What drives cultural practitioners to experiment, discover, and create?
We spoke to visual artist Benjamin Volta (2015), who creates intricate public murals and sculptures through participatory methods, often involving education, restorative justice, and urban planning.
We spoke to choreographer Merián Soto (2015), whose 40-year career in performance has been marked by a concern for the body—most recently manifested in a somatic, conceptual, and process-based practice that investigates the living body and its relationship to consciousness.
We spoke to visual artist Micah Danges (2015), whose work hovers between image and object and pushes the limits of what a photograph can be.
Director Michał Zadara and actress Barbara Wysocka on creating an innovative adaptation of Fryderyk Chopin's two piano concertos performed without a piano.
We spoke to visual artist Lauren Mabry (2015), whose work blurs the boundaries between ceramics, abstract painting, and sculpture.
We spoke to filmmaker and director David Scott Kessler (2015) whose work combines film, installation, writing, performance, and drawing to suggest what he describes as “a world beyond reality.”
Pew Fellow Bhob Rainey discusses his approach to improvisation.
We spoke to visual artist Caroline Lathan-Stiefel (2015), whose large-scale, immersive sculptural installations play with weight and mass, creating pattern, color, and light from everyday materials.
John Collins, founder and artistic director of the ensemble theater company Elevator Repair Service, discusses the discovery process his ensemble engages in at the outset of a new theater piece.
Musician and Pew Fellow Chris Madak on artistic motivation, the notion of "perfection," and more.