Art on the Air

Art(s) on the Air - Two-year anniversary chat w/ Tamara, Rob, and David

It's the 2-year anniversary of Rob Hessler handing the podcast over to Tamara Garvey (after having done it for 5 years)!

To celebrate, Tamara, Rob, and David Laughlin - who also did the show for a few year with Rob - met up for a looooong wild chat about Savannah's creative scene and the art(s) of interviewing and writing about it. 

(One thing we all agree on is the excitement of getting feedback from people who are listening to/reading our interviews HINT HINT!)  

 

Do you want even more of our unhinged thoughts? Check out each of our social media here:

https://www.instagram.com/tamgarv/
https://www.instagram.com/work_by_rob_hessler/ 
https://www.instagram.com/thedavidlaughlin/ 

 

Topics in our chat include:

Rob insulted his way into a regular writing gig at the Savannah Morning News; the in-and-outs of the current publishing cycle of the SMN; how the nature of the 1-on-1 interview is much easier for (introverted) creatives to talk about their work than at public Artist Talks; how creating each interview episode is an art project in itself; how rewarding it is to interview a burgeoning artist and give them a little boost; particular interviews that have stood out to each of us; the time David recorded a car crash during one of his interviews; the fact that Savannah has been a cultural mecca for years and we are wondering if it has/is peaking (a la Key West), because of housing prices; we each answer a few of David's "studio questions," including a great piece of advice we've each received; Rob talks about a recent article he wrote that has drawn some heat; choosing interview subjects and the necessity of being inspired by each other; "art decorates space and music decorates time;" the shared experience of trying to protect our time and our creative labor when society tries to get these things for free.  

Bonus article David found that related to our talk about Savannah!

Tune in and get all the details!

Art(s) on the Air with Adriana Iris Boatwright

Join Tamara for an interview with Adriana Iris Boatwright, a creative photographer and writer with a focus in social media. She was born and raised in Puerto Rico, and came to Georgia in 1994 by way of NYC and Germany. 

Her clients include: Coca Cola, Savannah Morning News, H&M, Bath and Body Works, Ghost Coast Distillery, Paramount Pictures, Do Savannah, and more.

Adriana is also an editor for La Voz Latina (a Spanish online magazine for SMN), *and* one of about 4 founding members of SOY X SOY, a space for Latino and Native American artists and creatives to meet, collaborate, and exhibit their work.

* Get ready for Art Rumble - A @soy_x_soy event!
8 artists will go head to head to win it all. What they draw is up to you! So make sure you attend to participate.
July 13 | 5-9 pm | Starland Yard *

Check out Adriana's work and the SOY X SOY group here:

https://www.instagram.com/adrianairis/ 
https://adrianairis.com/ 
https://www.instagram.com/soy_x_soy/ 

Topics in their chat include:

How Adriana was involved in Starland becoming an artsy district from its early days, throwing theme parties at the Wormhole; how her creative career came about through her blog about her baby daughter - she wrote a post about her brother's death and it went viral, and she suddenly got photography offers from various publications, including Savannah Morning News, where she still works; she transitioned out of blogging about her daughter as she got a bit older, to writing and photographing for SMN, particularly when they first launched "Do Savannah;" she shot the covers for years, including covers with the first gay couple and the first drag queen; how much she loved doing photo shoots with bands and collaborating about their location and their visuals; the pressure that comes from having a large Instagram following and a lot of people keeping an eye on you; the fact that Savannah has about 300 professional photographers (!); the importance to her of still going out to do personal and conceptual photo shoots for fun; having to transition from film photography to digital, including teaching herself Photoshop; being a sort of "purist" who doesn't rapid-fire during a shoot; doing food photography for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and SMN; she tells a wild story about the time an alligator suddenly walked through City Market, until being rehomed by Animal Control; shooting the yearly Lowcountry Pow Wow at Hardeeville, the only one in the area; upcoming Conde Nast Traveler in England of our local coffee shop Agatha's (!); and the upcoming SOY X SOY Art Battle.

 

Tune in and get all the details!

Art(s) on the Air with Henry Dean

Join Tamara for an interview with Henry Dean, who works in various modes (drawing and mixed media works on paper, installation, painting, sculpture, video), and is also a Foundations professor at SCAD. 

Our talk centered around his recently completed "Now and Then," a national immersive land-art project inspired by Nature and Cosmos - specifically the April 8th, 2024 total eclipse. As an Arts-Science initiative it imagines Nature and environment as unique and wonderful attributes of the cosmic whole (and was a project two years in the making!). 

Henry graduated St. Andrews University, Scotland (1980, MFA honors, Geography and Fine Arts combined), and Savannah College of Art and Design (2003, MFA Painting).

Check out his work and the "Now and Then" project specifically, and follow him here:

https://www.henrydean.art/ 
https://www.instagram.com/nowandtheneclipse24/ 

Topics in their chat include:

Before Henry moved from Philadephia to Savannah in 1999, he was mostly making and selling very large, plein air landscape paintings; his theories on why North America has had 2 total eclipses a few years apart, after not having had any for years; we try to wrap our heads around the experience of the Old Masters who created art in obscurity, died, and then were discovered & lauded throughout the world for centuries (!); how a long creative career always involves different waves of work, including transitional periods, and how craftspersonship can carry your work through successfully; coming to see that "Now and Then" was not specifically about the eclipse, but really about people, honoring communities and landscapes, expressing a wonder for nature, shared experiences, and tying communities together; and the details on that project: two years' worth of work and planning, 15 sculptures across 6 locations, driving across the country reaching out to local governments and chambres of commerce to make pitches for an art project that hadn't yet been completely designed.

 

Tune in and get all the details!

Art(s) on the Air with Sharon Norwood

Join Tamara for an interview with Sharon Norwood, a conceptual artist whose work spans several media to include painting and ceramic. She was born in Jamaica, then raised in Canada, before moving to the US to earn BFA and MFA degrees in art & painting from schools in Florida.

Sharon's work investigates the ways in which race, gender, and cultural identity shape our perceptions of ourselves and other people. In her work the curly line becomes a metaphor for the “black body." She is an active educator and lecturer, and her work is part of public collections at notable institutions such as the Gardiner Museum, Washington & Lee University Museums, The Telfair Museums, and The National Museum for Women in the Arts.

Check out Sharon's work and follow her here:

https://sharonnorwood.com/
https://www.instagram.com/sharonnorwoodartist/ 

Topics in their chat include:

Sharon and other family members emigrated from Jamaica to Canada when she was about 9 years old, which plunged her into a period of muteness; getting her BFA and MFA degrees after an early career in graphic design; a "controversially famous" poet uncle; how her time at art school began with her trying to get better at painting realistic portraits, but because she was then the only student concerned with mixing colors for painting dark skin tones, her work immediately became tagged as "political" or "about race," when that wasn't even her intention; so her work then became an examination of *that* phenomenon; how many porcelain tea sets are luxury items; her group show in 2019 at Laney Contemporary; her great practice of traveling around the US and Canada for artist residencies; and a recent installation she did in the drawing room at the Owens-Thomas House, in which she also incorporated sound.

Tune in and get all the details!

Art(s) on the Air with Will Penny

Join Tamara for an interview with Will Penny, who grew up in Ontario and first moved to Savannah about 20 years ago, to get his BFA in Painting from SCAD. After graduation he moved away, later returning for his MFA in Painting, and has been in town ever since. 

* Special note that on Weds 5/22 and Thurs 5/23, he will participate in a two-day event at Ships of the Sea Maritime Museum: a light and sound festival entitled “Celestial Seafarers,” featuring Will and 6+ other local artists.
Info and tickets here:
https://www.shipsofthesea.org/celestial-seafarers

Will is a multi-disciplinary artist whose practice incorporates an assortment of media ranging from painting, video, sculpture, programming, and projection. His work aims to combine traditional art making tools with new technologies, to create space to explore themes such as embodiment, presence, fantasy, and the sublime.

Check out Will's work and follow him here:

https://www.willpenny.com/
https://www.instagram.com/willpennyart/ 

Topics in their chat include:

During his BFA Will focused on refining his skills at painting realism, but when he returned for grad school he focused more on exploring concepts, and took elective classes in motion media design and visual effects; his interest in nostalgia (ex. the history of hockey masks) and working through his childhood of the 80s and 90s, both the good memories and the more traumatic ones; working through your memories, with all of the associated emotional attachments; how he came to be represented by Laney Contemporary; the whole emerging element of how archival work that incorporates technology or media is, whether it might degrade over time, and whether a museum or artist should maintain it; how his past series of 3D printed pieces were exploring the "sublime experience" of nature (but ended up too expensive to continue to produce); lessons he learned from his Big Mouth Billy Bass AI project, both from the summer heat outside of Green Truck and indoors at the recent ArtFields Festival; and his upcoming two-day event at Ships of the Sea Maritime Museum: a light and sound festival entitled “Celestial Seafarers,” featuring Will and 6+ other local artists. 

Tune in and get all the details!

Art(s) on the Air with Autumn Gary

Join Tamara and David for an interview with Autumn Gary, a largely self-taught American/First Nations painter, sculptor, and art instructor from Portland, Oregon. Her practice revolves around therapeutic art outreach, public art, and intertribal collaboration with indigenous/native arts communities.

Mark your calendar: Autumn and Alexis Javier (of Sulfur Studios) will have a joint exhibition at the #art912 space in the Jepson Center from July 19 until next February 9, with an Artist Talk & Reception on July 18! 

Check out Autumn's work and follow her here:

https://www.instagram.com/autumn.gary.art/
https://www.telfair.org/exhibitions/of-one-mind/ 

Topics in their chat include:

Growing up in an artistic and inclusive environment; making pilgrimages to the Kahnawake Mohawk Territory in Quebec; learning the Mohawk language and discovering how many words and feelings are untranslatable between it and English; having moved to Savannah in 2008, largely as the result of a dream; her sculpture project at the Savannah Center for the Blind and Low Vision, which was a collaboration with the blind users of the center; the center's Training Sidewalk, which recreates the various topographies of a city, so blind people can practice getting around; what she and AJ are planning for their collaborative sculpture and immersive Jepson Center exhibition coming up in a few months; the unstructured way she teaches at the Telfair's art summer camps; the awesome surfing metaphor we came up with toward the end of the show; and dancing with seniors. 

Tune in and get all the details!

 

* And some cool podcast news: Feedspot has highlighted Art on the Air as one of the Top 3 Georgia Art Podcasts on the web. Hooray! 

https://blog.feedspot.com/georgia_art_podcasts/

Art(s) on the Air with Melyssa Amann

Join Tamara and David for an interview with Melyssa Amann, who was born and raised in the Caribbean country Trinidad and Tobago. She came to Savannah in 2016 to attend SCAD, and after trying a couple of directions, earned a BFA in illustration with a minor in scientific illustration.

Her website shows a wide variety of her work - portraiture, editorial and commercial work, murals, and scientific illustration - and she does a great job including sketches and progress images for each project. 

Since graduating, Melyssa has gotten a steady stream of mural commissions. You can go see her public work at Kanpai II on Chatham Pkwy., the new Artstryngs Gallery on Liberty St.; and the JEA's basketball court. 

Check out Melyssa's work and follow her here:

https://www.melyssaamann.com/
https://www.instagram.com/melyssaamann/ 

Topics in their chat include:

A little background info on Melyssa's birthplace of Trinidad & Tobago; her roundabout journey to studying illustration at SCAD after trying engineering and industrial design, due to not knowing how one would make a living in the arts if not in a "serious" design field; the weirdness of graduating college in spring 2020; how working at Wasabi's on MLK while studying at SCAD led to her first mural, of koi fish, which has in turn led to multiple other mural commissions (even today!); the agony of seeing your chalk mural getting accidentally smudged by restaurant diners; the pluses and minuses of having many different styles and types of projects on one's website; the arduous experience of painting on a basketball court during June in Savannah;  her desire to continue breaking away from just depicting strict and tight representation, but to be able to incorporate concepts as well; and a lovely piece of advice Melyssa would give to other artists.

Tune in and get all the details!

 

* And some cool podcast news: Feedspot has highlighted Art on the Air as one of the Top 3 Georgia Art Podcasts on the web. Hooray! 

https://blog.feedspot.com/georgia_art_podcasts/

Art(s) on the Air with Danèlle Lejeune

Join Tamara for an interview with Danèlle Lejeune, who is a poet, memoirist, and photographer, as well as the Assistant Director at the Ossabaw Writers’ Retreat.

From her website: "Danèlle was a livestock farmer in Southern Iowa. She moved to Georgia with her three kids and nothing else in 2016, to begin again from the ground up. After a twenty year hiatus she's writing poetry, making art, and creating a a lot of chaos with her opinions on onions and pies."

You can find her debut poetry collection, Landlocked: Etymology of Whale Fish and Grace (Finishing Line Press, 2017), at the Book Lady here in Savannah, or online at the major book retailers.

Check out Danèlle's work and follow her here:

http://www.danellelejeune.com/ 
https://www.instagram.com/danelle_lejeune_author/  
https://ossabawwritersretreat.org/ 

 

Topics in their chat include:

Coming to Savannah in 2014 for the first time to attend the Ossabaw Island Writers' Retreat...but she was actually undercover to research and study the Ossabaw pigs, to help with her and her then-husband's pig farm in Iowa; how her quick iphone photos taken while hiking on Ossabaw were published as the posters for AWP (Association of Writers & Writing Programs); how that conference led to her getting an invite for a free(!) writers' retreat & residency in Prague, where she wrote enough Irish mythology-related poems to make an entire book, which was also quickly published; teaching composition classes at University of South Carolina at Bluffton; how dramatic a writers/artists retreat can be; and how supportive the Book Lady shop has been for her and for other local writers.

Tune in and get all the details!

Art(s) on the Air with Molly Cusick

Join Tamara for an interview with Molly Cusick, who works in the dual arts of photography and pottery, and shares a City Market studio with her mother (who also works in two art forms!). Traveling through the world's most beautiful places, Molly sees beauty where others are not looking. Faces of rocks, creek reflections, abandoned cars and barnacled boats offer a rich interplay of texture, color, and tone. Her eyes are drawn to the way that nature overtakes manmade objects.

She has a specific project called the Tree Pilgrimage:

"...born from the ashes of the Thomas fire, in January 2018, is a project honoring embodied connection and awakening.  

I followed a calling from deep within my heart to be with and photograph the amazing Trees around the world while I still had the chance."

 

Check out Molly's work and follow her here: 

https://www.instagram.com/mollycusickphotography/
http://www.mollycusickphotography.com/ 
https://www.thetreepilgrimage.com/
https://www.instagram.com/mollycusickpottery/

 

Topics in their chat include:

Growing up in a creative home and receiving her first (film) camera at 14; her affinity for junkyards and rusty old cars; in February 2020 Molly went to New Zealand for a 3-6 month photography trip, and when the pandemic hit she ended up staying there for 1 1/2 years, extending her visa to travel solo and do nature photography; her early time in Savannah selling work at the Savannah Gallery of Art; being a part of the Clayer & Co pottery teaching studio in Thunderbolt; getting photo prints made and her discovery of metal prints; close calls with bears and cobras; and her plans for future photography trips to Bulgaria and Madagascar.

Tune in and get all the details!

Art(s) on the Air with Phoebe Plank

Join Tamara for an interview with Phoebe Plank, who is just a few months from finishing her MFA in Fibers at SCAD. Her path to making art in the first place began when she studied abroad in Paris during her undergrad program, and had her eyes opened to a more unconventional way of life by the older woman who housed her. After graduating, she moved from Vermont to San Francisco, eventually making a bunch of artsy friends and attending the Burning Man festival, and from there she decided to move to Savannah and pursue her art. 

Phoebe says: "With what might be considered waste, or overlooked foraged materials, I assemble and create useful art objects and experiences. To address an overwhelming degree of alienation in our time, I aim to make work that is useful, even if in quiet sensory ways."

 

Check out Phoebe's work and follow her here: 

https://www.instagram.com/phoebe_plank/
https://phoebeplankart.squarespace.com/

 

Topics in their chat include:

Phoebe coining the name "stickwork" for her recent series of pieces, alluding to a magical, whimsical, wand-like vibe; playing around with hanging her stickwork on the wall with one point of contact, as a metaphor for how one exists/balances in the world, vs. hanging it from the ceiling and allowing it to sway around; what is "wet lab" felting and how do horses come into it?!; how is a jacquard loom like a player piano?; how "Dobby" refers to both a Harry Potter character and a person in the weaving process; weaving weeds in Lacoste; Phoebe's "pocket Rumi" book and how she pairs a poem with each of her pressed flower pieces; the amazing Rumi poem about cooked chickpeas that sticks in her memory; and her goal to live in France and pursue her art, post-MFA.

Tune in and get all the details!