A Brush With Life

Episod

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  #27 Hawk Talk - with Kirk Payne 29.04.2026 50min

  Please leave me your feedback and ideas here! Kirk Payne is enraptured by raptors! Kirk is a practitioner of the ancient sport of Falconry - training wild hawks to hunt for quarry. He is also an ardent conservationist, protecting and promoting the expansion of the kestrel population by installing nesting boxes throughout the region in appropriate landscapes. But he is most beloved in the community for teaching youth and families about the wonders of the natural world f...
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  #26 Metamorphosis into Iron Butterfly - with Deb Majerus & Joel McDonald 07.04.2026 29min

  Please leave me your feedback and ideas here! Deb Majerus and Joel McDonald share the surprising story of love and flowers literally growing out of the ashes, as they launched Iron Butterfly Flower Farm.
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  #25 Making a Great Impression- With Tamsin Barlow 10.03.2026 35min

  Please leave me your feedback and ideas here! Tamsin Barlow is a full-time Printmaker and Painter, who also squeezes in a couple of hours teaching Zumba exercise classes every week. She painstakingly carves her design into a linoleum block, rolls ink onto the surface, and presses it onto paper — but that's just one of many ways Tamsin makes an impression! Tamsin Barlow Instagram KTTC Interview with Tamsin
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  #24 Going Wild - with Jeff Feece 25.02.2026 42min

  Please leave me your feedback and ideas here! Jeff Feece lives right in in the city, but he can listen to the tree frogs trilling at night, watch hawks hunting in his back yard and he sometimes finds the dried nymph shells where dragonflies have hatched out in his tiny pond. Jeff is a landscape designer and city park planner, and loves wildlife. He has created a haven for insects, birds and small animals in his urban backyard in Rochester, Minnesota. Today he talks abo...
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  #23 - Bucking Tradition, with Cassandra Buck 10.02.2026 38min

  Please leave me your feedback and ideas here! Cassandra Buck never met an art medium she didn't love. She is a painter, muralist, jewelry-maker, weaver, embroiderer, and more - and she often combines those traditional mediums in untraditional ways. Cassandra is not one of those artists who secludes herself in her studio. She is truly out there - leading community art projects, organizing exhibits for artists, teaching classes, and being a businesswoman running her vintage shop. Ca...
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  #22 - Extreme Green - With Robin Greenfield 27.01.2026 45min

  Please leave me your feedback and ideas here! "Be the Change You Wish to See in the World." That pretty much sums up Robin Greenfield's life and philosophy. Once a successful businessman and aspiring young millionaire, Robin had a revelation about how his lifestyle was harming the earth and did a 180, dedicating himself to living simply and in harmony with the earth. His experiments in simplicity include living off-grid,non-ownership, growing all of his own food, traveling in othe...
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  #21 Fiddling Around - with Teresa Walter 13.01.2026 34min

  Please leave me your feedback and ideas here! Teresa Walter grew up playing classical violin, and she was really good at it, but she took a 20-year hiatus from music to focus on family and career. When her daughters were grown, she picked up the violin again and started to play casually at community venues, such as the Salvation Army kettle at the grocery store. One night, she attended a bluegrass jam session, joined in, and fell in love with playing her violin in the fiddle style. Just...
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  Happy Holidays, Dear Listeners! 05.12.2025

  Please leave me your feedback and ideas here! It has been so much fun creating these podcasts, interviewing so many fascinating folks, and sharing the conversations with you! I appreciate you, all of the guests, and the Southeast Minnesota Arts Council, who awarded me a grant to launch this podcast. Fr the next month I will be taking a little break over the holidays, putting down A Brush With Life and picking up my paintbrush and my pastry brush to do a little creating and holiday...
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  #20 - The Road to Crossings at Carnegie - with Marie Marvin 12.11.2025 35min

  Please leave me your feedback and ideas here! With plenty of guts and gusto, Marie Marvin turned an old Carnegie Library in Zumbrota, MN, into a hub of creativity. The building was bursting with art, whimsy, artists working, children learning, sometimes even people doing yoga. At night it hummed with fabulous music concerts, artist openings, and poetry readings. Marie has a way of encouraging the artist inside everyone. The road to Crossings was not an easy or obvious ...
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  #19 Siren Songs - Of Trombones & Mermaids, with John Sievers 21.10.2025 32min

  Please leave me your feedback and ideas here! John Sievers is not one to toot his own horn, but he does let it slide. John is a trombonist who plays in many bands, a poet who writes a haiku a day, an English professor, and Rochester's most enthusiastic music booster. In this episode, learn how John developed his lifelong partnership with the trombone, how he juggles his busy creative life, and what makes him most proud. This episode of A Brush With Life closes with 'Trombot," a joyful t...
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  #18 Enamored by Enamel, with Amy Johnson 09.10.2025 39min

  Please leave me your feedback and ideas here! Amy Johnson is an enamel artist who creates copper and silver jewelry with gorgeous, colorful glass designs fused to the surface. Amy tells us how she discovered this art form, her process, and how making art helped her survive and heal from tragic life events. View Amy's work: Website: https://www.amyjohnsonenamels.com FB Page: https://www.facebook.com/amyjohnsonenamels Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amyjohnsonenamels/
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  #17 - Little Homestead in the City - with Heidi Kern 23.09.2025 39min

  Please leave me your feedback and ideas here! As a young girl, Heidi Kern was inspired by "Little House on the Prairie" and dreamed of creating a self-sufficient life where she grew all her own food and sewed her own clothing. As an adult, she wound up living in the city but she and her husband Chris have transformed their cul-de-sac lot into an urban farmstead. Growing vegetables, fruits, herbs and chickens, Heidi produces most of the food for her family and generousl...
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  #16 - Well-Versed in Community - with Jean Prokott 09.09.2025 33min

  Please leave me your feedback and ideas here! Jean Prokott is Rochester, MInesota's Poet Laureate! As the community's official artistic wordsmith, she writes poems for community events and creates an annual poetry event for the public. She is also a teacher of English and Philosophy at Century High School. Her book of published poems is titled "The Second Longest Day of the Year." American Couplets (4th Fest) Claiming Light (4th Fest) The Second Longest Day of the Year
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  #15 - It's a Big World -with Oliver Books 25.08.2025 38min

  Please leave me your feedback and ideas here! Oliver Books is passionate about all things sound. He is a singer-songwriter who performs solo and in a 7-member band called Oliver Books and The Big, Big, World. He has worked in music production and movie production. in the past year, he and colleague Alex Ortberg produced The Rochester Mash-Up, a compilation music album of 20 diverse local musicians. Currently, Books and Oliver are launching a new recording studio. ...
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  #14 - Raising Her Voice - with Leann Eriksson 13.08.2025 34min

  Please leave me your feedback and ideas here! LeAnn Eriksson speaks softly but carries a big voice. Music has always been a huge part of her life, beginning with growing up on an Iowa farm, playing the flute in school and singing in the Lutheran church choir. Since then she has become a citizen of the world and lived, worked and sung in many countries. She discovered crystal singing bowls and learning "toning" and polyphonic singing - singing in more than one tone at the same tim...
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  #13 - Dreaming, Playing and Creating with Susan Davies 28.07.2025 33min

  Please leave me your feedback and ideas here! Susan M. Davies Sue Davies is a painter who approaches her work from many directions - abstract, animals, landscape, sumi-e,meditative, whimsical...but the constant is color: rich, vibrant, exuberant color. You sense that she lives her entire life with that same exuberance. Sue's other art is music; currently, she plays the tin whistle in a Celtic band called Hurkle-Durkle. You are invited to a special project Sue is bringing to ...
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  #12 - The Zen of Daring to Be Darin - with Darin Podulke-Smith 14.07.2025 25min

  Please leave me your feedback and ideas here! Darin Podulke-Smith is an artist, improv actor, stained-glass creator, banjo-player and Buddhist priest. In this episode, we talk to Darin about banjo practice and the practice of Buddhism, and what it takes to become a Zen priest. He also describes his most recent adventure, a 500-mile hike on the Camino Frances with his wife, Laurel.
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  #11 - Deb D'Souza - Putting the Pieces Together 30.06.2025 27min

  Please leave me your feedback and ideas here! Artist Deb D'Souza is devoted to the ancient art of mosaic and has traveled the world to study it, but she also incorporates innovative techniques. Mosaic is a patience-testing process than can take 40 hours to assemble thousands of tiny bits into 1 square foot of design. Deb magically creates landscapes and botanical images with amazing details, shadows and reflections and herlandscape mosaics sometimes incorporate materials act...
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  #10 - Eva Barr, the Dream Acres Dream Maker 16.06.2025 37min

  Please leave me your feedback and ideas here! Eva Barr puts the culture in agriculture! Eva and her partner Todd started Dream Acres Farm, near Wykoff, Minnesota, as a land collective where they built all the timber-framed farm buildings, taught heritage farming techniques, farmed with horses and oxen and raised organic veggies for a 40-family CSA. With Eva's theater expertise, the farm launched Flourish, a summer Theater + Agriculture camp for youth. On Friday evenings during the summe...
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  #9 Drawing Us In- with Lynette Yencho 05.06.2025 37min

  Please leave me your feedback and ideas here! Lynette Yencho has a lifetime of experience as a commercial artist, from drawing school buildings and class ring designs at age 16 and for Jostens, to designing collectible figurines, to being agraphic designer for the Minneapolis Star newspaper...to creating fantastical murals and other very fine art. https://gardenstudio.biz https://lynettestudio.com/ To follow Lynette in Art 64 , an Art Tournment in Wauwatosa, WI June 6 &7, 2025...