When words fail to clearly convey what you feel or what you want to say, using a different medium may be more effective. Kate Byrne sits down with artist Tamara Garvey, who uses art to confront misogyny in this day and age, when women are attacked even by people in positions of power. She talks about her upcoming multimedia art show, The Winter of Discontent, featuring paintings of the Log Lady from Twin Peaks and recordings of real-life women responding to J.D. Vance’s infamous “childless cat ladies” statements. Discover how art can be an avenue of advocacy and bring empowerment to every single woman in the world.
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Not Taking No For An Answer: Winter Of Discontent: How Tamara Garvey Uses Art To Confront Misogyny And Reclaim History
Some comments are meant to provoke outrage. Others, however, reveal something deeper and frankly more dangerous about who is considered legitimate. My guest, Tamara Garvey, Artist, a skilled one at that, in her new exhibition called The Winter of our Discontent, responds to the latter, confronting a far too familiar and corrosive refrain echoed by people like JD Vance, the women’s worth, credibility, or stake in the future, while it’s all measured by motherhood, compliance, or silence.
What I love about Tamara is that she doesn’t argue back. She creates back. Her work transforms anger into inquiry, grief into form, and dismissal into something that demands attention. By doing a call for commentary around the country from women of all different shapes, sizes, voices, and places in the world, The Winter of our Discontent isn’t just a reaction to a moment, it’s actually a real record of what happens when women refuse to shrink in response to this kind of behavior. In fact, as I always say, yes, that’s right, it’s alchemy in action.
This exhibit doesn’t shout. It holds. In so doing, it asks a really powerful question. What happens when women turn dismissal into art and art into agency? I’m so thrilled to talk with Tamara about art as an advocacy, about making meaning in moments of backlash, and about what it looks like to claim space, creatively, publicly, unapologetically, and of course, not being shushed. Let’s start.
In this episode, we’re doing something a little more expansive than I’ve done historically. I know once you read what the conversation is about, you’ll understand why, especially in these crazy times in which we are living. I’m so excited that we are joined by a very talented artist, Tamara Garvey, to discuss her The Winter of our Discontent exhibit that is going to be available down in Savannah on January 30th, 2026. For those of you who aren’t able to, reading later, you’ll still be able to go to a website and get the gist. You’re going to want to. Tamara, welcome to the show.
Thank you so much for that great intro. Thank you for having me. I’m honored to be a guest.
The Origin Story Of The Winter Of Discontent Exhibit
It’s my pleasure. Let’s just talk a little bit of a background because readers, really, one of the things that Tamara is doing with this upcoming, exhibition, I guess I’d call it, is really using art as a form of advocacy and vision. Tamara, I’m really excited for you to talk and share a bit about the whole notion of and the thinking behind The Winter of our Discontent. Take it away, Sister Sledge.
I first came to this, I just came across this think piece essay online one summer that was about the Log Lady from Twin Peaks, which was a surrealist show that aired for just two years in the early ‘90s. I wasn’t like an enormous fan of Twin Peaks, but the character of the Log Lady, she’s this very whimsical middle-aged woman, and she walks around holding a log in her hands, and she thinks that the log speaks and that she understands what the log says.
In the course of the show, it’s about a murder being solved by these men in town, the police officers. The Log Lady shows up very occasionally on the show and she’s just like, “My log knows what’s going on. Ask the log. The log can tell you,” and they look at each other and they think, “This crazy lady, she’s like this witch running around town.”
I came across this random essay that I’m just going to read you the subtitle of the essay that’s it’s called, Ode to the Log Lady: A Cross Between a Village Idiot and an Oracle, the Twin Peaks character cradling a piece of wood invites us to look beyond clichés of womanhood. I just thought this was so funny, it’s just such a ridiculous whimsical description. I started reading the essay, I got into the idea of just doing a series of paintings of this Log Lady and just exploring her as a character.
I was tickled by this. I pitched this idea to a friend of mine who’s not an artist but just a really smart person and she was like, “This is a funny character. It’s a funny idea for a show, but what if people coming to your show, if they haven’t watched the show and they’re not around the same age as you and they don’t know this one particular character? This is a little bit narrow. Will a lot of people relate to that?”
I came away and was like, “That’s a good note. I should really think about that.” I went away and I kept sketching this log woman and Log Lady and doing a little research. I don’t know what happened, but very quickly after that, something shifted in my head. I think it was just the unrelenting barrage of assault of news and terrible things coming at us all the time. Something in my head shifted and I guess came across this like JD Vance quote about the childless cat ladies, which he actually said in 2021. It’s a few years old, but it’s always floating around in the news a little bit.
Something fell into my head like these puzzle pieces shifted and suddenly I had it. I had this whole larger connected thing where I thought, “I am going to go ahead and do these paintings of this cross between the village idiot and an oracle, this middle-aged woman, but I want to pair it with real women responding to this horrendous quote by one of our political leaders attacking all of us, all of women.”
I couldn’t tell you what the event was, but something shifted, I suddenly had it. I thought, “I’m going to ask real women to respond to this, I’m going to record their voices. The show is going to be a combination of paintings of the Log Lady and also this whole sound element of real people. I want to elevate real people’s voices.”
As time went on, I realized that in the backgrounds of all the Log Lady paintings, I wanted it to be a different conceptual serious or surreal images in the backgrounds that were going to be different symbolic backgrounds about womanhood. It’s a very long way of saying, but that’s how I came to all the pieces. It fell together pretty quickly once I thought about it. That was in the summer of 2025. I’ve been chipping away on this big series of paintings for the entire second half of 2025.
It’s so funny. The visual that comes to my mind is literally like just things, a Rubik’s cube coming into alignment, which is fantastic. What made you feel like, “I’m going to respond to this craziness through art?” I can think of what an answer would be, versus fighting with just more words.
I know you wanted to touch on this, I used to have a podcast too, until 2025. I had inherited a podcast from another artist in town in Savannah, this really nice guy named Rob Hessler. He had done it for five years and he was interviewing local artists about their practice and their concepts and their materials. He did it for five years and then he handed it off to me, which was a huge honor. I did it for three years. I had expanded it to where I talked to artists and authors and musicians in Savannah.
People underestimate how much creativity happens after your brain ticks away in the background. Share on XWhen it hit right just before the three-year mark, I thought, “I’ve really enjoyed doing this, but it is a whole lot of unpaid labor.” It’s a lot of research. It’s a lot of time to do it. I thought, “I’m coming to the end of it. I’d like to be done, I’m going to hand it off to a friend,” so I did that. I wound it down, I handed it off to a friend. I just thought, “I’m ready for new artistic challenges.” One of the last interviews I did was with a local artist who is non-binary.
At the end of our talk, their name is Max, we were both talking about how we were so upset by things politically and that we would love to be doing political art but neither of us knew what shape it would take. We’d sit there, feel thwarted, not know what exactly to paint. We had this energy in us that we felt like we wanted to say something.
Fast forward maybe a month later, it’s the end of the podcast, I suddenly have a lot more space in my life. Exactly then is when this idea came to me. It really does feel like in my head, I had a certain amount of space, of volume, and as the energy for the podcast was able to drain out, I literally had space for another big project to filter in and fill up the limited portions of my brain.
Savannah’s a really small city. All the artists we see each other, we go to each other’s shows. Max put on a group show of political art and I caught up with them and I was like, “That is so funny that one of the last interviews I did with you was with us both saying how we wish we could do some political art and neither of us knew what shape it would take.” I think it just takes some time. It just has to have some time to filter in your head and for you to realize what exactly you want to be painting and so that’s what happened.
The thing that I love about this too is it’s literally, when you make that space. I think a lot of us did that, at least I had a similar situation in July, August 2025 and I made space and literally, eighteen days later something fabulous dropped in my lap.
Yeah, it really is uncanny.
It was honestly something that I probably wouldn’t have naturally thought of for myself and yet it makes so much sense and it connects all the dots. Sometimes we have to get out of our own way.
Also, for creative things and something that you’re going to be making, I think people underestimate how much time and space and maybe relaxation you need to be at in your life. As I was saying, I wasn’t searching out all over the place of how am I going to make this Log Lady idea better per my friend’s advice. It just shifted and happened to me in my head because I had a little extra space and time. I think people underestimate how much of the creativity happens after your brain has been ticking away in the background.
Gathering Voicemails From Different Women
I was going to say that you receive, actually, as opposed to force and push, which is by the way, let’s just call it, I know this bit juju but I don’t care. That’s a much more feminine manner anyway because that’s your intuition more likely than not. I also just like too that, first, and it was fabulous doing the podcast, that was essentially you receiving from another, someone else’s thing. You made it your own, great. Now this, The Winter of our Discontent, this is your thing, all in. Talk a little bit about you launched this open call, inviting women to contribute their thoughts and feelings. Were there any surprises you had about like what came back to you emotionally or politically or thematically?
Yeah, it’s interesting. What I did in order to get this out there is I got a Google Voice number, which I’d never done before and then setting up the settings for it so that I’d be receiving texts and voicemails without anything actually ringing. It’s a different voicemail. What I did was I set up a Google Doc and I just made this link public to anyone who had the link. I just did this big text one piece of paper saying, “Seeking women and people assigned female at birth to lend your voices to an art show.” I did a little description, here’s the JD Vance statements. “I believe that it’s appalling for a public figure to be making statements like attacking the motivations and character and usefulness of 50% of the population. I would love to hear your thoughts. Voicemail preferred or text is fine,” and I gave my Google Voice number and then waited.
I would share this link to my Google Doc around on my social media. I said, “I’m looking for people to answer this from all over the country. Please feel free to share. I’d love to be getting women’s voices from all over the country.” Another thing I wanted at my show was to have a map with pins of where all I heard from people. I wasn’t looking for it to just be Savannah. I wanted it to really get out there. In the end, I’d had in my head this number. I was like, “I’d really like to have 100 people.” I just had this idea, this round number.
I really tried. I really pushed my link out there as much as I could. I ended up with about 53, 54 people. Not as many as I’d hoped, but I’m just like, I did my best, I really tried. I did get people from all over the country. I did definitely get strangers who it was clear someone had just shared the link with them and someone’s sister, someone’s cousin responded to it. They said, “I’m Doris from Seattle, Washington.” I was getting messages from people I didn’t even know.
A funny thing, as it went on, I discovered that Google Voice, you can leave a voicemail for up to three minutes and then it cuts off and so you’d have to call back and leave a second voicemail. I discovered this because a couple of people left a long three-minute voicemail and it cut off in the middle of it. I had to text them and say, “I love what you were saying. Your last thoughts were XYZ. Would you mind so much calling back and continuing?”
I added that to the Google Doc being like, “Attention, if you’re talking for a very long time, please keep an eye out, it’s going to cut you off.” A funny thing is that some people had so much to say that it spilled over into multiple voicemails. If people left me a text message, I just recorded their voicemail in my own voice. What I’m doing is I’m stringing together all of these individual voicemails into one long sound file. The other funny thing, I would not have even had the idea to ever do any sound element in my art if I hadn’t done the podcast. It would never have occurred to me to even try this.
The fact that I know technically now just the bare basics of editing where I can string together a bunch of different things into one sound file, I have the podcast to thank for knowing how to do that. As far as surprises, what I love about the things that I’ve received is that it’s a real mix of you can tell some people who just got on the horn and started talking and was really cathartic and they just went on and on and it spilled into everything they were upset about politically, which is great.
Some people, you could tell wrote it out. Some people were incredible writers, incredible thinkers. I would have a variety, a whole gamut of things from people being very emotional, going from topic to topic to some people who were lawyers or working at think tanks or something and were attacking with surgical precision, like what JD Vance was saying. It’s really incredible. I have a whole gamut of voices. I got people from all over the country. I’m really excited to have this sound element be a part of the show and to have this map showing where all I heard from people from.
I love that. Honestly, I’m a huge fan of sound myself. I’m visual, but really, the sound just resonates with you. There are certain things. It goes a little deeper. It anchors it, I think, to a bit.
It’s real people, the real voice. They’re starting off they say their first name, the town they’re from. This is a real person. I didn’t make this up.
The Story Behind The Log Lady
The Log Lady, there’s also some other visuals and cultural archetypes that are related in there. You got witches, you got suffragettes, you got outlaw women and folk heroes. Why was it important for you to situate this contemporary misogyny within a much longer historical and symbolic lineage?
I guess from the very beginning, I was like, “There would be these screenshots of the Log Lady that were available online,” and that’s what I used to paint her. She’s always facing forward, she’s cradling her log, she’s looking at the camera with a little quizzical Mona Lisa smile. The background needs to be something. Really quickly, I came up with the idea before I pitched it to this gallery who is showing me. I had a bunch of thumbnails and I said, “It’s going to be the Log Lady over and over again.”
The repetition is the funny interesting thing. With each one has a different background and different symbolic just aspects of femininity. As you said, one is about suffragettism. For each one also then, I had the opportunity to do research, like I had to research into symbolism about each thing, the history of it. I wanted to make each background really layered and to be real and not just a made-up thing. I wanted to take the opportunity for all of the square footage I have on each painting to say something.
Art: Each painting has a different background and a different symbolic aspect of femininity.
One is about suffragettes. I ended up doing research into suffragettism. One is like a Thelma and Louise background. Two of them actually ended up being Ruth Bader Ginsburg themed ones. One I’m really proud of and really excited about is a Woody Guthrie themed one. Yeah, one is woman as a devil, one is woman as a witch. Just different interesting symbolic backgrounds, some of them a little more serious, some a little more whimsical.
Each one is like very researched, with the wall text at the show next to each painting. For the people who are nerds like me and really like reading, I have a couple of paragraphs of research about each painting of this tree means something, this moon means something, this is the history of people burning witches in the in the US, etc.
Why Society Continue To Push Back Women Into Prescribed Roles
I swear I want to fly down there to see it. Thank you for doing it in the first place. That goes without saying. Why do you think society is really afraid of women but when women refuse these prescribed roles and driving us trying their damnedest to drive us back into it because I swear to God, more and more each day, I feel like it’s Handmaid’s Tale come to life.
I mean it’s very scary. Why does the patriarchy have to be a thing? That’s the entire point. For some people who are physically stronger to be able to have a whole other segment of the portion that they can keep down and in order to do that, it has to be through fear and legal reasons and subjugation and physical fear and being afraid of being injured and needing to turn to someone for “protection.” That’s how we ended up having these family units where you get a bum deal where you don’t get to have your own money and your own credit card or work and in response you work in the home and someone supposedly “takes care” of you. It’s not a good deal for most people.
The Unique Power Of Women To Speak The Truth
Yeah, no kidding. Not at all. Also being both artist and yourself a woman, how do you hold that balance between the creative, as an artist and then a woman living in this whole moment? Do you think that being a woman, does that give you a greater more in-depth mouthpiece from which to bring this to life?
Yeah, it’s interesting. From the very beginning when I issued this call, I was like, “It’s only open to women or people who were, like I said, assigned female at birth. Just basically not wanting CIS men. At the very beginning, I had a friend’s very nice husband who I was describing the project and he was really excited. He was like, “I have things to say about that JD Vance guy. I’d love to help.” I was like, “I really appreciate your energy on this. I really want my project to just be women’s voices, but you being a White guy, if you have thoughts to say about JD Vance, I’d love for you to put it out there and talk to them directly of what you think about them.”
No one gets to define what women are. Only women get to define themselves, not as a group or a hive mind, but individually. Share on XThe whole deal with these men is that the only people that they listen to are other men. The few times that other men did approach me and they were like, “I’d love to participate, I have thoughts, I’m on your side too,” I was like, “I love that energy but what I would hope is if you could speak out publicly and use your maleness to show other people. For my show, literally this is just for us.”
The deal is that the idea that this one man has spoken what he thinks about us as women. This is our chance to push back and say no man gets to define us who we are. We get to define that each of us for ourselves. Not as a group, we’re not a hive mind. Each person gets to say that for themselves. If I had other men speaking in the exhibition, even if they were “on our same side,” it’s subbing in another man’s voice for this man’s voice. From the beginning I was like, “No, girls only.” The opposite of a 1950s clubhouse that says no girls allowed. Mine was like, no boys allowed.
Letting Nature Speak About Femininity, Power, And Resilience
No boys allowed. Sorry, just us. I hear you on that and again thank you for that too. You talked a little bit earlier, you made reference to the fact that there’s quite a few layers. You’ve got Log Lady and then there’s the background. You also use, I noticed, lots of flowers and trees in natural symbolism. What about nature or what does nature allow us to say or you in this case to say about women and resilience and power that language alone cannot? Is it a different depiction of femininity?
I think it’s interesting that I mean I don’t know how this started, but almost every tree or plant or flower there is has imbued symbolism for it. Everything has been way back. I don’t know if it’s the Greeks, the Romans, whatever. Different flowers and plants have symbolism that are just in them. When you’re sending someone a bouquet of flowers, if you wanted to, you could do research and pick the flowers that symbolize what you’re actually trying to say to the person.
For example, in one of the paintings that I have that’s a Ruth Bader Ginsburg themed one, I have her surrounded by flowers and it’s Black-eyed Susans because in the course of my research I just saw that Black-eyed Susans symbolize strength and tenacity and resilience and I thought, “This is a great flower for RBG.” This is an example of when I’m showing my paintings in the gallery, next to each one I have little a couple of paragraphs of info because most people and me too until I looked at this would have looked at and been like, “That’s a pretty flower.” I tried to really imbue each one with very specific symbolism.
Art: Almost every plant or flower has an imbued symbolism for it.
To answer your question, during COVID when everyone was home and there was less pollution and less traffic out there and all the nature was regenerating, I actually did a series of paintings then about seasonal flowers and about the symbolism is just that an individual flower’s delicate and could be crushed pretty easily. The entire system comes back every year. The system as a whole is resilient and cyclical and it comes back every year.
It increases during the spring and summer and then it goes fallow and dormant during the winter and comes back again. I always have been interested in this idea of nature as a symbol for an individual being able to be crushed a little bit but the whole system of flowers as being powerful. The same could be said for individual people and individual women. Time has gone on and we’re still here. For individual people, just the idea of the strength in numbers, the unity of us, the cyclical nature of our struggles and our fights and how as time goes on, we have to keep fighting and we’re hopefully ticking forward little bits at a time, but we’re constantly fighting.
I think there’s also an evolution of our resourcefulness. I hate that we have to always do work arounds, and that’s just bleh. At the end of the day, if that’s what’s going to get us to where we need to get and that’s what we have to do right now, okay, forget it. We could sit and whine or we could just get it done. I appreciate that. Hopefully, one day.
That’s an interesting thing. I guess that touches on the internet as a whole, that with new technology, there are new ways to hurt people but also new technologies for people to share their voices and band together and share things that have happened to each other and to organize and get together.
That is a really good point. I was just looking at a quote that came through my feed and it was talking about how the solstice or the dark is also an opportunity for the light to shine through because it compares that contrast. It reminded me that there’s a dark and a shadow side to each. It’s the age old, which one of those wolves are you going to feed?
What Art Can Say That Words Cannot Say
Some days, it’s easier than others. Sometimes, it’s just frustrating that there still has to be some of both alive when it just seems so unfair. Art is so often just dismissed as emotional rather than truly consequential. That is not what I believe, but there are some, which is why, quite honestly, I think so many schools are losing their art programs and art funding. It’s not seen as necessary. It’s seen as a nice to have.
There’s not really that understanding of how it fuels the very thing that they want, which is innovation and connectivity and frankly, power in a lot of different ways. It gives voices to so many people who are just see the world differently, neurologically diverse, all sorts of things. What do you believe art can do culturally, politically that policy debates and pundits can’t?
It ties right into one of the paintings I did, which is Woody Guthrie themed. I can use this as a metaphor to answer your question. I was familiar with the song This Land is Your Land and I knew of this famous photo of him where he’s has a cigarette hanging out of his mouth and he’s holding his acoustic guitar and it says, “This machine kills fascists.” In the course of the summer of 2025, I wasn’t even forcing it. Just ideas were falling into place and it was just very kismet.
There are new ways to hurt people, but there are also new technologies for people to share their voices and get together. Share on XI thought of this image of him, this machine kills fascists image and I started doing research on that. I’m going to read just a little bit about it. I came up with on Woody Guthrie. He started writing this quote on his guitars in 1943. They say he borrowed the phrase from workers in an American factory supplying the Allied war effort during World War II, who wrote it on their lathes.
Woody Guthrie believed that music culture has the power to defeat right-wing extremists and their anti-democratic ideas. He fought back using ideas, language, music, and the shared desire to build a better future together. The, “This machine kills fascists,” message became linked to his guitar and to his purpose.
When I thought of this image and I started doing research and found all this about Woody Guthrie. He’s a little before my time. I did research on him. In my painting that I do of the Log Lady as Woody Guthrie, she’s holding her log and on the log I wrote, “This machine kills fascists,” I was like, “This is so funny. The log is wood, his guitar was wood, these ideas it ties in perfectly. I can write the same thing.” I have this painting where she has a harmonica, she has a cigarette hanging out of her mouth.
In the background, I wrote some of his lyrics of his songs. This is just to show the cyclical thing how things are ticking forward a little bit, but it’s the same stuff over and over again. He had a song that was about refugees, he had a song that was about literally defeating fascism. This is so crazy. Woody Guthrie had a song called Old Man Trump that was about Donald Trump’s father.
At the time, Woody Guthrie was living in New York and Donald Trump’s father had a lot of apartment buildings and had very racist practices of who he’d let live in the building. Woody Guthrie literally has a song out there called Old Man Trump about these discriminatory housing practices. I wrote some lines from this song Old Man Trump in the background of my Woody Guthrie painting.
I was like, “What a crazy tie-in. This is wild.” This is a long-winded way of answering your question about I took this inspiration from Woody Guthrie. It’s the song This Land is Your Land that I grew up singing in elementary school. This is just one of many songs that he was literally talking about the power of art and music to push back against literal fascism. It’s crazy, right?
Yeah, which is amazing and it also speaks to how some of these practices go through generations.
He was dealing with this during the Depression and World War II. Why are we doing this 80 years later?
What It Takes To Achieve Collective Repair And Healing
What the heck? How did this happen? I want to talk a little bit about repair, this notion of repair and all of that. I know a lot of your works reference the need for healing. That’s one of the things I love. It’s not critique. You’re literally going, “Collective responsibility. We can heal trying to see and aid people in getting through to the other side as opposed to just bashing the other side again and again. My experience with this is that’s a great way to just keep getting yourself deeper and deeper into a groove, which is not going to be so great. It’s not going to make you feel good. In your mind, what does repair look to you and who’s responsible?
A lot of the messages that women left me, people touched on all different facets of their response to this. Over and over again people just said they just lifted up and it was no matter whether people responded who had kids themselves or didn’t have kids. Everyone was on the same page just saying, “Women do so much for our community. When I go out and volunteer, it’s women who I see out there. Things for children at the PTA, people helping at schools, whether they have kids or not, people out there marching on the front lines of these rallies, it’s so many women.
A lot of the messages I was getting from people was everybody noticing this about each other and just pointing out how strong, how hard-working, how tenacious we are whether we have kids or not. Everybody is doing what they can, what time they have, what money, what energy, taking what your own personal gifts are in the world and what you have to give. If everybody can know enough about themselves to know what they have to give and give that then we could really get somewhere.
What To Expect From The Winter Of Discontent Exhibit
If everybody did their one little part. When we spoke it just reminded me of I’m going to refer to it as the little drummer girl as opposed to the little drummer boy, but it is. It’s what piece can you have and give? No piece is too small. Every little bit helps. For the folks who are going to come and see this, what do you hope they reclaim when they move through the exhibit and what do you hope they feel?
Specifically, the show I’m going to have sixteen paintings. Eight of them are small things. I have a whole series where I have a little painting of a log with a colored background. When people were leaving me their messages, I did a whole transcript of everything and I pulled out specific quotes I really liked that I wanted to elevate. I have a bunch of little square colorful paintings where just in the background I wrote, just stringing together my favorite lines from people’s quotes. When women come to the show, the women who live in Savannah, they’ll come and they can look on the squares and find their little quote, find their thing.
Art: I have a bunch of little colorful paintings with my favorite lines from people’s quotes.
I have a bunch of the paintings are small ones that. I have eight that are bigger that are of the Log Lady with these symbolic backgrounds. I’m going to have a log an actual log that I’ve hidden a little MP3 player behind and there will be headphone lines coming out of the log and you can walk over and put on the headphones and then that’s how you’re going to listen to the women’s voices, literally listening to the log how the Log Lady said.
Log Lady spoke the truth, you can go over and listen to the log. I had this idea where I was like, “You’re going to come to a show. You’re going to walk over and listen for a second.” It’s an hour and a half, this entire sound file I have. I want people to be able to read as much as the women’s words as they want. I’m also going to have a printout, a binder you can flip through. I have a transcript of every single message I got. It’s an eighteen-page document.
If people are really into it, they can walk over and look flip through this binder, look for their quote, look for their friend’s quotes, read through all these things that I got. I’m going to have a map with pins of where all I heard from people. The final thing that I came to late in the game was I have a second log, which my very kind boyfriend who’s been super supportive about this both emotionally and with actual woodworking help with this log.
We created a bunch of holes in or little cuts in the log and I’ll have a little pad of paper with a pen so if you want to then speak back to the log, you can walk over and write a little note and there’s a place to stick your note into the log. There will be a log to listen to and then a log to speak back if the show has given you some thoughts and you want to return your words back to the log.
I’m calling this a multimedia exhibition because I have all my paintings and I have these two physical logs, I have a sound element. Hopefully it’s a fun, interesting space for people to be in to be look at all this. The fact that I have this collateral material. I have this binder with eighteen pages of text to flip through if you want to read. If you want to look at the map and see where people responded to. If you want to talk back and leave a note for the log. There are little bits of interaction.
As I said at the beginning, I’ve really never done a show that was this serious or conceptual or that involved this much planning. I am very excited. The other aspect is that since I’ve had to be very public and publishing this link and once every few weeks posting on my social media and being like, “Ladies, do you want to respond?”
As it gets closer and I’m like, “Now it’s people are going to come and see these paintings.” I hope the paintings look good because I’ve been very public about the show in general and the call for entries. It is this pressure feeling as it gets closer where I’m like, “I can’t hide at all.” This is a very public endeavor from the beginning. I really hope that people come and are this was worth coming to. These are good paintings.
Talk about vulnerability. I’m sure they’re amazing. What are the dates? It’s January 30th through when?
I have a link to the page on the gallery website. This is very cool. They gave me a three-week show, they’re open on the weekend. There’s time on Saturday and Sunday over the course of 3 or 4 weekends to go see the show. I also get three events, which is awesome. It’s going to be on view from January 30th through February 21st. There’s an opening reception on Friday, January 30th. The next week, there’s a thing in Savannah we always do first Friday of every month where all the galleries open up and you can bop around and see the shows.
I actually have a second reception that following week, which is Friday, February 6th. Our thinking about this, which I think is true, the woman who runs the gallery said, “The people who go to the first Fridays are not necessarily there for you, they’re just out for the evening going around to the galleries. They might just stumble across this. The people who come to your reception will be because you invited them and they’re there for you. This way you split it where you get two different events, not one overcrowded event.”
I have these two Friday evening events and then on a Sunday, I have Sunday, February 15th. There’s going to an artist talk where I guess there’ll be chairs set up, I go there. I’m going to be interviewed by the woman who runs the gallery who’s also a friend of mine. I have to somehow be able to string sentences together in front of a crowd of people. Look forward to that.
Being A Conduit For Other People’s Opinions
I think that sounds amazing. The thing that’s great about that too is you’re going to have your group that already supports you. We’ll also actually get to be reminded of why you’re so fabulous. You’re going to be able to draw a whole new crowd and a whole different generation, I’m betting, at the first Friday group, which is really exciting. I’ll be really excited to see how that all transcribes. In closing, we’ve just been talking about how women have been going through this forever. Resisting, surviving, all that sort of thing. What to you right now feels urgently unfinished? It’s like, “Where do I begin? I thought it was finished.”
I will say it’s funny, another woman in town interviewed me and she asked a question like, “How are you feeling after all this? Do you feel positive or negative for the future?” I was gasping a fish. I was like, “I don’t even know how to answer.” She said, “You’re right. That is it’s really hard. Who knows how to answer that.” I was just like, “What I can say is it made me feel honored to have been able to provide a conduit for lots and lots of people to give their opinions.”
As I said, everybody spoke based on what felt good to them, either extemporaneously going off very emotionally or writing out with surgical precision an argument against it. Everybody got to give their literal voice. At the end of a lot of people’s messages, they thanked me for the opportunity. They said it felt cathartic.
In closing, I don’t know what the major thing is to work on. As I said earlier, everybody has their little bit that they can do that they can provide. My thing that I feel comfortable doing was doing this art project, putting my own paintings out there with my own research, what I wanted to do and then this element that I had no control over which is what other people were going to say and what messages they were going to leave me. I’m excited. I feel honored and proud that people trusted me to leave their opinion, put it on record, and that it will be played and that people can come and read their words and listen to their thoughts and I just feel proud to have been able to done this and stuck with it and that it’s actually happening.
Be Prepared To Get A Lot Of No’s
I’m just really psyched. Talk about, one, the amount of intentionality in this is stupendous. Second, to your point, talk about being the change you want the world to be. Everybody stepping forward and showing up and doing their piece. Tamara, thank you so much for making the time. Last really quick question. I always have to do it so I got to be consistent. Knowing what you know now, what advice would you give your younger self?
I would say the advice that I’ve given to other artists coming up is you have to be prepared that you’re going to be told no a lot and apply for things and be denied and not get into shows or not get into opportunities or not get the freelance job you want. You just have to push forward. Everybody was told no a ton of times at the beginning and continuously throughout our careers.
I still apply for things all the time and get turned down. The only difference between me and someone who I was in art school with at the same time who isn’t still doing their art is just that they were told no a few times and let it stop them. I was told no all the time and just kept going. That’s the only difference. I tell the young artists this all the time. Your professors are applying for things all the time and getting turned down. Older artists who are doing it full-time are applying for things all the time getting turned down. You just have to keep going. It’s just what happens.
I think that’s such a great reminder for everybody because it’s really true, especially when someone’s new or getting started or extending into something that’s not their usual activity or realm. It’s so easy to think, “Okay great. No, I don’t belong here. It’s a sign.” The truth is no one is going to sit there running around like, “Everybody says no to me,” but trust me, they do. You’re absolutely right. Brush yourself off.
Really, honestly, they always say rejection is direction. Every no that happens, as we were just referencing earlier, it’s making space and giving you a little nudge in a more powerful direction for you. It’s always good. The positive universe always has your best interest at heart. All right, Tamara, thank you so much. Congratulations on this terrific accomplishment. I can’t wait to see it. I’m trying to figure out if there’s a way I can get down there that weekend anyway.
It’s open for three weeks, so you’ve got a lot of events but thank you so much for taking the time to, in turn, elevate my voice. I really appreciate it. Thank you to everyone for taking the time to read.
Awesome. Thanks so much.
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KB Takeaways For This Episode
Wasn’t that great? I thought it would be so interesting to have the conversation with Tamara because when I received the link and the questions, I just thought, “What a great idea.” I love this notion of utilizing art as an advocate for us. KB Takeaway number one is, look for other avenues and unusual manners in which to make a point, reveal the situation, because one, that’s really quite resourceful and quite clever. It also really opens up and gives greater accessibility to others to get involved in the conversation in the first place.
Two, Be prepared to get no’s, lots of noes. We’ve all gotten noes. Not everybody talks about them but we’ve all had them. The only difference of those who have made it to the other side is because they did just that. They didn’t let them stop them. Little spoiler, you’re going to get a lot more noes the more unusual. Perhaps the more deliberate and provocative your commentary and your thinking is, the more it forces the status quo to be stretched, the more friction it causes, which makes sense. Just be prepared to do that. Just know, “If I’m really getting them all uppity, I must really be onto something.”
With that, I’ll just say thank you so much for joining me here. Let me know if there are other folks that you would to like to read about, what topics you’d to read. One of the things I’m really doubling down quite a bit on are intergenerational entrepreneurs and just intergenerational wisdom, workforces, trends.
Second, also will be taking a look at a group called Rebels With a Purpose, whereby I’m going to have at least one episode a month be devoted to someone who’s a social entrepreneur who’s really mixing it up and forcing us all to think and giving us the opportunity to do good. With that, thanks so much. Look forward to continuing the conversation on the next episode.
Important Links
About Tamara Garvey
Tamara Garvey graduated from SCAD (Savannah College of Art & Design) in 2008 with a B.F.A. in illustration, and in 2009 won an Honorable Mention in Savannah’s Telfair Art Fair. In 2010 she moved to NYC, where she spent 7 years selling her work in craft markets to art collectors from all over the world (including actor Adam Sandler and the late writer Elizabeth Wurtzel)
In 2017 Tamara moved back to Savannah and now work as a full-time artist. In 2020 Tamara received the Judith Alexander Foundation Relief Fund for Georgia Visual Artists, and joined Gallery 209 on River Street, where she shows the majority of her original paintings.
She’s proud to have been awarded 1st Place Mixed Media at the Society of Bluffton Artists in Bluffton, SC, in their 2021 Judged Show. And most recently, Tamara Garvey was voted Best Local Visual Artist in Connect Savannah’s “Best Of” Contest for 2023!