Precious Substance
Episode 1
Introduction

Wendy Clough, Laura Tyler and Hayley Williams tell the story of how they met and reveal their reasons for making art for Precious Substance Ella’s Mill.

CREDITS

Producer: Laura Tyler
Concept: Wendy Clough, Laura Tyler and Hayley Williams
Editor: Andy Schwarz
Logo Design: Hayley Williams
Creek sounds recorded at Black Cloud Creek, Mt. Elbert, Colorado

TRANSCRIPT

Hello, and welcome to Precious Substance, an art podcast inspired by the story of Ella Yount who owned and operated a flour mill at the base of Boulder Canyon in Boulder, Colorado from 1876 – 1883. It’s a pleasure to introduce my friends and collaborators Hayley Williams and Wendy Clough. We’ve shared studio space upstairs at the House of Serein Art Studios located just a stone’t throw away from the former site of the old Yount Mill. This is Episode One, it’s an introduction. It’s about how Hayley, Wendy and I met and why we began this project together.

Laura
So, my name is Laura Tyler I am an artist. I’ve lived in Boulder since the 1990’s. Something that happened that’s relevant to this building, and this space, is that I stopped painting at the start of the pandemic. About a year ago this urge to paint again just popped up. It felt really strong. So I started looking around and this little tiny room became available and I said yes. Immediately, immediately I just felt completely entranced. I felt entranced by the light in my space. It has a west window and I started to feel super curious about all the people who’d lived here before what it may have felt like to them what was it like to live here.

Hayley
I’m Hayley Williams and I am an artist and I have been in Boulder for 2 years but I still consider myself very new to the area. The idea had popped in my head that I should go somewhere new, go somewhere I’ve always wanted to see, even if it was just for a summer, and that was my original intention. So, I just put all my stuff in my car, just drove out here. I think I didn’t really have any expectations and being in a new place where I didn’t really know people, I felt like I could do whatever I wanted and that turned out to be making art. So, that’s what led to a lot of my productivity here. It felt very natural as a consequence of moving to a space that felt very good to me at the time.

Wendy
My name is Wendy Clough and I’m an artist lucky enough to be in this beautiful old building which is now an artist’s studio with my fellow artists who share the building Hayley and Laura.

Laura
What is the room like that you’re in?

Wendy
It’s kind of an L shape with a closet and I have two windows that look South right onto Boulder Creek and Boulder Canyon. One tiny window looks east and I can see the trees from the garden out there. Boulder Canyon is obviously pretty busy so we hear a lot of car traffic. But despite that it really does feel like um being in nature. I see the walls of the canyon through the window behind me.

Hayley
I had actually toured Wendy’s room right before she did the same day and I remember seeing Wendy and when I came into this space I though wow this is amazing, the red rocks are right here, the creek is right here, you can see the canyon from these windows and um I remember seeing Wendy walking up to the house and I thought oh gosh you know other people are interested so that space become Wendy’s room and um I just think about that I laugh about that a little bit in my head because I was at the time actually upset I didn’t go for it but now I’m actually glad that I didn’t because then maybe Wendy wouldn’t have come into the space.

Wendy
I think I was looking for more of a community than my studio at home was providing for me. I also have the distraction problem with my home and my dogs so being away and having a dedicated space to work really appealed to me. So I started renting my studio and then just a couple of weeks later I found out I had breast cancer so I felt very uncertain of what my participation in the studio was going to be what my level could be but the months went by and I was made to feel welcome so it was really something I was able to grow into. And since being healthy for almost a year now it’s really become a big part of my life.

Laura
It sounds like you’ve described a momentous time in your life. Is that fair to say?

Wendy
Yeah, yeah, yeah encapsulated by this little old bedroom. Which it was one day it was someone’s bedroom. And everything has a domestic feeling which I think has influenced the work I’ve done while I’ve been here.

Laura
How so?

Wendy
I think the scale of the work I’ve done here has taken on sort of a corresponding domestic scale I think the idea of Ella Yount is just very appropriate to this space bing an old farmhouse and the idea of a woman working I think that was part of the intrigue. Women in the 1870’s they wore aprons so they could cover up their good dresses and uh the idea of the domestic work that was needed at the time to keep a house going let alone a mill going is overwhelming we know how hard people worked in those days.

Hayley
I’m curious, Laura, how you feel about your room knowing that that it is/was the laundry room before this space was converted for creative uses.

Laura
Yeah, so my studio is in the laundry room, it’s the smallest studio, I believe, in the house. There’s a north window that faces red rocks and an apartment building and then there’s this incredible west window. And there’s an enormous cottonwood tree right in front of the window. And so there’s this period of time in the afternoon when the sun is setting where the walls are just raked with light and the light is obscured by the cottonwood leaves and so its just flickering flickering flickering and it’s one of the most entrancing experiences I’ve had with light in my lifetime. I’m able to sit on the floor and have a low table in front of me that I can work on. I tend to work at the north window and get the nice indirect light. Sometimes I wonder about the families that lived here before. What were they like? Were they happy? Were there children here? Was it lonely? This building, this whole story, this past that we’re talking about, It gets me thinking about the character of Boulder. Who were the people that founded this city? Why did they come here? What type of habits and culture did they establish that we can still feel today? So, those are some open questions. I don’t know those answers, but I do wonder about it quite a bit, what did it feel like to live here? What if this was your home. What was that like?

Wendy
I know that people first came here for the mining. And when that started fading they came down the hill from Nederland and settled here. The flour mill that Ella Yount owned? Should we talk about her story at all?

Laura
Yeah, let’s transition over to that story. Wendy do you remember the story of us going to Carnegie how that happened?

Wendy
You sent a message to see if anyone was interested and I was and I was sitting outside on the bench because I couldn’t really figure out where to go inside. And I just figured that whoever was coming would come up the walk. And you came up and said oh it’s this way and I didn’t really know you at that time at all. But you showed me the way in and a woman met us, It’s a really amazing little old building that’s full of information and helpful people they had actually pulled some articles for us and some photos and land plots and maps that were a bit challenging to read and then just kind of let us go after it. It’s a serious place. There were other people there doing their own research we both came across this article and we were really, we were both struck by the language. I think it just really presents the sort of double bind that women maybe were in, have been in and are still in. And there was the question of who is a real woman.

Laura
Hayley. Wendy and I, we met at the Carnegie digging through these folders of old articles. How did you come into the project what was your first connection?

Hayley
I had come into it a little bit later since I wasn’t part of the trip to Carnegie. But I know the both of you had told me about what you were researching and I found it interesting. We had talked about it. You shared the newspaper articles that you had found and at that time I thought this is something I would really love to look into more and explore not just through reading by also explore with my art.