Windowsill Chats

Abby is back on the Windowsill for another round of Creative Current Events! This week, she and Margo are diving into the latest headlines making waves in art, design, branding, and retail—and, as always, there's plenty to unpack.

From collectible handbags blurring the line between fashion and art to luxury brands rolling out the red carpet for our four-legged friends, the creative world is full of surprises. They explore Polaroid's cheeky campaign encouraging us to put down our screens, the return of Bed Bath & Beyond in an unexpected form, and why Hermès is doubling down on hand-drawn illustration in an increasingly AI-driven world.

Margo and Abby discuss:

• The intersection of art, fashion, and collectible handbags
• Polaroid's clever push for analog experiences in a digitally saturated world
• Why luxury brands are increasingly catering to dogs (and their devoted humans!)
• Kirkland's transformation into Bed Bath & Beyond Seasonal Living and what it says about retail reinvention
• Hermès' embrace of hand-drawn illustration and the growing value of human creativity in the age of AI
• The bigger cultural shifts shaping what we buy, how we create, and what we value

Articles:

• Polaroid's Analog Summer Campaign Pushes Against Digital Overload — PetaPixel
• Dogs Became Luxury's Fastest Growing Customer — Art of the Brand
• Kirkland's Stores to Become Bed Bath & Beyond Seasonal Living — NBC Chicago
• Hermès Goes All-In on Illustration in the Age of AI — Highsnobiety

This week on Windowsill Chats, Margo is joined by novelist Jane Ward, author of four books, including her latest, Should Have Told You Sooner. With a lifelong love of storytelling, cooking, baking, and art, Jane has built a creative life rooted in curiosity, observation, and finding inspiration in unexpected places.

Jane began writing her first novel, Hunger, nearly thirty years ago while living in Iceland with her Navy husband, finding space for storytelling during the long, dark winters. Since then, she's continued exploring the complexities of human relationships through fiction, often weaving together themes of family secrets, forgiveness, regret, and the things we leave unsaid. Her latest novel was inspired by something as simple as a lawn sign spotted during an early morning dog walk.

Margo and Jane discuss:

• The meaning behind the question on Jane's website, "What's done is done. Or is it?" and why the past has a way of resurfacing

• Writing about family secrets, forgiveness, and the complicated relationships that make us human

• How Jane develops fictional characters who begin to feel like real people

• Finding inspiration in unexpected places, including the lawn sign that sparked her latest novel

• The creative freedom found in bread baking, photography, travel, and other everyday pursuits

• Her upcoming sequel and its exploration of motherhood in all its complicated forms

• The importance of making space for creativity outside of your primary artistic practice

• Jane's plans for a Gothic novel set in Switzerland, inspired by her childhood love of Daphne du Maurier

Connect with Jane Ward:

• Website: janeaward.com

• Instagram: @authorjaneward

• Threads: @authorjaneward

• Facebook: @janealessandriniward

What does it look like to build a creative career that keeps evolving, without losing the curiosity that got you started?

This week, Margo is joined by illustrator, designer, cartographer, educator, and all-around creative powerhouse Tania Willis. With a career spanning editorial illustration, advertising, pictorial maps, heritage interpretation, products, licensing, and education, Tania has spent decades finding new ways to make a living from her creativity. She's also the co-founder of The Good Ship Illustration, where she helps illustrators navigate the business side of a creative career.

Tania and Margo talk about the power of creative community, adapting as the industry changes, and why even established artists sometimes need to reinvent their work. They also explore the value of diversifying your income, following your genuine interests instead of trends, and creating supportive spaces where artists can learn without fear or shame.

Margo and Tania discuss:

• Why collaboration and community can accelerate creative growth
• Adapting your business as social media and the illustration industry change
• Teaching, mentoring, and sharing what you've learned along the way
• Reinventing your style when your work starts to feel too predictable
• Following curiosity instead of what you think you "should" be making
• Building a resilient career through freelance work, teaching, products, and licensing
• Why relationships and unexpected opportunities often shape a creative career
• The enduring value of handmade, imperfect, distinctly human work
• Creating safe, encouraging spaces for artists to experiment and learn
• Why sometimes you just have to fly your freak flag

Connect with Tania: www.taniawillis.com Instagram: www.instagram.com/tania.willis The Good Ship Illustration: www.thegoodshipillustration.com Instagram: www.instagram.com/thegoodshipillustration

This week, we're revisiting a favorite conversation from the Windowsill Chats archives with artist and surface designer Abby Jacobs.

As far back as she can remember, making art has been Abby's favorite thing to do—and some of the happiest times in her life have been when she's had a consistent creative routine. Her belief in art-making as a way of life led her to pursue a master's degree in transpersonal counseling and art therapy from Naropa University in Boulder after studying art and psychology/human services as an undergraduate.

Whenever something doesn't feel quite right in her life, Abby asks herself, "Am I making artwork daily?" If the answer is no, she usually knows where to start.

Margo and Abby discuss:

• Why pattern clashing isn't necessarily a bad thing

• Abby's art therapy background and how it influences her creative practice

• The importance of working with clients who feel aligned

• Having a creative outlet beyond paid work

• Navigating client expectations and people-pleasing

• Creating work that feels authentic to you

• What Abby learned from completing a 100-day project

• And much more!

Connect with Abby:

www.abbyjacdesigns.com Instagram: @abbyjacdesigns

Margo is joined by hand-drawn book cover illustrator Nosheen Ahmed for a conversation nearly a decade in the making. Margo first met Nosheen about nine years ago through portfolio reviews, when Nosheen was working as a dentist, raising her children, making art, and trying to find where she fit creatively. After more than 20 years in dentistry, Nosheen has built a career in illustration—bringing together her love of drawing, books, storytelling, and human connection. She and Margo talk about creative reinvention, letting go of the feeling that you're "behind," and realizing that none of the experiences along the way are wasted. They also explore the pressure to find a signature style, how motherhood and dentistry shaped Nosheen as an artist, and why work made by human hands matters in an increasingly AI-driven world.

Margo and Nosheen discuss:

• Reinventing yourself creatively later in life

• Why your past experiences aren't wasted

• Finding your voice without forcing a signature style

• Creativity as a way of living, not just a career

• The importance of empathy and human connection in art

• Why hand-drawn work still matters in an AI-driven world

Connect with Nosheen: Website: nosheendesigns.co.uk Instagram + LinkedIn: @nosheendesigns

Work 1:1 with Margo: Looking for personalized support in your creative practice or business? Sign up for 1:1 coaching with Margo for focused guidance, clarity, and support tailored to where you are and where you want to go next. https://margotantau.com/coaching-with-margo

Margo is joined by Melissa Moore and Michele Matrisciani, co-authors of Killer in the Family: The Hidden Costs of Loving Someone the World Hates.

Melissa grew up in Spokane, Washington, and was sixteen when she learned that her father, Keith Jesperson, had been arrested for murder. He was later convicted as the Happy Face Killer. Melissa went on to become a New York Times bestselling author with her memoir Shattered Silence, a domestic abuse prevention advocate, and an Emmy-nominated investigative correspondent for Crime Watch Daily. She hosts the true crime podcast Life After Happy Face and is the real-life inspiration behind the Paramount+ drama series Happy Face, starring Annaleigh Ashford.

Michele is a New York Times bestselling coauthor, a Pushcart Prize nominee, and an editor with more than twenty years in publishing, with an MFA from Stony Brook University. She spent fifteen years as an acquisitions and developmental editor at houses including Macmillan, Hyperion, and McGraw-Hill Trade before founding Bookchic LLC, and her collaborations span Hachette, Penguin, Hay House, and HarperCollins, most recently including Gypsy-Rose Blanchard's memoir My Time to Stand. She has collaborated with Melissa across four books.

For Killer in the Family, Melissa and Michele spent six years with nine families who share something nobody chooses: someone they loved was responsible for something horrific. The book moves the focus away from the crimes themselves and onto the parents, children, siblings, and spouses left to carry the aftermath.

Margo, Melissa, and Michele discuss:

• What it was like for Melissa's story to become public, and the years of shame that came before that
• Why so many people reached out to Melissa afterward with the same message: I'm just like you
• How they chose which families and relationships belonged in the book
• How Michele earned enough trust with nine families to get material this personal
• What Michele could see as an outsider that Melissa, so close to her own story, couldn't always see herself
• How they handled it when two people's memories of the same moment didn't line up
• The responsibility of sending a finished chapter back to the person who lived it
• How families hold love and horror about the same person at the same time
• The role media coverage plays in a family's grief and isolation
• Knowing when it's time to stop telling your story

Killer in the Family is available now in print, ebook, and audiobook wherever books are sold.

Connect with Melissa and Michele:

• https://michelem.net/
• melissa.g.moore on TikTok
• Melissa G. Moore (@melissag.moore)

Margo is joined by Dan Scott, co-founder and CEO of Spotlight Advisory Group, musician, lawyer, and longtime advisor to creatives. After decades spent both making art and advising some of the world's wealthiest individuals, Dan came to a powerful realization: having enormous wealth and experiencing financial freedom are not the same thing.

Today, Dan helps artists, musicians, actors, entrepreneurs, and other creatives use money as a tool to support their purpose rather than a scoreboard for measuring success. His forthcoming book, The Experience of Financial Freedom, explores what it looks like to build a life around creativity, fulfillment, and a deeply personal definition of "enough."

Margo and Dan discuss:

• Why purpose (not money) is the starting point for designing a fulfilling creative life
• What working with the ultra-wealthy taught Dan about the difference between wealth and true financial freedom
• Defining what "enough" looks like instead of constantly moving the goalposts
• Why budgeting can actually be a tool for greater creative freedom
• The tension between making meaningful art and navigating industries built to monetize it
• Letting go of society's default definitions of success, status, and achievement
• Becoming the architect of your own experience through intentional choices
• Thinking about legacy as something you create through the way you live—not just what you leave behind

Connect with Dan:

https://www.theexperienceoffinancialfreedom.com/ https://www.spotlightadvisorygroup.com/ https://www.spotlightadvisorygroup.com/blog

Margo is joined by Louie, better known as Louie's Loops, a self-taught crochet artist, designer, game creator, and founder of Club Crochet. For nearly 20 years, Louie has been turning his love of crochet into an ever-expanding creative world of amigurumi, tutorials, games, characters, and stories—all rooted in curiosity, play, and community.

Margo and Louie discuss:

• Following curiosity and asking "what if?" as a creative practice.

• Turning a self-taught crochet hobby into a career and creative business.

• Challenging the idea of crochet as simply a "craft" rather than an art form.

• Using play and experimentation to stay inspired and avoid burnout.

• Building community through tutorials, storytelling, and shared creativity.

• Expanding ideas beyond one medium into games, characters, animation, and more.

• Creativity and handmade art in an increasingly digital and AI-driven world.

• Bringing 20 years of ideas together through Crochet Goomis and Battle Goomis.

Connect with Louie:

www.TheGoomis.com

www.ClubCrochet.com

www.instagram.com/LouiesLoops

I'm bringing you a preview of the new series of Death of An Artist. In February 2024, celebrated children's book author and illustrator Petra Mathers and her husband, photographer Michael Mathers, mailed letters to dozens of friends and family members to let them know they had died by suicide. Petra and Michael were by all accounts healthy, happy, and in love. Why did they choose to die together? And what did that decision do to the people left to mourn them? Journalists Leon Neyfakh and Alice Gregory set out to interview everyone who got one of Petra and Michael's letters—as one married couple trying to understand another. Through intimate conversations with Petra and Michael's friends and family about their own relationships to aging, grief, death, and the friends they thought they knew, Death of an Artist weaves together a portrait of a community grappling with the Mathers' deaths and the final words they left behind. Done entirely in recordings, Death of an Artist is as much a love story as one about death. Listen to Death of An Artist wherever you get podcasts. And if you want to hear the full story right now, ad-free, you can binge the entire season with a Pushkin+ subscription—sign up on the Death of an Artist show page on Apple Podcasts or at pushkin.fm/plus.

Margo sits down with Daniel Boettcher, founder of The Intrepid Wendell, to explore the intersection of storytelling, craftsmanship, and legacy—and how the most meaningful creative paths are rarely the most straightforward ones. Daniel's journey has taken him through music, law, aspirations of diplomacy, and ultimately, bespoke jewelry design. After a life-changing experience shifted the trajectory of his career, he found his way toward work that allowed him to combine creativity with something he has always been drawn to: people and their stories.

• Daniel's unexpected journey from music and law to diplomacy aspirations and, ultimately, bespoke jewelry design.
• How a life-changing experience redirected his career.
• Why deep listening and personal connection are at the heart of Daniel's design process.
• The stories behind a few deeply personal pieces.
• The idea of an "instant heirloom" and how jewelry can carry family history, memory, love, and meaning across generations.
• Daniel's move from Washington, D.C. to Puerto Rico and how the community and culture of Old San Juan have influenced his creativity.
• What happens when a client feels truly seen and understood by the person creating for them.
• The charming story behind The Intrepid Wendell

Connect with Daniel: www.theintrepidwendell.com www.instagram.com/theintrepidwendell