Artists in Offices – Details, episodes & analysis

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.

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. Additional information and episodes can be found at artistsinoffices.com.

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.

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. 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. Additional information and episodes can be found at artistsinoffices.com.

In this bonus episode between seasons 1 and 2 of the podcast, I talk to Lennon Michelle Wolcott Hernandez, a Boston-based interdisciplinary artist who works in graduate admissions. Originally from Michigan, Lennon is a Latinx artist who speaks better Japanese than Spanish, is named after a Beatle, and comes from a family line that signed the Declaration of Independence. She completed her Bachelor of Fine Art at Michigan State University. After leaving the Midwest, Lennon attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University for the Post-Baccalaureate Certificate (2015) and Master of Fine Arts (2017) programs. In early 2020, Lennon will present a workshop at the Michigan Indian Educational Council Conference, where her work "Mother 2017" will be featured.

In "All Work and No Play", a solo exhibition at Gallery 263 in Cambridge, Lennon explores how having a full-time job impacts artists' time for creativity and practice. Office supplies inspired by her day job are used as materials for the work. This exhibition, which also features patterns and symbols of the artist's multicultural American heritage, serves as a self-portrait broadly defined. In this episode, we talk about her work in this show, as well as her experiences leading up to it, both in the studio and beyond.

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You can learn more about Lennon's work on her website and follow her on Instagram. 

As always, podcast music is provided by Mr. Neat Beats.

In this bonus episode, I check in with Laura Torres, the second artist I interviewed for season 1 of the podcast. About a month after our initial interview in December 2018, Laura quit her full-time day job in higher education fundraising to focus more time on her circus arts training and everything else that supports her creative practice. This bonus episode was recorded in March 2019, a couple of months after Laura left her job.

Since then, Laura reports that she is meeting a lot of her tightwire goals, though like all art objectives, everything takes much longer than initially anticipated. She has her own rig, she co-created and performed her first duo act, and participated in a wirewalking workshop at NECCA (New England Center for Circus Arts) in VT.

She's also halfway through Karl Marx's Capital Vol. 1, which she reports is a challenging but worthwhile read. You can follow Laura's progress on her Instagram. To listen to our original interview, look for episode 2.

Music, as always, is provided by Mr. Neat Beats.

In this bonus episode, I check in with Elizabeth Amento, the first artist I interviewed for season one of the podcast, who has since left her day job in San Francisco and moved to New York City. This bonus episode was recorded in late June 2019, a week before she started her new job, and about three months after she made the move.

Elizabeth was born in Boston, MA, and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. She returned to the East Coast to attend Boston College for Studio Art and Psychology, Brandeis University for a Post-Baccalaureate in Studio Art, and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts/Tufts University for her Masters Degree in Fine Arts. Elizabeth's work has been exhibited in Mighty Tieton Gallery, Washington, Baton Rouge Gallery, Louisiana, Arena 1 Gallery, California, Modified Arts, Arizona, Melvin Gallery, Florida, Boston Young Contemporaries, Massachusetts, among others. Her work is featured in Index Book's Cut out for Collage. She currently resides in Brooklyn, NY.

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In the interview, Elizabeth mentions taking a woodshop course at Makeville Studio in Brooklyn. For more information about Elizabeth and her work, please visit her website and Instagram.

As always, podcast music is provided by Mr. Neat Beats.

In the final episode of season one, I speak with Mike Rothfeld, an artist living and working in Oakland and San Francisco. He received his MFA in Fine Art and MA in Visual and Critical Studies from California College of the Arts (CCA) and his BFA in Photography and Imaging from the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University (NYU).

Rothfeld's lo-fi, seemingly clumsy sculptures serve as set-pieces and props for the partial science-fiction and fantasy narratives he imagines while working in the studio. His sculptures display a dedication to play, campiness and the absurd along with an underlying sentiment of melancholy and doom. Concerned by an inability to imagine new and viable alternative futures, while still wanting to locate hope for a better tomorrow, Rothfeld makes work that references an era of visual media effects that required viewers to heavily suspend their disbelief to immerse themselves in an imagined reality.

Rothfeld's work has been displayed at The Contemporary Jewish Museum, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Southern Exposure, the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art, Alter Space Gallery, and San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA; the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, CT; Jan Larsen's Xpo, Brooklyn, NY; the Beacon Artist Union, Beacon, NY; and the Institute of Contemporary Art, London, England; among other venues. His writing has appeared in Art Practical and show take-aways for Stairwell's exhibitions.

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In the interview, Mike mentions working with artist, author, and curator Deb Willis while studying at NYU. She she later introduced him to the graduate programs at CCA. Between undergrad and grad school, Mike attended the Haystack Mountain School of Craft Residency. Finally, Mike and I discuss his participation in the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts' 'Bay Area Now 7' exhibition, a project that was curated by Stairwell's.

You can learn more about Mike's work on his website and follow him on Instagram. As always, podcast music is provided by Mr. Neat Beats.

In episode 9, I speak with Nicole Kita,  a visual artist living and working in Northern California, who works as an educator and advocate for artists with developmental disabilities. As an educator, Kita has taught artists of diverse ages, cultural and socio-economic backgrounds, as well as individual behavioral and learning needs. She currently works as a full-time teacher at The Studio, a non-profit arts organization in Eureka, California, that provides an inclusive studio environment for artists of all abilities to foster an authentic art practice and professional growth.  

As an artist, Kita explores the visual language of signs and symbols. Her practice is informed by anthropology and the history of print media: artifacts of the history, folklore, and cultural heritage of North America.

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In the interview, Nicole mentions traveling to Chicago to screenprint with Dan McAdams at Crosshair. Learn more about Nicole on her website, visit her Etsy shop, and follow her on Instagram.

As always, podcast music is provided by Mr. Neat Beats.

Em Meine makes drawings, paintings, and sculptures as a means of exploring collective memory, storytelling, natural history, and anthropomorphism. The works are often figurative representations of imaginary objects or landscapes. She considers her artistic practice to be a ritual for contemplation and self-care, which enables her to experience a sense of connectivity and communion with everything beyond her self. Em's process is meditative, allowing her to disengage from the external world, and to instead explore an internal universe.

More recently, Em has been making drawings that articulate vulnerable ideas based on her own experiences with anxiety or grief. With this work, she is exploring how very personal, unique emotions can become relatable and relevant to other people.

Em is a member of CTRL+SHFT Collective, an exhibition and studio space located in West Oakland. As a group of cis-women, trans-spectrum, gender non-conforming, queer, and PoC members, CTRL+SHFT interrogates what it means to build and be a part of a community. Through workshops, exhibitions, and other community engagements, CTRL+SHFT focuses on providing a platform for their ever-growing family, which includes writers, artists, thinkers, performers, curators, allies, agitators, organizers, activists, and teachers who are people of color, women, queer, trans-spectrum, and gender non-conforming folks.

Meine received a BFA in General Fine Arts at Maryland Institute College of Art and her MFA in Fine Art from California College of the Arts. She has exhibited in New York, Texas, Chicago, and California, including shows at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Southern Exposure, and The Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco. Em lives and works in Oakland, CA.

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Learn more about Em on her website and follow her on Instagram.

As always, podcast music is provided by Mr. Neat Beats.

Gabriel Martinez specializes in political art and Visual Cultural design. Gabriel has an eclectic history of being an artist whose works span the spectrum of being displayed on Bay Area gallery walls or finding their way directly to the hands of people for political empowerment. He has even had his portrait displayed at the de Young Museum. Gabriel's work unifies art and design.

The discursive style elements in Gabriel's work have been inspired by the graphic works of lowbrow art, political cartoons, and culture jamming. Thus, Gabriel has always been comfortable creating with a stylus and a ruler. He realized his knack for doing straight forward graphic design when he enlisted himself to create communication material to promote his art. Working as a graphic designer has allowed Gabriel to be around other creatives and to work for organizations with an emphasis in social justice.

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In the interview, Gabriel mentions studying with mural artist Juana Alicia at Berkeley City College. We also discuss "instagrammable" art and how artists and museums are utilizing this new tool with the example of Masako Miki who recently exhibited at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.

Learn more about Gabriel on Linkedin and Behance. Keep up to date on Gabriel's art musings @sfavc_web on Twitter.

As always, podcast music is provided by Mr. Neat Beats.

In this mini bonus episode, Los Angeles area artist & museum preparator's assistant Christopher Thomas Ford discusses the decision to attend the Museum School's post-baccalaureate program before pursuing his Master of Fine Arts degree. If you'd like to hear our full conversation, look for episode 6 of this podcast.

Music provided by Mr. Neat Beats.