On this episode, I’m excited to welcome back Janine Biunno to the podcast! When we last talked, Janine was wrapping up her MLS degree while working as an archivist and maintaining her art practice. This time around, we talk about life after that degree, parenthood during a pandemic, day jobs that turn into careers, daily practices, and valuing the little moments.

During our conversation, we discuss Oliver Burkeman's book Four Thousand Weeks, Janine's husband Mac Pohanka, co-owner of Brooklyn-based Noble Signs, and our graduate advisor (and mom of 2!) Jennifer Schmidt.

Janine is a New York–based visual artist and archivist whose work explores how we experience architecture, infrastructure, and city spaces, and how our memories of them shift in the digital age. She currently leads the archives at The Met, after 8 years at the Noguchi Museum. Her art has been exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the International Print Center of New York, the Center for Book Arts in New York, Transmitter Gallery, and Satellite Miami, and is included in major collections across the country. Janine holds a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University, an MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, a graduate certificate in Museum Studies from Tufts University, and an MLS from CUNY Queens College Graduate School of Library and Information Studies. Janine is also the mom of a 5-year-old son. For more information about Janine and her work, please visit her website and 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.

For the first episode of season 2, I welcome back Lisa Jonas Taylor, who became a parent in 2023. Lisa is a Santa Rosa-based artist who makes paintings that often incorporate sculptural and theatrical elements. Lisa has shown her work at places like Bass & Reiner Gallery, Southern Exposure, the Contemporary Jewish Museum, the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, and the Casa Romantica Cultural Center in Southern California. Collaborative projects include God Sees Everything, part of SFMOMA’s Fertile Ground at the Oakland Museum of California, and Solarium, created during a residency at This Will Take Time and later exhibited at City Limits Gallery in Oakland. Lisa holds an MFA from California College of the Arts and a BFA from CSU Long Beach.

When we recorded this conversation in August 2025, Lisa had recently left her full-time job at CCA after 10 years. We talk about that transition as well as life with a toddler, and a studio in flux...again. If you haven't already done so, you can listen to my season 1 chat with Lisa here.

Artists in Offices is produced & edited by Rebecca Bird Grigsby. Intro music is provided by Jesse Kelsey. More information about the podcast can be found at artistsinoffices.com.

Artists in Offices explores how the work we do for pay supports the work we do for love. I’m your host, Rebecca Bird Grigsby—visual artist, mom of two, and full-time project manager by day.

Season 1 featured artists balancing day jobs and creative practice. This season, I’m talking with artists who are also parents about making art while raising kids.

We’ll dive into the challenges and joys of sustaining creativity alongside caregiving—how parenting reshapes priorities, changes our sense of time, and redefines what studio work looks like. Guests share stories of support networks, teaching as livelihood, navigating unexpected life shifts, and modeling persistence for their children.

At its core, Season 2 is about embracing the conversation: how art and caregiving intersect, transform each other, and keep us creating.

Welcome to Artists in Offices, Season 2!

Music provided by Mr. Neat Beats

In this bonus episode between seasons 1 and 2 of the podcast, I talk to Lennon Michelle Wolcott Hernandez, a Boston-based interdisciplinary artist who works in graduate admissions. Originally from Michigan, Lennon is a Latinx artist who speaks better Japanese than Spanish, is named after a Beatle, and comes from a family line that signed the Declaration of Independence. She completed her Bachelor of Fine Art at Michigan State University. After leaving the Midwest, Lennon attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University for the Post-Baccalaureate Certificate (2015) and Master of Fine Arts (2017) programs. In early 2020, Lennon will present a workshop at the Michigan Indian Educational Council Conference, where her work “Mother 2017” will be featured.

In "All Work and No Play", a solo exhibition at Gallery 263 in Cambridge, Lennon explores how having a full-time job impacts artists’ time for creativity and practice. Office supplies inspired by her day job are used as materials for the work. This exhibition, which also features patterns and symbols of the artist's multicultural American heritage, serves as a self-portrait broadly defined. In this episode, we talk about her work in this show, as well as her experiences leading up to it, both in the studio and beyond.

Additional Links:

You can learn more about Lennon’s work on her website and follow her on Instagram. 

As always, podcast music is provided by Mr. Neat Beats.

In this bonus episode, I check in with Laura Torres, the second artist I interviewed for season 1 of the podcast. About a month after our initial interview in December 2018, Laura quit her full-time day job in higher education fundraising to focus more time on her circus arts training and everything else that supports her creative practice. This bonus episode was recorded in March 2019, a couple of months after Laura left her job.

Since then, Laura reports that she is meeting a lot of her tightwire goals, though like all art objectives, everything takes much longer than initially anticipated. She has her own rig, she co-created and performed her first duo act, and participated in a wirewalking workshop at NECCA (New England Center for Circus Arts) in VT.

She's also halfway through Karl Marx's Capital Vol. 1, which she reports is a challenging but worthwhile read. You can follow Laura's progress on her Instagram. To listen to our original interview, look for episode 2.

Music, as always, is provided by Mr. Neat Beats.

In this bonus episode, I check in with Elizabeth Amento, the first artist I interviewed for season one of the podcast, who has since left her day job in San Francisco and moved to New York City. This bonus episode was recorded in late June 2019, a week before she started her new job, and about three months after she made the move.

Elizabeth was born in Boston, MA, and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. She returned to the East Coast to attend Boston College for Studio Art and Psychology, Brandeis University for a Post-Baccalaureate in Studio Art, and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts/Tufts University for her Masters Degree in Fine Arts. Elizabeth’s work has been exhibited in Mighty Tieton Gallery, Washington, Baton Rouge Gallery, Louisiana, Arena 1 Gallery, California, Modified Arts, Arizona, Melvin Gallery, Florida, Boston Young Contemporaries, Massachusetts, among others. Her work is featured in Index Book’s Cut out for Collage. She currently resides in Brooklyn, NY.

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In the interview, Elizabeth mentions taking a woodshop course at Makeville Studio in Brooklyn. For more information about Elizabeth and her work, please visit her website and Instagram.

As always, podcast music is provided by Mr. Neat Beats.

In the final episode of season one, I speak with Mike Rothfeld, an artist living and working in Oakland and San Francisco. He received his MFA in Fine Art and MA in Visual and Critical Studies from California College of the Arts (CCA) and his BFA in Photography and Imaging from the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University (NYU).

Rothfeld’s lo-fi, seemingly clumsy sculptures serve as set-pieces and props for the partial science-fiction and fantasy narratives he imagines while working in the studio. His sculptures display a dedication to play, campiness and the absurd along with an underlying sentiment of melancholy and doom. Concerned by an inability to imagine new and viable alternative futures, while still wanting to locate hope for a better tomorrow, Rothfeld makes work that references an era of visual media effects that required viewers to heavily suspend their disbelief to immerse themselves in an imagined reality.

Rothfeld’s work has been displayed at The Contemporary Jewish Museum, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Southern Exposure, the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art, Alter Space Gallery, and San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA; the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT; Jan Larsen’s Xpo, Brooklyn, NY; the Beacon Artist Union, Beacon, NY; and the Institute of Contemporary Art, London, England; among other venues. His writing has appeared in Art Practical and show take-aways for Stairwell’s exhibitions.

Additional Links:

In the interview, Mike mentions working with artist, author, and curator Deb Willis while studying at NYU. She she later introduced him to the graduate programs at CCA. Between undergrad and grad school, Mike attended the Haystack Mountain School of Craft Residency. Finally, Mike and I discuss his participation in the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts’ ‘Bay Area Now 7’ exhibition, a project that was curated by Stairwell’s.

You can learn more about Mike’s work on his website and follow him on Instagram. As always, podcast music is provided by Mr. Neat Beats.

In episode 9, I speak with Nicole Kita,  a visual artist living and working in Northern California, who works as an educator and advocate for artists with developmental disabilities. As an educator, Kita has taught artists of diverse ages, cultural and socio-economic backgrounds, as well as individual behavioral and learning needs. She currently works as a full-time teacher at The Studio, a non-profit arts organization in Eureka, California, that provides an inclusive studio environment for artists of all abilities to foster an authentic art practice and professional growth.  

As an artist, Kita explores the visual language of signs and symbols. Her practice is informed by anthropology and the history of print media: artifacts of the history, folklore, and cultural heritage of North America.

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In the interview, Nicole mentions traveling to Chicago to screenprint with Dan McAdams at Crosshair. Learn more about Nicole on her website, visit her Etsy shop, and follow her on Instagram.

As always, podcast music is provided by Mr. Neat Beats.