Fully automated, remote controlled fighting tables that compete for ultimate supremacy, seems to be a good place to start any conversation. Especially when that conversation is with artist ,woodworker, educator and humorist Annie Evelyn. From fighting tables we move onto the merely absurd, like what it means to be a conceptional functional furniture maker. Her time as a resident artist at the Penland school of Craft. And the work she produced participating in two ground breaking exhibitions for women craft artist

This is the story of how a seed of an idea sowed years ago becomes a ground breaking exhibition of women chair makers.

The exhibition entitled Seating Assignment happened in March of 2024 at the Sawtooth School for Visual Art in Winston Salem NC. It’s chief instigator was the then artist in residence at Sawtooth Rebecca Juilette-Duex. In this Mind of Maker episode we look at the inspiration for creating this exhibition, learn about the Chair Library at Winston Salem College and talk with Elsa Hoffman one of the artists in the show.

To view the exhibit online go to Seating Assignment

“How do you measure your worth”, this is a question Paul Sasso addressed in his 1990 sculpture featuring a woman and a man’s torso wrapped in measuring tape. It is a deeply metaphorical question that goes beyond the simple representation of measuring ones self as presented in Pauls sculpture. Paul passed onto that great measuring tape beyond in March of 2025, and in this episode we share excerpts from a previously unpublished conversation we had in 2023. A remembrance of an amazing artist, educator and mentor.

This episode of Why Make? is brought to you by Haystack Mountain School of Crafts.Thanks to Haystack to becoming our first sponsor and partner. Haystack currently has open spaces in select Square ONE Workshops for beginners and Summer 2025 Workshops! Spaces in workshops and housing are limited, and applications are processed on a rolling, first-come, first-serve basis. Applications for these open spots will be open the public starting Wednesday, March 26. To see workshop details and to apply, visit haystack-man.org or go to haystack-mtn.org/summer-workshops-details#workshops-how-to-apply

On this episode of Why make we continue our conversations from the 2024 Emma International Collaboration in Big River, Saskatchewan This time Miranda Jones. Miranda is primarily known in the art world for her paintings of animals but she is so much more than that. I saw her mostly in the metal fabrication area with plasma torch in hand but she could also be found in Tiny Shiny the jewelry workshop as well as the painting area. Miranda is a longtime participant in the Emma Collaboration and also sat on the Emma board, so a great person to talk to to get the length and breath of this hard to describe event. Here is my conversation with Miranda, we start with a silly reference to her honorary citizenship from New Zealand I refer to as her Kiwiness. Miranda is in fact a Canadian citizen and resides in Saskatoon but was originally from Australia.

In this episode the last episode of 2024 a special treat, the first of our many recorded interviews from the Emma International Collaboration which took place in August of 2024. This conversation is with Michael Hosulak the brainchild behind Emma though he takes no credit for being founder. We talk about two of the many pieces Michael was involved in making during Emma and also talk about the beauty that is “cocktail hour” and the “junk pile”. Sit back and listen as we contemplate the possibilities of “What If”.

In this episode, we are returning to our “Mind of a Maker” mini series with furniture maker and sculptor Ellie Richards, the idea behind the “Mind of a Maker” series, which is a new element inside the regular why make podcast is to talk to artists about the genesis and creation of a specific work, or body of work, in a sense, peeling back the onion yet one more layer to further expose that messy thing that is the creative process.

This story starts with an idea that was brewing for years before Ellie began making the piece we talk about in this episode, and that idea was a fascination with the fantasy coffin practice that exists in Ghana. Fantasy coffins, as the word implies, are fantastical, large, hollow, sculptural forms built almost entirely with hand tools that can be just about anything from a jet plane to a tomato… basically trying to capture a person's passions as they pass on and they are, quite simply, then buried in it, a practice far different from our western views on death and burial. She was encouraged to pursue her exploration of fantasy coffins by the artist Eric Adjetey Anang, a descendant of the original Ghanaian coffin makers. Eventually Ellie started to consider how to use these skills to create an object of her own design, and in this edition of Mind of a Maker, Ellie walks us through the process from inspiration to the final construction of her piece titled Basket Casket.

To see Ellie at work on the Basket Casket… Check out our short film on the video page of why-make.com, or find it on Youtube. Here are links to Eric Adjetey Anang and the

Music for this episode was generously provided by Jim Roberts, the guest on why make episode 64. It comes from his recordings, Waka, Waka and Two Traditions. Additional music comes from The Ghana Project 2013,that recorded several traditional funeral songs performed by Ghanaian artists in Ghana. It’s used in this episode under a Creative Commons license. You can find more of their recordings on YouTube by searching the username “the Ghana Project 2013.” Finally, music in our episode also came from the Internet Archive,

In this episode of why make I talk with sculptor, furniture maker and educator Jack Larimore about how his background in landscape architecture. What led him down the path to discovering a love of design and eventually making furniture. Furthermore how a lack of a formal education In the arts really allowed him to explore sculptural ideas with few preconceived notions. Then we get into a deep dive about in his most recent exhibition called Bonding that was held at Rowan University in the spring of 2024. A video of Jack working on the exhibition can be seen Here

On this episode of Why Make we have Jim Roberts a percussionist, producer, artist and educator who resides in Chapel Hill NC. Jim plays the drum set, djembe, congas, and has many recordings under his belt. He has just finished a 17 year teaching stint at Elon University where he taught percussion and directed the Elon World Percussion Ensemble.

Jims journey in percussion dated to his earliest years playing in band  class to marching band to drum and bugle core to African music traditional fiddle music and so much more. Please join us for a percussive journey with Jim Roberts

In this episode I talk about my first impressions of the Emma International collaboration, which took place on July 31 to August 8, 2024 in Big River Saskatchewan. If you need a little more background on Emma take a listen to What is Emma? Episode 59 of the podcast

When I returned from Why Makes great adventure to Emma earlier this month, I knew I needed to sit down and collect my thoughts about my experience before they started to drifted away. This short episode is a collection of my thoughts about having attended my first artist collaboration. I promise you there will be much more to come.

In Episode 62 of the Why Make Podcast we introduce the 1st in our Mind of a Maker series, a new part of the Why Make Podcast, with our guest Steve Fishman. Steve is a North Carolina printmaker and a painter in many mediums, as well as being skilled with pen and ink and the mighty pencil. He is also a teacher and someone who really knows how to think about the process of making art.

So journey back with me, Erik Wolken a little bit… to May of 2023. I'm thinking about how to put some new elements in the podcast and come up with the idea of trying to follow the thought process of an artist creating a specific piece of art. The name that came to me for that was Mind of a Maker, which I stole directly from the Anthony Bourdain PBS series Mind of a Chef

I was also thinking of this as a hybrid project, both a podcast and a short film, because of course after making one film I have mastered the medium. So the first thing I need is a guest/guinea pig to try out the idea, someone who will not mind if I waste their time and flail around. And that would be my good friend Steve Fishman, a willing victim, whom I've spent endless hours talking with about art and art making.

Steve had recently completed work on an exhibition of moon inspired paintings that were part of a much larger ongoing series. And as Steve and I are both fond of saying, "Bob's your uncle." I now had a willing subject and the perfect topic for my experiment.

So sit back and listen as Steve regales you with tales of painting the moon 🌙 🎨🌝