Howdy everyfunkabody!

Today we sit down with a fixture of Santa Barbara’s art scene, whether you’ve seen his brutal but cartoony canvases, gone to his annual Reindeer Art Show, know him for his early ’80s band The Tan, or just met him around town.

As of September 2014, he became the head of the Santa Barbara Arts Fund, which helps place teens with mentors from printmaking to sculptors. Brad is a guy who thinks out of the box naturally, being raised by two artists, abstract expressionist Ken Nack and “naive” artist Joan Main. You’ll see how he turns the entire interview into a statement of his art in the end…it’s clever!

Topics include:
His journey to the Arts Fund and the rewards of curating
The Scheinfeld Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation
The Arts Fund’s mission and an example from one of its interns
Growing up with artistic parents and Chicago vs New York in the 1940s/1950s art scene
A traumatic story of childhood spaghetti
The beginnings of The Tan and the Santa Barbara music scene, circa early ’80s
Recording with Robbie Krieger of the Doors
How being in a band is like having war buddies
How painting is like telling a story
How an office job might be the best thing
The dramatic end of the banana tarantula story

Brad Nack has a website here
For more info on the Santa Barbara Arts Fund check here
And because nothing dies on the Internet, The Tan has a webpage with audio! Relive the hair days/dyes!

Object of Knowledge, a work by Ken Nack, Brad’s father

By the way, subscribers to the podcast now receive my weekly newsletter “Friday Document Dump” (guess when it comes out!). Blatantly borrowing an idea from another podcaster, I provide 10 links to things I found interesting this week, from essays to artist portfolios, videos and more. Look for it!!

If you can’t see the embedded podcast above, here are other ways to listen:

Listen to it on iTunes
Download this episode here

You can also follow me on Twitter
Or read my arts writing at http://www.tedmills.com
Or check out my art here (warning NSFW): http://tedmillsart.tumblr.com/

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