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

Erika Lane , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

I have a couple of different crafts that I’ve learned over the years in the artistic field. I would consider my main two passions to be acting and poetry/writing. My mother is an actress and casting director and she used to bring me with her to her auditions when I was 2 and 3 years old. I ended up booking three national commercials because of it. Then our family moved out of Los Angeles to Colorado, and that part of life was put on pause. When I was 10, my parents got divorced and my mom moved us back out to California so she could continue her acting and casting career. I started working as an assistant in the commercial casting office with her when I was 15. I was always around actors but I always thought, I’d never want to be an actor. Life is funny the way it circles back around though. In college, I went to film school for behind the lens stuff, all forms of production. In my last semester, I took an ‘acting for directors’ class and I was immediately intrigued. I still didn’t know that I wanted to pursue acting, so after I graduated I went to work in the art department on a low budget feature film in Florida. We ended up needing a local hire for one of the roles once I was there, and my mom convinced me to audition. I booked the role, and the rest is history. I went back to L.A., started acting class and here we are today. That was about ten years ago. My poetry history goes back a bit longer. Ever since I was a kid, I expressed my emotions through poetry. When my childhood turtle pet passed away, I wrote a poem about him called “Clyde.” When my parents got divorced, I wrote a poem called “Love,’ which is still the only poem of mine I have memorized to this day. Currently, I own six different typewriters and I have worked a lot of events and art shows where I type personalized poems for the guests after asking questions or conversing with them for a while. I have played the typewriter as an instrument in a band, where I write stream of consciousness poetry to the beat like a drum, and I have even taken my typewriter to other countries and states to create poetry. I find it as a way to connect with people and relate on the human experience we all share.

Erika Lane , 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?

I feel like I answered most of this question in a long winded way previously. However, I can elaborate a bit. As far as my acting world, what sets me apart is that I have studied all aspects of the film industry, not just acting. I had to learn lighting, screen writing, art department, directing, editing, etc, when I was in school. It definitely has helped me as an actor present day to understand all parts. I also currently still work in casting. My goal as an actor is to create work that resonates with people, makes them feel something, and I suppose this is my goal as a writer too. As a poet, I am most proud of the poems I have written for people that have brought heartfelt tears to their eyes. I always try to write poems for my friends and loved ones, but enjoy reaching a strangers heart strings as well. Working weddings has always been a fun and beautiful thing to do, creating poems for guests with the newlyweds names on the stationary. They are always one of a kind gifts which is what makes them special. I have been published multiple times, and hope to be more in the future. I have put my words on utility boxes and murals around the city of Los Angeles, and would also love to do more of that on a wider scale.

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

Being a small business or a freelance artist is pretty hard in this world. The best way society can support artists is to shop small businesses, hire artists for freelance gigs when they can, hire them for commissions, etc. Part of when I love making art is when someone asks me let’s say for instance to write a poem about their new child, or their wife. That is a piece of my creativity, combined with the clients love and intention, that will stay with them for life.

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

The most rewarding part for me is that being an artist is a form of self love, of therapy, of release and of channeling the feelings life gives you into something creative. I always say, I would make art, or write poetry, or continue acting classes and gigs regardless of whether or not anyone bought it/saw it/that I made money from it. Which in all honesty, I’ve always had to have a second or third or fourth job to balance out my finances because being an artist isn’t always as lucrative as you would wish it to be. The love and passion of it, the way it flows out of you and is part of you when you are an artist, that’s the reward.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://erikalaneenggren.com
• Instagram: @poetry.lane, @erikalaneenggren
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wordmechanic/

Image Credits
Maiwenn Raoult Chelsea Nattiel James Reese Fred Prinz