Shows
An Infinite LanguageAre characters conglomerates of people we know?What does it mean when a writer creates a character?
2026-02-1806 minAn Infinite LanguageWhat if no one listens?A poetic-essayistic exploration of the idea of what if no one listens, reads, sees the art? And its opposing notion: what if audiences truly listen?
2025-12-3110 minAn Infinite LanguageWhat do you write about when you have nothing to say?What do you write about when you have nothing to say?
2025-12-2607 minAn Infinite LanguageCan Christmas stories teach us about the creative process?From Scrooge to George Bailey, to the modern comedic and heroic stories (including Elf, National Lampoon’s Christmas, and Die Hard), a consideration of the lessons that Christmas stories can teach us about the creative process.
2025-12-1509 minAn Infinite LanguageIs Generational Affinity Good for the Artist?Is generational affinity good for the artist? Is it good for creative work to have some sense of an affinity towards one’s generation? The disparate cohort and a sense of connection to various creatives from various times. The milestone occurrences and crossovers of concentric aspects of life, these might be valid as commonalities. A sense of grouping together of periods, works, and individuals as from a time and a context.
2025-12-0720 minAn Infinite LanguageGetting a spaceship out of a swampNotes on a dream, pulling a spaceship out of a swampPowerful dream. How do we bring a creative work into existence? Sleep dream. Dream come true… You know the whole thing… You’re trying to catch it. Will the notes look like the thing? Explains an aspect of the creative process. We are walking in the woods and we see what looks like a half-sunk spaceship in a swamp. The strategies we use to get it out… Writing: improvisational or planning? Improvisers use pre-planned things. Outliners have to improvise while making the outline… is there an outline for an outline? W...
2025-11-2515 minAn Infinite LanguageWhy the self portrait?an exploration of the common grounds of three questions:Why the self portrait? Can we create art and not reveal who we are? Should we do commissioned work?
2025-11-1730 minAn Infinite LanguageHow to write a love song and not really mean itCan you perform with just a notion of technique and without a sense of sincerity? Working with purity: either just passion or just technique… as a comparative structure to inquire into the question. Is it better to have feeling or a technical sense of the work? We can find examples of great performances of both. Sometimes as we learn more effective techniques in creation, we might get more of a reaction but we can feel more about the technique than the content. Authorial intent: can we know the intention? Do we need to? The audience’s reception: that’s the counte...
2025-11-0931 minAn Infinite LanguageCan we separate content from technique?Can we separate content from technique? What is the meaning of the lighthouse? One question here is the technique. One is the content. Perhaps they are one in the same. What is the meaning of the lighthouse? Symbolism: pre-figurative plus derivation of figurative meaning. The lighthouse is a structure that allows for people navigating to know that there is a place. A lighthouse is located in public. It is a public good once it is built. Free and open to all to find their way. In painting, the lighthouse becomes a look at painting techniques again and again. The content s...
2025-11-0325 minAn Infinite LanguageDoes art mask or reveal the true face?What is a mask? Literally and figuratively. Do creative pursuits construct a truer self? Or do they allow for a mask to be constructed? Or perhaps another persona? What is a mask? Masks that we can see. Masks that are hidden. A mask conceals important parts that we rely on in order to identify a person from the outside. The mask hides the face but creates a new face. Recognizability is both obscured but renewed. A mask is like a key into another portal of a persona. A foundation for presenting another persona. A transformative device for understanding who someone...
2025-10-2730 minAn Infinite LanguageThe strange comforts of HalloweenWe can view Halloween as a festival of creative participation. Anyone can participate to any extent or no extent. It allows for a creative way of engaging across genres. The levels of participation can be judgment free. Freedom of acquiescence It’s about the idea enacting the representation of beings that don’t exist in this world or are looking to invade the living world. And we come to this with a sense of nostalgia and joy. A wholesome scare. Sounds contradictory. Dealing in the plate tectonics of the subconscious.
2025-10-2026 minAn Infinite LanguageWhat is a Ghost Story?What is a ghost? Something that has the visual semblance of a human being, but not all aspects. Sometimes it can create sound. Not fully formed visually. A ghost can manifest as a visually present enough version of a human being. Ghost stories are often in houses. House is a central human symbol of comfort. The ghost is a disruption to the norm. Why does the ghost scare people? The ghost represents the prior existence before the current occupants. This represents a cycle of life. The ghost’s presence connotes a sense of vulnerability for the living in its appearance in...
2025-10-1325 minAn Infinite LanguageWhy are creative pursuits good for us?Sometimes we need to pursuit a question more within our range. Sometimes a question is too bold for the now. How is a creative question situated within a comfortable reach from where you are working from today? Shifting from one approach to another. Within creative pursuits you place yourself in control. And you are sometimes in a predicament where you choose something that enables you to get something accomplished. It would be a mistake to call this choosing the easy path. You sometimes encounter junctures of perception, of changing the dial a little bit. When we change the paradigm, then...
2025-10-0525 minAn Infinite LanguageDo we need creative mission statements?Consider the nature of the question. Consider what it all means. What is a mission statement or statement of purpose as a creative individual? Often with words. An articulation of where you stand and where you’re coming from in why you create what you create and what you anticipate the effects will be, perhaps. It’s another way to add a unique signature to who you are as someone who is involved in creative work. It overemphasizes a certain mapping of creative experience to advocate for just one approach. It’s good to consider what it all means. (recording contai...
2025-09-2827 minAn Infinite LanguageThe World Needs the Art You CreateThere’s so much already done, why make my art? It is possible to have a sea of doubts in the creative process. Among such doubts, are there legitimate and illegitimate ones? Whole other topic. In the life of creating, we will doubt. Why does the world need what I’m going to create? What can I possibly offer given the great works that already exist? Everyone lives in a context. In the game of human history. We are from specific contexts and categorical ones. This converges into a unique fingerprint of existence. (Episode was recorded outside and contains ambient soun
2025-09-2136 minAn Infinite LanguagePainting compared to illustratingWhy we love an idea: wonderful simultaneity. We have it but don’t. What is the difference? Is there a difference between an illustrator and a painter? Illustration: the line tells us where one thing begins and ends. Critically and extremely important… we have to know what we’re looking at. Or do we? Another topic for another day. What is painting? We do use the line in painting. Color and value are painting’s “lines.” What is value? It’s connected to saturation. Simple definition: the color itself, with gradations of white or black added to it. The mixture of black and wh...
2025-09-1342 minAn Infinite LanguageWhat is the value of the humanities?What is the value of the humanities and the arts? An acquiescence to the norm of a clear-cut value system is often behind such a question. There are modes of asking the question. Because we can’t see what you do in the humanities, we don’t know if it’s worth anything. The economy of straightforward worth. Frequent answer given: studying the humanities has a derivate value. Employs practices that have easy transference to other activities. In this justification, the idea is that the intellectual activities have transference. And it is those activities that have value. Isn’t it fundamenta...
2025-09-0150 minAn Infinite LanguageHow do we value art?How do we derive value for a work of art? Monetary value Meaning value Pattern in these inquiries: Understanding how the question and supposed answers are built rather than chiseling out one defined answer. The question is always: when considering such a question, what can be taken into account, and how so? This show is like interpreting maps and discussing the terrains of a region. The inquiries being regions. How do we declare that art has value? Two value systems are proposed for the purposes of illustration: classical period and post-classical period in terms of value systems Why do we m...
2025-08-2644 minAn Infinite LanguageWhat is the best way to look at art?There are some ways that offer advantages, perhaps, but not necessarily a “best.” So why phrase it this way? A question can be regarded as a precise linguistic inquiry or as an inquiry that has a heart and many implied inquiries surrounding it. It is not about linguistic exactness. It exists as a conceptual feeling. Like a work of art, where we move in various ways to get a point of view, this inquiry is profound and deserves reverence. Only one work of art to view or many others around: the context of the “looking.” The viability of the viewability: how much...
2025-08-1920 minAn Infinite LanguageTeaching Compared to DoingWhat are the differences between teaching a creative practice and doing the creative practice? This topic has many branches. The goal of this talk is to chisel out the general considerations. Creative practice as in painting, writing, dancing, singing, playing an instrument, composing music. The verbal phrase is explored too: compared to, along with, as opposed to. What about when a teacher has a creative practice in the realm that they’re teaching? Can we teach creative acts? What are the differences between a teacher of great notoriety in a creative field or lesser notoriety? Should the teacher within their teac...
2025-08-1242 minAn Infinite LanguageIs Fiction Communication?This is an exploration of the parameters of the question, the mapping of where we can go. Yes, no, maybe: is fiction a kind of communication? All three possibilities are explored. The subconscious finger-wagging, let’s avoid. None of the fictional worlds would have existed had the original writer not created those potentialities to carry on in that way… as if you are, as a writer, inventing instruments of imagination. Is that communication? Do we overburden the concept by making it work with one approach? The construction of imaginative instruments and parameters… is that what fiction writing is? A stage for the...
2025-08-0533 minAn Infinite LanguageIs Art Always Human Centered?Is art always human centered? The notion of the anthropomorphic, the idea that art is always human centered, to what extent is that idea valid? Is the landscape the ultimate example of art that humans can create that isn't human centered? Is there something in the fingerprint of human creation that always leave a telling trace? Or is it possible for humans to create art with no trace of the human? And what does such an exploration prompt in the course of explanation? (Episode was recorded outside and contains ambient sounds)
2025-07-2829 minAn Infinite LanguageThe Life Beyond the Light in the WindowWe have this phenomena of artistic creation of the life beyond what’s shown to us This is a symbolic representation of said phenomena How does this work in fiction, in non-fiction, in visual conveyances? The light is also placed there for us, as we are our first audience but modally different. We are the audience to a creative process, with the need to sense that more needs to be said. So we reach to say, to tell about the life beyond the light in the window. (Episode was recorded outside and contains ambient sounds)
2025-07-2410 minAn Infinite LanguageCrossroadsTwo topics at once in this episode: the crossroads and the newcomer. A consideration of the meanings of the crossroads as a hybrid place unto itself. The newcomer is a role that individuals take on, a contextual role. Like the crossroads, the newcomer is intensely aware of then and what's ahead. A consideration of the painting by Emily Shanks, "The Newcomer at School," and an interpretation of what each of the people in the picture represents.
2025-07-2213 minAn Infinite LanguageThe temporary and the preservedDoes art celebrate the temporary by trying to preserve it? Or is it an exultation of permanence? Is there such a thing? Is memory the only mold humans have to preserve? Perhaps recycling is the ultimate perpetuity, the collective embrace of reconstitution. When does a moment begin and end?
2025-06-3012 minAn Infinite LanguageWho's There?What is pervasive? What is elemental? What is contained within demarcations and what runs the gamut of existence? From the first two words of Hamlet to the self portrait and the fruits of or as destruction, to the assertion of the artist as inextricably bound visionary with the talent. Diego Velazquez and the portrait of the self via the portrait of the powerful other. Francis Bacon, the scream, the mouth, the difference between expression and communication. The artist as declarer of what art is, Marcel Duchamp. The critiques of conceptual art, art that does not respond to current events. Invictus...
2025-06-0819 minAn Infinite LanguageThe Black BoxFrom Ilya Repin’s paintings in the 1800’s to what our descendants might make of our lives in hundreds of years: the black box and the unknown. Expectations, moments, questions, sketches, input, output, what happens in the process? The procession can’t be witnessed. Kahlil Gibran “On Children,” and how the present cannot decide the future. Who were the secondary English teachers of the 1700’s? Perhaps the intellectualizing was in the everyday ways of being in various professions. The black box of the past and the future. How storytelling can cultivate awareness of self.
2025-05-2617 minAn Infinite LanguageThe Black BoxFrom Ilya Repin’s paintings in the 1800’s the what our descendants might make of our lives in hundreds of years: the black box and the unknown. Expectations, moments, questions, sketches, input, output, what happens in the process? The procession can’t be witnessed. Kahlil Gibran “On Children,” and how the present cannot decide the future. Who were the secondary English teachers of the 1700’s? Perhaps the intellectualizing was in the everyday ways of being in various professions. The black box of the past and the future. How storytelling can cultivate awareness of self.
2025-05-2625 minAn Infinite LanguageWhat makes a costume real?Costumes, cosplay, derivative imaginative experiences. When does a costume become real? Is a persona a mask? Can it become real? The pathway on the stage becomes real when the audience walks through it. How fiction can vibrate to the frequency of real. The audience decides that this is an enactment experience. We put on the costume and align with another form of being self. Synesthesia and the experience of becoming; self to character. Not necessarily synthesis. Derivative imaginative play. Solidly not real. Beyond the cover of the song. The notion of the influence. Costumes as a scaffolding technique of becoming...
2025-05-1214 minAn Infinite LanguageTapestries of meaningThe public good, the fallout shelter, we’re having an assembly today. The wonderful ruckus of it all. Thrown together, pieced together, stitches and seams all showing. From Victory Gardens to Patrick Henry, to Giuseppe Pitrè and Guiseppe Arcimboldo; from Great Wave immigrants to rainy day assemblies. Furnari Sicily, tailors, weaving, and the tapstries of meaning in story construction: storytelling as contextual. A story means what we convey it to mean.
2025-05-0415 minAn Infinite LanguageThe Universe End to End; Art and the Scale and Scope of ConveyanceWhen do the measures of the universe meet in a tight corner? Is the universe of artistic conveyance large enough to embody contrasting notions of validity? Considering Whitman’s “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer.” Reaching to the ends of a natural ethic from Robert Burns’s “To a Mouse.” Are we reaching to the stars or to the earth right in front of our feet with our artistry? The universe of referentiality from the still life to the landscape. Considering Helen Frankenthaler and Clara Peeters. Considerations of my own works including symphonies in the sink and people of the fork. This...
2025-04-2726 minAn Infinite LanguageA New GorgonWhy were there so many toy guns when we were kids? At what point does a work of art become a form? When does an artist create a kind of phraseology that other artists build on, play with, and speak into? When we’re in the world of pretend, is there an ethic for consumption? Why do authors or artists choose to portray the horrific? And how do they choose to portray it? What is realism? Is it the way the artist plays on the very real yet hidden contexts that we are walking through life perceiving with? Works referenced an...
2025-04-1521 minAn Infinite LanguageThe Reaches of Artistic TestimonyIn this pilot episode, the foundation of the notion of “An Infinite Language” is explored. From the process of painterly seeing to Ozymandias and the enduring voice of the arts and the artist.Some highlights:Can you paint with words?The artistic voice is more enduring than absolute power. The everyday person has the power to tell, to convey and sculpt our notions of what happened.What voice carries on?Creative output is an infinite language, it cannot be relegated to, cannot be limited to solving the world’s problems. Art is not a for-hir...
2025-04-1325 min
Literacy LandscapesSn.1. Ep 8: Discussing "Consider the Volley:" A Conversation with Dr. Adam TramantanoIn this episode, Johanna interviews Dr. Adam Tramantano about his new book, Consider the Volley: How We Make Sense of Things. You can access his book on Amazon at this link. You can also learn more about Adam, and his artwork, at his website https://tramantano.com/
You can also access the article Adam references, Constructing a Pedagogy of Apparentness, at the following link.
2023-04-1025 minLiteracy LandscapesSn. 1. Ep. 7: Why Literacy Matters to MeIn this brief episode, I discuss my "Why" as Simon Sinek would say, for why literacy matters to me. I'm excited about future episodes I'm planning, including: The connection between mathematics and literature, the importance of print rich environments in early literacy practices, interviewing Dr. Adam Tramantano about his newly released book, and planning a series on bilingual education. Stay tuned and please subscribe!
2023-04-0607 min