The Conversation Art Podcast

Marcie Begleiter, [https://www.marciebegleiter.com/] an artist based on the Central Coast of California, talks about: artist residencies, including the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology [https://sitkacenter.org/], where she recently did a 4-week residency, including collecting biological specimens/samples; how her time and relationship with the residency evolves over those four weeks, which has lead to artistic breakthroughs; how she likes deadlines, and can structure her residency experience with the clock ticking and puts extra focus on what she’s doing, and in addition having the support of the people running the residencies; the importance of the artist statement in applications for residencies; what her experience was like at Sitka, from where she stayed (at an offsite house as opposed to the onsite cabins) to how she spent her days and nights, and what her studio days are like on a residency vs. the studio where she lives; why she left New York (Manhattan) for, initially Taos, N.M., and eventually California (essentially she needed more access to nature); and the interdisciplinary program she started at Otis College of Art [https://www.otis.edu/programs/undergraduate/creative-action/index.html] that focuses on social change in the community.  In the 2nd half of our conversation, which is available on our Patreon page [https://www.patreon.com/theconversationpod], she talks about: how she’s restarting the local CERT (citizen’s emergency response training) training in her unincorporated town (of Los Osos, CA), partially inspired by not having much access out of her area in an emergency; how she and her husband came to leaving Los Angeles for Los Osos, back in 2015/16, after she toured extensively with her documentary on the artist Eva Hesse; the benefits of living in a small town (Los Osos) which she prefers to city life; the lucky circumstances of having a great studio space in a location where you wouldn’t expect great studios; why she vastly prefers a studio outside her home; she breaks down the different type of residencies: 1) fully funded plus stipends…2) fully funded, no stipend….3) highly subsidized…4) paying full ride; and finally, she addresses our standard finishing questions: how does she feel like social media in this moment, and how success is defined across various careers in the arts.

Oakland-based graphic artist Hugh D’Andrade, author of the graphic novel “The Murder Next Door,” talks about: His first graphic novel, The Murder Next Door, including what led him to finally making a graphic novel after being a big fan of them for a long time; studying fine art at the California College of Arts and Crafts back in the 1980s, and then going back to the same school, now called simply California College of the Arts, to get a masters in graphic novels; graphic novelists who have been influential to Hugh, including Adrian Tomine from nearby Berkeley, Chris Ware, who he refers to as both a giant and a genius in the field, as well Art Spiegelman, Thi Bui (whom he had as one of his graphic novel professors), Marjane Satrapi, and Phoebe Glockner; how the graphic novelists he’s met have generally been very talkative and have quirky sensibilities, but also have introverted streaks which are necessary for long stretches alone that are necessary for producing their work; how he worked on the beginning of his graphic novel while in grad school, where the crits were very nurturing and supportive, unlike crits from back in the day (undergrad); where graphic novel reading falls in our attention economy; the value he puts on the hand-drawn in comics, with modest digital intervention; and how Vipassana meditation, the first chapter of the book, played a big role in Hugh’s healing journey…. [the Conversation continues for another hour in the BONUS episode for Patreon supporters] The Conversation Art Podcast | creating a podcast that goes behind the scenes of the art worlds | Patreon [https://www.patreon.com/theconversationpod] In the 2nd half of the full conversation (available to Patreon supporters), Hugh talks about: the distinction between cartooning and illustration, and how challenging it is to render a person from multiple views in that style; what feedback he’s gotten so far, with at least one reader saying that it was ‘very unique,’ probably meaning they found it too dark; the roll his parents played (or didn’t play) in healing from his trauma (the murder the book is focused on); his trolling of conspiracy theorists on social media (which is described in the book), which came out of his reaction to people making things up about who was responsible for the murder, along with the pros and cons of engaging with a conspiracy theorist; his description of 3 or 4 major career trajectory paths for artists in big art capitals, inspired by his nephew and students and their impending career paths- the A path/A-train: rock star; B path/B train: you have a partner who has a job/supports you financially;  C path/train: artist with a day job;  D-train: you live just outside of a major city, or in a college town, or rural areas; housing in the U.S., particularly in the art capitals (a sort of passion of both of ours) and how he bought a house in East Oakland, a part of the city he had never been in and he’d been living in the East Bay for decades; how he’s in a ‘coffee dessert,’ meaning he needs to drive at least 10 minutes to get to a good coffee spot, leading to a beautiful paradox: as a participant in gentrifying his neighborhood, he realizes that as soon as that fancy coffee place pops up in his neighborhood, the gentrification will essentially be complete; the neighborhoods Hugh lived in in San Francisco, particularly the Mission, Hayes Valley and the Tenderloin, and their respective reputations and what he experienced living there as an older young person going to punk shows and the like; his friend Rebecca Solnit’s book Hollow City, about how gentrification displaces people of color as well as creative communities; we dig quite a bit into the weeds of the housing crisis, and how he lived on the cheap in the Bay Area for years, including getting around by bike up until 10 years ago; and finally he talks about his music show highlights over the years, including his changing relationship to the Grateful Dead over the decades.

In Episode 373, Molly Rice & Rusty Thelin [https://www.realtimearts.org/about/team], co-founders of RealTime Arts [https://www.realtimearts.org/] in Pittsburgh, talk about: The especially niche field of their work, which is the performance of live theater that aligns more with visual art and doesn’t really check any of the ‘theater’ boxes, and how they have interactive elements but don’t confront the audience the way a lot of performance art does (they describe a “lot of conventions around theater… that contemporary audiences have trouble with…”); their series “People of Pittsburgh,” whose tagline is ‘Theatrical Portraits of Extraordinary Ordinary Pittsburghers;’ the size of their audiences and how they’re shows are often tailored to the neighborhood’s they take place in, and how they make their performances as open to all as possible, with a ‘radical hospitality’ option whenever possible; their hosting of Little Amal, the puppet of a Syrian refugee girl that travels the world doing performances amidst community and how their version added a play that incorporated a massive local crowd; their rock performance, ‘Angelmakers: Songs for Female Serial Killers,’ which was a tight show, as compared with their more experimental and improvisatory shows, and how they got a much more mixed audience, including concert-goers to a rock concert, for that show. This podcast relies on listener support; please consider becoming a Patreon supporter of the podcast, for as little as $1/month, here: https://www.patreon.com/theconversationpod [https://www.patreon.com/theconversationpod] In the extended Full Patreon Bonus Episode, Molly & Rusty talk about: how they financially support their program, through a mix of fundraising, grants and occasional ticket sales; the gentrification that’s happening in Pittsburgh, which they admit to being a part of, and moved there because they wanted to be somewhere they were needed, as artists, and was a perfect medium in between a big city and a small rural town; Pittsburg’s cohesive art/cultural community, which reminds Molly of 1990s Austin, TX, when she played in bands; how she consider their work multi-disciplinary, influenced both by site-specific work, and that they’re descendants of the happenings of the ‘60s and ‘70s (including Claes Oldenburg and Robert Wilson); their current approach to social media (including looking into leaving Meta platforms); how connecting is a large part of success; and how they feel about connecting with the podcast’s Open Call (the short answer is: ‘really good’).

In Episode 372, the 1st half of the conversation with Amsterdam-based painter and photographer Claire Witteveen [https://claire-witteveen.com/], she talks about: Her putting off painting initially in favor of photography, for reasons both practical and related to insecurity, partly based on her mom being an artist who juggled that and being a mother; how she can feel completely disconnected from her photography (mainly when it’s a commercial object), but at other times, especially taking portraits, she feels very connected to her subjects; and how with painting she sees it as a monologue, whereas photography is more of a dialogue; how one photography job, combined with painting sales, can sustain her for the year; the complicated nature balance of making good work, and maintaining integrity, while also making a living, or enough income from the artmaking to survive on; the wide swings she can go through in the studio, from thinking she’s re-inventing the wheel in the morning to thinking she’s a total hack later that day; the nuanced factors that make a painting interesting, instead of just good, and an anecdote in which a collector at her opening asked what one of her paintings was about, only to find that it didn’t really matter what she said, because it already ‘spoke to his soul;’ how she connected with her gallerists in Paris, whom she feels very lucky to have and very supported by; the transformation of her work(paintings) once they entered the context of the gallery; and why one particular painting in a show that was in a catalogue and getting so much attention during the run of the show…didn’t ultimately sell.  [Claire has a show opening in Paris at Atelier Bergère [https://www.atelierbergere.com/] on April 3rd, which will run until May 1st.]

Gabrielle de la Puente [https://thewhitepube.co.uk/about/], half of the art critic duo The White Pube [https://thewhitepube.co.uk/], talks about: A few things people outside of the UK need to know about Liverpool, where she’s based; the origin story of the White Pube, when Gabrielle and Zarina were in art school together; the reputation of Central Saint Martins, the art school where they met, including where it was when they started school, which was already in a more gentrified, corporate atmosphere (they had to use key cards to get into the studios, for example); their working dynamic since their collaboration started, which involved more in-person activity early on when they were regularly in demand to talk about criticism at various art schools (because of how different they were from the clichés of an art critic), to now being more consistently using WhatsApp and ‘flying by the seat of our pants;’ how key it is that they post about culture-at-large, not just art (their film  restaurant reviews have been their most read); her solo visit to a special preview of a Peter Doig show in Edinburgh that had a tragic quality to it, but also became a great symbol for the artist’s struggle; their book, Poor Artists [https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/761769/poor-artists-by-the-white-pube-zarina-muhammad-and-gabrielle-de-la-puente/], including how they wrote it with both readers as well as subjects who they interviewed (and paid), including a moment in the book when the narrator talks about their experience of a performance in a gallery; and the case of the late artist, Nat Tate. This podcast relies on listener support; please consider becoming a Patreon supporter of the podcast, for as little as $1/month, here: https://www.patreon.com/theconversationpod [https://www.patreon.com/theconversationpod] The Conversation was recently included in Feedspot’s list of top art podcasts [https://podcast.feedspot.com/art_podcasts/]. We’re grateful to make the list again!