Why Make? Podcast

This episode is the story of two artists, two very different approaches and a almost two hundred year old photographic process called Cyanotype or blue printing. Join us as we journey to take a look at an exhibition at the Visions of Museum of Textile Art in San Diego California called Cyanotype with two of the participating artists Patti Gaddis and Morgan Ford Willingham. As we once again explore the world of modern fiber art.

This is the final episode of the 2025 season of Why Make and fittingly the concluding episode of our series on the Emma International Collaboration. Why Make was invited to attend and document the 2024 edition of this event which happens every two years. Our previous episodes on Emma are Episode 59 “What is Emma”, 63 “Impressions of Emma”, 67 “What if” with one of Emma’s founders Michael Hosulak , 68 with Miranda Jones a long time participant and finally this episode we are calling “Emma and the Art of Collaboration”. When I first entertained going Emma to document it two years ago I had not a clue as to how this mysterious process of collaboration worked, this episode will hopefully give you some insight into what that actually looks like.

In 2009 I attended the Furniture Society conference in Boone North Carolina and sat in on an artist presentation by three young amazing makers whose work left a lasting impression. Sylvie Rosenthal, Katie Hudnall and Yuri Kobayashi. Sadly Sylvie passed away on October 14th and that bright shining light is no longer with us. In remembrance of Sylvie please take a listen to the wonderful conversation we had with her in October of 2020. Sylvie Rosenthal is a Madison, Wisconsin based artist and educator. She maintains a studio practice making commission furniture, work for online sales, and fantastic genre challenging sculpture dealing with the intersecting flight patterns of the histories of trade, hybridity, materiality, queer theory, and the natural world. On Episode 21 of Why Make? we discuss her fascinating 2018 show at the Villa Terrace Decorative Arts Museum in Milwaukee called “House Of Risk” and the implications of taking risks in ones work. We also talk about the way in which Sylvie seeks to put multiple layers of understanding and interpretation in her work but ultimately leaves it to the viewer to determine meaning. Take a chance, roll the dice and join us for the next hour as we discuss risk with Sylvie Rosenthal!

In this episode of Why make we are going to literally talk about something close home, both my childhood home of Pittsburgh and my mom who was a fiber artist. That is the 2025 Fiberarts International produced by the Pittsburgh Fiber Arts Guild, of which my mom was a longtime member, Contemporary Craft and Brew House Arts. We will talk with two of the artists involved in this years show Akudzwe Elsie Chiwa and Chieko Murasugi And two long time members of the Pittsburgh Fiber Arts Guild,which has produced this exhibition for over 50 years, Patty Kennedy-Zafred and Risa Nagan. Take a listen as we weave a tale that for me starts with my mom and ends with learning something about an art form long denigrated as women’s work.

This is the story of how a seed of an idea sowed years ago becomes a ground breaking exhibition of women chair makers. The exhibition entitled Seating Assignment happened in March of 2024 at the Sawtooth School for Visual Art in Winston Salem NC. It’s chief instigator was the then artist in residence at Sawtooth Rebecca Juilette-Duex. In this Mind of Maker episode we look at the inspiration for creating this exhibition, learn about the Chair Library at Winston Salem College and talk with Elsa Hoffman one of the artists in the show.

This episode of Why Make? is brought to you by Haystack Mountain School of Crafts.Thanks to Haystack to becoming our first sponsor and partner. Haystack currently has open spaces in select Square ONE Workshops for beginners and Summer 2025 Workshops! Spaces in workshops and housing are limited, and applications are processed on a rolling, first-come, first-serve basis. Applications for these open spots will be open the public starting Wednesday, March 26. To see workshop details and to apply, visit haystack-man.org or go to haystack-mtn.org/summer-workshops-details#workshops-how-to-apply On this episode of Why make we continue our conversations from the 2024 Emma International Collaboration in Big River, Saskatchewan This time Miranda Jones. Miranda is primarily known in the art world for her paintings of animals but she is so much more than that. I saw her mostly in the metal fabrication area with plasma torch in hand but she could also be found in Tiny Shiny the jewelry workshop as well as the painting area. Miranda is a longtime participant in the Emma Collaboration and also sat on the Emma board, so a great person to talk to to get the length and breath of this hard to describe event. Here is my conversation with Miranda, we start with a silly reference to her honorary citizenship from New Zealand I refer to as her Kiwiness. Miranda is in fact a Canadian citizen and resides in Saskatoon but was originally from Australia.

In this episode, we are returning to our “Mind of a Maker” mini series with furniture maker and sculptor Ellie Richards This story starts with an idea that was brewing for years before Ellie began making the piece we talk about in this episode, and that idea was a fascination with the fantasy coffin practice that exists in Ghana. Fantasy coffins, as the word implies, are fantastical, large, hollow, sculptural forms built almost entirely with hand tools that can be just about anything from a jet plane to a tomato… basically trying to capture a person's passions as they pass on and they are, quite simply, then buried in it, a practice far different from our western views on death and burial. She was encouraged to pursue her exploration of fantasy coffins by the artist Eric Adjetey Anang, a descendant of the original Ghanaian coffin makers. Eventually Ellie started to consider how to use these skills to create an object of her own design, and in this edition of Mind of a Maker, Ellie walks us through the process from inspiration to the final construction of her piece titled Basket Casket.

On this episode of Why Make we have Jim Roberts a percussionist, producer, artist and educator who resides in Chapel Hill NC. Jim plays the drum set, djembe, congas, and has many recordings under his belt. He has just finished a 17 year teaching stint at Elon University where he taught percussion and directed the Elon World Percussion Ensemble. Jims journey in percussion dated to his earliest years playing in band class to marching band to drum and bugle core to African music traditional fiddle music and so much more. Please join us for a percussive journey with Jim Roberts

In this episode we introduce the first in our Mind of Maker series inside of the Why Make Podcast. With our guest Steve Fishman. Steve is a printmaker and a painter in many mediums, as well as being skilled with pen and ink and the mighty pencil. He is also a teacher and someone who really knows how to think about the process of making art. So journey back with me a little bit to May of 2023 and I'm thinking about how to put some new elements in the podcast and I come up with the idea of trying to follow the thought process of creating a specific piece of art. And the name that came to me for that was Mind of a Maker, which I stole directly from the Anthony Bourdain PBS series Mind of a Chef. And I'm also thinking of this as being a hybrid project as well, both a podcast and a short film, because of course after making one film I have mastered the medium. So the first thing I need is a guest slash guinea pig to try out the idea, someone who will not mind if I waste their time and flail around. And that would be my good friend Steve Fishman, who I've spent endless hours talking art and art making. And he was more than a willing victim. I also knew that he had recently completed work on an exhibition of moon inspired paintings and that those were part of a much larger ongoing series of paintings. And as Steve and I are both fond of saying, "Bob's your uncle." I had a subject and the topic for my experiment. Sit back and listen as Steve regales you with tales of painting the moon

On Episode 60 of Why Make? our guest is Jonathan Byrd a Carrboro, NC musician, who, along with being award winning song writer, is also a story teller extraordinaire, a poet, a photographer, a painter, a teacher and now a student in Physics. Erik has known Jonathan for a long time and has watched his career blossom over the years. After discovering that Jonathan had taken a hiatus from touring to go to school for physics it became evident that it was high time to get him on the podcast to find out more. Enjoy Part One of a wide open discussion on a host of topics, from song writing to physics, with Jonathan Byrd.

Welcome to the first episode of season 5 of the podcast, which we’re calling Mind of a Maker. We are going to take a slightly different approach to the podcast this season by focusing more on the creative process itself. Each episode will examine a specific piece of work or body of work of our guests and take a deep dive into how that work evolved . Also along with each podcast, we will be producing a short films to take the highlights from our conversations and put them in a visual form. These will be available on the website and our Youtube channel In this episode we start with a bang as we discuss making art with disabled guns with Boris Bally. Boris is a jeweler and metalsmith. Who describes himself as a discriminating sculptor, and a clever cultural critic. Please join us as we explore the how and why of turning guns into meaningful art

Episode 56 of Why Make? is a conversation 50 years in the making! Erik sits down sit with his childhood friend, the amazing metalsmith, jeweler, sculptor and teacher Boris Bally. Erik last saw Boris sometime in 1974 when they were 12 years old. Originally, like Erik, from Pittsburgh, Boris now resides and works in Providence RI. A maker from the early days of his youth, Boris fell in love with the magic of working metal and never looked back. Growing up in a Swiss family he took advantage of an opportunity to do a 1 year apprenticeship in Basil Switzerland in metal smithing after high school. Upon returning to the U.S he enrolled in the Tyler School of Art at Temple University in Philadelphia and finished his degree at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Always the practical artist Boris has fashioned his career by teaching, doing commission work and designing and producing a number of very successful production items, along with his own more personal work. Join us as we catch on the last 50 years and find out what just what Boris Bally has been making. We had the privilege of having this conversation with Boris while he was teaching a workshop at the Pocosin Center for the Arts in Columbia, NC in June with Bob Ebendorf our guest on Episode 54. Many thanks to the good folks at Pocosin for allowing us to spend some time on campus.

Retired educator, jeweler and metalsmith extraordinaire Bob Ebendorf joins us on episode 54 of the Why Make podcast. Originally from Topeka Kansas, Bob was a star football player and wrestler in high school who had the choice of a big time college athletic scholarship or attending art school. Lucky for us he made the right choice! After spending his undergraduate and graduate years in the art department at the University of Kansas Bob then went on to spend a fair amount of time in Norway honing his technical skills in metal smithing before returning to the U.S to teach. Bob is a self proclaimed radical in the jewelry and metals field, often choosing to work in found objects, thrift store finds and junk instead of precious metals and stones. After a long career in the arts Bob’s work is in the permanent collection of many museums and at 83 he still enjoys teaching, creating and just being curious. We had the privilege of having this conversation with Bob while he was teaching a workshop at the Pocosin Center for the Arts in Columbia NC in June. Many thanks to the good folks at Pocosin for allowing us to spend some time on campus.