The Center's Studio Podcast

In this episode, Michael Hicks, a polymath in music, literature, and scholarship, and Professor Emeritus of Music at Brigham Young University, (where he taught from 1985-2020), details a more private world: his personal archive of thousands of objects that speak to his life as a lover of music, books, and American culture. Hicks shares personal anecdotes about his extensive collection of records,...

The fourth-annual Artists Residency at the Center is now in the record books. The six artists: Meg Dodini (choreography), Jamal Qureshi (visual art), Emily Pack (music), Laura Hatch (poetry), Camille Charbonneau (visual art), and Tyler Gathro (visual art) introduce themselves, talk about their projects undertaken during the Residency, and describe the impact of the week on their lives and work. Ha...

Following the success at the Metropolitan Opera house of his beloved oratorio, Lamb of God , earlier this year, Rob Gardner talks with guest host, composer Benjamin Taylor, about his ways of writing music, from first ideas and deadlines to orchestration choices, lyrics, and why the best idea is often the first instinct. They uncover how the oratorio began years before it was written, why deadlines...

More than an early figure in Mormon frontier painting, C.C.A. Christensen helped to invent the visual language of Latter-day Saint history and theology. In this interview on the occasion of her new book on Christensen, art historian Jennifer Champoux reveals how the Danish artist’s Mormon history panoramas, Book of Mormon paintings, missionary images, and Scandinavian paintings and writings shaped...

This episode features an interview with the editors Richard Benjamin Crosby and Isaac James Richards about their new book, Latter-day Eloquence: Two Centuries of Mormon Oratory . They discuss why public speaking is central to Latter-day Saint life, how touchstone speeches from the 19th century to the present tell the story of the LDS people, and why they remain essential reading and relevant today...

Part 1. Why We Make Art - We celebrate our 100th monthly episode with a survey of special moments from our history. This first of four episodes, Why We Make Art, is a sampler of a few stories of artists and why they create or in some way a description of trying to see the big picture. These stories come from painters Brian Kershisnik and Fidalis Buehler, scholars Mason Kamana Allred and Amanda Bea...

Part 2. Moments of Faith - This second celebratory episode of our 100th podcast includes six conversations with artists and includes intimate stories with a spiritual touch: Historian Richard Bushman in New York, then choreographer Vanessa Cook in Switzerland. James Faulconer tells a miraculous story from Brazil, we hear about a treasured but divided heirloom from Salt Lake City, Utah and the mira...

Part 3: Unexpected Insights - In this third of our Audio Exhibition to celebrate The Center’s Studio Podcast’s 100th episode, 7 clips were collected from podcasts where artists inform us about the world. These artists become the most engaging and delightful teachers you can imagine on a variety of topics: Barrett Burgin talks about horror films, Jeremy Grimshaw speaks about music and traditions in...

Part 4: Emotional Moments -- In the finale of our celebration, we revisit clips from guests: Jamie Erekson, Samuel Evensen, Laura Allred Hurtado, Mauli Bonner, and Valerie Atkisson. These moving discussions become teary and include family tragedy, real-time stories happening during Covid, the highs and lows of careers, and complex social challenges. Finally, Glen Nelson summarizes some of the less...

Take a listen to the innovative, forthcoming Art Lab by the Center for Latter Day Saint Arts. It focuses on how art enhances family and group and experiences through interaction. Join four volunteers--Lauren and Nick Bazzarone and Emily and Jamie Erekson--as we preview a lesson from Art Lab about music, and jump into the experience with us. Music performed by Scott Holden, The Unknown Galaxy: A Ce...

Choreographer Vanessa Cook discusses her newest work, A Brief Collection of Moments, premiering at the Utah Metropolitan Ballet. Cook explores how dance combines with music, text, and visual art into this ambitious new piece, winner of the 2025 Ariel Bybee Endowment Prize. The conversation ranges from philosophy and choreography to the power of a single voice, echoing Bybee's own, growing int...

Explore the fascinating profession of scenic art with Tessa Jorgensen, a professional artist working on Broadway, opera, ballet, tv, film, advertising, and immersive experiences. Learn about her unique skills painting 50-foot murals, backdrops, cycloramas, and theatrical set pieces for some of the country's biggest theatrical productions. Music: "Please Only Tell Me Good News” by Stephen...

In this episode of The Center's Studio Podcast, Glen Nelson interviews Mauli Bonner, a multifaceted artist and filmmaker. They discuss Bonner's diverse career, including his work on the Elijah Abel project, which combines dramatization and documentary to explore sensitive aspects of Black history within The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Bonner reflects on his previous film...

In this episode, Sylvie Scowcroft, a certified financial planner specializing in assisting artists, discusses their unique financial challenges. Artists face unpredictable income, healthcare access, and the societal pressures that often devalue their work. She also points out that many artists have advantages regarding tax deductions, for example, of which they are unaware. The episode touches on...

In this engaging episode about Christian painting, artist Rose Datoc Dall, explores her artistic journey, the curation of the book Expressions of Jesus , and the importance of cultural representation in art about Jesus Christ. The new book of hundreds of images includes over 100 artists throughout history and from around the world. It raises important questions: How should a contemporary artist re...

What does it take to get a new musical staged on Broadway? In this episode, composer and lyricist Kyle Fackrell describes the journey of his new Off-Broadway musical, The Art Tour , that opens on 42nd Street next week. More than a recounting of the challenges and triumphs of producing an original work for the theater, Kyle details how the two-character show represents all of us in our decisions to...

The Last Caravan is a tabletop roleplaying game created by Ted Bushman, set in a post-apocalyptic America that's been devastated by an alien invasion. Unlike many roleplaying games where players take on their personas of superheroes and intergalactic warriors, this game is about regular people--teachers, truck drivers, librarians, mechanics, moms, even dogs--who band together to survive wild...

The Artists Residency at the Center concludes its 2025 cohort and asks the artists--Alexandra Mackenzie Johns (UK/Utah, literature & drama), David Jones (Oregon, music composition), Thayer Jonutz (Michigan, choreography), Zinta Jaunitis (United Kingdom, visual art), Jackie Leishman (California, visual art) and Daniel Martinez (Uruguay, visual art)--three questions. They are: what books they&ap...

Most people are unaware of the symbiotic relationship between artists and the gallerists who represent them. How does a gallery support, encourage, and market an artist's work? And how does an artist rely on the expertise of a gallerist when they are starting out, in mid-career, and when they want to defy expectation with something new? This interview brings visual artist Justin Wheatley and...

Winners of the Ariel Bybee Endowment Prize, Gonzalo and Susana Silva speak about their new exhibition, Instrumentos de silencio (Instruments of Silence). The 15-piece show at Sargent's Daughters gallery in New York (and later traveling to the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California) plays with ideas of musical instruments and history, but also the ways that invading Europeans subju...

His paintings are in nearly every Latter-day Saint meetinghouse and in many temples in the world. The beloved artist Walter Rane discusses in this podcast his life as a painter, insights he has discovered about himself through the freedom of creating, and why he loves painting now more than ever. Music: "Please Only Tell Me Good News” by Stephen Anderson; used with permission. Liked this epis...

It’s like a true crime podcast, but it’s about art. An heirloom masterpiece is created, mutilated, inherited, then lost--one of the most important objects in a rich culture’s history. Over a century later, a frantic search ensues, not unlike a manhunt, with a deadline fast approaching and a forthcoming, major exhibition hanging in the balance. Can it be recovered in time? Scholars Heather Belnap,...

Taiwanese Australian filmmaker Daniel Yen Tu tells about a new book project and screenplay, '93 Castrol which is the fast-paced story of siblings, a stolen race car, and a search for redemption from self-described low-lifery. The discussion of this limited edition artists book contains something even bigger--an emerging artist discovering identity, voice, and a newfound sense of authenticity....

Lisa Hess moved to New York at the age of 16 and a year later was asked to join the company of the New York City Ballet. That began an adventure with some of the great choreographers and dancers of the century, in a golden age of dance in America. Hess worked with the legendary George Balanchine in his final decade of life, frequently with Jerome Robbins, and others. In this extended oral history...

After an emerging-artist blitz of 26 New York exhibitions in just 7 years, the award-winning visual artist Valerie Atkisson de Moura hit a wall. Adrift and depressed in a new home, she received a medical diagnosis of an incurable disease and discovered that her mother had the same disease but had kept it secret from the family. Then, in a horrible year, her mother died, Valerie was hit by a car an...