Come join Wendy and I for a colorful conversation full of surprising, alternate views about our identity as artists, and how to look at this astonishing artistic life we lead. Wendy opens up a view that is probably new to many of us, sharing the collaborative joy of a group of violence survivors she works with, the lessons that their struggles and success have to offer us, and her own gorgeously simple but profound thoughts on how to measure one’s daily success and accomplishments.
Contact my guest:
Wendy Moore www.afterthemonsoon.com/
Other Resources mentioned:
Samunnat’s website: https://samunnat.co
Project Didi (trip to Nepal): https://www.projectdidiaustralia.org/travel-with-us.html
Mary Oliver’s poem: http://www.whereearthmeetssky.com/musings/2013/09/my-work-is-loving-world-poem-by-mary.html
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CREDITS:
Cover design by Sage; Illustration by Olga Kostenko
Music by Playsound
TRANSCRIPT
TRANSCRIPT: EP 032 A View to Astonishment w/Wendy Moore
WENDY 0:00
There is still this total sense of excitement about the fact that they are making gorgeous stuff and keeping themselves alive, that people in the rest of the world think they make beautiful stuff and that the one single line on anything.
SAGE 0:18
Hello, all my like minded and yet uniquely varied creative friends out there. Thank you for joining me for the Sage Arts podcast. This is Sage. I am going to be joined here in just a minute with a to me very special guests. We’ll be talking a lot about different ways of viewing our art, different ways of viewing the world in service of our art and the way other people see it. Just give us a different perspective. I think that would be really eye opening for a lot of us. So get settled in. And I have to tell you guys, I wasn’t going to say anything initially, but it’s really hard because oftentimes I start off this podcast and say, you know, I’m here, my dogs are around me, and the chair is the comfy chairs opening and ready for you, which it is again today. But unfortunately our little pack got smaller this last week. The older of our two dogs, a 12 year old American Eskimo who was diagnosed last Friday with metastatic lung cancer. So we don’t know what the primary cancer was after desperate calls for like all day on Monday, just trying to find an oncologist. So we finally got him in on Tuesday, got him a bunch of meds to make him comfortable. And then Thursday morning, he decided to just had enough of all that and went on his own terms. It was a really hard week. I didn’t get a lot of sleep because, you know, worrying and it was just a difficult time. So I apologize if my intros and outros might not sound as energetic as usual, but I’m just exhausted from lack of sleep. And then of course, we’re emotionally trying to adjust to our missing little guy. I think Brett and Amber are probably having a little harder time than I am. I tend to have kind of I don’t know, a positive view of death in that I see how it’s part of a cycle of which is crazy, miraculous thing called living is also a part. We all get to take a stab at living for a little while. It’s such a privilege, such a wonderful gift, an adventure to be able to be here. So passing away is, to me, just a return of our energy back into the cosmos. I just think that whatever we do with all the energy that we have, we should aim to make it as good and positive and loving as possible. So when our spirits pass on, we are adding good and positive energy back into the world. And I think Kemba absolutely did that. He could be such a little grumpy guy. But you know, he loved us fiercely and he was so present in the world, such a little creature, such a passionate little guy. And I just really feel like I learned a lot from him just because the way he seemed to look at the world. So so that’s my news and my have been quite as active on social media, just trying to love and hug on that little guy as much as I could. And I’m glad that we did set that time aside. But do come in and join me and settle in. We have a beautiful discussion coming up, but I did want to stop and think a couple of people. Margo Ashmore thank you for supporting us financially and thank you for showing up for the Zoom call that we had. It was a pretty small little crowd, but great conversation and we talked for like an hour and 15 minutes and just flew by. So I appreciate everybody that showed up for that. I do have one that was scheduled for the 18th, but I am going to have to put that off because it put off some other things this week with what happened to Kemba. And I’m going to have to take that time out next week. So I will reschedule as soon as possible and I will let you know through the newsletter and on the Facebook group, the Sage Arts Share Space Group. So you can join that on Facebook and sign up for the newsletter via the show notes or the home page of the Sage Ask.com. Look for the news and notices button. And as always, and briefly, just if you do want to support this podcast, I really appreciate any kind of giving you back you want to do. You can do that monetarily on Buy Me a Coffee or through PayPal. You can find those buttons on the home page of the Sage Arts podcast as well as in the show notes. And again, everything that I mentioned is in the show notes you can reach out to me with comments about the podcast or anything that you want to say through the contact page on the Sage Cars.com or through Instagram or Facebook under the Sage Arts podcast pages. You can send me messages or post to the post on there, and we’re going to leave the business there so we can get to this conversation. Now, my guests, Wendy Moore, is going to talk about a group that she’s been very actively involved in for a while. Salmon Not Nepal, and just the spelling because it doesn’t end up coming up in the conversation. It’s ESSA
community dot C oh that’s the website that you can go to. And of course, Wendy will explain what that has to do with art, what they do through this organization. It’s really just a wonderful project. So I’ll start with the blathering on my end and let’s go join Wendy.
My guest today is Wendy Moore. She’s a mixed media sculptural and jewelry artist, a teacher, an activist and a self-professed work in progress. So thanks for joining me today, Wendy.
WENDY 5:11
Oh, it’s so good to be here. Say so lovely talking to you.
SAGE 5:15
Yes, we’ve had more than a few conversations here and there over the years. So this will be fun. I’m really looking forward to this. There’s a lot of great insight from for you and your journey artistically and otherwise. You have just I just such a great story. So what is your artistic and creative focus right now?
WENDY 5:32
I guess, like you said, I use mixed media, primarily polymer clay, primarily my wearable art jewelry, but I do dabble in other things. But yeah, that that sort of is the focus. It’s it’s changing. I think that’s why I said work in progress because things change.
SAGE 5:49
So, okay, you live in Australia and you’re working there, but you’re north or south.
WENDY 5:54
Yeah, yeah. Been a little bit nomadic. So now I’m working at a place called Aubrey, which is it’s a beautiful regional sort of center on Australia’s longest river, which is the Murray River, and it’s where I lived for 20 years. We raised a family here, but then in 2006 left and sort of began this slightly nomadic existence where we went to Nepal and then came back, lived in outback Australia and then Canberra. And then just a month ago I decided it was time to come back here. So this very much feels like home again. That wasn’t where I was born. Yeah, but it’s a lovely place, so this could be it for a while. But you know, you never know.
SAGE 6:36
You’ve had a very colourful life and a lot of the questions I ask people as artists don’t apply to you as readily. So like, usually ask you like, do you have an art business to see? You have a business is probably not the right word, but you do something besides make art.
WENDY 6:55
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have a tiny business. I do teach and I also sell with stuff that I make. It primarily started that, you know, I wanted to be able to cover my costs and pay for my trips to Nepal because I was doing that a couple of times a year after we there, I started off in health, so I didn’t ever make a living from my until probably about ten years ago. But yeah, outside my peak, working with the world and some of that and in a way that is like my other job, you know, I mean, I spend a lot of my time.
SAGE 7:26
Yeah. On that. And tell the listeners what that is. First of all, it’s in Nepal because I don’t think that you mentioned. Yeah right. Yeah it’s.
WENDY 7:33
Yeah. And Australia. So yeah, when we went to say Nepal, my intention then was that you know, I just sort of had this fabulously indulgent time just making my art and discovering my artistic voice and property crap and then met these fairly amazing Nepali group of friends who had already established an organisation called Summit Nepal. And it was very much for women who’d been trafficked. These friends had all worked in the field of trafficking because a lot of Nepali women are trafficked and they were just aware that what was happening wasn’t really working, that just rescuing women wasn’t stopping them from being trafficked and from being vulnerable to being trafficked. And they realised that, you know, it’s not was these women are naive or easily led underneath that was this huge issue of they had nothing else to do that they could earn an income. They had kids to educate or parents to look at, you know, So it was desperate poverty that was driving sort of desperate action. So their goal was to set up an organisation just in their community, which was pretty remote, a long way away from Kathmandu, just to provide women with the means to earn an income. So they were training the women then, you know, really local thing was like owning a dairy cow or having a vegetable garden or working as a tailor. And it was just that I happened to mate Kokila Basnet who saw me sitting there making my earrings and discovering my inner self. And she said, You know, what are you doing? And I said, Oh, as sometimes happens, it sort of all just, you know, burble that she thought this was fabulous and said, well, maybe you could teach these women, maybe some of these women could get some work doing that. And my I initially thought, Oh, I don’t think that’d work. There’s no clay in Nepal. There’s no ovens, and there’s about 50 billion reasons that wouldn’t work. But she cut a long story short, we gave it a crack for 12 months and that was 16 years ago. And now there’s between ten and 15 women at any point in time who earn their total income making the jewellery. So they sell the jewellery and earn an income from it. But then on top of that, probably 90% and probably 95% of the funding for the organisation comes from the jewellery sales. So there’s no government funding. We’ve got a few fabulous regular donors, but I’d say 90 to 95% of the funding comes from the jewellery sales. So when I lived there I spent every second the women working together with them and then COVID notwithstanding.
? 10:14
Around.
WENDY 10:14
I now go over twice a year and spend another five weeks, twice a year just sort of working out what is it that they need to know, you know, how can I help them? So sort of, you know, mentoring, I suppose. Right? Right. And my husband’s also really, really involved. So he he comes over once a year, but we were not on the board. You know, we’re just kind of sharing a club really.
? 10:38
Well.
SAGE 10:39
What a serendipitous meeting. So you were living in Nepal at the time?
WENDY 10:43
Yeah, we were staying in someone’s house and until the little flat, but we were going to move to the unit was sorted and, you know, everything takes for a ride in Nepal. So there was, you know, a bit of a hiccup. And so, yeah, I was sitting on someone’s balcony just faffing around with my stuff because everything’s outside. So you see everybody’s is kind of know, you know, privacy. And Nepali people are very curious and, you know, it was just, just you just wanted to, you know, tell me I look up this what you know, what’s going on here. And that’s where it started. So I do I constantly pinch myself and think, what are the on all of me meeting copulation? She never you know, I mean, I think there were about sort of six Westerners in the town at that time. Yeah. Brava. And totally life changing for me, right? It’s just one of those wonderful, wonderful things that you think, oh, you know, thanks. The universe. I’m glad that.
SAGE 11:39
Yeah. Really incredible. So you’re very involved in that kind of thing. I mean, even locally at home, you do a lot of activism, focused activities.
WENDY 11:48
Yeah, we sort of set up an Australian summing up because initially the women weren’t able to get credit card. You know, there were all sorts of things that meant it would be better for an Australia group to handle the sort of dissemination of the jewellery so we don’t sell the women or everything, but then I’ll pay for from an account that we’ve got here. And then now we’ve completely revamped their website and look at helping them with their data collection and they say, Oh, look, we want to do this. Can you give us a hand with that? We’ll sort of say, okay, well, you know, that said, very much responding to what the board wants. So the board now is more than 50% made of women who’ve come through the program.
SAGE 12:30
Oh, that’s amazing.
WENDY 12:31
Fantastic. Yeah, but there’s a lot to do here as well. So it’s kind of like a part time schedule.
SAGE 12:38
So these are the things that you do and you don’t have a job outside of art and working with these women.
WENDY 12:45
No, no. So it all really started when I stopped my sort of serious job. So I worked in brain injury rehab for about 30 years. And because I knew my language, my Nepali language would never be good enough to do that kind of rehab work there. That was a big enough excuse for me to sort of stop that. And it was interesting because I was so passionate about that job. I mean, people would say to me, How would you going to go when you stop working? You know, I mean, your whole identity is being, you know, very involved in pediatric brain injury. All that said, how are you going to go? And I think, yeah, how about I did go? I went fine. I just went on to the next thing, which kind of surprised me because I’d, you know, given myself months just to explore. And then, you know, this happened within six months and I was just wonderful.
SAGE 13:36
The next thing. Yeah, I think you just need something to focus on, something that you’re passionate about. Well, and helping people in particular.
WENDY 13:43
Right? Yeah. Look, I think. I think I always had this little thing of thinking. Oh, wouldn’t it be nice if there was something out there that combines my love of, you know, creation with doing something vaguely useful? So that was as much of a plan as that was. I thought if that happens, that would be nice. And then that.
SAGE 14:03
And then just walked right up to you. That’s amazing. Yeah. Would you say you have any passions outside of art and your activism work?
WENDY 14:12
Yeah. Look, I think you could almost call me a little tiny, weenie, bit multi passionate.
? 14:17
That.
WENDY 14:19
I do. I mean, I love getting out in nature. It’s sort of as necessary breaking. So I really like getting out the bush and walking. Well, it’s an enthusiastic passion about stuff rather than a knowledgeable passion about stuff. So I love birds with great, fabulous birds. And, you know, they would come up and faint from our balcony and it was just, you know, I think, wow, how amazing is this that this bird is here on my own? And then we’ve got gorgeous family, gorgeous grandkids. So, yeah, there’s kind of a lot if anything, sometimes it’s looking out how to rein in the passions and.
? 14:57
Kind of manage them, right?
WENDY 15:01
Yeah. Yeah.
SAGE 15:02
That’s a good problem to have. Well, let me ask you some of the fun. Get to know your questions. Yeah. How would your family or friends describe what you do in terms of your artwork?
WENDY 15:13
I think they’d say it loud. I’m I think that my member who said it’s kind of weird because I’m a deeply introverted person, but I like these very extroverted art. I think I think it’s funny that there’s mate and then I sort of do this kind of look at me, look at me type jewellery. They all think that’s pretty funny. I think it’s ironic because I think they all think I’m pretty focused and driven. That’s the word that I would have to say comes up a lot with just focus. I think that’s deeply ironic because I see myself as a bit scary. But yeah, I would say, you know, I sort of focused, colorful, blunt, and that probably says way, way too much. I’m really trying to.
SAGE 15:55
So yeah, I don’t know. I think your version of swearing in Australia, in our version are very different things because I’m like, You don’t say anything.
? 16:03
Well, I haven’t started yet. Yeah. Oh okay. Okay.
SAGE 16:06
Well we’ll hold off on the judgement.
? 16:09
Yeah.
SAGE 16:10
Now how would they describe what you do in terms of your activism and your charitable work?
WENDY 16:16
I think again, they’d use similar words. They’d say she’s very passionate, very driven, very focused. I think they would use those sorts of words. I mean, I’m really lucky the family are all so phenomenally supportive. They’ve all been to Nepal that met the people involved. Yeah, I think that’s what they say. You know, that idea that when people can’t get onto Wendy’s, she’ll be doing a Zoom call with the girls or something like that, you know?
SAGE 16:43
Oh, that’s great. Now, if someone wants to write a biography of you today, what do you think it’d be titled?
WENDY 16:50
Well, it’s funny when you said before about colourful life, because, I mean, it’s such a cheesy kind of thing, but I thought I think in a way it would be called a colourful life because I am living a colourful life today anyway.
SAGE 17:04
Yeah. When I think of you, I think about colour, not just your work, but all the things that you do. I mean, in Nepal, everything’s so colorful, you know.
WENDY 17:12
There’s a place.
SAGE 17:13
So I see you there and there’s lots of colour. I see you in your studio and there’s lots of colour and yeah, you’ve lived a very varied life. Yeah, that’s a different thing. Yeah. And so I think colourful is good. It’s not cheesy. I think that’s a good, good title. Yeah.
WENDY 17:27
Yeah.
SAGE 17:27
Okay. I love asking people if their planner or pants or do you like to plan things or do you do things by the seat of your pants? I always find it interesting sharing what comes out in the artwork and what is the process and background?
WENDY 17:40
What would what would you recommend? Logic space. Right.
SAGE 17:43
I think you start out planning and then you just pants the whole thing after that.
WENDY 17:47
Because at my training I was totally a planner. Plan, plan, plan, plan. And I think I think even with respect to like we had to do a lot of planning to work out how we were going to be able to get to Nepal, live on a Nepali salary and all. That’s okay. So there was a lot of planning involved that and then you go there and, you know, there’s a bit of a saying that you make a plan. They’re basically saying, you know, what won’t happen?
? 18:13
And then you have the head.
WENDY 18:16
And you had, you know, Plan B, C, etc., I suppose the other thing is there were a few life experiences. Rachel turned life totally on its head and we thought everything we planned was, you know, just got to come to naught. So I went through a bit of a phase of thinking, Well, you can’t plan no point planning, you’ve got no control. That’s it. I’m just, you know, floating. And then eventually we kind of got to that middle path where I thought, okay, well, you actually don’t have as much control over life as you think. Yeah, but you can be ready for stuff. So now I would say exactly like you said, I kind of plan to a point and then fly by the seat of my pants. It’s a bit like bail set, I think, in on that deal and what that was what she said. She said to plan the journey and just made sure she’d have a place to stay and then left it really open within that. And I thought, yeah, that’s kind of how I would I.
SAGE 19:12
Can’t believe I hit it on the nose. I think I may be a first.
? 19:14
Yeah, Yeah.
WENDY 19:16
Well, you know me pretty well.
SAGE 19:17
It just.
WENDY 19:18
Makes sense. I think it’s being flexible. Well, being responsive, I think. I think that’s important now. Yeah.
SAGE 19:25
And not being too attached to your plans.
WENDY 19:27
Absolutely. I think that was the biggest life lesson in the world. One of the hugest things I learned. If my happiness was based on my plans working out, that was pretty flimsy grounds for happiness. I had to sort of rethink that one.
SAGE 19:42
I think it’s people who who have had a lot of journeys that we count more on the journey than on the destination. And I think when you do focus on the journey more than where you’re ending up, I think you’re a lot happier by the time you get there because you didn’t have a lot of expectations in between.
WENDY 19:58
Yeah, absolutely. And I think it’s that whole thing about being not doing, you know, focus on the being and not focusing on the doing. Yeah, we could get very philosophical saying we could.
? 20:10
We could go there.
SAGE 20:14
We’ll say that for our next visit. All right. So here is the here’s the dangerous question. What is the one thing that most people don’t know about you that they would find surprising?
WENDY 20:23
I think people, if they make me face to face, I’m actually profoundly deaf, which was ironic because I started my professional life as a speech pathologist. And so that was a pretty dumb career. So now I have a cochlear implant, which is.
SAGE 20:39
Yeah, sort.
WENDY 20:40
Of just this amazing, I think, Australian invention. So most people have got hundreds of electrodes in their cochlear to help them hear it. Obviously I had hardly any, and so I’ve had 28 implants in my brain and now I wear this little device, which means that it’s possible for your body to have these conversation. And it’s just it’s transformed my life. So it was a very gradual hearing loss. I started going deaf in my twenties, so when I had the surgery, took about six months to do the rehab and I did had loads of thinking, What am I done? Because it was really hard. Because you actually you sound almost robotically and they actually said your brain has to learn like I couldn’t pick, you know, they said a male voice, the female voice. I couldn’t tell that. And I really did spend quite a bit of time thinking this was a bad move. But then slowly, slowly, amazingly, your brain readjust. Now I can hear things I haven’t heard for 30 years. For the first sort of 12 months, I’d be constantly saying to my husband, What is that?
? 21:41
What is that?
WENDY 21:43
And and he’d say, That’s the washing machine. It’s just finish the cycle. Oh, that’s the indicator on the car. So it really it is just amazing. So I’ve got that in my body and a hearing aid that talks to it in the other. Yeah. And they people might not know that about me. People will often say, Oh that’s interesting, you don’t look deaf. I think, okay.
? 22:05
What would deaf look like? Yeah, very strange.
WENDY 22:10
Lost. I lost a lot.
SAGE 22:14
So, yeah, I’m talking directly into your implant.
WENDY 22:17
Yes, that’s right.
SAGE 22:18
They’re connected. But like, your husband walked in and gave you a cup of coffee, but he couldn’t hear me.
WENDY 22:22
No, absolutely not.
SAGE 22:23
Yes. I’m only just waving at him.
? 22:26
And he.
SAGE 22:26
Couldn’t hear me because it’s going directly into your head so.
WENDY 22:29
I can suddenly start talking in a way that might look quite loopy. And it’s just that I got a call.
? 22:36
Got a call.
SAGE 22:37
In my head. Technology. That’s just crazy. All right. We’ve got a little background on what you do have gotten background on the women, but your artistic journey, where did you start in art?
WENDY 22:48
I mean, I’ve always loved art, so even as a kid, I would just draw and draw and drawing, drawing. And my mum and dad were, you know, I mean, they’d really encourage that. I can remember my mum was changing the blinds and the curtains and so in our garage she hung up all these blinds and guide my sister nice and paints and just said are you can paint and are just like the most fabulous thing. So it was very encouraging and I would draw on everything. I would get in trouble for sort of obliterating messages from people because I’d drawn all over them. So I did love that. And I did art school. I did art all the way through to my leaving cert, but then not so much from my parents, but the community that I was kind of involved with at the time. There was very much an emphasis on, you know, doing something that kind of. So that was a bit hard for me to see how doing anything room related would be that kind of career. And also I just didn’t have the confidence. I always thought I was kind of okay, but I didn’t have anything hugely to offer, so I really got sidetracked. I suppose. I didn’t do much at all. Got very cool with studies and then work and then family. And then it was when the kids were little that I sort of just started dabbling again. And I did so painting for a long while. I really enjoyed soap painting. Great. Yeah, I did a community course, so it was design. Then I found polymer clay and I guess that was a medium that appealed because I could do something and then leave it and come back to it, you know? Whereas painting, which I love and ceramics, stuff like that, you needed big slabs of time. And cause I had two little ones at that stage, you know, you never get slabs of time. So just sort of visiting with a like, you know, and then just slowly doing more and playing more.
SAGE 24:37
And were you doing this type of artwork while you’re working on brain injury?
WENDY 24:41
Oh, definitely, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it was very much a sort of, I guess you’d call it a hobby. And I had these darling friends and I sort of had these set up where every Friday we’d meet and do just a few hours of, you know, we call it playing and we just played and then we thought we’ve got to finance our addiction. And right. We decided that we needed to start selling stuff. So it had this house sells and we both used to make these sort of funny little, fabulously well-endowed figures. I think they had the boobs that we always wanted, and for some reason we thought it would be a really good idea to call ourselves Lush’s Lady to sell this stuff, which was just so wrong that so many levels that we just, in our naivete, didn’t think of that. So we did. We made great sales. We did sort of find people often thought we were selling something different. So yeah, we buy our clay a bit more and we talked a bit and I think there was just this growing sense of I just want to be like more of this and more. They said it kept me sane while I was doing a job I loved, but that was very demanding. But there was also a sense that one day I’d really like a little corner shop, I’d really like to do this full time.
? 25:55
So I grow that year.
SAGE 25:57
So you’d been doing the Brain injury Rehab and then you went to Nepal and that’s when you thought you had the opportunity to explore your artistic side?
WENDY 26:06
Well, I think I just thought I could sit in a room. No one had known me. No one had had any expectations. I could just play with clay all day. And still I worked out what I wanted to do. You know, I think because we were going just such a totally different environment, I had no expectations or demands of myself. I could be so much kinder to myself because I could expect that I would stop up and make mistakes because I’d never lived there before. So it was really I was just saying, Oh, look, I’ll give myself six months. Just seeing what happens and working out what happens. And so that was that was a real luxury to be able to sort of take yourself away from the expectations of, you know, society of life and whatever, and just kind of let not a new me evolve but work out well, who am I away from the constructs old, you know, doing what I normally do as an aid worker in Australia in a normal setting with people who, you know, think that I’ll be a responsible human being.
I think I thought I might be a bit irresponsible for a while.
SAGE 27:13
So I wanted to be an irresponsible, artistic. Yeah. Nomad Yeah, Yeah.
? 27:19
Adult That’s right.
SAGE 27:21
Well, you told me there’s a lot of other things that were discovered through this, not just the opportunities to help these women, but for you as a Westerner, you saw a really different view of art in how these people saw creativity. And that’s what I really wanted to talk about, because I find it really interesting and educational for us to understand how other people might look at the process of creating and the process of what we call art, doing it from a very different position than what we do. So why don’t you describe to me what you saw there that you thought was so different?
WENDY 27:55
Yeah. Look, it was such an interesting thing I can remember because I had my kind of brain drain right out there, its head on. I can remember when we did sort of getting to things and I would do a lesson plan and I would say, right, the goal of our listeners and our first step would be this, you know, I did it for myself and partly because I was sort of learning the language too, so I needed to remember stuff and prepare. But then what I realised is that any assumption that I had made needed to be really thoroughly investigated and often thrown out the window. So for example, artisans in Nepal, I guess this was the first thing the, the artists who were truly respected and revered were the ones who put most faithfully and beautifully copy traditional things. So for a start, legally in Nepal, you are not meant to talk about caste or think in terms of cow, but the reality is that everyone knows what caste you’re from, and often someone’s name will identify what caste them in. And the artisans, they were often in a failing low caste. It wasn’t the lowest of the low, but, you know, they were low cost, which in the first place. That was a surprising thing for me. And the second place was that you tended to be born into it. So it wasn’t like you suddenly know, Oh, love to be an artist, You know, you, you probably were if you were born into that caste and you would your training as you grew up because there would just be that expectation that that would be what you do. And then, as I said, the the skill or the, you know, the recognition came from being able to faithfully copy. So there wasn’t a culture of rewarding or recognising innovation or someone doing very different things. So there was this profound fear of making a mistake in education. It was probably more horrific to fail than to cheat. And so I think one of my biggest things early on was saying, you know, failing is only failing if you don’t learn from it. You know, the stakes are how we learn, right away to make mistakes. So it took, I’d say, even years for the women to feel, okay, we are suggesting something, but didn’t work the first time. And you know, I’d be constantly saying I make mistakes all the time and I’d bring in my mistakes, I’d bring in my horrible things and and say, But look what I’ve learnt from during this. So there was just one big difference with just that whole approach to sort of learning from mistakes and taking risks, you know, all that kind of thing. And I mean, these were women weren’t here because they wanted to discover their artistic goals or whatever that was. They because they were having to learn how to do something so that they could educate the kids and survive, basically. Right. So then there were the more practical things like no one used and all the ovens were really hard to get. Most of them had been a long way through school. So the whole idea of understanding, you know, preheating another no.
? 31:07
Matter what.
WENDY 31:08
The temperature, you know, is really, really, really sort of basic stuff. And then I was so fascinated by the way more collaborative approach to making and creativity. He saw, I think certainly in the West, we’ve got these heightened sense of possessiveness about, you know, well, actually that’s my idea or how I came up with that technique. We do something and I look at something their job and say, Oh, that’s just fabulous is a great idea. I just thought of that and that we’re not at all smile and say, I’ll wait it like I did. It was the idea that was wonderful. And they’d say, Well, we all did.
? 31:49
And it was it was totally true.
WENDY 31:52
You know, it was this they had just did not have a sense of, you know, one person might have said, Oh, I wonder if we could do such and such and the other one might have said, oh, you know, and if we do that, we could do this. So then it became this thing that just became, you know, our idea, you know, rather my idea. I found that so refreshing. I think there is absolutely a place for ownership of things. But I think the thing that I just feel so often is that, oh, you know, there are so many times I do something and I think I am a genius, I am hot shit. I have come.
? 32:28
Up with.
WENDY 32:29
This amazing idea. This is it. Go viral. And then before it even done something, someone somewhere else in the world would have done it completely unrelated to me. And I think write silly counts all the time. Happens all the time. That’s right. And the other thing too, is that anything we do, we standing on the shoulders of someone else. And I think it was such an interesting thing to learn. And even now you know, absolutely there are women within the group who are more creative ideas might come to them more quickly or they might learn quickly or whatever. But there is still this total sense of excitement about the fact that they are making this gorgeous style and keeping themselves alive, that people in the rest of the world think I make beautiful stuff. And that one single line on.
SAGE 33:20
Anything that yeah, and refreshing is the word. It’s just how lovely to hear about them being excited about themselves. Collectively. We’re very driven to have an individualistic identity and to try to stand out and for them to just be excited about the work and what they’ve done and not, you know, who they are, how it makes an identity for them just seems to epitomize what art really, and being opinionated what art really should be about, about the make. Yeah, right. And not about the identity. Although obviously many of us identify as artists and as a big part of who we are and what we show the world. But just to hear that, just to hear that like we all did this and that’s all they wanted and just to be excited for them as a group. When you really think about it, none of us these days, especially as as much as we are exposed to, are really doing anything completely UNIVAC ism on our own. That’s the history that we’ve seen. We have the other people that we work with there, the work that we see online all the time, and it’s influencing everything that we’re doing. A lot of our ideas are rooted in these things that we’ve seen or heard before. So just to hear of a group who’s like recognising that they didn’t work towards that, that’s just what they do.
WENDY 34:31
It’s wonderful I still get goosebumps thinking about. So one of the artists is a, a gorgeous young woman called Pramila Achebe, and she, she writes said this was early on, we were doing some training. And so I think it is important to remember where these women go from. They’re all in horrible situations, really difficult situations. And we’ve been making this jewellery that we were going to sell. And she just said the biggest change for her was that she stopped thinking about herself as a victim and started thinking about herself as an artist. Yeah, I am. And so we try not to use that word victim anymore. This survivors, survivors of violence or, you know, people who’ve experienced violence. You know, Prunella just said, that isn’t about me. Now I’m an artist. And so for me, that was kind of like, Wow, this is it.
SAGE 35:24
That’s kind of like the power of art. Yeah, sounds cheesy.
WENDY 35:28
But seriously.
SAGE 35:29
Like to lose yourself in it in that fashion. You know, it’s one of the things that is discussed a lot. I don’t know if in Australia, but we have issues with depression in the United States.
WENDY 35:38
I think a lot of it.
SAGE 35:39
Really related since the pandemic, of course, and a lot of it has to do with the fact that depression often is rooted in kind of a self-involved view of identity. I mean, I’m not a psychologist or anything. There’s just some things that I’ve read so take that with a grain of salt and research if you don’t think that’s true. But to hear that something like this can take you out of that self-involved view, I know for me, if I’m not creating that, I will get depressed and, oh, something. I’ve actually been challenged all my life. But to be able to put yourself into something else, you know.
WENDY 36:11
I.
SAGE 36:11
Love to hear that those ladies are having that experience.
WENDY 36:14
I had these wonderful conversations with the Divine Kathleen. Dustin So one of the magic things that’s been happening is that the women have been leaning more in love with Kathleen, and then through their meetings with Kathleen and Christine, different and the things that we’ve all said afterwards is that we all learned more about how all of us, including the women, how we all are we learned more from our being that are showing or telling or doing or whatever. Kathleen, at one point she dropped something and it was something beautiful that she’d made and she’d drop the floor. And so naturally, like you could tell she didn’t even think about it. She picked it up and said, Oh, well, we can do that again at the same time when it drops everyone else around. And so we’re all studying her thinking, Oh my God, this is the hands of God. She’s just created another magnet.
? 37:04
We all went, Oh.
WENDY 37:06
And she just picked it up, did it again. And then one of the women said, Oh, Deedee, because didn’t mean big sister. So everybody calls everyone older than then big sister and okay, fantastic if you’re not Greg nice. And so one of them said, Gee, you are like, you are not angry. And she said, well, you know, and then Copula said, I’ve got a sign. So I said, you know, something bad might happen. I’ll go, Well, no one’s died. And, you know, then Copula said, Oh, well, no one’s died. And, you know, it’s.
? 37:35
Just we all we all love.
WENDY 37:37
But it was from seeing Kathleen modeling that, okay, well, yet bad stuff happens. You pick it up, you fix it up and you move on. And so, you know, it’s it’s you know, it’s mutual learning from each other in the context of art, you know?
SAGE 37:54
Oh, that’s the best. Yeah. And you had mentioned something about like when you made the lesson plans so that you’re going in with a certain idea of what you were going to do. And then it just kind of got thrown out the window because we have a certain idea about what we are doing for them, but they’re also doing for us. You’ve done a lot of teaching. I’ve done a lot of teaching. It’s such a back and forth. It’s not just an idea for you, but you saw that highlighted there, especially with these recent experiences with these big artists coming in and helping these women learn new designs.
WENDY 38:23
Yeah, and I think that’s the biggest thing. I mean, one of the things that certainly Cappella and I talked about right from the beginning was, I mean, we we had seen saw in any Western as going to Nepal. I think it happens with a lot of, you know, countries where, you know, people like us Sage way and going to a country and we can think, well, you know what would help. And that is just the most dreadful attitude to have. And we saw Val and I saw so many gorgeous, well-intentioned people setting things up that then failed when they went back home or they lost interest or, you know, have a baby or whatever. And so that was one reason why we were extra adamant that we would never said anything up. We would never be on the board of anything it would only be if someone stole that we had something to offer. I think one of the things I love doing sort of since 2011, I think a friend and I used to do these two is where we take groups of people to Nepal and they spend four days with the women at some of that Nepal. And one of the big things was that the women in Nepali women would teach the Westerners appalling, the kindness. And and for me, that was so profoundly important because when I first started, they would accept almost anything and they’d have gone, Oh, great. Yep, that’s right. And I’d say, No, that’s not that’s wrong. And they said no, because I wanted them. I said, not everything that falls out of the lips of a Westerner is gold. Some of it’s rubbish. So it’s, you know, it was that thing of critical thinking that said, you got to listen to everything I say and think, actually, that’s rubbish. Well, you know, that’s a good idea, but make a judgment. Yeah. And they were so unwilling to judge westerns. But these women said that they were teaching the Westerners was quite profound. And I think for the Westerners it was sort of like a really tangible reasoning and people sometimes say, Oh, you know, you do such a wonderful thing in Nepal. I think that’s bullshit. I am so selfish. I do this because this, you know, shows my how.
SAGE 40:30
You can’t say that what you do is not charitable and generous, but it’s just like you’re getting something out of it as well. And it’s good to recognize both sides of that.
WENDY 40:39
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s just it brings such joy.
SAGE 40:44
And to clarify, you’re saying as an outsider from another country, you don’t want to organise something for that country because the way they live, their, what they do, what they understand is going to be different than you do because they have a different viewpoint.
WENDY 40:58
Absolutely. And cultural things, you know, there might be things that all think, well, I’m just quietly I think this is a king size priority and copula was say we could never do that because of X, Y, Z. So you’re right. So often I’ve learned that the women are the ones who understand how something will fly within the context of a very patriarchal society, how you know, what will work, what won’t. And so we have this thing now where and this actually came from a a beautiful man, Maki Osaka, who is a brain injury rehabilitation specialist from the States. And he used to say in the absence of meaningful activity, real change can’t occur. Rehabilitation won’t work unless there’s a meaningful activity. And he talked about how whatever you do, you should constantly be asking yourself three question What works, what doesn’t, and what do we need to do differently? And so these have become our kind dance pillars of thinking about everything. So, you know, whatever happens was, okay, what worked with us, what didn’t work? And based on that, what will we do differently next time? So it’s almost sort of takes away that thing of what what was a king sized stuff up? It was like, okay, well, that didn’t work. What can we do differently next time?
SAGE 42:17
Oh, my gosh. Okay. That’s like the basics. Like everything. Like what’s working and what’s not. What can we do differently with every piece of artwork out of the processes that you work in, your artwork, your business, you know, is it working? Is it not working differently.
WENDY 42:31
So and making time to do it? I think that’s the other thing. I can just bowl along and forget to stop, right?
SAGE 42:38
Because a lot of times we don’t stop and think. We just like, Oh, that didn’t work. Okay, I’ll do it again then. But you’re not analogue. Yeah. And that goes back to the like the episode on criticism. You know, a lot of people are afraid of criticism, but this that’s basically what you’re doing when you’re doing it for yourself and for your own artwork. You know, what worked, what did, and what can you do differently next time? And if you do that, when you finish a piece or you get to a certain point in a piece, you can ask those kinds of questions. But if we’re not asking ourselves those questions, we are not learning to the extent that we really could and really move forward a lot. But in case, yeah, those I think those are great lessons for all of us.
WENDY 43:17
Yeah just because then they’re party doesn’t right. Everything they do is fantastic either. But it just means I would never say I think this is the answer in that context. I don’t know what it’s like to have been in that kind of situation. I don’t know how it feels to have left, you know, a really scary domestic situation. I don’t know what is the most important thing they do. And that’s why I think it’s so important that. Right, those women are on the board now. They’re the ones calling the shots because they know.
SAGE 43:49
I think that’s kind of an important viewpoint to take with whether we’re teaching someone, we’re helping someone, we’re working with someone to realize that you’re talking culturally, but we can even take down to an individual level that as individual artists, we all have a different experience and a different viewpoint. When I’m doing this podcast or writing blogs not, I make a lot of exceptions to my statements. I’m like, It’ll be this, but it may not be for you. Just like the whole idea of like what? What is success for you? People will tell you to be a successful artist, you have to do this. You have to go to these galleries, you have to sell this stuff. You have to have an online presence that are there, but individually that may not actually get the kind of success for them that is useful for them, that is meaningful for them. And I think taking what you’re saying and thinking in terms of just individually, each of us and everybody that we work with, it’s the same thing. We have to look and say, okay, this is what’s good for us, but not necessarily what’s good for someone else, even someone very similar to you. Even someone working in the same medium may need something very different about. We’ve talked a lot about what the ladies have taught you, whatnot. Is there are there any other like inspiring or surprising lessons for the artists and the people that are listening to this that you’ve learned from your work with the ladies in Nepal?
WENDY 45:10
Look, I suppose it’s never a lie. You know, there was, as you can tell, how I could go on forever. Surprising for an introvert, Thank God. I think it’s just to never forget just sort of the just the wonder of being able to make stuff. So I remember another one of our gorgeous artists, Sharmila. So Sharmila is another one who has been with us, right? The BBC people look at the, the photograph on our website. There is some eyes and a whole what it takes size.
SAGE 45:41
Yeah, Yeah.
WENDY 45:42
Well, those eyes are actually Sharmila and Pramila who until that. But Sharmila once said, you know, I just. I just love the fact that I’ve got these two ordinary hands and then this lump of clay and that I can make something beautiful from it. And I thought we can sometimes, you know, as makers, we can, you know, we can just kind of forget to say, Hey, isn’t this wonderful? And that that’s just so precious. And I think, you know, and that’s one you did this fabulous podcast Sage on your your precious this one that was such a turning point for me because I thought Precious talk about Precious. I am so precious. I you know, I’m precious about time. I’m precious about materials. I’m precious about these are precious about this. Yeah. And so I’ve sort of as a result of listening to that, I’ve started this little ritual where when I sit down at my studio now I do this thing and I’m not woohoo! But I sort of say, okay, my time is precious. It is hard to get time to come down here and do this. And my materials are precious. I haven’t got all the money that well to spend on them. But and this is what take from your podcast. I say my playing is precious and my exploring is precious. And I just remind myself that that is just as precious as, you know, producing something that people can say, Oh, yes, that Wendy Moore, she’s a worthwhile person. She made three pairs of earrings. You know, I mean, it’s it’s that, you know.
SAGE 47:17
Just because.
WENDY 47:18
You forget well, I forget. I forget so easily. So I do I just I think it’s like stating an intention and saying, you know, playing exploration, this stuff is so important. So, yeah.
SAGE 47:30
What a great way to start your studio.
WENDY 47:33
Sessions.
SAGE 47:34
Because we do get wound up and all the things that we’ve heard and we’ve been fed about being successful and you know, in our own pressures that we put on ourselves to make money off of it or recover enough to pay for materials so we can keep playing or what whatnot. But it is it is really important those times, like it’s kind of like I always refer to all my podcast now the necessity of doing nothing. Yes. Where I had to relearn daydream mean.
WENDY 48:01
Yes, yes.
SAGE 48:02
It was very hard for me to just stop and do nothing.
WENDY 48:05
Well.
SAGE 48:06
In our in our society. I think it’s very hard these days to end, but that’s precious as well all those things are necessary just for the process of being an artist and just a sane human being.
WENDY 48:17
Yeah, yeah, that’s right. I think we’re generally sort of grown up with this, you know? Look, I had a friend that used to say, you know, we’ve only got so much time. You got to fill every moment. Don’t wait. So I very much came from that. Always the time. You know, I can lie down when I’ve done it. And and then I just thought, you know, lying down, now I’ve got to lie down. Now you know that you realize that, you know, it’s not wasting your time to do that, to just sit and do it right. If you know that some of that’s really important.
SAGE 48:48
Well, I’m so glad you got so much of that episode. Well, let’s kind of wrap this up with closing questions. So what would you say is the most important lesson that you’ve learned over your career as an artist and a advocate for these ladies?
WENDY 49:03
Oh, yeah. I feel like it sort of really shaped the way I live. I think there’s just this overwhelming sense of we’re just so fucking lucky to be here, you know? I can wake up in the morning and breathe and stand up, you know, all those things that it would be easy to type granted. Yeah, but it’s, it’s really hard to say a single lesson. But I suppose with life and art, you can never control all the outcomes. You never, never, never can. So if you can learn to respond to what you’ve got in front of you, then you’re going to get through better.
SAGE 49:36
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I talk a lot about feeding. Yeah. On the thing I it’s really important to get a lot of input and not just to work and, you know, look at stuff online and to go to your studio.
WENDY 49:45
Yeah.
SAGE 49:46
We can’t work in a vacuum.
? 49:47
I know.
WENDY 49:48
Jeff.
SAGE 49:48
How do you feed your muse? What kinds of things do you do to keep yourself inspired? You know, what kind of things do you do to bring into the conversation with the ladies?
WENDY 49:56
Yeah. Yep. Well, look, a lot of that they exchange with the women. I mean, that’s sort of like that’s my. Yeah, yeah. As I said before, nature. I mean, I just. I love getting into the bush and walking and, you know, like, my kids will joke that we sort of sometimes daily walk ten steps and it’ll be, Oh, will you look at that texture? One one the holiday. My, my daughters dig this sort of mockup of make I can you believe texture can you believe those polish And they’ll I think we were traveling through Tibet. It was quite raw and they just thought it was hysterical and I was, you know.
? 50:36
Oh yeah.
WENDY 50:37
So I have to get I go a bit mad if I don’t get out into the bush and walk right. I love looking at like traditional crafts, ethnic crafts. I love looking at other cultures, jewelry, and I work. I’ve got, you know, books and beads from Africa and stuff like that. And I love all that. I could, you know, spend hours looking at those things. So moves the desire. Yeah. You know, I think lots of things go source of inspiration and I think it’s not rushing through life so much that you don’t stop and look you know and on a night to night Russia. So I just have to be more of a stopper. There’s this beautiful column. So this is probably at the moment this is going to be rare that my funeral is start. But Mary Oliver has done this beautiful poem called My Work Is Loving the World. And check out the poem. It’s a gorgeous poem. Okay. She talks about, you know, that my work is mainly keeping your mind on what matters and standing still and relating to be astonished. And I remember when I read those words I like, I just felt, you know, something in my head was saying, well, you just listen to this one. And it was, I think, just that phrase, learning to be astonished. Because if you’ve got a bright mind like this so much, you know that that is astonishing and beautiful. So I just love that phrase.
SAGE 51:59
I like, Yeah, I’m going to look that up. That’s great. It’s a.
WENDY 52:01
Beautiful poem.
SAGE 52:03
And it kind of reminds me of Leo McDowell’s talks about whether the were doing, you know and yeah so say in astonished by that and just seeing things as if they’re not again yeah it’s such a great way to go out there as an artist. Yeah. And get inspired just by saying yeah yeah, this is not ordinary. None of these things that seem ordinary are really work. That’s right. Look at them closely, huh? So I almost feel silly asking you this question because I feel like the whole conversation was about your versions of success with the ladies of what you’ve done with your art. But do you have a succinct way of saying like, what is your version of success? What is that marker that says to you, I’m successful at what I’m trying to do?
WENDY 52:41
I think honestly, I do this sort of meditation journaling in the morning, and I think it’s if I can get through the day, remember to sometimes think about that, you know, remembering to just pause, you know, for me now, from my vast baggage point of age, I think it’s just remembering to try and do the good stuff. That helps, if I can think, no, actually I stopped and just breathed for 2 minutes and noticed that flower. That’s pretty successful in my book because. So I admire that.
? 53:11
I love that.
SAGE 53:12
That Yeah. Instead of like being a big thing, you’re just you’re celebrating the daily little successes of recognize.
WENDY 53:19
Yeah, totally Stuff that’s wonderful.
SAGE 53:20
In your life. Yeah I don’t worry about the big things I think.
? 53:26
It’s lower.
WENDY 53:26
Your expectations that my goal just has been said Yeah lower your expectations that it’s really lies. It doesn’t mean abandoned. Absolutely Doesn’t mean that. Right? It just means just be realistic.
SAGE 53:38
Okay. Well, tell people what you’re up to and where they can find your work. I know you have a trip coming up that you want to talk about.
WENDY 53:46
Yeah, I have got a website after the monsoon dotcom. Way more interesting than that would be the Summernats website. If people want to read about the ladies popular rights blogs. And that’s a really interesting website. We have got a trip coming to Nepal where my gorgeous friend Bishnu and I for two weeks take a group of women around. We look at when it’s projects in Nepal, it’s very much the road less traveled. So once you leave Kathmandu, they’ll hardly see any other tourists. We’re leading on the 19th of November and there are spaces. Yeah, so and we’re doing it in collaboration with another fabulous organisation called Project Diddy. So maybe we can put that in the notes.
SAGE 54:28
Yeah. We didn’t talk a lot about your actual artwork. There’s a whimsy to your artwork and there’s a lot of colour in your artwork, so we look forward to seeing some of that and I’ll post some of that on the social media pages during the week as well. So you can see your actual work as well as hear about the ladies.
WENDY 54:43
Yeah, okay, so that’s Jay-Z and it’s all about the ladies, isn’t it?
SAGE 54:47
So such an interesting point of view, what you’ve done and how you got into it and how they see things. I think it’s a really good reminder for us to step back and think about there is another way to look at what we do.
WENDY 54:57
Yeah, you know.
SAGE 54:58
Then what’s kind of fed to us so constantly. So yeah, well, thank you so much for sharing all this with us, Wendy. I really appreciate you showing up for this and giving us all these words of wisdom.
WENDY 55:08
Oh, God. Just like that.
SAGE 55:15
Well, we have a lot to take from this, so I really appreciate that.
WENDY 55:18
I just I think the overwhelming thing is I feel so lucky that I have had this life.
SAGE 55:24
Well, thanks for sharing it with us.
WENDY 55:26
All right, Gorgeous to talk.
SAGE 55:30
Isn’t she a kick? I love chatting with Wendy always. I walk away seeing the world in such a different light. How did her comments strike you? Did you get thinking about your identity as an artist, your need for attribution and recognition? If that’s the thing for your work, how much do you appreciate the small things and how other people across the world view their role as an artist? I just find it so interesting to consider that people are out there making artistic work without really any thought of ego. It’s just such a prevalent thing in our Western culture and hard to get away from. If you have your own thoughts about that or some interesting stories of your own from experiencing viewpoints through other people and other cultures, please do write me. I love to hear your stories. You can write me through the contact page of Sage Arts dot com website or on social media, on Facebook or Instagram, on the Sage Arts podcast pages. Follow me there and let’s get a conversation going and you can do that in the Post comments or you can send me a direct message. Also, remember to hit the follow button on your podcast player. If you’re listening to me on Apple or Spotify or Google or whatnot, you can get info on all the things we talked about as well as links to the donation buttons. If you want to give back in the show notes and on the sage dot com website. And if you want to keep up to date on related activities, like when I reschedule that zoom call and get any extra material offered to go with various episodes, click that news and notice this button on the homepage of the Sage Arts website. You just get a little Sunday morning email. I don’t use the email list for anything else, I promise you. And if you have a second, consider giving me a review on your podcast player reviews and follows. Help move the podcast up on the search list, or so I’m told. And that will help us get more people in on these conversations. Kind of expanding our little community here. Right? And yeah, in the meantime, go into your studio, know that everything you do there is necessary and precious cherish those small successes, stay curious and be That means viewers be true as usual to your brand of weirdness. And I’ll catch you here for the next episode of the Sage Arts podcast.
