Something (rather than nothing)

Taylor Dean tsi dsdaʔ. pastəd čəd. spuyaləpabš čəd. ʔaciłtalbixʷ čəd.  My name is Taylor Dean.  I am white, I am a Puyallup, I am Native American.  I am in a unique position to critique the colonization of America from both a colonized and colonizer perspective.  My art work explores this duality via performance, installation, sculpture, and printmaking. https://taylorartdean.wixsite.com/website/b...

Melissa Oliveri is a multi-disciplinary artist who came to Minneapolis, MN from Montreal, Canada in 2006, bringing with her an eclectic mix of both French- and English- Canadian cultures. A born creator, Melissa has been writing stories, drawing, and playing music since childhood. Her most recent endeavour is a podcast called The Skylark Bell, which she writes, records, narrates, hosts, and produc...

“Disrupting the Canon” investigates how four women of colour use their practices to disrupt a predominantly Eurocentric, male art narrative. The goal behind this exhibition and presentation is bigger than diversifying the canon, which can still leave artists of colour and women on the margins. Rather, this discussion is part of the huge project of deconstructing the racist and sexist tendencies of...

Dakota Noot is a Los Angeles-based artist and curator. He uses drawings, paintings, and installations to create animal-human hybrids that explore rural yet fantastical, queer identities. Originally from Bismarck, North Dakota, he continues to show in both North Dakota and Los Angeles, including solo and two-person shows at Highways Performance Space, MuzeuMM, and PØST. Noot has exhibited in group...

Amy Guidry (b. 1976, Jacksonville, N.C.) is an American artist residing in Lafayette, Louisiana. She grew up in Slidell, Louisiana, a suburb of New Orleans. Guidry comes from a family of artists including the late painter Eleanor Norcross. She studied at Loyola University of New Orleans where she received her Bachelor's degree in Visual Arts in 1998. She was the recipient of the Loyola University...

SRTN welcomes Charlie French!“Yes, I have Down syndrome, but first I want you to see me: Charlie French. And then I want you to see my art. I am an abstract artist. I am an intuitive artist.  I embrace a blank canvas with a sense of wonder and adventure. I work hard, I keep learning but mostly I let go, be FREE and have FUN.Special thanks to guest co-host Karen French. The Questions:Question 5: wh...

A warm welcome to Elizabeth BestonHer artist statement gives a wonderful introduction to her explorations:We often associate the microscopic world as looking inwards, and downwards (as opposed to space, which is felt of as an outward, expansive pursuit). Through my photographic work, I want to challenge this paradigm, using the microscope as a platform for connecting to something bigger than us –...

For over a decade, Zoë Presley has guided individuals, couples and groups in cultivating wellbeing. Trained as a Depth Psychotherapist and Forest Therapy Guide, and in Transcendental Meditation, her approach inspires heart-centered healing, self-knowledge and connection to the natural world. She has served as a wilderness guide, eco-therapist, author, meditation teacher, and lecturer. In addition...

Audrey Martinovich is a recording engineer and producer that specializes in acoustic music such as classical, jazz, and folk. She co-owns & engineers at a recording studio in Madison, Wisconsin called Audio for the Arts and produces podcasts. She has been working in audio for eight years and has been a full-time studio owner & recording engineer for three years. She has recently worked wit...

Eric Lotke has worked for, with and against labor unions. Early in his career he did advocacy in the criminal legal system, researching problems and proposing solutions that all reached the same conclusion – we lock up too many people (especially people of color) and don’t do enough to keep people safe. His work includes the book, The Real War on Crime, and the studies such as Hobbling a Generatio...

For this episode we visit with Danish artist and musician Peter Sund.    Lunau & Sund songwriting is inspired by a beautiful mix of Nordic hymns and songs mixed with folk and Americana. You could call the style Nordicana.  Trine Lunau (vocal, accordion) and Peter Sund (guitars, vocal) have been playing together and writing music for 18 years. Their performance and connection on stage are secon...

Paige Pettibon is an artist based in Tacoma, Washington. Her medium focus is acrylic painting, but has extended to fiber art, beadwork, and other media.     Paige is black, white, and Salish (from the Confederated Salish and Kootenei Tribes). Paige is influenced by her native northwest community by learning the Lushootseed language, tribal songs, dances and traditions.https://www.paigepettibon.com...

Nickolas Rossi is a New York City based director & cinematographer. He attended Columbia College in Chicago for fine art photography and graduated from Portland State University with a degree in Sociology. Following university he lived and worked in Montréal, London, Prague and Los Angeles. With nearly 20 years experience behind the camera, Nickolas has worked extensively across the world shoo...

Soprano Kinneret Ely is a freelance opera singer based in New York City and Tel Aviv. Kinneret covered the roles of Anna in Catalani’s Loreley and the Fata Azzurra in Respighi’s La Bella Dormente nel Bosco in Teatro Grattacielo’s 25th Anniversary Concert in September 2019. She sang the role of Violetta in La Traviata in July 2018 at the Jerusalem International Opera Masterclass (JIOM), and at thei...

A wonderful conversation with the talented Irish musical artist GREG CLIFFORDClifford’s style is an authentic synthesis of Indie-pop rock fused with electronic aspects and ‘classical’ guitar fingerpicking. In 2017 he released an LP entitled ‘Quodlibet’, as well as playing 17 gigs across Ireland as part of a 3-act showcase called the ‘Back to Basics Tour.' Since then he has gone on to release his s...

The up and coming Portland-based garage-psych punk band, Spoon Benders released their debut album ‘Dura Mater’  in May 2020. Inspired by bands such as Goggs, the Pleasure Seekers, Black Sabbath, Thee Oh Sees, and the Stooges, they have managed to create a diverse and highly dynamic sound that promises to hold your undivided attention.https://www.wweek.com/music/2020/07/08/spoon-benders-music-is-in...

Greg Larson was a starry-eyed fan when he hurtled headfirst into professional baseball. As the new clubhouse attendant for the Aberdeen IronBirds, a Minor League affiliate of the Baltimore Orioles, Larson assumed he’d entered a familiar world. He thought wrong.  He quickly discovered the bizarre rituals of life in the Minors: fights between players, teammates quitting in the middle of the games, d...

This is a special episode with SRTN Producer and Editor Peter Bauer! This episode is quite the happening. It was recorded live at Warbling Creek Studios in the storied lands of Eugene, Oregon. Peter and I talked about the podcast, about music and philosophy. We reflect on the show, where it came from and where it is going. Peter is a painter, an adventurer, a musical talent, a producer and editor....

Randy J Byrd was a toddler in his playpen comfortably snuggled between two 15-inch subs that blasted the likes of Ozzy, Led Zeppelin and Van Halen. Randy’s mother loved heavy music and never said he could not listen to something. Thus a Metalhead was brought into being. Randy is a photographer for the fantastic doom/metal service Doomed and Stoned which serves the varied local worldwide doom and s...

Buddy Nestor is an abstract painter who strikes a strange new chord with portraiture. Using photographs he takes of beautiful women, he creates grotesque, distorted creatures, their features uncomfortably recognizable within the melting forms, slashes and swirls of Buddy’s abstraction.“These physical and psychological images are my attempt to capture the true nature of humanity. They are spiritual...

Metra Mitchell received her early training at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, KY where she earned her Bachelor's of Fine Art in Painting and Minor in Art History on a full art scholarship in 2006. She later was awarded a teaching assistant ship from Fontbonne University in St. Louis, MO where she pursued her Masters of Fine Arts in Painting and graduated Magna Cum Laude in 2008.Metra...

For this episode of Something (rather than nothing) we engage with the talented music artist and activist Laura Hopkins. Hopkins discusses her classical piano training, writing songs, growing up around music, playing guitar and creating some ‘louder’ music. Hopkins exquisite work with the band Death Parade straddles wide emotional terrain and floats into space only to be brought back in and ground...

Ghost Frog are four humanoids from planet Earth who started to make strange sounds together in the winter of star date 2013 in Portland, OR, USA. This interstellar transmission captured the words of Humanoids Quinn Schwartz and Karl Beheim. They play heavy psychedelic stoner grunge that combines doomy riffs with punk energy and otherworldly melodies while exploring themes derived from sci-fi/ horr...

Ever since she was a little kid drawing ghosts and graveyards at her desk in her parents’ basement, MELISSA ALFORD wanted to be an artist. Always a fan of the weird and the macabre, she discovered her love of sequential art through artists like Gary Larson and Charles Addams. Melissa went on to get her BFA in sequential art from the Savannah College of Art and Design, and has worked as a freelance...

"New perspectives can spring up from within the most insignificant everyday moments. A private photograph, a newspaper article or even a still frame of a movie can be the medium for another dimension. All these are raw materials for me, which I gradually release from any unnecessary feature that traps them into the optically compatible world. My aim is for my images to have a universality that goe...