Art · The Creative Process: Artists, Curators, Museum Directors Talk Art, Life & Creativity

How can the arts help us examine and engage with social issues? How do our families shape our views, memories, and experience of the world? From her role as Dr. Lisa Cuddy on the hit Fox series House, to her starring role as Abby McCarthy in Bravo's first scripted series Girlfriend's Guide to Divorce, Lisa Edelstein's range of roles are as diverse talent. Some of Edelstein's feature credits includ...

The Making of Moon Man “So, as we started talking and going through what this could look like. I run a creator-owned superhero universe at Image Comics called the Massive-Verse, which is spearheaded by the main book I write called  Radiant Black . I like to describe it as it's like  Power Rangers  with adult problems. It's very contemporary kind of reimaginings of superhero storytel...

What does the future hold for our late-stage capitalist society with mega-corporations owning and controlling everything? How can the world-building skills of the makers of films and comics help us imagine a better future? Kyle Higgins is an Eisner award-nominated #1 New York Times best-selling comic book author and award-winning filmmaker known for his work on DC Comics’ Batman titles as well as...

"What are you trying to do with the portrait? On a basic level, you're trying to communicate something about the essence of who someone is. You're trying to figure out who they are, not necessarily who they present themselves as. The two things can quite often be different. And then, you're trying to find ways of showing that through their face, their posture, or any other context. My instinct is...

How can the arts help cultivate our intuitive intelligence? What does visual art teach us about consciousness and the human condition?    Jonathan Yeo is one of the world’s leading figurative artists and portrait painters. From celebrated figures such as Sir David Attenborough, peace activist Malala Yousafzai, the Duke of Edinburgh, Nicole Kidman, and Tony Blair, sitting for a portrait w...

Scientists, artists, psychologists, conservationists, and spiritual leaders share their stories and insights on the importance of connecting with nature, preserving the environment, embracing diversity, and finding harmony in the world. Music courtesy of composer Max Richter . All voices in this episode are from our interviews for The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast. 00:05 Adapting...

"I don't honestly know entirely where I'm headed musically. I still have a lot of songs that I haven't finished that are relatively recent and some that go back to 40 years ago, if not more. You know, projects like this last album Jude, partially songs that never had a home, you know, that didn't quite fit on an album or another project. And so, I mean, strangely enough, what I've been doing...

How can the arts inspire us to lead lives of greater meaning and connection? What kind of world are we leaving for future generations? Julian Lennon is a Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter, photographer, documentary filmmaker, and NYTimes bestselling author of children's books. Executive Producer of Common Ground and its predecessor Kiss the Ground, which reached over 1 billion people and inspired...

Q: Who is David Byrne? David Byrne: ...I have no idea. Most people know me through music, but when I was in high school I saw science and the arts as being equally creative fields. More recently, I just started taking an interest in how the brain works, and there's been this explosion of literature. As much as I love reading about neuroscience, I realize that experiencing some of the phenomena is...

What is consciousness? The mind produces thoughts, sensations, perception, emotions. How can these inner felt experiences be produced within the darkness of the human skull? Nicholas Bruckman is founder and CEO of People's Television, a production studio and creative agency that produces independent films, and video storytelling for brands. Collaborating with the The Simons Foundation th...

"I've chosen my work because I've loved the outside world. I love the things outside of myself. I love what isn't immediate to me. And I love projecting onto that as a way of kind of trying to reach the distance between my inner self and the vastness. To try to do that in a way that makes other people feel inspired by it, not be chided for not taking care of it. It's not something that I intend to...

In this fractured world, how do the arts build community, understanding, and inspire change? How does art help us define who we are and our place in the world? April Gornik is known for her large scale landscape paintings which embrace the vastness of sea and sky. Her imagined landscapes, built up through a series of underpaintings are meditations on light and time. Her work is included in the col...

"I've never wanted to be invisible. I'm voyeuristic, but in a purely intellectual way. I would suspect the reason for functioning in a vertical format is because the horizontal rectangle is the proportion of all narration, all visual narrative in all society now. In my case, the content is when I get my vision sufficiently stimulated to where I can perceive the corner of this desk with sufficient...

How does the mind influence the mind? The mind cannot function without memory. And memory is just the mind aware of itself. So how do images tell us how we see and who we are? Ralph Gibson is one of the most interesting American photographers of our time. His international renown is based on his work, which is shown and collected by some of the world’s leading museums, including the Museum of Mode...

What makes films memorable and meaningful? Great cinematographers are not only translators of a director’s vision but are involved in a dance between director and actor. When combined with personal techniques like handheld, the camera itself can become a character, bringing us back in time and behind the eyes of well-known figures like Van Gogh and Stephen Hawking, which is what Benoît Delhomme di...

"If you think Arnold is just some muscle guy, well go look in the book. Go see how Annie Leibovitz envisioned him. Go see how Robert Mapplethorpe saw him. Go see how Andy Warhol saw him. Go see how Herb Ritts saw him. He was inspiration for all of these people.” “Why I was different from all the other boys in my town I cannot tell you. I was simply born with the gift of vision.” – ARNOLD SCHWARZEN...

“Why I was different from all the other boys in my town I cannot tell you. I was simply born with the gift of vision.” – ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER Is there any better example of the American Dream than Arnold Schwarzenegger? What does it take to make your vision a reality? How do you cultivate iron focus to overcome any obstacle and realize your dreams? On the publication of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s li...

"And so one of the wonderful things that happen in the book is these writers aren't just writers, they're readers. So when they're talking about the work they love in their essays, they didn't know they were going to be in a book with some of these other people, but they end up discussing the work of other people who are in the book. And because they're doing that, the book ends up creating this w...

How do you find your voice? As a writer, how do you take what you know and what you believe to share your stories with the world? How do we let young writers know just how powerful they are and that what they do matters? In How We Do It: Black Writers on Craft, Practice, and Skill Pulitzer Prize winning, and National Book Award finalist author Jericho Brown brings together more than 30 acclaimed w...

"Music has the ability to transport you to a place and create a sort of internal landscape. And we all have life-changing things that happened to us. And I remember I made it as a way to kind of ease a busy mind. And perhaps I was missing home. I still call Orkney home, even though I'm not there every day. I'm a thousand miles away today, and I still call Orkney home. For example, when I hear the...

How has music transported you? Where do you find inspiration from the natural world? Where do you find moments of every day magic? Erland Cooper is a Scottish composer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist from Stromness, Orkney. He has released three acclaimed studio albums, four additional companion albums, and multiple EPs, including a trilogy of work inspired by his childhood home. His work com...

Happy World Oceans Month "The sculptures get claimed and almost owned by the sea. And the textures that form the patterns, all things that could never be reproduced by human hands. And it's entirely unpredictable in many cases. I go to some of the 'museums' expect to see this type of colonization or this type of growth, and it's nothing like how I've seen it envisaged it. It's completely different...

What if museums weren’t confined to buildings but could be part of the natural world? What if sculptures could not only celebrate our oceans, but also provide habitats for marine life? Jason deCaires Taylor is a sculptor, environmentalist, and underwater photographer. His works are constructed using materials to instigate natural growth and the subsequent changes intended to explore the aesthetics...

What is the role of music in cinema and why it is such an important part of the storytelling process? How does music increase our capacity for empathy and wonder? Fabrizio Mancinelli is an Italian-American composer, songwriter, and conductor, best known for his musical contributions to the world of cinema. As a songwriter, he has created original scores for The Land of Dreams,The Snow Queen 3, The...

What role do the visual arts play in drawing upon history, activating democracy, and asking questions about what culture can do? Australian artist Anthony White lives and works in Paris. White’s artistic work revolves around the notion of reclaiming the act of dissent through the production of cultural objects. His research is situated at the intersection of several fields in the social space incl...