Marcie Begleiter, an artist based on the Central Coast of California, talks about: artist residencies, including the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology, where she recently did a 4-week residency, including collecting biological specimens/samples; how her time and relationship with the residency evolves over those four weeks, which has lead to artistic breakthroughs; how she likes deadlines, and can structure her residency experience with the clock ticking and puts extra focus on what she’s doing, and in addition having the support of the people running the residencies; the importance of the artist statement in applications for residencies; what her experience was like at Sitka, from where she stayed (at an offsite house as opposed to the onsite cabins) to how she spent her days and nights, and what her studio days are like on a residency vs. the studio where she lives; why she left New York (Manhattan) for, initially Taos, N.M., and eventually California (essentially she needed more access to nature); and the interdisciplinary program she started at Otis College of Art that focuses on social change in the community.

In the 2nd half of our conversation, which is available on our Patreon page, she talks about: how she’s restarting the local CERT (citizen’s emergency response training) training in her unincorporated town (of Los Osos, CA), partially inspired by not having much access out of her area in an emergency; how she and her husband came to leaving Los Angeles for Los Osos, back in 2015/16, after she toured extensively with her documentary on the artist Eva Hesse; the benefits of living in a small town (Los Osos) which she prefers to city life; the lucky circumstances of having a great studio space in a location where you wouldn’t expect great studios; why she vastly prefers a studio outside her home; she breaks down the different type of residencies: 1) fully funded plus stipends…2) fully funded, no stipend….3) highly subsidized…4) paying full ride; and finally, she addresses our standard finishing questions: how does she feel like social media in this moment, and how success is defined across various careers in the arts.

Oakland-based graphic artist Hugh D’Andrade, author of the graphic novel “The Murder Next Door,” talks about:

His first graphic novel, The Murder Next Door, including what led him to finally making a graphic novel after being a big fan of them for a long time; studying fine art at the California College of Arts and Crafts back in the 1980s, and then going back to the same school, now called simply California College of the Arts, to get a masters in graphic novels; graphic novelists who have been influential to Hugh, including Adrian Tomine from nearby Berkeley, Chris Ware, who he refers to as both a giant and a genius in the field, as well Art Spiegelman, Thi Bui (whom he had as one of his graphic novel professors), Marjane Satrapi, and Phoebe Glockner; how the graphic novelists he’s met have generally been very talkative and have quirky sensibilities, but also have introverted streaks which are necessary for long stretches alone that are necessary for producing their work; how he worked on the beginning of his graphic novel while in grad school, where the crits were very nurturing and supportive, unlike crits from back in the day (undergrad); where graphic novel reading falls in our attention economy; the value he puts on the hand-drawn in comics, with modest digital intervention; and how Vipassana meditation, the first chapter of the book, played a big role in Hugh’s healing journey….

[the Conversation continues for another hour in the BONUS episode for Patreon supporters]

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In the 2nd half of the full conversation (available to Patreon supporters), Hugh talks about: the distinction between cartooning and illustration, and how challenging it is to render a person from multiple views in that style; what feedback he’s gotten so far, with at least one reader saying that it was ‘very unique,’ probably meaning they found it too dark; the roll his parents played (or didn’t play) in healing from his trauma (the murder the book is focused on); his trolling of conspiracy theorists on social media (which is described in the book), which came out of his reaction to people making things up about who was responsible for the murder, along with the pros and cons of engaging with a conspiracy theorist; his description of 3 or 4 major career trajectory paths for artists in big art capitals, inspired by his nephew and students and their impending career paths- the A path/A-train: rock star; B path/B train: you have a partner who has a job/supports you financially; C path/train: artist with a day job; D-train: you live just outside of a major city, or in a college town, or rural areas; housing in the U.S., particularly in the art capitals (a sort of passion of both of ours) and how he bought a house in East Oakland, a part of the city he had never been in and he’d been living in the East Bay for decades; how he’s in a ‘coffee dessert,’ meaning he needs to drive at least 10 minutes to get to a good coffee spot, leading to a beautiful paradox: as a participant in gentrifying his neighborhood, he realizes that as soon as that fancy coffee place pops up in his neighborhood, the gentrification will essentially be complete; the neighborhoods Hugh lived in in San Francisco, particularly the Mission, Hayes Valley and the Tenderloin, and their respective reputations and what he experienced living there as an older young person going to punk shows and the like; his friend Rebecca Solnit’s book Hollow City, about how gentrification displaces people of color as well as creative communities; we dig quite a bit into the weeds of the housing crisis, and how he lived on the cheap in the Bay Area for years, including getting around by bike up until 10 years ago; and finally he talks about his music show highlights over the years, including his changing relationship to the Grateful Dead over the decades.

In Episode 373, Molly Rice & Rusty Thelin, co-founders of RealTime Arts in Pittsburgh, talk about:

The especially niche field of their work, which is the performance of live theater that aligns more with visual art and doesn’t really check any of the ‘theater’ boxes, and how they have interactive elements but don’t confront the audience the way a lot of performance art does (they describe a “lot of conventions around theater… that contemporary audiences have trouble with…”); their series “People of Pittsburgh,” whose tagline is ‘Theatrical Portraits of Extraordinary Ordinary Pittsburghers;’ the size of their audiences and how they’re shows are often tailored to the neighborhood’s they take place in, and how they make their performances as open to all as possible, with a ‘radical hospitality’ option whenever possible; their hosting of Little Amal, the puppet of a Syrian refugee girl that travels the world doing performances amidst community and how their version added a play that incorporated a massive local crowd; their rock performance, ‘Angelmakers: Songs for Female Serial Killers,’ which was a tight show, as compared with their more experimental and improvisatory shows, and how they got a much more mixed audience, including concert-goers to a rock concert, for that show.

This podcast relies on listener support; please consider becoming a Patreon supporter of the podcast, for as little as $1/month, here: https://www.patreon.com/theconversationpod

In the extended Full Patreon Bonus Episode, Molly & Rusty talk about: how they financially support their program, through a mix of fundraising, grants and occasional ticket sales; the gentrification that’s happening in Pittsburgh, which they admit to being a part of, and moved there because they wanted to be somewhere they were needed, as artists, and was a perfect medium in between a big city and a small rural town; Pittsburg’s cohesive art/cultural community, which reminds Molly of 1990s Austin, TX, when she played in bands; how she consider their work multi-disciplinary, influenced both by site-specific work, and that they’re descendants of the happenings of the ‘60s and ‘70s (including Claes Oldenburg and Robert Wilson); their current approach to social media (including looking into leaving Meta platforms); how connecting is a large part of success; and how they feel about connecting with the podcast’s Open Call (the short answer is: ‘really good’).