The Center's Studio Podcast

Aaron Johnston and Kelly Loosli, creators of the new animated series, Saving Me, describe the sci-fi show--an old man who manages to return to his 11-year-old self and redeem him. This is the first animated series for  BYUtv, and the bestselling author and award-winning animator discuss the process of translating words on a page to animation on a screen. With the theme song for Saving Me written a...

Joël René Scoville is a current participant in the legendary training ground for musical theater writing, the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop in New York. In this episode, Scoville discusses the craft of writing for the theater, her journey from actor to writer, her experience as a Black artist, and she describes why new voices and new stories are so important today. Music for the episod...

On the eve of the publication of her first book, Rachel Rueckert, the current editor-in-chief of Exponent II magazine, describes the events that led to her memoir, East Winds that will appear in mid-November, published by By Common Consent Press. It is a chronicle of her one-year honeymoon traveling around the globe and questioning what the institution of marriage is all about. Rueckert talks abou...

Author Glen Nelson discusses his discovery of an important body of 1930s fiction by one of the era's most famous cartoonists, John Held, Jr.  Today he's known for his magazine and newspaper illustrations of flappers and other 1920s characters, but in a flurry of activity from 1930 to 1937, John Held, Jr. published four novels and four collections of short stories that are mostly unknown...

Curator Margaret Olsen Hemming, artist Kwani Povi Winder, and scholar Vinna Chintaram gather to talk about different approaches to and perspectives on Heavenly Mother as they react to the exhibition at the Center Gallery, The Sacred Feminine in LDS Art & Theology . Olsen Hemming is the curator of the exhibition. Povi Winder is one of the artists whose work is in the show, and Chintaram is a Ph...

To mark the exhibition opening, The Sacred Feminine in LDS Art & Theology , at the Center Gallery in New York, its curator Margaret Olsen Hemming speaks about global artworks that imagine what Heavenly Mother is like. The LDS doctrine that we are from heavenly parents is not new, but recent LDS artists from around the world are building on the artistic foundation laid more than 100 years ago b...

The self portrait, Wrapped Up in a False Sense of Security, by Kirsten Holt Beitler, is the subject of this artist's interview. The work which is part of the exhibition, Siloed: Art for Uncertain Times , at the Center Gallery shows the artist wrapped in toilet paper, painted during the first months of the pandemic when hoarding and bouts of consumer panic spread across the country. Beitler is...

A new body of art work by Maggie Golightly Haslam is explored in this episode. The artist, whose works are featured in the current exhibition at the Center Gallery in New York City, embodies the 21st century zero-waste ethos and turns it into a process of art making. How can materials be recycled, upcycled, and reenvisioned, she asks. Her inventive and beautiful poured watercolor works are created...

Photographer Jeffrey Lee Butler chronicled the streets of Brooklyn in the early months of the pandemic. Part of the Center Gallery exhibition curated by Emily Larsen Doxford, Siloed: Art for Uncertain Times , Butler describes life in early 2020 and what he encountered as he ventured out of his Crown Heights apartment into the borough, resulting in a suite of 25 photographs. Surprisingly beautiful,...

Dancer, choreographer, and educator Marin Leggat Roper discusses her lifelong pursuit of dance as merging point of physicality and faith in this podcast interview that also previews a historic, upcoming event in Salt Lake City, Utah. It is Vision, an evening of dance, to be presented September 24, 2021 at the Capitol Theatre. She describes how the pandemic has affected dance and how dance artists...

Award-winning author and scholar of WPA-era photography, James R. Swensen discusses his new exhibition, Fields of Labor and Recovery: A Photographic Portrait of Utah from the Great Depression to WWII, 1936-1942 . The show at the BYU Museum of Art provides an opportunity to discuss Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee, and other photographers who were sent across the United States, including to Utah, to doc...

How does someone decide to become an art historian, a curator, or an art conservator? What kind of training and exposure do they need? In this episode, university senior Elisabeth Hunt discusses her background at Brigham Young University as an art history and curatorial studies major and her time in New York this summer working as the gallery assistant at the Center Gallery. What is it like to wor...

To mark the inaugural exhibition of the Center Gallery, Great Awakening: Vision and Synthesis in Latter-day Saint Contemporary Art , this podcast interview speaks with artist and curator Chase Westfall about what goes into making an exhibition, how to get people to slow down and look more carefully at contemporary art, and what he has learned through the process. Introductory music for the episode...

On the occasion of the publication of her latest book, First: The Life and Faith of Emma Smith , historian Jennifer Reeder talks about a complex 19th century figure in LDS history, an Elect Lady, Presidentress, and key participant in the restoration of the gospel. The discussion includes surprising finds by Reeder including Emma’s bi-racial family, her largely unknown skills, her turmoil regarding...

On the occasion of his solo exhibition, “Secret Camp—Are we there yet?,” Fidalis David Kanoanikie Buehler discusses how his worldview, which draws from his multi-cultural family, informs his artmaking practice. The conflicts of straddling his Euro-American and Pacific Island heritage include Kiribati traditions, his Catholic upbringing, and his conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-da...

Making art is easy; marketing it is terrifying. Many artists find the business side of their careers very difficult and something they know little about. In this interview, composer and creative entrepreneur Andrew Maxfield shares experiences, approaches, and methods of networking, business development, branding, communications, brain trusts, and entrepreneurship that give creative artists of any...

Award-winning artists whose works are exhibited in museums and galleries around the world, Georgina Bringas and Ricardo Rendón discuss their work and philosophies of artmaking in this podcast episode. Living and working in Mexico City, they have entirely separate bodies of work that focus on sculpture and installation art of the highest caliber. Rendón concentrates on constructed work that documen...

Have you ever wondered how the fine art market functions, how air fairs and auctions, collectors and dealers, navigate through a $64 billion industry of art work sales? In this episode, private dealer Warren Winegar, former head of client services at Sotheby’s, discusses this fascinating world. He describes the impact of the pandemic and what it is like to travel the world in search of art for cli...

Fifty LDS artists won Center grants in 2020 that responded to “the needs of the people at this specific moment.” In this podcast interview with the manager of the project, Emily Larsen Doxford, Art for Uncertain Times is described as a historical document of LDS artists’ reactions to Covid-19 and the social injustice protests in this turbulent, exhausting year, with examples from the winners’ lite...

Theologian, scholar, and Senior Research Fellow at the Maxwell Institute (BYU), James Faulconer discusses his recent book, Mosiah , one of Institute’s The Book of Mormon: Brief Theological Introductions series. His insightful approach to close reading of scriptures emphasizes the creative act of study. The podcast interview also discusses his earlier books written with LDS audiences in mind, Scrip...

After 20 years in the food publishing industry ( Ladies’ Home Journal , Martha Stewart Living , Kids , and Weddings magazines) and televisions appearances on the Martha Stewart network, the Today Show , the Food Network among others, Tara Bench--her nom de plume is Tara Teaspoon--has written her first cookbook, Live Life Deliciously: Recipes for Busy Weekdays and Leisurely Weekends . In this episo...

Collaborators James Goldberg, Ardis Parshall, and Carla Jimison discuss their new book, Song of Names: A Mormon Mosaic, in this episode. The volume is divided into 22 sections, each telling an extraordinary story of quiet heroism by members of the Church lost to history, as Ardis writes, “…Trying to capture the sacred in Latter-day Saints’ everyday histories.” But there is nothing ordinary about t...

2020 marks three historic milestones surrounding women and voting rights. In her new book, Pioneering the Vote: The Untold Story of Suffragists in Utah and the West , author Neylan McBaine narrates this extraordinary history through the eyes of the women of the West, who were the first to vote in the nation. In this podcast interview, McBaine describes the complex relationships of polygamy, politi...

Although he was born with a physical condition requiring prosthetic legs and braces to walk, John Williamson was a high-functioning professional with a long career in the technology industry until five years ago, when his body began to break down, making employment impossible. In this interview, Williamson describes how he discovered artmaking late in life, how it became therapy for him after his...

Two-time Emmy nominated writer James Best talks in this episode about his new one-act play, The Last Lake , which was a winner of the Art for Uncertain Times grant program of the Center for Latter-day Saint Arts. In addition to a discussion about the two-character play, presented in Zoom performances last week, and his upcoming projects, the writer describes his varied career in television, stage,...