Todd Vinson Self Portrait

I’m Todd Vinson, engineer, podcast producer, workshop instructor, writer, and maker of fine art currently based out of South Carolina. Here’s my artist resume in PDF.

This lengthy “About” section is my attempt to fully explain why this blog and accompanying podcast exist:

I work as a Senior Systems Engineer for a small company headquartered in San Diego, California USA.  At age 45, I moved to Georgia with my wife Alane to pursue a Master of Fine Art (MFA) from Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) – Atlanta campus.  I worked as an engineer and full-time student, so my life was nearly 24/7 mix of  technical and creative productivity – a fully creative life.

Mom and Dad watched their middle-aged engineer-artist son give the Excelsus Laureate speech at graduation.  After graduation, Alane and I moved back to our Maryland home.  We were living out of boxes when Mom died.  Before we could finish unpacking, my grandfather passed away.  I was transported to a barren place where there was no map, creativity or motivation.

My MFA thesis was a dark body of work called, “In Absentia,” Latin for “In the absence”.  The project addressed grief and loss artistically via a fictitious town I call Absentia.  Here, loss was a strong presence but bounded.  I felt trapped in Absentia, as if a living character in my own made-up town.

This blog and podcast is not intended to be depressing.  Quite the opposite.  It is a creativity podcast, but we will also examine what stops creativity and how we can get the flow going again.  Did I create “In Absentia” because somehow I knew I would need a dark place to fall?  Did I need to be stuck for a while for a while before I could move ahead again?  I don’t know, but I do know we cannot stay stuck and expect creativity to flow.  We can however, find inspiration from our stuck situation and make amazing stuff.

I hope you will be a part of this journey, and that any navigational markers left along the way will help you on your own creative path.  At times I may resemble an old man in a strange house, groping for a light switch on an unfamiliar lamp.  But if we start at the edges and work toward the center, the switch will be found and the light will come on.

Join me as we start mapping the edge!