From his parents backyard in Santa Monica, we spoke with LA based visual artist and designer Nico B. Young. This episode was recorded in a shed built from fiberglass walls, vintage speakers and foraged objects Young found on the street and turned into his own creations.
Images by Maddy Rotman
Episode Edited & Mixed by Matthew Conzelman
Original theme music by Billy Chapman
MARIAH: So, we’re in your shed, which you built in your parents backyard. Located in Santa Monica, the backyard is a dream, with a gorgeous garden with a beautiful tree in the middle of it.
NICO: A coral tree.
MARIAH: The coral tree is the center of the yard. Talk to me a little bit about what it was like growing up in and around that beautiful tree. Did you spend afternoons in the tree? Did you and your brother play around it?
NICO: Yeah, it's, it's like an 80 year old coral tree with branches spread from the front house to the back house. It's super climbable. A lot of the branches are less than 45 degrees so you can sort of like shimmy across and we used to climb it all the time when I was a kid. Our neighbors would come over and sit in the tree. One person even broke their arm.
MARIAH: Okay, Nico, what were you like when you were first kind of going to high school? Were you always into photography or did that start?
NICO: I was definitely nerdy going into high school. And, then I got into skateboarding. And, I sort of had these two separate social lives.
MARIAH: When you say nerdy, what does that mean? Video games? Books?
NICO: YouTube. Like being into YouTubers. And video games, but like retro video games. And just being really into technology, like reading about Steve Jobs and Apple. Between 8th and 9th grade,I worked at a summer camp. It was there when I got super into photography.
MARIAH: In high school, The New York Times Magazine tapped you for an assignment, no? That’s bananas.
NICO: It was really crazy at the time. And it's way more crazy when I think about it in retrospect. Like, thinking about how I look at teenagers and the amount of respect and interest like these adults showed in me. And yeah, it totally changed my life. It happened because my photo teacher just sent this photo project that I'd made in class to the photo editor of the New York Times Magazine. I was on assignment for like five months– photographing my friends, school events, football practice, skate park, stuff like that. And I would send them, like, a new batch of photos every other week, and I was shooting on film, and scanning it, and laying it out in PDFs
MARIAH: What did your friends think?
NICO: Of being photographed?
MARIAH: Yeah.
NICO: I don't know if I really know what was going to happen with the photos when I was taking them. I thought they might just publish a few of them. And Then it became this cover story of the magazine and had like like 20 or so photos, which was insane.
MARIAH: As a culture, we have an obsession with youth– especially those teenage years. We often romanticize and almost fetishize them a bit. But, very rarely do I feel like these stories are told from the perspective of another young person.
NICO: Nowadays you do.
MARIAH: Maybe nowadays, but back then it felt rare to see it from a young person's point of view.
NICO: Well, it wasn’t that long ago.
MARIAH: That’s fair, but I felt like all the media I was looking at in school was through the lens of someone older trying to stay in touch with that precious period.
NICO: Yeah, I guess. I mean it's weird to me now because I just am so not interested in….
MARIAH: In photography?
NICO: In teenage-hood.
MARIAH: So when you look at those photos, yeah, now, what do you feel? What do you see?
NICO: It means something to me now because I know the people and know how they've changed. Maybe I don't have enough distance from it in age to be obsessed with youth. It was sort of like being a detective or spy for the adults.
MARIAH: So after high school you attended UCLA for art, right?. What was that like?
NICO: The art program is super interdisciplinary. So they forced you to do everything. You can go in as a photographer and not take any photography classes for the first two years, which is what I did.
MARIAH: Wow, so in many ways the program kind of breaks down your identity.
NICO: Yeah, exactly. And a lot of people don't like that, but it was really exciting to me. I loved photography, but I didn't feel so attached to photography.
MARIAH: How did it feel to start making things with your hands?
NICO: I loved working with other materials and seeing myself applied to different mediums. It was in a film class that I realized, it's not really photography that interests me, but the idea of documenting. Documentary has really become the through line in my thinking. It can take many forms– of course photography or film, but also materials and sculpture.
NICO: When I was building the shed, I got super excited about making a kind of speaker system and customizing it for this space.
MARIAH: Need to have the playlist going while you're working.
NICO: Yeah, and have the playlists not have to come from my phone. So I found this 300 CD carousel. It's this huge obsolete piece of technology that stores 300 CDs. It's this amazing thing where you can shuffle between your entire library in this mechanical, pre iTunes way. The discs just spin around and the disc arm reaches in and picks out a disc and then plays track seven and then puts it back and then picks up another disc and plays track three or something, you know?
MARIAH: That’s crazy. She’s a big mama for such a small space.
NICO: Haha, ya it's a lot of real estate to devote to something not essential.
MARIAH: The sound from the speakers is special. It sounds raw and a little muzzily in a good way.
NICO: It all runs off of my dad's old car stereo.
MARIAH: His old car stereo? What type of car did he have?
NICO: He had an Isuzu Rodeo.
MARIAH: When I think about your work or look around this shed, so much of it is made from pieces that you found off the street. It's so fun to think about the stories that can be told from these collected objects.
NICO: Yeah, and stories that are charged within objects.
MARIAH: Where do you find some of the objects you collect?
NICO: This tabletop, for example, is a benchtop I found in the dumpsters behind the engineer department of UCLA. It’s a sturdy, 2” thick, maple workbench that is covered in scars from and has a date stamp from 1947 on it.
MARIAH: She’s beautiful.
NICO: Yeah, my interest isn't so much in maple workbenches, but it's this maple workbench that has evidence of countless stories of it being used and appreciated. And this notion of rescuing it from the dumpsters and letting it live on in a new way. So, I'm hunting for materials that have a charge and history.
MARIAH: Your shed is filled with vintage speakers systems and old CDs. What role has music played in your life? What does it mean in this shed?
MARIAH: 2023 has been a really big transformational year in your life. You and your family lost your dad, Jeffrey Young. I first, of course, just want to give all of you my love, but also ask how you're feeling? What has this year been like for you?
NICO: Yeah, he died in February. And two or three weeks after that, I went on tour with the band that he used to play with, Jackson Brown, for like 30 years. I was away for like two months with the band in Japan, Australia, New Zealand.
MARIAH: Wow. How special.
NICO: In Japan, I met all these fans that knew my dad and wanted to say how much they appreciated his music. We go into the train station and all these fans happen to be there waiting for the band. And this guy comes up to me and he's like, you're Jeffrey's son? And I was like, yeah, and he's like, I'm so sorry, but I have something to show you. And he pulls out these photos that he took of my dad in 1994 at the same train station, or one just like it.
MARIAH: You’re kidding me.
NICO: It made me realize just how many people’s lives he touched. Growing up, I had no idea about his musical life really. II wouldn't really know, or think to ask him. Going on tour with this band was such an adventure for me and like realizing that was how he spent his life.
MARIAH: It’s like you got to meet a whole new side of your dad even after he had passed.
NICO: Yeah, and since coming back I'm trying to find my own momentum again because everything sort of got pushed to the side when my dad was sick. Yeah. And sort of like starting to piece together my life again, and working here in the shed making lamps, and my first solo show in San Francisco.
MARIAH: Nico, thank you so much for sharing your story with us and letting Maddy and I into your shed.
NICO: Of course, thank you!
Learn more about Nico B. Young and his work here.