Taking a Break from Meta- please join me in Boycotting all Meta platforms this week
Release Date: 01/21/2025
Episode 381- Arleene Correa Valencia: From rural Mexico to the Napa Valley and back, fulfilling a family dream
The Conversation Art Podcast
Napa, CA-based artist talks about: Why she lives in Napa, CA, and the two distinct versions of the town, for the wealthy and for the poor (“you’re either the owner of the vineyard, or you’re working the vineyard,” as she put it); how she’s the first generation to not be working the vineyards, his dad having worked the vineyard for a period before transitioning to hand-painting etched wine bottles for a winery (which he had to ultimately leave for lack of being paid enough because he didn’t have an MFA); her favorite wines by grape (Pinots and Cabs from Sonoma mainly), and more...
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Episode 380- London-based photographer and writer Michael Collins on the perils of photography, and art criticism, and why to give your viewers the benefit of the doubt
The Conversation Art Podcast
London-based photographer and writer talks about: The flat where he’s lived for 35 years, which is getting ‘Wallace & Gromit’ crowded; how he keeps film in his deep freeze (aka freezer) as opposed to anything edible, and how he’s happy to shop for the day, while he points out that Brits see American refrigerators and are overwhelmed by how large they are; and by the way, we’re also bludgeoned by advertising here, compared with the UK and Europe; how he sees our social media consumption as giving in to the impulsive at the expense of the rational, a battle he gives in to daily...
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Episode 379- artist Linnéa Gabriella Spransy – growing up in a commune, Yale grad school, working as a living artist in Kansas City, and co-founding the gallery Bridge Projects
The Conversation Art Podcast
Pasadena-based artist talks about: Growing up between Wisconsin and a commune in Oregon, the latter which she describes as a complete commitment more than an experiment (the town was Wildeville, Cape Junction being the closest city); how you radically live out the life of Christianity, including giving away all their stuff, and how her father played in a Christian glam rock band that toured the world; having a positive commune experience, yet winding up ‘inevitably becoming part of the machine,’ aka capitalism, despite her wonderings as a child, which are still there; her period living...
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Episode 378: Artist Camilla Taylor- "My House Burned Down"
The Conversation Art Podcast
, Los Angeles artist, and curator of “), talks about: Her childhood with complicated religious origins, between her Mormon LDS father and her mother who branched off to start her own organization (some might say ‘cult,’ per Camilla), and how art, for her and many artists, can often fit the functions that people are often looking for in religions (including being part of something bigger than themselves); how she’s really good at compartmentalizing, seeing difficult experiences from her life as existing in rooms in a house, where she can shut the door to any given room; the epic story...
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Episode 377- “An artist walks into a bar…” Guy Richards Smit on his New Yorker cartoons, his paintings, and humor in art
The Conversation Art Podcast
Brooklyn-based artist and sometimes New Yorker magazine cartoonist returns to the podcast eight years after his first visit to talk about: His admitted high self-regard, paired with self-awareness, which we identify as being rare; our respective experiences and takes on artist blowhards; his history with cartooning, going back to his obsession with gag cartoons, going back to a New Yorker cartoon book he read at his grandparents’ house when he was a kid; how he started making his own gag cartoons; the steps he took to build his cartoon portfolio, leading to getting published in the New...
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Episode 376: Merging art & life and leaving the city for the country: artist couple and collaborators Gribaudi-Plytas.
The Conversation Art Podcast
In Episode 376, Alex and Theo talk about: Their location in rural France, at the southern end of the Champagne region, where there are tons of vineyards, many of which they take friends from out of town to, and how even in their minimally populated area they see plenty of income inequality; how they met while living in London’s version of dorms for art students, even though they were going to art schools that weren’t at all near each other, and how they evolved from friends to romantic partners to romantic partners who make art collaboratively; Theo’s art school professor, Leigh Clarke,...
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Episode 375: Marcie Begleiter on artist residencies, working with nature, leaving big cities, and much more
The Conversation Art Podcast
an artist based on the Central Coast of California, talks about: artist residencies, including the , 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;...
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Episode 374: “The Murder Next Door,” Oakland-based graphic artist Hugh D’Andrade’s first graphic novel
The Conversation Art Podcast
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...
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Episode 373: RealTime Arts’ Molly & Rusty on interactive happenings in Pittsburgh, where it's all about "Feeling the bean"
The Conversation Art Podcast
In Episode 373, , co-founders of 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...
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Episode 372: Painting, photography, and hard but necessary decisions: Claire Witteveen, an artist in Amsterdam
The Conversation Art Podcast
In Episode 372, the 1st half of the conversation with Amsterdam-based painter and photographer , she talks about: Her putting off painting initially in favor of photography, for reasons both practical and related to insecurity, partly based on her mom being an artist who juggled that and being a mother; how she can feel completely disconnected from her photography (mainly when it’s a commercial object), but at other times, especially taking portraits, she feels very connected to her subjects; and how with painting she sees it as a monologue, whereas photography is more of a dialogue; how...
info_outlineAfter learning about the Lights Out Meta campaign, a boycott on all Meta platforms from January 19th thru January 26th, 2025, it sounded like a good idea, and after reading about it more extensively, I think it's a necessary one.
Here are the articles I quote from in this one-off boycott episode:
Meta's pivot to the right sparks boycotts and calls for a user exodus
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Lights Out Meta: R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe calls for Meta boycott to protest rise of US far-right
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Meta Boycott And TikTok Ban Could Signal Social Media's Transformation