14. Art Is Your Superpower with Leah Guzman

<p>Somewhere along the way, most of us picked up the idea that creativity is something you have to earn — that you need the right studio space, the right technical skills, and a long stretch of free time before you&#39;re allowed to make anything. Our conversation today our our creativity podcast takes all of that apart.</p><p><br></p><p>Leah Guzman is a board-certified art therapist with twenty years in the field, an artist, and the author of five books on creativity and healing. She&#39;s spent twenty-two years working in school systems, and she founded the Creative Soul Society, an online community that meets weekly to make art together — and that turns six the week we recorded.</p><p><br></p><p>We love how practical this creativity conversation is. Leah talks about how showing up is the hardest part of any creative practice, and how that&#39;s a solvable problem. She talks about the systems that get her there: art journals small enough to travel, creative time written into the calendar like an appointment, a thirty-dollar table that means she can leave a mess out and come back to it. She also talks about what she&#39;s learned watching people arrive in her community from every possible starting point, including the ones who show up certain they aren&#39;t artists.</p><p><br></p><p>If you&#39;ve been meaning to get back to something, this is a good one to have on while you do.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>In this episode:</strong></p><ul><li>The six-layer birthday cake art journal Leah built for her community&#39;s anniversary, and how to make one for yourself</li><li>Why showing up is the hard part, and the systems that get you past it — travel-sized art journals, creative time in the calendar, a mess you&#39;re allowed to leave out</li><li>Emily on carving linoleum when every part of her brain said there wasn&#39;t time</li><li>The three questions Leah asks herself every morning, answered with a scribble and a bit of watercolor in about five minutes</li><li>Why the people in her community keep coming back, and what she thinks is really happening when creative people gather</li><li>Allie on the reframe that gets used most: who said anything about painting?</li><li>The member who spent years refusing to call herself an artist — and the day she stopped</li><li>What Leah says, without hedging, to anyone who has decided they aren&#39;t creative</li><li>The stretch of Leah&#39;s life when she was giving creativity away all day and keeping none of it, and how she found her way back</li></ul><p><br></p><p>What happens when the person teaching everyone else to make art stops making it for herself?</p><p><br></p><p>Leah Guzman has been a board-certified art therapist for twenty year and has written five books on creativity and healing, while working in school systems. She has also had a stretch of her life where everything looked good on paper and nothing felt good underneath it — a period she describes as her dark night of the soul, when she was giving creativity away all day and making none of it for herself.</p><p><br></p><p><strong>Resources &amp; Links:</strong></p><ul><li><a href="https://www.leahguzmanstudio.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Creative Soul Society </a>— Leah&#39;s website and online creative community</li><li><a href="https://www.instagram.com/creative.soul.society/?hl=en" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">@creative.soul.society</a> - Leah on Instagram</li><li><a href="https://www.eomega.org/?&scid=4620534&kw=46708731&pub_cr_id=806992152863&device=c&network=g&targetid=kwd-298074249294&loc_interest_ms=&loc_physical_ms=9005665&tc=CjwKCAjwvsvTBhBaEiwAmf-3nshARgpy-k8CCMhaP7M4k5RNs0-IdeVZk1XPSnKp66mOY5YT7yOMARoCTiUQAvD_BwE&rl_key=9fe870e5ec247802ac9d932d2a8a8e4d&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=21148139237&gbraid=0AAAAADD13DWvEjJ9ssiOw_3HKfgOfr2LY&gclid=CjwKCAjwvsvTBhBaEiwAmf-3nshARgpy-k8CCMhaP7M4k5RNs0-IdeVZk1XPSnKp66mOY5YT7yOMARoCTiUQAvD_BwE" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Omega Institute