• Gustav Klimt’s Death and Life
• Beyond the Surface: Free Email Course
• Shirin Neshat, Rebellious Silence Lesson (Curated Connection Library members)
• Tell Them, I Am Podcast
• Be a Podcast Guest: Submit a Voice Memo of Your Art Story (Scroll to bottom of page to submit your story.)

Cindy Ingram:

Hello, and welcome to the Art Class Curator podcast. I am Cindy Ingram, your host and the founder of Art Class Curator and The Curated Connections Library. We’re here to talk about teaching art with purpose and inspiration from the daily delight to creativity, to the messy mishaps that come with being a teacher.

 

Whether you’re driving home from school or cleaning up your classroom for the 15th time today, take a second, take a deep breath, relax those shoulders and let’s get started. Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Art Class Curator podcast. This is Cindy Ingram, and last week I had a really exciting conversation. Well, it was super exciting for me.

 

I can’t wait to hear how you all thought about it, but a conversation with Madalyn Gregory, who works with Art Class Curator and is also one of my best friends. And the artwork that we discussed last week was Death and Life by Gustav Klimt. I left that conversation so excited. It was like the best hour ever, probably my whole week or my whole month. I just enjoyed it so very much.

 

And then even after it was over, our conversation was over, we kept talking about the art. We talked about it for a bit in Zoom after the conversation, and then we kept talking about it on Voxer and we realized that we missed a lot of really important things and we decided to do a follow up conversation.

 

So I am here with Madalyn again, just a few days later from our original conversation. The first one hasn’t even aired, but we realized it was so important to add in more insight. So welcome back Madalyn.

Madalyn Gregory:

Hello.

Cindy Ingram:

And one of the things I want to point out is just how excited I was about the conversation is the same feeling that I get when I lead an art discussion with students. When everything clicks, when everything goes really well, I always felt so energized, so excited. Excited at the possibility of art, excited at my students and their perspectives, excited about just connecting with art, excited about teaching.

 

It’s all just so exciting. And I think because I have that emotion around it, that’s what I want everyone else to have. So I hope that you are inspired by that and are seeking out that experience for yourself in your own classroom. And even just with your own friends, having conversations about art.

 

That’s something you could try to because we’ve never really fully done that to the extent that we did, and it was pretty amazing. How did you feel after our conversation Madalyn?

Madalyn Gregory:

Oh, I felt just energized and giddy, because it just… Talking about big things and being able to look at something that’s so inspiring and thought provoking, it’s a good way to spend your time and your life, I think. And what you were saying about how it feels to do that with students too, I’ve never been in the classroom but I’ve homeschooled my children for many years and we’ve been in homeschool co-ops where I’ve taught art class curator lessons.

 

And it’s usually just a very few students and teenagers or maybe a little pre-teens, but every single time, even if it was an artwork that I had discussed with other kids several times, every conversation, every discussion was new and fresh. And even the kids that maybe were quiet during the discussion in the activities, they would bring in something brand new that I’d never heard before, or even thought about before and totally shifts the way I see the artwork. And it’s just wonderful every time. So I’m excited that we get to do this again.

Cindy Ingram:

Yeah, that is so true. I could be teaching the same artwork, having conversations with students like 20 times of the same artwork, and there’s always something new that no one has ever noticed or no one has ever pointed out. It’s like, I read this book by Gretchen Rubin one time. I actually don’t recommend that.

 

But she said, one thing, she moved. It was like she moved a few blocks away. And she said that her whole world picked itself up, restructured itself and put it back down at her new house. She lived in New York city and she had to like… It just reoriented you. And I feel like that’s kind of the same thing that what happens with the art when someone brings up something you’ve never seen before, it’s just like the art picks itself up, shifts itself around, puts itself back.

 

And now you’ve never see it the same way again. And I think that’s really fun. And I love when I see something that I’d never even noticed before. I get so focused on looking at one part that there’s something in there that I haven’t even seen, even though I spent an hour looking at it with the group of kids. So it’s super fun when that happens. I love that.

 

Okay, so I think our conversation was so good and we talked about a lot of things, but we realized after the fact that there was a huge gender issue in the way we discussed it. So I thought we could start with that. And since you’re the one that made that observation, can you tell us what you realized after we were done?

Madalyn Gregory:

So it was kind of two pronged, I think. And one thing that we did whenever we were talking about it is we kept referring to the death figure as a man. And we didn’t even question it or bump on it at all. And I thought that was really interesting because I mean, I don’t know a lot about skulls. But I feel like in the dozens of his artwork, I don’t think it’s necessarily meant to be a man and I really wanted to dig into why we automatically went there.

Cindy Ingram:

Yeah, that’s huge. And we have been lately talking about gender a lot because it’s just… Especially with TikTok, we’re hearing a lot more things about gender and just our world is becoming more understanding of what gender is and isn’t. And it’s so fascinating to see that those sort of gender conditioning that we have play out in real life.

 

So yeah, that skeleton, skeletons don’t have genders. Is it true we have one more rib? That women might have one more, or is that not true?

Madalyn Gregory:

I don’t think that’s true. I do think in general, female bodies are smaller in general. That kind of holds true, and I think maybe this shape of the pelvis and stuff, but I don’t think, as far as the skull goes, I don’t think there’s a whole lot of difference. I don’t see any part that we see.

Cindy Ingram:

Yeah, we don’t see anybody. It’s draped and fabric. There’s no indication of the shape of the body underneath it. It’s funny because I’m like, well, what is there to discuss here other than we had the awareness, that it was a really big awareness?

Madalyn Gregory:

Yeah, well, I really wanted to probe myself as for why I automatically went, okay, this is a male figure. And I think it’s because it’s death. I think when you think of death, you think of sad things that can happen and accidents and sickness and all of that. But the other big one is war and war is directly associated with masculinity and only men were drafted.

 

And there are these stories of women in battles and then wars throughout history. But of course it’s mostly been male dominated and continues to be so, and we don’t really think of women in war or death scenarios. And I think that that is kind of harmful to everyone because we talked a lot too about the women in the artwork and how they were kind of porcelain skinned and they looked dainty and fragile.

 

And you brought up how it looked like the man in the center was kind of carrying them and not feeling his own emotions. And I think that that’s really reflected in the way that gender stereotypes play out because women culturally have been having this moment and continue to have this moment with the Me Too movement and calling out the patriarchy.

 

But we as women have this language now that we can start using and relying on feminism. And we haven’t really done that for the men because the gender stereotypes are just as harmful to them as they are to us. And pushing down that emotion and being expected to be at the beck and call of war. I mean, that’s a lot to carry and they don’t have the language or the tools that I think women do now.

Cindy Ingram:

Yeah. Oh, that’s really fascinating. I have a couple thoughts while you were talking is one, in addition to what you were saying about the war, I think too that we’re conditioned to see men as the authority figures. So if there’s an authority figure in the painting, we’re going to just… It’s natural to be a man.

 

And until we see more women in positions of power, that’s just where we’re going to go to. They’ve done those research studies of children, and they talk about doctors but they don’t say the gender. And then they pull the children to see who’s doctor was a male and who’s doctor was female. I think that has changed though. I think it’s slowly getting better, the data on that.

Madalyn Gregory:

Well, it’s like the joke that, I mean, they were definitely still telling whenever I was a kid of the kids in the hospital, but the parent can’t operate but it ends up the mom was the doctor the whole time. And it relies on the fact that you think that a doctor is male.

Cindy Ingram:

Yeah, and then I love what you were saying too about men. And I mean, obviously neither of us are men, but we see it in the men in our lives that they have this sort of expectation. Like my husband, for example, I hope he’s okay with me using him as an example, I’ll ask him later to make sure, but he’s not like going hunting and fishing type of guy.

 

He doesn’t want to sling around tools. He prefers to build computers rather than do household things. But he’s talked about it before that he does feel that expectation of him in the world, but he’s actually really good at just saying, no, I’m not going to… That’s not who I am. This is not what I’m going to do. But I think a lot of men don’t feel that they have the confidence to, or they don’t feel it’s okay to, I don’t know, release that.

Madalyn Gregory:

Yeah, I think it is changing. I mean, I see a lot now about… Even when I was growing up, it was still very much boys don’t cry and boys will be boys and all of that. And it’s subtly shifting over time. People are recognizing that and trying to break that pattern. But I think the fact that we did just immediately go to the authority figure here being male is really indicative of just how deeply ingrained it is and how hard it is to tear that down in yourself, much less in a whole society.

Cindy Ingram:

Yeah, because I feel at some level, I think that the women have to have their moment first. They have to heal and they have to see change and they have to own their power and all of that. And then I feel like then men will be more allowed to do that. It’s like, I almost feel like right now are men even allowed to do that?

Madalyn Gregory:

Well, I think it’s interesting because you mentioned power specifically. And I was recently listening to a book that was talking about how women getting more power and getting more equality we’ve had to look like what the traditional power looked like, which is a male. And even for the men that don’t fit into that category is very limiting.

 

But it’s pants suits and it’s a deeper voice and not using exclamation points in your emails, and all of these things that we’ve been told, okay, this is not powerful. This is weak. This is feminine. And really challenging that and looking at what other ways power can look like, and that doesn’t have to be exclusive. It can be inclusive of all types of people.

Cindy Ingram:

Yeah, and there’s the whole… I mean, there’s this men women thing and what we’re dealing with, but there’s also a bigger picture of that gender is probably just created by humans. So I love to imagine a world that gender is not even a thing, that we’re all just people and what would happen then.

 

There’s no way to know, but it’s fascinating to think about and to process that we really sort of created these gender roles and we created the divide of… There could have been a third gender probably really easily.

Madalyn Gregory:

Yeah, in some cultures there is or was, and as the world has gotten more global and homogenous, that is less of a thing. But I think a lot of people looking at the younger generation now are talking about, well, why are there so many transgender kids? Or why are there so many kids that are… There’s all these terms now for gender fluid and agender, and all of these things.

 

And they’re like, “Well, that was never around when I was growing up.” And it really reminds me a lot of the LGBT, the larger… People said, “People weren’t gay whenever I was younger or whatever.” And that I think people were always there and they were always looking for different ways to be, but they didn’t feel free to do that.

Cindy Ingram:

That’s true. I mean, while you were talking, it made me think of when I was teaching elementary and when the kids were done with their lesson as we were waiting for the teacher to pick them up, I would have them line up boys and girls. Because you couldn’t do one line. It wasn’t long. The classroom wasn’t big enough to form one line.

 

So we had to have two lines and they would sit on the floor and just now I’m like, no, I should not have done that. But that was back in 2009. I think a lot has happened since 2009 of these sort of issues. I mean, once you know better then you do better. So I wouldn’t do that now because then what if there is a kid who’s not sure, what do they…

 

And it’s just a tiny microaggression. It was just waiting in line, but that’s another small way that that could have impacted that child’s identity and self-worth just by forcing that on them all the time.

Madalyn Gregory:

Yeah, I think that’s why representation is so important because whenever… We don’t see ourselves reflected or we don’t see a variety reflected. Whenever you’re told there’s two options, then you feel like you have to pick from those two options. And that really makes me think of another thing that we talked about with this is, everybody in this painting, I mean, we don’t know about death, but they’re white.

 

Everybody’s white. And that’s a whole other topic that has not… It feels so big to talk about, but I think that’s why it’s important to have these conversations in the classroom and with students, because if any student in your class that’s not white is not represented in this painting, where are they going to see themselves? And what is that going to mean for how they interpret it?

Cindy Ingram:

Yeah, I even had that thought because this is the first art conversation that we’re airing on the podcast and we hope to have many more, but I did have the thought after we did it. I was like, we chose a dead white guy for the artwork, but it’s also like, you can’t control what you’re going to have that emotional response to.

 

So we both had a really strong emotional response to this because we can see ourselves in this. I think that is really important that as we’re creating curriculum for our teachers, that we incorporate a lot more than this so that we’re giving all of our students the opportunity to find themselves in art. And if we’re only showing modern European art, you’re going to reach a couple students who really see themselves in it.

 

But there’s going to be a lot of students who will have that disconnect. And I guarantee, I bet we could find an artwork about this same theme. We haven’t tried looking. I just thought of it. But this life and death theme, done by black artist with black people in it, or whatever, or any other culture or race probably. This is such a big theme.

 

And so that makes me think, if we were to show this in a classroom, which we probably wouldn’t because there’s nudity in there, I doubt a lot of you guys are going to share this in your classroom. But if you were, it would be a good idea to show others about the same thing, other voices saying similar things so that you can find your place.

 

But I think it’s also important too to realize with every single artwork you can’t. You’re not going to represent everybody. And so I think there still is a place for this art too, but the variety is really important.

Madalyn Gregory:

Yeah, definitely. Because like you said, I mean, every classroom is going to be different. Every neighborhood is going to be different and you want to reflect your students, but you also want to reflect the world back to them so that… Like you were saying, representation matters because when you see not only yourself, but when you see other people, it’s very hard to other people whenever you know their stories and you know their art and you know what their lives were like.

 

I mean, looking at it through the lens of that, I mean, it would be very easy, I think, to look at this painting if you were in the right frame of mind and think that, okay, well only the lives and deaths and pain of white people matter. That’s the only thing we’re going to look at and talk about.

Madalyn Gregory:

So yeah, I think we can tell a lot about who gets excluded. We can tell a lot about the history of the world, but I think it’s important to make sure that they see everybody from everywhere as much as we can.

Cindy Ingram:

Yeah, and I think that being, what is it? Cishet person, like I’m a cishet white person. So the representation I don’t necessarily like… I see myself represented everywhere I go. However, when I see fat people in TV shows and in art and in things, that’s where I see myself.

 

And when I see myself represented in that way, because I’m not a small person, it is important to me when I see that. So anytime I see different body sizes on ads, when I see it in TV shows, I feel different when I look at those because I see it’s not just a sort of depiction of this ideal beautiful person. And well, they are beautiful, but you know what I mean.

 

So on that level, I can really connect with that feeling of needing to see yourself represented. And so anytime I try to think of the importance of representation for our children, I can connect with. That really is important to me to see. So I don’t feel like I explained that all terribly well, but.

Madalyn Gregory:

No, I think it’s true because it really can feel like your story isn’t worth telling if you don’t see your story already being told. And I’ve been listening to a podcast, it’s Ramadan and everyday they do a short story for Ramadan and it’s in the second season of it. But the first year that they did it, it was people not talking about their faith.

 

They were talking about who they were outside of their faith. And I thought that that was really helpful for me as a white person who as an adult doesn’t have really religion. And so to see their stories and hear their lives outside of what gets talked about on the news or what makes the headlines is I think really powerful because even just for me going about my life, I don’t know a lot of Muslim people.

I’m not close friends with anyone who’s Muslim. It helps me to see and know them and their humanity. And I know it must be so relieving to actually have those stories be heard and not just be this one thing and not get just stereotyped all the time. And I can’t even begin to imagine what that feels like, but I agree.

 

Even in the small ways in my own life, whenever I see something reflected that I can relate to is so powerful. Especially whenever it comes to something like race or religion, something that’s more obvious to the outside world. I think it’s all the more important that it’s reflected.

Cindy Ingram:

Yeah, and as you were talking, you hit on right at the end is it’s important, I think, to think about the authenticity of the perspectives and voices that we’re showing. So yeah, you could have representation, but it could be negative because you’re showing the stereotype.

 

So, if we use the Muslim peoples where we would show artwork that it’s all about the stereotype of who we think they are, not actually them telling us who they are. And so I think that is really important too, but that’s really hard if you’re coming from… If you’re on the outside of that group. Using the fat people as an example too, I hate to see a fat person who’s just all about dieting and self-hating themselves, or they’re the funny one.

 

Because they can’t win in beauty, they’re going to be the funny one. And so you’re not really seeing yourself represented, you’re seeing how everyone else views you on the screen rather than an authentic portrayal of who you are. So you can always tell that difference. Like, oh, they actually talked to the person who’s acting that role, how it feels in that situation and not someone making that up for them.

 

So it made me think of, we went to an exhibit a couple of weeks ago of Shirin Neshat at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. And we have her art in both The Curate Connections Library and we have it in the perspectives curriculum from Art Class Curator. And actually Jennifer Easterling and I are going to be talking about her artwork in a few weeks on the podcast.

 

But you and I went to that exhibit and the whole time I was there, it’s these photographs of Muslim women and then it had Arabic writing over their faces. And I kept thinking how dramatically different this experience would have been if I knew what that said, if I could just read those words.

 

And I’m here experiencing this and processing it through what I know, but someone who is of that culture, I think she’s Iranian, is going to have a completely different experience at that exhibit.

Madalyn Gregory:

Yeah, and I think there’s something to be said for the fact that we didn’t know the language and that some of the information that was with some of the artworks would kind of talk about what it was about, but with the exception of a few poems. None of it was translated.

 

And I think it’s interesting just because it’s not necessarily for us, and I think that that’s okay. We don’t know the language, we haven’t spent the time and effort to learn the language. So that experience, that depth of it is cut off from us. And I think that that is okay. I think that’s even good in some circumstances because we aren’t ever going to know what it feels like or to have that experience of moving through the world like that.

 

So, I think it’s okay if we don’t get everything all the time and I think it’s okay if we can’t always answer all the questions that a student has or whatever the case may be. I think it’s important to still show the art and still talk about it and still have the difficult conversations because… But not everything is for everyone and that’s okay.

Cindy Ingram:

Yeah, that was really good. Wow, okay. So we had gender. We talked about race in this art. Is there any other things that we left out later that we wanted to talk about? I know you wrote some stuff.

Madalyn Gregory:

I did think a little bit about the patterns that he used in the artwork. I mean, he’s famous for his patterns already, but it really makes me think of quilting or maybe wax prints, stuff like that. That really it made me think more about the whole culture around quilt making and it being usually women, older women sitting around and these generational things that get passed on.

 

So I thought that was an interesting addition to thinking about because they’re all kind of cuddled up together. And I think of whenever you’re on a bed with your siblings or your parents or whatever, and everybody’s squished in because there’s not enough room. And I don’t know, to me that’s like a very specific kind of love that I think the patterns add to.

Cindy Ingram:

Yeah, and it feels really weird to be talking about patterns after talking about such big things. But yeah, I can see that too. And especially there’s so many, and it’s almost like those patterns are more stories to tell about the life that that person led. Each quilt is some part of their humanity, is some part of their story. There’s things wrapped in it, and so the patterns themselves could be like maybe a symbol for the complexity of life or the richness of life maybe.

Madalyn Gregory:

I mean, I haven’t counted, but I almost wonder if each pattern is there for one of the people that’s in the group and maybe it’s a metaphor for the life that we’re weaving as we go. Because I don’t know if you’ve seen the people that will crochet or knit, every week or every day is a different color.

And it reflects either something that happened in their life or the weather or something like that. So I think that that is an extra part. I’m like, okay, who does this one belong to? And what is that dot in their life? I think it would be fun to do that with students too, and kind of have them make their own pattern of what does it look like for them?

Cindy Ingram:

Yeah, tell the story of who they are through a pattern.

Madalyn Gregory:

Yeah.

Cindy Ingram:

Well, that’s got me thinking about what I would be, what my pattern would be. But then we’ve got death’s pattern and he is all one pattern kind of. Well, it’s hard to say, but there’s a lot of-

Madalyn Gregory:

Definitely.

Cindy Ingram:

Yeah, there’s a lot of crosses on his. It’s just another thing we didn’t necessarily bring up as a sort of a religious component here.

Madalyn Gregory:

Yeah, it definitely… I mean the cross of course is I think mostly related with Christianity, especially now, but yeah, it almost does make me wonder. I think of a Bishop or something. They have the robes and the hats and all that, and the kind of ferrying people on to the afterlife or something like that, or.

Cindy Ingram:

Yeah, so death is like a afterlife clergy person and that’s his robe. And I want those circles in the middle to be peace signs really bad. And they’re not, but I’m reading them as peace signs and that’s all I’ve seen the whole time, but they’re not. But I feel like they have to mean something because they’re different.

 

So if you are listening, in the middle of death, there is two circles. They’re gold with a black background and they’re kind of random. There’s not any others that are like this, but there’s one circle has like a T in it, a line that goes across the diameter and then a radius line going down. And then the other one is just like a split the middle line straight.

 

And I’ve been staring at those a lot wondering, did that have any sort of meaning? I don’t have any meaning for it, but I’ve been looking at it.

Madalyn Gregory:

I mean, they definitely look like symbols. They almost remind me of cattle brands. They definitely feel like they symbolize something or maybe just because there’s two of them right on top of the other, but they also make me think of door knobs or locks or something.

Cindy Ingram:

I also have been seeing like the death… Thinking The Deathly Hallows from Harry Potter when I look at that too, for some reason.

Madalyn Gregory:

The triangle. I also thought it was interesting we didn’t… Because it’s not important necessarily for the interpretation or the art connection, but we realized last week too that the painting had done well and won awards whenever it first came out.

 

But even after it had won awards and been in a frame for a few years, Klimt went back and altered it, which I thought was really fascinating because you’ve talked on the podcast before about how perfection equals failure. And I kept thinking about the fact that he went back and changed it. And art historians believe that the painting, the background used to be gold much more what we, I think, associate Klimt with.

 

But the fact that he went back and changed it, I’m like, okay, what does that mean? What lesson can I learn from that? Because I’m always looking for one, especially with art. And I’m like, okay, I think one thing, especially in an art class that students have to learn is that mistakes are going to happen. And whether you call them mistakes or you call them happy accidents, I love Bob Ross, or something like that.

 

I mean, they’re going to happen in life just like they happen in your art and trying to do better. And like you were saying earlier, when you know better, you do better. And I think it really impacted the meaning too for the background to be dark instead of gold. And I don’t think that I would look at it or feel as connected to it. I think I’d still love it. But yeah, I think we don’t have to be a perfectionist to recognize that there are opportunities to improve.

Cindy Ingram:

Yeah. I think it’s a really cool story to tell students, because you think about… I’m trying to put myself in Klimt’s position that he painted this. When you make a work of art and you know this is a writer too, but it’s like you… It’s such a vulnerable experience. And so when you make something and then you give it to someone else to consume, it’s really hard and you’re putting yourself out there to be judged.

 

So I even view that as with my business too. When I put something out there it’s taken me a lot of years to get used to negative feedback because it is me, but it is not me at the same time. And so I can imagine Klimt in this situation, it’s out there in the world, it’s winning awards. Five years have passed before… He made it in 1910 and then 1915 is when he made those changes.

But there was probably this sort of wiggling thing in the back of his head that was like, this is not right. There’s something not right here. And then as he gets experience painting, because a lot can happen in five years as he paints more pictures, he realizes what’s missing and he changes it. And I think that’s really cool.

 

And then also when I look at it, something we haven’t talked about is the space is the background, is space between, the negative space between death and life. There’s this black void there. And I can’t imagine that being gold and it being effective at all. I feel like it would completely change the meaning because if you don’t… None of us really truly know what death is, what’s on the other side.

 

And I think the black in this shows more of that unknown. And I think there is depth to that unknown. I don’t know what that is, but you can see it in the paint. There’s like, you can see the other colors, it’s really kind of a rich texture, but it shows that the unknown. And I think the gold would read as more religious maybe.

Madalyn Gregory:

Yeah, no, I agree, because I’m sitting here trying to imagine it. And I think what comes to mind for me with a gold background is like some people talk about heaven being streets of gold and stuff like that. And it’s funny because even with all the crosses on death, I don’t necessarily read this as a religious painting, but with the gold added. It feels somehow loftier.

 

I think, especially in society now we’re kind of separated from death. It’s very sanitized. The hospital, bodies get taken away very quickly. The way that corpses are treated as even very sanitized. It kind of takes the flesh and blood out of it, I think a little bit. And I think that the gold would do that here.

Cindy Ingram:

Yeah, and that made me think of two things. One, it made me think of early Christian mosaics from Byzantine mosaics. They had these guys who were really long and narrow and they were draped in these robes. You couldn’t see their bodies, but they were clearly really long and narrow. So that death figure, he’s reminded me of those guys all along.

The other people, not so much. But I see that, and if you would add that gold there, that early Christian Byzantine feel to it would be extra heightened. And so I think for me, I would have a hard time separating that influence, but then also, yeah, having the black background makes it feel more earthy and fleshy and human, especially with the whole pile of humans blankets.

We see a lot of skin, we see a lot of lusciousness with the patterns or like blankets. It feels more just human and relatable.

Madalyn Gregory:

Yeah, it feels more vulnerable to me.

Cindy Ingram:

I don’t feel separate from it, and I think the gold might do that.

Madalyn Gregory:

Yeah. I think it all just goes to show that even if people are saying that something’s great, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s finished. And it wasn’t finished. He had to go back.

Cindy Ingram:

Yeah.

Madalyn Gregory:

I think it’s finished now. It’s so good. This painting is so good. And it made us talk about hard and uncomfortable things. I mean, like you said, at the end of the day, we definitely have our own challenges and stuff, but we’re two cishet white women that that’s not such a bad thing to be in this world, all things considered.

It is hard. And I remember reading a study not that long ago that I think it was almost 90% of teachers in general were white women. So, I mean, we definitely are representative of most of the educators in school and it’s okay to be uncomfortable and it’s okay to not have all the answers and to kind of stumble through things, because the more you stumble through, the more you’ll find the ground beneath you and it won’t be so rocky.

Cindy Ingram:

Yeah, I think this is a really good thing to end on. Hopefully we didn’t have anything else that we… We will. There’ll be something where, God, we should’ve talked about that. But I did an episode once before and I don’t remember the name of it, but it was about how we have to have these hard conversations.

I think it was the episode values demand action. I think that might be it, but these conversations are hard and you’re going to risk saying something that someone is going to be offended by, that someone’s going to just call you out on. And honestly, from the perspective of someone who’s going to put this conversation on the internet and now people are going to listen to it, I’m a little bit scared because I’m like I’m sure there was something I said that was ridiculous.

But I think that overall, it’s important to show that these conversations are, even if it means you might feel a little bit of pain because someone calls you out on something, they’re worth it. Because I love what you said, find your feet underneath you and then you’ll be better moving forward, and you learn as you go.

Madalyn Gregory:

Yeah, you don’t get better if you aren’t being honest about where you are at.

Cindy Ingram:

Yeah, absolutely. We covered some stuff in that hour, or not an hour, but is there anything that we missed that now that we’re at the end of it, is there anything from your list or things that we could have talked about?

Madalyn Gregory:

I mean, I think we checked the boxes on what I had written after last time to kind of remind myself, but yeah. I mean, like you said, I feel like we could keep looking and keep thinking, and that’s the beauty of art conversations and connection. And yeah, it’s never really over. You just have to say until next time.

Cindy Ingram:

Yes. And so, with next time in mind, I have an episode idea that I was going to do about big talk versus small talk. And I think that’s a perfect one for next week. So that’s what I’m going to make next week about, because we did some really big talk in these two episodes and I think that’s why you and I get along so well is we both really like big talk.

But I think that’s a really… I want to dive into that even more. So, that will be our episode next Monday. And thank you again for joining me, Madalyn. It was so good.

Madalyn Gregory:

Thank you for having me anytime. I love it.

Cindy Ingram:

Yeah, that was awesome. So, I hope you guys listening were just as energized about this conversation is we were and about this work of art. Again, we would love to hear your art stories. So, if you want us to share your art story on the podcast, or if you want to be a guest to have one of these conversations with me, you can do that by going to artclasscurator.com/podcast.

There’s a form on the bottom of that page that says share your story. If you fill that out, that will tell us you’re interested and then we will go from there. So would love for you to have your voice be heard on the podcast. So, thanks again for listening and I will see you again next week. What’s keeping you from showing more artwork to your students?

Do you get stopped trying to choose a work of art or do you fear your students will ask a question that you don’t know the answer to? Have you tried to start a classroom art discussion, but didn’t know what to say or how to get your students talking? Are you worried you’re going to spend a ton of time researching and planning a lesson that none of your students are interested in?

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