A Line Around Your Thoughts

On this week's episode, our guests are Sara Mortier and Christina Villagomez , who are tattoo artists based, respectively, in Spokane and Coeur d'Alene. They currently have a joint exhibition titled Body of Work at the Terrain Gallery in Spokane. It runs until the end of November 2025. One unique thing about this exhibition is its separation of tattoos from the human body. Instead the arti...

We explore multiple disciplines with this week's guest, Darrien Mack. Darrien is a DJ, a hip-hop artist, a videographer, a writer, a graphic designer and much, much more. One night you might see him curating a DJ set as Rosethrow , whereas the next night he'll performing with his group Truehoods . And the night after that he'll be capturing video for an event with Terrain or Pivot . An...

This week our guest is the Spokane photographer Dean Davis . Dean's work is the subject of a new retrospective exhibition at Spokane Falls Community College . It features select photos from his more than 30-year career in both commercial and fine-art photography. In this interview, Dean recaps that long career to give some context to those featured photos. Along the way, we end up talking abou...

The writer Susie Leonard Weller is our guest this week. She recently published 52 Global Reflections: A Pilgrim’s Travel Memoir — a book that's part memoir, part travel diary and part discussion starter. Susie gives some background on why she wrote the book as well as some of the places and experiences that left the most lasting impressions on her. As part of that conversation, we also talk ab...

If you purchase art supplies in the Spokane area, then you've almost certainly stopped into Art Salvage . Art Salvage is a resale outlet for the materials used in the making of all kinds of visual and tactile art. That could be paints and textiles, or it could be found objects that end up being creatively repurposed. My guest this week is the founder, owner and executive director of Art Salvag...

The singer, songwriter and musician Olivia Brownlee is our guest on A Line Around Your Thoughts this week. Recently, Olivia's been musing on a project that combines oral history and music. And if you're familiar with her work, that's a logical next step after her album This Is Where You Live , which commemorated the people and places of Spokane in song. We do indeed talk about that ora...

This week we're covering both music and film with guests Charlie Pepiton and Michael Kropf . They are two Gonzaga University professors who've pooled their talents for a new short film titled Love, Eleanor . Charlie is the film's director, and Michael composed the score. A preview screening of Love, Eleanor is coming up on October 18, 2025 with live accompaniment and a debut concert fr...

This episode is going out on on Thursday, October 2, 2025, which means Terrain' s big annual arts showcase takes place tomorrow night (Oct. 3) in downtown Spokane. The VIP preview night is tonight. For its (Sweet) 16th year, Terrain is featuring 850 works of art by 483 regional artists. There are also literature readings, short films, choreography, site specific installations and live performa...

This week we're sitting down and chatting with Aimee Brooks and Morganne Elkins of Banana Slug Books . Banana Slug recently published its first book, a short-story anthology titled Spokane Campfire Stories . It features work by 23 writers, including Sam Ligon, Kate Lebo, Kris Dinnison, Katy Shedlock, Gregory Spatz and Aimee herself. Spokane Campfire Stories had its official launch at a reading...

We departed the Rogue Heart Media studio and went on location for this week's episode to sit down with glass artist Preston Singletary and independent curator Miranda Belarde-Lewis . Preston's exhibition Raven and the Box of Daylight is currently showing at the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture until January 4, 2026. This episode was recorded onsite during the installation of that exhibition, w...

This week's episode features a conversation with the bookbinder and book artist Mel Antuna Hewitt , who goes by Mel the Maker. Mel came in to talk about her own work with the printed page and the act of creating something unique in a medium that's usually about reproducibility. She also prompts some reflection on what makes a book a book, which is a thought she'll continue in her forth...

On this week's episode, our guests are Jeni Riplinger and Jaiden Haley of the arts incubator Emerge Coeur d'Alene . Jaiden is the nonprofit organization's operations manager, and Jeni is the executive director. Emerge just had its annual Block Party in July, and it's now gearing up for the INK! Print Rally on September 13, 2025. That community event, which is themed "Portals,&...

We have two guests on this week's episode: Joe and Sienna Henson of Hitchhiker's Theatre . The two of them co-founded Hitchhiker's Theatre last year with a view to bringing live performances to unconventional spaces. The nomadic troupe's second season opens next week with a two-evening (Sept. 5 & 6, 2025) performance of the play 5 Lesbians Eating a Quiche at The Guardian in Spo...

This week's episode brings Jim Mohr into the Rogue Heart Media studio. Jim wears at least two hats in the Spokane community — one as the interim vice president of student affairs at Spokane Falls Community College , the other as the executive director of the Blue Door Theatre . He sat down to talk about the second of those, including their Spokane School of Improv, the BOOST center for profess...

On this week's episode, we're in conversation with Jon Kuritz, a video director who co-founded the nonprofit production house Live from Somewhere . Live from Somewhere is the group behind the music video series of the same name, which got its start during the pandemic by filming regional bands in all kinds of settings. They've since branched out into organizing the new Curators of Soun...

For this week's episode, Rachel Bade-McMurphy —jazz musician, composer and music advocate—is in the Rogue Heart Media studio to talk about, among other things, her new project, the Glass Bead Orchestra. The Glass Bead Orchestra is 10-piece ensemble that received a prestigious and very competitive Chamber Music America grant for women and minority bandleaders. The group debuts in its full incar...

This week we're in conversation with Danny Anderson, a longtime actor who's now leading My Turn Theater , a Spokane-based organization that provides performing arts opportunities to adults with disabilities. My Turn Theater's new production of The Lion King, Jr. is opening this weekend (Saturday, Aug. 2) at the Spokane Civic Theatre and will run there for a little over a week. Danny talks about th...

We sit down this week with visual artist Gwyn Pevonka , who also happens to be the driving force behind the 33 Artists Market . There's a 33 Artists Market coming up this weekend (Saturday, July 26, 2025). It's in a brand new location at the Pergola Event Center , and the number of participating artists has tripled for this particular event. Gwyn talks about why she chose to make this her...

On this week's episode we catch up with Zuill Bailey, who is not only an internationally touring cellist but also artistic director of the Northwest BachFest . There are three BachFest concerts coming up next week. First, there's Music in Manito on July 22 and 23. That's followed by the Afterglow performance at Barrister Winery on July 24. All three shows feature the same guest artists — namely, t...

This week we're talking with Dominique Betts, the co-founder of Bright Comet Theatre , and Celeste Bidwell-Williams, who has the lead role in BCT's upcoming production of Carrie: The Musical . Carrie opens Friday, July 18 at Stage Left Theater . More info on the show is available at either the Bright Comet or Stage Left websites (linked in this description). Dominique and Celeste naturally...

This week's episode features another pair of guests: Melody Chang and Andrea Olsen of Spokane Valley Summer Theatre — and by extension the Idaho Central Spokane Valley Performing Arts Center . Andrea is the organization's associate artistic director, and Melody is the communications & marketing director. Melody and Andrea came into the Rogue Heart Media studio to reflect on SVST's 10th anniver...

Our guests this week are Pollyanne Birge of the City of Spokane's Office of Neighborhood Services as well as independent artist Madison Merica. Pollyanne and Madison came in to talk about This Is Spokane:A Civic Guide for Neighbors , which is a new zine that the city has put out to help residents get a better fix on how local government works. Madison was the lead artist on that project. We ta...

This week's episode features a conversation with author Jess Walter , whose new novel is titled So Far Gone and was just published by HarperCollins. So Far Gone is set in and around Spokane but its story isn't region-specific. It's meant to be a portrait of a country where people who might be sitting around the same Thanksgiving table can be living in entirely different realities. Jess...

For this week's episode of A Line Around Your Thoughts, we're joined by Bryan Harnetiaux, the Spokane Civic Theatre 's playwright in residence since 1982. Bryan came in to provide the lowdown on the upcoming Playwrights' Forum Festival that bears his name. In 2025, the festival runs from June 19–22 in the Spokane Civic Theatre's Firth J. Chew studio space. This year, its 35th, there are a dozen on...

Our guest on this week's episode of A Line Around Your Thoughts is Mallory Battista , an independent artist who works in a variety of media. You've probably already come across Mallory's work in the form of murals, mosaic sculptures, holiday window displays, ironworking or comics. She was even kind enough to design the logo for this podcast. We ended up talking about, among other things, zines, th...