Artists Telling Stories
As the language of humanity, art tells stories of inspiration, hope, and healing even as it acknowledges the hurt and despair that afflicts us all.
In our Challenging Cultural Times, Steve Bliss tells Stories of the Complex Relationship Art has to Nostalgia and Truth
Steve Bliss is serious about the value art (his art) can bring to a fractured society, yet he recognizes that elements of art can also be used to manipulate a culture. Bliss believes there is a truth that can be approached through photography, despite its proclivity to nostalgia—capturing a romanticized or idealized feeling of the past—and he appreciates the turn photography has taken toward awakening a sense beyond nostalgia.
Meryl Truett’s Story of Excavations
Meryl Truett is a curator, gallerist, teacher, consultant, and artist. She earned an MFA from Savannah College of Art and Design. After years in the United States, where she taught and produced works such as Vernacular Highway and a photography book, Thump Queen and other Southern Anomalies (in its second printing), she moved to the magical pueblo of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Meryl continues to exhibit—in the US, Europe, and now Mexico. Her current work mixes photography with other media in order to excavate her past. She speaks of such excavations in this episode of Artists Telling Stories.
Josephine Sacabo Tells a Story of Her Journey Toward Transcendence and Connection
Josephine Sacabo’s art seeks transcendence and connection. She eschews any chasing after artistic fashion in favor of diving into what she loves. In this way she connects with those who view her work. The many layers of her work evoke layers of being, some disturbing, yes, but ultimately transcending such disturbance to “come full circle” with compassion and beauty.
Artists Telling Stories Extended Trailer
In this extended Artists Telling Stories Podcasts trailer, please join Austin Tichenor, Aline Smithson, Joe Harjo, Vincent Valdez, Jay Tolson, Alicia Olatuja, and Jim Lavilla-Havelin in discovering the importance of stories, the language of our humanity, and the transformative power of art. Artists Telling Stories Podcasts draw out human stories in the hope that in their telling, artists will offer a new story of our shared humanity, bringing all of us closer together.
Poet and Activist, Words and Names, Marks and Meaning: Jim Lavilla-Havelin
Jim Lavilla-Havelin has written six collections of poetry, with several more in the works. His work has been anthologized widely, and he has been nominated for Poet Laureate of Texas, where he has lived for the last few decades. This episode of Studio Aesculapius is different. Jim reads three poems and has a wide-ranging discussion with co-host, Eddie Dupuy: about the poems, about poetry, about art and activism, about language and knowing and finding patterns, about the human desire to make marks and the attempt to make meaning.
Joe Harjo and Native Visibility: Not Monolithic, but Extraordinarily Diverse
Joe Harjo says he didn’t have “access to seeing ‘artist as profession,’” while he was growing up in Oklahoma as a member of the Muscogee (Creek) nation. When he told a guidance counselor in high school that he wanted to teach, the counselor rebuffed him. When he said he wanted to be an artist, he got a similar response. Now he’s both artist and teacher, and his work tries to counter misrepresentations of Native peoples in popular culture. After a particularly difficult year of isolation, an injured knee, the resurgence of racial strife, and Covid, Harjo discovered his origins anew, both as an artist and as a Native person. He felt “lifted” and “carried through” by histories, his own and that of his ancestors, and he shared that discovery in a series of prints. It’s one of the mysteries of art that you will find something of yourself in his story as well.
Aline Smithson and Finding a Visual Voice: Something Universal, Something Healing
Aline Smithson was always drawing as a child growing up in Los Angeles. After a stint as a large format painter, Smithson went to New York for 10 years, working in fashion. She returned to LA, took a class in photography and realized she “could use the camera to make art.” She had found her “visual voice,” and now, as a teacher for more than 20 years, savors the moments she sees that voice arise in her students. Smithson is one of the most recognized names in photography, not only because of her work developing LENSCRATCH, an online resource for and community of photographers, but also because of her own significant body of work, which elevates the everyday world into something more. You will enjoy our conversation with her because of the individuality and universality, the humanity, she shares with us.
The Displaced and Disappeared: Adriana Corral and “Between Spaces”
Adriana Corral credits both sides of her family for her interest in art. Her father's side had several physicians who invited her to see their work of healing and who gave her a strong sense of the body. On her mother's side were an aunt and uncle who opened to her ideas of social justice. Like her place between her father’s and mother’s families, Corral sees between spaces as “where vital content exists.” She invites those who view her installations to do so “bodily.” Looking up, looking down, being aware of where they are in space. The spaces she creates are meditative or contemplative, dealing with heavy subjects that pull her viewers in (like gravity) while still giving them space to experience the work uniquely. Her conversation with us is no less weighty, drawing listeners to her thoughtful reflections on her life and work.