CalArts Podcasts

In this episode of Beyond the Blue Wall, Henderson Blumer talks with David O (Theater BFA 92) about their time at CalArts, life as a music director, and what it is like working on a Broadway production.

David O is the music director for Mr. Saturday Night, a musical comedy starring Billy Crystal. It is currently playing at the Nederlander Theatre in New York.

Beyond the Blue Wall is a production of the CalArts Office of Advancement. You can find all of the episodes at calarts.edu/btbw.

Director of the Jazz Program, David Roitstein, joins two of his former students: Scott Colley (Music BFA 88) and John Schwerbel (Music BFA 14) to talk about the extraordinary legacy of Charlie Haden at CalArts and beyond, including the annual Charlie Haden/CalArts Artist in Residence program.
Learn more about Charlie Haden at charliehadenmusic.com
Learn more about David Roitstein at davidroitstein.com
John Schwerbel currently serves as Director of Administration at Thomas Safran and Associates and is the Founding Chair of the CalArts Alumni Council
Learn more about Scott Colley at scottcolley.com
Watch Carla Bley and Steve Swallow as part of the 2021 Charlie Haden / CalArts Artists in Residence
Music Credit: "Turnaround" (composed by Ornette Coleman) from 80/81 (ECM) with Pat Metheny, Charlie Haden, and Jack DeJohnette.

Beyond the Blue Wall is a production of the CalArts Office of Advancement. You can find all of the episodes at calarts.edu/btbw.

Henderson Blumer talks with K Rocka Knittel (Art MFA 10) about their experience at CalArts, Other Places Art Fair (OPaf), and what it takes to make an independent art fair happen (with some help from funding awarded by the Alumnx Council).

The next OPaf will take place on Saturday, May 14, 2022 in Santa Rosa, CA. OPaf 5 is happening in San Pedro on September 17 and 18, 2022. Learn more at Other Places Art Fair and visit them on Instagram.

Beyond the Blue Wall is a production of the CalArts Office of Advancement. You can find all of the episodes at calarts.edu/btbw.

If you’ve been to a reading by poet, librettist, and former CalArts faculty Douglas Kearney (Critical Studies MFA 04), you know that Kearney doesn’t merely recite and read poetry. He performs it, lives it, breathes it, on stage or at the lectern, with an energy that’s more akin to hip hop and jazz with varied rhythms and turns of phrases.

Kearney has published seven poetry collections, including this year’s National Book Award nominee, Sho (Wave 2021). A Foundation for Contemporary Arts Cy Twombly awardee and Cave Canem fellow, he currently teaches Creative Writing at the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities.
In October 2021, Kearney returned to CalArts as a visiting guest artist and lecturer for the Creative Writing Program’s Writing Now Reading Series.

Before Kearney’s lecture, we chatted with him for the 24700 podcast about his book, Sho, the performance of poetry, his writing influences, and teaching. (And because of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, masks were required on campus, which Kearney wore during this interview.)

Music by: Erick Pepper Rivera (Music BFA 12)

Beyond the Blue Wall is a production of the CalArts Office of Advancement. You can find all of the episodes at calarts.edu/btbw.

The REEF Residency is a collaboration between the School of Critical Studies, School of Film/Video, and School of Art. Learn more about the REEF Residency.

In this episode, we speak with 2022 REEF Residents, Fía Benitez and Simone Zapata. Their exhibition, Tense Renderings: the will and won’t of spatial logics, opened at The REEF Los Angeles, June 24–July 24, 2022. Tense Renderings interrogates the motivations, conditions, and limitations of maps and mapmaking. The range of works include axonometric projection drawing; feminist, communally-woven textile; speculative sea and space colonization; and interventions into legal language delineating exclusion and belonging.

Tense Renderings features 14 artists across time zones and disciplines: Jumanah Abbas, C. Bain, Amy Chiao, Natan Diacon-Furtado, Jen D’Mello, Alexsa Durrans, Christine Imperial, sj kim-ryu, Wesley Larios, Julia Saenz Lorduy, Sonya Merutka, Amanda Teixeira, Sarah Sophia Yanni, and Bz Zhang.

View Tense Rendering s

Press:
24700: New Exhibition Interrogates Mapmaking in Tense Renderings: the will and won’t of spatial logics

Simone Zapata is a poet and educator from San José, CA. Her work can be found, or is forthcoming in Foglifter, The Quarterless Review, Tiny Spoon, Reed Magazine, and The Vassar Review. She serves as Managing Editor for The Beat Within, and as a poetry editor for MAYDAY. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from California Institute of the Arts.

Fía Benitez is an artist and educator living in Los Angeles. Their ongoing body of work, Root Rot, encompasses large-scale graphite drawings, collage, turn of the century artifacts, and bisque-fired ceramics. Incorporating research from public archives, works in Root Rot index the legacies of the California citrus industry and its history of indigenous dispossession, erasure of immigrant labor, and privatization of land management practices. Fía is a 2022 REEF Artist-in-Residence and a 2020 Research & Practice Fellow, with recent solo and group exhibitions at The Consulate General of Mexico in Los Angeles, NÉVÉ, The Reef, Tin Flats, Japanese American Cultural & Community Center, 7313 Melrose, Newhall Crossings, Other Places Art Fair, and CalArts. Publications include re:connections, water / relic / spices, as well as Baest Journal, Sublevel Magazine, The Kitchen Blog, and The Vassar Review. Fía holds degrees from Vassar College and CalArts.
Beyond the Blue Wall’s Season 2 original theme music was composed and performed by Socks Whitmore (Music BFA 20). Le

Beyond the Blue Wall is a production of the CalArts Office of Advancement. You can find all of the episodes at calarts.edu/btbw.