Art on the Air

Art(s) on the Air with Jazz Howington

Join Tamara for an interview with Jazz Howington, a versatile painter, muralist, and illustrator who started her career in 2012 (SCAD Illustration Alumna 2011). She has a day job in UX Design and creates art part-time, out of her studio at Cedar House (go visit her on weekends, receptions, or by appointment!).

She'll have work in the upcoming Cedar House show “SPECTRUM,” June 6th - 27th, with a reception on Friday, June 6. 

Her "Project Adoration" is a life-long endeavor to capture authentic queer relationships and the affection and adoration of those relationships, both romantic and platonic. The continued consideration of bold color, negative space, and degree of finish are constant themes in her works.

She is always looking for authentic relationships to capture, so if you and your partner(s) feel comfortable being photographed and then painted, sign up to model! 

 

Check out Jazz's work and follow her here: 

https://www.jazzhowingtonart.com/ 
https://www.instagram.com/relicz_art/ 

 

Tune in and get all the details! 

Art(s) on the Air with Brittany Curry

Join Tamara for an interview with Brittany Curry, a Savannah native who started her career as the coordinator of Oconee Area Citizen Advocacy, an organization that helps people with disabilities build a life outside of professional services. In 2012 she discovered Graphic Recording, an emerging field of documenting meetings with large, hand-drawn, visual graphics.

She began doing this work during nights and weekends, and in 2015 was able to take it full-time, launching her small business, InkyBrittany. 

Since then, Brittany's Graphic Recording & Facilitating work has been requested across the country and beyond. She has worked with corporations, small businesses, philanthropies, governments, public health, education, agriculture, and the disability advocacy community, to name a few. She now also leads workshops teaching others the skill of visual communication.

Mark your calendar for May 24 - Brittany is throwing a 10 Year Anniversary Party for her business at the American Legion downtown! :) 

Check out Brittany's work and follow her here: 

https://inkybrittany.com/ 
https://www.instagram.com/inkybrittany/

 

Tune in and get all the details! 

Art(s) on the Air with Dana Richardson

Join Tamara for an interview with Dana Richardson (b. Sewanee, TN), an artist, muralist, and art instructor at Savannah Christian Preparatory School. Her connection to landscape painting began during a year spent at the Marchutz School of Painting in the south of France. 

Dana first moved to Savannah to get her B.F.A. in Painting from SCAD, and is currently pursuing an M.F.A. at the Maryland Institute College of Art, expected to graduate in 2026. In her current work, she explores the re-enchantment of spaces through her subconscious painting method, using automatic processes to channel internal landscapes.

Dana returns annually to Ossabaw Island, where she completes a residency to study the unique environment. She currently has a piece installed at Artfields (running through May 3), and in June she and artist Lisa D. Watson will install collaborative work in the Boxed In/Break Out windows at the Jepson Center. 

Check out Dana's work and follow her here: 

https://www.instagram.com/danawrich/
https://www.danarichardsonart.com/  

Tune in and get all the details! 

Art(s) on the Air with Maxx Feist - Podcasthon collab!

Join Tamara for an interview with Savannah, GA artist Maxx Feist, a nonbinary self-taught artist from Asheville, NC who spends all the days and all the times painting! Highly influenced by a regular regiment of caffeine, heavy metal, and true crime podcasts, Maxx fights to connect the cerebral with the visual…always trying to maintain a balance between the dark and the light. This generally come through by way of underworld subject matter highlighted in bright colors and fun abstract shapes, borders, rope-like imagery, and other whimsical additions. 

 

** For this episode, I (Tamara) am very happy to participate in this 3rd edition of Podcasthon! For one week, more than a thousand podcasts will highlight a charity of their choice. There's no money involved—it’s all about raising awareness for various charitable causes.

I am highlighting The ACLU, which defends the rights of all people nationwide.

“With immigrant rights, trans justice, reproductive freedom, and more at risk, we’re in courts and communities across the country to protect everyone’s rights — and we need you with us.”

https://www.aclu.org/

If you enjoyed my episode, feel free to visit https://podcasthon.org/ to discover hundreds of other great causes through the voices and talents of other podcasters around the world! **

 

Check out Maxx’s work and follow them here: 

https://www.instagram.com/maxx_feist/

https://www.maxxfeistart.com/

 

Tune in and get all the details!

Art(s) on the Air with Ben Copperwheat

Join Tamara for an interview with Ben Copperwheat, a versatile artist known for his exceptional work in fine art, wearable art, and interior concepts. 

His distinctive style is characterized by vibrant colors, bold graphic imagery, and captivating screen prints. His art bursts with a riot of rainbow and neon hues, encompassing a diverse range of motifs and icons that form a unique visual language. 

Ben was born in 1975 in Luton, U.K., and received a BA and an MA in the arts before moving to NYC in 2003. He worked as a Print Designer for Calvin Klein for a few years and then freelanced - co-founding an avant-garde menswear line, and working with stylist Patricia Field at events like Berlin Fashion Week and Art Basel Miami. In 2018, he moved here to Savannah and became a Professor of Fibers at SCAD.

Check out Ben's work and follow him here: 

https://www.instagram.com/bencopperwheat/ 
http://www.bencopperwheat.com/ 

 

Tune in and get all the details! 

Art(s) on the Air with Carmen Aguirre

Join Tamara for an interview with oil painter Carmen Aguirre, a Miami native who got her BFA Fine Art in Miami, and then went to Spain for graduate study with Valencian classical painter Amadeo Roca Gisbert.  

Carmen moved to Savannah in 2016 and then spent about 10 years working for the former Grand Bohemian Gallery at the Mansion, eventually becoming Gallery Director. She is a figurative painter working in oil on canvas and/or panel. While she represents scenes of daily life, her objective is also to convey how the subject touches and inspires her. 

Check out more of Carmen's work and follow her here: 
https://www.instagram.com/carmenmaguirre/ 
https://www.carmenmariaaguirre.com/ 

 

Topics in their chat include:

The sharp learning curve of her graduate program in Spain, where she was thrown into the deep end of representational oil painting; she reminisces about her college and grad school era of not being super concerned about what her art would lead her to, career-wise, but just being at peace about pursuing your art degree for learning's sake; living in Miami and attending Art Basel from when it began in 2002; how she moved to Savannah about 20 years ago after having visited her daughter here many times; how she met good friend and fellow painter Dana Richardson when coming across Dana painting in Forsyth Park; her preference for including a frame on her art to call it "finished;" lessons learned from a past solo show at the JEA in which she had 24 (!) paintings; what are mangroves?; her conceptual painting of an orange LifeSaver candy; her years of having real creative control over discovering new Savannah artists and bringing them into the Mansion's Gallery; her recent series of paintings exploring Daffin Park and depicting the sense of vast space there; and her goals for 2025 of: building up a big series of paintings, putting on a public show, and possibly starting a series of artist salons.

 

Tune in and get all the details! 

Art(s) on the Air with Darcy Melton

Join Tamara for an interview with oil painter Darcy Melton, a local native who attended Savannah Arts Academy and then tried fashion school in NYC for a year, before returning to Savannah and the self-directed study of fine art. Her work focuses on portraits (she accepts commissions) and still lifes, and she has taught painting workshops at the Jepson Center and at Arts on the Coast in Richmond Hill.

Darcy's mother-in-law is Melinda Borysevicz, a former local figurative oil painter who has moved to Italy, and through her Darcy's been able to gain Italian residency too. She now splits her time between Savannah - look for her in shows at Location Gallery, SLAM, and Isle of Hope Art Fair - and Padula, Italy! 

 

Check out more of Darcy's work and follow her here:

https://www.darcymeltonfineart.com/
https://www.instagram.com/darcymeltonfineart/

Topics in their chat include:

How Darcy transitioned from watercolor painting to oil, and her advice that if you can work simply, with a limited palette and just one "solvent," moving from watercolor to oil painting is actually way less intimidating and complicated than people tend to think; once she started showing her work in person at a Sulfur Street Fair, and expanding to portrait work, both around 2021/2022, her career rapidly got a foothold; a large part of her art business recently is portrait commissions (she is open if you would like to book one!); juggling trying to learn Italian and/or Neapolitan, the dialect spoken in her town of Padula; and the 2 projects she shares with her husband Nathaniel Mellor - the "Only a Bag" podcast of Italian travel tips, news, and history tidbits, and their art & literary magazine "Pigeon Review," which they started during COVID and hope to reinstate in the near future.

P.S. - at some point we could not remember what ASMR actually stands for and I promised to do research, so here it is! "ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) is a relaxing sensation triggered by specific sounds or visuals, often described as a 'tingling' feeling in the head or spine." 

Tune in and get all the details! 

Art(s) on the Air with Bailey Davidson

Join Tamara for an interview with photographer Bailey Davidson, a Milledgeville native who lived in NYC as an aspiring actor for a few years, before returning to Georgia in the late 90s to pursue his MFA in Photography at SCAD. 

Since graduating, Bailey has built his freelance career in all aspects of professional commercial and editorial photography, working with a wide range of clients, including Savannah Music Festival, Wine Enthusiast Magazine, and The London Observer.

This past spring he opened a studio in City Market - go visit him and his 20 years' worth of Savannah photos there! 

Check out Bailey's work and follow him here: 

https://www.facebook.com/BaileyDavidsonPhotography 
https://baileydavidson.com/ 

Topics in their chat include:

Bailey's indie movie he acted in, called "Bringing Down Dejonga" (this was the ending title after all! I found out online. --Tamara); how while in NYC he started taking headshots for his fellow actors and gradually took more and more photos, getting into art shows, and drifting from acting to photography; how he first heard of SCAD because his parents happened to meet the Poetters on a cruise; his Flannery O'Connor tie-ins of having grown up in Milledgeville and then living in the garden apartment of her childhood home as his first Savannah apartment; his practice immediately post-grad of shooting weddings and family portraits, to support himself as he built up his clients for commercial and editorial shoots; his show at the JEA last year that was a continuation of his MFP thesis show, "Bailey's Acres," all Holga pinhole camera work; the nostalgia of taking photos with an analog/film camera and then being surprised by the images once you pick up your developed photos; his Storyboards website where he displays his series of photos that combine to tell a story, influenced by David Hockney and Robert Rauschenberg; his photography books "Seasons of Savannah," "Savannah Past and Present," and "Milledgeville Then and Now;" recently getting published in the fine art mag "Black & White Magazine;" and his advice to students and young photographers to just shoot shoot shoot as there's no substitute for practicing your craft.

 

Tune in and get all the details!

Art(s) on the Air with Julia Roland

Join Tamara for an interview with Julia Roland, a Savannah native who graduated from SCAD earlier this year with a BFA in painting and a minor in art history. The paintings in her portfolio symbolize the many different layers of African American culture and human identity through the juxtaposition of frontal facing confrontational figures, saturated colors, bold shapes, and loose patterns. These paintings are reflections of her identities intersecting as a black, queer woman. 

You can view her work in the current FAAA Small Works show at the Jepson Center, through November 26, 2024; at Bobby Bagley's studio/co-op gallery in City Market; and murals at Kim's Cafe and the outside door of a Head Start off of MLK.

 

Check out Julia's work and follow her here: 

https://www.juliaroland.com/
https://www.instagram.com/j.r.art_/ 

Topics in their chat include:

How Julia began showing her work in various Savannah spots as young as 18; she enjoys hand-building her substrates and using a jigsaw to cut out organic shapes for her wood panel art; she's always been into design and pattern but didn't want to create strictly abstract paintings, so her current work is portraits with abstract backgrounds; to build up the abstraction she relies on the underpainting to guide her, letting areas peek through or inform a pattern she's going to emphasize; creating murals at Kim's Cafe on MLK, including a portrait of MLK, Malcolm X, and the owners' mother, Kim (and thus the pressure to get portraits right when they're of recognizable people); what is a collagraph and why is it a good printmaking process for someone with a small working space?; her collagraph inspired by her experiences with roommates of different races and thinking about the differences in their hair; the challenge of using a handheld jigsaw to cut out her organic-shaped panels - it has to be thick enough to cut cleanly, but if it's too thick then the piece is very heavy, so Julia likes 1/4" plywood or a small piece of birch; her upcoming group show at Swan Coach House Gallery in Atlanta; her best advice to young artists who are looking to to find their style, message, and audience: thinking of creating art as a lifestyle and not a career, so that you find success in your productivity and not necessarily in your sales. 

 

Tune in and get all the details!

Art(s) on the Air with Zack Turner

Join Tamara for an interview with Zack Turner, a Savannah native who studied Sequential Art at SCAD for 3 years, until COVID happened. Since then, he has been working and pursuing his art by creating sequential art zines, illustrations, and occasional murals.

For the month of October, you can find Zack every Saturday 11-6 and Sunday 1-5 at Neighborhood Comics, where's he's working as the Artist in Residence. 

And check out “Sunday Scaries” - his newly-self-published 16 page horror-comedy comic collection - available at Neighborhood Comics or through his IG. 

 

Check out Zack's work and follow him here:

https://www.instagram.com/intentional_zombiehorde/
https://www.zackturnercomics.com/ 
https://neighborhoodcomics.com/pages/neighborhood-comics-sequential-artist-in-residence-program 

Topics in their chat include:

The challenges of working in traditional sequential art media - pencil and then pen and ink on paper or board - when you have a "heavy hand;" how the industry really calls for artists being able to do at least some of their work in digital, unless there's a big enough budget for the time it generally takes to work traditionally; for his artist residency Zack is working on a collaborative zine called Radio Jammers, with a few artist friends in Texas, creating narratives based on songs they've chosen (Zack's is Death Machine by AJJ); the physical challenges of painting murals, including the need to constantly run back and forth away from it, to evaluate the entire scene; learning how to do comic book lettering with an Ames Lettering Tool; thinking of comic books as "a movie on paper," and you do the work of the director, sound designer, costumer, screenwriting, etc, so a lot of comic book artists also work in storyboarding for movies; the common practice in comic books to collaborate with a different artist who specializes in the graphic design and lettering aspects; did you know that the GA Southern Armstrong campus has a print shop available to the public?; the joy of classic Sunday newspaper comics such as Peanuts, Garfield, and Calvin and Hobbes; how much fun he had during the SOY X SOY Art Battle back in July and how surprised he was to make it to the last round; and finally: Zack loves art collaborations - feel free to reach out to him if you're interested!

 

Tune in and get all the details!