Make/Work: A Rumpus Podcast

In Season 2 of Make/Work, Scott will speak with artists and activists about how they are responding to the new administration and the role that art and creativity can play in resistance. The show will seek to primarily amplify the voices and work of those being targeted and attacked by this administration. In Season 1 of Make/Work (Episodes 1-37), Pinkmountain spoke with people working in a wide range of creative mediums about how they survive, how they make a living, how they maintain their work over the long term. Every creative laborer has a different story to tell about how they negotiate their relationship between their creative work and their paycheck and how they balance their lives to sustain their creative practice.

Episode 20: Gene V. Baker 02/18/2019

Episode 20: Gene V. Baker Gene V. Baker is an immensely talented multi-instrumentalist and singer, as well as a composer and songwriter. He speaks candidly about the challenges he’s faced moving from the Bay Area to New York, and about the difficulty he’s had finding time for his creative practice outside of his all-consuming day job teaching music to kids. /episode/index/show/makework/id/8693507

Episode #40: Kate Schatz 07/19/2017

Episode #40: Kate Schatz In Episode 40 of Make/Work, host speaks with writer and activist Kate Schatz, author of the New York Times bestselling and , which she did in collaboration with illustrator Miriam Klein Stahl. Schatz is also one of the founders of the nationwide feminist resistance network , which she started with Leslie Dotson Van Every and Jennye Garibaldi, and which has grown from a house party back in early 2016 to over one hundred chapters with more than eighteen thousand Facebook members. Likely, you know her for both of those things. /episode/index/show/makework/id/5414215

Episode #39: Dorian Wood 05/22/2017

Episode #39: Dorian Wood is a musician, vocalist, and experimental performer. Much of Wood’s music and performance is an intensely visceral celebration and embrace of the body, often his own, which he fearlessly exposes while rendering gorgeous and virtuosic melodies. The effect is a powerful and intimate expression of his singular beauty that simultaneously reveals the more universal beauty of each of us as individuals. Pinkmountain and Wood discuss the impact of the election on a personal level and Wood’s reluctance to directly address political matters through his creative work. Wood points out bluntly that as a self-identified “overweight, queer person of color,” being singled out and antagonized by those in power is not exactly a new experience. Photograph © Pablo Almansa. /episode/index/show/makework/id/5309803

Episode #38: Beth Pickens 04/19/2017

Episode #38: Beth Pickens is an LA-based consultant for artists and arts organizations. Pickens’s background is in Counseling Psychology and she applies those skills to her work, specializing in supporting queer and trans artists, women, and artists of color. After the election Pickens wrote the how-to guide—Making Art During Fascism—and started running a free weekly drop-in workshop at the in LA. The workshop recently finished up, but Pickens is expanding the pamphlet into a book, which will be published by as part of the Feminist Survival Series that author is editing. Photograph © Tammy Rae Carland. /episode/index/show/makework/id/5155113

Episode #37: Melody Parker 01/04/2017

Episode #37: Melody Parker Melody Parker composes intricate chamber songs, and is her imaginative debut record. It invites the listener to inhabit an otherworldly place and time, yet it evokes the familiar as much as the fantastical. She has created these songs with mourning and celebration for this watery home we know—and for the paradoxical richness of our experience within it. *** Photograph of Melody Parker © Andria Lo. /episode/index/show/makework/id/4883494

Episode 36: Abeer Hoque 10/14/2015

Episode 36: Abeer Hoque Author and photographer Abeer Hoque lives in New York, has Bangladeshi roots, was born and raised in Nigeria, and identifies home in several different places. She captures this kind of simultaneous global existence beautifully in her new collection of linked short stories, The Lovers and The Leavers, which was recently published by HarperCollins India. /episode/index/show/makework/id/3856987

Episode 35: Dru Farro 09/16/2015

Episode 35: Dru Farro Scholar Dru Farro is currently finishing his PhD at the Center for the Study of Theory and Criticism in London, Ontario. He is also the Chief Deputy Editor of the journal , and head administrator of the blog . Farro talks with Pinkmountain about his role on the fringes of academia, his deeply ingrained American reluctance to seek medical attention, his eventual and abstract creative goals, and lots of Faulkner with some highfalutin references to someone named “.” /episode/index/show/makework/id/3799062

Episode 34: Joy Castro 08/19/2015

Episode 34: Joy Castro Joy Castro works in memoir, nonfiction, both literary and so-called commercialfiction, and poetry. And she’ll also be directing the Institute for Ethnic Studies at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln this fall. Castro speaks about her somewhat unorthodox writing process, the course of her career, the distinctions (real or false) between literary and commercial fiction, and whether or not she’d feel comfortable leaving her child with the “slutty drunken” narrator of her crime thrillers. /episode/index/show/makework/id/3741929

Episode 33: Daniel Baird and Alex Chitty 07/15/2015

Episode 33: Daniel Baird and Alex Chitty Back in January, artists Daniel G. Baird and Alex Chitty sublet their apartment, quit their jobs, packed what they could into their van, Bosco, and left their home base of Chicago to travel around for a year with the intention of figuring out how to make it all work better. They speak to host Scott Pinkmountain about their goals, fears, hopes, and their desire to avoid being perceived as slackers. And of course the value of “Wiggly Time.” /episode/index/show/makework/id/3671584

Episode 32: Nathan Langston 06/17/2015

Episode 32: Nathan Langston Several years back Nathan Langston schemed up a “gimmick” to meet other artists when he landed friendless in New York City. In April, he launched with the , linking 315 artists from 42 countries. Langston speaks about the origin and development of this ambitious project as well as the effect it’s had on his creative and personal life. /episode/index/show/makework/id/3616909

Episode 31: Aurora Tang 05/20/2015

Episode 31: Aurora Tang Researcher/curator splits her time between Los Angeles, working as the Program Director at the , and Joshua Tree, where she’s the Managing Director of . /episode/index/show/makework/id/3562048

Episode 30: Jon Nielsen 04/15/2015

Episode 30: Jon Nielsen Guitarist/composer Jon Nielsen spends half of his year working as a bike mechanic in Minneapolis and the other half traveling the country in an RV. He speaks about becoming disillusioned with the music scene, the difficulty he’s had regaining his inspiration and motivation over the past several years, and how he hit the road in search of finding that motivation. /episode/index/show/makework/id/3491187

Episode 29: David Meltzer and Julie Rogers 03/18/2015

Episode 29: David Meltzer and Julie Rogers Episode 29 of Make/Work is the fifth of a sub-series where host Scott Pinkmountain interviews couples in which both partners are artists, addressing some of the unique issues that may arise in those relationships and talking about the challenges and benefits of building a life with someone who's also engaged in a creative pursuit. /episode/index/show/makework/id/3431419

Episode 28: Pamela Z 02/18/2015

Episode 28: Pamela Z /episode/index/show/makework/id/3367076

Episode 27: Saul Melman 01/28/2015

Episode 27: Saul Melman Host Scott Pinkmountain speaks with emergency room physician and visual artist Saul Melman about ephemeral relationships, the parallels between creative practice and caregiving, and how to reconcile your identity as both a doctor and an artist. /episode/index/show/makework/id/3313484

Episode 26: Christine Hiebert 01/14/2015

Episode 26: Christine Hiebert has focused on drawing for nearly 30 years. She has shown at museums and galleries all over the world, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her work is both abstract and organic, investigating the nature and language of line. /episode/index/show/makework/id/3288797

Episode 25: Jim Ragen 12/31/2014

Episode 25: Jim Ragen For over forty years, with career, family and various natural disasters intervening, Jim Ragen has been at work on a five-volume novel spanning generations of life in the Dakotas. He turned down an offer to publish his writing in his mid-twenties because he knew he needed a lifetime of experience to best tell his story, which centers around the devastating 1972 flood in Rapid City, South Dakota that changed his life. /episode/index/show/makework/id/3266673

Episode 24: Artist Roundtable 12/17/2014

Episode 24: Artist Roundtable Host Scott Pinkmountain facilitates a conversation between four artists—Fiona Connor; her brother, Jamie Connor, a web developer; artist and writer Brigitte Nicole Grice; and artist Catherine Davis, who works as the manager at the Eames House in the Pacific Palisades. Their conversation veers from Marx and labor power to the difference between honesty and truth in art, to public vs. private practices, to Scott's ignorance about New Zealand, as well as Moondog and a whole passel of other stuff. /episode/index/show/makework/id/3244847

Episode 23: Katherine Ball 12/03/2014

Episode 23: Katherine Ball ’s work happens at the intersection of anti-capitalism, environmental issues, and social justice issues. For Ball, this has translated to a broad spectrum of projects ranging from making inflatable barricades for climate change demonstrations to helping turn a squatted Greek military base into a sustainable farm. /episode/index/show/makework/id/3213309

Episode 22: Mick 11/12/2014

Episode 22: Mick Guitarist and songwriter Mick (who has requested anonymity due to the nature of the discussion) speaks frankly about his childhood abuse and drug use, and the crucial need for alternatives to Katy Perry. /episode/index/show/makework/id/3169790

Episode 21: Mona Tian 10/29/2014

Episode 21: Mona Tian Mona Tian grew up in Shanghai and started playing violin at age 3. She made her major solo debut at age 8, then moved to the US to further her studies when she was 12. She speaks with Scott Pinkmountain about her lost childhood, the pressure she felt as her parents invested everything into her musical education, and how she eventually had to discover her own reasons and motivations to continue playing music as an adult. /episode/index/show/makework/id/3145660

Episode 19: Angela C. Villa and Thollem McDonas 10/01/2014

Episode 19: Angela C. Villa and Thollem McDonas Documentarian Angela C. Villa and musician Thollem McDonas have been living on the road on perpetual tour for the past eight years. Villa has captured Thollem in improvised performance with the likes of Nels Cline, Brian Chase of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Pauline Oliveros, and countless others. /episode/index/show/makework/id/3089558

Episode 18: Lisa Ward 09/17/2014

Episode 18: Lisa Ward An artist and architect, Lisa Ward also has an extensive background in theater, and speaks about her work with the Brooklyn Pageant Project bringing performances to the streets of New York on a wagon that folded out into a theater. More recently, she's focused on visual work—sculpture that blends her interest in architecture and the American West, and in her own words, "exploring symbols of human habitation and infrastructure and their relationship to the surrounding landscape." /episode/index/show/makework/id/3065094

Episode 17: Brett Fletcher Lauer 09/03/2014

Episode 17: Brett Fletcher Lauer Brett Fletcher Lauer is mainly known for his work as a poet. His debut book, , has recently been published by Four Way Books, and his work has also been published in American Poetry Review, Boston Review, Fence, Harper's, and Tin House. He is the deputy director at the . /episode/index/show/makework/id/3042011

Episode 16: Cheryl Leonard 08/20/2014

Episode 16: Cheryl Leonard Composer, performer, and instrument builder is known for creating compositions using materials she finds in the natural world—things like stones, wood, water, ice, sand, shells and feathers. She’s travelled as far as the Arctic and Antarctica in search of new sounds like calving glaciers and her set of penguin bone instruments. /episode/index/show/makework/id/3019816

Episode 15: Nate Wooley 07/16/2014

Episode 15: Nate Wooley Trumpet player/composer Nate Wooley’s playing has been widely praised by everyone from the New York Times and DownBeat to trumpet icon Dave Douglass who called him “one of the most interesting and unusual trumpet players living today.” He’s constantly performing and recording internationally with such folks as John Zorn, Thurston Moore, and pretty much every one playing contemporary free jazz and improvised music. For his day job, Wooley is the curator of the Database of Recorded American Music and the editor-in-chief of their online quarterly journal, Sound American. /episode/index/show/makework/id/2943908

Episode 14: Dan Nelson and Lexa Walsh 06/04/2014

Episode 14: Dan Nelson and Lexa Walsh /episode/index/show/makework/id/2871659

Episode 13: Vanesa Zendejas 05/21/2014

Episode 13: Vanesa Zendejas Artist has recently been dealing primarily with Modernist sculpture and her habit to decorate, perfect, and balance, which she says may or may not be related to being a woman. /episode/index/show/makework/id/2845281

Episode 12: Diane Cook 05/07/2014

Episode 12: Diane Cook Writer Diane Cook was a producer at This American Life for years until she quit to pursue her own fiction writing. She’s since had work published or forthcoming in places like Harper's, Granta, and Zoetrope, and in 2012 she won the Calvino Prize for fabulist fiction. /episode/index/show/makework/id/2821859

Episode 11: Aaron Siegel 04/23/2014

Episode 11: Aaron Siegel Aaron Siegel is one of the co-founders of the New York-based organization , and his own opera, “Brother Brother,” has its full-length premiere coming up in New York City on May 2nd and 3rd at the /episode/index/show/makework/id/2795998

Make/Work: A Rumpus Podcast

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