Chapter 1: What unique perspectives does Cy Gavin bring to his art?
There's what you're trying to do and then what you actually did do. And if you're even fussily trying to put paint down in an exact way, it's still communicating that you're a person who's probably out of control.
From the TED Audio Collective, this is Design Matters with Debbie Millman. On Design Matters, Debbie talks with some of the most creative people in the world about what they do, how they got to be who they are, what they're thinking about and working on. On this episode, a conversation with artist Cy Gavin about his career and about what he stopped drawing when he makes his paintings.
Why not just eliminate that step entirely and just be yourself?
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Cy Gavin is a painter whose work resists easy categorization. It moves between figuration and abstraction, between landscape and memory, between what is seen and what is carried. He creates artwork that unfolds as atmospheres, as questions, and as a kind of inquiry into perception itself.
His services hold both material experimentation, pigments, textures, light, and a deeper investigation into how we locate ourselves in the world physically and psychologically. His work has been exhibited at institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and is held in major public collections.
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Chapter 2: How did Cy Gavin's upbringing influence his artistic journey?
But what distinguishes his practice is not scale or recognition. It's the way his paintings operate as sites of searching. They ask not only what are we looking at, but how we look and what we bring with us when we do.
Debbie spoke with Cy Gavin in front of a live audience at the Met, where they were in conversation both about his life and work, but also about how it relates to ecologies of painting and installation on view in the European Paintings Galleries. Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us on this beautiful afternoon in New York City.
Sai, I understand that you, as you were growing up, were an avid birder.
That's true.
Tell us more about that. I understand that you learned more than 200 bird songs.
I did. Calls as well. Birds have like flight, migratory mating calls and songs, some of them. So I was a person who started this group in my high school with Envirothon, which is a kind of state run academic team. And yeah, like I was a specialist in bird calls and stuff.
I understand that your team, this Envirothon, you competed with your classmates, no, against your classmates to test your knowledge about soil, forestry, wildlife, aquatic ecology in a national decathlon.
Yeah, we went to states. We didn't win states. You didn't win? No, but we were incredibly good.
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Chapter 3: What role did nature play in Cy Gavin's artistic development?
And I believe that you learned much of this information during long family car rides in the countryside. Where were you and your family traveling to?
My family were Jehovah's Witnesses, so they would go knocking door to door. That in the rural setting means driving around for hours, and that's what we did. But it was really great because actually it meant that I could bring books with me and read in the car and put me in spaces where I would have opportunities to observe birds. And that made it actually engaging for me.
Do you still remember the bird calls?
Many, yeah. I do. I moved to California where there was a whole other set of things to learn, so I sort of lost a little bit there, but
While you were in the car, you and your sister were also sketching and reading. And your parents also often dropped you off at the Genora Public Library, where you spent long days exploring the stacks and rows of books. Is that where you first became aware of the artwork of the old masters?
100%. And kind of... in an ill-advised way by very overprotective parents, only allowed myself and my sister to go unattended to the library.
And so it gave access to all the things we had curiosity about and also luckily gave us access to people who were volunteers there who were sort of surrogate parents, for me at least, and who took an interest in what I was doing and suggested books and ordered them from the interlibrary loan system. And yeah.
What first inspired you to begin copying the old masters?
I mean, I think it was really just I wasn't allowed to do anything.
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Chapter 4: How did Cy Gavin transition from drawing to painting?
So I just went to the DIY section and would take out books about making all kinds of things. So I dabbled with all kinds of things that were there because it was a way of getting an education for free. And where I grew up, it's very much like the education is about education. football and not an education.
So to have the library really like more than supplemented an education actually provided it. And it was also a place where I could have sort of unobserved space and time to read books that would not have been allowed in my house.
You said you initially liked drawing when you were a kid because it was a skill where you could readily notice your improvement. For sure. Did anyone in your family at that time recognize that you had artistic talent?
I think there's a difference between talent and skill. I think that's, I mean... Oh, talk about it that way.
There's a difference between talent and skill?
For sure. Tell us about that. I mean, I think I'm distrustful a bit that talent exists. I mean, I hear it all the time, but I... Don't know what that means for myself, at least. I think that I had a life that was conducive to a certain kind of attention being paid to things because, as I said, I wasn't allowed to do very much.
So it concentrated my attention on what I could and it fostered an imagination that was maybe a sort of... like a escape hatch um but when i say there's a difference between skill and talent in my case is that it was very easy to um for people in my family maybe and other people too to say you're talented because you have drawn this thing that looks like that thing
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Chapter 5: What challenges did Cy Gavin face in art school?
from observation or by copying it. But that one sort of removed them from that equation. It meant that you were special, you could do this and we can't. And I remember very distinctly being a young person and all of my friends drew and they all drew all the time and they drew well.
And then at some point people told them that they were good at writing or that they were good at wrestling or whatever. And then they became people who looked at me and said that you're talented. So for me, it felt like an inadequate explanation for something.
But I also think like whenever I would draw, I really remember and what was gratifying about it was that it was, as I said, like a thing that... Um, the muscles of your hands are used for writing as well. So it was something that I could say, say like this week I could do something that I couldn't do literally two weeks ago.
So it's evidence.
Yeah. Compared to say, like trying to learn an instrument, which I tried to do as well. So by comparison, it was much more like immediate gratification to be able to, to create something that would be a gift for someone. And also that would distinguish me in a way that would give me attention and make people feel that I had value in a society that otherwise probably didn't see that value.
You've described your artwork at that time, some of which we can see here, as a kind of coded communication.
For sure.
What were you trying to communicate that couldn't be said out loud?
Not in these things so much. I mean, these are paintings that I made when I was in high school.
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Chapter 6: How does Cy Gavin address the concept of beauty in his work?
And the first oil painting I made is this weird self-portrait with a bird on the shoulder. I had sort of two sets of sketchbooks. I had no bedroom door, like this is not too, but like there was no sense of privacy in my youth. And it became very apparent that I had, you know, my father would rifle through every sketchbook I had copying them and taking them to the church.
Why?
It was dangerous to them somehow. But when I realized that there was this kind of like power in that, which was more than I had otherwise, it was something that I obviously like played with. So I could have basically two sketchbooks and one would be like the one I knew that they were going to find and then one was not.
So you hid that one?
Absolutely. Yeah, for sure.
Yeah. But none of that work is here. The hidden work is... It was a slide I took out.
But those were drawings. These are paintings. But I included this because I think probably our conversation will go to a place where it talks about the act of painting. And I think these are really like illuminated drawings more than paintings. And that was... And when you look at a book that you get from the library that says how to paint, that is what they tell you to do.
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Chapter 7: What insights does Cy Gavin share about the relationship between art and history?
And also when you look at Titian or something, up close you see that there is actually a chalk drawing under it or a drawing. And so I thought that that is how a painting had to be made. And so the idea of painting felt inextricable to drawing. And I don't feel that way now, but I back then did.
you loved going to the Carnegie museum of art in Pittsburgh, but couldn't afford the $13 entrance fee. And I understand you found a way to sneak in.
Yeah. I was hesitant to talk about that because I didn't want them to like close it up, but there's multiple ways, but now you don't have to tell us where it is exactly.
If it's still there.
Now I'm on the board of that museum and it's like, it's still an issue actually. Um, But it's the library in the basement through the stacks.
What did that experience teach you about access to art? And is that something you're bringing to the museum now that you're on the board?
That's the number one question. I mean, I wanted to be in the museum, so I made it a point to get in there. I'm sure that other people would want to be in the museum, but but I'm also sure that many people wouldn't. And I think that like that curiosity to go into a museum has to sort of, people have to encounter that.
And what was unique and I think really lucky about my experience having that be the museum I would go to was that it was also the Natural History Museum and Carnegie funded a lot of excavations for dinosaur bones.
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Chapter 8: What projects is Cy Gavin currently working on?
So, I thought all museums were this kind of mix of like an active academic space and also collecting art from wherever and also relics from other cultures.
Once you figured out how to get into the museum, you were there all the time. And I believe that you also had a teacher in high school who believed you had talent or skill. And she would meet you in the mornings before class at school, and you'd bring your paintings in in garbage bags, and she'd give you feedback. What kinds of things was she telling you about your work?
Yeah, I mean, I brought, I was copying paintings that I saw in the world and in books mostly. And they were all 16 by 20 because Michaels would have like two per sales. And that's what I could afford. It was like $5 for two.
And they always had the good coupons.
They do have coupons. And so I would get them when they would be on sale and then I was very afraid of just making something that I wasn't proud of because it was costly, relatively speaking. And those paintings were originally on like using just hobbyist paint, like 50 cent tubes from joint fabrics.
which I really like, actually, and I still use that paint now because it has a lot of chalk and it's very absorbent, absorptive, rather. And so it has a matte finish and is also affordable, so you can work with it without feeling sensitive about losing stuff. But I'd bring paintings in to her and she would just sort of give her opinion about them or challenge me.
I remember one moment she would challenge me to be like, well, you make... All these paintings are showing me have a certain kind of point of view. What happens when you work larger? Like, where would that point of view, will it expand the painting as if you grab the corners of it and draw it out? Or would you clutter it up with the same scale of activity inside that larger painting?
And since I couldn't access, you know, barter canvases, she had canvases people had left from years past and I would have to, you know, sand them down and paint over them. And they also left paint, oil paint and oil paint was way beyond like accessibility. So yeah, that's, was incredibly important for me to have a person who would just like carving out five minutes to do that.
One of the masterpieces in the Ecologies of Painting exhibition here at the Met that we've been hearing about from the curators is Peter Bruegel's 1565 painting, Harvesters. And you've said that first seeing Bruegel's work at that time of your life was life-changing, right? In what way? What did it inspire you in you? How did you feel when you saw it?
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