Got to meet with Len Chmiel today. He's one of my favorite artists. He's just incredibly gifted and I've always been a huge fan of his work. We were at the Coors Art show in Denver and we found a little hidden conference room, and we sat down and talked. In fact, at the end of the the show that we were doing, the music was playing and it was kind of beautiful.

Len is just such a creative individual. There's people that you meet in this world who think very deeply about their craft. From the smallest details of lighting to the canvas and how he finds the inspiration.

We talk about inspiration, the things that make you want to make a painting in the first place. Len and I agree, you can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it every day as a true artist, which he does.

After the interview was over he said, "oh yeah, I lived in this place in Redondo for two years. I just kind of boarded up the windows and lived on a couch and did my artwork. That's just how I had to do it and just live there." He as barely making a living but for him it was just part of the road he was on. It was part of his journey.

You know, the journey of an artist is one that is filled with struggle. That being said, there are great rewards if you can do it. Len has and I highly encourage you to go follow him on Facebook and see what he's done.

If you're at any of the shows that he exhibits at, make sure you go and see his work. He's terrifically important and this was very fun and enlightening to speak with him. This is Len Chmiel on the Art Dealer Diaries Podcast episode 379.

What a wonderful podcast I had with Marilou Schultz. She is a master weaver and a math teacher who grew up in Leupp, Arizona on the Navajo Nation.

She has been teaching her entire life and is justs now going into weaving full-time. There's good reason for that too. You see, Marilou's weavings are very in demand. She has a waitlist that includes the Basel and MoMA collections.

What she has done is interpreted various computer chips through the lens of a traditional Diné weaver. It's just an amazing story. She got a commissioned by Intel to do a rendition of the Pentium chip in 1994. She's a fourth generation Navajo Weaver and she uses her background in mathematics to create these incredible textiles.

I was fortunate enough to get one of these ordered a year ago, and she brought it to me today. I got to see it for the first time during this podcast and you can see my eyes light up as she unravels this masterpiece.

I highly recommend that you watch this on YouTube because you will be able to see her interact with the textile, as well see her tell her story, which is quite remarkable.

This is one of my favorite podcasts that I've done. I hope you enjoy it. This is master Diné weaver, Marilou Schultz on the Art Dealer Diaries Podcast.

This podcast is really a "part two" podcast in the sense that Billy Schenck and I have been working over two years on his 55-Year Retrospective show. We released a podcast that was recorded a year before this one, where we were discussing the planning process and that conversation continues in this episode as we approach the opening reception.

It takes a lot of time and energy to pull off a show of this magnitude. The show opens February 6, 2026 and it was very interesting to attack it in this way, knowing we're in the process of making history. What we're talking about and how it's going to be looked at by future by historians, stuff like that.

We filmed this at Billy's house which is a really beautiful place. It is filled with all the things that creatives need to be inspired. You see, his entire house will ultimately become a museum (It's part of his nonprofit organization) so we're kind of living through real history. It's amazing.

I fully expect that this podcast will be played in the museum sometime in the future, as a point of reference of this moment in time when he had this monumental retrospective featuring so much work.

Anyways, it was a wonderful interview. Even if you can't make the retrospective, you can listen to this podcast and get a feel for the important contribution that Billy Schenck has made to the art world.

There's a book that we did on the this show as well, which is available on our website if you want to take the show home with you. I hope you enjoy. This is Pop Western art icon Billy Schenck on the Art Dealer Diaries Podcast.

One of the things I love about doing this podcast is that I get a variety of people that come through my life. In this case it's Bill Healey, who I've known probably 25 plus years. His role, his part of the art ecosystem is different than many of the other people I've had on, and that is of a collector. He's a true collector who has this unique history, which I went into and I found very, interesting.

How he went from economics, to commercial development, to then retiring and devoting his life to art. First Western art, Russells, Remingtons, etc., followed by an epiphany when he was at the Heard Museum, seeing images of the Native American boarding schools. I remember that exhibit very well. I have one of these images in my own collection hanging in my own office. I look at it all the time just to help keep me grounded. Well, that image really set him off on a new odyssey to understand Native art and history in a different way. He then sold off the majority of this Western material, and focused on collecting Indigenous American art.

Bill has built this huge collection, part of which he donated to the Saint Louis Art Museum. They did a beautiful book on the collection and he's going to continue to give away pieces that he's collected to museum institutions to help tell the story of indigenous artists ranging from 1920 to today.

It's a fun ride of through his life and over 60 years of collecting. I think it's a real gift that Bill shared it with us.

You know, one of the great things about going to an artist's studio is you get an inside look at how they make art, how they create, how they see their world. With Maeve's work in her studio, you really get a glimpse of that process.

If you ever get the opportunity to go to an artist's studio, take it for sure, because it allows you to feel that what they feel, how they get to where they get artistically.

Maeve's studio is quite remarkable. The way that she has things set up, and how she visually transfers things from paper to the acrylic that she works on. It's just so complex and impressive to see in person.

So I highly recommend this podcast if you can watch it on YouTube, just because you'll get to live inside the studio for 40 or so minutes. It's brings it all to life. How she creates, how her world comes to be. For me, that's a real gift.

With so many of these individuals I interview, art is really the only thing they see themselves doing in life. Oil painter Raj Chaudhuri on the other hand was a very successful software engineer before committing to art. He could have gone that route and been hugely successful, especially considering the timeframe he was doing it. But no, he HAD to be an artist.

You see, Raj has been drawing since he was a little boy. He'd even won contests in school and at his university when he wasn't even an art major. He grew up in, India, and we get to talk about that whole component of his life. Eventually he moves to the United States from India and goes to Ole Miss to become an economist of all things. He was actually working on a PhD when he finally said "I've got to do what I love." Thankfully he did because he's an excellent artist.

We met in Denver during for an event put on by the Coors Western Art Show, a special kind of summer preview with lectures, all getting ready for their January exhibition. They have some lovely art, and it's really just a fun time. One of the highlights for me was speaking with Raj. One thing led to another and next thing you know Raj was on a flight to Tucson to see my gallery and record this podcast.

What makes an excellent podcast to me is when I come away learning things and getting a new sense of what it means to be an artist. This was very easy in talking to someone like Raj. It was very insightful and fun. So I hope you enjoy this podcast as much as I did.

I had the great pleasure of going to Ezra Tucker's studio and doing a podcast with him. It's so interesting to go in these sacred places that artists create, and it changes your perspective. To just feel the intimacy and the importance of these spaces... It really can't be overemphasized.

What happens in these areas of creation, and how somebody like Ezra spent the time, the thought, the energy, and the money to make it a place that really works for him.

I think a great takeaway from any artist that's listening to this is that your space is important. Don't underestimate the importance of having a place that you can create and feel comfortable doing so. For Ezra, this truly is a space that he's developed, much like a piece of art.

It's a real gift to me to be able to go in and for him to share something like this, because it is such an intimate thing. So I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. This is Ezra Tucker's studio on the Art Dealer Diaries Podcast episode 373.

The best kind of podcasts sometimes are the ones that you weren't planning, and that's the one I had today with Ernie Lister. He is a silversmith and is an incredible master of his craft. There's no doubt about that.

I've known about Ernie for a very long time. I've talked to him, but only at Santa Fe during Indian market. Things move very fast at that event and you can't really have this sort of conversation. So he came into the gallery today and I said, hey, how about a podcast? And he goes, sure, I'd be happy to.

And it's a very interesting podcast. You get the sense of what it means to take your art form seriously, which he does. For him, It comes from a different place. A place of heritage. If you really want to understand what it means to be a master Diné silversmith, then look no further. I mean, this is a guy who shows his work around the world. He has a huge following in Japan.

This podcast was to me a really a gift from the gods to be able to spend time with this man and hear about what he does and how he does it. So I hope you enjoy it as much as I had fun doing it.