The Culdesac

Brittany Greeson is a documentary photographer currently based in Detroit Michigan whose work examines economic divestment, gender disparity and the daily life of the American working-class primarily through long-form visual narratives and portraiture.

Jon Dean and Nicolas Glynos each, hold a Ph.D. in Molecular and Integrative Physiology from the University of Michigan. They have also each worked with Dr. Jimo Borigin at Borigin Lab. While at Borigin Lab, Jon published findings which showed that the psychedelic substance DMT occurred in rat brains in  levels roughly equivalent to serotonin, dopamine, and other compounds which regulate our mood and experience of consciousness.

Eric Hardin, is owner and operator of TODAY clothing in Ann Arbor. Eric is a master of the art of retail. TODAY is an institution of aesthetic, specializing in the landscape of menswear, carrying storied brands such as Kapital, Our Legacy, Story MFG, Endless Joy and featuring local treasures like designer and shirt master Yoshi Sugiura.

Eric takes retail beyond simply selling clothing. Like an old world merchant he has cultivated a friendly, welcoming environment for folks to drop in, shoot the shit, check in about local politics, and as you will hear in this episode tune in to a fascinating ramble.

Nick Hinton is a philosopher-poet who disseminates his musings on synchronicities, the paranormal, occult magick, portals to other worlds, higher dimensional beings, and his personal experience with high strangeness through his twitter threads and in his books.

His books are available in digital and print formats at nickhintonn.com, or directly through his social media accounts on twitter and instagram.

Nick also has a podcast! What IFF?

Matt Kenyon is a new media artist and designer. He is the co-founder of S.W.A.M.P. (Studies of Work Atmospheres and Mass Production).

SWAMP focuses on critical themes addressing the effects of global corporate operations, mass media and communication, military-industrial complexes, and general meditations on the liminal area between life and artificial life.

SWAMP has been making work in this vein since 1999 using a wide range of media, including custom software, electronics, mechanical devices, and often times working with living organisms.

Matt lives and works in Buffalo, New York, where he is an Associate Professor in the Department of Art at the University at Buffalo, and part of PLATFORM, UB's socially engaged design studio.

Cecilia Gorgon is, among many things, my wife. She is uses instagram to visually opine on fashion, animal rights, and flowers (she is a budding florist and brand manager @universityflowershop). She is also an incredible illustrator, and has a deep knowledge of fashion history and all things “cool”.

We recorded this conversation on our 6th year anniversary and I am presenting it as the 22nd episode of The Culdesac, because I read once that 22 is a powerful number for manifesting one’s ambitions. And, if there is one thing I aspire too, it is manifesting the ultimate expression of love, eros, and understanding, things that Cecilia helps me with everyday.

KATAI is a Detroit-based artist focused on designing, constructing, and evolving digital media experiences, predominantly through video, photography and sound design.

His work has been released in myriad ways, from music video collaborations with a long list of artists, to gallery presentations, and through a plethora of online releases.

Carisa Bledsoe an artist, originally from Texas by way of Memphis, TN, and also some Arkansas thrown in, they are now based in Marseille, France working in the intersection of corporeal expression, time, drawing and writing.

Their current research is centered in the connections between meditation and creativity. They are focused on the emergence of thingness, identity and the ongoing internal drama of self discovery. Through focusing on deeply personal subject matter, they transform the personal into the universal.

Their work is currently a part of an exhibition called Story, Word, Sound, Sway at the Stamps Gallery in Ann Arbor, MI.

The episode intro states Carisa is from Arkansas, they were actually born in Texas, don't rush your intro!

Julia Firestone Callis, a painter and poet born and raised and based in Detroit, Michigan. She constructs paintings by intertwining personal events and interactions through a nonlinear thought process. Objects float, disintegrate and re-appear, transformed through abstraction and given new context through Julia’s own poems and personal idioms. Each composition is treated as sacred.

Julia as held solo exhibitions, which always have such enigmatic titles, for example, “Dinner at the Fauvist Slum,” at Popps Emporium, in Hamtramck, 2017, Bread and Clutter at public pool in Hamtramck, 2018, and the Blue Solider, at Klemm Gallery, 2019, in which Julia imagines herself as a tongue-less blue whale.

Her work is currently on display at MOCAD as a part of a 40 person group show called Dual Vision.

Joseph Keckler is known for his expressive and powerful voice, stirring songs, and absurdist bizarrely heroic operatic monologues which dance between comedy, commentary and communion.

He has headlined at little places like Lincoln Center and big places like Joes Pub, Centre Pompidou, Third Man Records, and London’s Soho Theatre.

He has evolved past the need for category, stunning audiences in theaters, comedy clubs, art museums, rock venues, and the hallowed halls of the classical music world.

He is also super humble, beautifully indecisive, and a great friend and mentor.

On this episode I am joined by Robert Platt, a painter from London, England, who’s practice expands far beyond the confines of canvas into scenic design, costuming, optics, and architectural installations and film. 

His lush oil paintings span subjects from hermits and seekers, to neurons and tree branches and are often created using pigments that Robert has mined or grown himself. 

Philisophicaly, his work deals with the role of  contemporary landscape, human perception, surface and materiality in the age of increasing virtuality.

Robert engages deeply with these subject matters through exploring caves, making mountain pilgrimages, and even sailing to the polar north as part of The Arctic Circle residency which saw him and an interdisciplinary crew of artists and scientists sailing around in a traditionally rigged Tall Ship around the mountainous Arctic archipelago of Svarlbard, 10 degrees from the North Pole.

A film Robert made while there featuring his iconic Dazzle costuming which is making the rounds at film festivals called “Becoming Arctic”

When I was a student I was fortunate to spend a month caving, and creating work with Robert and Culdesac alumni Riley Hanson during a study abroad trip to the Burren College of Art, in Ireland. 

It was here that I really learned the extent of Robert’s exploring practice, descending into some of the most incredible cave systems on the planet. This was not like walking into mammoth caves, or something, there were no guard rails, we were squeezing, crawling, worming our way through the crust of the earth. The experience remains one of my favorite. 

Currently, Robert is a professor at the University of Michigan’s stamps school of art and design. He holds a PhD in painting from the Kyoto City University of Arts, An MA from the Royal College of Art, where he brushed shoulders with the likes of Charles Satchii and drove around the paintings of Peter Doig.

It was a true honor to get to re-connect and catch up. The conversation is presented here un-edited. Hope you enjoy it! 

Matt Rosner is an organizational strategist and lamp designer, currently based in New York, crown heights to be exact.

His studio practice, Superlamp, is one that focuses deeply on the objects that illuminate our studio practices, lamps.

Through Superlamp, Matt focuses on materials and designs that are both conceptually and materially sustainable. Every project is marked with a cult-like devotion to craft and is often the result of collaboration between a talented and growing community.

Ben Leigh is an artist and designer, working in New York City, he originates from Montclair, New Jersey. Ben designs tour merchandise for a music label (which is NOT owned by lizard people?) and has worked on projects for some of the biggest acts around including Ariana Grande, Slipknot, Blink182 x Lil Wayne, and 21 Savage.  He has also worked on conceptual garment projects, tracing and documenting his late grandfather’s life through brand making and design.

Richard Tinkler born 1975 in Westminster, Maryland has been working on a book of drawings for nearly twenty years. Like a growing crystal forming fractals, his process based practice generates thousands of intricate drawings based in color and geometry. He has shown these works in NYC, Italy, Paris, just to name a few geographic locations. Richard lives and works in Bushwick, Brooklyn.

Born in 1978, John Maggie has held studio spaces in Hamtramck and Ann Arbor. He employs a variety of painting styles to build his figurative paintings, often mixing clean, representational approaches with 3-dimensional applications of pre-dried paint piled on the canvas. Maggie also makes books, flip books and holds it down as a psychiatric nurse. His latest release is "head" a collaboration with Jim Chatelain and printed in risograph by Print Cache.

Philadelphia based artist Molly Metz uses paint and collage to capture streams of consciousness and personal narratives. Interested in humor, and inspired by dreams, she constructs these spaces layering loops and wavy gestures to simulate psychological environments. She received her MFA at Tyler School of Art in 2016, she is currently exhibiting work in a group show, “Hoarse Whispers”, at Fjord Gallery Philadelphia, PA.

DaylightShavings, Molly's noise music.

Micheal Ambron sees things. His work is primarily concerned with perception and the development of sustainable systems for investigating altered states of consciousness. Drawing inspiration from direct hallucinatory experience as well as ways in which memory is stored within the body, he creates paintings composed of stone chalks, glass powders, pigments, and clay, often affixed to found substrates.

He received his BFA from Tyler School of Art in 2007 and his MFA from The Ohio State University in 2012. He is currently based in Long Island City.

A conversation with Christopher James Davison an artist living in Manhattan, NY. 

Christopher Davison is a New York-based painter with an MFA from the Tyler School of Art. His first solo exhibition in New York was in 2009 at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery and his most recent two-person exhibitions were at Horton Gallery, NYC and Harpy Gallery, New Jersey. He has been included in exhibitions in New York, Miami, Copenhagen, Philadelphia, Boston, Rome, Los Angeles and Brussels. His work can be seen in the public collections of the Rose Art Museum (MA), University of Alabama (AL) and Museum of the Hague (Netherlands). In addition to creating works of art, Christopher is a part-time professor of art in Philadelphia at the University of the Arts, and Moore College of Art. A collection of his work can be seen at ChristopherDavison.com

Our conversation came out of a chance encounter on the internet. 

We discuss some texts and philosophies from the following: 

Sri Ramana Maharshi (sorry I butchered the pronunciation)

Ananda Coomaraswamy

PDF of Coomaraswamy's Christian and Oriental Philosophy of Art

René Guénon

PDF of Guénon's Crisis of the Modern World

Terence McKenna - A drive folder of many of his recorded talks.

Riley is a painter. Although his practice extends far beyond canvas to sculpture, writing, and performance.

Riley’s work has most recently been the subject of two-person-show with James Gregory Atkinson, organized by Daisy Sanchez, called Rawr Means I Love You in Dinosaur at Lubov, New York, NY. He has also mounted solo shows including Duck. Duck. Duck. Duck. Duck. Duck. Duck.  Duck. Duck. Tom Cruise. at No Place Gallery, Columbus OH.

He is currently based in Philadelphia, PA.

This conversations spans their latest project, Sand Puzzle, Simulations, Flesh Light Robots, and people who are dead inside.

Buy Sand Puzzle’s release Ephemery Lane

Visit and support the FishPeopleBirds Label

For more Squirrel University content check out his youtube.

Kolodziej's next project is Episode 1 of QUARTINE19, a dystopian puppet comedy show airing April 25 on Detroit puppet slam live stream.