3 MAY 2014 · Public Art Director of Project Row Houses, Ryan Dennis joins Afros & Ceramic Fruit to talk about current programs along with Project Row Houses year-long 20th anniversary celebration. In addition, she discusses how the development of smaller institutions heighten the visibility of artist and art professionals of color.

26 APR 2014 · Host La Keisha Leek & Savannah Wood sits down with transdisciplinary artist Samantha Hill to talk about: 1. Artist as archivist. 2. Place as a framework for understanding history. 3. Utopian hopes for the greater African American community. and much more. Hill's work is currently on view in the exhibition "RISK: Empathy, Art and Social Practice" that closes on April 26 at Columbia College Chicago: Glass Curtain Gallery. Additionally, Hill has a solo show titled "Topographical Depictions of the Bronzeville Renaissance" that is on display at the Hyde Park Art Center through May 18.

19 APR 2014 · Artist and educator Irina Zadov talks about the 2014 Chicago Home Theater Festival (CHTF). This is a month long celebration of art across 20 neighborhoods in Chicago, co-produced with Black Russell and Laley Lippard. In addition to CHTF Zadov talks about the presence of home as a significant part of her artistic practice through the Hyde Park Dacha and her work at the Jane Addams Hull-House.

5 APR 2014 · This week we talk with Brooklyn-based photographer Paul Mpagi Seyupa about a practice which uses photography as a tool for mapping together layered narratives. These narratives which is used to track the histories of personal relationships and encounters over the years. We also talk about navigating new cities, finding inspiration for new work and the importance of artist residencies. One of great note is his current 3-month stay in The Jack Gosswater Residency at The Hyde Park Art Center.

29 MAR 2014 · Arts Educator and Administrator Felicia Mings joins Afros & Ceramic Fruit to talk about creating visibility for emerging Canadian artists of African and Caribbean descent, an upcoming curatorial project on absence and presence thing Spring, working with The Andrew W. Mellon Summer Academy and Undergraduate Curatorial Fellowship Program at The Art Institute of Chicago. As well as an exciting film program that she is curating for the Chicago Home Theater Festival this May. Felicia Mings is an educator and visual artist with a passion for empowering youth through in the arts. Felicia’s artistic practice, employment experience and academic pursuits all strive toward promoting the nuances in cultures, personal histories and contributions of African Diasporic people.

22 MAR 2014 · This week on Afros & Ceramic Fruit we welcomed Interdisciplinary arts practitioner Rashayla Marie Brown. In addition to explaining how her growing up in a family where an understanding of Black history was embedded at a young age, we pick back up at some of last week's conversation and talk with Rashayla about how being a transplant on more than one occasion throughout her life (she had moved 18 times by the time she was 18 in fact) has had an influence on her approach to an expansive artistic practice. Layering personal and familial histories with those of pop culture and the African Diaspora - from Beyonce to Isaac Hayes to Malcolm X- her works which often includes images of herself, spans across the mediums of photography, video, performance and installation.

15 MAR 2014 · This week on Afros and Ceramic Fruit Savvy and I we joined by The Corner hosts Nikki and Rae. We discuss the ways we all engage our histories, the histories of those closest to us and how we use those histories as a mode of self expression, production and finding our creative niches. We also talk about our commonalities, being that at some point we have all been transplants in other cities that are not the place in which we originated from. We share an interesting dialogue on how coming and going has supported these modes as well.

1 MAR 2014 · Savvy is back! We catch up on her project Black Ink Book Exchange opening at the Arts Incubator in Washington Park this Spring- Look out for it folks! We were joined by artists, curators, administrators Alexandria Eregbu and Sydney Stoudmire to talk about black hair in performance art, having Chicago-based practices and what projects are up next for the both of them.

15 FEB 2014 · Welcome back for the third installation of Afros & Ceramic Fruit. This week we talk with curator and arts administrator Marcela Andrade about what it means to be Latina, and female in the art world. Using Marcela's own narrative as a springboard, we talk about her exhibition Interlacing Threads: Traditional Techniques | Contemporary Perspectives currently on view through March 7, 2014 at Columbia College Chicago's Hokin Gallery. Through traditional weaving techniques the artists works presented in Interlacing Threads have found a way to incorporate them into their practices. This has created contemporary forums in Chicago and elsewhere for dialogue that connects audiences to the artists' own heritage or found inspiration in that of another culture.

8 FEB 2014 · We've arrived at week 2! Savvy and I thank you all for tuning in last week for the first installation of Afros & Ceramic Fruit with the team from the Fultonia project. On the occasion of Dilla Day 2014 this week guest co-host Felicia Mings and I talk with Chicago-based interdisciplinary artists Krista Franklin and avery r. young on the influence of Soul and Hip Hop's in each of their practices. Through poetry, art making, music making and interestingly enough binary space making Krista and avery have developed artistic practices tied to their individual black experiences. Considering contemporary spaces for antiquities, we'll talk about where Soul and Hip Hop fits in to the equation as it relates to where they are today as artists and how they think about making. Starting from James Brown in the womb, to the church house, to the seeing a record for the first time, to the impact of MTV, to adopting a hustler mentality as a way of working, we arrive at imagining what Dilla might look like in embedded in a collaborative art project.