Secret Sauce

Hello Creative Friends,   It's been a minute. I've been navigating some big new changes over here that I'm excited to share very soon. This is episode three of season two, and something I've been mulling over for weeks, as I think about my place in this space and time as an artist. In this episode I share one of the most artistic things I've very witnessed in my life... and it's not a painting, or...

Hello Creative Friends,   This is episode two of season TWO! We are kicking off our first guest of season two with wildlife photographer Mark Anthony Munoz.   Y'all I'm very excite for this episode. Mark is a fantastic storyteller, and has tremendously valuable insight on being an artist, monetizing work, and my favorite topic of all... BEING YOURSELF. Mark's beautiful work is (in my option) ancho...

Hello Creative friends, Welcome to Season Two! This episode is sponsored by the Holiday Card Making for Comfort Workshop happening December 19th from 1-3 pm CST. I spent a lot of time the last few months thinking about what this podcast wanted to be in 2021. This episode feels like the perfect initiation into a new season: December. To me, December is the most artistic month of the year. It's the...

Hello Creative friends, In this episode I tell the story of my art education thesis research at the University of Texas in 2010-12. I partnered with the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, TX to lead a summer art-making workshop with public school art teachers. During this workshop I led a study that wanted to answer the question: "How can art-making help art teachers reflect on their professional li...

Hello Creative friends, In this episode I dive into one of my biggest fears that I think prevents a lot of makers from going directly into a fine art career, or working for themselves... the very real concern of marrying my deep love for making art with the often brutal concerns of capitalism. In regards to this concern: I've found a lot of solace in an unlikely place. That place was the question:...

Hello Creative Friends,   This is episode TWENTY! We are kicking off our twenties with the first guest to the podcast: Jordan Goetz, Founder of Austin based Custom Furniture and Metal Fabrication business: Growler Domestics.    You are all in for a treat. Jordan tells plenty of stories about starting a business. You'll be able to tell from this conversation, part of Jordan's Secret Sauce is his ab...

Hello Creative Friends, To me, Art-Making is so much more than making a THING. Art-Making can be a micro-model for the grandest artwork we'll ever make... our lives. This episode is about one of the specific tools we use to create our life... STORY. Stories are tremendously artistic. We can tell a 100 different stories about one experience, and the stories we pick will paint the experience in very...

Hello Creative Friends, This episode digs deeper into one of the goals of Secret Sauce: To talk about the intersection of artist and art. When I first began having relative success working as an independent illustrator, I noticed something: As my work expanded, it began tugging on ME. I couldn't sleep. I had anxiety. I was perpetually overwhelmed. Overtime it became clear, as my work grew the cont...

Hello Creative Friends, How do we make great art, when what we have to work with is meager? How do we create amazing new things, when resources are thin? This episode was inspired by the wise words of John Coltrane: "You can play a shoestring if you're sincere." Maybe shoestring music is exactly the kind of art the world needs right now. Maybe we don't need to have power to make powerful things. ...

Hello Creative Friends,   Anyone here question their purpose during times of crisis? When the world is on fire, does what we make matter? In this episode I use a handful of stories to make a case for Artists during crisis. Not only do we need them... but they are imperative to moving forward.     SUPPORT THE PODCAST We have been overwhelmed with wonderful messages from you all about the future of...

Hello Creative Friends, In this episode I glom together some stories about viewing life, business and art through a lens of enchantment. In uncertain times, who the heck has time for fairy dust? This is my first stab at making a case that all of us should make time.   SUPPORT THE PODCAST   We have been overwhelmed with wonderful messages from you all about the future of this relatively new baby po...

Hello Creative Friends, What times we're in, huh? The "more" seems to keep getting... MORE. In this episode I make a case for making things together as the best chance of solving some of most looming creative problems.... and making things with people that we wildly disagree with. SUPPORT THE PODCAST We have been overwhelmed with wonderful messages from you all about the future of this relatively...

Hello Creative Friends, This episode I finally roped in my husband Jason. I'm excited to have him on, because inevitably when people ask me for advice about combining art with business, I share with them things Jason has told me. In this episode we talk about Jason's "Secret Sauce...." aka the soft skills that are so important to navigating the relationships that are integral to making anything in...

Hello Creative Friends, This episode is about what we're making when we're seemingly "not making." It's about how we're all profoundly creative and artistic just standing in a room in silence. What gets made in the pause between making? If you're painting, what happens in the space between strokes? I believe the answer is so much more than we can possibly understand. How can that inform making wil...

Hello Creative Friends, This episode is a (slightly) later follow up to Episode 8: You Have One Job. I don't really know how to to describe this episode in a paragraph, so I'm not going to. It's a long episode. I honestly wonder how I just talked for 90 minutes straight. I supposed my husband wouldn't be surprised. ;) You'll have to dive in, and hopefully come out unscathed. On that note, we have...

Hello Creative Friends, This episode is about the creative power of energy. A philosophical foundation of my work and business is that energy is profoundly artistic. We are making things all the time, even simply standing in a room! I wanted to share a story about a teacher that first taught me how energy is even... a thing. It's certainly hard to talk about with words. I hope that the story in th...

  ABOUT THIS PODCAST Welcome to Secret Sauce, a podcast about the secret ingredients in life and work, hosted by Becca Borrelli. Secret Sauce explores artistry as a helpful framework for inspiring meaning and understanding in our everyday lives.  ABOUT BECCA Becca is an illustrator-educator and part founder of Austin-based female maker collective: Lemon House. She spends most of her time designing...

Hello Creative Friends,   This episode is for the graduate kiddos. You Have One Job... and it's do figure out what you truly want, and do it. Simple. Not Easy (in the slightest).  Doing what your soul truly wants is the greatest gift you can give to the world. Far more damage is done to the planet and others by those living quiet, lives of desperation trying to live in a way they "believe they sho...

Hello Creative Friends, It's fair to say that in this time, we are understanding and re-defining the word "essential" in new ways. Especially during times of collective distress, it's easy to feel like making or creating is not only unhelpful, but selfish. How DO artists matter? What do they offer? Would the world miss them if they were gone? If we imagine a world without art, I think we can colle...

Hello Creative Friends, Last week I spoke about being invited to let go ideas of "being right" when we make things. If we're not here to be "right," a continuation of that is this episode: "We're here to make magic." Magic is an elusive thing isn't it? The word conjures up many ideas, and also very few of those ideas are "grasp-able." Maybe we think of Harry Potter or fantasy movies, but how does...

Hello Creative Friends, How are you all doing during this time? Last week, I found myself reflecting on a larger narrative for what the heck artists are doing here. Yes, we make beautiful things. Yes we feel under the surface of the world to make those things. Yes, we're here to serve others as "soul workers." But's what's the larger point of all that in a world that really seems all about dominat...

Hello Creative Friends, In the third and final part of the "We're Artists We're Sensitive as F***" series, I talk about the nature of work, and how sensitivity changes the experience we have with it. What are the assumptions and misconceptions of how we view work? Do we view "making a living" as our most important contribution? Why have we collectively created a world where most of us feel we must...

Hello Creative Friends, This is audio from my conversation last week with host of Austin's pre-eminent Art podcast: Austin Art Talk . I have been a fan of Scott David Gordon and his thought-provoking art interviews since nearly the podcast's inception. He's incredibly easy to talk to, and in this episode we dive into why artists are sensitive. I also share some stories I've never shared publicly b...

Hello Creative Friends, Why are Artists Sensitive? What if it's for a very good reason? In Part 2 of 3 in the We're Artists We're SAF Series, we expand upon the work Artists are actually doing. I use a sports hero from my hometown of Cleveland- LeBron James- as a metaphor for how an Artists work is deeply misunderstood, and how that misunderstanding can paralyze creatively powerful people. How can...

Hello Creative Friends, If Secret Sauce is the thing only we can put into the world... what keeps us from doing that? In this episode I talk about making friends with sensitivity. That can be hard to do in a world that still largely views sensitivity as weakness. How can renegotiating the stories we tell ourselves about being sensitive, give us more power to create authentically in art and life? A...