Austin Art Talk Podcast

Episode 72: Fort Lonesome - Kathie Sever

October 11th, 2019  |  1 hr 9 mins

fort lonesome, kathie sever

Kathie Sever founded her company Fort Lonesome almost 20 years ago, which creates custom chain stitch embroidered western wear for local Austinites as well as musicians and celebrities flaunting their elaborate wears all over the world. In the interview we talk about her artistic origins and upbringing, her time living on a ranch in Montana, how she ended up finding and learning chain stitch embroidery and what that is, the many challenges she’s faced both professionally and personally growing the business, her awesome team of employees, and how she never really gets to meet the celebrities they work with and she’s OK with that. I love how candid Kathie is about the struggles she has had growing her business and how inspired she is by the people she works with everyday and all their hard work.

Episode 71: Deborah Roberts

October 4th, 2019  |  1 hr 10 mins

deborah roberts

In this highly anticipated followup to my first interview with Deborah from March of 2018, we sit down to talk about all of the wonderful and sometimes challenging aspects of her amazing career over the last year and a half since we last spoke. From grants to residencies to gallery representation in Los Angeles and London, it has been a will ride. But don’t think she is an overnight success. Her work ethic and passion have carried her though over four decades of pursing art to where she is now. As they say, luck is when opportunity meets preparation. Deborah shares how her work has been evolving and where it is headed, her studio practice, as well as giving us a peek into some ideas for her upcoming one women show at The Contemporary Austin a year from now. I think Deborah proves that hard work, integrity, and persistence can change your life and the lives of others in a positive way.

Episode 70: Beili Liu - Resilience

September 23rd, 2019  |  1 hr 20 mins

beili liu

Beili Liu is an installation artist who for most of her practice has focused on the use of space to create transformative experiences for herself and the viewer. She experiments with and puts a lot of emphasis on the exploration of materials, process, and time. Drawing from her life and cultural memory the works often explore issues that she relates to on a personal level and often highlight the importance of feminine strength through the use of meaningful repetition, mending, healing and resilience. And as a teacher who is a working artist she is also able to guide and inspire her students with the wisdom she has gained doing installations and exhibiting her work all over the world.

Episode 69: Women & Their Work - Chris Cowden

September 10th, 2019  |  1 hr 1 min

chris cowden, women & their work

Chris Cowden is the executive director of Women & Their Work, which for over 40 years has pioneered elevating and exhibiting the work of women artists from all over Texas. They have presented over 1900 artists in all disciplines (dance, theater, music, film and visual art) since they started, and have produced over 130 color catalogs with commissioned essays about the artists they have shown. They have programs to educate the public and especially children about art, through various commissioned performances and many other exhibitions and events. They also provide fiscal sponsorship and technical support to artists in creating their work.

Episode 68: Jan Heaton - Love, Gratitude & Family

September 2nd, 2019  |  1 hr 19 mins

jan heaton

Watercolor artist and teacher Jan Heaton is this weeks guest. We met seven years ago when I was working on a photo project capturing artists in their spaces. That experience enhanced my desire to spend more time with creative people and explore their lives and work. Our conversation covers her creative childhood and her art and teaching career through until present day, which is typical of my interviews. But the main impetus for this episode is to share her late daughter Kristin’s story and the upcoming Davis Gallery group exhibition and fundraiser that celebrates her life.

Episode 67: Sydney Yeager

August 24th, 2019  |  56 mins 18 secs

sydney yeager

Sydney Yeager is an artist who describes her current painting style as gestural abstraction. She also teaches drawing and painting at Austin Community College. Teaching has been a part of her life from early on, but it wasn’t until after she had kids and decided to go back to school that she committed to studying art in a serious way. We talk about her history and what motivated her early work and how that has evolved over the years. We also touch on materials, teaching, being a huge art history fan, the Austin art scene and more.

Episode 66: GD Wright - Impossible Until It's Done

July 28th, 2019  |  1 hr 11 mins

greg david wright

GD Wright is a sculptor, fabricator, and design consultant working most often with metal, cast concrete, and blown glass. He also consults with other artists to help them realize their own visions and has collaborated on and managed many monumental scale artworks and constructions. After growing up and attending college in the midwest he then made a career and a name for himself in Oakland, CA. Recently he relocated to Austin to start his career anew and be closer to his young son. His personal work is often a reflection of himself and his desire to confront what might be holding him back and to dismantle the cages we all create for ourselves.

Episode 65: Brinston

July 22nd, 2019  |  1 hr 2 mins

matthew brintson

Dallas based artist Matthew Brinston categorizes his very distinctive painting style as something like descriptive realism that leans toward the abstract. The characters in his works come confidently right out of his imagination with each decisive brush stroke and seem especially unique and attractive in an odd way. Over the last 6 years since he was involved in an almost fatal motorcycle accident that changed his life, he has been painting in earnest and feels that his purpose is to create art to make the world a better place and to help others, primarily directed by his faith in God. Be sure to check out the work and also his very distinctive self branding, social media approach, and marketing style that as he states in the interview is aimed at getting people to take a pause.

Episode 64: Werrick Armstrong - Faith & Inspiration

July 13th, 2019  |  1 hr 24 mins

werrick armstong

Werrick Armstong is somewhat of an outsider artist who spent most of his life in business, but then retired and shifted his focus to art for the last 20 years. With his wife of 50 years he splits his time between Spicewood just northwest of Austin, and Marfa, an unassuming art and architecture mecca in far west Texas visited by people from all over the world. Werrick creates large and often physically and emotionally elaborate 2d and 3d works that deal with a variety of subjects that he is passionate about. Ultimately he feels that he’s really just a tool to create the art, guided by his faith and a higher power.

Episode 63: Taja Lindley - There's Work To Be Done

May 25th, 2019  |  1 hr 17 mins

taja lindley

An 80’s baby born in New York and raised in the South, Taja Lindley currently lives in Brooklyn, New York working as the Managing Member of Colored Girls Hustle. In 2007 she received her B.A. from New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study where she designed her own major, concentrating in public policy and knowledge production with a focus on health and women of color.

Lindley is a memory worker, healer and an activist. Through iterative and interdisciplinary practices, she creates socially engaged artwork that reflects and transforms audiences, shifts culture and moves people to action. She uses movement, text, installation, ritual, burlesque, and multi-media to create immersive works that are concerned with freedom, healing and pleasure. She is currently developing a body of work recycling and repurposing discarded materials.

Episode 62: Sev Coursen

April 22nd, 2019  |  1 hr 1 min

sev coursen

Sev Coursen is an artist working in multiple media including photography, sculpture, film and video. His work has been presented in exhibitions and screenings in the United States and Europe.

Episode 61: Julie Speed - Moments Of Clarity

April 13th, 2019  |  1 hr 35 secs

julie speed

Julie Speed is a painter and collage artist residing in Marfa, Texas who previously lived and worked in Austin for almost three decades. In the high desert of the Trans-Pecos in far West Texas she has found the space and calm to focus on her work as an artist. When not painting she is gardening or building something around her beautiful home which she erected with her husband Fran. Her largest show to date of 48 pieces just cam down from the El Paso Museum of Art but it will travel to the Taubman Museum of Art in Roanoke, Va. and opens there on August 31st, 2019.

Episode 60: Brooke Axtell - Beautiful Justice

April 2nd, 2019  |  1 hr 18 mins

brook axtell

Brooke Axtell is the Founder and Director of She is Rising, a healing community for women and girls overcoming rape, abuse and sex-trafficking. Through her mentorship programs, retreats and workshops, Brooke helps survivors become leaders. She is passionate about inspiring young women to reclaim their worth and express their power to create a more compassionate world.

Episode 59: Elizabeth Chapin - Deconstructing Nostalgia

March 20th, 2019  |  1 hr 5 mins

elizabeth chapin

Elizabeth Chapin is a figurative painter who as she says in the interview is mainly interested in exploring the inner life and essence of the subjects she paints, employing color as emotion, in a masterful and intuitive way. Her most recent exhibition, Deconstructing Nostalgia, consists of pieces created over two years and is in many ways a departure from her previous work. The subjects, materials, and scale, are all part of an exploration of herself and issues around being a mother, her upbringing in the south, and how to live a conscious life of continued awakening.

Episode 58: Stella Alesi - Journeying

March 12th, 2019  |  1 hr 17 mins

stella alesi

Stella Alesi is a painter and long time Austin resident, who decided when she was 11 years old growing up in NJ that she would be an artist. After attending college and living all over the US, Stella settled in Austin with her husband Leon and together they have built a great life together that supports the creative freedom they desire. She spent a few decades working as a photographer but had the goal to quit by age 50 and commit to painting full time. I’ve known Stella for decades but it was great getting to sit down and really dig into her story. What an interesting life she has had thus far. If you know Stella you will love this interview and if you don’t there are so many gems of wisdom in her approach to life and art that I know you will get a lot out of it.

Episode 57: Ariel René Jackson

March 4th, 2019  |  1 hr 2 mins

ariel rené jackson

Throughout Ariel René Jackson's family's history, land has been both a permanent reminder of systemic racism and temporal unfolding of possible transformations and outcomes based on individual and communal actions. Material remnants of a legacy of farming and traditions of black epistemology throughout the diaspora functions as a guide to sourcing materials and research.