Episode 71 Xander Marro
Show Notes
A very special episode! Today we are chatting with Xander Marro, co-founder of the Dirt Palace, "a feminist cupcake encrusted netherworld located along the dioxin filled banks of the Woonasquatucket river, which is to say in Providence, RI USA". The Dirt Palace is a feminist artist-run collective/residency program/space that has been a pivotal part of the artistic community in Providence for over 20 years, and this interview is the first in a three part series focused on the Dirt Palace and its two co-founders: Xander Marro and Pippi Zornoza.
This series was made in collaboration with Voices in Contemporary Art (VoCA), and was recorded in December 2022 in Xander's studio. In a first for the pod, you can *watch* the interview, including clips of Xander's work here. In the interview, we discuss Xander's creative origins, explorations in puppetry, animation, printmaking, film, live performance, and community arts organizing.
We don't normally share guest-written bios, but Xander's is a work of art in its own right, so we simply must: "Xander Marro has been living the good life in the feminist sub-underground for too many years to count on her long bony fingers. She draws pictures (usually narrative), makes movies (usually not narrative), produces plays with elaborate sets and costumes (usually narrative, but confusing), and then makes stuff like posters, quilts and dioramas (probably narrative?). Her work is often about spiritual relationships to the material stuff of this world. Co-founder of the Dirt Palace in 2000 (feminist cupcake encrusted netherworld located along the dioxin filled banks of the Woonasquatucket river, which is to say in Providence, RI USA). Her studio (and heart) is there still. Xander currently serves as co-director of Dirt Palace Public Projects. She cut her teeth in community arts management serving as the Managing Director of Providence’s legendary AS220. She teaches a class on poster design at RISD and serves as The Board Chair of One Neighborhood Builders, a community development/affordable housing organization."
Stay tuned for our conversation with Pippi, and the final episode in the series where we sit down with both artists to discuss their decades long collaboration.
Links from the conversation with Xander
> http://xandermarro.com
> https://www.dirtpalace.org
> https://www.dirtpalace.org/wchbnb
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Transcript
Cass Fino-Radin:
From Small Data Industries, this is Art and Obsolescence. I'm your host, Cass Fino-Radin, and on this show, I chat with people that are shaping the past, present and future of art and technology. Well, folks, the show is back from hiatus. I hope you didn't miss me too much, and we're kicking things off with something quite different. Something that has been almost three years in the making. More than a few of you that listen to this show are likely familiar with an organization called Voices in Contemporary Art, AKA VoCA. They're a non profit that has, for many years, done really important work in training arts professionals on how to conduct good artist interviews, and they have an ongoing talk series where they host sometimes live and sometimes recorded artist interviews. Well, way back in 2021, Voca had a call for proposals for the Boston area, and it sparked an idea that requires a bit of backstory and some personal lore.
So, a long time ago, in my last two years of art school, for undergrad, I started spending some time in Providence, Rhode Island. I spent a summer there, living between, you know, years in school, and eventually I moved there after graduating. A bunch of friends from college were moving there and I had just been magnetically drawn to the art and the music coming out of the incredible underground scene there. For a small city, Providence had this incredibly dense concentration of artists and musicians. And there was what seemed like acres upon acres of these decaying post industrial spaces. Some abandoned, some lived in, in varying levels of legality, some served as underground venues, and it was also the kind of place that was affordable enough that as an artist you could cobble together a living from part time jobs that left enough free time to, you know, sort of do your thing. So it was just really this buzzing beehive of activity with an incredible show, be it art or music or both, every other night, and incredible bands constantly coming through town, playing shows in one of the various quote unquote venues, someone or some group of folks transformed into a special gathering space, one that may or may not be there next year, or next month for that matter. Impermanence was sort of a subtext amidst all of this.
By the time I'd moved to Providence, there had already been a whole generation of artists and collectives that were displaced by greedy real estate developers, and it was sort of understood that many of these special places that were central to the artistic community as people's homes or studios or gathering spaces, that some of this was just almost something too good to last amidst all of this, though, there were a handful of artists here and there that would sort of see the writing on the wall and would be able to cobble together something a little more official and a little more lasting. And one of these places that was very special, that really stood out, was a place established by two artists who realized that if they wanted to make a space for others and not risk it being taken away from the community that they needed to get their shit together and do something a bit more official and legal.
So in the year 2000 artists, Xander Marro and Pippi Zornoza joined forces and founded the Dirt Palace, a feminist arts space and residency program that has served as an incubator for hundreds of feminist artists, and is not only still around today, 20 years later, but is absolutely thriving. When I first arrived in Providence, the Dirt Palace played actually a big role in my starting to find my own sense of community and place. Although their underground credentials are unquestionable, they were accessible. They had a website. And you could just email them. And so that's just what I did. I offered to build them a new website, which at the time, you know, was something you kind of did by hand still, and this was kind of my sneaky go to way of getting to know artists who I thought were cool. So in exchange for that, Xander taught me how to screen print. And it sounds like a small exchange, but for scrappy, socially awkward me living in a city for the first time in my entire life, it really meant a lot. So when I saw VoCA's call for interviewing artists in the Boston region, I just knew I had to pitch the idea of interviewing not one, but two artists, Xander and Pippi, and much to my delight, the proposal was selected.
It was such a treat to revisit Providence and reconnect with Xander and Pippi so many years later to really get the full story of their wonderful legacies. So for the next three episodes of the pod, we will be listening in on these conversations, which took place a year ago in Providence. Today, we'll be visiting with Xander in her studio. Next month, we'll be doing the same with Pippi. And both of these talks focus on their work as individual artists and their creative work. So then finally, we will wrap things up in April with a conversation with both Xander and Pippi focused on their decades of collaboration and community building. Now, a heads up, this episode is going to sound quite different from what you are used to. It's recorded in a different location, different kind of microphones, but most importantly, it was actually edited for video So if you are so inclined you can head on over to VOCA's website I'll put the link in the show notes to watch this interview a first for the podcast. Also if you can truly not wait to hear the next two conversations all three interviews are Already up on VOCA's website. So you can binge all three of them all at once. Anyway, enough from me. Let's teleport to Providence and visit with Xander Marro.
[ cuts to interview ]
Cass Fino-Radin:
So we are here at the Dirt Palace today, on this rainy December day in 2022, with Xander Marro. Thank you so much for joining me today for this interview with VoCA.
Xander Marro:
Pleasure to be here.
Cass Fino-Radin:
Yeah. So one of the reasons I love doing these artist interviews, is it's a real opportunity to sit down with an artist who I've known for a time, but there's a lot of gaps in your story that I'm not familiar with. And for you, one of the things is really just your origin story, in terms of where you grew up, and what sort of creativity were you exposed to?
Xander Marro:
Yeah. So I was born in DC, but most of my childhood was spent on Long Island, which I hated from the very start. But my mom originally had been teaching pattern design, she started out in fashion. So exposed to the world of fashion at a really young age, go to fashion shows with her, and hand out little perfume samples and stuff like that, and be the kid near the runway. So maybe that was my earliest exposure to culture.
Yeah, but then on Long Island my mom started getting kind of serious about craft stuff. She grew up in Vermont, and there was maybe this sort of exoticism of being kind of from the country, and so was making wreaths and selling stuff at craft fairs. And she would dress me up in an outfit that matched hers, and exploit my seven-year-old cuteness in a matching whatever Victorian outfit to help sell sachets, and cut and pierce lampshades, and whatever. And then eventually she opened a store where she taught craft classes in the basement, so stuff like stenciling.
All of the worst 1980s home decor kind of movements, she was at the epicenter of. So I spent a lot of time around stenciled ducks with briefcases, and that kind of aesthetic. By the time I was in high school, and actually pretty early on, it was like I was always the art kid. I was the kid who the computer teacher was like, "Do you want to learn this paint program and not go outside for lunch?" And I was like, "Yes, I don't want to play soccer. I want to sit inside and learn how to use the computer for art or whatever."
Cass Fino-Radin:
Relatable. So it's interesting because it sounds like with your mother's craft practice, it was giving you exposure, not just to all of these hand skills, and crafts, and sewing, but also being an entrepreneur. It sounds like your mom was a real business woman.
Xander Marro:
Yeah, I think that's a perceptive insight. She was a total hustler, and she always brought me along with her hustles, which I thought was pretty fun. Up to a point. At some point, the outfits that she'd make me wear, I was like, "I got to put my foot down. No more matching wreaths on my head or whatever."
Cass Fino-Radin:
So eventually you find your way to Providence, Rhode Island, as a student at Brown. And I'm curious what led you there, and what were you studying?
Xander Marro:
Yeah, so I really just hated Long Island, I wanted to get out pretty early on. I figured that studying and being a nerd was the most efficient way to get out. So when I was thinking about where to go to school, visited Providence, and I was just like, "This is where I want to be." I knew pretty right away. So it was more that, more Providence then the institution, I think that really drew me. But yeah, I applied early and it was the only school I applied to.
Cass Fino-Radin:
So when you were entering school, did you have any conception of yourself as an artist yet at that point?
Xander Marro:
I mean, I think I thought of myself as an artist pretty early on. Like I said, I was the kid that the teachers would be like, "You want to draw the picture for the yearbook?" Or whatever the things are that early on designate the weird arty kid. And so I think I've been wearing that identity for a pretty long time. So yeah, then when I got to school though it felt weird to kind of be thinking about doing art stuff, with RISD so close, so I really kind leaned into theory and away from the art department. I just wasn't that into the art department, maybe I was kind of a snob about it. It just didn't seem that interesting, whereas the theory stuff in the modern culture and media department was really interesting and exciting, so that's just sort of what I threw myself into during that time.
Cass Fino-Radin:
Yeah, pretty legendary program too at Brown.
Xander Marro:
Yeah. And the people who were teaching film and video there were just super inspiring. And Tony Cokes and Leslie Thornton, who I both see as mentors who just gave so much time and care to my development. So I sort of leaned into doing film and video stuff, because I felt like they were the most interesting people to work with, or they were the most supportive.
Cass Fino-Radin:
So how did your practice and your work, and just the things that you were making evolve during those years, and develop as you come closer to graduating and just living the artist's life in Providence?
Xander Marro:
Yeah, so there was sort of a crew of folks both between Brown and RISD who were making movies. And making movies is interesting because it involves a lot of organization, there's a management component, there's a technical component. And I feel like we just were totally obsessed, we were developing film in the bathtub, lots of shop talk, and just living it day-to-day, finding jobs in associated fields. I moved into working at a film lab pretty quickly, because I walked in there and asked about chemistry, and they were like, "You're going to develop film at home?" And then later they were like, "You want a job?" So that happened pretty naturally.
Yeah, and there were definitely a few other peers that became really critical, I think we all became really critical to each other's development. Lisa Oppenheim is still a really close friend, and I think we really kind of grew up together as artists in really different ways. And then Raphael Lyon, as much as we drive each other crazy, we really I think influenced each other in a lot of ways along our path. And then as I became closer to people who were going to RISD, it was just an avalanche of energy. But pretty early on also, when I was at school, I had friends who were from Providence. I never went home in the summers, I worked in town. So from going to music shows, I quickly became friends with folks who had roots here. One of my close friends, Matt Obert, wrote the [inaudible 00:08:47] column for the underground newspaper, and we ran around together for a really long time. So just going to shows, and every show, every night.
Cass Fino-Radin:
That's a great segue, because one of my questions for you was, there's something we've talked about in Providence. Sometimes for students who are at Brown or at RISD, there can be this invisible fence in a way, that some students stay within the school environment and that community and don't really branch out into the local art scene, whereas others do, and they've become integrated into it, and they live here. And I mean, here we are, so many years later. So I'm curious for you, what were the first things that were kind of pulling you over to this side of town?
Xander Marro:
Yeah, I think both for Pippi and I, and so many of the folks that do, I think it's music a lot. It's like we were young people who came up being really involved in music subculture, and so coming to a new town, it was really normal to get involved with that, and that was largely all over the place, Downtown, West Side. And then relationships formed with people who were older, younger. Quickly, there was a crew for Woonsockett that I became friends... So it's just I think that was sort of the through line into having deeper relationships with people who were from the area.
Cass Fino-Radin:
So I know that puppets and puppetry has really been a major part of your work over the years, so I'm curious to know more about that. I mean, where did that really begin for you?
Xander Marro:
Yeah. So as a kid I did puppet shows for other kids' birthday parties. So I was really young, it was, again, another nerdy kid thing. And I think some of that is being shy, but still being kind of a ham and performative, it gives you a way to goof off and make people laugh, but not have to do that in a really embodied way. So it was just something that was so intuitive and natural for me, and also I loved dolls, and playing with dolls, and making weird little figurines and stuff. So it was just a fairly obvious thing to gravitate towards.
And then I think as I started to learn about some of its history, that became really exciting thinking about... I think when Bread and Puppet came on my radar, that was a whole other universe of like, "Wow, these are used in social movements, and used in all these ways to be really engaged with the world and reflect the world." And then obviously, Švankmajer and the more surrealist puppets were a real magical thing to discover. So then it's something I started doing maybe when I was still in school, and then there was just a moment when there was a lot of energy around doing underground puppetry. Miss Pussycat from New Orleans was an icon, was bringing it to rock clubs, and it seemed possible to do this mode of performance outside of even theater venues, and that felt really exciting.
Cass Fino-Radin:
So it's so interesting to hear you mention Jan Švankmajer, because the name has never come up in conversations we've had in the past, and I guess I've never thought about his work in thinking about your work. But now that you say it, I can see those seeds and influences, that's really fascinating. So I'm curious for viewers who aren't familiar with your moving image work and your puppetry work, I'm curious if you could maybe talk about a few pieces and paint a picture for us.
Xander Marro:
Yeah. One thing that happens in a lot of the puppetry work, is I'm clearly more interested in crafting the puppets than totally nerding out on exactly how they're jointed or how they move, so sometimes they're really rickety. But there was a time, especially when we started the Dirt Palace, when I was like, "Okay, I'm going to get out all of my angst about the difficulty of collaborative living by making these short vignettes that are about a hypothetical group of women who all live together." So there are a couple of classics that are puppet versions of... I'm not saying what I went through, but there's one that I feel still resonates today, that's about dishes. Where all these women are living together in this house, and someone's really mad because nobody's doing the dishes. And they start hiding dishes in the beds, and then the puppets break all the dishes, and then they party.
And I would do them with live soundtracks too, just because I was working with film, and marrying soundtrack to film is just a really expensive and crazy process. But I could project the film I was working with, and then make the soundtrack live. So I would play drums, and could create a clatter and commotion that would stand in for the soundtrack. While doing all of the different voices, which was really fun.
Speaker 3:
It's such a nice day. I think I'll have a nice relaxing cup of tea. *Screams*
Cass Fino-Radin:
So speaking of live soundtracks, I know that a sort of event or a series, I don't really know what the thing to call it would be, but a thing that you organized over the years that really became an important fixture in the community, was called Movies with Live Soundtracks. So it sounds like this really flourished into a thing that you organized and curated. So I guess, how did that emerge, and what was that?
Xander Marro:
Yeah, so that came out of loving cinema, loving people gathered together to watch movies, loving DIY and home movie, having these memories of Super 8 neighborhood gatherings. But also really being kind of jealous in some ways of the energy around music and musical performance, and just how that could be such a visceral, energizing kind of experience. And so wanting to bring these things together and merge them. And it was great, because it gave people who were coming from the movie side an opportunity to experiment with performance and doing live things, but it also gave an opportunity for people who were mostly musicians to dabble with, or try out, or test out filmmaking or working with video.
So I would do them every other month, and it was really kind of where I cut my teeth in organizing. Because there'd usually be about 10 different films that would be shown, so sometimes that would be four... It would be a lot of artists that I'd be organizing, and I learned pretty quickly all of the... Okay, you got to call people... You get them to sign up a month ahead of time, and then you call them two weeks ahead of time, and then you call them again a week ahead of time, and then you double check, and then someone's definitely going to flake out, but you're going to hear the story about their dog. Whatever is going on.
And it was really a fast track way of learning how to roll with the punches, in terms of working with artists and getting people excited to do something all together. And just the things that people would come up with, because they were allowed to work outside of their usual comfort zone, was so exciting. And I realized that that's something that I really love, is encouraging artists to play with things that they do have some comfort with, but also that stretch what they usually do. And that that is something that I feel like I'm still doing and still enjoying kind of working.
Cass Fino-Radin:
Yeah, it seems like a really incredible, almost third space that you created. That it wasn't just film, it wasn't just music per se, and it could create an opportunity for artists in the community who maybe had an interest in making music. But were like, "But I don't know how to write songs." And it's like, "Yeah, but I can bang some things around while there's puppets on stage."
Xander Marro:
Yeah, exactly.
Cass Fino-Radin:
So what were the material just realities of that? Were people lugging around 16 millimeter projectors or video projectors? What were people showing?
Xander Marro:
So I would always bring both projectors, which it was easier to have a 16 millimeter projector than a video projector. Video projectors were still really expensive, whereas 16 projectors were in the garbage, you could find them on street corners. And a PA, which was kind of the tricky part. And I would do it, but at a different location each time, and that was really exciting to me, because it kind of brought me into working with a different community by switching up where it would be. So that was kind of the joy.
And there's always a million young artists who will sign up to do a weird thing, but then I realized that it takes more energy to convince people who are more in their practice in certain ways. So I also realized that I really love mixing generations, and trying to stir things up, in terms of who does things together.
So some of the things people put together, there was one person who got three different landlines, this was pre-cell phone, and did live prank phone calls to a loop of an animation of a dog running around a garden. And it was the old prank phone call of, "Your dog is in my garden." And they kept making the prank phone calls until someone said, "I don't have a dog." And then the line is like, "I don't have a garden." It's so dumb, but this is what kids used to do in the old days. And then someone had brought a dog that talked, and that was their soundtrack, another incredible one. That's how I met Richie Allen, who was a old local filmmaker. What else? There were so many good ones. Someone who did portraits of all of the church bells, and then just stood straight-faced saying, "Bong, bong, bong." Every time it seemed like the church bell should be ringing. That might not translate in storytelling as well, but somebody just saying bong over and over, it was great.
Cass Fino-Radin:
So it sounds like some of the most interesting ones for you were these kind of deadpan, humor, experimental performance ones.
Xander Marro:
A hundred percent.
Cass Fino-Radin:
That's interesting.
Xander Marro:
And then Ben Coonley, someone who I really... Our relationship, we knew each other, but Ben, every time I'd do one, he would be like, "I am coming for this." And there were these ponies that are toys that you press their ear and they say, "I want you to brush me." He would concoct these elaborate narratives around this talking toy pony that children are supposed to ride, really good.
Cass Fino-Radin:
That's awesome. Well, this is kind of getting at one of the interesting things about I think your practice, and also Pippi's practice, and I think a lot of folks in Providence. Is that there are no genres or disciplines, just to call you interdisciplinary would be I think a massive understatement. And I think one of the examples of that, is the fact that you found a way to... As your friends and colleagues were going on tour with their bands, I know that eventually you went on tour with your puppet show. So I'm curious, what was that like? Where were you performing? What were the venues like?
Xander Marro:
Yeah, it feels like that was such a formative experience, and also kind of a disaster, but also kind of amazing. So I was touring with Becky Stark, who has kind of flowered into a career using the name of her alter ego from that show. I played a character named Lady Long Arms, and she played Lavender Diamond, and we were two women who had office jobs, but it slowly is uncovered that our job is to create world peace. Which sounds really hippie, and it was. We were just singing songs about peace, peace on earth. But there was also a character named Madame von Temper Tantrum, who was really mad about everything.
Sometimes it would be at a noise show or a punk show, and then sometimes it would be at a church basement, and there was a devil puppet. And we'd be like, "Oh, no, are they going to be mad about the devil puppet?" Or we got accidentally booked as a children's show, and basically run out of Carrboro, North Carolina. It was a nightmare, it was really bad. Becky, she had an allergic reaction to the stress all over her face, it was terrible. But then we kind of told that story at the beginning of each of the shows, and that we processed through it.
But yeah, it was loosely inspired by the work of Paul Laffoley, who's a visionary artist, who has these ideas about these futuristic art history movements. So we were talking about the Bauharoque, which was his moment when everything comes together, in terms of performance and craft. Yeah, so there was a line between it being really goofy and a little bit heady, and all those things. And we wore hot pants.
Cass Fino-Radin:
That's incredible. And how did the tour do? Were you making gas money every night?
Xander Marro:
Yeah, like I said, highs and lows. There would be some times where we'd be like, "That was cool, slept on a dog bed and performed for two people." And nights where it would be like, "I can't believe all those people came to see us and want us to do another performance." So it was just a mix. And it was just such a different time, where you would cold call people on the phone and ask them to set you up a show, and you'd have no idea what you were getting into. There was no GPS, you had to actually use maps. But yeah, just what I learned through that experience feels so formative. And also collaborating with Becky, who is just such a force of nature. I feel like there's a lot that's really analogous, in terms of how we approach very different kind of crafts. She's an incredible performer.
Cass Fino-Radin:
So live performance of your moving image work or screenings I know haven't been the only venue and space for your film work. And at a certain point you began branching out into doing more installation based work in a sort of gallery environment. So I guess I'm curious, what were your first pieces where that began to happen?
Xander Marro:
Yeah, maybe it was at the... And I have to be honest, should I be honest? I really feel like part of it was that all of a sudden in Boston somebody made a bunch of loopers, which is the kind of technology for having 16 millimeter be connected to a projector so that it can keep running all the time. And a few institutions bought them, and then they were like, "We can have artist film installations now." So I kind of feel like they were like, "We have a new toy, do you want to use it?" Which of course I did.
But yeah, so I think the experience of cinema and being in space with people, experiencing all the things, that watching something live near other people, is I think that's really important to me, that collective watching. But yeah, it occurred to me that that could happen on a small scale and be really intimate, and just be a different way to move through a museum space. So I would build these... And a lot of artists have done this, build these small spaces. It's stuff that's hard to imagine in pandemic realities, where people pack into a little mini movie theater and kind of experience cinema for 10 minutes together. So the piece that I made for the deCordova was called Born to Never Throw Anything Away, and I think it's about a six minute... And it's a combination of animation, and a technique where I'm shooting every object in a space, but just for one 24th of a second so that the objects become alive because they're moving so quickly.
And it's something I've done to document space a number of times. And now it feels like something you see all the time, just because of how technology's changed, and people are taking thousands and thousands of pictures all the time, and then they'll mash them up. But at the time, it was not something you saw all the time. And I was really into how you could contrast objects and create a visceral feeling through that.
So people go to action movies, because it puts them on this roller coaster. And I was thinking about, are there ways to do that through abstraction? Are there ways to create visceral feelings from watching movies that are not connected to content, or that are just the pure visual information, also with audio information as well. So that was a document of the house that my dad grew up in, that my uncle had been living in for a number of years. I mean, his whole life actually. And kind of my realization when I went to document it, that maybe hoarding runs in the family, that it's something to kind of be on the lookout for. But also seeing a lifetime's worth of objects and family objects before the house was sold. So yeah, kind of my first foray into working with family history.
Cass Fino-Radin:
So as far as the installation of that piece is concerned, when people see the image of this, the large wooden box with the projector on the outside, is sort of a little micro cinema that you could walk inside of?
Xander Marro:
Yeah, exactly. And then you see this weird movie.
Cass Fino-Radin:
So we're not going to talk about Dirt Palace stuff too much right now, we're going to talk about that in collaboration with Pippi, your co-founder of course. So we're going to sort of fast-forward a few years to... I know that you spent some time working in arts administration, not on your own stuff, but over AS220. So I'm curious to hear what that time was like for you, and did that give anything back to your more very personal practice of building the Dirt Palace, and the Wedding Cake House, and all of that?
Xander Marro:
Yeah, absolutely, for sure. Yeah, so that came out of... So I had been working at the film lab for a number of years, I didn't want to do that anymore. Had a little bit of a brief time when I was just doing art stuff, because the RISD Museum bought some pieces. And so I was reconfiguring, and I was doing a lot of neighborhood organizing at the time, working with Olneyville Neighborhood Association. And there was an organizer there who kind of blew my mind, she was just so good at all the bullshit. She could just spreadsheets, everything. And I was like, "Wow, if you can get good at that stuff, anything can happen." So she was really an inspiration and kind of mentor, in terms of like, "Okay, just don't be intimidated by logistics." So the job opened up at a AS220, managing director, which is sort of the person who does all the operation stuff. And I applied, and I think I was definitely the super wild card.
There were folks who had had positions like that at much larger organizations, who were just interested in a AS220 because it's such a radical model, who had applied for the job. And probably opposed to other people's better judgment, they ended up hiring me. And I just learned a lot so fast, and I'm so grateful there are so many folks who were working there who were just such forces, in terms of thinking about how artists can organize and build things for other artists, and build an infrastructure for artists, for figuring out ways for artists to exist in the world.
So a AS220 does tons of affordable housing, breaking through some of the mystery of how property management and real estate works. That was a huge thing that I learned. And I also came to realize that when you're doing whatever kind of work, and if you're doing it around other artists, and clearly four other artists, it just makes bullshit jobs kind of cool. I feel like I had these relationships with coworkers, because I knew what they made, and I always could be involved with them on that way. That there was automatically this kind of trust and care for them as humans, that it changed some of my ideas about desk jobs or office jobs, or certain kinds of labor.
Cass Fino-Radin:
Did that feedback into your work in any way? I know that for a lot of artists who work day jobs, sometimes it can trickle into the practice a little bit.
Xander Marro:
For sure. I mean, it made me be super efficient with the time that I had in my studio. So I would get up at 6:00, and come here to work on projects, and then ride my bicycle to the office at 9:30, and clock out at 6:00, and then do some reading. And it just made me be really efficient with my habits and ways of working through things. I'm trying to think if there are other ways that it impacted my practice.
Cass Fino-Radin:
Well, I know that there was the drawing that was from around that time.
Xander Marro:
Oh, yeah. So it was a place where you could bring your own work into things too. And it was great too, I would have stuff I was working on up on the walls where I worked. And there's a youth program, and youth would come over, and they'd be like, "Whoa, you drew that?" And I'd be like, "Yeah, you can be good at drawing and good at math, and it's cool." So yeah, I felt like a place where you could really be a whole person.
So often you're kind of enlisted to do fundraising stuff, or just dragged into efforts that sometimes involve your creative mind as well. So yeah, so the image that there is, was AS220 has a dark room, and the annual fundraiser for the dark room is a photo lottery. And I don't know how this happened, but a local pizzeria offered to give us free advertising if we screen printed the pizza boxes. So it would list different artists, or often it became artists who were staff that would design and print the pizza boxes to get people to get the word out about the photo lottery.
There was this great photo of Pipit with pizza, that I was like, "Well, this has got to be my pizza design." But yeah, I think that also taught me that you can in certain places. And I think Bert [Crenca], who was the founder of AS220, and a really great mentor to me, I think one of the things I learned from him is that it's really, not just okay, but it's actually for the best to bring who you are and bring your creative self into that kind of work. Just because you're meeting with bankers doesn't mean you have to wear a suit, as long as you're smart and can prove that you can do a thing, you can come to the table as you really are.
Cass Fino-Radin:
That's such a great lesson, that's phenomenal.
Xander Marro:
Yeah. I mean, Bert's such a... Rings on every finger, and just he'll doodle through every meeting. And then everyone will be like, "Who is this guy?" And then he'll say something so smart and everyone will be like, "Okay, yeah, clearly knows what's going on."
Cass Fino-Radin:
Yeah. So I know that in recent years you've begun teaching at RISD, and I'm curious of what that's been like to become an art professor. And how has that, if in any way, been influencing and feeding back into your work, both as an artist and a filmmaker, but also as a community builder and organizer?
Xander Marro:
Yeah, I care a lot about teaching, and in some ways I think the Dirt Palace came out of a love of being in the process of sharing the educational experience, and kind of a lifelong way with others, not sort of getting away from the modality of there's one person who has the knowledge. But shifting towards something where we all have knowledge and we just need to keep growing together. So kind of shifting back to, "I am the expert." Was a little bit weird. But I am a nerd, in that I love art education. I think the potential for... And what I love about it, the craft skills and sharing craft skills is super fun. I can shop talk all day, I love to be like, "Oh, you need to use a little bit of screen filler."
But I think critique when done well, learning how to receive feedback and how to really intuit what kind of feedback somebody needs, I think if that could be amplified across culture, we would be in such a better place. I think just that aspect of how to learn by what peers are able to share is so valuable. So I went into it mostly because the department head who asked me I think is really smart. She's another person who I'm like, "This person just gets stuff done, and is no bullshit." And I mostly just wanted to work with her. But it was really great, I loved organizing. I was teaching a class in poster design, screen printing posters in the illustration department. And I think I've cared about posters for a long time, but I've never been like, "I'm going to spend a lot of time with what the actual history of posters are." And so getting to I think integrating the nerdy, here's the history of poster stuff into practical stuff was what was the most fun about that experience for me.
Cass Fino-Radin:
Yeah. Well, and speaking of posters, this is something surprising that we haven't touched on yet, but of course, screen printing for Movies with Live Soundtracks posters, but also many other events, and concerts, and shows has been a huge part of your creative practice over the years. So I'm just curious I guess to hear, how has that evolved for you over the years, in terms of maybe styles and methods, and is this something you're still really active with these days?
Xander Marro:
Yeah. I feel like Providence in the nineties was poster city, and that was so magical, because it was how people communicated. And I just think that there's no going back to that in an era of social media, just being real about that. But I think there's still a great place for posters.
But yeah, it was just, you'd wake up, there would be this beautiful image that you'd encounter in public space. It would be kind of coded, but you maybe would have the secret to crack that code. It was such a powerful kind of mode of subcultural communication. And so when I saw that stuff, I was hooked immediately. I just had to figure out who had been making the posters, and trying to figure out how to become friends with the people making the posters, and learning how to make posters. So it was really intoxicating, and it was a really community thing. People taught each other and people pushed each other really outside of other institutional frameworks, so it felt really special. And I think there's still a lot to be learned from graphic communication, but it clearly moves in different ways now.
Cass Fino-Radin:
Are you still making posters?
Xander Marro:
I am more making things that look like posters, but that get sent in the mail.
Cass Fino-Radin:
Yeah, prints, cool.
Xander Marro:
Well, sometimes, like last year I made a poster for winter. They're still sort of advertising something, but it's just maybe a little more conceptual.
Cass Fino-Radin:
I love that, "There's this thing happening in December, you should come check it out."
Xander Marro:
Yeah, totally.
Cass Fino-Radin:
So your work over the years has been hyper material, so tangible and palpable. And I gather that recently you've been getting much deeper into your writing practice, and I'm curious to hear more about that. I also gather there's been a sort of community or internet component of that for you.
Xander Marro:
Yeah. So that actually came out of the time of teaching during the pandemic, which young people were freaked out, totally reasonably. And so I started as a way to try to understand where they were at, making Google forms that asked a lot of questions. And some of them were playful, and some of them were hard questions. And the answers I got were so thoughtful, the potential to use that space to share something kind of intimate.
So I realized that you could set things up so that people could read each other's responses. And during the pandemic, that just became something that made sense. So it was sort of like I was writing journal entries, but in Choose Your Own Adventure style, that required participation, but where everybody could read through what each other had to say. And the responses were much more elegant and beautiful than anything I had to say, but it made me feel like I had this lifeline to others who were having similar experiences, but processing them in other ways. And I have a couple of friends who are writers who spread things in their writer universe, so that meant that there was just this influx of really cosmic and well-crafted responses.
Cass Fino-Radin:
I love that. And I usually close my interviews by asking, what's coming next for you? What are you working on? But I know you're working on a book right now, so I'm curious if you could share a bit about that with our viewers.
Xander Marro:
Yeah. So I started writing a book, which was a really bad idea, because I had just been doing this project of renovating the Wedding Cake House, which was a huge and overwhelming process with not a lot of gratification along the way. I mean, it was really exciting in a lot of ways, but taking on another project that's long, that doesn't kind of meet with audiences for a long time, was maybe not the right avenue to go down. But it's been really fun.
And it's sort of about construction. It's maybe a coming of middle age kind of story, it's about renovating a house, and in the process also renovating one's self. And you're demolishing walls, and also maybe demolishing things that you think that you know or assumptions you've had in earlier parts of your life. So yeah, the framework is the house, but then there is lots of stories. And stories about building the Dirt Palace, since this was where I learned to build things. And maybe I'll draw some pictures for it, that's the next thing. Who knows if it will meet the light of day, but it's been really fun to work on. I feel like it's a splinter that I had to pull out or something.
Cass Fino-Radin:
It's really beautiful because in the whole lineage of your body of work over the decades, I can see this diaristic impulse, and this sense of biography, and depicting your roommates covertly. But it seems like that barrier of fiction has gotten thinner, and thinner, and thinner to the point where now it's this, not completely memoir, but kind of memoir. And that's really interesting, that that's been this kind of trajectory over the years.
Xander Marro:
That's a nice insight, thanks.
Cass Fino-Radin:
Great. Well Xander, thank you so much for taking the time to sit down today, and I'm looking forward to continuing the conversation to dig into more of the history of where we are sitting right now and the Wedding Cake House. So thank you so much, it's been a pleasure.
Xander Marro:
Thank you so much.
[ cuts to outro ]
Cass Fino-Radin:
And thank you dear listener for joining me for this conversation with Xander Marro. As always, if you like what you're hearing on the show, listener support is hugely important to making it all happen. You can always join us over at patreon.com/artobsolescence. Or if you are interested in making a one time tax deductible gift through our fiscal sponsor, the New York Foundation for the Arts, you can do so over at artandobsolescence.com/donate. And there you can also find the full episode archive, including full transcripts and show notes. And last but not least, you can always find us on social media @artobsolescence. Until next time, take care of my friends. My name is Cass Fino-Radin, and this has been Art and Obsolescence.