Why Make? Podcast

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.

Fully automated, remote controlled fighting tables that compete for ultimate supremacy, seems to be a good place to start any conversation. Especially when that conversation is with artist ,woodworker, educator and humorist Annie Evelyn. From fighting tables we move onto the merely absurd, like what it means to be a conceptional functional furniture maker. Her time as a resident artist at the Penland school of Craft. And the work she produced participating in two ground breaking exhibitions for women craft artist

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.

How Do You Measure Your Worth is a metaphorical question Paul Sasso posed in a 1990 sculpture of the same name. Paul passed on to that great measuring tape beyond in March of 2025. So here are some previously unpublished thoughts Paul had on the topic and many more from a conversation we had in 2023.

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-applyOn 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 the last episode of 2024 a special treat, the first of our many recorded interviews from the Emma International Collaboration which took place in August of 2024. This conversation is with Michael Hosulak the brainchild behind Emma though he takes no credit for being founder. We talk about two of the many pieces Michael was involved in making during Emma and also talk about the beauty that is “cocktail hour” and the “junk pile”. Sit back and listen as we contemplate the possibilities of “What If”.

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.

In this episode of why make I talk with sculptor, furniture maker and educator Jack Larimore about how his background in landscape architecture. What led him down the path to discovering a love of design and eventually making furniture. Furthermore how a lack of a formal education In the arts really allowed him to explore sculptural ideas with few preconceived notions. Then we get into a deep dive about in his most recent exhibition called Bonding that was held at Rowan University in the spring of 2024.

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 my first impressions of the of the Emma International collaboration, which took placeJuly 31 to August 8 in Big River Saskatchewan. I you need a little more background on Emma take a listen to episode 59 of the podcast “What is Emma” When I returned from Why Makes great adventure to Emma earlier this month and knew that upon returning I needed to sit and collect my thoughts about my experience before they started to drifted away. This short episode is just that a collection of thoughts about having attended my first artist collaboration. I promise you there will be much more to come.