00:00:00
00:00:01
Healing Through Creativity w/ Medora Frei
11 Plays2 years ago
Content warning: mental health, self-harm, and other health-related traumas.
My guest in this episode is an intuitive abstract artist based in the Midwest. Art has always been Medora’s way of composting pain so that something new can thrive from it. Experiences, in all their diversity of intensity and meaning, are what she most portrays with paint. She started creating abstract work in 2018 after a traumatic event, and her passion is to help others heal using art. She creates art in her spare time and loves being able to give back to her community through donated works and classes.
We talk about using art to help us through disease, chronic pain, and mental health. We can’t control what happens to us or our loved ones, but we can let our frustrations and our emotions out on a canvas or a page and start to find beauty amid the chaos.
You can connect with Medora and see her work on Instagram (@medorafrei.art) or through her website (medorafrei.com).
References from this episode:
The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk
What Happened to You? by Bruce D Perry and Oprah Winfrey
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Apology
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey everybody, I just wanted to drop a quick note at the top of the episode to apologize once again for my terrible audio. Hopefully this will never be a problem again because I just got a sparkly noon microphone, so my voice will also be sparkly for you from now on. But this time it is not, and alas, I apologize. I did my best and that's all you get from me. So, enjoy the episode!
Ugly Podcast and Embracing Imperfection
00:00:27
Speaker
Welcome to the Ugly Podcast. I'm your host, Lauren Alexander, she, they, and this is the place where creatives are encouraged to make messy, ugly art and let go of perfectionism.
00:00:38
Speaker
I started this podcast with my creative partner, Emerson, and we've since grown into our businesses. And this podcast is now evolving into a space where I interview other creatives to discuss our creative processes and how we navigate the mental mind field of creativity. This podcast serves as a reminder that you and your art get to be whatever the hell you want to be, ugly and all.
Meet Medora Fry: Art and Healing
00:01:05
Speaker
All right, welcome to the Ugly Podcast. And I have a guest today, and this is very exciting. So this is the first time I'm doing this with somebody that I don't know. So I'm excited to introduce my guest who is an intuitive abstract artist based in the Midwest. Art has always been her way of composting pain so that something new can thrive from it.
00:01:29
Speaker
experiences and all their diversity of intensity and meaning are what she most portrays with paint. And she started creating abstract work in 2018 after a traumatic event, and her passion is to help others heal using art. She creates art in her spare time and loves being able to give back to her community through donated works and classes. Welcome. Do you want to say your name and your pronouns, if you would? Yeah, so my name is Medora Fry. My pronouns are she, her,
00:01:59
Speaker
And yeah, I am from North Dakota. Welcome. And I met you through my, well, this is the first time I'm meeting you, but I heard about you through my sister-in-law, Mary, who I have also interviewed for this podcast.
Healing Through Ugly Art
00:02:14
Speaker
And I was really excited when she told me about you, especially just like the concept of using creativity to create a healing experience when we have
00:02:26
Speaker
chronic pain. One thing that I learned with doing my whole ugly art journey, I've heard multiple people say that ugly art introduces like a healing element. And I'm just so interested to hear your perspective and what you do. Yeah, 100%. I think that's one of the things I've found and like, like you said, why I started creating art was for the purpose of healing. And yeah, I guess what I have
00:02:55
Speaker
found is like the less pressure you put on yourself when you're creating it like
00:03:01
Speaker
Yes, what you make may be super ugly. It might be horrible. You may not never want to show it to anybody. But it's really the process of doing it, I think, is oftentimes I found way more important than the outcome, at least as far as healing, whatever. If you're trying to make money, maybe not so much, or really sell yourself. I don't know. But for me, that's one thing that's been
00:03:25
Speaker
helpful is really just like, I guess you would say like the cathartic process of it. And for me, I guess I'm kind of like a type A type person or very like can be really perfectionistic. And so allowing myself to just like, throw paint on a canvas and not really care about what it looks like. It's really, that was the thing for me that was like really instrumental in healing from like, I think I see it's like particularly like traumatic.
00:03:54
Speaker
experience yeah it can be very very rewarding in like a non I don't know what you say like not like monetary you know just just for your own like benefit yeah which I think is really hard for some people because like of the society we live in you know like
00:04:13
Speaker
everything has to have a purpose. If you have a hobby, people are like, oh, are you really good at that hobby? Or like, do you make money off of it? Because it seems like for, it's just kind of the mindset of how we think of like what we do with our free time. So which is very unfortunate, but I hope that's changing. And I hope this conversation can help people let go of that a little bit and be in the process of creating rather than focused on like the outcome of it.
Medora's Artistic Journey and Trauma
00:04:44
Speaker
So you said you started abstract art in 2018. Had you been really drawn to creative things before that, or was that really the event that kicked it off? Yeah, so before that, it was always like, even as a kid, I was always making something, once again, probably not the best, you know, best looking things always. But yeah, I was always like, drawing and I would get into like, I don't know, I was trying to like, do
00:05:13
Speaker
sewing for a while and different like I don't know I was just always doing something strange you know like something with my hands especially and as I got older like I got into high school I got a lot more interested in like photography and so for a while that was I was definitely into that not photographing people like photographing like flowers and plants and landscapes and that sort of thing for some reason I was like really
00:05:39
Speaker
attracted to that, I guess. Um, and it was awesome. I would just go on like, like nature walk. So go out and go on a walk and like, just take photos of the nature around me. And that, that I thought like the process of like the walking and taking photographs was really, um, like meaningful and kind of like calm me down a little bit. Um, in that way as like a high school or probably even middle school. And after I got to college, um, I,
00:06:07
Speaker
I have like an art minor, I guess I was like only like two classes away from like double majoring, but, um, I did photography there, like, and then, uh, ceramics as well. And that, those are kind of the two things that I focused more on. So yeah, the way I came into painting was a little weird because I didn't, other than just for fun, I didn't really have like, I've never taken a painting class as a student or anything. Um, so I think I've always been creative, but that switch didn't really happen until 2018.
00:06:38
Speaker
So what had happened was in 2018, my then boyfriend, now he's my husband, he actually had like two Widowmaker heart attacks in the same day. And I was there and did like CPR on him and like called 911 and everything. And so that was like terrifying, but also he like, we were initially told that he was going to die, like to go say goodbye to him in the ER, which was like,
00:07:05
Speaker
Another, also another level of trauma. Yeah. And then he was in a coma for 13, 12 or 13 days. I think it was 13 days. Finally woke up from that, but then it was a very long process of healing and like relearning how to do pretty much everything. So yeah, we were.
00:07:30
Speaker
at the hospital in Bismarck for a month. And then he was flown out to Minneapolis because he wasn't doing the best after a month. And so he spent a month out there and it was there and everything as well. So, and it pretty much took like a whole, I guess, calendar year because it was June 2018. It was pretty much until like June of the next year that he was able to really feel more normal. Of course, it's like a new normal, but like to have energy, be able to like walk without a walk or a wheelchair. And so yeah, it was quite,
00:08:01
Speaker
quite the process and everything, but kind of what had happened was it was August that we came back from Minneapolis of that
Art as Therapy for PTSD
00:08:10
Speaker
year. And when we came back, I tried to go back to working full-time, right? I mean, I did. That was very hard. I would not suggest for somebody else to, and luckily he's like, his mom was helping as well, but she was also working full-time. Yeah, it was just like, cool, crazy.
00:08:30
Speaker
shit show if I can swear, sorry. Like, yeah, so it was definitely like, just intense and strange. So when we, when we came back, there was a lot going on, like, I was trying to work. At that point, my husband, his name is Sam, he was still like in a wheelchair, could maybe walk a couple feet on his own, like, very, like, just really like weak, obviously, like, like,
00:09:00
Speaker
I don't know, 30 or 40 pounds or something, um, like skin and bones just, yeah. And like his medications were causing side effects. So there was just a lot going on. And then I had definitely PTSD from the, like the event of it happening and being there. So like sleep was not, not happening, right? It was very up and down, like not the, not the best. Um, and so. Okay. In the past when I had gone through difficult things, like
00:09:27
Speaker
being diagnosed with CF at a late age, that sort of thing. It, like art was always my thing just throughout life to kind of like help me through things. And Sam and I had been painting together a little bit before that event had happened. And so I was like, oh, maybe I can try a painting. But before I was like painting like animals and different things like that that were very like,
00:09:52
Speaker
you know, this is a frog. This is what a frog looks like, sort of thing. Kind of realistic, but not really, I guess. But I tried doing that one day because I was like, okay, I feel completely insane. Like I need to do something, like what is happening? And I could not, like I was, I was like shaking. I could not even like make a straight line. I don't know. I don't know what was happening, but it was not good. And so I was like, you know what? I'm just going to like,
00:10:22
Speaker
literally just like throw paint at this campus. Like I don't even know if I used the brush, I probably just like, I just really like went out, went out that thing. Because I had done like a couple abstract pieces in the past, but not, I don't know for some reason before I was never really like as into it. And yeah, I don't know exactly what happened, but it was very, very,
00:10:47
Speaker
meaningful. The actual piece looked horrible. I mean, I don't, I don't think I have it. I'm pretty sure it just ended up brown. Like even though I, you know, it just, it was not good at all. Very, very ugly. Like the epitome of, the epitome of ugliness on campus. But the process of doing it was so helpful. It was kind of helpful to sleep or like when I wasn't sleeping because a lot of the painting, especially like the first year or so that I would paint
00:11:17
Speaker
I primarily painted at like 3 a.m. Like nothing, sometimes I painted during the day, but a lot of the extra creativity was happening when I could not sleep or I had like woken up with like a night terror sort of thing. I would go down in our basement, scary basement. Definitely haunted. But yeah, so I would go down there and paint from like 3 a.m. to 6 a.m. or something.
00:11:47
Speaker
being able to like work through that I guess especially at night was super helpful even though I was I guess alone in the basement I didn't feel quite as alone like I was able to get some of that emotion out and yeah it was just really helpful and I think one of the things to
00:12:05
Speaker
was like the, I guess you would say like physicality of some of that and like the painting, like, if you're mad, you really can just like splat. Yeah, you can go at it. Get into it, that sort of thing. And, you know, whatever you're feeling. So I think that was also like a good way for me to get some of that out and not like
00:12:30
Speaker
be totally nuts, I guess, is the way. Yeah. It was really struggling for a while. And there was many different things that helped to, I mean, I still would consider myself to have PTSD and to like, I'm still working through a lot of that. And I probably always will, to be honest with you. But on a day to day, I feel like a lot more balanced generally now, which I'm thankful for. But I think painting definitely was a large part of that, especially at first when everything was super chaotic.
00:13:00
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Did you notice that there was like, I know for me when I'm having a hard time, especially like mentally, like I have anxiety and depression. And so like, I'll know like doing art's going to help me feel better. It's going to help me process these feelings. But then there's that mental hurdle of like, but I like can't bring myself to do it.
00:13:27
Speaker
Did you experience any of that? Or was it like, it's 3am. I can't sleep. I'm going into the murder basement and I'm going to get my struggles out. Like, I don't care. Yeah, it was kind of both. So there were certain and especially with like, because it like
00:13:45
Speaker
terrifying basement. Honestly, I did not always want to go down and paint sometimes I've done myself. And then other times I was like, Oh, I'm not gonna go get murdered by ghosts in this basement. I would just have like a paper and pencil upstairs. And I would even just do like, once again, not actual doodles of any kind that like, oh, I'm gonna like draw a flower. No, it was not that it was like literally just like scribble or something, but like literally just like, yeah.
00:14:14
Speaker
nothing that and I think that was for me it was just so freeing because a lot of the time I think sometimes it is external pressure right it's like oh I'm supposed to be taking care of this person so they need me but then I'm also supposed to be working full-time and they need me and I want to do all these things for myself and for my own health but I can't do them or whatever but also sometimes even though I don't need to I'm like my brain is like oh but you should be doing this are you you know like putting pressure on ourselves yeah I definitely
00:14:44
Speaker
do that sometimes and it's something I kind of constantly have to work on but I think at that time too that was a lot of it of I'd just been through this huge life-changing thing but yet my mind was like oh well you know it's 3am you're not sleeping you're such a horrible person for not sleeping at 3am or like you need to do this or this in your life or whatever and like I don't know those sort of feelings and I think one thing that abstract stuff particularly helped with was
00:15:12
Speaker
not putting pressure on myself to have things look a certain way. It could really, and sometimes even now, so now I do sell paintings, but the majority of, I don't do commissions anymore. I think that's one thing that I've decided I really cannot do them, or if I do, the person
00:15:38
Speaker
kind of has to be okay with like what I do. Like maybe they can you know like certain colors I could use or something but like I can't make things look a certain way or like I can't replicate paintings. I'm not especially if I'm using like water and acrylic which I often do at least for like the base and whatnot like I can try to manipulate it sometimes most of the time it's just gonna dry how it dries. I can't like I can't always you know like I can't have control over it and I think that's
00:16:06
Speaker
something that has really helped me because until that event happened or maybe even like before then when I was diagnosed with CF, but like, I don't know. Like we think that we can control our lives and we can go like this and then something happens to you and you're like, oh shit, I can't control everything that happens to me or in my life. It's like, okay, like how do I process this? And how do you know, like, I feel like anything bad could happen to me at any second. Like this is terrifying, but then kind of reminding yourself, okay, well,
00:16:36
Speaker
If that's true, which is, unfortunately, something good can also randomly happen to you at any time. And it's OK to not have control over every single aspect of your life, that sort of thing. Yeah. Well, and I love how that's mirrored with how your art turns out, too. We have no control over our lives or our pain.
00:16:58
Speaker
or our mental health or what happens to our loved ones. And in the same way with your paintings, you have no idea how they're going to turn out. And there might be parts of it that aren't great or that don't really mesh well. But then there's other parts that you're like, these colors are so beautiful together. I didn't mean to do that. It was just this random thing that ended up on this canvas. And that's just such a beautiful representation of how life is. 100%, yeah. Most of the paintings that I really like
00:17:28
Speaker
I did not intend for some of those elements to happen, I guess is like the best way. They're essentially like happy accidents to quote of Mr. Valbras. Because I, and like, I think it's both like, I think sometimes
00:17:43
Speaker
skill is maybe involved, or you can definitely learn. I'm like, OK, the first one I made, if I put every rainbow color on there, and I do it in a certain way, it's probably in turnout brown, which is always bad. But if you're not wanting the brown, don't mix those colors together sort of thing. You definitely learn. You have some techniques you can use definitely to improve if you want to sort of thing. But I don't think it's, especially if you're doing it for fun or purely cathartic sort of purposes, it's not
00:18:13
Speaker
that sort of skill isn't needed. And I think it's just important to really like, I don't know, even me as somebody that does sometimes, you know, I guess I do sometimes sell things like I prefer to just let things happen naturally, I guess. It just 90%
00:18:34
Speaker
eight percent of the time they work out better if I kind of let things go how they want. And that's the part of it too is like adapting, right? So if something looks horrible, I can 100% cover it up. Great. Okay. Whereas before I was like, I maybe would have been like, oh, this whole painting is ruined and I must throw it away, you know, or I have to cover the whole thing. It's like, okay. Like if it is really bad, I can cover it and I can just start again. Like you don't have to be
00:19:02
Speaker
I guess is committed to it in a way and you can kind of let it do its own thing. Yeah, there's a lot less pressure. Yeah. Yeah. On you and your art. I love the idea of like, I've heard some people and now I can't remember who I've heard this from.
00:19:18
Speaker
Just like talking about the pressure we put on our art. And it's like, your art didn't ask for that. Your art just wants to be what it is. Good, bad, ugly, beautiful. It doesn't care. It just wants to be there. And you're putting too much pressure on it and on yourself. Yeah. Totally. Yeah. That's 100%. I realized I was, was it last year or 2019? My years are kind of
00:19:44
Speaker
especially pandemic years. Yeah, years don't make sense anymore. I think it was 2020. But I had
Embracing Imperfection in Art Classes
00:19:52
Speaker
a gallery show at this amazing gallery in town that was really excited. And as I was painting some of the pieces, you know, a couple months beforehand, I started to get very self critical. It was like, oh, this, you know, oh, no, no, no, I can't put this in the gallery or this or that or whatever. And I was just like, complete pressure on myself. And I was like,
00:20:11
Speaker
I really had to like stop myself and set myself down and be like, you just need to paint. Don't worry about it. If something's bad, put it in there, whatever. You know, like not everybody is going to love this piece. A lot of the times I have that too, or like I love a piece and nobody ever buys it or nobody is interested in it or I mean,
00:20:32
Speaker
Thankfully, generally, I don't think I'm popular enough online to where people are posting hateful things about my art, which is good, because that would probably just put me in some ways. But not everything I make is going to be like, oh, the heavens opened up. You did it. So yeah, I think just liking what you make, too, is important.
00:21:00
Speaker
One of the things, too, I think that you and Mrs. Van are married. I still call her Mrs. Van, which is so funny. She told me, Mary, I can't. I have to call her Mrs. Van. But one of the things that you guys talked about, too, is even if something is bad, put it out there. If you like it and maybe other people would consider it bad or less quality or something,
00:21:23
Speaker
the world can still see it, maybe somebody can still benefit from it, like, I don't know, I have some, this is the other thing too, I have some people that are like so nice and genuine and really seem to like
00:21:34
Speaker
feel connected to my work, and that's so, like, invaluable to me and amazing. And then I have other people who have literally told me, like, my kid could do that. And I'm like, yes, they could. Like, that's important. Like, I'm like, you know, kind of slightly offensive in some ways. Yes, I really do. And I'm like, I'm like, great. Like, have a painting day with your kid and let them paint it. You don't need to, like, you don't need to buy anything from me. Like, that's fine, you know?
00:22:00
Speaker
You can't be creative then like it's people have just so you know you can never please anybody and as long as you like what you're making or even if you don't like what you're making and you're just making it you know for fun or whatever like oh yeah just just do you people you know you people do yeah yeah do you and like show it don't show it but like
00:22:23
Speaker
Well, that's amazing to me because like, especially because I've heard that so many times, like, I could do that. And I'm just like, then do that. Like, don't shit on other people just because they have their artwork out there. And you're like, I could do that. Like, okay. But like, right now you're not. So like, go do it if you want, you know, or like, yeah, when you want the art in your house or whatever, and then you pay somebody to do it, you know, but yeah.
00:22:51
Speaker
I know it's super funny to me because I don't know how I'm like I never know how to respond but that's I think what I'm gonna start saying is like having you know like have your video at them like yeah it's a really hard thing to respond to I guess you it could just be like well like have your kid do it and then they can sell it for 200 bucks I don't know I'm the one making 200 bucks here so funny um I wanted to talk about your classes that you teach
00:23:21
Speaker
Yeah. Can you tell me more about those? Yeah, so I started doing those really, like, I guess, a couple months into painting. It kind of happened organically. There was, well, I have taught, like, art to kids before, which I can talk about in a second, too, with a different project. But the process of kind of what I do now with, like, painting specifically kind of happened organically. And it was like a local,
00:23:51
Speaker
kind of like nonprofit or group in Bismarck here that they were having like workshop events and they had kind of, you know, knew my story or what I had been through and knew that I was painting and kind of why I was painting. And so they asked if I wanted to lead one of these workshops and kind of, you know, they obviously asked me what I wanted to teach about that sort of thing. I was like, well, I think, you know, like healing and painting and that process. And so I appropriately titled them healing, healing with painting or
00:24:19
Speaker
something to that effect, workshops. And I started doing just a couple of those. And the first one was actually to adults, that particular workshop, which is kind of kind of interesting and cool, because a lot of the people were very afraid of painting and like painting something abstract. And some people came up to me and they were like, can I
00:24:39
Speaker
just paint like a palm tree or something. And I was like, you can, I'm not gonna force you to do something that you're not comfortable with, but I was like, I encourage you to step out of your comfort zone a little bit and just try it. Even just try it once and you can rip it up and throw it away and then you can paint your palm tree or whatever if you feel comfortable. And I think it was, hopefully really, I mean, the feedback that I got from it was great and people
00:25:07
Speaker
you know, just felt like they were more free. Like what we do with those, when I do them with both kids and adults, I guess, is I kind of start out, like sometimes I share my story, sometimes I don't, kind of depending on like the audience or if it's like really little kids, sometimes I don't quite, you know, go into anything. But I generally start maybe with something like that. And then we kind of maybe talk a little bit about emotions and how certain activities, like painting, for example, can be very physical and like a great way to get that out.
00:25:36
Speaker
Obviously, there are so many other ways, like exercise and even like, you know, talk therapy and many things are helpful. But if a lot of the times, at least for me and my experience, like I go to therapy, but I also need to run, I need to do like, I think competitions for both. And yeah, yeah, it has been helpful for me personally. And so we kind of talk about that and then kind of how we can maybe paint through that. So what I've especially lately been doing is I kind of
00:26:05
Speaker
essentially kind of like a meditation or kind of putting ourselves in the present moment, maybe trying to really get in tune with like how we're feeling. And that's what I do personally in my practice too. And so that's where I got that from is I kind of sit there for a second and I'm like, okay, how am I feeling? You know, is this going to influence my color choices? Like what's, what's going on? And that at least, you know, helps me anyway to like center and kind of get into the present moment. And then I just kind of start painting and picking up random
00:26:34
Speaker
colors sometimes or, um, utensils. Um, cause I, I not only use like paint brushes and that sort of thing, but I have like these little, I just call them scrapers. Cause it's actually, I started using like the hotel, like key card that looks like credit card things in Minneapolis actually from when Sam was in the hospital. And so I started using that. And so that was kind of like a cool way for me to like reclaim that thing. And yeah, that's really cool. Like different things like that. So.
00:27:04
Speaker
that's kind of generally what we do in the classes and then they just paint and sometimes they'll put on music or have snacks and things but I don't know I just I love to like seeing what other people create and you know how their mind works and in different things in different colors or color choices they use because that's another thing too I'm like that I just love is I always I'm like oh I never would have thought of using those colors I never would have thought of you know painting in that way or using like
00:27:32
Speaker
I don't know, somebody used the wooden part of their brush to do a cool marking. There's just so many, just other people's creativity is really cool. And so getting to witness that, and especially with kids, oh my gosh, kids, they just have so many ideas up there. A lot of the time, not always, but sometimes I guess they seem to be
00:27:57
Speaker
quicker to jump in, and they just paint right now. And they're just using their hands, and they're getting in there where adults are really thinking about it. And I'm like, you just go. Just start. And they're just sitting there, and they're like, I don't know what color. And what if this color doesn't go with this color? I'm like, that's not the point. Just go. Right now, that's not the point. So yeah, that's always kind of fun, too, to see the differences between kids and adults, and kind of what their hindrances are not to creativity. That's always fun.
00:28:28
Speaker
Yeah, because the adults have the years of perfectionism and embarrassment and shame embedded in there. And they're like, no, I can't let go. Yeah, so true. So I'm like, got to get to the kids early. So they learned some of this before they turned into like pent up adults like I probably was for a while. Yeah. Right. I absolutely was. That actually sounds, your classes sound a lot like my
Creativity for Everyone
00:28:56
Speaker
ugly art hour that I have once a month. It's called Come As You Art.
00:29:01
Speaker
and we just do like a virtual thing. I wanna come to you, okay. Please sign, however I can sign up, I love that. Awesome, yeah, I'll send you the details. But yeah, like I do the same thing. Like I start with like a mindfulness, like get grounded, recognize like where you're at today. And then like we go and we just like make ugly stuff. And yeah, that's so, I love the parallels between your experience and my experience. That's so cool, I love that.
00:29:30
Speaker
Yeah, I want to do that. That'd be fun. And that's another thing, like I would love to do that because also I would love to, obviously sometimes when you're teaching, you can still get into it, but sometimes you're kind of separated, you know, and so I would love that experience too of like having somebody else lead and I just get to participate because that would be fun. Other than just my own painting practice, I haven't gotten to do that in a while, so that'd be cool. Cool. Yeah, that'd be fun.
00:29:53
Speaker
So this was a question I asked you before we signed up, but what do you wish more creatives understood? Pretty sure what I said about this was that people, okay, everybody is and can be creative. There's so many different realms of creativity. Like you don't have to love painting or just paint. Like it's even in your, personally, I think in like your thought process, problem solve and think about things.
00:30:21
Speaker
There's so many different ways to be creative. I get this with adults in painting classes all the time. Like I'm not a creative person or I don't know. Even my, yeah, like my dad or many people are like that. You know, like I'm not creative at all. I'm like, okay. But you like have this whole cool gardening thing that you, you know, like you plan this out and you like, or you put, I don't know. There's many different ways, right? To be creative. And it's okay to be bad at something. Like that's even, even now sometimes I,
00:30:51
Speaker
we'll just put out onto the interwebs things that are just for fun for me that I'm like, this might be considered bad or maybe it's not the best quality, but I had a really fun time doing this. I think just once again being less judgmental about ourselves and our art and that sort of thing and just learning that everybody is creative. Maybe you have to love something, but sometimes it's important to try something, that sort of thing. I do not like peas.
00:31:20
Speaker
Um, but I had like split pea soup recently and I loved it. You know, like you just never know, like, like, okay, I can't eat normal peas on their own, but if it's in soup, I'm like fine, apparently. So like, I think kind of a stupid example, but you know, you just never know what you might like, like just trying different things. And even if you don't like something, then.
00:31:42
Speaker
You learned, you know, you learned like, okay, I'm not good at this or, you know, I don't like doing this. I don't enjoy it, but I tried it. Like, here's what I learned about that experience. Like, I think those are kind of the things. And so just to be more open to things and not be afraid, you know, trying different things. Yeah, I love that. I definitely had a really hard time calling myself creative until like two years ago. And then I started like being like, Oh,
00:32:08
Speaker
Just because I'm not necessarily good at these things doesn't mean I can't do them and love them and even love what I make and then sometimes make good things, but most of the time not. None of my ability, my talent has anything to do with the fact that I am creative. That's just already
00:32:30
Speaker
in my DNA, it's in all of our DNA. It's like human beings are, we evolved to be creative problem solvers. That's why we still exist. Did you ever have a hard time calling yourself a creative or were you just like? Yes, lots of imposter syndrome all the time. Pretty constant with that. But I think even in high school, because all of the creative things I did on
00:33:00
Speaker
my own were pretty much just like at my house and in my, you know, just crafts and being crafty, that sort of thing. And that wasn't like artsy or creative for some reason in my mind, they were kind of separate. I don't know why, you know, so midwest thing. I have no idea. I think that's pretty common because like, I think I, I viewed them as different too for a while. But like now obviously I see them as like all part of it. But yeah, so I was definitely into like crafts and many things. But because I
00:33:30
Speaker
was not really always the best of like drawing maybe and stuff like that. I didn't consider myself to be creative in that way. It probably wasn't really until I was in that creative writing class with Mrs. Van that I was maybe starting to feel more comfortable kind of calling myself creative. And I kind of learned more about like, okay, like,
00:33:52
Speaker
putting together this event and coming up with ideas for this event and then obviously like the actual creative writing pieces of the class and everything and you know that was really like I don't know I felt more empowered I guess and especially like with event planning and then planning the litmeg everything like that that was yeah I just got more comfortable with it even like kind of
00:34:17
Speaker
kind of like calling myself a writer, which I still don't really consider myself, but like I love writing and it is something that I'm passionate about. And I even recently got the chance to write like a blog post for the CF Foundation. And so just things like that, like, I don't know, once again, would I consider myself like a full like writer? Maybe not, but I do like writing and sometimes I get the opportunity to share things I write, that sort of thing.
00:34:44
Speaker
I think just not limiting ourselves to like, oh, I do this as a profession. So I can't like be creative in my spare time or I can't like, I don't know, trying to get those like hindrances out of the way, I guess. But yeah, when I was in Mrs. Vams class two, I think it was, it was cool to like
00:35:05
Speaker
be creative in a collaborative way, because I hadn't really experienced that too much before to my memory anyway. So I think that was kind of another thing. That's one thing I've tried to do now with my art practice as well, is my husband is super creative and a better painter than me, which he was not. And draw, oh my gosh, yeah, he's just amazing.
00:35:31
Speaker
Like sometimes we'll do paintings together or he'll like draw something and I'll paint on it. And, um, I've gotten to work with other people, like somebody like made earrings and I painted them or making like ceramics and I like painted them or I did something, you know, like that's been kind of a fun, like collaborative thing to work on with other people. So that's something I've kind of tried to carry over. So yeah, that's been fun.
00:35:54
Speaker
Nice, I love that. Yeah, when I discovered that I could be creative with their people, and that was like a fun way to find community that way. I mean, that just like took off. I was like, Oh, that I mean, yes, I love this. I'm absolutely creative. And so are you. My husband also do like the, we haven't done it recently. But like, for a little while we were doing like,
00:36:17
Speaker
little stories that we'd like trade off. So like I'd write a few sentences and then he'd write a few sentences and they would just, it would all go off the rails and like get really weird. But that was what made it so much fun. That's so fun. That's a great idea.
00:36:33
Speaker
because you just said that, like, that was your thing that you wish more creatives understood. That's what I wish more writers understood, is that you're a writer if you enjoy writing and you write. So you're a writer. Congratulations. No, see, that's another, like, oh, I don't consider myself a writer, but I enjoy writing and I write for, yeah. See, I'm like, I'm my own, I gotta, yeah.
00:37:01
Speaker
Things are my own brain sometimes. We all do it. Yeah, totally. One of the things I haven't actually talked about, but I've kind of mentioned a couple of times, is the project that Mrs. Van actually
Art Projects with Hospitalized Children
00:37:15
Speaker
helped me with in school. And I feel like I should maybe talk about this too, because it's like another kind of aspect of creativity that some people may think may hinder them, but it probably does not.
00:37:29
Speaker
healing with and being creative with like illness and disease and that sort of thing. And so my story with that is when I was 18, I was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, which is also called CF as a moniker. And it's a genetic disease that often affects like the lungs, the pancreas, digestive system.
00:37:54
Speaker
It's in your DNA, so it's everywhere. It affects lots of things. And it was very, very weird that I was diagnosed so late. It just, long story short, I just got missed. And when I, so I was quite sick in my senior year of high school, which is also when this, when I was in the writing class with Mrs. Van and everything.
00:38:17
Speaker
when I was then diagnosed, it was like a huge shift for me. So not only like, oh, being in the hospital a lot and having tests and procedures and different things, and then obviously not feeling well, but then also feeling like, I don't know how to, I guess the best way I can describe it is like sadness. Sadness about the,
00:38:42
Speaker
I guess sadness projected onto my childhood in a way, because I was like, oh, this thing was going on. I didn't know. And I had all these experiences that now make 100% sense that at the time were really hard and we had no idea what was going on and that sort of thing. And so for some, I don't know, like loss of childhood or something, maybe two or something. Yeah, like grief over your childhood. Yeah. Yeah, yes, grief. I was like, sadness. Thank you. But yeah, so I think
00:39:12
Speaker
That was, at the time, a struggle. And when I went to college at Concordia in Moorhead, Minnesota, and I was lucky enough to receive a scholarship that was called the Phillips Scholarship Program, and it was
00:39:37
Speaker
through the Minnesota Private College Fund, but essentially what they had people, and you had to apply and everything, and you had to come up with a project that would benefit a group of people somewhere in Minnesota, preferably either diverse populations, underserved, that sort of thing. And so what I came up with based on all these passions that I just talked about the whole podcast here was using
00:40:07
Speaker
creativity and art and photography specifically at that time to help people or kids in a hospital setting that had maybe recently gotten a diagnosis, been through something traumatic, maybe had like a cancer diagnosis, things like that. And so I was able to do that in Duluth, Minnesota and Mrs. Van was super instrumental in getting that. It was a really like competitive process and I don't think I would have gotten it without her help.
00:40:38
Speaker
Obviously like the idea is important and whatnot, but how you present it and plan and everything is important as well. And yeah, it was an awesome experience. It was about a two week long project that I did out there and it was at a hospital in Duluth. And so I got to, we did a couple of things. One of them was Mrs. Van was nice enough to have, I was able to like rent some of the cameras essentially,
00:41:08
Speaker
from the high school and bring them out to Duluth and let the kids, they would essentially do what I used to do growing up. It just was like go on these like photo walks, right? So we would have our little cameras and we'd have all our stuff and they'd grab all the kids and we would walk around the hospital and like take photos of maybe like the architecture or like
00:41:28
Speaker
obviously because of like hippo you can't really take photos of people but maybe like photos of their feet and then luckily this hospital had a beautiful like little outside garden and so we got to like go out there and take photos outside and get the kids outside a little bit which is fun and get a little bit of movement in which is good as well and then we were able to take all the photos and put them in like a photo book for all the kids to have and that was also another
00:41:56
Speaker
great aspect that Mrs. Van was able to help me with, but it was really great. And part of it too was then I would also go like bedside to the kids that maybe had different mobility issues or just, you know, if they're hooked up to IVs or different, you know, different abilities, was able to maybe just paint or do crafts and whatnot with them and maybe just chat.
00:42:24
Speaker
sort of thing and sometimes they're really little and sometimes they were like 17 or 18 year olds and that one was really meaningful as well and yeah it was just a really cool experience and they then got to like have these little books that they could you know show their family and friends like oh I took this photo and this is what we did and yeah you know about the difficulties of you know maybe what they're going through but how they can kind of express themselves and one of the kids had a cool idea to like
00:42:52
Speaker
Um, his family. So on the, on the North shore in Minnesota, where Duluth is, it's, um, I think like superior there and it like the waves in the winter. I don't know what I think it has a name. I don't know what they're called. I'm so sorry, everybody in Duluth. Um, but the waves like come up and because the insanely cold temperature that it gets up here in North Dakota, Minnesota, they like freeze right away. Like in these like amazing, like ice shaped
00:43:17
Speaker
These are like these different, I don't know, it's just Google's, yeah, you have to like Google photos of them because they're so spectacular. But he always liked to photograph those. And he was like, he was like a 17 year old, he was a little bit older and he had a pretty terminal cancer diagnosis. But he's like, I have all of these on my
00:43:38
Speaker
camera on my computer, but I've never printed them out. And we were like, oh my gosh, you should print them out. And you can have a book that you can take with you and you go to treatment to look at these awesome photos that you take. You can even show nurses and start a conversation that way. And or you could print them out and put them in your house, all over your house or in your bedroom.
00:43:59
Speaker
different things where you could even like try to like paint or draw one, you know, like when you're at treatment and you're literally just sitting there and you can't, it's, you know, if you're getting chemo or IVs, it's very difficult to do a whole lot of movement. So, but if you're, you know, sitting there drawing, it might kind of take your mind off stuff. So yeah, they were, they were all just so like sweet and creative and had awesome ideas and I miss them every day. I wish, that's kind of, and it's like my,
00:44:25
Speaker
dream job kind of, I would love something like that. It's just, um, unfortunately, at least in North Dakota here, it seems to not really exist or not quite in that capacity, um, kind of as like. Heart therapy or that sort of thing. Um, or it's at least in the hospitals currently, it just doesn't seem to be something that they're interested in, which is super unfortunate, but yeah, maybe we'll have to just.
00:44:51
Speaker
send this podcast episode to all of their inboxes and be like, hey, you need this. Yes, please. That is so sweet, though. I love, I love that project you did. And did you find it was really like, it was more a way of like, how am I going to say this?
00:45:15
Speaker
So I
Processing Pain Through Creativity
00:45:16
Speaker
think a lot of times we want to distract from our pain or our situation. And so we try to numb ourselves. We try to distract with TV or whatever. But do you find that creativity and that art piece helps bring you into the present moment with yourself? Do you think there's some kind of connection there? Yeah, I think it can be both. And I think it may be just
00:45:44
Speaker
depends on how you're feeling, that sort of thing. I guess personally, sometimes I kind of use it interchangeably, or I kind of use that as both. Sometimes if I'm really struggling, and if I'm still really in the trauma deeply. I was also just reading a book about this, which kind of reinforced this a little bit. And I was like, this is why this is fine, or this is why I do this. Maybe it was a book on traumas.
00:46:13
Speaker
There's like the one with that Oprah did, and then there's the body keeps the score, please. Both of them, even if you don't think that you have trauma, please read those books. Because you may. Anyway, but they, they talk about this where if sometimes if you were really struggling, we really can't like fully pro- like our brain is not capable really of like processing or getting to some of those like higher levels of thought.
00:46:41
Speaker
And sometimes like maybe numbing is like, or maybe we briefly talk about the struggle, the struggle bus, but we don't need to process the whole struggle bus in that moment because our brain like cannot do it. And so I think both can honestly be helpful, both like actually trying to use creativity to like process what you're going through. And then also sometimes like as like a, what I say is like a positive way to numb, I guess would be a thing. So rather than maybe, you know, self-harm or
00:47:10
Speaker
destruction, or super negative thoughts, intrusive, you know, that sort of thing. Because I had a lot of that after his diagnosis, CF, because I was like, Oh, I'm, I'm unlovable. Now, like, nobody's gonna want me. I'm grow, I'm gross, but I, you know, whenever like, I have all these issues, like, with my body, I was having a lot of just, yeah, really, like negative things and self harm thoughts and that sort of thing. And I think what really
00:47:40
Speaker
helped me was finding those things like creativity and going on the photo walks and different things to just at least positively deal kind of deal or you know positively kind of cope with with some of that and sometimes that's in my opinion I don't know if this is 100% accurate so don't maybe don't take my full word for it but at least in my experience like personal experience and kind of what I've been reading is like no I think that's
00:48:07
Speaker
can be OK rather than turning to those other things to find something. And it doesn't have to be painting specifically, but just finding something that's positive, I guess, is maybe the best word. Yeah, just to keep yourself kind of, yeah. Yeah, like focusing on the beauty of things as they are instead of ruminating on those really hard things.
00:48:37
Speaker
Amazing. Well, I hope you're able to do that sometime. That would be an amazing job. Yes, yeah. It would be quite lovely. But even now, I'm definitely fulfilled when I'm able to do even some of those painting classes and whatnot. Those are so fun. So yeah, hopefully I can just start to do more of that stuff and might be a little safer
00:49:07
Speaker
for me as well now with the pandemic pandemic and everything i'm still quite quite isolated and why not just because i have cf and then my husband has like heart disease heart failure sort of things we have been super careful but yeah maybe we can slowly start getting back out into the world and doing more uh in-person classes and but that's another thing i can totally do online like i just need you know sometimes i have the thoughts and like you just got to do it like it's okay to do online you know online class or whatever like
00:49:37
Speaker
Yeah, get our brains to get stuff into motion. Absolutely. Awesome. Well, as a closing here on the Ugly podcast, we like to ask, well, I like to ask since I'm by myself these days, what is something ugly you made recently? Pretty much everything.
00:50:04
Speaker
made that everything but okay I will say this is one thing that was in my mind quite hilarious so my husband has been getting into like drawing and doing portraits and whatnot and one day he asked if I would want to like draw with him we weren't working on the same like piece but we were you know like sitting next to each other drawing and we ended up going on youtube and like finding this specific like
00:50:25
Speaker
tiny, very, like, tiny drawing class sort of thing. And we were painting this, like, tree, right? And it was supposed to kind of look like a bonsai tree. I told him, I said, you know that I struggle with this. This is going to be really hard for me. Like, you know, okay, so we get done. He has this beautiful tree, right? The painting is there, like, he has little leaves, whatever. And I told him, I was like, I'm not showing you mine. He's like, you have, like, it's fine. I was like, okay, but, you know, like, this tree and it, like,
00:50:56
Speaker
It was like, like, I think I did better things in like first grade and I'm not, it was horrible. Like, no, it was just, it was horrible, right? And I sent a bolt of them side by side and I sent it to my mother-in-law, bless her heart, but she was like, oh, I did the door, I did the top one. Because like, for some reason she thinks, because I can paint, I can draw, and it was like,
00:51:24
Speaker
No. It was horrid, like, you know, must burn immediately. Oh, this is okay. It literally looked like a
00:51:38
Speaker
cloud like one big cloud with like like a menorah or something like rather than like the cool like pretty like right it was just like it was like structured and then like a cloud shape it wasn't like oh these individual like tree branches but yeah oh i just i can't even explain it was still for some reason i still have it and i think i wrote like my masterpiece or something we like hung it on the fridge for a while because every time we walked by it we just laughed yeah that's what it was so
00:52:06
Speaker
Yeah, a bit of comic relief in my ugly tree drawing. But I was like, this is why I do abstract painting. And I do not do the, he can do these amazing realistic portraits. And I'm like, I don't know how he does it in his brain. Because I'm like, I just, I could not. I don't have the talent to make it good. But then even if so, I would never finish it. Because I would be like, oh, this doesn't look right. And this is, yeah.
00:52:37
Speaker
The ugly ponzi tree slash cloud on top of a weird, very structured menorah type thing. That was my super ugly piece recently. Amazing. I love it. I also guess, except for my husband and my stepmom, so now the world shall know.
00:52:59
Speaker
I love it. Well, that's like, that's my favorite thing about ugly stuff is more often, more often than not, it's just hilarious. Like, it just makes you laugh. Like, why not make something that makes you laugh? It's amazing. Completely. Yeah.
00:53:15
Speaker
I had kind of a two for one this week. I did, because I was making my ugly art with some watercolors, but then I also tried to make a stop motion video to do a reel on Instagram with it. It's not good at all. It's my watercolor painting.
00:53:36
Speaker
little square things and then they're just like creeping along like a little centipede and then I ended up like drawing or well painting the centipede thing with the paints and then giving it very long crazy legs are just like all varying shades of like wild colors. It's great. That's awesome.
00:54:03
Speaker
Um, where can people find you and how can they support your work? Okay. So you can go to my website, which is www.madorafry.com. Um, or just on Instagram, that's madorafry.art and it's fry like F-R-E-I, which is super German. I'm also named after a town in North Dakota called Midora. So it's like Midwest, pretty much in western, but yeah, those are the two things I
00:54:33
Speaker
have right now. Like I do sell work, but even just like, as everybody knows, like supporting people for free online, sometimes with likes and if you like my art following along, that sort of thing that's helpful too. So yeah. Or if you hate it and you have, you know, feedback or comments, that's fine. You know, we're so cool to leave those as well. You're too nice. I just delete stuff. People don't like me. I'm like, no.
00:55:04
Speaker
It's probably the healthy, yeah. Don't you think there's negative energy in my life? Oh, I'm blocking you. Like, go away. There's a preferably nice comments or constructive, criticisms of the world lately. No hate, messages or hate comment. We don't need those. But yeah, your art is beautiful. I have loved looking through your page so far. So yeah, I highly recommend that everybody go check out Madora's stuff.
Conclusion and Encouragement to Create
00:55:35
Speaker
It's nice to meet you and to chat with you. Yeah, this was really great. I'm glad that Mary introduced us. Mrs. Van. All right. And then we close it off by saying keep it ugly. So keep it ugly, everybody.
00:55:53
Speaker
The Ugly podcast is created by Lauren Alexander of Scribe and Sunshine Editing Services. It is produced and kind of edited by me and written, directed by absolutely no one. If you like the podcast, be sure to rate and leave a review on your preferred platform and share with the creative people in your life. As always, keep it ugly.