In this episode of Creative Guts, co-hosts Laura Harper Lake and Sarah Wrightsman chat with artist, curator, poet, and educator Fallon Rae. Fallon’s name was mentioned when Creative Guts interviewed Mike Howat last year, and Fallon’s been on the list ever since. Fallon’s currently in a state of transition with her personal art, moving from themes of outer space to something more figurative. While she’s evolving, she has plenty to keep her busy with the brand new gallery, Pillar Gallery + Projects, in Concord that she’s opening with Mike Howat and the Mini Museum at Concord Mart! In this episode, we cover a host of topics from the pressure to make money as an artist to the pitfalls of social media to why showing your art in small businesses is actually awesome. Check out Fallon’s work on the web at www.fallonrae.com and on Instagram and Facebook at www.instagram.com/byfallonrae and www.facebook.com/byfallonrae. You can find Pillar Gallery + Projects online at www.pillargalleryprojects.com, on Instagram at www.instagram.com/pillar_galleryprojects, and in person at 205 N State St, Concord, NH 03301. Listen to this episode wherever you listen to podcasts or on our website www.CreativeGutsPodcast.com. Be friends with us on Facebook at www.Facebook.com/CreativeGutsPodcast and Instagram at www.Instagram.com/CreativeGutsPodcast. A special thank you to Art Up Front Street Studios and Gallery in Exeter for providing a space where Creative Guts can record! This episode is sponsored in part by the Rochester Museum of Fine Arts. Thank you to our friends in Rochester for their support of the show. If you love listening, consider making a donation to Creative Guts! Our budget is tiny, so donations of any size make a big difference. Learn more about us and make a tax deductible donation at www.CreativeGutsPodcast.com.
In this episode of Creative Guts, co-hosts Laura Harper Lake and Sarah Wrightsman chat with artist, curator, poet, and educator Fallon Rae. Fallon’s name was mentioned when Creative Guts interviewed Mike Howat last year, and Fallon’s been on the list ever since.
Fallon’s currently in a state of transition with her personal art, moving from themes of outer space to something more figurative. While she’s evolving, she has plenty to keep her busy with the brand new gallery, Pillar Gallery + Projects, in Concord that she’s opening with Mike Howat and the Mini Museum at Concord Mart! In this episode, we cover a host of topics from the pressure to make money as an artist to the pitfalls of social media to why showing your art in small businesses is actually awesome.
Check out Fallon’s work on the web at www.fallonrae.com and on Instagram and Facebook at www.instagram.com/byfallonrae and www.facebook.com/byfallonrae.
You can find Pillar Gallery + Projects online at www.pillargalleryprojects.com, on Instagram at www.instagram.com/pillar_galleryprojects, and in person at 205 N State St, Concord, NH 03301.
Listen to this episode wherever you listen to podcasts or on our website www.CreativeGutsPodcast.com. Be friends with us on Facebook at www.Facebook.com/CreativeGutsPodcast and Instagram at www.Instagram.com/CreativeGutsPodcast.
A special thank you to Art Up Front Street Studios and Gallery in Exeter for providing a space where Creative Guts can record! This episode is sponsored in part by the Rochester Museum of Fine Arts. Thank you to our friends in Rochester for their support of the show.
If you love listening, consider making a donation to Creative Guts! Our budget is tiny, so donations of any size make a big difference. Learn more about us and make a tax deductible donation at www.CreativeGutsPodcast.com.
EPISODE 175
[INTRODUCTION]
[0:00:00] LHL: I'm Laura Harper Lake.
[0:00:01] SW: And I'm Sarah Wrightsman.
[0:00:03] HOSTS: You're listening to Creative Guts.
[EPISODE]
[0:00:17] SW: Hello, listeners. Thank you for tuning into this episode of Creative Guts.
[0:00:21] LHL: On today's episode, we're talking with artist, curator, poet, and educator, Fallon Rae.
[0:00:27] SW: Fallon's name came up when we talked with Mike Howat last year about Salon 2022, so we're excited to finally follow up and talk with Fallon herself. Let's get right into this episode of Creative Guts with Fallon Rae.
[INTERVIEW]
[0:00:42] LHL: Fallon, welcome to Creative Guts.
[0:00:44] FR: Hi. Thank you, guys, for having me. I really appreciate it.
[0:00:46] SW: We're so excited.
[0:00:47] LHL: Yeah, we've been trying to get you on for a while now, so we're glad that the stars aligned, which is a very appropriate reference, since a lot of your work is out of this world.
[0:00:59] FR: Thank you. Thank you. I love that. Yeah, the stars aligned. I also love that song by John Sandler, so that's always a thing for me.
[0:01:08] LHL: Oh, that’s awesome.
[0:01:10] SW: For our listeners who know nothing about you, will you just introduce yourself and tell them a little bit about you as a creative?
[0:01:16] FR: Yes, I am Fallon Rae. I am a creator, curator, and just overall, roaming human being who likes to just see what's up with this world. I genuinely like finding new things and helping other people discover what they can share with the world.
[0:01:38] LHL: That's wonderful.
[0:01:39] SW: That is so beautiful. Do you want to talk a bit about, first, your art, as in what mediums and what subject matter that you're working on?
[0:01:48] FR: Right now, I'm actually working on nothing. I know. It's crazy. I've been taking a little bit of time. I'm opening up a gallery right now, so it's been a lot of work. But I've actually been switching what I want to do for my subject. Lately, I've been doing space now for eight, almost 10 years, and I have wanted to switch to something different, more figurative. I've been taking some time off to understand myself and see where I want to emerge from this space that I call me.
[0:02:23] LHL: That is awesome.
[0:02:25] SW: So cool.
[0:02:25] LHL: We were very drawn to your work. I think we met you and we found your work out and your artwork online and didn't realize it was you that was associated with the account. That's happened a few times with us, where we meet someone IRL, and we don't recognize that it's the artist that we're like, “Oh, check out this artist.”
[0:02:43] SW: I had no idea that that's who you were when we met you at Mosaic, but I knew your name because Mike Howat mentioned you when we interviewed him on the podcast. I knew you and I knew your art, but I didn't know who you were. So, yeah.
[0:02:55] LHL: Then it all comes together.
[0:02:56] SW: It all comes together and we're like, “Oh, okay.”
[0:02:59] FR: Oh, yeah. That's great. Yeah, Mike is one of my co-curators. He's the one who's actually, we're opening up the gallery together. We've run a few exhibitions together, and I just absolutely love working with him. That means a lot that he mentioned to me, because I know how much he runs in the circles in the community, and I know how much these circles in the community mean to me. It was just so great that we found each other, we're making even more happen, and then of course, we're making this podcast and everything else is happening right now. It just feels like a dream.
[0:03:32] LHL: That's so cool.
[0:03:33] SW: Well, okay. We'll get back to your art in a little bit, but let's switch gears to the gallery then, because this is brand-new news. I will mention that this episode is probably going to come out in a month and a half or so.
[0:03:44] LHL: Something like that. Yeah.
[0:03:45] SW: A month to a month and a half.
[0:03:46] LHL: October. Will you have already been opened by then?
[0:03:49] FR: Yes, the first exhibition will open. It will open September 30th. It's called Flora and Fauna. It will open with about 12 artists or so. We have artists all across the northern hemisphere, from down to New York City, to up in this region. We're trying to expand ourselves a little bit more and just give a greater voice to the area. We also want to host more events and just art openings, art talks, yoga events, Sunday dinners, where people just get together, we have some chefs come in, and it just becomes a really, really cool time. That's our goal.
[0:04:28] LHL: Where's the gallery located?
[0:04:29] FR: 205 North State Street in Concord, New Hampshire.
[0:04:34] SW: What's the size, roughly?
[0:04:35] FR: It's really small. It's like, 200, 250-square-feet. It's on the smaller side, but we're going to be making the most that we can happen within the space.
[0:04:46] SW: Yeah, that's nice. Entering an intimate space, you really get that close time with the art, or whatever that you're connecting with. I think it makes it even more personal and you just have a different reaction with the art that way, like the See Saw Gallery that Amy Regan runs in Manchester. You just feel so – you're just swimming in it. You're immersed in it. I love that.
[0:05:08] FR: Exactly. I love Amy so much and everything that she does and the Rochester Museum of Fine Arts do. Everyone, like Eric Katzman, all these people I’ve worked with, Kimball Jenkins, where Mike and I have run Salon for the past few years. We've really loved expanding ourselves so much into spaces. We're really excited to see what it's going to be like to teeter down into a smaller space, create, and really give an amplified voice to people who are working in this area and beyond this area to connect everybody.
[0:05:43] LHL: That's great.
[0:05:44] SW: How did you and Mike meet, and then how did you start working together as curators?
[0:05:48] FR: Mike and I met, I was a little bit of a creepy fan. Not going to lie. I met through one of his friends and I saw his piece way back on the day when NHIA was still a thing, which it's –
[0:06:01] SW: RIP.
[0:06:03] FR: Yeah, exactly. RIP. I've been begging him to make an RIP NHIA little painting of it.
[0:06:11] LHL: Yes, that would be perfect.
[0:06:12] FR: There is a mailbox series I want him to do, like contributing to that. I remember when I first met him, I was like, “I've known you in so many lifetimes.” We have started something together. It was just like, I saw really Greek Venetian times. I know it might sound a little crazy, but I just saw groups of people and things happening. Through every experience we've ever had together, that is what has happened. You don't really meet that, or have that happen very often. He saw it, too. He spent a semester in his college in Greece. He was like, “Wow. Whoa. You've never been there? You see it, too? Oh, my God. We get each other. We see a community.” That's what we're trying to build here, without pretentiousness, without anything.
[0:07:00] SW: Right, right.
[0:07:00] LHL: Yeah, that's so cool.
[0:07:02] SW: I love that. Oh. Was Kimball Jenkins the first show that you had curated together?
[0:07:08] FR: Yeah, it is. That was the first official show we ever curated together. I actually curated a whole show to prove to him that I was a curator, I’m not going to lie. I do run a show at Dos Amigos right now, which anyone, I would love for everyone to apply to. If you are a creator, please apply. It's a show on Main Street in Concord, which is the capital of New Hampshire. It's something that I wanted to prove to him that showing your stuff at a cafe is worthy.
He came and he saw it and I'm a poet and I wrote poems for all the pieces that I was showing. I just wanted to show him that a cafe is worthy of showing art. It was one of those moments that made him and a lot of other people in the community realized, “Wow, this is a space that needs to be filled.” Now we've had so many people. Tyler Ann, I don't know if you guys know her as an artist. Shyla Hazen. I have Ty Meser, Mesker. I'm trying to think of his last name right now.
[0:08:09] SW: He’s in our –
[0:08:11] LHL: Yeah. I don't know how to pronounce his last name either.
[0:08:14] SW: He's in our art smart –
[0:08:15] LHL: It has a lot of vowels in it.
[0:08:16] FR: Yeah. He's a doodily man. I love him. I love his doodles. I love everything about him. It's just great to see that there are so many people being like, “Wow, we have a great place here in the community on Main Street for us to show our stuff.” It might be a cafe, but the governor comes in here on his lunch, or politicians come in here, or people who are making a change in the community, business owners are coming in here and making a change. That's what I want to show can be possible here. That's what I want to make possible in extending even Main Street and Concord. That's my big goal this next year is to extend Main Street and Concord.
[0:08:54] SW: Yeah. I really like to hear that, because I feel like a lot of artists are just not into showing their art in a cafe thing. As a result, the flip side for the patron is it's space that could be filled with beautiful art. It's space that I'm going to be there and looking at anyway. It's nice to be able to see that art. It's so accessible that people who aren't seeking out art are forced to look at art when it's in a café. They're there to get a burrito, right? So, they don't care. They're like, “Oh, that's neat.” Cool art that they wouldn't have seen otherwise. I love to hear that. I really love to hear that.
[0:09:31] LHL: When we're talking about public art, we think about murals and statues in center squares. Truly, art in a – it's so funny, we were talking with Amanda Kidd-Kestler, who is the Director of the New Hampshire Art Association and their location of their gallery in Portsmouth has a WC gallery, which is located in their bathroom. We had this big conversation about bathroom art and those that feel comfortable.
[0:09:56] FR: That's where I started. Bathroom. Yeah, it's bathroom art. My cousins, shout out to my cousin, Corey and Revival and Concord, who now has one of the best restaurants in the state of New Hampshire and he gave me a shot being a bathroom artist.
[0:10:13] LHL: I love that. That is so great. Yet another intimate moment with art.
[0:10:19] SW: Yeah. Galleries are awesome and then they have their place, but they ask people to come to them and look at art, like put art just in front of people's faces. People's got to use the bathroom, put art in the bathroom.
[0:10:29] LHL: Yeah. It's a bridge. It's a bridge. It's a way to connect.
[0:10:32] FR: You're right. It's in your face anyway. It's a blank wall anyway. If I can help people learn how to frame their artwork, or learn how to title their artwork, or learn how to price their artwork to sell, that is so huge for getting people to be just an artist in their bedroom to an artist in the streets, and that might not be the way that people might want to think about things, but that is the best way that people can actually get out there is being confident to be like, people believe in you. I hope to be that bridge to be like, “I believe in you. I understand what you mean.” It's okay if you're drawing something crazy, or of course, at this venue, it's in particular PG-13. There are venues that do need to have that. Not every venue has that. Some of my venues obviously don't have that, with Salon, or with Kimball Jenkins, or with this gallery now, but I do like to be some bridge in the community and say, this is possible for you to show your stuff in front of people for, yeah, a mural is for years, or for however long, but this is for a month and this can make a difference.
[0:11:41] SW: Yeah. I also saw the mini-museum in Concord and you're part of that. Is that still a thing? Is that happening?
[0:11:48] FR: Yeah. Yeah. I'm building it right now. It's a little bit difficult to get all of the little bits and bubbles into place, because I want to make sure it's weatherproof, everything proof. Because I don't want anyone to put their art into it and then it might go down. I do want to have it be something where when I put it in, it's a little semi-permanent, until it's taken out. I have about three or four artists right now that are interested in submitting their artwork. I would love more mini artworks.
[0:12:17] LHL: Ooh. I will email you.
[0:12:19] FR: They're really little. What is it? Two –
[0:12:23] LHL: Actually, yes. Can you back up and explain what this mini-museum is, because we jumped into it without context?
[0:12:29] SW: Yeah, we did.
[0:12:29] FR: Yeah. The mini-museum is a little project that I'm starting. It is a old phone booth that is available that I have access to through this amazing owner, the Concord Market. His name's Ruba. He's the most amazing business owner ever. He said, I can have this piece. He just wants to make sure that it can be weatherproof and good for the community. He wants people to submit their mini artwork. Anything that's under two by two, or so, inches, not feet.
[0:13:06] LHL: I love that.
[0:13:07] FR: Two by two inches. The smaller, the better. We're going to make it look a little mini museum.
[0:13:13] LHL: Oh, my gosh. I could do tiny little birds.
[0:13:16] FR: Yeah, yeah. We want to have it. Yeah, we want to create it, so it almost – so it sits at the size of what a phone booth looks like. There's going to be two, or a few little people sitting on benches at the bottom.
[0:13:28] SW: Oh, so cute.
[0:13:29] FR: Then yeah, we're going to have a door, or two and then little outlets and stuff. It looks like this mini gallery right here. It's really tall. It'll be technically two stories and we have a bunch of little artworks up and a lot of stuff. It's a little bit to engineer right now, but I'm trying to make sure it's good for the engineering purposes. It's taking a little bit more time than I've wanted. I'd rather make sure it's perfect than rushed. I really want people to submit their art and make sure it's a really cool thing. I'd love to change it out every few months to get donations. Yeah, just seeing what becomes of it, because I think it'd be so cool, because there's so many mini book happenings happening in Concord specifically. There's some murals happening in Concord. I want to make sure some more murals happen as we extend the gallery and just make an art map for Concord. I know Jill Dine in Manchester is doing that with her murals. I want to make sure that we can do that up in Concord, too.
[0:14:34] SW: So cool.
[0:14:36] LHL: Yeah. I'm just thinking on a really adorable scale, when you bring the paintings there, it's not like you have to have this giant portfolio bag, like you'll have this nice little case of little art. Oh, my gosh. Should people want to submit, do they just email you directly, or is there a website, or how would people proceed with that?
[0:14:55] FR: I do have a link up right now in the An Artist's Movement, which was started by Susan. Was it Susan? No, someone else. It was by someone in the community. They've started it. It's great. If not, you can send an email to info@pillargalleryprojects.com, and we'll get back to you and we'll facilitate that. Or, if you reach out to me, fallonraeart@gmail[.com], I'll reach out to you, too.
[0:15:26] SW: Oh, cool. Very cool.
[0:15:29] FR: I think it'll be really fun.
[0:15:31] SW: Is it Sue King? Is that her name?
[0:15:32] FR: Sue King. Sue King. Yes.
[0:15:34] SW: It was Ness. It was like, yeah. It was like, right there.
[0:15:36] FR: Yes. I knew it was a Sue in this. Sue something. Susan Haas is an amazing ceramicist at NHTI. She's a great ceramicist. Great ceramicist. That's what I was thinking, Susan.
[0:15:49] LHL: Oh, man. Ah, so much cool stuff, Fallon. My gosh. It's so exciting.
[0:15:54] FR: I know. I talk about myself either. I'm just in the background a lot in public and I'm just like, “I don't do anything.”
[0:16:03] SW: Sounds like, you do quite a bit.
[0:16:05] LHL: A thing or two. I definitely understand a need to pause the practice of making to work on curating. I'm wondering what is that battle like. Or, I shouldn't say battle, but that navigation internally as an interdisciplinary artist who helps run a podcast and a nonprofit. My time is often divided. My free time, I should say, when I'm not working my day job is divided between making and in a way, curating. It's a hard thing to navigate sometimes. Do you want to chat a bit about how that feels to you?
[0:16:41] FR: Yeah, definitely. It definitely is a really hard thing to balance. I don't know if anyone believes in astrology, but I'm a Gemini, so I am not good at balancing anything.
[0:16:53] LHL: Oh, no.
[0:16:54] FR: At all.
[0:16:55] SW: Very interesting. Can you get more specific? What kind of Gemini? Are you a May Gemini, or a June Gemini?
[0:17:01] FR: Oh, I'm a June Gemini.
[0:17:03] SW: Interesting.
[0:17:04] FR: I'm a June Gemini with a conjunction of Cancer. I don't know if anyone knows what that means, but it's like, I am moon and rising cancer. I'm just emotional. Picture Donald Trump. He's a June Gemini, plus Kanye West, plus – just the ocean and every little mermaid film you've ever seen.
[0:17:25] SW: Terrible people in your analogy.
[0:17:27] FR: Yeah, they are. They are. That's how it feels emotionally. That's why I try to make art to cope with the emotion.
[0:17:35] LHL: I'm a cancer. I don't know any other thing, as far as when and what that means, but I'm a highly sensitive person, who is swimming in oceans all the time.
[0:17:47] FR: Picture that with those other emotions fixed in there.
[0:17:52] SW: It's a lot to contend with. I imagine, the art process helps with that. Then I imagine working with others in community when you're curating, probably helps with that, too, and gives a sense of place and stability, maybe? I'm not sure.
[0:18:05] FR: Definitely. Definitely. That is what takes me away from those other crazier parts of myself. Keeps me grounded, keeps me in community, keeps me into understanding that there's a greater purpose out there than just being your own ego, or being in your own emotions, or being in your own weird state of like, I don't know, soup of something. I think that for me, it has been a little bit hard to not be practicing my art, because it is such a therapeutic process for me. Being in community and knowing I'm doing something and sacrificing something even greater has been another therapeutic process for me.
Again, being in that Cancerian state, or being in that homey state. New Hampshire isn't my home, but I've made it my home. I think that that is something I am really proud of that I'm not from here. I wasn't born here, but I want to make everyone feel like they can grow something here. Because I feel like, often, there's such great dense, amazing soil here, but not many people know how to take root. That's just something I want to provide here as someone who finds this wishy-washy in my emotions and in my sense of self. I think that is why I dedicate myself so much to external things as well. As I do feel with my art practices, it is giving to myself and to other people, because I am talking about space, or really out there subjects.
I think that I try to give some gravitas, or some sense of like, we all experience this, we all see the moon, we all feel the tides, we all get some semblance of art, we all hear music, we all hear something. I do want to believe that I am bringing us back to something that's similar.
[0:20:00] LHL: Yeah, a universal language in a way. I feel very deeply connected to your work, because I do, or I did – I haven't as much lately done a lot with outer space and with water, are subject matters that I've always felt connected to. I never really thought of it in that way that you just described. That actually is clicking a lot in my brain right now. I think for me, it also, if you think of an astronaut, maybe, there's a buoyancy in space. You're just floating. I always thought of the relaxation of letting go and being so small and everything else being so big and you don't matter.
Not in a way that you don't matter, but your little universe doesn't matter to the big universe, so there's some humility in that. The ocean's still going to wash you around, no matter what deadline that you're freaked out about, or that kind of thing. I think, there's some calm in that, I guess, for me. I really like your work a lot, because I feel that when I see it.
[0:21:00] FR: Thank you. I feel like, I don't really – I put my work out there and it either sells, or gets shown. I just don't pay any mind, or attention to it anymore. That might be a good, or a bad thing, but I just put it out there for the world. I really appreciate you seeing some semblance of what I'm trying to do to connect certain emotions that we might all feel. This is like, we're wandering, we're finding something where here, there's so much separation and there's so much continuous separation through everything in this world that I am trying to bring something.
You feel a color. You feel a pull towards my work, or something that pulls you, even if you might go to one of my events, or something like that or anything. You don't know you're going to my events, or seeing my art, or anything, but there's some energy that pulls you to a commonplace, like a gravity. I think that that's really important. I think everybody has a gravity and it's about how you just use it for the best.
[0:22:06] SW: Yeah. Tell us a little bit more about your evolution, because you're in the middle of an evolution right now in shifting subject matters and inspiration, and what's that like and how are you going through it?
[0:22:17] FR: Oh, that's a great question. Yeah, my evolution started even like, I didn't necessarily want to be an artist, or I didn't see any – everyone always told me when making any money being an artist. I was younger. I grew up and I graduated before a lot more of – my first smartphone I got was in 2010, 2012 when I had to save up for it to get it. It's one of those things where people don't understand what it's like to actually remember to willingly sign up for an Instagram, or social media, or anything like that, and to sell your art before that point and to sell that art after that point is a lot different.
I think, I'm finally realizing that I'm not here just to prove that I'm selling something. I don't even care if I sell any work anymore. I don’t even care if I show any work anymore. Last year, I made a goal. I want to have a show every single month for the year. That was my goal. And I did it. I did it.
[0:23:17] SW: Exhausting.
[0:23:19] FR: It was exhausting. Putting up a show and taking it down every single month was exhausting, but I did it and I was so proud of myself. Now, I'm just taking an ease back. I'm like, “What makes me happy?” Does creating make me happy? I'm like, what is the pull that pushes me here? I do take a moment to wonder about that.
[0:23:44] LHL: Yeah, are you reading my journal? I swear, everything you're saying is so spot on. I feel like, I'm at the crux of that, too, right now. This big crossroads. I was thinking, if social media wasn't the way it is now, what would my art be like? Where would I feel the pressure that I'm feeling for content? Excuse me. But that word is driving me up a wall.
[0:24:06] FR: I agree. That's why I stopped doing stuff. I got sponsors this year. I got all the things that I wanted this year, besides an artist residency. That was my last goal I haven't made yet. Oh, no. It's like, what's? What’s going on here? Is this what's pushing me forward? Is this what's making me happier? Is this putting a new undue pressure? I get diamonds are made out of pressure and everything like that. But do I need to be crushed to be perfect? Is this what my form is? Is this who I am? Or am I something that's softer, or needs to be in flow?
Yeah, I am definitely feeling of like, what is success? What is happiness? What is art? What is all these things? Because it is definitely harder, especially the more eyes that are on you, you reach – you're like, “Oh, I have a 1,000 followers. I have 5,000 followers. I have 10,000 followers. I have 20,000.” You're like, “When does this end?”
[0:25:04] SW: When do you feel satiated?
[0:25:05] FR: Yeah. The more you get. My sibling has half a million followers. I'm like, “Wow. Oh, my God.” Then I'm like, right, I have less than a quarter of that and I can't even handle that. It's weird.
[0:25:20] LHL: I think about, if all these people were in a room, I'd be really afraid to get on stage and talk to them. It's an uncanny thing that we're getting on stages on our phones and saying things to the world.
[0:25:34] SW: Oh, my gosh. That's such a good way to look at it.
[0:25:35] LHL: Isn’t that weird to think like, “Oh, there's half a million people here?” Oh, don't let me talk.”
[0:25:41] SW: If I put something up on Instagram and only 25 people like it, am I going to be bummed out about that? What if those 25 people came to my house and was like, “Oh, yeah. That's cool.” That would be overwhelming. I know. It's weird. Plus, I feel in the last couple of –
[0:25:57] FR: 25 people in this room would be overwhelming.
[0:25:59] SW: I know. That would be incredible. Also, with the advent of social media and digital content by artists, even five years ago, it was a lot different than how it is now, where there's the dun, dun, dun, algorithm. It's like this big, giant battle to have to figure out what the machine wants.
[0:26:21] FR: Now our sponsors. I don't know if you guys have any sponsors. It'll be a great place to put them in. It is very hard, because it is like there is, and even starting this gallery, who is going to be a sponsor of the gallery? Who's going to invest some money? Who's going to do these things? Am I going to let their opinions intercept what I'm doing right now? In some creations, I've had that happen. Some exhibitions I’ve had that happen. Some things, I've had to have other people's opinions go above mine.
Even in my own creation of my own art, when I have sponsors, or I have people who are giving me things, I'm like, here you go. It's a little hard to make that balance of what's authentic, or what's not.
[0:27:10] LHL: It definitely is.
[0:27:12] SW: Yeah. We definitely talked about that when we did the beginning of Creative Guts, as far as what we felt comfortable with and what we didn't. Sure, we turned down money once, because we thought the advertiser wasn't a good fit for the show. Yeah. There's part of us that's like, “What were we thinking? We turned down money?” But it needed to happen.
[0:27:33] LHL: Yeah. I think we decided to become a nonprofit. That was a big step, too.
[0:27:36] FR: Oh. Oh, I didn't know you guys were a nonprofit. It’s huge. Huge. Super hard to do. Congratulations.
[0:27:42] LHL: Thank you.
[0:27:42] SW: Thank you.
[0:27:43] FR: The leaps and bounds.
[0:27:45] LHL: It's a lot.
[0:27:45] FR: Yeah, it is. Get the board, get all the – Yeah.
[0:27:49] LHL: I don't think we'd be here if we weren't, honestly, because we started half a year before the pandemic hit. The pandemic hit, it changed the way we did things a lot. We had to live with this worldwide thing. We were so burnt out and we were like, “Well, it's not really sustainable for us just to do it.” Sarah's like, “Wouldn't it be nice if this lived on past us? If we are tired of this, if we have other things in our lives, if we can't commit to this, does it just go away?”
[0:28:16] SW: We were also spending our personal money on stuff, because –
[0:28:18] LHL: A lot. Yeah.
[0:28:19] SW: - we didn't have any mechanism for fundraising, or getting money. Yeah.
[0:28:23] FR: Yeah. I feel like the artist's endeavor is spending your own money, your own time, your own effort to create something. It's super rewarding, of course, when you have people say, “Wow, it's amazing.” But that doesn't pay the bills. Or that doesn't keep you fully happy. It does to a certain point, but unless you have a certain type of job, or something that can help sustain an offset cost, the compliments do, you wonder whether to turn, something else. It is good that you guys did create a platform, because that is something we are trying to figure out with the gallery.
I think we might keep it for-profit, just in terms of creating a board, or creating any of those other long-term. We've talked to Amy. We've talked to so many people across the network in New Hampshire. Just for what we're doing right now, pairing with a few other businesses, it might just be easier for us to do that, which is the harder part, which you have to take a risk.
[0:29:29] LHL: It's a lot to weigh.
[0:29:30] SW: Yeah. I mean, it's inconvenient that we need money to live and like, wouldn't it be cool if there was something like a universal basic income and we can all just be artists and do whatever we want?
[0:29:41] FR: Yeah. That has been the hard part about opening up a business is to make sure I can help and rise the tide for other people to be able to create and do stuff. It has taken a little bit from me to be able to create and do stuff this season of my life, but I'm okay with that. I'm 27. I know it sounds crazy, but I'm getting into my 30s. I gave it back to the youngsters.
[0:30:03] LHL: Appreciate your knees now. I'm telling you, they're going to go when you –
[0:30:06] FR: I broke all my limbs, so I appreciate every –
[0:30:09] LHL: You did? Okay, then you do.
[0:30:11] FR: Every single part of my body. Actually, that was a big part of me even more doing more for the community, because I had a whole thing happen and I broke every single bone of my body and it just been something that has even more been like, you guys are saying, if something happens, I want to give something back to the community. If something is really bad with me, when I was in bed, I was free to call it, laying in bed, making art, selling art, doing things people didn't think I could do. When I woke up, I had this really weird vision about Edward Norton and a bunch of other things. I was like, give me a paintbrush and let me paint this. Really, super weird. But it happens. I want to make sure if anyone else goes to that circumstance, they have a gallery to put their stuff in and I have an area to put their stuff in, because I worked really hard to be able to make sure I could be upright and walking to hang over 600 pieces of art in the past few years and help other people.
[0:31:14] SW: I always wonder this with galleries, or other organizations that are about showing art. How do you find and get and encourage emerging artists, or underrepresented artists, or other people who they may not submit? They may not even hear about it, or submit. How do you find those people and market directly to them and get them involved and get their art out there?
[0:31:36] FR: I think it's just about creating an opportunity that's like, this is for you. This isn't because of you and this isn't beside you, this is for you. This is for everyone. Everybody who's ever created anything deserves to make this happen. My mom and my grandmother taught me how to make art on Sunday nights. It was our Sunday craft night, and they never really showed their art. Yeah. It's just one of those things that my grandmother's a realtor and she would paint little mailboxes for every client of hers. I would drive around and see those when I was a kid and I was like, everybody can make art. Everyone can do art. Everybody deserves art in their home in some way or another. Some original piece of artwork needs to be in your house.
I think that that vision and that drive has pushed me to a place to make it so accessible for people not to just have to go into a thrift store, or somewhere else to get their art, but to be like, there's a hub, there's a place, there's a community of people that deserve to have this voice and create that space. It's like, when you're hiking in the woods, there's a trail for a reason, because someone blazed that trail. I want to be someone that can help blaze that trail in any way.
[0:32:52] LHL: That's supporting the creative economy so much, too. It's going to make a difference to the patron who has that piece in their house and it's going to make a difference to the artist that they bought it from, and the gallery that was the bridge between those two.
[0:33:04] FR: Yeah. Honestly, with Salon, it was one of the first big events that happened after the pandemic in New Hampshire. It was almost 300, 200, 300 people coming up. It was a safe environment, because we had it indoors and outdoors. Yeah, it was November, but we made sure that there was enough airflow, enough heat, enough everything.
[0:33:27] SW: Oh, it was great.
[0:33:28] FR: Thank you. Thank you.
[0:33:30] SW: It was awesome. It was such a cool night. You had the carriage house. Is that what it's called? It was in the carriage house, but then you had other – at least in the more recent, the last one, you had artists in the main building. People could go between and it just had this campus vibe. It was just really engaging.
[0:33:47] FR: Yeah. That's what we want to create is this feel that you can go anywhere, be anything, do anything, see what people are up to, be curious and just explore a little bit more. That is what I want to do when I open up more of Main Street, or help do that, because I want people to walk past the boundaries that we create in our own mind and be like, “Oh, there's a little bit more down the way. Oh, do I see some color down here? Oh, do I see something down here? Oh, there are lights on in the middle of the night as I'm driving by and there's a little mini gallery down here.” Just something to get people going and get people curious again, because that's so rare nowadays.
[0:34:27] SW: I love that.
[0:34:27] LHL: It's really great. It's really great.
[0:34:30] FR: Sorry if I went on a tangent.
[0:34:31] SW: No, it’s great. I know. Well, I have a bunch of questions for you, but I feel like, in my head, whenever we're interviewing with someone, I'm always trying to, won't stay on topic and then we'll move to this other topic. I'm having a little like, I want to jump around. I'm scrolling your Instagram right now and I saw you're a writer, too, which surprise, she's also a writer.
[0:34:49] LHL: I know. This is one of the interviews, I feel like, we've strayed from the original questions that we wrote way more than usual, because it's just so much cool information. Before we jump on anything, what's the gallery's name?
[0:35:00] FR: Pillar. Pillar Gallery Projects.
[0:35:04] SW: What a good question, Laura. We are A-plus interviewers. Pat yourself on the back.
[0:35:10] LHL: I know. We didn't really establish that.
[0:35:12] SW: How did we skip that?
[0:35:15] FR: Yes. It's pillargalleryprojects.com. @PillarGalleryProjects on Instagram. Yeah, we want to be a pillar in the community. That's the whole thing.
[0:35:24] SW: I love that. Pillar Gallery Projects.
[0:35:28] FR: Yeah. We almost want to see so many artists coming here. We want to create some, also, connections with other businesses.
[0:35:36] LHL: You follow me already. Oh, my God. I’m following you back.
[0:35:40] FR: Oh, my God. We went through some of our favorite artists in there. We're like, [inaudible 0:35:45].
[0:35:46] LHL: I'm on the list.
[0:35:47] FR: You are on the list.
[0:35:49] SW: Oh. All right. Calm down, Laura.
[0:35:53] FR: A ton of people that you're following are people that I follow, too. New Hampshire has such a badass arts community. We really have been developing such a great arts community in the past three to five years. I feel like it's just gone from zero to 60. It felt like something was crumbling with NHI ending and I didn't go to that school. I was just someone who always saw the community around it. It's just been so amazing to see almost what has flourished since then.
I do hope to maybe with Pillar, create more drink and draw spaces. Just some really cool space. I know Jason McGodd is doing some cool things on Sundays, where he has some cool live drawings and stuff like that. Just create and expand more of that creative network that we have.
[0:36:44] LHL: I love that so much.
[0:36:44] SW: What's the Instagram handle?
[0:36:46] FR: It's Pillar Gallery Projects.
[0:36:48] LHL: @Pillar_galleryprojects.
[0:36:50] SW: Okay. Thank you.
[0:36:52] LHL: I'm cognizant of time, but I want to circle back to social media. We already started talking about it a little bit. I specifically wanted to talk to you about it, because I saw that you have a ton of Instagram accounts that have stolen your art, your likeness, your name and how infuriating that is. That's one of the crazy risks about –
[0:37:11] FR: I’m so popular.
[0:37:12] LHL: I know, right? How? How did this happen to you?
[0:37:16] FR: Stalker. Perfect. I love it. I love it.
[0:37:19] LHL: It's the first time I've ever gotten a button right. But it's because I messed up earlier, so I remembered where it was.
[0:37:25] SW: Oh, my gosh. I'm so glad.
[0:37:29] FR: Yeah. Oh, my God.
[0:37:30] SW: Do you know that this is one of the risks to being on social media, but it's so unfair. It's such an injustice. Then you can't do anything about it, because a bunch of people, I even reported one of them.
[0:37:40] LHL: You did? [Inaudible 0:37:41].
[0:37:41] SW: Instagram’s like, “Sorry, we're too busy to deal with it.” I'm like, “Uh-uh. You got to deal with it.”
[0:37:47] FR: Or it says, “Oh, it's not that big of a deal.”
[0:37:51] SW: Disagree.
[0:37:51] FR: This isn't just as you.
[0:37:54] SW: Just my intellectual property and my hours of creation. Yeah.
[0:37:59] FR: It's like, they steal – I wouldn't mind if they just stole the photos. They just stole the content. They took everything on multiple accounts.
[0:38:07] SW: Bio, your user name. Yeah. Folks, when you go to follow Fallon, it's @ByFallonRae, and do not get confused by all the other accounts that are like @by.FallonRae. @ByFallon_Rae.
[0:38:20] LHL: So sneaky.
[0:38:21] SW: Ignore them.
[0:38:22] FR: Yeah, it's just @ByFallonRae, the one that has the most followers, the one who actually engages. If you send me a message, unless it's not something that's like, “You qualify for free sunglasses,” I will respond to you more often than not. There have been so many people that have messaged me, they're like, “Hey, I really love this piece of artwork. I can't afford it. Can you help me out?” I've helped with engagement gifts. I've helped with so many things. Only if you send me a DM on Instagram. The unfortunate thing is people have been sending DMs to other people, or getting redirected to other places online and has been getting a little bit hard to make some sales. I have been wondering like, has anyone – I know someone took my fallonwriteart.com.
[0:39:09] SW: What the heck?
[0:39:10] FR: When I was in a coma, to be fair.
[0:39:13] SW: Wow.
[0:39:14] LHL: Oh, my God.
[0:39:15] FR: I woke up from a coma.
[0:39:18] LHL: Oh, my goodness.
[0:39:19] FR: Yeah. No, it's been, honestly, something I've been dealing with on and off for the past three years. It's been really difficult. I've had low key a little bit of stalkers the more. I have a lot of guys that call me. My phone number got exposed. My old address got exposed.
[0:39:36] LHL: Oh, my goodness.
[0:39:36] FR: Yeah. I've had a lot of creepy things happen to me. I just say, “Oh, it's just being a female artist.” The older I get, I'm like, no. You just have a really insane amount of people who are just trying to get to something.
[0:39:54] LHL: It's weird. What's the tipping point? How popular do you have to be before it starts to suck?
[0:40:00] FR: I think, honestly, right around the 20,000 follower range overall. Once you reach – on TikTok and on Instagram, if you look both collectively, if you both look collectively, I have almost 30,000 followers collectively on all those platforms. I think, once I reached over 15,000 to 20,000, that's where the tipping point came where more of my safety got questioned, more of people saying, “Hey, I know you're associated with this place.” That has been a lot more like, whoa.
[0:40:35] SW: It’s a scary business. There's so much we want to talk about with you. We're going to definitely have to have you back on the podcast in the future part two.
[0:40:42] FR: I know. I hope that this is congruent anyway.
[0:40:46] SW: This is this is awesome. Having you on is so great. It's been a long time coming, so really good.
[0:40:53] LHL: Now it's time for rapid fire. You know what this is, listeners.
[0:40:56] SW: Yeah, you know the drill.
[0:40:58] LHL: This is quick questions with quick answers. Who's starting it off?
[0:41:03] SW: What other artist has influenced you the most?
[0:41:05] FR: I would say, Elly Smallwood right now. Tanya Shatseva. Those are the big artists that impact me. Be happy art. It's just some people collectively on Instagram. I also have been loving Goya. He's going to be a huge part of my next series of coming out of the darkness and that transition from space to void to person.
[0:41:30] LHL: Cool. Oh, beautiful. This relates a little bit to your artwork inspired in this question. It's very unique. We never asked it before. A favorite planet that's not Earth.
[0:41:41] SW: I like that you specify the can’t be Earth.
[0:41:42] FR: Celestial body. I would have to say, I do –
[0:41:46] LHL: That was the next question. Favorite celestial body. Okay, so we're going both.
[0:41:50] FR: Okay, so we're going specifically planet. Specifically, planet in the solar system. I do love Venus, or Jupiter, or Pluto. That's really hard. That's really it. That's a favorite child right there. One of those three. You can cut to whichever one.
[0:42:13] LHL: Favorite celestial body.
[0:42:14] FR: Europa.
[0:42:15] LHL: Wow. You are so ready with that. I thought we were going to stump you a little.
[0:42:20] SW: I thought so, too. I'd be like, “Oh, I don't know.”
[0:42:22] FR: No. That's why I'm like, if you look at my creation, I'm very specific about celestial bodies, the presence of celestial bodies. I'm also obsessed with asteroids and other events that happen, like Haley's comet, or things like that. I love bodies like that as well. That's why I do try to make a difference between the two, because I know that planets are more stagnant and celestial bodies are more traveling.
[0:42:48] SW: Oh, okay. Real quick side question though. When you were a kid, did you love or hate Deep Impact and Armageddon and all those disaster movies, where an asteroid's coming? Or were you just like, “Eh”? Or were you like, “Woo”?
[0:43:01] FR: I think, I was kind of, ‘eh’ to everything, except for War of the Worlds. When War of the Worlds hit, Tom Cruise, I don't know if it was just something, Dakota Fanning. I don't know. But there is just something there that was like, this feels more real than anything. Also, 2001 Space Odyssey, things like that, that made it feel like we're trying to understand something that's beyond and also close to us.
[0:43:28] SW: Nice. What's your favorite color?
[0:43:31] FR: Green.
[0:43:34] SW: What's your favorite scent?
[0:43:36] FR: I said not to say my cats. I would say, gasoline. Gasoline.
[0:43:47] LHL: You are not the first.
[0:43:48] SW: Very interesting.
[0:43:49] LHL: You’re not the first to answer that. That’s really interesting.
[0:43:53] SW: What's your favorite sound?
[0:43:55] FR: Like, the echo of a wave. The feeling of not being the sound of a wave, but being inside of a wave.
[0:44:02] SW: Ooh, very specific. I like that a lot.
[0:44:05] FR: That white noise sound. That's what I feel like, space sounds like, is that white noise. Yeah.
[0:44:13] LHL: Favorite texture to touch?
[0:44:17] FR: I really like silk.
[0:44:21] LHL: Yes.
[0:44:21] SW: Most inspiring location you've traveled to?
[0:44:23] FR: I would say, Quebec. Yeah. In the winter times, they went for carnival, and that was amazing to feel it, like negative 30 degrees. Really hyper cold. Really feeling the experience of what it feels like to feel winter. You’re like, “Oh, my God. It's cold here.”
[0:44:45] LHL: It can always get colder.
[0:44:47] FR: Yes. It can get colder.
[0:44:50] SW: What's the last new thing you've learned?
[0:44:52] FR: That manta rays swim in a circle. It's called a manta ray volcano, or cyclone. I think it's called a manta ray cyclone.
[0:45:01] LHL: Super cool.
[0:45:01] FR: Yeah. I have a lot of fun facts. I call them Fallon's Fun Facts. They save lives. I have a whole T-shirt of it. I'm obsessed with fun facts.
[0:45:13] SW: I love that. Plinter question, if you go back in time, what advice would you give your younger self?
[0:45:20] FR: It's okay. You're doing fine. Nobody else knows what they're doing. Just go for the most that you can right now, because you're going to regret not going for it, and you're going to wonder how someone else got there sooner when you had the idea first. It's just because we're all meant to do this. We all feel something, and it's not about anyone who gets their first or last. It's just about, we're contributing to the greater good.
[0:45:49] LHL: Heck yeah.
[0:45:51] SW: Yeah. I would totally emphasize your point about, nobody else knows what they're doing.
[0:45:54] LHL: I don't have a clue. When I was younger, I definitely thought other people knew what they were doing, and I was the oddball. Nobody knows what they're doing.
[0:46:00] SW: I still don't. Me either.
[0:46:02] FR: I feel like, I'm always like, “Oh, my God. Why did they do this?” Then like, you have this first. It's like, then you didn't do it. You sat there and you were nervous, and you were scared, and you thought no one wanted that. People want galleries. People want your work. People want to know your crazy thoughts of what's going on in your mind. That's why they invite you on a podcast.
[0:46:23] LHL: Tell us everything.
[0:46:25] SW: It was great. It really flew by though.
[0:46:28] LHL: Oh, I know. Thank you again, Fallon, for coming here and for sharing all of this with us. It's been so cool to just peek inside your mind.
[0:46:36] FR: Thank you. Yeah, the mind is like a glass castle, so I'm really glad that I could share with you a little bit of mine.
[0:46:44] SW: It's great. It's really great.
[0:46:46] FR: Thank you.
[0:46:47] SW: Thank you again, Fallon, for being on the show. With that –
[0:46:51] EVERYONE: Show us your creative guts.
[END OF EPISODE]
[0:46:57] SW: Another huge thank you to Fallon Rae for joining us on Creative Guts. This was one of those amazing conversations that was so inspiring. Fallon just kept dropping all of these beautiful sentences. And so frustrating, because it ended way too soon. That flew by. It seems super likely, we'll do more with Fallon and maybe Mike at Pillar in the future. Fallon, we are super lucky that you've decided to make New Hampshire your home.
[0:47:21] LHL: Fallon is an absolute beacon of creativity and thoughtfulness. She touched upon so much that I've been pondering/dealing with in my own life that it feels like we're kindred spirits. She has, and is brewing up a lot of great things for the New Hampshire arts community and just the community at large in New Hampshire. Thank you, Fallon, for being a trailblazer.
You should check out Fallon's work. There are many places to do so. Fallonrae.com is her website. You can follow her on Instagram and Facebook, where her handle is @ByFallonRae. And check out the pillargalleryprojects.com and their account on Instagram, which is @Pillar_Gallery Projects.
[0:48:11] SW: As always, you can find those links and more in the episode description on our website, creativegutspodcast.com. You will find us on Facebook and Instagram and LinkedIn at Creative Guts Podcast.
[0:48:22] LHL: This episode is sponsored in part by the Rochester Museum of Fine Arts. Thank you to our friends in Rochester for their support of the show.
[0:48:30] SW: A big thank you to Art Up Front Street in Exeter, New Hampshire for providing a space where Creative Guts can record.
[0:48:36] LHL: If you love listening and want to support Creative Guts, you can make a donation, leave us a review. You could interact with our content on social media, purchase some new Creative Guts merchandise. Whatever you are able to do, we appreciate you.
[0:48:51] SW: Thank you for tuning in. We'll be back next Wednesday with another episode of creative guts.
[END]