 Welcome to our interview show in which we interview LGBTQ guests who are important contributors to our community. We want to acknowledge that all things LGBTQ is produced at Orca Media in Montpelier, Vermont, which is unceded Indigenous land. Enjoy the show. Hi everybody. I'm here with two friends of the show, John Kalecki and Donna Ann McAdams. They're making return visits and Donna came nine months ago and John has come several times, most recently five months ago, and they've been up to a lot since we talked last. So I'd like to, if I may, tell you, just review their bios, their short bios because they do much more than a simple bio would indicate. And then we'll talk a little about Donna's show that's been touring the state for Formative X and John's activities as a curator. So let's start with John Kalecki, who is currently a legislator in the Vermont House of Representatives. Previously he served as Executive Director of the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts, Program Officer for Arts and Culture for the San Francisco Foundation, Executive Director of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and Curator of Performing Arts for the Walker Arts Center. Other past positions include Program Officer at the Pew Charitable Trusts, General Manager of PepsiCo Summer Fair, and Managing Director of the Trisha Brown and Laura Dean Dance Companies. His recent Vimeo-Elegy's will appear on Vermont PBS on April 20th at 9 p.m., so I encourage you to tune in and see that it's a very moving Vimeo. The first time I cried all through it, the second time I didn't and appreciated the art. Thank you. Donna McAdams, another luminary on the show. Donna was born in Queens in 1954, you're younger than I am, and you grew up in a town that interviewers have trouble pronouncing Lake Run Kokoma. Well Kokoma, close enough. Okay, you studied photography at the San Francisco Art Institute, got an MFA in Visual Arts from Rutgers, and a BA in Cultural Anthropology from Empire State College. A little more about Donna since 1983. McAdams has been, well let me just speak in the second person. You've been committed to bringing cameras and photography into marginalized and underserved communities. You've built community dark rooms and taught photography inside New York City homeless shelters, and day programs for people living with severe mental illness. You've also taken photographs and worked on the back stretch of a thoroughbred racetrack and inside a small farming community in West Virginia. In 2010, you collaborated with Maurice Sendek and Lynn Copernera to establish the Sendek Fellowship, a residency program for people who tell stories with illustration. Donna lives on a goat dairy farm in southwestern Vermont, Sandhurst. Sandgate. I want to come and visit Sandgate and meet the goats. Okay, can you speak up a little? Yes, come milk a goat. All right, you have five now? Oh, Donna has a lot more than that. Can you hear me now? Yes. Okay, I have 11 goats, adult goats, I have seven goats in milk, and I have 13 babies on the ground, 10 bucklings, and three dolelings. Very impressive. 13, yes. You are a serious scary farmer. And they all need They what? We're the smallest licensed, we're the smallest licensed dairy in the state of Vermont, they say. Well, sounds big to me. Let's start with John, if I may. One of his many identical fires is as a curator, and you curated Donna's exhibit, of course. Tell me, what does a curator do? Well, over my career, I've worked at the Walker Art Center and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and we had galleries there. And so, you know, I did some curation in both of those institutions, as well as at the Flynn Center, we had a gallery. And so for five years, I did the curating of shows, about every two months, so about six shows a year. And you know, a curator picks the artists, you sort of pick the themes if it's a group show, you select the work, you really think about what's a way to frame work, about an artist, about a theme, about a time. And I encountered Donna's work, but we've known each other for 40 years. But since I moved to Vermont in 2010, she did a great show with the Vermont Pope Life Center, a Tales from the Backstretch, I think is what it was called. And we had that at the Flynn Center. And then I had a group show called Animal Power. And I asked Donna, did she have anything, because she loves working animals, you know, whether it's horses at the racetrack. And she had just, so she had gone into Green Mountain College in Pultney, when they had a pair of oxen working oxen. And one of them had gotten injured, and they were going to have to put the oxen down. And there's a lot of issues about that. So Donna of course went up to the college to kind of, to capture the moment. But in pure Donna's fashion, she goes into the field with these huge oxen. And she did this beautiful diptych. So I used that in the Animal Power show that I had put together. And then in January 2018, I called Donna and I said, you know, Vermont doesn't really know how important you are. How sensual you are, how seminal you've been to kind of queer liberation and the avant-garde in the 80s and 90s in New York. And it's really important. And I would like to see if I could, I'm going to be retiring from the Flynn. I'd like to put together a retrospective show of yours and to see if anyone would be interested in Vermont. Because I think it's important that if we look at your avant-garde performance work, your queer liberation work, your work with people with mental illness, rural farmers, and also the life that she has with her husband with her goats on their farm in Sandgate. You know, there they are living in Sandgate, Vermont with 250 people. And no one knows about her. And in New York, I mean, just in May, PS 122 is going to be having its 40th anniversary. And they're honoring Donna because she was their house photographer for 23 years. And so I felt like we have one of the most important photographers living in social documentary alive here in Vermont. And people don't know her. So that began the journey of the show three years ago. And it's been such a pleasure to work with my friend, Donna Ann McAllums, because we share an aesthetic, we share a politics, and we share so much life history together. I mean, we were both, we didn't know each other then we were both living in San Francisco tonight, Harvey Muckles assassinated. And so to land together. And I think one of the things a curator does is you're allowed to tell your own story through artists. And there's just been such a deep connection to Donna's work. So it's been just an honor to work with her. So you as a curator, you choose themes and do you arrange the paintings? Well, I would say I'm going to bring Donna into the conversation now because it really, you know, it is something to walk into someone's archives and artist archives of 45 years of work. And we didn't start with a title. We started thinking about what are the different bodies of work and Donna and I would have conversations. And then we'd look at work together. She said many books and catalogs of her work. So we looked at the catalogs, but then sitting in her studio, it's so profound when someone opens a drawer, and there's a box, you know, and Donna will pull out this box. Oh, let's look in here. And so we went on a journey together. And we knew we were going to do the performance work, of course, because that's pretty important work. And I think we realize also that the age-related work, the act up work, the LGBT marching against Don't Ask, Don't Tell issues, the early lesbian, the Dyke marches and things. This was a history that people didn't really remember or know. And so we thought that was important. But it wasn't until we got to the animals that performative acts like, oh, I think that's what we can call it. And so then we had an organizing theme. And I don't know, Donna, maybe you should describe how it was for you to have people poking around in those boxes in your archives. It's really amazing when you think about the fact that we were both in San Francisco in November in 1977, I think, not 70, anyway, at the same time. And the trouble that we could, the good trouble, if I might, appropriated expression, we could have gotten into. But I think that both of our sensibilities were shaped by that early movement in San Francisco. So to have somebody like John, who I didn't, who I got to know really well during the culture wars in the early 90s, come into my studio, which is, it's like somebody going through your, your, you know, underwear drawer, you know, a lot of stuff that you may or may not be willing to show or share. But I felt so comfortable and the trust and the enthusiasm and the interest. It was, it was a pleasure to be able to just show and share things that I wasn't sure about, or I didn't really know about, or I didn't have a sense of whether or not they were good or not. So it was, it was a real pleasure to have somebody with this, with fresh eyes. It's always nice to have fresh eyes look at your work. Even if they don't like it, they always will tell you, teach you or say something that you didn't know, or you didn't realize, and it's always, it's always a great experience, whether it's in your archive and your studio, or whether it's on the wall in a museum or a gallery or a library. Anytime people look at your work, it's a great experience. Well, let's step back. When did you meet, Ben? You've been friends at least 40 years, 45 years? No, we, we, I've known Donna for 40 years because when she was the house photographer for PS 122, she'd actually be sitting on the edge of the stage and I'd be in the audience because I was a curator at that point at the Walker Art Center and so I'd be going to see shows and I wanted to see what was the, you know, because it was the place for the avant-garde and so I'd be seeing these shows and I thought, who is this strange woman with her like a camera just right there? And it was always her photographs that would be in the New York Times or the Will's Voice the next day in the review, you know, and so what happened was I didn't know her, I knew her work and then when the artist came to the Walker Art Center or other places I presented them, of course they used her photography because they really loved the way she photographs them and a lot of it wasn't staged or posed, it was really action shots, you know, that they, they would, she would photograph the artist in performance or in a dress rehearsal or something and it was really, it just, they were so visceral and they were so kinetic and it was, they had a pulse to them off the page and it, so it was then during 1990 I presented Karen Finley and that started the Culture Wars, that a review of the show at the Walker got Jesse Helms all upset, the senator and that started and suddenly Holly Hughes, Tim Miller, David Warnovic, Ron Athe, all of these artists, Donna had photographed and all these artists, we were getting slammed at the Walker where I was and so it became talking to Donna and other people about these artists to kind of protect them from demonized and sensationalized from like radical right wing media. Okay, let me, let me just say one thing, even though we didn't know each other, we knew each other because I knew John was curating all of my friends, but John we did, I, we met for the first time I think at PS 122, you came to see a young artist who was dancing on crutches in a different space and that was the first, I was shooting the dress rehearsal and that was the first time that we, that I actually got to meet you and I'm not sure what year that was. Well, you know, I was, I made a film with him, it was Crutchmaster, so I probably was sitting in the back with my camera. Yeah, well, yeah, but you, he was very nervous and you, you were really, really helping to have him find his way in the space and, and I think your presence and your, who you are helped that evening be incredibly successful and let him experience something that he knew he had, but he hadn't had a sense that he had, so that was the time I actually met you in the downstairs space at PS 122. Let's pause for a moment. Let me recommend Donna's wonderful website that we'll show the link to and John and Donna have a great conversation on it about the culture wars and let's now switch, let's now look at one of the photos from PS 122. Martyrs and Saints of Ron, healthy, healthy, healthy. Can you tell us a little about this Donna? It's a very intense photo. It's, it's Ron was performing at PS 122 in the upstairs space and he had himself, it was Saint Sebastian and he, he with with piercings on one of the, one of the beautiful white columns that I always would like to include in any photograph that I was able, if I could, while I was performing. He attached himself to that, but I think John, who knows, who's curated Ron and has done multiple conversations with him, would be the absolute best person to talk about Ron's work, I think, as opposed to me. Well, and what's, what's great is it's, we, we, we share this history with the Karen Finley's, the Ronnie Thieves, the Holly Uses, and David Warner-Novich. We could each go back and forth with stories, but with Ron, he had actually performed in Minneapolis before coming to PS 122 for that show and that had set off a firestorm because one of the visual art critics who did not come to the show, in fact, heard about Ron's show and three weeks after the event wrote this sensationalized review of the show she hadn't seen. It was outrageous. And so that then became the fodder of, oh, look what these artists are doing with National Endowment for the Arts money and this is so inappropriate. And then his next performance was at PS 122. So, of course, all the media was very interested in, in getting images of this radical artist. Now, and, and Donna was taking the images. So it was, it was wonderful to watch her navigate this, but to give you a little context of Ron and then Donna can tell you the stories about photographing Ron. He had a really interesting life. He grew up in a Pentecostal tent show family and his, his mother and his aunt, and I think probably his grandmother were schizophrenic and they had very unstable life together, but they would bring Ron to the tent shows. And early on around the age of eight, he would start speaking in tongues and dancing in these tent shows. And he became known as one of these Pentecostal healers. And it was very odd for a young kid to do that. And he's living in Los, in Los Angeles. Well, as he grew up, he got, he became much more of a punk in the punk aesthetics. And then he also got into the leather and bonded seam in, in Los Angeles. And he, he became a junkie. And so his work is interesting because it really deals with all of these issues in his life. It deals with redemption. It deals with healing from addiction. It deals with the bondage issues of what the limits are in persons. And it deals with religious iconography. So the picture that you're, you were showing is actually a Saint Sebastian picture on purpose. Cause in that picture, of course, Sebastian was pierced. And so in this particular performance moment, Ron is, is pierced in this side, you know, or earlier in the same show, there's a crown of thorns that's put on Ron's head. And, you know, I don't know if you've ever gotten acupuncture, but it's like acupuncture needles. It hurts a little bit, but not that much, but then there is blood. And so, but it's a thing of, to remember the nineties, body fluids were very frightening and very scary. So it's people like Ron Athe, we're pushing it, saying we are, we are washed in the blood. And this was 1993. Yeah. Yeah. And so then, then, then, then he comes to New York and the media is waiting for Donna's images. So, Donna, you should take over there now, I think. Well, all during the culture wars, the media and the press, following cues from Helms and his, his, his band of renowns were looking for pictures that would illustrate his point. And my responsibility was first to the artist, always to the artist, to represent them in the best possible light and the light they'd like to be seen in. And also at that time, people like John and I and all the, all the artists in all of the performing and vision and galleries were, we were the triage unit for the National Endowment for the Arts. So we, we, we would want, we wanted to present work that would not give them the media, the writers any opportunity to take a photograph out of context, which they would do regardless. But if they had photographs like Ron, looking beautiful, Saint Sebastian, Saint Sebastian, you know, it would be a lot harder for them to prove their point with my visuals, which did not make them happy. But it was the way, that's how I've always been with permission. I'm not going to cash in, I'm not going to, you can't pay me enough money to put out a photograph that would not make me happy or would not, that would be used against these, these artists and the work that they're creating for the communities that we lived in. It wasn't going to do it. So I did something else. I'm proud of that. Yes. Let's switch gears and go back five years to the Wild Cafe. This is my request that we include this photo of Paradise Lost at the Wild Cafe in 1988. This is in your exhibit of course. Tell us about this. Well, you know, I love this photograph for so many reasons, because all of my friends are in it. And when I was asked to, well, John also wanted to include this photograph in Performative Acts too, because of the Wild Cafe and because of women and because of lesbians and because of that particular community. And the Wild Cafe is such, was such and is still a magical place. So I was asked to also be in a show called Art After Stonewall and the curators had an idea about what they wanted to use. And in that particular show, I also wanted to include this photograph. So I asked Peggy Shaw, who's one of the members of Split Riches, along with Lois Weaver and Lori Sy to let me go to the, I was down, it was 2017, I was in town for some reason. And I wanted to go inside the space. I wanted to look at the buzzers in the front of the building. I wanted to get buzzed in and I wanted to climb up and be in the theater. So I could write this little piece about how important the Wild Cafe was for somebody like me. And so I climbed the 50 steps to the fourth floor and sat in the space and was able to sort of have a clearer sense about how important that space was for me. It was a place that you could go where you were safe, where you could laugh, where you could have fun, where you would cry. If you would laugh, you would cry. And it was like church. It was a really special place for me. Not like my home space, PS 122, where I had a responsibility. I had a different kind of responsibility at the Wild Cafe. I had a responsibility to my sisters and to myself. But it was more of a joyous thing. So I just went because I felt like it. I wasn't paid, but I was, I got a ticket and I got to sit in the front and I got to do what I did. And I'm happy that I have done that because I photographed quite a few performances there. So, and I have good friends that performed in Canyon and out of that, Debra Golan, Peggy Shaw, Lois Weaver, Holly Hughes, Sharon Dean Smith, Lisa Crone, Peggy Healy, Mo Angelis, a ton of women who were important to me in the 80s and into the 90s. The interview with Eva Weiss, Eva Weiss, great photographer, also was in the Lady Dick, which I think might have been the first performance that I shot there, Holly Hughes's piece, but many, many, many performances. I was privileged to witness and document. Well, let's switch back to the show traveling around the state. Performative X has been in Brattleboro, Kessleton in Rutland, Catamount Arts, Helen Day, where I was privileged enough to see it in person, and Burlington, and now it's in Bennington at the Bennington Museum where it is going to be showing until August 15. And then you're going to New York to the Hollow Gallery on the Lower East Side? Well, you know, that was, that was pre-pandemic. And now the pandemic closed that gallery down for a whole year. And so that's sort of off the table in the short-term calendar at this point. You know, the pandemic just changed things as well, so many, so many things. So actually Bennington was not on the original itinerary, and then it became coming home because it's just 12 miles from Donna's farm. So it's really great that it's there. You know, the conversation you two were just having about the Wild Cafe is really, I think, one of the importance of having this show is that those women, those theater artists, I mean, you know, Lisa Crone, who's now a Tony award-winning you know, Broadway star, basically had her beginnings there at the Wild Cafe. And so Donna's early photographs of these seminal artists are really important with not only a lot of the women who are written out of history in the avant-garde performance world. Donna has them, but also when we look at all the gay men that died, and she has the David Warner Novich, she has the John Burns, she has so many people as we went through this archives, and we saw how many great artists there were. You know, imagine if they all were like today, but... Just a little silence within another one of your photographs. Absolutely. You know, and so that was really an honor to go through that with Donna. What was fun, though, is that we didn't just want it to be about the performance work. We just didn't want it just to be about her act up AIDS activism, and she has some great photographs around act up actions that she was right there in the middle of. But we also wanted to make sure that the work she did with people living with mental illness was involved with, you know, and also was important for it to be current. So when we opened in Brattleboro in June of 2019, we included a photo of Christine Hallquist, because Christine... I was going to just ask about that. Let's put it up. Okay. So Donna, why don't you talk about this particular photograph? Well, how wonderful to hear the news that Christine was going to be the Democratic candidate in the state of Vermont. How wonderful is that? So I thought, you know, I was doing the show and we had a sense of what it was going to look like. So I knew that I needed to... I didn't need to do anything. I was pretty okay with what I had, but I wanted to do have two photographs that were new. So I went to... I called John and I said, what do I do? And John said, oh, just call this number and come down for, come up, not down, for the Pride Parade. And I'm sure, you know, it'll be perfectly... Yeah, you can do that. And I'm used to having a lot more security and a lot tighter restrictions on access. But so I called the press person and they were like, yeah, sure, come to the parking lot. I don't remember exactly where it was. And I'm standing there. And then Christine walks in, hey, how are you? So I just was able to, you know, meet her and have a conversation. And she knew what I was doing and part of the parade. And it was such a beautiful parade because the parade in New York is just, it's so big and it's not the same. And this was just... It was the people. It was the community and it was small and it was intimate and everybody knew each other. And it was really wonderful. So it was a really great opportunity for me to be able to do that. And I also went to Washington with Rosie O'Donnell to sing with a bunch of Broadway people in front of the White House. So those were the two photographs, the new photographs that were included in this show only because John decided that they were good enough because they have to be good. They can't just be of something. They have to actually be good photographs too. And Christine came to the opening in Rattleboro, which was just so great. I hadn't seen her. And John suggested that I make a copy of one of the prints and give it to her as a present. And I thought, sure, that's a great idea. So we made a little presentation of that photograph from that show to her at the opening. It was great, you know, for her to be there, for people to meet her and for my friends to meet her and for her. It was just really nice that she bothered to come. Well, it's very accessible. If I just may talk about all things LGBTQ, the first interview after she declared was on our show. Of course, it was simply by CNN and other more famous venues. But, you know, she's a great force in the community. Oh, yeah. She is. And Becca Ballant was there at the opening in Rattleboro. It was just great. But what was fun, you know, Anne, as we toured this show around, the next stop was going to be in Rutland at the Castle of Gallery in downtown Rutland in the old bank there. And each of the curators of the shows chose which images they liked for marketing. And it was there that they chose one of the grooms that Donna had taken because she, when Sarato racetrack is in session, I think what, for eight years or so, Donna? No, like 14. She goes every week and she photographs, but she photographs the back stretch workers, the unknown people, not the fancy people betting the horses. And there was this one image that made it with the show. It was really important because if I understand this right, Donna, that the man had passed away, but his family was so impressed that he was in your show. He was in a gallery and they just love the postcard. Well, let me introduce the picture if I may. Roger Tooty holding Kyan and Leroy at Oklahoma training track and Saratoga in 2010. And Tooty is still with us, but he's not well. And the thing that's great, the thing that's wonderful about letting people decide which image, which is giving them a perspective for what they think. I mean, I like to do that. It's collaborative. And John, of course, is the same. But what I got to do in that building was in the front of the building, they had these two little windows that they were sort of like display cases. And I asked Oliver, who was the, it's his space. I told him that I had 200 used aluminum racing shoes from the racetrack that I've used in installations before. And I said, would it be okay if I brought these shoes and dump them in these two windows so that, you know, and have a little information about a racing plate so that people could have a little education about what horses run on, what the shoes are made of, why they're made the certain way that they're made, how do the nails go in. So they had picked that photograph, but it wasn't until John and I saw the space for the first time that we looked and saw those two little spaces that I thought, oh, this is good. So we dumped, yeah, 200 shoes in the windows. And I don't know if you know the building. It's an old bank. But the problem is it's an old bank. And so all the windows are there and galleries don't usually have a lot of windows. And these are silver, gelatine, black and white prints, right? So it was like, light goes on them and they would fade within 48 hours or so, you know, it would be like it would destroy the photograph. So Donna and Oliver, the curator down there, we had to put black paper over all the windows to protect the work. And Oliver was great about it. Oh, he's a sweet man. Yeah, totally great. Well, let's turn to another contemporary image of a Black Lives Matter march. You've been busy during the pandemic. You certainly you've been showing everywhere, but you've been taking a lot of new photographs. Is that right, Donna? Well, actually, in 2020, I shot, I exposed 30 rolls of film. In 2019, I shot 175. In 2018, I shot 145. Okay. And going. So no, I went to that because a friend was organizing it with a bunch of young women who had who set that up. So I was, that's probably the only really live event that I went to besides my my father-in-law's unveiling in February of 2020. So no, I that and I'm really, that was the only time I sort of really went out in the world because I just my community was shut down. I wasn't able to photograph the way I wanted to photograph. And honestly, I just wasn't, I don't know. I just wasn't interested in taking pictures of people with masks on for some reason, except in the context of this, this, this protest. I thought, you know, that it didn't really matter that I didn't care, but I wasn't really, I didn't feel like doing that kind of, that kind of work. And I, so I didn't really shoot. I didn't have my community, my people. But, but, you know, and what was fun is that, you know, this was the, that, that particular photograph you're mentioning, Black Lives Matter is one of the two new ones we brought into the Bennington Museum. Because as it showed toward the, each of the galleries were different in size and what we could have. And so I think you said you saw it at Hellen Day in Stowe. And so we added seven photographs there that weren't in the show in Bennington because there was more space in, in Stowe. And one from Donna's Archives for the, for the Hellen Day Center in Stowe was 9-11. Donna was in New York living there at that time. And so she got one with the World Trade Center's actually on fire. It's an incredible image that she caught. And, and when we did a, Donna and I did on Zoom a visit with some of the school kids from Stowe. And that is the photograph that the kids wanted to talk about. And they kept saying to Donna, were you scared that day? It's really interesting, like that, that's, that one resonated. Not Ron Athea, St. Sebastian. It was, it was this one. So then when we went to Bennington. Let's show it. And the, it's striking because you could see the flames in the background, but it's not in the center. And in your art, you talk about framing and how that's particularly an artistic thing to do. I'm not, I don't know enough about photography to ask an informed question here. Like, can you talk about the, the framing and then it's not in the center? Well, I'm, I'm really interested in the edge, the photograph. I'm actually, my influences come from illustration, particularly early illustrations, cartoons. And so I, I like to, I'm not, I like to sort of work. And I like interruption in the frame too. And so when I managed to get out of jury duty and get my camera out of the lockbox on the ground floor as they were evacuating the building, and I backed up and I saw what was happening and I decided that I was going to go down to the, go down there because that's what you do. And then the first tower fell and then I thought, oh, that's not what you do. So I made my way back up Broadway and at Canal Street, I stood back and I saw, well, actually the tower hadn't fallen yet, but I think I, I talked to Brad on the phone and he said, don't go down there. That's what happened. He said, do not. And he had no idea. He had to turn on the radio. And when I was standing on the corner of Canal and Broadway, I looked and the towers were in the background and there was this advertisement for an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, Collateral Damage. And I just looked at that and I thought, oh my God. And so I made that photograph. I mean, I have pictures of people running farther away up Canal Street, up Broadway, the towers falling, going down, but I never really showed any of those photographs. This is the first time that I actually thought about showing that, making it public. It is on my website though. I decided what the heck. But that was a tricky photograph because it's so, it's heavy. It's, you know, it's, you know, what am I cashing in on the advertisement for the movie and my, on Sacred People died there. That's a burial place. I mean, it's sacred ground. There's 3,000 moffits in that space. So it was, it was an interesting and tricky and confusing, but I did it and I'm glad that I did. You know, it actually took some convincing. The curator had to convince the artist to actually show it because it is such a powerful image. And that resonated with the elementary school students. That's the one that, it was fascinating. Just as we mentioned that Karen Finley, Donna had never shown that, that photograph in public either since 1990. So as we put this show together and, you know, of course, the first thing she was called Karen to make sure it was okay. And of course it was because Donna never really wanted to exploit, right, or sensationalize any of this work. So, but, but I mentioned this because now that we're at home and Donna's home in Bennington, we said, well, what is there about Bennington that we could bring to Bennington? And it was the Black Lives Matter photograph, which is just across the state lines, as well as Donna has a great photograph of an old farmer in Sandgate. Will you describe it, well, we added, we, as we like to do as my curator insists on bringing things relevant, making them contemporary. So I had the Black Lives Matter photograph, which I think is a good photograph that represents 2020. And then we decided, John said, Well, what else, what do you think? And I have a photograph of Junior Bentley. He's driving some horses with a little, little, little colt, a little American cream following his mother who is harnessed to the cart in that show. And we also have a photograph of Jesse Rocco, who's a farmer who lives down the road from me. Well, so does Junior. They're both residents of my hometown. They're both residents of Sandgate, one who's gone and one who's, who sells potatoes and corn at the market in Bennington. So when we met with Jamie, John and I, and to see the space, I brought some work because just so he could see what it looked like. And we, and I had that photograph I just made and printed it. And he immediately recognized him and said, Oh, that's the potato guy. And so John was like, Oh, the potato guy. Yes, he's built, I guess he's going to be in the show. And I love that photograph because he's, he's there with his horse. I think it's Minerva is, is, is the, is the cow. She's a Jersey and she just Russian and there's little teeny baby little calf in, in a pile, you know, in front of him. And he's kind of half covered in the cow is kind of peaking out of the dark bond. So it's, I like that photograph very much. So yeah, so we have three new pictures for Bennington. Now that we're back at the farm, I'd like to quote you to yourself Donna, if you wouldn't mind. At a Vermont council, arts council interview, they asked, What is something about your art that has changed over time? You said, My work has become more intimate and personal. I work more closely with animals and the land. My relationship to my work is a direct result of my working alongside, alongside horses, goats, and neighboring farmers. Now I'd like to switch to Northern spy farm in 2007 to see a picture of your husband who, aforementioned in a wonderful photo called goat song. Can you tell us it's like he's commuting with the goat. It's wonderful. Can you tell us about it? Yeah, well that goat, that's Lizzie. She's, if you've read goat song, she's, she's one of the four original goats. She's one of the four original goats that we got when we first brought our goats here. And he, she was a very special goat to everybody, but in particular to Brad. He, he loved her very, very much. And she and him, well, we all have connections with animals in different ways, but Lizzie was, you know, as all of our, all of our does, all of them, they're all really special. But as she was the herd maker from her, are a line of goats right down to like the fourth or fifth generation of her, her daughters are with us. In fact, this year, last year we kept, two years ago, we kept Harvey milk out of our goat names Lata. And this year we kept another dough from Zlatah, who is, you know, comes from wiki, comes from that whole line of lady goats. And we're keeping a little doling this year. I think her name is going to be Freddie Mercury. So I guess she's no longer with us. No, Lizzie passed away for, she was probably 12 when she left. And on the ground now in the retirement zone, we have Jewel, who's 13, Tilly, we lost this year, she was 14, Wicca, we lost, she was 12, and Foyt, who's 11. So there's, there's, there's a little retirement community. And those retired goats raised the babies and it's, so it's really nice to see if only we could learn as, as human beings, how important the elders of our community are. Here are these old goats raising the babies. Why can't we do that? Why can't we bring our old together with the young? I mean, why do we, it's just, it just doesn't make any sense to me when you can see it, you see it here. We could learn so much from animals if only we pay attention and listen. So. Well, Lizzie is memorialized in a photograph. And speaking of goats and the farm, and one of the interviews that a fabulous interview that you and John did at Catamount Arts Library, you talked about learning a Swedish goat call from Meredith Monk. And you were kind enough to share it with the live audience at the library. I was wondering if you would be kind enough to share it with us. It was lovely and euphomious. Okay. Well, John and I have a special connection to Meredith Monk. I mean, he brought her to the walker. Meredith rides, she knows about horses. In her studio, there's a photograph that I gave her in the early 90s. It's one of the only works of art that is not necessarily hers or in relationship to her sensibility, it's in there. And when I first came to New York from San Francisco, I went to a performance at St. Mark's Church with a dancer and friend, Aldona Regulus. And she was doing the Plateau series number two. And this riff that she had, this improvisational movement, but also voice which is what she does often in her work, really stuck by me. And so when I got my goats and Brad started to research for goat song and we started to look at, you know, how do people get animals to come in? How do they call them? What's the relationship? I decided to use this Monk riff. And it's not exactly what Meredith did, but, you know, I've never done it in front of Meredith. But I have to sort of, let me see how I can get into it. John, do you have anything to say about Meredith as I prepare? Well, we also have a picture we could show of her at PS 122 doing volcano songs. Yes. 1994. Let's show that while you compose yourself. Okay. You know, and that again, this is a shared history with volcano songs. I had commissioned Meredith to do an opera called Atlas. And it was would be Houston Grand Opera and the Walker. And I actually have on my arm a tattoo from Atlas, an image of a horse that is from Meredith's horse. So that was, but after, after Atlas, she'd worked five years on this huge opera piece. She, it actually was just remounted Los Angeles two years ago to great acclaim. And it's a, it's a really great work. But she said, I just want to go into the studio and start over. I don't want to have a project in mind. I can't, you know, I can't figure out the project before. And so I said, okay, well, let's see if we can raise money for you just to begin again. And so we did. And she got a little bit of money together. And the piece was a solo and it was called volcano songs. And the photo in this exhibition that's touring right now through the state has Meredith in that solo format in volcano songs. So there's, there's almost all of these artists we could talk back and forth on, but let's hear Meredith Monk's goat songs now. Oh, okay. Evulous. If I were a goat, I'd come running. My dad just went running. Well, this has been a great conversation. Or is there anything you want to add? We have a few more minutes. Well, yeah, I could make you very jealous, by the way. Okay. Because I've been down to the goat farm a number of times. and there was she had a new baby boy born and they don't keep the boys around very much on the farm because it's a dairy right so they keep the girls and they sell the boys but they decided this one boy was so sweet and so they they were going to castrate them and keep them and I said oh name them after me John Johnny Ray and so they have a little what do you call them you don't call them a boy goat he's a weather a weather anyway Johnny Ray lives on the farm and and of course Brad her husband thought it was Johnny Ray the singer that he didn't even know who was named after so I have a goat named after me and just saying okay I am very impressed okay well we'll have to come down and visit the farm and Johnny Ray Johnny Ray and what the archives are in a separate building there and so when you go visit Sandgate the farm after you visit the goats make sure you go into Donna's exhibit and you can just say let's look at some of the early history of some of the early dike marches and was it dike nation right dike nation that was and the lesbian Avengers she has such an archive of photograph of women at that early part of the movement that you will be just in heaven you'll be delirious yeah I mean I was I was lucky enough to photograph the first dike march in Washington DC in 1993 no and Laurie and I went out it Laurie and I went out at night we went out at night and all these women with no shirts on like dancing around in front of the White House and whenever I put that up it always I always get thrown in the lock up for while violating community standards because you can't show boobs are you can't no there's no there's no showing there's no showing of breasts that's against the law so I put it up a few times and been thrown into lock the Facebook Instagram a big house oh no friends this has been wonderful and you'll have to come back again when in the next incarnation of the show as you continue to travel around and work together thank you so much for coming oh and thank thank you for having us yes thank you for having us thank you for joining us we'll see you in two weeks but in the meantime resist