I wrote about the impulsive kickoff to a yearslong creative idea in a recent blog post: “Basketball Hoops: A Photography Project.” These are more of my forming thoughts on the work as it continues to unfold. (See #showyourwork and the creative ethic behind a post like this.) This project can Read more…
I had a one-sentence blog post1 in my head. Something about a thing that was not everything, followed by a notion about what is everything. (Even though that phrasing bothers me these days, because it might be confused with the socially popular, dramatic, vapid penchant to declare any and all Read more…
As I’ve written before, in “What Sets a Poem in Motion,” poetry often starts flowing in my mind when I’m present and open to it. It doesn’t take much to set it off. On hikes, in the shower, meditating. Anywhere, anytime. As long as I’m not brain-deep into spinning on Read more…
Overview: In this solo episode (ep 148), Adam Williams talks about his not-quite-forgotten chapbook of poetry and photography, San Agustinillo. He shares two very short poems — “The Palm” and “The Moon” — from that project several years still in the making. (Released on podcast on June 27, 2023) Also on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, YouTube, Google and Read more…
Overview: In this short solo episode (ep 144), Adam Williams relates the shared DNA of he and his son’s habits of thinking time. (Released on podcast on May 4, 2023) Also on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, YouTube, Google and other players. EP 144 SHOW NOTES, LINKS & TRANSCRIPT Connect with Adam Williams Humanitou on Instagram: @humanitou About Adam 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 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…
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…
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…
A year ago, I wrote something as a response, a moment of clarity, around a perpetual question that nags at me: Why am I doing this? Like many artists, the path is unclear. We’re responding to an urge that rises within us. We’re breaking norms. There is no given market Read more…
Zen brush painting is an ancient practice of clearing the mind and allowing what comes — your true nature — without effort for something. It is a practice of presence and simplicity. It’s much less about making beautiful, simple paintings than it is about experiencing and expressing a moment of bliss, Read more…
I spend a lot of time in self-inquiry. Always have, but now it’s in much more frequent, even formalized, ways with yoga and poetry and creativity. Even in Humanitou conversations, when I’m asking questions of others, it’s honest probe into myself by way of our common humanness. Immersion in one’s Read more…
I recently shared the story of Humanitou in PechaKucha style at the annual MACnificent fundraiser for the Manitou Art Center. I was one of 10 presenters sharing stories of humanness, creativity, community. PechaKucha is a 20 x 20 presentation format. It uses 20 images that show for 20 seconds each. Read more…
The internal ride of making art and sharing it in public can be day-to-day at times. I’ve got several months until my first solo photography show in June 2019, at Kreuser Gallery. The subject matter is in my hands. No pressure is put on me. I get to just be Read more…
The poem below is a #showyourwork slice of what I’m eyeing for my next chapbook. I published Echoes of Oms earlier this year and now I’ve cleared some projects to a point I can return to San Agustinillo. San Agustinillo is a small fishing village on the Pacific, in the Read more…
A prose poem, “Cottonwoods in the Valley,” from a session of trail yoga spent low and slow in the Garden of the Gods. Like I’m coming into the scene of a cold case, one left to linger in the open air for all to witness, evidence strewn, dried and decaying. Read more…
Update: This photography series continues to evolve and expand. Now called Reverence: Portraits of Natures Mortes, you can see a selection from this work in the Reverence online gallery and via the @humanitouphotography Instagram page. (April 18, 2019) I’m lighting the fuse on a new photography project. It’s one I’ve Read more…
Words often come to me when I hike. So do creative ideas and photos and … The words often come in lyrical verse. Sometimes as fragments, notes to work out later. Sometimes as formed poems I jot down and then try to leave alone, letting the flow of that moment Read more…