Episode 63: Professional Development (w/ Jeffrey Augustine Songco)

Summary: Hi everyone. As usual, I hope you are doing well wherever you are. I went to Guangzhou this past weekend and visited a few locations where my family lived. I have some new ideas jumping around in my head and maybe will start something new soon. I will keep you updated. For today, I have a wonderful chat with Jeffrey Augustine Songco, a multidisciplinary artist exploring the complexity of self-portraiture. As a gay American man of Filipino ethnicity, Jeffrey's work is a place of representation — an opportunity to playfully cast himself as the protagonist of a postcolonial queer narrative. Jeffrey got his BFA from Carnegie Mellon University and his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. While our paths did not cross in Pittsburgh, there was a shared sense of familiarity as I talked with Jeffrey in the way we both approach our work. We discussed Jeffrey's beginnings as a child actor, the creation of his secret society, and how he ended up in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I hope you enjoy this.