Makers & Mystics

Does commerce feed or take away from your artwork? Does getting paid to do it validate your work? How do you make the leap from hobby to vocation in your work and more importantly, should you? These are among the questions our Summer Series round table guests songwriter, John Mark McMillan, author/illustrator, Vesper Stamper & visual artist Brandon Willett discuss in this episode.

Jason “Jay” King is the founder and owner of World Citizen Media and a twenty-year veteran of the music industry. He manages Los Angeles based duo JOHNNYSWIM, Propaganda, and Pop writer/artist TRELLA. World Citizen’s core mission is to help BUILD, LAUNCH, and ACCELERATE meaningful projects, with strong foundations, that contribute good back into the world. Jay’s background includes working with renowned artists including Platinum selling hip-hop group GRITS, 4th Avenue Jones, Hillsong United, Grammy award winner Israel Houghton, All Sons & Daughters, Fonzworth Bentley, Daniel Bashta, John Mark McMillan, Rhett Walker Band, and more. He has also worked along side brands such as Tumi Luggage, Macy’s, Fiat, General Motors, Southwest Airlines, St. Jude, and more in order to bring campaigns for his clients to life. He held the title of VP of A&R positions for both Gotee Records (Universal Music Group) and Integrity Music (Sony BMG) before establishing World Citizen Media. In this bonus episode, guest-host, JOHN MARK MCMILLAN, interviews Jay King about the role of artist management and navigating the “business” of art making.

Welcome to the Makers & Mystics Summer Series of artist interviews and bonus episodes! This episode features guest-host Vesper Stamper in conversation with calligrapher, David Chang. David Chang is an NYC based artist merging the traditions of Western calligraphy and Eastern philosophy that is shaped by immediacy of his urban environment. Chang’s art is a sustained exploration into the significance and meaning of words and texts as embodied through physical gestures. Centuries-old eastern techniques in calligraphy find new form in the western alphabet as the artist shapes his own hermeneutics of the hand. The artist's brushwork, vacillating between traditional scripts and contemporary abstraction, issues statements of personal, cultural, and spiritual awareness, while it also retains an autonomous formal beauty full of urgency and grace.

In this bonus episode, Stephen Roach gives a brief overview of the 2021 The Breath & The Clay creative arts gathering. The theme for this year's event is Re-enchantment. Keynote presenters include: Jeremy Begbie, Pádraig Ó Tuama, Christine Valters Paintner, Stephen Roach and many others. Musical performances by: Hannah Miller, John Mark McMillan, Cageless Birds, Glassea, Josh Baldwin, Rivers & Robots and Songs of Water. Choreography by: Numinous Flux, Camille Sutton, Whitney Hancock, and aerialist Laura Powers. see www.thebreathandtheclay.com for the full roster and details.

Shara Nova is a classically trained vocalist and self-taught multi-instrumentalist. She records dazzling, shapeshifting music under the moniker My Brightest Diamond. Her music resists the conventions of genre, blending elements of rock, art pop, and chamber music into a sound totally her own. Over the span of her career, Shara has released multiple ground breaking albums, as well as composed a baroque chamber opera titled, "You Us We All.” She has recorded as a guest vocalist with notable artists such as David Byrne, The Decemberists, Sufjan Stevens, and many others. Her extensive collaborations with visual artists include contributions to the works of Matthew Ritchie, Matthew Barney and more recently, performance artist and vocalist Helga Davis on a collaborative film project titled Ocean Body. In today’s episode, I talk with Shara about her background as an artist and some of the motivations informing her work. If you are a patron of the podcast you can enjoy an additional episode segment with Shara on her experience as a working artist navigating our current cultural landscape. Visit patreon.com/makersandmystics or see the show notes of this episode to sign up as a patron today.

We may not care to be famous or even desire to make art as a full time vocation, but we each carry a need for our work to matter.  We want to know that what means something to us may also mean something to others or that what we give our time, attention and resources to may serve to beautify or to better the lives of those around us. In this episode, I discuss what it means to make a significant contribution through our creative work. I invite the listener to reframe the narratives we believe about ourselves and our art.  What if our art isn’t about us? What if we learned to care less about what we have to lose and more about what we have to give? In my work as a creative coach, I’ve encountered many artists who trip over concerns about self-promotion or what others may think about their intentions. But what if rather than being concerned over self-promotion or of having selfish motivations, we were more concerned over the loss of not offering the world our creative gifts?  This episode explores these concerns and offers a new way of seeing our relationship to our art.

Temi Coker is a Multidisciplinary artist based in Dallas, Texas. He creates visually compelling artwork for campaigns, products, activations & more. Temi’s use of vibrant colors and textures come from his upbringing in Nigeria as well as his love for the colors, patterns and storytelling of the African Diaspora. He has worked with clients such as: Adobe, HBO, Apple, and Facebook. In today’s episode, Temi and I discuss color as a means of storytelling along with themes such as the business side of art-making, how to avoid burnout and the challenges of overcoming people pleasing to follow a sense of calling.

J.F. Martel is a Canadian writer, filmmaker, and podcaster. He has directed a number of French and English documentaries for Canadian television as well as created several dramatic short films. His writing has appeared on Reality Sandwich, The Finch, Metapsychosis, and in anthologies published by Tarcher-Penguin, North Atlantic Books, and Intellect Books. His book Reclaiming Art in the Age of Artifice was published in 2015 by Evolver Editions; The back cover tells us the book is an essential reading for visual artists, musicians, writers, actors, dancers, filmmakers, poets, anyone who has ever been deeply moved by a work of art. I’ve read the book and I have to agree, J.F.’s ideas about art as an inborn human phenomenon that precedes the formation of culture resonates with own thoughts on creativity as an inherent part of our spiritual and human experience. In this episode, I speak with J.F. about many of the concepts in his book including his thoughts on viewing the universe primarily as an aesthetic universe. I’m excited to announce that J.F. will be one of our keynote presenters for this year’s The Breath & The Clay virtual experience taking place March 17-21, 2021. You can find out more about The Breath & The Clay and our theme of Re-enchantment at http://www.thebreathandtheclay.com/theme21

Amy-Jill Levine (“AJ”) is University Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies and Mary Jane Werthan Professor of Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt. Her books include The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus and Short Stories by Jesus; four children’s books (with Sandy Sasso); The Gospel of Luke (with Ben Witherington III); and The Jewish Annotated New Testament (co-edited with Marc Brettler). In 2020 she published The Bible With and Without Jesus: How Jews and Christians Read the Same Stories Differently (with Marc Brettler); and Sermon on the Mount: A Beginner’s Guide to the Kingdom of Heaven. She is the first Jew to teach New Testament at Rome’s Pontifical Biblical Institute. AJ describes herself as an unorthodox member of an Orthodox synagogue and a Yankee Jewish feminist who teaches New Testament in a Christian divinity school in the Buckle of the Bible Belt. In this episode, I talk with AJ about how we interpret Jesus’s parables and why having a clear contextual understanding of Jesus’s stories is important both spiritually and creatively.

Well friends. We made it to the end of this unforgettable and unrequited year. Its fascinating now to look back at the catalog of discussions we had and see the unintended red thread weaving its way through the pathless maze of 2020. In fact, the cliché “Hindsight is 2020” becomes this moment’s most truthful refrain. In this episode, I share highlights from some of my favorite conversations from the year. Highlights include my interviews with Kimbra, Elephant Heart, Padraig O’ Tuama, John Eldredge and others.

Sarah has contributed sculptures to national shows and received several notable awards, including the Maryland Arts Council Individual Artist Award in 2009. Currently Sarah is sculpting a seven-and-a-half-foot statue of renowned fashion designer, Claire McCardell, to be cast in bronze and installed in McCardell's hometown of Frederick, Maryland. In this episode, Stephen talks with Sarah about her creative process as a sculptor, how technique and spontaneity work together and how practices such as centering prayer leads to unexpected astonishment in her art making. 

One of the growing problems of our society that started long before but has been agitated by the COVID-19 pandemic is isolationism or the sense of loneliness and lack of meaningful social connections. Too much isolationism leads to individuals feeling a decreasing sense of responsibility or belonging to a group or a family. Therefore everything from littering to mass shootings could be rooted in the spiritual deficiency of belonging. In this episode, Stephen shares on the artist's need to belong and the gift of creating a safe space to be in process.

Thea Matthews is a San Francisco born poet, orator and activist whose work centers on the complexities of humanity, grief, and resiliency. In this episode, Stephen Roach to talks with Thea about her debut poetry collection published by Red Light Lit titled, Unearth [The Flowers] and about her journey of finding healing and resiliency through poetry. Thea's empowering poems provide a path to healing and illustrate how survivors can find a safe place within themselves to reclaim their own identity and sexuality. Her book has been described as an electrifying letter to family, country, and self, Unearth [The Flowers] is relentless in its journey through stages of grief and healing while celebrating life.

Julian of Norwich was a Medieval English mystic born around year 1342 and who died around year 1420. Much of Julian’s life remains unknown to us but what we do know of Julian comes from biographical passages in her book Revelations of Divine Love. This book, now considered a classic of contemplative literature, is the first known book to have been written in the English language by a woman.  The book recounts a series of mystical visions where she witnesses spiritual realities in beautiful and sometimes terrifying encounters. Her visions, sometimes contrary to Church teaching, occurred at a time when the Church’s word and God’s word were taken as synonymous. To contradict the Church’s doctrine was seen as an offense toward God. Furthermore, to write and teach authoritatively as a woman was highly frowned upon, even dangerous during her time. Although there is not a wealth of information about the life of Julian of Norwich, understanding the culture and circumstance in which she lived reveals the revolutionary nature of her writing and highlights why this Medieval mystic’s experience is pertinent for us today.

Rivers & Robots is an independent band from Manchester, UK whose sound explores acoustic and electronic elements beneath layers of devotional lyrics and worship themed motifs. In this episode, Stephen talks with founding members Jonathan Ogden and Nathan Stirling about the creative exploration within their music and how context influences the art we make.