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Welcome to Your Art Is A Spell, the podcast that ignites inspiring and transformative conversations about art as a magical practice. I'm your host, Edgar Fabián Frías—a multi-passionate artist, witch, therapist, and proud mutant shape-shifter. My art spells have reached audiences through social media, billboards, and skyscrapers and have even been placed on the surface of the moon! Join us as we explore how reclaiming your unique artistic voice and embracing bold creativity can transform your life and the world around you. Subscribe to the podcast and sign up for our newsletter at www.yourartisaspell.com to stay connected!
welcome your art is a spell and it will change
your life and the world around you hey everyone
welcome back to your art is a spell where we
explore the magical intersection of creativity
spirituality and transformation I'm your host
Edgar Fabian Frias and today I want to take you
on a journey my journey of how I became the
multi-passionate artist witch educator and
therapist that I am today this was inspired by
the fact that a couple of years ago I created a
dream job spell that took two forms a meditation
that was commissioned by the artist and writer
Michelle Tea that I'm going to be linking here in
the YouTube video and also in the description of
this podcast and the dream job spell also took
the form of a viewfinder artwork and I will
also be including that link in the description so
if you want to see it you could also purchase it
I think there are a few left but I didn't just
wake up one day with this dream career the path
has been winding it's been challenging sometimes
and full of unexpected turns so buckle up because
today I'm sharing all the different jobs I've had
to normalize that becoming who you are meant to
be is rarely a straight line so so my first job
ever was actually working with my dad when I was
really young he would take us out on weekends
and we would collect cans from garbage cans we
would go to the rich neighborhoods and we would
look through their trash and we would collect
cans to take to recycle my dad always made this
a really fun activity for us I remember we would
always end up going to McDonald's afterwards so it
always felt like a fun celebratory thing to do and
later on as I got older my dad would invite me to
other jobs of his one that really sticks out was
when we were tasked with emptying out the home of
someone who had just died it was challenging but
also really stayed with me for many years because
we literally emptied out an entire home together
finding photos old magazines records all of these
things told the story of who this person was so
you could see why this one really stuck with me
and of course I also pet sat for people and I
grew up Jehovah's Witness so I feel like another
job I had even though it was unpaid was I would go
door too sharing the good news of the kingdom of
Jehovah I would also stand outside of donut shops
sharing what I believed at that time was the good
news so I've been a proselytizer for a long time
and in many ways this is another iteration of me
sharing the good news but that news has shifted
now as you all know and you know my first real job
was working as a locker room attendant at a pool
that was in my town at this job the universe gave
me a gift I met my first queer friend ever Arturo
and I remember he came out to me on the first
day of work and I remember really struggling with
that because I was still Jehovah's witness and I
wasn't sure about how I felt at the time having
a gay coworker but I also remembered Another
Part Of Me felt really excited to meet another
gay person and little did I know that I would be
coming out to him a few months later after this
when I started undergrad at UC Riverside I became
a peer counselor and I worked with students who
were on academic probation it was my first taste
of being a therapist and also really normalized
the process of going to therapy for me and it
was during this time that I visited a therapist
for the first time and that fully changed my
life from there at UC Riverside I worked as
a psycholinguistics laboratory researcher where I
was doing research using eye tracking machines and
creating weird objects to see what words people
would use to reference them this work informed my
honor thesis which combined this eye tracking
research with ideas of queerness and gender
expansiveness and the results of my psychological
research I ended up putting together into an art
installation as you could see I've always been
drawn to Bridging the Gap between seemingly
disparate academic disciplines after I finished my
honors thesis I studied abroad in northern England
at the University of Leeds which is about 2 hours
north of London by train I finished my art degree
there so my undergrad I got both an art degree and
a psychology degree and I finished my art degree
in Leeds at the University of Leeds and after I
finished it I ended up moving over to Berlin in
Germany and I got a job briefly there as a gallery
preparator assistant where I helped install some
shows and I also helped communicate with the
American buyers who would come to this gallery
after my time abroad I came back to the US and
I worked for a short time as a tutor where I was
helping young children with their math and English
skills I did this for a few months while I saved
up money to move to Portland Oregon supplementing
my income at the time by dumpster diving with my
friend Sergio and selling the things that we would
find in the dumpsters at flea markets or swap
meets as they're called in Southern California
and we made quite a bit of money from dumpster
diving and with this money we moved together to
Portland Oregon in 2008 right at the beginning of
the recession so as you could imagine finding work
was really hard at this time and I had just moved
so the first job I could find was at a call center
helping people transition away from having regular
TV antennas to receiving free digital antennas
from the government it was a bilingual call center
and I remember having to wake up at 4:00 a.m. and
take three buses to get to this job after this job
ended I worked at another call center where we
were processing credit card payments for cell
phone providers in Spanish these were grueling
repetitive jobs where I was treated like a cog in
the machine I remember getting in trouble if I was
just a few seconds late from my break and we were
timed when we went to the restroom shortly after
this job I ended up getting my first job ever as a
parapsychologist or a therapist in training I was
working with families who were having challenges
with their children and doing in home therapy
with them and it was a bilingual position and
I remember this job was truly a turning point for
me it was really at this time that I decided that
I wanted to become a therapist because I wanted to
learn how to work with myself and with others to
facilitate healing while I was doing this I was
also organizing an underground queer Music and
Arts Festival this was a fully community-funded
queer art and music festival in Portland and it
actually grew out of Portland to a lot of places
this became a job of its own even though it was
unpaid but it was definitely lifechanging in many
different ways while I was doing this I applied
and got into graduate school to become a therapist
at Portland State University in Portland Oregon
I worked there in the college's Counseling Center
as a therapist and then I moved to a somatic and
mindfulness-based therapy practice in Portland
where I did my internship and learned the hakomi
method for somatic and mindfulness-based therapy
both of these jobs were unpaid but they definitely
taught me a lot about how to be a therapist and
how to work with people so once I graduated I was
high in demand as a bilingual therapist and I got
a pretty big promotion because I was hired as a
program manager for a domestic violence program
in Hillsboro Oregon it was a nonprofit Center
and I helped to develop a Therapy Program for
Spanish-speaking families who had been victims
of domestic violence and their children I really
loved the work that we did in this program but I
realized pretty quickly this wasn't the type of
work I wanted to do long term so after being in
this position for some time I decided to move
to the Bay Area and the first job I got there
was working with undocumented people who had
been victims of crime providing free therapy
for them that they received through a free program
in California this position didn't last very long
for reasons that I will not get to in this but
after this I got a full-time job working as a
social worker for the first time ever at the
Golden Gate Regional Center in San Francisco
at this job I had over 80 clients all of them
had developmental disabilities many of them
needing wraparound extensive care this was one of
the hardest jobs I've ever had to do it exposed
me to so much loss stress and danger I worked at
this job for a year and a half and unfortunately
due to some terrible things that happened
at this job I was forced to leave the Bay
area and moved to Los Angeles with my partner
this is when things really shifted after moving
to Los Angeles I was gifted an amazing intuitive
reading from my old art professor and dear friend
Asher Hartman that fully changed my life in his
reading he urged me not to look for full-time
work as a therapist as I had done many times in
the past and to really find a part-time job as a
therapist so that I could really focus on my art
art practice even though it was hard I decided to
do it and I got a job at a luxury Treatment Center
in West Los Angeles where I ran a Saturday program
that included art experimential activities like
horseback riding going to the beach to visiting
art museums and running therapy groups on my other
days I focused on my art practice applying for
grants for exhibition opportunities sharing my
work on social media and I slowly began to get
opportunities that led to other opportunities
met the right people who invited me to work on
projects with them and just as Asher had shared I
started to become both an artist and a therapist
at the same time yes this took a bit of time and
there were months when I was really broke where I
wasn't really sure if it was going to work out
but I stuck it through and in spite of having
so many different jobs and moving in a variety of
many different directions my love and passion for
art has always been there it's been unwavering
as has my belief that my artistic vision and
voice mattered and were important those are the
things that kept me going and we need those as
artists to really believe that we have something
to share because for art you have to persevere
and you have to have something that drives you so
as luck or magic would have it just as I decided
to leave my therapy job at the treatment
center and open up my own therapy practice
this this was shortly after I got my lmft
or licensed marriage and family therapist in
California I was awarded a 2-year artist residency
in Tulsa Oklahoma This residency was fully funded
there was a stipend I got a studio I got housing
and I decided to do this because it would allow me
to become a full-time artist for the first time in
my life made the hard decision I closed my private
practice I stopped practicing as a therapist my
partner and I moved to Oklahoma and for the first
time I worked fully as an artist and it was during
this time that I completed two solo shows I was
a part of a biennial in Bogota Colombia I was a
part of a biennial in Los Angeles I shared my art
at a psychedelic music and arts festival I did so
much during these two years and I grew so much as
an artist during this residency I applied and got
accepted to UC Berkeley's MFA art practice program
which I have been trying to get into for years
I'll share another video here if you're watching
on YouTube that uh talks a little bit more about
my journey I will also share it in the notes for
this podcast so my partner and I moved to Berkeley
I began to work there as an art teacher this was
during Covid and I was also getting paid to do
workshops and ceremonies and live interactions
online for example a museum paid me to create a
whole mindfulness based program that I could offer
their communities and really I pivoted a lot into
the virtual realm during this time and got lots
of gigs working virtually so by the time that I
graduated from UC Berkeley I decided to restart
my therapy practice therapy with Edgar this time
fully virtual and with an emphasis on somatic
parts work and I'm so happy to still have this
therapy practice today I specialize in working
with neurodiverse highly sensitive artists and
multi- passionates like myself who are in the
lgbtqia plus Poly ENM Kink and BDSM communities
this practice coupled with my work as an artist
has helped me find the perfect balance that feels
just right for me at this moment I work one day as
a therapist I'm working another day at Cal Arts
where I teach a class and I dedicate the rest
of my time to the many different art writing and
teaching projects that I have going on yes I have
found my dream job so looking back at this winding
nonlinear multi-dimensional path here are some
of the lessons that I've learned number one trust
the seemingly disconnected dots each job even the
ones that felt like detours gave me the skills and
perspectives that make me unique in what I do now
number two your path doesn't have to make sense to
others what might look like career chaos to some
was actually me Gathering the specific ingredients
I needed for my specific magic number three
listen to your intuition the reading from Asher
was a pivotal moment because I trusted it even
when it went against conventional wisdom about
career stability I knew that this was something
I really wanted I tuned into it and I went
for it and committed number four embrace the
both and instead of either or I didn't have to
choose between being an artist or a therapist
I found a way to be both on my own terms and
you can too number five your dream job might
not exist until you create it I've essentially
crafted a career that didn't exist in any job
listing by combining my passions and skills in
unique ways fully committing to them and finding
building forging a web around me to support me
in all the different ways I show up in the world
and I want to emphasize this there are
so many ways to get to where you want
to go and it might look different than what
you thought it would be the path might feel
weird nonlinear not right according to societal
standards but that doesn't mean that it's wrong
I haven't even mentioned all of the ways that
I worked as some jobs lasted for even shorter
amounts of time some of them are embarrassing
to be quite honest I've been paid to do dozens
and dozens of things from officiating weddings
to speaking about my art with high schoolers
and at universities to hosting virtual support
groups for artists and offering tarot readings
at libraries and galleries one big thing that has
come out of this journey is that I've learned I'm
no longer a worker I'm a Creator a deal maker
and someone who gets to show up in as in many
ways as I feel called to so in our next episode
we'll be talking with an artist who I feel also
follows this multi-dimensional nonlinear path her
name is Reina Prado and I look forward to sharing
our conversation with you in the meantime
please subscribe to this podcast share it
with your friends sign up for our newsletter at
yourartisaspell.com and if you're watching this
on YouTube I want to invite you to give a thumbs
up click subscribe and leave a comment how does
my journey compare to yours have any questions
about any of the steps or jobs that I've had
what are your dream jobs I want to hear and also
I want to mention that as a part of season 1 I
am going to be gifting a free 30 minute tarot
reading to someone who leaves me a review go
to Apple podcasts or Spotify leave this podcast
at review and I will be selecting a person in a
future episode to receive a free 30 minute tarot
reading with me until next time remember your art
is a spell in whatever form it takes and it will
change your life and the world around you bye