Everyday Creative People

“Being stuck is an important part of the creative process – every great creative advance has been preceded by being stuck.



And it’s staying with that, and then suddenly you see it differently. You discover that… there are different forces at play here than what I thought, and there are different barriers, and some of the barriers that I was fighting against, they don’t even exist! They’re just a construct.”



Roger Nierenberg is a conductor who has enjoyed long tenures as Music Director of both The Jacksonville Symphony (Florida) and the Stamford Symphony (Connecticut). His conducting work has brought him to the podium of The London Philharmonic, The Residentie Orkest, The New Zealand Symphony, The National Symphony, and the symphony orchestras of cities across the US, and he has collaborated with musicians from more than one hundred orchestras around the world.



Roger is also the creator of The Music Paradigm, an interactive learning experience that brings teams into the orchestra rehearsal process to discover critical lessons about leadership and teamwork. Participants are seated directly amongst the orchestra musicians where they gain fresh understandings about the opportunities and challenges faced by their own organization. Over the past twenty years, Nierenberg has presented to hundreds of different organizations, from civic groups to Fortune 500 companies, in two dozen different countries. The lessons and experience of The Music Paradigm are shared in a narrative account through the book, Maestro: A Surprising Story about Leading By Listening.



To follow Roger, you can find him on Twitter @rogernierenberg or on Facebook at The Music Paradigm.

This week I got to interview a dear friend and a true renaissance soul, Kristin Richardson Jordan, about her work as a social justice poet and in particular her most recent book of poetry, Water and Light: Choose Love Now.



Kristin is a book printing poet, writer, teaching artist, whose work is driven by an activist spirit. She grew up in the historically black neighborhood of Harlem, New York, and draws a great source of inspiration from the deep roots of activism, community, and artistic excellence in this community.



She is the daughter of two physicians who worked extremely hard and overcame great obstacles to become minority physicians and who strive to serve their communities and help those underserved and underrepresented in health and science. Kristin graduated from Brown University in 2009 with a BA in Black Studies (“Africana”) and Literary Arts.



To learn more about Kristin and her work, you can check out her websites below:



* kristinrichardsonjordan.com: Kristin’s personal website* Pensup.com: the home of Kristin’s publishing company for “literary activists”

Photo credit: Stéphan Ballard



Kofi Oduro is a creative coder, creative engineer, thinker, poet, and performer living in Montreal, Quebec (my new hometown!).



In this week’s episode, we take a dive into computer science and finding creative fulfillment when you’re also a math geek. Kofi fills me in on the intersections of live coding, video, AI, spoken word poetry, music, and “algoraves,” an event where people dance to music created by algorithms. Turns out, math is at the foundation of pretty much everything we do.



Kofi uses Videography, Poetry and Creative Coding, to highlight the realms of the human performance and the human mind in social, internal, or even biological scenarios which we face in our everyday lives. You can check out his work at kofioduro.myportfolio.com and follow him on Instagram at Illest Preacha.

Ben Falcon paints custom bicycles, motorcycles, and more. Having felt constrained by the opportunities available to him as an architecture student, Ben sought out something that would enable him to do more hands-on work. He found it in custom painting.



In this week’s episode, Ben and I discuss how he stumbled upon this niche career, what he would do if he weren’t doing custom painting, and what it’s like to run a custom paint business in New York City.



Ben has worked with some of the finest bicycle frame builders in the world. After fine tuning his trade at the leading purveyors of custom at Seven Cycles outside of Boston, he moved out west to establish the state of the art wet paint department for Chris King in Portland, OR before ultimately landing in Brooklyn, NY, where he is currently devoting his talents to the paint enterprise at the Brooklyn-based Horse Cycles Paint.



To learn more about Ben’s work and follow along with his projects, check out benfalcon.com and find him on Instagram @benfalconpaint.

This week I caught up with Vessna Scheff, an emotive, abstract painter and musician living in Philadelphia. Vessna has the attitude of a perpetual student, and has jumped into her creative pursuits more than once with little to no formal training!



In this episode, Vessna shares her incredible journey to becoming a working artist, and the attitudes, approaches, and beautiful moments of magic that got her there.



Vessna combines sounds, movement and color to create encompassing performances. Her work is inspired by stories of social and personal revolution and resilience, and seeks to fully celebrate the small yet powerful moments of freedom we experience within struggles.



Utilizing water as a main tool of creation and source of inspiration, Scheff energizes large brushstrokes and mixed media to add depth and dimension to her works on paper. On stage, she merges sounds with colors in an empowering and colorful musical and visual performance.



To learn more about Vessna, see her paintings, and follow along with her work, you can visit her website vessnascheff.com, or follow her on Instagram @vessnascheff.

This week I chatted with artist, educator, consultant and coach Stephanie Simpson about the interplay between stress and creativity, and how to nourish and draw on the power of our full human selves.



Drawing on her background in movement, meditation, and psychology, Stephanie guides people to achieve their greatest potential by nurturing the connection between the mind, body, and spirit.



With a focus on helping people find their true balance and align with their authentic selves, Stephanie empowers them to live their lives unapologetically and to the fullest. An RYT-200 Hour Certified Yoga Instructor, Stephanie holds a BA in Interdisciplinary Studies from Emerson College and an MFA in Dance Performance/Choreography from Smith College. She is currently an MA degree candidate at Columbia University Teachers College in the Clinical Psychology program with an emphasis in Spirituality, Mind, Body and a focus in Organizational Change.



Stephanie presents and consults for businesses nationwide, bringing her expertise and passion for helping people thrive to audiences and organizations seeking to realize their fullest potential. Most recently, she launched her 21 Day Stress Management Program to help people redefine how they respond to stress. It comes with a cool guide to help you learn all kinds of stress management techniques that harness your creativity, awaken your body, and more!



You can learn more about her work at stephanie-simpson.com, and follow her on Facebook (Stephanie Simpson Coaching) or Instagram (Stephanie.e.Simpson).

“Leaning into a beginners mindset is really helpful for me.



I have some [internal] stories that I need to be great at everything, and a lot of times that keeps me from leaning into creativity where I can just be curious about what I’m capable of.



Not only in seeing what that first version is and almost how bad it is – because I do have a sense of taste, and can tell like, wow what I just made really isn’t great – but also being able to say, ‘If I practice this, if I really lean into doing this… I can see where that can head, where that can lead.'”



Todd Emaus is an executive coach and organizational consultant, working with founders and leaders as they seek to scale their organizations without losing their soul. He’s founded startups, raised venture capital, and burnt out in the process. All of these have been powerful teachers for supporting leaders in his work today.



In this episode, Todd and I talked about the role of play, connection, and belonging in business and in life. You can learn more about Todd and his work at toddemaus.com, and follow him on Twitter @ToddEmaus.

Heather Kirtland and Marissa Huber are two artists and mothers, who happen to be the dynamic duo behind the Instagram community Carve Out Time for Art and blog by the same name (COTFA for short).



The goal of COTFA is to cultivate a positive and nurturing community for creatives who want to find time to satisfy this part of their identity – a perfect match for Everyday Creative People! Some of the things we talked about included:



* The power of self talk and the importance of choosing to claim your own creative identity * How motherhood impacted both Heather and Marissa as artists* How to make art amidst a busy life, even (especially) if you don’t have a dedicated space to do it in



Marissa founded Carve Out Time for Art in 2015 after the frustration of being told she’d never have time to create once she had children. She didn’t want to give up on her own dreams and felt being a mother made her a better artist. She set off to interview women who were making it work, and unintentionally created a community of artists. She teamed up with Heather Kirtland that same year to start writing a book on artist mothers, and they became partners in writing and in creative shenanigans for their COTFA community.



Marissa Huber is an artist, writer, designer, connector, and mother who lives in South Florida with her husband and two children. By day, she uses her interior design background as an Occupancy Planner, where she plays Tetris with space and is a friendly hostage negotiator for offices. You can visit her at marissahuber.com or follow her on Instagram and Pinterest, both @marissahuber.



Heather Kirtland currently teaches encaustic workshops and is focused on her own studio practice. She was awarded The Maryland State Arts Council Grant and was a resident artist at The Holt Center. Her work has been exhibited throughout the Mid-Atlantic region, abroad in Italy and Wales, and in Modern Home and Country Living UK magazines.  Heather recently moved from Baltimore to a more rural part of Maryland where she lives with her husband and two children and Luna their rescue dog.  When she is not painting she loves to read, run and encourage other mothers to find a creative outlet through Carve Out Time for Art. You can check her out at heatherkirtland.com or on Instagram @heatherkirtland.

“I never thought of myself as being creative. But at a certain point I needed to tell stories out loud on stage.



And part of that was because some of the social justice work I was doing, I felt people needed to change something more than their logic about things. You know, racism is illogical, but I felt like we had to get beyond that, that you couldn’t rationalize it. And also that emotionally, some people just feel different things along those lines.



And so my storytelling was a way for me to put something out there that was rational in thought, but also had emotion and could move the spirit and that’s where I hit on it: that being artistic means you touch people’s spirit. And so I started to come to terms at like, oh, maybe I am creative, maybe I am artistic, because I want to move and touch people’s spirit.”



Rosita Choy has spent her career of more than two and a half decades dedicated to social justice nonprofit work, with an emphasis on immigrant rights, racial equity, and anti-poverty.



She’s been on staff for organizations such as the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition, American Friends Service Committee, and Amnesty International.



Rosita is now an independent consultant and coach helping to promote healthy and sustainable organizations and work cultures. She specializes in burn-out prevention and recovery. She is also a public storyteller who performs on stage as “Una China Latina,” spinning tales about growing up immigrant and Chinese in Chicano L.A.



To learn more about Rosita and follow her work, you can check out her website RositaChoy.com, or follow her on Facebook. If you’re in the DC area you can also attend her upcoming workshop on April 9th titled “Enduring Idealism: A Workshop on Surviving Nonprofits.”

“I’ve worked with kids all my life, but when I became a mother myself, I realized how babies, that’s the first thing they do before they even talk, you know, they just play and tinker. And that’s how they understand the world and how they learn.



And then as, we grow older, play is our favorite way of coming up with new ideas, and… play often becomes social. So you start playing with others. And it’s a key way, actually, for us to develop empathy, and connect with the people who we play with. Because the thing that happens with play is that, when you’re playing, you’re in what we call this ‘magic circle.’ So it’s this invisible boundary set by the rules of the play and you’re present, you’re connected, you’re equalized, you’re kind of ready to listen and learn from each other.”



Chloe Varelidi is the founder of humans who play, a new design firm with offices in Washington and (soon Nairobi) that uses play as a force for good.



Prior to starting her own practice she was part of the early teams at the Institute of Play, Quest to Learn, the Mozilla Foundation and littleBits where as a play designer she launched everything from top rated apps, to franchise products for Marvel & Disney, to a public school featured on the cover of the NYT Magazine. 



Chloe has won multiple awards for her work along the way, including some from ISTE, TOTY (toy of the year) and Common Sense Media. She is recognized as one of the GOOD100 for shaping the world in meaningful and creative ways and frequently lectures about harnessing play as a force for innovation and doing good. Chloe is an Adjunct Professor at The Corcoran School of Art & Design where she teaches Interaction Design.



To learn more about Chloe and her work, check out her website humans who play and follow her on Instagram at @humanswhoplay. You can also view some of her previous work at varelidi.com.