Speaker 1: Art really is self expression, and you're never going to
Speaker 1: love your work. You're never going to love that self
Speaker 1: expression if you hate the thing that it's expressing, which
Speaker 1: is yourself.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 2: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes
Speaker 2: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think,
Speaker 2: ring true, and yet for many of us, our thoughts
Speaker 2: don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 2: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 2: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 2: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 2: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 2: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 2: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 2: how they feel they're good Wolf, Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 2: Our guest on this episode is Andy J. Pizza, an
Speaker 2: artist and designer creating work that is always evolving but
Speaker 2: forever rooted in whimsical narrative and modern graphics. Andy is
Speaker 2: the creator of the Indie Rock coloring book and the
Speaker 2: Daily Nod drawing project, as well as a collaborator of
Speaker 2: Color Me Blank Exhibition with Andrew Nyer. He's worked on
Speaker 2: projects for Sony, Google, Smart Car, Urban Outfitters, Wired Magazine, Starburst, Candy,
Speaker 2: and the list goes on and on. This is a
Speaker 2: great conversation about Andy's work and also creativity in general.
Speaker 3: Hi, Andy, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 4: Eric.
Speaker 3: I am excited to have you on. We are sitting
Speaker 3: here in your studio in Westerville, Ohio, which is right
Speaker 3: near Columbus, Ohio, a suburb, so yeah, we live near
Speaker 3: each other, so it's always fun to do these in person.
Speaker 3: I was out here a while ago, and I was
Speaker 3: a guest on your show, Creative Pep Talk. But today
Speaker 3: we're going to be talking more about you and your path.
Speaker 3: But before we do that, we'll start like we always
Speaker 3: do with the parable. In the parable, there's a grandparent
Speaker 3: who's talking with their grandchild and they say, in life,
Speaker 3: there are two wolves inside of us that are always
Speaker 3: at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things
Speaker 3: like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is
Speaker 3: a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred
Speaker 3: and fear. And the grandchild stops. They think about it
Speaker 3: for a second, they look up at their grandparent and
Speaker 3: they say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says,
Speaker 3: the one you feed. So I'd like to start off
Speaker 3: by asking you what that parable means to you and
Speaker 3: your life and in the work that you do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I have wrestled with that a lot.
Speaker 1: I think my whole upbringing, I feel like I would
Speaker 1: have had more clarity on it, almost because I think
Speaker 1: I was raised in a world where everything seemed very dual,
Speaker 1: and I think I had a clear sense of like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is what's right, this is what's wrong. And it's
Speaker 1: not that I don't feel that now. I do feel
Speaker 1: that way, but I've become interested in kind of poking
Speaker 1: at like what's behind the.
Speaker 4: Bad wolf, Like what's he after?
Speaker 1: I think for me, there was a evolution that happened
Speaker 1: where I shifted from oh, I'm having these problems because
Speaker 1: I'm bad, and more like I'm having these problems because
Speaker 1: I'm resisting who I am. And I think that getting
Speaker 1: curious about my addictions or my issues instead of assuming
Speaker 1: like this is something that's wrong with me, assuming like
Speaker 1: maybe this is just a misdirected good thing. Maybe I'm
Speaker 1: after something positive. Really, but because I'm trying to ignore it.
Speaker 1: It's turning into something out of control. And so I
Speaker 1: think as I think about where I am in my
Speaker 1: life right now, that's the thing that comes up. I'm like,
Speaker 1: what's wrong with this wolf? Why is there a bad
Speaker 1: wolf in here? What does he need? What does he
Speaker 1: not understand? I've been going on a big youngie and
Speaker 1: kick for the past few years, and I think it
Speaker 1: kind of gets at his perspective of the shadow. We're
Speaker 1: thinking about whatever the minotaur is and the labyrinth, like,
Speaker 1: that's the part of you that's got out of control
Speaker 1: and you've got to go in there and face it.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that answers the question, but that's
Speaker 1: kind of where my head goes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it does. And as you were talking,
Speaker 3: I was thinking about you talk to dog trainers often
Speaker 3: and you say to them, you know, I've got this
Speaker 3: dog who's really out of control. They'll often say, well, really,
Speaker 3: what we've got here is a people problem, meaning the
Speaker 3: environment you've got the dog in and the messages you're
Speaker 3: giving the dog and the signals that you're giving the
Speaker 3: dog are creating this problem. There's nothing wrong with the
Speaker 3: dog when the dog is given the right environment, it
Speaker 3: will begin to be quote unquote a good dog. Now,
Speaker 3: you know, humans are not that simple. But I thought
Speaker 3: we could start there because you've talked recently about your mother, Yeah,
Speaker 3: and you know her struggles and your sort of desire
Speaker 3: to try not to be like her, and then maybe
Speaker 3: think that maybe you were like her, and maybe we
Speaker 3: could start there. Tell us a little bit about that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I would love to talk about that. It's a
Speaker 4: big part.
Speaker 1: Of my journey is growing up being the creative weirdo,
Speaker 1: you know, qualities that I clearly got from my mom.
Speaker 4: And when I was really young, I was.
Speaker 1: Like stoked about that because she was the most creative,
Speaker 1: interesting person in my life, so being compared to her
Speaker 1: was great.
Speaker 4: But as I got older.
Speaker 1: I started to feel complicated about that, as I saw
Speaker 1: her life kind of devolve into chaos, and I noticed
Speaker 1: that people that told me that I was just like
Speaker 1: her didn't actually have the highest opinion of her, you
Speaker 1: know they So I was like, ah, it's not a
Speaker 1: compliment like I thought it was. You know, they talk
Speaker 1: about how she can't stick to anything, she can't stick
Speaker 1: to a job, she's late to everything, she can't stick
Speaker 1: to an appointment, she can't stick to a marriage like
Speaker 1: and I started to as I got older, just feel like,
Speaker 1: I don't know how I feel about being just like her.
Speaker 1: And so I think by the time I was seventeen,
Speaker 1: I probably saw myself as a bad thing that needed
Speaker 1: to be overcome and conquered and repressed, and I wanted
Speaker 1: to be the opposite of her. And I spent you know,
Speaker 1: a few years really grinding down who I was and
Speaker 1: desperately trying to shift these qualities and aspects of myself
Speaker 1: that I saw were coming from her. And I think
Speaker 1: that season wasn't for nothing. There were good things that
Speaker 1: came from that, but ultimately I couldn't escape who I was.
Speaker 1: And I think it wasn't until I came across this
Speaker 1: talk about this adult with Adhd, and I started to
Speaker 1: recognize all of these qualities, you know, as he's going
Speaker 1: and talking about it and talking about not being able
Speaker 1: to make an appointment or stick to things and stick
Speaker 1: to jobs and the difficulties around that. And I started
Speaker 1: hearing my story but also my mom's story, and I
Speaker 1: started reading all about Adhd, and the more that I
Speaker 1: read about it, the more I felt like I understood her.
Speaker 1: And I saw her in a light that I'd never
Speaker 1: seen her in. And so what happened was I started
Speaker 1: to suspect that maybe she failed not because of who
Speaker 1: she was, but because she was trying to be somebody
Speaker 1: that she wasn't. And I started to get more curious
Speaker 1: about what would it look like to quit trying to
Speaker 1: be the opposite of her and the way that I
Speaker 1: always think of it as instead tried to be more
Speaker 1: like her than she ever let herself be, and that
Speaker 1: has proved to be a much better policy for me.
Speaker 1: And you know the other thing that happened at that time,
Speaker 1: I think you were talking about environment at that same time.
Speaker 1: So I tried to be an illustrator. I tried to
Speaker 1: make that work right out the gate of college. I
Speaker 1: studied that in college, and then I got a few
Speaker 1: lucky breaks out the door, but ultimately it kind of
Speaker 1: all disappeared overnight for whatever reason, and I had to
Speaker 1: get a job at this U shelter.
Speaker 4: So I was working at this U shelter, and it was.
Speaker 1: Kind of my worst nightmare actually because it was connected
Speaker 1: to a juvenile detention center, which I didn't understand when
Speaker 1: I got the job that I would be required to
Speaker 1: take shifts over there too, and so as someone with ADHD,
Speaker 1: I find like traditional employment to feel like a jail,
Speaker 1: and here I was, like in traditional employment, in an
Speaker 1: actual jail.
Speaker 4: It was my first shift.
Speaker 1: I mean, I was just having a panic attack just
Speaker 1: going back into this life down facility without windows. But
Speaker 1: looking back, I've started to think about how much facing
Speaker 1: that fear was a very formative experience to me because
Speaker 1: the thing that everyone knows that works there is that
Speaker 1: the kids that are in the shelter that are being
Speaker 1: taken care of because they currently don't have a home,
Speaker 1: and the kids that end up in the juvenile detention center,
Speaker 1: they're almost all the same kids. Literally, they just go
Speaker 1: back and forth from these two places. And the thing
Speaker 1: that I think really broke something open for me was
Speaker 1: that they could be in the exact same place literally,
Speaker 1: and depending on how they think they got there, completely
Speaker 1: changed their behavior. Because when they were on the shelter side,
Speaker 1: and they were there because they deserve a roof over
Speaker 1: their heads, they acted pretty good. When they were on
Speaker 1: the juvenile detention side, where they were there because they
Speaker 1: were bad, they acted bad.
Speaker 4: So I think that that.
Speaker 1: Worldview of are you a bad thing to repress or
Speaker 1: are you a good thing to cultivate? Ultimately, the seed
Speaker 1: of that I think was found in that job.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of stuff in there that we could
Speaker 3: go into, and I want to start with going back
Speaker 3: to a little bit more about your mother, because it
Speaker 3: sounds like her problems were more than just she couldn't
Speaker 3: make appointments.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's definitely true.
Speaker 1: So by the time I was about seventeen, she had
Speaker 1: left her second family, ended up with this guy that
Speaker 1: was physically abusive and kind of just a bad dude.
Speaker 1: And I got a phone call from her sister saying
Speaker 1: that she was in the hospital and that they'd found
Speaker 1: out that she had a brain tumor. She had this
Speaker 1: very hardcore drug addiction, and you know, they didn't know
Speaker 1: if she was going to make it. They had to
Speaker 1: do emergency brain surgery, which they did. And you know,
Speaker 1: part of the thing I relate to with her is
Speaker 1: that I'm a talk so I have a podcast. So
Speaker 1: it was pretty devastating to watch her go through this
Speaker 1: because when they remove the tumor, it actually initially really
Speaker 1: destroyed her speaking ability because it it was right in
Speaker 1: the center of like the vocabulary area of the brain,
Speaker 1: and so when she got out, she couldn't remember hardly
Speaker 1: any words, and so it was pretty devastating to watch
Speaker 1: her kind of lose her essence in a way, and so, yeah,
Speaker 1: it got pretty bad.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: I remember seeing her after she got out of the
Speaker 1: hospital and being devastated to see her in that place,
Speaker 1: but also just completely burdened by the idea of like,
Speaker 1: I'm just like this person, like this is what's going
Speaker 1: to happen to me. And the fact of the matter
Speaker 1: is I was already doing drugs. I was already, you know,
Speaker 1: trying to avoid school and work if possible, and yeah,
Speaker 1: I could sense like this is the path that I'm on.
Speaker 3: I think it's interesting to think about our parents because
Speaker 3: we are in reaction to our parents very often, whether
Speaker 3: that reaction is we are trying to be like them
Speaker 3: because we admire them, or because that's how they want
Speaker 3: us to be and we want to please them, or
Speaker 3: because we think the way they are isn't good and
Speaker 3: we're reacting against that. It's this dynamic where if we're
Speaker 3: not conscious about it, we can get spun around in
Speaker 3: really difficult ways. Like I worked really really hard. I
Speaker 3: was certain that I would not be my father. My
Speaker 3: father was very angry. You know, everybody in the neighborhood
Speaker 3: was scared of him. I mean, he was just an
Speaker 3: angry person. And so that was the obvious sort of
Speaker 3: quote unquote bad behavior in my house. It was the
Speaker 3: one that everybody remarked upon. And so I'm like, I'm
Speaker 3: not going to be like that. I'm not going to
Speaker 3: be like that. I'm not going to be like that.
Speaker 3: And at the same time, there was sitting over on
Speaker 3: the other shore was my mother, who her behavior seemed fine.
Speaker 3: But it's interesting in not becoming my father, I took
Speaker 3: on many of the worst qualities of my mother, which
Speaker 3: were depression, right because I was so determined not to
Speaker 3: be angry that that emotion could have no place in
Speaker 3: my life. And all I could have is like, shove
Speaker 3: it down, shove it down, shove it down, which we
Speaker 3: know leads to depression. And so then later on I'm like, well,
Speaker 3: hang on a second, I guess I'm not a lot
Speaker 3: like my dad, but holy mackerel, I'm a lot like
Speaker 3: my mom. And I just find it interesting to think
Speaker 3: about how those dynamics really play out slightly differently for everybody,
Speaker 3: But everybody's doing that dance, they might be doing it differently.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I totally relay. I have my own versions of that.
Speaker 1: I kind of feel like the journey is to become
Speaker 1: a third thing, to become a thing that isn't either
Speaker 1: of those people.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: That's right. That's right, And it does take a certain
Speaker 3: degree of intentionality and awareness of that stuff. Otherwise, we
Speaker 3: tend to be shaped by what's around us unless we're
Speaker 3: in shaping it.
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 3: So the next thing I'd like to go into a
Speaker 3: little bit more is ADHD. I'd love to hear about
Speaker 3: what your journey with that looked like. After you went Okay,
Speaker 3: maybe I've got this thing. You know, I watched this
Speaker 3: talk you know you mentioned you then went on the
Speaker 3: internet and started doom scrolling for you know, back before
Speaker 3: that was a word for ADHD, right, yeah, and learning
Speaker 3: all about it. So where did that lead you and
Speaker 3: how is that unspooled over the years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's been a massive revelation for me,
Speaker 1: and it started actually before that. I kind of had
Speaker 1: suspected that I had ADHD all the way back when
Speaker 1: I was in kindergarten. I remember, I think it was
Speaker 1: kindergartener first grade, and there was this kid named Jeremy
Speaker 1: who just would like run around the gym and we'd
Speaker 1: both just be absurd and crazy. And then I remember
Speaker 1: one time in open gym he stopped and he's like, hey,
Speaker 1: I just got to go to the office real quick.
Speaker 1: And I was like, uh why, and he's like, I
Speaker 1: gotta go get my medicine. I was like, are you sick,
Speaker 1: and he's like, no, I'm just hyper. And I thought, oh,
Speaker 1: I didn't know you need medicine for that.
Speaker 4: I thought it was just being awesome.
Speaker 1: And then in high school I had an experience where
Speaker 1: in my period where I was experimenting a lot with drugs.
Speaker 1: One time we got some adderall from a friend who
Speaker 1: had ADHD, me and a buddy of mine, and we
Speaker 1: both took it and went home and we both did
Speaker 1: crazy things that night. My friend Brian, he didn't sleep
Speaker 1: a wink, watched the sunrise, was completely wired. And I
Speaker 1: did something crazier than that, which was my homework and
Speaker 1: in an efficient manner. And I remember thinking like, well,
Speaker 1: I don't know what this means. I can't really tell
Speaker 1: my parents this because I'm doing a legal behavior. But
Speaker 1: I was curious about it, and so I think but
Speaker 1: I also just stuffed it because I just thought, this
Speaker 1: is something wrong with me. I don't want to think
Speaker 1: about it. I'll just get past it. And so as
Speaker 1: an adult, once I started to open that door, I
Speaker 1: think that it did a lot of things. I feel
Speaker 1: like there's a lot of debate around should you or
Speaker 1: should you not seek out a diagnosis around the different
Speaker 1: things that you've got going on, And I feel like
Speaker 1: I'm somewhere in the middle in that. I feel like
Speaker 1: we have the DSM. We have so much information about
Speaker 1: what's wrong with people in terms of neuroscience and neurologically,
Speaker 1: maybe it just doesn't pay to figure out what's right
Speaker 1: with you.
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 1: You can do that a little bit, but it just
Speaker 1: doesn't seem as like there's not as much scientific rigor
Speaker 1: around what's the cool things about your brain. And so
Speaker 1: I think for me personally, I always encourage people like
Speaker 1: go figure out whatever they say is wrong with you,
Speaker 1: because it will be a roadmap and if you see
Speaker 1: it through a different lens, like the way I see
Speaker 1: it is, ADHD is it's not an all good thing,
Speaker 1: it's not an all bad thing, but the more I
Speaker 1: understood what it was, the more I found ways to
Speaker 1: work with it and then also have self compassion for Like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the world I find myself in isn't necessarily ideal for this,
Speaker 1: And I like to think of it like water World,
Speaker 1: that Kevin Costner movie, where some people have developed gills,
Speaker 1: other people haven't. I feel like I live in a
Speaker 1: water world and I didn't develop gills, So it's okay
Speaker 1: if I need a snorkel and some scuba gear, like
Speaker 1: I need some extra help, like and seeking that diagnosis,
Speaker 1: I think help me find that and also helped me
Speaker 1: lean into the strengths around it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think that question of diagnosis, of label H,
Speaker 3: of what's the right response, of what is just normal
Speaker 3: sort of the range of human functioning and what is
Speaker 3: quote unquote a disorder. Yeah, I mean these are really
Speaker 3: complicated questions.
Speaker 4: Mary.
Speaker 3: I think we've come a long long way as a
Speaker 3: society around mental health. Yeah, and we have an extraordinarily
Speaker 3: long way to go, because nobody really understands what is
Speaker 3: going on, you know, And the more you get into it,
Speaker 3: the more you start realizing, like, well, I'm not saying
Speaker 3: this is you. Let's talk about Jeremy was that Jeremy, Jeremy,
Speaker 3: Jeremy had ADHD, and then a little bit later he
Speaker 3: was diagnosed with anxiety, and then a little bit later
Speaker 3: he was diagnosed with perhaps bipolar, And you start looking
Speaker 3: at that and you go, well, boy, Jeremy is an
Speaker 3: extraordinarily unlucky guy to be diagnosed with like five or
Speaker 3: six different what's wrong. Jeremy's really been dealt a bad hand, right,
Speaker 3: So you start to go, well, Okay, there's something going
Speaker 3: on underneath these that there may be a commonality here,
Speaker 3: but we don't know what it is. And your ADHD
Speaker 3: looks different than Jeremy's ADHD. Again, I think we've made
Speaker 3: a ton of progress, and I think that we have
Speaker 3: ways of helping people who are suffering extraordinarily that we
Speaker 3: didn't have. And still our own journey through it is
Speaker 3: really really complicated. But I love that idea of the
Speaker 3: water world analogy because I feel the same way, like,
Speaker 3: for whatever reason, I have mood issues, you have depression
Speaker 3: related and there have been times that I've needed snorkels
Speaker 3: and I've needed different things and those have been extraordinarily helpful.
Speaker 3: And then there's been times I've needed to go like, well,
Speaker 3: it's okay that I don't even swim that well, like,
Speaker 3: no big deal, who cares about swimming? Like so it's
Speaker 3: finding way through all that that I think takes a
Speaker 3: lot of nuance.
Speaker 1: Yep, I agree completely, And I think shifting my thinking
Speaker 1: of like oh, I need a snarkl because I'm bad,
Speaker 1: is different than I need a snorkel because I love
Speaker 1: myself and I don't need to grind through life just
Speaker 1: because these are the cards that I was dealt.
Speaker 3: We all know that genuine self compassion and self love
Speaker 3: are absolutely crucial in the quest for healing, transformation, and
Speaker 3: everyday growth. But what if we struggle to get there.
Speaker 3: One of the most powerful, yet effortless ways to settle
Speaker 3: our nervous system and reconnect with our true selves is
Speaker 3: by spending quality time in nature. It's for this reason
Speaker 3: that this August I'll be offering an in person Awakening
Speaker 3: in the Outdoors retreat at the Beautiful Cropollu Center. This summer,
Speaker 3: I'll be co teaching the retreat with Ralph de l Rosa,
Speaker 3: who's a three time guest of the podcast, author, psychologist,
Speaker 3: meditation teacher, and friend. During these five days together, will
Speaker 3: enjoy hikes, outdoor meditations, art, insightful workshops, and lively discussions.
Speaker 3: Our goal is for you to walk away feeling restored,
Speaker 3: with a firm awareness of new resources and a new
Speaker 3: relationship with the gifts nature holds.
Speaker 4: For us.
Speaker 3: To learn more about this short retreat and sign up,
Speaker 3: go to one you feed dot net slash nature. How
Speaker 3: do you tweeze apart, ADHD and creativity? Yeah, because there's
Speaker 3: some crossover there in what you see. And so I'll
Speaker 3: give you my personal example of this, and I'd love
Speaker 3: us to reflect on it in your own case, which is,
Speaker 3: on one hand, I have suffered from depression and there's
Speaker 3: times it's been really bad. And on the other hand,
Speaker 3: I think I have a slightly melancholy type temperament, and
Speaker 3: I think some of that is who I am. And
Speaker 3: so you know, I don't want to be pathologizing very
Speaker 3: natural and good parts of myself. And yet to your point,
Speaker 3: I don't want to be suffering unnecessarily. So how have
Speaker 3: you thought through that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've given that a lot of thought, because I
Speaker 1: don't think as a society we take the idea of
Speaker 1: the hero journey or individuation seriously enough. I like to
Speaker 1: think of it like if an alien came through a
Speaker 1: portal and gave you a device and said, this thing
Speaker 1: is unique in all the universe and it's one of
Speaker 1: a kind, and then another evil alien comes through a
Speaker 1: different portal and killed him before he could tell you
Speaker 1: what it does. You would be like, I got to
Speaker 1: figure out what this does. Like it's one of a kind,
Speaker 1: it's unique in all the universe. It's one of the
Speaker 1: most powerful devices in all the universe. That's your brain.
Speaker 1: That's your brain. Your brain is like no other brain,
Speaker 1: and it is the most powerful thing in the universe.
Speaker 1: Now AI is coming up, but our brains at least
Speaker 1: work in a way that still is a mystery. The
Speaker 1: way that they work is completely insane, and so I'm
Speaker 1: taking the long way route here to get to the answer.
Speaker 1: But I just feel as though it's really important to
Speaker 1: take seriously, like how does this particular brain function and
Speaker 1: what are its strengths and weaknesses. That was one of
Speaker 1: my favorite things about learning about ADHD was I felt
Speaker 1: like it gave me a cheat sheet for how my
Speaker 1: brain was working, so that I could kind of codify
Speaker 1: it in a way where it wasn't just happening on accident.
Speaker 1: And the way I like to think about it. I
Speaker 1: don't know if this is scientifically accurate, but it's the
Speaker 1: way it feels to me is that I have friends
Speaker 1: whose brain it seems like you're in an attic and
Speaker 1: it's like a little tiny spotlight, almost like a laser,
Speaker 1: and it laser focuses on one little thing in that attic.
Speaker 1: It can just see this old mannekin or whatever, and
Speaker 1: it can really drill down and get the micro details
Speaker 1: of that thing. And my brain and my attention feels
Speaker 1: much more like this giant spotlight and I'm seeing ten
Speaker 1: things at the same time. And so I think that
Speaker 1: has really served my ability to do things like analogies
Speaker 1: and storytelling and metaphor, because every time I think of
Speaker 1: a thing, I don't think of that thing.
Speaker 4: I think of things.
Speaker 1: I think of, Oh, it's like that, and it's connected
Speaker 1: to this and connected to that.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: So my brain thinks in this very kind of abstract way.
Speaker 1: And the more that I've understood, like, oh, that divergent
Speaker 1: way of thinking comes really naturally to me. Well, the
Speaker 1: reason I highlight that is because I actually think creativity
Speaker 1: means a lot of different things. I think that there
Speaker 1: are people who approach creativity through the lens of like
Speaker 1: Oigi board creativity, where you're just like, well, I don't
Speaker 1: know what the paintbrush is gonna do, so you start
Speaker 1: and you.
Speaker 4: Don't know what the end is.
Speaker 1: Whereas I think it's just as creative, and I probably
Speaker 1: lean towards more like puzzle solving or you know, mystery
Speaker 1: book writing where you have to work in reverse.
Speaker 4: We're like, that's where I'm going now, I'm gonna.
Speaker 1: Lay everything, all of the pieces in a giant puzzle.
Speaker 1: And so I think, as I've understood how the ADHD
Speaker 1: brain typically works, I could start leaning towards creative opportunities
Speaker 1: that's really well suited for.
Speaker 4: Does that make sense?
Speaker 3: It does? So what sort of creative activities is the
Speaker 3: adh bringing well suited to. I'm just kind of curious. So, yeah,
Speaker 3: you sort of mentioned the spotlight versus the laser the laser, yeah,
Speaker 3: or the you know, diffuse focus versus the detail focused. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 3: So that sounds like one big area. Are there others?
Speaker 4: I think there are others.
Speaker 1: I think that the thing that comes to mind is
Speaker 1: I don't know if I've ever seen anybody say this,
Speaker 1: but I feel like I don't have the bottom level
Speaker 1: of the building, and that level of the building is reality.
Speaker 4: It's like the way things actually are.
Speaker 1: If you said how are you feeling, I couldn't say
Speaker 1: this is how I'm feeling.
Speaker 4: I'd say it's like this, it's all metaphor.
Speaker 1: And so I think that the way I've come to
Speaker 1: understand that is illustration. So illustration is it's usually the
Speaker 1: work of symbol, and symbol is essentially analogy, and so
Speaker 1: I think that that's probably the main way. But then
Speaker 1: also the other way, I think that the bottom level
Speaker 1: of the building not existing, like whatever the basic obvious answer,
Speaker 1: I feel like I can't even grab that answer. It's
Speaker 1: almost like you're stuck in a room. There's a door,
Speaker 1: and I'll do everything but try the handle. So I'll
Speaker 1: find out ten other ways to get out of this
Speaker 1: room that aren't opening the door with the handle. And
Speaker 1: so I do think it gives me a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of options, but it does often mean that I don't
Speaker 1: do the common sense option. And that is true whether
Speaker 1: I'm making art or a podcast episode, or whether I'm
Speaker 1: just at the grocery store just doing something weird and
Speaker 1: someone comes along that works there and they're like, do
Speaker 1: you need help to So yeah, I feel like it's yeah,
Speaker 1: seeing the divergent, all these different ways of doing things,
Speaker 1: and then I think it's the illustration as symbol and
Speaker 1: analogy that comes really natural to me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's interesting as I look around and I look
Speaker 3: in your studio here at all of your art, right,
Speaker 3: it's pretty obvious you're not a detail focused guy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, very true.
Speaker 3: Your creatures don't have a lot almost in anything fine detail,
Speaker 3: you know, which I'm not in any way criticizing. Just
Speaker 3: as you were saying that, I was like, that tracks.
Speaker 4: That's my jam.
Speaker 1: And actually, when I started really trying to develop my
Speaker 1: visual vernacular, I did this project where I did a
Speaker 1: new character every weekday for a year, and really the
Speaker 1: challenge I knew for myself is that one of the
Speaker 1: reasons I did it was because my taste is so
Speaker 1: abstract lack of detail. Even when I was growing up
Speaker 1: with superheroes, I liked the ones that had almost no detail,
Speaker 1: like Spider Man was very cool, but even like Black
Speaker 1: Panther was cooler than that for me because it's just
Speaker 1: a black.
Speaker 4: Suit, all curves.
Speaker 1: Anything that was like too much stuff going on. I
Speaker 1: don't know, just not my taste. So I did these
Speaker 1: two hundred and sixty characters because the challenge was, how
Speaker 1: do you do very little but evoke everything you want
Speaker 1: to say and do it in a unique way, Because
Speaker 1: if your taste is that minimal, like in the world
Speaker 1: we live in, a lot has been done. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: trying to find your voice within a circle with legs
Speaker 1: is not very easy, and it comes down to the nuance.
Speaker 1: So those two hundred and sixty characters were me just
Speaker 1: trying to figure out from doing very little, how can
Speaker 1: I do a ton?
Speaker 3: Now, did you give yourself specific constraints or your taste
Speaker 3: was the constraint?
Speaker 1: I knew, just my taste. I mean, taste is a
Speaker 1: big thread through everything I do. It's a thing I
Speaker 1: talk about on my podcast all the time. Like, I
Speaker 1: think taste does not get enough play. I don't think
Speaker 1: it's everything in creativity, but I do think it's the
Speaker 1: starting block. You might have saw, like ten years ago,
Speaker 1: there was this clip of Ira Glass that went viral.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he talks about taste in that.
Speaker 1: The funny thing is, though everybody talks about that clip
Speaker 1: because it's like the gap, the gap between the taste
Speaker 1: that you have and the work that you're able to do,
Speaker 1: and your taste is saying this work that I'm able
Speaker 1: to do isn't any good.
Speaker 4: Everybody talks about the gap of that.
Speaker 1: But I got hung up on an earlier part of
Speaker 1: that video where he said everybody starts making stuff because
Speaker 1: they have great taste. And I heard that and I thought,
Speaker 1: I don't think that's a given. I've never heard anybody
Speaker 1: say that. I heard Gordon Ramsey say a similar thing,
Speaker 1: and I was like, what is this. Gordon Ramsey was
Speaker 1: asked like, what do you look for in young chefs
Speaker 1: to know that they have talent? And I thought, you know,
Speaker 1: cook a steak to perfection. I'm thinking skill based things,
Speaker 1: and he said great taste. He's like, if they don't
Speaker 1: have a great palette that can pick up on nuance,
Speaker 1: they can't make good food.
Speaker 4: That's the thing that.
Speaker 1: Guides your creative process. And I think they were getting
Speaker 1: at the same thing. And so I've kind of dove
Speaker 1: deep into that world over the past eight years to
Speaker 1: try to figure that out. And then as you pull
Speaker 1: it that, you realize, like, I'm not superversed in philosophy,
Speaker 1: but I know Emmanuel Kant is pretty famous in that world,
Speaker 1: and he had a huge body of work around the
Speaker 1: idea of taste because he thought it was one of
Speaker 1: the only things that came built into your system. A
Speaker 1: priori like taste is something that you don't learn, and
Speaker 1: I think that's the building block. So yeah, when I
Speaker 1: was going into that project, I knew I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: make stuff that I don't like, Like I'm going to
Speaker 1: have to stick within this taste but then find the
Speaker 1: edges of it, because it can't just be stuff that
Speaker 1: I like that's already been done that I know that
Speaker 1: I like. I'm gonna have to like mess up and
Speaker 1: push it and all that. But that's gonna be my guide.
Speaker 3: Wow, I'm gonna have to ponder whether taste is built
Speaker 3: in I tend to be a believe or not much
Speaker 3: is built in and that it's all all conditioned.
Speaker 1: I would only say I would disagree with can't in
Speaker 1: this way, but only slightly. I think the interesting space
Speaker 1: is between guilty pleasure, which is I wish I didn't
Speaker 1: like this, but that's really valuable because it's telling you
Speaker 1: something about your palette. Because it's hard to get past persona.
Speaker 1: It's hard to know like what do I like because
Speaker 1: I think it'll make me look good?
Speaker 4: Or what do I like because I just like it?
Speaker 1: And then there's that, and then there's acquired tastes that
Speaker 1: I think are as interesting and valuable.
Speaker 3: Right, it makes me start thinking, like I used to
Speaker 3: just love threes company, and then I just you know, like.
Speaker 4: That's the good stuff. Interesting, I guess.
Speaker 3: But what's interesting is that if you look culturally, most
Speaker 3: people like the same things. The same things become very
Speaker 3: very popular, which might say that our tastes run very similar,
Speaker 3: which then most artists will say, well, but a lot
Speaker 3: of that stuff is just lowest common denominator here. Well, okay,
Speaker 3: is it? It's just fascinating questions.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's interesting.
Speaker 1: What it makes me think of next is I don't
Speaker 1: know if this crosses over into all the different types
Speaker 1: of taste that you could have. But as I've been
Speaker 1: thinking about and exploring the idea of taste, one of
Speaker 1: the things that I came across is this idea of
Speaker 1: a supertaster, which is a have you heard of that far?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so it's just.
Speaker 1: Somebody who has way more taste buds than your average person.
Speaker 3: If you heard that, they might be Giants song about supertesters,
Speaker 3: Oh one of their children's records. You've got it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you have to go listen.
Speaker 4: That's awesome.
Speaker 1: I'm yeah, I have kind of like got obsessed with
Speaker 1: the idea of taste. There you go, So I'm gonna
Speaker 1: listen to that. But yeah, I've thought about it like that.
Speaker 1: Like I think leading with your super taste is a
Speaker 1: good idea as a creator, like leaning into the thing
Speaker 1: that you have in a unique receptivity to nuance, because
Speaker 1: when you have that, first of all, you're able to
Speaker 1: like reverse engineer a recipe. Like if you really are
Speaker 1: tuned into comedy, you cannot just enjoy the comedy that
Speaker 1: you love, but you can listen to it with a
Speaker 1: fine tooth comb kind of and just figure out, like
Speaker 1: how are they achieving that because you're able to like
Speaker 1: put it on your palette and break it down. I
Speaker 1: think there's a lot of reason why there's that monoculture thing.
Speaker 4: Again.
Speaker 1: I think part of that's the persona. People just want
Speaker 1: to like what's acceptable.
Speaker 3: What they're exposed to. I mean, so.
Speaker 1: Many reasons, but I think as an artist, the best
Speaker 1: bet is to bet on the thing that is maybe
Speaker 1: the weird tastes that you have.
Speaker 3: What's interesting about what you were just saying there about
Speaker 3: taking something that you love and sort of deconstructing. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, it made me think of something else that
Speaker 3: you were talking about that I wanted to go into
Speaker 3: a little bit where you were talking about how, at
Speaker 3: least early on, everybody talks about art being creative expression. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: and that for you, it felt like art early on
Speaker 3: was creative excavation. It was using a shovel. And I'd
Speaker 3: love to talk a little bit about that because as
Speaker 3: I was thinking about that, I was also thinking about
Speaker 3: how personal growth happens, or spiritual development or whatever you want,
Speaker 3: psychological development, shadow work, pick your term, right, is that
Speaker 3: that happens by taking ideas and then really using those
Speaker 3: ideas to reflect upon yourself in a deep way. It's
Speaker 3: one thing to read a book of you're into young
Speaker 3: right now, to read a young book and be like, oh,
Speaker 3: those are all really interesting ideas. It's a whole different
Speaker 3: animal to stop and take those ideas and go, okay,
Speaker 3: well what is my shadow you know, or follow some
Speaker 3: of the exercises that some of these books happen, sit
Speaker 3: down and do that writing and do that excavation in
Speaker 3: the same way that you're saying that to create good art,
Speaker 3: you need to take what you like of just consuming it,
Speaker 3: actually deconstructing it or excavating it or excavating what about
Speaker 3: you is responding. It's moving from a consumer of these
Speaker 3: things to some form of deeper reflection upon these things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think the best term for it for me
Speaker 1: would be a young term, which is active imagination. Active imagination.
Speaker 1: Anybody that's not super familiar with that, I'm not a
Speaker 1: Youngian analyst, so I can't speak to it expertly, but
Speaker 1: I can speak to it as an artist. Active imagination
Speaker 1: is kind of like dreaming while you're awake. It's kind
Speaker 1: of just like trying to find the symbols that are
Speaker 1: coming up naturally and excavating those. That's what a lot
Speaker 1: of artists are doing, whether they realize it or not.
Speaker 1: You're just taking the things that are coming to you,
Speaker 1: the ideas that are coming to you, and you're trying
Speaker 1: to put them on the page, or you're trying to
Speaker 1: put them into music. And the projects that I was
Speaker 1: doing early on that I would consider self excavation, they
Speaker 1: were active imagination before I knew what that was. And
Speaker 1: I figured that out. That prompt came from one of
Speaker 1: my all time creative heroes, which is Charles Schultz, creator
Speaker 1: of Peanuts and Charlie Brown, and I had heard him
Speaker 1: say in an interview, like, so when I got stuck
Speaker 1: and I felt like, man, everything I'm making this is
Speaker 1: like a couple of years out of college when everything
Speaker 1: just died down. I just got stuck feeling like I'm
Speaker 1: just working in trends. I don't really feel like this
Speaker 1: is authentic to who I am. If I'm gonna make
Speaker 1: a real go at this over my life, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: have to go deeper than this. But really, there weren't
Speaker 1: any podcasts about creativity that I knew of at the time.
Speaker 4: I struggled to find any direction.
Speaker 1: So what I just started doing was obsessively consuming everything
Speaker 1: that I could find that my creators had said about
Speaker 1: their process or about their work. And one of the
Speaker 1: things I came across was Charles Schultz, and he said
Speaker 1: that he would always be asked, is.
Speaker 4: He Charlie Brown? His name is Charles. Charlie Brown's the
Speaker 4: main character.
Speaker 1: It makes sense, you know, and Charlie Brown's a loser,
Speaker 1: so it's kind of a funny question to say, are
Speaker 1: you Charlie Brown, And he'd say, yeah, I am Charlie Brown,
Speaker 1: but I'm also Lucy. Like Lucy's my sarcastic side, and
Speaker 1: Snoopy's my cool side, and Linus is my religious side,
Speaker 1: and all these characters are me just different sides of myself.
Speaker 1: And so when I did that first daily drawing practice
Speaker 1: where I was doing a new character every weekday for
Speaker 1: a year, that's what I was thinking of. I was thinking,
Speaker 1: I'm going to put a different part of myself onto
Speaker 1: the page as its own character, and I'm just going
Speaker 1: to do that over and over and over and try
Speaker 1: to find all these different facets of who I am.
Speaker 4: Only much later did.
Speaker 1: I realize that that's actually exactly what active imagination is,
Speaker 1: which is, instead of going out in your life and
Speaker 1: projecting your worst parts of you onto other people and
Speaker 1: subjecting the world to them, you can do that in
Speaker 1: your sketchbook.
Speaker 4: You can like project all those pieces.
Speaker 1: Out of yourself and onto a page, and it can
Speaker 1: act as a kind of soul mirror. It can be
Speaker 1: a thing where you can see the inside on the outside.
Speaker 1: You can take a look at it and get to
Speaker 1: know it and actually, Carl Jung even thought that creative
Speaker 1: work was a great way to excavate the psyche, even
Speaker 1: beyond trying to make pretty things or a career of it.
Speaker 3: This is a totally different thing, but it's interesting. In
Speaker 3: something called acceptance and commitment therapy, which is a type
Speaker 3: of therapy, they talk a lot about cognitive diffusion, being
Speaker 3: able to sort of not be your thoughts, but be
Speaker 3: able to look at your thoughts, being able to get
Speaker 3: a lot of distance. And one of the tools that
Speaker 3: they recommend is slightly similar to what you were just saying,
Speaker 3: which is you give these thoughts, you know, particularly the
Speaker 3: ones that are coming up again and again are problematic.
Speaker 3: You give them a character, you know, Like for me,
Speaker 3: it's not as creative as creating my own character, right right,
Speaker 3: But for me, my sort of low mood kind of
Speaker 3: guy is e or ah. Yeah right, that's right.
Speaker 4: This is just such a bad day.
Speaker 1: My wife thought I were just talking about how Winnie
Speaker 1: the Pooh applies to this perfectly.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, So when I do that, right, it just
Speaker 3: gives me a little bit of distance. It makes me smile.
Speaker 3: But you created two hundred and fifty new characters. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it was jo hundred and sixty. I guess weekdays, all right,
Speaker 3: that's good to know. I don't feel like I have
Speaker 3: two hundred and sixty parts of myself. So did they
Speaker 3: just come naturally to you? Or what was that excavation process?
Speaker 1: Like, I mean, I definitely took inspiration from other people
Speaker 1: in my life, that was true too, okay, But for
Speaker 1: the most part, I think it was just nailing down
Speaker 1: a particular behavior or a particular desire or And I
Speaker 1: think you'd be surprised if you start making a character
Speaker 1: every weekday, how much stuff you got going on in
Speaker 1: there and all these different kind of warring factions in
Speaker 1: your brain.
Speaker 4: It started out that way, but what ended.
Speaker 1: Up happening And this is kind of why I recommend
Speaker 1: creators that are trying to find their their style or
Speaker 1: this even better, the substance of their work or the
Speaker 1: story of work, is that they would get it out
Speaker 1: and start working it out on the page. And I
Speaker 1: think at the same time, you're looking at those psychically
Speaker 1: charged images that come up when you're trying to pair
Speaker 1: these facets of yourself with symbols. And as I did that,
Speaker 1: I knew, like I was really obsessed with you know,
Speaker 1: in doctor Seuss. If there was a page where there
Speaker 1: were eyes in a tree trunk at night and it's
Speaker 1: all dark, like I knew, I was obsessed with that.
Speaker 1: So I was really like paying attention to these symbols.
Speaker 1: And at first I just thought, and I think a
Speaker 1: lot of creative think this, well, why do you like that?
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's just cool, That's all there is to it. But
Speaker 1: if it resonates on a deeper level, I've come to
Speaker 1: feel that there is a reason behind that. There's something
Speaker 1: going on there of why that's resonating on a deeper level,
Speaker 1: and as you work through it, you start getting closer
Speaker 1: to the bottom of that. And so it started out
Speaker 1: as this project where I was just making characters, and
Speaker 1: then eventually I realized, like all these characters that are
Speaker 1: like hiding, they're getting its kind of abstract forces, and
Speaker 1: it became this thing called Invisible Things, which there's a
Speaker 1: poster right look in the head. We have a picture
Speaker 1: book me and my wife just made. It's coming out
Speaker 1: this year called Invisible Things, and it's all these characters
Speaker 1: that are personifying the invisible forces, the phenomenons like dark
Speaker 1: matter and gravity, and then feelings like love, and joy
Speaker 1: and all that, and then also the sensory things, and yeah,
Speaker 1: over time, the more stuff I made, the more I
Speaker 1: had a sense of like what those images were doing
Speaker 1: in my head. And for me, I think it's just
Speaker 1: that as an illustrator, kind of maybe what's broken about
Speaker 1: me or maybe interesting, is that I don't really like
Speaker 1: the visible world.
Speaker 4: I'm not really interested in the visible.
Speaker 1: World, which is kind of weird when you're working in
Speaker 1: a visual medium. I'm really just fascinated by all the
Speaker 1: things we can't see, and then come to find out,
Speaker 1: you know, there's different figures depending where you look, but
Speaker 1: something like ninety five percent of our universe is invisible,
Speaker 1: and so there's a lot of good stuff to go at.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, there's all those different numbers like that
Speaker 3: that blow your mind. The other one I love to
Speaker 3: think about is, you know, we look out and we're like,
Speaker 3: all right, I see what there is to see. I'm
Speaker 3: hearing what there is here. Yeah, but no, we're not
Speaker 3: right in our senses pick up a very small range
Speaker 3: of all of these things that the frequencies that can
Speaker 3: be heard, we hear just a little bit of them.
Speaker 3: The rest of them are all around us. We just
Speaker 3: don't know it. The things to be seen, well, we're
Speaker 3: picking up a spectrum of what can be seen, but
Speaker 3: the rest of it is all out there, and I
Speaker 3: just love to sometimes close my eyes and be like,
Speaker 3: what actually out there? Yeah, I latch is like God
Speaker 3: only knows.
Speaker 1: And I think it goes back to Since we've been
Speaker 1: releasing this picture book, I've been thinking a lot about
Speaker 1: this story that I wrote with my wife. It's actually
Speaker 1: got I feel like the same point as another book
Speaker 1: that we just wrapped up that I haven't talked about
Speaker 1: publicly yet. Not to be overly cryptic, but I realized, like, oh,
Speaker 1: they have the same point. They're about how you know,
Speaker 1: when I was growing up, all of the things I
Speaker 1: liked were about hidden universes, you know, when we were
Speaker 1: talking about deconstructing your favorite things. When I was doing
Speaker 1: that project, that character project, I collected a bunch of
Speaker 1: my favorite stories. And the truth is, before you do that,
Speaker 1: it's not really obvious what they have in common. It
Speaker 1: took me a long time after the fact to start
Speaker 1: seeing that. You know, I collected Alice in Wonderland and
Speaker 1: Wizard of Oz and Fraggle Rock and Spirited Away and
Speaker 1: now as I say I'm all together, maybe people listening
Speaker 1: just see the obvious connection that they're all about hidden worlds.
Speaker 1: They're all about these hidden fantasy worlds, really, and so
Speaker 1: I kind of lived in fantasy. I even played pretend
Speaker 1: way past.
Speaker 4: When it's normal.
Speaker 1: Like I had a younger brother that was quite a
Speaker 1: bit younger than me, So I'll give myself a little
Speaker 1: bit of credit on that front.
Speaker 4: But I was just living in a fantasy world.
Speaker 1: I think, you know, I wasn't interested in the world
Speaker 1: that we find ourselves in. I wasn't engaged. I was
Speaker 1: kind of saying no to it actually on an energetic level,
Speaker 1: like I don't want this, I don't why like it.
Speaker 1: It's boring, it's not interesting. And I think a lot
Speaker 1: of that was ADHD. And then I had a friend
Speaker 1: he's also lives in Columbus now, but we're both from Columbus, Indiana. Weirdly,
Speaker 1: he lives in Columbus, Ohio now. He gave me this
Speaker 1: print out of an article back in probably two thousand
Speaker 1: and four that was about like popular science kind of
Speaker 1: quantum physics stuff, and it was the first time I'd
Speaker 1: ever heard about string theory. And you know, the different
Speaker 1: dimensions and multiple world theory, all these things, and I
Speaker 1: was like, whoa, this is the first time I've ever
Speaker 1: been interested in this universe or life. You know, our
Speaker 1: world is incredible, and I think it broke open this
Speaker 1: thing of There's this scene in Truman Show where the
Speaker 1: kid is like in school and they say what do
Speaker 1: you want to be when you grow up? And he's like,
Speaker 1: I want to be an explorer and the teachers like, well, sorry,
Speaker 1: we've already explored everything. And I think I felt like
Speaker 1: that until that moment when I was about seventeen. And
Speaker 1: so I think the picture books that I'm interested in making,
Speaker 1: they're less like fantasy hidden worlds and they're more like
Speaker 1: a magical, actual realism where it's like, these are real
Speaker 1: hidden worlds. They look fantastical, and yes I made up
Speaker 1: the characters, but all of the stuff you're seeing, this
Speaker 1: is how multi fast did an interesting our universe is,
Speaker 1: and how much there is to lean into. I think
Speaker 1: that's what kind of compels me to make that stuff.
Speaker 1: And it filters back to the ADHD thing too. I
Speaker 1: think that that was the thing I had to overcome,
Speaker 1: is boredom, just boredom with being alive. Oh, and it's
Speaker 1: weird because not everybody relates to that. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that it took me until I was about seventeen,
Speaker 1: and that article, along with a few other things getting
Speaker 1: into music and stuff like that, kind of switched me
Speaker 1: on to life. And I think that was the metaphoric
Speaker 1: say yes to the call to adventure, that is being
Speaker 1: alive and being in pain. You know, why would you
Speaker 1: want to stick around and do that? I don't think
Speaker 1: I knew until that time.
Speaker 3: I want to go back to very early in the conversation.
Speaker 3: It just sort of glossed over this piece, or you
Speaker 3: didn't gloss over it. We were just on our way
Speaker 3: other places. But I wanted to pick it back up,
Speaker 3: which is, you got out of college and you were
Speaker 3: deciding that what you're going to do is be an illustrator,
Speaker 3: and you got a couple of pretty early successes, right
Speaker 3: Nickelodeon called you. Yeah, you were really into doing concert posters,
Speaker 3: and you were offered a chance to illustrate a video
Speaker 3: for the band The December Is right, you had a
Speaker 3: lot of really early quick wins that then faded quickly.
Speaker 3: I wonder if you could talk us through that time period,
Speaker 3: that process and finding your way, you sort of find
Speaker 3: yourself out of creativity and discouraged and back into it. Today,
Speaker 3: you're clearly a successful creator. Share a little bit more
Speaker 3: about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that when I was seventeen and I
Speaker 1: was going through that with my mom, and I kind
Speaker 1: of went through this period of time where I thought,
Speaker 1: I want to be the opposite of her. I want
Speaker 1: to be the opposite of who I am. At the
Speaker 1: same time, I was going to college for illustration, and
Speaker 1: that's kind of a weird place to be in as
Speaker 1: an artist, where you are trying to run from yourself
Speaker 1: but make art that's a you know.
Speaker 4: It's not going to work.
Speaker 1: And I remember going to school and talking to my
Speaker 1: teachers and being like, look, all my favorite artists, it
Speaker 1: seems important that they have a style. They've found a
Speaker 1: style and it's working for him. I think a lot
Speaker 1: of young creators that's attractive to them. They want to
Speaker 1: figure that out, right. And I told my teachers that
Speaker 1: this first year, I'd like to focus on nail in
Speaker 1: the style and they're you know, they were left rightfully,
Speaker 1: so kind of like okay, slowdown, buddy, Like what that's
Speaker 1: not how it works? Like you can't just find a style.
Speaker 1: You know, a style finds you kind of thing, like
Speaker 1: kind of stoner yoda, mystical thing that you get in creativity.
Speaker 1: But you know, I think that there's definitely something to that.
Speaker 1: And I was like, okay, no, but I've got to
Speaker 1: figure this out because this is going to be my job.
Speaker 1: And they were pushing me to be like, yeah, your
Speaker 1: style emanates from who you are, Like, try to get
Speaker 1: in touch with yourself, find yourself, and your style will
Speaker 1: kind of come from that. But I was literally trying
Speaker 1: to run for myself. I was afraid to look in
Speaker 1: the mirror, look at the shadow. I wanted to get
Speaker 1: away from that. And so I think, discouraged by their advice,
Speaker 1: I decided like I'm going to just adopt trends. I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna be doing trendy work, which is I think
Speaker 1: part of the process too. You know, I don't look
Speaker 1: down on anybody that goes through that or works that way.
Speaker 4: It's fine.
Speaker 3: Do you think there was a conscious choice, like I'm
Speaker 3: gonna choose trend or it is just that was what
Speaker 3: was there and that's what you did.
Speaker 1: I wasn't conscious enough about what was going on. I
Speaker 1: think I just thought like well, the people that are
Speaker 1: getting work are doing this, and I liked it. It
Speaker 1: wasn't that it was disingenuine or something, but there was
Speaker 1: just like the psychedelic kind of doodle movement going on
Speaker 1: that was a kind of reinvention of like Peter Max
Speaker 1: Yellow Submarine, that kind of stuff. I feel like that
Speaker 1: was happening pretty hardcore in the mid twenty tens or
Speaker 1: two thousands, like two thousand and five to two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight ishes that time, and so I just started
Speaker 1: kind of like joining that movement, which is not a
Speaker 1: bad impulse. Like I said, I think there's a time
Speaker 1: for that. But the problem is if that's all you
Speaker 1: you have, when that trend leaves as soon as it came,
Speaker 1: you're kind of back at square one. And so I
Speaker 1: think some of those early jobs that I got and
Speaker 1: those lucky breaks were a lot just because I'm part
Speaker 1: of this movement doing something trendy. They know I'm one
Speaker 1: of the people doing that, and so they turned to me.
Speaker 1: That was the same time I got the job at
Speaker 1: the Juvenile Detention Center and worked at the U shelter.
Speaker 3: This was after these early early all that didn't work out. Essentially, Yeah,
Speaker 3: you saw it like, Okay, I've hit it big and
Speaker 3: then it turns out, no, you haven't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, i'll tell you what happened with that was a
Speaker 1: year out of school. I got an opportunity to illustrate
Speaker 1: this music video that was going to be on a
Speaker 1: Nickelodeon TV show, and it was with one of my
Speaker 1: favorite bands, which is the Decembrists, And I was like, dude, I've.
Speaker 4: Died and gone to Heaven.
Speaker 1: I've beat the game, like I'm I've just kind of
Speaker 1: started and like I'm crushing it, and I remember just
Speaker 1: doing everything I could think of to make it great,
Speaker 1: but I didn't have a lot of resources, Like I
Speaker 1: just started, and I sent over my final illustrations and
Speaker 1: they replied pretty quick and they were like rough draft looks. Okay,
Speaker 1: I was like, and I was so I had tried
Speaker 1: everything that I knew how to do to the point
Speaker 1: where I didn't know how to make it any better, right,
Speaker 1: I literally didn't And the only thing I can think
Speaker 1: to do was just write an email that was like,
Speaker 1: those are actually not the rough drafts, those are the finals.
Speaker 1: And yeah, they weren't happy about that. It didn't go
Speaker 1: how I wanted it to, and I felt like I
Speaker 1: kind of blew my once in a lifetime dream opportunity,
Speaker 1: you know. And so after that, just slowly that trend
Speaker 1: dried up. The economy got bad. It was like two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight, and then, you know, for six months,
Speaker 1: I didn't get any work, and I ended up having
Speaker 1: to just get a job at the Juvenile Attention Center.
Speaker 1: And honestly, I took down my website because I had
Speaker 1: tried so many different ways to pick it back up,
Speaker 1: and it just just nothing I was doing was working,
Speaker 1: and it just kind of hurt to keep.
Speaker 4: Trying, you know, and so I gave up.
Speaker 1: And then I think what ended up happening was I
Speaker 1: met a guy who wanted me to do some of
Speaker 1: this work and do a collaborative show at his gallery
Speaker 1: in Cincinnati. He's like, I'd done a coloring book. It
Speaker 1: was called the Indie Rock Coloring Book. And he's like, hey,
Speaker 1: I saw that book. What if we did like a
Speaker 1: color in like adult coloring thing, but in the walls
Speaker 1: of the gallery, like a huge coloring book.
Speaker 4: And this was like.
Speaker 1: Before adult coloring blew up. So it was like a
Speaker 1: thing at that point, or it wasn't. It was starting
Speaker 1: to be a thing, and so I was like kind
Speaker 1: of scared to open that door again, but I grudgingly
Speaker 1: just was like, Okay, let's do it.
Speaker 4: You know what could it hurt.
Speaker 1: And before I went there, he called me and he's like, hey,
Speaker 1: there's a problem with the show. And I was like,
Speaker 1: here it goes again, like my dreams are crushed. And
Speaker 1: I was like he's like, no, it's I love the idea.
Speaker 1: I just feel like it's incomplete. His name's Andrew Nyer.
Speaker 1: He's like a product designer and concept artist conceptual artist.
Speaker 1: He was like, the show's great, but there's a problem
Speaker 1: with it because we're gonna do this giant mural, but
Speaker 1: we can't have people come in color with regular sized markers.
Speaker 4: The concept breaks and he's like, we need giant markers.
Speaker 1: And I was like, okay, if you know, like Rick moranis,
Speaker 1: who's got a reverse shrink ray, can blow a few
Speaker 1: of those bad babies up.
Speaker 4: Like I'm game for that. And he's like no, I'll
Speaker 4: make some.
Speaker 1: And they'll be there when you get there tomorrow. And
Speaker 1: I hung up the phone thinking they're definitely not going
Speaker 1: to be there, Like he's going to go try to
Speaker 1: make giant markers and realize you don't just whip up
Speaker 1: giant markers. And I went to his gallery the next
Speaker 1: day and it was in this cool part of Cincinnati
Speaker 1: that was up and coming at the time, and like
Speaker 1: exposed brick and this just gorgeous like gallery and those
Speaker 1: giant markers were there, and I was just like, who
Speaker 1: is this guy? This guy's like a creative wizard. And
Speaker 1: we did the show and it was a big success.
Speaker 1: We've done the show a bunch of times since then.
Speaker 1: We've taken it to Stockholm and New York City, all
Speaker 1: kinds of places. But I think that that was the
Speaker 1: first part of a breakthrough where he's really different than
Speaker 1: me in a lot of ways. But I saw a
Speaker 1: bit of myself and him, and I also saw him
Speaker 1: owning that, and it made me feel like, maybe I'm
Speaker 1: not all bad. It made me inspired to look into
Speaker 1: who I am and find out what parts of me
Speaker 1: aren't bad. And I started to just kind of binge
Speaker 1: watching talks from my favorite artists and reading interviews and
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff, and I started to recognize
Speaker 1: all these ways that I had things in common with him,
Speaker 1: and even people like there's a design Aaron Draplan who's
Speaker 1: very popular online and has since kind of become a
Speaker 1: buddy of mine, and he's out in Portland now, but
Speaker 1: he's a proud Midwesterner. He's from Michigan and he wears
Speaker 1: it on his sleeve. And I remember just feeling like, oh,
Speaker 1: I've never seen an artist be proud of being for
Speaker 1: the Midwest, Like, Okay, maybe that part of me is
Speaker 1: not so bad. And then there was this artist Kate
Speaker 1: Bingham and Burt who did this whole.
Speaker 4: Project about her credit card debt.
Speaker 1: And you know, she drew every one of her credit
Speaker 1: card statements like that's exactly what it sounds like, like
Speaker 1: just hand copied them on a piece of paper and
Speaker 1: then did this massive show and she did them until
Speaker 1: the credit card debt was paid. It was like this weird,
Speaker 1: conceptual art kind of thing. And I thought, Okay, so
Speaker 1: maybe this part of me that's terrible with numbers isn't
Speaker 1: something that I have to be ashamed of. And I
Speaker 1: think just slowly I started to get curious about myself
Speaker 1: and that ended up leading to the ADHD.
Speaker 4: Diagnosis, which was a big for me.
Speaker 1: And the way I like to think about it now
Speaker 1: is art really is self expression. And you're never going
Speaker 1: to love your work. You're never going to love that
Speaker 1: self expression if you hate the thing that it's expressing,
Speaker 1: which is yourself. You're going to have to at some
Speaker 1: point make peace with, or make friends with, or feel
Speaker 1: excited about something about yourself if you're ever going to
Speaker 1: feel any of those things about your work, because it
Speaker 1: is an expression of you. And so I think that
Speaker 1: that was the path to doing the character project, looking
Speaker 1: deeper into myself and ultimately changing seeing myself as something
Speaker 1: to repress and overcome as to something to cultivate. And
Speaker 1: I think it led to a lot of the creative
Speaker 1: breakthroughs that helped me build.
Speaker 4: What I have going on now.
Speaker 3: Awesome. Well, I think that is a great place to
Speaker 3: wrap up with this idea of you're not a bad thing,
Speaker 3: You're a good thing. You're not something to be overcome,
Speaker 3: You're something to be cultivated. So thank you so much
Speaker 3: for coming on and sharing your journey with us, and
Speaker 3: I've really had a great time talking with you.
Speaker 4: Absolutely Thanks Eric.
Speaker 1: These are great questions and ones that I don't always
Speaker 1: get to explore, so I really appreciate it.
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