Episodes

Poppy Dodge is an abstract painter and a Color Maximalist who delights in creating harmony and balance using all the colors. Her work explores her obsession with stacking color and shapes and is influenced by modern improvisational quilting and abstract collage. Poppy says: "I approach painting intuitively and am entirely process driven. I like to think of my work as color celebrations; a stacking of playful color conversations joyfully stitching my life experiences together. During our conversation we talk about newsletters, tea, the “Ladies of Yet,” and why it can be discouraging to make content solely to be seen instead of for yourself.

Alison Watt has worked as a biologist on seabird colonies, an ecotour guide, has published a novel, a work of non-fiction and a book of poetry. She teaches painting online and in her studio on Protection Island, near Nanaimo, British Columbia. Alison is interested in where science (especially biology) and art interface and her paintings are informed by landscape and botanical forms. As a self-taught artist who has been painting for over thirty years, Allison relates to both the dream of making the paintings we see in our minds, and the frustrations of mastering the tools, techniques, and mindset to achieving them. During our conversation, Alison talks about creative destruction, informed intuition, and how freeing it is to paint without brushes. Alison is not interested in moral instruction but in illuminating new ways of seeing.

Jane Davies is a painter and collage artist whose workshops focus on developing a personal and playful approach to art making. After graduating Bennington College and attending the School for American Crafts, Jane began as a potter in the early nineties, then transitioned into freelance art, using painting and collage as her medium. Since 2010 she has been teaching, writing, and making art. In addition to The Elements of Visual Language, Davies is the author of three books on collage and mixed media, and one on ceramics. Jane talks about her obsession with visual language, the subconscious image library, and how fine art is essentially an exploration and that You DON’T know how everything is going to turn out.

Marin Laukka shows us the importance of staying curious, and why it’s ok to be a quitter. During this conversation, we each share our story behind our use of the word “authentic” and explore a few other concepts that seem to trigger strong emotions in people. Marin is a dancer, coach, speaker, and author of “Ready Enough: Your 7-Step Guide for Life's Hardest Decisions.” Marin has a master’s degree in positive developmental psychology and certifications in life coaching and yoga, which have contributed to her obsession with authenticity and staying true to herself. Marin’s business, Yes&, offers high-touch, individual and group coaching catered to your unique goals, roadblocks, & ambitions.

Lisa Woodward’s curiosity, persistence and self-confidence have led to her success as a full-time artist after a first career in international development. Lisa’s obsession with footpaths comes from her strong connections with the semi-wilderness of Ontario, and the rural landscapes of Ireland, India and Jordan, whose geographies and peoples have influenced her work and led her to an enduring captivation with abstract landscapes. Lisa says: “Land and people inspire my work. I am fascinated with the ways we leave traces of our activity on rural lands – the paths, fences, fields – while the land in turn shapes us. Conversations about people’s local histories, their families and their work contribute to what I see in the land, what I remember about it, and how I choose to paint it.” Lisa shares a hot tip about using your sketchbook to analyze artwork and the advantages of starting an art career later in life!

Jess Pillay is an independent singer/songwriter, pianist, and guitarist from Seattle, Washington. Known for her soulful alto voice and lyrically-driven songwriting style, Jess is a voice for the voiceless, resonating with people who have big life questions and find themselves in those in-between spaces. Her songs often wrestle with themes like faith, doubt, hope, loss, and the ever-changing, messy nature of relationships. Jess is intuitive and hopeful, and more than fame and fortune, she hopes her songs make an impact. Her debut EP is set to be released in 2022.

Patient, purposeful and persistent, high school arts educator and abstract painter Frank Korb is fascinated with building frames, stretching canvases, and preparing his materials. Frank focuses on the formal elements and principles of art and the push and pull of relationships. Frank starts each work by laying down bible pages to add texture and text. Frank is in his studio every day, often spending only 45 minutes each session, but his persistence pays off!

Art balls, shadow, light, blood and ants with Flavia Testa!! In life and in art, Flavia challenges people to wonder, be inquisitive, to find meaning in visual communication. She says that art is a force and a fortress that protects and reveals our lives. Flavia’s signature style is raw, visceral and powerful and layered with emotional and visceral complexity. She often gives her art away – sometimes in the form of art balls, and she is never without paper and a sharpie. Flavia writes “my hope is to have as many people interested in looking at art, appreciating beauty, knowing that everyone has the capacity to be creative no matter what field they work in.”

Nirmal Raja is an interdisciplinary artist and curator living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She lived in India, South Korea and Hong Kong before immigrating to the United States thirty years ago. She collaborates with other artists and strongly believes in investing energy into her immediate community while also considering the global. Nirmal curates exhibitions that bring people from different cultures and backgrounds together. "Reimagining the Global Village" opens October 11, 2021 at MIAD in Milwaukee, and showcases transnational art collaborations among artists and between artists and communities. This exhibition is an ambitious but necessarily incomplete survey of various strategies artists have employed while working toward a more connected and caring world. Nirmal is represented by the Portrait Society Gallery in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. (Headshot image by Kevin Miyazaki.)

Painter Nicola Bennett, originally from England, has lived in Okere Falls, New Zealand for the past 20 years. Nicola’s art is deeply connected to her love of food. She believes that they are so intricately linked - in their processes, shared pleasure and transformation. She approaches her work having been inspired by a cooking experience and loves the sensory pleasure of preparing ingredients and of applying paint. She sees colour like flavour and is forever searching for the perfect balance.

Brianna Lynn Hernández Baurichter is a Chicana artist, curator, and educator guided by socially engaged practices. Brianna’s current work focuses on the experience of providing end-of-life care and the subsequent grieving process. During our conversation Brianna shares the importance of the mind-body connection, she gets into neuroscience and the capacity for empathy and the physicality of the work and how it feeds into her creative practice.

Emma is a queer mixed media artist, teaching artist, and highly sensitive person. She is silly and soulful, tactile and contemplative. Emma reveals her current obsessions with nature, poetry and Buddhist teachings and how they connect to artmaking. From the stillness questions arrive that serve as a jumping off point for her creations. “Can a line of stitches be a poem?” "Can fabric books made slowly and quietly be containers for grief and other emotions?"

Chelsea Littman is trying to make a good impression with her empire of empties. Her sand cast glass bottle shrines are all about filling the void. Chelsea is a hot shop assistant for Polpelka Trenchard Glass and develops her own artwork, which attempts to transform a moment, a snapshot, into an everlasting object that is heavy and tangible and solid instead of lost adrift in the cloud. During our conversation Chelsea talks about the dance that happens while glassblowing, mountain biking, and the collaborative nature of her craft.

Nicole Shaver creates artwork inspired by ideas of place and belonging. She researches different geographical sites and employs them as metaphorical compasses to create landscapes combining reality, fantasy and memory. During our conversation Nicole reveals her “dump-and-dash” process, her experience documenting Aldo Leopold journals, and her obsessions with geology, objects, and landscapes.

Intuitive, intimately scaled, and imbued with a lighthearted humor, Kassandra Palmer’s work is inspired by melodies from the B-side of human history. Kassandra's drawings are accumulations of touch that blur the boundaries between nature and human nature. Echoes from stories of love, loss, and forgiveness, these paradoxical pictures are beacons that point simultaneously toward the mundane and the mysterious. Kassandra and I talk about motherhood, intuition, forgiveness and patience, framing (both literal and conceptual), and connection.

Frank Juárez brings decades of art education and arts management experience organizing local and regional art exhibitions, community art events, facilitating presentations, supporting artists through grant programs, and offering professional development workshops. Frank is in the forefront of promoting Wisconsin artists, as well as attracting regional, national, and international artists to collaborate and exhibit in Wisconsin. Frank’s projects include Artdose Magazine, Artdose artist talks, “365 Artists 365 Days,” and the Indian Green group exhibition. Frank is the art department chair at Sheboygan North High School, and continues to photograph road trips and daily moments. photo credit: Jon Erlien

What a gift to have Melanie Chadwick and Sandi Hester together in one episode to share their sketchbook practices! They talk about the importance of sketching to sharpen your observational tools, practice drawing skills, and play with new mediums. Mel and Sandi agree that benefits of sketching include learning to let go of expectations, engaging all our senses and generating new ideas. And you’ll end up with a visual diary and memories that become richer as you’re sketching your surroundings.

Amy Weil is a New York artist creating abstract encaustic paintings that parallel the cycles of nature. By spontaneously inscribing, scraping and adding wax, this process allows exploration of landscape on a deeper level. Amy is interested in how time is circular rather than linear. Her paintings allow the viewer to see the past, present and future all at once as each layer reveals the layer before. Her constant search to find beauty and harmony in a chaotic world has always been a motivating factor in her work.

Ginnie Cappaert, known to her friends as the Queen of Play, is a full-time artist and owner of Cappaert Contemporary Gallery in Door County Wisconsin. Ginnie divides her time between Wisconsin, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and Santa Fe, New Mexico. Listen as we discuss influential books, poetry, what to do with surplus artwork, and keeping your social media posts grounded and real.

Jenna Freimuth is an illustrator and designer living in Minneapolis, building surface design patterns, stitching abstract embroideries and drawing to decorate and delight. Listen as we talk about newsletters, object permanence, regal felines with personalities, fantastical curiosity, and serendipitous connections. Jenna is also a co-founder of The Wondermakers Collective with the fabulous textile artist, Mindy Sue Wittock. They combine their artistic aesthetics and stitch layered embroideries, pen-palling them back and forth from MN to WI.

Amy Jarvis is a painter whose keen sense of color and lighting gives her work a recognized grace and emotion. In addition to commissioned pet portraits, Amy recently completed a series of nine oil paintings of mythical women from across continents and throughout the centuries, weaving fact, fiction and legend, that were featured in a solo show titled: The Mythics. Amy’s yoga practice keeps her grounded and connected to a creative life and she says it gives her a deeper way of listening and seeing. During our conversation Amy and I discuss boundaries and sandhill cranes and ponder the question: do men wear leggings?

What do dental scalers, trowels, wooden butter pats, and a toilet brush all have in common? Gill Edwards uses all these tools is her prints and paintings. Along with her obsession with vessel shapes, especially those found in simple elegant vases and rice bowls, Gill is fascinated with shadows, vintage rug patters, European doorways, and Japanese textiles. During our conversation, Gill shares her sketchbook practices and unexpected outcomes that come from working in a series.

Paula DeStefanis is an artist, educator, co-founder of the non-profit arts organization North Shore Academy of the Arts, and director of The Arts Mill gallery and arts boutique. Inspired by her travels, Paula divides her time between her studios in the US and UK. Paula shares her thoughts about organized chaos and the ripple effect.

Melanie Chadwick describes her creative practice as playful, evolving and lively. Melanie talks about having an anchor in your life that grounds you, her love of maps and place, and how her art workshops help businesses and organizations gain confidence and generate ideas. In addition to her illustration and fine art work, Melanie has a podcast called Creative Catchup with Natasha Newton, she publishes VLOG’s on her YouTube channel, and offers classes and workshops. She always makes time to get outside for windy walks on the Lizard Peninsula to sketch the cottages and wild places.