#5 Delia King - Artist & Muralist

Join the discussion this week with Delia King - an artist currently residing in Philadelphia whose current medium is reverse glass painting and has done extensive mural work. She talks about reverse glass painting, coming back after losing everything recently in a flood, the Infamous Robert Ritchie from Cleveland, Ohio and how she networks to do mural work in communities that are not her own. We also get specific about wheat paste vs acrylic gel medium.
You can see some of Delia's work at https://delia873.wixsite.com/deliaking/murals

Transcript

Interview with Delia King -  Artist - Murals and Reverse Glass Painting

Timmie Boose: [00:00:00] Welcome to Adulting for Artists. I hope in the past week, you guys have gotten something organized or started a new project. You know, keeping things going, sharpening the saw - stuff like that. Today, my guest is Delia King. She is a mural artist and also a reverse glass painting artist from Philadelphia and formerly of Cleveland.

We are going to talk about the reverse glass painting process, our friend in common, Robert Richie, the infamous Robert Ritchie from Cleveland, Ohio. And mural techniques that Delia has used on the many murals she has done.

 This episode has been brought to you by my graphic design company, Taboose Graphics. If you're interested in any graphic design work, I do all kinds - I'm here for all your graphic design needs. Just visit www.Taboosegraphics.com. Send me a message and I'll get back to you and we'll have a conversation about it. So without further ado, here's my conversation with Delia King.

Welcome to Adulting for Artists. It's nice to see you. 

Delia King: [00:01:39] Nice to see you, Timmie. You look great. Thanks for having me on. 

Timmie Boose: [00:01:42] Thank you. I have known you for a pretty long time. Probably like 20 years - originally from Cleveland. That's where we met. And now you are in Philadelphia. And we met, we've met up in Florida before in Miami, the big art Fest down there.

You've been an artist for a long time. And, um, you do a lot of murals and also reverse glass painting, which you and I both learned from our mutual friend, Robert Ritchie. And, why don't you tell us all about. What do you want to talk about the mural stuff or the reverse glass painting stuff? 

Delia King: [00:02:27] Well, I'm doing glass painting right now and I've been doing glass painting in more concentrated efforts lately, like the last few years than the mural paintings. So we can go ahead and talk about the glass painting especially since it's been since like the connection between you and me in many ways with the, you know, the Cleveland and it's such an unusual discipline. I never meet anyone who does it. I've been meeting people who know what it is more and more lately, but, and that's being in Philadelphia.

But I don't know if that's because of just my own efforts or if there are other people in the world, glass painting. I haven't actually seen any glass painting, but. people in Philly seem to know what it is. 

Timmie Boose: [00:03:11] I never saw it until I saw Robert Ritchie doing it. And then I started doing it and I haven't done it for a long time. And then I know you've done it for a long time.

Delia King: [00:03:20] Yeah. Yeah, I've done. I mean, when, when I was super, super active as like professional artist and, you know, was making my money, the bulk of my money - doing the murals,  I still always kept up doing two shows a year. And all my private studio work has always been glass because, you know, Robert used to always say, "what makes you different?", Right?

 And no one, no one does the glass glass painting anyway. 

Timmie Boose: [00:03:48] So why don't you explain what reverse glass painting is. 

Delia King: [00:03:53] So reverse glass painting is actually a traditional art form from China. And it's very old. You also find it in the United States as a women's craft around the, actually about a hundred years ago. It was popular in the 1920s. And actually it was popular in the 1920s in Midwest areas as a women's craft. So I have - actually right here, I'll show you - right there. That is from Ohio. That one. Can you see it?

Timmie Boose: [00:04:20] I can see it. Yeah. 

Delia King: [00:04:23] That is, that is a 1920s glass painting made by, uh, just a housewife from Ohio.

Well, I found it, it was in a flea market. Right? So glass painting is the ancient art of painting backwards on glass. You paint your details first and then your mid grounds and then your backgrounds, and then everything is sealed. And then you, view it actually from the back, which is now the front.

So I've got glass paintings everywhere. This is one right above my head. This one is 1916. Mass produced in China for the American market. It's done on curved glass. It's got mother Pearl in it. It's the U S Capitol. And you can kind of see what it looks like. It's got that shine. 

Timmie Boose: [00:05:09] When I was doing reverse glass painting, I would just buy like old picture frames, like from the thrift store. And then you just draw on it with like a marker, a paint marker, or Sharpie marker, and then paint backwards, which, you know, if you don't think backwards properly, you can screw it up. Like you do the highlights first and then you paint behind everything.

But then when you turn it around, it looks super cool from the front because there's already like a finish over the top. 

Delia King: [00:05:40] That's true. It's sort of like an instant varnish from the glass.  I still pretty much do it exactly the way that you just described. There was a period around - I'd say probably 2008 through around 2010 where I lost the black lines for a while. And I started to really kind of experiment with doing more heavily realistic glass paintings. They were very, very labor intensive because I would actually have to paint them onto like a forward surface in my, like a canvas  -  I actually used parachute cloth, which is a mural material, but it's like canvas - so I'd paint it like a traditional painting.

Have it all planned out first and then put the glass over it and literally copy what I had done as the painting.

Timmie Boose: [00:06:27] Oh my God. That sounds like too much work to me. 

Delia King: [00:06:31] They were beautiful. I sold one of them for $47,000. 

Timmie Boose: [00:06:36] $47,000?!

Delia King: [00:06:38] Yes. 

Timmie Boose: [00:06:41] What was it of?

Delia King: [00:06:43] It was of a cowgirl. 

Timmie Boose: [00:06:44] Oh my God. Was it big? 

Delia King: [00:06:46] Yeah, it was big. For a glass painting.  It was like five by six feet. It weighed, like a lot of pounds. It was extremely heavy and it went to Texas.  But then I, - actually wait this one right behind me too. This one here. See that one, the one with the heads.  This one does have the black lines in it and that's kind of that one is 2012. That's when I started to kind of bring the black lines back a little and look at the series I'm doing right now are about - this big? the glass paintings are that big. And I brought back the black marker for those. 

Timmie Boose: [00:07:40] That was about what - one inch by one inch?

Delia King: [00:07:42] Yeah, one by, maybe an inch and a half. I've done them even smaller. I've done them that are a half an inch by half an inch square too.

Timmie Boose: [00:07:53] Oh my God. 

Delia King: [00:07:54] Yeah. I got for a while, like really into super, almost when I, when I was a muralist and doing like 9,000 square foot murals, it was like, I had to have this outlet where I did things so tiny. So my glass paintings got like super small. And I thought they were romantic too. Something romantic about little work. 

Timmie Boose: [00:08:18] Almost like a jewel. 

Delia King: [00:08:21] They looked that way. And my, my, um, you know, Robert -  who I'll introduce him as a character into this in a minute, but he used the, um, silicone sealant. You remember he used that on the glass?

Timmie Boose: [00:08:36] Uh no - I don't remember that. I never used that, but. I don't remember.

Delia King: [00:08:42] I don't think it's good for you. I think it's bad for you. I use that though in a different way than he does, and I sandwich two pieces of glass together and I actually had one lying around, but I think I might've actually thrown it away in a weird fit of something...

And I sandwiched together and they do look like jewels. It was a little teeny tiny one I found. So, um, yeah, they really did look like jewels and they could be added to other paintings or jewelry or just something to keep in your pocket. You know, something, 

Timmie Boose: [00:09:18] I thinkmay make some more reverse glass paintings. I haven't done one for a long time. And lately I'm like, I don't know what to do with art. I can't decide what to do art of or what mediums to use. So I just really, haven't been doing much. I'll just, I'll mess around once in a while, but I haven't really, this whole year, come out with much art. 

Delia King: [00:09:38] What about  your Ghost Cats?

Timmie Boose: [00:09:41] Uh, I haven't really done anything with them this year. I know. And it's almost October, I should do something with Ghost Cat, but I don't know what to do with him right now, but, um...Why don't we talk about, since we keep bringing Robert Ritchie up-  He was kind of like a mentor of ours, I guess you would say. Um, and he was what, like a super drunk punk rock guy. 

Delia King: [00:10:11] Yes. Super drunk is an understatement wouldn't you say - right? He's the drunkest person I've ever met in my life. 

Timmie Boose: [00:10:18] Yeah, me too. But he was great. He was always doing art and he taught us all kinds of art and he was just pretty fascinating, but - he always needed a babysitter.

I just remember when I would go out with him sometimes I would always make sure that someone else was there to babysit him. He always got  out of hand. Cause he got drunk so fast and ...

Delia King: [00:10:48] Cause he was always drunk. 

Timmie Boose: [00:10:50] Yes. And one time went with him somewhere by myself and I totally regretted it. So I was always like, "let's get someone else to come" and you know, he always had Dr. Treece driving him around and sometimes...

Delia King: [00:11:08] and she tolerated it. 

Timmie Boose: [00:11:10] You did, sometimes other people did, but yeah, he could become intolerable fast, but you also didn't want to abandon him and leave him places. 

Delia King: [00:11:19] Well, he could die! You were always convinced that he would, but he always managed to find his way back or he'd get arrested. That was the other thing. If you left in somewhere, he'd get like a free couple of nights down downtown at the jail, and then he'd come out like really shaky. He was, um, he was definitely an interesting character. Um, I would say for sure, hands down - the biggest artistic influence in my life. You know, I think when I met him,  I was 22.

I knew that I wanted to make art , I was looking for a mentor. I didn't want to go to art school. I had dropped out of philosophy college in Santa Fe and I was looking for, I want to be an artist, but I was really enthralled with this notion of avant garde and - Oh, you know, fuck the establishment and I'm going to go and, and like meet some genius on the street and he's going to just teach me, I don't know why I thought it was he, but it was the nineties, you know, and also I'm a girl, but, um, he's going to teach me everything and it turned out that is exactly, you know, you manifest things, right?

And the first time I met Robert, everyone - I was going around Cleveland when I first got there in '96, saying to people that this is what I wanted. And everyone kept saying, "You want Robert Dickhead Ritchie." That's how they would say it to me. And I was like, this doesn't sound very good. And in my head, I had this notion of like a college professor with, uh, like gray silvering hair. And for some reason I felt like he had a gray silvering full beard and that, yeah, he was the guy at the bar who would be obnoxious when he got drunk, but I didn't at all expect Robert. When I, when I actually met him, I was like, this is not the picture I had in my head. Robert - how would you describe - he had like all the piercings through all of his ears and nose.

Timmie Boose: [00:13:19] He had spider webs tattooed between his fingers. 

Delia King: [00:13:23] He did that in Philadelphia when he visited me and he tattooed my name to his arm, with an arrow with blood coming through - in Philadelphia. He did that in 2000. Yeah. I remember when he was here, I couldn't take him anywhere. We went to this restaurant down -  like a bar restaurant down on South street called Copa Bananas. And he kept getting drink after drink. And he got this big, you know, like a margarita glass and he finished the drink. He put the drink down and then he leaned over like the glass and he puked in it and he filled it up perfectly with puke. And then he leaned back and he was like, "I feel better." Well, we got kicked out obviously - I was, I was wanting to, I've never seen anything quite that disgusting. I was, and I had seen everything I thought from Robert at that point, but he was definitely a character, but he, um,  his drive to make art was as strong as his drive to drink. I would say that. 

Timmie Boose: [00:14:30] Yeah. And sometimes I think like, just like being an artist all these years and then, and like, sometimes I'll be like, well, I don't have enough space to make art, or I don't have enough supplies, but I have got plenty of stuff. Robert would sit in his crappy little bedroom and sit on his twin bed and get all kinds of art done. Just sitting in his bed all night. You know,

Delia King: [00:14:55] Chain smoking...

Timmie Boose: [00:14:57] Spitting. 

Delia King: [00:14:57] Surrounded by trash 

Timmie Boose: [00:14:58] He would spit on the side of his bed...

Delia King: [00:15:00] He peed his bed too  - oh God. Yeah. I remember that. Yeah. He'd spit on the wall. He pissed his bed as well. It was so awful. Yeah, you're right. As you know,

Timmie Boose: [00:15:11] Inspiration comes from all kinds.

Delia King: [00:15:14] Im too much of a princess to like my bed. I can't, but you're a hundred percent. Right. I have a feeling like if he was under a bridge he'd make art, you know, 

Timmie Boose: [00:15:27] Oh, definitely. He was like a survivor, like a cockroach survivor or something. 

Delia King: [00:15:34] Yeah, he was, he was also protected by people because he was so brilliant and he was valued despite the fact that he was a pain...

Timmie Boose: [00:15:42] And people would get really mad at him I remember, because he would have his art hanging in an art gallery and then he would sell the art behind the galleries back. Which is a big, no, no. In the art world. 

Delia King: [00:15:59] Yeah. He'd also usually sell it to several people too. And he would usually have a patron who would buy the art before it was made. That would not be the person he would sell it to at the gallery. And then he would have taken money for the painting from him, other people. He was definitely, um, yeah - I will say that picking up like art tips about the art world from Robert was both good and bad. Cause - one - you learn how to survive as an artist from Robert, like you know how to make a sale, um, the hard way, the hard sell, you know, you really kind of shove it down people's throats.

You know how to get a show. Cause you just, you just, you know, Robert would just ball barrel into a place and get a show. So you learn how to do that too. But it's his approach that doesn't really translate outside of Robert or possibly Cleveland because Cleveland was very avantgarde. I don't know if it still is, but in the nineties it was heavy on the avant garde.

Timmie Boose: [00:17:01] Well also he was young in Cleveland, and then he also got older there. So I think people knew him for a long time. So they knew his, he was notorious, you know what I mean? 

Delia King: [00:17:14] True, true. So maybe they are willing to put up with him a little bit more. I think taking his tactics - I wonder if the tax tactics would work at a place like New York where at like kind of everything goes - I'm not saying like the constant drunkenness cause you need to survive, but, um,  - it definitely doesn't work here in Philly. Philly is I think more interested in MFA than they are the avant garde. I don't think Philly has any clue of what  avant garde is when it comes to the art world at all. Like it's. It doesn't mean it doesn't have good art. It doesn't mean it doesn't have challenging art, but, um, it's all very like grown in, you know, like university of Pennsylvania art school and stuff.

So that kind of bravado that you and I came up with in Cleveland in the nineties just doesn't exist here. Never has.  But it doesn't matter like the type of education that I got from Robert, I think still gives you that. I can do it regardless. You were absolutely right. Like you think you don't have enough, you just think about what he did with what he had, which was like three tubes of paint, one paint brush, dirty, dirty glass. And the most disgusting bed you've ever seen. 

Timmie Boose: [00:18:35] And then he'd  invite people over to like, you'd sit in like a chair next to his bed and he'd have the TV going and all kinds of people would go over there and visit him and just talk to him while he did art - he wasn't embarrassed of his crappy bedroom. It didn't stop him from inviting people over - that's for sure. 

Delia King: [00:18:59] No, he wasn't really embarrassed about much. I think in his dark hours, he was.  Like the pain of being Robert and being poor, being an alcoholic and drug addict. And he was unhealthy. So I think in his darker moments that would, and he would cry um -  the worst cry I've ever seen a man cry, but I, I think that outside of those moments, he had absolute confidence in himself, at least as an artist.

which - when I taught art, you know, for years I taught art in amongst pretty much every population Philadelphia has to offer. I've done kids, senior citizens, inmates - I've taught in Catholic schools, parochial schools, public schools, charter schools, um, summer camps. I mean, anything - you name any age group, I've taught it here and elsewhere. I've done. Um,  other places. And I always would tell my students, they would say, "Oh, I can't draw. " Or "I'm no good at art." And I say, you know, "just forget all that. Because at the end of the day, the thing that makes you an artist and the thing that makes what you produced, great art is your self confidence in what you make."

If you draw a bunch of lines and squiggled marks on a piece of paper and you're like, "this is fabulous. I love it." And you really believe it. You're not like Donald Trump and frontin' or something. You really believe it from your soul. Then other people are going to believe it too. And that's what, you know, you would see in a person like Robert, he never, ever faltered.

He never had his dark moments about his art. He had his dark moments about his personality. Um, and his, his problems. So that's something I've - in my dark moments-  had to remind myself of, you know, um, that there are these times in life, when you do have to rely on the fact that, you know, maybe everything is going wrong, but that you can create.

Timmie Boose: [00:21:02] Right. That makes sense. 

Delia King: [00:21:05] And people will want to see it and they'll want to listen and they, you know, hopefully, you know, I've always been lucky in that way.  I don't know if it's just the glass painting or if it is actually the content, I've always had to wonder about that because the glass painting is so unusual.

Timmie Boose: [00:21:21] So what is your content? What do you consider your subject matter to be? 

Delia King: [00:21:26] Glass painting? A lot of my glass paintings - very different from my mural paintings, glass paintings tended to be figure paintings. Figurative works. I have always been more interested in like women's kind of issues. So some things that come to mind - like this one behind me, of the heads, you see  it's there because the flood,  we're attempting to rescue it still.

It got caught in the flood. So it's, it's in my room against the wall. But this one is. It's very much about kind of, um, transgression and - it's really about violence. 

Timmie Boose: [00:22:08] I'll post it a picture of it in the show notes. if I can - I think I can.

Delia King: [00:22:12] And then I did another one, yeah, that same year for Urban Outfitters and that one was about materialism and how women can be ...that one well, I lost that in the flood. I showed that a lot and was really hoping to be able to show it. I'm not gonna think about it. I'm not gonna think about it - I'll cry. 

All right. 

Timmie Boose: [00:22:31] So let's talk about that right now... 

Delia King: [00:22:32] the painting itself, let me finish describing the painting -  the painting itself was beautiful. It was all gold. It was huge. It was, it was 11 feet by four feet and it was all cut out. Beautiful, very expensive to produce. And it was a glass woman and she was surrounded by this, like, This wash of materialism, like ribbons  and everything in her life was ribbons and bows, but she was engulfed and lost in it. And I felt that was like, that was a statement on materialism and how it's sold to women and our value and our worth is like how we cloth ourselves, the things that we own and buy or bought for us.

So a lot of my work is that then there's also the pornography.

Timmie Boose: [00:23:20] Okay. So I want to say, cause you keep mentioning the flood and you know, this is a podcast, so people don't know about the flood. So recently, very recently you lost everything in a natural disaster, right? The place you live got flooded.  What happened?

Delia King: [00:23:43] Hurricane - is it I.... It's it's like, of course the hurricane that would take me out is one I can't pronounce it's either Isaiahs or it's I, I keep hearing it pronounced a different way. Like something I've never heard before. Like I.... anyways, 

Timmie Boose: [00:23:57] Isaiah - I forget what it was....

Delia King: [00:24:03] Around here in Southwest Philadelphia, they say Hurricane Isaias. And  I've never seen anything like that in my life. So within 15 minutes, I live in historic the house in that, down by the airport in Philadelphia. And I'm literally the last house on the border of the County of Philadelphia going into Delaware County. And it's the border is marked by Cobbs Creek, which is little tiny dinky Creek.

I'm right next to my house. And I'm a caretaker for the Fairmount park Conservancy and the city of Philadelphia parks and recreation. So I take care of the park and I take care of this house. And this house was built in -well to debate  - 1766 is what it says on the building. Um, so within 15 minutes there was a flash flood that took out my house, my car. SIx feet of water on the first floor  - basement submerged for at least two days. 

Timmie Boose: [00:25:03] That's crazy. The entire basement was full of water ?

Delia King: [00:25:07] All the way through to the first floor for six feet, six feet on the first floor for at least the first floor was at least a day and a half.

The entire basement was under water for at least three days. And then it was at half for eight days. And then it was at two feet for about 10 days or, or two weeks. Wow. Talk about destroyed. I mean, it was just mud and I was between studios. I was moving out of a studio that I had in Darby, which was a visual art studio and the sound studio .

And I was looking at for my new studio. So I had all my stuff in the basement and on the first floor. And it all went in the dumpster. 

Timmie Boose: [00:25:51] Crazy. And it happened in like 15 minutes,

Delia King: [00:25:55] 15 minutes. I looked out the window and I saw my car was going down. I was, that was mind blowing to me. We're kind of high up right where my car was.

Um, Yeah, then they had to rescue me and my son out the second story window, because we couldn't get out - the water rose so fast - it was coming through the walls, the windows, the doors, um, it was scary. It was scary. Yeah they had to come get us.  And then it's been over a month, I think now, cause that happened on the fourth and today is what the...

Timmie Boose: [00:26:30] Today's the 14th of September. 

Delia King: [00:26:32] So they're supposed to come tomorrow and put the kitchen because they had to tear the kitchen out. So they're supposed to put the kitchen back in. 

Timmie Boose: [00:26:39] So you stayed at a hotel for a while, and now you were able to move back into the house.

Delia King: [00:26:44] I was at a hotel for a month. I hopped around hotels and I had my cat with me. so I did these crummy hotels. And then, when my money ran out, I just sort of moved back in the house cuz they had all the mud and stuff out and it needed more cleaning and I didn't want it to be like, I didn't want to move in and then have to start when they finished, you know, the kitchen.

So when they come put the kitchen in tomorrow, I'll be in a good, it'll be pretty much done, you know? Cause the cleaning's all done

Timmie Boose: [00:27:16] Is the basement back together?

Delia King: [00:27:18] The basement. I'm never putting anything  in there again, except for a few tools to maintain the park. But, um, Yeah. There's like this crazy carpet that's rolled up that someone threw on my stairs that the basement stairs are on the outside. I'm waiting for the city to come because I don't know if anything is in that carpet. There's been dead people in my park before. I'm a little scared that - it doesn't smell like a dead person though. This neighborhood is known for its problems - let me put it that way. That's why they have a caretaker here. 

Timmie Boose: [00:27:54] Wow. Now you have a studio. That's away from your home...

Delia King: [00:28:00] which is great. I was toying with the idea since I had nothing in the first floor room, which is just like one big room -  to make that my studio. But then I was like, you know, I really need to be able to get out of my house. Then I have my cat and my son, and I want a kitchen table again, you know, I want a dining room table and a couch. I want to be normal. And I'd been searching for sound studio that'd be both - kind of like what I, I had in Darby. And I luckily just found one at a building in Philadelphia, which is pretty well known. It's called Crane Arts and it's not like anybody can just go, like you have to  apply. And then they, and it's not like a regular application where they're looking at your credit score and stuff. They're looking at your art and if they like your art and they think you'll, you know, bring some, some, you know, Goodness to, you know, some sort of panache or something to the building - they invite  you.

And so, I was really happy cause I just hadn't found the right spot. I kept getting weird feelings about spots, so I decided to go take it. And it's beautiful. It's on the third floor and I have this gorgeous view of downtown Philadelphia and I see the skyline and it's super clean. And it's got so much light, which is something I, my studios, I haven't had a studio with light in it for a long time.

 the one in Darby did, but I wasn't there very long and it's just, I'm, I'm very excited about it. It feels like normalicy is around the corner. 

Timmie Boose: [00:29:33] Good. So it didn't take you long to kind of get back on your feet again. I know you're probably not all the way there, but what kind of advice would you have for other people who have like a big setback like that?  It can be like pretty overwhelming to deal with, I would imagine.

Delia King: [00:29:52] I am overwhelmed. I'm not going to lie. Um, but you know, I, and I lost everything. But there are like ways to approach losing everything. It's sort of like you bring everything to a baseline again. And, um, and you know how it is as an artist, you just end up with all this, like with this like leftovers from like other projects and you end up with like glitter here and rhinestones here, bits of glass, and then... sometimes that could be too much! Where you're  just like, I have so much stuff - I don't know what to do or you're like, gosh, I really should be using pink glitter  because I have a ton of pink clutter, but I really need silver glitter for this project. And now I have nothing. So I just decided on a project and got the materials just for that project and just enough for that project and I'll use it all up. And that's kind of the way that I've approached it for now. 

Timmie Boose: [00:30:52] That's great.  So what is the project that you're going to do? 

Delia King: [00:30:56] My first project is due on the 26th. I do a lot of work in the rap community here and there is a magazine called double XL. It's like a rapper magazine. I don't know if it's just the name of the concert or it's like also semi-sponsored by the magazine, but it's the Double XL Freshman Philly Concert. anyway. They have vendors at these things and I signed up to be a vendor. This is another - you're talking about like starting over.

That's where Robert started me. Like, this is how you get shows. This is how you get your name out. You sign up for things that other people wouldn't necessarily think to sign up - like being a vendor at a rap venue. Things like that. So it's like, you know, when you have to start all over from scratch, which I am -  in many, many levels, that's - you need someplace to go and show your things.

So. The project itself -I had made a reference to it. I have decided to do one last line of porno paintings that I also learned from Robert.  I used to make this line called Pornaments and I don't make those anymore. Um, since my divorce ...and I've always wanted to make a line called sex magnets, and then, you know, Floyd Longworth from The Floyd Band?

Yes. He makes those magnets right? The ones of rock stars and stuff. And when I went to visit him in Cleveland last year, he inspired me and I was like, you know, I had that idea about it doing sex magnets, I should do them again. So they're like this big. 

Timmie Boose: [00:32:39] Say how big - this is a podcast. 

Delia King: [00:32:41] They're like one by one and a half inch. If that -they're really small and then it just will have a small magnet on the back. It's two pieces of glass sandwiched around a glitter in silicone sealant mixture with a very tiny drawing that I trace out of a hustler magazine. Um, of, you know, some naughty bits, um, in the black marker. And then I just fill it in with some just flat acrylic paint.

And those two pieces of glass get sandwiched around the painting with the silicone sealant mixture. And then you stick, you know, so they're, they will be pretty. And I was going to sell them for really cheap, like 10 bucks each. 

Timmie Boose: [00:33:28] So are they reverse glass painting? 

Delia King: [00:33:30] They are, yeah, they're little tiny reverse glass paintings.

Timmie Boose: [00:33:35] So you're going to make a whole bunch of them to sell at this event. 

Delia King: [00:33:38] That's my first project.

Timmie Boose: [00:33:40] And is the event, is it like a one day event or a weekend event? 

Delia King: [00:33:45] It's a one day event. And whatever I don't sell it at that I'll just keep for the next. These are pretty much just made for the rap community. That's my audience for this group. 

Timmie Boose: [00:33:57] Okay.  I get it. 

Delia King: [00:33:59] And then I have another project that I was going to take to Miami right after the shutdown happened. So being as the shutdown happened and Miami just went COVID crazy. I did have to cancel it, Those are not glass paintings. They're like portable murals. So I will also put those up in the studio and redo them because I haven't given up on going back to Miami and put those up. And those are a little different. 

Timmie Boose: [00:34:35] So you were going to put them up where ?

Delia King: [00:34:37] I was going to go down to Wynwood Walls. And, and put them up around there.

Now those are not glass paintings. 

Timmie Boose: [00:34:44] Just put them up, out on the street do you mean? 

Delia King: [00:34:46] Yeah, like on walls - you can glue them up like a pasteup done with this cloth that I mentioned before, parachute cloth, which is like a non woven canvas. 

Timmie Boose: [00:34:56] So you paint on the parachute cloth and then you cut them to size or whatever. They're not on a frame or anything?

Delia King: [00:35:03] No - it's sorta like hand painted  wallpaper. A non-woven polyester pressed. It's like,  polyester paper kind of, it's very durable and it takes paint beautifully. And it's actually what all the murals in Philadelphia are made of. So that will be the second project I do in the studio , so it's a small place to start - both of these.

Cause the Miami series I started before the pandemic hit. Um, and it's very different. It's not porno or anything. I'm not trying to get arrested. Those are Philadelphia sayings and I thought it would be cool to like write Philadelphia sayings on a background, like abstract background and then put them up in Miami, you know?

So I thought that would be fun. 

Timmie Boose: [00:35:54] What are some Philadelphia sayings? 

Delia King: [00:35:56] So one of  the paintings says Real Rap - means like real talk. Like you, you know, you speak the truth kind of thing. Another one says That John Drawn. Uh, that means, um, whatever it is that the John is, which is a person place or thing, is drawn, which means it's completely nuts and bat-shit crazy. The draw that, that, it's not that it's Dat John Drawn so that John drawn. 

Timmie Boose: [00:36:24] So is that like, they're like sayings from the rap community?

Delia King: [00:36:29] I would say my neighborhood, I live in a black community. So what people say around where I live. There's a couple others. I can't remember them off the top of my head. Those two really are up there though. 

Timmie Boose: [00:36:42] So it's kind of a language dialect and then you're moving it to a new location. 

Delia King: [00:36:48] Yeah I think because when I had been going down to Miami and Broward County, this last year, I just love the way people talk down there. Typically like the Haitian Americans, they say like "that part" and I don't know, they just have some cute sayings and that's why I was like we have kind of the equivalent in Philadelphia, but it's totally different. Wouldn't that be interesting to bring like the Philly version and put it on the walls up there and, you know, maybe I would do it like the opposite, like take some Miami sayings and put them on the walls up here, you know, but I would need to collaborate with someone down there, which, um, I need to go to 

Timmie Boose: [00:37:27] to know what they are, exactly. 

Delia King: [00:37:28] Yeah. Like like I  know about that part, but I don't know about the other ones, you know, I hear them. 

Timmie Boose: [00:37:34] So when you put these up on the walls, on the streets, do you just do it with like wheat paste or something? 

Delia King: [00:37:41] You can, you can use wheat paste. When I went down to Miami last time and what we do in Philadelphia with the murals here - is we use a thick, clear acrylic gel, and you can get it from Utrecht. When I went down to Miami last time - I drove to Fort Lauderdale and I bought two gallons of Utrecht High Gloss Heavy Body Gel. And that's what I used as my glue to put up the piece in in Pompano beach. And in Philadelphia, we pretty much use the same thing, but it's made by Golden Paints.

And before that we used - I want to say deco color, but that's the name of the paint, the pens. Nova Color! And they kind of invented this technique cause they had Nova Gel - like big five gallon buckets and you get like 10 of those and then you put up these massive murals using that...

Timmie Boose: [00:38:44] Nova Paint was in LA when I was there.

Delia King: [00:38:48] Are they still in LA? Yeah. That's yeah. 

Timmie Boose: [00:38:50] Yeah, yeah. And I remember other artists telling me like, that's where to get the paint Nova Color. And I, I never did. I still haven't tried their paint!

Delia King: [00:39:00] Golden has really kind of taken their spot because Nova Color had problems with fading with white, yellow, and red. White would just sort of fade into nothing, the yellow - yellow though - anything, anything yellow is just not going to last, which is a shame because I love designing in yellow. 

Timmie Boose: [00:39:21] I did not know that. 

Delia King: [00:39:22] Yeah. Blue blue is good. Blue doesn't fade very well. 

Timmie Boose: [00:39:26] Do you just mean outside or indoors too? 

Delia King: [00:39:29] Well, anything that gets light. You know, anything with light and that's not protected somehow -  it's going to fade if it's yellow, the Golden Acrylic Mural paints -the yellow is really good. So that's why they kind of took over the Nova Color spot because I think they went after it. They paired with the mural arts program here in Philadelphia with our artists. And actually I had something to do with the way that they ended up  -Golden Paint - started formulating their High Body Gel - because their first version didn't dry.  It just stayed wet under the thing. So that was my input. They didn't realize that happened and they went and redid it and they made it better. But yeah, they were answering the call for non-fade. But it's sort of the same texture. It's the same body. It really is the same pigmentation. It's still very great quality - both paints.  I think the prices are the same too. It's just depends on what your preference is, you know.

Timmie Boose: [00:40:37] So when you go to Miami - and tell me if it's just too much information - and hang up things on the streets on just the sides of buildings - do you get permission or are you just going wherever or you look for an empty building or should I not ask you these questions? 

Delia King: [00:40:56] Well, I actually did get permission when I went to Pompano.  I got permission from the community and I knew kind of like the head gangster there. So there was this one guy, his name was OG Bling. And the cops from Pompano beach, like Broward County Sheriff's Department showed up - and then Pompano Beach officials showed up and they're like, you can't put that there and stuff. So OG Bling - he, uh, he just went up. Five minute talk  - came back. He's like, it's all good. 

Timmie Boose: [00:41:30] Oh, wow. 

Delia King: [00:41:31] Like what did you - you greased some palms! But that's still there. But yeah, I had permission from the business owners and I had gone down in September and I had met all these people. And then I had the inspiration, which is why I went down in December, because then you were like, you know, that's what we were going to the art fair. And, um, I called them. Cause I kept their information. I kept talking to them after I left in September and  I had this inspiration. I said, would this be cool? Now when I go to Miami with the Philadelphia sayings, I'm not really sure how I'm going to do it, but my sort of plan was - before the pandemic -because I've been making all these relationships with music studios down there and I was going to connect for locations through them.

Timmie Boose: [00:42:20] I see. 

Delia King: [00:42:21] Yeah. I don't like to do graffiti. To me graffiti is an unpermissioned public artwork

But 

Timmie Boose: [00:42:29] What about like a Banksy or something,  originally, I don't think he got permission - Nowadays he probably does. 

Delia King: [00:42:39] I mean, he's elusive and that's his brand, you know? 

Timmie Boose: [00:42:42] Right.

Delia King: [00:42:43] I think at one point he had to keep his whole - I think his identity is still secret. Isn't it? Cause they're going to go get him. 

Timmie Boose: [00:42:51] They have said who they think he is, I've seen that before, but there have been rumors that it's a guy from the band Massive Attack, but then they were saying, there's this guy - I've seen it where they put his name up - they think that's really him but.... 

Delia King: [00:43:06] I don't think they really know, He has an agent,  he's making money, but - that's his brand and there are graffiti artists who  - that's their - was it Shepard, Fairey? I did a job for Shepard Fairey once. 

Timmie Boose: [00:43:22] Oh, wow. I love Shepherd Fairey. 

Delia King: [00:43:25] He's gone into like the legit world, but he started by just climbing up the scale of a building and putting it up there and he's got diabetes, he's got the drip in his arm. It's like, wow, this guy is bad ass, you know? 

Timmie Boose: [00:43:37] Oh really? I didn't know that.

Delia King: [00:43:38] Yeah he climbs those buildings with like a drip in his arm. Not probably so much anymore because now he hires people like me to go do it for him and it's all permissioned and tons of funding and he gets lots of money for it. But I am a 47 year old woman with a kid and I have a whole history of public artworks with permission.

So. I'm not trying to get arrested or fined. I'm not trying to go to jail. I'm not trying to go to jail in Florida. That's for sure. 

Timmie Boose: [00:44:11] Yeah right - It's like a third world country over here in Florida. 

Delia King: [00:44:18] And it's fun to meet people and get permission. You meet so many cool people 

Timmie Boose: [00:44:23] Like, who do you contact? Do you just find a building and you contact, whoever owns the building?

Delia King: [00:44:30] I would start with people. Like, so I did a project after Hurricane Sandy that like decimated the Jersey Shore. Right? And I'm from New Jersey and I'm from the shore. So I wanted to do a mural project that connected groups of people that had lost their home in floods. So the irony, you know... This was in 2013. So what I would do is I would go to these small city governments on these small beach towns, just walk in city hall and introduce myself and say, this is what I want to do. Where do I put it? And then they would hook me up with like business organizations or I would cold call business organizations. I had a meeting with the mayor of Atlantic city at the time. Unfortunately, that's when things in my life with my marriage were going downhill. That was the end of the project. That was like the end. I didn't really get Atlantic City, but that's the type of stuff I would do.

I would just kind of cold call people and school districts, um, and just tell them what I wanted to do and how I wanted to do it and where I was going to get the money. And then they would hook me up with walls. And the thing with Miami, it's sort of the same thing - that's to me, the fun of it. It's like, let me go out and make these connections and see where people want this to be - because it's not my community.

You know, I might have a connection or a love for it, which is why I want to do it. But I don't live there. Right? So I want to ask the people who live there, where they want this artwork, because I know they want it. 

Timmie Boose: [00:46:04] So then when you do a mural - now, a lot of people project it on the wall and they get scaffolding and all that. You make it first, right? And then you stick it up after it's already made.

Delia King: [00:46:18] That's right.  I do use projectors, but I lost my projector in the flood. It was the one thing that was filled with water that I tried to save. It was a loss. So I think because a projector costs money. I got parachute cloth, which I also lost  - it's $500 for a role of parachute cloth. I lost that in the flood too - I invested that money and got a fresh beautiful roll. And I was thinking about actually doing some real drawing

Timmie Boose: [00:46:48] What do you consider real drawing?

Delia King: [00:46:53] I am not a snob, I believe that tracing and all that stuff is real drawing, but I actually kind of want to make some artwork where it's not preplanned and I can like prime the parachute cloth, pin it on my wall in the studio and see what comes out of me directly on the parachute cloth.

Cause one thing I'll say about mural painting is it's all very pre-planned. Have to be...they're massive. But I I'm a free agent and I can do whatever I want. And I have this, this technical deficit right now. So why not try to ignite? I don't think I have used that side of my brain either - in years. So that's what I was going to try, but I have also projected directly onto walls. I have done grid method on walls. I 've pounced, you know, where they make - like the DaVinci method. We make the little holes in paper and then use the charcoal paper. And you pounce on top of the paper on the wall.

And you peel it off and you have like these - that is a pain in the ass. I did that once. Never again. It's really good if you're doing frescoes, it's not really necessary - in fact using acrylic paint with that technique is a pain because then the charcoal - like particularly if  you're using white paint - you can imagine what a mess - but the project on parachute cloth method is fast and it's easy and it's time efficient - it's good. 

Timmie Boose: [00:48:23] So you do it in the studio, you project onto the parachute cloth, you attach it to the wall, project what you're going to put on there and then paint it and then you roll it up. And then wherever the location where you're putting the mural, then you stick it up with the stuff you were talking about - the gel, the acrylic gel,

Delia King: [00:48:47] or wheat paste. You can use wheat paste too. The only thing with wheat paste is that it breaks down. It degrades. 

Timmie Boose: [00:48:53] What is wheat paste? I don't even know what it is exactly. I've just heard that's what people always use.

Delia King: [00:48:58] That's really good if you're using like paper, particularly  -like you're doing a paper paste-up or something. You can make it  - it's made of like flour and water and Elmers glue. Which is why it breaks down real easy. It's essentially organic. Another thing you can use is wallpaper paste from Lowe's or Home Depot. And that has more of a - it's kind of rubbery. It's not a rubber base, I guess it's latex and it's not clear. So you have to be very clean. Whereas the gel is clear, you can be sloppy with it.

Timmie Boose: [00:49:36] The gel, do you put it on the top too - to seal it? 

Delia King: [00:49:41] I used to - when I was learning how to do this - and I don't anymore, because the problem is that  it traps moisture and it can be remoisturized  - not that it undries, but moisture gets in it, it gets cloudy. But it'll clear up the minute it's warm again and dry, it'll clear up. So when you're putting it up, you want to wash it off the top. But if you just have a small, thin film of the gel on top of your mural, that will never get cloudy.

It's where you get like, you know, kind of big, giant, sloppy brush strokes and that's why it's ideal to something like wallpaper paste. Cause the wallpaper paste is kind of yellow or white and you have to wash it, but you're always going to have that remanent of whatever the actual adhesive pigment is, you know, whereas the gel is clear.

Timmie Boose: [00:50:39] Interesting. I've never done a mural. Well,  I did one on the side of somebody's garage in Cleveland - on the side of Mark Ireland's garage. But I remember it was some drawing I did over and over and  it was easy just to paint it on the wall, but I've never done a proper mural, you know. It sounds so scary.

Delia King: [00:51:01] I should send you some  parachute cloth you know and you can experiment with it  - do a small little five by five, or to put it in a tube I'd probably have to put it in five by three. You just do like a little five by three mural and experiment with it. I'll send you one. I have enough parachute cloth now.

Timmie Boose: [00:51:20] I would love to try something like that. And I've got blank walls here in my apartment. I'm always like, "I hate these beige walls." Like I need to put something on them. 

Delia King: [00:51:30] Yeah. Beige is kind of a deadly color. 

Timmie Boose: [00:51:33] Oh yeah. My whole apartment is beige, but it's like so much work to paint it that I'm like, eh, I don't know. I might not even live here that long, you know?

Delia King: [00:51:41] You rent? 

Timmie Boose: [00:51:43] yeah I rent. 

Delia King: [00:51:45] Yeah I  wouldn't bother.

Timmie Boose: [00:51:46] I painted the bathroom. I painted my bathroom purple. It's small. I can manage that, you know?  And if I have to paint over it, I could, you know, or I could just leave it and I won't lose too much of my deposit, but the actual rest of the walls, it's a big job, you know - I don't think I'm going to

Delia King: [00:52:12] I never feel like rentals are worth it. 

Timmie Boose: [00:52:15] Yeah. And I don't think I'm going to stay here much longer to be honest with you. So we talked about what you're working on now...When is the event that you're selling the magnets? 

Delia King: [00:52:29] It's on the 26th, on a Saturday. I'm a little nervous because of the COVID thing. It'll be my first indoor event. I'm also selling masks N95 filters and eye guards, which I will be wearing and gloves at the event too. But I'm a little nervous. I don't want to get COVID right now, but usually the vendors are kind of off to the side, so ...

Timmie Boose: [00:52:55] right. Are there like performers and stuff that are going to be there?

Delia King: [00:52:59] Yeah It's a concert.  I don't know if I've been to this venue or not, but yeah,  so there'll be a bunch of young rappers there. And the XX Freshmen Series is a contest that a magazine does and it all caught kind of comes together at the end where they do a national one. And people end up being massive stars out of this, like 21 Savage was it was a XXL freshmen, Kodak black was a XXL freshmen  - Lil UziVert, who is from Philadelphia, was one. So it's respected. So that's, what's going to be going on at the front and then I'll be in the back, you know? 

Timmie Boose: [00:53:49] Awesome. I'm glad that you joined me today. Thank you. On Adulting for Artists. 

I learned some stuff about the mural stuff 

Delia King: [00:54:03] Pick up a pen and do some glass paintings, girl.

Timmie Boose: [00:54:08] I know I need to do that. I need to get some glass. That's what I don't have is the glass 

Go 

Delia King: [00:54:14] get some frames. 

Timmie Boose: [00:54:16] Yeah. There's a thrift store right across the street. Yeah. Alright, Delia, it's great to talk to you. Oh, where can we check out your work? You did send me a link. I can put it in the show notes. 

Delia King: [00:54:29] That's my old website, but that's what I'm using until I'm refreshed with everything. Adulting for artists. Everything's one small thing at a time. The webpage-  I need new content, so I'm not in any hurry. I'm just using that for now that old one. 

Timmie Boose: [00:54:44] All right. Great, good luck at as the vendor at the rapper festival. 

Thanks a lot. It was great talking to you. 

Delia King: [00:54:53] Thanks for having me on. All right. Bye. Bye. Bye.

Timmie Boose: [00:55:00] Thanks everyone for joining the conversation today on Adulting for Artists,. Delia King will be at the XXL Freshmen Philly Concert in Philadelphia, pennsylvania on Saturday, September 26th. Go check out the vendors, check out the up and coming rap artists. And don't forget to wear your mask. 

I want to extend a thank you to early listeners of the podcast. If you go to adultingforartists.com and sign up for the newsletter by October 10th, I will send you an inspirational art quote, which will be art by me, your host Timmie Boose,  with a fantastic inspirational art quote that has yet to be figured out. So it's going to be a surprise guys. Thanks again for checking out the show.  Tune in next week, I try to post on Fridays. Sometimes it might be Saturdays or Sundays. Maybe I'll do it early once in a while on a Thursday. But generally Friday is the deadline I set myself up for Have a great week, everyone. Believe in yourself, Charge ahead! Join me next week. Timmie Boose - Adulting for Artists - over and out.