About Mia Weiner

Responding to the historical textile, Mia Weiner creates intimate declarations that explore identity, gender, and the psychology of human relationships. She hand-weaves each tapestry in her Los Angeles studio.

Mia received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2020) and her BFA in Fiber from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2013. She was awarded the V&A Parasol Prize by the Victoria & Albert Museum and Parasol Foundation in 2024. Her work has been exhibited internationally including in New York, London, Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago, and Rome. Weiner is a Yaddo Fellow and her work is in the permanent collection of the Kunstmuseum Den Haag, Netherlands.

This week Thibault sits down for a conversation with LA-based artist Samantha Rosenwald. They talk about a life-changing moment when Sam saw the face of someone (maybe g*d?) in a vision as a child, and life as a hard-working artist.

About Samantha Rosenwald

Rosenwald is based in LA and works primarily in colored pencil on canvas. By threading together contemporary culture, visual pun, and the dogmas of art history, she creates absurd, personal, and darkly funny portraits which illustrate what it feels like to be alive.

She received her BA in Art History from Vassar College in 2016 and her MFA in Fine Art from California College of the Arts in 2018. Rosenwald has shown with galleries such as Arsenal Contemporary (New York), Carl Kostyal (Milan), Stems Gallery (Brussels), and Sebastian Gladstone (Los Angeles). upcoming solo exhibition at Carl Kostyal. She and has been featured in publications such as New American Paintings, Art Maze Magazine, and Art of Choice.

Show Notes

• Sam Rosenwald's website https://www.samanthajrosenwald.com/
• Instagram https://www.instagram.com/samantharosenwald/?hl=en
• Sam Rosenwald at Carl Kostyal https://kostyal.com/department/draw-jam-2022/samantha-rosenwald/

In October 2024, Thibault sat down with Malado Francine and Kayla Tange to talk with them about moments when life forced change on them. They also talk about past lives, woo woo stories and being careful what you wish for.

About Malado Francine

Malado Francine (b. Malado Francine Baldwin-Tejeda) is an American multi-media artist based in Los Angeles. Her work in multiple media examines the intersection of culture and identity. Outstanding influences in her work include a childhood spent in Dakar, Senegal and Bamako, Mali as the daughter of former Peace Corps volunteers in a mixed-race family of Hispanic descent. She holds a BA in comparative literature from Swarthmore College, and an MFA in painting from the New York Studio School. She spent more than 15 years living and making art in New York City before moving to Los Angeles in 2013.

About Kayla Tange

Kayla Tange was born in South Korea and adopted by a Japanese American family. Her love for poetry and photography slowly progressed into a conceptual performance practice which incorporates elements of exotic dancing. Physical and psychic boundaries, sexuality and permanence are also recurring themes. She often uses dark comedy in her performance work to explore love and longing, societal taboos and catharsis. She is the co-producer of Sacred Wounds, a show around ritual, subverting cultural stereotypes and ancestral healing.

Show notes:

• Kayla Tange Vime Page https://vimeo.com/tange
• Kayla Tange Website https://www.kaylatange.com/
• Francine Malado Website http://www.maladobaldwin.com/cv/

This week Thibault sits down with artist and activist Rio Asch Phoenix to talk about his solo show with Monte Vista Projects, While Light Still Falls Here, documenting the hotly contested Canyon Hills property near the Verdugo Mountains in Los Angeles. They talk about Rio's nerd-level love of plants, Instagram's effect on art and why photography is still relevant.

Rio's show will be up at Monte Vista Projects in DTLA until Feb 2nd. Go to his closing reception on Saturday, February 1st. Details on the Monte Vista Projects website.

About Rio Asch Phoenix

Rio Asch Phoenix (b. 1996) is a Los Angeles-based photographer documenting the contested boundaries between built and natural environments. Raised in North Florida, his work focuses on the intersection of these sites and the stories of destruction, renewal, and harmony that emerge from them.

His photographs have appeared in Contemporary Art Review LA, Telegraph Magazine, and KCRW. Recently, he received an Honor Award from the American Society of Landscape Architects and was selected for Review Santa Fe 2024. He holds a BFA in Photography from Northeastern University (2019)

Show Notes

• ⁠Rio Asch Phoenix website⁠⁠ https://www.rioaschphoenix.com/
• Rio Asch Phoenix Instagram⁠⁠ https://www.instagram.com/rioaschphoenix/
• Monte Vista Projects ⁠https://www.montevistaprojects.com/
• No Canyon Hills https://nocanyonhills.org/⁠
• Support the NCH legal defense fund! https://www.gofundme.com/f/nch-legal⁠⁠
• Watch The Side Woo on YouTube⁠ https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjjmLJwGNrjyP1vbzNUJxKiJ4MXOw7sfE

This week Thibault talks with best-selling author Sarah Thornton about her latest book "Tits Up: Tits Up: What Sex Workers, Milk Bankers, Plastic Surgeons, Bra Designers, and Witches Tell Us about Breasts", which was listed as one of the New Yorker Best Books of 2024. After her own botched breast reconstruction surgery, Thornton delved into what breasts/tits/titties mean to women all over the world from the sex work industry to witches and everyone in between.

About Sarah Thornton

Sarah Thornton is a writer, ethnographer and sociologist of culture.[1] Thornton has authored four books and many articles about artists, the art market, bodies, people, culture, technology and design, the history of music technology, dance clubs, raves, cultural hierarchies, subcultures,[2] and ethnographic research methods.

Show Notes

This episode is a recording of a live conversation between Thibault and Allison Schulnik, reknowned painter, ceramicist, animator, and filmmaker based out in the desert in Sky Valley, CA. They talk about trying to live a dumb phone life, being witchy, and delve into Schulnik's artistic practice. Schulnik's latest show, "Dumb Phone" was at The Pit in Los Angeles and can be found on their website. The conversation was recorded on December 12, 2024. About Allison Schulnik Allison Schulnik choreographs her subjects in compositions that embody a spirit of the macabre, a Shakespearian comedy/tragedy of love, death and farce. The subjects often stare back at the audience and study them as they are in turn studied, aware of their ancestors from the Grand Theme works of the past, the genre paintings that inform them. Although a haunting sense of foreboding, discomfort and unease is palpable, a sense of understanding, compassion and hopefulness for her cast of characters is still evident in the heavy impasto paintings. Her sculptural use of oil paint references her clay-animation background, as a motion-like sensibility affords her paintings unparalleled depth and energy.

Show Notes

• https://allisonschulnik.me/
• Dumb Phone at The Pit https://www.the-pit.la/allison-schulnik-2
• The Side Woo on YouTube https://youtu.be/kDTlymYmHDM
• The Side Woo on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesidewoo/

This is a little check-in to say happy new year, and a teaser to get you excited for all the good stuff we have coming your way in 2025, which is just days away - on Thursday of this week, no less.

Also a huge thank you to all of our fans! We are listed as a Top 10, and Top 5 favorite podcast for hundreds of people which is incredible. And to the 37 of you who love us best, I love you best of all too :)

Our first episode comes out on January 2, 2025 with Allison Schulnik!

Leave me a comment, question or your thoughts on “the creative life” and we might share on a future episode https://www.speakpipe.com/Thesidewoo

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Subscribe on YouTube to get all the video goodness. https://www.youtube.com/@thibault-thesidewoo

This week on The Side Woo, Sarah talks with grad school buddy Roberto Fatal about their beautiful short films, student loan debt, using grant money for good and the hilarity of sci-fi's white apocalypses.

About Roberto Fatal

Roberto Fatal [they/them/ellos] is a Meztize Chicana filmmaker and storyteller. They come from Rarámuri, Genízaro, and Spanish ancestry. Their Queer, gender fluid, Mestize/Mixed identity informs the sci-fi, films they make. Their work centers on humans who sit at the intersections of time, space and culture. From this unique vantage point, these characters can bridge divides, see all sides, find new paths forward and recall multiple histories long forgotten. The mixed people of Fatal’s stories can connect us deeply to an undercurrent of humanity that we often overlook in a world that is increasingly divided. Survival, intersectional identity, perseverance, love, empathy, community, connection and creation are at the heart of their characters and films. Fatal is a Sundance Film Institute Native Film Lab Fellow Alum and an Imagine Native Director's Lab feature film fellow alum. Their debut feature script, ELECTRIC HOMIES, was selected by GLAAD x The Black List as one of the best unproduced screenplays of 2022 and was awarded the 2023 SFFILM Rainin Screenwriting Grant.

Learn more about Roberto's work here: https://robfatal.myportfolio.com/video-art-and-film