Speaker 1: Ephemeral production of My Heart three D audio for Felix Vasure.
Speaker 1: Listen with that phones. If you had to leave your
Speaker 1: life behind and take only the things you could carry,
Speaker 1: what would you choose. On today's bonus episode, we introduce
Speaker 1: you to ephemeral producer Trevor Young, whom you'll hear more
Speaker 1: from this season. Trevor recently had the chance to visit
Speaker 1: his grandmother, a professional artist based in Malibu, California. Over
Speaker 1: five decades, she amassed an impressive body of work, paintings, sketches, drawings, illustrations.
Speaker 1: She was also an avid art collector, and then she
Speaker 1: lost all of it. The horribly destructive wildfires then engulfed
Speaker 1: nearly two million acres of California that year, well almost
Speaker 1: all of it. Honestly, if it wasn't from my neighbor,
Speaker 1: I would be dead. It was one o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 1: The phone rang, and everything was going fast. The phone
Speaker 1: lines were going down, the electric lines we're going down.
Speaker 1: And she said, the fire has jumped the freeway. We
Speaker 1: haven't much time, and that's when I packed everything, and
Speaker 1: she's absolutely right. We didn't have much time. When I
Speaker 1: got down to the end of the driveway or the road.
Speaker 1: There was just blazing. That's my grandma. Her name is
Speaker 1: Yvonne Scherbach, and she's been a professional artist and educator
Speaker 1: her entire adult life. She's worked and lived most of
Speaker 1: that life in the mountains just east of Malibu, And
Speaker 1: as you just heard, she was forced to evacuate her
Speaker 1: home a few years ago, barely escaping the so called
Speaker 1: Woolsey wildfires. When I found out what had happened, I
Speaker 1: couldn't leave it. I had grown up visiting that house
Speaker 1: every summer. It was a magical place. The house looked
Speaker 1: like an art gallery. Every wall had paintings on it.
Speaker 1: Many of them, of course, were mine, but I collected,
Speaker 1: of course, I collected. I collected from other illustrators, other artists.
Speaker 1: I had paintings, drawings everywhere, and they were delightful. It
Speaker 1: was a wonderful environment to live in. More than anything,
Speaker 1: that house was a testament to everything my grandma had
Speaker 1: achieved over five decades of work. Just looking around it
Speaker 1: was easy to see what a successful career she had had.
Speaker 1: As she told me, she knew very early on in
Speaker 1: life that art was her calling. I don't think there's
Speaker 1: a choice there. I think one is born to do that,
Speaker 1: and I think that's true of musicians, it's true of writers.
Speaker 1: You don't have an Aha moment. It's just what you're
Speaker 1: born to do, and quite frankly, you will do anything
Speaker 1: to do it. As a young adult, my grandma studied
Speaker 1: at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and
Speaker 1: quickly discovered what she was capable of. When I graduated,
Speaker 1: all I knew is that I wanted to be an illustrator.
Speaker 1: That's what I'd studied. And to tell you the truth,
Speaker 1: I had a job before I even graduated, and almost
Speaker 1: immediately I was illustrating books for children. I illustrated for
Speaker 1: ten years two books a year for Scholastic, The Math Monsters.
Speaker 1: As an illustrator, really, what I was really doing as
Speaker 1: characters storytelling. That's what illustrators do, is tell stories. When
Speaker 1: I saw the movie called Ms Potter with Renee Zelwerger
Speaker 1: about the life of Beatrix Potter, I laughed in the
Speaker 1: theater when she started talking to her characters, her book characters,
Speaker 1: because then I didn't feel like such an idiot. I
Speaker 1: used to do the same thing. I used to actually
Speaker 1: talk them, say now you know what, Babs, this doesn't
Speaker 1: go when something wasn't going right with the drawing. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's very funny. You get connected to the very things
Speaker 1: that you're drawing. I did two books a year for
Speaker 1: ten years, and sixty illustrations each book. That's a lot
Speaker 1: of drawing, and then that's a lot of time with
Speaker 1: those monsters. So in between all of that, I found
Speaker 1: time to also do my own work as an artist.
Speaker 1: Because in every artist, there lives two artists. The one
Speaker 1: that has to make a living to pay the bills,
Speaker 1: and the other one that likes to do what it
Speaker 1: likes to do. Unless you are lucky enough to be
Speaker 1: financially independent, to be able to shuffle around in your
Speaker 1: barn stocks sandals, smoking goal was cigarettes and up in
Speaker 1: the studio, which does not happen anymore. You have to
Speaker 1: be very diversified as an artist. You have to be
Speaker 1: able to do many different things on top of creating art.
Speaker 1: My grandma spent much of her life teaching art. She
Speaker 1: taught illustration at the Art Center College of Design, Finder
Speaker 1: a college in various high schools in the region. And
Speaker 1: as busy as she was, my grandma still found plenty
Speaker 1: of time to make her own art. I think it's
Speaker 1: because I lived in a very beautiful area. I really
Speaker 1: loved doing landscape, sea scape, nature because that was the
Speaker 1: environment I lived in. And I love just stepping outside,
Speaker 1: breathing the fresh air, sitting down and capturing it, seeing
Speaker 1: the sunrise, seeing the sunset, seeing the grove of oaks.
Speaker 1: My grandma finally retired from teaching in the spring of
Speaker 1: that summer was particularly hot and dry, and in November
Speaker 1: the fires began in southern California, later called the Wolsey Fire.
Speaker 1: The flames ignited on November eight and quickly ravage Simi
Speaker 1: Valley that dozens of homes have burned in various areas
Speaker 1: this afternoon, including in Bell Canyon, in Agora, in oak Park,
Speaker 1: and in the Malibu Lake area. Fire crews telling us
Speaker 1: that they are not able to do damage assessment yet.
Speaker 1: At first, my grandma thought she was safe in her
Speaker 1: tucked away corner of Malibu, but early one morning that
Speaker 1: all changed. As you heard at the beginning, she got
Speaker 1: a call from her neighbor saying it was time to evacuate.
Speaker 1: The fires were imminent. When the fire was raging towards me,
Speaker 1: there was not a lot of time. I took what
Speaker 1: was the oldest, the most irreplaceable, and the smallest. I
Speaker 1: took a Louisy cart. It's an etching from the nineteen hundreds.
Speaker 1: A couple of heroes she Gaze, which I was seventeenth century,
Speaker 1: and a very old oil painting that I have that's
Speaker 1: nineteenth century. And then a couple of small things of
Speaker 1: painting I had done in Salt, quote Scotland, and a
Speaker 1: photo from Salt because Scotland. These things were all small.
Speaker 1: There was one funny thing I did do. As I
Speaker 1: was getting into my truck, I looked up at my
Speaker 1: art studio and I said, you know what, I just
Speaker 1: bought a bunch of very expensive, nice sable brushes back
Speaker 1: in England last year, and I'm not leaving them, So
Speaker 1: flames be damned. I went up into my studio, opened
Speaker 1: the drawers and grabbed handfuls of brushes. Everything else I
Speaker 1: had to leave, but I got my brushes. As long
Speaker 1: as I had my brushes, all was well. I grabbed
Speaker 1: those things. I put my animals in their animal carriers.
Speaker 1: I had three changes of clothes. I grabbed a box
Speaker 1: that I thought had some important papers in it, got
Speaker 1: on my truck back down the driveway, got down to
Speaker 1: the end of the road and was horrified to see
Speaker 1: that to my left, which is where I was planning
Speaker 1: on going, there were thirty foot flames, so I had
Speaker 1: to turn right and that was it. There was no
Speaker 1: communication for quite a while about what had happened, and
Speaker 1: I kept going on to Google Earth and going, oh, looked,
Speaker 1: everything's fine. The house it's still standing. Well, the Google
Speaker 1: Earth wasn't accurate. Finally, my next door neighbor she said,
Speaker 1: I don't know how to tell you this, but everything's gone.
Speaker 1: So house was gone, art studio was gone, guesthouse was gone,
Speaker 1: everything was gone. All I have to say is you
Speaker 1: have a sense of disbelief for a while. You just
Speaker 1: can't believe that that's possible. It happened November nine, and
Speaker 1: yet wasn't until December one that we were able to
Speaker 1: get back up there, and when we arrived and saw
Speaker 1: it gone, it's just it's just surreal, that's all I
Speaker 1: can tell you. It's surreal. And at that moment, what
Speaker 1: you're glad is that you're alive. The animals are alive,
Speaker 1: and what are you going to do now? What you've
Speaker 1: lost doesn't even really come to you, and it's only afterwards,
Speaker 1: and I do mean long afterwards. A year afterwards, we
Speaker 1: start going, oh my god, I've got no photographs of
Speaker 1: my children, I've got no artwork from what I've done
Speaker 1: for thirty years. Still you come back to square one
Speaker 1: of well, I've got my life, I've got my animals,
Speaker 1: and life goes on. I left my own art work
Speaker 1: that I can never replace. I could never redo that,
Speaker 1: and artwork done by friends and illustrators and from patients
Speaker 1: at the hospital. It's just heartbreaking, it really is. I've
Speaker 1: been able to go on the internet and find some
Speaker 1: of the books that I illustrated and have been able
Speaker 1: to get, but most of them are either too expensive
Speaker 1: because they've become collectors items, or they're out of print.
Speaker 1: Some of them were two hundred dollars a piece. Now
Speaker 1: these are things that originally sold for like six dollars
Speaker 1: a piece. One of them was fifteen. Now, Dad, they go,
Speaker 1: oh my god, why. But I was able to buy
Speaker 1: a few of them back and thumbing through them, Oh
Speaker 1: my god, they bring back memories of oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: remember doing that. It was amazing to me that my
Speaker 1: grandma instinctively grabbed the works that she did to say,
Speaker 1: from the fire. I asked her to explain what they
Speaker 1: meant to her and describe them for me. It just
Speaker 1: so happens that on one of the walls in my
Speaker 1: bedroom that's where the Louisy cart was and the two
Speaker 1: heroes she Gaze, So there were things I woke up
Speaker 1: to every morning. So there's not only a familiarity to them,
Speaker 1: but there's also they happened to be two artists that
Speaker 1: I really love. The two hero she gaze our landscapes
Speaker 1: their Japanese prints, so they're sky, horizon, water, and the
Speaker 1: cart is a defiant young woman looking to a mask
Speaker 1: that is hanging on the wall, and the mask is
Speaker 1: clearly to be the devil. So perhaps there is some
Speaker 1: symbolism to those three things. The other ones the little
Speaker 1: oil paintings I believe it or not of the Bronx
Speaker 1: City Park, but it was done in so the Bronx
Speaker 1: City Park looks like the country. I doubt that it
Speaker 1: looks like that now, and it was just always a
Speaker 1: little peaceful thing to look at. The only painting I
Speaker 1: saved in my own was from Salt Coats, Scotland when
Speaker 1: I was there, and a photograph from there. My husband Norman,
Speaker 1: was from there and I always take my watercolors with
Speaker 1: me and I travel. It's a landscape of the west
Speaker 1: coast of Scotland and the photograph is some young boys
Speaker 1: that are crabbing. They're catching crabs in the harbor. I
Speaker 1: then asked my grandma what she thought would eventually happen
Speaker 1: with these keepsakes and priceless works of art. Well, you don't,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I guess that depends upon my daughter
Speaker 1: and my grandson, and I hope that they will look
Speaker 1: into who the artists were or look into the places
Speaker 1: that were. That is what art does for us. For
Speaker 1: an example, if you go to the Crocker Museum up
Speaker 1: in Sacramento, there's these amazing, huge, massive paintings of Yosemite
Speaker 1: that we're done by Barnstadt and a couple of artists
Speaker 1: who were hired by the American governments. Two document to
Speaker 1: what the new newly acquired national parks looked like. Because
Speaker 1: this was pre photography. There's also books about even where
Speaker 1: I live in Malibu, about what it looked like at
Speaker 1: the time that the artist did it, and it doesn't
Speaker 1: look like that any more. So it's a document of
Speaker 1: what was and I guess in a hope, let's say,
Speaker 1: in the Bronx City Park, is an awareness to protect things.
Speaker 1: I vividly remember those paintings that my grandma saved as
Speaker 1: a child. I would sometimes stare at them for hours
Speaker 1: when I would visit that house in Malibu. But there
Speaker 1: were so many more of them back then. As my
Speaker 1: grandma said, it was like an art gallery or a museum.
Speaker 1: And it's one of my family's biggest tragedies that I'll
Speaker 1: never see any of it again. My grand no doubt
Speaker 1: feels that more than anyone. I certainly never never imagined
Speaker 1: such devastation at the time of something like a fire
Speaker 1: or a hurricane, or a flood or god knows what
Speaker 1: I have to tell you, you are not in the
Speaker 1: best state of mind. And even if I had been
Speaker 1: in the most sharpest width at that time, I don't
Speaker 1: know what more I could have physically taken and put
Speaker 1: into my vehicle. In retrospect, I can think of lots
Speaker 1: of things, because our things are not just things. There
Speaker 1: are things that remind us of something or someone. They
Speaker 1: bring back a memory when you pass them on. Your
Speaker 1: hope is that someone else sees something in them. Also.
Speaker 1: Yvonne Sherbock is a California based artist and retired educator.
Speaker 1: She now lives in Ventura, California, and despite losing fifty
Speaker 1: years of her art, she continues to paint and create
Speaker 1: more every day. This episode of Ephemeral was written by
Speaker 1: Trevor Young. I'm produced with Max and Alex Williams and
Speaker 1: Matt Frederick. Next time on Ephemeral. The only time in
Speaker 1: my life where I'm truly mindful and truly present in
Speaker 1: the moment is when I'm listening outside. I live so
Speaker 1: much of my life planning three or four or five
Speaker 1: steps ahead, trying to be as efficient as possible, trying
Speaker 1: to be as productive as possible. That prevents you from
Speaker 1: living in a moment. When I'm out there, I can
Speaker 1: just be, which is such a relief. It's almost like
Speaker 1: I'm sleeping with a few others sensory systems working. It
Speaker 1: also just brings me into contact with the coolest events
Speaker 1: and organisms that I wouldn't see otherwise if I wasn't
Speaker 1: just sitting and listening and being patient. Support Ephemeral by
Speaker 1: recommending an episode, leaving a review, or dropping this a
Speaker 1: line at Ephemeral Show for more podcasts from my heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows, and learn more at
Speaker 1: ephemeral dot show