The Artists Residency at the Center concludes its 2025 cohort and asks the artists--Alexandra Mackenzie Johns (UK/Utah, literature & drama), David Jones (Oregon, music composition), Thayer Jonutz (Michigan, choreography), Zinta Jaunitis (United Kingdom, visual art), Jackie Leishman (California, visual art) and Daniel Martinez (Uruguay, visual art)--three questions. They are: what books they're currently reading, how Covid affected them and their art, and when they began to think of themse...
Most people are unaware of the symbiotic relationship between artists and the gallerists who represent them. How does a gallery support, encourage, and market an artist's work? And how does an artist rely on the expertise of a gallerist when they are starting out, in mid-career, and when they want to defy expectation with something new? This interview brings visual artist Justin Wheatley and David Ericson, the owner of David Ericson Fine Art in Salt Lake City, Utah, together to uncover surpri...
Winners of the Ariel Bybee Endowment Prize, Gonzalo and Susana Silva speak about their new exhibition, Instrumentos de silencio (Instruments of Silence). The 15-piece show at Sargent's Daughters gallery in New York (and later traveling to the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California) plays with ideas of musical instruments and history, but also the ways that invading Europeans subjugated and tandemized Andean populations with outside culture, including music. Music: "Please On...
His paintings are in nearly every Latter-day Saint meetinghouse and in many temples in the world. The beloved artist Walter Rane discusses in this podcast his life as a painter, insights he has discovered about himself through the freedom of creating, and why he loves painting now more than ever. Music: "Please Only Tell Me Good News” by Stephen Anderson; used with permission. Send us a text about the podcast.
It’s like a true crime podcast, but it’s about art. An heirloom masterpiece is created, mutilated, inherited, then lost--one of the most important objects in a rich culture’s history. Over a century later, a frantic search ensues, not unlike a manhunt, with a deadline fast approaching and a forthcoming, major exhibition hanging in the balance. Can it be recovered in time? Scholars Heather Belnap, Ashlee Whitaker Evans, and Brontë Hebdon detail the extraordinary tale of a pre-Civil War album q...
Taiwanese Australian filmmaker Daniel Yen Tu tells about a new book project and screenplay, '93 Castrol which is the fast-paced story of siblings, a stolen race car, and a search for redemption from self-described low-lifery. The discussion of this limited edition artists book contains something even bigger--an emerging artist discovering identity, voice, and a newfound sense of authenticity. Music: "Please Only Tell Me Good News” by Stephen Anderson; used with permission. Send us a tex...
Lisa Hess moved to New York at the age of 16 and a year later was asked to join the company of the New York City Ballet. That began an adventure with some of the great choreographers and dancers of the century, in a golden age of dance in America. Hess worked with the legendary George Balanchine in his final decade of life, frequently with Jerome Robbins, and others. In this extended oral history episode, Lisa Hess Jones captures a vivid era--a girl from Amarillo, Texas who finds herself with...
After an emerging-artist blitz of 26 New York exhibitions in just 7 years, the award-winning visual artist Valerie Atkisson de Moura hit a wall. Adrift and depressed in a new home, she received a medical diagnosis of an incurable disease and discovered that her mother had the same disease but had kept it secret from the family. Then, in a horrible year, her mother died, Valerie was hit by a car and suffered head trauma that changed the way she lives and works. Throughout everything, the artis...
Potter Ben Behunin has created a body of work that includes message-driven ceramics exhibited in museums and galleries. He is also an author, and the subject of this interview is his field guide, “How to Seduce a Sasquatch,” which includes tips to jumpstart creativity and related theories. Send us a text about the podcast.
Dancer, choreographer, and teacher Kate Monson describes her work at Brigham Young University, where approximately 5,000 students each semester take dance classes. She describes the dance-friendly LDS culture, how all of us are dancers, and how, as a dancer's career progresses, it is impacted by ageism. Finally, Monson draws connections between her spirituality and physical movement. Send us a text about the podcast.
This interview with visual artist Jackie Leishman and poet Steven L. Peck unwinds the process of creative minds meeting, finding common passions, and then making inter-disciplinary art together. The podcast celebrates the artists' latest published work, a chine-collé print, Sound of a broken wing. Send us a text about the podcast.
In this episode, Mia Meredith describes her work as a graphic designer for the very popular, monthly pull-out section of The New York Times created exclusively for kids. The graduate of Brigham Young University's design program talks about her career path in New York that landed her in her dream job, its challenges, rewards, and purpose, which is to help kids understand the world. Send us a text about the podcast.
The exhibition The Delicate Ties That Bind explores the precariousness of post-pandemic existence and assesses the complex and often fragile relationships that shape our lives now. Curated by Megan Knobloch Geilman, these threads make up the nature of our reality and serve as metaphors for both a tattered society and the essential connections between us. In this interview, the curator describes the process of putting together this exhibition on the campus of Claremont Graduate University with...
A landmark exhibition spanning the history of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints marks a milestone in the culture's artistic output and appreciation. The 121-work exhibition, Work and Wonder: 200 Years of Latter-day Saint Art, is curated by Heather Belnap, Ashlee Whitaker Evans, and Brontë Hebdon. They join in this wide-ranging conversation about the show's five years of development and the four themes that emerged from their extensive, global research: Memory and Archive, Indivi...
The publication of Latter-day Saint Art: A Critical Reader is a landmark event, the first comprehensive critical examination of Mormon Art. In this interview, co-editors Mason Kamana Allred and Amanda Beardsley introduce the chapters with insights into the reasons why each is indispensable. Then, the authors of this 664-page book from Oxford University Press submitted questions for the podcast about the making of the book and what lies ahead in art and objects by LDS people. Part 1 of 2 histo...
The publication of Latter-day Saint Art: A Critical Reader is a landmark event, the first comprehensive critical examination of Mormon Art. In this interview, co-editors Mason Kamana Allred and Amanda Beardsley introduce the chapters with insights into the reasons why each is indispensable. Then, the authors of this 664-page book from Oxford University Press submitted questions for the podcast about the making of the book and what lies ahead in art and objects by LDS people. Part 2 of 2 histo...
The young nonprofit organization, Inspired Arts League, is the focus of this interview with its founder Brittany Scott and executive producer Ellen Wheeler. It’s a fascinating model: invite global artists who are already accomplished to be members and give them as a group, through workshops and collaboration, tools to more effectively tell stories and inspire hope in the world through art. Scott and Wheeler announce their inaugural exhibition October 14-25, 2024 at the venerable Salmagundi Cl...
In this interview with Rachel Helps, Wikipedian-in-Residence at the BYU Library, researcher and author Helps explains her work refining, creating, correcting, and researching Wikipedia pages that relate to the unrivaled collection of Mormon Studies volumes at the Harold B Lee Library at Brigham Young University. The conversation includes interesting finds and experiences covering eight years of work and hundreds of articles. Helps also mentions her interactive fiction projects. Send us a text...
Brett Peterson is Director, Exhibition Media and Interactives at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, which is at the forefront of engaging audiences and making exhibitions memorable by the creation of accompanying original, responsive digital media. In this episode Peterson describes the shifting expectation of visitors regarding technology. He tries to find new ways to evoke emotions and heighten works on display, including magical digital and physical pairings. He asks...
Artist Collin Bradford makes video, sound, photography, sculpture, and other media. In this interview, the incoming art department chair at Brigham Young University discusses his work, how art speaks directly to the brain through the senses, and his work as a reflection of concerns about the future. His video installation, A Burning Hope (2021) is part of the museum exhibition, Materializing Mormonism: Trajectories in Contemporary Latter-day Saint Art, organized by the Center for Latter-day S...