This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:37] Laura Camien: Welcome to The Spark File, your well-lit painting studio for creative inspiration.

[0:43] Susan Blackwell: I'm Susan Blackwell.

[0:44] Laura Camien: And I'm Laura Camien. If you're joining us for the first time, oh, welcome. You may be asking yourself, what exactly is a spark file? Where do I get one? What do I file in it? These are such good questions, and we do have some answers.

[0:54] Susan Blackwell: We do. A Spark File is the place where you consistently collect all your inspirations and fascinations. And if you're like us and you're making stuff all the time, you know that sometimes the wellspring of inspiration can run a little dry. We are here to refill it.

[1:13] Laura Camien: Yes, we're on the lookout for fresh ideas, images, and inspiration that spark our creativity and pique our curiosity, things that inspire us to get up off of our asses and make things like this very podcast.

[1:25] Susan Blackwell: Or a joyful expression of protest and resistance through choir singing.

[1:31] Laura Camien: Or a daily practice and commitment to making art in inconvenient moments.

[1:37] Susan Blackwell: Or a painted journal project inside a gifted book filled with pre-dawn and midnight paintings capturing a full emotional landscape.

[1:47] Laura Camien: Or a school dedicated to inspiring a diverse community of young people to engage with the arts as a pathway to a creative and purposeful life.

[1:56] Susan Blackwell: On today's MakerSode, we're gonna talk with someone who truly sparks us.

[2:00] Laura Camien: And that special someone is Kate Quarfordt.

[2:03] Susan Blackwell: Kate! Welcome to The Spark File.

[2:09] Kate Quarfordt: Hello! I'm so happy to be here.

[2:12] Susan Blackwell: I just let's just set a scene. I just want to set a scene before we even dig in.

[2:16] Laura Camien: I'm gonna talk more.

[2:17] Kate Quarfordt: You like that?

[2:18] Laura Camien: Do it, do it, do it.

[2:19] Kate Quarfordt: If you talk like that, I do.

[2:21] Susan Blackwell: It's just real creepy. Um, we are in Kate Quarfordt's painting studio in her art studio.

[2:29] Kate Quarfordt: I love you guys.

[2:30] Susan Blackwell: And I just want to declare for the record, um, never leaving.

[2:36] Laura Camien: We have moved into the studio. It is a magical realm.

[2:40] Kate Quarfordt: Paint around us.

[2:41] Susan Blackwell: Paint around us, Kate.

[2:43] Kate Quarfordt: Right.

[2:43] Laura Camien: No, it'll be like an endless sleepover. We'll all just hang out and make stuff together for...

[2:47] Kate Quarfordt: Oh my god.

[2:48] Susan Blackwell: It's bliss.

[2:49] Laura Camien: We're gonna post pictures with your permission. We'll put some pictures on the webs, but it's um, it is so great in here.

[2:58] Kate Quarfordt: It's so wonderful.

[2:59] Susan Blackwell: We'll talk more about it in a second.

[3:01] Laura Camien: All right, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry to delay.

[3:03] Susan Blackwell: Sorry we go.

[3:04] Laura Camien: Here we go.

[3:05] Kate Quarfordt: We needed that.

[3:05] Susan Blackwell: This is happening.

[3:06] Laura Camien: Now picture it. We're really, really doing it.

[3:09] Kate Quarfordt: But before we really do it, as you are aware, there's a small price of admission into The Spark File.

[3:15] Laura Camien: Real quick, you have to tell us a creative risk that you have taken recently.

[3:20] Kate Quarfordt: Okay, so one of the hats that I wear is Arts Educator. I teach uh eighth graders, sweaty middle schoolers. Lots of feelings.

[3:28] Laura Camien: So many emotions.

[3:29] Kate Quarfordt: And oh my god.

[3:38] Susan Blackwell: It can be so hard.

[3:38] Kate Quarfordt: So hard. And it can be so rich. Uh, there's so much deep awkwardness in this incredible moment of transition.

[3:45] Laura Camien: I love that perspective.

[3:46] Kate Quarfordt: And I just love awkwardness. I'm so awkward. I feel like I'm perpetually in eighth grade myself.

[3:53] Susan Blackwell: Um, just all up in my feels all the time.

[3:55] Kate Quarfordt: So it is the new beauty. It works great. Um, of the things that I tell my students all the time, which I'm also telling myself is your weirdness is your genius, right? That thing that you think makes you so dorky and unlovable is actually your superpower.

[4:11] Susan Blackwell: So I teach this class called Creative Connections, which is an interdisciplinary arts-based class, which essentially means that I can teach really whatever I want.

[4:20] Kate Quarfordt: And I'm using the arts to find really...

[4:22] Laura Camien: So you just gave it like a broad, confusing title, so you can do it.

[4:25] Kate Quarfordt: So I can just make it every way.

[4:28] Susan Blackwell: I love it.

[4:28] Kate Quarfordt: Love it. So the first thing that we do every year is the kids make, uh, they declare a creative vision for the year, and they make a vision board.

[4:37] Laura Camien: And it's not just any vision board, right?

[4:39] Kate Quarfordt: It's not just like, I mean, and no shade to anyone who just, you know, like throws together some collage stuff. But like we really treat it like it's a talisman. They create like a color family, and they really dig into images and how can you use metaphor to embody this creative image?

[4:55] Laura Camien: Like if you have a creative vision to be, um, to deepen your dance practice, you might not find a picture of a dancer in a magazine, but maybe you find a gazelle, or maybe you find a bird.

[5:05] Susan Blackwell: If I had had you as a teacher when I was teaching, it would have been life-changing, and I think my head would have exploded right off of my body.

[5:13] Kate Quarfordt: Well, go tell my eighth graders that!

[5:13] Laura Camien: So can I take the class now though?

[5:17] Kate Quarfordt: I mean, sure.

[5:19] Laura Camien: This is the audit.

[5:20] Kate Quarfordt: Come on, come on and join.

[5:20] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[5:21] Kate Quarfordt: They're male lessons.

[5:21] Susan Blackwell: Sorry to interrupt you. Go ahead.

[5:23] Kate Quarfordt: So I decided, I've taught the class before, and I decided this year, uh, I thought a lot about the most transformational experiences that I had had as a learner.

[5:32] Kate Quarfordt: And it was always when my teacher was in the work with me, not saying I'm gonna now dispense a bunch of wisdom at you, but let's do some work together.

[5:41] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[5:41] Kate Quarfordt: And I'm gonna be just as vulnerable as you are, and we're gonna be in this thing in community with one another.

[5:48] Laura Camien: And so I decided, okay, if I'm asking them to do this thing, which is incredibly hard for even grown-ups to do, but I'm asking them to do it at eighth graders, then I need to do it too.

[5:56] Kate Quarfordt: So I'm gonna declare a creative vision for the year, and I'm gonna make a vision board.

[6:01] Kate Quarfordt: And I'm gonna get up in front of a bunch of middle schoolers and say my creative vision out loud. My hands are getting sweaty, just like, and I brought in my little vision board that I made, and I was like so nervous, like way more so than if I'd been up in front of a whole big crowd of grown-ups.

[6:17] Laura Camien: Oh my god.

[6:17] Kate Quarfordt: And so, you know, like we're all gathered around the desk, and I was saying, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna put myself out there to kind of like show you that I'm in it with you.

[6:26] Kate Quarfordt: And so I laid out my little vision board, and I told them my creative vision for the year is to make a website that showcases my visual artwork.

[6:38] Kate Quarfordt: And by the time you all graduate, eighth grade, my hope is that I will have this website live and I will sell artwork.

[6:45] Kate Quarfordt: And I'll have sold five pieces and check and check, right?

[6:49] Laura Camien: And I honestly, that was sort of in motion, but like way peripherally, like in the subconscious, like in the depths, like in the late night, like musings of maybe I'll kind of get around to that sort of ish, maybe someday.

[7:03] Susan Blackwell: Yes.

[7:04] Kate Quarfordt: And then as soon as I said it in front of the babies, I was like, oh, I'm screwed.

[7:08] Laura Camien: I gotta do it.

[7:08] Kate Quarfordt: That's powerful.

[7:09] Kate Quarfordt: A bunch of eighth grade accountability cards.

[7:12] Laura Camien: Exactly.

[7:13] Kate Quarfordt: Like drilling into my eyes.

[7:15] Susan Blackwell: Yeah, they were like, okay.

[7:17] Kate Quarfordt: And then they would check in. You know, like that website, yeah.

[7:20] Laura Camien: Yeah, how's it going?

[7:21] Kate Quarfordt: What are you on?

[7:21] Laura Camien: Did you Squarespace?

[7:22] Kate Quarfordt: It was Squarespace.

[7:23] Laura Camien: Oh, yeah.

[7:24] Kate Quarfordt: Oh, yeah.

[7:24] Laura Camien: How's it going?

[7:25] Kate Quarfordt: How many pieces have you made? Are you photographing?

[7:27] Laura Camien: Like, are you retouching them yet?

[7:29] Kate Quarfordt: Like I mapped out, like, okay, these are like sophisticated eighth grade.

[7:33] Laura Camien: Yeah, they were holding my feet to the fire.

[7:35] Kate Quarfordt: So now I need to know follow-up question.

[7:37] Laura Camien: Oh, you completed that well before their graduation date.

[7:42] Kate Quarfordt: Turns out, did you set another goal?

[7:45] Kate Quarfordt: Yeah, I did. Um, so my next goal um was, uh, uh, to collaborate on three multidisciplinary projects in some creative way.

[8:02] Laura Camien: Incredible.

[8:02] Kate Quarfordt: Right.

[8:02] Laura Camien: So I, so much of the work that I do that I've been doing, um, in terms of visual art is really me squirreled away at three o'clock in the morning, just like making all open.

[8:11] Kate Quarfordt: Stealing time, and I've really been loving um the experience of collaborating with people. You mentioned the chorus, and I sing with this incredible group of women who are such badasses, and they've all got all of these incredible creative side hustles, and they're just making this brilliant work.

[8:30] Kate Quarfordt: Um, and so it's been really exciting to start to think about synergy of like, okay, you're creating a song cycle. What might it look like to have visual work that reflects those themes of each song and get projected onto us while we're singing?

[8:37] Laura Camien: And like that kind of work is really, really getting a little bit more.

[8:46] Kate Quarfordt: So there's one example, the this yeah, potentially collaborating with a song cycle, and providing a visual.

[8:53] Laura Camien: What are the other two?

[8:54] Kate Quarfordt: I don't know yet.

[8:55] Kate Quarfordt: So this is in motion.

[8:55] Laura Camien: So part of it is identifying and sort of disinvestigating and discovering what those other two might be.

[8:55] Kate Quarfordt: And what deadline have you set for yourself to identify those collaborations?

[8:55] Kate Quarfordt: Well, the deadline is these eighth graders walking across that stage.

[8:55] Laura Camien: Oh my god.

[8:55] Kate Quarfordt: June 19th.

[8:55] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[8:55] Kate Quarfordt: Oh my gosh, you are officially admitted into The Spark File.

[8:55] Laura Camien: That was an easy, easy one.

[8:55] Susan Blackwell: Um, full disclosure, I've had the pleasure of working with you previously and in an ongoing way, but I only recently learned about the sheer scope of your creativity.

[8:55] Kate Quarfordt: Honestly.

[8:55] Susan Blackwell: So we're gonna dig into that today, but for people who don't know you at all, here's a two-part question: one, how do you identify creatively, and two, can you tell us about your creative work?

[8:55] Kate Quarfordt: So this is the first year of my life. We're only, uh, 20 some odd days—no, it's February, so we're a whole month into the year, right?

[8:55] Laura Camien: I bet you thought it was January 20th.

[8:55] Kate Quarfordt: Great, yeah, cute.

[8:55] Laura Camien: Time out of time.

[8:55] Kate Quarfordt: Oh, that reminds me, Kairos time and Chronos time. Let's bookmark that for a little bit.

[8:55] Laura Camien: We gotta get there.

[8:55] Kate Quarfordt: We gotta know.

[8:55] Kate Quarfordt: So, um, this has been really the first year of my life that I have felt comfortable calling myself an artist with a capital A.

[10:20] Susan Blackwell: You are shitting us.

[10:22] Kate Quarfordt: No, I always thought of myself as a creative person, but most of the creative work that I did was in the context of education.

[10:32] Kate Quarfordt: I love making work with young people, and I would do, I would do creative...

[10:32] Susan Blackwell: Say to the eighth graders.

[10:41] Kate Quarfordt: No, I think a lot of it was, um, and I'm sure we could go deep down into this rabbit hole.

[10:49] Kate Quarfordt: Um, but I think I really struggled with the idea of what it means to be an artist.

[10:56] Kate Quarfordt: I think that in other places in the world, it's not quite so complicated.

[10:59] Kate Quarfordt: I think somehow, you know, I was talking to a friend of mine who's a really beautiful Afro-Cuban dancer and incredible choreographer, and she does a lot of work in Cuba, and she was just talking about the notion of being an artist in Cuba, and just the fact that like everybody is immersed in the arts, everyone's steeped in the arts, and it's not um high stakes to say that you're an artist.

[11:16] Kate Quarfordt: Of course, you're an artist, you're a human being, you're breathing and you're making work, so boom, you're an artist.

[11:21] Kate Quarfordt: And I think that there's something in art culture, at least the way that I've lived my culture, that has made the idea of self-declaring artist capital A has always felt quite fraught to me.

[11:30] Kate Quarfordt: Um, and I think that I, um, I'm so grateful that the education has created a kind of a portal for me or a pathway for me to do all kinds of creative work without the fraughtness or the stress or the strain or whatever perceived weirdness that I've carried with me or that I like storylines that I've inherited, just gave me the freedom to just make work.

[11:52] Kate Quarfordt: Um, so I did that for and have been doing that for, you know, the better part of two, three decades, but without ever really claiming artistry per se.

[12:01] Kate Quarfordt: And I would make stuff for myself sometimes, or I would sing, or I would write, or I would make paintings or whatever, but without ever really um stepping into that name.

[12:11] Kate Quarfordt: And so when it came time to have a word to describe myself, I would call myself a creative instigator, which I really quite like.

[12:18] Kate Quarfordt: Yes, creative shit stirrer, sure, yes, exactly. All of that. Um, and I have always thought of my work in education as a form of art, I still believe that. Then when you're truly teaching and you're tapped, and you all know because you're in that work. Um, I think that you're in this kind of alchemical process that is the nature, the essence of art. And so I've always claimed that very comfortably.

[12:44] Kate Quarfordt: Yeah. And I really had a moment, um, it's it was like such a defining, uh, such a defining um clarifying moment. Uh, it was my birthday of last year. I played hooky. Um, really, I think for the first time. I just sort of in my mind had this clear, kind of like click decision of like, no one's gonna die if I don't go to school today. I can get somebody to cover my rehearsal when we're doing Moana. Yeah. You know, okay. That will stay in motion. So, you know, people can have my back. No one's gonna die if I don't show up. It is my birthday, and I'm going to the Guggenheim.

[13:24] Kate Quarfordt: I think you know where this is going. The Googs, the googly goo goo googs. And I'm gonna see this Hilma off Klimt exhibit before it closes, right? And I'd heard so much about it, and I'd seen the images online, but I just really felt this super strong call to go. Yeah. And to see the work. What a gift for yourself. I kind of closed my eyes. I walked all the way to the top. And I then made my way to just let myself almost get kind of pulled by gravity down the spiral of this building and walking past these images. And it was kind of an out-of-body experience.

[14:03] Kate Quarfordt: I mean, that work is designed as this pure transmission for those of you who might not be familiar with her work. Please Google her immediately. She was this incredible uh like divine prophetess of the listen to the Hilma episodes, right? Oh, exactly. You all talked about her work in a lot of depth and a lot of richness. And so just at a time where women were not making abstract art and um women were not making a lot of art publicly, period. She was a little bit more. I'm gonna say that nobody yet was making abstract. Exactly. She was right on the vanguard in a way that wasn't recognized until years later. Um but the way that she channeled spirit and and this divine consciousness and mathematics and science and and proportion.

[14:46] Kate Quarfordt: Happy birthday. Oh my God. And I just I literally just sort of wept the whole way down. And I by the time I got to the bottom had made this pact with myself of promising myself that I would step forward and claim that title and and be able to say it out loud.

[15:09] Laura Camien: Happy birthday. What a birthday present.

[15:15] Kate Quarfordt: Holy crap. So that's how you identify creatively.

[15:20] Laura Camien: That's it. Uh uh, we'll take that. Do you want to tell us a little bit about the creative work that you embarked on at that point?

[15:26] Kate Quarfordt: So I had already been doing this journal project for a couple of months at that point. And um, really what that entails, I have this old book um that my dad gave me um in high school. It's called The Movie Goer. It's a pretty interesting novel. It's not perfect, it's not really held up over time all that well, but there's a lot of gems in it. Um, and I understand why he gave it to me.

[15:48] Kate Quarfordt: Yeah. Um, and so it was kind of like knocking around my shelves. I'd read it a couple of times. I kind of didn't want it anymore, but I also didn't want to get rid of it. It was kind of sentimental. And I knew that I was really drawn to this idea of uh making a simple routine for myself where I could make work every day or almost every day. I'm not like a you know, drill sergeant about it.

[16:08] Kate Quarfordt: Yeah. But I wanted to create a way that I could just be making work every day in a way that felt not full of pressure, not super high stakes, not designed to share with anybody, just for myself. Um, and I liked the idea of painting on a surface that was not white. There's something about the white page, the blank canvas that can be a little some it's not always for me. Sometimes it's just really fun to just dig right in. But I know that sometimes that can stop me.

[16:34] Kate Quarfordt: And so the idea of painting on a thing that was maybe destined for the trash heap anyway, and also already has like writing on it, like somebody's already done the work. And so now I can just do whatever. And if it comes out great, great. If it doesn't come out great, it doesn't matter. Um, it just gave me a way to kind of, you know, uh free yourself.

[16:52] Kate Quarfordt: Just free myself, exactly. And that started to become a way for me to really retrain my nervous system. I think that my life is really packed. I have three kids, I work full-time at a school, um, I sing in a choir. There's a lot that's kind of going on and swirling all the time. And in this particular moment where all of us are flooded constantly with this incredibly stressful, polarized, sometimes just utterly heartbreaking 24 hour news cycle.

[17:19] Kate Quarfordt: The tweets are coming at us full speed. Yeah, just all of that feeling so overwhelming. Um, I was starting to notice that I was just sort of walking around with my shoulders up and you know, kind of my heart super guarded all the time, and really um running on caffeine and adrenaline and what is the thing that's on fire right in front of my face that I must have just grinding and not sleeping enough and and really not taking the time to check in with myself and let my heart be tender and unguarded and peel back and say, Oh my god, I'm so sad right now, or I am so open to possibility right now, or I am just like turned on in a way that I like don't even know what to do with my body right now, or I am nostalgic for something that I can't even name, but I feel like I just want to get back to that thing.

[18:14] Laura Camien: Whatever that realness was.

[18:15] Kate Quarfordt: Yeah, it feels like what you're describing is like an opportunity to come into your body and come into the present moment in a way that we for many people we don't permit ourselves to do on the regs.

[18:28] Laura Camien: Right, yeah, right.

[18:29] Kate Quarfordt: And I wanted to, and the regularity piece of it was really important to me. And so as I started to settle into that creative practice, um, it felt great. And then I also had a moment of a bit of panic. Um you showed me the meta wagner, those five types of creativity. And one of the types, I think it's the last one, is um a creativity that's really fueled by social justice, right? Like this desire to make change and use art as activism.

[18:54] Kate Quarfordt: And I run in circles where a lot of the artists that I work with and collaborate with, um whether it's through the chorus or other places in arts education, are true activists, you know, and they're making art that's really just uh dead on, uh attacking um you know gender inequality or approaching the issue of climate justice, or you know, talking about Black Lives Matter. And I had this kind of panicky moment about three or four months into this project of thinking, like, oh my god, why am I spending all this time evoking these inner landscapes for myself when the outer landscapes are full of like, you know, the ice caps are melting, we've got kids in cages at the border.

[19:35] Kate Quarfordt: Like, like, why am I sitting here, you know, summoning my inner feelings, right? And I my inner monologue started to get really harsh and really mean. And I had a long, I took myself for a long walk through Fort Green Park and just sort of like started to talk myself down a little bit. And started to realize that I have the luxury and the privilege to have a lot of different channels in my life where I can do that really outward-facing activism work and I can use my voice in really powerful ways.

[20:08] Kate Quarfordt: And that this work in its own super quiet way for me has a very urgent political thread to it because we live in a world in which so many of us are squashed down to the flattest, most one-dimensional version of ourselves, and this notion of containing multitudes, yeah, of really giving space to all of our contradictions and all of our longings and all of the ways in which we don't fit into boxes.

[20:43] Kate Quarfordt: That right now, in this moment, is a radical act just to acknowledge that, right? And so I just had this moment of standing in the park and being so alleviated. I was just like, oh God, right? Yes. I don't have to fix all of the world's problems. This the simple act of sitting with what is true for me in any given moment is enough. Like that's enough. Lay the burden down, woman. Like God, take a breath.

[21:08] Laura Camien: Even prioritizing yourself, your art, and and by allowing yourself to be the full human being that you are, it is a gift to others.

[21:18] Kate Quarfordt: And it sounds like you had a thousand reasons not to prioritize that.

[21:24] Laura Camien: And just for our listeners, because we've talked to so many of you, you know, those reasons never go away.

[21:30] Kate Quarfordt: The reasons not to sit down and spend that time with yourself never go away. So you have to decide for yourself that you will make space for it and make room for it.

[21:40] Kate Quarfordt: Yes. That is enormously inspiring to me. As you're speaking, I'm also the thing that I'm thinking is by doing you have a very full life, and I would like to talk to you about how are your energy levels, how much do you sleep?

[21:55] Laura Camien: Like the real nuts levels get into it to understand that.

[21:59] Kate Quarfordt: But I'm also struck by, and I feel like we're inside your heart because we're inside your studio. We're like totally in.

[22:06] Kate Quarfordt: But doing this work that you have carved out time for, this like very present in your body in the moment kind of work. It feels to me like it is a foundation or a battery recharge, something that gets you realigned so you can back out, go back out into the field and fight the fight.

[22:32] Laura Camien: And so it's almost I'm like, it may feel I don't know, when you were saying mean things to yourself as you were walking through Fort Green Park, like, you know, how the privilege, the luxury, the, but I feel like it's the thing that may be refueling you and kind of like getting your yourself reattuned so that you can go back out and really, really fight hard and work hard and get a bunch of shit done.

[22:57] Kate Quarfordt: And give to your family and give to the eighth graders and and sing in the choir that is making a difference, all of it.

[23:05] Laura Camien: All of it. But I could I don't think I'm not used to I could only speculate and I might be full of shit.

[23:10] Kate Quarfordt: Yeah, I think that's really true. I think it's really true. Um it is it is a way for me to fill the well. You know, I think that there's um there's a quote that I really love that was shared with me by a former student who's now in his 30s.

[23:27] Kate Quarfordt: Um and I've learned a lot of wonderful and put a whole lot of see. I'm trying to do the math on that. Well, maybe late 20s, maybe late 20s. We've been kicking it for a minute. But um he shared this quote uh from Khalil Gibran, um, that he learned actually uh from a bunch of Quakers who run a uh summer camp up in Vermont where he spent a lot of his formative years.

[23:52] Kate Quarfordt: And it's a really simple sentence, love work is love made visible, comes from a longer poem on work. And I think that our culture has this idea of work that's just the constant grind that it depletes you, right? That it that it takes energy from you.

[24:08] Kate Quarfordt: And my experience has been that when I'm doing work, whether it's creative work here at this little table, you know, painting in this small book, or I'm doing work with young people, or I'm doing, you know, the work of motherhood, or um, yeah, sometimes it can be exhausting, sometimes it's gritty and sweaty and not cute, not sexy.

[24:28] Kate Quarfordt: Um, but when I'm aligned, that I'm really channeling that sense of love and making it visible through the work that's in front of me. And I think that when I'm tapped into that, that's a refuel. And I think this is an example of that. Um absolutely it doesn't feel like work like a heavy load, a heavy burden. Yeah, it's work is love made visible.

[24:55] Susan Blackwell: I really like that. Can I ask you it you can tell me to fuck myself, but can I ask you how old are you?

[25:01] Kate Quarfordt: 44.

[25:03] Susan Blackwell: Okay, that blows my mind. You that's a great you're aging really beautifully.

[25:10] Kate Quarfordt: Yeah, unquestionably. But wow. Here's the thing that it doesn't surprise me about it. Your brain, I'm like, oh, you're a wise, you got a wise brain.

[25:22] Kate Quarfordt: Wise and so my grandma in there.

[25:24] Susan Blackwell: That's my grandma. I was gonna say, have you always been a wise old soul, even in your younger years?

[25:29] Kate Quarfordt: I don't know that I would have identified that way, but I do know that middle school and high school were rough friend-wise, and I hung out with my grandma.

[25:41] Susan Blackwell: Okay, yeah. Okay. So maybe that's the answer. Thank you, grandma.

[25:43] Kate Quarfordt: Thank you. I'm grateful to her. Um talk to me. You have this very full life. You have, you know, you have three children.

[25:53] Kate Quarfordt: I do a husband, a dog. Yes, um, you have you work, so you have a job, you have your own artistic practice, you have a school. It seems like you have a lot of, and you aspire to many more. You you're now like sharing and selling the art that you make. You are an artist, Capital A.

[26:17] Susan Blackwell: Capital A. I feel like I'm missing other big chunks, but talk to me about like what are the nuts and bolts of how are your energy levels? How do you um optimize yourself to get the most out of your this isn't it like a tips, tricks, and hacks kind of podcast, but I'm sort of like as somebody who struggles with being the busiest, laziest person in the world, and as I age, like my energy levels are depleting a little bit. Like I'm just curious, like, how are you doing this? Do you do well you're like, I only eat green algae. Like, what is it? How are you doing this?

[26:52] Kate Quarfordt: Um, well, I think part of it is that I have a lot of support right now. Uh, as we are recording this podcast, um, my husband Eric and my three kiddos are out in the park together. Um, so that's a small concrete example of I have a partner who goes hard for me. And I think that's really important to say.

[27:10] Susan Blackwell: And the motherfucking paint.

[27:11] Kate Quarfordt: Yes. It's literally. It's really important. Um, you know, I s I have I have a lot of friends um and who, you know, who have lives that are set up differently from mine, and I and I, and I I don't take anything that I have for granted for a second. The fact that if I need to um, you know, hire a babysitter that I have that possibility, and that there are like you know uh people in our orbit who are so incredibly nurturing with our children. Like that that is such a huge privilege, and and so I don't take that for granted. Support there's support.

[27:47] Kate Quarfordt: Um there is uh I think as I've gotten older, I I have gotten really clear about what I like to do and what I don't like to do. Yeah, like my kids love and Eric, they love to watch um like Marvel movies and action movies, and like that's just their jam. They love it, and they and they they have so much uh it's such a joy for them to sit and watch that together, and like movie night is so fun. Yeah, I don't necessarily love those kinds of movies, and so it's been really awesome for me to say, hey, we're you know, we're gonna spend time doing something else. You all can come down to the studio and we'll all paint together, or we're gonna make brownies tomorrow, but I don't want to do movie nights. I'm gonna go downstairs and paint. Come down when the movie's over and I'll show you what I'm working on. But I love this um for me kind of newfound ability to opt out of the thing where I'm like, I don't know. Don't want to use my time in that way.

[28:42] Kate Quarfordt: Yeah, and it doesn't mean that I don't love you, it doesn't mean that I don't value family movie night. We'll watch Philadelphia story together someday, and that'll be amazing. But just being really clear about like I got invited to a party, I should go to the party. I don't want to go to the party. I'm not going to go to the party.

[28:56] Susan Blackwell: So you have clarity about you're really attuned. This is something that has come to me later in life as well.

[29:02] Kate Quarfordt: Absolutely. Attuning with what it is that actually in your body viscerally, you're like, Yes, and what you're actually like, no, thank you. Thank you much. No, uh, you know, even if it's like my body's saying, I don't um need to spend two hours doing that when I can instead look for the thing that lights me up.

[29:25] Susan Blackwell: Yes.

[29:26] Kate Quarfordt: So you're you're and that to me dictates how I bet you're real specific and efficient with your choices about how you use your time.

[29:33] Kate Quarfordt: Yeah, I think so. And not just on Marvel movie night, right? Yeah, and I also think that I've gotten a little bit better about really thinking about where where am I gonna make an impact. Like if I'm thinking about the work that I'm doing at school, you know, if I uh a lot of the work that I do with kids is very individualized, and so it takes a lot of my time if they want to do block prints and each one of them wants to do a portrait of a different activist or a different, you know, um for Black History Month, Women's History Month, that takes a lot of time to differentiate for them and help them find exactly just the right one. So that's a good use of my time. Whereas, you know, sitting and grading a ton of exams is not that's not giving them the same kind of creative richness that I want for them. And so, and I'm I luckily can make those choices in educ as an educator. I'm not being dictated about how I how I structure my classes. So I'm thinking about those those kinds of things.

[30:27] Kate Quarfordt: Um, I think I uh I generally um when I'm feeling exhausted, which I which I sometimes do feel exhausted, I do think that I have a couple of kind of like um I don't think they're hacks, they're just things that I do. Um we were talking a little earlier about this goofy thing that I that I've started doing of um using my I I walk uh from here to Nevin Street to get on the subway every day, and it's about a 15-minute walk. And often I use that walk. I um put my headphones in and I go to the voice memo function on my phone.

[31:07] Susan Blackwell: Yes.

[31:08] Kate Quarfordt: And I talk into my voice memo for 15 minutes uh down the street. And then when I get on the train, I listen back to it. And what I've found is that if I give myself that space to just spill whatever's on my heart, whatever's on my brain, whatever's stressing me out, whatever like, you know, heartbreaking sadness or like super like huge annoyance or whatever thing that longing, whatever thing that is consuming me and adding to my exhaustion, not just the exhaustion of like not enough sleep, but also I'm like emotionally fuming over XYZ. If I give myself a little space to just spill all that out in a very messy kind of blah kind of way and then I listen back to it and you know I I think I I'm probably not alone in having a a inner monologue that can sometimes be a bit judgy you know and sometimes if I'm just like stewing with my thoughts and I don't have that chance to externalize it can be kind of like a uh icky kind of push pull there's something about listening back to those things that gives me just enough distance to have compassion with myself as if I'm listening to a friend that we were joking earlier but it really is that is one of the features like the defined features of prolonged exposure therapy yeah where you record you you record the tale and then you're required to listen to the tale back yeah um it's it's um it it's useful that movie honey boy that we talked about I think that's the exp that's how he ended up with a screenplay.

[31:42] Kate Quarfordt: Oh wow by talking it out also seems like verbal morning pages yeah but we were saying it's a legit for I think a lot of people think that writing is fingers on keyboards or pen in hand touching the page and this walking talking recording is a totally legit first draft writing practice and I think some people are like what uh uh but it's so it's so it feels so much more flowing it feels easier um and I think even when I said that to you you were like hey, I had that I got a whole book in me yeah.

[31:42] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[31:42] Kate Quarfordt: I love that can I ask you super specifically how much do you sleep at night.

[33:15] Kate Quarfordt: Not enough. I've been thinking a little bit about, you know, as we're talking about this like rich full life, it makes it sound so lovely. And and it is. And I in the last few months, as I've sort of stepped into this artist capital A a bit more intentionally, I have been thinking of like, I'm not really getting enough hours of sleep. And I I this it's the wheels are on, but sort of barely at the moment. And so I have been really thinking about it.

[33:41] Susan Blackwell: I love your honesty about um, yeah, maybe something needs to shift. And and I think the sleep piece is is really what's driving that. You know, I'm not I'm not in my twenties.

[33:52] Kate Quarfordt: I mean, my god, when I think about when I first started teaching, but you do look like you're in your twins.

[33:56] Susan Blackwell: Thanks, thanks for saying that.

[33:58] Kate Quarfordt: But yeah, when I when I first started teaching, I just remember like I was so bad at it, and it was so hard for me, and it was so not fun. And so my um my therapy would be I I would go out salsa dancing, and so I would go out and I would dance and sweat and like drink mascal and just be a total hooligan. And then it would be like three o'clock in the morning, and I'd be like, oh shit, like I have to get up and go to the Bronx and be at the Bronx in the Bronx by like 7 45 if I'm gonna get to the copier to get my copies made before first period.

[34:28] Susan Blackwell: Oh my god.

[34:28] Kate Quarfordt: And I would just like haul ass onto the D train, like just sweat, still sweating and like I'm sure I'm sure the kids were like, Yeah, we know what the hell's going on. That was but that was my coping strategy, and somehow in my late 20s, early 30s, like I could just rock that. Yeah, I could teach three hours of sleep and be like, boom, I'm dropping knowledge, like this is great. I'm like totally in flow, which is really terrible, actually, because it started to give me this false sense of like, oh, I can teach hungover, no problem.

[35:57] Susan Blackwell: You could do that for a while, yeah.

[35:58] Kate Quarfordt: But then this the the you know, not sustainable, the resilience starts to kind of like a law of d diminishing returns. And so I have been thinking, you know, and on a good night, maybe I'm getting like six hours of sleep a night, but there's some times where I'm like, oh shoot, I gotta, you know, I just came home from a chorus gig and I know that second period we're rolling out XYZ project and I don't have those design briefs ready to hand out and I just gotta burn the midnight oil.

[36:06] Kate Quarfordt: That's right. Um, I have to like eat some protein and maybe like drink water.

[36:24] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[36:24] Kate Quarfordt: And I have these kind of talks with myself about like, okay, look, this is the business you've chosen. Like this is the road you you're choosing to walk. So you're not gonna sleep that much tonight. Um and it's always that, it's always those days, like the universe knows where like, you know, I'll finally get into bed and be like, okay, I've got like three and a half good solid hours. We're gonna really get into that like deep rich, dark, inky sleep. And then a kid pops up awake with a nightmare and you're like, Oh my god, of course it's this time.

[36:52] Susan Blackwell: Of course, always.

[36:15] Kate Quarfordt: And it only as you age. We talk about it all the time and we're like, Grammy Susan, like little grandmas of like, how's your sleep? Now did you get enough vegetables yesterday? I mean, really, but you can't just glide into the later year. But if you do tend to it, like if you do tend to it, and then you also have this like delicious like I I don't know. I think this is primed. I feel like this is prime time life right now because you're sort of like, well, if I if I do tend to those like things to care for myself, I've got all of this like good brain wisdom. And I'm like, I don't know. I'm now the combination is like really starting to come right now.

[36:54] Laura Camien: But while we talk about time and how you use yours, you had a time thing you wanted to tell us about.

[36:59] Kate Quarfordt: Oh yeah. Tell us. Sure. So a friend of mine shared this with me probably a decade and a half ago, and it's just really stuck with me. So the Greeks had the ancient Greeks had two notions of time, Kairos time and Kronos time. And Kronos time is the kind of time that in the Western world we're all really familiar with, where you're on the clock, you're moving in a linear way toward a goal. It's very measurable. And you're just kind of clicking off the minutes as you move, and you're very conscious of where you are in time and space. And everything's just very kind of, you know, you're you're you're you're moving along. Kairos time is the opposite of that. Kairos time is when you are in a suspended space where you are so deeply involved in whatever it is that you're doing, maybe it's something that you're making, or somebody that you're with, or you're in that conversation that's just, you know, like carrying you along where you forget where you are, you forget how much time has gone by, and you're in that just magical realm. And our culture does Kronos time really well, and it doesn't, I think, give us real ways to talk about Kairos time.

[38:09] Laura Camien: Could you spell Kairos?

[38:10] Kate Quarfordt: Yeah, it's K-A-I-R-O-S. Kairos time. What you're describing to me, if I understand you correctly, is my understanding of transcendence, which is where time takes on a different dimension in that you're engaged you're watching a play, or you're engaged in a conversation where you're sort of swept away, or you're meditating, and you look at your watch and you're shocked because you couldn't identify that that much time had passed. Um, when you were talking about your just very like action-packed life and how that works, I was thinking, take this or leave this, but I was thinking a meditation is also like a great supplement to rest, and the kind of meditation I do is all about just like very gently, not hard charging pursuit of it, but very gently putting yourself in Kairos time so that you're getting that deep, like nourishing rest.

But painting can be too painting is a form of meditation. And I think of it as flow and that concept of flow and you're sitting down to write and realizing after it's really clicked in, like, oh my god, it's you know an hour's gone by, yeah, right, or like five hours have gone by and having even gotten up to pee.

[39:29] Kate Quarfordt: Yeah, that's yeah, yeah. Oh, that's so great. I love that. I'm picturing a t-shirt with like Kronos time on the front and Kairos time on the back, or it's reversible.

[39:39] Laura Camien: You could yeah, flip it. Did you have more thoughts about culturally? You were saying like we do one really well and the other not so much. Do you have like further thoughts on that?

[39:49] Kate Quarfordt: Well, I think that um I think that there is a real interesting synergistic relationship between these two forms of time, and the paradox for me is that Kairos time sometimes happens just naturally. You're cooking and all of a sudden happens. Yeah, yeah. But because our culture isn't really set up, I have found that I have to be very disciplined about setting off, you know, kind of pockets of time in which I could allow myself to float into that space. So the idea, the paradox of being disciplined about floating away, yes, it's very strange to me, right? And so, and I think that that's true about a lot of things that are inherently kind of effortless. Like when you're in a really good jam with your partner and you're you're just like, you know, in flow, right?

As a relationship in terms of the way that you're relating to one another, that's really easy at the beginning of a relationship. And Eric and I have been married, you know, going on 20 years now. And so we've also started to realize like there is a discipline to an intentionality about fun as a couple, or about play as a couple, or about just like creating space for those great goopy soupy conversations at the kitchen table where there's not really a we're not sitting down to like figure out the summer calendar and where are the kids going to come. Like, oh, that's I mean, that has to get done.

[41:18] Laura Camien: Yeah, right.

[41:20] Kate Quarfordt: Um, but I think the way that our lives are set up, it requires us to be really steadfast and really disciplined about setting aside time in which we can allow ourselves to be loose. And I think I'm still sort of struggling with it. Like it doesn't, it's so counterintuitive to me. And I think where I get stuck is that feeling, and this I think comes up a lot with relationships, um, but it also comes up with my own creative practice of like, well, if it's natural and flowing, it should just happen on its own. And then I get very like, how dare I how is this relationship just not like doing it on it? It's like you should already know how I want to have fun and just like already show up like that, no, no, no, no. And like, and the the creative thing should just like already take me there.

Like I have this expectation that it should just do it by itself. We were just talking about this in terms of I did a spark recently about preparation and how I had this misguided notion for a long time that things that looked effortless were because of little effort had been exerted. And really, what I've come to learn through my own work and watching others' example is actually things that appear effortless are because there's this whole body of work that it surrounds them. And one of those things is like showing up on a regular basis at the uh uh on a fresh page of the journal or meditating, or hours and hours and hours and hours of rehearsal, Beyonce.

[42:47] Laura Camien: That's right.

[42:47] Kate Quarfordt: So that when you're up there, you're Sasha Fierce. Exactly. And it looks like you were born to do that. So one of the things that I love most about making theater with young people is exactly that, right? So those hours and hours of rehearsal, that grind, right? That effort that nope, we're gonna take it again, let's go back and do it again. Can when the stars align lead to that moment of just like whoosh, it's just doing itself. Yep. And we've started to create this tradition at my school where at the end of every performance, instead of just okay, curtain call, lights out, lights up, and now we're all talking to our families, and we're like in the hustle and bustle of let's get out of costume and go to the cast party.

We always pause and the lights come up, but the kids stay on stage and they all sit down. And we do a little facilitated, it's not really a talk back, it's just a moment of reflection. We always have one kid who facilitates it. They've they're they are the MC. The questions are always the same. What have you learned about yourself throughout this process? What have you learned about working with other people? And what have you learned about creativity and the creative process itself? And what that does for me, this is very selfish. This is all literally about me. I don't care about the kids. This is about me, right? What that does for me is prolong the Kairos time a little longer. It just gives us a moment.

So the kids are like sweaty, they're all elated, they've just done the thing, they've danced, they've sung, they've you know poured their hearts out on stage, and now there's this moment before we go back to real world, before we go back to Kronos time. Hip pause, the lights are still on, we're all still in the little bubble, the audience is going nowhere, and they have a chance to speak on what they're experiencing.

[44:28] Laura Camien: Yeah and it extends that magical suspended state.

[44:32] Kate Quarfordt: And this is about me. I just want to be able to sit back and say, okay, that's what it was there for. Like that's what we've been working toward. And let's just sit and bask in this for a second before we go back to the broken world. Really, really, really useful.

[44:51] Laura Camien: That is so great. And I know that there are educators that are listening to this, and maybe even like I don't know, coaches and you know, athletic coaches and things like that, or human beings that I'm just like taking that moment, taking that moment to linger and say, look at what we did, what did we learn? Like to take, just take the moment. I think is 100% news you can use.

[45:20] Kate Quarfordt: That is so useful. I can't help but imagine that it's equally useful for their parents who are watching who maybe did not get this kind of education growing up, but to help train all of us to take a moment of reflection. You know, what's my relationship to this? How did I grow through this? How did we as a group grow? I mean, it's it's uh an incredible takeaway. And we're gonna be talking about that one for a while.

[45:47] Kate Quarfordt: Well, for me, the the funny thing is that um as somebody who makes a lot of theater with young people, when I meet people and they ask what I do and I say that, they're like, Oh, you must just really love theater. And I do, it's fine. I do. I mean, I go to the theater and I love it. I'm like, great. I mean, Lin-Manuel Miranda, like big fan, huge uh piece of my personal storyline. Awesome. Yes. But what I really care about, uh we're okay, on the surface, we we're gonna have auditions, we're gonna start rehearsals, and then it's all gonna culminate in a play. As if the play is the point. Ha ha. Like everyone thinks this is all a long con. The play is not the point. Is a long con. Don't tell anyone.

Oh my god, my students. This is as if the play is the point. Right. The play is not the point. The point is all of us in the dark together, with the lights on, one little slice of human experience, having that ex having that experience together, right? And going through the process of we don't have a thing, we don't know how we're gonna get the thing. The thing has to happen on X date, because opening night is happening whether we're ready for it or not. How do we get a thing made out of a room full of people with no props, no costumes, no nothing, just a script and an idea of where the thing might take us? And now we have to somehow manifest this thing out of these relationships. We have to think about what kind of community we want to build on the way to making the thing. And the thing itself is just an excuse to do all that other stuff, which is, I think, the thing that's really interesting.

[47:24] Laura Camien: Yes.

[47:24] Kate Quarfordt: And then hopefully at the end, you know, we have a play, and it's great and it's super fun. And everyone claps and they get little flowers and hopefully. But it is part of the process. It is a good thing. We get to linger in the Kairos time space.

[47:36] Laura Camien: Oh, Kate. When I bump into something that inspires me, I dump it in the spark fires. Sparfies could be something that I want to make or how I wanna be. I'll pump it in the spark fire. I jump into my spark flags. Let's open up the spark fire.

[48:08] Susan Blackwell: That was part one of our interview with Kate Quarfordt. Part two will be available next week. Unless it's the future, then it's available now. So go on, give it a listen, and find out what's sparking Kate Quarfordt these days.