PODCAST · arts
Secret Sauce
by Becca Borrelli
Hosted by Austin Illustrator Becca Borrelli, Secret Sauce explores Art through a process-focused, spiritual, inclusive lens, that seeks to awaken everyone to the birthright of their personal artistry.
Episodes
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Be the Watercolor
This is the second post in a series of stories weaving Principles and Elements of Design, with Life and/or Spirituality. If you are interested in reading the first post, you can do that here. Over the course of my career as a K-4 Art Teacher, and later an Independent Illustrator, I have come to...
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Art Deficit Disorder
Hello Creative Friends, When you exist inside an artwork, for better or worse, everything that gets added to that work gets compared to the original work as a reference point. If you're happily painting a pink canvas for 30 years, and then suddenly decide it's more in alignment for you to change…
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Your Something Bigger
Hello Creative Friends, The crux of this podcast, my art, my business (and heck, my life) is making in tandem with something that is bigger. I first posted about this in 2022, and it was the most listened to episode of that year. I have talked about this on and off since, entirely in a positive...
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The Day Job
Hello Creative Friends, This podcast is about the "soup" of our world. The stuff between the stuff. So it's no surprise that episodes like to delve into the vague, mysterious and abstract. However we live on a planet that also has stuff. Sometimes as artists it can feel seductive to condemn that...
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Art Kid
Hello Creative Friends, This episode is a follow up to last week's Art as a Threshold, however as always it's also a standalone episode. In this episode I talk about one of the fundamental aspects of my work as an artist... My Art Kid. Not my human kid. Not an imaginary friend. The part of me…
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Art as a Threshold
Hello Creative Friends, Happy New Year! As we cross the threshold from 2023 to 2024, I want to talk about another threshold we encounter… our art. This aspect of artistry is so rarely talked about, and even more seldomly acknowledged, that I wanted to begin The Secret Sauce year 2024 delving into...
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Art Will Save Them
Hello Creative Friends, This episode is, in some ways, piggy backing off "Art Will Save Us" posted a few weeks back. But in other ways, it's a standalone episode. Creating is often a largely solitary act. Even those of us who create in groups, like perhaps a choir or theater, have a very solitary...
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Art Freedom Paradox
Hello Creative Friends, This episode was recorded on July 4th, 2023. I LOVE this episode. It's one of my favorite recordings on this podcast. I also included an introduction explaining why I tabled it for 5 months. I can't speak for everyone listening to this, but I know a fair number of us feel...
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Did You Know
Hello Creative Friends, This episode is a nod to a holiday episode I did in 2020 around the Christian Christmas Story. That said, this episode has something for EVERYONE. Especially folks who aren't Christian, don't recognize Christmas, or have been wounded by religion. Are there ways the…
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Art Will Save Us
Hello Creative Friends, This episode is a call. The culture has narrowly defined artistry in the past, and has limited the ways we engage with making things. It has become downright brazen to suggest that art can save us. But is it? This idea has certainly has been trumpeted from artists across...
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Art is a Wound Turned Into Light
Hello Creative Friends! This episode is about creative wounding... something we ALL know about. Why is art uniquely lovely and painful at the same time? How has the culture narrowly defined artistry in the past, and how has that limited the ways we engage with medicinal qualities of making…
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The Ugly Middle
Hello Creative Friends! This episode is especially for ME this month. In fact, almost all of these episodes are for me... and by proxy YOU, because we're all doing this shit in the same sauce. Whether we know it directly or not, what we're contending with in our lives at this very moment is 100%...
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Art as a Behavior
Hello Creative Friends! This episode is for everyone who feels like an imposter making things... So Everyone. Myself included. Especially myself. As we navigate a time of massive collective change, the stories we tell around artistry are changing too. One of those stories is about "who is an...
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Army of Artists
Hello Creative Friends! It's been over two months since the last episode. I've been in a period of great transition artistically, and as I navigate what that looks like, I've been asking myself a lot of questions about what being an artist means to me. For most of recorded post-Renaissance…
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Like a Warhol
It's 2023, Art Friends! We are opening the new year with a sweet episode about January, the year ahead, and making change. I believe artists are being called to expand into new ways of thinking about creative change. Rather than big sweeping swing for the fence that leave us exhausted and poised…
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Art Pregnancy
Hello Creative Friends, Is Art Making and Life Making always active? When we think of an artist, we think of someone painting, composing or dancing. When we think of someone living we think of them out and about, working, running errands, and traveling. The truth however, is that massive creative...
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Art at the Ballot
It's election season! In this episode I take on the beastly challenge of using Art to expand our perspective on voting, considering candidates, issues, and politics in general. Disclaimer, this episode offers far more questions than answers, however they are questions that are largely absent from...
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Like a Monet
Hello Creative Friends, We are living through some doozie of times. I suppose every generation has said this, but WOO what a few years we've navigated. Art can be fantastically supportive at how we look at things. In this episode I deep dive into Impressionist painter Claude Monet and his art as…
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Art Baby
Hello Creative Friends, In 2016 when I launched my illustration business I posted a light comparison to "what I imagined" was a similarity between birthing a business and birthing a baby on social media. Woo! Was that a touchy subject! A lot of parent friends had an opinion on that one... and…
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Making Art with Something Bigger
Hello Creative Friends, I'm excited to back for this episode. It's been a minute. In this episode I talk about a topic that's near and dear to my heart: Using art making as a model for making tough decisions. In April of this year I shuttered most of my art business, even at the height of its...
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How is an Artform
Hello Creative Friends, I'm excited to back for this episode. It's been a minute, and I'm hoping by late 2021, Secret Sauce will be getting a new facelift and more regular content for YOU. In this episode we talk about how "THE HOW" in our art-making is just as artistic as the WHAT. I tell some...
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The Art of What You Hate
Hello Creative Friends, In this episode we talk about our propensity (and when I say "our" I mean YOU, ME, EVERYONE's) to create the things we purport to deeply dislike in the world. AKA "Hate." Hate is an overused word, but I think in this context it's good to talk about. I tell a few stories...
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Art Without at Audience
Hello Creative Friends, Comedian Bo Burnham famously said: "If you can live life without an audience, you should do it." In this episode we talk about sharing our art with an audience. Sharing art and our creative lives online has become almost as ubiquitous as breathing or eating. It happens so...
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Making Art is Intuitive
Hello Creative Friends, In this episode we talk about using our Intuition to make things, whether it's art or a LIFE. Over the last centuries the logic and analytical mind has been valued in art (and the culture) far more than the intuition. Intuitive styles of art-making were viewed as "low…
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Focus Your Fire: An Interview with Jade Gillon, Founder of Volta Joules
Hello Creative Friends, I'm thrilled for you all to meet Jade. She has a lot of wisdom to share, and I love listening to her, because when she drops knowledge you know that she earned it through living courageously. In this episode we talk about the origins of her jewelry making at Volta Joules,...
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Criticize Art Not Artists
Hello Creative Friends, It's been a minute. I've been navigating some big new changes over here that I'm excited to share very soon. This is episode three of season two, and something I've been mulling over for weeks, as I think about my place in this space and time as an artist. In this episode…
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Nothing and Everything
Hello Creative Friends, This is episode two of season TWO! We are kicking off our first guest of season two with wildlife photographer Mark Anthony Munoz. Y'all I'm very excite for this episode. Mark is a fantastic storyteller, and has tremendously valuable insight on being an artist, monetizing...
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The Most Artistic Month of the Year
Hello Creative friends, Welcome to Season Two! This episode is sponsored by the Holiday Card Making for Comfort Workshop happening December 19th from 1-3 pm CST. I spent a lot of time the last few months thinking about what this podcast wanted to be in 2021. This episode feels like the perfect...
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Episode 22 Art, Vulnerability and Canaries
Hello Creative friends, In this episode I tell the story of my art education thesis research at the University of Texas in 2010-12. I partnered with the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin, TX to lead a summer art-making workshop with public school art teachers. During this workshop I led a study…
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Episode 21: Why do You Make Stuff?
Hello Creative friends, In this episode I dive into one of my biggest fears that I think prevents a lot of makers from going directly into a fine art career, or working for themselves... the very real concern of marrying my deep love for making art with the often brutal concerns of capitalism. In...
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Growler on Your Shoulder w/Jordan Goetz of Growler Domestics
Hello Creative Friends, This is episode TWENTY! We are kicking off our twenties with the first guest to the podcast: Jordan Goetz, Founder of Austin based Custom Furniture and Metal Fabrication business: Growler Domestics. You are all in for a treat. Jordan tells plenty of stories about starting…
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Everything You Imagine is Real
Hello Creative Friends, To me, Art-Making is so much more than making a THING. Art-Making can be a micro-model for the grandest artwork we'll ever make... our lives. This episode is about one of the specific tools we use to create our life... STORY. Stories are tremendously artistic. We can tell…
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Episode 18:The Secret Sauce is You
Hello Creative Friends, This episode digs deeper into one of the goals of Secret Sauce: To talk about the intersection of artist and art. When I first began having relative success working as an independent illustrator, I noticed something: As my work expanded, it began tugging on ME. I couldn't...
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Episode 17: Playing Shoestrings
Hello Creative Friends, How do we make great art, when what we have to work with is meager? How do we create amazing new things, when resources are thin? This episode was inspired by the wise words of John Coltrane: "You can play a shoestring if you're sincere." Maybe shoestring music is exactly...
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Episode 16: Crisis Needs Artists
Hello Creative Friends, Anyone here question their purpose during times of crisis? When the world is on fire, does what we make matter? In this episode I use a handful of stories to make a case for Artists during crisis. Not only do we need them... but they are imperative to moving forward.…
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Episode 15 The Reenchantment of Art
Hello Creative Friends, In this episode I glom together some stories about viewing life, business and art through a lens of enchantment. In uncertain times, who the heck has time for fairy dust? This is my first stab at making a case that all of us should make time. SUPPORT THE PODCAST We have…
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Episode 14: The Third Artwork
Hello Creative Friends, What times we're in, huh? The "more" seems to keep getting... MORE. In this episode I make a case for making things together as the best chance of solving some of most looming creative problems.... and making things with people that we wildly disagree with. SUPPORT THE...
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Episode 13: Just Ask Jason
Hello Creative Friends, This episode I finally roped in my husband Jason. I'm excited to have him on, because inevitably when people ask me for advice about combining art with business, I share with them things Jason has told me. In this episode we talk about Jason's "Secret Sauce...." aka the…
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Episode 12: What We're Making When We're Not Making
Hello Creative Friends, This episode is about what we're making when we're seemingly "not making." It's about how we're all profoundly creative and artistic just standing in a room in silence. What gets made in the pause between making? If you're painting, what happens in the space between…
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Episode 11: You Actually Have Two Jobs
Hello Creative Friends, This episode is a (slightly) later follow up to Episode 8: You Have One Job. I don't really know how to to describe this episode in a paragraph, so I'm not going to. It's a long episode. I honestly wonder how I just talked for 90 minutes straight. I supposed my husband...
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Episode 10: Lightening Before Thunder
Hello Creative Friends, This episode is about the creative power of energy. A philosophical foundation of my work and business is that energy is profoundly artistic. We are making things all the time, even simply standing in a room! I wanted to share a story about a teacher that first taught me…
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Episode 9
ABOUT THIS PODCAST Welcome to Secret Sauce, a podcast about the secret ingredients in life and work, hosted by Becca Borrelli. Secret Sauce explores artistry as a helpful framework for inspiring meaning and understanding in our everyday lives. ABOUT BECCA Becca is an illustrator-educator and part...
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Episode 8: You Have One Job
Hello Creative Friends, This episode is for the graduate kiddos. You Have One Job... and it's do figure out what you truly want, and do it. Simple. Not Easy (in the slightest). Doing what your soul truly wants is the greatest gift you can give to the world. Far more damage is done to the planet…
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Episode 7: Are Artists Essential?
Hello Creative Friends, It's fair to say that in this time, we are understanding and re-defining the word "essential" in new ways. Especially during times of collective distress, it's easy to feel like making or creating is not only unhelpful, but selfish. How DO artists matter? What do they…
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Episode 6... We Came Here to be Magic
Hello Creative Friends, Last week I spoke about being invited to let go ideas of "being right" when we make things. If we're not here to be "right," a continuation of that is this episode: "We're here to make magic." Magic is an elusive thing isn't it? The word conjures up many ideas, and also…
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Episode 5: We Didn't Come Here to be Right...
Hello Creative Friends, How are you all doing during this time? Last week, I found myself reflecting on a larger narrative for what the heck artists are doing here. Yes, we make beautiful things. Yes we feel under the surface of the world to make those things. Yes, we're here to serve others as...
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Episode 4: We're Artists We're SAF Part 3
Hello Creative Friends, In the third and final part of the "We're Artists We're Sensitive as F***" series, I talk about the nature of work, and how sensitivity changes the experience we have with it. What are the assumptions and misconceptions of how we view work? Do we view "making a living" as...
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Sensitive as F*** with Austin Art Talk
Hello Creative Friends, This is audio from my conversation last week with host of Austin's pre-eminent Art podcast: Austin Art Talk. I have been a fan of Scott David Gordon and his thought-provoking art interviews since nearly the podcast's inception. He's incredibly easy to talk to, and in this...
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We're Artists We're SAF: Part 2
Hello Creative Friends, Why are Artists Sensitive? What if it's for a very good reason? In Part 2 of 3 in the We're Artists We're SAF Series, we expand upon the work Artists are actually doing. I use a sports hero from my hometown of Cleveland- LeBron James- as a metaphor for how an Artists work…
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We're Artists We're SAF
Hello Creative Friends, If Secret Sauce is the thing only we can put into the world... what keeps us from doing that? In this episode I talk about making friends with sensitivity. That can be hard to do in a world that still largely views sensitivity as weakness. How can renegotiating the stories...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Hosted by Austin Illustrator Becca Borrelli, Secret Sauce explores Art through a process-focused, spiritual, inclusive lens, that seeks to awaken everyone to the birthright of their personal artistry.
HOSTED BY
Becca Borrelli
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Secret Sauce have?
Secret Sauce currently has 51 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Secret Sauce about?
Hosted by Austin Illustrator Becca Borrelli, Secret Sauce explores Art through a process-focused, spiritual, inclusive lens, that seeks to awaken everyone to the birthright of their personal artistry.
How often does Secret Sauce release new episodes?
Secret Sauce has 51 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Secret Sauce?
You can listen to Secret Sauce on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Secret Sauce?
Secret Sauce is created and hosted by Becca Borrelli.
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