Common Shapes

*/ ?>

Latest Episodes:

Storytelling as a Throughline with Tamara Santibañez Jun 14, 2023

Show notes

This week on Common Shapes podcast, I’m sharing the mic with my friend Tamara Santibañez for a conversation about oral histories, tattooing, freelancing, and art as activism.

Tamara is an interdisciplinary artist and oral historian living and working in Brooklyn. Their work is rooted in storytelling and the visual language of identity construction, exploring subcultural semiotics and the meanings we make from bodily adornment.

Tune in to hear us discuss—

Tamara’s studio practice
Oral histories & oral traditions
Tattooing as liberation work
How to balance many projects as a freelancer
Making time for movement work
Coalitions & political responsibility
The different feelings/functions/forms of Instagram vs Substack

Links—

Visit Tamara’s website
Follow Tamara on Instagram
Subscribe to Tamara’s Substack
Get Tamara’s book, Could This Be Magic? Tattooing as Liberation Work
Get the Creative Ideation Portal
Sign up for my weekly newsletter
Find all these links & more at codycookparrott.com/commonshapes

If you'd like to support the show, please send it to a friend, leave a 5-star rating & review, and download the Creative Ideation Portal.

Finding the Pace of Our Work Jun 07, 2023

Show notes

This week on Common Shapes, I share four practices for checking in with your creative pace — internal seasons, intuitive sharing, weather systems, and the earning pathway.
This episode feels like an updated version of How to Not Always Be Working, and I hope it serves your practice, your pace, and your deepest alignment.
Listen in to learn—

Why lists are how I orient myself in my life
How to identify & live by your internal seasons
What it means to share intuitively
How to cultivate your earning pathway
Why it’s so important to find your own pace

After you listen, go get my free Creative Ideation Portal, and join me in making our art and pacing ourselves.

Links

Get the Creative Ideation Portal
Sign up for my weekly newsletter
Take my class, Organizing A Day
Find all these links & more at codycookparrott.com/commonshapes

If you'd like to support the show, please send it to a friend, leave a 5-star rating & review, and download the Creative Ideation Portal.

Our Work is a Web with Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo May 31, 2023

Show notes

This week I’m welcoming Common Shapes’ very first guest, Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo.

Lukaza (they/them/Lukaza) an artist, abolitionist, educator, storyteller, cultural worker and person of multitudes. Through a practice based in the printed multiple, community-based work and installation building, they invite the viewer to recall and share their own lived narratives, offering power and weight to the creation of a larger dialogue around the telling of B.I.Q.T.P.O.C. (Black, Indigenous, queer, trans, people of color) stories.

Listen in to hear us discuss—

The web shape for creative work
How to craft a studio practice
Claiming our work as our main income stream
How to weave your values and your activism into your sharing practices
The radical history of newsletters

Links

Get the Creative Ideation Portal
Sign up for my weekly newsletter
Find all these links & more at codycookparrott.com/commonshapes

More from Lukaza

If you'd like to support the show, please send it to a friend, leave a 5-star rating & review, and download the Creative Ideation Portal.

Art as Service May 24, 2023

Show notes

This week’s episode of Common Shapes is about the fact (yes, it’s a fact) that your art is of service, no matter what you create.

I also share my four containers for connecting with the why behind your work. And I offer many, many ideas for how to market your art in creative, fun, meaningful ways.

Listen in to learn—

Why all art is of service
How to figure out who your art is for
My favorite creative marketing practices
Practices for visioning our work in the world
A spell for hitting send

After you listen, go get my free Creative Ideation Portal, and join me in sharing your work with the world!

Links

Get the Creative Ideation Portal
Sign up for my weekly newsletter
Take my Newsletter class
Sam Slupski’s I LOVE TO FAIL
Find all these links & more at codycookparrott.com/commonshapes

If you'd like to support the show, please send it to a friend, leave a 5-star rating & review, and download the Creative Ideation Portal.

The Art of Newsletters May 24, 2023

Show notes

Today’s episode of Common Shapes is about why I love newsletters and why you (yes, you) should have one.

Together we’ll explore the marketing side and the creative side of newsletters. I’ll also share—

My journey starting my newsletter
How to choose your email service provider
The newsletter tech I recommend
What to put in your newsletter
Examples from my favorite newsletters
How to decide if your newsletter should be paid or free

After you listen, go get my free Creative Ideation Portal, and get ready to hit send on your first (or next) newsletter today.

Links

Get the Creative Ideation Portal
Sign up for my weekly newsletter
Take my Newsletter class
Click here to get 50% off your first year of Flodesk
Newsletters I mentioned in this episode: Fariha Roisin’s Substack How to Cure a Ghost, Liz Migliorelli’s Sister Spinster newsletter, Kevin Morby’s Substack
Off the Grid episode, “To Substack or Not to Substack”
Find all these links & more at codycookparrott.com/commonshapes

If you'd like to support the show, please send it to a friend, leave a 5-star rating & review, and download the Creative Ideation Portal.

Creating Creative Containers May 17, 2023

Show notes

Today’s episode of Common Shapes is about creating creative containers for our work and convening the spiritual committees that help us make and share our art.

Tune in to hear me share—

The many shapes my work has taken
How I select and gather my spiritual committee for each creative project
Why you need an email list
All kinds of containers your work can take
The importance of being in community with other artists

Then grab my free Creative Ideation Portal and start gathering your committee and outlining your first project today.

Links

Get the Creative Ideation Portal
Sign up for my weekly newsletter
Take my Newsletter class
Teachers I shared: Bear Hebert of Marketing for Weirdos & Amelia Hruby of Off the Grid
Find all these links & more at codycookparrott.com/commonshapes

If you'd like to support the show, please send it to a friend, leave a 5-star rating & review, and download the Creative Ideation Portal.

Making a Beginning May 17, 2023

Show notes

Welcome to Common Shapes! This week’s episode is about the art of beginning AKA the moment just before the sunrise of our projects when anything and everything is possible.

Tune in to hear me share—

Stories of my many creative beginnings
My favorite visioning process
Reflections on imposter syndrome
The magic of starting small

Then grab my free Creative Ideation Portal and start dreaming up your own beginnings today.

Links

Get the Creative Ideation Portal
Sign up for my weekly newsletter
Sign up for my class, The Art of Beginning
Take my Newsletter class
Find all these links & more at codycookparrott.com/commonshapes

If you'd like to support the show, please send it to a friend, leave a 5-star rating & review, and download the Creative Ideation Portal.

Welcome to Common Shapes May 08, 2023

Show notes

Welcome to Common Shapes, a podcast about practices, systems and rituals for creative life.
It’s hosted by me, Cody Cook-Parrott.
And on this show, I talk about crafting business ecosystems that are in alignment with our values, marketing as a creative practice, and crossing the bridge between artist and small business owner.
Tune in to the first four episodes for my Creative Ideation Portal guide, and then stay tuned for conversations with artists, writers and thinkers I’m grateful to be in community with.
Whether you’re dreaming up a book, a newsletter, a thoughtful text to a friend, an online class, a podcast, a collection of beautiful paintings in an art gallery, a membership site, a dog walking service, or anything else — Common Shapes is here to support you on your path to creation and to service. Subscribe to join us.

Links