April 6, 2020 • 47 mins
Is it really possible to follow all of your curiosities for a living? Say hello to Tyler Thrasher. He's made a career out of exploring caves, hybridizing plants, and growing crystals on insects, and he's here to tell us how. It starts with a major pivot away from computer animation and a return to his love of the natural world, hacking his fascinations and building a business model to support his life as a full-time (and self-taught!) artist and scientist.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everybody, just an f y I. We recorded this
episode before we were in a pandemic. We thought that
my beautiful context for you indeed, but we hope it
still brings you inside and inspiration during this challenging time.
Hanging there. The Limit Does Not Exist is a production
of I Heart Radio. Hey, I'm Christina Wallace and I'm
(00:29):
Kate Scott Campbell and you're listening to the Limit does
Not Exist. A podcast for Human then Diagrams coming at
you every single week and hosted by us. Imagine this
your three months out from completing your degree and an
inspirational speaker comes to share what life in your new
(00:50):
career is going to be like. And you leave that
presentation a hundred certain that it is going to make
you miserable. So what do you do next? Do you
change my jors and stay in school longer, go forward
with the original plan knowing it won't fit you, or
do you make a major pivot and create an entirely
new path with just a three month runway. Tyler Thrasher
(01:12):
chose options see swapping a career in computer animation for
a custom path as an artist and chemist. Tyler tells
us about that fateful pivot, as well as how he
built a business model to support his life as a
full time artist. So if you're feeling a call from
within that you're afraid to answer for any number of reasons,
Tyler's story might just give you the ammunition you need
(01:34):
to take the leap and the logistical insights to give
yourself a safety net. So what are we waiting for?
Let's jump in. Let's do it. I grow crystals, undead things.
I'm a scientist, a chemist, an artist, a grower, and
(01:56):
a lover of nature. Anything and all things I find fascinating.
I do it's Thrasher your real or given name? Or
did you choose that it's your real name? I lock out? No, Wow,
that is so hero. Thrash is my real name, and
(02:17):
the origin is not as cool as you would think.
It comes from thresher, from someone who like threshes the field. Okay,
that's though. Given your connection to nature, there's a field metaphor.
H this is a great to make another nature connection
family tree that you were born in. Sorry, guys, I
(02:41):
know like you worse than dad jokes and a dad
that was pretty bad. What's rest of a dad joke?
I'll add it to my personal branding. Okay, okay, so
we need to dig into this artist and chemist. This
is an amazing comb nation. I think you are our
first chemist on the show. Congratulations on that. Yeah, well
(03:08):
we need to back up a little bit because you
were a computer animation major in college, yes, and just
before you graduated, you had a realization that you did
not want to pursue that as a career. What was
that about? How did you know that you needed to
do something else? Oh? Man, it's kind of depressing, but honest,
(03:28):
that's where I like to reside. I was three months
from graduating. I thought I wanted to be a computer animator,
and I didn't really think about it was I was
kind of just pushed in that direction from like high
school counselors. And three months from graduating, the school brought
in someone who was working in the field, and they said,
ask this guy, Indian, all questions you have, because this
(03:48):
is where you're going to end up. So I was
very honest, asked him some very hard questions, and his
answers pretty much led me to believe that animation would
be the worst decision I could personally make. Wow, do
you remember what about his answers or a detailer too,
so I asked him for one. You know, he talked
a lot about how intensive animation is, Like you work NonStop.
(04:09):
It's a very like grueling, rigorous artistic field. However, you
are like the backbones to any project, yet you get
very little attention, Like when you watch a film, no
one's there to like look at the animators that were
part of it. You care about the director, the producer,
but you are pretty much the only reason that film
ever happened, and so it's very like unrewarding job. He
(04:33):
did not hold that back. He told me his wife
left him like halfway through his career, the thing called
animator's widow. You can look it up. It's like the
thing where like people cannot stay in healthy relationships with animators.
There's like no tangible way to coexist. Oh my goodness,
this is like the least inspirational guest speaker ever. It
(04:53):
also sounds like he saved you a lot of time ultimately. Yeah,
And at first he was offering up a lot of hope,
and I'll like, look, I'm not buying this Disney stuff,
like you realistic with us because we're about to go
into this field and you're not telling us any of
the hardships, just like the uplifting stuff, and I'm like,
that's not realistic. Good for you. The last question I
asked him, I said, okay, you work on all these
(05:16):
other projects. I adore the Explorer and in Juju Pets.
I was like, when's the last time you did something
for yourself? When's the last time you worked on your
own project? And he said It's been about thirteen years
and I said, I'm out. I'm completely out. That will
not work. So Tyler, just the fact that you were
self aware enough in undergrad to ask when was the
last time you did something for yourself? Is really impressive.
(05:39):
You know, I want to go back to the growing
crystals on dead things and there are no longer animate objects.
How did you land on this particular medium that goes
back to like my knack for wanting to do stuff
for myself and explore things on my own. It is
entirely random, as some of the best they this in
(06:00):
your life can be. I was going to school for animation.
I was miserable. I just didn't want to spend my
time working on school projects I know no one would
care about After I graduated, so I was like, I
have to fill my time with other things. So I
would spend every weekend hiking. I went to school in Springfiel, Missouri,
so there's a lot of really good hiking. Eventually that
led to me exploring a lot of cars topography. It
(06:21):
ended with me inside of caves. Like pretty quickly, I
would spend every week and crawling through a cave, exploring caves,
mapping out caves. The Missouri is called the Cave State.
Did not know that, neither did I. There was a
cave within like a two mile radius of me at
any point when I was in Springfield, Missouri, and just
this odd thing that I was doing outside of school,
(06:42):
like caving. I was very aware that I was doing
something most people in Springfield were not doing, and I
felt this disconnect from the rest of the world. But
I was still basking in fascination and curiosity while I
was underground miles away from like other people. This separation
kind of forced me to all in love with nature
and pull away from things like school and other people
(07:04):
that were kind of distracting me or making me miserable.
And I thought I got to bring this into my
artistic practice. I don't know how, but this is fueling me, like,
this is fueling this fire inside of me that I
didn't know I was there. And so I started working
gyms and minerals into my illustrations and to my animations
have a slight chemistry background, and I thought, what if
I just grow crystals? And that wasn't enough. I was like,
(07:26):
I've seen that thousand times. What haven't I seen? So
I went through the list and crystals on insects was
one of the things that I just couldn't creatively like
picture in my head. And if I couldn't picture it
in my head and I couldn't find it on Google,
then I was like, this thing has to happen. I
have to make this. So I did, and it went
viral online like pretty quick. I would believe that because
(07:47):
crystals on insects. I don't even know where to start
with that. I mean, obviously we've seen your work. It's beautiful.
I would never in a million years thought crystals insects. Yeah,
let's see what happened. I mean, Tyler, were you doing
a kind of nature association game where you had to
running lists and you were like, let me pick, let
(08:07):
me pick crystals and something from this list, like how
did you How did those two things intersect for you?
While I was spending time hiking, I was looking at
a lot of insects, and I was approaching life like
a kid for the first time in a long time. Everything,
look at it, observe it, and I was like, adults,
just do not do this anymore. I was really into insects,
(08:30):
so I was drawing them, and then I was like, man,
I'm really into this geometry and I'm finding my roots
back in science. So I was like, geometry, nature equals crystals.
So I had two different schools of science that I
was working into my bringing into my artistic practice. Falling asleep,
I was like, you know what, I have a lot
of things I love doing. I need to save some time,
(08:50):
and why don't I just start combining some of my fascinations.
I've always had a knack of, like loving doing a
bunch of different things, but there's not enough time. So
I've made a habit of combined inning my different fascinations
to kind of cut my time in half. So I
was like, crystals, insects, drawing art. Maybe if I just
lump art and insects and crystals altogether. I could say
(09:12):
myself time on my fascination. Okay, that's a brilliant you
are speaking our language. Okay, So now I need to
know how did you learn the chemistry to pull this off?
Because you didn't study chemistry in college, right you? You
took a P chemistry in high school. But how did
you learn the techniques and the materials that you would
need to do this? Funny quick backstory on why I
(09:34):
even picked chemistry in this big world of anything to pick.
I took a P chemistry, ib H L chemistry, all
these higher end chemistry classes in high school, which I
never would have except at the time. In high school,
I had an ex girlfriend who we're all signing up
for classes, and she was like, I'm gonna take pre
ap chemistry and I was like, I m too, and
(09:56):
she she looked at me and said, you're too dumb
to take Yeah, I'm not very fond of this. Were
you guys dating at the time. Oh my god, that
was the red flag, Tyler. I am so happy she
has a big X in front of the world. Girlfriend. Yes,
this person was one of the first in a line
of people to never take anything I wanted to do seriously,
(10:18):
which I learned the fuel. So I told her, yeah, right,
I'll do it. I took create P chemistry and I
failed miserably well because I was a huge goofball. I
didn't pay attention. I had a lot of like dark
things going on back at home, and I it took
me a year or two to finally think, you know,
I gotta find something outside of my home life, outside
(10:40):
of the people that tell me I can't. I can't.
I'm too goofy or silly to do any of this
or be taken seriously. I ended up saying, you know what,
I'm going to pass these ap chemistry classes. So I
opened up the textbook for the first time and I
dived in, and it all made so much sense. My
brain was like, dude, where was this? Where why have
you been depriving me? So I fell in love. I
(11:00):
understood it. I kind of viewed chemistry like a big
box of legos, and I loved building. It all made
so much sense with the world around me. I was like,
chemistry is an answer to all things physical, like yes,
that carbon backbone totally yes. So that was it, and
then chemistry was a huge part of my identity. In
high school that I went to college and I lost
that until I was like, animation isn't cutting it. This
(11:23):
daily thing of repeating the same schedule over and over
isn't cutting it. So I referred back to my fascinations
and high school and opened up some college chemistry textbooks.
I bought some really cheap, used ones, and I plowed
through them and got more and more and more, and
I was like, oh my gosh, again, where was this?
So I'm self taught currently. Everything I do, all my
experiments are self taught and self research. That's amazing. It's
(11:46):
so incredible, Tyler, the fact that you allowed the naysayers
to fuel you, particularly at an age where I feel
like for so many people, that kind of feedback can
stop one in one's tracks. Where do you think that
you acquired that ability from at the time. Did you
(12:09):
have any mentors or specific sources of encouragement to, you know,
go for what you were drawn towards and then to
start combining these worlds. I didn't have many mentors. And
in fact, what was kind of silly is a lot
of teachers are looked up to said similar stuff, like Tyler,
you're too goofy to even go to college, you don't
take anything seriously. Um. It just felt like I was
(12:31):
being flanked by doubt constantly. And I just with my
upbringing and a lot of things I was dealing with
at home at the time, I had a really good
knack of just kind of buckling down and like putting
up blinders and getting through some really dark stuff. And
so when that doubt was coming up, all I knew
to do was, Okay, you know what, here's that negativity again.
(12:54):
And all you can rely on is yourself. Like there
are many times that the only person I could count
on in my life was myself. And so this is
one of those times where I was like, Okay, I
have this curiosity, had this fascination. I believe in myself. Hey, friends,
do you believe in me? And they would say, no, dude,
you know, you know, and just stick to being a
you know, the class clown, or stick to whatever it
(13:14):
is you're doing. And I was met with so much
disappointment that my instinct was put up the blinders. If
all you have is your own fire, then that's going
to get you through. And I just I've always had
that in me since a child, and that's what I did.
Like high school, I found out a lot of the
people that I relied on when it came down to
and some of my big ideas and some of my
huge goals, a lot of them are like yeah right, dude.
(13:37):
So I was like, that's it. Put up the blinders
and I ended up losing a lot of friends because
I was like, if I keep these relationships, I will
not make it. I will not achieve these goals that
I was really hoping you would be there for. That
was kind of I was like, Okay, it's either I
stay friends with a lot of people that do not
actually believe in me and what I'm capable of, although
(13:57):
I'm very supportive of them and their ideas, or I
just focus on me and I just watched myself skyrocket. Well,
it sounds like you learned at a young age to
really rely on yourself and trust your own instincts, which
when you do work that is unlike other work out there,
that's such a crucial core skill to have. Tyler, as
(14:19):
you've been following these instincts, and on your website you
write that every calling, whether it be a faint whisper
or more of a dire screaming that wakes me up
in the middle of the night. I answer them, how
do you decide what to follow and when? Like I
imagine for you, just hearing you talk, you have a
lot of inspiration that crops up, right, So how do
(14:41):
you prioritize your time decide what to work on next?
Or do you not? You just kind of follow the
next instinct and see where it leads. Well, that was
something I had to learn um and something that drove
my wife crazy. Had this funny story of like us
going to the grocery store and I had this idea,
Like I have this idea. I was like, I need
(15:01):
to do it now, and she's like, really right now,
Like you can't wait like two hours, like right now,
and so like, oh my god, okay, and I was like, Babe,
I'm going to go to the grocery store. I needed
a specific Moleskin sketch book. I was like, can you
go find it for me? And she went to every
store in the shopping district and couldn't find one and
ended up like we lost a lot of time. And
then she was like, Babe, we got to talk about this.
(15:22):
She's like, there's got to be some compromised So that's
you might realize inspiration is important to acknowledge and grasp.
But sometimes you have to look at inspirations say look,
I hear you. First off, get out of my face
for a second personal space. Second, um, can we just
put a pin in it. I'm not going anywhere. And
if you practice a little bit of patients will come
(15:42):
back to this. Yeah. I had to learn how to
communicate with my inspiration. And so I have a notepad
and every day I'm adding like five new projects to it.
I know I'll never do all of them, and so
the ones I do. When I have an idea, if
I have the resources at hand, I'll do it. If
I know i'll have the resources and a couple of months,
I'll do it. Then. You know, sometimes I'll have an
idea for a drawing and I'm like, well, this is
(16:04):
only gonna take me like an hour. I can do
it now. If there's a type of crystal I want
to grow, or a piece I want to see, I'm like, well,
I'm going to be in the lab in a couple
of hours, I'll do it then. Or if there's like
a short story I want to write or something, and
I'm like, well, I really don't have like a week
to do it. I just write down as much information
as I can. And I am very fortunate right now
to be entirely self employed on my own art. So
(16:26):
my time is dedicated to being as creative and responsive
to inspiration as I can. And I've made a habit
of that because I know there's a lot of people
who follow me that kind of rely on me to
keep that fire going and showing people that, like, you
can answer inspiration and utilize it, and that's totally possible,
despite what other people might say. Having heard that, so
(17:05):
let's talk about this business model that you have created
for your life, because that's incredible being able to be
a full time artist and not having a day job
to support you. How do you make that work? Like,
let's get real. Yeah, yeah, At first, it was very
much out of my control, right. I was three months
(17:26):
from graduating and I started when one of my professors
was asking us to make a four or five year plan,
and I said, here's my five year plan. I'm not animating.
I'm going to be a self employed artist. I got
an f on that project. Really, I detailed my strategy
and my professor's like, this just sounds more hopeful than anything,
(17:46):
and I was like, exactly, that was another stage of doubt.
That was like okay, well, good luck with that, and
I was like thanks, um, yeah, we'll see that. Crystal
work went viral about three months before graduating. It and
right as I was graduating, people were wanting to buy it.
I didn't know what I was gonna do. I thought
I'd have to get a day job or do something.
(18:07):
And I was like, I'll move back to Tulsa. My
wife was like, Tulsa's up and coming, like you should
come back, So I did. The cost of living is
very cheap and Tulsa so I had the sort of
cushion to explore whether or not I could sell this
crystal stuff. I would sell some pieces, those people would
share their pieces, and then they're people would be like,
oh my gosh, I have to have this. And so
I watched this bubble expand and expand, and before I
(18:30):
knew it, I was traveling from my work. I was
doing online drops, holiday sales. I was struggling to figure
out how to manage all this while I had hundreds
of people, thousands of people clamoring for some of my work,
and I was like, I was not taught how to
handle this in school, and I had to do I
had to mess up a lot of times. I had
to take a lot of notes and jump a lot
of hurdles to land where I am now, where this
(18:52):
has been my full time job. I've learned what works.
I've learned that people will wait in line for two
hours to buy a piece from me, which is in saying,
I cannot comprehend that. That's incredible. Yeah, it's crazy. And
I've also learned people don't want to support my art,
but people want to support what I'm saying. And I
believe in what I'm saying, and I believe in how
I live creatively and how I create, and a lot
(19:13):
of other people turns out look up to that, and
so people started supporting that, and I just realized, I
guess I'm doing something right. People want more of this
and I don't really know. I had to learn how
to navigate that. So how did you learn that? Though?
I mean, you have this incredible following, you have over
two hundred thousand followers on Instagram, You've got four d
patrens on Patreon, Like, do you have a team that
(19:37):
support do you have an accountant or I don't know
a business manager or is this I mean, do you
have someone packing and shipping your pieces or are you
doing it all yourself. My number one teammate was my wife,
and she was the one that has helped me through
a lot of it. For four or five years, it's
been just me and her when she wasn't doing her
(19:57):
own work. And just this year I hired an assistant.
I was looking at how well my art did last
year and I was like, it's time for an assistant.
So having I have my tribe of people that I
really believe in what I'm doing and they're very supportive,
I've learned to surround myself with people that fuel my
fire and people that I believe in, And so I'm
making the small creative network of people that I trust
(20:20):
with my work and my brand that I bring in
to help me. Like I did my first art book
two years ago, and I got in a shipment of
over books and I relied on like eight people to
come in and help me unload that and then package
them and ship them for a kickstarter that was like
really successful. And so I have a group of people
that I am eternally grateful for that uplift my work
(20:43):
and support me. So that's kind of it. But for
the most part, it is mostly me. I schedule all
my shows, I make all the work, I organized everything,
and I just now hired on someone that can deal
with the emails and ship and do outreach and stuff
like that. So I'm now learning it's time to maybe
delegate some things, maybe spread out my brand and my
(21:06):
work to support other people that also support my work.
Let's go back to that moment when your work went viral.
What did you share that got such a big response,
and how do you think all of those new members
of this community of yours found you. It's pretty simple.
I don't think a lot of these big, crazy things.
(21:27):
They're always very simple. When I first started making these pieces,
I would share them online. My wife talked me to
getting an Instagram alls in college. I didn't want to,
but she said you have to, and I was like, Okay,
best decision I've ever made. And I would share my
work and a lot of the people who are familiar
with my illustrations, like friends and family, were like, dude,
this is kind of weird because a sudden dead insects
(21:49):
with crystals on them not many people got it. Not
many people like we're vibing with it. What happened was
I had an artist, and I've always had the snack,
which I think is a very important thing to do
that if you want something sometimes just ask for it.
The worst that anyone can never say is no. I
always had this habit of doing this. If I had
an idea and I needed help, I was just asked
for it. And there's this big artist that I loved
(22:11):
her work, um, still do. Her work got me creatively
through college, and so I reached out to her and
she had a lot of cicadas in her illustrations and said, hey,
I'm just a college student. Um, your work is very inspiring.
I've like lived off of it. And I started a
project where I'm growing crystals on cicadas. And I know
you like cicadas. Would you ever be down for a trade?
(22:32):
And I said, I doubt you'll ever see this. I
sent this to her on Facebook on her Facebook page.
I was like, I just want to sketch something I
can put in my like college bedroom, like above my
desk to look at, just have this physical source of inspiration.
And she said yeah, and I was like, well, what.
She was like, Yeah, She's like, I can't really picture
what you're what you're doing, but if you can send
(22:52):
some photos. So I sent her some photos of crystallized cicadas.
She freaked the f out freaked out. I was flabbergasted.
I couldn't believe it, like I was holding a conversation
with my favorite artist in the world. I sent her
the cicadas, not expecting anything, just a sketch, and I
sent her the pieces. And then like two weeks later,
(23:13):
I wake up and Molly is my wife, is sitting
by my bed in my college house. And I still
remember this day. I get goose bumps still going back
to this moment. He babe. I was like what, She's like,
your phone has been going off for the last three hours.
I was like, what it was like noon, and she
was like, yeah, I woke up at like nine o'clock
and your phone is not stopping. And I looked and
(23:33):
it was like blank, like your photo blank, like your
photo blank fallow blank fall like it was my phone
was just blowing up. And I was like what what what? What?
What what? And my Instagram posts are getting like tin
likes per thing. Now it was blowing up and I
opened it and she shared those crystallized cicadas that she
got in the mail. People. Oh wow, it's very simple
(23:54):
what I think happened. I picked someone who I thought
would like my work, that would connect with it. And
what assumption leads to is that most of her followers,
if she likes that type of work, then most of
her followers would probably like that type of work as well.
And that's exactly what it was like. All big artists
who have worked similar to hers like, we're following me,
and everyone was like, what is this? I have never
(24:16):
seen anything like this in my phone since that day
has never stopped, you know, you consider notifications off right,
you know, suggestion. I loved so much the confidence you
had to ask, even though you sort of expected the
(24:37):
answer would either be no or like no answer at all,
and yet you asked anyway. And I think just putting
the ask out into the universe. If you don't do that,
you can't possibly get a yes right now. Exactly. Well, absolutely,
And it's such a fantastic example of looking for your
community through the work of someone you really admire too,
(24:58):
you know, which sounds like it was very organic and
in a lot of ways sub conscious, but really impressive. So, Tyler,
you now have all of these followers, and you have
over four patrons on Patreon, as Christina mentioned, so how
do you now take care of your community? How do
you balance both the creation of new work and making
(25:22):
sure that you're sharing it with everyone who's waiting for it.
I have made a habit of sharing the fact that
I don't think a lot of my art comes from
the finished product. I'm not sharing so much like finished art,
but experiments and the art of experimentation. So it's very
easy to share work whenever I'm sharing mostly like all
these crazy ideas I have. I can think of like
(25:43):
fifteen ideas that I have shared that never got finished,
and people still love the fact that I shared the
snippet of something that was in progress. So that's that's easy.
Like for me, people are following me to see what
crazy thing I'm working on, and as long as I
keep people in the loop and keep this message of
like experiment, experiment, experiment, that's what people want. And so
my Patreon, a lot of that goes towards like me
(26:05):
sharing some of like the inside stuff of what I'm doing,
or I do workshops on Patreon, which is easy because
while I'm in the lab, if I have a free hour,
I'm like, Okay, I'll just do a workshop on like
growing this plant or this chemical reaction, or like fun
experiments you can do at home. And that's kind of
what's become most of my work is just really showing
(26:28):
the fact that you don't ever stop experimenting and you
never stop exploring whatever inspiration you decided to wield. I
love that focus on process, and it sounds like Tyler
tell me this is right, that it's relatively easy for
you to kind of switch from thing to thing to go, oh,
let's just take an hour here and do a workshop,
or let me go back into working on this crystal project, etcetera.
(26:50):
Is that true? Yes, it is very easy for me
to swap from the different schools of things that I
I'm fascinated with. I don't know where that came from.
And I've always had that, Like in high school, i
would be drawing and the next thing I know, I'm
I'm sitting there like beatboxing and like making. After that,
I'm like, I don't know, I'm I'm doing something else.
(27:11):
So I've always had this habit of being able to
transition from thing to thing, and sometimes I don't have
control over it, which is can be really frustrating. Or
I'm trying to draw but I have this song in
my head. Or I'm trying to make music but then
I'm like visualizing this painting that I want to make.
Or I'm trying to like focus on like research, like
trying to figure out how to work on my Opal
recipes and stuff like this, and I can't think scientifically
(27:34):
because I'm thinking musically. Um So there is a given
take where I can kind of control where my brain flips.
But then there's also times where it just kind of
like grabs me and says no, we're making music, and
I'm like, oh God, now please, I'm painting. I love
the term Opal recipes. I feel like that would be
a really great name for a band. I'm just getting
(27:55):
that out there to talk about bringing music into the mix.
I love it. So I want to know what it's
like to be a working artist in Tulsa. I am
not from Oklahoma. I did grow up in the Midwest,
but I would not have thought of Tulsa as a
creative hotbed. What is the creative community like there? Do
(28:17):
you find it's easier to be a working artist where
you you know, have a lower cost of living and
are in a smaller you know, metropolitan area. Or is
it harder because you're not, you know, on the coasts
in these kind of big visual art hubs. Oh man,
we live in a time creatively where your location does
(28:39):
not matter. You don't have to live on the coast
to be successful at creating art. You don't need to
be surrounded by big galleries, and you don't need to
be surrounded by big artists to be successful at creating
at all. My work took off in Springfield, Missouri, the
like middle of the country and these small cities. I
think having the Internet, having social media and learning how
to navigate that with your are is the only tool unique.
(29:01):
I don't know. You could be an amazingly successful artists
in like Anchorage, Alaska or anywhere in Greenland. It doesn't matter,
as long as you know how to reach people who
would like your work online. With that being said, I
do have friends. I've talked about this with another artist
that you know. They tell me like, how are you
like a full time self employed artist? You know, I
(29:21):
live in l A And I'm paying four thousand dollars
a month from my like studio apartment, and I'm like, well,
there's your number one problem when you're paying the whole
salary of every year to live in like nothing. So
living in a place with the low cost of living
that's good for anybody, but it works best for art
because you don't have to rely on your location to
(29:43):
make and sell art at all. If anyone tells you otherwise,
they're not looking at some of the biggest, most successful
artists on social media, who most of them make their
income on selling work online. That is just a simple fact.
Your location doesn't matter. And when you like book shows
or reach out and try to build partnerships, is that
(30:03):
all through relationships you've built online? Yes, or people reach
out to me, um, I get a lot of inquiries.
I have a lot of galleries that reach out to me.
I have learned to work in a very strict vetting
process for the people I work with and partner with.
You know, the part of being a successful artist is
taking notes and learning areas that did not work out
(30:24):
so well for you. And I had enough not so
pleasant experiences with other galleries I had to learn. Look,
I only have so much time here, and I have
enough respect for my work and there's enough options out
there that I can be very very picky on who
I work with because I want to nurture these really
great relationships. So a lot of the galleries or spaces
(30:44):
I still show with every year, I do so because
I love the people who made the space. I love
their ethic, I love how they respect their employees. That
was always a big one for me, and so I
have a lot of people reach out to me, but
I get so many inquiries now that I'm able to
just pick a few of my favorites and say, hey,
let's just do this every year. And that's worked out
great for me, and I get to support people that
(31:05):
support me these wonderful, very respectful, mutual relationships. That's fantastic.
You know, it's so interesting hearing you talk about what
it's like to create work in Tulsa now it makes
me think about what it was like to grow up
in Tulsa. You have this incredible ability to merge worlds.
(31:25):
Was Tulsa a weird place or a great place to
learn how to do that? Growing up? The high school
I went to Booker T Washington High School is the
best high School in Oklahoma, and it's amazing. It's amazing.
It's an amazing place for students and students of color.
It's a very nurturing place. I had an art teacher,
Jennifer Brown, who pulled me aside and made me take
(31:46):
her art class, just watching me sketch in the hallways
during breaks. They were very, very observant. I would say,
if there's any part of Tulsa that took care of
me and really kind of nurtured this in me was
the high school I went to. And beyond that, you know,
I wasn't really tapped into Tulsa as a teenager, but
coming back as an adult, I'm looking around and I'm like,
(32:06):
oh my gosh, there's so many people here trying to
take care of artists. There's all these small communities that
are like flourishing, even more so now because like everyone
is moving from the West Coast. I was talking to
a friend about this. Everyone's moving from the West Coast
to Denver. Everyone's moving from Denver to Kansas City, and
everyone from the city to Tulsa. And so there's a
bunch of awesome things happening in Tulsa that come back
(32:29):
and affect the economy and the people living there and
the artists and musicians and makers. Tulsa has this weird
they called the Tulsa effect where everyone kind of knows
each other and everyone kind of like there's this mutually
agreed upon like sort of respect that we have for
makers and artists and each other's like small businesses. It's
really wonderful. That's really exciting. You know, I'm so struck
(32:51):
by both the strength of your immediate community in the
home in which you live and the expansive strength of
your online community to really exciting. You have a son,
(33:22):
you are a father, and he's still pretty young. But
have you thought about what you want to foster in
him in terms of creativity but also about the world
and finding his place in it. I know these are
really big thoughts for for a short answer in a podcast,
(33:42):
But how is being a father sort of affected how
you think about your place as an artist? And you know,
bringing that up, it's changed everything. It's changed how I
look at the world. It's warped some of my bitterness.
It's changed everything. Um, and it's made me think about
almost everything I say I believe in because I'm like,
(34:05):
do I want him to believe in this. And I've
taken back a lot of things that I thought I
stood by having put those in my son and thinking
I do not want to see that in my son.
Things I would love to foster. I go on hikes
with him, and I see how he looks at everything.
I see how these kids have this immense respect for
the world because it's also new, and I hate that
we lose that. As an adult. The one thing I'd
(34:26):
love to foster is to teach him no matter what,
no matter what happens, the one thing you can rely
on is your curiosity. The one thing you can always
rely on is your innate human curiosity and respect for
our origins, which are in nature. If not tainted, if
not altered, we will always come back to nature, and
that's where we can find our roots. And there are
(34:48):
some adults that don't nurture that in their kids. Are
some teachers that don't cultivate that, and I see the
adults who do actively cultivate that, and what you get
are humans that have some sort of content with the
world we live in. And that's the one thing I
could want to cultivate, is just at least contentment um
and a love and respect for nature, and hopefully doing
(35:08):
that through making sure my son is observant and not
even that I'm observant with him so he can see
that in me. Yeah, the most important thing I think.
I think, because anything else you can learn from anybody else,
but remembering to come back to nature. That that kind
of takes stepping away from other people. So that's kind
of the hard one. We can get wrapped up in
the world and people and ideas and all this other
(35:31):
shallow stuff that we forget to tap back into nature.
So if you have that, then you have everything. Is
kind of how I'm learning to live. Absolutely, So when
he says, Dad, I'm going to go into this cave
for a while, you support. I love it. You know, Tyler,
another very important person in your life that you have
(35:53):
mentioned throughout our conversation. It's so apparent how much your
wife is a partner to you. Both of you are
artists and work from home. So how does that work.
Give us some logistical insights on your okay, being self
(36:14):
employed is beautiful and it's a nightmare. We made it
work a lot better before we had a kid. We learned,
we learned to ask for help. What our life looks
like is I'll come home from the lab just in
time for Molly to get into the car to go
to a photo shoot. So it's a lot of us
just like handing the baton back and forth so we
(36:35):
can be with our son. Sort of asked for help,
so that we can spend time with our son together
and reel in. Because self employment, you can get carried away,
and you can get just as carried away doing a
bunch of stuff that you didn't even mean, just as
much as you could just working out a retail store.
It's so true, so true. Yeah, And you get so
wrapped up in your own stuff, in your own business,
(36:56):
and you've got to really reel that in. And so
we've learned to just us for help. Every week we
do what we call family day Mondays. We try to
off our phones as much as possible. We go to
the museum, we go on a hike, we go play outside.
We do not work. Monday's we don't work. We don't
check our emails. No self employed bullcrap. Nothing is just hard.
(37:17):
You know, when you're self employed, you don't really get
a weekend. I'm working any time I want and can
and have to. But Monday's we start with family Day
and we're going from there. This is also new that
we're kind of learning the limitations of our self employment.
It's very doable, but when both parents are self employed
in working, it's commendable. But also there's times where I'm like,
a not very part. It's a work in progress. So,
(37:41):
like everything, where do you go from here? What does
the next five ten years look like for you? You know?
I think about that a lot. I'm gonna be very upfront,
the next five to ten years can look like whatever
I want them to. I've learned to kind of just
believe in what I doing that much. Hopefully in five
(38:02):
to ten years, I've nailed down my opal recipe. I've
currently found a way to grow opal in five days.
If I could take that process and like make tangible
art with it, that would be killer. I have dreams
of opening up a conservatory and Tulsa, a plant conservatory
to showcase interesting plants and bring plants in horticulture to
some of the more ignored communities and Tulsa and bring
(38:24):
plants to kids and households and families that don't really
have the privilege to kind of just look at plants
all the time, or or be concerned with plants. Those
are two of my big goals, you know. I would
love to just keep experimenting. I would love to own
a cave someday. Oh my gosh, how do you own
a cave? That's incredible? You just buy land as a
(38:46):
cave on. I would love to buy a cave to
conserve and and do research on. And caves are being
vandalized every single day. Um So I would love to
put some of my like income and my art and
money where my mouth is and protect one of these
caves and just find more ways to combine science and
(39:06):
art and show not just little kids and in young
creative minds, but show adults that you can live this beautiful, creative,
nature inspired life no matter how old you are, and
no matter what route life takes you. And I'm hoping
in ten years I'm still living that. As an example,
what would you say to Tyler whose girlfriend had just
(39:28):
told him, no, you're too dumb to take a peek Kim,
and he was surrounded by naysayers? What words of encouragement
would you give him? Knowing all that you know now,
I spent so much of my life, visualizing that almost
barely hopeless me as a kid and hanging onto something.
I would love so much to just go back in time,
(39:49):
just once and just look at me and go, dude,
just hanging there, just hanging there. And part of me
as a kid visualized adult meat coming back and saying, Hey,
just hang in there, just hanging there. Here's what I'm this,
and it's gonna be kind of real. I think the
fact that an adult me would ever come back and
say something to me as a kid would be hope
enough that it's all worth it. I don't know that
would say anything except maybe just come through this vorpal
(40:13):
wormhole and and just look at me um and say, hey, dude, um,
that's it. I think that would be enough to know
that if I'm still here and I'm still making work,
if I look healthy, and if I look at least
even happy coming back from the future, that's all I
think it would take for a younger me that same.
(40:37):
And I gotta say, Tyler, that younger you had so
much tenacity. Holy crap, Holy crap. I think some were
way deep down he did, you know? Christina? Our Converse
(41:00):
station with Tyler really shined a light on so many
of the things that we've been hearing about from our
other guests this season, like how powerful it is to
find your community both online and off, how rewarding it
is to build a business model that works for your
unique situation, and how important it is to have creative
partners and collaborators to keep you going. One of the
(41:21):
things that really struck me from Tyler's story was that
his first work went viral because he connected with that
artist whom he admired and also who made work that
was in the same realm as his. You know, he
didn't go to the most famous artists he could find
or just share his work online and hope people found it.
(41:41):
He shared it with someone who specifically would be into it,
and then so beautifully she shared his work with her community,
which was just the perfect audience for it. I mean,
that's so true. Putting great work out into the world
is important, but finding the specific collaborators and the audiences
that are going to be inclined to like it is
(42:02):
more valuable than the spray and prey approach that you know,
most people have. If ned and prey it's a little visceral,
but you know, it really hit me in my car. Yeah,
I was also really inspired by how he discovered that
sharing the experimentation and the artistic process behind his work
(42:24):
with his Instagram and his Patreon supporters that was just
as interesting, or you know, even more so then the
finished product. I feel like the behind the scenes content
really helps his followers get even more invested in supporting him,
and you know, it potentially inspires others to create work
of their own. So whin when there that's right, particularly
(42:47):
in a place like social media where we see so
many outcomes, right, it's so refreshing to see the process
as both inspiration and a reminder to really exist in
your own process, and as you do that, the outcomes
will follow. Right. And speaking of that, I love how
Tyler truly invented a new art form by combining two
(43:10):
of his interests, chemistry and visual art. So instead of
asking himself which one should I pursue, he decided to
merge them and carve out his own lane entirely, which
is I'm sure part of what made his work resonate,
you know, Christina. It reminded me of this episode of
the Ted Radio Hour podcast called what is Original, which
(43:32):
really talks about this concept of remixing, right, How sampling, borrowing,
and riffing make all of us innovators because I feel
like there's this big pressure of how do I be
new in I used to have this director at the
Groundlings who said, honey, it's all been done before. It's
(43:52):
just how you do it right, because we were always
searching for the next big idea. Now it's really that
synthesis that holds innovations so much of the time, right.
I love that idea of remixing, And between the unique
art that he's created and the fact that he's built
his audience online, he's able to live in Tulsa and
(44:17):
really benefit from both the creative community there alongside the
affordable cost of living, you know, rather than struggle with
the cost of living in a major city I don't know,
like New York or l A for them on Earth
a little bit. But it's you know, it's one of
the biggest reasons that his business model works for him
(44:39):
as a full time artist. That's right, and it's another
sign of his ability to really follow his intuition and
sort of be his own personal cheerleader. He was talking
about how he felt these really big moments where he
was surrounded by naysayers, and instead of listening to them,
he went within, which is so inspiring. So this week,
(45:04):
think about the pieces of your ven diagram and consider
how you could remix them in a way that creates
something entirely new. And just on a personal note, I
just want to say, when I was first blogging about
math and pop culture, I used to say to people
Christina that I was mashing up pop culture and math,
(45:27):
and people would go, oh, pop culture and meth, and
I was like, no, no, no, not the drug, math
the area of study. And so I would just use
that as an antidote to say the stranger the combination
seems might mean that you're really onto something. Also, this week,
(45:52):
consider if there are pieces of your business model that
you can adjust to make it more sustainable. Are their
community or audiences you can access by building a greater
presence online, or are there others in your field that
you can connect with and help amplify each other's work.
That's right, no matter where you are, there is a
(46:13):
community for you, So don't forget to let us know
how you're remixing and experimentation turns out and what it
leads to. We love hearing your updates and questions. You
can reach us on Twitter or Instagram at t l
d n E pod, or you can email us at
Hello at t ld n E podcast dot com, or
you can go old school and leave us a voicemail
(46:33):
at eight three three Hi t l d n E.
That's eight three three eight five three six three and
then press eight oh three. Well. Link to Tyler's Instagram
and Patreon pages, the ted Radio, our podcast and past
episodes with visual artists doing STEM inspired work in our
show notes, which you can find at t l d
(46:55):
n E podcast dot com Slash one seventy. Thanks so
much to our producer Maya Coole and to you for
tuning in. As always, please subscribe, rate, and review on
(47:15):
Apple Podcasts if you like what you heard, it really
helps us get the word out to fellow human ven diagrams.
Until next time, remember the limit does not exist. The
Limit does Not Exist is a production of I Heart Radio.
For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the I
(47:37):
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows. Yeah
Hey, everybody, just an f y I. We recorded this
episode before we were in a pandemic. We thought that
my beautiful context for you indeed, but we hope it
still brings you inside and inspiration during this challenging time.
Hanging there. The Limit Does Not Exist is a production
of I Heart Radio. Hey, I'm Christina Wallace and I'm
(00:29):
Kate Scott Campbell and you're listening to the Limit does
Not Exist. A podcast for Human then Diagrams coming at
you every single week and hosted by us. Imagine this
your three months out from completing your degree and an
inspirational speaker comes to share what life in your new
(00:50):
career is going to be like. And you leave that
presentation a hundred certain that it is going to make
you miserable. So what do you do next? Do you
change my jors and stay in school longer, go forward
with the original plan knowing it won't fit you, or
do you make a major pivot and create an entirely
new path with just a three month runway. Tyler Thrasher
(01:12):
chose options see swapping a career in computer animation for
a custom path as an artist and chemist. Tyler tells
us about that fateful pivot, as well as how he
built a business model to support his life as a
full time artist. So if you're feeling a call from
within that you're afraid to answer for any number of reasons,
Tyler's story might just give you the ammunition you need
(01:34):
to take the leap and the logistical insights to give
yourself a safety net. So what are we waiting for?
Let's jump in. Let's do it. I grow crystals, undead things.
I'm a scientist, a chemist, an artist, a grower, and
(01:56):
a lover of nature. Anything and all things I find fascinating.
I do it's Thrasher your real or given name? Or
did you choose that it's your real name? I lock out? No, Wow,
that is so hero. Thrash is my real name, and
(02:17):
the origin is not as cool as you would think.
It comes from thresher, from someone who like threshes the field. Okay,
that's though. Given your connection to nature, there's a field metaphor.
H this is a great to make another nature connection
family tree that you were born in. Sorry, guys, I
(02:41):
know like you worse than dad jokes and a dad
that was pretty bad. What's rest of a dad joke?
I'll add it to my personal branding. Okay, okay, so
we need to dig into this artist and chemist. This
is an amazing comb nation. I think you are our
first chemist on the show. Congratulations on that. Yeah, well
(03:08):
we need to back up a little bit because you
were a computer animation major in college, yes, and just
before you graduated, you had a realization that you did
not want to pursue that as a career. What was
that about? How did you know that you needed to
do something else? Oh? Man, it's kind of depressing, but honest,
(03:28):
that's where I like to reside. I was three months
from graduating. I thought I wanted to be a computer animator,
and I didn't really think about it was I was
kind of just pushed in that direction from like high
school counselors. And three months from graduating, the school brought
in someone who was working in the field, and they said,
ask this guy, Indian, all questions you have, because this
(03:48):
is where you're going to end up. So I was
very honest, asked him some very hard questions, and his
answers pretty much led me to believe that animation would
be the worst decision I could personally make. Wow, do
you remember what about his answers or a detailer too,
so I asked him for one. You know, he talked
a lot about how intensive animation is, Like you work NonStop.
(04:09):
It's a very like grueling, rigorous artistic field. However, you
are like the backbones to any project, yet you get
very little attention, Like when you watch a film, no
one's there to like look at the animators that were
part of it. You care about the director, the producer,
but you are pretty much the only reason that film
ever happened, and so it's very like unrewarding job. He
(04:33):
did not hold that back. He told me his wife
left him like halfway through his career, the thing called
animator's widow. You can look it up. It's like the
thing where like people cannot stay in healthy relationships with animators.
There's like no tangible way to coexist. Oh my goodness,
this is like the least inspirational guest speaker ever. It
(04:53):
also sounds like he saved you a lot of time ultimately. Yeah,
And at first he was offering up a lot of hope,
and I'll like, look, I'm not buying this Disney stuff,
like you realistic with us because we're about to go
into this field and you're not telling us any of
the hardships, just like the uplifting stuff, and I'm like,
that's not realistic. Good for you. The last question I
asked him, I said, okay, you work on all these
(05:16):
other projects. I adore the Explorer and in Juju Pets.
I was like, when's the last time you did something
for yourself? When's the last time you worked on your
own project? And he said It's been about thirteen years
and I said, I'm out. I'm completely out. That will
not work. So Tyler, just the fact that you were
self aware enough in undergrad to ask when was the
last time you did something for yourself? Is really impressive.
(05:39):
You know, I want to go back to the growing
crystals on dead things and there are no longer animate objects.
How did you land on this particular medium that goes
back to like my knack for wanting to do stuff
for myself and explore things on my own. It is
entirely random, as some of the best they this in
(06:00):
your life can be. I was going to school for animation.
I was miserable. I just didn't want to spend my
time working on school projects I know no one would
care about After I graduated, so I was like, I
have to fill my time with other things. So I
would spend every weekend hiking. I went to school in Springfiel, Missouri,
so there's a lot of really good hiking. Eventually that
led to me exploring a lot of cars topography. It
(06:21):
ended with me inside of caves. Like pretty quickly, I
would spend every week and crawling through a cave, exploring caves,
mapping out caves. The Missouri is called the Cave State.
Did not know that, neither did I. There was a
cave within like a two mile radius of me at
any point when I was in Springfield, Missouri, and just
this odd thing that I was doing outside of school,
(06:42):
like caving. I was very aware that I was doing
something most people in Springfield were not doing, and I
felt this disconnect from the rest of the world. But
I was still basking in fascination and curiosity while I
was underground miles away from like other people. This separation
kind of forced me to all in love with nature
and pull away from things like school and other people
(07:04):
that were kind of distracting me or making me miserable.
And I thought I got to bring this into my
artistic practice. I don't know how, but this is fueling me, like,
this is fueling this fire inside of me that I
didn't know I was there. And so I started working
gyms and minerals into my illustrations and to my animations
have a slight chemistry background, and I thought, what if
I just grow crystals? And that wasn't enough. I was like,
(07:26):
I've seen that thousand times. What haven't I seen? So
I went through the list and crystals on insects was
one of the things that I just couldn't creatively like
picture in my head. And if I couldn't picture it
in my head and I couldn't find it on Google,
then I was like, this thing has to happen. I
have to make this. So I did, and it went
viral online like pretty quick. I would believe that because
(07:47):
crystals on insects. I don't even know where to start
with that. I mean, obviously we've seen your work. It's beautiful.
I would never in a million years thought crystals insects. Yeah,
let's see what happened. I mean, Tyler, were you doing
a kind of nature association game where you had to
running lists and you were like, let me pick, let
(08:07):
me pick crystals and something from this list, like how
did you How did those two things intersect for you?
While I was spending time hiking, I was looking at
a lot of insects, and I was approaching life like
a kid for the first time in a long time. Everything,
look at it, observe it, and I was like, adults,
just do not do this anymore. I was really into insects,
(08:30):
so I was drawing them, and then I was like, man,
I'm really into this geometry and I'm finding my roots
back in science. So I was like, geometry, nature equals crystals.
So I had two different schools of science that I
was working into my bringing into my artistic practice. Falling asleep,
I was like, you know what, I have a lot
of things I love doing. I need to save some time,
(08:50):
and why don't I just start combining some of my fascinations.
I've always had a knack of, like loving doing a
bunch of different things, but there's not enough time. So
I've made a habit of combined inning my different fascinations
to kind of cut my time in half. So I
was like, crystals, insects, drawing art. Maybe if I just
lump art and insects and crystals altogether. I could say
(09:12):
myself time on my fascination. Okay, that's a brilliant you
are speaking our language. Okay, So now I need to
know how did you learn the chemistry to pull this off?
Because you didn't study chemistry in college, right you? You
took a P chemistry in high school. But how did
you learn the techniques and the materials that you would
need to do this? Funny quick backstory on why I
(09:34):
even picked chemistry in this big world of anything to pick.
I took a P chemistry, ib H L chemistry, all
these higher end chemistry classes in high school, which I
never would have except at the time. In high school,
I had an ex girlfriend who we're all signing up
for classes, and she was like, I'm gonna take pre
ap chemistry and I was like, I m too, and
(09:56):
she she looked at me and said, you're too dumb
to take Yeah, I'm not very fond of this. Were
you guys dating at the time. Oh my god, that
was the red flag, Tyler. I am so happy she
has a big X in front of the world. Girlfriend. Yes,
this person was one of the first in a line
of people to never take anything I wanted to do seriously,
(10:18):
which I learned the fuel. So I told her, yeah, right,
I'll do it. I took create P chemistry and I
failed miserably well because I was a huge goofball. I
didn't pay attention. I had a lot of like dark
things going on back at home, and I it took
me a year or two to finally think, you know,
I gotta find something outside of my home life, outside
(10:40):
of the people that tell me I can't. I can't.
I'm too goofy or silly to do any of this
or be taken seriously. I ended up saying, you know what,
I'm going to pass these ap chemistry classes. So I
opened up the textbook for the first time and I
dived in, and it all made so much sense. My
brain was like, dude, where was this? Where why have
you been depriving me? So I fell in love. I
(11:00):
understood it. I kind of viewed chemistry like a big
box of legos, and I loved building. It all made
so much sense with the world around me. I was like,
chemistry is an answer to all things physical, like yes,
that carbon backbone totally yes. So that was it, and
then chemistry was a huge part of my identity. In
high school that I went to college and I lost
that until I was like, animation isn't cutting it. This
(11:23):
daily thing of repeating the same schedule over and over
isn't cutting it. So I referred back to my fascinations
and high school and opened up some college chemistry textbooks.
I bought some really cheap, used ones, and I plowed
through them and got more and more and more, and
I was like, oh my gosh, again, where was this?
So I'm self taught currently. Everything I do, all my
experiments are self taught and self research. That's amazing. It's
(11:46):
so incredible, Tyler, the fact that you allowed the naysayers
to fuel you, particularly at an age where I feel
like for so many people, that kind of feedback can
stop one in one's tracks. Where do you think that
you acquired that ability from at the time. Did you
(12:09):
have any mentors or specific sources of encouragement to, you know,
go for what you were drawn towards and then to
start combining these worlds. I didn't have many mentors. And
in fact, what was kind of silly is a lot
of teachers are looked up to said similar stuff, like Tyler,
you're too goofy to even go to college, you don't
take anything seriously. Um. It just felt like I was
(12:31):
being flanked by doubt constantly. And I just with my
upbringing and a lot of things I was dealing with
at home at the time, I had a really good
knack of just kind of buckling down and like putting
up blinders and getting through some really dark stuff. And
so when that doubt was coming up, all I knew
to do was, Okay, you know what, here's that negativity again.
(12:54):
And all you can rely on is yourself. Like there
are many times that the only person I could count
on in my life was myself. And so this is
one of those times where I was like, Okay, I
have this curiosity, had this fascination. I believe in myself. Hey, friends,
do you believe in me? And they would say, no, dude,
you know, you know, and just stick to being a
you know, the class clown, or stick to whatever it
(13:14):
is you're doing. And I was met with so much
disappointment that my instinct was put up the blinders. If
all you have is your own fire, then that's going
to get you through. And I just I've always had
that in me since a child, and that's what I did.
Like high school, I found out a lot of the
people that I relied on when it came down to
and some of my big ideas and some of my
huge goals, a lot of them are like yeah right, dude.
(13:37):
So I was like, that's it. Put up the blinders
and I ended up losing a lot of friends because
I was like, if I keep these relationships, I will
not make it. I will not achieve these goals that
I was really hoping you would be there for. That
was kind of I was like, Okay, it's either I
stay friends with a lot of people that do not
actually believe in me and what I'm capable of, although
(13:57):
I'm very supportive of them and their ideas, or I
just focus on me and I just watched myself skyrocket. Well,
it sounds like you learned at a young age to
really rely on yourself and trust your own instincts, which
when you do work that is unlike other work out there,
that's such a crucial core skill to have. Tyler, as
(14:19):
you've been following these instincts, and on your website you
write that every calling, whether it be a faint whisper
or more of a dire screaming that wakes me up
in the middle of the night. I answer them, how
do you decide what to follow and when? Like I
imagine for you, just hearing you talk, you have a
lot of inspiration that crops up, right, So how do
(14:41):
you prioritize your time decide what to work on next?
Or do you not? You just kind of follow the
next instinct and see where it leads. Well, that was
something I had to learn um and something that drove
my wife crazy. Had this funny story of like us
going to the grocery store and I had this idea,
Like I have this idea. I was like, I need
(15:01):
to do it now, and she's like, really right now,
Like you can't wait like two hours, like right now,
and so like, oh my god, okay, and I was like, Babe,
I'm going to go to the grocery store. I needed
a specific Moleskin sketch book. I was like, can you
go find it for me? And she went to every
store in the shopping district and couldn't find one and
ended up like we lost a lot of time. And
then she was like, Babe, we got to talk about this.
(15:22):
She's like, there's got to be some compromised So that's
you might realize inspiration is important to acknowledge and grasp.
But sometimes you have to look at inspirations say look,
I hear you. First off, get out of my face
for a second personal space. Second, um, can we just
put a pin in it. I'm not going anywhere. And
if you practice a little bit of patients will come
(15:42):
back to this. Yeah. I had to learn how to
communicate with my inspiration. And so I have a notepad
and every day I'm adding like five new projects to it.
I know I'll never do all of them, and so
the ones I do. When I have an idea, if
I have the resources at hand, I'll do it. If
I know i'll have the resources and a couple of months,
I'll do it. Then. You know, sometimes I'll have an
idea for a drawing and I'm like, well, this is
(16:04):
only gonna take me like an hour. I can do
it now. If there's a type of crystal I want
to grow, or a piece I want to see, I'm like, well,
I'm going to be in the lab in a couple
of hours, I'll do it then. Or if there's like
a short story I want to write or something, and
I'm like, well, I really don't have like a week
to do it. I just write down as much information
as I can. And I am very fortunate right now
to be entirely self employed on my own art. So
(16:26):
my time is dedicated to being as creative and responsive
to inspiration as I can. And I've made a habit
of that because I know there's a lot of people
who follow me that kind of rely on me to
keep that fire going and showing people that, like, you
can answer inspiration and utilize it, and that's totally possible,
despite what other people might say. Having heard that, so
(17:05):
let's talk about this business model that you have created
for your life, because that's incredible being able to be
a full time artist and not having a day job
to support you. How do you make that work? Like,
let's get real. Yeah, yeah, At first, it was very
much out of my control, right. I was three months
(17:26):
from graduating and I started when one of my professors
was asking us to make a four or five year plan,
and I said, here's my five year plan. I'm not animating.
I'm going to be a self employed artist. I got
an f on that project. Really, I detailed my strategy
and my professor's like, this just sounds more hopeful than anything,
(17:46):
and I was like, exactly, that was another stage of doubt.
That was like okay, well, good luck with that, and
I was like thanks, um, yeah, we'll see that. Crystal
work went viral about three months before graduating. It and
right as I was graduating, people were wanting to buy it.
I didn't know what I was gonna do. I thought
I'd have to get a day job or do something.
(18:07):
And I was like, I'll move back to Tulsa. My
wife was like, Tulsa's up and coming, like you should
come back, So I did. The cost of living is
very cheap and Tulsa so I had the sort of
cushion to explore whether or not I could sell this
crystal stuff. I would sell some pieces, those people would
share their pieces, and then they're people would be like,
oh my gosh, I have to have this. And so
I watched this bubble expand and expand, and before I
(18:30):
knew it, I was traveling from my work. I was
doing online drops, holiday sales. I was struggling to figure
out how to manage all this while I had hundreds
of people, thousands of people clamoring for some of my work,
and I was like, I was not taught how to
handle this in school, and I had to do I
had to mess up a lot of times. I had
to take a lot of notes and jump a lot
of hurdles to land where I am now, where this
(18:52):
has been my full time job. I've learned what works.
I've learned that people will wait in line for two
hours to buy a piece from me, which is in saying,
I cannot comprehend that. That's incredible. Yeah, it's crazy. And
I've also learned people don't want to support my art,
but people want to support what I'm saying. And I
believe in what I'm saying, and I believe in how
I live creatively and how I create, and a lot
(19:13):
of other people turns out look up to that, and
so people started supporting that, and I just realized, I
guess I'm doing something right. People want more of this
and I don't really know. I had to learn how
to navigate that. So how did you learn that? Though?
I mean, you have this incredible following, you have over
two hundred thousand followers on Instagram, You've got four d
patrens on Patreon, Like, do you have a team that
(19:37):
support do you have an accountant or I don't know
a business manager or is this I mean, do you
have someone packing and shipping your pieces or are you
doing it all yourself. My number one teammate was my wife,
and she was the one that has helped me through
a lot of it. For four or five years, it's
been just me and her when she wasn't doing her
(19:57):
own work. And just this year I hired an assistant.
I was looking at how well my art did last
year and I was like, it's time for an assistant.
So having I have my tribe of people that I
really believe in what I'm doing and they're very supportive,
I've learned to surround myself with people that fuel my
fire and people that I believe in, And so I'm
making the small creative network of people that I trust
(20:20):
with my work and my brand that I bring in
to help me. Like I did my first art book
two years ago, and I got in a shipment of
over books and I relied on like eight people to
come in and help me unload that and then package
them and ship them for a kickstarter that was like
really successful. And so I have a group of people
that I am eternally grateful for that uplift my work
(20:43):
and support me. So that's kind of it. But for
the most part, it is mostly me. I schedule all
my shows, I make all the work, I organized everything,
and I just now hired on someone that can deal
with the emails and ship and do outreach and stuff
like that. So I'm now learning it's time to maybe
delegate some things, maybe spread out my brand and my
(21:06):
work to support other people that also support my work.
Let's go back to that moment when your work went viral.
What did you share that got such a big response,
and how do you think all of those new members
of this community of yours found you. It's pretty simple.
I don't think a lot of these big, crazy things.
(21:27):
They're always very simple. When I first started making these pieces,
I would share them online. My wife talked me to
getting an Instagram alls in college. I didn't want to,
but she said you have to, and I was like, Okay,
best decision I've ever made. And I would share my
work and a lot of the people who are familiar
with my illustrations, like friends and family, were like, dude,
this is kind of weird because a sudden dead insects
(21:49):
with crystals on them not many people got it. Not
many people like we're vibing with it. What happened was
I had an artist, and I've always had the snack,
which I think is a very important thing to do
that if you want something sometimes just ask for it.
The worst that anyone can never say is no. I
always had this habit of doing this. If I had
an idea and I needed help, I was just asked
for it. And there's this big artist that I loved
(22:11):
her work, um, still do. Her work got me creatively
through college, and so I reached out to her and
she had a lot of cicadas in her illustrations and said, hey,
I'm just a college student. Um, your work is very inspiring.
I've like lived off of it. And I started a
project where I'm growing crystals on cicadas. And I know
you like cicadas. Would you ever be down for a trade?
(22:32):
And I said, I doubt you'll ever see this. I
sent this to her on Facebook on her Facebook page.
I was like, I just want to sketch something I
can put in my like college bedroom, like above my
desk to look at, just have this physical source of inspiration.
And she said yeah, and I was like, well, what.
She was like, Yeah, She's like, I can't really picture
what you're what you're doing, but if you can send
(22:52):
some photos. So I sent her some photos of crystallized cicadas.
She freaked the f out freaked out. I was flabbergasted.
I couldn't believe it, like I was holding a conversation
with my favorite artist in the world. I sent her
the cicadas, not expecting anything, just a sketch, and I
sent her the pieces. And then like two weeks later,
(23:13):
I wake up and Molly is my wife, is sitting
by my bed in my college house. And I still
remember this day. I get goose bumps still going back
to this moment. He babe. I was like what, She's like,
your phone has been going off for the last three hours.
I was like, what it was like noon, and she
was like, yeah, I woke up at like nine o'clock
and your phone is not stopping. And I looked and
(23:33):
it was like blank, like your photo blank, like your
photo blank fallow blank fall like it was my phone
was just blowing up. And I was like what what what? What?
What what? And my Instagram posts are getting like tin
likes per thing. Now it was blowing up and I
opened it and she shared those crystallized cicadas that she
got in the mail. People. Oh wow, it's very simple
(23:54):
what I think happened. I picked someone who I thought
would like my work, that would connect with it. And
what assumption leads to is that most of her followers,
if she likes that type of work, then most of
her followers would probably like that type of work as well.
And that's exactly what it was like. All big artists
who have worked similar to hers like, we're following me,
and everyone was like, what is this? I have never
(24:16):
seen anything like this in my phone since that day
has never stopped, you know, you consider notifications off right,
you know, suggestion. I loved so much the confidence you
had to ask, even though you sort of expected the
(24:37):
answer would either be no or like no answer at all,
and yet you asked anyway. And I think just putting
the ask out into the universe. If you don't do that,
you can't possibly get a yes right now. Exactly. Well, absolutely,
And it's such a fantastic example of looking for your
community through the work of someone you really admire too,
(24:58):
you know, which sounds like it was very organic and
in a lot of ways sub conscious, but really impressive. So, Tyler,
you now have all of these followers, and you have
over four patrons on Patreon, as Christina mentioned, so how
do you now take care of your community? How do
you balance both the creation of new work and making
(25:22):
sure that you're sharing it with everyone who's waiting for it.
I have made a habit of sharing the fact that
I don't think a lot of my art comes from
the finished product. I'm not sharing so much like finished art,
but experiments and the art of experimentation. So it's very
easy to share work whenever I'm sharing mostly like all
these crazy ideas I have. I can think of like
(25:43):
fifteen ideas that I have shared that never got finished,
and people still love the fact that I shared the
snippet of something that was in progress. So that's that's easy.
Like for me, people are following me to see what
crazy thing I'm working on, and as long as I
keep people in the loop and keep this message of
like experiment, experiment, experiment, that's what people want. And so
my Patreon, a lot of that goes towards like me
(26:05):
sharing some of like the inside stuff of what I'm doing,
or I do workshops on Patreon, which is easy because
while I'm in the lab, if I have a free hour,
I'm like, Okay, I'll just do a workshop on like
growing this plant or this chemical reaction, or like fun
experiments you can do at home. And that's kind of
what's become most of my work is just really showing
(26:28):
the fact that you don't ever stop experimenting and you
never stop exploring whatever inspiration you decided to wield. I
love that focus on process, and it sounds like Tyler
tell me this is right, that it's relatively easy for
you to kind of switch from thing to thing to go, oh,
let's just take an hour here and do a workshop,
or let me go back into working on this crystal project, etcetera.
(26:50):
Is that true? Yes, it is very easy for me
to swap from the different schools of things that I
I'm fascinated with. I don't know where that came from.
And I've always had that, Like in high school, i
would be drawing and the next thing I know, I'm
I'm sitting there like beatboxing and like making. After that,
I'm like, I don't know, I'm I'm doing something else.
(27:11):
So I've always had this habit of being able to
transition from thing to thing, and sometimes I don't have
control over it, which is can be really frustrating. Or
I'm trying to draw but I have this song in
my head. Or I'm trying to make music but then
I'm like visualizing this painting that I want to make.
Or I'm trying to like focus on like research, like
trying to figure out how to work on my Opal
recipes and stuff like this, and I can't think scientifically
(27:34):
because I'm thinking musically. Um So there is a given
take where I can kind of control where my brain flips.
But then there's also times where it just kind of
like grabs me and says no, we're making music, and
I'm like, oh God, now please, I'm painting. I love
the term Opal recipes. I feel like that would be
a really great name for a band. I'm just getting
(27:55):
that out there to talk about bringing music into the mix.
I love it. So I want to know what it's
like to be a working artist in Tulsa. I am
not from Oklahoma. I did grow up in the Midwest,
but I would not have thought of Tulsa as a
creative hotbed. What is the creative community like there? Do
(28:17):
you find it's easier to be a working artist where
you you know, have a lower cost of living and
are in a smaller you know, metropolitan area. Or is
it harder because you're not, you know, on the coasts
in these kind of big visual art hubs. Oh man,
we live in a time creatively where your location does
(28:39):
not matter. You don't have to live on the coast
to be successful at creating art. You don't need to
be surrounded by big galleries, and you don't need to
be surrounded by big artists to be successful at creating
at all. My work took off in Springfield, Missouri, the
like middle of the country and these small cities. I
think having the Internet, having social media and learning how
to navigate that with your are is the only tool unique.
(29:01):
I don't know. You could be an amazingly successful artists
in like Anchorage, Alaska or anywhere in Greenland. It doesn't matter,
as long as you know how to reach people who
would like your work online. With that being said, I
do have friends. I've talked about this with another artist
that you know. They tell me like, how are you
like a full time self employed artist? You know, I
(29:21):
live in l A And I'm paying four thousand dollars
a month from my like studio apartment, and I'm like, well,
there's your number one problem when you're paying the whole
salary of every year to live in like nothing. So
living in a place with the low cost of living
that's good for anybody, but it works best for art
because you don't have to rely on your location to
(29:43):
make and sell art at all. If anyone tells you otherwise,
they're not looking at some of the biggest, most successful
artists on social media, who most of them make their
income on selling work online. That is just a simple fact.
Your location doesn't matter. And when you like book shows
or reach out and try to build partnerships, is that
(30:03):
all through relationships you've built online? Yes, or people reach
out to me, um, I get a lot of inquiries.
I have a lot of galleries that reach out to me.
I have learned to work in a very strict vetting
process for the people I work with and partner with.
You know, the part of being a successful artist is
taking notes and learning areas that did not work out
(30:24):
so well for you. And I had enough not so
pleasant experiences with other galleries I had to learn. Look,
I only have so much time here, and I have
enough respect for my work and there's enough options out
there that I can be very very picky on who
I work with because I want to nurture these really
great relationships. So a lot of the galleries or spaces
(30:44):
I still show with every year, I do so because
I love the people who made the space. I love
their ethic, I love how they respect their employees. That
was always a big one for me, and so I
have a lot of people reach out to me, but
I get so many inquiries now that I'm able to
just pick a few of my favorites and say, hey,
let's just do this every year. And that's worked out
great for me, and I get to support people that
(31:05):
support me these wonderful, very respectful, mutual relationships. That's fantastic.
You know, it's so interesting hearing you talk about what
it's like to create work in Tulsa now it makes
me think about what it was like to grow up
in Tulsa. You have this incredible ability to merge worlds.
(31:25):
Was Tulsa a weird place or a great place to
learn how to do that? Growing up? The high school
I went to Booker T Washington High School is the
best high School in Oklahoma, and it's amazing. It's amazing.
It's an amazing place for students and students of color.
It's a very nurturing place. I had an art teacher,
Jennifer Brown, who pulled me aside and made me take
(31:46):
her art class, just watching me sketch in the hallways
during breaks. They were very, very observant. I would say,
if there's any part of Tulsa that took care of
me and really kind of nurtured this in me was
the high school I went to. And beyond that, you know,
I wasn't really tapped into Tulsa as a teenager, but
coming back as an adult, I'm looking around and I'm like,
(32:06):
oh my gosh, there's so many people here trying to
take care of artists. There's all these small communities that
are like flourishing, even more so now because like everyone
is moving from the West Coast. I was talking to
a friend about this. Everyone's moving from the West Coast
to Denver. Everyone's moving from Denver to Kansas City, and
everyone from the city to Tulsa. And so there's a
bunch of awesome things happening in Tulsa that come back
(32:29):
and affect the economy and the people living there and
the artists and musicians and makers. Tulsa has this weird
they called the Tulsa effect where everyone kind of knows
each other and everyone kind of like there's this mutually
agreed upon like sort of respect that we have for
makers and artists and each other's like small businesses. It's
really wonderful. That's really exciting. You know, I'm so struck
(32:51):
by both the strength of your immediate community in the
home in which you live and the expansive strength of
your online community to really exciting. You have a son,
(33:22):
you are a father, and he's still pretty young. But
have you thought about what you want to foster in
him in terms of creativity but also about the world
and finding his place in it. I know these are
really big thoughts for for a short answer in a podcast,
(33:42):
But how is being a father sort of affected how
you think about your place as an artist? And you know,
bringing that up, it's changed everything. It's changed how I
look at the world. It's warped some of my bitterness.
It's changed everything. Um, and it's made me think about
almost everything I say I believe in because I'm like,
(34:05):
do I want him to believe in this. And I've
taken back a lot of things that I thought I
stood by having put those in my son and thinking
I do not want to see that in my son.
Things I would love to foster. I go on hikes
with him, and I see how he looks at everything.
I see how these kids have this immense respect for
the world because it's also new, and I hate that
we lose that. As an adult. The one thing I'd
(34:26):
love to foster is to teach him no matter what,
no matter what happens, the one thing you can rely
on is your curiosity. The one thing you can always
rely on is your innate human curiosity and respect for
our origins, which are in nature. If not tainted, if
not altered, we will always come back to nature, and
that's where we can find our roots. And there are
(34:48):
some adults that don't nurture that in their kids. Are
some teachers that don't cultivate that, and I see the
adults who do actively cultivate that, and what you get
are humans that have some sort of content with the
world we live in. And that's the one thing I
could want to cultivate, is just at least contentment um
and a love and respect for nature, and hopefully doing
(35:08):
that through making sure my son is observant and not
even that I'm observant with him so he can see
that in me. Yeah, the most important thing I think.
I think, because anything else you can learn from anybody else,
but remembering to come back to nature. That that kind
of takes stepping away from other people. So that's kind
of the hard one. We can get wrapped up in
the world and people and ideas and all this other
(35:31):
shallow stuff that we forget to tap back into nature.
So if you have that, then you have everything. Is
kind of how I'm learning to live. Absolutely, So when
he says, Dad, I'm going to go into this cave
for a while, you support. I love it. You know, Tyler,
another very important person in your life that you have
(35:53):
mentioned throughout our conversation. It's so apparent how much your
wife is a partner to you. Both of you are
artists and work from home. So how does that work.
Give us some logistical insights on your okay, being self
(36:14):
employed is beautiful and it's a nightmare. We made it
work a lot better before we had a kid. We learned,
we learned to ask for help. What our life looks
like is I'll come home from the lab just in
time for Molly to get into the car to go
to a photo shoot. So it's a lot of us
just like handing the baton back and forth so we
(36:35):
can be with our son. Sort of asked for help,
so that we can spend time with our son together
and reel in. Because self employment, you can get carried away,
and you can get just as carried away doing a
bunch of stuff that you didn't even mean, just as
much as you could just working out a retail store.
It's so true, so true. Yeah, And you get so
wrapped up in your own stuff, in your own business,
(36:56):
and you've got to really reel that in. And so
we've learned to just us for help. Every week we
do what we call family day Mondays. We try to
off our phones as much as possible. We go to
the museum, we go on a hike, we go play outside.
We do not work. Monday's we don't work. We don't
check our emails. No self employed bullcrap. Nothing is just hard.
(37:17):
You know, when you're self employed, you don't really get
a weekend. I'm working any time I want and can
and have to. But Monday's we start with family Day
and we're going from there. This is also new that
we're kind of learning the limitations of our self employment.
It's very doable, but when both parents are self employed
in working, it's commendable. But also there's times where I'm like,
a not very part. It's a work in progress. So,
(37:41):
like everything, where do you go from here? What does
the next five ten years look like for you? You know?
I think about that a lot. I'm gonna be very upfront,
the next five to ten years can look like whatever
I want them to. I've learned to kind of just
believe in what I doing that much. Hopefully in five
(38:02):
to ten years, I've nailed down my opal recipe. I've
currently found a way to grow opal in five days.
If I could take that process and like make tangible
art with it, that would be killer. I have dreams
of opening up a conservatory and Tulsa, a plant conservatory
to showcase interesting plants and bring plants in horticulture to
some of the more ignored communities and Tulsa and bring
(38:24):
plants to kids and households and families that don't really
have the privilege to kind of just look at plants
all the time, or or be concerned with plants. Those
are two of my big goals, you know. I would
love to just keep experimenting. I would love to own
a cave someday. Oh my gosh, how do you own
a cave? That's incredible? You just buy land as a
(38:46):
cave on. I would love to buy a cave to
conserve and and do research on. And caves are being
vandalized every single day. Um So I would love to
put some of my like income and my art and
money where my mouth is and protect one of these
caves and just find more ways to combine science and
(39:06):
art and show not just little kids and in young
creative minds, but show adults that you can live this beautiful, creative,
nature inspired life no matter how old you are, and
no matter what route life takes you. And I'm hoping
in ten years I'm still living that. As an example,
what would you say to Tyler whose girlfriend had just
(39:28):
told him, no, you're too dumb to take a peek Kim,
and he was surrounded by naysayers? What words of encouragement
would you give him? Knowing all that you know now,
I spent so much of my life, visualizing that almost
barely hopeless me as a kid and hanging onto something.
I would love so much to just go back in time,
(39:49):
just once and just look at me and go, dude,
just hanging there, just hanging there. And part of me
as a kid visualized adult meat coming back and saying, Hey,
just hang in there, just hanging there. Here's what I'm this,
and it's gonna be kind of real. I think the
fact that an adult me would ever come back and
say something to me as a kid would be hope
enough that it's all worth it. I don't know that
would say anything except maybe just come through this vorpal
(40:13):
wormhole and and just look at me um and say, hey, dude, um,
that's it. I think that would be enough to know
that if I'm still here and I'm still making work,
if I look healthy, and if I look at least
even happy coming back from the future, that's all I
think it would take for a younger me that same.
(40:37):
And I gotta say, Tyler, that younger you had so
much tenacity. Holy crap, Holy crap. I think some were
way deep down he did, you know? Christina? Our Converse
(41:00):
station with Tyler really shined a light on so many
of the things that we've been hearing about from our
other guests this season, like how powerful it is to
find your community both online and off, how rewarding it
is to build a business model that works for your
unique situation, and how important it is to have creative
partners and collaborators to keep you going. One of the
(41:21):
things that really struck me from Tyler's story was that
his first work went viral because he connected with that
artist whom he admired and also who made work that
was in the same realm as his. You know, he
didn't go to the most famous artists he could find
or just share his work online and hope people found it.
(41:41):
He shared it with someone who specifically would be into it,
and then so beautifully she shared his work with her community,
which was just the perfect audience for it. I mean,
that's so true. Putting great work out into the world
is important, but finding the specific collaborators and the audiences
that are going to be inclined to like it is
(42:02):
more valuable than the spray and prey approach that you know,
most people have. If ned and prey it's a little visceral,
but you know, it really hit me in my car. Yeah,
I was also really inspired by how he discovered that
sharing the experimentation and the artistic process behind his work
(42:24):
with his Instagram and his Patreon supporters that was just
as interesting, or you know, even more so then the
finished product. I feel like the behind the scenes content
really helps his followers get even more invested in supporting him,
and you know, it potentially inspires others to create work
of their own. So whin when there that's right, particularly
(42:47):
in a place like social media where we see so
many outcomes, right, it's so refreshing to see the process
as both inspiration and a reminder to really exist in
your own process, and as you do that, the outcomes
will follow. Right. And speaking of that, I love how
Tyler truly invented a new art form by combining two
(43:10):
of his interests, chemistry and visual art. So instead of
asking himself which one should I pursue, he decided to
merge them and carve out his own lane entirely, which
is I'm sure part of what made his work resonate,
you know, Christina. It reminded me of this episode of
the Ted Radio Hour podcast called what is Original, which
(43:32):
really talks about this concept of remixing, right, How sampling, borrowing,
and riffing make all of us innovators because I feel
like there's this big pressure of how do I be
new in I used to have this director at the
Groundlings who said, honey, it's all been done before. It's
(43:52):
just how you do it right, because we were always
searching for the next big idea. Now it's really that
synthesis that holds innovations so much of the time, right.
I love that idea of remixing, And between the unique
art that he's created and the fact that he's built
his audience online, he's able to live in Tulsa and
(44:17):
really benefit from both the creative community there alongside the
affordable cost of living, you know, rather than struggle with
the cost of living in a major city I don't know,
like New York or l A for them on Earth
a little bit. But it's you know, it's one of
the biggest reasons that his business model works for him
(44:39):
as a full time artist. That's right, and it's another
sign of his ability to really follow his intuition and
sort of be his own personal cheerleader. He was talking
about how he felt these really big moments where he
was surrounded by naysayers, and instead of listening to them,
he went within, which is so inspiring. So this week,
(45:04):
think about the pieces of your ven diagram and consider
how you could remix them in a way that creates
something entirely new. And just on a personal note, I
just want to say, when I was first blogging about
math and pop culture, I used to say to people
Christina that I was mashing up pop culture and math,
(45:27):
and people would go, oh, pop culture and meth, and
I was like, no, no, no, not the drug, math
the area of study. And so I would just use
that as an antidote to say the stranger the combination
seems might mean that you're really onto something. Also, this week,
(45:52):
consider if there are pieces of your business model that
you can adjust to make it more sustainable. Are their
community or audiences you can access by building a greater
presence online, or are there others in your field that
you can connect with and help amplify each other's work.
That's right, no matter where you are, there is a
(46:13):
community for you, So don't forget to let us know
how you're remixing and experimentation turns out and what it
leads to. We love hearing your updates and questions. You
can reach us on Twitter or Instagram at t l
d n E pod, or you can email us at
Hello at t ld n E podcast dot com, or
you can go old school and leave us a voicemail
(46:33):
at eight three three Hi t l d n E.
That's eight three three eight five three six three and
then press eight oh three. Well. Link to Tyler's Instagram
and Patreon pages, the ted Radio, our podcast and past
episodes with visual artists doing STEM inspired work in our
show notes, which you can find at t l d
(46:55):
n E podcast dot com Slash one seventy. Thanks so
much to our producer Maya Coole and to you for
tuning in. As always, please subscribe, rate, and review on
(47:15):
Apple Podcasts if you like what you heard, it really
helps us get the word out to fellow human ven diagrams.
Until next time, remember the limit does not exist. The
Limit does Not Exist is a production of I Heart Radio.
For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the I
(47:37):
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows. Yeah
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