Art Restart

Dec 02 2024 100 ep. 26 mins 9

Art Restart Podcast artwork

Host Pier Carlo Talenti interviews artists who are shaking up the status quo to learn how they are reinventing their fields and building a new landscape for the arts.

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Aaron McIntosh’s quilts archive queer Southern history

Dec 02 2024 26 mins

For fiber artist Aaron McIntosh, quilting is an act of defiant documentation. Growing up in an Appalachian family with a generations-deep tradition of quilting, he learned the craft as a boy and went on to develop his own ethos and mission, studying first at the Appalachian Center for Craft in Tennessee and then earning his MFA at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond.In rec

Kickstarting Classical: Composer Christopher Tin keeps fans close on his musical adventures.

Nov 18 2024 27 mins

Christopher Tin is an award-winning and genre-bending classical composer whose work has been featured in a variety of settings and media, from august concert halls to the world of video games. His orchestral piece “Baba Yetu,” which Christopher originally composed for the game “Civilization IV,” was the first ever musical work written for a video game to win a Grammy Award.

What urban-rural divide? Matthew Fluharty supports art across geographies.

Nov 04 2024 26 mins

Matthew Fluharty is the founder and executive director of Art of the Rural, an organization that works to support and promote the work of artists and culture bearers across the country and that also aims to bridge cultural divides across urban and rural areas.Initially created as a blog in 2010, Art of the Rural has since then developed several long-term projects in collaboration w

From land to stage, Groundwater Arts nurtures justice in the arts.

Oct 21 2024 24 mins

Theater artists Annalisa Dias and Tara Moses are the co-directors of Groundwater Arts, an organization they founded in 2018 — along with Anna Lathrop and Ronee Penoi — to braid together goals that at first might seem disparate: decolonizing the arts-and-culture field and striving for a climate-just future.Guided and inspired all along by an advisory council as well as a youth c

Truly Appalachia: Author/theatre-maker Robert Gipe holds safe spaces through the toughest times.

Oct 07 2024 25 mins

Calling Robert Gipe an author or novelist is a bit like calling Neil deGrasse Tyson a YouTuber. Yes, Robert wrote a widely praised self-illustrated trilogy of novels (https://www.ohioswallow.com/author/robert-gipe/) — “Trampoline,” “Weedeater” and “Pop” — that follows the travails of a young woman growing up in rural Appalachia. He completed that authorly feat, howe

Piano/percussion duet SHHH! Ensemble makes contemporary classical a blast for a new audience.

Sep 23 2024 27 mins

You might be forgiven for guessing SHHH! Ensemble (https://shhhensemble.com/) to be a collection of musically minded librarians, but you’d be way off the mark. Because SHHH! Ensemble makes noise. A lot of it. On a variety of instruments. And people are loving it. Which might be especially surprising given that SHHH! mostly plays contemporary classical works, a genre that can be i

Norms-busting choreographer Aszure Barton uses joy as the foundation for her work.

Sep 09 2024 29 mins

On January 26 of 2024, San Francisco Ballet (https://www.sfballet.org/) premiered a commissioned work by Canadian American choreographer Aszure Barton. It was titled “Mere Mortals” and explored the science and ramifications of AI through the ancient myth of Pandora. With a brand-new score by world-renowned British electronica composer Sam Shepherd, aka Floating Points (https://

Alexander Lloyd Blake's Tonality: a choral call to social change

Aug 26 2024 27 mins

In 2016, while earning his doctorate in music at the University of Southern California, Alexander Lloyd Blake founded the choral group Tonality. His initial aim was to create a choral ensemble that would represent and celebrate the full diversity of Los Angeles’ population. That done, Tonality started to focus each concert on social-justice issues, from global warming to gun viol

Conscious Costume's Kristen P Ahern builds networks of ethical designers.

Aug 12 2024 26 mins

Costume designer Kristen P Ahern has been thinking about sustainability since childhood, when her parents, her mother in particular, instilled in her a passion for environmental responsibility. As an adult, she has centered that passion in her art, in 2018 founding Conscious Costume, an information-and-resources clearinghouse with a clear vision: “Every costume created in harmony

Launch a sumptuous arts complex in this arts climate? Bill Rauch’s vision is already bearing fruit.

Jul 09 2024 27 mins

Of all the tasks to undertake in the current arts climate, leading a brand-new multimillion-dollar performing-arts center through its opening and first season must be one of the most daunting. Yet, Bill Rauch, the inaugural artistic director of the Perelman Arts Center (usually referred to as PAC NYC) in Lower Manhattan managed to launch with a bang through an astonishing array of