Artspeak Radio with poet/writer Olive Sullivan and artist Vince Medellin

Artspeak Radio, Wednesday, May 20, 2026, 9am -10am CST, 90.1fm KKFI Kansas City Community Radio, streaming live audio www.kkfi.org Producer/host Maria Vasquez Boyd welcomes poet/writer Olive Sullivan and Vince Medellin freelance Character Designer/ Comic Artist. OLIVE SULLIVAN- Poet, playwright, and bookbinder--the common denominator is books. Olive L. Sullivan invites you to come celebrate the world of paper and ink with her at her brick-and-mortar bookbinding studio in Pittsburg, Kan. Sullivan Book Arts is celebrating its one-year anniversary on Sunday, June 21, 2026, with a reception on the lawn. The event will feature food, music, an open mic, and crafts for everyone.  Sullivan, from Pittsburg, Kan., is a Kansas Touring Artist through the Kansas Arts Commission. A former teacher, Sullivan has led writing workshops for various groups, including the Tar Creek Conference in Oklahoma, where participants wrote about environmental action. As the recipient of a kidney transplant, cancer survivor, and widow, she writes about place, grief, and surviving hard times. She is the author of two full-length poetry collections, a play, and several poems, short stories, and essays in a variety of journals and anthologies.  She is inspired by the natural world around her. She loves traveling for inspiration, and spends her free time singing to her dog, Balthazar. Visit the website at sullivanbookarts.com or check out Sullivan Book Arts on Facebook and Olive L. Sullivan on Facebook and Instagram. VINCE MEDELLIN- Hola! My name is Vincent Medellin. In this case, when referencing my illustration practice, I prefer my penname, Vinny “Zigzag” Medellin. Why Zigzag? The art style that I have cultivated over the years has incorporated a loose, gestural style. Also, it is fun for kids and the “kids at heart” to say! I work both digitally (using my iPad) and with traditional mediums. The materials I use range from cardboard and grocery bags to masking tape, colored pencils and crayons. The idea is to encourage kids to use materials that are readily available to them. This stems from a cultural motivation for sustainability. A philosophy that can best be described as “rasquache” among Mexican American communities. Essentially, rasquache means, “use what you have.” By referencing this philosophy, I hope that my art can be viewed as unique, welcoming, and approachable. The artwork I create (both in my fine art and illustrative practice) is community focused. I have partnered with organizations such as The Nelson-Atkins Gallery of Art, Mattie Rhodes, and Johnson County Library to reach thepublic. In addition to working as an artist, I have worked in bookstores and libraries. A trend that I have noticed among non-white, underrepresented groups, is an interest in manga storytelling. Watching kids race to these sections, checking out manga in droves, inspired me to look deeper into the intersection between this style of graphic storytelling and the lived experiences of non-white youth in America. Naturally, this led me to analyze my own experience with manga/anime in hopes of developing and publishing, through a major publishing house, a graphic novel inspired by manga styling. I want to tell the stories of my ancestors, and validate the communities who desire to see more of themselves within comic book storytelling. I identify as Chicano and, like most who identify as such, I feel caught between the margins of society. “Chicano” is a term used by Mexican Americans to describe themselves as being, “not from here, not from there.” Representation of Mexicans and/or Mexican Americans was limited in the United States during the 1990s. Mexicans existed in the media, but as a stereotype or a parody conceived by a dominant white class. Even so, I took what I could get. This is why characters such as Speedy Gonzalez, and his cousin, Slowpoke Rodriguez still connect to the roots of millennial Chicano experiences. This was all we had. There was nothing that expressed our lived experiences as Chicano. Nothing that validated our feelings of being marginalized and forced to assimilate. The cartoons we watched told us that Mexicans were a joke. I felt desperate to access the ethnic roots I was being denied. In short, I wanted over the wall that the media had created. Today, I use my artistic practice to not only lift myself above this wall, but to also help empower others to free themselves from the arbitrary parameters developed by colonial conquest.