a farmer makes sense of the world by
providing food a dentist makes sense of
the world by helping people to their
food a plumber helps people limit where
they eliminate their food but how do I
make sense of the world as an artist my
quick story is I’m paid to pay attention
really I’m paid to listen but I don’t
come by it naturally I’m often
interrupting people maybe you can relate
I crave attention so thanks for being
here but 20 years into my career or 20
years ago when I began my career in the
arts mmm I didn’t have that kind of
self-awareness so I knew I had to make a
living somehow and like a good farmer
grows food I decided to make pottery
that could hold food and then if I could
sell it I would have it made so I start
by making a lot of cups and bowls
sometimes up to 200 of them in a day and
one day one afternoon after throwing
many of them I am nursing my carpal
tunnel and looking at all of them and
thinking what are all these really worth
and so as a way of finding out I make a
hundred in one vases that graduate in
size from one inch all the way up to 20
inches which did not help my wrist but
on a hunch I priced the first one at
$1,000 and then I decreased the price
and $10 increments all the way up the
line until the final one at the end is
free and the only one I sell is the free
one thank you no no it’s free go ahead
and finally or suddenly I’m finding that
making pottery isn’t helping me make as
much sense of the world as I’d hoped and
first I thought well maybe this is a
creative problem if I can’t make sense
maybe the cups can’t make sense
maybe the cups are too naive to know how
to hold anything at all
or maybe this cup is the prehistoric
equivalent of a bad cellphone doesn’t
work but you can take it anywhere and
what if in five thousand years
someone unearth these big jugs
what would they learn about us if I made
something so big and of questionable
utility populated with nude suburban
burnouts drinking beers in their lawn
chairs I’m getting pretty into myself
here and I make a little platter that
has a bird in the middle where you could
go to cry
surrounded by traffic and buildings
where you might cry after a traffic jam
and then BAM 9/11 happens and the world
makes no sense at all and it’s not
ironic
and as a way of grieving I look into our
history and I decide to make these
memorial platters about the Japanese
children that are evacuated and put into
internment camps from my Seattle
neighborhood in 1942 from my studio in
fact which was Yoshi OHS cleaners and in
1943 became cranes cleaners these are
bowls hanging on the wall now they don’t
hold food at all I abandoned making
things that hold food altogether
ten years into my career I cast
repeatedly a connectable form that helps
present the interconnectivity of our
spirit but at the opening I’m holding it
and I realize I’ve stripped my work down
to the bone at the height of my career
I’d hit bottom I didn’t know how to make
sense of the world through art at all
and so I become a janitor at my pottery
studio where I teach and now my parents
had never said you should make more
useful things out of your life but I’m
beginning to wish they had because
unlike farmers or plumbers or dentists
my work didn’t seem to really solve any
problems it just pointed at them and all
my ideas began to fall flat and I got
one useful piece of advice which was to
stop you’re stuck make some space for
something different and for a while
space was about all I could make and I
took the advice and I pulled my work out
of stores and galleries I sold
everything except my favorites at a
studio sale and I did what any white
middle class American male does in a
spiritual crisis I went to graduate
school
to dig a little bit deeper
I married a writer a poet yes we were a
poet and a potter destined for great
wealth but being surrounded by her
community of writers I also fell in love
with stories and in school I made
anything that I could tell a story with
so animations and blogs and comics and
music theater performance and I helped
create my first child I did not create
income and that space I’d made people
started to fill it and I started to
panic no income no free time and I
answer my next spiritual crisis because
I finished graduate school I have a
master’s in fine art and I only seem to
know that I don’t know what I don’t know
and I’m looking at my son eat his cake
on his first birthday cake mouth
I’m like that makes a lot of sense
and then I’m like wow what if I watched
other people make sense of their world
and maybe I could get paid to pay
attention maybe I could start listening
and for those of you who already know
how to do this you’re awesome but I just
didn’t at the time
so I start meeting people for coffee I
start a blog that I call more belief
because I believe in other people’s
stories and I start writing about them
and one of those coffee meetings leads
to this a facilitator needs help keeping
people engaged at an artist’s retreat
and so I roll out an eight-foot-wide
piece of paper and I grab some mr.
sketch markers you know the smelly kind
and she introduces me and I instantly
turned my back to everyone and I start
drawing everything everyone says right
as they’re saying it and I sort of enter
this trance
and in about four hours later I start
hearing chairs shuffling and I look
around
and then people are running up to me and
they’re smiling and they’re shaking my
hand and twenty years into my art career
41 years of age I learned three things
one is how to draw with sweaty hands
second is how to draw while listening
but the most important thing was that I
just made probably and exhibited
probably the worst drawing I’d made in
my life and it’s received the happiest
reception I’d ever seen I had discovered
graphic recording and I find that even
though people talk pretty fast while
they’re excited I was able to make these
look half decent and so I volunteer for
Giant Steps a conference where artists
and entrepreneurs make up their careers
so I fit right in
and I started to get some clients and at
this event I slowed down drawing even
more because I do the math if pictures
really are worth a thousand words well
then I can expect a little verbal
padding before someone stops and says so
what I really mean is and that’s when I
draw see my own and creative ideas had
begun to lost lose their poles so at
these events creative ideas were
everywhere and I just got out of the way
and I could make art again and a woman
came up to me at this event and she says
I’d never felt so heard or understood in
all my years in city politics and she
was kind of choked up and this is an Eau
Claire Wisconsin they’re just trying to
bring more visitors to their part of the
world and I say to her I don’t
understand you do
and so I keep meeting amazing people
like this woman Marie up in the
clubhouse there she’s facilitating a
conference in Iowa to bring a 1950s
brand the Rotary Club out of the
nineteen fifties and we did it I meet
leaders i bask in their wisdom
leadership isn’t people that know how to
make sense of the world always but they
keep going I admire that I learned how
to scale a company in that context I’m
drawing understanding I’m being paid to
pay attention and a man comes up to me
at this event and he says do you know
what your gift is and I say drawing and
he says space you understand how it
feels in here not just the words that
come out of people’s mouths but how
everything fits together
and I go cool but a little while later I
invite three people to join my company
including a science writer and an
aspiring space engineer and we call it a
storytelling company and we make it a
mission to make space for change we make
it a space mission and we’re within a
year working for national corporations
like nutri blend telling their story of
how they’re making a drive to save
hungry children and we start training
graphic recorders and we expand to
include animation and content strategy
for brands as varied as BASF trying to
tell a story about how they’re using
data to save billions of dollars of
waste and their supply chain or nature
works right here in Minnetonka Minnesota
converting greenhouse gases into
biodegradable plastics and the st. Paul
public schools how youth and mentors can
work together more democratically and
well I used to be envious of farmers for
having such a clear way of serving the
world now I get to work with Land
O’Lakes and help farmers understand how
to get a little more food out of a seed
out of a square foot of soil out of a
bucket of water and I’m helping 3m work
with a global Council of dentists so
children can stop skipping school all
over the world because of tooth aches
and if you know any plumbers that need
some drawings are their ideas let me
know
my cake today and I can eat it too
though I have to share it with my
eight-year-old and now a three year old
but I get to draw cartoons every day and
it’s may seem small but drawing cartoons
is a way to bring joy to really intense
amounts of chaos and that helps me
drawings you’ve seen weren’t made for
this talk they were first made for
someone else listening to someone else
discuss how they make sense of their
world demonstrating to me that the work
that serves me the most is the work I do
for others and more belief makes a space
for change like I had to make to become
more curious and when we meet people
like business leaders or even our
neighbors we’re meeting him at a point
of crisis or burnout and we offer them
three things when we roll out a canvas
or when we start scripting an animation
we ask them to make some space for
change and to become curious in that
space and to share that space even if
it’s uncomfortable who you’re sharing it
with in fact ideally the person you’re
sharing it with is somebody you might
have conflict with because that’s when
you become most creative and then show
your work to each other be exposed it’s
a safe space for that to happen you’re
part of a lineage of people that have
influenced you and who you will
influence and don’t cut that off
and really farmers aren’t the only ones
who grow food and dentists aren’t the
only ones who clean teeth an artists
aren’t the only ones who are visionary
sense of the world we can still do
something we can begin to listen to each
other
we can listen to each other and not just
the people we want to listen to listen
to people you don’t want to listen to
that helps you become more creative and
curious
and maybe we can stop being scared of
each other and we can give each other
hope
for giving me hope
you
providing food a dentist makes sense of
the world by helping people to their
food a plumber helps people limit where
they eliminate their food but how do I
make sense of the world as an artist my
quick story is I’m paid to pay attention
really I’m paid to listen but I don’t
come by it naturally I’m often
interrupting people maybe you can relate
I crave attention so thanks for being
here but 20 years into my career or 20
years ago when I began my career in the
arts mmm I didn’t have that kind of
self-awareness so I knew I had to make a
living somehow and like a good farmer
grows food I decided to make pottery
that could hold food and then if I could
sell it I would have it made so I start
by making a lot of cups and bowls
sometimes up to 200 of them in a day and
one day one afternoon after throwing
many of them I am nursing my carpal
tunnel and looking at all of them and
thinking what are all these really worth
and so as a way of finding out I make a
hundred in one vases that graduate in
size from one inch all the way up to 20
inches which did not help my wrist but
on a hunch I priced the first one at
$1,000 and then I decreased the price
and $10 increments all the way up the
line until the final one at the end is
free and the only one I sell is the free
one thank you no no it’s free go ahead
and finally or suddenly I’m finding that
making pottery isn’t helping me make as
much sense of the world as I’d hoped and
first I thought well maybe this is a
creative problem if I can’t make sense
maybe the cups can’t make sense
maybe the cups are too naive to know how
to hold anything at all
or maybe this cup is the prehistoric
equivalent of a bad cellphone doesn’t
work but you can take it anywhere and
what if in five thousand years
someone unearth these big jugs
what would they learn about us if I made
something so big and of questionable
utility populated with nude suburban
burnouts drinking beers in their lawn
chairs I’m getting pretty into myself
here and I make a little platter that
has a bird in the middle where you could
go to cry
surrounded by traffic and buildings
where you might cry after a traffic jam
and then BAM 9/11 happens and the world
makes no sense at all and it’s not
ironic
and as a way of grieving I look into our
history and I decide to make these
memorial platters about the Japanese
children that are evacuated and put into
internment camps from my Seattle
neighborhood in 1942 from my studio in
fact which was Yoshi OHS cleaners and in
1943 became cranes cleaners these are
bowls hanging on the wall now they don’t
hold food at all I abandoned making
things that hold food altogether
ten years into my career I cast
repeatedly a connectable form that helps
present the interconnectivity of our
spirit but at the opening I’m holding it
and I realize I’ve stripped my work down
to the bone at the height of my career
I’d hit bottom I didn’t know how to make
sense of the world through art at all
and so I become a janitor at my pottery
studio where I teach and now my parents
had never said you should make more
useful things out of your life but I’m
beginning to wish they had because
unlike farmers or plumbers or dentists
my work didn’t seem to really solve any
problems it just pointed at them and all
my ideas began to fall flat and I got
one useful piece of advice which was to
stop you’re stuck make some space for
something different and for a while
space was about all I could make and I
took the advice and I pulled my work out
of stores and galleries I sold
everything except my favorites at a
studio sale and I did what any white
middle class American male does in a
spiritual crisis I went to graduate
school
to dig a little bit deeper
I married a writer a poet yes we were a
poet and a potter destined for great
wealth but being surrounded by her
community of writers I also fell in love
with stories and in school I made
anything that I could tell a story with
so animations and blogs and comics and
music theater performance and I helped
create my first child I did not create
income and that space I’d made people
started to fill it and I started to
panic no income no free time and I
answer my next spiritual crisis because
I finished graduate school I have a
master’s in fine art and I only seem to
know that I don’t know what I don’t know
and I’m looking at my son eat his cake
on his first birthday cake mouth
I’m like that makes a lot of sense
and then I’m like wow what if I watched
other people make sense of their world
and maybe I could get paid to pay
attention maybe I could start listening
and for those of you who already know
how to do this you’re awesome but I just
didn’t at the time
so I start meeting people for coffee I
start a blog that I call more belief
because I believe in other people’s
stories and I start writing about them
and one of those coffee meetings leads
to this a facilitator needs help keeping
people engaged at an artist’s retreat
and so I roll out an eight-foot-wide
piece of paper and I grab some mr.
sketch markers you know the smelly kind
and she introduces me and I instantly
turned my back to everyone and I start
drawing everything everyone says right
as they’re saying it and I sort of enter
this trance
and in about four hours later I start
hearing chairs shuffling and I look
around
and then people are running up to me and
they’re smiling and they’re shaking my
hand and twenty years into my art career
41 years of age I learned three things
one is how to draw with sweaty hands
second is how to draw while listening
but the most important thing was that I
just made probably and exhibited
probably the worst drawing I’d made in
my life and it’s received the happiest
reception I’d ever seen I had discovered
graphic recording and I find that even
though people talk pretty fast while
they’re excited I was able to make these
look half decent and so I volunteer for
Giant Steps a conference where artists
and entrepreneurs make up their careers
so I fit right in
and I started to get some clients and at
this event I slowed down drawing even
more because I do the math if pictures
really are worth a thousand words well
then I can expect a little verbal
padding before someone stops and says so
what I really mean is and that’s when I
draw see my own and creative ideas had
begun to lost lose their poles so at
these events creative ideas were
everywhere and I just got out of the way
and I could make art again and a woman
came up to me at this event and she says
I’d never felt so heard or understood in
all my years in city politics and she
was kind of choked up and this is an Eau
Claire Wisconsin they’re just trying to
bring more visitors to their part of the
world and I say to her I don’t
understand you do
and so I keep meeting amazing people
like this woman Marie up in the
clubhouse there she’s facilitating a
conference in Iowa to bring a 1950s
brand the Rotary Club out of the
nineteen fifties and we did it I meet
leaders i bask in their wisdom
leadership isn’t people that know how to
make sense of the world always but they
keep going I admire that I learned how
to scale a company in that context I’m
drawing understanding I’m being paid to
pay attention and a man comes up to me
at this event and he says do you know
what your gift is and I say drawing and
he says space you understand how it
feels in here not just the words that
come out of people’s mouths but how
everything fits together
and I go cool but a little while later I
invite three people to join my company
including a science writer and an
aspiring space engineer and we call it a
storytelling company and we make it a
mission to make space for change we make
it a space mission and we’re within a
year working for national corporations
like nutri blend telling their story of
how they’re making a drive to save
hungry children and we start training
graphic recorders and we expand to
include animation and content strategy
for brands as varied as BASF trying to
tell a story about how they’re using
data to save billions of dollars of
waste and their supply chain or nature
works right here in Minnetonka Minnesota
converting greenhouse gases into
biodegradable plastics and the st. Paul
public schools how youth and mentors can
work together more democratically and
well I used to be envious of farmers for
having such a clear way of serving the
world now I get to work with Land
O’Lakes and help farmers understand how
to get a little more food out of a seed
out of a square foot of soil out of a
bucket of water and I’m helping 3m work
with a global Council of dentists so
children can stop skipping school all
over the world because of tooth aches
and if you know any plumbers that need
some drawings are their ideas let me
know
my cake today and I can eat it too
though I have to share it with my
eight-year-old and now a three year old
but I get to draw cartoons every day and
it’s may seem small but drawing cartoons
is a way to bring joy to really intense
amounts of chaos and that helps me
drawings you’ve seen weren’t made for
this talk they were first made for
someone else listening to someone else
discuss how they make sense of their
world demonstrating to me that the work
that serves me the most is the work I do
for others and more belief makes a space
for change like I had to make to become
more curious and when we meet people
like business leaders or even our
neighbors we’re meeting him at a point
of crisis or burnout and we offer them
three things when we roll out a canvas
or when we start scripting an animation
we ask them to make some space for
change and to become curious in that
space and to share that space even if
it’s uncomfortable who you’re sharing it
with in fact ideally the person you’re
sharing it with is somebody you might
have conflict with because that’s when
you become most creative and then show
your work to each other be exposed it’s
a safe space for that to happen you’re
part of a lineage of people that have
influenced you and who you will
influence and don’t cut that off
and really farmers aren’t the only ones
who grow food and dentists aren’t the
only ones who clean teeth an artists
aren’t the only ones who are visionary
sense of the world we can still do
something we can begin to listen to each
other
we can listen to each other and not just
the people we want to listen to listen
to people you don’t want to listen to
that helps you become more creative and
curious
and maybe we can stop being scared of
each other and we can give each other
hope
for giving me hope
you
Please follow and like us: