This episode features a conversation with host, Rhonda Willers, and guest, Sara Nishikawa.

Sara is based in Detroit, Michigan. Her sculptural practice coexists with a profession in nonprofit administration. Her approach to studio practice is one of desired balance, but also recognizing the peaks and valleys of creativity and life. As part of her creative practice, she hosts one-day baking residencies, known as Mostly Butter. Throughout our conversation, Sara comes back to the importance of your community of support as a lifeline to keeping creativity alive. 

Please enjoy this episode with Sara Nishikawa.

To learn more about Sara’s work follow her on Instagram @supersarebear and @mostlybutter and her website www.saranishikawa.com

Podcast: www.theartistinmeisdeadpodcast.com Instagram: @theartistinmeisdeadpodcast
Host Information: www.rhondawillers.com Instagram: @r_willers

Studio Mix #15 :|: Sara Nishikawa
Pork Soda by Glass Animals 
DLZ by TV on the radio 
Maps by Yeah Yeah yeahs
Your Dog by Soccer Mommy 
Intro by The XX

Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7oC95RgS8f6epQTv4EBvyl

Sara Nishikawa’s Biography:
Born and raised in Honolulu, HI, Sara Nishikawa is an artist and arts worker based in Detroit, MI. She is currently the artist-in-residence at Greenwich House Pottery in New York and has exhibited her work at Simone DeSousa Gallery and Spaysky Fine Art Gallery LLC. She runs Mostly Butter, an artist residency where she and an artist bake something they’ve always wanted to bake. She holds a BA in Psychology from Loyola Marymount University, MA in Visual Arts from CSUN, and an MFA in Ceramics from Cranbrook Academy of Arts. She has a small dog named Angus and a cat named Kitty.

Episode page: https://theartistinmeisdeadpodcast.com

This episode features a conversation with host, Rhonda Willers, and guest, Carmen Radley 

I met Carmen through the online writing community and newsletter, The Isolation Journals, where she serves as the managing editor and host of the monthly writing hour called The Hatch. In this conversation you’ll hear how Carmen became a co-collaborator with the founder, author Suleika Jaouad, and how The Isolation Journals has evolved in so many beautiful ways. 

Carmen is based in Austin, Texas, and her family has been rooted in Texas since the early 1900s. Before coming to her present role and work, Carmen was a k-12 educator, hospital ship journalist, and professional biography writer. As we talked, she shared that her current personal project is focusing on reclaiming her hometown of Sour Lake, Texas, as a forgotten place. She is writing this book with no promise that it will be published, but this allows her to explore and evolve it before the pressures of the market come on it. Carmen’s love of literature and her poetics are so evident in this conversation - I can’t wait for you to experience it!

Please enjoy this episode with Carmen Radley.

To learn more about Carmen’s work follow her on Instagram via @theisolationjournals and check out the community at TheIsolationJournals.com and on substack: https://theisolationjournals.substack.com

Studio Mix #14 :|: Carmen Radley 
Fast Car by Tracy Chapman
The Promise by Sturgill Simpson (When in Rome cover)
16, Maybe Less by Calexico, Iron & Wine 
Texas Sun by Khruangbin & Leon Bridges
Summer's End by John Prine

Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2apnzasqONvzmEuhNMOjID

Carmen Radley’s Biography:
Carmen Radley is the editor of the Isolation Journals. She’s currently writing a climate change memoir about her hometown of Sour Lake, Texas, an early twentieth-century oil boomtown where her family has worked in the oilfield for more than a century. A graduate of the University of Texas and Bennington College, she lives in Austin, Texas.

Episode page: https://theartistinmeisdeadpodcast.com

This episode features a conversation with host, Rhonda Willers, and guest, Pam Kravetz. 

Pam Kravetz, “a mural makin’, street paintin’ quilt sewin’, yarnbombin’, curatin’, flashmobin’, tutu wearin’ rootin’ tootin’ art monster.” She is a regionally & nationally recognized visual artist with more than 50 art exhibits & installations.

Pam is the epitome of “come join me” for all the fun! Pam is based in Cincinnati, Ohio, where May 21st is officially Pam Kravetz Day and after our conversation, I’m sure you’ll understand why she is celebrated not only by her city, but also by anyone who meets her. She is an advocate and empowers those around her. She did throughout her k-12 teaching career and she continues to do so through her collaborative art making process, known as Pam & Co.

We cover so much of Pam’s amazing life in this conversation: from elementary art teaching to advocacy to starting her own synchronized swimming team and becoming a lifeguard at age 61! Give yourself the gift of getting to know Pam through this conversation. 

Please enjoy this conversation with Pam Kravetz. 

To learn more about Pam, check out her instagram @pamkravetz and her soon to be revealed new website pamkravetz.com

Studio Mix #13 :|: Pam Kravetz 
These Boots Were Made For Walkin' by  Nancy Sinatra 
Brick House by The Commodores 
Talk to the Animals by Rex Harrison (Dr DoLittle) 
Love Shack by The B52's 
Ohio River by Jake Speed & the Freddies

Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4roohnY6SPlTkj61moO2I2

Pam Kravetz’s Biography:
Pam Kravetz - She’s a mural makin’, street paintin’ quilt sewin’, yarnbombin’, curatin’, flashmobin’, tutu wearin’ rootin’ tootin’ art monster. She is a regionally & nationally recognized visual artist with more than 50 art exhibits & installations.

With Pam, Contemporary Art is not a spectator sport – it is understandable, accessible, interactive and community oriented. Truly, she is inspired by the beauty in the chaos of the everyday. Her artwork ranges from street art, Artworks installations at Cincinnati’s Children’s Hospital to monumental Memory Quilts in the lobby of the Contemporary Arts center. Recently Kravetz was the Art Director for The Blink Parade, a Board Trustee for Artworks ,The Art Academy of Cincinnati, Ish Festival, HRC (Human Rights Campaign), and was a Co-Onsite Liaison for the National Council for the Ceramics Arts (NCECA) Conference in Cincinnati.

She is the creator & face of CAC-tV and the curator of the live art performances. Her alter ego, Pinky Shears is the notorious Mastermind of the Yarn-Bombing Collective – the Bombshells of Cincinnati and the performance art collective The Polyester Spy Club. Her current exhibit on view at the Cincinnati Art Museum Rosenthal Education Center – Ace Ramone, Mr. Doodle-Boy & the Peanut puts the best parts of herself & her art into an interactive wonderland. Her interactive exhibition, I Think My Uncle Gershun Was A Golem, at The Weston Art Gallery in Cincinnati, Ms. Kravetz used her artist voice and platform to talk about her family, her Jewishness and antisemitism. Currently, she has an installation at the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center in the Creativity Center’s UnMuseum, titled Pinkolicious Pamajama’s House of Wonder and Silly Scooter’s Playhouse. Kravetz is also a CityBeat newspaper Best Artist of 2022, an Enquirer Cincinnati Women of the Year 2017. She has numerous awards and recognitions as both an artist and art educator. Pam is always up for the next larger-than-life art bonanza!!

Episode page: https://theartistinmeisdeadpodcast.com

This episode features a conversation with host, Rhonda Willers, and guest, Zahra Hooshyar 

Zahra is an interdisciplinary artist based in Northern California, who describes herself as constantly stuck in diasporic liminal spaces. 

Zahra and I met at Anderson Ranch Arts Center where she was working as a ceramics intern. She was my workshop assistant for a week-long terra sigillata workshop, which we can now fondly refer to as t-siggy thanks to Zahra. She’s one of those people who feels like magic when you meet her. She engages with a desire to be submerged fully in the wholeness of life. 

Zahra is a first generation Iranian-American, who was born and raised in West Virginia to a cute and short pair of Iranian immigrants. We recorded this episode on the day her BFA thesis show opened. She is graduating from the University of California-Davis with a degree in Studio Art and a minor in Persian Studies, and as you’ll hear from our conversation, Zahra is a human containing multitudes of experiences and knowledge. 

Please enjoy this episode with Zahra

To learn more about Zahra’s work follow her on Instagram @zazahoosh and check out her website http://www.zhooshyarstudios.com

Studio Mix #12 :|: Zahra Hooshyar
Be Careful by Greentea Peng
Prelude by Ali Azimi
Lamp Lady by Sevdaliza
It Never Rains Here Morteza by Kiosk
No Bus by lophiile

Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/42rb0A0IahbU54upMbEcxW

 Zahra Hooshyar Biography:
Zahra Hooshyar is an interdisciplinary artist with an emphasis on ceramics. Born and raised in West Virginia to a cute and short pair of Iranian immigrants. She is a first generation Iranian-American that is constantly stuck in diasporic liminal spaces. Hooshyar will be graduating from the University of California-Davis with a degree in Studio Art and a minor in Persian Studies.

Episode page: https://theartistinmeisdeadpodcast.com

This episode features a conversation with host, Rhonda Willers, and guest, Emily Romens. 

Emily’s creative practice has evolved from that of art student to arts administrator to presently new mom. We discuss the importance of self-compassion when it comes to your creative practice and how to recognize when you might be missing or lacking your own creative motion. 

Emily shares ways artists can advocate for themselves when they are beginning careers or jobs in arts administration. She offers ideas for how you can ask for your creative practice to be part of your employment agreement. 

We also dive into the feelings of shame that bubble up when someone tells us “it’s so easy to make” and yet we are struggling to take that first step and how it requires a lot of energy to be spontaneously creative. 

Please enjoy this episode with Emily Romens.

To learn more about Emily’s work and practice, follow her on Instagram: @emlyrmns

Studio Mix #11 :|: Emily Romens
Sexy Villain by Remi Wolf
The Chain by Fleetwood Mac
Happier Than Ever by Billie Eilish
Paralysed by The Staves
Summer Girl by HAIM

Podcasts:
Armchair expert
Lore
This American life
Mike Bribiglia’s Working It Out

Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4BggKksXt1YtOrRBUO9NUV

Emily Romens Brief Biography:
Emily Romens received her BFA in Ceramics from the University of Wisconsin - River Falls in 2017. 
I make non-objective objects, based on very objective things. I am an object maker, and a bellyacher. I find myself most attracted to patterns of domestic life - each beautiful, overwhelming, insignificant, sexy, humorous, caring, heavy, vague, charming, ordinary, moment. How I get my hands moving has changed a lot over the last five years, but the wonders of my gross domestic life has remained. I am now a mother to my child, the first human who has ever deserved my mothering. And somewhere in there is that object maker.

Episode page: https://theartistinmeisdeadpodcast.com

This episode features a conversation with host, Rhonda Willers, and guest, Hannah Kane. 

Hannah moves through the world as an artist and wanderer. In our conversation, you’ll hear how she prioritizes wonder in her life. And then we meander through Hannah’s seeking nature and the teachers that have mentored her along the way, including the ocean.  Later we think about the ways in which our creativity is impacted by our romanticized beliefs about the creative paths of others.

The title of this episode is inspired by Hannah’s realization that the ocean is never going to get closer to her, so she needs to put herself next to the…*bleep’n*...ocean, just like we need to put ourselves next to our creativity if we want to experience it. 

We started the recording after catching up and laughing for about 30 minutes, so you’ll hear us come into the conversation from that place of connection and joy. 

Please enjoy this episode with Hannah Kane

To learn more about Hannah’s work and practice, follow her on Instagram: @_h_kane_

Studio Mix #10 :|: Hannah Kane
Boa Sorte Vanessa De Mata and Ben Harper
Ndokulandela by Bongeziwe Mabandla
Falling Water by Maggie Rogers
Shake it out by Florence and the Machine
All I wanna do by Sheryl Crow

Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/10eBrgqYCbk3phJOrNS6ah

Hannah Kane Brief Biography:

I move through the world as an artist and a wanderer. I have been enjoying my last few years learning through travel and connection with others. I am constantly seeking new languages to connect with and some of my favorite modes are: conversation, storytelling, clay, dance, yoga, food and my newest favorite surfing. Spiritual work is the most important and interesting to me.

Episode page: https://theartistinmeisdeadpodcast.com