Art & Trees with Char McCurdy & Aaron Straight

Art & Trees with Char McCurdy & Aaron Straight

In this episode of Art &, we catch up with designer Char McCurdy and biochemist Aaron Straight about The Giving Tree, an upcoming Stanford IntroSem being taught this fall that will start with a single tree from campus and asks students to explore what can be made from as much of it as possible. Developed through Stanford Arts Institute's Arts Catalyst Fellowship, the course incorporates design, organic materials, sustainability, and hands-on making. Char and Aaron discuss how their collaboration started from a chance conversation about furniture into an adventurous class about materials, climate change, biodiversity, risk-taking, and problem-solving. Along the way, they reflect on what happens when students and faculty learn directly from the natural world, embrace uncertainty, and develop the agency that comes from making from the abundant source of wonder standing all around us: trees!   Featured Guests: Char McCurdy & Aaron Straight Follow Stanford Arts on Instagram and YouTube for more stories and updates. Credits Host: Ellen Oh Creator / Producer / Editor: Taylor Jones Sound Designer & Mix Engineer: Chase Everett Theme Song & Music: Juana Izuzquiza Executive Producers: Ellen Oh and Anne Shulock Artwork: Connie Ko

Art & Fellowship with Erika Chong Shuch & Tiffany Steinwert

In Episode 5 of Art &, we meet Erika Chong Shuch, a performance maker, director, choreographer, and 25-26 VPA Visiting Artist, and Tiffany Steinwert, Dean for Religious and Spiritual Life at Stanford. Their conversation centers on 1,000 Ways to Hold, Erika’s ceramics-based social practice project that brings people together to shape clay bowls while reflecting on what they have held, and what has held them. Rooted in Erika’s inquiry of intimate encounters and bringing strangers together, 1,000 Ways to Hold originated from a question about isolation and the small moments that foster meaningful connection. Across campus, the project moved through classrooms, dining halls, community centers, spiritual life spaces, Stanford Hospital, and staff communities, inviting students, faculty, staff, patients, families, and neighbors to enter a shared creative process. Erika, Tiffany, and Ellen explore how art can act as a way to usher people into deeper presence, listening, and exchange. They discuss the relationship between ritual, spirituality, and community-building, divinity as an extension of making, and how a ball of clay can create space for grief, tenderness, and profound relation. "1,000 Ways to Hold" is on view at the Anderson Collection [https://anderson.stanford.edu/exhibitions/erika-chong-shuch-1000-ways-to-hold/] at Stanford University from April 2 through August 17. Featured Guests: Erika Chong Shuch & Tiffany Steinwert Follow Stanford Arts on Instagram and YouTube for more stories and updates. Credits Host: Ellen Oh Creator / Producer / Editor: Taylor Jones Production Support: Edi Dai Sound Designer & Mix Engineer: Chase Everett Theme Song & Music: Juana Izuzquiza Executive Producers: Ellen Oh and Anne Shulock Artwork: Connie Ko

Art & Plankton with Jiabao Li & Manu Prakash

In Episode 4 of Art &, we meet Manu Prakash—a Stanford bioengineer whose lab invents frugal, open-source tools that make global science accessible—and artist/designer Jiabao Li, whose work spans technology, biology, ecology, and planetary futures. Their collaboration centers on The Long Fall, an expansive performance and installation that transforms microscopic plankton into a planetary-scale story about climate change and connection. What started as Jiabao’s sabbatical project in Manu’s lab grew out of a shared inquiry: How can art and science work together to reveal the invisible systems shaping life on Earth? Drawing from Manu’s career of ocean expeditions, the two collaborated on a piece that moves across scales, charting the descent of plankton through the deep ocean, to the global forces of oceanic warming and shifting ecosystems. Together, they shaped a narrative that is part planetary meditation, part scientific revelation, and part emotional encounter with the unseen. Manu, Jiabao, and Ellen explore how interdisciplinary collaboration can reshape how we perceive the planet—how art can resist despair, open space for hope, and invite everyday people to feel the urgency of climate change not through raw research, but through wonder and beauty. Featured Guests: Manu Prakash & Jiabao Li Follow Stanford Arts on Instagram and YouTube for more stories and updates. CREDITS Host: Ellen Oh Creator / Producer / Editor: Taylor Jones Production Support: Edi Dai Sound Designer & Mix Engineer: Chase Everett Theme Song & Music: Juana Izuzquiza Executive Producers: Ellen Oh and Anne Shulock Artwork: Connie Ko

Art & Anatomy with Anita Mohan & Lauren Toomer

In Episode 3 of Art &, we meet Anita Mohan — a clinical assistant professor of plastic and reconstructive surgery at Stanford Medicine — and Lauren Toomer, an artist and lecturer in Stanford’s Department of Art & Art History. The two reflect on their personal paths to letting art inform their professional perspectives, and how a chance meeting during a medical humanities fellowship sparked a collaboration that integrates art and medicine.  During the episode, Mohan touches on how plastic surgery’s focus on form, beauty, and what makes the anatomy aesthetically pleasing made for an organic connection to similar topics in art. Toomer shares how taking an undergraduate course on art, medicine and disability opened up her mind to thinking about the world in a more holistic way. Together, they’re designing workshops that encourage medical students to slow down, observe, and see the body through an artist’s eye. Hosted by Ellen Oh, Director of Interdisciplinary Arts Programs at Stanford Arts, the Art & Podcast explores arts-driven collaborations across Stanford University’s dynamic research ecosystem through lively conversations about how creative perspectives can spark new pathways, insights, and solutions for the most pressing issues of our time. Featured Guests: Anita Mohan and Lauren Toomer Follow Stanford Arts on Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/stanfordarts/] and YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/@stanfordarts] for more stories and updates. ________________________________ Credits Host: Ellen Oh Creator/Producer/Editor: Taylor Jones Production Support: Edi Dai Sound Designer and Mix Engineer: Chase Everett Theme song and Music: Juana Izuzquiza Executive Producers: Ellen Oh and Anne Shulock Artwork: Connie Ko

Art & Gastronomy with Ramón Perisé & Vayu Hill-Maini

In Episode 2 of Art &, we meet Ramón Perisé—chef and Head of R&D at the internationally acclaimed Basque restaurant Mugaritz, and a Doerr Visiting Artist at Stanford—alongside Vayu Hill-Maini, a Stanford bioengineering professor whose lab explores fermentation, microbial systems, and the creative edges of biology. Their collaboration marks a rare and exciting model for campus: a chef-in-residence program that merges avant-garde gastronomy with scientific research, sustainability, and design. In this conversation, Ramón and Vayu trace the roots of their partnership, which began more than a decade ago when Vayu was a student searching for ways to merge science and cooking. That early exchange shaped his path as a researcher—and now returns in the form of a residency that brings Mugaritz’s playful, provocative approach to Stanford. Together, they walk us through their newest line of inquiry: the study of Neurospora, a vivid orange fungus whose biological and culinary potential opens the door to what they call “genetic gastronomy”—designing flavor, nutrition, and sensory experience directly through microbial life. For both of them, fermentation becomes a framework for thinking: a process that connects the microscopic to the planetary, linking questions of transformation, ecology, and sustainability. They describe the cross-disciplinary ecosystem they’re building on campus—hands-on workshops at the O’Donohue Family Stanford Educational Farm, part of the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, [http://sustainability.stanford.edu/] collaborative experiments in the lab, plans for a communal meal, and a forthcoming Neurospora zine—all aimed at creating new forms of exchange between chefs, scientists, farmers, students, and the public. Together, Ramón, Vayu, and Ellen explore what becomes possible when culinary practice and scientific inquiry move in tandem—how food can function as a form of cultural research, how microbes can reshape the boundaries of creativity, and how cross-disciplinary collaboration can spark new ways of thinking about sustainability. Featured Guest: Vayu Hill-Maini & Ramón Perisé Follow Stanford Arts on Instagram [https://www.instagram.com/stanfordarts/] and YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/@stanfordarts] for more stories and updates.   Credits Host: Ellen Oh Creator/Producer/Editor: Taylor Jones Production Support: Edi Dai Sound Designer and Mix Engineer: Chase Everett Theme song and Music: Juana Izuzquiza Executive Producers: Ellen Oh and Anne Shulock Artwork: Connie Ko