282: Currency and Creativity with David Berry and Raymond Biesinger
- Diana Varma
- Jan 27
- 3 min read
It’s a big book day! Today I sit down with two authors with two new books on two interrelated topics.
David Berry (How Artists Make Money & How Money Makes Artists) and Raymond Biesinger (9 Times My Work Has Been Ripped Off: An Informal Self-Defence Guide for Independent Creatives) are here with me today.
David Berry profiled and critiqued the book, film, music and theatre scenes for a local alt-weekly, and then nationally for the National Post, and has contributed essays, criticism and features to the Globe and Mail, The Walrus, CBC, Hazlitt and many other places, a few of which also still exist. He lives in Edmonton, Alberta. His first book, On Nostalgia, was published in summer 2020 by Coach House Books. When not writing, he spends his time editing, community organizing, and attempting to parent.
Raymond Biesinger is a Montréal-based illustrator, artist, and author. He has completed more than one thousand assignments for magazines, newspapers, and ad agencies since 2002. Other interests of his include minimalism, maximalism, world and local history, equality, diversity, economics, music, science fiction, historic buildings, pictorial maps, Canadiana, and preserving a 145-year-old home, etc. His 2022 collection of drawings 305 Lost Buildings of Canada was a national non-fiction best-seller and his latest joy is a noteperfect and 2:3 scale recreation of a 1960 Civil Defence booklet titled Your Basement Fallout Shelter.
In this conversation you’ll hear the macro and the micro of economics and art; David and Raymond share history’s most interesting examples, alongside personal examples of the ways in which art and money are intertwined. We talk challenges for early career creatives, artists vs. AI, and what it means to create in a rapidly-shifting media ecosystem. There’s so much richness in this conversation, so many incredible insights, and so much food for thought. If you consider yourself an artist, a designer, an author, a creative… you won’t want to miss this one.
Let’s listen in…
About Our Guests:
David Berry profiled and critiqued the book, film, music and theatre scenes for a local alt-weekly, and then nationally for the National Post, and has contributed essays, criticism and features to the Globe and Mail, The Walrus, CBC, Hazlitt and many other places, a few of which also still exist. He lives in Edmonton, Alberta. His first book, On Nostalgia, was published in summer 2020 by Coach House Books. When not writing, he spends his time editing, community organizing, and attempting to parent.
Raymond Biesinger is a Montréal-based illustrator, artist, and author. He has completed more than one thousand assignments for magazines, newspapers, and ad agencies since 2002. Other interests of his include minimalism, maximalism, world and local history, equality, diversity, economics, music, science fiction, historic buildings, pictorial maps, Canadiana, and preserving a 145-year-old home, etc. His 2022 collection of drawings 305 Lost Buildings of Canada was a national non-fiction best-seller and his latest joy is a noteperfect and 2:3 scale recreation of a 1960 Civil Defence booklet titled Your Basement Fallout Shelter.
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Music:
Bubbles ( Lofi , Bright , Relaxed ) by HoliznaCC0 is licensed under a CC0 1.0 Universal License.
Talk Paper Scissors Theme Music: Retro Quirky Upbeat Funk by Lewis Sound Production via Audio Jungle
