Episode 1: Introduction to The Heart Gallery with Rebeka Ryvola de Kremer & Alice Irene Whittaker
For Episode 1 of The Heart Gallery Podcast, Rebeka Ryvola de Kremer introduces the podcast in conversation with writer & podcaster Alice Irene Whittaker.
Podcast transcript is available below.
See the 3 artists Alice Irene mentioned: Drew Lanham, poet & ornithologist; Doireann Ní Ghríofa, author of A Ghost in the Throat; & Tamara Lindeman of The Weather Station.
See the 3 works Rebeka mentioned: Chris Jordan’s Midway project, Tomás Saraceno’s spider works, & The Ghosts in Our Machine documentary.
Find the Reseed podcast here | More about Alice Irene here.
Rebeka Ryvola de Kremer website.
Connect with us @rebekaryvola & @aliceirenewhittaker.
Thank you Samuel Cunningham for podcast editing.
Thank you Cosmo Sheldrake for use of his song Pelicans We.
Podcast art by Rebeka Ryvola de Kremer.
And be sure to read about 3 of Rebeka’s pivotal art projects and 3 of Alice Irene’s art-focused Reseed episodes …
3 heart moves with Rebeka & Alice Irene:
To provide a visual accompaniment to your listening of The Heart Gallery Podcast Episode 1, here are 3 pieces of Rebeka’s art that are significant in some kind of way to her life, perspectives, and career, along with 3 of Alice Irene’s Reseed podcasts:
Rebeka #1: Virtual Water Gallery, 2020 - present.
“I was invited to take part in this consortium of artists and scientists examining water issues in what is today commonly called Canada (also the nation that gave me and my family citizenship when we were running from communism). This was at the beginning of the pandemic, in a moment of great personal insecurity, fear, and change, and this opportunity represents the moment that I started to shift my life in a way I didn’t know I was capable of. Part of that was feeling, for the first time, that I could be an artist who actually creates physical works! Previously to this I had mostly worked digitally, with illustrations, cartoons, and animations, on an artist-for-hire basis. I’m deeply grateful to have been given this opportunity by Louise Arnal, and also to have gotten to collaborate with Pat Cheechoo on an exploration of interwoven indigenous and immigrant experiences of water.”
Rebeka #2: Guerrilla art at the Russian Embassy, Washington, DC.
“I wanted so much to somehow create some public art in response to the Russian war on Ukraine. I created an assemblage of folkloric cutouts inspired by the art of my childhood and of the region, and had help from my husband and some friends to stage a rapid installation of a guerrilla art gallery at the Russian Embassy here in Washington, DC. I found out that Yo-Yo Ma had been there, in the very same spot, a few days prior, staging his own peaceful, artistic protest with his cello. It was a moment of affirmation on many levels that the desire to create an artistic, heart-led response to an injustice is worth following through on.”
Rebeka #3: Temperature Tapestry, Design Museum London, December 2022.
"A dear colleague at the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre gave me an opportunity to create a work for an exhibit at the Design Museum London. This large-scale piece was a tapestry of sorts that I pieced together from many different illustration projects I’ve done for different entities throughout the Red Cross & Red Crescent Movement. Seeing all the pieces together in this global temperature timeline quilt helped me realize that the common thread throughout all my work is connectivity and relationship: people, more-than-human species, environments, countries, human and non-human systems - all of these categories are in fact much more blurred than we can tend to think, and what I most strive to do with each piece I create is to try to show the interrelationships in their blurred, melded, melted, interwoven, interdependent beauty.”
Reseed podcast #1: Revealing Why Women Grow Gardens - Alice Vincent.
“Why do we grow in our gardens? Are we searching for closeness to the mystery and magic of the natural world, or perhaps working towards self-sufficiency by feeding ourselves? Do we grow to create habitat for pollinators or enrich precious soil? Do we grow to foster a knowledge of growing in our children, and to foster community? Do we grow to grasp control in a scary world? Do we grow because we love beauty?
Wise and curious guest Alice Vincent delves into her new book, Why Women Grow: Stories of Soil, Sisterhood and Survival. Alice is a writer, broadcaster, career-journalist, and multi-platform storyteller, and her book Rootbound: Rewilding a Life was longlisted for the Wainwright Prize. Now a columnist for Gardens Illustrated, Alice has written for The Telegraph, The New Statesman, Vogue, The Financial Times, The Sunday Times and The Observer. Beyond the page, Alice is the host of the Why Women Grow podcast, which unearths stories of the land with inspiring women.
This beautiful and rich conversation roots into our relationships with nature and gardening in cities. We discuss perfectionism, being drawn to the soil, and motherhood. We refurl stories of women in their gardens, and pay homage to the gardens who raised us.”
Reseed podcast #2: Reclaiming Culture, Decolonizing Fashion - Aditi Mayer.
“Fashion is a connector of land, labour, culture, and personal expression. Through a decades-long project of fast fashion, we have forgotten and become disconnected from regional, regenerative fashion systems that can exist. There have been beneficial fashion systems embraced by many cultures throughout history and today, where clothing is an expression of place. Natural dyes come from the landscape, dressing the wearer in the colours from their home. Natural textiles connect regenerative farmers with makers, and give back to the soil both in their farming at the beginning of their life, and decomposition at the end of their life, as part of a circular fashion system. We can dream of, imagine, and create this relationship to clothing again.
Aditi Mayer joins Alice Irene Whittaker to help reimagine such a fashion system, while also advocating for the reclamation of culture. Aditi is a sustainable fashion blogger, photojournalist, and labour rights activist. A storyteller and creator, she looks at fashion and culture through a lens of intersectionality and decolonization. She approaches her work from multiple domains: from grassroots organizing in Downtown LA’s garment district to educating folks on the importance of diverse perspectives. She is on the council of Intersectional Environmentalist and State of Fashion. Aditi will be spending this year as a National Geographic Digital Storytelling Fellow, spending one year documenting the social and environmental impacts of fashion in India.”
Reseed podcast #3: Reflecting Climate Grief Through Music - Tamara Lindeman of The Weather Station.
“Music can help us make sense of, and deeply feel, our climate grief. Tamara Lindeman’s acclaimed album Ignorance about climate grief struck a chord with citizens and critics. Performing as The Weather Station, Lindeman’s 2021 poetic, thoughtful, and highly danceable album was named album of the year by The New Yorker and Uncut. Tamara joins Alice Irene Whittaker, the host of Reseed, for a conversation that starts with climate grief before spanning to art, selfhood, rootlessness, connection, and the heartbreaking beauty of birds.”
Podcast transcript:
Note: Transcripts are generated in collaboration with Youtube video captioning and ChatGP3 and are not extensively edited.
[Music]
Hello and welcome to the first episode of The Heart Gallery podcast. I am Rebeka Ryvola de Kremer and I created this podcast to inquire into the various roles that art can play in helping us build deeper connections to our surroundings and to others. I have worked as an artist, a creative advisor, and a visual communicator in the climate and humanitarian space, and also social change spaces for over a decade. I also have a personal art practice works focused on relationships between individuals, other living beings and our Earth. Listen to this podcast to hear from myself and other artists engaging in these interrelationships with all kinds of approaches, philosophies and hopes for the future of humanity and our planet.
For this first episode I wanted to introduce the themes of the podcast but since I'm so much happier asking questions and being in dialogue but mostly asking questions I didn't want to
do one of those monologue type episodes. So today I will be having a conversation with my friend Alice Irene Whitaker Alice Irene is a writer and an environmental Communications leader she is the Creator and host of Reseed which is another podcast about repairing our relationship to nature. I actually made the cover art for her podcast and she featured me as one of her guests last year which was my first podcast appearance.
Alice Irene has been published in National and international Publications including the Globe and Mail in Canada and permaculture magazine she was shortlisted for the Canadian Broadcast Corporation (CBC) literary awards. She was selected for a fellowship for the Martha' Vineyard (fancy!) Institute of creative writing, and she received a Bill and Melinda Gates Innovation award.
Alice Irene is also the Director of Marketing and Communications at Smart Prosperity Institute and Natural Step Canada, she plays a leadership communication role on national initiatives like Circular Economy Leadership Canada and the Canada Plastics Pact. In her career she has worked closely with leaders, CEOs, and non-profit gender equality and environmental organizations including as Director of Communications and Public Relations at Plan International Canada.
So inspiring. And she's also currently writing a creative nonfiction book exploring regenerative care and circular living. Her research for her book has taken her to ranches and farms and fashion runways and homes where she's engaged in conversation with farmers and builders and designers, and so many other people who are living in a way that repairs our relationship with the natural world.
It's so cool and so in line with this podcast, I mean, I'm clearly inspired by her and her initiatives, and we talk about some of those experiences today, in addition to talking about why we started podcasts specifically, where our philosophies and creative approaches came from, and we also end up talking about motherhood, neurodiversity, and reconciling seemingly disparate goals and dreams. I am so happy to be talking to my incredible friend Alice Irene in this episode. I really can't think of a better way to introduce The Heart Gallery Podcast.
[Music]
R: Welcome Alice Irene Whitaker it's so nice to be here with you.
AI: It's so nice to be here with you, Rebeka thanks for inviting me, it's an honor.
R: Oh my gosh the pleasure is mine and you have to know that I have been so excited for this episode. I told you before that I've already recorded a couple episodes of the podcast but this is going to be the first one.
The reason that I wanted to record this introductory Heart Gallery episode with you, I mean it's it's really threefold, I think. There's actually probably more reasons than three, but there's three main reasons.
The first is that when we recorded the Reseed episode… after we recorded, maybe like almost like instantaneously, I started to feel very differently about communicating about these topics that I talk about on this podcast, essentially art as a way to communicate about relationships between humans, more-than-human creatures, and the earth.
Even though I've been creating art in the climate and humanitarian space for years, doing infographics and illustrations and graphic facilitation, I didn't really have the confidence to really try to articulate the value that I saw in what I was doing. I really stretched myself when I spoke with you and afterwards I was just, I don't know, there was some positive chemicals going on, I was like, “oh that that felt really good and I want to do more of that”, and I want to get more into that a little bit later.
Then the second reason that I wanted to have you on is because you are an artist yourself and you have a number of different mediums that are a part of your practice that I'd love for you to talk about as we chat, and then the third reason is that you have this incredible podcast that I love, and that, you know, that changed my life - we'll talk more about that throughout the podcast.
On reseed you have talked to a number of artists and in those episodes I can tell that you really believe in the power of art. In the role that art can play in affecting change in our world and building a world that is more centered around care. You talk so much about care, which I love, and I just want to name a couple of the episodes that I encountered when I was preparing for this episode:
My favorite one is with Tamara Lindeman from -
AIW: oh I love that one - from the weather station.
R: oh it's so good. You two talk about climate grief.
Then there's another one with another artist, Stacy Tenenbaum, who's a filmmaker who has a film called Scrap about our relationships with objects throughout their lifespan.
Then you have a number of of episodes around textiles, the life cycle of textiles around fashion. Then you have a number of podcasts with different writers - I consider writing a form of art as well of course in so many different ways - and so I'm wondering, to start, can you tell us about Reseed and what brought you to create that podcast, and why why you have art as a thread going through a lot of the episodes?
AIW: Absolutely, and thanks for the kind words. it is such a labor of love and something I deeply believe in, so every time I've found that I hear someone say, “oh I love that episode, it keeps me company while I'm having dinner”, or whatever it is, it really means so much. Like it's a treasure that helps me keep making.
So reseed is a podcast about repairing our relationship with nature and each other as well, and ourselves, and it's really about this journey from taking to caretaking, so how we as human beings at this moment of so many crises and heartbreak and heartache that I feel every day about the planet and this Earth and our species…
It’s about how we become caretakers no matter how it quote “turns out”, like I think a lot of times it's like, “oh but will it matter, will it actually make a difference”, and for me the act of taking care and the act of loving the Earth and ourselves within it is really important to me, and has become more important than knowing what happens.
So these conversations explore all different people and how they are doing that. I picture it as all these different seeds across the sort of tapestry of the earth you know almost like a quilt where you have different geographies and different people within each of those Landscapes who are planting different seeds that grow and are all sort of netting together, rooting together. So for one person that is like you said filmmaking, that's their gift, and they're using it in their way and someone else is a musician, and someone else is a fashion designer, someone else is an activist, and they're all doing one of the “re” words, so reimagining the environmental movement to be oriented on justice or reflecting climate grief through music.
It's the difference of all of those things really speaks to me versus saying oh there's one way to do this. There are so many ways to do this and absolutely each one of us is part of that in our own way.
So why I started it was I was writing a book - I am writing a book - and that is its whole journey unto itself. Through it I was interviewing all of these different people, especially farmers and artists.
I'd be there, you know, in their barn, speaking to one another and recording it for my book. Never thinking that it would be aired, but as I started doing more and more of them - and I've interviewed dozens of people now- I was like, “these have to be shared”.
I wanted to share them in a way that's more immediate than a book - which takes so long - and also in way that I really have (and maybe I'm only seeing this in retrospect) that I'm able to shape it versus with book publishing… while you're waiting for the opportunity to publish: This was a way that I could start to tell these stories when I was ready to.
I'm a bit of a busy person being a mother, with a career and writing, and so I kept saying, “oh I want to make this into a podcast, but I can't because there's no time”. You know, when good ideas just find you and stick with you after a year and a half or so, I was like okay it's happening.
Then I started to work on it. And really a big part of it was you creating the art for it, the artwork and cover art.
It was not an ideal time for me to be doing the project, but because I had you creating this tangible expression of it and you to be accountable to, that really helped me like, “oh I need to get back to Rebeka”. The artwork made it so real and so that really helped propel it from the idea into a real live breathing project.
R: my gosh I feel like I'm blushing, that accountability though is so powerful. I mean sometimes you hear this advice like, oh if you have an idea, like keep it to yourself, like don't tell anyone until it's in the world because people will talk you down, but I don't think that's the entire truth. AI: Right, I think that there is such power in having other people invest in our dreams and our plans. Yeah I think it's the opposite, I mean I think the right people, like treasured people who are gonna be nourishing about it and not talk you down is really important, because then it feels like someone there is waiting for it. Whereas with so many ideas and art there's no one asking for it, you know, no one's like, “please create a new book”, no.
R: Yes, so much. I did want to ask you “why podcast now”, and I think you answered that so beautifully. What you said about the book writing being an isolated type activity. I’m not writing - well actually I'm writing a few children's books, which is so much fun, but it's very different from writing a bigger kind of a piece.
But speaking of isolation, part of the reason that I decided to start a podcast now is because of isolation and and it connects to, like I mentioned at the beginning, coming to terms with wanting to get better at speaking about what it is that I care about, wanting to become a stronger artist, and I'm realizing that I was quite alone in two ways:
The first was social media. For me Instagram specifically for many years was the only place where I had any kind of art community. A few years ago I joined one of these 100 day challenges where you create something for 100 days you share every day. There's a hashtag, etc. This was years ago, like maybe like four - five years ago. Through that hashtag at that time I connected with a few different lovely creators on Instagram and it was so cool. I was like, “oh this is social media like at its best”. I met a woman named Kelly, and when I was driving across the country - actually driving from Mexico City to Washington DC - on this very uprooted moment of my life I contacted this woman I had met on Instagram and I was like, “hey should I come see you in in New Mexico”, and she was like, “yeah come on over”. It was so fun and she's fantastic and she's an artist and so that was like social media at its best.
That was the first time in my life that I felt any sense of belonging as an artist, but Instagram oh my gosh, Instagram these days it's so… there's some great things, there's some great artists… you're there! There's so many and I mostly follow either very close friends or artists and creators that I admire, or activists…
But every time I go on there I'm just being forced to see these awful videos these like Tik Tok type videos. I keep saying, “not interested in this content”, and Instagram keeps saying, “oh you're interested, you are interested, you will be interested!”.
So not to go down this path too much, but I just haven't found satisfaction there for the longest time. I haven't been making those kinds of connections really as much even though there still is you know “community potential” there, it's just not the place for it I think. I was thinking that I really want to do something to find a way to have a community online.
I think as we get older if we're lucky we can find community where we are and I hope that we all have a chance to to be a part of communities where we are, but then when you start to get more niche, and you start to define your niche, it can be really nice to to find people to talk about something like very specific with. Like the topic of our respective podcasts, for example.
And I actually applied for this art Fellowship last year here in Washington DC, and I didn't get it. It’s a really cool Fellowship - I will apply again! - but the fellowship administrators offered people who were rejected a chance to chat about their application. I spoke with this lovely person named Jonathan who went through my application and he was essentially like, “you don't know how to be a professional artist. You don't know how to write an artist CV”. He was like, “you're supposed to have your name, where you were born, and the year you were born”. You would never see that in like the other types of worlds that you and I are in. No one would share where they were born and what year but that's the norm! So it's like a random super specific thing that he said you just need to know.
He also said you need to have a community of artists. You need to be out there meeting people and so this coincides with me doing your podcast. This rejection came around the same time where I realized like oh I really do love this space and he helped me realize like wow I'm really like quite isolated and also this realization that Instagram's not really the place it brought me to to realize like oh if I foster a community through this podcast that there's this accountability.
The accountability piece is real. I could meet people not in a podcast setting but there is something really nice about having to do it in those moments where you feel shy, you feel like someone is way more awesome than you, their career is just so impressive and fancy and yours is not, and there's this whole thing around that.
So this is a reason I can reach out to really fancy people and say, “I have this project”, and it gives such direction to that cultivation of community.
AI: I feel like it gets right to the heart of it, versus hoping to talk about it with people that you don't know kind-of-thing. But I find that really helpful for me.
R: you're so right, it's having to do the research too, which is such a joy actually doing research is one of my favorite things, but having to really try to understand where someone is coming from. To really try to understand and articulate like what it is that they are doing to you with their work is such a good practice. But it takes some effort. Have you found that?
AI: I have found that, I was gonna say on Instagram I've been finding the same thing and even just last night my sister and I were talking about disconnecting from news and disconnecting from Instagram and I'm so grateful because I have foraged these beautiful relationships, really, and connections on Instagram more than any other social media platform, and I feel like it's resulted in very tangible growth and connection and learning for me.
And at the very same time I've found it to be so, I don't know, like manipulative, I guess and yes the way that when I create less and less people see it because they want me to do those videos that you're talking about, they want us all to do those and I don't wish to. I just don’t.
R: Don't do it!
AI: I don't do it. I feel like instead I take these moody videos of raindrops falling on the moss and I'm like, “there there's a video for you, Instagram!”. But I just find, too, it's hard to find the people that I know and care about on there. Instead I'm being fed all of this content that I haven't asked for, like you said, so it is a really hard place to be sometimes.
I've taken some very intentional breaks, but they've just kind of happened where I'm like, “oh I guess I haven't posted for a few days”, and then it turns into three months where I barely go on. I really don't miss it when I'm in that space of having been away.
I feel like when I think oh I should go back and do something there I have like a physical feeling of not wanting to. Do you know what I mean?
R: yeah I know exactly what you mean. Do you feel like you've successfully replaced Instagram with other types of of community, like your podcast and your local community in the beautiful woods of Canada?
AI: uh no not really. I feel like Instagram has sort of planted seeds that then grow in other places. Making connections with people that I speak to in another way, or, you know, an in-person event. Two weeks ago I hosted this conversation in our community here up in Wakefield, which you know and love so dearly.
It was a conversation about regenerative agriculture and art and how they can work together, and it was 25 people in the library in a circle talking about these issues for two hours. You know, coming together with farmers, with artists all in one space. To your point about community, it's really what we're missing.
Like, that was very rare and special, but if we had that all the time as humans right now, where we're coming together and sharing our grief and our worry and our ideas and laughing like we were that day, that would be so transformative. Versus these online relationships.
R: Is that part of what you're exploring through your book and your podcast and your other work? Is that your hope for the world to move towards that space?
AI: It is a hope I have for the world. And community is so much a part of what I've learned about and explored over the last few years. It's interesting, because I'm quite an introverted person and I'm not drawn to quote socializing or networking, but by community I mean like deep rooted relationships and being able to call on each other when we're facing food shortages or extreme weather. I really think as those become more common there's not going to be a lot of help maybe, and that having it within communities and knowing who to go to for when you need food kind-of-thing is going to be very transformative.
I'd say my hope for the world, or at least what I feel like my specific offering is, is really about perfectionism. Perfectionism because it's something I really struggle with and that I see so insidiously intertwined in climate and environmental spaces. It’s something that I know so well and am trying to dismantle in myself. It will take a whole lifetime for sure, and I think that that's something I can offer.
The other is care. Really orienting environmental action and movements and spaces around care, and using stories and art to do that. I think those are my dreams for the world, or at least my dreams for myself in shaping the world we're in.
R: I wonder if this point you have about perfectionism, which connects to a lot of the types of activism that we see in online spaces where it's it's like very, I don't know. sometimes I find it a little shouty, like it's a little like finger pointy, and I wonder if us putting so much stock in these online spaces…
AI: I wonder if that type of communication just thrives better there. Then there's like other slower care, imperfection-focused communication.
R: Why do you think that's the way that it's going right now?
AI: I think it does come back to the social media conversation before. Social media is so conducive to like hot takes and things that generate reactions, like the, “I don't know who needs to hear this but you can't do this” or “you should do that” or, you know, like all of that way of communicating. So that's what we see and then it's what we see and we hear and we start communicating like that because we're human beings and we learn from each other.
So then we're doing that in this weird online social media way versus when human beings are talking in a room. It’s such a different way to talk, one that might bring out more of the nuance and the deep thinking and connection and compassion for each other.
Maybe that's why it is harder to feel compassion on social media, right, because it's so much platform-based, right? Everyone has their little platform so everyone is broadcasting out…
R: I mean is there any kind of space online like where people are more pulled to be in conversation?
AI: I can't think of one off the top of my head for me either, and I think Instagram - if not conversation - to me felt more about listening and sharing than it does now, you know, versus performance. Yeah maybe that's part of the perfection is the performative nature of it, right. R: Something nice about the podcast format, like even though I guess you and I are now performing, if anyone listens to this -
AI: but I tend to forget, I feel like we're chatting though.
R: yes, I feel like we're in conversation, so much, and I like when it's going well… I told you I recorded just a couple of these, but I already forget that there's a microphone and my husband listened to one of the ones I recorded and he said, “why did you say that”. [Laughter] A teaser. I think episode 3.
One of the other pieces I wanted to bring in about why podcasting - and you gave me a bit of a teaser in an email that you shared with me - and I really want to to hear your thoughts on this… Another reason that I decided to podcast now, the reason I felt brave enough to podcast now (in addition to you giving me the chance to try it out on Reseed, to realize how fun it is, that is even possible to do such a thing) was that I received an Autism Spectrum diagnosis uh last year.
It was first a self-diagnosis and then I worked with a professional for a real diagnosis a quote unquote real diagnosis. I say quote unquote real because the diagnosis for autism is still very inaccessible for so many people and so within the community self-diagnosis is seen as valid - side note.
I received this diagnosis, and it turned my whole life - that sounds so hyperbolic, but it really did turn so much upside down for me in a really wonderful way in the end. It was like two months where I was going through this… it was essentially going through like two months of intense, constant life processing. Like a reel of my life going through my head and just starting to see everything that I'd been through in childhood, school, professional situations, friendships, relationships… - I don't know, it was almost like a missing puzzle piece came into the picture and I started to be able to have more compassion for myself like where I hadn't been able to before because I just didn't understand why I had been a certain way and why certain things were so challenging.
Speaking specifically about the professional context: I had for years just been spending so much - like 99 % of my time - just focused on succeeding in tasks that were were kind of basic you know just just trying to do things that other people could do quite easily from my perspective, that just shouldn't have been hard. Like paying attention in meetings, like understanding flow of conversation when there's just a ton of different people speaking, like being able to task switch super fast… Being able to, you know, go on a work trip and you know not come home and be like exhausted and sick and need to not speak to people for weeks afterwards.
No, I just like didn't understand why I had these struggles. When I got the diagnosis I started to see how I had just neglected myself so much. I was just so focused on the struggles like to the point where I was like obsessively watching these YouTube videos on like productivity and like workplace effectiveness, like “how to get things done”, how to structure days, and like systems of organization. I was like, “if I just figure this out then I will succeed”. I was just, I think I was just filled with so much self-loathing because there's just like some things that I couldn't figure out.
Maybe even more importantly the diagnosis helped me see that I was neglecting so much the areas that were strengths. Namely, getting very very deep into topics that I care about, working uninterrupted - you know for hours, sometimes like you know 10 plus hours, like just getting like super fixated and really like really solving a problem - and for me like the the way that I did that was through art and through visual translation.
I had just sort of like pushed that all to the back burner in favor of trying to get better at the things that I was just really bad at. Then when I got this diagnosis I was like, “oh my gosh I can stop! I can stop doing that, and I can start to like build in more of the pieces that I love. And that's a really kind thing to do to myself.
That all happened around the time of the Reseed episode…
I mentioned to you in the email I wanted to like not just drop this on you. Sharing this diagnosis with people … it can be quite triggering, you know people like have a lot of opinions, especially when you've been like masking certain things about yourself for your whole life. They're like no no you're not that. So I wanted to just let you know ahead of time, “like Alice Irene I might talk about this”.
And you told me something really interesting about yourself. You didn't tell me much, but you said that you also had a recent experience with neurodiversity, and I wondered if you want to share.
AI: I'd love to share and it really isn't something I haven’t talked about a lot but I'm getting more comfortable with it, I think. Everything you said there resonates with me so much and I think that's the beauty of a diagnosis and being able to talk about it. It’s not being alone. That sounds so much like my experience and what you said there is so liberating to look back at your life and process it, and then say like, “I can stop doing that” and, “there's a reason why - it's not just that I'm bad. There's a reason”.
So yeah, I um in the last year and a half I also was diagnosed as neurodivergent and I have severe that's in quotes, that was the actual word, severe, ADHD which has so many similarities to what you were just describing, and what you were saying earlier before we started recording. Like, there’s just the labels, and everything are so complex and can be problematic. Like the, you know, even the word “disorder” in there versus, like, you're framing it like there's so many strengths and often it's not a deficiency in attention, it's actually like an extreme hyper attention and extreme focus on whatever the thing I'm interested in.
R: It’s so extreme.
AI: So extreme, yeah, and then you realize you're like, “oh other people are not this extreme, it's just this obsessed. And it can be for years and it can be like a food, like it can be a food that I eat every single day, or twice a day for multiple weeks and then I just don't eat it ever again, you know.
That's a small example, but for me the ways that it's really, well, first I'll say it was really shocking to me, and like you were saying how people are like, “no no no you don't have that”, I've experienced that a lot, and experienced it myself. My therapist a couple of times said,
“well, that sounds like ADHD”, and I kind of laughed like, “oh good one”, you know. And then after she said it a few times and I started exploring it, looking it up I was absolutely shocked.
I had, first of all, no knowledge at all about ADHD. I think I just have pop culture references, which kind of talk about it negatively and yeah referring to hyperactive boys.
R: yeah, same with autism.
AI: Yeah, like, it's just a complete, like, I just had no idea anything about it. Completely ignorant to it. As I started reading it was both kind of earth shattering, but also so liberating to be lik, “this is me”, like, “this is me”. And for me it's with the masking - Like I'm extremely productive and “successful”, and have really thrived in school and work environments… But to the great detriment of myself and like a lot of inner chaos. Like chaos at home, chaos in my finances, or anything administrative, like benefits and taxes, like all of those things I really have the hardest time with…
Even just knowing that it's a real thing and being able to be ask for help with this, or [just recognize] that I need to really focus on it, spend a lot of time with it, that this is hard for me - this has been really helpful. But yeah, there's just a lot of chaos and also a lot of perfectionism has been one of my ways to deal with it.
Then learning about like extreme sensitivity and extreme rejection sensitivity that people with ADHD, and maybe autism, I'm not sure, could experience. It’s almost as like a physical pain. If anyone had said the slightest thing when I was a child I remember just like burying my head and crying into my desk so much. And being so sad if someone on the street says, like, you know, ‘move your bike!” or whatever, like crying and thinking about it for days.
You know, like just extreme rejection.
R: I just have to share that the other day … we just moved to this new house and I've been trying to find some things on Facebook Marketplace - great place to find secondhand things - and I messaged this guy about a desk. I asked him if he would take less money for it and offered a price. He just wrote back like one word it was just like “no”, period. I was with my husband and I was so crushed by this guy. I was like, he said… no. ..? And then I was destroyed. So I relate to that so much.
And now I can look at it and have more of a sense of humor about it and be like, “okay it's because, you know you have this tendency”.
AI: but yeah it can be really perplexing if you get crushed by someone on the street or someone on Facebook Marketplace and you don't understand like why this is affecting you so much, right, and being able to say like, “oh it's not that I'm bad or wrong, or should feel shame”, it's like, “Oh I'm a very sensitive person”.
And with that - there's so many beautiful strengths that we undervalue in our society like having such an open heart and sensitivity to the world - you're so connected to it - an the ability to hyper focus and do an incredible amount of on something you care about, that we care about, and being able to like see connections all over.
Like even with these podcasts, you know, being able to understand and see and feel connections in a different way than most people can I think are such beautiful gifts. Being able to like celebrate that and lean into it and like I love how you said like, “Oh I can I can stop trying to be this other person that completely conforms into this ideal of what it is to be a human being and instead lean into these other ones…. And find the people that that appeals to.
So it's been very liberating.
R: Sorry, not to throw economic terminology in there, but there's such an opportunity cost that I found, if you have the luxury to stop doing some of that. Like if you don't have to show up in a certain kind of way - which of course is a great privilege - then you can start to to focus on those other things.
I feel like those of us who have that privilege and have the ability to speak about these things without our well-being being threatened… I don't know if I feel a sense of responsibility to share about this because I think about how many people don't have the ability to maybe come out about whatever they might have going on in their brain, in their workplace or you know in their life.Right, I do think that we need to start normalizing this so so people can bring their strengths out in our society it is such a loss if you think about it. Like what you just said, if you think about how many people are maybe burying their gifts, their strengths, their sensitivities because they don't feel safe to to be that way or they don't feel like it's acceptable…it's very sad for the world.
AI: absolutely it makes me sad too, all of these people struggling to, I don't know be passable at some regular tasks -
R: yeah, exactly like spending all my life like years like trying to like be better at emailing like what a life.
AI: oh my gosh Rebeka, the chaos. If you could see it, it's just chaos over here, like emails, portals. My husband and I always laugh, it's anything with a portal. Like the second that something has a portal with a login I'm literally learning it for the first time and lost and angry. Like, where is it! … I just really struggle with those things…
R: the portals are bad, yeah the portals and the passwords.
AI: yeah oh gosh.
R: anyways, I'm so grateful for you sharing. So have you seen a big shift in your life?
AI: I really have. I think it's so liberating. I just feel like a liberated person in a lot of ways from it. I really did find it out at the same time as the podcast ….yeah it was at the beginning and really alongside it. And now I’ve just released Episode 34. Through that whole time I’ve been processing this. It really for me was like, “oh this is where I thrive”. Like I'm thriving in this thing because I'm able to enter into deep conversation with people that's not small talk, but it is very real conversation one-on-one. I thought I might be nervous because I'm quote introverted, but I'm like, no, actually I just like to relate in this this way versus in - like to your point - a group of people where it's overwhelming.
So I found that the deep conversation appealed to me and the connections being like, “Oh there's a connection between this poet and this Justice Advocate and this farmer”. For me, the podcast and ADHD, like seeing those connections, were really interconnected. It made me sort of - as I was processing the diagnosis - see where my strengths lied. And I just learned more about it, so they really are interconnected for me. As is finding my voice and being able to be honest about it, although I've never spoken about it like this. I've ever really probably to anyone actually, Rebeka,like I've spoken about it, in sort of passing, on the podcast, but never talked about it like this.
So it's new for me.
R: I'm so honored, thank you for being willing to share and what a surprise that this podcast has all this as a central piece. And not surprising at all if think about how it affected my life and now hearing from you.
I'm really glad that we're able to talk about this.
AI: me too and thanks for creating the space for it. And it is so interconnected with art and that way of thinking. It is important to me to talk about it too. It just occurs to me because my children - I have three kids, as you know - and I imagine at least one or two of them, from what I can tell, also have ADHD and it is neurodivergent. And it is genetic, so for me being able to talk about it in positive ways and also acknowledge the hard parts of it. To give them tools, and being able to name it, and being able to celebrate the super powers of it as we talk about it so that they have that experience growing up is really important to me.
R: They're so lucky to have you, and your kids are full of superpowers. They really are the coolest people.
AI: Actually when I opened my computer for this conversation, today the photo on my wallpaper is at your wedding. Your beautiful ethereal magical wedding. It's the five of us all with like sparkles on our faces and wings and it's just all very magical. So that's on my computer.
R: It was so nice to have you there especially because we didn't know each other that well at that point. I just had this feeling. For those of you listening, Alice Irene and I met through one of our mutual really good friends, and I just had a sense that we needed to have you there and your family there.
AI: oh I'm so glad, it was so special. I wish I could repeat it.
R: Let's do it again! I wonder if I can connect this conversation about neurodiversity and especially what you're talking about in terms of this sensitivity that you feel like you have, that you go through the world with, and connect that back to your focus on this culture of care that you're committed to in all the different kinds of work that you do. You mentioned something at the beginning that I had to write down because there was something about it that I wanted to dig deeper into: this idea that taking care is greater than knowing what happens and I'm so captivated because I think that a lot of us can fall into this trap of fixating on trying to know “what happens”. And when things don't look so good, when we when we start to feel like oh what is going to happen is potentially not good, it can be an entrapment of sorts and it can be hard to get out of that place. I think that your podcast on climate grief with Tamara got into that a little bit, and I wonder if you can talk about how you came to be someone who focuses on creating this culture of care over being fixated on knowing where it is that we're actually going as a society, as a world?
AI: Such a good question and one of my Essential questions I think for me and my life, at least right now. I think there are a couple of reasons or origins for it. One is like, I'm so deeply feeling and empathetic, as are so many people, and that's been my entire life to the point that something like seeing a bird die when I was a kid or reading something on the news like can just stick with me. Like it can break my heart like so physically and so overwhelmingly and for such a long period of time. So that way of relating to the world and to relating it to it at this moment of such peril and heartbreak is really just how I am. You know, like that's just how I am and have always been. That's really hard and I like to think it's there for a reason, though, which is feeling that care and experiencing it.
Another part for me is motherhood. In becoming a mother and really seeing myself as a caretaker. In feeling like that is my greatest bliss, really, is mothering them and being a caretaker. Being able to name that as part of who I am, which I wouldn't have been able to do before, that infinite Universe-wide love that I experienced when they were born and everyday since… That has really helped me with my identity around being a caretaker.
And I think the last one is that I really struggle to take care of myself and have always struggled to take care of myself. I've often chosen doing a lot of the things that I believe in or caring for others over caring for myself. It's something I'm really consciously trying to teach myself but it's very messy and very imperfect, that journey.
But I know to be the caretaker that I want to be for my Earth, for our Earth, for my children … until I've learned to do it for myself…. That's part of my ongoing struggle and journey. I think the part of experiencing care as a process rather than like a tactic to reach some beautiful product or like end point where the world is safe and climate change has been reversed and biodiversity is flourishing… I like that vision and that's what I want, that's what I imagine.
I think it's so easy to be like, “oh well it's too late”, or “it won't result in that anyways”, or “I'm one person”.
To be thinking more about what will the impact be or what will the end result be can we even fix it anyways…to me, through writing my book, the podcast, and just my own personal journey the last few years, it's become less important and it's better for me to think it doesn't matter what happens. Of course it does matter, but it's out of my control. We are human beings and we love to take care of things, that's what we do… like the way a bird flies and a frog hops, we take care of each other. We take care of our children, we take care of our gardens and soil and nature. That is in us through and through, and embracing that process and that part of ourselves to me is more empowering than saying, “oh but what's the point of it anyways” or “we can't actually do this”. And I don't think any of us know what will happen so why focus on that versus this act of taking care.
R: Do you see care taking care as an art form? I'm also curious how you see mothering, if you see any art or creative component to being a mother? We haven't talked about this much yet, but you are an artist, you're a writer. I mean people can hear from from how you speak… You're so poetic in how you speak. That translates in your writing. And I know you've been a dancer and I think that gardening is also a form of art. And I'm sure that you do so many other things. I know that you're very passionate about textiles and fashion as well. So I wonder if you can speak to like how art permeates this philosophy that you have of care.
AI: Art is so embedded in it and for me they all reside within me because, like all humans, I'm many things. Going back to my entire life, looking back, I've always been torn between art and activism. I thought I had to choose and my identity at different times in my life has been all one or the other. I remember in high school we did a career studies class and you had to draw what you would be one day. I literally drew a diagonal line across it - I'm not a visual artist by the way so you can picture like a very clumsy drawing - but on one side was me dancing on a stage with a spotlight which at my that time was my expression of art. Then on the other side was me volunteering and helping children, which again at that time was my expression of what Justice and and activism looks like.
I was literally on two different paths. Then I started to try and knit them together. I was training to be a professional dancer, dance was my everything, my identity all of my time. But I would to host an art & dance show where the proceeds would go to a cause I cared about…So trying to find concrete way to connect them, like art for activism, I think was the name of it in University. You know, so starting to try and knit them together. Then I left dance and was all activism and and justice and gender equality.
Through time I’ve rekindled that artist identity. Now I'm like, oh they just all coexist in me and they're all expressions of me. I would create art, doesn't matter if it was basket weaving or ceramics or painting or music, or wanting to play cello, like I'm just such an artist. The medium has changed, but for me writing and poetry is really a through line and the one that has captured my heart that I want to do for my whole life.
It's funny even looking back. I had a dance company or dance brand I guess for myself and it was called ink on paper. My main dance works were about women writers so even then in dance it was about writing. So it's what I found.
And moving to the woods here really happened at the same time that I said, “I am a writer”, like a capital W writer, and embraced it more wholeheartedly.
R: How wonderful. That diagonal line on your piece of paper, it was really just like a needle with thread.
AI: Oh Rebeka, I love that.
R: I relate so much to what you're saying too. I haven't been an artist - capital A artist - in my life either. I think only in the last couple years maybe have I started to even feel like I could possibly identify that way. When I was younger art was what flowed and art was my way of being, but then I think I fell into maybe like a similar trap as you. Feeling like, “oh if I want to affect change in the world I have to do something quote unquote serious”. I think i shared about this on your podcast. I just didn't have anyone saying that it's possible to create your own reality like with your tools focusing on what you want.
Luckily like over time we've managed to find out that very much is possible so I'm looking forward to seeing how you continue to to weave those together no doubt it's a constant evolution and your kids are going to benefit from your perspectives too. I'm so curious to see what they start to do with their lives as they get older.
AI: oh me too. And art really is part of motherhood for me and creativity and it's such an opportunity to like break old cycles and start new ones and create and lead. Motherhood is just so rich and powerful and so much stronger than the picture of it that we have been sold. You know, as this nice soft thing or a Naggy thing or whatever it is.
It really is such an opportunity to remake the world.
R: that gives me so much hope hearing that. I've been on such an adventure trying to understand what motherhood is and what it might be as I go into this some phase of life in the next few months. It's wonderful to have so many wonderful mother Role Models around, yourself included, Alice Irene.
R: I wonder if I can just ask a couple more questions, maybe like a little more rapid fire. The first one is: what else are you working on right now? You mentioned the book. I wonder if you want to share more about that and if there's any other project that you're passionate about?
AI: I would love to. My book is my other baby. I'm so blessed to have a a book deal and that it will be coming out next fall. Fall 2024. I am just so excited and it's something I've been working on forever. To have it be real is almost surreal. I'm yeah really excited about it. So the book is called Homing, and it's about a lot of the things we're talking about. It’s an environmental memoir of me leaving an exhausting life in the city where I was commuting literally hours a day and just sort of racked with eating disorder and perfectionism and overwork. About deciding - like we're talking about care - to change how I'm living, where I'm living, and move to a cabin in the woods. Then of course finding that all of those struggles come with me, and how I can untangle them and really strip out perfectionism out of my life. How to find that care for myself, but also for the Earth and for a community. So it's really about finding home in our own bodies, finding home in a geography where we are with the people with whom we share a community, and finding home as part of the earth. Not apart of it, but a part of it if you know what I mean. And being really a part of the ecology in the earth that we're living in.
It has lots of bird research in there.Obviously such beautiful creatures who home and find ways - you know just the most Herculean efforts - to find their way around the planet and find home. So they're really a part of the story as well.
R: oh I can't wait and we'll have to have you back on the podcast when the book comes out. As a final question, I've been asking everyone to share three pieces of art or artists that have shaped how you see the world. I thought that since this is sort of that you and I are interviewing each other of sorts in this episode, that we could each share like one at a time.
AI: I love that.
R: oh if you don't feel like it's too much of a game show.
AI: no no I love it, oh this is the game show part of the podcast, good.
R: I can start because you spoke of the birds. So one for me is this artist who I think I'm going to get to interview. His name's Chris Jordan, and when I was in college I saw this incredible work that he did oh gosh, it's so grim it's actually not really like in line with our our theme today, but he did this portrait series of albatross carcasses on Midway atoll in the middle of the ocean. These carcasses were filled with plastic. This was the first time that I connected how what we do with our trash can have an impact that is wide-reaching. So that is that is one for me.
AI: Hmm beautiful and that's so “what art can do” versus like a thousand articles about plastic…. So I will stick with birds. For me, it's Drew Lanham the poet and ornithologist. He has a book called Sparrow Envy. It’s a collection of poetry that has just moved me to my core. I wish I had a passage to read from it. but yeah Drew Lanham is one of mine for sure.
R: Another one for me is this Argentinian artist named Tomas Saraceno. I was in New York last year and I had a chance to see an exhibit that he had there on spiders and spider relationships. There were two really cool parts to it. One where you could be a spider and you got to climb up on this really tall web and lay in the pitch black and just feel vibrations through the web which was incredible. Getting to step into the spider experience. Another piece of that exhibit was seeing these intricate webs that spiders created in these Plexiglas boxes. They were interwoven webs made by solitary and community-based spiders - so there’s like some spiders that prefer to create by themselves and others that create in community. You could see these cool interlinkages between them.
AI: just like humans.
R: It's just like humans. Okay my solitary spider.
AI: The next one for me is again a poet, but I will introduce a woman.Her name is Doireann Ní Ghríofa. I hope I've said it correctly. She's an Irish poet and she has this stunning book. It's not poetry, it's more Memoir, and it's called a Ghost in the Throat. She talks about motherhood and being a writer, but in a way that is like no writing I've ever experienced. I just saw
myself in it and also was really inspired by it. She talks about writing in the book like in the car while picking up her kids for five minutes or going through her head as she's scraping cold oatmeal into the garbage. It's just such a different expression of what being a writer and an artist means versus the archetype we have in our heads about what a writer looks like. Her writing is absolutely stunning so she's one for me.
R: When you said “ghost” you me think of a woman creator, but I can't remember her name so put it in the show notes. A documentary filmmaker who made a movie called The Ghost in Our Machine about animals within different parts of human society. About how we utilize animals for food, fashion, science, and one more space that's not coming to me right now. But the way that this film was powerful was that it created these intense deep connections with animal individuals within these spaces where we see animals as a mass. You know, a faceless mass of creatures. But by connecting with specific individuals working in these sectors there was this shift that happened for me where I started to interact differently with how I consumed animal products.
AI: wow I love how animals have come up so much in this. They’re a big part of our relationship with this Earth.
R: We need to deepen our relationships with animals too. I don't think we talk about it enough.
AI: I agree, it's such a human part of who we are 0 connecting with animals. We've really forgotten. I think we found a way to do it with pets in a very public way, but not the other animals. My third one would be Tamara Lindman, who you brought up from The Weather Station. Her album Ignorance about climate change and other things was for me one that I played on repeat, which just has completely affected me. To me it’s an expression of what climate art can look like without being completely, “this is climate art”, you know. What I mean is that it appeals to me with many sensibilities. I just love it. I also saw her live perform it and it was one of my first like mid-covid/post-covid in-person experiences with just a room of people moving to music. I remember at one point just wanting to like weep with the beauty of being with people with this music. It's one I can listen to every single day. So Tamara Lindeman of the Weather Station.
R: Thank you Alice Irene. You'll remember that experience forever, no doubt.
AI: Absolutely. And I was a solitary spider there. I went by myself, but surrounded by community spiders.
R: Haha, co-creating. Oh, beautiful. You've given me so much to think about and this has been such a gift. I can't wait to share this. I'm so grateful that the first episode going live will be this conversation with you. I'm looking forward to future collaborations with you.
AI: I'm so honored Rebeka. Thanks for welcoming me in and creating this. I can't wait to listen to them. This is actually my first podcast interview on the other side so thanks for creating that space for me.
R: You’re such a pro, I wouldn't have guessed! The first of many. Thanks so much Alice Irene.
AI: Thanks Rebeka, take care.
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That is it for the first episode of The Heart Gallery. Thank you for sharing this space and time with us. Please do also look up the accompanying blog post where I share some of my and Alice Irene’s milestone creations - see a link to that in the show notes.
I hope you will be back for the coming episodes with some very special guests. If you have any ideas for who I else could converse with here please do get in touch at hello@the-heart-gallery.org. I also welcome any other thoughts about the podcast there, you can also find me @rebekaryvola. It would be lovely to your support in the form of podcast subscribing wherever you listen, rating, commenting, and sharing with others.
Thank you also goes to Samuel Cunningham for the podcast editing and to Cosmo Sheldrake for the podcast music. I encourage you to go listen to the whole song, it’s called Pelicans We.
Until next time!
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