Foreground/Background with Noah Scalin

Noah-O is an innovative rapper and entrepreneur that has been a staple on the Virginia Hip Hop scene since his debut project Monument Avenue in 2014. He founded the Charged Up Entertainment record label and recently launched a flagship store in Richmond, Virginia. He’s made appearances on Sway in The Morning and Hot 97 and was named one of Style Weekly's Top 40 Under 40. His latest release is the deeply personal album TRILLipino, w...

Jonathan is known for writing a Song-A-Day, which he has done every day since January 1st of 2009 - which means he is rapidly nearing 5,000 original songs. His songs have gone viral, gained him worldwide recognition and are now even available as NFTs. 

In this hour long conversation, we discuss the benefits of daily creative projects, what NFTs can offer artists, and so much more!

Jonathan Mann’s site: jonathanmann.net

...

Jennifer is the Pulitzer prize winning author of the novel A Visit from the Goon Squad, she also wrote Manhattan Beach, which won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and many other multi-award winning books. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, Granta, McSweeney's, and The New York Times Magazine. And her new book The Candy House, a sibling novel to A Visit from the Goon Squad, came out from S...

Hamilton, AKA Ham, is a Richmond, Virginia based artist with a background in architecture and design. Ham is a prolific painter and muralist, who is well known for using his art as a tool for inspiration and healing in the community. In 2020, Ham founded the influential large-scale public art project: Mending Walls which was created to bring about healing through public art while adding to the conversation of Black Lives Matter.

In...

Kate is a literary agent at the Howard Morhaim Literary Agency in Brooklyn, NY. She is also an adjunct professor at New York University. Her work has appeared in Electric Literature, Catapult, Racked, Popula, and in SCRATCH: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living. She writes the fantastic substack newsletter Agents & Books about, you guessed it, literary agents and books.

In this hour long conversation we discuss:

...

Freehand is an LA based multi-disciplined artist who’s infamous for destroying coveted sneakers to make unique masks - a body of work stemming from a year long, daily project called MASK365 (inspired by own Skull-A-Day project!) Since 2010 he has made more than 200 one of a kind sneaker masks, working with brands like Nike, adidas, Puma, Cadillac, Converse and more. Freehand was also my very first podcast interviewee and I’m excite...

Michael-Birch is a fiber artist and fashion designer. Pierce has interned for Diane von Furstenberg, embroidered Christmas decorations for the Obama White House, and designed an exclusive collection for Levi’s. They have performed their embroidered portraits at Oscar and Super Bowl events, Design/Miami, and SXSW, and worked with clients such as Visa, Target, Amazon, Delta, NBCUniversal, and Airbnb. And they have exhibited in numero...

For this very special episode I’m interviewing my own parents, Mim Golub and Chuck Scalin! Both Mim & Chuck are artists and art educators and were of course fundamental in my own foray into the art world. It’s always a pleasure for me to hear the stories of their career arcs and I’m so glad to have captured this conversation in my studio earlier this year, before the Covid-19 Pandemic hit the United States. Thankfully both of m...

Jesse is an internationally known artist whose goal has always been to translate his skewed perspective of the world onto paper, canvas, concrete or skin. He has been published in almost every tattoo magazine, has won a ton of awards for his unique use of color and even found his way onto the reality TV show Ink Master. He currently works in Richmond, Virginia where he runs his own studio called Loose Screw Tattoo.

Foreground/Backg...

Terry Border worked in the commercial photography industry for a dozen years before leaving it to follow more artistic ambitions. He began his world famous Bent Objects project in 2006 and since then he has published many, many books of his art He also speaks about and exhibits his work internationally and lives with his wife and cat in Indiana.

Foreground/Background is a conversation between working artists – pulling back the curt...

Kat Roma Greer is based in Hong Kong and works as an urban disruptor and curator of public art interventions for positive social change. She is the founder and artistic director of Micro Galleries, curator of Urban Nasty, and was named as one of Australia’s 100 Women of Influence for 2015, for her work in the cultural sphere.

Foreground/Background is a conversation between working artists – pulling back the curtain on the real day-...

Jenny Kendler is an interdisciplinary artist, environmental activist, naturalist, and wild forager who lives in Chicago and various forests. Jenny holds an MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago as well as a BFA from The Maryland Institute College of Art. She currently helps run the artist residency ACRE and the art/research/activism initiative Deep Time Chicago. Jenny is also the first Artist-in-Residence with the Nat...