Libsyn Directory

A conversation with multi-disciplinary artists Cori Nakamura Lin and Tori Hong

Release Date: 09/02/2024

A conversation with artist Nichole Gronvold Roller and pianist Brianna Matzke

Conversations from the Barn

Nichole Gronvold-Roller is a painter who received a BFA in Art Education from Minnesota State University of Moorhead, an MA in Art Education from Boston University, MA, and an MFA in Painting from Bradley University. In addition to being an artist, Nichole is a full-time high school art teacher in Tremont, IL, where she has been teaching for the past twenty-six years. Furthermore, she is a contributor writer for the Inland Art column with Community Word. Dr. Brianna Matzke's dynamic pianism shows “a sense of refinement, flair, and technical prowess” (clevelandclassical.com)....

A conversation with multi-disciplinary artists Cori Nakamura Lin and Tori Hong

Conversations from the Barn

Cori Nakamura Lin (she/her) is a Japanese, Taiwanese, Okinawan-American multimedia visual artist based in Chicago. By painting, documenting, and weaving, Cori is finding her way to a world that prioritizes ecological and community care. Descended from East Asian island peoples and born and raised in the midwest, Cori’s art practice is an ongoing self-archive where she examines her own multiple identities as a story of self. Cori’s work asks: How do we dream beyond our fears in the face of climate collapse? How do we carry multiple legacies, multiple ancestors, through the...

A conversation with singer/songwriter Leslie Vincent

Conversations from the Barn

LESLIE VINCENT is a prolific songwriter and jazz vocalist. Equally at home singing the Great American Songbook, musical theater, and contemporary rock and pop, she has quickly become one of the most notable voices to emerge in the vibrant Minneapolis music scene, being hailed for her joy-filled performances and her “fun, human, beautiful interpretations” (Levi Weinhagen). Born into a military family, Vincent spent childhood moving along the East Coast and United Kingdom, where she spent her spare time singing along to Frank Sinatra and the Les Mis soundtrack. The one constant was...

A conversation with authors Molly Beth Griffin and Juliet Patterson

Conversations from the Barn

Molly Beth Griffin is the author of four picture books: Ten Beautiful Things, The Big Leaf Leap, Rhoda’s Rock Hunt, and Loon Baby. She has also published a young adult novel, Silhouette of a Sparrow, two chapbooks of poetry, and a series of beginning readers. Two more picture books are forthcoming in 2024: Rings of Heartwood: Poems on Growing and Just Us. Silhouette of a Sparrow (winner of the Milkweed Prize for Children’s Literature) was a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award, the Lambda Literary Award, and ForeWord’s Book of the Year, and was...

A conversation with composer Carlisle Evans Peck and playwright Elle Thoni

Conversations from the Barn

Carlisle Evans Peck (they/them) is a genderqueer composer and singer-songwriter of Northern European settler descent based in Minneapolis. Their work is focused on the power and magic of song and the human voice, rich with queer narratives, magical realism, and mythic symbolism. As a singer-songwriter and a music-theater composer, they consider songs as vessels for forgotten stories, landscapes of emotion through which to wander, and spells and offerings. Elle Thoni (they/them) is a queer femmebeast playwright and public artist from the banks of the Mississippi River on Dakhóta land in...

A conversation with Vincenzio Donatelle

Conversations from the Barn

As a multi-instrumentalist and songwriter, Vinnie has dedicated the majority of his life to making sense of the world through melody, rhythm, and verse. From, picking up the violin at age 12 and later busking on the streets of France, to learning to play the upright bass to set out on the road with the Last Revel, to finding the guitar as a tool to reimagine his process and find joy in playing with his indie-rock project Friend Dog, he's always felt that the song has been his only way to process his experiences in the world. He's found that a beginner's mind in his work is the only path to...

A conversation with singer/songwriter Ondara

Conversations from the Barn

Ondara offers a unique take of the American dream on Tales of America, his debut album. By Eric Danton Ondara grew up in Nairobi, Kenya, listening to American alt-rock and making up his own songs for as long as he can remember. After moving to Minneapolis in 2013, he began making his way in the local music scene, continually writing songs about what he saw, felt and experienced in a place far different from home. From a stockpile he says is hundreds of songs deep, Ondara chose 11 for Tales of America. They’re captivating tunes built around acoustic guitars and adorned with subtle...

A conversation with singer/songwriters Ben Noble and Chris Bartels

Conversations from the Barn

Ben Noble is a Minneapolis-based artist and producer. Noble’s serene, innocent melodies drift lithely along sonic textures that range from sleepy-time folk to intrusive, experimental hyper-synth scapes. Through any aural difference, the heart is the same: Noble wants to embody his truth and experiences in his music. Chris Bartels is a producer, musician, husband, and father from Minneapolis, Minnesota. He has spent hours upon hours of his life crafting textures, melodies, emotions, soundscapes, and stories through music. Bartels' musical obsessions are varied, plentiful, and often.

A conversation with Allison Vincent and Taja Will

Conversations from the Barn

Allison Vincent is a performer, director, writer, and teacher known for devised work, physical theatre, and gender-bending performances. She has been honored to collaborate with companies and theaters across the Twin Cities, including The History Theater, Jon Ferguson Theater, WLDRNSS, Theater Forever, The Four Humors, Mainly Me, The Illusion, The Guthrie, Frank Theatre, Sod House, Strike Theatre, Transatlantic Love Affair, the University of Minnesota, and Walking Shadow. Allison has received two Ivey Awards for her work creating performance in ensembles and three Golden Lanyard Awards from...

A conversation with authors Rachel Moritz and M. Ahd.

Conversations from the Barn

Rachel Moritz is the author of two poetry books, Sweet Velocity (Lost Roads Press, 2017), and Borrowed Wave (Kore Press, 2015), as well as five chapbooks. She’s also the co-editor of a collection of personal essays, My Caesarean: Twenty-One Mothers on the C-Section Experience and After (The Experiment, 2019), which won the Foreword INDIES Award in Silver. Rachel’s work has appeared in American Letters and Commentary, Aufgabe, Colorado Review, DIAGRAM, Iowa Review, Tupelo Quarterly, VOLT, Water-Stone Review, and other journals. Her poems and critical writing have been featured in...

More Episodes

Cori Nakamura Lin (she/her) is a Japanese, Taiwanese, Okinawan-American multimedia visual artist based in Chicago. By painting, documenting, and weaving, Cori is finding her way to a world that prioritizes ecological and community care.

Descended from East Asian island peoples and born and raised in the midwest, Cori’s art practice is an ongoing self-archive where she examines her own multiple identities as a story of self.

Cori’s work asks: How do we dream beyond our fears in the face of climate collapse? How do we carry multiple legacies, multiple ancestors, through the generations? How do we honorably re-root as unmoored people on occupied lands?

Primarily using gouache, watercolor, and paper-cutting when making images, Cori layers fluid washes with sharp paper edges to create dreamy, textured paintings that investigate liminal spaces in the natural world and her cultural identities.

She is inspired by Japanese records of yōkai, kawaii visual culture, and Okinawan textile practices, and she is currently learning basket making practices to help her process her relationship to the lands that she lives on. Learning from the work of Black and Indigenous feminist abolitionists — like Mariame Kaba, Kelly Hayes, and Ruth Wilson Gilmore — and Afro-diasporan and Indigenous futurists —like Octavia Butler, NK Jemisin, and Grace Dillon—Cori Nakamura Lin aims to create art that will outlive her into the next seven generations.
corilin.co

Tori Hong (she/they) pursues an interdisciplinary art practice expressed through illustration, textiles, printmaking, and installation. Positioned within queer theory and praxis, her work explores the concepts of ritual, pleasure, self-determination, and political resistance. Hong endeavors to bring the past into the present — and the present into the future — by incorporating Hmong and Korean aesthetics into their practice. Expressed through repetition, saturated colors, and confident lines, Hong’s art embodies and expresses their authentic self, encouraging her audience to do the same.

Born in 1992 in Minneapolis, MN, Hong is currently based in Providence, RI working toward her MFA in Illustration at the Rhode Island School of Design. Hong has been awarded the Everwood Artist Retreat (2024), Springboard for the Arts Hinge Arts Residency (2021), MRAC Next Step Fund (2020), Forecast Public Art Early Career Research and Development Grant (2020), and more.

Ntxoo Art reclaims the name Hong shares with her mother and sister: Ntxoo [“un-Zong”] meaning “shade” or “shadow”.
ntxoo.art

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