Karen:
Today's guest is an incredible artist whose work brings color,
movement, and soul into every space it touches. Greg Didyoung is an artist,
sculptor, muralist, and more — a storyteller with a bold, emotional, and
instantly recognizable style. I first encountered Greg's talent through the
mural he created for American Crane, a massive, vibrant piece that came to life
through his collaboration with my amazing sister Stephanie and our team. And
then there's the eagle he sculpted from reclaimed shop material, a piece that
perfectly blends imagination, grit, and ingenuity. Greg, I'm thrilled you're
here.

Greg:
Thank you for having me, Karen.

Karen:
When did you know you wanted to be an artist? Tell us about your
path to coming to this point you're at today.

Greg:
I was always into art — my dad was kind of into art too, always
tinkering, always creating on the side. But I went to college to be a
photojournalist, did that for many years, and just did art on the side. I never
really showed anybody. I joke that I was a closeted artist — nobody knew. I
never really put myself out there.

Then in 2017, I had a
life-changing injury. I'm a bit of an adrenaline junkie — whitewater kayaking,
downhill mountain biking — went off a big jump and got a double compound
fracture. Then I re-broke it whitewater kayaking, so more plates. And then it
wasn't healing, and it turned out I had a chronic bone infection. I was out of
work for a very long time, with a PICC line in my heart, and I said, I need
something positive to focus on. I'm sitting at home not working. What do I do?
I'm going to throw my artwork out into the world.

On the exact day I went down
for my one major surgery, my friends submitted some of my work to the Art of
Jazz at GoggleWorks. It got accepted. I hobbled out a couple weeks later for
the award ceremony with my cast and my PICC line and everything, and I won Best
in Show. Talk about being thrust into the art world. Then I went to Studio B in
Boyertown and won that show too. I put myself out there, took the risk, and got
rewarded. After those two awards, there were a lot of no awards — you start
asking, am I doing the right thing? But I started to find my voice, and that's
how I found murals, which grew from little ones to bigger and bigger, up to the
giant Hope mural for suicide awareness on Cherry Street. That's the big piece
that put me on the map.

Greg:
A community artist named Michael Miller approached me — he's
fantastic — and said, I think you're the right guy for this project, I like
your aesthetic, and we need a mural that talks about suicide. How do you get
across a topic that heavy? We wanted it uplifting, but also real. I had a few
designs they told me were too heavy, not correct. You get pummeled and think
you can't figure it out, but every time I got rejected on a design, it led me
to the correct path to get the right one.

It has a giant head on it, with
flowers for the brain, for growth. And then there are Tetris pieces coming
down, which symbolize imperfection — because with Tetris there's a right way,
but there's also variability in how you do it. People really loved that. The
big part for me was learning about community artwork, which was new — not just
sitting in my studio doing graphic design. These murals really involve the
community, and even though I was the designer, the people who painted it were
all involved. You're talking hundreds, thousands of people. I love that synergy
of teamwork, and I think it relates to your company, because you're very
team-oriented.

Greg:
When we do these murals, a lot of people like you don't really know
how it works, so it's fun to watch you learn. Everybody comes to me saying, I'm
not an artist — and you don't have to be. We meet with you, figure out what you
want, come up with a good design. Then we put that design on canvas material,
make it large, and it's essentially paint by numbers. Anybody can do it, but it
empowers them to say, I was a part of this. That's the big part of community
murals — you can bring everybody in. You can paint it, you can help install it,
and all of a sudden you take ownership. It becomes not my mural anymore, it's
our mural.

Karen:
How do you go about designing something so big?

Greg:
With public art, you have to think about how it will be viewed —
from afar, close up, or both, like yours. I knew you were doing really cool
stuff, but driving by, you wouldn't know. So the first thing I wanted was for
someone driving past to ask, what is going on in there? That's why the design
starts with the American flag, angled to lead your eye into the story. Talking
to you and to your employees, common themes came up over and over. I realized
your father, Edvar, is the cornerstone of the company — so he's literally the
cornerstone of the design, anchoring it. Then I wanted to show the cool stuff
you do: NASA, nuclear energy. But going through the facility, seeing the scale
and precision, the big theme was teamwork. So I had to show the cool things you
make, but more importantly the people who make it possible — the whole process
of manufacturing, from blueprints to cutting to painting to wiring to shipping.
Some people thought the color palette was going to be too gaudy and bold, and I
said, it needs to be. Once they saw the whole picture, they got it. That was
the biggest compliment for me.

Greg:
Every project keeps getting bigger and heavier, but it's a good
problem to have. It started during the pandemic — no murals were being done, I
was up in Vermont away from my shop, and there were these rusty grills. I
started making little robots out of them, and people really liked it. I was a
digital artist for a while, but as a kid I was playing with Lego, tinkering
behind my dad in the shop. I wanted to delve into it, and it kept expanding —
little birds out of spoons, then bigger sculptures. Now sculpture is probably
the majority of my work.

I like reclaimed material
because you're taking something discarded and finding a new, innovative way to
use it — just like in business: how can we be innovative, how can we approach
something differently? That's how I do it with junk. The eagle I made you was
all old nuts and bolts, and your employees look at it and go, I know what that
piece is from. Just like the mural, they take ownership of it.

Everything has to have the
essence. Even with a mural, there's a lot of research, which I think is fun —
how does that animal act, how does your company function? I knew the eagle had
to have some attitude. And it's a female, because you're a woman-led company,
and with bald eagles the females are much larger. It's made to scale of a real
one. It weighs way more than a real one, though.

Greg:
Nobody's going to come find you. You have to put yourself out there
and not be afraid to fail, or to try to do better next time. Even when you're
good and you have some wins, when you don't win it still hurts, and you still
have to pick yourself back up and keep trying.

With art — especially now with
AI and everything being perfect and machined — it's nice to have that organic,
made-with-your-hands quality. What we call wabi-sabi, being a little imperfect,
and not being so hard on yourself. This isn't as good as the guy next to me
carving, but I made this, I did it. And the only way you're going to get better
is if you keep doing it. It's about personal growth, and you can take that from
art into anything in your life.

The grit for me has been in the
design challenges — when things aren't exactly what people want, figuring it
out without getting discouraged, making sure everybody's on the same page. With
community art you really need that dialogue, that back and forth, so you're not
forcing your vision on them, but it's still what they want. You're walking the
line of making everybody happy while still having your own artistic voice.

Karen:
What do you want people to take away from your art?

Greg:
I always thought of it this way: if fine art was a grocery store,
I'm the potato chip aisle. I like pop art. I want you to get it right away. I
don't want you sitting there asking how this makes you feel — there's
definitely space for that in art and I love it, but I try to speak to the
common person who maybe doesn't get art. I try to make it punchy, poppy, fun,
and inspiring. Everything's got a little playfulness in it.

Greg:
I've done a lot of outdoor sculpture exhibits throughout the East
Coast, and they've all asked to keep them up. But personally, I've been so busy
with commissions that all I want to do is make a giant T-Rex for myself. I've
been saving material. It's going to challenge me on scale, weight, and design.
You get so busy with work you don't get to do things for yourself sometimes.

It's the ebb and flow with art
— you'll be very busy, then it's a little slow, so you always want something
cooking in the back. You have to have that balance too, because you don't want
to burn yourself out on one thing. That's why it's nice as an artist to be
varied in your mediums — you can hop around and bring the best to the table
each time. If you're stuck in one thing, you get worn down and unmotivated.
Switching it up keeps me fresh.

My first big sculpture show was
the North Bennington Outdoor Sculpture Show in Vermont — my first time in the
big leagues of outdoor sculpture. I used that to talk to people and network,
and last year I won Best in Show there for another bald eagle made entirely out
of cutlery. That took me to Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Pennsylvania.
Every time I go to a new venue, my goal is to figure out what new thing I can
get from it. I say if a door's cracked, it's your job to walk in. Nobody's
going to push you through.

Greg:
To me, it's taking whatever resources you have, whatever strengths
you have, and saying: how can I make this better than I left it? Whatever that
is. That's lifting — turning junk into something cool, or teaching somebody
that hey, you can paint a mural. Using your skills and your strengths to help
other people elevate. High tide, all ships float. To me, that's lifting.

During your Grit Day, it was
the largest community paint Mike Miller and I had ever done at one time — we'd
never had that many people painting at once. I remember being on stage telling
everyone they were going to be artists that day, and some of your tough
fabricators said, we're not artists. Then after that hour was up, I couldn't
get the brushes out of anybody's hands. I'm saying time's up, and they're
saying no, no, I'm not done. Seeing them get excited about it was fantastic.

Karen:
Thanks for coming on today. Your inspiration and your spirit come
through in all of it.

Greg:
Thank you so much for having me, Karen.