New York artist Will Cotton talks about:
His neighborhood of Tribeca, where he and his girlfriend bought a place, and how he's seeing Chelsea galleries starting to move there; his studio schedule, and how he still allows time to be social and finds the need to be out – including providing face-time for collectors, et al. - even though he's had gallery representation with Mary Boone since '99; how he consciously keeps it down to just himself making his work (he does have an assistant, Emily, who handles the desk/administrative duties), because he's seen artist friends turn into managers more than artists; how he builds his 'tabletop maquettes,' and one of his anecdotes in which he got in trouble for the overuse of a root beer waterfall for one his scenes; another anecdote involving discovering something inside one of the cakes from his maquettes, after its long-since dried shell cracked; the genesis of his using live models in his candy scenes, and how that's both been fruitful and also gotten him into a little bit of trouble for accusations of exploitation; the 'hedonistic and druggy' (specifically vodka and cocaine) phase of his life, just prior to starting the candy land-fantasy work that's become his oeuvre; and his gratefulness for his life in the studio.
Clearfield, Pennsylvania-based artist Rebecca Morgan talks about:
Her hometown of Clearfield, a financially distressed former coal town, where she currently lives in the home she grew up in with her mom, in between teaching gigs in other states, which affords her tons of time to work, but also feels like suspended adolescence; the liminal relation she has to the town, which both rejected her and she rejects, and despite those rejections she's roughly the only one among her fellow school kids who's still (for the moment) there; her dating life in all its challenges and even brutality, through dating sites and aps, and which include things like driving 4 hours to New York to go on dates with art dudes; how happy she'll be to settle in just about any city EXCEPT New York, even though she went to Pratt and connected with the gallery that now represents her before leaving the city, and how her current home in the middle of nowhere affords her the time and space just to exist (vs. killing herself to survive in NY); how she doesn't think she would have left NY had it not been for her landing gallery representation; her very substantial Instagram following: how she got there, what she posts, how she interacts with her followers, and how it gives her a presence, and even sales, even while living in 'the middle of nowhere;' her most impactful IG supporters: Juxtapoz magazine and Amy Sedaris; body image in relation to her self-portraiture, which ranges from naturalistic to over-the-top; and we close with an audio dating profile for Rebecca, where she makes her intentions known and I begin playing a little matchmaker.