1 00:00:08,267 --> 00:00:13,068 (Sound of Welding) 2 00:00:13,068 --> 00:00:14,862 JUDY PFAFF: I got my first welder in Maine, 3 00:00:15,640 --> 00:00:18,120 and I made some structures  and stuff and I thought oh, 4 00:00:18,120 --> 00:00:19,693 I have to learn how to weld now. 5 00:00:20,640 --> 00:00:22,291 I never wanted to be a sculptor. 6 00:00:23,280 --> 00:00:24,320 My background is painting. 7 00:00:24,320 --> 00:00:25,600 I was a painter. 8 00:00:25,600 --> 00:00:26,868 All my friends are painters. 9 00:00:27,520 --> 00:00:30,780 Elizabeth Murray, you know great, great painters. 10 00:00:32,880 --> 00:00:36,462 And I always thought that welders  were not only guys that drank beer, 11 00:00:37,598 --> 00:00:39,760 and clanked around with rusty stuff, 12 00:00:39,760 --> 00:00:43,748 I am now clanking around with  rusty stuff, drinking beer. 13 00:00:47,240 --> 00:00:51,680 But this first welder I got was actually for  thin sheet metal and it was for auto body guys. 14 00:00:51,680 --> 00:00:57,840 It was like a sweet welder, not  stick welding, which is pretty rough. 15 00:00:57,840 --> 00:01:01,694 This would be the equivalent  of hot glue gun or sewing. 16 00:01:06,006 --> 00:01:06,600 MAN: That’s Mel 17 00:01:06,916 --> 00:01:08,422 PFAFF: I have to talk about Mel. 18 00:01:09,200 --> 00:01:12,560 He moves earth around. I didn’t realize it. 19 00:01:12,560 --> 00:01:14,200 I only deal with little things. 20 00:01:14,200 --> 00:01:17,520 He deals with like big things, you know? 21 00:01:17,520 --> 00:01:21,520 And he sees these roots,  and he says you want roots? 22 00:01:21,520 --> 00:01:22,764 I got roots. 23 00:01:24,468 --> 00:01:28,320 PFAFF: So Mel and I go down  to the river and we find, 24 00:01:28,320 --> 00:01:29,920 I don’t know if you’ve looked at these things, 25 00:01:30,573 --> 00:01:32,709 they’re the best roots I ever saw. 26 00:01:34,160 --> 00:01:36,040 Can you see how rough these things were? 27 00:01:36,040 --> 00:01:38,360 They’re like...these are huge. 28 00:01:38,360 --> 00:01:40,987 Look at the size of that. Look. 29 00:01:55,200 --> 00:01:58,560 These stumps were broken into four parts  because we’ve got to get them into the gallery 30 00:01:58,560 --> 00:02:03,178 and up elevators so we’re cutting them  apart, putting them back together. 31 00:02:07,070 --> 00:02:08,678 PFAFF: You ready? 32 00:02:16,868 --> 00:02:19,102 PFAFF: You should- MAN: But you can’t really do it when… 33 00:02:19,102 --> 00:02:21,960 PFAFF: Right...we draw this pattern  out and we’re going to take it apart... 34 00:02:21,960 --> 00:02:25,760 PFAFF: I was born in London. That was 1946. 35 00:02:25,760 --> 00:02:31,040 And came to America when I was  (SIGH) about twelve and uh, 36 00:02:31,040 --> 00:02:35,245 did not fit and was quite unruly. 37 00:02:35,960 --> 00:02:37,600 I wasn’t raised by my mother. 38 00:02:37,600 --> 00:02:39,694 I met her when I came to America. 39 00:02:41,082 --> 00:02:42,730 I never have met my father. 40 00:02:44,960 --> 00:02:46,452 I was a terrible student. 41 00:02:47,840 --> 00:02:48,880 I don’t like to read. 42 00:02:48,880 --> 00:02:50,560 I don’t like to do homework. 43 00:02:50,560 --> 00:02:52,680 I could care less. I’m ornery. 44 00:02:52,680 --> 00:02:53,800 I don’t like authority. 45 00:02:53,800 --> 00:02:57,200 I mean there’s a lot of things that  would...made me a lousy student. 46 00:02:57,600 --> 00:03:00,308 The art part...and that was  actually where Al came in. 47 00:03:00,560 --> 00:03:03,040 Al Held was my teacher at Yale. 48 00:03:03,040 --> 00:03:07,560 He thought I was visually  intelligent, a disaster in other ways. 49 00:03:07,560 --> 00:03:11,040 But he thought there was something in  the way I sort of get it with materials 50 00:03:11,040 --> 00:03:13,730 that would hook me into another kind of education. 51 00:03:15,960 --> 00:03:18,200 Painters I think are made differently. 52 00:03:18,200 --> 00:03:20,520 They can concentrate in different ways. 53 00:03:20,520 --> 00:03:24,760 I found when I was a painter  I couldn’t stop and until it 54 00:03:24,760 --> 00:03:27,560 was finished another thought didn’t enter. 55 00:03:27,560 --> 00:03:29,520 With the sculpture, they go on for months. 56 00:03:29,520 --> 00:03:31,400 It tells different kinds of stories. 57 00:03:31,400 --> 00:03:34,320 They’re sort of sequence of moments. 58 00:03:34,320 --> 00:03:38,480 It worked better for the way I  am put together and I love stuff 59 00:03:38,480 --> 00:03:41,005 and as you know I love tools. 60 00:03:45,360 --> 00:03:47,760 Last year, everyone I knew died. 61 00:03:47,760 --> 00:03:52,946 My mother, Al, good friends, and uh, 62 00:03:54,440 --> 00:03:58,400 and I just thought, this show  I just want it to be emotional. 63 00:03:58,400 --> 00:04:02,400 So I was basing this sort of on images of… 64 00:04:02,400 --> 00:04:05,800 I don’t think hell, but darkness and kind of a… 65 00:04:05,800 --> 00:04:09,267 a wilder characteristic than the other stuff. 66 00:04:11,160 --> 00:04:13,160 The show is going to have a lot of light, 67 00:04:13,160 --> 00:04:17,051 and there’s going to be one  room all light, all white. 68 00:04:17,640 --> 00:04:19,680 And another one all black. 69 00:04:19,680 --> 00:04:22,360 Or I think, and these big  roots are going to come in, 70 00:04:22,360 --> 00:04:29,047 and so it’s going to be a stack of things that go  from light to dark or heavy to light or however. 71 00:04:29,720 --> 00:04:31,048 (TORCH FLARES) 72 00:04:36,160 --> 00:04:40,560 I have uh, a way of never sort  of touching things directly. 73 00:04:40,560 --> 00:04:43,444 It’s sort of funny because I’m very  hands-on but in a way that’s not… 74 00:04:43,444 --> 00:04:44,160 not true. 75 00:04:44,160 --> 00:04:45,348 There’s usually a tool. 76 00:04:46,800 --> 00:04:49,320 And finding these burning kits was like… 77 00:04:49,320 --> 00:04:53,200 this is for guys who make duck decoys, 78 00:04:53,200 --> 00:04:58,040 so you get these blades for putting  feathers on or doing details. 79 00:04:58,040 --> 00:05:02,440 It’s all solid burning and  dying and going through layers, 80 00:05:02,440 --> 00:05:06,971 so it’s a nice physical way  of getting into something. 81 00:05:10,800 --> 00:05:14,400 I think I have so much control over things. 82 00:05:14,400 --> 00:05:18,578 I get so involved that having an  instrument between it blunts that a bit. 83 00:05:23,080 --> 00:05:24,960 I think the show is going to look like these… 84 00:05:24,960 --> 00:05:26,200 these drawings and it’s… 85 00:05:26,200 --> 00:05:30,000 and you know and that’s sort  of ends up actually to be true. 86 00:05:30,000 --> 00:05:35,400 But I think if you see that and see the work  you can see that there’s just a lot of uh, 87 00:05:35,400 --> 00:05:37,680 imagery that sort of similar in a way. 88 00:05:37,680 --> 00:05:39,120 There’s a lot of flaming going… 89 00:05:39,120 --> 00:05:46,285 there’s a lot of like soot, fire,  burning, and a lot of water too. 90 00:05:47,000 --> 00:05:51,081 So the...I think it will be an  interesting set of dynamics. 91 00:05:52,680 --> 00:05:55,752 I think some of these drawings  actually look quite nice. 92 00:05:56,720 --> 00:05:57,866 Even tame. 93 00:05:58,560 --> 00:06:01,403 Their way of being made is very rough. 94 00:06:02,960 --> 00:06:05,160 What I don’t understand was all this roughness, 95 00:06:05,160 --> 00:06:08,795 that it actually kind of ends up calming down. 96 00:06:20,160 --> 00:06:22,360 We’ve been doing these forms for a while. 97 00:06:22,360 --> 00:06:24,640 They’re based on what’s called a sweep mold. 98 00:06:24,640 --> 00:06:27,440 Sweep...s-w-e-e-p mold. 99 00:06:27,440 --> 00:06:32,952 And I saw a pattern for it on a WPA  manual for people learning plaster work. 100 00:06:33,520 --> 00:06:35,320 They use what’s called live plaster, 101 00:06:35,320 --> 00:06:39,040 so the plaster is mixed with  stuff and then you have a form 102 00:06:39,040 --> 00:06:44,840 and at a certain moment you drag the  form over and it takes that perfectly. 103 00:06:44,840 --> 00:06:49,040 For big shapes, you have a circular  track and you’re walking it, 104 00:06:49,040 --> 00:06:52,600 so it’s just this gigantic sort  of performance of walking this… 105 00:06:52,600 --> 00:06:54,200 this plastic blade… 106 00:06:54,200 --> 00:07:00,109 This will be filled with Styrofoam and  then the last part of it is this plaster 107 00:07:00,200 --> 00:07:03,560 that makes it like this  most beautiful turned form. 108 00:07:03,560 --> 00:07:06,280 So what this is going to look like, there are two. 109 00:07:06,280 --> 00:07:07,880 There’s one that goes up this way, 110 00:07:07,880 --> 00:07:10,000 and there’s another one that goes to the top, 111 00:07:10,000 --> 00:07:13,967 so it’ll look like the  negative space of two spheres. 112 00:07:15,040 --> 00:07:17,480 And that’s where that kind  of two worlds thing coming, 113 00:07:17,480 --> 00:07:19,413 the white and the black, so...I think. 114 00:07:19,413 --> 00:07:20,000 I don’t know. 115 00:07:20,000 --> 00:07:22,560 I’m saying this thinking that  that’s exactly what I’m going to do 116 00:07:22,560 --> 00:07:24,613 but I always change my mind, so... 117 00:07:36,868 --> 00:07:38,874 ELEVATOR: Second(?) Floor. 118 00:07:38,874 --> 00:07:40,708 BOB: So if you want to be safe,  you turn the lights off first. 119 00:07:40,708 --> 00:07:44,075 ASSISTANT: (INAUD) 120 00:07:44,929 --> 00:07:45,560 PFAFF: Is that going to work, Bob? 121 00:07:45,560 --> 00:07:46,060 BOB: Yeah. 122 00:07:46,060 --> 00:07:48,115 PFAFF: Do you know what  happened? Was it the wiring or... 123 00:07:48,115 --> 00:07:50,736 BOB: Oh this? I don’t know. I think, I suspect... 124 00:07:50,736 --> 00:07:52,240 PFAFF: The ballast? BOB: The faulty ballast, yeah. 125 00:07:52,240 --> 00:07:54,440 PFAFF: That’s the...is that the brand new one? 126 00:07:54,440 --> 00:07:55,107 BOB: No. 127 00:08:28,836 --> 00:08:35,716 MAN: Look at that. That’s like  a drain in my bathtub. Sweet. 128 00:08:43,541 --> 00:08:47,005 MAN: More, more, more, more, more (TALK) 129 00:09:04,486 --> 00:09:07,160 ELEVATOR: Second Floor 130 00:09:12,966 --> 00:09:17,440 PFAFF: You come off the elevators, and  there’s a pretty big obstacle in front of you, 131 00:09:17,440 --> 00:09:19,569 this kind of double cone. 132 00:09:20,200 --> 00:09:23,440 I assumed one would go to the right. 133 00:09:23,440 --> 00:09:25,357 There’s a kind of natural route. 134 00:09:27,040 --> 00:09:30,560 I always thought that it would  be walked counter-clockwise. 135 00:09:30,560 --> 00:09:32,855 Just because the layout of the gallery. 136 00:09:41,120 --> 00:09:42,960 I received two emails. 137 00:09:42,960 --> 00:09:47,978 They’d just seen the show and both of  them talked about sadness and loss. 138 00:09:50,040 --> 00:09:54,120 And I thought wow, I’m glad  that they saw that in that. 139 00:09:54,120 --> 00:09:55,560 Because that’s what I thought, 140 00:09:55,560 --> 00:09:59,320 that’s what drove it, that’s what I anticipated. 141 00:10:02,320 --> 00:10:04,760 When we were finishing up the show, 142 00:10:04,760 --> 00:10:07,060 once we stopped making a lot of mess 143 00:10:07,060 --> 00:10:13,320 and there was a straight view past  the drawing room into a far back room, 144 00:10:13,320 --> 00:10:15,920 and I remembered that they  had an Al Held painting, 145 00:10:15,920 --> 00:10:20,920 a black and white, that if it was  put up it would just fill that… 146 00:10:20,920 --> 00:10:23,379 that slot through the gallery. 147 00:10:31,360 --> 00:10:33,680 I think I’m very romantic. 148 00:10:33,680 --> 00:10:36,200 That’s where these scrims and these structures, 149 00:10:36,200 --> 00:10:37,307 why they’re around. 150 00:10:42,040 --> 00:10:43,480 I think there are these levels, 151 00:10:43,480 --> 00:10:47,600 like the thing that I was  given was way too much romance, 152 00:10:47,600 --> 00:10:48,920 way too much emotion, 153 00:10:48,920 --> 00:10:51,640 and not enough of these other things  which are hard for me to get to. 154 00:10:51,640 --> 00:10:54,305 So the work is to get to the other levels. 155 00:10:56,240 --> 00:10:58,240 To the silence, to the… 156 00:10:58,240 --> 00:11:01,029 the breath, to a sweeter sense of things.