Film director Chris White and songwriter Daniel Smith of The Danielson Family have crafted an 8-minute short film/music video titled "Come and Save Me," a poignant exploration of acceptance and community as a cure to the loneliness epidemic of our post-pandemic world.
In this episode, Daniel and Chris share about the film’s inception, working with lead actor and comedian Fred Armisen, and why the arts play a central role in addressing social concerns.
Read MoreI recently traveled to Lancaster, Pennsylvania where I participated in THE 2024 SQUARE HALO CONFERENCE:
RETURN TO NARNIA—CREATIVITY, COLLABORATION, AND COMMUNITY.
As part of the event, I hosted a live podcast recording on the topic of creativity and community. Joining me for this conversation is graphic designer, children’s book illustrator, author, and printmaker, Ned Bustard. Ned is the creative director at Square Halo Books and co-author of my book Naming The Animals.
Joining us alongside of Ned, is author and community leader, Brian Brown. Brian is the founder and director of the Anselm Society, a Colorado-based organization dedicated to a renaissance of the Christian imagination.
In our conversation, we address the questions, why does community matter to the artist and what are its challenges? How can we foster healthier relationships between artists and communities of faith and how can we move beyond the impact of social disruption into new experiences of communal life.
Patrons of the podcast can enjoy my live discussion from Square Halo on The Mischief of God In Art—Exploring Subversive Themes in Scripture and Creative Practice:
Visit Patreon.com/makersandmystics to learn more.
Read MoreAs we prepare for The Breath & The Clay creative arts gathering, I’m going to be highlighting several of the speakers and performers who’ll be joining us at the event.
For today’s episode I reached into the archives and pulled a segment of my conversation with BC24 headliners, Elephant Heart.
Elephant Heart is the Los Angeles-based electronic duo Jason and Victoria Evigan. Elephant Heart’s music Is Rooted in their shared passion for international travels, world beats and global cultures Elephant Heart creates genre-bending music that pulls multicultural influences from far and wide.
This segment of Season 7’s conversation carries a meaningful contribution to our current season’s theme of community and culture.
In this clip, Victoria and Jason share about the healing power of music and its ability to bring people together, the beauty of cultural diversity as well as a candid look into Victoria’s own process of moving past fear into the fullness of her creative expression.
You can listen back to the full episode here.
Read MoreKaleb Moten is a singer, songwriter, composer, music producer, and musician, dedicated to revealing beauty and meaning, and liberating other artists to do the same.
Kaleb has released four studio albums to date and is currently producing two more. In addition to his solo work, Kaleb also works as a music producer, with credits for artists such as Victory Boyd and Abbie Gamboa.
In this episode, Kaleb shares one of the foundational encounters that shaped him as an experimental, musician, as well as his journey of developing a vocabulary to encapsulate some of the deeper experiences of his music and life.
In keeping with this season’s theme of community and culture, Kaleb shares about the impact of leaning into particular expressions of art not only as an individual but what happens when an entire movement of people collectively express the same heart.
Kaleb will be joining us along with Victory Boyd at The Breath and the Clay creative arts event, March 22-24, 2024.
Read MoreThis Artist’s roundtable discussion was recorded live at Loom creative arts event in Spruce Pines, NC. The conversation centers on the importance of building creative community, the embodiment of the creative process and what it means to be an artist of faith amidst a culture in crisis.
Joining us for this discussion is long time friend of the podcast, author/illustrator Vesper Stamper, photographer and founder of JHS pedals Josh Scott, conversation host Corey Frey and myself, Stephen Roach.
As we prepare for The Breath and Clay 2024 I wanted to share this live discussion to highlight some of the vital community discussions we will be hosting.
Read MoreHugo Ball was a German sound poet, theatrical performer and mystic. He and his partner Emmy Hennings were the original catalysts of the infamous Dadaist art movement which they started in Zurich, Switzerland around 1916.
What may be surprising to learn is that Hugo Ball was a Catholic and his bizarre forms of art were deeply informed by his theology.
Joining me for this episode is visual artist, writer and art critic Jonathan Anderson. Jonathan writes about Hugo in his book, Modern Art & the Life of A Culture.
Read MoreTasha Jun is a Korean American melancholy dreamer, wife, and mom, who grew up in a multicultural and biracial home. She’s spent her life navigating the space between worlds: American and Korean, faith and doubt, family devotion and fierce independence. As a Korean American, she wandered between seemingly opposing worlds, struggling to find a voice to speak and a firm place for her feet to land.
In today’s episode, as we continue our exploration of art and identity, Tasha talks with me about her journey from self-rejection to self-acceptance and how writing her memoir Tell Me The Dream Again served as a means of integrating the multi-faceted parts of her identity.
Patrons of the podcast can enjoy a deeper dive into this topic with Tasha on our Patreon.
Read MoreIn today’s episode we’re going to hear from a young adult fiction writer whose creative work is fueled by the inspiration of family and who gains tremendous creative energy both from his children and by writing for children.
Our guest is S.D. Smith, author of The Green Ember Series, a bestselling middle-grade adventure saga. The Green Ember has reached hundreds of thousands of readers and spent time as the number one bestselling audiobook in the world on Audible. Smith’s stories are captivating readers across the globe who are hungry for “new stories with an old soul.” Enthusiastic families can’t get enough of these tales.
In our conversation, S.D. (Sam) shares why family and community are important to him as a writer.
This conversation continues the season 12 theme of Art & Identity, offering a meditation on how family and community shape the people we become and the art we make.
We will be talking in greater detail about this relationship between art and family in the Makers and Mystics Creative Collective. If you’d love to go deeper with us in these conversations, I want to invite you to visit Patreon and sign up today.
And since this episode features the work of a children’s book writer, it seems appropriate to tell you here that starting the first Wednesday in October, our collective will begin reading through The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
Read MoreArtistic expression and the creative process profoundly shape our sense of self, culture, and belonging. In our first roundtable of season 12, author Rachel Kang, visual artist Corey Frey and podcast host Stephen Roach to explore the transformative relationship between between art and identity.
Drawing from their own unique journeys with the written word and visual art, we discuss how these forms become powerful conduits for personal and collective narratives.
Rachel Kang is an author, poet and founder of The Fallow House online creative community. A mixed woman of African American, Native American (Ramapough Lenape Nation), Irish, and Dutch descent, she is a graduate of Alliance College with a Bachelor of Arts in English with Creative Writing and a minor in Bible.
You may recall our previous episode with Rachel on her book, Let There Be Art.
Corey Frey s a visual artist, poet and musician. He and his wife Christy are the founders of The Well Collaborative, a community in Frederick Maryland, dedicated to wonder, hospitality and creativity. Corey works as the Exhibitions Manager at The Delaplaine Arts Center in Frederick’s downtown area. He is also the co-hosts of the Makers and Mystics podcast’s creative collective book clubs.
Join us as we explore the intricate tapestry of human identity and gain fresh insights into understanding the transformative relationship between art and identity.
Read MoreWhat role does the imagination play in shaping the identity of a culture?
Our collective imagination provides metaphors, stories and symbols that bind people groups together and create a common understanding of the world.
But what happens when those metaphors no longer carry the same meanings? Or even worse, when those stories and metaphors no longer create unity but bring division and harm?
Professor and writer Karen Swallow Prior addresses these concerns in her book The Evangelical Imagination.
She tells us, contemporary American evangelicalism is suffering from an identity crisis - and a lot of bad press.
In this episode, Karen discusses what Charles Taylor called ‘A social imaginary’ and how artists and creatives can respond to the evangelical crisis of identity and bring healing to our cultural fractures.
Read MoreWhat does transcendence look like for a “post-psychedelic” artist and seeker? How does the notion of transcendence differ for the Jesus follower? Is there a difference between “manufactured” transcendence and one brought about by genuine spiritual encounter?
This Roundtable discussion brings together Canadian author, printmaker and clothing designer, Josh Nadeau, New Zealand folk musician, author and spiritual director Strahan Coleman, Mid-Western artist and writer Ashley Lande and Makers & Mystics host Stephen Roach to explore these questions.
Read MoreThe Wonderful Wizard of Oz, written by L. Frank Baum, has been heralded as “The Great American Fairy Tale.” Generations of both young and old alike have been fascinated by this whimsical tale since the early 1900’s.
When the book was first published, it became an immediate bestseller and was translated into multiple languages as well as adapted to Broadway musicals and several silent films. Frank Baum had reimagined the traditional fairytale and created a story so universal, it caught on like wildfire, and still today, over 120 years later, new adaptations continue to emerge.
Today’s artist profile gives a small glimpse into the life of the man who brought this story to life and calls listeners to consider the sometimes fraught relationship between artists and the church as seen in Frank's own spiritual journey.
Read MoreThere is a relationship between grief and transcendence that may not be immediately recognizable. But it’s one often expressed within art and in particular, children’s literature.
Whether it’s Lewis’s wardrobe to Narnia, Dorothy’s house transported by cyclone to Oz or a bridge to Terabithia built across a chasm of loss.
Grief has a way of transporting us to a fantastical world of imagination where we can more easily grapple with the difficulties of loss and even find closure to the trauma that sent us looking for relief.
In this episode, Makers & Mystics host Stephen Roach talks with children's book author Katherine Paterson about the motivations behind her writing and why she feels it is important to create a safe space through art and literature for young adults to work through difficult emotions and experiences.
Katherine Paterson is the author of more than 40 books, including 18 novels for children and young people. She has twice won the Newbery Medal, for Bridge to Terabithia in 1978 and Jacob Have I Loved in 1981.
Read MoreBruce Herman is a contemporary artist, writer, and speaker. His art has been shown in more than 150 exhibitions — nationally in many US cities, including New York, Boston, Washington, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Houston — and internationally in England, Japan, Hong Kong, Italy, Canada, and Israel.
Bruce taught at Gordon College for nearly four decades, and is the founding chair of the Art Department there. He held the Lothlórien Distinguished Chair in Fine Arts for more than fifteen years, and continues to curate exhibitions and manage the College art collection.
In this episode Stephen Roach talks with Bruce about his current inspirations and the winding spiritual pilgrimage woven throughout his 51 years working as a master artist.
Continuing our season theme of art and the urge for transcendence, Bruce shares his early experiences of psychedelics and the transformation that led him from Eastern mysticism to become a follower of Jesus.
Read MoreDr. Elissa Yukiko Weichbrodt is Assistant Professor of Art and Art History at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Georgia. Her research and writing consider representations of race and gender in 19th and 20th century art and visual culture, but she is most passionate about equipping laypeople to engage generatively with the images they already see.
In this episode, Dr. Weichbrodt and I discuss her book, Redeeming Vision: A Christian Guide to Looking at and Learning from Art, which at the time of this recording was just released from Baker Academic.
In our conversation, we talk about how we might engage with art that makes us uncomfortable, challenges us or takes us outside our familiar ways of seeing.
One of the chapters in Redeeming Vision is titled Wondering at God’s Transcendence. Of Course, given our theme for the season, I couldn’t resist spending some time unpacking this chapter specifically.
Read More
Father Christopher Foley is the priest at Holy Cross Orthodox Church in Kernersville, NC where he has been serving for 17 years. Fr. Christopher is a convert to the Orthodox faith from an Evangelical background. While studying missiology and art history in college, he became interested in Eastern Orthodoxy and went on to receive a Master of Divinity degree at Saint Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary in NY.
In addition to his duties as a parish priest, Fr. Christopher has been active in writing and recording music with his band, Luxury, for over 30 years. The documentary Parallel Love tells the story of the band and how three of its members each became Orthodox priests.
In this episode Fr. Christopher discusses art in sacred contexts, the tension between embracing tradition and the artist’s aversion to being labeled. Host Stephen Roach and Fr. Christopher talk about what it means to be haunted by Eden and how the longing for transcendence stays with us even for those who have deconstructed their faith.
Patrons of the podcast can enjoy an additional interview segment on idols and icons.
Read MoreIn this Season Opening Primer, Makers & Mystics host Stephen Roach sets the stage for the season’s conversations on Art & The Urge For Transcendence.
You can download a transcript of this episode here.
Music provided by Some Were At Sea.
Read MoreJohn Ringhofer, the man behind Half-handed Cloud, is as joyful and frugal as his music. An economical thinker, Ringhofer prefers the subway over a taxicab, is a recycler of plastic, a compulsive note-taker, and a habitual optimist. Half-handed Cloud started as a home-recording project in Chattanooga, TN in 1999. Ringhofer was later based in the California Bay area for over a decade (where he worked as a part-time custodian) before moving with his young family to Helsinki, Finland in 2015 for his wife’s linguistics research. Half-handed Cloud is able to ensconce complicated theological concepts into catchy and sublime playground songs that refuse to condescend to its subject or its listener. He has collaborated with artists Sufjan Stevens, Daniel Smith of the Danielson Family and is currently an Asthmatic Kitty recording Artist.
In this bonus episode, Stephen talks with John about the creative process of his latest album, Flutterama as well as the mischief of Jesus, satire and how environment shapes the art we make.
Join the Makers & Mystics Creative Collective
Read MoreWhen we think about restoration, we typically refer to restoring something that once was but no longer is. We mean bringing something back to its original condition that was either altered or strayed from the intended design. But restoration doesn’t necessarily mean going back to something that once was. We can ‘restore the future’ as well.
In this season finale episode, Makers and Mystics host, Stephen Roach discusses what it means to restore the future, what it means for artists to become wounded healers, bridge builders and those who re-story the narratives of our lives to reflect original design.
Read MoreArthur Aghajanian is a Christian contemplative, essayist, and educator. His work explores visual culture through a spiritual lens. His essays have appeared in a variety of publications, including Ekstasis, Radix, Saint Austin Review, The Curator, and many others. He holds an M.F.A. from Otis College of Art and Design.
In this episode, I talk with Arthur about his spiritual background, the nature of non-dualistic thinking and the concept of art set free from the ego.
If you’ve followed the podcast this season, you’ll recall that woven throughout our conversations has been the underlying theme of restoration for the heart of the artist. As we approach the final episodes of this discussion, I wanted to revisit our theme in a more direct way. So I asked Arthur to speak into each thread of restoration, wounded healers, existing in the splice and re-storying the narratives we believe.
Your support of the podcast enables us to continue producing these vital conversations on art, faith and culture. Please consider joining today and lend your support to this work.
Music Provided by: Some Were At Sea
Read MoreThis episode is Part 2 of the Re-Creation of Meaning Roundtable (The Fire Dragon Edition) featuring John Mark McMillan, Stephen Roach, Vesper Stamper and Brandon Willett.
In this part of the discussion, we talk through:
- self absorption vs. self awareness
- the role of the audience in the artist's creative process.
- meekness and confidence
- Fire Dragons and Jackalopes
- How the intimate reflects the infinite
This Roundtable is the world's first podcast ever to discuss Taylor Swift, Radiohead, Beck, Nick Cave, Miley Cyrus, Madonna, Lady Gaga, Justin Vernon, Jay Z, Kanye, Rick Rubin, Adele, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Johnny Cash, Slayer, James Taylor, Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, Fire Dragons, Comic Books, David Brooks... All in one episode. Enjoy..
Read MoreJosh Nadeau is a print maker, writer and clothing designer living in Western Canada.
His Instagram account, Sword and Pencil, features a library of images and musings about goodness, truth and beauty.
His work, both in word and in image, aims to offer solutions to disenchantment and acts as an antidote to Christian culture’s rampant mediocrity.
In this episode, Stephen talks with Josh about the role of suffering in spiritual and creative development, the winding path to meaning and the need to cultivate virtue in our everyday lives.
* Patrons of the podcast can enjoy an additional interview segment with Josh on Waiting Well & The Temptation of Idolatry.
Music in this episode is provided by Sean Williams.
Read MoreMalcolm Guite is an English poet, academic and priest in the Church of England. He is a fellow of Girton College in the University of Cambridge and has published widely in the field of theology and literature.
His research interests include the intersection of religion and the arts and the examination of the works of J.R.R. Tolkein, C.S. Lewis and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
In this episode Malcolm and I discuss what I’ve termed as the poetics of restoration and how poetry and literature hold keys to understanding and even bridging the gaps between tradition and originality.
Patrons of the podcast can enjoy three additional interview segments with Malcolm, one on the moral imagination (which members of our creative collective will recall from discussions in our last book club.) also Malcolm’s thoughts on imagination as empathy, and practices to can we establish to achieve longevity for the artist and writer.
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Brightbell Creative: Meaningful Marketing For The Creative Artist
Read MoreRachel Marie Kang is a New York native, born and raised just outside New York City. She is an author, poet and founder of The Fallow House online creative community. Her writing has been featured in Christianity Today, Proverbs 31 Ministries, and (in)courage.
A mixed woman of African American, Native American (Ramapough Lenape Nation), Irish, and Dutch descent, she is a graduate of Alliance College with a Bachelor of Arts in English with Creative Writing and a minor in Bible.
In this episode, Rachel and I discuss her book, Let There Be Art: The Pleasure and Purpose of Unleashing the Creativity Within You.
In keeping our season ten theme of Restoration for the heart of the artist, Rachel and I discuss what it is like to create in the space between life and death, joy and grief and how creativity can serve as a bridge between the two poles.
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