Something Rather Than Nothing

New Orleans-based visual artist and art educator, Sara Hardin creates paintings that explore the connection between place and memory. She synthesizes collage, painting, and digital media to investigate this relationship. Pulling from both personal and collective recollections, she brings awareness of the space and the unique intricacies of the human experience; the ticks, the quirks, and the machinations of everyday life. Her work plays with the unique characteristics and culture of New Orleans, her hometown. Sara enjoys investigating new places and learning about the people that occupy that space. Her inspiration comes from her surroundings, and she captures the beauty in her everyday world as a crucial element of her art. She then takes that beauty and builds a collaged space, filled to the brim with memory and ritual. Sara’s work is a cacophony of recollection, color, expressive brush strokes, and the enigmatic nature of our lived experiences.

Sara graduated from the University of Louisiana in 2016 with her degree in Arts Education. From here, she began teaching visual arts at the secondary level. From 2019 to 2020, Sara took part in several group exhibitions and was a member of the Basin Arts Artist Collective in Lafayette, Louisiana. In 2021 she was awarded a fully-funded artist residency in VanCleave, Mississippi. Sara graduated with her Master’s in Fine Arts, with a concentration in painting, at the University of New Orleans in 2023, where she was conferred numerous Graduate Assistantship Awards. She is currently being represented by M Contemporary in New Orleans and working as an Art Educator in the greater New Orleans area.

Sara Hardin

BEHOLD!! The Swamp Thing Rather Than Nothing Episode!!

WITH!!!! Special Panel:

Curious wisdom-speaker and plant-woman Em Grebner-Gaddis appears. 

Painter and eccentric gatherer Swamp Ken  (Kenneth Nicholson) speaks to history, body-horror and early 90s bizarro.

Craig Randall thinks of living-thru-doom, hope and plants from the fertile crescent of the Pacific Northwest.

The guiding question and idea behind this fervid inquiry: Why is Swamp Thing Important?

Host Ken Volante corrals most tendrils of this wonderful panel to: explore the brilliance and radical edge of Alan Moore; the connection of Heather Locklear's foot and Midsommar; The Swamp Thing DC movie Universe speculated upon; the Wes Craven film (1982) dismantled and apprehended; the omnipresent threat to women in the films; Kudzu vine Swamp Thing biology theory; the (in)humanity of Alec Holland; the alien-transcendence of orchids; mental health, loneliness and alienation; and, so you know, SWAMP THING in a JEEP - this actually occurs in The Return of The Swamp Thing

Enjoy!!!

Dysgenia is Riley Holland, Brian Wilson, and Dustin Vandehey.

"How much can you you say without words?" That's the question these Portland-based musical veterans seek to explore with their boundary-dissolving instrumental psych/prog/metal outfit Dysgenia. 

Dysgenia have distilled their own unique brand of controlled musical chaos, equal parts head, heart, and gut.

Dysgenia Bandcamp

A warm welcome to the talented and creative artist Bex Carlos! Gonna tell you a bit about her podcast Tu Tía Bruja . . . 

"In the Dumpster Fire year that was 2020, Tu Tía Bruja was born. Tu Tía Bruja is a podcast that focuses on conversations about witchcraft, ghosts, the occult, true crime, anti-racism, and the abnormal. Recorded mostly in English with episodes also available in Spanish.

Since launching in June 2020, the show has charted within the Top 200 Spirituality Podcasts in Canada, Finland, Germany, the U.K., Costa Rica, Chile, Denmark, Spain, Mexico, Australia, Belgium, South Africa, Colombia, and the U.S. It has been a huge pleasure growing my community all over the world."

Bex Website

Horror Beauty Product Line Glamgoria:

https://www.instagram.com/glamgoria/

Mariah Day Tik Tok Ethical True Crime Activist:

https://www.instagram.com/tutiabruja/

https://www.tiktok.com/@tutiabruja

Fortaleza Tequila

SRTN Website 

Jayne Karma Lamo is a neurodivergent multi-instrumentalist, performer, recording artist and producer from Salmo, BC.  Jayne creates dreamy, post-grunge alt-rock, drawing from multiple self produced albums worth of original material.  Her signature sound has been influenced by the likes of PJ Harvey, Radiohead, the Dandy Warhols, among many others.  Jayne plays with a full band, or is available for solo shows doing live looping or acoustic material.  Audiences can expect to be captivated by her otherworldly vocals, moody melodies, and her thought provoking, emotionally charged lyrical content! As a space holder, Jayne also creates deeply relaxing and nourishing soundscapes and very unique immersive sonic journeys for small or large groups.

Jayne

Florence Williams is a journalist, author, and podcaster. She is a contributing editor at Outside Magazine and a freelance writer for the New York Times, New York Times Magazine, National Geographic, The New York Review of Books  and numerous other publications.

Florence’s latest book, Heartbreak: A Personal and Scientific Journey, won the 2023 PEN/E.O. Wilson Award for Literary Science Writing and is called “show-stopping” and “courageous” by Publisher’s Weekly.  Her first book, BREASTS: A Natural and Unnatural History  (W.W. Norton 2012) received the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in science and technology and the 2013 Audie in general nonfiction. It was also named a notable book of 2012 by the New York Times. Her 2017 book, The Nature Fix, was an Audible bestseller and was named a top summer read by J.P  Morgan.  She was the writer and host of two Gracie-Award-winning Audible Original series, Breasts Unbound and The Three-Day Effect, as well as numerous episodes for Outside Magazine’s podcast.  The Wall Street Journal calls her writing “droll and crisp,” which makes her feel like a pastry.

Her public speaking includes keynotes at Google, the Smithsonian, the Seattle Zoo, the Aspen Ideas Festival and many other corporate, academic and nonprofit venues. A fellow at the Center for Humans and Nature and a visiting scholar at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., Florence’s work focuses on the environment, health and science.

In 2007-2008, Florence was a Scripps Fellow at the Center of Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado. She has received many awards, including a PEN America award, two National Magazine Award nominations, six magazine awards from the American Society of Journalists and Authors, and the John Hersey Prize at Yale. Her work has been anthologized in numerous books, including Outside 25, the New Montana Story, How the West Was Warmed and Best American Science and Nature Writing 2008. Florence serves on the board of  two of her favorite non-profits, the Trust for Public Land and the Ted Scripps Fellowship in Environmental Journalism.

Florence Williams

R.W.W. Greene is a New Hampshire USA writer with an MA in Fine Arts, which he exorcises in dive bars and coffee shops. He is a frequent panelist at the Boskone Science Fiction and Fantasy Convention in Boston, and his work has been in Stupefying Stories, Daily Science Fiction, New Myths, and Jersey Devil Press, among others. Greene is a past board member of the New Hampshire Writers’ Project. He keeps bees, collects typewriters, and lives with writer/artist spouse Brenda and two cats.  He has published three books: The Light Years, Twenty-Five to Life, and Mercury Rising, all with Angry Robot Books.

RWW Website

ROLLER DERBY EPISODE! SRTN 202 drops you onto Oregon State University parquet with the skaters of Sick Town Roller Derby (Albany and Corvallis, Oregon)

Immerse yourself in the sounds and story of fighting for survival, being yourself, getting out your angst, sounding your barbaric yalp and having fun!

Sick Town Derby Dames is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization located in Corvallis, Oregon. We are a skater-owned and operated flat-track roller derby league based in Linn and Benton counties.

We respectfully skate on the ancestral land of the Kalapuya represented today by the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians and the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde and are committed to supporting the surrounding community through active participation in local events, volunteering for benevolent causes, and hosting charities at our sporting events.

Sick Town Website

Described as a “combination of Patty Griffin grit and Amy Winehouse grace” by American Songwriter, Portland-based Soul/Americana singer-songwriter Karyn Ann has been charming audiences across the US with her powerful vocals and emotive lyricism. Her debut album Into the Depths (2015) and subsequent follow-up Be Loud (2018) garnered critical acclaim and radio play, leading this once geologist now turned-road musician to gain a steady following along the West Coast and beyond.

She’s shared stages with Haley Johnson, Liam St. John, and Fox and Bones, as well as Emily Saliers of the Indigo Girls (at the 2017 Women’s Redrock Music Festival), and has performed at the legendary Bitter End in NYC . Her work is featured in the award-winning full-length film Undeserved (2016), and most recently in the indie-short Second Story (2022), which went on to win the “Gold Award for Best Acting Duo” by the Independent Shorts Awards, and ‘Best Romantic Short” by the IndieX Film Fest.

In 2020 she was selected for the Falcon Ridge Folk Festival Emerging Artist showcase, and placed runner-up in the Red Lodge Songwriters Contest and TOP 100 in the Great American Songwriting Contest singer-songwriter category. Her 2021 self-produced EP - “I Am Not Yours” was featured on Hare’s Paw Literary Journal, and received positive reviews. Karyn's newest work is an EP titled “Consequence of Fear."

Karyn's website 

Ellen Adair is a regular analyst on MLB Network's "Off Base," and has also appeared on "MLB Now," "Hot Stove" and "MLB Central."

Ellen is a multi-talented artist, actor, writer and baseball brain.

Ellen was the guest on SRTN 128 

Ellen is the co-host of the podcast "Take Me In to the Ballgame," on the Underdog Sports Network.

Thanks Ellen for chatting baseball on EPISODE 200 of Something (rather than nothing)!

Props to the Red Sox and the Phillies.