Time and again I look at something I’ve created and feel some childlike wonder that this thing before my eyes happened at all. Gratefully. Only minutes before, this space, now so colorful, textured and full of story and life, and provocations for the curious onlooker, was a blank canvas, nothing Read more…
In a separate blog post, “What Art Is Really About, Trippy & True,” I wrote about a common question of the curious who asks about an artist’s work, “What does it mean?” That blog post includes hints of where art comes from, how the meaning evolves even for the artist, Read more…
Sometimes I look at my work, my visual artwork, and think, “Someone is going to wonder where this came from.” The answer generally is, “I don’t know.” Not satisfying, I know. When we look at work and get curious about what it “means,” and want to know what the artist Read more…
Overview: In this short solo episode (ep 138), Adam Williams pulls out a helpful piece of the best-selling author Steven Pressfield’s book, “The War of Art,” noting key distinctions between worldviews of the artist and the fundamentalist. (Released on podcast on Feb. 20, 2023) Also on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, YouTube, Google and other players. EP 138 Read more…
Many writers or otherwise creative, artful beings know the story below well, I dare say. Here is an abridged version of “Christmas poem to a man in jail” by Charles Bukowski. hello Bill Abbott: I appreciate your passing around my books in jail there, my poems and stories. if Read more…
Below is a noteworthy quote by Debbie Millman, writer, artist, designer and host of the renowned podcast Design Matters, on what she’s learned about making decisions in moments of change. These comments came in conversation with her friend, and fellow artist and illustrator, Lisa Congdon on the Lisa Congdon Sessions Read more…
I’ve never been a comic book, sci-fi, Marvel superheroes kind of guy. I was drawn to nonfiction stories more than fiction, in general, and more than fantastic space-alien types of fiction especially. But in the past couple years, I’ve become aware of my own superpowers. This awareness has helped me Read more…
Notes from an evening walk with my wife on my birthday’s eve, 2021: Archipelago of clouds infused with hues of lavender and pink, something feeling more refined and elevated than mere references to cotton candy in the evening sky, a chain of islands ephemeral and conjuring the Pacific, serene Read more…
It’s not news to me that I think too much. Do you? If so, do you not already know that? Yeah. All of us who think too much know it, and we think about it. Too much. I’d like to think that my thinking over time is not so much Read more…
Overview: In this short solo episode (ep 137), Adam Williams shares forward a life-changing question. It’s the key to breaking down our reactive, defensive postures when someone says something that triggers us. (Released on podcast on Feb. 18, 2023) Also on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, YouTube, Google and other players. EP 137 SHOW NOTES, LINKS & TRANSCRIPT Read more…
I’m still buzzing with a WTF-just-happened creative exuberance the morning after. Five hours last night, including dinner break with my family. Seventy-six (76) iconographic works, made from 5:36 p.m. to 10:36 p.m., an exactitude that was as unplanned as every other aspect of this singular evening of creative explosion. I Read more…
My work tends not to be overtly political. I say “overtly” because it’s said, and I think it seems reasonable to say, that everything is political. Every expression of ourselves is read as something in the mind of someone else. Maybe now more than ever. Our clothes, our words, our Read more…
My conversation with Mike Orrill, retired Presbyterian pastor for 35 years, on the We Are Chaffee: Looking Upstream podcast landed in the on-demand Internet cyberwaves today. It also airs at 1 p.m. on KHEN 106.9 FM community radio, where most episodes of Looking Upstream are recorded, in Salida, Colo., as Read more…
In Mary Oliver’s poem, “The Moth, The Mountains, The Rivers,” she writes: “Who can guess the luna’s sadness who lives so briefly? Who can guess the impatience of stone longing to be ground down, to be part again of something livelier? Who can imagine in what heaviness the rivers remember Read more…
Humanitou is dead. Long live Humanitou. (Read “What does ‘Humanitou’ mean? “) I’ve been on hiatus from the Humanitou podcast since the summer of 2021. After more than four years of publishing conversations on the Humanitou website, in one form (text) or another (audio), and of wearing all the hats Read more…
Overview: In this short solo episode (ep 139), Adam Williams talks about the essential value in stepping up to our stories and vulnerably sharing them, with some inspiration from Fat Joe, Dax Shepard and Shaun White. (Released on podcast on Feb. 22, 2023) Also on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, YouTube, Google and other players. EP 139 SHOW Read more…
The work I posted a while back about emerging from a yearlong hiatus continues to stack up and evolve. I have posted some on Instagram, a tool I do not use much these days. So much is lost in viewing these works at such a small size on a phone Read more…
Emerging From Hiatus, New Artwork // I’ve been making new work after nearly a year of creative hiatus from the Humanitou podcast, art making, blogging, poetry and the Humanitou newsletter. With this new visual artwork, I’m speaking more to current events, to what exhaustingly feels like years of brinkmanship with Read more…
Overview: Lucas Cullen is the founder of Struggle Creates Strength, a mental health advocacy organization based in British Columbia, Canada. He’s also a podcaster, a traveler and a former semi-pro hockey player. In this conversation, Lucas and I talk about the power of story, of sharing our stories vulnerably and Read more…
Overview: James McCrae is a poet, a meme artist, and the author of the book, Sh#t Your Ego Says. Naturally, this conversation dives into James’ thoughts on the ego. We also talk about karma, existential crisis and ayahuasca, poetry and meme artistry, which James is convinced is the most potent Read more…