This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Susan Blackwell: This is part two of our interview with Kate Quarfordt.

[0:02] If you like, you can go back and give part one a listen.

[0:05] You'll find it wherever you get your podcasts or not.

[0:08] However, you're doing it, you're doing it right.

[0:10] Enjoy the show.

[0:11] The Spark File podcast may contain profanity and other adult content.

[0:15] Please use your discretion.

[0:21] Kate Quarfordt: When I bump into something that inspires me, I jump in my spark file. Spark file to be something that I wanna make or how I wanna be. I pump it in my spark file. I jump into my sparks.

[0:43] Let's open up this spark file.

[0:48] So my introduction to you came when I think that baby cams must have followed you on Instagram through the Spark File account.

[0:58] And so I just discovered your artwork. It was like, what the actual fuck. I was like, okay, follow, follow, follow, follow. So that was my first exposure.

[1:09] I was just looking through the feed and I was like, what's this now? What is I really responded to it strongly and positively. Let me put it that way.

[1:22] And it was it, and then I took a deep dive through your Instagram feed, and I was really, really sparked by it. Really sparked by all different aspects of it.

[1:41] The colors that you choose that you were painting a lot in a book. And I was like, that's something that I could do. And then, like, I could, once it's dry, you know, you don't need a lot of space for it.

[1:56] You could, I was like, oh, this is something that I could do in a space of my own. Yes. I was very inspired by many different aspects of it. Your writing that accompanied it.

[2:07] So it's a real joy to actually, when we walked into your studio, I was like, so um, this isn't really shaping up to be a question. It's just sort of, I guess it's a thank you.

[2:21] But will you tell us more? I don't know. This isn't even a question. Take a couple of cams because we I think we are on the same bound, like the same train of enthusiasm.

[2:33] You blew my mind. You blew my mind, and so first visually, and then when I would read your writings that accompanied the paintings, I was telling you, I first of all, I just bought a print that I'm super excited about, and it took me a while to decide which one because of the way you wrote about them, and I was like, oh, but this really spoke to me.

[2:58] You included on one of your many posts, you included this quote from the book that you use, The Moviegoer. Oh to be aware of the possibility of the search is to be on to something, not to be onto something is to be in despair.

[3:16] Oh, we lost our minds over this. We do like that. Could you tell us more about it?

[3:24] Kate Quarfordt: So, as I said, my dad gave me the book in high school, and high school was a weird time. Socially, it was really weird. You spent a lot of time with your grandma, spent a lot of time with Graham.

[3:39] Not maybe not feeling your peers so much. Yeah, it was just a tricky time. I grew up in a place that was really obsessed with like having the right designer jeans, which I didn't.

[3:47] We were like a Sears, you know, Oshkosh B'gosh kind of family. And it was hard as a young person to find that sense of being onto something.

[4:02] And I think on the outside I probably presented as a very happy functional human, but I think that deep down I really understood from an early age the sense of, God, that just kind of numbed out, grayed out feeling of like not finding traction, like not finding the thread, that golden thread that once you're on it, you can just kind of like you can only see an inch in front of you, but you know you're onto the thing and you can just keep following the thread.

[4:33] And the ways that I found that thread were through conversations with my grandmother, were late nights staying up, you know, listening to Billie Holiday with my dad. My mom too had these incredible forms of artistry that she would share with me.

[4:48] And then little by little in high school, you know, I would I was lucky enough to get involved with our school's chorus, our magical singers and that kind of stuff, which was strange because it was in the context of school, so it was like a class.

[5:01] You would go to the class and you would show up fourth period and then Kairos time would kind of kick in for me. I would sort of forget where I was and I would just be singing and realize like, oh, this is not a school thing.

[5:10] This is like a people surviving and not collapsing under the weight of this despair thing. Like this is a thing that people do to hold joy.

[5:20] And yeah, once I got tastes of that, it was like this need, this desire to follow those threads, to follow the searches. And I have had times in my life, and I think that when, you know, when we kind of catch the thread of that, you hold on as long as you can, and then it feels like the thread wears out, and you have to find the next thread.

[5:43] Yes. And in the moments between, and I've experienced this a number of times in my life where I'm not on the search and the despair settles in.

[5:53] And I just feel like, oh well, I guess maybe that wasn't my path. Like I guess maybe I don't have what it takes, or I don't know how to find that magic again.

[6:05] I had this experience recently of getting to sing at Joe's Pub with a singer-songwriter named Treya Lamb, who is a just deep, deep soul and a really direct conduit of this magic that we've been talking about.

[6:19] And it was such a healing experience for me because I think about 15 years earlier, I had gone to Joe's Pub to see a show. It was the Bjorkestra. I'm a huge fan of Björk.

[6:31] And there's this wonderful group called the Bjorkestra where they would do these incredibly creative Björk covers in like a full-blown orchestral setting. And it was at a time where I was really in that despair.

[6:42] I was not on the search, I was not doing anything creative. I was burning so much energy trying to be of service to other people, and I wasn't doing anything that even like remotely connected to my own artistry.

[6:53] And I remember standing in the dark at Joe's Pub at this show, watching somebody else sing these songs that I knew every word to, and just thinking, oh well, I guess that's not for me.

[7:03] Like, I guess I won't ever do that again. And to be back on that same stage, you know, surrounded by these incredibly fierce women and in collaboration with Treya was just an incredible moment to realize like the search is always there, it's always there for us, you know.

[7:20] And we can feel like we've let go of it, but it's just right there. Just pick it back up again. It's fine.

[7:25] Yes. I feel like we that that is the point of this podcast. It is about looking for those sparks that to mix my metaphors that to get to so that wind can catch your creative sails or to use yours that you can find those golden threads that sort of like can carry you through and get you into sometimes get you into Kairos time, yeah, but sometimes just like give you something to sit up in the morning and go, Well, I'm gonna go open up a fresh page of the journal and I'm gonna like pick some new colors today.

[7:59] Yeah, something to just like just that lifeline thread.

[8:04] Kate Quarfordt: Yes, onto something.

[8:06] Susan Blackwell: I love I will never think of that phrase the same way again because the number of times where like whether I'm writing a play and do part of perform part of it or work on a project and someone says, I think you're onto something.

[8:20] I will never think of it the same way again. It's like so much deeper than I ever gave that phrase credit for onto something.

[8:30] And in your case, in that example, you found the choir. Can you tell us about your work?

[8:36] Kate Quarfordt: That's yes. Oh, what a joy. These women are so fierce and so beautiful and radiant.

[8:44] I say the name of the chorus. So it's called the Resistance Revival Chorus, and it evolved out of the women's march.

[8:54] Ginny Suss and Sarah Sophie Flicker and Nelini Stamp. There's a six co-founders of the chorus, and their names are all on my mic.

[9:04] Yeah. Anyway, they all gathered up after that big first march in January of 2017 and said, Wow, this was incredible.

[9:11] They had all helped to organize that and galvanize it, along with I mean, so many other countless incredible women. And they came out of that march and said, Okay, that was amazing, but what is missing from this movement is music and joy.

[9:24] Oh, we are all grinding our gears, right? Yes, right.

[9:29] So in the 60s, yeah, so much of this work as people were marching for civil rights, so much of this work was buoyed and fueled by music, and that came out of the African American tradition of singing in church and singing from that place of and yet, like the world is a broken mess, and yet we uplift joy and we center joy, and joy is a form of resistance, it's a joy, it's a form of resilience, it's a form of survival.

[9:56] And if we lose our joy in the fight for justice, what's the justice worth, right? Like if we are so depleted by the end of this fight that we've gotten what we wanted, but we're so broken that we can't live it.

[10:07] What does that do for anybody, right? And what are we teaching our children, right, about how we resist and how we fight if we've lost our joy?

[10:14] And so this evolved it was just a group of women sitting around a kitchen table saying, How can we reinfuse joy into this resistance movement?

[10:24] And they said, Well, let's just start a chorus. Unbeknownst to me, I had no idea that any of this was unfolding.

[10:29] I was there the March in Washington on the 17th, and I was very much involved in that burgeoning protest movement, not burgeoning, I shouldn't say that, because there is so much work that was done primarily by women of color that led up to that moment.

[10:47] I think that's really really important to keep centering. But I had, you know, really this new awareness of the movement, yeah.

[10:55] Yeah, as it was spreading and growing and becoming more galvanized and intentional. And so right around that time, I was it was the summertime, it was like the spring, sort of spring after that march.

[11:07] And I remember I was writing in my journal, and I said, you know, I hadn't been doing any singing. I had been I'd done singing in high school and done musicals, and I had had a short-lived, very volatile, weird band at one point that didn't really work out.

[11:23] But let's just underscore that that singing that you had done in high school sounded like a bit of a golden thread lifeline to me.

[11:29] So important. Right, and just this notion, what I loved about singing in high school is I didn't have to be the soloist.

[11:36] I loved singing in a choir where I couldn't hear my, I could barely hear my own voice, but I was thinking so much about how to harmonize with other people.

[11:44] And just that experience, the synergy of being in a group and what that does, how that amplifies our voices and our intentions.

[11:51] And so I wrote in my journal, I probably have it somewhere around, literally, like I want to sing with women about things I care about.

[11:59] Kate Quarfordt: And I don't need to be the headliner, I want to be one in the number. I just want that feeling again. And not three days later, my friend Abana emailed me or Facebooked me or something or other and said, "Hey, we're putting together this choir. We're gonna do a flash mob in the middle of Times Square. We're gonna sing, you know, some of the old protest songs from the 60s. We're gonna start to create some of our own new protest music. Do you want to be a part of it?" And I was like, "Are you in my head? Like, how did this happen?" Well, and I said, "Yeah, absolutely. I think this is a that was a time, and this continues to be a time where people are looking for a way where they can take a gift that they have, something that really knocks on their door and then combine it with activism. Yes. And impact some change in that way. So I feel like it's kismet and it also makes total sense. The timing makes total sense."

[12:51] Susan Blackwell: It does. Do you perform frequently? What's the schedule like, and how can people find you?

[12:56] Kate Quarfordt: Right. So yeah, you can find us online, you can find us on Instagram, all the things. Um, so we have our schedule is really heating up. Um, the response from folks right from the start was really, really powerful to your point. I think that there's a real hunger right now to be in connection and particularly in a world where like so much of the connection that we do is through the lens of social media, which no shade, that's, you know, it can be really powerful and really great. But I think that we're really craving like in-the-room connection. Like we want to sing together and actually hear ourselves singing and hooting and hollering and just like stomping and just making a big ruckus. So right from the start when we started to... yeah, I just had a spark.

[13:39] Kate Quarfordt: Oh, sorry, go, go. Real-time spark.

[13:41] Susan Blackwell: Yes, do it.

[13:42] Kate Quarfordt: We were just having a conversation last night with Donna Lieberman, who is the head of the NYCLU. Yeah, yes. And every year there is an event called Broadway Stands Up for Freedom and different Broadway performers and others, people who are expressing their activism through creative means and performative means. Oh my god. It's at Town Hall, you all should stay there at Broadway Stands Up for Freedom. I will send the email within the next 48 hours.

[14:10] Susan Blackwell: Love that. You were saying, yes.

[14:12] Kate Quarfordt: Raising ruckuses. I think that's where we were.

[14:14] Susan Blackwell: Yes.

[14:15] Kate Quarfordt: So I love this. I love this. And you know what's really funny too. Um, two nights ago I went to see American Utopia.

[14:21] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[14:21] Kate Quarfordt: And I was sitting there and thinking, like, wow, this is so much that—have you seen it?

[14:25] Susan Blackwell: I have not.

[14:26] Kate Quarfordt: It's extraordinary. I'm a huge David Byrne fan, a huge Talking Heads fan. Um, but the spirit of that piece, uh, of you know, singing these songs with these little, you know, bits and pieces of stories together. And the idea of like this is a stage full of musicians who are also immigrants and what it looks like to really kind of re-envision what's possible. It was really a stunning moment for me. And it made me think like, oh wow, the chorus, it's so in line with how we do our shows are in that kind of format. Um, and with that same kind of spirit where it's music, it's activism, it's this notion of the alchemy that happens when we're all in that room together. And I was just literally, I just not a day and a half ago texted our group chorus thread and said, "Broadway, have we considered Broadway? We should do it." So being amazing.

[15:16] Susan Blackwell: Oh my god.

[15:17] Kate Quarfordt: So we perform a lot, and what I love about the chorus is that there's a huge range. I mean, often what we're doing is street protests. It's like a rapid response. Somebody finds out about an action.

[15:24] Susan Blackwell: Yes.

[15:26] Kate Quarfordt: And it's like, yeah, who can come? We've all got this signal through. Making change, Ben. It's like literally just like it's happening, you know, five o'clock tonight. Who's in? Who can music direct? We've got, you know, a number, it's a very leaderful space. So there's a lot of folks who are willing and able to step into that role. We've got a lot of people who are working musicians, we've got artists, we've got educators, we've got mothers, and so there are people who are, you know, at any given moment might be out on tour, might be like at a conference someplace. And so there's 60 of us, but at no time are we ever all 60 together. It's like whoever can show up. That's right. Um, we all know each other's parts, we can all step in on like who's got the alto line. Yep, got it. That's me, no problem. Um, exciting.

[16:07] Kate Quarfordt: Yeah, and so what's been really interesting is that as momentum has, you know, I think at the heart of what we do, um, protest and activism are always gonna be there at the core, and there's also a sort of second prong, which is really uplifting and centering women in music. Um, so that kind of thread has led us onto some really beautiful stages. We got a chance to um sing with Angelique Kidjo at Summer Stage, we were with um Ani DiFranco, we sang with um Carly Simon at Carnegie Hall. And so, like those experiences are starting to keep on happening if I have anything to do with it. We just recorded an album which is getting mixed right now, and that will be coming out in the world.

[16:50] Susan Blackwell: Oh my god, what do you know what it's called?

[16:52] Kate Quarfordt: It's called the Resistance Revival Chorus, This Joy.

[16:55] Susan Blackwell: Can we sing this on the book?

[16:56] Kate Quarfordt: Oh my god, this joy.

[16:58] Susan Blackwell: Oh my god.

[17:03] Kate Quarfordt: You're so full of sparks. You're so full of sparks. You're a basket of sparks. Incredible. Uh, should we jump? Should we also mention like you are co-founding a school? Should we just mention what person in their right mind?

[17:19] Susan Blackwell: Oh god, what a dumb idea, right?

[17:21] Kate Quarfordt: No, do you just do this from like 3 a.m. to 4 a.m.? Yeah, you worked a window co-founding a school. But you it's co-founded, it is founded, it is in motion, right? So that that um crazy town moment of like the actual, oh my god, we're gonna make a thing that is not a thing turn into a thing. Yeah, that was like 2014, 15, 16. We opened our doors in 2016, um, which is a crazy time, just also in the context of like the political moment when we've been talking a lot about how these things intersect, right? The idea of we're gonna create an arts-based middle school with a really diverse population of young people that creates a very inclusive environment so that kids can show up with their whole identity intact in our school. Oh, but we're also gonna do that on the year that Trump of all people gets elected president, and that's gonna happen. Well, but we have been open, our doors have been open for like a month and a half, two months.

[18:13] Kate Quarfordt: Oh my god. So navigating that process with this new group of sixth graders, right? So these were 10, 11, 12 year olds that we were just getting to know, just building community, just talking about what does it mean to have this inclusive diverse space was really the power keg.

[18:32] Susan Blackwell: Yeah, I'm sure.

[18:32] Kate Quarfordt: Yeah, but you're it there is a through line of creativity um at that school and the mission of the school. Can you talk about that?

[18:42] Kate Quarfordt: Well, I think that learning is inherently creative, and that shouldn't be a radical statement, but given the state of education in our country right now, it sure as hell is. We have and with really good, clear, strong intentions. I really want to be careful because I think that there are a lot of amazing educators in the world who have centered the notion of accountability and like we really do need to teach the babies to read and write and do math. We really do, right? Of course, and we need to be able to measure that, and there's a lot of socioeconomic um and race, you know, like lenses through which we must look in order to turn, you know, the work that we're doing. We need to be measuring it, we need to be clear about that path.

And also, there is so much great work that can happen in a classroom that is not necessarily measurable in those kinds of ways with those very limited metrics that we often use to determine how kids are learning and growing. I think that uh the creative process is inherently differentiated. Kids create and learn how to create in their own way at their own time, and that runs really antithetically or has a tension, a creative tension with this other way that we've been viewing education in this country for a long time. And our sweet spot at our school, like the thing that we are, that ever-elusive kind of like moving target that we're always kind of working toward is, and I actually don't think I think that so socially or um in terms of how we've been taught to think about education, there is this tension, but I don't actually think it exists.

I think that when you're actually doing great creative work, it is helping you become a better reader and writer. And I think that when you're actually doing great creative work, it's growing that muscle and that way of seeing that helps you improve in math. And so for me, I don't see those things as antithetical.

[20:33] Kate Quarfordt: Yeah, and yet they're integrated.

[20:34] Susan Blackwell: You talk to, yeah, exactly.

[20:36] Kate Quarfordt: They're to me, they're very integrated. Like we do, I do this um wonderful unit on the Fibonacci sequence and the golden ratio with my kids where I just completely geek out. They completely geek out with me. At first, they're like, oh God, it's an art class, why do we have to do math, right? Or like, let's look at how the Parthenon was built, let's look at the spiral in a pine cone, let's look at these patterns in music and see that they're all linked by this one very simple but incredibly elegant and expansive property. And that these ways of knowing and these ways of learning and seeing are your birthright, and yet our schools are not set up to give you access to that way of knowing. Um, and so we're trying to do that work at a time where we also really need to like post some good reading and math scores. And so it's a really interesting tension and an interesting dance.

[21:24] Kate Quarfordt: I can't help but think about how you're teaching them to know themselves as creative beings, and that you're raising this little generation of students who won't have any issue calling themselves artists with a capital A because they will know themselves in that way.

[21:44] Susan Blackwell: From the jump.

[21:45] Kate Quarfordt: From the jump. And I think that's a huge gift.

[21:48] Susan Blackwell: I really do. I have a question. You do so much. And then I've also you're, I mean, you're really in the middle of making so much. And then I've also seen your to-do list in your like you have a top post on your chalkboard in your office. You have sort of like things that you also aim to aspire to make. Is there a creative thing that you know that you have to do before you're done?

[22:21] Kate Quarfordt: I think that there's a book in me rumbling around somewhere under the surface.

[22:28] Kate Quarfordt: I second that emotion. I started writing, I started writing a book in 2010. I was directing The King and I in the Bronx.

[22:36] Susan Blackwell: Sure.

[22:39] Kate Quarfordt: And I was really fascinated with the story of Anna Leonowens as like this white lady who goes to what was then known as Siam. Um, who it's like this wild, um, kind of layered—there's Rogers and Hammerstein, right? These like two Jews are gonna write a story about a white lady who goes to Siam, and like this like all of these crazy, and then I, as a white lady, I'm gonna go and do that show in the Bronx, where all of the students that I'm working with are students of color. And what does that mean? Where I'm, you know, like the young woman that I'm working with is learning, you know, to speak in a British accent, and we're like unpacking all that, and then we do research into Anna Leonowens' past and find out that she actually was not white, she was of mixed race descent, she was born in India, and her husband passed away, and she realized that her only ticket was learning how to speak with a British accent and passing as a white woman. She was actually from Wales.

[23:35] Kate Quarfordt: Yes, I know. There is spark for it. I know, so sparkish. So, gets on a boat to Siam, and in that transition, like teaches herself to be a British governess person.

[23:48] Susan Blackwell: Oh my. And like does that because being a woman and being a widow and what are you gonna do to survive?

[23:57] Kate Quarfordt: So unpacking all of these layers, and I think I got a bit stalled in that process because I kept coming into this realization of like I was telling the story from my perspective, but because I was working with all these young folks, they were necessarily part of the story. And I kept having these moments of realizing that I'm writing their stories, but from my voice, as the white educator who's doing this work with young people, and I have never felt ever like oh, I'm like this magical white lady that's coming into this like poor bedraggled neighborhood and like saving the kids, and like, you know, my whatever what Michelle Pfeiffer, Dangerous Minds, like the little black leather jacket. Like that's been so far from my experience.

And yet, as I was writing this thing, I was like, oh, this is feeling this is like I'm I don't know quite how to bust out of that box. And I just had this moment where I was like, you know what? Just like drop it for a while. Like, you don't maybe you don't have to make that right now. Let that go. Those stories are gonna be there. Maybe there's another way that it'll move or shape, and maybe the book the book, maybe that's the book, you know, the painted book is the book. And maybe it maybe it'll come through in another in another form. And I think that as I've gotten older, I've started to trust that these goals that we set for ourselves are useful because they get us onto something, yeah, but they don't necessarily have to show up in the world exactly the way that we envision them.

Right. Like morph and change and you got your eyes on the prize, you've got your eyes on the prize, and then sneak attack and then sneak a tie in the side. It was actually a step towards something else that is totally surprising and comes from left field. I think to the um I I'm not a big uh like New Year's resolution maker. Um it just doesn't, it's not how my brain works. Um, but I did have a moment of sitting down in you know early January this year, and my New Year's resolution was to stay open for the side sneak attacks. Like here I am. I'm like putting like lots and lots of effort into visual art, but like what if someone came around and said, you know what, we're gonna make a play about XYZ and why don't you come and help you know, like let's stay open to the wild possibility of somebody says, like, I want to give you a $20,000 grant to go and make a movie in Paris. Like, like yes, okay, cool. Like, and why not? Why not just like so? That's my kind of New Year's resolution is to sort of be open to some wild, ridiculous, out of left field creative adventure.

[26:31] Susan Blackwell: That's a goodie. I love that. Kate, you do so much, as we've mentioned. Do you have a clear vision of what it's all for?

[26:43] Kate Quarfordt: I think a lot about the women in my family who were filled with so much creativity as young people and didn't get a chance to fully live it. My grandmother on my mother's side was an actress in London when World War II broke out, and her parents told her that because she was Jewish, it would be unsafe for her name to appear on a program. So she had to leave. And so she came to New York and got married and didn't act again. Wow. And my grandma on my dad's side told me when I was 13, 14 in the high school moments when you're running a lot with Grams. She told me that she used to write a lot of poetry. And I said, Oh my gosh, I learned I like to write poetry too. Will you show me your poems? And she said, Oh no, dear, don't be silly.

I burned them when I got married. Oh. Oh, that's chilling. And it just that hit me like a ton of bricks. And she found so many other beautiful ways to channel that inherent natural creative life force that was so much a part of her. But I think so much about those two women and so many women who are just full of creativity and full of artistry, and who, for whatever reason, either pressure from the outside or pressure from the inside, yeah, don't give that creative fire any oxygen. And I have been that woman. And I don't want to be that woman anymore.

[28:20] Susan Blackwell: That's right. And you're giving permission to all the others as you forge your path. Everyone has permission to follow those same steps.

[28:31] Kate Quarfordt: Oh that's a good one. That's a fucking great one. Who or what is sparking you these days?

[28:47] Kate Quarfordt: I would say the singers that I get to share the stage with from the chorus, each of whom individually has so much uh joy and artistry to offer. Um I'm doing one of the collaborations that I talked about with my friend Nulusha, who's writing this incredibly beautiful song cycle called Ten Blessings. And you're giving us the viz. Yes, you wants. Exactly. Um, and singing in that and um contributed some writing to that. And I just like the way that she uh has envisioned this project and the way that she leads it with such grace and clarity and generosity of spirit, is such a pleasure to be in the room with. And she brings out uh she brings out the beauty of each individual collaborator in a way that's so careful and so she, you know, talk about preparation.

She comes so exquisitely prepared, she does so much work on the back end that she can then show up in that rehearsal room and it flows out of her effortlessly. And I'm like, I'm on to you. I know how much work you're doing behind the scenes. Um, I think of Treya, who I mentioned, you know, who's just this incredible channel uh for artistry, and same thing, just so much grit and hustle and heart that goes into that work so that she can show up, you know, barefoot in her white tunic, strumming on her guitar, like it's just nothing. It's rolling out of her so freely like water. And I think, uh uh. I know, I know, I know. I think of my friend Dina, who's doing just making incredible jewelry. I think of my friend Ilana, who's just written her second book of poetry.

Like I'm just so I'm so grateful to be surrounded by so many incredible women makers who and and you mentioned at the very beginning of this conversation about the work that gets done in the inconvenient moments. Like so many, my friend Yen, right, who is an architect and a mother of two, and you know, finds those moments, those pre-dawn moments at her kitchen table to make these incredible drawings. And I just think so much, you know. I think about Lucille Cliff Clifton, you know, this incredible poet who had many kids and was always like sort of writing a line of poetry on a the back of a brown paper bag while she's frying an egg and feeding a kid and mending a clothes and whatever. And and I think that that's true for a lot of a lot of creators in general, but I think a lot of a lot of women creative people, right, are finding that that discipline to sit down at the blank canvas with the sink full of dishes, which you all got a chance to witness. My sink is full of dishes right now. Proudly. They can wait. They can wait. They can wait. They can wait.

[31:20] Kate Quarfordt: Just describe probably the history of female art throughout time, like how it gets made. What did you say specifically? You said if uh it seems like I don't, I'm gonna butcher it. Painting gets done when there's a sink full of dishes.

[31:34] Susan Blackwell: Yeah, painting only gets done when there's a sink full of dishes.

[31:36] Kate Quarfordt: Yeah, painting only gets done when there's a sink full of dishes. Give yourself permission to paint, give yourself permission to have a sink full of dishes while you're gonna be.

[31:43] Susan Blackwell: That's right. All that can be your sparks are all those women. And I don't know, not so ironically. You're a woman who sparks us.

[31:53] Kate Quarfordt: It makes me so happy. Yes. And I also want to not to insert our us into this equation. But I'm about to do it because you said something before we started that rocked my world, which is that you come into this beautiful studio that is your heart and you listen to this while you paint.

[32:09] Susan Blackwell: I do.

[32:10] Kate Quarfordt: Which felt to me that I was like, there is no greater compliment you could give us.

[32:16] Susan Blackwell: No, it's from the heart. Truly. I'm so honored to be.

[32:21] Kate Quarfordt: Now I'm picturing, yeah, I'm picturing the spark pile in this space. It makes me really, really happy.

[32:27] Susan Blackwell: Yeah. Well, I think that this is how synergy works. There's a reason that, you know, that myth of the the solo artist who's just there toiling. It's usually a dude, right? Some like really a mastermind.

[32:36] Kate Quarfordt: Yes, yes, yes.

[32:39] Susan Blackwell: Like, oh yeah, you know, smoking cigarettes and just like being tortured all alone. Just like genius, you know, all the genius like hustling up the mountain or whatever. Oh god. So many of the creative folks that I that I so admire, and you all included, are networked in this really beautiful synergistic way. We are not doing this work alone. It is nourishing. I have to say, what just sitting here being with you, it is so it is so sparkish and so nourishing. And I really didn't mean to insert us into your no, I said it. I feel like, I'm having an out-of-body experience where I'm recording the podcissistic.

[33:17] Kate Quarfordt: Not at all. Not at all. But I guess it is pridefulness is a sin. But I was also proud of it. No, listen, listen, women don't do enough bragging. And listen. Take that, everybody. See you there.

[33:29] Susan Blackwell: It is okay. It is okay.

[33:33] Kate Quarfordt: Thank you so much. What a pleasure.

[33:34] Susan Blackwell: Thank you both so much. We are really.

[33:37] Kate Quarfordt: You are. You are a basket walking spark.

[33:41] Susan Blackwell: You are. Just spewing sparks. I see you. Like walking down the street, just spewing sparks. Sort of like pig pen, but the opposite.

[33:47] Kate Quarfordt: The opposite.

[33:50] Susan Blackwell: Yeah. A little actual pig pen in the mix. Let's be clear. A little grit. Never hurt anybody.

[33:56] Kate Quarfordt: That's it. We hope that this put another bunch of sparks in your file. Listen, if there's a spark that you'd like us to explore, or if you've taken a spark and you've fanned it into a creative flame and you'd like to share that, won't you email us at thesparkfile at gmail.com or submit it through our website, the sparkfile.com. We will even take your feedback, but you know the price of admission. First, you have to share a creative risk that you have taken recently. And be sure to subscribe to this podcast wherever you get your podcast. Subscribe, rate. Five-star review it. If you like this podcast, please won't you share it with people you love? If you didn't like it, Kate, what do you say to your critics?

[34:35] Kate Quarfordt: It's okay. I'm gonna keep making my thing anyway. And you know what? You should go out and make something too.

[34:42] Susan Blackwell: I love that. If something tickles your fancy and gets your creative juices flowing, we're writing you a forever permission slip to make that thing that's been knocking at your door. Kate's signing it too.

[34:54] Kate Quarfordt: Kate is signing it forever.

[34:57] Susan Blackwell: There you go. It's your turn to take a spark and fan it into a flame. You gotta locate it. You gotta do date it. You gotta be like Kate Quaffert and multipassionately create it. Woohoo! You gotta take it and make it.

[35:15] Kate Quarfordt: Bye.

[35:16] Susan Blackwell: Bye.

[35:17] Kate Quarfordt: Okay. When I bump into something that inspires me, I dump it in the spark five.

[35:29] Kate Quarfordt: Could be something that I wanna make or how I wanna be.

[35:34] Kate Quarfordt: I pump it in the spark fire.

[35:37] Kate Quarfordt: Spark.

[35:39] Kate Quarfordt: I jump into my spark five.