MUSED: LA 2 HOU
MUSED: LA 2 HOU
MUSED: LA 2 HOU | Tommy Gregory | Everything Lasts Forever
While I had previously been aware of him, I finally met artist and curator Tommy Gregory a week and a half before he left Houston in 2018. He moved with his family to head the public art program for the Port of Seattle (SEA-TAC) at...
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This is Melissa Richardson Banks. Welcome to Mused LADU. This is a podcast dedicated to the idea of the literal and figurative journey between Los Angeles and Houston, where I lived in LA for 25 years and Houston now for the past four. And I have a really great guest today, someone that I met who actually took a journey of his own when I met him and is doing some really wonderful things. My guest today is Tommy Gregory. Tommy, are you on?
SPEAKER_02:I'm here. Thank you so much.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, great. So, Tommy, you're an artist and a curator, and you were just sharing with me, very similar to me in that you have a, maybe you're bi-coastal, if you will. It's your Gulf Coast and West Coast now, correct?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I still have a pretty good presence in Houston and based primarily here in Seattle. So, I feel like I'm definitely bi-coastal, but I'm a Houston and Seattle-based artist and curator.
SPEAKER_00:And you, along with your wife, artist and writer Casey Arguelles Gregory, and your adorable, precocious seven-year-old daughter Clementine, who I just shared with you recently. I thought she was, I couldn't believe she was just seven. You now live in Seattle, but you're back and forth between here as well. Well, not
SPEAKER_02:as back and forth as we'd like, thanks to the coronavirus, but yes, definitely a Still have some pretty solid roots in Houston, but we are loving Seattle and making the best of a beautiful place during the COVID-19 era.
SPEAKER_00:I'm glad to... I've been... Well, I met you, I guess, right before you, literally probably a week or two before you guys moved. We were just talking about that the other day, in 2018? Yeah,
SPEAKER_02:yeah. We met... Basically, a week and a half before I moved, but I'm so glad we kept in touch. It was a crazy time when we were leaving. It's a crazy time now.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, yeah, and I remember. So when we first met, we were introduced by Volker Eisler from the Artscan Gallery, and I know he was your partner and collaborator on a project that I was introduced to when I first moved to Houston in 2016. I didn't realize that was the first year. It was Sculpture Month Houston. And tell me a little bit
SPEAKER_02:about that. Yeah, it was actually the, it was the second part of the biennial. So we started the first year in 2016. And then the, yeah, we met on, it was basically the biggest one to, you know, we hoped they would get bigger, of course. But it was, yeah, 2018 was the second part of that biennial. And then this year, 2020 was supposed to be, but I don't know because of the coronavirus, what the future of, that a Houston Sculpture Month program might end up becoming.
SPEAKER_00:And now how timely would it be now? I mean, the idea that people are looking for things to do and to get out in the cars and to go out and be safe, but to see art. So I really hope that it comes back in some form or fashion. That
SPEAKER_02:is something interesting with public art is we're in a time where museums, for the most part, are limited capacity or closed. Galleries are limited capacity or closed. And public art right now is at its most important time, in my opinion. It's something where you could drive by it. It's something where you could wear your mask and walk and see it and have social distance in mind, but also get some visual culture.
SPEAKER_00:Kind of prophetically, the last show that I saw that you did here in Houston was earlier this year. I saw it, I think, on the last day that it was on view. And it was called Everything Lasts Forever, which... I think as I looked at the show, was really tongue-in-cheek because of the idea that it had so many different elements in it. I'd like you to talk a little bit about that. That body of work was a series of cast bronze sculptures, and among them were... Why don't you roll it over to you now? Tell me a little bit about the pieces, and did they indeed last forever?
SPEAKER_02:Well, taking objects that are destined for... the landfill or in a lot of those cases from the condom wrappers, it's not condom wrappers, but the condoms that are still enclosed. These were kind of single-use objects. And by kind of immortalizing them in bronze, it's pretty evident that, you know, nothing lasts forever, obviously, in a manner of speaking, right? So everything lasts forever was a tongue-in-cheek title. But the work in the show, I mean, it had a lot of implications, um, from political innuendo to, um, environmental concerns, um, you know, discussing single use objects, but then the shoes, uh, in a weird way, like there's a shoe culture where, you know, you might buy a shoe, wear it once and hang it on a wall and never wear it again. Or you just get rid of them. Like the one that I cast in bronze, which was, uh, somebody sold on eBay for$14, but the shoe when it originally came out was over 300. So it's, It's really funny, just like the destiny of objects, but also the beauty in changing the material and the way the public interacts with it. And actually, it's no longer used in the same fashion. It's only used in a visual sense. It's something you could enjoy visually and not wear out. But I hope that people... took more out of it than what was on the surface of that show. I enjoyed the way the gallery presented all of the work. It was extremely elegant. And, you know, I hope that, I don't know, it's a body of work that I want to continually investigate because I do love Castrol.
SPEAKER_00:You know, I grew up in a, not a small town, but I guess I'm from Flower Bluff, Texas. I don't know if you know, it's right between Padre Island and Corpus Christi. And I didn't go to a museum until I was, well, they didn't really have a museum until later, right before I left. It had a little small history museum and then later became what is now the Art Museum in South Texas. So my museum career started in Los Angeles and I started with a history museum back in 1993. And so my, you know, that kind of the history and the identity and when they actually have this interpretation. It's kind of interesting to me because I love the presentations that are at Great Contemporary, but I really wanted to have this conversation with you because having this history background but also wanting to understand art because I'm not an art historian and I really want to appreciate art and I do art marketing so I really want to help people understand that's why I was really interested in chatting with you too because the pieces were there and it was a beautifully elegant presentation but what I hungered for and that's why I called you too is I wanted to know more about these amazing the back story of this because I love and appreciate going to an art museum and Being at its purest, which I think is done so well at Great Contemporary, where people just appreciate the art without having someone tell them about it. But I'm also this person that wants to be told, and then I can still interpret my own way and take it that way. It's kind of like the one piece that you know that I loved in the show is the lever soap. I think that, and I was like, oh, what's this soap? And then it had even more meaning now after COVID because I was like, oh, I really want that piece, right? And I think you said, right? And I think there was another one too. You said you did a glass sculpture earlier that was, was it the dove soap or?
SPEAKER_02:Well, I did a dove soap. Yeah, there was, I did a dove out of glass. And, you know, that was, my first casting in glass, I worked with a really great, um, uh, I would say he's definitely a sculptor, but he's more than just a, he's one of those artists. You can't kind of pigeonhole into saying you're a sculptor, you're a glass artist. He does it all. But, uh, Weston Lambert and he showed me how to cast glass and we cast this stuff. So, but it was initially because there's something that we're forgetting, especially somebody who came from a border, uh, close to the U S Mexican border. Um, the, the terrible immigration laws we have going on right now and the story that came out in that small town facility, that ICE facility, where they weren't allowing the basically prisoners, the immigrants, any soap. So I felt like the dove soap was being upside down too, so the peace symbol of the dove is kind of flipped upside down, meant something to me there, but then it's evolved because As soon as that show ended, we got hit with the coronavirus of the soap, which kind of meant one thing depending on how the viewer looks at it. Some people look at it just in a weird way. Soap, when you have it in a material that doesn't degrade, it's a very elegant object. It's almost like an Ellsworth Kelly painting, very simple and geometric.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Anyway, yeah, it's taken on a new life because we've been washing our hands methodically since March. I mean, those of us who were lucky enough to. And... I don't know. I feel like my pieces always do that. I feel like I've been lucky that way. And where my eyes and my art interests kind of start to align and what I want to make is, I remember doing a piece on toilet paper many, many years ago. And now I have friends reposting that when the whole country was having a toilet paper shortage. It's just weird how art... You know, you can explain it all you want, but it's going to change over
SPEAKER_00:time. And I really appreciate that because I think that's what I really needed to hear for myself because, again, I kept thinking, oh, I want someone to tell me and then I can get my interpretation. But your work in particular has just made it for me to understand the fact that, again, it does change. It can change with your environment. It can change with your point of view. And then, again, meaning you have an intent when you are creating it, but... The intent has changed and evolved. And now we can have this whole new meaning. And how beautiful is that? So again, I really learned a lot just by your show because of that and because of what's happened afterwards. And it shows the longevity of your work, which I think is really awesome too. Thank
SPEAKER_02:you. And I feel like I learned that from having good mentors and good professors and just people that artists, friends that I admire and seeing the successes in their work or some of the works that, you know, made on surface level, not seem, you know, to be striking at all on all the hot points. And then you find out over time, like, gosh, you know, they really had it, you know, they really had an amazing idea and saw it to fruition because sometimes pieces are, are beyond their time, I think. And, you know, I worked with Louisa Menes, very amazing artist. painter, sculptor, printmaker, artist extraordinaire, you know, out of the Southwest area. He taught at University of Houston when I was an undergrad there. And I think that was one of his things he kind of challenged me with was like a, you know, finding what motivates you to make work other than beauty, but never forget the formal kind of power of making an object because that's what makes it, it kind of transcends and goes beyond what we intended to be as the maker. And it also reaches people because you don't want to make work that's completely one-sided. So if you're trying to make a message that wants, like the piece I had on Heights Boulevard, I always thought was a really good example of something that people look at both sides of a political spectrum or a a worldview spectrum where they see something and they could get something out of it, even though my message is completely my own. So I don't know if you're familiar with that piece, but it was a bench and it was a bench that was cut in the shape of the United States. Pretty plain as day. It wasn't really hiding that shape at all. It was a water jet cut clean as a whistle. And inside the state or the country, the shape of the country, it said, made for you and me. you know, the Woody Guthrie song, this land is your land, this land is my land, right? But on the southern border of that bench, which is what made it a bench, because you can lean against this, was a 12-foot tall fence, all made out of square tubing. And, you know, this is right on Heights Boulevard, a prominent area of Houston, Texas, and you know, people from all political backgrounds and socioeconomic backgrounds run on that Heights Boulevard area. It doesn't matter your economic stance. I mean, that's a very popular spot to go and just enjoy the outdoors. Anyway, my point is, is that I remember hearing people who were right-leaning human beings being like, Oh, that's really cool. You know, cause they, they made for you and me and they just, they saw something that I did not intend. Right. And then, you know, anybody who was, who was kind of empathetic and cautious to our border issues and our immigration issues in the country, um, they saw the, you know, what was a fairly evident, uh, monolithic, uh, monstrosity and having this, this big overly done backing to this, that was implying to the separation between our, our, you know, neighbors to the South. And, um, Anyway, there's a lot of people who didn't see either one of those things. They saw a big old bench, and if it wasn't a super sunny day, people would take a little load off between their runs.
SPEAKER_00:So you mentioned the Heights Boulevard project. That's the one that was, I think, co-curated by a variety of people, but one in particular we have a mutual friend is Gus Capriva of Redbud Gallery. Yeah. Okay.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, Gus definitely involved in giving me that opportunity, but also was very supportive from an engineering standpoint. He actually has stanced my engineering drawings, which made the piece completely possible. But, yeah, Gus is amazing, and that's public art to, you know, doing what public art should do is that project there that's an annual project I'm so glad it's funded and it gets good support locally and evidently regionally because they're expanding beyond the Houston borders but it has some great artists I mean Joe Havel has done it Sharon Capriva has done it Paul Kittleson was one of the first artists there Lee Littlefield um I actually, if I'm not mistaken, I think I was driving by and I actually helped move a couple sculptures because I was living in that neighborhood at the time, renting in that neighborhood, and Yeah, it was a really fun thing that started in 2014. I'm so glad it's strong going. At that time, I spent five years in San Antonio, and I'd only been back in Houston for two years. And I was already eyeballing that space when I saw that Gus and I think it was Chris Silkwood collaborated to make that happen for the Heights Boulevard project. And I was just, you know, fingers crossed I would be able to do it. So to be able to be an artist included before I moved and relocated to to Seattle was a really big honor.
SPEAKER_00:You mentioned San Antonio, and I recall you did your MFA at the University of Texas in San Antonio, and that's where we also had some mutual friends, too, in the art world. Joseph Cohen, Vincent Valdez, Ricky Armendariz, and probably others. You were there for your master's degree, but I think you also worked in public art there as well. Is that Tell me a little bit about that. I
SPEAKER_02:did, yeah. Melissa, that's one of the great things about the art world. It makes the whole world smaller. It's a very tight community in a way and very open. And San Antonio was extremely open. And You know, I was there for a couple of years for grad school where I got to actually have a TA for Ricky. And, you know, I was working. I was working at Blue Star while in graduate school there. And that's where I met Vincent and Vince Valdez. And when I got out of graduate school, I applied for a public art project and didn't get it. But the director of the program saw me at an opening and was like, hey, you know, I really liked your proposal. sorry you didn't get it. Would you be interested in a job? So that was my intro to becoming a public art administrator. I ended up applying for that job that he talked about and got hired and has been doing it basically ever since.
SPEAKER_00:And then that's when you went as we were the public art program director and then curator for Houston Airports and of course now senior
SPEAKER_02:manager. We met when I was handling the, yeah, the Houston Air Force
SPEAKER_00:system. Definitely the power couple, because your wife is an artist and also an amazing writer, writer for the arts. And I don't know what others, I just know her work writing about the arts. And your daughter is very talented. Clementine, oh, my God. Tell me a little bit about it. I want to segue real quick because I was looking on Facebook, and I saw that you were inspired to make this work of art that was an ordinary object that's definitely on everyone's mind right now, which is dealing with the United States Postal Service. So talk a little bit about that.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. So, you know, this is a tough dilemma. I know that you're going to have a lot of artists listening to this, and they're going to connect, I believe, with my conundrum. If you're being socially responsible and caring about everybody around you, you're trying to social distance and quarantine as much as possible. Casey is anybody who's met us. She's the brains in the family. She's brilliant. She's a great writer, great painter, and we're both trying to stake creative. And we have a little one here who is also just, you know, she's seven years old and she's living in one of the most beautiful places in the world, right next to Lake, not right next to Lake Washington, but we're, you know, a nice little hike away from Lake Washington. So it's hard to enjoy the outdoors to a certain degree. It's hard. She's made every kind of art project you could think of inside our little, a little 900 square foot place where we're living in Seattle. And I lost my studio through to some developers took over the studio that, so it's just been a, It's been a nightmare for us to try to stay creative. I shouldn't say a nightmare, but it's been difficult. And so Casey's finding her way to do it. Clementine's finding hers. And her and I together were driving and driving back from my office through the Port of Seattle at Pier 69. And we were driving back and I saw a USPS car. postal box and I was just like I told Clementine in the backseat I'm like hey we're going to make a stop and I knew a few blocks over was a Lowe's we pulled over to Lowe's and I bought some hardware just did the math in my mind and I was like I think this will work I spent$70 in lumber and yeah and I built the kind of very it was just a great itch to scratch because I needed to make something I've been making small works in our little place but it wasn't really scratching that itch so I think that because I'm very much worried about our democracy and the fate of our kind of election coming up and just also the safety of human beings, being able to vote by mail. We do it here in Washington State. It's extremely efficient and very, very convenient. I feel it's like a safe thing and it works. I hope everybody gets to do it. And if we do preserve our postal service, we should be able to do it. So this idea obviously generated from that. I saw it on the street and I really just had to make something and I made that. And now it's turned into a little thing where the little kiddo I think it has to be having a painter for a mother, but she did an amazing underpainting, which she calls it the underpaint. So she painted it blue with a little gallon of blue paint we had laying around, which actually looks really good. It's like one of the more classic USPS blues, not the dark blue that we see today, but it still looks great. Or it looks like it's been weathered. And we're letting her friends in the neighborhood just kind of tag it and work on it and Anyway, I'm glad that you saw it. It's cathartic in a way to have made it, but also posted. I didn't intend it to be artwork, or I shouldn't say artwork, but I think it actually might be a piece that I'll be proud to say I made, especially during this era. You and I, and not to segue again, but we both have some good hair farming going on. I think that's another record of time. We should talk about that. I don't know if you want to segue to that. Let's do,
SPEAKER_00:let's do.
SPEAKER_02:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:Let me just, first of all, say you have a head of hair.
SPEAKER_02:I, I work, uh, I swear I get like some negative vibes from some of my male coworkers. And I talked to some other friends at work and they're like, well, it's cause they're all bald. And you got this giant head of hair on every zoom in Microsoft teams meeting we're doing. So I was like, I don't, it's not my fault. And the reason it's growing is I think I told you, my mom's a hairdresser and she was a, She's been the only one really to cut my hair. I've had one other haircut from an uncle, like when I was two, maybe. But other than that, the only person to ever touch my head is, well, aside from Casey shaving it, which she wants to do so badly. And I keep telling her to leave it alone, just let it grow until I can see my mom again. And that'll be the time I get cut. But yeah, it's growing. It's like a helmet. I could jump off our roof and probably be fine.
SPEAKER_00:No, it's a great head of hair. You know, my head of hair has defined me in so many ways. And so... Over the years and I've been hesitant to move from that honey gold blonde that I was born with that I eventually started toying with in my late 30s and 40s as I was transitioning. And I knew that I was at the time. My hair was not changing like my mother. My mother has a beautiful head of white hair. Her hair is beautiful. And my sister has beautiful salt and pepper. It's more silver. And mine just wasn't there. And I tried to do it last year. And then like you, when this COVID happened in the quarantining, it became defining for me to just let it go. And in fact, I kept saying, I'm not going to cut it until this is over. And, you know, it's blending nicely. I said, I'm going to be a silver and gold hair. hippie by the time this is over. It'll have the gold roots and the silver, you know, so I mean, gold ends in the silver roots. And, you know, I'm kind of, it's important, it's a time keeper or record of what's happening as well. And it's also kind of depicts what I'm going through in terms of change like we all are. We're all going through so much growth during this time. I love that your mom's a hairdresser. I think that's awesome too. So I hope that you get to see your mom soon, safely and whenever. I'm sure Casey is hoping you'll see her soon because you could get your hair cut.
SPEAKER_02:Well, I like it and I love yours. I mean, I think that there's a natural look that you're going with. I think you were strawberry blonde when I met you. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, let it grow. Let it grow and let's see what kind of silver streaks you get because I'm definitely owning mine. I'm definitely more silver than I am dark-haired now. But, you know, this is the era. Let it be a record of time.
SPEAKER_00:No, I think that's really, really exciting. We also had some connections. So when you moved to Seattle, we continued– getting to know each other via email and phone. And I think you actually came, you and Casey and Clementine came to LA when I was producing a couple of private collector events for art news magazine in conjunction with the launch of freeze in Los Angeles. And that was in February, 2019. And then I, I, you know, I think at that point, I didn't realize, and I don't know if you define yourself, your identity as Chicano, but I didn't know your heritage, and I think that's when I finally went, oh, Tommy Gregory, it just was not the name that I felt like I, that I, and that sounds really bad from this white girl here, but I just didn't, know your what you who you identified or what you what you considered your identity and if because of that event you got to meet Cheech and Gijun and that's how it all kind of the conversation started so I'll stop there and talk to you about identity
SPEAKER_02:well you know I identify as a I'm a mixed race um individual and uh I was always kind of like I'm kind of proud like you know probably not the right word but half Irish half Mexican I feel like there's a lot of um similarities between those two cultures more than people would probably connect on the surface. But yeah, I mean, I was raised in a, you know, Chicano was a word that, you know, I think that from a revolution during a more revolutionary time was a word that was used. So in the late 80s when I was kind of understanding where I kind of sat as a mixed race person, I think that term kind of was coming in and out in Texas, right? Somebody did a good marketing program and started dubbing everybody Hispanic and having a chick Hispanic on, uh, on your, um, um, you know, school sheets and such. But, um, no, I mean, I'm proud to be, um, you know, kind of a biracial person and connect to the multicultural, um, um, you know, sides of this country. And, uh, the work is a little bit inspired by that, but, um, I mean, to be able to go to Cheech's house is like going to Mecca in a way for an art person, you know, you go to a place where he's got, uh, from the De La Torre brothers who thankfully, you know, through you, I met them and became very familiar with their work. Uh, I knew their work before, but it became even more engrossing. As a matter of fact, like we're, uh, we, we saw each other because of another, um, a connection you made with us with Elena Del Rio. Um, I saw the brothers, what, maybe three weeks ago here in Seattle. It was a fantastic hangout I want to say it was probably the first hangout artist face-to-face interaction I've had since we all went on lockdown so it was it was just an emotional time for me to be able to talk art Casey was with us too and his really fun to be able to talk to them. But yeah, because of you, I really got to thank you for those, having the strong network and sharing it and connecting people. You know, you're, you're, there's no way that I'm the first person to tell you that. And I won't be the last, but you're like just awesome at, at, you know, kind of well melding these, these communities together and letting us know we're all here together and working, trying to, to, you know, elevate the art world in the way that I guess the world perceives work in the United States in this millennia. What is it? What era are we in now? Who knows what this era is going to be known as. But I think it's good that we have people like you, Cheech, the De La Torre brothers, all of our networks in Texas, kind of all getting to know each other and getting to know each other's work. It's a fun, odd time.
SPEAKER_00:Well, it's interesting because I actually started my career in what was termed as Hispanic marketing in Texas. And when I finally moved to Los Angeles years later, people kept saying, how are you, like, how'd you get involved with the Chicano community? And for me, I felt it was a community that felt most connected. connected to me as being a Texan because in Texas you take the German immigrant history and the Mexican immigrant history and you shake it all up that's Texas and that's being Texan and it's a little bit there's so much of this again this melding again of these communities if you will and when I've later met Cheech through Richard Duardo, may he rest in peace, a great, wonderful master printer and artist himself. But I did a project with them and Cheech, at that very big gathering at Plaza de la Rosa in LA, saying should mean as an honorary Chicana, so at least I have. Somebody gave me that, but I still am a white girl from Texas, but I really appreciate and support the community and working in this world, so it's a good thing for me, and I really appreciate it, and I'm grateful for that.
SPEAKER_02:You know, it's weird. I think that the art world is like the great equalizer. Did you ever ride a motorcycle, or did you ever have a motorcycle?
SPEAKER_00:Yes, my father made cars and motorcycles So I am definitely,
SPEAKER_02:you know how there, there's a culture there where like, um, at least for me, like at least when you're on it, I remember when I was in graduate school, I was lucky to have one. Cause my, my dad had a, I don't know if he listens to this, he'll get mad, but I think midlife crisis, but he bought himself, he always rode bikes, but he, when he, when he got a little older, he bought himself a little sport bike. And, uh, my mom was like, take this to San Antonio with you. Cause he was in Houston and he kept like hurting himself on it. So I basically stole his motorcycle and wrote it while I was in graduate school. And, uh, but, but, but driving between, you know, Houston and San Antonio. And then our, we have my folks, uh, a little family farm in Bastrop. I'd be driving on the road, you know, small town, Texas highways. And, um, you get the wave, you know what I mean? So like, you know, as the motor, you're, you're a motorcycle on the other side of the one way, I'm on the other and they just give you a nice little, nice little wave. And it's like, it's like the art world to me. It's like where you're a part of a club and it doesn't matter if you're Hispanic, Mexican, Chicano, white, black, it doesn't matter because we're all like in this, in this thing together. Kind of like, I wish the rest of the world would be like professions shouldn't really be the things to dictate that because in reality, artists are, I think we become connected not only to our peers, but also our collectors and people that show us support and help guide our careers as well, from curators to public art administrators. We collect these networks of people and we try to foster them. There's a very human thing that happens when the creative economies and people interested in the creative field start to work together and live life together and become kind of in tune with social media as much as I think it's extremely problematic in a lot of ways. It's opened the door to people to see my daughter. I have collectors who are like, God, it's so fun to see her grow up. I met her when I bought this piece of yours in 2014 and she was just a baby. You know what I mean? I don't know. There's something about that where I I'm hoping that, I don't know, there's the power of art from our earlier discussion talking about public art and how it's needed right now because of the quarantine and COVID-19, but also just, you know, these kind of networks that we've made together and that we're going to, I'm sure, foster for years to come. I just hope the kind of vibe spreads and we get to do shows together and, you see our hair grow together that'll be fun
SPEAKER_00:we'll have to definitely have our uh before and after photos of you you do yours i'll do mine and we'll post them together at the end of this because there's going to be an insight
SPEAKER_02:we'll have to you do you i sent you one so you show yours and then when we get uh hopefully we'll have some kind of treatment or vaccine and we could have that picture together in person
SPEAKER_00:i would love that i would love that Well, I think this has been an amazing conversation, and it's one of these things that you and I, we talked about the other day. We could talk just on and on because there's just so much, so many things that I think we enjoy and enjoy your family and, of course, all the connections we've had together. One last thing before we wrap up today. I was just curious, do you have an update, an upcoming show or project that you're proud of that you'd like to talk about? Is there anything coming up that we should know?
SPEAKER_02:Well, I'm very proud to say I've been accepted for a residency at Pilchuck Glass School. And again, I have to give you a little kudos there because it was a connection made through the brothers who you helped foster there and then through Ben Wright, who's the exhibit coordinator. I didn't see his title. He's either a director, exhibits director there. But he invited me to be an artist in residence. And because of the coronavirus, it was postponed until 2021. So it's supposed to happen this summer. But I'm still excited at that. That's something, you know, just... from living in the Pacific Northwest to be at Pilchuck is to me the creme de la creme it's the top of the top of the top and I'm just so happy to I visited the school before the coronavirus happened so I was able to go see what the facilities were like and I guarantee I'm going to make some amazing things there and look forward to working with the specialists they have and getting to know artists and other artists and residents but yeah that's still in the books I'm looking forward to that and I'm currently in a show in Houston right now Melissa at Gray I mean they I recently started representing my work in the Houston market, and I'm in their Black Lives Matter show, which is simply titled Matter. And that's up until the end of the month, I believe.
SPEAKER_00:I'll be sure and put all that into the promotional materials and stuff and share it. I'll put links. Your website is TommyGregory.com?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and it's kind of, I'm a Luddite, so it's been abandoned for a little years. They have, I think the only work on there is my confessional that I showed at Redbud and then a neon piece I showed at the Williams Tower. But Instagram handles pretty good. I kind of try to stay on top of things there. I think the Instagram is Tommy Gregory TXWA or WATX. It's Texas or Washington. I'm a dual resident in
SPEAKER_00:a way. I'll add it to the site here. Oh, thank you. Tommy, this has been really great. Again, I hope this is, I know it's a continuation of a long friendship and working relationship as well, so I'm really grateful. Yeah,
SPEAKER_02:well, thanks for doing this, too. This is, you know, from Casey's as an arts writer, has seen this kind of a little bit of lull in the creative information that we could digest as far as in print or web-based media for art. And I'm hoping that, you know, stuff like what you're doing, I hope you continue to do this because I've got that need. I want to hear what my other art buddies are up to. So please keep doing this, Melissa. I'm excited to talk to you and excited to hear more.
SPEAKER_00:Well, thank you so much, and we'll be in touch. This is Melissa Richardson Banks, and I'm closing out today. This is Mused, LADU.