Wendy Chin-Tanner, author of the poetry collections Turn (a finalist for the Oregon Book Awards) and Anyone Will Tell You (both from Sibling Rivalry Press), as well as co-author of the graphic novel American Terrorist (A Wave Blue World), is the mother of two daughters, married to a graphic novelist, co-founder of A Wave Blue World, and the proud daughter of immigrants. Born and raised in Brooklyn, NY and educated at Cambridge, she talks with us about how racism kept her from writing for a decade and motherhood brought her back. If ever there was an artist who was able to talk with deep eloquence and insight about the necessity of a creative life when you are a mother, it is Wendy.

Wendy and her family

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n this special episode, recorded at the Mineral School Artist Residency in Mineral, Washington during parent-artist week, Grace Campbell (flash fiction and non-fiction writer and mother of 3) and Laura Stanfill (fiction and non-fiction writer and mother of 2) talk with Claudia about how women can take up space and honor their voices, while not buying into cultural myths about motherhood and art-making. You won’t want to miss this crass, revealing, insightful talk that can only happen when three fed up women speak their minds.

Two artists interview two artists--with our children playing in the adjoining room sometimes, sometimes under our feet. Amy Conway is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work utilizes performance, drawing, writing, video, installation, collaboration, and comedy. Her pieces tend toward reflections of the personal. Brandon Conway is a guitarist who primarily focuses on free improvisation. He likes both minimalism and maximalism, spontaneous intuition and nerdy formalism. Amy let’s everything run together and percolate. Brandon compartmentalizes his art, work, and family life. They have two boys, Heywood and Alvah, aged 10 and 8, who love video games and comic books.

Brandon and Amy taking time to relax.

The Conway family wades in the surf.

The Conway family in their mirror.

Amy

https://amyconwayart.wordpress.com/

https://www.instagram.com/glacierface/

he moves like the ocean: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMkICKJ1pRc&t=2s

this is how i communicate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsycgtycouU&t=17s

twist and shout: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIGuujRhOfA&t=7s

Brandon

https://halfbird.bandcamp.com/

https://soundcloud.com/halfbird-pdx

https://soundcloud.com/nanrandcowboy

http://nanrandcowboy.com/web/

Indivisible Gallery: https://www.indivisiblepdx.com/ 

OCAC/PNCA combined MFA in Applied Craft & Design: http://acd-ocac.pnca.edu/

Creative Music Guild: https://creativemusicguild.org/

 Kickstand Comedy Space: http://www.kickstandcomedy.org/

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Jacklyn Brickman, visual artist, environmental activist, educator, and mother of 3, renews our trust in change and possibility. An avid experimenter in both form and subject matter, Jacklyn has produced work on the competitiveness of birds, the calls of frogs, the housing crisis, suburban lawns, and Egyptian mother goddesses. A Detroit, Michigan native, she recently moved her family of 5 to Columbus, Ohio to start a graduate program and has fallen in love with the black walnut. She is interested in the dynamic interrelationship between people and their habitats and her work spans installation, sculpture, drawing, and video with a special interest in collaboration and social engagement. Take the time to enter her world online. If you're extra lucky, she'll have an exhibit near you soon.

Jacklyn Brickman at a recent exhibit, photo taken by her daughter

Jacklyn Brickman with husband, Andrew Bahrou, and 3 children.

Video tour of Jacklyn's studio with her kids

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Christopher Luna, poet, organizer and dad to Angelo, reminds us what it means to trust others and ourselves and how that can be applied to art-making, child-rearing, and life. An avid collaborator and supporter of others, he believes that putting love and community first allows everyone access to the best parts of themselves. He lives and teaches in Vancouver, Washington, runs the Ghost Town Poetry reading series at The Angst Gallery, runs Printed Matter Vancouver: a press and editing business with his wife, Toni Partington, and has transformed the writing scene, being named the Poet Laureate of Clark County for a record 5 years. 

Christopher Luna (photo by Julian Nelson

Christopher with his son, Angelo, at his high school graduation

Christopher and Angelo on St. Mark's Place

Check out one of Christopher's latest projects Documenting Street Art (with Toni Luna and Leah Jackson) at The Angst Gallery--July 6-28, 2018.

Christopher Luna's work space

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In Part 2 of our interview with single dad, bassist, and educator Andre St. James, Andre talks relationships, musically and romantically. His hard choices. His brave ones. Get the tissues. We mean it this time.

Andre and his son, Dreydan

Single dad, bassist, and educator Andre St. James, splits open our mind with his stories of the tough choices he's made as a father and musician and of the jazz greats and teachers who shaped him. He'll make you howl with laughter and weep a bit, too.  

"I like to say I ditched a promising military career to write books, run a profitless press, and build blanket forts with my daughter..."

People become poets for many reasons, but stage fright is not usually at the top of the list. When Josh Gaines was an Air Force Captain he had terrible stage fright. Horrendous. "I would almost be sick and I had to give generals reports on weapons. So, I thought of the most embarrassing thing I could do. I had these 3 poems. I began reading them several times a week in front of open mike audiences, and, one day, I thought, I could do better. I can write better poetry." So, Josh became a poet and a regular at the open mike he started attending in Oklahoma, and, then, once he left the military he helped organize and run more readings in North Carolina and, then, Chicago, culminating in a graduate degree from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, a partnership and daughter, and a press, ThoughtCrime, where he supports the work of other writers and is supporting his desire for a better country. 

"I like to say I ditched a promising military career to write books, run a profitless press, and build blanket forts with my daughter. My biggest challenge in making work since having a kid has to do with alone time at the right time. I get up, make her lunch, make her breakfast, and my wife takes her to school on the way to work. Then it's my time to write, but even getting into that head space takes a couple of alone hours for me. Then I start to stress and by the time I get to writing, I only have an hour or two before I have to run by the post office to mail books out and then go pick up my daughter. I admit I kinda quit here and there, and then I'll get to a point where I become a far less happy human and a few hours of writing brings everything back in line."

In our conversation with writer Robin Romm we discuss (as the antidote to Trump's State of the Union address) what it means for women to be ambitious, what we risk, how we fail, and if you can actually nurse twins while writing your novel. We tackle the hard stuff and leave nothing for the President.

Claudia and John riff on 2017's art-making, crazy-household-making, artists collaborated with in the past year, and their best ice cream recommendations that will allow you to still pay your rent. Also, a look ahead to the parent-artists who will appear on the podcast in 2018.