We often say we want to make the world better.
At Studio Aesculapius, we think engaged, thoughtful dialogue about the arts can help.
Join us on our journey of discovery.
Artists Telling Stories News
The International Center of Photography (ICP) and Harlowe present Through the Light of Hope, a groundbreaking symposium exploring the intersection of art and science in healing trauma through photography.
Artist Vincent Valdez’s new retrospective Just a Dream offers glimpse of tragedy and triumph of life in contemporary America.
Artistic Directors Austin Tichenor and Reed Martin share the 2025 Sidney Berger Award from the Shakespeare Theatre Association honoring their commitment to popularizing the works of Shakespeare around the world.
Edward Dupuy’s new book Recollections on a Road Between: A Story of My Life is now available.
"Edward Dupuy's Reflections on a Road Between is an enchanting autobiography written through a kaleidoscopic lens of memory, literature, theology, poetry, and history—all interwoven in a thoughtful tapestry of family, study, work, travel, golf, friendship, and more.”
For their first collaboration in nearly 15 years, Dalt Wonk and Josephine Sacabo have assembled a selection of their best journalist work in NEW ORLEANS (1970-2020): A PORTRAIT OF THE CITY, providing an indelible retrospective on some of the Crescent City’s major cultural landmarks over the last 50 years.
Meet the hosts of our Artist Telling Stories Podcasts.
Edward Dupuy
Gene Beyt
Listen on your favorite podcast directories.
Discover our podcasts and learn more about our guest.
Meryl Truett is a curator, gallerist, teacher, consultant, and artist. She earned an MFA from Savannah College of Art and Design. After years in the United States, where she taught and produced works such as Vernacular Highway and a photography book, Thump Queen and other Southern Anomalies (in its second printing), she moved to the magical pueblo of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Meryl continues to exhibit—in the US, Europe, and now Mexico. Her current work mixes photography with other media in order to excavate her past. She speaks of such excavations in this episode of Artists Telling Stories.
Josephine Sacabo’s art seeks transcendence and connection. She eschews any chasing after artistic fashion in favor of diving into what she loves. In this way she connects with those who view her work. The many layers of her work evoke layers of being, some disturbing, yes, but ultimately transcending such disturbance to “come full circle” with compassion and beauty.
In this extended Artists Telling Stories Podcasts trailer, please join Austin Tichenor, Aline Smithson, Joe Harjo, Vincent Valdez, Jay Tolson, Alicia Olatuja, and Jim Lavilla-Havelin in discovering the importance of stories, the language of our humanity, and the transformative power of art. Artists Telling Stories Podcasts draw out human stories in the hope that in their telling, artists will offer a new story of our shared humanity, bringing all of us closer together. Join us for a new season in 2024!
Jim Lavilla-Havelin has written six collections of poetry, with several more in the works. His work has been anthologized widely, and he has been nominated for Poet Laureate of Texas, where he has lived for the last few decades. This episode of Studio Aesculapius is different. Jim reads three poems and has a wide-ranging discussion with co-host, Eddie Dupuy: about the poems, about poetry, about art and activism, about language and knowing and finding patterns, about the human desire to make marks and the attempt to make meaning.
Joe Harjo says he didn’t have “access to seeing ‘artist as profession,’” while he was growing up in Oklahoma as a member of the Muscogee (Creek) nation. When he told a guidance counselor in high school that he wanted to teach, the counselor rebuffed him. When he said he wanted to be an artist, he got a similar response. Now he’s both artist and teacher, and his work tries to counter misrepresentations of Native peoples in popular culture. After a particularly difficult year of isolation, an injured knee, the resurgence of racial strife, and Covid, Harjo discovered his origins anew, both as an artist and as a Native person. He felt “lifted” and “carried through” by histories, his own and that of his ancestors, and he shared that discovery in a series of prints. It’s one of the mysteries of art that you will find something of yourself in his story as well.
Aline Smithson was always drawing as a child growing up in Los Angeles. After a stint as a large format painter, Smithson went to New York for 10 years, working in fashion. She returned to LA, took a class in photography and realized she “could use the camera to make art.” She had found her “visual voice,” and now, as a teacher for more than 20 years, savors the moments she sees that voice arise in her students. Smithson is one of the most recognized names in photography, not only because of her work developing LENSCRATCH, an online resource for and community of photographers, but also because of her own significant body of work, which elevates the everyday world into something more. You will enjoy our conversation with her because of the individuality and universality, the humanity, she shares with us.