Lauren Midgley is a conceptual fine art photographer based in Oklahoma. Her photography stretches beyond the historical use of the camera and invites the viewer into a world of surrealism and visual storytelling. In a world saturated with digital imagery, Lauren employs illustrative, advanced digital manipulation to paint virtual narratives that speak to the heart of our collective human experience.
In this episode, Stephen and Lauren discuss her aims and motivations as an artist as well as the inception behind several specific portraits. To make it easier to you to follow along (with the visual nature of our discussion), we have posted the images mentioned in this episode on Instagram @makersandmystics.
Pop Artist and cultural icon, Andy Warhol started his career as a commercial artist working as a successful illustrator for magazines and advertising agencies but eventually made the leap to become an independent, exhibiting artist in New York City. Andy’s unique style of portraying screen-printed images of his lifelong obsession with celebrities and mundane objects propelled him into the spotlight as a leading voice of the Pop-Art movement.
What isn’t widely recognized about Andy’s life was his secretive devotion to the Catholic faith. Underneath his silver wigs and flamboyant costumes was a man who regularly attended mass, served at a homeless shelter and financed his nephew’s study for the priesthood. How these two irreconcilable personas found home in this one man’s life is a question both interested religious figures and art critics alike have been asking.
In this Artist Profile, Stephen takes a brief look into the religious life of this enigmatic and complex artist’s hidden life.
In this opening episode, Stephen talks with singer-songwriter Josh Garrels about his latest release, Chrysaline. The two discuss the personally transformative experiences that informed the making of these songs and how collaboration and environment impacted Josh’s creative process. Josh shares openly about his experience of personal frustration that led him to place his music on the altar.
*Be sure to listen to the end as Josh addresses the latest trend of what feels like a mass exodus from the faith by so many people in our generation.
“This may be one of the more timely and important conversations we have had on the podcast. I look forward to discussing this further with our creative collective over the next few weeks.” – Stephen
Hello beautiful friends! Season Six is about to kick off this week! We just finished edits for the opening episode. You are going to love it!
Before we launch this first episode, I wanted to let you know about a few things coming down the pike.
First, we are hosting several Makers & Mystics live events in select cities across the U.S. We will be in Phoenix, Denver, New York City, Frederick, Maryland and Durham, NC. Tickets for these events can be found here.
***Denver and Phoenix events have calls for artists to submit works for our gallery.
We will be adding excerpts from these live events to our roster of episodes. So cool! We just hosted a live recording in Charlottesville with The Farmhouse Community on "Art As Healing." It was an incredible time. Can't wait to share the audio!
The winners of our first annual Bright Wings poetry contest are listed here. The Grand Prize winner will be featured on the podcast coming up in Season Six to share her poem!
News for the 2020 Breath & Clay event will be coming very soon as well!
HINT: We are going to have some special ticket offers to our patrons only before the tickets go live.
Our Book Club will resume this fall as well. Details to come on that.
What an incredible summer it has been! I've enjoyed getting to know many of you and interacting with you. I look forward to continuing to build our creative community.
This LIVE Season Finale episode features the perspectives of diverse voices you’ve heard on the podcast; Amena Brown, Josh Garrels, Vesper Stamper, Cole NeSmith and CJ Casciotta. In today’s panel discussion, these five discuss the tension between the soul and the business of creativity.
In the realm of art-making, there can seem to be a tension between our desire to create authentic works, works which remain true to the artist’s creative vision, while at the same time creating works which are either commercially viable or which resonate with the communities where we have influence.
John O’ Donohue was a modern-day mystic, philosopher, theologian and poet. He spent his life along the West Coast of Ireland where the solitude and beauty of the land shaped him as an artist and thinker.
Jason Burkey is a professional actor who has appeared on television shows such as The Walking Dead, Nashville, Being Mary Jane, The Resident and a score of other well-known programs. His movie credits include a lead role in the 2012 surprise hit, October Baby as well as Lady and The Tramp, I Can Only Imagine, Bigger and The Art of Self-Defense.
Jason is also a founder of "Act For A Change," which is a local theatre non- profit that gathers Atlanta actors, writers and directors to perform one-act plays for local charities.
In this episode, Stephen talks with Jason about what motivates him as an actor and what it means to live truthfully in an imaginative setting.
Gerard Manley Hopkins was a Jesuit priest and English poet born July 28,1844. He is considered to be one of the greatest poets of the Victorian era although during his lifetime, his poetry was never published. His approach to poetry was deeply enmeshed with his intimate and mystical spirituality. For Hopkins, who was an avid lover of nature, poetry was a means of accessing the Divine and of discovering God within nature.
CHARLIE PEACOCK is a Nashville-based, 4x Grammy Award-winning, composer, record producer and recording artist. His production credits include Chris Cornell, Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Americana successes such as The Lone Bellow, Holly Williams and The Civil Wars.
Charlie is considered one of Nashville's most prolific cultural influencers and has dedicated himself to championing the independent music scene which he has served for over 40 years.
James Hampton was an African American visionary and found object artist who built a 180 piece throne in preparation for the second coming of Christ and wrote and accompanying manuscript in untranslatable language.
Lanecia Rouse Tinsley is an abstract artist based in Houston, TX. Her portfolio also includes a range of work in photography, painting, teaching, writing, and speaking.
Lanecia creates out of a desire to make the invisible landscapes within and the human condition known; using texture, form + color to speak to life upon various surfaces in ways words cannot.
In addition to her art, Lanecia works with projectCURATE as Co-Spiritual Director and Consultant for the Arts; and is Co-founder/Co-Creative Director of ImagiNoir Group, an international alliance and think-tank of black activists, artists, writers, scholars and educators.
Lanecia is a graduate of Duke University Divinity School (MDiv) and a graduate of Wofford College with a BA in Sociology.
In this episode, Stephen talks with Lanecia about her creative process and about art as healing and as a means of expressing the full range of our human experience.
***Patrons on the podcast can enjoy an additional interview with Lanecia about her inspiration in James Baldwin as well as a downloadable PDF of Baldwin’s essay on The Creative Process.
This episode is sponsored by: DITA 10 Duke Initiative in the Arts. Join Lanecia, Makers and Mystics podcast, Chris Wiman and many others at this event.
Lilias Trotter was a British artist, writer and visionary. It has been said that through Lilias’s contact with art critic and social philosopher, John Ruskin, she had the opportunity to become one of England’s greatest and most famous artists of her day. Yet, for her own convictions, Lilias turned away from this opportunity and followed a path that assured her of obscurity and promised no certain success.
Lilias lived forty years of her life among the Arabic people of North Africa and built significant friendships with Sufi mystics of the Sahara desert.
Sleeping At Last is the moniker of Chicago-based singer-songwriter, producer and composer, Ryan O’Neal. Ryan’s music has been featured on popular television shows like Grey’s Anatomy, Criminal Minds and The Vampire Diaries and has appeared in Films such as The Fault In Our Stars and The Twilight Saga.
Ryan has collaborated with numerous noteworthy songwriters such as Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins, Jon Foreman of Switchfoot, Sarah Brightman, and many others.
In this episode, Stephen talks with Ryan about his music composition, his Enneagram songs, and what motivates his creativity.
**This episode is brought to you by Sarah Duet –artist, communicator, & Enneagram teacher. Sarah works with groups and individuals to help foster creativity, connection, and community. To learn more about her new workshop, Enneagram Creativity: The 9 Types of Making, visit sarahduet.com/enneagramcreativity
Meister Eckhart was a late 13th and early 14th century philosopher, theologian and mystic born in central Germany. In 1326, he was accused of 150 accounts of heresy and went on to be tried before the Catholic Inquisition. Today, however, Meister Eckhart’s writings have influenced artists and spiritual seekers from most every tradition and walk of life.
Alastair Humphreys has been on expeditions all around the world, traveling through over 80 countries by bicycle, boat and on foot. He was named as one of National Geographic’s Adventurers of the year for 2012.
He has walked across southern India, rowed across the Atlantic Ocean, run six marathons through the Sahara desert and participated in an expedition in the Arctic, close to the magnetic North Pole.
More recently, Alastair followed in the footsteps of one of his own heroes, an Englishman named Laurie Lee who walked across Spain in 1935 earning money for food by playing his violin in bars and plazas.
In this episode, Stephen talks with Alastair about his adventures, his fears and motivations behind his lifestyle of risk and his latest book My Midsummer Morning.
Earlier this year, I traveled to the beautiful country of England. While I was there, I had the opportunity to meet with singer/songwriter Martin Smith in his hometown of Brighton. We shared a breakfast together and afterwards I asked if he would be willing to answer a few questions I could share with our listeners. Martin was gracious and obliged, so I quickly pulled out my cell phone and captured our conversation.
**Disclaimer: Because the conversation was recorded on my iPhone, the production is a bit raw. But I felt the conversation was inspiring enough to share with you anyway.
Jeremy Begbie is Thomas A. Langford Distinguished Professor in Theology at Duke Divinity School. He is also Senior Member at Wolfson College, Cambridge, and an Affiliated Lecturer in the Faculty of Music at the University of Cambridge. He is Founding Director of Duke Initiatives in Theology and the Arts, one of the main aims of which is to foster theological-artistic links between Duke and Cambridge.
In this episode, Stephen joins Dr. Begbie at Duke Divinity School to talk with him about music, art and the transcendence of God.
This artist profile episode is about the iconic Notre Dame Cathedral and how writer Victor Hugo’s novel, The Hunchback of Notre Dame inspired a generation to restore this historical landmark.
The human heart longs for restoration and it is the artist who embodies this longing through artistic works and creative acts. We long to preserve and sustain beauty because in beauty’s longevity is tied our own hope that there is something more enduring than the ephemeral passing of our own bodies and physical structures. Places of beauty and historical landmarks become symbols of a deeper human impulse and reveal our longing for the eternal.
Amy Orazio is a poet, teacher and writer from the Pacific Northwest. She received her MFA in Creative Writing at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles California. Her work has appeared in publications such as Bitterzoet, Gap Tooth, Pidgeonholes, Synasesthesia, and The Curator magazine. Amy’s latest collection of poems, titled Quench, is a meditation on exile and coming home.
In this episode, Stephen talks with Amy about sitting with mystery and overcoming the need for resolve in her poetry.
This episode features musical interludes by Colorado-based recording artist VNE.
Patrons of the podcast can join us for an additional interview segment with Amy as we talk on Wendell Berry, Mary Oliver and the influence of nature within her writings.
Austin Kleon is the New York Times bestselling author of Steal Like an Artist, Show Your Work!, and The Steal Like an Artist Journal: A Notebook for Creative Kleptomaniacs. His work has been translated into over twenty languages and featured on NPR’s Morning Edition, PBS NewsHour, and in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.
The New Yorker said his poems “resurrect the newspaper when everybody else is declaring it dead.” He speaks about creativity in the digital age for organizations such as Pixar, Google, SXSW, TEDx, and the Economist.
In this episode, Stephen talks with Austin about his thoughts on creativity, originality and his brand new, follow up release titled Keep Going, Ten Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad.
**Patrons of the podcast can access an additional interview segment with Austin on Creativity as subtraction and how the deconstruction process of his blackout poetry creates a new art form.
Sister Corita Kent was an artist, printmaker, educator and an advocate for social justice. She broke through religious norms in the art world of her day by incorporating popular song lyrics, advertising images and slogans into her work. Her pop-art style is reminiscent of the works of graphic artist, Andy Warhol. When Corita viewed Andy’s artwork in the Los Angeles Ferus Gallery, in 1962 she soon began producing her own pop-culture inspired prints.
Kelly Archer is the founder and artistic director of the Cadash Contemporary Dance Movement. The vision and mission of Chadash is to cultivate renewal, reparation, and restoration in a broken world. Combining dance with film, poetry, multi-media, visual art and spoken word performances, Cadash Dance tells stories in an effort to honestly acknowledge the world as it is, but then seeks to engage in the conversation about what the world can be.
In this episode, Stephen talks with Kelly about the language of movement and what it means to “stand in the ashes of the barn burned down and point to the moon. One half in suffering and one half in hope.”
Rainer Maria Rilke was a Prague-born poet and novelist. His verses embody the human heart’s yearning to commune with God in an age of disbelief. His transcendent themes are deeply existential and contemplative in nature.
Graham Cooke is an internationally recognized author, public speaker and strategist. He is known for a radical faith and friendship with God.
Graham's books have helped organizations and individuals overcome negative, limited thinking and transition toward a higher level of corporate and spiritual life.
An integral part of Graham's work involves producing resources for helping the poor and for eradicating human trafficking through supporting the organization, NOT FOR SALE.
In this episode, Stephen talks with Graham about cultivating environments to serve his creative and spiritual disciplines.
*Patrons can enjoy additional interview segments on how to deal with rejection and establishing healthy rhythms.
