Nigerian born but living in America since the age of one, Odili Donald Odita's work explores color on the grand scale and his hard-edge large paintings and mural installations have redefined abstract painting in the context of sociopolitical concerns. Most of Odita's work is inspired by the vibrant textiles of his home country, Nigeria, mixed with patterns from Western modernity. He has exhibited his work prolifically in important museums and galleries around the world including a recent large i...
Jun 11, 2025•49 min
A Chicago painter with an endless amount of surprises that unfold inside her landscapes of the Rococo and fantastical. Her work represents a continuation of the Chicago Imagists of the 60’s with an interest in combining eccentric figuration with abstraction. “Bramson incorporates the passionate complexity of eastern mythology, the sexual innuendos of soap operas, and sometimes the happy endings of cartoons” said critic Miranda McClintic She has shown her work prolifically in prestigious gallerie...
May 01, 2025•56 min
My guest today is Henry Burmudez. He became a major artist in his home country of Venezuela in the 70’s through the early 2000’s. He made a good living and prospered as a creative force in his home town of Caracas. Among his other accomplishments, he represented Venezuela at the 1986 Venice Biennale. In 1998 , with the election of Cesar Chavez, his world began to fall apart. With the collapse of the economy, his collector base evaporated and left the artist with no way of making a living and sup...
Mar 20, 2025•50 min
Chip is a photographer, an international public street artist and activist who worked as a physician on the Navajo nation between Monument Valley and The Grand Canyon in Arizona for 36 years retiring in 2023. In 2012 he formed the Painted Desert Project – a community project which resulted in a constellation of murals across the Navajo Nation painted by reservation artists and artists from all over the world. As an artist, a doctor and community activist he has committed himself to the vital hea...
Feb 20, 2025•49 min
The independent filmmaker based in Salt Lake City , Utah has created his own very distinct and unique style of filmmaking. In 2013, Indiewire proclaimed Harris "The Best Underground Filmmaker You Don’t Know — But Should." [5] Harris' films have been featured at various festivals and museums worldwide, including renowned venues like Sundance , the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art , the British Film Institute in London, the Edinburgh Film Festival , the Museum of Modern Art in Vienna Austria, Le...
Jan 15, 2025•43 min
“I appreciate the Rococo for its extravagance and theatricality, as it appeals to my love of kitsch.”- STUART NETSKY Netsky is a conceptual artist making paintings, mixed media sculptures, prints and other objects. An original voice and artist whose work jumps off the canvas and confronts us with the eclectic absurdity of our image inundated culture. A lover of the theatrical, mixed with his unique version of pop and Romantic master painting. His work is made in distinct series, creating a picto...
Dec 02, 2024•37 min
Donald Camp is a renowned Philadelphia artist and photographer known for his large scale images that explore the dignity and nobility that can be found in the human face. Camp's unique printing methods are based on early 19th Century non-silver photographic processes. In 1990 Camp began his most acclaimed series, Dust Shaped Hearts. These large photographic monoprints are created with raw earth pigment and casein, and transmit haunting and intimate images of the human face. He is the recipient o...
Oct 16, 2024•53 min
Dan Rizzie is an artist of the heart, whose work is playful yet sophisticated and combines a rich variety of medium and textures. His images and subject matter conjure a world of memory and symbols. Born in Poughkeepsie , NY in 1951, he grew up in India, Egypt, Jordan and Jamaica. Rizzie lives in Sag Harbor , New York. [1] Dan is a painter, printmaker, and collage artist. He attended Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas under the mentorship of Don Marr and Bill Hawes. [2] At Hendrix he received h...
Sep 20, 2024•43 min
Sarah McEneaney’s art is singular and unique in its focus on the everyday existence of the artist. Living in the middle of the very busy and complicated city of Philadelphia, she has created a lifestyle of almost monastic discipline as an artist. McEneaney is also an activist and community leader including the formation of the Callowhill Neighborhood Association in 2001, and the co-founding of the Reading Viaduct Project in 2003. She works mostly in egg tempera, and her work is raw and direct, a...
Aug 28, 2024•47 min
Judith Schaechter: Stain glass artist that has redefined the scope of contemporary art in both materials and subject matter. She has created a startling body of work, using hi-tech and low tech, if not centuries-old techniques. She has chosen for her subject matter an equally archaic focus that seems to bring the suffering and story telling of ancient religious iconography into the 21st century. Her work can be seen all over the world in major museums and galleries including: Smithsonian Institu...
Jul 16, 2024•53 min
Gail Ann Dorsey, most famous for being David Bowie's bass player and collaborator, has, with her voice and stage presence, made an art of being a session player with other top bands and artists, bringing her unique sound to a long list of important bands and recordings, including Tears for Fears, The National, Lenny Kravitz, Bryan Ferry, Ani Difranco, to name a few. She has written, recorded, and performed her own material as well, creating the 2004 lyrical masterwork, “I Used to Be.” Originally...
Jan 04, 2024•46 min
Stuart Rome, a world-renowned photographer, has produced one of the most eclectic and compelling bodies of work imaginable. He also established the photography department at Drexel University, exhibited his work in top galleries, and is featured in the collections of many major museums. Moreover, he has published books of his work and has been featured in numerous art publications. In 2015, he received the Simon Guggenheim Foundation Award for his current project, Oculus.
Nov 30, 2023•33 min
Mahogany L. Browne, poet, writer, and artist, is currently the executive director at Bowery Poetry Club and the artistic director at Urban Word NYC. She is also the author of several books, including children's books, stage plays, articles, and audio recordings. As the founder of Penmanship Books, Browne holds the distinction of being the first-ever poet-in-residence at New York City's Lincoln Center.
Oct 05, 2023•37 min
Terry Tempest Williams is a towering cultural figure as a writer, educator, and conservationist and activist. Her writing is rooted in the American West, and she is an unstoppable stand for this vulnerable and fragile landscape.
Sep 25, 2023•31 min
Richard Watson is a fixture and legend in the city of Philadelphia. His idea of being an artist includes the way he dresses with great care and style. He's an activist and committed to the breaking down of racial exclusion in the arts and elsewhere.
Sep 15, 2023•36 min
On today’s episode I’ll be talking to Rosanne Cash; singer, songwriter and author. She has reinvented herself and her art many times, on her way to finding her own very original voice.
Aug 23, 2023•33 min
Derrick Velasquez is an artist and exhibition organizer who lives and works in Denver, Colorado. His most recent exhibitions include solo shows at The Herron School of Art and Design, The Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, Robischon Gallery, Pentimenti, and The Black Cube Nomadic Museum. He has had recent group exhibitions at University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Carvalho Park and Transmitter in New York, and was a 2017 recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant for Painters and Sculptors a...
Jul 23, 2021•1 hr 4 min
A legend in his own time, Peter Paone is a fixture in the Philadelphia art world. He has exhibited his artwork internationally including New York, London, Vienna and Germany... and in major cities across the US. His work is in many prestigious collections, including The Museum of Modern Art, The Victoria and Albert Museum, The National Gallery in Washington DC, and the Yale University Art Gallery, to name a few. He is a prolific painter, printmaker, archivist, and teacher.
Jul 09, 2021•55 min
Mikel presently makes his home in Germantown Philadelphia, but has travelled the world on his way to being the established and formidable artist he is today. He has been featured in international publications and media, including commercial television, and feature films. He earned a BFA degree in painting from U Arts in 1986 and also studied at The School of Visual Arts in New York. In 1987 he took on a life changing job of being a personal assistant to the great jazz icon Miles Davis and was wi...
Jun 11, 2021•59 min
Brooke Larsen has had a remarkable career that includes single handedly starting an art program at the Richard Stockton University in Pomona, New Jersey in the early seventies. He was the only teacher! Then, after moving to New York City, he became an integral part of the early eighties art scene in New York. Along with his artwork, he became one of the most important frame designers and makers of this generation of contemporary artists' work. In 1991 he reluctantly took an offer to teach a Satu...
May 28, 2021•1 hr
Jane Irish has created an expansive career that has included ambitious projects and collaborations with others. She has used her great talents as a painter and inclusive visionary to take on big subjects and has brought everyone along for the ride. Her most famous and ongoing project being exposing the fraud and consequences of the Viet Nam War. To this end she has given voice to veterans and other committed activists in curating extensive ground breaking exhibitions. In her own practice she int...
May 14, 2021•48 min
Host Tom Judd speaks with Eileen Neff about how literature has influenced her work, including the poetry of Wallace Stevens. Neff, a Philadelphia based artist, began as a painter until she discovered photography was the pathway to her expression as an artist in the early 80s. Known also as a sought after art critic and writer, she went on to develop an astounding body of work over a 40 year period. You can learn more about her on her website eileenneff.com
Apr 30, 2021•59 min
Born in Brownsville Texas and raised in Mexico City, Ray Smith emerged as an important voice in the 1980’S post modern reinvention of painting in New York city, along with his friend Julian Schanbel. Ray is best known for his large segmented paintings, his elements of cubism and surrealism, and his work with Mexican muralists, with the use of anthropomorphic animals akin to his hero Pablo Piccaso. Ray refers to his subject matter this way... “They are Beasts, but they are directly attached to a ...
Apr 16, 2021•1 hr 11 min
Two powerful artists by themselves , the married couple love to mix it up including collaborating on paintings and sharing ideas about art and artmaking. Established contemporary artists, they are both published writers and love to play music together. The interview reveals an expansive studio practice between their two homes, New York City and a country house in rural Pennsylvania. The COVID outbreak impacted them immediately when Jennifer came down with the virus and was bed ridden for a month...
Apr 02, 2021•1 hr 10 min
Host Tom Judd sits down with painter Tim McFarlane to discuss the importance of putting in the work, and showing up. Tim also talks about the daily challenges with a painting, even when it's not going well, and how to listen to the painting instead of your busy mind. Your can learn more about Tim on his website timmcfarlane.com
Mar 19, 2021•56 min
On this episode of Being an Artist, host Tom Judd talks to sculptor Darla Jackson about her love for clay and sculpting, quitting her full time job to pursue art while pregnant, getting endorsed by Courtney Love and more! Darla ran Philadelphia Sculpting Gym. It was a coworking space for sculpting that ran for four years. She is currently working on her show Enter the 36 Chambers, a series of 36 bird sculptures that tells a blend of Kung Fu, Wu-Tang and fairytales through the lens of her brain. ...
Mar 03, 2021•49 min
