Knives out! Join Tamara for an interview with Charles Alexander, the Chef de Cuisine at Farm Bluffton. He grew up in NYC with a father who worked as a chef in Manhattan, and Charles has worked at fine dining restaurants in Key West, Atlanta, and now Savannah/Bluffton. 

Passionate about high quality and seasonal cuisine, Charles is trained and experienced in classical French, Mediterranean, Asian, and American cuisines.

Mark your calendars: Charles will be putting on a ramen pop-up at Strangebird on Tues, Dec 10! *Edit Dec 6 - unfortunately this has been canceled, but keep an eye on his IG for events to come*

Check out Charles's work, follow him, and get news on more pop-ups he'll be doing here:

https://www.instagram.com/chefcharlesalexander/ 

Topics in their chat include: 

Knives - seriously, so much info about Japanese knives!; the crossover between working in ceramics and working as a chef; how to use a thin metal probe to test whether fish is cooked properly (it's not as simple as using it to test a cake); the importance of math - how Michelin star restaurants measure ingredients out to the gram, so a recipe can easily be scaled up and down; the French term "mise en place;" why the earliest restaurant kitchens were run by military cooks; his tips on food photography and on multitasking when cooking a meal with multiple components; and how "farm to table" means that Charles has personal relationship with local farmers. 

Tune in and get all the details!

Join Tamara for an interview with photographer Bailey Davidson, a Milledgeville native who lived in NYC as an aspiring actor for a few years, before returning to Georgia in the late 90s to pursue his MFA in Photography at SCAD. 

Since graduating, Bailey has built his freelance career in all aspects of professional commercial and editorial photography, working with a wide range of clients, including Savannah Music Festival, Wine Enthusiast Magazine, and The London Observer.

This past spring he opened a studio in City Market - go visit him and his 20 years' worth of Savannah photos there! 

Check out Bailey's work and follow him here: 

https://www.facebook.com/BaileyDavidsonPhotography 

Bailey's indie movie he acted in, called "Bringing Down Dejonga" (this was the ending title after all! I found out online. --Tamara); how while in NYC he started taking headshots for his fellow actors and gradually took more and more photos, getting into art shows, and drifting from acting to photography; how he first heard of SCAD because his parents happened to meet the Poetters on a cruise; his Flannery O'Connor tie-ins of having grown up in Milledgeville and then living in the garden apartment of her childhood home as his first Savannah apartment; his practice immediately post-grad of shooting weddings and family portraits, to support himself as he built up his clients for commercial and editorial shoots; his show at the JEA last year that was a continuation of his MFP thesis show, "Bailey's Acres," all Holga pinhole camera work; the nostalgia of taking photos with an analog/film camera and then being surprised by the images once you pick up your developed photos; his Storyboards website where he displays his series of photos that combine to tell a story, influenced by David Hockney and Robert Rauschenberg; his photography books "Seasons of Savannah," "Savannah Past and Present," and "Milledgeville Then and Now;" recently getting published in the fine art mag "Black & White Magazine;" and his advice to students and young photographers to just shoot shoot shoot as there's no substitute for practicing your craft.

Tune in and get all the details!

Join Tamara for an interview with Julia Roland, a Savannah native who graduated from SCAD earlier this year with a BFA in painting and a minor in art history. The paintings in her portfolio symbolize the many different layers of African American culture and human identity through the juxtaposition of frontal facing confrontational figures, saturated colors, bold shapes, and loose patterns. These paintings are reflections of her identities intersecting as a black, queer woman. 

You can view her work in the current FAAA Small Works show at the Jepson Center, through November 26, 2024; at Bobby Bagley's studio/co-op gallery in City Market; and murals at Kim's Cafe and the outside door of a Head Start off of MLK.

Check out Julia's work and follow her here: 

https://www.juliaroland.com/

How Julia began showing her work in various Savannah spots as young as 18; she enjoys hand-building her substrates and using a jigsaw to cut out organic shapes for her wood panel art; she's always been into design and pattern but didn't want to create strictly abstract paintings, so her current work is portraits with abstract backgrounds; to build up the abstraction she relies on the underpainting to guide her, letting areas peek through or inform a pattern she's going to emphasize; creating murals at Kim's Cafe on MLK, including a portrait of MLK, Malcolm X, and the owners' mother, Kim (and thus the pressure to get portraits right when they're of recognizable people); what is a collagraph and why is it a good printmaking process for someone with a small working space?; her collagraph inspired by her experiences with roommates of different races and thinking about the differences in their hair; the challenge of using a handheld jigsaw to cut out her organic-shaped panels - it has to be thick enough to cut cleanly, but if it's too thick then the piece is very heavy, so Julia likes 1/4" plywood or a small piece of birch; her upcoming group show at Swan Coach House Gallery in Atlanta; her best advice to young artists who are looking to to find their style, message, and audience: thinking of creating art as a lifestyle and not a career, so that you find success in your productivity and not necessarily in your sales. 

Tune in and get all the details!

Join Tamara for an interview with Zack Turner, a Savannah native who studied Sequential Art at SCAD for 3 years, until COVID happened. Since then, he has been working and pursuing his art by creating sequential art zines, illustrations, and occasional murals.

For the month of October, you can find Zack every Saturday 11-6 and Sunday 1-5 at Neighborhood Comics, where's he's working as the Artist in Residence. 

And check out “Sunday Scaries” - his newly-self-published 16 page horror-comedy comic collection - available at Neighborhood Comics or through his IG. 

Check out Zack's work and follow him here:

https://www.instagram.com/intentional_zombiehorde/

The challenges of working in traditional sequential art media - pencil and then pen and ink on paper or board - when you have a "heavy hand;" how the industry really calls for artists being able to do at least some of their work in digital, unless there's a big enough budget for the time it generally takes to work traditionally; for his artist residency Zack is working on a collaborative zine called Radio Jammers, with a few artist friends in Texas, creating narratives based on songs they've chosen (Zack's is Death Machine by AJJ); the physical challenges of painting murals, including the need to constantly run back and forth away from it, to evaluate the entire scene; learning how to do comic book lettering with an Ames Lettering Tool; thinking of comic books as "a movie on paper," and you do the work of the director, sound designer, costumer, screenwriting, etc, so a lot of comic book artists also work in storyboarding for movies; the common practice in comic books to collaborate with a different artist who specializes in the graphic design and lettering aspects; did you know that the GA Southern Armstrong campus has a print shop available to the public?; the joy of classic Sunday newspaper comics such as Peanuts, Garfield, and Calvin and Hobbes; how much fun he had during the SOY X SOY Art Battle back in July and how surprised he was to make it to the last round; and finally: Zack loves art collaborations - feel free to reach out to him if you're interested!

Tune in and get all the details!

Join Tamara for an interview with Brian MacGregor, a fine artist and - more so over the past couple of years - a muralist who's had a studio in City Market for 20+ years now. He moved to Savannah from Richmond, VA in 2000 and got an Illustration degree from SCAD.

Brian says: "You may have notice​d all the handwriting in the backgrounds of my paintings. These pages come from thousands of different people's hand written nocturnal dreams that I collage into the background of my work.​ I have been collecting these dreams for over 15 years in several journals hanging outside my galleries for the public to write in. I call my style "Romantic Surrealism" inspired by the artists of the late eighteen hundreds, mixed with contemporary artistic methods."

Check out Brian's work and follow him here:

https://brianmacgregor.net/ 

https://www.instagram.com/brian.macgregor/

How Brian started showing at A.T. Hun Gallery in City Market in 2003 (until 2008), while still a student, because he was assertive about getting involved in, and volunteering for, the gallery; his trial and error with layering different colors as transparent layers that will be saturated, yet still show the collaged handwriting pages beneath; how he plans out and draws the compositions of his paintings precisely, but then wants the painting stage to be fairly loose; how currently his art business has shifted to be more mural jobs than fine art sales; the importance of researching how much sunlight an outdoor mural is going to get; renting a construction lift for his big murals; how physically arduous painting a mural is; the huge ceiling mural he did on the soon-to-open Subaru dealership in Pooler (and how hard that was on his body); his devotion to Behr paint and toned primers; the recent mural he did for the City, right on the surface of a road at an intersection in Cloverdale, intended to slow down traffic; and Brian's advice to begin your mural portfolio just by painting your own walls. 

Tune in and get all the details!

Join Tamara for an interview with Kasey Jeffrey, a mixed media artist and graphic designer. She is currently focusing on collage and watercolor, often incorporating organic and hand done elements into her digital designs and illustrations.

She's a member of Dreamhouse Studios, an artist workspace above the Starland Strange shop, where she both creates her art and leads various craft workshops.

You can order her "Magic Beet" book through Barnes & Noble, etc! 

Check out Kasey's work and follow her here:

https://www.instagram.com/kaseymakesstuff/

How Kasey moved here from Pennsylvania in 2022, sight unseen, with her partner, and loved it here right away; her degree in Communication Design - comprised of graphic design, advertising, web design, and illustration - and how the illustration parts have inspired her to bring in handmade, physical collage into her graphic design; her first post-college job as an in-house designer for Martin Guitars in PA, doing such work as the labels inside sound holes, art on the guitar neck and fretboard, and the graphics for the company's guitar museum; visiting the workshop where the "inlay guys" were hand-creating the fretboard art she had designed; the joy of using a "clay pasta" machine to make her polymer clay jewelry; she's now a year into being completely freelance, juggling her graphic and web design work, making and selling her own prints and jewelry, and hosting regular creative workshops; "Magic Beet," a book illustration project she landed while still in college, after having proactively reached out to local design businesses for gigs; Kasey's belief in the benefit of cold-calling potential clients to grow her graphic design business; her advice to only show work in one's portfolio that's the type you want to continue to make; and going forward, she's pushing herself to work on larger and more detailed pieces, using paper that expands out beyond the page and has non-flat elements, and working through how to finish/frame it.

Tune in and get all the details!

Join Tamara for an interview with Mary Carol Kenney, a "figurative artist known for her work in painting and mixed media, often drawing inspiration from her surroundings to explore themes of nature, people, and culture."

Mary Carol moved to Savannah in early 2021, largely because someone once told her she would really like it here, and joined the City Market Art Studios at the beginning of July, after having spent years working from her home studio. Visit her symbolism-filled figurative paintings and her pop art screenprints in her studio, or on Saturdays at the farmers' market/lane of artists selling in Forsyth Park! 

* This Sunday, Sept 8 from 4-7pm we're throwing an Open Studios event at the City Market North side (above the Georgia Tasting Room) - please join us to chat with the artists and enjoy light refreshments and music! *

Check out Mary Carol's work and follow her here:

https://www.marycarolkenney.com/

Topics in their chat include:

Tune in and get all the details!

Join Tamara for an interview with Lusiana Morales, who was born in Puerto Rico and began an architecture program there, while also apprenticing at a local tattoo shop and honing her linework skills. Midway through her degree she moved to Savannah to instead get her BFA in Painting at SCAD - she arrived in town in early 2020, so her first months here were during the height of Covid!  

Since graduating, Lusiana spent some time in Miami before returning to Savannah to work at Tramp Art Studios and pursue her MFA in Fibers, which she is currently halfway through.

Check out Lusiana's work and follow her here:

https://www.instagram.com/lusiana.arte/ (art)

Topics in their chat include:

Tune in and get all the details!

Join Tamara for an interview with Jason Bible, an Americana and rock singer-songwriter and instrumentalist who was born in Fort Worth, Texas. He began performing and recording music in the 90s - singing and playing guitar and harmonica.

He left Texas and moved to Savannah in 2001 (due to a "banking issue"), and immediately began playing multiple shows a night, focusing on bars on River Street, and eventually out on the islands. In 2005 he formed the band The Train Wrecks, who are still going strong today.

Nowadays you can catch Jason playing solo, with The Train Wrecks, *and*, recently, out playing Nirvana covers with his teenage son Jack.

Check out Jason's music and follow him here for concert and album news:

https://www.instagram.com/jasonbiblemusic/

https://open.spotify.com/artist/1UXKMDrq24J2TJIJi4DJAN 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-7NvBK95xe8bPrdmvtW_IA

Topics in their chat include:

How Jason started learning guitar and harmonica in HS, through private lessons focusing on early Dylan songs; playing solo both in indie coffee shops and in various Barnes & Nobles in Denton, TX during the heydey of the coffeehouse era; his recent gig opening for BB King's daughter and Stevie Ray Vaughan's nephew at Tybee Post Theatre; what does he mean by "leave sawdust on the stage?;" how his longtime band The Trainwrecks started, playing 3 gigs a night running around out on Tybee and Wilmington Island; how he and a co-writer have written 2 books, with a corresponding song per chapter, named for principles/tenets of Buddhism (contact Jason for these books); how difficult it is to find left-handed guitars and Jason's recommendations for where to buy them; the "Quarantine Concerts" Jason played during the pandemic; Jason's recent musical endeavor with his drummer son Jack, performing Nirvana covers around town for the past year, and the challenge of reenacting Kurt Cobain's screams; his karaoke song is "Roadhouse Blues;" and his upcoming projects: keep an eye on his IG about a new record and book coming out hopefully fall 2025, and about all of his upcoming gigs.

Tune in and get all the details!

It's the 2-year anniversary of Rob Hessler handing the podcast over to Tamara Garvey (after having done it for 5 years)!

To celebrate, Tamara, Rob, and David Laughlin - who also did the show for a few year with Rob - met up for a looooong wild chat about Savannah's creative scene and the art(s) of interviewing and writing about it. 

(One thing we all agree on is the excitement of getting feedback from people who are listening to/reading our interviews HINT HINT!)  

Do you want even more of our unhinged thoughts? Check out each of our social media here:

https://www.instagram.com/tamgarv/

Topics in our chat include:

Bonus article David found that related to our talk about Savannah!

Tune in and get all the details!