Feed Your Creative Soul
a series to spark curiosity, part one
2025 came out swinging, and it feels like everyone could use a big hug these days, or at the very least, some snacks. I hope this series feels like a graze board for your soul. Ha! Get the Chicken Soup people on the phone.
Although it can be a difficult season, winter is one of my favorite times to nurture creativity and to use the space to poke at ideas and see what’s there. Last year, we did a series called Creative Practices for the Winter Doldrums—if you want to explore a life of play and creating instead of consuming, that’s a great place to start. (Also! There is a ridiculous story about me hoarding my hair, which will carry you through the darkest of days.)
As I thought about what I wanted to do this year, I decided to turn to one of my trusted creative practices: When I need a boost, I hang out with interesting people doing interesting things.
We have a strange and romantic notion that artists are lone rangers, conjuring brilliance alone in their caves. I’ve found just the opposite. Although we need solitude to create, we also need people, especially when we are disenchanted with the world.
And so, I’d like to introduce you to some of my pals who are following their curiosity. I sat and asked them all the same simple questions, and I loved what it sparked in me.
Something bigger stirring in you? Working 1-on-1 with people is one of my favorite parts of life, and I just opened a limited amount of Creative Coaching and Spiritual Direction slots. For more info, message me: jackie@jackieknapp.com
Introducing the ever so delightful, ever so quirky…Hope and Peter Lundblad.
I met these two while working on an art show for The Red Dress Project and immediately sensed they were kindreds. They reside between France and San Francisco, have recently begun an endeavor called The Poetry Factory, and dream of hosting artists in beautiful spaces.
How would you describe your creative work?
Hope: Contrary to photo evidence, I am not a professional trombonist, but my work is multidisciplinary—I began with photography, which led to painting, storytelling, portraiture, and poetry. I’m interested in documenting a global history of home and believe hospitality is the highest form of art.
Find Hope on Instagram or Substack:
Peter: I started with filmmaking by shooting YouTube comedy sketches with my best friend. It was a two-person studio, so we both had to act, direct, and do the laugh tracks. Then, I went into photography. I love music and the culinary arts, and my day job is graphic design, so I suppose I’m multidisciplinary, too.
Find Peter on Instagram or at Lundblad Studios or PCL
What is something you are curious about right now?
Peter: Fermentation! I've been interested in sourdough and Kefir for a long time and recently started reading up on winemaking, so I just made my first batch of sparkling cherry wine.
What about fermentation interests you? So many puns, so little time. Let me percolate on that—I think it activates both the scientist and artist in me. I realized I enjoy many fermented things—cheese, bread, wine, vinegar, and even chocolate. Working with other organisms to make something with interdependence instead of individuality is fascinating. I set up the environment, but the microbes and the yeast must do the work, which is the ultimate collaboration.
I also love that one of the primary ingredients is time, which slows me down and gives the process more intention. Hope says, “It's an edible sculpture of time.”
Jackie: Percolate on that, people.
Hope: I've been curious about my mind and how I perceive the world. I just turned 30, and this season has been transient and disorienting in one way but also vibrant and clearing the ground for something new.
Any practices you're trying on? I’m trying to slow down and pay attention, to sit with something for a few minutes, even if it’s a simple container right in front of me. The poetry is right here in the room, but it’s quite hard to remember that. The phrase is pay attention, which means there’s a cost. Your payment of attention is costing you, costing productivity the world is demanding. But when we pay attention, we're paying it to the present moment, not the past or the future. And that presence opens portals into wonder.
Jackie: I am here for portals of wonder.
When you're feeling stuck or uninspired, what's one of the first things you try to reignite interest in your creativity or the world?
Hope: Switch it up: I love shifting between mediums. I was writing many poems at one point, and words were healing. And then suddenly that wasn’t working, and I needed to move to painting and color. I had to accept that I wasn't trained as a painter and reckon with the narrative that “I'm a bad drawer.” It was a reframing and letting myself explore the childlikeness in trying.
Release the pressure to produce: We can’t always create a product or a good. Sometimes, I’ll decide to bake cookies or walk on the beach and make a sculpture out of stones no one else will see. This is my creative practice for the day and frees me from the mentality of needing to have something printed and framed by the end of every day.
Peter: Get outside into open space and move: Going out for a run became important when working a stressful full-time design job. Burnout or stress can feel like an enclosure, and I need the open space to free my brain and help me reset.
Ponder a plant: I've started walking out to the garden, looking at the plants—the designer in the wild. There's an innate pleasure in caring for another organism. Even if it doesn't need anything, it gets the attention off of myself onto something else.
I’ve also been thinking about dormancy. Even if the branches are bare, there are still beautiful things happening. They're not just out there cranking out fruit 24-7. Constant productivity is not how the earth works. Sometimes, it’s best to set a project down for the night and wake up with a fresh mind. We have to be okay with our limits.
One of my favorite questions is, “What is one failure you are risking right now?” It started with this musing last year. I know you've stepped into a massive season of risk. What’s that been like?
Hope: We're in a season of going for it. We've moved to France, and every day is a risk: what does it look like to get our visas, learn this culture, and belong? While looking into moving, we sat in our dark, moldy, way too-expensive apartment in San Francisco, eating nachos by candlelight. Romantic, right? We looked at each other and said, “Do we go for it, or do we get stability underneath us before making a bigger decision?”
The question morphed from, “What if we do it?” to “What if we don't?” That question shifted everything, and it became clear that it wouldn’t be a failure if we tried and had to return. Commitment is hard in this day and age, especially for our generation. But when you do choose to commit, there's a root that sets down. You're planting a seed into the soil.
For me, the failure would have been letting the seeds get moldy in the storage space. And they might die in the ground, but at least I planted them. We’ve given ourselves permission to fail. If the dream changes and morphs, then that's not a failure. It's a growth into who we are becoming. The failure would be not to try.
I think of Joan of Arc, who boldly stepped out in faith. It’s not that she didn’t have fear, but I read this article by
about how fear was her tailwind rather than her forewind—I loved that. I suppose we're riding through France in a Joan of Arc season. The fear is there, but it's pushing us forward rather than holding us back.Peter: Living in a new country is tricky. I speak child French because that's what I can speak right now and that’s hard. Petit, petit, little by little—I say that every day.
Sometimes, I think about my buddies here in SF who are in a similar life stage, and it's tempting to believe that if I had stayed back, I would be a creative director or have a fancy title by now. But I talk to those people and realize they're thinking, “What if we did what you're doing?” The grass is always greener, isn’t it?
Also, having a community is essential in seasons of risk because you have couches to sleep on when you need them, which we sometimes do these days. But taking risks inspires others to do the same, and we can provide those couches for others needed them.
Jackie: It’s all coming back to interdependence. From fermentation to plants to couch-surfing, we need each other.
Ending: Who is an interesting person in your life? What could you do to spark your curiosity? I’d love to hear how you are getting through the winter.
Or connect with me on Instagram: jackieknapp_
Such a fun series, Jackie! And I'm here for ALL the hugs and snacks!