Artsy Types

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,...

Joy and Teresa are back at it, starting season two by workshopping four seemingly-eccentric journal entries (rodents seeking revenge, a strange golf tournament, big strawberries, pickups at the gym), determining which “is something” that could be transformed into a developed story. The twosome workshop the ideas, settling on a concept, sharing their creative process as the discussion moves along....

In this highlights episode, Joy and Teresa bring back several of their most popular segments. Their discussion about what to do when you’re too busy for art struck a creative chord with listeners who shared their own hacks for making time for art after hearing this discussion. Teresa goes down the rabbit hole that is Elizabeth Siddal and Joy is dissecting the old-fashioned card game, cribbage. The...

Joy and Teresa are on hiatus enjoying the final days of summer by taking a holiday in the South of France. Just kidding! Joy is getting kids back to college and Teresa is helping her mom move to a new house. In the meantime, they have carefully assembled a “bespoke” offering of their favorite segments from season one. From losing a limb to having a bunny mistaken for a gopher, they are opening up...

Sunlight, sound systems and storage: in the finale to season one of Artsy Types, Joy and Teresa talk about the studio spaces they have, and the studio spaces they dream of. The episode kicks off with shared updates on Teresa’s poetry workshop and Joy’s attempt at playing Camille Saint-Saens on the piano. In Rabbit Holes and Recommendations, Joy is diving into the Andy Warhol Diaries on Netflix, an...

Making money, going viral, and having peers compliment your work are all ways of measuring results as an artist. Joy and Teresa are trying to figure out the best barometer for success in art. In the penultimate episode of season one of Artsy Types, they’re asking if there’s shame in chasing social media, if wanting to have sales is a bad thing, and they’re confronting the daunting possibility that...

From catastrophes to rolling vineyards to beautiful, but sorrowful, felled birds, Joy and Teresa are talking about the themes that make repeat appearances in their artistic expressions and try to understand why. They share a story they received in response to the last episode that talked about creative ways to find time for art. In Rabbit Holes and Recommendations, the discussion starts with the e...

Teresa and Joy commiserate that their creative pursuits have been put on the the backburner as Teresa helps her mom move and Joy has kids home from college. All hope is not lost, however, as the two share ideas for keeping creative sparks alive when life gets hectic—including a technological idea that may surprise! In Rabbit Holes and Recommendations, Teresa raises the bar with her acquisition of...