Everyday Creative People

Steve Lucin is a creative entrepreneur who helps passionate visionaries bring in more cash to their businesses through creativity.



Lucin pulls his technical design, motion graphics, and entrepreneurial skills from running his own entertainment and nightlife creative business, Halucinated Design, Inc.



He was the VRFX supervisor at Michael Bay’s 451 Media, where he oversaw the creation of VR/360 (Virtual Reality) content from creative to post-production. He also animated many of the original 451 motion comics.Since then he has decided to pursue his personal mission in life, which is to uplift his community through creativity and to show people that life should be spent enjoying themselves, exploring, and learning.



He does so by developing passionate individuals in his community through the nonprofit that he is building, Support Creativity.



His third brand, Legacy Greek, focuses on strategy, branding, and marketing for community-driven fraternities and sororities.



At night he likes to animate and mix video live to electronic dance music as a VJ. He has performed visuals at NYC nightclubs such as House of Yes, Verboten (now Schimanski), Space Ibiza NY, Cielo, Jump Into The Light VR Play Lab, and Electric Zoo Festival.

Katie Visco, who has been called a “bubbly and offbeat running, biking, soup-making, people-loving, community-building exclamation mark,” loves peoples’ stories, healthy and delicious food, traveling, and human-powered adventures.



In 2009, promoting the importance of a bold and passion-driven life, Katie ran solo across America, from Boston to San Diego, and became the 2nd youngest and 13th woman overall to make the crossing. During, and the year after her transAmerican crossing, she raised funds for the charity, Girls on the Run, and also stopped to visit more than two hundred audiences en route to spread her message to young and old alike. Running has been a versatile cornerstone of her wellbeing for years, and she especially loves the trails!



Katie also has 10+ years of experience as a community-builder and entrepreneur. She has started eight businesses and campaigns, and is currently the proud owner and soup maestra behind Hot Love Soup, a soup and bone broth delivery company in both Austin, Texas and Missoula, Montana. She hails from Glen Ellyn, IL, a suburb of Chicago, and is a 2007 Economics graduate of Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. Visco lives and works to see courage, community, and true connection happen in this world.



Besides trail running, biking, creating delicious food, and traveling, Katie loves her husband and family very much and enjoys getting to hear the stories of others. She’s been writing since she was six and hopes to publish a book one day. She’s stoked to share her journeys with you in hopes that you will glean something special from them for your own growth and joy!

“I believe that as we’re being creative, sometimes we really have to practice creativity, as opposed to wait for creativity. And I found that that’s such a powerful practice for me when I’m working with young people, because part of my job is to hear terrible things all the time. And to make those things playable.



And it’s really, really hard. It’s really hard and scary to play with things that you don’t think you can play with. And in drama therapy, and in developmental transformations, we are talking about, how do I play with grief? How do I play with death? How do I play with sexual assault? How do I play with domestic violence? And I want to be clear, when I say the word play, that I’m not saying, this isn’t mocking, and I’m not making fun of people with these things. I really mean, how can I help loosen some of this trauma that gets locked in our bodies? And how can I do that, using the dramatic medium?”



Rebecca is a mental health therapist specializing in working with adolescents and adults with trauma of all kinds. A former singer and actor, Rebecca found her way to drama therapy through her first degree in Drama Education. When she’s not pretending to be an anaconda or a ninja, Rebecca enjoys weightlifting, yoga, and hanging out with her puppies and birds. Yes, people who keep birds as pets are odd.  She knows. Someday Rebecca will get a PhD to study trauma and play. Also someday, she’ll go back to writing short plays. Until then, she’ll keep building spaceships while being forced to finish her math homework (for pretend).



To learn more about Rebecca and follow her work, you can check out her website (and soon-to-be blog and podcast) at therapyaltered.com, follow her on Instagram at TheMentalAthlete and TherapyAltered, or shoot her an email at [email protected].

“Creativity goes hand in hand with emotional intelligence. The more self aware we are, the more we practice self awareness and empathy and all these things, the more we’re able to be resilient, the more we’re able to unleash that creativity inside of us. A lot of times in our workshops, we get people that say, oh, we’re not creative, or, you know, I’m just not a creative person, and they have a lot of what we call limiting beliefs about themselves. And oftentimes, after going through our workshops, they’re like, ‘Wow, I didn’t realize I had that in me! I didn’t realize I could be creative, I didn’t realize I already am creative. I just didn’t know that!’ And so, you know, it’s just amazing to see the amount of creativity that is unleashed as people work on their emotional intelligence skills.”



Saleema Vellani is the Co-Founder and COO of Innovazing, an education and leadership development firm that strives to help organizations cultivate more impactful leaders. Innovazing uses emotional intelligence tools and techniques, based on neuroscience, in its highly customized programs for social enterprises, nonprofits, higher education, Fortune 500 companies, and government agencies. Aside from launching 5 fast-growing ventures across 4 countries, she has also provided consulting for over 12 years to a wide spectrum of organizations. 



Saleema is passionate about empowering the developing world through technology, innovation, and entrepreneurship. Earlier in her career, Saleema co-founded a nonprofit language school in Brazil, which is currently the nation’s top-rated and largest Portuguese school. Recently, Saleema co-led an award-winning, groundbreaking study at the World Bank on how existing climate-smart food production technologies, such as hydroponics and aquaponics, can be adapted and simplified to tackle food insecurity while increasing livelihoods for refugees and engaging the private sector in water-scarce countries.



Saleema teaches Entrepreneurship at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and is a faculty member of Mavasive Leadership Institute. She also co-leads the World Bank Group’s largest and most inclusive mentoring program for the Youth-2-Youth Community and is the Career Advisory Networks Co-Chair of SWAN, the SAIS Women’s Alumni Network. 



Saleema has spent her life between Canada, Brazil, Dominican Republic, Italy, and the USA and is fluent in five languages.

At long last, Everyday Creative People has returned for a second season! Here’s my brief introduction to set the stage for what’s to come.



Stay tuned for the first interview, coming next Monday!

“I literally spend hours just staring at my glasswork or my worktable, and think: ‘Ok I’m gonna give it up.’ And then my husband always says, ‘Just go down there and work, go and try this, get in there and immerse yourself.’
You know, I struggle all the time. That’s part of it: it’s pain and pleasure. Pain, pleasure, and definitely passion. And sometimes the pain is worse than the pleasure is, or sometimes the pleasure of something coming out… is wonderful. And, you know, I think that they come in waves, and you gotta ride some waves harder than the others.”
Anita Merina, educator and children’s literacy advocate turned glass artist, talks about glass working as a form of magic. When working with glass, she says, there are so many surprises and possibilities that, “you become like the magician, the scientist, the mad scientist…”
After 28 years in the education and editorial field and leading the National Education Association’s Read Across America program, Anita Merina picked up glassworking about 10 years ago. She is now following her longtime dream to be an artist with glass as her medium. She is the owner and creative mind behind AMerinaGlassworks and partner with Katherine Thomas in DC Glass Artists.
To learn more about Anita and her work, follow her on Facebook at AmerinaGlassworks or on Instagram at Merinaglasswork.

Some themes from our conversation include:


* The surprising nature of glass
* The importance of play
* Finding your own unique way in your art form
* Finding mentors
* Connecting to your heritage through art
* Passing on a spirit of creativity and resilience to others

“The more that I show up for myself and therefore am able to show up for others, it just, gets me into my purpose, and why I’m here. I think that when we do that, we’re able to feel more joy, and when we feel more joy, we’re able to reap the benefits of that joy. And when we’re in our happiness and our joy, we’re able to just think more clearly, and we’re more inspired, and we’re more open to the possibilities of life and recreating ourselves…
I feel like I’ve opened this door of limitless possibility, that I went from someone that was like, yeah I like to dance, yeah I like healing, and, sometimes I do it, but I’ll also settle for working as an assistant at this architecture firm… doing these things that are kinda wasting my time in a way because I kept myself limited. Joy opened this pathway and now I’m overwhelmed with my dreams, I’m overwhelmed with possibility….”
Tatiana Zamir is a choreographer, dance instructor, performing artist and holistic healer. Tatiana earned her BFA at UCLA in the World Arts & Cultures Department with an emphasis on dance. She continued her studies in holistic body therapy at the Institute of Psycho-Structural Balancing, also in California, where she honed her skills in the healing arts and integrative approaches to wellness. A unique, movement therapy-based practice for healing and upliftment evolved naturally.
Groups and individuals in the US, Southeast Asia and Southern Africa have benefitted from Tatiana’s Radiant Healing Breakthrough Workshops — which teach use of the body as a vehicle in overcoming challenges and achieving one’s highest destiny. From these workshops to her inclusive Afro Hip-Hop dance classes and performance art pieces Tatiana proves herself to be a compassionate, outside-the-box creator of dynamic, expansive, empowering and joyful experiences that catalyze transformation. To learn more or engage with Tatiana and her community, check out her website TatianaZamir.com or follow her on Instagram at @TatianaZamir.

Alexandra Zsigmond spent 7 years doing art direction for the New York Times’ Opinion section before deciding to refocus her energy on personal creative pursuits. In this week’s conversation we chat about her “dream job” as an Art Director and her current process of creative recovery.

Alexandra is an award-winning art director and visual thinker working at the intersection of fine art, illustration and editorial design. Her core interest lies in the use of metaphor and symbolism in visual art, as a tool to represent complex ideas and visualize the invisible realms of mind, thought, and emotion. Since writing her honors thesis on visual metaphor at Stanford University in 2004, she has explored this interest through multiple roles and media: as art director, curator, and designer of metaphoric imagery for newspapers, books and exhibitions.

She has collaborated with a roster of over 1000 artists worldwide and art directed over 4000 editorial illustrations. She is known for greatly expanding the range of visual contributors to the Times, drawing equally from the worlds of contemporary illustration, fine art, animation, and comics. To follow her adventures and see some of her creative work, follow Alexandra on Instagram @zsigmonda.

“I am of an immigrant family. So this is what we were taught: ‘This is, you know, America is the land of opportunity, and this is what you must do in order to become successful.’ So, if this is what has been taught to each one of us, then me pursuing art was something very risky, and in that risk, and I think even behind the scenes, you know behind the Instagram photo that I would put up, there was a lot of that sacrifice, and struggle… My family and close friends saw that most.
So I did get a lot of like, ‘Well, why don’t you try to look for another job in the meantime and do this on the side?’ And I was like, ‘No, that’s not what I want to do. I can’t do that, because, then, I feel like I’ve wasted all these years, and that’s only going to take me away from it further.’ So it was a lot of resisting on both ends… Like, ‘You’re crazy, you’re ridiculous for doing this,’ but also, ‘No, I need to do this or I’m crazy for not doing it.’”

Natalia, aka Naty, is an Argentine-born, NYC native creative free spirit. She is a henna artist, fine artist, muralist, graphic designer & photographer. Naty has been practicing the art of henna since 2009. She has a Bachelors Degree in Graphic Design with a fine art focus. She has participated in events & parties in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Florida, Art Basel, Las Vegas, Denver, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Burning Man, Cuba & Costa Rica


Her passion, expressed through all of her arts, is to build up & empower humanity through connection & unity. Much of her inspiration comes from the four elements of nature due to their reflected similarities within people. She hopes to bridge culture gaps by embracing, educating & demonstrating that henna is for everyone. You can check out Naty’s work on her websites hennabynaty.com and natybynature.com, her Etsy store: Naty by Nature, or on Instagram and Facebook @natybynature.




Themes: 


* Loss as a catalyst for reclaiming your creative voice
* Making use of the tools at your disposal to boost yourself to where you want to be
* Making the leap from full time to freelance
* Defining “career” on your own terms
* The importance of overcoming the fear of asking questions

“The idea that the arts need to be something separate from your socially engaged life, or your community-based life, its really been created by institutions and it isn’t true. Every community… has been using the arts and creativity to thrive, since forever.”

Rebecca Kelly-Golfman is a facilitator, entrepreneur, theatre artist, and activist. She has spent her entire career figuring out how to integrate the arts and advocacy/activism work, and helping others to learn how to do this too. Rebecca is a true Renaissance Soul/Multi-potentialite, cobbling together a variety of different activities to build a life and career that really feeds her soul.



Amongst her various activities, Rebecca is the Founder of Black Abundance BK, a platform celebrating Black life in Brooklyn through uplifting Black businesses, creators, activists, and community members. As an Adjunct Professor at Wagner College, she was awarded The Diversity and International Action Council Award for Diversity and Inclusion for her course Race, the Arts, and Activism.  She also devises plays with anti-gun violence youth organizers in Crown Heights through Theatre of the Oppressed NYC. Additionally, Rebecca is a former civil rights attorney where she focused on dismantling the school-to-prison pipeline as Associate Counsel with The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law in Washington DC. She was recently selected as part of the 2018 Create Change Fellow cohort with The Laundromat Project, and is co-creating a socially engaged art project in Brooklyn with STooPS Bed-Stuy.

 

You can learn more about Rebecca’s work at rebeccakellyg.com and blackabundancebk.com and follow her on Instagram at @rebeccakelly_g and @blackabundancebk.

 

Some themes from our conversation:


* Learning to accept various artist identities outside of a formalized/externally recognized space
* Getting self judgement out of the way
* The natural synergy of arts and activism
* A (very) brief history of the arts being used as a form of rebellion/resistance by African people enslaved in the US