Double Scoop Podcast

"There's something interesting about how Vegas (and the Strip) absorbs culture," said Erik Beehn. "We don't really create it, but we do absorb things that make their way from other places." He's the director of Test Site Projects, a fine art publishing house that produces limited edition multiples with nationally recognized artists.  Host: Noah Glick

"If you can imagine it to be fabricated or built out of silver or steel or leather, we are the go-to place in Nevada," said John Wright. His family has owned JM Capriola, the Elko shop that makes custom saddles and Western gear in Elko, for three generations. Host: Noah Glick

Corn in a bright blue condom. Olives in a lipstick tube. These are among the unlikely objects that UNR MFA candidate Birdy McCray has seen in her dreams and brought to fruition. Host: Charlotte Italiano

Years ago, when Shoshone-Paiute artist Micqaela Jones Crouch was a stay-ay-home mom with young children, she needed a creative outlet, so she picked up some acrylic paints at K Mart. She took to the medium quickly. Initially, she was reluctant to put her work out in the world, but step-by-step her career has blossomed. Host: Noah Glick

The Lilley Museum at UNR has a new director—Stephanie Gibson. Growing up in Ottawa, she spent a lot of time in the National Gallery of Canada and became fascinated with the ways communities and civilizations have expressed themselves through art. Host: Charlotte Italiano

In an age of digital everything, it's rare to ever see our own names written out. That's why calligraphy can make things a little more special, said Lauren Iida. She's helping to keep the tradition alive by offering professional calligraphic services and teaching the age-old art. "It's nice to bring something back from yesteryear that our grandparents did, that our great-great grandparents did," she said.  Host: Noah Glick

Eva Salyer remembers having experienced some major stress as a child. When things got tough, her mom would hand her some art supplies and advise her to draw how she felt. Now Eva is a full-time artist in South Lake Tahoe, where she does, among many other projects, live paintings at concerts—including the George Clinton show this past summer. Host: Noah Glick

"I feel like a lot of museums and galleries talk about diversity, but when I go to these spaces, I don't really see that representation of someone like me," said Ruby Barrientos, a Salvadoran artist who lives in Reno. I wanted to bring art to the people, and what's a better way than to just bring it to them directly?" Ruby is the lead organizer of the exhibition “Llegaron Los Guanacxs” featuring work by herself and fellow Salvadorans Leslie Chiguichon, Jon Gomez, and Jahi Mazariego. Host: Noah Glick

When it comes to craft, failure doesn't mean you're doing it wrong. Neither does imperfection. They both happen to the best of us on a regular basis, says Anela DeLaveaga. Anela is a Reno-based woodworker, Resident Artist at The Generator, and founder of the Design Build Collective, a Nevada group that wants to carve out a bigger niche for female and nonbinary woodworkers. Host: Noah Glick

Electrical engineer Joe Fitzpatrick is the lead artist on the Burning Man installation, "Last Bet Motel." The piece is an homage to the Best Bet Motel, one of the many weekly motels in Reno that have been demolished in the name of development. These motels are often last-resort housing for people without stable shelter arrangements, and each closure has left more people homeless. Noah Glick, this season's host, talked with Joe, his collaborator and spouse Elizabeth Fitzpatrick, and Emily Stewart about the genesis, design, and goals of the project.

Barry Crawford talks shop about the surprise details of his ambitious kinetic artworks. You can see one of them, "Rearing Horse," in downtown Reno, and his newest creation, "Ratchetfish," will debut this month at Burning Man. Our host this season is Noah Glick.

Jessica Schimpf is a glassblower with a studio in downtown Reno. After years of establishing herself in a physically demanding, male dominated field, then losing several loved ones over a short span of time, she was feeling grief on top of burnout. She reassessed the way art worked in her life—both her professional life and her downtime. Then, she made some adjustments that really helped.

Five years ago, mixed media artist Sogand Tabatabaei packed everything she could fit into two bags and moved fro Tehran, Iran, to Reno to start in UNR's MFA program. The loneliness of her new life produced some crushing anxiety—which she channeled into her artwork. This episode also features Miya Hannan, one of Sogand's art professors at UNR.

How do you keep all of those looming "what-if" anxieties at bay? For Reno's Rob Garrett—a veteran and sculptor—welding metal objects together helps quite a bit.

"Art and anxiety and mental health, they go hand in hand," said Las Vegas artist Lance L. Smith. "And whether your art is your cooking or your parenting or your gardening ... you have a right to allow those things to be a container for things that other folks can't hold." In the first of 4 episode on Art + Mental Health, Lance talks with Holly Hutchings about how, at a young age, they realized that art was the avenue to help channel the feelings that didn't have anywhere else to go.

The Art + Mental Health Podcast is coming soon! This season's host, Holly Hutchings, spoke with four artists——Lance L. Smith from Las Vegas, Reno's Jessica Schimpf and Rob Garrett, and Sogand Tabatabaei, a UNR graduate who now lives in Dallas——about how art and mental health work together in their lives. We'll start releasing episodes soon. Meanwhile, check out the season trailer!

Elaine Parks is a ceramic sculptor who lives in Reno and Tuscarora, a northeast Nevada town with 10 residents. You can get an almost uninterrupted view of the natural world from there—a fact that's informed her sculptures for decades. Lately, she's been processing climate doom.

Meet the latest curators from The Holland Project's Curators Series, Annaiz Ramirez + Sal Barajas-Alvarez from Savior Studios. Annaiz is a recent UNR graduate with a degree in art history. Sal is a TMCC student. They both grew up in Mexican families in Reno, and they have very different stories about how art became part of their lives.

During the pandemic, Reno portrait artist Zoe Bray took a detour into comic-style drawings of a happy-but-cooped-up family. Now she's back to exhibiting oil paintings. Her latest exhibition Face to Face: Contemporary Portraits, is at the Courthouse Gallery in Carson City through Feb. 10.

Tahoe artist Paula Chung has undertaken the laborious task of honoring every person in the United States who's died of COVID—803,000 and counting. For each person, she's sewing a mark onto a long roll of rice paper. A few of these rolls are on view at the Bristlecone Gallery at Western Nevada College through Dec. 22.

When Nathaniel Benjamin was growing up, his mother was studying to become a nurse. Nathaniel was fascinated with her medical illustration books, especially by an encyclopedia of human abnormalities. You can still see the traces of this early influence in his murals, prints, and apparel designs.

Jessi talks about how growing up with literature influenced her large-scale Burning Man artwork, and she gives some updates on The Generator, the Sparks makerspace.

Reno artist Richard Jackson has been into flying eyeballs, flames, and skulls since he was in the 3rd grade. These days, he thinks of his skull-shaped ceramic creations as "empty vessels" for biographical imagery or "blank pages" to draw on. Richard co-curated the exhibition "Skull" at UNR, along with Las Vegas artists Chris Bauder. It's on view at the Sheppard Gallery through Dec. 1.

“The problem is that a lot of people don't see themselves being represented in museums,” said Vivian Zavataro, Curator of the Lilley Museum of Art at UNR. She talked about how art institutions, including the Lilley, are trying to fix that.

Melissa Melero-Moose, co-founder of the Great Basin Native Artists, talks about the ongoing challenges Indigenous artists face in gaining visibility and recognition.

Luka Starmer, VR specialist for UNR Libraries (and Double Scoop contributor) has learned a lot as part of the team that's 3D scanning historical Native baskets. He came into the KWNK studio to talk about the baskets, the basketmakers, the technology, and an unsolved crime or two.

Nevada First Lady Kathy Sisolak launched a new program to showcase work by Nevada artists in the Governor’s Mansion. Incline Village watercolor artist Ronnie Rector is the first to be featured. On this episode, she and Carson City Arts & Culture Director Mark Salinas bring you up to speed on the program, Ronnie's paintings, and more art news from Carson City.

When Ahren Hertel first stared painting, he had two main influences—cartoons like Calvin + Hobbes and Renaissance paintings. He took it from there. His exhibition, Match, is on view at the Oats Park Art Center in Fallon through April 4.

Kris interviewed Las Vegas artist Justin Favela on institutional inclusion and his exhibition at the Courthouse Gallery in Carson City, Saludos Amigos.

Muralists have job hazards, just like everyone else. Holly Hutchings asked Reno painters Bryce Chisholm and Jennifer Charbonneau about the ups and downs of working on the streets.

The City of Sparks got a $50,000 public art grant last year. Now, they're working on making the most of it. City events planner Francine Burge and artist Jen Charbonneau talk about some of the creative ways they've come up with to find out what kind of art Sparks residents want to see in their city.

Downtown Reno is changing quickly, and four new Burning Man sculptures in the neighborhood symbolize different things to different people. August podcast host Holly Hutchings talked with a tourist, a bus rider, Elko artist Barry Crawford, and Ben Castro from the Reno Initiative for Shelter and Equality.

This week, we're taking you behind the scenes of Double Scoop. Learn about what we do, where we're coming from, and what's coming up.

Lena Tseabbe Wright from Nixon is a grad student at the San Francisco Art Institute who's leading a community mural project in Sparks. In the studio, she was thoughtful and upfront about the pros and cons of art school, the challenges of starting an art career, and how much thought goes into responsibly represent a community, Native American or otherwise.

Artspot's mural tours stared when Geralda Miller noticed her collaborator Eric Brooks showing his friends from Scotland around to Reno's outdoor artworks. Now, their org offers weekly tours downtown and in Midtown. The remaining tours this month are on July 13, 20 and 27. For details, visit Artspot Reno's Facebook page.

DJ and podcaster Prince Nesta interviews artist/author/trailblazer Mary Lee Fulkerson, who remembers how challenging it was to chart an art career as a woman in the 1950s . Mary Lee and several others will talk about their work during the Artown event Visioaries: Women Artists of the Great Basin at the Northwest Reno Library on July 6 from 1-3 p.m.