What’s My Thesis?

Every week, artists teach Javier Proenza.

What’s My Thesis? is a society podcast hosted by Javier Proenza, with 309 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80. PitchCentric scores this show on Booking Probability, Listen Score, and live audience signals refreshed every 24 hours.

Javier Proenza hosts What’s My Thesis?, a society show with 309 episodes published.

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  Episode #309

  309 Why Artists Have to Do Everything Just to Survive | Azul Silverio

  Aug 18, 20261h 9m

  Azul Silverio is a Los Angeles-based artist, writer, curator, and arts administrator currently working at the Hammer Museum. Drawing on their experience at LACE and on the board of the National Performance Network, Silverio discusses supporting artists through institutions, developing a curatorial and writing practice, and navigating the contemporary art world. The conversation traces Silverio’s background in printmaking, performance, and autobiographical work exploring queer and trans identity, Latino and Mexican culture, and a Catholic upbringing. Silverio and host Javier Proenza also consider burnout, artistic ambition, networking, multidisciplinary careers, and the value of building a creative practice slowly and consistently over time.

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  Episode #308

  308 Why “I'm Sorry” Is the Wrong Thing to Say | Saba Sadr

  Aug 11, 202657 min

  Lebanese weaver and performance artist Saba Sadr, an MFA student at Otis College of Art and Design, joins Javier Proenza to discuss returning to Los Angeles after more than two decades in Lebanon and how experiences of displacement, caregiving, and political conflict inform an evolving artistic practice. Although Sadr's work centers on weaving and performance, the conversation expands into broader questions of identity, memory, and belonging. Together they examine the meaning of resilience, the complexities of Lebanese conservatism and resistance, queer community organizing in Lebanon, the challenges of public visibility, and the long-term consequences of war on individuals, families, and cultural memory. Throughout the discussion, Sadr reflects on the relationship between art, community, and the responsibility of speaking from lived experience rather than abstraction.

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  Episode #307

  Would You Buy Art That Won't Last? | Juan Gomez

  Aug 4, 20261h 23m

  Juan Gomez returns to What’s My Thesis? to discuss his evolving practice across sculpture, installation, and drawing, and the ways his Mexican American identity and family history have resurfaced through materials associated with physical labor. Working with wire, knots, cement, bricks, packing materials, and found objects, Gomez reflects on his family’s roots in Zacatecas, his father’s blue-collar work, and the unexpected relationship between the labor he grew up around and the work he makes today. In conversation with Javier Proenza, Gomez considers the economics of sustaining an artistic practice outside the commercial art market, the role of mentorship and community, material impermanence and collecting, social comparison, failure, and the pressure to define success through institutional recognition. They also discuss Gomez’s time in Mexico, mortality and memory, AI-generated imagery and handmade objects, and his view of art not as a hobby but as a lasting discipline and way of life.

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  Episode #306

  306 Alex Gonzalez: Painting MacArthur Park, Sign Painting & Narrative Art in Los Angeles

  Jul 27, 20261h 11m

  In this episode, Javier Proenza speaks with Los Angeles painter and sign painter Alex Gonzalez about the relationship between place, labor, and artistic practice. Drawing from a lifetime spent in the MacArthur Park neighborhood, Gonzalez describes how its density, street life, and changing social landscape have become the foundation of a narrative painting practice built on observation, symbolism, and allegory. The conversation explores the value of professional sign painting as both a craft and a sustainable career, the realities of maintaining an independent studio practice outside the gallery system, and the challenges of balancing artistic ambition with financial stability and family responsibility. Throughout, Gonzalez reflects on the ways everyday experience can be transformed into contemporary painting without losing sight of the community from which it emerges.

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  Episode #305

  305 Sterling Wells on Plein Air Watercolor, Contemporary Painting, Water Systems & the Art Market

  Jul 21, 202657 min

  Sterling Wells is a Los Angeles–based painter represented by Night Gallery whose practice combines plein air watercolor with ideas drawn from conceptual art, environmental systems, and site-specific observation. In this conversation, Wells reflects on growing up in St. Petersburg, Florida, studying painting and sculpture, living in New York after the 2008 financial crisis, and developing an interdisciplinary approach through graduate study at ArtCenter College of Design. The discussion examines the role of water as both material and metaphor, the relationship between documentation and painting, and the evolution of Wells' practice from sculptural installations to large-scale outdoor watercolor works. Wells also speaks candidly about gallery representation, artistic community, financial uncertainty, and the practical realities of sustaining a contemporary painting practice while remaining committed to a slow, labor-intensive process.

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