The Conversation Art Podcast

Hadley, Massachusetts and NYC artist Sarah K. Khan talks about:
How it's a "little miracle" to have a studio (a former chick coop on a farm in the 5-college area of Mass.) after so many years working in kitchens and other spaces not dedicated to her work and where she can really spread out; her short films about the immigrant experience in New York via food trucks (particularly her Queens Migrant Kitchens series), and how she was originally motivated to work in this area in 2015 as a way to follow up on the fall-out from 9/11 among the immigrant community; the challenges she had getting street vendors and other food makers in being filmed, because they were afraid of being surveilled; the films' impact on the street vendor community, including one woman who was able to grow from a street vendor stall to a brick-and-mortar restaurant (and keep the food stall active); her collaboration on 'Speak Sing Shout: We, Too, Sing America' with the animator Simon Rouby; her film and photography work in Old Dehli, one of the many world crossroads she's covered; how making things for herself, first and foremost, is a practical way of making work (this may or may not be connected to her not being trained in a BFA/MFA kind of way; she has advanced degrees in food studies and has a background in integrative medicine); and how the core of her work is talking about the migration of people, plants and ideas (often women, often domestic spaces).
This podcast relies on listener support; please consider becoming a Patreon supporter of the podcast, for as little as $1/month, here: https://www.patreon.com/theconversationpod
      In the 2nd half of the conversation, available to Patreon supporters, we talk about:
Sarah's background in integrative medicine, including teaching chefs about nutrition, and taught Western nutrition to Eastern practitioners;  how it's time to grow our own vegetables as a way of taking control of our own health; vegetables and herbs people can grown themselves, both as food and in teas; plant-based diets, which are followed by most of the world; how food and culture infuses the ceramics, prints and animation work she's been doing; the research and work she's been doing in southern India and how it connects with the history of 'the Sultan,' and in her case replacing that story with the Queen of Shiba; how her engagement with her own cultural lineage in her work can encourage viewers to engage with their own cultures; how she's created her own pipeline as an artist, without a BFA or MFA (having come from nutrition and science); her filming all over India (including in Nagaland in the far north) of women farmers; and how compassionate and tuned in she is to the immigrant experience.

Artist and legendary street artist Robbie Conal talks about:

His family history, including his two activist-and-politically inclined parents, his background in fighting the power; moving up to Los Osos (in San Luis Obispo County) as a permanent residence (back after the 2008 crash), but keeping a small place in L.A.; what he misses about not being in the city (he's lived in NYC and SF as well as L.A.); his first big moment with public art, through postering, which was born out of caricature paintings he was making of Ronald Reagan's cabinet, which he dubbed 'Men with No Lips,' and alighted through a large postering campaign just as Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, was opening to the public in 1986; how he's Shepard Fairey's OG, and how he was an influence on him as a future street artist (though Fairey said, "I can do that" quite confidently); his personal mantra:  "apply what you do best to what you care about most," which in his case his drawing and talking smack (does best) and American democracy (cares about most); how, to make his work quicker to keep his work temporal, he switched from oil painting to charcoal and then to acrylic with oil accents; how all his friends who have his art (mostly of terrible characters) have them in their toilets; and his most popular work, "Watching, Waiting and Dreaming," a triptych of Gandhi, the Dahli Lama and Martin Luther King.

This podcast relies on listener support; please consider becoming a Patreon supporter of the podcast, for as little as $1/month, here: https://www.patreon.com/theconversationpod

In the 2nd half of the conversation, available to Patreon supporters, we talk about:

How he's sustained himself financially over the decades outside of sales of his work, from teaching to receiving donations to his postering campaigns to lots of (young) volunteers; what he thinks about street art, and mural art, today, and the distinction between graffiti, street art and poster art, and how his reputation saved him from competing street artists when he was postering; our different respective takes on street art, and how Leon Trotsky taught him that everything is political, and street art is inherently political; what he's learned from terrible jobs: mainly, you can't make good art, let alone great art, in your spare time, while holding down a full-time job (and doing the work on the side); the most commonly asked questions he's received about postering (how many times have you been arrested?); how part of your mission as a poster is muscling up for the consequences; and what the best thing is to say to the judge when you're asked why you did it.

And for the final 15 minutes of our talk, he covers the breadth of logistics related to putting up posters in public/on the street, which he refers to as 'acts of civil disobedience.'

Napa, CA-based artist Arleene Correa Valencia talks about:

Why she lives in Napa, CA, and the two distinct versions of the town, for the wealthy and for the poor ("you're either the owner of the vineyard, or you're working the vineyard," as she put it); how she's the first generation to not be working the vineyards, his dad having worked the vineyard for a period before transitioning to hand-painting etched wine bottles for a winery (which he had to ultimately leave for lack of being paid enough because he didn't have an MFA); her favorite wines by grape (Pinots and Cabs from Sonoma mainly), and more recently a master fabricator color theorist and surface touch-up artist; making her dad's dreams to become an artist come to fruition through her; how she always refers to the work she makes as 'ours,' assuming everyone knows that her father always has a hand in the projects, in addition to consistently collaborating with makers from her culture of origin; the letters she exchanged with her father, while he was working to lay a foundation for the family to move to the U.S., among the artworks acquired by Stanford's Cantor Arts Center; her complicated DACA (Dreamer) status, and the exhibition she was able to have in Mexico (in Puebla, about 2 hours from Mexico City) which ultimately allowed her to apply for, and get, a green card; how she had to defer her dream to go to a 4-year university or art school until she received DACA status, and then she got a Diversity Scholarship that allowed her to attend California College of the Arts, which she would never otherwise would have been able to afford; how one of her 1st interviews was for someone interested in learning about being undocumented in the arts (originally published in Hyperallergic, she had to have it taken down for legal reasons to protect her); how her various supporters propelled her into her art-making and her art school education, and in turn the questions she asks herself about how she can help others, undocumented and otherwise…

This podcast relies on listener support; please consider becoming a Patreon supporter of the podcast, for as little as $1/month, here: https://www.patreon.com/theconversationpod

        In the 2nd half of our conversation (available on Patreon), Arleene talks about:

How her mom comes from a family with 36 brothers and sisters, so is part of an enormous extended family; the BRCA mutation in her family, in which bodies are much more susceptible to various cancers, including breast cancer and ovarian; why ICE hasn't been active in the Napa Valley area, very likely because people of wealth and/or power won't allow their wine supply to be affected; how aware she is of her career and her sales, and that she's proud of her production rate and the work her gallery is doing with her; the demand for her truck paintings, and why she has a need to make those paintings, not producing them for a paycheck; when she requested a collector give her more time to finish a piece that she wasn't happy with, and re-made it; how integral her dad is to her work and her process, and how he's celebrated along with her, if only through his tremendous pride in her, and that it wouldn't all happen without him; the work they do with a tattoo family, and how it's similar to the dynamic that she and her dad as a family do together, which she acknowledges is a bit like the man behind the curtain; her Tochtli (rabbit) tattoo, a symbol in her family that signifies selflessness and the ultimate sacrifice; how the evolution of her being tattooed, which started when she was 18, has been about honoring the story of her ancestry and claiming her identity, and how her brothers, like her, are acquiring full body suits of tattoos.

London-based photographer and writer Michael Collins talks about:
The flat where he's lived for 35 years, which is getting 'Wallace & Gromit' crowded; how he keeps film in his deep freeze (aka freezer) as opposed to anything edible, and how he's happy to shop for the day, while he points out that Brits see American refrigerators and are overwhelmed by how large they are; and by the way, we're also bludgeoned by advertising here, compared with the UK and Europe; how he sees our social media consumption as giving in to the impulsive at the expense of the rational, a battle he gives in to daily for a half hour on IG…and how sometimes, you just want to look at a panda falling out of a tree; why readers (of books) make better viewers of artworks; how when his photographs are printed at full scale (4 x 5 feet) you can walk into them and how part of photography's schtick is that it's nosy, that it admits everything in it; his takeaways from giving a presentation at the Hampstead Photographic Society, in which have the members bolted for the door at the break; the importance of 19th century photography to understanding the history of photography, and how it's not shown enough in museums (at least in London); how he started studying politics, but switched over to art, initially stumbling into photography as an editor at a teenage girl's magazine, then moving to The Observer, and then he became picture editor at the Daily Telegraph, where he realized, amidst a more rushed editorial structure that went with predictable stock photographers, that the most interesting photography was not there to fulfill another's agenda, but in pursuit of independence, to fulfill its own agenda.
 This podcast relies on listener support; please consider becoming a Patreon supporter of the podcast, for as little as $1/month, here: https://www.patreon.com/theconversationpod
In the 2nd half of our conversation (available on Patreon), Michael talks about:
The challenges of evolving and following your own path at the expense of taking the more marketable route, which means maintaining your integrity, and how his photographs, and his writing are both better than ever; the complex and fulfilling experience he had visiting and re-visiting a Jeff Wall museum exhibition; how the photographer Martin Parr dominates the scene in Britain, and how all his pictures look roughly the same, and yet he's kind of this hero in the country, through the 'steamroll of publicity,' and how there's far more depth, wealth and nuance out there than we're being allowed…; his first art review (for The Daily Telegraph), of Andreas Gursky's exhibition at Tate Liverpool, which uncovered a surprising digital edit, one he was turned on to by one of the museum custodians, and when he wrote the review that included his misgivings about the work, the Tate press office told him he was being cruel (to which he replied, "that's not being cruel, that's being honest"), and how another artist's agent threatened to sue for a negative review; our respective takes on art writing and criticism, in terms of what he appreciates vs. can't tolerate, and what I appreciate and can't tolerate; more about the world of magazine editing, which he describes as being a lifetime ago…; and finally, to wind down our conversation, we talk about his book, Blind Corners, which features several essays exploring across the spectrum of photography and photography's history; in particular we review a passage where he compares Americana via Kodachrome and Hollywood light with the dull, austere light of Britain, and he goes on to call out Dubai as the culmination of late capitalism.

Pasadena-based artist Linnéa Gabriella Spransy talks about:
Growing up between Wisconsin and a commune in Oregon, the latter which she describes as a complete commitment more than an experiment (the town was Wildeville, Cape Junction being the closest city); how you radically live out the life of Christianity, including giving away all their stuff, and how her father played in a Christian glam rock band that toured the world; having a positive commune experience, yet winding up 'inevitably becoming part of the machine,' aka capitalism, despite her wonderings as a child, which are still there; her period living and working in Kansas City for seven years after grad school at Yale, figuring out which voices to use in her work and make enough to have a house and a nice studio, and yet felt claustrophobic by its limitations and where she saw herself in the future if she had stayed there; her mantra in Kansas City, "if there's no pressure, I still do it," in determining what work she would keep making no matter what; her intense experience at Yale, where everyone, even the future stars, received harsh criticism for a range of reasons; the big advantages of artists who are extroverted charmers, especially in comparison to the 'ambiverts,' as Linnea calls them (and who we both essentially identify as), and even more so the more misanthropically aligned artists; her tenure co-founding Bridge Projects, a spiritually-oriented gallery in Hollywood, which had the misfortune of opening days before the pandemic.
In the Patreon BONUS episode (379A), twice as long as episode 379/the public feed, Linnea also talks about:
Her complex take on the existential state we're in politically and culturally in the context of history, in which she identifies with people from numerous eras of the past, confronting their own challenging times and what we have in common; her experience living in Pasadena as a diverse place with a significant history and culture, and, as a neighbor to Altadena, what their respective roles have been as neighborhoods for artists in the context of the Eaton fire; her different working methods, from the through-the-process-oriented abstraction, as opposed to her much more research-based figurative work…she describes each of them as working different muscles; in the context of her 'growing a human person,' as she put it, the importance of having a rich internal life, interesting things, interesting people…; and whether she should get a studio in an artist building downtown, vs. sticking with her garage studio at home. She also asks (and to some extent answers) a question in support of the future artist advice podcast, The Intrepid Artist.