Artists in Offices

No guest this episode, just a personal update. Two things have been building for a while, and it turns out they're the same story: I'm writing a book, and I quit my day job! In this episode: the book idea I've been sitting on for a couple of years why the tension for artist who are also parents isn't really creativity vs. caregiving; it's making art vs. making money a survey I need your help with (15 minutes, open to any artist, no degree required) why I gave notice after almost seven years at my day job Links: take the survey (15 minutes, open to any artist regardless of training or degree) read the full story behind the book on Substack read the full story behind the day job news: do what you love, f*ck the rest follow along on Instagram subscribe to the newsletter If you know one artist who should hear this episode or take the survey, send it their way. As always, big thanks to my friend Jesse Kelsey for the intro/outro tunes!

On this final episode of season 2, I'm thrilled to welcome Carrie Lederer to the podcast! She's a painter, sculptor, and installation artist whose nature-inspired work has been shown across the U.S. Carrie has completed public art commissions for places like Facebook, UCSF Medical Center, and several Bay Area cities, and she's currently an artist-in-residence at Kala Art Institute in Berkeley. Carrie is a recipient of the prestigious Fleishhacker Foundation Eureka Award. Her work is in major collections and has been widely featured in publications like ARTnews and the San Francisco Chronicle. Carrie served as curator at the Bedford Gallery for 25 years. On top of all this, she's also the proud mom of an adult son. During our conversation, we discuss a couple of other interviews including 48 Hills and Create! Magazine. To learn more about Carrie and her work, check out her website and follow her on Instagram. Artists in Offices is produced and edited by Rebecca Bird Grigsby. Music is provided by Jesse Kelsey. Additional information and episodes can be found at artistsinoffices.com.

I'm so excited to welcome Meredith Steele to the podcast! Meredith is a painter and educator whose work is rooted in a love for the everyday. In 2020, she created 100 Paintings of Oakland, a project that was featured on KQED and led to major commissions with Chandra Cerrito Art Advisors and a body of work now permanently installed at the John Muir/UCSF Berkeley Outpatient Center. She's had solo shows at The Compound Gallery in 2023 and 2025, participated in group exhibitions including the 2023 de Young Open, and holds degrees from the Savannah College of Art and Design and Winthrop University. Before focusing on painting full-time, Meredith taught high school art for 20 years. She lives in Oakland, California, with her adult daughter and dog, Ferris. To learn more about Meredith and her work, check out her website and follow her on Instagram. Artists in Offices is produced and edited by Rebecca Bird Grigsby. Music is provided by Jesse Kelsey. Additional information and episodes can be found at artistsinoffices.com.

On this episode, I'm thrilled to welcome Ellen Lake to the podcast! Ellen is an interdisciplinary artist based in Oakland, California, whose work spans painting, video, sculpture, installation, and public art. She often experiments with technology and archives, creating projects that blur the boundaries between process and material. Her public art initiative, Bench Projects, replaced ads with art by local artists at AC Transit bus stops in North Oakland (including episode 8 artist Lisa Solomon). Ellen has been awarded residencies at places like MASS MoCA, the Vermont Studio Center, the Rauschenberg Residency, and Stanford's Experimental Media Arts Lab, and she's received grants from the California Arts Council and the City of Oakland. She's also the Co-Executive Director of Kala Art Institute, a residency program and community art hub in Berkeley. At home, Ellen is just as dynamic; she lives with her husband, their three children, and two chihuahuas, Max and George. You can see some of Ellen's film and video work we discuss here. You can listen to the Spoiler Alert Radio podcast interview I mention here. To learn more about Ellen and her work, check out her website and follow her on Instagram. Artists in Offices is produced and edited by Rebecca Bird Grigsby. Music is provided by Jesse Kelsey. Additional information and episodes can be found at artistsinoffices.com.

On this episode, I'm thrilled to welcome Lisa Solomon to the podcast! Lisa is a studio artist, college professor, and illustrator whose work explores themes of domesticity, craft, and personal history—often blurring the lines between art and craft through her mixed-media pieces and large installations. She's exhibited nationally and internationally, with work in both private and public collections, and she's also the author of several books including A Field Guide to Color, The Color Meditation Deck, Knot Thread Stitch, and more (find all her books here). Beyond her art practice, Lisa teaches on CreativeBug and continues to create from her backyard studio in Oakland, where she lives with her husband, their teenager, two cats, a three-legged pit bull, a dachshund mix, and countless spools of thread. Shout-outs to artist and UC Berkeley professor emerita Katherine Sherwood (also the reason I first met Lisa over 20 years ago) and longtime Chroma series collaborator Christine Buckton Tillman. Lisa shares more about how her many books came about on various other podcasts and interviews (so we didn't spend too much time talking about it), including Authentic Obsessions earlier in 2025, a 2019 conversation with Abby Glassenberg, and a recent Canvas Rebel article here. We do talk about Lisa's dreamy backyard studio in Oakland, California. You can check out a cool timelapse of the studio being built here. Finally, learn more about Lisa's newest book Art, Craft, Color, coming out in February 2026, here. To learn more about Lisa and her work, check out her website and follow her on Instagram. Artists in Offices is produced and edited by Rebecca Bird Grigsby. Music is provided by Jesse Kelsey. Additional information and episodes can be found at artistsinoffices.com.

In this episode, I'm excited to welcome Sarah Kobrinsky to the podcast! Sarah is the former Poet Laureate of Emeryville, California, and the author of Nighttime on the Other Side of Everything. Her poems and stories have appeared in places like Magma Poetry, Red Light Lit, Monkeybicycle, 100 Word Story, and many more. Born in Canada, raised in North Dakota, seasoned in England, and tempered in California, she now lives in the Bay Area, where she and her husband run a handmade ceramic dinnerware company called Jered's Pottery. She also hosts literary workshops and readings there, and beyond her creative and professional life, she's a folk dancer, a martial artist, an aspiring polyglot, and the mom of a teenage son. During our interview, Sarah reads two of her poems: Elf-Portrait and Phantom Letdown. She paraphrases Joan Didion (and gets very close to the actual quote: "I don't know what I think until I write it down."). Finally, you can get a sense of how she engages her audiences during poetry readings here. To learn more about Sarah and her work, follow her on Instagram. Artists in Offices is produced and edited by Rebecca Bird Grigsby. Music is provided by Jesse Kelsey. Additional information and episodes can be found at artistsinoffices.com.

On this episode, I'm excited to speak with Susana Sanchez-Young! Susana is a visual journalist with more than 20 years of experience in newspaper design and graphic and photo illustration. Her award-winning work has covered everything from presidential inaugurations to Spanx for men to nudist camps in South Florida—and pretty much everything in between. She's been recognized by the Society of News Design and multiple state press associations across the country. Susana is also the creative force behind The Designing Chica, a brand she launched after realizing during her pregnancy that there wasn't enough artwork reflecting her own Guatemalan-Nicaraguan-American culture. She has since channeled that inspiration into vibrant, culturally rooted designs often created late at night, after work and the many family obligations she has as the mother of two. To learn more about Susana and her work, check out her website and follow her on Instagram.  Artists in Offices is produced and edited by Rebecca Bird Grigsby. Music is provided by Jesse Kelsey. Additional episodes and information can be found at artistsinoffices.com.  

I'm thrilled to talk with David Burke on this episode of the podcast! David is an artist whose career balances teaching, studio practice, and public art. Over the past two decades, he's created murals, exhibitions, and collaborative projects that merge creativity with community storytelling. He's the founder of Hungry Ghost Productions, a Bay Area mural collective dedicated to diversity, social justice, and collaboration, and their ongoing Love Letter to Oakland project celebrates generations of artists, activists, and leaders in the city. In his studio work, David explores ecology, climate change, and the relationship between the natural and built environment. His teaching career has taken him from Chiang Mai University in Thailand to the Academy of Art University and Cal State East Bay. David is also the father of two. During our conversation, I reference another podcast interview David did with Urban Artist Talk. You can check out that interview here. Shout-outs to David's mural crew & collaborators: Steve Babuljak, Pancho Pescador, and Joevic Yeban. Special recognition goes to Hung Liu, an artist featured in the Love Letter to Oakland mural in Oakland's Temescal neighborhood and a major influence on artists in the Bay Area and beyond, as you'll hear in future episodes. To learn more about David and his work, check out his website and follow him on Instagram.  Artists in Offices is produced and edited by Rebecca Bird Grigsby. Music is provided by Jesse Kelsey. Additional episodes and information can be found at artistsinoffices.com.

This week's guest is Briana Loewinsohn! Briana is a high school art teacher and cartoonist, and the author of the acclaimed graphic memoir Ephemera, published by Fantagraphics in 2023. The book was named one of the American Library Association's top graphic novels of the year and won the 2023 Foreword Indies Editors Prize for Nonfiction. Her latest graphic novel, Raised by Ghosts, came out in early 2025—also with Fantagraphics—and recently won the Harvey Award for Best Young Adult Book. Briana lives in Oakland, California, with her husband, their two kids, and their cat, Gary. We talk a lot in the episode about Briana's "bestie," Thien Pham, fellow teacher and comic book & visual artist. Briana has been featured in a lot of articles and interviews, but I particularly enjoyed her "Diary of a Struggling Comics Artist" interview with Chris Wisnia; you can listen to the 2nd part of their conversation for free here. She talks a lot about her experience getting her work published in this and other interviews. Some other projects we discuss include her Color Field for the Drawn to MoMA series and Movie Theaters We Have Lost for KQED. To learn more about Briana and her work, follow her on Instagram. Artists in Offices is produced and edited by Rebecca Bird Grigsby. Music is provided by Jesse Kelsey. More information about the podcast can be found at artistsinoffices.com.

In episode 3, I speak with Buffalo-based artist Andrea Wenglowskyj. Andrea is a photo-based artist and commercial/editorial photographer whose work explores how memory and community are shaped by war and authoritarianism, inspired by her Ukrainian-American heritage. A Fulbright Grant recipient in Ukraine, she has exhibited across the U.S. and internationally, including at CEPA Gallery, Silver Eye Center for Photography, and Galerie Amu in Prague. Her photography has appeared in The New York Times, NPR, and more. Andrea has taught at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the International Center of Photography, and the Brooklyn Museum, among others. She co-founded creative organizations Kind Aesthetic and DELVE and has participated in numerous residencies and grant-funded projects. Most recently, her work appeared in Portrait of Buffalo II at CEPA Gallery, where she'll open a solo exhibition in November 2025. During our conversation, I reference Andrea's May 2017 CreativeMornings Buffalo talk about Paths of Intention. You can watch the video here. To learn more about Andrea and her work, visit her website and follow her on Instagram. Artists in Offices is produced and edited by Rebecca Bird Grigsby. Music is provided by Jesse Kelsey. More information about the podcast can be found at artistsinoffices.com.