SPEAKER_02 0:00

This is peace and good wealth. Hello everyone and welcome back to Peace and Good Wealth. This is Loy Carlos, your host, and today we have a very special guest. Leah Pollard is a celebrated sculptor and cultural curator whose work explores the intersection of inner peace, identity, and creative abundance. Trained at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and known for her acclaimed bed series and warrior women portraits, Paula uses figurative sculpture to reflect the psychology of self and society. Her art has been exhibited globally from Beijing to Mexico City, and she has curated over 140 exhibitions across five continents. Through her work, Paula reminds us that true wealth begins with understanding, expression, and the courage to lay ourselves bare. Welcome, Lea. How are you today? I'm

SPEAKER_00 1:17

so flattered to be here, and thank you. Thank you for that lovely introduction.

SPEAKER_02 1:22

I messed up a little bit of Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. But I wanted to make sure that I pronounce it a little bit better than usual. But let's start there. Education-wise, you went to school in Paris. How much of that influence Obviously, there's a discipline, the scholarly discipline that you learn in school. But how much of being in Paris influenced sort of the way you look at your work?

SPEAKER_00 2:03

That's a wonderful question to start with, because I often say that my life began when I moved to France with my three children. little children and started the second part of my life. And my education at the Beaux Arts in Paris began with a baptism by fire. The professor literally excoriated me and almost threw me out of the first sculpture class. And later we became very, very close friends. And I said to him, why did you do that to me? Why did you make it so hard? And he said, you didn't have any time to waste. You needed to know, was this for real or not? And so it impacted me. A thousand percent.

SPEAKER_02 2:47

And you said that was the second part of your life. What year, more or less, was this when you first started?

SPEAKER_00 2:53

Oh, in the mid-70s, I got to

SPEAKER_02 2:55

France. And France has changed since, and so has New York, from the 1970s to where it is now. Tell us a little bit of a flavor of what it was living there with three children at that time, taking up art. What was Paris like back then?

SPEAKER_00 3:14

The only expats that were really in Paris at that time either were working for the government, for large corporations, or with religious institutions. And so I was the real one out. There was nobody like me around. And, of course, the fact that taxis wouldn't take four people, we were on foot a lot and in the subways a lot, and that got a lot of attention from people. I went to Paris regularly. Accidentally, almost. I went for three months and I stayed for 23 years. Wow. So

SPEAKER_02 3:50

Paris at that time, how did you decide? Did you decide during those three months that we already decided that you're going to study art? Or was that something that was also not planned

SPEAKER_00 4:06

at the time? Not at all. Not at all. I was trying to figure out how to survive. I had just sold my last home in Miami, was going through a divorce, had literally nothing and ended up in Paris and felt that it was a place I could make something happen for myself. Yes. And the art part came a few years later where I got to realize my dream.

SPEAKER_02 4:30

Where did you begin, you know? Artists, a lot of the artists, you know, start from a very young age and they've dreamt about being, you know, artists. Some transition in adulthood, but they've always had some sort of idea. When you were studying, when you picked up art... sculpture was not the first thing that you started to explore, right? Did you explore painting and any other forms of art before you went to sculpture?

SPEAKER_00 5:02

Yes, because I was always hands-on in my earlier days, raising a family between sewing and knitting and cooking and decorating and gardening, all these things that you do physically. I had a very physical relationship to art, but I wanted to be a painter. And I love color. So when I started at the Beaux-Arts, I started in the painting class. And there was this constant urge to just push the brush through the canvas. I had to really hold myself back. And then I always felt that the brushes were very long. I didn't know if I could shorten that distance. So after about four months in the painting class, the professor came over and said to me very kindly, Soleil, that art school you went to in America, did they teach you how to hold a brush? So I said, oops, he got me on that one. And so I drifted into the sculpture class and said, maybe if I get my hands on the material, that would work.

SPEAKER_02 6:03

So let's talk about the creative process. What's the difference between, or is there any difference between the creative process when you're painting versus when you sculpt? Where do you begin? In both cases, you start with a blank canvas, right? Either you're a block of stone or metal or, you know, everything is blank and then form comes out of that. Is there, what do you think, you know, for you, is there a difference other than the physical process of doing it?

SPEAKER_00 6:39

You know, they often ask the question about art being contemporary and I say it can't be anything contemporary. except contemporary, because the artist is living there at that moment doing the thing. And so you can't leave yourself out of that equation. You bring with you a lot of your personal experiences, a lot of your subconscious thoughts, and then things trigger you, which is exactly how the bed series started that was triggered. The process itself, where you're in an environment that is conducive to digging deep, and at the Beaux-Arts in France, we dealt a lot with the history and the past, so kind of building on the shoulders of these very, very famous artists. Some were still alive. Some were still walking through the hallways. And at the time, it was so strange. I didn't say, oh, my goodness, I'm sitting in the same seat in this café. that Jean-Paul Sartre sat in, but I did. So by osmosis and by the frequentation, the fabulous museum exhibitions, yeah, it was a total bath.

SPEAKER_02 7:50

How much of knowing the history and what of art is important in the way you create? Some people will argue that there is something about going to school for art. and understanding the principles and the history that makes for a much more profound, rounder artist than somebody who has not. How much of that you think is important if somebody wanted to really be an artist?

SPEAKER_00 8:26

In other countries and in other cultures, and perhaps because they have thousands of years of culture behind them, and that was built on their knowing of the thousand years before them, take great pride and spend a lot of time and interest in the past so that you can then incorporate that in where you are in your present. It's hard to just free fall and say I'm here and I'm gonna just do hotchky-potchky with my hands and make something happen. So we got really serious training and sometimes I have to find an analogy and say, oh, my goodness, you have a problem in your brain. You need surgery. Oh, I'm going to get somebody who never studied, but he knows he can take that knife and go after that little thing in my brain. It's the same thing. With sculpture, you absolutely need to learn how to sculpt. Then you can do what you want. And we always say Picasso is the perfect example of that lesson.

SPEAKER_02 9:28

And there are, I mean, through, we're talking about, you know, masters. Masters also have apprenticeships. And a lot of them studied, not necessarily to copy the masters, but to know the principles and the techniques so that when they then in turn interpret or create art on their own, that they have that basic foundation for creating art. Now, art is a little bit difficult because you know, what somebody sees in something isn't necessarily what somebody sees in another. So it's a little bit easier when we're looking at maybe portraiture, you know, in paintings where, okay, well, this person looks like that real person. You know, this painting looks like that real person. And you might say, well, that might be good art, that may not be. But when we talked about art at your lovely home, we talked about the energy of art. Okay. So let's talk about that a little bit. We were saying that you were saying that there's certain pieces, you know, or pieces of art have their own energy. And some of them are really powerful, which now is what we call, you know, maybe a master art or a great work of art because people are drawn to them because of the energy that they have. So How does that come about? Is it the artist that's creating this because of technique, or is it a combination of what the artist puts into it that comes out as the energy of that piece of work?

SPEAKER_00 11:08

Well, you know, very fortunately at this stage of my art practice, I've become... more interested in science than in quantum physics. And you learn very quickly that we are just energy in fields of energy. And it's kind of matched one of the ways I understood what I was doing in three dimensions, which was harnessing energy and pushing away the extraneous elements so that I would be left with the core. So I guess it's a little bit like getting uranium for a bomb. You want all that energy. You want it compressed. And if you don't put it in, it's very hard to get it out. The art that I feel has been the most significant across all borders, all cultures is art that has in it that energy. There's a role that the observer, the beholder has with the work of art. When you stand in front of a work of art, you give your energy to the art. You start looking at things and that energy is kind of goes in a circuitous fashion. It bounces back and forth and back and forth. So these masterpieces that we love so much, they're capturing energy from the people looking at them. I've always felt that one of the saddest things is to create so much art and never have it be seen. It needs to be seen to be alive. Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:39

Well, I think I guess that's what it means when we say, you know, If I pick up a sculpture or a painting, it's because this particular piece of art speaks to me or this particular photograph speaks to me as well. Now, a lot of artists also talk about when they're creating that there is this process of tapping into the ether somehow. You don't really know what you're creating, but somehow you tap into this process stream of consciousness in the universe and it manifests itself in the art that you create and I think that's a beautiful thing I know for me when I'm writing something I'm not really fully aware of what that writing is until I'm finished and then I look back at it and I say wow I didn't even think that that was the case or even painting it's sort of like the same way now sculpture is a long process it's not so So how patient do you have to be to get to the point where you know... Well, first of all, how do you know when a particular piece of art is finished?

SPEAKER_00 13:56

Oh, I wish. I wish. You know, sometimes they leave the studio and you say, just give me another couple of weeks. I really think I could have done better with another couple of weeks. But...

SPEAKER_02 14:08

But they have their own endings, don't they? It's the funny part. They don't have to be perfect.

SPEAKER_00 14:13

Okay, so I think of it perhaps in a very plebeian way. It's my job. I decided that I would work materials and make sculptures from these materials. So it's what I do. And the goal, of course, is to do something good enough, interesting enough, personal enough that... A person who looks at it will be touched by it. They'll be moved by it. They'll be inspired by it. They will have something shift within themselves, often in a very deep and personal place that they too can't explain exactly. But there's that connection. That's what you're hoping to establish. I don't think that any piece is finished. I always think of the work as a bridge. I'm just building a bridge till one day somebody's going to look at it over my dead shoulder and say, well, I guess that meant this, or it meant that, or she was thinking this. I don't know. I don't know. That's the mystery of it. If it were less mysterious, it would be boring to

SPEAKER_02 15:14

me. Are all objects art? Let's put it that way. Or... Or is there art that we can define? For whatever reason, we as human beings feel like, I think most of us, feel like there are certain forms that we know, okay, this is art. It even could be the smallest thing. It could be the oldest thing. It could be the newest thing. But we feel that that's art. Now, some are similar objects, but they don't seem to feel like they're art. They're just decorations. Or is there any difference?

SPEAKER_00 15:50

Well, I'll give you an example of something that happened to me maybe the second or third year that I was in Paris. It was a beautiful day. The sun was shining. I was going to take the bus, and I look up, and on the glass wall of the bus, I see this patch that is iridescent and translucent and gold and yellow and crackly, and it's absolutely stunning, like a Pompeian mosaic. And then I look and I say, oh, my goodness, somebody threw an egg against the bus stand and it dried there. But I'm in a city that has so much aesthetic that is so incredibly beautiful that your eyes get used to looking for the beauty in things.

SPEAKER_02 16:35

Right.

SPEAKER_00 16:36

Yeah. So there's beauty everywhere.

SPEAKER_02 16:39

Well, I think that's that's you know, I always talk about Italy this way, that even, you know, when you're in Italy, even the the the. garbage when they throw it out. They arranged it in a way that's kind of beautiful. And I think it's part of the culture, right? There is a love for life and beauty amongst Italians. And if you're surrounded by that, everything seems to be colored by that aspect of the culture. But I have to say also that I have a friend, it might take an artistic eye to spot something that beautiful. Because I have a friend who takes photographs and I say this as an example a lot, that if you took a photograph of gum on the street, it would be artistic. If I took that same photograph, it would just be gum on the street, right? There is a certain eye, for whatever reason, And maybe, as you say, a certain energy that one infuses into the work that then turns it into something much more magnificent than a piece of gum on the street. So let's talk about when you have portraiture in your sculptures. Most people, well, a lot of people that we know, when they take up sculpture, they go into more the abstract part of it. Is there a difference in terms of discipline and technique or is the process the same?

SPEAKER_00 18:19

Well, interestingly enough, when I was in school at the Beaux-Arts, we had live models. We drew from the live models and we also sculpted from live models. And I'll never forget that we had a model that was maybe 21 years old and perfect body and wonderful, you could put her on a catwalk and she would be perfect. And the whole class kind of got listless and bored and turned away from the subject. And then we got a model that had been ravaged by time. Her body was absolutely a roadmap for what she had been through. And there was nobody that wasn't totally, totally engaged in capturing what this woman represented. And once I started doing work with the human form, it was the, I would say, the only thing you would not want to do if you wanted to have a successful career and sell a lot of work, because America had moved to abstract expressionism, op art, pop art, installation art, everything that was not to do with the human form. And yet, it's what we are. We all are people, and we carry these bodies around with us. Our eyes speak to you. You sit in the subway. When I came here, there was a little girl, and she was probably six months old, and she's flirting with me with her eyes. So the human form for me is something I'm very attached to, very sensitive of. And when I sculpt a person, my idea is not to sculpt them literally, but to sculpt them spiritually. Where does their spirit reside? Where is their soul?

SPEAKER_02 20:00

So we were talking about that, the essence of the humanity of whoever they are, which are reflected, you know, we talked about the Mona Lisa, you know, La Giaconda, you know, it's that, half smile that captures us. It's not because she's so beautiful and she's so wonderful, you know, because she is. And it's not even, you know, because of the greatest technique in the painting, because a lot of it we don't even see because it's been covered through, you know, years of time. But that particular expression is the essence of who she is. Now, there are very famous sculptors like Rodin and Mayol and Mayol being being one of my favorites, how many more women could you capture in statues? But they're all different because they have their own different essence. If you have to describe your portraiture to somebody, what would you say?

SPEAKER_00 21:15

Okay, a little earlier you prompted a thought that reminded me of when I knew that I could make a sculpture by Lea Pollard. The big concern is that you're going to do something that's overly influenced by a famous artist or that you're going to copy something or that'll be derivative. And that's a big hole to fall into. That's one of the reasons why art history is so important. You see what has been done everywhere. before you. So I did an exercise. I took a magazine. I closed my eyes. I tore out half a dozen pages arbitrarily. I pinned them on my studio wall, and I made a sculpture based on what I saw in these pages from a magazine. And then I looked at it, and I said, okay, would you know that that was something that I did? And the answer was, yeah, nobody else would have done it that way. So from that point on, I realized that I did have my signature.

SPEAKER_02 22:10

What is that signature in your eyes?

SPEAKER_00 22:14

Truth. Digging, digging for the truth, the honesty, the veracity of the situation. You know, when I work with a live model on a portrait, we spend a lot of time talking. We talk, we examine each other to the point where there's a transference of trust. And as the person is wandering around the studio, because I don't ask anybody to sit still so I can get the perfect profile, I just want their presence so that I can just check it out and feel them. Something happens, and the sculpture itself starts to breathe.

SPEAKER_02 22:55

And it comes out, I think... artists would say, whether you're a photographer or a painter, there's a certain thing that comes out that isn't necessarily a physical thing. But when we see it as human beings, we identify it. That is that person. And that is that artist who made this type of thing. Now, you had... Let's talk about women for a second. You've taken on... different topics on women, aging, womanhood, sensuality. What stories do you feel remain to be told in women's place in art?

SPEAKER_00 23:48

Okay, that's a perfect segue. You know, I work in really supporting women in the arts, As a woman in the arts and having had a gallery, having sold a lot of art, I feel that it's very important to put some energy behind a segment that has been under-respected. We've seen changes now. But the one thing that I am yearning for, the one thing that has never been put on a pedestal, is the person who has a normal life and performs the functions of a totally not average existence because it's getting more and more rare to function at all those levels. But you feed your children. You know how many female artists have been revered because they abandoned their children or they couldn't have the conflict of raising children or they had a different lifestyle that would not permit what I call a normal existence, an existence that most everybody can relate to. So it is possible to be a normal person. You don't have to be the Van Gogh crazy. You don't have to cut off your ear. You don't have to have green hair. You can just be a normal person doing a really fine, fine job at what you've chosen.

SPEAKER_02 25:12

Well, I think the difficulty that we have is that human beings have a tendency to label. know people label things so you're either an artist or you're not an artist or you're you're a woman you know women um cannot have it all but men can have it all for whatever reason which is you know sort of like interesting a man can be a both a father a good father um a good horseback rider or athlete and a good chef and a smart businessman and they can have it all and have children and all of those things. But women can't. Women had to have choices because their positions, I would argue, their positions were limited. They were limited to either this or that. It can't be both of them. And so somebody who does... All of the ordinary, seemingly ordinary things in life cannot possibly be extraordinary, right? You can't be both, right? So you couldn't be a good mother and a wonderful artist and a great dancer and all of those things as well. But women have, I think, forged on as best as we can, but I think they're still underrepresented in art, don't you think?

UNKNOWN 26:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:36

The amount of people, we know male artists, we can identify male artists quicker than we can identify female artists, I would argue.

SPEAKER_00 26:45

Yeah, well, the statistics speak for themselves. I'm involved with the New York Society of Women Artists, and we just celebrated our centennial. And we have to look at the facts. The facts are that more than 50% of artists, declared artists, are female. Only 2% make it to an auction at Sotheby's. Only 10% get into museums at all. And as soon as the identity is known, the chances drop more and more and more. But getting back to when I was in school, my professor did not give us false expectations. He said, you become a sculptor Maybe after 25 years, you know how to sculpt. It's slow, and you have to do a lot to be able to learn those lessons. And it's not for you to say you're an artist. Let other people say that. I say I sculpt. You say I'm an artist. I accept that.

SPEAKER_02 27:47

Well, that's the trinity, right? Anybody can write, I suppose. But the writer puts out the work, and if people read them, then you're a writer. If people don't want to read them, then you're still a writer, but you're not necessarily at the level of the people that we revere as good artists that write poetry. Anybody can write poetry. But I think to have that connection with another human being is what's important about the art. Now, having said that, we talked about artificial intelligence sort of like coming into play. And whether, you know, the creation of a particular object becomes art, even if it's not made by a human being. Now, perhaps, you know, if it's energy, if art is energy, then maybe it doesn't matter that it's a human being. But in my mind, there's also that sort of, when you are sculpting a portrait of a model, there is a connection that I can see when I'm looking at it that relates to you and the model. So it's sort of that, you know, that thing, or is that even, does that even really matter, having that connection between human beings to create art?

SPEAKER_00 29:15

Pixels on a screen are not brushstrokes. You perhaps can get a lot of ideas by using artificial intelligence. You can prepare, you can move things around easier, you can come to other considerations from the multitude of possibilities that are available with AI. But it's a little bit like eating a McDonald's and having something made by a four-star chef. The love that goes into it, the passion, the commitment, you can taste it. And I think that if you look at art enough, it's not just colors and squares you put on walls. It actually informs your very, very sense of being alive when you wake up in the morning. I remember I had a wonderful, wonderful painting behind my bed. And I was requested for a museum exhibition. And so I loaned it to the museum for six months. And every time I walked in the bedroom, the hole, that space with nothing in it behind my bed was so huge that it actually kind of hurt. And I couldn't wait for the piece to come back and put it in its rightful place. So I think that each and every artwork is unique. How you relate to it is unique. And how much you choose to be in that space commitment of existence of being present to how you feel and what you see and there's some wonderful books out there I could recommend some but one there was actually a discussion on the science of what we see and the fact is we don't see we extrapolate you only see 20% of anything I only see 20% of you but I met you the other day and I can fill in all those little pieces and say there's Lloyd okay but You're not there.

SPEAKER_02 31:06

Right.

SPEAKER_00 31:06

You're just the kind of...

SPEAKER_02 31:08

Well, that's what I was saying. I was thinking about that this weekend that, you know, I say it's the impression. You know, I was looking at the sunset and I tried to remember it in my mind's eye. And... All I really remember is the impression of what it was. It's not everything. The camera captures everything. But my eyes capture the impression of what it is. And thank God for me, I have very romantic eyes. Because some things you see more beautiful than it is, closer than it is. If you're looking at the skyscrapers, for instance, you feel they're closer to you than the camera does. And so there's a change. But this is a nice segue to your... to the bed series. So let's talk a little bit about what is the bed series?

SPEAKER_00 32:02

It's autobiographical. It has become autobiographical because once I started it based on a personal event, I had an accident in my studio and I was bedridden for an extended period of time. I couldn't work on anything that had any weight to it. I'd been using heavy materials, so I could only work on a tabletop in my bed. And I made a bed. I made a sculpture of a bed. It was on my mind, right? And then I made another one, and I realized that there was a relationship linguistically between the word bed and the object bed that I was making. So then I sat down, I made a list, and I executed a dozen pieces. They went into an exhibition, and it sold out the first night. And those were the days when the cell phone wasn't available. People started to call me and give me words with bed in it. So I said, whoa, this is interesting. I made a first list and there were over a hundred beds. And I realized that it was a linguistic form that I was curious about. How we transported the idea of bedrock or riverbed or bed and breakfast into our psyche and use these words without thinking twice when the image is a bed. And then of course, my curiosity led me to research. There's no materials on the subject. You can get information about certain types of beds made at different periods of time, but a bed isn't really more than what you do there.

SPEAKER_01 33:31

It's

SPEAKER_00 33:32

what happens that it becomes the bed, right?

SPEAKER_02 33:36

Well, that's interesting because I also, you know, I was thinking culturally, there are certain cultures that don't have, they don't use beds. You know, not in the classical way, that we know it. Yet there is, you know, people would say like, you know, like a rolled up, you know, woven mat is the bed, you know, and it becomes the bed when somebody is on it. But there's also a certain personality with beds, right? And it's a very personal thing. Some people want it, you know, a certain way and want to look at a certain way. But the moment you, you know, If you go on vacation, the one thing that you miss most is lying down in your own bed. It

SPEAKER_00 34:27

feels

SPEAKER_02 34:29

good to get home. Yes, that's what it feels like home. But you have a lot of other things that you're working on. Now, sculpture, bronze is a difficult material to work with. It's

SPEAKER_00 34:41

not easy. Excessively difficult.

SPEAKER_02 34:43

And now, but you also are doing this not just, you're doing it in Italy, right? You just came back from Italy. You're doing it here, obviously. And you're also in China. So let's talk about, is there a difference in the way people around the world look at sculpture specifically or art in general about how it's made or the importance or the value of it and what the future looks like in terms of sculpture?

SPEAKER_00 35:13

No question about it.

UNKNOWN 35:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:16

Let's compare, let's say, the two different ones. The Italians that are very classical and then the Chinese in Beijing. What are we seeing? Are they in parallel direction or are they looking at it differently? Because you're in both worlds.

SPEAKER_00 35:34

I haven't had enough time in Italy to actually test the waters to see what everybody has to say. And in fact, I'm starting a new series using... words that have leto in them. Leto means bed in Italian. And guess what? There's more than 100 words with leto in them. So I started to work on that and using a different material, which is a material first used in Italy and still traditionally used in Italy and very rarely used outside for what we would call serious art. I think to answer your question a little bit more precisely when I accidentally ended up at the world's largest art foundry in China. This is a foundry that has 800 trained employees and 80,000 square meters of studio space. This is big. I couldn't believe that they would want to work with me, that my little beds would make a difference or matter. And I'm talking about my work next to monuments, monuments. And so at first I was a little bit you know, scared. I was afraid that one day they would discover it was just a little bed. But as the years went by, and now we're into 15 years of this relationship, and we're starting another project together, they said something to me. I said, why did you care about my little beds when you're making these monuments? The last one they did is five times taller than the Statue of Liberty. So it's monumental, beyond anything we do in America. And they said, but most of that work is done by groups of artists working together. They're technical people who execute an object, a subject. You're an artist, you create. And they've been true to that from day one. It's been amazing.

SPEAKER_02 37:31

Are there apprenticeships that's going on in China now as well? Or is it... I guess just like in every other place in the world, there are people who like the classical arts. There's also the traditional Chinese art. But there's also a lot of interest in more abstract expressionist art among the Chinese. The collectors, at least, like modern art. Has art changed in China since... I guess the more commercialization of China in general, or do you feel like it's always been there and it's just getting bigger and bigger because of the opportunities?

SPEAKER_00 38:23

Well, I can give you two examples. One is that a few years ago, China announced that it was going to create 300 new art museums. We're lucky if we get two a year, and they're going to do 300 in the next five years. Culture to them is more than 2,000 years old, the Bronze Age. They have bronzes in Beijing at the temple that are 2,000 years old, and you can't imagine what they were capable of executing at that time. But what you're seeing also, take any situation from America and multiply it by 10. So if you have 1,000 billionaires in America, you have 10,000 billionaires in China. And they will collect art. And the most interesting thing is that the older generation has declared itself somewhat lacking in knowledge and open spirit. And so they have put their children in the role of acquiring art for the family's heritage.

SPEAKER_02 39:26

So where do you fit in these? Because I know you have multiple more projects in China. You're coming up with a really big one in 2026. We talked about the taro, which is how big is it going to be?

SPEAKER_00 39:46

They're going to be about two and a half meters by four meters. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:51

And how long do you think it would take you from start to finish before you could

SPEAKER_00 40:00

exhibit? Can I come back in a year and tell you what it took? I'm not sure. It's an experiment that I'm working directly with the Foundry on. And I'll tell you, it came about through some unusual circumstances and an interaction with a master of tarot and a philosopher who was completely intrigued by the bronze process. viewed from the alchemistry perspective. And so he met me over in China, and we started to conjure up some possibilities. And we did tarot readings morning, noon, and night. And so I... presented a project to the head of the foundry to do these giant tarot cards, but they are going to be assemblage, and I'm going to use the scraps from the foundry. So when you imagine the size of what they normally work on, a scrap takes two men and a crane to move into place, which is why I can't answer your question on how much time and what. So The biggest, hardest part was to convince the foundry that with a zero waste policy, they could sacrifice some of the recovery of these materials and let me work them and create the tarot cards with them. So it's an adventure. We'll see.

SPEAKER_02 41:14

Well, it's certainly exciting. Now, one last question before we go. Is there a question that no one ever asks you that you wish somebody would when it comes to

SPEAKER_00 41:26

art? Yes, yes. I'll be very blunt. Why does the art market chase 2% of the world's population to sell the same people art when their role should really be to convert the 98% that is afraid to buy art into art lovers and art buyers at every level? Why?

SPEAKER_02 41:49

Well, you know, we remember what, again, we talked about Fran Lebowitz saying that they applaud the price, they don't applaud the artist. And I think that's part of what's keeping a lot of the art, you know, could be, would be art collectors from indulging in art. Because if they bought something for $25... It doesn't feel like it's valuable art because the world tells us that the $25 million one or the $250 million one is the one that you should covet. And yet art is everywhere. There's so many artists that when you go to flea market, These artisans, if you go to, I go to Provincetown quite a bit, and there used to be artists that are in training or they just want to do things. They're not very expensive pieces of work, but people look at them as lesser art than the ones that we are told are collectible. And so I think if we wanted to convert the world you know, the 98% into art lovers and art collectors. We have to erase that idea that art can only be good art if it's expensive art.

SPEAKER_00 43:06

My final word would be that the language around art and artists has to change. The closest parallel is diamonds or petroleum. It's a natural resource. It's deep, deep, deep down in the earth, if you want to call the psyche earth. And somebody has to pull it out, refine it, condition it, and put it in a place where it can be used and applied. And we should be using art. to apply to culture, not to apply to price tags. So if that language would change and you would look at each and every artist as you would look at somebody who's capable of transforming raw materials, it's like a farmer. The farmer plants the seed and you get to eat it on your dinner table. Well,

SPEAKER_02 44:00

I think the problem that we're having is that art isn't, you know, as we know it today, especially, just as in real estate. We used to think of real estate as a house that you lived in or a place that you worked in. But a lot of people think of it as an investment. Even if they live there, they look at it as an investment. And art right now is being looked at as an investment, as a form of investment, but not as a financial investment, not as a personal investment. And I think what you're talking about is looking at art as... deeply intrinsic to our investment in the culture of humanity, in our connection with each other, you know, that would allow us to appreciate, you know, everything from everyone from all over the world, just like we do with, you know, music and food and in all of these things that connected us as human beings.

SPEAKER_00 44:53

We are custodians during our lifetime. All we're doing is taking care of it. You show me who got buried with the Picasso in their tombstone. I mean, the pharaohs used to take their jewelry and all, but really. So what does it mean that you possess this, that it cost you nine figures? I don't think that's the point. The point is that we want to be careful when we talk about the art market and we want to talk about art culture. as culture. And if you stomp on your culture and you don't respect it, you will inherit something pretty sad and you'll pass something very sad on to your heirs and your family. This is what I spend a lot of time trying to defend. Look at it from a different perspective.

SPEAKER_02 45:41

Art is something, you know, we work very hard to, you know, as they say, to be able to enjoy these things, art, in all of its form, whether it's poetry, whether it's sculpture, whether it's paintings, you know, that's what we enjoy doing. It's not something that we trade as a commodity, you know, without any other... It's what connects all of us together. It's how we identify, you know... the deeper thoughts that we have, the deeper emotions, you know, that we have is expressed through art, in all sorts of forms, in music, in plays, in television, in, you know, all of these things, I think, are a reflection of who we are. And I think that's what's getting lost. You know, we keep talking about the sellability of things, sellability of movies, sellability of books, sellability of, you know, we forget that the reason we do them is for that connection with that, artist?

SPEAKER_00 46:45

When we are in touch with ourselves, we can begin to be in touch with art. And they say everywhere, art is a language. Well, learn a new language. You will have so much richer life because of it. And possessing things is not the same as the wealth. Peace and good wealth, it just goes through my head every day when I think of how you chose the name. for good wealth, because I think that that's something that has been overlooked. You should have good wealth.

SPEAKER_02 47:22

Not just wealth for the

SPEAKER_00 47:23

sake of it. That's right. Good wealth. If it's not working on you. and making you a better person, how good would it be?

SPEAKER_02 47:31

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 47:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 47:32

Well, and on that note, thank you so much, Leah Pollard, for such a beautiful and profound discussion about art, life, and culture. We are privileged to have you here and hope to have you back soon. And on that note, we are here. We're going to say goodbye. Thank you, Colin Megley. Thank you, Leah Pollard. Thank you, Perry Law, Dieter Borbeck, Kenneth And on behalf of Global Wealth, this is Lloyd Carlos wishing you peace and good wealth.