In The Studio Podcast

There are two kinds of gap. The gap of time — the years of absence — we talked about in Episode Two. This episode is about a different gap entirely: the distance between what you can imagine making and what actually emerges when you put your hands to the work.The gap does not close. Even as skill increases, the vision expands faster. And the gap can become a prison — the thing that keeps you protecting the idea from the making, circling it for years without landing. It can also become something more useful: a signal that the direction is subtly wrong, that you are making toward someone else’s measure rather than your own.Episode Four is also about flow — the state we are waiting for before we allow ourselves to begin, and why waiting for it is precisely the thing that prevents it from arriving.The non-flow hours are not the failed hours. They are the most of the hours. They are what a creative practice is actually made of.I am Chandra Rice. I make things at Il Baciarino, a small agriturismo in the hills of Tuscany. New episodes every two weeks. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chandralrice.substack.com

The return feels enormous from the inside. It has inflated, in the imagination, into something that needs to be commensurate with the absence. Ten years away means the return has to justify ten years. This is the thing that keeps more women from coming back than almost anything else.Episode Three is about what the return actually needs to be. About Prudence Chalk — the Historian, the voice that uses the real past to build a case against the future — and the way her logic mirrors the logic of the self-improvement industry exactly. About iris leaf cordage in Florence with Sara, and what it teaches about the making that fits inside the life that is already happening. And about the difference between a beginning and a first step: a beginning is complete in itself.She is not a project under construction. She is a queen who has been waiting, patiently and without judgment, for you to remember that the studio is still hers.She just needs to show up.I am Chandra Rice. I make things at Il Baciarino, a small agriturismo in the hills of Tuscany. New episodes every two weeks. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chandralrice.substack.com

There is a word for what happens to the creative life when it disappears. Not lost. Not gone. Dormant.Episode Two is about the gradual erasure — not the dramatic stopping, but the slow, almost imperceptible way a creative life gets crowded out by reasonable choices that accumulate into a life with no room. About the self-improvement industry and its particular role in keeping women oriented toward becoming rather than being. About the third act — the twenty-five to thirty years that the archetypes skip, that previous generations did not have, that our culture has not yet found language for. And about the fruit before the raisin: still juicy, still at peak flavour, twenty years of it possibly more.The creative life that was gradually taken can be gradually reclaimed. It does not require a grand gesture or a perfect window of time. It requires something much smaller than that.The creative life is not a reward for having become good enough. It is the evidence that you already are.I am Chandra Rice. I make things at Il Baciarino, a small agriturismo in the hills of Tuscany. New episodes every two weeks. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chandralrice.substack.com

You were born creative. Not you, if you happen to be one of the lucky ones. Not you, if you showed early promise or had a parent who encouraged it. All of you. Every single one of you listening to this.This is where the first episode begins — with that claim, and with everything that has been done, quietly and usually with good intentions, to make you doubt it.Episode One is about the pruning of the creative self. About the internal voice that presents as an ally and is not — the cheerleader who ensures you never feel enough, who is already pointing to what comes next before you have had a chance to receive what you just made. About the difference between talent and creativity, and why confusing the two has cost so many women so much time. And about the single most important thing I have come to believe after thirty years of making and teaching: that creativity and authenticity are not separate things. They are the same thing, wearing different clothes.It is also about what a creative practice actually is. Not the inspired hours. Not the flow state we are all waiting for. The ordinary, imperfect, irregular act of showing up — before the day has had a chance to tell you what to think.This is the first episode of In the Studio — a podcast about the creative life, why it gets crowded out, and what it takes to find your way back. New episodes every two weeks.I am Chandra Rice. I make things at Il Baciarino, a small agriturismo in the hills of Tuscany. I have been making things for thirty years and teaching people to do the same for most of that time. This podcast is what I have learned — not about clay or colour, but about what it actually takes to keep showing up. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit chandralrice.substack.com