Episode 4: Beth Thielen - Love and Freedom REPRISE

Episode 4:  Beth Thielen - Love and Freedom

Bookmakers at San Quentin. Not surprising, given "Q's" clientele. But no, we're talking about real books with real pages that are awe-inspiring works of art.

Needless to say, this year has been both odd and extraordinary. Odd? --- Well, Pick your poison. Extraordinary? --- Because we spent the year having amazing conversations with dozens of creative change agents who are kicking ass making a real difference in the upside-down world we live in. These conversations have helped us at the Center for the Study of Art & Community manage the lurking shadows and have sparked some new ideas and even optimism.

We're excited to be starting our second season on February 2, but in the meantime we thought it might be nice to revisit some of our most popular past episodes.

First up is Beth Thielen, a book maker who works across the by here from us at San Quentin. Actually she's not taking bets, but she and her students at "Q" are making a lot of awesome books. Have a listen.

Bill Cleveland: At the time, what came to be known as the classic or a version 1.0 was considered a modern marvel. After a short wait for what was called booting up, and a few clicks, the text seemed to appear magically on a ten by twelve screens set into a plastic computer case. Eventually, the white on black text gave way to a gloriously glowing black on white. Moving through the text was accomplished using a small, palm-sized oblong disk that was endearingly called a mouse. Unfortunately, the computer was quite heavy and wired, so reading was typically a one person, one stationary screen affair.

Then, the "two point oh" model with names like Kindle and Nook changed everything. It still had a screen and needed juice, but the wires were gone, and it was small and thin and light enough to take anywhere without a hassle. Going through text with the push of a button or flick of a finger on the screen made reading almost fun. There were a few downsides, though. After you paid for the machine, you still had to fork over for whatever it was you wanted to read. The thing also needed charging, and eventually, they would quit working from being dropped or just wearing out, which meant you lost whatever you were reading, which wasn't that big a deal because you actually never really owned it.  

But today, with the advent of the extraordinary Codex 3.0, also known as, "a book," all that came before seems quaint. This new text delivery system has so taken the world by storm, seven in ten humans now consider reading their number one favorite personal activity. While retaining the handiness and readability of its predecessors, this new model is both less expensive and far more versatile. This is due, in part, to the fact that after you purchase it, you actually own it, which means these books can be gifted or shared or even sold. There is speculation that eventually books will be collected in repositories that some are already calling libraries and could actually increase in value over time.

But the most delightful features of these clever little packages of text are embodied in their design. Now, depending on their size, which is varied, they can fit neatly in your hands or lap for easy reading. They're ingenious cover, and page feature allows you to open, feel, and manipulate the enclosed paper sheets in sequence from front to back, the reverse, or even randomly. This is called browsing. If you want to remember where you left off, you can use what is called a bookmark or even bend the corner of those little pages. It's your choice. Another improvement is its sturdiness. You can drop it, sit on it, even step on it. And it will still function like it was new. And best of all, there are no...

Episode 4:  Beth Thielen - Love and Freedom

Bookmakers at San Quentin. Not surprising, given "Q's" clientele. But no, we're talking about real books with real pages that are awe-inspiring works of art.

Needless to say, this year has been both odd and extraordinary. Odd? --- Well, Pick your poison. Extraordinary? --- Because we spent the year having amazing conversations with dozens of creative change agents who are kicking ass making a real difference in the upside-down world we live in. These conversations have helped us at the Center for the Study of Art & Community manage the lurking shadows and have sparked some new ideas and even optimism.

We're excited to be starting our second season on February 2, but in the meantime we thought it might be nice to revisit some of our most popular past episodes.

First up is Beth Thielen, a book maker who works across the by here from us at San Quentin. Actually she's not taking bets, but she and her students at "Q" are making a lot of awesome books. Have a listen.

Bill Cleveland: At the time, what came to be known as the classic or a version 1.0 was considered a modern marvel. After a short wait for what was called booting up, and a few clicks, the text seemed to appear magically on a ten by twelve screens set into a plastic computer case. Eventually, the white on black text gave way to a gloriously glowing black on white. Moving through the text was accomplished using a small, palm-sized oblong disk that was endearingly called a mouse. Unfortunately, the computer was quite heavy and wired, so reading was typically a one person, one stationary screen affair.

Then, the "two point oh" model with names like Kindle and Nook changed everything. It still had a screen and needed juice, but the wires were gone, and it was small and thin and light enough to take anywhere without a hassle. Going through text with the push of a button or flick of a finger on the screen made reading almost fun. There were a few downsides, though. After you paid for the machine, you still had to fork over for whatever it was you wanted to read. The thing also needed charging, and eventually, they would quit working from being dropped or just wearing out, which meant you lost whatever you were reading, which wasn't that big a deal because you actually never really owned it.  

But today, with the advent of the extraordinary Codex 3.0, also known as, "a book," all that came before seems quaint. This new text delivery system has so taken the world by storm, seven in ten humans now consider reading their number one favorite personal activity. While retaining the handiness and readability of its predecessors, this new model is both less expensive and far more versatile. This is due, in part, to the fact that after you purchase it, you actually own it, which means these books can be gifted or shared or even sold. There is speculation that eventually books will be collected in repositories that some are already calling libraries and could actually increase in value over time.

But the most delightful features of these clever little packages of text are embodied in their design. Now, depending on their size, which is varied, they can fit neatly in your hands or lap for easy reading. They're ingenious cover, and page feature allows you to open, feel, and manipulate the enclosed paper sheets in sequence from front to back, the reverse, or even randomly. This is called browsing. If you want to remember where you left off, you can use what is called a bookmark or even bend the corner of those little pages. It's your choice. Another improvement is its sturdiness. You can drop it, sit on it, even step on it. And it will still function like it was new. And best of all, there are no batteries, no wires, and no moving parts. Finally, each book comes with a multigenerational lifetime guarantee that stipulates that with reasonable care and handling, each book will be fully functional for hundreds, if not thousands of years. 

Bill Cleveland:  Excerpted from the "Modern Marvels of the Post Pandemian Epoch" by William T. William, 2047 A.D., also referred to as 26 P. P. E. 

Bill Cleveland: From the Center for the Study of Art and Community, this is Change the Story Change the World. I'm Bill Cleveland.

Bill Cleveland:  Long before the advent of Books, Inc., Amazon, and the Kindle, the making of books was considered a vital and essential art form. Over many millennia, the connections forged between humans and their books were seen as both fundamental to human progress, and as sacred and dynamic relationships. Given this, if I were to add yet one more evolved stage to the oddly imagined Future Books saga I just shared, it would be embodied in both this venerable history and in artists like Beth Thielen. Beth is a contemporary book artist who stands with one foot in the monasteries and studios of her revered bookmaking predecessors and another in the altered universe that is only now being shaped in the spectral shadow of our global pandemic. 

Beth describes her life pursuit as asking questions and making connections. Her work combines the narrative and tactile and sculptural with a passion for the transforming affirmation intrinsic to the act of creation. This passion has fueled the making of hundreds of extraordinarily beautiful, inspiring, and provocative works of art. These books of every imaginable shape, size, and material have been crafted by Beth and hundreds of bookmakers, who she has mentored over her long career. This community of artists and their stories have been nurtured and fed and celebrated in prisons, group homes, hospitals, senior centers, and schools all across America. 

I first met Beth in one of those other places during my time running the California Arts in Corrections program. She said she wasn't sure what to expect, but after her first visit to the California Institution for Women in 1985, she knew she had come to the right place. She's been showing up at those right places ever since.

Part One: Love and Freedom

Bill Cleveland So let me begin by saying, first of all, thank you. Thank you for agreeing to do this. I'm looking forward to learning more about your path and your journey. Let's begin by saying if someone were to ask you, "what is it you do, Beth," what was your answer to that question? What is your work in the world? 

Beth Thielen: I would say that I am an artist who works with incarcerated and troubled communities, and that's where my work comes from. That's the kind of work that comes out of me. It's the kind of questions that form in my work, such as the question I shared with you the other day that I had when I first started with Arts and corrections in California was one day I was at my drawing table after teaching a week in California Institution for Women, and a question formed in my head, which was what relationship does love have to freedom? And I had just seen a mug shot of a woman in prison from back when San Quentin was a private prison at the turn of the century, and she was in for bigamy. It said that her age was 27, but she looked easily 57. She looked so hurt, and haggard and that form the question, what happened here? What's the relationship between love and freedom? Because boy, something happened here.

Bill Cleveland: So you have a practice that is social in nature, in that you go into institutions and you engage with a wide variety of people, some of whom have some experience making things, others who don't. You also have a studio practice that you talk about the relationship between the two.

Beth Thielen: Yeah, well, you know, landscape painters need to be in a landscape. I'm of an interior landscape. I'm looking at the story of our country in a way through my own vision of the landscape. I had a drawing teacher when I was very young at the Young Artist Studios in the Chicago Art Institute, and she would have you go into a room to draw where the mom was. But you were there only to look, and then she would make you go into another room to actually do the drawing, so you would have to capture it in your head and then move into the other room to do the drawing. So, in a way, I do that I walk into prisons, and of course, you're not allowed to bring a camera, but I know how to catch it in my head. 

Bill Cleveland: So, one of the things that happens when you enter into institutions and you engage the people who live and work there, is that you inevitably come into contact with the stories they represent. Could you talk about the relationship between the story field you encounter in these extraordinarily complex places and what happens when you make work?

Beth Thielen: Well, I'm often moved by what my students say to me. I did a Pop-Up book where each page was a sentence spoken in prison to me, and I just would write down the sentence and then have there's pop-up book image of that particular sentence, and one of them was simply this place change issue was what a woman said to me. It was such a loaded sentence. Her sentence, you know, that it conveyed and made the power of the image happen. So, when I'm there as a visual artist, I'm using seeing and all the ways that one sees pulling what's happening before me and to a translatable image that I can then share in a piece of artwork.

Bill Cleveland: Do you think of yourself as a witness?

Beth Thielen: Yes., and as a kind of a distiller because I'm not just there to witness, but to make connections.

Bill Cleveland: How does the act of teaching make connections? 

Beth Thielen: Well, it's very hard to just go in and draw somebody's portrait if what you're drawing is what I'm doing, which is telling a whole story. So the teaching is a way for me to be there and share and learn from my participants in the process of making together without it having to be "Tell me your life story. I'm going to do a book, or I'm gonna do a painting". And, you know, it takes a lot of time, so right now, I'm working with girls at a group home there. They're locked down. I can't see them right now. But this is volunteer work on my part. I go twice a week, and I just do whatever we want to do, whatever they are up to doing, but they informed me about the dilemma of a group home by my just being present and watching what's happening and how so much of the seeds of what has happened in corrections happens so young with these girls. So that's the process. 

Bill Cleveland: So, in essence, you're there bringing a practice.

Beth Thielen: I'm bringing a practice, Yes.

BC: And what do you think is happening for them?

Beth Thielen: I don't always know. I know that the men at San Quentin when I get there, they're waiting in line to get in. They don't stop. They don't take a break. I don't even sometimes pee until four o'clock when they're called out because they are showing me their portfolios. They're asking me questions. We're doing or making an artist book, or we're making individual sketchbooks for them or where printing. But there's all this other stuff going on to where they're really honed into my presence in a way that doesn't happen anywhere else in the world, and I'm just meeting at as best I can. There's that hunger that is so fantastic.

Bill Cleveland: So Beth, somewhere along the line, you took a sharp and very focused turn into this practice of yours being an artist and engaging the world, and what I would describe as a healing practice. How did you come to that?

Beth Thielen: I come from a very large, dysfunctional German Catholic family. When Susan Hill at ArtsReach at UCLA started doing classes in the prison system in California, she asked if I wanted to try it. I went in, and it was a California institution for women. I got in there, and within the first hour, I said, jeez, this feels just like home. I can do that somewhere weird. You know, t's the problems that we face there. You have to work them out individually, even if they are something that looks like you're doing out in the world. You're trying to find a solution to something innate, so I suppose with my upbringing, I was already asking the questions that would make me good for that environment.

Bill Cleveland: So before you got on the train, so to speak, to California Institution for Women, was art a big part of your family life? What took you down the path of studying art in the first place? 

Beth Thielen:  I was very lucky. I can remember in kindergarten being introduced to fingerpainting and having all these big jars of tempera paint and sloshing it around a big piece of paper, and suddenly I saw and what I was doing, this dense forest where me and my twin brother were trying to get through this tangle of logs. It was just an aha moment. It was like, oh, that's what's going on…And, you know, I was very lucky that at a very early moment, the teacher had to shut me up. I was like talking to her about the painting; you know that I did. And all that's going on and that I could see it so clearly. But an artist was born. I was hooked. 

Bill Cleveland: And your family supported this? 

Beth Thielen: No, not so much. No. I remember when my father was, you know, he got his education through the military. My parents had eight children, and when I said, gee, I think I'm an artist, I want to go to the Art Institute of Chicago. My father just yells at me, and he said, Excuse me, who the ____do you think you are? And I said, Gee, Dad, I think I'm an artist. Cause he in our family, if you wanted college, you had to do military. That was just how it was. So, I broke the rules and went off on my own to art school without support, but I did it. 

Bill Cleveland: So, is there a part of your early biography that travels with you when you walk into these places, maybe with these young women that you're working with?

Beth Thielen: Oh, absolutely. I see my early childhood in these girls. My childhood had some abusive parts to it. And I think in the American psyche, if you want to look at damage, look at young girls, in particular, there's something that happens where a young boy can devil may care. There are all these different words that say it's OK to make mistakes, whereas girls, you're breaking up the family. It's like on visiting day for holidays at the prison. The line is around the block for men's prisons. And there's very few for women's prisons that come in. There's a shame in the feminine mystique that's so deep. So, looking from the California prison system to working with girls in group homes, I can really catch how they are fodder for all that ails you. 

Bill Cleveland: You described yourself as sort of breaking the rules of your family, and when you were just talking, I had this image of how much harder it is for some women to be a rule-breaker where for men in some cases, that's seen as romantic and adventurous and experimental…And for women, because you are in some cases, the rock. 

Beth Thielen: Right, right…Disturbing the peace of the status quo. Get in the kitchen—all that. 

Bill Cleveland: So, you talk about California institution for women. That was a long time ago that you first went into the institution. 

Beth Thielen: I think I started nineteen eighty-five.

Bill Cleveland: So you've been doing this ever since? ….mhmm…And you're no longer in California. You're on the East Coast now. So obviously there's something about this that has moved from an opportunity to a significant part of your practice. How is that? How did that come about? 

Beth Thielen: It goes back to that first question. What relationship does love have to freedom? It's the heart of our failure as a country, really. And so, to me, if I have some mature person now can say I'm trying to tell the story of my country through this experience, then I have to deal with are incarcerated. I have to deal with the fact that we have the largest percentage of people in prison in the world because it's the heart of what our trouble is, how we have not become who we should be as a nation. It's at the very heart. So, yes, that's why I'm there.

Part two, Wisdom meets beauty  

Bill Cleveland: At the end of part one, Beth returned to her initial question, what does love have to do with beauty? She also touched on how dealing with both the ugliness and the beauty she finds in her present experience helped her address another of her burning questions. What is the story of my country, and how can I help change it for the better? In part two, we delve a little deeper into these questions. So, Beth, the irony, of course, is that for most folks, the carceral state, these two and a quarter million souls hardly exist in their consciousness. These institutions are out of sight, out of mind. And I would maybe point out that right now, these places are particularly dangerous with regard to the pandemic. So, given this urgency as a context, could you talk about what you've been doing recently that personifies the intention and hope for impact of your work? 

Beth Thielen: Well, I was just in San Quentin in March, two days before they locked everything down. And I'm working on a limited-edition artist book of about 30 copies where each of the guys will get to keep their own copy. We're all making one together as a group, and I shared with them my artist's statement about them, and how I view them and what I was telling you about how they're there waiting for me at 8:00 a.m. and they're showing their portfolios, they're sharing their paintings that we work until they're called out for count at 4:00. No one takes a break.

Art matters here. I don't get that at the university, but these people that I meet in my classes, they often have sons in prison or grandparents in prison. They have a whole generational span of experiences in prisons, and they meet it with a courage and a generosity and a strength. I'm in debt to their courage, and I feel a responsibility to get people to understand that it's these people who are living in this horrible situation and have for such a long time, that are adapting to where we need to go faster than the rest of us. They are like a species living at the edge of sustainability, where there's adaptation occurring, where there's mutations occurring that allow them to adapt and change, and these people bring so much imagination to lack. For me, that's our way that we have to go. If we're going to solve our problems with the environment, we're going to solve our problems with prisons. If we're going to solve our problems with how we do our communities post-pandemic. So, for me, the hardships they have endured give us a way to our future if we can accept and not be afraid of the hard knowledge, save one. 

Bill Cleveland: So do me a favor. I would...