In this episode, I've invited my good friend Carissa to take the reins as guest host. She's brought along her friend, Aaron to embark on a fresh creative project, making something that neither of them has made before. Links mentioned in this episode Aaron Chen’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/journomadic/ Carissa Ferdinand’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/3cloudsstudio/ Air and Space Forces Magazine Minot State University Athletics Minot Daily News Carissa's Mad Hatter Carissa’s Cloud Guy Oklahoma City Asian district Textile artist Victoria Villasana Lao Gan Ma chili sauce KattGrass Studios Homestead Center for the Arts Photos Carissa's embellished print, photo by Aaron Chen Aaron's embellished print, photo by Carissa Ferdinand Transcript Carissa: Hi everyone, this is Carissa from Three Cloud Studios, formerly Koi the Creatrix, here with Aaron Chen on You and I Make a Thing Hi, Aaron. How are you? Aaron: Good, good. How are you, Carissa? Carissa: Good. Thank you so much for asking. Aaron is a passionate and accomplished traveler, lifestyle, and commercial content creator. He's known for crafting compelling visual stories that resonate with his audience and best reflect his clients’ values. Some of his work has been featured in publications such as Air and Space Forces Magazine, Minot State University Athletics newsletter, Reveille Music Publishing, and Minot Daily News. Aaron: That's a good intro! Carissa: Yeah. Okay. I wanted to keep it brief. Does that sound okay with you? Aaron: Yeah. That was awesome. Carissa: Thank you! So Aaron, I know that you have been on this bit of cross country photography experience. What have been some of the most memorable stops that you've made along your journey? Aaron: Yeah, thanks for asking that. It's interesting because the cross-country journey kind of ended up when I visited you guys. You guys are at the tip of Florida and that was the end of the journey there. Carissa: Yeah, so you went all the way from North Dakota down to the very end of Florida. Aaron: Yes. So North Dakota is where my journey started. And so same thing kind of as you, you know, North Dakota is kind of like our artistic, big breakthrough era. And I know we supported each other a lot in North Dakota. So I was very excited to go see you in Florida. Carissa: Yeah, in my hometown in like my natural setting here. Aaron: Yeah. Carissa: And Aaron was kind enough, he has done a couple photo shoots for various products that I have created, t-shirts and the like. He also was kind enough to stop by and take photos of my first art exhibit last year. And so I was incredibly grateful. And of course, the photos come out absolutely amazing every single time. Aaron: Oh, thank you. Thank you. Carissa: So any plans moving forward on your adventures? Aaron: Yeah. I have Hawaii coming up pretty soon, and then after that with Japan, and pretty much my plan is to travel all across Asia, capturing stories of people and culture, and then bring them back to the American audience. Carissa: Oh, I'm so excited hearing that. And I think that actually ties into one of the projects that I want to talk about here today. So leading up to this meeting, I've asked you to come with three ideas. I myself have come up with three ideas of projects that we can work on. We come from very different media backgrounds. And so I'm really curious to see where this goes and to see what we can come up with. T The idea is that we find a project that's a little bit anxiety inducing and maybe one that's feasible to accomplish within a month. So, typically what we do is a bit of a back and forth. You share one, I share one idea here. Would you like to start or would you like me to? Aaron: I think you can start. I'm very excited to hear what you come up with. I think you always have amazing ideas and it inspired me to keep spiraling and come up with more ideas. Carissa: Oh, yay! Okay. So as I mentioned, your upcoming journey throughout Asia reminded me of a project idea that I have here when we first started kind of arranging this meeting. It was right after New Year's. And so thinking about some of our past conversations, I thought about how important culture has been to the both of us. And I was interested in doing a project about the Lunar New Year, the Chinese New Year, because outside of calling it the Chinese New Year and knowing the animal associated with my year of birth, I really don't know much about the Lunar New Year. And so I thought it was a great opportunity to learn a bit more and to celebrate something that I know is important to you. Aaron: Yeah. I really appreciate that. That sounds really cool. Okay. Carissa: Well, go ahead. What is one of the ideas that you came up with? Aaron: So pretty much I just wanted to see which direction I wanted to take it in. Like I have kind of the Asian culture direction. Or even like a mental health direction. Or we can do a combination of both. But I really like ...
