We are super excited to share this conversation with Gil Rocha, artist, educator and curator from Laredo, Texas.  Gil is a phenomenal contemporary artist who shows around the United States and in Mexico, most recently in a solo exhibition at Presa House Gallery in San Antonio, Texas.  Gil brings together his profound abilities to mix the absurd, poetic, and political into works of art that span sculpture, drawing, painting, language and sound to really speak to the place and time he is living and working in.  As an artist from Laredo who left and returned, he is both insider and outsider and his work really speaks to the depth, humanity and experience that encompasses. 

Gil teaches art at Vidal School of Communications and Fine Arts in Laredo, Texas and continues to be an ally to the No Border Wall Coalition who actively and creatively make work and actions that speaks truth to power to protect the river and her people.   He is an ongoing friend and ally to the OBW Project, welcoming us with open arms in 2018 when we visited Laredo.  Gil and Leah met during graduate school at School of the Art Institute in Chicago and became fast friends!   Gil also came to Pittsburgh in 2019 to work on a mural project called Disrespecting the Border/Irrespetando la frontera: a weekend-long collaboration with the community and as part of the University of Pittsburgh's Year of Creativity initiative.

No Border Wall Coalition

We are honored to share our conversation with Ebtehal Badawi, a Pittsburgh-based artist, activist, mother, and inspiration to many.  Ebtehal is a prolific and passionate artist who creates to build bridges and showcase the innate human connection we all have to one another.  In 2019 she began an anti-bullying campaign as a direct response to two racist attacks against Muslim students:  one was targeted at a student in a neighboring township while in her own high school bathroom, and the other was against her own son on his hockey team.   

Using love and creativity in defiance to hate and fear, Ebtehal created a poster that now hangs in local schools and colleges that is intended to remind us that we are all connected, in the city of bridges, as brothers and sisters in peace and love.  

We hope you enjoy this powerful conversation with someone who came to art later in life, and is now using all her spirit and energy to create a world where we all belong.

Ebtehal Website

Ebtehal and her anti-bullying campaign in the news, 2019

A very short introduction for what you can expect from this podcast.  We welcome you here!  Join us as we redraw borders and dissolve walls.

We are thrilled to share our conversation with Chris Dos, the bassist for the Pittsburgh-based legendary punk band Anti-Flag. Launching in 1988, Anti-Flag’s powerful live performances match their intense lyrics, imploring the world and their fans to work in solidarity for justice for all. They have released 12 studio albums, their most recent, 20/20 Vision, a pointedly anti-Trump, anti-Fascist album that portended the former president’s 2020 election defeat. Chris Dos joined Anti-Flag in the late 90s. Co-host Tereneh follows Chris on Twitter and when he followed her back she nearly fell off her chair. Through this “meeting” he agreed to sit with the OBW pod. This just goes to show you that social media isn’t all bad.

http://www.anti-flag.com/

Here we speak with the brilliant and enigmatic artist and craftsman Jaime Guerrero, known internationally for his work in glass.  Jaime has been at the forefront of using his work to connect to marginalized communities through empowering them to the incredible world of glass art.

Visit Jaime's website!

See his solo exhibition at the Pittsburgh Glass Center

We introduce ourselves and provide a short condensed history of how we began in early 2017 when the Trump administration, newly in power, sent out a Request for Proposals to design and build ‘Other Border Walls’.  We go back to those early days and what got us started on this project and how it has evolved since then.