The Light Grey Art Lab Podcast

The Light Grey Art Lab team returns to Iceland! This time we're visiting this beautiful country to host a week-long artist residency in southern Iceland, right at the base of the infamous Eyjafjallajökull volcano. We brought together a group of 14 amazing artists and spent an entire week exploring, conversing, and learning. In the final installment of this three part 2014 Iceland Diaries series, Jenny, Lindsay, and Chris take a moment each night to reflect on the travels, discussions, logistics, and memorable moments from each day. This episode picks up immediately after Lindsay, Chris and Jenny have dropped the residency participants off in Reykjavik, and continues to our safe arrival back in the good ol' US of A. During our final days in Iceland, we visit the Icelandic Academy of the Arts, explore massive lava tubes, find a shipwreck, run from a volcano threatening to erupt under a glacier and more.

The Light Grey Art Lab team returns to Iceland! This time we're visiting this beautiful country to host a week-long artist residency in southern Iceland, right at the base of the infamous Eyjafjallajökull volcano. We brought together a group of 14 amazing artists and spent an entire week exploring, conversing, and learning. In part two of this three part 2014 Iceland Diaries series, Jenny, Lindsay, and Chris take a moment each night to reflect on the travels, discussions, logistics, and memorable moments from each day. This episode covers the rest of the residency, up until we drop the group off at the airport, but there's more! So be sure to check out the next episode to find out what happens to Lindsay, Chris and Jenny once we head out on our own!

The Light Grey Art Lab team returns to Iceland! This time we're visiting this beautiful country to host a week-long artist residency in southern Iceland, right at the base of the infamous Eyjafjallajökull volcano. We brought together a group of 14 amazing artists and spent an entire week exploring, conversing, and learning. In the first of a multi-part 2014 Iceland Diaries series, Jenny, Lindsay, and Chris take a moment each night to reflect on the travels, discussions, logistics, and memorable moments from each day. This episode only covers the first few days of the adventure, so be sure to check out the next few episodes for plenty more!

It's mid-august and we currently have our heads down working as fast as possible on Dream Arcade, our colorful pixel art videogame extravaganza, which launches on Friday, September 12. Videogames are a pretty new medium to us, so on this week's podcast Jenny, Chris, Francesca and Lindsay talk about the current state of Dream Arcade and what we've learned so far. We discuss the origins of the project, painful stumbles, and exciting breakthroughs over the past several months, as well as some of the practical details when planing a complex exhibition like Dream Arcade.

On this week's podcast, Lindsay, Chris, Francesca and Jenny discuss our thoughts relating to the article 'No Time to Think', recently published in The New York Times. In the article, the author discusses the problem of modern society's tendency to be "overscheduled, overcommitted and overextended," and comments on the the constant need for meaningless mental stimulation. The Light Grey team all had very different reactions to the article, and we thought it would be interesting to use it as a jumping-off point to talk about why people like (or hate) being busy, tasks vs luxuries, and what counts as a personal reflection. We also try to answer the age-old question; does keeping busy actually help, to quote the article, "stanch [our] welling sadness"?

This week we talk to Rory Phillips, a Portland-based art director, designer, illustrator, printmaker, and educator. Rory currently teaches at Portland State University, runs his own design practice, and still manages finds time for personal projects in between. Rory has always been driven to make art, but he didn't realize it was a viable career until after embarking down several other paths. We talk about how Rory decided to make the jump to full-time design, why it's important to be a life-lone experimenter, the diversity of the portland creative community, and why learning from your mistakes is the most crucial part of success.

On this week's podcast Lindsay, Chris, Francesca, and Jenny talk about invisible work. Invisible work is the unglamorous work you might not predict at the outset of a project, such as unexpected situations or obstacles, tedious errands, unforeseen tasks, last minute revisions, or feature creep. We talk about how to plan and deal with these hidden speedbumps, share some real-life examples of invisible work from the past year, and discuss why and when throwing a new project on the already cramped to-do list makes sense.

This week Lindsay and Jenny traveled to Portland, OR to attend ICON 8, the annual Illustration Conference. They spent the weekend meeting artists, attending creative panels, participating in the ICON Roadshow, and just having an all-around great time. On this week's podcast, Lindsay and Jenny reflect on their favorite moments, interactions, and personal realizations from ICON 8.

Summer's in full swing, and people everywhere are itching to hit the road and get away. On this week's podcast, we talk to two creatives who above and beyond the average summer roadtrip. First we talk to Brian Nigus, a visual artist and author of the book Soft Feet. Brian has spent a lot of time living in and around other cultures and we spend a majority of the time talking about Brian's time living with a small tribe in Papua New Guinea. We discuss how western culture has influenced their lives, but also how it can work the other way around as well. Then we talk to visual artist Laurel Maha, the creative force behind Perfect Pizza Nails. Laurel visited Light Grey Art Lab as the last stop of a 3 month bike tour that started in her home town of Oakland, CA. We talk with Laurel as she reflects on the trip, how her perspective has changed, and the joys and hardships of being alone on the road.

On this week's podcast Francesca, Jenny, Chris, and Lindsay marvel at how summer is passing us by (again!). We discuss a range of topics like choosing our battles/summer projects, making hard decisions in the face of cold, hard mathematics, fearless anime leaders, the Jucy Lucy™, stepping on rakes and getting hit in the face, Prince Pajama Parties and the age-old argument of who was in the excellent film Die Hard... Vin Diesel or Bruce Willis?

Light Grey Art Lab was asked to speak at the IGDA Twin Cities monthly meet-up. The talk, which took place at The Nerdery, covered who Light Grey Art Lab is, our origins, philosophy, and journey so far. It covers a great deal, with a focus on collaboration, community, and how projects like Great Personality and Dream Arcade even happen in the first place. This talk allowed us to reflect on the last few years, and we through it would be worth sharing here.

On this week's podcast Jenny, Lindsay, Chris, and Francesca talk about adopting new travel souvenirs, hairdos, accents, thrift shop gold, thrift shop horrors, treasures, hand-me downs, and anything else you can pick up along the way.

On this week's podcast, we talk to Claire Hummel about costuming, cosplay, style, and more. Claire is an amazingly talented artist and currently a Production Designer at HBO. Claire has a passion for costuming, history, materials, and style, we chat with her about how she found her love of costuming, the importance of reference, her experiences both professionally and personally.

Have you ever had a stranger stop you on the street to say, "Hey, I really like your shirt! That's my favorite band/show/podcast/festival/thing, too!" Wether we like it or not, what we wear, the places we choose to spend our time, and the things we choose to consume are all visual manifestations of our personalities. These are the things that spark conversations between strangers, broadcast our opinions into the world, and influence our perception of the person we see reflected in the mirror.

The term 'generic' can illicit some defensive reactions, and on this week's podcast Francesca, Chris, and Lindsay talk about what generic means to each of us. We argue the merits of being generic, what a person is referring to when they label something as generic, and how you brand a product that makes generic seem cool.