♪♪
-I remember the very first time I tried to draw.
I was about 3, and my sister was 5.
And she, being older than me,
I thought was amazing at everything.
And I really wanted to be an awesome artist
like my sister.
It was about six or seven years ago,
I found some early ephemera of me and hers,
and she drew stick figures.
She was a 5-year-old,
but I thought she was so incredible.
And I guess that that was the inspiration.
It's something that I have always loved to do,
is playing with materials and drawing.
I worked in textiles for a long time.
I did custom lighting and lighting pieces.
And I hated it, but I was really good at it.
But it was never for me.
It's so finicky and delicate,
and you have to be clean, clean, clean.
And then I met plaster something like 20 years ago,
and it was brutal,
and you have to put your whole body into it.
And I like that I get to play with mud for a living
and be messy, and I like that it's layers.
And that's how you make a giant mess.
There's many different kinds of plasters.
I have, for 20 years, worked in finish-grade plasters,
lime-based plasters like Marmorino,
Venetian plasters, and Tadelakt in specific
is a Moroccan plaster and it is just exceptional.
It is made using a lot of the similar materials
as a Marmorino or a Venetian plaster,
but it also has an obsidian glass ground into it.
It's been in the hands of men for a long time, plaster,
and they've been using it the same way --
either to fresco or as wall finishes.
But it's so much more than that.
And Tadelakt in specific can be so much more than that.
Just the way it works,
the different finishes you can get,
how you can see the particulates in it.
So, it really -- it really looks like stone.
We don't even know what it can do yet.
And that's one of the things I love about my medium,
is it's ancient and incredibly experimental.
The way you're going to get a specific texture
or visual effect with the plaster is with time.
So, whether or not you're going to burnish it,
leave it matte, whatever.
That drying process is integral
because you have to catch it at the right time
before you put your full weight in it
and burnish it and burnish it
and then get the effect you want.
I need the time in between.
I need the time to think about it
and to step away and really look at it
and let it fully cure
so that I understand how the next layer is going to interact.
Letting plaster layers dry has allowed me to go for walks,
and now that I have a daughter, to spend time with her.
Yeah.
April 11th, Violet Viper Bassett was born
and she is already a force to be reckoned with,
and it's been the best
because she reminded me that's what I was.
And I went through this really horrible loss before her.
And I used to not be able to look in the mirror
'cause I didn't see myself.
And I found this picture of
when I was doing stand-up in the Village in New York,
and I was like 22 years old and I was a force, you know?
And she is that.
And it's just such a pleasure and a delight to be around.
But yeah, it's the best decision I ever made, making that kid.
My whole body of work right now that I'm working on
until about May is called Time in a Bottle.
And all my pieces are about time 'cause it's my biggest enemy.
It doesn't play by any rules.
If you want more of it, there's less of it.
If you want it to stop, it goes faster.
If you want it to go faster, it slows down.
I went through a brutal heartbreak and loss,
and I don't understand.
You know, that happened in the same chunk of time
that I decided to use a donor and have my daughter,
and now there's all these moments
I want to freeze and keep forever.
But there were all these times where it wouldn't go fast enough
to help the heartbreak go away.
Or now it's like going so fast that I just had my kid,
but she's not a baby anymore.
She's going to be walking, and that's a blip.
And plaster is all about time.
It's so ancient and it'll be here forever.
It doesn't bleach. It doesn't fade.
When I make a piece, it's always very personal to me,
these thoughts or these memories I put into stone.
And the only meaning that they have
is if someone happens to engage with a piece I have
and they feel something.
♪♪
I go by "Monster" a lot of times
because monsters are just a creature
that you don't understand, that has incredible powers,
that everyone wants to destroy.
And I think that's how I've felt my whole life.
I'm not a princess. I'm not a hero.
I'm just a monster.
And I want to be in my lair and breathe fire and make magic.
If you're the scariest thing,
like, what do you have to be afraid of?
And I really, like, I feel like that I'm not afraid of anything.
♪♪
The lake is crystal clear, especially in the winter.
And I hate being cold,
but there's just this charge that happens
when you get in the water at whatever temperature,
and so I swim year-round.
And I do it in the morning.
No one else is up.
There's bald eagles down there that know me now.
They won't move. They'll be like 4 feet from me
on a branch by the lake, and it feels like
how people should live -- swimming in the cold,
and then you get out and you feel so alive
and you come in here and you play with mud.
I mean, I hazard to guess if anyone did this
for a month of their life,
that it wouldn't totally change how they feel about everything.
-Right now at Vetri,
we're showing the work of Dawn Bassett.
Dawn is somebody that has been working
in the medium of Tadelakt plaster,
and she's using it in a way that is very different
from anything that I've seen really anywhere.
She's able to take the things and the images out of her mind
that she wants to create and expertly create them.
And I think that's the difference with her work,
is that it's informed by what image she's trying to create,
but it's also informed by what the material will allow.
And it's her relationship with the material
that is a partnership
and making all the pieces that are in the gallery.
I think Dawn's career is headed in a global direction,
towards showing in more and more galleries
and working more and more in the studio.
This is what she's been working towards for so many years.
-When I think about where my work is going,
I've always said this,
and I don't care if people think I'm crazy --
I want Gagosian by 45.
And by that I mean I want a world stage for plaster.
I won't stop. I don't stop.
And I know that this material has so much to say.
And that's five years from now.
And what I'm going to be making in five years
is going to be crazy.
As long as people just get out of my way, it's happening.
♪♪
-Follow Dawn on Instagram
and at Vetri.
For hours and location
go to VetriGlass.com.
♪♪
Catch Art Zone Friday nights at 8
and anytime online
at SeattleChannel.org/ArtZone.
♪♪