Interviewer: Why don't we just start there to get that, so you can kind of see, and then we can come sit some?

Speaker 1: Well, I was going to let you talk and just kind of go.

Interviewer: Okay. Do our normal?

Speaker 1: Is that okay with you if I just go out in the garage here?

Interviewer: What should she [crosstalk 00:00:10]?

Greg Noblin: Yeah, you can, totally. You can do what you want.

Interviewer: Do you know, on your site, I think it was under paneled installations ... I don't know how often you go ... but there was some of the raw wood and stuff like that? Those are the types of pictures she gets. Is there anything she shouldn't take a picture of?

Greg Noblin: Mm-mm (negative).

Interviewer: You'll see it, anyway, what we use.

Greg Noblin: I don't there's ... Mm-mm (negative).

Interviewer: And it's probably not coming out for at least a year. I have to write 11.

Greg Noblin: I'm doing some ... to explain what's out there, right now, so what I'll do is I'll make one panel, like the large one that you have, right?

Interviewer: Yeah.

Greg Noblin: I'll make one of those and then if someone's like, "Oh, my God, I have to have one like that," I'm like, "Okay-

Interviewer: Different size?

Greg Noblin: ... if you want it, I can't make it that same size. I can make it twice as big or maybe like half as big, or if it's rectangle, I can make it a square," or something, so each person has something that's definitively unique. [inaudible 00:01:14] I could just crank them out.

Speaker 1: Right, right.

Greg Noblin: I mean, they would be different because of the actual physical construction part of it. I can't do that exactly. I can't hand cut prints out exactly the same way. And then the most popular ones, I make small, and I'll do like a run of five and it's just in addition to five or whatever. So like from this last show, there was the owl with the moon and ...

Speaker 1: Yeah, you have those as prints on your ...

Greg Noblin: Yeah. I used to do ... I don't wanna do prints anymore. When I came out of school, that's what I wanted to do, was prints, because it was easy, it made sense, I knew how to do it, I can matte and frame and do all of that. And ...

Interviewer: Why don't artists wanna do prints? Because it's not art? I mean, because it's [crosstalk 00:02:09]-

Greg Noblin: No. For me, it's the trade off ... I would rather have an open edition. So I would do editions of nine and $400, $500 if you want it framed and matted. I could have nine and sell nine at $400 through a gallery and get half of it, or I could do an open edition and sell 3,000 of them for $50. I would much rather sell ... what I can do is, I can kind of do whatever I want. I just have hope ... And they can get licensed out. The reason I don't wanna do it, is I don't want someone to spend $400 on a print and then see that you could just buy reproductions online for 50 bucks.

Interviewer: I see. I see.

Greg Noblin: So it's like protection of the scarcity of it. I have to manage the artificial scarcity of them.

Interviewer: Yeah, and I love both of them. I got them insured. As a matter of fact, I hang them in a room. It's in the same room as the eight-foot painting, and I want it to have its own ... I don't want it to be in the same room as that, because I feel like-

Greg Noblin: So what's out there right now is, the Tappy and the Moon, and then the turtle with the squirrel in the light. The turtle and that owl came from the Atlanta Wild Animal Rescue effort. I contacted them and I said, "I'm an artist and I'd love to come photograph what you have there," whatever. They really don't allow that. And because I had a body of work, these kinds of places get requests all the time from my students and whatever. It was just another artist and it just becomes a ...

Interviewer: Stresses the animals, blah-blah-blah.

Greg Noblin: Yeah, and it's inconvenient for them because they're actually doing a job. They don't have time to like cater to someone come out there. They do have ambassador animals, and the ambassador animals are the one that they can't release back into the wild because ...

Interviewer: I'm a member of AWARE and all that.

Greg Noblin: Oh, great. That's awesome. So, they actually-

Speaker 1: [crosstalk 00:04:35]-

Greg Noblin: ... they actually let me come ... I was speaking with the director, I can't think of his name.

Interviewer: Scott.

Greg Noblin: Scott, yes. Scott Lang. And he's super awesome. They kind of bent over backwards to let me come out there. They [crosstalk 00:04:49]-

Interviewer: I think they're fantastic.

Greg Noblin: They had some volunteers come out, Ella, Elle?

Interviewer: Don't know.

Greg Noblin: No, that's not Elle. Her name is [Tamara 00:04:58].

Interviewer: It rhymes with Elga.

Greg Noblin: [Elguru 00:05:03] is the name. She came out and she walked me through all the cages of their ambassador animals and was just ... whatever. They held the owls out for me-

Interviewer: God, owls are amazing.

Greg Noblin: That was the primary reason for going there, it was because I can't get owls. I used to use a lot of toys, but I would like to be able to license some of this stuff out, and if there's a third party-

Interviewer: You can't. Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Greg Noblin: I could do it for fine art reproductions and they could do that all day, but in terms of something that's a little more promotional, can't happen. So I want to get more into using [crosstalk 00:05:49]-

Interviewer: Real animals. Did you shoot the elephants?

Greg Noblin: Yeah. One of those is a toy, and you can actually [inaudible 00:05:57].

Interviewer: Oh, is it the baby? The sitting one? Oh.

Greg Noblin: It's the same one that's in the boat.

Interviewer: Yes. I didn't even know that.

Greg Noblin: And I have the boat, if you wanna take the boat.

Interviewer: You know what happened? I bought the big one, Into the World ... I love the titles. We'll talk about that, because sometimes they don't appear on your site. It's frustrating. I wanna know what the title is. But anyway, bought the big one and then as I was sitting in the office, he had some leaning on the wall. I was like, "Oh." He was like, "Well, that is [inaudible 00:06:36]-

Greg Noblin: And that was on of the ... because the big one sold, and that was the one the ...

Interviewer: But they're different. This one has that electrical cord with the fan.

Greg Noblin: Yeah, it's not gonna go for its price.

Interviewer: No, but I was tempted to get a practical string the same size and just run it off the wall into-

Greg Noblin: You know, I [inaudible 00:06:57]. Something that I don't understand is installation art.

Interviewer: Yours has a cool ... like you could do little umbrellas in front of the ... I don't know. I think that ... because I like when they come in-

Greg Noblin: Right. It just never makes sense to me.

Interviewer: You keep doing what you're doing. Your art is amazing. I just thought of that because the cord goes off the thing and-

Greg Noblin: I have thought about [crosstalk 00:07:23]-

Interviewer: I looked on the side, like what ...

Greg Noblin: [inaudible 00:07:26] of just take just the black wire and just put it like one of those child plug strips.

Interviewer: Yes, the little plastic ... yeah.

Greg Noblin: Just a dummy one and doing that with [Delphine 00:07:41]. I don't know how installation artists make a living, like how they get paid.

Interviewer: Well, we're interviewing two, I think, and you'll meet them at the release party.

Greg Noblin: That's great. It's not that I think it's bad, I just don't get it.

Interviewer: Whereas mostly, it's like they're with the hats and the statues and the ... Larry Anderson, he has a lot of like stuff that you have to experience.

Greg Noblin: Right. I'm talking about something that's a little more abstract, like-

Speaker 1: I'll tell you [crosstalk 00:08:13], one of my favorite installations was this person, this is for their exit show, they marked off this gallery so they had a space probably about this size. They had potting soil that they had. Just filled the room with potting soil and maybe like five feet of potting soil.

Greg Noblin: Holy crap.

Speaker 1: So you open the door and you had to step into this thing.

Interviewer: That's cool.

Speaker 1: It was amazing. I mean, the smell of it and you're just walking around in this cushy little ... But, yeah, I mean, how did this [crosstalk 00:08:45]-

Greg Noblin: [crosstalk 00:08:45] because I think that's stuff's more about the experience.

Speaker 1: Definitely, yeah.

Interviewer: Dorothy O'Connor, did you go to her site?

Greg Noblin: No.

Interviewer: She's in this.

Greg Noblin: I haven't seen any of the other artists.

Interviewer: You guys are cracking me up. None of you went to-

Speaker 1: You've probably seen her stuff.

Interviewer: None of you went to ... I think one of you that we've talked to ... here she is ... has look at the other ... I sent you all the links and you're all like, "Uh-uh."

Speaker 1: I don't look at in here.

Interviewer: You guys are cracking me up.

Speaker 1: Yeah, so she does that.

Greg Noblin: Yeah, see, that's really cool [inaudible 00:09:20]. [inaudible 00:09:20] a slide show. Oh, my God.

Interviewer: Right. And you know what she said to us, when we told her that we were gonna go talk to her? She's like, "Well, it's out in the middle of ... bring bug spray." So she's somebody that-

Greg Noblin: That was installed somewhere and-

Interviewer: She did stuff on the BeltLine.

Greg Noblin: Oh, cool.

Interviewer: But you'll meet her, you will. It'll be fun.

Greg Noblin: They probably get a grant of some sort.

Interviewer: She got something for the BeltLine, like they commissioned her or something to do a thing for the BeltLine. And it was for a cause. Yeah, AWARE has an art auction. That's where we went.

Speaker 1: Yeah, we went to the art auction.

Interviewer: So I'm surprised they haven't hit you up. Oh, that's right, do you work with ... I'm surprised they haven't hit you up for work for the auction.

Greg Noblin: I've done stuff for the North Georgia Humane Society, the Children's Museum, downtown.

Interviewer: Chattahoochee Nature Center, maybe? They'd be another people that would love you.

Greg Noblin: No.

Interviewer: They have good owls.

Speaker 1: They do have.

Greg Noblin: I've had some ... The Chattahoochee ...

Interviewer: Nature Center.

Speaker 1: Chattahoochee Nature Center.

Greg Noblin: That's interesting [crosstalk 00:10:34]-

Interviewer: The big white-

Speaker 1: They have a big [inaudible 00:10:37]. They have the great [inaudible 00:10:38].

Greg Noblin: Where's that at?

Speaker 1: In Roswell, by the-

Interviewer: It's not that far. I've just done all the [crosstalk 00:10:42] there.

Speaker 1: Kind of like in between Roswell and Marietta. It's like five minutes from our house.

Interviewer: Crazy butterflies right now, too, if you're ... I mean, you have one on your horse, but they-

Greg Noblin: I went down to Callaway.

Interviewer: Did you?

Greg Noblin: And then I decided I needed to buy a lens, so I bought a lens.

Speaker 1: What lens did you buy?

Interviewer: I was gonna say, that's ... You just said ...

Greg Noblin: 150 to 600.

Speaker 1: Nice.

Greg Noblin: It's ridiculous. It's like this stupid ... I feel like, "Well, I'm good. Put me in the end zone." It's ...

Interviewer: I'm gonna plant a ... One of my favorite animals that I think is like ... so I'm just gonna plant the seed, I don't know where you'd find it ... I really ... Bats.

Greg Noblin: I have a-

Interviewer: Bats.

Greg Noblin: (whispers) Yeah, I do a bat.

Interviewer: You do?

Greg Noblin: [inaudible 00:11:20].

Interviewer: I went to a Seattle zoo and they had like the vampire bats that were wrapped, and they were like this big.

Speaker 1: You have a toy tub?

Greg Noblin: It's a IKEA like curio cabinet, where like they're all ordered [crosstalk 00:11:34]-

Speaker 1: Is that upstairs?

Greg Noblin: ... ordered, less ordered, pile, pile.

Speaker 1: Is that upstairs?

Interviewer: Do you wanna walk with them now or do you want us to ... like what do you want?

Speaker 1: I mean, do you care if I just kinda go look?

Greg Noblin: It's right at the top of the steps. You'll see it. It's clear.

Speaker 1: As long as you're okay with it. I might start outside, then.

Greg Noblin: Yeah. So I have some lined ... AWARE is gonna get two of the small ones for their thing, this-

Interviewer: That is probably what it's toward, then, because you [crosstalk 00:12:02]

Speaker 1: That's October. It was October.

Interviewer: Yeah, it was. That was fun.

Greg Noblin: I have a show for [Lennis 00:12:08] [Enneries 00:12:08] photography at The Artist. It's-

Speaker 1: I love them.

Greg Noblin: And I need to make as much stuff as I can.

Interviewer: I forgot that you ... fellow photographer ... like I forgot that. I loved ... You know what I loved?

Speaker 1: These are way different than [crosstalk 00:12:21]-

Interviewer: Your ... Right, I mean, you know, you're ... it was your side projects, and it was just the real, simple, like they were ... it looks simple, but they're not, given your construction/reconstruction. I don't know if you did anything with that, but like-

Greg Noblin: That's where the whole process developed.

Interviewer: Yeah, I loved those. It's funny, while I was looking at them, I was like, "Oh, one of the nature places would ..." It's funny, because that's what I thought when I was looking at them, beautiful, and the ... I love horses. And then my-

Greg Noblin: Me too.

Interviewer: ... in my room ... They're so peaceful and they smell good ... in my room, I have these birch logs hanging, just like free hanging because I like it like that. And I have caribou water color behind them, just because I like to feel like that. And I'm looking for a horse. I was like, "Oh."

Greg Noblin: I've contacted a lot of the boarding stables and stuff, and just go out there, and what I'll do is I'll just photograph everything that I can. So then I just set up a hidden page on my website and they can just take them and whatever-

Interviewer: That's nice.

Greg Noblin: ... whatever they want. The images that I'm taking are in a ... It's awkward when the lighting's like this and stuff, I don't like ... I need it to be completely overcast, because I need the world to be a giant salt box. Because I can fix hard shadows in Photoshop and I can get around it and whatever-

Interviewer: It's not fun. Not fun.

Greg Noblin: ... but it's just, if it's-

Speaker 1: Won't do it.

Greg Noblin: ... you can shoot it right, it makes it so much easier. And I fell in love with post work more than actual like photography stuff. I went [crosstalk 00:14:03]-

Interviewer: You just blended ... Oh, you did?

Greg Noblin: Yeah. And I wanted to do commercial portraiture and then I sat down for a Photoshop and I fell in love with Photoshop and I was like 16 hours day, terrible at it.

Speaker 1: Yeah, I love editing a lot more, I think, than actually taking pictures.

Interviewer: She takes ... like she [inaudible 00:14:19] like, "Send me, send me, send me." She's like, "They're not ready." I'm like, "Damn it."

Greg Noblin: So-

Interviewer: You got mad at me. I sent one to Kelvin and she's like, "Those are not ready." I'm like, "I'm just ... I'm gonna have to put ..." It's cute.

Greg Noblin: So what I do is, I have a little ... just a table set up with some mono lights, just white, or I can put a black on there if I'm shooting glass or whatever. And so for objects, I just photograph right there, upstairs, and for everything else, I go out. I need to get more landscapes, but-

Interviewer: Your trees was gorgeous.

Greg Noblin: Some of those trees ... which tree?

Interviewer: Trees. You had a ...

Greg Noblin: Because some aren't real.

Interviewer: Didn't matter, they looked great. It was just that they were just-

Greg Noblin: Photoshop has a tree, a tree regular.

Interviewer: But for an average person who's not ... actually, not an average person. They're beautiful. Who cares?

Greg Noblin: It is so hard to cut a tree out of Photoshop, unless it's like-

Speaker 1: Yeah, impossible [crosstalk 00:15:18]-

Interviewer: That's why I couldn't ... I think it was in your side projects. There was a whole like tree study and it was like Tree Seven, Tree Six, Tree-

Greg Noblin: Oh, yeah, yeah. Those were all from Oklahoma. My wife's family, since like the 1800s, have had a 3,000 cattle farm in Oklahoma. Her father died last year and her mom ... she had three other sisters and they all live like in Arizona and Utah-

Interviewer: Square states.

Greg Noblin: Yeah. And so, her mom ... basically, they closed up the house. They had a house built there, like all the family lives there. There's some in trailers, there's some in ... but it's not like trashy redneck or anything.

Interviewer: It's a tiny house.

Greg Noblin: Well, their house is big. It's like the big farm house on the hill and like all this land with cows everywhere.

Interviewer: No cows. Cows didn't strike you?

Greg Noblin: I have pictures of cows.

Interviewer: I just wondered because I find them kinda peaceful and kinda zen-like, too.

Greg Noblin: There's a great video somewhere of there's this accordion player or band or something, and he just sees these cows. And he just goes in the side of the field and they just start playing, and all the cows come and watch them play.

Interviewer: Must be a frequency thing. That's cool.

Greg Noblin: What's the hell's this band over here ...

Interviewer: Can you read that thing? I don't know.

Greg Noblin: How the house is like set up for retire and the doors are wide enough for gurneys and wheelchairs or whatever. They basically winterized the house forever, and she's in a assisted living place in Phoenix where one of the sisters lives, and they've since, they're just leasing the land out. Someone's renting the land to put their cows on it. The Black Angus, grass-fed. Her dad was-

Interviewer: The trees were on that property that you study?

Greg Noblin: Or around there, yeah.

Interviewer: Because they were solitary ... or did you cut out ... I mean, there was like [crosstalk 00:17:36]-

Greg Noblin: Some might have been removed, but it's not completely flat, but it's sparse. A lot of just open space. They had a farm truck, it was just a Ford Explorer, and her dad gave me the keys and said, "If you get stuck, let me know. I'll come get you with the tractor. I'll know."

Speaker 1: That's awesome.

Greg Noblin: Her dad was awesome. He was in naval intelligence in the '60s or whatever, and he was stationed in Japan. They were intercepting Soviet radio transmissions and so he was decoding-

Speaker 1: Cracking the codes, yeah.

Greg Noblin: ... cracking the code and translating. So he was fluent in Russian and Japanese.

Speaker 1: Wow. Pretty wicked [crosstalk 00:18:31] then.

Interviewer: So Meet the Fockers, but seriously.

Greg Noblin: Yeah, yeah. So he was fluent in Japanese and Russian, and he was a PhD chemical engineer that worked for DuPont and Kimberley Clark in the '60s, '70s and '80s.

Interviewer: So a smart dude.

Greg Noblin: Yeah, you're talking Kevlar, Goretex, [inaudible 00:18:54], Spandex, those kinds of products that they made, and he just worked on teams that made that stuff. Synthetic ... what was it? Synthetic non-woven textiles. Basically like tarps. It's like a fabric, but it's all in plastic. After all of that, he just retired. He taught at OU, University of Oklahoma.

Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. And [inaudible 00:19:30] from Tulsa.

Greg Noblin: Yeah.

Interviewer: Paul Roberts was there [inaudible 00:19:32].

Greg Noblin: Yeah, so you had this crazy smart dude, wearing this big old hat, fluent in Japanese and Russian-

Interviewer: And you'd never know, right?

Greg Noblin: ... never to drive his tractor around with hay on him.

Interviewer: That's an evolved person that doesn't need to ...

Greg Noblin: Really neat. Nice guy.

Interviewer: So you've been married a long time?

Greg Noblin: No, we've only been married like three years, three and a half years, but we've been together since 2005. She was married for like 13 years before that and had two kids, and right after the kids, got divorced.

Interviewer: And then you guys met. Just tell me a little ... how did you ...

Greg Noblin: We met at Narcotics Anonymous. We had ups and downs initially, but whatever.

Interviewer: As you do.

Greg Noblin: Well, yeah. I needed to make sure. But yeah, everything's great.

Interviewer: And so she's supportive of you an artist then [crosstalk 00:20:53]-

Greg Noblin: Absolutely. Absolutely. I worked for General Motors when we met and-

Interviewer: Were you doing stuff on side?

Greg Noblin: No. I [crosstalk 00:20:58]-

Interviewer: Not stuff, work.

Greg Noblin: I wanted to do something creative for ever, but my parents weren't supportive and General Motors happened, and then, well, you get a pension and it's job security and you get benefits and da-da-da-da-

Interviewer: All the game of life route.

Greg Noblin: That's right. And that's why I turned to drugs, because I used my "I hate life" as an excuse to permit myself to become an addict so-

Interviewer: No, that is all the rich stuff I wanna go back to. So I'm gonna ... When you said, I wanted to do something creative forever, let's go with that, because I wanna figure out, did you wish you had a crayon in the womb, or was it when you were like six, seven, 10? Did you take a class? Like where did it go where you went, "This touches something?" Or was it an evolution? It might not have been a lightning flash moment. It might have just been ...

Greg Noblin: It wasn't a lightening flash moment and I don't know when it happened. I played a lot with toys that would require ... like Legos and being outside to ... like if you were playing with your like army guys, your GI Joes or cars or any of that stuff, there is an element of imagination that's required to create the world that you're trying to put these toys in.

Interviewer: Absolutely. I was Fisher Price non-stop. Those little people with the village and the ... non-stop.

Greg Noblin: And you do know that they're toys and they're not real realistic, and so you have to invent those worlds for these things to be in. And so then I got into music and I played trumpet for years.

Interviewer: You got into it, or did parents nudge or how ... you just took ...

Greg Noblin: No, they didn't. It was really just a, "Hey, we have this band program at our school and if you wanna do it, then pick an instrument."

Interviewer: Trumpet.

Greg Noblin: Yeah, just came right out of the hat. No-

Interviewer: Ferris Bueller. Never had one lesson ...

Greg Noblin: Right. So it just turned into that, and then I marched a couple of years in drum and bugle corps in high school. And then I was gonna go to school for music and I went to [inaudible 00:23:50] in Akron and then General Motors was coming so I dropped out.

Interviewer: Oh, but so let's go ... So have you have an affinity for your imaginary ... Like as a kid, that's kind of how you get little things and you make up conversations and all of that, so that kind of ... you remember that. It imprinted. Then you got into the trumpet and it sounds like for a fair amount of time and pretty ... were you doing anything tactile during that, or was that your expression for a while?

Greg Noblin: That was the expression. I can't draw. I've never been able to draw. And that's more of a skill that's practice, being able to draw. So when I say I can't, it's just I haven't put the time into it.

Interviewer: Yeah, that's not your bag. So, the trumpet and you went to university and then you said General Motors happened or was coming. How did that intersect trumpet player?

Greg Noblin: I was going to school. I didn't like it, so I dropped out, and I just kinda like floundered for a minute. And-

Interviewer: Sorry, school at what? Senior year, junior, sophomore year?

Greg Noblin: No.

Interviewer: Graduate high school?

Greg Noblin: I graduate high school in '95, and then in '95, '96, I went to college for music. Didn't like it, and that's where actually my addiction started. Like, was very unhappy-

Interviewer: Didn't like it, why? Because you liked it all the way up until this point, and then college and you're like, "I'm out."

Greg Noblin: I think it was more a rebellion thing, that ... I should probably go see a therapist and talk this all out, then figure it out. But-

Interviewer: Today, I'll play the part of a therapist.

Greg Noblin: I think it was a rebellion thing, and had freedom to do what I wanted, when I wanted, how I wanted, which was a disaster at that age, which is fine.

Interviewer: Were you pretty corralled before you went away? Or was it just no more check in. No more ...

Greg Noblin: I don't know what it was. I don't know what it was. Everything was regimented, but ... what's the word? ... but it wasn't from my parents.

Interviewer: That's why I'm sitting here. That regimentation, making up a word, is why I'm here, because I think everyone has trumpet, painter, photographer, whatever, but there's a [crosstalk 00:26:33]-

Greg Noblin: Right. In high school, I did every band thing. There was something always happening, like an event I needed to be at to do something. So I was busy. I wasn't the greatest student to begin with and that just came from the lack of my parents forcing me to do stuff, so I never studied. I'd do the homework or whatever, but half-assed.

Interviewer: You got through. You played the game.

Greg Noblin: That's right. And I never failed a class, but I was like GPA was two point something, or whatever.

Interviewer: You played the game.

Greg Noblin: Right. And getting into music school was more about the audition than it was the GPA. So I was good enough to get accepted.

Interviewer: So now take us, trumpet, General Motors.

Greg Noblin: I was disillusioned in college and dropped out and just kinda floundered for a bit. And moved back home, became a waiter at a country club, and took some classes at Bowling Green. They had a satellite campus. It was basically a community college that Bowling Green State university bought.

Interviewer: And this is in what ...

Greg Noblin: In Sandusky, Ohio.

Interviewer: Thank you. Just-

Greg Noblin: And surrounding areas.

Interviewer: How were parents at your return home?

Greg Noblin: They were okay.

Interviewer: Good.

Greg Noblin: And worked at the country club and just did everything. Worked as many hours as possible, did as much as possible. Bused tables, waited tables, worked the snack shack out in the middle of the golf course. And the thing was, we lived right across the street from it, so there was times when people would call off and not show up-

Interviewer: And you'd just walk across-

Greg Noblin: ... and the manager would come over and knock on the door and be like, "I need you to pick up an extra shift if you can."

Interviewer: What was your compulsion to do that? You wanted to earn or you just wanted to be busy-

Greg Noblin: It was to earn, I guess.

Interviewer: Did you have the habit, at that time, that you need to feed that, or not yet?

Greg Noblin: I don't know. I really don't know what was going on, when I think about all of that stuff. It was that point that I met some of the most important friends of my life. There's just a couple there. And so I was doing that and then General Motors like two years later. There were rumors. They were gonna hire, they were gonna do this, whatever. So I was just in a holding pattern. I was taking classes at Bowling Green and-

Interviewer: Classes for ...

Greg Noblin: Just general-

Interviewer: School.

Greg Noblin: English. Yeah.

Interviewer: School classes.

Greg Noblin: College. So it was just English, science, math. Getting those done.

Interviewer: When you were doing country club, you drop out, move home, country club, work, met friends, which we'll go back to, were you doing any music, photography, paint-

Greg Noblin: Mm-mm (negative).

Interviewer: Nothing.

Greg Noblin: Nothing.

Interviewer: Right. So it's-

Greg Noblin: Working.

Interviewer: ... building. Okay. So, kid that played, the imagination, all of that, trumpet, expression, nothing right now.

PART 1 OF 5 ENDS [00:30:04]

Interviewer: Trumpet expression, nothing right now.

Greg Noblin: Right.

Interviewer: Okay. Either the friends or General Motors. The convergent of you and country club in General Motors, or friends. Which romp do you feel like going on?

Greg Noblin: Well there's really only one really good friend that's been there, her name is Andrea, she lives in Bowling Green and she does stained glass. She was an art student. I actually met her at the country club and at, I think, and at school, at Bowling Green. We were just basically taking classes. She went on to get her degree in stained glass.

Interviewer: MFA?

Greg Noblin: No, BFA. Now she runs AAA Stain Glass Restoration Palace Studio. Whatever. She doesn't own it, she runs it. The owners are absent and she just runs it.

Interviewer: So a kindred spirit?

Greg Noblin: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Interviewer: Did she bring out what was dormant or is just that you [crosstalk 00:31:25]

Greg Noblin: There was no. No. It was really just a bunch of waffling through life.

Interviewer: Right. Yep.

Greg Noblin: For me at this point. Not being happy. Drinking and partying. Whatever. And then

Interviewer: Did you know why you weren't happy?

Greg Noblin: No.

Interviewer: Okay.

Greg Noblin: I still don't. I don't think. And that's okay. I'm okay with all of that. She was really awesome. Still friends to this day. We knew that General Motors was coming, rumors and all that. An there was going to be a lottery system. So I just did that until it happened and then I got hired in 1999.

Interviewer: As?

Greg Noblin: Blue collar hourly... so you're looking at 1999, it was a tiered system on how your wage went up.

Interviewer: And you're a tempy?

Greg Noblin: Yeah. I wanted to do, at that point I was like I could do culinary school, I could do something like that, and they said, "No. Absolutely not. You're not going to do anything, you're going to go work for General Motors and you're going to get the steady paycheck and the benefits and the pension."

Interviewer: So they were over this kind of floating part. And wanted some structure and some security for you.

Greg Noblin: Yeah, but the way I viewed it as they were just not interested in me doing what I wanted to do with my life. "You go do this." And my dad worked there. He was in management, so there was a little bit of nepotism but that's how everybody got in. Like the lottery system was an employee who worked there, had to give you your ticket, basically.

Interviewer: Did Andrea go with you?

Greg Noblin: No. No. She moved to Bowling Green and she lives in Bowling Green, she still lives in Bowling Green. She's actually in Europe right now.

Interviewer: So you went to work.

Greg Noblin: Went to work.

Interviewer: You wear a blue collared shirt, everyday. Did you have a little

Greg Noblin: You could wear whatever you wanted. It was a machine shop.

Interviewer: I didn't know.

Greg Noblin: It was hot. I ran TNC lathes.

Interviewer: TNC?

Greg Noblin: CNC and TNC. Taking numerical control and computer numerical control. They're just lays.

Interviewer: So assembly or?

Greg Noblin: No. We make wheel barrings. The part would come in, we'd put it in the machine and then it would start spinning and this tool would come in and it would cut off the metal. And then it would take the part out, put it in the thing, and it would go down and get measured and gaged. If it was within tolerance, it would get passed. The gage. And then it would go on. Every three hundred parts, I had to change the tooling and do quality checks every hour, just to make sure. Cause sometimes the gages would start to drift and the tools would drift as they [crosstalk 00:34:43]

Interviewer: The calibrators?

Greg Noblin: And so it's just basically maintenance and monitoring. I would sit there and do crossword puzzles for... the actual amount of work that I was required to do was probably ten minutes per hour.

Interviewer: Right, but you had to be there for

Greg Noblin: But I had to be there, yeah. Which was fine.

Interviewer: How long did you do that?

Greg Noblin: I did that from '99 to 2004.

Interviewer: Wow.

Greg Noblin: So five years.

Interviewer: Happier? Parents happier? [crosstalk 00:35:16]

Greg Noblin: Parent were happier, but I wasn't.

Interviewer: Frustrated.

Greg Noblin: But I was burning my money up in drugs.

Interviewer: Right, okay so that, that's when that happened.

Greg Noblin: I was making thirty dollars an hour. I could go out in the parking lot, take a chain saw, cut my arm off on purpose, go to the hospital, they'd sew it back on and the only thing out of pocket would be two dollars for my pain medication. Best benefits in the world.

Interviewer: Right.

Greg Noblin: I was very unhappy. Hence why I was using drugs, or whatever.

Interviewer: What do you think got you, when did you went go? Was it just that much time in watching [00:35:58].

Greg Noblin: What to start using drugs?

Interviewer: Yeah.

Greg Noblin: No, cuz early on I was slamming Nyquil, like right out of high school.

Interviewer: So you already had, okay.

Greg Noblin: I had the addiction gene. I don't know. The only thing that I can think of is that I am just generally unhappy with reality.

Interviewer: Yep.

Greg Noblin: Whatever that is. And now it's just manifesting itself in a different ways, cuz I have no interest in mood altering substances or anything anymore. Which is great all around, generally speaking. Its just so much better. I was very reactionary and not forward think, but I think that's like being a I don't think there's a forward thinking twenty year old.

Interviewer: Right. You were the odd. So now we have you in GM that scenario is going on, how do we get to you. How did the arch start?

Greg Noblin: I wanted to, I've always wanted to explore creativity, whatever it is, like cooking or painting, or drawing or whatever, but I just

Interviewer: Music.

Greg Noblin: Music, exactly.

Interviewer: Like you said, culinary school, you did music, it's just been a thing.

Greg Noblin: That's right. In 2004, I had started putting in transfer requests. For several reasons. One was the factory that I was in was a parts manufacturer, it was General Motors, but it was getting spun off into a company called Delphi.

Interviewer: Yep.

Greg Noblin: And I had hired in under the old GM contract so I had something called flowback rights, which means that I can transfer to a proper GM facility. I had in for Boston, there was a place in Oregon, Portland Oregon,

Interviewer: Was it anywhere but here, or was it specific places you picked for a reason?

Greg Noblin: No. There was Atlanta, Boston, Portland, Oregon. There was a place it was called newne, it was right out of LA.

Interviewer: But did you pick the places cuz you were like, "I want anywhere but here?" Or.

Greg Noblin: Yeah. I though that you meant out in the air.

Interviewer: No, actually.

Greg Noblin: Right so I just kinda went doo, doo, doo, doo on the map.

Interviewer: Right.

Greg Noblin: Four corners.

Interviewer: Ah, farthest.

Greg Noblin: Oregon, California, New England, south east. I had one in Dallas, too. We could have five requests in. And you would get on a phone and it was crazy, cuz it was before iPhone and stuff, you used a pay phone.

Interviewer: Wow

Greg Noblin: You could check your position on where you were for those places, it was all done by phone, you just entered your codes and stuff. There was a whole transfer system, phone system that General Motors had. they had it for your insurance stuff. They had one for your unemployment and stuff if you got laid off or whatever. Which was always interesting, like getting laid off was awesome.

Interviewer: Right. Pocket change.

Greg Noblin: Well you got eighty percent of your pay to stay home.

Interviewer: Yes, please.

Greg Noblin: Right, but there was no work to do, General Motors would lay you off, and they would save twenty percent in the

Interviewer: But retain you for...

Greg Noblin: That's right, you weren't fired or anything.

Interviewer: Right.

Greg Noblin: So Atlanta happened. I just wanted to leave there, I grew up in small town Ohio.

Interviewer: What was relationship with mom and dad? Cuz you were working. [crosstalk 00:39:46] know about the other...

Greg Noblin: I don't talk to my parents now, at all.

Interviewer: Were they happy that you were at GM and did they know about your habit?

Greg Noblin: They totally knew about the habit, for sure. Cuz that was...

Interviewer: And were you still living with them?

Greg Noblin: No. There was a person at General Motors, thyr were union, EAP, Employment Assistance Program rep. I basically hit rock bottom and

Interviewer: That is a thing.

Greg Noblin: Right, but it wasn't [00:40:29] rock bottom then.

Interviewer: Right. Which is also...

Greg Noblin: I called off, burned off all my days, I'd missed a week and half of work, and that's when I called the EAP rep and he came and picked me up and took me to an inpatient place in Toledo.

Interviewer: So you called?

Greg Noblin: Yeah.

Interviewer: Cuz that's...

Greg Noblin: And I said, "look, I don't want to lose my job, I don't want to do this any more or whatever" So he drove me to Toledo to an inpatient place. I got work back in, coming back to work.

Interviewer: Week or month inpatient?

Greg Noblin: It was three days.

Interviewer: So detox?

Greg Noblin: Basically, but. Which, my drug of choice was cocaine so it didn't [inaudible 00:41:23] it was a mental detox. I worked there, it was basically two or three months I was working there and my transfer to Atlanta happened. So I bought up a bunch of drugs, of course, my dealer was in the plant, and came down to Atlanta, and went to the orientation, started working. it was hard to find any drugs here, but I eventually found a connection

Interviewer: Apartment?

Greg Noblin: Yeah, I lived in an apartment right over on Pigstreet Corners circle. I missed three or four days of work after being there for three or four months. I called the EA Rep there and I said, "Look, I have a problem, I relapsed on my way down here, what do I need to do?" And she says, "great, thanks for calling me, boom, put me in thirty day inpatient

Interviewer: Wow so serious.

Greg Noblin: Yeah, it was Peachford.

Interviewer: Yep.

Greg Noblin: Did thirty day inpatient and then did three months of outpatient. But outpatient, I was back to work. So I was out for a month and came back and it was great. When I called her, I was done. I was like, "I'm done. I'm done with this."

Interviewer: What made you know that you needed to call or just keep going?

Greg Noblin: Well I didn't want to lose my job.

Interviewer: So let's stop there for a second. Didn't want to lose your job because it was income to be able to afford the drugs or you didn't want to lose your job because you knew it was that thing that was

Greg Noblin: It was the income to live.

Interviewer: Got it. Okay.

Greg Noblin: Income in general.

Interviewer: Yep.

Greg Noblin: Being in the union, we always do have safety nets. You get chances. They just walked me through the whole thing. But when I had called her, I was done. I was really done at that point.

Interviewer: Was it a look in the mirror done or what the fuck am I doing or?

Greg Noblin: You know I can't even explain that. I was just done. That's why NA member really worked out for me cuz I didn't have a whole bunch of shit that I needed to work through or whatever, I wasn't like, oh my God, my lights got turned off and it's giving me cravings to use and so on. It had me, I was done. But what I don't do is fool myself thinking that I can have a beer or you know, I can't.

Interviewer: Right.

Greg Noblin: I can't, cuz I occasionally do get a craving for a beer, cuz I really liked beer, that's why I drink a lot of the [00:44:37]. Cuz it's got that carbonated bite.

Interviewer: Yep. A little bit.

Greg Noblin: Totally satisfies whatever that is.

Interviewer: I'm dating someone in AA, that's why I know it. He went away for months to Karen, in north Boston or somewhere. All this is very familiar.

Greg Noblin: I had a hard time relating to a lot of the peoples struggles.

Interviewer: Cuz it wasn't where your head is.

Greg Noblin: That's right.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Greg Noblin: I played the game and I went to the meetings and I worked and got a sponsor

Interviewer: It's also part of your requirement.

Greg Noblin: Yeah, but

Interviewer: For your EAP?

Greg Noblin: Yeah, but it wasn't so much mandated. I didn't have to prove anything. I didn't have to do sheets. Proof sheets where you have the meeting chair sign something. I didn't have to do all that because I was proactive.

Interviewer: Right you called you what [00:45:36]

Greg Noblin: I said look I have a problem and duh... let's get this sorted out. Instead of getting busted at work. There was none of that.

Interviewer: It wasn't conditional.

Greg Noblin: That's right.

Interviewer: So then you still had your job. You were on the path to clean. Or clean, cuz you decided you were done.

Greg Noblin: I was clean.

Interviewer: Yep.

Greg Noblin: I was working on the line. Everybody that knew me was like look, you're not supposed to be here. Because how they knew me and just talking with them and becoming friends with employees, coworkers, or whatever. They said, "you're not supposed to be here. You need to go do something else with your life. Before you end up like me with twenty nine years of seniority and a whole bunch of I wish I would haves."

Interviewer: Yep.

Greg Noblin: And that started to really sink in. It's funny. Something came up and it's funny.

I didn't know what I wanted to do. I thought I wanted to do music production, just because I have that history of that or whatever.

Interviewer: Something familiar that you like.

Greg Noblin: That's right I had a familiarity with music. In 2005, some rumors started spreading that General Motors, this was about that time they had that, they were about to have the financial crisis, General Motors.

Interviewer: With the [inaudible 00:47:14]

Greg Noblin: It was a couple years before that and thyr were going to offer buy outs based upon seniority. All the people that I worked with in the Ohio plant had all transferred out. They all got their transfer, they went to, there was a transmission plant in Toledo, some went to Fort Wayne Indiana, some went to Boards Town and Youngstown, Ohio. Vans and spread because that place went under. They got bought out by someone else, they slapped the people that worked there, if they stayed, they got their wages slashed in half. Which was devastating for that area because that was the only job, there were a few places like that. There was a Ford plant too but...

So, that happened. They offered buy outs, so I got a lump sum.

Interviewer: Which was a perfect timing [00:48:16] to you.

Greg Noblin: Right. Couple of years that I had been here I got twenty-five grand to move here. You get ten when you leave, on your last paycheck up there, but it's crazy cuz my last day there was a Friday and my first day here was a Monday. So I had the weekend to get down here.

Interviewer: Oh wow.

Greg Noblin: So I got ten grand, my last paycheck there and after a year here, you got the other fifteen and then a year later they offered buy outs for a hundred. On top of everything else. After taxes I got fifty-something. Paid off my car, went to school and basically had from late 2005 to 2010, no job, no income, nothing, I just lived on that.

Interviewer: You said you were going to school during that time?

Greg Noblin: Yep that's when I went to school. I went to Art Institute.

Interviewer: Okay. So there we go. You had this epiphany forming anyway from people who knew you. You had this serendipitous thing happen. Why did you pick art school over culinary, over music, over, what, how did that happen?

Greg Noblin: I don't even know. It's weird when I think back on it cuz I think I would have rather gone to a different school. But if I had gone to a different school, the results might have been different and I might not be doing what I'm doing today, right?

Interviewer: That's right.

Greg Noblin: Butterfly effect, cause and effect, whatever.

Interviewer: Right.

Greg Noblin: Even if where I went was over priced, and not necessarily the greatest fine arts program cuz it's more commercial. Yeah, I don't think I'd be doing exactly what I'm doing right now. Again, it was like picking the trumpet. It didn't matter. I don't think it mattered.

Interviewer: You just wanted to be around or in something that was, yep. How are parents at this point? Supportive?

Greg Noblin: I don't even really know.

Interviewer: We'll go back to that, how that dropped off.

Greg Noblin: The reason they were. What was I going to do? At this point I had met Jen, my wife, and we were, I guess it was only six months or whatever in our relationship, but. She was supportive and super awesome.

Interviewer: Supportive of art school or?

Greg Noblin: She would be in general.

Interviewer: Yep.

Greg Noblin: This plant wasn't going to make it, they were going to close it, so there was already rumors that it was going to be done in like a year or whatever. So I transferred to another place.

Interviewer: Right. Did Jen see something in you? You said she was supportive. Did she see you like the other people were saying you gotta get out of here, did she already see that and know?

Greg Noblin: I don't even know. You'd have to ask her.

Interviewer: Right, right.

Greg Noblin: I don't know.

Interviewer: So you picked Art Institute. And it didn't even matter.

Greg Noblin: It didn't matter. And then photography, didn't matter.

Interviewer: And then you just picked photography?

Greg Noblin: I knew I didn't want to do culinary.

Interviewer: Right. Okay.

Greg Noblin: At that point.

Interviewer: Yep.

Greg Noblin: I didn't not want to go to culinary, I didn't want to cook. I was thinking, you know, portraiture, commercial portraiture.

Interviewer: When did you first pick up a, so how old were you when,

Greg Noblin: I had a camera when I came down here. I had an Icon, an eighty. Thirty five milometer. Its probably out in the garage.

Interviewer: So you're at this and you decide photography, although you dabbled, you had a camera.

Greg Noblin: Yeah, I had a camera and I took a lot of pictures of stuff, that was probably why.

Interviewer: Pictures of what? And the reason I'm

Greg Noblin: Anything really. All the art shots. The car behind you in the side mirror. All the crap that

Interviewer: Right, you started to see through that.

Greg Noblin: That prism, yeah. I guess that's probably why. Cuz I had a camera, I had two lenses and

Interviewer: It fit in with all the other tornado stuff going on you had.

Greg Noblin: That's right. Yeah, I just started going to school there for... All my Bowling credits transferred. I had a pile of cash in the bank. What I did that isn't smart.

Interviewer: You're clean.

Greg Noblin: I was clean. I did make one mistake. I didn't use that money necessarily for school. I took out the loans and kept the money. Whatever. All in all, I think it was a pretty good experience. It was...

Interviewer: How old were you when you went to Art Institute? Roughly?

Greg Noblin: That would have been 2006. So twenty-eight or twenty-nine.

Interviewer: Okay.

Greg Noblin: So its not traditional

Interviewer: I just wanted to get an idea.

Greg Noblin: So I'm in there with eighteen year olds that "Oh my God!," and already have

Interviewer: Art man.

Greg Noblin: I have ten years of, I took a ten year gap year. [inaudible 00:54:31]

Interviewer: Right. And were richer because of it.

Greg Noblin: Yeah. The flat tires of life or whatever, I had already done.

Interviewer: So were you protege there, normal there, how did you start to do the ... how did [crosstalk 00:54:53]

Greg Noblin: I [crosstalk 00:54:53] turned into that. I was given at the end, I was given a lot of leeway that a lot of students weren't. It was studio work. Tabletop. Sets, building of sets, lighting, doing those things, doing it right.

Interviewer: Cuz they were teaching you for commercial, right?

Greg Noblin: That's right. Getting it right in camera. This was just at the transition from film to digital, too. I remember telling students, other students, I was like, " you know, digital cameras are going to completely replace film. No one will be using film in commercial work. It will be relegated to being a fine art niche thing." Everyone's like, "they'll never develop that technology, the sensors will never get good enough to do the commercial work with the detail that we're looking at. You're crazy." "okay."

I just did the initial stuff.

Interviewer: And then when did you start?

Greg Noblin: My images were.

Interviewer: Informed?

Greg Noblin: Maybe a little better than some others, not the best. I did a lot of, this is important, I think for photography students. I would assume for any art student, but in my experience, photography students, is to look at stuff. Just look at it, lots and lots of stuff. See what's been done. See how they're doing it. What is that whatever it is. If you want to whatever it is that you want to do look at a lot of that stuff. And I've always been interested in the hard to find, hard to explain, hard to understand, abstract, overly complex, needlessly complex,

Interviewer: Right. Seemingly complex but not.

Greg Noblin: Right. 2001 Space Odyssey. That kind of stuff. Its like mind benders a little bit. Those were my favorite kinds of movies. Pulp Fiction, Memento, which is interesting cuz I don't watch any television or any movies or anything any more. Except for Marvel.

Interviewer: Marvel. Right, right. Which should be mandatory.

Greg Noblin: Right. When I go. I've come to a point where if I'm going to a movie, maybe its just straight up arrogance, but I just want to be entertained. I don't want someone to be crazy, over the top fine art, whatever or crappy, or cute or whatever. You know I don't want to walk into Inception, and the movie starts and he spends that time. I say, we are going to sit here at the end of this movie, its going to spin the top, we're not going to know if he's in a damn dream or not. I'm leaving this movie. I don't want to see this. And there you go, you don't know if he's in a dream or not at the end. And you're like, "Ugh." You know?

Interviewer: Cuz it seems like you have enough of that going on.

Greg Noblin: Yeah yeah. The Sixth Sense, that thing was good. He kinda lost the...

Interviewer: Yeah, he did. Right after that.

Greg Noblin: What was that one? The Village or whatever? He did like, "they're suits. They're suits. The adults are wearing suits."

Interviewer: Suits, yes. It was yeah The Village or something.

Greg Noblin: Right. The only thing I didn't put together was that it was happening today.

Interviewer: Yeah. Right. That it was the modern world and they were keeping them sequestered. Yeah.

Greg Noblin: Commute. Let me go to the restroom upstairs, and I will be right back.

Interviewer: Do I have a way to do that too or no?

Greg Noblin: You can go right here. There's enough water to flush once.

Interviewer: It's just number one, so I'll be fine.

Greg Noblin: [00:59:43]

Interviewer: I love your space. It's awesome.

Greg Noblin: Oh up here?

Interviewer: Yeah.

Greg Noblin: You can turns the lights on...

Interviewer: Well yeah I did, I did. It's just walk in and see a completely different kind of energy. It's like yeah this is where it happens in my relationship. Yeah I know I'm honesty.

Greg Noblin: Well yeah.

Interviewer: Your whole set up is not...

PART 2 OF 5 ENDS [01:00:04]

Greg Noblin: [inaudible 01:00:00].

Speaker 2: Your whole set up is [inaudible 01:00:03].

Greg Noblin: Yeah. It's [inaudible 01:00:05] close the door and ...

Speaker 2: I need to ask you a technical question about how you got your monitors connected. Is it just [inaudible 01:00:19]?

Greg Noblin: Oh, what? [inaudible 01:00:19] to HP [inaudible 01:00:19].

Speaker 2: It's okay to use the restroom in here, right?

Interviewer: Oh. I don't know, because I just did, and it didn't-

Speaker 2: Didn't flush?

Interviewer: No. Yeah, and it seems like there's enough for another. I would try it.

Speaker 2: Got it. [inaudible 01:01:25].

Interviewer: Oh, right. So it'd be bright orange?

Speaker 2: Yeah. I'm done with everything, but I need to get it in. Should I take pictures while you guys are talking?

Interviewer: Sure.

Speaker 2: [inaudible 01:01:34].

Interviewer: Okay, because I looked at it. He's really-

Speaker 2: [inaudible 01:01:34], yeah.

Interviewer: Okay. And I'm wondering if it wouldn't be a good idea to cover some of the ...

Greg Noblin: [inaudible 01:01:36].

Interviewer: And ask him to explain.

Speaker 2: Oh, I'm back down here. I'm sorry. What did you ask?

Greg Noblin: [crosstalk 01:01:43] toys?

Speaker 2: I'm sorry?

Greg Noblin: Did you see all the toys?

Speaker 2: I did. I got them. Those are so awesome. I'm always at Michaels, when I take the girls to Michael's. I've got two, and-

Greg Noblin: Twins?

Speaker 2: No, no. But we always look through the animals. That's funny, because this reminded me of that.

Greg Noblin: There's Safari Limited, and Schleich is another one.

Speaker 2: Yeah, Schleich is ... yeah.

Interviewer: I think Schleich is great.

Speaker 2: Yeah, that's-

Greg Noblin: I actually contacted them initially when I was in school to license from them. Did you go?

Interviewer: I did. It was funny. It looks like there's enough for another.

Greg Noblin: Yeah. Well, just in case.

Interviewer: Right. I wanted to go back-

Greg Noblin: Oh, hold on. Hold on.

Interviewer: Yes?

Greg Noblin: I've got one thing, maybe. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Interviewer: Is it the little elephant?

Speaker 2: He is [inaudible 01:02:31].

Well, I mean, hand in hand.

Interviewer: Mm-hmm (affirmative). It's interesting. I was thinking, Calvin has social ... his issue. Elizabeth has that mom thing. He's got [inaudible 01:02:54]. Yeah, it's interesting. Bruce is [inaudible 01:02:58].

Speaker 2: Is what?

Interviewer: Narcissist.

Speaker 2: Yeah, different reasons in thinking, being. But that's your inner ... what makes you tick.

Interviewer: Larry.

Speaker 2: Where you find your [inaudible 01:03:15].

Interviewer: He was interesting, wasn't he?

Speaker 2: I think for him-

Interviewer: And Scott.

Speaker 2: He's the brain.

Interviewer: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Meticulous.

Speaker 2: He's just constantly thinking. He's just finding the humor. He's just-

Interviewer: But he [inaudible 01:03:38].

Speaker 2: You know what he's doing? He's stating the obvious.

Interviewer: He is?

Speaker 2: Yeah. No, wait. Larry.

Interviewer: Larry? Oh, interesting.

Speaker 2: He's stating the obvious that people don't see, that's very obvious to him.

Interviewer: Loud to him.

Speaker 2: Oh, very loud to him.

Interviewer: That's ...[inaudible 01:03:58].

Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. The badges. The [inaudible 01:04:00] badges. Just like, do you have a muff diver? I want a muff diver. I was like, "Those are all sold out."

Interviewer: I think he's hilarious. We're going to do this in a second. I want to ask you something, though, because well, it's important to me.

Speaker 2: Is it cool that [inaudible 01:04:15] the letter in the name ... Those are nice.

Interviewer: Your parents. You decide on Art Institute. Sorry, I'm getting right back into your grill. You're at the Art Institute. Photography is ... Why not? How are they?

Greg Noblin: They're okay.

Interviewer: Good, you're clean. Do they know you're clean?

Greg Noblin: Yes.

Interviewer: It's all that. They've been-

Greg Noblin: I think that was the most important thing.

Interviewer: For them?

Greg Noblin: Yeah.

Interviewer: They went on all this with you to varying degrees?

Greg Noblin: Sure.

Interviewer: Okay. Because you say you don't talk now, so I'm trying to get at what point ...

Greg Noblin: Right.

Interviewer: You met Jen. All that's going okay. You're on an up?

Greg Noblin: Yeah.

Interviewer: Keep going to-

Greg Noblin: Yeah. I crushed school. Like 3.8 GPA, best portfolio.

Interviewer: Because you wanted to.

Greg Noblin: If they had valedictorian, it would've been valedictorian. Yeah, and it was because I knew what I wanted to do in terms of creativity. When I started, I didn't have that focus of what it was going to be, where it was going to turn into those.

Interviewer: How did you feel at this point? I mean, because-

Greg Noblin: Great. Great. It wasn't ... An assignment, you need to go out here, and you need to spend three or four hours carrying this heavy stuff, these light kits and cameras and fuss with the camera, and things not go your way, and then things work out. Then, you get the shot. Then, you have to take your film, and you have to go to this place to do all that. A lot of younger students were bitching about it, but I had ... Get up in the morning, go to work, do, do, do. I had all that experience, succeeding and failing at it.

It was just a task. Go do this. Okay, great. It's what I want to do anyway. Why would I complain about it?

Interviewer: Right.

Greg Noblin: If I complained about anything, it was because the printer broke, or ...

Interviewer: You were thwarted from getting what you wanted. Was that it?

Greg Noblin: Right, right, right. Technical limitations of equipment and stuff, like if you checked out a light kit and you went to go do something, and the previous person that did it smashed the light bulbs, and the flash was-

Interviewer: Right, so anything that kept you from the pursuit of what you were-

Greg Noblin: That's right. It wasn't the actual work.

Interviewer: Can I tell you something that's really interesting? We are talking about, until this point, you were laid down, your voice was different. I wish I could ... You know?

Greg Noblin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Interviewer: Now, you're up and animated, and your eyes are ... It's cool to see, that was your-

Greg Noblin: Right, and I think that's an explanation of that life experience. Because when I was like, "Ugh," that was how that first part of life was for me, was like, "Ugh. This sucks. I really don't have any affinity towards it." I think my life started when I started going to school and I met Jenny. That's my experience.

Interviewer: Yeah. I mean, you can just see it in your whole ... It's cool. You crushed it. You met Jen. You're good. Your parents are with you.

Greg Noblin: That's right.

Interviewer: You're taking photographs, and you just evolved into where you are now through the-

Greg Noblin: We had a class. It was a digital photo illustration one, where we had to ... That's my wife.

Speaker 2: oh, that's a cool picture.

Greg Noblin: We were on quarters, so they were 10 weeks long. In that class, we had like eight assignments. Something, maybe it was six or five, I don't remember. Because you had like two weeks to do it. You had to emulate an artist. The first class for the next project, or whatever, you would sit there. They would introduce you to a particular artist, or a photographer. It was photography based. Then, we had to mimic that. We hit a woman named Maggie Taylor. Do you know her?

Interviewer: No.

Greg Noblin: Look her up on your phone.

Interviewer: I know the name, but I don't ...

Greg Noblin: That was my very first time that we had to emulate. What she does, her work is very similar. What she does, though, is her backgrounds ... She went to Florida, University of Florida.

Interviewer: Is she the one-

Greg Noblin: Have you ever watched the Ghost Whisperer with Jennifer Love Hewitt? Anyway-

Interviewer: You know what's funny? How old is she?

Greg Noblin: Oh, she's got to be in her 50s.

Interviewer: I think she's the one person I've asked for this project that said no.

Speaker 2: That's who you ... That's the same person.

Interviewer: This is fucking weird.

Speaker 2: She is a huge-

Interviewer: She is the one person I asked to do this that said, "I can't."

Greg Noblin: She was a huge influence to me. Her husband, Jerry Uelsmann is-

Speaker 2: You've got to contact her again and tell [inaudible 01:09:47].

Greg Noblin: Her husband, Jerry Uelsmann, is a legendary-

Speaker 2: Oh. That's her husband?

Greg Noblin: Yeah.

Speaker 2: That's her husband?

Greg Noblin: Legendary, right?

Interviewer: Wait, wait, wait.

Greg Noblin: He does Photoshop without Photoshop. He takes the negatives, cuts them out, reconstructs them in the ... They're all black and white.

Interviewer: When you said the name, that's when I went, "Wait, I know that name." What's weird is, I don't know anything about art. I just went through all these sites, and I was like, "That guy, this guy, this guy." There's something about your art in particular and hers ... weird.

Greg Noblin: And her-

Interviewer: I don't know that you get-

Greg Noblin: I've met her when I was at school.

Interviewer: Here's the weird thing. The same thing happened with Scott and Tracy Sharp. They're at the same gallery. They have 30-some artists, and I was like these two. They know each other, and did their first show together. They had corollary.

Greg Noblin: Oh, that's neat.

Interviewer: Then, I was like, "This is getting weirder." Every time, there'll be some little weird thing where ...

Greg Noblin: When I had to imitate her, that was my first successful image in Photoshop. At that point, I was in love with Photoshop. I said, "Everything else can go to hell. I am going to sit in this [crosstalk 01:11:03]."

Interviewer: That was your-

Greg Noblin: We had a digital darkroom at school that was just-

Speaker 2: Woops.

Greg Noblin: Rows of tables, or whatever. They had stations. It was just Macs, boom, boom, boom, all the way around. I would go in. I would do my classes. I would just go be bad at Photoshop. Just fail. This doesn't work. You're talking about 2006, 2007, 2008 ... or 2006 to 2010. YouTube started, I think, in 2006 or 2008. Now, if I don't know how to do something, I can just ... It was trying to figure it out. Taking what I'd learned in class, have a general understanding of how the individual tools work, and specializing into the tools that I need to do what I need to do.

This one that you're about to go through was my specialization portfolio, so it's all going to be that style.

Interviewer: Right, right, right. How did you make it towards animals? How did you start to ... Why Elephant Eggshell? Because in your About, you say you have a nod in there to looking at things, and you say a little bit about solving what [inaudible 01:12:40]. How did that come about?

Greg Noblin: All of the things that I utilize have a duality in meaning. One's utilitarian, and one's metaphor. Toys and animals are easier to deal with than people. There's less complication in terms of copyright releases. A horse doesn't have to sign a model release.

Interviewer: Would you rather people?

Greg Noblin: Not at this point. The animals are a metaphor for people, anyway. I can get the message sort of. I'm not trying to like, "This is what it means." I don't want-

Interviewer: Right. Nope. Yep.

Greg Noblin: Right. I can get-

Interviewer: You can express what you are [inaudible 01:13:42].

Greg Noblin: I can express that in a way without over complicating it with red tape, people, releases, stuff like that. Yeah. Maggie Taylor was a huge influence. The surrealists, primarily Magritte, with the bowler hat and the apple in front of the face. Stuff like that. Just out there ideas or whatever. But-

Interviewer: That started to-

Greg Noblin: Right. Her process is a little different. She scans a lot of stuff in. Like the women, or the people, that are in her photographs are often old Daguerreotypes, tintypes, stuff like old vintage photographs that she picks up at wherever, flea markets, yard sales.

She scans them in and then colorizes them. That process is different, and her backgrounds, I think, in a lot of cases, she actually ... The trees and stuff that are in the background, she does in pastels, and then scans that all in.

Interviewer: She's really ... yeah.

Greg Noblin: Then, she photographs the other elements and puts those in together.

Interviewer: With you, it seemed like once you found it, that that's it.

Greg Noblin: It was all bets are off. That's why I was given ... In the last two years of school, I was given a lot of latitude to ... I didn't have to do an internship at a commercial photography place. I got to skip certain classes. People pulled strings for me to do something, like make up my own class, instead of having to take this other class.

A lot of it was also because the schedules, like the class wasn't going to be offered again or something like that. It was a requirement, and then they were like, "You know, just do this instead. What do you want to do?" [inaudible 01:15:57] make the total.

Interviewer: [crosstalk 01:15:58].

Greg Noblin: You can do this. So, I did that. I made up like two classes that I did. They still required that you ... Was that all people in that first one?

Interviewer: Yes.

Greg Noblin: The general, you had, when you graduate, you had to have a general book and a specialization book. In the general book, you had people and product and building, and whatever. A lot of the product work had to be done in the studio, on tabletop, building the set, doing all of that stuff.

Interviewer: And preparing you for-

Greg Noblin: That's right. They let me not do that.

Interviewer: You really were ...

Greg Noblin: Students were coming in and building their sets-

Interviewer: They assumed you wouldn't need it?

Greg Noblin: No, that wasn't why. The reason they didn't want people doing it in post, like I was going to do, is because it cheapened it. It was a shortcut.

Interviewer: They didn't want it to show-

Greg Noblin: They didn't have to shoot it and set up a thing in the studio, or whatever. But they knew that I had already put in the time. I wasn't going to half-ass it. I wasn't looking to make it a shortcut. I was going to in the digital studio and spend just as much time in Photoshop making it as awesome as possible-

Interviewer: Different reason, yeah.

Greg Noblin: Than just trying to get out of the studio. If I came in with a pair of scissors that were going to be a product shot that I was going to turn in, and I just tossed in on the table, tossed up two lights, and went, kaboom, kaboom, kaboom, kaboom. Took 15 or 20 shots and then left. They knew that I wasn't just doing that so I could leave. I was going to take the lights back to the where you check them back in and go sit in the digital studio for the next four hours of class and work on it and do that.

Interviewer: Do something with it, yeah.

Greg Noblin: I would be in the studio scanning in sheets of paper, like textured papers, just building this catalog of stuff. I wasn't half-assing it. That's why I was allowed.

Interviewer: You were different [crosstalk 01:18:21].

Greg Noblin: I'd already proven that my Photoshop wasn't going to be absolutely godawful. Because some students' Photoshop was awful. That's fine, because they didn't want to do Photoshop.

Interviewer: Right. They wanted to do [crosstalk 01:18:34].

Greg Noblin: Right. If someone wanted to take a shortcut, like, "I'm going to do this in Photoshop." You're like, "You've never turned in anything in Photoshop. You're not going to do it ... start trying to do it now."

Interviewer: [crosstalk 01:18:42]. Now you're out, and Jen has seen this evolution.

Greg Noblin: That's right.

Interviewer: She's seen you from plant to school to now you.

Greg Noblin: That's right. I have no idea what's in there.

Interviewer: Still hyper supportive.

Greg Noblin: Hopefully, it's not a bunch of pornography.

Interviewer: Still hyper supportive. Now, she sees probably what I saw in that little microcosm there as you you. She's all onboard. Did parents see what you did? Did they see what I just saw in you sitting up and brightening up? Did they see it?

Greg Noblin: I don't know.

Interviewer: Or did they not care that-

Greg Noblin: They weren't here. They're not here. They're down in Memphis, and whatever.

Interviewer: Right. It's just a natural separation due to distance and ...

Greg Noblin: Yeah. They just get updates or whatever.

Interviewer: That's good, babe.

Greg Noblin: Yeah. Then, the next thing happened.

Interviewer: That's where I went, yep. You found it. You did it. You're doing it. You're passionate. You got support. You're clean. Shit is going straight. Valedictorian-esque.

Greg Noblin: That's right.

Interviewer: Now what?

Greg Noblin: One of the requirements for the portfolio show is that you had a big, giant print of a specialization piece and a big giant print of one of your generals. That's Jen, as well, those nudes. What I had done is one of the classes that I made up was just experimenting with materials and textures, because I love textures. I don't know why I love textures. I just love textures. What I did is I had prints made of 15 panels. I said, "I would like ... Instead of doing two big pieces, can I do 10 smaller pieces?" My portfolio teacher said, "If you can make it 15, yes." I said, "Fine."

I drove to my parents' house in Memphis, and my dad and I made 15 panels, 24-inch square panels. That's why Maggie Taylor's [inaudible 01:21:07]. Not the only reason, but-

Interviewer: I love that your dad helped you with that.

Greg Noblin: We made those panels. I brought them back, mounted them all, and I put wax on them, because wax was one of the things that I played with. Did not know what the hell I was doing, but ...

Interviewer: You didn't have it in your head? You just ...

Greg Noblin: No, I had it in my head. I had this visual of what I wanted this photograph ... photo encaustic. I loved it and whatever, but I was using raw materials, and whatever. Right? Some of those [inaudible 01:21:41]. I made the 15 pieces, and I had 15 pieces in my ...

Interviewer: Your final?

Greg Noblin: They were on wood panel. It looked like they should be in a gallery, or whatever. That was great. One more thing I got to do that other people didn't. I got to do it because it was way more work than sending a digital file to PPR, having them crank out a thing on gator board. You know? And put those brackets on the back.

Right after I graduated, I emailed every gallery in Atlanta with photos of everything that I had. Two replied, PB&J. I don't know if you know them. They're east side, a little further up than Decatur.

Interviewer: Which is where I live.

Greg Noblin: You live in Decatur?

Interviewer: Yeah.

Greg Noblin: PB&J contacted me, and Kai Lin Art contacted me. PB&J actually called me, and my price point was too high. But their ceiling is like 500 bucks. I wanted to do a thousand for each one. Yu-Kai from Kai Lin Art said, "All right. We're having a big group show. Bring me a couple of pieces to look at." And-

Interviewer: Excited, daunted, both? How'd you feel at that point?

Greg Noblin: Excited. Super excited. Took him a couple of pieces. He said, "Great. How many do you have?" I said, "15." He's like, "Okay. Bring like six of them," or whatever. I dropped them off-

Interviewer: He didn't pick the six of the fifteen? He let you pick the six of the fifteen?

Greg Noblin: Yeah, I believe so. He definitely wanted the two that I brought. He hung them, and he sold a couple. Ever since then, we've been in a relationship. From 2010 to now.

Interviewer: It does feel good in that space. It-

Greg Noblin: Yeah, and I owe a lot to Yu-Kai, because he really gave me the time and the space to get better. Because that up there was a whole different animal than that up there. You know? I am not a woodworker. Some of my panels are a little wobbly. I was doing butt joints and not miter cuts. I didn't know what the hell I was doing when I was doing that. He-

Interviewer: He saw it anyway.

Greg Noblin: And he sold them. Nothing's come back, really, that's been my fault. I had one piece come back that needed a little bit of a repair because they bumped into it and scratched paint across it. [inaudible 01:25:15].

Those animals that you saw were my first foray into making large panels.

Interviewer: Did you like it? I mean, did you like it?

Greg Noblin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Interviewer: Because I was like ...

Greg Noblin: Those actually got licensed.

Interviewer: They stop you. Yeah, they were ...

Greg Noblin: And-

Interviewer: Actually, that was my only thing is I wanted to get further back, and he had them in the hallway coming in, because you had a lot. I wanted to ... What I saw, when they were up.

Greg Noblin: That was years and years ago, right?

Interviewer: No, it was maybe a year. Your show at ... I mean, they-

Greg Noblin: Oh.

Interviewer: Where I got-

Greg Noblin: I thought you were talking about just the solitary animals on a texture that look like presidential portraits.

Interviewer: No, I haven't gotten those, yet. I mean, I didn't see those-

Greg Noblin: Yeah, those are-

Interviewer: When I bought your two pieces that I have. I wanted to see them further back, because his hallway ... You know? Because they were bigger.

Greg Noblin: Well, [inaudible 01:26:16].

Interviewer: When you walk in the door, there was ... Then, you walk down a little bit, and they were on both sides. But the hallway was [inaudible 01:26:27]. I wanted to get further back.

Greg Noblin: Where at?

Interviewer: At the gallery. At your show about six months ago, seven months ago, eight months ago.

Greg Noblin: No, it was ...

Interviewer: Where I bought Into the Wild.

Greg Noblin: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what that might've been? It was April.

Interviewer: Was it?

Greg Noblin: Four or five months ago?

Interviewer: Yeah.

Greg Noblin: Yes, it was April to June. Yeah.

Interviewer: Yes, because he made me wait to go get Into the World. He made me wait til the show was over. Then, I called, and I'm like, "Hey."

Greg Noblin: We've had a spectacular year this year. He sold like ... I did eight pieces for the show, and he sold ... Well, 10 total. But he sold-

Interviewer: All but two, I think?

Greg Noblin: Like four before the show opened. Yeah. The show was opening on Friday, and you bought that Friday.

Interviewer: Because I wasn't going to come to get it and see [crosstalk 01:27:34].

Greg Noblin: I was like, "Ah."

Interviewer: Sorry. But I said you could keep it for the show, because I wanted people to see.

Greg Noblin: Yeah. I think we sold six. Six out of ten. Which he told me he hasn't-

Interviewer: That's what I said, all but two. Yeah.

Greg Noblin: He's never sold most of a show during the show. But anyway, he's been amazing and giving me the time to be frustrated and figure out the construction, the physical part of it. You have that grid of photos to put together the whole thing, and it's another one of those utilitarian and meaning things.

Interviewer: There's the little part of all of your life in ... There's an assemblage part. You know?

Greg Noblin: Right.

Interviewer: There's the experimental part. There's the struggle part of figuring something out. Then, you have this concept. Then, it comes out in these real life practical metaphor. It's kind of you. It's what you've been through, because you went through this real life, and it wasn't for you the whole time you were ... Then, it converges into this ... You know?

Greg Noblin: Right. The grid. Well, do you want to get into what it all means and all that at all?

Interviewer: I have a couple questions. Then, yes, I do. I want you to talk about that. You said it when we got here, but Mike wasn't with us. You don't have any trouble letting them go? Once they're out, they're out. Is it a solve thing? Is it a and now we're on to the next thing? Is it a ...

Greg Noblin: No. No. It's something that I've just recently realized what that means. It gets back to the movies and the TV and reading books and stories, and my ability to always be able to walk away from that. I don't become attached to anything, really, except for my wife and the cats and her kids. But this physical entertainment, I'm not attached to it. I don't know why. I'm just not. Like my parent-

PART 3 OF 5 ENDS [01:30:04]

Greg Noblin: I don't know why, I'm just not ... My parents, they just eventually were [inaudible 01:30:06] a little too much, and that's fine.

Interviewer: So there was no big break, it was just over time.

Greg Noblin: It was a big break for them. They were yelling at me or whatever for being an asshole kid, unappreciative, whatever. It's always over the dumbest shit. We told them, look, we're getting married, there is no party, there is no gifts, none of that stuff, and they forced family to send us money and cards and stuff because ... and they were asking me how much each person sent, because they were getting validation of how important they were to the rest of their family members through how much they get, right? I was like, yo, this is crazy.

They had a dog that died, about the same exact kind, and named it the same thing. I'm like, you guys are weird. I can't ... You're manipulative, whatever, I'm done. "You're unappreciative."

So I've been able to always walk away from certain things, and just not have an attachment to it.

Interviewer: Well even your habit. When you're done, you're done. Woop.

Greg Noblin: Yeah, I have one habit ... two habits left. Caffeine and some nicotine. 'Cause I smoke three packs a day, but that isn't even close to ...

Yeah, I don't have a problem with it. It's weird. It's like, when I'm making them I make them in batches, and I need to make more, as many as possible. I've come to the understanding that at this point it's no longer quality or content or ... message or any of that. All that stuff's figured out. It's quantity at this point. I need to become prolific.

Interviewer: For this ... So this is body of working. Where are you going next year? Do you know yet? Have you started thinking about it? You're still [crosstalk 01:32:12].

Greg Noblin: It has changed.

Interviewer: 'Cause I can see even from [inaudible 01:32:17] that it's so different.

Greg Noblin: Yeah, those are just kind of, I'm gonna just do this, why not? I have a lot of time that I can do things. The main body of work is ... it transformed in the last 24 months. It's more ... It's all because of Larry Anderson. I showed with him last time, and so I knew a year out, before that. [inaudible 01:33:06] says "Larry has named the show Magic". So I went literal. I said, instead of being crazy over the top metaphor, trying to get deep, building meaning into all of it and really trying to build these giant narratives, let's just make magical, magic, just do that. Glowy bits. Stars.

Interviewer: The owl with the moon.

Greg Noblin: Magical, right. A magical moment like the piece you had, it's a magical moment. I'm trying to ... That's the direction I want to go right now, is just magic as much as I can.

Interviewer: It feels like it. And it doesn't feel like a moment, it feels like a world. Like it's a ...

Greg Noblin: Right.

Interviewer: To me. I mean, I'm just telling you ...

Greg Noblin: Well, that's what I'm aiming for. I mean they all kind of have to fit in there so you don't have a crazy outlier, but for sure, I want it to be magical. I think that's the niche that I'm ... for now. It could change. But when I make it ...

Interviewer: I absolutely like it. I have two [inaudible 01:34:29].

Greg Noblin: When I make it, it's done. You know why I might not have so much attachment to it? Because if I really did, I could make my own. Right? I could just breathe one.

Interviewer: You could. Or keep the original and make ...

Greg Noblin: Write art is proof on the back of it. This is great.

Interviewer: So this is a question, 'cause you said something earlier so I don't wanna guide you. Are you happy?

Greg Noblin: I am absolutely happy. The only thing that ... I was telling Ukai this the other day ... There's only one thing that does not make me happy, or it weights on me, and it's just money. That's the only thing. Just because of some decisions I've made, or whatever, I have quite a bit of debt from school. Kinda dumb to do that in my early 30s, and being in my 40s right now and having that much debt is kinda stupid. But other than that, completely happy.

Interviewer: What would make you stop?

Greg Noblin: Death.

Interviewer: Universal answer so far.

Greg Noblin: As I've ... Last January ... November of 2016 I turned 40, and then January, I have a friend I went to high school with who's a body builder ... it's gonna be a tangent ... and I said, hey, man, I just turned 40. I am fat. I sit at a computer for 16 hours a day, eat like garbage ... Well actually I didn't eat like garbage because I was Keto, and it had done what it could do for me.

Interviewer: 'cause you can't stand on that, can you?

Greg Noblin: You can, you can. As long as you're getting ... You gotta take a multivitamin. 'Cause you're never eating fruit, ever. I haven't had legit fruit in four, three years.

Interviewer: I eat fruit every day. Sugar's my problem. But anyway. You called him, you said I'm fat.

Greg Noblin: I said I'm fat, I sit at a computer, I'm less than sedentary, if there was a way to be like that.

Interviewer: I'm immobile.

Greg Noblin: I said, I build these panels, I go to home depot, I buy all this wood, I saw it, cut it, screw it together, glue it together, paint it, sand it, all this stuff. I'm 40, completely out of shape, and I wanna be able to do this into my late 60s. Make these panels and be whatever. He wrote a program for me.

Interviewer: Right, you emailed me back and said this is ...

Greg Noblin: He wrote ... Now that I'm into it a lot longer, it's called a Brosplit. But it's one body part a day for like five days a week. So you do rms, and chest, and legs, and back, and shoulders, and abs twice a week.

Interviewer: I just love that the impetus for it is because you wanna be able to do that.

Greg Noblin: That's right.

Interviewer: I mean, that's just ...

Greg Noblin: It's like I front loaded all of the bullshit in my life in my 20s. I did the drugs, the alcohol, the cigarettes, the partying, all of that. And now I'm just cutting it out. I don't need a whole lot of entertainment. I just need a little bit of food, you know. Gotta hit a couple of macros, got rid of the drugs, got rid of the alcohol, got rid of the cigarettes, still have some nicotine. You know, it's not three packs a day. I'm not living some extravagant, exorbitant lifestyle or whatever. Weening that stuff out, and now I get to do this, and bandaid the house together sometimes.

But it's great, 'cause I can be here for that. I can be here for mail guy, I can be here if I need to sign for a package, I can be here if my wife needs me to go pick up some prescription drug, or ...

Interviewer: The kids.

Greg Noblin: Get a kid out of a school 'cause they were puking. I can do that. That's not a problem. I play Mr. Mom because she works crap hours. She leaves here at like 6:30 and she gets home at like 7 or 8. Four days a week. She's off on Wednesdays, and on Wednesdays, she's got all of the stuff that she can't do during the day that she's gotta go do. So if she wants her hair or nails, or has to go to do something, whatever, a meeting or any of that kind of stuff, has to go to the post office, whatever ... That gets done on Wednesdays.

We have the kids here for two weeks, and then they go to their dad's for two weeks. Dad's remarried, he's adopted a son. Our relationship is good. It's ... You ever see When Harry Met Sally?

Interviewer: Yeah.

Greg Noblin: I'm sorry, that's the wrong movie.

Interviewer: Sleepless in Seattle?

Greg Noblin: No, the other one. You've Got Mail.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Greg Noblin: You remember when they sat down, Meg Ryan and whoever played her husband, and they said, you know, I don't think this is gonna work, and he's like, phew, oh god, I don't either. That's what their divorce was like.

Interviewer: Right.

Greg Noblin: They're like, okay, 50 50 everything? Yup, sounds great. Okay, see you later.

Interviewer: Don't have to tear each other down, it's just not ...

Greg Noblin: That was it, right. It was a mutual split and ... He lives in a school district. He's over there, and it's like no big deal. The only thing is he played trumpet, too, and Jenn's like, Jesus, fucking married another trumpet player.

Interviewer: Do you still play?

Greg Noblin: No. I have mine upstairs. It's all aged to death. None of the pieces come apart.

Interviewer: So as you're going through life, all this happened along the way, all at once, or?

Greg Noblin: These are all from Ohio [inaudible 01:41:29].

Interviewer: I'm talking about his tattoos. I'm talking to myself. So I know what I asked you.

Greg Noblin: Oh.

Interviewer: Right, 'cause ...

Greg Noblin: No, these are all just kind of, again, more hodgepodge stuff. Stuff that I'm interested in. That's the record label. These are Sandra Dee stuff. This little pink one, I used to collect him. I have boxes of toys of his. He's right there. I got a third one somewhere, but, anyway ...

Interviewer: So it's just you.

Greg Noblin: Yup. This is Cleveland, Ohio, a big statue of Cleveland. Probably 100 feet tall. They're all pretty old. That was cutting edge, huh? The iPod? Nano? Is that a nano?

Interviewer: The worst thing I've ever done is gone to this [crosstalk 01:42:28] museum in New York. I'm like, I had that, I had that, I had that. It's in a museum. Jesus. Remember the yellow Walkman? I had that. Remember a Discman? I used to try to run with it like this so it wouldn't skip. And then eventually I was just like, fuck it, it's just gonna skip, and I would just run to skipped music.

Greg Noblin: Oh, that's what we had to do. We had to take the four by five Polaroid, right down the adjustments that we were gonna have to make based on filtration and bellows extension and all that nonsense.

Speaker 3: I'm stealing this.

Interviewer: 'Cause she teaches.

Greg Noblin: Oh you teach? Where you teach?

Speaker 3: [inaudible 01:43:10]

Greg Noblin: Awesome.

Speaker 3: Yeah. Might have to call you up and come visit.

Greg Noblin: Don't ask me to do some bellows extension adjustment. That can't ...

Interviewer: No, you'd just be a guest in the classroom.

Speaker 3: Yeah, just come chill with all the high schoolers. It's fun.

Greg Noblin: Yeah, I'd totally come hang out.

Interviewer: What was I gonna ask you? I'm good. Covered, if we wanna walk around with him. Do you wanna walk around and get anywhere? Do you wanna shoot him anywhere?

Speaker 3: Well, you want the shots that you want, and I'll get this.

Interviewer: You agreed to do this, you know that my drive for it is so that people read it. It's not really about art. It's about picking up whatever it is, the trumpet or the clay or the pencil or the sketch and just, if it's in there, you gotta ... I want somebody to read this who has a little bit of the itch to just try. Just be like ... Not that they wanna get to a certain point or anything, but just to be able to feel like I can.

Greg Noblin: That is what I think is the most important thing, and to touch on all of that, that's my life ... Saturday Night Live. I try to create that Saturday Night Live ring flash, actually but that's not a ring flash. You know the things that they do before the commercials?

So, okay. Doing this now, there's a couple of things. I need to work more, I'm a time waster, I need to ... be more prolific. In this experience in the last eight years or whatever doing this, and kinda growing and getting more exposure and more opportunities, and just some out of the blue things ... A gallery from Chattanooga contacted me yesterday and says, we wanna represent you.

Interviewer: They're good. I mean, Chattanooga's got a serious art scene.

Greg Noblin: Galleries don't do that. You have to approach them.

Interviewer: Right.

Greg Noblin: So that's amazing. That is amazing. Your opportunity, amazing. One of my heroes is Henry Rollins.

Speaker 3: I love Henry Rollins.

Greg Noblin: They said ... Asking how he became successful, he said, I just said yes to everything. Just yes. Because he was so fearful of failure. I'm not so much fearful of failure because I think that's one of the only places we can learn, but in this experience, I've been able to go somewhere, drive around, have to go do something, whatever it is. If I have to go downtown at 2:30 on Friday. Right?

Speaker 3: I'm not going anywhere on Friday.

Greg Noblin: If I have to, though, I'm not pressed for time to do it. I'm ... Instead of getting mad at the traffic and how awful everything is, I look at it, I say, why do we do this? Why do we put ourself in this situation to have gone to college, to get a job, and a career, or go to college to pick a career, only because of the monetary value of that job. Get a job somewhere and exchange our life, our effort, our label, our skills and our intelligence to someone else, for a paycheck that we don't think is enough. That we're not valued enough.

And in this city, you not only exchange your time while at the job, you exchange two hours of your life going and coming back every single day.

Interviewer: And how much mental space, too?

Greg Noblin: Yeah, and they fill that time with stuff to drone out the boredom and the misery. Podcasts or whatever. Hopefully they'll listening to Tony Robins, or who's that five minute self, what's her name?

Interviewer: [inaudible 01:47:38]

Greg Noblin: Her too. Any, you know. I think we would have ... I don't know how it could work, but ... that's not my job. I think we could have more innovation, life happiness ... What is it when ...

Interviewer: Fulfillment. Utopia.

Greg Noblin: Fulfillment's the word, exact word I'm looking for, yeah. Personal fulfillment, if people ... even if they had to go do all that other stuff ... if they would take the time to do something that they were passionate about. It doesn't matter what it is. If you are passionate about motor repair, repair some motors. You should do it. Find some, fix some. Buy broken ones, fix them. Whatever it is, do that. There is so much more fulfillment in doing something you love, failing at it, getting better at it, failing at it, getting better at it, and eventually getting to some point, than succeeding at something you hate.

Interviewer: That could be the first page. That was great. 'Cause that's what I think a lot of people are doing.

Greg Noblin: They're succeeding at stuff they hate.

Interviewer: And we keep everybody ... not maliciously, but we keep everybody ... oh, you're not a ... How do you feel about being called an artist?

Greg Noblin: I think it's fine. I wear it as a badge on honor.

Interviewer: Some people that I'm talking to that are in the same echelon as you, still are like, I don't know. I'm like, you make your fucking living making art. You're an artist. I don't know about that title. That's what we do.

Greg Noblin: You get the typical, oh, so you're the artist, and your wife has the real job. Well, if you go down to the gallery and buy a couple pieces, I will make more than she does in this week, or [inaudible 01:49:40]. It just depends.

Interviewer: But it's funny. I think this is why we're doing this. I think everybody has a little bit of [inaudible 01:49:49]. We don't foster it.

Greg Noblin: No. Not at all.

Interviewer: We think we do.

Greg Noblin: It's all about doing what you need to do to create a ... foundation where you can survive, and you're told that that survival is actually success.

Interviewer: Exactly right.

Greg Noblin: And then you're buying a bigger grill than your neighbor because ...

Interviewer: Testify, brother. I have a really big grill.

Greg Noblin: But what I'm saying is, it's penis envy. My yard's greener, I have a better tri ... My bushes look better. I don't give a ... pave it. Well, don't pave it, 'cause that would just be [inaudible 01:50:36].

Interviewer: That's my favorite, was thinking about you with the crow feathers and the [crosstalk 01:50:40]

Greg Noblin: Put some fake grass out there. I hate our HOA. If I could I would blacktop that and put parking spots in there. But it's already hot enough and I don't want blacktop on this. Maybe some AstroTurf and fake grass. Not like, AstroTurf, but ...

Interviewer: There was a radio host who got into a tiff with his HOA because he put an inflatable on his roof too early, and they wrote him a note and said, we don't allow Christmas décor up until whenever, and he's like, are you fucking kidding me? Right? So then he started doing stuff to just ... So they had this little patch of grass outside his front door, and he planted corn in it.

Greg Noblin: Oh my god, that's [inaudible 01:51:30], it won't grow for shit, only if it's [inaudible 01:51:32] to grow grown.

Interviewer: Planted corn! So he planted corn.

Greg Noblin: That's awesome.

Interviewer: So he had a letter from the HOA. It's like, sir, we don't ... that is not an approved ... you put cactus in. He just kept fucking with them, and finally they invited the HOA president on the air, on the radio show, and said, I'm so and so, and I'm gonna ... And she actually started laughing and she was like, look, I think it's funny as hell, but I have to enforce the code. But I've been thinking it was hilarious. Like, what's he gonna do next? So they started paying attention, because it was funny to them, too. But to me that's the peak underneath this façade. She thinks it's funny, too, and of course it's ridiculous that he can't have Santa on the roof in October. Who cares? You should be able to leave him there all ... but it's that, oh no no. We have a certain standard.

Greg Noblin: That's right. I'm a believer in just, do what you want as long as it's not ... if it's not preventing someone else from doing what they want. That takes kidnapping and that kind of thing out of it. Murder. That prevents people from doing what they want. Don't overtly offend anyone.

Interviewer: Larry.

Greg Noblin: Yeah, but his is in a different context.

Interviewer: He was funded first.

Greg Noblin: I think that's fine. He's sending a message and he's doing it in an art way.

Interviewer: Well, you have to go seek it. It's not like ...

Greg Noblin: That's right. Don't spray paint your roof or something. But just generally be nice to people. It's not that hard. But the thing is, my reality is different from others. I'm not super stressed out all the time because these external things ... I'm pissed off because of traffic. That wears on your existence as a human.

Interviewer: That's because you broke the matrix. You came out of it, and you see it, and so you're not affected by it, 'cause you can ...

Greg Noblin: And my honest opinion about what I'm doing is ... and I believe it whole-heartedly is that I just keep doing it. As I said earlier, I feel that I have reached a level of quality and all of that stuff, where just making enough of it, the monetary success will come. And you know what? It won't be nearly as important as all the other successes. If I'm selling a bunch of stuff and I'm like some crazy super successful artist that everybody wants to talk to, and there's a line for me at the low opening or whatever, and it's, ooh, look at this celebrity artist ... None of that will have the emotional and personal fulfillment as finally making one unwobbly panel. That first time, you know? The first time I didn't fuck something up. Those successes are way more important than all the other stuff.

Interviewer: 'cause you know that's your golden ... that's it.

Greg Noblin: Right.

Interviewer: The other's a symptom of that success.

Greg Noblin: That process of me cutting those things up and mounting them to the board and taping them together, mounting them to the board, filling in the gaps with paint and putting the gel on top, and then painting the borders and all of that stuff, there's been ... When I was learning that stuff, there was times I had one image ... There was a Zebra that I did. Mounted it. Had to sand it down. Mounted it. Had to sand it down. Mounded it, had to sand it down. The fourth one was good. But it was still wobbly.

Speaker 3: Can't get everything.

Greg Noblin: Let's walk up. I wanted to some other than just right here.

And then what? Tell me?

Greg Noblin: Those are ... That's what's important to me. My dream car is a van because it's something that can hold bigger panels, right? I can put a 12 foot panel in there. That's my dream car.

Interviewer: I love your bench with your weights.

Greg Noblin: Oh, so our kids ... They [inaudible 01:56:14] in a week. And they did health and phys-ed at summer school to knock it off, and [inaudible 01:56:38].

Interviewer: No, you can keep talking. I've personified mine.

Okay, mic is back with us. I literally talk to him. It's weird. Yeah, this is great. Alright.

Greg Noblin: Yeah, so. Oh, one of 'ems [inaudible 01:58:18].

Interviewer: Oh, I was wondering why I was getting such light. Did you see me over here? I'm like, what am I ... what's the deal?

Greg Noblin: This has a wireless set up but it's not setting up anything. The wireless isn't triggering every time.

Speaker 3: It must be this ... I mean, this is obviously ...

Greg Noblin: So what I did I just went to the PC cord, and it's this one and this are just [inaudible 01:58:44]. So yeah, I'll just put something in there and ... I don't have a card in here but ... sit on the floor and ... so I have my little tabletop, and if I'm doing glass, then this would all be black. For the blending mode. If you photograph on black with glass, there's a blending mode in Photoshop that just takes the black away. So all that's left is the glare, the reflections, the highlights that you've put in with fill cards, or however. Is that ... You getting too much?

Speaker 3: I know, I'm trying to ... I'm just trying to trick it a little bit.

Interviewer: You guys are cracking me up. I'm just gonna trick it. What?

Greg Noblin: So here's the hour glass in the [inaudible 01:59:42] show.

Interviewer: Oh, yeah.

Greg Noblin: [inaudible 01:59:48]

Interviewer: The boat is so small.

Greg Noblin: Yeah, you know, that was ... I built a model.

PART 4 OF 5 ENDS [02:00:04]

Interviewer: That's metaphoric, I love it.

Greg Noblin: And that was the biggest mistake of my life, 'cause it was like, this is the one I want. So I grab the one off of the shelf, and I can just turn this label off.

Speaker 1: Yeah, please, fix it.

Interviewer: That means a lot to me, especially that it's a life boat.

Greg Noblin: Now try.

Speaker 1: Okay.

Greg Noblin: That's good.

Speaker 1: Yeah that's good.

Greg Noblin: So, I just grab the model ship that I wanted and a friend of mine from Ohio shipped me his [inaudible 02:00:35] whale and I put the ship on top of the whale but I had to build this model right, so I get home like, "Oh, it's going to be great. I'll just take the pieces out and glue 'em together," and I get here, I open it up, and it's all white. Nothing's painted.

Interviewer: Oh shit! Oh shit!

Greg Noblin: It's like 900 pieces. The construction's book like ... Took me eight days to make it.

Interviewer: You did it?

Greg Noblin: I'm like four hours a day-

Interviewer: This is that? This is the life boat from that?

Greg Noblin: Yeah but that was just two pieces, right? That just goes, boop.

Interviewer: No, I know what you mean, but still.

Greg Noblin: Well, actually there's three 'cause there's the one on the top part, but yeah, the boat, the ship itself, it took me like four hours a day for like a week.

Interviewer: I just love that you did it-

Greg Noblin: I was so done with it.

Interviewer: -and didn't say, "Fuck it, I'm gonna go buy one." I love that you said, "Well-"

Greg Noblin: That's the thing. You couldn't. Well you could, but they're like four or five hundred dollars for a ...

Interviewer: Oh, for a done one.

Greg Noblin: Like one that's detailed enough? And it's just, it killed me.

Interviewer: Charge more for that one. I'm kidding. Do you want to get him in the garage?

Speaker 1: Hmm?

Interviewer: The garage? The studio?

Speaker 1: I want you in the garage, I want you upstairs, I want you ... Let's get you everywhere.

Greg Noblin: So when I'm working at the computer, it's ...

Speaker 1: Dark, yeah. It's the [inaudible 02:01:53] yes. Cool, and dark, and the fan. I love it.

Interviewer: You know it's funny you said, "I have a lot of time and I waste a lot of time," but then you say things like, "16 hours at the computer in Photoshop."

Speaker 1: Why don't you sit there for a minute? I'll try and do it.

Greg Noblin: Not always.

Interviewer: Right, right, right. I just, you go in fits and starts, and what I like about that is it's exactly what you were saying. It breaks the nomenclature of eight hour work day, you know?

Greg Noblin: No absolutely.

Interviewer: It may be 16 hours one day, zero the next.

Greg Noblin: It absolutely ... Yes, that's right. And it might be eight hours starting on 4 p.m. on Friday, and finishing at midnight, Friday night.

Interviewer: And we've got to get to a point where universal, that that's okay. It doesn't have to be ...

Greg Noblin: That's right.

Interviewer: Yeah. And then you know what it would abate? Traffic.

Greg Noblin: Yeah.

Interviewer: And a lot of the things that are irritants would abate.

Greg Noblin: I have many times, sat here and knocked out an image on a holiday, on a day when most people are, "Oh my God, I'm done with work." Kick up, go to the movies, Friday night. Stuff like that. And I'll start it 'cause sometimes, [Jen 02:03:09] will text me and an emergency bag just came in or whatever, and it'll be 4 p.m. on Friday. A [canine unit 02:03:20] will come in. They do those for free.

Interviewer: Oh that's cool.

Greg Noblin: And just something weird or whatever. And if it just came in, if it's three or four o'clock, you're looking one to two hours before she gets in through a X-ray, and then thirty minutes to put it down.

Interviewer: Anesthesia, yeah.

Greg Noblin: Put her under an anesthesia. Two hour surgery and she's got to stay there until she comes out of anesthesia.

Interviewer: Wake up, yeah. And that's crazy when they wake up.

Greg Noblin: And then you just [charge 02:03:50] directions and all of that stuff and no one listens to you. I call those repeat customers. She'll fix a broken leg and they'll take it home and let it run up and down the stairs, and it just shatters into a bajillion pieces. I say, "Well, good job. You want to amputate or put it down?"

Interviewer: Oh yeah.

Greg Noblin: For another three grand. Could do a bone head ... So she sometimes, not often, but sometimes a Thursday or Friday, she'll come home at ten, eleven, twelve.

Interviewer: Right. Let's get him in the garage. Ooh, that's a cold room. I love this and then this.

Speaker 1: I know right?

Greg Noblin: Yeah.

Interviewer: I love your horses.

Speaker 1: I'm just curious about this. What is this?

Greg Noblin: That's our intruder divert-

Speaker 1: Oh okay, I knew it had something to do with ...

Greg Noblin: There was ... There's been a couple of houses where people had ...

Interviewer: Break ins?

Greg Noblin: Yeah. They weren't home.

Interviewer: Oh, like home invasion, middle of the day kind of thing?

Greg Noblin: Yeah. And sometimes-

Speaker 1: Yeah. Maybe that, that's a big neighborhood thing. That was what happened when we lived in Snow Mountain.

Greg Noblin: That's actually going to get solved. Technology's going to solve that 'cause everybody's going to have a ringing doorbell.

Interviewer: They caught a guy in our neighborhood, he was porch shopping.

Greg Noblin: Oh.

Interviewer: Yeah, [inaudible 02:05:09], then a ring, he walked up and they were like, they gave the ring video to the police and they caught him.

Greg Noblin: Exactly.

Interviewer: High speed chase, drugs and guns, stolen car.

Greg Noblin: But that's going to happen and eventually that's just going to be something that everyone, it's a $200 investment.

Interviewer: Right.

Greg Noblin: So everyone's going to have one. So anybody that comes into the neighborhood is going to have 40 different views.

Interviewer: Oh that's true, yeah. Yeah, 'cause they showed the guy. He pulled into the driveway in a white, like they, he pulled into the driveway.

Speaker 1: Big Brother, though.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Greg Noblin: Well at least it's you monitoring and, you know.

Interviewer: Not somebody.

Speaker 1: Well, not necessarily.

Greg Noblin: Well ...

Speaker 1: Depending on the software you're using, right?

Interviewer: I told you I was doing, talking to [Russell 02:05:56] about a golf thing, like over the phone. We were talking over the phone, on a golf thing, and the next day on my Amazon ... I have Alexa in every room in the house. And the next day on my Amazon, there was an ad for a golf thing.

Greg Noblin: Oh.

Speaker 1: Oh yeah. They use the algorithms, whatever you're ... Yeah. I mean it's, it's happening guys.

Interviewer: It doesn't bother me though. I don't care.

Speaker 1: Freedom is gone!

Interviewer: No, I'm okay with it.

Greg Noblin: I had seeing ads for stuff that I just bought.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Interviewer: Yeah. There's that. But that-

Speaker 1: That's not a good system.

Greg Noblin: If I'm upstairs and on my computer with my headphones on, it's the middle of the day 'cause most break ins are between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. or something like that. And I just put that five piece there and I jam it there at the ...

Interviewer: Then there won't ... Yeah. Kevin and Emily, Christmas middle of the day, somebody kicked in the door, stole all their Christmas presents.

Speaker 1: Kids, yeah.

Interviewer: They didn't even know. Alright, garage. That's where, so you work up there and you bring it into ...

Greg Noblin: Well yeah, I build them all up there and then I print them and I hand cut them out. Come down here. Then ...

Speaker 1: You need to get your cutting board.

Greg Noblin: What I ... No, see I want them hand cut.

Speaker 1: Oh, okay.

Greg Noblin: I want them to be ...

Speaker 1: A little, yeah.

Greg Noblin: To look like they're hand ...

Interviewer: That kind of looked like [Rocket 02:07:21] a little bit.

Speaker 1: Yeah, a little bit.

Interviewer: The other guy's parrot.

Greg Noblin: It's ... I want ... There's this hand-built quality to them 'cause I can get a solid sheet printed. Especially now 'cause it's a lot less expensive, but I can have the print in one giant sheet and I can mount it cleanly with to a purchased board, and it would be perfect. But I don't want it to be perfect, I want it to look like you've stumbled into an attic. "What the hell is this? What's this from?"

Interviewer: Yeah.

Greg Noblin: So there's this ... These aren't done but I had to fill in the gaps. So I fill the gaps in just so you can't see bare wood underneath, and then after that dries, I knot it with PDA glue. And fill in the gaps. Once that's done, I take gel medium, there's a gallon behind you, and I put it on, I wipe, smear it all across the top, and I [inaudible 02:08:33].

Speaker 1: Ah.

Greg Noblin: With my hands. And then I take the tunnel and knock all the-

Interviewer: Oh, so your hands are in ...

Greg Noblin: Yeah. So I knock all the [petes 02:08:38] down, and then that dries and I measure an inch all around, painter tape it, and paint it with golden [inaudible 02:08:49].

Interviewer: I see. Oh yeah, there's your ...

Greg Noblin: With some blanks, you know.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Interviewer: Cool.

Greg Noblin: So, yeah. Two of those are gonna go to [a ware 02:09:01], two of these are going to [a ware 02:09:03].

Interviewer: If it's their art thing, we'll probably be there.

Greg Noblin: I'm using two of these. I have a bunch of blanks. So I basically have, I have five new ones that are going to be for the show at the art institute, and it can hold like 19. And I don't have 19 pieces, so I'll have five new ones, I have two there, so that's five, six, seven. And then I can put some of these smaller pieces in there and probably fill it up.

But this ... Oh crap, I don't know what I was going to say. I print them and then I bring them out.

Speaker 1: Yeah, you were talking about processing this in here.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Greg Noblin: Yeah, so I'll know ... I make them all first digitally and then I know, "Okay, I need this size of this many with size panel," and then I go get the wood or sometimes buy. I would really start preferring to buy. If I can start making more and targeting more volume-

Speaker 1: Yeah, saving a lot of time.

Greg Noblin: You guys sell most everything that I have so that's something ... Right, then that tells me I need to make more. Right?

Interviewer: Well I bought off the floor too, remember. They were like, I'm like, "Oh, you need to ..." So it's just exposure.

Greg Noblin: And then that other gallery, they're like, "We want to represent you," and I didn't know how to respond to them like, "Look I got a show coming up and everything else is sold, so I don't have anything for you." I don't want to be like, "Oh, I'm super duper-"

Interviewer: Right, right. But you know, well it's an over time thing, right?

Greg Noblin: Right. So hopefully they'll call me. I haven't checked my phone.

Interviewer: They could just put a blank thing on the wall that said, "When he's done, something from [Rick 02:10:48] will go here." Pre-orders accepted.

Greg Noblin: Right. That was another goal that's happened, that's starting to happen. Something that I always wanted to have happen is, when I make the image, the digital image, and I post that image, it's sold before it's even made.

Interviewer: Makes sense to me.

Greg Noblin: That's one of those, "I'm successful if ..."

Interviewer: Right.

Greg Noblin: I'm successful if it's going before I even made it. That means the person that's buying it already knows what it's going to be like.

Interviewer: What it's going to be. Do you do commissions? So like if I said I wanted something with a bat or ...

Greg Noblin: No. I'm not necessarily saying I would turn it down, the thing is it's really difficult for me-

Interviewer: To manufacture it if it doesn't come to you.

Greg Noblin: Right. It's difficult to pull the image out of your head and make it what you see.

Interviewer: Well, and plus you have stuff in here other than just a bat. It's a meaning. "The bat is a ..." or you know.

Greg Noblin: Right.

Interviewer: What are my elephants? Now it's just offered. Like, I have into the world and set sail. Like, my little elephant in the boat with a fan, but like, you don't have to tell me if you don't want to.

Greg Noblin: Oh so the meaning in a lot of this stuff is, it's community, it's sometimes either ironic or preposterous situations and it's just a metaphor for our experience as humans.

Interviewer: Right. The silliness of 4:30 traffic.

Greg Noblin: Right, or sitting in a boat with a fan in it, thinking that it's going to make it go anywhere. You're not going anywhere.

Interviewer: Same thing. Same thing, yeah there's not gonna be, there's the same [inaudible 02:12:55] position.

Greg Noblin: Right. And even if it would blow you, you're gonna pull the plug out eventually. And the fan's gonna stop working. Now you're screwed. And why is the bird sitting on the front of it, with him, taking the boat somewhere? It could fly off and do what it wants.

Interviewer: And why an umbrella over the baby, over the egg?

Greg Noblin: We're taking [crosstalk 02:13:14] with us sometimes.

Interviewer: I love all of it. I love all of it.

Greg Noblin: But a lot of it is just a metaphor for us and our experience; of success, of struggle, of overcoming, of failure.

Interviewer: Of relating. Of whatever, yeah.

Greg Noblin: Putting ourselves or being in dumb, bad situations that we've either put ourselves in perfectly on our own through poor decision making or things that are outside of our control. And sometimes, it takes more than just ourselves to do something or get something accomplished, or to overcome a situation. That's all in these things.

Interviewer: Yeah. You can feel it. I think that's where the interest comes from as if there's the other world thing.

Greg Noblin: Right, and I want to tell those things without being too macabre, dark, and just kind of more joyous and ...

Interviewer: Well 'cause you're not necessarily ... I mean, the way it feels to me is, that's in there but you're necessarily condemning it and throwing it, you're just saying, "It is."

Greg Noblin: Right. Yeah.

Interviewer: It is.

Greg Noblin: We've all had a flat tire in life. We've all had a wrench go into our plans. We've all had a success and a failure and there's not really any kind of experience that's completely unique to ourselves. If you ever experienced something in life, you can go somewhere and find a group of people that have gone through the same thing.

Interviewer: Easier now too.

Greg Noblin: Right. And it doesn't matter what it is.

Interviewer: Yeah there's a group I heard of, of men who swallow Barbie heads and pass them.

Speaker 1: What?

Interviewer: That's the most unique group I've ever heard of. Yeah, there's some sort of sensation when they're coming out, that, yep ...

Greg Noblin: I forget there is a group of people that like to poop in their pants in public.

Speaker 1: Well what's the fetish of ...

Interviewer: Wearing a fur-suit?

Speaker 1: Yeah. What are those?

Interviewer: Furries.

Speaker 1: The furries?

Interviewer: Furries.

Speaker 1: I had no idea. My high schoolers let me know about that one. They showed me pictures. I'm like, "Oh my God."

Greg Noblin: Do you know what 'brony' is?

Speaker 1: Oh yeah. The bronies.

Interviewer: Yes.

Greg Noblin: They go to conventions.

Speaker 1: Yeah, I had to throw old my-

Interviewer: Well, you got to be careful now. When you Google it, parents have to be careful if they Google 'My Little Pony' because ...

Speaker 1: Yeah. They come up. Yeah.

Interviewer: Different things.

Greg Noblin: Oh yeah.

Interviewer: Yeah, but to your point. The fact that just enumerated all of those, once you know, yeah. Whatever it is, there's a group for it.

Speaker 1: It exists. Yeah.

Interviewer: I like that though. There's no experience that is wholly unique and unto ourselves.

Greg Noblin: True.

Interviewer: Wow. Good?

Speaker 1: Good.

Interviewer: I'm good.

Greg Noblin: I think that there is a thing, this is about photography that there's one last thing that I'd like to say, so I just want to say. A lot of this has to do with perception of reality. And I know I said I was disillusioned with reality. I kind of reject reality [inaudible 02:16:43]. And how we can do what we want to do, and we can be successful at those things. And with photography, I've often thought, "Am I capturing or am I taking photos thinking ..."

This is something that had occurred to me when I was in school. "Am I really capturing reality?" Like, when I go somewhere to take a photograph or something, we think of photography as a way of documenting a moment in time. In trying to, well then it's a little bit more difficult than film because we one frame. We don't have two hours, we have one frame to tell the whole story.

But am I really documenting reality in that? Or is it my perception of reality? 'Cause I don't think we can capture reality.

Interviewer: And anything you're capturing, we made up. I think that a lot, like, "Somebody made this up."

Greg Noblin: Right.

Speaker 1: Well, it's your perception. I always use that argument for the Bible too. Like when somebody throws religion at me, I'm like, "Well, that's somebody's perception." "Well it was written down! It's written word!" "Well-"

Interviewer: That was somebody's take on it.

Speaker 1: Today, this experience right here. If I was to write was I saw, what I heard, it'd be completely different than what [Teeny 02:18:02] would write. It'd be completely different.

Interviewer: Look at the news' perceptions of the world.

Speaker 1: So, but what you're saying is interesting too, about perception and reality because in my divorce in dealing with a narcissist and coming back for the sake of our kids, trying to go to therapy and figure out a way of maintaining a relationship, he just decided that this was his reality and he believes it.

Interviewer: Oh he does, yeah.

Speaker 1: And that has become his story. He manifested his own reality.

Greg Noblin: Sure.

Speaker 1: But that's not my reality.

Greg Noblin: That's right.

Speaker 1: That's not our reality, but it's funny 'cause he's just that, and he truly ... Like honestly, it's all he's been, like that's his story. That's his reality.

Greg Noblin: Wait, do you ... That is ... That's powerful.

Speaker 1: But you can do that. But you can do ... Like a switch went off in my head like, "Oh, he can do that."

Greg Noblin: You can do that.

Speaker 1: "I can do that too."

Greg Noblin: We can manifest our own reality.

Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean it really is perception.

Greg Noblin: When you start taking these attachments.

Speaker 1: It really is your own limitations. The attachments is a big thing. That's a huge thing.

Greg Noblin: The car, the grill, the big TV, all of that stuff. Keeping up the [Jones 02:19:16] is I've got status. All of that stuff. And not just those things. It can be anything. Food, alcohol, drugs-

Interviewer: "How many followers do I have?"

Greg Noblin: Right. If you can let go of those things and just focus on what you're passionate about and what brings you happiness, I think that's what would work.

Interviewer: Cat.

Speaker 1: Cat.

Greg Noblin: Maybe.

Speaker 1: I might get you out to come talk to my high schoolers 'cause I think ... We drive as far as philosophies and what I teach them and what I tell them and talk about future.

Interviewer: I'm gonna just get my purse.

Speaker 1: Like I know, all their parents would kill me if they heard me.

You might need that set of paper.

Interviewer: Oh yeah, that's ... That's been a universal thing.

Greg Noblin: If you're gonna be a doctor, lawyer.

Speaker 1: Right. Those, those, a vet. Yeah, yeah, any kind of profession like that.

Interviewer: But that can go, you know what though about ... I thought about the doctor and lawyer thing. The doctor and lawyer thing is almost an apprenticeship and a trade. You don't need the first four years of bullshit.

Speaker 1: If you have someone-

Interviewer: Go straight into it.

Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean if you have someone ... Well that's a lot of time for them to take to do that. That is a lot to learn.

Interviewer: That, part of it. But you have to have undergrad before you ... Then you should be able to go straight into ...

Speaker 1: No, no, no, I, yeah. But it's this construct that-

Greg Noblin: You don't need English, English 2.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Interviewer: Trigonometry.

Speaker 1: And now it's almost [crosstalk 02:20:45] first, these colleges, they're getting this influx of kids and lot of kids shouldn't be there. So now they're going back to more of a handholding, like, "You got to take this [inaudible 02:20:54] course, and you've got to meet with your counselor, and you can't sign up for your own classes."

Greg Noblin: I completely agree.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.

Greg Noblin: I think it should be mandatory to take a gap year.

Interviewer: Yeah, I do too. I do too.

Greg Noblin: 'Cause it took me a decade and you know, I thought I knew what I wanted to do, but didn't and I think that's another problem. It's like, "I think I know what I want to do," and then 15 years into your accounting career-

Speaker 1: Well you don't even know what's open to you until you get out there.

Greg Noblin: Fuck math.

Speaker 1: Right?

Greg Noblin: You know?

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Greg Noblin: So ...

Speaker 1: Fuck math. Fuck math.

Greg Noblin: That's not to say you don't get an education.

Speaker 1: Right.

Interviewer: Yeah. True.

Greg Noblin: I went to school for photography. At this point right now, I could go spend four hundred, three hundred dollars a month to get a lynda.com account, hit up YouTube, do something ...

Speaker 1: What's the first account you said?

Greg Noblin: Lynda. Lynda.com?

Speaker 1: Oh Lynda. Training.

Interviewer: Training.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Greg Noblin: Yeah, yeah. And just hammer those hours and then join ... The one thing that's difficult for photography is you need that critique. You need that interaction with people that are also doing it. Join a photo club. Join the APA. Join ACP.

Speaker 1: Yeah, just jump on Flickr.

Interviewer: They're stuck, yeah.

Greg Noblin: Right. But you could do, every year, you can go do the pin-up shelf, right?

Speaker 1: Which we do.

Greg Noblin: And put that up there. Get some critiques and useful feedback from people that are also doing it. What do they like about it, what do they don't like about it. Get that thick skin.

Speaker 1: Well that's the other problem too. People get the education but then they don't put that into play necessarily. That's the most important piece, is that interaction and that exposure and that ...

Greg Noblin: That's right.

Speaker 1: You know, so being a high school teacher, I'm like, "I can teach you everything that I know. I can teach things in theory."

Greg Noblin: That's right.

Speaker 1: "Get up and go to a damn gallery company! Go talk to an artist. Find somebody that you like. Email them. They might answer you back!"

Interviewer: Actually I should come talk to your class too, and say, "You know what I did?"

Speaker 1: You totally should.

Interviewer: "I called them."

Speaker 1: I would love to do that 'cause I want to pull more people in so that they can see, "Here are your options. Here are your options." I tell them, "I wasn't a good student. I didn't go to school for photography." "What?!" You know? So having that individual come and give their-

Interviewer: It is definitely a theme. It's a theme that's bubbling up after talking to you guys.

Speaker 1: No it totally is.

Interviewer: I think everybody was like, "You don't need to go to college."

Speaker 1: But I mean, I would you need to go to college for the experience and the networking and-

Interviewer: But it's not college-as-we're-saying college, it's some sort of experience and maybe it's taking what we're saying about-

Speaker 1: A transition to adulthood or something, you know.

Interviewer: Or saying about the groups that are interested in something and make that a college.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Well I think they need to bring back the vocational stuff in high school, too.

Interviewer: Yeah, and not it be so ...

Speaker 1: They need a shop. They need a freaking wood shop, you know? So that kids can experiment with that.

Greg Noblin: I think it's so funny that you could to UGA for $26,000 a year, get a degree in statistics or whatever, and then be a CPA, right? And make $120,000 a year 'cause you run in the CPA practice and dealing with employees or whatever, but you can go spend six months and apprentice to be a welder and make $100,000 a year.

Interviewer: Right.

Speaker 1: Oh yeah.

Interviewer: But it goes back to that passion for it. You're right. It depends on whether you're ruled by the money or society's path or ...

Speaker 1: Well, it's flipping. It's flipping.

Interviewer: It is flipping.

Greg Noblin: What tells you that being an accountant is more prestigious than being a welder?

Speaker 1: Well how about this? How about this?

Greg Noblin: Society is.

Interviewer: That's right.

Speaker 1: Pick any profession. Pick any kind of middle in the road profession. I mean the whole social media stuff that I'm doing for fun, I'm making a crap load more money doing that than I am teaching and I were just to stop teaching and just go dive full into that ...

Greg Noblin: That's something else that you could tell, if you don't already, the kids is you don't have to rely on one income source.

Speaker 1: Right.

Greg Noblin: I don't.

Speaker 1: No. Hustle [inaudible 02:25:06].

Interviewer: I got a couple-

Greg Noblin: I get twelve to 99's every year.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Greg Noblin: You know?

Interviewer: Right. Right.

Greg Noblin: That's ridiculous.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Interviewer: Some stuff, yeah.

Greg Noblin: It might be $600 bare minimum from this place, but at this other place, might be only doing $50 a month or whatever.

Speaker 1: Right, but every little bit, yeah.

Greg Noblin: But what's great about that is if you have 15 to 20 of those things, and it's $2000 a month or whatever, and one of them happens to not do well anymore ...

Interviewer: You diversify your work portfolio, not just your investments.

Speaker 1: Well you can put more work into the other things.

Greg Noblin: Right, so you're down fifty dollars a month.

Interviewer: Instead of your whole job and-

Greg Noblin: That's right.

Interviewer: -and everything. Yeah.

Greg Noblin: Yeah so you ...

Speaker 1: Yeah. That's funny to think about.

Greg Noblin: It's not hard to drum up some $1500 a month business.

Interviewer: No.

Speaker 1: No. It's not.

Interviewer: I think that's why a lot of people do Uber and [extras 02:25:55].

Greg Noblin: That's right.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Interviewer: I just did extra work last night.

Greg Noblin: Oh, at a movie?

Interviewer: Yeah.

Greg Noblin: Oh cool.

Interviewer: I was on, have you ever heard of 'The Resident?' It's a series. In season two of 'The Resident,' I was hospital administrator.

Speaker 1: Oh you were? Did you have a line?

Interviewer: I had two moving scenes with the lead people in the scene. I didn't even know them. I was like, "Who are the 14 year old kids?" They're like, "Those are the leads." I was like ... I'm just too old.

Greg Noblin: Well, it was nice meeting you and talking.

Interviewer: Oh it was wonderful to meet you.

Speaker 1: It was great to meet you.

Interviewer: The elephant in the boat wants me to thank you.

Greg Noblin: Oh, you're very welcome.

Interviewer: Yeah. I can't wait to go home and go, "Fuck!"

Greg Noblin: Yeah.

Interviewer: Process from here, I keep reiterating, but you know you guys ... I'm gonna get the rest of the interviews done. I think we have five more to do. And then I'm going to start and I'll send you in the first draft and make sure there's nothing that's like, "There's no fucking way you're printing that." So that's it.

Greg Noblin: Okay, sounds great.

Interviewer: Alright, thanks, we got to go. Thanks.

Greg Noblin: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Interviewer: I will ... It'll be months and months, so don't ... I'll just keep sending those updates.

Greg Noblin: Do you want me to give you a card or do you, if I think I ...

Speaker 1: Yeah, I will take your card.

Greg Noblin: Let me find one.

Speaker 1: Or I mean, are you-