Guest For Your Show

"The Art of Symeon Shimin" With text from Symeon Shimin, Edited and Curated by Tonia Shimin

From Hollywood to Beloved Children’s Book Illustrator to Muralist and Painter of Justice, Symeon Shimin Left His Mark and a Legacy that Resonates Today 

Can you recall it to memory? The most iconic movie poster in history—Gone With the Wind! 

It was created by a man who was also equally one-of-a-kind.  Whose life could rival the drama in that storied film. And who stood for those less-favored by an America of the mid-20th century—poor children, people of color and the beaten—in his fine art.

And now a beautifully-illustrated coffee table book,  presents for the first time a view of the life and art of this Russian-born, New York-based, Jewish artist. The Art of Symeon Shimin, returns this man’s life to the forefront, as many of the issues that roiled his images are now still making headlines. Symeon, as his daughter Tonia Shimin, reminds us today was an influential figure in multiple spheres. 

Acclaimed as an illustrator of children’s books, Shimin is also known as the painter of the original Gone With the Wind movie poster and the creator of Contemporary Justice and The Child, the highly praised mural located in the Department of Justice Building, Washington, DC. Throughout his life, 1902-1984, Shimin's deep involvement in the quest for justice and human rights was paramount to the way he lived and painted. Showcasing the only cohesive collection of his fine art, this book brings into focus a unique and meaningful perspective of his extraordinary gifts. In addition, the autobiography and essays in the book provide a unique and meaningful contribution to the world of art.

Symeon’s works grew out of his own experience with oppression and poverty. Escaping the violent pogroms in Russia in 1912, Symeon arrived in New York as a 10-year-old with his family, but found a hard-scrabble life on the streets of Brooklyn, helping to support the family by delivering groceries 13 hours a day. With a passion for music he sought to become a musician, only to be denied by his father. Instead the youngster turned to drawing “with fidelity to reality.” 

Symeon spoke his rage and demand for justice through his paint brush. But much of his work embodied and celebrated the beauty of humanity. His work, lauded by Time Magazine, The Washington Post, Art News and Art Journal has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC, National Gallery in Washington, Art Institute in Chicago, the Whitney Museum of Art in New York City and the Chrysler Museum of Art. To see some of these images, visit www.symeonshimin.com

But while much of his art career may have faded into history, his children’s books have continued to populate the shelves of youngsters worldwide. Whether his own or with some of the leading children’s and Jewish authors of the 20th century, he was revered in his later years by the children’s book world.  

And with the publication The Art of Symeon Shimin and cries for justice ringing out in our land again, this seminal artist demands revisiting. His daughter Tonia can ably tell his story and speak of her memories as she watched her father soar in Hollywood and yet struggle with the plight of those who were disenfranchised and oppressed by injustice. 

Tonia Shimin Author Biography

As a dancer Tonia Shimin performed in the companies of Martha Graham, Jose Limón, Pearl Lang, The Ypsilanti Greek Theater and as a soloist with Anna Sokolow's Player's Project, Mary Anthony Dance Theater and Repertory West Dance Company. She has had an extensive teaching career in the United States and abroad. Her choreographic works have appeared in the United States, the Czech Republic, Russia, Germany, Turkey, Switzerland, Greece, Italy and Mexico.   An award winning dance filmmaker, for among others the documentary Mary Anthony: A life in Modern Dance, her awards have included support from the National Endowment for the Arts and the 2005 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Santa Barbara Dance Alliance. Currently she is Professor Emerita of the Department of Theater and Dance at the University of California, Santa Barbara and continues her creative work in the USA and abroad. Most recently she has curated, edited and with Mercury Press International published the award winning book, The Art of Symeon Shimin, on the remarkable work of her father, whose fine art is here shown in a collection for the first time.

Shockingly 1 in 4 Kids in the U.S struggles with a chronic health condition like anxiety, autoimmune, adhd, autism, asthma, arthritis, IBS, colitis, eczema and the list goes on!  My son is one of those children.  The journey my beautiful boy has taken me on, to witness the incredible power of the body to heal when given the support it needs, has been a great gift.  Because of this experience I went back to school to study nutrition and founded Kid’s Health Revolution, dedicated to teaching other parents the power they have to profoundly improve their children’s health and happiness. 

It is my mission to make as much of an impact on our children’s health as humanly possible!  I would love to share my story and teach your listeners some simple changes that will create the opportunity for balance and health so our kids and families can thrive.

Deborah Morgan is the creator and head revolutionary at Kid’s Health Revolution, a resource and community for parents of kids with chronic health conditions. She is the fierce mama bear of one busy little boy who was diagnosed with an autoimmune condition at just 2 years old. She was told there was very little that could be done, but Deborah refused to give up.  She did what everyone told her couldn’t be done and used diet and natural approaches to dramatically improve her son’s health.

This experience inspired her quest to transform the way we approach children’s health, by supporting parents in using the essential tools of nutrition, microflora balancing and lifestyle.

Feeling lost and overwhelmed in the search for solutions to help her son almost stopped Deborah from taking action, it is why she founded Kid’s Health Revolution.  A safe place for parents to find a sense of community, to feel less alone, to find trustworthy information based on both science and personal success and to feel empowered to take action.

Deborah is a Certified Holistic Nutrition Consultant and GAPS certified practitioner. Through her online community, you tube videos, workshops, coaching programs and one on one consulting, Deborah is helping parents make the changes that will support the future health and happiness of our children. 

In her powerful, heartwarming and hilarious memoir, THIS IS HOW I SAVE MY LIFE: Searching the World for a Cure: A Lyme Disease Memoir (Gallery Books; Paperback; On sale 5/18), Amy B. Scher tells a fiery and unbounded story of how to take life into your own hands when all hope is lost; by believing in the power of self healing and the miracle of survival. It’s the perfect post-COVID story of real female heroism. Amy would be a great interview.

Praise for THIS IS HOW I SAVE MY LIFE includes: 
A Good Morning America “Most Anticipated Reads” pick for May 2021

“A heartwarming and inspiring story that will change the way you look at life.”—Vikas Swarup, New York Times bestselling author of Slumdog Millionaire

"Amy Scher is a brave warrior and a wonderful writer. She is a living example (very much living!) of what it looks like when a woman takes her health, her heart, and her destiny into her own hands. My hope is that this book will inspire many other women to do the same."—Elizabeth Gilbert, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Eat Pray Love and Big Magic

“An Eat Pray Love-like memoir.”—Pam Grout, #1 New York Times bestselling author of E-Squared 

In THIS IS HOW I SAVE MY LIFE you travel with Amy from California to the Mayo Clinic in Minneapolis and finally in India as she shares her uplifting story of pure determination to heal herself from her late-stage, chronic Lyme disease. 

As her body began to rapidly deteriorate and she had exhausted all options, Amy found a highly experimental trial that had just as likely a probability of killing her as it did curing her…but it was in Delhi, India. She packed her bags and her parents hoping for an answer. 

In an interview, Amy can discuss: 

What it means to be resilient in a post-COVID world.

How to reframe your mindset around challenges that are daunting or painful.

The writing process of her memoir; especially how sharing our vulnerabilities can transform pain for others.

How to reclaim your life and what that means.

I’d be more than happy to send a PDF if you’d like to dip in. Watch Amy on Ticker News here or check out her Washington Post essay here. If you’d like to schedule an interview with Amy, please let me know. I’d be happy to put you in touch!

Cheers,
Sammi

About the author: Amy B. Scher is an award-winning and bestselling author of four books about human’ing and healing. She’s been featured in The Washington Post, Daily News (New York), Cosmopolitan, CNN, CBS, the Los Angeles Review of Books, The Rumpus, The Times of India and more. Scher was also named one of The Advocate’s “40 Under 40.” Amy’s books have been translated into sixteen languages. She currently lives in New York City with her beautiful wife and bad cat.

With a conceptual approach, Chinese-born and Oakland-based interdisciplinary artist Zhang Mengjiao, aka Jasmine Zhang’s work investigates social issues of “immigration” and explores questions pertinent to the autonomy behind being a woman of color, Chinese, artist and human being. Her socially engaged art takes the form of photography, texts, painting, performance video, and sculptural installations. Her first solo show entitled “For the Sake of… the Artifice!”, takes place in Los Angeles at the Kylin Gallery (8634 Wilshire Blvd, Beverly Hills, CA, 90211) from June 19th-July 3rd, and she will then go on to host an exhibition in San Francisco shortly afterwards. 

We would love to set up an interview with Zhang Mengjiao to discuss her upcoming art exhibition and her work as an artist.

Whitney, Caitlin & Morgan 

Brought up and educated by Chinese traditional value systems where each individual is accountable for the prosperity and adversity of the world, she feels obliged to make community-based engagement activities and artwork to empower not only herself. While conceptualizing to work with a community, she rethinks how to enter the community from an artist vantage. What role should the organization take, and what kind of reciprocal exchange system should she build in between herself and the community. In order to support her community, she strives to create a new narrative that contains a reciprocal exchange system. Through this system, she is determined to challenge the white supremacy and American gaze that has oppressed her as a woman of color, a non-citizen, and a human being.

We would love to set up an interview with Zhang Mengjiao to discuss her upcoming art exhibition and her work as an artist.

Whitney, Caitlin & Morgan

With a conceptual approach, Zhang Mengjiao tries to increase the dynamic between audience and author by objectifying emotions and investigating the duality that develops through different interpretations.

Her works never show the complete structure. This results in the fact that the artist can easily imagine an own interpretation without being hindered by the historical reality. With Plato’s allegory of the cave in mind, she makes work that deals with the documentation of events and the question of how they can be presented. The work tries to express this with the help of physics and technology, but not by telling a story or creating a metaphor.

Her works are an investigation into representations of (seemingly) concrete ages and situations as well as depictions and ideas that can only be realized in photography.

Her works directly respond to the surrounding environment and uses everyday experiences from the artist as a starting point. Often these are framed instances that would go unnoticed in their original context. By demonstrating the omnipresent lingering of a ‘corporate world’, she tries to develop forms that do not follow logical criteria, but are based only on subjective associations and formal parallels, which incite the viewer to make new personal associations.

Her works demonstrate how life extends beyond its own subjective limits and often tells a story about the effects of global cultural interaction over the latter half of the twentieth century. It challenges the binaries we continually reconstruct between Self and Other, between our own ‘cannibal’ and ‘civilized’ selves. By examining the ambiguity and origination via retakes and variations, she presents everyday objects as well as references to texts, painting and architecture. Pompous writings and Utopian constructivist designs are juxtaposed with trivial objects. Categories are subtly reversed.

The world is changing rapidly, so is society. Clearly, change is inevitable. The only answer 'how' to succeed healthily as a species is LOVE. Love is the answer. The most written about, sung about, philozophized topic in human history is love. Let me share the "How To" with your audience. My podcast has listeners in 51 countries. www.baldandblonde.live

When love is taught in schools globally change in all our lives is possible within the shortest amount of time. Moral and integrity can be learned in easy to understand, fun ways. My clients around the world achieve results beyond their wildest dreams. So can you!

Daisy Papp was born and raised in Germany, speaks 3 languages fluently and has spent a lifetime helping others. In fact, some state that Daisy is the world's best-kept secret!

Daisy is the founder of SelfRecoding®, the secret recipe for healing the past, clearing the present and generating a predictable future in the shortest amount of time. Daisy has extensive experience through years of extraordinary training in the fields of NLP, EFT, Energy Psychology, and other modalities from world-known psychologists, neuroscientists, and leaders in the coaching industry.

Daisy has a proven track recordd and has spent hundreds of hours conducting seminars and workshops. She has helped individuals, couples, world champions and Fortune 500 CEO's on all continents, showing an unrivaled commitment to her profession with more than 10 thousand hours of one-on-one sessions completed. Her three books have been sold in over 50 countries.

Daisy Papp now lives in the sunny Florida Keys and is bringing her expertise to the podcast Bald and Blonde, teaming up with the renowned "Baldwarrior', Kathi Tait from Australia. Together they are embracing the globe and helping millions of listeners change their lives through Mindset Evolution, the focus of the podcast.

Daisy was a signed artist with EMI Music as a singer/songwriter. Her music is aired on radio stations in Europe and the US, her visual art is exhibited in myseums around the United States and collected by art connoisseurs with private collections around the globe. Her podcast has listeners in 51 countries.

 

This is long, sorry! Hello, my name is Leni Dubel. I wanted to see if you would like to possibly interview my Mom. The reason being is that she has written a book about welcoming illness and disease to the body like a cherished guest to self-heal it. The book (called “An Appropriate Conversation With Cancer”) contains an actual conversation with cancer itself. 

I have been communicating with Spirit since 2003 and found that you can communicate with basically anything once you learn to commune with the trees, animals, etc. Everything has a frequency and an energy and back in 2016 my Guides taught me to welcome any illness to the body to heal it. We began with no prior experience for self-healing, no ability there. We worked with a deathly mold allergy that I had (I had unknowingly spilled an entire gallon of water onto the floor and it grew mold which was making me quite ill to live in.) 

So, each time I breathed it in and it made me sick my Guides told me to welcome the mold to my body like a cherished guest. And by day three or four I had healed the allergy! But not only that, I also was able to heal the effects completely, of the allergy medicine that I had been taking those few days. Suffice it to say that I went from being very sick and feeling terrible from the combination of the two, to feeling amazing. 

So, myself and the Guides came up with an exercise for self-healing which we have been giving away ever since. I have used the exercise to self-heal literally thousands of things since then. How the book comes in to play is that our friend had cancer. And my Mom came up with the idea to write a book in conversation style between myself, my Spirit Guides, the cancer, my Mom and our friend. 

She subsequently passed because she refused to work with the exercise but that was fully her choice. Another interesting thing that has occurred is that in 2016 I was somehow downloaded with the ability to communicate with my Ego. Myself and the Ego spoke all night that first night and despite my former spiritual beliefs that the Ego was bad and blah, blah, it turns out that the Ego is actually a Guide to the emotions! I think the folks who thought poorly of the Ego must not have known it at all. 

If I had not connected with the Ego in 2016 we would not have been able to write the book because my entire life changed EXPONENTIALLY for the better when I became friends with my best friend Martin (my Ego). And by better I mean that I could actually speak with my Guides much more fluently, allowing information to flow to myself a lot easier. 

Anyway, I’m not really an interview person. I tried a handful of them back in 2016 and was too nervous and did not like it. But my Mom is much more outgoing. We really are trying to get the message out there of self-healing and working WITH as opposed to against the Ego in a harmonious way. Have a wonderful day. 

Leni Dubel

I follow my daughter who gets information from her Spirit Guides. We use this as our main spiritual teaching in life. 

Are you looking for a captivating and engaging guest who is fluent in a host of topic such as: book reviewer, writer-multiple genres, baseball afficionado, relationship cancer coach, management trainer and so much more. If you answered yes to any of the above, I'm your guest!

I spent thirty-five years in the world of road construction. Back surgery in 2010 put the skids on that career. My body couldn't handle the rigors of twelve to sixteen hour days, six to seven days a week anymore. As I convalesced, licking my wounds, I wondered what to do next. Not being out in the sun getting baked, or dodging traffic, was going to be a hard act to follow. Seriously, what else did I know? An article in the Dallas Morning News caught my eye. It was about being a professional speaker. Hmm? That sounds interesting. Becoming mobile again, I took a seat in front of a blank monitor, pondering what to write.

Let's start with something we know: my life. The first work was titled "God's Plan: A Glimpse Into One's Life." I re-titled it six months later to "Why Did Everything Happen?" This is a look back at the last twenty-five years of my life and how the death of my partner, father and true love affected my life. I was amazed at the revelations. Since then, I've moved on to write in several different genres. Some say I should change my name when diverting from the path. Well, right or wrong, I'm sticking with my name. The current works range from the love story of my one true love: Debbie Beck-RIP 7-20-2009, an alternate historical perspective of Vampires and WWII, a newly released Sci-Fi time travel adventure, a short horror story and two Baseball Coaching Manuals. Granted, not every book I write is for everyone. I understand that, but I hope I'm showing readers diversity can be a good avenue.

I currently live in the DFW area, spending a lot of time with my daughter, her girls and my oldest son. When I was in construction, I never had or took the time to enjoy what surrounded me: love, family and friends. My true love, Debbie and her girls reminded me what was important in life; "we work to live, not live to work."