Shows
WPKN Music, Arts, and Culture PodcastErector Square Open Studios 2025—Interview with the Artists' Collective G.L.O.CValerie Richardson spoke with four of the five members of the artists' collective G.L.O.C. who will be presenting a collective work during Erector Square Open Studios. G.L.O.C = Megan Czekaj, Emily Herberich, Anna Russell, Gabriella Svenningsen, and Allison Hornak (not present for the interview).
2025-10-1321 min
WPKN Music, Arts, and Culture PodcastErector Square Open Studios 2025–Interview with Artist and Open Studios Organzer Eric MarchWPKN's Valerie Richardson speaks with Eric March, a realist painter and draftsman whose work explores themes of urban life, urban environments, and narrative-often through dense multi-figural compositions. Since 2020 Eric has created five different large community-focused figurative artworks for public display at local health facilities, including Yale New Haven Hospital and Cornell Scott Hill Health Center. Eric also is an illustrator and a web designer and developer—and is the creator of this website! He currently teaches at the Art Students League (NYC) and Creative Arts Workshop (New Haven) and has been a primary organizer of Erector Square Open Stu...
2025-10-1326 min
WPKN Music, Arts, and Culture PodcastErector Square Open Studios 2025–Interview with Artist Fethi MeghelliWPKN's Valerie Richardson interviews artist Fethi Meghelli, an Algerian-American artist whose career spans more than five decades, three continents, and experimentation in a wide variety of media and styles, from printmaking, masks, and found objects to paintings, sculpture, and collage, often combining the urgency of social realism with the expansive imaginativeness of surrealism.Meghelli earned his BFA from the School of Fine Arts in Algiers, Algeria, where he was mentored by the founders of modern Algerian painting, particularly M'hamed Issiakhem (1928-1985), Choukri Mesli (1931-2017), and Ali Ali-Khodja (1923-2010). He later received his MFA from the National School...
2025-10-1323 min
WPKN Music, Arts, and Culture PodcastInk and Impressions: 110 Years of the Society of American Graphic Artists — Valerie Richardson interviews Jennifer Reynolds-Kaye and Bill Bill BehnkenIn this episode, Valerie Richardson sits down with Dr. Jennifer Reynolds‑Kaye, Director of the Housatonic Museum of Art, and guest Bill Behnken to explore Ink and Impressions: 110 Years of the Society of American Graphic Artists. Behnke is a former president of SAGA. We talk about SAGA’s legacy and what it means to mark the organization’s 110th anniversary with its 90th annual members’ exhibition—150 hand‑pulled prints by artists whose works span intaglio, wood engraving, lithography, mokuhanga, and more. We highlight how the show bridges past and present—featuring historic names like Isabel Bishop, Rafael Soyer, Ruth Leaf, and Ann...
2025-09-1538 min
WPKN Music, Arts, and Culture PodcastElm Shakespeare Company — A Midsummer Nights DreamValerie Richardson speaks with Rebecca Goodheart, Producing Director of the Elm Shakespeare Company. Their 30th anniversary production is a Bollywood-styled A Midsummer Night's Dream. Performances run August 14 through August 31, beginning at 7:30 pm, in New Haven's Edgerton Park. Admission is free. elmshakespeare.org
2025-08-2019 min
WPKN Music, Arts, and Culture PodcastOur Woven Community—Discussion with Cynthia DavisValerie Richardson speaks with Cynthia Davis on WPKN's Community Hour on August 18, 2025. Cynthia shares the origin story of Our Woven Community and the women whose artistry fuels it—bags, scarves, and new beginnings. She also previews “Sew Strong Together,” the September 7 gala supporting OWC’s next chapter.
2025-08-2030 min
WPKN Music, Arts, and Culture PodcastTod Papageorge (Emeritus Director of Photography at the Yale School of Art) & Lisa Kereszi (Assistant Director in Photography at Yale) interviewed by WPKN's Valerie RichardsonValerie Richardson speaks with Tod Papageorge, emeritus director of photography at the Yale School of Art, and Lisa Kereszi, assistant director in photography at Yale, about At the Beach + In the Pool: On Influence, a new exhibition at MoCA Westport. The show pairs Papageorge’s iconic black-and-white photographs of 1970s–80s Los Angeles beachgoers with work by 41 of his former Yale MFA students—now Guggenheim Fellows—offering a compelling meditation on photographic mentorship, influence, and legacy.
2025-06-1039 min
WPKN Music, Arts, and Culture PodcastDiscussion of Artist Julie BuffaloheadValerie Richardson sits down with Lilia Uribe and Dr. Royce K. Young Wolf, the inaugural Assistant Curator of Native American Art at the Yale University Art Gallery and Collection Manager of the Native North American and Indigenous Collection at the Yale Peabody Museum, to discuss the powerful work of Native American artist Julie Buffalohead. In honor of Native American Heritage Month, the Housatonic Museum of Art will host a special storytelling session highlighting Buffalohead's painting, Resurrection, which is currently on display at the museum. Wednesday, November 20 from 3:00pm - 6:00pm...
2024-11-1336 min
WPKN Special BroadcastsWPKN Live from New Haven Open Studios at Erector Square 2024WPKN's Valerie Richardson, Martha Willette Lewis, and Brendan Toller lead a special live broadcast from New Haven's Erector Square Open Studios featuring interviews with Eric March, Oi Fortin, Lesley Finn, Janet Warner, Adrian Martinez, Paul Theriault and more.
2024-10-232h 16
WPKN Music, Arts, and Culture PodcastArtist Iyaba Ibo Mandingo interviewed by WPKN General Manager, Valerie RichardsonWPKN programmer Valerie Richardson speaks with artist Iyaba Ibo Mandingo about his exhibition Arwe Journey: Twentieth-Century Afri-Caribbean Migration, which will be on view at the Housatonic Museum of Art from Weds. Sept. 18, 2024, through Feb. 21, 2025. In the 61 paintings in this exhibition, the artist Iyaba Ibo Mandingo tells the story of the 20th-century Afri-Caribbean migration to Europe and North America. Arwe Journey takes its inspiration from Jacob Lawrence’s Great Migration series and August Wilson’s plays. The exhibition will be accompanied by many special programs including performances of poetry and storytelling by the artist himself. Also joining the conversation were co-c...
2024-09-1644 min
WPKN Music, Arts, and Culture PodcastBryan Munar of Hadestown with WPKN's Valerie RichardsonBryan Munar, Orpheus in the upcoming touring production of Hadestown, talks with WPKN's Valerie Richardson ahead of the Hadestown theatrical debut at the Waterbury Palace Theater, October 3-6.
2024-09-1224 min
WPKN Community RadioA conversation with artist Kim Weston about her project "Sweetgrass: Dancing with My Ancestors"Valerie Richardson is joined in the studio by photographer Kim Weston and Jennifer Reynolds-Kaye, director of the Housatonic Museum of Art. Kim's exhibition Sweetgrass: Dancing with My Ancestors opens at the Museum on November 29, 2023
2023-11-2946 min
WPKN Community RadioEric March, artist and organizer, discusses the Erector Square's 100th anniversary Open StudiosErector Square, which celebrates its 100th birthday in 2023, has always had a special place in the creative life of New Haven, Connecticut. Until 1967, it was the home of A.C. Gilbert's factory that produced Erector Sets and dozens of other toys and science kits that challenged kids' creativity and ingenuity. In recent decades, it has become studio space for over 100 artists as well as theater companies, yoga and jujitsu studios, and other creative disciplines.
In celebration of these 100 years, the artists of Erector Square are opening their studios on October 21 and 22, 2023, from noon to five.
Open Studios organizer Eric March...
2023-10-1825 minWPKN Community RadioAntoinette Brim-Bell , Connecticut's Poet LaureateState Poet Laureate Antoinette Brim-Bell joined WPKN's Valerie Richardson to talk about her work and her tenure as the state's Poet Laureate.
She also spoke about an upcoming event where she will be joined by poets Marilyn Nelson, Kate Rushin, and Rhonda Ward. The four poets partnered with the Witness Stones Old Lyme Project and created a verse cycle to capture the forgotten voices of the enslaved in Lyme, Connecticut.
The poets will talk about their creative process including their work with historian, Carolyn Wakeman, to uncover the stories of the long ago enslaved including Cato, Humphrey, Temperance, and Arabella.
2023-08-1026 min
WPKN Community RadioLive Culture Episode 79 : women's History Month, For the Record...Up Now in the archives!
https://archives.wpkn.org/bookmarks/listen/377818
This month's episode features guest co-host and artist Maxim Schmidt as we celebrate Women's History Month with a discussion with artists George Corsillo, Clymenza Hawkins and Amy Wachtel about their involvement with the art exhibit Sound & Vision II: For the Record... a visual and musical celebration of feminism involving over 40 artists in a gallery exhibit featuring imaginary record covers, real covers form private collections and the wpkn archive and musical memorabilia from women musicians at many stages of their careers.
The show is up until May 6th at the...
2023-03-2559 min