Mindkiller

Heather Gabel has always worked as a visual artist, but over the past four years she's discovered the joy and catharsis of musical performance as half of the dark electronic duo HIDE, who recently returned from a tour in support of their E.P Castration Anxiety. We drank a large amount of coffee and discussed true crime, asshole sound guys, Hannah Hoch, Eve Libertine, parenting, Hollywood, and that amazing feeling you get when you realize that you can just start a band and people will find out about your shows and come see you.

Aay Preston-Myint has worked diligently for many years to build his thriving fine-art practice, but he's also devoted a tremendous amount of energy to collaborative projects that have improved the quality of life in Chicago for his fellow makers, and queer artists in particular. As one of the founding organizers of Chances, a series of dance parties, Aay helped to create a nightlife space where it was cool and safe to be both weird and queer,  fostering community and funding creativity with grant money raised from the proceeds. As a partner in No Coast, a print-focused collaborative, an Editor of the arts and literary journal Monsters and Dust and an organizer of the Chicago Art Book Fair,  he's learned valuable lessons about management and communication. We discussed the highlights (and a few low moments) from his multi-faceted career, and discussed strategies for letting go of criticality and getting in touch with the outside world- a tall order for introverts.

Over the course of our 16-year friendship, I've been in constant awe of Carrie. She's a brilliant artist and fellow musician, and she has a knack for problem-solving and tackling difficult tasks fearlessly. In the wake of a recent divorce, however, her coping mechanisms were severely tested. Realizing that she'd become isolated, Carrie reached out to a group of female friends for support and discovered hidden reserves of power she didn't realize she possessed. Although she's an atheist, she embarked on a spiritual journey that led to a thriving magickal practice. Since it's Spring, a time for new beginnings, I was excited to check in with one of my dearest friends to learn about her fresh start.

As an undergrad, Janice Lim studied studied printmaking and photography, but she holds a graduate degree in art restoration, and she currently works at the Field Museum of Natural History making display mounts for rare and precious specimens including (currently) dinosaur fossils from Antarctica!!! She's also a highly skilled tattoo artist, and she garnered fans as the drummer for Civilized Man and Gula Gila, two influential Chicago bands. Given her many interests and talents, It's no surprise that she and I broke my record for longest recorded interview, and I loved every minute of it, even the heavier moments when the conversation turned away from lighter topics (old acid, drumming in a skirt) to more difficult subjects like grief and loss.

I am fascinated by funny people. Gina is both funny and fearless, qualities that make her a world-class cartoonist and an extremely engaging interviewee. Her book Someone Please Have Sex With Me was excerpted in the 2015 edition of Best American Comics and has been translated in Spain, Norway and Denmark, and she has continued to explore the themes of lust and longing in subsequent mini-comics. I'm so thankful that Gina traveled across the city to talk to me about, among other things, her apartment, her job, her art-making process, boys, capitalism, Puerto Rico, Dancing, fashion, isolation and the internet. And I learned the term "chuckle-fuckers". At the end of the interview, you'll hear Nuestro Planeta by Kali Uchis.

Molly Colleen O'Connell raids sewers and circuses to bring her trolls, clowns and eccentrics to vivid life. Via performance, painting, sculpture, video and cartooning she creates elaborate habitats and mindscapes that put the viewer in close proximity to creatures from the outer realms, but she imbues them with so much love and pathos it's impossible to come away unmoved. Buckle your spacewig chinstraps and get ready for an in-depth conversation about creativity, comedy, terry cloth and so much more.

I have some kind of nasty illness, probably a sinus infection. I am very sick, and I can't deal with life. So instead of posting an interview, I made this mix for you to jam in the studio. Track list is in the intro. I hope you find this music as comforting as I do, and if you don't, too bad! This is the best I can do. Check in next week for (hopefully) more hard-hitting interviews.

Dain Daller and Amanda Speer left Chicago to live off the grid in Abiquiu, New Mexico Eight years ago, and I recently caught up with them by phone. They're both skilled artists and artisans, and the home they built in the desert, out of salvaged materials, is full of unique and beautiful objects they've made by hand. After learning loom weaving at a local fiber arts center, they began producing exquisite scarves, wall-hangings, blankets and garments, and their work is sought after all over the world. Check it out at http://www.warpzoneweaving.com/ If you've ever wondered what it's like to live off the grid, wonder no more-Dain and Amanda graciously answered all of my desert survival questions. At the end of the interview, you'll hear "Baby Wants to Ride" by Frankie Knuckles.

I met Deborah Garcia at Yollocalli Arts Reach, an organization dedicated to providing after-school arts programming to teens in the Pilsen and Little Village neighborhoods of Chicago. First at Yollocalli and now at Enlace, another local non-profit, Deborah has dedicated a large part of her life to making sure that kids in the community have the opportunity to express themselves in a safe, creative environment. She's graduating with a Master's degree in Arts Administration from the School of the Art Institute this Spring, and her thesis project is an ambitious series of murals that examines the problem of gentrification in the area. If you are feeling overwhelmed by everything that's wrong with the world, this conversation will remind you that there are brilliant people working hard every day all around us to make the future brighter and more peaceful for everyone.

Jessica Campbell, like all great comedians, finds the humor in abjection. Her comics and wall-hangings are darkly funny, mining daily frustrations and small humiliations for big laughs, and we discussed her influences, both positive (her partner Aaron, her friend Chuck Forsman) and negative (internet trolls and harassers) and her plans for the future. Where are the adults? Is life worth living? I'm still not sure, but I feel better after talking with Jessica.

Emma Sims and Hanna Elliott are both visual artists, but they've chosen to devote a large part of their creative energy to HOGG, their collaborative music project. To date they've released two E.Ps of, in their words,  "Industrial Psycho-Sexual Abstraction, Ritualistic Anarcho Death-Dance", Bury the Dog Deeper and Solar Phallic Lion, but they spent several years before they began playing live and recording honing their sound and performance style in private. I was fascinated to learn about their unique approach to song-writing and their rare creative symbiosis, and I was deeply impressed by their insights on failure, meditation, femininity and transgressive art.

I was lucky enough to catch Montreal-based cartoonist Tommi Parrish during their brief trip to Chicago in support of The Lie and How We Told It, their latest graphic novel. They've garnered praise for their finely tuned dialogue and innovative visual style, and we discussed their artmaking strategies, mental health tips, lifelong love of learning and much more! At the end of our talk you'll hear the song Extractor by Lungbutter, so stick around for that-it's a ripper!

Margot Ferrick creates sequential art that's haunting, poetic and utterly distinctive, and it was a joy for me to read back over her books in preparation for our talk and discover themes and recurring motifs. Although I had difficulty remembering the name of an Alejandro Jodorowsky film (Endless Poetry) and a Joseph Campbell book (Hero with a Thousand Faces), we had a moving and far-ranging talk about motherhood, prayer, ballet, Long Island, sex, Catholic ritual, the enduring appeal of Eva Hesse and much more.

Ruth, who sometimes works under the name Robin Hustle, is a visual artist, writer and registered nurse. How she got to where she is now is a fascinating story, and I picked her brain about self-education, eroticism in art, nurturance, and her stint writing articles for a popular mainstream blog. Ruth has a wide range of  experiences and interests, and we tackle the difficult topic of how to balance work and life as artists and human beings.

Stephany Colunga's jewlery is unlike anyone else's-she takes inspiration from diverse sources to craft unique and beautiful wearable art objects. Like many of the artists I've interviewed, she's also a musician, and you'll hear a track by her band Gula Gila at the end of our talk. Over the course of an hour, Stephany generously shared her tips on how to game the system when doing paid market research, told the story of a New Year's Day epiphany that took her to Mexico to connect with her father's side of the family, and discussed her more recent efforts to help with earthquake relief in that country. And we both got a little existential at the end.

I spoke by phone with professional bassist and all-around badass rock & roll star Emily Elhaj, newly returned to New Orleans after a work trip to L.A,  about her start playing bass in the band Mayor Daley and her current gig touring and recording with Angel Olsen. We discussed the pressures and stresses of touring and how to decompress during and after long months on the road, and Emily described a transcendent experience playing for a live audience on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. In addition to pursuing music and photography, Emily also runs a record label, Love Lion, and she's just released Grid City, a compilation featuring many beloved Chicago bands, which is now available in select shops and online.

I traveled a short distance from home to interview musician and visual artist Daniel Luedtke at his studio space in the Little Village neighborhood of Chicago. I've been a big fan of Daniel's ever since I first encountered him performing with his legendary Minneapolis-based band Gay Beast, and it was great to catch up. Should you settle for a partner who's not into reading? How can the American pharmaceutical industry be improved? Should you print show posters for bands you don't like? How do you uphold your principles and find work you love? When and where did punk go wrong? What is process-based art? (I just looked up the definition and...oops...) Tune in to find the answers to (most) of these questions!

By their late teens, Yusuf Muhammad was already one of the most influential members of Chicago's underground music community. They quickly gained recognition for their distinctive guitar work in the bands Haki, Bloom and Ono, and  they're currently playing bass in the newly formed experimental rock group Hagspittle, and making visual art as well. We sat down over tea and I barely noticed the time passing as we discussed ambition, collaboration, spirituality, romance, family, Black Sabbath, addiction, recovery, and the perfect show, where every single audience member would be wigging out in their own totally unique way.

Cartoonist and musician Mike Centeno doesn't shy away from difficult autobiographical material in his work, so we skipped the small talk. Topics covered include the punk scene in Caracas, Venezuela, the undeniable allure of Catholic iconography, even for atheists, and Mike's battle with a life-threatening illness, during which he observed that time, in hospitals, is measured not by the clock, but by an endless procession of sitcoms.

  I temporarily overcame my fear of snakes to interview cartoonist, printmaker and ceramicist Chloe Perkis. Over the course of our talk we faced down ghosts, bullies and mansplainers, and celebrated heroes like resourceful single moms, DIY music festival organizers and the tormented former scientist Alex Olsen, whose chemically bathed body reacted with the vegetation of the nearby swamplands, transforming him into the shambling, muck-encrusted creature known popularly as Swamp Thing

For the inaugural episode of Mindkiller, my podcast dedicated to creative struggle, I interview Jill Flanagan, one of my oldest friends and a former bandmate in Coughs, a Chicago noise-rock sextet. Along the way, we discuss the challenges she's faced in her decades as an experimental musician and performance artist, and what keeps her motivated and inspired in the face of adversity. Topics covered include an illuminating acid trip, a bloody accident with a dried puffer fish, year-end top ten lists and Jane Fonda's workout video.