TRANSCRIPT Hey! Welcome to the Humanitou Podcast. I’m Adam Williams, a visual artist, a writer, and the creator and host of this podcast, among other things, like … … being a super-curious introvert who really isn’t a superstar at small talk but loves great, energizing in-depth conversations with incredible human Read more…
A compelling history has taken shape in the name Humanitou. And it’s rooted, I’ve come to learn, in ancient, spiritual and creative mythologies that could not be more suited to me and my work. As fated, it seems. On the practical side, Humanitou is the name of my podcast, website Read more…
I am fascinated by others’ processes of work, thought and creating. I like to see photos and hear/read stories that give peeks behind the curtain of what they do. I think that’s why I’m drawn to share some of those pieces of myself. So here’s another entry for the #creativeprocess Read more…
I’ve started using a web-based art visualizer app to simulate the look of my art on the walls of home spaces. I’m adding room-scene images that include the art framed on the walls to the web pages of individual works that I offer in the Humanitou shop. [Update, Dec. 2022: Read more…
Jack Kerouac seems to get the most attention of the Beat poets and writers. Allen Ginsberg is like the Paul McCartney to Jack’s John (or is it the other way around?). But Lawrence Ferlinghetti was always there. A presence. That’s how I perceived it anyway, though I never quite seemed Read more…
I write a few pages in a journal every morning. They’re what Julia Cameron, author of The Artist’s Way, calls morning pages and recommends as a creative tool to clear our minds as the start to each day. And I wonder if anyone else ever will read those hand-written pages Read more…
Failing our way to success is not a new idea. Counterintuitive for many of us, but not new. Tech and business and creative giants have touted it. Psychologists have studied it. Inspirational posters and Instagram memes quote our shiniest champions and thinkers who give credit to their failed attempts as Read more…
I’ve been creating work that feels all over the place. I have a lot of interests. And maybe I’m still trying to figure out who I am creatively; maybe I always will be. I appreciate the work of many others, and so I absorb many influences. I see threads I Read more…
I think there was a time I knew how to create just to create in a way that I sometimes forget now. To create for that something it gives you in the heart just to do it, no particular outcome in mind. No self-expectation of “success,” like, say, publishing or Read more…
From the time we’re kids, we’re taught that the rules of society serve harsh punishments for stealing, for plagiarizing, for being unoriginal. All while we’re being socially conditioned to conform and ultimately be … unoriginal. Should it be any wonder artists often are seen as non-conformists, as rebels, as different Read more…
I got a question from another artist after I posted something “from the #showyourwork file” this week on Instagram. (By the way, I wrote about “The #ShowYourWork Ethic” on this blog in July 2018.) And in the message exchange that followed, which I was grateful for because it prompted me Read more…
From the #showyourwork and #creativeprocess files … In my daily visual creative practice using the Procreate app on iPad, I’ve been exploring the simplicities of abstract line drawing. A lot of portraits. With blue eyes as the essential (and most obvious) thread that ties them all together. I’m exploring something Read more…
The United States seized more than 1.5 billion acres of land from Indigenous peoples between 1776 and 1887. That spans the land we call America from sea to shining sea. I live on stolen land. You most likely do too. Care to learn whose land you live on? There are Read more…
The U.S. flag is a loaded symbol. We — and I mean when taking into account the views of a truly collective, diverse “we” — can see all things in it: pride and shame, peace and violence, protection and destruction, opportunity and greed, freedom and imprisonment … on and on. Read more…
I’ve been contemplating the value of creative practices for a while now. But I’ve been mistakenly doing so, lately, as if it was new territory for me, as if I’ve never tapped into the power of it before. And then this morning I remembered a series I wrote as creative Read more…
I had a sort of breakthrough experience over the weekend. One that I’m tempted to say should be obvious. But I don’t think it is. Until it is. I was feeling like the worst artist in the world; really down about it. And then the breakthrough: I picked up the Read more…
I have not figured out if we are being punished to live during this time in history or if we are fortunate for the opportunity to be here now, to know it, feel it, live it, respond to it and tell it firsthand. History always has been an interesting subject Read more…
The artist Daniel Arsham posted a handwritten list of answers to this question on Instagram today: What is the job of the artist? Arsham’s answers: Reframe the present Interdimensional narrative Reveal the unseen Interpret the era Make joy and sadness Time travel Re-present the familiar as strange and unusual Provoke Read more…
I feel scattered in my creative interests and actions. I create this and that, pull on this creative thread and then pull that one, and follow where they go. I am drawn to a lot of ideas and ways of visually expressing them. So my interests spread, and my skills Read more…
Writing poetry has gotten less time from me of late. I started 2020 on a mission to complete a chapbook of poetry (and some photography) from time spent in San Agustinillo, on the coast of Oaxaca, Mexico. Then the upheaval that would be the year that this has been. I Read more…