Episodes

  • Why Make? Episode 75: Emma and the Art of Collaboration

    Why Make? Episode 75: Emma and the Art of Collaboration
    Dec 29 2025

    There are four unattributed voices in the podcast that I would also like to mention and they are in order of appearance, Adam John Manley of San Diego CA,

    Lisa Geertsen Seattle WA, Jason Nemec Charlton NY and

    M Craig Campbell of Ness Creek SK

    Again my many thanks the Emma board of directors for Inviting Why Make to the 2024 event and to the Emma community as whole for being the wonderful supportive generous people they are. Please go to https://www.emmacollaboration.com/ for more information
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    20 mins
  • Why Make? Episode 74: Turning the Tables

    Why Make? Episode 74: Turning the Tables
    Dec 18 2025
    In Episode 74, my sister Johanna Zorn turns the tables and interviews me about the podcast. This should be a familiar name to those who listen to the credits at the end of our episodes. She has helped edit many of the episodes we have released in the last two years and was in the background making suggestions years before that. She is a veteran of radio and the audio documentary format having worked at WBEZ public radio in Chicago and then founding the Third Coast International Audio Festival, an organization dedicated to audio storytelling. She is now a freelance editor and producer. So take a listen as she tries to get me to answer the question, why I make Why Make?
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    16 mins
  • Why Make? Episode 21Reissue: Sylvie Rosenthal In Memoriam

    Why Make? Episode 21Reissue: Sylvie Rosenthal In Memoriam
    Oct 28 2025
    In 2009 I attended the Furniture Society conference in Boone North Carolina and sat in on an artist presentation by three young amazing makers whose work left a lasting impression. Sylvie Rosenthal, Katie Hudnall and Yuri Kobayashi. Sadly Sylvie passed away on October 14th and that bright shining light is no longer with us. In remembrance of Sylvie please take a listen to the wonderful conversation we had with her in October of 2020. Sylvie Rosenthal is a Madison, Wisconsin based artist and educator. She maintains a studio practice making commission furniture, work for online sales, and fantastic genre challenging sculpture dealing with the intersecting flight patterns of the histories of trade, hybridity, materiality, queer theory, and the natural world. On Episode 21 of Why Make? we discuss her fascinating 2018 show at the Villa Terrace Decorative Arts Museum in Milwaukee called “House Of Risk” and the implications of taking risks in ones work. We also talk about the way in which Sylvie seeks to put multiple layers of understanding and interpretation in her work but ultimately leaves it to the viewer to determine meaning. Take a chance, roll the dice and join us for the next hour as we discuss risk with Sylvie Rosenthal!
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    1 hr and 4 mins
  • Why Make? Episode 73: Smile Honey

    Why Make? Episode 73: Smile Honey
    Oct 28 2025
    In Episode 73 of the podcast we talk with Teresa Audet an artist and educator based in Pittsburgh PA. Her journey as an artist took it’s first turn in college when switched from being a painting major to spending all her time in the wood shop. She then spent the 10 years after graduating making cutting boards, furniture, working in a hardware store and working one day week for a wood carver named Cecilia Schiller who creates Automata. Kinetic whimsical wooden characters that move through a system of gears and hand cranks. Graduate school led to an exploration of performance art and participation in the groundbreaking exhibition Making a Seat at the Table- Women Transform Woodworking. And that is not all, please take a listen to our conversation with Teresa Audet
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    20 mins
  • Why Make? Episode 72: The 2025 Fiberart International

    Why Make? Episode 72: The 2025 Fiberart International
    Aug 25 2025
    In this episode of Why make we are going to literally talk about something close home, both my childhood home of Pittsburgh and my mom who was a fiber artist. That is the 2025 Fiberarts International produced by the Pittsburgh Fiber Arts Guild, of which my mom was a longtime member, Contemporary Craft and Brew House Arts. We will talk with two of the artists involved in this years show Akudzwe Elsie Chiwa and Chieko Murasugi And two long time members of the Pittsburgh Fiber Arts Guild,which has produced this exhibition for over 50 years, Patty Kennedy-Zafred and Risa Nagan. Take a listen as we weave a tale that for me starts with my mom and ends with learning something about an art form long denigrated as women’s work.
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    27 mins
  • Why Make? Episode 71: Sit Like A Girl

    Why Make? Episode 71: Sit Like A Girl
    Jul 16 2025
    Fully automated, remote controlled fighting tables that compete for ultimate supremacy, seems to be a good place to start any conversation. Especially when that conversation is with artist ,woodworker, educator and humorist Annie Evelyn. From fighting tables we move onto the merely absurd, like what it means to be a conceptional functional furniture maker. Her time as a resident artist at the Penland school of Craft. And the work she produced participating in two ground breaking exhibitions for women craft artist
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    26 mins
  • Why Make? Episode 70: Seating Assignment

    Why Make? Episode 70: Seating Assignment
    Jun 6 2025
    This is the story of how a seed of an idea sowed years ago becomes a ground breaking exhibition of women chair makers. The exhibition entitled Seating Assignment happened in March of 2024 at the Sawtooth School for Visual Art in Winston Salem NC. It’s chief instigator was the then artist in residence at Sawtooth Rebecca Juilette-Duex. In this Mind of Maker episode we look at the inspiration for creating this exhibition, learn about the Chair Library at Winston Salem College and talk with Elsa Hoffman one of the artists in the show.
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    25 mins
  • Why Make? Episode 69:How Do You Measure Your Worth - A Remembrance of Paul Sasso

    Why Make? Episode 69:How Do You Measure Your Worth - A Remembrance of Paul Sasso
    Apr 30 2025
    How Do You Measure Your Worth is a metaphorical question Paul Sasso posed in a 1990 sculpture of the same name. Paul passed on to that great measuring tape beyond in March of 2025. So here are some previously unpublished thoughts Paul had on the topic and many more from a conversation we had in 2023.
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    18 mins