What drives cultural practitioners to experiment, discover, and create?
Pew Fellows Shehrezad Maher and Kristen Neville Taylor both consider the nature of memory and personal and collective histories in their creative work. Here, they discuss their artistic practices and processes.
Composer/musician Sumi Tonooka and poet/author Phillip B. Williams discuss commonalities in the ways they “channel” their compositions and how they’ve experienced shifts in their artistic identities.
Filmmaker Darius Clark Monroe and musician Karen Smith talk about tapping into creativity at an early age, striving to extend their artistic legacies, and finding peace at the ocean’s edge.
Pew Fellow James Allister Sprang shares about his transformative encounter with 4DSound and what it means to be a “listener.”
Visual artists Adebunmi Gbadebo and Odili Donald Odita discuss their shared Nigerian heritage and the materiality of their respective mediums.
Interdisciplinary artist Maia Chao and visual artist James Maurelle discuss how they create productive work environments for themselves, their earliest interests in artistic expression, and why they’ve made Philadelphia their home.
Novelist Camille Acker and filmmaker Sabaah Folayan discuss the origins of their practices, creative influences, and dream projects.
Fiction writer Asali Solomon and poet and performer Denice Frohman interview each other and discuss the role of humor, artistic influences, and what work they're most proud of.
In this installment, experimental composers Raven Chacon and Jacob Cooper discuss their musical origin stories, the role chance plays in their work, and the environments in which they make music.
Decker talks about how she drew on her own experiences with pregnancy and motherhood (as well as her background as a filmmaker) in developing the piece, and she explains the intentions behind the work’s unconventional structure and content.