BONUS: Launch Party + Grace Johnson

BONUS :Launch Party + Grace Johnson

Tiffany: I'm your host, Tiffany Sauder. And this is Scared Confident.

Tiffany: One of my major goals with this project of Scared Confident is to give language to fear and words are not the only way that we communicate. It's the way that I know how to communicate, but we also communicate so vividly through picture. As I thought about that concept, I thought, well, what if I would.

Get an artist partner to help me create a visual picture to fear. So I reached out to Grace Johnson. She worked at element three as a designer for many years, and we had a really special relationship when she worked here. And I asked her at the very beginning of this project, well, you listened to my fear interview and paint.

Make what you feel. And I gave her no guidance. I don't care what the medium is. I don't care what the colors are. I don't care anything. I want you to literally make what you feel. This isn't about me being the customer of this artwork. This is about you interpreting what it is that you've experienced.

And I'm so excited for you guys to be able to see that if you go to the scare confident Instagram page, you'll see this artwork and an artist statement of grace explaining what it is that she made and saw and felt. And I'm hopeful that this journey will help us all give more language to fear. Both the words as I speak them, the words as I bring people on and have them audibly speak to fear.

And as we use the talents of others to bring different pictures, different language to fear. So here's Grace.

Grace: Tiffany asked me to like, listen to the episode. It's like, I'm not fear. And, uh, Nathaniel, that was like an amazing. You know, process to go through and conduct that. Um, and so yeah, this image, I guess, in part like it did come to mind from listening to that, but it sort of was rooted in a conversation that Tiffany and I had years ago about like, we all are like these amazing beings, but we all have these kind of rings of fear.

So if you come up and look at the painting, you'll notice like there's a center point on all these circles and. To be honest, it's not like anything mindblowing, but just like going through the exercise of doing this. Um, it reminded me of that conversation and how TIFF was talking about like, as we grow through life and we make connections, like we each have to step through these kind of rings of fear that like grow us and expand us.

And it's like beautiful. But I think it's also easy to get like interconnected with everyone and. You know, in ways you're supported by people. And so that's where like visually these rings are kind of interconnected and layered. And then in Tiff's, um, interview or, or first episode, she kind of talked about this need to like go on a journey and how this journey would be like, kind of terrifying and make her maybe feel alone.

But in like on the flip side of that, Uh, bring peace. And so that's kind of this circle or ring thing going on over here. And like, just in the composition, um, you have this left side, but it's like really heavy. And I think then this right side, that's like, there's a lot of air and breathing room. And so like for me not to get too heady and deep, but that like represents kind of the duality of like life and, you know, it's like, Maybe that's a big city and this is like a rural community, or it could mean so many things, but the idea of like, kind of breaking away from the mass and going on your own and like, you know, again, it's just like visual stuff, but like who knows what the rings of fear and colors and things that you'll encounter and kind of break through that, build who you are.

So. Yeah, that was really like the idea of behind this painting. Like TIFF said, this is like a big stretch for me. I'm a, I'm a designer. So I'm usually like working on the computer. So, um, just the process of like painting is like therapeutic for me. And so I would just encourage anyone. Like if you listened to the episode and you feel a feeling like.

To just like document it in some way and express yourself. Like, I think, like TIFF said, visual language is very as important as verbal language. So. Thank you.

Tiffany: love it. If you'd help us on our journey to reach 100,000 people this year with a secure, confident message. Take your favorite episode and share it with us.

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