Alexandra Grant: On Collaborating With Ourselves
I am joined today by my dear friend, Alexandra Grant. Alexandra is a fascinating person and talented visual artist whose work examines language and written texts through painting, drawing, sculpture, video, and other media and has been exhibited at institutions across the country: at Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA), the Pasadena Museum of California Art, among others. In 2008, she created the grantLOVE Project, which has raised awareness and funds for various arts nonprofits through the gift and sale of her iconic LOVE artwork. In 2017, she and her life partner, Keanu Reeves, co-founded X Artists’ Books, an artist-centric publishing house, helping artists and readers alike explore the creation of artwork and ideas outside the traditional model of book publishing. If that wasn’t enough, Alexandra is currently leading the first NFT project of the Hollywood Sign for the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce and is an Advisor to the Future Verse Foundation.
She joins me today to meditate on art and love—as we celebrate the release of her book Love: A Visual History of the grantLOVE Project. A comprehensive history of the foundation she started fifteen years ago, the book is a visual collection of paintings, prints, sculptures, textiles, jewelry, and architecture gathered by Grant and her collaborators to explore the timeless question, what is love? Our conversation is a peek into our regular walk and talks—a beloved routine through which we have been able to explore, reflect, and build an incredibly meaningful friendship. Today we discuss what it means to be looked at and perceived by the public, especially as the partner of one of the most famous actors of our generation; the inevitable disappointment that results from taking the beautiful ideas in our heads and attempting to turn them into something physical; and owning our native talents in the pursuit of a creative live, whether or not we fit into the conventions of being an artist. You have to create opportunities between the cracks, she tells us. Okay, let’s get to our conversation.
EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS:
Being in the messy middle…6:50
Owning your native talents…19:45
Conversing with the past self…32:00
Creating opportunities between the cracks…45:00
MORE FROM ALEXANDRA GRANT:
Love: A Visual History of the grantLOVE Project
Explore X Artists' Books
Check out her website and the grantLOVE Project
Follow Alexandra on Instagram
TRANSCRIPT:
(Edited slightly for clarity.)
ALEXANDRA GRANT:
I'm nervous. Can you tell?
ELISE LOEHNEN:
Why?
ALEXANDRA:
Cause I love you.
ELISE:
I love you.
ALEXANDRA:
And you're so amazing and I'm just so honored to be here with you.
ELISE:
Oh, stop. Stop.
ALEXANDRA:
I've been looking forward to it all week. Then I just had like, oh my God, what am I gonna wear a moment, I gotta show up.
ELISE:
I feel like it's fun to let people in on our little walk and talks and chit chats about everything.
ALEXANDRA:
About everything, about everything. You know, it's so funny because one of the things that I really, you know, in a life where we balance having a private life and a public life and understand both, our friendship has meant so much to me because we've both been in the public eye, but we also value our privacy. I feel like we're going on the red carpet with our friendship right now. The world's gonna know that there's the mind trust that's been going on. I'm so grateful to you and I think about you all the time, even though we can't walk all the time.
ELISE:
I know. Well, same. And you are one of my wisest friends and one of the most interesting people to hash everything out with, because I think of you as somewhat of a mystic. And I also feel like your perspective, as you just said, is so fascinating as someone who is, this is the interesting thing to me too about you is that you're not even begrudgingly in the private eye. Like you're too cool for the public eye, in my estimation. No, but it's interesting to me. And then, I think when I first met you, it was the whole age appropriate conversation because you have white hair and then you were like, wait, I'm actually significantly younger.
ALEXANDRA:
Yeah, there's that, I mean, what's interesting about life is that, you know, you set out to have an interesting life, to solve problems, to create, to be present for yourself and others. And then the conversations that you end up being in, sometimes you're like, wow, this is not what I pictured.
ELISE:
Right.
ALEXANDRA:
At all. And then you're like, I think there's that opportunity to ask about control, I'm thinking about this as an artist, I'm starting a painting, it's not going how I planned, but it's going really well, but in a very different direction. Do I go with the different direction or do I curtail the experiment and try to guide the creativity back to what I planned? And I think I live my life making the, you know, the first option, which is, this is not what I planned, but this is very living. Let's see what's there. Which can be really wonderful, but it can also be terrifying.
ELISE:
Mm-hmm. So terrifying and requires a bravery, as you just said, where you're in a way you're like, I didn't actually sign up for this and yet…
ALEXANDRA:
Jumped off the clip, and here we are, you know.
ELISE:
Well, and it's love. I mean, that's the other thing too that's like beautiful about the book and about what we're even talking about is that it's love. And so you go where love leads you and sometimes it's into strange waters where suddenly you're representative of all women over the age of 40 everywhere. Did you know that?
ALEXANDRA:
Yeah. I mean, it's funny because I think I remember just because I was always very identified with the mind and creative life, which is, you know, an interior painter is a very solitary in our profession, you know, you're alone a lot of the time. I'm very much a hermit in that process. And you know, like anyone who has a creative practice, when you're in the flow, hours can go by and suddenly you're like, wait, how did, where did the day go? I was just gluing, you know, little tiny things to something else, you know? And so then to wake up and be reminded, no, I'm not just in the line. No, my life isn't just interior. It's also being looked at, and I understood that being looked at like how to be in the world in the gaze in a very academic way. And I don't mean it like, like this, I, my, in my instinct about it was academic. I mean, literally academic. I understood being in the public eye as being a teacher or being a professor. My parents were both professors. So that's how I understood it. So it's interesting having chosen not to be an academic, you know, not to pursue a doctorate or further graduate work after my master's and become an artist, was really going against everything I knew how to do.
So I often ask to circle back to your lovely question or compliment about being mystical. I often ask, is the journey of being an artist a spiritual journey? You know, what's the relationship between the spiritual journey and the artistic practice? Am I really a mystic concealing myself in this world as an artist? So as not to terrify everyone? Or is the journey of an artist a spiritual journey?
ELISE:
Yeah.
ALEXANDRA:
I don't know. You know, I don't think I need to answer that question, but I'm very aware of the relation.
ELISE:
It's funny. I majored in art and English, art only because it was so fun and it was a form of therapy for me. I am technically terrible. I had good ideas, but technically I'm a terrible artist. I'm very grateful for the process, what you are talking about taking painting. My focus was in photography, but I had to take a lot of studio painting classes and being there and being in the middle where it's like, what the F is this, this is truly terrible. It probably was. But then having to keep going, right? And be led through the experience of making something that somehow resulted in an acceptable enough piece. I know we're talking about operating at different levels, but there is a certain faith that's required of making anything. And it's true for writing too, where you're in the middle, the messy middle, and you're like, I don't even know what this is, and I just have to keep going.
ALEXANDRA:
Yeah. I love that because, you know, so often we derive people who have a great idea in their head and don't take action. Like so much of the, I don't know whether it's self-help or coaching or teaching industry around creativity is let me help you get all those beautiful ideas out of your head and onto paper, onto canvas. But you know what, the ideas are beautiful. And sometimes maybe having beautiful ideas that are never realized is actually a gorgeous thing, right? The minute you start trying to put down that vision in your head, onto paper, onto canvas, into a film you enter into: it's never going to live up to the image in my head. And so that is that moment of the museum for one, which is really like an incredible thing, if that's a consolation. I'm so grateful to the images in my head that I will never realize, because that's when I lay in bed with my private museum at night, and I just look through all those beautiful things that are in there, and I can never make real, I treasure them, because there is that disappointment that happens when you say, okay, I have this great idea, now I'm gonna go put it into the world. And it can't live up to what's in your head, you know? And that process is incredible process of making in reality, which is a whole different thing than having a private museum of head treasures.
ELISE:
Oh, but Alexandra, wait, say more. I've never really thought about that, but this idea that whatever we create can never live up to the fantasy. Why? Is that just what it is to be…?
ALEXANDRA:
If we are channeling things through our heads, you know, first we're getting them the idea, the spark in our mind, and then we go into reality. The first step is the disappointment that we live in a 3D material world, and that we're trying to apply something physical or tangible to something that's purely electrical and made of light in our own interior cinemas. The first step from bringing it to mind and to the world is one of disappointment, right? You're bringing it down from, you know, idea stage, electrical synapse, impulse image, cinema of the mind into reality. And you have to come into contact with the tangible, you know, materials, people, things, collaborators paint. And suddenly the idea has to morph, you know, in disappointment. And then the next step after the disappointment is like, okay, but now I'm making something that I didn't imagine. It's not going like I imagined, but it's going. And then when you finish the object, thing, book, then it has the power to take you on a journey that you never would have dreamt had you kept the idea in your interior museum. And then that shifts your imagination. You have more artwork that's collected in the interior museum. And, but, then as you grow older as a maker, you see that distinction, right? The distinction between the beautiful interior museum and the museum in reality of things that you've actually made and done, and the stories attached to the making and doing that have changed your life. I have painted so many people into my life, you know, I said this to my wonderful art dealer in Berlin, I said, you know, I wouldn't know you if I hadn't painted this painting. You know, we'd shown a specific painting. And she said, no, that's not true. And I said, no, it actually, it is true. I wouldn't, because we like each other so much as people, we forgot that we were introduced via a work of art. And I think that's what's interesting is that the things we make connect us again to people through a language that's we're not totally in control of. So that we started this wonderful conversation talking about control. We have control over the images in our mind. We have to let go of control as we, you know, try to birth things into the world. And in that we are reconnected with new people and ideas that then confirm certain things for us, you know? So when you were talking about being a student, you know, you were like, oh, that realization things in my mind are really hard to put into the world. And then they're also in dialogue with people I don't have control over their opinions.
ELISE:
Oh, God. That's the whole other thing is like the wall of then perception and the energetic exchange of what you put out into the world or who you are in the world, or how you're perceived, and then what other people, the stories that they create from that, or like what that exists. And then there's the energetic exchange of all of this, right? I mean, I can't articulate or understand that, but like, you know, as being someone who's noticed when you're in the world, the energy that is coming that I'm sure you perceive, it's very interesting. It's a very interesting way to move throughout the world, and I'm going to put words in your mouth, but as someone who's like, I don't, actually, you didn't create that. Right? But now you're in this vortex of, it's like a projection distortion, you know?
ALEXANDRA:
When you realize you're in the vortex of projection, what I would say is that, you know, we always are, it's just when you're in the public as a creative person, then it's magnified in scale, but it's not the actual gaze that's different. So I think whether you're a kid in a playground or you know, someone on a red carpet, it's this similar human exchange of perceiving and comparing and narrating and interpreting and misinterpreting just at a bigger scale. But then I always say to students when I work at art schools or any school, that my goal for them as a student with me as a teacher, is just to build a creative life. You don't need to be an artist because being an artist is a specific relationship to a gaze or a series of conventions that if you don't fit into that, that's okay.
But everyone is creative. Every single one of us. And so how do we tap into what that is and then accept what that looks like? You know, for me, I think the biggest surprise when I was in my twenties is that I went to college. I didn't actually know you were an art major in college. I ended up being one, but I went to college as a math major, and I just asked the classroom, you know, the first semester and thought, there are two other people in my linear algebra honors class and I was like, I just can't do this. I can't do it because I don't want to sit in this room with these two people for the next four years. And because I just don't think that's what I'm here to do. And I also knew that I wasn't going to be fluent at math and that ultimately when I thought about my life, I wanted to take some sort of risk to speak a language that made me feel at home in my own body. And so then I became a historian and an artist at two separate fields. And it took me a long time to really take the rest, to be an artist. I would say late twenties.
ELISE:
Yeah.
ALEXANDRA:
So I really felt it, and then was like, oh, okay, I have to become an institution of one. And it was a really wild moment. Like, I kept searching until I was about 30, somewhere that I belonged; the institution where I belonged, and instead I had to make it myself.
ELISE:
So Interesting. I want to talk about that particular evolution, because I think it's so significant, like when you get to call yourself the thing, but I just, I need to just say, I was a mathlete.
ALEXANDRA:
Were a mathlete?
ELISE:
I was a mathlete. I went to the National Math Counts competition when I was in eighth grade representing the great state of Montana. I was so advanced in math, I went to this hippie school, and we had an incredible math teacher that I, in high school, and Alexander and I both went to boarding school, but I did linear ab, linear linear algebra, ab linear algebra math topics, one math topics too. Like, I was like on my own independent study. And then I went to college and I never took another math class.
ALEXANDRA:
I never knew this about you. I mean, when I was in a public high school and when I was 14, they ran out of classes. And so that's why I went to boarding school, because my mom was like, you know, you can go to college now. And I was like, I'm 14 years old, I can't actually handle that emotionally. And the good thing about boarding school is that there were kids who were a lot smarter than me. And then when I went to college, I had the double luck of having already lived away from home for many years. And you know, having had the education I did, I realized that there was something about humans that I was really interested in when I just looked at again the possibility for storytelling and connection. And I think I just took this minute and looked at what sort of like a math life would look like. And you know, you read about these incredible people who have special wiring and they're living with their moms and, you know, spouting theorems and that's extraordinary, but I didn’t think that was my path.
ELISE:
Math is a spiritual language, too. I mean, it's a beautiful way of understanding and decoding the universe. And it's so appealing.
ALEXANDRA:
And the pattern recognition. So what I realized in math, like my favorite things was discrete math, you know, when you're like, how to most efficiently distribute the male, like I love solving things like math making. And I think that is present in everything I do. I have an eye for pattern recognition, so I just, will go to a new country and I'll be like, okay, everyone who's bourgeois in this country wears a purple tie and lavender shirt. You know, like, I'll see these patterns and, and I can't help but sort of like count how many times I've seen them or, you know, it's just that recognition. And part of that comes from I think growing up in the way that I did with two parents and what's called a third culture kid.
So I was brought up in a culture that was different from that of my parents and who weren't from the same culture either. And I think that recognition comes from when you're not really from a place. And when I think of all these talents, you know, and when I say talents, I really mean that in relation to me as a child. You know, because you look at a kid and there's like native talents that kids have. And you can work with them or against them, I guess, in the parenting equation. And so for me, the native talents I had were like pattern recognition and the acute awareness of difference across cultures. And not in a way that we talk about it today, but just like, okay, these people speak this language that, you know, like power dynamics and all. And, so of course I became an artist.
ELISE:
Yeah. So talk to me about owning that. I mean, I've sort of been on my own journey as you have been participant in, of instead of just writing things, I'm a writer and getting comfortable claiming that or an author difficult for me to authorize myself.
ALEXANDRA:
To put your name on your own writing,
ELISE:
To put my name on stuff. Yes. After ghost writing so many books, I feel like besides not really having any talent,I was like, I'm not an artist. I'm an art student. I'm just an art student and some people had no problem calling themselves artists, but to me it feels like that's a really difficult leap. I think that's a really difficult leap for a lot of people. When do you, as a creative, when can you claim to being something? Or is that just like, in my head? Is that just like my own warped insecurity?
ALEXANDRA:
No, I think that's a really legitimate, and I'm actually grateful to you that you know, said you were an art student, that you were an amateur. I think I wish more people did that, to be honest. I think it would be easier, make their lives easier. You know, when we play baseball on the weekends, we don't say we're baseball players. And so that sense of perceived excellence, like there's something about art that, it is funny when people identify as artists, you go like the idea of like, what's the line of professionalism? It's hard. Yeah. I think it's hard for people to see it. You definitely know it when you're inside one of many art worlds because there's so many codes, and abilities, and talent. So it is one of those things, you know, I to add to the math, art history dynamic of college, I also played basketball in college. And I think about that, the two things go hand in hand for me is sort of like the athleticism, the body discipline that I got from sports. And I think that I learned how to be an artist by doing both at the same time. By seeing what that you had to practice, that you had to play and that you lost often until you got better. And, so for me, I really have correlated my sports practice and my artistic practice. So I understand when something is good and when it's not. Like, what does it mean, you know, to work out privately and push yourself to the limit of where you are and then go and win or lose a game because you're in relationship to other people's practices.
And I think that the arts are a lot more like sports and should be considered more like sports, in terms of you know, we fight for Title X, we fight for children to have sports because it exercises the body, the mind teaches us to play well with others in self-discipline. And art is, for me, fundamentally the same. So if we could say like, you know, I'm in the tee-ball of my art career, I made it to the little leagues, you know, but I think that is, that's probably the most accurate. You know that there is mastery and that there is apprenticeship, that there are all these stages of creative life.
ELISE:
Who decides, who's picking teams here? Like how do you, you know, like how do you know that you have made it to the major leagues?
ALEXANDRA:
Art is an interesting path because at some level you see, you know, in an art career that there's an education and then you would do group shows and then solo shows at a gallery, and then somehow you make it into a museum or, but the great thing is that there's so many more pathways than that and what we're seeing right now, especially with the development of Web Three and NFTs, is that a lot more people are identifying as artists, and there's a lot more economic pathways to success than there used to be because of disciplines fading one into the next. But I think it's really important to not play a game. I mean, it's funny because that notion of sports we're just talking about when you say play a game, when it comes to art, it's like that you're trying to game a system and for something to be sustaining over time, to really do anything over time, I mean, you can pretend to like potato salad with mayonnaise for your whole life, but if you don't like it, that's going to become arduous and grueling, you know? The most authentic careers, the people who have success over time are doing what they really like to do when no one is looking.
ELISE:
Right.
ALEXANDRA:
Which is the same thing as when everyone is looking. So, you know, sometimes artists have extraordinarily strange work, and you think, how is this person with this, you know, whatever the image is or theme is, so successful. And you realize is that it's not the rabbits jumping and doing pickle dances. That's what's interesting. It's the fact that this person has dedicated their life. So it's, again, the pattern.
ELISE:
And that's so important. This the focus on, well, not even the focus, but the reverence for the process. The same is true of writing, and obviously you publish books and make books as well. The process of the writing a book has to be the compensation for writing a book, you can't ever do anything creative with the expectation or hope that you'll be renumerated or rewarded by its reception because you will be destroyed. I mean, how many artists make it into museums? Right? How many books get the front page of the New York Times book review. If the expectation is that whatever you're making will the end result will validate the effort, you're going to hurt, I think. It has to be something that you're just has to do.
ALEXANDRA:
Yeah. I mean, one of my favorite painters, is Morandi he was at home most of his life, painting just a small number of vessels and jars, you know, and for years. But he showed us more about paint and color and form and shape than almost anyone else. You know? So if you said to someone, yeah, your life as a great painter is going to be living at home and painting your pots and jars for 30 years, that's not what people imagine. Right? But I think that's it. That there's this idea, I think of this in writing, some of the best books are about something that happened five minutes on the side. You know, you think about Clarice Lispector writing about a cockroach in a maids room, you know that honestly, it's what triggers showing thought or showing how thought works. The trigger itself can be something domestic or small. You know, it doesn't have to be a big event and that's what life is, it’s a practice, right. That you show up with the circumstances you have and the materials you have. And I think those are the best artists, right? And makers, that they're not just running and buying every material or taking every class. I mean, that is one way to be creative, but it's also following a set of conventions and rules. And so the idea of finding that balance between understanding what the conventions are, but then understanding that, no, I'm being drawn to try , this other approach to stories. That makes sense only to me. And then that gift of reception, right? That someone receives what you made and goes, oh my gosh, I get it. Or you know, thank you. And also in that process, realizing that often it's the accident that makes the best work. The surprise, all these things.
ELISE:
Where's the joy for you? As someone who practices privately as an artist, and then also you were just in South Korea showing that you have a public life around art and a public life in general—What's the joy, where's the joy? Like, what is the part that feeds you?
ALEXANDRA:
I mean, luckily for me, I'm very easily amused. I mean, so for me, I was like, I brought all these truffles back from Korea because someone found out that I love chocolate and they're amazing, when I say what that is, I'm enjoying the artistry of a chocolatier, and I'm enjoying the fact that someone across a language I don't speak, recognizes that I love chocolate. So there's a generosity. I think for me, that's what art is. It's connecting to others. Through small gestures, sometimes large gestures, and finding that we have much more in common than we do indifference.
ELISE:
Yeah.
ALEXANDRA:
And that, and that is a surprise. I mean, it's a surprise to the opposite when, you know, you assume that people share your expectations. I mean, those are the disappointments in life. But the surprise and the joy comes from those moments, right of finding commonalities. I also love, for me, I think a lot about I'm one of my dear friends, Steve Rodin and I, we did a show at the Pasadena Museum of California Art, I think it was 2014 or 2015 and we would often talk about collaborating with oneself. And for me, that joy, like back to college, I always felt that in college, I never got to finish anything that, you know, the arc of an idea was like this and then the deadline, like, oh, it would come and my idea would smash into it and again, not be realized, you know, the paper about the Swedish economy wasn't as good as I wanted it to be or whatever. But, so I wanted, as an artist to be able to follow the entire arc of an idea, which is what I let myself do. And Steve and I would talk a lot about collaboration with other people, but you collaborate with yourself. Like, I paint hard almost every day. And when I leave the studio, I've painted everything I have inside of me for that day. And I just look sometimes and I go, I don't know what to do next. Or I'll say, oh, you know, there's that purple line. I'll start with that tomorrow. And then I come in the studio after, you know, a good night's sleep, and I'm like, wow, who the hell did this? And then I get to pick up and add to the painting, which is basically a collaboration with who I was the day before and the day before that. And I love that aspect, that painting, it's an accrual of traces of the me I've been over multiple days. And it's a conversation with my past self, which I just, I love.
So the joy for me lies in reading who I was yesterday and adding to that and paint and having that record and painting. And, I'm a pretty minimalist person in terms of how I like to live, the colors I like to wear, or you know, but in painting, I like the opposite. It's just like every color maximalist and I love that freedom, right? To make the biggest mess and then somehow bring it into cohesive balance. So it is an exercise in conversation with self.
ELISE:
Yeah. Every time. I mean, it's so beautiful.
ALEXANDRA:
Every time. And so people always ask that, you know, that chess note about how do you know when a painting's done? And I think it's because I've achieved, for me, some sort of exquisite harmony where if I keep going, I'll ruin it. And so sometimes I have to paint back to what it was yesterday. Cause I went a step too far. And then I have, you know, the private joy of the studio, and then the joy of putting it into the world and having people respond as unexpectedly as the artwork is to me to begin with. So there is this notion that the thing I'm making, I don't know if channeling is the right word, but you know, that I'm not trying to control it.
ELISE:
Right.
ALEXANDRA:
Yeah.
ELISE:
Let's talk about love, because that's the heartbeat of at least this latest project. But it's such an interesting, it's so heady and in the world of Alexandra Grant, right? Because love is the thing that you can't sell or buy. It's an indefinable and ineffable quality that is ultimately the greatest motivator that we have in our lives. And first let's set this up for people, why you created the foundation, the work, and as like a self sustaining entity and the way that we collectively lean on artists for philanthropy.
ALEXANDRA:
Yeah. It's fascinating. I mean, I had been a professional artist for about, you know, let's just say I'd been working in LA as a professional artist for about seven years. And what I realized is that I was asked all the time to donate small works to nonprofits to raise money. And there's a level where you say, okay, that's great. This auction, people are gonna see my work. It'll, you know, lead me to have more opportunities. Someone might buy something from the studio, or a curator might see it. So there's, you know, real motivations. But for artists, there's no tax write off. So you can only write off the cost of the materials. And so it, it, I began to see it as over time, oh I might be giving away more work than I actually can make and it might be taking away from my career. So that was one question. And then the next was, I went to a Quaker college. I was brought up by people who talked all about civic society all the time. You know, my mom was a political scientist. My godparents were as well. And I really was thinking about, I want to give back and I want to do it with my art. And this opportunity to give, I could see, you know, photographers were able to print a hundred of their one photo. And so they could give very generously without losing the studio for a painter, that's different. So when I stumbled upon the love symbol, I really, you know, saw it as an opportunity, okay, wait, here's something that I can make, that I can create a specific, and I hate to use the word brand, I think it's overused, but I have a brand that I can make for philanthropy. And it solved the problem of wanting to make something that was solving the problem of being asked to raise money, but kept the studio intact.
ELISE:
Yeah. Well, it is a brand too, which is insane. It's like a physical brand.
ALEXANDRA:
And I have it branded on my arm now, you know, so yeah, it's literally a brand. And so I trademarked it, and that was a very interesting experience because immediately I was sued in trademark court, because a corporation named Cartier, declared that they owned love in, in several categories, which was fascinating to me as a language based artist that, you know, corporations would claim ownership of concepts like love. And then I also realized, well, if they're seeing me as something to compete against, then I own something that has a lot of value. You know, and I was looking at Robert Indiana and his beautiful love symbol, which was really an inspiration for me. And saw, you know, that he didn't control where the money flowed. So the way we have it structured today is that the Grant Love project is an artist project. So it's a business where we work with artists and artisans and printers and, you know, all sorts of people. And then the foundation aspect is hot housed under the care of the entertainment industry foundation, which has projects by so many different wonderful artists from Cher to Colin Kaepernick and many more. And so we are able to, you know, do the philanthropic work with them. And in the past, you know, it was really an alchemy, partnering with Project Angel Food and Heart of Los Angeles, different organizations that serve underserved communities and create art for them to sell, and auction, and give away really made me value what I do as an artist in a different way. Because I could say, you know, this neon sculpture with love equaled this many meals for underserved and ill people.
And the feedback loop for me was one of, in a world where our creativity is valued success and failure, you know, they're hard to value. You know, sometimes we have the support of our peers, when we don't have market value. But it's really remarkable to be able to barter, right? Like, I'm bartering by giving this thing that then becomes money that can then become, you know, part of an afterschool program. So it's been deeply satisfying. I mean, my idea of love really is that we have to take care of ourselves first. I mean, that's part of why I love you and your explorations about self care and mental health and physical care. And then we are in relationship with our family and friends, but this idea of loving people that we don't know, how do we do that? And how do we do it ethically, right. In a moment when we're talking about, you know, post-colonialism and not wanting to impose, I mean, philanthropy is very problematic sometimes because it imposes a value system on the recipient. And so I really love to think about like, how do we have exchanges between people with different levels of power that put people in the same framework,
ELISE:
Right? Or co-creative.
ALEXANDRA:
Yeah. Love is that, okay, let's define what that is, you know, across our differences.
ELISE:
Yeah. And then participate in it in a way that cuts in so many different directions, which I think makes it very meta and very interesting. And I'm really annoyed that Facebook owns ‘Meta’ by the way.
ALEXANDRA:
Speaking of, you know, corporate interest taking over a word. And it has, you know, it's backfired a little bit for them, but think about Facebook. I mean, they own the word face, you know, to begin with.
ELISE:
So wild.
ALEXANDRA:
Yeah. I mean, when we really think about owning language or where language comes from, and wanting to control language. I mean, that's a whole politics as well, which is why, you know, the French writer, Helensi Sue has always been a mentor and an inspiration because she had this idea of feminine writing as a way of pushing back against the power and authority of language.
ELISE:
God, that's deep. SoI know you gave us a version of love and I mean, I think of it as an essential animating energy for all of us or is it the essential animating energy? How do you think about it?
ALEXANDRA:
You know, when I think about that idea of animated energy, I think about chi and life force, right? That part of life force is just waking up in the morning and being alive. Like, what is that? We're all coming to grips with just our electrical impulses. But love at first, you know, is the feeling that we don't have control over. You know, think about the enthusiasm you feel when you're falling in love with another person or a friend, just a stranger that you've never met, you know, it's that it's a fire for sure.
ELISE:
Yeah.
ALEXANDRA:
But it is very much tied to life, right? And I think the happiest people I know are people who are in alignment with that inner life and inner fire, and that work with it instead of against it. Right?
ELISE:
Yeah, certainly. I mean, I know some of your hopes and dreams, but when you think about, I mean, you create in so many different formats, right?
ALEXANDRA:
I would say participated in.
ELISE:
Participated in, yeah. And you have lots of these little businesses and enterprises. I mean, you're just fascinating to me and I feel like you just, you come up in the crack to the sidewalk.
ALEXANDRA:
I love that. I mean, part of why your metaphor is so apt for me is that, you know, like many artists, I got some opportunities and I'm very grateful for the orthodox opportunities that I've been given, but none of those are enough to sustain a creative practice. You know, that one wins a grant, it's exceptionally, you know, an honor, but then you're like, I can't actually run a studio on this $10,000, so like most artists, you have to create opportunities between the cracks and pop up there. And I've just owned, you know, when I was teaching, I would say even 10 years ago, and I used the word artist, you know, would say entrepreneurship. Some people would get really scared by it in the art world, because it's taboo to talk about money. But I love to talk about money, especially in terms of arts education, because so many students are women. And then when you get into the professional art world, you look at the numbers and they're terrible, you know, for women like this. And then we're just talking about women as a category. What about trans women or, you know, queer people or, you know, women of color and international, the numbers are very, very small. So anyone who is eccentric, and by eccentric I mean not centered, like not centered and privileged, it's going to have a creative life that's being weeds through the cracks.
ELISE:
It has to, I mean, that's one of the things that I really admire about you too, is the fact that you recognize, you know, it's your interest in NFTs and crypto, which kind of puts me to sleep a little bit or just like, I don't understand.
ALEXANDRA:
So happy to bore you anytime <laugh>.
ELISE:
No, but the fact that you do, even as a creative person who theoretically, I think people look at you and in your public life and could probably be like, oh, she doesn't need money. And you're like, no, actually I do. I support myself. I have a studio, this is me. I am my own thing.
ALEXANDRA:
Yeah, I'm an adult. And one of the things that I think has been very important to me, and I think any person you know, is to have a budget and to have your own budget and to make within your budget. I mean, we've all been part of projects at a certain point in our life that have had infinite budgets, and it doesn't make the projects any good. You know, having a budget and having that structure, you know, scarcity is one of the biggest drivers for creativity. You know, not if you're stuck there forever, but, you know, limitation is what drives creativity. So I, I'm very committed to staying within my community and then using anything that I have that's extra in order to give back to the community. Whether that looking at X artist books, but I reinvested, always in creating more, which is, you know, maybe I, at some point have to look at my own amount of energy, like the budget of my energy, because sometimes I think, oh gosh, you know, here I am about to, to start some something new. But, I really am a working artist. With a working studio who shows up and I like to say that how I feel about being an artist is being an elevator person. And I'm in an elevator between the penthouse and the basement, and I think every artist is you. You can go to the parties and the penthouse and look at the view and drink the champagne, but you don't really live there as an artist. You live in the elevator because you go down and you do the work in the basement.
ELISE:
That's so interesting.
ALEXANDRA:
I'm always at events picking paint out from my nails because I've just come from the studio and I just don't have the time, you know, to deal with conventions like nail polish when I'm painting all day. You know, like it would be an infinite thing.
ELISE:
But that's so interesting too. I mean, and you think about this idea, so there are multiple ideas here. One, that there's something out of harmony for art and money to coexist for the artists, right? Like that there's this idea of starving artists and you go back into the renaissance, this idea of, of patrons, right? Like the wealthy patrons who were supporting these artists, Michelangelo, whatever. And so it's this really old story. I think that we have this romantic idea, and it's such a disservice to artists who need to support themselves and to this idea of artists participating in the economy of their own work, which I knowNFTs like the whole world of crypto, Ethereum, et cetera, hopes to solve. I kind of know as much as that. But it's interesting to meet you as a person and culture who exists, as you said, between the penthouse and the basement and why you like the basement.
ALEXANDRA:
Right? I mean, I think anyone on the spiritual journey is an elevator person too, if you think about it, you know? Enlightenment can happen in the penthouse, but you have to have your feet on the ground, in the ground. And I think that's the spiritual journey, is being an elevator person. I mean we talked about earlier in the conversation, the idea that when we have the beautiful images in our museum of the mind, and when we enter them into the world, the first disappointment happens for anyone studying art, the first great disappointment is putting their work into the world and realizing that there is a market, the market is a great disappointment and it's not accurate, you know, because so much fashion is involved, most people in the art world are people of the ear, rather than people of the eye, are listening to other people say why things are important.
People buy art, they have no idea why, you know, just because they heard so and so else wasbuying it. So it's really important to understand that the market is a disappointment. But then it's also fascinating, right? That, you know, we look at the opioid crisis and the Sackler family donated wings to every museum. So there is a money laundering aspect, that's the legal money laundering, you know, after illegal drugs and arms. The black market of art is the third largest black market on planet earth, because it's easier to transport a small, valuable artifact than it is, you know, a thousand gold bars across borders. But that reconciliation, like, okay, the art world isn't what I thought it was. There's a market involved. Some of it is a black market, you know, philanthropy itself is highly problematic because corporations use it to launder their reputations, et cetera, et cetera.
But that's actually where the fun begins, I think, when you realize that all of these transactions are also codes and encoded. And to segue nicely to the book, the love project became this, you know, way of talking about art as a transaction and really looking at, well, what happens when instead of a vertical philanthropy, we have a horizontal philanthropy. When an artist supports another artist, is that the same or different than when someone who might be living in the penthouse gives to someone living and working in the basement? So, you know, how do these questions work? I don't know if I've answered the question, but I certainly hope that the problematics of money that people can talk about it and somehow not feel uncomfortable or that it compromises this original downloading of the spirit images from their heads as they join the world.
A lot of people become cynical once they encounter the market and create all sorts of defenses. For me, it just is, it doesn't touch the integrity of the spiritual journey of art, which is why I'm able to work every day and look at the market and go, okay, today it's hot, today it's cool, but it doesn't touch how I think about being an artist.I mean, some days it's a bummer, you know, like you can't help but get excited when a painting sells, you know, that's the same thing is a painting not selling. I mean, they're just sort of this, to me, the positive and negative of the same value, but the joy is still in making the work and not being disappointed by market exchange. What I do like about the crypto market or part of it is crashing, is that the decentralized finances, people really begin to unpack and understand that centralized finance crypto is failing, it's decentralized finances is working, is that it's an opportunity for people who have been unbanked: refugees or people in smaller communities globally, to have access to a way of making money and exchanging money that can be equal to their talents and keep them within the communities in which they function already. So there are new opportunities and experiments that are happening. I think the metaverse moment that we're in is one foot in reality and we're all functioning in the Metaverse community, deposit a bank check, you know, on our phones. So we're already there and many of us don't know it, but yeah, to me, it's a very exciting moment if each one of us can admit that we don't know what's going on. You know what I mean? Like that if we're open to it.
ELISE:
I have no clue most of the time.
ALEXANDRA:
Yes.
ELISE:
But you're one of my wise guys. This was amazing, thank you buddy.
ALEXANDRA:
Thank you, buddy. I love you.
ELISE:
I love you too.
ALEXANDRA:
So lucky to have you. Let's go on a walk soon.
ELISE:
I know. Tell me when.
ELISE :
I’m so happy you all got to experience Alexandra. She is truly one of my wisest friends, both incredibly grounded and earthy and connected, and then she can really open her mind and go too far-out, mystical places. She is also very tall and I like having tall friends, she is taller than I am. She is also fascinating to me as a public figure, and not necessarily a begrudging public figure, it’s just not her thing, its not what she set out to do. But, she is partnered up with our collective heart throb. In fact, when I was introduced to her I was like, I don’t think I can be friends with you because I watched Speed a lot as a child and this is too meta for me. But she is full of grace and empathy, and joy, I think that also came through. I’ve never seen her in a bad mood, which is something I’d like to cultivate more in my life. There’s a lot about her to respect and model ourselves after, even though we were talking about how it’s a projection field of distortion, but she is one of those rare birds who is herself truly and fully, without deviation and I wish we had more of those people in our midst. Alright, I’ll see you next week.
