Nic
Hi, I'm Nic Steenhout, and this is the work between. Before I get into what the show is, I want to say whose land it's made on. This podcast is recorded on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the Stó:lō Coast Salish people, the people of the river, whose presence in the Fraser Valley stretches back 1000s of years. I name this territory because it belongs with what this show is about: the ways we decide whose lives are valued, whose work is taken seriously, and whose experiences are treated as problems to be managed. Those decisions shape everything. This show sits inside that. This is, was, and always will be First Nations land. That's not a formality. It's consistent with everything I, and this show stand for.

Nic
This episode of the Work Between is going to be a little different. Usually, this podcast is a conversation, an interview. I sit down with someone and we talk about creativity, identity, disability, and the places where those things intersect. Today, it's just me.

Nic
Every creative practice develops its own tradition, ways of working that get passed along because they've helped a lot of people learn and become better at what they do. But traditions can also carry assumptions about how we learn, about the environment we work in, about what our bodies and brains can do or can't do. I've been thinking about what happens when those assumptions meet disability, and about the difference between changing what we're trying to learn and changing how we get there. Urban sketching happens to be where I've been encountering those questions lately, so that's where I'm going to start.

Nic
I've been thinking about urban sketching. I mean, I think about that a lot, so I should specify. Lately, I've been thinking about how we teach people to do urban sketching, because if you spend any time watching urban sketching videos or taking classes, you start hearing the same advice: sketch from life, draw directly in ink. Don't use photo. Don't start with pencil. There's good reasoning behind most of that. Sketching on location teaches you to observe what's actually in front of you. Drawing directly in ink can help you commit to the lines you've made. Working quickly can help loosen some of that perfectionism that can make drawing more difficult. So I understand the advice. A lot of it is great advice. Where I have a problem is when good advice becomes a prescription for how everybody is supposed to learn.

Nic
I'm disabled, and I'm very conscious of how much some of this advice assumes about the person holding the sketchbook. Urban sketching can make demands on your body before you've even started drawing. I often have to use wheelchair if I see a building I want to draw. I can't necessarily wander around until I find exactly the composition I want, and then settle wherever happens to give me the best view. Maybe there's a curb, maybe the ground is rough, or there's a slope. Maybe the place with the really good view is somewhere I can't put my chair without blocking the sidewalk. Sometimes I have to use a cane instead of wheelchair, and when I use a cane, I have a completely different experience. I may be able to get to the spot, but standing there for an hour might hurt, or maybe I can do it, but it uses so much energy that I don't have anything left afterward. And then, of course, there's the weather. Heat and cold aren't always just a question of being uncomfortable. For some disabled people, temperature can aggravate symptoms or affect the health. Staying another half hour because the drawing isn't quite finished may not be a reasonable choice. Once you've found somewhere to draw, there's everything has to deal with. Pain and fatigue take attention, so does filtering sound and movement and everything else happening around you. Some of us arrive at the drawing with more of our energy and attention already spoken for.

Nic
Think about what your brain is actually doing when you're sitting on a busy street trying to draw. You're looking at a roof line, and you're trying to understand where it's going. Somebody walks in front of you. There's a conversation happening behind you. A truck goes past. There's movement at the edge of your vision. Someone stops, and asks what you're drawing. Okay, where was that roof line again?

Nic
Some brains are very good at deciding that most of that information does not matter and pushing it into the background. Others not so much. For neurodivergent people, that conversation behind them may not become background noise just because they want it to. Movement at the edge of the vision may keep demanding attention. Filtering all of that can take effort, and that leaves less attention available for figuring out the drawing. For me, something different happens. If I'm sitting somewhere in public with a sketchbook, I'm very aware of the fact that I'm drawing in public, I'm trying to figure out a roof line. Someone walks toward me. I can't help wondering: Are they going to stop? Are they going to look? Can they see the page? And suddenly, I'm aware of the drawing in a completely different way. I'm aware of my hand. I'm aware that the line isn't right. I'm aware that somebody might see that it isn't right. Maybe they don't care. They probably don't care. That doesn't really change what happens in my head, though. I'm trying to learn something while feeling as though I'm supposed to demonstrate that I already know how to do it.

Nic
And this is where photographs become really useful for me. I'm still learning perspective, and an experienced sketcher may look at a building and understand that those lines are doing almost without thinking about it, I don't always see it yet. Give me a photograph, though, and I can stare at one roof line for as long as I need it to. I can follow it. I can look away. I can come back to it. I can compare it with another line. I can get it wrong and try again. A bus isn't going to pull up and block the bit I'm studying. The light isn't changing while I'm trying to understand why something looks the way it does. At home, I can be a learner. I can spend 20 minutes getting one roof line wrong. Maybe I start again and get it wrong a second time. Maybe I make a complete mess of the page. I can put the sketchbook down. I can go grab a drink. I can come back later, or come back tomorrow. Nobody is watching me learn. Maybe it shouldn't matter, but that's important to me. On location, I don't always give myself the same permission. I become conscious of doing this in public. Someone can look over my shoulder, someone can ask what I'm drawing, and I start feeling as though I should be producing something worth looking at. When what I'm actually trying to do is figure out why those two lines don't look the way I expected them to? For somebody else, that feeling may not bother them at all. Maybe it's the traffic they can't filter. Maybe it's the conversation behind them. Maybe it's everything moving at once. There's plenty of ways for a busy street to ask too much of a brain. Eventually, I want to sit in front of the actual building and recognize those relationships there. That's one of the things I want from urban sketching.

Nic
But I can learn some of this before I ask myself to do everything at once. Pencils-they can work the same way. If what I'm concentrating on today is proportion, maybe I work it out in pencil. Once I'm more comfortable with that, once I'm more comfortable with what I'm seeing, I can work in making those decisions directly in ink.

Nic
A photograph might be scaffolding for me. Pencils might be scaffolding. I can use them while I'm learning something, and maybe, eventually, I don't need them anymore. Some of the other things I've been talking about, those are different. I may get to a point where I no longer need a photograph to understand a roofline, but I'm not going to practice my way out of being a wheelchair user. I'm still going to need somewhere I can actually put my chair. Someone who can't comfortably stand for an hour isn't going to become a better artist and suddenly stop needing to sit down. A neurodivergent sketcher may always concentrate better with earbuds, and someone whose disability is affected by heat isn't going to become more skilled, or skilled enough that a hot afternoon stops affecting them. That's the difference between scaffolding and accommodation. One may help me while I'm learning; the other may simply be part of how I sketch because I have no choice.

Nic
Think about stairs. What do I actually need to do? I need to get from one floor to another. For a lot of people, stairs, those work perfectly well. For me, they don't. I don't need the second floor lowered because I use a wheelchair. I need another way of getting there. If I'm learning perspective, then yes, I need to understand perspective. Whether I can filter the conversation at the next table while I'm learning, that's a different question. Whether I feel like I'm performing because somebody can see my sketchbook doesn't tell you whether I understand perspective either. And being able to stand on a street corner for an hour doesn't make someone better at seeing what's in front of them. Somehow though, these things can get bundled together because they're part of the traditional image we have of urban sketching.

Nic
Which brings me back to the Urban Sketcher manifesto. I like that manifesto. Drawing on location is at the heart of urban sketching, and that's one of the things that attract me to it. Being there changes the drawing. People move, vehicles get in the way, the weather changes. You notice something you might never have thought to photograph. You have to make choices about what goes into your drawing, you have to make those changes because you can't possibly put everything that's happening on the one page. I do want to get better at all of that, but the manifesto doesn't tell me how I'm allowed to practice perspective before I get there, and it doesn't tell me what my body has to be capable of once I arrive. Somewhere along the way, draw on location has picked up some extra expectations. Don't practice from photographs. Don't use pencils. Find your view, sit down, pull out your pen, and draw while the city moves around you. That's obviously a perfectly good way to urban sketch. It's just not available to everybody. I wish we understood that better. A beginner sitting at their kitchen table, trying to understand the perspective of a roof from a photograph, may be preparing for the day when they draw that building from life. At home, they have somewhere they can be a learner first. Once we're outside, we're going to do this differently too. I might choose a less dramatic view because that's where there's room for my chair. Someone else might put in earbuds. 20 minutes may be enough for somebody else, and when I take my sketchbook outside, the things that make a place accessible to me don't suddenly stop mattering because I've learned to draw better. I still need somewhere I can physically be. Someone else still may need to control the noise around them, or the movement, or leave before everybody else does. Sometimes I need the street to hold still for a while, so I can understand what I'm looking at. When I'm ready for it to start moving again, I still need a place on that street from which I can draw.

Nic
If you enjoyed this episode, if you were inspired in any way, or if you learned something, please leave a rating or review on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or whatever podcast aggregator you use. Ratings and reviews really do help. Thank you. And that's it. I'm Nic Steenhout. This is the work between. If this sounds like the kind of conversation you like. Subscribe, and I'll see you in the next episode.

Nic
Hi, I'm Nic Steenhout, and this is The Work Between.

Nic
In case you didn't know, I provide transcript reviewed for accuracy by a human for every episode at the time of publishing. There's a text-only transcript that you could read if audio isn't the best media for you. There's also a time transcript you can follow along while listening if that works better for you. You can access those directly on the podcast's website if they aren't displayed by your podcast aggregator, that's the workbetween dot show.

Nic
Before I get into what the show is, I want to say whose land it's made on. This podcast is recorded on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the Stó:lō Coast Salish people, the people of the river, whose presence in the Fraser Valley stretches back 1000s of years. I name this territory because it belongs with what this show is about: the ways we decide whose lives are valued, whose work is taken seriously, and whose experiences are treated as problems to be managed. Those decisions shape everything. This show sits inside that. This is, was, and always will be First Nations land. That's not a formality. It's consistent with everything I, and this show stand for.

Nic
My guest today is me. A couple people told me they'd be interested to learn more about my creative processes. I thought about it, and concluded it could be fun to have me as a guest on my own show. To make it more interesting, I invited a friend and colleague to be the interviewer. Mark Miller is someone who, like me, works in digital accessibility and inclusion. He is a photographer and majored in art. He also is a martial artist, and he co-hosts the Inclusion Impact podcast. I have tremendous respect for him, and was chuffed when he accepted to play this game. I gave Mark carte blanche. I didn't know what questions he was going to ask or what direction he was going to take. It was great fun, and I hope you enjoy our discussion as much as we did. Mark, thank you so much for being a good sport and agreeing to play the role of the host for this episode.

Mark
You are very welcome, and I want to thank you for inviting me to do that. It's it's honestly an honor. I think you and I have long been fans of each other's content, so for you to think enough of me to invite me in is a huge honor, and I really appreciate it. And I'm very excited for this opportunity to get into your brain a little bit, and not not just around this accessibility subject that you and I tend to talk a lot about, but to understand you, your art, your creative process, all these really cool things that you and I haven't had a chance to really dig into quite as much yet. So this is this is going to be great. On that note, why don't we get started right away and just tell me a little bit about the artwork that you do and what you know your processes around it?

Nic
I would say I'm a serial hobbyist. Over the years, I've tried so many things, from leatherworking to bone carving to wool felting, but I would say the three main creative endeavors that I'm doing regularly and that are sustained are around wildlife photography, particularly birds, around quilting and around watercolor and sketching.

Mark
What would you say? Like, you know, at heart you seem to be a maker, right? And you're getting your hands into anything where you can express yourself creatively. What through that process? What caused you to land on these three three things as your primary outlets?

Nic
You know, I'm not too sure. Maybe in parts is if you try enough pair of shoes, you're gonna find one that actually feels comfortable, but also, if I think around the sketching and the watercolor, I know if I go back as far back as being 7, 8, 9, I always wanted to do drawing and painting. My parents even gave me an oil painting kit. My grandfather built an easel for me, and I gave up at the time because it was too hard. My cousin, who was a couple years older, did stuff that I thought, "Oh, it's so wonderful! I'll never be able to do as good," and I kind of gave up. So over over the period of my long and venerable life, I've come back over and over and over again to painting, and suddenly I decided, well, okay, enough is enough. I'm gonna actually do the hard work. I'm gonna do the practice. People say, "Oh, Nic, you have talent." No, I don't. I have zero talent. There's not a talented bone in my body. It's all about perseverance and skill building. Around sewing and and quilting is a little bit similar that my mother taught me how to do sewing when I was a kid using her old Singer sewing machine. It was really more about being self-sufficient and being able to mend my clothes more than anything. But I had that exposure back then, and then I worked with leather, doing hand sewing leather, and I don't know. It kind of evolved in when I started doing quilting with fabric. It kind of like the piece of puzzle came together. And photography. Well, I've been playing with photography on and off since I was a teenager, and always wanted to do wildlife, but never really had the funds to have the gear that would allow me to do half decent shots. And and as I get older, that became a little bit easier. But it's certainly not a cheap hobby. So once you get your gear, you you keep the gear and and work it to death.

Mark
You know when I when I first asked you this question, you sort of gave I think the most interesting answer, and that was I don't know I don't know why I landed these things, and then and then of course you went through to clarify, but the reason why that's interesting to me is because I think it's an honest answer, right? Like if if you had asked me that question, I I don't know that I could have articulated out of the gate why I've chosen the things I've chose, and it just goes to to show that art is a lot about self exploration. The reason why you may not have an answer is because in some undefinable way that art is working inside of you to do to do something. So, what I'm curious about thinking about that, Nic, and you know the the subject that you and I do cross a lot is accessibility and and disabilities. And I have to feel I feel like there has to be some sort of a connection between you know disability, your work and accessibility, and that internal fulfillment and exploration and and discovery in all those things that art gives you. Do you find that it connects those parts of your life, or is connected to those parts of your life, or are they really independent things for you?

Nic
Well, they're connected because it's all about me. I mean, I'm not saying that because oh, look at me-it's all about me. But it really is part of who I am and what I do. So, in that sense, they're connected. But I think I'm feeding very different aspects of my self with the creative processes I do for enjoyment and the work I do in accessibility. There's a certain level of creativity, I think, around accessibility where you have to put your thinking cap on, and no, you you have a problem, and you try to solve it, and you figure it out, you nut it out. But for me, accessibility work is a lot more about making the outside world better for other people, whereas my creative processes is about making me better.

Mark
It's a great way to frame it.

Nic
So it's it's backward looking and inward looking.

Mark
Well, and then it seems to me that there's a bit of, and this is just my observation of you, Nic, but that there's a bit of an event horizon between those two. Things that comes in the form of some of the content that you create for the accessibility industry, you leverage that your deep ability to create and to, you know, I think when you create, you can bring things together. You particularly have a talent for for explaining complex subjects to people who may not be deep into that subject, but I think that when you create that content, I can see that creative nature in you as a component to that. So to me, that would be that that that event horizon. But it sounds like when you view it for yourself, you really look at it as something that is maybe a break from what you would consider to be a professional. Like that's another way to work the brain. Is that a fair?

Nic
Yeah, absolutely. As someone who is disabled, working in the field of accessibility. I used to joke that accessibility work is not a job; it's a lifestyle, and and in many ways, I can't not need a ramp when I go to the store when it's after 5p.m. and I've stopped working. So, accessibility. I always need to advocate for that. The sketching, the photography, the the quilting is for me a way to do things away from that. It's a way to relieve the the pressure of constantly being an almost fight or flight reaction. There was a great post from Sheri Byrne-Haber on LinkedIn recently, where she was describing the spike of hormones that you're experiencing when you're always having to advocate for accessibility, and then she took it one layer deeper and explained how these spikes of hormones and stress and everything gets exacerbated when you start talking to other people with disabilities that are experiencing their own their own things, and then you're working in a community, so you get very little relief from that constant constant stress reaction around facing a non accessible world. So because of that, I, as I'm getting older, I'm realizing I need to have a break to not burn out.

Mark
That cortisol management,

Nic
yeah, we need to burn it all

Mark
down at some point, yeah.

Nic
And because I work with computers so much, I mean it's it's 100% of what I do. Having activities that take me away from the screen is wonderful. A sketch, I can do that. I you know I have a pen of a pad of paper, a pen, a few watercolors. I can be outside in nature doing that. I can do this anywhere.

Mark
Yeah,

Nic
quilting same thing. Whether I do it with a machine or I do hand sewing, I don't need a computer or or anything to do that. The the wildlife photography is a little bit different because, well, actually, you know, I don't work in film anymore, and I need to process my photo, so it requires a screen at some part of the process. But the advantages of this creative practice can only happen when I'm out in nature looking at birds, animals, listening to birdsong, to the sound of the breeze and the trees and all that-that's all part of the experience that has nothing to do with my work.

Mark
Yeah, or or your disability. It's all stuff that you're doing. It's just yeah, and I think you know it strikes me. There's a lot of there's a lot of research, a lot of talk, a lot of ancient sort of wisdom out there around the mental health benefits of being in nature.

Nic
Yep,

Mark
and I think if you're anything like me, Nic, what you're describing is taking that a step further, and with something that's more tactile. It's not your not digital. It's not your computer. It's your paintbrush, your your your pencil, your sewing machine. In the case of photography, it's a little bit of in between, but and actually participating in nature, right? In in in drawing back and forth, like like engaging with it, engaging with it. Do you so? In full disclosure for your listeners, I'm a I'm a studio arts major. My background is in photography as well, but I've dabbled just like you in all of those things. Being a studio arts major, and so one of the questions or one of the things I always get curious about when I talk to other artists like yourself is the influences that they've had. Is there anybody that you would point to, either famous or within your own life, that's influenced the work that you do artistically?

Nic
I have so many different influences, and some I can tie directly, and some are a lot more vague. I think, in in large part, my my interest in art has come from the fact my dad is an arts collector, and had several friends who were artists. One. One of my dad's friends' name is Milienko Horvat. He's a he lived in Quebec, but he's a Hungarian modern artist. Was. He passed away. So I've been surrounded with pieces of art, mostly modern art, but also pieces or more classical paintings. So I I think that shaped an understanding of art is important. I recently had my a conversation with my dad, who is telling me, you know, Nic, you're doing these sketches, and and that's great. But really, you don't understand art. And yeah, okay, thank you, I, you're right. I do not understand art because I don't spend time trying to analyze it. I just want to make it happen. Yeah. So that, in part, is is why. drawing and sketching and painting is important in terms of more direct influences with what I like to do is is all the urban sketching movement the this idea of painting on location from life capturing a moment in time, and there's there's a certain style that comes out. I mean, everybody does it differently, but but there's a lot of line and wash that comes out of that. I I like to capture those those ideas. In terms of quilting, I don't know that I have any particular influences. I've just always liked quilt. I was lucky enough to to travel through the U.S. We were full time traveling in an RV, and we stopped in Kentucky, in Paducah, and there's a national quilt museum there. This was just before I started doing quilting, and we spent several wonderful hours exploring that, which is all around modern quilts. And then my wife surprised me with a book of how to make your own sampler quilt entirely from scratch, and I think I put in 12,000 stitches in that product, and I'm really happy with it. But that's that. You know, my wife jokes that she created a monster because after doing that one, then I had to do another one, and another one, and another one, and and I haven't had a chance to quilt in last 18 months because we were moving and work and all that, but we finally have a room that is a dedicated craft and gaming room. So I'll be able to go back and finish the projects I started a year and a half ago. Photography, I don't know. Photography, I, you know, there's all the masters of of street photography. Bresson, in particular, I like his style. Adams, I like his style, but I don't think I'm trying to replicate what they're doing. But it's more in terms of

Mark
Bresson, Paris, black and white.

Nic
Yeah, yeah,

Mark
yep. Okay, now you're talking about. I would not have pronounced it that way, but I think you're probably pronouncing it correct since you are speaking his native tongue.

Nic
Yeah, what I like about him is this this approach of, funnily enough, capturing real life moment snapshot of time, which in a way ties into urban sketching, but it's it's this

Mark
decisive moment,

Nic
decisive moment. Now, what we know of his photos, they're wonderful, but we also, if you dig into it a little bit, you realize that there's a lot of negatives that never made it to print, right? But to have that, what's the word I'm looking for? That it's that instant spontaneity. To have that spontaneity, whether you're sketching or taking photos, you you have to have taken 10,000 bad photos. You have to have done 10,000 bad sketches. You have to have put in 10,000 hours in in quilting before things start flowing. So to have that spontaneity, I think is is is what I'm hoping for at some point. To to have enough practice and skills and and muscle memory to not have to think about it and be spontaneous that way.

Mark
Yeah. The... I want to dig into a couple things here, and in doing this, I'm going to challenge your father's statement that you don't understand because you you mentioned a couple of times you talked about the street, whether it's in reference to painting, whether it's in reference to photography and this sort of urban landscape, which is very interesting to me, Nic, because what I know of your photography, you've shared back and forth with me, or nature photos, which is very specifically the opposite of that urban. But one of the things that you said that was really interesting is that you liked that sort of street art in in the on location art, and I don't know if you've been to the last time I was in London. I was at the Leek Street Tunnel, and the Leek Street Tunnel is a place in London where it's okay to do graffiti. It's encouraged, and this idea of creating art on location and art that, in part and whole, is probably temporary because there's no rules, right? Or or or the rule is is that if somebody paints a picture, you can come right behind them and paint over it, or or somebody may never paint over your picture, like you don't know. But to me, that urban art, that temporary nature of it, that on location, all those things, all the things that you describe to me-that's the true nature of art, right? Because it's because it's evolving. It is temporary. It is when somebody paints over a part of your picture, they don't wipe out your picture, but they add the overall gallery, right? The overall impression. So now, what they did becomes a part of what you did, and then there's this like bracket of time. This bracket of time that moves through time, and then you know, in photography, there's the decisive moment. There's the it's sort of humans in nature. Do you why do you why do you think that you're drawn towards those urban landscapes that are moving and changing and temporary and and raw? You know, in in some ways. I mean, you're talking about quilting and nature photography in the same breath, Nic.

Nic
Yeah, yeah.

Mark
What's the what's the attraction there? Like, why that dichotomy in your in your in your esthetic? I'm asking hard questions, aren't I?

Nic
Yes you are, and that's wonderful. I think it feeds different parts of my needs, but ultimately, it's it's all about quieting my brain. My brain never stops. I have, I don't have a diagnosis, but I'm 99.9% certain I have ADHD, and part of that is my brain never stops. I go to bed, my brain doesn't stop. I go to sleep, my brain doesn't stop. It's always going, except when I sketch, when I quilt, when I take photos, so these are different expressions of how do I self-medicate without medication, if you want. Why urban sketching? Well, I've always liked architecture. I've always been interested in architecture. I've traveled a lot as a kid, and then been exposed to to architecture in in Canada, in Montreal, in the U.S. in in Africa, in Europe. So. I think there's beauty in buildings, whether they're 300-year-old buildings or newer ones. But also, more and more, I want to include people in my urban sketches because ultimately, like accessibility, it's about people. So it's tying the human experience to the environment. Quilting is a different beast altogether. I think it's especially the patchwork part is is making art that isn't related to the human experience, but in the end, the quilt is to be used. For me, a quilt is not something you put on a wall or put in a box and forget about. A quilt you you use it when it wears out. Well, you make another one. So yeah.

Mark
So you said something really interesting in there, and you know we've got a lot in common, Nic. And one of the things I think we have in common is sort of this diagnosed, undiagnosed ADD. I grew up in the '80s, and I'm self-diagnosed. Well, I'm diagnosed now with ADD, but ultimately I didn't have that diagnosis, and then also dyslexia, and so it really resonates with me when you talk about these different artistic endeavors quieting the brain, or almost to me, it's almost like just aligning thoughts that tend to be sort of all over the place, right? You know, do you find that, like, think about something like sketching? Is it hard in and hard out for you? And what I mean by that is sometimes I have a hard time through all that deciding I'm going to sit down and draw something, or that I'm going to go out and take pictures. But once I'm in that, I now have a hard time stopping, and I have a hard time not thinking. Like if I leave a work unfinished, it's on my mind until I feel like I've finished it. Is that your experience? Is that is that are you are you narrowing your focus once you get into it, on that piece of artwork, or is it something different for you? I'm curious if do we have a similar experience or if it's different.

Nic
Yeah, it varies for me. Sometimes I say, okay, I'm going to take half hour and do a sketch, And I just fiddle. I have my notes, my sketchbook, and my pen, and I'm not getting anywhere. And sometimes I kind of thought, "Oh, well, I'm just gonna doodle, and I end up sucked in immediately. And I lift my head, and oh, what do you mean? Two hours have gone by, right? And some days I I want to do these things. Some days I want to do sketching, or I want to grab my camera and go out. It's a beautiful day. the The light is nice. It's not too hot and not good cold, and I just can't. I don't have the spoons. I don't have the energy to to get going. So it's. I don't think there's a specific pattern about that. But most of the time, once once I start it, once I actually do it, then I'm so full in that you know the world could drop around me and I wouldn't know.

Mark
That's interesting. Yeah, I would love to have that experience where the world, but I never have that. My ADD keeps me on the surface all all the time. This is really where I wanted to end up here today because this is interesting to me. I was listening to your first podcast with Mia.

Nic
Yep,

Mark
and I was learning all sorts of things about you that I didn't know, and of course, there are things that we have in common, Nic. Right?

Nic
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mark
Believe it, believe it or not, and one of them is that you mentioned a martial arts experience in your past, and I'm I'm wondering, you know, within the context of this discussion of art. So I've got a I've got a strong martial arts past too. Does that does that is that a part of this whole artistic experience for you? Does it influence it? Do the things that you learned mentally and physically do they do they play a part in your artwork at all, or is that yet another separate outlet that you had in your life or still do? I don't know if you.

Nic
Very different. I started judo when I was six years old because I was being bullied, and it was recommended that I do something that would give me the confidence to to stand up in a way, and I did judo for 18 years. I didn't like competition, and to reach black belt, you either had to do a technical approach, which was longer and harder, or go through competition, and people are brutal in competition, and that did not appeal to me at all. So I didn't quite reach my black belt in judo, but I did it for 18 years.

Mark
18 years is a lot of time on the mat for

Nic
yeah

Mark
anybody yeah, and I'm assuming. So I don't know a whole lot about your history of disability either, but I do know, or I think I know, that you're a wheelchair user. That that's correct, right? Was this prior to being a wheelchair user? Is this something that you did as a wage?

Nic
It kind of started fading out. The judo faded out when I, within about the same time range that I started having to use a wheelchair.

Mark
Okay.

Nic
But also towards the end of doing judo, I I was traveling a lot. I was a chef at the time.

Mark
Oh wow!

Nic
Which hey, guess what?

Mark
Another video there.

Nic
Yeah, and and I was slowing down the judo, but I started doing tai chi. I learned tai chi, which is a lot easier to practice on your own than judo is, because there's only so many katas you can practice. Although in in a way, Tai Chi is katas. But I started doing judo

Mark
judo is specifically designed to be to have an opponent in the

Nic
yes

Mark
practice.

Nic
There there are some katas you can do, but it's yeah

Mark
yeah. Tai Chi is is more of a inner

Nic
Tai Chi is is a more internal practice. I mean, outwardly it looks like you're doing movements, but it's all about the how the internal goes. And from that perspective, Tai Chi is is good for my brains as well because it's a form of moving meditation. I occasionally try to start tai chi again, but it's it becomes a question of juggling how much spare time do I have in my day and where do I want to focus my energies?

Mark
Yeah.

Nic
So at the moment, I choose to focus my energy in in sketching. And

Mark
I think the wonderful thing about any artistic endeavor, and and and including ones that where you move your body, like like the martial arts, is that you can bring it back in times in your life. So drawing's been that way for me, where I go through long periods of time without drawing, and then I, for some reason, I have a need and I come back to it. So I think that's a brilliant thing, particularly with something like Tai Chi, is that if it doesn't provide value for you at this time in your life, then it doesn't make sense to do it,

Nic
yeah,

Mark
but if but it may provide value in a in the future, and you there's nothing that says you can't circle back to it, you know. And then so and I don't want to stay on this martial arts thing too long because really we're here to understand you as an artist, but I've got one one final question because I can't1.

Nic
more thing. There was

Mark
one more thing because I can't help myself. But have you ever thought about retooling your 18 years of judo to be into a a wheelchair practice where you could use the same Principles adopted for adopted for wheelchair.

Nic
I do

Mark
or did I just come up with an idea for you?

Nic
No, I I I'm I think I'm actually doing that, but not in a martial art kind of way, because 18 years of judo and six years, solid six years of tai chi, forms how your body moves.

Mark
Yeah,

Nic
forms how you open doors. Even I mean, the way you open a door, you know. In a wheelchair, you can't just pull on the door because if you pull on the door, it's not the door that's going to open; it's your wheelchair that's going to move, right? So the way you you use that push pull that that equal and opposite forces, the way you're you're moving, all that is in a way integrated into my subconscious, and

Mark
makes sense.

Nic
It's funny because years after stopping judo, 20 years after stopping judo, I actually took a pretty nasty tumble out of my wheelchair. I was going down a hill, and my wheels locked on a rock, my chair stopped. I was going down, and I flew out of my chair, and I ended up doing a just a roll, judo roll.

Mark
Yeah, you came just,

Nic
and that was it. Didn't get hurt. Some people that saw me tumble said, "Oh my God, Nic, what the hell was that?" Looked very spectacular to people outside. But for me, it just came naturally.

Mark
Yeah, it was just another. How many times in your life had you done that? And this was just one. Yeah, that's. I mean, I think everybody should study at least the ukimi, which is the falling part of judo in their life, because I can't tell you how many times it's come into play for me, and if hopefully, if you're a martial artist, you'll never have to use the martial arts in your life, except for there's no way to to avoid falling at some point in your life. So you will. I always tell people, like tell my students, this is one of the most important things.

Nic
Yeah, I'll teach

Mark
you, and I can remember once running with my wife, and I tripped over a root, and it was just the same story. You know, I went headfirst to the ground, but I rolled up out of it, stood up, and she, "Oh my god, are you right? "I said. I looked at her, just smiled, and she goes, "Oh yeah, I forgot. Let's keep going,"

Nic
you know.

Mark
But but I probably fell four more times that day on the mat, you know, in practice or whatever. So it was just another moment of falling. So, swinging back into your your art a little bit, right? We've talked about you know you sort of have settled on these different things that that that resonate with you, and they're all very different. This is what's impressive, right? Is that photography and quilting could we get much more opposite than that, right? And then, and then these things like drawing and and watercolors kind of are somewhere in the middle of that spectrum. So I think it's wonderful that you figured out a way to kind of exercise this full full spectrum of of expression within within art. Is there anything that you is there anything that you you don't like about your art, or anything that you wished you had leaned into more in the as you were sort of coming up as an artist?

Nic
Several things. First, I wish I had persevered earlier. I really picked up watercolors for the first time, and when was in the late 90s? I wish I had kept at it back then. Yeah, because by now I would be. I assume I would be happier with what I produce. I am my own worst critic. I'm getting a lot of great feedback. People love what I'm doing, and and it's good for the ego. But when I look at what I do, I'm rarely satisfied with what I've done. I see all the faults. People told me, "Hey, your bird photography is great. Maybe you should sell calendars or or sell your art." And I'm looking at everybody else that I interact with that does bird photography, and I'm thinking, "Well, a the market is flooded, and b I'm okay, and maybe I'm better than people around me. But the reality is, I'm just a very, very basic bird photographer compared to other people. " So, from that perspective, I, you know, I like to share the work I do, but I'm not often happy with the work I do.

Mark
I'm I'm agreeing with you, Nic, because you're descri you're describing what I feel just about every time I produce something, and it makes me wonder if if we're wrong or if we're right about that feeling. You know what I mean. If if if everybody who's who's photographing birds or or or sketching looks at their work and feels the same way, and where I feel this the most in in that same sentiment of like I wished I dug deeper when I was younger is with like figure drawing. I learned to figure draw in school, but I kind of. Left it in class, and I've come back to it at certain times, and I'll do a drawing, and I'll be very happy with it, and then I'll look at it the next day and be like, "What? Yeah, what did I do? This is not good.

Nic
This is where, for me, art is about the process, not about the outcome. I am much more satisfied with spending an hour sketching a bridge than I am with the finished bridge sketch.

Mark
Yeah, that's a really great way to to think about it and to to put it. What are you most happy with when you look at it and you go, "This is in my art. I've accomplished. I'm so glad I've accomplished fill in the blank.

Nic
With sketching, what I'm working on most right now is perspective and values. So if I nail perspective and values on a sketch, it makes me happy. With quilting, it's sharp seams, points that are on points, and and when I say points that are on points, is is the corners where two different or three or four or five or six parts of fabrics are meeting that they're meeting spot on. For bird photography, it's it's it's getting close enough to the bird to be able to have the eye sharp at about level. I don't want the birds to be all the way up or all the way down, and I, I like to capture motion. A bald eagle sitting on a branch doing nothing is impressive. They are really big birds, but I've got hundreds of bald eagles sitting on a branch doing nothing,

Mark
right?

Nic
And and I said last year when when I was out looking at bald eagle migration, I said to somebody else, like oh yeah, they're just sitting there, they're boring. And the person says, what do you mean they're boring? Well, they are. What we're waiting for is the action they're taking off. They're splashing into water, grabbing a salmon. They're grabbing each other and swirling. That's what you're looking for. It's for the action, and what satisfies me most is when I have that action.

Mark
I think that yeah, what you described is is that evolution, right? And it's the decisive moment. So when you were first describing that, it was like, well, yeah, you know, I don't know how jazzed I would be about capturing a bald eagle. Probably pretty jazzed, you know, but just sitting there on a branch. But then I also don't know how big of a deal it would be to catch a bald eagle eagle soaring overhead, but to capture a bald eagle in that moment when it's just about to take off and it goes through that expression or whatever it is where it's not sitting on the branch and it's not in flight, but it's somewhere in that moment in between. I think that when the term decisive moment was coined. It was moments like that that that they were thinking about. That there's a particular thing about only at that moment could you click the shutter and capture that. If they're in flight, you could click the shutter 1000 times. It's going to look very similar. Or if they're sitting there, you know.

Nic
That's right.

Mark
So I I completely I completely understand, you know, and I think there's something when you hit that, like you feel it, you know it, and it's it's it's very very satisfying.

Nic
It it it's it's learning the behavior of the bird too, because you can capture that great photo by sheer luck, or you can know. Oh well, this bird has been sitting there for this long. It's starting to shuffle a little bit on the branch this way, and oh yeah, I know this is coming. I need to be ready to take that photo.

Mark
Yeah,

Nic
and it's

Mark
almost almost athletic in that sense of of you know if you're hitting a shot when people are trying to defend you in basketball-it's recognizing the movements in the moment to take the shot. It's a very similar thing, and to your point, it's the process. It's all the work that goes before it to allow you to do that. That that you do it for. If you had to, if you and I were going to meet on a deserted island and you were only able to bring one piece of artwork with you to show me, what would that be? I've never seen any of your artwork, but you have to bring one one thing to show me. What would it be?

Nic
One of my quilts.

Mark
Oh, that's very interesting.

Nic
Because I can't help being pragmatic and practical about life, so I'm going to show you this quilt, and we're on a deserted island, and we need to stay warm. So we're going to wrap up in my art and stay warm.

Mark
That is a fantastic answer. I absolutely love that. I'm thinking it's going to be like a picture or something, and you're like, "No, we got to stay warm. The so let's let's reverse that. I'm coming over to your house, and every piece of artwork you've ever done is laying out on the floor. What do you what do you before I get there? What do you hide so that there is no way I will ever see it.

Nic
My secret sketchbook.

Mark
Enough said.

Nic
I I have a sketchbook where I experiment, ink, colored pencil, gouache, watercolor, brush pens, whatever. I just do stuff in there, and it's for me only. I will never show that to anyone, and that relieves a lot of the anxiety about performance. So...

Mark
Are you hiding the imperfection in your art in that case, or are you hiding the parts of your brain that are coming out in that art, or both.

Nic
A bit of both, but a lot of hiding my brain. You wanted to explore my brain earlier, and I nearly said, "Oh well, it's not a very pretty place, and that secret sketchbook allows me to to express the often dark thoughts that I have that I don't want to a burden people with or b make myself too vulnerable about.

Mark
And that brings me back to your attraction towards that urban esthetic, which you you called human, right? Because you you said you know you don't want to take a picture of a a rusty fence in a brick wall. You want to take a picture of a rusty fence in a brick wall with a person leaning into it that's pensive, or with a person hitting it with a hammer, or you want that human human element in there, and I think sometimes those it it makes sense to me. Your answer makes sense to me because I think sometimes those urban landscapes and that locational art and that freedom is this the surfacing of some of that darkness, you know, like if you're painting a still life or nature or you're photographing a bird, it's not doing that. But when you're so deeply into the human condition that you're in a place that is 100% of a human environment, with 100% of a human reacting to that environment, you're starting to surface the that that that depth. So I think that there's a relationship between those things. Well, I hope that if we end up on a deserted island, that you bring that quilt because that sounds wonderful. And I hope not to ever stumble upon your secret sketchbook because that doesn't something I want to even get into, Nic. But I hope that the things that you need to surface out of that sketchbook and into your regular art, I I think that part of the process is finding out how to do that too. Yeah, you know,

Nic
yeah. There's there's certainly things that I'm figuring out as I'm doing doodles in my secret sketchbook that actually come out of there and that I'm using in in everyday things that I'm happy to share with with other people.

Mark
Well, I'm gonna also say secret sketchbook. Great great title for a novel, not a bad band name either.

Nic
I have so much musical talent in me that if I played musical instrument, I would kill all the vegetation around me. You know, they they say music like plants like music. Well, my music, they wouldn't.

Mark
I'm I'm right with you. I yeah. Don't ask me to sing. Don't ask me to keep rhythm. I'm not going to do it. I think we're we're we're getting close to the end of our time. Nic, is there anything that we didn't cover, or anything that you kind of want to bring up about you, your artwork? any of it that that that you think is important that we didn't cross over.

Nic
Yeah, I would like for people to think about me as a multifaceted kind of person. I'm not just that disabled guy. I'm not just that angry crip. I'm not just this digital accessibility expert. I'm I'm a husband. I'm a son. I'm I'm I'm human, and part of that humanity means that I'm going to be doing sketching, I'm doing to be quilting, and I'm doing photography. And who knows? Maybe, maybe a year down the road, I'm gonna say, "Hey, there's a new creative thing I've just heard about, and I want to try that. And I'm hoping that people that see me bouncing about from one to another to another to another type of creative practice. See it as exploring creativity rather than being aimless and not sticking to something, because maybe the practice I'm using right now is different than the one I'm using six months down the road, but I'm still practicing creativity rather than not sticking to one thing.

Mark
One of the sayings that we have in the martial arts that my group of people have in the martial arts is: we say, "There's nothing better than being a white belt. Everybody wants to get to that black belt, and we say the most fun that we have is being a white belt, and this oftentimes brings us to study other disciplines. Right? You said you did judo, you said you did tai chi, and I've got a bullet list, and I stick with ones, but I also try other ones, and I think it's that same thing, Nic. Like you, art is a process before it's a final product, it's about the journey. It's about the creation, and sometimes the most satisfying form of that is when you've got something brand new, a brand new skill you're trying to acquire, a brand new medium you're trying to figure out how to work with, but something that is returns you to the beginning and causes you to rediscover from that perspective.

Nic
Yeah.

Mark
So I don't think I don't know if I'm sure you're talking from a place of experience when you say you hope people think of you that way, but I, to me, it just makes sense. It makes a lot of sense, and I think that it's really one of the ways that we discover-we don't discover who we are and the things that we're good at. We discover who we are and how we interact and react to the things we're not good at, or to adversity, or or novelty, or whatever. So,

Nic
and I appreciate

Mark
you do that.

Nic
There's growth in discomfort.

Mark
Yeah. Yep, 100% Then that's where again, maybe we're a lot of like, like people say, "You want to go on vacation? Let's go to you know the all inclusive. I'm like, "Can we go right in the middle of town? Can we go find those people that don't want us to be there? I want to hang out with them, right? It's there is there is comfort for me in discomfort sometimes.

Nic
Yeah,

Mark
you know, into having your having the edge of your blade ground against a little bit, that that's what makes it sharper. Well, Nic, I feel like we could do 10 more of these, and I still wouldn't get to the center of who you are entirely. Nor do I think I ever want to be there because of the discovery is the point.

Nic
Yeah,

Mark
this was amazing, and I'd love to keep going. But I know we've got to. We've got to.

Nic
I had a wonderful time, and I'm so glad I picked you to interview me. This was so much fun.

Mark
I'm so glad that you picked me too, and it was an absolute honor. And if you if you feel like you've got more of a story, I'd be honored to step back into this role anytime.

Nic
Mark, thanks a lot.

Mark
Thank you.

Nic
If you enjoyed this episode, if you were inspired in any way, or if you learned something, please leave a rating or review on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or whatever podcast aggregator you use. Ratings and reviews really do help. Thank you. And that's it. I'm Nic Steenhout. This is the work between. If this sounds like the kind of conversation you like, subscribe, and I'll see you in the next episode.

Nic
Hi, I'm Nic Steenhout, and this is The Work Between.

Nic
In case you didn't know, I provide transcript reviewed for accuracy by a human for every episode at the time of publishing. There's a text-only transcript that you could read if audio isn't the best media for you. There's also a time transcript you can follow along while listening if that works better for you. You can access those directly on the podcast's website if they aren't displayed by your podcast aggregator, that's the workbetween dot show.

Nic
Before I get into what the show is, I want to say whose land it's made on. This podcast is recorded on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the Stó:lō Coast Salish people, the people of the river, whose presence in the Fraser Valley stretches back 1000s of years. I name this territory because it belongs with what this show is about: the ways we decide whose lives are valued, whose work is taken seriously, and whose experiences are treated as problems to be managed. Those decisions shape everything. This show sits inside that. This is, was, and always will be First Nations land. That's not a formality. It's consistent with everything I, and this show stand for.

Nic
My guest today is Soren Hamby. Soren is an artist and advocate who survives under capitalism as an accessibility and product equity designer. Their natural state is to build systems, frameworks, and communities, and to challenge the hidden structures that determine inclusion. They live in New York's lower Hudson Valley on unceded Ramapo Lenape land, reshaping perceptions of living with multiple disabilities and intersecting identities. When they're not busy with small goals like changing the world, you'll find them painting, doing fiber arts, writing poetry, or collecting different ways of making and creating, which they see as essential human needs. Most of our conversation revolved around poetry. We also spoke about fiber arts and the line between necessity and expression, about vision loss and the pull between digital and physical media, and the impact of late neurodivergence diagnosis.

Nic
Soren, thank you for accepting to talk with me about creativity and identity and disability. Welcome to the show.

Soren
Thanks so much for having me. I'm really glad to be here, and this is such a great thing that you're doing.

Nic
I'm glad you enjoy that. Let's start with the first question, which perhaps is the most obvious one. But tell me about your art or creative practice. What is it that you do? And I think, I think you do a few things that are related to making and creating. So tell me a little bit about that.

Soren
Yeah. So there's a couple of things, and I I kind of divide them into more necessity or expression. So one one realm that I kind of get into is doing things that are I make things because I can't get them commercially or I can't get them easily. So it's like like knitting and crochet and sewing and things where I'm you know making things with my hands, and the the primary object is not to make something that's decorative or or narrative. And so I've been doing that for a very long time. And I just recently got into doing some decorative and narrative crochet through doing like tapestry work. The other thing, of course, is expressive, which now I'm starting to bleed the line, blur the lines between those. But doing things like painting, watercolor, drawing, and poetry, I would say that those are those are kind of my big ones. With poetry being one that's top of mind right now because we just had the National Poetry Writing Month in April.

Nic
For me, poetry is a is a mixed emotions kind of thing. I don't write poetry, but my father is a several-time published poet, and we have this thing that he shows me his poetry, and I read it, and I hear what he's saying, but poetry just kind of doesn't click with me. So I'd be curious to know more about your poetry. How did you learn? How did you get started with that?

Soren
So I had a really great English teacher in high school, mrs. Garren. She had this project where she had the whole class contribute to a book of poetry, and that's where I really first got started. And this project really stood out to me because I also got to organize the project and design the cover, so that was just a really formative experience for me. And then I continued doing poetry just for fun in high school. I kind of dropped out of doing it when I lead in life kind of took over and my interest took other avenues, but then I got back into doing it when I picked up my life in the southern U.S. and moved to the Lower Hudson Valley in 2017. And the community that I integrated with first up here was a poetry community, and I just found a lot of acceptance and a lot of a lot of other people that had disabilities or that were LGBTQ+. So it was just a really great opportunity for me to interface with people. And the more time you spend hanging out with poets, I feel the the more you feel like you have something to say and write about.

Nic
Yeah.

Soren
So it's like, oh well, I'm hearing lots of things about you know other people's experiences with bad relationships or with you know different bigotry, but I don't hear my story. So maybe there is space for me to tell my story, so I got back into doing it, and my poetry specifically has the flavor of some kind of natural space sort of metaphors, and I also pull on mythology a lot, so it becomes a way for me to explore some of my other interests, because I get to deep dive into what's the meaning behind this mythological story, or maybe like what is you know like some of the mechanics behind some of the really interesting science things that I'm weaving into my story. Sometimes people don't understand all of the meaning behind it, but one of the favorite things in poetry circles to say is "specific is the best general". The more specific you can make something, even if people don't understand it, they relate to that specificity of it. They relate to the way that you're expressing your internal experience. It's like taking the internal and making it external. And so, if you can get someone to understand what it's like, and what, and like, even if they don't understand how it is to feel that way, they understand the intensity of your feelings. They understand that that's something you care about.

Nic
Do you write for yourself, or do you write for others? Who do you write for?

Soren
I definitely write for myself. I would say there's a lot of stuff that I've written that has never and will never see an open mic. And there's stuff that I've written and I go, oh wow, that was really bad. Like it's not a good poem, but I'm glad that I wrote it, and that's what National Writing Month in April is about. It's like about building a writing muscle and about like writing a lot every day. It's about just trying to make time to do it, and the expectation is kind of like you won't have 30 finished, ready to perform poems at the end of a 30 month prompt sprint. Like you will have maybe like one or two good poems that come out of it, if you're lucky. But the the whole idea is to like get used to editing and writing and making the practice part of it a little bit more of of the process rather than just like when inspiration hits.

Nic
Yeah, I I find something very similar with with sketching is even if I put 10 minutes a day on doing sketching every day, I'm not as stuck. I I keep going, and maybe a 10 minute sketch is just a bunch of lines that look like a squiggle, and it's not good. But it's building that muscle memory.

Soren
Yeah, I I would agree with that. It's it does build muscle memory, but I think it also just causes you to take some time to reflect, and also it it helps you to dial into things that aren't as strong of emotion. So then, if you're ever given the opportunity or asked to create something that's not driven by something that's really strong, it becomes easier to do. So, for instance, like if there's a theme where you're given money to come up with like a poem for spring, it's a lot harder to do that if you only write from a place of like rage or anger or hurt to write like a happy spring poem that's going to win prize money, and not that art has to be for money or has to be for anyone else, but just that if you want to become more versatile, you have to practice at it. But if you are happy with just writing from a place of intense emotion, then there's absolutely no reason to practice getting better at writing about other things, but I just think that it's a good way to break out of the the trap of having to feel those emotions every time as well.

Nic
Yeah,

Soren
because I think that's part of why I write is like when I'm editing a poem, I don't just write it down and then it's done. I write it. I sit there. I edit it. I probably edit it again. I edit it with one person. Then I take it to a writing group, and then I probably take it back to someone I trust to give me a really good opinion on it, so it probably goes through three to four rounds before it ever would see someone else's, like a stranger's eyes or ears. So I think, I think like the that process of like being able to step back from the experience a bit and be retrospective about it, and also just to like distance yourself from really intense experiences can be a really freeing thing, and that's one reason why I I do write.

Nic
When you get stuck with your writing, what does that feel like, and and what do you do to get unstuck?

Soren
That's a great question. So I actually got stuck for a really long time, and I recently got myself unstuck by doing National Poetry Month. I feel like sometimes you have to let it get away from you for a little bit. You have to let you have to work through it and be stuck. Sometimes I've I've like put down a poem that I thought wasn't very good or didn't have very much to offer me, and then I've come back to it and with a little bit of perspective, or even my life has changed. I find that it's it's different. I have a different perspective on it, and then I can write it differently, or edit it differently, or finish it. So that has happened a couple of times where I've let something sit for maybe even six months before I've come back to it, and I think that being able to kind of go back and rewrite it is also a little bit powerful in a way because I'm I'm saying like I can't end this story the way that I want to. It's not stuck in this unfinished state, and and that that kind of feels powerful and very self empowering, you know. Like I'm not being given that. I'm not being given it. I'm I'm just claiming it. Yeah. So that's that's something I I really enjoy about writing.

Nic
So what does finishing feel like, and do you trust your own senses of when something's done,

Soren
Never. No, I would say, like I think doubting, doubting is part of the process. I think if you're ever sure of anything, then you're probably wrong. But I think we can feel confident about things, and sometimes I feel like confident that the poem is at least ready enough to to hear an audience. But I kind of joke that my work is probably never finished. It's just what edition you get when you hear it or read it. So I try to... I started trying to date whenever I do edits because I used to just like, I used to just edit the original, and then you know I would look at the version history and see what I changed. And then as I got a little bit more sophisticated, I would copy and paste it when I came to like a major revision. So I would you know copy the entire body and and paste it above like it was a reply to an email, and I would then I could look at them kind of like side by side even, and say okay, this is what I changed on this line, and so I have some poems that are just like it looks like four emails of the same poem with slight changes, but I think you know now. I've gotten to where I'm like I should date these and just like if I ever go back and edit them some more, then you know you've got the the 2026 edition versus the the 2016 edition.

Nic
It sounds like almost constant iteration, and maybe you should start writing in GitHub with version control.

Soren
That would be a really interesting way to do it, for sure. I I hadn't really thought of it that way. I've been using you know like a note taking app for a long time, but you know the pricing has gone up on that since they've added a bunch of features I didn't ask for, so that that actually could be a really great solution. So we're doing a little problem solving on this show too.

Nic
Yeah,

Soren
I really like that idea. I I do think that art and poetry, more specifically, is in a constant state of iteration because we constantly are learning new information or new techniques. I think we just we let things be finished. I think sometimes we do need to let things be finished because you can only erase so many times and redraw, and sometimes we need to move on to making something else, and I think that's really the more pressing thing is is not that we necessarily finish something and close a door, but that we have to move on to making other things. And for me, I at least I I think that the finished part of it isn't a necessary part of the equation.

Nic
I don't write. I mean, I write, but I write tutorials and blog posts and all that. It's I. I don't consider that creative writing, but I do watercolors and sketches, and for me, it's it's very rarely about ending up with a finished sketch. It's about the process. At the same time, I know I've I've done a few sketches for friends, and they're asking for revisions. Can you revise this? And and I have to say, well, actually, no. I'm using actual paper. I'm using ink. I'm using paint. And if I'm to revise this, I have to start from scratch. And sometimes I'm happy to do that, but sometimes I'm not. I I think from a from a constant iteration and editing, doing it electronically like you do with the writing would be a lot easier.

Soren
Yeah, that's that's a reason that I, besides just having some, uh, some issues with working with paper since I've I've had vision loss, I've tried to move a little bit towards more digital media, like using Procreate on my my tablet rather than paper and pencil, but I still do love the the feeling that like the tactileness of

Nic
yeah

Soren
physical media. You just can't you can't give that up. I feel like sometimes

Nic
For me, I work so much with computers that real paper, especially cold press watercolor paper that has a good texture, and a pen is, despite arthritis, it's it's actually making it worth it. But having vision loss, it's it's very hard to zoom in on a 8" by 10" watercolor sheet of paper.

Soren
I knew that I had switched over to digital a little too much when I tried to pinch on pinch in and zoom in on a on a piece of paper. I was like, okay, this is I've I've done too many digitals now. I need to need to do a detox.

Nic
Yeah. So you're part of a creative community, writing groups. What does that connection bring for you?

Soren
Well, so the partner that I live with started these groups here in Rockland County, New York, and so they've been running them for a long time. I think I think they're up to something like 15 years or so, maybe more. But it, you know, it's decades now, and. It was a way for me to get to meet people in a like very digestible way for someone with disabilities because you know there's breaks when you're supposed to socialize and there's times of more quiet. It's you know it's it's at a place where it's not overwhelming. We had our open mic at my hometown town hall in the community room, so it was like the the environment is very peaceful and controlled. And I was like, you know what? This is a really great place for me to meet people because having learned recently that I was neurodivergent, I was like, I really would like to have a little bit more of a of a controlled environment when trying to like meet new people. It just felt a little more safe to me, and I was moving across the country like I'd never lived anywhere outside of the southern United States. I was not sure what the culture would be like, so it just felt like it was removing a variable for me. Where if there have been, you know, like bar music or bright lights or like other things to kind of like distract that going to other social groups or meetups might have not gone as well for me because there'd be other variables that could make it harder for me to connect with people. So, you know, I just wanted to take out some of that ambiguity and and know that at least like I knew what the gathering was about, I knew where it would be, I knew what the environment would be like, and so like poetry kind of like provided that for me, and then it also provided like a built-in kind of inclusive environment because of just the nature of of poetry. I feel like it's it's made to boost marginalized voices and to specifically include people who are underrepresented, so I mean, there's all kinds of discussion about like how much how much people kind of like rely on a little bit of the trauma in in poetry, sometimes a little too much, and I I think that like sometimes that can that can feel bad, like that we're monetizing trauma when it gets to be like professional poetry. But I think for a hobby and for a community group, it's really nice to have a place where you know I'm able to go read at open mics if I would like to, but I can go and just take part in small groups and get feedback on how my writing could be better. I get much more interesting feedback than I do from just you know like running it through a spell checker or

Nic
yeah

Soren
something like that. So it's it's really nice, and I also I also can kind of get perspectives from people that I know are coming from the same life experiences that I have. So

Nic
Yeah.

Nic
What the most useful criticism you've received?

Soren
I think the most useful criticism I've received is though the first thing that popped into my head is I also designed the logo and the and some of the t-shirts and things for this group, and I got this comment when someone posted the the design as a fundraiser. So they were saying, you know, pre-order the supports our poetry team because at the time there was still a national poetry conference, and we would send a team to it, and so we would fundraise and send that, send, make sure that there was no cost to that team to go, and so that was one way that we fundraise. So someone commented on it and said, "Ugly color, stupid design", and I don't like that word. And so we ended up having a really interesting conversation with this person about poetry, about ableism, in the comments of Facebook, just because he didn't like our our our design for our t shirts, and he didn't even go to our... He wasn't part of the community. He just happened to see it because somebody probably that he knew liked it or shared it or something, and he just felt the need to let us know what he thought of the design. It's still my favorite design feedback, actually, and I was like, wow. It's just, it was just so. I don't know that it's most helpful criticism, but that was the first thing that popped into my head. I think the most helpful criticism I've ever gotten about my writing would be that someone doesn't understand something, and or if they if they tell me that they understand it in a way that I didn't mean for them to understand it, so then I can kind of like change my tactics of like how do I want to lead them on this journey with me, and obviously like I I didn't lead them to the place where they needed to go, so I need to give better directions.

Nic
What's your relationship with disability?

Soren
I would say long, and it's it's been it's both sweet because I feel like it partially makes me who I am, but also a bit bittersweet because I feel like it does add a layer of complexity to my life, and and there is a grieving process you go through when you're you receive a new diagnosis or you find that you're newly disabled in a different way, especially as someone with multiple disabilities. But I've been disabled as long as I can remember. I have several chronic illnesses. I've had an insulin pump since I was a child. I've experienced vision loss in starting from 2016, and I was late diagnosed neurodivergent. So it was like all these things about myself made sense after I received that diagnosis, but then also I find myself fighting all the stigmas. So it's a little bit of a double edged sword, just like my relationship with disability. It's like I understand myself better. I can accommodate myself better. I can set myself up for success a little bit better, but then I also have that negative experience of having to combat people's preconceptions about what someone with ADHD or autism or combined type ADHD and autism looks like or acts like or feels like, or even just like how capable or empathetic they are. Like it's hard to to fight people's like really deep seated preconceptions about neurodivergent stereotypes. Honestly, I would say it's I. I expected the ones about being about vision loss and and blindness. Like I, I really did expect those, like the daredevil comments.

Nic
Yeah,

Soren
I have a whole poem about that. But I think there's and and I I always expect the platitudes, but I think I wasn't really expecting how hard I would have to fight against the neurodivergence stereotypes.

Nic
I haven't been diagnosed with ADHD, but it's the only thing that explains so many parts of who I am. And when when I finally realized, hey, yeah, that's you know, I don't have a diagnosis, but I'll eat my hat if I don't have ADHD. It was like the puzzle came together, and suddenly the picture was clear. And at the same time, people react very strangely. Oh, you can't have ADHD. You're not always bouncing off the walls, or you can't have ADHD because whatever. And I do think an intangible neurodivergent condition that that's hard to to put your finger on is is a lot harder for non-disabled people to process than vision loss or using wheelchair that kind of thing.

Soren
Yeah, I agree with that. I think I think too is just like so coded in media. Like we have entire shows about you know neurodivergent people like a doctor who's neurodivergent. It's fictional, but and we even have reality dating shows about you know people dating with autism. It sometimes feels a bit. It feels a little bit like inspiration objectification or inspiration porn is something. Like to call it,

Nic
yeah,

Soren
but yeah, I feel like like sometimes we've just been fed these these really subtle beliefs and stereotypes through all these different kinds of media, whether it's you know just like things that people have put out in the workplace about like how to accommodate people that were just really outdated, or to all the way to movies and TV shows. So I think you know, I've seen more advocacy work done by neurodivergence advocates than, but to like combat that stuff like in the past, like five years, than I've seen for almost any other kind of category of disability, and still, I feel like it feels like people don't don't slow down on putting out that that incorrect assumption about people that have autism or ADHD or other kinds of neurodivergence. So it's it's like it's hard to fight against something that's still happening and is still so pervasive. And you know we still are coming out with new seasons of whatever show to to kind of like further those stereotypes. So I think it it has to be a multi multi pronged approach. Like we have to stop doing the harm, and we also have to start you know educating people. But if if we don't if we don't stop putting out those bad stereotypes into the world, as like I'm saying, we as like makers, people that create media, then it won't have as much of an impact for the people that are being advocates. So, in a way, makers are advocates.

Nic
Let's talk advocacy. I I know that in your professional life you are a huge advocate of accessibility and and disability inclusion. Is your writing a form of advocacy, or is your writing a form of self therapy. Is there a difference?

Soren
I'd say yes to both of those, but it's it's also a form of like an empathy exercise that doesn't make me feel objectified. The poem I mentioned earlier about like when I had vision loss, there was like kind of an FAQ, frequently asked questions that I would receive, like, "Oh, has your hearing gotten sharper? Like, can you smell things more? And I was like, "No, I already could smell things like like a bloodhound. So, no, it didn't. My brain isn't rewiring itself to, you know, like hear sounds and create a sonar map in my brain. It just doesn't work that way yet. Yes, yet. But I would just get these same sorts of questions over and over again, and so the best way I could think to express them and to help people find empathy for my experience, especially especially with how extreme it was at the time, because while I was going through a state of like fluctuation with my vision, I didn't have I didn't have any vision in my right eye, and I had almost no vision in my left. So it was just a very isolating experience. So I wanted to bring people with me on that journey. So it's a little bit of a therapy of getting it out there and saying like, this is what I'm feeling and this is what I'm experiencing, and like I said, externalizing myself and putting it out there, stepping away from it, being able to not feel those big feelings as much. But it's also a way for me to to bring people along with me and to say, look, you may not go through this, but this is what I'm feeling, and you can at least understand me, where I'm coming from, because I've told you what it feels like in ways that you might be able to understand.

Nic
Do you think of yourself as a disabled person who writes poetry, or as a poet who happens to be disabled, or is there no distinction between the two for you?

Soren
I see poetry as one of many ways I I put work out into the world. I think I primarily do see myself as as a maker. And a creator who is a disabled person, and that's part of my experience. Just like I don't really see myself as like LGBTQ+ first, or as a you know like a cat caretaker first, or anything like that. I feel like I feel like it does contextually change based on the conversation what becomes more relevant. But yeah, I do feel like at the core, I I am a a person with like an octopus arms amount of interest that I just reach out into the world with. I think I probably pursue more interests than other people do, and that might be neurodivergence, or it might just be my my personality. Who knows? But I do just really enjoy a lot of different activities to really get. get what I want to say out there. I also just enjoy learning new things. I think that is a major driver for picking up new skills and new techniques as well. It's like the challenge of learning things and of retaining that skill. Like I own that skill now. I'm not, I'm not renting it. I I know it now. It's it's so interesting, and it's a way that I can connect with other people as well, because I don't know if you've ever been to a meetup or anything with any other illustrators, but anytime I'm around people that do poetry or you know fiber arts or like other kinds of woodworking or crafting or something. It's like, oh, I'm really jazzed. Are you really jazzed? Let's talk about this thing. Let me share this technique. Oh, you don't know about that? I have some extra at my house. Let me give it to you. It's like, it's like we're best friends right now. So I feel like I have this instant connection.

Nic
I actually am going to meet up tomorrow. Whole day, two workshops, whole day of urban sketching, and then Sunday afternoon as well. So yeah, I know exactly what you're saying there. It's that's

Soren
wonderful.

Nic
Yeah, it's going to be fun. Has your writing ever put you in conflict with your community?

Soren
Ooh, I definitely have had a couple of people that I I don't know that I would consider them part of my community because they weren't disabled, and they weren't regulars at my poetry scene or groups either. I've I have performed some some of my pieces, like I have a a poem about platitudes where I basically say that like I I don't like platitudes, and you know here's why. And I give this whole dissertation on why platitudes don't work for disabled people, because a lot of the platitudes are like it gets better, you know, you never give them more than you can handle, that kind of thing. And it just doesn't really make me feel better. It just makes me feel more angry the longer I go in life,

Nic
yeah.

Soren
So I kind of wanted to express to people like that feeling, and at the end of it, I talk about being the moon and being struck by an asteroid, and saying that the asteroid didn't make the moon more strong, and that like surviving adversity in my life doesn't make me stronger either. I was already as strong as the moon, and it's just a testament to my strength that I'm still here. And I think that hit a nerve with that person because they they have the best intentions, and that's exactly who I wrote it for. These people that have the best intentions but don't know the effect that they're having on their loved ones, and so we did end up having a really nice discussion. But she came up to me after at this festival that I performed at and was like, "I don't agree with your poem, and I was like, "Oh, okay, you don't agree with the poem I wrote about my experiences-that's interesting" and I was like, "Let's talk about this". So, you know, we sat, we kind of like found a place to sit down and and had a little discussion about it, and I was just like, "What? What made? What did you feel about it? Like, and you know what what part really stood out to you?" And you know, we talked through it, and that's only conflict I ever feel like I've had with people about things that I've written. But I am also pretty careful about what I put out there. I think my day job training has. Has definitely left an imprint on me as far as like I want to be the best version of myself,

Nic
yeah,

Soren
and I don't want to leave ambiguity out there for how how I feel about things. So if I can't be sure that it will it will hit the right chord and it will be received in the way that I intend it to be received. Then I just don't perform it. Maybe it's one of those pieces that I write and then I go, you know, this this could be seen as satire about this topic, or it could be seen as I agree with the people that are wrong on this topic, so maybe I don't perform this. So I think I have a little bit of of that instinct in me. So

Nic
yeah,

Soren
yeah.

Nic
You said earlier when I was asking about criticism that that some people don't understand your writing the way you mean it to be, and and then you brought that again now with with the person who actually disagreed with your your expression of your lived experience. How do you feel about that gap between what you intend and what people take from your writing?

Soren
I think I'm especially sensitive to that because that is something that I've struggled with as someone that's autistic, and it that struggle specifically over... my life has led to to having a diagnosis, so I think I'm sensitive to that, and I'm sensitive to people receiving the message essentially, and so I don't like to just like have a have a poem that just says it like a diary entry like here's what happened to me today I did this and then I did that I would rather take people on the the sensory experience or you know create something that's a little bit more cinematic or epic, and and tell my story that way. But I don't want the meaning to get lost either. So a couple of times I've done poems about really really hard experiences in my life that were either traumatizing or or just difficult to talk about, and sometimes it helps to talk about them in ways that are not intensely direct. But I also don't want to mislead people or bring them to a place where it's the the poem isn't about the underlying hard issue anymore. It's like I have a poem called "Eggplant Soup" about an abusive relationship, and I don't want to lose the fact that it's about an abusive relationship. I don't want someone to walk away thinking that it's a recipe for soup. But that that's a it's it's something where you know once you find that like what feels clever to you as a poet about a particular metaphor or something, you want to make sure that that stays through the writing. But sometimes when you start adding details to it to flesh out the rest of your time or the rest of the story, it gets lost, and so when that happens, and you get feedback that maybe like the other details are taking away from it, sometimes you have to cut those down or change them or just kind of like redirect a little bit. It's not always like a like complete cut. Sometimes it's more of a of a sanding,

Nic
Are there topics that are just completely off limit for you? Whether because you think your audience isn't going to be prepared to listen, or may completely misunderstand you, or just because it's not something you're ready to explore.

Soren
I don't explore topics that I feel like I'm not the best person to talk about. For instance, I am a white person. I don't talk about racism because I'm not a person that should be talking about experiences of racism, I feel like there are plenty of other people that cover those topics. I also don't talk about topics that I feel like my audience isn't equipped to talk about or receive. So when talking about disability, I feel like there's a there's a level that you can get to with people that don't have disabilities, and I think we know that because we know that there's an a deeper level you can get to with people that do have disabilities, and you can get there quickly. So I feel like there's just a there's this invisible shelf where I can cover I can cover anything that falls sort of like up to there, but anything else might be seen as like too much information or might might distract or or be too much for people. Another thing is just that people lose the hope as well. If you if you stay too far into the bad experiences or the things that are really hard, they lose that side of the hope. And I had someone come up to me after I performed an older piece, and say, "I don't know. I don't know how you go on. I I think I would have, think I would have stopped living" essentially, and I was like, oh oh, you like you just like would have just laid down and stopped living, and they were like, "Oh no, I probably would find found a nice cliff". And I was like, "Oh, okay", well, I'm. I just like left the conversation because I was like, 'Oh, I think I'm needed over here", because...

Nic
How do you respond to that?

Soren
I just didn't know how to respond to that, right? Exactly. It happened to me in an interview as well, which the phrasing was a little more close to the cliff thing. But I just I found that people don't see the positive in it sometimes that being disabled is part of who I am, and it's like been a part of me for so long that I don't know who I would be. I wouldn't be this person. I would be some other version of me without disability. So like it's it's it's not who I am, but it definitely has shaped my experience of the world, and that experience of the world does shape who I am, so in a in a way it has been very formative for me. And so, not being able to see the hope that the neutrality of disability is something I really want people to understand. It is a completely neutral thing, like water. It is, it is just there. It is something that can be good and can shape my life in ways that I never thought it would. It can also too much of it can be a lot to carry.

Nic
I, we could speak about this particular point for for a long time. I have been hanging out and working with disabled people for a very long time, and this concept of disability as neutral is very much like the social model of of disability, where you know the disability is not that you're using a wheelchair; it's that there's a step to get into the building. The disability is formed by your environment that has barriers, and from that perspective, it's neutral. But I think I would also some days want to challenge that because there are most definitely some massive negatives intrinsically in in being disabled.

Soren
Oh, I agree. I think I think it's net neutral. I guess I should clarify it's net neutral, but I. I I would say that I agree with you in that as somebody that has dealt with chronic pain, you can't accommodate or perfect world yourself out of having pain.

Nic
Bingo!

Soren
You can't you like you can't erase the time that it takes, the extra time, the extra care that you have to put into things. And it's like, well, if the world was better, I still would have this pain, and I don't want to have it. Like if you could ask, if you ask me, like, would you give up having pain? I would say yes, absolutely. I would love for my baseline to be no pain, or at least very little. I'd love for my baseline to at least be lower, but it's that's not how it often ends up, and unfortunately,

Nic
Yeah.

Soren
but. I yeah I just I think with art we often want to take people on the journey with us and it just feels frustrating when they don't see that it is part of you or that it has helped shape you in a way and that can feel frustrating because they when like I said, they lose the hope. They they feel like life isn't worth living if you have a disability, and I guess that's what I was really trying to get at earlier. Is that like it's frustrating that they think that life may not be worth living if they were as disabled as me.

Nic
Yeah. Yeah. What do you wish people asked about you and your work that they don't?

Soren
Oh wow, that's a great question. I do really wish that sometimes people would ask me a little bit more about what drives my work, because I think sometimes people just either focus on their reaction to it. Like, like I liked this part, I didn't like this part. That phrasing really stuck out to me, which is all very nice. Like, it's all good feedback of like, I liked it. I didn't like it. Or even when people react to it in writing groups and they're like circling and underlining and saying, "This is this part really good. This is really strong. You know, lean in here. Those are all great things. But I I I love it when people dive into like what drives you, what caused you to to say this, or what made you even explore this topic to begin with. I think that curiosity that that some people bring to the table. I wish I saw a lot more of that.

Nic
What does writing give you that nothing else does?

Soren
I think writing gives me an alternate dimension. Almost, it's it's like I can I can say things that I would never be able to write, or or sorry, let me back up. It's like an alternate dimension because I can write things that I would never be able to render myself, and that we don't have the capability of of rendering. Honestly, there's never going to be a computer that could render what is in my head when I'm trying to think of how to express, you know, what being the inside of a geode would be like, or you know the feeling of dating Persephone, like those those kinds of things. I just don't feel like they always translate as well either. It's like if you see something written down, even versus spoken aloud. There are some poems that are meant to be spoken, and there are some that are meant to be read. And you can tell because some of the ones that are meant to be read only have some really cool formatting and enjambment, and some that are meant to be spoken aloud. Sometimes, when you read through them, it doesn't make as much sense until you read them as if they're two people talking to each other aloud. So, I think that's that's what it gives me. Is it gives me the opportunity to work in a medium that wouldn't be possible any other way.

Nic
That makes so much sense. We're we're starting to run out of time, and we haven't spoken at all about your knitting and crocheting, and maybe maybe we need to to book another call and cover that because I'm I'm curious about how how your utilitarian fiber arts is starting to veer into decorative. So I'd love to speak about that some more, but maybe not today.

Soren
Sure, I'd love to do that,

Nic
Soren. Where can people find you? Where can people find samples of your work? Where can people reach out to you and ask you these questions you wish they asked you?

Soren
Well, the main hub where all of my links and everything are is Soren dot o o o.

Nic
Soren dot o o o, perfect. Thank you for telling me about your writings and and being open and vulnerable. This has been a wonderful conversation.

Soren
Yeah, same. I enjoyed taking this journey with you.

Nic
If you enjoyed this episode, if you were inspired in any way, or if you learned something, please leave a rating or review on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or whatever podcast aggregator you use. Ratings and reviews really do help. Thank you. And that's it. I'm Nic Steenhout. This is the work between. If this sounds like the kind of conversation you like, subscribe, and I'll see you in the next episode.

Nic
Hi, I'm Nic Steenhout, and this is The Work Between.

Nic
In case you didn't know, I provide transcripts reviewed for accuracy by a human for every episode at the time of publishing. There's a text-only transcript that you could read if audio isn't the best media for you. There's also a timed transcript you can follow along while listening if that works better for you. You can access those directly on the podcast's website if they aren't displayed by your podcast aggregator. That's theworkbetween.show.

Nic
Before I get into what the show is, I want to say whose land it's made on. This podcast is recorded on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the Stó:lō Coast Salish people. The people of the river, whose presence in the Fraser Valley stretches back thousands of years. I name this territory because it belongs with what this show is about. The ways we decide whose lives are valued, whose work is taken seriously, and whose experiences are treated as problems to be managed. Those decisions shape everything. This show sits inside that. This is, was, and always will be First Nations land. That's not a formality. It's consistent with everything I, and this show, stand for.

Nic
Róisín Curé is an urban sketcher, author, and teacher based in Galway, on the west coast of Ireland. She came to urban sketching in 2012 and built a practice around capturing everyday and natural scences in ink and watercolor. She teaches sketching worldwide through online classes, a sketch club, and in-person workshops across Europe. She has published illustrated books including An Urban Sketcher's Galway. She has recently launched Wild Atlantic Ink, a monthly hand-drawn comic rooted in the wildlife landscape and stories of her corner of Ireland. We spoke about identity and how she identifies as a comic artist, about the relationship between sketching and mental health, about the pros and cons of sketching from life rather than from photos, and we even spoke briefly about foraging and cooking.

Nic
Hello, Róisín. Thank you for joining me on my show. I was really excited that you accepted the invitation because I'm a little bit starstruck, I have to say. So thank you for joining.

Róisín
Delighted. Delighted to be here, Nic. Thanks for inviting me.

Nic
For those of us who don't know you, can you tell me in a few words, what is it you do? What's your creative practice?

Róisín
My creative practice has suddenly taken a new turn, and I am now officially identifying as a comics creator. So I've struggled. You mentioned earlier that the podcast will discuss themes of identity as an artist and creative identity, and it's always been baffling to me how I couldn't identify, I couldn't put a label on what I do. And I would try out lots of labels in my head and none of them seem to fit. But I'm a comic, I'm a comics creator, and that fits just fine.

Nic
Comics creator.

Róisín
I'm a comics creator.

Nic
What kind of comics? I grew up with Tintin and Spirou and all the classic Franco-Belgian ones.

Róisín
My comics are like, I've only done one episode, and I'm just getting issue two to print. And it is like as if Hergé met David Attenborough, and we're driving in a clown car together. That's a good description.

Nic
Okay.

Róisín
I've got the Ligne Claire of Hergé, and I have the Passion for Nature of David Attenborough, and the clown car is because I cannot be serious.

Nic
I want to read that.

Róisín
You're going to love it.

Nic
Yeah, I'm sure I will. I have a bit of a passion for nature. I have several creative practices. I sketch, I quilt, and I do bird photography.

Róisín
Oh, wow.

Nic
And I'm privileged enough to live five minutes from where the bald eagle migration comes through every year. So between November and early January, I drive five minutes, and I can see hundreds of bald eagles in one spot.

Róisín
Amazing.

Nic
So this is just like, yeah, it is amazing. It's like mind-blowing. You know, how are we so lucky to have this? And at the same time...

Róisín
I live on an estuary, and my land backs onto an estuary. I am also privileged to have just discovered the Merlin app, and I'm extremely privileged to have a lovely son who likes to walk with me early in the morning. He does not like me listening to the birds all the time, but I am just enchanted by the combination of Merlin app and the bird life. I was just saying to my husband earlier today, this summer I am enjoying the birds more than I ever have in all my years, because I'm suddenly very, very conscious of them due to just listening out for them, really.

Róisín
And on our estuary, we just have everything. They all love our estuary, and it's a very out-of-the-way, undisturbed, unspoiled natural paradise. So it's just perfect.

Nic
That's wonderful. I assume you sketch those birds once in a while.

Róisín
Well, this will make you laugh, Nic. First of all, I've only just discovered the Merlin app, so I haven't really been conscious of birds. We've been walking parallel to each other without being aware of each other's presence for, you know, 50 something years, I suppose. But I was putting them into my first issue of my comic. So I used the Merlin app to draw them. There's photographs of the birds and I copied them. I mean, how how bad is that? I did not sit there with my binoculars and my sketchbook. I looked at my phone, screenshotted the ones I'd heard. I drew them from the photos that the app supplied.

Nic
Right.

Róisín
But I'm hoping that I used to be very much a purist. If it if it wasn't in front of me, it didn't get drawn. But I've changed. Now I feel I don't care what source it is, if it's my mind, if it's a photo. Obviously, I work from life all the time as well. But now it's about the art for the first time, not about the source.

Nic
This this is fascinating because I am not directly involved with the urban sketching movement. But I have attended a few events and obviously I've read the books and all that. And of course, it's it's always we draw on location. Yeah. And for me, who's come to art later, I've only been drawing for about five years. Doing it on location is extremely difficult because I don't have muscle memory on how do I draw a face? How do I get the perspective right? And... I've tried and tried and tried, and I beat myself up because I hate the results. I feel I'm not progressing. I'm feeling like backwards. So I've I've done a lot of thinking around, well, maybe using photos isn't so bad because.

Róisín
No, it's it's it's I'm sorry to interrupt you, Nic. No, it's not. I know it seems challenging to draw on location, but actually you've got much more information on location than you do from photo. You can see more clearly what's challenging is the fact that they move, the fact that they leave, the fact that the light changes. But those things counterintuitively actually become benefits because they force you to just draw whatever you can. And you're no longer obsessed about getting it right or wrong because there is no time to obsess about getting it right or wrong. And like that, there's no such thing as drawing a face, drawing a tree. There's only seing there's only seing and drawing what you see.

Róisín
And when I when I teach people to draw, I say. It makes no difference whether you're drawing a heap of rocks or a human face in terms of the actual technique you use. Drawing is drawing, looking is looking. It really does not matter what the subject matter is, except that some don't move and some do. And other than that, it's all the same thing.

Nic
So you giving yourself permission to draw from photos, how does that tie in then? Because you've done all the hard work.

Róisín
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You could say that you could say that I've done all the work I've been outside and, you know, inside. But drawing, drawing what I see in front of me, I'm not going to say daily, but not that far off daily for the last 12 or 14 years. And before that, I wasn't an urban sketcher, but I've been drawing regularly since I was about, I don't know, four or five, the usual young kid age. And I didn't stop. I drew all the way through my always. So I'm not I mean, I'm not going to go to the urban sketching, you know, I'm not going to go to an urban sketching meet up and start drawing from my head or from photos. But yeah, I've I've put in the groundwork and my comic is, for example, it's got a story about a seal who lives on the coast. And every time I draw his little rock pool that he lives in, I'm remembering the way the reflections go when I draw the sky darkening at night and the sunset. I'm remembering how I've drawn that. So many, many times I've drawn wet sand when he meets, he meets another seal on the wet sand at dawn. Well, I know how that looks because I've drawn it so many times, not a seal on the wet sand, you know, so my drawings are very much informed.

Róisín
And you say muscle memory, I've got bags of muscle memory now and I'm so glad. It's like it's like you've been driving all your life and somebody asks you to go and drive in a racetrack. And it's a really tricky racetrack. But you're like, yeah, I can do that. I've done it a million times. I'm comfortable with my car. I'm comfortable with the way the road bends, comfortable with any surprises that might come up along the way. I'm used to it. I've done it. So that's that's where I'm coming from in that way.

Nic
How did you find the racetrack? How did you get from what you were doing to doing cartoons and identifying yourself as a comic artist?

Róisín
I've been a comic artist since I was I mean, I was I was a Tintin obsessive. So, I mean, I've read I don't know, I've read three biographies on Hergé. I was looking for the secret to his beautiful line and his incredible mastery. And I really wanted to find out the secret. Now we're going back. We're going back twenty five years plus now, and eventually I worked out by myself what the secret was, which was that... He wasn't that great when he started, but he was always a great storyteller, but he wasn't that accomplished as an artist. He was OK, but he wasn't what he became. And then he worked on Le Petit Vingtième every had to had to produce a comic every single Friday without excuse, without fail. And he did that for ten years. And I began to and then I also discovered that he had a team and I thought, oh, oh, he had a team.

Nic
Oh, OK.

Róisín
So it's not just Hergé, it's Hergé and his team. But I realized that just by sheer volume of output, he became a master. And as I say, he had to bring it every single Friday. He had to produce the goods and he had a team. So I was comforted by that. And I thought, OK, it's it's possible through sheer dedication and practice because I was always very technically able, but nothing like that, nothing like that. And then. And then.

Róisín
So I was a comic artist all my life. I've always been the one to to make people around me laugh through my drawings. I've always done that. I've done comic strip series of my friends who never had any boyfriends. And then it was me who never had any boyfriends. And then it was there was always something for me to draw a comic strip about and on social media. And so when I joined social media in 2013, I quickly realized that the public had no interest whatsoever in any of my funny stuff. So I just didn't bother putting it there. And it was something I just did for my family to make to make my family laugh. And, you know, we share a sense of humor. So it was always great fun. And then I've been doing this nonstop ever since. It was just a little private pleasure I had. And then it was something that was always an ambition of mine. But life goes on. The years go by and you think, you know, I'm very happy with what I'm doing. I'm very lucky the way things have worked out. I've done very well. I've had lots of these creative platforms that people could only could never even have dreamt of in time gone by. And I've had them all. And I live in the middle of nowhere.And I'm a mom who stayed at home to raise the children. And yet I got the breaks because of social media. So I felt very grateful. But then about three months ago, I came across a woman who had started doing a comic and it's been very successful for her. She's had viral success she's bringing in a very decent wage every month because of the success of the comic and I thought oh my god that's what I want to do that's that's what I can do. I can I can do this I can make a comic because I've been making little booklets of all sorts for years self-publishing. I've got some traditional traditionally published books out but didn't really want to do that anymore. And then I couldn't remember who she was you know the way in social media if you don't make a record of it it's gone. There's no way you're going to find it.

Nic
Yep.

Róisín
And then my younger daughter introduced me to um you know Gemini. So I said to Gemini so I'm looking for this cartoonist, this this comics creator and I don't know her name but she's bringing in $14,000 a month because I was trying to give facts and figures she is she was interviewed by a newspaper but I don't know which one and little lady. And I was able to find her and I thought oh my goodness I've got a medium-sized audience small to medium-sized audience I'm going to give this a try. And with that I started drawing. I started planning and then it was like the floodgates opened the idea started coming through and at the same time as this happened this is the really strange thing how things come together. When the time is right... um I follow a guru from San Diego, a fantastic man called Pat Flynn really fantastic guy and he sometime in November December he said right on January the 12th we're all going to do one reel and a short a YouTube short every single day one minute long from one month. So I was like I wouldn't mind doing that, yeah that's a good idea I think I can do that and it was going to start on January the 12th. And on January the 12th in the morning I said to my husband... I said this is the day I'm supposed to start but I don't know what I'm going to do. I have no idea. I haven't planned it so I thought well nothing to lose nobody's paying me. Nobody cares whether I do it or not so do whatever you want. Which is always a great way to start any creative endeavor and I had been drawing the little um animals from my area my beautiful part of Galway where I live. And make believe animal well they're real animals but they're... They all walk on two feet and they've got like 18th century clothes and you know they're they it's centered around the ruins of a manor house a few years ago.

Róisín
And I thought well I'm going to do this I'm going to do this I'm going to do this. And I thought well I'd like to do that so I started drawing them and one thing led to another and I started being able... I... A story began to form which had never happened for me never been able to write fiction. um And suddenly here was a world that had just opened up in front of me. This this this this personality who began to take on a life of his own and I suddenly found I had plenty in the tank. um Yeah and that was great and I was like oh my god I've discovered my illustration stroke storytelling mojo. And then when I saw the comics lady about a month and a half ago I was like oh my god I can put them all in a comic I can put them in the comic. I can have a story in the comic. I can do something on the flora and fauna I can do the birds. I can do a recipe I can go and gather wood. I can do a lot of things. I can do a lot of things I can do a lot of weeds and make food out of it because I've always done that and I was like oh my god and I haven't left my studio since. I'm here you know six in the morning so I don't know how long it'll last before I fall over with exhaustion but so far so good.

Nic
And you're about to release the first one.

Róisín
I've done the first one the first one I printed 400 copies I have about um let me see I have about 80%, 70% of them left but I fully expected that um and I'm perfectly happy I'm going to lose so much money on this venture but I don't care because this is my artistic expression. um and you know... You you put you you paint in your studio and you you you put your work up in a gallery and you don't second guess the audience. If you do well that's a mistake in my opinion. So this is the same thing I'm just making it. I am certainly not second guessing the audience but I'm going to... I'm just pleasing myself and that's always a good start.

Nic
So one of the questions I often ask is do you do art for yourself or do you do art for others? And this sounds like almost like you're doing it for yourself without really caring for the audience.

Róisín
I'm not I don't I I tell you what my father my father, he left us in November, and my father and I were very close. And he used to always say to me he had a horror of being bored. This was his terrible fear and he, whenever I said to him dad I'm working on a new book, he'd say is it boring? I say well uh I I I hope not. He said just don't let it be boring. Don't be boring okay right I'll do my best. So that in that sense I try to please the audience I really don't want the audience to be bored. They're giving me their time, they're giving me their money so it's my responsibility to make sure they're not bored. um So I want to give them value and also I canvassed my wonderful students. And I asked them... I told them about my comic I was planning and one of my students is a real straight talker. And she said okay Róisín what is the value for me when I buy your comic and I was like um... Oh gosh well so I said there'll be maps. She's like okay I like maps. Maps are good. And I said they're... There'll be recipes. She said uh-huh okay that's good. But it she really helped me to keep that front and center in my mind. Give them value and above all make sure they're not bored. So but within that you can really please yourself. You can you can draw the recipes just how you want to. You can you can present them exactly how you think they should be presented and every... Every page I approach is is a playground. It's a 100% playground how am I going to present this, what would this creature say, what would what would, be how do these colors look together, do the colors... Do they harmonize?

Róisín
And I have on occasion thrown whole pages away because I didn't I didn't do myself justice you know. So I'm I'm trying to really do my best. This is my this is my exhibition this is my art gallery because I don't ever put any work up on a wall.

Nic
Someone asked me recently if I could do a portrait of themselves and I said sure I can give it a go. I don't promise anything but I can give it a go. And then they said well you know if I don't like it you can always do revisions. And I had to say well you know I am using actual ink and actual watercolor on actual paper it's not like Procreate. I can't do an undo. And you saying you're throwing out whole pages is a little bit like that right? For those who listen in that don't understand we're we're talking about actual physical art not digital art.

Róisín
Nope. Now mine is a hybrid a little bit because I draw everything by hand. Every time I draw a speech bubble, I draw a speech bubble and I draw little track lines with a pencil to make sure that the lines are nice and neat. And if I change my mind about what they've what they're going to say I draw a new speech bubble with new track lines. If my hand if I'm too eager and my hand smudges the ink before it's dry, I have to draw a new speech bubble. Sometimes the shape isn't quite right but the writing is perfect and I've said exactly what I want to say so I go ahead and scan it and then I clean it up and then I remove the background. I might adjust the scale. I drop it in. I layer my work. I use graphics program to layer to flatten images, to erase things. But everything everything is created by hand and then it's manipulated on the screen.

Nic
That's an interesting process. Tell me more it works.

Róisín
It's fantastic I I'm thinking I'm giving a course next May in Greece May 27 and it's going to be um illustrated vacationing journaling. And I'm going to teach them how to use the graphics program because it's free. It's GIMP, it's open source. It's GIMP and I did not... For the first time I did not ask my son and my husband. Well my husband would just say he's busy but my son, I did not ask my son to install it for me. I did it all on my own, which is amazing for me. So if I can do it anyone can do it. And it's very powerful. I've only used a hundredth of what's available on it. And if I can't do something I google how to do it, and if I still can't do it I go and ask my son and he's he's brilliant at it. He showed me... So um for example I... In the coming issue I have um one of my owls is getting used to his new quarters his new aviary and I wanted to show the grill um you know the bars in front of the aviary because at one point he, the little owl I mean... It was so adorable he flew over to me and he hung on to the the the wires with his two little talons and his two... He let his two wings dangle down like he looked like a giant white feathery fly. It was so sweet and he's only a baby. He's only he's only a couple of months old and uh he stood there with his two little feet and his wings hanging down and I, of course, I had to do the grill because otherwise what's he hanging on to.

Róisín
So I did the grill. I it worked really well and uh it looked it looked just right but it was much too dark. It was black. I used black ink for it I should have used gray and uh when I put it in front of the the drawing of the owl it just it was really... um It was really uh interfering with the drawings of the owls. So I was trying to... I was trying to adjust the opacity of the grill but I didn't really know what what what it was called. I mean that's how bad I am. I thought is it the gradient? Is the transparency? What do you call this? So I tottered over to my son and he said it's the opacity and suddenly he showed me how to adjust the opacity so I was able to drop the grill on the owls but this time they were nice and pale gray. And I could test different opacities to see what was a good balance between you know not being too dark and being too light. So I love the fact that I can manipulate very key elements of design like that. um Now my... The only problem is my eyes get very tired. I'm on a MacBook Air. It's very small screen and I probably should get a bigger a bigger a bigger laptop but... um So the result is my eyes are extremely tired at night time but that's okay. I mean you just have to take lots of breaks you know. I have a dog and the dog loves to chase a ball so.

Nic
Yes uh my dog is hard to sleep on my feet right now and...

Róisín
Oh lovely

Róisín
Yeah. You mentioned Hergé and uh I'm gonna share a an anecdote from my life when I was very young. I think I was 10, 11. uh There was in Montreal an exhibit for Hergé, a retrospective of his work and um my cousin and I we were talking and we were saying oh wouldn't it be great if Tintin had an adventure in Quebec. And um there and then we sat down and we wrote a letter to Hergé saying "hey why don't you have an adventure of Tintin au Québec"? And uh somehow the people the journalists that were there um filmed us writing this letter uh to to Hergé. We were sitting in a corner of the museum and the letter made it to him somehow. And we got a response. So uh somewhere in my mother's archives there is a letter from Hergé saying "hey this is a wonderful idea and maybe Tintin will come to Quebec right now but I'm busy working on a new project", which was his last one that was never published because he died. And then you know I think it's the Alph-Art. So so yeah that's that's my connection to to Hergé.

Róisín
That's amazing yeah that's amazing. Well I have an anecdote about Hergé as well. Indirect and this is a very sad story. I lived in Paris in the early 1990s and um I was living a very miserable lonely life. I had a really bad boyfriend who I really should not have been hanging around with at all. It was a real problem and I was trying to get away but I didn't have a job and I was at the mercy of his largesse. So it was not a good situation I was trying to get jobs and I was being taken care of. And I was turned down here, there, and everywhere and then I saw a job drawing Tintin cartoons with a studio in Paris. I thought oh well I can do that and I went for my little trial and I drew some Tintin cartoons and I drew better than I'd ever drawn before. But in retrospect I don't think they were that good to be honest but they were but they were better than I'd drawn normally so I really was sure that I had a chance. Anyway I didn't get the job and um a very nice manager told me that... It wasn't a manager, he was a sub manager or something... He told me he'd been trying to get a woman on his team for 10 years and he had yet to succeed. He said they just aren't going to hire women. So that kind of made it better because it felt like it wasn't really my fault. I couldn't do anything about it but... um that's my sad Hergé story. And I cried and cried and cried and then I went to see um Green Card with the Gérard Depardieu and it was really funny and it cheered me up so it wasn't too bad.

Nic
Yeah. Part of my show is is talking about disability and art and before we started recording I I pointed out I know you don't identify as disabled. You're not disabled but in reading your blogs, listening to some other interviews you've done, there's there's been a a running thread I think where you speak a lot about melancholy and uh you've used word like taming the demons and brain worms and all that so I think that those themes fit in within the context of of disability in at a stretch. But um one thing that I was really interesting in hearing is how sketching for you is letting you quiet your mind. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?

Róisín
Yes I I'd be very happy to um I I was... I mean that that example of what I just told you in Paris, that was just very normal for me. I mean that was just my my lot in life. That I would you know frequently be absolutely miserable, you know, and it didn't have to be because I was alone in another city. It could be anywhere. It could be in company. It could be alone. I come from a very big family but it was no guarantee at all that I wouldn't be you know in trouble that way. And it was just a part of my persona that I was very disappointed in because I it's nobody likes to have that kind of horrible little, you know, creature yapping at your feet waiting to pounce at any moment. Because melancholy is horrible and and dwelling on the worst that can happen and being a catastrophist and, you know... But also just just general depression um and in fact um so I'm and and... I did have um I did I have a... I was the subject of a of an attack in Paris and in fact it was the same the same man I just referred to. And unfortunately that led to... um It it really opened the door... The things that had been sort of kept at bay suddenly the gates, the locks broke, and the gates were open and I went through. I went into what what I came to realize was just PTSD, regular old PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder.

Róisín
Which I didn't know what it was. I just thought I was going mad and a few years later um when I heard a psychiatrist on the radio, I remember I was hoovering my bedroom, and I I heard a psychiatrist on the radio talk about this feeling of thinking you're going mad and thinking that you're jumping off a cliff into an abyss and there's nobody can save you. And that is I I just stopped hoovering. I thought oh my god he's talking about me. There's I'm going into madness and there's nobody gonna stop me and I realized then that... um That it was it was an actual thing it was an actual thing. And then I a little while later I discovered that people who survive near-death experiences often have that when you're faced with your own mortality. It happens to people who've survived plane crash, who have um been you know had a heart attack, they can get this PTSD survivor thing you know. It's just too much for your brain to handle that you were this close to being killed but you're not you know. And I had tasted death at that time when I was attacked and I was very close to being to being killed but I wasn't. And um I began to get used to this creature that was big. It took it took a permanent residence in my mind and uh it was unpleasant but it was something I couldn't get rid of. It just lived there and it manifested in a kind of... um It manifested in a kind of a knot in my in my chest. Time went by, went to university, got married, had kids that was very again it kept rearing its head when you're bringing up children on your own, it's not a good place for people who have this this this this weakness.

Róisín
And then in 2012 I discovered sketching and needless to say um it occupied my brain because when you're struggling to try and draw something properly it's flipping hard. You know it looks wrong all the time and it's hard.

Nic
That's where I'm at.

Róisín
It's very hard. It's very hard and uh all kinds of things happen but it's very exciting. And I fell in love with sketching. So I I and I got addicted so I started sketching a lot. And um I came back to Ireland, that was when I was living in Mauritius, and I came I came back to Ireland and I kept on sketching. And then after about maybe a year or two I began to notice something very curious. Once I had been sketching for about an hour I would get this sense of calm that would descend on me. Because I used to spend hours sketching at the time. Now I don't know maybe but at that time I'd just fallen in love with sketching, and just like falling in love with anybody it's all you want to do. So I was sometimes four or five hours more just sketching and I began to notice this really strange thing after about an hour I would get this feeling of calm and like a flow... Of course I know now I was entering the flow state and I realized that once the flow state began I I no longer made a mistake. My drawing would just happen automatically and it was very enticing. This was like "what is this magical feeling?" and then the more I sketched the faster this state would descend until about four or five years in after a lot of sketching it would happen automatically as soon as I started. My brain obviously developed some kind of a muscle memory and the second I would start sketching I would feel the calm. And then it began to affect the rest of my life when I wasn't sketching and the melancholy went away.

Nic
That's wonderful

Róisín
And I don't get it anymore I'm 100% cured.

Nic
That's wonderful

Róisín
I know it's a miracle to me. It's... I had until I was 44 when I started sketching it was something that was there to a lot lesser or a greater extent. And I was able to... And now it's gone so I'm very grateful. And I I have had many students say to me they they're... There are people who were a bit like me. Intense people people who were struggling mentally in some way or another and they've come to me and said "I can't stop sketching it's midnight I can't stop and I'm just on a high". I had one woman not too long ago who said she said "I've been on antidepressants for 30 years and I've stopped taking them and why did nobody ever tell me that I I can I can sketch instead why did no one tell me?" So I do get I do get people who've got a similar experience it happens quite a bit.

Nic
Yeah well I'm I'm in a similar boat not quite cured by any stretch of the imagination but um... I was um labeled with treatment resistant depression so for the last... Since I've been 15-16 I've had ongoing low-grade depression and then sometimes really acute and these days the only times where my brain really quiets is when I quilt, when I go bird photographing, and when I sketch so. um Yeah I I think there's something to this whether it's sketching or or exercising creativity which is ...

Róisín
I think it is I think it's I think that's the common thread it's using your hands physically. It doesn't work if you're just thinking about it. You have to use your hands and it has to be something that you have it has to be a problem solving thing whether that's you know... I don't know rearing rare insects or whether it's you know it has to be something to do with your hands that you really have to focus.

Nic
Yeah

Róisín
And you really have to think. You have to solve you have to solve problems. We're humans. We're built to we're built to solve problems.

Nic
Yeah and then I think part of it too is you have to get to that point where you get to the flow state.

Róisín
You do you definitely do I I think you're right on that. You do and and and as I explained for me it came slowly. It came slowly and um um and and and and the prowess as sketching and the improved ability it came hand in hand with that and that was its own rewards. And obviously it helped my career in many ways but that's completely separate. The big gift I had was being fixed and um I mean I I you know I've always been a very uh how would I say ill... It's an uncivic minded person I I you know I'm I'm ungenerous in my mind. Ungenerous towards others and and and and sketching has definitely made me a much more relaxed and chill and nicer person. I'm not sure my husband would tell you the same thing but I know for a fact that I've been a very uncivic minded person for a long time. And I've been... He's definitely got a nicer wife than he did before.

Nic
You say you're ungenerous and yet you you give up of your time, you share about sketching and urban sketching, and drawing, and you have YouTube and Instagram and and you're giving of yourself. How is that ungenerous?

Róisín
Well yes maybe I'm very generous in physical terms. But what I mean is is if I'm if I've always thought the worst of people. Like if you know it'd be mean-minded mean-minded you know I wouldn't be kind in my mind, you know. I'd be mean in my mind. um But now I'm not so mean right. I'm becoming a little bit nicer, I think but that's definitely... You know that phrase they say that um "damaged people aren't very pleasant because they're so busy trying to look after themselves they don't have time for others"? I think that would describe me quite well.

Nic
Still now?

Róisín
No no no no I'm loving it. I'm loving it. I'm lovely now.

Nic
Well you are lovely but I... I can't see into your brains. I can't see into your mind. I don't know if you're thinking "oh this Nic really should shut up"!

Róisín
No no no that's in the past it's in the past.

Nic
What other creative things do you do? Cartoons, drawing, sketching... Do you do anything else?

Róisín
um I'm a sewer. Yeah and I designed my sketch pocket. My little bag for artists. Oh yeah um so I I don't know maybe 10, maybe 9 versions. And then when it was taken away for, you know, mass manufacture if you like, then there was more iterations but they weren't me. They were done by the factory. um So I sew... um Do I have any other? uh What else do I do? I guess I paint and acrylics and oils but only very occasionally. um Give me an example. I mean I do lots of things I'm just trying to think about it. I'm just trying to think about it. I'm just trying to think about it. I'm... What do I do? I make models. No used to anything to do with using your hands I would say. I don't I don't knit. I don't crochet. um I like sticking things. I like I like cutting things out. I like glue. Oh I love glue and scissors. You can't go wrong with glue scissors and some nice colorful paper.

Nic
So collage

Róisín
Collage I like. I like I like baking. I like cooking. I like arranging a house to look nice. um Yeah lots of things.

Nic
Cooking and baking. um I'm starting to make connections. You said in your comics there's recipes. Are they actually recipes for humans to try or are they recipes for the characters in your comics to...

Róisín
Nope they're genuine actual recipes and they're foraged food so...

Nic
Oh nice

Róisín
Food you find in the world and I've done that since I was a teenager. um I used to pick rose hips and try and make rose hip syrup. um None of my brothers and sisters did. And I've got lots of them I do not know what they were doing if they weren't gathering food from the countryside but I was. um I was always trying to make my bread rise and... um My father was a wonderful bread maker and somehow I don't know... I do not know how his bread worked really well and mine didn't I'm sure he told me how to do it but it didn't work so... um You know fruit jams next week. I'm this week actually this week I'm going to pick elder flowers to make some cordial. um And in next month's recipe is um I make nettle soup and some really gorgeous Irish brown bread and also some nettle pesto and um so lots of things with nettles. And then in the first issue it was sea beet. The vegetable that grows on the seashore and it's like chard. If you have chard and it's delicious. It's delicious. Can you imagine coming across miles and miles of free perfect fresh chard that's just there to be taken and that's what I did. In... It's only there for about a month. um But I I took lots and I even put some in the freezer so I'm very pleased. And then in the in the autumn I'll make sloe gin and I'll do something with mushrooms probably. When somebody shows me because I have no clue. I only... I've... There's only a couple of mushrooms I'm familiar with but there's lots of mushrooms I'd like to I'd like to learn about so...

Nic
You don't want to mess around with mushrooms unless you you actually know what you're doing.

Róisín
No I don't want to mess around mushrooms. I like being alive.

Nic
Bread. Do you do yeasted bread or sourdough?

Róisín
Yeah I do... I don't do sourdough. I um I did during the pandemic and um I I made a disaster with sourdough. I somehow allowed it to get contaminated with bacteria but I didn't know. So I gave myself a gut infection from... And nobody tells you that you know yeah... um They... Everybody was talking about how wonderful it was, how healthy, but every time I took a bite I would get a terrible pain and I thought what's going on? Something's going on here. But I've been making yeast bread um for 30, 40 years and I also make soda bread. So I love I love making bread. I love making unusual bread and I love playing with the timing so that it changes the fermentation. You know I really like making fun bread and now my son makes makes bread as well.

Nic
Yeah I've I've been making sourdough since the start of the year and I am very careful about my starter making sure it's it's healthy

Róisín
It's yeah yeah

Nic
The one thing I'm not mastering yet is the the baguette because I think...

Róisín
No I haven't mastered it. I haven't mastered it. I saw YouTube recently on making a baguette my son and I are watching it and... um I think I think I think it's it's well obviously it's possible but it's it's very complicated

Nic
Yeah I was told that because I have a gas oven and it's not a commercial oven it's too vented to hold the steam to have the right...

Róisín
See, that's what I mean. That's what I mean. I think we just have to go to the baker to get our baguette.

Nic
Yeah well as I said I live in the back of beyond. The nearest baker is an hour and a half from me so...

Róisín
Same that's why I started making yeast bread because the bread you buy around here is awful, or it certainly was 30 years ago. um And you know there's nothing like the most beautiful smell of bread that's been rising overnight and this bubbles and oh it's just beautiful!

Nic
Let's get back to comics. You've got one published.

Róisín
I have.

Nic
You've got one coming out.

Róisín
Mm-hmm

Nic
Do you know what your third one's gonna be?

Róisín
I I have well the magazine the comic is called Wild Atlantic Ink and it comes out once a month.

Nic
Right.

Róisín
So you you can buy it locally in the local shop for a reduced price because I sort of feel it's nice for the locals to be able to buy it. And then you can buy it as a subscriber so it goes out all over the world to my subscribers. And they are all sent out on the same day. 14th of each month and that way no... There's no sneak peeks beforehand. And then I wait 10 days after the 14th to be sure that everybody has it and then I can show people what's in it. That's the theory anyway. This month I was so busy. I was teaching in different parts of Ireland so I haven't even showed anybody what's in the issue that's been out for three weeks. Three weeks ago I sent it so. um Like for example I went down to the shore last week because I wanted to include the beautiful wild flowers that are on the shore at the moment and I was looking at them, and they're so beautiful, and I was thinking "oh how can I present it in an interesting way?" And I'm again my father's words "don't be boring don't be boring" Dad thanks! So um so then I suddenly thought I was driving home I was there by myself and you know that's okay it's cool um and I was driving home and suddenly an idea popped into my head of how to present it with a character with a theme so that's the beauty of this this this this this project.

Róisín
And and then I asked um I asked I asked was it ChatGPT or Claude I can't remember. I think it was ChatGPT. I asked ChatGPT to suggest some creative uh ways to to to do ideas. um And I have no shame about that. I should have but I don't. And uh he, ChatGPT came up with a brilliant idea. I shouldn't be saying this because I should pretend it's my idea. But they mentioned something about um a ghost. And I realized that I it just it just sparked a cool idea like. I live right next to this big huge ruined house and it was built in 1789 and it has been empty when it was since it was burnt out in 1920. And the people who lived there... It has a very very colorful past and, it's not a nice past. It's it's not the good old days it's the bad old days, right? It's a tale of poverty and um and and exploitation of the locals. But that's... I'm not going to be miserable I mean... Again my father would say don't be so miserable.

Róisín
So I was thinking I could have a ghost who lives in that house because people talk about that house being haunted, and a few people have talked about they've seen ghosts there. I don't believe that, it's not... That's not the point. I'm going to have a character who lives there. He's a ghost and he's exploring the area. And I don't know yet what I'm going to do but how fun is it to have your own comic that you can make up any old crap you want and you can just allow these characters to take on a life of their own. They exist in your mind. I'm lucky enough to be able to draw exactly how I want something to look really really fast. I have all the tools I have a beautiful studio I have the time so I feel like all my Christmases and Easters have suddenly arrived.

Nic
That's wonderful

Róisín
I'm so happy

Nic
Before we wrap up is there anything you want to share that I didn't ask or you think we should talk about?

Róisín
Okay um well I think it's very interesting about um identifying as an artist and I... I look... I don't know is it a male versus female thing. A man's career is his identity. A woman's career, and don't shoot me, is as a mother. um That's our biological purpose and I have very strong feelings about that. um And I do believe that women have been sold a pop that, you know, a career is just obviously... You know a lot of people want kids and can't have them. A lot of people don't want kids. You know it's different for everybody but this idea of identifying as something with a name in it... I don't know if it well... I can only speak personally with authority. For me it just wasn't a thing it just wasn't a thing. I'm just me. I'm just me. I'm not a artist, I'm not a mom, I'm not a, you know, you don't have to put a label on yourself

Nic
Yeah

Róisín
um So so and yet people think they do. And for my husband that's very important. He... He was an oceanographer. He's no longer an oceanographer. This is what he says but it's a thing you know it's a thing. um So so from identity purposes yeah I do see... I do see people wanting to call themselves a thing. um I'm I I and it's like it's like in urban sketching they say drawn draw verbs not nouns. I would say I'm a I'm a verb I'm not a noun. I'm a doing. I'm not a being. I'm definitely a doing, not a being. So yeah I think you don't need labels you just have to you know do

Nic
You are what you do.

Róisín
You are what you do yeah well I'm a doing for sure. Yeah um and I suppose the last thing I would say is that uh it's it's a massive privilege to be healthy settled financially secure enough that I can take some risks. Creative risks and to have access to social media so that I can actually share the joy and the wonder and the the the the passion of creativity. um And to inspire other people and maybe get them out of the the the the holes sometimes life throws us at us. Yeah through creativity as people have done for me. As Danny Gregory did. As Hergé did. As all the incredible people that I follow online and listen to their podcasts and all those people who have shared so generously um and have changed my life. Guy Raz is another one I just adore Guy Raz and I just love him and his podcast. um So I'm just pass it on a little bit I suppose and uh and it's just it's an honor it's a it's an honor to be asked to talk about it and to share it and...

Nic
So social media. Where can people find you? Where can people find subscription info for getting your comics and and seeing all you do?

Róisín
Sure okay well my comic is on my website roisincure.com and you'll find it under I think under membership. My my webmaster has put it under membership so you know. I don't think it's on the home page. You might have to dig around a little to find it and it at the moment it costs 10 euros 99 delivered on your doormat every month. um And then you can get it for slightly cheaper if you buy the the year the year subscription. um I was putting up reels every single day since early January as I mentioned and it's not that I've run out of steam it's not that I've been burnt out but I can't even scroll anymore because I'm doing a comic all the time...

Nic
Yeah

Róisín
16 pages every single month that's one... It suddenly hit me that's that's a page per two days! Help but. um That's what I've chosen and you know I am a fast I'm a fast worker so I think it's going to be okay. So Instagram Róisín Curé. YouTube Róisín Curé. uh Where else am I? TikTok I've just started. I've stopped now but for a few weeks there I was wasting time on TikTok. Not going to do that anymore. And um so it's just my name on all all the platforms, you know. um I don't do Threads, I don't do BlueSky. What else do I not do? uh Anyway Instagram YouTube those are my principal ones and if you've got a lot of time on your hands then go to YouTube and you won't be looking up for a lot of time. So I think it's time same as Instagram there's a lot of stuff there.

Nic
It's all good stuff too.

Róisín
Thank you

Nic
Thank you so much for opening yourself and chatting with me and sharing all those insights I really enjoyed that.

Róisín
Oh, thank you, Nic, and likewise I really enjoyed talking to you and you know don't be a stranger reach out anytime I always love to chat.

Nic
I will be sure to do that, thank you.

Róisín
Thank you so much.

Nic
If you enjoyed this episode if you were inspired in any way or if you learned something please leave a rating or review on Apple Podcasts on Spotify or whatever podcast aggregator you use. Ratings and reviews really do help. Thank you.

Nic
And that's it! I'm Nic Steenhout, this is The Work Between. If this sounds like the kind of conversation you enjoy, like, subscribe, and I'll see you in the next episode.

Nic
Hi, I'm Nic Steenhout, and this is The Work Between. This podcast is recorded on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the Stó:lō Coast Salish people, the people of the river, whose presence in the Fraser Valley stretches back of years I named this territory because it belongs with what this show is about the ways we decide whose lives are valued whose work is taken seriously and whose experiences are treated as problems to be managed those decisions shape everything this show sits inside that this is was and always will be First Nations land that's not a formality It's consistent with everything I and this show stand for. My guest today is Dr. Alessandra Springman. I know her as Sondi. Sondi is a planetary scientist with a PhD from the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona. She spent years studying asteroids and comets, and her work has included the NASA OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample, returning mission, and two years of planetary radar observation at Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. She quilts. Her quilting practice lives on Instagram at at intergalactic cactus. So today we're talking about quilts, what draws her to the work, and what making things by hand means when your professional life is built around looking towards outer space. Sondy, welcome to The Work Between.

Sondy
Thank you,

Nic
Now, for my listeners, I have to be open. Sondy and I go way back and we've been talking about quilting a lot but let's let's try and formalize things a little bit tell me a little bit about your creative practice what is it that you do obviously quilting but tell me more about that

Sondy
For the most part when I make quilts I am turning secondhand fabric into something more interesting than stuff that doesn't get sold at the thrift store that may wind up in a landfill. The project that I'm working on now is a lot of work shirts and work pants from an uncle figure of mine who's a contractor who builds boats, repairs boats. He met his wife while they were working at a boat yard. She was the manager and he rose up in the ranks because he could weld and he was smart um he's a he's a real uh he's so we were going through his clothes a couple years ago when I was staying um in a little cottage on their property and he was saying that he would love a quilt made from secondhand shirts because it was it would be soft I said okay richard um so here we are almost two years later and it's been a really fun way to figure out how do you take something you know how do you take a set of half a dozen work shirts and carhartt pants all made of canvas and denim and other tough materials and make them make them something soft and how do you arrange them in an pleasing way and how do you do it in a way that doesn't make you want to lose your mind, or if you are going to lose your mind, providing for losing your mind in the process. So I'm doing something called quilt as you go, which involves cutting out the batting for each little part of the quilt before hand, rather than sewing the top of the quilt, sewing the back of the quilt, and then sewing the top of the quilt, the batting and the back of the quilt together in uh one big sandwich and so for this I'm making tiny little hexagon sandwiches and rather than lose my mind cutting out each hexagon of batting and fabric uh by myself by hand I went to the library makerspace and used the laser cutter to laser cut the batting into hexagons and to laser cut his uh denim work pants and work shirts into in canvas work pants and work shirts into hexagons so I didn't ruin all my uh cutting tools at home so it's been a fun way to you know take something as mundane as you know the clothes off his back but you know clothes that have been well loved and some of them have fun paint stains and some of them you know there's the fading that's really interesting under the seams uh men's work shirts often have like a little I think it's a pleat at the back of the neck and so the that area under that doesn't fade as much as the rest of the shirt. So I've managed to capture that in a few places. So I think it's a really fun way to take something, you know, like his, you know, these clothes that are such a fundamental part of us, you know, they're close to our heart, we wear them out, and they sort of fade into the woodwork, and to turn them into something soft, something comforting, and something that will, you know, keep him warm.

Nic
How do you take something that's not inherently soft like denim or or work canvas and make it into something soft and cozy

Sondy
First of all you give those garments to someone who will wear them until they are worn out and they have been washed so many times that they are incredibly soft on their own and then one of the things I have figured out in quilting is if your fabric is ugly or if your fabric is otherwise too much if you cut it small enough it suddenly is less ugly or less firm so having these um pieces of you know canvas carhartt work pants cut to hexagons that are about six inches tall makes it much easier to have them be soft and the whole quilt isn't denim or canvas there's a lot of um there's thrift store shirts there's shirts from friends there's some corduroy pants in here there's quilting cotton all the backs the hexagons are quilting cottons so there's a huge variety so if you don't have the hard things dominating your quilt you can get away with a lot

Nic
How did you learn quilting

Sondy
Well in 2020 uh in march 2020 when my roommate at the time and I were like well we're at home what do we do with ourselves she had gone to fashion design school. And so she had been an accomplished sewist. She had done costume design in New York, including Broadway musicals. And so she was, she was very competent. And so we said, let's sew some masks. And I thought I knew how to sew. I'd, you know, done some basic garment sewing. I'd sewed my prom dress in high school. And, you know, after I borrowed a sewing machine from a friend and Carrie looks at my sewing and she, you know, you can tell the thoughts are going through her head. Like, wow, Sondy, you think you could sew? That's a really nice idea you have there. But she taught me kind of how to sew as an adult rather than seat of the pants sewing that my mother had taught me. And once you do something hundreds of times, and we sewed 500 masks. I had a spreadsheet tracking all this. Once you do something hundreds of times, you get decent at it. So I sort of got more consistent with my pinning, got more consistent with stitching, learned some binding, learned all sorts of things, learned some very silly couture techniques, which I've never really used since, but it's good to know that they exist. And, you know, after it became clear that supply chains had resolved themselves and we could get good N95 masks. Again, I had all the scrap fabric left. And one of my friends in town was an astronomer who was moving to a job at an observatory in Hawaii, and she was downsizing. And she gave me a bunch of fabric that I didn't realize was like fancy designer quilting fabric until I had all these scraps sitting around and said, what should I do with them? Uh, and I'm, I'm Jewish, but you know, most of my friends are celebrate Christmas. And I decided to make a Christmas stocking for a friend out of these scraps and didn't quite realize that what I was doing was quilting until I had done it and realized, Oh, this is, this is quilting. I should, I should learn more about this. So I went to the library and I went to the shelf of the library that had quilting books. And I this was you know a neighborhood branch it wasn't the main branch and I grabbed the five most interesting books out of six that they had on the shelf and I took them home and I found one by Blair Stocker called Wisecraft Quilts and she turns fabrics into meaningful patchwork and I read this book you know I opened this book I read her philosophy and I turned a few pages in and I saw this quilt where she was using the value or the brightness of fabrics rather than the color or the pattern to dictate the pattern dictate the layout of the quilt and I was completely sold and probably within within three weeks of making that Christmas stocking I had put an alert on Craigslist for sewing machines at estate sales and yard sales I had driven 45 minutes down to a suburb of Tucson. I threw elbows. I got a gigantic Janome sewing machine that Ginger Downing had spent like $2,600 on new that I got for $600. And it came with all the accessories. And I have sewn so much on that machine since. And I've made some pretty cool quilts, if I don't say so myself. It's been really fun to finally feel like I have a creative practice. Both of my parents are artists my mom has done oil painting and acrylic uh big big canvases she's done some mixed media but she really sticks to like big abstract acrylic canvas works my dad was a portrait photographer for most of his career he photographed Georgia O'Keeffe in 1974 at Ghost Ranch so he's you know so my mother's father was an animator her mother was an illustrator my dad's mother sewed and she crocheted and she knitted so you know I come from this family of creatives and I'd never really done anything regularly and I think everyone was sort of like sitting around waiting for me to do something consistently so when I finally started quilting I think everyone I think my mom in particular breathed a sigh of relief and four months after I started quilting she came to visit me in Tucson and I was picking up my sewing machine from being serviced at the, um, the sewing machine store and she paid for it. And she's like, no, I want to encourage this. So it's been, it's been cool to get into quilting. It's been cool to find out how many people around me quilt or know someone who quilts, uh, you know, someone's mom tried quilting and she gave me the, what they call a pig, a project in a grocery bag of her first attempt at quilting and she decided she didn't like quilting after she'd started that. And I looked at what she'd done and I said, yeah, of course you didn't like quilting, Pat. You were not, no one taught you how to do this properly. No one taught you how to cut your fabric properly. Of course you hated this. So, you know, it's fun. And then I've moved up to Boulder a few years ago and through a desperate post on the Young and Millennial Quilters Facebook group, found a wonderful long arm quilter up here and joined the Boulder Modern Quilt Guild. And it's been great to meet other people who are really interested in secondhand materials quilting. There's one guy in the Quilt Guild, Elu Hernandez, who's a bit of a big deal making quilt set of reclaimed jeans. And so he's been really encouraging about this project. And there was a Quilt Guild open sew and he said, give me seven of those hexagons. I want to take them home to sew them together for you. So he took seven of the 188 hexagon pieces and sewed them together. So now I get to add his name to this quilt. So it's been really fun to learn this, to find the community, community. I try to read a lot, you know, random quilt books, blogs. The Facebook group has been fabulous and educational. There's a lot of Facebook groups that are badly moderated or that tolerate very bad politics and behavior from their members. And this Facebook group is, I would say, it's one of the things that keeps me vaguely active on Facebook. And by vaguely active, I mean logging in twice a month to ask a question or see posts there. So I've enjoyed the community. I've enjoyed being able to make things.

Nic
I want to come back to community in a little bit, But before we explore that, I want to talk influences. Obviously, your family background is very much into creativity, but it sounds like nobody really quilts. Have they?

Sondy
My dad has started quilting in the last few years.

Nic
As a follow up on what you're doing, right? So the influence into quilting from their creative and artistic endeavors, has that tickled through or is just, tell me about that relationship.

Sondy
I think it's interesting because my mother loves color. She loves reds and oranges and yellows and she loves her blues and her greens and things of that nature. But my mother doesn't really think about value in her her paintings she doesn't think about the contrast between colors she just says you know she's a very intuitive painter and you know she went to she I think she went to art school for a little bit she had some um post-college art education so I know you know I know she's familiar with color theory I know she's familiar with value and contrast and tints and tones and shades and all that um but she you know I she knows all that but it's all you know in her heart at this point we've talked about sort of like patterns and scale but you know she she creates with paint she creates very fundamental she creates in a very fundamental way with paint whereas you know I'm using things that already exist and I'll look around you know at the fabric and say hmm this would be good for this I think it's a very different creative process than than what my mom does and I have some of the fabrics that her mother designed as an illustrator for the launch of salzburg in los angeles and I'm like a lot of this stuff is just like not it's just not interesting to me like I can't figure out what to do with it but I hold on to it because

Nic
Because it's fabric right how how can you not hang on to fabric and stuff

Sondy
It's the great thing about having a quilt guild and a center for creative reuse in boulder is that I can just bring fabric to quilt guild and say hey who wants this or bring fabric to the center for creative reuse

Nic
That quilt guild uh you're part of that as a community what does that connection do for you

Sondy
For one thing uh this hexagon quilt that I'm working on that I started just under two years ago. I started working on it at an open sew and L.U. Was enchanted by the process. I don't think he was really familiar with doing hexagons for quilt as you go. And then I let it sit for a while because it was parts of it that were frustrating and I hadn't quite figured out how to mitigate the frustrating. And at some point in the last year, LU asked hey how's that hexagon quilt going and I kind of grumbled at him and so I started working on the hexagons again so it's been really nice to have encouragement uh it's been really nice to have feedback when I need feedback it's been nice to have a smaller place to ask for smaller scale advice there's now a couple of us who have been inducted into the singer featherweight cult though uh I think all of us have one featherweight so we're not really cultists

Nic
You ever have enough featherweights

Sondy
I don't know I take issue with like I've got 10 featherweights and I sew on none of them like get them out in the ecosystem folks say they uh they need to they need to be used so for folks who are not familiar with singer featherweights Singer made these lovely little sewing machines between the 1930s and the 1960s. And they are mechanical. They draw 0.7 amps, less if you put an LED bulb in them. I mean, they draw less current than your phone does when it charges. And they are, some of them have been running for 90 years. If you keep servicing them and keep putting oil and grease on them, they will run for another 90 years. I mean, they are the most robust little machines. And I like to say that they are the most heterosexual sewing machines of all time, because you will not find a straighter stitch on any other sewing machine. So it's been fun to learn the basics of featherweight maintenance and where to grease and where to oil and how to clean things with kerosene and how to adjust the timing and what has changed in the intervening uh 81 years since my sewing machine has been made and what has not in you know what remains the same between this machine and modern machines like the needle that this machine uses it's the same needle that modern machines do

Nic
Yeah

Sondy
The bobbin case okay yeah bobbin cases are very particular on the featherweights but modern machines are very similar into how that all works. So it's just a really cool way to sort of fundamentally understand how sewing machines have evolved and haven't evolved and how to use them. And I feel like it informs better how I use my machine that was made 15 years ago. And yeah, it's nice to have more technical understanding of how a sewing machine works and how to adjust it and how to tune

Nic
It well we're talking about equipment but one thing I'm curious about is um what does your workspace tells you about yourself that you didn't really decide it kind of involved or arrived at

Sondy
So I I've got some lower back stuff from uh being rear-ended twice while driving my car So I have figured out that standing for machine sewing is best for my ergonomics. I have also discovered that since getting a heart rate tracker about nine months ago, that standing to sew also does really goofy things to my heart rate. I don't know if it's a POTS thing because I can walk like three or four miles a day, no problem. But it's the standing that seems to just not agree with heart rate stuff, which is fascinating or that like stand sewing is just like a stressful thing is, you know, it's, it's creative, but it's like, am I just sort of like going into like, you know, high stress focus mode to do this? So that requires more, experimentation and investigation, but I've now gotten to the point where all these hexagons have been, I've done everything I need to do for the hexagons themselves to machine sew them. Now I'm joining them by hand, all seams of them and that can be done on the couch it can be done at my partner's wood shop it can be done uh at parties it you know it's a very portable task in that regard so that's been cool and it's also like okay I will not be worsening my heart rate while I do this part of this project I will have to stand to sew to do the machine binding but it's also just a nice way to slow down a bit and kind of figure out how do I do hand sewing because I've never been interested in doing hand sewing I've always found it annoying but when you do something uh you know 127 times you you get a little better at

Nic
It you could always hand stitch the binding

Sondy
I don't I'm really bad at sewing straight like sewing like long straight lines whip stitching to join hexagons is is fine uh because you've already got the straight line there but I don't know I guess I could try it but I feel like that would just be when it comes to putting binding on a quilt I'm just like get me through this let's just go like

Nic
Final mile final get it out

Sondy
And uh I know richard probably will not listen to this but I know that richard will never um he will never wash this quilt and a lot of the fabrics you know there's some like a thrift store skirt that had boats on it and a few other ones that I'm like yeah this would be fun to include but it's way too light and I got some indigo dye and did indigo dyeing last year to darken some of these fabrics and so the fabric I have I'd gotten in Ghana for uh and had originally given to his wife Millie but you know they were never going to use it and so I'm like oh I have an idea of what to do with it but it's kind of a like a medium light sky blue with like a darker vine print on it and so I've been darkening that with indigo with the idea of using it for the binding because the binding of the quilt is part of the quilt that is used the most and gets like all of your oils from your fingers on it from like pulling it and touching it and I don't like fighting reality right like I accept that gravity is is a thing I don't like to fight gravity unless well there are circumstances in which I have successfully fought gravity and won we can we can get back to that one um so I like making sure that the bindings of my quilts are dark so that they don't show as much finger oil don't need to be washed as often

Nic
If it comes down to a choice between working alone on a quilting project and working in a group what what's your preference why

Sondy
So another march 2020 thing that I started was a zoom crafting group uh so rather than it being stitch and bitch I named it loom and zoom and here we are six years and uh a month and seven days later and we are still going twice a week on zoom where we work on crafting projects together we have a group chat where we talk about ideas so for me really up until I moved to boulder and joined this quilt guild quilting sewing whatever was not really a in-person social event um but you know I still I still like hanging out on zoom to do things with folks and now I can have a project that is portable I can take it places there is a hand sewing group that the quilt guild has I think they meet in coffee shops and so now I'm kind of like huh I should make sure I have a hand hand sewing project at all times and the quilt guild open sews those are fun I've really enjoyed those I'm the only person masked them but that's fine and now that I have a it's much easier to bring a sewing machine to them than to haul like all 26 pounds of my main sewing machine downstairs in the car take it over to the community center

Nic
I'm gonna ask you about your relationship with disability you you mentioned a few things you mentioned pots you mentioned um chronic back issues so what's your disability what's your relationship to that

Sondy
For I have had ibd for over 20 years I have got you know another fun constellation of other other things you know laryngopharyngeal reflux and interstitial cystitis and some lower back stuff from, uh, drivers in Tucson. Um, I deal with headaches. I deal with some joint stuff and RSI stuff. Um, so for like half, half of my life, I've been dealing with, living with chronic illness and some form of disability. And I have found that most of my friends are disabled, have some sort of disability of one type or another. A lot of my friends have a chronic illness or deal with chronic illness. There's someone at Quilt Guild who, you know, I've interacted with her very briefly twice and she says she doesn't drive. And I'm like, huh, that's interesting. You know, there's so many reasons that a person may want to drive, whether it's from disability or from a moral perspective. And I'm like, I kind of want to get to know you better because you've thought about this. You've made a decision that runs contrary to what the rest of the world expects or experiences. That, you know, huh, interesting. And so that's one of the things that I really appreciate about disability communities is that disabled people have thought about how they move through the world, how they interact with the world and whether it's their choice or otherwise they they have had to think deeply about sort of the fundamental tenants that society uh expects and that's something I really appreciate about disability community

Nic
Yeah that's funny you say that I was I was gonna ask you um I was gonna to say some people argue that navigating a world not built for you produces a kind of creative thinking and do you think that connects to your practice or is that just too neat a framing but you mentioning getting to meet and talk to people that have been doing that kind of thinking before Or leads me to think that, yeah, maybe it works for you?

Sondy
I think I've, at least for quilting, I'm someone who likes, I like solving problems in interesting ways. Or I've done sort of enough thinking from reading, you know, reading about color theory or value quilting. Or like looking at a stack of fabric and being like, what can I do with this? This is the project in the grocery bag. This is the pig fabric that was given to me by the friend's mom who decided she didn't like quilting and for some people they see what I wind up doing and they're like wow that's wild like how can you look how can you look at these strips of these fabrics and turn them into you know this thing I'm like well I've been thinking about value and contrast for a while and like what what combinations of fabrics you would need to have you know to make something effective out of to make this particular thing and have it be effective and so people don't necessarily see all of that like thinking and experimenting and work that goes into producing something that looks really cool but also you know folks in the quilt field being like I don't understand how your brain works that you can have these, you know, go from this step to that step. And I'm like, oh, there were a lot of steps in between and a lot of frustration. There was a lot of experimenting. There was a lot of banging my head against the wall and being frustrated that I put all this effort into this thing and then abandoned it. But, you know, two years later, coming back to it in a completely different way no one sees all those experimental steps that led up

Nic
To

Sondy
It and you know for this hexagon quilt you know figuring out oh yeah I've used the laser cutter a couple of times at the library makerspace including for a really cool quilt that I made for a mutual friend of nick's and mine so you know had some precedent you know there'd been some in my life for doing laser cutting for quilting so you know there's there's a lot of work that people haven't necessarily seen that leads up to my current creative way of moving through the world you know it comes from like going to the there's a the colorado quilting council puts on a quilt affair once a year and someone was doing a demo of her reverse applique system and you know sitting there watching her do this and I was like I don't I need to make a quilt that has Chinese characters in it but I don't want to do any of this by hand and I'm watching her do this reverse applique and I you know figured out from what I knew about laser cutting and her reverse applique method that I could do this could have a laser cutter do a couple of steps for me and not have to worry about figuring out a bunch of stuff by hand and having it look not the way I wanted it to look so it's um yeah it's been fun in that regard to figure out how to put a bunch of disparate things together and also kind of fun to see people just blown away by the end result

Nic
I like this contrast between Sondy is using a nearly 100 year old featherweight singer's sewing machine and is using the latest laser cutting technology I think that's that's just awesome Sondy are you a disabled quilter or are you a quilter who happens to be disabled

Sondy
I think I'm a disabled quilter uh I'm always trying to find more ergonomic ways to do things I'm very aware of how the ergonomics of pretty much any fiber art are awful doesn't matter what you're doing you know is it knitting is it crocheting is it uh needle you know needlepoint needlework is it cross stitch is sewing on a machine all of this is bad it you know you're hunched over on your machine some people put wedges under their machine to tilt it up a bit but I like having the big extension table off the side of my machine so like having the machine tilted up doesn't like creates this other problem so I feel like you can't really fundamentally separate how I quilt from my being disabled and yeah this heart rate stuff this is interesting um I don't really have a provider I can talk about this with but I don't know I guess I I guess I need to ask around and see what what other people experience

Nic
What are you trying to get better at right now

Sondy
I'm trying to get better at being consistent and doing things at a sustainable pace um for me it's sort of this like this boom bust cycles of doing things now that I feel like I've gotten to the point where, you know, 24, 23% of the way through sewing these hexagons together, I'm just like, I just want to crank them out. I just want to get them done. I want to get them out the door. Like, let's go. And that's, you know, after like months of not doing anything, you know, then I'm like staying up past midnight hand sewing and I'm like it's not not great yeah I've got this other quilt that I've like should be working on I'm like trying to get back to but like you know it's like okay well I need to deal with this well that means dealing with that and then you're like five steps away from the original issue and it's like that's so be nice to consistently show up and do work without it sort of being too much or not at all. Yesterday I was up at my partner's woodshop hand sewing, and he always likes having a body double there to kind of keep him on task. And I was saying, hey, is it helpful having me here? He says, well, you know, I'm pretty locked in on this task I'm doing. You know, I think I would have been doing it and stayed focused on it even if you weren't here. You know, but it's nice it's nice to have company uh and he asked you know is this helpful for you and I'm like well I'm not trying to make a living off of my quilts necessarily

Nic
Yeah

Sondy
But you know it's like I really should be cleaning the house I should be doing physical therapy I should be doing should be like cooking more meals I should you know I should be tidying the sewing room which is just devolved into chaos uh yeah there's a whole bunch of things I should be doing and well okay we're gonna we're in a boom we're in the boom part of the cycle uh that's just how it's going there will be times when I'm in the bust

Nic
It seems like you're you're working in cycles Do those cycles relate to either feeling stuck and then kind of not abandoning but slowing down or, you know, hey, it's going well, let's get things accomplished while it's going well? Or is it something unrelated to that that dictates the boom-bust, quick, slow approach?

Sondy
Sometimes it's related to disability in october we doing botox injections for this headache and I got the fun reaction of uh my so when you do botox sometimes your neck muscles are like whoa whoa whoa what my head is so heavy and your head is the same weight your neck muscles are just responding completely differently. So I got all of this like neck perceived neck muscle weakness that caused tremendous pain if I bent my head forward for more than like a little bit at a time. And that was really terrible. And I couldn't machine sew. And I'd been kind of like okay yeah let's get back to machine sewing um but fortunately fortunately uh the guy who had serviced my sewing machine had screwed something up so I couldn't sew until that got fixed

Nic
Right

Sondy
And I couldn't sew because of my neck um and so like yeah that really sucked but there was like that in combination with something else was not not the worst

Nic
Has making the work the quilting has it made it harder rather than easier so you know you're you're making these quilts you've you've had uh the the botox and and you've had barriers but you're also keeping at it so I'm I'm assuming doing the work the quilting is is actually somehow making your life easier in some ways but has it also made it harder

Sondy
Yeah I think you know there's definitely the times where it's like oh look I'm staying up too late hand sewing or I'm getting distracted by this to the uh I'm getting distracted by this and it's you know negatively affecting other things in my life um I mostly buy secondhand fabric or I inherit fabric or I you know given fabric so spending money on this hobby isn't necessarily a problem especially since I make t-shirt quilts for friends occasionally and you know that helps subsidize things so yeah like the ergonomics of hand sewing right now you know like having like poked myself in the finger so many times or like how it's worsening this really thick callus on my thumb which means that like the sense you know the nerves are now like having a hard time it's like okay yeah the sensitivity of like the left side of my or the outside edge of my dominant hands thumb is like having an issue um or like oh I should really be doing pt but look at me I'm sewing instead I'd had ankle surgery last year and was like finally out of the boot and probably should have had the boot on but like my sewing machine had been on the floor and I'm like okay I'm gonna lift it up and put on the table and I'm like should I have been lifting 26 pounds at that point

Nic
Yeah

Sondy
Probably not it could have been much worse I guess but it's um I guess for the most part sewing has generally been a positive thing because it really felt like before the pandemic started in 2020 that I didn't I was never getting enough done as a grad student that I was always uh not productive enough to have hobbies and that was really a time where it's like yeah no one's getting anything done like having a hobby having a hobby that involves like sewing masks socially great keep up the good work you know it was like oh I'm not gonna get anything done I'm gonna go for a hike and I'm not gonna feel guilty about it so I think for the most part sewing has been generally a positive thing in my life and has not been too detrimental damaging or distracting from other things.

Nic
Have you ever made something you regret making?

Sondy
I've certainly started projects where I'm like, I don't... Do I really want to finish this? Do I really want to get back to this? Okay, if I was starting this now, I would make all these different choices. So that's definitely been, been the case for some, some things.

Nic
You could always just shove it all in a bag and give it to somebody else.

Sondy
Yeah. Okay. I do, I do regret one thing. I had a friend in town who moved nine months ago, coincidentally when this headache started. And anyway, the move, the move was a shipwreck of epic proportions. And before she was moving, I'm like, Hey, I'll, I'll make a t-shirt quilt for you and so I've like stabilized all these shirts of hers I've cut some of them out she even like came to the library makerspace and helped me with some of the stabilizing and cutting and now I'm just like ah darn it what do I do with these they're like all in a bin plastic storage bin like shoved under you know like on the bottom of a shelf in a cabinet where like I can't see it but you know she hasn't thanked anyone for helping with the move she hasn't apologized to anyone. This is not the first move that I've bailed her out of. So kind of like regretting that. And I'm like, she did give me her FedEx number. I'm like, I could just FedEx all this to her. And I know a lot of t-shirt quilters like hate, hate, hate taking on t-shirt quilt projects that other quilters have started. But like, I'm no amateur. I've made, I've made three t-shirt quilts one that a friend has paid me for I'm precise I'm accurate I am not sloppy a lot of people who start t-shirt quilt projects don't they haven't done a lot of reading they don't know what the common pitfalls are and I think anyone who got this uh pib project in a bin would not be unhappy yeah uh like given that I've done most of the most annoying parts of the work and given that it's been like nine months and she hasn't apologized to anyone

Nic
Yeah

Sondy
I don't think it's worth having this taking up space in the house

Nic
That seems making sense to me

Sondy
Yeah

Nic
That's

Sondy
But hey she didn't move nick I'm not joking t-shirts

Nic
That's a massive quilt

Sondy
And uh no it's not and but like in another dozen garments if each t-shirt is 12 by 12 inches that's a foot a queen size quilt is eight by eight feet that's 64 shirts

Nic
Yeah all right that works

Sondy
So it probably won't be king size but

Nic
Yeah when you make a quilt what are you hoping it does how are you hoping it's received and and does it land that way usually

Sondy
Two years ago two years ago a friend graduated from library school and she didn't know I was making her quilt but I'd actually been working on it while she was showing up at crafting group on zoom like right under her nose and she would she would practice the cello while I worked on this quilt on zoom like right under her nose and so the quilt was supposed to show up the day before graduation and it didn't but it showed up the day of graduation and her parents got these photos of her wearing her cap and gown opening this box not knowing what's in the box and just like the look on her face and you know just how excited she was and she she's just looking more and more excited and like the final photo is her like with it around her shoulders like a cloak and she's like spinning her you know head with the cap and the tassel and she looks ecstatic uh and I posted this on young and millennial quilters and they're you know every so often there's a post there with someone being like I made this quilt for you know my mother-in-law or my and you know she was so ungrateful and she sent it to the thrift store and like or this person was you know I'm like hey don't make quilts for people who are going to be ungracious right like don't do that but a lot of people were like right this is this is why we do what we do and this is the correct response to receiving a handmade quilt so people have been people have been pretty happy and you know I think I put some fun surprises in I made a t-shirt quilt for someone that like some of the t-shirts have like interesting tags one of them was uh the brand was junk food with like a heart-shaped american flag so you know I put labels on my quilts and I included that as one of the labels I'm like sure this is fun and weird

Nic
Is there a quilt someone else made that you wish you'd made

Sondy
There's a bunch of these like judy niemeyer quilt works quilts and I'm like man I really want to do that but I also don't want to spend 400 on fabric some of the some of the color schemes for some of the judy niemeyer quilts that people come up with I'm like I see why you're into that that is not to my liking but I would like to do I would like to do more of those but you really you have to put a lot of and time and effort into the planning because you can't just be like I'm gonna buy these fabrics when there's like fabric options they have a quilt planning tool where you can try out different fabric combinations color combinations the the fabric picker is a huge pain in the butt it's not just like let me filter by red like just let me put red here let me put blue here you know just just give me like a you know a hex code color picker right come on those exist there's apis for them

Nic
What do you know now about your quilting practice that you couldn't have articulated when you started five six years ago

Sondy
I think it's really important for me not to cut all the fabric for a project before I start. I think it's really important for me to cut sections because if I get bored with a project or decide I want to do something a different way and I've got the fabric all cut, then that's a problem that, you know, it's hard to reuse it if it's been cut a certain way. For me, it's really important to put a lot of time and effort into precision and accuracy uh people like that's just you being a raging perfectionist I'm like well no there's a purpose to it and that is if you do things in these certain if I do things in these certain ways it's easier to get a it's easier to put things together it just makes subsequent steps easier so if you invest the time into getting things a certain way here it's those problems are not going to propagate out the way they would if I was just being like it'll be fine and I don't know like I look at I've got one quilt I've got a quilt pattern for something that I want to try and I'm like this is one of it's not like the most popular quilt pattern of like the last 10 or 15 years that's like the exploding hearts one that's all half squares triangles which like forget about it miss me on that one but it's the ranges quilt by modern handcraft and that one I'm like people have been putting this together and it's looked fine and people have like not been accurate with it they've not put in the effort to have it you know and it's turned out fine so like let's put it together and see what happens

Nic
You talk about perfectionism and that always makes me think a long long time ago I was a chef and people say chefs are artists and I kept saying I'm not an artist I'm an artisan an artist has the luxury of failure the artisan doesn't and I'm curious in view of your raging perfectionism are you an artist or are you an artisan

Sondy
Yes um I think there's there's time you know that the first project I started that's still you know sitting in a bin upstairs that I don't know if it's a failure it'd be really great to finish it I don't know what finishing it is going to look like I think it's going to be a lot of time it's like oh I really want to take all these apart and sew them back together knowing what I know now because it would make it much easier blah blah blah um and you know is that a failure I don't know it's part of the learning process that's you know like you had to go to cooking school right you had to learn you had to fail a lot before you were a professional so there's a thousand hours yeah exactly um so there's that expectation that you have to learn somehow and you know there's you have to invest that I think, you know, it's just really important to understand that, you know, I'm not, I'm not punching out t-shirt quilts for a living. There are people who do that. And, you know, I could, I could, I guess, if I really wanted to, but I can't stand the smell of people's fabric softeners. You know, they can, they can make my headaches worse. So no thank you on that regard. And yeah so I think you know there's an this is a craft at some level uh I do it mostly for fun if it wasn't fun I would probably not do it I'll probably make a t-shirt quilt or two more for friends over over the years um I got I got one quilt finished last year part of what I mean I did have foot surgery at the end of February, but it was just, just didn't, just didn't sew a lot last year. There was, you know, the issues with machine, there was the issues with like my head and my neck. And that's, that's fine. It's a, my partner is a woodworker. He he wants to be a commercially successful woodworker. He has an artist background. He's, you know, painting oil painting. Uh you know he's got a lot of experience with color and creativity and he doesn't feel like he's got the space to fail right now yeah really that he's got the space to experiment because he wants to be able to make a living uh making art and you know so it's like well yeah I mean you've and you know an artist is worried about marketing and so I think you know at some point this is kind of is still sort of a hobby but I think it's it's both art and craft for me it's art and artisan and you know it's just fabric nick no one's gonna get food poisoning right like no one's gonna leave me a bad review on yelp or whatever right like it's I'm not gonna give anyone an upset stomach or send them to the emergency room it's just fabric

Nic
Yeah well have you tried eating fabric it'll give you an upset stomach

Sondy
Yeah but if anyone's eating my quilts we have other problems nick right like I so I don't use scented scented um spray starch I don't use scented laundry detergent yeah I tell people not to wash things in scented detergent because those you know all that buildup can reduce the lifespan of the fibers in the quilt um I try to avoid using polyester thread when you know or polyester anything if I can avoid it my quilter prefers using polyester thread because it's stronger when it's wet and I'm using polyester thread to join these hexagons by hand because I know there's gonna be a lot of stress on these seams but you know I try to use cotton for everything and try to think about try to think about how things are going to be used the person using it um try to use good quilt batting yeah so hopefully yeah hopefully I don't give anyone an upset stomach or you know a migraine

Nic
Yeah what do you wish people asked you about your work that they don't

Sondy
That's a good question uh I think you know the point of like yeah like what is the toll on you like what is you know clearly this is something that compels you to to make and create but like what are what are the downsides like what is this doing to your body I think a lot of people don't kind of realize the brutalness of all of these quote unquote traditional women's crafts you know the things the the fiber arts that they're just really hard on a body and I don't think people realize that I don't think that people respect that and a lot of people see quilting as sort of like oh yeah this is this is what grandma does and you know but the average quilter is like a 60 something year old wasp um that that this is yeah like you know if you look at the quilt guild it's a whole bunch of you know gen x white femme presenting women in the quilt guild plus lu hernandez right like it's uh yeah like okay we have a couple people over 60 the demographics are not you know we're not like treated you know average demographic but it's still like what what makes this interesting and different and um and also like what are what are the hard aspects of this

Nic
Yeah

Sondy
You know you hear about port like all the accommodations for knitting like how do you make knitting hurt less you know there's the portuguese knitting there's people who take uh tennis balls or makeup brushes and stick their crochet hooks in them

Nic
Yeah

Sondy
So they can get a more ergonomic grip uh I want to look into getting a needle puller or um some more like finger protectors because like this is this is a lot of grip strength pulling this needle through and I think I can do better

Nic
You know what I've noticed makes a big difference do hide homemade thimbles one on the thumb one on the index and suddenly I don't need to grip the needle as strongly and there's more friction so I can pull the needle easier

Sondy
Yeah I've got this uh I think it might be doe hide it's a very soft

Nic
Yeah um yeah that looks a little bit like what I do

Sondy
So it's nice but then like if I'm tying knots I have to take the thimble off and yeah I might want to learn how to tie knots better I don't know I check out books from the library on quilting I'm like certainly one of these quilt as you go books won't suck so many of these quilts okay I checked out a bunch of books on garment sewing from the library and all of the examples are stitched with like contrast thread on fabric but the quilt as you go community is like oh no

Nic
No

Sondy
Any example quilt that we use in our books has to be a final quilt that we're gonna like want to give away to someone yes no contrasting thread the fabric is a solid so it's the same on the front as the back so you can't see like what's the front of the fabric and what's the back of the fabric oh well if you want to do it by machine just do it by machine it's like no this is a hand stitching example you got to give us the mystique I don't know I kind of like want to write a quilt as you go book of like you know quilt as you go that doesn't suck like

Nic
There's your next project in your downtime

Sondy
I I read through uh I don't know I was reading through the alumni magazine of where I went to undergrad and I was like damn I need to write a book I don't know what this book's gonna be but like salty quilting

Nic
Now you do hey Sondy I really have enjoyed this conversation um I want to ask you one last thing um is there something that you would like to say that I haven't covered that ties your quilting with your disability

Sondy
I think those of us who've been forced to look at the world differently, I think we get to make more interesting choices about what we make. Those of us who can't sort of take everything for granted, whether it's our bodies or how society lets us move through the world. I think there's a lot of disability inherent in quilting. I think there are a lot more disabled quilters out there than folks may admit to themselves that, you know, especially for hand stitching, right? Like if you can't sit, you know, there's hand stitching available. Or if you can't, you know, sit up at a machine, you know, if you, you know, there's so interesting like you know posts on these facebook groups of like hey I can't do this or I need I need a thing that does that and you know all the people who are happy to hop in and be like yeah here's an accommodation for that here's an accommodation to that or like I've got the same thing and it sucks like it's uh I appreciate and I know that's not like terribly really personal. But I think there's just so much of, you know, a lot of us who are disabled can't take, we can't take things for granted. We have to think, we have to question, we have to create new ways of moving through the world and interacting with things. And, you know, as you create something that no one else has before, I think that's a lot of fun. You know, there can be a playful aspect there's a lot of joy there and that's something that I've really appreciated about disability communities is seeing you know thriving disabled joy in a way that society society doesn't want you to society you know and you know quilt quilting wants you you know buying other people's patterns and using other people's ideas and not like and you know there's a lot of folks who are like yeah there's space in the quilt industry for people to come up with their own patterns and to come up with their own things. That, you know, not everyone, that it's, you know, it's hard for me, especially to keep like a whole bunch of thoughts in my head at once. And so to have time and to be able to read and to think and to put different things together is really validating. That's something that's been really hard for me as a scientist to come up with my own research ideas to do to you know read through the literature I really have never enjoyed that aspect or I've never like kind of figured out the right accommodations to be able to do that or to ask interesting questions and so to have a thing in my life where I feel like I can do that is uh it's really it's really great you know someday there'll be a you know science support and facilitation position where my weird weird experiences will be rewarded um but we haven't gotten there yet

Nic
Yeah hey I just thought of something we you mentioned microgravity earlier and we didn't come back to that now I know from past conversations that you've actually been on microgravity flights doing experiments which sounds like a lot of fun what would quilting look like in microgravity or no

Sondy
Funny you should ask that astronaut karen nyberg has quilted in space

Nic
How awesome is that

Sondy
Yeah yeah it's pretty cool um she even has two lines of quilting fabric uh called earth views one is prints that are really cool I actually have the whole set I'm gonna do a bigger hex bigger hexagons that have been like traditionally machine pieced for a friend out of those she does um like mars mission work where she you know her she works on one of these cameras that points down at mars and gets really cool landscape aerial landscape photos of mars and then karen's next fabric line is going to be batiks if it's I think it's already come out

Nic
Cool

Sondy
So yeah someone someone someone's done that there's been there's been quilts in space if I ever uh get an llc for my t-shirt quilts it'll be quilts in space awesome like muppets pigs in space

Nic
Sondy thank you so much for talking to me about quilting about disability about the work between um where can people find you or more about your quilting

Sondy
I have not really been active on social media in a while so uh if you happen to be in a you know the same discord or slack that I'm in um look for me there some maybe someday I'll post things on intergalactic cactus I think I have a blue sky for quilting but yeah you're just gonna have to social media has just not been fun for me so

Nic
Yeah I can relate to that Yeah, so I've just

Sondy
Enjoying putting my time and effort into smaller communities and doing the thing.

Nic
Awesome. Dr. Alessandra Springman, quilter, scientist, and a good friend. Thank you.

Sondy
Thank you, Nick. You're the best.

Nic
That's it. I'm Nic Steenhout. This is The Work Between. If this sounds like your kind of conversation, subscribe, and I'll see you in the next episode.

Nic:
Hi, I'm Nic Steenhout, and this is The Work Between. Before I get into what the show is, I want to say whose land it's made on. This podcast is recorded on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the Stó:lō Coast Salish people. The people of the river, whose presence in the Fraser Valley stretches back thousands of years. I named this territory because it belongs with what this show is about. The ways we decide whose lives are valued, whose work is taken seriously, and whose experiences are treated as problems to be managed. Those decisions shape everything. This show sits inside that. This is, was, and always will be First Nations land. That's not a formality. It's consistent with everything I and this show stand for. My guest today is Mia Seljubac, and we just discussed how to pronounce the name, and I know I fluffed it up, but my apologies. Mia is a games lawyer, turned game developer and co-founder of Serial Mug Games. She's currently working on a cozy narrative game called I Am the Cat, where all the animation and textures are completely hand-painted in watercolor. Mia works in a variety of mediums, including ink, watercolors, and acrylics, and she sells hand-painted jackets at her local tattoo parlor. Hi, Mia, thanks for joining me for this talk about creativity. How are you?

Mia:
I'm good. Thank you, thank you for having me.

Nic:
So there's a lot to talk about here, but my first question really is how does one go from being a lawyer to being a game developer?

Mia:
It's kind of an interesting story. It's not like one happened and then the other happened. Like, um, all the way back to the beginning. So I grew up playing video games, always loved them. Um, I liked a lot of fighting games like Street Fighter and Dead or Alive, and that led me down a path of learning martial arts, and then my first job was actually as a martial arts instructor, and I taught kung fu classes. And I had to learn a little bit about business and being self-employed. And then COVID happened, and you can't have people punching each other when there's a pandemic, so I was like, okay, I'm going to retrain. I find the kind of contract negotiation stuff interesting. I'd done volunteering with a few organizations that worked with lawyers, so I went and retrained as a lawyer. And then I found out that video game lawyer is a job that exists. So I kind of do law within the games industry for the love of it, uh, and it's an industry that I know quite well, having just been immersed in it from like as long as I can remember. Yeah. I was part of a weird generation of lawyers that were told that if you don't learn how to code, the machines are going to take your job. And I actually went and did it, and I'm like, well, why can't I try and use these skills to make a game myself and give it a go and see how that pans out? And, uh, it's panning out well, and having a lot of fun.

Nic:
Fantastic. I want to explore that game thing a little bit more, but, um, I had no idea you were a martial artist, and I find it interesting because I starting at age six, I did 18 years of judo, and the only reason I didn't end up getting my black belt is because, uh, the only way I had access to do it is on points and competition, and people are just vicious in competitions. I was not interested. And then I, um, I didn't do kung fu, but I did, uh, Taoist Tai Chi for about six years, so very, very different.

Mia:
yeah, no. Um, so my style of kung fu that I specialize in is Wing Chun, and it has a lot in common with Tai Chi, right? And, uh, one of my Wing Chun instructors is also a Tai Chi instructor, so I've learned both styles from him, and, yeah, no, Tai Chi is awesome.

Nic:
that's kind of neat. Uh, a bit of commonality that was not expected. So we'll speak about, um, game development, but because your game is rooted in watercolors, I'd love to learn more about your watercolors. Tell me about that. How, what is it you do? Obviously, watercolors, but what style? How do you work with watercolor?

Mia:
so I'm very inspired by like really old illustrated children's books like Books and the Paddington books. I try and wanted to, I wanted to make the game feel like it was in a storybook, um, and that's the kind of style that I've tried to adopt. It's very loose, uh, the line work is very kind of sketchy and rough, and I wanted it to just kind of feel like, you know, I feel like a drawing that was alive, if that makes sense.

Nic:
So a lot looser than strict. And, you know, quite

Mia:
yeah. It's interesting because when you're animating in watercolor, like, it's all completely hand-painted, like, using a light box, so I have to trace animation frames on top of each other, and when you're doing that, the paint kind of behaves the way that it wants to. Like, you can control watercolor to an extent.

Nic:
Yeah.

Mia:
so for some of the animations that are in the game, I completely embrace that. I let the watercolor do what it wants, and I like the feel of like the moving in weird ways that animation doesn't tend to, but when you've got characters that you're looking at all the time, like the cat that you play as, um, I have to take it into a program and kind of normalize some of that out, like add some filters to it so that it doesn't look too jarring or too tiring on the eye to look at all the time.

Nic:
How many illustrations, how many watercolors do you have to do for, I don't know, a segment of one minute of gameplay?

Mia:
So it's all done in loops. So the cat, at the moment, the walking animation is about 16 frames moving in different directions. Um, but there are lots of different little animations for interacting with things. I think I've drawn like, I think I've drawn about 120 versions of this cat at this point. Um, but other NPCs have, like, the other characters that walk around the world, the walking animations are quite like low frame rate, so some of them have like four frames in each direction walking, but they'll have more complex and detailed animations. Like, I decided to animate a character who's a barista, like making a coffee, like taking the portafilter out of the machine and tamping it and putting it back in the machine, and all of those little movements take a lot of individual drawings. Um, so some characters have a lot more than others.

Nic:
That's amazing. How did you learn watercolors?

Mia:
so my mom was always really artsy, so whenever we'd go anywhere, uh, she'd kind of encourage me to take a little sketchbook and like draw what I see. And it's really cheap and easy to get your kid, like, one of those little, like, they have these little red tins that you can pick up, and like, we used to be able to grab them in like an and they cost like under a fiver, and you could get one of these little tins and just learn.

Nic:
Yeah.

Mia:
So that's how I picked it up initially. But I only kind of decided to get serious about it much later. Like, I got myself a nice set of watercolors on sale and just got stuck in, watched a bunch of tutorials.

Nic:
So you're self-taught rather than having someone teaching you how to do it beyond your mom encouraging you, obviously.

Mia:
Yeah, so she taught me how to use paints and how to mix colors. She's a professional artist. She went from fashion design, where a lot of the illustrated in color. She uses watercolor and color pencils for that, and then she moved into stained glass, so she's got like quite an artsy background, and she went to college for ceramics and stained glass as well. So I had quite a good set of knowledge in my household to like draw off of.

Nic:
Is your mother an influence in your art? I mean, obviously she taught you, but is her style of work an influence in your style of work? And if not, or if yes, do you have other influences?

Mia:
Yes and no. Like, her art is very classically inspired. Like, she draws a lot of inspiration from artists like Leonardo da Vinci, and, uh, she used to take us to different exhibits at like the V&A and at different museums around London, and take inspiration from lots of different places. Um, my main inspirations for the game are like I mentioned, the Paddington Bear book, that's a big one, and like the illustrations. Um, in terms of other influences, it's hard to pin down because it's such a huge mix of things. Like, I have lots of artists that I really love and I'll like borrow little bits from here and there. Um, like, I initially learned how to paint with inks, which is a little bit different, and I was really inspired by, like, uh, a video game artist like Yoshitaka Amano, who's the illustrator for like the Final Fantasy concept art, and his illustrations are extremely beautiful, and like they have that loose, flowy movement style that's got like a lot of fashion design influences. Yeah.

Nic:
Painting with ink, that's, uh, just, do you do ink washes, adding water to the ink, or just pure ink? Or how do you do that?

Mia:
So I got like one of those old dip pens, like, from a craft shop when I was a kid, uh, so I'll like dip that directly into my little inkwell and sketch. Uh, but then when I go to color, I'll do different washes. Like, usually I'll stick to like one or two colors and just get the variation by adding water.

Nic:
Right. Are you an artist or an artisan?

Mia:
What is the difference?

Nic:
I think for me, an artist is, there's room to fail, there's room to be wrong. Uh, an artisan has to be able to replicate what they're doing. And I guess in this context the idea of artist versus artisan is important, because as a watercolorist you can be an artist, but as a games maker where you're relying on your painting, you don't, I mean, yeah, okay, watercolor has a mind of its own, but you don't have that much room for error.

Mia:
It's interesting because I found, when I'll do like a character concept, it will be very loose and free-flowing in terms of my process, and I'll let the paint do what it wants to. I'll let my mind wander and do what it wants to. And then you kind of, even if you're not trying to, when you go through the process of drawing each frame over and over and over, you get more precise and you get a lot cleaner, and you kind of have to almost fight back against that. And, like, I, it was this process when I first started animating characters with watercolor, to kind of embrace the chaos a little bit, because I had to make a decision of whether or not I wanted to try and replicate what I did the first time for every single frame, or lean into the differences. And I hope that it kind of gives the game a little bit of a unique feeling, the fact that I've gone with the latter approach, and just embraced the fact that all of the frames aren't going to look perfect. Like, if I was animating digitally,

Nic:
I really need to grab the game and try it. I'm very curious about what that actually looks like. What keeps you coming back to this? What's the motivation between, you know, doing the watercolor and doing it over and over for that game? Is the game, having a completed game, the motivation itself? Is the watercolor why do you keep going and doing

Mia:
it? One of the things that's so amazing about game development is you really do have to learn to love every single bit of the process. Um, and there's a lot to it. Like, it's not just the watercolor animation. It's also the programming and the writing. There's a lot of elements that need to come together. So one thing that keeps me going with it is the fact that if I'm getting tired of animating, if I'm getting a bit, like, my brain is getting tired or my hands are getting tired, I can switch to something else. I can think about what the characters are saying to each other, and it allows you to kind of, you know, pick up where your energy

Nic:
is. Yeah.

Mia:
I am very motivated by finishing the game because a lot of people who I've shown it to have said that they're really keen to see the finished product, and that's terrifying, but it's also like, okay, people are waiting for this to come out. I actually have to finish it. But it's one of those things, a lot of people pick up game development and they don't finish their game because they've got a lot of ambition, but sitting down and actually doing it becomes a bit of a chore.

Nic:
Yep.

Mia:
So yeah, learning to enjoy every bit of the process. Like, you get into a bit of a flow state when you're animating a bunch of frames, and you're painting them one by one, and then it all comes together, and you see you see the cat walk in a little circle or curl up and go to sleep, and it's just like, it's just a really nice feeling.

Nic:
Yeah. I bet. What do you make that you don't show anyone else?

Mia:
I have a sketchbook that's just for me. Um, and I feel like I need that to let the mind wander and keep it as something that I enjoy. Like, I studied English literature at university, and I always had a book going that wasn't part of my syllabus, to remind myself I enjoy reading.

Nic:
Yeah.

Mia:
And I feel like, you know, my own sketchbooks that I don't show people are kind of that, because when you're doing art for a product, it kind of can start to feel like you're doing it for other people. And you need that little bit of, you know, that little bit of privacy to explore and grow, and kill the perfectionist. And,

Nic:
yeah, so, draw things other than cats, right?

Mia:
Draw things other than cats. Yeah. I've been really inspired by fashion illustration lately. I've been looking up like drawings of clothing and trying to copy those in ink, and trying to put a little bit of my own flair on it, and because it's a completely new style that I've never done before, it doesn't look great. So, or it doesn't look great all the time. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. And you're not going to get good at something unless you just do it, and you do it badly at first.

Nic:
Is it about ending up with a good-looking drawing or painting, or is it about the journey to getting there?

Mia:
I think it needs to be about the journey, and like, being able to draw something without the pressure of how it's going to turn out is really, really freeing. Um, so like, as much as it's really rewarding to see the skills develop and to see it build, and to see that finished product starting to look better and better each time, like, it's about just being able to do something that relaxes me and brings me joy.

Nic:
Yeah. So when it doesn't bring you joy, when you're stuck, what does that feel like? And how do you get unstuck?

Mia:
That is the million-dollar question. Different things get me unstuck. Usually, if I'm feeling stuck, um, you either have to power through or change pace. Like, if I'm doing animation frames, it's something that I've done, I know that I'm good at. I can do it and I can kind of almost zone out and just do it, and that can kind of get the hands moving in a way that feels familiar. And it's just like, oh yeah, I can draw. And it doesn't feel like you're trying to overcome a creative block because you're not really doing anything new. You're doing like something that you're used to. It's like breathing. Uh, but when you're trying to, like, you know, oh, I need to design this new environment for the game, and you're actually trying to exercise those creative muscles a little bit, that can be really frustrating. I find the things that get me out of those blocks are turning to other artists. Like, I recently played a game called Sorry We're Closed, which has just the most incredible visual style, like, all of the environments, all of the character art is just so gorgeous, and it's one of the most unique-looking games that I've played in a really long time. And like, I was going through a little bit of a creative rut when I picked it up, and then it's like, you just, you just get all of these ideas. It's like, okay, all right, I'm motivated to draw. I'm gonna go and I'm gonna try and make some things.

Nic:
What's the most useful criticism you got

Mia:
on, like, my work? Or

Nic:
yeah, on your work? Not personally, but has there been anyone that said, hey, you know, this part of your work it's no good, and make it better, or whatever?

Mia:
I, it's, useful criticisms, that's kind of hard because I feel like a lot of people, if they have thoughts, if they have something that they don't like about a piece of art, people tend to, you know, keep that to themselves.

Nic:
Yeah.

Mia:
yeah. And I went through what I'm sure a lot of people have gone through, where you do art at school and you're trying to do something that's a little bit different, or a little bit like not the syllabus, and art teachers have kind of tried to like shut you down and go, no, you need to know this exactly how we say it. And that kind of, I was always like a little bit of a rebel growing up, so it'd be like, I knew that you have to play the game to get the good grade. So I would try and like balance that criticism. I didn't ignore it. I understand the importance of learning the fundamentals and why we're told to, you know, do still life and, you know, not jump straight into stylism. But it also kind of made me value exploring those different styles that my teachers were telling me not to do. Yeah. I don't know if that makes sense. I'm kind of,

Nic:
what I'm hearing is being basically told to conform to what is there and what you have to do and what you have to learn, but those limits also being, um, a motivation to go outside of the bounds of the trail and to explore what's out there as a way to grow.

Mia:
Yeah. Like, um, I think that if you get very good at doing art in school, if you're one of the kids that gets the good grades, you kind of almost are encouraged to become a little bit of a human photocopier. If you're a kid that doesn't like doing that, you just get very bored. You're like, yeah, but it doesn't, I'm not saying anything, I'm not doing anything new. This picture already exists. I've just copied it. Is

Nic:
saying something important to you?

Mia:
I think that's, saying something is everything.

Nic:
What do you want to say?

Mia:
So if we bring it back to the game, like, the thing that motivated me to make the game was, I was working in a corporate job in London and I was incredibly lonely. And I, like, there was this, there was a cat that lived on my street that everybody knew by name. Nobody knew who she belonged to, and like, people would constantly be sitting with her and like just spilling their guts. And I would do this too. I'd go get a coffee from the coffee shop, and I'd just sit on the bench, and this cat would come and climb on my lap, and it'd just be like, and I just imagine, like, what are the stories that this cat must hear from people who are just, you know, really stressed and really lonely and don't really have anyone to talk to? So I kind of wanted to say something about community and about loneliness and about how human it is to seek out that connection. And like, it feels really silly, like, spilling your guts to a cat, telling a cat your deepest, most vulnerable feelings. But it's also something that's really human and something that we all do. Yeah. So I wanted to treat the idea with a lot of sincerity. Um, like, I want people to feel a little bit seen.

Nic:
Yeah. I like that. So this podcast is about creativity and identity and disability. What's your relationship with disability?

Mia:
so I'm diagnosed with ADHD. I was diagnosed as an adult. But, um, I think a lot of people knew quite early on. I was one of those kids that got put in detention quite a lot for like drawing on the tables and forgetting my homework and, you know, all of the classic, you know, bright kid who just can't quite get it together, you know, that a lot of people experience. Um. And I also suffered a spinal injury when I was 19, in a gymnastics accident, that has like inhibited my mobility. Um, which is huge because, like, martial arts has always been a really big part of my life. I also got very into dance for a little while. Right before the injury, I was competing in and, uh, that's something that's been, like, you know, something that I've had to grapple with a lot. And it's something that's, you know, contributed to those really lonely feelings. Like, particularly when I was working in these oppressive corporate jobs, you know, can I have an extra work-from-home day because I will literally destroy my body doing this commute? And being told, well, everybody else is doing

Nic:
it.

Mia:
It's just like, you know. But it's it's a little bit different

Nic:
in terms of identity being so focused on body movement, on martial arts, on kung fu, which is a lot of internal, not just external. A spinal injury would really have thrown you for a loop, I would imagine.

Mia:
yeah. Um, there was a period very shortly after the injury where I couldn't, I could barely walk. I, the doctor told me that I could leave the hospital as soon as I could walk out myself, so I walked with the help of about four people who helped, like, kind of assisted-walk me to a car. I was dropped off at my flat, and I could do very, very little for a good few weeks. And then when I was finally able to like walk by myself again, I went back to kung fu, and they were like, hey, where have you been? I was like, ah, I've not been able to sit up for like three weeks. it's a really, it's an interesting thing with spinal injuries in specific, because it was damage to the nerve, and you have to very slowly reintroduce new movements, and every time you do something that your body isn't used to, it hurts like a bitch, pardon my French. Yeah. And, uh, you have to kind of build up a lot of courage to experiment with movement again, and to like make yourself do these movements that you haven't done in a long time, knowing that your back could just go nope at any minute, and you're just going to be flat on your back on the floor again, and you don't know when you're going to be able to get up. Uh, so that's hard, and that was life for quite a long time.

Nic:
How does that tie into your watercolor illustrations and your game development?

Mia:
So, when you can't sit up, you can still draw and you can still write. Um, it's something that kind of gets me out of myself a little bit, something that feels very internal and very personal, that I can still do and still do comfortably when my body isn't listening to me. Some, like, it's really hard to keep that, to not just become very depressed by all, and to not just kind of shrink back into yourself and go, I'm just gonna sit and stare at the ceiling and just, you know, be sad. And sometimes you need to be sad, but it's hard to keep yourself from going too far down that dark hole.

Nic:
Yeah.

Mia:
and allowing myself some kind of a creative outlet really helps me to just maintain a bit of a positive attitude and be like, hey, you know, this is temporary. It's a part of life.

Nic:
Yeah.

Mia:
And, uh, it'll pass, and I'll be up again. And you have to, you kind of have to tell yourself that.

Nic:
Do you think of yourself as a disabled person who makes things, or as a maker who is disabled?

Mia:
I'd say that I'm a maker who is disabled. I prefer that. That feels more fitting to me. Um, because I've been creating forever. Like, it's always been something that's brought me joy, and it's something that continues to bring me joy. I've always had ADHD, even if I haven't always known it. But I haven't always, you know, had a physical disability.

Nic:
ADHD, a lot of the people that I know that have ADHD tend to be serial hobbyists.

Mia:
Yeah.

Nic:
Have you, um, have you gone down that path? And if yes, what has, why have you settled on watercolor and directed that towards game making?

Mia:
I think that making games is something that really like scratches that serial hobbyist itch, that it lets you lean into that impulse, because, like I said, there are so many different elements to it. Like, you can swap between coding and writing and drawing and whatever else the game needs. Um, so, like, my game is a narrative game where there's not a huge amount of like mechanical gameplay. But if you're making a game that's really mechanics-heavy, that's another way that you can let your brain wander and let yourself be creative. I mean, I'm also selling jackets at the tattoo parlor, like, and I'm doing martial arts in the evenings, like, you know, the things don't end. Yeah. I struggle to say that I've settled on anything at any given point because there's always something on the horizon. I do see myself doing game dev for a long time, because it is something that, you know, allows me to lean into that, you know, impulse to do lots of things.

Nic:
Yeah. Yeah. I do watercolor and sketching, and I do quilting, and I do photography, and I've tried so many different things, and I've kind of settled on those, you know, sketching and quilting and photography. But that's what I'm doing now. Who knows what I'm going to be doing two years down the road? In terms of creative thinking, um, there's this idea that navigating the world when you're disabled, and the world isn't really built for you, for example, your teachers saying, hey, you have to do these things and don't get out of there, um, people say it produces a kind of creative thinking that is more, or different. Do you find that connects to how you work?

Mia:
Growing up with ADHD, you're always finding your own way of doing things, and you're building coping strategies upon coping strategies. And I think, I don't know if this is relatable to a lot of people with ADHD, but sometimes your coping strategies will work brilliantly for like nine months, a year, two years, and then just stop. So you kind of have to focus and refocus and change tack, like, quite a lot. And you need to rotate through your toolkit and see what's working for you one day, what's not working the next day. And I think that kind of keeps your brain active in a really creative way.

Nic:
You mentioned loneliness earlier. Do you work better when you work alone, or do you work better as part of community?

Mia:
So I love working in teams. Um, the industry that I've chosen, like the legal industry, isn't very inclined towards disabled and neurodivergent people. Um, you kind of have these really oppressive hierarchical structures at play, and if you don't fit into the mold, you'll just kind of be hung out to dry. So I've chosen like a self-employed path because it allows me to use my skills in a way that, you know, I know works for me, and that isn't, you know, restricted by these structures. But I think that the thing that I like about this job, and where I found balance, is that it is very social still. Like, I'm working with lots of different clients. I'm working with a lot of creatives, and I get to bounce ideas off of other people on the daily, and I never feel like I'm alone in it. I also have really good mentors. Like, there are so many games lawyers around. I didn't know there were, like, so many of us. But there are plenty of game lawyers running around, and they're all just such cool people. So I always feel like I have people that I go to if I have questions or if I need support. I feel a lot less lonely as a self-employed person than I did when I was working in corporate and surrounded by people every day.

Nic:
So if we were to apply that same question to your game development and your watercolor, does the same thing hold?

Mia:
I can be a little bit of a control freak when it comes to my work. I am collaborating with other creatives on the game. I'm working with a 3D artist at the, to try and bring some of those 2D drawings into a 3D world, and like, somebody who's just very good at blending those two worlds and can see the vision and is on board with it. And that's really easy. Uh, I'm also working with composers, and I know nothing about music. Like, I did singing as a kid, and, you know, my husband's really into jazz and knows a lot of music theory, and, you know, there's a lot of putting chords together. And like, I know some of the basic vocabulary, but like, it sometimes can be hard to just let creatives do their thing, because I know they're going to make their best work if I just take my hands away. Yeah. Um, I can get quite anxious about that collaborative process, but I've been, I like to think I'd be quite good at letting my team do the things that they're good at, and things are working out really well, and I'm really happy with it. But yeah, I definitely have that tendency in me.

Nic:
What have you made that you regret making?

Mia:
I don't think I regret making anything. Like, I've made things that haven't always turned out the way that I wanted. Um, I've worked like as part of creative teams where we weren't aligned and it was kind of messy, and the product as a result wasn't good. But all of it is learning, and learning how to hone your own craft and your own skills, and learning how to work with other people, and sometimes learning when to walk away from a project. Um, so I don't regret making anything. I think even those projects that kind of get left on the cutting room floor, there's value to be gained there.

Nic:
When do you decide to leave something? When, if there is one, what's the trigger to say, oh, all right, this isn't gonna work? And let's move on.

Mia:
when people in the team don't respect each other. Um, like I said, I had that control freak tendency in me.

Nic:
Yeah.

Mia:
I know that I can't do better than what my composers are doing, because that is their craft and they know it a lot better than I do. If I was being very critical of them and critical of their skills, uh, they should leave. Like, you know, it's, like, there's constructive ways to say, oh, you know, can you tweak this? Or we're going for more of this kind of a feeling. But if it gets to the point where it's like, somebody isn't respecting your ability to create,

Nic:
yeah,

Mia:
not respecting what you bring to the table, that's when I say it's time to walk away from the project. Um, yeah, because I think when you're working collaboratively on something creative, like, trust is everything, respect is everything. And you need to be able to, you know, pull things apart and critique things and build something cohesive, build something together. And you can't, you have to have respect for your fellow creators. Otherwise that just that just doesn't work.

Nic:
Yeah. Respect is so important. Are there things you feel you can't make, subjects or forms that you feel are off

Mia:
I mean, I don't have all of the skills in the world. Um, I've tried to dip my toe into 3D modeling and it did not go well. Uh, the original vision for my game didn't involve watercolor illustration. I opened up Blender and I opened up Unreal Engine, which at the time I kind of naively thought was, it's got a bit of a reputation for being the engine that you use when you want to make games that are really pretty and really visually stunning. Um, so I picked that up and I made something that looked like an absolute trash fire. And I spent about three months on it, and I sat back from it after three months and went, so I like coding and I like drawing and I haven't done either in the whole process of making this game for three months.

Nic:
Right.

Mia:
Let's pivot. So, like, I don't think that 3D modeling is off limits. It's definitely something I can't do now. I have so much respect for people who can do it. Maybe I'll give it a go and try and pick it up again when I've got like the and the time and the mental energy to try and tackle it again. Uh, but right now I'm happy leaving that to the 3D artists.

Nic:
Your game hasn't released yet. Um, but I imagine you've shared your progress with other people. Have you noticed a gap between what you intend people to take from what you're doing and what they're actually feeding back to you?

Mia:
so when I first started sharing the build, it was very, very rough. Like, some of the writing had been done. I'd written, I think I'd written a couple of storylines completely, but the characters were like little outline stick The cat was four frames of like a walking animation, but it was just an outline with no color, and everyone was just a box. Like, it was just like a gray box moving around a 3D space with a picture of a cat on the front. And I was surprised when I was showing that around to people, being like, hey, I got the box to move, how much the vision was already starting to come across. Like, people were getting the vibe from the dialogue and what I was trying to do. And then as it started to come together, like, the art being added on top, like, actually finished and painted, it felt like I was successfully communicating an idea to people. I think still, like, points in which people misunderstand, like, my game is completely narrative. You can't really affect the story. You're a cat. Like, you're just there to experience the story through the characters who are talking to you. You can meow at people. Um, you cannot meow at people, uh, but you can't like talk back to them or say anything that's going to materially change their lives, aside from them feeling comfort in your presence. Um, I've had people not quite get that aspect. Some people, like, oh, do the people give you quests? Do they ask you to do things? Can you change the outcome of the story by doing different things? It's like, no, you're a cat. Like, yeah, that's the main thing that I think that some people don't really vibe with, with the game. But plenty of people like a linear narrative story where you're just kind of vibing out and experiencing it. So, you know, my game is for the people that get it, and I'm finding that a lot of people get it and a lot of people are excited for

Nic:
it. I think there's something to be said about storytelling in a different way, rather than you have to be FPS, kill everything in sight and interact with everything, and, oh, is this loot? I think different paces is important for different people at different times.

Mia:
Yeah. And I grew up playing a lot of FPSs and shooting things and picking up loot. And it's a different kind of experience. But the thing that I've always loved about games, whether you're shooting things and picking up loot, or, you know, talking to characters and getting a story that way, is that the story is always kind of told through the world, through interacting with the world, whether it's, you know, shooting at the world or talking to the world. And that's something that a lot of games have in common, and that's something that I really wanted to lean into. Um, I like games that feel very mundane and make you feel really small. Like, my favorite, one of my favorite Legend of Zelda games is Wind Waker, like, you're just a kid and the world is flooded, and you sail around, and it feels really peaceful, but you also feel really tiny because you spend ages on the sea sailing from place to place. And that's something that I really enjoy.

Nic:
Is there a game that you wish you'd made? And why that one?

Mia:
I wish I'd made. I would have, if I could have been on the team for Sorry We're Closed, that would have just made my entire life. I'd be like, I could die happy. This is like one of the coolest, most unique pieces of art that exists in the gaming space. Um, like, I make most of the game by myself, as a solo project. Uh, I don't see any games out there that I'm like, I could have made this, or I would have wanted to have made this, because I think with solo devs it's very kind of personal, it's a very unique creative vision. But I've seen games that I'm like, man, I would have loved to have been like a character artist in this game, or I would have loved to have been a writer in this game. And I think, like, Sorry We're Closed is one. Um, one of like one of my more rogue influences is a game called Deadly Premonition, which is just absolutely insane. It's heavily inspired by Twin Peaks, and it's a game where you're solving a murder in a small town. And you think this has nothing to do with the game where you're playing as a cat. But one of the things that I really like about it is, you can go into people's houses and see how life is moving on in the wake of this tragedy. And like, you can see people comforting each other and bonding with each other, and you really get like an insight into the fact that these are real people dealing with grief. And that's a huge influence in my game. So like, looking at these projects, these are projects that I'm not like, oh, I wish I'd made this. But I'm really very inspired by it, and like, I think about the team and all the people who are responsible for injecting it with these little details. And it's just like, art to have been part of that. That would have been cool.

Nic:
So eventually, this game is going to be finished. What are you going to be doing after that? Or what would you be doing now if you weren't doing game development?

Mia:
If I wasn't doing this game, there are other ideas cooking. I've already thought about, like, I'm not necessarily, the next title that I'm make, but at least the next idea that I'm gonna workshop, because it is such a process, when it comes to game development, of, like, you know, finding the fun and finding the idea that works, and what people are vibing with. If I wasn't doing game development, um, I really want to get good at oil painting. It's something that I've been afraid of for a long time. Uh, I'd probably be leaning into that and giving that a go. Um, yeah, I'm addicted to picking up a hundred different hobbies and constantly trying new things. So I'd be just scouting around for, yeah, what the next thing is, to keep that impulse.

Nic:
I probably would not recommend trying to do frame-by-frame animation with oil painting unless you have the patience.

Mia:
Absolutely not.

Nic:
Has your creative practice ever changed something you thought about yourself or believed about yourself?

Mia:
I think that happens constantly. I think when it comes to doing something like game development, where it's a piece of art that's like the process is drawn out over many, many months, you spend ages working on the same thing, uh, sometimes you step back from something and you're really, like, you don't realize the amount of time that you've put into something until you're stepping back from it, like, months later, going like, whoa, I built this.

Nic:
Yeah.

Mia:
Like, it's made me feel a lot more confident in my ability to pick things up and put things together. Uh, another thing is, I've always been kind of self-critical about my art and about showing it to people. But like, drawing game assets, they kind of take on a life of their own. And like, you see the thing that you drew in its own little world doing its own little thing, and you know, that something about that just feels really special. Like, if you draw a piece of art in your sketchbook and then you take it out and you frame it and you put it on your wall, and it's like, now part of a space, and it's, you know, giving that space an energy, it just feels different to letting it just exist in its sketchbook. And like, game development's a little bit like that. Like, I've drawn this cat a hundred times, each individual frame doesn't really have a purpose on its own. But it's part of something that's like a little bit bigger than itself, and that's made me feel a lot more confident in my own art and in showing people my art and feeling like people are understanding what I'm trying to do.

Nic:
Yeah. Technical question for you, which isn't so technical, but I'm curious about it. What is your favorite brand of watercolors, and what paper do you like to use? And what's your, uh, your ink of choice?

Mia:
Um, so I missed that last bit. Was the last part, the last

Nic:
bit, what is your ink of choice?

Mia:
Okay. So, favorite watercolors, I use Winsor Newton. Um, I use the pan ones, not the,

Nic:
yep,

Mia:
like, if I use the tubes, I like, let it dry out into a pan, use it like that. Um, I use the little Winsor Newton field kit. They don't do it with the professional colors anymore. They now do it with the Cotman colors. Um, but you can get the set and fill it with whatever colors you want from whichever range you want. I also use Winsor Newton ink. I'm a bit of a Winsor Newton purist. Um, when I was learning watercolors, I just picked up the cheapest notebook that I could find. It wasn't even watercolor paper. And you paint on it, and the paint just kind of sits on top of the paper and it's very unforgiving. Yeah, colors down and then it's down. Uh, I recently bought my sister-in-law a sketchbook, like a nice Moleskine sketchbook, uh, for Christmas. And whenever I gift somebody a sketchbook, I always do the first page, because I think the first page is a little bit intimidating. And it's also just kind of nice, like, hey, remember I got this for you? And, oh my god, painting on that paper, which is like, it just took the paint and it just looked amazing, and it was so much easier. I was like, um, this is a nice experience.

Nic:
Yeah,

Mia:
I've been using the Faber-Castell watercolor pads for the animation for the game. I haven't been punishing myself by using regular notepaper. It's not quite as nice as the Moleskine sketchbook paper, though.

Nic:
I will suggest that if you want to up your game in the sketchbook world for watercolors, you might want to try the Hahnemühle 100% cotton sketchbook, because it is as much better from the Moleskine than the Moleskine is from cartridge paper. It is a world of difference. But anyway, that's just me geeking out. over

Mia:
I want to try the 100% cotton paper eventually, but I feel like I need to build up to that level.

Nic:
Well, that's the thing. At least for me, is that I was intimidated by using good, expensive paper. But when I started, I realized, oh my god, I'm so much better than I thought I was, and the results are a lot more pleasing, so it's less of a struggle.

Mia:
That makes a lot of sense. I think with me, this is something that I've learned to do. Um, like with ADHD and picking up hobbies perpetually, it's very easy to spend an awful lot of money. So I've put like parameters on myself, like, if I'm sticking with a hobby for x amount of time, I'm allowed to invest in some nice things for myself, like x amount of materials. I'm trying to resist the urge to go out and make a lot of purchases unless I know that I'm really in this for the long haul.

Nic:
That makes sense.

Mia:
yeah. And I wouldn't switch to different paper now for the game, because you need a level of consistency there. Maybe once the game is out I'll treat myself to a nice 100% cotton sketchbook.

Nic:
Yeah. Or for your private sketchbook that you show nobody else.

Mia:
Yeah. Maybe,

Nic:
yeah. What does your art and game making give you that nothing else does?

Mia:
I think that with the game making in particular, it gives you an amazing community. Like, I started getting into the games industry professionally by going to playtest parties and like seeing people's work in progress. And like, I think with game development in particular, it really gets you out of your comfort zone. And especially, it kind of forces you to kill any perfectionist tendencies that I think a lot of artists have, because you need to test if a game is viable before you invest potentially years into making it. If you want to sell it. If you're making something just for you and you don't plan on showing it to anyone, that's a completely different thing.

Nic:
Yeah.

Mia:
but I wanted to kind of test myself to see if I could make a game that I could release on Steam. And that forces you to go out and show people the gray box, just a graphite pencil where everything is, you know, blocky and looks a bit weird. Like, it forces you to show people that version of the game to see if you're onto something. And I think that's really, really helpful, because you're getting early feedback, you're kind of getting out of your own ego in terms of, like, I can't show this yet, it's not quite ready. And you're getting into the habit of talking about your process and your creative work with other people who are also doing the same thing. And it gives you confidence as well, because you get to see other people's work in progress. And it's like, okay, I can show this, because, you know, nobody is being, you know, oh, but that's not good enough, or that doesn't look right. Yeah. Everybody understands that it's a process.

Nic:
Yeah. Second-to-last question for you. Is there something we haven't discussed that you would like to discuss, as it relates to disability, creativity, game making?

Mia:
I think that the games industry in particular has got a lot of participation by an extremely, like, diverse kind of groups of people. Um, you get a lot of people with disabilities in the games industry. Um, you get a lot of people of, like, marginalized genders in the games industry. And I think everybody is very accepting, and people connect over being, like, a little bit weird. Because I think creatives are all a little bit weird. I feel like you have to be. Um, and just being a little bit of a rebel and a little bit of an outcast. And I think that it's a very, like, safe environment to kind of put yourself into, because I think there's a lot of stereotypes. You know, people think of gamers, they think of, like, 14-year-olds on Xbox Live playing Halo and like yelling slurs at each other. But if you go to like a playtest party in London, uh, the community is so vibrant and full of all different kinds of people, and is so welcoming and is so nice. And I think that that's been really, really good for me, because it's allowed me to connect with people who I can relate to, and in ways that I couldn't relate to people when I was working in corporate law.

Nic:
Thank you. Last question for you. Where can people find you? Where can people find your work? Uh, because I assume people are going to be as interested to discover this game that you're making and seeing your illustrations as I am.

Mia:
So, um, I post a lot about my game development on LinkedIn, so that's just me as Seljubac on LinkedIn. I'm really easy to find. Um, I'll post, I post about, you know, the work I do with other creatives as a lawyer, uh, on there. But I also will post about my game and the creative process and how things are going. Uh, I have an itch.io where there is an extremely early build of the game. It looks a lot better now than the version in there. But if you want to get like an insight into that super early process and what the game looked like six months in when I was first starting, uh, you can play that now. Uh, my itch.io profile is called S-A-L-Y-U-M-A-N-D-E-R, so like a salamander, but right, Salyumander. Um, and you can follow I Am the Cat on Steam, and you can wish-list it, and you'll be updated when the demo is out and when the final game is out.

Nic:
Thank you. This has been a great chat.

Mia:
Thank you very much.

Nic:
That's it. I'm Nic Steenhout. This is The Work Between. If this sounds like your kind of conversation, subscribe and I'll see you in the next episode.

Mia:
Bye.

Hi. I'm Nic Steenhout, and this is The Work Between.

Before I get into what the show is, I want to say whose land it's made on. This podcast is recorded on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the Stó:lō Coast Salish peoples: The People of the River, whose presence in the Fraser Valley stretches back thousands of years. I name this territory because it belongs with what this show is about. The ways we decide whose lives are valued, whose work is taken seriously, and whose experiences are treated as problems to be managed. Those decisions shape everything. This show sits inside that. This is, was, and always will be First Nations land. That's not a formality. It's consistent with everything I and this show stand for.

So. What this show is, and what it is not.

A lot of shows about artists follow a familiar shape. Someone faces hardship. The hardship changes them. The change makes the work better. You come away feeling inspired. It's a satisfying arc. It's also a version that tends to flatten the work, and tidy up lives that aren't typically tidy.

The question I keep coming back to is this: how does your life and your creative practice shape each other? Both in motion. Pushing, pulling, sometimes in conflict, neither one staying still long enough to be a fixed point. That's The Work Between.

And understanding that means getting into the actual work. If someone's a sculptor, we're talking about materials, form, and process. If they're a musician, we're getting into sound and structure. If they paint or quilt or cook, I want to understand how they actually do it; the decisions, the constraints, the techniques. The craft isn't background. It's half the conversation. And it’s often where these questions about identity and experience show up most clearly.

These are long-form conversations. Unhurried, sometimes a bit uncomfortable, and specific. I'll ask questions, I'll follow threads, and I'll leave space when it matters. Not everything needs to resolve cleanly.

I'm not interested in turning people's lives into neat narratives, or using difficulty as a way to make the work more palatable. And I'm not interested in presenting disability — or anything else — as something to be admired from a safe distance. What matters here is what people actually think, and how they actually work.

I make things. I sketch and paint in watercolor. I quilt. I photograph birds and wildlife. I spent years working as a professional chef before changing direction entirely. I tried several other creative endeavours. Some of it stuck. Some of it didn't. But I've been asking myself the questions I'm bringing to this show for a long time.

I've also spent nearly three decades working in web accessibility. My other podcast, A11y Rules, has been running since 2017, with over 160 interviews across two series. What that work taught me — slowly, and sometimes the hard way — is that the most useful thing you can do is listen to someone's actual experience rather than your assumptions about it. That's the discipline I'm trying to bring to every conversation here.

This show is for people who make things, and for people who want to understand how creative work actually happens — especially when it doesn't fit a clean story. A lot of these conversations sit at the intersection of creativity and disability — but you don’t have to be disabled yourself for the work to resonate.

I'm talking to painters, sculptors, fiber artists, musicians, photographers, writers, and chefs. People who work with their hands, their bodies, their materials. People making things that didn't exist before they made them. The work might be visual, physical, edible, wearable, or something that lives in sound. What connects them is that they're all trying to make something that matters to them.

Some guests will have a clear sense of how their disability shaped their work. Some will push back on the question. Some won't have worked it out yet. And that's all right.

They get to be complicated. They don't have to arrive with a lesson. They don't have to leave you feeling uplifted. They just have to be honest about what they actually think.

Every episode has a full, human-edited transcript. That's not a nice-to-have. That's just how the show works. I'll also provide extensive show notes.

Episodes will be released every 2 or 3 weeks.

I'm Nic Steenhout. This is The Work Between. If this sounds like your kind of conversation, subscribe — and I'll see you in the next episode.