This week on the Tales of a Red Clay Rambler Podcast I have an interview with Paul Berglund the executive chef at the Bachelor Farmer in Minneapolis, MN. Since 2011 the restaurant has garnered high praise for its Scandinavian inspired cuisine. In 2012 it was named to Bon Appetit's Hot Ten List of best new American restaurants and was nominated for the prestigious James Beard Award for best new restaurant in America.

This week on the Tales of a Red Clay Rambler Podcast I have an interview with Evelyn Craft Belger. She is the executive director of the Belger Arts Center and Red Star Studios in Kansas City, MO. Since 2005 Evelyn has been instrumental in the growth and display of the Belger Arts Collection, a private collection of thousands of contemporary art works, that is managed by the Belger Foundation and housed within the Belger Arts Center.

This week on the Tales of a Red Clay Rambler Podcast I have a panel discussion featuring Cary Esser, Meredith Host and Tommy Frank. Each panelist is a ceramic artist that balances their art career with a business oriented profession. Our discussion centers around how creativity is an asset in the business world. We discuss the creative overlap between art making and teaching, running a small business or managing an art center.

This week on the Tales of a Red Clay Rambler Podcast I have a double episode with ceramic artist Richard Notkin. Known for his protest art Notkin has approached a variety of subject matter during his career including the folly of war, the nuclear age, and global warming. His teapots and tile work can be found in numerous museums around the United States including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Cooper-Hewitt Museum and the Mint Museum of Craft and Design.

This week on the Tales of a Red Clay Rambler Podcast I have an interview with ceramic artist Steve Lee. At first glance his porcelain ceramics appear to be traditional Asian vessels but a closer glance reveals pop culture icons and contemporary subject matter.

This week on the Tales of a Red Clay Rambler Podcast I have an interview with ceramic artist Bobby Silverman. Throughout his multifaceted career he has been an educator, designer and maker. He currently manages Alsio Design, a Brooklyn based company that produces ceramic tile for residential and commercial markets.

This week on the Tales of a Red Clay Rambler Podcast I have an interview with wood fire potter Tara Wilson. The fly ash patterns on her functional pottery often reference the worn surfaces of geologic formations while her altered forms display a sense of volume often found in the animal world. 

This week on the Tales of a Red Clay Rambler Podcast I have an interview with ceramic artist Mel Griffin. Her functional pottery and large scale tile work use animal and landscape imagery to talk about human behavior and the way we relate to our surroundings.

This week on the Tales of a Red Clay Rambler Podcast I have an interview with ceramic artist Chris Pickett. His slab built pottery consists of inflated sculptural volumes decorated with saturated colors and low relief patterning. He says of the work, "With the appearance of being freshly constructed, the fullness of form allows these vessels to evoke a sense of play and ease. The generous volumes are metaphors for our own bodies that reference both the comforts of physical intimacy as well as childlike items, such as toys and stuffed animals."

This week on the Tales of a Red Clay Rambler Podcast I have an interview with ceramic artist Eva Champagne. Her hybridized biomorphic sculptures highlight the infinity variety and unifying order that occur within the natural world. 

This week on the Tales of a Red Clay Rambler Podcast I have an interview with potter Courtney Murphy. Her functional earthenware draws from a variety of influences including "simplified abstractions of nature, children's artwork, folk art, mid-century modern forms and shapes, as well as textiles, patterns and historical pots." She maintains a studio in Missoula, MT were she is an artist-in-residence at the Clay Studio of Missoula.

This week on the Tales of a Red Clay Rambler Podcast I am featuring a panel discussion on ceramic career paths with Mel Griffin, Mathew McConnell, and Peter Christian Johnson. The conversation starts by questioning the premise of an established career ladder in ceramics and evolves into a discussion about success, living a mobile life, and creating your own career path.

This week on the Tales of a Red Clay Rambler Podcast I have an interview with potter Sean O'Connell. I met Sean in 2010 while he was making five hundred plates for the Salad Days Residency at Watershed Center for Ceramic Arts. He focused on a lobed plate form as a canvas and set out to experiment with hundreds of solutions for surface decoration. I admired his methodical approach to such a monumental assignment. I continue to see the same dedication to visual inquiry in his current body of work.

This week on the Tales of a Red Clay Rambler Podcast I have an interview with artist and Renaissance man George McCauley. Over his 45 year career he has made pottery, mixed media sculpture, and metal work, as well as being a cowboy, carpenter and movie producer. His self described "casual" approach to art making highlights the emotive quality of gestural mark making and loose brushwork. 

This week on the Tales of a Red Clay Rambler Podcast I have an interview with potter Adam Field. Based in Durango, CO Adam produces a wide variety of functional ceramics ranging from intricately carved porcelain forms to massive Korean Onggi jars. He says of the work, "I am fascinated with antique artifacts, the way they can speak of mastery of lost peoples, places, and cultures. This inspires me to create works that both radiate history and capture my own place and time."

This week on the Tales of a Red Clay Rambler Podcast I have an interview with potter Matt Kelleher. He designs utilitarian ware with a keen eye for the architecture and edge quality of his hand built forms. He combines layers of slip with the soda firing process to create rich translucent surfaces that capture the mood and density of the Western NC landscape he now calls home.

This week on the Tales of a Red Clay Rambler Podcast I have an interview with ceramic artist and educator Merran Esson. Her recent body of work springs from a two week excursion she took to a remote part of western New South Wales, Australia. She says of the trip, "I have always had an affinity with the land, having spent my childhood on a farm in the foothills of the Snowy Mountains, however, the geology and vastness of this recent exploration has brought a more organic resolve to this work. My interest in the collision between man and nature continues."

This week on the Tales of a Red Clay Rambler Podcast I have an interview with sculptor Vipoo Srivilasa. After immigrating from Thailand to Australia Vipoo has used ceramic sculpture to explore the similarities between his native and adoptive cultures. Over the past 16 years Vipoo has developed a body of porcelain figurines that mixes the blue and white traditions of East Asia with contemporary symbols of Australian identity.

This week on the Tales of a Red Clay Rambler Podcast I have an interview with ceramic artist and curator Jill Foote-Hutton. Her totemic sculptures reference gods, monsters, and heros. 

This week on the Tales of a Red Clay Rambler Podcast I have an interview with ceramic artist David Hiltner. His functional pottery and sculpture references the farming landscapes of the midwestern United States.