Design Savant: Sculptor and Furniture Designer Vivian Beer

And today it is my great pleasure to have in the studio with me, sculptor and furniture maker and artist, and just in general, I think a pretty wonderful person. Early indications are the case. Vivian Beer, thanks for coming in today. It's a pleasure. Yeah, great to be here. So I was saying to you that I feel like I know you well because we always ask people ahead of time, can you give us a little bit of your background? And you shared all this really wonderful stuff about growing up in Bar Harbor and your early formative years in the sort of Mount Desert Island, Ellsworth area and going to the Maine college of Art. But then you've also had connections all over the place subsequent to that time. So just even knowing where to start is kind of really fascinating. But I guess let's start with your most recent work and your public installation. Yes, yes. That's great. I just finished a large project in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, so it's pretty close to here, which is great. I've been spending say the last five, 10 years, a lot more time doing these larger public art pieces and a lot of them tend to be a little further away. We're talking DC and further, so it's really exciting to do something close to home. And tell me about that piece. It was a part of a development that's right downtown. So there's a new building that went in right by the church downtown, so very in the heart of this historical area, but it was a fairly contemporary building, really beautiful with this glass structure. And the architects did a great job and the developer wanted to include a public art component with that. And I've done a few projects where I'm working directly with the developer. I think there's a real push for doing something unusual with art and developments, especially say in the last five years or so, because it's a way to really distinguish an area and a way to hook into community in a way that's really empathetic. And this is what art does, right? Architecture, yes, but art, absolutely. So I got to get in right when it's a hole in the ground. So we're communicating with the landscape architect, the architect, the developer, the city, the historical district committee. And what's really interesting is to drop in as a more contemporary artist into historical town like that and to be respectful, but also get to do something a little bit different than you might see otherwise. So I did two different pieces that are the largest scale I've been to so far, and so really pushing more of an architectural scale. And they're both these metal materials that I use quite a bit. So one is metal with automotive finish, right? So it has a color to it and the other is bronze. So a really actually more historical material. I called the whole project "Woven Together" and it's using these really forever materials, these really durable materials, but using them as if they were fabric, which is a little bit of my thing. So I'm taking this structural hard material that might be historically viewed as very masculine and I'm just making it gooey and that's sort of the heart of the mix for me. But it really, it's interesting because sometimes you get a prompt and so I got asked to come up with some ideas, but when I went into the first meeting, which was a number of years ago, this was actually the project I did through Covid. So it's like this huge project that finished out at the end of last year. We got everything installed, but it went through that really intense time. So all of the difficulties that happened with that, also kind of wrestling with this massive object that I was creating for a future of social interaction because, they're inside a public square so everybody can interact with them. There's seating to sit down and eat and have brunch in front of them. So it's very interactive. But the prompt when we met with the developer said, I want you to celebrate women. And I'm like, whoa, what a horrible ask. Because that can be a really difficult thing to do without being trite or being didactic. And so I was a little flummoxed with that, whereas I think I just inherently celebrate women by existing and doing the work that I do, especially in these really male dominated spaces. But something, or at least for me as a creative, you got to think of everything that you encounter is every art object that you encounter is encountering a person. You don't know, there's a whole world behind it and a world that was built by the artist, by the experience with these public pieces, by the community, by again, the developer, the different architects. So there's all these influences coming in, and some of it is about what's happening in that moment. And so this literally the day after I go to this meeting and I get this ask of, "oh, can you make some work that celebrates women because women need to be celebrated." Like, hey, awesome also, but how do we do that? That was the day that Ruth Bader Ginsburg died. So I'm here dealing with a hard ask is how I feel about it. And then I'm like, "oh no, one of the great trailblazers for women's rights, we lose." So I was thinking about her and about the area, and that's really when I locked into doing something that was based in fabrics and fashion, because she did a lot of amazing things. But one of the things that I think that she did that was really unusual was using fashion and fabrics to signal by using those jabot collars to signal what she was doing, that is a really complex thing that she did. And so I did have a plan to do a pat actual jabot collar pattern around the fountain, but we just couldn't pull it off because of the way the stone work was doing and stuff. But to me, it's still the center of that project and the effort of celebrating women, celebrating trailblazers by using this really permanent material, but using the form of fashion and fabric and all these things that have been requ historically to women's work, but in these big material. So I'm excited about how the piece turned out. It was definitely a battle for me physically and mentally. But yeah, I really would love for people to go check it out and message me. Tell me what you think. Yeah. Well, as you're talking, and I know this wasn't the direction you were going in, for me, I think about the women in my family who once worked in the Bedford Mills, so Bedford SoCo, and I mean really everybody but women in particular, they did a lot of that work. And they're amongst all these industrial machines and they're just kind of showing up every single day, churning out the fabric that would then go out to be used by people around the country. And so the weaving for me and the celebration of women, interestingly enough, just brought up a really different set of ideas. But I love that you're also, you're thinking about from the fashion and signaling. So I think that that's so true. How do you, I mean, celebrate women, what does that even start? Right, oh, yay. But also, "UGH" how do you do that in a way that again, isn't didactic, isn't lecturing, but is just creating a space for people to encounter? And I think about that a lot with my work and with public work is trying to create a space where you're not telling somebody what to think, but you're giving them an opportunity to maybe not, or what did I say the other day? I said I was think feeling. And that's a lot of how I try to build empathy into the forms. I'm using abstract forms, but I'm trying to build empathy. And that's what a lot of the precision and labor intensive nature of the work. Or I could say my work is labor intensive, but there's a reason for it. So I'm honing these really mostly compound curves, which are inherently empathetic as we are compound curves, but we're in these spaces that are not, I mean, you've got a little bit of curve here that's unusual actually for a building, but a lot of times we're working in these rectangles that are really unnatural. So trying to create objects that are environments that are empathetic spaces, and that requires a certain build that isn't common, I should say. So trying to create those spaces and using things that are using abstracted form, using reflectivity, using interactivity, all of those things to build a relationship or a space where relationships can be built. One of your original pieces, I believe, was actually in Yes. My first public installation was in Portland. And so you were talking about different connections and yes, there's connections and as I had a chance to really start early doing my work start, so I've had the chance to do a lot of projects and also really didn't have a strong relationship to sleep until recently. So I'm really, really productive. But the relationship with Portland is of course very deep because I did my undergrad there and huge formative time for me. That first public art came from doing a two person show at the ICA at Mecca. So I got invited to do a show there. At the time, I was living in North Carolina doing a residency at Penland School of Craft, and that was a moment in time where I was able to switch from working on my stuff while working for somebody else in some way to having my own studio. And that was very much supported by that residency and was the intention of that residency at the time. They've opened that one up a little bit more for shorter term projects and such. But at the time that residency was designed to help artists make some sort of transition, whether that was as a mid-career artist transitioning to something else, or as somebody like myself who was beginning to transition, say, into running your own studio and working full time. And that's what I was able to do. So I had the time and the space and the support to have my own studio and make these larger pieces. And so I was getting to do these shows and not necessarily bartering my time between say, survival and what I wanted to do. So yeah, I did a couple of pieces for the city of Portland. They've moved them around a little bit. It's been a while. I think that was 2007, maybe. So a minute ago. And they're still there, though. You can go visit them. I love that. I love Where are they located? They are in the back bay. So they're along that walking path. And what was great when that, there was a call that went out, and when I could write that call, it was great because I used to jog around the back bay. I lived up on the hill and could just jog around the back bay or go grocery shopping down there. And so I had a familiarity with the area, and that made me feel like, oh man, I could make something really awesome that you encounter around the back bay. So whenever I'm approaching doing a public piece, I try to get a lay of the land, but it can be really helpful if you already know the area, but if you don't, you've got to find out. You have to embed to some degree. Otherwise you're just sort of forcing a piece. There's a term that's used a lot of site specific people do a lot, which means you're putting it into a site and then they're site responsive, which public art really should be. So you have an object and you're thinking, oh, that could fit is really different than being responsive to a space. I really love that idea because I know in my field in healthcare, there's been this interesting move away from understanding people as people and people as context. And my specialty is family medicine. So my specialty is understanding people as part of a family, part of a community. And we've moved towards this very widgetized way of looking at it. That's terrible news. Well, I'm not saying everybody, Vivian, I am just saying that there is this interesting way you're a doctor, you could be a doctor anyway, anywhere. It's plug and play. Whereas me personally as a physician and also as a writer, it's been so incredibly important to go to the place where the stuff is done to go to the place where the people are living, to go to the place where people's stories are unfolding because we are as much shaped by our environment and our context as we shape our environment and context. So I do love that parallel with the public art and this idea that you're not just saying, oh, I think I know you. Let me just put this thing over here. You're saying, here's this place that I want to try to interact with and I want to create a conversation within. Yes, exactly. And it's trying to understand those forces at play is a huge part of the way I think about design in general. So categorization can be helpful for communication. So I kind of try to dump them into forces of culture and forces of nature. But I use the term forces because when I am trying to, or not even finding myself attracted to different things. So you walk down a street or you meet a person and you're attracted to different things, and that has to do with your own personal history and predilections and cultural upbringing and all of that. But you do get attracted to things. And those attractions are really good indicators that there's something to be curious about. And I am most curious about, not say the waterfall, but the force of water falling over rocks and how it changes those rocks over thousands of years. So it's the part that I'm interested in. So not necessarily that a red button usually means stop and a green button means go, but the culturally, but that we have these cultural indicators that are learned over time. So that's when I'm going out and assessing. I'm looking for those patterns. And being sensitive to that I think keeps you from just trying to plop a spaceship in the middle of a space that has nothing to do with, to not become alien, but to become native to whatever space you're in and be responsive to it. Your work has a lot of industry embedded in it. And you specifically have built a lot of your art around metal, which correct me if I'm wrong, but this has not traditionally been a space that a lot of women artists have entered into Traditionally. No, no, it's definitely, I've been negotiating a lot of, I think I mentioned a lot of male dominated spaces throughout my career, metalworking. I've used a lot of automotive paint, I've got a lot of connection with hot rod culture and blacksmithing and all of these really kind heavy duty, traditionally seen as quite masculine fields. But you can't help what you're meant to do. I think it's that it connects to that natural attraction. So what are you attracted to? And I think of building your studio life and building your personal language about this negotiation between understanding what you're attracted to and why. So it can be complicated. So I love all of the hot rods and the car stuff, but I also love high heels and fashion and the way fabric is represented in classical art. So I love all these different things, and I think one of the wonderful advantages of doing abstraction is that you can take all of these things and put them in an object that can speak to many people because it's kind of drawing from this larger interest. And I think your studio life, you have choice in it, but you also don't, it has its own gravity. So you're following your interest, but you're also following the process. And that ties to the industry. So some of my process is about being inspired by different things, and some of it is the act of making. So I build my own tools. So I imagine something, and then I have to imagine how to make it and pursue highly technical processes, new technologies. I use computer-aided design. I just started using a program where I can use augmented reality to see my objects in three dimensions as I'm building them. So trying to engage in a lot of different ways. So it's part art, which I always think of is the head and heart space. It's part engineering, super nerd, and it's part athleticism. When you're doing this work, and that's tied to the craft component. You're kind of like a professional athlete. And I don't think a lot of people realize that about the craft community is that it's athletic, even if you're weaving baskets, it is incredibly dexterous and athletic. So it's, it's not how people think of it, but it is the experience. I love all of what you're saying. And I think having talked with people who work with wood, for example, or talked with people who work with stone, which is even more fascinating to me. I'm not sure that everybody considers how do you create essentially an enormous stone monolith? How do you do that? And it requires machinery and people planning to do things that are very logistical in nature. And I would imagine that as a kid growing up where you did and describing it as sort of eighties, nineties, not really connected with the outside world, but knew that somehow there was this artistic side of yourself, you actually had to be pretty committed to, I don't know why I'm attracted to this. I don't know why I want to be an artist, but I'm going to do this no matter what. And so even this question that I have about what, it's sort of not necessarily that you are a woman and you're doing something that's more male dominated, but more just that you are doing this interesting thing and you have to have made that commitment to yourself because it certainly wasn't handed to you by anybody else. I think that's why I use the term gravity, that you just feel pulled. People always talk this way about the arts where it's a calling, but it is, it's a calling. It's a calling, it's a discipline, it's a challenge. I mean, so many challenges, and I've worked very hard, but I've also been really lucky. So you really have to have a little bit of both. You do have to work hard, that doesn't come accidentally, and you have to fail far more than you succeed, and you have to be willing to. So becoming comfortable with not having pieces come out, the more you're comfortable with failure, the better you're going to do. And that's hard. I think that actually gets harder the longer you're in it as that relationship to failure, because now you have a reputation to upkeep. You have a studio with a lot of equipment, you have to continue to afford to upkeep. So that risk aversion really becomes harder as time goes on, I think. But maybe the heart of, I don't think it was necessarily believing in myself, but giving myself not even realizing I needed to give myself permission to do it, just doing it. I didn't realize it was risky until later. I just did it because it's what I did. And that's what I think of the calling where you don't even consider doing something else. You just do it. And I dunno, never occurred to me not to. When you talk about the hard work and you talk about the willingness to take risk, and you talk about this being drawn, it doesn't erase the fact that there are still things that happen in your life that you have to try to find a way through. And you mentioned COVID, and that was obviously a pretty big thing, but you also had a pretty significant thing happen in 2017. I'm wondering, are you okay with talking about this? There are lots of challenges through the way, right? We're talking about resistance of, we talked about male dominated field growing up rural and trying to afford myself the opportunities or pursue things. And I think that always felt really good to me, is swimming upstream felt good. I like resistance, and I often joke that that's why I like metal the best. And I also work with concrete and paint all these things that are technically difficult, physically difficult. I like a fight, but sometimes you can't fight. And that was something that I always, you were asking about adversity and challenges and the things that feel the most adversity are when I'm like, yeah, I just can't power through it when the resistance doesn't feel good. And that was when it becomes most personal, that's when it happens. And I think it becomes really hard to talk about it. It does really hard to talk about when things go to hell. I think it's hard for all of us. It's hard to hold space for other people when things are going poorly. But I think it can be especially hard in my profession where yourself is also in a way, the product and being an artist yourself has to be in the work, but you also have to run it a business because you're legally required to. And the expectation is, oh, well, you're a business owner, but we would like you to put your entire soul into it too. So you're inherently attaching value with a capital V and value dollar sign to your work. And that can be very complicated. And so it can be really hard to share when things are going wrong. You're like, yeah, I'm great, I'm great. And I think we all have some relationship to that through social media becoming so large, kind of watching people figure out that they need to package themselves or feel like they need to package themselves or see other people's wonderful packages of self and feeling bad. So it becomes really hard to share and say in 2017, everything kind of went to heck for me because I'm at the top of my game, man. I am coming off TV shows. I'm interviews, I'm public art, everything is happening and I'm traveling. I'm traveling so much, I'm having a hard time even moving into my new studio, which I had to get because I got displaced. Everybody has these issues. Displacement's a huge issue for us, and we're in the middle of traveling. I'm doing the sabbatical and my wife has a stroke. She's fine, she's fine. She's fully recovered. But I mean, we are young, totally unexpected and bam. And I just carry on. I'm like, I can do everything and carry everything. I don't even talk to people about it. For the most part, we're dealing with hospital bills that you wouldn't even believe it's bad. And I do get help. I get help from the Haven Foundation, which is amazing. Stephen King started that here in Maine, and unfortunately, I think they're kind of wrapping up, but sending that money out to other organizations. I got help by craft Emergency Relief Fund, which I now serve on the board of. It's an amazing organization specifically for craft artists that are going through some sort of disaster. And disasters can be personal or they can be shared, especially with what's happening with the environment right now. We see these big fires. We see, say the floods in Vermont, where, I mean, a tornado almost touched down in Manchester the other week. We're kind of dealing with some other stuff. But that was, I think the first time. And I got through it. I got help, but I didn't know how to ask for help because I'd always been able to power through and never really realized how much help I'd been getting anyway. So I say I'm lucky, but that's also organization supporting me, all this different stuff. And what stability I have is because I've had so much support from my community. I think I'm still unpacking the lessons from that. But mostly when you brought up the idea of adversity, I feel like adversity is when adversity really sets in when you feel alone, and you do that to yourself sometimes when you don't know how to ask for help and such. But the lesson from that for me is I'm unpacking it over time, is, yeah, nobody can be an island and nobody really is. And I feel like, yeah, it is important to talk about. We all have these frictions, but it's that old school, just pick up your boots and go kind of thing. It just doesn't always work. Sometimes you need a little help. And I think it's a great opportunity for empathy when you kind of hit these moments where you're like, oh, no, I can't get myself out of this. And it made me think more about how to negotiate that public and private self of how do you share what this is happening? So that one of my colleagues, when this happens to them, hopefully not, they're not going to feel as scared to say, yeah, I'm a mess, or just disappear. And everybody's like, are you still in business? Where it's just like I just needed to sleep a little more for a few years. So yeah, it's interesting. I feel like, but that's the moment. That's sort of the lesson of the moment. We need to take care of each other always, that this is one of them. Participating in your community is always an important part of any discipline, I think. But that it's a challenge until you feel alone and then it's adversity. This is one of the reasons why I'm really glad that you're willing to share this, because I think that it happens more than it. We are all humans. We all inhabit we bodies that do things like unexpectedly. Yeah. I mean, how could you have a wife who's so young who had a stroke, how does that happen? And yet it does. And yet it does, or even, I think that's one of the reasons that the Haven Foundation was so wonderful as an example, is that that is a grant that Stephen King set up after he got hit by a car and he said, oh my God, what if I wasn't wealthy? I can't write. So that grant was meant to support specifically professional artists that are encountering some sort of fiscal devastation because of a health issue. So that's specific to what was happening for us. But there's all kinds of support networks out there, and I think it's really important that we try to feed those networks because I think we're all just one bad day away from being vulnerable and you don't see it. But I think if we can try to build in some resiliency individually, but more as a community, that we're all going to rise because it happens. You don't think it's, and that I'll be fine now. Maybe you won't be fine. Maybe you won't be fine. Well, as you're talking, it was making me think of your father and you were describing he was a boat builder. And so you come from a family, as I've already mentioned, as do I, where people work with their hands. And when you lose the ability to work with your hands, whether you're a boat builder or whether you work in a factory, or whether you work in automotives, whether you own a small business, whatever it is, Oh, totally. Then your livelihood disappears. It's not like you work for a corporation and you can take sick time or whatever kind of leave you need. So I think that is, for me, and Maine is so that Maine, probably New Hampshire, probably many other parts of the world. Were talking about before we started, everybody's got a side hustle in Maine, right? Everybody's more than one job, and there's a lot of crafting. I think that's why I got a chance to encounter many materials very early in life because everybody's got a side hustle. Everybody's got, oh, yeah, yeah, I got a for forage off my barn like all this. But you're right. It's when you're working with your hands, when you're working with your body, when you're kind of trading in your sort of physical talents to craft or build or something, it does make you vulnerable because of that, that that's your natural resource. But we aren't necessarily trained to think of ourselves as our greatest natural resource crafters. That is for sure. Because you can't replace the knowledge embedded over time with the experience inside your hands. And so that's one of the reasons that I am engaged with something like Craft Emergency Relief Fund, because it's specifically targeted to help support craft artists, which are vulnerable for those reasons that you're plugging into. You're not plugging into a sort of corporate background that has sort of support structures. It's where the gaps are, right? We're living in the gaps, and most creatives are living in the gaps that we don't have a sort of public support for because we're living slightly unusual lifestyles, right? This is a really doom and destruction, I feel like. But the thing that I bring out of this, Vivian, is actually that sure, you're living in the gaps, but also you've already said that you kind of like that area. You like that space. I need to be in that space. And I mean, I think most creatives do. And so it's the advantages and disadvantages things. So the advantages when you're living in the cracks, you can see 'em, right? You can see 'em seeing the patterns. You're seeing the cracks in a way that when you're living inside the normative, whatever that is, these days, you don't necessarily see where the water is flowing into those cracks. So it just has to be that way to some degree. I would love to see us as a country support our creatives more. I really would. And it's hard. There are a lot of people that need support, but I feel like there's this divide in the public imagination between creative output and the person that created it. And that divide is really hard for the artist because you dehumanized your work is very important, but you're not. Right. And I think that's what I would love to see change. If I could see any perception change for the arts is that there's people attached to all of these efforts, and can you imagine your life without music? Can you imagine your life without painting, without walking by that mural, can you imagine your life without these things? Or even say, can you imagine buying Nike sneakers? But it's not the swish. In fact, it's not even named Nike. It's just sneakers for running. That's the name. So that's what you take the creative part out. You take all these things away, so it's embedded deeply, but knowing that that division between this is human output and imagination. I look at the world and I see people designing those sconces and oh yeah, that diffuser, I see that there were people behind every choice here, and I want everybody to see it that way. All of it's intentional. You've identified why it is that the Portland Art Gallery exists, and you're not specifically a Portland Art Gallery artist, but the idea behind the Portland Art Gallery isn't just to make art available. It is also to support the artists that put the art in the Portland Art Gallery. So when we bring people in, the idea is please bring some art home with you. Put it on whatever surface you are going to because it's supporting the artist. It's not just about, oh, the pretty thing and how it makes me feel. Absolutely. It is that, and also it is also the thing that we need to do, which is to acknowledge that there's a human behind this, so please buy a piece of art. It's why we have this podcast because we want people to understand there are faces behind these wonderful things that we get to enjoy in this world. And it really ties back to what I was talking about of value and that complexity of making something that has value, value dollar, monetary value, but being engaged in a profession that adds value to humanity and to attach your passion and your self. That becomes the challenge that unless you've lived a studio life, you don't really see that challenge. I say, go easy on your artists. They're people. Well, I have very much enjoyed our conversation today, so I hope people who are listening will find a way to support the creatives in this world, whatever that looks like for them. Hopefully in a way that's meaningful so that people can have their medical bills paid, for example. Oh my goodness, Right? Or buying some really, really sweet bronze to make a piece out of. That's also important. I mean, if you look in our garden, we have sculptures in our garden for that very reason. So whatever that looks like for whoever