U-M Creative Currents

Penny Stamps Speaker Series: Chrisstina Hamilton

• Arts Initiative • Season 4 • Episode 1

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In this episode of U-M Creative Currents, join host Mark Clague as he interviews Chrisstina Hamilton, producer and director of the University of Michigan's prestigious Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series and Roman Witt Visiting Artist Program. This special episode is part of a U-M Creative Currents' podcast series building excitement for the inaugural Michigan Arts Festival (September 25 - October 26, 2025).

Before joining the Stamps School of Art & Design, Chrisstina directed the Ann Arbor Film Festival and has extensive experience with film and media projects both nationally and internationally. She brings an impressive lineup of thought leaders and inspiring artistic voices to campus across visual art, design, music, theater, and dance, with a fantastic lineup planned for the Michigan Arts Festival.

Featured Speakers include:

*Production Note: This episode is part of U-M Creative Currents' special Michigan Arts Festival podcast series which kicks off on September 25, 2025 and is produced by Jessica Jenks and edited by Sly Pup Productions.


SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to Creative Currents, the Michigan Arts podcast where we explore the power of collaborative creativity and the ways that the arts inspire dialogue and connection. I'm your host, Mark Clegg. I'm very excited that the University of Michigan is hosting its first ever Campus Arts Festival from September 25th to October 26th. This annual event kicks off in 2025, and we're continuing a special Creative Currents sub-series spotlighting the people and the events that will animate the Michigan Arts Festival this year. Today, I'm thrilled to welcome Christina Hamilton, the producer and director of our prestigious Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series on campus, as well as the Roman Witt Visiting Artist Program. Both programs come out of our University of Michigan's Penny W. Stamps School of Art and Design. Christina brings a stunning lineup of thought leaders and inspiring artistic voices to campus in visual art, design, music, theater, dance, fashion, really anything that you can imagine and that can challenge us to stretch our comfort zone and expand our personal creativity. Before joining the Stamp School. She directed the Ann Arbor Film Festival, and she has worked in all sorts of film and media projects nationally and internationally. This is going to be a super fun conversation, I'm sure. Christina, welcome to Creative Currents.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, thank you so much, Mark. It's such a pleasure to be here.

SPEAKER_00:

So tell us about the Stamps Speaker Series. Like, what is it and what makes it really special?

SPEAKER_01:

The Penny Stamps Series is a weekly program that focuses on the creative process. It's sort of based in art and design. And, you know, it was born out of the School of Art and Design. It's named for one of our alums, Penny Stamps, who was, you know, she was actually an interior designer herself who studied here. And she wanted to find a way to give back to her alma mater. And she thought that the School of Art and Design and students really needed some way to connect with real practitioners in art and design out in the world beyond the walls of the academy, you know, that had made their way. And for students to also learn to, you know, create a network and begin to have connections out in the world with people that were really successful and learn from all their different, you know, stories of how they found their own latitude in the world. And then as we started embarking and working on this, we also realized that it was also about building this network beyond the school itself within the university, but then also beyond the university within the larger community. And so the series happens every Thursday at the Michigan Theater off campus.

SPEAKER_00:

Is it always at 5.30 or just?

SPEAKER_01:

It is. It's pretty much the regular part of the series is Thursdays at 5.30. Okay. It's free. It's free. open to the public, which is wonderful.

SPEAKER_00:

So anybody can come? Anybody can come.

SPEAKER_01:

Students, faculty, staff, and people that are completely unaffiliated with the university can even come. And it's usually Thursday at 5.30 at the Michigan Theater. You can depend on that. We also, however, do special programs quite often that don't fit into that framework where it might be something at the Museum of Art or it might be at Rackham or we might do something in Detroit or we might go to Grand Rapids and sometimes it's a So you have to look for those special events. But there's always a Thursday 530 at the Michigan Theater, and you can just show up. There's no tickets. You don't have to register and give out your personal details. You just walk in the door and find a seat.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and these have been some of the most amazing experiences, you know, that are my experience on campus. I remember having Philip Glass, you know, Wynton Marsalis. I mean, a lot of musicians, and of course I come from the music world. But one of the interesting things to me about Stamps and about your series is that I mean, you say it's mainly art and design, but it's so many other things too. I mean, and there's, I think that's really the fascinating thing about the Stamp School is that it's sort of all forms of creativity mixed together. And students don't just study painting or ceramics or sculpture. They study creativity and sort of realizing their vision and realizing their dreams. And the people you bring in, I think, are so inspiring in terms of just taking some of the most provocative, innovative people around the world and bringing them to our campus.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, we try very hard to do that. Yeah, it's interesting that you say that. It is true. We don't always just host artists and designers because one of the things, too, is the idea that within the creative process, you're responding to something in the world, right? And as artists, designers, musicians, you know, dancers, theater folks, students that are, you know, studying and interested in those fields, you know, they have to understand the world that's around them and what are the issues of the day and what you know, what is it that we need to be processing and responding to in our world? Because artists and designers at the end of the day are those people that help us get through those, you know, think through those processes and can help us change the world, you know, and how our perspective of thinking.

SPEAKER_00:

That makes so much sense. So it

SPEAKER_01:

might be, sometimes we might have a journalist and people are like, I remember one of the first journalists that we had, I had Amy Goodman from Democracy Now! come in and I had, at the time I was talking to Charles Eisendrath at the Knight Wallace House. And he said, why are you doing this? He said, this isn't art and design. And I said, well, actually, it is. I mean, Amy Goodman is a creative. She's created this other network. She's created a whole other way for people to get information. And he kind of loved that. It was a light bulb for him.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, that's exciting. So our festival kicks off on September 25th, and that is not an inconsequential day because that is when Rhiannon Giddens, who's our University of Michigan artist-in-residence, gives a Penny Stamps talk. So, you know, do you have any sense of what Rhiannon's going to do? I mean, she's an amazing musician, but also a scholar, and she's here working on a book project as well as various artistic projects.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, I am so excited to be able to have this event in the Speaker Series and to partner with the Arts Initiative on it, and I love this artist-in-residence that you're embarking on. And she is just such a stellar person to begin with. I do know that she is going to be talking something about the underclass of people in this country helping, you know, through their music to build who we are. I'm hoping she's going to perform a little something for us,

SPEAKER_00:

too. I have never seen her talk without our band, Joe. I'm pretty sure that she's going to sing and play.

SPEAKER_01:

I think we did have some discussion of that, and we— I always love it at Petty Stamps when there's a performative moment on the stage. So I think folks can look forward to that. And just, you know, in my own experience, having seen this woman, wow, can she talk. She is a really great communicator.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, she's so human. I mean, she's very direct and honest and has incredible sort of, I think, experience and integrity that she brings that really connects music making, which sometimes people can feel is like this really otherworldly thing, but she makes it really present and real and so that's going to be great and she's working on a book called When the World's on Fire which is about sort of the contribution of sort of working class people to American popular music and so we tend to forget it's not just Hollywood it's not just like the big the coast and the big cities but it's the people of the Appalachian Mountains and a lot of the music that she's recovered and part of what she's recovered too is that American folk music is not just you know owned by one group of people that it's all sorts of people who have made up American history. Sure, yeah. So African-Americans, you know, Latin Americans, all sorts of people have heard of that folk voice. And so when we talk about music, we have to really expand our notion of who the folk are. So I'm really looking forward to that talk. But that kicks off really a whole month of amazing things. So Gary Graham, you know, I think one of the amazing things you have to do is learn how to pronounce all these names correctly.

SPEAKER_01:

That's always a trick.

SPEAKER_00:

So I can do Jacob Collier– and Mario Moore, but is it Emily Monet?

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, you got

SPEAKER_00:

it. So tell us a little bit about this whole month of the festival. You have an event every Thursday, and you have one of

SPEAKER_01:

those special events. Every Thursday, yes. And, you know, it's kind of a great opportunity for us with this festival. You know, we are able to—I actually love it that it's bookended, you know, with the Rhiannon Giddens being at the beginning and the Jacob Collier, another music event, you know. For

SPEAKER_00:

those who don't know Jacob Collier, who is he?

SPEAKER_01:

Jacob Collier is— an incredibly inspired and inspiring young man from the UK who, during the pandemic, shut up in his bedroom. I mean, this young man, he's sort of the man on fire. He just couldn't help.

SPEAKER_00:

He does everything, too. He sings and keyboards, percussion.

SPEAKER_01:

And guitar. I mean, he plays acoustic instruments, but he also does digital, wild digital stuff. And during the pandemic, During the pandemic, he had to have an outlet and started posting all this music that he was creating online and developed this huge following. And then our good old, now deceased, but wonderful and amazing Quincy Jones found him and then really helped, said, hey, I want to really help you and produce your music. And he did. And wow, he's just taken Jacob to the next level. It's

SPEAKER_00:

one of those moments in internet culture when connections that you would never imagine. Right. And shooting someone to stardom.

SPEAKER_01:

One of the positives of the COVID, you know.

SPEAKER_00:

And he'll be performing with our Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra, a community ensemble here, professional ensemble, a lot of School of Music, Theater and Dance students and faculty play with that group.

SPEAKER_01:

We're very excited about this because it's our first time doing a partnership with the Ann Arbor Symphony. And, you know, as the Penny Stamp Series, we love to partner all the time with everybody. And I'm actually surprised it's taken us this long. This will be our first partnership with the Ann Arbor Symphony. But yes, so Jacob will be actually doing the Penny Stamps series event. This is a special and it's on a Monday at the Michigan Theater. Also at 5.30. And then he will be also performing on Tuesday with the Ann Arbor Symphony at Hill Auditorium.

SPEAKER_00:

That's right. And students should really check that out. Everybody should check it out. Everybody should check all of that out. It definitely meant to be a student-centric experience. So we hope students will

SPEAKER_01:

take it. Yes. Yes. I think they will because he's just so exciting.

SPEAKER_00:

So the Thursday before, Mario Moore is here and they are represented as an artist, painter, and time traveler. So I want to know.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes. Mario Moore is, he is a Detroit artist and a very, very good Detroit artist at that. He is, you know, his medium, he mostly works, he works in painting and he connects, I think the time traveler, I love it that he put that as one of his monikers, you know, he He's connecting sort of traditional and classical painting techniques with now and also with subject matter that was not traditionally seen in classical painting. But he's such a talent, and he's also another person who can speak very well. One of the things I've certainly learned over the years in doing the series is you can have an incredibly talented artist Yeah, so how do you put together a season like this? I mean, you get these

SPEAKER_00:

amazing people together. I mean, I imagine it's quite a jigsaw puzzle to pull this off.

SPEAKER_01:

It is such a jigsaw puzzle. It's a big soft puzzle to pull it off every time. I mean, there's a lot of different entry points. I mean, you know, one of the things is, you know, I'm always trying to connect as much as possible back to what else is happening in the community, on campus, what are the issues of the day that we want to be talking about that we need to be thinking about as a community, and what other people are doing so that we can partner on things and bring deeper experiences. you know, like partnering with you on Rhiannon when she's here doing this other work or like with the Ann Arbor Symphony on Jacob where people can come and hear his story and hear him talk and then go see him perform and do what he does. Yeah, absolutely. And then there's also the different communities I'm trying to connect with. You know, there's the students where we're trying to think about where they're at and meeting them there and what's going on with the curriculum. But then, you know, also in the larger community, what's happening in the community. So, you know, there's... There's all those different kind of constituents that you're trying to pull together. And then also wanting to bring many, many different perspectives to the table. You know, we don't want to have like, I've never done something, you know, where it was like all of a sudden the whole season is just painters or just designers or just this. You know, we want to make sure that there's all different stuff mixed up in there, you know, subject matter wise, media wise, you know, discipline wise. Because another thing about it is, you know, for students at the university, They're trying to figure out their life. They're trying to, you know, and a lot of young people, maybe they don't even know what they want to do, and that's okay. And one of the things that you can really gain by coming to the series all the time is insights from all these really wildly different ways of approaching that, that people have, you know, taken these different creative journeys

SPEAKER_00:

in their life. Yeah, that's so powerful.

SPEAKER_01:

Finding their own latitude. So I hope that that really, you know, I always say to the students at the beginning of the year, you're not going to like all of these. And isn't that, you know, sometimes it's handy to figure out what you don't like to set you on your path to figure out what you do like. But I always say there's going to be one that really turns you on.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. So one of the cool programs that the Arts Initiative is doing now is an Arts Honors Court where undergraduate students, master students, actually any student, can really literally wear as part of their commencement regalia their arts identity and really celebrate the fact that 75% of our students see themselves as creative artists. So they have to earn points in order to do this, like get involved in the arts. Can they earn points and like actually take the penny stamps speaker series for credit? Is that a, is that a possible? I love

SPEAKER_01:

it that you're bringing this up, Mark. Yes, absolutely. Uh, the penny stamp series beyond being a public program is also offered as a one credit course every semester. Um, and it's just a pass fail, easy one credit course where basically you just have to show up. Um, and, And, you know, I always say it's one of the courses that you can get the most out of and engage with it a lot and stay after and meet people, or you can just show up and do nothing and you still get the credit. But yes, we would love for non-majors to join us. And if they want to take the credit, that would be wonderful. And, you know, shouldn't everybody want to have that beautiful arts honors cord when they graduate? I think it's a wonderful thing. And so, yes, would love it. All you non-majors out there This is another way that you can get that Arts Chord and be part of the series. And, you know, you can not just show up. You can also get credit for showing up.

SPEAKER_00:

I know. We want people to do more than just show up. But I think it's a little extra inspiration to show up. Yes. And I do think, you know, as you were saying, like being there in person makes all the difference. And so I'm so excited that this is part of the Honors Chord program.

SPEAKER_01:

Yay. Me too. There's going to be one that really turns you on. Yeah. You know, so we're all

SPEAKER_00:

going to be there. One thing I know that students are interested in

SPEAKER_01:

is fashion. You have Gary Graham, fashion designer. thinking about when we invited him is he said, you know, if I'm going to talk about my creative process, he's like, wouldn't it be cool if I could make an early visit to Ann Arbor and sort of explore the lay of the land? He's especially excited about the Michigan Theater, and he wants to create a textile specific to the space. Wow. And then he can unpack his process and show how he did it.

SPEAKER_00:

That is really cool.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. So he's actually, yeah, here on the ground today in Ann Arbor.

SPEAKER_00:

And then on October 9th, Emily Monet

SPEAKER_01:

Emily Monet, yes. This is exciting. She is a Canadian, Indigenous, First Nations artist. And she will also, this is a partnership with UMS. She's also going to be performing. She has a show at UMS. And she, you know, she's one of these artists like you're talking about where she's got so many different facets to her

SPEAKER_00:

work. So this is Nigaman Tanai, the immersive theater work. Yes. Exactly. Okay. Yeah, that's going to be at the Power Center. Yes. And it lines up with Climate Week. And I know it has a lot to do about, you know, song and indigenous knowledge. But as I recall, we talked to our friends over at UMS a couple of days ago. Oh, good. And they're putting a, like a theater within Power Center. Like there's a theater on the stage. Right. It's very intimate with the audience. The environment. Yes. Well, that's exciting. So you can not only experience the show, but you can talk to the artists. Yes. About that, their creative process. Yes. Well, that's fantastic. And, you know, one of the things One of the things we're hoping with the Michigan Arts Festival is that people catch the bug of what's amazing about the arts in Ann Arbor. And they really start to see Michigan as a place that, yeah, we have an amazing medical center, an amazing engineering school, amazing athletics department, but also amazing artistic resources. We really do. Michigan engineering, Michigan athletics, Michigan arts. So maybe to close, just what do you hope people really get out of being part of the Penny Stamps series, and I'm particularly thinking about, like, if you come week after week, if you do what I should be doing, which is just reserve 5.30 every Thursday to make sure I'm at the Michigan Theater, which is what I think everybody listening to this podcast would be wise to do, but how does that affect people over time, and what do you hope this series does for people?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, I think it can do a lot of different things, and I think people come looking for different things. You know, I think it can be an inspiration, you know, to people in their own creative life and what they're doing. Like I said, I think it can be a beacon for students who are, you know, sorting out and seeking their own path and sort of learning from different journeys that other people have taken in the creative world. I think it also is this opportunity as a community for us to have, you happens less and less is this idea that we're all together in a time and space and having a common cultural experience together. And that really is powerful, I think, in, you know, building community. And it also, because it also gives us this common experience, this thread where we then can talk about it together, right? I mean, I know I hear some people, local community members that tell me they come to this series on Thursdays Because then they meet friends or their partner or whatever, and they meet at the series, and then they go to dinner afterwards. And they have a conversation about whatever it is. It's conversation fodder. And I think it's also an opportunity for people to meet other people that are like-minded people that maybe they befriend. And I also always say to the students at the beginning of the year, building your network, it's not only just about, oh, this person that's visiting a on the stage is you know wonderful and you should stay for the Q&A and try to talk to them afterwards but look around the theater because there's amazing people in that theater and you never know who you're sitting next to or who you're bumping into in the lobby and you know say hello stripe a conversation because you know I've had students that have gone on to you know meet someone that had an art gallery in Chelsea and all of a sudden when they got graduated they had a show there or they went to work for someone or they had a you know you just It's like taking that moment to be there in person and meet other

SPEAKER_00:

people. powerful, but it actually starts right away of students getting to know their peers. And those are the people who are going to be your collaborators and your artistic inspiration in the future. So that is so cool. And anyway, I'm so excited about this year, the SNAP Speaker Series. Thanks for all you do on our campus. Oh, my

SPEAKER_01:

pleasure. I

SPEAKER_00:

hope that many, many people will take advantage of the series, and I look forward to future collaborations with the SNAP Series on the Arts Initiative.

SPEAKER_01:

Thank you so much, Mark. We value so much your partnership and the Arts Initiative coming to campus has just been phenomenal. And thrilled about this, you know, the Arts Festival this fall and more great things to come.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, well, let's go make some art. Yay! Creative Currents is a project the University of Michigan's Arts Initiative, please visit our website at arts.umich.edu. Thanks for listening and for being part of the Michigan arts community that makes our campus so fabulous. So until next time, stay curious, stay inspired, and keep your creative currents flowing.