“We have literally been depicting animals since we could make artwork, since we could paint on the walls of caves. It’s pretty much across every culture and civilization in history, animals have been part of artwork that’s been created. I just found that so fascinating and when I was thinking about how to put what I was doing down on paper. That felt like the cornerstone idea of why I am doing this and why these animal portraits can be important and part of this, a part of humanities portrayal o...
Oct 27, 2018•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 48
"Being a parent I can relate. I know what it’s like now to not be able to work on projects that I want to work on. And those are like real life obstacles, whether it’s a day job, or a sick family member, or a young child that needs taken care of. There are a lot of obstacles in our life that keep us from being creative. Whether they’re just excuses we make up for ourselves or they are real. We still need to be creative. That’s the breakthrough that I made. It seemed harder to do my work as an ar...
Oct 22, 2018•1 hr 17 min•Ep. 47
"A single object can be these extremely different things depending on the context. When the lights are bright in the gallery a whole bunch of what that painting is becomes completely obscured, it’s not even present at all or barely visible or not even there. And when the lights cycle off it's the same thing, there’s a whole bunch of that painting that’s not there at all, but all those things that were hidden before are now visible. I like that back and forth and that feeling of transformation. A...
Oct 12, 2018•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 46
"I had never been to a glacier. I had this vision of them being these giant massive things that were just there. I never really thought about how much of a living organism they are. Growing and retreating, melting, and expanding and changing. When we went on hikes on the glacier the pathway changes constantly because of the nature of the glacier and the route. With climate change these things that have been around for thousands of years are disappearing. This object I thought was a permanent str...
Oct 06, 2018•51 min•Ep. 45
"We are all connected. We need to be a village for each other and raise and support each other through everything. Being in the art community what I have found is that I've finally found my tribe. I found my tribe in the people that understand the emotional roller coaster ride of being an artist and the constant self questioning and pushing. It’s that hunger in us to constantly be better." After going to medical school and practicing as a pediatrician for many years, and at the same time growing...
Sep 24, 2018•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 44
"These images like murals are images that can speak to people and that people can identify with. You don’t have to be from a certain background or certain city or community or ethnicity or political belief or religious belief. These are my visual memorials to the epic and endless struggle of the human experience." From Vincent Valdez’s point of view we have a choice as to which way we want to go as a country. We can start again. It could be the beginning of a darker chapter in our history or a m...
Sep 17, 2018•1 hr 19 min•Ep. 43
“I don’t remember what artist said this but I’ve always liked this. She said ‘There are no dumb ideas.’ And I always keep that in my head. Maybe you are not going like it when you get to that point of is this done or isn’t or who cares. You have to try it. You have to see where it goes. That’s why we’re artists. Were allowed to do that. Nobody is telling us you can’t do that. There might be people saying that but they are wrong. You can do this. You can do whatever you want. That’s why you’re an...
Sep 08, 2018•1 hr•Ep. 42
"For me it only becomes an artwork if it has the potential to have a lot of layers of meaning. I have my themes that I always want to emphasize and I’m always looking for ways buoy those themes and so I’m on the look out. The aesthetics are never the thing that get me. It’s if there is something out there that I see that will speak to what I am already thinking about. Memory plays a big part when I come back to my studio in what I want to infuse back into my paintings. So I know that it was a be...
Aug 25, 2018•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 41
"You really need to define success for yourself, separately from the reactions of other people. If you are waiting to publish the book or get collected by museum X or all of those things that depend on other people, you need to reframe success for yourself. You can't control them nor should you really want to. You could hope that they would come along for the ride. Define success for yourself and then focus on making sure that happens. You can control that. You can get involved in that and make ...
Aug 18, 2018•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 40
"You have to cultivate your own ability to be inspired. As I become more mature as an artist its how do I create the circumstances to cultivate the mood and the mental state I need to be in to really connect with my vision as an artist." Four years ago when she hit a low point in her life, artist Caitlin McCollom (https://cgmccollom.com/) could not have imagined that today she would be a full time artist with a successful career. When you don’t have anything, you don’t have anything to lose some...
Aug 06, 2018•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 39
“My advice would be to work as hard as you can on your work and get interested. Use anything you can, get hold of anything you can. Study that and work at it. You have to work at it a lot. Research, do your work, and get as much knowledge as you can from as many people as you can. That’s about it.” At the age of eighty seven Claude Van Lingen has had a long career as an artist and is still doing as much as he is able to create work everyday. He has since he was a child sought to learn about and ...
Jul 31, 2018•53 min•Ep. 38
"It’s easy to get stagnant with what you are doing. I just want to keep staying motivated and keep getting better. But also just not being so hard on myself. It’s easy to be your own worst critic and just think everything you are doing is horrible and getting in those ruts. But to be able to just pick yourself right back up and just be like, OK why am I like this. Why do I feel like this? What's the next step?" Most of us have seen great live and behind the scenes images, or portraits and press ...
Jul 21, 2018•56 min•Ep. 37
“In one of our early meetings I expressed to Rebecca that I was having some confusion around how do I continue to present things and ideas that I have worked on in the past. Working with this material of coal but also introduce something new and explore new territory. She really didn’t hesitate and was like, go wild, don’t slow yourself down. Just keep creating and keep making and explore, you know keep exploring. And so I think that is something I will take away from this show is that idea of j...
Jul 16, 2018•56 min•Ep. 36
"I just love learning from the work. Just leaving it open and learning. It’s part of my being in the world. I try to be patient with myself and my artwork. There were years where it felt like it didn’t connect to the larger art world. But I just had to keep working. And I think you never know what’s coming unless you keep working, unless you keep that thread going. I think developing as a person is a part of what goes into the work. Who you are and what you think about and what's important to yo...
Jul 08, 2018•56 min•Ep. 35
"For me authenticity is being truthful, and just allowing yourself to be vulnerable." "I express myself through fashion by just letting it flow and just walking into my closet and kind of treating it like a palette and just wearing what I feel and grabbing pieces that I feel work for me instinctively at that moment." Dawn Okoro is a figurative painter who uses bright and bold saturated colors and as she has in her most recent exhibition, Punk Noir, captured the spirit and presence of creative pe...
Jun 23, 2018•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 34
"It’s not easy but for me it’s very enjoyable to put on these wigs and be these people. One mainly because I am an entertainer and I like to entertain people and I like what these characters do to people, and to me. But then in a deeper sense I’m very much exploring and reclaiming a lot things about myself that were taken from me as a kid. And that’s a slow, slow process." Paul Soileau simply considers himself an artist even though he does practice and inhabit many different forms of art, theatr...
Jun 16, 2018•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 33
"I am generally not thinking about what it means because I don’t know that I am imbuing it with any particular sort of meaning. I’m more inclined to let the viewer take what they want from it. I’m not generally sending a message. Except, look at this amazing old stuff. That is the message. Look at this stuff that you walk by everyday and don’t care about." Laura Caffrey has spent the last 20 years creating artwork out of junk. Well maybe not always what you might consider straight-up junk but of...
Jun 09, 2018•54 min•Ep. 32
“This is what I want, this is what makes me fulfilled, is to make work. I need to do that. In order to go further, in order to grow, as an artist you have to do! You can’t ask why all the time. You can ask why later.” Visual artist Charles Heppner’s work spans many different mediums and has many themes but ultimately focuses on the sanctity of beauty, especially in nature, how its appreciation makes us human, communication, and the interconnectedness of everything. He is devoted to both being an...
Jun 03, 2018•58 min•Ep. 31
"Who are the people in your life that inspire you, that support you, that you can connect with on a regular basis, to keep that creative spirit going, to inspire you to explore things that you maybe never have?" "If you have something that lights your fire, that really inspires you, find a way to do it and surround yourself with people who are doing it also." For the last thirty five years Jason Phelps has been studying and practicing a diversity of performing arts including acting, dance, music...
May 26, 2018•1 hr•Ep. 30
"The way that I look at things, anything, even this big storm brewing outside, I feel like my eyes aren’t acknowledging it enough. I feel almost restless that I’m not able to look at it and be satisfied. I want to capture it again. I want to hold the moment again through my hand or a gesture of that big tree blowing in the wind. I want to recycle and feel it again but through my translation. Because I think this world is so gosh darn gorgeous and people are so interesting that it’s not enough ju...
May 19, 2018•59 min•Ep. 29
"What are the sensual takeaways from being in a place? When I think about how it feels to be lying in my backyard in the hammock watching the pecan trees it's not static images of green leaves. It's spectral light, it's rainbow light moving through. It has pink and it has orange and it has all of these colors." Elizabeth Chiles (http://www.elizabethchiles.com/) creates photographic collages and complex composites with images she has taken of nature. Growing up her love of the outdoors and the op...
May 12, 2018•56 min•Ep. 28
"We all are photographers. Everybody will have their own excuses to take photos. But to me just being able to keep shooting I think it is already in my veins, in my mind, in my heart, in my soul." Photographer Faustinus Deraet (http://www.faustinusderaet.com/) learns more about himself every time he clicks the button on his camera, captures an image, and makes a print. These images are windows into his subconscious (subconsciente) which end up revealing something deeper that needs to be expresse...
May 05, 2018•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 27
"I am just grateful that people are finding this as an outlet to be able to say that this happened to them. As a way of walking through and finding some semblance of healing in it or using it as their very first outcry. There are people who have reached out to me who have never told anyone else……There is a true feeling of empowerment in doing this. It’s been so cathartic for me. Whether you are a survivor or not the one thing that I hope will happen is that it will make people talk." The Pink Bo...
Apr 29, 2018•55 min•Ep. 26
"If everyone that wants to make a difference, just started making and taking those steps to actually make a difference, then imagine the world we would live in. I think that doing good today is invaluable and we need it. Just do it. Just start. Just take the necessary steps to make it happen." Jenn Hassin (https://www.jennhassin.com/) cares about the world we live in and is trying to figure out what we can do as a society to make it a better place. Her artwork is often focused on raising the awa...
Apr 22, 2018•1 hr 12 min•Ep. 25
"People they are the cloth that protect me, that cover me. Without them, I’m nothing, I can't do anything. So they take me to this level. They should not leave me here. They should continue. Be behind me. Be forward. Be at the back. Be at the side. And I will also do my best and continue to be there and be contributing to this world we are living." Olaniyi Rasheed Akindiya is most well known by the name AKIRASH (https://www.artwithakirash.com/). He is a unique interdisciplinary artist who has fe...
Apr 14, 2018•1 hr 22 min•Ep. 24
"Within our festival there’s space for really different kinds of expression of art, and some of those are perhaps harder immediately to relate to. But we’re holding space for those artists to challenge things, to experiment, to tinker. To help us as people, as artists, think about things in new ways, and give us things to chew on. I love things that have mystery to them, that I don’t understand." The annual Fusebox Festival (http://schedule.fuseboxfestival.com/) aims to allow for a meaningful ex...
Apr 08, 2018•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 23
“Giving people compassion and respect, it just goes such a long way to healing. You never know what somebody is going through or what could happen in their lives.” A lot of people don’t know what art therapy is but for those who do they probably understand and appreciate its power and potential. Elizabeth Hendley (https://www.dellchildrens.net/services-and-programs/child-life-services-program/expressive-therapies/), the art therapist at Dell Children’s Medical Center, might not think she is a sa...
Mar 31, 2018•1 hr 16 min•Ep. 22
“We all have creativity in us and we’re all very imaginative people but we also have all these voices that tell us we’re not. I just don’t give myself credit for it. I don’t think any of us do.” Novelist Natalia Sylvester (https://www.nataliasylvester.com/) says of her most recent book, she is writing for the people who have shared common experiences around immigration and know about being caught in between. These powerful and sometimes painful stories need to be out in the open so that the subj...
Mar 24, 2018•1 hr•Ep. 21
"That's the thing that got me excited about being creative is that you start with nothing and then something happens. We have so much power as creatives." If you get to the point in your artistic career where you are invited to help carve and build a church and sculptures out of ice in Slovakia for three weeks, you might think you have made it. But for Griffon Ramsey (https://griffonramsey.com/) it is only a part of the beginning of the next exciting chapter. After spending many years working an...
Mar 17, 2018•1 hr 7 min•Ep. 20
"I’ve always dedicated my life to the work, and what ever the work needed that’s what I did." It has been an incredible year for Austin based artist Deborah Roberts. But after decades of hard work and scholarship it’s not really a surprise. She was already an established artist long before deciding to go back to school to get her MFA in 2014, to study and find the language and direction for her new work. Her imagery started out in a very romantic Americana style but after a time that didn’t comp...
Mar 10, 2018•1 hr 5 min•Ep. 19
