Music Credit: “NY” composed and performed by Kosta T, from the cd Soul Sand, used courtesy of Free Music Archive

Jo Reed: From the National Endowment for the Arts, this is Art Works, I’m Josephine Reed.

Dr. Alan Lightman is a man who wears many hats and he wears them all very well. A theoretical physicist who did research on black holes and the author of some 18 books of fiction and nonfiction, Lightman moves fluently from science to art and back again. For example, his 1992 novel Einstein’s Dreams, puts the readers inside Albert Einstein’s mind as he imagines many possible worlds as he discovers the theory of relativity. Adapted into dozens of plays and musicals it is a brilliant and lyrical example of the connections between art and science. While his 2018 book, Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine, is an elegant and moving collection of essays that explores our longing for certainty and permanence in light of the modern scientific view that all things in the physical world are uncertain and impermanent. This is an examination that Alan Lightman continues as the host and co-writer of the new PBS series “Searching: Our Quest for Meaning in the Age of Science.” Directed by Geoffrey Haines- Stiles, this visually-rich series with a haunting score by cellist Zoe Keating, brings an impressive group of scientists, philosophers, and faith leaders—two Nobel laureates, two MacArthur geniuses, the Dalai Lama—in conversation with Alan as they ponder questions of meaning. It’s a series that very much focuses on the journey and on the questions and observations made along the way. It is thought-provoking and artistically rewarding film-making that visually captures complicated scientific and philosophical inquiry. I spoke with Dr. Alan Lightman recently— while he was in Cambodia working with the not-for-profit he founded, the Harpswell Foundation, so you may occasionally hear the sounds of Phnom Penh in the background. I asked him to describe the event that kicked off this whole exploration that began one night on a boat in Maine.

Alan Lightman: My wife is a painter, and she and I have been very privileged and fortunate to live on a small island in Maine in the summertime. And there are no ferries or bridges to the island, so each person has their own boat. And one night, I was coming back to our place on the island, very late after midnight. It was quiet and the stars were blazing in the sky. And I decided to turn off the engine of the boat and it got very quiet. Then I turned off the running lights for the boat, and it got even darker. And I lay down in the bottom of the boat and just looked up. And after a while, I felt like I was falling into infinity. I felt like I was becoming part of the stars, like I was merging with something much larger than myself. And I lost all sense of my body, I lost sense of where I was and I lost sense of time, and it was a transcendent experience. I think that most of us have had experiences like that, maybe not that particular experience, but experiences where we feel connected to something much larger than ourselves. So I wondered, how do we reconcile an experience like that with a materialist, scientific view of the world? And so that was really the beginning of my journey.

Jo Reed: And you’ve documented that journey beautifully through your books, particularly, Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine. Why the decision to bring it to television as a series?

Alan Lightman: Good question. I was not planning on bringing this to television, and had no plans to ever have a television program based on my books. About three and a half years ago, the director and producer, Geoffrey Haines-Stiles-- who was one of the senior producers of a Carl Sagan's original "Cosmos" series in the 1980s, and has produced many other wonderful science documentaries-- contacted me and said that he was interested in possibly doing a television program based on my book "Searching for Stars" which he had recently read. And I said, "Well, if it's going to be all science, I'll respectfully decline. But if you can also-- if we can also explore the philosophical, ethical and even spiritual sides of science, which the book does, then I would be interested." And so that's how it started.

Jo Reed: And in Searching you do speak with scientists, philosophers, ethicists, and religious leaders. What are some of the questions you explore together?

Alan Lightman: One of the questions that we explore is, how do we fit into the grand scheme of things? We're a collection of atoms and molecules, each one of us, a special collection of course, and we have a limited lifespan of 100 years, which is nothing in the unfolding of the universe. We live on an ordinary planet, which is in an ordinary solar system, which is on the edge of a galaxy of 100 billion stars, and then there are billions of other galaxies. So it's a pretty big place out there, both in time and space, and how do we fit into that scheme? Another question that we explore is, if we're all material, atoms and molecules are just something that we argue for, how is it that these complex human experiences that we have-- like falling in love, or feeling connected to things larger than ourselves, or our awe at observing a sunset, our appreciation of beauty-- how do all of those complex human experiences arise from atoms and molecules? Because most scientists, I think probably all, believe that all of our mental experiences come from the brain and the brain is made out of neurons, which are made out of atoms and molecules. So how do you get all of this fabulous human experience from atoms and molecules? Why do we long for permanence, when everything around tells us that the universe is impermanent? So those are some of the big questions that we explore in the series.

Jo Reed: Well Alan, you're both a physicist and a writer, both a fiction and nonfiction. So scientist as well as an artist, and in my mind, actually kind of the perfect question-- the perfect person to be probing this. Can you just tell us a little bit about your background. When you were a kid, were you drawn to both art as well as science?

Alan Lightman: I was. I built rockets and remote control devices, and I also wrote poetry and short stories. Looking back on my childhood, I realize now that I had two different groups of friends. I had friends who were the science types. Those are the friends who love their math homework. And then I had artistic friends, who were editors of the school magazine. And I really loved being part of both groups of friends and never thought twice about being members of two different groups of people. I think that my observation-- I'm not a child psychologist, but my observation is that most children have an interest in both the sciences and the arts, even if they don't know what those disciplines mean, that they have a curiosity about understanding how the world works. They also like to chant and sing songs and a natural affinity for rhythms and for painting and drawing. And I think that, unfortunately for many children, their parents and teachers and friends steer them in one direction or the other. It's easier to get through life if you're either the scientific type, the deliberate rational type, or if you're more the artistic type, the spontaneous, more imaginative type. And it's just easier to get through life, at least through the institutions that we've created, if you're either the artist type or the scientific type. But I was fortunate to be able to navigate between those two forces and make a life in both the science and the arts.

Jo Reed: Well, I think both disciplines are seen as oppositional in some way, which I disagree with.

Alan Lightman: Me too.

Jo Reed: First of all. And I'm curious, as someone who has done both, if you can talk about the creative process unfolds in both and how they're similar. I understand how they're different, but they're also similar, and if you could tease that out for us a bit.

Alan Lightman: My experience is, there are many similarities in the creative process, both scientific creation and artistic creation. When I am being creative, and either working on a scientific problem or trying to put together a dialog for a character in a novel, I lose sense of myself, just as I was describing the situation when I was lying down in the bottom of the boat in Maine and looking up at the stars. I lose sense of my body. I lose sense of time, and I'm just in this world of creation. And I think that another similarity between the sciences and the arts is that both scientists and artists appreciate beauty. It's not exactly the same beauty, but there's some things that overlap. The appreciation of simplicity, which I think is part of our aesthetic of beauty. The appreciation of wholeness, the appreciation of inevitability. We've all heard symphonies or seen paintings where we think that not a single note or stroke could be changed. There's an inevitability about it, and there's an inevitability about Einstein's theory of gravity that you couldn't change one thing without the theory falling apart. So those are some of the similarities. But the sensation of creation, beyond the aesthetic, the sensation is the same when we're in that creative space.

Jo Reed: I find that very interesting. My ex-husband is a mathematician turned computer scientist and one word he often used was elegant or elegance. A calculation was elegant, or conversely, it was inelegant—which meant even if the calculation was correct, if the process was clunky, it was inelegant and that actually pained him.

Alan Lightman: Yes. I think elegance is another similarity. The appreciation of elegance. And interestingly enough, many scientists, and especially the greatest ones, when they're searching for new theories, they are guided by an aesthetic of elegance and simplicity. When Einstein discovered his theory of relativity of time and space-- the first experiments done to test this theory disagreed with the theory, and Einstein would not accept the results of the experiments. He said that the theory is too beautiful not to be true. And then a few years later, it was found that the experiments were wrong, not the theory. Of course, sometimes our ideas of aesthetics and science lead us astray, but the history of science mainly is a story of the search for elegance in nature.

Jo Reed: Scientists obviously rely on experimentation.

Alan Lightman: Of course.

Jo Reed: But they also use their imagination.

Alan Lightman: Yes.

Jo Reed: And in the same way, artists use their imagination, but they also have to know the craft of their art, the technique, in order to convey that imagination.

Alan Lightman: Yes, totally agree.

Jo Reed: You focused on science in graduate school, although you kept on writing. And you later observed that there were at least a few scientists who later became writers, but you knew no writers who became scientists, and that kind of accounted for that concentration in your life. But I also wonder, because there seem to be many scientists who do their best work when they're young, whereas in the arts, somehow you need that experience to help you really get better.

Alan Lightman: Yes.

Jo Reed: Which is not to say there are not young artists who are brilliant, but experience adds depth to the art.

Alan Lightman: That's true, what you just said, I believe. Science seems to be a young person's game. It seems that you need to have a certain limberness of mind, an ability to challenge authority. And if you look at the Nobel Prize winners, which is one measure of scientific greatness, not the only one. If you look at the ages of the people at the time that they did their work-- not necessarily the time that they won the prize, but the time that they did the work, you'll find that they're very young. And physics is usually in their 20s, and other sciences might be in their 30s. Whereas, as you said, in the arts, experience with life, especially if you're a novelist for example, experience with life enhances your creative powers. So science is a young person's game and that's why, when I was in my early 20s, I decided to focus mainly on science, but I did not give up my writing. I continued writing, but I just did it on the weekends and evenings until I was in my early 40s, and I realized that my powers as a scientist were beginning to decline. And that's when I began putting much more of my effort into my writing.

Jo Reed: Everything in the universe is connected and we really are the stuff that stars are made off, and we know this from science. And we know our galaxy is small, the earth is small, and we are very small on this little planet. But as we try to pull meaning out of this, that really isn't what scientists do. They're not the meaning makers. That's what artists and philosophers and spiritual leaders do.

Alan Lightman: Yes.

Jo Reed: And that's why you brought them into this conversation in this series.

Alan Lightman: Yes, agreed. That being said, and I totally agree with you, scientists often make discoveries that are useful for the philosophers and faith leaders--

Jo Reed: Oh yeah,

Alan Lightman: -- and ethicists, in finding meaning. So even though I don't think scientists themselves are particularly qualified to find meaning, the work that they do is part of our understanding of the world and our place in it.

Jo Reed: Absolutely. You can't charge anyone to do everything.

Alan Lightman: Yes.

Jo Reed: We're all part of a large conversation, I think.

Alan Lightman: Yeah, that's right.

Jo Reed: Well, one question that you posed and you discussed is, why do we humans long for permanence against all evidence presented by nature? And this informs so many aspects of all our lives, and I think it particularly drives the artistic impulse.

Alan Lightman: Well, I think that one of the greatest forces of human existence is awareness of our mortality. I think it comes into so many things. There was a whole book written by a philosopher and sociologist named Ernest Becker, I think "The Denial of Death," is the name of the book. And he argues that almost all of our institutions, our civilization, our science, our art, our buildings, all of it is an attempt to postpone our imminent death. There's a scene at the end of the series, "Searching," the very last scene where I'm standing on the top of a mountain that's 12,000 feet up. It's called Jungfraujoch. It's in Switzerland. And there are these very, very high mountains. And I look very, very small. I think one of the brilliant ideas of Geoffrey Haines-Stiles, the director, was to find this location and its metaphorical meaning. So I'm standing at the top of this mountain, and I look very, very small. But as you see where I'm standing, it's on a platform that is an astronomical observatory that has a dome, and that sort of represents that even though we are very, very small with our limited lifetimes and our mortality, that we are elevated somehow by our quest to understand the world, our search for meaning. And all of that is represented visually. That's one thing I learned from working with Geoff on this series, that visual images can tell stories by themselves. And all of that, even if I didn't say a word while I'm standing on this platform, surrounded by snow-covered mountains, this tiny speck of me, even if I didn't say a word, the scene would convey the whole story, in a sense.

Jo Reed: Oh, I think he gives us visuals in that series that really made visible the questions that you were exploring. I mean, he was just marvelous at bringing the metaphors that you used to life.

Alan Lightman: Yeah. The cinematography is just fabulous, and I can say that without bragging, because none of that is due to me. It's all due to Geoffrey Haines-Stiles and the camera crew that he assembled. Many camera crews, because it went to many different places in the world. But the camera crews and Geoff's vision produced all of those wonderful images.

Jo Reed: And of course, I couldn't help but think the artistry of filmmaking is elucidating really complicated scientific inquiry and also on a practical level: that two minutes of finished tape is the result of how many hours of work that we never see?

Alan Lightman: Right. And I can tell you, it was damn cold on that mountaintop.

Jo Reed: Oh my god, you could hardly articulate. I mean, I felt--

Alan Lightman: I could hardly-- yeah.

Jo Reed: I felt very bad for you.

Alan Lightman: I could hardly talk. My lips felt like they were frozen, and-- because it was not only, you know, near zero degrees, but there was a strong wind blowing. And although I put on lots of clothes, I still was shivering. At one point after, in post-production, we were thinking of this very high tech, essentially dubbing the voice. And we finally decided no, maybe we should let the viewers understand that I'm really, really cold, with the muffled words coming out.

Jo Reed: This viewer did, and felt for you. I mean, it was a glorious shot, but whoa!

Alan Lightman: Yeah.

Jo Reed: And conversely, I think it's close to the end of the first episode, you film underground. You travel to Montignac, and film in the prehistoric caves there.

Alan Lightman: Well, it was in this little town called Les Eyzies, where some of the prehistoric caves of France are located, and there are paintings on the walls there that go back twenty or thirty thousand years. And in addition to these beautiful paintings, there are at least one very unusual symbol. And you don't know exactly what this symbol means, but you know that, somehow, it represents the search for meaning. And the purpose of that scene, I think, and that whole segment, was to show that we human beings have been searching for meaning for a very long time. Of course, we have more advanced tools today. We have particle accelerators and earth-orbiting telescopes, but we're still searching for meaning, like we were there. And on the visuals-- we were speaking of visuals, a moment ago-- there's a bridge in this little town of Les Eyzies, and a river underneath it. And there was a moment where there was a mist hanging over the river, and trees overhanging the river, and the whole scene looked like a Monet painting. And Geoff got one of our camera people to send a camera flying over the river, and caught it on film.

Jo Reed: It was beautiful. It's a beautiful, beautiful series, visually. It's great filmmaking.

Alan Lightman: Well, thank you, Jo.

Jo Reed: The content and the delivery -- it's a great marriage. You speak to the Dalai Lama about consciousness, and I read in the show notes, first of all, that was the first thing you shot, which had to have been daunting. I know it would've been for me.

Alan Lightman: Yes.

Jo Reed: But it was also an incredibly interesting conversation. Can you just tell me about that whole experience?

Alan Lightman: Well, we couldn't actually get to Dharamsala, where the Dalai Lama was, because COVID was raging in India at the time, so the best we could do was to have a very high-tech Zoom between him and me. And there were two cameras-- local camera crews-- with him, in his private chapel in Dharamsala, and then I went to a Buddhist Tibetan temple in New Jersey. But because of the time difference, it was about midnight, my time. I think this was in July, when we filmed it-- it was boiling hot, and I thought, "If I'm speaking to the Dalai Lama, I should wear a jacket." Well, I was sweating profusely. We had a lot of camera lights to light me up, and I had to wear this jacket, and it was boiling hot, and I was really sweating buckets. So, that's sort of the context for this conversation with him. And I had a very big screen in front of me, which showed his face in great detail, and he had a screen in front of him, which showed me. And as soon as he came on, he gave me the biggest smile, and that was worth everything.

Jo Reed: You know, I was so struck by what he said about consciousness: that it precedes life, it precedes the universe.

Alan Lightman: Yes. I did ask him-- because we had just finished talking about whether an advanced android or computer could be conscious, and he said, "Absolutely not." And then I asked him whether consciousness requires life, because astronomers and physicists believe that, in 100 billion years or so, there won't be any life left in our universe, after all the stars burn out. Not only life like us, but life of any kind, we think, will not exist, at some point in the distant future. And I asked him whether you need life for consciousness, and he said no, that consciousness is not physical. And then he went on to say what you just said: that consciousness has no beginning and no end, that it's always there. Which is a pretty amazing statement. I have enormous respect and admiration for His Holiness. I don't share that view, but I think that many people do.

Jo Reed: I don't know if I do, but I know I like thinking about it as a possibility.

Alan Lightman: Yes.

Jo Reed: I like living inside of questions. I mean, I know a lot of people find that uncomfortable, but I'm lucky. I really am happy inside of a question.

Alan Lightman: Yes, and you're happy not knowing the answer, I guess, as well.

Jo Reed: Yeah. I am.

Alan Lightman: Yeah. Well, you know, I think that many scientists are happiest when there's a puzzle, and we yet-- we don't yet understand the answer. I think that's when science is the most exciting. And it may be true for the arts, as well. I know-- and I can only speak as an artist from novel-writing, which is as close as I can get to the arts, but when I'm struggling to understand a character, and there might be a single line of dialogue that I'm looking for, that can bring the character to life, that's when it's most interesting to me, most exciting.

Jo Reed: One of the most interesting segments in the show is when you ask a number of scientists: If they could push a button and get an answer to the biggest questions about the origin of consciousness, would they?

(“Searching” extract)

Alan Lightman: I wanted to talk to some leading scientists about their experiences with discovery. What did they find most rewarding? First, I returned to the McGovern Institute of brain research at MIT, which is headed by Robert Desimone. I asked him whether if he could push a button and get an answer to the biggest questions about the origins of consciousness, would you push the button?

Robert Desimone: Darn right, I would! (laughs)

Alan Lightman: Fabiola Giamatti, is now director general of CERN, the giant particle accelerator in Geneva, Switzerland. She worked on the discovery of the Higgs boson on a fundamental subatomic particle, would she push the button to learn the final laws of physics?

Fabiola Giamatti: I think, no, I would not push the button because I think what is important is not only the ultimate goal. I think equally fascinating is the path that brings us there.

Alan Lightman: Rai Weiss is a Nobel Laureate, for his four decades of work to detect gravitational waves, and achievements so difficult that even Albert Einstein thought it impossible. Would you push the button?

Rai Weiss : Of course, I would want to find out. Of course, I push that button.

Alan Lightman: Nergis Mavalvala is an immigrant from Pakistan. She's a MacArthur Genius. And the first woman to be Dean of Science at MIT. Nergis has been a major contributor to building the instruments that detected gravitational waves. Push the button?

Nergis Mavalvala: Absolutely not. I would break the button because part of the journey is peeling back the layers to see what's down there. I may, you know, just give it a tiny tap just to see what the next thing is…

Jo Reed: And I understand this was a very small sample size. We only saw the answer of four scientists-- two men, two women. The men said, yes, they would push that button, <laughs> without hesitation, and the women said, "No." <laughs>

Alan Lightman: I think that if you asked a larger range of people, that you would've gotten-- the gender association would've disappeared.

Jo Reed: I wondered about that. But their responses were so fascinating. So, let me ask you: would you push that button?

Alan Lightman: I would not push the button. I think that the journey of discovery is what drives our creativity. It stimulates us. I think, if we had all the answers, that it would probably squash our voyage, our journey. It would squash something of our creative impulse, I believe. So, I would not push the button.

Jo Reed: The series is also memorable because of its score, which was composed and performed by cellist Zoe Keating. How did you all work together? How and when did she come into the process?

Alan Lightman: Well, I can't praise her enough, just as I can't praise the director enough. Geoff knew Zoe Keating. He knew her music, I should say, and very much admired it. And we contacted her, and we had a meeting with her at a very early stage, and discussed the series with her, the ideas. We had done no filming at that point, I believe, and asked her if she would be interested, and she was. And so, at different points along the way, we sent her some of our early clips, before we had put everything together, and she composed, I think, first some of the theme music, some of the title music. We told her the sort of different plays of ideas that we had in the series, and some of the tension, the dramatic tensions, and all of that was grist for the mill for her. And she did send us drafts of things along the way, and there was a certain amount of back-and-forth where, if something didn't seem to fit quite right for us, we would send it back to her. Of course, you don't want to interfere with another working artist too much. You don't want to hem them in, so we wanted to make sure that we were not interfering or limiting her own creative process. But one of the most interesting things for me-- I mean, as a writer, I've always worked in isolation. You know, I like to be in a room that's very quiet. I only get up, rarely, to eat meals. I don't have-- I even-- don't even have an open window. I like serenity and quiet and isolation. So, I'm like a soloist. But working on this film, I became a member of a large orchestra, with a musician, Zoe Keating; a director, Geoff Haines-Stiles; and many other very talented and creative people, who are all working together to make this series. And that was a new experience for me: just the collaborative nature of making a film.

Jo Reed: Well, there is a wonderful moment where you take some time to very closely observe, with a microscope, all the critters in just one square inch of soil. And it's a beautiful moment, and I thought she scored it perfectly.

Alan Lightman: Yeah.

Jo Reed: But I also thought it was a really important moment that explores what it means to stop, and observe, and be in the moment.

Alan Lightman: Yes, because I think that that moment came after a cosmological discussion, where we're talking about billions of years in time, and billions of light years in distance. And, the series is about our search for meaning. Is meaning about things that last? But, of course, nothing lasts. We sort of hypothesize that meaning exists in the moment, and, in the world that we live in today, this fast-paced world, we're all rushing around from one appointment to the next. We look at our smartphones every five minutes, and we rarely give ourselves the permission and opportunity to just stop and live in the moment, just pay attention to what's happening in the moment. There's a Buddhist concept called mindfulness, which is simply being present. And we try to convey that in that scene with the magnifying glass, looking at the one square inch. We're just trying to be in the moment, and be present.

Jo Reed: You went to the LIGO Lab, which is a large-scale physics observatory designed to detect gravitational waves, and it's 40 years in the making. And the scientist working on it for all those years, Rai Weiss, explained how he kept at it.

Alan Lightman: Yes. I did ask Rai what kept him going for 40 years, and he said, "The fun of it," basically; that it was fun. This is another example of the quest being as important as the answer; that what kept him going, and other people going-- I mean, graduate students came and went over the 40-year period, not seeing the results of the final detection, but each year, there was an advance in the equipment. The equipment got better and better and better and better, until finally it was sensitive enough to detect gravitational waves, which are very weak. And along the way, all of these improvements and technological advances were made, that continue to provide excitement-- and just plain old fun-- to people like Rai Weiss. So, that's what kept him going.

Jo Reed: I loved that section of the series. The look on his face-- it's exactly the look I think we all want to have, when we think about our life's work.

Alan Lightman: One of the things that we were hoping to do in this series is to convey the passion that scientists have for their work. And, of course, artists and philosophers and other creative people have passion, as well. But we wanted to show how excited scientists are about their work; the passion. Most scientists, they're not doing what they're doing to make a car that goes faster, or create a better washing machine. They're doing it because they're learning something new about the way the world works, and the trip is just so thrilling.

Jo Reed: And that is a great place to leave it. Alan Lightman, thank you and thank you for giving me your time. It's ten thirty at night for you right now, so thank you. I know it's the end of a long day.

Alan Lightman: Well, I very much appreciate being on your podcast, Jo. Thank you for inviting me.

Jo Reed: You're very welcome, and thank you.

That was physicist and writer Dr. Alan Lightman. He’s the host and co-writer of the new PBS series “Searching: Our Quest for Meaning in the Age of Science.” You can watch the series on your local PBS station or online at searchingformeaning.org where you can also find background on the people, places and ideas in Searching, as well as a forum so you can continue to explore these ideas with other viewers. We’ll have a link in our shownotes.

You’ve been listening to Art Works produced at the National Endowment for the Arts. We’d love to know your thoughts—email us at artworkspod@arts.gov. And follow us wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a rating on Apple, it helps people to find us. For the National Endowment for the Arts, I’m Josephine Reed. Thanks for listening.

Alan Lightman: One of the most interesting things for me-- as a writer, I've always worked in isolation. You know, I like to be in a room that's very quiet. I only get up, rarely, to eat meals. I don't even have an open window. I like serenity and quiet and isolation. So, I'm like a soloist. But working on this film, I became a member of a large orchestra, with a musician, Zoe Keating; a director, Geoff Haines-Stiles; and many other very talented and creative people, who are all working together to make this series. And that was a new experience for me: just the collaborative nature of making a film.

Music Credit: “NY” composed and performed by Kosta T from the cd Soul Sand. Used courtesy of the Free Music Archive.

Jo Reed: From the National Endowment for the Arts, this is Art Works, I’m Josephine Reed. Lately, maybe because it’s a cold and gloomy January--I’ve been thinking a lot about the art of quilting  and how people create beautiful patterns and narratives from pieces of cloth and the result is a piece of art—that warms your body as well as your spirit. I’ve been fortunate to interview many fabric artists during my time at the Arts Endowment, including the 2014 Bess Lomax Hawes National Heritage Fellow for Advocacy in the Folk and Traditional arts, quilter, curator, and author Carolyn Mazloomi…. And it seemed like a good time to revisit my 2015 interview with this artist and advocate.

Carolyn Mazloomi: I firmly believe that creating art and folk art, which I call “The People’s Art”, by ordinary people, which has the capacity to affect the spirit, not all, I really feel that work is spirit driven. When you create a piece that has touched the heart, spirit, and soul of a person that’s looking at it, it no longer belongs to you, no longer belongs to the maker. It belongs to the public at large. 

Jo Reed: Carolyn Mazloomi creates quilts that tell stories of the African-American community and its history: from Billie Holiday and jazz to the march from Selma to Montgomery.  Dr. Mazloomi uses needle and thread to show the extraordinary diversity and spirit within the African American community.

Quilts aren't her first love.  Oddly enough, airplanes are, and Carolyn Mazloomi has a Ph.D in aerospace engineering to prove it.   But once she discovered quilting, she embraced it wholeheartedly.  Her work has been exhibited in galleries around the country.  Dr. Mazloomi also curates exhibits of African American quilts, and she's written many books about the art form as well, including the influential Spirits of the Cloth.  And as that isn’t enough, Carolyn Mazloomi is the founder of the Women of Color Quilter's Network: an organization created to protect the quilters and their quilts.   She is an artist with a mission who shines her light on the art form of quiltmaking and its reflection of the African American community.  It’s little wonder that Carolyn Mazloomi was awarded the 2014 Bess Lomax Hawes National Heritage Fellow for Advocacy in the Folk and Traditional arts.  I sat down with Carolyn when she came to Washington DC to receive her award. Here's our conversation:

Jo Reed: First, again, congratulations.

Carolyn Mazloomi:  Thank you.

Jo Reed:  Can you tell me about your upbringing?  Where were you raised?  What was your childhood like?

Carolyn Mazloomi:  I was born in Baton Rouge and a very simple childhood.  I was a very quiet person and very much the bookworm and concentrated more on my studies and reading, and not so much extracurricular activities, but just a good student and always I loved books and reading. 

Jo Reed:  Were there quilts in your life when you were a kid?

Carolyn Mazloomi:  Not really.  I had my grandmother who had a quilt on her bed, and I don’t know who made that quilt, but that was my only recollection of a quilt.  So, other than coming there and seeing that one quilt, I can say really I didn’t grow up with quilts.  Nevertheless, I have come to love them.

Jo Reed: You loved airplanes. 

Carolyn Mazloomi:  Yes, I do. 

Jo Reed:  Can you talk about what it is about planes that just inflamed your imagination?

Carolyn Mazloomi:  First of all, the mechanics and the design.  I think it’s just the greatest invention of all time to have a machine in flight, and I’ve always been fascinated from a child with airplanes, always.  And from a young child, I knew one day I would learn to fly; I knew one day I would be somehow involved in doing something with airplanes and it just so happened I married an aircraft engineer as well and we both have that in common. Our family, our family and airplanes. 

Jo Reed:  You have a PhD in Aerospace Engineering.

Carolyn Mazloomi:  Yes, and I came along at an era when getting an education for me, it didn’t cost that much and these opportunities presented themselves to get advanced degrees and through a scholarship and I didn’t have to pay.  So, of course, I took advantage of that. I’ve always said I’ve had many careers, I’ve had many interests and I continue to have many interests.  So, along with the airplanes and along with that education, I became interested in quilt making.  I became interested in the art.  I became interested in quilt history, and that continues to this day.

Jo Reed:  Do you remember when you first became interested in quilting?  Was there a particular quilt that you saw?

Carolyn Mazloomi:  Yes.  I became really interested in learning how to quilt after I saw a quilt at the International Trade Market in Dallas, Texas.  I, at that time, owned a gift shop and went there to buy merchandise for my store and it was a time when the Appalachian Cooperatives had first started selling their quilts wholesale to the trade and I was walking by a dealer’s showroom and I saw this traditional American patchwork quilt.  It was patchwork in the middle and it had an eagle in each corner, an appliqued eagle and it just stopped me in my tracks, and I think that’s the lure of quilting and quilts.  That quilt just called me and just said, “Okay, touch me.  Feel me,” and we as quilt makers know we’re not supposed to touch the quilts, but we’re the worst offenders.  It’s something about the cloth and our connection as human beings to the cloth.  This is something we’re swathed in from birth.  It’s the last thing that touches our body in death.  So, we have a lifelong love affair with the cloth.  You can’t get away from it.  You can’t deny it.  So, seeing that quilt started this journey.

Jo Reed:  Did you go out and buy quilting material and get to work?

Carolyn Mazloomi:  I was living in Los Angeles at the time and I left Dallas and I came back home with a determination to learn how to quilt.  Unfortunately, I could not find any classes at the time.  So, I just got a “how to” book and I taught myself how to quilt. 

Jo Reed:  How were those early quilts?

Carolyn Mazloomi:  Terrible. My first quilt was a simple nine patch quilt and I had this “how to” book and I wanted my quilt to be an authentic American quilt.  I wanted cotton batting and I couldn’t find any cotton batting at the time.  I could only find the poly bat, which was really popular back in the ‘70s.  So, I went to the drug store and got the first aid cotton.  For those people that are my age and older, over 65, they’ll remember the Red Cross cotton in the box and you get a little pad of cotton about maybe four by four inches and I got boxes of that and I kept running out of it and I would have to return to the pharmacy to get more of these boxes of first aid cotton.  And finally, one day, the pharmacist stopped me in the store after I don’t know how many trips to get this cotton and he told me; he says, “Dr. Mazloomi, I hate to interfere in your personal life, but I have to say whoever in your home is sick, I think you should get them to the hospital right away.”  So, that was my first experience making a quilt and then I really didn’t follow the directions and prewash everything and I washed it after my little kids got it dirty and dried it in the dryer and the middle of the quilt stands up like an egg.  And it looks quite three-dimensional.

Jo Reed:  You were ahead of your time.

Carolyn Mazloomi:  Hey, you know.  So now, I just pay my kids not to show anybody that quilt, but I’d like to think I’ve improved a little bit.

Jo Reed:  But, it sounds like the passion you had for quilting was there right at the first one.

Carolyn Mazloomi:  Anybody involved in quilting, I guess in any hobby, it becomes an all-consuming entity, you know.  It’s like breathing.  It’s inseparable.

Jo Reed:  What’s your process for making quilts?

Carolyn Mazloomi:  Well, I keep diaries of my thoughts and my dreams and I refer back to those diaries when I get ready to design a quilt.  And I can see it in my head.  The quilt design depends on the story I’m trying to tell and I work on more than one project at a time, several actually at a time, and I will draw the piece out first, draw the images. Each individual quilt determines the process.  So, it can be either appliqued, painted, or stenciled and I work exclusively in black and white now.  I started out making black and white quilts.  So, I’ve dabbled in other designs and what not.  However, I find that I don’t like using a lot of colors in my quilts.  I love black and white.  I like the drama of it.  I like the simplicity of it, and those two colors become a part of my story.  I look at life, everything is black and white, everything.  Everything from me is pretty much cut and dry with the story that I’m trying to tell.  And then, the work reminds me of linocuts and I collect linocuts.  So, I’m happy doing the black and white.

Jo Reed:  You mentioned telling a story, and that brings me to your writing about African American quilting, You've written that's there's a great diversity of quilts in the African-American community, but there really seems to be a focus or a lot written about one, and that's the improvisational quilt.

Carolyn Mazloomi:  Yes. Within the African American quilt community, you find a variety of quilts. We’re not just relegated to making improvisational quilts. I’m very happy to receive the Heritage Award and come here and talk a little bit about those quilts because, prior to this time, I noticed that most of the honorees in the quilt section, you know, they’ve been traditional quilters leaning towards improvisation.  That does not describe the depth of what can be found in the quilt community, in the national African American quilt community.  Improvisation is just one type of quilt, and when you survey all of the quilts within the community, you’ll find that that’s just a tiny percentage.  It’s less than one-percent this improvisational quilting.

Jo Reed:  Can you explain what that is?

Carolyn Mazloomi:  Improvisational quilting means to make a quilt without benefit of a pattern or a design.  It’s free-hand cut.

Jo Reed:  And you think that there’s really an overemphasis on the improvisational quilts that African Americans create?

Carolyn Mazloomi:  Definitely.  The variety of quilts found within the African American community are just as varied as we are people. You can find art quilts, traditional quilts, folk art quilts, as well as improvisational quilts. You can find narrative quilts, abstract quilts: everything you would find in the white quilt community, you can find in the African American community. The only thing that sort of separates it is the spirit, the spirit with which it’s done. The spirit makes the difference. The colors make the difference. The story makes the difference. I collect and specialize in narrative quilts and we own our story. No one can tell our story like we can tell our story. That sets us apart because it’s a unique story to African American culture, African American history.

Jo Reed:  You also curate exhibitions of quilts and you curated one that opened very recently. What’s the name of it?

Carolyn Mazloomi:  “And Still We Rise”. Raise culture and visual conversations. It’s a traveling exhibit and it traces 400 years of African American history, from 1619 to present day and what I did for this show was create a timeline of events that were unique to African American history, that impacted our history in some way as to inflict a major change. And it’s an extraordinary exhibit of narrative quilts.

Jo Reed:  Carolyn, why this exhibit? Why “And Still We Rise”, focusing on African American history?

Carolyn Mazloomi:  It’s easy, I feel, to learn about history through visual arts as opposed to reading. Statistics show that most Americans don’t necessarily get their historical information from reading. So, I thought it would be an easy fix to put this visual survey, historical survey together to talk about African American history and events that have impacted us and created the exhibit also to let people from outside of African American culture know about the contributions to American culture by black people and what are some of the trials and tribulations that black people have gone through that have shaped our lives and, hopefully, the exhibition can start a conversation as well about race relations in this country.

Jo Reed:  I wanna just stop you right there Carolyn, because I really would like you to address the ability of art to start these conversations, to, not just to instruct people, but to move them.

Carolyn Mazloomi: I firmly believe that creating art and folk art, which I call “The People’s Art”, by ordinary people, which has the capacity to affect the spirit, not all, I really feel that work is spirit driven. When you create a piece that has touched the heart, spirit, and soul of a person that’s looking at it, it no longer belongs to you, no longer belongs to the maker. It belongs to the public at large.  It’s a teaching tool. That’s what the quilts are in “And Still We Rise”. Each one is a powerful tool to impact the viewer in such a way as to make them stop and think.

Jo Reed:  How did you organize that exhibition? Are you doing it by period, by concept? How did you approach it?

Carolyn Mazloomi: The Exhibition is divided according to the era in our country’s history. There’s one section that is devoted strictly to the Civil Rights movement. Powerful quilts.  During the time the show was up at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, I would sometimes just go and sit and watch people walk through that show to see their reactions to the piece.  And sometimes, I would go and speak with them, especially young people because so many of them, so many young African Americans don’t know their history.  They don’t, and it’s eye opening when I talk about the quilts and tell them the stories.  And many of them just don’t know and they just don’t understand, and I’m with them in that particular section and I explain the quilts and I ask them a simple question, “Would you put your life on the line for freedom?  Can you do that?”  I believe it was Maya Angelou that once said, “Every young African American has been paid for.”  This is such a true statement, such a true statement.  They’ve been paid for by the struggles of so many people that have come before, that have enabled me to get an education and be who I am today and my children.  So, I ask, “Would you be willing to put your life on the line for freedom?”  That’s a powerful, powerful statement and it’s a powerful gift that the freedom workers, freedom marchers have given to young African American people and they can see that in that time line and this exhibit.  And to me, as a curator and as an artist, it’s important that the exhibition has something important to say that’s of value to humanity.  It’s important to make a statement to educate people, to make them think.  

Jo Reed:  Do you think that’s one of the reasons you tend to work in a series and you do a series?

Carolyn Mazloomi:  Definitely.  Most definitely.  I’m doing a series now about disadvantaged children around the world.  I just finished a piece about Syrian children that are working, picking potatoes on farm.  They’ve been displaced, their families displaced and their circumstances are dire and anything that concerns children and women concern me.  Every other quilt I make deals with the status of women, the most important human beings on the planet.  They have the most important job as first teachers of their children.  It’s the most influential position on the planet because we influence every human being on the planet, women, women.  Our job is not easy, but it’s the most important and sometimes, the most overlooked. 

Jo Reed:  No argument here. You founded in 1985 the Women of Color Quilters Network.

Carolyn Mazloomi:  Yes.

Jo Reed:  Tell me about that.  What was lacking?

Carolyn Mazloomi:  I founded the Women of Color Quilters Network in order to educate African American quilt makers not only about the cultural significance and the history of quilt making, but also to educate them about the monetary value of the quilts because I saw at that time, in my travels, quilts in art galleries and the galleries were asking enormous sums for the quilts and the quilters were just giving them away because they had no monetary value attached to them.  That’s not fair.  So, if you’re going to sell your work, you need to know what the work is worth so that you can get a fair price for your work.  At the time I started out, we had cooperatives popping up all over the United States of quilt makers.  So, you had many women making their living making quilts.  So to me, it’s important that you know what the quilts are worth.

Jo Reed:  How many members are in the network?

Carolyn Mazloomi:  There are 1,700.  Approximately 1,700. 

Jo Reed:  You sometimes represent women when collectors are calling and they’re looking for quilts.

Carolyn Mazloomi:  Yes.  I have many times sold quilts on behalf of network members or facilitated sales on behalf of network members, yes. I charge nothing for that. 

Jo Reed:  And in fact, all the money you make you put into the network.

Carolyn Mazloomi:  Yes.  After 30 years of trying to get a grant, we’ve just got a great from the NEA.

Jo Reed:  Whoo.

Carolyn Mazloomi:  A $30,000 grant from the NEA to do the catalog for “And Still We Rise.”  Like many grassroots organizations, money is very difficult to come by and I, in the last 30 years, have, with one other network member, underwritten all of the cost for the network.  I write the books.  I publish the books.  I underwrite the exhibitions.  We’ve had nine major touring exhibitions and I’ve underwritten all of them over the years.  For me, I feel, that’s my mission, to carve out a piece of American quilt history for African American quilts.  That’s important.  It’s important for me to know that African American quilts have a presence in American quilt history and it is documented as such.  It’s important.  It’s important to me.  It’s important to my children, their children.  We are a part of history and that should be duly noted.

Jo Reed:  you quilt, you write, and you curate exhibitions and, that’s a lot of balls to be juggling.

Carolyn Mazloomi:  Definitely.  Curating an African American made quilt show is difficult.  Finding the quilts and asking people if they would agree to loan me those quilts for two or three years while these quilts are traveling, it’s difficult because they didn’t make the quilts with that in mind.  They made the quilts for their family or friends or church.  They weren’t thinking about a museum show.  So, that’s a whole education all unto itself, and it is ongoing. 

Jo Reed:  You’ve written extensively about quilt making and probably Spirits of the Cloth is one of the best known.  That was a very influential book. Can you talk about that book?

Carolyn Mazloomi:  Well, it was the first book ever written on African American quilts that encompassed all styles, contemporary, art, traditional, and improvisational.  So, it broke ground in that way.  Since that time, I’ve written several books and actually, the books served as catalogs to touring exhibits on many topics, jazz, women’s history, African American history. So, that documentation is important.  We have to document what we do.  I don’t curate any show without writing a book, but Spirits of the Cloth was the first and it laid the groundwork for what was to come.

Jo Reed:  And this summer, you were in South Africa.

Carolyn Mazloomi:  I curated an exhibit, co-curated with Dr. Marsha MacDowell an exhibit that opened in Johannesburg.  I did not go for health reasons.  I couldn’t go, but 80 network members did go, and that was one of the dreams of the founding members of the Women of Color Quilters Network, to do a quilt show in Africa and travel to Africa.  So, we’ve gotten that off our bucket list.  And the show celebrated the life of Nelson Mandela.  Half of the quilts, 40, came from the United States and half came from South Africa.  I curated the half that came from the United States and Dr. MacDowell curated the South African portion and it was just filled with spectacular works of art to celebrate a great man’s life, spectacular works. 

Jo Reed:  You were given the Bess Lomax Hawes Fellowship.

Carolyn Mazloomi:  Yes.  Its exciting to be recognized for doing something that I so love.  But in receiving this award, it also calls attention to the art of the African American quilt maker.  That’s even bigger for me, calling attention to the art form.  So for me, the award is really for every African American quilt maker that has ever put needle to threat to create a quilt.  It’s about them.

Jo Reed:  Thank you so much.  I really appreciate you giving me your time, and many congratulations for a work so well done.

Carolyn Mazloomi:  Thank you.

Jo Reed:  Thank you. We were revisiting my 2015 interview with the 2014 Bess Lomax Hawes National Heritage Fellow for Advocacy in the Folk and Traditional arts, quilter, curator, and author Dr. Carolyn Mazloomi. You can keep up with her at  carolynlmazloomi.com  where you can find out about her more recent work,  including the exhibition and book, “We Who Believe in Freedom.”    You’ve been listening to Art Works, produced at the National Endowment for the Arts. Follow Art Works wherever you get your podcasts and then leave us a rating on Apple, it helps people to find us.

For the National Endowment for the Arts, I'm Josephine Reed. Thanks for listening.