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Silicon Bites Ep366 | 2026-07-14 | the book and movie Stalker: enter at your own risk, assume everything is hazardous, and stop looking for redemption in the rubble. You may find things of use in the Zone of contagion, but what you find may also corrupt and kill you. ZONE OF CONTAGION: In a single fortnight, the IOC has reinstated the Russian Olympic Committee, Netflix has expanded a Russian cartoon empire into more than a hundred countries, and the Venice Biennale has already spent a season laundering the pavilion of a state that bombs museums and conducts daily human safaris in Kherson Oblast. All while Russian glide bombs hit bus stops in Sumy and ballistic missiles land in Kyiv's residential districts. The West keeps searching for the "good Russia" — the culture, the art, the sport — as if finding it would redeem the state committing the crimes. This is weakness and naivety that will get us all killed. And it is based on extraordinary weakness that verges on complicity with evil. This fictitious good Russia is a convenient excuse for us to take no action to defeat the real Russia – the one attacking Ukraine and us. This blindness to Russia's evil intent must stop. ----------ACTIVE CAMPAIGN:We are raising funds for 5 of 15 Vampire DronesSilicon Curtain for Kupiansk Vampires. Dzyga's Paw, together with Jonathan Fink, is joining forces to raise $40,000 to provide the Khartiia Brigade with Vampire Drones.https://dzygaspaw.com/silicon-curtain-for-kupiansk-vampires----------SUPPORT THE CHANNEL:https://www.buymeacoffee.com/siliconcurtainhttps://www.patreon.com/siliconcurtainhttps://www.gofundme.com/f/scaling-up-campaign-to-fight-authoritarian-disinformation----------TRUSTED CHARITIES ON THE GROUND:Save Ukrainehttps://www.saveukraineua.org/Superhumans - Hospital for war traumashttps://superhumans.com/en/UNBROKEN - Treatment. Prosthesis. Rehabilitation for Ukrainians in Ukrainehttps://unbroken.org.ua/Come Back Alivehttps://savelife.in.ua/en/Chefs For Ukraine - World Central Kitchenhttps://wck.org/relief/activation-chefs-for-ukraineUNITED24 - An initiative of President Zelenskyyhttps://u24.gov.ua/Serhiy Prytula Charity Foundationhttps://prytulafoundation.org----------SOURCES:NPR — "IOC clears way for Russian athletes to return to Olympics" (8 July 2026)IOC — "IOC provisionally lifts suspension of Russian Olympic Committee" (7 July 2026)Sportico — "IOC Ban on Russian Athletes Lifted Ahead of Los Angeles 2028 Olympics" (7 July 2026)Marathon Handbook — "Russia Cleared To Return To The Olympics As IOC Lifts Its Suspension" (7 July 2026, incl. World Athletics Council decision of 3 July 2026)Meduza (English) — "British lawmakers demand ban on Russian cartoon 'Masha and the Bear' over 'propaganda'" (3 July 2026)Propastop — "Masha and the Bear: Why Did Russian Media Go on the Defensive?" (6 July 2026)The Telegraph (via Yahoo News) — "The Russian children's cartoon embroiled in Putin's soft-power war" (July 2026)Georgia Today — "Netflix faces criticism after expanding global access to Russian cartoon Masha and the Bear" (late June 2026)Euronews — "EU countries back suspension of funding for the Venice Biennale over Russian participation" (12 May 2026)Artforum — "Russia's Venice Pavilion Will Be Closed to Public for Duration of Biennale" (28 April 2026)EUobserver — "Russia's pavilion at the Venice Biennale won't whitewash its crimes against humanity" (8 May 2026)AP / Reuters (via US News) — "Russian attacks kill 6, wound 29, as Ukrainian forces target oil tankers" and "Russian Strikes Kill Eight, Wound Dozens" (11 July 2026)Al Jazeera — "At least 22 killed in Kyiv as Zelenskyy warns of 'massive Russian strike'" (2 July 2026)The Moscow Times — "Nine Dead as Russia, Ukraine Exchange Strikes" (12 July 2026)Background: Arkady & Boris Strugatsky, Roadside Picnic (1972); Andrei Tarkovsky, Stalker (1979).----------
Welcome to Art is Awesome, the show where we talk with an artist or art worker with a connection to the San Francisco Bay Area. Today, Emily chats with Miguel Arzabe, a engineer turned artist based in Oakland, Ca... About Artist Miguel Arzabe: Miguel Arzabe makes colorful and dynamic abstractions - weavings, paintings, videos. He starts by finding outdated beauty in paper ephemera from art shows, modernist paintings, discarded audio recordings. They are methodically analyzed, deconstructed, reverse-engineered. Drawing inspiration from the cultural techniques and motifs of his Andean heritage, Arzabe weaves the fragments together revealing uncanny intersections between form and content, the nostalgic and the hard-edged, failure and recuperation. Arzabe lives and works in Oakland, CA. He had recent solo shows at Shulamit Nazarian Gallery (Los Angeles, CA) and Johansson Projects (Oakland, CA). Arzabe's work has been featured in such festivals as Hors Pistes (Centre Pompidou, Paris), Festival du Nouveau Cinéma (Montreal), and the Geumgang Nature Art Biennale (Gongju, South Korea); and in museums and galleries including MAC Lyon (France), MARS Milan (Italy), RM Projects (Auckland), FIFI Projects (Mexico City), Marylhurst University (Oregon), the Contemporary Jewish Museum, Berkeley Art Museum, the CCA Wattis Institute, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Arzabe's work is held in public collections such as the Harn Museum of Art in Gainseville, FL; the de Young Museum; Albuquerque Museum of Art; Oakland Museum of California; San Francisco Arts Commission; the State of California; as well as numerous private collections. He has attended many residencies including Facebook AIR, Headlands Center for the Arts, Montalvo Arts Center, Millay Arts, and Santa Fe Art Institute. He holds a BS from Carnegie Mellon University, an MS from Arizona State University, and an MFA from UC Berkeley. In 2022 Arzabe was awarded the San Francisco Bay Area Artadia Award. In 2023 he was awarded a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant and and a Golden Foundation Residency. In 2024 his work was featured in the exhibitions About Place at the deYoung Museum and The Poetics of Dimensions at the ICA San Francisco. His work is featured in the 2025 contemporary art survey TEXTILES x ART published by Thames and Hudson AU. Visit Miguel's Website: MiguelArzabe.net Follow Miguel on Instagram: @Miguel.Arzabe -- About Podcast Host Emily Wilson: Emily a writer in San Francisco, with work in outlets including Hyperallergic, Artforum, 48 Hills, the Daily Beast, California Magazine, Latino USA, and Women's Media Center. She often writes about the arts. For years, she taught adults getting their high school diplomas at City College of San Francisco. Follow Emily on Instagram: @PureEWil Follow Art Is Awesome on Instagram: @ArtIsAwesome_Podcast -- CREDITS: Art Is Awesome is Hosted, Created & Executive Produced by Emily Wilson. Theme Music "Loopster" Courtesy of Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License The Podcast is Co-Produced, Developed & Edited by Charlene Goto of @GoToProductions. For more info, visit Go-ToProductions.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Episode 184: Miriam Katz & Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert ABOUT MIRIAMMiriam Katz is Los Angeles-based public speaking coach, podcaster, and performer. She studied comparative literature at Columbia University, worked at Artforum magazine for many many years, followed by stints curating comedy shows and panels for Moma in New York and Silencio in Paris. She trained in improv at The Groundlings and UCB, and also studied acting, clown, and voice over in many other theaters and schools. You may have heard her in video games or seen her in films, tv shows, and Chili's commercials (plural). She is the host of the “Ex Appeal” podcast for which she interviews every person she's ever been romantic with on any level. The show was recently a “hot topic” on The View. That's right, Whoopi Goldberg knows her name.CONVERSATION HIGHLIGHTS• Miriam's unconventional podcast, X Appeal, and her honest conversations with ex-partners reveal our shared human experiences• The importance of curiosity over fear in creative pursuits and personal development• How her diverse background in arts and academia informs her approach to coaching and life• The influence of spirituality and intuition on her creative processInsights from Elizabeth Gilbert's Big Magic and its encouragement to see art and inspiration as playful, divine collaborations• Practical tips on embracing silence, pauses, and authenticity in communication and art• The significance of setting boundaries and focusing energy on what truly fuels your passion• The role of continuous learning and experimentation in evolving as a creative individualThe MAIN QUESTION for you that comes out of my conversation with Miriam is, How curious, playful, and open are you when it comes to your creative endeavors and general goals in lifeFIND MIRIAM• Website: https://www.miriamkatz.com/• LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/miriam-katz-b53ba828b• Twitter: https://x.com/miriamdkatz• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/miriam.katz.7LinkedIn - Full Podcast Article: CHAPTERS00:00 - The Book Leads Podcast - Miriam Katz01:05 - Introduction & Bio06:33 - Who are you today? Can you provide more information about your work?13:50 - How did your path into your career look like, and what did it look like up until now?52:15 - How does the work you're doing today reconcile to who you were as a child?55:43 - What do you consider your superpower?56:11 - What does leadership mean to you?01:04:32 - Can you introduce us to the book we're discussing?01:08:20 - Can you provide a general overview of the book?01:18:21 - What's changed in you in the process of writing this book?01:23:20 - What are you up to these days? (A way for guests to share and market their projects and work.)This series has become my Masterclass In Humanity. I'd love for you to join me and see what you take away from these conversations.Learn more about The Book Leads and listen to past episodes:Watch on YouTubeListen on SpotifyListen on Apple PodcastsRead About The Book Leads – Blog PostFor more great content, check out the catalog for my newsletter Last Week's Leadership Lessons, if you haven't already!
Photographers Jarod Lew and Reagan Louie join PhotoWork with Sasha Wolf to discuss how they explore cultural identity, personal loss, and trauma through photography. Lew and Louie are Asian American photographers from different generations, and their work reflects how the exploration of cultural identity in contemporary photography has evolved over the decades. While Louie takes a documentary photography approach, Lew works through more conceptual constructs. Their conversation with Wolf highlights the visual differences between their practices while revealing striking resonances in how they discuss their approach. https://www.jarodlew.com https://www.reaganlouie.com Jarod Lew is an artist who draws on photography to explore intergenerational encounters with diasporic loss, displacement, and postmemory. Through this exploration, his work contends with the performativity of race and its instability as a locus of meaning. His project, Please Take Off Your Shoes was shortlisted for the Aperture Portfolio Prize in 2021, and was exhibited in a group exhibition at SFMOMA titled Kinship: Photography and Connection in 2023. His other project, In Between You and Your Shadow, examines his relationship with his mother, who was the fiancé of Vincent Chin--the subject of a hate-crime that brought national attention to matters of Asian American civil rights. In 2025, Lew will mount his first museum exhibition at the University of Michigan Museum of Art titled- Strange You Never Knew. His works are held in public and private collections including the Cantor Art Center, Detroit Institute of Arts, Kadist, San Francisco, Harvard Art Museum, University of Michigan Museum of Art and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Lew's work has been written about in Aperture, Artforum, Elephant Magazine, and Aesthetica Magazine. Lew graduated with an MFA in photography at the Yale School of Art. Reagan Louie's photography and installations explore global transformation and cultural identity. He is currently at work on several projects that focus on the relationship between home and homeland; including a book about his family's immigration from China to America. And a Virtual Reality experience about his ancestral home, Wing Wor. His work is exhibited at institutions: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Modern Art NY, Philadelphia Art Museum, Fotomuseum Winterthur, Gwangju Biennale. Louie's photographs are in the public collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Modern Art NY, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Oakland Museum, Cantor Art Museum. Louie's photographs are widely published. His books have received critical acclaim. The New York Times Book Review named his first book on China, “Toward a Truer Life”, the photography book of the year. He is the recipient of numerous awards - The Guggenheim fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, Lange-Taylor Prize, and Fulbright Fellowship.
In this debut story collection Patchwork Dolls (Blair, 2026), Ysabelle Cheung weaves an eerie fabulism with tales that cross continents, technology, and time. Set in Hong Kong and America--between the present day and an uncannily altered future--this story collection warps the familiar rules of our world to ask: what does it mean to be Asian and a woman--living under the specter of state and technological surveillance--or trying to break free from it? In the title story, a young woman of color realizes she can make her fortune by surgically selling her facial features to whiter, wealthier clients. In "Please, Get Out and Dance," a group of rebels escapes a city that is literally disappearing around them--building by building, person by person--to migrate to a new home beneath the ocean, defying their government's mandate. "Herbs" follows an elderly widow who, when the clones of her dead husband start to appear uninvited in her home, must grapple with her memories. In each of these stories, Cheung tilts the world just slightly off its axis to bring together a haunting meditation on what it means to survive within our increasingly digitized and mechanized world. Ysabelle Cheung is a writer and art critic based in Hong Kong. Her Fiction has appeared in Granta, Slate, and The Rumpus. She was awarded the 2023 Aspen Words Fellowship and was in residence at the Jan Michalski Foundation in 2024. Her essays and criticism have appeared in The Atlantic, Artforum, and Lit Hub. She is the co-founder of a contemporary art gallery in Hong Kong called the PhD Group. Recommended Books: Merlin Sheldrake, Entangled Life Sayumi Kamakura, Applause for a Cloud Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is published with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
In this debut story collection Patchwork Dolls (Blair, 2026), Ysabelle Cheung weaves an eerie fabulism with tales that cross continents, technology, and time. Set in Hong Kong and America--between the present day and an uncannily altered future--this story collection warps the familiar rules of our world to ask: what does it mean to be Asian and a woman--living under the specter of state and technological surveillance--or trying to break free from it? In the title story, a young woman of color realizes she can make her fortune by surgically selling her facial features to whiter, wealthier clients. In "Please, Get Out and Dance," a group of rebels escapes a city that is literally disappearing around them--building by building, person by person--to migrate to a new home beneath the ocean, defying their government's mandate. "Herbs" follows an elderly widow who, when the clones of her dead husband start to appear uninvited in her home, must grapple with her memories. In each of these stories, Cheung tilts the world just slightly off its axis to bring together a haunting meditation on what it means to survive within our increasingly digitized and mechanized world. Ysabelle Cheung is a writer and art critic based in Hong Kong. Her Fiction has appeared in Granta, Slate, and The Rumpus. She was awarded the 2023 Aspen Words Fellowship and was in residence at the Jan Michalski Foundation in 2024. Her essays and criticism have appeared in The Atlantic, Artforum, and Lit Hub. She is the co-founder of a contemporary art gallery in Hong Kong called the PhD Group. Recommended Books: Merlin Sheldrake, Entangled Life Sayumi Kamakura, Applause for a Cloud Chris Holmes is Chair of Literatures in English and Professor at Ithaca College. He writes criticism on contemporary global literatures. His book, Kazuo Ishiguro Against World Literature, is published with Bloomsbury Publishing. He is the co-director of The New Voices Festival, a celebration of work in poetry, prose, and playwriting by up-and-coming young writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literature
Welcome to Art is Awesome, the show where we talk with an artist or art worker with a connection to the San Francisco Bay Area. This week, Emily welcomes Paola de la Calle, a Colombian American multidisciplinary artist based in San Francisco. Her work spans textiles, ceramics, printmaking, and writing, and often explores themes of immigration, land sovereignty, family memory, and diaspora identity. About Artist Paola de la Calle: Paola de la Calle is a Colombian-American multidisciplinary artist whose work examines home, identity, borders, and nostalgia through the use of textiles, printmaking, and sculpture. In her practice, De la Calle combines photographs sourced from family albums and found images which she prints on textiles, as well as poetic texts, paintings made with coffee instead of paint, and found objects, to mine the aesthetics of nostalgia and examine the socio-political relationship between the United States and Colombia. She is a graduate of the New York Foundation of the Arts Immigrant Artist Program in 2019 and the lead artist for the Caravan for the Children Campaign as part of her residency with Galeria de la Raza in 2020. She was awarded fellowships at KALA (2022) and The Studios at MassMOCA (2025). She has attended residencies at the Textile Arts Center in Brooklyn, NY and Casa Lu in Mexico City, MX. De la Calle was awarded the 2026/2027 Ann Chamberlain Artist-in-Residence at San Francisco State University. She's been featured on Hyperallergic's “A View from the Easel”, “Through My Eyes” on Hulu, NPR, Refinery29, The Boston Art Review, Latina Magazine, Glasstire, and VOGUE among others. Visit Paola's Website: PaoladelaCalle.com Follow Paola on Instagram: @PaoladelaCalle -- About Podcast Host Emily Wilson: Emily a writer in San Francisco, with work in outlets including Hyperallergic, Artforum, 48 Hills, the Daily Beast, California Magazine, Latino USA, and Women's Media Center. She often writes about the arts. For years, she taught adults getting their high school diplomas at City College of San Francisco. Follow Emily on Instagram: @PureEWil Follow Art Is Awesome on Instagram: @ArtIsAwesome_Podcast -- CREDITS: Art Is Awesome is Hosted, Created & Executive Produced by Emily Wilson. Theme Music "Loopster" Courtesy of Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License The Podcast is Co-Produced, Developed & Edited by Charlene Goto of @GoToProductions. For more info, visit Go-ToProductions.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Hunter College professor and author of The War of Art, Lauren O'Neill-Butler talks about: Her 12 years at Artforum magazine, including its balance between advertising and hard-core art writing, and how her chapter on Fierce Pussy was written while at Artforum; the classes on Activism she's taught at Hunter College, which were not to get students to become activists but to make them aware of its history and context; how teaching activism and writing the book were both 'rage containers' but also ways to inspire difference; how activisms 'expire,' including in the case of her colleague Carrie Moyer, whose hardcore activism (including her campaigns for Dyke Action Machine) lasted two years and followed by going back to the studio and making abstract paintings; the difference between 'activists' and 'artists activists,' which culminated in a question at one of her book events at the New York Public Library: "why are you focusing on artists? What makes them so special? Why can't you talk about other activists too?" and how, in addition to bringing an aesthetic to their activism, as part of the answer, artists are beleaguered; the seminal moment in the artist Rick Lowe's career, when a student living in the 3rd Ward of Houston asked him why, as opposed to just showing them the problems in their neighborhood that they were already aware of, wasn't he being creative about coming up with solutions?; her contention that all art is political, but what does an artist's role look like in terms of their actions; how there's no purity in America and no purity in activism, and how Project Row Houses wouldn't have become as robust without the corporate effort; Sarah Schulman's recent writing on the importance of solidarity, and how the left keeps pointing the figure and keeps eating itself; what Project Row Houses looks like, including the mix of affordable and market rate housing, artists who live in them, and expensive condos recently going up in the neighborhood amidst preserved housing in the 3rd Ward of Houston. In the 2nd half of our conversation, available to paid Patreon Supporters of the podcast, Lauren talks about: Why she included (former guest) Ben Davis's critique of Project Row Houses, along with a contextual framework on the challenges of limiting the effects of gentrification, primarily as a way to point out that it isn't artists who are the problem fixers, it's our government representatives; for Rick Lowe and Project Row Houses, it was about trying to do better for the locals; the highly influential and impactful activist organization P.A.I.N. (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now), started by artist Nan Goldin, which was instigated by the terrific irony of the Tate Museum, with £4 million in donations from the Sackler Family Trust, purchased Goldin's "The Ballad of Sexual Dependency" at the same time as she was addicted to Oxycontin (the highly addictive pain medication that led to an epidemic, of which the Sacklers are known for); the successful objective of P.A.I.N. (which is a non-partisan group despite it being formed by a politically progressive artist) to eliminate the art-washing of the Sacklers by putting their names on so many museum wings, and in turn what it was like for PAIN members to attend the protests with fellow protesters who were in very different cultural spheres, including hard-core trumpers; how savvy PAIN was in cultivating and working with the press, which really got their actions thoroughly covered, and even their private meetings were recorded, which helped provide lots of content for Laura Poitras's documentary on Goldin; how Lauren uses YouTube video footage of the PAIN protests, which were so well thought out and dramatic, in her classes; why she didn't right about the Stop Oil! Activist actions in museums (because it's mainly taken place in the U.K.); how the effectiveness of a protest depends very much on the press coverage and the level of circulation of the images from a given action; how most activisms have a figurehead (Goldin), and how it matters, for better or worse, when there's a public-facing person in a group; how successful activism depends on bringing in new blood and new ideas, and how big a factor burnout is for activists; the state of agitprop, or postering, today vs. the 90s- Carrie Moyer and Sue () of Dyke Action Machine would say that the street postering they did wouldn't work today, because there's just too much visual noise, and Lauren's nostalgia for the 90s for those reasons; the 'Secret Handshake' sculptures of trump and Epstein that have been making the rounds on social media around the world, work which she hates but recognizes as effective nonetheless; the hostile takeover of the New College of Florida, Lauren's undergraduate alma mater, by governor Desantis, and how she's been part of the alumni response to the takeover including the forming of nonprofits, a project that is very close to her heart and how she's been involved in it for the past three years, and the struggle of the school was recently featured on "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver."
Welcome back to ARTMATTERS: The Podcast for ArtistsOur guest today is Margaret Curtis, a feminist painter born in Bermuda whose vivid, densely layered canvases explore power dynamics at both the personal and societal level. Margaret is an inaugural recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Fellowship, and her work first gained national recognition in Marcia Tucker's landmark Bad Girls exhibition at the New Museum in New York in 1994. Since then she has shown at the Brooklyn Museum, the Andy Warhol Museum, and the Wexner Center, with recent solo shows at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art and Post Times Gallery in New York City. Her work has been reviewed in the Times, Artforum, Art in America, and Harper's, and is held in permanent collections throughout the United States. I sat down with Margaret in the last days of her exhibition entitled ‘S at Post Times in Lower Manhattan. I set up the mics and the cameras and Margaret spoke to me about endurance, dumb mark-making, her beloved Quinacridone gold and how she describes a day in her studio as 30,000 nonverbal decisions, and feeling practically broken by the end of it. We talk Cricut, Frisket, Speedy Carve and Dibond as well as the cake decorating tools that she snatched up in a deliberate act of rebellion against her painting instructors - and originally kicked off this predilection for alternative mark-making, Margaret explains why she believes style is a market pressure, not something worth pursuing, and that each painting demands its own visual language. She also talks Jack Whitten, gives some great final advice, and tells me why painting has always been "her friendliest enemy.”Support this podcast by clicking HERE and becoming a Patreon Supporter!If you're enjoying the podcast so far, please rate, review, subscribe and SHARE ON INSTAGRAM! If you have any questions you want answered, write in to artmatterspodcast@gmail.com host: Isaac Mannwww.isaacmann.cominsta: @isaac.mannguest: Margaret Curtiswww.margaretcurtisart.cominsta: @margarcurThank you as always to ARRN, the Detroit-based artist and instrumentalist, for the music.
Welcome to Art is Awesome, the show where we talk with an artist or art worker with a connection to the San Francisco Bay Area. This week, Emily Wilson sits down with Julia Goodman, a San Francisco-based artist who makes paper and textiles, as well as paintings and sculptures. They meet on the campus of the California College of the Arts — the last art school in San Francisco, set to close at the end of the 2026–27 school year — where Julia has been teaching. Their conversation covers Julia's winding path to art, the meditative and cathartic labor of making paper from recycled fabrics, grief, and an ongoing audio archive project about astronomy and motherhood. About Artist Julia Goodman: Julia Goodman is an artist and educator working at the intersection of papermaking, textiles, sculpture, and painting. Her work is held in the collections of the National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA), DePaul Art Museum, Recology San Francisco, and Google. Unimaginable Units of Time marks her first solo museum exhibition, presented at the San Luis Obispo Museum of Art. Recent group exhibitions include NMWA, Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Jose Museum of Art, DePaul Art Museum, Poetry Foundation, and Berkeley Art Center. Her residencies include JB Blunk Residency, Recology SF, Creativity Explored, Salina Art Center, The Space Program SF, and The Eames Institute. She is a recipient of the 2020 Women to Watch Award from the San Francisco chapter of NMWA. She is a longtime resident of the San Francisco Bay Area and started making paper in 2003 with a kitchen blender and old window screens. Visit Julia's Website: JAGoodman.com Follow Julia on Instagram: @JuliaAnneGoodman Learn more about Julia's Wrenching News Workshops HERE. -- About Podcast Host Emily Wilson: Emily a writer in San Francisco, with work in outlets including Hyperallergic, Artforum, 48 Hills, the Daily Beast, California Magazine, Latino USA, and Women's Media Center. She often writes about the arts. For years, she taught adults getting their high school diplomas at City College of San Francisco. Follow Emily on Instagram: @PureEWil Follow Art Is Awesome on Instagram: @ArtIsAwesome_Podcast -- CREDITS: Art Is Awesome is Hosted, Created & Executive Produced by Emily Wilson. Theme Music "Loopster" Courtesy of Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License The Podcast is Co-Produced, Developed & Edited by Charlene Goto of @GoToProductions. For more info, visit Go-ToProductions.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Welcome back to ARTMATTERS: The Podcast for ArtistsToday's guest is Catherine Haggarty, a Brooklyn-based painter, educator and founder whose work has been featured in Artforum, the New York Times, Hyperallergic, and BOMB magazine, among others.Catherine has exhibited widely across New York, LA, and Miami and has been a visiting artist at institutions including Cornell, RISD, Pratt and Rutgers, where she also earned her MFA.She co-founded NYC Crit Club in 2017 and also created the Canopy Program, a one-year mentorship platform now serving artists all around the world.On today's episode I joined Catherine in her Crown Heights studio for an expansive conversation. We discussed the emotional weight of years of unsold work in storage to what it really means to slow down and become more deliberate as an artist.Catherine speaks to me about motherhood, sustaining a practice over decades, the difference between style and voice and what led her to co-found NYC Crit Club and build the Canopy Program into the global platform it is today.We also talk about drawing, watercolor and other painting practices, as well as the importance of saving money and taking care of your body.Enjoy the conversation!Support this podcast by clicking HERE and becoming a Patreon Supporter!If you're enjoying the podcast so far, please rate, review, subscribe and SHARE ON INSTAGRAM!If you have any questions you want answered, write in to artmatterspodcast@gmail.comhost: Isaac Mann www.isaacmann.com insta: @isaac.mannguest: Catherine Haggarty www.catherinehaggarty.com insta: @catherinehaggarty insta: @thecanopyprogram insta: @nyccritclubCanopy Program Application - NOW OPENThank you as always to ARRN, the Detroit-based artist and instrumentalist, for the music.
On the KMOJ Morning Show, LaVina Branscomb joined Chantel Sings to share how her North Minneapolis roots and personal journey have shaped her work as a multimedia artist blending graphic design, painting, digital art, and community storytelling. After losing her mother to breast cancer, Branscomb turned to art as a source of healing and transformed that experience into a mission to spread joy, uplift others, and celebrate community voices. She discussed her participation in The People's Artist competition, a national showcase recognizing artists who use creativity to inspire healing, connection, and social impact, with the winner receiving a $25,000 prize, a feature in Artforum magazine, and an exhibition opportunity in Los Angeles. Branscomb also reflected on the importance of young people seeing artists who reflect their neighborhoods and experiences, while honoring her mother's legacy by pouring love and purpose into her work.
Welcome to Art is Awesome, the show where we talk with an artist or art worker with a connection to the San Francisco Bay Area. This week, Emily welcomes Abram Jackson, the Director of Interpretation at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, to talk about his work making museum exhibitions more inclusive and equitable. Abram came to the role through an unexpected path — he was a teacher and dean specializing in ethnic studies at the Bay School when a student's mother asked him to review an audio tour for inclusive language. He fell in love with the work and joined the de Young full-time in 2022. In his role, he reads exhibition labels through an equity lens, a practice he traces back to his very first edit on the Soul of a Nation show, where he revised the description of Fred Hampton's death to accurately name the role of COINTELPRO. The conversation also covers an upcoming Lowrider Culture Celebration at the de Young on June 6th, honoring artist Rose B. Simpson's Lexicon — rebuilt classic cars painted like pottery — planned in partnership with three women lowrider community leaders: Angel Romero, Ruby Ramirez, and Vera Majano. The free public event includes a lowrider exhibit, a screening of the documentary Los Dueños, a DJ, and family art-making activities. About Abram Jackson: Abram Jackson is the inaugural Director of Interpretation at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Jackson utilizes ethnic studies theories and DEIA practices in partnership with staff to incorporate more inclusive narratives into didactics. Jackson holds a Master of Arts in Ethnic Studies from San Francisco State University and a Master of Teaching in Social Studies from the University of Southern California. Jackson has fifteen years of administrative and teaching experience at the high school level, including seven at The Bay School of San Francisco as a humanities teacher and junior class dean, adjunct lecturer at San Francisco State University and at education programs for incarcerated people in California. Connect with Abram: LinkedIn Profile Follow Abram on Instagram: @Interpreting_Abram For Details About The Lowrider Culture Celebration on June 6 at the de Young - CLICK HERE Learn More About Rose B. Simpson Lexicon HERE -- About Podcast Host Emily Wilson: Emily a writer in San Francisco, with work in outlets including Hyperallergic, Artforum, 48 Hills, the Daily Beast, California Magazine, Latino USA, and Women's Media Center. She often writes about the arts. For years, she taught adults getting their high school diplomas at City College of San Francisco. Follow Emily on Instagram: @PureEWil Follow Art Is Awesome on Instagram: @ArtIsAwesome_Podcast -- CREDITS: Art Is Awesome is Hosted, Created & Executive Produced by Emily Wilson. Theme Music "Loopster" Courtesy of Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License The Podcast is Co-Produced, Developed & Edited by Charlene Goto of @GoToProductions. For more info, visit Go-ToProductions.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
We're kicking off Pride 2026 with a look at Todd Haynes's 1991 feature debut, Poison - one of the defining films of the New Queer Cinema movement! Join in as we discuss Haynes's early career, the way the movie's subject and structure challenge convention, and the rise of the Sundance Film Festival. Plus: Why did this movie cause trouble for the National Endowment for the Arts? Which of the three stories is the most unbelievable? And an explanation of why you should give Haynes's Dark Waters a second chance. Make sure to rate, review, and subscribe! Next week: My Own Private Idaho (1991)-----------------------------------------------------Key sources and links for this episode:Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance, and the Rise of Independent Film by Peter Biskind (2004)"New Queer Cinema" by B. Ruby Rich (Sight & Sound)"On the Margins: Todd Haynes's Poison" (Criterion)"Todd Haynes's Poison" (Art Forum)"The Todd Haynes Poison Controversy Explained" (SlashFilm)"Todd Haynes Rewrites the Hollywood Playbook" (New Yorker)"Transcendent Transgression: Looking Back at Todd Haynes's Poison" (Sundance)Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (YouTube)Cloud Atlas extended trailer (YouTube)"Serial Killer Documentary Takes Horrible Turn" by Cole Escola (YouTube)"Investigation into Bishop Bransfield finds Harassment, Gross Misuse of Funds" (National Catholic Reporter)
Is digital media preventing us from accessing the most exciting part of culture? Final episode of the hiatus special series: it's a new era! It's a new episode structure with new segments!Find out more about:the unacknowledged difference between wonder and wander – wonderment: what is it?A poem by Wordsworth & Agnes Martin's writingsart etiquettethat time when I went viral and Snoop Dog (or his team) reposted my performance showand more... (author and podcaster Katy Hessel (Great Women Artists Podcast), author Lauren Elkin...)Visit Worlding online and sign up to our newsletter or follow us on Instagram: @worldingprojecthttps://www.worldingproject.comSmall donations are great! "Buys us a book": https://buymeacoffee.com/exhibitionistaDonate: https://exhibitionistaspodcast.com/support-usTo know more about our guests and our ideas → SIGN UP TO THE EXHIBITIONISTAS FILES.https://joanaprneves.substack.com/s/exhibitionistasMy definition of wonderment is actually taken from the noun ‘wonder': https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/wonder Hollis Frampton's text: Digression on the Photographic Agony, Artforum, November 1972: https://www.artforum.com/features/digressions-on-the-photographic-agony-209932/Agnes Martin's photo credits: Agnes Martin in the mesas near Cuba, New Mexico, 1974. Photo Gianfranco Gorgoni.Pliny the Elder's mention of the origin myth of art is in Natural History Book XXXVMy strange viral experience article Going Viral: if your exhibition is reposted by Snoop Dog, does it matter? https://substack.com/home/post/p-157358364The article where I mention Katy Hessel's strange Art Self Help Book, Art as Function, Automatic Education, and Self-Care: the Politics of Culture Replaced by the Commodification of Creativity: https://substack.com/@joanaprneves/p-190450394Find Walter Benjamin's first “read Walter Benjamin with me” here” https://joanaprneves.substack.com/s/your-crazy-aunt-book-shelfDiscover other podcasts regularly: https://www.womenwhopodcastmag.com/00:00 Introduction to Exhibitionistas and New Format01:30 Wonderment06:03 Reading Out Loud08:25 Agnes Martin on Joy12:58 Ekphrasis19:51 Digital Hygiene41:32 Build Exhibitionistas With Me!46:33 Brainstorm in a Teacup47:37 OutroFollow, Subscribe, Comment, or write joana@exhibitionistaspodcast.com
In this episode we are joined by Rob Arcand to discuss his work on Spotify, streaming, and the financialization of culture. We begin with Spotify's emergence as a supposed democratizing force for working musicians, even as its model relied on surveillance and data-trawling. We explore how this data-driven promise — that listener analytics could be leveraged for touring and merch — reshaped the relationship between artists and audiences, often in ways that reinforced precarity rather than alleviated it. From there, we turn to Arcand's comparison of Spotify's ambitions to Uber and Airbnb, situating streaming within the broader logic of platform capitalism. We discuss how corporate consolidation has shaped the power dynamics of the music industry over the past several decades, and how subscription and ad-supported services emerged from a moment of crisis as neoliberal adaptations to instability. Our conversation also examines how disenfranchisement has paradoxically opened space for new labor struggles within the culture industries, and what a more equitable path forward might look like in an industry dominated by monopoly capitalism. We trace Spotify's shift from search-centric functionality to playlist curation, its "Music for every moment" strategy, and its rebranding from a "celestial jukebox" into lifestyle accessories for individual listeners. Arcand helps us unpack Spotify's editorial logic — from "chill" playlists to hyperpop — and how mood-based categorization blurs the boundaries between artistic expression, consumer mood management, and financialized cultural assets. We consider the assimilation of subcultural genres into profit-seeking structures, the emergence of "Spotifycore," and the recalibration of genre itself for algorithmic infrastructures. Rob is a writer, editor, web developer, and PhD candidate at McGill University in Montreal. He's a former staffer at Pitchfork and SPIN, and has published work on music, visual art, books, film, and technology with outlets like n+1, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Artforum, Art in America, The Nation, The Fader, Rolling Stone, Vice, and more. Twitter: @robarcand If you like what we do and want to support our ability to have more conversations like this. Please consider becoming a Patron. You can do so for as little as a 1 Dollar a month and gain access to our Discord. The Same Stream Twice by Rob Arcand
On this month's 21andsensory Podcast* I have Nathan Dunne as my special guest. Nathan was born in Brisbane, Australia and grew up in India. After graduating from the University of Sydney with the University Medal, he studied art history at Cambridge University and received a PhD from Birkbeck College, University of London. He has lectured at Harvard and Yale, and also worked for several years at Tate Modern. As a journalist and critic, he has contributed to many publications, including The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Boston Globe, The Guardian, Slate and Artforum. Nathan is the author of 'When Nothing Feels Real', a memoir about depersonalisation which was published in June 2025. We have a really interesting chat about DPDR (depersonalisation and derealisation) and the onset for Nathan and how he has experienced it and Nathan and how he has experienced it and was diagnosed. We also discuss my own experiences and diagnosis of DPDR and how it affects me, then mention the great work that Unreal Charity do!*trigger warning for content covering self harm and mental health strugglesNathans links:Nathan's website and book: ‘When Nothing Feels Real' (https://www.nathandunne.com/)Nathan's Guardian Article: 'I was enjoying a midnight swim. Then my girlfriend kissed me – and the nightmare began' (https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/jun/08/i-was-enjoying-a-midnight-swim-then-my-girlfriend-kissed-me-and-the-nightmare-began)Nathan's Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/nathanadunne/)Mentioned:Unreal Charity (UK based) (https://www.unrealcharity.com/)What is DPDR? (https://www.unrealcharity.com/what-is-dpdr)Eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing (EMDR) information: https://emdrassociation.org.uk/Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS) information https://www.unrealcharity.com/treatment-care)Maudsley Clinic Information (UK based) NHS South London and Maudsley (https://slam.nhs.uk/dissociative-disorders)Unreal charity blog (https://www.unrealcharity.com/blog)Joe's Wilkins video of a clinic walkthrough: The Maudsley Depersonalisation Disorder Service: Q&A With Dr Claudia Hallett (https://youtu.be/5xvC-o5tnpM?si=sJ3Wo2S3L1Oe0Z2G)Emily's links:Emily's blog link to her experiences of DPDR, including her illustration: https://www.unrealcharity.com/blog/emilys-story-coming-to-terms-with-dpdr-ezjgz-cxwb2-lrp2x-4j56w-5ezjj)
Welcome to Art is Awesome, the show where we talk with an artist or art worker with a connection to the San Francisco Bay Area. This week, Emily interviews Emory Douglas, the Black Panther Party's Minister of Culture and revolutionary artist. The episode centers on a retrospective of his work, Emory Douglas in Our Lifetime, on view at San Francisco's African American Arts and Culture Complex. About Artist Emory Douglas: The former Minister of Culture and Revolutionary Artist for the Black Panther Party, Douglas helped define the aesthetics of protest at the height of the Civil Rights era, cementing his status among the 20th century's most influential radical political artists. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, he designed all but one of the Party's newspapers, each issue marked by the artist's bold, figurative illustrations outlined in thick black line and contrasted with bright colors, block text, and photomontage. The clearly rendered imagery, applied to a range of printed media from newspapers to posters, notecards, and pins, became a hallmark of liberation movements around the world, as supporters calling for an end to the oppression and subjugation of Black, Indigenous, and other communities sought to project a spirit of shared struggle through a common artistic vocabulary. Douglas was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan. In 1951, his family relocated to San Francisco, where he continues to live today. Widely known as an epicenter of radical countercultural politics in the post–World War II era, the city was also deeply divided and segregated, and it was the injustices that Douglas observed as a child that informed his political ideology as an adult. Beginning in the early 1960s, as a student of commercial art at City College of San Francisco, Douglas made frequent trips to nearby San Francisco State University to see civil rights leaders like Amiri Baraka, Stokely Carmichael, and H. Rap Brown speak. He soon lent his talents to the nascent Black Arts Movement, creating fliers and other promotional artworks to advertise events held across the city. These formative experiences solidified his intentions to dedicate his work to the broader struggle for Black liberation that was taking shape around him. In January 1967, Douglas met Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, two young activists from nearby Oakland, who, months earlier, had founded the Black Panther Party (BPP). Black self-determination was the Party's primary motivation, seeking to improve the position of underprivileged people of color in America through “whatever means necessary.” The organization initially focused on an individual's right to bear arms for defense against police violence, but its attention eventually turned to social justice issues like free breakfast for school children and fair housing. Seeking to promote their civil rights agenda to a primarily Black American audience, the Panthers developed a newspaper, the first of which Seale created and published in April 1967. That first issue was simple in layout and design, leading Douglas to offer his expertise in print production, understanding the power that strong visuals could lend to political action. Beginning with the second, he designed every issue thereafter—some 537 newspapers, from 1967 until it ceased publication in the early 1980s. Douglas quickly rose through the ranks of the organization: he was officially named its Revolutionary Artist and, eventually, Minister of Culture, overseeing all aspects of the BPP visual identity. Douglas's familiarity with the print production process was a fruitful asset, as he employed simple tools like markers, rub-off type, and prefabricated texture materials to create his visually impactful designs. To keep costs low, each paper was printed in one or two colors—black ink, often with a contrasting bright color. His illustrations shone a spotlight on state-sanctioned brutality, depicting law enforcement officers and politicians as pigs, while also portraying Black people bearing arms and defeating their oppressors. Some issues featured images of Black suffering, lambasting the political establishment for failing to meet the basic needs of people of color across the United States. Douglas strategically employed photomontage as well, integrating photographs alongside text and illustrations to emphasize urgent issues facing the Party. The impact and influence of Douglas's designs underscored the importance of a consistent graphic strategy in conveying complex political messages in very simple terms. This success was underscored by the massive global distribution of the newspaper and the frequent use of Douglas's illustrations in the political campaigns for organizations like the Organización de Solidaridad con los Pueblos de Asia, África y América Latina, Organization of Solidarity with the People of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, known as OSPAAAL. Despite the popularity of the Panthers' programs and their frequent struggle against the established white political order, the Party was disbanded in the early 1980s. Douglas continues to work as a political artist and activist, producing work that seamlessly translates complex political issues into easily understood illustration, a hallmark of the pieces he produced as a member of the Panthers. His striking figural illustrations connect him to generations of American artists like Elizabeth Catlett, Aaron Douglas, and Charles White, while his combining of type and image draw on generations of political art emanating from across the world, including contemporaries working in Cuba during the Communist Revolution. Deeply bound to American history and politics, his imagery evokes a powerful, globally resonant narrative. For more on Emory, CLICK HERE. To learn about the exhibit honoring Emory's revolutionary work, CLICK HERE. -- About Podcast Host Emily Wilson: Emily a writer in San Francisco, with work in outlets including Hyperallergic, Artforum, 48 Hills, the Daily Beast, California Magazine, Latino USA, and Women's Media Center. She often writes about the arts. For years, she taught adults getting their high school diplomas at City College of San Francisco. Follow Emily on Instagram: @PureEWil Follow Art Is Awesome on Instagram: @ArtIsAwesome_Podcast -- CREDITS: Art Is Awesome is Hosted, Created & Executive Produced by Emily Wilson. Theme Music "Loopster" Courtesy of Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License The Podcast is Co-Produced, Developed & Edited by Charlene Goto of @GoToProductions. For more info, visit Go-ToProductions.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Recorded live at NADA Art Fair, Episode 942 features a deeply generous conversation with gallerist and artist Christopher Rivera—founder of Embajada ("Embassy") Gallery in Puerto Rico. Joined by hosts Ryan Peter Miller, Tom Sanford, and William "Bill" Pereda, Rivera discusses artist-led infrastructures, building a gallery as a political and conceptual project, and the evolving ecosystem of Puerto Rican contemporary art. At the center of the conversation is Rivera's presentation of artist Taina Cruz whose hybrid practice—spanning painting, robotics, and installation—anchors the booth. The discussion moves fluidly between artistic identity, diaspora, conceptual vs. formal practices, and the strange alchemy of building a gallery that resists becoming purely commercial. This is also a conversation about organic growth: careers, relationships, and opportunities that emerge through trust, community, and sustained engagement rather than strategy alone. NADA Art Fair — https://www.newartdealers.org/ Taina Cruz https://tainacruz.com/ Art Basel Miami Beach — https://www.artbasel.com/miami-beach Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) — https://www.mica.edu/Yale University — https://www.yale.edu/Hunter College — https://hunter.cuny.edu/Marlborough Gallery — https://www.marlboroughgallery.com/ Rachel Uffner Gallery — https://www.racheluffnergallery.com/ Sugar Hill Children's Museum of Art & Storytelling — https://www.sugarhillmuseum.org/ Artforum — https://www.artforum.com/Bad Bunny — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Bunny Joshua Nazario Lugo — https://joshuanazario.com/about Jan Anthony Olivares — https://www.instagram.com/janthonyolivares/ Carla Acevedo-Yates — https://mcachicago.org/about/who-we-are/people/carla-acevedo-yates William Wegman — https://www.wegmanworld.com/Claude Monet — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Monet Camille Pissarro — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camille_Pissarro
Bat-Ami Rivlin is a New York-based sculptor working primarily in found and surplus objects. Notable exhibitions include Boat, Plastic, Tire, L21, Spain (2023-24); Simple Sabotage, Kunsthal NORD, Denmark (2023-24); The Socrates Annual, Socrates Sculpture Park, NY (2023-24); COLAPSO, Tenerife Espacio de las Artes, Spain (2022); EN-SITIO, Museo de la Ciudad de Querétaro, Mexico (2022); whereabouts, Hessel Museum of Art, CCS Bard, NY (2022); No Can Do, M23, NY (2021); and more. Rivlin's work was featured in publications such as Artforum, BOMB, Brooklyn Rail, Flash-Art, Emergent magazine, Artnet, PIN-UP, Office Magazine, The Paris Review, Public Parking, and more. Rivlin holds an MFA from Columbia University. She is the recipient of the Monira Foundation Residency, Sculpture Space Residency, Socrates Sculpture Park Fellowship, A.I.R. Gallery Fellowship, among others. Bat-Ami Rivlin, Untitled (radiators, zip ties), installation view at Management, New York, 2026. Courtesy of the artist and Management. Photo by Inna Svyatsky. Bat-Ami Rivlin, Untitled (radiators, zip ties), installation view at Management, New York, 2026. Courtesy of the artist and Management. Photo by Inna Svyatsky. Bat-Ami Rivlin, Untitled (radiators, zip ties), installation view at Management, New York, 2026. Courtesy of the artist and Management. Photo by Inna Svyatsky.
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for May 5, 2026 is: augur AW-gur verb To augur is to show or suggest, especially from omens, that something might happen in the future. Used most often in formal speech or writing, augur is often followed by an adverb, such as well. // The downturn augurs badly for the success of the business. See the entry > Examples: "Last March, almost exactly two decades after his ghost church appeared at the Whitney, [Banks] Violette put another destroyed structure on display: the canopy of an abandoned gas station split in half. ... This wreckage could only augur doom." — Rachel Wetzler, Artforum, 1 Feb. 2026 Did you know? In ancient Rome, augurs were official diviners whose function it was to divine whether the gods approved of a proposed undertaking, such as a military move. They did so by various means, among them observing the behavior of birds and examining the entrails of sacrificed animals. We doubt the Romans predicted that their verb augurāre, meaning "to foretell by augury," would evolve into an English verb meaning "presage or foretell," but in retrospect, augur's path must have been in the stars.
Michael Moore was one of the first artists to hit the NOT REAL ART airwaves, and he's just as unpredictable now as he was then. A mainstay of the Chicagoland art scene, Michael is best known for his madcap “Frankenstein” machines: kinetic assemblages built from scrap steel, blinking warning lights, and whatever vintage oddities he can scavenge, all pieced together in his garage.These days, the self-taught tinkerer and lifelong musician has a new twist in his story: He's a finalist for the People's Artist competition, a wild card contest backed by Johnny Depp, Artforum, and the nonprofit Art of Elysium. The prize? Twenty-five grand, a spread in Artforum, and a moment in the LA spotlight at Elysium Salon, all decided by public vote. If you're reading this, you can tip the scales by voting for Michael here.On this episode, Michael and host Scott “Sourdough” Power talk about the evolving world of people-powered art, the highs and lows of chasing votes, and why Michael still can't quite believe his “cremation station”—one of his signature contraptions in the running—might just be his ticket to the big time.
A wealthy, old art collector always wants more, a successful gallery owner finds herself alone, and a famous painter at the top of his game might have been involved with the mysterious death of an art gallery employee. The world of buying and selling art is portrayed as hazy and ridiculous, but the astronomical numbers are serious. While some of the characters are a bit unlikable, everyone has a story and perceptions about who they are and what they need to be happy. The Violet Hour (Pegasus Books, 2026) is a well-written novel about the business of art, the power of wealth, and the transitional aspect of relationships. JAMES CAHILL was born and grew up in London. He has worked in the art world and academia for the past fifteen years, having originally studied Classics and English at Magdalen College, Oxford, followed by a master's degree in contemporary art at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London. In 2018, he was awarded a PhD in Classics at the University of Cambridge. His debut novel, Tiepolo Blue (2022) was shortlisted for the Authors' Club Best First Novel Award and selected for H.M. The Queen's Reading Room. To quote Her Majesty Queen Camilla: “Surprising, unsettling and gracefully told; ‘Tiepolo Blue' is a story about art and academia, which reads like a thriller.” He writes for publications including Artforum, the Financial Times, the Times Literary Supplement and the Spectator. Cahill has curated several exhibitions spanning contemporary art and classical antiquity. He divides his time between London and Los Angeles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network
Welcome to Art is Awesome, the show where we talk with an artist or art worker with a connection to the San Francisco Bay Area. This week, Emily chats with Kara Maria, a painter and printmaker based in San Francisco Episode Highlights: Kara discusses her large-scale wood panel print on display at Chase Center in San Francisco, created at Magnolia Editions in Oakland with master printer Tallulah Terrell How a monarch butterfly painting became the starting point — and then had to be modified — for the Chase Center commission Her colorful aesthetic, rooted in 1970s cartoons, Spirograph, comic books, and Japanese woodblock prints (particularly Hokusai) The influence of her husband, Mexican artist Enrique Chaya, and their travels to Mexico on her color palette Childhood memory of a school librarian who gave her a shelf in the library for her handmade illustrated books Her journey from music school to painting — and why she knew she could never stop making art Her love of Bay Area edges: the Marina, Ocean Beach, and the view from Mount Davidson Why her studio, SF MoMA, the de Young, and the Legion of Honor all hold special meaning About Artist Kara Maria: Kara Maria is a visual artist working in painting, drawing, printmaking, and public art. Her recent work addresses climate change, biodiversity loss, and their significant impact on humanity. She meticulously paints miniature portraits of threatened, endangered, and extinct animals amid fields of flying shapes, twisting lines, and swirling colors. These works celebrate the joy and exuberance of life, emphasizing the incredible variety of existence on our planet. Maria received her BA and MFA from the University of California, Berkeley. She has exhibited work in solo and group shows across the United States at venues such as the de Saisset Museum at Santa Clara University, CA; the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art, Sonoma, CA; the Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, NV; the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, TX; and the Katonah Museum of Art in New York. Maria has been selected for awards and honors, including the Masterminds Grant from SF Weekly; a grant from Artadia; and an Eisner Prize in Art from UC Berkeley. Her work has received critical attention in the San Francisco Chronicle, the Los Angeles Times, and Art in America. She has been awarded artist residencies at the Montalvo Arts Center, the Recology Artist in Residence Program, Djerassi Resident Artists Program, and the de Young Museum Artist Studio. Maria's work is part of the permanent collections of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University; the Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento; the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation, Los Angeles; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the San Jose Museum of Art, among others. Born in Binghamton, NY (1968), Kara Maria now lives and works in San Francisco, CA. Links & Resources: Visit Kara's Website: KaraMaria.com Follow Kara on Instagram: @Kara Maria Art Kara Maria's work is on display at Chase Center as part of the Homegrown Series (alongside work by Masako Miki, featured in Episode 60) CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFO -- Coming Up Next: Episode 70 on May 19th — Emery Douglas, graphic artist and former Minister of Culture for the Black Panther Party. His show Emery Douglas: In Our Lifetime is at the African American Art and Culture Complex in San Francisco through October. -- About Podcast Host Emily Wilson: Emily a writer in San Francisco, with work in outlets including Hyperallergic, Artforum, 48 Hills, the Daily Beast, California Magazine, Latino USA, and Women's Media Center. She often writes about the arts. For years, she taught adults getting their high school diplomas at City College of San Francisco. Follow Emily on Instagram: @PureEWil Follow Art Is Awesome on Instagram: @ArtIsAwesome_Podcast -- CREDITS: Art Is Awesome is Hosted, Created & Executive Produced by Emily Wilson. Theme Music "Loopster" Courtesy of Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License The Podcast is Co-Produced, Developed & Edited by Charlene Goto of @GoToProductions. For more info, visit Go-ToProductions.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Episode 524 / Diane Briones Williams Diane Briones Williams is an artist born in the Philippines who is based in Los Angeles whose work explores fragmented histories, cultural memory, and diasporic identity shaped by colonization. Her work has been featured in select publications and radio interviews including Artforum, Hyperallergic, Los Angeles Magazine, CBS News, KPCC, Laist, LA Weekly, Artillery, Eastsider LA and KPFK. Williams exhibited in several solo and group shows at the Armory Center for the Arts, 18th Street Art Center, Muzeo, Human Resources, Official Welcome, Museum of Art and History, California State University Northridge, College of the Canyons, Cerritos College Gallery, Robert and Frances Fullerton Museum of Art, California State University San Diego, Children's Museum of the Arts New York, Berkeley Art Center, San Francisco Arts Commission Galleries and Grafiska Sällskapet Stockholm, Sweden among others. She has works in private and public collections at National Immigration Law Center, Los Angeles and Washington DC, Glendale Community College and Azusa Pacific University. Williams earned her MFA at University of Southern California (USC) in 2021 and BFA at California State University, Long Beach (CSULB) in 2013.If you're in New York this May, check out Future Fair, the forward-thinking contemporary art fair returning to Chelsea for its sixth edition, May 13 to 16. We're proud to be a media partner of this year's fair, which brings together 68 exhibitors from around the world, with a strong focus on curatorial vision, emerging and under-recognized voices, and a community-driven approach.Sound & Vision listeners can get 30% off tickets with the code SOUNDANDVISION, all one word, at futurefairs.com.
Guests: Lindsay Buchman and Heather Raquel PhillipsHost: Christopher KardambikisRecorded on March 20, 2026This is the second of three episodes focusing on the recent publication: Even the Score, guest edited by Lindsay Buchman and published by Homie House Press.Lindsay Buchman is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, and publisher based in New York (NY) and Philadelphia (PA), whose work explores image-making and writing through print and lens-based media, artist books, and installation. Recent exhibitions include the Penumbra Foundation (NY), Center for Photography at Woodstock (NY), and the Wignall Museum of Contemporary Art (CA). Her work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New York Public Library, and SFMOMA. She is a recipient of the Toby Devan Lewis Fellowship and the Flaherty Fellowship, and her work has appeared in Hyperallergic, Lenscratch, and The Hopper Prize Journal. Buchman has been an artist-in-residence at Light Work, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Lower East Side Printshop, and Kala Art Institute. She holds an MFA from the University of Pennsylvania and a BFA from California State University, Long Beach. lindsaybuchman.comHeather Raquel Phillips (she/they) is an interdisciplinary artist & independent curator based in Philadelphia, Pa. Working across photography, moving image, text-based textiles, and installation, Phillips critically investigates systems of power as they relate to personal autonomy, sexuality, deviance, and transgression. Phillips is the recipient of the Toby Devon Lewis Fellowship 2016, the Leeway Foundation Art & Change Grant 2017 and the Leeway Foundation Transformation Award 2020. She was the 2019 Visiting Scholar at the Leather Archives & Museum (LA&M) in Chicago, where she was voted onto the Board of Directors in 2020. She has since helped craft the LA&M Artist In Residence program and curated the exhibition, Sparks in a Dark Room by Gabriel Martinez. Phillips participated in the post-grad apprenticeship at The Fabric Workshop and Museum in 2022 and as a CFEVA Finalist in 2025. Phillips' work, The Path to Candyland, is currently exhibited at Taller Puertorriqueno, Philadelphia, as well as Threaded Currents at Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art.Her work has been featured in Hyperallergic, Artforum.com, and Sixty (Inches From Center), Philadelphia Gay News and Artblog. She has exhibited nationally and internationally, including in Los Angeles, New York City, New Orleans, Chicago, Philadelphia, and the United Kingdom.heatheraquelphilllips.comEpisode artwork by Homie House Press“Paper Cuts Theme” by The Early@theearly_band // http://theearly.net
Today on the program, a trip into the archive and a return to Episode 734, my conversation with Kate Durbin, author of the poetry collection Hoarders (Wave Books). Air date: October 24, 2021. Kate Durbin is a Los Angeles-based writer and artist. Her books of poetry include E! Entertainment, The Ravenous Audience, and ABRA, which won the 2017 international Turn On Literature Prize. Durbin was the Arts Queensland Poet-in-Residence in Brisbane, Australia in 2015. Her art and writing have been featured in The New York Times, Art in America, Art Forum, The Believer, BOMB, poets.org, The American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. She has shown her artwork nationally and internationally at The Frye Museum in Seattle, The Pulse Art Fair in Miami, MOCA Los Angeles, The Spring Break Art Fair in Los Angeles, Peer to Space in Berlin, and more. *** Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers. Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc. Get How to Write a Novel, the debut audio course from DeepDive. 50+ hours of never-before-heard insight, inspiration, and instruction from dozens of today's most celebrated contemporary authors. Subscribe to Brad's email newsletter. Support the show on Patreon Merch Instagram TikTok Bluesky Email the show: letters [at] otherppl [dot] com The podcast is a proud affiliate partner of Bookshop, working to support local, independent bookstores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Welcome to Art is Awesome, the show where we talk with an artist or art worker with a connection to the San Francisco Bay Area. In this episode, Emily talks with San Francisco based artist Chad Hasegawa, known for his minimalist, bold abstract style. Chad grew up in Hawaii, moved to San Francisco inspired by the Mission School art movement, and studied advertising at the Academy of Art University before becoming a full-time painter. He discusses how artists like Franz Kline and Mark Rothko shaped his goal of creating work that stirs deep emotion without explanation, and how painting murals on the street — and the raw reactions from passersby — reinforced that vision. Chad is currently painting a mural on shipping containers at the entrance to the San Francisco Art Fair at Fort Mason (April 16–19) and will have a solo presentation at the Good Mother Gallery booth inside the fair. About Artist Chad Hasegawa: Chad Hasegawa is a San Francisco-based artist and a graduate of the San Francisco Academy of Art. Hasegawa's art is a quest for simplicity and emotional resonance. His approach, deeply rooted in minimalism, focuses on reducing complexity to reveal the essence of feeling and reason. Hasegawa believes in stripping away the unnecessary, leaving behind art that genuinely connects with the viewer through color and form. This process, a balance of adding and subtracting elements, aims to capture pure emotion rather than narrate stories. His work is a deep exploration into the intrinsic structures that shape our perceptions. His work is not just an artistic expression; it is a blueprint for understanding and experiencing the world. Through the lens of minimalism, Hasegawa meticulously crafts each piece to serve as a map, guiding viewers through a landscape of feelings and ideas. The essence of his art lies in this careful balance of elements - each subtraction and addition serves a deliberate purpose, ensuring that every stroke, every color, and every form contributes to the overarching narrative of emotional truth. He strips away the extraneous, focusing on the elemental to evoke a raw, unfiltered emotional response. This purity of expression allows the viewer to connect deeply with the work, engaging not just with the art but with their own inner landscapes of emotion and thought. His work reshapes our understanding of art and its purpose, emphasizing the importance of simplicity in a complex world. By removing the superfluous, his work allows us to appreciate the fundamental aspects of life and art. Hasegawa's work uniquely blends emotion and reasoning, ensuring each piece is both meaningful and emotive. When his work lacks feeling, he enriches it with emotion; when it lacks purpose, he refines it to its core. This balance is Hasegawa's signature, making his art a powerful statement in the ongoing evolution of minimal abstraction and its role in shaping our future. For more from Chad, CLICK HERE. Follow Chad on Instagram: @ChadHasegawa For more about the San Francisco Art Fair at Fort Mason - CLICK HERE -- About Podcast Host Emily Wilson: Emily a writer in San Francisco, with work in outlets including Hyperallergic, Artforum, 48 Hills, the Daily Beast, California Magazine, Latino USA, and Women's Media Center. She often writes about the arts. For years, she taught adults getting their high school diplomas at City College of San Francisco. Follow Emily on Instagram: @PureEWil Follow Art Is Awesome on Instagram: @ArtIsAwesome_Podcast -- CREDITS: Art Is Awesome is Hosted, Created & Executive Produced by Emily Wilson. Theme Music "Loopster" Courtesy of Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License The Podcast is Co-Produced, Developed & Edited by Charlene Goto of @GoToProductions. For more info, visit Go-ToProductions.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Welcome to Art is Awesome, the show where we talk with an artist or art worker with a connection to the San Francisco Bay Area. Today, we are paying tribute and remember Tosha Stimage, who passed away earlier this month. We are revisiting Emily's conversation with Tosha back in 2024, as they discuss her artistic journey, from her childhood experiences with nature to her current projects and inspirations. Emily highlights her creative process, experiences during the pandemic, and her upcoming installation at the Presidio Tunnel Tops. About Artist Tosha Stimage: Tosha Stimage is an Oakland-based multi-disciplinary artist who uses a variety of art mediums to examine how we create language. Her paintings, collages, installations, and floral sculptures “use experimentation to re-contextualize physical material and histories with fresh perspectives,” she shared. As the founder of SAINTFLORA, a full-service floral design company specializing in “unconventional flower experiences”, Tosha is also a local entrepreneur and the third and final artist within the Presidio's Public Art Mentorship Program. In July 2024 Tosha will create and install a large-scale art installation to transform the space between the Presidio Transit Center and the enclosed Picnic Pavilion at Presidio Tunnel Tops. “Flowers put us back in the ‘circle' and connect us to labor, land, and each other,” Tosha shared. “I'm incredibly excited to explore the flora of the Presidio and use it to spark curiosity and fresh perspectives. Nature provides an accessible and inclusive entry way for dialogue around complex social and environmental topics.” Honor the legacy of Tosha and support her family by gifting her GoFundMe HERE. Visit Tosha's Website: ToshaStimage.com Support Tosha's Floral Shop: SaintFlora.com Follow Tosha on Instagram: @SaintFloraCo Check out Emily's 48Hills article about Tosha's 'SUPERBLOOM' back in 2024 - CLICK HERE -- About Podcast Host Emily Wilson: Emily a writer in San Francisco, with work in outlets including Hyperallergic, Artforum, 48 Hills, the Daily Beast, California Magazine, Latino USA, and Women's Media Center. She often writes about the arts. For years, she taught adults getting their high school diplomas at City College of San Francisco. Follow Emily on Instagram: @PureEWil Follow Art Is Awesome on Instagram: @ArtIsAwesome_Podcast -- CREDITS: Art Is Awesome is Hosted, Created & Executive Produced by Emily Wilson. Theme Music "Loopster" Courtesy of Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License The Podcast is Co-Produced, Developed & Edited by Charlene Goto of @GoToProductions. For more info, visit Go-ToProductions.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Episode 521 / Nat MeadeNat Meade received his BFA from the University of Oregon and his MFA from Pratt Institute. His work has shown in numerous group and solo exhibitions nationally and internationally, and has been reviewed in publications such as Artforum, Juxtapoz, The Boston Globe, and Hyperallergic. He attended the Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture 2009, the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program in 2016, the Siena Art Institute in 2018, and the James Castle House Summer Residency in Boise, Idaho in Summer 2021. He lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.Nat returns to the pod as he just hung a show called Franklin at Hesse Flatow for a talk about his new work, funny sad songs, cinema, teaching, making work for fellow painters, titles with multiple meanings and much more.
For the 44th episode of Reading the Art World, host Megan Fox Kelly speaks with András Szántó—cultural strategist, writer, and longtime observer of museums and markets—about his new book, "The Future of the Art World: 38 Dialogues," published by Hatje Cantz.The book brings together 38 conversations with artists, curators, sociologists, philosophers, collectors, gallerists, and institutional leaders—what Szántó describes as a “stained-glass window” onto the art world's possible futures. Rather than advancing a single thesis, the dialogues map the pressures shaping the field: the dominance of mega-galleries and the squeeze on mid-sized dealers, the erosion of traditional art criticism and what may replace it, the precarious economics of artistic careers, and whether today's system is evolving gradually or approaching a more fundamental realignment.Their conversation takes up the scale of the global art world—some 300 art fairs, more than 100,000 museums, and a market approaching $60 billion—and asks whether that expansion has altered the system in kind, not only in size. They discuss the role of the art advisor within an increasingly complex ecosystem, the importance of criticism in sustaining the values the market depends on, and whether artificial intelligence may emerge as a new connective tissue for engagement with art. Szántó is cautiously optimistic, pointing to developments such as the emergence of gallery districts in Tribeca, the Studio Museum in Harlem's new building, and the reopening of the Frick—while remaining clear-eyed about the structural headwinds ahead.For those working within the art world—as well as those seeking to understand it—this conversation offers something rare: the breadth of 38 dialogues distilled into a single, considered one.ABOUT THE AUTHOR András Szántó, PhD, advises museums, foundations, educational institutions, and leading brands worldwide on cultural strategy. He has directed the Museums of Tomorrow Roundtable at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the Global Museum Leaders Colloquium at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Artforum, and The Art Newspaper. Born in Budapest, he lives in Brooklyn.PURCHASE THE BOOK https://andras-szanto.com/book/the-future-of-the-art-world-38-dialogues/Note: click the “ask a question” button to see the AI feature mentioned in the episode. SUBSCRIBE, FOLLOW AND HEAR INTERVIEWS:For more information, visit meganfoxkelly.com, hear our past interviews, and subscribe at the bottom of our Of Interest page for new posts.Follow us on Instagram: @meganfoxkelly"Reading the Art World" is a podcast featuring live interviews with leading authors and writers on important new art books. Megan Fox Kelly is an art advisor and past President of the Association of Professional Art Advisors who works with collectors, estates and foundations.Music composed by Bob Golden
Welcome back to ARTMATTERS: The Podcast for ArtistsOn this week's episode I'm joined by Bruce Tapola.Bruce Tapola was born and raised in Ohio and received his BFA from the University of Utah, and his MFA from Montana State University. He has exhibited nationally and internationally and has received several awards, including the McKnight Foundation Visual Artist Fellowship (1995, 2001, 2017). His work has been written about in Artforum, The New York Times, New American Painting, Art Papers, and New Art Examiner, and is in numerous public and private collections. He taught painting and drawing at St. Cloud State University in MN from 2000 to 2022, and in addition to his studio practice, Bruce is a member of the artist collectives Paintallica, Free Art School, and Artpolice (RIP). Bruce lives and works in St. Paul, Minnesota.I sit down with Bruce back in December in Saint Paul, in his backyard studio with a wood-burning stove. It was a cold day, but the studio was cozy and Bruce, I discovered, as you will shortly, is a talker so we covered a lot of ground. Bruce discusses rejecting cleverness, when something smells like art, humor in art, sameness in imagination, screaming colors, sneaking up on a painting, magic, ceramics, the price of art, emptying-out content, outsider art, having a family of artists and painting the perfect cloud.Before we begin, a reminder that ARTMATTERS is entirely listener-supported. If you want to support the show and help make more conversations like this possible, consider joining the ARTMATTERS Patreon. Supporters get video versions of every episode as well as more behind-the-scenes content. Support this podcast by clicking HERE and becoming a Patreon Supporter!If you're enjoying the podcast so far, please rate, review, subscribe and SHARE ON INSTAGRAM! If you have an any questions you want answered, write in to artmatterspodcast@gmail.com host: Isaac Mannwww.isaacmann.com insta: @isaac.mann guest: Bruce Tapola insta: @btapola
Each page of Ancient Spells and Incantations holds verses adapted from text unearthed through extensive research—grimoires, letters, and trial transcripts from across the ages and around the world. Many of these were tucked away in university libraries not easily accessible even to one actively in search of them. Enid Baxter Ryce painstakingly researched this collection, finding fragments from across the centuries.Translating some from Latin and Old English herself, Enid has made the spells accessible to today's witches. What was once whispered or chanted, spiraling in cursive, or carved in stone, still echoes like a song. The words that survived connect us to that ancient magic, and we can feel the truth and power.As we marvel at these ancient magical words, we think of our ancestors. Thanks to them, scraps of papyrus, shards of pottery, secret books, and hissed recipes can, hundreds of years later, still show themselves to those who seek them.Find the book and Enid:Website: https://enidryce.com/Social Media: @enidryce on social mediaShops: https://enidryce.com/store-1Pre-Order Ancient Spells and Incantations: https://bookshop.org/p/books/ancient-spells-and-incantations-echoes-of-magic-through-the-ages-and-across-cultures-enid-baxter-ryce/04275e35fceb231a or anywhere books are sold!Enid Baxter Ryce is a writer, artist, and filmmaker who has exhibited at museums internationally, including the National Gallery of Art, the Getty, and the Arnolfini. A descendant of three Salem witches, she comes from a long family history of natural magic practice. Enid has an MFA in visual arts and studied at Cooper Union, Yale University, and Claremont Graduate University. She won the Elizabeth Kray Prize from the Society for American Poets when she graduated from Cooper Union. Enid is currently working on the Getty Foundation Art x Science Initiative project “From the Ground Up: Nurturing Diversity in Hostile Environments,” a forward-looking ethnobotanical study undertaken as the basis of a forthcoming exhibition and an accompanying publication at Armory Center for the Arts. She is the community engagement director and a curator for the Philip Glass Center for Art, Science, and the Environment. Her latest film, War and the Weather, featuring the music of Philip Glass, premiered at the National Gallery of Art Theater in Washington, DC. Enid's work has been reviewed in The New York Times, Artforum, ArtReview, the Los Angeles Times, and many other publications.
In this episode of Occupied Thoughts, FMEP Fellow Ahmed Moor speaks with David Velasco, the former editor-in-chief of the art magazine Artforum. Ahmed and David discuss David's decision in October 2023 to publish a letter from cultural workers in support of Palestinian liberation and an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and in opposition to violence against all civilians, regardless of identity. David was fired following the publication of that letter. Ahmed and David discuss the concept of solidarity in the art world, the role of money in culture, and how they understand voluntary complicity and capitulation in the early stages of genocide. David Velasco is an American writer and editor. He was the editor-in-chief of the art magazine Artforum from 2017 to 2023. He is the editor of Modern Dance, a 2017 series of books on contemporary choreographers published by the Museum of Modern Art, New York. In December 2025, he published an essay in Equator entitled "How Gaza Broke the Art World" about being fired from Artforum in the wake of October 7th. Ahmed Moor is a Palestinian-American writer born in Gaza and a Fellow at FMEP. He is an advisory board member of the US Campaign for Palestinian rights, co-editor of After Zionism (Saqi Books) and is currently writing a book about Palestine. He also currently serves on the board of the Independence Media Foundation. His work has been published in The Guardian, The London Review of Books, The Nation, and elsewhere. He earned a BA at the University of Pennsylvania and an MPP at Harvard University. You can follow Ahmed on Substack at: https://ahmedmoor.substack.com. Original music by Jalal Yaquoub.
Welcome to Art is Awesome, the show where we talk with an artist or art worker with a connection to the San Francisco Bay Area. Host Emily Wilson sits down with Maria Jenson, executive director of SOMArts Cultural Center in San Francisco. Maria shares her journey from dancer and playwright to arts administrator, including stops at SFMOMA before finding her home at SOMArts. The conversation covers Cece Carpio's solo exhibition Tabi Tabi Po: Come Out with the Spirits, You Are Welcome Here, featuring found objects, poetry-infused wall text, and immersive altar installations that blend Bay Area and Filipino cultural traditions. Maria explains why SOMArts returned to solo shows after focusing on group exhibitions — to amplify community artists ready for bigger platforms. Maria also discusses the "Artists Live Here" cultural convening, which drew over 400 people in response to the announced closures of California College of the Arts and the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts. Designed as an "unconference" with no slides and no panels, the gathering channeled grief and anger into collective action and joyful community building. Other topics include SOMArts' annual Día de los Muertos exhibition, the Murphy and Cadogan Awards for Bay Area MFA students, and how Maria organized an art fair at the Tenderloin's Phoenix Hotel that brought together galleries, local artists, and civic partners. She credits advocate Ebony McKinney as a major influence and finds creative inspiration in the Bay Area's natural landscape. About Creative & Exective Director Maria Jensen: Maria Jenson is recognized as a leader in the arts for advancing innovative strategies to sustain creative communities in the midst of rapidly changing urban environments. As Creative and Executive Director of SOMArts, Jenson has deepened the organization's commitment to racial equity, creating clear pathways for Bay Area artists to cultivate new ideas and grow their careers. Through her leadership, Jenson has expanded SOMArts' public programs, advanced new public-private partnerships, and fostered groundbreaking exhibitions such as The Black Woman is God, The Third Muslim: Queer and Trans* Muslim Narratives of Resistance and Resilience, and many more. These projects represent SOMArts' commitment to incubating the growth and careers of Bay Area artists and curators. Prior to joining SOMArts, Maria was a key member of the SFMOMA External Relations team during the museum's expansion and was the Founding Director of ArtPadSF, an independent art fair launched in the Tenderloin at the Phoenix Hotel in 2010. A graduate of the 2018 Getty Foundation Executive Leadership Institute, she is a sought-after thought leader on the role of cultural institutions advocating for a more democratic and equitable society. Visit SOMArts Website: SOMArts.org Follow SOMArts on Instagram: @SOMArts For more about the Cece Carpio exhibit at SOMArts, CLICK HERE. -- About Podcast Host Emily Wilson: Emily a writer in San Francisco, with work in outlets including Hyperallergic, Artforum, 48 Hills, the Daily Beast, California Magazine, Latino USA, and Women's Media Center. She often writes about the arts. For years, she taught adults getting their high school diplomas at City College of San Francisco. Follow Emily on Instagram: @PureEWil Follow Art Is Awesome on Instagram: @ArtIsAwesome_Podcast -- CREDITS: Art Is Awesome is Hosted, Created & Executive Produced by Emily Wilson. Theme Music "Loopster" Courtesy of Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License The Podcast is Co-Produced, Developed & Edited by Charlene Goto of @GoToProductions. For more info, visit Go-ToProductions.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Welcome to Art is Awesome, the show where we talk with an artist or art worker with a connection to the San Francisco Bay Area. Today, Emily chats with Richmond-based artist Joe Cerda about his multifaceted creative practice spanning tattoo art, painting, and sculpture. Key Topics: Joe's earliest artistic memories, including his godfather teaching him to draw a boat at age four His self-taught journey into tattooing, starting with hand-poked tattoos and a homemade machine built from a Walkman motor Moving between Southern California and the East Bay, eventually opening his own tattoo shop in Richmond His specialty in realistic portrait tattoos and photorealistic paintings Travel-inspired artwork from trips to Spain, the Philippines, and Mexico Sculpture training at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco The emotional connection he feels to his paintings versus commissioned tattoo work Influence of representational artist Richard Schmid on his painting technique His plans to incorporate more abstract elements while maintaining realism Location: Cerda Art Studio, Richmond, California Next Episode: Maria Jensen, Executive Director of SOMArts Visit Joe's Website and Tattoo Studio: CerdaArt.net Follow Joe on Instagram: @CerdaArtStudio -- About Podcast Host Emily Wilson: Emily a writer in San Francisco, with work in outlets including Hyperallergic, Artforum, 48 Hills, the Daily Beast, California Magazine, Latino USA, and Women's Media Center. She often writes about the arts. For years, she taught adults getting their high school diplomas at City College of San Francisco. Follow Emily on Instagram: @PureEWil Follow Art Is Awesome on Instagram: @ArtIsAwesome_Podcast -- CREDITS: Art Is Awesome is Hosted, Created & Executive Produced by Emily Wilson. Theme Music "Loopster" Courtesy of Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License The Podcast is Co-Produced, Developed & Edited by Charlene Goto of @GoToProductions. For more info, visit Go-ToProductions.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Air Date - 18 February 2026What was the power of words in ancient magical practices and how may they be applied to modern manifestation? My guest this week on Destination Unlimited, Enid Baxter Ryce, has assembled a collection of poetic spells and incantations that recount the rich lives of our ancestors, who were connected across cultures by their experience of the world as a magical place, who shared a belief, and who engaged in magical practices for manifestation, prophecy, love, protection, healing, curses, and even vengeance. Enid Baxter Ryce is a writer, artist, and filmmaker who has exhibited at museums internationally, including the National Gallery of Art, the Getty, and the Arnolfini. A descendant of three Salem witches, she comes from a long family history of natural magic practice. Enid has an MFA in visual arts and studied at Cooper Union, Yale University, and Claremont Graduate University. She won the Elizabeth Kray Prize from the Society for American Poets when she graduated from Cooper Union. Enid is currently working on the Getty Foundation Art x Science Initiative project “From the Ground Up: Nurturing Diversity in Hostile Environments,” a forward-looking ethnobotanical study undertaken as the basis of a forthcoming exhibition and an accompanying publication at Armory Center for the Arts. Enid's work has been reviewed in The New York Times, Artforum, ArtReview, the Los Angeles Times, and many other publications.Her website is https://enidryce.com, and she joins me this week to share her path and new book, Ancient Spells and Incantations: Echoes of Magic Through the Ages and Across Cultures.#EnidBaxterRyce #VictorFuhrman #DestinationUnlimited #InterviewsConnect with Victor Fuhrman at https://victorthevoice.com/Visit the Destination Unlimited Show Page https://omtimes.com/iom/shows/destination-unlimited/Subscribe to our Newsletter https://omtimes.com/subscribe-omtimes-magazine/Connect with OMTimes on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/Omtimes.Magazine/ and OMTimes Radio https://www.facebook.com/ConsciousRadiowebtv.OMTimes/Twitter: https://twitter.com/OmTimes/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/omtimes/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/2798417/Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/omtimes/
Welcome to Art is Awesome, the show where we talk with an artist or art worker with a connection to the San Francisco Bay Area. Today, Emily features San Francisco wire sculptor Kristine Mays discussing her politically charged exhibition "State of the Union" at Modernism Gallery. Created in response to the uncertainty and division at the beginning of 2025, the show explores themes of American identity, social justice, and individual responsibility through intricate wire sculptures.Kristine walks through several powerful pieces: "This is America," a frayed wire American flag with beads representing blood and tears; "Human Complacency," depicting the see/hear/speak no evil concept; and "Modern Day Lynchings and Hashtag Memorials," featuring hand-embroidered names of Black people killed by police on silk ribbons. Many works incorporate quotes from writers like Audre Lord, whose words "your silence will not save you" inspired Mays to create this body of work as both political statement and personal healing.She traces her creative journey from childhood craft projects with her mother to her current practice working with construction-grade wire. She explains how she creates faceless figures and sculptural garments that allow viewers to project their own stories and recognize loved ones through gesture alone. The meditative quality of working with wire and its durability appeal to her desire to create lasting legacy work.A major milestone: the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture recently acquired her piece "Hush Harbor." Kristine, who has participated in San Francisco Open Studios for over 20 years, credits her "divinely led" journey and her mother's early encouragement to create without fear of failure.About Artist Kristine Mays :Kristine Mays, a San Francisco native has been an exhibiting artist since 1993. She was the Grand Finale Winner in 2015 of the 5th Annual Bombay Sapphire Artisan Series National Competition. This competition not only provided an opportunity to exhibit her work at Art Basel Miami, but she had a solo exhibition at the Scope NYC Art Fair as well, and was also afforded a chance to collaborate on a large scale public mural. Her mural is on the side of the Boom Boom Room in San Francisco on Fillmore and Geary Streets. (It has large wire feathers placed among the portraits that adorn the walls, reflecting the fleeting existence of black jazz musicians in San Francisco.) In 2015 she also participated in the Hearts in San Francisco program, creating a large 400 pound heart for their annual public art installation. The heart spent a few weeks on display in Union Square before going to its final home upon purchase from AT&T.In 2009, Kristine was a featured artist in the San Francisco Art Commission's "Art in Storefronts" pilot program, a project which transformed vacant storefronts and commercial corridors into a destination for contemporary art, bringing a new energy to the Bayview Hunters Point neighborhood. A participant in the San Francisco Open Studios program for over 20 years, Kristine has also served on the Board of Directors for ArtSpan-- the Producers of SF Open Studios and has participated on several of their committees. Kristine served as the 2011-2013 artist-in-residence at the Bayview Hunters Point Shipyard in San Francisco. She is a graduate of Lowell High School, received her Bachelor Degree in Arts Administration from DePaul University and has occasionally served as a grant review panelist through the San Francisco Arts Commission.Seeking to create impact and change with her art, Kristine has participated in raising thousands of dollars for AIDS research through the sale of her work by collaborating with organizations like Visual Aid, the San Francisco Alliance Health Project and WE-Actx. Her work has received local and national press including mentions in the San Francisco Chronicle, New York Times, The New York Post, The Washington Post, Source Magazine, Artsy, and the interior design blog Apartment Therapy. She is represented by Simon Breitbard Fine Arts in SF, the Richard Beavers Gallery in Brooklyn and Zenith Gallery in Washington DC.Kristine has participated in programming at the De Young Museum, Museum of African Diaspora (MoAD) and exhibited at the California African American Museum (CAAM) in Los Angeles, CA. Collectors of her work include an eclectic mix of people including Star Wars creator George Lucas and the dearly departed Peggy Cooper Cafritz (who amassed one of the country's largest private collections of African-American art). Her work is displayed in many Bay Area homes and private collections throughout the USA.Visit Kristine's Website: KristineMays.comFollow Kristine on Instagram: @KristineMaysFor more about Kristine's exhibit, "State of the Union" CLICK HERE--About Podcast Host Emily Wilson:Emily a writer in San Francisco, with work in outlets including Hyperallergic, Artforum, 48 Hills, the Daily Beast, California Magazine, Latino USA, and Women's Media Center. She often writes about the arts. For years, she taught adults getting their high school diplomas at City College of San Francisco.Follow Emily on Instagram: @PureEWilFollow Art Is Awesome on Instagram: @ArtIsAwesome_Podcast--CREDITS:Art Is Awesome is Hosted, Created & Executive Produced by Emily Wilson. Theme Music "Loopster" Courtesy of Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 LicenseThe Podcast is Co-Produced, Developed & Edited by Charlene Goto of @GoToProductions. For more info, visit Go-ToProductions.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Welcome to Art is Awesome, the show where we talk with an artist or art worker with a connection to the San Francisco Bay Area. In this week's Episode, Emily features Adriene Busch, a Bay Area fiber artist and weaver whose exhibition "Of Water" is currently on display at M Stark Gallery in Half Moon Bay. They chat at Adriene's home studio and discuss her artistic journey and creative process.Adriene grew up in Arizona making art but studied business in college, considering art impractical as a career. She continued creating throughout her education, exploring photography, ceramics, and painting. About 10 years ago, she discovered fiber arts through embroidery, which led her to weaving—a medium that combines everything she loved: the composition skills from photography, the tactile nature of ceramics, and the color mixing from painting.Her breakthrough came with "West Bay: A Love Letter," a large-scale aerial view of the Bay Area made with felted wool details like San Francisco skyscrapers. This piece was displayed at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Center for a year and caught the attention of gallerist Marianna Stark, who offered her the current exhibition.About Artist Adriene Busch:Adriene Busch is a contemporary weaver based in San Mateo, California. She has worked in various modes of fiber art since 2016, eventually committing fully to tapestry weaving. As a self-taught weaver, she finds great joy and satisfaction from artistic problem solving and in the continual development of her technical skills and artistic vision. She is intentional in her selection of materials, using color and texture to represent particular characteristics of her surroundings. As a tapestry weaver, she enjoys the many choices that working with fiber allows; in her pieces, color, texture, and composition interplay to create a balance between bold and neutral, flat and three-dimensional. Adriene's work reflects her personal connection to the world around her, creating pieces that embody her daily experiences.Visit Adriene's Website: WestBayFiber.comFollow Adriene on Instagram: @WestBayFiberFor more on Adriene's exhibition "Of Water" at the M Stark Gallery - CLICK HERE--About Podcast Host Emily Wilson:Emily a writer in San Francisco, with work in outlets including Hyperallergic, Artforum, 48 Hills, the Daily Beast, California Magazine, Latino USA, and Women's Media Center. She often writes about the arts. For years, she taught adults getting their high school diplomas at City College of San Francisco.Follow Emily on Instagram: @PureEWilFollow Art Is Awesome on Instagram: @ArtIsAwesome_Podcast--CREDITS:Art Is Awesome is Hosted, Created & Executive Produced by Emily Wilson. Theme Music "Loopster" Courtesy of Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 LicenseThe Podcast is Co-Produced, Developed & Edited by Charlene Goto of @GoToProductions. For more info, visit Go-ToProductions.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
On this episode of CounterPunch Radio, Erik Wallenberg and Joshua Frank welcome Sean J Partick Carney to discuss his 10-part series, Time Zero, on the nuclearized world. Sean J Patrick Carney is a visual artist, composer, and writer. His essays, criticism, and interviews appear frequently in publications including Artforum, Art in America, VICE, Southwest Contemporary, Artnet News, Harvard Urban Review, Glasstire, High Country News, and Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. In 2019, Carney received the Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant for short-form writing. This episode is sponsored by Pilsen Community Books. The post The Nuclearized World w/ Sean J Patrick Carney appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
In this wide-ranging and deeply thoughtful conversation, writer Emily LaBarge speaks with host Adam Biles about Dog Days, her groundbreaking new work of nonfiction. Rooted in the 2009 hostage event she and her family survived while on holiday in the Caribbean, the book explores not the incident itself but the psychic “mark” it left—its shape, depth, and resistance to narrative. Emily discusses the instability of storytelling after trauma, the pressure to produce coherent versions for police, insurers, or therapists, and the unsettling sense that the world itself had changed in the aftermath. She reflects on the limits of therapy, the body's relationship to memory, and how literature, art, and cinema became “fellow travelers” in her attempt to understand the experience. Adam and Emily also consider genre, experiment, and the essay's capacity to hold fractured thought. Dog Days emerges as a radical, erudite, and emotionally exacting exploration of what it means to live on after rupture.Buy Dog Days: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/books/dog-days-13*Emily LaBarge is a Canadian writer based in London. Her essays and criticism have appeared in Granta, The London Review of Books, Artforum, Bookforum, Frieze, and The Paris Review, amongst others. She is a regular contributor to The New York Times and 4Columns. Dog Days is her first book.Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company.Listen to Alex Freiman's latest EP, In The Beginning: https://open.spotify.com/album/5iZYPMCUnG7xiCtsFCBlVa?si=h5x3FK1URq6SwH9Kb_SO3w Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Welcome to Art is Awesome, the show where we talk with an artist or art worker with a connection to the San Francisco Bay Area. Today, Emily chats with Christine Wong Yap, a visual artist working in printmaking, social practice, and community-based art.Christine discusses her latest project "Bay Windows/Ventanas," a trilingual public art installation featuring lanterns created with Chinese-speaking women in Chinatown and Spanish-speaking women in the Mission District. The lanterns, displayed at five locations through March 11th, explore themes of mental health, belonging, and immigrant experiences through traditional paper-cutting techniques.About Artist Christine Wong Yap:Christine Wong Yap is a visual artist and social practitioner who works in community engagement, drawing, printmaking, publishing, textiles, and public art. Through her hyperlocal participatory research projects, she gathers and amplifies grassroots perspectives on belonging, resilience, and mental well being. Last year, she received a a Creative Power Award from the Walter & Elise Haas Foundation and Creative Capital Award. She has served as Neighborhood Visiting Artist at Stanford University (Stanford, CA) and Creative Citizenship Fellow at the California College of the Arts (San Francisco, CA). She has developed projects with the Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco, For Freedoms, the Library Foundation of Los Angeles, the Othering and Belonging Institute at UC Berkeley, Times Square Arts, and the Wellcome Trust, among others. She holds a BFA and MFA in printmaking from the California College of the Arts. She was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she has lived since spending a decade in New York City from 2010 to 2021.Visit Christine's Website: ChristineWongYap.comFollow Christine on Instagram: @ChristineWongYapFor more about Christine's Bay Windows project and upcoming scavenger hunt CLICK HERETo learn about The Creative Capital Award CLICK HERE--About Podcast Host Emily Wilson:Emily a writer in San Francisco, with work in outlets including Hyperallergic, Artforum, 48 Hills, the Daily Beast, California Magazine, Latino USA, and Women's Media Center. She often writes about the arts. For years, she taught adults getting their high school diplomas at City College of San Francisco.Follow Emily on Instagram: @PureEWilFollow Art Is Awesome on Instagram: @ArtIsAwesome_Podcast--CREDITS:Art Is Awesome is Hosted, Created & Executive Produced by Emily Wilson. Theme Music "Loopster" Courtesy of Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 LicenseThe Podcast is Co-Produced, Developed & Edited by Charlene Goto of @GoToProductions. For more info, visit Go-ToProductions.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Welcome to Art is Awesome, the show where we talk with an artist or art worker with a connection to the San Francisco Bay Area. Happy New Year! Cheers to a great 2026! In today's Episode, we continue our Winter Hiatus with a Replay of EP27 from June of 2024, with Illustrator Tucker Nichols... Emily chats with NorCal based artist Tucker Nichols as he shares stories about his spontaneous move to Taiwan, where he immersed himself in a vibrant artistic community. He discusses his extensive body of work, including children's books and the initiative 'Flowers for Sick People.' He reflects on his background, including his mother's influence and his intense study of East Asian art. Tucker's journey includes struggling with Crohn's disease and a career shift to become a full-time artist, supported by his wife. He talks about influential works and places, emphasizing his lifelong passion for art. The podcast concludes with three thought-provoking questions Emily asks every guest.Stay tuned as we return in 2 weeks with a brand new Episode with featuring a new batch of Awesome Artists! About Artist Tucker Nichols:Tucker Nichols is an artist based in Northern California. His work has been featured at the Drawing Center in New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Denver Art Museum, Den Frie Museum in Copenhagen, and the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. A show of his sculpture, Almost Everything On The Table, was recently on view at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum. He is currently an Artist Trustee at SFMOMA.His drawings have been published in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, McSweeney's, The Thing Quarterly, and the Op-Ed pages of The New York Times. He is co-author of the books, Crabtree (with Jon Nichols) and This Bridge Will Not Be Gray (with Dave Eggers). Flowers for Things I Don't Know How to Say was released in March 2024. Flowers for Sick People, his ongoing multimedia project, can be viewed here.Visit Tucker's Website: TuckerNichols.comFollow Tucker on Instagram: @TuckerNichols--About Podcast Host Emily Wilson:Emily a writer in San Francisco, with work in outlets including Hyperallergic, Artforum, 48 Hills, the Daily Beast, California Magazine, Latino USA, and Women's Media Center. She often writes about the arts. For years, she taught adults getting their high school diplomas at City College of San Francisco.Follow Emily on Instagram: @PureEWilFollow Art Is Awesome on Instagram: @ArtIsAwesome_Podcast--CREDITS:Art Is Awesome is Hosted, Created & Executive Produced by Emily Wilson. Theme Music "Loopster" Courtesy of Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 LicenseThe Podcast is Co-Produced, Developed & Edited by Charlene Goto of @GoToProductions. For more info, visit Go-ToProductions.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Episode No. 739 is a holiday clips episode featuring artist Dara Birnbaum. Birnbaum, a pioneering titan of video art, passed away this year at 78. "Her work is now displayed in museum collections around the world as the example of feminist video art," wrote curator and critic Karen Archey in an Artforum obituary. Birnbaum's work often included pointedly feminist critiques of mass media, including of entertainment and journalism. Retrospectives of her work include "The Dark Matter of Media Light" at SMAK, the Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst in Ghent, Belgium, and at the Serralves Foundation in Porto, Portugal, and "Dara Birnbaum Retrospective exhibition" at the Kunsthalle Wien in Austria and at the Norrtalje Konsthall in Sweden. Several of the Birnbaums discussed on this program are available online, including: Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman (1978-79); Kiss The Girls: Make Them Cry (1979) (clip); Canon: Taking to the Street (1990) (clip); and Walkthrough of Psalm 29(30) (2016) at Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris. This program was recorded in 2017 when Dara Birnbaum's Local TV News Analysis (1980), which Birnbaum made with Dan Graham, was included in "Breaking News: Turning the Lens on Mass Media," at the J. Paul Getty Museum. The exhibition examined how artists have used newspapers, magazines and televised news programs to consider media, news and the messages included therein. The exhibition was curated by Arpad Kovacs. Air date: January 1, 2026.
Welcome to Art is Awesome, the show where we talk with an artist or art worker with a connection to the San Francisco Bay Area. Today, for our end of the year REPLAY! Episode, we revisit Emily's chat with Pacifica based artist Saif Azouz, discussing his journey in art, inspiration from nature and literature, his current exhibition 'Cost of Living', and his reflections on boundaries and displacement. Saif's experience with art, his use of materials, and his perspectives on creativity and community are highlighted throughout the episode.About Artist Saif Azzuz :Saif Azzuz is a Libyan-Yurok artist who resides in Pacifica, CA. He received a Bachelor's Degree in Painting and Drawing from the California College of the Arts in 2013. Azzuz has a forthcoming solo exhibition at Blaffer Art Museum in Houston, TX in 2025 and has exhibited widely in the bay area including exhibitions at 1599dt Gallery, San Francisco, CA; Adobe Books, San Francisco, CA; Anthony Meier Fine Arts, San Francisco, CA; Galerie Julien Cadet, Paris, FR; ICA SF, San Francisco, CA; Pt.2 Gallery, Oakland, CA; Ever Gold [Projects], San Francisco, CA; NIAD, Oakland, CA; Rule Gallery, Denver, CO; Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, New York, NY; Jack Barrett, New York, NY and K Art, Buffalo, NY. Azzuz is a 2022 SFMOMA SECA Award finalist and has participated in the Clarion Alley Mural Project and the Facebook Artist in Residence program.Selected public collections include de Young Museum - Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco, CA; Facebook, Menlo Park, CA; Gochman Family Collection, NY; KADIST, San Francisco, CA; North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, NC; Rennie Museum, Vancouver, Canada; Stanford Health Care Art Collection, Menlo Park, CA; UBS Art Collection, New York, NY; and University of St. Thomas, Saint Paul, MN. Learn more about Saif, CLICK HERE. Follow on Instagram: @SaifAzzuz--About Podcast Host Emily Wilson:Emily a writer in San Francisco, with work in outlets including Hyperallergic, Artforum, 48 Hills, the Daily Beast, California Magazine, Latino USA, and Women's Media Center. She often writes about the arts. For years, she taught adults getting their high school diplomas at City College of San Francisco.Follow Emily on Instagram: @PureEWilFollow Art Is Awesome on Instagram: @ArtIsAwesome_Podcast--CREDITS:Art Is Awesome is Hosted, Created & Executive Produced by Emily Wilson. Theme Music "Loopster" Courtesy of Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 LicenseThe Podcast is Co-Produced, Developed & Edited by Charlene Goto of @GoToProductions. For more info, visit Go-ToProductions.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Welcome to Art is Awesome, the show where we talk with an artist or art worker with a connection to the San Francisco Bay Area. In this episode, Emily interviews artist Kathy Aoki, known for her witty, satirical works that blend pop culture, gender commentary, and fictional narratives. Kathy discusses her “Koons Ruins” project, her creative process, and the inspiration behind her art, including playful takes on celebrity culture and the art world. Tune in for a fascinating conversation about imagination, humor, and the power of storytelling in contemporary art.About Artist Kathy Aoki:Kathy Aoki is a multi-disciplinary visual artist who uses satire to critique the absurd value systems that dominate gender, pop culture, and politics. Her printmaking work can be found in major collections across the U.S. including the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.She received fellowships at MacDowell (NH), the Headlands Center for the Arts (CA), and Frans Masereel Centrum (Belgium) and other venues. Aoki has completed commissions for the San Francisco Arts Commission, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Museum, and the San Jose Museum of Art. Her studio is located in the San Francisco Bay Area where she is a Professor of Studio Art at Santa Clara University.Visit Kathy's Website: KAoki.comFollow Kathy on Instagram: @KathyAokiArtistFor more info about Kathy's exhibit Koons Ruins CLICK HERE. --About Podcast Host Emily Wilson:Emily a writer in San Francisco, with work in outlets including Hyperallergic, Artforum, 48 Hills, the Daily Beast, California Magazine, Latino USA, and Women's Media Center. She often writes about the arts. For years, she taught adults getting their high school diplomas at City College of San Francisco.Follow Emily on Instagram: @PureEWilFollow Art Is Awesome on Instagram: @ArtIsAwesome_Podcast--CREDITS:Art Is Awesome is Hosted, Created & Executive Produced by Emily Wilson. Theme Music "Loopster" Courtesy of Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 LicenseThe Podcast is Co-Produced, Developed & Edited by Charlene Goto of @GoToProductions. For more info, visit Go-ToProductions.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
e-flux journal Associate Editor Andreas Petrossiants talks to author Andrew Ross about his recent book, The Weather Report: A Journey Through Unsettled Climates. Between the summers of 2023 and 2024, Andrew Ross visited Ramallah (Palestine), Dubai (UAE), Phoenix (USA), and Shanghai (China)—some of the landscapes most disturbed by human activity, whether through active warfare or massive development projects. Rather than offering another eco-polemic or recalling for us the dread prognostications of Malthus in the 19th century or Ehrlich in the 20th, The Weather Report is a clear-eyed and essentially optimistic book that proposes a pragmatic, just, and urgent new common ground reestablishing scalable projects of mutual aid and care as a new, essential center for our economic, ecological, and social well-being. Andrew Ross is a social activist and Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at NYU. A contributor to The Guardian, The New York Times, The Nation, Artforum, Jacobin, New York Review of Books, and Al Jazeera, he is the author or editor of almost 30 books and hundreds of articles on a wide variety of topics—labor and work, urbanism, politics, technology, environmental justice, alternative economics, music, film, TV, art, architecture, and poetry. His articles have appeared in newspapers and magazines as well as in academic and public interest journals, and his books are published by mainstream trade, academic, and independent presses. He has lectured at hundreds of universities and cultural institutions in North America, Europe, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and Australia. Politically active in many movement fields, he is the co-founder of several groups–Gulf Labor Artists Coalition, Global Ultra Luxury Faction, Coalition for Fair Labor, Occupy Student Debt Campaign, Strike Debt, the Debt Collective, and Decolonize This Place—and is an organizer with others, including the American Association of University Professors and the US Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel. He also serves on the steering committee of the national network of Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine. Ross's books include The Weather Report; A Journey Through Unsettled Climates, Abolition Labor: The Fight to End Prison Slavery, Cars and Jails: Freedom Dreams, Debt, and Carcerality, Sunbelt Blues: The Failure of American Housing, Stone Men: The Palestinians Who Built Israel (winner of a Palestine Book Award), Creditocracy and the Case for Debt Refusal, Bird On Fire: Lessons from the World's Least Sustainable City, Nice Work If You Can Get It: Life and Labor in Precarious Times, Fast Boat to China: Corporate Flight and the Consequences of Free Trade–Lessons from Shanghai, Low Pay, High Profile: The Global Push for Fair Labor, No-Collar: The Humane Workplace and its Hidden Costs, The Celebration Chronicles: Life, Liberty, and The Pursuit of Property Value in Disney's New Town, Real Love: In Pursuit of Cultural Justice, The Chicago Gangster Theory of Life: Nature's Debt to Society, Strange Weather: Culture, Science and Technology in the Age of Limits, and No Respect: Intellectuals and Popular Culture.
Welcome to Art is Awesome, the show where we talk with an artist or art worker with a connection to the San Francisco Bay Area. In this Episode, Emily interviews artist Jamil Hellu. Jamil shares his multicultural background—Brazilian, Syrian, Paraguayan, American, and queer—and discusses how these identities inform his work. The conversation explores his journey from Brazil to the U.S., his evolution as an artist, and his teaching at Stanford.Jamil talks about his latest exhibition, "In the Studio," at Rebecca Camacho Presents in San Francisco, which delves into identity, transformation, and the use of vibrant color and materials in self-portraiture. He reflects on his creative process, the influence of queer culture, and the importance of community in the Bay Area.The episode also features Jamil's thoughts on representation, the impact of artists like Claude Cahun, and the significance of residencies in his artistic development. Tune in for an inspiring discussion about art, identity, and the power of self-expression.About Artist Jamil Hellu:Jamil Hellu is a visual artist based in the San Francisco Bay Area, who creates personal and politically charged projects to expand the discourse on identity representation. Through an interdisciplinary studio practice rooted in photography, his work is a dynamic exploration of queerness, community, and cultural heritage.Born in Brazil and of Middle Eastern descent, Hellu's diverse ethnic background informs his practice and research, offering a critical lens through which to examine issues of race, discrimination, and belonging. In today's political climate, where LGBTQ+ rights, immigration, and racial justice remain central to social struggles, Hellu's projects invite viewers to consider the ways we construct, perceive, and validate identities.Through a vibrant visual vocabulary, he repeatedly engages in self-portraiture, activating conversations around visibility, cultural lineage, and the evolving nature of self-representation. His work contributes to ongoing discussions about who gets to be seen and who doesn't and the power of visual storytelling as a form of resistance.Hellu earned his MFA in Art Practice from Stanford University and has exhibited widely. His work has been discussed in publications such as The New York Times, The Guardian, Artforum, and VICE. His projects have been supported by grants and residencies such as the Fleishhacker Foundation, the San Francisco Arts Commission, and the Headlands Center for the Arts. An active participant in the San Francisco Bay Area arts community, Hellu serves as an Advisory Board member for Recology's Artist-in-Residence Program and represents local artists in the Board of Directors of SF Camerawork. He is a Photography Lecturer in the Department of Art & Art History at Stanford University. Visit Jamil's Website: JamilHellu.netFollow Jamil on Instagram: @Jamil.HelluFor more about Jamil's exhibit "In The Studio" at Rebecca Camacho Presents CLICK HERE. --About Podcast Host Emily Wilson:Emily a writer in San Francisco, with work in outlets including Hyperallergic, Artforum, 48 Hills, the Daily Beast, California Magazine, Latino USA, and Women's Media Center. She often writes about the arts. For years, she taught adults getting their high school diplomas at City College of San Francisco.Follow Emily on Instagram: @PureEWilFollow Art Is Awesome on Instagram: @ArtIsAwesome_Podcast--CREDITS:Art Is Awesome is Hosted, Created & Executive Produced by Emily Wilson. Theme Music "Loopster" Courtesy of Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 LicenseThe Podcast is Co-Produced, Developed & Edited by Charlene Goto of @GoToProductions. For more info, visit Go-ToProductions.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
CUJO is a podcast about culture in the age of platforms. Episodes drop every other week, but if you want the full experience — including access to our CUJOPLEX Discord and reading group meetings — we recommend signing up for a paid subscription.Paid subscribers also get access to The Weather Report, a monthly episode series where we take stock of where the cultural winds are blowing and tell you what's rained into our brains. On our latest installment, we chat with Billboard editor Katie Bain, author of a new history of Coachella, about what the festival's 2026 line-up tells us about where culture is headed, the rise of anti-sellout discourse, and the AI industry's nostalgic, artisanal rebrand. Since our last episode, something historic happened: Zohran Kwame Mamdani was elected mayor of New York City, marking the American left's most significant electoral victory since the Bernie movement took off in the 2010s. While his team will credit his win to bold, populist economic policies, there's no denying another factor at play: Zohran's extraordinary command of images. He grew up in a film-director household, rapped as Young Cardamom before pivoting to politics, and hired a crew of indie filmmakers to create a video campaign that unfolded like a documentary love letter to the NYC of halal carts, bodega cats, and ordinary working people. Zohran's media fluency is also why people are calling him the Left's answer to Trump. Which all raises some big questions: Is politics in the information economy becoming indistinguishable from theatrical world-building? And what does that mean for our offline lives?This week's guest, writer and artist Gideon Jacobs, has thought about these questions for years. A former creative director at Magnum Photos, child actor, and native New Yorker, Gideon has explored our cultural relationship to images in outlets like The New Yorker, The New York Times, Artforum, and Los Angeles Review of Books, for whom he penned an excellent piece earlier this year called “Player One and Main Character,” which contends that political reality, post-Trump and post-Musk, is beginning to bend to the rules of fiction. We talk about the aesthetic politics of the Zohran campaign and what it tells us about what successful counter-programming to MAGA's vision of America might look like. We also discuss what Gideon's study of the role of images in ancient cultures and religions can tell us about navigating the image world of the present, how the rise of populism (on both the left and the right) is inextricable from our current technological moment, and whether Zohran's victory marks the start of a political future more grounded in material conditions—or the next phase of the image arms race.Follow Gideon on InstagramRead Gideon:“Player One and Main Character” (Los Angeles Review of Books)“Trump l'Oeil” (Los Angeles Review of Books)“Thou shalt not make images—but what if AI does?” (Document Journal)“Aliens” (The Drift)Additional reading:“Selling Zohran” by Corey Atad (Defector) This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theculturejournalist.substack.com/subscribe
Carlo McCormick is a pop culture critic and curator living in New York. He is the author of numerous books on contemporary art and artists and has lectured and taught extensively at universities around the United States. His writing has appeared in Aperture, Art in America, Art News, Artforum, High Times, Spin, Vice, and countless other magazines.