The Creativity Cafe

Lia D'Apote is a jewelry artist who's originally from Italy, and has been living in Tallinn, Estonia for four years. With her primary media being sterling silver or brass and including some precious gemstones, Lia crafts pieces that aim to help every woman connect with her feminine power and be able to use it. Size inclusivity is an important facet of her work as well, and Lia creates piec...

Ashley Rodriguez Reed is an artist, designer, and educator with over 15 years of experience. Her creative path started in a childhood full of imagination and messes. Today, she works from her home studio in Japan, raising three kids and making art along the way. She is inspired by the natural world, travel, and moments of reflection. Ashley’s art and teaching inspire imagination and help others bu...

From interior design and styling workshops to pop-up events and gallery scenogrophies, Thara Ladrech creates environments that inspire and connect. In her impressive and storied career, Thara has reimagined IKEA stores, developed concept stores, and staged floral intallations in the Ikebana tradition, each time blending innovation with timeless aesthetics. As a curator of artists, Thara brings tog...

Using Instagram as her medium, Ronide Comeau creates videos and digital comics that strive to bring out the whimsical in black girls and women who have felt like they weren't a part of the stereotype of what a black girl can be. With humour, playfulness, and delightful curiosity, Ronide invites the viewer to upend expectations and embrace the fullness of themselves.  www.instagram.com/anxiousb...

Dana Batho is an artist, teacher, and veteran of the Canadian Armed Forces. After a training injury ended her career as a RCAF Intelligence Officer, she returned to her artistic roots as a way to heal and help inspire others to be creative. Having recently returned to oil painting after a 15 year hiatus in addition to having to adapt her practice around her injury, Dana finds joy in creating objec...

In this episode, Paige interviews Jordana to discover what she has been working on behind the scenes and how her creative journey has evolved over the last few years. Additionally, discover all the details about Jordana's upcoming exhibition in Tokyo. Find out more about Jordana: https://www.jordana-matsuda.com⁠ ⁠https://www.instagram.com/jordana.matsuda.artist⁠ Exhibition: June 13th - 15th, M...

Ruth Lever is the creative force behind Rule Design, helping entrepreneurs turn their brands and websites into customer magnets. With brand strategy and SEO-friendly web design, she builds brands that fuel business growth and looks epic doing it.  Ruth offered some good advice and insights on how to show up for your brand and how she can help your personality shine through your online presence. ht...

Henna Bakhshi is a self-taught artist creating art for change and healing. Through her work, she strives to tell under-represented stories and start conversations that lead to connections, community, and liberation.  Henna believes art has the power to change hearts and minds and hopes her art helps you see we are never alone, there is always hope, and that together, we can make change happen.  Le...

Filiz Soyak is an interdisciplinary artist creating through intuitive mark-making in painting, fiber, clay, and installation, whose work has been exhibited and collected internationally for over two decades.  Her work explores territories of intuition, subconsciousness, and is about creating and invoking peace, healing, and an appreciation for our natural environments, humanity, and the present mo...

We are back with episode 1 of season 6, and we are so excited to be introducing you to some very special people from all over the world. Today, though, I am speaking to my co-host Paige about the work she does to help creative people bring their dreams to fruition. https://www.wholeselfcreative.com/ https://www.instagram.com/wholeselfcreative

Originally from Adelaide, Australia, songwriter, musician, poet, and podcaster, Sorcha Chisholm has been living in Tokyo since 2004. With a voice and demeanour that both soothe and intrigue, Sorcha's work invites us into a world that asks us to go deep and get real. Her monthly podcast, The Witch Way Spellcast, gives us the opportunity to explore the power of the witch, including alternative modes...

Originally from London, Raj Kaur has spent the last six years living in Bavaria, in the south of Germany. Combining her professional work as a freelance Design Director for Brands with her art and illustration practice, Raj's work covers a vast array of explorations. She strives to find the balance between ‘play’ and ‘project creation’ in the quest to build a body of personal work, which celebrate...

Miho Murakami is a Filipino-Japanese fashion designer and self-taught muralist and painter based in Tokyo. She draws inspiration from the vibrant interplay of colors in nature, infusing her art with a deep appreciation for cultural diversity and feminine beauty. Her work is characterized by a seamless blend of art and fashion and with each creation, she tells a story that celebrates the harmony be...

Jean Shields Fleming is an American novelist and both the founder and editor in chief of Certain Age, a magazine dedicated to unleashing women's power, one story at a time. Chock full of poems, reflections, and other features, Certain Age shares wisdom, perspective, truth-telling, and opinion with all the discernment that comes from having lived. Jean now lives, writes, and edits in a small villag...

Caroline Jariwala is an ethical mosaic artist based in the West Midlands in the UK. Caroline creates vibrant, lively mosaics with varied themes using chipped, rejected, thrown away and second hand crockery and cheap tiles that would ordinarily be destined for landfill. By using these materials, she gives them a new lease of life and creates objects of beauty that spark both conversation and joy. ...

Ema Shin is a Melbourne-based artist who was born and raised in Niigata, Japan. After studying printmaking at Tama Art University in Tokyo, Ema completed a Master of Fine Art Degree at Aichi University of the Arts in Aichi, Japan. Her recent solo exhibition, Hearts of Absent Women, is a celebration of the lives and energy of anonymous women refracted through personal experiences with her own cultu...

We are so excited to be back with you all and today to kick off season 5 we are catching up on how we are both feeling and what we have been up to since the end of season 4. As always, if you have a question for us for our regular Ask Us Anything segment, please get in touch with us by email or via Instagram. thecreativitycafe21@gmail.com https://www.instagram.com/thecreativitycafepodcast

We have a special episode for you today! Paige and Mioko Mochizuki (Season 1 guest), sit down with Jordana, Haneka Azuma and Laura Pearson to discuss a deeply meaningful project Paige and Mioko started over a year ago, The Motherhood Project. The Motherhood Project was born when Art Educator Mioko Mochizuki and Creativity Coach Paige Baldwin Ando began discussing themes related to motherhood, and...

We have a special episode for you today! Paige and Mioko Mochizuki (season 1 guest), sit down with Jordana, Haneka Azuma and Laura Pearson to discuss a deeply meaningful project Paige and Mioko started over a year ago, The Motherhood Project. The Motherhood Project was born when Art Educator Mioko Mochizuki and Creativity Coach Paige Baldwin Ando began discussing themes related to motherhood, and...

Ava Roth is a Toronto-based encaustic painter, embroiderer and mixed-media artist who's spent the past decade working almost exclusively with beeswax. Ava is fundamentally guided and inspired by the organic and local materials she relies on, such as Canadian beeswax, foraged wood, birch bark, foliage and horsehair. One of her current projects is an inter-species collaboration with local honey bees...

In her abstract pieces that blend mesmerizing colors and shapes, Satsuki Shibuya, a native of Los Angeles, California, invites us to notice the ways the energies of the unseen world can be translated into something more tangible. While the primary medium she might be known for is watercolor, she currently incorporates multiple media, including oil and hard pastels, color pencils, crayons, oil, and...

In this special episode, we interviewed all 4 of the illustrators commissioned to create images for the upcoming publication of the book Paige Co-created with Maria, The Emerging Queendom. It was fascinating to hear how each illustrator approached the project so listen as we learn more about this fantastic book. Help publish the book and pick up one of the amazing perks by contributing to Indiegog...

The Emerging Queendom book is a creative collaboration between Maria, a fiber artist and cross stitch designer from Tallinn (Estonia) and Paige, a writer and creativity coach from Tokyo (Japan). Perfect for fans of fantasy and fiber arts alike, The Emerging Queendom is a celebration of strength, healing, and feminine powers. It weaves together thirteen magical stories rooted in symbols and folklor...

Isobelle Ouzman is a multinational artist who creates intricate, magical worlds through her work as an Altered Book Artist in Bratislava, Slovakia. Having been born in Leeds, in the United Kingdom, Isobelle relocated to Washington state in the US as a teenager. Through her work with altered books, Isobelle conjures opportunities for reflection, connection, and the contemplation of the ways in whic...

Clara Kumagai is from Canada, Japan and Ireland. Her fiction and non-fiction for children and adults has been published in The Stinging Fly, The Irish Times, Banshee and The Kyoto Journal. Her debut YA novel, Catfish Rolling blends magical realism with Japanese myth in a story about grief, memory and time. Catfish Rolling was nominated for the YOTO Carnegie Award, a finalist for the Great Reads Aw...