We were lucky to catch up with Ad Van Wink recently and have shared our conversation below.

Ad, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Are you happy as a creative professional? Do you sometimes wonder what it would be like to work for someone else?

Happiness should not solely be connected to your creative work, even though your creative work can be incredibly rewarding and make you happy. The happiness I want to find is complete self-validation, as a person, creatively, and with the work I’m doing. Creative emotions are too unstable to rely on all the time, and it doesn’t help you to be at the mercy of those waves. As for making a living, being able to create can be the best thing ever if you love what you’re doing, and if you don’t, maybe the worst if it takes the spark from you. Art and creating things comes from such a pure place and if it’s a choice of getting a regular job to support yourself and family vs loosing the spark, the answer to me is obvious.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I grew up in the Coachella Valley in CA. I found an interest with music and was always supported by family and people around me to turn that interest into something. I started playing with my band YIP YOPS when I was 14 and with weird opportunities and constantly practicing and playing shows, it started to turn into something real. Until COVID hit and everything went silent, we had been playing almost every weekend in LA and toured around the US. But by the time everything shut down, I started to get ideas for some kind of visual album which eventually turned into the 45 film, “A Night At The Shack” which I wrote, directed, scored and edited while managing the shooting schedule between all the cast and crew. We had 5 main cast members and 4 crew that made up the majority of the shoots and I was obsessed with the feeling of working with them to make this project come to life. Being able to have to have that experience at every stage of the process was eye opening for me and is always with me when working with other people or on other projects. I can focus on my piece of the pie while having respect for every other piece.

I really just want to stay open. Allow ideas to come and focus on the ones that spark the most. I want to continue collaborating with interesting, creative people that think of things I don’t and we can push each other. This is the real stuff for me.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

Part of me thinks we need to reconsider art being valued as entertainment over everything else. It’s hard to say in a time where art/music/movies are a needed escape for most people, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. But there’s a depth of connection between art and audience we may be missing out on by not allowing creativity to work more fluidly. The aim for any artist is to make a living doing it, which is becoming harder and harder. And because of this the “art” of art is suffocating trying to compete with flashiness, glamour, and short term satisfaction. Maybe it’s the way it’ll always be but if artists were able to focus not on doing whatever they need to to reach the most amount of people but rather creating a thing for the things sake, I think both the audience and artist would be better off.

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

It’s important to expose yourself to as many different mediums and styles as possible so you can understand what you genuinely connect with vs not. And you need these things to revert back to from time to time as you hit the roadblocks and disappointments you are sure to go through in life. But I don’t like to get too hung up on influences and idols anymore because in the long-run they distract you from making something that’s unique to you, which I think is the purest way to find that pesky self-validation. For me, I really enjoy performances like “Nina Simone Live at Montreux”, Clarice Lispector’s novel, “Agua Viva”, Astra Taylor’s documentary, “Zizek!”, Pink Floyd’s album, “Animals”, and Kraftwerk’s entire discography. There are others too but it’d be too long to list everything.

Contact Info:

• Website: yipyops.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/?hl=en
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ad-van-winkle-092810228/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBMgYpMie0GcwijrY9vV48Q

Image Credits
Main photo and additional photos 1-4, taken by Hannah Mills. Additional photo 5 taken by Rich Hayden.