 I just want to say first of all, thank you so much for coming out here on an incredibly cold Saturday evening. I know it's not easy. We have an incredibly special evening tonight. We are so thrilled to welcome the Haas brothers, Simon and Nikki, along with their incredible guests from South Africa. So we are so excited to have you here. Thank you so much for joining us and being open to talk with us after an incredible afternoon at the Beating Workshop. We held a Beating Workshop in this room. There may be some little beads around, still on the floor, but our guests got to make these incredible necklaces. So just a very quick primer in 2014, the Haas brothers began collaborating with Monkey Biz, which is a non-profit income generating bead project that works with crafts women from the collegiate township in South Africa. And together, the Haas brothers and the Haas sisters, as they have lovingly begun to be known, began creating these expressive, fantastical and incredibly joyful collection of aphreaks. And the series of this beaded flora and fauna can be seen upstairs in our exhibition, Beauty, Cooper Hewitt to Simon Triennial. So of course I have to give some thanks to our funders and the very generous support that we received from Edward and Helen Hintz and Madeleine Rudin Johnson. The exhibition is, we also received additional funding that was provided by Amida and Pernandue Chatterjee, the August Texture Exhibition Fund, Marjorie and Edgar Missenter, May and Samuel Rudin Family Foundation, the Erin Krantz Fund, the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, Rockwell Group, Esme Ustan Exhibition Endowment Fund, and the Consulate General of Finland. So thanks to all of those people for making the exhibition itself possible. And I also do want to thank our very dear friends and colleagues at the Design Gallery, Erin Company, who have worked tirelessly behind this needs to help bring these wonderful objects and artists to Cooper Hewitt. So thank you, wherever you are. And so now please join me in welcoming Nikki and Simon Haas. They will join us on the stage first and just provide a very quick overview of their work to familiarize you. And then we're going to show a video that is playing upstairs in the gallery as well about their collaboration with the Haas sisters. And then we will all come back on to the stage to chat. And Matops, who is one of the women, will come up and join us. And so I want to welcome you guys. I want to welcome Matops and Kate Carlisle, Evelyn Ngomso, and Nanzele Seko. Thank you so much for being here tonight. Thanks so much for coming, everyone. We're so proud and so excited to be here to show you guys this project that has been going on for two years. And it's been really, really life-changing for us. And I don't think we could be any happier about where we are showing it. It's fantastic. And to get started, I just want you guys to, we'll roll through a few of our older work so you can get a sense of where we came from and what we're doing now. So we're known for, in general, sort of being experimental with materials, but also very playful with our forms. And we love anthropomorphic objects. Here you can see some examples of ceramics that look sort of like they came from underwater. And then a little toy beast. The beast is made from goat fur and ebony horns. And the ceramics have a texture on them that we developed as well that actually sort of grows itself. And here I think you can see that we really appreciate kind of gnarly but also beautiful things. And we don't shy away from even the bald spots there on the ceramics there to assert our part of the process and we really embrace it. Here another set of ceramics. Again, I think you can see a mix of gnarly and then very fine with the sort of gold detailing. And here a great example of Nikki's amazing ability to be expressive and put humor into our work. Nikki sculpts everything. I mean, usually the materials guy. So these are a pretty distilled version of Nikki's humor and sort of energy. Here a grouping of candelabras and vases. Also completely sculpted by Nikki and then some more ceramics with the accretion texture. Us inhabiting the space with some of these animals, we made a gigantic dromedary. This one was named Debbie Harry Dromedary. And Harry spelled H-A-I-R-Y. So we love to throw in jokes in our names and never take it way too seriously. So this leads us to the Afriks which is the collection you'll see upstairs. I think it's completely different than anything we've ever made but also is based in this love for anthropomorphic objects, emotions, attitudes. I think this is the most expressive collection we've ever produced. And it was completely... they're great. And I'm saying that too because our sisters designed them with us and it surprised us in so many ways with the ways that they... their techniques, beating techniques, the expressiveness in them. It was a full on collaboration from the very start. We started at the language and I think you can see sort of like the mini-beast before that was expressive and funny and cool and had humor. And also maybe ask questions about what it was that you were interacting with. The reality is when we met the sisters and got familiar with the way that they worked, the work went to a completely different place that is at the same time more casual, more humorous, more unusual, but also more impactful and has a heavier, deeper, more serious meaning behind it than we were working on our own. And I think it was the first time that we had moved into something where we were proud not only of our message, because in the past we've been proud of the things we're making, the things that we're trying to say, but this was like the interaction, the work of the project, the benefit that was held by everybody involved was so much deeper seated and so much more life changing than anything we've embarked on before. And I think that we're so extremely proud of this work because you can feel that as a part of it. And it completely changed our aesthetic. And we were at a place before we started making this collection where I think we were probably pretty happy with ourselves for a moment. We felt pretty good, like literally the day before we went to first work with these guys, we were in New York, we just had our first solo show, which was a tremendous success. We'd sold a lot of work and we got a lot of press for it. And so I think we felt pretty excited about it. And then we went to Kailicha and I mean to Cape Town and I think we totally got knocked on our ass, man. And it made us totally reassess what it really meant to be making work. So this wasn't just like, hey, let's go make some aesthetically unusual pieces. And oh, we want to add color to our work, so let's go to Africa to do it. That's not the approach at all. I think maybe initially it had a little bit of that when we went to Cape Town, we were stunned by the work that we saw at Monquitas and all we wanted to do is start working with them, but we didn't actually know what was going to happen until we went. And the collection that resulted was just pretty outrageous. These mushrooms, for example, are eight feet tall. That's an incredible amount of beading. It's a huge feat and it's just really great for us to be involved in doing that. I can't stress how much of a collaboration it was and it's actually the first time that I can say that we've really collaborated with anybody in a full sense. And so we're very excited about it. And after this, I want to show you guys a quick video that gives you a sense of the project and then I think we will... We were excited since Nicky has always drawn such remarkably expressive characters to make completely invented animals. Not even animals really, just freaks. We had this idea that we could embrace the title of freak as it is such a nonspecific title. The word means anything really unusual or unexpected. But it is bandied by bullies around the world to diminish anyone they deem to be weird. This derisive blanket term taken at its actual definition is a fantastic set of constraints for a design project. We wear the title of freak as I have come to wear the title queer with pride and assign its literal meaning to ourselves and to the objects we wish to create. Unexpected, abnormally shaped, surprising, out of the blue. To us, these terms all sound pretty cool. We want to make beautiful freaks. We christened the series afreaks. We were excited since Nicky has always drawn such remarkably expressive characters to make completely invented animals. Not even animals really, just... Can our sisters stand up for a second so everybody can see who we work with on this project? Are you guys ready? These are just five of about 30, 35 women that worked on the project with us. These are the ones that we started the project with and we're definitely powerhouses inside of the system that we use to create it. I think we'd like to invite Andrea back on stage and Matapela. I'm super excited to have all of you guys up here. Edma talks, thank you for joining us up on stage. First of all, your work is incredible anyway but how did it even come to be that you guys met each other? We went up in Cape Town as... Cape Town was named World Design Capital in 2014 and our gallery, our own company, brought us there to exhibit in a booth that they had there. And Nicky and I started walking around Cape Town and just happened across a fair called Design in Daba and inside of the fair, Marquis had a booth and we began a conversation with Joan from there. She's not here today but... and she suggested that we start collaborating with each other and we were blown away by the work in the booth so we thought it was an amazing idea and from there on it was just the rest of the history that was two years ago. Maybe we'll just break it. We liked each other and we're sort of inviting and like, hey this is cool, maybe we can do something and I think there were emails back and forth where it was like yeah, I don't know if you guys necessarily believed that we would do something initially. Do you know what I mean? We went to young American guys come in and they're sort of like, yeah, let's do something and I don't know if we believed it ourselves initially but then we started talking and I was just like, dang, man this is really cool and we could do something rad and there wasn't necessarily like a goal to what we were doing until we met with you, Andrea, because then we had a finish line, you know? Then you say, oh, you dismiss Sony and design museum, holy shit, alright. Let's do something and then you ask us to do something transgressive and I'm only projecting, I don't know what you were hoping we would do necessarily but like Simon and I are known for our hypersexual work and I thought we were thinking maybe it has something to do with sexuality and we're like, well if we're supposed to do transgressive we shouldn't do what's expected of us at all and so it just ended up being sort of like this perfect storm and we're like, man, those awesome ladies from Cape Town can totally nail this and let's do it together and lo and behold they totally did they did something that stands up across the world and in a reality that they hadn't experienced until even just a week ago and they somehow found the language that has changed the scene I think in a way permanently, it's nothing short and miraculous, pretty awesome That's how we met each other How is it for you? Actually for me and the artist and the monkey bees is absolutely amazing because we've been, we are 15 years in monkey bees but actually there are some people that just come to say guys, let's collaborate, let's do this so sometimes it doesn't happen so actually this is the very first one that it was thrown away and it's totally amazing and it just takes us into another level because we do like other artworks but now this is like, it's amazing we really couldn't believe that we can do this beautiful work it's so amazing to work with these brothers, they are just amazing So what is your process of collaboration? Tell me more about how you work together It started with, sorry, do you want to say? It started by, we just asked if they would all start to experiment with textures and before we got there the first time actually they had already prepared all of these amazing little samples with little tongues and things hanging out Gagala Gugu is what we're calling it, this sort of scrunchy texture and so when we arrived we were really inspired by what they had already produced and then Mickey sat down with everybody and just started drawing while they taught me how to bead and it was, I don't know, it's hard to even say who made what in terms of the design choices it was so collaborative and so much just us hanging out together that's kind of with the entire experience Even in the initial textures, the first time we came to work they had put up in the studio photos of stuff that we'd made in the past and then inspiration images, Kate, I know you pulled weird mushrooms and some other stuff that we had related to the work we'd made before and there were even some photos of us and they had already started to make work that sort of related to our aesthetic which was awesome I even remember the photos of us, we came in and I don't know if Evelyn, if you asked me someone was like, you don't have breasts and I was like, what? and I was like, any time and then I looked at the photo that they had of me and I'd been in a fair and there was this really bad light over me and I had this white T-shirt on and I was like, I could see why you think I would and so it was like, literally we had had so little interaction and we'd all sort of taken this massive leap of faith just to get started and coming from both sides I mean, they had started making work that I mean, I don't know, working on our aesthetic we knew it was going to happen and then we flew to South Africa not even really understanding the place at all and it was like, I think that's what made it so successful is that we all had hope together before we even became friends and we all went through a massive growing experience that was at times super difficult and other times so joyful and unbelievable and that the result is like these objects are sort of like all of our children together and they're really just a product that is like a perfect example of the real work of the project which was which was getting to know each other and reaching across the ocean to meet each other and all that other hippie to pee and I have a crap that I like to talk about but that was the real work of the project was us getting to know each other and share our cultures with each other and I just like, when we started really I just had to choose for the very best artists because there are so many so it was like, I think we started with like four until now we have like plus, minus, thirty-five artists that are working in this project but at the beginning we started with a small then as Niki said, we do some samples then I have to, then we see the work is going, they say, oh man we can extend, we can make another one then I started to look for the people that can come so can be the artists they can increase and it was like amazing and KT was one with this like emailing back, so it was like the defaults of the emails to say oh, then when we are just making maybe it's like halfway, they're going to just get some pictures and send it away so it was incredible and the artists they believe themselves they just like, they couldn't believe that they can able to produce these I think I was going to say, I just I don't know if like, I know that none of you guys will be able to tell but it's like we, like Simon and I can tell exactly which sister made which piece because their voices so succinct and so smart and beautiful and like Evelyn and Nongamso and Nonsuseko have pieces upstairs that they specifically worked on the pieces and it's like there's some that are like group efforts and the voices more of like a community in that case, like the larger pieces but the little toys you go I know who made that because I know they're aesthetic and I know how they would work with that and we worked on them together which is really really cool well and some of them even have names after because each of them have like an artist name yeah like well Simon and I name our pieces often like we started by like making dumb celebrity names there's another collaborator in the house too, Johnny Smith in fact there's somewhere he's there, he made it so Johnny will like we'll all sit together and make like celebrity names Taylor Swift Taylor Swift my favorite is like a little bit obscure I'm a huge, I love ice hockey and my favorite goalie the whole time was Martin Broderer, he plays for the New Jersey Devil and there was one piece that was called Fartan Oderer which is like awesome exactly because everyone's like what does that mean, Fartan Oderer but what was even cooler was that all the sisters have all their names for the pieces as well and they're in several of the pieces after the sisters too as we started to get to know each other yeah but anyways the naming was cool, it was really fun because yeah it was a super good project yeah and yeah it was really a super project that we even made and just changed the level of the artist it's made it's like beyond we're super excited to have the work upstairs I mean it was interesting because two years ago when we first approached you guys to participate in the try and tell you yeah no idea what this was what was going to come of this and I remember we had some talks about yeah that idea of transgression and then you came to the museum and showed us some early sketches some of kind of the beating algorithms and things that you were working on tell me a little bit about those the beating algorithms so they on some of the pieces upstairs you'll see there's some floral bits like little flowers and leafy foliage this I got so obsessed by beads as a result of this project the sister's all taught me how to do bead work and actually based on some of the necklaces that we taught today in the workshop I developed a system for making three-dimensional shapes using using just logic so for example you could say on a flat tapestry maybe a red line will be moving in this direction and a blue line is moving in this direction and when they hit each other one bead gets removed that's one of the examples and that'll create sort of like a tapering spiral shape but I came up with 26 of these 26 unique stitches each one makes its own three-dimensional shape and they can be permuted with each other to create those flower shapes that you see upstairs so to me even though it wasn't it was very much kind of a personal passion project that was on the sidelines completely it would have been absolutely impossible to make that leap from sort of thinking mathematically the way I do into sort of more of an abstract math and a linguistic math and it's because I was trying to learn OSA and trying to explain some of these stitches I had to completely reformat the way that I think and as a result I realized that I didn't think I could ever have so I encourage you guys to check out those algorithms that are really, really hard to understand for most people because I'm just kind of an obsessive crazy guy but I love that you gave each of the 26 stitches if you will you assigned them a letter A through Z there's 26 letters so I thought that's pretty awesome I can give them so what is it about beads? why were you so moved with the beads? I was the first one that saw these guys and in Daba and I think the reason that I was so attracted is that I was going through in Daba hoping to see something that felt like unusual to me more exotic or African even honestly we're Americans looking for something that looks like not where we're from and a lot of South Africa a lot of the work coming out of the design community is very like western western engage they love making stuff that looks western and I'm like alright it's really good they make great stuff but I want to see rad African stuff when I came across everybody I was like this stuff is awesome and then you meet the women making it and you go holy shit they're awesome they really get it man and so for us I think it's just like this insane aesthetic then backed by this tremendous spirit beautiful community and additionally with beads I think we were both really struck by you know our work is all very intense we spend lots and lots of time making every piece and when we saw these objects we were like wow these take at least as long as the things that we make and ultimately we're selling our stuff in galleries in New York for all this money blah blah blah we really thought that beadwork could use a boost because it is such a beautiful art and such an intricate art that to see it be treated sort of as a craft well it is a craft but you know some people have a problem even putting craft in such a high end place so actually I commend you for allowing us to put beadwork in this design museum it's really incredible but I think it's a craft that really could use the boost and we were we were all so excited to do that I mean Tubbs your mom taught you to be traditional here right my mom actually is the one who makes the first all of monkey beads when it was started that's the original and it expands when you are going to pass out to your friend but my mom taught a lot of the artists how to do beadwork and in the beadwork most of the people from they know the beadwork from the background like history of beadwork but we we just taking a beadwork into contemporary instead of like cultural and we are the one we are the unique project we do beadwork no one do like us it's unique it's made in South Africa it's not original from some movies original from South Africa and tell me more what did beads mean to you ultimately when your mother taught you to bead you're wearing the most incredible beaded necklace did you make that by the way I didn't I didn't made it I didn't made it beadwork it means it means a lot to me actually because as we started monkey beads because it's a project that it's uplifting it's uplifting the community actually some of the artists they didn't know that they can do something with their hands that they can bead from so the beads means a lot and we we're not doing a traditional beadwork but we do more than beadwork but it's just like unique and the way we run that project time when we have the people they have to print the artworks to us we call them a marketing each and every artist have a bank account it's not like in the car where we have to wait for payment immediately the person bring the work to us then we give them a they get paid into their bank account so this project actually just like beyond because the people they were working at the office every day so they were getting like a salary so it was really it's improved a lot well and I have to say as far as just the beadwork that you see upstairs the most incredible textures that you're able to get I mean it looks like hair you want to pet these things although we keep telling visitors do not touch the objects I'm so curious the name of the opening say we made this, don't touch it buy a monkey biz piece in the gift shop because they can touch all you want and it's like the best texture of all time it is a really tactile experience and we designed them that way too the mushrooms have for example these sort of filaments and then you can brush your hand around it and it's curtains and beads that are really loose there's like a proboscis on one of the animals upstairs that Evelyn left really floppy and you can bat it and it kind of like swings around but don't do that that's what Evelyn is doing for you it's really amazing because we just like we used to make our products at home in Cape Town but now we're here it's really amazing some of us it's the first time to fly and it's really incredible oh my gosh we got manicures and pedicures one day we go next to the show anyone ice skating yeah we went ice skating oh man the color purple so we did a lot we ice skated we did the rocket color center ice rink which was so much fun what's been your favorite part about being here and part of this whole experience I think it's where I watched the show that was my kind of purple yeah and we worked so we worked the the perfume bridge it was cheap did you have to get winter jackets when you came here absolutely we never used to do sparkles in Cape Town actually especially today brutal out there so also tell me because now I mean you guys have taken on this loving term the Haas sisters how did that come about that happened in you guys the studio didn't it actually we were just in the studio we just because they were Haas brothers then we just said okay we just started and we said okay if you call them Haas brothers tell them about their family maybe they can be Haas sisters then we just they just it's great they made a flag this beaded flag it says Haas sisters heart Haas brothers and it was like because we're leaving I was like a tear-drucker and it really was the name is appropriate because family and in the in studio while we're working we would be singing and like dancing all the time and actually at the end of this that we should show you a dance because there's a great bell we're going to have for you so come up here and show us all the dance for sure yeah I love when you guys came in for the first time when we were finishing up with the installation and you got to see the video and the music and there was just this spontaneous eruption of dance in the gallery it was just so fantastic which was a big part of it too and you know Matapelo in her free time very busy by the way you work so much but somehow in your free time she has a program called Tabang which means happiness in Kosa and she teaches kids dance in her neighborhood and it's such a beautiful thing so we got to go experience that too and it really filtered into our project for other kids of every age to keep them off the streets and not get into trouble doing other that stuff and it's like the most positive thing that I've ever experienced she runs an other garage it's like she's so generous with her own space it's insane and the reason why I started this because I love the cultural dance that I used to do when I was young called Bukhubo is a Soto dance so when I was in Kichau we were away from the rural area we were in the city so you're not going to be able to see that so I just, because I loved it so much I wanted to keep it on so I know, bad thoughts because I love you so much what touch says is hands down one of the most insane miraculous women I've ever met amazing people next I mean you guys fly home tomorrow back to tomorrow morning you have to wake up at 6.30 and maybe you'll miss it maybe you'll miss it I don't want to stay so long because I have to choose from staying to get music again the project is continuing so far it's been really successful and we presented some similar pieces in Miami and they sold really well and knowing that it needs to be good to continue and already have some commissions rolling in so I only see Miami growing bigger and us having more and more projects it's a I think it's a sustainable, wonderful thing amazing to hear those great news we've talked about a year or two of work I'm sure going away the project is going to last longer too so good, I think at this point shall we open it up for questions before we break into dance yeah sorry we'll just wait for the mic I did a workshop earlier and Simon told a great story about how when you first started this thing the first thing that you guys did was put them on a salary and maybe you can talk about that and how, I'd love to hear from our sisters too about how that changed things and what that freedom enabled them for creative ideas we thought it would be a great thing to in general it's payment by piece you make a piece and bring it in and sell it as in a gallery and since we were asking the sisters to be experimental with their work we thought why not put them on salary and give that gives you the freedom to be a little more experimental with your textures and spend longer on them for example so I think it was essential to this project yeah and it made a really really big difference I know that it made a big difference for all of you guys but I maybe you want to say something about that too I think it was helpful actually it's making a huge impact because some of the ladies there are like the breadwinners which they don't have the husband so the children they are at school so they can able to pay things they can able to be like the breadwinner in their family and as well they working from the office so it was for them as well it's just like something new and something that is very nice because we know many working from home it's incredible so everyone really that work in this project it changed their lives well I love too the story that you even included like those discs for instance that some of the women who aren't able to come into the workshop or the studio are able to make from home Kate and I were in the studio with these big dunes and thinking about how to we had designed some ideas and then we were thinking about how to make make the biggest impact and we thought why don't we cover them in tiles that can be made from home so the sisters who weren't able to work with us it just increased the number of people who were able to work on it which is really important we want to uplift everybody should be as many people as inclusive as possible so there's a big yellow and red sort of mountainous shape upstairs that you'll see that has that and then there's one more very rainbowy stripy one and the strips were also made from home and applied so I think actually in the future I'd like to build even more of those types of things into the project Nikki and Simon could you talk about how working with these women and the cultural experience that you had and the emotional experience that you had has influenced other kinds of design and artwork that you might be thinking about working on now or what you're going to do next that comes out of this that's different from the leading project you know I don't know if we've talked about which future projects there will be but it has changed everything about our practice I don't know I think that the two of us realized just what how happy somebody can be when we went to Cape Town we were both, Nikki touched on a little bit earlier but we were flying so high you know on our egos actually before ever going to Cape Town I think that's a pretty it can be a really dangerous path and once we went there we recognized our level of privilege we felt our privilege not just intellectualizing it and it threw us both for such a loop I don't think we ever could have imagined that any project would be quite as emotional as this one was and continues to be like when I cry when I think about it so yeah there's no way for me to make anything from this point forward without considering all of those aspects of reality and not just aesthetics and not just you know where can I go from here there's so much more to focus on yeah for me too it's just like totally it changed my philosophy of how I want to make work just because it became much less like thinking about how I could affect just our immediate group of people or impress our peers around us it became more about being responsible and using the word to try in some way to make some kind of difference and to try to lessen this or just level the playing field just to be fair and while making work to not intellectualize it to a point that isolates anybody to open it up that art or design becomes accessible to anybody and everybody so it's not necessarily even like an aesthetic change in a way that we think I mean for sure that's happened just because of you're going to be affected by everything around you and South Africa such a crazy looking place and so beautiful but it's definitely just been like I mean Simon and I's relationship is so different from now than it was when we started on the project and oh man I say you're into it halfway through Simon and I like never fight really and we had this like knock down horrible fight and it was because we were grappling with the idea of being American white males and you go through a moment where you go what the hell I'm given so much and then you go through this moment where you go like do I deserve any of this and then you have a moment where you go okay like I do deserve it because I'm working really hard but at the same time yes a lot of it was given but I feel like I'm doing well with it and it's like of course the first person like if I'm uncomfortable I'm going to be like screw you you know I'm going to say that to the person I care about most my fiance did too she knows when I was going through when that was happening it's like you strike out against the people that you care about most when you are going through a huge revelation and so it's like when we're saying that everybody on the project is different than when it started and it's been affected everybody on the project I don't think there's anybody that's been a part of this I hope you feel that way too it's just I don't know I go into my office into our studio in the morning and I sit down and I go I don't give a shit about any of this and I also care so deeply at the same time it's just a total momentum shift it's just like my day to day for me personally has been about like each step that I take forward and then each step that we decide to take forward together and then each step that all of us together take forward is about moving towards something that isn't just like an ego play or isn't just like let's get bigger for the sake of getting bigger it's like how can we how can we keep this as positive as possible and that's the biggest change I think and you know these guys are already doing it you know what I mean but it was it was huge for us like we totally candid before we went to South Africa we were here, we had our solo show we were staying with our friends like Penthouse apartment on Hudson River and we were like taking ecstasy around and like and then you go to South Africa the next day and you go I'm a brat you know what I mean like I need to get my shit together and be happy for what we have in front of us and you know like like I think that's that was the biggest change and so we fought because we were dealing with we were dealing with the things that we had done and we felt like we needed to do differently and I feel like you see that transformation in the work upstairs it is so incredibly joyful to see those objects I mean everyone who wants into that pink gallery absolutely just stops and loves it and responds so much to each of each of those objects which is really incredible so I think you see that itself in the work definitely I mean it's all about joy if there's one thing that's consistent between forms and colors or anything, joy is like the only consistent thing and it's because that's what we felt the entire time we were doing it well and I think you know maybe we can actually just bring one of these up on the table or something actually we were surprised when they came from South Africa this time they brought us as gifts these two that Mickey and I had absolutely nothing to do with except that we just received them and they're so beautiful but it's really amazing to see after this collaboration the way that we've influenced each other and this thing, this amazing thing was born out of it it's just incredible and you guys had nothing to do with the form I mean you guys sculpted the whole thing you did all of it and the brothers wanted us to name them actually they didn't know the names when we were sitting up there we're just discussing what we're going to call them because of these dancing and music, so we called them this one will be ama yie yie this one he loved dancing ama yie yie and this one will be can we give you a little kick guys can you show mama yie yie so can we see I'll do it with you guys. More about the giving circle and also if you would consider teaching U.S. or North American art teachers, perhaps lessons or skills to bring back into our classrooms. The giving circle is difficult to talk about because we're still, we just had, I mean we know what we're going to do with it but we just had a conversation about it so we but it's being organized through our gallery and it's essentially to benefit, sorry, I'm out of breath. It's going directly into monkey bids and then to the people involved and we work with an NGO here in New York so that we can donate directly with very minimal pull off of that money so that there's not, we did a lot of work. It's hard to explain it. It's going to go directly that's fine. And then as far as teaching, we would love to teach in the U.S. and we just got to do our first workshop here actually so that was really great and it was wonderful. Everybody did such a good job and it was so much fun and I'm particularly interested in trying to teach the beating methods that I came up with during this project that might have to be like a college course, it's like not too much. Very logic driven. Good, I thought we had another question back here. This is a little off topic to the hot sisters but the pieces that you showed prior to working with this project you talked about some texture and you said that it grows. I'm wondering what it's made of. It's made of ceramic and it grows, so there's in ceramics you can have a very watered down clay called slit and basically you just take a brush, dip it in the slit and paint it onto a vessel in thousands and thousands of layers with a pretty specific stroke and the texture will just grow, this sort of fur texture. You saw it in the slides but it doesn't grow by itself because a human hand is involved but all that the hand is doing is this which I think is really exciting. I like anything that can do that and the bead programs that I worked out also essentially grow. It's kind of my obsession. Any other questions? Bad guys, thank you very much. Thank you so much. We'll be open till 9 p.m. this evening if you want to go upstairs and check out Sea of Greeks on the third floor of the beauty exhibition.