have a really beautiful few rooms of studios, thanks to her and her advocating for her own space, which I appreciate very regularly. Because I have large windows. (laughs) And I make sure that my students know how unusual and wonderful that is. Yeah, I mean, I don't really know a whole lot about that. I know that she hasn't really been in touch with anyone since she's left. But I would love to know more of the history. SL: Well, we talked a little bit earlier about the College Book Art Association, and one of the projects you were involved with. KO: Yeah. SL: Can you talk a little bit more about your greater involvement with the organization? KO: Yeah. So this came, I guess you get back into academia and you're like on the tenure, you know, tenure whatever that is, push. (laughs) So when I got to MTSU, I knew that certain things would be expected of me. And I also knew that, I know myself. I know myself. I'm like an 02:42:00 epic overachiever. Which is fine. It's a good thing. So I think it was in 2013, Cindy Marsh, who teaches at, or taught, I think she's retired officially by now, at the kind of, the other state school on the other side of Nashville from where I teach, it's called Austin Peay. So Cindy Marsh works there. And she was their printmaking, letterpress person, professor, for quite a while. She invited me to a meeting at the Nashville Public Library just about, I don't know what she put the heading on there, but for me I was like yeah, okay, I'm going to go. It's a bunch of local book art people. I feel like I should go. I'm new, I need to meet these people. They're working in this area, I should know them. So it was kind of this beautiful introduction to the book art universe of Nashville, which it's really nice that there is a community here of book art people. Because that was one of the things that I was very unaware of coming here. So on that day, Cindy was telling us about how she would like to host the 2016 College Book Art Association Conference in Nashville, and she wanted it to be this big kind of collaborative thing with all of the book art people in the area. And that day she 02:43:00 also invited me to be one of the co-chairs. And I was like, oh! It was this big kind of like she just dropped this huge bomb on me. So I was like uh, I got to think about that. So I thought about it. I knew I was going to say yes, because I know myself. But I was like oh my God, this is going to be one of those things where it's so much work. And if I actually knew how much work it would be right now, I would never say yes. And I knew it was one of those things. And it was one of those things. It was totally true. So we started planning this conference back then in 2013, and it was a ton of work. And I learned about things that I thought I would never need to know about, never use again. But that's not true. So I learned how to negotiate a hotel contract. All kinds of things. So yeah, we had that conference, and it was such a massive 02:44:00 collaboration .And it was Cindy Marsh's University Austin Peay, my University of Middle Tennessee. And then we held the conference actually at Vanderbilt, which is in Nashville. So more central location, and there's things that we could do in Nashville. So it made total sense to be there. We worked with our third co-chair, who was a librarian named Annie Herlocker. So the three of us organized this conference. And it was a ridiculous amount of work, and like an insane amount of email. But after it was over, I was really glad I did it. (laughs) Because I met so many people. Not just book art people or printing people, but just so much of the art community here and in the area. Not even just here, but in Nashville. I was thinking about that, and I was thinking you know, it probably would have taken me ten years to do all that just on my normal routes of things. So it was really like this very fast and furious way of making all those connections at once. So I am really grateful for that part of it. But I was also, like everything, I really liked working with Cindy. Because she's a letterpress printer and a book artist, and she has such a great take on making things and working with people. Like she's so smart, but she's also so down to earth. And she has this magical way of relating her ideas. And like all of her interests and her skills. And then like her resources, which often are not even resources. Just things that maybe she personally has on hand that she 02:45:00 can make something that's super valuable out of nothing. And I always just find that ability to do something so brilliant like that, I'm just in awe of that. She could just make stuff that was just like, and still make things that are so powerful and so simple. And she just has such a good brain for doing that. It's really, it's pretty great. And it's so down to earth. And it's not just like for, also, what I actually really love about it is that it's like not stuck in an academic bubble. It is like, it could be anybody on the street would understand it. It's beautiful. I think that's like so smart. All right, so after that conference in Nashville, which was fun, oh my gosh, it was fun. I'm glad it was over, 02:46:00 though. So I joined the College Book Art Association Board of Directors. And I think I came on as the vice chair for meetings, or I became the vice chair for meetings or something. Anyway, and a title at some point soon after that. And then in 2017, I think I took over as their vice president for programming, which I'm still doing. And so I'm still on their board of directors. It's a lot of work. (laughter) It's a lot of work. It's a lot of work. But I will say, so despite it being a lot of work, and I think at least the roles that I'm in, it's like, I don't know, it's like the glutton for punishment role, which is like I just keep organizing more conferences and meetings. It's like I help people do it, but it's like I'm in a hamster wheel. It's sort of like oh, here's another conference. So I'm really good at negotiating hotel contracts now. (laughs) And like, why? I don't know. But I am. I've met so many people doing this. So for me it's like--it's not even just meeting people. It's like I've worked with so many people doing what I'm doing. And I really love that. And it's sort of, I think, brought me, I 02:47:00 don't know about opportunity. Maybe opportunities. Probably opportunities. But I guess it's been enriching in other ways, which I probably still have yet to feel or understand. So that's really good. And for me, I'm also like such a big believer in putting in work. So I like working. Sometimes I work too much. But I also think like okay, I'm putting in the work now. You know, I was gone out of the country for a while. There's a lot of like adjunct land. I just need to earn some respect around here. I don't know. It's like I always talk about things sort of in like street terms. Like I just need some street cred in this book arts world. So, I don't know. Just trying to do the work. And I do it okay, I think. I do it okay. They ask me to come back, so I must be doing okay. (laughs) 02:10:09 SL: Well with all of your responsibilities between CBA and your role as a professor, how do you make time for your own projects, and what are you working on? KO: Yeah. How do I do that? I don't know. So I spend 02:48:00 a lot of time thinking about that, how to make this happen. So one of the things that I've done for the past few years is I get, it's turned into this ritual. I don't know how this happened. I just started doing it, I guess. But in the morning when I have breakfast, it's like this massive multitask where I make breakfast, I listen to the news and I draw. And the drawing that I do every morning is like I've been doing hand lettering for a few years. And every once in a while, I break off and do some kind of patterning thing. It just depends on what my brain feels like doing that day. So I have notebooks and notebooks and notebooks of just lettered things. And my students at some point taught me how to do Instagram. Which I'm sure will disappear in another year or something. And I think actually the student that taught me how to do it just told me recently, he's like, "I am no longer 02:49:00 interested in Instagram." And I'm like, what? You got me into it. So for a few years now I've been kind of positing to Instagram a lot of the stuff that I've been drawing in my sketchbook every day. But for me I'm like, whatever. It's a way of making me feel like accountable for a regular practice, I guess? I'm sort of, I don't know. I have really mixed feelings about social media, because I think it's kind of junk. But I still do it. So I guess I kind of like it. So that practice kind of has fed into a few other things, which is at some point I also took a sign painting workshop in Peru. Which is like, actually it was a sign painting workshop on how to paint like the names on buses, or the amount of weight that you could put on a tractor trailer truck. It's like just hand painting letters. And I've been fascinated, like again, traffic in Lima. All of the buses that I would ride on, like I collected for a long time all the bus tickets. Because they're letterpress and offset printed little pieces of paper. And now that that's like kind of transitioning into not being offset printed anymore, like kind of more digitally printed tickets, it's like, 02:50:00 they're not as pretty. So I collected those bus tickets for a long time. I always admired the lettering on the side of the buses. Sometimes it was really fancy. Had shadows. I loved that. So all of that hand lettering stuff has been, in a regular practice, I occasionally would take into my studio and I would do bigger drawings or bigger versions of those things. So that led into, and all this stuff is like simultaneously. Like the one thing happens and something else happens. I'm working it all at the same time. So I did a book a few years ago called, what was it called? Briefly a Spy. So it's a one of a kind book. That book didn't need an edition. It's all gouache drawings. I was trying to go back to like 2001 when I was in Italy, I did these little teeny tiny one of a kind books out of gouache. And it was called Little Victories. And it was just about like how I figured out how to buy toilet paper, or like--(SL laughs) how to open up the doors at my house. Or one day kids on the street were like pea shooting toilet paper balls into my windows, because they were open. And thinking about just these small kind of beautiful little victory things. So this other book, Briefly a Spy, was a 02:51:00 little bit sort of in that same vein of like getting back to keeping it simple. Because the practice of getting into the studio to print like a huge edition of books is really time-consuming and difficult to do. I needed something that I could be working on like after-hours at my house, or like, you know, in a short period of time between let's say dinner and going to sleep. Or before dinner, or before and after dinner. That kind of thing. So when I had like a little break to kind of deal with it. So I thought well, okay, I'm going to try that. And I realized that my lettering was terrible, so I wanted to practice that more. So all of these things kind of fed into each other. I was also thinking a lot about this one-off, this one of a kind thing, because my colleague friend and this artist that I work with, he's our printmaker, Nick Satinover, is, like I love his artistic practice. He can make things, 02:52:00 I'm always in awe when people can make things so quickly. So he and I have been talking a lot about editioning things or not editioning things. And I think we both have like a huge influence on each other's work in terms of like how we think about making copies of things, and like if the work is going to endure for a long time or not. It's archival quality. But, so I worked on that book Briefly a Spy. And then I was drawing other, bigger things. And then realized like those are too big to make into a book. (laughs) So how can I turn them into a book? And I figured out I could scan some big drawings, and shrink them down and digitally print them out. So I just finished editioning this. I finished the book probably last December, but I just finished the edition maybe last month of a new book called Difficult Loves. And all the images 02:53:00 and lettering in the book is all done by hand. But it's scanned from these original gouache drawings into a smaller format. It's pretty nice. I like it. I keep looking at it. I'm like, oh, you're so attractive. So I still have to get some good photos of it. But that's the newest one. But it's nice to see sort of the daily practice kind of feeding things that aren't daily practice, things that are just part of the researching stuff that I'm doing. What else am I doing? I'm working on a new book that's sort of in that same--there's sort of like a bunch of things that I'm working on. A new book that's starting with drawings again, in gouache. I don't know where that one's going. Too soon. And then I'm working on this weird pattern making project, where I'm trying to design really colorful patterns. I don't know where that one's going yet, 02:54:00 either, but I keep coming back to it. It's been a few years now. And I have plans for more projects in Peru. Those are coming. We'll see where that's going. And then, I'm doing some research about pressure printing with the same colleague, Nick Satinover. We should be going to Spain in, when are we going, soon. (laughs) SL: Where in Spain? 02:17:56 KO: We're presenting at the Impact Printmaking Conference in the north of Spain, in Santander. So that should be good. And that's like a little technique that we've been sort of passing back and forth. But I was actually working on it a bunch when Katie Garth was printing her book, Exit Door. So I was kind of perfecting the process when she was there, getting all the adjustments right. But I was printing out on letterpress. So now we're going to try to print it on not a letterpress, and see if we can make it work. So that's our next thing. SL: It sounds like you're pretty busy. KO: Yeah. I don't sleep much. That's not [unclear] I sleep regularly, but it's hard. I mean, it's time management. I keep a lot of lists. SL: And I guess just one more question before we wrap up. KO: Sure. SL: I wondered if you had any final 02:55:00 thoughts about how, I guess, studying and even working at the UW ended up impacting your career so far. KO: Yeah. Totally impacted my career. (laughs) Check. I mean, I would have a hard time, I have such a hard time going back and saying like this was not at all impacted by the UW. Really. I mean, any of it, if you think about it, right? When I'm in high school, I meet a UW grad. Without the UW, I don't even want to think what I would be doing. (laughs) I would not be doing what I'm doing now, that's for sure. Honestly, I don't, yeah. I don't think, we would not be having this conversation without the UW. So what would I be doing? We could only speculate. But I mean, yeah, starting from, and maybe it was even before this. But starting with Diane Fine, you know, Rachel Davis, there's another UW person. Getting into 02:56:00 grad school, working with Tracy Hahn. All that time at the Silver Buckle Press. I wouldn't know how to print letterpress without her. I mean, yeah. It just wouldn't be this, at all, about the UW. So I mean, I don't know, when I studied there, I mean, if you take out all of that stuff that I just mentioned, like when I studied there, all of the resources that were there. All of the space and equipment and energy. Like I guess I went in there and I was like, I'm taking advantage of all this as much as possible. Because like I knew it was good. I didn't know how good it was, but I knew it was really good. So I knew I better take advantage of it. But also, like the thing, I know it's true, everything I've mentioned about people. So yeah, like the UW could be all the space, and certainly it was, it had all these resources in terms of space and equipment and things, but it was also full of all these great people. So without all of those people that ended up there--so students, professors, my students later, just everybody working there in some capacity, or related to there in some capacity is really important. A lot of those relationships are, and also they're not finite relationships. They keep going on. So those are really important. I'm trying to think of like other examples when that UW--like the UW also has their big reputation. (laughs) I knew that they did before I went to school there. But, I don't know. It's funny, their 02:57:00 reputation. I feel like that's got me a little bit of street cred in some corners of the universe. It's certainly always been like when I've met people that also have gone to UW that I don't know, they're like, oh, we already have something in common. Like we know this certain good quality thing. So there's always that. I don't know, it's one of those things where I think about it and I'm like, oh, why don't I still live in Madison so I can take advantage of all these things? Because I know so much has changed since I've left that would be just like, I would take advantage of all of those things. (laughs) There's more books in the Kohler. There's like a giant new museum that I have yet to go to. SL: Well, thank you so much, Kathy. If there's nothing else that you want to add, I think we can wrap up. KO: No, that's good. I think we're good. SL: Thank you so much.