A Life Creative Podcast

Imagine being asked to freshen up the rooftop garden of House & Garden magazine’s editor-in-chief, Dominique Browning, for a photo shoot. For this episode’s guest — author and editor Stephen Orr — that one encounter led to a job as the magazine’s garden editor.

Stephen tells the story of his upbringing in West Texas, where his parents sparked an early appreciation for nature and plants. He shares how the foundation of skills and experiences he set in motion in early adulthood ultimately landed him a dream job in New York City magazine publishing.

But as always on A Life Creative, the path had plenty of twists, turns, and grunt work — all in service of building a creative life. Along the way, he worked for acclaimed publications including Condé Nast Traveler, House & Garden, Domino, and Martha Stewart Living (planting 10,000 daffodil bulbs alongside Martha!), and spent many years as editor-in-chief of Better Homes & Gardens.

He's authored four books, his latest The Gardener’s Mindset: Connecting with Nature Through Plants published in 2026, is a collection of essays in which he considers the important role of nature, plants and gardens in our lives.

And his three favorite gardens in the United States? You’ll have to listen to find out.

This episode is supported by Aura House, cold-air diffused home fragrances.  Visit them and use creative10 for 10% off your purchase.

For more on Stephen please visit:

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How does an art history major and auto-didact maker become one of the country’s most sought-after “celebration experts” — and one of Martha Stewart’s creative right hands for more than 25 years?

Darcy Miller joins us to tell the story. From her very first job — hired by legendary creative director Gael Towey in the scrappy, pre-magazine, roll-up-your-sleeves days at Martha Stewart — to becoming Editorial Director of Martha Stewart Weddings, Darcy spent decades crafting the beautiful stories you’ve seen on the magazine’s pages, working alongside the photographers, art directors, and prop stylists host Melañio Gomez knows firsthand.

Then she struck out on her own. Her brand, Darcy Miller Designs, helps people turn even the smallest occasions into something unforgettable — and her book, Celebrate Everything, illustrated entirely by her own hand and filled with mementos straight from the heart, shows exactly how.

Her philosophy? Almost anything can be a moment worth remembering.

This episode is supported by Aura House, cold-air diffused home fragrances.  Visit them and use creative10 for 10% off your purchase.

For more on Darcy please visit:

www.alifecreativepod.com

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@alifecreative on Instagram

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Liz Callaway is an Emmy Award winning, Grammy and Tony nominated singer and actress with a long resume in performing arts. Her Broadway debut happened in her early 20's with the first run of Stephen Sondheim's Merrily We Roll Along.  She went on to perform in Cats, Baby, and Miss Saigon on Broadway and has recorded (and self-produced!) numerous albums in various music genres.  She has a longtime friendship with composer Stephen Schwartz (Wicked, Pippen, Godspell among many others) and her latest album is a tribute to his work:  The Wizard and I: Liz Callaway Sings Stephen Schwartz.

Liz is also known for her performances as the singing voice behind a number of animated feature film characters, mostly famously as Anastasia singing the Oscar nominated song Journey to the Past.  She also performs with her sister Ann Hampton Callaway and shares some hilarious stories from their time as twenty-somethings getting their start in New York City.

A Life Creative's show producer, Chris Kangas met Liz while seated next to her on a flight to San Francisco and she graciously agreed to come on the show and share her wonderful story.

This episode is supported by Aura House, cold-air diffused home fragrances.  Visit them and use creative10 for 10% off your purchase.

For more on Liz please visit:

www.alifecreativepod.com

alifecreative.Substack.com

@alifecreative on Instagram

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Prop stylist, gardener, ceramicist, textile designer — these are just some of the many hats Martin Bourne wears in his creative life. In this episode he shares the story of his upbringing in bucolic Hertfordshire in the United Kingdom, how he complemented a natural talent for design with various academic pursuits, and how he stumbled into his first styling jobs — not yet knowing that "prop stylist" was even a career.

Before leaving the UK for New York City, Martin worked for Elle Decor and was recruited to produce interior design stories for Tyler Brûlé's influential new magazine Wallpaper*. A friend in New York eventually convinced him to visit, and he soon found himself picking up freelance styling work. He's been in the U.S. for more than 20 years now, with a home in upstate New York where he pursues his other great passion: gardening.

During the COVID era, the pressure to reinvent was felt across the creative community — how to keep making work under the constraints of home confinement became the central challenge. For Martin, this led to a collaboration with photographer (and upstate neighbor) Patricia Heal.  Together they experimented with creating still life images, even producing stories shot inside a chicken coop. That inventive spirit carried forward into something unexpected: the backdrops and vessels he created have since evolved into textile and ceramic product lines.

It's a life lived in perpetual creative motion — experimenting, collaborating, and making beautiful things almost as a byproduct of simply following curiosity wherever it leads. 

This episode is supported by Aura House, cold-air diffused home fragrances.  Visit them and use creative10 for 10% off your purchase.

For more on Martin please visit:

www.alifecreativepod.com

alifecreative.Substack.com

@alifecreative on Instagram

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In the small world of the New York City creator community show host Melanio Gomez worked at Martha Stewart Living with the sister-in-law of this week’s guest, Allison Williams.

Allison is a graduate of Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) who went on to build successful creative businesses.  Initially she worked for several years as a graphic designer for Carbone Smolan design firm.  She left to do freelance design work landing clients like Takashimaya under the corporate name ‘Design MW’ which she co-founded with her former husband JP Williams.

Eventually, she and JP co-founded WMS&Co. an online retailer of artfully curated home office products.  She recounts how it all started, the lessons she learned along the way, and how she manages art and commerce successfully.

This episode is supported by Aura House, cold-air diffused home fragrances.  Visit them and use creative10 for 10% off your purchase.

For more on Allison please visit:

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Cheryl Molnar is a New York-based artist whose intricately layered collages — composed of paint-stained paper, photographs, and architectural drawings mounted on natural birch panels — reconstruct familiar landscapes into evocative, utopian worlds. Her work examines the tension between the natural environment and human development, exploring themes of memory, social class, and the places we return to only to find them changed.

Cheryl and host Melanio Gomez crossed paths early in their careers at Martha Stewart Living, Cheryl's first job after graduating from RISD. She has since earned an MFA from Pratt Institute and held residencies at Smack Mellon in Brooklyn and the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts (EFA) in New York City, where she maintains a studio today. Her work has been exhibited across the country, including at the University of Arizona and the Islip Art Museum, and she has completed public art commissions for the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs (a permanent ceramic tile installation at PS19Q in Queens) and for Los Angeles County. She also curates exhibitions through her curatorial project, Cheryl Molnar Projects.

A few months ago, Melanio reconnected with Cheryl at C24 Gallery in New York City — which represents her — on the occasion of her solo exhibition The Overview. There Cheryl gave a talk about her work and inspirations, offering a window into the reconstructed landscapes and layered memories at the heart of her practice.

On today's episode Cheryl shares the path that led her from making Barbie doll clothes as a child to being a full-time artist with an incredible body of work. 

This episode is supported by Aura House, cold-air diffused home fragrances.  Visit them and use creative10 for 10% off your purchase.

For more on Cheryl please visit:

www.alifecreativepod.com

alifecreative.Substack.com

@alifecreative on Instagram

alifecreative on YouTube

Peter Som joins host Melanio Gomez to share the story of how he became a New York City-based fashion designer. After early stints at Calvin Klein and Michael Kors, he pursued his dream of creating his own label — spending nearly 15 years producing collections shown on Fashion Week runways, sold at Bergdorf Goodman and Neiman Marcus, and worn by Michelle Obama, Beyoncé, Scarlett Johansson, and Maggie Gyllenhaal.

Over those years he cultivated a second passion: cooking. Rooted in childhood hours spent in the kitchen with his mother and grandmother, cooking was never just about getting food on the table — it was a way of sustaining meaning, connection, and heritage in everyday life. He has written food stories for Saveur, Bon Appétit, Food & Wine, and other publications, and in 2025 authored his first cookbook, Family Style (Harvest/HarperCollins). The recipes were inspired in part by a remarkable discovery made in his grandmother's apartment after she passed away.

This episode is supported by Aura House, cold-air diffused home fragrances.  Visit them and use creative10 for 10% off your purchase.

For more about Peter and links to his work:

www.alifecreativepod.com

alifecreative.Substack.com

@alifecreative on Instagram

alifecreative on YouTube

Ray Booth grew up in Huntsville, Alabama, studied architecture at Auburn, and today divides his time between Nashville, New York City, and Provincetown, Massachusetts — a life as layered as the interiors he creates.

Ray's path to becoming a partner at McAlpine, the celebrated architecture and interiors firm founded by Bobby McAlpine, wasn't a straight line. After interning with the firm in college, he headed to New York to work in the studio of legendary designer John Saladino. He also spent time as a model with Click Model Management — a chapter that funded extended travel through Europe and deepened his eye for history, craft, and beauty.

McAlpine eventually drew him back with an offer to build out the firm's interiors practice, and Ray has been shaping some of America's most thoughtful homes ever since. He's published two books: Evocative Interiors (2018) and The Expressive Home (2025).

In this conversation, Ray shares a design philosophy rooted not in aesthetics but in emotion — he sees homes as emotional vessels, containers for the full breadth of human experience. Beauty, he'll tell you, is the byproduct of creating a soulful home.

Host Melañio Gomez has known Ray since the early '90s, when both were just beginning their careers and adult lives.

This episode is supported by Aura House, cold-air diffused home fragrances.  Visit them and use creative10 for 10% off your purchase.

For more about Ray and links to his work:

www.alifecreativepod.com

alifecreative.Substack.com

@alifecreative on Instagram

alifecreative on YouTube

Melañio Gomez, host of A Life Creative, first encountered Cy and Genevieve Carter while on assignment for Martha Stewart Living — and it's easy to see why they made an impression. After honing their craft at the celebrated Los Angeles design collective Commune Design, this married duo founded Carter Design, building a devoted following among actors, artists, and creative professionals drawn to their signature mix of modern and heritage, and their talent for delivering the unexpected.

In this episode, Melañio draws out the origin stories behind that sensibility. Cy grew up on ranchland in the Texas Panhandle; Genevieve in New England, where her great-great-grandfather was the renowned architect, Stanford White. Two very different worlds — yet both formative, and both alive in their work. The Carters describe their approach as anthropological: a deep reading of who a client is, where they've been, and who they're becoming.

Carter Design's clients often arrive at a particular moment — a life in transition, a new chapter opening while the last one still deserves honoring. Knowing how to hold both at once, the new and the cherished, turns out to be their quiet superpower.

This episode is supported by Aura House, cold-air diffused home fragrances.  Visit them and use creative10 for 10% off your purchase.

For more about Cy & Genevieve and links to their sites:

www.alifecreativepod.com

alifecreative.Substack.com

@alifecreative on Instagram

alifecreative on YouTube

A Life Creative went on location for the first time, and it was worth the trip. We recorded this episode at Star Bright Farm in Baltimore County, Maryland — home to Helen Norman, an accomplished fashion, food, and lifestyle photographer whose career took her from New York City and beyond, all while keeping her roots firmly in rural Maryland life.

Helen and her son Peter Elmore have built something rare at Star Bright: a fully hands-on herb farm where they grow, distill, and craft a line of home and wellness products — lotions, candles, teas, essential oils — that are as thoughtfully made as they are beautifully packaged. You can find them online, at farmers markets, or better yet, visit the farm shop in person.

Host Melañio Gomez and Helen go way back — they worked together on a Martha Stewart Living entertaining story shot in Jon Carloftis' Bucks County potting shed. (Jon told his own story in an earlier episode — worth a listen.)

For more about Helen, Peter & Star Bright Farm visit links below:

www.alifecreativepod.com

alifecreative.Substack.com

@alifecreative on Instagram

alifecreative on YouTube