0:01 Graham Caldwell: The other night I had this movie, this Japanese movie- Yakuza movie that
0:04 I watched the night before last year, that night that I didn’t sleep. And everybody kept-
0:09 all these Yakuza guys kept doing something wrong and to apologize, they would cut off
0:13 their finger over and over. They just kept cutting off their finger. Three different
0:18 people cut off their finger in that movie. It was so weird. And just the tip. Yeah.
0:25 [music]
0:37 I’m Graham Caldwell. I am a contemporary artist who works primarily in glass. Sort of a constant
0:47 material I keep using and coming back to.
0:50 [music]
0:54 These forms are- in the studio where they’re
0:58 being made, they’re sort of an embodiment of gravity. But when they are installed, they’re
1:03 going to burst in different directions, so it’s going to be- it’s going to feel more
1:06 like sort of an explosive velocity than gravity.
1:13 [music]
1:17 This piece is a- it’s going to be a networked volume, like a three-dimensional drawing,
1:24 that sort of tensely lined sort of three-dimensional volume where there are nodes throughout. And
1:31 the space that it’s going to be mounted in, or on is huge. It’s a thirty-foot ceiling,
1:38 so it’ll have this luxurious sense of air kind of moving through all of the interstices
1:53 of the piece.
2:00 [music]
2:28 Kyiv is a very, sort of, built place. It’s a very industrial sort of landscape and society,
2:39 so I’m sort of profoundly interested in that- in this particular piece, and in my work more
2:44 broadly. I’m interested in very much the intersection of kind of mechanical, man-made, very artificial
2:52 things and processes and natural ones.
2:57 [music]
3:10 Have you ever welded something like this before?
3:18 One million times. One million times.
3:20 [Laughter] There are rules. There is a system. There
3:23 is structure that is very mechanical and organized and relies on very straightforward hardware
3:30 attachments. And then it spreads organically, as if it was a living thing, made of nuts
3:38 and bolts. That is very much the structure of this piece.
3:45 [music]
4:10 In Ukrainian craft, there’s this really intricate lacework and embroidery that I think is just
4:17 magnificent. In my work, and in this piece, there’s a similar kind of intense complex
4:28 repetition that I think is- I like looking at that.
4:42 Ambassador John Tefft: And I really care about this because it’s- I mean, we have the opportunity
4:45 here to show American artists, but also Ukrainian artists. This is one of the best parts of
4:53 the new Embassy building. When they told me you were going to come and do this, I thought,
4:57 “Excellent. This is exactly what we need.”
5:00 [music]
5:05 We’re standing in the atrium of our brand-new embassy, which we hope will be opening within
5:10 a couple of months.
5:11 [music]
5:47 When we get art from local artists- or in the case of this exhibition, several artists
5:52 whose roots are in Ukraine who have moved on to great fame in the United States, we
5:56 see- we build a tie, a bond to the people in the society.
6:01 [music]
6:01 Off camera: This is beautiful! This is great!
6:18 Off camera: This is beautiful! This is great!
6:22 Graham Caldwell: Thanks man.