S2:E11 Carrie Lederer
on holding on to the end of the rope
On this final episode of season 2, I’m thrilled to welcome Carrie Lederer to the podcast! She’s a painter, sculptor, and installation artist whose nature-inspired work has been shown across the U.S. Carrie has completed public art commissions for places like Facebook, UCSF Medical Center, and several Bay Area cities, and she’s currently an artist-in-residence at Kala Art Institute in Berkeley. Carrie is a recipient of the prestigious Fleishhacker Foundation Eureka Award. Her work is in major collections and has been widely featured in publications like ARTnews and the San Francisco Chronicle. Carrie served as curator at the Bedford Gallery for 25 years. On top of all this, she’s also the proud mom of an adult son.
Additional Links:
During our conversation, we discuss a couple of other interviews including 48 Hills and Create! Magazine. To learn more about Carrie and her work, check out her website and follow her on Instagram.
Artists in Offices is produced and edited by Rebecca Bird Grigsby. Music is provided by Jesse Kelsey.
Listen here!
S2:E10 Meredith Steele
teacher, mom, and full-time painter inspired by the everyday
I’m so excited to welcome Meredith Steele to the podcast! Meredith is a painter and educator whose work is rooted in a love for the everyday. In 2020, she created 100 Paintings of Oakland, a project that was featured on KQED and led to major commissions with Chandra Cerrito Art Advisors and a body of work now permanently installed at the John Muir/UCSF Berkeley Outpatient Center. She’s had solo shows at The Compound Gallery in 2023 and 2025, participated in group exhibitions including the 2023 de Young Open, and holds degrees from the Savannah College of Art and Design and Winthrop University. Before focusing on painting full-time, Meredith taught high school art for 20 years. She lives in Oakland, California, with her adult daughter and dog, Ferris.
Additional Links:
To learn more about Meredith and her work, check out her website and follow her on Instagram.
Artists in Offices is produced and edited by Rebecca Bird Grigsby. Music is provided by Jesse Kelsey.
Listen here!
S2:E9 Ellen Lake
interdisciplinary artist, arts administrator, and mom of 3
On this episode, I’m thrilled to welcome Ellen Lake to the podcast! Ellen is an interdisciplinary artist based in Oakland, California, whose work spans painting, video, sculpture, installation, and public art. She often experiments with technology and archives, creating projects that blur the boundaries between process and material. Her public art initiative, Bench Projects, replaced ads with art by local artists at AC Transit bus stops in North Oakland (including episode 8 artist Lisa Solomon). Ellen has been awarded residencies at places like MASS MoCA, the Vermont Studio Center, the Rauschenberg Residency, and Stanford’s Experimental Media Arts Lab, and she’s received grants from the California Arts Council and the City of Oakland. She’s also the Co-Executive Director of Kala Art Institute, a residency program and community art hub in Berkeley. At home, Ellen is just as dynamic; she lives with her husband, their three children, and two chihuahuas, Max and George.
Additional Links:
You can see some of Ellen’s film and video work we discuss here. You can listen to the Spoiler Alert Radio podcast interview I mention here. To learn more about Ellen and her work, check out her website and follow her on Instagram.
Artists in Offices is produced and edited by Rebecca Bird Grigsby. Music is provided by Jesse Kelsey.
Listen here!
S2:E8 Lisa Solomon
artist, illustrator, educator, and author
On this episode, I’m thrilled to welcome Lisa Solomon to the podcast! Lisa is a studio artist, college professor, and illustrator whose work explores themes of domesticity, craft, and personal history, often blurring the lines between art and craft through her mixed-media pieces and large installations. She’s exhibited nationally and internationally, with work in both private and public collections, and she’s also the author of several books including A Field Guide to Color, The Color Meditation Deck, Knot Thread Stitch, and more (find all her books here).
Beyond her art practice, Lisa teaches on CreativeBug and continues to create from her backyard studio in Oakland, where she lives with her husband, their teenager, two cats, a three-legged pit bull, a dachshund mix, and countless spools of thread.
Shout-outs to artist and UC Berkeley professor emerita Katherine Sherwood (also the reason I first met Lisa over 20 years ago) and longtime Chroma series collaborator Christine Buckton Tillman (not to mention a little teaser at the end to future podcast guest and Kala Art Institute Co-Executive Director, Ellen Lake!).
Lisa shares more about how her many books came about on various other podcasts and interviews (so we didn’t spend too much time talking about it), including Authentic Obsessions earlier in 2025, a 2019 conversation with Abby Glassenberg, and a recent Canvas Rebel article here.
We do talk about Lisa’s dreamy backyard studio in Oakland, California. You can check out a cool timelapse of the studio being built here.
Finally, learn more about Lisa’s newest book, Art, Craft, Color, coming out in February 2026, here.
Additional Links:
To learn more about Lisa and her work, check out her website and follow her on Instagram.
Artists in Offices is produced and edited by Rebecca Bird Grigsby. Music is provided by Jesse Kelsey.
Listen here!
S2:E7 Sarah Kobrinsky
poet, martial artist, mother
In this episode, I’m excited to welcome Sarah Kobrinsky to the podcast! Sarah is the former Poet Laureate of Emeryville, California, and the author of Nighttime on the Other Side of Everything. Her poems and stories have appeared in places like Magma Poetry, Red Light Lit, Monkeybicycle, 100 Word Story, and many more.
Born in Canada, raised in North Dakota, seasoned in England, and tempered in California, she now lives in the Bay Area, where she and her husband run a handmade ceramic dinnerware company called Jered’s Pottery. She also hosts literary workshops and readings there, and beyond her creative and professional life, she’s a folk dancer, a martial artist, an aspiring polyglot, and the mom of a teenage son.
During our interview, Sarah reads two of her poems: Elf-Portrait and Phantom Letdown. She paraphrases Joan Didion (and gets very close to the actual quote: "I don't know what I think until I write it down."). Finally, you can get a sense of how she engages her audiences during poetry readings here.
Additional Links:
To learn more about Sarah and her work, follow her on Instagram.
Artists in Offices is produced and edited by Rebecca Bird Grigsby. Music is provided by Jesse Kelsey.
Listen here!
S2:E6 Susana Sanchez-Young
artist, visual journalist, and entrepreneur
On this episode, I’m excited to speak with Susana Sanchez-Young! Susana is a visual journalist with more than 20 years of experience in newspaper design and graphic and photo illustration. Her award-winning work has covered everything from presidential inaugurations to Spanx for men to nudist camps in South Florida—and pretty much everything in between. She’s been recognized by the Society of News Design and multiple state press associations across the country.
Susana is also the creative force behind The Designing Chica, a brand she launched after realizing during her pregnancy that there wasn’t enough artwork reflecting her own Guatemalan-Nicaraguan-American culture. She has since channeled that inspiration into vibrant, culturally rooted designs often created late at night, after work and the many family obligations she has as the mother of two.
Additional Links:
To learn more about Susana and her work, check out her website and follow her on Instagram.
Artists in Offices is produced and edited by Rebecca Bird Grigsby. Music is provided by Jesse Kelsey.
Listen here!
S2:E5 David Burke
artist, educator, muralist, and father of two
I’m thrilled to talk with David Burke on this episode of the podcast! David is an artist whose career balances teaching, studio practice, and public art. Over the past two decades, he’s created murals, exhibitions, and collaborative projects that merge creativity with community storytelling. He’s the founder of Hungry Ghost Productions, a Bay Area mural collective dedicated to diversity, social justice, and collaboration, and their ongoing Love Letter to Oakland project celebrates generations of artists, activists, and leaders in the city. In his studio work, David explores ecology, climate change, and the relationship between the natural and built environment. His teaching career has taken him from Chiang Mai University in Thailand to the Academy of Art University and Cal State East Bay. David is also the father of two.
During our conversation, I reference another podcast interview David did with Urban Artist Talk. You can check out that interview here.
Shout-outs to David's mural crew & collaborators: Steve Babuljak, Pancho Pescador, and Joevic Yeban.
Special recognition goes to Hung Liu, an artist featured in the Love Letter to Oakland mural in Oakland's Temescal neighborhood and a major influence on artists in the Bay Area and beyond, as you'll hear in future episodes.
Additional Links:
To learn more about David and his work, check out his website and follow him on Instagram.
Artists in Offices is produced and edited by Rebecca Bird Grigsby. Music is provided by Jesse Kelsey.
Listen here!
S2:E4 Briana Loewinsohn
High School Art Teacher and Cartoonist
This week’s guest is Briana Loewinsohn! Briana is a high school art teacher and cartoonist, and the author of the acclaimed graphic memoir Ephemera, published by Fantagraphics in 2023. The book was named one of the American Library Association’s top graphic novels of the year and won the 2023 Foreword Indies Editors Prize for Nonfiction. Her latest graphic novel, Raised by Ghosts, came out in early 2025—also with Fantagraphics—and recently won the Harvey Award for Best Young Adult Book. Briana lives in Oakland, California, with her husband, their two kids, and their cat, Gary.
We talk a lot in the episode about Briana’s “bestie,” Thien Pham, fellow teacher and comic book & visual artist. Briana has been featured in a lot of articles and interviews, but I particularly enjoyed her “Diary of a Struggling Comics Artist” interview with Chris Wisnia; you can listen to the 2nd part of their conversation for free here. She talks a lot about her experience getting her work published in this and other interviews.
Some other projects we discuss include her Color Field for the Drawn to MoMA series and Movie Theaters We Have Lost for KQED.
Additional Links:
To learn more about Briana and her work, follow her on Instagram.
Artists in Offices is produced and edited by Rebecca Bird Grigsby. Music is provided by Jesse Kelsey.
Listen here!
S2:E3 Andrea Wenglowskyj
Buffalo-based photographer and mother of two
In episode 3, I speak with Buffalo-based artist Andrea Wenglowskyj. Andrea is a photo-based artist and commercial/editorial photographer whose work explores how memory and community are shaped by war and authoritarianism, inspired by her Ukrainian-American heritage. A Fulbright Grant recipient in Ukraine, she has exhibited across the U.S. and internationally, including at CEPA Gallery, Silver Eye Center for Photography, and Galerie Amu in Prague. Her photography has appeared in The New York Times, NPR, and more. Andrea has taught at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the International Center of Photography, and the Brooklyn Museum, among others. She co-founded creative organizations Kind Aesthetic and DELVE and has participated in numerous residencies and grant-funded projects. Most recently, her work appeared in Portrait of Buffalo II at CEPA Gallery, where she’ll open a solo exhibition in November 2025.
During our conversation, I reference Andrea's May 2017 CreativeMornings Buffalo talk about Paths of Intention. You can watch the video here.
Additional Links:
To learn more about Andrea and her work, visit her website and follow her on Instagram.
Artists in Offices is produced and edited by Rebecca Bird Grigsby. Music is provided by Jesse Kelsey.
Listen here!
S2:E2 Janine Biunno
Artist & Archivist Janine Biunno is back with an MLS degree, a new job, and a kid.
On this episode, I’m excited to welcome back Janine Biunno to the podcast! When we last talked, Janine was wrapping up her MLS degree while working as an archivist and maintaining her art practice. This time around, we talk about life after that degree, parenthood during a pandemic, day jobs that turn into careers, daily practices, and valuing the little moments.
During our conversation, we discuss Oliver Burkeman's book Four Thousand Weeks, Janine's husband Mac Pohanka, co-owner of Brooklyn-based Noble Signs, and our graduate advisor (and mom of 2!) Jennifer Schmidt.
Janine is a New York–based visual artist and archivist whose work explores how we experience architecture, infrastructure, and city spaces, and how our memories of them shift in the digital age. She currently leads the archives at The Met, after 8 years at the Noguchi Museum. Her art has been exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the International Print Center of New York, the Center for Book Arts in New York, Transmitter Gallery, and Satellite Miami, and is included in major collections across the country. Janine holds a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University, an MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, a graduate certificate in Museum Studies from Tufts University, and an MLS from CUNY Queens College Graduate School of Library and Information Studies. Janine is also the mom of a 5-year-old son.
Artists in Offices is produced and edited by Rebecca Bird Grigsby. Music is provided by Jesse Kelsey. More information about the podcast can be found at artistsinoffices.com.
Additional Links:
For more information about Janine and her work, please visit her website and Instagram.
Listen here!
S2:E1 Lisa Jonas Taylor
Lisa Jonas Taylor returns to Artists in Offices as a parent artist!
For the first episode of Season 2, I'm excited to welcome back Lisa Jonas Taylor, who became a parent in 2023. Lisa is a Santa Rosa-based artist who makes paintings that often incorporate sculptural and theatrical elements. Lisa has shown her work at places like Bass & Reiner Gallery, Southern Exposure, the Contemporary Jewish Museum, the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, and the Casa Romantica Cultural Center in Southern California. Collaborative projects include God Sees Everything, part of SFMOMA’s Fertile Ground at the Oakland Museum of California, and Solarium, created during a residency at This Will Take Time and later exhibited at City Limits Gallery in Oakland. Lisa holds an MFA from California College of the Arts and a BFA from CSU Long Beach.
When we recorded this conversation in August 2025, Lisa had recently left her full-time job at CCA after 10 years. We talk about that transition as well as life with a toddler, and a studio in flux...again. If you haven't already done so, you can listen to my season 1 chat with Lisa here.
Artists in Offices is produced & edited by Rebecca Bird Grigsby. Intro music is provided by Jesse Kelsey.
Additional Links:
You can learn more about Lisa's work on her website and follow her on Instagram.
Listen here!
Season One
10 artists + 1 bonus interview
S1:E1 Elizabeth Amento: A self-described "artist with a day job". Listen here; bonus episode here.
S1:E2 Laura Torres: A multi-disciplinary artist and tightwire performer. Listen here; bonus episode here.
S1:E3 Lisa Jonas Taylor: A San Francisco-based artist and arts administrator. Listen here.
S1:E4 Helena Hsieh: A Los Angeles area artist and educator. Listen here.
S1:E5 Janine Biunno: A Brooklyn-based artist and archivist. Listen here. Bonus episode here.
S1:E6 Christopher Thomas Ford: A Los Angeles area artist & museum preparator's assistant. Listen here. Bonus episode here.
S1:E7 Gabriel Martinez: A Berkeley-based visual artist & graphic designer. Listen here.
S1:E8 Em Meine: An Oakland-based artist who works in art & design higher education. Listen here.
S1:E9 Nicole Kita: A Northern California artist and educator/advocate for artists with developmental disabilities. Listen here.
S1:E10 Mike Rothfeld: An artist and arts administrator living and working in Oakland & San Francisco. Listen here.
S1 Bonus! Lennon Michelle Wolcott Hernandez: A Boston-based interdisciplinary artist who works by day in graduate admissions. Listen here.