Melissa Guido is a multidisciplinary printmaker and illustrator whose work draws inspiration from fashion and costume design of the 1920’s. Melissa is currently living in Iceland for 9 months under a Student Fulbright Open/Study Research Grant where she is exploring Iceland’s sustainable textile practices and unique plant sources for natural dyeing. 

During our conversation Melissa talks about digital art, the magic of Iceland, the collaborative nature of printmaking and some surprising revelations about rulers and paper cutters. Her obsession with pushing boundaries is evident in her printing work –screen printing, letterpress, etching, lithography, and relief printing – as well as her current creative pursuits focused on traditional textile arts, natural dyeing, embroidery, weaving, and knitting.

As the co-founder of Sourwood Press, a design and printing studio established with Brittany Emerson, Melissa leads a female-run business specializing in designing, producing, and selling products such as bandanas, stationery, and tote bags. Sourwood Press also collaborates with designers and businesses to create bespoke printed goods and products. 

Takeaways

1. What is the best possible way to make a piece shine?
2. My skills were built over having lots of mistakes.
3. Stay curious about tactile skills.
4. Don’t ever wish your life away.

Melissa Guido

Melissa Guido on Instagram

Sourwood Press on Etsy

Peter Hristoff on Instagram

Chelsea Cardinal

Larry B Wright

Charles Yoder

Jillian Tamaki graphic novelist

Dafi Kühne on Instagram

Hamilton Wood Type Museum

Pressing On: The Letterpress Film

New York Collage Ensemble

Fulbright Student Fulbright Open/Study Research Grant

Artist, teacher, collector, and storyteller Molly Meng interviews artist and illustrator Elizabeth DeJure Wood for today’s episode. They discuss the authenticity of non-human animals, being fully present, generating ideas and limiting options.

Elizabeth has a creative background in ceramics, graphic design, illustration, and fine art. She loves drawing every day and enjoys developing novel visual solutions for clients. Molly and Elizabeth met in the beautiful coastal town of Portsmouth New Hampshire where they both reside.

Takeaways

1. Animals are inherently authentic.
2. Staring into space is important for your creative life.
3. An extended eye to eye with an eel makes an impact.
4. Being fully present in the moment to moment makes a really great life.
5. Keep your instruments or tools of play in sight so you can express yourself fully whenever you need.
6. Generating ideas often come during the ordinary moments and while moving our bodies.
7. Limiting options in the media you use helps with discipline and getting into a more regular art practice.

Elizabeth DeJure Wood

Elizabeth DeJure Wood on Instagram

Elizabeth DeJure Wood on YouTube

Elizabeth DeJure Wood on LinkedIn

Elizabeth DeJure Wood on Bluesky

Elizabeth DeJure Wood on Pinterest

Molly Meng

SarahPedlow, founder of ThreadWritten, is an artist working with embroidery and cultural preservation through workshops, textile travel tours, and fine art. ThreadWritten supports women artisans, traditional textile practices, and the preservation of heritage through research, education, and the cultivation of a global community of makers.

While participating in an artist’s residency in Budapest, Hungary in 2009, Sarah fell in love with Hungarian embroidery and clothing during a visit to the Ethnographic Museum. The experience led her to seek out women embroidering in the written style in Transylvania, Romania, and start ThreadWritten in 2012, first with artisan-made bags and pillows. Since 2014 she has focused on education, lecturing, and teaching cultural embroidery workshops. Originally from the San Francisco Bay Area, she moved to Amsterdam, NL, in 2019, and to Rotterdam this year.

Takeaways

1. Notice what feels nourishing to you. Keep your antenna up and remain curious and creative.
2. Each part enriches the other part.
3. Keep the channel open – the gist of a longer quote by Martha Graham
4. “A miracle is a shift in perception.” Marianne Williamson

Sarah Pedlow

Sarah Pedlow on Instagram

ThreadWritten

ThreadWritten on Instagram

Tim Ingold

A brush with…podcast

Museum of Ethnography, Budapest

Krista V. Allenstein, Midwest Optimistic Artist, loves neon signs, old buildings, dollhouses and the culinary delights of Kwik Trip. She loves painting things often overlooked as beautiful. Monkeying around with words and phrases makes her especially happy. Krista often wishes she had a camera in her eyeball so she could share how she sees the world. Her paintings attempt to make that wish a reality. 

During our conversation Krista talks about embracing chaos, being uncomfortable with compliments, middle-age anonymity and invisibility, and the crippling nature of looking backwards. Krista is a true Francophile who would move to Paris if she could get away with it. She embraces and reveals all the parts of her authentic self – from her contagious optimism and positivity to her control freak tendencies.

A graduate of the School of Visual Arts (NYC), Krista has had the opportunity to participate in exhibitions at the Lakefront Festival of the Arts (In 2023 as the featured poster artist), Des Moines Arts Festival, Columbus Arts Festival, Oconomowoc Arts Festival, Madison Art Fair On the Square, Cincinnati Artfest, Free Range Art, Frank Juarez Gallery, Gallery 2622, MARN Gallery, 2020 Wisconsin Artist Biennial, and a 2019-2020 ARTservancy and MARN mentor/mentee appointments.

Takeaways

1. See the world not the way it is but the way you prefer it to be.
2. Tightly controlled situations aren't that interesting.
3. You have two choices. You could live your life being scared something terrible is going to happen again, or you could just live your life and assume it's not going to.
4. You’re exactly how you’re supposed to be whether you like it or not.
5. The key to successful art is when people know that you mean exactly what you put out there and you're not trying to be someone else, you’re not trying to say something you don't mean. People respond to that kind of authenticity.

Krista V. Allenstein

Amélie

The Regal Find, Madison, Wisconsin

News in Slow French

Finch  

You're going to hear about fighting for the underdog, discernment, editing, celebrating differences, and relinquishing control through your tools in today's episode with Debbie Taylor-Kerman.

Debbie is a Scottish artist who came to New York City to work as a textile designer in 1991. She fell in love with the city and her husband Elliott, and they moved to Harlem where they raised their two sons and still reside. Her path included the Foundation Course at St Martins School of Art in London, a Printed Textiles degree from Liverpool School of art and 4 consecutive years of Nicholas Wilton’s Creative Visionary Program. During the pandemic Debbie left her successful commercial art career of more than three decades and finally decided to paint fine art full time.

We had a great conversation about her obsession which we ended up calling “equality” – but that doesn’t do it really justice –it’s about fighting for the underdog, for racism and inequality, celebrating diversity and how much we can learn from each other. Debbie strives to normalize the fact that we're all different and we all celebrate different things. She writes: “I need to find hope in this fragile and divided world by creating the beauty of diversity. I believe it's critical for everyone to feel seen and to feel that we can coexist in peace.”

Takeaways

1. The mundane things unite us.
2. We all come from somewhere. We are all a part of the people we have in our lives. 
3. When the desire to do it becomes bigger than the fear, take the leap!
4. Find the most important thing and give it room to breathe.
5. Ask yourself: “where is my heart and what do I want to explore and paint?”

Debbie Taylor-Kerman

Debbie Taylor-Kerman on Instagram

Debbie Taylor-Kerman on Facebook

Art Juice Podcast: Finding purpose in your art with Debbie Taylor-Kerman

Tap Into Your Creativity with Sandra Felemovicius

Jillian Suzanne

Sue Zipkin

Nicholas Wilton’s Creative Visionary Program

Cheeky Wee Pumpkins quilting fabric

Wiser Than Me, Julia Louis-Dreyfus

Mark Rothko

Egon Schiele

Bird by Bird, Some Instructions on Writing and Life, Anne Lamott

Rachel Davis

Princeton Catalyst wedges and contours 

Siara Berry creates multi-medium sculptures influenced by neighborships, housing systems, and American domestic landscapes. Deeply influenced by her upbringing in the suburban Midwest, her work contends with cultural narratives about place and purpose, property and people. Using a combination of found object and traditional craft processes, Berry deploys a visual language that is equally quotidian and absurd.

Listen in as we chat about neighborships, domestic landscapes, construction sites, the lawn, yard signs, and control over nature.

Takeaways

1. Artists should feel creative, comfy, and cared for.
2. Every artist is working in their best interest in what feels right to them, and when it doesn’t feel right it’s a negotiation between the artist and the work.
3. Acknowledge that social media is not the full picture.
4. Neighborships are a collective effort in living a private life.

Siara Berry

Siara Berry on Instagram

John Michael Kohler Arts Center Arts/Industry Residency Program

Mary L. Nohl Fund Fellowships for Individual Artists

The Curious History of Your Home podcast

all photos courtesy of Michael Lagerman.

Rainer is a queer creator, collector, and tinkerer raised in lederhosen with a pet buffalo on a floral farm in rural Pennsylvania by an eccentric immigrant father and a defiantly strong mother. Rainer is a designer leveraging art to explore and document encounters of the human condition. He is a sculptor and a painter who creates interactive installations and experiences that help people feel seen and heard.

During our conversation we talk about documenting the human process, what helps and what hurts, machines, control and letting go, procrastination, and seeing time in yearly spirals.

Takeaways

1. Stand up for what’s right. Don’t be afraid to try new things.
2. Sometimes when you start a project you have no idea how much of an impact you will have.
3. Self-doubt can push you into problem-solving and exploration.
4. Not knowing the rules can give you confidence.
5. Don't forget to keep the other burners of your life alive.
6. We’re so much more similar than we are different.

Rainer Wolter

Rainer Wolter on Instagram

Rainer Wolter on LinkedIn

The Accounting, by EJ Trask (Rainer’s debur in short horror story)

Art Prize

Khadi Papers

Krista Allenstein, Authentic Obsessions Episode 2

Mixed media artist and painter Erica Jane Huntzinger was raised in the western suburbs of Chicago. Her parents hail from Maine and Pennsylvania and they drove back there each year to see family and friends all while absorbing and exploring the landscapes and ground they missed. Her immediate family was centered in questioning, learning and growing. Her mother was a psychologist, her father, a minister and Erica was the sister to an adventurous brother. Erica made her way through creative explorations from hundreds of coloring books, mud, rock and stick scapes into multi-media work through the lens of a painter.

We talk about flow, the importance of play, and demystifying the creative process, including how people make creative decisions in their life and how and where people can affect dynamic change for themselves through creative actions.

Takeaways

1. You can affect dynamic change for yourself through creative actions.
2. Be open to asking yourself: why DON’T you do some of the things you aren’t doing?
3. Play helps get you through difficult feelings, which in turn drives your curiosity.
4. Whatever you make, and it doesn’t matter what kind of artist you are, there's somebody out there that's going to like it.

Erica Jane Huntzinger

Erica Jane Huntzinger on Instagram

Erica Jane Huntzinger’s podcast, In The Act

Erica Jane Huntzinger on YouTube

Creative Quest, Questlove

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Sara Willadsen

Art as Medicine, Creating a Therapy of the Imagination, Shaun McNiff

Marco Polo

Lois Keller

Rachel Weaver Rivera

Whitney Morales

On Writing: A Memoir of Craft, Steven King

Cooper Diers

Glimpses and layers of time, what will remain, walking, beauty, palimpsest, AI art, and clothespins are all on the mind of London-based photographer and writer Duncan Petrie.

Duncan explores nature in the human landscape, and what the world might look like when we are gone. His images, found on long walks, are a sort of synecdoche: from a single frame, a single point of punctum, they construct a world. He seeks simple images in order to strip them of their context, and to allow the viewer to peer at the world between them. He holds a 1st class degree in Marine and Natural History Photography from Falmouth University.

Takeaways

1. Always book the tickets the day before. It’s important to make it easy to fit the creative bits into your life. 
2. Photography is a collaboration with the world.
3. Look! See!
4. The future, the end of history, can be beautiful.
5. Look at this world that we have built and notice what things might outlive us and what things are very temporary.

Duncan Petrie on Instagram

Duncan Petrie on YouTube

Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes

Beauty in Photography, Robert Adams

This American Life

Ursula Le Guin

The Worm Ouroboros, E. R. Eddison

The Last Unicorn, Peter S. Beagle

Piranesi, Susanna Clark

Lud-in-the-Midst, Hope Mirrlees

Old books, tight deadlines, the button box, design, and dancing all come up during my conversation with mixed media artist Sue Johnson.

Sue Johnson is a mixed media artist from the UK who loves painted papers, pattern, and repetition. Her working process is quite eclectic but often begins with a colour palette and experimental mark making and various printing and painting techniques. She often works on found surfaces and ephemera such as used envelopes and pages from discarded books destined to be shredded. These provide unique surfaces to paint and print on and the use of collage yields unexpected results. Her printed textiles background informs her composition and process but play, curiosity and intuition lead the way.

Takeaways

1. Push all the boundaries and do something different.
2. Little and often.
3. Notice what you notice.
4. Sometimes the best things come out at the end during the last-minute push.
5. To get unstuck, hold your work up to a mirror to distance yourself and see what needs to be changed.

Sue Johnson

Sue Johnson on Instagram

Sue Johnson on Facebook

Creative Visionary Program with Nicholas Wilton

Bindex UK Link, Bindex US Link

Rex Ray: Art and Design YouTube video 

We Are All connected Art Project, Beatricia Sagar

Art Juice podcast