Interview with Brandi

I have a set of questions that I came up with that are a little bit Krista Tippett, a little bit Danielle Krysa, and a lot bit my own curiosity. I think talking about our creative stories is a way to bind us together and encourage us to keep going on our own creative path. I’m excited to be asking these questions and to be sharing these creatives’ answers with you.

Tell my readers a little bit about you.

Hello there – I’m Brandi, and I live in Bellingham, WA with my husband Andrew, and our small rescue dog with a big personality, Augie Roo. We moved out here a little over a decade ago after a life on this east coast, and now we can’t imagine leaving. I work for myself during the week, sending out my monthly mailing, Extravagant Hope, and on Saturdays I work at our local art and history museum, both of which I adore. When I’m not working, I can usually be found in one of our local thrift shops, with my nose in a book, or journaling with a very cute dog curled in my lap. I know most of the Murder, She Wrote episodes by heart, cannot stand the taste or smell of maple syrup, and consider the neighborhood birds I feed peanuts each day to be dear friends.

What is your first memory of creativity?

I come from a long line of makers, so I can’t remember a time when my mother wasn’t sewing, stitching, building, painting, or knitting something. We grew up with the mantra of “make what you need” which meant there was no room to fret over what we didn’t have when we could figure out a way to make it. From dolls, to books, playdoh, forts, and more, we used what we had to make what we wanted to play with, and it was magical. 

What did you love to make as a kid and are you still making some variation of that now?

I took to drawing and making up stories and books very, very early, so some of my first memories are of coloring the characters I’d imagine and bringing them to life on folded booklet of whatever paper I could find. I still have some of them, and it tickles me that even though I use those creative impulses a little differently now, that curiosity about people/characters and stories is alive and well in both my professional and personal work. 

In one of my scrapbooks from when I was a kid there is a folded piece of construction paper where I tell the very dramatic story of a girl and her vacuum cleaner. I remember the joy of making the booklet, writing out the story, and then drawing the illustrations. So I can completely relate to your childhood making!

What is your favorite creative supply and why can’t you live without it?

A great pen – whether it’s a fountain pen for writing (a practice I got from my dad), or a brush pen for drawing, that simple tool lets so much come to life, from words to images. And if you’ll permit me to add one more, it would have to be found ephemera – what we collect just by being alive in the world and making our way. We can do so much, and be so inspired by, a found grocery list, or a scrap of a security envelope. We need so little to make so much.

What is a creative question you ask over and over?

“What’s missing?” And “Who is in charge here?”

For what’s missing, I’m wondering, what is left out in a first pass, or overlooked in an effort to be “safe”. It’s a question that encourages me to always look at things with new lenses.

For who’s in charge here, the answer, when I am the maker, is always me, but it’s still a question I need to ask often, because it’s so easy to forget. I am in charge of my creative work, which means I can change my mind, go against the flow, make/unmake/remake as much as my creative heart and hands need.

I love your “Who is in charge here?” question! I recently had an epiphany because I was working on something and my thinking was very much “It has to be this way and it has to play out like this!” and I had that moment of “Who says that? Why do I have to do it that way? I can do whatever I want because I am in charge!” So your question is just so good at keeping us open to the possibilities!

What does your creative practice show you over and over?

How important it is to have a practice in the first place. What we make, what we engage with, becomes a kind of breadcrumb trail that tethers us to curiosity, delight, and joy. No matter how hard and heavy it is to be human, having a creative practice connects us to something outside ourselves. Whether it’s paper or people, and that kind of connection is the web that holds us together, and keeps record to remind us it isn’t all awful.

What gets you to start a new project?

For me, it’s usually a need, and sometimes that’s simply for a new play to play, like a journal, or a desire to use my hands in a different way (switching mediums to paint or fabric, etc.). When I feel that tickle that something’s missing, or there’s a tender part of me that needs the comfort of engaging with making (which is really just hope in action), I find myself reaching for something new.

What is a book on creativity that you come back to again and again? Why?

I often reach for Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet, as well collections of letters from writers or artist I love. I find that people talking about their practices and processes with their friends and family is such an incredibly human and inspiring thing, even if that’s not the specific kind of making I’m working with right then. Remembering just how human and complex other creatives are (which is to say, all humans because I believe we’re all creative), is incredible. I adore Flannery O’Connor’s letters in The Habit of Being, and Words in Air, the letters of Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell.

How did we meet?

Oh goodness, that’s a tangle in my memory, on Instagram, that messy, amazing, frustrating beast, but maybe through a couple different webs of connections with people.

I want to ask you about hope. You create these really delightful mailers that you send out into the world that you call Extravagant Hope. Talk about what got this business started and where you personally find that wellspring of Hope to continue this work.

Oh, hope, it’s such a prominent practice in my life, so I guess it’s no surprise that at some point it would spill over and I’d want to share it with everyone. I started Extravagant Hope as a digital offering in 2018, and while I knew it was the start of something, I knew it needed to be more and different. I was playing it safe and afraid to take a risk and do what I most wanted to do in the way that felt truest to me. There’s so much out there for artists, and especially artists who run small businesses, that will tell you exactly the “right way” to do things, but it just…didn’t feel right to me.

So, after that first year, I put it to rest for a while, and then in 2020 when the world felt like it was crumbling, I decided there wasn’t a lot to lose, so I took a leap and did a small test offering of mailers that autumn. It was like a switch flipped inside me with that first envelope, and it’s grown brighter since. Each month I wonder if I will have anything to say, any images to design, and hope left to hold, and each month as I show up for the practice of holding really stubborn, extravagant hope, I find it’s all there.

The real gift is that I get to pay attention to the world, to listen to people’s lives, to look at the world in all its brokenness and beauty, and make pieces that will tether us together, and help us to keep going. There’s something really powerful about getting to really see people, and to be seen, and that’s what I keep close with every mailer I make and send – a little love letter to all us messy humans that we aren’t alone in this. 

How can people find you?

My shop, newsletter, and Instagram.

Brandi, thank you for sharing your creative stories with us! I had so much fun reading your answers to my questions. And I know my readers will enjoy it too. (These photos belong to Brandi. She graciously let me use them in this interview.)

What about you? Are you formulating your answers to these questions? I’d love to know your answers! Catch up with me on socials, email me, or go oldschool and leave a comment on this post to be immortalized for all of time.

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