Debbie Millman

Rose, let's talk a little bit about your origin story.

You grew up in Santa Clara Pueblo, surrounded by generations of artists and thinkers.

Your mother, Roxanne Swensdell, and your grandmother both forged paths that united making and meaning.

When did you first sense that art could also be a kind of language for survival?

Going real deep, real fast.

You've described your childhood home as experimental, and I understand that your mother once turned off the electricity to see how the family could adapt.

How'd that go?

What did those early experiences teach you about self-reliance or the connection between self-reliance and imagination?

That requires self-reliance that is not always something that we're learned to cultivate as children.

How do you sustain that?

intrigues you most about car culture?

Are you a Fast and Furious fan or is it more spiritual?

But your work does move between disciplines, ceramics, metal, automotive restoration, performance, and now includes all of them.

Now, did you always imagine those boundaries dissolving, or did that happen more organically over the work that you've done in your practice?

You've called cars cars.

vessels.

And many of your figures, many of the sculptures you make, you've called vessels for transformation.

What do these vessels hold?

Consciousness.

Tell us about that.