Nurturing Your Creative: Curating for Inspiration

I was recently asked “how do you nurture your creative soul while advancing your career?” It’s a great question. I believe there are four keys. Today, I’ll take a look at the first: curating experiences to inspire your creative self.

At my company, when we launch a video project we often start with inspiration boards—something to inspire us; a visual framework within which we can build the story.  In the same way, it’s important to create your own “inspo board” for life. For me, that means going to a lot of museums and installations. Earlier this year I experienced Man Ray: The Paris Years at the Art Museum of Richmond–a fantastic look inside the creative process of this great photographer, as well as the creative milieu in which he soaked daily while living in Paris. And one of the things that surprised me the most was how much of Man Ray’s archetypal photos were created for commercial projects—commissions for magazines, book covers and the like. One of his most iconic and insightful images is of Ernest Hemingway with a bandage wrapped around his head. At the time, Hemingway had been struggling to write. At a party, he drunkenly mistook the chain of a previously broken skylight for the toilet chain. The glass came crashing down on him, he was rushed to the hospital, and reportedly spent hours on the operating table. That night, Hemingway almost died. Man Ray snapped the photo a few days later, capturing Hemingway’s vulnerability, courage, and a slightly rakish look with his hat off kilter as he looks into the middle distance. After the accident, Hemingway’s creativity was unblocked and he wrote A Farewell to Arms, probably one of his greatest works. Some of my many takeaways from this curated experience: a crisis can move us to action. The pivot point in a story can be unexpected. And getting paid to work doesn’t mean the work isn’t worthy–it’s a gift that allows us to keep creating.

Some of my other favorite inspirational experiences are outdoor installations, sculptures and murals. Living in Washington, DC, I’ve got plenty to choose from locally, including the haunting Korean war memorial, Some of my other favorite inspirational experiences are outdoor installations, sculptures and murals. Living in Washington, DC, I’ve got plenty to choose from including the haunting Korean war memorial, including life-sized statues by Frank Gaylord[ making you feel as if you are right there with them in the cold and relenting rain.

And the joyful murals surrounding Ben’s Chili bowl done by artist Aniekan Udofia.

I was also lucky enough to catch the multi-floor Adam Pendleton exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York when I was there last month for a project.

Now that Covid restrictions are lifting, I’ve got lots more places on my list to inspire my creative work this year. I can’t wait!

What art or installations have inspired you?

 

 

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Women Who Inspire Us

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What trailblazers inspire me?  For International Women’s Day, I immediately thought of five world-changing, badass conservationists I met recently—women working in biodiversity hotspots to save their local habitat, species and communities to help save our planet.

As global citizens, we’re so lucky to have women like Awatef Abiadh working in North Africa, Ingrid Parchment working in Jamaica, Leah Mwangi in Kenya, Martika Tahi in Vanuatu and Le Thi Trang in Vietnam—check out their videos to learn more about the challenges they face and how they are bringing communities together to save biodiversity.  Biodiversity hotspots are Earth’s most biologically diverse yet threatened terrestrial areas. The Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF) empowers civil society organizations–with leaders like these fearless, focused women–to manage the global biodiversity crisis at a local level, one initiative at a time.

One of the great things about being a digital storyteller is learning about people who make a difference in our world, and thanks to @Interface Media Group (IMG) I was lucky enough to get to know these five inspiring women and their incredibly important environmental work, partly funded through grants from CEPF, as part of the IMG production team which produced the CEPF Hotspot Hero Awards videos and the entire virtual awards event where all 10 heroes were celebrated. Let me take this opportunity to shout out the incredibly talented creative team at IMG, including Director of Experience Design Jordana Well, Senior Project Manager/Line Producer Frankie Frankavilla, Director of Visual Effects Dave Taschler, Editors Luke Blackwell and Abbey Farkas, Sound Designer Dennis Jacobsen, and Sound Mixer Pavel Sinev—it takes a village to create great content!

You can watch the entire virtual awards event produced by IMG here and learn more about the important work of CEPF, their global partners, and all the Hotspot Heroes.

 

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My Career Challenge: Breaking a Bone Changes Everything

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Here’s a surprise: my biggest challenge last year wasn’t Covid. Not by a mile. Exactly one year ago, I broke my right wrist. So badly that I needed surgery. One 3” titanium plate and 10 screws later, loaded up on painkillers and still unable to feel my entire right arm due to a surgical nerve block, on Day 2 I assessed my situation. And it freaked me out.

Writing was my first challenge. As a multimedia producer, I do a lot of writing. The week after my surgery, a major deadline loomed for an 1,800-word blog post for one of my clients and a video script for another. Thankfully I had already done the background research. But boy, left-hand typing and non-dominant hand mouse-ing was quite laborious. (Speech-to-text was not the easy functionality I had hoped, which I’m sure my friends with different abilities already know.)

But here was the biggest challenge of all: playing the violin.

playing on a street corner at age 13 with my duet partner Jeff

You see, I’ve been a musician since I was six, and a violinist since age 9, having apparently begged my parents relentlessly to play that instrument.  Growing up, I spent hours taking violin lessons, playing in youth orchestras and competing in solo competitions acro

The only photo I have of Giuseppe DiLuisi circa 1906

ss my region. On weekends, various musician friends and I would play on street corners in Georgetown, a tony neighborhood in Washington, D.C., to earn money towards our college funds.  Years later, when playing in my college symphony orchestra, I learned from a relative that my great great grandfather Giuseppe DiLuisi had played the violin for a living, in summer riverboat orchestras on the Mississippi and

winter music halls in New York. At the age of 9, he had arrived in this country from Italy with only the clothes on his back and his little violin. So my passion stems from long family roots.

Flash forward, and I’ve been playing at a professional and semi-professional level for, well, a bunch of decades now. In the Washington DC area where I live, I’m lucky to be surrounded by great musicians, and often play in churches, in various chamber groups, and with my amazingly talented colleagues of the NIH Philharmonia.

Back in March of 2021, the thought of never playing again was devastating.

Music has been essential to my life—not only personally, but also professionally. As a content creator, I spend a lot of time curating just the right music, reviewing sound mixes, working with talented sound designers. Because sound is more than half the picture.

So when I broke my wrist, I did what I always do when producing a complex multi-media project: I threw myself into the details.  I read everything I could about rehab for string player injuries. I showed up religiously for painful physical therapy sessions twice a week.  I took my PT “homework” very seriously. And my talented surgeon Dr. Peter Fitzgibbons—who had been briefed in advance on my absolute need for full flexibility again—brought great confidence to each of my check-in’s. At one point, I brought in my violin and the Bach Brandenberg Concert #3, which the NIH Phil planned to play in December, and demonstrated a passage to show how far short I was falling to manipulate the bow into Bach’s many nuanced sequences. I was determined to not just play the part, but play the principal 1st violin solo part for this concert. And that was my goal every single day.

Focusing on one overarching goal has a way of putting everything else in perspective. Whether you are managing young children through Zoom schooling, grappling with your evolving career, or facing the trial of you or a family member struck by Covid.  Take the climb in small steps. Break the challenge into manageable pieces. You will get there.

Today, I plunge into the work of 2022 with gratitude. I can write and produce videos. I can play the violin again. The healing took so many steps. But I’m finally there. And you will be, too.

 

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