Episode Summary:

In this week’s unique gallery, Yassi and Haddy invite their good friend, Dan Boulus, to talk about “Art and the City” --how arts institutions shape the literal infrastructure and cultural feel of a city. Then to kick off our hometown series, they interview 2019 Reno City Artist and figurative abstractionist, Tom Drakulich. Finally, this week’s provocation asks you to confront a piece of abstraction and figure out what it means to you.

Dan Boulos received his PhD in Theater Studies from the University of California Santa Barbara in 2018. His dissertation examined the founding of the Repertory Theatre of Lincoln Center in New York City and Center Theatre Group in Los Angeles and situated their histories in the context of urban renewal during the Cold War in the United States. Earlier graduate research led to his Master’s thesis on the redevelopment of New York’s City’s Forty-Second Street and Times Square, reflecting a life-long fascination with American cities, the majority of which he got to see while spending nearly two years touring North America in a giant lizard costume in The Magic School Bus Live.

Biography: Born and raised in Reno, NV, Tom Drakulich is a process based, figurative abstractionist whose art practice navigates the play between the unique and the familiar. Having grown up exploring the Nevada landscape, he is influenced by the ways in which the physicality and form of the desert can be connected to the aesthetics of the body and his relationship with human nature. Tom is an interdisciplinary artist working in ceramics, mixed media painting and drawing, and site-specific sculpture. Tom received his A.A. in Art History from Truckee Meadows Community College, his B.A. in Criminal Justice from the University of Nevada, Reno, and his M.F.A. from the University of Nevada, Reno. In 2019, he was selected as the City of Reno’s inaugural City Artist.

Find Tom online:

https://www.instagram.com/tomdrakulich/

Provocation (#artifpodcast): Find a piece of abstract art that you don’t understand and use this simple checklist to interpret it. Describe, Analyze, Interpret, and then Judge the artwork.

Mentions:

Carnaby Street

Lincoln Center

Mark Taper Forum

The Public Theater

Joseph Papp

UNR

Kintsugi

Richard Jackson

Fred Reid

Lynda Yuroff

Walter McNamara

Kelsie Harder

Jim McCormick

Kiki Smith