WEBVTT
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I have found more value and like I need to invest in relationships and things in community because I don't have that during the day.
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You know, some people are like peopled out because they work all day and they are surrounded by people and then then by the time they get home they're like, oh, like enough.
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But I'm the opposite.
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I'm like people come, I need to talk to you and I just remember.
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You know I really you know my art community.
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I didn't really find it until college.
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Hi, this is Dwight Spencer, one of the Connections and Community Guys.
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I'm joined by other Connection and Community Guy, Maddox, and you're listening to For the Love of Creatives, a podcast about the intersection of creativity and community.
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Today, we are joined by our featured guest, Andrea Holmes, a McKinney-based muralist.
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While she's based in Texas, she's working all over the world.
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You may have seen some of her work.
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She's known as the Bird Lady and she's the host of Birdtober, and there are a lot of fun and interesting facts about Andrea, but who better to tell us a little bit about who she is than Andrea Holmes herself?
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Take it away, Andrea.
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Hi, how are you guys?
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Great Good, I am Andrea Holmes and I am a mural artist.
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I've been doing those for about five years, but I've been a painter for over the past 15 years and I've always been an art student and I just thought it couldn't be a real job and I went into other avenues of work.
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Couldn't be a real job and I went into other avenues of work.
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But over time I have figured it out and now I feel like I can say that I'm a successful full-time artist.
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I've been doing art full-time for the past eight years, which feels like a big accomplishment.
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And I am the co-author of Art makes magic with my friend Beth Fields, and that is about being a fairy art mother and inspiring other artists and being a mentor.
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Um, and it has practical tips and it really talks about how there's different pathways up the mountain for being an artist.
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It's not like a doctor where you do this, this and this and now you're a doctor.
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Art's not that.
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A doctor where you do this, this and this and now you're a doctor Art's not that kind of journey.
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So I also do 60 Second Bad Portraits, which is just a really fun, literally just a one-minute quick doodle of someone, and those have been really great and successful, really great and successful.
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And I am on the board of Millhouse, which is a creative center that empowers women to flourish.
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Here in McKinney, I'm a part of leadership McKinney, so I'm very active in a lot of things.
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I'm also a mom.
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My daughter and I have a little Muppet that runs around the house.
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He is a little grumpy, brussels the Griffin, and so that's basically me in a nutshell.
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You are a woman of accomplishment.
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You know to be a single mom and a pet.
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You know.
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And to make your living to support you and your daughter with your art is quite an achievement.
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It is, and I have to remember that it is a lot of times when you're in things you don't see what you've accomplished and how far you've come.
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And so to not only be an artist and making ends meet and paying bills and things like that, but to actually be flourishing and getting to travel all over the world and do extraordinary things, it's more than I could have ever dreamed of or thought possible, truly.
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You know, I just want to say, andrea, that you know we at this point with the podcast have had conversations with just shy of 40 creatives now, not all artists, but all creatives and you are right up there at the top of a very, very tiny percentage who actually do support themselves fully with their craft.
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So I just want to drive that home.
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You know that's quite an accomplishment.
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Thank you.
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I think I put this into the book but I wrote about you just don't really know what, how people are doing what they're doing.
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Do they have a spouse, do they have parents or a trust fund, or you know?
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I just would always look at other artists as I have been growing and just being like how do they do it?
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But you just don't know what their backstory is and how are they making sales.
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Maybe they have a father who was able to help them get into the art world or, you know, do things with them, or maybe they have a husband that helps them do all the business side.
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You just have no idea what kind of support systems people have.
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And so it's.
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To run my own business, and successfully, is pretty cool and I do wear that with pride because I've worked very hard at it and I'm grateful for every bit of the crazy things that I've been through to get me here.
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Well, and I also without you.
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Oh, go ahead, dwight.
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Well, I was just going to say that you brought up how hard it is to think of anything in a fashion that's other than linear.
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You know how when you're involved in something, you're so close to it, you can't really appreciate the magnitude of what it took to get to that point.
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What was it like when you were first having, you know, those, those inklings toward, you know, maybe possibly doing something with art?
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I mean, what, what was, what were those thoughts and feelings like?
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So I always wanted to be an artist but I just didn't think it was viable and that you know starving artist mentality, all of that.
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And so I went into school for more biology, zoology, like veterinarian type thing, and then I actually worked at a veterinarian clinic and realized quickly I was like, oh, this isn't for me.
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This is not all the puppies and kittens and all the love and warm fuzzies that I was hoping it would be.
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And so I had always been taking art classes on the side as my electives, things like that, just because I truly enjoyed it.
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And I actually didn't start painting until I graduated college.
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I had a professor that said you know, you guys don't even know how to draw.
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We need to start with the basics.
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And so I dropped it.
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To draw, we need to start with the basics, and so I dropped it.
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Um, so I eventually started taking painting classes.
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Um, after you know I had graduated, I couldn't find a job in art.
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I have an arts and technology degree.
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I was like I'm going to work for Pixar and um, but then it was like 2009,.
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You know, it was really hard to find a job.
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So I was working in catering.
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I worked at a as a server in a restaurant, I worked part-time in an art gallery and then I worked for a TV show called Cheaters, and so I just had all this modge podge and then I could just feel my creative soul dying and I wanted to, you know, nurture it.
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So I took classes on the side, um, and then I entered into an art show and they were like you don't even have hangers on here, go to this art gallery.
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I got a job at the art gallery and then I was able to quit all of the other jobs.
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It was a big pay cut, a huge pay cut, but I knew that it was the right choice.
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It was probably one of the better choices that I've made.
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That and getting divorced was to to go from, you know, making lots of money, um, especially when I was working at the catering job.
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I became a manager and, like, they gave me like paid for my gas and I had, you know it was a lot of money, a lot of stress, but a lot of money.
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But then to find this art job in an art gallery, that it was like almost half of a pay cut.
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But I had a husband at that point and so I could make that decision and I did and I just grew through working at that job I learned so much information about the art world and meeting other artists and you know, working on the large format printing machines to do like canvas prints, g clays, um, working in a gallery, you know how do you price stuff.
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All of that it was so valuable.
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So you know, you can see this little path that I was carving out.
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And then I started doing art shows and art festivals.
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I started teaching classes and then, and then eventually I I started to be an artist full time.
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The gallery that I was working with ended up closing and so I had had my daughter.
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At that point she was about a year and a half old and it was like, do you put her in daycare?
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And then I could only work part time and it was like Monday through Wednesday who's hiring for?
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Monday through Wednesday, nobody.
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And so I decided to stay home and again, I had the ability to do that because I had someone to support me at that point.
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The ability to do that because I had someone to support me at that point.
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And, um, I worked on my art and I was just taking a lot of commissions and doing daily projects like the um, uh, you know, a 30 day art challenge, um, then, which led to Birdtober and doing that every year, and this will be my seventh year and um, and then I started getting into more things.
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So it just was this long pathway.
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So art for me has just always been there, and the more that I got into it I was like oh, like this is, there is money here and art and um, people spend billions of dollars in art.
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It's a huge industry and when you really look around and see how much art really touches everything, hold on my dog.
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This is the one thing I didn't think of.
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He does this every time I was looking for this squeaky toy Cause he brings it out every time I'm on a zoom call.
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But I just, I just and I lost my train of thought.
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I'm so sorry.
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You tried to prepare me for this.
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You know there was something that you said earlier.
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I want to track back a little bit.
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I'm still kind of hanging on.
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You do art full time because it's such a big deal.
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Everything we talk about is about that intersection of community and creativity, and I know that you'd get commissioned work to do murals where you have to travel, which lets me know that in order to do that and be a single mom, you have to have quite a support system to be able to do that, and that's a beautiful example of how community impacts our creative life.
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You couldn't do that if you didn't have the support community.
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There are times where she's with her dad, so I can plan like, okay, she's going to be with her dad, this is a week, I can do something, so let's plan for that.
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Or grandma helps out, and then I have a trip coming up that my sister-in-law is going to come help out.
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So I really do have a support system and for me, one of my hugest pillars of where I get my strength from is from friends and family and relationships.
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I mean, I don't think I would have made it through these past five years.
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They've been very turbulent.
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Now my career has grown exponentially and it's been wonderful, but at the same time my personal life has just been chaos and turbulence the whole time.
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But people wouldn't know that, but it's just been crazy.
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And without those friends that I especially my friends that I've surrounded myself with I can't imagine getting through any of it.
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I don't know how people do it without those kinds of connections.
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Well said, andrea.
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We love that.
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We are so all about people magic and you're describing a variation of people magic.
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Yeah, Relationships are so important, even through business.
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Right Connections are sometimes called networking, which is, you know, an ugly word for artists.
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We don't use the N word in our house.
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It really is.
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Relationships is what it truly is.
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With a lot of the businesses here in downtown McKinney.
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You know I worked down here.
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I built relationships in that way.
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People trusted me and then I was able to start doing projects down here.
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People saw my caliber of work.
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I'm easy to work with.
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You sit and work in someone's business If you're painting a mural.
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You're there for like a week or more and you talk to these people and you learn about their life and then even afterwards I continue to go back to these places and visit their restaurants or shops or and continue to have relationships with them because you genuinely like them and you're invested and you you're cheering them on and they're cheering you on and, um, and I especially love that here in McKinney and I've even going to Hawaii and that was like a trip of a lifetime and only because if I'd made a project which is the 100 bird mural project, it's based off of a painting project that I had done which was 100 bird, hundred bird paintings Um, and I wanted to figure out how to paint what I wanted to paint, um, versus like signs and billboards for businesses, um, and really do art murals and this was my solution.
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But you know, these people reached out from Hawaii and they invited me in.
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They let me stay in one of their Airbnbs.
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They had, you know, ceremonies and meet the artist night, where they all had home cooked food and I learned how to do lays and like we were sitting around a table and making lays together with leaves.
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And I mean to travel across the world, or several thousand miles, and be somewhere for just eight days and then immediately you have a connection with someone and I think that is universal and that's a huge part of this project is for me to have a sense of awe and wonder and experience the world in this way.
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But it's really also about connecting with people all over the world, because when you get into these small towns or places or you kind of get a slice of life moment, it's really beautiful and you realize, in spite of all the chaos and drama that you see online and everything that you know, people are quite wonderful and loving and caring and they're living their lives and it can be a really good place as much as it can be a bad place, and I really create my art for me to have joy, because life is crazy and it brings me joy and I want to bring that to other people through my artwork, with the bright, colorful things and like birds.
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They're just like jewels to me.
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You know they're just.
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They come in a variety of sizes, shapes, colors.
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It's just an endless subject matter to me.
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Um.
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So to be able to do that and and spread that joy throughout the world and make those connections and travel and have on and wonder, I mean it's quite incredible and I feel very lucky that I am able to do it, because I know a lot of people work, everybody can work hard, right, but not everybody gets these opportunities.
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So a lot of hard work and a little bit of luck.
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You know there's something very unique about what you do as an artist.
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You know I'm sitting my mind is percolating here and I'm thinking about how most artists paint on canvases, or you know, and probably maybe a small percentage of what they do is commissioned work.
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Most of it's what we call spec work.
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But as a muralist you can't just really go out and paint a wall.
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I mean, I guess graffiti happens all the time, but that's not what you do, you know.
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So pretty much all of your murals have to be commissioned work, right?
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I do approach places a lot of times.
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You know working with cities, or you know there's grants and things available, but there are.
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It's not just like whatever I want to do, they are adding in the ingredients.
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So I think of this like a kind of like I'm building a recipe, um, and I for me, especially with this bird project, it's my only thing is it needs to have a bird in it, but each new location, each new person that I work with gets to add in the ingredients and I get to build something cool based off of that and it'll be unique because of that and I think it'll have a lot of flavor and joy put into it, because I'm working on it with other people and when you collaborate, you build something better because it's not just you and your own space.
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It gives you new ideas, it gives you, um, you know, creative restrictions and, um, I think because of that I create better work.
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That's beautiful.
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I'm curious what have you had a chance to discover that was surprising in any of this work or in your travels easier.
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It feels which sounds so awful and I'm sure that's like an infuriating thing to say, but I don't know if it's because I feel like maybe I have finally, like I'm really in a place that I should be, Like I have found my passion.
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I'm, you know, like this.
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It's so that it feels easy because I'm not fighting against something or trying to be something.
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I'm not or trying to fit into a category that I'm not.
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But if I could go back and tell myself like, hey, little baby artist, Andrea, you know, this is what you're going to be doing and this is how much people are going to pay you, my mind would just be like, you know, like I, I would never.
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I I wanted it to be good, but I didn't think it could be this good and that things could surpass my expectations is probably the biggest thing that I just didn't see coming um and so, but I've just I very stubborn um throughout all of this and just very persistent um and willing to pivot, and those were probably the things that you know that have helped me grow and be able to be successful is just being just, I'm a Ram, you know, Aries Ram, and I'm an ox in the Chinese one.
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I think I'm just like, I'm steadfast, I just kind of trudge through things.
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You know the grit factor, but I just I wanted it.
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I want to be an artist.
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I want, I want the things that come along with it.
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I eat, breathe, sleep art.
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I don't know, it's all art all the time.
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I can't imagine people who don't have art in their lives.
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What is that even like?
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Or even the community that art brings?
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You don't have those people in your life.
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No wonder everybody's so sad people in your life.
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Like what.
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No wonder everybody's so sad.
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There is something quite magical about being surrounded by other creative people.
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You know I've been writing about it lately, searched for my people my whole life and just in the last couple of years, you know, in probably the last stages of my life, I have found my people, you know, and it's just been, it's been phenomenal.
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You know you were talking about never dreaming that you'd get paid, what you get paid.
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I had a mentor sometime, not too long ago say to not just me, but a group of people that were creating, and he said you know, don't ever feel bad about making money, don't ever feel embarrassed or ashamed or bad about making money, because, he said, what you do changes the world, what you do contributes to humanity in a major way.
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Now, they may not really realize it like that, but that doesn't matter.
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It contributes, and the more money you have, the more people you can help, the more people you can touch, the more murals you can paint, and it makes sense.
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We should never, ever feel ashamed of getting money for our work, because it's the enabling thing that lets us bring more joy into the world.
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Yeah, it has extreme value, it truly does, and I, you know you don't think about it.
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But but companies like Starbucks, you know they paid me.
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I'm going to use real numbers Cause as an artist and when I was trying to figure things out, I love to hear people's real numbers but it was like, you know, $20,000 to work on a project for them, like they're investing that Uptown Dallas, it's like over a $60,000 project.
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So these people, these big corporations with lots of money and the ability to research, they're investing in art and that says a lot.
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The city of McKinney is investing a lot of money in art.
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They added another $160,000 to their arts commission to be able to give out in grants.
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That says so much and it's really a feather in someone's cap to be able to invest in art, because you're not just surviving, you're thriving, and that's something unique to humans is to create art and express ourselves this way, and I think it's such a wonderful thing and I was talking to my brother the other day and I have said this in one of my workshops that I do.
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It's a goal workshop.
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Every year I do this.
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I keep thinking about giving it up, but I don't think I ever will, because it's invaluable to me.
00:24:04.029 --> 00:24:10.943
It's like a recap of your year and then you look into the next year and at one I said I was like I want to make a hundred thousand dollars as an artist.
00:24:10.943 --> 00:24:12.997
And I remember people being like what?
00:24:12.997 --> 00:24:17.763
Like that's crazy, and but I was like I'm just putting that out there and I did it.
00:24:17.763 --> 00:24:25.997
And then I was talking to my brother the other day and I was like I want to make a hundred thousand dollars in a mural and he's like, well, you can make a hundred thousand dollars in a year.
00:24:25.997 --> 00:24:27.420
And I said no, in one mural.
00:24:27.420 --> 00:24:29.304
And he was like what?
00:24:29.304 --> 00:24:35.519
And I was like I just put in crazy things out there and it happens.
00:24:35.519 --> 00:24:42.289
So I I'm sure this is like a weird manifestation or type thing or I don't know.
00:24:42.289 --> 00:24:49.839
You're putting it onto the universe or you're setting a goal and because you haven't set limitations on yourself, you look at things in different ways.
00:24:49.839 --> 00:24:54.678
You try to figure out that problem in a different way so that you can achieve it.
00:24:54.678 --> 00:25:07.787
Because if you're like, well, I only can make this much as an artist, but if you limit yourself, then that's where you're going to stay, so I like to give myself these like absurd challenges, or at the time, they seem absurd.
00:25:07.807 --> 00:25:10.801
Um, to me, where I'm just like that's crazy.
00:25:10.801 --> 00:25:15.916
But, um, there, it's out there and people are paying money for art.
00:25:15.916 --> 00:25:16.417
Like it's.
00:25:16.417 --> 00:25:19.365
It's a, it has value, it's an investment.
00:25:19.365 --> 00:25:20.468
It's not a cost, it's.
00:25:20.468 --> 00:25:25.096
It's a, it has value, it's an investment.
00:25:25.096 --> 00:25:26.960
It's not a cost, it's it truly adds to people's lives.
00:25:26.960 --> 00:25:28.122
They crave it, they need it.
00:25:28.122 --> 00:25:37.948
Um, so I I really just and not that it's about the money, um, but for me it's like what does a hundred thousand dollar mural look like?
00:25:37.948 --> 00:25:42.895
Is that a giant building that I get to paint on, where, like, a whole city gets to see it?
00:25:42.895 --> 00:25:46.663
Like, isn't that so cool that I could leave that kind of mark?
00:25:46.663 --> 00:26:04.990
Um, in the world and and, um, and you know, affect someone's life in a way where they see that mural and maybe they it invokes a feeling of joy or positivity, or if I could do that in some way, it's such a it's I want to do it.
00:26:06.497 --> 00:26:10.826
I love your attitude, Love, love, love your attitude and it's very inspiring.
00:26:10.826 --> 00:26:16.647
And I just want to say, yes, it's very much about manifesting and B there is nothing weird or crazy about it.
00:26:19.695 --> 00:26:25.248
Let's, let's not overlook, just because we're talking about manifesting.
00:26:25.248 --> 00:26:29.182
I'd say, a key ingredient is that determination that you spoke of.
00:26:29.182 --> 00:26:39.701
I mean you, you have put in the hard work, you've, you've applied grit, and that's as much a part of that formula for manifestation as just setting the crazy goal.
00:26:40.505 --> 00:27:06.672
Yes, I think so and I actively pursue like these things, like I don't just set it out into the universe and be like, okay, I'm ready, you know, I, I talk to people, I reach out, I, um, I look for opportunities and, um, I'm planting seeds all the time in order to grow, and so I think it's.
00:27:06.672 --> 00:27:18.642
You just never know what's around the corner for you, and especially if you just keep applying yourself, keep showing up to the easel, keep you know, keep working at it.
00:27:18.642 --> 00:27:24.655
And the next part is talking about it, you know, talking about what you do.
00:27:24.655 --> 00:27:48.042
This is one of my biggest components of you know, mastering your self-promotion is so key for artists and creatives because you know you make these wonderful things and if you don't talk about them or show them to people or share them, then it's just lost and I think again, it adds real value to people.
00:27:48.042 --> 00:28:02.750
So you have to do the other part of the work, of the marketing, of the promoting what you you're doing because it's good.
00:28:02.750 --> 00:28:04.561
We need more good things in the world.
00:28:05.214 --> 00:28:10.366
You have to wear the entrepreneur's hat, so you can wear the artist hat.
00:28:10.787 --> 00:28:16.768
Yes, and I'm like there is no shame in the book that I wrote with my friend Beth.
00:28:16.768 --> 00:28:29.468
She has a full-time job and she's like waiting to, but like she has a pension that she's like working towards, and she didn't go to art school and she, you know, didn't have a studio outside of her house.
00:28:29.468 --> 00:28:35.948
That has value too, where you're creating art, you know, just for yourself, and things like that.
00:28:35.948 --> 00:28:39.555
Like it doesn't not everybody needs to be a full time artist, right.
00:28:39.555 --> 00:28:46.028
Not everybody needs to be a full-time artist, right, but I think art still has immense value, even if it's just for the artist.
00:28:49.494 --> 00:29:05.721
But I want people to share it because I want to see it Right and I can appreciate how, when you're creating art, it scratches an itch, it fulfills a need, like I understand that there is so much that we don't know about how it is that we're built.
00:29:05.721 --> 00:29:07.164
We know that we need nutrition.
00:29:07.164 --> 00:29:10.059
We know that we need sunlight.
00:29:10.059 --> 00:29:13.567
We we know that we need to have relationships.
00:29:13.567 --> 00:29:14.308
We're discovering it's.
00:29:14.308 --> 00:29:32.009
It's essential for making sure that we don't suffer from a host of ailments, including dementia, suffer from a host of ailments, including dementia, but art probably factors in there pretty highly and just because it hasn't been quantified, it's something that we should probably be diligent about pursuing.
00:29:33.130 --> 00:29:59.703
Truly, I'm reading this book called Joyful and it starts off talking about and I can't remember the town or the people or the players or anything, but it talks about this town that is really impoverished, there's a lot of crime, and then the mayor comes in and he paints this whole building, everything except for the windows orange, like this bright, vibrant orange.
00:29:59.703 --> 00:30:16.936
And he starts this initiative where they start painting entire buildings, even ones for the city, in these bright, wonderful colors and patterns and things, and then it decreased crime, People that were afraid to open up their shops, which were starting to open up again.
