Art Dealer Diaries Podcast

Sometimes a podcast is just meant to be. I feel that's the case with Justin Hess and Maria Im. You see, I was in Philadelphia at the Barnes Foundation Museum and I happened to run into these individuals. We were looking at some furniture at the same time, and I was saying "Oh, that's a Nakashima or it looks like it's Nakashima."

Maria interjected and said, "Yes, that is a Nakashima! I just lifted it up and it's Mira Nakashima."

I proceeded to tell her that I was going out to New Hope, PA to interview Mira the next day and they both go, "Oh my gosh, that's great!." So we talked for a while in the Barnes and and it turns out they're very both very interesting people with art adjacent vocations.

Justin Hess is a trained violin maker and he only does like three a year and he's got a five year waiting list. Maria Im is a world-class violinist that has played all over the world. She's played at Madison Square Garden and trained at Juilliard. They're both just a remarkable husband and wife combo. Fast forward a little while later and they invite me and my son Charles to come to their studio in Philadelphia and take a look behind the curtain at the process of what it takes to make a violin and it was fascinating.

To me, this chance encounter typifies what I want in my podcast. The spontaneous combustion of the creative juices that come across my path that I am curious about. It was fascinating to hear Justin talk about how he makes these violins and how Maria plays them in an elite capacity. Maria even plays a violin (several, in fact) handmade by her husband for us and It was a  beautiful experience. 

I would recommend not only listening to this, but if you watch it on YouTube, you can actually see the components of the studio of the creativity component that goes together with making a violin and Maria playing the violin.

It was just incredible to meet these humans and to get to know them. I really enjoyed recording this podcast. This is Maria Im and Justin Hess on Art Dealer Diaries episode 417.

This is a podcast I've been wanting to do for a while because I'm a huge fan of this guy's work, but Virgil Ortiz is this really brilliant artist from Cochiti Pueblo in New Mexico.

He's got this long history with Pueblo Pottery. His mother was esteemed pottery artist Seferina Ortiz so he was raised with it. But he pushed past those boundaries of just strictly traditional Pueblo pottery and now he's doing these amazing contemporary sculptures. You see, Virgil's got this entire component of his work that has to do with the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 and an alternate history he created in the 500 years that follow. 

When I was in Santa Fe during Indian Market and we recorded this podcast, he had a big exhibit at the Vladam Contemporary, another one at the Wheelwright Museum, As well as a third concurrent exhibition at the Autry, so he is a busy, busy man. 

He's also a renaissance man. From sculpture, to furniture, to clothing, to pottery, to just seeing the world a little differently. If you don't know who Virgil Ortiz is, which is hard to imagine, but if you don't - this is a great podcast to get to understand the genius of his work.

I had this great podcast with Mira Nakashima and it was a really long one, so I broke it into two parts. This is the second part, and this was really where I walked through her facility in New Hope, PA and we go through these all these buildings. 

The first building is called the "pole barn" which has all this amazing storage of wood, which is really the reason that Mira continued her family legacy of woodworking because she really wanted to see the life of this wood through its journey, and she felt a great obligation to do that. We also look at the place where they take the wood after its "planed," where they really start putting the puzzle pieces in place and where it start to comes together as a piece of furniture. Then Mira takes us to the finishing shed were really as she describes it "the magic happens."

Then after Mira was called away to her board meeting, I was able to talk to her assistant and designer Zane Shalchi and he was very kind and said, sure, I'll do a quick interview. It gave me a different perspective of what it's like to be a part of the legacy of George and Mira Nakashima. 

Anyhow, I think this is a very important podcast historically. I love their work. I think this is one of those that will go down for me as one of my favorites. This is Mira Nakashima, part two on the Art Dealer Diaries Podcast.

Sometimes if you really want to do a great podcast, you just have to get on a plane and go somewhere. In this case, I went to New Hope, PA to talk to renowned second-generation woodworker, Mira Nakashima. 

She is the daughter of George Nakashima, and they both are incredibly important figures in the world of furniture making. Many would say that George Nakashima is the father of modern furniture making. I mean, he's the guy that started it all in the late 40s, and they've been going non-stop ever since.

Mira has been at it herself full time since 1970 and the campus in Pennsylvania is an amazing place to go. If you go, make an appointment way in advance because it's already so busy and they would get overwhelmed if it was open to the public.

It was so amazing to go see the facility and hear this complex history of her father and his craft. You see, they were put into an internment camp in 1942 because of World War II, George being a trained architect and Mira being a newborn at that time. Hearing that story and how George meeting a woodworker while imprisoned changed his trajectory completely from the architectural world. 

This episode is a more traditional podcast, in the sense that we both sit down together and have a really amazing conversation about her and her father's legacy in the arts. After our almost 2 hour conversation, Mira gives us a tour of the facility in Pennsylvania and that will be its own episode of the podcast.

In any case, this is definitely one of my favorite podcasts that i\I’ve ever done. It was well worth the trip to go out there, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat. This is Mira Nakashima on Art Dealer Diaries Podcast episode 414.

I had Rebecca West on the podcast today and she is the Executive Director and CEO of the Buffalo Bill Center of the West. She's just such a lovely person.

I really enjoyed speaking to her and learning about how she became the Director. the story is really quite amazing because she's been at the museum for like 34 years. She started there doing an internship, working on the catalog raisonné of western art icon Frederic Remington. She worked her way through the organization for something like 11 years as a curator, and then continued until she became the Executive Director / CEO in 2021.

We talked about the current show that's going on called "Buffalo Nation" which is a very large, expansive show that is definitely worth seeing. You can hear Rebecca describe all of the components of it and hear how excited an exhibit like this gets the two of us. The exhibit will be up through January of 2028 so you'll have plenty of time to visit it if you're interested.

So, I love it when I get to talk to an organizational figurehead in the art world that really loves their job and knows their stuff. She's been at that museum for 34 years, so I think it's fair to assume that she loves that job.

Learn more about the Buffalo Bill Center of the West here:
https://centerofthewest.org/

One of the wonderful things about having your own podcast and determining who you want to interview is that you can just do whatever and follow your curiosity. In this case, I had the opportunity to sit down with Nogi San. She's a fantastic artist who does a plethora of things but is most well known for her comic book covers.

I've always loved comics. As a kid, I collected a ton of them. I collected them to see the artwork mostly. I always loved the art component of comic books and still had a huge collection up until recently.

Well, Nogi just happens does some insanely beautiful comic covers for the two biggest comic companies in the world, Marvel and DC. Before that, she did artwork for video games such as Assassin's Creed, Cyberpunk 2077, and League of Legends, and was handpicked by Giorgio Armani himself to do artwork for their 2020 Tokyo Olympics collaboration.

But her art career didn't necessarily start that way. It started in a much more uncertain part of life where a career as an artist was maybe not the most secure route she could have taken. To get through that component, for most people, is really difficult. She knew in her heart that being a creative professional was the only thing she could do, because that's who she was on the inside.

So I really enjoyed this podcast and I think you will too. To see her get animated when she talks about her art and her life and the things that make her who she is was lovely. She will no doubt be one of the premier comic book artists of the day. This is Nogi San on Art Dealer Diaries Podcast episode 412.

I had artist Marcus Amerman on today. He's a really interesting guy. He's somebody that we actually represent and is collected by museums around the world. Marcus is just this guy who can do all sorts of things. 

He's a true multimedia artist in that he's done fashion, he's done paintings, glasswork, and he's currently doing assemblage pieces that are made out of old hubcaps. 

What he's best known for though, is his beadwork, or photobeadilism as he calls it. In the 80s he was doing beaded designer jackets worn by the likes of Elton John, John Travolta, and Sylvester Stallone. 

To get to spend an hour with him and just kind of find out where all of the creativity comes from and how it bubbles up was really interesting. I think you'll find it interesting as well. He's just such a unique human. 

It's lovely when you get to spend time with an artist like Marcus. For me, it's a double treat because I get to show his work as well. This is the Art Dealer Diaries Podcast episode 411 with Marcus Amerman.

View available works by Marcus Amerman here

***The Youtube version of this podcast is recommended due to the visual nature of the recording.***

I think one of the greatest and sacred things that you can experience is the firing of Pueblo pottery and I was very fortunate to be able to witness a firing right before the 2026 Santa Fe Indian Market. It was a very famous family of pottery makers too. 

The family includes Christopher Youngblood, Joseph Youngblood, and Sergio Lugo (who ends up winning Best of Show just a few days after we filmed this firing) and they are all brothers. We also got to speak to the amazing Jennifer Tafoya, (who's married to Chris Youngblood) who won Best of Show three years ago. In fact, Chris's mother, Nancy Youngblood, also won Best of Show in the past (though we didn't get to see her this time around) which makes this one of, if not the most decorated family of potters in the history of Indian Market. It's very obviously a great line of pottery makers, and they all stand on their own. 

They're all terrific artisans with their own specialties and it's so interesting to watch what's really involved in doing a firing. First of all, it's a dangerous thing to do the way with the constant smoke and flames. It can take decades to really get to the point where you can be a master at firing. It's a truly sacred event. You'll see it. I mean, they literally make blessings to the pottery that they are firing. 

This is the kind of thing I love to do. It's important to me. It feels important as I'm asking them questions and documenting the process. So if you want to watch experts of their craft do what they do best, watch the Youngblood/Lugo/Tafoya family fire two very important vessels in this special presentation of a firing at their home.

This was the 104th Santa Fe Indian Market and SWAIA has been putting on a ceremony for the Best of Show Award since 1977. It's always incredibly exciting and quite honestly, emotional to watch and be a part of this ceremony because the individuals that win are so grateful and, more often than not, surprised that they were selected as the best in their classification, the very best of what they do, whether it would be beadwork, kachinas, pottery, 2D media, all those things are judged.

The artists that win ribbons for being the best of their respective classification, are then juried to see who wins the best of show award. They pick the final person who they consider to be the very best of everything that year and in this case, it was Sergio Lugo for his magnificent floating pot.

I would encourage you, if you can, to watch this on youtube, because if you see it on YouTube you get to see the winning pieces and the reactions of the artists to winning. It's pretty impressive just to see the emotion that these individuals have and how important Santa Fe Indian market is to them and how grateful they feel for what SWAIA does.

I genuinely love watching his ceremony, because each individual talks about their tribe, family, and culture and how instrumental it all is in how they got there and how they made such amazing works of art. 

I never get tired of these ceremonies. In this case, it was for the 104th Santa Fe Indian Market.

In this episode of the podcast, I am joined by the brilliant contemporary American visual artist Eric White. We spoke for over 3 hours, so the interview is going to be cut into two parts. This is part two.

Eric is widely celebrated today for his intricate, cinematic paintings that effortlessly blur the lines between reality and surrealism. In our conversation, Eric takes me back to his early days as an artist. He sheds light on his formative experiences, the pivotal moments in his schooling at Rhode Island School of Design, and his early years as a professional illustrator.

We dive deep into his artistic journey, discussing how his unique visual vocabulary developed over the years, the inspirations that shaped his signature style, and what it was like finding his footing in the competitive art world. Whether you're an avid collector, a fellow creator, or simply fascinated by the origins of great art, this podcast offers an intimate glimpse into an exceptionally creative mind.

For more information on Eric White and his artwork, visit his website:
https://ewhite.com/