Today’s episode is an interview with American ceramicist Amanda Smith. From blowing things up in the kiln to balancing art and motherhood, Amanda seems to handle all of it with a Zen-like ease. You can listen right up there, or you can subscribe on iTunes. Here is what we covered, in the order that we covered it. First up, I was so thrilled to have Amanda’s work in the show that I curated last winter at the Bedford Gallery in California. That group of women is getting an up-close look at three of Amanda’s pieces:

Ooh, and this piece, titled “Piñata”, was on the title wall. Note the red ‘sold’ dot! {The lovely images of the gallery were taken by Micaela Hoo}. Moving along to a few of the pieces that I specifically asked Amanda about… “Hummer Procession” and “Hot Punch”:

… and just a few more of my favorites because I can’t not share them…

Unicorn! Love. We also gave a little plug to her wonderful, supportive, and also super talented husband, Casey Jex Smith:

And according to the ‘speed round’, if she could have a coffee date with anyone it would be Ira Glass. Um, I want an invite to that! Here’s Ira with Tavi Gevinson of Rookie {in the Wall Street Journal}… hopefully they won’t mind if Amanda and I join them:

And that’s a wrap! Thank you to Amanda for taking time away from her baby, her four year old, and the studio to talk to me for half an hour… and thank you so much to all of you for listening! The next episode will be up next Saturday.

Damn. I wish I thought of that. I haven’t said that out loud in awhile, but the moment I saw these beautiful women with their stunning, inky hair, well, I couldn’t help myself. These pieces are all from a collage & ink series, titled “Ebony”, by American artist Lorna Simpson. Lorna is an incredibly accomplished artist, known for her pioneering work in photography and film making … the list of galleries where her work has been shown is insane… MoMA, LACMA, and the Whitney just to name a few!  These collages are her most recent work, some of which are 30″x22″. She repurposes images from the 1950s {found in vintage issues of Ebony magazine I believe}, “taking the African-American woman as a point of departure, continuing [Lorna’s] longstanding examination of the ways that gender and culture shape the experience of life in our contemporary multiracial society.” Beautiful.

*Quote taken from the description of, “Lorna Simpson : Works on Paper”

Aaaaand, we have a winner! Thank you to everyone that entered, and a HUGE thank you to Anne-Sophie for her artsy generosity  ♥ This gorgeous print is on its way to …  Johanna McDaniel! Woot Woot! {Johanna, I’ll email you to get your mailing address}. Thanks everyone… happy Saturday!

Yes! This is a little #tbt from a few months ago… I wrote about French born, New Zealand based artist Anne-Sophie Adelys. Well, she emailed me a few days ago and said that after I wrote about her, so many of you showed her a ton of love and support … so she asked if she could give ONE OF YOU a limited edition print… I said, “Um, okay!” and picked this beauty, titled “1994”. Please just leave a comment below, and I’ll draw one lucky winner on Saturday June 27! Thank you so much, Anne-Sophie xo

(The print is from a limited edition of 20, and is 50cm x 60cm image but with border 72cm x 68cm – gorgeous!)

Modern, geometric design meets old oak floors! Yep, Texas based artist Bri Land reclaimed this wood from an old home in the River Oaks neighborhood of Houston, and transformed it into these gorgeous one-of-a-kind pieces. I love this work, and I love Bri’s story too … after losing her marketing job a couple of years ago, she found herself with extra time, so she did what every creative person with extra time would do… she decided to build herself a table. Well, one thing led to another and Bri realized that she had a knack for building things {I’d say!} and she hasn’t looked back! ps. Keep an eye out for her work on HGTVs Blog Cabin 2015 remodel!

{All of the pieces shown here are now available in my online gallery… Yay!}

Rocks. Pretty, pretty, pretty rocks. These are collagraphs by London based printmaker Tessa Horrocks. I minored in printmaking, so these pieces are calling my name! Sigh… don’t they make you want to spend the day pebble hunting at the beach? Me too.

I could literally spend hours looking through the Instagram feed of Seattle based artist Cheyenne Randall… ok, I just did. I cannot get enough! He adds the most beautifully hand-drawn tattoos to some of pop culture’s favorite icons… from Twiggy to Marilyn to Elvis. I was going to stop there, but I’m a child of the 80’s so clearly I also had to include these:

Yes. Oh, yes.

{You can buy his work as prints, originals, and apparel right here.}

Oh, Monday morning. I want to jump back into my bed for one more quick little bit of sleep… just long enough to have a colorful, beautiful, and totally wacky dream that resembles these mixed media pieces by Swedish born, London based artist/illustrator Monika Forsberg (aka Walkyland) … I want to make friends with little birds wearing shoes!

{via Lisa Congdon … you can find a really wonderful interview with Monika on Lisa’s site.}

Episode no. 5 : Kansas City based artist Peregrine Honig. I “know” Peregrine, but only through email, so I was very excited, and a little nervous, to finally speak to her in person. We talked about her experience as a reality TV cast member {for real!}, helpful procrastination tips, and her latest body of work {no pun intended} that could have gotten her arrested in China. Everything in this episode is shown here so that you can follow along while we’re talking. Most of it won’t make sense unless you listen, so just click ‘play’ right up there {see, just under those beautiful boys}, and you can also subscribe on iTunes. Alright, first things first… reality TV meets art:

Yes. Reality TV and art… that might literally be my own personal heaven. Did you watch Bravo’s Work of Art? I sure did… and Peregrine was on it! {that’s her above, in silver, just below the “of”}. I loved this show, and Peregrine was my favorite all the way through so it was VERY exciting to finally ask her all of my fangirl questions! The images above are from her final, fantastic, absolutely gorgeous show. Sigh. Love. Ok, so after I obsessed over that for awhile, we moved on to talk about her latest series, #hoteldrawings:

Gorgeous, and I love that she didn’t create them in her usual studio space! She then took this sassy series to a new level via an incredible printmaking residency in China, just this past spring:

Yes, that’s the master calligrapher she mentioned… an inspiring collaboration, and “so sexy” as the girls would say! {This work will be shown in September 2015 at Red Star, Kansas City MO.} As we were finishing up with the “speed round”, I asked if she had any strange final stories to share… she did:

What!? The glass crown by Kate Clements that I wrote about {right here}, the day before Peregrine and I did this interview… and look where it lives?! Crazy.

Oh, and I said that I would include her first answer from my book, Creative Block. All of her answers were like poetry, but this Q/A was my favorite:

JC: Do you remember the first time you felt like “an artist”?

PH: I remember drawing in the sun on my mother’s apartment porch when I was four. My hand was cooperating with my mind. A Belgian man and his girlfriend were staying downstairs. He was smoking near me. He looked at what I was drawing and told me I was too good to draw on both sides of a sheet of paper. The memory of this moment is fresh- the airborne dust, the smell of tobacco, the texture of the wood under my paper. I had never been praised in the form of advice.

Ah, lovely. And with that, I will say a huge thank you to Peregrine for taking the time to do this with me, and of course a great big THANKS to all of you for listening/looking! The next episode will be filled with art and ready for your ears next Saturday.

Whoa. I want to go to there. I am in love with the explosion of color in these magical, mountainous landscapes by Minneapolis based artist Melissa Loop… but wait… she’s no ‘one trick pony’! Melissa does beautiful things using only one color too:

Ahhh, blue tropics. I want to go to there too… Melissa did: “This series is based on the photos, mis-memory, and fantasy around my research trip to the French Polynesia.” ♥

Oh. My. Found wood and colorful, intricately painted lines? Yes, please! I absolutely love this series of work by American painter Jason Middlebrook. After moving from Brooklyn to Hudson New York, now out of the city and into nature, Jason started painting on chunks of discarded wood – adding contemporary design to the already gorgeous work that Mother Nature provided… a perfect collaboration.

{via My Modern Met}