Leslie Holt
Our podcast is hosted on Anchor
But you can listen in most places such as: Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Radio Republic.
Leslie Holt is a mixed media artist and mental health advocate who exhibits internationally and is represented by David Lusk Gallery in Memphis. Leslie has taught college and in community locations for over 15 years. Currently she teaches primarily adults with disabilities in community settings. She has also worked as a social worker and advocate for people with disabilities and people receiving welfare benefits. She is the creator of Neuro Blooms, a project which uses art to make mental health conditions visible and beautiful. Neuro Blooms partners with organizations on their mental health awareness efforts and so far the project has had a presence in the US, UK and The Netherlands. In addition, Leslie is Co-director of Red Dirt Studio, a warehouse studio for a group of independently practicing artists and creative professionals in Mt. Rainier, MD. Leslie lives in Hyattsville, MD with her wife and three cats.
Machine Transcription provided by Happyscribe
Leslie Holt.mp3 - powered by Happy Scribe
Hi, everyone. Today's guest is Leslie Holtz. Lesley is an accomplished artist. Her work has been featured internationally. She is also the cofounder of Red Dirt Studio, where she displays her work artwork. She has been an advocate for people with developmental disabilities. Mental illness. As somebody who has some mental illness herself, this episode really dies into how she has coped and adapted, but also how she has used her artwork to reframe and gain more of an understanding and empowerment over her own self, how she sees herself, how she sees mental illness in general.
This is a really fascinating, really deep conversation. I was particularly impressed with how Leslie shared the information of when you have a friend, family member, coworker who is going through maybe some depression, how we can help that person without getting in the way, what are the best things to do? How do we know what the warning signs are? So I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I do. Thank you very much for listening. Leslie, thank you so much for taking the time to be on the show.
It's always great to see you. I really appreciate you being here.
Thank you so much, Costava. I'm really honored to be on. Thanks for the invitation.
Of course. So I would like to tell people a little bit about your work, who you are, what you do. I know you're an artist. Talk a little bit about your art, how you got started with it, and then we'll dive deeper from there.
Cool. Yeah. I'm an artist. I have been an artist my whole life. I would say I have a funny, sort of funny, maybe kind of gross story about how I got into it seriously, which involves a lawn mower in my toe. And I won't say anything more than that. But it meant that I couldn't play tennis that summer, which is what I was doing. And it was the summer before 9th grade. I was switching high schools. And so I took a painting class that summer and got completely hooked on painting.
And I had a really dynamic, wonderful teacher all through high school. And so that's when it became sort of solidified, that. Yeah, I'm an artist, and this is going to stick. And I did.
That'S interesting. Can you tell us a little bit more about? So I'm assuming before that you drew for fun, you kind of liked it, but it wasn't something that you really took seriously. Is that correct?
Yeah. And I think that's sort of age appropriate, right? I mean, when you're a kid, you're just curious and you do what you want to do. And I just love doing it. Yeah. And then I got into this intensive program in high school, and it was amazing. And it was all I wanted to do. I was pretty obsessed with it in high school. Interesting.
Can you tell us a little bit more about your teacher and how they inspired you. And what did they do to make it so engaging and so interesting and making you want to pursue this?
Yeah. Well, his name is Walter Bartman. He is still teaching. He's not at a high school now. He has a center, an art center that he teaches that he founded and what it was about him very dynamic, very passionate person who took us all really seriously. And if you were into it and you put the work in, he was sort of like, your champion, your advocate. He very much instilled, not for everybody, but for a lot of us and intense work ethics. So there was an art group at school and we would go be in the art room, paint after school, weekends, nights.
We went out at night and painted under street lights. We painted each other. He made a community more than anything and just instilled a seriousness in us. I look at 9th grader now, and I think, wow, that's a little kid. And so I think of, well, that's because I'm old. But you think of a teacher taking that kid super seriously and saying, I want you to fill this sketchbook by the end of the semester. And I want you to do this drawing this week and gave us a lot of work to do and talked about the meaning and showed us artists just sort of this whole holistic experience of art.
Yeah.
That's amazing. Can you talk a little bit more about this idea of community, which I think is fascinating and super important. So what did that community mean? And how did he make it feel? Like community is a sense for me. It's a sense of like, you belong. You're not being judged. It's almost like a second home, right? Yeah. So basically, as long as you took the work seriously and you tried, he made you feel like you belong to something.
Yeah. I think that's a good way of putting it. And I think it's a way high school is rough. So I think a lot of high schoolers are looking for a home, like they joined the band or the track team. So it was like that it was a safe place to go. Sometimes if I didn't have a friend who had the same lunch period as me, I'd just go to the art room and eat lunch and I'd find somebody I knew there it was about creating a really vibrant, safe place without calling it.
That right. I don't even think safe space was a phrase back then, but really, that's what it was to be like, the weird kids. It was a lot of misfits and weirdos.
That is powerful at that age, right. How did you feel like he was assessing the different talent levels of the different artists? Right. Like, if he felt that you were trying, not you, but a student was trying and maybe they just didn't quite have the ability. Was it something that he still encouraged them if they liked it, because it's too soon to tell what you can make of it at that point in time, right?
Yeah. To a large extent. Yeah. Definitely. It's interesting. I'd love to talk to him about that in terms of how he feels about, quote, unquote natural talent versus everybody's got potential. Right. And sort of the myth of your natural and you don't even have to try. It just comes out of you. Certainly there are people like that, like the Michelangelo, but really, most of us are, like slogging along. And I was very slow. I consider myself sort of a slow learner in terms of some of the technique and the drawing.
And I don't feel like I picked it up really fast, but I worked really hard. And so he always respected that. And he had the skills and the vision to take somebody like me, not like he molded me or anything but to take somebody like me with enthusiasm and a certain amount of skill and really push me to the next level, essentially. So I think that's more how he thought of it rather than people who had talent or didn't have talent, which is what made it so affirming.
I think for a lot of people, for a lot of the students, sort of like you all have this potential. But I think a lot of it was like the hours that you put in. He's very demanding of that. And like, he'd ask you, how many hours did you spend on this painting you got to put your time in which I think is really valuable. I think musicians are just used to that. You got to do your scales, you got to put the practice in. But artists not so much, not as much.
So that was very helpful.
He knew even back then about that. What is it, the 10,000 hours rule that you have to put in to master something, right?
The Malcolm Gladwell. Yeah. I think that was before that notion was in the air. But yeah, he definitely would subscribe to that.
That's really interesting. And how did that? So as you moved into College, and I know we're going to talk about mental health and neuro blooms and everything, but take us through the steps of when you went into College, what were you looking to do? What were your goals and drives at the time? And how are you adapting to that new challenge, that new Vista?
Yeah. College was very rough for me. I went to I think, technically, five different colleges took a semester off from there. That's when depression really hit me. I think it was there in high school and even as a kid. But it really hit me. And as it hits a lot of people at the College age, it's a huge shift. It's a huge transition. And so I was pretty lost during a lot of College when I went to the first school I went to Westland in Connecticut. I went there for three semesters and was fully intending on majoring in art.
But the art Department was like two people, and I only got to study with one person for three semesters, and we didn't really click. And so I had a lot of soul searching, like, Am I in the right place? Am I really an artist? That kind of, like, deep identity stuff. And you piled depression on top of that. It didn't go well. And then I went to an art school for a semester, and that didn't feel like the right fit, either, because I wanted a whole Liberal arts education that was important to me.
And then, yeah, I went to a state school. I lived with my parents, and then I ended up at Washington University in St. Louis. Geared up ready to go with the art thing again. Very clear about it. And I went in as a junior. So that's when you're really focusing on your major, I went right into this pretty tight community of juniors and seniors in the painting major, and I really thrived there still struggled quite a bit with depression, but that school was a good fit for me.
Yeah. That's pretty much the trajectory of my College years. It was a bit of a journey speed bumps along the way.
Most definitely everybody. I had my share of speed bumps, too.
But.
I spoke to another great guest about mental health, and he has depression as well. And one of the things that I would like your opinion on is, do you remember? He said there were certain things, certain things are genetic in us and certain things can be triggered by our environments. Do you remember kind of what triggered that? And then can you also talk about we talked a lot about anchors, like the anchors he used and the help he sought out to help him get back to a place where he could function and could thrive and could adapt.
Would you agree with that general framework?
Absolutely. And I think a big part of what happened from high school to College is I was anchor less, and I realized a lot of what I did throughout my whole school year, elementary school, I was off in the teacher's pet by design. I latched on to teachers. My home life was pretty chaotic. Mental health issues sort of abounded in my home life. And then when I went to College was sort of plopped down there, I couldn't find my bearings. So I had, like, one really good friend who I felt safe with and some professors and other subject matters, which was interesting.
I actually thought about majoring in polySi for half a minute because I love this one class I was in, and my adviser was like, That's not a good reason to switch your major. I was like, okay, but it really was like searching for my mother or something. Will you take care of me? Not literally, but absolutely. I was anchorless. I loved that word. And so that was a huge trader for me. And frankly, the school I was at was kind of known for that. There was no common meeting place at the school.
There was this small student center. It was a really interesting conversation to have with various people, like so many people literally felt isolated at that school. So that was a really bad match for me. I would say as far as specific triggers in terms of when it became clear that the depression was unmanageable, I was living in this group house. It was not great. There was not great communication among us. Go figure. A bunch of College students not communicating well. And I wasn't enjoying my classes, and I started to have this focus problem, which is generally when that starts happening.
I know an episode is coming. Like I literally couldn't decide if I was going to class or going to get a coffee or going to the library. It's sort of like minute decisions were just torturous for me. And I was literally walking to my art history class and instead walked to my car and drove from Connecticut to Maryland because I went home. That occurred to me as the thing I should do. And I stayed there for, like, a week, and then I came back. Yeah. That was the beginning of okay.
This is a real problem.
Sounds like a self preservation instinct kicked in, and you just went home?
Yeah. Absolutely.
Feel free to share whatever it is that feels right to do it. But can you help us understand two things, right? Number one is, how did you start to get back those anchors? And how can people who are friends with you? So if I have a friend who has depression, how do I know when and how to best be there for them and intervene or just support them through that? What are the things that we should be aware of as people so that we can help each other in those moments?
Yeah. That's a great question. What was the first question?
The first question is, how did you start to realize and get back the anchors that helped you right move? Depression is something that my understanding is it's always with you on some level and never completely goes away. But at least you can get to the point where you're okay or where you're thriving and not right. You're okay?
Oh, totally. Yeah. And you don't think about it. If you're lucky, you get the combination of treatment and healing, and you can spend a lot of your life not even worrying about it. And I've been very lucky that way. Yeah. So finding my roots, finding my anchor, that was a very long process. Like I said, I went to four different schools before I landed, where it was good for me to land. And that also meant finding different treatment providers, like therapists, psychiatrists, that was extremely chaotic. So, yeah, it's a really interesting question, Gustavo, because I'm not quite sure what clicked it in place in terms of when I moved to St.
Louis to the school that I actually graduated from, I was still casting about quite a bit and struggling quite a bit, like kind of went in and out of these depressions. So, yeah, I don't know if I have an answer to that question. It took a long time, and it was maybe not school that did it. And then the second question about how can people support people's? Depression is really important, and it's different for different people. Right. We're all different. But I think the main thing is accepting it, believing the person, I think with any mental health condition like, yeah, it's that bad.
And no, this person, this friend is not being lazy or they're not unintelligent. I always felt so dumb because I couldn't organize my thoughts. And that's the worst feeling to have in College where you're supposed to be smart and believing and then being with them and asking them, do they want to be with somebody? Would they rather be alone? Makes sense. What makes sense to do. And then offering a very good friend of mine. When I went through a very bad period, she sat with me.
She would do stuff and just sit with me so she was physically present. But I barely could talk. I was in such a bad way. But I went to work with her and sat in her office while she taught. I went swimming with her. She just made it herself available to join her in her life and made it okay for me to be in this horrible state. So for me, acceptance is a lot of it. And then I think really key again, with many mental health conditions, sort of.
It's the time you need people the most. And it's the hardest time to reach out because you have no sense of self or hope or just you feel totally worthless and not worth spending time with. Right. And so to reach out is sort of just really challenging to do. And so the gentle reminders that, hey, I'm here. You may not want to spend time with me. That may be just too much for you, but I'm here and a text, an email, a call, maybe like, leave a message.
I tend to isolate severely with depression, and a lot of people do. Partly it's the nature of the beast, and it comes with just the shame piece. So just gentle nudges about I know you're going through a rough time, and I'm here. And even if you never even talked to the person that really matters, it makes a difference that somebody knows somebody is watching out for you. You are not alone. I think it's very hard to it can be very hard to watch somebody go through it, especially if you have not gone through it yourself.
It can be scary. The person, you know is pretty transformed and feels pretty beaten down. And of course, everybody worries about suicide. You know, that's a real worry. What I've learned over and over from doing work in mental health and just personal experiences with friends. It's really okay to bring it up. It's okay to ask, do you feel like you're hurting yourself? Do you feel like you're going to hurt yourself? You're not going to make them think of it by asking it's okay to ask. They might not answer you.
But it's an important conversation to have absolutely something that I have a couple of questions. I thought that was a great answer based on what you just said. So when somebody who is going through a depressive episode says that they want to be left alone, and yet with your friend, it helped you to be with her and just to participate in her life and just hang out there. So can you think of a situation where it actually is better for at least in your experience, where it would have been better for you to be alone?
Or is that something that the friends in your life and the people who matter to you should just kind of nudge past that a little bit and say, Are you sure? And it's totally okay. And why don't you come and do this with me or why don't you come just hang out? How do you know? I know it's a tough answer, but what's your experience with that? Is there actually a time where it's better to be alone?
That's a really good question. What I'll say for myself is shortly after I started school at Washington University, my roommate quit school and left me alone. And so I broke my lease and I moved in with this family and it was not going well with the family. It was not a good match. Nothing horrible happened, but it wasn't a good personality match. And I was severely depressed. So I spent a lot of my time just in my room and they would try to beckon me out of my room and give me the TV room was right across from my room, which was miserable for me because they watched a ton of TV.
I just really did not want to spend time with them. And so it's an example of, yeah, that was a good choice. Not like staying in your room for 17 hours a day is a good idea, necessarily. But if that was self preservation, it has to be a safe person. It has to be a healthy person. It has to be that accepting person. It has to be somebody who can really hear you. And as far as being a friend, am I that safe person? That's a very intuitive thing.
And I think what can be helpful is if you know, somebody who goes through depression is to talk to them about that when they're not in it and say, well, what's been helpful to you or what made sense? What did I do right last time or what would you prefer? I not do that's a deep friendship to have that conversation. And those can be sort of mini conversations. I will tend to tell people I am kind of disappearing for a bit. I love you. I'll be back.
But I've never liked talking on the phone. Right. So it's just going to get worse. And so many adjustments to how people react to me is how I handled that. I've never sat down and said, this is what I need, because sometimes you just don't know and it's like you're out of your mind. So you don't know what's going to work. So I appreciate your generosity and sort of the nudging where it's like, are you sure? Are you sure? How about we just watch TV, like, really low impact?
Nobody needs to talk. You're just sitting there. And how about I come over and even just to lay eyes on them? Like, I made this really awesome soup and I'm going to bring you some and then they can choose not to open the door. You can leave it at their doorstep. Right. Or let you in and talk for five minutes and then you still have an eyeball on them. Yeah. It's very nuanced. Right. Tricky.
And that's a great answer. And that just all these situations are fluid. It's about how well do you know the person, how comfortable you are and what your rapport is together and then you feel that out. But can you also talk a little bit about the psychiatrists and therapists? Sure. I don't think that gets discussed often enough. What has worked for you, and what advice would you give to somebody else to get a better outcome from their situation with that? Because those relationships are important.
Absolutely.
Especially if they're good relationships, which hopefully they should.
Which is not a given. Right. So our mental health system is so broken. So if you actually are lucky to access mental health care, sometimes it's a question if that will be a good match for you. For whatever reason, that being said, what worked for me again might not work for everybody. But yeah, for most of my life, I've done a combination of psychiatry and therapy. And what I think people might not know about psychiatry is they are not there to talk to you about your childhood or even your everyday struggles.
They are really there to monitor and manage your symptoms and prescribe your medication. I think that's shifted a lot, probably in the last 20 years. And I think people get kind of put off by that, like they don't care about me. But that is really more the role of the psychiatrist. It's rare. It happens. But it's rare to find a psychiatrist who wants to sit and talk to you for an hour, like a therapist. And once you are stable, whatever that means to you, you won't necessarily see your psychiatrist very often.
That's the goal to not have to see them very often. Like I see mine, like once every six months or this year it's been annually. But then your therapist is there to talk about whatever might be triggering you, depending on the kind of therapy. And there's a million different kinds of therapy. Talk about how to manage it. Talk about childhood stuff that may have led up to this biological stuff. Like my mom has bipolar, what it means going forward, talk to you about a lot of people don't want to take medication, and not everybody has to.
That's a really hard choice for a lot of people. And that's something you can process in therapy. Not necessarily great to process that with your psychiatrist, because obviously they believe in medication, and it's to the point where it can feel like it's being pushed on you, right? Yeah. So I've had both good and bad experiences with psychiatrists, and what I would say, whatever recommend to people if they choose psychiatry at all is to really stick with it and don't stick with somebody that's not working for them.
I've done that before, and that's not a necessarily safe situation for you. If it's somebody you don't feel like you want to call if you're in crisis, that's not the psychiatrist for you, right? Yeah. But the therapy is sort of the ongoing relationship to sort of dig deeper. And sometimes that can be for some folks with depression, they don't necessarily need medication or they don't need it long term. And therapy is what's most helpful to them in terms of coping with what's going on. There's cognitive behavioral therapy where they change their thoughts to kind of change how they feel.
There's tons of that stuff. And then there's alternative healing modalities. I'm doing something called Somatic experiencing, which is very much about trauma in the body. So there's less talking, which is fascinating. I've always done, like, talk talk therapy. And this is sort of she stops me and asks me how things are feeling in my body. I'm like, what do you mean? So that's been mind blowing. They're wonderful and really fascinating. There are different kinds of therapy. People should know that if something isn't clicking, there's options.
It brings me back to a question I wanted to ask you before. I know that when you're going through a period of depression, it can be really difficult. But when you do regain some perspective or get some of yourself back, were you able to see or appreciate just that, right? It's a process and it's okay. And I don't have to feel the shame that I'm feeling to this degree because I'm still trying to figure it out. So you haven't given up, right? That's one of the most important things is even if you feel like you've hit rock bottom if you haven't given up, there's still the possibility of finding that combination of therapies modalities support group that's going to work for you or work much better for you.
Absolutely. Yeah. I think I know when I'm emerging, when I have these glimmers of hope. Yeah. When I can be patient with it, when I don't want to just banish it for my body, because that doesn't work. Even medication doesn't work that way because like you said, it's part of you. It demands a certain amount of respect. It has a certain amount of power, and you have to contend with that. And there's a whole lot of patience, which is when it feels intolerable that is the most painful part, because it feels like it's never going to end.
And that's where people get in real trouble and sometimes do hurt themselves because they see no end to the pain.
From what you're saying for you, at least an effective way out of that is to try to accept it or, like you said, appreciate its power, appreciate what you're feeling and just sit with it, not avoid it, not run away from it, not try to banish it.
Yeah. I think that is very easy to say in retrospect. So I think I believe that right now because I'm feeling pretty good. That is almost impossible while you're in the thick of the crisis and that's part of the crisis, right. It just feels like it won't end. I always qualify when I say something like that because it's like if you're in the thick of it and somebody would say that you'd be like, get out of here, super unhelpful, go away, just be patient and recognize its power.
Oh, no. I want relief. You just want relief. But yeah, in retrospect, yes. And when it's lifting. Yes. That's when you're able to have more perspective. Absolutely.
I've had some bouts of depression, not to the same degree, but I've had, at least in the last couple of years, some physical injuries that I have better from. But they were definitely like I had those moments of I know it's not the same thing, and I'm not trying to say it is, but this is my empathetic moment of trying to imagine what it is like for somebody else's. I had that feeling of I don't know if I'm ever going to get better. I don't know if this pain is ever going to go away.
It's not the kind of pain that I can just sit with because it's physically jolting and it's like spasmyng things, and I can't do anything about it. There's no relaxing. You just write it out until it goes away, however long it is. And so I had a lot of those emotions and feelings that is this going to go away? How am I going to manage this? I don't know what to do.
Absolutely. And you're right. It's not the same, but it's still depression. And then some people might call that situational depression. I think it's all situational, but that's depression. The only difference between that because your feelings that you just described are very familiar to me is that the duration and sometimes the intensity. Right. I imagine you didn't get to the point where you were thinking about hurting yourself. Hopefully, it's about the intensity and the duration. When it's chronic depression, it repeats, it comes back. It's not just based on a situation, although there are these triggers.
Right. But I think that is a great way to find empathy and to understand what if you had that experience that lasted for six months? What if you felt that way for six months? That would be a different ballgame. Right. So I look at these pet scan images that we'll talk about later. But they look at pet scans of people with depression or depressed symptoms, and people who are sad or listless. And those pet scans look very similar to each other. So it's not that you're not having the same or similar feelings as somebody who has chronic depression.
It's about the intensity and the duration of it. That sort of distinguishes it. Yeah.
There's a great segue. Let's talk about your artwork. Let's talk about neuro blooms. What gave you the idea to start, first of all, looking at those scans and then turning it into something artistic?
Well, lots of things. I had dealt with mental health in my work here and there, off and on. Really. I mean, you could call self portraits. I did these very dark self portraits in high school, so you could call that being about mental health. But I sort of overtly started dealing with mental health and grad school, and I did images of pills and pills spilling in different locations. I went home for the holidays and spilled my mom's pills and took pictures of them just talking about general disarray, chaos and something that's gone wrong in the home, which is to say it's sort of just been this interest for a long time, but not sort of continuously.
So I got back to it really, when I moved back to my home state. So I graduated from WashU and St. Louis and then stayed there for, like, 20 years, except for three years of grad school. And then my wife got a great job offer here in DC. My parents were aging and needed help. So we had not planned to move from St. Louis. We loved it there, but sort of those two major things came together. So we moved back here, and that was a really hard transition.
And I think that's what got me back into dealing with issues of mental health. I looked at hard historical issues of people sort of despair and extreme emotion. That's sort of how it started. And then I always had these brain images in my mind and sort of had collected some of them. And I can't talk about it without saying. My sister is a neuroscientist who studies schizophrenia, so it's sort of like it's in my consciousness and in my family right to look at the brain, even though I know almost nothing about the science behind it.
I'm looking at it from a very different perspective than she is, but I just started playing with them. I don't remember the exact moment what was going on in my head, but I thought I have had these kicking around for quite a while. I'm just going to dig in with the subject matter, and I was doing embroidery. I still do embroidery and paint, and so it seems perfect to hand embroider these digitally based images. It seems sort of like a potent way to deal with them.
These images that literally flash for a fraction of a second, and I'm sort of slowly embroidering them for hours. Embroidery is certainly a very meditative and healing activity. I think recently what I've come to understand is that it's a little bit of my grappling with science and the notion of objective data about the experience of the mind. Right? I mean, how ridiculous is that there's objective data about that, but that's in a way what the science is trying to do, not pretending like it can, but that's the direction that is interested in going is finding the trends, finding the categories, finding what's happening in the brain.
I believe in that deeply, but I also believe that's just one way to look at mental health.
The scientific method has it's super useful in some areas, and it's super reductionistic in other ways, too. So yes, we have to at least my take on that is, let's find where it's useful for us, and let's discard it where it's not and find whatever is useful. But when I look at, for example, your neuro blooms, I'm not an artist. I appreciate art, but it was never something that I'm more like music, movies, books. But when I looked at your neuro blooms for the first time months ago, it was the first time in my life that I had, like, a visceral reaction to them.
It was really interesting experience. I encourage everybody to go take a look at them, order some, but it hit me in my gut, and I've never experienced that with art before.
Wow. Thank you. That's an amazing thing to hear that's sort of dreamy. Thank you for saying that.
You're welcome. Obviously, the brain scan is the starting piece, but then you're interpreting that artistically in your way, correct?
Yes. It's the starting piece, and it's actually become less and less. The work that I make is sort of taking more, less literal approach to the original pet scan imagery. It's becoming more abstract, which has been interesting.
Please talk about tell us more about your work. What you've been working on, what's been inspiring you. I know that you recently got back from an amazing trip in Amsterdam. Let's please share. We'd love to learn more about that.
Let's talk about Amsterdam. What a place. Yeah. So lately I have been working on these neuro blooms. They're paintings to try and paint a picture of it for people who are just listening. There are stained canvases. So I pour paint on raw canvas. And so just like when you stain your clothes with grape juice, it seeps and bleeds and drips. And I stain a bunch of those canvases at once. And then I add stitching to them. And the stitching that I've been adding with embroidery thread is based on brain images, based on these pet scans of people's brains who are experiencing different mental health conditions.
And they're compelling for lots of reasons. As an artist, they're incredibly compelling, color wise and pattern wise. They look like kaleidoscopes. I mean, very lopsided Kaleidoscopic imagery. They're not symmetrical, but our mandalas visually, they're just very engaging for me. But also, I love sort of the potency of the meaning behind them that schizophrenia looks so completely different from bipolar and that there is really something literally physically happening in your brain. And so I think it starts a conversation about mental health and what is happening in your brain, what is the cause of mental illness or mental health conditions.
But it also just piques curiosity because it's so visually interesting. I think that's what I most love about it. The images are recognizable to some, but to some, it's just an interesting image, and they want to know more. And that's sort of what I want the conversation about mental health to be about as well. I don't think that we can ever know what the causes of mental health conditions. I happen to think that that will remain a mystery, but we can certainly have really interesting conversations about it.
And I think the visual is a way to get those started, because mental health is not necessarily very verbal. What's happening in your interior is sometimes very hard to talk about, right? Like we were just saying, it's a time when you should be talking to people and reaching out. But it's a time when it's very hard to. So I think visual art is a particularly good way to talk about things that are unspeakable. Sometimes I've been working on these mixed media pieces for several years now, but really focused on it.
In the last couple of years, I had a show, University of Maryland, right, as the pandemic was hitting, so it actually got cut short, but luckily it ran most of its run. Luckily, I just had a show in Amsterdam over the summer and a place called the Beautiful Distress House, which is this really interesting organization that is totally focused on art and mental health. The core of what they do is they have this art space where artists who mostly European artists. I think I was their first American artist exhibit who make work that's in any way related to mental health can have an exhibit there, and it doesn't mean that they themselves experience it.
The relationship to mental health can be really varied. And they have theater there, their performances. So it's not just visual arts. And then the second piece of what Beautiful Distress does is coordinate artists and residencies, placing artists in psychiatric facilities. So they have exposure to psychiatric patients, clinicians and other staff members at this hospital, and they can visit with them. They have access, not necessarily to people who are so severely ill that they're on a locked Ward, for example, but for folks who are a little less severe but severe enough to be in the hospital or in a day program.
And they have one in New York that they've had for a few years. And they just started one in Japan, which had to shut down because of COVID. But hopefully it will get going again. But the one in New York is something I was scheduled to do before Kavan and I went up and visited. It's just amazing. So you live on the hospital grounds. You live on an abandoned hall of an empty part of this hospital that's now an administrative building, and you can go and hang out with patients as much or as little as you want and make your work.
And so your work can be influenced by your surroundings, by your conversations. You can make work with patients. But you have a space in this abandoned hall to make your work, and it's totally self directed. They have a little apartment that they've set up there. So it's up to you to create it's three months. So it's a nice chunk of time to really dig deep. I cannot wait to do it. I am very impatient with this Cove and nonsense.
Absolutely. That's fascinating that they would whoever thought of that was very intelligent human being, because that's a brilliant idea.
Yeah. And so it was actually started. I don't know, the very first program like this, but Beautiful Distress was based on a Dutch program that's been going for, like, 20 years at a hospital in the Netherlands. And so, yeah, that's pretty well established there. But I don't think there's anything like it in the United States. I think this is the only program like that. I'm pretty sure very unusual. And it has to be an administration, hospital administration that's very open, willing to take that kind of risk.
I mean, there's all sorts of things you have to go through to be able to spend time with the patients, all sorts of background checks and things like that. The man who coordinates it in the New York hospital is a real visionary. And he said he was trained as a drama therapist, and he's got all these art therapists on staff, which you are not. You are not an art therapist. I don't want to be an art therapist. So they make that super clear you're not treating anybody.
You're not providing treatment.
You're there to be an artist to connect to immerse, to experience. It came to me while we were talking. And I do want to focus on this, too. But there's this idea in art, probably in culture, too. Right. That beauty is tied to symmetry. Right. The more symmetrical the body or the more symmetrical the piece of artwork. And I think that part of the reason why I had such a visceral reaction to the Neuro Blooms pieces is that it's not symmetrical and it's beautiful. And you're showing that that's part of the meaning that I took from that is that something that you are intentionally trying to do?
Is that something that people can take with other artistic movements, or is that still kind of the fundamental belief in art that beauty is somehow related to symmetry?
That's what you're saying? I never thought about symmetry with. Well, that's not true. I do, because most of them are a single brain in the middle of the canvas. So in that way, there's symmetry, right. It's sort of the central focal points. But then through the color and the stitching, it becomes completely asymmetrical sometimes very chaotic. I am not interested in symmetry, so I feel like I can't even speak to symmetry. Nothing about symmetry except that it's just overrated. I think it's funny because I was talking to a friend, a colleague today, who makes very beautiful, symmetrical sort of Art Deco drawings.
And they astound me. They're so beautiful. I appreciate it so much, but it's the furthest thing from my mind when I make work balance. Yes. Symmetry. No.
Which is interesting because there's a beauty to it that I think is important. So not only are you trying to promote conversations, start conversations, deeper conversations about mental health. But to me, you're also, whether it's intentional or not, I think there's a secondary conversation here to be had about how we see beauty and how we see what is our relationship with beauty and symmetry and how we perceive ourselves.
Absolutely. The tagline of the Neurobloom products, the pins and the cups and stuff is making mental health conditions visible and beautiful. And the feedback that I've gotten from people with lived experience with mental health conditions is that on more than one occasion, I never thought of this as beautiful before. And to the point where some people are like, that's amazing. I love thinking of it that way. But I had one woman talk I gave in Amsterdam who said, I'm really struggling with that idea that this is beautiful.
And she was an inpatient in the hospital. And so she was in the thick of it. Right. And she's like, tell me more about that because this does not feel beautiful to me. This was a public talk, and I was like, You're so right. And I don't know what I said in response, something about in retrospect, that I hope that you will find beauty in your struggle. But it's a really interesting question for me. Anybody who makes beauty out of pain, I think it struggles with that.
We do not want to romanticize mental health conditions by any means. And I'm sure some people might take it that way, but I do want to recognize their beauty. I want to recognize people's resilience, and that what is happening in their brain is wild. It's wild. What we can see about what's happening in their brain. Yeah. Beauty is a big topic.
How do we think about beauty? What does it mean to us? How do we feel about it? It's not just seeing something through rose colored glasses or looking at something for lack of a better word. Traditionally beautiful, right. Most people think of, like, beauty is a very plastic, very flexible idea and concept. It's met way different things to different people, different periods of time, different cultures. And it's really easy to forget that. But it's not just some absolute universal thing, at least not how I experience it.
No, absolutely. You bring your whole baggage to it, right. You bring it all. And I'm particularly fond of sort of the messiness of humanity, like the parts that don't quite work together and the stains that can be beautiful, the mistakes that can be beautiful. I try to think of my 20s, not as sort of a lost decade. Sometimes I do where it's like, oh, man, I'm such a mess the entire decade, mostly because of depression. But lots of things and I more have shifted to what an amazing thing to go through.
I had really fascinating jobs, and I learned so much about myself and about the world. And I came out this person that I am, which would be totally different if things had been smooth sailing. Right. So that, to me, is very beautiful but also very messy.
Absolutely. No, it is. I feel the same way about, well, because it's so easy to get caught in the trap of, well, I should have achieved this or I didn't get to this place or I didn't do this thing. And this person is way, quote, unquote ahead of me in this respect. And it's all these cultural messages that we get that you're supposed to do this and you're supposed to be here and you're supposed to do that, right. And to me, that's where most of that comes from.
It's not really like an internal belief that I have about where I should be or who I should be. The messiness and the difficulty and the pain and the good things that came from that, too, are all part of the story.
Absolutely no. It's very much of a cultural norm that's imposed upon us, especially in the United States.
I'm also wondering, Leslie, for people who are either thinking about becoming artists or are already artists or for parents who have a child who has shown some kind of an interest in art? Do you have any advice? Any ideas of how to encourage your child? What to look for? What's the road like as an artist? And why has it meant so much to you?
Oh, my goodness. Yeah. That's also interesting. I'm co director of a group, a warehouse studio called Red Dirt Studio. And part of what we do is mentor other artists. We call ourselves like an incubator, grad school without grades. We meet weekly, and it's something we call seminar. And that's where people bring things up, like these practical. How do I be an artist? How do I have time to make art when I have to have a job? And like, how do I apply for this grant? And where should I pursue showing my work?
I have a lot of experience working with other artists that way. Usually younger artists are artists who are young to the arts. And what we often say, especially, we get the question a lot. Like, how do I make my art when I'm working full time? Or how do I make a living and make my work? And we're usually like, Well, how much time do you have? Because there's no one way to do that, right? We go around the room. Artists are incredibly creative and have a whole range of risks.
They're willing to take both financially and everything. So there is no one solution to that. So it's definitely there's no guidebook for that. Although there are books about there's literally a book how to Survive as an Artist. So there's tips that you can give, but it's always a fascinating, the sort of work work balance, not even work life balance. People who are like, how do you have a kid and be an artist and have a job? I don't have kids. I'm like you're on your own, but yes, so staying open and just giving your kid opportunities.
My parents were very generous that way. My whole family is scientists, and so my mom really appreciated art. It's not like she was single minded about science, but she was a theoretical physicist. So art was not the main thing on her brain, but she made it very possible for me to explore the arts, had after school lessons that she drove me to. And when I got into high school, she was very encouraging until it seemed like I was taking it way too seriously. And I wasn't going to take physics as seriously.
So we had our moments. And then, like that, I would actually pursue it beyond high school. There were some moments there, right? It's uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable. But I feel like in the United States, in this economy, so much is insecure about work and jobs, right? It's so much more common now for people to be freelancers or piece together gigs. Both of my parents were in government jobs, whereas, like, you work 25 years, you get your pension. Does the government even offer that anymore? Those jobs are few and far between right now.
And so I am hopeful that parents can see that. And that part of staying open is knowing that they'll figure it out. There'll be bumps along the way, but they'll figure out how to make it work in their lives. And maybe that means a lot of my mom was always like, Why don't you study graphic design? I'm like. But sometimes that is the answer, right? Somebody's really drawn to that. And that's the way they make their living. And that's their creative pursuit. Or they have that.
I have a friend who's a painter, and she has a part time. She has her own graphic design business. So that's how she makes that work to some people. That would be hell. I have other friends who teach adjunct at various universities and are willing to live on a shoestring. But again, it's sort of how much of that are you willing to do? One of my painting teachers in Undergrad. I can't remember the exact thing he would say, but sort of like if your impulse is to buy a new shirt instead of a tube of paint, you're in the wrong business, something like that, something sort of obnoxious like that.
So how much are you willing to give up? It's a good question, because it's an unbelievably unstable field. Economically, we have a slogan at Red Dirt that art is a bad business decision. If you're going into it for the money, you're in the wrong field. So it's going to be okay. And I guess I would say sort of the opposite, like if your kid goes into accounting, there's maybe more assurances that they could find a steady job with that. But that's not a done deal, either.
There's uncertainty in any field.
We do see that more being in College in the mid 90s, there weren't nearly as many career choices open then as there are now, they were starting to open up. The Internet was just happening. And what we have today, though, like you said, there's so many more opportunities to bootstrap, to freelance, to explore different things and figure out what works for you. But it always is. Even as a business owner, it's still a choice where you hear the honest entrepreneurs. Just because you're a business owner doesn't mean you're going to be have some big business and be super wealthy.
Like, no, it's a real struggle. And there's a price that you have to pay for everything. And are you willing to do it because you love it or because it matters to you in some way, or you have to find that out for yourself. I think that's great advice.
Yeah, that's hard. But I think artists are really fond of being like, Well, this is the hardest profession. No, I think poets are better at that. But no scientists have those battles. Jobs are limited and research funds are limited, and you have to try and figure it out. And I mean, maybe it's sort of like anything in life, sort of what is working for you. Maybe having that nine to five job is super important to you. So you make art on the weekends. That's fine. There's no one way to do it.
I think there's also something to be said for better education, and it's not necessarily through the school system, although that would be great, but better education in terms of I think of the cars and I think of people who are really into high performance cars or racing, like they build the enthusiasts and the community up to aspire to something like that as they get older. It's not just about the status for a lot of those people. There's something heartfelt and exciting and interesting about being a car person.
Right. And I think that the art community can do more with creating art enthusiasts and people who understand it more. So it doesn't feel so classical music has that same problem, too. It feels like unapproachable like, oh, I have to be a musician. Or only the high society likes classical music or the more approachable we can make it, the more people have a chance to appreciate it, buy it, understand it, and help spread the joy of it.
Yeah. Absolutely. Finding community is key for me. At least artists love to sit together and complain about how hard our lives are and that's important. That's important part of what we do and that's community. And then we tried to find some solutions. That kind of camaraderie's importance, sort of the notion of the isolated, struggling artist really needs to be done away with debunked, because that's not effective for anybody.
Is there something that we have not discussed yet that you feel is important to talk about?
I hear you asking your other guest, then I'm always like, you can't plan for that question, right? It's like double negative.
Because you don't know everything we're going to talk about. So.
Yeah. No, it's been wonderful talking to you. I can't think of anything off the bat. I can't think of anything. It's been a wonderful conversation.
Absolutely. So please tell everybody how they can find you. Connect with you. Learn more about you. Buy some of your amazing artwork.
Yeah. So my website is neuroblooms. Com, and I'm on Instagram and Facebook pretty actively Instagram. More at Neuroblooms. And if you are interested in sort of staying connected in a more involved or deep way, I have a mailing list, and I actually just started a blog a couple of months ago, so I've been doing a lot more writing, which is really, really satisfying. Yeah. There's a lot to poke around and look at on my website.
Fantastic. Well, I always enjoy talking to you. I'm so glad that we connected and that you took the time and I look forward to doing this again and to staying in touch with you. Thank you so much.
Yeah. Thank you so much. It's a real pleasure. All right.
Have a terrific day. Lesley, you too.
Bye you.