5.1K
Downloads
50
Episodes
A podcast about secret ingredients in art, work and life.
Episodes
Friday May 26, 2023
Friday May 26, 2023
Hello Creative Friends!
This episode is especially for ME this month. In fact, almost all of these episodes are for me... and by proxy YOU, because we're all doing this shit in the same sauce. Whether we know it directly or not, what we're contending with in our lives at this very moment is 100% relevant to what every other person on this blue and green planet is contending with... more or less.
This episode is about a stage of every creative work, whether it's in life or art. THE UGLY MIDDLE. There's no way to avoid this stage, but our current predatory capitalist structure shouts the opposite at us daily. If what you're making is ugly, you have no business making that thing. The truth is however, the ugly middle happens to literally everyone. Including "master artists" (or whatever that means.) In this episode I unpack the ways this looks for one of my truly skilled painter friends, for myself, my students, and how it shows up in life. Are you making ugly stuff? You my friend, are doing it right.
From the episode:
Paula Nelson: http://www.whoanelson.com/
LINKS:
Website: http://beccajborrelli.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/secretsaucepodcast/
Email: beccajborrelli@gmail.com
ABOUT BECCA
Thursday Mar 30, 2023
Thursday Mar 30, 2023
Hello Creative Friends!
This episode is for everyone who feels like an imposter making things... So Everyone. Myself included. Especially myself.
As we navigate a time of massive collective change, the stories we tell around artistry are changing too. One of those stories is about "who is an artist, and who isn't. Who should be making art, and who shouldn't." As old stories around these topics shift, so is the ground under our creative feet. How are new stories around artistry better prepared for helping us live better lives? How are we going to incorporate those better narratives into our creative practices?
LINKS:
Website: http://beccajborrelli.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/secretsaucepodcast/
Email: beccajborrelli@gmail.com
ABOUT BECCA
Tuesday Mar 14, 2023
Tuesday Mar 14, 2023
Hello Creative Friends!
It's been over two months since the last episode. I've been in a period of great transition artistically, and as I navigate what that looks like, I've been asking myself a lot of questions about what being an artist means to me.
For most of recorded post-Renaissance history, the Arts have been relegated to the entertainment section of society. When a Broadway actress steps out onto the stage, she's thinking about entertaining the audience... less commonly is she thinking about healing them.
We know Art does so much more than entertain, and yet since we live in a culture that is deeply suspicious of things we can't quantify, the ways our Arts create healing is acknowledged sure, but rarely honored.
In this episode I unpack the ways Art has created healing in my life, how making it can create healing for others, and how that collides with capitalist art structures. What does it mean for you as a maker to negotiate your art practice with healing and making money?
LINKS:
Website: http://beccajborrelli.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/secretsaucepodcast/
Email: beccajborrelli@gmail.com
ABOUT BECCA
Friday Jan 06, 2023
Friday Jan 06, 2023
It's 2023, Art Friends! We are opening the new year with a sweet episode about January, the year ahead, and making change.
I believe artists are being called to expand into new ways of thinking about creative change. Rather than big sweeping swing for the fence that leave us exhausted and poised to fail, how can we lean into the power of change that "simply happens on it's own" in small bits over time?
This is a big deal for artists in 2023. We've been taught a lot of unsustainable things about creative change that leave us burnt out and dis-regulated. In this episode we dive into the ways Pop Artist Andy Warhol's screen prints can provide us with a helpful framework for embracing new modalities of creative change in 2023.
LINKS:
Website: http://beccajborrelli.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/secretsaucepodcast/
Email: beccajborrelli@gmail.com
ABOUT BECCA
Thursday Nov 17, 2022
Thursday Nov 17, 2022
Hello Creative Friends,
Is Art Making and Life Making always active? When we think of an artist, we think of someone painting, composing or dancing. When we think of someone living we think of them out and about, working, running errands, and traveling. The truth however, is that massive creative aspects of our art and lives are not active. They are quiet, internal... pregnant with something.
The culture does a poor job of educating us on this aspect of making life and art. Whole societies of people completely skim over the quiet, internal creative work that is so important to making new things. This sounds inconsequential, until you consider it in other terms. Imagine going into active labor with a human child and then once it was over, going into labor again. And again.
It sounds silly, and yet look around at the planet. There is evidence of human, social and systemic breakdown that absolutely results from unsustainable creative cycles such as perpetual labor without pause. How would our lives change irrevocably for the better as we learned to honor and tend to pregnancy periods in our lives and art?
ABOUT THIS PODCAST
Wednesday Oct 26, 2022
Wednesday Oct 26, 2022
It's election season! In this episode I take on the beastly challenge of using Art to expand our perspective on voting, considering candidates, issues, and politics in general. Disclaimer, this episode offers far more questions than answers, however they are questions that are largely absent from our shared political discourse. They are also questions that (if we can hold them) might serve us tremendously as we make decisions about how we vote. Art can be a fantastic anchor for reframing how we live our lives, and that includes voting.
ABOUT THIS PODCAST
Wednesday Oct 19, 2022
Wednesday Oct 19, 2022
Hello Creative Friends,
We are living through some doozie of times. I suppose every generation has said this, but WOO what a few years we've navigated. Art can be fantastically supportive at how we look at things. In this episode I deep dive into Impressionist painter Claude Monet and his art as an anchor for how we can look at our own art, our lives, and the world.
Full disclosure, I'm a trained artist, art educator, and business owner. I am not the beefiest when it comes to art history. This episode does it's best to unpack certain aspects of Impressionism, Abstract Expressionism and the portions of the 19th and 20th centuries they spanned, but for those of you history geeks, I might have messed on some details. Let me know!
Lastly, this episode contains triggering topics. The content references: politics, religion, sexuality and discrimination. Please consider your needs and listen if it is right for you.
ABOUT THIS PODCAST
Tuesday Oct 11, 2022
Tuesday Oct 11, 2022
Hello Creative Friends,
In 2016 when I launched my illustration business I posted a light comparison to "what I imagined" was a similarity between birthing a business and birthing a baby on social media. Woo! Was that a touchy subject! A lot of parent friends had an opinion on that one... and they were spicy. Interestingly however, parents who also worked for themselves all agreed: Business and Babies were similar.
This episode is about one of the similarities I've noticed now that I have firsthand experience with and Babies: They are catalysts for healing. The culture doesn't talk about this very often. In this episode I want to unpack the way that the crunchiness, discomfort, and downright pain of creating with our children/ creating with our art is in fact an entrance point into re-creating fresh new versions of ourselves.
ABOUT THIS PODCAST
Monday Oct 03, 2022
Monday Oct 03, 2022
Hello Creative Friends,
I'm excited to back for this episode. It's been a minute.
In this episode I talk about a topic that's near and dear to my heart: Using art making as a model for making tough decisions. In April of this year I shuttered most of my art business, even at the height of its success, to focus on my new son. No one was more surprised than me, to make that decision.
Big decisions often bring up a lot of turmoil. There have been large decisions in my life that have absolutely wrecked my quality of life. Over the years I've learned a lot about navigating those decisions in ways that preserves my well-being. Over time I realized those ways had a lot in common with being an artist.
Artists have so much in their arsenal that they don't realize. We're all taught to focus on the things we lack and improve upon them. In this episode I made the case that certain parts of the artistic mindset can be a tremendous ally to us as we make large life choices.
ABOUT THIS PODCAST
Monday Jul 05, 2021
Monday Jul 05, 2021
Hello Creative Friends,
I'm excited to back for this episode. It's been a minute, and I'm hoping by late 2021, Secret Sauce will be getting a new facelift and more regular content for YOU.
In this episode we talk about how "THE HOW" in our art-making is just as artistic as the WHAT. I tell some stories about how I've seen this play out in my own life and career, however as always the stories are about YOU. I'd like to make a case that when artists focus on how they make things, it's a game changer for art, work and life. In many ways, the HOW is the X-Factor in creative industries. It's the thing that differentiates some artists from the many. It's hard to quantify, and our culture still struggles with the invisible things. Thankfully artists have a leg up here. Listen as we talk about ways you can incorporate conscious use of process and "how" in your own art... and of course work and life.
ABOUT THIS PODCAST