Across the Studio

Mia Schoolman

A podcast recorded inside artists’ studios. Conversations about process, inspiration, and building a career as an artist. Hosted by Mia Schoolman. Instagram: @acrossthestudio TikTok: @acrossthestudio Substack: @acrossthestudio

  1. 28 Jun

    Across the Studio with Daniel Tagbo

    In the 19th episode of Across the Studio, Mia Schoolman sits down with Daniel Tagbo, a figurative surrealist artist based in Brooklyn, originally from St. Louis. Daniel creates work exploring psychological themes of journey, searching, and the American Dream through surrealism, mythology, and lived experience. His first collection, Fever Dreams, created in his bedroom after graduation, was a dream journal made visual: paintings about the high-speed fever dream of New York, where hopes and fears collide. His current collection draws from the Labyrinth and the Odyssey as metaphors for the search for freedom, using symbolism to question the myth of the promised land and the American Dream itself. Daniel approaches each painting spontaneously—no references, no studies, no plan. He starts with color or a line and builds intuitively, discovering meaning halfway through. He thinks of each collection as an album, each painting as a song. A gallery visit in Nigeria during his sophomore year changed everything: standing among hundreds of works, something clicked, and he switched his major to fine art. In this conversation: the moment in a Nigerian gallery when he realized he wanted to be an artist. How fear escalates when more people see your work. Why he abandoned music to pursue visual art. His creative ritual of filling pages with vertical lines and studying figure drawing. How he maintains discipline within spontaneous practice. What five to ten years looks like—building a creative organization that combines painting, film, music, and mentorship into one cohesive world. And why J. Cole's approach to storytelling through music is what he aspires to do through art. Follow Across the StudioInstagram @acrossthestudioTikTok @acrossthestudio Follow DanielInstagram @danieltagbo and thank you @everyartistco for helping film this episode!

    Across the Studio with Daniel Tagbo
  2. 21 Jun

    Across the Studio with Sophie Kitching

    In the 18th episode of Across the Studio, Mia Schoolman sits down with Sophie Kitching, a French and British artist based in New York City who works across painting, sculpture, installation, and found object collection. Born on the Isle of Wight, raised in Paris, and now a decade into her practice in New York, Sophie creates work inspired by nature, architecture, literature, and the specific colors she collects from the places she has lived. Her practice spans Venetian blinds transformed with neon and gold leaf, polycarbonate paintings lined with two-way mirrors that feel like painting on water, and large-scale canvases that began as watercolors on paper. Her work has been shown at the Palais de Tokyo, the Maison de Châteaubriand, and she was invited by Bulgari to create a capsule collection for the 75th anniversary of the Serpenti icon — a collaboration that led to the discovery that emerald inclusions are called "the jardin" (the garden), which connected directly to her artistic vision. In this conversation: how she collaborated with Bulgari and Ruinart, the moment seeing her large-scale paintings unroll on a ballet stage felt like a heart attack, what she learned during a full moon in Bali when she saw the world in black and white, and why her ritual is keeping her brushes out in a controlled mess so the work always feels in progress. Follow Across the Studio Instagram @acrossthestudio TikTok @acrossthestudio Follow SophieInstagram @sophiekitching sophiekitching.com

    Across the Studio with Sophie Kitching
  3. 10 May

    Across the Studio with Mallory Granata of Impermanence Studios

    In the 13th episode of Across the Studio, Mia Schoolman sits down with Mallory Granata, the Detroit-born, New York-based founder of Impermanence Studios, a multidisciplinary atelier working across sculpture, wearable objects, and material experimentation. Her practice exists at the intersection of fashion and art, deeply informed by archival research and unconventional materials — shark teeth, sea urchin spines, and porcelain hand carved to resemble metal. Mallory has spent the majority of her career building marketing strategy and brand experiences within the LVMH ecosystem, where years of working alongside heritage brands sharpened her understanding of archives, legacy, and what it actually takes for something to last. She is currently hand carving 1,200 porcelain razor clam shells to recreate Alexander McQueen's VOSS SS01 dress, and her finished Coiled Corset from The Overlook FW99 is one of the most labor intensive and quietly radical things I have ever seen in person. In this conversation: why the quote she read on a mountain about time guides her whole practice, a fashion designer's thoughts on the 2026 Met Gala theme, why she is revisiting the archives of the fashion masters and recreating them in materials that push back — shark teeth, sea urchin spines, and hand carved porcelain — the negotiation with materials that defines her entire process, and why slowing down has been the most surprising gift of building Impermanence Studios. Follow Across the Studio Instagram ⁠@acrossthestudio⁠ @miaschoolman TikTok ⁠@acrossthestudio⁠ Follow Mallory Granata Instagram ⁠@impermanencestudios⁠ @mallorygranata

    Across the Studio with Mallory Granata of Impermanence Studios

About

A podcast recorded inside artists’ studios. Conversations about process, inspiration, and building a career as an artist. Hosted by Mia Schoolman. Instagram: @acrossthestudio TikTok: @acrossthestudio Substack: @acrossthestudio

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