Shows
Studio AesculapiusSteve Bliss: Cemeteries (In Collaboration)In this Anatomy of a Photo, photographer Steve Bliss shares his story of collaboration with painter friend John Hull, as Steve’s photographs comes full circle and uses, not only his boys, now adults, but also “graphic information” around images, something he explored as a very young artist. See Steve's photo at Studio Aesculapius.com.Studio Aesculapius Podcasts feature the stories of artists and the art of stories. We seek the personal stories of artists—their journeys—and the impact of their art on their own well-being and on those who encounter their work.As the...
2025-11-0806 min
Studio AesculapiusSteve Bliss: Finding Perfect SubjectsIn this Anatomy of a Photo, photographer Steve Bliss recounts how, when they were young, his two boys became his photographic subjects and how he realized that they were stand-ins for him or, as he says, vice versa. In any case, it’s part of the joy and drama of being father who was once also a child.See Steve's photo at Studio Aesculapius.com.Studio Aesculapius Podcasts feature the stories of artists and the art of stories. We seek the personal stories of artists—their journeys—and the impact of their art on their own wel...
2025-11-0803 min
Studio AesculapiusIn our Challenging Cultural Times, Steve Bliss tells Stories of the Complex Relationship Art has to Nostalgia and TruthSteve Bliss is serious about the value art can bring to a fractured society, yet he recognizes that elements of art can also be used to manipulate a culture. Bliss believes there is a truth that can be approached through photography, despite its proclivity to nostalgia—capturing a romanticized or idealized feeling of the past—and he appreciates the turn photography has taken toward awakening a sense beyond nostalgia.Bliss is frank, funny, and unpretentiously intelligent in the stories he tells of his art and art in general. Join us for this enlivening discussion.St...
2025-08-1730 min
Studio AesculapiusMeryl Truett’s Story of ExcavationsMeryl Truett is a curator, gallerist, teacher, consultant, and artist. She earned an MFA from Savannah College of Art and Design. After years in the United States, where she taught and produced works such as Vernacular Highway and a photography book, Thump Queen and other Southern Anomalies, she moved to the magical pueblo of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Meryl continues to exhibit—in the US, Europe, and now Mexico. Her current work mixes photography with other media in order to excavate her past. She speaks of such excavations in this episode of Artists Telling Stories....
2024-07-1036 min
Studio AesculapiusJosephine Sacabo Tells a Story of Her Journey Toward Transcendence and ConnectionJosephine Sacabo’s art seeks transcendence and connection. She eschews any chasing after artistic fashion in favor of diving into what she loves. In this way she connects with those who view her work. The many layers of her work evoke layers of being, some disturbing, yes, but ultimately transcending such disturbance to “come full circle” with compassion and beauty.Studio Aesculapius Podcasts feature the stories of artists and the art of stories. We seek the personal stories of artists—their journeys—and the impact of their art on their own well-being and on those who encounter their work.
2024-05-2137 min
Studio AesculapiusArtists Telling Stories Extended TrailerIn this extended trailer, please join Austin Tichenor, Aline Smithson, Joe Harjo, Vincent Valdez, Jay Tolson, Alicia Olatuja, and Jim Lavilla-Havelin in discovering the importance of stories, the language of our humanity, and the transformative power of art. Artists Telling Stories Podcasts draw out human stories in the hope that in their telling, artists will offer a new story of our shared humanity, bringing all of us closer together.Studio Aesculapius Podcasts feature the stories of artists and the art of stories. We seek the personal stories of artists—their journeys—and the impact of thei...
2024-01-0305 min
Studio AesculapiusPoet and Activist, Words and Names, Marks and Meaning: Jim Lavilla-HavelinJim Lavilla-Havelin has written six collections of poetry, with several more in the works. His work has been anthologized widely, and he has been nominated for Poet Laureate of Texas, where he has lived for the last few decades. This episode of Studio Aesculapius is different. Jim reads three poems and has a wide-ranging discussion with co-host, Eddie Dupuy: about the poems, about poetry, about art and activism, about language and knowing and finding patterns, about the human desire to make marks and the attempt to make meaning.Studio Aesculapius Podcasts feature the stories of a...
2023-05-2655 min
Studio AesculapiusJoe Harjo and Native Visibility: Not Monolithic, but Extraordinarily DiverseJoe Harjo says he didn’t have “access to seeing ‘artist as profession,’” while he was growing up in Oklahoma as a member of the Muscogee (Creek) nation. When he told a guidance counselor in high school that he wanted to teach, the counselor rebuffed him. When he said he wanted to be an artist, he got a similar response. Now he’s both artist and teacher, and his work tries to counter misrepresentations of Native peoples in popular culture. After a particularly difficult year of isolation, an injured knee, the resurgence of racial strife, and Covid, Harjo discov...
2023-04-0837 min
Studio AesculapiusAline Smithson and Finding a Visual Voice: Something Universal, Something HealingAline Smithson was always drawing as a child growing up in Los Angeles. After a stint as a large format painter, Smithson went to New York for 10 years, working in fashion. She returned to LA, took a class in photography and realized she “could use the camera to make art.” She had found her “visual voice,” and now, as a teacher for more than 20 years, savors the moments she sees that voice arise in her students. Smithson is one of the most recognized names in photography, not only because of her work developing LENSCRATCH, an online resource for and...
2023-04-0442 min
Studio AesculapiusThe Displaced and Disappeared: Adriana Corral and “Between Spaces”Adriana Corral credits both sides of her family for her interest in art. Her father's side had several physicians who invited her to see their work of healing and who gave her a strong sense of the body. On her mother's side were an aunt and uncle who opened to her ideas of social justice. Like her place between her father’s and mother’s families, Corral sees between spaces as “where vital content exists.” She invites those who view her installations to do so “bodily.” Looking up, looking down, being aware of where they are in space. The s...
2023-03-3045 min
Studio AesculapiusHard Won Pilgrimages: Paul Elie discusses Literature, Bach’s Music, and his Journey as a CatholicPaul Elie (from the Berkley Center at Georgetown University) talks about his two books, The Life You Save May be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage (2003) and Reinventing Bach (2012), especially the “hard won” pilgrimages of Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, Flannery O’Connor, and Walker Percy. Elie goes on to speak of his own pilgrimage in and around the Catholic Church, his struggle to remain within its story while writing about some “awful things”—such as the sexual abuse crisis. He speaks of Bach’s unique place as religious artist and, finally, of his work on the American Pilgrimage Project, where h...
2023-03-0946 min
Studio AesculapiusFake News and Truth, Faith and Irony: Jay Tolson Discusses the Big Questions of our CultureJay Tolson says, following T.S. Eliot, that "in my beginning is my end." And what an end, one that has led him to see art's power to connect us to one another through a shared reality.He began as an undergraduate studying cultural and intellectual history and after a long career in journalism at US News and World Report, the Wilson Quarterly, and Radio Free Europe, he was asked by the University of Virginia's Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture to serve as editor of The Hedgehog Review. Although he has returned...
2022-05-2750 min
Studio AesculapiusShakespeare and the Arts during the time of Plague and War with Austin TichenorAustin Tichenor loves his work, and it certainly comes through when you speak to him. He's funny, "I've always loved telling stories...and I have an irreverent sense of humor." He also lives in dread of taking himself too seriously. The arts tend to foster that, but he avoids it like the plague.He says he's forever grateful to his father for telling that he would "hate law school" and that he shouldn't go. So he went into theatre, acting, and writing instead. He's been with the Reduced Shakespeare Company for 30 years. When asked "Why...
2022-05-2752 min
Studio AesculapiusMusic, Connection, and Joy: Alicia Olatuja and the Presence of VoiceAlicia Olatuja partially credits Ms. Marsh, one of her elementary school teachers, for her singing career. Ms. Marsh told her she would be a famous singer but warned her not to "get the big head." Alicia's mother and grandmother, both educators, also facilitated her trajectory, giving her a strong worth ethic and a sense of purpose through music.And Alicia has not disappointed. The New York Times has noted her "luscious tone and amiably regal presence." When she found out she had been invited to solo at Barack Obama's second inaugural ceremony, she was so...
2022-05-1646 min
Studio AesculapiusThe Mastery of Craft and the Healing Expression of Art with Mohammed Al ShaibaniAlthough he studied visual communication as an undergrad at the American University of Sharjah, Mohammed Al Shaibani (Momo) knew that comics were his passion. So his family sold their house and moved into his Grandfather's house so Momo could attend the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) where he would earn an MFA in Sequential Art (Comics). Young and highly energetic, Momo nevertheless classifies himself as a connoisseur of craft. He strives to excel in illustration and story-telling, the marriage of which drives the craft of the comic arts. For him, art involves the "mastery of...
2022-05-1638 min
Studio AesculapiusIn Our Era of Loss, Imbalance, and Malaise, Bach's Music Recenters, Restores, and Heals with Sean DugganFr. Sean Duggan, OSB, knew as a teen that he wanted to find a way to combine his love of music with his call to a religious life. He ultimately found that combination by joining the community of Benedictine Monks at St. Joseph Abbey in Covington, Louisiana, where liturgy and music thrive. Fr. Duggan sees music, like the other arts, as an opportunity to approach God through beauty, and though he has mastered the work of countless composers, he's drawn time and again to Johann Sebastian Bach.For Fr. Duggan, Bach's music is endlessly infectious...
2022-04-2637 min
Studio AesculapiusTelling Stories with Images: Memory and the Quest of History with Vincent ValdezVincent Valdez says he began drawing when he was four and "hasn't looked back." We are the happy recipients of his forty-four years of learning to "tell a story through images."He happily cuts against the grain of contemporary art, he says, and though he didn't start out with the idea of critiquing what Gore Vidal calls "the United States of Amnesia," he can't turn away from what he sees.Rich in detail, his images wake the viewer from somnambulance. If, three days later, that viewer, still haunted by Valdez's powerful work, looks...
2022-04-2540 min
Studio AesculapiusReconnecting with Beauty in a Post-Pandemic World with René Paul BarilleauxRené Paul Barilleaux knew he had a problem with reading when he was young, but no one did anything to help him overcome it. Instead, he drifted toward what he knew he liked—images, objects, drawings. It is no wonder, then, that he became a visual artist and later a curator, now head of curatorial affairs at the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, Texas.In our inaugural program, René discusses his everyday work, "something new all the time," and those moments when he walks from his office through the galleries at the McNay to see...
2022-04-2434 min