Dear Adam Silver

Long time Sports Illustrated writer Alexander Wolff joins the podcast to discuss his book (one of my favorites ) Big Game, Small World. In 1998, after the Chicago Bulls had won their sixth title but before Michael Jordan had officially announced his retirement, Alex began a year long trip to see how basketball exists in different places all over the world. From the middle of Bhutan to the middle of Bosnia, from China to Angola, Alex gives the reader insight into how the meaning of the game can be translated, and re-translated by various cultures and peoples. 

This interview was very special for me because Big Game, Small World has come to be a guidebook for my own artwork. It is a true cultural document that holds weight eighteen years after it's publishing. 

To read more about Alex, his career accomplishments and his recent book The Audacity of Hoop, please click here. 

I've been close to bursting for the past three weeks wanting to discuss The Last Dance on the pod! Thanks to Brian Tran for coming on to discuss some of his thoughts on the documentary and indulge my long list of talking points. We bounce around between the first six episodes and the most compelling themes and footage so far. 

 Brian Tran is an MFA candidate at Washington University in St. Louis where he studies and writes fiction. We first met at Paul ArtSpace, an art residency located just outside of St. Louis in Florrisant, MO. We bonded immediately over our shared love for basketball and podcasts so it makes sense that he was my first guest ever back in the summer of 2018. Always happy to have him on the show! 

Today's episode is all about mail and the post office. Fellow artist, mail appreciator/sender and dear friend Melodie Reay is my guest. We talk about what the mail has meant to us in our art practices and the everyday excitement of receiving a handwritten postcard. This discussion stems from concerns over continued funding of USPS and our fears of our mail system becoming completely privatized. We scoff at insurance, laugh about water damage and celebrate other mail woes. And basketball shows up, because basketball is in everything. 

Melodie and first met while we were both graduate students at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, LA. She was a year ahead of me in our MFA program and was one of the first friends I made when I moved to Baton Rouge. Her wonderful artwork can be seen here. She and her husband Jim Osbourne (also a wonderful artist) run a wonderful bakery called Rosch Bakehaus (pick up only right now) out of their home in Baton Rouge's Garden District.  As someone who has eaten a lot of their sweet and savory creations, if you live in the area, they are highly recommended and a wonderful business to support. Visit their website here and follow them on instagram @rosch.bakehaus

Thanks for listening! As always, please make sure you are subscribed to the show. And please leave a rating and a review! 

On today's podcast, my dear friend Glauco Adorno and I discuss the book Citizen: An American Lyric by award winning poet, playwright, educator and multimedia artist Claudia Rankine. This book is a masterful unpacking of how racism exists in the United States. Rankine combines poetry, pros, found images and text to express a personal meditation on how the system of white supremacy functions in this country, both in obvious and subtle ways. Specifically, a a large portion of the book is focused on Serena Williams and the hateful and unjust treatment she has experienced from the professional tennis world based on the color of her skin. 

Glauco Adorno is a Brazilian curator and art historian based in Rio de Janeiro. We met each other during our time as graduate students at Louisiana State University. His website can be found here. On today's episode he also shares some of what his experience has been like during COVID-19 and how the virus is being handled in Brazil. He is also featured on episodes 3 and 25 of Dear Adam Silver. 

Claudia Rankine was born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1963 and received her BA from Williams College in 1986 and her MFA in poetry from Columbia Universit in 1993. She is currently the Frederick Iseman Professor of Poetry at Yale University. Her website can be found here. 

Brooklyn based artist Jeremy John Kaplan is back on the pod today to discuss basketball hoops (and of course, nets) being temporarily removed from parks around New York City to discourage people from gathering together in the time of COVID-19.  Jeremy was originally a guest back on episode 20 of Dear Adam Silver where we discussed the Gold Nets Project, an ongoing body of work (est. 2005) where he spray paints basketball nets gold and then hangs them on hoops without a net or hoops that have torn, non functioning nets. This project has been a way for him to give back to the game as a dedicated fan and pickup basketball player. Now, Jeremy is going back to the parks where he has put up nets around New York City to photograph the empty, hoopless backboards that remain. We also get into a little bit of local politics in the city and the state and discuss our experiences during this pandemic and shut down. 

To see more of Jeremy's work click here and to learn more about the Gold Nets Project click here. 

Rebecca Solnit's essay Who Will Win the Fight for a Post-Coronavirus America? can be found here. 

Please note that we recorded this episode last Wednesday, April 1. 

Naomi Clement is a Canadian based potter and educator. We met when we were both in the same cohort during graduate school at Louisiana State University. Naomi is an independent and working artist and the Covid-19 outbreak has hit her hard financially with event cancellations, including many opportunities to sell, share, teach and promote her work. On the podcast, we discuss the fear and frustration that exists for many working artists right now and also the role an artist can play even if it doesn't involve making in a traditional sense. 

If you are interested in checking out Naomi's work you can visit her website here and you can follow her heartfelt posts on Instagram @naomikclement. 

If you are interested in purchasing a piece by Naomi (and have the funds to do so), you can find her work for sale @companiongallery and @euctectic_gallery. 

Sam Anderson is a staff writer at the New York Times Magazine and author of Boom Town: The Fantastical Saga of Oklahoma City, Its Chaotic Founding, Its Purloined Basketball Team, and the Dream of Becoming a World-class Metropolis. As is made clear in this interview, I love this book.  Through my own artwork, I try to discuss intricacies of place, history and societal structures through basketball. Boom Town does just that by tracing the beginnings Oklahoma City to present day alongside the development of the Oklahoma City Thunder.  The book is filled with tiny details specific to OKC, both physical and conceptual and the writing shows a level of reverence and respect for this wildly complicated place in the middle of our country.  

This is a hard time for everyone, for some more than others, and I just want to recognize anyone experiencing loss or pain right now. We are truly in this together.

I recommend Boom Town as a book to add to your reading list during this time of social distancing. Once Bookman's is back open, you can pick up a copy of Boom Town at one of their six locations in Tucson, Phoenix, Flagstaff and Mesa.

Thank you so much to Sam for coming on the show and sharing about his experiences researching in and about OKC and writing this book.

Please note that this episode was recorded ten days ago.

New Orleans based artist Abdi Farah is back on the pod to discuss the coronavirus and it's impact on basketball and beyond. 

To see Abdi's artwork, click here 

To all those listening to and following the podcast, if you can, please stay home. 

As always, Dear Adam Silver is sponsored by Bookman's. 

Emily Stamey is the curator of exhibitions at the Weatherspoon Art Museum at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. For this episode, we discussed her current exhibition To the Hoop, which is made up of art work produced by over 20 artists in response to basketball. The pieces vary in their subject matter, some related to the objects used in the game, some related to social issues tried to the game and some are about  the spirituality of the game. I am very grateful to Emily for coming on the podcast to discuss the development of the exhibition and if any of you listening are near Greensboro, NC in the coming months, please check out the show. It will be up until June 7.

To read more about the exhibition please click here

The sudden death of Kobe and Gianna Bryant has had the basketball world reeling for the last month. At first, I was unsure how to handle their deaths on the podcast. And to be honest, I still am. I am not used to speaking about death and loss, especially on a public platform and about people I did not know personally.  I want this space to be for thoughtful responses, not quick reactions. So this episode is an attempt to discuss what I have heard, read and felt in the past few weeks.

Today’s podcast includes two separate conversations: one with writer and Lakers’ fan Brian Tran and the other with Isaac Eger, who is also a writer and pick up basketball player.

I also want to make sure that I acknowledge the seven others who died that morning. 

Sarah Chester

Here are some articles I have read that I think are valuable: 

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/01/kobe-bryant-i-knew/605560/

https://www.instyle.com/news/kobe-bryant-reactions-complicated-legacy

https://theundefeated.com/features/kobe-bryant-death-complicated-past/

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/28569693/kobe-bryant-never-stopped-trying-inspire

And for interesting podcast conversations: 

Rest in Peace, The Right Time with Bomani Jones 

Remembering Kobe Bryant, Inside the Green Room with Danny Green 

Ramona Shelburne and Rachel Nichols, The Lowe Post