Makers & Mystics

Josh Nadeau is a print maker, writer and clothing designer living in Western Canada. His Instagram account, Sword and Pencil, features a library of images and musings about goodness, truth and beauty. His work, both in word and in image, aims to offer solutions to disenchantment and acts as an antidote to Christian culture’s rampant mediocrity. In this episode, Stephen talks with Josh about the ro...

Canadian-born Erika Lemay has become a beautifully disruptive icon in the world of live performance, using her body in ways that defy both gravity and human possibilities. Her journey has taken her from her first ballet class at the age of four to worldwide success and accolades. As the creator of Physical Poetry , Erika believes that ‘Poetry doesn’t have to be expressed with words’. Her TV perfor...

Bette Dickinson is a visual artist, writer, and speaker who invites audiences to connect with God through visual parables of the spiritual journey. Through creative communication, she helps her audience awaken to the beauty of God and His Kingdom and see more clearly the eternal realm in the heart and in the world. Through her work, Dickinson helps her audience connect the inner life of spiritual...

YOUNG OCEANS is a neo-alternative worship project that evolved from a gathering of musicians, re-imagining hymns in a New York City apartment. Untethered from the expectations of a traditional congregational format, these artful re-renderings gave birth to a sound that is at once familiar and refreshingly innovative. The musical ethos of Young Oceans emerged as more a companion to reflective praye...

The Welcome Wagon is a musical duo comprised of married couple, Vito and Monique Aiuto. heir musical style is steeped in sacred song traditions presented with minimalist Alt-Folk sensibilities. Their musical journey began with Asthmatic Kitty Records in 2008 with the debut album, Welcome To The Welcome Wagon produced by Sufjan Stevens. In this bonus, album drop episode, Vito and Monique share with...

Blaine hogan is a writer, film and creative director and actor. He is the former creative director for Willow Creek Community Church and is currently a full-time filmmaker living in Atlanta, Georgia.  His recent memoir titled Exit The Cave: Embracing A Life of Courage, Creativity and Radical Imagination is a brutally honest recounting of his struggle with addiction and the unexpected gift of hitti...

Michael Hayes is the founder and director of Umoja Health, Wellness, and Justice Collective. He is a visionary agent of change who has found powerful ways to infuse the art of storytelling and the science of resilience into opportunities for healing and recovery. He is the author of the HOPE module (Healing Our Past/Personal Experiences,) a Certified Peer Support Specialist, a Wellness Recovery Ac...

Malcolm Guite is an English poet, academic and priest in the Church of England. He is a fellow of Girton College in the University of Cambridge and has published widely in the field of theology and literature.  His research interests include the intersection of religion and the arts and the examination of the works of J.R.R. Tolkein, C.S. Lewis and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.  In this episode Malcolm...

Rachel Marie Kang is a New York native, born and raised just outside New York City. She is an author, poet and founder of The Fallow House online creative community.  Her writing has been featured in Christianity Today, Proverbs 31 Ministries, and (in)courage. A mixed woman of African American, Native American (Ramapough Lenape Nation), Irish, and Dutch descent, she is a graduate of Alliance Colle...

Strahan is a writer, award-winning folk musician and spiritual director from Aotearoa, New Zealand. He founded Commoners Communion in 2017 to explore what it means to become a deeply prayerful people in our times. Since then, he has written three prayer books offering poetic prayers, contemplations and reflections to help readers deepen their communion with God. Today, Strahan runs spiritual retre...

Jess Ray  is a singer-songwriter-and music producer from Raleigh, North Carolina. Her particular musical brand, has been  affectionately dubbed “friendly folk,” and is an enchanting blend of indie pop vibes and lyric-driven sensibility.  Jess’ decade-long musical journey has weaved in and out of Christian spaces, mainstream circles, from house concerts to historic venues like the Ryman Auditorium...

Lore Ferguson Wilbert is a writer, thinker, learner, and author of the book, A Curious Faith . She writes for She Reads Truth, Christianity Today, and more, as well as her own site, Sayable.net . You can find her on Twitter and Instagram @lorewilbert. She lives in New York and has a husband named Nate, a puppy named Harper Nelle, and too many books to read in one lifetime. In this episode, I talk...

Cathy Loerzel is the Co-Founder of The Allender Center at The Seattle School of Theology and Psychology and co-author of Redeeming Heartache: How Past Suffering Reveals Your True Calling with Dan Allender. She has spent the last 15 years developing a popular new coaching and therapeutic approach called Story Work that moves people through their past stories of heartache to heal and discover health...

This introduction to Season Ten of the Makers & Mystics Podcast offers a brief overview of themes we will discuss in our interviews, artist profiles and round-table discussions. The meta-narrative is “Restoring The Heart of The Artist.” Inside this are three distinct threads. Wounded Healers. In The Splice. Re-storying. Stay tuned and get ready to take the journey. It is time to leave the past...

Ryan Diaz  is a poet and writer from Queens, NY. He holds a BA in History from St. Johns University and is currently completing a MA in Biblical Studies. His work has been featured in publications like  Ekstasis ,  Premier Christianity ,  Dappled Things , and  Busted Halo . In this bonus episode, Ryan and I talk about the relationship between poetry and prayer, cynicism and the sacramental imagina...

Portrait Artist, Hannah Rose Thomas has pioneered an incredible means of combining humanitarian work with paintings of refugee women she has encountered. Through her art, Hannah gives voice to the voiceless, lionizes the isolated and prescribes dignity to the persecuted and forcibly displaced. In this episode, Hannah and Stephen discuss her process of portrait painting and advocacy as well as the...

In this season finale episode, Stephen Roach shares on how the past two years have impacted artists personally, socially and creatively. Drawing from his own journey of faith and art, Stephen tells how spiritual practice, community and imagination have played a significant role in re-integrating fragmented parts of himself into a deeper, lasting wholeness. Become A Patron Brightbell Creative: Mean...

Laura Valentine is the Artistic Director and Choreographer for Numinous Flux Dance Company in Nashville, TN. The work she curates is sensory and riddled with humanity, telling stories thru the human form and searching for a shared inner movement between herself, those embodying the work, and those making sense of it. She has crafted and produced multiple full length productions over the past decad...

Pete Scazzero’ s book Emotionally Healthy Spirituality has had a tremendous influence on our modern understanding of how emotional health intersects with contemplative spirituality. In this episode, our friend Luke Humbrecht talks with Pete about how the artist can live a more healthy emotional and spiritual life. Help us continue to produce these conversations on art and faith! For as little as 1...

Chris White is an award-winning filmmaker who has spent over a decade writing, directing, and producing a variety of feature length and short films. His most recent project is the music-centric, coming of age comedy Electric Jesus, which explores the world of a fictional 1980's Christian hair metal band called 316. The film follows the band's journey from playing Bible camp talent shows...

In this bonus episode, I speak with one of today’s favorite mental health advocates, Dani Parks .  Dani is a public speaker, author, minister and mentor of young adult girls. In our conversation, she shares her story about her struggles with depression, suicide attempts, and the mental suffering she endured for over ten years due to the incorrect treatment of her bipolar disorder.  Get Dani’s Jour...

In this episode, I talk with Author and Professor ,Mary McCampbell about her book, Imagining Our Neighbors As Ourselves: How Art Shapes Empathy. In our conversation, we discuss how narrative art serves as an invitation to awaken and expand our capacity for empathy. Buy Mary’s Book Support The Podcast! Your generosity enables this work to continue. Featured music by: Jessamyn Day Interlude music by...

Sho Baraka  is a globally recognized recording artist, performer, culture curator, activist, and writer. His work combines his artistic platform with his academic history to contribute a unique perspective, elevating the contemporary conversation on faith, art, and culture. In this episode I talk with Sho about his book, He Saw That It Was Good: Reimagining Your Creative Life to Repair a Broken Wo...

In this Round Table Discussion, I talk with visual artist and performance speaker, Scott Erickson along with trauma therapist, ritual-maker and NYC-based artist, Heather Stringer. In this round table, we talk candidly about disorientation and the process of re-orienting after two years of social and personal upheaval. Join the Creative Collective Official Website Follow Us on Instagram Send us Fan...

Joshua Luke Smith is a British rapper, poet, and producer with a dramatic, socially conscious style rooted in explorations of the Christian faith. He was born in London raised in Pakistan, and holds a degree in philosophy, which informs his music with a unique perspective on the world both from his education and experience.  In this episode, I talk with Joshua about his upbringing, his creative pr...