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Mark and Joe are joined by writer and broadcaster Lisa Brandt to talk about an environmental art installation by Bulgarian artist Christo Yavacheff and French artist Jeanne-Claude, the artists known jointly as Christo and Jeanne-Claude.
Lisa started in radio and has since moved into voice-over work and writing for hire as a freelancer, which she loves. She’s also penned several books.
The three discuss The Gates, one of the massive art projects of Christo and Jeanne-Claude. Lisa first encountered it as an abstract painting done by another artist. She tried to purchase the painting, but when that didn’t work out she was inspired to recreate it on her own using a scraper and thick wads of paint.
In radio work, the received wisdom is that there are ‘generators’ and ‘reactors.’ Lisa had been told that she was the latter, but the process of making the art made her realize she could be a generator too!
This epiphany led her into writing fiction, and other forms of creativity, such as stained glass and upholstery.
The three take a deep dive into how The Gates was created by Christo and Jeanne-Claude. The installation was constructed of more than 7,503 steel gates hung with saffron orange cloth, and situated throughout Central Park in New York City. [Some of them can be seen at the left, over Gapstow Bridge, and there are more images below.]
The Gates spanned twenty-three miles in Central Park; it ran from February 12th to the 27th in 2005.
Joe, Mark and Lisa go on to discuss the careers of Christo and Jeanne-Claude, talk about the nature of creativity, and explore the question: what does art do for the soul?
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Lisa Brandt likes to quote Betty White, who was once asked why she always kept so busy. Her reply: “You can’t hit a moving target.”
Lisa’s career started out in radio and she’s never really left the microphone behind. As a freelance voice-over artist, she’s done work for clients such as Nivea, BMO, RBC, Stella Artois, Dairy Queen, Honda, and Ford.
She’s also worked as a writer and editor. And published books too!
As discussed in the podcast, Lisa once worked at a naturalist colony, which she turned into a memoir called The Naked Truth. Her insider’s guide on how to get picked up by the media is called: Make the Media Want You. She even turned her life-threatening illness into a book: My Sepsis Story: How I Almost Died and You Don’t Have To. They’re all available at Amazon, along with the rest of her books.
If you’d like to engage Lisa’s wonderful voice for some voice-over work, you may want to check out the Voice-over Demos at her website. She also has a podcast, Gracefully & Frankly, that she does with her co-host, Erin Davis.
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