Small Lake City
Small Talk, Big City
Join host Erik Nilsson as he interviews the entrepreneurs, creators, and builders making Salt Lake City the best place it can be. Covering topics such as business, politics, art, food, and more you will get to know the amazing people behind the scenes investing their time and money to improve the place we call home.
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Small Lake City
S1, E54: Artist - Jeff Hein
Listeners are invited to discover the profound impact of personal adversity on Jeff's artistic journey, including a harrowing battle with medical neglect that led to life-altering surgeries. Despite these challenges, Jeff's dedication to art remained unwavering, and his story is a testament to resilience and the strength found in supportive relationships. From humorous college tales to the serendipitous beginnings of his podcast "The Undraped Artist," Jeff shares how these experiences fueled his passion and success in the art world. His journey underscores the unpredictability of life and the role of art in navigating personal and professional landscapes.
In this insightful conversation, Jeff not only discusses his artistic endeavors but also provides a unique perspective on the intricacies of art collecting and the motivations behind collectors' choices. We highlight the dynamic art scene in Utah, connections with notable artists like Howard Lyon, and the significance of the Hein Atelier in nurturing artistic talent. Whether you're an art aficionado or new to the scene, Jeff Hein's story offers profound reflections on perseverance, passion, and the transformative power of creativity. Join us for an episode filled with inspiration, humor, and valuable lessons from a life devoted to art.
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notebooks, but the only time I drew was when I didn't want to be studying. So it was in school, okay, but my initial thoughts were I'd never come back like I do not like utah. When I was on my mission, I got diagnosed with testicular cancer, which was a huge disappointment for obvious reasons, and then they removed about 80 of my intestines a couple times. They told me I'd probably die. I shouldn't say this on a public podcast, but I'm gonna Dude. I tell you this is true. I'm telling you it's a true story. It's hard to believe this is real and painting still kicks my butt and intimidates me more than anything else I've had my hands in, and I always hesitate to tell this, but I mean, it's the truth.
Speaker 2:What is up everybody and welcome back to another episode of the Small Lake City Podcast. I'm your host, eric Nilsen, and today's guest we have an artist by the name of Jeff Hine. Now, jeff Hine is a world-renowned portrait artist, an amazing, fine artist who's done so much for not only the Salt Lake community but the art community in whole. He has his own podcast, called the Undraped Artist, where he interviews a lot of successful artists, picks their brains and interviews them about their work. But we're going to talk to Jeff today a lot about his life, of growing up in New York, coming out to Salt Lake for a mission battling cancer, finding his step as an artist even though we didn't even know what being an artist was going to be. To talk a lot about some of his learnings in becoming an artist, as well as what he does in the community with the Hein Atelier.
Speaker 2:So a great episode. Whether you're an art enthusiast or not, great stories. He's a great person to have, great conversationalist and I think this is one you're all going to like. So enjoy, but I'm like. So, jeff, it's been fun to get. It kind of goes in the vein like we were talking about where, like, the art community in Utah is punches above its weight. It's a lot bigger than people think and if you don't really pay attention and kind of like jump in, you really miss a lot of the details. And it's interesting because I think the first way of me learning that was, I mean talking to John getting introduced to Micah, I mean Howard, ben me, mark, brian, brian Taylor, amazing artists in Utah, that again, like you see their work, you hear about all the accolades they have and it's truly like amazing and it's been fun too. You haven't even scratched the surface.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and I actually was with Howard at his daughter and son-in-law's house, who were friends of mine that I met here. So eventually it's how I got to know Howard and he comes up to me. He's like howard lion, yes yeah, and so howard comes.
Speaker 1:He's like eric wills.
Speaker 2:do you need, who do you want? Like, the thing that like gets the most curiosity for me right now is like the art scene, but then I don't know because, like, I can go walk into anthony's, like hey, micah, like who do you want to refer me to? But uh, don't have enough time to do like that much searching. So, like me and him were brainstorming a little bit and like every single person that him or Shari would bring up, I was like yeah, that's, that's another great person. And then like with you, for example, I mean I found out about you and I was talking like interviewing John, and then it was interesting Cause then I mean undraped artists came up on my Instagram page is something to follow, it's working. And then I drive by the atelier and I'm like wait a minute.
Speaker 2:There's no chance that this is not the same Jeff Hein. So it's been fun to see these breadcrumbs turn into these pieces of bread and slowly start to put it all together and seeing, um, and I'll, apologetically so I was reading about you about 10 minutes before you showed up and like that's good. I never researched my guess at all.
Speaker 2:I like it so much more because you're like, it's like an actual genuine reaction, yeah, exactly and so when so many people said you'd be a great guest, I was like, okay, like they, they know he's a great artist, he's built, I mean, a great reputation, portfolio exposure. But then once I kind of like looked where I was like, oh, like there's more to this than just I mean portraiture and complex still life and so so, so excited to jump in and hear more about it too, because, like I'm with you, I don't like doing too much research, because I want to find out as it goes, yeah. But yeah, I mean you want to start from the beginning of growing up in the New York area and what that was like and how that set this foundation for your art career.
Speaker 1:Jeez, I don't know if New York had any play in it, frankly. I mean I was a really irresponsible kid in that my mom and my parents I mean my dad wasn't too vocal about it, but I remember there were times when my mother was like you're never going to be able to survive on your own, that kind of thing. And I didn't do art much as a kid. I knew I was, I knew I had talent because, like creative talent or just raw talent okay creative talent?
Speaker 1:um, because you know, I would draw on the back of the brown paper bag book covers in school, or I would draw on my notebooks. But the only time I drew was when I didn't want to be studying, so it was in school. So I knew I was good compared to my peers, right. But when I got home it was the last thing I wanted to do. I wanted to play sports or I wanted to just hang out in the neighborhood or just do kid stuff, right? So I wasn't one of those kids that had my face in a sketchbook all the time at all. And so when I, when I told my mother that I wanted to study art as a, I guess I would have been 17 when I graduated from high school she's like what? You don't even draw.
Speaker 2:I mean, she knew I could draw. She knew I was talented but you weren't taking like art classes, she would tell me to take art classes and I'd be like all my life.
Speaker 1:She's like, why don't you, don't even take art classes? I'm like, yeah, I don't know, I'm not really interested, you know. And then one day I, you know, tell her I'm going to study art in college.
Speaker 2:She's like, uh, that's crazy you want to study that Like okay. Okay, Like I want to be.
Speaker 1:I feel like there's this pull of like.
Speaker 2:I want to be supportive, but at the same time like it's an art degree, especially when there's like no huge history of art to be like. Okay, jeff, like let's think about this.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, and any good parent that is ignorant of the potential of an art career is going to do what my parents did, you know. So I don't blame them at all. I mean, they, they really tried to get me. They're like what about graphic design? What about animation? What about? And I'm like, no, I want to be an artist, although I didn't know what an artist was. I thought I'd illustrate books or something, and I didn't know what a fine artist was at that point.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that's a detail, cause, like artists umbrella of I mean graphic design and sort of all these things, and you could say it's kind of the thing that envelops everything. But like to be like I want to be a fine artist that sits in front of a canvas and paints no idea what that was.
Speaker 1:Yeah, all I knew is I want to do something traditional with my hands got it. So they would say this was let me see, I started school 92 okay, college 92 and if I remember right, we had just gotten our close to just gotten our first computer and it was like practically dos, you know, and um, I remember kind of it's all vague, it was so long ago, but just creating this little like 20 pixel character on some totally rudimentary program, that's hardly a graph spring. I mean, if a kid saw today they would just be like this is the dumbest thing I've ever seen. I mean it it might have been just several pixels and my mom's like, see, you could do something like this. You know, I mean this was the time of uh what? I guess it would have been like super mario brothers and that sort of thing. So you know it wasn terrible, but I wasn't using that kind of software, I was just I was probably on like paint or something.
Speaker 2:It's like the paint before paint was paint Exactly yeah.
Speaker 1:Anyway. So my mom's like well, what about this? Computers might be the thing, and I'm like no mom, I want to be, I want to be an artist, whatever that is. Anyway, they did support me in that they, you know, they still helped me with school for a little bit until I got married and um, but I ended up coming to utah on a mission.
Speaker 2:That's how I ended up yeah, yeah, let's go to the mission and yeah, kind of the four years that.
Speaker 1:So I went to rick's college, which is now byu, idaho, and I had a great teacher there alvin, not alvin, um, uh, Griffin, his name was professor Griffin and, uh, he was great. He was mean as hell, Like he would. If you screwed up. He would just make fun of you in front of the whole class. Perfect, which a lot of people hated him for it, Um, but I frigging, I hated him for it too in a way, but at the same time, my personality type.
Speaker 1:It worked. Perfect for my personality type because always had this like screw you attitude and like I'm not going to let you make fun of me again in front of the class. And then he also had this thing. That would never work today with this generation. But it was like if you're the best in the class, according to him, obviously he's the judge because he's the best in the class, he does the teacher. If you're the best in the class, you get the A plus and everyone else is graded down from there relative to your performance. Dude, that's the way to grade in my opinion, because for me at least, it was so motivating I'm like I am getting that A plus. And I remember there was one girl in the class that was always like the one to beat and I think I got it every time. But man, she was tough to beat. Interesting yeah, and but it was motivating as all get out.
Speaker 2:Well, it's so funny Cause like I mean thinking about this like childhood version of you, that's like I don't want to be told what to do, I'm doing this for fun. But as soon as it's like an actual task given from someone, you're like'm out, like hands off. And then once you go to college and you have this, I mean call it like the right learning environment, the right teacher to do so, which a lot of people might back away from because like well, I don't want to be graded like that, I want the bell curve, I want to be rewarded. You're like no, no, I want to be at the top, I don't want to be embarrassed. And then that's like it's funny to see these two different situations in like I I mean environments where one where you like don't even want to succeed, and then one where you thrive yeah, I think part of it.
Speaker 1:That's all true, but part of it is that when I'm, when I get obsessed with something, I get obsessed, and as a kid I was obsessed with play. It's that simple. It sounds so stupid, but it's the truth. I'm like I just want to play and have fun. But then, once I went to college, I switched my obsession and then I became all in at that point Interesting and so and I didn't learn that about myself until you know I became semi-adult.
Speaker 2:It's like a few years ago.
Speaker 1:It's a yeah, and it's. It's a. It's a strength and a weakness, because it's also. I can be very distracted, because I can. I have a lot of obsessions now, so I have to just keep some of them in check, Because the older you get, the more you acquire.
Speaker 2:I know all about these feelings. Yeah, you do too.
Speaker 1:Like you have a podcast now and so do I. It's like dang it. Now I'm obsessed about something else. But it worked out great for me Because once I got to college I'm like all right, now my neighborhood's gone.
Speaker 1:My old friends, you know my opportunity for the things I used to do for fun are gone, my girlfriend's gone, like all that was back in new york, like just now, all I have left is paintings and well, I didn't never painted then but all I have left is this art education thing.
Speaker 1:So I just went in, you know, full steam ahead so and it was cool because, um, I didn't have a lot of confidence as a kid either, so I always figured that once I got into a bigger what's the word? Once I put myself out in the world and was exposed to more people I mean, I'm not in a small town by any means, but I figured my high school yeah, maybe I'm good compared to the kids in high school, but once I get to college I'm going to blow Like there's no way. School yeah, maybe I'm good compared to my kids in high school, but once I get to college I'm gonna blow like there's no way I'm gonna be good compared to kids coming from all over the country. But then I got to college and I realized, dang, I still I do have skills, like I do have a natural, um aptitude for this stuff, even compared to the college art majors. And that's when I thought, man, maybe I can really do this, you know.
Speaker 2:And it gave me a big boost of confidence yeah, and I I assume I mean mission, and what happened, I mean during and after your mission was part? Uh, I mean it was before college no, no, no. So that was when I was 17 oh okay, because you yeah, you graduated early, right?
Speaker 1:I got what didn't graduate early I just just started young New. York the deadlines.
Speaker 2:I was the same. I'm the opposite. So my birthday is the end of August, so I was always the oldest.
Speaker 1:Oh see, my birthday is in November, but in New York the cutoff was December. Interesting. So I was this tiny little baby all the time. I was always emotionally behind it. It was terrible my mom should have held me back, but yeah. So I was in kindergarten at four, but anyway. So I went. I finished college and then I got called to Salt Lake City.
Speaker 2:Got it Okay.
Speaker 1:Which was a huge disappointment, for obvious reasons, but it ended up being amazing. I mean, it was like. I mean, because I wouldn't be here, I never would have considered coming to.
Speaker 2:Salt Lake? Yeah, never, especially being in New York. Why would I come to Salt Lake? It's a long way to get to Salt Lake from New York and there's a lot of other places.
Speaker 1:And I knew nothing about it, like I mean, I'm obviously Mormon, right, so obviously I have that. But you know, growing up in New York, we, we, you know, we would just be like, ah, the Utah Mormons. You know, it was always like it's this whole other breed, it's like a different. I mean, it was totally stupid.
Speaker 2:And now that I live here, like everybody who's grew up Mormon outside of Utah, it's that same perception of like ah, them, like yeah, well, and there is a difference.
Speaker 1:There is definitely a difference, but it's not what I thought it was. It's more like uh, it's more like we're clue. We, frankly, were clueless outside of Utah. We, we don't really. We're just uh, I, I kind of feel like we were, we were just trying to, um, trying to be part of the LDS culture, but but we really didn't understand it, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And for good or for bad, right, yeah and um, but we'd have. We'd have. You know, lds families move into our ward from utah and they'd be so different than the rest of us. You know, first of all, they have no new york accents, which I don't have either anymore, but and uh, they'd always be blonde that makes sense, like what's happening over there.
Speaker 1:Just you, just 27 kids so there were just things like that. It was just different, just different, but always great people. But I never thought I'd move here, um, because it was just just never even occurred to me like why would I move to utah, yeah. So then I got called the mission here and uh, and I didn't at that time. I know this is small lake city, so maybe I should be only speaking positively of salt lake, oh no, okay, but my initial thoughts were I'd never come back like I do not like Utah, I mean growing up here I still had like, yeah, I had similar sentiments and uh, I was like no, this place is dry, it's ugly.
Speaker 1:I mean, I remember leaving the airport in Utah the first time. This was probably when I went to Rick's, but leaving the airport, it probably was in 92 that I noticed this the first time. This was probably when I went to rick's, but leaving the airport, it probably was in 92 that I noticed this the first time. But I just remember flying out of new york and the whole state looks like a chia pet it's like do you remember chia?
Speaker 1:pets, of course. Okay, it's just fluffy green. I mean, there's a lot of pop, this. It's really populated, like really populated, but there's so many trees you can't see the houses. In the fall or in the winter it's like houses, houses, houses, right, cause all the leaves are gone. But I just grew up just canopied with trees, that's the way what I was used to. And then we fly into Utah and I thought I was landing on the moon.
Speaker 2:I was like what the?
Speaker 1:crap, man, it's dry. And people were like Utah is so beautiful. I'm like what the dirt is beautiful Like what about? This is beautiful? Okay, but that said so, I ended up meeting my wife here. She was also a missionary, but she's from Rochester, new York, which is six hours north of me, so we had nowhere to go. I went home, we dated long distance for a couple months and then the only option we really could think of was come back to utah, because the only place we had in common. I'm not going to live near her. She doesn't want to live near me, like six hours apart here, and you're like, let's just go all the way out yeah, exactly, well, we knew we knew it right.
Speaker 1:And plus, uh university, utah um worked out to be better tuition for me, even though I was out of state for various reasons, and so I'm like, well, let's just go to Utah for a couple of years and we'll start our marriage out in Utah for a couple of years, but I'll just tell you this. So 12 years later, 12 years later, after we're in Utah, jen and I take a trip down to uh oh, now I'm drawing a blank Zion's National Park. Got it Dude At that point.
Speaker 2:I was like okay, utah wins.
Speaker 1:I was like New York is great, but Utah wins. I'm like this place is amazing. And I was like, okay, I'm not leaving. This place is unbelievable. And then we started. You know, at that point we have kids and we start going to all the national parks and everything and I started realizing New York. You can drive from New York to Georgia before you even see a difference in vegetation, I mean before you see a palm tree or anything. That's like 1,500 miles. In Utah, you drive an hour and you see something different. In Utah, you just walk up the canyon and you see something different. It's crazy and I didn't realize that for 12 years. I'm just like this place is ugly, this place is ugly. But once I got out of the Valley um, and the you know the sage brushy kind of stuff I was like man, this place is amazing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So now we're still here.
Speaker 1:It's been 20. So I guess I moved here with her in 97. So wow, yeah, we're not going anywhere.
Speaker 2:I was going to say that's a lot to uproot. You're just like hey, listen, babe, I tried.
Speaker 1:We did it for. We did it for 27 years. No, I'm not going anywhere.
Speaker 2:I'm, like physically trapped with property and you know supplies and everything, lots of responsibilities, lots of mouths to feed and teach how to paint and and all the fun things yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm not going anywhere, um so you'd want to talk about you wanted to talk about this so, yeah.
Speaker 1:So what happened was when I was on my mission I got diagnosed with testicular cancer and then, um, so I had a surgery here and then I had to go home right after the surgery to do the rest of the treatment. Yeah and um, and then I had I can't, I'm probably gonna get the numbers wrong. I'm sure my if my mother listens to this, she'll be like jeff, you got all this wrong, but I can't remember. It's been a long time, but I think I went through about six or nine months of chemotherapy, obviously got really sick from that, and then I had what they call a lymph node dissection, which is they had to remove all the lymph nodes. On my left side, which is where the cancer was growing. Up the left, I had a tumor about the size of a grapefruit up against my back, my spine, so it never got to my lungs or my brain. It's the same thing that lance armstrong had and mine was um, mine was what do they call it? It was the worst of level um, level four, whatever, I can't even remember the terminology anymore. But it was not in my brain or my lungs. I got lucky there. It was in. It was like in my abdomen area in my back but it was big and they shrunk it way down to the size of a grape and then they did this lymph node dissection.
Speaker 1:But that's when the crazy started happening, because I don't know what happened. No one knows what happened, but for some reason um well, I know this happened I caught mono right after having surgery. So I'm throwing up like crazy. I'm throwing up like 10 12 times a day with an incision that goes from here to my chest. Oh, it hurts so frigging bad. And that's after catching a bacterial infection in the hospital. Then I catch mono and I'm throwing up and throwing up and all of a sudden I don't know how long days week into it or whatever I start getting this terrible abdominal pain. I mean, I've had probably hundreds of kidney stones since, which is due to the being screwed up in the abdomen, but this made the kidney stones feel like a walk in the park. I mean, it hurts so bad.
Speaker 1:So I started going to the local emergency room. They told me everything was fine. It's all in my head, I'm just seeking drugs, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They wouldn't treat me. So then I end up.
Speaker 1:You know that went on for two weeks and what would happen was I'd be in this extraordinary pain and then they would. Then they would tell me or they would, you know, just sort of like, give me saline instead of medicine and just tell me I was crazy. Constantly blah, blah. I'm not going to get too into the details. It went on forever.
Speaker 1:And then, long story short, after a lot of craziness, the last time I was in the hospital, my mom came in and said screw this, I'm taking him out. She took me to another hospital in New York City where they ended up removing 80% of my intestines because they had gone gangrene. Yeah, wow. So what had happened was my intestines had every time I was feeling pain. I would feel it for like two or three hours and it would go away.
Speaker 1:And every time I was feeling pain, what happened was a loop of bowel would be going out of the sack that holds all the bowels together, cause if you don't have that sack, they'll wrap around every organ in your body, right, it's like a bag of snakes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the sag, this sack, had a hernia in it, had a cut in it, and so one loop of bowel was coming out, wrapping around the blood supply and cutting off circulation to itself, and then it would let go for a little while and then it would grab on. So every day or couple of days I'd have this excruciating tourniquet pain on my intestines and then it would let go. I'd go home and then I, and then a couple days later I'm back begging for pain medication. They tell me I was a crazy person and give me saline instead of morphine and try and give me psychotic drugs and everything else, and then send me, send me back home. And I mean it was abusive behavior, like yeah, and then, um, like I said, long story short, eventually my mom, she started to believe I was crazy for a while and and then eventually she's like no, my son's not crazy. I get to this other hospital. I pass out cold on the way there. My vitals were 108. My temperature was 108.
Speaker 2:I mean, I didn't even know it was possible.
Speaker 1:And then I don't even know what my heart rate was, but apparently it was through the roof. And then they removed about 80% of my intestines and I had an ileostomy and colostomy for a while. They weren't sure if I'd be able to sustain my sustained life with that short of intestines. I don't know exactly what I have. They've said four to seven feet somewhere in there. They don't really know. And so yeah, man, it sent me for a loop. There I was a mess.
Speaker 1:And a couple times so, because it was gangrene. There was so much infection in my abdomen they had to open me up a whole bunch of times, so I ended up having 10 surgeries, wow, and they just left it open so they could hose me out. So when I'd look down I'd see this gaping wound, and they only closed up the first layer so that I couldn't see my guts right, but everything else was just wide open and they just flush it every day and shove gauze in it, and so I don't have a pretty scar from it just close slowly.
Speaker 1:You're just constantly opened up but they kept going in, going in, flushing me out because the infection kept setting back in. You know, um, and I was in the hospital from a lot of times but this. There was one stint where I was in the hospital from july to the end of november, beginning of july, end of november. So I went in and I burned in a hot summer and came out in the middle of winter and I didn't. I had a window facing a brick wall. I didn't even realize the weather was changing when I came out the first time. I'm like what happened to the world?
Speaker 2:yeah, like it's, so yeah it was got.
Speaker 1:It was crazy and, um, yeah, a couple times I got so sick I got down to 119, so I'm 185 now. So try and picture me at 119. I looked like a corpse. And so they a couple times they told me I'd probably die. Um, when they put me in surgery, or there's a good chance I would die, yeah, so that was traumatic. Well, you might not wake up exactly. They said I have 50, 50 chance twice of waking up. So it was crazy time. And then, um, yeah, I mean, what else do you want to know?
Speaker 2:about it. I mean, I think, thankfully we know that it did not.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:You beat those odds and came back and yeah, I mean.
Speaker 1:I mean I'm not normal. I've got lots of health issues because of it, you know, but but I'm I feel incredibly fortunate to be as in good as shape as I'm in, you know, considering all that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they didn't know what was going to happen. Yeah, the spread of options between like not going to make it and here's what life's going to look like and seeing where you're headed is, I mean, nothing short of a miracle.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but the crazy thing is my wife I probably shouldn't say this on air, but my wife, who was a missionary, during that whole drama I was a year ahead of her, okay, wife, who was a missionary during that whole drama I was like I was a year ahead of her, okay. So she was still out during that whole thing and she came home I was still about 140 pounds so still a lightweight right and I was jaundice, my hair was just starting to come back in and I was on intravenous feeding still when I proposed to her Wow, and she freaking said yes, and her mom said her. Her mom said what are you joking with me? What's this guy's life expectancy?
Speaker 2:like, let's see if we get to the wedding and I'm.
Speaker 1:But seriously, her mom was right on it's, like what was she thinking? But she, well, I'm still here, so it worked out. We've been married 27 years but, dude, it was amazing. So she and I came to utah. I was just barely better, not 100, but just barely able to leave home. When we came to Utah. I was just barely better, not a hundred percent, but just barely able to leave home when it came to Utah, and it's been.
Speaker 1:It's been an interesting road, you know to say the least but you're not to sound cliche, but it was motivating because at that point I didn't know how long I would live, cause the last thing I remember them saying to me was you should probably still be on intravenous feeding. We don't know how long I would live, because the last thing I remember them saying to me was you should probably still be on intravenous feeding. We don't know how long you can live without you know, with this few intestines. We don't know what kind of. They knew some of the problems I'd have, like I'd have kidney stones all the time. They knew I'd need to be 12 shots. They knew a lot of stuff, but they didn't know exactly what kind of long-term problems I would acquire.
Speaker 1:So I'm like that's like burning in my ears all the time, you know, and so I, especially the beginning, because it was all such a mystery now that it's been 20 something years. How long has it been? It's been 27, I guess 28 years now. It's like I do have problems, but it's not quite. The urgency is starting to fade and that's sort of unfortunate in a way. But um, but at the time, man, I was ready to work. I'm like I've got I don't know how much time I have. Yeah, I don't know what my life is going to be like. I'm gonna work, and so I busted my tail to become an artist when I got here and, yeah, it was very motivating.
Speaker 2:Totally.
Speaker 1:I mean.
Speaker 2:I can't imagine, because I've had. One of my best friends had testicular cancer. Another family friend had testicular cancer. I had a friend from college who passed away from. It's like a tumor in her back cancer.
Speaker 2:And then um man, man maybe you're causing cancer I am I'm radioactive actually maybe, but it's like crazy to hear all the stories behind it and like I mean seeing someone on like essentially death's door because at the end of the day, I mean, chemotherapy takes you there. The whole point is like to kill the cells and they kill the cells, take you closest to death and bring you back and, like you understand, you're like, okay, like you see, they'll lose their hair, that you'll have mouth sores, this, but then when you see it, you're like, oh, like yeah literally one step from death, but also I mean at the same point like it makes life so much more appreciative.
Speaker 2:You understand perspective on things and I can see you just sprinting out of the hospital. I mean, mean, brush in hand, arm swing and ready to go, I mean. And so I mean let's talk about that early career, cause I know at some point you had to have said I want to do a portraiture, I want to do complex still life. Yeah, I mean, talk to me about like finding your stride, both as a professional artist, but also finding your own style.
Speaker 1:Well, in the beginning I didn't. I didn't know what I wanted. Well, in the beginning I didn't. I didn't know what I wanted. Like I said, I didn't even know what a fine artist was.
Speaker 1:So I started at salt lake community college after I got to utah and I had a few good teachers there, um rick graham and um rob adamson. Uh, this other guy, george, and I can't remember george's last name, I haven't heard about or from him for a while, but um, some pretty good teachers there. It's kind of a gem. At least it was 20 years ago, sully community college. And then, um, yeah, but so I was exposed to the craft of making art there. It's the first time I ever painted, you know and uh, but I still I don't. I don't know why I was so clueless about fine art. I still didn't know about fine art. We just talked about how to make, how to put paint on a canvas, but I don't remember a discussion about how to make a career out of it ever.
Speaker 1:And then Rick Graham told me I needed to go to University of Utah, and which I regret, frankly, because Rick was. I was in great hands with Rick Graham and Rob Adamson, like they were great teachers and I didn't have quite as good of an experience at University of Utah and so I mean, I had some good stuff going on. There were some people that you know I had. There were some things I learned there. But when I got there I picked up where I left off and I just said, oh, I guess I'll study illustration, that's all I knew, right. So I started.
Speaker 1:I got there, I picked up where I left off and I just said, oh, I guess I'll study illustration, that's all I knew, right. So I started, I got into the illustration program, started doing that and then I started noticing at the University of Utah they had this fine art program and that was probably the biggest difference, and someone might correct me, but I don't remember a fine art program at Salt Lake Community College Interesting, yeah, maybe there is, maybe there was then or there is now, I don't know, but I don't remember it. So, but I see all these um students just hanging out in the figure drawing room and like doing paintings instead of like dealing with type and all this other stuff that I was doing and I'm like, yeah, that sounds freaking cool yeah, I wanted to do what they're doing yeah what are they doing, you know?
Speaker 1:so I started thinking about that. Um, anyway, eventually I switched um to fine art and, um, yeah, I mean, like I said it was, there were some things I learned. You know, what I found was there was it was interesting there, there was. I got to a point where I got frustrated because I started hanging out at Barnes and Noble, I started seeing artists like Odd Nerdrum and David LaFell and bookstores, and these are big big time artists and I'm like, well, I want to paint like that. Or John Singer Sargent, who's a dead artist. But like, what wait, they're not teaching me this stuff. Like, I want to paint like this.
Speaker 1:So I found myself doing the assignments at school just to get a grade and then teaching myself at home. And, um, it was really frustrating because I couldn't get what I wanted out of school, and so I was literally making my own assignments, and many of these assignments I use in my own atelier. Now, the assignments that I use to help me learn to paint I use in the atelier, and they're just assignments I reverse engineered. I'm like, okay, if this artist does this, then what exercise can I do to help me understand what I'm observing? And so I just started inventing exercises and most of them worked. I can't think of one that didn't. It definitely helped me to learn, um. But I mean, there was a point where I I was doing assignments to make fun of the assignments that I was getting at school Again here's this rebel attitude coming back.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, I tell you what.
Speaker 1:So there was one time where I did a I shouldn't say this on a public podcast, but I'm gonna so I had. So I had we had to do a final exam in school and I mean it's the final, it's like half our grade, right, and I don't remember the criteria, but I remember, being up, we had at the time when I did this, we had a one bedroom, not just a one bedroom apartment. We were staying in one bedroom, Like we were broke right'm. I'm sitting next to the bed on the floor doing a drawing because we had no furniture but a bed right. So I'm sitting on the floor doing this drawing and it's going terrible and I'm up until all hours of the night.
Speaker 1:My wife is like turn off the light, turn off the light. And I'm getting more and more frustrated because it's the final exam. So I start doing completely irrational things. And so the head wasn't working out. It was a female figure, is what I was doing? The head wasn't working out, so I just cut it off, and so now the paper is even smaller and then I'm like oh, the arm's not working out. So I cut that off smaller. It got to a point where it was like this big and all it was was upside down why it was like a butt crack.
Speaker 2:Perfect, I kid you not. Your wife wakes up. She's like are you kidding me this?
Speaker 1:is the final exam, so I bring it. I'm like I can't. And it was supposed to be framed and everything. I didn't frame it because I didn't have time. It was like three in the morning. I finally just gave up. I'm like I'm screwed. So I get to school the next day and I'm in the class before the class with that. I'm supposed to present this because we're also supposed to do a presentation right, and the kid, one of the guys who was in my both classes, he's like dude, you are screwed. I'm like no, I got this, I got this. He's like it's not even framed. Man, it's not even framed. I'm like, no, that's part of the concept you just wait you just wait, dude, I tell you this is true.
Speaker 1:I'm telling you it's a true story. It's hard to believe this is real, but so I brought it into class. There was a bunch of presentations, you know, in front of the whole class, from other students, and it was my turn. And um, I got up with this little piece of paper with a y on it that was nothing more than a butt crack. You couldn't even tell it was a butt crack. And I start talking about I knew my audience. I start talking about the fragility of blah blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm not going to get into it. Yes, you know, and I'm like I didn't frame it in order to express that fragility Da da, da, da, da da. And I knew my audience. I got a standing ovation and then the teacher stood up and shook my hand after and said that's the best presentation we've ever had and I got an A plus. What a dumb.
Speaker 2:That's amazing dude.
Speaker 1:So I just started doing that my entire college. I brought a rubber ducky to a sculpture class and said what it represented and I got an A plus. It was a sculpture class. I didn't even sculpt it. All I did was put a bandana around its neck and say it represented something, and they ate it up. They just lapped it up.
Speaker 2:That's amazing.
Speaker 1:So I kept doing that to get grades, because when I tried, like when I really tried to do art, I didn't do well, because they didn't like my brand of art, my brand of art, representational art. They wanted conceptual art, so I played their game. Yeah, and brand of art, my brand of art, representational art they, they wanted conceptual art, so I played their game yeah, and it worked out it worked out. But what's amazing is how predictable the game is.
Speaker 2:Like anyone can play it yeah but it's like, it's funny because like, like, obviously this is the context of like, I mean school, art, I mean higher education, but it's a universal principle. Like you can apply that to anything, whether it's your job, whether it's I mean anything, social relationships, emotional, like, know your audience know your audience you know how to communicate.
Speaker 1:Tell them what they want to hear exactly yeah, and it got me through college at least. I mean, well, I'd never graduated, I ended up. What happened was I ended up? Um, I got a scholar. There's this, uh, private collector who comes in. His name's Howard Clark Awesome man, and he maybe a possible interview.
Speaker 2:Good guy.
Speaker 1:Also an artist. But he comes in and he chooses two people, or he chooses one person every year, at least at the time, to do a solo show and he at the time he would pay his 1,500 bucks and this was 20 years ago, 22 years ago. So he paid his $1,500, and then he would give us a show at the end of the year, just a solo show. Well, in my year he chose me and one other guy. So he chose two that year, which was unusual, but he was a landscape painter and the other guy he chose was a landscape painter. I'm a figure painter, so it made sense. And then he arranged the show to be at Williamsiams fine art, which clayton williams is now passed, but it was in a spectacular gallery.
Speaker 1:I had no idea what I was getting at the time and, uh, anyway, I started prepping for that show and, um, it was great. Like I said, I had some really good teachers there, like john erickson was an amazing teacher, it wasn't all bad. I was I. There was some that teachers there Like John Erickson was an amazing teacher, it wasn't all bad. There were some that were really good, Like John Erickson was good. And John Erickson, I remember he just was like Jeff, just go do your thing and I'll give you an A if you work hard. And I'm like, yeah, I'll definitely work hard, there's no question about that.
Speaker 1:So he didn't even expect me to come to class, which may seem like not a good teacher, but it was because it's what I needed. He knew what I needed, you know. So I came up with this show at the end of the year and then, by that show, did so well that williams picked me up full-time as an artist, as one of their artists. They started selling my paintings as fast as I could paint them. Wow, and I thought, well, I'm not gonna go back to school this semester. I had two classes left, a writing class and a painting class to graduate. I'm like I'll wait another semester, I'll wait another semester.
Speaker 2:You have what you want to do. Going on, it's happening yeah.
Speaker 1:So now it's been 22 years and I still have a writing and a painting class, although now I'm sure I'd have to start over, but I don't know how that all works.
Speaker 2:However they over, but I don't know how that all works. However, they get as much money of you as possible. Yeah exactly.
Speaker 1:So I never did graduate, but it wasn't intentional. Just sort of blew it off every semester for 22 years so every fall you're like maybe this is the year yeah, exactly that's, that's amazing.
Speaker 2:I mean, and and obviously it's, it's been a very successful career and you have. I mean, at what time, at what point did the Atelier come in and like that space that you have there?
Speaker 1:So it kind of came in right away.
Speaker 1:I had a really good. I mean it's the name has changed, but I think of it as starting back in 2002. Okay, Right, and it's evolved. So for a while it was like Jeff Hein I can't remember what I called it like the Hein studio or, and then it was like Hein Academy and now it's Hein Atelier. But it started out with during that summer when I right after that that scholarship show, like I said, I was selling paintings. So I went out and rented a studio for 300 bucks a month. There was 350 a month and it was just a vacant room in an office building. It wasn't a studio per se, right, I just found a vacant room, but I was scared out of my mind because I wasn't selling paintings. As fast as I could paint them, I had sold a few paintings, right, it was the very beginning. It was literally the week after right.
Speaker 1:So I didn't know my future. I thought it could be a fluke, whatever. So I went out and took a chance and I rented this studio. And then I thought, well, at the very least if I could get two students to pay for the studio because I didn't have the extra income to pay for the studio if I could just get two students, then I could pay for the studio at 175 bucks a month or whatever. And I went home and there was a message on my answering machine. The night I rented the studio and set it all up like built a little model, stand at two by fours and everything. I go home that night and there is a message I'm answering of a mother and son who wants lessons.
Speaker 1:Of course I kid you not. I was like, oh my gosh, it's a freaking miracle. So I never had to pay rent, which was a huge weight off my shoulders, Like now I can focus on painting. So that was the beginning of the high Italia. It was just me, and within a week or two it was four students and it's all I could fit in my studio and they would come twice a week. And then a year or two later I upgraded to a bigger studio, took on eight students just twice a week, and then at some point I realized that it wasn't working. Like the once a week class just wasn't working. I mean, they were improving, but it was at a snail pace. I'm just like this isn't fulfilling. I'm not seeing growth. So I quit teaching for like nine months and that's when I learned that I'm an extrovert. And then I missed it. Like where are those people I was talking?
Speaker 1:to yeah I'm like man, I I don't. I don't like being alone all the time. I mean, I need my alone time, but this was rough like that, yeah. So that's when I started researching how students were taught in the past and how they apprenticed under old masters, I thought, if I'm going to teach again to this teaching thing, I'm going to do it right. So I started researching and I figured out that the way the old masters taught is they studied with a master right and they apprenticed with them. It wasn't a classroom setting, it was a lot of learning through osmosis, you, you know, just being in the presence of them, watching them work, having open access to the studio, and that sort of thing so that's what I created the hein academy, which is really the now the hein italian.
Speaker 1:Nothing's changed functionally. I just changed the name later, but at the time it was hein academy. And then, um, I went, when I did that, I did it in my current studio for about a year and then I moved out of there and bought a building downtown which is the one you were talking about yes, on 700 south and main. Yes and uh, converted that to personal studio slash academy and that's what I've been doing ever since. Now I'm down to eight students. That's intentional. I'm trying to like just sort of compress, like not have quite as much responsibility, but I'll probably I'll probably always teach on some level. But I've also expanded. It's online, so I have eight in-person apprentices, but then I do now I do online mentorships and I have about 50 students on that. How often are you doing?
Speaker 1:classes that every friday okay yeah, but it's the same format, except they're obviously not with me, but I work with them at their own pace, you know, and I actually mentor each of them at their own pace. So all of them are at different levels and um that I may invent an assignment for a particular student if they have particular needs. So it's really, you know, one-on-one education, um, but in small group settings. So they they are.
Speaker 2:They do come to me in groups, but I'm working with each of them independently, individually oh, I love that and like yeah, um, I mean the only student I know personally, that's, I mean gone to your apprenticeship, I mean john darley.
Speaker 2:John darley and so I'm sure it's fun to see people like John where they come in, say they want to be an artist, endure through the whole apprenticeship learning process to the master and then go on to do their own thing. But I'm sure it's been great to see not just John be that only story, but to see other people become artists whether it's professionally or they just decide to do it as a hobby, but to truly see people flourish and blossom into real fine artists.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's interesting you bring up John, because the key, though, is not even just to have a good teacher and have that opportunity. The key is the hard work. John was like dude. That guy has work ethic. Yeah, I mean, he works like a dog. I mean he was there 50 hours a week, every week, without fail, and he'd be there when people'd show up, and he'd be there after they all went home. It was amazing, and he's still that way. And then he goes to New York and he does it for a year there, and he gets himself sick working so hard in New York. The guy is like an insane worker.
Speaker 1:But that's what you have to do in this field. You can't be lazy about it. It's too I don't want to say competitive, because you're not competing with other artists um, the medium is competitive. It beats you like if it's. I often tell people it's the hardest thing I've ever done, and I've done it the longest. You know, I've been painting for 22 years, but I also have all these other, you know. You might call them skills or hobbies, whatever, and, um, painting still kicks my butt and intimidates me more than anything else. I've had my hands in it's and it's, it's so, it's so hard. So if you don't put the work in all the time, it'll eat you up. It's not the other artists that eat you up, it's the medium that eats you up.
Speaker 2:Totally.
Speaker 2:You know, and that was one thing I didn't really understand until again I find myself with a brush in my hand and because, once I realized, because I think everybody has to go through, so we were kind of talking about it I can't remember if we're recording or not, but, like we all have this part of our ego that tells us who we are Right and a lot of which, especially with, I mean it's called like capitalistic society today we tend to push off a lot of the creative side, go towards the pragmatic earning money.
Speaker 2:No-transcript, I'm not a creative person, I'm like. I urge you to challenge that in some way, shape or form, because maybe you will find out. But at the end of the day, to learn a new skill in your gravitated towards the belief that, like you can't teach an old dog new tricks, you can't do anything new. But then, all of a sudden, once you realize you can do the things you didn't think you could do and then that starts the snowball effect yeah, like nothing really, I mean can like seems too daunting anymore, because all of a sudden you can say, well, this person can do it, and I've done other things.
Speaker 2:Why can't I do this now? And I mean going back to john for a sec, I mean that guy is a absolute workhorse. I mean he's the only person who he's like. Well, I don't know if I want to. He's like I'm going to go work in North Dakota on the oil fields and then I'm going to maybe join the military and then I'm just going to go again like slave away in a studio. And he's someone I mean similar to you, where I mean you give him a task or you tell him to do something and he will do it again and do it again.
Speaker 2:And it's been fun to see him. I mean just evolve and just like see his. I mean to become the artist that he is and he's like a very amazing. Well, he's like, and he's humble about it, and I always tell him to be less humble about it. Like john, you need to have a little bit more of an ego, just a little bit. And but then you see, like the accolades he gets, uh, I mean especially in the context of utah, which punches above its weight in general, and to see him kind of being this younger artist, I mean rising in the scene. It's fun to see and have it be like a friend that I can call and be like.
Speaker 2:Now talk to me about my composition but like with painting when I started I mean jumping in more and like it was consuming more of my personal time I found I always loved the first five percent and the last five percent. Oh, seriously, the middle is so rough, so rough, and I would just be looking at this painting and like part of me just like wants to punch my fist through the canvas, the other part of me just like kind of wants to cry and the other part of me is like determined to have it finished. But then all of a sudden, because, like, even when I was talking to mike, I mean, it's, it's conflict resolution, conflict resolution, conflict resolution, conflict resolution until you get to a point you're like, oh, we're, we're good. Like this, this feels and nothing's ever going to be perfect, everything has its own style to it, etc. But like, once you can be like, oh, like I did this, like I, I overcame what you were talking about of. Like this mental battle, this like emotional medium that beats you up.
Speaker 2:But to look at and be like, oh, I won today yeah I did it and I like and I look at all the paintings that I've done and I can almost look at all of them be like I remember what I was going through, or like what I was like, at least in my head at that time, how I felt towards all of them. Be like I remember what I was going through, or like what I was like, at least in my head at that time, how I felt towards all of these paintings. And it's fun Cause, like there's again that middle 90%, but leaving it on that last 5%, I'm like oh yeah, but it was a look how good it turned out and look, look what I did.
Speaker 1:That's great.
Speaker 2:I'm glad you're enjoying it. It's so fun, it's such, so pragmatic analytics, numbers, black and white. Then now I have a complete pendulum swing on the other side where I mean sometimes I'll just stare and be like, well, what do I want to paint? Like starting something new? I don't know. I usually gravitate a lot towards flowers, just because I like colors, and then all of a sudden once you get more in the details that you appreciate it a lot more. But yeah, without a doubt, like life-changing in so many ways.
Speaker 1:That's great. Yeah, it's very therapeutic painting, but also can be very the opposite of therapeutic. It also could be an awful, awful experience. I mean I it's funny, I don't know if a lot of artists would say that, but I I have a love hate relationship with it because it's part of it, is because of what I choose to paint. You know, when I leave here I'm going to go face this 10 foot by eight foot canvas of 12 figures and lots of other stuff in it. That and I like yesterday I was working on just the sleeve of a figure and I'm like I'm asking myself why do I not just have a solution already?
Speaker 1:I've painted sleeves before, but the problem is it's never the same sleeve. You know what I mean. A solution already. I've painted sleeves before, but the problem is it's never the same sleeve. You know what I mean. It's like I've done woodworking, I do welding, I do all this other stuff. It's always the same, like when you weld something, it's a weld is a weld is a weld, a dovetails, a dovetails, a dovetail. They might be slightly different shape, but it's the same. Muscle control, it's the same. But painting a sleeve it's different edges, different colors, different values, different everything. It's like every time you paint it's almost like you're doing a whole different task than you did the first thousand times. So but what I love about it is, man, it's like, when you're done, you've done a really hard thing, totally, you know, and you and you know you've succeeded, whatever that means, um to a certain degree.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's another mountain. You've summited Another thing, exactly you might.
Speaker 1:You may not have succeeded as well as someone else would have if they'd done the same thing, but you know you, you got through it and you you accomplished something that was hard.
Speaker 2:So that's really fulfilling, yeah, and it also like it also makes me appreciate things a lot more. Like I'll be dry, like a couple of my friends will always call me out on it, but I'll be driving and let's say it's, I mean, golden hour. I'm on i-15, I look over, I see mount olympus and I'm like oh, yeah.
Speaker 2:But you see, like all the reds and the blues there's some greens there and like I see how I would do that. And then like you're thinking about the colors and painting, and oh isn't that funny how that happens.
Speaker 2:Like all of a sudden, you just start like you're all like look at the clouds, like, well, it's not like pink and blue there, there's some purple here, but it's oh, there's also like a little bit of green right there. Like you, you just start to appreciate the details and things more, because you're so like I spent three or four months on this painting of mount olympus and so now every time I'm in some sort of different angle of it, I'll stare, be like, oh, so that's why that, like that's why those values were like that, because that's how like dynamic this shape is. Or just sit there and stare and like most like any of my close friends will be like you're thinking about the painting and I was like yes, I am okay, listen you're addicted.
Speaker 1:It's terrible. Yeah, what's crazy is when I take someone out for the first time landscape painting. That's never done it before. Like I remember taking my daughter out and pointing to the distant trees and she was painting them green. I'm like Addy, they're not green, they're not green. She kept and she painted. She did it right pretty quick, but it was interesting to watch that realization come over her. Like, oh my gosh, they're not green.
Speaker 1:But she believed they were green. She always defined them as green because that's what a tree is it's green, but when it's that far away it's not, it's like a blue gray, you know. And then there was another time I remember bringing having somebody outside and pointing out that the sky is richer, blue at the. You know straight up, and that is, it gets closer to the horizon, it gets grayer and lighter and they're like I've never noticed that like it's like you, and until you paint it's like you don't see, it's like it's all there. But once you start painting, all of a sudden, the world, you start seeing the world, yeah, and the whole time it's like your eyes have been closed it reminds me of I don't know why this just hit me, but like, did you ever read the giver?
Speaker 2:where they're?
Speaker 2:I mean?
Speaker 2:Essentially, the premise is, they're in almost seems like I mean alternative world reality where everything's very similar in everyone's life, there's no joy, there's no pain, and there's one person who kind of experiences everything and they can see color and they can, like, I mean, hear the music and like, see the beauty and everything, but they have to live in almost this like personal hell, cause I can, like, see the beauty and everything, but they have to live in almost this like personal hell, because I can't really tell anybody about it, nobody really knows, and so it's like, yeah, like once you've been like awakened to it and I had to stare at some sort of I mean, whether it be figure, whether it be a landscape, whether it be anything, be like oh yeah, yeah, the drape of that arm, like that sleeve, is different and the value is different.
Speaker 2:That texture makes the color different and because we decided to do it in the studio, their front yard, their backyard, like, all of a sudden all the values are different, the saturation is different and even the sky in the background is different. And you that takes so many at bats to understand, like, the differences between that and then also be able to communicate those differences of them, instead of saying like, yeah, it's different than at noon, than at 7 pm but you know, what's interesting about the whole thing is that it actually has helped me to realize how remarkable the human mind is, because it's not a flaw in human observation, it's actually a strength.
Speaker 1:Because if we didn't have the ability to interpret those distant trees as green, even though they're not green, we wouldn't know they were trees. I mean, if we, if we weren't programmed to interpret information rather than just seeing information, then we wouldn't know that those were trees and we wouldn't be able to interpret value in such a way that we can tell we're about to step off a cliff, right, all these things that we take for granted, that we know that those purple trees and purple mountains are more, are farther away. We don't have to. We don't have to extrapolate all these different things like, well, if it's purple, that means that you know, it has to do with atmospheric perspective. We don't have to. Our brain just knows and it says, yeah, that's still a mountain, it's just a farther away mountain because it's bluer, it's just all instinctual, it's just.
Speaker 1:Our minds are amazing. So, as an artist, we almost have to dumb down, which is kind of ironic. We have to be, we have to get rid of or push aside our mind's ability to interpret nature and just see nature. Instead of interpreting it, just see it, which is a whole different. You become like a camera with no brain, you know, and which is so interesting. It's actually a very difficult thing to do to dumb yourself down to the degree that you see in such a way that you don't allow yourself to interpret. You're just looking. Yeah, you know.
Speaker 2:Just seeing everything objectively.
Speaker 1:Right, totally objectively and removing any sort of context things you've learned. Right yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I mean I know, jeff, you have your own podcast, undraped Artists, where I mean interview podcast highlighting, I mean, amazing artists around the country and world. Really, yeah, I mean, tell me how that got started.
Speaker 1:So it's kind of a funny story and I always hesitate to tell this, but I mean it's the truth, so, but I mean it's the truth, so, but it's, it's a riot. So I started teaching online, as I mentioned before, and so I built this whole equipment thing. That's really quite cool, you know, it's this little recording studio on wheels. And I thought, you know, I had a passing thought here and there like oh, it'd be fun to do a podcast, but I never thought I'd be any good at it at asking questions, you know, and I don't have a podcast voice. So I'm like fleeting thoughts, I'm literally fleeting. I might have thought it 30 seconds of my life.
Speaker 1:And then one day a buddy of mine who actually was, he served with me at my church and we used to do visits and I was the elders quorum president at the time and he was my counselor and we used to do visits to all the elders in the ward and when they moved in and various reasons. And he said to me one time he called me up and he's like Jeff, have you ever thought about doing a podcast? I'm like why would you say that he goes? Because I remember back when we used to do visits, that I would just sit there and you would just ask all these questions, and I would always be amazed about how you even come up with these questions and your curiosity about these people. Why would you sit there and be like I don't know what to say? And I was like, really, and he goes, yeah. And he says he says this is the funny thing, because I wish I was like this, but he's, like you, always reminded me of Joe Rogan, interesting, yeah. And I was like, really, and he goes, yeah, I think you'd be a good podcaster.
Speaker 1:And I was like, really, I honestly didn't believe him. But then I thought, well, I mean this guy, I trust him, like, maybe I'll try it. So I tried it and I'm I was Joe Rogan. I wish I got his paycheck Right, be a nice one to have. But man, I freaking love it, like it's fun. So I just you know I'm lucky because I have obviously I have been in with a lot of artists. So the first thing I did was get all the great artists I know who I'm actually friends with right, that's the you might say low hanging fruit. I probably shouldn't use that word because it implies that they're not worthy.
Speaker 2:Easiest amount of effort to get in front of Exactly.
Speaker 1:No, they were amazing artists, but I already knew them. So I knew I hoped they would say yes, expected they would say yes, and they did, and then it just built from there and, man, it's fulfilling. It's like going back to school because I mean, I've been at this for 22 years, man, I've got a lot to learn. I still, every time I have a guest on, I learned something and, um, it's affected my paintings in small but important ways.
Speaker 1:you know, I don't know that, um, I mean I'm I'm too far into this to have huge growth right. It's always going to be these tiny little incremental steps at this point. But I do see them, which is kind of remarkable, and I have seen, you know, that plateau sort of creep up just a little bit since having the podcast. So it's really kind of a selfish endeavor at this point. I just want to get all the artists I admire on my podcast so I can just suck their powers up. You know, do you remember that movie or that, that TV series heroes?
Speaker 2:Oh, I thought you're going to mention another series that I'm watching right now, where there's an energy vampire who sucks their energy, but no it's like that. Do you remember heroes? Though I do remember the show I never remember. Oh, you never watched it.
Speaker 1:Okay, Well, there's this character, peter, and all he had to do was touch you and, if I remember right, and he would suck up your powers.
Speaker 1:That's what I feel like this podcast is for me, if I can just get them on zoom then I can at least a little bit, maybe suck up some of their powers, and it's been really cool. Yeah, so, and man, yeah. And it's crazy because when I bought my building back in 2007, I didn't even imagine that technology would be in this place. I'm sitting in my building with this setup and I'm seeing like I just interviewed an artist from Israel, dana Zaltzman, and I'm like I'm talking to this woman in Israel. It's a perfect picture, perfect. She could be like right next door and like, and she's in Israel. And when I bought the building, it was a technology didn't even exist, or if it did, it was so rudimentary that it would have been like this glitchy thing.
Speaker 2:I don't even think it existed Probably barely had like Wi-Fi.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but I'm in the same building. I don't know why that trips me out, but I haven't gone anywhere and all of a sudden I'm able to in my building that I've been painting it for almost 20 years. I'm able to talk to someone from Israel and learn about her process. It's just dude. It's such a cool blessing to be able to do that I don't know if people in this generation realize what they have.
Speaker 2:I, I go through those like phases, For example, like so my grandpa, how old is he now? 87. And my grandma passed away and she was 85 in 2001. Yes, that makes sense.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And like I'll always think about okay, so if they were born in I mean late thirties, like I mean cars weren't even like popular I mean, oh dude, it's crazy.
Speaker 2:I know, just like to compare, or even the one that always gets me, is when I was in either high school or middle school. I remember reading Ender's Game and they were like the thing I loved about orson scott card as a um sci-fi authors. He'd be really good at using the right words to help explain things. But similar to uh, I mean like ray bradbury and for fahrenheit 451 or 1984, like you can only describe what you see the future to be. And even like ray bradbury when he describes everybody has these bullets in their ears. He didn't realize he was describing headphones and even airpods and seeing what that would be like until we are now.
Speaker 2:And so with orson scott card he talked about how I mean ender and all these kids come to their room in the spaceship. If you haven't read the book, it's a really good book, this will make sense eventually, I promise. Um and they all get handed this like um, I can't remember the word, he used to do it, but essentially he's explaining an ipad and how like they have all these things in these games and they can talk to each other and do it all this. And then I remember when I like first got an ipad and claude was like oh, we're here, like sci-fi is becoming real. I know it's surreal and so yeah, I I feel that sentiment of being like, oh my gosh, there's no way.
Speaker 1:I mean, this would have been a collect call that would have cost like hundreds of dollars yeah, back in the 2000, when we still had flip phones, there was a lady at church who was in her 90s back in the early 2000s and she had a flip phone and she was in her 90s, so she was probably born in like the teens or something, and she showed me a picture on her phone of her as a child in a barrel with a horse behind her and a wagon.
Speaker 1:And it was on her cell phone. Like that woman has experienced so much. It's just mind blowing Because if you think about I mean, this is way off the art conversation but if you think about how many centuries nothing really changed that much. And then, yeah, and then this woman who grew up, who was born at just the right time in the 1900s, 19 teens, yeah, she saw so much crap.
Speaker 2:So much change.
Speaker 1:It's wild to think about.
Speaker 2:Interesting.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, yeah, oh yeah. Well, to go back to, like that, early, early technology adopters like, well, let's call them elderly people. Well, she's passed away now. I think she lived to be 103, but it was my brother-in-law's family friend. Like very old, she's from German, has thick German accent. She was at the first Olympics where Hitler was there.
Speaker 2:And so she and like in the end of her life, in her like late nineties and early hundreds, she was very cognizant and could tell you all of these stories and tell you, like I mean, all of these different decades, and it was wild to talk to her and just hear her perspective on things and I mean just be able to tell all these details so well of like there's a podcast right there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just interview old people. I mean, yeah, just interview old people.
Speaker 2:I mean, that's what we need. I remember in seriously, it's so interesting. It was like a uh assignment to go find someone who lived during world war ii and interview them about it, yeah, and then I'm like that was a school assignment, now that could be like an entire part, like someone could go make money off of this, because again, like they're all passing away and that I know my court of mouth is going away.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, jeff, this has been great. Want to end with two questions. I always end every episode with First if you could have someone on the Small Inc City podcast and hear more about what they're doing and what they're up to, who would you want to hear from?
Speaker 1:I should have been prepared for this, because I remember this question and I wasn't prepared. I mean, you've mentioned a bunch in the past, like the governor and the mayor, that I think would be interesting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, do you need to get Erin on here? She's been one mention that I. I mean it makes sense.
Speaker 1:Well, I know Governor Cox and he's a great guy.
Speaker 2:A good person to talk to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he'd be a good guy to talk to. Well, obviously there's the artists Brian Mark Taylor was nice to drop my name, that was nice. The artists brian mark taylor was nice to drop my name, that was nice. And I would have dropped his too because, like, like he said, we're kin kind of kindred spirits and that we're both like sort of like into other things and inventing things I see how that friendship works now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I sat down with both of you um, so, but you've already got him, um, but it's got to be a salt lake guy or got to be utah person. I mean salt lake's loose. So it's loose, yeah, because you've already got him, but it's got to be a Salt Lake guy or got to be a Utah person. To me, salt Lake's loose, salt Lake's loose.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because you've been all over?
Speaker 1:huh, yeah, you've been all over. I think you should interview some major collectors That'd be a good one, yeah, and see what it is that they're. I mean, if you're interested in art, it'd be interesting to get in the mind of a collector.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Someone to figure out what it is that motivates them, because I there are a lot of collectors that buy and sell art just to save on taxes, you know, and then there are others that do it just for the passion of it. You should interview Gordon Bowen, gordon Bowen.
Speaker 2:Do you know who that is? The name sounds familiar, but I couldn't put my finger on it.
Speaker 1:Okay, dude this guy is something else. Okay, you should definitely interview Gordon Bowen, and I'm so glad I thought of him because he's like the coolest guy. I don't exactly know, I only know what I've heard. Okay, right, I know him personally.
Speaker 2:He's a friend.
Speaker 1:But he's a big time collector. He has arguably the most beautiful home in all of Utah. I mean, if I died and went to heaven and his house was heaven, it would all be worth it. Perfect, I mean, I kid you not. I stand in his yard and it's paradise because the guy has impeccable taste, impeccable taste.
Speaker 1:But he's the um owner of the, what I've been told is the biggest advertising agency in the world, wow, and apparently it was bought out, I think, like by some japanese company or japan itself, and he's still you know how these buyout things. My understanding is, again, all this is just my understanding is and he's still you know how these buyout things. Yeah, my understanding is, again, all this is just my understanding is that he's obviously still got to work for them and make sure it still functions for a while until he retires or whatever. I don't know all the details, but the dude is brilliant. He does a lot of free work for the lds church. Um, uh, the dude is, he's brilliant. Gordon Bowen, all right, gordon Bowen. Yeah, you got to get him Cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then, lastly, if you want to find out more about, I mean, your art, the podcast, the atelier itself, uh, what's the best place to find more info?
Speaker 1:Well, obviously just Google um Jeff Hein and the, the, the atelier is just Hein Ateliercom. Most people can't spell that A T E L I E R, it's French for studio, and um, and then Jeff Heincom, and then if you just in social media just type Jeff Hein, art and my stuff will come up, cool.
Speaker 2:So yeah, jeff, everybody was right. Great guy, great artist.
Speaker 1:Great no.
Speaker 2:I'm excited. I'm excited to see more from you. And what else, what? What other hobby is next?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that you're going to jump into. But yeah, no, it's been a pleasure, it's been an honor. Appreciate it.
