Ryan’s creative endeavors include poetry, articles, and multimedia collaborations with friends old and new. He’s driven to create art as a spiritual practice of discovering, clarifying, and celebrating his own experience, and evoking a shared feeling in others. You can follow Ryan’s poetry, his musings on art, see his work on Sex, God, Rock ‘n Roll, view his short films, and read his articles on Live the Questions.
Portrait of an Artist
Though he couldn’t read a lick of music at the time, his sheer passion and heart landed him in a renowned music performance program at Missouri Western State University where he majored in percussion performance, sound engineering, and Spanish. His true artistic awakening came years later while producing Stuart Davis’ wildly creative national television show, Sex, God, and Rock ‘n Roll. This unique project integrated many of Ryan’s cherished and disparate talents and qualities: spiritual debauchery, irreverent humor, and creative abandon, and technological geekery. The show’s long-awaited second season, costarring Kandyse McClure, airs on HDNet this fall. Ryan’s also written and produced two short films, including Love’s Initiation, which won the award for best screenplay at the 2009 Boulder Shootout Festival.
…I can’t give you any advice but this: to go into yourself and see how deep the place is from which your life flows; at its source you will find the answer to the question of whether you must create. Accept that answer, just as it is given to you, without trying to interpret it. Perhaps you will discover that you are called to be an artist. Then take that destiny upon yourself, and bear it, its burden and its greatness, without ever asking what reward might come from outside. For the creator must be a world for himself and must find everything in himself and in Nature, to whom his whole life is devoted. ~ Rilke
