Trusting the ideas that find you, even if they have to come knocking twice...
Sometimes ideas find you, and they don't make any sense. Sometimes you go with it anyway… and they lead somewhere so much bigger than you’d ever imagined.
In the spring of 2024, I was really struggling. I felt lost creatively and disappointed with the lack of momentum from projects that I had been investing a lot of time and energy in. It got to a point where I wasn’t sure if I could keep Radici Studios going. I was also pretty unhappy- deeply questioning who I was an artist and what role Radici Studios should hold out in the world…
After weeks and weeks of a downward spiral I made a vulnerable ask to my Creativity Group to come to my studio. I put together a powerpoint presentation on “All the art I’ve ever made” hoping at the end they’d tell me who I am and what I should be doing. I talked them through all the portraits I painted in college, the found object sculptures I made in my 20’s, the collaborative show I did with my dad in his backyard, the activist posters I started to make after the 2016 election, the murals I got commissioned to paint here and there. They asked me good questions, then we had lunch. No questions were answered.
Looking back now, I realize that it was there that something started churning in my head…
Seeing the winding river of my creativity laid out like that- seeing all the places I had meandered and pushed- helped me zoom out to see it from a birds eye perspective. I realized I sort of liked some of the ideas I had started in the past but that had been interrupted by life, or ego, or timing… like the The Momo Party mural I painted for Bini’s Kitchen. I liked the patterns the birds eye perspective, the energy. I remembered creating another design in that same style and submitting it to be considered for a potential mural in San Francisco. It wasn’t chosen. I was bummed… I moved on to other things….
Days after the studio visit , as I walked to pick my kids from school, I thought about how much I LIKED that drawing of the community garden, the one that got rejected. The sore feeling of not being chosen, now felt distant. I thought about cleaning up the drawing and adding color! It SHOULD be a mural! A series! A whole series of murals about people gathering in different ways! Huge murals painted in public places that inspired people to connect with each other and gather more often! YES!
Ok, but reality check- no one was banging down my door with funding an extra wall space for the murals… so what else could this be in the meantime? A series of prints?! A calendar?! That felt like a weird idea- I’d never made a calendar. I was skeptical anyone would be interested, but I pushed on- realizing a calendar would force me to come up with 12 new pieces and excited by the new design ideas that kept me up at night. I got pricing for printing 50 calendars and ended up selling almost 900 a year ago.
I’m happy to report that 2025 involved not one but two We Gather Murals now out in the world, 12 beautiful new screen prints of all of the original images (Use code SCREENPRINT30 at check out for 30% off this week), and 12 brand new designs now in the 2026 calendar which have gone out to almost 1000 people all around the country (and world!)
And here we are near the end of the year, so I also want to let you know about the the very last screen print for 2025 - We Nourish. It’s a piece about cooking together- it’s a piece about the energy of being in a kitchen participating in the creation of something delicious (tamales!) with music and imperfect loving relationships softened by common purpose.
So here’s to all the ways we gather because of, and despite, all the hard things in the world right now. Here’s to connection with our families and/or chosen families. Here’s to trusting and following the ideas that find you.
Sending big love to you all in this season,
Jen
p.s. I know the beautiful large size screen prints might be out of budget for some folks even with the discount, so I had a handful of digital prints made of last years We Gather images. You can check them out here.
p.p.p.s. My friend Molly May just ran a 1-hour FREE CLASS called Awaken Your Mammal! She covered why being in your mammal self is essential and exciting for this new era ahead. It isn’t an anti-tech class; it’s about how to co-exist with it all and not lose this most important part of your nature. If you missed it- you can still catch the recording here.
It's funny how you could be wondering about your purpose, while at the same time there is someone across the world (me!) who is being endlessly inspired by your work. I return to it when I need direction, when I need to remember that there are others who believe in a present and future that looks like the images you create. It is one of my goals in the next couple years to save enough money to have several of your prints hanging on my wall as daily reminders and prayers. For now, I have been overjoyed to have the coloring pages to color when my heart is heavy, and to share with others when they need it. Jen, you may not see the ripple effects of this work, but I tell you from Denmark: We pray, we dance, we celebrate, we cultivate, we show up, we share, we gaze, we listen, we create, we organize, we grieve, we nourish together, across the world, not always visible to one another but together nonetheless. Sending a root of connection your way today, with great love and gratitude.
https://radicalneighboring.substack.com/p/what-i-mean-by-radical
This is brillaint work. The observation about needing to see the "winding river" of creativity from a birds-eye view to recognize which ideas still had life in them really captures something most people miss about creative direction. A lot of folks treat rejected ideas as failures, but theres often just a timing mismatch or context problem rather than a fundamental flaw in the concept itself.