Makers & Mystics

This bonus Episode features a live performance and interview with spoken word artist La’Tasha Strother. La’Tasha threads her relationship with God throughout her life and work and creates poignant imagery about her life experiences. The poem performed in this episode is titled Love Is Not Blind and was performed live at our Art As Healing Podcast in Charlottesville Virginia.  You can join La’Tasha alongside of several other Makers & Mystics featured poets including Joel McKerrow, Ashley Blake and Tinasha La’Raye at our upcoming The Breath & the Clay online event: Come & See. Come & See is a series of workshops, performances and interactive discussions on themes of perception and how the way we see impacts the art we make and the lives we live.

This episode is our second release from the Makers and Mystics LIVE series. This conversation comes to you from Charlottesville, VA and highlights excerpts from our discussion on Art As Healing. You’ll hear from a diverse panel of voices including Farm House community founder, Lauren Stonestreet, Philosopher, Bernard Hankins, Pastor and songwriter, Brendan Jamieson, Neuroscientist and Jazz musician, Nadine Michel and Doctor of Osteopathy, Dr. David MacDonald. In light of recent events, I felt this conversation on Art As Healing was timely and offers creative insights on navigating through difficult times and how art contributes to Healing for individuals and to society. I’ve said often that the artist is an architect of hope and a voice of reconciliation for a divided world. I think you’ll find the perspectives in this conversation to be helpful in finding our way forward and understanding the vital role of art as an agent of healing. *If you’re a patron of the podcast you have access to the full conversation which includes a spoken word performance by poet Latasha Strother and Nadine Michel’s story of traveling to Haiti, the country her parents immigrated from.

Vàclav Havel was a Czech playwright, political dissident, and consistent moral voice on human rights who went on to be elected President of the newly democratic Czech Republic. His life is a shining example of what artists can achieve when they have a robust sense of the time in which they have been placed in the world. Guest host Vesper Stamper talks about Havel’s life, work and spiritual perspective.

When it comes to spiritual formation, our individual temperament plays a large role in how we connect to God, one another and the world around us. There is not a one size fits all for how we approach the spiritual life. In fact, the same systems that bring us clarity and definition can also leave us frustrated or feeling confined to search for God in a manner contrary to our natural temperament. Best-selling author and speaker, Gary Thomas insists that it’s better to discover the path God designed you to take–a path marked by growth and fulfillment, based on your unique temperament. In this conversation, Gary and I discuss his nine Sacred Pathways, where he strips away the frustration of a one-size-fits-all spirituality and guides you toward a style of relating to God that frees you to be you. For the artist or the creative, understanding our unique make up and how we most easily connect with God enables us to live and create from a deeper authenticity. Instead of fostering a compulsion to imitate or conform to an exterior, homogenized form of faith, discovering the beauty of God’s unique path for our lives opens the way for greater possibility in our creative work.

Leonardo Da Vinci was an artist, scientist and inventor. His capacity to metaphorically dream while awake, through the use of his imagination, enabled him to perceive the natural world as a playground for investigation, exploration, discovery and invention. This mentality would lead him to creative innovations in various fields of study including painting, architecture, mathematics, engineering, anatomy, botany, cartography. and much more. Today, Leonardo da Vinci is historically recognized as a genius, who played an influential role in the Renaissance period through the use of his creativity to impact culture. This artist profile is guest-hosted by Morgan Ruth Chin-Yee, a creative, art educator, and member of the Breath and the Clay team. Visit her website, MRCY, and follow her on Instagram @morgan.ruth.

Kimbra Lee Johnson is a singer, songwriter, producer + musician from New Zealand, now based in New York City. Her award-winning, debut album Vows was released in 2011. In 2012, she appeared on Gotye’s multi-platinum single, Somebody I Used To Know. Kimbra’s music pushes the boundaries of genre and style juxtaposing pop sensibilities with influences in Jazz, R & B, and electronic music. Lyrically, Kimbra expresses the deeper longings of the human heart. Her poetic verses draw from personal experience, imaginative religious imagery and reveal a depth of honesty, vulnerability and reflection. In this episode, I talk with Kimbra about her creative process and the deeper experiences of the artist’s life.

Carey Wallace is the author of Stories of the Saints, The Blind Contessa’s New Machine, The Ghost in the Glass House, Choose, New Thing, and the forthcoming Discipline of Inspiration. Her work has appeared in Time, the Awl, The New Decameron, and Detroit’s Metro Times. She has spoken to students at Princeton, Yale, Julliard, Pratt, Emory’s Candler School of Theology, and the Festival of Faith and Writing, and taught at The Glen Workshop. She has released a dozen records with her brother as The Wallace Bros., and shown her fine artwork in Detroit and Brooklyn. She is the founder of the Working Artist’s Initiative, which helps emerging artists establish strong creative habits, and the Hillbilly Underground, which draws nationally-recognized filmmakers, writers, fine artists, and musicians to rural Michigan each summer. She lives and works in Brooklyn with her poorly-behaved Appenzeller, Bandit.  In this episode, Stephen talks with Carey LIVE in New York City (recorded October 2019) about the nature, the origins and the discipline of inspiration.

Cynthia Newland is an artist, educator, speaker and wellness consultant. She is the founder of Alible3 – Nourishing the Body, Soul and Spirit, providing educational resources and equipping tools for holistic health. With her work in the area of wellness, she partners with the Health Made Simple community. Cynthia is the founding Director of Feet Speak Dance, a dance company whose mission aims to use dance to teach, inspire and bring a rich art filled experience to all whom they encounter. In this episode, Cynthia talks with Stephen about the importance of physical nourishment, nutrition and general health in the life of the artist.

Social distancing can feel a bit destabilizing. All of our habits and routines and normal ways of functioning are suspended and we have to adopt new daily rhythms, ways of doing life and finding work. For the artist, this can lead to questions about the validity of our work and where art-making and creativity belong in a time of global crisis. But it is vital for our own mental and emotional health that we are formed by a clear narrative and see the true place of art as a needed response. Making art during times of crisis positions the artist to become a protest against despair. The artist pushes against losing our identity and our humanity in the face of war, disease or whatever opposition stands against living an unimpeded, beautiful life. In this episode, Stephen shares about the role of perception, the mischief of God, and the need for art in our current climate of isolation and uncertainty.

Heather Stringer is a therapist, artist, and ritual maker. She is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor in Seattle, WA and a Fellow with the Allender Center. She completed her M.A. in Counseling Psychology at The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology and the Externship Program at The Allender Center. Heather has a practice of creating narrative informed trauma therapy as well as creating rituals for people marking a significant event in their life. Heather believes that when we are intentional about engaging the particularities of our bodies, memories, and stories, an opening for healing and change are possible. In this episode, Stephen Roach talks with Heather about her niche of combining ritual making with performance art in ways that foster healing and inspire a more creative approach to everyday life.

We are calling all creative arts communities, individuals, seekers, believers, skeptics, doubters, craftsmen and bakers, tongue talkers and Quakers, anyone who needs community in the midst of quarantine. Come hang with us this Friday night at 7 pm Eastern time. The communion time will be hosted by our Makers and Mystics creative collective along with Cageless Birds, Justin McRoberts and members of The Breath and the Clay community. Normally, this would be a patron-only event platform but this Friday we are opening it up to everyone! When the world says “don’t gather,” I don’t know, maybe it’s the punk rock left in me from my "angsty" teenage years but I say, let’s outsmart the system and move, not in rebellion, but in the opposite spirit. Communion. Follow the link button to sign up today and join us Friday night. Oh yea, and since it is a virtual table, it is BYOW (bring your own wine and wafer. Haha.)

Vincent van Gogh was a leading postimpressionist painter of the late nineteenth century, known for his thick, swirling brushstrokes and radical use of color. Before he was an artist, though, he was a pastor to a village of destitute coal miners in Belgium, an experience that shaped him deeply. Vincent was full of compassion and wonder, anguish and hope. “Sorrowful yet always rejoicing” was one of his personal mottoes. His art—whether of sunflowers for his friend Paul Gauguin, a peasant family sitting down for dinner, or a starry sky outside his asylum window—highlights the numinous in the day-to-day. This artist profile is guest-hosted by Victoria Emily Jones, a writer on Christianity and the arts. Visit her blog, Art & Theology, and follow her on Twitter @artandtheology or Instagram @art_and_theology.

In this episode, Stephen talks with Producer of Marketing and Distribution for Aspiration Entertainment, Erik Lokkesmoe. The two discuss Erik's vision for individuals, families and churches who want to support artists and the arts. Erik's charge to "democratize patronage" and create local communities of patrons is an important idea for our time. I encourage everyone to listen to this discussion then pass it along to the leaders, patrons and arts advocates in your life.

In this Season opening episode, Stephen talks with singer-songwriter John Mark McMillan about the creative process behind his new album Peopled With Dreams

John Eldredge is a New York Times bestselling author, a counselor, and a teacher. His latest book, Get Your Life Back, examines the breakneck pace at which we force our souls to exist—a pace that far exceeds God’s original design. In his book, John argues that a constant absorption of others’ worries through social media, paired with our own burdens and stresses, has left people overwhelmed and weary. In this season-finale episode, Stephen talks with John about the simple, yet profound spiritual disciplines that can heal our souls and nourish the creative spirit inside of us.