Creative Chats With Eileen Ryan (How Do You Stand Out in a Crowd?)
This is a recording from a series for the podcast at the Mosesian Center for the Arts called Creative Chats. I sat down for a live conversation with artist and climate and social justice activist Eileen Ryan to discuss the question: How do you stand out in a crowd?
Eileen talks about the ideas behind the many signs, hats, and outfits she's designed for protests, how images of her and her work have been featured in local and national publications (and why she thinks she captures photographers' eyes), how she thinks of herself as an illustrator of movements, the case for beauty, kindness, and humor as tools that persuade and recruit better than pure anger, and more.
Released April 29th, 2026
(Click here to listen on streaming apps) (Full transcript below)
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Find out more about Eileen and Beyond Plastics and the upcoming Mother's Day Walk for Peace
Listen to other Creative Chats episodes
Photo Credit for Image of Eileen: Asia Kepka
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Thanks to podcast promotional partner the Watertown Business Coalition, a nonprofit organization focused on connecting local businesses and strengthening our community. Check them out at watertownbusinesscoalition.com.
Thanks to promotional partner Watertown News, a Watertown-focused online newspaper. Check them out at watertownmanews.com.
Thank you to Creative Chats series sponsor Arsenal Financial!
This program is supported in part by a grant from the Watertown Cultural Council, a local agency which is supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency.
Transcript
Matt 0:07
Hi there, welcome to the Little Local Conversations Podcast. I'm your host, Matt Hanna. Every episode I sit down for a conversation to discover the people, places, stories, and ideas of Watertown. This episode comes from a live event, a Creative Chats event that I do monthly over at the Mosesian Center for the Arts. And the guest was Eileen Ryan, who is an artist and climate and social justice activist. So we got into the question of, how do you stand out in a crowd? Quite literally, but also with the art. Before we get into the conversation, I want to give a quick thank you to Arsenal Financial, who has joined on as a series sponsor for Creative Chats. Thank you, Doug, and the rest of the team over at Arsenal Financial.
Matt 0:47
And I wanted to let you know about a couple other Creative Chats events coming up. If you’re listening to this when this comes out, it's coming up on Friday, May 1st. And that's with Daniel Pritchard, who's a poet, translator, and essayist. And his topic is going to be, should art be difficult? So Friday, May 1st, 8:30 to 10 a.m., Mosesian Center for the Arts. Then to round out the Creative Chats season, I'm trying something new. What I'm calling the Creative Chats Conference. It's gonna be on Thursday, June 4th, from 12 to 4 p.m. It's gonna be two big interactive panel conversations. And the theme of the whole event is how do we support a healthy local arts ecosystem? It should be a really fun event, and hopefully we'll come out with some actionable steps. Get to meet some great local artists that are also in the community with you. So again, that's Thursday, June 4th, from 12 to 4 p.m. again at the Mosesian Center for the Arts. Head on over to LittleLocalConversations.com slash events. You can see both of those Creative Chats events coming up. Hope to see you there. All right, so now let's hop into the conversation I had at the beginning of April with Eileen Ryan.
Matt 1:45
Welcome again. This is Creative Chats, which is part of my podcast, Little Local Conversations, which focuses on lots of different areas in Watertown, but arts is a particular interest of mine. And I wanted to give a space for people to come together to talk about creative topics. So I do this monthly at the Mosesian Center. And today's guest, well, I'll let you introduce yourself and how you describe yourself, because you're lots of different things, right? But introduce yourself and then we'll introduce the topic for the day. So give me your little short spiel of the case.
Eileen 2:13
Well, you'll soon see that I wear a lot of different hats. So my name is Eileen Ryan. I live on Pearl Street. I'm a climate and social justice activist. I'm a member of First Parish of Watertown. And I think I know most of you in the audience today. So welcome. It's great to be here. And I can't wait to share my thoughts about sign making and costuming and how to stand out in a crowd.
Matt 2:36
Thank you. Yes. Great segway. That is our topic for today, which is how do you stand out in a crowd. And obviously, there's lots of different ways to take that. There's the physical, which obviously you have experience with standing out in a crowd, but then there's just the artistic thing that lots of artists struggle with of how do you stand out in a crowd. So I think those could be intertwined today. So let's start with how did that topic first come up for you of standing, literally standing out in a crowd?
Eileen 3:00
Well, actually, I went to the Women's March in 2017 with some of the people here. I went to Washington, D.C. We were told we could not bring any kind of poles. So I decided that I needed a really tall hat. It's over here and I will put it on. It has all these streamers on it that address some of the other issues that I care about, healthcare, education, et cetera. But I felt like I wasn't tall enough. So I came home and I was like, how can I be taller for the next protest I'm going to? And I was listening to NPR and I heard a story about giraffes and how they're endangered. So I thought, wow, maybe I should be a giraffe. So I created this hat that's over here out of an old flannel sheet, which I painted. It's stuffed with newspaper. So it's very transportable. That's another thing. I always have to be able to travel on public transportation because a lot of these protests that I go to are in cities that are difficult to drive to. And I'm also a climate activist. So I support taking public transportation.
Eileen 4:00
I don't know if I can take all these capes off right now, but I'm taking off a bright green cape, which I wore this weekend as part of the No Kings March in Boston. We had a climate coalition of people, we were trying to raise up the green community. And this is the purple cape that I created for the Women's March in 2017 with the help of Leslie Evans, who's here today, who's a printmaker and illustrator. We made these sashes that say Hear Our Voice and Justice for All. And we made them for multiple people. We had a workshop in the basement of First Parish Watertown. Leslie brought her press and we printed, and the back of them all say Watertown Mass. So people could wear these to Washington. It was a really easy, lightweight thing for people to wear. And some of my neighbors said that people actually noticed where they were from and called them out on the mall with thousands and thousands of people there. So I went for the tall look with the giraffe. I've used it a lot. I think I used it first for a science march that was in Boston in 2017. And then I was going to Washington again in the spring of 2017. And I created also a banner.
Eileen 5:08
So I have a few banners that are out in the hall, and I have a way of holding them up with these expandable paint sticks. They're for paint rollers. So you can put them up high and they also collapse down and they easily fit into a bag, which is very important. So I have a bunch of bags I brought with me too, just to show that it's important to be able to carry your signs with you without, I think it might be, I think it might be overstuffed right now.
Matt 5:36
For people just listening, you are missing out on some visuals here. She has gone through a couple of costume changes already in the first five minutes of our conversation here.
Eileen 5:46
So initially I didn't have this shirt, but I walk a lot. I walk dogs professionally. And when I'm walking, I get a lot of ideas. So one day I was walking and I was like, you know what would be really cool is if the spots on the giraffe were animals that are endangered. So then I created this shirt where I actually cut out and then I traced around the cutouts of the different animals to create the look of a giraffe, but where the spots, instead of just being, you know, the random kind of shapes that are on a regular giraffe, they are animals. And this is also reflected in the banner that is out in the hallway. So that was what I wanted. I wanted height and I wanted something visually arresting.
Eileen 6:25
But the other thing I've worked on is working with groups of people to stand out in a crowd. And one of the first things I think I did along those lines was this walking meditation with people from Extinction Rebellion, where everybody wore black, and then we created these black signs that people wore around their necks. And there are a few of them here. Climate justice is eco justice, climate justice is clean air for all, climate justice protects the children. A lot of people don't understand what climate justice means. So I try to illustrate that with images and words, right.
Eileen 6:58
So I like to think of myself as an illustrator of movements. So when you're at a protest, you're trying to amplify the message of whatever that demonstration is about. And I think it's really helpful to do it in groups of people. So not everybody wants to wear a giraffe hat. And not everybody wants to carry a heavy sign, although my friend Catherine here has done that for me in the past. So the around the neck is really easy, and people wear all black, and it makes a really visually arresting statement. We have about 25 to 30 of these signs that can go around the neck. And when you're walking quietly in a public space, it is very arresting and eye-catching. So we've done it in train stations, North Station, South Station. We've done it along the Charles River during the head of the Charles. And people really turn and then you're passing out flyers so they sort of understand what you're, you're trying to bring more people into the movement. In that case, those were for Extinction Rebellion, the Boston group.
Eileen 7:55
And then I'm the leader of Beyond Plastics, Greater Boston. So I work a lot on trying to get people involved in banning plastic, legislation that reduces plastic pollution in our community in Massachusetts. And so I had to, I had to, I just had to create this outfit. Actually, the reason I created the next outfit that you're going to see is because I wore the giraffe costume to an art opening in Concord on the day of the Wake Up the Earth festival a few years ago. So I had worn the giraffe costume in the morning and I was going with my friend Katrin, who's a performance artist from New York. She created this amazing performance called Death by Plastic, where somebody gets into a clear plexiglass coffin filled with single-use plastic to show that plastic is killing us. And a video of her doing that in the canals of Venice was part of this show in Concord. And she was wearing an anti-plastic costume that she created.
Eileen 8:53
So the two of us together had these costumes at the opening. And a woman came up to me and said, Oh my goodness, I am doing a climate and racial justice fashion show in the South End, well, in Fort Point Channel. And that was in September of 2023. And would you like to be part of it? Now Katrin’s based in New York, so she said, no, thank you. But I said, sure. And then I had already been printing some of these patches and collecting them. And then I had Leslie, she created this poster for us for our group. It says plastic kills, and it has silhouettes of many sea animals on it. Asked her if she could do it on fabric. So we have the dress, it has pockets. I have my business card in this pocket right here, Beyond Plastics, Greater Boston. My phone fits in here.
Eileen 9:41
And then, of course, I'm all about the front and the back, the front and the back of every sign because you never know how you're going to get photographed. I'm super aware of photographers. I was a photographer. I studied art history and photography in college. I know how to be aware of the camera. And I know they're not always looking for somebody as super posed. But because of that awareness, I have now had my image reproduced in the New York Times, multiple times in the Boston Globe, and the Wall Street Journal and, you know, smaller publications as well. It's just creating something that’s visually arresting.
Eileen 10:15
So also a lot of people keep saying, why are we going to all these protests? These demonstrations don't make any difference. We don't need to go. And I was like, yes, we do. Yes, we do. Yes, we do. Because they are making a difference. And the record of how many people are there, that visual record and the record of what the signs say, those get used over and over again. The media wants illustrations, they want ways to illustrate stories, right. This is all about storytelling. So I've been really surprised when I have seen images that were taken of me. Sometimes they're really disappointing. It's like, oh my God, I made the most amazing sign. I had this incredible banner. I had this amazing costume. And I didn't get into the Boston Globe. I can't believe it. And then months later, a picture from that thing pops up illustrating something that maybe was or wasn't what the original thing.
Eileen 11:05
Like there was something about ranked choice voting that I was at. It was right before Halloween. Months later, they started writing about ranked choice voting again. And there's the picture. Just recently, I created, and it's out in the hall, a big banner that says no ice here. And it has an outline of Massachusetts on it. And we went down to City Hall in January after Renee Good was killed. And we stood there, got there early. That's a key thing. Get there early if you want to get photographed. And again, I was like, oh my God, my banner didn't get into the Globe. It's nowhere. Blah, blah, blah. And then I started seeing it. It's been coming up. Photographs from that day have been coming up in talks about immigration. They've been on, some of those photographs have been used in some of the publications like 5051, Massachusetts, which is an organization that lets people know about actions in Massachusetts. It's been on there. So you don't know how your images are going to come forward.
Eileen 11:58
Also, I was talking a little bit about the climate groups. I'd like to make signs that work together that other people can carry them when we go to a march or demonstration. So these that are behind us here, they all have one white dove in the middle of them, and then they have one word: justice, trust, peace, hope, forgiveness. And there's more of them. We use those at the Mother's Day Walk for Peace, which is on Mother's Day every year, which this year is May 10th. I just put a little shout out. I'm the organizer of the Watertown Walks for Peace team. We need to get more donations, of course. We're just sending out our invitation right now. But the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute, which is based in Dorchester, loves that we come and look like a unified group. And they photograph us, they use our pictures on their website over and over again. And all of these are double-sided. I mean, this one just says Watertown Walks for Peace on the back, but other ones actually are connected to what the word says in the front. So the justice one says attack forces of evil, not people doing evil. And that's based on one of the Kingian principles of nonviolence. So I try to incorporate that information too.
Eileen 13:09
Yeah, so just recently I've been getting into different shaped signs, thanks to Fritz, who's in the audience today. He's a woodworker. And I had him, on Valentine's Day this year in Watertown Square we had a resist with love standout in Watertown Square. And Fritz cut out these beautiful wooden hearts for me. And we have five of those. And then he said he could actually do cardboard as well because we can't take those heavy wooden signs down into Boston. So I was going to myself just cut really simple crowns out, zigzag, you know, kind of like the logo that you've seen for No Kings. But Fritz's like, no, we can do something really fancy. So we made a whole lot of these, and they look really amazing when you have a whole group of people together carrying the same shape sign. He also helped me cut these round signs, which we just used last Saturday with the climate contingent at the No Kings demonstration in Boston and in Watertown. We use them in Watertown too.
Matt 14:09
So you've made a lot of signs.
Eileen 14:11
Made a lot of signs, yeah.
Matt 14:13
So when you're making a sign or costume or an outfit, are you thinking about how it's going to appear in a crowd or appear from a distance? And how do you go about creating the vision you want for it to look like from afar?
Eileen 14:26
Well, I want it to be read from afar. So I think it's really important. The lettering has to be large. I walk around looking at street signs and traffic signs. It's like, oh, okay, you can read that from a pretty far distance and only three and a half inches high. Actually, that's how I first made my first stop sign, which is over there by the window, which is a double sign. One side says stop the madness, the other side says stop the lies. But I made that during 2018 when the March for Our Lives was happening and a lot of anti-gun violence. But I was walking down Pearl Street where I live, and I looked at the stop sign. It's like, oh my God, I got to make a stop sign. And stop signs are great because kids really love them and they can identify them, but they really stand out.
Eileen 15:09
And then I made a lot of signs about stopping the fossil fuel plastic industry for a big march we did in New York City, which was in 2023. And that's when I got into the New York Times. I was so excited because I was wearing this dress and I was wearing this hat. It says stop petrochemistry on the bottle that comes out of the crown of the hat that has a straw on it. And I actually change this little sign all the time, depending on what I'm doing, like update the bottle bill, pass the climate bill. So I've worn it to the state house to testify many times, actually. But something really simple like this, stop petrochemistry. I had these two teenagers in New York ask me, what is petrochemistry? So I can tell them, you know, it's fossil fuels and chemistry, and that's what plastics are made out of, and give a little lesson.
Eileen 15:57
But yes, my main thing with the signs, they have to be visual from a distance. My mother, actually, a long time ago, when she was at BU in the 1950s, took a class in sign making. You have to be able to read a sign from a moving car. And she used to say that to me all the time. I have to tell you that my mother did actually give me a lot of feedback about my signs and was quite critical at times. But I guess in the end, it helped, right?
Matt 16:21
What was some of the feedback? What was the problem with some of the early signs and how did you change them?
Eileen 16:25
Too many words, too close together. But I also always want my signs to have some kind of illustration that goes with them because I actually like the idea of children who maybe don't know how to read, be able to get something out of the sign. So I have this crazy monster over here, stop the monster, which is all about New England energy companies. And ISO New England is the energy company for New England. But this guy is based on Robin Wall Kimmerer’s tales that she tells about, I think it's the wendago. This is the greedy monster that wants to eat everything, take everything, right. And we need to curtail that, that kind of greed, right. So I also try to bring my values as a Unitarian Universalist into the circle. And I, I think you were gonna ask me about why I like to have positive signs.
Matt 17:16
That's where I was gonna go next. It's like a lot of the wording is stop the, rather than don't do, you know.
Eileen 17:23
Almost never use the word no. I mean, no kings is, I mean, I think it's great. It's really short and simple, and it conveys a strong message. But I keep wishing it didn't have the word no in it. So when my kids were growing up, I read Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish’s, their book, How to Talk to Kids So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk. And she says in that book, you know, don't say to your child, don't pull the cat's tail. Just say, be gentle to the cat, right? Because what the child often hears is pull the cat's tail. They don't hear the no. And I feel like that's important with your messaging, but I also feel like it's important to have beauty and kindness and love, and that all those things help to bring more people into the movement than anger and hostility. I don't know. I see a lot of signs these days that use the F word. I was like, okay, I get it. I understand where that rage and anger is coming from, but I don't think that's the best way. If you're trying to win hearts and minds, I don't think that's the best way to bring people into the movement.
Matt 18:26
Yeah. And do you, when you do get into publications, do you notice there's a trend with that? Is it certain wording, certain phrases that pop up on those signs?
Eileen 18:34
I think it's the visuals.
Matt 18:36
It's the visuals.
Eileen 18:37
Yeah, it's the visuals. And it's also how it goes together. Like Guy and I dressed up as Betsy Ross and his ancestor, Timothy Matlack, who is the calligrapher for the Declaration of Independence. There's a portrait of him at the MFA right now. So we were wearing these amazing costumes, and we had a sign that related to our costumes, right. So that's when we got into the Wall Street Journal together last fall. And when I got into the New York Times, it was the same thing. My costume actually told a whole story. So I had the hat that said stop petrochemistry. I was wearing a shirt with the back of the shirt, had this the image. Oh, I took that dress off. Had the plastic kills on the back. So you could just see, oh, stop petrochemistry, plastic kills. They go together, and then you have the plastic bottles, the nip bottles, which we, of course, all want to get rid of now of the bane of our not existence, but whatever, hoping to expand the bottle bill and have them have a return on them.
Matt 19:34
Yeah. And how about when you're actually out in the crowd with your signs? I mean, obviously you could have something that's arresting, but if you're not actually actively acting in a certain way, you might not get captured too. Like, is there something in the way when you're in the crowd that you?
Eileen 19:47
Walk around. I like to walk around. Actually, I just got on Reddit, which I don't read, but one of the young people in Indivisible Progressive Watertown saw it's like, oh my God, Eileen, you're on Reddit. And it was my back, and I know when it happened. It happened because I had walked, tried to walk up close to the stage when I got turned around. And when I was walking away, somebody took this picture. And again, it was the back of the cape, which says peace, and it was the back of the sign that's no longer here. That stop the Trumpster fire sign. So, yeah, walking around makes a difference. I try to do that, but I don't always. Also a key thing is getting there early. I feel like multiple times the news, the media gets there early and they take their pictures and then sometimes they leave. But I also did once get into the Boston Globe when I arrived very, very late to something. I was like last person there.
Matt 20:34
So both sides of it. So sometimes it's not even standing out in a crowd, it's just not being with the crowd. I mean, obviously the rest of the day you're with the crowd.
Eileen 20:42
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm mostly with the crowd. And also, you know, if you're marching, it's different too. I guess another thing I've been thinking about a lot lately that I wanted to tell is the Aesop's fable story about the sun and the wind. So the sun and the wind are having an argument, who's stronger, and they can't decide. And then they look down and there's a man walking along, and he's got his cloak around him. And so they decide, okay, let's see who can get him to take his coat and cloak, whatever, off first. And the wind tries blowing and blowing, and he's pulling it tighter and tighter around him. But then the sun comes out warmer and warmer and warmer, and then he's like, oh, and he takes it off. And so it's the sun that wins out, right? That's why I like to go with love and positive messaging.
Matt 21:26
Yeah. Then obviously there's the how to stand out in a crowd, but to stand out in a crowd, you have to be part of the crowd. Is there anything else in terms of being part of that crowd that we haven't hit on that you feel like is important for you?
Eileen 21:37
We'll I try to always take the message of the demonstration to heart and to create something that goes with that. So a group of young people in Boston wanted to do a dinosaurs for justice protest, all about dinosaurs. So I was like, okay, I'll make a dinosaur hat. This is also stuffed with newspaper, and I think it's a little soggy right now, so I won't put it on. This is a T Rex, you know, protect the earth. And we post down the Faneuil Hall near a big dinosaur that's out there in Quincy Market. But yeah, try to add to the messaging of whatever you're going to.
Matt 22:11
Then if we take it a little more abstractly, how to stand out in the crowd, not necessarily in the physical crowd, but in like an artistic standing out from other artwork that might be around. Have you learned anything from making all these signs and banners on a general art scale too?
Eileen 22:26
Well, we haven't really talked about humor yet. I think humor is really important in the protest movement. And I think that it really works. It's very effective. So like it's time for a new DJ. That one is over there. We're sick of the soundtrack. That's DJ Trump. That was another thing that came to me while walking up Palfrey Street, actually. DJ, what his initials like, oh my God. Actually, Leslie helped me create that image of the hand on the record. And it says racism, hate, lies, cruelty. So I think that's pretty humorous. And you know, in the Trumpster fire and wake up and smell the corruption is another one. The back of this is make greed wrong again. Those little images of the head, Zuckerberg, Bezos, Trump, and Musk. I based those on a New Yorker drawing that was in the New Yorker right at the time of the inauguration last year. I don't know. Yeah, I love all the artwork that other people make. I mean, I'm not a trained artist, actually. I'm just a, I mean, I have some talent, but I'm a little crude, I think. I mean, my skills aren't that great. So I really love seeing what other people make who are very, very talented. And yeah, usually the larger the better. But I also love, like as I was saying before, doing a group that works together.
Matt 23:35
Now, do you reuse these or, you know, you make a new one for each time?
Eileen 23:40
Oh, yeah. These take hours and hours to make. I want people to appreciate how much time they take. So I have actually turned this small room that was originally built, I think it's a sewing room in my house, but it was my daughter's bedroom for a while, into my storage unit. And my husband Guy created this rack for me to store all this stuff on. And I take them down in Watertown Square. We've been doing a monthly standout, and it's been great. And I've been taking lots of them down there. Before that, during the George Floyd protests, we also had a lot of anti-racism protests in Watertown Square, and I brought a lot of signs for that. So I have my different topics that I can bring to any kind of standout. But ones we're doing now, I can bring almost anything too.
Eileen 24:21
So yeah, I have these bags I was talking about because I've traveled. I did a protest in New York City against Coca-Cola’s sponsorship of COP27, and I dressed up in a Coke can costume, which belonged to one of the members of Beyond Plastics Greater Boston. And I got all these people in New York. I know a bunch of New York activists, and we sent it out on the Beyond Plastics list. And I worked with a Beyond Plastics leader in New York City, a couple of them. And we had 20 people, I got everybody to dress in red, black, and white. And then we had, Leslie made the plastic kill sign in red, black, and white for that protest. And all the signs were in red, black, and white based on the Coca-Cola colors. I mean, red and white are the real Coke colors, but the black is like the Coke, right? And it was really effective. We sang songs. I rewrote the lyrics to I'd like to teach the world to sing. And I also rewrote the lyrics to Puff the Magic Dragon. And we sang in Grand Central Station, and we ended up at the New York Public Library. Anyway, that's another story.
Matt 25:19
And then I guess before I open up questions, maybe one last, why do you think it's important to have, I mean, you've already touched on it some, but to have signs and visuals rather than just a group of people saying their thoughts as a group? What's the process?
Eileen 25:32
As I said, we're illustrators. We're illustrating different movements and the importance to the media. They need illustrations for everything that they do. They want them. They want them, right? It makes an article so much more interesting or coverage of something. Well, in print media, it makes it much more engaging to have visuals, right? And then also in TV or whatever, if you have those images, it amplifies the message because a lot of people aren't talking, right? They're just they're watching. That's not all that interesting. It's really cool to, I mean, it was really cool to see the images of Boston Common from above, the drone photography, like, oh my God, 150 to 200,000 people were there. But when you see the signs. And it's they're fun. They're fun. They're really fun and they're inspiring.
Eileen 26:15
So I read Robert Hubbell’s newsletter every day, which is a really nice, encouraging newsletter about what's happening in the news and about protest movements and the importance of them. And he's been for the past several months posting images of protests around the country and I pore over those pictures every morning. Oh, that's a really cool one. Maybe I'll try that. Or he hasn't put mine in yet, and I can't believe it. But he has published mine quite a few times, photos that I've sent him of different protests that I have been involved in here in Watertown, actually. So that's been really fun to get amplified in that way. Because I think he has like over a million followers.
Matt 26:51
Awesome. Great. Well, I think we got a good overview of what you're doing and where you're coming from. But I always like to leave time for questions from the audience. So do people have comments or questions for Eileen? I can come around with the mic. All right.
Speaker 27:06
I may have missed it, but what initially inspired you to move to clothing? Was it the fashion show or was it? Because what you're wearing right now, which I know is one of your newest, I just have always been really intrigued with what you've done with that.
Eileen 27:24
Yeah, we didn't really talk about that. Well, the first costume I made for protest was the purple cape with the Hear Our Voice and Justice for All and the hat. But I come from a long line of sewers. My mother learned to sew here in Watertown. I live in a house that's been in my family for 101 years since 1925. My mother went to the East Junior High, which is now the um Brigham, the Brigham House. And she learned to sew in this little room up on the third floor. She always points it out. She had a wonderful teacher, and she created clothing in the 1960s, made out of Mary Meckle fabrics that she sold at a friend's boutique in Camden, Maine. I grew up in Bennington, Vermont. North Bennington, Vermont is where I grew up, and I grew up surrounded by a very artistic community of people. I mean, almost everybody I knew was a visual or performing artist or somebody in the healthcare profession. I didn't know anybody ever who worked in finance. I knew maybe one lawyer. My mother worked in healthcare. My father was an actor.
Eileen 28:23
But then in high school, I started making costumes for theater. And it's always been a love of mine, costuming. And actually, my neighbor Dan Grossman once said, Eileen's always in a costume. Like, no matter what I'm wearing, I do often make a visual statement with my clothing, even if it's not part of some protest movement. And I actually thought when my youngest child went off to college in 2016, I thought, I'm gonna go work for Costume Works in Somerville. So Costume Works in Somerville provides all the costumes for Revels, which my three children have been involved with, which is an amazing organization, used to be based here in Watertown, but they have these great performances at Sanders Theater at Christmas time every year. And the costumes are phenomenal. And I'm good friends with Heidi Hermiller, who is the chief costumer for Revels. Actually, she's the person who helped provide the amazing 18th century costume for Guy to wear at the No Kings 2 protest in October. And I've given Heidi lots of things. So my mother also collected antique clothing. And I've been shopping at thrift shops my entire life. So when I go and I see things that I think Heidi would like, like lace up boots that look like 19th century boots, I buy them for her and donate them to her. But also, my mother died this fall, and we've been going through her house, and I just gave Heidi these amazing fur gloves. I mean, they're probably from the early 20th century. She said she was gonna make a beaver costume out of them. Yeah, so I have this history of sewing, but my mother and grandmother were not costumers or anything. But I have just been drawn to that, I guess, my whole life.
Speaker 29:56
Hi. So I really appreciate all your artwork. But what advice do you have for those of us who cannot draw, can barely write a legible. How do we do it other than to steal one of your signs, which is what I usually do?
Eileen 30:10
Well, we've been having these sign making parties at First Parish Watertown that have been really, really fun. We've had three of them in the past year. What I love is actually, this sign, one of the reasons I brought this sign in today that says save our immigrants and has a butterfly on it, is multiple people worked on this. Fritz cut out the circle, a new person I hadn't met before, Anya, she outlined, I drew the circles around, and then she outlined the lettering for somebody who didn't feel like she had the skills to paint the letters. And then Lori painted the letters in, and then Anita sketched out the butterfly, and then I finally painted it at home. It didn't get finished at the sign making party. But that is a great way for people who don't feel like they have the skills, is come to one of our sign making parties and work together. Yeah, but definitely always try to make your lettering large enough to be read from a pretty far distance, at least 10 to 12 feet.
Speaker 31:06
I have just a comment because Eileen is so amazing and inspires so many of us. And I was away visiting family in Berkeley, California for the latest No Kings. And I sent a text to Eileen and I said, Did you see there's this woman on Instagram who talks a lot about everything that's going on? She has about, you know, almost half a million followers, so a lot of folks. And like looking at my feed, seeing Eileen in her green outfit, you know, arranging the signs and things. So you may not even know where some of these images are popping up because people on social media are constantly, you know, kids film everything. Kids and all of us actually are filming so much of what we're experiencing, sharing it with people. So, you know, your point is so well taken that you never know when these things that you're creating. And I think a lot of it, I think of it as performance art. You know, you're creating an experience for people and it's on multi-layers. And I think of that as a type of performance. And I think it's wonderful.
Eileen 32:05
Yeah, thank you, Heather. So I met that woman who has the following. I had no idea she had an Instagram or a following or anything. And she's based in Germany. So I did say to her when she told me that she was from Germany, I was like, oh, I hear in Germany, particularly in other parts of Europe, too, that they don't know there's a counter-resistance going on. They just think that we're all just falling over, right. That we are not pushing back. She said, I know that's why I'm here. I'm here to show the resistance. So that's great. I had no idea that she had this following or who she was or anything. But yeah, you don't know. You don't know where you're gonna get picked up or when it's gonna show up. Or I've been picked up by the AP a lot. So that's been really exciting. Like No Kings 2, I ended up with a picture. The time for a new DJ backside of that is banish the bully, dethrone the mad king. So this I wore with the purple cape, and that got picked up by the AP. So that was exciting.
Matt 32:58
Well, I think we got a lot of thoughts out there for the podcast. So we can end the podcast, but feel free to mingle and chat afterwards on the topic of how do you stand out in the crowd in all the different ways that we've talked about.
Eileen 33:09
Yeah. Thank you, Matt.
Matt 33:10
And yeah, thank you, Eileen, for coming in and bringing a whole show today.
Eileen 33:14
Yeah. Thank you to Leslie for recommending me. Yeah. Thanks to all of you for coming. Yeah, it's really nice to see all of you here.
Matt 33:21
So that's it for my conversation with Eileen. If you'd like to hear more of these Creative Chats conversations, you can head on over to LittleLocalConversations.com. In the menu there, you can see listen by category, and you can select Creative Chats. You can see the dozen or so episodes I've been releasing that series so far. And like I mentioned at the beginning of the episode, you can come join on Friday, May 1st for the next one with Daniel Pritchard and come out to the big Creative Chats Conference on Thursday, June 4th to be part of the community, part of our working together to try and build a healthy local arts ecosystem. See all that again at Little Local Conversations.com slash events. You can also sign up for my newsletter there at the website so that you can be kept up to date with all the episodes and events coming up. And you can see all the other episodes I do that are beyond the Creative Chat series.
Matt 34:08
All right, I want to give a thank you to the Creative Chat series sponsor, Arsenal Financial. That's a financial planning business here in town that's owned by Doug Orifice, very committed community member, co-president of the Watertown Business Coalition. He's the vice chair of the Watertown Cultural District. So he cares deeply about the arts. But if you need help with financial planning, they focus on busy families, small businesses, and people close to retirement. Reach out to Doug and his team at arsenalfinancial.com. Thank you again, Doug, and the rest of Arsenal Financial.
Matt 34:38
All right, and I want to give a few shout-outs here to wrap things up. I want to give a thank you to the Watertown Cultural Council who have given me a grant this year to help support the podcast. So I want to give them the appropriate credit, which is, this program is supported in part by a grant from the Watertown Cultural Council, a local agency, which is supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency. Find out more about them at Watertown Cultural Council.org and MassCulturalCouncil.org. And a couple more shout-outs to promotional partners. First, the Watertown Business Coalition. Their motto is Community Is Our Business. Find out more about them at WatertownBusinessCoalition.com. And lastly, Watertown News, which is a Watertown focused online newspaper. It's a great place to keep up to date with everything going on in the city. Check that out at WatertownMANews.com. So that's it. Until next time, take care.
