Dear Adam Silver

Isaac Scott is a Master of Fine Arts candidate at Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University in Philadelphia where he is studying ceramics.  During the recent protests in response to the murder of George Floyd, Isaac turned to photography and began documenting various scenes and instances he saw unfolding in the streets. A friend of mine tagged me in a few photos of his on Inst...

Blake Gillespie is on the pod (again!) to discuss the first letter I wrote to Adam Silver, back in the early fall of 2017, regarding the rule that the NBA had/has in place that requires players to stand for the National Anthem.  Blake Gillespie is a former journalist and current writer who thinks and makes work about basketball as a force larger than the game itself.  Blake is the writer...

Tay Butler is a multimedia artist based in Houston, TX. He is currently pursuing a Master of Fine Arts at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, where he is focusing on photography.  Tay and I had the chance to discuss our frustrations with mainstream outlets using photography as an often misleading form of representation and his ongoing series of collages where he repurposes found...

Noel W. Anderson is a visual artist and Area Head of Printmaking at New York University’s Steinhardt Department of Art and Art Professions. He has an MFA in Printmaking from Indiana University and an MFA in Sculpture from Yale University.  Our conversation focuses on Noel's practice and work, much of it in the context of the murder of George Floyd and the mass protests that have followed. Noe...

Gina Adams is a multimedia artist who lives in Vancouver, Canada where she is an Assistant Professor of Art at Emily Carr University of Art + Design. Adams' studio work includes the reuse of antique quilts and broken treaties between the United States and Native American tribes, sculpture, ceramics, painting, printmaking and drawing. She is a descendant of both Indigenous (Ojibwe) and colonial Ame...

About a week ago, Blake Gillespie reached out to me with a letter he had written to Adam Silver regarding the reopening of basketball. The letter, written so carefully and tenderly, is about much more than the game. Blake Gillespie is a professional writer. He began his career contributing to Impose Magazine, an independent music and culture publication based in Brooklyn. He was a partner in the p...

Long time Sports Illustrated writer Alexander Wolff joins the podcast to discuss his book (one of my favorites ) Big Game, Small World. In 1998, after the Chicago Bulls had won their sixth title but before Michael Jordan had officially announced his retirement, Alex began a year long trip to see how basketball exists in different places all over the world. From the middle of Bhutan to the middle o...

I've been close to bursting for the past three weeks wanting to discuss The Last Dance on the pod! Thanks to Brian Tran for coming on to discuss some of his thoughts on the documentary and indulge my long list of talking points. We bounce around between the first six episodes and the most compelling themes and footage so far.   Brian Tran is an MFA candidate at Washington University in S...

Today's episode is all about mail and the post office. Fellow artist, mail appreciator/sender and dear friend Melodie Reay is my guest. We talk about what the mail has meant to us in our art practices and the everyday excitement of receiving a handwritten postcard. This discussion stems from concerns over continued funding of USPS and our fears of our mail system becoming completely privatized. We...

On today's podcast, my dear friend Glauco Adorno and I discuss the book Citizen: An American Lyric by award winning poet, playwright, educator and multimedia artist Claudia Rankine. This book is a masterful unpacking of how racism exists in the United States. Rankine combines poetry, pros, found images and text to express a personal meditation on how the system of white supremacy functions in this...

Brooklyn based artist Jeremy John Kaplan is back on the pod today to discuss basketball hoops (and of course, nets) being temporarily removed from parks around New York City to discourage people from gathering together in the time of COVID-19.  Jeremy was originally a guest back on episode 20 of Dear Adam Silver where we discussed the Gold Nets Project, an ongoing body of work (est. 2005) whe...

Naomi Clement is a Canadian based potter and educator. We met when we were both in the same cohort during graduate school at Louisiana State University. Naomi is an independent and working artist and the Covid-19 outbreak has hit her hard financially with event cancellations, including many opportunities to sell, share, teach and promote her work. On the podcast, we discuss the fear and frustratio...

Sam Anderson is a staff writer at the New York Times Magazine and author of Boom Town: The Fantastical Saga of Oklahoma City, Its Chaotic Founding, Its Purloined Basketball Team, and the Dream of Becoming a World-class Metropolis. As is made clear in this interview, I love this book.  Through my own artwork, I try to discuss intricacies of place, history and societal structures through basket...

New Orleans based artist Abdi Farah is back on the pod to discuss the coronavirus and it's impact on basketball and beyond.  To see Abdi's artwork, click here  To all those listening to and following the podcast, if you can, please stay home.  As always, Dear Adam Silver is sponsored by Bookman's . 

Emily Stamey is the curator of exhibitions at the Weatherspoon Art Museum at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. For this episode, we discussed her current exhibition To the Hoop, which is made up of art work produced by over 20 artists in response to basketball. The pieces vary in their subject matter, some related to the objects used in the game, some related to social issues tried t...

The sudden death of Kobe and Gianna Bryant has had the basketball world reeling for the last month. At first, I was unsure how to handle their deaths on the podcast. And to be honest, I still am. I am not used to speaking about death and loss, especially on a public platform and about people I did not know personally.  I want this space to be for thoughtful responses, not quick reactions. So...

New Orleans based artist Abdi Farah is back on the pod to discuss the NBA season so far, conceptual art and camaraderie at the All-Star game and our desire to be part of a team, through art. Abdi is a regular on the podcast and I am so excited to share our most recent conversation.  To view Abdi's artwork, click here .  In the middle of this episode I mention Steven Adam's autobiography,...

Maria Molteni is a Boston based socially engaged artist whose process and work defies any one category of art.  Our interview covers Maria's own time as a basketball player, the process of painting basketball courts as a way to create a conversation with the cosmos, and New Craft Artists in Action (NCAA), an artist collective that she is a founding member of which pushes back on traditional n...

Brandon Juan Surtain is an artist and former defensive back for the Louisiana State University Tigers football team. He is now currently pursuing a Master's in Architecture from Tulane University in New Orleans. We met when we were both studying art at LSU. For today's episode,  we had the chance to discuss his development as an athlete and an artist, the impact Hurricane Katrina had on his l...

Tucson based artist Linus Schief is on the podcast to discuss the Venn diagram of her current work that includes nuns, basketball and eggs.  You can follow Linus on instagram at @yolkjammer Thank you to KXCI for providing studio space and as always, thank you to my sponsor Bookmans. 

Gail Buckland is an author, educator and curator of photography. She has held the position of curator of the Royal Photographic society of Great Britain as well as the Benjamin Menschel Distinguished Visiting Professor at Cooper Union. She is the author and collaborator on fourteen books of photography and history and the curator of a number of photography exhibitions. Her book Who Shot Sports is...

Maryam Amirvaghefi is an artist and educator based in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Originally from Iran, Maryam's work encompasses her cultural identity without explaining it; her work speaks to where she comes from but she does not feel the need to indulge the viewer's expectations and stereotypes about art that an Iranian woman might make.  She shows humor and appreciation towards games and spor...

Sinda Karklina is the artist behind Sissy Moon Ceramics. For much of her recent work, basketball is her muse and she responds to the game thoughtfully through the pottery she makes. We had the chance to discuss how she became a fan of the game, her design process, any why we both are hesitant to actually play.......sometimes!  Thanks so much to Sinda for joining to discuss her work and ideas!...

Sean Feeney is a long time fan of the game of basketball and happens to be the President of Bookman's Entertainment Exchange, the company that sponsors this podcast! With a background in film criticism, his way of thinking about and approaching sports is a near to perfect fit for Dear Adam Silver. For this episode, we did a deep dive on two NBA games from last week, the Houston Rockets vs. the Atl...

Brazilian based curator Glauco Adorno joins the show to discuss our experiences as artists-in-residence at Kaunas Photography Gallery in Kaunas, Lithuania earlier this year. Glauco and I make up a two person art collective called No Look Pass where we engage in researched based projects involving sports, political identity and the body. Our time spent in Kaunas, researching and making work about t...