It all feels so tentative this return to courage and voice through all the ways I create and express. (Listen/Read: “Back From Hiatus!” and “Humanitou Is Dead, Long Live Humanitou.”) It feels uncomfortable. It also feels necessary. It feels like I must push on in all the ways I feel Read more…
I’ve been using a new practice, “The Log Book of Doings,” as recognition of daily creative accomplishments and motivation to keep going. I also appreciate list making and have been fascinated by list-oriented creative projects and sharing by others. Here, I’m exploring the value of sharing a collected summary of Read more…
I went to Ski Cooper, north of Leadville, Colo., for my first time today. Snowboarding. My wife, Becca, had gone to Cooper for her first time only a few days ago. She came home and raved and raved about it. She was on a mountain high that lasted into the Read more…
I came across two messages within minutes of each other last night, both speaking to qualities of being a great man. I can’t say that I’ve considered the greatness of my manness before. I want my work to be great, but even that can be a tough sell, to myself Read more…
TRANSCRIPT of the New Humanitou Podcast Trailer Welcome to the Humanitou Podcast. I’m Adam Williams. I’m a writer, artist, poet, photographer and podcaster, among other things. Humanitou has been my podcast and my space online for exploring creativity and humanness within myself and in conversations with others, some really thoughtful, Read more…
My scrawl-abstract artwork continues to take on experimentation. Textures, scrawled writing and historical photographs still are central elements of it. But comparing scrawl-abstracts I’ve done over the past year, or so, the evolution and shifting sands become clear. Notably, there has been a return to stylistic aspects that were part of Read more…
When I wrap a podcast conversation and say goodbye to the guest, I’m left with myself, an introvert crashing in the wake of significant social energy expenditure. I’m not saying that’s negative. But I’m still trying to learn how to deal with it. To be clear, for any readers who Read more…
I wrote something last week about New Year’s Eve and the false attachments we have to it, “Beyond the Constructs, We Live in Deeds, Breaths & Heartthrobs.” The essence of that might be the magical and mundane fact that new beginnings surround us. It is not tied to the Gregorian Read more…
I stood at the gas pump for 25 minutes in 14-degree mountain cold at 8:30 a.m., with groceries now filling the back seat, waiting on the slowest. gas pump. imaginable. to fill my pickup truck’s 36-gallon tank. And I did some math. And I did some inner work, of sorts. Read more…
I’ve been aiming for simplicity in creating and all things for so many years. It’s one of those cyclical things that comes back around every so often, probably when my efforts have become overly wrought again, and it reminds me that I haven’t learned the lesson yet. Simplicity, it seems, Read more…
After time away from various creative veins (I’ve written about the hiatus), I have begun to think in lines of poetry again. I wrote a poem in the shower on one recent night, a poem with a particular still life photograph of river rocks stacked in my mind, a poem Read more…
I spent a good portion of a recent evening pulling images from the Library of Congress archives for use in my ongoing “scrawl” abstracts art series I’ve been working on. Scrawl-abstracts. That’s what I’ve been calling them. It’s the best I’ve got, so far. I usually have naming ideas and Read more…
In the waning moments of the calendar, I feel like I ought to write pithy, witty, essential words that encapsulate the year that’s been and launch good vibes for the year ahead. And then I remember that social pressures and sentimentality around this time are constructed by humans. We get Read more…
Poetic notings of an afternoon in July 2021 while reading on my front porch in Colorado: A winged yellow insect appears on the page I am reading, walking northward, parallel to the epic’s spine. It pauses in the gap where the sentence soon will end, “Music erupted in the [insert Read more…
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…
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…