visual arts — Off-Leash Arts

Visual Artist Marjorie Morgan: The Landscape of Dreams

Marjorie Morgan has had an extraordinarily varied career in the arts. After receiving a BA in Dance from Oberlin College, she spent over 25 years dancing professionally and creating dances and performance art to be performed by herself and others. When a serious injury compromised her ability to dance, she shifted her focus to the visual arts, where she’s found joy and acclaim as a painter and printmaker. For the past few years, she’s been captivated by the process of making her own inks and pigments from natural materials that she finds near her home in Western Massachusetts. In this conversation, Marjorie discusses how painting saved her after her devastating injury, how unconscious impulses have guided her artistic journey, and how a voice heard in a dream prompted her to cross oceans to visit the site that inspired a series of her paintings.

Painting, Visual ArtsTanya ShafferJanuary 31, 2022painting, visual arts, creativity, dreams, printmakingComment

Dancer-Choreographer Tonya Marie Amos: Dance for the Revolution

Tonya Amos is the founder of Grown Women Dance Collective, a company made up of internationally renowned dancers in their forties and fifties who have retired from full-time positions in the nation’s finest professional dance ensembles. Tonya combines her exuberant spirit, her passion for arts and community-building, and her expertise in dance, health, and wellness to celebrate Black history; build cross-cultural, cross-racial, and cross-class bridges; and bring arts and wellness services to economically disenfranchised communities all over the San Francisco Bay Area. In this podcast, she talks with host Tanya Shaffer about her extraordinary journey as a dancer, which took her from the racially discriminatory Bay Area dance scene of the 70’s and 80’s to New York and the Alvin Ailey Company. They also discuss Tonya’s work with Grown Women Dance Collective; how she became a choreographer by default; her passion for breaking down barriers between people of all classes, races, and generations; and her plans to train a new generation of health and wellness experts to bring Pilates, dance, and physical therapy into communities that have previously had little to no access.

Playwright-Performer-Visual Artist Herbert Sigüenza: White Jesus Was the Original Fake News

Herbert Sigüenza is a founding member of the brilliant, hilarious, and politically incisive group Culture Clash, the most produced Latino performance troupe in the country. He’s also the playwright-in-residence at the San Diego Repertory Theatre and has appeared as an actor in theatre, tv and film. He served as a cultural consultant and the voice of the lead character’s two deceased uncles in the Academy-Award-winning film Coco. In today’s episode, he chats with host Tanya Shaffer about a range of topics, including Culture Clash’s beginnings in San Francisco in the ‘80’s, how they create hit shows, his ongoing commitment to progressive politics, and how he remains engaged and excited about his art 35-plus years into a long career. He also shares a delightful monologue from his solo show A Weekend With Pablo Picasso and a thought-provoking soliloquy based on an interview with a Black preacher in Washington, DC.

Directing, Visual Arts, Playwriting, ComedyTanya ShafferJune 24, 2020Culture Clash, theater, theatre, performance, comedy, Latino, arts, performing arts, visual artsComment

Multidisciplinary Artist & Disability Rights Activist Gwynneth VanLaven: Am I Allowed to Laugh at This?

Multidisciplinary artist Gwynneth VanLaven uses photography, installation, performance, writing, and social engagement to challenge stigma, which she says “takes the real experience of real people and squashes it flat into stereotypes and presumptions.” Through work that is both playful and dark, layered with irony and mystery, she seeks to break down the binary thinking that separates “the well” from “the sick” and “the disabled” from “the non-disabled.” In this wide-ranging discussion, host Tanya Shaffer talks with Gwynneth about her improvisational photographic process, her interactive public experiments, and the humor and awkwardness of being fully embodied in art and life.

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