Mormon Arts Center's Studio Podcast

In this episode, The Center for Latter-day Saint Arts announces an inaugural program, The Artists Residency at the Center. It will bring 6-8 LDS artists to New York City to reside together and work for a week in October 2023. The Residency is hosted by Stanley Hainsworth, who joins us on this podcast and discusses his own journey from a fledgling actor in New York through global creative designer roles at Lego and Starbucks before founding his own firm, Tether. With each of his corporate positions, he has led "Design Camp," an off-site retreat, which tees up, conceptually, The Artists Residency at the Center.Music for the episode: guitar and vocals by Stanley Hainsworth.Support the show

Director/screenwriter Aaron Toronto and screenwriter/actress Nha Uyen Ly Nguyen discuss their film, The Brilliant Darkness!, which won the highest award, The Golden Kite (the Vietnamese equivalent of an  Oscar) this year, for best film, best screenplay, and best actress. The dramatic film is about a family imploding, precipitated by the death of a wealthy grandfather and his son's gambling debts that imperil his life and his family's future. The main theme of the film and the topic of the podcast interview are the abusive relationships of families over multiple generations that are tacitly condoned in Vietnamese culture and their toll on its populations' physical and mental health. Recent studies show that 2/3 of Vietnamese children suffer physical abuse by family members. This is something that is autobiographical for Nha Uyen. The rapturous reception of the film--its appearance tragically coincided with the deaths of three different family's young children as victims of abuse at the hand

Young LDS filmmaker Luis Fernando Puente discusses the premiere of his short film, I Have No Tears, and I Must Cry, at the  Sundance Film Festival 2023. It is a personal film based on his own experience as an immigrant to the U.S. from Mexico.Music for the episode is taken from the short film score, composed by Jorge Murcia.Support the show

Author and Mormon literature influencer William Morris talks about his new book, The Darkest Abyss: Strange Mormon Stories, and describes his approach to writing fiction with examples from his collection of short stories published by By Common Consent Press. Morris is also the incoming president of The Association for Mormon Letters. In the podcast he outlines some of his plans and priorities regarding the organization, which is the primary institution for LDS authors today.Music of the episode: "Christmas Soundscapes 7" by Steven Ricks.Support the show

Aaron Johnston and Kelly Loosli, creators of the new animated series, Saving Me, describe the sci-fi show--an old man who manages to return to his 11-year-old self and redeem him. This is the first animated series for  BYUtv, and the bestselling author and award-winning animator discuss the process of translating words on a page to animation on a screen.With the theme song for Saving Me written and performed by The National Parks.Support the show

Joël René Scoville is a current participant in the legendary training ground for musical theater writing, the BMI Lehman Engel Musical Theatre Workshop in New York. In this episode, Scoville discusses the craft of writing for the theater, her journey from actor to writer, her experience as a Black artist, and she describes why new voices and new stories are so important today.Music for the episode is: "Til I Get Back on My Feet” from the musical, Flophouse.Music by Joanna Burns, book and lyrics by Justin Anthony Long & Joël René ScovilleSung by Joanna BurnsSupport the show

On the eve of the publication of her first book, Rachel Rueckert, the current editor-in-chief of Exponent II magazine, describes the events that led to her memoir, East Winds that will appear in mid-November, published by By Common Consent Press. It is a chronicle of her one-year honeymoon traveling around the globe and questioning what the institution of marriage is all about. Rueckert talks about the journey, the book writing process, and finding peace with big picture decisions.Support the show

Author Glen Nelson discusses his discovery of an important body of 1930s fiction by one of the era's most famous cartoonists, John Held, Jr.  Today he's known for his magazine and newspaper illustrations of flappers and other 1920s characters, but in a flurry of activity from 1930 to 1937, John Held, Jr. published four novels and four collections of short stories that are mostly unknown today. This podcast episode describes the fiction, talks about how the author came to discover it, and makes the connections between Held's upbringing in Salt Lake City and how his Mormonisms appear in his art and fiction.Support the show

Curator Margaret Olsen Hemming, artist Kwani Povi Winder, and scholar Vinna Chintaram gather to talk about different approaches to and perspectives on Heavenly Mother as they react to the exhibition at the Center Gallery, The Sacred Feminine in LDS Art & Theology. Olsen Hemming is the curator of the exhibition. Povi Winder is one of the artists whose work is in the show, and Chintaram is a PhD student at University North Carolina  Chapel Hill studying religion and culture.Music for the episode is “Women of Faith,” lyrics by Matthew B. Biggs and music by Michael Kosorok.Support the show

To mark the exhibition opening, The Sacred Feminine in LDS Art & Theology, at the Center Gallery in New York, its curator Margaret Olsen Hemming speaks about global artworks that imagine what Heavenly Mother is like. The LDS doctrine that we are from heavenly parents is not new, but recent LDS artists from around the world are building on the artistic foundation laid more than 100 years ago by poet Eliza R. Snow and painter John Hafen to further a discussion about the nature and role of the sacred feminine.Music for the episode is “Women of Faith,” lyrics by Matthew B. Biggs and music by Michael Kosorok.Support the show

The self portrait, Wrapped Up in a False Sense of Security, by Kirsten Holt Beitler, is the subject of this artist's interview. The work which is part of the exhibition, Siloed: Art for Uncertain Times, at the Center Gallery shows the artist wrapped in toilet paper, painted during the first months of the pandemic when hoarding and bouts of consumer panic spread across the country. Beitler is a single mom of four children, an artist, and a muralist at a grocery store in St. George, Utah. In this episode, she describes how  isolation during the pandemic and personal heartbreak have become crucibles for new, wry, self-exploring works.Music for this episode is the nineteenth-century Mormon folk song, "St. George and the Drag-on," by Charlie Lowell Walker. Support the show

A new body of art work by Maggie Golightly Haslam is explored in this episode. The artist, whose works are featured in the current exhibition at the Center Gallery in New York City, embodies the 21st century zero-waste ethos and turns it into a process of art making. How can materials be recycled, upcycled, and reenvisioned, she asks. Her inventive and beautiful poured watercolor works are created with materials that have been harvested and salvaged from leftover media of earlier series of works, thereby linking them into a new sort of visual art lineage. Larger ethical questions emerge: What is art for? Why make it? How do the materials direct what the art wants to be?Music for the episode is "Bearing Us Up" by Robert Strobel, a winner of the Center's Art for Uncertain Times project.Support the show

Photographer Jeffrey Lee Butler chronicled the streets of Brooklyn in the early months of the pandemic. Part of the Center Gallery exhibition curated by Emily Larsen Doxford, Siloed: Art for Uncertain Times, Butler describes life in early 2020 and what he encountered as he ventured out of his Crown Heights apartment into the borough, resulting in a suite of 25 photographs. Surprisingly beautiful, colorful, and even joyous, the people in the pictures show the resilience, ingenuity, peacefulness, and determination of urban dwellers in a very uncertain moment.Music for the episode is a Swedish folk tune played by Claudine Bigelow, part of the exhibition and a dance film by Keely Song, Covenant Keepers.Support the show

Dancer, choreographer, and educator Marin Leggat Roper discusses her lifelong pursuit of dance as merging point of physicality and faith in this podcast interview that also previews a historic, upcoming event in Salt Lake City, Utah. It is Vision, an evening of dance, to be presented September 24, 2021 at the Capitol Theatre. She describes how the pandemic has affected dance and how dance artists are finely attuned to issues of social upheaval, identity, and the immediacy of current events.Music for the episode is an excerpt from Sydney Ann's Apple, by Nathan Bowen, from a 2007 dance commissioned by Marin with sculptural decor by Valerie Atkisson and performed at the Merce Cunningham Studios in New York City. Support the show

Award-winning author and scholar of WPA-era photography, James R. Swensen discusses his new exhibition, Fields of Labor and Recovery: A Photographic Portrait of Utah from the Great Depression to WWII, 1936-1942. The show at the BYU Museum of Art provides an opportunity to discuss Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee, and other photographers who were sent across the United States, including to Utah, to document government programs and ultimately created the most comprehensive portrait of America ever attempted. Swensen discusses his detailed research into the lives of the photographers’ subjects, and he notes the importance of seeing patterns of history by looking back to the past, and as he notes, the value of beautiful pictures of ugly things.Music for this episode is “Mountains,” by Robert Cundick, performed by Grant Johannesen, piano.Support the show

How does someone decide to become an art historian, a curator, or an art conservator? What kind of training and exposure do they need? In this episode, university senior Elisabeth Hunt discusses her background at Brigham Young University as an art history and curatorial studies major and her time in New York this summer working as the gallery assistant at the Center Gallery. What is it like to work in an art gallery and interact with the public? As an example, she describes a generational difference of viewing art—the consequences of the saturation of images that younger people experience through social media upon their fine art viewing—and the reactions she has witnessed of visitors from the general public to the gallery in New York City.Music for this episode was recorded as ambient sounds of jazz street musicians outside the Center Gallery, traffic sounds, and the video artwork, "Let us rejoice," by Maddison Colvin that opens the exhibition, Great Awakening: Vision and Synthesis in Latter-day Sai

To mark the inaugural exhibition of the Center Gallery, Great Awakening: Vision and Synthesis in Latter-day Saint Contemporary Art, this podcast interview speaks with artist and curator Chase Westfall about what goes into making an exhibition, how to get people to slow down and look more carefully at contemporary art, and what he has learned through the process.Introductory music for the episode is an audio extraction from Maddison Colvin's video work in the exhibition, Let us rejoice.Support the show

On the occasion of the publication of her latest book, First: The Life and Faith of Emma Smith, historian Jennifer Reeder talks about a complex 19th century figure in LDS history, an Elect Lady, Presidentress, and key participant in the restoration of the gospel. The discussion includes surprising finds by Reeder including Emma’s bi-racial family, her largely unknown skills, her turmoil regarding polygamy, and most importantly, her life of loss and service. Emma’s decision to remain in Nauvoo as other Saints moved to the West set up an environment of tension in the 19th century that is being replaced today with companion and understanding. Music for the episode is Emma’s final aria, sung by Jennifer Welch Babidge, “You Are Like the Sun,” from the opera, The Book of Gold, composed by Murray Boren.Support the show

On the occasion of his solo exhibition, “Secret Camp—Are we there yet?,” Fidalis David Kanoanikie Buehler discusses how his worldview, which draws from his multi-cultural family, informs his artmaking practice. The conflicts of straddling his Euro-American and Pacific Island heritage include Kiribati traditions, his Catholic upbringing, and his conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1999. Now an artist who exhibits paintings, drawings, printmaking, and sculpture in the U.S. and abroad, Buehler also teaches at BYU, and the podcast interview ends with his thoughts about embracing multicultural students with an eye toward adapting traditional fine art education methods in order to learn from the students and prepare them to contribute to the cultures of their own communities.The musical except for the episode is “Sonata for Two Flutes Unaccompanied,” by Helen Taylor. The Center’s Studio podcast begins its fourth year with this episode.Support the show

Making art is easy; marketing it is terrifying. Many artists find the business side of their careers very difficult and something they know little about. In this interview, composer and creative entrepreneur Andrew Maxfield shares experiences, approaches, and methods of networking, business development, branding, communications, brain trusts, and entrepreneurship that give creative artists of any kind much-needed tools to amp up their careers—with examples of the composer’s music and advice for anyone who is tired of passively waiting for something big to happen.Support the show