Good day to you all, Funkee Homosapiens!
Dug Uyesaka has been making art in Santa Barbara since the '70s and trained under an impressive roster of instructors during his time at UCSB. A really swell guy to talk to, I've seen Dug out and about in SB since I started hanging around the wine-and-cheese peeps that congregate at art openings, and he's always got time to talk. So that made her perfect podcast invitation material. But because information about him is scant, I used this interview to really unearth his background, and by gum we did!

In this chat we go into a lot of Californian and American history, then wind up talking about art and teaching.
Topics discussed include: Being born in Fresno and his earliest drawing efforts Dug’s dad’s job and Fresno’s Chinatown Being a sansei, a third-generation Japanese-American The Forestiere Underground Gardens The San Joaquin Valley and the drought How Dug’s family went into the internment camps in Jerome, AK and Poston, AZ The aftermath of internment Going to UCSB and his teachers: William Dole, Howard Fenton, Bob Thomas, Richard Ross, Guy Williams Ciel Bergman, Michael Dvortcsak Living in I.V. during the mid-‘70s and Dug’s listening list as an undergrad Dug’s disastrous post-Tom Petty date Dug’s interest in ink on paper Cy Twombly Mark Tobey The Slingshot Gallery “Outsider art” and Jeff Koons Being an artist model for Jack Tworkov and Alfred Leslie Random people met while working at the BottleShop: Stuart Whitman and Playboy Playmate Kym Herrin Working for Andrew Davis and Robert Zemeckis Transition to Laguna Blanca School and the fun of teaching children Artist and friend Michael Blaha The Santa Barbara arts community and the Funkzone Being interdisciplinary and working with history What he’d like to borrow from his students and how he thinks his students see him Bringing his pets into his art

Dug really doesn't have much of a web presence...maybe he'll ask one of his students to bash together a site for him. Hey, it's what we call extra credit in the teaching biz. In the meantime, here's his Facebook page.