Welcome listeners to 5 Questions: A Critical Mass for the Visual Arts Podcast in which we ask 5 questions of our interviewees aimed at positioning and contextualizing their respective bodies of work within the St. Louis artworld.This episode we’re talking with Nick Schleicher and Marina May of cool WIP Podcast.
Cool WIP was established in 2018 as an earnest pipe dream asking “What if we started a podcast that blended art, with humor, and documentary storytelling?” Over the past three seasons, the show has spread globally and included conversations with artworld luminaries, ranging from collecting work, to discussions of rodeos, abstraction, to the intricacies of high school wrestling in Germany. Cool WIP is about sharing honest conversation in real time, and expands beyond the traditional boundaries of the art world into what it means to create, practice, and connect with others. Today, we’re chatting with Marina May and Nick Schleicher from cool WIP. Marina is writer, gallery director, and as she says “semi-professional talker” based in St. Louis who got her degree in Art History and Anthropology from WashU, and then became a curatorial assistant at the Contemporary. From here, she co-founded the editorial platform Silver Space in 2017, and then started cool WIP within the next year. She currently lives in the city where she is a private gallery director and member of Monaco USA. Nick Schleicher is an artist whose work ranges from color field abstractions to sculptural forms inspired by domestic display. He received his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2011, where he focused on painting and sculpture. Nick is a co-host of cool WIP, and also a member of Monaco USA.Recent solo exhibitions include Monaco, St. Louis, MO; Grease 3, St. Louis, MO; and PLAQUE at Granite City Art & Design District, Granite City, IL. Selected group exhibitions at Julius Caesar, Chicago, IL; The Luminary, St. Louis, MO; and Aupuni Space, Honolulu, HI. Schleicher’s work has been featured in New American Paintings Midwest (Issue 143), Soft Quarterly (Spring 2021), The Pinch (Fall 2020), and Under the Bridge (Concentric Series: Issue 2) among others.
Y’all are up to a lot! So I’d like to just generally ask you the artist questions, and then maybe follow up throughout.
- Why art? Why create?
- Where does grassroots style media fit into the picture of contextualizing art in the local and hyperlocal?
- What do you want for St. Louis and its people?
- What are your priorities as arts advocates and artists?
- What’s the endgame?
5 Questions is a program by Critical Mass for the Visual Arts – a nonprofit, self-formed visual arts collaborative dedicated to promoting, enhancing and initiating contemporary visual art in the St. Louis region.
Pick it up on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts
On twitter @criticalmassSTL, and IG @criticalmassart
You can find cool WIP on Spotify or apple podcasts, follow them on @coolwip_official on IG
You can find Marina’s work at silverspacestl.com, and @Marinamae_west or @silverspace_stl on IG. You can find Nick’s work at nickschleicher.com or @nick_schleicher on IG.
With Marina May, Nick Schleicher and Joe Kohlburn
Editor – Sarah Hammond
Producer – Brett Williams
Critical Mass for the Visual Arts 