Artsy Types

Shorter days and falling leaves have Joy and Teresa thinking back to grade school fall art projects. They recall laminating fallen leaves between melted wax paper and making homemade Halloween costumes. They also explore the ways the changing seasons impact their art today and what each hope to accomplish artistically before year-end. The episode is bookended at the start with an update on Joy’s a...

Joy and Teresa update one another on current projects. Joy reveals she is leaving on a trip and wants to try sketching on location. Teresa has been getting into a flow at her workbench and is allowing a new collection to emerge on its own. They’ve both been busy writing one-line stories to read out loud. The conversation begins by featuring listener comments to the question, “Why I Create,” and en...

Hearing Barry Manilow explain why he writes songs has Teresa and Joy asking each other why they create? Joy has one word that captures her motivation as a creator, and Teresa pinpointed several words that drive her metalsmithing. Miniature paintings and one-sentence-stories have led Teresa into a rabbit hole, and Joy reads up on the Edmund Fitzgerald. Comments are still coming in from the digital...

Finished works of art are born from small ideas. Tiny seeds—sometimes just a few scattered thoughts—somehow nestle into our minds, find ways to grow and finally make their way to a pencil, a paintbrush, piano keys, a mound of clay or a piece of enamel. Joy and Teresa talk about using an annoying crow, a haunting photograph, and an inflatable kayak as launchpads to creativity. In Rabbit Holes and R...

Do you have habits and rituals, or things like special clothing or playlists that set the stage for your creativity? Joy and Teresa share the recipes they each use to spark their creativity. From alt-rock band Pavement playing loudly through headphones, to curated ambient music designed to create an “emotional weather system” in the studio, their two recipes start at the same places then quickly v...

Artists have tried to replicate the works of the masters for centuries. Copying to learn is nothing new. But what happens when the piece of jewelry you dreamed up while looking at the stars, sketched into existence in an old notebook and crafted after hours at your workbench—what happens when you see that identical piece of jewelry for sale on someone else’s website? Joy and Teresa discuss the imp...

The creativity conversations are generating lots of ideas, and they’ve led Joy and Teresa to pose a question to one another: what have your a-ha moments been? Are there revelations that have found their way into your artistic process? Whether it’s a reminder to get out of the studio and live life, or a directive to call upon muses to help with creativity, the a-ha moments are revealed. The episode...

Creating art is one thing, getting it noticed another. How do exhibitions work, and what is a juried competition? What are tips for getting into magazines and invited onto podcasts? Teresa and Joy have a practical conversation with specific takeaways including tips on photography and a key website. This episode’s rabbit holes include the Staedtler Mars Techno Lead Holder and a round up of beach re...

Teresa is on the cusp of a fresh start as she moves into a new home and studio, while Joy is in a creativity slump. In this episode, Teresa and Joy talk about the up and down phases that exist for all artists and how to navigate seasons of creativity. In their “Last Thing I Wrote” segment, Joy brings quotes from recent books that inspired her, and Teresa is writing about roadkill and antique books...

The two-week digital detox has drawn to an end, and Joy reports to Teresa how her life changed while going off-grid. What were the hardest parts, did she ever cheat on the experiment, and did being away from the phone jump start her creativity? While Joy was staying away from social media, Teresa was monitoring the Artsy Types Pod Instagram account and shares followers’ advice. Joy offers a mixed-...

Joy decides to go off-the-grid for two weeks in an attempt to re-set thought patterns, gain time, spur creativity and live life outside the distorted lens of social media. Teresa suggests parameters for the experiment and offers advice after her own attempts to work in silence. During the digital detox, Joy will keep a journal of observations and in the following episode report whether she made it...

Honesty is the foundation of good art, but is there such a thing as being too honest? Spurred on by a beautifully forthright statement that Teresa recently made on Instagram, this episode’s conversation explores where the line is between artistic confessionalism and trauma dumping. As the episode moves along, there’s a segment on “The Last Thing That Inspired Me” that brings out favorites in telev...

The resurgence of plein air painting, over-the-top maximalism, visibility of the artist’s hand laid bare in finished work, the way museums treat sensitive subjects--Joy and Teresa look at cultural and artistic trends, extending the topic all the way into the Gen X segment and debating whether any 80s trends should return. “The Last Thing I Wrote” segment comes back, bringing with it roadkill and a...

Artists are creatures of habit, and those habits either help creativity flourish or get in its way. Teresa is sharing the habits that have helped build her metalsmith practice, and Joy is asking for ideas to combat the dreaded bad habit of social media distraction. The episode begins with an anecdote about how the art of Gerald Scarfe made an early impact and ends with a back-and-forth about the m...

An accident, a coincidence, a life event. Conversations between mothers and daughters. Sheer boredom. Teresa and Joy are putting words to the alchemy that took place in their lives to transform daily routine into lifelong pursuits of creativity. Before taking on the task of unraveling creative alchemy, they do some quick warm up calisthenics trying to spit out words that start with GN, and they bo...

In this second “Is This Something” episode, the tables are turned, and Joy and Teresa are thinking through Teresa’s idea fragments for a new collection based on Polaroids and poems she crafted last year while saying goodbye to her childhood home. The back and forth conversation is a template for how creators can talk through concepts to transform rough ideas into finished pieces of art. The creati...

Joy and Teresa count down the three tips they each think every artist should know, and at least one of the tips is something that will surprise listeners! Whether you are a painter, a jeweler or an every day creative, there will be a takeaway to use from this episode. Teresa goes down a fascinating rabbit hole of video archives from days gone by and Joy does a round-robin of tv, book and music rec...

Joy and Teresa walk through the process for setting annual creative goals and lay out what they each hope to achieve in the coming year. From creating a collection of paintings, to writing a poem a month, producing a newsletter and improving photography, this year’s goals are ambitious and not without revenue goals and software tools to help achieve them. Teresa has gone down the rabbit hole of cr...

Joy and Teresa are goal-setters by nature, even when it comes to creativity. To close out the year, they take a look back at the 2025 goals they each set as creators and disclose whether they accomplished them. Before kicking off the main topic, though, Joy quizzes Teresa on her knowledge of terms-of-art. . .for art! In Rabbit Holes and Recommendations, Teresa discovers a hidden message in an old...

How do two Artsy Types celebrate the holidays? With home cooking, homemade crafts and one very peculiar tradition involving 80s vinyl records. Joy and Teresa also count down their favorite holiday songs, finding themselves knee-deep in a difference of opinion about the Gen X holiday anthem, “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” The two also share memories of their favorite TV Christmas specials from the...

Sometimes creators need more than the voice in their own head--they need a nudge from a friend. Joy and Teresa assign each other surprise creative challenges in this episode, laying out a path for listeners to try their own projects. Joy kicks off the episode reporting on her visit to Milan to see DaVinci’s Last Supper. Teresa recommends an Instagram rabbit hole where followers can see famous song...

Whether or not to take commissions is a question every creator is faced with at some point. Joy and Teresa are talking pros and cons, logistics, and reliving a commission gone awry involving an airbrush and a Harley Davidson. Rabbit holes and recommendations is on a hiatus, and taking its place is a new segment, “The Last Thing I Wrote Down.” Joy is taken to task in real-time for gatekeeping Gen X...

Divine inspiration, random occurrences, ideas born from dreams. . .what are we to make of creative ideas that come to us in unconventional ways? Joy and Teresa look at famous examples of great works of art born out of dreams, then attempt to gain an understanding of how the supernatural can impact creation. The exchange leads to a practical discussion of ways artists can quiet the logical part of...

Daydreams, hidden ambitions and a never-before-shared passion project—Joy and Teresa are telling each other their secret goals for the first time. A coffee table book, a herd of cows and St. Sulpice all get laid bare in this swap of secrets. In Rabbit Holes and Recommendations, Teresa has discovered a mysterious cure for insomnia, and Joy has discovered a band that everybody else discovered 30 yea...

From Sylvia Plath to Wayne Thiebaud, Joy and Teresa are talking about the creators who’ve inspired and influenced their work. Whether it’s Plath’s ability to impart “an impression of a feeling that you don’t know what to do with,” or Thiebaud’s colorful shadows, these old-school influencers are at the heart of an interesting discussion about early inspirations. In Rabbit Holes and Recommendations,...