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SPECIAL - Gathering & Community For Artists with Stephen Roach
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Gathering & Community For Artists with Stephen Roach of Makers & Mystics
In a special conversation, host Lisa Smith sits down with Stephen Roach, founder of The Breath and The Clay creative arts organization and host of the Makers & Mystics podcast. As a poet, musician, and self-proclaimed “creative instigator,” Stephen takes Lisa through the concept of what it means for artists to be architects of hope.
The two also dive into the gravity and healing nature of meeting in person with other artists, as Stephen prepares for the 2024 Breath and Clay Creative Arts Gathering in Winston-Salem, North Carolina on March 22-24.
Learn more about the Breath and Clay Creative Arts Gathering: https://www.thebreathandtheclay.com/
Listen to the Makers & Mystics podcast: https://www.makersandmystics.com/
Connect on Instagram: @thebreathandtheclay @makersandmystics
Connect on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thebreathandtheclay/ https://www.facebook.com/makersandmystics
As we continue our Wise-Hearted Ones series, be sure to subscribe and follow Be.Make.Do. on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Join the movement at https://soulmakers.org.
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Transcript
Introduction to Be Make Do Podcast
00:00:10
Speaker
Hello, welcome to Be Make Do, a soul maker's podcast where we talk about what it takes to pursue your calling as a culture maker with spiritual wholeness and creative freedom. I'm your host, Lisa Smith, here with my producer, Dan ABH. Hello, everyone. And we are here to encourage and hopefully inspire you to become who you are created to be, make what you are created to make and do what you are created to do.
Impact of Art and Design in Faith
00:00:38
Speaker
We're really enjoying the season of the podcast and our conversation about the wise hearted ones in the book of Exodus. Looking at ways art and design shape our world and the implications for those of us working as artists of faith.
00:00:52
Speaker
Now, if you haven't had a chance yet, I invite you to go back and take a listen to some of the conversations we've been having with artists and architects and theological thinkers about why it matters. It matters that you make art and why how you make matters.
Empowerment Through Artistic Community
00:01:12
Speaker
This week, we've got a special episode for you. We're going to pause the teaching material to have a conversation about community and gathering and why these things are so important. Building empowering relationships is one of the key principles for soul makers. And obviously having a community of support and a community of challenge makes a difference for everyone. But why is it important for artists specifically?
00:01:41
Speaker
Today, I'm joined by Steven Roach to chew on these questions a little and invite you to join us in Winston-Salem, North Carolina at the end of March for the Breath and Clay Artists Gathering. You'll find me there along with Dan and some other people from the Convergence and Soulmakers community leading a workshop on curating wholeness, building a purposeful world through art.
00:02:04
Speaker
along with a bunch of other great keynote sessions, performances, workshops, and just a great opportunity for you to meet other artists and creatives from around the country and around the world. So on that note, let's talk about community and gathering.
Steven Roach's Creative Journey
00:02:31
Speaker
Well, so Steven Roach is a poet, musician, and founder, the creative mind behind Makers and Mystics podcast and Breath and Clay Creative Arts Gathering, which is being held in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, March 22nd to 24th. We're excited because we're planning on being there. And we're just so excited that you would take some time to talk with us for the Be Make Do podcast. Welcome, Steven. Thank you so much for having me. I've been looking forward to this conversation all week.
00:02:59
Speaker
Good. Good. Me too. Well, I want to take some time to talk about the gathering and about the theme of community in general, which you're exploring on the Makers and Mystics podcast in this season. But before we go there, I just wanted to kind of give a chance for you to introduce yourself to our audience and let them know a little bit about you. So what's your story? Who are you anyway?
00:03:22
Speaker
How much time do you have? Yeah, right. Yeah. So, yeah, I'm Steven Roach and I live in North Carolina. I've lived here my whole life. In fact, my mom's side of the family, I tell people she was one of 15 kids and they were all bluegrass musicians from here in North Carolina. And then my dad was also, he was actually a third generation fiddle player from the Appalachian Mountains. And so,
00:03:52
Speaker
Both sides of the family, very musical. I grew up playing music. I toured professionally, created a band called Songs of Water. We toured for a number of years. And I'm still active as a film composer. I write instrumental music for different film projects, as well as a bit of a poet, I suppose, on my good days. And yeah, and just like to think of myself maybe as a creative instigator of sorts.
00:04:21
Speaker
I like that creative instigator.
From Musician to Community Leader
00:04:25
Speaker
I mean, you've got those deep roots that music is sort of, it's in your blood. Oh yeah. I jokingly tell people I was condemned to be a musician from the start. You didn't, you never had a chance. All right.
00:04:38
Speaker
And then you mix that with this creative instigator. Yeah, I'm curious because we're similar in the sense that we both have this artistic background and even creative families. But then there's this other thing on top of what compels somebody to then become a convener, you know, to then become somebody who wants to encourage other artists to do what they do. Where'd that come from for you?
00:05:04
Speaker
That's a great question. I think at one point when I was touring and music was kind of the primary focus of my life,
00:05:15
Speaker
I was wondering how long touring would be a part of what I did and different places that we would go. People would always begin to ask me, how did you create this sound or how did you stumble into this music? Because it was very experimental. I've always been an experimentalist in everything that I do, self-taught. And so I just saw, especially within the art community and then even more nuanced within the faith art community,
00:05:45
Speaker
a need to know we have freedom to explore, you know, questions about how can we combine our art with our own, you know, spiritual practices, things like that. And so I just saw the need there and something as I began to grow
00:06:04
Speaker
that began to grow with me, that I not only wanted to perform and to create, but I also wanted to help others to liberate that creative spark inside of them. And so, yeah, it was all the way back in 2014, my wife Sarah and I held the first little mini Breath and Clay event in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, with about 100 folks that came out locally.
00:06:30
Speaker
But throughout the year, they just continue to write to us and say, are you going to do another one? Are you going to do another one of these? And so it just kind of grew from there. And I figured out, you know, this is just as much a part of the DNA or the fabric of my creative self as the art that I'm making of my own, you
Importance of Awareness in Faith-Based Communities
00:06:52
Speaker
know? Yeah.
00:06:53
Speaker
Yeah, I resonate very much with that and started to understand the more I understood about visual art. I kind of felt like I'm a community artist social practice kind of person. It doesn't fit into the box.
00:07:11
Speaker
But so I think that's just a really important thing at this time. That's one of the things I'm excited to have you on the podcast to be able to introduce you to our little group of people so they can get connected with what you're doing. I am amazed at how many little pockets of groups of artists of faith there are all over the world and how disconnected
00:07:38
Speaker
We all are from each other. We don't know that there's a lot of other people out there like us. And I really am wondering if that awareness of each other is something that God is doing right now in a larger movement of sort of raising up these artists to service in the culture in a more intentional way.
00:08:03
Speaker
You know, it's always beautiful for me when I stumble across another creative community like yourself, like your own. And I find that there's a resonance happening there almost like the synchronicity or something that we've all been tapping into the same thing and we didn't realize it.
00:08:22
Speaker
But I also along with that, I see how so many folks just need encouragement. So many people right now just need to know that their work matters, need to know that what they're doing is not in vain. There's a higher purpose for it, you know, and
00:08:38
Speaker
So I think you're right there. And that's really one of the motivators behind what we do is to kind of take that red thread and begin to needle the communities together and begin to see what kind of shape and form it might take. If, you know, if one puts a thousand to flight, what will 10,000 do, you
Healing Through Post-Pandemic Gatherings
00:08:57
Speaker
know?
00:08:57
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that was one of the things that I was curious about to ask you, just thinking so much has changed over the last couple of years, understatement, right? Just a little bit. Just a little bit. But you've been convening these gatherings for a while, but then now there just feels like there's something different about convening now after all this time and so much has happened.
00:09:25
Speaker
Maybe there's two questions. In general, why do you think it's important to gather artists together in the same place? And why now? What's different maybe from before? Yeah, such a great question. You know, before, for me on one hand, even though there was a deep sense of calling involved with it,
00:09:47
Speaker
I think at the same time was just a beautiful excuse to get super cool people in the same room together and see what would happen. So maybe it was a social experiment for me. Just kind of seeing what kind of collaborations would be born out of these connections if we got in the same space. But now there's a deeper purpose in it for me. And it's because I recognize that
00:10:14
Speaker
so much damage was really done to so
Solitude vs. Isolation in Creativity
00:10:19
Speaker
many people. But I would say specifically to those working in the arts and entertainment industries, those that, you know, like my own journey, event planning and hosting public gatherings in the midst of a worldwide lockdown is not a very lucrative career. Let's just say it that way.
00:10:41
Speaker
But for me now, it's more than just hosting a fun event to get everybody together. There's a real element of healing involved in this. And so when you say, why now? Why is this important now? I know because even in my own life, there is an element of restoration. There is an element of redemption. There's an element of healing.
00:11:06
Speaker
that I believe is part of our gathering together again. And I think that just on a societal level,
00:11:15
Speaker
We need that. We need one another. And I think, you know, for me, I differentiate between solitude and isolation. And I've experienced both. Solitude is life-giving. It's nurturing to the creative spirit. Solitude is where innovative ideas are born. It's where we can find the freedom to flesh out ideas and experiment with things. So solitude is necessary.
00:11:42
Speaker
for flourishing in the creative life. But isolation is
Value of Physical Presence in Art Gatherings
00:11:47
Speaker
detrimental. Isolation is damaging because isolation pulls you away from community, whereas solitude is kind of feeling you up for community, if that makes sense. That's interesting, yeah. You know, and so the reason I bring that up is because I think that many of us have been in a place of isolation and we've almost normalized
00:12:11
Speaker
digital currency in the sense of
00:12:15
Speaker
you know, the way that we interact online and the way that most of our relationships are formed through this digital platform, you know, which there's nothing wrong with that. I'm grateful for it. We're having this conversation because of that technology. But I think because it's so normalized that we we forget the need we have for looking another person in the eye. And I just think that gathering with other artists, other like minded people, other seekers, other people on their own journey,
00:12:45
Speaker
I think it's important because it pulls us out of our own sort of basic selfishness in some ways and it can pull us out of our own inverted self-focus.
00:12:59
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's a really interesting opportunity. We thought a lot about this in conjunction with being a community that was meeting in person and then during the pandemic going online and then coming back together only now we have a more dispersed group of people around. But that conversation between online versus in person really got me thinking a lot because I am
00:13:28
Speaker
an introvert and I love the solitude and I can even like hang with the isolation in some in some respects probably you know that's the area that I need to be pushed in but it was actually really interesting the time online
00:13:43
Speaker
was in a way actually really healing for me around some relationships and the idea of relationship in general and it kind of expanded and broadened my network of relationships because it was so intentional and so maybe spiritually or artistically focused and I didn't have to do all the small talk and the other conversations that go that are problematic or difficult for me sometimes.
00:14:10
Speaker
So it was really interesting. However, at this point, like now I'm really longing, like I want to see those people and I want to hug them and I want the atmosphere. So I think that what's really interesting about coming together after having not done that for so long is it gives us the chance to ask, what is so special about being in the same room together? What is it about the atmosphere that makes
00:14:36
Speaker
this gathering different and how do we take advantage of it and maybe not waste some of that time? Maybe we've been too superficial in some of our encounters with each other and how could we take maybe some of what we learned online and from that solitude and really embrace the fact that, oh my gosh, we're in the same room together. Let's really celebrate that and not take it for granted. Do you know what I mean?
00:15:03
Speaker
Absolutely. And you're right. And, you know, there is certainly that beauty of the online experience that that we even got to taste a bit when the lockdown first happened.
Global Connections During Lockdown
00:15:17
Speaker
And I remember, man, one of the most impacting things that I ever saw is there was someone in China who
00:15:24
Speaker
was on their rooftop and we did these online communions together and they couldn't they couldn't go outside they couldn't go anywhere and they just snapped a picture and they put it on online where we were doing our gathering of them taking communion with us in China from the top of their building and I'll never forget that it was one of the most beautiful things to see
00:15:48
Speaker
Um, that we were, it has given us the ability to connect on such a broader level. Now I'm ready to connect on a deeper level. And you know, I've said several times, I don't think I coined this. I'd like to take credit for it, but I don't think I coined this. Yeah.
00:16:05
Speaker
But art is incarnational and, you know, there's just something of the sensory experience of art that you don't get online, you know, to be in the same room with someone, to smell the smell, to taste the taste, to see, to touch, to hear.
00:16:25
Speaker
to feel the bass rumbling off the speakers on your body, you know, to be able to grab someone's hand and tell them how much their painting impacted you, to be able to see without that filter between you. There's something incarnational about that experience that I'm excited to lean into again. You know, we haven't done a fully live experience since 2019, so this will be a special time.
00:16:54
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's interesting and I'm very interested in that and what you're curious to explore in that gathering and specifically with artists and this idea of thinking about the embodied nature of things and the incarnational peace.
Art's Spiritual Role
00:17:15
Speaker
I'm feeling very much a sense of wanting to
00:17:19
Speaker
encourage and push forward this conversation around the importance of what the arts are and what art making really is, that it's much more than just something kind of nice that we sort of do, but that perhaps there is a much more integral role that was intended, that God created it for, and that maybe it's time for artists to kind of like shake off some of that stuff and say, okay, if all this stuff matters, if our environment matters,
00:17:48
Speaker
maybe there's a spiritual and an important role that we actually do have to play and it's okay to take up space. And yes, we need to deal with our humility and all that other good stuff, but so does everybody else. And maybe we can let go of that conversation and talk about, you know, what does it look like to be called by God to do this work and take it seriously? Well, you know, I think for me,
00:18:15
Speaker
Even before I identified as a follower of Jesus, I always had this intimation that the arts were deeply spiritual in nature. I've just always known and believed and experienced however
00:18:32
Speaker
I defined that or however I labeled that, I've always known that there is an inherent spiritual component to the arts. And the more that I go along, the more that I realized that, you know, there are just certain things that cannot be expressed in scientific prose. There are just some things that cannot be expressed in a linear
00:18:59
Speaker
interpretation of the experience, you know, there are some things that the only language that can hold the depth of that emotion might be a dance. Or the only way to give shape to our ideas about the universe is to sculpt it on a wheel, you know, or, you know, and the analogy can go on and on. But there
00:19:22
Speaker
I think that the language of the arts provides a means of understanding spiritual truth that we just don't easily see. And so when you're talking about maybe there's a deeper purpose, that's where my mind goes is that there's just this other dimension to what it means to be human. Doesn't have to be super woo woo.
00:19:46
Speaker
Yeah, it's just what it means to be human requires that we exercise that language. And that's for everybody. Some people say, well, I'm not an artist, right, but you're an appreciator of art. And, you know, you still have that component inside of you as a human being, whether you make art or whether you respond to it.
00:20:09
Speaker
We're all creative because that's the image, you know?
Creating Culture Through Intentional Art
00:20:13
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. And we're so influenced and shaped by our environments, especially, you know, and we're responsible for our created environments, you know, our human created environments. And there's so much that goes into that.
00:20:27
Speaker
That's a big part of I think what I would love to see move to the front of the conversation. We're not just talking about art in an art museum or going to see a show. We're talking about, you know, the culture. We're talking about
00:20:42
Speaker
everything we swim in all the time and the difference of are we being intentional about that as a particular way of being human or not because it's a choice and you either choose or you choose not to choose or as Rush would say, you still have made a choice, right? The band. I was like, Rush? Yeah, Rush the band, sorry.
00:21:12
Speaker
Yeah, I'm actually, I wanted to kind of push a little bit further into this question of what you hope or are praying might come out of this gathering of artists at this time. I was thinking earlier when we were talking about, or you were saying that it seems like so many people are
00:21:33
Speaker
saying the same things or thinking along the same lines. I was thinking about, I don't know if you remember, did you watch Battlestar Galactica, the series? Yes. At that point where they're hearing the song in their head, the individuals are hearing the song just out of nowhere and eventually they come together and realize, we're all singing the same song and there's over-silent.
00:21:56
Speaker
But at that point, nothing is ever the same. Everything changes because there's a recognition that there's something bigger than just what's going on in my life that doesn't quite make sense. And it makes sense now that we're together and we have to do something about it. And I don't want to be too lofty, but I'm just really wondering and praying about whether or not there might be something brewing that could come out of artists gathering together like this.
00:22:24
Speaker
Absolutely. You know, one of the most beautiful experiences I get to have on the other side of these gatherings is seeing collaborations and friendships form that weren't there prior.
Creation and New Artistic Ideas
00:22:38
Speaker
Yeah. And I remember years ago, we had
00:22:43
Speaker
you know, our event and a lot of people came and then maybe six months later on social media, I saw several different pockets of people creating art together and people who had begun to form these other collectives and things that came out of being together in this event. And I have a good friend of mine. He's actually coming this year. He's teaching a class on filmmaking. And, uh,
00:23:10
Speaker
He told me, he's like, Steven, you know, after the year I came to The Breath and the Clay, that was the year that gave me the courage to start my own film company. And he ended up leaving his job. He was doing a full time film editing job for another company. And after that event, he just had that spark to go out and begin this thing. And now years later, he's still making films. Now he's got films in Sundance Film Festival and all these different places that that came from that gathering. And so
00:23:39
Speaker
When he asks, like, what do you want to come out? What would you like to see? That is one of the greatest joys I have, is seeing that creative spark inside of each one of us.
00:23:52
Speaker
just get enlarged, you know, people just getting the courage and the inspiration and not just inspiration, but also a community of people cheering you on and knowing that, hey, I'm not isolated. I'm not in this thing alone. And
00:24:11
Speaker
the theme for this year, and this might be a good time to bring that up, but we have this theme this year that's just simply let there be. And of course that comes from the creation narrative, you know, let there be light. But it's about this calling forth, it's about this giving birth to something new, it's about bringing something into being. And I know a large part of it, one of the talks I'm gonna give at the Breath in the Clay, it's learning to dream again.
00:24:40
Speaker
And I think that for many of us and many of the people that I've talked to in our community, learning to dream again is a tremendous need, you know, because so many things were altered or shut down or whatever and courses were changed. And so for me, the idea of let there be
00:25:03
Speaker
is really an invitation to bring forth that thing that you've been carrying in your heart that maybe even died and now it needs to be resurrected. But it's just the permission to re-engage that creative part inside of you that maybe got shut down over the past few years.
00:25:21
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's incredible. And I do think there's so much possibility for that. I mean, you think about all kinds of artistic and philosophical movements, which are born out of that kind of thing and that I really do believe that spaces can shape and help us become something else.
Artists as Visionaries and Critics
00:25:43
Speaker
So that's really amazing.
00:25:45
Speaker
I was thinking about, I was really inspired by the book, The Vocation of the Artist, written by Deborah Haynes, where she kind of lays out this idea that her sense is that the call of the artist in the 21st century is to act as prophetic critics and imaginative visionaries.
00:26:05
Speaker
just basically acting, creating as if what we make matters and how we create matters. And I do think that that's a big part of what we're called to. But you talk about in your podcast, you call artists the architects of hope for the next generation. And I love that too. I mean, is that what you see the call for artists in the 21st century to be your artists of faith?
00:26:31
Speaker
I do, I do, and I feel like I have to qualify that statement a bit because
00:26:39
Speaker
I don't think that as artists of faith, that that means that everything we create has to be positive in the sense of we also need to grapple with some of the darker parts of our human experience. We also need to grapple with some of the more difficult things. And I think that that can also be a very important calling. But when I talk about
00:27:07
Speaker
the artist of faith being the architect of hope for our generation, what I mean is that the framework in which we deal with everything, whether it is the darker parts of humanity or the joy or love or fear or anger or any of these emotions or any of these experiences,
00:27:28
Speaker
hope is the framework that I like to say hope has the final word. And I think that because the artist is a bit of a prophetic critic and is a bit of a prophetic social critic, I think that especially in our modern time when it seems like things like nihilism and hopelessness
00:27:52
Speaker
Um, they're far too normalized and see, I don't, you know, maybe I've been the tortured artist. Uh, there was one point in my life when I was, I was really afraid of my own healing because I thought that if I got healed from some of my own issues that my creative, you know, that, that creative angst would go away, but it's just simply not the case. And so I think that,
00:28:21
Speaker
the call really is, and the invitation is the word I like to use, that we are invited by God to be architects of hope. And really what that means is just that we embrace the worldview of what God has to say about human history.
Hope in Art for Cultural Change
00:28:41
Speaker
And then we live that out through our art, no matter what form that takes. And I think that when people encounter art
00:28:51
Speaker
hope infused art. It gives them the ability to make changes in their own life that they didn't know. And if we do that enough, we can change culture.
00:29:01
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And there's so much urgency behind, I mean, all you have to do is listen to the news for five seconds. And there's a book called The New Leadership Literacies by Bob Johansson that I read right before everything shut down. And he's a futurist, he was talking about the next 10 years, and he was saying that the biggest indicator of how things will go basically in the next 10 years is young people who are connected
00:29:30
Speaker
and hopeful versus young people who are connected and hopeless. What happens there will determine how we go, basically. And I think there is just this huge sense of urgency for, I love this idea of the framework, how do you navigate through the realities of life from a perspective of hope?
00:29:59
Speaker
Yeah, and making art. Absolutely. And I want to learn how to make art that does resonate across generations. I'm thinking in terms of legacy at this point. I'm thinking in terms of what are the things that are going to not only shape and transform
00:30:20
Speaker
the people in my life now, but let's think a little bit more generationally and how can we create works of art that resonate across centuries, you know? I love that idea. Yeah, that's big. It is big. I'm not there yet, but I'm at least acting that way. Yeah, that's a great call.
00:30:42
Speaker
Well, we are very much looking forward.
Breath and Clay Gathering Details
00:30:46
Speaker
There's a group of us, a group of us that are coming to North Carolina to be a part of The Breath and The Clay and to get to meet all kinds of amazing people that I know will be there and to learn and just be engaged. And I love, I don't know if you do it on all of your podcasts, but I've heard you say, you know, just you're not alone. And I really appreciate that. And I feel like that's an important message. And
00:31:11
Speaker
I feel like this, even this conversation, that that's really encouraging, that we're not alone in this. And I think that that is probably one of the biggest pieces, like you were kind of saying, of coming together and just being able to connect and know, eh, we're really rooted. We're not alone in this. It's a really, really good feeling.
00:31:33
Speaker
That's so good. Well, I'm glad that you guys are coming. I'm excited. And I'm also appreciative for you taking the time to talk with me and ask these questions about the things that mean so much to me so and mean so much to you as well. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we'll put all of the links and everything in the show notes and make sure that everybody can get connected with you and sign up and head down to Breath in the Clay in March. Wonderful. Thanks for talking with us, Steven.
00:32:03
Speaker
Thanks for having me.
00:32:28
Speaker
Thanks for listening to this special episode of Be Make Do, a Soul Makers podcast. Join us and many others for The Breath in the Clay, hosted by Makers and Mystics on Friday, March 22nd through Sunday, March 24th in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
00:32:45
Speaker
where Lisa will lead the workshop curating wholeness, building a purposeful world through arts. Visit thebreathintheclay.com to reserve your spot. All links and resources for this episode can be found in our show notes.