Go behind the scenes in an art museum. Join the crew from the Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art as we chat with artists, curators, and everyone else who helps us bring our galleries to life. New episodes will be posted in selected months after the program has aired on KUNV 91.5.
The Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art is located on the campus of one of the most racially diverse universities in the United States, we strive to create a nourishing environment for those who continue to be neglected by contemporary art museums, including BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ groups. As the only art museum in the city of Las Vegas, we commit ourselves to leveling barriers that limit access to the arts, especially for first-time visitors. To facilitate access for low-income guests we provide free entry to all our exhibitions, workshops, lectures, and community activities. Our collection of artworks offers an opportunity for researchers and scholars to develop a more extensive knowledge of contemporary art in Southern Nevada. The Barrick Museum is part of the College of Fine Arts at the University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV).
Announcer
0:00:00
This is a KUNV Studios original program.
Wesley Knight
0:00:04
The following is special programming aired in collaboration with the Marjory Barrett Museum of Art on the campus of UNLV and does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 Jazz and More, the University of Nevada Las Vegas, or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education.
Music
0:00:20
♪♪♪
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:00:27
Hello, everyone. My name is Katie B. Funk, and I'm coming at you, speaking today from the Marjory Barrett Museum of Art, and I am being joined by a very special guest, Sapira Chirk. Hello, Sapira. Hello. Thank you for having me. Thank you so much for joining me today. How have you been? I have been very well. Our office is moving, so everything's a little hectic.
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:00:51
I'm sorry?
Sapira Cheuk
0:00:52
Exciting.
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:00:53
It is exciting. It's just a little hectic. Always, always. Well, can we start with a little bit of background information? Just where you're from, the kind of art you create, and just for fun, what is your favorite way to beat the lesser famous Vegas winter weather?
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:01:09
Oh, that's a great question. I was born in Hong Kong and we immigrated to Honolulu when I was 10 years old. So my art is really influenced by the places I have been. I am an ink artist. I make large-scale ink paintings. They're primarily on paper. I learned how to paint the really traditional Chinese calligraphy landscape painting way. And I carry a lot
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:01:41
of that into my contemporary practice. Specifically, the ink I use are a blend of Sumi ink. It's a Chinese brush painting. They're, you know, very traditional, you know, run-of-the-milk ink that you would get or you start with in Hong Kong. And then I blend it with India ink, which I really associate with my Western art education. When you use pen and ink, that's usually the ink that you buy, it's like the calligraphy ink. And I blend the two and they create this very particular effect.
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:02:18
One is water-soluble, one isn't. So they blend and repel each other. And that is kind of the core and characteristic of all of my work and it really represent me as an immigrant adapting to a place but also like having a difficulty adjusting so it's like together but apart but also as one in the body. Yeah I like that idea of things combining but also resisting resisting and working with that from your experiences and kind of translating that into your art. Yeah, that's really interesting. What inspired you to become an artist? Oh my gosh. This is gonna sound
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:03:01
crazy. I'll tell you the journey. So I'm a Chinese immigrant and growing up in the 90s it was really frowned upon to pursue art seriously as a career. And especially I was the first in my immediate family to go to college. So it was a big no-no to pursue art. But it's just such a core part of my being. I just make stuff. It doesn't have to specifically be painting or whatever. I could be baking or putting knick-knacks together or like crafting. It just, I need to make some stuff with
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:03:41
my hands. So anyways, I'm always drawn to it. It's always a part of me. But I was really advised to not pursue to a point where I thought I would be disowned when I was going to major in art. And so I didn't tell my parents that I majored in, I told them I majored in accounting. And at that time, they moved back to Hong Kong. Because I was the first to go to college and to graduate, my whole family flew out from Hong Kong and they brought my aunt, they brought my cousins, I have family from the UK they came to, and I haven't told them that
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:04:21
studied art. Wow. Yeah. And so I was like, well, they have to know when I walk down, you know, to get my diploma. So on graduation day, they had announced the graduates of this college, College of Fine Art, you know, here are the graduates.
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:04:39
I don't see them in the crowd because they're driving separately. I don't see them. I don't know where they are. But they came in late. They saw me, they heard my name being announced. They see me walk across the stage, get my diploma, and they all clap. They're walking in. They're like, okay, we saw our daughter graduate.
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:04:56
And they still didn't know that I was an artist, that I majored in art. Yeah. And it was until like much, much later that I came out to my family. It was an ordeal. That's impressive. Did that pressure or resistance to want to pursue art make you want to do it even more? Or did it feel like
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:05:15
nerve wracking to kind of keep it more secret?
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:05:18
Yes, it felt like I think, when I was a much younger artist, it felt like I had a lot to prove. And I had to be like, I can, you know, have a creative life. Maybe it's not what I do for money. But it can still be meaningful and worthwhile and be taken seriously not just as a hobby, but as an intellectual pursuit. And that's actually how I went into graduate school because I'm a serials government worker. I've been with a state agency for forever. But I went in and
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:05:55
thinking that this is something that I care deeply about and it is worth investing actual money to pay for a graduate degree. And it's fulfilling enough where I think it's worthwhile to give myself to. Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Did you along the way, either young or up into grad school,
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:06:17
did you feel like you had specific favorite artists that were influencing how you made work?
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:06:23
Those are really great questions and I can never answer them in the way I find or in the way I think it's useful or interesting. I will tell you my one very impactful moment when I experienced art. I was 10 years old. We just moved to the U.S. We went to the Getty and I saw Van Gogh's irises where they're all crushed. And I cried. I was 10 years old and I cried in front of that painting because I thought it was so beautiful. I think that is a moment where I would like to recapture in my work. How do I get them out of you? Yes. With that, what do you think is the hardest part about being an artist and what's maybe like the best or
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:07:23
the, you know, the thing that makes you want to keep doing it? And like, what's the biggest
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:07:27
kind of hurdle?
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:07:28
Wow, I think there was hurdles and difficulties in different part of my career. When I was very young, I was obviously, you know, dealing with my parents and their expectation, and then having to reconcile the fact that, like, you need to also have a job if you actually want to support yourself. So those things were stuff that I had to struggle with when I was younger, and then maybe like mid career, or not mid career, but when I was going through grad school was a lot of like, success look like and coming to the realization is that only you can define what success look
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:08:04
like for you and then really letting go of all of the ego that comes with being an artist in a competitive space. And now I think my biggest struggle, I'm sorry just talking about struggle, there's a lot of fun things. finding time to make work that you are, for me anyway, to make work that you're really really proud of that are serious because you will never have the focus
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:08:30
that you had in graduate school when you have all of your time and all your focus into making something. So I think finding time to really seriously investigate is it's a struggle. Yeah. Yeah. Yes, as someone that's teetering to the end of my MFA career here at UNLV, I definitely understand that kind of concentrated time to work and really, really push and explore gets a lot harder and muddier when you have to now get work. And like, you know, as you said, kind of provide for yourself while still pursuing the creative side that you want to really do. With that, how do you try to
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:09:22
kind of manage the business and creative sides of your practice? Does it feel like one or does it feel very like one is one part and one is the other and I keep them very separate at the end of the day. I don't bring, you know, if I'm having a decision monetarily about a piece, I don't bring that to the studio or is that in your studio flow? How do you kind of organize that? Yeah, that's very, that's a great question. I will just kind of go over all the things that I do as a person. So I have a full time job within the Nevada Arts
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:10:02
Council. I love my work. It's the most fulfilling job I've ever had. And I teach part time at UNLV and CSN. And then I have my art practice and I actually have a small craft business that actually helped me get through a lot of tough times because yeah, and I'm a big planner. It's my thing. That's what my small business like specializing. It's planner stickers. It sounds silly, but I've never made that much money off of my art. Yeah, yeah. So I think and before I
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:10:39
worked for the Nevada Arts Council when I was in California, I worked for the employment development department doing disability insurance. And I also worked for CHP. I took 911 calls. That was my first job. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. But anyways, I think they all actually bleeds into, like, I think all parts of my life bleeds into my practice, A, because you're a being, like, how do you separate that part of yourself, but also finding what is worthwhile for your time is really important and finding meaningful work. I don't know if that answered your question. I think throughout my career
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:11:17
I was trying to get to the role that I have now. I was working in the public sector. I'm still very interested in art and supporting artists, and I feel like this role that I have now it's like the culmination of everything that I've had experienced and learned. Absolutely. What kind of current projects are you working on at the moment or anything coming up either end of this year or into next year? Yeah, so I have some exciting... Well, okay, should I talk about work work or my practice?
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:11:50
Both. Okay, sounds good. So let's talk about my practice first. So I have an exhibition in Oaks Park Art Center in Fallon, Nevada, and it's called Transmitting Figures. We'll have a culminating talk on January 18th, and that will include two of my collaborators, one of whom works for the Burek, Chloe Bernardo. Yeah, Chloe, one of my paintings are inspired by her movements. She is a Pengli dance performer, dancer, and I
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:12:34
won't try to explain what she does, but if you are so inclined. And then my other collaborator is Dr. Stephanie Montgomery. She is a historian that wrote, that specializes on women and crime in 1930s and 40s in China. And we found a lot of commonality between my two collaborators about how bodies and bodily experience transmit knowledge, histories, and stories.
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:13:09
So that's why the show is called Transmitting Figures. So we'll have a performance, a short talk, and then a short panel discussion about all these themes and how it culminates into the work that is in Fallon right now. That show will travel to Cerro Oso Community College in Ridgecrest, California. And then I do have a confirmed show at CSN in 2026 as well. going to be good. I think it's going to be good. Yeah, so those are some of the things that's happening. And then there's lots of things happening at work. So I'm going to talk about just artist grants, because that's usually the things that gets folks excited.
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:13:46
So the Project Grant for Artists is a $3,000 grant for artists to create something or promote their work or document. There's a lot of things that we can fund, even podcasts about art. So it has to be art-focused. It can be visual, literary, or performing arts. And that application opens January 2nd
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:14:17
and close March 2nd. Again, it's $3,000, you don't need to have a match. Unfortunately, it's not available for students that are in the same field. So for example, if you are a dentistry student but you want to record an album, you can apply for that grant. But if you're an artist making art, you can't apply for it. I know you gotta wait.
Katie B. Funk
0:14:38
Rules are rules.
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:14:40
Yeah, sorry. And then we also have a fellowship coming up that is a $5,000 honorarium. It's not an honorarium, sorry. It's a $5,000 award from the Nevada Arts Council and we highlight our most prestigious most excellent artists in the state. We only award five or six a year per discipline and this year we are opening the application for performing arts and
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:15:05
literary artists. And if you are interested in applying for any of those, you can find us online. It's just nvartcouncil.org. We also have lots of professional development that are free for artists. We just hosted one for retirement. It's actually a great retirement webinar if you're just a small business owner.
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:15:33
If you're an independent artist, you're just looking to set up your retirement, you don't have a retirement plan through your employer. It was really, really helpful and it had a lot of really great information and it's free. The next one we have is going to be the bookkeeping for artists. So we try to do like a taxes for artists every year. So this year we're going to do bookkeeping. So how do you keep all your receipts? How do you keep your money straight so you can file taxes at the end or just see where your money is going, how much you're making, how much the art is costing. Those are really important questions.
Katie B. Funk
0:16:11
Always important.
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:16:12
And then we have two more webinars that are going to come online and I'll share more of that later when we solidified it. But if you're interested, there's definitely more information available on our website. That's amazing. That's so many great things for people to utilize coming up and to take advantage of. I for sure need help with money, taxes, bookkeeping, all that. I have a little crumpled up pile of receipts in my studio that I don't know what I'm doing, but I'm hanging on to them. So that's really exciting. You may have already said this, but for the grants that open up each year, do you do different sections of art,
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:16:56
or is it always like an art, a performing art, literary, does every kind of section open, or do you kind of rotate each year what you do? Yeah, so the fellowship is our most competitive and highly, you know, highly regarded award, and that rotates every other year. So it's every other discipline. So next year will be visual arts. And then for the project grant for artists is for all discipline every year.
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:17:21
And this is a $3,000 grant that you can apply for every year. I don't know if you're going to get it every year, but you can apply for it every year. And there's usually two cycles of that. And it's usually the first half of the fiscal year and the second half of the fiscal year. So the application, sorry, it's really, there's a lot of information, so I just want to share a little bit.
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:17:40
So the application's gonna open now. It's for the first half of FY26, so you gotta apply six months before you're gonna do your project or spend your money. So it could be for framing, for building a website of your art,
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:17:53
for helping you pay for, like, if you have an art fair that you need to travel to, we can help you with some of the shipping costs or registration fees. So things like that. Do you have any suggestions for people, I know this is something that I struggle with, when there's deadlines of six months prior, three months prior, whatever it may be, but you're still trying to figure out the details of the project,
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:18:19
you're not really, you don't have certain things fully fleshed out yet, do you have any advice of what the person should do, like really kind of get everything figured out before you start to apply or is it okay to kind of have some ambiguity? Yeah, I can't, I cannot speak to other grants, but for our grant specifically we know that plans change, you know, venue might fall through or things might, you know, might not go as planned. It's totally fine as long as you notify us and for the, there, you do have
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:18:49
to submit a budget of how you're planning to spend your money. And you can give us an estimate of like, the publishing this book will cost this amount of dollars. You can just get a quote. Getting quotes, I think it's pretty easy and standard.
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:19:02
And if there is a big adjustment to your expenditure, then just let us know, and then we'll work with you. And just, I think, opening the communication with us and our grants folks is really important just in case anything happen.
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:19:18
Sure. With the many hats that you wear, how do you find balance in dedicated time to the work you do in the day and then when do you do art after? Do you do it in the morning, weekends?
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:19:34
Do you have kind of a strict schedule for yourself or does it kind of just depend on what's going on? Yeah, I, that's a great question and it comes back to being a planner. Yes. It comes back to being a planner. And actually when I went to grad school, I worked full-time. So my day would be 6 30 or my start time would be 6 30, 7 30 and then I would end at like 3 34. I would drive an hour to school, go to school in the evening, and then drive home. Like, it took an hour to travel. It was insane. So, I was forged through fire.
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:20:12
JAN MISALYA Yeah, yeah, literally. SHERYL MCCARTHY Yeah, so it was very much... And my readings, I would have my phone read the readings that was assigned to me during the drives.
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:20:26
That's smart.
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:20:27
Yeah. Yeah, so anyways, I think understanding what I need to be, to feel safe, it's basically having a job, having health insurance. That makes me feel safe and secure. And I have a planning workshop for creatives
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:20:45
and that's one of the fundamental things, like in what part of your life do you not feel secure? You need to take care of that first before you can allow yourself the creativity and not to be burdened to make the work that you're supposed to make,
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:21:01
that you're put here to make. So I always talk about like, it's okay to spend time shoring up your foundation before you spend the time creating the art. And that's my philosophy, I'm sure. It's very different from everybody else.
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:21:16
But I have like, if you want to talk like technical stuff, there's plenty of planners, plenty of productivity apps that I can recommend depending on what your needs are. But I think number one is feeling secure and safe before you try to make anything. Yeah, I think that safety and security
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:21:36
has to be there for the foundation to let anything else kind of blossom and grow for sure. I'm curious, when is your birthday? February 10th.
Katie B. Funk
0:21:46
Pisces?
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:21:47
I'm Aquarius from my risings of Virgo. I think that makes sense.
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:21:51
I'm a Virgo Leo Cusper. Okay. When you said planning, I wondered about because I know specific signs are known for particular, like planning things out, organizing things, step by stepping things really well, and then some other signs are like, nope, no plan at all. So very nice.
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:22:10
We have a nice balance. February and August have six months apart. I like that. That's very good. You're my opposite. If you're a Leo, then you're the opposite sign of Aquarius. Because that's where we get along so well. Yes. That's awesome. Well, to kind of circle back a little bit to your own work, when somebody comes into a gallery, museum, any kind of space that has your work, what do you hope that they kind of feel or experience? Is there a particular, I know you talked about, I want to make them cry like Van Gogh. That's amazing. Is there any kind of particular thing you hope they'll
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:22:46
take away or question they'll have. There's a lot of themes in the, a lot of, in like bodies of my work that I would like them to experience or consider. I think, I think like even uttering the word I hope that they take away puts a lot of pressure on myself already, but I try to, I mean of course I do, right? Why do you put work out if you don't, if you're not trying to reach someone? That's my philosophy anyway, I'm trying to reach you.
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:23:21
Lately, it's been, it's, okay, I'm sorry. Those thoughts have been really intertwined with a lot of conversation I have with my day job, with work work. And yes, there are specific things like in, oh my gosh, in Align Parallel, sorry, I totally spaced. So in Align
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:23:56
Parallel, one of the issues that I was having, I was diagnosed with the disease, but I was misdiagnosed for two years. And I was really struggling. None of the doctors would listen to me. And I found that it was really difficult to advocate for my health. And also, it was really difficult to just find doctors in the Valley. And what am I trying to say?
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:24:28
Through discussing that body of work in my experience, a line parallels about fibroblasts, which are scar tissues. When you see a scar in person, they look tough, right? Like it's like they healed. But fibroblasts is actually, they're cells that build parallelly instead of your skin. Your skin is crisscross. The cells are built like, I don't know,
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:24:53
in a diamond pattern, but your scars are are are parallelly binded, I don't know, build. And they're actually weaker than regular skin. So there's like this, it seems like their person is tough, but perhaps not. And I use that because I had a very specific experience with my disease and finding communities that would support me. I'm sorry, I'm like, everywhere. So through that,
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:25:33
there's through sharing that work, I had discovered that like, there are a lot of people here that struggle about finding care, finding, you know, just getting a doctor's appointment and finding support. And, and how, like, we're not alone in whatever you're experiencing, you're not like somebody who's dealing with the same thing. and not a lot of people are, how do I say? It is a connector for all of us, and I think that's what I'm trying to talk about. And in the bigger picture, why does art matter?
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:26:11
And not just looking at the economic impact of art in here in Las Vegas. It's a lot, it's actually really important to our growth and development, and even just the contribution to our tax dollars. But it's a connector and it's part of humanity.
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:26:30
That sounds cheesy, but it's true. And I think, okay, sorry, it took forever for me to get to my point. to remember that we are a community and we share a humanity together. Yeah, no, for sure. I think it being such a hard question to ask an artist, what do you want people to feel? What do you want people to think?
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:27:19
There's a lack of control in that, that you have to kind of give up. I think the more you can give it up, the more freer you'll be. So I really appreciate that idea of connection and connection to community too,
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:27:32
where they'll kind of have their own moment of connection of what they relate to, whether it's a personal struggle for them or something they're trying to find care for. You never really know the impact that the inked figures or the crushed flowers of Van Gogh, you never know where it's going to go. You paraphrase that so well. You said it so much. Can you just let
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:28:07
us know where we can find more of your work? Sure. My website is Sapirachurk.com. You can just Google my name. I come up, which is really cool. And if you want to find out more about grants and other opportunities for artists, whether you're a visual artist, performing artist, literary artist, works website, the Nevada Arts Council is nvartscouncil.org. And I think it's the same handle as NVR Council on Facebook and Instagram. Awesome. Well, thank you very much, Sapir. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your year
Katie B. Funk/Sapira Cheuk
0:28:53
and happy New Year as well. And we will be back again shortly after the New Year starts. and happy New Year as well. And we will be back again shortly after the New Year starts. So thank you, everyone.
Transcribed with Cockatoo