090 - Thanksgiving 2021 - Turkey and Mayo!

Kurt Neiswender: 0:06

Hello, Jamie, how you doing?

Jamie Crawley: 0:09

Good. It's almost Thanksgiving. That's right. By the time I finished this edit, it may be AF after we might be doing like Thanksgiving leftovers. Is that what you're saying?

Kurt Neiswender: 0:22

That's right. Which two of the best leftovers combined or Turkey and.

Jamie Crawley: 0:28

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no Mayo. No,

Kurt Neiswender: 0:33

no. Oh, I'm kidding. Cold Turkey and mayonnaise.

Jamie Crawley: 0:38

No cold Turkey. Yes. No mayonnaise. Don't need that in my life at all.

Kurt Neiswender: 0:43

I'm missing

Jamie Crawley: 0:45

out now. I, I'm not missing. Turkey with cranberry sauce, like all day, every day.

Kurt Neiswender: 0:51

one of Daniel's aunts makes a cranberry sauce that has a lot of booze in it. I'm a, I'm

Jamie Crawley: 0:57

down with that. Cranberry sauce is the easiest thing in the world to make it

Kurt Neiswender: 1:02

better

Jamie Crawley: 1:03

with boots in it. Maybe. I don't know. I haven't done, I haven't done that. So. I don't know, I'm a purist on the, on, on my, oh,

Kurt Neiswender: 1:12

get the ones that I became.

Jamie Crawley: 1:15

No, what is this?

Kurt Neiswender: 1:17

This is painful. Pure

Jamie Crawley: 1:19

Berry sauce. No, it's not. I'm talking about cranberries. Like the berries, like you get the berries and then. Sugar and boil them water and

Kurt Neiswender: 1:31

boil. And I I've been there. It's actually you're right. It is pretty easy. And then they pop,

Jamie Crawley: 1:38

they pop. Yeah. Yes. It's brilliant. It is. It is

Kurt Neiswender: 1:41

kind of fun. It's kind of like take like, cause I mean, who wants to eat at cranberry?

Jamie Crawley: 1:47

I mean, who wants, he wants to have like, that weird gelatinous thing that comes out of a can the mean to do that? That's awful. No, it's just that as me.

Kurt Neiswender: 1:57

Yeah. Every, I mean, when I was young, I mean, it happened to. On occasion at my house, but I'm not going to toss, toss anyone under the bus because

Jamie Crawley: 2:11

mom does listen to this podcast every once in a while. I know. She,

Kurt Neiswender: 2:15

she she's a fan and a supporter. We want to keep her in that camp.

Jamie Crawley: 2:20

Yeah, exactly. Is tell her, skip past, skip past the first three minutes of this episode. Should we

Kurt Neiswender: 2:28

move on? Yes. Well, what happened to episode 89? Yeah. Right. Don't worry about it. Don't worry about how it got deleted. So, yeah. so yeah, as we approach. I, I would say one of the, funner holidays in American calendar, however, D had Danielle, Nathaniel, Jamie is a hybrid or half-breed which yeah. Canadian American or American Canadian.

Jamie Crawley: 2:57

I don't know. There are, there is a Canadian Thanksgiving and an American Thanksgiving. Yes. What they're on if they're on different days. but since we live in the states, we have always done the American Thanksgiving, which for obvious reasons, like named namely you're out of school or whatever. So, right.

Kurt Neiswender: 3:15

And you get your hands on some real

Jamie Crawley: 3:18

cranberries. Yeah, well, yeah, cranberries and Turkey and stuffing and mashed potatoes and sweet potatoes. And. Yams, all the good stuff. Yams,

Kurt Neiswender: 3:31

yam, same thing as a sweep. Isn't it? The same thing

Jamie Crawley: 3:34

is it though.

Kurt Neiswender: 3:36

I, I want to say yes,

Jamie Crawley: 3:38

I grew some squash in the garden. I grew a butternut squash. so I'm going to actually try a butternut squash recipe for, Thanksgiving. I'm not sure how that's going to go. I will report back

Kurt Neiswender: 3:50

later. I mean, as long as you don't under cook it, butter, not squashes are

Jamie Crawley: 3:55

very delicious, so you're gonna try and keep it simple. So yeah,

Kurt Neiswender: 4:00

always, always is best. So in simple terms, what is your. Beverage do your oh, today, use my French, French Canadian to

Jamie Crawley: 4:12

shore. I am, I'm having the last of the maple pecan, that I mentioned he can

Kurt Neiswender: 4:19

maple P can coffee. Yeah, I'm going to like, I, like I said, still haven't ventured out, but I will. make a, make a little trip to see if I can acquire some, nobody nobody's offered any porch pickup coffee this year because the pandemic is.

Jamie Crawley: 4:39

I do have some stuff that I, I intend to get in the mail for you. So there is that week capital city, coffee is, is coming your way, so already purchased nice in the, in the bag. Very

Kurt Neiswender: 4:53

nice. So looking forward to that, that will be, hopefully in time to replace this a rootless Barry kiss, similar to, Other recent episodes. I've been sticking with my Flint Flint favorites, which actually I forgot to mention. And you should have gotten that email. I mean, I know we can make a little. Right about potential collaboration between rootless coffee, which I do believe they are a listener and follower of the Twitter

Jamie Crawley: 5:29

page. And these guys, guys, guys, guys, and

Kurt Neiswender: 5:35

them, we will come up with a, a branded, hold on. How do I put it more fun than that? Basically we will get some coffee, sketch coffee. For coffee, sketch podcasts,

Jamie Crawley: 5:48

coffee out there to consume

Kurt Neiswender: 5:52

in the real world in the new year. I think we have.

Jamie Crawley: 5:56

Yeah, I know we have to, we have it now we have now. Yes, but it's like, you got to wait there's anticipation there. You're building the anticipation, both for ourselves as well as everybody else that we will, encouraged. They'll be excited. And then tell us, tell us if it's any good.

Kurt Neiswender: 6:14

yeah, I think, well, I mean, I haven't had

Jamie Crawley: 6:17

anything. We consume enough coffee to probably have a good opinion

Kurt Neiswender: 6:22

about it, but we have a podcast that we do talk about coffee. Yeah. Sometimes from time to time. Right.

Jamie Crawley: 6:28

And, and rootless does like the graphic. yeah. aspects of, bag design and whatnot for their branded blends. So, there's, there's a nice kinship there. I think, I think, I think, it's something to look forward to for the new year, for

Kurt Neiswender: 6:42

sure. Yeah. In the new year. Yeah. And the, what was I going to say? I forgot already the, they have another one out now. That is a kinda neat, it's like, I forget the name now, but it's a little spoof on,

Jamie Crawley: 6:53

Big Lebowski.

Kurt Neiswender: 6:54

It's got the, the cat has robe and the bowling ball. And so speaking of their graphic design sort of, can the kinship and they're sort of tongue in cheek sort of attitude about, labels and things like that. So they keep coming out with some fun stuff. So, anyway, so yeah, I forgot to mention. But, Jamie needs to reply to that email, I think, to, make it official. It's your job. Oh, okay. Gotcha. we need a thumbs up. so, so let's, it's it's how do we reintroduce this week? Let me show you, I'm going to pull some sketches from Jamie's vault here. but boom, we can talk about this one first or this one, depending on your, your, your preference, but you have some new sketches here of, an event that you've been a participant in the past. and, and sort of in a, what do you call it? A short list of high regard of designers of these installations called the, the Creek. The Walden Creek love. Love

Jamie Crawley: 7:59

me some Creek show. yeah. It's yeah, no. W was fortunate to, be a selected artist a few years ago, with, with a team and, we're able to release the crackin on Walnut Creek. and then, as photons. And then photon fable redo got re envisioned in the Ooma loft sculpture garden, and unlike creature, which is only about 10 days, of an installation in downtown Austin. the redo of our photon fable, was in the sculpture garden for almost a year. So that was. Pretty darn exciting. but yeah, they, the Creek show annually, is, put on by the Walnut Creek Conservancy in downtown Austin. And they have tried to garner attention to this watershed area, in. In the, in the downtown grid. we've talked about it a little bit before, but in getting the public awareness campaign for this particular area and the importance of it, both for the city, but also the potential, that, this watershed can also be a place for the public to interact. with the natural environment and that sort of stretches up through the city and becomes this kind of nice artery, both literally and figuratively, throughout the city, they, they decided that art was, was a, an art activations were, were a possible way to. With gain public awareness about this, amenity in downtown, because a lot of it's happening below street level. so it's, your, your bridges and your roads are sort of crisscrossing it and within the grid and there's this Creek that's feeding into the lake and at, at the, the edge of downtown. A lot of folks who've visited Austin sort of know that, that part of town. And there's a couple of different creeks that sort of feed into it. But one of the major ones is Waller Creek and Walnut Creek is essentially going north and south, all the way up to the. and so it's, it's running parallel to one of the major highways, and sort of, kind of dances up next to it a

Kurt Neiswender: 10:01

little bit. Is this the, is this the Capitol dome too? And then that's

Jamie Crawley: 10:05

the, yeah, so it's, you're, you're within, a lot of recognizable downtown elements, stitched throughout the city. And this is a really, amazing natural. And, and, and the watershed. So it's the other part of it is when there are big rain events, there is the potential for flooding. And so water is going to track towards this Creek or the Creek starts to rise. And so there was, an infrastructure aspect to all this as well that the Sydney was trying to do. In terms of, flood, flood mitigation and flood control. it's, ideas about climate that you and I've talked about before. So all those things sort of dovetail into, what is Waller Creek and the Conservancy, and ultimately preacher, becomes the sort of interesting public face of it all, for several years. and now this year, one of the things that they have undertaken and now has been realized, or at least the first big phase of it has been realized is, a redevelopment of a, of a large park. That was, that was already on the path of Walmart. And so it was a public bark, but had sort of fallen into disrepair and, it did flood from time to time. And so some of these mitigation efforts were, highlighted in this park and the realization that that much land sort of in downtown could be really turned into a great amenity for the public. as well as solve some of these other issues. And so, Creek show, I think I would describe it to you is that the artwork sort of started really pretty close to the lake kind of down at the base of the Creek. And then it slowly migrated, whether by intention or not year to year up the.

Kurt Neiswender: 11:49

yeah, I would think, oh, sorry.

Jamie Crawley: 11:52

Now is in now is at this park that just opened this year.

Kurt Neiswender: 11:56

Oh, okay. So, so this made it, I mean, I would think if they were, there's an interesting strategy to that as far as. Your your initial, when you mentioned the use of art and I would almost call it art and architecture, the de the design elements are occupiable, as a, as a beacon or a way to raise awareness of, of this natural, or, a natural amenity and, and it's, as a Creek, right? It's it is a directional, natural environment, right? You have water moving. And so it goes from, an origin source to, an outlet, right. To the lake and, sort of highlighting the various stages or the points along the Creek would make sense. So if they did, if there was an intention behind it, I think that's kind of a, a smart move to sort of, cause just like, now if you made a comparison to like urban investment, downtown Austin is not just downtown Austin, right? I mean, you, you have different pockets of, characteristics, that are different all, all throughout. And so activating the space in this portion may not be the same as activating a space in some other part of town. And so the sort of serendipity. the outcome may not necessarily be predictable and that sort of unpredictability is probably a good thing. And so that's just the way I see it as an

Jamie Crawley: 13:27

outsider. Right. Right. Well, and, and, and I think unpredictability is sort of the, the, a nice way to even look at Creek show itself. I mean, is that there is. And an unpredictable aspect of, what art gets selected and who's participating. and then there isn't specific sites, as, as it's, as it's, there are sites in a sense, because people traditionally were using the same sites over and over again, but even with. now that it's started to migrate up the Creek, what's sort of interesting for me as, as somebody who's gone several years in a row now, is that, and then also participating in myself is like the site that we worked at there had been three or four installations at it. prior to us, we were the last one though, to occupy that site. Then the following year, they had moved further up the. and so, in all these success of ears, and now this particular year, this is the first time that these particular sites that are in these two sketches have ever had Ark. and so there's that unpredictable nature of it. And, and it's like, it's sort of that when you build it, will they come and how will they enjoy it? and how what's the reaction going to be to it?

Kurt Neiswender: 14:39

Yeah, sending to the other one, but yeah,

Jamie Crawley: 14:41

and this one too, is, is one where there is a large permanent, built pavilion, open air pavilion by Thomas Pfeiffer and partners. and so it, it occupies a large portion of the, So the park site that, that all these artworks are now housed within, or at least for housed within, for this Creek show. And, it, it, in of itself is sort of a, an artistic architecture piece. and one of the, one of the installations sort of in the right of this sketch, it looks like. Some things sort of hanging there. and, and so there was a, they used the, the framework of this, Trellis this white transparent trellis frame that sort of over the top of the stage, they used it as a, as the means to hang sort of lip pieces and sort of in a repetition that you kind of walked through this environment, which was, I thought pretty effective. and it's positioning on the site is sort of it bounds and sort of creates an edge towards downtown on one side. the sketch sort of looks back towards the creeks. And there's another work there in the, in the, on the far left. And those were in inflatable. Yeah. In fleet inflatable pieces. was that had sort of a, like a CAC tile or CAC tile? Is that a word cap?

Kurt Neiswender: 16:04

I think it is now that's yeah.

Jamie Crawley: 16:06

but they were

Kurt Neiswender: 16:08

kind

Jamie Crawley: 16:09

of, there you go. and, and they were, they were. they were a big hit for sure. I think from a, from an interaction standpoint, I mean, it was like bouncy house meets art, and, Gavi in this brand new park. I think it, they end the S the idea of sort of super scale. was, was really, really effective, for, for those. And I think they were well cited. really, really liked, really liked the way that they sort of created their own little environment within the park. there were, some more. Artistic pieces. and the previous sketch I thought was, maybe one of my favorites in terms of the, the built aspect of it. also because you had multiple vantage points, this particular one that the drawn you, you picked up on it right away is it's got this great Vista back towards the cab. And so you kind of get the sense of where you are in space in downtown yet there's this layering of space. And so the sketch really tried to, tried to capture that I did, I didn't do this one on side. I did. I admit, I spent a lot of time on this one afterwards. but, it was. I think it's it's, it was a personal challenge and I, I knew it when I saw it, how I wanted to draw it though. Was that the foreground there's sort of a limestone, pathway. There's a lot of what's for, for, for a park that's dealing with water mitigation. There is a lot of cast element. so, I'm, we haven't had a big, big rain event, so I'm not sure

Kurt Neiswender: 17:42

how it's all impervious surface, maybe

Jamie Crawley: 17:45

very, very, so that's sort of interesting. but so th that, that bottom portion of the sketch is, a cast retaining wall, and then you sort of see some scale figures with the artwork there. and then in that sort of white zone, that's a sort of a play on the figure field. And then behind it, that dark night sky with the, the silhouette at the parking garage and, and then the capital, in distance.

Kurt Neiswender: 18:15

Yeah. I really like how the, again, sorta using these lines as a way to render the sky and in a backdrop and. you're, you're sort of squiggle squiggle landscapes, which are, I think, I mean, they read, it reads really well. I like, your scale figures too, but I, I actually did notice the, your sort of subtle hint at the block work. And so that was interesting to see that now that you've mentioned what it is actually, and how that sort of figures into the whole. The whole space

Jamie Crawley: 18:50

there's a lot of landscape is yeah, because the landscape is really tiered. And so I was, I was trying to figure out the best way to, to capture that. And so you were starting to say it, but I think that that was the thing is like, there's, there's these layers of space and, but a lot of it's really built up and I was, I'd been in the park once before without the. it's only, it's only been open for a little while. and, but seeing it with all the artwork and seeing with so many people in it, for, for the creep show itself, I mean, this is, this is a show that brings, 10,000. to, to, to the park, for, for a show in one evening. and in this case they were going to, because of, COVID protocols, they should have controlling access and things like that. but, but yeah, it, it, that activated, the space, in the evening it was, it was, it was nice to see. but it definitely some layering of space that I was trying to.

Kurt Neiswender: 19:40

Yeah, well, I see it. I mean, I can, it really neat, for a flat sheet of paper, this sort of, sort of backdrop and stage, and almost imagining it, thinking of it almost like theatrically a stage set with, doing the most out of a little limited amount. For real estate. And, and so the vantage point, that you pointed out that you, you wanted the view that you sketched and it took you a little, a little bit of a sort of returned to, to get there. But, yeah, it's really, it's a, it's a really nice, and they're sort of, heavy. Render. I don't like overly wet pen. I don't know what to call it. like in the way the, the shadows are sort of in the texture of these, poles, which I imagine are kind of like a TP of sorts, or I don't know what they were

Jamie Crawley: 20:33

intended. I am. I'm not sure. I didn't, I didn't necessarily read the

Kurt Neiswender: 20:39

TP is the right word to use.

Jamie Crawley: 20:43

Well, yeah, I mean, I think that they, they abstraction of these offset poles. it was, it was a, it was an interesting scale game cause they all weren't the same height. and they, they had. I interpreted them. I didn't read it and I should go back, but I interpreted them almost like, Mechanization like that they were sort of creatures in and of themselves and the sort of almost still walkers, that they were sort of like moving in this landscape and you're sort of capturing it. and they lit up the tops lit up and there also was sort of a, th the, the way they were fabricated, they actually had some LEDs in the, in the cylinders themselves. So there was one side of it that sort of had a, had a globe. And so that was part of the idea what the sketch was. How do I render that part of this shell? And then part of the slight, see that now all with all with one pen and no color,

Kurt Neiswender: 21:45

that's really, that's very mysterious,

Jamie Crawley: 21:48

but, but yeah, I, I kind of, I, I read that. in sort of, not reading the artists, description are the most likely sort of, mechanization, these sort of elements that were sort of creatures walking into the park and I kind of liked it. It was

Kurt Neiswender: 22:03

a fun. Yeah. I'm going to have to look up the, see if I can find some pictures, more pictures, of this year's installation, but the, and 1, 1, 1 last thing for me, at least. And if you I'll give you the last word, but I really am intrigued by the concept of bringing awareness to the watershed and the urbanization of downtown Austin. And now that I'm teaching, we, we recently have been having some conversations about potential projects for next semester on. In the Detroit area and over the Detroit or the Detroit river watershed, which is fairly large. well, the, the largest portion of it is through Wayne county, which comes, which is where Detroit is. And, funnel's individual trait river Wayne county. It's the math is staggering. It is like 90 plus percent. Or per impervious. Right? So we've had, I mean, if you've read the news, there, there are some, freeways that are above ground and then some that are sort of below ground as they try and weave these things throughout the city that have literally flooded, like. In the, in, in these heavy rains over the past few years and these inundation events, right, where it's just a ton of rain at once. And I wonder if there is some aspect of, the sort of art and installation. That could help to raise awareness in the Detroit area, maybe.

Jamie Crawley: 23:40

Well, I, I, I think it's, it's, it's certainly something to consider. I mean, the, one of the early individuals to the Conservancy reached out to and brought on board was, part of the Highline project. and so they had.

Kurt Neiswender: 23:55

I don't scape a landscape guy. No,

Jamie Crawley: 23:57

no, no, no. It was one of the community organizers. Oh. it was, it was somebody who was, interested in the, the, the, what you're describing, th th the place aspect of the infrastructure and the impacts of it to the community. And then how art or installation or intervention. Can change one's perception and awareness of a particular place that's maybe underutilized or needs to be rethought or, fill in the blank. But, I think what, my, as much as I like what you're talking about, and I completely agree that that might be a way to, to, to think about it for Detroit. The thing that I would say the caution, the cautionary tale part of this, maybe, maybe that's where we kind of pin it and an end on is that in this particular case, I thought it was very. And a little bit ironic that now that the park is open, and this is a first phase of a larger, that them and the project is not done. I mean, there's, there's more work to be done. but now that the park is open and Creek show was very integral to its awareness campaign and to the movement throughout the few years that it's been going on. And the artwork is now in the park for this year. And now it's just, just finished disclosed. none of the artwork was in the water, so none of the artwork was actually in the Creek itself. and so I thought that that was a missed opportunity. And, has somebody who has personally spent time in the Greek? I think, I think that, that, that part of the story it's still really important and I think was really kind of a missed opportunity for them as they're trying to. it became more of an event about the art and the place, as opposed to the event, the art place and awareness of the bigger picture. And I think that, that part, I would have loved to have seen more of that. And I think that, that, that might be my, my one criticism of it, but otherwise I thought the artwork, was, Was was really inventive. definitely, everyone's upping their game, which is great to see. and some of them were certainly favorites this one in particular. so

Kurt Neiswender: 26:07

yeah, thanks. Yeah. That's, that's a good way to, to set the tone and, and sort of w we should probably, I think it would be interesting to revisit again. Probably more often, but we do always circle back to some things, but yeah, thanks. for these really nice sketches. and, and we are part of your continued participation in the creature. So have a nice Turkey

Jamie Crawley: 26:33

day. Yeah, you too. Yeah. Turkey, no Mayo, no Mayo buddy. I can't cranberry

Kurt Neiswender: 26:38

sauce. Cranberry sauce can make any promises.