Across the Studio with Sophie Kitching

Across the Studio with Sophie Kitching

In the 18th episode of Across the Studio, Mia Schoolman sits down with Sophie Kitching, a French and British artist based in New York City who works across painting, sculpture, installation, and found object collection. Born on the Isle of Wight, raised in Paris, and now a decade into her practice in New York, Sophie creates work inspired by nature, architecture, literature, and the specific colors she collects from the places she has lived. Her practice spans Venetian blinds transformed with neon and gold leaf, polycarbonate paintings lined with two-way mirrors that feel like painting on water, and large-scale canvases that began as watercolors on paper. Her work has been shown at the Palais de Tokyo, the Maison de Châteaubriand, and she was invited by Bulgari to create a capsule collection for the 75th anniversary of the Serpenti icon — a collaboration that led to the discovery that emerald inclusions are called "the jardin" (the garden), which connected directly to her artistic vision. In this conversation: how she collaborated with Bulgari and Ruinart, the moment seeing her large-scale paintings unroll on a ballet stage felt like a heart attack, what she learned during a full moon in Bali when she saw the world in black and white, and why her ritual is keeping her brushes out in a controlled mess so the work always feels in progress. Follow Across the Studio Instagram @acrossthestudio [https://www.instagram.com/acrossthestudio/] TikTok @acrossthestudio [https://www.tiktok.com/@acrossthestudio] Follow SophieInstagram @sophiekitching [https://www.instagram.com/sophie.kitching/] sophiekitching.com [https://www.sophiekitching.com/]

Across the Studio with Akiva Listman

In the 17th episode of Across the Studio, Mia Schoolman sits down with Akiva Listman, a New York City based painter and third generation New Yorker whose shaped canvas works transform the everyday objects of city life into something worth stopping for. Subway seats, metrocards, road signs, pigeons, locks, and cones...the things most New Yorkers walk past without thinking...are Frankensteined together in Photoshop, cut from plywood with a jigsaw, and painted with craft and attention. Akiva works four days a week in his own studio and three days a week assisting artist Dustin Yellin. He has collaborated with Nike, Beams, and Only New York and showing at the New York Transit Museum in a show saying goodbye to the subway seats that are slowly being phased out of the city he has painted his whole life. In this conversation: why he waited years before cutting his first shaped canvas until he could make one he was proud of, how the head of basketball apparel at Nike found him through years of genuine kindness and patience, why every artist is a small business whether they like it or not, and the one piece of advice he gives to anyone who wants to do this full time: treat every opportunity like it could work out. Across the Studio Instagram @acrossthestudio [https://www.instagram.com/acrossthestudio/] Tiktok @acrossthestudio [https://www.tiktok.com/@acrossthestudio] Akiva ListmanInstagram @akivalistman [https://www.instagram.com/akivalistman/]

Across the Studio with Amanda Zheng

In the 16th episode of Across the Studio, Mia Schoolman sits down with Amanda Zheng, a New Zealand born, New York based visual artist and designer who graduated from Parsons School of Design with a BFA in communication design. Her work spans fine art, graphic design, and experimental material practice — from medium transfers and metal engravings to lithographic prints. Sponsored by Adobe and Apple, her work has been featured in Vogue and Vanity Fair, and she recently released Plume, a limited edition lithographic print collection about desire, excess, and the compulsion to construct a singular perfect identity. Amanda grew up as one of three students doing art in high school in New Zealand, where school counselors told her she was not going to America. She applied to Parsons on a whim, got in on a scholarship, and moved to New York at 18 with no blueprint and no one who had done it before her. In this conversation: why she approaches her practice more like an athlete than an artist, how taste is a privilege she only discovered after moving to New York, why every piece of inspiration she has ever used has come from offline, the 400 page artist catalog she designed as her senior thesis, and why her only ritual before making art is pressure. Follow Across the StudioInstagram @acrossthestudio [https://www.instagram.com/acrossthestudio/]@miaschoolman [https://www.instagram.com/miaschoolman]TikTok @acrossthestudio [https://www.tiktok.com/@acrossthestudio] Follow Amanda ZhengInstagram @amandaaart [https://www.instagram.com/amandaaart/]Website amandazheng.com [https://amandazheng.com/]

Across the Studio with Dipa Halder

In the 15th episode of Across the Studio, Mia Schoolman sits down with Dipa Halder, a Brooklyn based artist working across abstract painting, florals, tablescapes, and interior design. Born in India and raised in the Bay Area, Dipa spent years as a software engineer at Figma before quitting her job the day she got back from painting a mural for their London office, not because she had planned to, but because she knew if she did not do it that day it would never happen. She spent the following year traveling solo, ended up at an artist residency in the mountains of Bogota, and eventually moved to Brooklyn to build a studio practice from scratch. She paints on raw unprimed canvas with water diluted acrylic, stitches canvases together with a sewing machine, draws images with salt, and makes tablescapes until 2am for supper clubs across New York. In this conversation: growing up South Asian with parents who nurtured creativity but never valued it as a career, the first apartment she turned into a gallery with 20 people and a last minute party poll, why she thinks she has been most depressed when she did not have a creative outlet, how putting financial pressure on your art changes your relationship to it, and the piece of advice she would give her earlier self about finding her style. Follow Across the Studio Instagram @acrossthestudio [https://www.instagram.com/acrossthestudio] TikTok @acrossthestudio [https://www.tiktok.com/@acrossthestudio] Dipa Halder @dipahalderstudio [https://www.instagram.com/dipahalderstudio/]

Across the Studio with Diego Miró-Rivera

In the 14th episode of Across the Studio, Mia Schoolman runs into Diego Miró-Rivera on the streets of Tribeca during New York Art Week. No studio. No appointment. No microphones. Just a U-Haul truck and the loudest corner in New York. Diego Miró-Rivera graduated from Yale in 2023 and has spent the last three years living on the road, with the back of his truck as his studio. He is a land artist, or as he prefers, a land student. His work is anchored in the natural world, literally and conceptually. He collected 100,000 cicadas by hand during a once in 221 year emergence and made paintings with them without a single drop of glue. He grew a sculpture from native Texas grass seeds over two years. In this conversation: why his favorite place to make art is literally called Art, why glue is the enemy of poetry, and what it means to give the natural world credit for its creations. Apologies for the street noise. We recorded this on the loudest corner in Tribeca with my voice memos on my iPhone...worth it. Follow Across the Studio Instagram @acrossthestudio [https://www.instagram.com/acrossthestudio] TikTok @acrossthestudio [https://www.tiktok.com/@acrossthestudio] Follow Diego Miró-RiveraInstagram @gogomiro [https://www.instagram.com/gogomiro/]