Altadena (in L.A. County)-based artist James Griffith talks about:

Discovering the town of Altadena, where they first bought a house, and then a studio building, formerly Altadena’s fire house, back in 1999, and fixing them both up from tear-down conditions; being connected to nature while also being in the city, and not ever buying into owning a cell/mobile phone (although he does use an iPod, which he can text with); having renters in both the converted garage at their home, and in a section of their studio building, providing he and his wife with more freedom to make their art without needing ‘the monthly nut;’ working with tar as his primary medium, which he’s done for well over a decade and gotten a lot of mileage from one 5-gallon bucket of the stuff; and his and his wife’s decorative/faux finish painting business, which his wife launched in the 80s, and allowed them to buy their fixer upper house and studio building.

San Francisco-based artist Sarah Thibault talks about:

How she’s the last artist in S.F., or at least so it seems; a ghost encounter she experienced in Edinburgh (Scotland), as well as her engaging in Tarot cards and other new-age spiritual pursuits, largely as a byproduct of the pandemic; her experiences going to a range of artist residencies, from remote ones with just a couple fellow residents in Portugal, to a more professionalized one at Plop in London; the Minnesota Street Project, a subsidized artist studio and gallery complex in SF where Sarah has a long-term lease at ‘below-market rate,’ and the barriers for entry there; her transition from working in executive assistant jobs to becoming a recruiter; and we talk about my concerns about Sarah’s giving me a tarot reading (and spoiler: we eventually do one in a bonus episode to come).