We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful e bond. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with e below.

e, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you talk to us about how you learned to do what you do?

How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?

I learned I was an artist or (someone who makes things), by growing up in a household where that was cherished and encouraged. I learned to become a working artist through lots of trial and error as well as years and years of schooling.

I don’t think anything can ever really be sped up. The pace we learn is the pace we learn.

I do believe the amount of focused or dedicated time you are allowed to spend on a skill could be one way to accelerate the process because you get to focus solely on something which does wonders for the integration of that skill into brain and the body. I also think repetition is a great way to speed up the mastery of a skill. Doing something over and over and over.

I think the skills I find most essential to my practice are those deeply related to the process of my making. Not so much the specific skills of say ‘binding a book’ or ‘drawing a beautiful shape’ but the skills of how to show up to yourself and for yourself every day on the page, in the studio or in your making space. I guess what I am talking about here is rigor and commitment or persistence maybe, and not so much referring to a specific project or skill but to the act of creating altogether. The skills and processes that aid to you as a maker to say every day, ‘yes I choose this again and again and again.’

e, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am an artist who works mostly in collage, words, and book forms.
This shows up in the fine art space, in the craft space and in the teaching space.
I teach workshops in person and online and I am mostly concerned with students and makers finding their individual process tools to make a sustainable art practice for themselves.
I am most proud of how my interests and curiosities show up in everything I do. That the work I do now is trying to grapple with the same questions I had 5 years ago and will probably have 10 years from now. I love the idea that no matter how diverse I make the work, that there the throughline of me always showing up.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

I think one lesson I have to unlearn over and over again is that there is only one way to do something. There are a million ways to live a life and a million ways to respond to a challenge/problem, and work toward a solution.

It personally helps me to think from abundance by trying to ask tons of questions around the given problem. It also helps to ask questions of those questions and invite others who have different thoughts to weigh in. I always find myself saying, ‘I never thought of that!’ after sharing a challenge with someone and having them give their thoughts about it.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

It’s been a gift to live my life as an artist; to be someone who gets to live within questions, problem solve, think about big ideas, engage in curiosities and use my imagination daily. It’s a brave thing to believe that you can imagine and create worlds, I mean children do it all the time…but somehow as we get older the mere notion of it feels far away. I feel like being an artist brings me a little closer to being in the space where I believe that can happen.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://ebondwork.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eisroughdraft/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ebondwork/

Image Credits
please credit Taryn Lahey if you use the portrait of me in my studio