From The Circle Of Trust Vault - Mike Sutfin AID AM 38

Originally Released November 17th, 2014

Prologue

Just three short years ago I went to San Francisco to attend back to back weekends of vending in the Bay Area. To justify staying in San Francisco for the week, I decided that away from my wife, dog, TiVo and print shop that I would make this week, the week that I would finally get my Circle of Trust subscription service launched. However, the new dedication of doing the podcast daily meant, that I would still have to record some episodes while in San Francisco, and then the idea was born, what if I go to an artist's studio, set up my recording equipment and record them in their natural habitat. My first subject was Mike Sutfin, and this recording is the first time AID went into the field, and I showed up at strangers door with my microphone in hand for an away game. 

Little did I know that Mike Sutfin was beginning a similar career pivot. After a solid run of doing illustration and paintings for the publishing world, Mike was ready to start working on his ideas. Hoping to create more poster artwork that would hopefully lead to more art prints and birth a career that reloved self-initiated work versus a string of client jobs where one just leads to another just like it. 

If you listen to Adventures In Design regularly, you might know how this all worked out for me. This week would go down in show history as the turning point to where my nightmare hobby turned into the dream job. If you listen to this coming Monday, you can hear the other side of this story and learn how taking a chance on working with a newly forming group mysteriously called the VACVVM helped Mike Sutfin achieve many of the career goals that he spells out in this interview. 

I encourage you as you listen to us both taking a gamble on our artistic strengths and hoping that these risks will allow us away from our creative weaknesses. Ask yourself not only who were you three years ago? But more importantly, who do you want to be three years from now? I hope that releasing old interviews before dropping new conversations is showing the slow and subtle path to getting you and your talents closer to the spot that you want to exist. Actions do speak louder than words and documenting creative peoples actions is a way to show us all the efforts behind these conversations. 

The Circle of Trust Vault will open back up this Friday with another very important rerelease to help set up next week's VACVVM week. Next week we'll all learn how the last three years have helped some of the industries best artist get even better and how I have come to enjoy the away games supported by my now much more substantial Circle of Trust. 

Until Then, Good Day & Good Design,

Mark Brickley

Original Episode Notes

Oakland’s very own Mike Sutfin allows us to visit his designer dungeon where we talk to him about oil painting, toy design, and his personal projects that he hopes to birth through the new collective of artists and designers he joined known as the VACVVM.