Art Works Podcast

This week, we’re talking about investing in the creative economy from two perspectives. First, we get an overview of the issues from Laura Callanan. She’s the founding partner of Upstart Co-Lab,  an organization which works to connect impact investing to the creative economy.  With global partners from the UK and Argentina, Upstart Co-Lab co-published a report about this--Creativity, Culture & Capital: Impact investing in the global creative economy brings together some 40 essays from organizations from around the world that support impact investing in creative industries. In the podcast, Callanan explains what’s meant by the creative economy and impact investing, and how they contribute to a thriving culture and economy. She always shares what the United States might learn from the work done in this area by other countries. Then, we burrow down and look at investing in the creative economy from a local perspective by looking at the work done in Atlanta, Georgia, with Sheoyki Jones. Sheoyki Jones is the founding program manager of Creative Industries, an initiative of Invest Atlanta.  (She also contributed an essay to the Creativity Culture & Capital report called “The Creative Industries: Driving Economic Opportunity in Atlanta.”) Jones talks with me about the programs that Creative Industries began that support Atlanta’s creative workers. She discusses the importance of genuine outreach to creative workers and also shares some of the challenges and best practices in designing programs that invest in and support local creative communities.

In his documentary The Story Won’t Die--an official selection of the AFI DOCS Film Festival-- director David Henry Gerson looks at the lives and work of eight Syrian artists in exile. Since the civil war in Syria began ten years ago, more than half of the country’s population has been forcibly displaced. Of these, 6.8 million are refugees and asylum-seekers who have fled the country. The life of an artist is never easy—but to create art, first, under a violent and oppressive dictatorship, and then, as a refugee struggling to survive in a strange land, is something else again. What meaning does free expression have for someone in exile? Who is there to see or hear? Where can words and images resonate? How do you make a community in exile? These are some of the questions that the artists ask themselves and that The Story Won’t Die explores. These artists do continue to create in spite of displacement, As Gerson says, they “find ways to turn very dark, awful circumstances into creativity.” The Story Won’t Die interweaves the stories of these eight artists, with their art—music, dance and visual arts—taking pride of place in the film and becoming a central part of the narrative. In this podcast, David Henry Gerson talks about his decision to make a film that focuses on Syrian artists in exile, the relationship that developed with the artists, interweaving the art with their stories, the burden of exile, and the extraordinary resilience shown by these artists under dire circumstances. Featured Artists: Abu Hajar, Bboy Shadow (Mohammad Sabboura), Diala Brisly, Tammam Azzam, Anas Maghrebi, Medhat Aldaabal, Omar Imam, Bahila Hijazi    

Anita Fields, a citizen of Osage Nation, is a renowned textile and clay artist whose work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. Her art reflects Osage philosophy with its connection to nature and emphasis on duality. Her work also gives a new visual language to the complexities of Native history and culture. While immensely talented in other media, Fields has been named a National Heritage Fellow for her outstanding ribbon work. Native American ribbon work is colorful, precise, and complex. The style of Osage ribbon work is unique and Fields is an exemplar of the art form. An innovative artist, she honors the tradition while taking it to new places--for example, taking the designs of ribbon work and impressing it on her ceramic and clay pieces.  In this podcast, Fields talks about the centrality of Osage culture and philosophy in her art, her work in different media, her respect for and innovations of traditional textile and clay work, and her long and continuing artistic journey.

In 2015, the New Orleans City Council voted to remove four Confederate monuments from public grounds. Death threats, protests, lawsuits, and rallies ensued, and writer and comedian CJ Hunt thought the situation ripe for a short satirical YouTube video.  He was curious “why a losing army from 1865 still holds so much power in America.” He covered the hearings and protests, and a bigger story began to emerge—one with profound implications. The result of Hunt’s exploration is a documentary called The Neutral Ground—a personal, disturbing, sometimes-funny, and informative exploration of the struggle over the monuments in New Orleans. But more broadly, the film, an official selection of the both the Tribeca Film Festival and AFI Docs, is an examination of collective memory, the myths of the Confederacy, how history was rewritten and reaffirmed, and the price paid, especially by Black people, to keep the story of “Lost Cause” alive.  In this podcast, Hunt talks about the film’s journey from short funny video to a timely and scholarly documentary, his decision to insert himself as a central character in the film, the conversations Black people have been having about these monuments since Frederick Douglass, and how humor can be a great method to get people to examine uncomfortable truths.  

One of the most important public artists in New Orleans is Enrique Alférez who was born in rural Mexico of indigenous Nahua heritage.  His life spanned the 20th century, and his distinctive vision helped shape the look of the city. His figurative sculptures, fountains, architectural friezes, bas-reliefs and carvings can be found on buildings and streets throughout New Orleans from City Park to Lakefront Airport, from the Central Business District to Algiers Point. Alférez is the subject of a new biography by poet Katie Bowler Young called Enrique Alférez: Sculptor.  Young had unrestricted access to his private papers and his family’s holdings; and, the result is a thoughtful, comprehensive, and visually-rich assessment of Enrique Alférez’s life and work.  In this podcast, Young discusses the breadth of Alférez‘s work, his commitment to public art, his place in the New Orleans’ visual landscape, his celebration of women and laborers, his time with Pancho Villa’s revolutionary army (oh yes!) and why a poet would take on the task of writing a biography—even one of a great artist.

Mohegan theater artist Madeline Sayet believes that stories have power; they can do harm or they can heal. And her aim is to use story medicine: to serve people by sharing stories in ways that heal communities. Sayet is an award-winning director whose many honors include a TED Fellowship, an MIT Media Labs Directors Fellowship, and a White House Champion for Change Award. She is a playwright, a performer, and a director of new plays, classic work, and opera. First and foremost. Sayet is an advocate for and participant in Native theater, championing Native playwrights, directors, and performers. She grew up with traditional Mohegan stories and Shakespeare, and it’s this intersection that informs her current exhilarating and intimate one-woman show Where We Belong. Sayet both wrote and performs in the play, which is presented by the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company in association with the Folger Shakespeare Library and is streaming through July 11. Where We Belong is Sayet's journey examining her time living in London while working on a PhD in Shakespeare and becoming increasingly uncomfortable in a country that doesn’t recognize its colonial past. Yet, when she returns to the United States, to Mohegan in Connecticut where she lives, she’s finds it difficult to feel grounded again. In this podcast, Sayet talks about the impulse behind Where We Belong, the challenges of performing a one-woman show during the pandemic, the enormous growth in Native theater and the possibilities it offers, and the centrality and potency of story to her life.   

Maestro William Henry Curry is a man of incredible talent, tenacity, and enthusiasm. His love of music is infectious and informs his rigorous approach to conducting as well as his ongoing outreach to community members. He grew up in Pittsburgh in an African-American working class family, and both he and his brother went on to become professional classical musicians. There was a musical lineage, even if it skipped a generation: his maternal grandfather organized and sang in a Black opera company while his paternal grandmother was an organ major at the New England Conservatory.  It’s not easy for African-American classical musicians, and it’s especially difficult for African-American conductors. And Maestro Curry has met numerous challenges even as he has found great success. In this podcast, the Maestro talks about some of those challenges and successes all of it filtered through his great love of music which has been a lodestar he’s been following his entire life. He talks about his student days at the Oberlin Conservatory, his extraordinary twenty year run as resident conductor of the North Carolina Symphony, his working with jazz artists when he was resident conductor for the New Orleans Symphony, and his current position as the music director and conductor of the Durham Symphony Orchestra where he insists on robust programming of American composers. Maestro Curry is a passionate story-teller whose gusto is matched by his charm, wit, and humor.  

Celebrate Juneteenth with this conversation with Kaitlyn Greenidge, author of the novel Libertie.  An historical novel, Libertie  was inspired in part by the true story of Dr. Susan Smith McKinney Steward who in 1869 became the first Black female doctor in New York and then co-founded of a hospital for women in Brooklyn.  Greenidge shifts the timeline to before, during, and after the Civil War and creates the character of Dr. Kathy Sampson—a widow who is raising her daughter Libertie to walk in her footsteps in a Black community in Brooklyn, regardless of the girl’s wishes.  As she runs up against gender roles, class and parental expectations, and colorism, Libertie seeks to create the life she wants. Kaitlyn Greenidge parallels Libertie’s struggles with autonomy to the ways Black people sought to enrich their lives and their communities in the aftermath of slavery, and she traces their ongoing discussions about what freedom would look like for Black people in America. In this podcast, Greenidge talks about writing an historical novel, the possibilities that Reconstruction offered Black people and the country as a whole, her decision to set her novel solely in Black communities and make white society peripheral to the story, and the pervasive and ongoing challenges of colorism.

We’re celebrating Pride month with a conversation with poet, 2011 NEA Literature Fellow, and 2020 Pulitzer Prize-winner Jericho Brown.  Drawing on biography, history, and mythology, Brown’s acclaimed collection The Traditionbears witness to personal and public violence, love, anger, and vulnerability. It challenges and forces a reckoning with tradition, even it seeks to enlarge its possibilities. And it does so with language that is both dazzling and haunting. Brutality and tenderness are never far apart in Brown’s work. In language that sings with lyrical intensity, Brown demands attention to the beauty of and damage done to the bodies of Black and queer people.  In this poetry-filled podcast, Brown walks us through his writing of The Tradition in particular and poetry in general.  When Brown writes a poem, he begins with sounds. He says, “Once you find the words that make those sounds, they tell you what you’re saying.”  Brown gives us a close reading of a couple of his poems, explains the new poetic form he invented called “the duplex” (and gives us poetic examples of it,) and talks about the significance of Black queer poetry and its capacity to expand our concept of love.

We’re kicking off Pride Month by revisiting my interview with playwright, composer, lyricist Michael R. Jackson.  A Strange Loop, his play about a Black queer musical theater writer, has wowed audiences and critics, capturing some of 2020's most prestigious awards, including the Lambda Literary Award for Drama, the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. A Strange Loop is the first musical to win a Pulitzer for drama without a Broadway run, and Michael R. Jackson is the first Black artist to win a Pulitzer for a musical. (The NEA funded the world premiere, which was produced by Playwrights Horizons.) The show is bawdy, joyous, disturbing, funny, and heartbreaking. The songs are often bouncy tunes that stay in your head while the lyrics can tear at your heart. Jackson has said he never thought the play would ever be produced, so he just wrote what he wanted. (There's a lesson here.) And his mission statement is "to make works that are as challenging as they are entertaining." He succeeded. It was a pleasure to revisit this musical podcast: Jackson is smart, funny, and extraordinarily engaging. And I’ve been singing his fabulous music to myself all week. You will too!