Authentic Obsessions

Risa Iwasaki Culbertson is a multi-disciplinary artist in San Francisco, CA with a focus in fiber arts, illustrating, and storytelling. Biracial and born in Japan, she creates art to bridge the gap between her two worlds. Inspired by the healing and connective power of humor and play, she creates her wacky, whimsical, and colorful work to process deep emotions in grief and joy, while creating plac...

Artist, teacher, collector, and storyteller Molly Meng is a force for good. Molly is heavily influenced by a scrap of paper, a single word, ​opera, rap, theremins, the thick cotton of an old book page, random sentences, and an overheard statement. Molly exudes optimism and curiosity, and believes we are ALL related and connected to each other.  Takeaways Just ask. On social media: Follow less, eng...

Priorities, patriotic quilts, procrastination, studio space evolution, and playing with the tension and finding the edge! Maura's journey began in 2011 when she followed her dream to merge gardening and quilting. Hailing from a family of quilters and tailors, Maura finds joy and meaning in connecting with her ancestors through her craft and preserving heritage techniques. A pioneer in hand-dyed fa...

Glue & adhesives, rules & parameters, loving the outcome without loving the process (this is where discipline comes in!), purposefully making things that others might not want, and knots all come up in today’s episode with Lisa Solomon. Lisa Solomon is a studio artist that moonlights as a college professor and illustrator/graphic designer. Profoundly interested in the idea of hybridization (sparke...

Michael McConnell was born in Michigan, where he used to watch squirrels from the front window. He graduated from Columbus College of Art & Design, with an emphasis in lithography and painting, and landed in the Bay Area soon after, where he still lives. Making art is how Michael makes sense of the world and his forgotten childhood, creating visual narratives that examine the space between memory...

Let the loose thread be dangling!  Born and raised in New England, Sarah Haskell has a BFA in Textile Design from RISD and a Masters of Art and Healing from Wisdom University.  As a seeker, maker and creative pathfinder her medium is most often thread, investigating the mystery of encoded fabrics and the hidden language of cloth. Sarah talks about the soothing nature of weaving, the importance of...

Melissa Guido is a multidisciplinary printmaker and illustrator whose work draws inspiration from fashion and costume design of the 1920’s. Melissa is currently living in Iceland for 9 months under a Student Fulbright Open/Study Research Grant where she is exploring Iceland’s sustainable textile practices and unique plant sources for natural dyeing.  During our conversation Melissa talks about dig...

Artist, teacher, collector, and storyteller Molly Meng interviews artist and illustrator Elizabeth DeJure Wood for today’s episode. They discuss the authenticity of non-human animals, being fully present, generating ideas and limiting options. Elizabeth has a creative background in ceramics, graphic design, illustration, and fine art. She loves drawing every day and enjoys developing novel visual...

SarahPedlow, founder of ThreadWritten , is an artist working with embroidery and cultural preservation through workshops, textile travel tours, and fine art. ThreadWritten supports women artisans, traditional textile practices, and the preservation of heritage through research, education, and the cultivation of a global community of makers. While participating in an artist’s residency in Budapest,...

Krista V. Allenstein, Midwest Optimistic Artist, loves neon signs, old buildings, dollhouses and the culinary delights of Kwik Trip. She loves painting things often overlooked as beautiful. Monkeying around with words and phrases makes her especially happy. Krista often wishes she had a camera in her eyeball so she could share how she sees the world. Her paintings attempt to make that wish a reali...

You're going to hear about fighting for the underdog, discernment, editing, celebrating differences, and relinquishing control through your tools in today's episode with Debbie Taylor-Kerman. Debbie is a Scottish artist who came to New York City to work as a textile designer in 1991. She fell in love with the city and her husband Elliott, and they moved to Harlem where they raised their two sons a...

Siara Berry creates multi-medium sculptures influenced by neighborships, housing systems, and American domestic landscapes. Deeply influenced by her upbringing in the suburban Midwest, her work contends with cultural narratives about place and purpose, property and people. Using a combination of found object and traditional craft processes, Berry deploys a visual language that is equally quotidian...

Rainer is a queer creator, collector, and tinkerer raised in lederhosen with a pet buffalo on a floral farm in rural Pennsylvania by an eccentric immigrant father and a defiantly strong mother. Rainer is a designer leveraging art to explore and document encounters of the human condition. He is a sculptor and a painter who creates interactive installations and experiences that help people feel seen...

Mixed media artist and painter Erica Jane Huntzinger was raised in the western suburbs of Chicago. Her parents hail from Maine and Pennsylvania and they drove back there each year to see family and friends all while absorbing and exploring the landscapes and ground they missed. Her immediate family was centered in questioning, learning and growing. Her mother was a psychologist, her father, a mini...

Glimpses and layers of time, what will remain, walking, beauty, palimpsest, AI art, and clothespins are all on the mind of London-based photographer and writer Duncan Petrie. Duncan explores nature in the human landscape, and what the world might look like when we are gone. His images, found on long walks, are a sort of synecdoche: from a single frame, a single point of punctum, they construct a w...

Old books, tight deadlines, the button box, design, and dancing all come up during my conversation with mixed media artist Sue Johnson. Sue Johnson is a mixed media artist from the UK who loves painted papers, pattern, and repetition. Her working process is quite eclectic but often begins with a colour palette and experimental mark making and various printing and painting techniques. She often wor...

Articulation, pivoting, sketchbooks, observation, and travel all play a key role in Ethan Keister’s creative life. Graphic designer, illustrator and art director Ethan was born in Vietnam, grew up in the backwoods of Upstate New York and now calls Milwaukee, Wisconsin his home. When Ethan isn't ruining his posture at his desk, you can find him snow skiing, water skiing, biking, hiking, traveling,...

Idea generation, your brain on cartoons, incongruency & divergent thinking, and how to encourage your creativity are all on the mind of cartoonist, writer and artist Paul Noth. Paul is a cartoonist for The New Yorker magazine, where his work has appeared regularly since 2004. He created the Emmy-nominated animated series "Pale Force" for Late Night with Conan O’Brien. He has been an animation cons...

Rocker chick Paula Hare talks about no longer giving a rip what other people think, New York City, and Wisconsin’s most iconic dessert – the cream puff. Paula Hare is a life-long artist, designer and creative director, plein air and studio painter. She brings a unique perspective to her work which includes unusual juxtapositions, compositions, and subjects. Paula's keen eye for detail and apprecia...

Diving deep into your own life to find your voice, the selfish nature of being an artist, the power of observation, and reacting to marks and layers are all considered during my conversation with Victoria McDonnell. Victoria relocated from Bogota, Colombia – at the age of 28 – to the rural countryside of Norfolk, UK. The cultural change was already overwhelming, but the language barrier added anot...

Monumental undertakings through multimedia narrative projects, travel and deep introspection, embracing chance and spontaneity, baseball, and how people define happiness, all come up during my conversation with Milwaukee interdisciplinary artist and writerJon Horvath. Influenced by his early formal education in creative fiction writing, philosophy, and composing music, Jon's practice has since exp...

Listen in as Stacy Bogdonoff talks about using verbs as she works on a project, the importance of not putting too much (psychologically) into social media, slowness and control,  living at the intersection of design and art, and why the media & the process – the heart and head of knowing and being known- is her authentic obsession. Stacy is a mixed media artist who divides her time between her ver...

Trauma journalism, social activism, igniting and changing conversations, and telling stories in a visual way are all integral part of Amy Putman’s life. Amy is a collagist and mixed media artist with a passion for issues of social justice. She helped create and brand the Million Mom March for Common Sense Gun Laws with her logo and slogan “Looking for a Few Good Moms.”  Amy says: “I am drawn to te...

The effect of knitting during the birthing process, the importance of resting, felting as the wild sister of fiber arts, and the role of felting in community practices and traditions all comes up during my convo with Megan Henderson. And the always impactful practice of letting go and surrendering to the present moment.  Megan is a fiber artist living on a few wooded acres in Central Ohio who is i...

Sue Bulmer is an artist, educator, Art Psychotherapist and Inspiration Facilitator. Her expressive, energetic and colourful work is inspired by landscape and seasonal alignment. Sue believes we are all creative souls and is a passionate advocate for the well-being benefits of living a more creative life. ​She has a deep understanding, stemming from personal experience, of the many benefits of livi...