Episode 22 - Live from HennaCon 2014 with Kim, Jessica and Kiran

Welcome to Episode 22 of the Caught Red-Handed Podcast which is the first ever live podcast and therefore most of the intro is about my experience at HennaCon.  It was my first time, and one of my rare appearances at a conference.  If you’ve never been to a henna conference and aren’t sure if you’re ready, believe me you are.  The only prerequisites are a passion for henna, a desire to learn and grow, and a minimum of a few weeks of doing henna.  I was surprised to see that HennaCon offers so much to newbies and seasoned old pros. I’ve been doing henna for 16 years and walked away from this experience with my brain and heart full of so much new stuff, most of which I am still digesting a month later.  I met so many newbies who were all bright eyed and bushy tailed, soaking up as much information as they could , hennaing each other and getting hennaed.  The week after I saw their work on Instagram and noticed leaps in quality and creativity.  For me, HennaCon came at a good time for me benefit from it.  If you have listened to just 1 or 2 episodes of this podcast you’ll know that I have been on a journey to improve my skills (learning to roll and use cones, and also tampering with my paste) as well as finding ways to more deeply tap into my creativity.  My state of mind is very curious and receptive so HennaCon felt like a perfect match for my sponge-like state.  I absorbed a lot from classes, but also from talking to other artists, watching how they work, answering their questions which really made me think about how I work, hennaing and getting hennaed.

Back in Brooklyn one month after HennaCon here is what I’m thinking/doing/learning/planning. Starting with the podcast, i got a surge of ideas of different kinds of podcasts and people to interview.  Watch this space for these developments.  I’ve started practicing more on my own (it helps that it’s the slow season here).  In my practice time I am working on things that I picked up at HennaCon like Kiran’s shading, Neeta’s fills, Rebecca’s leaves, Joey’s dots and then putting them all together.  From the Moroccan henna class that I co-taught with Noam I realized that there is a huge interest in Moroccan henna. Before that I was despairing that no one cared about it and what’s the point of pushing it out there.  Thanks to all your support (especially those of you who asked me to henna you with Moroccan designs) I feel a renewed passion for it.  Nic and Noam and I are cooking up some projects in the realm of Moroccan henna.  Again, watch this space.

As for this episode of the podcast, I had the pleasure of interviewing Kim Brennan, Jessica McQueen and Kiran Sahib on the subject of the creative process.  I hope the sound issues aren’t too disruptive; it was my first time recording in a live environment. After the conversation with these three awesome women and artists I put in a few woman-on-the-street interviews with HennaCon attendees recorded on my iPhone.  The sound quality on these is pretty terrible tho with all the background noise you may feel as if you were there, listening in person.

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