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PHOTOS BY ARNALDO ANAYA-LUCCA
WORDS BY TAMARA RAPPA
Tamara Rappa: You have been an artist in the public eye for about 30-plus years, and having sold over 30 million albums worldwide, but what can you tell us that we may not know, about the very first people, places, and things you drew inspiration from?
Jewel: I'd say nature. I was raised in Alaska. I didn't have a lot of money, but we had this incredible piece of land because my grandparents were homesteaders. Alaska would give you free land if you promised to move there and not die for a whole winter! I grew up on a homestead where we didn't have running water; we had an outhouse. We only ate what we could kill or grow, and it gave me this profound connection to the earth, to being in a relationship with nature. It informed me. During my dad's time, it was this brilliant home full of artists, but also pretty abusive. I think the reason my whole family was able to weather some pretty emotionally turbulent situations was because there was this land. That's a privilege that very few people get. The open space, the quiet, the lack of pop culture influence affected the type of writer I became, and what kind of human I would be.
TR: What do you admire and cherish most about your family?
J: So much. There's a real pioneering spirit in my family. You figure things out, you go into unknown spaces, you take on responsibility and accountability, you move into uncomfortable spaces. That's something that really is strong in my family, as are the arts. I was raised by a really feminine line that I think is unusual. My grandmother was running the homestead while my grandfather was off doing other things. There were six girls and two boys. I was raised in a family where there weren't normal gender roles. It wasn't like women cooked and men did the outdoor work. That didn't exist, where I was raised at least I think it was a huge benefit, and I think it's why I moved out at 15. It's was an unusual thing to do, but it was really all because I was from a pioneering family. I'm a girl and I was expected to do everything that guys were expected to do. I didn't realize how much of a privilege to be raised that way.
TR: What do you then see as the pivotal point that was responsible for your stepping into your artist self in your early life? Was it school? Was it performing with your father? Was it your time in San Diego?
J: Art was a resource made available to me because my whole family wrote their own songs. This wasn't because anyone was necessarily trying to be a professional musician. It was just part of our resources and part of what was available to each of us. Turning inward and writing as medicine. This was part of my daily life, part of my personal emotional hygiene. It was a coping mechanism...that might be the best way of explaining it. It was a coping mechanism made available to me that I took advantage of, and I wrote from a young age. I've been writing poetry since high school. This was a tool not to become a professional at first, but to help me navigate the world.
TR: Why did you choose to head to San Diego to sing and perform?
J: I moved out at 15 to go to an amazing, prestigious boarding school where I got a scholarship, in Michigan. After graduating, my mom was sick in San Diego so I went there to take care of her. That's how I ended up in San Diego. I had a boss who propositioned me, and when I wouldn't have sex with him I wouldn't be given my paycheck. I couldn't pay my rent so I started living in my car, thinking I'd get back on my feet. I didn't get back on my feet and ended up being homeless for about a year.
TR: Your early story is one that's been shared and discussed in so many instances over the years, and one part of that story being that you lived in your van for some time. Is there anything about how that story has been perceived or shared that has struck you? And is there anything about that time that is true, but little-told?
J: A lot of the framing of that story in the 90's was that I was kind of this plucky kid who moved into her car to chase her dreams. It wasn't like that. It was literally that to not have sex with a boss, to not be compromised, I had to choose to invest in my humanity and character, and believe in my value as a human. My willingness to do something hard...living in your car and being homeless, it isn't easy. It isn't fun. It isn't cute. It was better than compromising myself and having sex with a boss. It's about when you bet on yourself, and why I left home. I didn't want to be treated badly. I didn't want to be in an abusive relationship with my dad. It was about having the internal fortitude to say to myself, 'No, I'm going to find another way'. I refuse to compromise. I'm able to look back on my life and know that I've never chosen to compromise, I've always found another way even when it was a hard price to pay. I also know that it leads to magic, and that's something that I wish everybody could know. Every time you choose to invest in your character, it's like the stock market. It pays dividends that are magical. You don't get to see it at first, you don't get to know what it will be. And, look, you pay a price, but I believe it keeps something in you so integrally intact, that magic is able to come from it. You just don't get to know exactly what it is ahead of time.
TR:. As you look back on your music career and its moments at this point in your life, what do you think about in terms of which was special and pivotal and important?
J: It was always these deep internal decisions that were these huge forks in the road for me. What am I going to do? How am I going to handle this? Is this in alignment with my values? I was always choosing my values and my character over a perceived benefit. When I got discovered as a homeless kid, there was a million dollar signing bonus that I was offered. Luckily, I had the wherewithal to know that nothing is free. Nobody gives you a million dollars. So what's the catch? I was willing to investigate, what's the catch here? I went to the public library. I got a book on the music business. I learned how contracts were structured. It's a loan. It's a loan against the future sales of an album that I didn't make yet. And that made me personally uncomfortable. I didn't feel comfortable leveraging a piece of art that I hadn't even made. When I thought about how many albums I would have had to sell to give back that million dollar bonus---plus let's say, one or two million in promotions--- I'd be three million in debt before I even had an album made. I wanted to be an artist more than I wanted to be famous. I wanted a career more than I wanted a short-term hit. I wanted to be emotionally healthy more than I wanted any of it. I got really clear on, what do I need? What do I want to get out of this, and am I putting myself in a position to meet those goals and being very realistic about it, being willing to say no, being willing to say that maybe I don't sign a record deal, maybe this isn't for me? You take someone with my emotional background...God forbid I get famous... in every documentary you've seen on any musician, it usually leads to drugs and a pretty tumultuous ride. I didn't want to be a statistic. I didn't want that to happen, and that meant I needed to structure things in a way that might lead to a different outcome. It meant turning down the million dollars. It meant turning down opportunities, like being offered to be on Big Brother, the biggest reality show. I didn't think it'd be good for me. I didn't think it'd be good for my psychology.
TR: Is there anything you wish you could have done to prepare yourself for such global fame?
J: I set things up in a way that would allow me to handle what would come. One was a promise I made to myself, was that my number one job was to learn to be a happy whole human--- not a human full of holes. My number two job was to be a musician. Underneath that, I wanted to be a musician more than I wanted to be famous, and that gave me a hierarchical way of making decisions that if I was loyal to, would protect me throughout my life and my career. It meant things like turning down the bonus, it meant things like turning down the big reality show. It meant betting on the long term. It meant that hardwood grows slowly. I was being being patient in how I built my career. When I did blow up, when I got hugely successful, then it became giving myself permission to not do that. My personality and my traumatic background didn't work well with fame. The level of fame I've received, where you can't walk across the street or go to the bathroom or grocery shop, and you have bodyguards everywhere...it didn't work for me. I didn't like it. I had to give myself permission at a really young age, and it was during my second album, after Hands, to say that this actually doesn't work for me. It triggered me. I didn't know the phrase 'trauma trigger' at the time, but that level of fame was deeply triggering to me. I didn't like it, and wasn't good for my art. I had to be able to say that I'm going to walk away at 22, and I quit for two years. After that learning, I thought, okay, I do like music; I don't like being this famous. How can I do music and be this famous? Making a conscious decision to be less famous, to be less successful in the traditional way but in a way that supported my art and creativity and most importantly, my humanity--- those were very powerful decisions for me that at the time were perceived as weakness. The media perceived it as as if I were a washed up has-been who was stepping away. 'This album wasn't as successful as the last one'. 'She's switching genres to be popular'. Only I knew that my choice was a choice from power, and I had to believe that whether other people knew it or not, that was completely irrelevant.
TR: There was this time when people were not ready for you to change your sound. What comes to mind when you think about the current climate in music?
J: First and foremost, you have to know what makes you tick as an artist. And it's different for everybody. There are artists who like to iterate on the same theme over and over; that's deeply authentic to them. For me, that isn't authentic. I like growth, I like change, I like discovery---that's deeply authentic to me. You have to know this about yourself. Once you know what's true about you, you have an obligation to it, whether it's understood by people or not. I had plenty of role models who made music for authentic reasons, right? I had Bob Dylan and Neil Young; artists who were singer-songwriters and were changing their genres because they had a need inside of them to do it. It was authentic. There weren't as many female role models; Madonna switched genres, but maybe from a different place. Her art comes from a different place, which is fine and great too. But there weren't many female singer-songwriter role models at the time who were doing it from the sort of inside-out place. Even when Bob Dylan and Neil Young did it, it was hugely upsetting to people. They got really criticized. So I knew I would be in for a rough ride, but I also knew that not doing it meant that I was selling out. That fact would be harder to weather than other people thinking I was a sellout for other reasons, if that makes sense. Now, it's a little easier, a little gentler, for Taylor Swift to go from country to pop. Now mind you, Dolly Parton did it. And I remember her famous quote, 'I'm not leaving Country, I'm bringing it with me'. So you had women doing it. It's just always a little harder for women, but I think it's getting easier.
TR: We're going to discuss your extensive work in the mental health space and with children. But first, I wonder if you have general advice or wisdom you can share with adults, like the many adults in this country dealing with the impact of stress, and namely, work-related stress. You're someone who's had to deal with all sorts of pressures tied to work in their daily lives. What have you yourself discovered and learned?
J: Your life is your artwork. And if you're not involved, every day, making sure you like the shape of your life, if you're not actively involved in saying you are empowered to make whatever decision you need to make to ensure you're happy and make sure that your life is working for you, that the experience of your own life doesn't make you sick---then you're living from a very disempowered place. It is our divine birthright and on us to make sure that our life works for who we are. I've really learned that, no matter how poor you are, no matter how disadvantaged you are, you're still in a position of power. The more you can make decisions from that powerful place, the better, and it takes a deep place of trust and faith to know that saying no to something still means your life will work out. Believing that, no opportunity that requires you to compromise your integrity, isn't the right choice for you. It means there is going to be something else out there. That's an act of faith, and it's an uncomfortable act. But I've never seen it not work out. I work with a lot of disadvantaged youth, and it does works out.
TR: Why is musical collaboration fulfilling to you? You've collaborated with many.
J: I collaborate because you learn something. I already know what I bring to the table. It's my job to ingest enough books, enough art, enough literature---that I keep evolving. Whenever I put myself in proximity to someone intimately, like in collaboration, I'm gaining how they think, how they feel, how they structure things. It always makes you better.
TR: During the course of your career you've done quite a bit of acting. Is it something you enjoy and see in your future?
J: In the beginning of my career I wanted to do acting and music at the same time. I was very fortunate that Ang Lee really believed in me and put me in his film, and that was my first acting gig. A beautiful role. Once I started going out on auditions, I learned that it's a rough business. It's a rough trade. You're brought in and you're asked to turn a circle and show them your teeth, and you're treated like property. I was coming from a singer-songwriter background where I had so much autonomy and so much control, I was able to contribute heartily in the art. I remember being sent out for Swordfish where, there's the famous scene when Halle Berry puts the book down, showing tits. I was like, I don't want to do this. This isn't the role I want. It was very hard to find roles that weren't sexually exploitative. It also wasn't a process I enjoyed a lot. I liked acting a lot, but I didn't like the world of acting. There was that, on top of the fact that my main driving force was that I want to enjoy my life. I want my life to make me more comfortable in my skin, not less comfortable. When I looked at people who truly had these dual careers, I thought, what is the price you pay? What is their home life like? What is their relationship like with their kids? I looked at the field at people who were doing it and contemplated what the price could be. I may not be able to have a personal life that I was really deeply grounded in, because I was working so much. For me it meant stepping away from something and knowing that I have so much fulfillment in music. Acting would have given me some more fulfillment, but might have cost me. I felt like the cost wasn't worth the creative reward. It's simple math, and is it worth fighting for? At the time I didn't feel like it was. Later, when the producers offered me the June Carter cash roll, I turned it down because I was breastfeeding. I was a new mom. When they said they would create filming schedules around my breastfeeding schedule, I was said alright. They made me an offer I couldn't refuse, so let's do it. When Hallmark said like you could do six movies in five weeks, I thought, that might be fun. The truth of what it took to film those Hallmark movies...was just too hard for me. The shooting schedule was really rough and they were kind enough to let me out of my contract. That was so nice of them. I signed up for six and I think I did three. I just realized, and I don't take it lightly, backing out of work, I'm super committed to anything I sign on to do--I realized that the toll it was taking on me as a single mom working for 18, 20 hour days was big. On weekends, you're not actually spending time with your son; you're trying to learn pages and pages of dialogue for the next week of filming. I wasn't able to anchor, and to ground into my son. I'm still so moved that they really cared about it, they cared about how I was doing as a mom, and that it wasn't manageable to me.
TR: Of course you have such a big body of music to discuss, but I do want to talk about 2009's Lullaby, because it relates to a current project of yours.
J: When you're an artist, your art is your baby. When you make a piece of art, it's a very vulnerable, innocent thing. After that, you now have to be a parent to that innocent thing so that it can remain in its integrity and its innocence. The way you parent your art well, is to understand business structure, because people will leverage that baby. If you don't understand where it's vulnerable you're not in control of the narrative. If I spent too much money and I need money, that would put my art in a bad position. That meant I had to have good spending habits to protect my art. It meant I had to make sure I was never in a position where it was, 'My God, I need a payday, so I'm going to make some art that I don't like because I need the payday'. In thinking about that, in looking at that and how the landscape of music had been changing with digital disrupting the music world, I also started watching how celebrity chefs were coming onto the scene and it was fascinating. The Food Network blew up in the early 2000s. You had people who were probably doing TV shows not for much money, but likely because they could then sell a lifestyle brand. They could sell pots and pans and knives. I looked at where music was headed. We were probably going to start getting paid less and less for music. If I couldn't figure out how to authentically align with my consumer fan base and monetize it in a way that wasn't just about an album sale, I would probably be in a bad position. I considered this aggressively and ahead of time, before it became a problem for me. When I went into country music, I negotiated having a non-compete album. I owed my record label, Big Machine, with two country albums. I negotiated doing a non-compete album in between those. And what that non-compete meant, was it could be music in no genre that was recognized by radio, and it couldn't be sold anywhere records were sold. That's a big challenge, right? How are you going to succeed making a piece of music?
TR: This idea was brilliant.
J: It was was a fun challenge, and precious. How do you make an authentic, real record to be proud of as a singer-songwriter? How do I make it win? Because I want to win. I'm ambitious. For me that meant first identifying what that music should be, and I felt like lullaby was a natural choice because I've written a lot of my music to soothe my anxiety and to help me sleep. Straight up, a lot of my music was written as if angels were standing by to help me fall asleep, to help me stop the bad anxiety at night. Lullaby is a natural, deep, authentic album that I was interested in making. You have to put on your business hat, too, and understand how it could be successful. I couldn't sell it where records are sold, and I realized that my fans weren't in the music section anymore anyway. They were in the baby aisle and probably the greeting card aisle. I figured out how to negotiate getting my albums placed into non-traditional spaces. My album was sold at the end cap of the baby aisle and in the greeting card aisle. Lullaby ended up being wildly successful. I also owned that master, and the way that the music business is set up, is that the master holder makes the lion's share of streaming. It ended up being probably one of my most successful records that nobody knows about. It's supported my lifestyle to this day. The reason I could take seven years off from the music business to raise my son, was because my Lullaby album was this evergreen piece of music that just kept selling, and still does. It sells year after year. I'm so thankful to the Gods.
TR: Your son Kase is now 14, and he's a budding creative. What of yourself do you see in him?
J: It's so interesting, you know, raising a child. I love it. Being a mom is my favorite job. And it's my most creative job. It requires me to evolve and change every day. Kase definitely has musical talents. I don't know that it's his, quote-unquote, thing. It hasn't grabbed him the way it had grabbed me. He's just gifted at it, but I don't know if that'll be his career, or where he'll end up going, but it's interesting to watch. My whole family's talented, they're just talented people---my cousins, all my brothers...
TR: How do you go about nurturing Kase to be more of who he is?
J: I think a big part of it is acceptance. My son was born how he was born. They're intact, you know? They're born of themselves so you try to honor who they are. You try to help them train up their weaknesses. I think my job, really, is to help my son be enduring, to have emotional resilience, to be flexible....To not be precious so that as his life changes, and as he's met with heartbreak---as all of our lives meet us---he'll have some internal reserves to be able to pivot, to read the environment, and to trust his instincts wherever they take him.
TR: What do you think the most challenging thing is about raising a son in 2025 and how are you facing that, head on?
J: Raising a child now is a pretty unprecedented thing for all of us parents. It's hard for us to let our kids be bored. We feel like we're failures if our kid is bored. It's hard to trust that being bored is good. Taking them off of technology is critical to parenting, that's how I feel about it. I don't see it benefiting our youth in any way right now. It's about letting him have open space and quiet to relate to, to build a relationship with himself, without the need to be distracted. That's the role that I find myself in.
TR: When was it that you first felt the desire and the call to give back?
J: Really, really early on. When I was homeless I had bad kidneys and couldn't get clean water. Tap water was so contaminated, you couldn't really drink it. I couldn't afford bottled water. It blew my mind that in America one can literally not afford to have access to clean water. What might it be like in other places? Before I ever got famous I thought, if I'm ever in a position to deal with water. That was my first thing right off the bat---a water foundation. We did wells in, my gosh, many, many, many countries. It started to become a popular cause. A lot of people got into that space of solving the water crisis, much better than I could have as a small-scale operator. I started to move into mental health next, and when I was pretty young. The goal was to help youth falling through the cracks, youth who didn't have access to mental healthcare, youth who didn't have traditional support systems to be able to have good mental health outcomes.
TR: Why had mental health become something that hit the forefront of your charitable efforts?
J: Because when you solve a problem for yourself, you want to solve it for other people. When you've suffered greatly, you know what it is to help people solve that problem. Suffering greatly with water was a real pain point for me. Suffering greatly with mental health was another pain point. I moved out at 15, and you don't leave an abusive household to move out on your own, and think you're going to do a lot better. Normally you're just a statistic, and the statistic repeats itself. Not becoming a statistic was my life's privilege. I didn't have a lot of help. I didn't have a lot of resources. I didn't have access to therapy, but I still found ways to meaningfully impact my panic attacks, my agoraphobia, my eating disorder, my shoplifting habit. These were all tools I'd figured out on my own. By creating behavioral tools, I learned to behave differently. I learned to get in touch with my motivations to behave differently, and that would lead to different outcomes. I felt like there was a lot of work that could be done to help people with no money, without therapy, to have positive mental health outcomes. I saw it work in my own life, and I really believed it could work for other people.
TR: Take us back to the first days of your Inspiring Children Foundation.
J: A lot of the work started with me on my own, building out the tools. My business partner Ryan Wolfington had already started Inspiring Children Foundation. I was able to take a lot of the tools that I developed, curricularize them, and bring them into the foundation where Ryan was really on the same path doing the same work. How do you help people without therapy? I'm not saying that because I'm against therapy, but because there's not enough therapy out there or therapists who are available. It's unacceptable that people with money can have access to being happier, but people without money don't get the same. There are tools you can use, tools that are scalable, tools that don't cost money. That was our shared passion.
TR: The foundation has core values of gratitude, kindness, and inclusivity. Why are gratitude and inclusivity core, and crucial?
J: Those are definitely our core tenets, but something that allows us to stand apart a little bit too, are the values of being hard to offend, being gritty, being high-achieving, not wanting to shrink from the world, wanting to accomplish big things, but do it without compromising our mental health for success. Self help practices should make us harder to offend. They should make us more capable, more resilient, and tougher in a good, meaningful way. They should make us more capable of meeting the world where the world is, knowing the world's going to knock us down but knowing we have the wherewithal to keep standing up and in a healthy way, letting go of negative coping mechanisms. That's the real hallmark of the Inspiring Children Foundation. We have kids with rough backgrounds who are so capable. They don't compromise things like their sleep; they don't compromise their ability to be joyful in the world while still challenging themselves to be great. We have a very healthy high achieving environment. This has been Ryan and I's goal.
TR: How did co-founding Inner World take shape, an amazing virtual mental health platform, with three tiers of membership.
J: The next step with Inspiring Children was to take the tools we know work into group settings, and scale. We felt that doing it virtually was the way to do it. There is a bottleneck in the world of mental health, so that means we're not going to solve the mental health crisis by having enough therapists available. I do hope we keep getting more working therapists and more kids going to school for it. I thought I could help by creating a system that would allow people to have access to mental healthcare that was affordable. Inner World basically takes CBT and DBT skills into a group environment, virtually. We track mental health outcomes and are able to help show people that it works.
TR: What is one of the most impactful stories of transformation in the mental health space that you've been able to be a part of or witness?
J: My gosh, so many. Being an artist is really fun and really fulfilling, but helping people enjoy living is ten hundred times more fun. The thing that's most impressive to me, is when you see people take on the responsibility of their own happiness. They start to dig in and say, 'Nobody's coming for me, I'm coming for me'. When you see that switch happen for people young and old alike, they're unstoppable. They're going to be on a new path.
TR: Not Alone has grown exponentially. Congratulations on creating such a deeply positive impact. This month you had a spectacular award ceremony and summit.
J: Not Alone is a mental health social media challenge that our kids thought up. They thought it would be a fun idea. They had seen the cold water bucket challenge. We thought, what if we did this for mental health? It's really our kids who take on these projects, and I'm there to support them in any way I can. It's been incredibly successful. In four years we've gotten like billions of impressions. Its success caused us to want to create a summit. What I've noticed, being in the mental health space, is that I'm really lucky to meet experts from all over the world who each work in these silos. How wonderful! That might be someone, for example, who is studying the effects of gut microbiome on depression and is able to predict depressive episodes weeks before they come. It's fascinating, not enough people know about that. So for me, the summit is about bringing these leaders together in different spaces so we can share information and cross-pollinate. The awards show is about people deserving to be recognized for the work they do to help people enjoy living. There are a lot of people who deserve that recognition, and that's how the awards show came about.
TR: You're not just a recording artist. What led you to begin creating visual art? Which mediums do you work in and have you worked in?
J: Back in high school when I went to that boarding school, I double majored in voice and visual art, and I double minored in theater and dance. At the time, you weren't allowed to do it, butI broke all the rules. The dean just kept tolerating me! It was, understandably, how can you focus on four things? You should focus on one thing and be great at it. I communicated with my dean that this is deeply important to who I am. It's integral to the soul of my being. I needed to express and learn in all four of these areas to satisfy this intense urge that I was having. I promised that I could handle it. I was willing to skip lunch, The way that I handled it; my ability to communicate with him, worked. I thin it's something they allow more now, which they should. There are people where this is deeply authentic to them, and they do have the wherewithal to handle it. I was just like, 'Look, I may never get to come here again. This may be it for me and my training. You can't deny me the ability to get trained while I have the chance'. The dean was kind enough to comply. That said, I had this great visual arts teacher who taught me sculpture and drawing, and now it's a huge part of my creative passion. My music career took off, which was amazing. It's been very hard to keep up with sculpture, but I was able to keep up with my drawing. My visual art practice was very private, and nobody knew I did it until about like two years ago.
TR: The Portal, which can be found on Spotify---is your incredible, immersive art experience. What was that process like?
J: To go back to the business of things, I knew I wanted to make visual art. The visual art world is a pretty, closed insular, gate-kept space. I'd had enough experience switching genres, going into poetry...all these things that 'shouldn't' be successful. How do I make these huge left turns, but in an situation that's nourished enough to succeed and do well? My training over the course of my life has led me to be able to take on this visual art left turn, and then I put it together in a way that would allow it to hopefully succeed. Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art were really brave to take me on; somebody who isn't known for visual art. We put together The Portal. It's about marrying my visual art, my music, and my mental health practice into one thing, into one experience. It leads people on a journey to investigate their inner life, their physical life, and their spiritual life---and seeing if those three things are in alignment or if they are in conflict with one another. Good mental health outcomes come from them being in harmony, right? If you know who you are authentically, if you can say who you are authentically to the world, if you're inspired by what you do... if all three of those things are clicking, you're probably a pretty happy person. The adverse can be true. If you can't be authentic and say who you are in the real world, that's hard. That's a painful thing. If you don't feel inspired by what you do in your life, that's a hard, painful thing. The whole experience was designed to help people get to know those three realms. I did painting, sculpture, video art, and ultimately, a huge drone show, with this ten minute piece of music called The Portal. It's the most fun piece of music I think I've ever made. It's kind of me-meets-Pink Floyd.
TR: What do you get from making visual art that you don't get from making music?
J: It pushes me and challenges me. I'm not as good at it, which I really like. Getting myself to this level...the learning curve's been really steep. It makes me happy. It makes my whole body vibrate and sing. like being in the deep end of the pool where, as David Bowie says, you're on your tippy toes. That's a place I like. That's where I'm in my sweet spot creatively. It puts me there, which I really like.
TR: As a multidisciplinary artist and creative, what is your process like at the beginning? At the onset of inspiration, how and when do your ideas come to you, and what comes next?
J: It has to always start with an undeniable urge in your body. It can't be wishy-washy like, I'd like to maybe do X or Y. it has to be such a deep soul command that you have to obey it, and you'll go through any amount of pain to follow that voice in your heart or in your body. It takes that level of commitment to try and make something work. It's going to be painful. It's going to be uncomfortable. You're going have a lot of problems to solve. You're going to have a lot of people who say you shouldn't do it, who say, 'Why are you in this space?' You need to be able to weather all of that, and it has to be from such a deep place. Bukowski spoke about it. It's not a choice. You are commanded to do it and you obey. Then you figure the rest out.
TR: For the deeply creative person you are, what does your physical space need to look like? What needs to be in place for you to feel most like yourself and most creative? Do you write things down? What colors and textures and lighting do you surround yourself by? Is there a way the scene is set?
J: You know, I've been lucky. I've been really lucky my whole life. Once I plug in creatively, it can happen at the airport. It doesn't matter. I'm not precious about my environment in that way. As long as I can plug in and it's like an electricity; once I plug in, get that electrical download, that's it. I'm painting in my living room right now because I'm a single parent, and going down to my studio didn't allow me the tiny moments to paint. So I'll sneak up and paint for twenty minutes in my living room. It's nothing fancy, and more about access. Can I access it whenever I want?
tamara rappa
Arnaldo Anaya-Lucca
SAM SPECTOR
peter butler
tracey mattingley
matin
tracey mattingley
photo assistant
aDAM DICARLO
Jewel's wellness routine includes an all natural cream, toothpaste, and adaptogenic coffee.
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