Art Lovers Forum Podcast

Welcome To Art Lovers Forum.  This is a podcast conversation about pop art in the 1960’s and 1970’s that includes drugs, infidelity, dementia and everything else that makes a real juicy story.  If you are involved in art you may know some of this already, but today I have Jonathan Scull on Art Lovers Forum who is going to tell us all about Ethel and Robert Scull, the most talked about  Pop Art collectors for years. They dominated the press because of their unusual collecting and selling practices. Every major artist and gallery owner socialized with them because the Scull’s changed the business drastically which made art prices soar. The world was fascinated by them because of their rags to riches story.
 
Little did I know that a quasi-competitor of mine, was their oldest son, Jonathan Scull. At first he was a  senior editor for Stereophile Magazine. Then he started his own successful marketing company called Scull Communications, a PR company focused on the home entertainment industry. Most folks in the audio and music business knew Jonathan as a distinguished industry publicist.
 
I didn’t know that Ethel and Robert Scull were Jonathan’s parents. I never put two and two together. I think Jonathan recently mentioned it on Facebook. The minute I read that I knew I had to get Jonathan on my podcast to tell us more.  What was it like being a child of the two very fast lane folks who changed the world of collecting pop art? They were their own PR machines.
 
Before we  begin, let me reveal that Jonathan is now working on a new project with his business partner, Amy Penn, to tell the entire fascinating story of his parents called “Bob & Spike.” Spike was Ethel’s nickname. If you Google them, you will see what all of the excitement is about.
 

I feel like I know Evelyn Politzer forever. I have been seeing her yarn, thread, and fabric exhibits all over Miami for years, especially airline terminals, parks, and a vast array of galleries.  Her work makes you stop and stare. You can’t believe what this woman can do with soft hand-dyed fibers to create unconventional pieces ranging from small two-dimensional tapestries to monumental projects. She is definitely a pioneer in this area of art.
I know a secret about Evelyn. Shh, don’t tell anyone. While she is a leading fiber artist for a few decades now, she actually never knitted a sweater. It’s difficult to  believe considering all the millions of people who knit a sweater every year. Evelyn has been spending her time conquering art exhibits all over the world.
I have tried to meet Evelyn for years but I keep missing her at her exhibits. She either left before I showed up or she was at one of her other exhibitions. Then a few weeks ago Evelyn and I were at the same event and she made sure we finally shook hands, or in this case hugged. I knew I wanted to interview her on my podcast so I made her agree to it that night.
Evelyn started her practice  in her native land of Uruguay, a country where sheep outnumber human inhabitants, and where wool and other natural fibers continue to be an essential tool for people’s livelihood, especially women. The relationship between the fibers she works with and the place where she was born evokes the comfort of belonging, no matter where she is in the world.
Thank you Evelyn for joining us.

I’m thrilled to be interviewing Jeanne Jaffe today because she is not the typical artist that I usually meet. She has been creating art for 40 years and continues to put out more work than most people half her age. She is a true inspiration for folks who have something to say.
Jeanne is a multi-disciplinary artist working in installation, sculpture, and stop motion animation. Her work is influenced by an interest in language, literature, psychology, and history and explores how we construct identity, our world, and our value systems. Jeanne began her professional career studying archeology and anthropology, examining how people create and express meaning and values through objects, rituals, and behaviors.
Presently, Jeanne has a very mind boggling and profound exhibit at Spinello Projects in Miami.  Titled "Before I Wake."  The solo exhibition spans her work from 1997 to 2024.
Jeanne was a Professor Emeritus of Fine Arts at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and was a visiting artist for five years at Xian Academy of Fine Arts in Xian, China. She is the recipient of fellowship grants for outstanding artistic development from the Gottlieb Foundation, for support of her automatronic installation about the life of Nicola Tesla from the National Endowment for the Arts, an artist residency in Mino Japan, as well as grants from the Mid Atlantic/NEA, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the Independence Foundation, the Leeway Foundation, among others.
Most recently she was awarded an Innovative Artist Fellowship from the Cultural Council of Palm Beach County and a project artist residency from the Deering Estate. Works by Jeanne have been exhibited nationally and internationally at such places as Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art Museum, Phila. Pa; Seokang Museum of Art, Busan, Korea; Mino Washi Museum, Mino, Japan; The Royal Scottish Academy of Edinburgh, Scotland; Hunterdon Art Museum, Clinton, N.J.; American Museum of Papermaking, Atlanta, Georgia; Michener Art Museum, Doylestown, Pa; Woodmere Art Museum, Phila. Pa; Delaware Center for Contemporary Art, Wilmington, DE; Abington Sculpture Garden, Abington, Pa; Rowan University Gallery, Glassboro, N.J; Marginal Utility Gallery; and Gallery Joe in Phila, Pa.
She also has shown at LNS Gallery, Bridge Red, Doral Art Museum, Coral Springs Art Museum, IS Projects, Hollywood Art and Culture Center, Deering Estate, the Mexican Consulate, the Arts Warehouse, Edge Zones, IPC Artspace and Collective 62.
Her work has been reviewed in Art in America, The New York Times, and Sculpture Magazine among others.

Most people refer to Bianca Bosker as the New York Times best-selling author of Cork Dork and, most recently, Get the Picture.
I refer to Bianca as the most self-assured writer alive who doesn’t mind putting herself in vulnerable and embarrassing situations if it means she gets to write kick ass books that shake up entire industries for the better. Most of the folks I know would never allow themselves to be in an inferior position for the sake of anything. Every day when I was reading “Get The Picture” I kept thinking about how brave and fearless Bianca was.   
Bianca did that both in her book about wine, Cork Dork, and most recently, Get the Picture, about art. 
I just finished reading Get the Picture because my husband and I seriously collect art even though we were never formally trained to do so. Yet hundreds of thousands of dollars have gone from our piggy banks to the hands of gallerists around the world.
I couldn’t put Bianca’s book down. Most everything she detailed I have witnessed, or heard, over the years. Of course it was always discussed in hush-hush, one on one, conversations.  Bianca took the lid off of snotty attitudes, pricing practices, artist loyalties, the challenges of art fairs, and everything else you can think of.
Most of my collector friends who read Get The Picture were not only impressed by Bianca’s remarks but truly appreciated her writing style. I kept hearing “a brilliant writer who knows how to captivate.”
Now we get to hear her voice.
Just for some background, Bianca is a contributing writer at The Atlantic. She has also written for publications such as The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal. Her work has been recognized with awards from the New York Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, and more, and has been included in “The Best American Travel Writing.”  She lives in New York City.

This is the first Art Lovers Forum I am doing extemporaneously. I usually have a prepared introduction with a list of questions. I guess my free spirited, number 13 episode, is appropriate for the art explorer I am about to interview. Avi Ivan has traveled to 69.1 per cent of the earth studying art. The list of places he has traveled to will be published in my blog: www.digidame.com. I met Avi in South Africa. It was happenstance. He joined a group, Fountainhead Arts, that Eliot and I were touring with. Everyone in the group was fascinated by Avi’s travels so I wanted him to tell us more on this podcast. Welcome Avi.
 
 
 

Marla Rice founded the Rice Polak Gallery in 1992 and holds a prominent place in Provincetown, Massachusetts as one of the primary venues for contemporary art. The gallery represents a select group of emerging and established artists whose work is both contemporary and contemplative. 
 
The philosophy of the Rice Polak Gallery is marked by a spirit of collaboration and exploration. The diverse media in the gallery’s program are united by the consistent presentation of challenging and thoughtful work. These works are often motivated by an interest in questioning established boundaries.
 
Marla is challenged and excited by her artists, whose works are ever changing, often humorous, sometimes political and always stimulating. Her desire to share that challenge and excitement is what keeps Marla committed to her artists and to the public.
 
Rice Polak Gallery
430 Commercial Street, Provincetown, MA 02657 
ricepolakgallery.com
508-487-1052  
Marla Rice Director, Cell: 508-237-5499

Raymond Elman is an American artist, publisher, editor, and writer. While he has had a very successful career as an artist, we are talking to him today about why he created an online video art publication platform which has already featured (500) video conversations with some of the most interesting and accomplished people from the art world. The videos are produced in short segments so that you immediately get right to the point of the conversation. The production will captivate you.
First called Inspicio in 2014, its name was changed to ArtSpeak last year. It was easier to pronounce and remember. 
ArtSpeak is sponsored by the Lee Caplin School of Journalism & Media in The College of Communication, Architecture + The Arts at Florida International University in Miami.
Ray earned two degrees, a BS (1967) and an MBA (1968) from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.  While attending UPenn, Ray took all of the studio art courses he could schedule. After graduating from Penn, he moved to Greenwich Village in New York City, where he took studio art courses at New York University (NYU) and met his mentor Knox Martin (1923-2022).  Martin motivated Ray to “give up his day job” and move to the Provincetown art colony.
When Ray was living in the Provincetown area on the northern tip of Cape Cod from 1970 to 2012, he co-founded Provincetown Arts magazine with Christopher Busa in 1985.  The magazine is still being published today.

Jayda Knight (Aka Flying Knight) is a visual & street artist known for her idiosyncratic Neo-Deco Symbolist art. Jayda received a BFA & BArch from Rhode Island School of Design. She worked with Eugene Lee in set design for Saturday Night Live and off-Broadway shows in New York which influenced her creative approach.
 
Jayda explores pattern both as a metaphor as well as a visual to create narratives inspired by contemporary topics. Jayda draws from quotidien, societal, sexual and personal subject matter to create a descriptive storytelling delivered in the form of symbolic patterns. 
 
An underlying darker sub-text inherently lingers-this psychology in her work is often only accessible to the careful viewer, but playfully veiled behind a Decorative Arts approach. The intentional contrast between the surface and the deep are part of what makes her work both accessible and challenging. This combined narrative in her work juxtaposed with a nostalgic flair, is often described as a visual form of the Historic-present.
 
Jayda has collaborated with several institutions including the Miami City Ballet, Oolite Arts, Lincoln Road Improvement District and Timeout and is a grant recipient from The Gottlieb Foundation.
 

I met Yasue Maetake about three months ago when gallerist Nina Johnson of Miami exhibited Yasue stunning and very unique tabletop sculptures. I walked into the exhibit and immediately thought I must own one of these amazing objects because they represented findings from the earth. I did buy one and I love looking at this piece called—-Avian— it’s made up of hand-blown glass, stained found tree branches, casters aluminum seashells, animal bones, fossils, and epoxy resin.Yasue is a Tokyo-born artist living and working in New York. Her work has been exhibited extensively in the U.S. and abroad including at Puerto Rico, The Netherlands, Taiwan, and the United States.Yasue’s work has been reviewed in Artforum, The New York Times, Art in America, FlashArt, and others. She was recently named as one of “20 international women advancing the field of sculpture” by Artsy. Yasue’s work has been featured in Sculpture Magazine. She was also a recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) Fellowship in Sculpture and an artist residency in the studio of El Anatsui in Ghana with a research grant from the Agency for Japanese Cultural Affairs. Yasue earned her MFA from Columbia University in New York.

Born and raised in Miami, Alex Nuñez is a Cuban-American mixed-media painter. She is not only a friend of mine, but Eliot and I collect her work. We met her at the Perez Museum 15 years ago when she gave an impromptu speech about an artist a group of us were examining. She was so articulate and so thorough that we all fell in love with her. She received her MFA from Hunter College, City University of New York, and was awarded the C12 Emerging Artist Fellowship. Solo shows include Marianne Boesky, New York, and Club Gallery, Miami. Her works have been exhibited in Museo del Barrio New York, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami.
Nuñez is the host and producer of the “Sunday Painter” (https://alexnunez.net/Sunday-Painter) podcast on Jolt Radio, now in its seventh year of production, and a recipient of The Warhol Foundation’s Wavemaker Grant. She has been reviewed and published in The New York Times, Artforum, CNN, Art Nexus, Hyperallergic, Huffington Post, W Magazine, and The Observer.