Creativity

If you are new to craft shows, or even if you have been doing it a while, consider these elements to help improve your displays.

Host Peri Pakroo talks with Billy McCall about his new book, Four-Year Depression, shitshow politics, and using art to build new concepts and new realities.

I started to get really pissed at so many things about being told what I was allowed and not allowed to do in dance, and I pretty much exploded from anger and it was like “Fuck this situation, I’m going to do whatever the fuck I want.”

John Fugelsang is in Albuquerque to perform “Unpresidented: The true story of a comedian trying to raise a toddler while his country was electing one” and we were lucky enough to get him into the Pyragraph LIVE studio (a.k.a. my office) to talk about comedy, politics, religion, and how he’s pulled all those elements and more into his unique creative career. 

All I wanted to do was make a cigar box-style guitar, and in this town there were no cigar boxes to be found. The next best box to find for free were the torobako, the crates used to ship sanma from northern Japan to southern ports.

There are so many things in our lives that might be considered “incurable” or terrifying, why not work with them?

Welcome to the inaugural Coffee + Creatives Job Listings! We are pleased to bring you the latest in gigs, jobs, and funding for creatives around the world. Jobs and funding opportunities included in our listings tend to be flexible and/or remote, though we will include some from our home state of New Mexico.

I asked all the members of Chicharra, a band I’m in, to come up with three questions for another player. And it’s like they’ve been giving interviews their whole lives. Their curiosity about the nuances of how music is made, how the other people in our band-fam experience practice and performance, was so spot-on. I loved hearing them talk shop.

Zine fests make small cracks in the foundation of authoritarian, nationalist, dictatorial power that hides under progress of the digital age.

As long as I’ve been a fan, Martin has said the same thing: “If you choose a path to fall back on, you will.” Martin is balls to the wall.

For the most part, I’ve had the good fortune of doing work that doesn’t compromise my beliefs. But a few years ago I wasn’t so lucky.

As observers of the natural world, artists and scientists find new audiences and new grounds to discuss and create in the face of a changing environment and impacts to pollinator populations. As pollinators end up on the endangered species list, is our humanity the result of our inhumanity?

Inevitably someone is going to compare your work to someone else’s. And when someone says, “This reminded me of your work” it’s hard to know what they mean.

Far too often in this country we throw things away that would still be wanted by someone else. Everything from perfectly edible food which places like Whole Foods throw away because the bananas are “a little too yellow” to the unwanted pets that get thrown away by fools who get a dog without wanting the responsibility of its care.

We artists and writers can’t afford to passively watch all the things we care about burn to the ground. Rather, we should be proactive in ensuring that the arts have a place to flourish and thrive in every town and community in the US.

Guest Blogger Katie Alice Greer: “OK Sadness means the machine in my head is working just fine and Not OK Sadness means, just like a runny nose, upset stomach, or a hacking cough, that I am currently sick. Plenty of factors both genetic and environmental mean I’ll always need to keep an eye on how things are going in my head.”