The Side Woo

This week Sarah reads for artist, activist, and podcast host Nikki Nolan. They talk about how to break from the patterns of perfectionism and let your inner Leo take center stage. Show Notes Instagram: @thenikkinolan TikTok: @theonlynikkinolan Get your human design chart https://www.ihdschool.com/get-your-chart The AI, Data, Ethics, Privacy & Security Association: https://theassociation.ai/ ht...

This week Sarah talks with Ranu Mukherjee, a professor at California College of the Arts and a prolific artist in many different mediums including painting and new media installations.  During our chat they talk a lot about Ranu's Indian ancestry and how that has influenced her work and her outlook as an artist. They also talk about her more recent challenges with addiction in her family and the E...

For the first Artist Tarot Reading episode, Sarah does a reading for LA artist and curator Vivien Chung who is wondering about making a big career move. You can check out Vivien's work on her website http://www.vivienchung.com/ and her Instagram https://www.instagram.com/vivienpaints/ Reserve your spot at the Live Talk on Creativity and What Blocks It hosted by The Side Woo @ICA SF ⁠https://ww...

This week Sarah talks with Sonny Smith about the creative process and what he has learned about sustaining inspiration for his music over multiple decades and many style changes. Recorded at The Space Program in July 2023. About Sonny Smith Sonny Smith (born 1972) is an American musician, playwright and multimedia artist from San Francisco. He has released fourteen albums since 2000, largely with...

This week, Sarah talks with Bay Area artist and tatooist Christopher Martin who was a resident at The Space Program in San Francisco this summer. About Christopher Martin Christopher Martin is a multidisciplinary artist from North Carolina exploring the African Diaspora and Indigenous histories. Driven by a desire to push cultural narratives, Martin confronts aesthetic perceptions of contemporary...

This week is an off week, so I thought I would take it as an opportunity to share another project I work on called Free Agent.  As part of my substack newsletter, Art Date , every month I record interviews with artists, writers, musicians, and other creative folk who have stepped outside the traditional career models to carve out their own path. Was it good? Was it bad? I want to hear about it.  T...

Sarah talks with Bay Area artist Jud Bergeron, the co-founder of The Space Program where the episode is being recorded in San Francisco, CA. This episode covers a lot of ground, but the main throughline is talking about how to cultivate personal freedom, for yourself and how to offer space and resources for others to experience it too.  Other topics include following the Grateful Dead on tour (for...

Sarah sits down with Bay Area artist Ron Moultrie Saunders to talk about the ways in which he cultivates and tends to his many communities, with a focus on supporting African American artists in San Francisco through projects like the Black [Space] Residency and the 3.9 Collective. We talk ancestry.com, giant plants, and what it means to get art to communities who don't usually go to museums t...

In this episode, Sarah talks with podcast host, psychotherapist, and tarot aficionado Shannon Knight of The Tarot Diagnosis Podcast. They discuss synchronicities, the collective unconscious, and ways to engage with tarot beyond traditional divination. About Shannon Knight Shannon Knight (she/her) is a queer psychotherapist licensed in both Arizona and Florida where she specializes in working with...

This is the first of 10 episodes that I recorded and produced at The Space Program Residency in San Francisco. The first in the series is a conversation with artist and educator Libby Black. We talk about sobriety, lesbian visibility, teaching before and after the pandemic, and that time she swam The Rock, yes Alcatraz. About Libby Black Libby Black is a painter, drawer, and sculptural installatio...

For this week’s episode, Sarah talks with artist Rachelle Reichert. Rachelle shares more information about her process, her undying interest in rocks, and what she does to stay positive despite the bleak news around the climate crisis and industrialization. About Rachelle Reichert Rachelle Reichert is a visual artist and art educator based in the San Francisco Bay Area, California (Chochenyo Ohlon...

For this week’s episode, Sarah talks with researcher Tracy Poff who is doing her PhD on Medical Intuitives. After visiting a medical medium for an unexplained illness in her family, she felt compelled to study transpersonal psychology and then pursue her doctorate in medical intuitive practices. We talk about what exactly that is, how to discern a good one when meeting someone for the first time,...

Sarah talks with artist and activist Amy M. Ho. Amy talks about her work as an art teacher for an art-in-prison program at San Quentin Correctional Facility and how in 2021, her father was tragically killed during a mugging in downtown Oakland. Amy shares how her background in social justice activism with the prison system, has reinforced her belief in restorative justice, despite being touched pe...

This week, to kick off Pride Month, Liz and Sarah talk with trans artist, Eli Thorne. We talk with Eli about his experience coming out and transitioning as a trans man, dating as a man for the first time on the hellscape known as Tinder (where he ended up finding love), the Faustian bargain of Instagram success, and how he feels about becoming a dad with his long-time partner. About Eli Thorne Eli...

This week on The Side Woo Sarah talks with musician and songwriter, Inara George. Inara shares her experience growing older as a cis woman and as an artist. They talk about what it means to embody beauty as a woman and whether getting older might mean stepping away from the spotlight, and taking on more of a mentorship role to younger generations. About Inara George Inara George is an American sin...

This week Sarah talks with friend of the show, Rachel Dawson. Rachel shares the way her connection to her intuition has evolved throughout her life. About Rachel Dawson Rachel Dawson is an artist, educator, and intuitive located in Oakland, CA. She makes connections between her artistic practice and metaphysical processes, seeking to render the invisible visible and to materialize the immaterial....

This week Sarah sits down with Bay Area artist, Rebekah Goldstein. They talk about the way we define success and failures and look back at an ArtForum article, The Loser Thing, which examines a period in the 90s where failure was at the forefront of people's minds. Sarah and Rebekah discuss whether failure, and it's artistic counterpoint, the masterpiece, are useful in terms of how we look...

This week on the Side Woo we talk with LA-based artist and former long-time Bay Area resident Kelly Lynn Jones.  I was really inspired by Kelly’s story and asked her to come on to talk about how she in 2018 she made the decision to file for bankruptcy for her store Little Paper Planes, which was a super cute boutique on Valencia Street in the Mission District of SF.  It came as a bit of a shock to...

This week Liz and Sarah talk with Glasgow-based, cosmic-pop musician, performer and magickal practitioner Elisabeth Elektra about their magickal tendencies and prophetic dreams, including one in which they dreamt about the bombing of the Machester Ariana Grande concert the night that it happened. They share their love and affinity for both Prince and yes, Freddie Mercury, as well as what they see...

This week we talk with the prolific Carissa Potter. She’s the founder of People I’ve Loved, and the host of the podcast Bad at Keeping Secrets. Carissa’s illustrations are gentle line drawings that tackle big subjects like emotional messiness, boundaries, and the search for meaning in a wild, imperfect world. Her newsletter and podcast interviews get into the nitty gritty of what it means to be al...

In this episode, Patron Saint of The Side Woo, Nikki Nolan shares her story about how she began advocating for patient rights, specifically a requirement for stricter regulations around medical consent. After a traumatic experience with a Bay Area medical facility in which her requests for an all-female staff during an ob-gyn procedure were denied, Nikki began researching how to implement policies...

This week on The Side Woo, we talk with Adobe Books Director, former SECA Coordinator, and long-time Bay Area native Heather Holt.  The conversation looks at what it means to be queen of a scene, and what it was like on the outside after Heather left her former husband for a married man.  Plus, bonus shout out to Valley Girl culture. About Heather Holt Heather Holt graduated from the Sch...

Our guest this week, Dr. Raghu Appasani, an integrative & addiction psychiatrist, psychotherapist, and neuroscientist, is trying to revolutionize mental health from the inside out.  We unpack alternative modes of healing and how can we start to transform the way mental health is diagnosed and treated.  He shares his work serving as the Chief Medical Officer of PYM (Prepare Your Mind)...

Sarah and Liz talk with Rachel Howe, an LA-based witch, healer and illustrator of the Small Spells tarot deck about her book Witch Ethics.  They talk astrology, mercury in Pisces and the importance of creating good energetic boundaries between you and the (spirit) world. Rachel is a Los Angeles-based illustrator, reiki healer, stick and poke tattoo artist, a potter, a tarot card reader, and a writ...

This week's episode we get into a discussion about whether reincarnation is real with our guest, Spiritualist Minister Cody Blair. We also talk about his issues with hierarchy in the Spiritualist church, and what he wants to do about it.   About Cody Blair Cody Blair is a Psychic-Medium that has worked in many Spiritualist churches and circles throughout his home state of Texas, the United States,...