Austin Art Talk Podcast
In depth conversations and wisdom from Austin artists and creatives, about life, work, and creativity.
About the show
The goal of the podcast is to facilitate connections with and to learn from the successes, struggles, life experience, and wisdom of the people featured, most of whom live and create in Austin, Texas. The honest conversational flow of these weekly long form interviews lends itself to some really great insights and information that is available to anyone who wants to listen. Join us to explore the origins, stories, lessons, lives and work of those in our community who are at the forefront of creative expression. The podcast is hosted by photographer, art enthusiast and collector, Scott David Gordon.
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Episode List
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Episode 56: Koichi Yamamato - Making A Mark
February 11th, 2019 | 1 hr 16 mins
koichi yamamato
Koichi Yamamoto is an artist who merges traditional and contemporary techniques so as to develop unique and innovative approaches to the language of printmaking. His prints explore issues of the sublime, memory, and atmosphere. Koichi has worked at many scales, from small and meticulously engraved copper plates to large monotypes.
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Episode 55: Alyssa Taylor Wendt
January 28th, 2019 | 1 hr 16 mins
alyssa taylor wendt
ALYSSA TAYLOR WENDT is a multidisciplinary artist, filmmaker and curator that works in Austin, Texas and Detroit, Michigan. Her recent projects reference themes of ritual, animism, monuments, mysticism, the primordial, architecture, gender and mortality using video, sculpture, staged photographs, sound and performance. The work tends to provoke questions in the viewer with dark and evocative aesthetics and multiple layers of perceived truth. She earned her BA from NYU and her MFA from Bard College. Transplanted from New York City, she has shown in numerous national and international exhibitions and performed at The Museum of Art and Design in New York, envoy gallery, The Fusebox Festival and Deitch Projects and completed residencies in Iceland and Norway. She is currently finishing her opus multi-channel video work HAINT and just curated an epic exhibition about death and transformation with over 60 artists at DEMO Gallery in Austin. She enjoys darkness, gospel blues and bad jokes.
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Episode 54: Alejandra Almuelle - Revealing the Presence
January 21st, 2019 | 53 mins
alejandra almuelle
Alejandra Almuelle is a full time ceramic artist who creates sculptures and pottery that often merge traditional and contemporary styles and often feature the human figure. Her most recent and largest exhibition of work to date titled The Journey, interpreted the hero’s journey and was inspired by events in her own life. By making pottery, which she sells online and at art fairs, she is able to create her sculptural work and explore it under less pressure to make a living. The creation of each piece is a dance of control, her unconscious, the limits of her abilities, years of experience, and the same doubts we all have bringing something new into the world. She persists until the presence inherent in the clay reveals itself to become its own entity. Being of service to something beyond herself she daily finds joy and love through her work. What a great interview. Have a listen and enjoy!
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Episode 53: Seth Orion Schwaiger
January 7th, 2019 | 56 mins 14 secs
seth orion schwaiger
Seth Orion Schwaiger is an artist, curator, critic and arts writer, and teacher, who splits his time between Austin and New York with his wife Elizabeth, who is also an artist. As a writer one of his goals is to attempt to communicate intelligently about art in a way that everyone can understand. In recent years the art creation side of identity manifest in three exhibitions of work in different cities, which were called Complex 1, Complex 2, & Complex 3. In the interview we speak in detail about each exhibition, his approach to the different aspects of his practices, the Austin art scene, its strengths and weaknesses, and his future plans. Have a listen, share any feedback, and be sure to check out Seth’s work if you have the chance.
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Episode 52: Sharon Bridgforth - Circles Of Relationship
December 17th, 2018 | 1 hr 15 mins
sharon bridgforth
Sharon Bridgforth is a writer and performing artist who collaborates with actors, singers, dancers, and audiences to share works that explore, celebrate, and put forward African American migration stories and performance traditions. The work is also a form of prayer to tell stories, transform, remember, and pass on language of the heart with the intention to bring us all along and create space to be shaped together.
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Episode 51: Drew Riley - Gender Portraits
December 10th, 2018 | 1 hr 8 mins
drew riley
Drew Riley is an artist and activist who through her transition to fully discovering and revealing herself found an opportunity to help others do the same. With her Gender Portraits project she paints, interviews, and shares the stories of trans, intersex, and gender non conforming people. We get a glimpse of their lived experience, their essence, and their lives outside just talking about gender and the oppressive societal norms we all have to deal with in big and small ways. If we are open to taking in these powerful portraits and stories no doubt we can all in some way relate.
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Episode 50: Tammie Rubin - Everything You Ever
December 3rd, 2018 | 1 hr 11 mins
tammie rubin
Tammie Rubin is a ceramic sculptor and professor at St. Edwards University. Since moving to Austin only three years ago she has fully established herself in the art community. While maintaining a consistent studio practice she also teaches multiple classes, supports many other artists, is a member of ICOSA, and is a Dimension Gallery fellowship artist.
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Episode 49: Darden Smith - The Habit Of Noticing
November 17th, 2018 | 56 mins 35 secs
darden smith
Darden Smith is a Texas born singer/songwriter who just released his first book. The Habit of Noticing is an honest and poetic journey through Darden’s life as an artist, what he has learned so far, and the many interesting people that have crossed his path. His writings are artfully juxtaposed with his own drawings and photographs.
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Episode 48: Randal Ford - The Animal Kindgom
October 27th, 2018 | 1 hr 6 mins
randal ford
Photographer Randal Ford, who specializes in conceptual portraiture and advertising work, just released a gorgeous book of animal portraits. The Animal Kingdom is a project that he has been creating on along side his regular work for almost 10 years. It all started when DJ Stout of Pentagram Design approached Randal to make portraits of Dairy cows. It was a novel and fresh idea and soon he found himself getting more animal related advertising work. When he self initiated his own photoshoot of a lion, tiger, and bear, it tipped over into a personal project that would take him to many locations and studios to capture a 150 different mammals and birds.
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Episode 47: Maura Grace Ambrose - Folk Fibers
October 21st, 2018 | 1 hr 16 mins
maura grace ambrose
Maura Grace Ambrose is a natural dye artist and quilt maker who lives close to the land on ten acres just outside of Austin with her husband and four year old daughter. She studied fibers at The Savannah College of Art and Design and after some time working on an organic farm as the greenhouse manager took a fateful four month trip around the US with her husband. As they made their way back to Texas she decided to give it a go and put her skills to use by starting her own company. In addition to her love of the fiber arts Maura was encouraged by her experience growing plants from seed at the farm and felt compelled to create and tell the story from plant to dye to color to quilt in her own unique way. Folk Fibers was born.
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Episode 46: Shawn Camp - Dualities of Existence
October 12th, 2018 | 1 hr 4 mins
shawn camp
The dualities of our existence are many, life and death being one of the most prominent. And we are often searching for rational patterns and order in our experience. Art can sometimes greatly change our subjective view and that can be very intentional on the part of the artist. Shawn Camp has pushed himself for decades to use painting, sound, video, and his teaching skills to explore these varied ideas and many others, to facilitate going deeper than just surface layers. And he draws on his studies in Philosophy and Psychology, in addition to teaching Art, to enhance his concepts and motivations and to stay inspired.