Episode 00: About the Podcast

“Everything gets easier when you walk away from the hubris of everyone. Your work is not for everyone. It’s only for those who signed up for the journey.” — Seth Godin

I am excited to announce that I’m starting a podcast about navigating sustainable creative careers called In Between Artist!

For those who have gotten to know me over the years it won’t be surprising that I’m starting this podcast. In a way it is something I have been working toward subconsciously for a long time now through my own artistic journey and those of my friends and former art school classmates. I have been a long-time outspoken advocate for cultivating entrepreneurial skillsets for all creatives. Art business education is so important and vastly unavailable in most academic art programs. So let’s make it free, accessible and entertaining via a podcast, my podcast, called “In Between Artist”. Listen to the trailer here.

What is an In-Between artists?

This is my personal definition. An ‘In-Between artist’ is someone just 5–10 or even 15 steps ahead of you. Someone on a similar journey and path you seek to be on. Someone not so far ahead that they can relate to where you are and provide meaningful and fresh insight.

You can deep dive into the origin stories of the “In-Between artists” here. This February 6, 2019 article I published (originally on Medium) was my first time putting my thoughts on this down on paper. I also get into who my in-between artists is. Since publishing this I’ve also grown to accept that you can have multiple overtime. I’m still an advocate that all artists should have one for themselves and my podcast may help creatives discover theirs.  

Two years later I published another Medium article announcing a mini virtual series called “From Here to There” that I hosted in partnership with my alma mater University of Michigan Stamps School of Art and Design. The announcement read:

From Here to There — Hosted by artist and alumnus Stephanie Brown (MFA ‘18), brings current Stamps students and Stamps alums together for honest and accessible conversations about the alumni’s creative career path.

Designed to help Stampers navigate their art and design careers, these talks will reveal the “nuts and bolts” of how Stamps alums worked to find a home in their creative career. With a different alumni featured bi-monthly, this live interview will be followed by a Q&A with students.

BONUS: From Here to There participants will receive contact information for the alumni speaker, who will welcome follow-up questions via email and/or social media. From Here to There is a great way for students to start their professional networking journey — and get the critical information they need to design their present and their future for the real world.

From Here to There was honestly my first time really creating episodic material that really mattered to me. I got support from my dear colleagues at UMich to make this series happen. Thank you Brian, John, and Truly. They advocated for my brilliance and saw my idea as something that could really make a difference to students. I always knew my work with them was bigger than University of Michigan alone, but it was a lovely start to something magical that I know creatives were hungry for. I was paid to host 10 episodes in total before handing the series back over to the university to continue on their own.

What is the In Between Artist Podcast about?

In Between Artists will feature honest and accessible conversations with guest artists across a variety of mediums and career stages. Your host, yours truly, will invite other creatives to share their personal journeys while highlighting practical and actionable insight on creative entrepreneurship for all to learn from. We’ll talk money, navigating obstacles, battling patience, building networks and more! This podcast is designed to help aspiring, active, and dormant artists alike kickstart, revamp, or endure their art and design careers.

I want to double down on who this podcast is for so you don’t miss this. It’s for the aspiring. Those who dream of a creative career as an artist, designer, dancer, actor, etc. It’s for the active. Those currently in the thick of career building, networking, and actively putting themselves out there. It’s for the dormant. Those of you who maybe went to art school but never got the chance to bring your creative aspirations to life. Or maybe you started on your art career and stepped away cause life and other pressing things took precedent and perhaps you’re feeling ready to try again or looking for motivation to try again. Maybe you never had the opportunity to tap into your creative potential because of familial or societal pressures to choose a “practical career” instead. Choosing a creative career is hard work but it can be satisfying, heart fulfilling work with the right community and support system. There is no one straight path to being an artist and everyone’s career map is going to look different. My hope is that this podcast will help you find elements to what will ultimately be your path forward. Let’s become cartographers and construct maps for ourselves by learning from one another. I believe that together we can help each other collect all the pieces we need to make the map clearer and a little easier to navigate.  

Who will be featured on the In-Between Artists podcast?

I plan on inviting guest speakers from all areas of my life and around the world. Visual artists, designers, dancers, musicians, and more! I’ll be sure to highlight voices of people in various stages of their career to help you out no matter what stage or phase you find yourself in personally. But its not all about my rolodex of folk. Use the contact page on my site to submit yourself or recommend friends that I should interview on my podcast.

My goal is to create 5 episodes this year starting in June. However, I’m on a personal journey to not be too rigorous with myself anymore so the cadence of this podcast will flow and evolve naturally to give myself grace in knowing that not everything goes to plan and that’s okay. I appreciate you all extending to me the same grace as well as I create healthy work/life boundaries for myself.

If you have made it this far and find yourself excited for the podcast, go ahead and subscribe to the podcast and my YouTube channel where you can opt into watching the podcast episodes. If you prefer to just listen, you catch them where you like to listen to podcasts or listen via my website www.stephaniesquared.com/episodes. I look forward to being in community with you and reading your thoughts and questions so subscribe to stay up to date with the latest episodes.

P.S. Shout out to my undercover rockstar of a husband, Phillip Fleming, who is a now seasoned podcaster of not just one but two podcasts with his co-host and friend Eric Wong. He inspired and motivated me to move forward with this even when I thought it was ‘too late’.

If you’re into comics check out The Omnibus, a comics theory and criticism podcast. If you are into Gundam, check out Operation V: A Mobile Suit Gundam Podcast, a Gundam discussion and commentary podcast where casual fan Eric Wong and hardcore fan Phillip Fleming watch and commentate on a Gundam series episode by episode.