Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Brenda Echeverry. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Brenda, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. I’m sure there have been days where the challenges of being an artist or creative force you to think about what it would be like to just have a regular job. When’s the last time you felt that way? Did you have any insights from the experience?

I am very happy working full-time as a healing arts facilitator, artist, and consultant. I am also investing in building my own creative business, Art & Soul Clinic. Although it comes with its challenges (especially financial), this career allows me to have a lifestyle that is authentic to my values and personal working style. I prefer to take on project-based work because I tend to create in bursts. I excel at planning and executing projects that have a specific start and end date. The times in my life that I have had a salaried 9-5 job, I felt a sense of endlessness, dread, and boredom. In my last experience as a school-based mental health counselor, I became severely burnt out and had to take an intermittent medical leave to address my overall health and wellbeing. Despite having a steady salary, I still felt stressed out and depressed. The effects began to bleed into other areas of my life, impacting close relationships and my own connection to creative spirit.
So yes, sometimes I do think about having a “regular job” and relieving some of the financial stress I am under. However, I generally feel more capable to take on daily challenges and inconveniences while I am doing work that is true to my heart and arts-related.

Brenda, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Born in New York to a Jewish educator and a Colombian artist, I grew up surrounded by the colorful chaos and musical catharsis emerging from a unique blend of cultures. As a young woman of mixed ethnicities and the daughter of an immigrant, I learned a lot about being a bridge – connecting different perspectives and aesthetics to create something entirely new and beautiful. I work to identify and process the shame and fear that I felt as someone stuck in the “in-between,” watching my father attempt to assimilate to American culture, and struggling to express my authentic self. That is why my approach to creative facilitation is inclusive, welcoming, and trauma-informed. I am grateful to have increased my fluency in Spanish and can speak more comfortably with my family, which in turn has helped me to serve more people in Spanish. Similar to my upbringing, my artistic practice is an eclectic mix of visual art, music, and creative writing deeply inspired by psychology, spirituality, mujerismo, and the natural world. I incorporate a mix of spiritual tools and rituals such as prayers, mantras, altars, sound healing instruments, tarot, and nature-based materials into the services I provide. The explicit representation of our culture is a form of resistance and encourages a sense of belonging and pride. Art & Soul Clinic is a service-based business offering therapeutic arts workshops and individual sessions to the community. I work to redistribute art and wellness resources in the form of mutual aid, free community-based healing arts events, and through an art supply donation library. I create a nurturing environment where people of all ages can reconnect with their creative spirit and learn how to incorporate the arts into care practices as a means of transformation and healing.
In my personal practice, I am creating visual artwork and music that centers spirituality and interconnectedness. For example, I have been creating a number of altars dedicated to archetypal figures and the natural world in a variety of mediums including clay, fabric, and collage. I have also been working on making a variety of wind chimes out of nature-based materials that will be incorporated in the future ‘musical forest’ public art installation.

In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?

Artists & creatives work towards liberation and contribute to our society just as much as medical doctors, bus drivers, educators, trash collectors, small business owners, etc. Some basic initiatives that I believe could support artists like me directly include universal income, free healthcare and public transportation, increased opportunities for affordable housing specifically for artists and creative communities, a stronger city-run recycling and repurposing system to salvage materials/tools/instruments for artist use, increased grant funding for individual artists (rather than organizations), increased opportunities for public art, free art education for all ages, and more free/sliding scale event and studio space.

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

A book that supported that development is the first book I referenced to learn about tarot called Will You Give Me a Reading? by Jenna Maltin. This book was a resource that increased my confidence about providing tarot services through my business. She taught me to be open minded about the wide range of tarot reading styles, to identify and maintain professional boundaries and scope of practice, and to shift my mindset about receiving fair financial compensation for providing spiritual care. I enjoy leading tarot workshops for all levels of experience so we can learn, discuss, and practice tarot together. The book really showed me how to teach tarot in an inclusive way.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.artandsoulclinic.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/artandsoulclinic
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@ArtandSoul_Clinic
• Other: LinkTree: linktr.ee/artandsoulclinic

Image Credits
Personal photos or by artist friends