Award winning actor and playwright, Beth Graham, has come to know the voices of her inner critic(s) well, having adopted the term Weasels to capture the sometimes playful, more often threatening nature of such characters to the creative temperament.  She was so familiar with the nature of her own Weasels, that she chose to give them the title role in one of her latest plays, examining the turmoil we can experience when our voices turn from curiosity to doubt, to fear and to the abandonment of courage and confidence.  

As an actor, Beth Graham, has worked professionally at theatres across the country and toured internationally. As a playwright, she has received the Gwen Pharis Ringwood Literary Award twice and has been a finalist for the Governor Generals Award for Drama. Currently, Beth is the Lee Playwright in Residence at the University of Alberta. At the time of our conversation, her play Weasel had just opened in Edmonton, Dora Maar: The Wicked One, which she cowrote with longtime collaborate Daniela Vlaskalic was back in rehearsals for its Edmonton production at Workshop West Playwrights’ Theatre and I caught up with her in St. John’s, Newfoundland where she was working as dramaturge on a dance show based on a collection of poetry. 

As someone who loves to walk, wander and wonder, Katharine Weinmann travelled to Spain last fall to walk the famed Camino de Santiago. Our conversation touches on her actual Camino experience and more so, how she has found inspiration to continue to live life artfully with a true Camino spirit.  

One of Katharine many gifts is her ability to be fully present and pay attention to the world and ourselves within it. Her professional and personal careers have been dedicated in service to the growth of others in leadership and living.  

Always drawn to writing, Katharine has recently come to embrace and honour her poet’s voice, paying fresh attention to each moment.  Through poetry and  contemplative creative non-fiction, Katharine shares the beauty in her imperfect, sometimes broken, mostly well lived and much loved life in her weekly blog, A Wabi Sabi Life, a celebration of existence unfolding in all its mess and mystery, with all its grit and grace.

A globally recognized practitioner, teacher and mentor of the Circle Way, Katharine is adept at the art of hosting...ensuring the space for others to be seen and understood as they navigate their own learning pathways. 

A Wabi Sabi Life blog and its page on her Camino: http://awabisabilife.ca/the-portuguese-coastal-camino/

Katharine’s essay, “A Creative Walks Her Camino,” is forthcoming in SAGE-ING: The Journal of Creative Aging, December 2022, Issue 43 – online publication around December 21: http://www.sageing.ca/

Ellipses Thinking... will return on Wednesday Jan 25. 

In this special Season 2 preview host Greg Dowler-Coltman offers listeners, a sense of what he and his guests will explore this season. As well as paying tribute to his friend and coach Bruce McLeod. 

Julia Coltman is the host of "OFF THE SHELF", the newest podcast from the Ordinary Podcasting Network. On this special Bonus episode of Ellipses Thinking... She shares her love of literature and why she decided to launch a podcast book club! 

In Lena McKenzie’s words, she “inherited a fabric of beliefs, woven by generations of women…a fabric that tells stories of not just one family line, but a constellation of them.” Her memories of the bond forged between her mother from the Philippines and her paternal Grandmother, from Minneapolis, speak to a powerful wisdom co-created by a shared desire to embrace all there was to learn. A proud Filipina Canadian, Lena’s roots are in classical music, having studied voice in Manila before embarking on a professional career that has included TV, film, musical theatre and concert halls as soloist and member of Asia’s premiere classical crossover trio, the Opera Belles. In 2020, after spending a decade performing around the world, Lena found home on Salt Spring Island off the coast of Vancouver Island. Here she has found herself with the time and reflective space to return to her love of song writing and recently, released her first EP, Finding North, an ethereal reflection of her complex cultural background. She speaks of finding peace with the idea of ‘home’ even when home exists in many places, and how she finds beauty as an artist in embracing the idea of the amateur and the excitement of beginning again.

Deep integration of past and present as we dream forward and design our collective future…that is one of the many things that is on the mind and in the heart of Lance Cardinal. Lance is a multi-disciplinary creative professional and proud member of the Treaty 8 Bigstone Cree Nation. His family roots stem deep from his small home community of Calling Lake, Alberta. Over the past 2 decades, Lance has built an impressive catalogue of work as a multi award winning Visual and Concept Artist, Performer, Writer, Teacher, Facilitator and Cultural Healer. His company, Soulflame, is committed to raising the recognition of indigenous community members through creativity, positivity, and conversations. Lance’s enthusiasm is infectious and his commitment to teaching lives in everything he does. His online presence, provides snapshots of the process in process of his mural paintings…his YouTube series Indigenous Art Adventures with Lance Cardinal, provides the platform for his skills as performer, visual artist and educator to reach through the screens to young people, of all ages, to introduce or reinforce important learnings in his desire to help bridge the gap of understanding between Indigenous and Non-indigenous Canadians. Whether creating an original shoe design for an iconic local company, a mural celebrating the science of indigenous land learnings or a breathtaking celebration of Turtle Island as a logo for the Edmonton Oilers, Lance remains completely focused on his passion to share deep and reverent knowings through the imagery of his art and the openness of his heart.

To Learn More:

ordinarypodcasts.com

dowlercoltman.com

Nicole Schafenacker, lives her life in a constant state of ellipsis thinking. Her work as an interdisciplinary artist and researcher has always existed in the liminal spaces between; a space of curiosity in which the unknown is the only way we can ever truly be discovery-ready. She sees in art, the existence of pathways to create both meaning and understanding, to bridge knowledge systems and ways of knowing and to make the possible, personal. Through her work, she embraces radical, transformative approaches to addressing the challenges of the complex issues that we face as one species alongside others on Earth. A cohort member of the International Centre for Art for Social Change, Nicole has spent the last 5 years living, studying and working in northern BC and northern Norway and is thrilled to now be living on the edge of Marsh Lake, Yukon. Her artistic signature is indelibly driven by a commitment to social justice and framed in terms of action research in which she is as curious about what might result in the space of creation as the creative result itself. She is currently Artist in Residence with the Yukon Chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society. She is deeply committed to and engaged in working to undo the colonial relations at the root of the climate crisis and fully acknowledges her role in making active the ongoing process of decolonizing self and society.

To Learn More:

ordinarypodcasts.com

dowlercoltman.com

Facing the challenge of choosing a focus for his PHd thesis in Computational Media Design, Owen Brierley felt the panic we so often feel when the canvas feels too blank, too wide open…But almost immediately he found himself drawing courage from the voice of a mentor dating back nearly 3 decades, specifically on the importance of trusting self in order to enter the void. By his own admission, Owen Brierley’s life has always been about transitions fed by an insatiable curiosity. At times those transitions have felt like, "now what!?" At other times, "what's next?!" But he has never felt a stranger to an ellipsis state and the creative opportunity it has consistently offered. A performer from a very young age, his mind was blown when a friend introduced him to a new computer "fad" called the World Wide Web and he leapt into the brave new world of digital media design and production. A natural ability to bridge gaps in understanding between disparate groups of experts, has allowed him to collaborate across many disciplines in the arts and sciences. In his latest ellipses thinking adventure, Owen is discovering the world of academia and the process of doctoral studies in the Computational Media Design program at the University of Calgary. In this space, Owen is playing with Intelligent Virtual Beings and the human side of research in video gaming and virtual realities. He is fascinated by the relationships we create with Roombas, our wariness of autonomous vehicles, our complex evolving trust with Siri or Alexa, and our joy of watching and interacting with non-player characters in open-world games. Owen knows beauty to exist in these virtual creatures, and is intrigued by how the artists who design them might help us appreciate the beauty in our relationships with them. 

To Learn More:

ordinarypodcasts.com

dowlercoltman.com

Sister/Singer/Songwriters Emily & Samantha Schultz continue to discover, (sometimes uncomfortably) the power of vulnerability in shaping and maturing their artistic voices. Over the years, I have witnessed them carve out and navigate the complicated relationships that are demanded of artists and their art and to me, in a manner that demonstrated incredible courage and imagination. Trusting their intuitive powers and anchored by strong foundational values rooted in family, they continue to find ways to show up as their most authentic selves… as artists, as women, as daughters, partners and sisters, even when it has felt incredibly challenging to do so. Over the course of two conversations, we had the opportunity to trace from childhood what drew them both the music, the importance of finding and nurturing community, their ongoing articulation of what success means on a personal level and how both have been and continue to be in life and through their art, powerful advocates for mental health. They also shared some insight into their creative process, trusting that when they are open and ready for the muse to arrive, they stand a chance of capturing what they need to spin it into music.

To Learn More:

ordinarypodcasts.com

dowlercoltman.com

Nicole Deibert is clearly is on her own Renaissance Woman journey. Whether at work as Head Scenic Painter at the Citadel Theatre in Edmonton, at home surrounded by acrylics, oils or water colours or her digital canvas…in her kitchen with an ever-widening palette of garden delights heading into preserve jars…or as she currently steps into the entrepreneurial ring, Nicole boldly embraces her true creative nature. In our conversation, she shares how she loves the invitations to figure out artistic solutions to the challenges of creating visually stunning illusions in the theatre. We talk about the path to mastery and the role that intuition and experimentation plays. I also asked how she continues to access the kind of space that allows her to drop in and get lost in the creative zone of a work in progress. I hope you will join us for another conversation on ellipsis thinking. And if you are enjoying this program, please spread the word with your community of curious listeners.

To Learn More:

ordinarypodcasts.com

dowlercoltman.com