Wednesday, November 22, 2017

Lindy Stockton, Founder of The Collage Cafe



Lindy Stockton is the founder of The Collage Cafe in Evanston, a creative studio space focused on inspiring and motivating people. In this interview we follow Lindy’s journey from corporate change manager to artist and change manager for her community.

The Collage Cafe used to be on Sherman Ave. with a retail storefront and has recently moved to West Evanston on Florence Ave. Ditching the retail component and focusing 100% on art and supporting people into a more creative life, Lindy’s new space allows for people to enjoy creative self expression from classes, to open studio time to girl’s night. Images below feature a look inside the studio and Baxter!









In 2018 The Collage Cafe is adopting a new business model, quarterly membership, where people can choose from a menu of creative activities to engage with the studio. Like most of the endeavors Lindy has chosen in the last several years, she will try this one on for size, see how it goes and if it leads to the creative freedom both herself and her customers need, it will be a success!

Learn more online at thecollagecafe.com or visit Lindy in person at 1129 Florence Ave. in Evanston.

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The Lisa D Show is a podcast celebrating creatives, featuring 20-minute, unedited conversations that mimic the live-radio vibe, very low tech on purpose. Reach out to host Lisa Degliantoni at thelisadshow[at]gmail.com


Wednesday, November 15, 2017

Ellen Greene on Painting Beyond the Canvas




In this episode of The Lisa D Show podcast we talk with artist Ellen Greene about her recent transition into portrait work. Ellen is a trained painter, having attended the Kansas City Art Institute, and is best known for her intricate work leather gloves.

Last year, Ellen gifted a portrait of a dog, shared it on the Internet (as one does) and the commissions for pet portraiture and now human have been fast and steady ever since.

Full disclosure, I am the portrait on the right below.

 

We talk about the struggle of choice many creatives face when pivoting from one area of focus to another, more lucrative area. If you are still painting, but you are painting pet portraits, have you lost your way as an artist? What I love is Ellen’s perspective on this shift in her work and her openness to the potential new mastery portrait work might bring her painting career.

See more of Ellen’s portrait work at portraitsbyellengreene.com and follow her on Instagram at portraits_by_ellengreene

To see her full body of work and wearable art visit artbyellengreene.com








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The Lisa D Show is a podcast celebrating creatives, featuring 20-minute, unedited conversations that mimic the live-radio vibe, very low tech on purpose. Reach out to host Lisa Degliantoni at thelisadshow[at]gmail.com

Friday, November 10, 2017

Photographer Jessica Kaplan on The Lisa D Show



Today on The Lisa D Show podcast we talk to photographer Jessica Kaplan, who captures candid portraits, fine art, architecture, people, streets, and more with her iPhone or camera. We talk about Jessica’s journey becoming a photographer, where she cultivates new skills to shoot the images she wants, and we also touch on the skills she uses from a previous life as WTTW line producer to draw out her subjects. The best part of being a photographer so far? Having something “tangible” that allows her to engage with the audience about.





Meet Jessica tonight at Backlot  offee for an opening reception of her work on display thru November. Visit her website and online store at jessicakaplanphoto.com and follow her on Instagram at JessicaKaplanPhotography. We reference the photo below in the interview, "American Gothic".




From jessicakaplanphoto.com:

Thank you for stopping by! I love to capture moments in a style that evokes confidence and intention. My natural light photography has a journalistic feel, featuring rich tones, depth and expert composition, inspired by my background in television news and as a storyteller.

Whether you are looking for an updated headshot, a portrait of your child, inspiring stock or custom photography for your own business, or an expertly framed image to hang on your wall, I am so glad you've stopped by for a visit!

My passion for storytelling began as a tween and evolved at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. That launched my 14-year career in the news business at WTTW, Chicago’s PBS station. Although I'm no longer in news, my passion for connection through storytelling still exists through the lens of my Canon DSLR and my iPhone 6.

I enjoy freezing time by capturing a look, an expression, joys and struggles. I love photographing people of all ages, in active moments or in quiet reflection. I work in both black and white and color, and I love creating natural light candid portraits.

I find inspiration on the street, in a new city, at the beach, in the water, in patterns in the sand. I celebrate wood, rust, texture and geometry. Looking up, looking down, looking into people’s eyes and watching children play are particularly satisfying. Depth and movement provide extra encouragement.

I am patient, yet persistent. I take the time to let a scene develop and evolve until it reveals itself to me. This results in a photograph with visually pleasing composition, providing a sense of balance, sometimes clean, sometimes gritty. Always compelling. I love excluding the expected and including the unexpected, turning a seemingly mundane scene into a thought-provoking image.


Jessica Kaplan Photography
email: jessica@jessicakaplanphoto.com

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The Lisa D Show is a podcast celebrating creatives, featuring 20-minute, unedited conversations that mimic the live-radio vibe, very low tech on purpose. Reach out to host Lisa Degliantoni at thelisadshow[at]gmail.com

Thursday, November 2, 2017

Photographer Vanessa Filley on The Lisa D Show


Photographer Vanessa Filley's art tells the stories of today, the past and a future imagined. Storytelling through her photography, Filley builds engaging, inviting and sometimes eerie images with visually compelling collaborators … her children and her friend's children.


In this interview we walk through several of the pieces from her upcoming show “A Nursery Rhyme For You” opening Nov. 4, 5-8 p.m., at Perspective Gallery in Evanston, up thru Nov. 26. If you don’t make it, check out her work online at vanessafilley.squarespace.com


This interview is candid, inviting the listener into Filley’s artistic process and beautiful mind. I am grateful to know artists like this who make Evanston a more interesting and beautiful place to live.
More Info: A Nursery Rhyme For You


As a child some weekends we visited my grandparents in a farmhouse of decaying grandeur in New Jersey and other weekends we’d stay home and traipse through the halls of great New York City museums.  I always imagined how these places could be different, how they were a portal to another time, an imagined life.  In the attic of my grandparents home there were dust covered steamer trunks filled with ballgowns while the American Wing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art offered a glimpse into the interiors of early American homes. I dreamt of wearing these ballgowns and living in a different era, but despite my dreamy nature I never got much beyond dress-up in shoddy 1970’s halloween costumes.  


As the mother of two girls with fanciful imaginations in an era when unfettered childhood fantasy is interrupted or negated by an abundant access to technology I have sought to preserve and create for my daughters a little bit of the magic I longed to have brought into my own childhood while avoiding much of the contemporary child’s play market and trying to impart an honest sense of the world we live in today.


I find great inspiration in anything from fairytales to the primal relationships between humans and nature to current events. Every fairytale has a dark side, the death of a parent, the loss of a power and in an era of social and political upheaval and environmental degradation, the dreams and fantasy of a child are effected and shaped by the external forces buzzing in the world around them. In A Nursery Rhyme for You My Dear I am attempting to both create a child-like fantasy world and to allow the harshness of reality to seep in.  When I make an image I am very interested in exploring it’s underbelly.  It may look pretty on the outside, but perhaps there is more to it.  I want to both dwell on and delete some of the darkness in any given scenario, to try on a story for size, to understand what it might be like to exist in that moment and how to learn from it, but also leave it behind, as if in a dream.

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The Lisa D Show" is a podcast celebrating creatives, featuring 20-minute, unedited conversations that mimic the live-radio vibe, very low tech on purpose. Reach out to host Lisa Degliantoni at thelisadshow[at]gmail.com