Follower of One : Missions For The Rest Of Us

Artist and designer Debbie Millman has been fascinated by the power of branding for most of her life. And as the host of the Design Matters podcast (which was recently translated into a book, out next month) and chair of the School of Visual Arts’s Masters in Branding program, she constantly has branding on her mind. For Millman, part of the allure of logos, identities, and marketing stems from the exercise of clearly and confidently expressing a purpose and meaning—a challenge that she has concurrently grappled with on a personal level. The parallels between aims in her work and life are no coincidence: Millman’s professional projects are often her way of searching for answers to life’s deepest questions.Millman has long considered how design can reveal people’s innermost desires. She has worked at several prominent New York City agencies, including Sterling Brands, for which she served as chief marketing officer and president of its design division for 20 years, and was part of teams that created identities for brands such as 7Up, Burger King, Tropicana, and Twizzlers. She even moonlighted as the first-ever creative director of the pioneering hip-hop radio station Hot 97. Over the years, her career has helped her recognize the importance of slowing down, and of trusting that she doesn’t have to approach everything—writing, teaching, special projects, love—as if it’s her last chance to experience it.On this episode, Millman describes her quest to feel comfortable in her own skin, talking with Spencer about the benefits of being a good listener, branding and marketing as ways to manufacture meaning, and why she doesn’t want to peak until the very end of her life.Show notes:Full transcriptdebbiemillman.com(03:50): Roxane Gay(06:34): Millman’s “Together Apart” poster for #CombatCovid(08:15): RAND Art + Data(11:58): Master’s in Branding program at the School of Visual Arts(13:19): Why Design Matters: Conversations with the World’s Most Creative People (HarperCollins)(13:19): Design Matters podcast(33:52): Look Both Ways (HOW Books)(50:09): Brand Thinking and Other Noble Pursuits (SkyHorse Publishing)(54:35): Millman’s 2019 TED Talk, “How Symbols and Brands Shape Humanity”(01:17:16): How to Think Like a Great Graphic Designer (Simon & Schuster)

For curator and scholar Glenn Adamson, craft isn’t a quirky hobby that sits on the outskirts of contemporary culture. Rather, it’s a vital, timeless tool for teaching us about one another, and about humanity as a whole. This belief fuels his writing, teaching, and curatorial projects, which seek to unpack the many ways in which the age-old activity shapes our lives. Adamson’s work shows that craft is bigger than any single skillfully handmade object—each of which itself can serve as an important symbol of the human capacity for honing expertise over time—and influences countless aspects of society, from the Japanese tea ceremony to farming robots devised by Google’s parent company, Alphabet X. In this way, craft acts as a lens for understanding people and places across time.Adamson, 49, has explored the virtues of craft throughout his two-decade-long career, which has included roles at Milwaukee’s Chipstone Foundation, London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, and New York’s Museum of Arts and Design. In his 2018 book Fewer, Better Things, he positions craft as a means of connecting with fundamental issues and ideas (as opposed to those that hold only momentary or superficial relevance), and explains why taking the time to appreciate handmade objects from a maker’s or a user’s perspective holds particular spiritual and psychological value. Adamson’s account of the discipline in the United States, neatly laid out in his latest book, Craft: An American History (Bloomsbury), reveals how artisans—whose trade often includes people who are disempowered by their ethnicity, gender, or both—have been consistently suppressed throughout the nation’s history, but, paradoxically, are integral to many of its greatest achievements. His latest endeavor takes a more forward-looking approach. “Futures,” an exhibition Adamson co-curated that opens in November at the Smithsonian’s Arts and Industries Building in Washington, D.C. (on view through summer 2022), considers how craft can signal where we might be headed, and why we should be optimistic about the time to come. Over and over again, Adamson demonstrates how skilled making is about more than just beautiful objects. “Craft stands in for the whole idea of what it means to be human,” he says, “and why that matters.”On this episode, Adamson discusses the various facets of skilled making, talking with Spencer about the value of hand-formed objects, the relationship between time and craft, and the discipline’s essential, often complicated role in the history of human progress.Show notes:Full transcript on timesensitive.fm@glenn_adamsonglennadamson.com(16:20): Fewer, Better Things (Bloomsbury, 2018)(52:57): Chipstone Foundation (53:33): Milwaukee Art Museum(54:16): “Postmodernism: Style and Subversion 1970–1990” (Victoria and Albert Museum, 2011)(55:56): The Journal of Modern Craft(56:04): Museum of Arts and Design(59:50): Craft: An American History (Bloomsbury, 2021)(01:17:23): “Futures” (Smithsonian Arts and Industries Building, Nov. 2021–Summer 2022)

Trevor Paglen aspires to see the unseen. The artist explores the act of looking through various angles—such as how artificial-intelligence systems have been trained to “see” and categorize the world, or the disquieting sense of being “watched” by a security camera—and creates scenarios that frequently implicate viewers in the experience. At other times, he’ll take pictures of places that are typically kept far out of sight, including the rarely seen headquarters of America’s National Security Agency, or the Mojave Desert, home to numerous military facilities, prisons, and a former nuclear testing site. Paglen, who has a Ph.D. in geography from University of California, Berkeley, also thinks about the relationship between space and time, and how the associations a person makes while looking at something—be it an age-old landscape or a satellite in endless orbit around the Earth—are fleeting and constantly changing. By highlighting invisible frameworks that exist in the world, Paglen invites viewers to think about life’s inconspicuous, and often unsettling, realities. Paglen, who is 47 and has studios in New York and Berlin, draws on science, technology, and investigative journalism to make his wide-ranging work. In one of his early projects, “Recording Carceral Landscapes” (1995–2004), he wore a concealed microphone and posed as a criminology student to document the interiors of California penitentiaries. For “The Last Pictures” (2012), he collaborated with materials scientists at M.I.T. to devise an ultra-archival disc, micro-etched with a collection of 100 images, and launched it into space on a communications satellite for aliens to find. More recently, his viral digital art project and app “ImageNet Roulette” (2020), which allowed users to upload photos of their faces to see how A.I. might label them, horrified many users with racist, sexist, or overtly stereotypical results, leading ImageNet, a leading image database, to remove half a million images.  Beyond his art practice, Paglen continues his preoccupation with perception. He studies martial arts, surfs, and composes music—activities that require constant, intense awareness. It all stems from a heightened consciousness of, and interest in, the concept of observation that he’s carried for nearly his entire life. “We’re all trying to learn different ways of seeing,” he says. On this episode, Paglen discusses his deep-seated fascination with perception, talking with Spencer about the impacts of surveillance, deserts as sites of secrecy, and the value of trying to perceive forces that seem impossible to see. Show notes:Full transcript on timesensitive.fm@trevorpaglenpaglen.studio04:54: “The Last Pictures” project (2012)19:51: “Orbital Reflector” (2018)29:48: Robert Smithson’s “Spiral Jetty” (1970) 42:53: Paglen’s thrash group, Noisegate47:15: “Recording Carceral Landscapes” (1995–2004) 1:05:13: “ImageNet Roulette” (2020) 1:05:13: “Bloom” (2020)

When describing experiences, New York–based artist and author Maira Kalman almost always goes for the extremes: an instance can be at once stupid and smart, miserable and hopeful, sad and delighted. A bittersweet point of view forms the throughline of her work—which spans more than 30 books for adults and children, as well as performance, opera, film, and industrial and set design—and gives each project its distinct ability to encapsulate the reality of being human. Tragedy and beauty can, and will, she believes, appear out of nowhere. In both instances, it’s what one does with it that determines how the event will impact their life. Kalman, 71, credits this sensibility to credits this sensibility to people and places of significance in her life, specifically to the early death of her husband, the celebrated graphic designer Tibor Kalman, and to her late mother, Sara Berman, in addition to her Jewish heritage and birthplace of Tel Aviv. In tandem with her practice, Kalman makes time to indulge in seemingly mundane activities, such as taking long walks, cleaning, and reading obituaries, which she sees as activators of life. Each gesture is a means for finding clarity in the midst of chaos.On this episode, Kalman talks with Andrew about observation as a creative act, the allure of books, the importance of not thinking, and performing daily rituals as a means for staying sane. Show notes:@mairakalmanmairakalman.com9:37: Tibor Kalman13:08: Alex Kalman13:55: “Love in the Time of Corona” (Times Square Arts, 2020) 17:30: American Utopia (Bloomsbury, 2020) and American Utopia Broadway play (2019–Present)23:46: “The Museum Workout” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (2017)28:26: “Sara Berman’s Closet” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (2015)52:21: (Un)fashion (Abrams, 2005)53:43: M&Co56:11: “Tiborocity: Design and Undesign by Tibor Kalman, 1979–1999”  58:08: Alex and Maira Kalman’s short films1:05:08: “New Yorkistan” cover for the New Yorker (2001)

Kevin Beasley thinks a lot about objects. In particular, specific objects that relate to notions of American-ness and Blackness—and ones that are often linked, subtly or not, with violence. Whether with a Cadillac Escalade, a pair of Air Jordans, or an N.F.L. helmet, Beasley finds deep connections to each item he chooses to work with, rigorously studying their multifarious contexts, meanings, and histories. Happy to let artifacts sit in his New York studio for long periods of time, the 36-year-old artist allows them to slowly gestate in his mind until he feels ready to express whatever he has deciphered out of their nature. From there, he turns them into exquisite, alchemical works of art, from tightly packed “slab” sculptures—large, flat resin blocks that embody the density of the symbolic articles that comprise them—to evocative sound installations and performances. Beasley’s prolonged approach isn’t mere research; it’s his way of making space to reflect, to pay more attention, and to grapple with the nuances of the complex, loaded subject matter that’s embedded in many of the things that permeate our everyday lives. For Beasley, unpacking subjects charged with underlying connotations is a necessary means for transformation. “You don’t have to fully understand what it is you’re dealing with,” he says. “It takes time. It takes a revisitation. And that’s okay, because that speaks very specifically to a process of learning and understanding.”Beasley’s work often draws from his personal history, which has included growing up in admiration of the handiwork of his mechanic father, deejaying at house parties at Yale University, and attending annual family reunions in rural Virginia. It was at one such reunion, in 2011, when Beasley came across a cotton field and picked the plant for the first time—an eerie experience that was, as he considered his ancestors and enslaved peoples who once performed the act, all at once distressing, pleasurable, haunting, and illuminating. The following year, Beasley took his fascination with cotton further—and into the deep South. After finding and purchasing a mid-20th-century cotton gin motor on eBay, he drove from New Haven, Connecticut, to a farm in rural Alabama to collect the object. Beginning as part of an M.F.A. project at Yale, the motor would later evolve into an encased artwork, whirling and surrounded by microphones, inside a pristine, clear, soundproof box at the Whitney Museum of American Art—the potent centerpiece of the artist’s breakout exhibition “A View of a Landscape” (2018–2019). (The raw, rancorous noises the motor produced were pumped into an adjacent room that served as a listening gallery.) Later this year, Beasley will extend the project further with a monograph and double LP of the same name, which features sound contributions from artists, musicians, and writers such as Kelsey Lu, Jason Moran, and Fred Moten, whose tracks sample recordings that Beasley made of the churning machine.On this episode, Beasley talks with Spencer about contemplating these particular objects, sound as a means for greater understanding, and the role of repetition in reshaping history.

For Grammy Award–winning singer and songwriter Rosanne Cash, processing the past is a constant, endless journey. She’d been thinking about race and reparations long before the Movement for Black Lives gained momentum last year, as both racism and African-American ancestry exist in her family history rooted in the American South, where she was born to country music legend Johnny Cash and his first wife, Vivian Liberto, in 1955. Cash channeled her anguish into “The Killing Fields,” a haunting single that reckons with the United States’s legacy of lynchings, and “Crawl into the Promised Land,” a blistering yet optimistic response to the tumultuous events of 2020. Last month, she released both tracks on a seven-inch limited-edition vinyl, the sales from which will benefit the Arkansas Peace and Justice Memorial Movement, a nonprofit that raises awareness about the state’s history of racial injustice.  Over the last four decades, Cash, who now lives in New York, has established herself as one of the rare voices in popular music who sings from the uncut perspective of a grown woman, fraught with opinions, mixed emotions, and battle scars. With each album she releases (there are 14 to date), she seems to gain a deeper understanding of herself. After earning 11 number one hits on Billboard’s country music chart during the 1980s, Cash released Interiors (1990), a dark, reflective album that marked a departure from her commercial work. While country radio stations and her label all but ignored the record, she’s embraced the honest, deeply personal approach used to make it as her modus operandi ever since. Her recent work is increasingly intimate: Cash confronts her Southern roots and grapples with her life as a wife, mother, and former country star in the 2014 album The River and The Thread; her 2018 album She Remembers Everything—released against the backdrop of Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings and during the rise of the #MeToo movement—tackles the plight of women in America with songs about divorce, ingrained social hierarchies, and death, including a track about a boy killed by gun violence told from the viewpoint of his mother. She has also written articles for The Atlantic, The Nation, and The New York Times about subjects that matter to her, such as the need for country music artists to speak out in support of gun control. Eschewing any self-righteousness, these efforts, whether singing, songwriting, or prose, are her way of working through the complexities of life. “I have to keep showing up for the things I believe in,” she says, noting that she often feels like a fraud. “That’s part of being an artist. You come up against that, and you still show up, because you have to. The world needs it.” On this episode, Cash discusses what it means to reckon with history, talking with Andrew about her long-standing work as an activist, the healing power of music, and continually revisiting the past as a means for personal and artistic evolution.

Growing up in the 1950s in the only Chinese family in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey, Billie Tsien always felt like an outsider. She would seclude herself in the shower of her family’s home’s master bathroom, behind closed doors, escaping into books for hours before her parents, who had originally moved to America from Shanghai to study at Cornell, would find her. Through this Tsien developed a deep understanding of the value of a rich interior life—a concept she has gone on to apply to her work at the New York–based architectural practice Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects Partners (TWBTA), which she co-founded with her husband, Tod Williams, in 1986. The ethereal craft inherent in TWBTA’s structures, which include parks, libraries, museums, and other people-focused places, emanates from Billie and Tod’s belief that architecture is an act of service, and an opportunity to create quiet moments where visitors can indulge in the simple yet powerful emotions that can be stirred when encountering beauty. When Tsien, now 72, reflects on her firm’s philosophy—which entails making buildings that transcend solutions, that respect the earth, and that are measured by the lives lived within them—it’s clear that she profoundly, even poetically, shapes each project’s awe-inspiring energy. Tsien’s deliberate, unhurried methodology is apparent in everything she does. She advocates for listening and community engagement—a central part of her firm’s high-profile, often controversial public works, such as Philadelphia’s Barnes Foundation (2012), Dartmouth College’s Hood Museum of Art (2019), and Chicago’s Obama Presidential Center, which is slated to break ground this fall. Tsien and her staff spend time with the craftspeople who create many of their materials—including Dutch textile artist Claudy Jongstra, whose vibrant felt paintings grace the walls of New York’s David Rubenstein Atrium (2009), and Danish brick-makers whose product features on the facade of dormitories at Pennsylvania’s Haverford College (2012)—and select them according to the emotional responses they elicit. She gives the same focused attention to the holistic experience of a building as she does the handrails that will go inside it. When it comes to the planet, Tsien thinks buildings should embrace measurable ways to minimize their environmental footprints as well as immeasurable ones, such as the meandering pathways of the LeFrak Center (2013), in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, that invite people to appreciate the natural wonders around them.On this episode, Tsien details the origins of and rationale behind her approach to the built environment, talking with Spencer about designing structures as containers for life, why history doesn’t unfold in a straight line, and architecture as both an honor and a responsibility.

For 37 years, Eileen Fisher has faithfully followed a vision: to create simple, timeless clothes for women that make it easy to get dressed. Soft-spoken, polite, and a self-described introvert, the 70-year-old Fisher is the unlikely CEO of an approximately $500 million fashion company that bears her name. The operation is owned by 42 percent of its largely female staff, and is praised for its longtime environmentalism and progressive business model. Headquartered in Irvington, New York, the brand embodies Fisher’s view of what a contemporary clothing business should be, and acts as her way of giving back to the world.Though Fisher prioritized natural materials in her designs from the beginning, she didn’t fully understand how making clothes affects the planet until a 2012 trip to China, where she visited the company’s factories and saw the severity of the water crisis firsthand. Upon returning home, she created an internal “Sustainable Design Team,” composed of representatives from key departments, including supply-chain management and production, with the goal of minimizing their work’s environmental impact. Today, the brand uses organic cotton and linen almost exclusively, and between 2015 and 2018, it offset all of its carbon emissions when transporting garments between its factories and distribution center. Seventy-nine percent of its wool is responsibly sourced or recycled. The company’s initiative that buys and sells vintage Eileen Fisher pieces, called Renew, has collected more than a million and a half garments, and Waste No More, an in-house studio that uses a felting machine to transform leftover fabric into home decor, accessories, and art, nods toward Fisher’s goal of creating a circular production system. She’s constantly looking for ways to reduce the brand’s environmental footprint. “The whole industry has a very long way to go,” Fisher says of fashion’s contribution to global economic and climate crises. But solving the problem, she adds, is a “huge opportunity.” On this episode, Fisher describes her efforts to build a clothing business that serves women and the environment, talking with Andrew about collaboration as a preferred modus operandi, solving the fashion industry’s pollution problem, and the remarkable effects of staying true to one’s vision, and to oneself.

Last year, after more than three decades of practicing and teaching Ashtanga yoga, Eddie Stern found himself wondering if he should continue in the discipline. He’d amassed a considerable following through the classes of his New York yoga studios (with celebrity students such as Madonna; Gwyneth Paltrow; and Mike D, of the Beastie Boys), authored two books, launched a successful app with Moby and the alternative-medicine advocate Deepak Chopra, and lectured around the world. But issues within the industry have loomed large: The Western yoga scene—with its high-priced classes, stadium-size festivals, “rock star” yogis, and self-aggrandizing instructors—trouble him. They distort yoga from its origins, he believes, imposing false narratives onto participants. Meanwhile, in the era of #MeToo, multiple allegations of sexual misconduct against his peers—including the late Pattabhi Jois, under whom he studied for 18 years—have brought about a reckoning in the community. Then the Covid-19 pandemic hit, and Stern began giving classes over Zoom, a format he found conducive to creating the personal, noncompetitive, altruistic side of yoga that initially attracted him to the practice. He soon discovered his passion for teaching all over again.Stern’s dedication to yoga is rooted in a desire to understand who he is, which is apparent in each step of building the life he currently leads. His ninth-grade English teacher challenged him to contemplate his identity and purpose, which he explored early on by hanging out in New York’s 1980s punk music scene, skateboarding, and taking psychedelic drugs. When a co-worker at a record store introduced him to yoga, Stern quickly saw that the practice was a direct line to the insight and self-realization he longed for. Eager to immerse himself in the discipline, he moved to India, where he spent nearly two decades, on and off, studying with Jois, who had developed and popularized the vinyasa style of yoga known as Ashtanga. Jois also, as Stern acknowledges on this episode of Time Sensitive, abused some of his female students. But the sense of self Stern drew from being close to the guru, coupled with a fear for his own survival, caused him to remain largely silent until now. “Fear doesn’t lead toward treating people well,” Stern says. “Not just in accordance with yoga principles, but with human principles.” Today, he’s using what he’s learned from this dark experience to help inform how he approaches instructing his own students: as spiritual friends, who learn and grow together with their teacher. On this episode, Stern describes his profound experiences with the yogi tradition, talking with Spencer about the beauty of breathing and the body’s natural rhythms, yoga as practice of selfless concern for others, the problem of fear, and how slowing down shifts our relationship with ourselves.

Simon Critchley, a philosopher at the New School, combines deep thought with humor, bringing clarity to complex ideas. He shares personal experiences, like recovering from memory loss and his journey through adversity influenced by punk culture. Critchley discusses the connections between disappointment, creativity, and social upheaval while highlighting the transformative power of mentorship. He reflects on the therapeutic nature of writing and the joy of engaging with students, all while exploring the philosophical dimensions of music and humor.