Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Uh, I don't know if you know, a lot of academics, but, you know, I had this idea that my life, as an academic was going to be like in a wool coat with like, you know, the elbow patches. And like after rousing debate with my colleagues, I'd go to the campus club and enjoy a scotch and a cigar. And just like, think about the philosophers of the past. But that is really, you know, a pipe dream. It might be the academic experience for very few, very small percentage of people who are likely, you know, older white men who have graduated into that structure and have allowed, have been allowed to continue to operate in that way. But I had a four, four course load, meaning I was teaching four different classes every semester, if not five with independent studies. I mean, when I went up for tenure, I think I had done like 22 different course preps over the seven years that I had been there because I had to teach every single class from the intro through the senior seminar, as well as a variety of, you know, elective classes for our majors to take.
Speaker 0 00:01:11 And so I was burnt out. I was really mentally exhausted and, um, I was starting to really feel those effects. And so I knew that I needed to take some drastic measure to figure out how to be in better relationship to my job, uh, which, you know, kind of leads me into this next chapter of my life. Um, that is a severe, um, veering off of the highway of academia.
Speaker 2 00:01:49 You're listening to sound mind where queer voices across Minnesota explore mental health through art. I'm Jane Ram siren Miller artistic director of one voice mixed chorus. Minnesota is lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and straight allies. Chorus. We acknowledged that sound mind is produced and our singers reside on the sacred traditional lands of the Dakota and initial Nabil people. In this episode, we're going to stir up a little trouble with Candice Creel folk on a self-identified Chicana, queer femme, who went rogue from her academic tenure track and is now living as a mostly self-taught artist in rural Ottertail, Minnesota. I met Candice over zoom during a Minnesota blizzard, her styling glasses and her background wall of books led me to believe that she has not completely strayed from her academic roots. Here is how Candice introduced herself. To me.
Speaker 0 00:02:49 I've been working a lot on trying to define myself based on, you know, more of my like soul self and by my values, as opposed to what I do. So I'll try to start there. I'm a firstborn daughter and my family of origin. My mother is Mexican American. My father is white. I was born in Kansas, but grew up in New Mexico. So I have a really strong affinity for the geographies of both the Prairie and mountains as a Chicana and growing up in Albuquerque New Mexico. I spent a lot of time being a rebel rouser. I actually think one of the deepest parts of myself is like a troublemaker, like a good troublemaker. Somebody who's not afraid to call out injustice and somebody who's really deeply invested in learning deeply about new ways of being in the world, being in better relation to both other people and the environment around us. I live in rural Earhart, Minnesota, which is an Otter tail County with my wife on 20 acres Lakeside with goats, chickens, cats, and a couple of small dogs who live in the house. Um, how I spend my time is as a writer and a visual artist. Um, and as a recovering former academic, who is still, still very enamored with the power of ideas and particularly the power of narratives as a way to inspire social transforming
Speaker 2 00:04:34 Candace's rabble rousing narrative is a story that crosses many divides starting with her childhood. Growing up in a bi-cultural family
Speaker 0 00:04:44 Parents met while my dad was pursuing a master's degree in electrical engineering at Kansas state university. And my mother as, uh, was working as the secretary in the department. And so I like to tell that story because I think it really kind of frames my beginnings. Um, my dad comes from a really solidly middle-class background and my mom grew up, um, in a rural Kansas, um, in poverty. And so though that bicultural experience really shaped our, our life growing up, um, in a number of ways, um, both the, you know, experiencing experience of having a visibly Brown mother and like seeing how she was treated by people and then having a white father just taught me a lot about race, actually in a lot of my formative experiences of around coming into a racial identity or racialized understanding of identity, it was really about those different experiences that my parents would have and the different experience I would have in relation to those parents when we were out and about when I was 15, I started having a lot of health problems like unexplained problems.
Speaker 0 00:05:57 Like I was getting super dizzy. I was having like heart palpitations. I would just kind of start sweating out of nowhere. And, um, my mom took me to the doctor and I had all of these tests done physiologically and nothing was wrong. And so ultimately the answer to that at the time was let's send the patient to a psychologist. Then I'm like, let's think about this from a mental health angle. Uh, you know, in the late nineties, this was the approach. And so, um, I started seeing a psychologist, um, and I started taking some antidepressant medication and I started to feel a little bit better. Um, but at the time I was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder and panic attacks. And so I just kind of like enveloped that as part of who I was. Um, I just, just knew that I'm kind of high strung.
Speaker 0 00:07:00 I'm anxious. Sometimes that anxiety has, uh, something I can link it to because it's stress induced. Oftentimes it's just general anxiety about everything. Um, and this was, you know, pre COVID. So I felt like the world was ending like all the time. Um, for a really long time, I had a weird experience with my, um, extended family, because we were the only family that lived outside of the state of Kansas for the most part. And so the only way we got to see them was on holidays and, um, in some ways that was really a blessing because it allowed me to see that it's possible to leave your family and like still have relationships. Um, and so it gave me a little bit of an out to leave New Mexico. So I went to K U and loved my experience there. Um, on holiday breaks, I would hang out with my abuela, my grandma and my ideas.
Speaker 0 00:07:59 And I got to see all these, like cousin's weddings and like go to my nieces, like Keene say, and like all of these things that I probably wouldn't have had access to had I not, um, made that purposeful decision to move to Kansas, to connect with my Mexican family in particular, when I was at K U I picked up two majors and had a minor. And so you probably can assume from that experience that I was taking a very heavy credit load and, um, you know, graduated with honors was thriving in the academic environment. I actually was going into the field of psychology and that was me, my number one major. And I realized, I don't think that this is the career path for me. I, I think, uh, at the time I was really struggling with the, the idea of psychology being something where you work one-on-one with someone.
Speaker 0 00:08:55 And I had bigger aspirations to make larger change outside of just individual impact. And so I started really exploring some women's and gender studies classes, keeping my psychology major, kept my parents happy because they could see, like I could get a job. Um, while I pursued this other really rich form of inquiry that really excited me and really like put to words like these feelings that I had had as a young person, just feeling really confined by gender roles and gender norms and expectations around like what it means to be a woman and what it means to be a person in society. I graduated in four years and I knew that I didn't, I would have needed to go to graduate school for a psychology degree anyway, to practice psychology. And so I somehow convinced my parents. It was okay that I apply for graduate school in different programs with the idea that, you know, there's going to be a job at the end of this
Speaker 2 00:09:55 Talking to Candice, it became abundantly clear that they are the epitome of an overachiever, definitely a perfectionist, as you might imagine, coming out under all that pressure to succeed was not easy.
Speaker 0 00:10:09 Yeah. So I'm kind of a cliche. I'll say I had my coming into my sexuality moment as a, somebody in college. I, as the first born, you know, Mexican American daughter of a heterosexual couple, I was definitely, um, raised and socialized with compulsory heterosexuality. I had several boyfriends in high school and serious ones, you know, that my parents loved and cared for in different ways. And when I went to college, I was actually, um, in a serious committed relationship with a man and I thought I was gonna marry him. And we talked about kids and he ended up moving to Kansas to be with me. And I was like, this is my path. And then thankfully, he broke up with me and broke my heart pretty dramatically. Um, the summer after my first year at college, I met, uh, my best friend from college, um, who was also an RA on a different floor.
Speaker 0 00:11:22 And one of her residents, um, really just shamelessly pursued me. Um, she, my first girlfriend was somebody who loved the challenge of converting so-called straight girls. And the entire time I was really resistant to it. And I think part of it was just knowing like how difficult it was to manage the expectations about my parents and like all of the gender stuff that had been put on me and all of these things that I was carrying. I had come out as a feminist when I was 18. And that was already like pushing the boundaries of my politically and religiously conservative household. I think for a long time, I was trying to say like, no, I can be a feminist and I can, you know, be hetero or, you know, feminists can also love men because it was so hard for me to hold onto that, that identity of claiming like, no, I'm a feminist.
Speaker 0 00:12:21 And I believe in women's equality and women's rights to their own bodies. And like, you know, I think the only way forward is if we end sexism. And so I just wasn't willing to go there, but thankfully my first girlfriend did not give up on me and we had some transformative moments and, um, then we were in a relationship with one another and for a while I was like, okay, this is fine. It'll just be her. Like, I will just have the one relationship with her. I'm just, open-minded, I'm attracted to people, not just because of their body parts, which I would say is accurate, right? Like how I think about myself now, growing up as a Catholic, I think I was also just really grappling with that. I was of course, a leader in the church. I sing in the choir and like I was going to get married in the Catholic church.
Speaker 0 00:13:16 And then all of a sudden, my life is going in this much different direction. And I think it was just really hard to like grapple with. And I remember going to, to mass, um, on campus and just crying sometimes because I was just like, what am I going to do? I also don't want to like, hide this part of myself anymore and I want to explore it. And I feel most alive when I'm in partnership with other women in particular. Um, though of course my first girlfriend also broke my heart and then I was like, fine, I'll just go back to dating men. And then I turned, it turned out. I did not like dating, you know, cis-gender hetero. Then I decided to just kind of lean into the fact that I was queer or that, you know, I actually, probably at that time was using the term lesbian to describe myself.
Speaker 0 00:14:11 By the time I was a senior in college, I was there and I was out to my friends and I was a member of the LGBTQ community and Lawrence. And we would party every Wednesday night at the local restaurant that had a gay night for the dancing. And I had some really wonderful formative moments, um, in that regard. But, um, I was not out to my family for quite some time actually after that, my white family actually, um, has been the more difficult to accept, uh, of me then my Mexican American family. And, um, I, I don't really know what that is particularly about other than, you know, um, I think it's a good reminder that all cultures are capable of homophobia and, um, I've been pretty much loved and affirmed in the ways that they can love and infer me, um, by my Mexican American family and kind of, um, uh, what is the word I'm looking for? Uh, estranged from my white family, actually my white extended family for the most
Speaker 2 00:15:31 Coming out to family is often complicated for LGBTQ people. It can be typical to have some family members who are very supportive while others are not each person coming out needs to figure out where they're going to find their people, perhaps through gay night at a local restaurant or a queer student group at school, many singers in one ways, describe our chorus as their chosen family, where they share holidays, emotional support, and even shared childcare. One vice singers sometimes use our concerts as a way to come out by inviting family members to attend. I remember one grandmother who approached me in the lobby to say she was no longer worried. She experienced that palpable joy of her granddaughter singing on stage, surrounded by LGBTQ friends and grandma realized that her granddaughter had the support to thrive as a young person. But speaking of thriving, let's return to Candace's the story. As we follow their academic path to Minnesota,
Speaker 0 00:16:34 It was really wonderful to move to the twin cities and go to grad school because there was just such a thriving LGBTQ community. Minnesota has a really special place in my story because of that, because I could be my fullest queer self when I moved to town. And that's who people have known ever since I've been here in Minnesota, I went straight from undergrad to graduate school and then straight through that program and graduated with a PhD before I was 30 and just was really on this like very strict stringent academic path of like succeeding in a way that like a piece of paper provides you with some kind of credibility and some kind of structured to make you feel like you've achieved something. I guess I'm in graduate school. My panic attacks became really terrible when I was finishing my program. Like I would have them very frequently.
Speaker 0 00:17:31 The first one I had a partner at the time drove me to the emergency room because I was really certain, I was having a heart attack. I could not breathe. My body felt like it was turning against me. And then we got to the emergency room and they're like, Oh, you had a panic attack. And that was wild because it was not like my panic had shown up in any other way. Um, but it was clear that it was starting to become physical. Like it was manifesting physically physiological in my body. And so, um, that I kind of got under control when I started being a professor and then the stress of an academic lifestyle, um, and like high achieving and like balancing a lot of things just was really ramping up towards the end of my, my trajectory at me, my institution. And so I graduated with my PhD in 2010, um, which was, you know, coming out of a pretty intense, um, economic recession and as such academia was a terrible place to be trying to get a job.
Speaker 0 00:18:38 So also, I mean, probably equal to what it's like now. Um, I would say, and maybe now is even worse. Um, my partner at the time, her parents were from Morehead and I happened to be at a conference, uh, in a Dinah. And I met the director, the then director of women's and gender studies at MSU and Morehead and on a whim because I had been taught to network network network. I said, I'd be happy to teach at that institution. And she had a adjunct position ready for me, like the next weekend, which was incredible. She was really trying to grow and expand the program. And she saw an in, uh, particularly around that time where a lot of women's gender studies programs were trying to recruit and retain people who had a PhD in the field. Um, they were hopeful that they would be able to make that a full-time job and ultimately they did, and I applied for it and I got it.
Speaker 0 00:19:40 And it was really for two tests because to get a tenure track job in women's and gender studies at that time was really like a, um, very improbable situation. And I know that several of my colleagues and peers who graduated around that time or before and after me are no longer in academia because they were not able to pursue or, you know, get one of those lottery jobs basically. And so I ended up moving to Morehead, um, where I was a women's and gender studies professor. And I really loved teaching. I loved it so much teaching people who I saw myself as like, you know, 10 years before, like the rabble-rousers the, the students who would like take it to the administration and demand better. And the students who are not afraid to like stand up for what they needed and what they deserved in that academic environment.
Speaker 0 00:20:40 And I was really rich and fulfilling time to spend with young people and sharing like feminist theory as like a viable path forward towards building a better world for all of us was just some of the best work ever. You know, all of the things we've been going through the last 20 years, basically in higher education just was coming down on me a little bit, too hard. And I felt like as the person who was both the director of the program, who was also the only full-time faculty member in the program who was holding up a major and two minors on a certificate program and trying to fight for that to exist was just really difficult work. And I found that I was really getting drained by that work actually. And that, that part of my job began to interfere with my joy in the classroom.
Speaker 0 00:21:44 And when that started happening, I think my whole world was just turned upside down. Um, I started, um, seeing a life coach actually, and, um, Karen Olson who lives in the twin city, she lives in Minneapolis. She is fantastic. And she does a lot of like body informed coaching. And so a lot of our activities together were like, how does that feel in your body? Like decision-making practices of like, what does it feel like when you say you're going to quit your job? You know, like, what is the fear? Where is it in your body? And she helped me really like bring together like the intellectual side of how I understand my anxiety and then also the physiological side, like just being more better in touch with my body, um, and helped me really like process what it would be like to make that major shift in my life, which at the time I had a really hard time imagining I ever would pull like that I would ever come to that decision of leaving.
Speaker 0 00:22:48 Um, but that process was really super helpful and I did end up leaving, um, academia and I do not regret that decision. I had always longed to live on a farm. And, um, my, my aunt, my Thea Lily lives on a farm in Kansas. And I just have these wonderful memories of going to visit her farm and like going to spend time with the chickens and more ahead, like many mid-sized cities would not allow chickens. And so I kind of just finally had had it because the city council did not allow chickens for another year in a row. And so Liz was like, well, I know one way we could get chickens is if we live in the country and she grew up on a farm I'm on the iron range. And so I was like, you know, if anyone can do it, I bet we can with Liz's knowledge, you know, we call it the chick fin cottage.
Speaker 0 00:23:47 So I'm Chicana. My wife has finished American. We bought this house in the hopes of creating an artistic retreat or community activist retreat space for, um, QT POC folks, um, who needed a retreat from their lives or from the action in a rural or urban area. And really just wanted to try to provide space for people to recharge and to connect in nature, um, because it's just so wonderfully restorative for us. And it has been really restorative for both of us. Um, Liz likes to say that we bought this place to survive. Um, the Trump years not to get like overtly political, but to think about like, how can we intentionally build community in a way that helps promote the values of what we see as important in terms of, you know, liberation for all like folks being uplifted, being loved, feeling like they belong and community, and just taking that really seriously.
Speaker 0 00:24:56 And, and I was thinking a lot about how can we use narrative? Um, my research has a lot on like narrative. So how do, how are people talked about and how do we talk about ourselves, um, as communities. And I just really wanted to explore that in a different form. And so I took this foundations of three-dimensional art, the local community college, and it, I found out that for the first time in a really long time, I actually felt mentally challenged. And, um, I was not really expecting that. It was scary for me because I like to do everything perfectly. And like, there really isn't any perfect in visual arts, I mean, but it's also a really good skill to have to like strive for perfection in visual art making. Um, I just really loved how it made me think differently and how it really pushed my brain to engage with the world around me in a different way, as somebody who has always seen academia as like the way that you gain expertise, I didn't have any expertise, you know, like it had the one art history class I had had, like the one art class I took in sixth grade, but I didn't have when I, what felt like years and years of like practice to be able to make things, you know.
Speaker 0 00:26:23 And so I, I think I kind of like was a little cagey about that identity for myself for a while. I ended up deciding that I was going to pursue a degree, um, when I went back to teaching. So I was taking classes at the community college and then driving, which was in Fergus and then driving to Morehead and teaching classes, and then coming back to the studio and working, and then like starting all over again the next day. Um, but it really suited me. It actually helped me, um, develop that separation from my work life and my work, like my identity as an academic and as a professor, because I couldn't stay on campus for my professor self because art takes time and I had to be really serious about protecting the time I needed to achieve that 4.0 at the community college.
Speaker 2 00:27:19 Candice, his story reminds me of one of my favorite quotes by Edward teller. He says when it's time to step into the darkness of the unknown faith is knowing that one of two things shall happen either you will be given something solid to stand on, or you will be taught how to fly. I'm so inspired by Candace's ability as a self-described achiever to leave a secure vocation and venture out into the unknown. Somehow she was able to let go and trust her passion as an artist to take the lead.
Speaker 0 00:27:55 I'd love to make monumental work that can not be missed. I think that's part of what I really love about the visual arts is like transmitting a message that like is hard to look away from, or like avoid in your visual field. I have my first solo exhibition. That's going to be up at them across the art center in grand Rapids, Minnesota. So the series is called interior intimacies, and I've been really trying to explore like my relationship to my house actually. And so that started in 2019 prior to the pandemic. And I'm just really grateful that I had picked a subject matter that I still could have access to and new insights of relationship to, um, during a global pandemic because I've been stuck in my home. And so, yeah, there are nine interior scenes that I I'm trying to call narrative paintings of, uh, imaginary or opportunities for people to imagine my relationship to the objects around me and this concept of intimacy, like peering into somebody else's house and somebody else's life. The other aspect of it is related to like the tensions that we have in social media. So they're square because of the ways Instagram has really begun to shape our expectations of how we see an image and the curated versions of ourselves that we put into social media. So thinking about that a lot in the ways that I staged these paintings and ultimately end up providing this like visual scene to be in Villa in, um, cause they're pretty large paintings.
Speaker 2 00:29:35 The first time I clicked on the canvases paintings on her website, I fell in love with the bright, bold colors that come together to share just a peek into their rural life. In one painting, we see Candace's bedroom with a bed unmade and in another we see their bathroom. But I think my favorite is their painting of a bright yellow front porch complete with hatchet chainsaw and the requisite queer keen sandals, those belonging to Candace's wife, Liz.
Speaker 0 00:30:05 And of course, part of that is like a gender conversation of like, you're looking into the life of two women who share their lives together in rural Minnesota. Like what does that bring up for you as a viewer to that kind of work? You know? And what does it mean for me to share that in a rural community, you know, like in a community that like people know who we are just because we're lesbians, like not to say that that doesn't happen in urban places, but I think that's like kind of a special like facet of what it means to live in a rural place that, that identity kind of becomes like a really salient one in terms of how you get identified in relation to the place that you are. Um, which is fine by me because as you know, if my art is about not being missed, like can't be missed, I'm also fine.
Speaker 0 00:31:00 Like not being missed when I walk into spaces. And I think it's because that's been my life experience right. Of like walking in kind of like, I don't know. I don't feel like I look that queer, but I'm queer enough in many facets that like in the pre COVID times, if I walked into a diner in a rural community, everybody's heads would turn and stare at me and I for a long time was kind of precocious about it. And like kindness, salty, like wanting to be like, why don't you take a picture? You know? And then, then later on, I feel like I've tried to shift that a little bit. Just be like, of course, people want to look at you, like just kind of own it, you know, like of course, like you are visually interrupting, what is narrative? You know? And so when you do that through your appearance, either your clothes or your gender appearance, um, you know, with shaved head or like high fem elements in a rural place, like you jar people out of expectations of what they assume they're going to see
Speaker 2 00:32:37 And coming out as an artist, canis also discovered some really beautiful ways to also support their mental health.
Speaker 0 00:32:43 I've just learned a lot of new coping skills to deal with my anxiety. Um, I do yoga, I meditate, I turn to cultural traditions and rituals and create structure in my life and, um, you know, schedules and I plan things and I over-prepare, and all of these things just kind of work to my advantage to kind of quell some of that just underlying energy that is within me, um, that I've always been able to get above and like still achieve. Um, but it's really magical when you don't need that to do something right. That you don't need the external motivation of like your mental illness to like motivate you to do something. And so I find like this journey I'm on in terms of like visual arts is so wonderful. There is an anxiety piece about it, but I don't think it's any different than other people who don't have anxiety disorder or something like artists just have like deep responsibilities in terms of like this creative process, um, is physically and mentally taxing and like requires a lot of us.
Speaker 0 00:33:57 Um, but I find that painting is like one of the times where I feel like no anxiety at all when I'm in the process of it. So there's anxiety figuring out what I'm doing. There's anxiety like getting ready to paint. But as soon as I'm at my easel, um, everything else just kind of slips away. And it is like so delicious to have that and like, know that I can make that happen whenever I want. Like whenever I go to my easel, it will happen if I'm there long enough, you know? And if I let myself just start, that's really all I have to do.
Speaker 2 00:34:39 Thank you, Candice, for your candid stories for our listeners, check out the photos of Candace's artwork from the link on our podcast website. From our very first conversation, I was struck by Candace's self identification as a rebel rouser. It reminded me of a song that one voice performed in 2015 in a concert titled gender unchecked. The composer David MacIntyre is Canadian. So you'll notice a reference to royalty in the phrase, God saved the queen or in the last verse, as a tenor says, God saved the Queens Candace in honor of your story. This is one voice mixed chorus, singing Vive LA deferrals
Speaker 1 00:36:40 Who was invited. She couldn't bake, but she'd haul. She drove a truck always right on top.
Speaker 1 00:37:42 Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:38:11 The gorgeous home getting the Gucci shoes. <inaudible>
Speaker 2 00:38:57 This concludes episode, two of sound mind from one voice mixed chorus, Minnesota's LGBTQ and straight allies chorus. This podcast is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through the Minnesota state arts board. Thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund. Yay, Minnesota voters. Thank you to audio engineer, a theater writer and all around smart tech person. Paul Cruz join us for the next soundbite episode to meet Andrew Gonzalez, who grew up in the big city of Chicago, came out as a student at St. Olaf college in Northfield, Minnesota, and is currently in his first year teaching elementary school music virtually
