Shows
ART CRUSH INTERNATIONALCRUSHED VELVET: 18 Artists in 20 WeeksWhat a ride! ART CRUSH INTERNATIONAL's first season is coming to an end. It's been wild, adventurous, lovely and above all, very cozy. Join Svea and Jozefien in this season finale as they reminisce and relive all the crushes they've had so far. Which artist served the best snacks? What backstory surprised them the most? What was the most emotionally challenging interview and which one was the most physically demanding?
ART CRUSH INTERNATIONAL will be back on August 31st with many more crushes - Ana Teresa Fernández (https://anateresafernandez.com/) is our first crush of season 2...2021-07-1519 minART CRUSH INTERNATIONALIs Your GP Secretly an Artist? Lorraine Bonner on Healing With ClayOnward! To East Oakland where artist-physician-writer Lorraine Bonner sculpts clay in the house that was once her mother’s home. Lorraine shows us the space, now converted completely to a studio-gallery, and talks about growing up in Queens, moving to rural California in 1970, moving to Tanzania with her husband so they could have their baby in an African socialist country, and studying Medicine at Stanford with two small children at home. Bonner’s work addresses personal, societal, and environmental traumas including racism, abuse, and torture through figurines and abstract shapes. How does she navigate such heavy topics without buckling unde...2021-07-0932 minART CRUSH INTERNATIONALCRUSHED VELVET #1: Do You Have to Be A Jerk to Make Good Work?Jozefien and Svea are fed up with misconceptions about artists and in this series, called CRUSHED VELVET because it sounds good even if it makes no sense, they're setting the record straight. There's more to life than making art. There is, for example, trauma, sexism, capitalism, haikus, and other funny things.
THIS EPISODE'S VELVETEEN RABBITS:
When you were depressed, did you make better art?
Would it be worth it to be an artist if it meant you were necessarily depressed?
Have you known happy artists?
How does the idea of the tortured artist...2021-07-0121 minART CRUSH INTERNATIONALLinocut Prints and a Tenderhearted Prince: Sofia Shu and her Siberian-San Francisco Love StoryWe climb and descend the hills of Potrero Hill in San Francisco - in high heels of course! - as we search for Sofia Shu's secluded studio. We're mesmerised by Sofia's meditative, spiritual, detailed abstract paintings and wall hangings. Sofia serves us a delicious vegan latte and talks about growing up walking through snow tunnels in Siberia, learning English by tending bar in NYC, ending up in the Bay Area, and meeting her sweetheart prince. We love her love story and you will, too.
Sofia Shu Studio online: https://www.sofiashu.com/
Sofia on Instagram: https...2021-06-2232 minART CRUSH INTERNATIONALQueering the Kudzu: Richard Jonathon Nelson on Plants, Roots, and ColonialismHop into our car to East Oakland where we’ll meet textile artist Richard Jonathan Nelson at his friend and fellow artist Jamee Crusan’s place. Richard talks about being a black, queer man in the US, how his mother and aunts encouraged him to make textile art as a child and how language plays an important role in his life. What’s a hand baby and who brought the Kudzu? Richard tells us all.
Richard’s website: http://www.richard-jonathan-nelson.com/
Richard on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rich_nels/
Visual tour and transcript of the i...2021-06-1534 minART CRUSH INTERNATIONALIt’s Only Creepy If You Are: How BRIK TU-TOK Free Their MindsJoin us on a trip to the harbour of Ghent, Belgium, where we meet Linde Carrijn and Maxim Storms, the avant-garde performance-duo known as BRIK TU-TOK. At their light-filled studio in an old red-brick factory we marvel at BRIK TU-TOK's handmade fashionable costumes, colorful accessories and extraordinary DIY music instruments. What's the Giggle Gallery, and can we come? Welcome to our crushes' bizarre, but fascinating universe!
BRIK TU-TOK on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/briktutok/
Watch BRIK TU-TOK's music videos on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_kFfBUcDuc91hHBISrM26A
All music during the...2021-06-0134 minART CRUSH INTERNATIONALIf You Escaped Nazi Germany, What Would You Do with Your One Precious Life? At 88, Edith Hillinger Is Still Making ArtWe rush to visit Edith Hillinger at her garden studio inside the West Berkeley house she built in the 1990s. Hillinger is 88 years old and studied at New York’s Cooper Union College in the 1960s. She draws from her childhood experiences as a refugee in Ankara, Turkey, to create obscenely masterful full-scale collages and paintings. She quotes Rilke! She tells us about fleeing Nazi Germany, her marriage, the women’s movement (and how it helped her get a divorce), and what it’s like to be an accomplished female artist in her later years. We fête her.
E...2021-05-2532 minART CRUSH INTERNATIONALHow Is a Textile Designer Like a Turtle? Leda Devoldere Is About to Find OutJoin us on a trip to Oostakker, Belgium where we meet textile designer Leda Devoldere in the art studio she has in her parents' garden. Leda designs carpets, pillows and plaids in bright, vibrant colors and abstract shapes. She also has a lisp, which makes some English words hard to pronounce and her voice very easy to love. She knits almost all of her work by hand on her historic hand knitting machine, which makes every single object a real act of devotion. We are in full awe of all this beauty and high design coziness!
Leda o...2021-05-1823 minART CRUSH INTERNATIONALWhy Alison OK Frost Doesn’t Want to Paint Sad Paintings that Make You CryThis episode is dedicated to Bay Area artist Gary Hackett, who died suddenly. He was a good friend of Alison OK Frost, and this episode was postponed out of respect for her. We are grateful for Hackett’s presence in the Bay Area: an artist precariously housed and studiously generous with his time and care. It’s a little less colourful now, with him gone.
We go with realist painter and arts educator Alison OK Frost to the Mosswood Park homeless encampment in Oakland, California. Frost is interested in humanity and creativity; she paints from photographs taken of h...2021-05-1136 minART CRUSH INTERNATIONALYour Purse is a Tiny, Wearable Billboard. Michele Pred Told Me So.Join us on conceptual/installation/social practice artist Michele Pred's red couch in her white-walled studio at Faultline Artspace in East Oakland, California. Pred is a Swedish-American artist who started the "Art of Equal Pay" movement to encourage female and non-binary artists to charge more. She's got a billboard in New York City all about it. With us, she talks about the "Power of the Purse" series, a collection of vintage purses that blink light-up political messages. Does your purse do that? Not yet. Her couch is from IKEA and her work is from the heart.
Browse...2021-04-2726 minART CRUSH INTERNATIONALWhy Helena Johansson Lindell Wants Your GarbageWhat's the difference between jewellery and sculpture? The patriarchy, that's what.
Welcome to the cool, stone-walled studio of avant garde Stockholm jewellery designer Helena Johansson Lindell. We fall in love with her capacity to turn plastic toy bits (don't you have a box of plastic toy bits??) into smooth, multilayered wearable art. She's that genius who can look at a Lion King franchise Happy Meal toy and see the perfect oval pendant hiding within its soul. Svea's four-year-old daughter appreciates all aspects of this experience. Colours are discussed. Also, kardemummabulle!
Helena on Instagram: https://www...2021-04-2018 min
Sustaining Creativity PodcastSvea Vikander & Jozefien Buydens Art Crush InternationalCreativity through the lens of a journalist and textile artist"Creativity is more of a process of experimenting with the world." - Seva"Creativity is a proces and sometimes it comes and goes" - JozefienSvea Vikander is a Swedish-Canadian journalist and writer. A former therapist, she is now working on her second graduate degree—this time in journalism. Svea lives in a Sámi community in Arctic Norway and makes a mean reindeer blood pancake. Find her at sveavikander.com or on Twitter (twitter.com/sveavikander) or Instagram (instagram.com/sveavikander)...2021-04-2047 minART CRUSH INTERNATIONALCan You Scale a Wall? Kat Trataris Wants to Teach YouWe hop in our time machine and eat all the snacks at Kat Trataris' white-walled gallery and studio space in the Tenderloin District of San Francisco.* We talk drunk barbering, performing linguistic feats as a screaming punkrock diva, growing up in a Los Angeles exurb, tooth gems, and why their dad put a wall of chain link behind their white picket fence.
*It's called r/sf, which is perfect, because we're really debating the value of acronyms this episode.
Kat is also a founding member of art handlxrs*, marginalized people who make the arts world actually...2021-04-1329 minART CRUSH INTERNATIONALIs Tippet Rise a Religious Experience?Tippet Rise, Montana: where two wealthy artists have invested in making ecstatic experiences for others. Would you like to be surrounded by rugged mountains, transported from one large-scale contemporary artwork to another in a free, solar-powered van while they charge your phone for you? How about being driven around by a sweet Frenchman who waxes poetic about his life’s work in a dusty pick-up truck? How about some gourmet locally-sourced food and a concert pianist? And some cows? This week, we’ve got it all.
Visual tour: https://artcrushinternational.com/is-tippet-rise-a-religious-experience.html
Tippet Rise online: https...2021-04-0624 minART CRUSH INTERNATIONALWhy Angela Hennessy Crochets with HairWe find Angela Hennessy standing at a table of shiny metal objects at her studio in industrial Oakland. Jozefien calls it cozy, but that’s just because she’s a real European. Nothing hygge about this bright warehouse space in which a lot of hair is transformed into a lot of art. Hennessy talks growing up in Humboldt County, riding horses in the summer, Blackness, being a hospice doula, and avoids telling us who gave her the genuine actual coffin standing in the middle of the room.
Visual tour: https://artcrushinternational.com/why-angela-hennessy-crochets-with-hair.html
Angela Hennessy on I...2021-03-3027 minART CRUSH INTERNATIONALWhy Mariam el-Quessny is Finally Calling Herself an ArtistWelcome to ART CRUSH INTERNATIONAL! We take you to visit Mariam El Quessny in the Oakland apartment she shares with her husband and two small children. Quessny, originally from Egypt, has lived in California for five years and, despite being a graduate of the Pratt Institute’s School of Design, only recently begun to call herself an artist. She serves us dandelion tea, shows us the tightly packed studio corner she has carved out for herself, and tells us about ‘Motherhood Illustrated’, in which she transforms women’s photographs of gritty, unflattering motherhood experiences into lovingly detailed watercolour paintings. We make...2021-03-2229 minART CRUSH INTERNATIONALWhere Elle Sofe Sara Goes to RefuelHop in crushers, we’re going to the Arctic. We take a walk through the woods with Sámi reindeer herder, choreographer, and filmmaker Elle Sofe Sara. The wind blows, the snow falls, the noses run, the hearts beat wild. She talks the importance of refuelling, travel, an old Sámi tradition called ‘ribadit’ where you grab your crush’s belt and walk around with them, and what it was like to move from the tundra to London at the age of 19. We are blessed to know her.
Some helpful vocab:
Sámi - Indigenous people of Northern...2021-03-2236 minART CRUSH INTERNATIONALWhy Simon Tran Paints in his BedroomWe visit Simon Tran in his small, art-covered bedroom, which also functions as his studio. Tran is a Vietnamese-American artist who grew up in Los Angeles and graduated from UC Berkeley’s Fine Arts program as a painter. He gives us a tour of the old North Berkeley house he shares (built on top of a tunnel with a creek running through it), serves us strong coffee, and we huddle around the mics together, talking about how terrible his friends are (they’re all comedians), how much he admires architecture students, and how he is, in Svea’s words, ‘just a f...2021-03-2225 minART CRUSH INTERNATIONALWhat Tramaine de Senna Thinks About RhinestonesWe’re on our way to Belgium! Come eat quesadillas in Tramaine de Senna’s studio with us. She’s a mixed media artist with a background in architecture, proudly from Vallejo, California. Nowadays, she loves the light and space in the Antwerp studio she shares with her husband. It has a band saw and a paint dryer and a sewing machine and a huge jar of beads that’s great for looking at. De Senna talks love, absurdity, and the migration of forms. We can’t bring ourselves to leave.
Visual tour: https://artcrushinternational.com/tramaine-de-senna.html
T...2021-03-2233 minART CRUSH INTERNATIONALWhen David Wilson’s Garage got Real BloodyJoin us as Svea runs into the car in her pyjamas and Jozefien is forced to scrunch under a low wooden table. All in the name of art (and Wilson, also in the name of Wilson). Our art crush David Wilson shows us his pristine “garage”, bougainvillea, and tape recorder. He talks FaceBook artist residency, drawing, bringing people together to sing and eat, and what happened when he had to cut just a few extra pieces for the garage ceiling. It rains. That’s very romantic. We demand snail mail and access to his outdoor shower.
Visual tour...2021-03-2227 minART CRUSH INTERNATIONALHow Samar Hejazi Avoids Getting Stuck in a Janitor’s ClosetGet your boots and your coat, for this Canadian mischief. Join us as we desperately seek a quiet space to conduct an interview in Toronto’s Museum of Contemporary Art with Palestinian-Canadian artist Samar Hejazi. Hejazi is game for anything, which is probably why she’s so good at conceptual, installation, and sculptural arts. Hejazi is working on a commission that involved making a live cast of someone’s face, stitching onto dissolvable fabric (and then dissolving it), and making abstract marks for literally no reason at all. We are besotted.
Visual tour: https://artcrushinternational.com/samar-hejazi.html2021-03-2226 minART CRUSH INTERNATIONALART CRUSH INTERNATIONAL teaserIt's happening! ART CRUSH INTERNATIONAL launches on Monday, March 22nd 2021. Stay tuned!2021-03-1901 min
Creative CuppaSvea Vikander and Jozefien Buydens: journalist & textile artistHost: Gareth Davies. Produced by The Sound Boutique. Gareth chats with journalist Svea Vikander and textile artist Jozefien Buydens about their brand new podcast Art Crush International, making it work long distance and the joy of the northern lights. Links Svea's website: https://bit.ly/3nVaQGE Jozefien's Instagram: http://bit.ly/38WGNdd Art Crush Instagram: http://bit.ly/3oXBGiD Creative Cuppa Facebook Group: https://bit.ly/3kXDSof screenless on Twitter: http://bit.ly/3mM0WXM screenless on Facebook: http://bit.ly/3efk6Ce screen...2021-02-2312 min