Unleash Your Inner Artist with Colleen Bordeaux
You don’t have to be Frida Kahlo or Jackson Pollock to make or appreciate art. But oftentimes art museums feel stuffy and inaccessible to those who weren’t art history majors. Colleen Bordeaux is a writer and consultant for the Art Institute of Chicago. Today she’s talking to Andrea about getting through creative blocks and unleashing your creativity upon the world.
When it comes to making art, we leave it to children… and highbrow artists. But what about the rest of us? Art museums are community spaces – not stuffy buildings full of stereotypical art critics. Colleen Bordeaux is a writer and consultant for the Art Institute of Chicago who spends her time reimagining galleries to help engage everyone from art history majors to people who have never stepped into an art museum in their lives.
Colleen encourages everyone to do some “art cardio,” where you start in the gift shop and run through a museum to find things that catch your eye. You’ll be an appreciator in no time! She also discusses why it is so hard to put your creativity out for the world to see and how you can challenge your belief systems to help unleash your inner artist.
[00:56] - Colleen's background in human capital and journalism
[02:34] - Projects with The Art Institute of Chicago and The Second City
[03:56] - Creating for the sake of the process
[05:06] - Throw people off-kilter
[08:32] - Art therapy
[11:06] - Tips for first-time museum visitors
[16:09] - How to transform judgement into curiosity
[22:48] - Am I Doing This Right?
[28:00] - Self-help junkies
[32:12] - How does Colleen live a dope ass life?
Colleen Bordeaux is a best-selling author, speaker and human capital consultant. She’s been published everywhere from the Chicago Sun Times to the Huffington Post. Her book, Am I Doing This Right? (Amazon Publishing, 2019), called ‘brilliantly insightful’ and 'a modern guide to life,' became an immediate #1 Amazon best seller, endorsed by New York Times columnist and author Barry Schwartz and Sunday Times bestselling author Louise Parker. Her popular blog has reached more than 200,000 readers. She’s presented to Fortune 100 companies, spoken at national conferences, and is a frequent podcast guest. She’s currently working with The Art Institute of Chicago on creativity programs.
JUST TWO GALS WHO CAN APPRECIATE MONET
On this week’s episode of The Dope Ass Podcast, I chatted with Colleen Bordeaux (@colleenbordeaux for all you Instahoes out there) on what it means to be a creative.
Colleen is currently on a sabbatical from her corporate gig as a human capital consultant. Instead of working with companies to best understand employee productivity, she’s been working with the Art Institute of Chicago and Second City to develop programming that encourages people to tap into their emotional-creative powers.
As Colleen explained, much of what the art world tells us is important — feeling, connecting, getting vulnerable — isn’t nurtured within us in a traditional academic setting. As someone who has been struggling with homeschooling my kiddos over the past several weeks, I can agree. Her work is centered around bringing those skills to the forefront to help adults develop as professionals and leaders.
It’s cool, cool stuff, and not to get all “in these current times” on you, but I think it’s pretty clear now, more than ever, that more empathy is never a bad thing. And Colleen’s using some pretty woo-woo tactics to draw that out of people. One exercise she leads is getting everyone in the room to look at one another long enough so that they can remember every person’s eye color. This reminded me of something we used to do in my Spiritual Psychology program — we would spend time just staring at one another until it went from being normal to kind of weird to super weird to enlightening. I don’t make the rules, but I can testify that staring at people is a valid way to connect with our shared humanity.
If glorified staring contests aren’t your jam, Colleen also recommends spending some time at your local art museum. As an art history major, I can speak to the power of a great piece of art, but if you aren’t sure where to start, follow Colleen’s advice and head to the gift shop. See what pops up there and follow the signs. (Hint: it’s not going to be the obscure pieces that take a Ph.D. to understand) No museum? No problem! Spend some time getting creative on your own, and if you’ve got kids, encourage them to do the same.
It’s not how you embrace creativity that matters, it’s just that you do it! Speaking of that, cut the excuses and start creating now! Colleen mentioned that reading Bronnie Ware’s Top Five Regrets of the Dying gave her the push she needed to buck people’s expectations and pursue the life she wanted. In doing so, she took her sabbatical and transformed her incredible blogs into her AMAZING book Am I Doing This Right? which explores humanity’s top seven questions...nbd.
So whether you want to quit your day job and pursue art full time, or you want to shirk the expectations that you’ll settle down and start a family to travel the world instead, DO IT. And ignore anyone who’s judging you because, as I like to say, if someone notices it in you, they feel it in themselves. To put it in what my daughter would call “cringe” terms, your haters are your motivators. And on that note, if you ever feel yourself hating, turn that judgment into curiosity and you might just realize whatever bothered you or made you jealous is what will lead you to create the life of your dreams. So get questioning, get creative and get doing — your Dope Ass Life is right around the corner.
On the Dope Ass Podcast, Andrea Levoff and her roster of hilarious, inspirational, and always-opinionated guests are tackling everything from motherhood to fashion to travel and spirituality---with a seriously dope ass lens. But don’t take our word for it. Learn more about your dope ass host and her mission to make everyone see the world through hot pink-colored glasses at https://www.andrealevoff.com/.
This podcast episode was produced by Dante32.