Art’s Complicated

Sam Blanchard is a digital artist who uses technology to interweave everyday objects into extended metaphors of experience.  He says his relationship between his art and his life flows through stages of inspiration, anticipation, and frustration.

Artist Marcia Neblett talks about the physically intense process of woodblock printmaking and how she finds inspiration in fairy tales.

When Frances Mayes moved to Tuscany in Italy, she left behind her family and roots in Fitzgerald, Georgia. In her memoir Under Magnolia, the renowned author of Under the Tuscan Sun returns to her hometown to explore her coming of age in the Deep South.

Since 2000, furniture imports from China have increased dramatically and offshoring has cost American furniture makers thousands of jobs. In her book Factory Man, Beth Macy tells the remarkable story of John Bassett III’s battle to keep his family’s furniture business in southwest Virginia open.