full interview_luis flores_1.mp4
Speaker 1 [00:00:00] It's solitary.
Luis Flores [00:00:05] Me and my thoughts. Sometimes, or a lot of times, I'll listen to audio books or podcasts or something. Sometimes I'll listening to music. Not so much anymore, but every once a while, you know, I like to put on a good album or something. But it's pretty solitary. It's nice. I like my alone time. I like the solitude. Don't really get that as much these days because of my kids. Like being in the cave.
Speaker 1 [00:01:03] So is it kind of muscle memory? I mean, you sort of sort of know what you need to do.
Luis Flores [00:01:07] There's a lot of muscle memory that's involved. Maybe not with this particular piece right now, but I've gotten to a point where I don't need to look at it anymore. I can just sort of just go. But since it's just getting started right now, the beginning is always the hardest for whenever I start a new piece. It's the most sort of like difficult to hold in your hand, getting an understanding where the patterns are is difficult to recognize sometimes in the very beginning. And yeah, so. It's not until there's a few rows in that the muscle memory will kick in. It just feels good in the hand. Like, my hand then. If there isn't enough for me to grab onto, the muscle memory's not there. I need to have enough in my hand for it to sort of like kick in.
Speaker 1 [00:02:17] Tell us about the way it feels, generally. Do you like the way that the crocheting feels?
Luis Flores [00:02:22] Um... It depends on the material. All the materials are different. So this particular material, the yarn is much thinner. And the way that it's braided, the way that it is rolled is really tight. With some of the other yarns that I use, they're thicker and it's more fibrous. You can see the fibers in the yarn. And so the way that it slides in, the way the crochet hook will slide into the loops feels different for every material. Yeah, so it just depends. Like this is nice, but for different reasons and I hate it for different reason. It's nice. The way I'm able to sort of put the crochet hook through and then just grab onto the thread is really easy. And it doesn't have a, it doesn' get like a... Uh what's the word it doesn't get caught in and the loops don't or the threads don't separate as easily sometimes with the other threads they'll uh they'll fray and they'll want to rip and tear and it's not as nice but i hate it because it's so thin so that means that i have to crochet a lot more to get more done um yeah so it feels good for different reasons, and the other one feels good for different reason. This is also a lot rougher on my hands. The nice thing about this is that I don't have to worry about it getting fuzzy. With the other materials that I work with, sometimes it'll get fuzzy and the stitching won't look as clean. It'll start to sort of look almost like felt. So I have to go back in and sort of like, sometimes I'll trim it down or sometimes I like put a heat source to it to melt because a lot of the fibers that I use are synthetic. So I'll melt it'll melt down and They won't be so fuzzy anymore. So it just depends. Every material is different. It interacts differently. It feels different in the hand.
Speaker 1 [00:04:47] So were you always fascinated by different kinds of materials? Yeah.
Luis Flores [00:04:52] I like, I like um... I just have a curiosity for how things work. I love to know how things worked. When I was a little kid, I would love to take my RC cars apart, take the body kit off, and then take the wheels apart and then look at the mechanics, look at all of the electronic components and stuff. And sometimes I could put them back together, and sometimes I couldn't. And then I would also just be fascinated by the engines or the, the, um, the motors. And yeah, and then I would make my own. Once I figured out like, oh, this is how you can get something to move. You know, I would just like get a battery, wire it up, put some electrical tape, and then just like make my little cars and just have them go and take off. With no, like I didn't understand like the radio controls and how that worked, but I understood that if I give the motor power, like it'll just take off, you know? So yeah, I've always been interested in. How things work. I love materials, like I love working with different materials. I love the way it feels, the way you manipulate them. Like I'm... The way that it works for me in my head is I think of math. And for me, with math, it's algebra. And algebra is the most fundamental thing. If I can understand algebra, I can do more complex ideas. And so for me it's getting a basic understanding for how a material functions, how it reacts, and then understanding it well enough to manipulate it to do whatever I want it to do. And so... Yeah, for me, it's just like playing with the materials, sometimes in unconventional ways. And a lot of times I don't really like to learn the conventional ways of how things work because you get stuck in a box. You get stuck a box for like, this is how you do X, Y, and Z. And if I just go in there and play, I'm able to just sort of come up with my own way of having a conversation with the material, manipulating it to do, sweet talking it, right? So yeah, so it's a. Yeah, I love materials. I just, I love materials, it's great. It's fun. It's play, it' experimentation, yeah.
Speaker 3 [00:07:13] How did the algebra work though? You can talk to me about it.
Luis Flores [00:07:16] Yeah, yeah, with algebra. I mean, the algebra doesn't come in to the equation necessarily. It's more about The way that I understand algebra in my head is the way that understand the materials. It's just, I know how to, like I love math and I understand Algebra, it's my favorite thing. And so I'm, with Algebra I'm able to do more complex things with like geometry and trig and calculus. But for me it's always the fundamental of Algebra. And so for me, it when I have a material, it's like, let me understand the Algebra behind the material. Like, let understand, like, if I do this to it. How is it going to react? If I apply heat to it, how is it gonna react? If I, you know, if I cut it this way, how's it gonna to react. So it's all about like having a fundamental understanding of the limitations of the material so that I can work within the limitations of the materials to then manipulate it to do things that it's not intended to do. So like for me, it's like with a crochet, I understand the limitations of this material. I understand it well enough to be able to manipulate it, to do whatever I want it to do, to be be able get into shapes that I want to get into. Understanding those limitations is really important, because if I don't understand it, then it goes off into be nothing. Like, I can't manipulate it to do what I want if I understand its limitations. Yeah. So.
Speaker 1 [00:08:51] Can you, do you have to listen to the material or can you kind of make the material?
Luis Flores [00:08:59] It depends. It depends because I don't work with just this material. When I'm crocheting, it's always a skin to something else for the most part. I listen to the object that the crochet is going to be covering and surrounding, but I manipulate this to what the object tells me to do. Yeah, so it's like I'm the medium, you know, I am the in-between. The object tells what it needs to do or what it wants to be and how to manipulate this. To go to surround that body.
Speaker 1 [00:09:50] So it's a good time to tell us what you do. Sure. What you're practicing.
Luis Flores [00:10:00] Is primarily known for the figures, the crochet work that I do. That's what people know me for. And a lot of the work that I make is usually surrounded or encompassed, or there's an umbrella of masculinity and masculine identity about my work. And so I usually will make figures of myself doing things to myself sometimes. A lot of it has to do with... Memories that I have of growing up, my relationship to my dad, my uncles, my brother, my friends, and it's usually about trying to understand the context, the cultural context of masculinity and how it functions and questioning it and interrogating it and just trying to get a better understanding and also rejecting a lot of it. For me, a lot of it is wanting to redefine what masculinity is for me. And at the same time redefine, what masculinity can be in its totality, right? Yeah. And so, for me, it's about, um... Pushing back and trying to make room for new ideas.
Speaker 1 [00:11:41] So if I'm sitting next to you on a plane or something like that, and you're saying, so what does your stuff look like? Can you give me the very basic, like, I create?
Luis Flores [00:11:54] Yeah, I'll give you the, so this is when I was in Joanne's fabrics, that's where I usually go get a lot of my yarn. I'm like a very rare sight to see walking up and down the yarn aisles. And so there was this one time where this older woman, she sees me and she gets curious. She's like, are you looking for a yarn for yourself? And I'm, like, oh yeah, like I am. She's, like do you crochet? And I, I'm oh yeah I do. She's you do? Her eyes get all wide. She's an older woman. She's probably in her 70s. So she's fascinated. She's like, what do you make? Like I make sculptures. And so it went on to, you know, and so the way that I described it to her is I make these crochet soft sculptures of myself that are life size, that look like me, that have my body type. And then I'll take out my phone and I'll be like, look, here's an image of one of the things that I make. Oh my God, this is amazing. You should come to my club. You should to my crochet club. They would love you there. We need more men in our club. And I'm like, yeah, that sounds great. And I didn't join the club, but I went on their Facebook and I joined the Facebook group. And yeah, it's fun. It's fun getting that reaction out of people. Because they don't expect someone who looks like me to be doing this. And I think that that's part of the work for me, right? It's like, it's this juxtaposition of a masculine man doing feminine crafts and working with feminine medium, at least what's been largely considered to be feminine. And so yeah, it's like, yeah, men can do these kinds of things and it's okay and making space for that. And so, yeah. That's sort of my pitch is like, I make figures of myself, there's soft sculptures that are life-size that look like me and then are doing things to either me or other things. Yeah. I try not to show the more crude things or the more. Violent things. I try to be a little more careful about what I show older women who might not quite understand, or not even older women, just older people in general. I want to be considerate of how they might take it.
Speaker 1 [00:14:39] But there is this tension because it's very accessible, it's fun, I can imagine kids really loving it, but it's got some real anger, it has some edge to it.
Luis Flores [00:14:52] Yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, the figures work in a lot of different ways. So the first way that I sort of think about the figures is the uncanniness of them, right? The uncanniest is a really important factor for the work, I think. When a viewer enters a room that the figures are in, depending on what they know they're going to see, their reaction will be different. But if they have no idea what they're looking at or what they are expecting to see. Usually, they'll overlook the figures. They don't realize that the work is in the room already and that they're walking amongst the figures, and then when they realize that the figures are in the rooms, when they sort of do a double take on like, oh, what is that? Then this sort of disbelief kicks in, right? And that uncanniness is really important for me because I'm trying my best to sort of suspend that feeling, that feeling of disbelieve, to hold a viewer's attention for long enough. That their curiosity sort of allows their mind to begin to find what the undertones of the work are so that they can start to have a conversation with the work. And then there's multiple levels in which a viewer will engage. Some of it will be very surface, some of it would be more sort of like wanting to get to the meat and guts of it. But I always try to make the work accessible on multiple levels where it's just like a thrill, right? And there's also more of a psychological component to it.
Speaker 4 [00:16:28] Some of these figures are in really awkward positions, right? I mean, when you look at them, I suppose that's because you want them to be awkward, right, and that's part of it.
Luis Flores [00:16:37] Yeah, yeah, yeah. So for me, so some of the, like with these figures here, a lot of it is this sort of, this back and forth that I'm sort of having with myself in terms of... Me grappling with the ideas surrounding masculine culture. A lot of it is this sort of push and pull, this fight of where do I stand? And so, yeah, some of it will be, and some of is like, with this work too, I was really interested in wrestling at the time, and I was interested in looking at 90s wrestling. And I'm really interested in how the culture of that sort of happens. You have these greased up men going into a ring, doing like very, very homoerotic things to each other, wearing very sort of sensual costumes. You know, like I think of like the heartbreak kid, Shawn Michaels, and like he'll walk in and he'll be thrusting around and like, you know, and he'd do his poses and all these dudes, you know young and old are just going crazy over this guy like, and his sort of sexual... You know, a way of performing for the audience. There's something really fascinating and ironic about that whole situation because there's so much within the, there's this very sort of homophobic tension within the audience that occurs. Is just ironic to me because it's just like, look at what you're cheering for. Like, look at, like, this is just, it's odd. Like, it just weird. And it reminds me of Barbara Kruger's, one of Barbara Kroeger's works. Forget exactly how it goes, but it says, or men create rituals to find ways to touch each other. And it's like, it is this image of these frat boys. From what I remember, it was this image of these fraat boys sort of like going through these sort of hazing techniques or these hazing rituals of like touching each other and like doing awful things to each other. And so for me, the work was also about that, wanting to point out the irony and the stupidity of a lot of the way masculine culture functions.
Speaker 1 [00:19:10] You could have done it in fiberglass, but you chose to use this very time-consuming...
Luis Flores [00:19:16] Yeah.
Speaker 1 [00:19:17] Thank you.
Luis Flores [00:19:18] Yeah, so the way that I came into crochet is when I was at UCLA for my undergrad I worked with Barbara Krueger a lot. Had recommended that I go see a show that was up at the time, and it was a show up at MOCA called Wack. Art and the feminist movement, I believe. And when I went to go see the show, I was really sort of taken back by the work that was there. I was taken back like. The kinds of work that was being made and the materials that were being utilized for some of the work. And so for me, it made me curious about the tension, or not the tension. It made me care about what it would mean for a masculine man to utilize feminine craft to make work. Like, what would it mean for me to take up crochet and to make the masculine objects that I make? And yeah, it was also sort of like... Piggybacking off of at the time my mom had told me a story about when she was a little girl and she used to crochet and she use to put the crochet hooks through her ears and it was always like a very vivid image in my mind and so when I went to go see that show it reminded me of my mom and the crochet that she did. There was also other things that were happening for me at the that made me sort of deal with the work that I'm dealing with now. My dad was going through a lot of... Psychological issues, I guess you could say. There was a lot of sort of him having to face a lot demons and it made me really sort of question this idea of the man as this sort of gallant figure on a white horse that for him was like he had to be the knight in shining armor all the time and whatever that meant for him. That was sort of like his demise in a lot of ways. And so that really influenced my work at the time too. I think that's why I started to make work that dealt with masculinity and masculine culture. Was this sort of complete deterioration of self.
Speaker 1 [00:21:38] I'm interested in the medium, because you talk about materials, which is totally what things we're into, but we also have other parts of the film where there are artists who are dealing with AI, and it's incredible, cutting-edge technology, you know, supercomputers, But you know, you're certain about the end, you got work in the end.
Luis Flores [00:22:01] Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, so for me, one of the things that really interests me a lot with crochet is it can't be replicated by a machine. Crochet has to be done by humans. It has to the human hand that's involved in order for a crochet to happen. One of the things that I really like about that a lot is that whenever you approach a piece of crochet work, you know that there's an author behind it. You know that's there's a real person that's behind that work. Um, yeah, it's one of the things that really fascinates me. There's also something really nice about just the sort of the tactile quality of it, right? There's something nice about having this in the hand. There's nothing nice about seeing it and seeing the skill behind the person that made it. Like, like I often like look at my work sometimes and I'm just like, shit, I can't believe I made that. Like it's so beautiful. It's such a beautiful object, you know? And, um, you don't get that. Like, I don't get that feeling when I look at a piece of, you know, illustration on a computer, you know, that was made using Adobe Illustrator or whatever, like, I don't have that same sort of visceral reaction where it's just like, fuck, like this is real. And especially like with sculpture, there's something about like viewing an object in the round, like walking in the space. Like what does that mean to walk through time and space and how it's an ever-changing object? Yeah, it's just, there's something just so beautiful about, about, about this medium to me. It's just something so. I don't know, I don't know how to explain it. There's just, it's just is like, it just is, it is great. But it's also like, it's a love hate relationship where I hate how long it takes, you know? But I think that that also, for me adds a lot of the value to it, right? Because of how much labor went into some of these objects. Like, you now, I was telling you like with the toilet, like. I've been working on it for over a year. Like seeing the intricacies of it all is just like, damn, like it's just so beautiful. Like the end game is beautiful.
Speaker 1 [00:24:31] How long do you, for example, these figures, you don't have to look at them, but the two guys, how long do they take to do them?
Luis Flores [00:24:37] It depends. It depends on if I'm doing it myself or if I have help. I used to have an assistant that would help me do some of the crochet work, like the stuff that doesn't really require a lot of attention to detail, but if I am doing it The double figures will take me about like two months, month and a half. It just depends. Sometimes if it's a single figure and if it not too complicated, I can get it done like now, like in 10 days to two weeks. You know, just depends, yeah. It really just depends The more complicated and like contorted the figures are, the more articulated that they are, the more complicated that they become in terms of like how I put them together. Because it's not just the crochet work, right? It's also the welding, welding the armature, welding the armor, putting the clothes on. Like it's a whole process. There's a lot that's involved to get them to where they are. So if it's just a crochet work crochet work is kind of like the easy bit. I know the patterns, I know how to make everything now. It's the putting it together that takes a long time. Cause you want that attention to detail. The tweaks. Are really important, like how an eyebrow sits on the face, how the hand is pointing, or how the fingers are articulated. Like that's where it becomes really important to pay attention to those details, because it'll change the feeling. Like an inch, an inch of how the finger moves will change the feel of the whole thing. It just depends.
Speaker 1 [00:26:15] Do you have to do trial and error? Yeah. If that was wrong, you got to go undo it? Yeah.
Luis Flores [00:26:19] Yeah it's happened before where like I'll have to break them you know because of their they have a foam interior you know I'll, have to, break them sometimes if there isn't a steel armature that's supporting it I'll. Have to break, them and if there is a steel, armature sometimes I'll just start the whole thing over again and that then it's just like yeah it's, just like start from the beginning start from scratch and that hurts because so much time goes into them and materials you know the materials aren't cheap so it's. Just it's like um it can be Devastating sometimes, yeah.
Speaker 3 [00:26:53] So we're going to see, ask one question. Yeah, go ahead. It's sort of like the crochet, like the needles and what you're using. It's kind of like a painter's brush, right? Isn't it sort of similar to kind of what another artist might use? Y-y-h-h...
Luis Flores [00:27:12] Yeah, I mean, so this is a crochet hook. Knitting needles are different, right? Knitting needle are just their needles, they're straight through. The crochet hook will have a hook at the end. So I'm pulling the yarn through the different loops. It's not so much that this is, I guess, yeah, I guess you could think of it like a painter's brush, because the painter needs to know how to manipulate the paint on the brush, needs to how to to manipulate the paint, on canvas. How to, like if they push or pull a brush a certain way, what sort of effect they're going to have. So for me, this is like understanding how I pull the yarn through, and where I pull yarn through. Where I need to sort of double up on things. And knowing the effect that it's going to have, right, because a lot of times when I'm crocheting there has to be a lot a forethought with the object that you're crocheting. If I know that it is going to get wider quickly then I need to compensate for that and try to address that right away so that I'm adding enough loops so that by the time it gets to point it's already there because if I don't then I'm fucked. And I basically have to undo a bunch of the work that I've already done to then go back and start adding more loops into it so that that way. It does what I need it to do. So there's a lot of planning. There's a lotta forethought that has to go into crocheting the objects that I crochet. Sometimes, you know, sometimes they're subtle. And understanding that subtlety is also important. Like if I add one or two more loops, is that gonna be enough? Or is, if I go one loop or two loops too much, then it won't be tight to the body. It won't tight to object. And that's also really important because then it's just like, oh, it looks like, um. Looks like they're wearing baggy pants, like they are wearing a skin that's not meant for them. Yeah, so it's really important to understand. Adding and subtracting loops is going to affect and having the forethought or the foresight to predict like, oh, this is what I need to do now so that in an hour I'll be where I need to be. It is precision. And for me, what I've learned is that you can only learn it through experience. Nobody can teach it to you. Nobody can tell you, oh, this is what you have to do. It's instinctual for me now. I just know what to do, I know how to manipulate this to get it to be where I want it to be by such and such time. Yeah, because you can lose a lot of time.
Speaker 1 [00:30:09] Is this like somebody who's not an artist, like an older lady crocheting, which is the image, right? Are they basically, they have to have a precise head and their mind's image? Is it sort of like we don't recognize that in fact they're really working a lot of math and...
Luis Flores [00:30:29] Yeah, so this is where it becomes a little bit problematic for me, right? Like I say that I crochet. Because I use a crochet hook, and I use yarn, and I understand how to make a basic chain, which is like what every piece of crochet work, as far as I understand it, is where it begins. But I don't really know how to crochet. I only know how manipulate the yarn the way that I've sort of. Understood how to manipulate the yarn the way I've taught myself how to do it. When I started to learn to crochet, I went to Joanne's or Michael's, I think it was Michael's actually. I went Michael's Arts and Crafts and I got a book on how to crochet. And I did not understand a damn thing in that book. It was, this was like pre-YouTube and I didn't have anyone to show me. And so I'm trying to learn through these images in the book, but they're so difficult to understand if you don't already know. The language that they're speaking and so out of frustration I was able to learn how to create a basic chain and I just kind of went from there and understanding how to do that this goes back to the algebra it's like I understand the fundamental chain that every piece of crochet work is going to start with once I understood that then I just manipulated the chain and i just sort of with the assistant that I had, she's kind of a master of crochet. She understands all of, like, how this works. And when I approached her and, you know, told her what I needed her to do for me, she asked me to leave the sample with her. And so I left it with her, and she's like, come back in a couple of weeks. And I come back and a couple a weeks in. I don't know what the hell you did. She's like, I've referenced all of my books. I don't know what this stitch is. And so, to answer your question, I don't really know how old ladies crochet because I don's really crochet and I don 't really understand that language of mastery of crochet, you know? And so... I only know what I know and what I've sort of taught myself and figured out for myself how to do. And so, yeah, so it's a, I can't compare. It's apples to oranges right now. Like, I just know how to what I do. What I do know is when I told my assistant, you know, who was helping me. She's like, you hold the hook wrong. The way that you're moving the yarn through itself is not typical. You're doing it from the outside in or inside out instead of outside in. Does that make sense? Basically, I was doing it in reverse. The way I pull the yarn though is in reverse, where it's like this is actually the outside and this should be the inside. So the outside. Was inside, yeah, and the inside was outside, yes. So yeah, it was a whole bunch of having to figure out how to tell her what I was doing and articulating this language that I developed for myself to her and how I needed things done.
Speaker 5 [00:34:04] It works for you.
Luis Flores [00:34:05] It works for me, but it goes back to the algebras. I understand the basics. That's the most important thing. If I can understand that, I can do whatever I want. That's worked for me thus far for most things, understanding the fundamentals of it. If I know how something is going to react, then I can manipulate it from there.
Speaker 6 [00:34:26] Thank you.
Luis Flores [00:34:28] Yeah, we get a lot of helicopters out here and planes.
Speaker 7 [00:34:40] The process that goes into this in this current day and age when everybody wants everything yesterday. As far as our creation...
Luis Flores [00:34:59] Yeah, no, nobody really understands how much time goes into a lot of these figures and the crochet work that I make. And that's also, it's a funny thing to ask because my production is slow. Like I'm not interested in making things fast. Like I am not interested in having a factory. It's just me in here, you know? And the slowness is actually really important for me because it lets me really take the time to consider the work that I'm making. I'm just pumping things out. It's not like, come back tomorrow, like it'll be done. It's like, no, come in a month or two months, and then it'll done. And that can be challenging, you know, as an artist participating in the art world, like in the world as like most people know it. It's a gallery's not interested. Most galleries aren't interested in the slowness. Most galleries want an artist who can produce. They want like some type of factory because they need to make money, right? And I'm not interested in that. Like I'm interested in making these things for myself because a lot of it is therapy. Like as cliche as that is, it's therapy. Like I am trying to understand myself, trying to the world that I live in. You can't rush that, you can't just rush that. If you rush that then you're not learning anything. You're not really understanding anything. At least the way that I. It's gotta be slow.
Speaker 1 [00:36:45] We would work in this movie for three years. Right, yeah. You know, we've worked in movies for taking seven years. Yeah. And he would be really happy. Thank you very much.
Luis Flores [00:36:55] It's the same. There's definitely the same sort of sentiment. In the art world, it's been called post-show depression. You'll have a show, you'll be working for X amount of time for a show. And then it's up and then you're kind of like, well, what do I do now? And are like, what have I done? And like, and where do I go from here? Like is the thing that I made good and how do I make something better, right? It's always this sort of like growth that I think artists tend to put on themselves, right. Like I have to do something better than the thing I made last. And yeah, it's like a complete breakdown. Where you're just like, there's this crisis of identity. I think that happens where you're like, what am I doing? What is this all for? There's all of these questions that definitely come up. And yeah, and like I've tried different things to try and not have that happen to me, sometimes more successfully than others. But for me, it's trying to, especially when I know that the end is coming for a thing, a show or whatever, I'll try to have started on a couple of other things to sort of keep my mind occupied so that I have somewhere to go for my mind to go. After the fact. It doesn't always work. You can have something, but it doesn't work. There's this lingering sort of doubt and questions, and yeah, your own internal dialog, your own interrogation of the work, it's weird.
Speaker 1 [00:38:41] One guy said, the work has no more potential. Yeah. I don't understand. It's like, you know what, I'm not interested in it. Yeah.
Luis Flores [00:38:45] Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, like one of the things that I've been trying to really sort of... Really trying to sort of become a part of my practice is, once the work is done and leaves my studio, it's not mine anymore. It's not for me, it's for everybody else. And like relinquishing ownership of that thing. It's mine when it's in here, it's mine, when I'm working on it. But once it's gone, it not mine any more. It belongs to everybody else that's actually been really sort of helpful. My hands will never touch it again. And being able to let go of that ownership is liberating. Where you're just like, it's not mine. Like, fuck it. Good or bad, it not mine, it for other people to enjoy, other people critique, other people hate, whatever. Doesn't matter to me anymore. I did my job. I did what the work told me it needed to be. And once it's gone, it is gone. I did it my job, yeah. It's nice, it liberating But again, it doesn't always work, right? You try to have that happen, but it doesn' always work. There's always this sort of lingering, these lingering feelings and emotions that you tend to get captivated by.
Speaker 3 [00:40:13] Well, the question is just that we can do this at the end, but I'd like to go through the whole process. Just what I was going to do. Just sort of tell us, from the beginning, what you have to do to actually create a figure.
Speaker 1 [00:40:27] And keep in mind that tonight we're going to see a piece of it. So imagine your voice narrating what we're going to be hearing.
Luis Flores [00:40:36] So the first thing is an idea, right? Like I have to have an idea of what it is that I'm trying to make. And when it comes to the figures. There's different layers to it, into the thought process, but I won't go into too much detail with that. But I have an idea, I try to think of the pose that they're going to be in. I try think of a pose also in terms of how the viewer is going to interacting with the object or the figure. And then once I have a general understanding of how the figure needs to be. Then the actual work will begin in terms of construction. So the way that it goes is I... I'm usually in my living room with my wife, sometimes we'll be here, and my wife will be sort of the hands that I can't be, right? I'll strip down, I'll be in my underwear, she'll wrap me up with saran wrap. Once she wraps me up with saran wrap, then we'll begin the taping process. She'll start taping, wrapping duct tape, so I have this sort of mummification process. There are certain parts of the process that are not sensitive to how the figure is posed, but they'll reach a certain point within the wrapping process that I need to articulate the pose that the figure itself will need to have. Because the tape holds a memory. It holds the figure the way that it was posed. So once I'm wrapped up, I'm just sort of like, you know, if I'm doing this pose, I'll need to make this pose. And once I am completely wrapped up in the tape, she'll cut me out with an X-Acto knife and scissors. And then this sort of, like, shell, this skin, I'll sort of come out of this cocoon. And uh... And then that's it, right? Like, we cut out and then that is it. Then I am left with this sort of tape skin. Then I come back into the studio, and then I have to create an armature, steel armature for the figure. And once I have the steel armature for the figured, that acts as the skeletal structure for this duct tape skin thing, that then I need to sort of reanimate because the duct tape, skin is just this sort of like, loose piece of fabric. And so I'll need to reanimize the skin. Um, and I'll, I'll do that by, uh, stuffing it with different kinds of foam. Each bit of foam does different things for the figure. But there's usually two or three different kinds of foam that I'll use. So once I have this first sort of layer of foam in there, then I'll pour this liquid foam inside to get it rigid and to sort of inflate the figure, right? Because stuffing it with the foam doesn't always inflate a figure enough. So I'll pour this liquid foam inside that will expand the figure inside. And then, while I'm stuffing it, I'm also taping it back together, right? Wherever it was cut out, I am taping back together. Then, what happens after that? Oh, and then I'll start putting the skins on them, the crocheted skins on them, I'll put the clothes on them. Putting the shoes, the head, everything will just start to come together. And then all of the nuances of the figure. Will happen afterwards, like how the fingers and the hands live. The nice thing about the process that I use is, there's some give to it, they're not entirely fixed. So if there's something that needs to be manipulated, I have a certain amount of wiggle room to sort of like, if the arm is like this, but I realize I want it to be like up here just a little bit, like there's usually enough of a tolerance for that to happen. But I can't do, the figure can't go from doing this pose to doing like this pose. Like it can't be manipulated. Like it needs to have the general sort of feeling or the general pose that it was once sort of cast in. And then that's it. And then like the skin will go on and I'll do the tweaks here and there. Then that's, and then they live. There's that breath of life that they get to have. And then they scare the shit out of me when they're brand new because I'm walking into the studio like, who's in my studio, right? If it's brand new, sometimes I'll take them into my house and I'll have them in my living room and I come home late at night. I'm just like, oh my God, who's at my house? Like, I'm ready to kill somebody, you know, it's a, and I have collectors that will tell me the same thing that they'll put their figures in their house and they'll live with it. And it takes a while to get used to it. If you decide, like you've been living with it for three months and decide like you want it somewhere else, it starts all over again. Like the memory of it being there is no longer there and the cycle starts all over again and you're afraid because you don't know what you're walking into. Yeah, it's crazy.
Speaker 1 [00:46:22] So basically, if I really want to crunch that down, just for telling purposes, is that we're going to see you, you're going to be wrapped, essentially your wife and you're creating a kind of a mummy skin, and then that skin, after you fill it up with other materials, will then be covered with...
Luis Flores [00:46:47] Yeah, with the clothes and the crochet, yeah.
Speaker 1 [00:46:48] So let me just maybe...
Luis Flores [00:46:50] I'll do yet Got it.
Speaker 8 [00:46:54] Okay, yeah, yeah
Speaker 1 [00:46:56] Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Also, I'm thinking, well, that means we have to get footage of you doing the steel armature. Right, right. Yeah. Yeah yeah yeah. I know we can do it. Yeah yeah.
Luis Flores [00:47:04] Um, so the idea happens. I know what I want the figure to look like, um, I then have my wife or I'll strip down. I'll be in my underwear. My wife will wrap me in saran wrap and tape. She'll cut me out of the figure. Once she cuts me out of the finger, I am left with this sort of mummified skin. I'll bring that skin into the studio. I create a steel armature for it. Once I have the armature, I can start to tape it together. I stuff it with foam. And then it'll inflate back up. Once it's inflated back up, I'll put clothes and the crochet skins on them and voila, you're left with a creepy figure to look at, this uncanny figure to looks at.
Speaker 1 [00:47:51] It strikes me that at some point, you're going to not look like the movie. Yeah. It's like Dorian Gray.
Luis Flores [00:47:58] Yeah, that's that's something that I've so that that's definitely something that I think about a lot and have thought about in the past. I'm getting old my weight changes you know and so my hairstyle chain changes like so it's it's the way that I think of it now is like once since its inception it's always held the same esthetic and as far as I'm concerned at this point it's gonna continue to hold that same esthetic. I'm not. So much interested in trying to make the figures look exactly like me at that point in time in which I made them. It's like they're a character and the character is constant. Eventually I'll change the character. Like it's something that I've thought about a lot. I mean, it's part of the uniform too, right? Like the uniform is creating a character for myself. I'm creating an idea for myself, right, or an idea of myself. And the repetition of it is very powerful. How that repetition functions and how it's perceived is very power. People can recognize it the way that they recognize a brand. It's definitely something that I think about like when that character changes like what will it look like and What will it be? Yeah, but for now This is me. This is the figure like it's weird That's my relationship is so weird
Speaker 1 [00:49:29] It's cheaper than a therapist. Yeah, we're going to make this up. Then what I want to ask you is, you're going to tell us the figure that we're going to see tonight in the context of this sculpture with the toilet in the back, OK? So, you know, just tell me what you're hearing. We're hearing about that, yeah. You want me to talk about that?
Luis Flores [00:49:51] You want me to talk about the sculpture? Yeah. OK.
Speaker 1 [00:49:53] Yeah, the whole sculpture that, you know, we're going to see a key part of it where you get wrapped, but it's not just the figurines.
Luis Flores [00:50:00] Yeah, yeah, so the This particular work comes from this thing that I heard. This video that, so let me back up a little bit. When I was in grad school, Facebook was really big, right? It was a thing, maybe not so much anymore, but it was a think then. And there was a video that I came across by Dustin Hoffman. He was giving an interview to, I don't remember what media company it was. But it was about Tootsie and his sort of role in this film. And he talks about how before he agreed to do the film, he wanted to make sure that the hair and makeup was gonna be passable, that he was going to be passible for a woman. And so he goes through this process of hair and make up, being turned into a woman, And when the people reveal to him what he looked like, they give him a mirror, he's looking at himself, he laughs. And then he says, okay, now make me beautiful. And the hair and makeup people are kind of like looking at each other and. There's no making you, this is you, this is what you would look like as a woman. There's no beautiful woman behind you, like, you know, like you can't, you gotta be beautiful to begin with. And so he says that in that moment, he sort of has this realization of what it's like to be a woman in America. And the idea and the ideals that we hold for what a woman is and needs to be. And he has this very sort of emotional moment. He's kind of crying on camera. And it was a very powerful thing to see for me, right? And after watching this video, going through the comments and reading some of the things that were being said, and it was like the Me Too movement was happening at the time and everyone is just like tearing him down. This isn't enough. Like, how can you think that this is okay? Blah, blah, blah. Just completely just dismantling this very real moment. And in my head I was like... Wow. Where, at what point will it be enough, right? At what point would it be right? And I started to think about like, that this is an entry point for a lot of young men or men in general, to sort of like enter into this, this way of thinking or understanding, like the complexities of what it's like to be a woman, you know, and how challenging it can be. And so the work is about, is in reference to that, Right, in the, I think in the. In the interview, one of the things he says that the hair and makeup people replied with are, sorry, Charlie, this is as beautiful as you're gonna get. And so the working title for this piece is Sorry Charlie. And so it's this golden crocheted toilet that has a figure, one my dickhead figures, where the phallus has an image of my face at its head coming out of the figure that is going to be strangled in the toilet and potentially with a gun in its mouth, holding, choking the dickhead, drowning it in the toilets, with also holding a gun and putting it in a figure's mouth. And for me, it's just sort of like this, um... It's for me, it's about this sort of idea of just like completely deconstructing and dismantling masculinity and like what that idea is. But also like just robbing myself of masculinity. Like, is this, like, is enough? You know, like what is enough, like no dick, you know, no male, like not testosterone. Like what is, for me there's all of these sort of questions that arise. Where it's just like, at what point is it going to be good enough? Like there is, it'll never be good enough. We're always gonna find something to complain about. And so for me, that's kind of what the work is, trying to have a conversation with.
Speaker 1 [00:54:33] So to help us imagine it, just again, try to make it three-fold. Sorry, I know I can't. That was really, really intense. That was a really great. You had sort of told us about that, but that was the full story. That was great. You're gonna do this figure, okay, and it's part of a sculpture, and what's gonna happen is you're gonna have this phallus, it's a good way to use, public television, okay? Coming out of the figure that you're going to be showing us tonight, okay. And, you know, you've got the toilet too.
Luis Flores [00:55:16] Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah, not the back story, right?
Speaker 1 [00:55:19] It's kind of like when you submit a movie to a festival, they ask you for a log line, they ask for 50 words, and they ask it for 200 words. So this is a 50 word log line.
Luis Flores [00:55:33] So the figure that I'm gonna be working on is a figure of myself with a phallus that comes out of the figure, this really long phallis, and at the head of the phallist is an image of my face. And so this figure is gonna be interacting with this golden crochet toilet, where the figure is drowning the phallus with one hand and shoving its head into the toilet bowl. And then with the other hand, has a cun placed into the phalus figure, the dig head figure's mouth. And yeah, and the working title for it is, Sorry Charlie. And I like that, sorry Charlie too, where it's just like, Charlie also being used as like, there's Charlie everywhere, like talking in military terms, just like is Charlie being the bad guy, you know?
Speaker 1 [00:56:27] You know the original Sorry Charlie, right? No, no, I don't. This is what everybody's going to think. OK. I'm going to reference Charlie as a character. Yeah, yeah. I'm not going to rephrase that. It was the famous Charlie the Tuna. Charlie the what? Charlie the tuna is one of the famous ads. Sorry Charlie. OK, Charlie the tuna wanted to be, he never got chosen to be Starkis Tuna, because their standards were so high. Yeah. And so Charlie would always be trying to like seduce the hook to be killed for it. Oh, yeah, yeah yeah yeah, and then the voice whatever sounds kind of like daddy's voice. Sorry Charlie, you're not good enough for Stark as Tudor and that's where the expression came from.
Luis Flores [00:57:05] Yeah, I did not know that. So yeah, I'm gonna have to know it not at all But because it's one of those things where it's just like I can't know everything right, but but i'm glad that you're telling me I'm glad that you're telling me.
Speaker 1 [00:57:16] Yeah, yeah. Yeah, Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Luis Flores [00:57:20] Yeah. Yeah. I love that. No, I mean, I love it. Like I said before, once it leaves my studio, it's like I do as much as I can to understand how the work is going to be interpreted, but there's only so much that I can do. I don't know every reference. And I love that. It's just like, well, that's great. The references that you bring in, your experience that you're bringing to the work, that you have your own sort of perspective on the work. But I gotta look it up now, I definitely have to look it
Speaker 1 [00:57:51] I would have Charlie said he had like glasses on his attitude, but tell us about the twilight, how long is it going to take to finish?
Luis Flores [00:57:58] So I probably have like another solid month.
Speaker 1 [00:58:03] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Luis Flores [00:58:09] Yeah so as part of the piece there's this crochet toilet that I've been working on. I've working on it for over a year now on and off in between projects. I probably have a solid month and a half of crochet if I'm not working on anything else like a solid month and half of just crocheting and finishing this toilet. Most of it is done. I'm just left with the the part of the toilet that holds the water, the... I forget what it's called. The tank, thank you. Yeah, the tank of the toilet is the remaining bit that I need to crochet, which is the least complicated of all of the other parts that make up the toilet. So I'm really looking forward to that because it's straightforward. Like, I don't have to think too much about it. There's not too much sort of expanding and contracting that needs to happen with the crochet work. So yeah, it makes it so much more enjoyable because I'm not hunched over like. Trying to get underneath the toilet and all, like articulate all of these different parts of the toilet where it's just difficult to get into. It's just like straight shot, done. That's gonna be nice, but it's beautiful. Like the way that it exists right now, it's such a beautiful object. Like nobody really thinks to look at a toilet, right? Like there's been artists that have played with the toilet, like there's a historical precedent that's been made with artists working with toilets. But when you see it for me in this way with this material. It just changes, like it really lets you appreciate the object. Something we all use on a daily basis multiple times a day. It's just like, oh, it's really beautiful. Like it's such a sculptural work of art in itself. And like having this crochet skin over it really lets you appreciate it in that way. But, and then like I have my intervention with it with this figure being drowning its own phallus in the toilet and killing it, which puts its own little spin on it. But sometimes I'm like, ah, I should just leave it as a toilet. Like it's just such a beautiful object, you know? And I may end up doing that, you now? We'll see what happens when everything is said and done. I may not like the figure or I may like it more. So we'll see.
