Rena Diana - Line & Pattern

The monumental labors of women that often go unnoticed, and the resilience of women under the invisible weight they carry are themes interwoven in the current work of interdisciplinary artist Nirmal Raja. 

Nirmal's current solo exhibition at the Portrait Society Gallery of Contemporary Art is titled Grace and Grit, and highlights her current authentic obsession with material intimacy.  Nirmal’s keen observations and curiosity during her 3-month Kohler Arts/Industry residency resulted in an inspirational and wide body of work, including works cast in iron and brass, sound recordings and photographs. Nirmal is also part of the Paglees, a feminist collective of artists of South Asian origin living across the United states, currently exhibiting their work at the South Asia institute in Chicago. 

Nirmal collaborates with other artists and strongly believes in investing energy into her immediate community while also considering the global.

Takeaways

1. Despite all the restrictions, I am strong.
2. “Share your excitement for your practice and your own work.” Jason Yi
3. “There is mud and there is the lotus, and you cannot have the lotus without the mud.” Thich Nhat Hanh
4. Push against restrictive boxes we put ourselves in.

Links

Nirmal Raja
Nirmal Raja on Instagram
Nirmal Raja on Linkedin
A Brush With… Cornelia Parker
Portrait Society Gallery of Contemporary Art, Grace and Grit- solo exhibition 
South Asia Institute, The Paglees: Between Reason and Madness
Grace and Grit Catalog
John Michael Kohler Arts Center Arts/Industry Residency Program

Stones, learning, confidence, pattern and line, expressing beauty, and promoting your work are just a few topics artist Rena Diana covers today.

After retiring from a fulfilling career as an educator in Baltimore, Rena started focusing full time on her artwork. She worked every day in a studio at the Art Students League in New York City, where she began painting abstract landscapes. Rena is fortunate to divide her time between Baltimore and her home on Lake Champlain in Vermont, which is the source of much of her inspiration. 

Rena on art journals and sketching: "Throughout my adult life, I have kept notebooks chronicling my observations and experiences.  Gradually these became art journals, filled with sketches and collages, along with personal narrative and remarks about the creative process. As these notebooks evolved into more formal exercises, I realized that they were distinct art forms in themselves. At that point, I began creating larger, single pieces. These art journals remain a core part of my studio practice."

Takeaways

1. You develop confidence as you learn to trust yourself and the process. Believe in yourself and that what you have to share with other people is valuable.
2. It’s a marathon. A long game.
3. Learning is the best antidepressant.
4. First think about who YOU are before you decide how and where you’re going to promote your work.

Links

Rena Diana

Rena on Instagram

City Arts and Lectures, Ann Patchett

Mary Lynn O’Shea

The Art Students League of New York

Last Light, How Six Great Artists Made Old Age a Time of Triumph, Richard Lacayo

The challenges of creating on a deadline, having faith and trust in the thing you’re doing, and the feelings that arise when switching from the act of writing to marketing and promotion all come up during our conversation.

Nick Petrie is the author of 8 best-selling Peter Ash crime fiction novels, including The Price You Pay, out February 2024. His debut, The Drifter, won both the ITW Thriller award and the Barry Award for Best First Novel, and was a finalist for the Edgar and the Hammett Awards. He is also  an excellent husband (mine!) and father (to our son Duncan).

Takeaways

1. Winnow down and lean into the thing that is interesting to you and that you really want to pursue and then let go of the outcome when it gets out into the world.
2. “Keep a clean antenna."
3. Get comfortable with being uncomfortable.
4. Seamus Heaney on the hardest thing about writing: “Getting started, keeping going and getting started again.” 

Links

Nick Petrie’s website

Follow Nick Petrie on Instagram

Follow Nick Petrie on Facebook

Follow Nick Petrie on X

Your Brain on Art, Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross

Mystery Tribune, The Cleveland Job

Bill Schweigart

Boswell Books

The Poisoned Pen Bookstore

Murder By the Book bookstore

Kaye Publicity

Michael Mann, Blackhat and Collateral

The Great Creators with Guy Raz episode 67 with Andy J Pizza of Creative Pep Talk

Carol Paik, a New York based artist, is interested in many different media, but really found meaning working with repurposed textiles. After years of buying expensive and often toxic materials for her work, her goal now is to create art exclusively out of the unappreciated, overlooked, landfill-destined stuff she finds around her, of which there is never a shortage.
She most enjoys taking something that is overlooked, and looking at it closely. Or, taking something too frequently seen, and looking at it slightly differently. She is interested in the emotions that we bring to the things we discard: nostalgia, guilt, desire, and loss, and her goal is to give these objects--and, by extension, ourselves—new possibilities.

During our chat, Carol talked about the idea of leaving a mark without marring a landscape, specifically in relation to her cairn projects, but it got me thinking of that in a broader sense. And she also assured me that sometimes finishing a project is overrated.

photo by Sharon Schuur

Takeaways

1. Ask yourself: Why do I need to do it THAT way?
2. Keep your eye on the road because wherever you’re looking is where you’ll end up.
3. Take a closer look.
4. If you limit yourself, you’ll look at things in a different way.
5. Look around for things you can reuse for your projects.

Links

Carol Paik
Carol Paik on Instagram
Heidi Parkes
Nina Katchadourian
Natalya Khorover

K. Woodman-Maynard’s obsession with emotional expression comes out not only in her graphic novels but also through anger journaling and diary comics. She loves tree time, cold water swimming, running and cross-country skiing. Katharine is a sequential storyteller and an artist who writes (as opposed to a writer who draws) and loves to mentor other creatives. Her debut, The Great Gatsby: A Graphic Novel Adaptation was called, “hugely rewarding” by The Wall Street Journal. 

Takeaways

1. Be present and enjoy yourself.
2. What can I do for social media, not what social media can do for me.
3. Get some tree time.
4. Bring in people for feedback during a long term project.

Links

K. Woodman-Maynard
K. on Instagram
K. on Facebook
K. on Linkedin
K. on Pinterest
Great Gatsby Graphic Novel, K. Woodman-Maynard
The Big Leap, Gay Hendricks
Healing Back Pain, John Sarno
Art Matters, Neil Gaiman

 From chenille bedspreads & fringe vests to mosaics & ceramics, Andryea Natkin shares her journey as a seeker, always on the lookout for what is truly hers so she can express it. She  was born into a family of artists, which gave her that foundation of permission to trust herself.  Andryea persevered and eventually received her BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, all along working in a variety of mediums including drawing, painting, printmaking, mosaic and ceramics.

Takeways

1. Be wasteful and make ugly things.
2. Make a lot of mistakes.
3. Don’t judge yourself while you’re making.
4. Inspiration comes from my heart, not my head.
5. Turn the fire up. It’s time to get going.

Links

Andryea Natkin  
Andryea on Instagram
Andryea on Facebook
Your Brain on Art, Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross
Artery Ink

Joanne is an artist and photographer whose work is “based in semi-abstraction, purposefully balanced between representational and the imagined. in my role as an artist, these two elements have become an integral part of my motivation to create, with the ‘doing’ often as important as the outcome. I firmly believe that natural curiosity and creative pursuits are essential to healthy living, regardless of age or education.” Jo shares her experiences and how they impact her daily life and her long term connections. Her obsession with fragility and delicacy is linked to her fascination with awe and transience, resiliency, and mortality. 

Takeaways

1. If you really listen to people, you hear more. If you really look, you see more. If you care, you get more.
2. A piece is finished when it stops talking to me.
3. Resilience is tolerating emotional discomfort.
4. Ask yourself, “And what’s so bad about that?”
5. Accept limitations that some things just can’t be changed. We can only change our bit.

Links

Joanne Olney
Joanne Olney on Instagram
Joanne Olney on Facebook 
Joanne Olney on Pinterest
AWE: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life, Dacher Keltner

Weather, layers, inner worlds, thick living and 10,000 folded paper cranes. Brianna’s work is driven by world-building. She’s interested in exploring possible and impossible landscapes that may or may not exist on this planet, in this dimension, in a memory, a dream, or a vision…they may never have existed anywhere — until now. Her creations convey an architectural/organic world which thrives in paradox and ambiguity; it’s a place that gives voice to so much more than can be articulated with sound or words. Each piece she creates is an earnest translation of the feelings, ideas, images, landscapes, and visions of her inner world — for Brianna, the ultimate goal of her creative life is to ardently impart to your inner world what she can from her own.

Takeaways

1. We are all complicated nuanced onion layers of humans.
2. We are all works in progress.
3. The lessons are everywhere.
4. Sharing of the art is just as important as the creating of the art.
5. There are no mistakes in art. If you think it’s not right, it’s just not done.
6. We are little time tornadoes creating our own weather.

Links

Brianna Martray

Brianna on Instagram

Brianna on Facebook

Brianna’s YouTube Video: "The Making of a Public Art Installation at Denver International Airport" (June 21, 2011)

Tim Hecker

Lee Bontecou 

Rachael is an experimental textile and mixed media artist living in West Yorkshire, England.  She describes her residency at the Nature in Art Museum and Gallery as a “cocoon of delight!” If you listen deeply and look closely, you will see how Rachael’s obsession with stone and stone walls seeps into all her work. Her feelings and experiences and surroundings all contribute to unique and thought-provoking pieces of art. During our chat, she talks about containment and constraint, delicious boredom, and Helen Keller’s keen observations.

Takeaways

1. “Music is the space between the notes.” Claude Debussy
2. Your work teaches you AFTER you've done it.
3. You need other people to notice things in your work that you may not see.
4. Look down and in for creativity and up and out for a sense of well-being.
5. Take time to contemplate and mull, and simply look long enough to see things from a distance.

Links

Rachael Singleton

Rachael on Instagram

Rachael on Facebook

Blue Peter

Kim Thittichai

Nature in Art Artist in Residence program

Do: Pause

Krystyna Pomeroy

Henry Moore, London’s War: The Shelter Drawings of Henry Moore

The Song of the Stone Wall, Helen Keller

Jacob Nordby

During our chat, Anna talks about receptacles, the Minystery of Consideration, discovering and processing beauty, permission, belonging, and what makes us tick.

Takeaways

1. Just do your job.
2. Don't do other people's jobs.
3. It doesn’t get any better or more beautiful than this.
4. It’s all here already.
5. Do what’s real and what’s true, and remember that you don’t always get there while you’re walking upright.

Links

Anna van der Putte
Anna van der Putte on Instagram
Lesley Hilling
Scott Roberts
John T. Upchurch
Alison Jackson-Bass
Office of Collecting
Aja Lund
Hedi Kyle book arts
Stephanie Hüllmann Atelier-Talk podcast
The Secret Life of Lance Letscher
Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, Elizabeth Gilbert