Art on the Air

Art(s) on the Air with Angela Burson

Join Tamara for an interview with Angela Burson, who works in a variety of media to depict images of (frequently cropped or headless) figures, their belongings, and interior spaces, which indicate complex psychological and social relationships with one another. Her sharply painted work includes detailed classic clothing and accessories, and is frequently compared to the aesthetic of Wes Anderson movies. Angela first moved to Savannah from Liberty, Missouri in the late 1980s, to get her B.F.A. in Painting from SCAD. After a few years away, she returned in 2004 and has lived and exhibited here ever since.   

Her 2020 feature in New American Paintings has led to a rush of national and international opportunities over the past year, including shows and art fairs in NYC and Madrid, and she's currently preparing for a solo show in L.A. in December 2023. 

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

Topics in their chat include:

Angela's early years in the late 1980s living near Colonial Park Cemetery, and then on Jones St for $250 a month (!); how her first solo show of cowboy- and gun-themed artwork inadvertently boosted local gun sales; how her painting entitled "Danny Hansford's socks" led to her long running fascination with observing and painting peoples' socks; which rock star's hand is her frequent reference for depicting cigarette smoking; her History of Menswear reference book; which one specific outfit from a Wes Anderson movie she has included in a painting; and her advice to keep applying to New American Paintings no matter how many rejections you get. 

 

Tune in and get all the details!

Art(s) on the Air with Sarah Cuda

Content note: in the 2nd half of the interview, we discuss Sarah's advocacy with sexual assault issues and navigating the legal system.  

Join Tamara for an interview with Sarah Cuda, local photographer, hairstylist, and barber. Her favorite subjects to shoot include musicians and dancers during performances, as well as nature closeups - she believes that everyone has a different viewpoint of the world that one can capture with their photos. 

Sarah loves to collaborate with other businesses, to bring growth to the small business community, and one of her many upcoming projects is a photo blog promoting other Savannahians' life and work. 

https://www.sarahcudaphotography.com/
https://www.instagram.com/sarahcudaphotography/ 

Topics in their chat include: leveling up your camera lenses; working at the Legion in 2007; going on nature photography trips; what is an Anhinga?; shooting concerts at Victory North and the Juneteenth festival on Tybee; putting on her first art show last May at the Sentient Bean; and what is a soft box? 

Bonuses!

Mini-interview at 49min with Gullah artist Sabree, a long-time City Market favorite. http://www.sabreesgallery.com/ 

A song by beloved local musicians Maggie & Jackson Evans at 56min. "Red and White," written by Jackson Evans. http://jacksonevans.com/maggie/ 

 

Tune in and get all the details!

Art(s) on the Air with Antwan Eady

Join Tamara for an interview with Antwan Eady, author of children's book NIGEL AND THE MOON along with upcoming titles MICAH'S RISE, THE LAST STAND, and the YA anthology POEMHOOD. He writes with the intention of occupying a space within literature where the underrepresented may see themselves as the main character. 

NIGEL AND THE MOON - featuring a Black schoolboy who moves past his fear of judgment to share his big dreams with his class during Career Week - has been a HUGE success! It was named a Barnes and Noble Most Anticipated Kid's Book of February, Amazon Editors' Best Books of the Month Pick, Colin Kaepernick's Current Favorite Children's Picture Books, and Today Show Best Children's Read, amongst many other awards. 

https://www.antwaneady.com/
https://www.instagram.com/antwan.eady/

Topics in their chat include:

Antwan having a 10-year-plan in 8th grade; how meeting Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah at Savannah’s Book Festival in 2019 inspired him to start writing; the lack of both characters of color and creatives of color in the book world; his terms "young dreamers" and "young dreamers of color" for children; his edict that "having no agent is better than having a bad agent;" having kept a gratitude journal since 2002, learning to advocate for some down time to recharge during his book tour; and a possible future Christmas rom-com type story! 

 

Bonus! Antwan was kind enough to provide a terrific list of resources for writers.

Podcasts:
 The Manuscript Academy - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-manuscript-academy/id1171799743
 First Draft - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/first-draft-with-sarah-enni/id896407410
 Save the Cat- https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/save-the-cat-podcast/id884651026
 Society of Children's Books Illustrators and Writers - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/scbwi-podcasts/id1465188050
 The Growing Readers Podcast- https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-childrens-book-review-growing-readers-podcast/id1550324351
Books:
 Writer's Market (latest edition) - can be borrowed from local libraries.

 

 

P.S. - During the first few minutes of the interview, you'll hear the train passing by off in the distance, which gives it a real genuine Savannah feel! ;)  

 

Tune in and get all the details!

Art(s) on the Air with Paul Downs

*Hear ye, hear ye! Our show is now moving to the 1st and 3rd (and 5th) Wednesdays of the month, instead of every Wednesday. We want to continue making as high quality a show as possible, and biweekly will fit much better with our schedules and workloads. Thank you all so much for your great feedback on our first few months!*

Join Tamara for an interview with self-taught artist Paul Downs, who works in oil, acrylic, and watercolor paints, striving to evoke a sense of storytelling and design in his work. He shows regularly in art fairs in Savannah, St. Simons Island, and Hilton Head Island. Paul serves on the board of Arts on the Coast and is a member of Savannah Art Association, and has recently launched a watercolor painting class for adults! 

https://www.pauldownsartist.com/
https://www.instagram.com/art_monkey16/

Topics in their chat include:

Paul's recollections on living in Seattle during the 90s grunge scene; the gallery scene in Savannah's City Market in the late 90s/early 00s; how his pet portrait commission business has exploded just since Covid; what shape of head and eyes reads as "cuter" in a yeti holiday card; in which store you can shop his "tasteful nude" painted bookmarks; and the learning curve of doing your first outdoor art shows, including Paul and Tamara's hot tips for securing your small paper products during windy shows. 

 

P.S. - the local crime novelist he was trying to think of was...Rita Herron! 

 

Tune in and get all the details!

Art(s) on the Air with Gabrielle Torres

Join Tamara and Melissa(!) for an interview with Gabrielle Torres, who earned her MFA in Painting from SCAD in 2021. She works in collage, installation, sculpture, etc, with media that runs the gamut from paint, wires, chains, live plants, fabric, and plastic bags.

In just the year since she graduated, she's shown her art at Sulfur Studios, Telfair Museum of Art, Savannah Cultural Arts Center, Savannah State University, and the September Gray Gallery in Atlanta, as well as having completed an Artist Residency at Sulfur Studios. Whew! 

https://www.gabrielleelizabethtorres.com/

Topics in their chat include: what Gabrielle's early artwork of horses represented to her, teaching art to kids as early as possible, explaining to gallerists the watering process for her artwork, the symbolism of English ivy, the location that her thesis show shared with recent horror movie "Halloween Ends," and using her Sulfur residency to talk to Savannahians about colonialism and other weighty topics. 

Tune in and get all the details! 

Art(s) on the Air plays Bero Bero and the Eric Jones Trio

Happy Thanksgiving week! We're celebrating with a special show of music by two of Savannah's beloved local groups.

First, Bero Bero - a synth band that has been described as Sade meets Kate Bush - made up of Veronica Garcia-Melendez and David Murray. Here are songs from their EP called DANCE (2020), and they are currently working on their 4th EP, set to release early 2023. Follow their IG to keep up with their news, including lots of live shows! 

https://www.instagram.com/beroberoband/
https://www.beroberoband.com/ 

Next up, music by the Eric Jones Trio, who play every Sunday and Thursday nights at Good Times Jazz Bar downtown, and have also appeared at the Savannah Jazz Festival. These songs are from from their 2020 album Azubuike (which our show's theme song is also from), provided to us by their bass player Marc Chesanow. 

https://www.ericjonesmusic.net/ 
https://goodtimesjazzbar.com/ 

Art(s) on the Air with Jennifer Mack Watkins

Join Tamara for an interview with Jennifer Mack Watkins, a printmaker with a studio in Sulfur Studios. She was born in Charleston and holds a B.A. in studio arts from Morris Brown College, an M.A.T. from Tufts University, and an M.F.A. in printmaking from Pratt Institute. Her work investigates the societal constructs that can leave women feeling isolated, resisting definitions of femininity based on widely held notions of beauty and cultural norms.

If you happen to be in NYC in the next couple of months, Jennifer currently has a piece on view in The Metropolitan Museum of Art(!) - "The Power of Portraiture: Selections from the Department of Drawings and Prints," October 13, 2022–February 7, 2023.

https://www.instagram.com/mack_jenniferprints/
http://www.mackjennifer.com/
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/675828/you-gotta-meet-mr-pierce-by-chiquita-mullins-lee-and-carmella-van-vleet-illustrated-by-jennifer-mack-watkins/ 

Topics in their chat include: Shina plywood (a soft wood for woodblock printing), what Jennifer's dream print shop would contain, what is risograph?, what getting rejected from an AP art class in high school inspired in her, and the soon-to-be-published children's book she illustrated: "You Gotta Meet Mr. Pierce!" 

Tune in and get all the details! 

Art(s) on the Air with Emily Heid

Join Tamara for an interview with Emily Heid, author of the children's books "Scarlett Moves to Savannah" and "Scarlett Wins the Race," illustrated by SCAD alum Chelsie Liberati, as well as the 'non picture book' "Establish." She's also created a consulting business called Bootstrap Books, in order to help authors self-publish professional-looking work.

We chat about the 3 types/rounds of editing that a manuscript goes through for publication, the nitty-gritty of self-publishing and selling an e-book and/or physical book through Amazon and Barnes & Noble, the Weenie Dog races of Savannah, Queen Elizabeth's corgis and dorgis, and combating writer's' block.

Bonus - toward the end of the show you'll get to hear music clips from 2 of our past interviewees - harpist Kristin King and electronic musician Derek Hakíkta Lynch (Kola Hak).

Check out Emily's books, plus the others she's consulted on via Bootstrap Books, here:

https://bootstrapbookspublishing.com/books/ 

Get the answers to such burning questions as:

Does Emily recommend that professional authors set up an LLC?

How has "print on demand" made life so much easier for up-and-coming authors?

How did the children's book collaboration between Emily and illustrator Chelsea Liberati come about? 

What is a life lesson/tip that Emily builds into her children's books?

 

Tune in and find out!

Art(s) on the Air with Erin Dunn

Join Tamara and David as they interview Erin Dunn, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Jepson Center. Her retrospective "Feels like Freedom: Phillip J. Hampton," has recently opened and will run through January 2023, and you have to go see it! 

We chat about how Erin got into curation, tips and advice for anyone looking to enter the field, and the steps a museum takes when art arrives for an exhibition and needs to be checked over for any degradation, plus lots of specifics about the Hampton exhibition and his incredible artistic range. 

Toward the end David gets to ask her his favorite query, and she really knocks it out of the park!

Connect with Erin and her curatorial life here:

https://www.instagram.com/erindunn_art/

https://www.telfair.org/exhibitions/feels-like-freedom/ 

 

Bonus - a mini-interview with painter Laura Till Barton (at 56 minutes) about her most recent series of large-scale figures and interiors.

 

https://www.instagram.com/laura_barton_fine_art/ 

Get the answers to such burning questions as:

What are Erin’s favorite and least favorite aspects of being a curator?
What were the steps involved for her to curate and put up her current exhibition?

How did Philip J. Hampton’s work run the gamut from social realism and speaking about the Black experience in Savannah, to the expressionist/conceptual art that had begun to boom in the art world in general? 

Why might artists want to avoid making too much work on newsprint? 

 

Tune in and find out!

Art(s) on the Air with the Wednesday Writers

Join Tamara for a roundtable discussion with local authors Judy Bean, Helen Pitts Bradley, Susan Earl, and Beverly Willett. They've been meeting every Wednesday for over 5 years as a writers' critique group, the Wednesday Writers. 

Topics include: the process of reaching out to agents and/or directly to publishing houses, the Ossabaw Island retreat, Savannah courthouse drama, letting real people find their way into your writing, how a group keeps you accountable, having reading/book launch events in local shops, and the usefulness of Query Tracker.

Check out each of their work here:

 

Judy Bean https://www.linkedin.com/in/judy-bean-8aa1475 

Helen Pitts Bradley https://nexttribe.com/grandparents-raising-grandkids/ 

Susan Earl https://www.susan-earl.com/ 
https://sulfurstudios.org/susanearl 

Beverly Willett https://beverlywillett.com/

https://www.independent.co.uk/us/voices/breast-cancer-awareness-month-pink-b2205494.html

Get the answers to such burning questions as:

What are a few recommendations for getting past creative block?

How does a writer/artist decide whose advice/criticism to take?

What are the marketing materials you need to be top notch in order to pitch your novel?

 

Tune in and find out!