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
Release Date: 09/13/2025
Episode 390: a broken plate catapults a career: Nyack, NY-based artist Rob Strati
The Conversation Art Podcast
Nyack, New York-based artist talks about: Living in Nyack, as far as its local arts community and proximity to NYC; his early artist years in San Francisco, including driving a cab for several years, and eventually getting into tech (starting as a web designer at Yahoo) as a day job, always to support the art even though it became a big part of his then-identity; how his 25 years working in research, marketing and technology all started when he was exposed to web design while staying with friends in DUMBO, Brooklyn; how he shared his 2025 earnings in an end-of-year newsletter, why he did so,...
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Episode 389: The Conversation presents: The Intrepid Artist, an Advice podcast- Episode 1, with co-host Arleene Correa Valencia
The Conversation Art Podcast
“To Post, or Not to Post….That is the Question” In this pilot episode of The Intrepid Artist, the main question asked by a listener is whether sharing (or even having) one’s social media plays an important role in grant and open call decisions. Arleene advocates for developing a thoughtful, engaging and empathetic feed, as opposed to one in which an artist is simply constantly sharing work. She wants a feed in which the artist shares who they really are, beyond the gallery setting; whether to use Stories vs. Posts, and the importance of sharing what you want to share, and how Arleene...
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Episode 388: Lauren O’Neill-Butler on Artist Activism, Artforum magazine and the seminal Project Row Houses in Houston
The Conversation Art Podcast
Hunter College professor and author of , talks about: Her 12 years at Artforum magazine, including its balance between advertising and hard-core art writing, and how her chapter on was written while at Artforum; the classes on Activism she’s taught at Hunter College, which were not to get students to become activists but to make them aware of its history and context; how teaching activism and writing the book were both ‘rage containers’ but also ways to inspire difference; how activisms ‘expire,’ including in the case of her colleague Carrie Moyer, whose hardcore activism...
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Episode 387: Peter Hujar and Paul Thek's "Wonderful World That Almost Was," with writer and Frieze editor Andrew Durbin
The Conversation Art Podcast
Writer and Frieze editor-in-chief talks about: His book tour for "The Wonderful World That Almost Was," which has been hectic; how he became familiar with Peter Hujar’s work initially, and why his and Paul Tek’s legacies really took off after their deaths; Peter’s persona and personality as someone who could be as charming and engaging as can be, but also someone who flew off the handle with a volatile anger at some in his life, and how he actually using photography to deal with some of that anger; how Paul Tek appeared to be thoroughly charming and quintessentially hippie-ish from the...
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Episode 386- James Delbourgo on the 'Noble Madness' of collectors- from Charles Foster Kane to Norman Bates and others, and what Freud had to say about all of them
The Conversation Art Podcast
James Delbourgo, professor of history at Rutgers University and author of , talks about: Why he’s written about contemporary art so extensively, as a history academic who’s very interested in the present, going to galleries and wondering who collectors are right now, raising a lot of questions about archetypes for what would become a big part of his book; how collectors can not only be defined as powerful, they can also be defined as weak, unhinged and deranged, among other things; how the profile of the collector, over time, is more a corkscrew than an arc, with the Freudian view of the...
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Episode 385- Useful Art explodes what your sense of Art with a capital "A" is and can be, with John Byrne, author of “Useful Art- How Activist Artists Can Change the World”
The Conversation Art Podcast
, author of “,” and professor of Useful Art at Liverpool John Moores University’s School of Art and Design, talks about: The city of Liverpool and its art community, with about 20 total galleries, and how he fits into it; where he’ll be book touring the book; a key framing in the book, being in a ‘neo-liberal occupation’ that we live under, which has a huge impact on the culture industries and means the financialization of essentially everything; the surprising pushback there’s been at conferences and other events where Useful Art is discussed, including a lot of resistance from...
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Episode 384: Boston artist and lifelong art school teacher on photography and teaching in art schools for 46 years
The Conversation Art Podcast
Boston-based photographer talks about: The Boston art community (which is often connected to the art school and universities) and why he’s lived there the great majority of his life (he lives in the house he grew up in); he’s a dedicated Mass-hole- there’s an edge to people there and you have break that edge; how he navigates random passersby when he’s photographing for long sessions with his wooden large-view camera (his exposures range from a second to 20 minutes), with people always around him (here’s a short video of a food stand guy singing tango where Jim was doing a shoot);...
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Episode 383- Sarah Khan: Documenting the Immigrant Experience
The Conversation Art Podcast
Hadley, Massachusetts and NYC artist talks about: How it’s a “little miracle” to have a studio (a former chick coop on a farm in the 5-college area of Mass.) after so many years working in kitchens and other spaces not dedicated to her work and where she can really spread out; her short films about the immigrant experience in New York via food trucks (particularly her series), and how she was originally motivated to work in this area in 2015 as a way to follow up on the fall-out from 9/11 among the immigrant community; the challenges she had getting street vendors and other food makers...
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Episode 382: Robbie Conal,from the studio to the streets--applying what you do best to what you care about most
The Conversation Art Podcast
Artist and legendary street artist talks about: His family history, including his two activist-and-politically inclined parents, his background in fighting the power; moving up to Los Osos (in San Luis Obispo County) as a permanent residence (back after the 2008 crash), but keeping a small place in L.A.; what he misses about not being in the city (he’s lived in NYC and SF as well as L.A.); his first big moment with public art, through postering, which was born out of caricature paintings he was making of Ronald Reagan’s cabinet, which he dubbed ‘Men with No Lips,’ and alighted...
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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...
info_outlinePasadena-based artist Linnéa Gabriella Spransy 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 and working in Kansas City for seven years after grad school at Yale, figuring out which voices to use in her work and make enough to have a house and a nice studio, and yet felt claustrophobic by its limitations and where she saw herself in the future if she had stayed there; her mantra in Kansas City, “if there’s no pressure, I still do it,” in determining what work she would keep making no matter what; her intense experience at Yale, where everyone, even the future stars, received harsh criticism for a range of reasons; the big advantages of artists who are extroverted charmers, especially in comparison to the ‘ambiverts,’ as Linnea calls them (and who we both essentially identify as), and even more so the more misanthropically aligned artists; her tenure co-founding Bridge Projects, a spiritually-oriented gallery in Hollywood, which had the misfortune of opening days before the pandemic.
In the Patreon BONUS episode (379A), twice as long as episode 379/the public feed, Linnea also talks about:
Her complex take on the existential state we’re in politically and culturally in the context of history, in which she identifies with people from numerous eras of the past, confronting their own challenging times and what we have in common; her experience living in Pasadena as a diverse place with a significant history and culture, and, as a neighbor to Altadena, what their respective roles have been as neighborhoods for artists in the context of the Eaton fire; her different working methods, from the through-the-process-oriented abstraction, as opposed to her much more research-based figurative work…she describes each of them as working different muscles; in the context of her ‘growing a human person,’ as she put it, the importance of having a rich internal life, interesting things, interesting people…; and whether she should get a studio in an artist building downtown, vs. sticking with her garage studio at home. She also asks (and to some extent answers) a question in support of the future artist advice podcast, The Intrepid Artist.