Something (rather than nothing)

Episode 72 - Melissa Alford

Ever since she was a little kid drawing ghosts and graveyards at her desk in her parents’ basement, MELISSA ALFORD wanted to be an artist. Always a fan of the weird and the macabre, she discovered her love of sequential art through artists like Gary Larson and Charles Addams. 

Melissa went on to get her BFA in sequential art from the Savannah College of Art and Design, and has worked as a freelance illustrator and comic artist ever since. Working primarily in pen and ink, her work focuses on themes of finding beauty in the darkness, of working through challenging emotions with art, and of course, not forgetting her artistic roots, the occasional homage to vintage horror. 

Melissa was born and raised in Portland, Oregon, and after having lived away for several years, has once again settled in The City of Roses.

Episode 71 - Kiki Kolympari

"New perspectives can spring up from within the most insignificant everyday moments. A private photograph, a newspaper article or even a still frame of a movie can be the medium for another dimension. All these are raw materials for me, which I gradually release from any unnecessary feature that traps them into the optically compatible world. My aim is for my images to have a universality that goes beyond the context of a particular place, time or person."

Kiki Kolympari was born 1974 in Nuremberg where she lived and worked for many years. She studied Visual Arts at the School of Fine Arts in Athens from 2012 to 2017.
During her studies she also completed the following courses:  Byzantine Iconography, Fresco painting, Encaustic, Ceramic sculpturing and Art Theory. She graduated with an MFA Honours Degree. She currently lives and works in Athens.

Episode 70 - Jainam Jhaveri

Jainam Jhaveri is a graduate in business management and degreed in software programming. Jainam started working when he was fifteen years old and worked in multiple corporate companies in fields like content writing, marketing and sales, software programming, administration work. 

In 2015, his father passed away and he took over the family business.

Jainam says:

"Somehow I randomly came to know about Astrology and it was very intriguing, though I did not believe in it first - but by studying it and applying it - I realized how accurate it is. Then came the love of my life and that is Philosophy. I started studying Vedanta, Buddhism and Jainism."

Join 'Philosopher Jay' from Mumbai, India and host Ken Volante to learn about philosophical traditions of India and their commentaries on something, nothing, nonduality and the nature of being and becoming.

Episode 69 - Ilay Karabay Solakli

Turkish artist, İlay Karabay Solaklı graduated from economics and spent her former years working in corporate companies and government institutions. Realizing that this lifestyle isn't satisfactory enough for her she decided to follow her childhood passion, which is painting.   

The self-taught artist mostly uses acrylic and nail polish in her paintings. She believes that paintings should give people positive and calm energy, thoughts, and feelings therefore she states that color composition is the most important aspect.   Started from drawing doodles and comics, eventually, she ended up doing abstract paintings. “It’s more freeing and limitless, you can use any type of medium and draw what's inside your mind and heart without any limit,” says the artist.

She also believes that talent itself is not enough to achieve your goals in the art industry. You need dedication, hard work, and most importantly creativity, so you can be original and stand out from the rest.

"Basically, I paint my feelings. :)  All of them. All the time. And i like to share them with everyone. Enjoy."

Episode 68 - Vincente DiSanti

Vincente DiSanti

Founder / Producer / Director WOMP STOMP films

Vincente DiSanti moved to Los Angeles in 2008 and has since worked in several aspects of the film industry including live-action, feature animation, story development, voice acting, visual FX, commercials, and much more. A jack of all trades, Vincente is best known for his directorial work on Never Hike Alone (2017), Never Hike in the Snow (2020), Imagine (2018), The Red Room (2015), and starring as Michael Myers in The Spirit of Haddonfield (2018). 

Episode 67 - Ken Volante

Ken Volante has been asking questions of SRTN guests for awhile. In this special episode, Rachel Lally, podcast host of Six of One and Half a Dozen of the Other returns to ask the SRTN host the baffling questions he usually advantages himself of. Ken Volante is a labor activist. He is originally from Pawtucket, RI which is known as the birthplace of the American Industrial Revolution. He has worked on behalf of working people for a quarter century and was involved in the beginning stages of The Wisconsin Revolt. He holds degrees in English literature and Philosophy from The University of Rhode Island, an M.A. in Philosophy from Marquette University, a M.S. in Labor Studies from The University of Massachusetts - Amherst. He has worked as a grocery clerk, a bookstore clerk, a University Professor and a union representative. His creative endeavors include hosting the podcast 'Something (rather than nothing)', painting in an abstract style, writing short pieces and he has recently started doing short documentaries. He is influenced by the following artists: Kathy Acker, Nikolai Gogol, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx, Plato, Immanuel Kant, Jesus Christ, Stanley Kubrick, Polly Jean Harvey Andrei Tarkovsky, The Buddha, William Faulkner, David Lynch, Taylor Swift, The Cure, Neurosis, Neutral Milk Hotel, Weedeater. (((Remember, every list you write will be incomplete))) This episode is dedicated to my lovely parents Kenny Sr. and Patricia :-)

Episode 66 - Geoff Finan

Geoff Finan was the Writer in Residence for Dublin City Council for the Dublin North West area in the summer of 2018 and again in 2019 and is currently lecturing in the National College of Art and Design on the module ‘Voices From The Margins’. Last year he had the honour of writing the 100 year commemorative poem celebrating the first Dáil in Ireland, titled ‘January 1919’. Geoff was recently commissioned as part of the First Fortnight Festival to write his most recent piece ‘Gloke’ after working with The Traveling Community for four months. Geoff has also been commissioned by the DCC’s Culture Connects project to write for the Local Heroes initiative and his poem 'A Letter To Leo' was chosen as the flagship piece for the My Name Is campaign, fighting against child homelessness in Ireland.

Geoff has written and performed a poem for the documentary Baristas, which has gone to number 1 in 8 countries, top 10 in the US and top 5 in Canada and the UK, in the documentary charts and is now streaming on Amazon Prime. He was also recently shortlisted for writing and performing in the short film ‘Taboo’. Geoff been featured on RTÉ, TV3, Today Fm, 98 FM, FM104 and Newstalk and in The Sunday Business Post, The Times, The Irish Times and The New York Times.

Episode 65 - Mary Cappello

Mary Cappello is the author of six books of literary nonfiction, including Awkward: A Detour (a Los Angeles Times bestseller); Swallow, based on the Chevalier Jackson Foreign Body Collection in Philadelphia’s Mütter Museum; and, most recently, Life Breaks In: A Mood Almanack. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, Salon.com, The Huffington Post, on NPR, in guest author blogs for Powells Books, and on six separate occasions as Notable Essay of the Year in Best American Essays. A Guggenheim and Berlin Prize Fellow, a recipient of The Bechtel Prize for Educating the Imagination, and the Dorothea Lange-Paul Taylor Prize, Cappello is a former Fulbright Lecturer at the Gorky Literary Institute (Moscow), and currently Professor of English and creative writing at the University of Rhode Island. A new book, Lecture appears this Fall 2020 as the inaugural title in Transit Books Undelivered Lecture Series.

Episode 64 - Nikki Lynette

NIKKI LYNETTE is a performer, writer, and visual artist whose individual style is equal parts hip hop, alternative, and pop. A Chicago native, she fuses mental health activism into her performances and has created a lane for her music that is uniquely her own.

A proud independent artist, her self-produced tunes are currently featured in popular shows on Netflix, Hulu, Showtime and more. Lynette’s success in music licensing has earned its own accolades, including a prominent feature in Billboard Magazine and being invited to speak on a panel at South By Southwest.

After a hiatus from releasing new music, Nikki Lynette returned to the public eye with a confession: she’d secretly been battling mental health issues. She began writing articles about depression and suicide for prominent sites like BlackDoctor, Afropunk and AllHipHop. A newly appointed ambassador for the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), Nikki’s mental health documentary Happy Songs About Unhappy Things is also currently in production. Nikki has opened for Lion Babe and Leikeli47, and recently in Chicago, headlined her own sold-out show in the Foundation Room at the House of Blues.

After a sold-out run in Steppenwolf Theatre Company’s LookOut Series, Nikki’s autobiographical musical Get Out Alive was in conversation with multiple theaters to produce an extended run of the play. However, COVID-19 put those plans on hold… As a result, Get Out Alive has been reimagined for the internet for January 2021!

Episode 63 - Holly Campbell

Holly Campbell is a life-long, self-taught artist born and raised in Oregon's Willamette Valley. Primarily using acrylic, ink, and watercolor, her work is often described as whimsical - with a focus on feminine energies, body positivity, and "dream-scapes".

Since 2016, she has worn a multitude of different hats as an artist. She has spent many hours volunteering for local art organizations such as the Corvallis Arts Center, the Corvallis Arts Walk and Chintimini Wildlife Center. These connections eventually led Holly to join a co-op gallery named Voices (now called The Nest). Voices is where Holly really stepped into her identity as an artist and collaborator. Between designing/painting two downtown murals with the group and founding Voices' annual young artist exhibit, Holly met her friend/business partner, Sharon. 

Holly and Sharon joined forces in 2017 to open The Hold Studio and that partnership kept The Hold running for almost three years before Covid changed their trajectory. The Hold has since closed its physical location, but Holly and Sharon still run their gallery virtually. In the meantime, Holly has found solace in painting and collaborating from her home studio and you can often find her work on display at local restaurants, shops and, of course, on Instagram (@hollycampbellart).