Collecting Culture Podcast Liz Logan

For our very first episode, I interviewed Elaine Smith, a design lover in Oakland, California. Elaine is legitimately obsessed with the furniture of Roy McMakin, who is a well-known artist, architect and designer; she’s collected more than 30 pieces of furniture in the last 20 years or so. McMakin has honed his distinctive style—basic, colorful forms in an exaggerated scale, with idiosyncratic details—since the ‘80s.

Katie Haegele is the author of two books (with a third coming soon!), and many awesome ‘zines. I talked to her about the ‘zines she’s made, the history of this DIY publishing phenomenon, and about her undying love of all things secondhand—as evidenced by her book, “White Elephants: On Yard Sales, Relationships, and Finding What Was Missing.”

For more info about Katie and her work, visit her website, thelalatheory.com.

All photos by Katie Haegele.

Artist Patricia Belyea collects vintage Japanese yukata cottons, which are hand-dyed and feature large-scale motifs, such as dragonflies and irises. Patricia sells these fabrics online and in her Seattle shop, Okan Arts, and she also makes them into absolutely stunning quilts.

All photos by Patricia Belyea.

Adam Rosen is an Apple Consultant and has an impressive collection of over 100 Macintosh computers, period-specific software and Apple nostalgia. He is curator of the Vintage Mac Museum, which he runs out of his home in Malden, Massachusetts, outside of Boston.

Our discussion covers rare items in his collection, and photos are from his website, VintageMacMuseum.com. Adam also speaks more broadly about the Apple ethos and the future of the Macintosh platform.

Our guest this month is Bill Volckening, quilt collector and author. Bill owns more than 400 quilts, from all different periods of American quilt history, including quilts from the early 1800s. But lately his real passion is sharing quilts that have rarely, if ever, been shown in museums: groovy polyester quilts and vibrant Hawaiian scrap quilts, all from the 1970s.

His quilts have been shown in museums around the country, and he’s written two books about quilts, New York Beauty and Modern Roots. Beginning on May 26, an exhibition of ’70s polyester quilts from his collection will be on view at the International Quilt Study Center in Lincoln, Nebraska.

For the past 25 years, Tam Keihnhoff has collected “early Texas art”—which is not exactly what it sounds like. It’s art made by an artist who was born, lived or worked in the state, and it was made more than 40 years prior to the present date. So, “early” doesn’t necessarily mean a century old—or even a half-century old!

Tam, who lives in Houston, is an incredibly curious and tireless collector. She loves learning the stories behind artworks, and she’s particularly fascinated by 20th-century women painters in Texas, who struggled to earn reputations in the male-dominated art world. She’s even gotten to meet some of these unorthodox women.

Tam has served as board chair at the Center for the Advancement and Study of Early Texas Art, and now she works for the antiques dealer David Lackey (who you might know from Antiques Roadshow).