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What happens when you grow up in a home where art isn't something you go see, but something you create to survive?
Rose B. Simpson would know.
She comes from a line of clay artists stretching back generations.
She also builds custom lowrider cars.
And if that sounds like a contradiction, it's kind of the point.
I look at a car and I don't see the car.
I see what it could be.
I look at a garden and I don't see the garden.
I see what it could be.
And then I begin.
Rose grew up in Santa Clara, Pueblo, New Mexico.
Raised by her mother, the sculptor Roxanne Swensel, in a home where the electricity was sometimes deliberately turned off and art was indistinguishable from life.
In this conversation with Design Matters podcast host Debbie Millman, she explores what it means to treat everything a ceramic figure, a car, a room, your own body as a vessel.
They talk about what it means to listen to the world around you, and Rose reminds us that we are never as powerless as we think.
There wasn't a difference between art and life.
Everything was a creative process and everything was applied, and everything had intention and meaning.
The conversation's coming up right after a short break.
And now our conversation of the day.
Rose, let's talk a little bit about your origin story.
You grew up in Santa Clara Pueblo, surrounded by generations of artists and thinkers.
Your mother, Roxanne Swenstahl, and your grandmother both forged paths that united making and meaning.
When did you first sense that art could also be a kind of language for survival?
I'm going real deep, real fast.
I don't have a lot of time.
I love that.
I would like to say first that there wasn't a difference between art and life.
That everything was a creative process and everything was applied and everything had intention and meaning.
So what we did and how we moved through the world had an invested interest in creating a reality that was aesthetic.
I think that my mother is an incredible sculptor and she took The ability that she had been given to work in ceramics that came from generations and generations before us.
And she used it to communicate in a way that she was needing to.
And it became our livelihood.
She supported our family with her sculpture.
But it was like the art world was something very strange, because she was also making the pottery that we ate out of.
She used her ability to craft earth, to build our home, to grow our food.
And so that utility and relationship with it was innate in all walks of our life.
You've described your childhood home as experimental, and I understand that your mother once turned off the electricity to see how the family could adapt.
How'd that go?
Oh, it was really frustrating when I had to catch the bus at a 630 in the morning, but I am so grateful.
My mom is always still to this day, searching for ways to root and to figure out how to apply the innate values of relationship to Earth and being in all walks of life.
And so part of that was growing all our own food and figuring out how we could live completely sustainably.
And we have the privilege of living in our ancestral home, having seed and relationship to spirituality that can foster the farming.
So those seeds have been adapted to that environment for a very long time.
We have tradition that's passed down for a really long time to be able to support ourselves in the high desert of northern New Mexico.
And turning off the electricity was one step towards remembering what it's like to not be dependent on a system.
And now, because of the fact that she turned off the electricity, she homeschooled us for a long time.
We grew our own food.
I can actually hear electricity.
Yeah, I'm really sensitive to like.
Yeah, it's all we adapt to all the things that we add to our lives.
And when we take it away, then we start realizing how much we're affected by it.
What did those early experiences teach you about self-reliance or the connection between self-reliance and imagination?
I feel like understanding true sustainability means that we always have a choice.
Because my mom didn't put us into the school system.
She intentionally homeschooled me and my brother from early on, and we chose to go to school later.
And now we keep going to school.
And I think that was... a way of her building a capacity in us to choose.
There's always a choice.
We're not victims to the world that we live in.
We can always.
If we're taught how to be sustainable and how to innovate and figure out how to survive in any situation, then we are in our agency when we navigate the world around us right?
That requires self-reliance.
That is not always something that we're learned to cultivate as children.
How do you sustain that?
How do I sustain that?
I love to remember that I don't need the things i think i need, right like we're.
We're told and told, and told that we need x, y and z and, and every single day i realize it's a choice i'm making and then i'm in my my power in relationship to it, as long as i don't need it, it doesn't rule me, it doesn't own me, and so I maintain my relationship with the natural world, my food sources, etc.
Then I am actively engaging in the relationships that I'm making, and that includes the art world, that includes car culture, that includes education, that includes all the decisions, the reason you know being here today.
What is intrigues you most about car culture?
Like, are you a fast and furious fan or is it?
Is it?
Is it more spiritual?
Um, at one point i did like fast and furious a lot.
I've watched all the movies.
Um god, in 60 seconds is my jam um, so you've got range.
I grew up in Española, New Mexico, which is a town that's adjacent.
It's actually sandwiched between two reservations, two tribal nations Santa Clara Pueblo and Oquehuingue.
So the town is...
The youth culture is very mixed between indigenous communities and then the local Hispanic communities.
And so we grew up together.
So like my youth culture was very much like lowriders and like what would be like the Cholo culture Hispanic community there.
And as a little kid, my mom had a 52 wheelies truck that she built our house with, and there was no room for the kids in the front seat.
So we used to sit in the bed of the truck as she drove through town.
And I'd be watching all the cars pile up behind us because we went max like 40 miles an hour, right?
And I'd be like looking at all the nice cars.
And in my head, I was like, when I grow up, I'm going to have a nice car.
That was just like, you know, the goal, right?
Did that happen?
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Tell us about what's in your garage.
I have two cars.
Custom cars that I built for myself in order to have an aesthetic experience.
What does that mean?
Relational aesthetics to me.
When I was in graduate school, the first time I wrote my thesis and I studied what indigenous aesthetic means right.
And the closest I found was actually Japanese aesthetics that I was written about and aesthetics of the everyday and the intentionality of all that we do and applied aesthetics to our lived environment.
And growing up in Española, where the cruise line on Sunday is everybody you know get in their nice car and you put on some good tunes and you lean back and you are present.
You're enjoying your community.
You're having a sense of self-worth.
You're enjoying the sunset.
You have a good drink from Sonic, right?
That feeling is actually presence.
And that feeling is understanding. is when aesthetic gets reapplied to our life.
And when we make those aesthetics decisions, that we are in a state of agency, right?
We're a state of empowerment in ourselves, right?
And so I was building myself to have that moment, to to create that aesthetic experience for myself that I felt was reminiscent of what I knew of applied indigenous aesthetics where it's not in a white cube, on a white box in some other building, somewhere where you don't necessarily have access to.
It's for everyone.
Everyone has access to that experience.
But your work does move between disciplines, ceramics, metal, automotive restoration, performance, and now includes all of them.
Now, did you always imagine those boundaries dissolving, or did that happen more organically over the work that you've done in your practice?
I always wonder if I stop being an artist in the way that the world is arting, I would still be doing stuff.
I would still be going from one place to the next and making things constantly.
And I feel like I'm always interested in how... I'm a dreamer.
I constantly...
I'm imagining the next best thing.
I'm imagining I'm laying there like that window should be over there.
And how can I do that?
And like I look at a car and I don't see the car.
I see what it could be.
Right.
Like I look at a garden and I don't see the garden.
I see what it could be.
And then I begin.
And I feel like I will always be doing that no matter what.
I'm always going to be searching, and whether that's in the world around me and how to better that and how to Listen to it.
Ask how I can be of service of it and then do work.
And the satisfaction of stepping back and seeing how something transformed, that is, that applied aesthetic to the world around me in all things.
And I feel like that is also internal.
So it's also that internal investigation of our psychological and spiritual spaces.
You've called cars vessels.
Yeah.
And many of your figures, many of the sculptures you make, you've called vessels for transformation.
What do these vessels hold?
Consciousness.
Tell us about that.
I am a vessel and I am aware and I am moving and I am making decisions intentionally in this world.
And I make decisions, ceramic vessels that are hollow inside, and they are watching and they are doing work, and they are independent and they make their own decisions and they move to the world with a job to do, and so do cars, and so do the how the houses we live in, the spaces we inhabit.
They're all watching, they're all listening and they're all making decisions, If we are aware.
Tell me how you become aware.
I like to ask.
And I think the first thing that we can do is begin to ask and then wait for an answer.
And I think we have so consistently built the muscle inside of ourselves of prioritizing a human interaction that we've stopped understanding and believing that we can be in a communication with that which is beyond human right.
And so I make anthropomorphized vessels in ceramics so that it's a bridge, because humans really like to talk to other humans and have interactions with those.
And if we can see an anthropomorphized face and start feeling and listening, then we can begin building that muscle of communication with that which we have deemed inanimate.
One of the things that I've noticed about your work particularly seed the installation that was in two spaces in New York City was that the sculptures that you make these vessels, the eyes are always open.
Sometimes the mouths are open as well, but most of them are closed.
I'm assuming that these are very deliberate conscious decisions.
Can you talk about that?
Because though they're anthropomorphized, they feel very real.
They don't feel there's a step between real humanity, anthropomorphized humanity.
So can you talk a little bit about that?
Yeah, I uh, when I make my figurative work, I I don't always include things that I don't think are necessarily important, like arms or hair, but they do have um, the senses.
So they have ears nose mouth eyes, Because I want them to have what they need to soak in the world around them and to create a relationship with that.
And that we see that in that we will also build a relationship, understanding that they are sensing us.
Right.
And so that is why I choose to do that.
And, you know, when I cut the eyes into the clay the first time, I always say hello.
Welcome.
Welcome.
There's been a lot of writing in the last couple of years about how artists of any discipline are vessels for creative communication.
Rick Rubin talked about that in his book, The Creative Act.
Elizabeth Gilbert talked about that in her TED Talk, about how we have to be open to the idea of creativity coming through us, that we are the muse for creativity and allow that creativity to be born through our work.
Do you, do you feel that way as well?
Totally, how do you feel?
Like that happens?
I'm so i'm, i'm waiting.
You know, i'm like come on, come on, come through.
How do you?
How does that feel?
Uh, for instance, when i'm doing a public art piece, i have to go to the place, i have to sit there and i ask And I wait for an answer.
I say, what needs to be here?
What needs to be told?
What story needs to be manifested here to make change?
And how can I be of service?
And then I wait, and I listen, and it comes.
A waste real fast.
Yeah, it's like.
It's like truth, there's only truth.
And when you're in alignment with it, it's like you just tuned into it and boom, you found it.
And then you're like okay, time to get started.
And so when i enter into the studio and i and i you know i get into that place, it's like okay, what needs to be done, what needs to be said, how can i be of service?
When I first met my 1985 Chevy El Camino,
Is that Maria?
Maria.
Yeah.
She, you know when I first painted her, the first day I painted her, she was a satin black with a gloss clear, made to look like our traditional pottery.
I brought her home and I was sitting on the porch with a folding chair and I was looking at her and I was like I didn't do this.
This wasn't me.
She used me to make her into what she was always meant to be.
And I just listened.
And it's incredible to see and give the power back and say thank you for choosing me to be a part of this process of your becoming.
How involved do you feel you are in determining the aesthetic?
If there's something that you're making, are you in the process while making, also evaluating the making?
I love the subject of aesthetic.
I like teaching aesthetics to students, et cetera, because have you ever heard the term?
Don't yuck my yum.
So to me, aesthetic is when we let go of our thoughts and find our yum.
And sometimes what we thought was our yum isn't, if we sit with it long enough, right?
So it's like, how do you refine and refine and refine your yum until it's just mmm, mmm, right?
What is that?
And how do we live in that long enough to where it's like, no, it's actually fine.
Just to the left.
And if you close your eyes, you feel it click.
And that's where it is, right?
That is the finding of it, is tuning.
It's tuning to it.
I think also having that self-reliance all the way, going all the way back to your origin story, to know that you can trust your sense and your judgment.
Yeah, and it takes a, it's a muscle.
Yeah, i think it's a muscle and we have to build it.
You've talked about animacy, the soul of things, And you blur the line between making and being.
And a lot of that, as you said, is about listening.
What kind of silence do you hope your work leaves behind?
The silence I hope my work leaves behind is the one that is...
Full of information.
Because there's so much to learn when we shut up.
There's so much.
And my pieces, unless they're 410 horsepower, 350 going really fast, are very quiet.
And in that silence...
There's connection.
Thank you, Rose Simpson.
Thank you for having me.
That was Rose B. Simpson in conversation with Debbie Millman at TED Next 2025.
If you're curious about TED's curation, find out more at TED.com slash curation guidelines.
And that's it for today.
TED Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective.
This talk was fact-checked by the TED Research Team and produced and edited by our team Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Green, Lucy Little and Tansika Sangmarnivong.
This episode was mixed by Christopher Fasey-Bogan.
Additional support from Emma Taubner and Daniela Balarezo.
I'm Elise Hugh.
I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed.
Thanks for listening.
