Across the Studio

Mia Schoolman
  • 5.0 (3)
  • Arts
  • Updated Weekly

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. 15h ago ·  Bonus

    Across the Studio with the NYFA Immigrant Artists

    In this episode of Across the Studio, Mia Schoolman moderates a live panel for NYFA's Immigrant Artist Mentoring Program, featuring four immigrant artists building creative practices in New York: Vasudev Vashisht, Patrícia Colmenero, Luísa Mantelli, and Voyo Woo. Each artist immigrated to the US at a different point and through a different path, from grad school to journalism to a decade-long career in TV production, and each found their way into a full creative practice through NYFA's mentorship program. Their work spans photography rooted in land and community, painting that plays with colonial imagery and the idea of being seen, textiles shaped by architecture and space, and large-scale installations that combine 1,500-year-old paper cutting traditions with EEG brainwave technology. In this conversation: what it really costs to sustain an art practice as an immigrant in New York. Why working class artists can't always be full-time artists, and why that's okay. Finding community when you're starting out alone. The role of art residencies in giving artists permission to take themselves seriously. And the small rituals, from meditation to journaling to simply staying well-fed, that ground each of their practices. Follow Across the StudioInstagram @acrossthestudioTikTok @acrossthestudio Follow the Artists Vasudev Vashisht @wahsodev Patrícia Colmenero @patcolmenero Luísa Mantelli @luisa.mantelli Voyo Woo @voyowoo

    Across the Studio with the NYFA Immigrant Artists

  2. Jul 13

    Across the Studio with Gabrielle Guthrie

    In the 20th episode of Across the Studio, Mia Schoolman sits down with Gabrielle Guthrie, an abstract painter based in Brooklyn who started her art practice in 2023 after a decade-long career in product design and entrepreneurship. She studied at Stanford's Joint Program in Design, started a company, sold it, and then felt an itch in her hands that told her it was time to make physical things again. Her work is described as dreamy, serene, and joyful—layered, textural pieces built across multiple panels using earthy tones with pops of neon. She starts every painting with a monoprinting layer using plastic bags, works on six to ten pieces simultaneously, and approaches her practice with both a creative and business mindset. She's collaborated with Tap In Collective, curated a show at Third Door Brooklyn, and is currently exploring rust as both a conceptual and aesthetic element in her work. In this conversation: transitioning from business to art. Why working on multiple pieces at once reduces pressure. Taking breaks to make better work. How art creates connection and feeling. And the rituals that ground her practice. Follow Across the Studio Instagram @acrossthestudioTikTok @acrossthestudio Follow Gabrielle Instagram @gabrielleguthrieWebsite gabrielleguthrie.com

    Across the Studio with Gabrielle Guthrie

  3. Jun 28

    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

  4. Jun 21

    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

  5. Jun 14

    Across the Studio with Akiva Listman

    In the 17th episode of Across the Studio, Mia Schoolman sits down with Akiva Listman, a New York City based painter and third generation New Yorker whose shaped canvas works transform the everyday objects of city life into something worth stopping for. Subway seats, metrocards, road signs, pigeons, locks, and cones...the things most New Yorkers walk past without thinking...are Frankensteined together in Photoshop, cut from plywood with a jigsaw, and painted with craft and attention. Akiva works four days a week in his own studio and three days a week assisting artist Dustin Yellin. He has collaborated with Nike, Beams, and Only New York and showing at the New York Transit Museum in a show saying goodbye to the subway seats that are slowly being phased out of the city he has painted his whole life. In this conversation: why he waited years before cutting his first shaped canvas until he could make one he was proud of, how the head of basketball apparel at Nike found him through years of genuine kindness and patience, why every artist is a small business whether they like it or not, and the one piece of advice he gives to anyone who wants to do this full time: treat every opportunity like it could work out. Across the Studio Instagram @acrossthestudio Tiktok @acrossthestudio Akiva ListmanInstagram @akivalistman

    Across the Studio with Akiva Listman

  6. Jun 7

    Across the Studio with Amanda Zheng

    In the 16th episode of Across the Studio, Mia Schoolman sits down with Amanda Zheng, a New Zealand born, New York based visual artist and designer who graduated from Parsons School of Design with a BFA in communication design. Her work spans fine art, graphic design, and experimental material practice — from medium transfers and metal engravings to lithographic prints. Sponsored by Adobe and Apple, her work has been featured in Vogue and Vanity Fair, and she recently released Plume, a limited edition lithographic print collection about desire, excess, and the compulsion to construct a singular perfect identity. Amanda grew up as one of three students doing art in high school in New Zealand, where school counselors told her she was not going to America. She applied to Parsons on a whim, got in on a scholarship, and moved to New York at 18 with no blueprint and no one who had done it before her. In this conversation: why she approaches her practice more like an athlete than an artist, how taste is a privilege she only discovered after moving to New York, why every piece of inspiration she has ever used has come from offline, the 400 page artist catalog she designed as her senior thesis, and why her only ritual before making art is pressure. Follow Across the StudioInstagram @acrossthestudio@miaschoolmanTikTok @acrossthestudio Follow Amanda ZhengInstagram @amandaaartWebsite amandazheng.com

    Across the Studio with Amanda Zheng

  7. May 31

    Across the Studio with Dipa Halder

    In the 15th episode of Across the Studio, Mia Schoolman sits down with Dipa Halder, a Brooklyn based artist working across abstract painting, florals, tablescapes, and interior design. Born in India and raised in the Bay Area, Dipa spent years as a software engineer at Figma before quitting her job the day she got back from painting a mural for their London office, not because she had planned to, but because she knew if she did not do it that day it would never happen. She spent the following year traveling solo, ended up at an artist residency in the mountains of Bogota, and eventually moved to Brooklyn to build a studio practice from scratch. She paints on raw unprimed canvas with water diluted acrylic, stitches canvases together with a sewing machine, draws images with salt, and makes tablescapes until 2am for supper clubs across New York. In this conversation: growing up South Asian with parents who nurtured creativity but never valued it as a career, the first apartment she turned into a gallery with 20 people and a last minute party poll, why she thinks she has been most depressed when she did not have a creative outlet, how putting financial pressure on your art changes your relationship to it, and the piece of advice she would give her earlier self about finding her style. Follow Across the Studio Instagram @acrossthestudio TikTok @acrossthestudio Dipa Halder @dipahalderstudio

    Across the Studio with Dipa Halder

  8. May 17

    Across the Studio with Diego Miró-Rivera

    In the 14th episode of Across the Studio, Mia Schoolman runs into Diego Miró-Rivera on the streets of Tribeca during New York Art Week. No studio. No appointment. No microphones. Just a U-Haul truck and the loudest corner in New York. Diego Miró-Rivera graduated from Yale in 2023 and has spent the last three years living on the road, with the back of his truck as his studio. He is a land artist, or as he prefers, a land student. His work is anchored in the natural world, literally and conceptually. He collected 100,000 cicadas by hand during a once in 221 year emergence and made paintings with them without a single drop of glue. He grew a sculpture from native Texas grass seeds over two years. In this conversation: why his favorite place to make art is literally called Art, why glue is the enemy of poetry, and what it means to give the natural world credit for its creations. Apologies for the street noise. We recorded this on the loudest corner in Tribeca with my voice memos on my iPhone...worth it. Follow Across the Studio Instagram @acrossthestudio TikTok @acrossthestudio Follow Diego Miró-RiveraInstagram @gogomiro

    Across the Studio with Diego Miró-Rivera
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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
3 Ratings

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

Information

  • Creator
    Mia Schoolman
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    21
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Mia Schoolman
  • Show Website
    Across the Studio

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