A Brush With Life

Please leave me your feedback and ideas here! Kirk Payne  is enraptured by raptors!  Kirk is  a practitioner of the ancient sport of Falconry - training wild hawks to hunt for quarry. He is also an ardent conservationist,  protecting and promoting the expansion of the kestrel population by installing nesting boxes throughout the region in appropriate landscapes. But he is most beloved in the commu...

Please leave me your feedback and ideas here! Deb Majerus and Joel McDonald share the surprising story of love and flowers literally growing out of the ashes,  as they launched Iron Butterfly Flower Farm.

Please leave me your feedback and ideas here! Tamsin Barlow is a full-time Printmaker and Painter, who also squeezes in a couple of hours teaching Zumba exercise classes every week. She painstakingly carves her design into a linoleum block, rolls ink onto the surface, and presses it onto paper — but that's just one of many ways Tamsin makes an impression!   Tamsin Barlow Instagram KTTC Interv...

Please leave me your feedback and ideas here! Jeff Feece lives right in in the city, but he can listen to the tree frogs trilling at night, watch hawks hunting in his back yard and he sometimes finds the dried  nymph shells where dragonflies have hatched out in his tiny pond.  Jeff is a landscape designer and city park planner, and loves wildlife. He has created a haven for insects, birds and smal...

Please leave me your feedback and ideas here! Cassandra Buck never met an art medium she didn't love. She is a painter, muralist, jewelry-maker, weaver, embroiderer, and more - and she often combines those traditional mediums in untraditional ways.  Cassandra is not one of those artists who secludes herself in her studio. She is truly out there - leading community art projects, organizing exh...

Please leave me your feedback and ideas here!  "Be the Change You Wish to See in the World." That pretty much sums up Robin Greenfield's life and philosophy.  Once a successful businessman and aspiring young millionaire, Robin had a revelation about how his lifestyle was harming the earth and did a 180, dedicating himself to living simply and in harmony with the earth. His experimen...

Please leave me your feedback and ideas here! Teresa Walter grew up playing classical violin, and she was really good at it, but she took a 20-year hiatus from music to focus on family and career. When her daughters were grown, she picked up the violin again and started to play casually at community venues, such as the Salvation Army kettle at the grocery store.  One night, she attended a bluegras...

Please leave me your feedback and ideas here! It has been so much fun creating these podcasts, interviewing so many fascinating folks, and sharing the conversations with you!  I appreciate you, all of the guests, and the Southeast Minnesota Arts Council, who awarded me a grant to launch this podcast.  Fr the next month I will be taking a little break over the holidays, putting down A Brush With Li...

Please leave me your feedback and ideas here! With plenty of guts and gusto, Marie Marvin turned an old Carnegie Library in  Zumbrota, MN, into a hub of creativity.  The building was bursting with art, whimsy, artists working, children learning, sometimes even people doing yoga. At night it  hummed with fabulous music concerts, artist openings, and poetry readings.  Marie has a way of encouraging...

Please leave me your feedback and ideas here! John Sievers is not one to toot his own horn, but he does let it slide. John is a trombonist who plays in many bands, a poet who writes a haiku a day, an English professor, and Rochester's most enthusiastic music booster.  In this episode, learn how John developed his lifelong partnership with the trombone, how he juggles his busy creative life, a...

Please leave me your feedback and ideas here! Amy Johnson is an enamel artist who creates copper and silver jewelry with gorgeous, colorful glass designs fused to the surface. Amy tells us how she  discovered this art form, her process, and how making art helped her survive and heal from  tragic life events. View Amy's work: Website: https://www.amyjohnsonenamels.com FB Page: https://www.face...

Please leave me your feedback and ideas here! As a young girl, Heidi Kern was inspired by "Little House on the Prairie" and dreamed  of creating a self-sufficient life where she grew all her own food and sewed her own clothing.  As an adult, she wound up living in the city but she and her husband Chris have transformed their cul-de-sac lot into an urban farmstead.  Growing vegetables, fr...

Please leave me your feedback and ideas here! Jean Prokott is Rochester, MInesota's Poet Laureate!  As the community's official artistic wordsmith, she writes poems for community events and creates an annual poetry event for the public. She is also a teacher of English and Philosophy at Century High School.  Her  book of published poems is titled "The Second Longest Day of the Year....

Please leave me your feedback and ideas here! Oliver Books is  passionate about all things sound.  He is a singer-songwriter who performs solo and in a 7-member band called Oliver Books and The Big, Big, World.  He has worked in music production and movie production. in the past year, he and colleague Alex Ortberg produced The Rochester Mash-Up, a compilation music album of 20 diverse  local music...

Please leave me your feedback and ideas here! LeAnn Eriksson speaks softly but carries a big voice.  Music has always been a huge part of her life, beginning with growing up on an Iowa farm, playing the flute in school and singing in the Lutheran church choir.   Since then she has become a citizen of the world and lived, worked and sung in many countries. She discovered crystal singing bowls and l...

Please leave me your feedback and ideas here! Susan M. Davies  Sue Davies is a painter who approaches her work from many directions - abstract, animals, landscape, sumi-e,meditative, whimsical...but the constant is color: rich, vibrant, exuberant color. You sense that she lives her entire life with that same exuberance.  Sue's other art is music; currently, she plays the tin whistle in a Celt...

Please leave me your feedback and ideas here! Darin Podulke-Smith is an artist, improv actor, stained-glass creator, banjo-player and Buddhist priest. In this episode, we talk to Darin about banjo practice and the practice of Buddhism, and what it takes to become a Zen priest. He also describes his most recent adventure, a 500-mile hike on the Camino Frances with his wife, Laurel. 

Please leave me your feedback and ideas here! Artist Deb D'Souza is devoted to the ancient art of mosaic and has traveled the world to study it,  but she also incorporates innovative techniques.  Mosaic is a patience-testing process than can take 40 hours to assemble thousands of tiny bits into 1 square foot of design.  Deb magically creates landscapes and botanical images with amazing detail...

Please leave me your feedback and ideas here! Eva Barr puts the culture in agriculture!  Eva and her partner Todd started Dream Acres Farm, near Wykoff, Minnesota, as a land collective where they built all the timber-framed farm buildings, taught heritage farming techniques, farmed with horses and oxen and raised organic veggies for a 40-family CSA. With Eva's theater expertise, the farm laun...

Please leave me your feedback and ideas here! Lynette Yencho has a lifetime of experience as a commercial artist, from drawing school buildings and class ring designs at age 16 and for Jostens, to designing collectible figurines, to being agraphic designer for the Minneapolis Star newspaper...to creating fantastical murals and other very fine art.  https://gardenstudio.biz  https://lynettestudio.c...

Please leave me your feedback and ideas here! Kevin Ian Reid was the Orofacial Pain Specialist at Rochester's  Mayo Clinic for 26 years. He had never studied art, but in order to cope with the strain of working with so many people suffering from pain, he began painting, especially abstract faces that often evoked pain.  When Reid retired, he decided to return to school to study art at the Min...

Please leave me your feedback and ideas here! Becky Schlegel grew up in South Dakota singing classic country music. When she moved to Minnesota, she fell in love with bluegrass music and with her banjo-pickin' husband, Heath Loy.   Now Becky is a singer with a voice as sweet as nectar writing songs that tug at your heart or lull you to peace, a painter of gestural flowers, and the grateful st...

Please leave me your feedback and ideas here! Judy Onofrio's work has spanned from firing ceramics to burning huge structures in fiery performances, elaborate, quirky brooches to elegant sculptures assembled from bones, celebrations of nature to divas, acrobats and other colorful characters. She is renowned for creating monumental sculptures from the tiniest bits, baubles, beads, buttons and...

Please leave me your feedback and ideas here! The first time I met Suzanne Szucs, she was dressed in the most sumptuous, colorful, exotic clothing you can imagine, dancing at Squash Blossom farm during  our Cow Puja festival. That is just one facet of Suzanne's life -  she also  teaches  Photography at Rochester Community & Technical College. Her own photographic art is inspired by nature...

Please leave me your feedback and ideas here! Kevin Ewing recently retired from his career as a teacher and is now devoting himself to his favorite pastime - woodcarving.  He is not just whittling away his time - he creates elaborate, elegant pieces inspired by architectural and historic masterpieces.  Plus, he generously shares his craft by teaching woodcarving to aspiring carvers of all ages.  F...