What brings people to art making, and what keeps them going once they’ve started? Why I Make Art: Contemporary Artists’ Stories About Life & Work (Atelier Éditions), a new book by Brian Alfred, explores these questions and many more. Alfred is the artist and educator behind Sound & Vision, a podcast featuring interviews with artists and musicians from around the world. Why I Make Art pulls from 30 of Alfred’s more than 300 podcast conversations to date, conducted between 2016 and 2020. From skateboarding to statelessness, from painting to performance, the wide variety of influences and practices the book covers demonstrate that the motives for art making are as numerous as artists themselves.

Alfred is a perceptive interviewer whose insightful questions and warm personality lead his Sound & Vision guests to unexpected and heartfelt places, like silly childhood memories and touching revelations. Though his book lacks some of the podcast’s spontaneous emotional charge, its well-crafted, concise essays show the author to be a gifted writer and editor who seamlessly integrates his artists’ words with thoughtful analysis of their work. In no small feat, the book condenses the artists’ multifaceted, meandering spoken stories into lively, relatable narratives that draw the reader in.

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