More Light

Inspiring podcast featuring interviews with artists, meditators and pioneers of culture. Hosted by Brooklyn, NY based artist Dan Gratz.

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Episodes

Wells Chandler

Saturday May 17, 2025

Saturday May 17, 2025

Wells Chandler is a space alien born on Planet Birthday. Drawing from folk art, 1970s craft feminism and countercultural thinkers, he weaves esoteric art history into the canonical. His vibrant, devotional work explores non-dual representations of queer identity, community and belonging. Chandler is also an amateur scholar of comparative religion. Beyond the studio, his practice extends to writing, curating and mentorship.

Fr. Peter Funk, O.S.B.

Saturday May 10, 2025

Saturday May 10, 2025

Fr. Peter Funk, O.S.B., is the prior of the Monastery of the Holy Cross, a contemplative Benedictine monastery in the archdiocese of Chicago.  Before entering monastic life in 1997, he was a choral conductor at St. Thomas the Apostle parish and the University of Chicago.  His exposure to great Renaissance composers such as Palestrina and Victoria was catalytic in his desire to enter religious life as well as his interest in the power of Catholic culture to evangelize.  Having studied theology at St. John's School of Theology in Collegeville, Minnesota, where he majored in Scripture, he was ordained to the priesthood in May 2004.

Haley Josephs

Saturday May 03, 2025

Saturday May 03, 2025

Haley Josephs (b. Seattle, WA 1987) lives and works in Providence, RI.  She received her BFA from Tyler School of Art in 2010 and an MFA from Yale University in 2014.
Drawing inspiration from notions of transformation, mortality, and femininity, Josephs paints solitary figures in fantastical yet foreboding environments that transcend time and space. A recurring character within Josephs' work is the artist's late sister, who is often evoked in bold, almost daring, portraits that amalgamate intimate and personal narratives of the artist with the universal human condition. Her enigmatic paintings are colorful and whimsical yet also present a dark twist. An underlying sense of power and balance pervades her works, hinting a moment of liberation from one’s ostensibly everlasting psychological conflicts.

Michael Ambron

Saturday Apr 26, 2025

Saturday Apr 26, 2025

Michael Ambron is a Queens-based artist whose work explores time, perception, and the relationships between materiality and emergent forms of consciousness. He received his BFA from Tyler School of Art and his MFA from The Ohio State University. Michael is the owner and operator of Paint Makers Notes LLC, a company that provides customized paints, educational demonstrations, and technical assistance to artists and designers of every background. 
 
You can see more of his work with raw materials in the documentary “Color,” by artist Alteronce Gumby and director John Campbell, now streaming on Comcast and XUMO.
https://play.xumo.com/free-movies/color/XM0A4RZ5JA1QJT

Skye Gilkerson

Saturday Apr 19, 2025

Saturday Apr 19, 2025

Skye Gilkerson is an interdisciplinary artist creating poignant conceptual projects across a range of media, including sculpture, installation, film, collage, and poetry. With a sense of wonder, tenderness, and humor, her work engages the tension between time and timelessness, place and placelessness, and the human and universal scale. 
 
Skye has walked the distance to outer space and back, made drawings from the ash remains of burning newspapers on each new moon, and keeps a reference library of failed apocalypses.

Tim Van Laar

Saturday Apr 12, 2025

Saturday Apr 12, 2025

Tim van Laar is a Detroit visual artist and writer who exhibits his artwork nationally and internationally, including solo exhibitions in Germany, the UK, and The Netherlands. He has written numerous reviews and essays and co-authored four books, including Artworld Prestige: Arguing Cultural Value (Oxford), and Shiny Things: Reflective Surfaces and Their Mixed Meanings (Intellect). His creative activities have been supported by institutions such as Fulbright, Yaddo, The Pew Charitable Trusts, and The Henry Luce Foundation. He received his MFA from Wayne State University and is Professor of Art Emeritus at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

David Greenwood

Saturday Apr 05, 2025

Saturday Apr 05, 2025

David Greenwood's stories have appeared in Electric Literature, Fence, Tin House online, and elsewhere. His debut novel, The Cloud Intern, will be published on May 27th. He has a BA in computer science from Boston University, and an MFA in creative writing from Brooklyn College. His ongoing micro-novels project, The Bubble Cannon, can be found on Substack, his literary fitness videos on YouTube. 
 
The Cloud Intern: https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-cloud-intern/eafaf17d3a5f88c6?ean=9798991122009
 
The Bubble Cannon: https://davidgreenwood.substack.com
 
Literary Fitness: https://www.youtube.com/@Book-Built

Letha Wilson

Saturday Mar 29, 2025

Saturday Mar 29, 2025

Letha Wilson is a visual artist based in New York (Craryville and Brooklyn) who was born in Honolulu, HI and raised in Greeley, Colorado. She is known for her synthesis of mediums, expanding the visual and physical dimensions of photography and sculpture.  By combining industrial materials such as Corten steel, aluminum, vinyl and photography, Wilson has developed unique fabrication processes.  She prints images depicting the beauty of natural landscapes onto her sculptures, embeds them in the surface of her works, and manipulates them in various unexpected compositions.   
 

Rob Westerholm

Saturday Mar 22, 2025

Saturday Mar 22, 2025

Robert Westerholm, Ph.D. is an NYC-based clinical psychologist who specializes in cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) for the treatment of anxiety and mood disorders across the lifespan.  Dr. Westerholm and his wife, fashion designer Monica Wesley, are avid art collectors who have been building their contemporary art collection over the last 15 years.

Ajahn Kovilo

Saturday Mar 15, 2025

Saturday Mar 15, 2025

Ajahn Kovilo is an Ohio-born Theravāda forest monk. Having been introduced to meditation, the five precepts, and the Pāli Canon through the Goenka tradition, Ajahn Kovilo’s growing interest in Dhamma led him to enter the monastery in 2006 in hopes of devoting his life to practice. Ajahn Kovilo received full ordination from Ajahn Pasanno and Ajahn Amaro at Abhayagiri Buddhist Monastery in California in 2010, and spent the next decade training at monasteries and with teachers of the Ajahn Chah tradition in America and Thailand.

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