The Creative Pulse podcast

Rachael Harms Mahlandt is passionate about creating Sidewalk Joy - adding bright spots of whimsy to her city through creative art installations. Sidewalk Joy spots are free, curated public galleries, exchanges and displays, often installed in front yards, along a sidewalk fence, or on the side of a building. Her first project was creating a dinosaur-themed diorama (a ‘Dinorama’), which then led to a dino exchange, a micro book swap, an Air Bee N Bee, micro parks, a mug exchange, and more. Bu...

John Avilla joined his family’s band at only 8 years of age and the experience ignited a lifelong passion for music. Building on his expertise in branding and marketing for global companies, he is now a co-founder of Sound Union, a first-of-its-kind social club and creative studio in Redwood City, California. The space welcomes people who make music a central part of their lives—not necessarily as a career, but as a passion. It’s a cultural hub where music fuels well-being, creativity and co...

David Gilliver is multi-talented, sharing his creativity as a light painter and miniature artist. His works are both entertaining and thought-provoking in both their composition and subject matter. To create light paintings, he uses long-exposure photography techniques under the darkness of night. And his ‘Little People’ and ‘Toys’ macro photography series depict captivating scenes using miniature people and items to tell stories and offer social commentaries. He has been recognized with aw...

Hello friends! I’m your host Angela de Burger, and incredibly, once again summer is here, which means that instead of welcoming a guest on this episode, it’s time for me to pose a classic Creative Pulse question to you: What are your tips for starting up, or keeping up, the creative energy in your life? To share a tip, you can: - record a short voicemail from your phone or computer at speakpipe.com/CreativePulse - or you can send me a message or tag me in a post on Instagram @creativep...

Tri Le is a pen and ink artist who weaves imagination into his art, creating light within an illogical world. His work often leans toward surrealism, intertwining both traditional and contemporary elements. Tri’s pieces often explore the perpetual conflict between opposing forces: love and hatred, pleasure and displeasure, past and present. He seeks to capture the tension and harmony between these dualities, examining how they influence and shape one another. Building on a decade of experie...

Kasia Muzyka is an intuitive artist and seeker of the sacred threads that weave life’s visible and invisible dimensions. She paints with coffee, wine and natural pigments to make the unseen visible and says her works are portals - expressions of remembrance, healing and communion with the heart. She has exhibited her work nationally and internationally and her most recent exhibition, in New York, is titled The Sacred Condition of Being. She is also the founder of Call2Love, a wearable art b...

Alexandria Masse works with textiles and fibres to construct wearable art and soft sculptures. She is fascinated by how a material can be manipulated and uses sewing, knitting and crochet to make both functional and fine art creations. Alexandria’s works have been shown in two solo exhibitions as well as many group exhibitions all over Canada as well as in the United States, Portugal and Iceland, and she was selected as an artist-in-residence at Art Windsor-Essex. On this episode, host ...

MAESTRO is a Spanish artist who divides his time between the eastern coast of Spain and the western coast of the United States. He studied, trained and developed a professional practice as an architect and designer before beginning his artistic career. After immigrating to the United States, MAESTRO picked up a phone with a minimal data plan. The images on his screen often failed to load and he found himself intrigued by his own frustration. Over the following months, while working to rebui...

Louisa Deasey has been a professional writer for more than 20 years and her specialty is crafting memoirs. She says that true stories, well-told, have the power to change the world. In her captivating memoir, A Letter From Paris, Louisa shares how she received a message out of the blue from a stranger in France, telling her about a stack of letters written decades before about a man she hardly knew: her father. On this episode, host Angela de Burger chats with Louisa about how writing helps...

Simon Arizpe is an award-winning pop-up book designer, paper engineer and illustrator based in Brooklyn, NY. He’s a graduate of The Pratt Institute, has worked in the field of pop-up book design for over 20 years and was recently an artist-in-residence at Zion National Park. He’s designed more than 35 pop-up books to date and works on every aspect of the process, from concept to publication. His book, Stranger Things: The Ultimate Pop-Up Book, is a #1 best seller, and the three dimensional p...

Sammie Aplin works in the healthcare field but a few years ago, in her free time, she began to do daily beach clean-ups in her community. She noticed there was a lot of plastic litter on the shore and wanted to do something about it, viewing this waste as a resource. Before long, her creative mind saw a way to give these items a second life in thought-provoking, eye-catching, structured, yet whimsical artworks. Her pieces include colour-themed layouts made up of a wide variety of plastic tra...

Laurence Winram is a talented land artist who makes his professional living as an award-winning commercial and fine art photographer. He spends his free time following his passion by creating land art in forests, on beaches and anywhere inspiration finds him. He uses natural, found items such as leaves, flowers, sticks and stones, to create ephemeral works of art featuring geometric patterns, size progressions and tessellations that are absolutely captivating. Lucky for us, his photography ...

Kristy Gordon is a Canadian-born artist living in New York City who is an accomplished painter, teacher and writer. Her work has been widely exhibited and her paintings hang in more than 600 collections worldwide. She’s a three-time recipient of the prestigious Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant and has participated in residencies and apprenticeships in Italy, China, Norway and France. She’s now helping to develop the next generation of artists as an adjunct professor at the New York A...

Fern Piyachut Rusmeeroj is a trained architect who followed her creative passion and developed a career making miniature models of structures and their contents. She designs and makes scaled representations of buildings, homes, shops and more, for both individuals and commercial clients. Imagine your own home and everything in it, created at a size that you could display on a coffee table. It’s like the ultimate, personalized dollhouse. On this episode, host Angela de Burger chats with Fern...

Mark Jones has dedicated over 25 years to empowering the next generation of creatives. His book, The Starving Artist Myth, challenges long-standing stereotypes about creative careers, advocating for the economic and social value they contribute to the world. Mark is an accomplished educator, producer and author, known for bridging the worlds of culture, technology and education and his insight into the evolving landscape of creative industries. He is the Dean of the Faculty of Animati...