All language subtitles for The.Secret.Life.of.Lance.Letscher.2017.WEBRip.x264-ION10.eng

LANCE LETSCHER: Lately,
the work has gotten
so complicated and so dense

that the big question that it
engenders upon first appraisal

is why would somebody
do something like this?

So, it's a different catalog
and they're all at 8:20.

Isn't that strange?

LETSCHER: When I was little,
I mean really little,

I was preoccupied
with patterns
that were nature-based.

My grandparents had
a gigantic fireplace made
with these rough cut stones.

That was when my parents
were still married

and everybody
smoked cigarettes.

I kind of remember
this smoke in the room

creating a hazy
kind of ceiling.

And I remember just looking
at this stone fireplace,

and sometimes I would imagine,
like, an army tank,

you know, like,
a big base, a small turret,

and if there's another stone
coming off, that would be
the gun, you know?

So, there's certain ones
that you can make
a really good tank.

There's a meditative quality
to that kind of looking

that's kind of stuck with me.

One of my nicknames
in high school was Trance.

Like... (LAUGHING)

Yeah, so it's kind of
hard-wired.

I zone out, look at things.

LOUIS GRACHOS: There are so
few people that have advanced
collage the way he has,

and also remained really true
to the material that he uses,

and I think that really
makes him stand apart
from many artists.

The careful synthesis
that he goes through,

the very thought-provoking
combination of imagery,

the narratives that he creates

is very much
his personal stamp.

PAVEL ZOUBOK: I think
for Lance, a big part of
his process as an artist

is about taking things
that are, you know,
sometimes deeply painful

and making them not only
necessarily beautiful

but even sometimes
joyful or funny.

And because he's also
incredibly playful,

even at its most dead serious,

it's sort of joyful
in its way.

NANCY WHITENACK:
He doesn't mind going
to the dark place, ever.

Which, I think, adds
some richness

to how he thinks
and what his concerns are
as an artist.

How would you know
how to put things together
that have shadow feelings,

unless you were willing
to really go deep?

And he does.

Lance used to come
to the store that I worked at,

which is the Half Price Books
on the Drag in Austin.

It was the '80s
and early '90s.

Lance would come
pretty regularly
and dive in our dumpster,

because most of what he used
was old books.

LETSCHER: That was
when one of my sons
was about seven,

but he was a small guy
and he was real stout,

so he was about this big,

and I would lift him up
and drop him in the dumpster.

And then he would start,
like, going through it,

and I'd point or he'd point,

or he'd say,
"Oh, my gosh, look at this,"

and then he'd pull out
this gigantic, you know,
one of those dictionaries

that's, like, this big,
you know, weighs
35 or 40 pounds.

And so he was like
my accomplice,

and we got yelled at
by people at Half Price Books.

I think I would catch him
once in a while in there

and even say,
"Hey, look at this."

I started to develop an idea
of what he was looking for.

TORNATORE:
There's such a beauty
in the aging of books,

and he really gets it
and loves it.

A really old book
that's torn and tattered.

ROBERT JESSUP: You find
your attention always being
moved around

in such a delightful way,

and then you come upon,
you bump upon an image,

you bump upon another image,
you bump another place.

And he's always
moving you around,

and there's this sense
of wonder, of delight,
of discovery.

His images work
like little memories.

LETSCHER: Nice box.

Oh, yeah.

PATTI HOWELL: Some of these
books are pretty trashed.

There was an estate sale
when I went to Warrington,

and some has stuff
all through it,

others, you know,
just have a couple things,
like that one.

LETSCHER: Yeah,
these are good.

PATTI: And then there's
a lot of scribble stuff.

Um, a friend of mine
was moving,

and this is all her
childhood notebooks
and she's in her fifties.

LETSCHER: Yeah,
these are great.

LETSCHER: Thank you very
much. This is really good.
PATTI: Okay, good.

LETSCHER: Really, really good.

-(LETSCHER EXCLAIMS)
-PATTI: Isn't that good?

LETSCHER: Ah, thanks
for doing this.

You've really scored big.

PATTI: Oh, good.
LETSCHER: These weapons...

LETSCHER: Wow, these
are so good.

This is how they're organized.

So, this is stuff
that's been cut through,

um, at some point or another.

I started out a long time ago
with the idea

that if I didn't organize
the boxes,

that I'd have to
go through the boxes

and I would find stuff
that I didn't know
was in them,

and it actually has been
somewhat beneficial
having that idea,

but lately I've gotten
so much stuff.

That whole back room
is full of boxes of paper.

I buy a lot of albums.

There's no real rhyme
or reason to it.

Like, that was a good one.

There's a really good leg,
look at that.

Oh, I could use that.

Look at that color.

A lot of times I'll be looking
for something

and I'll find five things
I didn't know
I was looking for,

but they're exactly
what I need.

They're more what I need
than what I started out
the quest for.

It's not a premeditated
decision to pursue the work

in a certain emotional tone
or psychological tone
or thematic direction.

It's more guided by intuition
and availability of materials.

I'll just start out cold
without an idea

and the materials
will start to dictate
the direction of the piece,

and as I see something
becoming realized,
then I push it.

LETSCHER: I wanted
a play-off of kind of
a structural assembly,

like she is
a mechanical woman,

or else have the items
function graphically
as if they were tattoos.

WHITENACK: I am not sure
what drives Lance,

but he is absolutely driven.

He has shown with five
to seven or eight galleries
at a time.

We always have a very large
body of work for show,

and every gallery
that he works with
would say the same.

He's incredibly responsible,

but behind that is this man

who may take six weeks
to cut material
with an X-ACTO knife.

Tiny, tiny little pieces,
for six weeks!

LETSCHER: My most conscious
time is when I'm cutting.

If my mind wanders,
the blade continues to move

and sometimes it doesn't
move in the direction
that I want it to move.

Like, it's almost like
I black out,

because I'm thinking
about something

and not concentrating
on what my hand
and my eye are doing.

It takes 3% of the time
to make the piece

and 97% of the time
to cut all of the parts.

(METAL CLATTERING)

(GRUNTS SOFTLY)

LETSCHER: Almost all
the cutting that I do is hard.

One way or the other,
it's either very detailed
or physically demanding.

The path of greater resistance
is the one that
I usually end up taking.

This is no exception.
The metal is very difficult
to cut.

(METAL CLANKS)

Wow, this is hard.

(GRUNTING)

So right now, I'm just
kind of cutting through
the metal that I have

in these pie-shaped wedges,

so that I can reassemble them
into kind of circular shapes
like that.

It's a theme that I've used,

and it's one
that I've been doing
a lot of commissions for,

and so that's
what they wanted.

We wanted something
to be bright and colorful
and weather resistant,

so we thought metal,
painted metal of some kind,

and Patti started shopping.

I started looking around
for old signage.

Well, I didn't see anything,

and I thought, "This is
going to be difficult."

LETSCHER: The project is to do
an exterior piece outside of
South Congress Books.

HOWELL: We bought the shop
in 1997,

prior to South Congress
just taking off like a rocket.

EVAN VOYLES: I think there's
something magical lucky
about South Congress,

and I think the reason
it's popular

is it reflects both
an America of the past

and the idea that it can
be funky and different

and not all malled up
and Starbuck-ed out

is intriguing to people.

To me, what's interesting
about Lance's project

is that it's sort of
the next step.

It's art for art's sake,
but it's outdoor art.

LETSCHER: I got a letter
from Serbia.

Wow.

This is a 500 million
dinar banknote.

The banknote represents one
of the biggest denominations

for paper money ever printed
in the territory of Europe.

This guy just sent it to me.

(CHUCKLES)

LETSCHER: What I love about
the work is what you can do
with perspective

and what you can do
with an optical illusion.

What you can do
with a movement of color
or a graphic shape.

Some kind of shape
that implies something

without actually
being something.

My parents were distracted,
conceptually absent.

I think I just gravitated
towards being by myself
when I had a choice.

Lance grew up here in Austin,
born and raised,

not many people
can say that anymore.

His mother was
from Paris, Texas.

His father was
from Port Arthur, Texas.

FRASHER:
They met here in Austin,
going to school at UT.

His mother was in art school.

She kind of was
a frustrated artist, I guess.

She... She got discouraged.

She was very nurturing
until I was about five or six,

and then I think
that things started to go bad.

She just kind of shut down.

My dad was kind of
a narcissistic person.

He was very self-centered,

and he was just somebody
that would pop up
and disappear.

Didn't have much connection
with him.

He was pretty well abandoned
by age... Probably about
by age 14.

Yeah. They were there
a little bit for holidays,

for Thanksgiving
and Christmas,
and that was about it.

LETSCHER:
One of the advantages
that I had in my childhood

was that I didn't have
a lot of stimulation.

I was bored frequently
and I made things to kind of
compensate for that.

I remember being on the floor
drawing when I was younger,

I had a big set of
gold headphones.
I'd listen to music,

I'd look at catalogs,
I liked to look at books,
just doing stuff.

Doing things
to keep from being bored.

I had an uncle, Johnny,

that I kind of
pattern myself after
in a lot of ways.

He had guns and he had a boat
and rode motorcycles

and, um, just was wild,
a little bit wild.

FRASHER: When Lance was 16,
that's when he started
getting into motorcycles.

And he got into a lot
of trouble with motorcycles.

He wrecked them
one right after another.

It was a lot of fun, you know,
it's fun. (CHUCKLES)

It's really fun.

I had friends that rode,

and, you know,
we just rode a lot.

Rode all the time,
skip school and ride.

When I was a teenager,
hormones created
a lot of havoc and misery.

You know, I think that's when
I started to become
more unhappy

is just as a teenager.

I think before that
I was okay.

I lived with my mom some,
and then when I was
a senior in high school,

I was getting in trouble,
and she didn't know
how to handle it,

and so she told me
to go live with my dad.

I went and lived with my dad
in Nebraska for six months.

My dad had some
psychological problems,

and I think that he suffered
from depression,

but I think he was
probably undiagnosed.

He exaggerated
and he embellished stories,

and he told stories
that were just false.

About the time
I was in high school,

he kind of just didn't want
to work anymore.

So, he figured out
different strategies

to kind of keep from working
for the rest of his life.

LETSCHER: I was 21 when I got
married to my first wife.

We started dating
and she got pregnant.

Jonathan was born
and she graduated.

I finished the semester
and then we got married.

At that particular time,
I was really involved
in art school.

I had kind of been through
a protracted period of crisis

from about age 13
to about age 19.

I was insecure
and self-conscious

and just miserable,
generally miserable.

And when he was born,
I just kind of focused on

making him into
a strong enough person

not to have those problems
when he got to that age.

JONATHAN VON LETSCHER: I kind
of always just remember,
like, doing art with him.

Feels like my whole upbringing
was kind of centered
around that.

I remember going
to the UT art school
in the art department

and hanging out
with his friends.

STEVE WIMAN: We were two
of the only guys

in that group of young artists
who had kids.

He was reserved,
quiet, soft-spoken,

but very focused
and very dedicated

to the work that he was doing
at that time.

I think it was 1986.

He did a show
at a small gallery in Dallas

that just was one
of the most remarkable

moving pieces of work
that I've seen.

JOHN REOCH: There was
something literary about it.

There was something haunting.

It was work that was
very unusual because...

There was this
lead-based chair.

There was this
lead-based tricycle.

All these things
that were very unusual
and somewhat dark.

REOCH: They were beautiful
works of art,

but dark in a mysterious way.

He also had a dissecting
cadaver table covered in lead,

which was very,
very mysterious, and...

And I was drawn to it,
but, I mean,

you needed
to be an institution

to have something like that
in your house.

LETSCHER: The table had
a connotation of a landscape,

like a river straight down
the center,

you know, these two
banked sides.

I wouldn't do
those pieces now,

but, I mean,
I was 20 years old,

and very depressed

and very absorbed
with depressing subjects.

I did several paintings
that were based on the book

The Painted Bird
by Jerzy Kosinski.

I was reading a lot
about the Holocaust,

and I was very involved
in the history
of the Second World War,

particularly in the Holocaust,

and I was thinking
a lot about that

and about the effect
on survivors.

Sometimes you find meaning
in reading about
other people's suffering.

You identify with it

and it makes your own
suffering more meaningful

and not as isolated.

You feel less alone, I guess.

She gets so pissed off.

It was in a show in 1992,

so it was after I'd been
out of graduate school
for about three years.

I was doing a lot of pieces
based on furniture

and then doing things
to them or, you know,
carving parts of them

or breaking up parts of them
and reassembling them,

so that you could see that
they'd been broken and fixed.

I made this piano
that was, you know,
5 feet by 4 1/2 feet.

It had real short, stubby
legs, so it was deformed,
almost like a dwarf,

and it was sealed closed

and had little brass fittings
on the bottom,

brass casters and brass pedals
for the actuation,

but it didn't have the actual
mechanism of the piano.

CHARLES DEE MITCHELL:
So much of the very early work
was about childhood.

Everything was child-sized,
and, I mean, it was...
It was traumatic.

MITCHELL: The ballet slippers
were definitely for a child.

A pillow made out of marble
that looked like someone
had slept on.

The first exhibition which was
so predominantly sculpture,

the one piece that I remember
being framed and on the wall

was a really tender image
that was an angel.

When you looked again,
you could also see

that it was
a little boy standing

with very bright lights
shining on his face,

and I think his hand
was up like this.

The light was both invasive,

but it was also radiant,
transcendent light.

JONATHAN: I just remember
him kind of brooding,
thinking a lot.

He seemed kind of distant.

My parents weren't really
getting along at all.

It was kind of a...
A rocky household,
I would say.

LETSCHER: You know,
by the time my second
son was born,

my first wife was pretty much
gone all the time.

It was pretty bad.
It was terrible.

It was a terrible relationship
and we fought a lot,

and so it was not healthy
for the boys, and...

So, I told her I wanted
to get a divorce

and told her I wanted custody
of the kids,

and she didn't dispute that.

LETSCHER: I don't really have
any kind of preconception

about how this piece
is going to go,

but it seems similar enough
to the paper pieces
that I make

to where it's mostly going
to be about balancing color

and creating a composition
that's active and interesting.

One of the kind of classical
theories about color

is the simultaneous contrast
of complementary colors.

It's like you put
red next to green,

they're complementary colors,

and they both make each other
look more vibrant.

Working with color,
it's a process of, like,

putting things down
next to each other

and seeing if it makes it
better or worse,

and taking it away and seeing
if it's better or worse.

Just a visual trial and error.

So, laying them all out
like this on the floor,

there's no commitment there
to any of those things

being in the place
that they're in now.

All that cutting
and this is all I got.

Like, this isn't even
a third of it.

It's a real insecure feeling
to be making something
and it doesn't look good.

You know, like, letting it
not look good.

Right now,
there's no cohesion.
It's just real rough.

When I first met Lance,
he was working for an artist,

southwestern artist,
Amado Pena,

who was very big and famous
at the time,

and Lance was doing
all of his printing for him,

his etching,
his mono-printing,
lithography, he did it all.

I was with him
for 11 years total.

Towards the end,
we were doing 9-plate,
64-color etchings

that took three guys eight
hours to wipe for one print.

He was coming to work
for Amado at about 7:00
every morning,

after he'd gotten his kids
fed for breakfast,
came to work,

and he would work until
about 3:00 in the afternoon,

go pick them up at different
schools every day,
and then take them home.

Then, he would hang signs
for his ex-wife.

Hang banners
until about 8:00
at night.

Then he'd go home,
cook dinner for the boys,

and then he'd do his artwork.

That's when he had time
to do his art.

The first exhibition that we
had of Lance's work

were graphite drawings,

and they were very small,
intimate drawings
of fragile branches,

and he would cut
every bit of it out

and apply the drawing
to an old piece of paper,

and they were exquisite.

There was no color.

Always quiet.

There are always
bodies of work, you know,
and he'll...

He would always
find a motif or a theme
and pursue it.

The, um...

There are some
very, I would say,
straightforward landscapes,

although, of course,
they're totally abstract.

REOCH: It looks like
a faint drawing made with tea.

There's faint pencil marks
on it.

They're quiet, quiet gestures
of the human hand.

The work became lighter
and airier and more poetic.

I have hundreds of works
of art,

but this is one
of my favorite pieces

because of how quietly
it speaks of love.

It's just a very romantic
piece to me,

and it's these two cards
that are two of hearts

and they mirror each other.

The two of them together
for eternity.

One thing Lance's father
always said when I met him,

he said, "Lance did not do
anything with color
until he met you."

You know,
she's a complex person

and intelligent and creative
and attractive,

and, you know, I just started
to let down my guard.

It was after we'd been
together for a while

that both of our lives
started improving together,

you know, we were helping
each other, um,

that it started showing
in his work.

WHITENACK: One day I got
in the mail a small collage,

and it was very abstract

with just small slits
of colored paper,

and it was just this total
break from anything
we'd had.

This was Lance's signal
that he was moving
a very different direction.

MITCHELL: Very quickly,
though, the elaboration
of the abstract work

had reached a level
of complexity
and sophistication.

Even if it was nothing
but stacks of color

that appear unbalanced
on the paper

or maybe shifting to one side.

WHITENACK:
Color, once he started
getting involved with it,

became something that is
a very important element

and something
that he understands,

maybe intuitively.

JESSUP: Lance's collages
always hold the wall
from 40 feet away.

There's always an overriding
sense of form and rhythm,

that kind of formal play,
the syncopation
of all those parts together.

All these different levels of
pictorial organization work.

They work in a big way,
they work in a medium way,

and they work
in a teeny, teeny way.

And like all of the
really great works of art,

you will never get tired
of looking at them.

LETSCHER: I started to think
about creativity

several years after I got out
of graduate school.

I started thinking about
my dream life,

which is so rich
and so populated
with people I don't know,

landscapes that I've never
seen before,

detailed to an infinite degree

in a way that I couldn't
consciously conceive of
when I was awake.

I started to develop
strategies to trick myself

into having access
to those parts of my mind

that aren't normally available
during waking hours.

I kind of stopped trying
to preconceive pieces

and stopped trying
to plan pieces.

Instead, I'd get a fragment
of an idea from a piece

and that will become
the next piece.

And when I'm in a groove
like that,

I think about it all the time
and I dream about it at night.

My favorite kind of dream is
I'll have a piece of paper
like this,

and I'll be going like this,
and that's the whole dream.

It's just like,
see the pattern,
see the color, you know,

and this feeling comes
over you, like,
"Oh! Oh, that feels so good."

You know,
I'm just looking at color.

(LAUGHING)

One time I had a dream
that there was a secret
piece of fabric

on the back of our armoire
in our bedroom,

and you couldn't see it
and nobody knew it was there,

but in the dream
I knew it was there

and it was a striped
piece of fabric.

I did 20 pieces based
on that dream.

JESSUP: He depends upon
that chaos of stuff,
of things laying around,

which is almost
a physical manifestation

of the untamed mind,
the untamed unconscious,

that as you survey it,
as you scan it,

as you live through it,
things come up.

Things present themselves.

In fact, things can only
present themselves

if they exist within
that kind of chaotic, uh,
noise, as it were.

You know in that process
of selecting, selecting,

trying this, trying that,
trying this,

one thing leads to another,
one thing leads to another,
things are open,

you make discoveries,
you find things.

Like, when do you decide
to commit to the cutting out
of this thing?

LETSCHER: There's like
a pattern of the same color

and it moves throughout
the piece.

This kind of yellowish orange,

like those two colors
put together make this color.

And...

So, if you think of that
as one level

um, and there is
another level with...

Or another kind of
interlocking matrix
of this blue...

This blue-gray.

I knew that I wanted
more blue-gray,

but then I...
I saw this piece.

Like this.

It made sense
to put another tree in,

but also, you can see
through it,

so I don't lose
a lot of detail.

There's a certain wow factor
to the cutting

and the light transition.

I was hoping for the color
and I got those other things
as a benefit.

I don't understand, really,
the symbolic significance
of putting this tree in,

but it gives it a more kind,
gentle, loving feel.

You know,
it's not as harsh. Like,
before I put the tree in,

he looks crazier,
they look crazier.

The tree kind of
stabilized it a little bit.

It's a mysterious process.
It's a complex
and mysterious process.

And I don't fully
understand it,

but I'm aware of it
and I can coax it along

or I can get out of the way
and let it happen.

I think this piece
is kind of about an oblivious
denial, you know?

It's like they're all about
dysfunctionality
and mental illness.

You know, the cat's got
this devious and excited look

that it's actually probably
going to eat these mice.

The rabbit is painting
this picture of this horse,

but he's looking at a fire,

so that's a weird
symbolic thing
that I don't understand.

So, it's kind of an
expressionistic quality to me,

like, you know, manic,

and just kind of spin out.

I don't know.

It's what the work
is doing right now

and I don't feel that way,
I don't feel manic,

and I don't think
in terms of cartoons

and weird Freudian symbology,

but it comes out in the work.

I heard a quote one time,
this guy said, about music,

"Music is not written,
it's given."

You know, so,
it's almost like...

I think that your subconscious
may be a conduit

for something
that's beyond your capacity,

and it's beyond your
experience, and it's beyond...

You know, it's something
that you can't easily access,

but when you do access it,
it's much more powerful
than your conscious mind,

so, you know, it can
give you something.

(BARKING)

Pearl, come here.

Yeah, he's a little...
He's special needs.
He's a little slow.

Hey, hey.

(BARKING)

All right, come on.

That's going to look great
and really be eye-catching

and mind-boggling
to look at, I think.

LETSCHER: Yeah, I'm working
on it more now.

I had a lot of time
to think about it.

Thinking through the steps
takes away anxiety and stress.

I think I'm gonna use some
kind of really heavy-bodied
Liquid Nails-type adhesive

to glue them onto disks,
wooden disks.

I want to make this hanging
as quick and easy
and fool-proof as possible.

I want the weight of it to be
hanging from that parapet
with no screws.

Basically, I want to make
some brackets
to go over-top...

-Yeah.
-...and then just hang it
on there.

We could have those things
that go over the parapet

fasten on the back
of two-by-fours,

and you could just
put your boards up
on the two-by-fours and...

-Screw them in. Yeah.
-Yeah.

It doesn't have to be
too elaborate or too...

It doesn't even need
to be too strong.

I like the idea of moving it
up over the top of the roof
a little bit,

just to get it high enough
to where people
won't be touching it.

We don't want anybody
to get cut because it is going
to be an attractive...

What the lawyers call
an attractive nuisance,
if it's within reach.

(BOTH LAUGHING)

That's an actual term.

They use that to prosecute
people that have swimming
pools that aren't fenced

that a kid could drown in
or something.

LETSCHER: Wow,
attractive nuisance.

-Yeah.
-Yeah.

I know people like that.

(BOTH LAUGHING)

Yeah, right.

Oh, wow. God, these are great!

HOWELL: Oh, good.

-Really fantastic color.
-Oh, good.

LETSCHER: Isn't that gorgeous?

HOWELL: Yeah. Okay, good.

LETSCHER: Yeah, even if
I just get, like,

one or two, you know,
of those wedge-shaped

-pieces out of that.
-Oh, okay.

This is amazing.

HOWELL: That's on both sides.
LETSCHER: That's fantastic.

-HOWELL: Yeah.
-Yeah, okay.

HOWELL: That is paper,
and I didn't know
if you could use that or not.

LETSCHER: Oh, yeah,
these are great.

A painter takes a kind of
formless thing

and gives it a form
and makes a language with it.

A collage artist takes things
that already exist
in the world

that already have stories,
context, et cetera,

and they use it
in an associative way
to create a new reality.

LETSCHER: So, this
three or four-month period,

I think I've made probably
between 40 and 50 pieces.

I've been thinking
about doing pieces
that have to do with sound.

All these kind of jokey things
about noise-making devices,

but also the sound of just
all the stuff kind of
cascading down

and maybe over
the hull of the submarine.

(IMMITATES CASCADE)

Really, where it came from is
a friend of mine
showed me this video

of this sound that has
supposedly been recorded
all over the world.

Um, it was on YouTube
and it was just a shot
of the sky

with kind of a cropped
building on one side
and maybe a power-line,

and then you hear
this tone that's like...
(IMITATING TONE)

It's like the horn
at the end of the world.

(LOW-PITCH DRONING)

It's about the rapture.

Most of the boats
and the planes,
they're all without people.

FRASHER: He watched me go
through a difficult divorce
and was a good friend.

He was the kindest, most
gentle man I'd ever met,

and I thought, "My God,
I can't not love this man."

LETSCHER: I think we're
real similar.

It's just that she's more
actualized than I am.

She's more realized
as a person.

She kind of made certain
decisions at crucial junctures
in her life

that have benefited her.

Like, be happy
instead of being miserable,

and be kind, you know,
instead of...

Instead of miserable.

(LAUGHS)

(CLEARS THROAT)

FRASHER: When we
came together as a family,

I think Gabe was 6
and Jonathan was 12.

I'll never forget it.
Lance said,

"Mary, if we buy this house,
I promise you,

"if you'll let me,
I will transform this place."

I said, "Okay, if you
think so, go for it.

"I think it's what we can
afford and we'll do it."

And so we bought it,
lived in his rent house,

and every day after work
we'd come over here
taking things apart.

Basically, right when
we moved in,

my dad just started
tearing through it,
like, ripping down walls.

We mixed a lot of concrete,
like, for the foundation.

This house doesn't at all
mirror what we bought.

He wasn't exaggerating.

But for him, it's doing it
by hand himself.

GABE VON LETSCHER:
When I was growing up,
I didn't have a room,

so he built this chicken coop
type thing that I had.

It was like a little fort
with windows

and it had a screen door
with a little spring on it.

And then Mary helped
make it look cool.

And on top of it,
there was a mattress.

So, I basically had no privacy
for, like, the first fourteen
years of my life.

LETSCHER: I was real invested
in my kids and spent
a lot of time with them.

You know, I just had an
insight based on my own
kind of dysfunctionality

of what it takes to be
a functional human being

and somebody that's strong
and grounded.

At one point, he looked at me
and he said,

"Mary, do you think I should
go to medical school?"

And I said,
"Why would you do that?"

And he said, "Because I'm not
making it financially,"

and I just said, "No, no.
Don't give up.

"You... You're doing
somebody else's art all day

"and you're not doing
your own.

"You don't have time
for your own.

"Keep at it."

And then it was just kind of
like almost a miracle
that happened.

He got a call from a gallery
in New York,

Howard Scott, and he said,
"Lance, I'd like you to send
me some of your artwork.

"I heard about you
through a collector."

LETSCHER: The work was
based on design and craft

and, specifically,
quilt patterns.

He probably sold 90%
of the work
before the opening.

We walked into the show
and it was, like,
almost all red dots.

It was totally, uh...

I just couldn't
believe it myself.

JESSUP: They're not pure,
they're not clean,
because they're collage.

That's one of the things
that made them so painterly.

They had natural abrasions

that would come
from the history of,

you know, the paper,
wherever they came from.

LETSCHER: I was just thinking
about color wheels,

the gradation of color
from yellow to orange
to red to purple to blue.

All the primary colors
joined together
with all the tertiary colors

that involve the blending
of the primary colors.

I was doing pieces like that,
but I was doing them
with the idea

that they were done
by a chaotic thinker.

FRASHER: A year after he had
his first show there,

everybody wanted
Lance Letscher.

And he no longer had to work
for anyone else again.

LETSCHER: I mean,
in the scheme
of things in the world,

it's not that big a deal,

but to get picked up
by a gallery in New York,
that's a big step up,

and he changed
my pricing structure.

Instead of making
$1,000 or $1,200 a year,

I was making $6,000
or $9,000 a year.

And then,
pretty quickly after that,
he was selling a lot of work,

and so I was making
a decent living
for the first time.

The other thing
that Howard did was
he had connections overseas,

and so he arranged
a show in Munich
and a show in Barcelona,

so I started to be visible
in Europe.

Consequently, a gallery
in Paris started showing
my work.

I'm like, "Lance, do you
realize, of all the artists
you went to art school with,

"or more importantly,
all the artists you know,

"how many of them show
all over the world?

"How many of them
have been seen, you know,

"and are still actually
doing their art?

"It's tough."

He's just... He stuck with it.

He has stuck with it.

And at all costs.

WHITENACK: You can stand
back from a piece

and enjoy
a certain aspect of it,

but then you get up
on the piece

and there's an infinite field
of things to see.

You never come to the end
of his work.

That's one of the things
I love about what he does.

ZOUBOK: It immediately demands
a kind of closer look.

It demands
a deeper engagement,

because you really have to
look at this stuff.

It's not sort of
art-as-entertainment
or art-as-spectacle,

it's really art
as an object of contemplation,
as a physical space,

as a metaphorical garden
of ideas and experiences.

An artist like Lance
helps to reconnect us

to our kind of physical sense
of ourselves

in relation to
the things around us.

Oh, hello, how are you?

This is Lance,
who I've been buying for
for all these years.

Hi, Lance, how wonderful.

I knew you were selling
to somebody that needed
all this good stuff...

-Yeah.
-...that I've...
That I've loved, too.

-(LAUGHING)
-Yeah!

LETSCHER: How did
you get involved
in buying paper like this?

LILLIE MAE WILLIAMS: Well,
one reason,
I've always loved paper stuff.

I grew up in the Depression,

and I'd keep every little
piece of paper
that we could get.

We didn't have any money.

I mean, we didn't have
ten cents to go
to the picture show.

We didn't throw anything away
because we didn't get much,

and I still do to the day.

I mean, I need
to throw stuff away.

I've got a houseful,
a garage full.

LETSCHER: Yep.
I'm the same way,
I've got big piles.

-LETSCHER: I mean,
it's a fire hazard.
-(LAUGHS)

Well, I hope to make your pile
a little bit bigger.

-(ALL LAUGHING)
-TORNATORE: Well,
let's see what you've got.

TORNATORE:
I'm gonna let Lance do
what I normally do.

And she'll tell you
how much it is.

LETSCHER: Okay.

TORNATORE: Lance,
you aren't gonna get this.
I'm getting this.

LETSCHER: What is it?

TORNATORE: It's a complete
guide to modern knitting
and crocheting.

-That's gonna go
like crazy in my store.
-LETSCHER: Really?

-TORNATORE: You can't have it.
-LETSCHER: Are you sure?

I think she got
this stuff for me.

(LAUGHING)

That was the first thing
I would have picked up,

and that's the first thing
he put on.

LETSCHER: Yeah,
this is a beautiful book.

That's a golden nugget
for me. That is, like,
really beautiful.

WILLIAMS: That's wonderful.
Somebody's trying
to sell it for $6,

but it sure ain't me, honey,
about a dollar.

Sheri pays me better
sometimes, but I'm glad
to meet you, so we will...

LETSCHER: Yeah, we'll cut out
the middleman.

Well, no,
I can't do without her.
She's my goody.

See that? This is good.

This is good. This is gold.

WILLIAMS: There's gonna
be a lot of that stuff
in all those old things, yeah.

-Yeah.
-That's awesome.

LETSCHER: Yeah, these
are really beautiful.

Like, that word, "Pop."

TORNATORE: As you're speaking,
I'm seeing some of your
collages in my head.

LETSCHER: That I'm going
to cut out when I get home.

I know what I can
use that for.

I use pictures like this
a lot.

WILLIAMS: Well, that's good.

LETSCHER: I'm gonna
buy all of this.

I think you could use
all of this, probably.

-It's just gonna be $5
for the whole box over there.
-LETSCHER: Okay.

-Is that cheap enough?
-LETSCHER: Oh, my gosh,
thanks.

I would have probably
charged her $10,
but I'll charge you $5.

(LAUGHING)

LETSCHER: I'm learning
a lot today.

WILLIAMS: It's been wonderful,
I appreciate it so much.

-LETSCHER: Thank you.
-You better believe it.

-MAN: All done?
-TORNATORE: Yeah, we're done.

We'll see you next time.

LETSCHER: One of
the professors that I had
when I was in art school

did me a really big favor
in that he complimented me
on my work ethic.

He said that I didn't mind
a little hard work.

At that time,
I did mind hard work,

but I realized
when he said that,

there was like
this gleam of virtue
in what he said

that made me want to acquire
that skill or that discipline.

So, yeah, I have a work ethic.

I just happen to worry
about failure a lot

and negative
outcomes to possible
or imaginary scenarios.

I'm worried about
not doing enough

or I'm worried about
the state of something
that's in flux

that I need to have
some kind of resolution,

and a lot of times,
when it's not resolved,

it almost manifests itself
as a form of anger.

When it does kind of
come together,

if it comes together in a way
that I don't really anticipate

or better than I expect,
then I feel relief.

You gotta lay it down somehow

and then I can
shift stuff around.

So that's that.

I've done a lot of
these pieces,

and also I've been working
on this piece so long

that I've been kind of, like,
thinking and thinking
and thinking,

and kind of gradually,
things come into focus
or go out of focus,

and, you know, then I get
kind of basic guidelines
in my head about how to do it.

If I lay it out again,
then maybe it'll be better,
it'll probably be better.

If I make a mistake
and it gets better,
then that's better.

I've got about a 30-
or 45-minute open time,
like it starts to dry up.

So I've got to kind of
do this fast.

(GROANS SOFTLY)

(SIGHS)

I had a friend
in graduate school that,

I went over
to his house one time at like,
9:00 in the morning

and I knocked on the door
and he didn't answer,

so I open the door
and he was laying
on the floor.

He was holding a tube
of paint and a brush.

I kid you not.
And he was asleep.

I woke him up and he was like,

"Oh," and he went over
to his painting
and started painting again.

That was so
inspirational for me.

Okay. (SIGHS)

LETSCHER: Lately, I've been
talking to people
about adhesives.

I've been using the same
adhesive for paper
for a long time.

Seven or eight years
or something

and so I haven't really had to
do any kind of research
or experimentation,

but with the metal, I need to
find some kind of adhesive

that's not
gonna come unglued
when the metal gets hot,

that's the problem.

I've been procrastinating
because it's unfamiliar
and it's more difficult.

I was talking to
my son about it

and he said, "Lots of people
are gonna see that,

"you're gonna have to
really knock it out
of the park with this."

And that was like the first
time that I thought,

"Wow, I have to make this
as good as I can make it,

"I have to make
this really good."

I realized that I was
procrastinating because
I didn't have that insight,

you know, I didn't have that
motivation or inspiration

to make it as strong
as I can make it.

FRASHER: He was kind of
fighting with himself about,

"What am I gonna do?
How am I gonna do this?"

He wouldn't talk about it,
and it froze him for a while.

He was doing
a lot of art upstairs

and I thought,
"What are you doing,

"when are you gonna
get to the metal?" (LAUGHING)

(METAL SLICING)

LETSCHER: Last weekend,
I started having really
bad anxiety attacks,

I needed to be working on
this piece no matter what,

and so this week
I've put in a lot of hours.

With the paper,
you put it in a press

and so it pushes the paper
so hard that,

if there's a circle underneath
that's covered by
another circle on top,

you can clearly see
the definition
of the circle below.

I want that quality to be
in this metal if possible.

As I've worked on it,
I've solved certain
technical problems

and I've realized certain
things that'll work,

and I've seen what the color
looks like, and the colors
kind of...

The color's gonna be strong.

And I got more excited
about it and I realized

I can do certain things
to invest more quality

into the piece because
I have the energy to do it,
I know how to do it now.

So it's... I turned a corner
on it, definitely.

It used to be that I would
think about a certain person

and I would imagine their
personality traits

and their
thinking characteristics,

and then I would make a piece
based on that dynamic

or that paradigm
or that kind of structure.

I would think about somebody
who was highly dysfunctional

and would make these pieces
to communicate

because they were
such a poor communicator,

and then when the work started
becoming autobiographical,

I realized that, you know,
basically, I'm that person.

You know, so I just made
pieces the way
I wanted to make pieces.

JONATHAN: I think It's
impossible to do
what you want to do

without that fire and drive.

I've done, like,
push-yourself-to-the-limit
kind of sports

and I think I was
attracted to those
because of my upbringing.

His father, Larry,
he started kind of coming

to my competitions when I was
running track at UT.

He was really into it, so
he started coming around

and coming to dinner
and stuff.

LETSCHER: Gabe started
wrestling in high school
and he was really gifted.

He was state champion in Greco
his second or third year.

He went to Nationals twice.

For somebody to come out
of Texas

and wrestle that well,
it's highly unusual,
it's very, very unusual.

So my dad got really
interested in that
because he was so good.

He started going to
wrestling matches.

So we'd sit there all day
Saturday and all day Sunday
together and talk.

He wanted to be
around his father, um...

So...

I think he probably just
kind of suppressed a lot.

MITCHELL: All of a sudden
there were pictures there.

There were
landscape-type settings,

there were some things
that seem to be based on
children's stories,

there were factories,
and I was supposed to
write about this,

and I really didn't know
what to say. (LAUGHS)

And I did just end up
saying, like,

"Well, you never know
what's going to come next."

FRASHER:
They've got train tracks
going into these buildings

and no one knows
what that's about

and I do know
what that's about.

That's about
the concentration camps.

TORNATORE:
We're all fascinated
by fairy tales like Grimm's,

and things like that,
these dark fairy tales.

This was like,
this true fairy tale

that was the darkest of all.

LETSCHER: I was seeped in that
stuff when I was growing up.

I read books, I read
air combat magazines,

and they were always about
World War II airplanes.

(STAMMERING) I didn't really
understand the horror of it
and the tragedy.

TORNATORE: He's really
fascinated by people

and what moves them
and how things can happen

and what in the world would go
on in the mind of children
of this time

and I think he's a deeply
caring and deeply, um,
thoughtful person.

LETSCHER: I love beautiful
design and I love mechanical
and industrial design.

I love things that are
utilitarian primarily

because the decision-making
process that goes into them

is to support their
ability to function.

FRASHER: When he took up
motorcycles again,

I was so absolutely livid
with him,

I could have wrung his neck.

Well, I'll never forget,
I came home
from work and he said,

"I have to tell
you something,"
and I thought, "Oh God, what?"

(LAUGHING)

He said, "I bought
a motorcycle," and I was...

I dropped
the F-bomb. I was like,
"What are you doing?"

I thought, "Are you trying
to kill yourself?"

(OBJECTS CLATTERING)

LETSCHER: I really wanted
to buy a motorcycle,

I just wanted to buy
a motorcycle so bad.

I couldn't justify it
with my wife

and I expected to be a serious
point of contention.

I decided one way to get
a motorcycle would be

to do a motorcycle
as a sculptural project.

My whole life he's been like,

saying that
I shouldn't ride motorcycles

and I never have
because of that.

Then all of a sudden,
he gets a motorcycle

and I'm like,
"What are you doing?"

He's like, "Oh,
I'm not gonna ride it,

"You know, it's, uh,
it's just for art."

LETSCHER: I wanted
to highlight the design,

not necessarily
the engineering

but rather the design of
the bikes, and how minimalist

and beautifully mechanical
and elegantly engineered
they were,

so that those
aspects of the bikes
supported the art.

It's real small
and it's very light,

it's a Yamaha 125 from 1972

and it was a Grand Prix
motorcycle, so it was raced
at the very highest level.

They go 150 miles an hour.

RICK ROME:
It's not just a surface
beauty thing for him,

it's about doing
everything right

and making everything perfect,

and so, you know, we had
the perfect machine

and our motorcycle
in the other room,

and I just think Lance,
everything Lance does,
it's done with a purpose.

NANCY ROME: After you
kind of get past that
it's a motorcycle

that's been collaged,
you start seeing it
as an entire story.

That's the mystery
and the miracle

of the Lance Letscher work.

You're immediately engaged
by his technique.

References to childhood,
to adulthood,
to family history,

to, you know,
the Industrial Revolution.

It's that same deep
appreciation of structure.

The machines are, um, perfect.

LETSCHER:
It's a Cagiva Alazzurra.

Ducati went bankrupt in
1982 or 1983

and they were bought out
by these three brothers,

and they used the first two
initials of each of their
names to spell Cagiva.

I stripped it completely,
took the engine apart,

rebuilt everything
and then collaged discreetly.

It's an incredibly interesting
two-faceted mind to me.

The engineering ability and
the creative artistic ability.

It doesn't happen very often
and I think it's...

I think that's what makes
him amazing.

LETSCHER: At that time,
I was really interested in

the juxtaposition of childhood

and the presenting of certain
ideas to children
as entertaining somehow.

And how people make things
attractive to children

that shouldn't be attractive
to children, like guns
shouldn't be toys, you know?

And motorcycles
shouldn't be toys.

That was kind of the...
The genesis for the idea

for the perfect machine,
was having these pieces around

and, like, starting to think
about the fact
that I was doing

things that had to do
with my childhood.

FRASHER: He tells difficult
stories in a way that you
don't understand it,

but he's always
telling a story.

That's the very, uh,
essence of Lance.

At first I was going to make
an exhibition catalog.

I had a show in March of 2010
that I was preparing for

and this was going to be
in the show.

This is an actual gun.
It's a Condor Legion Astro,
and the Condor Legion...

Uh, these German airman
were the ones
that bombed Guernica

and that's what
Pablo Picasso's painting,

Guernica, is about,
was the bombing of Guernica.

My uncle had
a Condor Legion Astro

when I was growing up,
and he let me shoot his guns.

He would take me out
in the country

and me and my cousins
would shoot his guns

and I shot
the Condor Legion Astro

when I was about
10 or 11 years old

and it was like, "boom,"
you know?

I mean, it was this
powerful gun and powerful
experience for a little kid.

When I started to think about
the gun in particular,

I realized that
I could make a story.

That was it,
The Perfect Machine.

LETSCHER: Up to that point,
I'd always been

pretty strict about making
the work non-autobiographical,

but at that time it was like,

penetratingly
autobiographical,

it was terrifyingly
autobiographical.

Baby, Baby, Baby. Quit!

That's Baby.

Ready?

The real first page
of the text,

there's a fan-shaped structure
of electrical devices

and letters
and different textures,

and they're all kind of
projected out of a pair of
legs that are running.

It's like the thoughts
of this really excited kid.

The next one is
the same idea of thoughts

projecting and expanding out
and becoming more full.

There's a hut and it's in
the background,

just a little
cube that's got
a little fenced area,

and in the back there's
kind of these circles
joined together with lines

that imply
a scientific background,

like a chemical
structure somehow.

There's railroad tracks
in front of it

and a glass of chocolate milk.

FRASHER: He made a little
walking machine one time.

When it was done, he thought,
"It needs a pair of shoes
to make it perfect."

So he made some shoes
which ended up looking
kind of ridiculous. (CHUCKLES)

(FRASHER READING)

LETSCHER:
I kind of think of these as
diagrams of thought,

and these pieces
are kind of split,
right brain, left brain,

one side is kind of imagistic
and that's the right brain,

and the left brain
is like, chaotic

and filled with letters
and lines connecting
different letters,

you know, trying to get
connections and associations.

(FRASHER READING)

(LETSCHER READING)

I'd never really done
any guns before,

I did all the guns at
the same time.

And I did this gun,
it's a Colt 45.

It's a specific gun.

And, um...

That's the gun, um,
that my father
used to kill himself.

He saw... He saw the gun,
I don't think
it influenced him,

but, um, very ironic.

FRASHER:
He started thinking harder.

He thought of every kind
of airplane.

LETSCHER: One of the things
I'm interested in

is the German development
of rocket flight.

And this particular
rocket's a V2,

it's the rocket that
Wernher von Braun developed

at the end of the War
to bomb England,

but after the war,
he kind of had a moment

when he could go with Russia
or with the United States,

and he went with
the United States,

and he founded
the space program NASA,
he worked for NASA.

TORNATORE:
What he thinks a lot about is

how good and evil exist in
the same person,

and when does that evil get
control of you

and when does
the good come out?

LETSCHER: He thought
of a city on wheels.

It doesn't exactly
illustrate it

but it's with very thin,
short, segmented strips

that are laid out in kind of
a chaotic pattern

and supported by very tenuous,
unsteady legs.

(FRASHER READING)

He had so many ideas that
he had to arrange them into
categories to avoid confusion.

LETSCHER: This one's buildings
and train tracks

and, you know, maybe it's like
the very edge of consciousness

when you start to dream,
you start to see images

of what are going to
coalesce into a dream.

The separation of
reality and dream life.

FRASHER: Then he had a dream
about a little building

that good ideas flowed out of.

Next, he dreamed about
a machine that made
beautiful works of art.

Finally, he dreamed
of a device

that could write
all kinds of books.

(LETSCHER READING)

Then he knew the answer.

Can you think of
what it might be?

Can you think of
what it might be?

Just a second.

(DOG BARKS)

(DOOR OPENS)

(DOG BARKING)

He never saw the book.

He saw the galleys for it

and then, you know,
when it was published
he was no longer with us.

Everybody in the family
is absolutely devastated.

Lance is the one that
stands up and is like,

"No, we're gonna
handle this,
it's gonna be okay."

He still did the show,

focused, did the opening for
them and kept it all at bay.

LETSCHER: He had these
kind of rages, and the thing
that he ranted

about a lot was the people
that lived above him.

They had a little kid
and he said it was like
living under a bowling alley

because the little kid
would run back and forth.

So, what he did was...

He had inherited a gun
from my aunt,

and he took
the gun and he went upstairs

and he sat outside
of the apartment

of his neighbors upstairs,

and that's where
he shot himself.

And, so the young man
came home with his child
and found my dad.

I mean, it's terrible.
It's terrible.

But I went and talked
to the guy

and he was
27 years old and he had
a four-year-old boy,

you know, and he didn't want
to even open the door,

he thought I was gonna do
something to him or something.

It's angry, hateful,
vindictive.

There was a lot of really
negative connotations
to what he did.

He had letters
that he had written out,

like a letter to the police,
a list of things
that needed to be done,

where all of his accounts
were, his passwords,

all this paperwork,
and he had crossed out dates

and put new dates,
like, sometimes two
or three times on it,

so he had been planning it
for a really long time.

At first I was
very task-oriented,

care-taking, explaining,
rationalizing,

and then it kind of
tapered down

and then I started working
in the studio

and then I kind of went back
into my normal habits
and isolation,

and that's when
I started to kind of
really think, I guess.

It really spun out
pretty quick after that.

JONATHAN: I've never seen
him like that.

He really went down
for a long time.

LETSCHER: About three or four
months into the experience,

I started getting hit
with profound emotional
shock waves.

Terrible insomnia was
kind of the first thing.

I started having
problems with panic.

Painful, wracking
physical symptoms,

and it just kind of
snowballed like that.

Really radically
dysfunctional.

Near psychotic, probably,
for maybe six months
or eight months or a year.

He was so down
that it kind of...

He put a wall around himself
and it was kind of hard

to, like, be in his life
for a few years,

I think for all of us
in a way.

(DOG BARKING)

LETSCHER:
After my dad's death,
I felt like,

you know, probably
in the back of my mind

I thought it's therapeutic to
work through it with my work.

I mean, there's only
really one path

and the work's
gonna change,
and it's gonna change again.

I want it to be
out of control,

I want it to be beyond
my control,

but to function out of
your control

or beyond your control,
or beyond your understanding

is an uncomfortable
position to be in.

He started staying home a lot,

um, and the boys were gone.

Yeah. They grew up and left.

And so he, um,
had to be careful.

Yeah, and stay
on top of himself

and not completely
pull back from society.

And then
an odd thing happened.

My stepmother died
unexpectedly of breast cancer
and we had to move my dad in.

So he was no longer alone,
and that was huge.

Lance didn't bat an eye.
He was getting ready
for a show,

and he stopped everything
and built,

added a room onto our house
for my father,

and we had him moved in
with us in about
three months' time.

My dad was a pilot
in World War II.

He flew corsairs,
he was in the Marines.

So, one night we're sitting
in this TV room

and Lance is going
through the Internet
looking at things,

which he does every night
on eBay,

he's curious about
what people are selling,
and he sees this glider.

He's fearless
in what he's willing to do.

If he decides to do a project,
he just simply goes for it.

I mean, the plane,
I don't know

how many thousand dollars
the plane cost to buy
off the Internet,

but he made
a decision to do it,
and it was gonna happen.

It was delivered
to the studio.

It was longer
than the studio, really,
there wasn't room for it.

And the wings weren't on it.

But we went back there
and Dad knew exactly
what it was,

and him and Lance
just talked nonstop about it.

LETSCHER: It was
a Laister Kaufman,

and the one that I bought was
built in 1941

and all wood construction
covered with fabric,

but it also had
a steel sub frame.

The wingspan of
the glider was 50 feet

and the plane
that I ended up building,

the wingspan is 25 feet.

What the plane eventually
became is based on

this airplane that was
in World War II.

The Me163 was
a rocket-powered plane,

very short, single-seater,

and these two highly volatile
chemicals were mixed

at the plane
at the point of take-off.

And most of the people
that got killed

in relation to this plane
weren't pilots
that got shot down,

they were actually people
that were pouring
the two chemicals together

because they were
so highly volatile that
they would explode.

It had 60 seconds of thrust.

Four seconds of thrust
to take off,

and then 56 seconds of thrust
to go straight up

and fly into a...
A squadron of B-17s

that were going to Berlin, and
then the plane with level off

and shoot its missiles out
of the back of the plane

into the flight of the B-17s,

and then it would run out
of gas and it would
coast back down.

Very radical, life-or-death,
kind of Kamikaze airplane.

FRASHER: He changed
the shape of everything,
every aspect of it.

Cut the wings down
to a manageable size.

LETSCHER: Also, the wings are
swept so they're angled back

for higher speed stability,

so I had to change the root
of the wing

so that that angle
would be achieved.

Then I cut out a section
of the tail in back
of the cockpit

and moved the tail forward.

I ended up kind of cutting
this part down

as well and
reshaping the nose,

reshaping the lower section,

and then built a wooden
lattice over it

to create the structure
of the outside
of the airplane,

and covered that with
eighth-inch birch plywood.

People would say,
"Why are you doing that?"

and I went,
"'Cause he can
and he wants to."

ZOUBOK: I was very keen
to have him really do

whatever was going to make
this first show back
in New York

as auspicious a beginning to
our working relationship
as possible.

So when he came to me
and asked

how I felt about showing
the glider which is, you know,

it's a whole airplane,
a small airplane,
but it's an airplane.

We had to crane the piece,
in sections of course,

through the gallery window.
And we're on the second floor.

GABE: That was
an amazing show.

He filled the whole
gallery space.

It was like 40 or 50 pieces
and a sculpture.

ZOUBOK: People were
kind of delighted by it.

It's a beautiful object first
and foremost,

but it's also almost as if
this kind of magical

collaged bird had landed
in the gallery.

LETSCHER:
I think a lot of humor
is about insanity

and a lot of art
is about insanity

and a lot of your life is
about insanity

in trying to stay balanced
and to not be hurtful

and to be lucid
and cognizant and present.

You know, it's like
you're fighting all the chaos
inside of you

in order to present
yourself as a sane person
all the time.

And in art you don't really
have to do that.

Doing a collage, you can be
as crazy as you want to be.

This one really does have
a strong narrative to me,

it's autobiographical,
it's about somebody
I know.

And this person was
a very exaggerating person.

He made up stories,
he made up lies.

Now, are you making
this all up?

-No, this is true.
-This is true?

This is somebody you know?

Yeah. Yeah, my dad, actually.
It's about my dad.

Um and there's two
main stories going on
about this boat.

Maybe he was shipwrecked.

Um, and one story is
a very romantic story

about this beautiful
three-masted schooner

and there's all these ladies'
hands kind of
framing that aspect.

So it's very romantic,
it's very beautiful.

And maybe the true story,
or the truer story,
is based on this boat.

It's kind of a rundown
tramp steamer

and the only hand
is floating in the water.

-WHITENACK: A sinking ship.
-Yeah.

And the truth of the matter is
that he probably wasn't
ever shipwrecked,

he probably wasn't even ever
on a ship,

um, but that's the story.

And the movement
of the shoes is...

I was thinking of
dancing around,

you know, dancing manically
to get somebody's attention

and to keep
somebody's attention.

And the title of this piece is
The Greatest Dancer
in the World.

Yeah, The Greatest Dancer
in the World.

I thought about naming it
Mr. BB.

But, um, yeah, The Greatest
Dancer is pretty good.

-Yeah.
-Wow.

LETSCHER:
We're mutually supportive.

You know, her job
is really hard,

her job is a lot harder
than my job.

She deals with kids with
cancer and I deal with myself.

FRASHER: I believe in love at
first sight because of Lance.

It just happened.

To this day, we'll look
at each other and go,

"Do you know how many
miracles it took
for us to get together

"and to stay where we are?"

LETSCHER: It's been
five years, coming up
on the sixth year

since he committed suicide.

And I'm in a different space
mentally about it,

I mean, I can talk about it,

I couldn't even have talked
about it two years ago
or three years ago.

But I think that it's...
It's important to talk about

because of the relevance
to the work

and the relevance to just
about every aspect of my life.

It's one of those things
that comes along
and changes everything.

LETSCHER: Sorry, I didn't have
my phone. I'm in the back.
Is everything okay?

Yeah, I'm cool.

Doing good.

All right, love you. Bye.

FRASHER: His background has
really enabled him to do
the art that he does.

He makes it very,
very difficult,

but that's what makes
his collages interesting.

Sheri came over and was
asking about how are you
gonna do it?

They're close enough
where he's like, "I'm having
a hard time with it."

And she said, "Remember
those pieces you did

"where you
stapled them together?

"You know, the paper.
Those are really,
really thick."

And I just saw that light bulb
go off above his head.

Finally he said,
I know what I'm doing.

Everything was laid out
on the floor,

and Mary said, "Why don't you
staple it or something?"

And I was like, "Oh!"
It would be less work

to individually staple every
single piece one-by-one

than have all that glue
and the potential for it to
change when it gets hot.

He had spent months
collecting metals

and colors
and cutting out shapes.

They were laid out on
a pallet in that wood shop.

From then on he was a madman.

(SHUSHING)

Go sit down.

FRASHER: It really started
changing and getting
much more complicated.

I'd call every day.
"How's it going?" "I'm done."

Well, that went on for about
a week and a half before
he finally was done.

LETSCHER: Mary leaves
at 9:00,

I come out here, turn on
the compressor,
find my sheers,

look at it for a second,

and then I cut one piece
and then staple.

And the next thing I know,
it's like 3:00
in the afternoon.

It's that kind of work.

FRASHER: Then he calls me
at work one day and says,

"Okay, you've got some
tins in the kitchen
that I really want."

And I said, "They're yours,
you can do it.

"I love them but it's for
your art. Yeah. Go for it."

LETSCHER:
She's completely supportive.

I've never had
anybody in my life,

anybody in my life that's done
that before.

She wants me to succeed,
to thrive and excel.

FRASHER: He'd get up at night,
walk out and look at it

and come back in
and say, "Okay, I know what
I'm gonna do tomorrow."

(CHUCKLES)

LETSCHER: It's really
so pleasurable to look at it
and tack something up.

You're moving it in tiny
little increments every time.

And if it's worse, then you
get the pliers and you...

(MIMICKING USING PLIERS)
You know, pull the staple out.

So this is a box of staples,

and what does it say?
"Quantity 10,000 Staples."

This is the fourth box
of staples I've gone through.

Feel how heavy that is.

It drew in his interest
and curiosity

and satisfied a lot
of anxiety, you know,

about doing something
he'd never done before,
to the point of,

"When am I gonna
let myself stop?"

LETSCHER: I had a dream
that I was painting this huge
painting of the ocean.

You know, kind of, like,
loading the brush up

and making these big marks
and stepping back
and looking at it

and studying it,
and it was huge.
It was big.

And I woke up and I was like,
"Man, I would love to do
a big painting like that."

In a way this is
the fulfillment of that
because it feels like that.

It's starting to get a texture
like a painting would
get texture,

you build it up real slow.

You know,
what Mary told me was,

you know when you really feel
affection for somebody

and you're talking to them,
your pupil dilates really big.

I don't know, it's about love.

When you love somebody,
you feel the love,

and when you're talking to
them your pupil
gets really big.

I got there at 6:45
and he was already there

pacing around and we both had
the same idea, that we wanted

to put the first panel up
before anybody got there

because we weren't sure
that it was gonna work.

Yeah, it doesn't look
too good down there.

Uh, but I think
we'll be able to fix it.

BRENT HOWELL: My original idea
was that Lance and I
sneak down there

early in the morning
and put it up like
guerrilla art, like graffiti.

If anything goes wrong
it can't go too wrong.

This is about 500 pounds,

the wall's not gonna fall
over, hopefully.

When you make stuff at home

expecting it to work
somewhere else

that's not exactly
plumb and level,

it doesn't really work
most of the time.

This is one
of those instances.

Now they won't fall off on us
when we're messing around
down there.

(DRILLING)

Yeah.

Now we're talking.

-Success!
-You got it.

(GROANS)

All right. Let's bring the top
out and the bottom in.

Let's bring the top out.

(GRUNTING)

(DRILLING)

-(LAUGHS) Whoo, it worked!
-It worked!

-Your design worked.
-(LAUGHS)

Do you want to do it
in stages, lift it up,

-set it on the ladder...
-Right.

...and then go
the rest of the way?

LETSCHER: Right.

Up.

BRENT: We knocked
the ladder over.

(LETSCHER GROANS)

-It's still not easy, is it?
How's your back?
-It's okay.

Let's try to get it up here
in one swell foop.

There we go.

-LETSCHER: Right.
-I'm going to get
another grip.

All right, I'm on.

LETSCHER: Fuck.

We're going to try
a different way.

-That was better.
-It was better.

BRENT: All right, top out,
bottom in. Are you okay?

LETSCHER: Yeah.

All right.
To me about an inch.

That's perfect.

BRENT: Let's flip it over
kind of this way.

FRASHER: I knew
when I got there,
I saw the stress on his face.

Oh, my God. I was just like,
"Don't get hurt
and don't drop it!" (CHUCKLES)

LETSCHER: Okay,
that was the best one yet.

Oh, wait, look.
Look how off we are.

How about there?

You're a little bit out
but it's not that much,
that's good.

What do you think, Lance?

LETSCHER: I think it, uh,
looks all right.

BRENT: (GRUNTS)
I'll stick my corner.

-Oh, that's good.
-Okay, good.

It's beautiful.

LETSCHER: It's amazing
how much detail you can
see from this far back.

FRASHER: I saw Lance
do something I haven't seen
him do in a lot of years,

is to do a different medium
of work

and get completely,
passionately in love with it.

That turned out to be a gift
he didn't understand

when it first came to him,
and it changed a lot of him.

LETSCHER: I think that
that piece has
a different trajectory

than anything
that I've done before.

I didn't feel irritated
or angry or insecure about it,

I got it to where it felt
like everywhere was
kind of working.

I think it's going to have
an impact on people.

And I like that. I like
the idea that people that
are walking down the street

that I don't know and
I'll probably never talk to,

are gonna have an experience
with it somehow.

It's always been really,
really important to me
to be an artist.

Once I kind of realized
that I could be an artist

then that was
the main goal in my life.

I couldn't imagine anything
better than that.