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Judy Pfaff in "Romance" - Season 4 - "Art in the Twenty-First Century" | Art21

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    (Sound of Welding)
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    JUDY PFAFF: I got my first welder in Maine,
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    and I made some structures 
    and stuff and I thought oh,
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    I have to learn how to weld now.
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    I never wanted to be a sculptor.
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    My background is painting.
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    I was a painter.
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    All my friends are painters.
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    Elizabeth Murray, you know great, great painters.
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    And I always thought that welders 
    were not only guys that drank beer,
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    and clanked around with rusty stuff,
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    I am now clanking around with 
    rusty stuff, drinking beer.
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    But this first welder I got was actually for 
    thin sheet metal and it was for auto body guys.
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    It was like a sweet welder, not 
    stick welding, which is pretty rough.
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    This would be the equivalent 
    of hot glue gun or sewing.
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    MAN: That’s Mel
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    PFAFF: I have to talk about Mel.
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    He moves earth around. I didn’t realize it.
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    I only deal with little things.
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    He deals with like big things, you know?
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    And he sees these roots, 
    and he says you want roots?
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    I got roots.
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    PFAFF: So Mel and I go down 
    to the river and we find,
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    I don’t know if you’ve looked at these things,
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    they’re the best roots I ever saw.
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    Can you see how rough these things were?
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    They’re like...these are huge.
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    Look at the size of that. Look.
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    These stumps were broken into four parts 
    because we’ve got to get them into the gallery
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    and up elevators so we’re cutting them 
    apart, putting them back together.
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    PFAFF: You ready?
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    PFAFF: You should-
    MAN: But you can’t really do it when…
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    PFAFF: Right...we draw this pattern 
    out and we’re going to take it apart...
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    PFAFF: I was born in London. That was 1946.
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    And came to America when I was 
    (SIGH) about twelve and uh,
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    did not fit and was quite unruly.
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    I wasn’t raised by my mother.
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    I met her when I came to America.
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    I never have met my father.
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    I was a terrible student.
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    I don’t like to read.
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    I don’t like to do homework.
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    I could care less. I’m ornery.
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    I don’t like authority.
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    I mean there’s a lot of things that 
    would...made me a lousy student.
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    The art part...and that was 
    actually where Al came in.
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    Al Held was my teacher at Yale.
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    He thought I was visually 
    intelligent, a disaster in other ways.
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    But he thought there was something in 
    the way I sort of get it with materials
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    that would hook me into another kind of education.
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    Painters I think are made differently.
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    They can concentrate in different ways.
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    I found when I was a painter 
    I couldn’t stop and until it
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    was finished another thought didn’t enter.
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    With the sculpture, they go on for months.
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    It tells different kinds of stories.
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    They’re sort of sequence of moments.
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    It worked better for the way I 
    am put together and I love stuff
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    and as you know I love tools.
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    Last year, everyone I knew died.
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    My mother, Al, good friends, and uh,
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    and I just thought, this show 
    I just want it to be emotional.
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    So I was basing this sort of on images of…
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    I don’t think hell, but darkness and kind of a…
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    a wilder characteristic than the other stuff.
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    The show is going to have a lot of light,
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    and there’s going to be one 
    room all light, all white.
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    And another one all black.
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    Or I think, and these big 
    roots are going to come in,
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    and so it’s going to be a stack of things that go 
    from light to dark or heavy to light or however.
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    (TORCH FLARES)
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    I have uh, a way of never sort 
    of touching things directly.
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    It’s sort of funny because I’m very 
    hands-on but in a way that’s not…
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    not true.
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    There’s usually a tool.
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    And finding these burning kits was like…
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    this is for guys who make duck decoys,
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    so you get these blades for putting 
    feathers on or doing details.
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    It’s all solid burning and 
    dying and going through layers,
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    so it’s a nice physical way 
    of getting into something.
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    I think I have so much control over things.
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    I get so involved that having an 
    instrument between it blunts that a bit.
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    I think the show is going to look like these…
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    these drawings and it’s…
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    and you know and that’s sort 
    of ends up actually to be true.
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    But I think if you see that and see the work 
    you can see that there’s just a lot of uh,
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    imagery that sort of similar in a way.
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    There’s a lot of flaming going…
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    there’s a lot of like soot, fire, 
    burning, and a lot of water too.
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    So the...I think it will be an 
    interesting set of dynamics.
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    I think some of these drawings 
    actually look quite nice.
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    Even tame.
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    Their way of being made is very rough.
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    What I don’t understand was all this roughness,
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    that it actually kind of ends up calming down.
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    We’ve been doing these forms for a while.
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    They’re based on what’s called a sweep mold.
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    Sweep...s-w-e-e-p mold.
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    And I saw a pattern for it on a WPA 
    manual for people learning plaster work.
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    They use what’s called live plaster,
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    so the plaster is mixed with 
    stuff and then you have a form
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    and at a certain moment you drag the 
    form over and it takes that perfectly.
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    For big shapes, you have a circular 
    track and you’re walking it,
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    so it’s just this gigantic sort 
    of performance of walking this…
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    this plastic blade…
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    This will be filled with Styrofoam and 
    then the last part of it is this plaster
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    that makes it like this 
    most beautiful turned form.
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    So what this is going to look like, there are two.
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    There’s one that goes up this way,
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    and there’s another one that goes to the top,
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    so it’ll look like the 
    negative space of two spheres.
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    And that’s where that kind 
    of two worlds thing coming,
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    the white and the black, so...I think.
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    I don’t know.
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    I’m saying this thinking that 
    that’s exactly what I’m going to do
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    but I always change my mind, so...
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    ELEVATOR: Second(?) Floor.
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    BOB: So if you want to be safe, 
    you turn the lights off first.
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    ASSISTANT: (INAUD)
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    PFAFF: Is that going to work, Bob?
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    BOB: Yeah.
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    PFAFF: Do you know what 
    happened? Was it the wiring or...
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    BOB: Oh this? I don’t know. I think, I suspect...
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    PFAFF: The ballast?
    BOB: The faulty ballast, yeah.
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    PFAFF: That’s the...is that the brand new one?
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    BOB: No.
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    MAN: Look at that. That’s like 
    a drain in my bathtub. Sweet.
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    MAN: More, more, more, more, more
    (TALK)
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    ELEVATOR: Second Floor
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    PFAFF: You come off the elevators, and 
    there’s a pretty big obstacle in front of you,
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    this kind of double cone.
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    I assumed one would go to the right.
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    There’s a kind of natural route.
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    I always thought that it would 
    be walked counter-clockwise.
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    Just because the layout of the gallery.
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    I received two emails.
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    They’d just seen the show and both of 
    them talked about sadness and loss.
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    And I thought wow, I’m glad 
    that they saw that in that.
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    Because that’s what I thought,
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    that’s what drove it, that’s what I anticipated.
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    When we were finishing up the show,
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    once we stopped making a lot of mess
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    and there was a straight view past 
    the drawing room into a far back room,
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    and I remembered that they 
    had an Al Held painting,
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    a black and white, that if it was 
    put up it would just fill that…
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    that slot through the gallery.
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    I think I’m very romantic.
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    That’s where these scrims and these structures,
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    why they’re around.
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    I think there are these levels,
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    like the thing that I was 
    given was way too much romance,
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    way too much emotion,
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    and not enough of these other things 
    which are hard for me to get to.
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    So the work is to get to the other levels.
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    To the silence, to the…
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    the breath, to a sweeter sense of things.
Title:
Judy Pfaff in "Romance" - Season 4 - "Art in the Twenty-First Century" | Art21
Description:

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Video Language:
English
Team:
Art21
Project:
"Art in the Twenty-First Century" broadcast series

English (United States) subtitles

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