Advertise on podcast: What’s My Thesis?

Artist Donel Williams reflects on his unconventional path into art, from community college photography to his studies at UCLA, where he developed a multidisciplinary practice spanning painting, performance, and installation. Drawing on personal history and mentorship, he describes how early experiences shaped his engagement with labor, material, and image-making. The conversation centers on the expectations placed on Black artists within contemporary art, particularly the pressure toward figuration, and Williams’ turn toward abstraction as both a formal and political strategy. Through work informed by redacted government documents and performative gestures that critique authorship and visibility, he examines the tensions between identity, audience legibility, and artistic autonomy.      

Faris McReynolds is a painter and musician whose practice engages directly with the structures of the contemporary art world. In this conversation, he reflects on his early entry into the gallery system, the financial realities of sustaining a painting practice, and the conditions that led him to step away from commercial representation. The discussion addresses how wealth, collectors, and market forces shape artistic visibility and value, alongside a critique of galleries, art fairs, and institutional power. McReynolds also considers the distinction between underground and unsuccessful practices, the influence of social media on artistic production, and the possibility of maintaining an independent, long-term commitment to making work outside dominant systems.

In this episode of What’s My Thesis?, Los Angeles painter Jahn Baby Muller, a graduate of the USC Roski School of Art, joins host Javier Proenza to discuss his thesis work and the philosophical questions shaping his practice. Muller describes a body of still life paintings built from objects collected at estate sales—particularly toys and artifacts left behind by the Baby Boomer generation—which he stages as emotional narratives about generational inheritance and cultural memory. The conversation expands into a broader reflection on how art is defined and experienced. Muller proposes that art is not determined solely by the artist’s intention but emerges through the experience of the viewer and the cultural context surrounding it. Alongside discussions of art education and institutional hierarchies, he explains how his work combines painting, large-format photography, video-game color palettes, and extended poetic titles to explore nostalgia, generational power, and the material remnants of previous generations.

Painter Katie Hector joins host Javier Proenza for a conversation on portrait painting, image culture, and the shifting cultural frameworks that shape how faces and bodies are represented in art. Hector reflects on her studio practice, discussing her return to figurative painting and the role of photographic source material in constructing contemporary portraits. The conversation also explores Hector’s concept of a “shadow practice,” including her quilting work made from repurposed painting materials, alongside a broader discussion of portraiture’s historical associations with power, representation, and beauty standards. Together, they consider how contemporary artists engage with the legacy of portrait painting while navigating the visual language of digital and internet-based imagery.      

In this episode of What’s My Thesis?, painter Estefania Ajcip joins host Javier Proenza to discuss the personal and cultural experiences that shape her work. Ajcip reflects on growing up between the United States and Guatemala, her Indigenous family background, and the circumstances that led her to return to the U.S. as a young adult. The conversation explores how family separation caused by immigration informs her paintings about absence and memory, as well as her path through art school at Pasadena City College and California State University, Long Beach. Ajcip also discusses developing a mixed media painting practice, navigating critiques in art school, and translating personal history into contemporary art.

In this episode of What’s My Thesis?, host Javier Proenza speaks with Los Angeles–based Chicano artist Raul Baltazar about the cultural and historical foundations of his practice. Baltazar reflects on the origins of his performance character “Seven the Aztec Bunny,” first developed through ceremonies at Self Help Graphics’ Aztec New Year celebration, and discusses how Indigenous traditions, Catholic symbolism, and community ritual inform his approach to art. The conversation explores Mexican and Mexican American identity through migration, colonial history, and cultural syncretism, including reflections on La Malinche, the blending of Indigenous and Catholic cosmologies, and the preservation of ceremonial knowledge. Baltazar also addresses the generational lineage of Chicano artists in Los Angeles, the tension between community-based practices and art institutions, and the role of devotion, memory, and cultural continuity within contemporary artistic work.

Kristine Shomaker is a Los Angeles–based conceptual painter and arts organizer, and the founder of Shoebox Arts and Art and Cake at the Brewery Art Complex. In this conversation, she reflects on building artist support systems outside traditional commercial models, restructuring a nonprofit to sustain mentorship, and expanding art journalism focused on marginalized communities. Shomaker also discusses her studio practice, including cutting paintings off their stretcher bars and reconfiguring them into sculptural installations, as well as her long-term collaborative projects Perceive Me and Color Response. The episode examines experimentation, adaptability, and the role of collaboration in sustaining artists locally and internationally.

In this episode, Haitian painter and muralist Olivier Arsène Ganthier, an MFA candidate at Otis College of Art and Design, reflects on his artistic formation in Haiti and his current practice in Los Angeles. Raised in his father’s studio and trained at the National School of Arts in Haiti, Ganthier discusses the technical foundations of his education, the development of Haiti’s graffiti and mural culture, and the practical realities of building an art career across geographies. The conversation addresses the Haitian Revolution and its economic aftermath, Western media narratives about Haiti, and the role of spiritual syncretism between Vodou and Catholic imagery in shaping visual culture. Ganthier describes his figurative painting as a form of Black representation that draws from archetype, animation, African masks, and diasporic experience, while also emphasizing the importance of business literacy, contract awareness, and public space as critical dimensions of contemporary art practice.

In this episode of What’s My Thesis?, ceramic sculptor and installation artist Liz Stringer joins the podcast for an in-depth conversation about sculpture, scale, and the body. Working primarily with ceramics, metal armatures, and welded structures, Stringer discusses how her practice emerged from a background shaped by medicine, illness, and early encounters with Roman, Gothic, and Baroque architecture. The conversation explores monumental ceramics, biopolitics, and public space, including Stringer’s engagement with civic spectacle, parade structures, and collective ritual. Drawing on Enlightenment history, architecture, and lived experience, Stringer reflects on her recent MFA thesis work, which centers the viewer’s body within installations addressing armor, metamorphosis, vulnerability, and systems of power.

In this episode, Javier Proenza speaks with Frannie Hemmelgarn, director and co-founder of DMST Atelier, an artist-run space in Los Angeles developed in collaboration with affordable housing providers. Hemmelgarn reflects on the space’s origins during the pandemic, its community feeds and public programming, and the responsibilities of artist-run initiatives within gentrifying neighborhoods. The conversation also turns to Hemmelgarn’s studio practice, which centers on handmade papermaking using upcycled materials. She discusses how the work emerged from transitions between painting and cyanotype, and how incorporating her late father’s papers shaped a process focused on grief, repair, and reconstruction.

In this episode of What’s My Thesis?, host Javier Proenza speaks with Stephanie Sherwood, an artist and Exhibition Coordinator at the Brand Library in Glendale. Sherwood reflects on her dual role as a practicing artist and arts administrator, drawing on her experience working within municipal institutions such as libraries, city galleries, and public exhibition spaces. The conversation explores Sherwood’s painting practice, including her long-term engagement with found materials, discarded objects, and containers, as well as earlier work focused on the body, still life, and abstraction. She discusses artist collectives, alternative pathways outside the MFA system, institutional labor, and the ways public art spaces shape access, experimentation, and community within the Los Angeles art landscape.      

In this episode of What’s My Thesis?, Javier Proenza speaks with Ever Velasquez, Director of Charlie James Gallery, about her path from collage and community organizing to gallery leadership, and the values guiding the gallery’s long-term commitment to artists in Los Angeles. Velasquez discusses curatorial pacing, group exhibitions as frameworks for career development, and the labor behind gallery work, alongside reflections on collage as a lifelong practice and Afro-diasporic spiritual traditions as discipline rather than aesthetic. The conversation centers self-advocacy, boundaries, and responsibility as essential to sustaining artistic and curatorial practice.

Artist Joaquin Stacey joins Javier Proenza for a conversation on art, identity, and cultural formation shaped by migration. Born in Ecuador and raised in Miami before relocating to Los Angeles for his MFA at Otis College of Art and Design, Stacey reflects on how geography, language, and institutional training inform his practice. The discussion moves through painting, performance, and installation, with particular attention to Catholic iconography, mestizaje, diaspora, and the contradictions of living in the United States while remaining connected to Ecuador. Stacey also describes his use of fermentation and sourdough as both material and conceptual frameworks, challenging linear notions of time, labor, and artistic process.      

Artist Flora Kao joins What’s My Thesis? to discuss the evolution of her practice from painting to large-scale installation, and how Taiwanese mourning rituals, Buddhist symbolism, and diasporic memory shape her approach to space. Trained at Otis and later UC Irvine, Kao describes discovering installation as a way to create experiences that “elicit a sense of wonder,” pairing conceptual clarity with meditative, labor-intensive processes. The conversation traces her early years moving between Houston, Wisconsin, Taipei, and Boston; her family’s history under Taiwan’s martial-law era; and her transition from environmental science and strategy consulting into art school. Kao explains the cultural and personal significance behind folding 108 origami lotus forms each week for seven weeks—a ritual she adapted into a suspended installation of 756 hand-folded lotus at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery. Kao also speaks about using archival photographs, bamboo prayer-leaf structures, and cyanotype processes to explore grief, family history, and the shifting landscapes of Taiwan and Los Angeles. She offers rare insight into sustaining an installation-based practice through grants, community networks, and long-term professional relationships, while navigating motherhood and the realities of working outside commercial gallery systems.

Artist Manuel Vdah Bracamonte joins What’s My Thesis? for a grounded conversation on graffiti, identity, and the lived conditions that shaped Los Angeles street culture in the 1980s and 90s. Born in El Salvador and raised in downtown LA, Bracamonte traces his earliest memories of tagging, the shift into “tag banging,” and how the social and political pressures of that era intersected with his development as an artist. A pivotal high-school teacher introduced him to portfolio building and ultimately to the CalArts CAP program—a transformational moment that opened a different pathway into art, community, and education. Throughout the episode, Bracamonte reflects on moving from name-based graffiti to narrative, community-oriented mural work; researching Mayan hieroglyphs; and developing a hybrid visual language that holds both ancestral history and futurist possibility. The discussion expands outward into questions of Latinx identity, diaspora, public art, youth mentorship, and the politics of presence—what it means to show up in spaces that often assume you don’t belong. Bracamonte’s reflections move between personal history and broader frameworks of street culture, muralism, pedagogy, and the ongoing transformation of LA’s art landscape. This episode offers a direct, unfiltered look at how artistic practices emerge from lived experience, community ties, and the need to create meaning beyond institutional boundaries.