Art · The Creative Process: Artists, Curators, Museum Directors Talk Art, Life & Creativity

Sam Levy studied film in Paris with French New Wave director Eric Rohmer and began his career as an apprentice to legendary cinematographer Harris Savides. Sam first gained recognition as a cinematographer when he photographed Wendy and Lucy for director Kelly Reichardt - voted “One of the Best 25 Films of the 21st Century” by The New York Times. He went on to shoot France...

"I met the founders Alan and Joshua who started NeueHouse in 2013. They are lovely gentlemen, and they called me aside and said, 'We'd love to get you involved in our coworking space that we are doing.’ And we really curated an interesting community of people. And have had a lot of interesting people do talks, from Paul Smith to Salman Rushdie to Wu-Tang Clan, Tom Sachs, and Ariana...

Oberon Sinclair is the CEO and founder of the creative and branding agency, My Young Auntie. Since she founded the company in 1997, Oberon has collaborated with and managed an array of notable clients from the high luxury, art, fashion, food and lifestyle sectors, including Hermès, Vivienne Westwood, Fabergé, the Richemont Group, Jack Spade, ArtForum, Selfridges, Rizzoli Books, Island Records...

"The first painting I saw of what I had done, the finished painting was a real turn on. I mean, really heavy, like that painting was coming from my brain. It wasn't a photograph. It wasn't an image of something. It was coming from me, from this. That really, I mean, excited me more than when I first heard John Coltrane or Ornette Coleman. And it was like, Pow, this is what painting is about. ...

For nearly half a century, Richard “Dickie” Landry was at the center of the New York avant-garde. Born in the small Louisiana town of Cecilia in 1938, he began making pilgrimages to the city while still in his teens in search of the city’s most cutting edge gestures in jazz, and relaxed there not long after, falling in with a close knit community of artists and composers like Keith Sonnier, Philip...

"Sometimes  I'll paint images of people watching a parade go by, but nobody takes the pictures of the crowd watching. And just to focus the attention on: this is what you're missing. I like to do stuff like that. And it's just to draw attention to an aspect of humanity that I'm just trying to make people pay attention to, that's all. Like sometimes walking through Times Square, you see all th...

Gloria Pacis is a painter dividing her time between New York City and Hoboken, where she has her studio. She received her BFA from the University of Washington in 1976. She credits her years working as a set designer and scene artist for the dramatic, character-based elements of her paintings. She has participated in exhibitions at public institutions and universities, including Wing Luke Museum,...

"I listened to something recently by Philip Glass. It was fantastic kind of symphonic stuff with dance and video and kind of theater in it, as well. And it's throwing all of this at you. And the hope, I think, of the artist is they're doing this kind of multisensory projection to try to grow in your mind the idea that Philip Glass had in his mind when he was writing this music. And just talking it...

Johnjoe McFadden is the author of Life is Simple, How Occam’s Razor Set Science Free and Shapes the Universe. He obtained his PhD at Imperial College London and went on to work on human genetic diseases and then infectious diseases, at the University of Surrey. Professor McFadden has specialised in examining the genetics of microbes such as the agents of tuberculosis and meningitis. His other book...

"It was such a beautiful process. Throughout it, it felt like we were doing something new and different. And then what really hit home is that there was something so new about the colors, the fashion, the music, the sounds, the visuals, the thinks and purples, even Fletcher Moules in the way that he animated, it harkened back to hand-drawn animation, where instead of, you know, traditional 3D anim...

Karina Manashil is the President of Mad Solar Productions. She began her career in the mailroom at WME (William Morris Endeavor) where she became a talent agent. She represented notable clients including Scott Mescudi, known by his stage name, Kid Cudi, and built her career taking talent into new arenas. In 2020, she partnered with Mescudi and Dennis Cummings to launch Mad Solar, which is backed b...

"Jean-Michel Basquiat's combination of words and images, this visual poetry, just from a cultural standpoint has been so important. When I met him in 1983, black people were not allowed in the art market, pretty much. And you see that he broke down this barrier, which opened the door for all this multiculturalism within the art market. And you can't diminish the importance of that at all. It's hel...

Lee Jaffe, a cross-disciplinary visual artist, musician, and poet, took photos of his friend, Jean-Michel Basquiat, when they traveled abroad in 1983. As a photographer, Jaffe had a connection to Basquiat, and their time spent together resulted in an archive of imagery that captured one of the art world’s true legends through an unfiltered and authentic lens. “For me, watching him [Jean-Michel] pa...

"I think what we really face is an even more profound change into this condition where human nature becomes plastic in the sense of malleable, and we then have to think more from the ground up - What is it that ultimately brings value to the world? If you could be literally any kind of being you chose to be, what kind of being would you want to be? What constraints and limitations and flaws would...

Nick Bostrom is a Swedish-born philosopher with a background in theoretical physics, computational neuroscience, logic, and artificial intelligence, as well as philosophy. He is the most-cited professional philosopher in the world under the age of 50. He is a Professor at Oxford University, where he heads the Future of Humanity Institute as its founding director. He is the author of some 200 publi...

"I'm very, very concerned that we are already in a time of being lost, that a lot of people feel lost, and they feel like the world has kind of moved out from under them, and that they have lost their bearings. They've lost their anchor, and they don't have what it takes to actually navigate. And in that kind of environment, it's a very rich environment for fascism and for the worst kind of politi...

Designer, author, educator and artist Bruce Mau is a brilliantly creative optimist whose love of thorny problems led him to create a methodology for life-centered design. Across thirty years of design innovation, he’s collaborated with global brands and companies, leading organizations, heads of state, renowned artists and fellow optimists. Mau became an international figure with the publication o...

"I think art is essential to all cultures. We know that, if you go back to the earliest parts in history, artists played a role in culture, and some are directly obvious in how they shape and impact people's lives and others are more peripheral, but I think artists are essential to any society. And even increasingly, when you think about the reflection that an artist can bring at a societal level,...

Neil Grimmer is Brand President of SOURCE Global, innovator of the SOURCE Hydropanel, a renewable technology that uses the sun to transform water vapor in the air to clean, safe and perfectly mineralized drinking water. The Public Benefit Company’s mission is to bring perfect drinking water to every person, every place, and Neil leads its marketing, consumer packaged goods and last-mile water solu...

“I think to pursue mystery and beauty, these things are a bit subjective, so you can't really tell people exactly what it shouldn't be about. And also I have to preserve these things for myself. I primarily make the work for myself, so if I don't have some questions that are unanswered, even for me, then there's not really an interest to like keep going otherwise. So it's also sort of protection a...

Petra Cortright is a Los Angeles-based digital artist known for her elaborate paintings, videography, and digital media. Crafted from massive digital files on Photoshop, her paintings are often composed of physical and digital images, simulated brushstrokes, and marks that blend both abstract and figurative elements. Petra has exhibited at the Walker Art Center, Whitechapel Gallery, and the Hammer...

“I think art can engage with the body, the mind, and the imagination in so many different ways that can compliment modes of thinking, other modes of creating, thinking through, working through and devising. I was thinking about this in relation to the last 18 months and how the sciences have rightly been heralded as the great way of getting ourselves out of this pandemic, but culture is the way an...

Anthony Gardner is Professor of Contemporary Art History at the University of Oxford, where he was the Head of the Ruskin School of Art from 2017 to 2020. He has published widely on subjects including postcolonialism, postsocialism and curatorial histories. His books include Politically Unbecoming: Postsocialist Art against Democracy , and Biennials, Triennials and documenta: The exhibitions that...

"When are we all going to start to care about one another? Because all of our individual choices do have impacts. And I just think the demands that we place on this planet, on the ecosystems, are what are driving conflict and human suffering. In some cases, it's really the scarcity of resources, just like water. In others, it's the changing climate and the loss of fertile lands to be able to grow...

Photographer and filmmaker Ami Vitale shares her personal odyssey—from documenting the heartbreaking realities of war to witnessing the inspiring power of an individual to make a difference. Her award-winning work illuminates the unsung heroes and communities working to protect our wildlife and find harmony in our natural world. Hear her awe-inspiring stories of the reintroduction of northern whit...