In this check-in, we wander into some personal territory, talking about family and travel, at a time we are all longing to be with family but can’t and to travel but can’t do that either. We share some lively and engaging conversations we had at our recent trip to Virtual First Thursday at Venture Cafe, and highlight a couple upcoming events we’re eager for. Our check-ins are “not your usual Artblog Radio” episodes– they are unscripted, conversational, a glimpse into what we think about and talk about on the phone while we work remotely.
If you want to skip straight to the art talk, we won’t hold it against you. Just skip to 19:39.
You can listen to Artblog Radio on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Thank you to Kyle McKay for composing Artblog Radio’s original podcast intro and outro!
Transcription
Morgan Nitz: [00:00:10] Hello friends, welcome back to Artblog Radio! It is Roberta and Morgan again, having another conversation because we think a few people, or we’ve heard a few people, like them! So here we are on February 17th, and we’re going to catch up. Because I had off yesterday, so I don’t know what Roberta did yesterday.
And I’d like to hear, what did you do yesterday, Roberta?
Roberta Fallon: [00:00:34] Oh, it’s such a secret. I did the same thing I do every single day. I worked for Artblog and I took some walks and… end of story. So, but you had a very special day. I know because you shared a little bit of it with me before the day began. So. Tell me how it went.
Tell me what you did and how it went.
Morgan Nitz: [00:00:57] Yes. So yesterday I took the day off and spent it outdoors with my family. Yesterday was the 10 year anniversary of my brother passing. And he was nine years older than me. So I’m about around his age when he passed, now.
Roberta Fallon: [00:01:17] Wow. Oh my God. Does that give you thoughts of mortality, Morgan?
Morgan Nitz: [00:01:21] No, but it is strange, you know, cause I feel so young and he was such an old soul. He felt so… adult, always. You know? And not just because I was so much younger than him. We were sharing last night and his friends were saying the same thing, that he always was wise beyond his years.
Roberta Fallon: [00:01:41] I have a daughter who was an old soul, is an old soul was born that way. Some people are! They’re wonderful. They’re keepers. And I’m sad that Danny passed away 10 years ago.
Morgan Nitz: [00:01:52] Yeah. Well, it’s sad. But like I said, he was an old soul and he also did a lot of living. When he was young, a lot, a lot of living, he was rebellious and I’m always learning of new mischievous things he did in his youth.
And on top of being mischievous, he was really caring, and nurturing. So…
Roberta Fallon: [00:02:12] Oh, he sounds superb. Really, superb.
Morgan Nitz: [00:02:16] Yeah. He was an artist, and a musician, and a writer.. So we gave blood yesterday and that was our 10th year giving blood on that date. And so we’re going to be in the Jefferson Hospital newsletter (laughs) .
Roberta Fallon: [00:02:31] That’s so great. With the picture, I hope! I’m picturing all the Nitzes with their masks on, in Jefferson hospital.
Morgan Nitz: [00:02:38] Yeah. Yeah. Blood donor influencers (laughs) .
Roberta Fallon: [00:02:45] That’s great. Oh man. You know, I family traditions are really special. We don’t have a lot of family traditions in my family, the one that we have as we celebrate birthdays together, and birthdays are a moveable feast, and we just decide on a date and everybody comes over or we go to one of their houses and we all have cake, and a nice barbecue if it’s a warm or whatever. Yeah.
Morgan Nitz: [00:03:13] You celebrate all of the birthdays on one day?
Roberta Fallon: [00:03:16] Well, no, we celebrate winter birthdays because some of us have, you know, they kind of congregate. So there are the winter birthdays, the December, January, February, March. So there’s a whole bunch of them for the winter. And then there’s two in the summer and one in the fall.
So we collapsed the summer and fall together into one and the rest are in the winter. So twice a year
Morgan Nitz: [00:03:40] Wow, that’s so fun because it’s… yeah, it’s a bit easier than, you know, trying to congregate that many times. And I bet it means that you are much more consistent about celebrating everyone’s birthday. Is that right?
Roberta Fallon: [00:03:54] Yeah. Yeah. We, we all celebrate everyone.
Morgan Nitz: [00:03:57] That’s great. I love that.
Roberta Fallon: [00:03:59] Yeah. And my son and my husband– my son is now 37, Max kimbro, AKA fade resistant on Instagram, everybody should follow him, amazing– anyway, he and Steve, my husband have been going to get haircuts ever since Max was a little kid at the same barbershop in Narberth and they still go.
They haven’t during COVID obviously, because the barbershop was not open and they still don’t want to go. But I think that was a fabulous tradition that they had. Just the two of them, they go off to the barbershop and then they grab coffee afterwards.
Morgan Nitz: [00:04:39] That is great. I love that. When we were watching family videos last night , all of my brothers had bowl cuts from my dad
Roberta Fallon: [00:04:47] When they were little, right? (laughs) Not recently?
Morgan Nitz: [00:04:49] Yeah. (laughs) Yeah. When they were little. Yeah.
Roberta Fallon: [00:04:54] Oh, family movies. Great. Or pictures? Pictures, or moving pictures.
Morgan Nitz: [00:04:59] Movies. Yeah, my dad and brother. Well, I guess, but just my dad digitized all of our family videos.
Roberta Fallon: [00:05:07] Oh, Super 8’s, or whatever?
Morgan Nitz: [00:05:11] Yeah. So those are super fun. Cause they start New York where all of my siblings were born except for me. And then they moved to Delco. Where my parents still currently live.
Roberta Fallon: [00:05:22] Oh, you’re the special child!
Morgan Nitz: [00:05:26] Uh… (laughs) maybe! (laughs) They certainly think that I got away with a lot more than they did, but I argue that by the time I was rebelling, my parents knew all the tricks already.
Roberta Fallon: [00:05:41] Yeah. That’s a good point. They probably knew the tricks.
Morgan Nitz: [00:05:45] Yeah. Yeah. But as we were sharing with my family and with some of Danny’s old Rock School friends, because he was in the Paul Green School of Rock before it was a franchise and it was just this very gritty…. cool… place to become a… high school rockstar!
It was, it was awesome. They would travel and everything, but as we were watching all those videos, of him and his friends performing and everything else. We eventually just started talking about the past and about traveling and the fact that my dad and you both went to University of Wisconsin, Madison, and I was telling them how you had recently told me you took a year off to go travel across Europe. And I’d love to hear you talk about that.
Roberta Fallon: [00:06:38] Sure! What I can remember, it was a long time ago. And I want to say, did you ask your dad what year he was at the University? Because it’s possible we coincided? We were both English majors, right? That’s I think you told me that once.
Morgan Nitz: [00:06:53] Yeah. And I think you just missed each other because he said that that happened just before he went.
Roberta Fallon: [00:07:00] Aha. Yeah. Okay.
Morgan Nitz: [00:07:02] Which was, the bombing, right?
Roberta Fallon: [00:07:04] Yeah, the bombing in 1970. Yeah, there was a, yes, I was at the University and it was a great, great University. One of the big, tens and humongous number of students, you know, tens of thousands of students on the campus.
And it was a hotbed of radicalism in the Midwest. It was kind of the Berkeley of the Midwest. And so during the anti-war demonstrations, it was very active. And then there were the more radical movements on campus, SDS and other things. And at one point, there was a bombing at the, what was called the “Army Math Research Center,” which had a big contract from the Pentagon.
And I have no idea what sort of research went on there, but apparently it was related to the war, or at least that was the thought. And they blew up the building, the SDS blew up the building, or so it was alleged, I think it was probably proven, but I don’t remember. And there happened to be a graduate student who was working late in the evening.
I mean, they did it when they thought nobody was in the building, right? They set the bomb to go off in the middle of the night, but there was a kid in there working cause that’s graduate students do, they work through the night. And he was killed. He was a father, had a wife and a young kid. It was, it was devastating to all of us who were you know, voting with our feet for peace and not for blowing up buildings and inadvertently or intentionally killing anybody.
So at that point, I, my girlfriend, Patty and I decided to leave the country. We had just had enough. Kent state had had the national guard kill a couple of students at the um, demonstrations there, it was 1970. Also. I believe?
It was a very bad year, as far as I was concerned and I had to get away. I really couldn’t stand the anxiety and the horribleness of the death of the students. And then the unending war that just would not stop and would not stop. And so we got a one-way ticket to Ireland and we flew across the waters.
Our parents were sort of against it, they were very against it, as a matter of fact. We got one way tickets. “When are you coming back?” We didn’t know. So we went over there and. My mother had been a correspondent with a family member, Father Bartholomew Egan, who lived in the suburbs of Dublin. And he agreed to find a place for us to stay when we first landed in Dublin , which was wonderful.
We found our way to a house that belonged to two young lay women. Catholics, of course– I was raised Irish Catholic, so it was my friend Patty– and they took us in for about a week or two until we found more permanent digs, which we did find, in a hostel for young women, run by the nuns.
And those girls were amazing because they were very spunky. And we learned that they were daughters of the so-called Magdalen Mothers, which were under the radar back then. The Catholic church kept it very quiet, but these were unwed mothers who gave birth out of marriage. And the church took them in uh, supported them until they had the baby. And then they took the babies and put them in orphanages, basically.
And you know, it was a big scandal, terrible scandal. And these young girls, they had such life spirits in them. It was amazing. Some of them were pretty on the edge of mentally unstable, which you can understand if you grew up in an orphanage and then you’re out living in a hostel with a job and you have money finally, and you know, you don’t know your background and you don’t know anything pretty much.
Yeah. It’s, it’s very difficult. So anyway, after that, we were there in Ireland for seven months. And we traveled around the country, did a lot of hiking. There’s a, there’s a big hiking culture there. So we went on hikes up into the small mountains south of Dublin. And you know, you walk back and you walk past a little country pub, and there was.
A woman’s entrance and a man’s entrance. This is 1970.
Morgan Nitz: [00:11:52] Wow (laughs) .
Roberta Fallon: [00:11:53] So we had to go (laughs) in the women’s entrance (laughs) and all the other guys went, you know, in the men’s entrance. And it was just so interesting and weird. Yeah, Ireland.
It’s when Ireland was pre Irish tiger, you know, tech tiger with Dell moving in and all the technology and whatnot. And so. People didn’t have central heating and you went to bed with a water bottle, hot water bottle in your bed at night. That’s how you kept warm at night (laughs) . I had you put your pennies in a little heater in the room that you were in to get a little electric heat when you went in there?
Morgan Nitz: [00:12:34] What? How did that work?
Roberta Fallon: [00:12:38] It was electricity. It was a space heater.
Morgan Nitz: [00:12:41] Ohhhh!
Roberta Fallon: [00:12:42] But it required you to put some pennies in, so, it didn’t work without money. And I don’t know. I don’t remember that anybody collected the money, so I don’t know what happened to those pennies, but that, that was a thing I remember doing. Yeah, it was interesting.
Morgan Nitz: [00:13:01] Yeah, wow.
Roberta Fallon: [00:13:02] Learned a lot. And then we stayed in, we stayed in Europe for another, it was 13 months altogether, so another six months. And we thumbed our way across the continent and spent the summer in Grindlewald, Switzerland as maids for a little guest hotel called the not your Freunde to house is what it was called, in Grendelwald.
Which was also, that’s a different story. I don’t want to bore you with all my tales of this, but,
Morgan Nitz: [00:13:31] Not at all!
Roberta Fallon: [00:13:32] Well, you’re a good audience (laughs) . We finally made it back to London and got a one-way ticket home and went home. Cause 13 months to be out of your own country, you start longing for your home. And I started feeling that I understood how immigrant populations felt when they were out of their element, that you would look for people that were like you, people of your nationality, you were comfortable with them, and there was a level of discomfort being outside of your home country that was confusing and sometimes thrilling, but a lot of times, very lonely and you know, disruptive to your, to your wellbeing, I think.
So then I went back to Madison and I completed my degree and the rest is history.
Morgan Nitz: [00:14:31] Were things different when you returned? Did it feel different? After.. You left after something really wild happened, and was the culture at the school different when you returned?
Roberta Fallon: [00:14:42] I think it was. After I came back, I had to work to make tuition money to go back to school.
So I didn’t go back right away. So I didn’t go back until two years after I’d been gone. And there was a difference. You know, Nixon was still in office. I think the war was still grinding on, but it looked like it was coming to a halt. And I was different, you know what I mean? So I had calmed down about things.
I was still politically very active and active in political campaigns for the Democrats. But. It wasn’t the same marching on Washington. And I think the bombing really shook the whole community. I think it changed things. So yeah, it was different. That’s a good question. It was different.
Morgan Nitz: [00:15:33] Yeah. Well maybe when you returned, you probably did overlap with my dad in that case, just for your last year.
Roberta Fallon: [00:15:41] Probably! Yes.
Morgan Nitz: [00:15:43] And he and my mom went to Ireland at some point after they met in New York. And they stayed in an unused dormitory building apparently.
Roberta Fallon: [00:15:52] Oh, on a college campus? Interesting.
Morgan Nitz: [00:15:54] I guess so, yeah, (laughs)
Roberta Fallon: [00:15:58] This was pre-children?
Morgan Nitz: [00:15:59] Yeah, so they met in New York. And I believe they both already been to college. And had moved to New York and my dad was going there to be an artist and my mom was going there to be a dancer.
And they both worked at the Figaro cafe. With, you know, It was a hotspot back then. At a different cafe my dad worked at, they had turned away Joni Mitchell there, cause it was after closing..
Roberta Fallon: [00:16:24] Why on earth?!
Morgan Nitz: [00:16:26] I guess it was after closing. And my dad said he didn’t understand it, but the manager said “We’re closed. You can’t come in.” (laughs) And he, my dad worked with Mark Ibold from Pavement and Mark Ibold’s girlfriend at the time was a babysitter to Danny and Katie, and is currently my sister’s godmother. So they had a fun time there. And then I guess they went traveling a little bit before they had kids or after they got married or whatever else.
Roberta Fallon: [00:16:55] Cool, cool. Yeah. Ireland is a wonderful place to visit. I went back with my family, my grown family now two years ago? And it’s obviously a very different place than it was in 1970. So it felt like a modern European country. It didn’t have that gritty, you know coal in the air everywhere, the dirty coal air that Dublin used to have, you could smell it. You could feel it. It was really gritty.
But my family loved it. I’ve been talking about Ireland since they were little kids, and so everybody was happy to finally see it! (laughs)
Morgan Nitz: [00:17:39] I know I can’t wait to go. I’ve heard all about, I think, I don’t know when my parents went, it may have been the nineties because they would have moved to New York in the eighties and by the time they were together and everything.
But yeah, yeah, it’s funny. The parallels you all have and, and the parallels that my family has in general. Like I met, I met Maddie who had this position before me at Emily Gowen’s wedding, who was on the Artblog Advisory Committee. It’s all just kismet. Isn’t it?
Roberta Fallon: [00:18:06] It is kismet. It is. I can’t tell you, it’s also partly Philadelphia, Philadelphia has this amazing ability to, for people to have connections that you wouldn’t expect. I have found that, you know, to be the case that you have in a random people that you can’t imagine have a connection to you, have some sort of connection to you. It happens.
Morgan Nitz: [00:18:32] Yeah, definitely. One of my best friends who has since moved to Japan, but we were roommates for years in school… After she moved to Japan, I ran into her brother on the subway and it turns out that her brother knew my brother, Dan.
Roberta Fallon: [00:18:45] Oh my. See?
Morgan Nitz: [00:18:47] And one time when I was working at Sabrina’s this lady who was a customer said, “Oh, I’m from Port Richmond, I’ve been in Port Richmond my whole life.”
And I said, “Oh, well, you wouldn’t, you wouldn’t know him, but my grandpa was from there.” And she said, “What’s his name? What’s his name?” She was a really fun lady. She knew my grandfather’s mother!
Roberta Fallon: [00:19:07] Woah!!
Morgan Nitz: [00:19:09] Yeah! (laughs) Isn’t that wild. And she had been to her funeral and yeah, I guess it’s just, it’s just a tiny world.
Roberta Fallon: [00:19:18] It is. It is. It’s a microcosm, but I kind of like it here.
Morgan Nitz: [00:19:23] Oh yeah, me too.
Roberta Fallon: [00:19:26] I’ll stay (laughs) .
Morgan Nitz: [00:19:26] But, oh my goodness. We’ve been rambling about ourselves,
Roberta Fallon: [00:19:29] Yes!
Morgan Nitz: [00:19:30] For 20 minutes!
Roberta Fallon: [00:19:31] I know. on to other things.
Morgan Nitz: [00:19:33] But thank you for telling me that story. I love it. And I’m glad that other people will be able to hear it. So anyway enough about us. Let’s move on. What’s going on in Philly, in the art world world.
Roberta Fallon: [00:19:44] Really. Let’s talk a little bit about the Unconscious Bias workshops that we’ve been to? This is a series put on by the cultural Alliance, greater Philadelphia cultural Alliance.
And it brings together speakers and there’s an audience and they made it heavy use of the breakout rooms, which I thought was fun. I’d never been put in a breakout room before and then you’re required to participate. So I thought that was also very good because generally you go to workshops or a webinar or something and you don’t have to participate, you just sit there.
And I liked having to participate! Made it real. I liked it a lot. Plus the information and the case studies that we worked on were good.
Morgan Nitz: [00:20:28] I totally agree. It was a great series that they put on. It started with racial bias, and then class bias, and then gender bias. And we have one more to go to, which is Ableism bias. And it was really great because it built upon itself really neatly, you know ? Like race is intersected with class, and gender, and ableism, and compounds. And they were so generous with sharing with us. And I think they’re having another one in the spring. So if you’re interested, you should sign up.
What else? There’s something going on this Friday, and I hope we can get this podcast out before that so that people can look out for it! It’s a event with the Dox Thrash House Project organizers. And I think you know more about this than I do. What’s going on with that?
Roberta Fallon: [00:21:12] I know it’s being organized by Arthur Ross gallery. And I’m sorry to say, that’s the extent of my knowledge, Morgan (laughs)
I know that we really love, you and I talked about the Dox Thrax House Project a lot, and I mean, it was in the newspapers, so probably most people know a little bit about it, but it’s a wonderful collaboration between artists, community organizers and a developer, who came in with some big financial support to keep this house from being A. Torn down or, you know, B. Let to, you know, devolve into a ruin.
So they’re going to make this into a historic house of some sorts, and this should be a good conversation for organizations and people that are interested in collaborative ways of doing things that involve some capitalistic and some non capitalistic organizations working to together.
Morgan Nitz: [00:22:08] Yeah. I mean, cause the developer has a great mission, which is that I believe their intentions are to revitalize North Philadelphia, preserving the historical you know, integrity of that area, which is so rich in jazz culture and Black artist culture and Black activist culture, and protests and everything else. And beautiful homes out there that…
I took an architecture class , or an architec ture professor took our art class over to Sharswood and told us how The PHA, the Philadelphia housing they were doing this very vulture, terrible thing where they would go up to these people who lived in these houses that were in there, their families for generations, so maybe they didn’t necessarily still have the deed to the house, and seizing them. And then they’re getting knocked down and they’re getting replaced by like the OCF Legoland housing. So it’s terrible and it needs to be protected. And it’s great that there are developers that are doing that.
Roberta Fallon: [00:23:08] Bravo.
Morgan Nitz: [00:23:10] Yeah. But what else? We had a wonderful time at Venture Cafe First Thursday, and we had an Office Hours session, which we were trying out and we wanted to see who would show up. And we had a great turnout and we had some really great conversations and there were some really funny things said and interesting things said.
What were some of your favorite things?
Roberta Fallon: [00:23:31] Favorite things? Well, we had these questions, which we had scripted prior to the Venture Cafe, just kind of conversation starters, like how are you doing, what are you up to? What do you hope for the future? Of course, the questions get harder as you go along. And what would you do with a million dollars? That’s one of my very favorite questions. Although, you know, nowadays a million dollars doesn’t get you much, but it’s better than a hundred dollars. So it’s a good question.
Let’s see, we had a lot of people who talked about a lot of things and we got into talking about collecting and running a gallery, artists who collect art, and artists who run galleries , like Terri Saulin, who just converted her garage and back of her house in South Philly to a gallery, No. 5, Butchie Alley, it’s called.
We had people talking about pricing, their art, these are all artists and they were talking about, you know, if you sell your art in New York at a certain price, how can your friends who live in Philadelphia, who can’t afford that price, afford your art anymore? Because you have to stay with that, or do you have to stay with that New York price? So it was, those were some of my favorite things. How about you?
Morgan Nitz: [00:24:49] I totally agree. I thought it was really interesting that two artists independently who were not at the table at the same time, said that they struggled with the idea of selling one piece of art for a ton of money, or many pieces of art at a lower price point. And they both said I would rather sell to someone who was my friend, rather than someone who is not my friend. I thought that was really great.
And I agree. And I’ve had conversations with that about my friends, too, making, keeping art, assessable, to people that you want to have it hanging up on their wall.
Roberta Fallon: [00:25:24] Yeah, I, you know, that gets to the deficit vision of what is art, is art a product only, or is art something more ephemeral than, I mean, it contains product in it. If you’re making a thing that you can hold in your hands. But if that thing that you’re making is more of a gift than a sales product. That gives it a different sort of definition in your own mind and in probably the mind of someone that wants to own it.
Morgan Nitz: [00:25:53] Yeah. And you know, what’s interesting is it’s says a lot about the maker, because think about being a writer and your book sells for $15 and it can be in many homes and that can give you this kind of joy that the way that you express yourself can be shared.
You know, but then there’s the, the difference with art, where if you’re not making a ton of things and when you’re the type of artist who brands yourself and who becomes a business and the whole market is about the rarity and driving up the price by there being few, or there being one of its kind. And it’s a different type of thinking about art making and thinking about being an artist entirely.
Roberta Fallon: [00:26:36] And I think the world is big enough to accept both of those orientations to art. I really do.
Morgan Nitz: [00:26:42] Yeah.
Roberta Fallon: [00:26:43] I think, yeah, it makes sense that some people, you know, we’re not all the same. We’re not all cookie cutter people. And so some people are more of the, “my art is a gift” and some people are more, “my art is going to make me a millionaire” [or at least sell for lots of money and I that’s what I want and what I need.] And both of those are fine. And I think somehow you just have to accept the art world is bifurcated that way.
Maybe it’s more than two, maybe there’s a third way. I don’t want to necessarily be part of all three of those worlds the, the one I want to be involved in is the one that I would opt to be in, which is “my art is a gift.” I like that, that feels very authentic to me and good, which is not to say you can’t make a twenty-five thousand dollar painting and it’s not authentic because it is.
It’s, you know, it’s the marketplace that creates this disparity between pricing.
Morgan Nitz: [00:27:45] Totally. And it’s also more complex than that because you have to protect yourself as an artist who’s asked and approach to do free labor all the time. And you have to think about…. Something that people were reiterating in this conversation too, was the struggle between giving their art away, and wanting to give their art away, and valuing their art at a fair price point for the amount of hours.
And I think there’s a happy medium between that because you need to protect yourself and what your worth is. Many of us undervalue ourselves. So it’s a great skill to be able to value yourself.
Roberta Fallon: [00:28:20] Yeah, I agree. And what I’m thinking while you’re talking about valuing yourself and all that is going back to the WPA, which was basically giving employment to artists that was at a fair wage. And as we know, from Virginia Maksymoowicz and Blaise Tobia, who were at our Venture Cafe, and have spoken about this before, and written about this on Artblog,
There was the CETA program in the 70’s that was kind of similar to the WPA. It was employment for artists to work in communities on art projects and make art. And if we could get to some place now where we value artists, as much as we value the art they make, we’d all be better off.
Full employment for artists. That’s what I want.
Morgan Nitz: [00:29:06] Mhmm! Yeah, or universal basic income or whatever else, because it’s so important for folks to live and to make a wage that allows them to live and pursue their dreams.
You know, people have this idea that universal basic income will cause people to not want to work. And I just don’t think that’s true. I think people just will be able to work in a field that makes them happy.
Roberta Fallon: [00:29:27] I agree. And we need to explore that as a culture. I mean, it’s a very negative view of humankind to say, I’ll give them money and they’re not going to do anything when you haven’t proven that there’s no research that shows that.
So why are you so negative on the human race? So I’m very up on the human race, I’m with you, give them money and let them make what they love to make and do what they love to do. There’d be more books, there’d be more art. You know!
Morgan Nitz: [00:29:53] And it doesn’t all have to… who cares if someone doesn’t want to do anything, really?
Like, that’s just speaking to what you value and that you should be able to live and have housing. If, if, even if you aren’t. Creating markets and…
Roberta Fallon: [00:30:06] Absolutely, absolutely. And right. It’s judgmental to say that everybody will, you know, be making something because that’s not for everybody.
Morgan Nitz: [00:30:15] And there’s different ways to contribute that we don’t value monetarily that are so important, which is interaction and being social and having neighbors and taking care of families and everything else.
Roberta Fallon: [00:30:27] That’s right. Being neighborly. Yes. That’s a good high note to end on.
Morgan Nitz: [00:30:32] Yeah! (laughs) do you have any quotes that you pulled from the office hours to end on?
Roberta Fallon: [00:30:37] I love what Bill Gerhard said. Bill Gerhard is an artist and he collects some arts and we were talking about the future just. What’s your hope for the future. And he starts out very negative.
He says “I’m kind of pessimistic. I want things to be better. We’re all flawed and have to get out of the way, and maybe art can help us? Art won’t solve the problems of the world, but we can model our optimism. I teach art and deal with kids with problems. I’m in the trenches. I’m not convinced teaching art will save these kids, but there’s some truth to that. Some kids come only for the art.”
Morgan Nitz: [00:31:19] Yeah, that’s great.
Roberta Fallon: [00:31:20] Mhm. That’s one of my favorite quotes.
