Vanessa Stockard recently visited the podcast for the 3rd time!

Vanessa Stockard was born in 1975 in Sydney and spent her formative years in a small country town in the Mid North Coast of New South Wales.  At 12 she returned to Sydney as a boarder at Abbotsleigh.  After graduating from the College of Fine Arts (COFA) Sydney in 1998 with a BFA, Stockard launched head first into the avant-garde art scene in the bohemian village of Glebe.

Stockard is one of the most dangerous artists on the Australian, and by extension, international scene.  Her ethereal works of art are a window into the soul of a talented and complex artist, one whose legacy is bound to resonate well past her generation.  The existential nature of her painting viscerally questions our concepts of social relationships and reality.

Twenty years of introspection and experimentation, ranging over a number of media, have forged Vanessa’s style and vulcanised her craft, enabling her to reveal complex misdemeanours, while simultaneously demanding the viewer’s self-reflection.  She deals with isolation and sadness with intimate care and attention.

Vanessa is unhindered by failure, always continuing the discovery of things previously unseen, revealing work that is fresh, unlaboured and penetrating.  The deceptive everyday nature of her subject matter belies hidden depths of relationship, feeling and emotion.  One could describe her process as absence of thought, a freedom of construct, not unlike the stream of consciousness associated with authors such as Hemmingway and Thomas Wolfe.

If light and shade were students, she would be their master.  This skill, combined with a naturally deft hand and a determined use of perspective, imbue her subjects with gravitas.  The artist refers to set design elements that often alter and morph as her piece progresses.  She has said she feels grounded from her ability to draw from the benign surrounds of familiar life, infusing these images with a meaning that yields a meditative satisfaction.

Stockard’s oeuvre features many pieces developed without any direct visual reference but rather from memory, often incorporating domestic pets such as cats and dogs.  Juxtaposing the anthropomorphic nature these animals are given by our society, she infuses the personification of virtue and vice into the everyday canine and feline status quo of our pets.  Cats with their fluffy comical exteriors glint with an instinctive urge to kill and cruelly torment their prey, dogs with their providence of happiness, loyalty and friendship are flung back onto Churchill’s menacing metaphor for depression.

The Kafkaesque mindset behind such works is reminiscent of the existentialist authors like Sartre and Camus.  Absurdism appears with cake imagery and its relation to a childlike nostalgia for happiness which may never be real, but rather imaginary, unattainable and unachievable.  It’s been said “pain is inexhaustible, it’s only people who get exhausted…”

One can never “have it all”, to be both the artist and patron.  To intrinsically understand those things around us that others overlook is what we want from our artists, our creatives.  They give voice to the profound mystery of the world around us, surrounded as we are with consumerism, pointless greed, deceit and dissatisfaction.  There’s no pretension here in these paintings, just spontaneous insight and beauty.  Some art is said to speak volumes, but these works are more like innocent and delicate poems, whispering untold truths with an economy of words.

Something Rather Than Nothing Podcast

Aaron Keuter is an editor, motion designer, animator, and visual effects artist in Portland, Oregon.

SRTN is a worldwide podcast that features the greatest creators you can find.

Rachael Tyrell aims to create art that reimagines classic pinup aesthetics through a contemporary lens. Working primarily with Sharpies and various inks, she crafts pieces that radiate raw energy.

Her sculptural work transforms everyday objects into surreal expressions, challenging expectations.

Drawing from her background as a model, Rachael's art explores the fluid boundary between being seen and seeing. She wields ink with intention as each permanent line shapes her distinctive visual language.

Her autobiographical zines blend intimate narrative with striking imagery and have traveled with her to zine fests in Los Angeles, Detroit, and Portland. They hint at stories untold and adventures yet to come. Beyond her art, Rachael steps behind the decks as a DJ and hopes to be a quiet catalyst for others' creativity. Her artistic universe embraces contradiction and invites viewers into a world where art becomes a shared secret.

Rachael's website

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Lady Ro is a Baltimore based indie folk rock musician. Formally know as Baby Carrots, Lady Ro began playing shows in Baltimore in 2019, where she quickly garnering a solid following. Her performances are a dynamic blend of heartfelt song writing, humor, a stirring powerful voice, and a wicked sense of style.

We had a lovely chat about the great city of Baltimore, DIY aesthetic, thanos & eros, creativity, melancholy, style, the city, photography, vinyl and Rock & Roll.

Stop in and enjoy this lovely chat with dancer Tina!

We chatted a bit of horror, a bit of art, a bit of dancing, standup comedy and constantly challenging yourself. 

There was even a special guest visit by Ripley The Cat.

Thanks for visiting from Germany, Tina.!

Tina's Instagram

Enjoy a lovely and vulnerable chat with Kels & Tess. Host Kenny and Co-host Jenny explore health, excitement, sex, p*rn and the powerful things that move us. 

Kels is a producer, businesswoman, and sex and relationship enthusiast. She never underestimates the power of a good story or a good spreadsheet.

In tandem with a career in project management and marketing, she has been writing, directing, producing and performing for film and theater since 2013.

​Kels believes the core of a good business, production, or sexual experience is the same: being attuned to other people and aware of their sweet spots. She’s committed to restoring education to its natural state — enticing.

Tess uses her experience as a researcher to establish a data-driven foundation for Squirm. She holds a master's degree from the University of Amsterdam where she researched the intersection of sex education and pornography.

Tess has organized events featuring sex educators, filmmakers, and academics with the goals of celebrating erotic culture and destigmatizing talking about sex. She is a feminist erotic film enthusiast and is always looking ahead to the next indie film festival.

Get Squirmy

P*rn Nerds Podcast

Something (rather than nothing) Podcast presents a special STRIKE episode from Albany, Oregon.

SRTN gives you an up to the moment report on the brave educators of The Greater Albany Education Association (GAEA) who have been on strike for five (5) days as of this episode’s release.

GAEA is fighting for student safety, lower class size and a wage that recruits and retains high quality educators.

The Mariana Link

Click here to support GAEA:

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Besa is a film photographer and model who resides in Chicago. Her work is largely editorial, drawing inspiration from old Hollywood film noir and the creative direction of Sofia Coppola.

Besa

SRTN

Elisabeth Eaves is the author of the debut novel The Outlier as well as two critically acclaimed non-fiction books, Wanderlust: A love affair with five continents and Bare: the naked truth about stripping. Her work has been anthologized in four books of essays, and she's won three Lowell Thomas awards from the Society of American Travel Writers. Her journalism has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, Foreign Policy, Marie Claire, Slate, and many other publications, and she was a staff writer and editor at Forbes and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

Before turning full time to writing, Elisabeth worked as a waitress, a bartender, a deck hand, a landscaper, an office temp, and a peep show girl. She earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Washington and a master’s degree from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.

Born and raised in Vancouver, Elisabeth lived in Cairo, London, and Paris, spent 10 years in New York City, and now resides in Seattle.

SRTN Website

Shelia Knox awakes from a two week coma to find her life torn apart.

Her children have been savagely murdered. Her husband is missing. Her hand completely mangled and her throat slit to within inches of her jugular…Leaving her with nothing left to live for.

So, when the men responsible for taking her and her family, come after her to try and finish the job, they unwittingly let loose an Angel of Death, hell-bent on hunting down those responsible and making them all pay.

From the creative team of Keenan Marshall Keller (writer/co-creator of The HUMANS from IMAGE Comics) and Alex Delaney (creator of The Derelict and The Other Side of Town) comes VENGEANCE Is For The LIVING; A 4 issue mini-series overflowing with gritty exploitation action about the power of anger/loss and the clearness of vision that VENGEANCE can provide.

SRTN Website

Samn Johnson (he/they, b. 1991) is a composer, producer, multi-instrumentalist, and historical linguist. Their work often harnesses research on acoustics and historical phonology to set texts in ancient languages like Latin, Old English, Hittite, and Gothic. Samn has written for a range of performers including Chromic Duo, Righteous GIRLS, JACK Quartet, and harpsichordist Nathan Mondry. His latest work is the song cycle Consolation, setting Latin poetry from Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy for vocalist Tis Kaoru Zamler-Carhart. It is out on innova Recordings, June 28, 2024. The two preceding recordings, both self-released, are Ageless Sea (2022), for chamber choir, chamber orchestra, electronics, and rock band, and First Book for Piano (2022), performing his own piano works.

Samn is also half of the synth pop duo Acraea, together with Leora Mandel. Samn holds degrees in composition from the University of Michigan and NYU, studied composition at the Interlochen Arts Academy, and has taken courses in Indo-European historical linguistics at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. He lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

SRTN website