This week on Common Shapes podcast, I’m joined by my internet friend Anna Fusco to discuss dedicating your life to art.

Anna is an artist, writer, deep thinker, question asker and truth teller. Her practice consists of writing her Substack newsletter and making drawings.

Together we talk about our daily list practice, creating a gallery show, the challenges of pricing your work, and what it means to be a full-time artist.

Tune in to learn about—

• The List aka Project Miracle
• Making art & having art shows
• Pricing your work
• Newsletters & Substack
• How to get started as a self-employed artist

Links

• Make Miracles in Forty Days by Melody Beattie
• Visit Anna’s poster shop, Lord Cowboy
• Subscribe to Anna’s Substack newsletter, Unsupervised
• Follow Anna on Instagram
• Get the Creative Ideation Portal
• Sign up for my weekly newsletter, Monday Monday
• Find all these links & more at codycookparrott.com/commonshapes

I think the great fear of most creative people is that we’ll run out of ideas and not know what to do next.

I come up against this time and time again in my own work, so I’ve developed a series of practices for releasing fear, removing blocks, returning to center, and discovering what’s next.

Tune in to this episode to learn my six favorite tools for when I don’t know what to do, including—

• Morning pages & artist dates
• Movement
• Phoning a friend
• Setting up an easy practice
• List-making
• Recovery & spiritual practice

After you listen, go get my free Creative Ideation Portal, and join me in dreaming up what’s next for you and your work.

Links

• Get the Creative Ideation Portal
• Sign up for my weekly newsletter, Monday Monday
• Get Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way
• Find all these links & more at codycookparrott.com/commonshapes

This week on Common Shapes podcast, I’m sharing the mic with my friend Tamara Santibañez for a conversation about oral histories, tattooing, freelancing, and art as activism.

Tamara is an interdisciplinary artist and oral historian living and working in Brooklyn. Their work is rooted in storytelling and the visual language of identity construction, exploring subcultural semiotics and the meanings we make from bodily adornment.

Tune in to hear us discuss—

• Tamara’s studio practice
• Oral histories & oral traditions
• Tattooing as liberation work
• How to balance many projects as a freelancer
• Making time for movement work
• Coalitions & political responsibility
• The different feelings/functions/forms of Instagram vs Substack

Links—

• Visit Tamara’s website
• Follow Tamara on Instagram
• Subscribe to Tamara’s Substack
• Get Tamara’s book, Could This Be Magic? Tattooing as Liberation Work
• Get the Creative Ideation Portal
• Sign up for my weekly newsletter, Monday Monday
• Find all these links & more at codycookparrott.com/commonshapes

This week on Common Shapes, I share four practices for checking in with your creative pace — internal seasons, intuitive sharing, weather systems, and the earning pathway.

This episode feels like an updated version of How to Not Always Be Working, and I hope it serves your practice, your pace, and your deepest alignment.

Listen in to learn—

• Why lists are how I orient myself in my life
• How to identify & live by your internal seasons
• What it means to share intuitively
• How to cultivate your earning pathway
• Why it’s so important to find your own pace

After you listen, go get my free Creative Ideation Portal, and join me in making our art and pacing ourselves.

Links

• Get the Creative Ideation Portal
• Sign up for my weekly newsletter, Monday Monday
• Take my class, Organizing A Day
• Find all these links & more at codycookparrott.com/commonshapes

This week I’m welcoming Common Shapes’ very first guest, Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo.

Lukaza (they/them/Lukaza) an artist, abolitionist, educator, storyteller, cultural worker and person of multitudes. Through a practice based in the printed multiple, community-based work and installation building, they invite the viewer to recall and share their own lived narratives, offering power and weight to the creation of a larger dialogue around the telling of B.I.Q.T.P.O.C. (Black, Indigenous, queer, trans, people of color) stories.

Listen in to hear us discuss—

• The web shape for creative work
• How to craft a studio practice
• Claiming our work as our main income stream
• How to weave your values and your activism into your sharing practices
• The radical history of newsletters

Links

• Get the Creative Ideation Portal
• Sign up for my weekly newsletter, Monday Monday
• Find all these links & more at codycookparrott.com/commonshapes

More from Lukaza

• Visit Lukaza’s website
• Follow Lukaza on Instagram
• Subscribe to ROOTS WEBS NETS BRANCHES BULLETIN BOARDS

This week’s episode of Common Shapes is about the fact (yes, it’s a fact) that your art is of service, no matter what you create.

I also share my four containers for connecting with the why behind your work. And I offer many, many ideas for how to market your art in creative, fun, meaningful ways.

Listen in to learn—

• Why all art is of service
• How to figure out who your art is for
• My favorite creative marketing practices
• Practices for visioning our work in the world
• A spell for hitting send

After you listen, go get my free Creative Ideation Portal, and join me in sharing your work with the world!

Links

• Get the Creative Ideation Portal
• Sign up for my weekly newsletter, Monday Monday
• Join Flexible Office, my digital co-working space
• Take my Newsletter class
• Sam Slupski’s I LOVE TO FAIL
• Find all these links & more at codycookparrott.com/commonshapes

Today’s episode of Common Shapes is about why I love newsletters and why you (yes, you) should have one.

Together we’ll explore the marketing side and the creative side of newsletters. I’ll also share—

• My journey starting my newsletter
• How to choose your email service provider
• The newsletter tech I recommend
• What to put in your newsletter
• Examples from my favorite newsletters
• How to decide if your newsletter should be paid or free

After you listen, go get my free Creative Ideation Portal, and get ready to hit send on your first (or next) newsletter today.

Links

• Get the Creative Ideation Portal
• Sign up for my weekly newsletter, Monday Monday
• Join Flexible Office, my digital co-working space
• Take my Newsletter class
• Use the code MARLEEGRACE to get 50% off your first year of Flodesk
• Newsletters I mentioned in this episode: Fariha Roisin’s Substack How to Cure a Ghost, Liz Migliorelli’s Sister Spinster newsletter, Kevin Morby’s Substack
• Off the Grid episode, “To Substack or Not to Substack”
• Find all these links & more at codycookparrott.com/commonshapes

Today’s episode of Common Shapes is about creating creative containers for our work and convening the spiritual committees that help us make and share our art.

Tune in to hear me share—

• The many shapes my work has taken
• How I select and gather my spiritual committee for each creative project
• Why you need an email list
• All kinds of containers your work can take
• The importance of being in community with other artists

Then grab my free Creative Ideation Portal and start gathering your committee and outlining your first project today.

Links

• Get the Creative Ideation Portal
• Sign up for my weekly newsletter, Monday Monday
• Join Flexible Office, my digital co-working space
• Take my Newsletter class
• Teachers I shared: Bear Hebert of Marketing for Weirdos & Amelia Hruby of Off the Grid
• Find all these links & more at codycookparrott.com/commonshapes

Welcome to Common Shapes! This week’s episode is about the art of beginning AKA the moment just before the sunrise of our projects when anything and everything is possible.

Tune in to hear me share—

• Stories of my many creative beginnings
• My favorite visioning process
• Reflections on imposter syndrome
• The magic of starting small

Then grab my free Creative Ideation Portal and start dreaming up your own beginnings today.

Links

• Get the Creative Ideation Portal
• Sign up for my weekly newsletter, Monday Monday
• Sign up for my class, The Art of Beginning
• Take my Newsletter class
• Find all these links & more at codycookparrott.com/commonshapes

Welcome to Common Shapes, a podcast about practices, systems and rituals for creative life.

It’s hosted by me, Cody Cook-Parrott.

And on this show, I talk about crafting business ecosystems that are in alignment with our values, marketing as a creative practice, and crossing the bridge between artist and small business owner.

Tune in to the first four episodes for my Creative Ideation Portal guide, and then stay tuned for conversations with artists, writers and thinkers I’m grateful to be in community with.

Whether you’re dreaming up a book, a newsletter, a thoughtful text to a friend, an online class, a podcast, a collection of beautiful paintings in an art gallery, a membership site, a dog walking service, or anything else — Common Shapes is here to support you on your path to creation and to service. Subscribe to join us.

Links

• Get the Creative Ideation Portal
• Sign up for my weekly newsletter, Monday Monday
• Join Flexible Office, my digital co-working space
• Find all these links & more at marleegrace.space/commonshapes