FLOW. FLOW.
LContradictory yet symbiotic, water has become mesmerizing to me over the past few years. As I’ve taken to running, I find myself subconsciously gravitating toward it when mapping my routes. In doing so, I’ve learned to observe, appreciate, and connect with the many forms water takes; mirroring my own evolution. Simple. Necessary. Vibrant. Water keeps flowing unapologetically: through storms, alongside the breeze, glistening beneath the sun.
EI KOne airy afternoon, trotting along the waterfront near the Brooklyn Bridge, I began to notice how closely these rhythms resembled creativity and energetic flow - the way momentum builds, dissipates, and returns again.
Bodies of water oscillate between movement and stillness. When flowing, ecosystems are nourished and restored, carrying nutrients and life forward. 4
TE R
WAWhen stagnant, murkier elements surface - discomfort, stillness, reflection. Yet, it's often in those still waters where the most beautiful reflections appear. Even in moments of stagnation, life exists beneath the surface, vivid and in motion.
Water adapts. It bends, transforms, freezes, evaporates, reflects. It is shaped by its environment and temperature, absorbed and observed, essential and ever-present, much like us. We move between states, adapt to surroundings, energy, and climate, observe without permission, and evolve in ways both visible and unseen. While there is value in observing these multidimensional states, I believe it's just as important to let ourselves flow. In other words, to simply be.
This philosophy extends deeply into creativity. Everyone's process looks different. Some build elaborate systems; others wait for inspiration to arrive quietly. There is no right or wrong - only what works for you. At the core, we all crave the same things: to be understood, seen, and appreciated. Sometimes, honoring that means showing up imperfectly, doing our best in the moment, and trusting that it will find its way.
And sometimes, it's the space between - the void - that holds the most power.
The ether was once believed to be the invisible medium through which light and electromagnetic waves traveled. When we find our flow, we embody that medium. Light becomes energy, ideas, motion; the quiet glow that radiates from within when we lean wholeheartedly into passion. It's the feeling others sense when they enter our orbit. Magnetic. Resonant. Connected. Thoughts that seem to emerge from thin air may simply be the universe reflecting our own frequency back to us. Something I believe our current world could use more of.
For years, I grappled with an overwhelming urge to create - paired with the pressure of not knowing where to begin. The weight of it felt immobilizing, at times spiraling into an identity crisis. I dabbled across mediums without committing fully to any one thing. Photography resonated most, but even that lived mostly through fleeting moments and half-hearted attempts.
With time, patience, and exploration, I learned to soften that urgency. To pick it up gently and let it go to voicemail when needed. After traveling, relocating, collecting analog cameras, and experimenting with creativity on my own terms, clarity arrived in an unexpected form: I've always loved to host. To bring people together. To gather strangers and watch them leave as friends. To collect people - across cities, cultures, and timelines - because I'm genuinely curious about their stories and care deeply about their well-being.
Living in New York exposed me to what a creative community can look like when it's woven into everyday life: social clubs, collaborative gatherings, throught-provoking exhibits, murals, spoken word, intimate performances, and fleeting moments that leave lasting impressions. I sat in awe - inspired, yearning, unsure of my next step. Ironically, returning to Boston brought me exactly the answer I had been searching for.
I've known Sam since college, but our friendship truly deepened later on. Always chasing new ideas and side quests, he quickly became both a constant source of inspiration and an anchor of support during moments I needed it most, often without even realizing it.
His range spans acting, podcasting, app innovation, a daily poetry practice, and beyond, but more importantly, he leads with curiosity, generosity, and heart. It's been an honor to exist in his orbit and even more so to build alongside him.
With a shared history of hosting small gatherings and a mutual recognition of a gap within Boston's creative landscape, all it took was one conversation. While Boston is rich with talent and established creative circles, we both longed for something slightly diferent: a common ground. A place to meet in the middle. To play. To collaborate. To inspire.
Thus, Ether Flow was born.
Our mission is simple: to come together, grow together, and exist together - not apart. Creativity can feel isolating, even competitive. We want to soften these edges and build spaces rooted in curiosity, collaboration, and mutual celebration. Our vision is to create third spaces where creatives of all disciplines can gather through broad, inclusive events and more intimate, niche gatherings tailored to specific crafts.
To coincide with these efforts, we're releasing a magazine that highlights Boston-based creatives, evolving projects, lesser-known events, pop-ups, and exhibitions. Each volume centers around a theme - our first edition draws from our inner circle - people in Boston who continue to inspire us in small, everyday ways.
We approach this project with humility, curiosity, and wonder. We know there is much to learn, and we hope you'll be patient with us as we do. If not, join along for the journey. Ether Flow is not just a publication or series of events; it's an open invitation to connect, create, and flow together.
We look forward to meeting you - exactly as you are - very soon. <3
- Mina Culbert + SB
CRE • A • TIV • I • TY
NOUN
CREATIVITY IS THE TEMPTATION, THE URGE, AND THE PERMISSION TO PLAY. IT IS THE WILLINGNESS TO EXPERIMENT, TO WANDER WITHOUT OUTCOME, TO EXPRESS WITHOUT CERTAINTY. IT LIVES IN CURIOSITY RATHER THAN CONCLUSION, IN FREEDOM RATHER THAN FORM.
IT IS A LOOSENED EXPECTATION, TO RELEASE WHAT SOMETHING SHOULD BE AND INSTEAD GIVE IN TO IMAGINATION. IT INVITES COLLABORATION, TRANSCENDENCE, AND INTERPRETATION. IT EXISTS WHERE RULES SOFTEN, AND INTUITION LEADS.
IT IS NOT CONFINED TO TRADITIONAL DISCIPLINES OR NAMED PRACTICES. IT IS EXPRESSED DAILY, THROUGH UNLIMITED MEDIUMS: IN STYLE, IN LANGUAGE, IN POSTURE, IN HOW WE MOVE THROUGH THE WORLD. IT SHOWS UP IN ACTION-FORWARD LINEAGES LIKE PHOTOGRAPHY, PAINTING, SPOKEN POETRY, FILM, COMICS, AND EQUALLY IN THE UNSEEN GESTURES OF LIVING.
OPENNESS.
MAKING SPACE FOR WHAT WANTS TO EMERGE.
COLD IN APPEARANCE
PURE IN ITS FORM
NOT UNDERSTOOD BY MANY JUDGED BY ALL
APPRECIATED FOR WHAT MEETS THE EYE SHE WAS ART SINGULAR EXPRESSIVE PERIPATETIC
NOT CRAVING TO FIND A HOME
BECAUSE SHE HAD ALREADY BUILT ONE WITHIN HERSELF
WITH WALLS SO STRONG THAT IT WAS HARD TO LET PEOPLE IN BUT THOSE FORTUNATE ENOUGH TO ENTER
FOUND A HOME IN HER HEART
Who's the most creative person you know?
If you were asked this question, you may instantly have a few people come to mind. Maybe it’s a person you grew up with. Maybe it’s a family member. Or maybe it’s a celebrity that inspires you.
There are many people that you may find to be creative, but this leads me to a bigger question: what exactly is creativity?
That is the question I’m looking to answer.
In my eyes, creativity is all around us, even when we may not realize it. For instance, the other day I was talking to someone whose occupation is what many would consider to be one of the least creative occupations around - finance.
My friend and I happened to be discussing a specific business case that a corporation was navigating through. This company, which had been a powerhouse in their respective industry for 25+ years, had just released their annual earnings, and they were abysmal. Over the past five years or so, they had not been able to adapt to what consumers have wanted, and as a result, their stock price was at its lowest point ever.
We were going back and forth over various hypothetical scenarios of how to turn the business around when my friend in finance said something that took me aback. He went super in-depth on how the business could be saved solely by making a few strategic yet simple changes in how they operate. I won’t dive too deep into the details, but he was telling me this as if he had found the missing piece to a puzzle that could not be solved—moving the numbers around in a way that looked so easy, yet had so many people flustered. The natural fluidity in the way he was able to dictate this strategy just by looking at numbers had me in a state of awe.
“The numbers tell me a story, and I just bring the story together. It just flows for me.”
At that moment, it was made clear to me that there is a world out there full of people who are creative in different ways. The creative process that allows an artist to see their vision come to life on a canvas can also be seen with my friend in finance navigating through a sea of numbers to come up with a sound business decision. While this was one very specific instance, it made me realize that creativity can be found anywhere, with anyone, no matter their focus or occupation.
When answering the question of “what is creativity,” to me, creativity is when someone is able to think and act in a way that flows naturally and produces an extraordinary result. I truly believe that everybody is creative, and we all just showcase it differently.
My ultimate goal is to highlight the stories of people from all different backgrounds and to showcase how these individuals look at the world from their own personal lens through their interests. I want to share their perspectives with the ultimate goal of helping others find inspiration, knowledge, and excitement in their own ventures. Because at the end of the day, you’re the most creative person in someone’s eyes, even if you may not know it.
Just like how a financial analyst is able to bring out a story through numbers, I’m aiming to bring out a collection of stories through this outlet. With each of these stories comes a spark of inspiration—a spark that I hope lights something up in you.
Keep on creating.
– SB
FLOW, IN PRACTICE
TIKTOK: SANDYBOSTON SANDYMEDIARELATIONS@GMAIL.COM
RETURNING TO WHAT FEELS TRUE EVEN AS EVERYTHING SHIFTS.
Cassie moves through the world with a kind of quiet attentiveness; the sort that notices shifts in light, breath, mood, season. To know her is to feel that she is always listening: to herself, to others, to the subtle undercurrents of becoming.
For Cassie, creativity is not performance; it's freedom. The ability to express herself authentically, without conforming to fit an expectation. When she shares something that feels deeply aligned, she feels it immediately. Not in metrics or numbers, but in reasonance. Those moments draw in people who are similarly attuned, creating pockets of connection that feel less like an audience and more like a shared understanding.
Her journey with content has shifted gently over time, mirroring the phases of her own life. During the isolation of COVID, while living alone, her work leaned toward humor; a way of coping, lightening heaviness, of finding levity in stillness. Over time, that expression evolved into something more grounded: a New England-rooted lifestyle perspective shaped by yoga. This new theme sheds light on seasonal rhythms, honoring slower cycles, managing seasonal dread, and sharing what genuinely helps her grow.
Photographs by Josh Minuskin, courtesy of Cassandra Gallagher.
Cassie is acutely aware of the permanence of sharing online. She works intentionally by drafting, revisiting, and waiting a day before posting. She asks herself questions that feel ceremonial: Would I regret this? Would this still feel true years from now? That same care extends into her editing process, where she refines not for perfection, but for clarity by adjusting sound, pacing, and tone, until it feels honest.
Over time, as her work has grown more authentic, she's begun slowly shedding that layer, though she knows Sandy will always remain part of her creative lineage. What began as a private YouTube series made for her mother - calm, meditative videos meant to soothe - organically expanded when her yoga students began asking for recordings. What was once intimate became communal, without ever losing its tenderness.
She originally created under the alias Sandycheekedup, an incognito name that allowed her to explore without fear of being seen by work or institutions not yet ready for her full self. Sandy became a safe container that was playful, private, and still deeply personal.
This outlet has changed Cassie in ways she never anticipated. What began as a form of expression slowly became a mirror, one that helped her discover herself, practice accountability, and articulate parts of her inner world that once felt unspeakable.
Not only did she find confidence, but it drew in people with a natural alignment to her energy.
Creativity has always coexisted within her. In high school, it took the form of photography, digital experimentation, and storytelling. She served as class historian and later found refuge on early internet platforms like Tumblr. There, behind anonymity and the absence of immediate perception, Cassie created freely. Expression existed without performance, and identity could unfold without pressure.
Today, her creative flow begins with a feeling.
Ideas arrive abruptly, and she notes how something should feel, the language it should carry, and the emotional temperature it holds.
Her current creative season is one of reflection: more mindful, less performative, devoted to clarity over perfection. In her yoga classes, she plays Horizons by Garth Stevenson every time; a nod to arriving and transitioning inward. If she were to title her autobiography, she'd call it Wilder: guided by instinct, shaped by care, always moving with the current rather than against it.
Drishti’s relationship with photography didn’t begin as a “creative phase.” It began early, as a role she naturally inhabited, always the girl behind the camera. Growing up in India, she spent her primative years surrounded by family who noticed the same thing early on: a symbiotic relationship between her and the camera. Her mom would hand her the camera without hesitation, and relatives acknowledged the quality of what she captured.
Before leaving for college in Boston, she and her dad built a small world together: riding through Delhi in a car, photograhping the streets as they unfold, capturing motion, texture, ordinary life caught midbreath. Later, the images were transformed into a book. A gesture that quietly says: this matters.
In Boston, photography stayed close, even when it lived mostly through her phone. Then COVID brought the moment that changed everything. An early snow hit the city while fall colors still clung to the landscape on October 30th, the Public Garden transpired into what she references as a “magical land" (Page 16). It became her first walk with her camera in Boston, and she’s never really put it down since. Shortly after, she created an Instagram account for structure and consistency. A way to keep showing up, a way to keep training her eye.
In 2023, her first workshop shifted her from “taking photos” into studying photography - the composition, curating, building a body of work with intention. In time, her style has sharpened into something distinct: abstraction. Drishti consistently finds herself capturing images that make you pause, tilt your head, and do a double-take.
“If anyone says what is that to any of my photos,” she says, “it’s a compliment.”
Her process is quieter than people expect. She doesn’t chase the perfect sunrise or plan a shoot down to the minute. Lately, she’s been practicing quite the contrary: going out with no expectations and letting nature speak first. Sometimes she’ll set a loose focus - water relfections, colored umbrellas - but mostly she responds to what’s there. She even rejects the idea of bad conditions. Harsh light, the kind photographers complain about? She’ll find a way through it.
She learned on a Fujifilm system and appreciates the analog feel but has recently experimented more with Nikon, teaching herself a new language after years of fluency. A zoom-lover at heart, one of her favorite lenses is a 100-400 because it allows her to isolate and turn detail into something unrecognizable.
All photographs are from Drishti's archive unless otherwise noted. Portraits by Mina Culbert.
Editing though? Her kryptonite. Especially the culling. She’ll let her photos sit and trust that time will help her see them more clearly. When the time comes, she’ll oftentimes edit on her phone at night - hands on, close to the work, away from the feeling of performance.
Over the past few years, she’s found community through Muench Workshops, seven trips and counting, traveling to places that widened her definition of landscape and possibility. Among them are the Adirondacks, Mount Rainier during a super bloom, Death Valley (a turning point that pulled her toward small scenes), Caddo Lake in East Texas (where ancient cypress deepened her fascination with trees), Antarctica (her personal favorite, surreal enough to feel like a dream), and Colordao, where something internal softened.
Trees and water remain her ongoing muses. She revisits her favorite trees in Boston as she does old friends, sometimes even spending up to half an hour under a canopy if there’s a frame hidden among the chaos. She talks about redwoods with reverence, carrying a wisdom you can nearly feel. On more than one occasion, she’s joked with friends that in her next life she’d like to be tree - situated high up on a mountain with seasonal weather. Still and watching.
Her work has begun living off-screen, too. After joining the Boston Camera Club, she had a photo featured in a gallery for three months, her image not only displayed but highlighted on a poster throughout the space. Seeing her work exist in print emphasized something she’s always known: photography is meant to be held, not just scrolled.
Now she’s thinking bigger, slower, deliberately. Her goal is to print more and explore multiple exposures and intentional camera movement. She imagines one day making a book that pairs her images with stoic, introspective essaysphotography resembling both art and personal growth.
Recently, in Colorado, she made herself a promise: no negative self-talk. Quieting every critical thought that appeared. After a day and a half, her mind went silent. She became present. It was then that her photography shifted. Her images were shot with conviction.
Drishti’s work has never been about proving she belongs but rather learning to trust what she already sees - then offering it back to the rest of us as a question we can’t help but linger inside: What is that?
BOSTON, RENDERED SOFTLY
WHERE STRUCTURE MEETS SENSITIVITY.
Emme has a way of making Boston feel more serene than it is. Not by changing the city itself, but by noticing it.
Her process often begins with a walk. A building she’s passed a hundred times. A street corner softened by morning light. She photographs these moments as they are - brick, windows, iron railings, familiar lines - and later redraws them by hand, transforming the city’s architecture into illustrated scenes that feel quietly enchanted.
Emme has lived in motion most of her life, moving between Houston and Boston, between heat and cold, in a constant flow between leaving and returning. Yet in her return to Boston in 2024, something shifted. The city stopped being a place to pass through and became something to study. To listen to, to notice.
Her work doesn’t rush; it lingers.
Boston, through Emme’s illustrations, feels almost personified, as if a quiet companion with softened edges. Buildings bend into warmth. Sidewalks hold memory. Corners invite pause. Architecture breathes instead of imposing. And often, tucked gently into the scene, whimsical figures appear, things such as bunnies, small companions, and soft observers, adding a layer of play that feels both childlike and deeply intentional. It’s not fantasy for the sake of it; it’s an invitation to slow down and see what’s already there.
Creativity, for Emme, isn’t about spectacle. It’s about fearlessness and the willingness to follow the small curiosities that tug at her without asking where they’ll lead. Her creative flow arrives quick1ly, often without warning, when hours disappear, and a piece seems to unfold all at once. She describes it as bliss, the kind that can’t be forced, only experienced. The result is work that feels light but considered, refined yet airy.
Much of her work balances intention with restraint. White space is not emptiness, but breathing room. She knows to stop adding when softness speaks louder than the detail. The feeling she hopes to evoke is familiarity and gentleness, like being embraced by a warm memory you didn’t realize you missed.
When creative ruts appear, she oftentimes finds herself lacing up her shoes and going for a run around the esplanade. Miles of movement restore her sense of gratitude and perspective, and more times than not, the next idea meets her somewhere along the path.
If her younger self were to see her work now, she might recognize the same quiet curiosity, just more confident and patient. Emme’s art doesn’t demand attention - it earns it, gracefully.
Outside of her art practice, Emme works as a product and UX designer: a profession rooted in logic, structure, and user flow. Rather than competing, the two practices inform one another. One sharpens her thinking, the other softens it, allowing for a release from rules. One builds systems, the other dissolves them. Together, they create balance: structure meeting intuition, efficiency giving way to wonder.
Beneath the text, the softened image that fills the background is Emme’s original reference photograph, the moment as it existed before translation. The article here moves within the space between photograph and illustration, allowing her words and drawings to frame one another. Each illustrated scene begins with a photograph she captured herself, before being reimagined, where architecture, memory, and magic overlap.
In a city known for its pace and ambition, her illustrations ask a softer question: What quiet beauty awaits us when we stop rushing past it? 23
DESIGNED FOR MOVEMENT; NOT MANNEQUINS
CRAFT AS COMFORT, PROCESS AS MEDITATION.
IG: CONNOR_LANCASTER
Connor’s relationship with sewing didn’t begin as a grand vision of fashion or self-expression. It began the way many of his interests do: crafted by curiosity, practicality and the frustration with what didn’t quite fit. That challenge prompted him to action: couldImakethismyself? What ensued wasn’t a push for perfection, but rather a steady accumulation of skills, instincts and confidence that was gained by doing, reassessing, and trying again.
His inspiration comes less from runways and more from real life. A 6’6” frame, a pandemic pause, and the realization that tailoring was always a compromise became the catalyst. He didn’t grow up thinking of himself as artistic and imagines his younger self would probably be surprised by who he is today. What began as a solution quickly formed to become a therapeutic outlet. Creativity didn’t arrive as a lifelong calling; it arrived like an unfinished sentence waiting to be filled in.
Spanning Baltimore to southern Oregon, Philadelphia to Boston in 2023, Connor’s adept in observing style as a means of rhythms and expression. Moving between cities and coasts has not only shaped his sense of style, but his openness to it. Exposure, he says, matters, as well as permission to try, experiment, and enjoy the process without needing to define it.
One of the first pieces that truly felt like his was a pair of trousers that were painstakingly constructed early in his learning curve, complete with pleats, a waistband, and more than a few mistakes along the way. These pants are featured to the left: in motion, seams under pressure, not one gives way. It’s a detail he’s humbly proud of: durability as design philosophy. Clothing that doesn’t ask you to be careful. The breakthrough wasn’t perfection; it was recognition. He’d made something he would’ve been thrilled to find on a rack. Something that felt deeply his own, because it’s built, not borrowed.
Since then, most of Connor’s work now lives with other people. Jackets, trousers, shirts - of course - but also bags, keychains, and even stuffed animals (a brutal, hand-sewn experience that he can now laugh about in retrospect). Giving the purpose; appreciation the fruits of his labor.
Despite his shift toward gifting, he keeps the first thing he’s ever created well within reach: a small keychain, simple and imperfect, but foundational for the future.
One of the most meaningful recent pieces is a quilted jacket he made for Olga, his girlfriend (pictured right). The process mattered as much as the results: turning something that might have sat unused in a donation pile into a garment full of warmth, memory and care. Repurposing, while not always feasible, feels particularly rewarding; fabric with a past becoming.
His process is unstructured by nature. Inspiration often finds him suddenly, impulsively. He struggles with creative flow, admits he wishes ideas stacked more fluently. Albeit, inspiration isn’t forced, it’s allowed, and when momentum falters mid-project he returns to the result: the bliss of creating for others. That vision carries him through.
His tools are simple and familiar: a Brother sewing machine, scissors, rulers, pins. You don’t need much to get started, just time and the willingness to trust the process. Mistakes aren’t failures; they’re instructions. Each project provides an opportunity for a new approach next time. Space is limited currently, but one day he imagines a dedicated room and a large worktable; freedom to expand.
Looking ahead, the ideas remain open-ended: perhaps one day even a wedding suit. Not because it’s expected, but because it’s possible. Despite the opportunity, he has no interest in monetizing his work for fear of changing the relationship.
These projects aren’t meant to be preserved behind glass. They’re built to live, and so long as the seams hold, that’s the quiet triumph.
AN EYE THAT TURNS GLANCES INTO GAZES
TRAINED BY CURIOSITY, LED BY INSTINCT.
Before he ever drew a frame of animation or placed a camera on set, Jordan had the gift of an eye that sees beyond mediums.
Not just the settled, observational kind, but the kind that sees possibility in a moment before anyone else does. That eye first showed itself in childhood drawings and sketchbooks sold for pocket change. It matured through years of teaching art at summer camp, where he didn’t just make images; he guided others to find their own visual voice. Now, it’s encapsulated by films and animations that carry the same unassuming curiosity and restless wonder that have accompanied him his whole life.
Jordan’s journey isn’t linear; it’s layered. Rooted in painting, growing into animation, branching into story, storybuilding, and springing to life through film. All of these parallel expressions of the same instinct: to make what he sees felt.
Boston taught him rigor. Film school taught him collaboration. Animation taught him imagination without limits. In animation a character, a place, or a mood can exist exactly as he sees it because he draws it into being. The only constraints are his imagination and the hours he’s willing to honor.
Despite this, ideas don’t arrive on command.
At the center, Jordan’s portrait is layered with his own self-drawn likeness; the artist and the observer are folded into one image, a subtle act of self-reflection.
The following visual spread traces Jordan’s range across mediums and moments. On the left, storyboard frames and stills from Un • bind reveal the blueprint of his narrative process, how emotion is built frame by frame before it ever reaches the screen.
Across the spread, painted and animated works from The Giving Tree and other short films sit alongside commissioned pieces and personal studies, where observation gently drifts into intimacy. The film strip weaves through the page as a connective thread, echoing Jordan’s belief that story lives through experience, captured by the sequences between frames.
Portrait photographed by Jasmin Dionne Watts. All other images are Jordan's original works, including stills from Janke.
Jordan doesn’t sit with a to-do list of concepts ready to execute, he describes creative ignition as something that exists outside of effort. It’s as if ideas are already circulating, needing only to be claimed. The craft isn’t summoning the idea; it’s having the drive and discipline to manifest it once it arrives.
You’ll often hear artists talk about perfecting their practice in a mechanical way. Jordan talks about it like it’s a conversation; something that needs time, place, and voices he hasn’t yet learned how to render. That’s evident in Janke, the animated short feature here: a work of three years, a collection of memories, textures, ancestral questions, and love. The film’s images don’t just move, they linger, similar to the brushstrokes of emotion you didn’t know were still there.
In that same beat, you see how his eye functions in different registers:
• the clear architectural eye that composes a frame
• the empathetic eye that captures the emotional weight
• the narrative eye that connects displacement, belonging, family, and identity without forcing a conclusion
He doesn’t make work about themes as much as he makes work that has themes embedded into it, the way memory lives in brush marks and the way the past is always just beneath your feet if you stop enough to feel it.
His practice also embraces risk, not bravado, but the kind that arrives when you choose meaning over comfort. When Jordan created a piece on police brutality for a Jewish arts collective, he approached it not as protest art but as data embodied in imagery; not to preach but to gently unfold a truth.
A police officer told him he understood it. A mother, grieving her son, thanked him. The duality of holding multiple realities at once is the kind of humanity his work inhabits: neither soft nor hard but unmistakably present.
As a director and collaborator, he talks about control as something that loosens with maturity. Early in his career, he would have decided every brushstroke. With time, he’s learned to trust others to bring themselves into the frame, knowing that their contributions don’t dilute the vision, they expand it. That transcends the boundaries of growth across the spectrum.
His current creative season is not explosion; it’s retreat and replenishment which is a needed pause after years of gestation. Three years on one film can wear one down, but with disassembly comes new curiosity: stories of black diasporic experience around the world, stories shaped with tenderness, stories animated into being. He calls these phases “wet clay”, a metaphor that refuses finality. There is no finished product until it breathes on its own.
That’s primarily why he doesn’t chase trends or serve audiences; he invites participants: the viewer, the collaborator, and the witness.
Jordan doesn’t want your applause; he wants your continued attention.
His art doesn’t demand you decide what it means. It asks: what remains with you after?
A true signature of his eye is not what he sees, but that what’s seen refuses to be forgotten.
Objects from the artist's home studio.
Some creative influences arrive through cities, collaborators, or defining moments. Others are present long before you have language for them - embedded in how you learn to look, ask questions, and explore the world.
My dad has never lived in Boston, but to exclude him from this first volume would feel like a disservice to both of us. For as long as I can remember, he has been the most consistent creative influence in my life; not by instruction, but by example.
Before music became his primary medium, creativity showed up as exploration. Taking radios apart and putting them back together as a child. Making prosthetics from a monster makeup kit. Turning apples into shrunken heads, simply to see if he could. Creativity, for him, was never about outcome, it was about curiosity. "As
kids, we explore with no end result in mind. That's what makes it so free."
That philosophy never left him.
A CONSTANT CURRENT
Over the years, music became the vessel. He has played in more than twenty bands, some lasting months, others years; a pattern not of instability but of evolution. Each iteration taught him something new about sound, collaboration, and self-trust. Despite moments of industry momentum - label interest, tours, near breakthroughs - he repeatedly chose integrity over containment. He resists genre, avoids rigid definitions, and follows curiosity wherever it leads. "If I restrain myself to a genre, it feels untrue." When he talks about creativity, he talks about removing pressure. Deadlines, expectations, and external validation, he believes, pull artists away from the work itself.
The most meaningful creative moments happen when those constraints dissolve; when you lose yourself in the process rather than aiming for an end result.
What he modeled wasn't just confidence; it was permission.
As a performer, he speaks about live shows as a feedback loop - an exchange of energy rather than a one-way presentation. When it works, the artist and the audience shape each other in real time.
That mindset shaped how I learned to create.
Growing up, I wasn't taught creativity as talent, I was invited into it. Encouraged to ask questions. Given sketchbooks. Accompanied on photoshoots for school projects. Featured in the chorus of one of his songs. Challenged through movement - rock climbing, roller blading - and reminded constantly that exploration mattered more than polish.
That willingness to risk misunderstanding, to persist even when outcomes aren't guaranteed, is central to how he creates. It's also how he lives.
Some of his most formative performances came from uncertainty: experimental sets where the audience didn't know what to expect. In one case, a solo electronic performance ahead of its time left the crowd confused at first, then fully captured by the end. For him, those moments mattered more than predictable success.
"When you don't know the outcome, the reward is different."
At the core of his work is a belief that truth is subjective, shaped by perspective, experience, and internal dialogue. His music often gets misinterpreted, and he welcomes that duality, inviting listeners to interpret rather than be told.
" If you're sincere on stage, the crowd knows. It's all energy."
His music moves between rock, electronic, jazz and atmospheric experimentation, guided by internal dialogue rather than genre. Only recently has he begun preparing to release years of unreleased work, prompted by a simple realization: he enjoys it.
That openness extends into how he thinks about the future of creativity, including technology and AI. He approaches it not as a replacement, but as a collaboration: another tool for expression, provided the human voice remains present.
"If I like it, maybe someone else will too."
This first volume centers around becoming; on the quiet, ongoing process of transformation that often happens out of view. Including him here isn't about lineage or nostalgia. It's about acknowledging that creative ecosystems begin long before scenes, cities or platforms.
Sometimes they begin with someone who never stopped asking why.
TIKTOK: KARMALANEMUSIC
SPOTIFY: KARMA LANE
