Jeffery Saddoris

A couple weeks ago, I had a terrific conversation with an artist whose work I’ve admired for years. And while it was a treat to get to talk to someone who has inspired me for decades, the work was only a small part of the conversation. Instead, we just talked. We connected straight away and what was meant to be a quick phone call just to say hello ahead of a potential episode of Process Driven ended up being a two hour conversation about everything from family and our respective childhoods to love, loss, Studio 54, JK Rowling, and even musings on the nature of art. On more than one occasion, and typically after a particularly interesting exchange, one of us would comment, “man, we should be recording this.” But instead we chose to just keep enjoying the experience — a one-off conversation between nascent friends.

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This month, a brand new record from John Coltrane comes out. Blue World was recorded with Coltrane’s Classic Quartet in 1964 between Crescent and A Love Supreme. Ahead of the September 27th launch, Universal has released a gorgeous video that really captures the look and feel of some of the iconic Reid Miles covers.

One of my favorite recent television shows is called The Boys, which is adapted from the comic by Garth Ennis, a monster in comics who also created Preacher and wrote The Punisher, Hellblazer and a bunch of other books. His latest project is a six-issue series called SARA, which tells the story of seven female snipers who find themselves caught up in a deadly struggle against an evil German invader. The series has been called a masterclass in comics storytelling and one of the finest works of his career.

Robert Frank died Monday at the age of 94. He was one of the most influential photographers in the game and his book The Americans inspired almost every other famous photographer you could think of. If you’ve ever considered pursuing photography he’s a photographer whose work you’ll definitely want to know.

Music in this episode: The Wrong Way (Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0

Have you ever sat down to watch something on Netflix only to spend whatever time you set aside just trying to find something to watch? It’s amazing how often I find myself in that exact situation.

A few months ago, Adrianne and I were scanning though the myriad of options, and a promo for a show called
Blown Away popped up. If you haven’t seen it,
Blown Away
is a competition show that centers around glass blowing. Ten glass artists competed for a $60,000 prize package which includes a residency at the Corning Museum of Glass. We didn’t really know what to expect but both of us were hooked from the first episode and binged the entire season in less than a week. The show is shot in a way that allows the glass to be the star and while each of the artists on the show were interesting in their own ways, there were two who really stood out for us both in skill and technique and in how they approached their craft, one of whom is a visual artist and glass blowing instructor from Philadelphia named Alexander Rosenberg.

One of the reasons I reached out to Alex was that I loved the way he interpreted each of the challenges on the show. In the few times we’ve talked on the phone, I’ve learned what incredible passion he has for the material, the respect he has for those who have come before him, and the profound sense of joy he gets from sharing his love of glass with his students.

CONNECT WITH ALEX
Website: https://www.alexanderrosenberg.net/
Instagram: @rosenbergalexander
Twitter: @Thetoast77

MUSIC
Please Listen Carefully
 (Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0

A week or so ago, I was talking to my friend Gareth about how frustrated I was in not feeling like I had a clear and consistent creative voice. It’s not uncommon for me to feel overwhelmed and frankly paralyzed by the number of options I have and unable to get out of my own way to take action on any of them. “You need to talk to Vari,” he said. “Like today. Don’t put it off. I’m going to tell her you’ll be calling.” Gareth’s partner Vari Longmuir wears quite a few hats – one of them being that of creative coach, helping people just like me — and maybe you — to fail forward and to overcome the obstacles we create and get back into that flow state of making. I reached out to her and asked her if she’d be willing to talk about some of this with me and I’m so glad she said yes. It’s a terrific conversation about figuring out what living a creative life looks like to you and unapologetically striving for balance, happiness and success doing what you love.

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I’d love to hear from you. Email me at [email protected] or connect with me on Instagram @jefferysaddoris.

You can catch up with Vari on Instagram @varilongmuir or on her website at varilongmuir.com

Music in this episode: Take Me Higher (Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0

Are you happy? If not, why do you think that is? For a lot of people who make things and share what they make online — myself included — we have a tendency to abdicate our happiness to the fickle whim of the mob. Not enough likes, or hearts, or dollars can send us careening into a creative tailspin, questioning what we do and even who we are. If this sounds familiar to you, hopefully this conversation with Jon Wilkening will help you find your way back to making first and foremost for the joy of it, and not simply for the return.

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I’d love to hear from you. Email me at [email protected] or connect with me on Instagram @jefferysaddoris.

You can catch up with Jon on Instagram @jonwilkening or on his website at jonwilkening.com.

Music in this episode: Take Me Higher (Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0

Last week, I asked a deceptively simple question on Instagram: What are some of your fears around creativity? Dozens of responses came in ranging from fear of running out of creative gas, to being judged by an audience to not being seen or heard at all. Your responses reinforced how much I miss interacting with an engaged community around making art.

I’ve been noodling around what to do about it for quite a while and I think I have something that may be interesting, but it doesn’t work without you. In a nutshell, I want to hear from you. I want to hear what interests you, what inspires you, even what you’re struggling with. Chances are, whatever you’re going through — the good or the bad — someone else out there is going through something similar and by sharing these things with one another, maybe we can help each other to become better artists and maybe even better people. By sharing something with me on this new endeavor you’re giving me permission to share it with everyone — and maybe even to reach out to you to have a deeper conversation about it. I don’t know if this will be a few random one-off episodes or whether it wants or needs to be a new show, but regardless, I think there’s something there and I’d love to see where it goes.

So if you’d like to participate, and I hope you will, reach out to me at [email protected] and let me know what’s on your mind. I think everyone has a great story to tell. Let’s work on telling yours.

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Music in this episode: Step On (Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0

Not too long ago, I was having a conversation with David duChemin about subject as it relates to photography — specifically, some of the differences between photographs of a subject, versus photographs about a subject. It can feel like a tricky distinction but moving from one to the other can really elevate the work that you produce.

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Daniel Rozin is an artist and professor at NYU who builds incredible mechanical mirrors out of materials like metal, wood, and even trash that respond to the viewer’s movements.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission to the moon and to mark the occasion, NASA has completely restored mission control at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas to exactly how it was in 1969, down to period coffee mugs, ashtrays, rotary phones, and carpet to recreate it as accurately as possible. Johnson Space Center director Mark Geyer said “I’m thrilled this facility will be open for the public to view. It is my hope that it will serve as inspiration for generations to come.”

NPR posted a fascinating article about a team of scientists from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute who are investigating the amount of micro plastics in the Deep Ocean. According to chief scientist Kyle Van Houten, data suggests that there’s actually more plastic in the Deep Ocean than there is in the giant floating patches on the surface, which is pretty staggering.

Music in this episode: The Wrong Way (Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0

I had something else planned for this episode, but I got a little surprise in the mail and decided to go in a different direction. On Wednesday of last week, as I went to take Cooper on his ten o’ clock walk, I noticed a big padded envelope on the front porch with the words “UNSOLICITED GIFT” written on the outside. Now, I can be a little strange about gifts, even the ones I know are coming, so when one just shows up anonymously I sometimes don’t know how to react. Fortunately, Adrianne was working from home that day and was able to offer some sage advice that wasn’t as obvious as it probably should have been as I stood there staring at the package. “Well,” she said, “the only way you’re gonna know what it is is to open it.” Right. Inside, wrapped in newspaper, was the gift itself and an envelope that contained a card. I’ll get to the what in a moment, but first I want to address the why, because without the why, the what isn’t nearly as meaningful.

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Here’s a terrific article from The New York Times Magazine called The Day the Music Burned, which tells the story of the 2008 Universal fire that destroyed the original analog and multitrack recordings of nearly a half million songs, some dating back to the 1940s.

I’ve just picked up Adam Savage’s new book, Every Tool’s a Hammer and one of the reasons I did is because I read an article on Wired that featured an excerpt from the book all about the power of making lists and how Adam’s list making life changed when he started working at Industrial Light & Magic.

In an article on Witness, Lewis Bush addresses “why there is such a poverty of theory about storytelling in photography compared to other fields, and why there is so little precision about the terms and techniques we use. Why, for example, are so few photographers able to differentiate between such fundamentally different things as story and narrative.” It’s a fascinating read that definitely has me thinking about the type of work I’d like to produce moving forward.

Music in this episode: The Wrong Way (Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0

As many of you know, three weeks ago today I had surgery on my eyes to correct a muscle imbalance and while the physical recovery has been fairly uneventful, the emotional and existential healing has been incredibly profound. The condition is called Strabismus and basically what happens is that the eyes don’t focus or track together. Let me explain…In the center of the retina, there’s an area called the macula which is basically the functional center of the retina where straight ahead images are processed. Within the macula is a spot called the fovea where the cones are at their highest concentration and it’s here where the image is meant to focus at its sharpest. In most people, if the eyes are tracking together, those two sharp images are combined to create binocular vision. In my case, my right eye was off axis—it was turned in—so the image didn’t focus on the fovea and when my brain tried to combine the two images, since they didn’t match up, I didn’t have binocular vision. Think of it like this—if my left eye was looking straight ahead, my right eye would be looking about 20-30 degrees off axis to the left. My brain would then try to combine those images into one, but since they didn’t match up, it would leave me with this somewhat fragmented almost double exposure type of view and would finally just give up and basically disregard the image data from my right eye. There are a number of different types of Strabismus, depending on what the eyes are doing. When one or both eyes converge in, it’s called esotropia. If the eyes point out, it’s called exotropia, and if they are misaligned vertically it’s called hypertropia. Bottom line, I was cross-eyed and for most of my life, it was a constant gut punch to my self-esteem and self-image.

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Music in this episode: The Wrong Way (Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0

I’ve always tried to be honest with you about what’s been going on with me—from the deaths of my parents, to my struggles with depression, to what led me to ultimately leave California for the East Coast. Today I want to share something that I haven’t really talked about but is something that has affected me for years and in many ways been at the core of some my darkest days.

You won’t find a mention of this on Instagram or Twitter, but I wanted to share it with those of you who subscribe to Everything since you have been so supportive and generous with your time and with your ears.

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Music in this episode: The Shine (Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0

Let’s talk about inspiration-specifically what to do when you can’t seem to find any. Generally, there seems to be two schools of thought around it. In one camp are those who more or less wait for inspiration to strike, which is sort of in line with the Greeks who believed that inspiration was basically an unconscious blast of creativity, either from the muses or directly from the Gods. To be fair, I actually know more than a few artists who insist that their particular muses drive much of their creative work. For example, my friend Gareth has his muse Melissa—and while the work he does with other models is terrific, there is just something, oh, I don’t know…special about the work he does with Melissa. Muses in one form or another have inspired art, music, film, and poetry for thousands of years, so who am I to question their validity. In the other camp are those more in line with Chuck Close who famously said “Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work.” Now, I understand what Chuck is saying, and on some level I agree with him. The work isn’t going to make itself and at some point, you need to stop the navel gazing, roll up your sleeves and do something—whether or not you’re comfortable calling it work and really regardless of whether it’s even good.

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Huck magazine posted a fascinating article—it’s the story of Adrian Street, an androgynous and incredibly flamboyant wrestler who inspired Marc Bolan, David Bowie, and Bob Dylan.

An interesting article on The New York Times that suggests that the music we loved as teenagers tends to be the music we still love as adults.

Check out the Instagram feed of Jude Allen, a San Francisco based travel and landscape photographer who recently returned from Japan with a stunning body of work.

Music in this episode: The Wrong Way (Jahzzar) / CC BY-SA 4.0