Art Heals All Wounds

Today, I’m joined by photographer, filmmaker, and educator Michael O. Snyder. His work focuses on the intersectionality of environmental and cultural change. Our conversation is centered around his project called The Coming Coast. In this photography project, Michael explores the impact of rising seas and how it will affect the Chesapeake Bay in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. The ar...

Today, I’m joined by avant garde and experimental composer and guitarist Ernesto Diaz-Infante. You might remember my conversation with his wife, filmmaker Marjorie Sturm, back in season 1 where we touched on how they are creating a home for their children to also explore the arts. Ernesto and I expand on that a little further and discuss how his childhood shaped how he and Marjorie are raising the...

Today, I’m joined by Laura Joyce Davis, the creator and host of the award-winning podcast Shelter in Place . What started as a creative outlet to cope with the stay-at-home order of March 2020 has now turned into almost 200 episodes of narrative nonfiction storytelling about reimagining life through creativity and community. Laura and her husband have since expanded into the podcast education spac...

Today, I’m joined by independent director and producer Alexi Lacey. She has over 20 years of experience in filmmaking, and her most recent project, Fiji Memory Colonial Time, has been on her mind since she was a teenager. The film explores the complexity of identity when it's been formed by privilege due to the exploitation of other people and the intended destruction of their culture. For Al...

Today, I’m joined by cinematographer, camera operator, and first assistant camera Rachel Dusa. Rachel and I discuss navigating a male-dominated field, how she formed her professional network in Los Angeles, and the unfortunate realities of working on set for streaming service content. She shares why it’s unsafe for many craftspeople on set, and the loopholes that some companies are cashing in on t...

Today, I’m joined by photographer, filmmaker, and writer, Shantre Pinkney. You might recognize her from Season 1, Bonus Episode 2 where I shared the pilot for her podcast, The R(e)ad Lounge, which Shantre uses as a space for the audio storytelling of her upcoming book, Raw, Black & Blue. On today’s episode, we talk about her introduction to photography, what inspired her to connect photography...

Today, I am joined by Jim LeBrecht and Sara Bolder, husband and wife creative team. Jim is the co-director with Nicole Newnham of the film Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution and Sara is a producer of the film along with Jim and Nicole. We discuss their film, which shares the beauty, insight, and humor of one group of disabled young people at Camp Jened. Jim and Sara share why this project was part...

Today, I’m joined by writer, poet, and educator Preeti Vangani. Preeti’s work covers themes of family, grief, sexual politics, and the body. In our conversation, we discuss her transition from the corporate world to creative writing, where she draws inspiration from, and what she's currently working on. Plus, she reads two of her poems and unpacks the story behind them. Tune in to learn more...

Today I’m joined by Catherine Monahon, host of the podcast Material Feels. We talk about the way that Catherine works with their voice as their creative medium, how they care for their voice, and how they use it to inject the right tone to their podcasts. Catherine believes that creativity is a human right, that no one is “bad at art.” Their podcast is a love letter to the material world, inviting...

*This episode includes brief mentions of childhood sexual abuse   Today I’m joined by Giiniw-ikwe, also known as Vanessa Willow, a painter in the Woodland Art tradition. Vanessa is Ojibwe, a nurse, mother, grandmother, cancer-survivor, and childhood sexual abuse survivor. After undergoing a double mastectomy, lumpectomy, and radiation treatment, Vanessa received a gift of paints and canvases by he...

I’m joined by musicians Vicki Randle and Barbara Higbie. We discuss how they got their start in music, what they love about the Bay Area music scene and what’s going on at the legendary Berkeley nonprofit community arts organization, Freight & Salvage. They share how the venue has navigated these last two years and how it’s supporting musicians through the pandemic. Listen in to hear more of o...

In part two of my conversation with documentary filmmaker and professor Julie Wyman, we discuss the broader questions that her documentary raises. Julie talks about the implications that the growth medication Voxzogo has on the future of dwarfism, the complex feelings she has around changing her body, and connection through shared experiences. I also open up about the challenging dilemmas that I’v...

Today, I’m joined by documentary filmmaker and a professor of filmmaking at UC Davis, Julie Wyman. Julie’s work aims to challenge and expand our culture's narrow range of represented bodies, and her latest project is no different. As an adult, Julie was diagnosed with a form of dwarfism called Hypochondroplasia. Her diagnosis was part of the inspiration behind the documentary she’s currently...

Sarah Davis, a learning experience designer, lost her father to cancer in 2016. Her experience of grief left her feeling isolated and unbalanced. She had difficulty sharing this experience, mostly because there were so few examples of how to share and navigate the grieving process. She started the podcast Breathing Wind as a space to share and create community for those grieving the loss of a pare...

Welcome to Season 2 of Art Heals All Wounds, the podcast where we meet artists transforming lives with their work. In this season, we'll explore some of the themes that came up in Season 1--the body, family, home, community, and self. We’ll be releasing episodes every week. We’ll hear the stories of artists whose work presents a creative approach to these five themes. of body. Through stories...

The infectiously optimistic music from Quincy Griffith and Luqman Frank from Episode 11 of Season 1 is helping me to get through this long January at the beginning of year 3 of the pandemic. If you need some cheer in your life and you like soul music this may be what you need to hear right now. As an added bonus, videos for some of the songs from the album are starting to be released. You can find...

Sit back and relax while you listen to episode 1 of The Re(a)d Lounge from Shantre Pinkney. You'll get a chance to hear excerpts from her upcoming book Raw, Black, & Blue in her podcast. You can find The Re(a)d Lounge wherever you listen to podcasts and you can hear more about her story as a writer, filmmaker, and photojournalist on Season 2 of Art Heals All Wounds. Be sure to sign up for...

Some new directions for Season 2 of Art Heals All Wounds. Sign up for the Art Heals All Wounds newsletter to learn more about upcoming guests as well as insight to art and healing from guest contributors. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information. Support the show

The very special guest on the Season 1 finale of Art Heals All Wounds is opera composer Hector Armienta. Hector is also the Art Director of Opera Cultura, a Latinx Hispanic opera company in San Jose, California. As a Mexican American composer, Armienta composes operas that explore what it means to be between two cultural worlds. His musical inspirations include the works of Puccini, Mexican corrid...

April Harris performs to heal. Her journey as a performer began when she was still serving as Captain in the United States Army. She had survived several sexual assaults during her service, but she realized that surviving wasn’t enough. For herself and for her two sons, she needed to thrive. To do that, she first needed to heal. Finding her way to a personal storytelling workshop was the beginning...

Have you ever had a difficult relationship with someone that you absolutely adore? How would you handle your grief if that person unexpectedly dies before you've worked through your issues together? This was exactly the dilemma faced by Michelle Kennedy when her father was tragically killed in a car accident. As a writer, on-camera reporter, and news anchor, Michelle was at the top of her fie...

Filmmaker Ken Paul Rosenthal first met Berkeley street poet Julia Vinograd thirty years ago. Struck by her work and her presence, he asked if he could make a film about her poems. Although she agreed, Rosenthal felt that he didn’t yet have the experience as an artist to do her work justice. In 2018, Julia Vinograd passed away. Now Rosenthal has taken on the mission of bringing this iconic poet to...

They say you can never go home again. When Denise Zmekhol, daughter of the late Roger Zmekhol, a prolific and masterful architect in Brazil, decides to make a documentary film about his most famous building in Sao Paulo, she hopes that by telling the story of the building she will also be able to deepen her connection with her father. Known as the Skin of Glass (Pele de Vidro), this building symbo...

Do you need a positive mantra to get you through the ups and downs that these times keep throwing our way? How about a mantra set to amazing music? I know the perfect thing for you, a new single, Gonna Be Alright, from Luqman Frank and Quincy Griffin. It's from their upcoming album, composed and recorded during the pandemic, with messages of positivity, unity, and love as a response to the cu...

When the poet Maw Shein Win was faced with the wearisome task of moving, it got her thinking about her relationship with her things. She found a storage unit for the objects she didn't part with and she realized that, while the storage unit contained her things, her things, in turn, were containers as well--of memory, emotions, and attachments. At the same time, she had been researching nat s...