Ep 207: Art, Anger and Liberation with Evonne Gallardo and Colony Little

Ritzy Periwinkle (0:01)

Hola, welcome to Word To Your Mama, the podcast that amplifies diverse voices and celebrates shared experiences. Hosted by me, Ritzy P, a Latina creative entrepreneur with the background in art, music, and new web technologies. From Academy and Emmy winners to activists, artists, and builders, we celebrate the rich diversity of my multicultural tribe. There will be special guests, mad laughs, and absolutely no BS. Word To Your Mama drops every Monday on your favorite podcast platform.

Welcome, ladies. We are here to do our annual or let's get talking about this, because I was trying to do the math. The future of BIPOC disabled and LGBTQIA plus artists, but now we're including culture bearers, community leaders, right? And this is our fifth installment, but we've been doing this. I looked it up, ladies. We've been doing this.

Our first episode dropped October 13th, 2020

Evonne Gallardo (1:02)

What?

Colony Little (1:04)

Oh my gosh.

Evonne Gallardo (1:05)

Okay.

Ritzy Periwinkle (1:05)

Can you imagine? We were in the thick of the pandemic, the thick of it.

Colony Little (1:12)

Yep. Wow.

Ritzy Periwinkle (1:14)

The thick of it.

Colony Little (1:15)

It was a whole nother... I think I said that last time. It was a whole nother world and it just...

Ritzy Periwinkle (1:20)

It's a whole nother lifetime, like a whole nother existence, but just to think of how far we've come and maybe I mislabeled, but it said last year was the fourth installment.

Did we do one every year? Maybe we skipped a year? Because it should be the sixth installment instead of the fifth installment if we did it on 2020

Evonne Gallardo (1:40)

You're asking a menopause brain. You're asking a menopause brain.

Colony Little (1:46)

I'm not sure.

Ritzy Periwinkle (1:47)

It's the fifth or the sixth, who's to say? But today, as usual, I'm with Colony Little and Evonne Gallardo.

I always usually do the intros, but I thought since we're five or six years in, why don't you go ahead and introduce yourselves? We've all evolved, everything changes. Colony, why don't you go first? Let the folks know who you are, what you do, why you're here.

Colony Little (2:14)

I was thinking about that five-year mark and you posted that picture, I think, and it was right after I cut my hair. There were still traces of black in it. I'm like looking at me now going, yeah, it feels like five years. But hello everyone out there.

Thanks for being with us again. But I'm Colony Little. I am a writer based here in Raleigh, North Carolina. I am originally from the Bay Area and Los Angeles. Shout out to California. I miss you so much. But I love North Carolina. But like I said, I grew up in the East Bay and moved to LA in the early 2000s.

I'm a writer and art critic. Previously, before that, I worked in corporate America in the insurance industry for 25 years and left that to write about art. And I've been doing that as a freelancer for over 10 years, which is hard to believe that I've been at that or at this for so long.

It's a privilege to have that kind of perspective on how the arts have evolved. And here locally in the Triangle in North Carolina, I really take my role as an advocate, a cultural advocate seriously because there are dwindling platforms for artists to be discussed more broadly. And there's just a wealth of work that's being created out here that deserves a spotlight. So I'm happy to share what's happening here and to share my insights.

Ritzy Periwinkle (4:19)

Thank you, Colony. Yes, we're not talking about just anybody on here, guys, talking about this stuff. We're talking about people that know what they're talking about. Evonne, break it down for the folks, please.

Evonne Gallardo (4:32)

Hi. So good to be with you both and for everyone out there. Good to have you listening in. Evonne Gallardo, she, her, ella, originally from East Los and the Eastside area, third generation, I guess.

Lived in New York for 12 years, lived and worked in New York for 12 years, and I've been back here for quite a bit, here being the LA area. And I don't know, my trajectory has been, you know, started at a museum, worked in development where you learn, you have to learn everything about the functions of a museum, and then moved into community arts work, and that was a completely different world, and so grateful for all of the learnings there. And so like Colony, I've had a long trajectory of diverse experiences, but my mission was always clear from very early on, which was to serve artists. And I think in this work, there are many things you can serve, many entities and approaches to the work that you can serve. But that definitely, that is my touchstone, and it's a privilege to have, to be of service in the way that I can. So happy to be here, happy to go into discussion about all of the things with you both, because you are also one of my touchstones. So appreciate you both.