Artist Kelly Witmer joins host Javier Proenza to talk about material process, experimentation, and what it means to sustain an art practice in the desert. Based between Joshua Tree and Los Angeles, Witmer works across glass, ceramics, and painting, transforming the unpredictability of the kiln into a meditation on control, failure, and transformation.

In this episode, she traces her trajectory from photography and printmaking at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia to her later exploration of sculpture and abstraction. The conversation moves through her early life in Pennsylvania’s Mennonite community, her relocation to Los Angeles in the 1990s, and the gradual evolution of her visual language — from figurative painting to material-driven forms that balance fragility and chance.

Witmer also reflects on the changing realities of the art world: the economics of desert living, the value of art school, and the rise of Instagram as both tool and trap for visibility and survival. Along the way, she discusses her fascination with prehistoric art, Utah pictographs, and the enduring human impulse to leave marks in stone and clay.

A grounded, candid conversation about process, persistence, and the quiet negotiations between art, livelihood, and place.

René Camarillo is a Mexican-American craftsperson from East Los Angeles whose practice resists the hierarchies of the art world. Trained in apparel design at LA Trade Tech, fiber and material studies at Cal State LA, and textiles at RISD, Camarillo positions weaving and garment-making as acts of cultural inheritance, labor, and community survival rather than commodities of privilege.

In this conversation, Camarillo reflects on rejecting the label of “artist,” his experience with exploitation in fashion and sweatshops, and the deep political stakes of textiles in shaping both history and everyday life. The dialogue explores craft versus fine art, sustainability, gentrification in Lincoln Heights and El Sereno, and the importance of teaching weaving, dyeing, and self-reliance through Grow Lincoln Heights and his brand Dust of Course.

With a Fulbright in Japan to study indigo farming, Camarillo embodies a practice that is at once monastic, technical, and communal—insisting on fundamentals in a moment dominated by spectacle and commodification.

Artist Sheng Lor reflects on her journey from a Thai refugee camp to a studio practice in Los Angeles. Born to Hmong parents displaced by the Secret War in Laos, Lor discusses culture shock, grief, and the intergenerational legacies that shape her art.

Her loom-wrapping series transforms discarded weaving tools into sculptural memorials, addressing the histories of labor, invisibility of craft, and Hmong spiritual traditions. This conversation explores how weaving, diaspora, and ritual intersect in contemporary art and the Los Angeles art scene.

In this episode of What’s My Thesis?, Los Angeles–based painter Elmer Guevara returns to the podcast ahead of his upcoming exhibition at Charlie James Gallery. Known for his densely layered figurative paintings, Guevara reflects on how memory, history, and inherited trauma shape his visual language.

The conversation traces his evolution from graffiti to oil painting, his deep engagement with South Central Los Angeles, and the ways he reconstructs the 1992 Los Angeles uprisings through scenes of everyday life. Blending autobiography with collective history, Guevara explores how painting can act as both a historical record and emotional archive, layering his family’s Salvadoran experience with the city’s shifting social landscape.

Host Javier Proenza and Guevara discuss the aesthetics of the working-class home, the ethics of representing trauma, and the enduring influence of Caravaggio, Bay Area Figuration, and documentary photography on his approach to storytelling. What emerges is a portrait of an artist using realism and symbolism to reimagine how communities remember themselves.

Listen for insights on painting, social history, and the emotional terrain of Los Angeles—then see Guevara’s new work on view at Charlie James Gallery, opening October 25.

Artist David Lloyd joins What’s My Thesis? to reflect on a career that spans CalArts in the early 1980s, formative years at Margot Levin Gallery, and decades of navigating the shifting landscape of the Los Angeles art world. Known for his commitment to formalist abstraction, Lloyd discusses what it means to sustain a painting practice over forty years while adapting to the changing priorities of galleries, art fairs, and collectors.

The conversation delves into his most recent body of work, where Lloyd integrates his own archive of paintings, drawings, and ceramics into AI image generation. By transforming these digital hallucinations into trompe l’oeil abstractions through resin, collage, and material experimentation, he considers how technology can challenge conventional definitions of painting while remaining rooted in physical process.

Other topics include the legacy of CalArts conceptualism, the burdens of postmodern theory and art education, the precarity of mid-level galleries, and the paradox of elitism within the contemporary art market. Throughout, Lloyd emphasizes the importance of generosity, resilience, and longevity in sustaining a life in art.

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Artist Kristen Huizar joins What’s My Thesis? to reflect on drawing, printmaking, and the act of documenting Los Angeles. Born and raised in Commerce, CA, she traces her path from community college to Cal State Long Beach, where persistence and community shaped her practice.

Working with wax pastels on plastic vinyl, hand stitching, and large lino cuts, Huizar explores repetition, process, and the archival impulse. Her drawings function as reportage—capturing overlooked city views, everyday details, and the rapid changes of East L.A.

The conversation considers Chicana identity, community studios, and the politics of representation, offering insight into how artists both preserve and reimagine the city.

In this episode of What’s My Thesis?, host Javier Proenza speaks with Emma Christ, editor at Artillery magazine and gallerist working between Portland and Los Angeles. Christ reflects on her beginnings in photography, formative years at Bard and Reed, and her transition from artistic practice into gallery management, editing, and writing.

The conversation traces her early influences—from Francesca Woodman, Diane Arbus, and William Eggleston to mentorship under No Wave photographer Barbara Ess—before moving into immersive installation work and a graduate thesis on trans-corporeality and the porous body. Christ discusses her experiences in institutions such as the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, her role in supporting artists within commercial gallery structures, and the gendered dynamics that continue to shape the field.

Throughout the episode, Christ shares candid insights into navigating the hierarchies of the art world, balancing writing and curating, and the importance of advocating for emerging voices across both editorial and exhibition platforms.

In this episode of What’s My Thesis?, Los Angeles printmaker Israel Campos shares how his work bridges Mesoamerican codices, Mexican revolutionary art, and the mural traditions of his South Central upbringing. Known for his meticulous intaglio prints, Campos reclaims visual histories disrupted by colonization—collapsing linear perspective, weaving ancient mythologies, and drawing on the political legacies of artists like José Clemente Orozco.

From growing up in a garment factory household to exhibiting at Charlie James Gallery, Campos has shaped a practice that circulates both within galleries and directly to his community, merging economic sustainability with political intent.

🎧 Listen now to hear how Campos’ art collapses past and present into a single visual language of resistance.

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In this episode of What’s My Thesis?, host Javier Proenza sits down with Los Angeles–based artist Jackie Castillo, whose practice transforms the overlooked landscapes of Southern California into sculptural, spatial interventions that challenge how we see, inhabit, and remember place.

Born and raised in working-class neighborhoods of Orange County, Castillo’s perspective is deeply rooted in the lived realities of the region—its immigrant histories, economic divides, and the architectural patchwork that defines its suburbs. Trained as a film-based photographer, she has evolved her practice to merge photography, sculpture, and installation, creating works that slow the act of looking and demand sustained engagement. Her use of reclaimed materials and references to site-specific histories reframes the photographic image as an object in dialogue with its environment.

Castillo traces her influences to classic cinema, the New Topographics photographers, and the conceptual rigor she developed in community college and at UCLA. Through these intersecting frameworks, she examines the formal language of geometry, light, and tonality while embedding questions of class, labor, and urban change. From photographing the quiet interventions of working-class residents in limited outdoor spaces, to producing large-scale installations that reference architecture, demolition, and construction, Castillo captures the poetics of transition—whether in a falling roof shingle or the shifting demographics of a neighborhood.

The conversation traverses the sensory memory of California light, the politics of housing and displacement, and the role of critique in art education. Castillo speaks candidly about her commitment to making the work she wants without bending to external pressures, and the importance of artist-to-artist support networks in sustaining a creative practice.

Her current exhibition, The Return, is on view at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles through August 31, with additional work featured in the group show Back to the Earth at Roberts Projects.

Discover how Jackie Castillo transforms the overlooked corners of Southern California into a visual language of place, memory, and resistance.

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This week on What’s My Thesis?, host Javier Proenza is joined by Ann Shi, a nomadic curator and founder of a poco art collective, whose deeply intuitive curatorial practice bridges Chinese literati aesthetics, feminist mysticism, and contemporary Asian diasporic identity. With roots in China, academic training in Oxford and at Sotheby’s Institute of Art, and early career experience on Wall Street, Ann’s nonlinear path defies institutional expectations, illuminating how curating can become both an embodied ritual and an act of cultural translation.

In this wide-ranging conversation, Ann reflects on growing up as the daughter of a classical inkwash painter and an opera singer, both devoted Buddhist practitioners who observed the Five Precepts, embodying compassion and discipline in daily life—a grounding that continues to shape how calligraphy, voice, and ritual manifest in her exhibitions. Drawing on her time as Associate Curator at Rice University’s Chao Center for Asian Studies, she reflects on how oral histories and immigrant archives shaped her curatorial voice and informed her efforts to platform Asian art beyond the Western gaze.

Together, Ann and Javier unpack the tension between authenticity and market sustainability, the legacy of the literati tradition in Chinese art, and the complicated dynamics of Asian representation within museum and gallery systems. They also explore Ann’s use of feng shui, the five elements, and feminine archetypes—like the goddess Nüwa—as curatorial frameworks that honor the unseen and elevate spiritual intuition over spectacle.

The episode closes with a discussion of “Nüwa’s Garden: A Summer Offering in Clay, Fire, and Water,” Ann’s recent show at Charles Arnoldi Studio in Venice Beach, and its irreverent, ritual-infused closing celebration featuring live performances and feminist mythologies.

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