Search Results

Friends, family and locals gathered at Coffee Cultures on Park Avenue in Alameda on Saturday afternoon to support their community in creative arts while enjoying the space and refreshments the cafe had to offer. The show's name "A Decade of Jones" was a nod to the last ten years that Mindiana Jones has grown as a traveling artist, seeing every opportunity as a call for adventure. Exploring far away places, and the deepest inner spaces, she shared how continuously meeting new people gave the opportunity to practice the qualities and behaviors she was self-teaching herself along the way. Learning how her sensitivity to emotions was not a hinderance but an ability that helped navigate through life, grew the belief in herself to take on projects that once seemed greatly overwhelming. Years of experience freelancing photography, the happy accident of working at a merch agency, self taught design and branding techniques, and working hands-on with countless projects has brought about this skillset of creative services that are now a part of the official launch of Mindiana Jones Creatives, LLC. Local collaborator Jeremy Castro has been a mentor and catalyst for great things in Jones' journey, teaching her a vast amount within the merchandise industry as well as connecting her with Jason Michael Paul, owner of Coffee Cultures and JMP Entertainment. They all worked together in 2023 for the launch of Jason's Heroes Symphony tour , and continued to dream up ways to fuel each others creative journeys which led to the art show that unfolded on this beautiful fall day. Visitors were welcomed to a gallery of photography and multimedia collages that showcased both inner and outer voyages, along with an art bar with different supplies to paint, draw or collage their own works of art and be a part of the playful joy of creating. Pieces came of the walls with a raffle giveaway and buyers eager to take home a special something. Learning new things, meeting new people, & seeing new places are some of her greatest joys, so there are definite plans to continue pop-up and collaborative events after seeing the inspiration drawn from this inaugural event. If you are interested in dreaming something up together, please email Mindiana Jones directly at collab@mindianajonescreatives.com

Tucked in a San Francisco alleyway, in a neighborhood now gone from memory, we met up for a sunny afternoon kick it with a new mission. Half of the group were graffiti artists with tags all around the Bay, but instead of the usual covert outings, they organized a legal street painting session down a row of garages in the city. This was 2015, and most of us were happy to just to get a paycheck from some mediocre job so we could buy weed and booze and kick it watching sunset after sunset together. As friend groups intermingled, I got to meet more of these artists and we spent many days adventuring to obscure places. Places you'd never find in a travel guide, but ones that make you experience the area in a deeper and more meaningful way. It was a new kind of art to me. I noticed the art itself with the imaginative designs, impressive locations and techniques, as well as the camaraderie and creativity it brought out in those that channeled it. Of course there were some that had beef that caused drama, which was low key annoying but also entertaining. Once I learned what they wrote, it was fun seeing their tags around town. It's when you see something they did high up on the side of a building and say damn props for pulling that off. And it becomes a sort of dance; rhythms of this subculture saying fuck your rules with quick feet (and a smart mouth) around any authorities. And to anyone who hasn't seen behind the curtain of graffiti artists, they very well could just see it as disrespectful and a nuisance. And honestly there are the stupid shitheads that live up to that reputation. But what I saw was passion and community, supporting each other and pushing their boundaries. And, they're relentless. Try to paint over their work, and they will come back with something more badass. Try to fence off a building, and they'll find a way in. It's why being adaptable and curious are my lifelines because they let me see into the lives of others that run parallel passions. So, what do you think?

I came up on a typewriter this year, and we bonded quickly after co-creating nearly every day on my roadtrip to the PNW. With the influence of Jack Kerouac's spontaneous prose, I typed out with great intention streams of consciousness that's allowed practice and healing. I had no intention of sharing these pages, but without anything else planned there's no sense not to. I do not make drafts, nor care much about formatting or typos. My mind goes to many places, and it's not always the easiest to invite people into these sorts of rabbit holes. This is a recap written after month 1 of 6 of subleasing my apartment for the first time.

The world is full of life hacks. They're essentially methods and mindsets developed or learned by people to achieve a certain result based on their positioning in time and space. Now that last part is important, because no matter how much someone swears by it, its still not going to work for everyone. Any "discovery"of information or technique is a persons perspective, influenced by their input and environment, arranged in a new way that resonates with their understanding of this existence. That new insight is also going to resonate with its own unique demographic that otherwise wouldn't have happened. (what if there was a database of life hacks, searchable by outcome, life situations or beliefs?) So what am I getting at with this? Naturally, I can only speak from my perspective, but this comes from my own experience of trying to figure out this life of mine; to understand my inner being and what purpose and passions light my soul on fire, because in that is how I want to spend my time in this Earthly existence. I have spent hours and months and years unpacking my reasoning and behaviors, not to mention FEELINGS. My, all the feelings. All of these invisible, intangible things that shape our thoughts and actions and that translate to the then physical manifestations of such. Those invisible things that are hardly taught in modern society, yet so greatly impactful on our well-being consequently brings us to where we are. These thoughts overwhelmed me for a long time, and instead of going all-in on one of these solutions or hacks, I started by trying all sorts of new things without an attachment to the end result. Overtime I've collected the practices and beliefs that resonated, and discarded the rest. In short, I just started by starting. Overthinking/analyzing is the antithesis of flow, for flow is freeing, creative non-attachment that creates worlds of opportunity otherwise stifled by expectations, comparison, Both can be innovative, so not to say one is wrong or right, rather used with intention based on the desired outcome. It's a balance that comes with practice, beginning when your skillset is low, but willingness and determination are high. It's why having solid foundations are so important, so you are not shaken when success doesn't come; these then were not the solutions meant for you, but lessons that broadened your perspective to achieve that thing, that Why, that we are all chasing. So, whatever you are feeling called to, go to it. Don't think too much about what you are expecting it to be; that part will work itself out.