Make/work: A Rumpus Podcast

In Episode 40 of Make/Work, host  speaks with writer and activist Kate Schatz, author of the New York Times bestselling and , which she did in collaboration with illustrator Miriam Klein Stahl. Schatz is also one of the founders of the nationwide feminist resistance network , which she started with Leslie Dotson Van Every and Jennye Garibaldi, and which has grown from a house party back in early 2016 to over one hundred chapters with more than eighteen thousand Facebook members. Likely, you know her for both of those things.

 is a musician, vocalist, and experimental performer. Much of Wood’s music and performance is an intensely visceral celebration and embrace of the body, often his own, which he fearlessly exposes while rendering gorgeous and virtuosic melodies. The effect is a powerful and intimate expression of his singular beauty that simultaneously reveals the more universal beauty of each of us as individuals. Pinkmountain and Wood discuss the impact of the election on a personal level and Wood’s reluctance to directly address political matters through his creative work. Wood points out bluntly that as a self-identified “overweight, queer person of color,” being singled out and antagonized by those in power is not exactly a new experience. Photograph © Pablo Almansa.

 is an LA-based consultant for artists and arts organizations. Pickens’s background is in Counseling Psychology and she applies those skills to her work, specializing in supporting queer and trans artists, women, and artists of color. After the election Pickens wrote the how-to guide—Making Art During Fascism—and started running a free weekly drop-in workshop at the in LA. The workshop recently finished up, but Pickens is expanding the pamphlet into a book, which will be published by as part of the Feminist Survival Series that author is editing. Photograph © Tammy Rae Carland.

Melody Parker composes intricate chamber songs, and  is her imaginative debut record. It invites the listener to inhabit an otherworldly place and time, yet it evokes the familiar as much as the fantastical. She has created these songs with mourning and celebration for this watery home we know—and for the paradoxical richness of our experience within it. *** Photograph of Melody Parker © Andria Lo.

Author and photographer Abeer Hoque lives in New York, has Bangladeshi roots, was born and raised in Nigeria, and identifies home in several different places. She captures this kind of simultaneous global existence beautifully in her new collection of linked short stories, The Lovers and The Leavers, which was recently published by HarperCollins India.

Scholar Dru Farro is currently finishing his PhD at the Center for the Study of Theory and Criticism in London, Ontario. He is also the Chief Deputy Editor of the journal , and head administrator of the blog . Farro talks with Pinkmountain about his role on the fringes of academia, his deeply ingrained American reluctance to seek medical attention, his eventual and abstract creative goals, and lots of Faulkner with some highfalutin references to someone named “.”  

Joy Castro works in memoir, nonfiction, both literary and so-called commercialfiction, and poetry. And she’ll also be directing the Institute for Ethnic Studies at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln this fall. Castro speaks about her somewhat unorthodox writing process, the course of her career, the distinctions (real or false) between literary and commercial fiction, and whether or not she’d feel comfortable leaving her child with the “slutty drunken” narrator of her crime thrillers.

Back in January, artists Daniel G. Baird and Alex Chitty sublet their apartment, quit their jobs, packed what they could into their van, Bosco, and left their home base of Chicago to travel around for a year with the intention of figuring out how to make it all work better. They speak to host Scott Pinkmountain about their goals, fears, hopes, and their desire to avoid being perceived as slackers. And of course the value of “Wiggly Time.”

Several years back Nathan Langston schemed up a “gimmick” to meet other artists when he landed friendless in New York City. In April, he launched with the , linking 315 artists from 42 countries. Langston speaks about the origin and development of this ambitious project as well as the effect it’s had on his creative and personal life.

Researcher/curator  splits her time between Los Angeles, working as the Program Director at the , and Joshua Tree, where she’s the Managing Director of . 

Guitarist/composer Jon Nielsen spends half of his year working as a bike mechanic in Minneapolis and the other half traveling the country in an RV. He speaks about becoming disillusioned with the music scene, the difficulty he’s had regaining his inspiration and motivation over the past several years, and how he hit the road in search of finding that motivation.

Episode 29 of Make/Work is the fifth of a sub-series where host Scott Pinkmountain interviews couples in which both partners are artists, addressing some of the unique issues that may arise in those relationships and talking about the challenges and benefits of building a life with someone who's also engaged in a creative pursuit. This week, Scott speaks with poets David Meltzer and Julie Rogers. Husband and wife, reading and performing partners, Meltzer and Rogers also share a Beat sensibility with Buddhist leanings.    

Rooted in the San Francisco avant-garde music scene, composer and performer  combines vocals, electronic processing, and multi-media performance into a hybrid, experimental medium of her own invention.

Host Scott Pinkmountain speaks with emergency room physician and visual artist Saul Melman about ephemeral relationships, the parallels between creative practice and caregiving, and how to reconcile your identity as both a doctor and an artist.

 has focused on drawing for nearly 30 years. She has shown at museums and galleries all over the world, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her work is both abstract and organic, investigating the nature and language of line.   

For over forty years, with career, family and various natural disasters intervening, Jim Ragen has been at work on a five-volume novel spanning generations of life in the Dakotas. He turned down an offer to publish his writing in his mid-twenties because he knew he needed a lifetime of experience to best tell his story, which centers around the devastating 1972 flood in Rapid City, South Dakota that changed his life.

Host Scott Pinkmountain facilitates a conversation between four artists—Fiona Connor; her brother, Jamie Connor, a web developer; artist and writer Brigitte Nicole Grice; and artist Catherine Davis, who works as the manager at the Eames House in the Pacific Palisades. Their conversation veers from Marx and labor power to the difference between honesty and truth in art, to public vs. private practices, to Scott's ignorance about New Zealand, as well as Moondog and a whole passel of other stuff.

’s work happens at the intersection of anti-capitalism, environmental issues, and social justice issues. For Ball, this has translated to a broad spectrum of projects ranging from making inflatable barricades for climate change demonstrations to helping turn a squatted Greek military base into a sustainable farm.

Guitarist and songwriter Mick (who has requested anonymity due to the nature of the discussion) speaks frankly about his childhood abuse and drug use, and the crucial need for alternatives to Katy Perry.    

Mona Tian grew up in Shanghai and started playing violin at age 3. She made her major solo debut at age 8, then moved to the US to further her studies when she was 12. She speaks with Scott Pinkmountain about her lost childhood, the pressure she felt as her parents invested everything into her musical education, and how she eventually had to discover her own reasons and motivations to continue playing music as an adult.