The Center's Studio Podcast

In this special episode recorded during the COVID-19 pandemic, four artists discuss their current life and work. Each answers the same four questions: What is it like to make your art right now?; How does this pandemic affect content?; Are there works from the past, written in similar times or about similar challenges that are meaningful to you?; and What advice might you have for an artist in qua...

Composer Deon Nielsen Price in San Francisco, California talks about her distinguished career writing music that is socially relevant including works about the Watts Riots and Vietnam. She finds comfort in poetry written by Japanese Americans imprisoned in internment camps during WWII, and she describes how her composer heroes Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Messiaen, and Cowell all used their periods of...

Poet Susan Howe in Ephraim, Utah talks about the disruption of her writing practice that typically involves peers gathering together. She notes the lag time and emotional distance required for a personal experience to enter into her work without sentimentality, and she quotes a meaningful refrain by T. S. Eliot that has brought her comfort during the pandemic.  Liked this episode? Send us a text.

Painter Samuel Evensen in New York, New York is recovering from COVID-19 symptoms that have forced him into quarantine and attacked his body. A painter whose subject is the body, Evensen discusses the Spanish Flu epidemic, HIV/AIDS, and other global health crises and how artists such as Hyman Bloom and Egon Schiele chose to engage in the figure. His poignant advice for artists ends the episode. Th...

American composer of jazz, musical theater, concert, and choral music, Lisa DeSpain has not one, not two, but three operas in late-stage development—all winners of important commissions and grants. In this interview peppered with excerpts from the operas and with DeSpain breaking into song as she describes the compositions, the topic at hand is how an artist juggles different projects, collaborato...

In this episode, scientist and novelist Steven L. Peck discusses his newest novel, The Tragedy of King Leere, Goatherd of the La Sals . The book updates the Shakespearean tragedy to the near future, specifically, after a global climate change disaster. At turns funny, tragic, and frightening, the novel--and the interview--wrestle with the truths to be found in art as well as science. Liked this ep...

Painter Kent Christensen's Secrets of the Great Salt Lake is a virtuosic piece of visual satire representing early Utah history. Brigham Young rides a dinosaur in the lake while two trains bringing Jell-O, Snelgrove's ice cream, donuts, and toxic waste meet at Promontory Point for the driving of the Golden Spike. The state's animals frolic among recognizable tourist landmarks even w...

"Beleaguered but buoyant parents of five children between the ages of 6 and 16," as The New York Times described Erik and Emily Orton, "hadn’t even plotted an itinerary when they bought a 38-foot catamaran (sight unseen), flew to a Caribbean harbor and set sail on a Swiss-Family-Robinson-style adventure." The resulting adventure was only the beginning. In this episode, the auth...

Music from Bali is the subject of this podcast interview, with Jeremy Grimshaw, who brought the traditional percussion ensemble of gamelan to Brigham Young University. The nature of gamelan is communal music-making, and Grimshaw discusses the history and culture of Bali, his experiences there, and how a new community of gamelan has grown in Utah. Liked this episode? Send us a text.

The Center for Latter-day Saint Arts provides a weekly Art Companion for the gospel study curriculum, Come, Follow Me. This was the idea of Jennifer Wilcox who explores, in this podcast episode, how the project came to be, how she uses art in her church teaching, how she commissions new art for her students, and ultimately how the home is the perfect classroom and art space. Liked this episode? Se...

Artist Brian Kershisnik discusses a new monograph of his art work, Looking for Something: Selected Paintings , published Unicorn Publishing Group (London) and discusses how growing up in Angola, Thailand, and Pakistan has informed his worldview and affected his body of questioning, joyful, vibrant art. Liked this episode? Send us a text.

Assemblage artist Page Turner talks about how the sisterhood of church women in her hollow near Roanoke, Virginia, inspire her work, which has recently been included in 50 Women Contemporary Women Artists, alongside some of the most important artists working today. Liked this episode? Send us a text.

Emmy-award winning producer Angie Denison takes listeners behind the scenes of two recent KSL documentaries: Amish Latter-day Saints and the story of a kidnapped boy from India who finds his family again in adulthood. Liked this episode? Send us a text.

On the day of the premiere of his Easter oratorio, To a Village Called Emmaus , composer Ethan Wickman previews the work with excerpts and behind-the-scenes insights into its creation. The oratorio was commissioned by the American Festival Chorus and Orchestra and conducted by Craig Jessop. Liked this episode? Send us a text.

The former global acquisitions curator for the Church History Museum reflects on her tenure and influence on art in the Church with the aid of tributes written by artists and colleagues: Neylan McBaine, Walter Rane, Rose Datoc Dall, Alan Johnson, Valerie Atkisson de Moura, Annie Poon, Diane P. Stewart, Caitlin Connolly, and Jason Metcalf. Hurtado is the newly-named executive director of the Utah M...

Starring on Broadway at the age of 11, Tade Biesinger played the title role in Billy Elliot the Musical and reprised the part in London and St. Louis. The experience left a strong impression on him but not in a way you'd expect; he learned at this tender age why he needed God in his life. This podcast episode was recorded three months before his departure as a full-time missionary. Liked this...

In a discussion about his newest book of poetry, award-winning poet Lance Larsen speaks about prose poetry, describes how his work evolves from draft to print, reads from his work, listens to an art song setting of his poems, and considers other art forms that appeal to him. Liked this episode? Send us a text.

Art historian and Latter-day Saint Brontë Hebdon, a PhD student at the prestigious Institute of Fine Arts in New York City, discusses the Church's visual culture and how new approaches to art history and the exploration of objects affect identity, testimony, and gospel messaging. Liked this episode? Send us a text.

A series of letters from Broadway deity Stephen Sondheim opened the doors for composer David Fletcher. The resulting songs--like Weepin' Mary, Eternal Day, A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief, and Wondrous Love--have been sung in numberless Latter-day Saint church meetings are a singular blend of Broadway, classical, sacred, and popular styles. In this podcast, the composer discusses the musical pa...

Independent scholar Brigham Barnes explores allusions to Mormonism, Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and the Book of Mormon in James Joyce's novels Ulysses and Finnegans Wake , leading to a larger discussion of how Mormon Studies might expand to embrace artworks by members of the Church and also works about our culture, texts, and people by others. Music includes exclusive content of a bootleg re...

Ruby Gilmore and Addy Hawley are teenagers who have performed with the Metropolitan Opera and American Ballet Theatre companies. In this podcast, Ruby and Addy talk about the dedication required and the joys encountered in the performing arts. They also discuss what it's like to perform alongside principal ballerinas and international opera stars who are LDS, like they are, and how talent and...

The newest book by Richard Lyman Bushman is The American Farmer in the Eighteenth Century: A Social and Cultural History . In this podcast, Bushman discusses the legacy of farming and labor as a shaper of America society, the tragedy of Native American displacement and slavery as a consequence of farm expansion, and the influences of the family on larger issues of American culture. Liked this epis...

Excerpts and discussion with pianist Scott Holden about his Carnegie Hall concert and new CD of a century of Mormon music. Liked this episode? Send us a text.

Author Randy Astle describes the largely unknown story of early Mormon film and its remarkable connection with LDS history. A product of twenty years of research, his new book, Mormon Cinema: Origins to 1952, published by the Mormon Arts Center, is a landmark volume full of extraordinary and entertaining stories. Liked this episode? Send us a text.

In this episode, Angolan painter Hildebrando de Melo discusses his life and work, including the chaos and brutality of his country's decades-long civil war, and his responses to it through the lens of a search for God. Liked this episode? Send us a text.