What is Sweet Blast All About, Anyway?

Episode Notes:

Suzanne Schultz, founder and CEO of Canvas Fine Arts, flips the script on me in this episode, driving the conversation as we explore my creative process and the origins of the Sweet Blast series. 

"One of the most flattering things I ever had was my youngest came home from school. This was when he was in high school. And he turned to me and said, Dad, I heard myself channeling you talking to one of my friends about a problem that they raised. And I thought, I've done it. What I've created may not be remembered. But, his child's child's child may be still talking these philosophies to the people he's interacting with. That's enough for me."

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INSIDE THIS EPISODE:

Suzanne Schultz can be found at www.canvasfinearts.com

Find them on twitter here: https://twitter.com/canvasfinearts

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/suzanne.schultz.589

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/canvasfinearts/

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This episode was produced by Matt McKee, with help from Suzanne Schultz and http://www.CanvasFineArts.com, the specialists in coaching for creatives

Transcript

What is Sweet Blast All About Anyway?
Cherry Bomb! The Podcast Transcription
SPEAKERS
Matt McKee, suzanne schultz

Matt McKee  
One of the most flattering things I ever had was my youngest came home from school. And he turned to me and said, Dad, I heard myself channeling you talking to one of my friends about a problem that they raised. And I thought I'd done. I may not be remembered for this, you know, his child's child's child may be still talking these philosophies to the people he's interacting with. That's enough for me. Hi, I'm Matt McKee, and welcome to Cherry Bomb the podcast a series of conversations with people about food, art and sustainability. Today, we're doing something just a little bit different. A good friend of mine, Suzanne Schultz, who you may recognize from the end credits when I say that this episode could not have been done without Suzanne Schultz and Canvas Fine Arts as specialists and coaching for creatives. She's in the studio right now to flip the script on me. Suzanne, welcome.

suzanne schultz  
Thank you for having me. I'm thrilled to be here. flipping the script,

Matt McKee  
this should be fun. I don't need my notes. Because hopefully it's all in my head.

suzanne schultz  
This podcast is really been so fun to listen to and learn about so many different people inbox, Boston, out of Boston in all different industries and their relationship not only with food, but sustainability. And that's a word that used to not relate to everybody, but it's becoming something that we all have to think about in our lives. And it's not this big, gigantic word. It's something that we do need to think about and realize that we all can be part of the solution in a small way. Listening to all these guests. I decided, I thought we wanted to hear more about you. You're always asking the question. So I wanted to ask you a few questions. I'll do my best starting with when did you start creating your photography?

Matt McKee  
Oh, wow. Okay, so going back to the beginning. It's funny, I was talking with Julie about this actually, my wife on a road trip recently, I realized that my origin story actually starts with somebody handing me a Polaroid camera when I was seven years old. And this sounds like a very cliche story. You know, the photographer was handed a camera at a young age. And he went out and explore the world and changed everything. No, but I did discover some things as I was going along with it. You know, the first few packs of film were photographs of the family dog and the Christmas tree and all that stuff. But somewhere along the way, and I still have this Polaroid somewhere in my archives, I set up a scene where I had a three foot long T Rex model that I'd got from the Boston Museum of Science on one of our family trips. And I set up our women all around it on the red shag carpet, made a backdrop that crudely drawn palm trees and stuff like that and had basically the Godzilla story of, you know, Godzilla coming in the T Rex coming in and destroying everything. And this is way before Jurassic Park. And a number of years later, when I was in my career, I went back and looked at that Polaroid and realized that was the moment that I realized that I can create a story within a frame that will cause people to have a reaction. Now in this particular case, it was my parents going maybe we want to seek some therapy for the boy, or at least keep them from watching horror movies. But that was when I realized that I could communicate more with pictures than I could with my voice. I couldn't stand up in front of a crowd. But I could put this up on the wall and let it speak for me.

suzanne schultz  
So it's pretty interesting that you went from taking pictures of the family dog to that conceptual photography that you're doing now, like creating something that didn't exist. I mean, I can almost picture that what that look like in my head and see it hanging in a contemporary art museum. You know, to is that one of the ones who still have the Polaroid? Yeah, with the dinosaurs in the red shag carpet

Matt McKee  
that want to have I don't I think I still have the dog pictures too. But that that's the one that resonated with me and has always been sort of my Touchstone as to why I create.

suzanne schultz  
I want to ask you if when you are creating now as an adult, you know, as opposed to as a child you are creating for yourself, then are you still creating for yourself? Are you creating for a specific audience?

Matt McKee  
I think I was always creating for an audience. Even back then I was not as interested in capturing memories as I was in telling stories. But if you're telling a story, if you're you know, writing a story or standing in front of your best friend telling him what you did last night, you're telling it to an audience and you change the story, shade the story, it'd be a better way of putting it to help it resonate with them, help it connect to them. And that's every photograph If I've ever created has been along those lines, when I've done stuff solely for myself, it's more of a technical test to see if I can make the lights work right or make the props work, right. But it's never those images, never stick with me with sweet blast, that whole series do lemon delight. It was always about what is going to cause somebody to look at this twice and ask a question.

suzanne schultz  
So you have the audience in mind. So where does the passion come in the passion

Matt McKee  
to create or the passion? Which passion are you talking about? Typically,

suzanne schultz  
when I use the word passion, or when I think about art, I think in terms of maybe maybe you have a passion, that's more than the creating part. Maybe it's it's, you know, something else. But usually when I talk to artists, I hear they have this passion for the creation. And what I love hearing now is that you're thinking about an audience, because a lot of artists don't care about the audience. It's what they want to do and what they feel. So I guess I'm asking, is it a passion to be creating? Do you get excited to think about what the next subject is going to be? Or the next series? Or is the passion come later, you know, when you are showing it off in a gallery, or to potential collectors or people who care about the subject matter?

Matt McKee  
That's an interesting question. There is an excitement that happens with the technical side of whatever medium you're working in, if you're working in wood, or you're working in paint, or whatever, the fact that you can create something out of those materials that are just inert materials, and cause them to have a message that someone else will see. I think that that magic is very powerful. And you know, when you succeed at something, you get that endorphin rush. But I think even the artists who say they are creating for themselves, if they were just creating from themselves, they would never show their work, it wouldn't matter, they wouldn't need to brag about it or or talk about it, it would just be they do it in their house, and they put it away in their closet, they don't even put it up on their own walls. But they have an audience, they want an audience, the passion part comes from wanting to reach out and connect with somebody else.

suzanne schultz  
I think when they say and I want to say they painting with a broad brush pun intended, I think there's a bit of fear. Absolutely. You know, so they say, you know, I'm doing this for myself, just in case, there's a backlash. You know, I've seen such fear with artists, you know, with a simple show, at a Liberty hotel, people are gonna come in and say terrible things, this is going to end and you know, I have to break it down. And I'm like, no, they're gonna come in and look for cheese and wine, and they might look at your art, and they're gonna be really excited to meet you and talk about your art. There are some art critics out there in the world, and it's their job to criticize artists, but usually they're at a different level in their career, and just like, if you're on Broadway, you're usually not being ripped apart. If you're like your high school play. Yeah, you know, if you are, then you know, that's an issue, but different trauma. Yeah, my parents these days can be mean. But so when you're creating, you have a philosophy, you have a mission, you obviously have something that you do want to share with people. And so you take that little bit of philosophy, and how do you get from that to what you have was sweet blast. How did that happen?

Matt McKee  
Oh, the magic of the process? Yeah, no, it's

suzanne schultz  
really fascinating.

Matt McKee  
I don't know if it's a typical artists brain, or, well, that's a whole nother subject we can delve down into. But for me, the really weird thing is the images sleep through my brain, they show up fully formed. I know what each one of those sweet glass pieces was going to be before we set up the shot when I'm going out with my corporate clients. Again, I already know what I'm photographing who I'm photographing it for, if they don't tell me, I make up a story, the execution part of it is just that the execution, it's just putting things together at that point, because the idea was already there. In terms of process. I don't know, I don't really know how to describe it, because the idea is already there. And I think the ideas are what I'm really passionate about. And they're the subjects that I'm upset about. Angry about, frustrated with. I mean, the entire sweep last series is about my frustration that we are doing horrible things to our food, and we're making some really terrible mistakes, in my opinion, about you know, are we going to have these food items in Well, in this case in 10 years. And my other passion is of course, eating food. So I wanted to start the conversations, the number of times I've proven myself ignorant of where my food comes from means that I'm not alone. In this, I'm sure I'm not alone. There are other people out there who are just as ignorant as I am. And they've been going along into this. I'm not saying that as a crack on them or myself, we just never considered it before. As one of my guests said, leading a mindful life can't hurt you, knowing more about where these things are going, starts with somebody starting a conversation about where they came from.

suzanne schultz  
It's interesting, because we have taken a lot at face value, because that's all we knew. You know, you come into this world and your parents feed you. You know, I was given a lot of Twinkies and things that had a shelf life of 1000 years. Yeah. And honestly, I don't even think if I ate one now would even taste good. No, no. Somebody asked me the other day. Have you ever had Chick fil A tortilla soup? And I said, Why do you think I've ever eaten at Chick fil A, you know, and it's funny because I don't eat at fast food restaurants. I haven't in a long time I used to, it doesn't mean I'm not saying I eat super clean. I try to. But I just wouldn't make that choice. I try to cook a lot for myself. But I also, I also try to think when I see certain foods, and you kind of show this in your art with the hand grenade on top of it. In my mind, if I really want something that I know that's bad. I kind of, you know, like in a cartoon, when it says like XXX something, I try to think about it in a way that you try to show us in your art that this is actually toxic to our body. You're actually you wouldn't drink Dre No, you know, and maybe that Twinkie or that cupcake or that candy doesn't have that same immediate effect. But over the long term, it does, you know, and we are putting poison in our bodies. And we're feeding our kids that, you know, I was a really young mother and I used to take my kids to McDonald's and say, Finish that finish your poison. Yeah, absolutely. And my kids now as adults are really good eaters, you know, and it wasn't because of how they were raised. I always had a lot of junk food in the house. But I didn't know any better. So. So you're showing us in a way through art. And I think artists can teach us so much that we really should be thinking about what we're consuming?

Matt McKee  
Absolutely. Well, I don't know if artists can necessarily teach us so much. But they can start conversations, because we're going in in a different way. We're bypassing or sometimes we're bypassing certain pieces of logic that we miss logical structures that we've set up in our heads, not necessarily accurate structures. But we take certain things for granted all the time. If I can make you think a little bit differently about whatever that is that you took for granted, then I've done my job. As this far as I see my job. I've made you think a little bit more about the fact that guacamole, for example, is a piece with an avocado, which I love avocados are good for you. And they are for the most part good for you like any other item out there too much is not good for you. But there's a whole socio economic political challenge around avocados and environmental to is there, you know, moving water around in order to feed these avocado trees. And while you may have an obsession about avocados, if you ate three avocados a day, you're not going to be healthy anymore. And you're also supporting an unsustainable practice. So what if you only had one avocado a week,

suzanne schultz  
right? And there's something to be said about eating local foods,

Matt McKee  
things that are not shipped on an airplane. Right? And things

suzanne schultz  
don't taste right. You know, when you open a strawberry and it's white, and it just doesn't taste like anything.

Matt McKee  
Yeah, berries from Peru. How do you think they got here?

suzanne schultz  
Yeah, and you really shifted the way I thought about food early on. You have these feelings about the planet and the food and everything. When did this start to dis start when you had children? Did it start before you had kids? Like where when did that really start getting in your head and pushing you to creating this sweep blast series sweep blast

Matt McKee  
actually was started in 2012. With lemon delight, I can identify the genesis of that actually, when I was listening to a lot of public radio and looking for on sensationalized news, if that's even a thing, and we're starting to discover things or learn more about things like mono crops and mono crop is basically where you go into a field that would have a diversity of different crops growing in it, and you just make it all corn, and not just all corn but all one type of corn and banana splat also came out of that Harriet, and that was another one where doing just a little bit of homework, I learned that the bananas that we know and love and buy today, were not the original bananas that are I can't remember the dates now. But it's like in the 30s, I think it was, there was one type of banana that was everywhere. And it was twice as nutritious, twice as tasty as the videos we eat today. But it was a mono crop, that was the only thing that was planted. And a disease came through and wiped out entire plantations, and to the point where that particular type of banana went extinct. And it was because of the way it was farmed. I feel like I'm missing out. And what that was learning that kind of stuff was sort of a shock. Yeah, so I never got to taste that banana, which I think is a huge crime. We did it to ourselves. And we are continued to do it to ourselves. And that was what got me thinking about Holy cow. At that point. Also, the factory farming of beef was starting to become more recognized as a situation as a problem. So high stakes came out of that that's the one with the black and blue steak on it. And I love meat, I'm an omnivore Are you just about everything, but I got thinking that you know, may not be able to get hamburger may not be able to get that juicy steak may not be able to get the foods that I love to eat. And that's when I started kind of looking further into these things and realizing that anytime the hand of humanity starts interrupting these natural processes, we accelerate problems. I'm not saying that we shouldn't do certain farming practices, because obviously, we have the space and we have the technology to feed everybody on the planet. We're just not doing it in the name of greed in the name of ignorance in the name of tradition. And those are things that I don't have the solutions to these things. But I do want to have the conversation about these things. I'm really excited about hydroponic farming, where we can get lettuce year round that is not coming from a foreign country, or massive distances. It's actually coming from right here in town, because there's a warehouse somewhere now, the technology is there, but there are there problems with it. I'm sure there are. But if we approach it mindfully, I think that we can, without the idea of we have to maximize profits. But instead of maximize the system itself, I think we can come up with some solutions. Yeah, long trail. I'm not sure what was going so well.

suzanne schultz  
You know, another problem I see is the expense. You know, it makes me sad that healthy organic foods are so expensive, and they're not available to everybody. Yes, that does or nominal the city. Yeah, yeah. And there's certain regions that our country and our country does suffer from. It's an oxymoron, you know, obesity and malnutrition at the same time. So there's lots of calories being consumed. But there's not a lot of nutrition. Yes. And I think, you know, education is key. And I think education comes in all different forms. And I love that you're you are starting the conversation on many different levels, about the food that we're eating, where does it come from? And what does it do to our bodies? Like, what where is it? What has its journey been? You know,

Matt McKee  
Maria speling said that she treated food as medicine for her body,

suzanne schultz  
I love her. She was great. Hey, I think she is her background. I mean, being a scientist and everything and you know, and she's, she's living it, you know, she's not talking to talk, she's really living it. And I find it very inspirational, because I do struggle with I want to eat everything too. I love food. And I love cooking, and I love all of that stuff. And I feel like I've used that as an excuse for years to make poor choices or to consume too much. And realizing that, you know, being abundant isn't about lots and consumerism. Being abundant is how you feel inside and making the right choices. So I can feel really abundant with that smoothie. You know, with the banana that isn't as good as the banana from the 1930s feeling very sad about that. And the raspberries and feeling like I've done something good for my body. And there's an abundant feeling even though I do like a nice truck driver breakfast, you know, give me two orders a bacon, sausage. You know, I like that too. But I think the mentality should be it shouldn't be that we have to feast all the time.

Matt McKee  
So here's the challenge with that it comes back to education at killing ourselves, it comes back to being mindful about why I'm picking up that box of cheese. It's at, you know, 10 o'clock at night, it comes back to we are creatures of habit. And these habits have been ingrained in to us for ever since we were born. And it's up to us to do some thinking about what we do. And that's one of the challenges in today's life is that there's no way for us to know everything that's out there. There's just too much information to subsume. So we need to find guides, find editors who will help to pare these things down to one of the reasons why I started the podcast was I was thinking about the fact that just making little changes along the way, when I've tried to make a major change in my life, I failed horribly. It's not the way we work. But making a little change where Okay, so I, I don't start my morning with a 16 ounce Mountain Dew, I love do, I still love Mountain Dew to this day, but as a 55 year old person, you know, drinking a 16 ounce Mountain Dew in the morning. It's kind of deadly.

suzanne schultz  
So tell me what your definition of art is? How big is that definition?

Matt McKee  
Wow, wow, it actually is a very big definition. I kind of sum it up to three different elements to it. I think art means so many things to so many different people. But it comes down to a concept, the intent and the execution, those three things go into every piece of art that's out there. There's a fourth element though to it. And that is a very personal connection. And it there's so there's a very personal connection when an artist self described or otherwise is creating something, they have a purpose that they're trying to fulfill. That's very personal to them. And then there's also a very personal connection with the viewer and the art piece. And the thing I was thinking about actually the other day is those two personal connections most often are not connected to each other, except through the art piece. If you

suzanne schultz  
have one, what is your favorite piece of your own, that you've created? Do you have your favorite child

Matt McKee  
that is has a really good question. I don't think I do. Like any human animal, I get bored easily. So I started sweep last 2012 There's 30 different images, 35 different images depending on how you count it in the series. And for the last five years of doing these. I keep thinking that's it. I've explored everything. There's not another piece of food I can throw on a hand grenade top. And then somebody comes along and says, Wow, have you looked at the clover that's out? Despite what we've done to our lawn? The Clover is still breaking through all of our interventions and it's still blossoming and it's actually kind of pretty in the bees are all over the lawn. Well, there's get lucky that one goes up. I thought before that was Honey Do I thought mouth before honey do it didn't have anything and somebody said to me, have you done anything about the pollinators? And honey do like slammed into my brain? I need a honeycomb I need to go find a beekeeper.

suzanne schultz  
That's an amazing piece. And a great video. Oh, that

Matt McKee  
was a fun video. Yeah, great video to watch. No one was actually stung during the process except the beekeeper. And she was very surprised she got hit because she wasn't standing and she was very careful about not standing in front of the hive. Wow. But apparently, she was someplace that the bee wasn't very happy with her and now they're on the finger. But we had a swarm that was zipping past as you could hear him like zipping past your ear. Like you know some of you shooting a BB past year. The bees were actually flying out of the hive going around in a curve and then shooting out to a field of wildflowers about a half mile away. And then they would kind of come bumbling back afterward, after they'd filled gotten their fill. Do you know why they're bumbling? Because they were drunk? Yeah.

suzanne schultz  
And they're not allowed back in the hive when they're drunk really know that they don't let them in. It's like a parent saying you're sleeping on the porch tonight. You learn your lesson. I didn't run those hives. Like it's amazing how smart these bees?

Matt McKee  
Yeah, the natural world period is incredible to me as far as what it does, and everything that that takes place, even as we do our interventions to make the natural world bend to our will. Nature still has these processes and adapts to them and does its thing.

suzanne schultz  
So if you could go back to when you started this, what would you what would you say to that young Matt McKee or what would you want to know then that you know now

Matt McKee  
I think the big thing that really kind of frustrates me so my career, my life started out as a rebel. I didn't want to do business I love my parents, but I watched them go to work, they were teachers, and you know, put the suit on every day. This is back when teachers were shooting tied to work every day. And I didn't want that life, I was very comfortable in my jeans, I would resist all these things. And I would resist the trappings that went with it. Learning business, understanding what sales really meant, those kinds of things, learning what systems were, I never understood that I was part of a system that, you know, a family unit is a system, there's dinner time, there's recreation time, there's homework time, there's whatever, there's a system that takes place in order for things to succeed. So I resisted all of these systems. And it wasn't until I hung up my shingle as both an artist and as a commercial photographer, that I started realizing that I had no systems and therefore I could not plan my day, let alone be successful at anything. And so I really wish I could go back and smack myself across the top of the head and say, the systems that you create are going to evolve, the first system you make isn't going to be right, the second one is neither, or the third one, but they're going to improve along the way. And these systems are going to give you the freedom to say okay, now is the time when work stops, and I can go play with my kids, or take my wife out to dinner, or sit on the couch and relax or whatever. So I wish I could go back and tell myself to be more open to the ideas of how the world actually works. Because systems are all around us go right back to nature. There's a whole system there. That's very complicated.

suzanne schultz  
Well, it's funny, because I know you as a very organized person, I've learned a lot of business practices from you,

Matt McKee  
my parents are constantly surprised that I'm organized. Now, I can't

suzanne schultz  
see you as an unorganized person. But you know, the funny thing is, is people who don't want to keep a schedule or be organized because they want to be a free spirit or be available for anything, have less freedom. Yeah, then people who are organized and have a schedule, because all that scheduling and organization will lead you more to success, which brings you that money to have more recreation. And actually schedule time. Like you said, time for family vacations going out on a date night with your wife, or it's spending time with your kids. If you're just unscheduled, even those things suffer, you end up spending

Matt McKee  
all your time chasing something, or being chased. You're being completely reactionary. Yeah, one of the things that came out of being reactionary all the time was, I would react to something in a way I thought was appropriate. But because it was a knee jerk response, nine times out of 10, it was inappropriate. They got me in trouble. One of the things that came out of that was I have a firm mantra, no knee jerk responses. If somebody says something, or I see something that makes me angry, why am I angry? I need to identify that first. Is it me? Is it them? Is it something outside of that? Is it completely irrational? Why are they saying what they're saying? Is it me? Is it dumb? Is it completely irrational? Then I can react to it in a way that is appropriate? That can either help me help them right to find a solution to it. Just getting up in somebody's space does not? Because I was late does not help anything.

suzanne schultz  
So what is your go to comfort food at the end of a long day?

Matt McKee  
Oh, wow. Oh, wow. So obviously, I've asked this question of just about every guest that I've had on the show. And it's now what almost 40? Yes. And I started asking that question, because I realized I don't really have a comfort food. I realized that I do like goldfish after dinner. But that's not comfort food. It's salty crunch. Did I just, you know, it's a craving that I'm trying to answer. My wife's chili is my mother's shrimp Zhang is one. But cold pizza on a Saturday morning after doing takeout the night before that has sausage and mushroom and some peppers and things like that with a cup of iced coffee is incredibly comforting to me. I had an artist once said, you know, what's your favorite photograph to make? And they always said my next one. And when somebody asked me what my comfort food is, what's my next meal?

suzanne schultz  
Right, right. So what do you want your legacy to be?

Matt McKee  
This is something that I think for everybody changes over time. For me early on, I wanted to be remembered for you know, changing somebody's mind with my art. I still would like that. I would like to To think that for the people who have hung sweet blast in their homes or Promethean dreams or the tool series, even that it becomes something that they remember me by. But, boy, that sounds kind of cliche, but I think my children are my legacy, because I'm watching them, embrace the conversations that we had. And one of the most flattering things I ever had was my youngest came home from school. This was when he was in high school, and he turned to me and said, Dad, I heard myself channeling you talking to one of my friends about a problem that they raised. And I thought I'd done it. I may not be remembered for this, you know, his child's child's child may be still talking these philosophies to the people he's interacting with. That's enough for me. Thanks for listening to this episode of cherry bomb the podcast. I'm your host, Matt McKee. And today I was speaking with Suzanne Schultz. As always, there'll be links to her website and social media at the art of Matt McKee calm and also in the show notes. Just click on the link for cherry bomb the podcast. I'm also available on Twitter for questions and comments at McKee photo. This episode of cherry bomb the podcast could not have been done without the help of Suzanne Schultz and Camus Fine Arts, the specialists for coaching for creatives. Thanks for listening. And let's start the conversation.