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Nancy Mills : Cathryn Hrudicka Interview
Interview with Cathryn Hrudicka on CreativitySpirited Woman Q & ABy Nancy Mills As I've gone from city to city leading the SPIRITED WOMAN Workshop, I've had the privilege of meeting some
truly exceptional women. Cathryn Hrudicka is most definitely one of them. I met Cathyrn, who lives in
Berkeley, CA when she attended my first San Francisco workshop last April. Truth be told, Cathryn genuinely
impressed me as a REALLY CREATIVE WOMAN. It was the way she dressed and expressed and pondered — and
just was — as though every nerve ending was burrrrrrrrrrsting with creativity. My instincts were
Cathryn, I later found out, refers to herself as the CHIEF IMAGINATION OFFICER (CIO) of her company,
Creative Sage, where she enables businesses, non-profits, educational institutions, healthcare facilities and
individuals to enhance their creativity and think in new, innovative ways. Also, for 15+ years, in addition
to owning Creative Sage, she has led Cathryn Hrudicka & Associates, a multi-media development services
company. To name a brief list of Cathryn's numerous creative talents — she's a writer, composer, sound
designer, editor, multi-media producer and artist, trend-setting entrepreneur, I mean the woman's got talent pouring out of every vein, and since so many of you attend the SPIRITED
WOMAN Workshop as an outlet to let your creative expression roar and soar, I thought you'd be fascinated by
Cathryn's life, both personal and business, and also by what she has to say about the creative process
For those of you want to meet Cathryn face to face, she is 99% sure that she will attend the first ever
SPIRITED WOMAN Berkeley Workshop on October 23. She would love to meet you, as would I. Now, read on
Q.
You say in your resume that if someone was stranded on an island with only one
consultant/mentor to guide them to creative freedom — it should be
A.
My entire life has been about learning about creativity and figuring out the best processes
that work with different types of people and different types of situations. I've been an artist, I've run my
own business, and I've worked with people in all the different settings — corporate,
Q.
Your company, Creative Sage is from the Planet of Sonic Delight— what does
A.
Well, I have a background as a sound designer and a composer, which is probably kind of
unusual for a person running their own business, so I actually just put that in there because so much of my
life is focused on listening, not just seeing, but listening — whether listening to a client talk or
listening to sounds in my environment — including the sounds of my work environment, which I focus on
as much as the way my work environment looks. I am always either creating sound or I'm trying to listen very
carefully to the environment around me, whether it's human
Q.
Cathryn, did you come from a
A.
I think in retrospect, yes I did come from a creative family. I don't know if they would
have identified themselves as such. I think we all sort of took our creativity for granted. My father is a
visual artist. He was an art director for an advertising agency, now he owns his own advertising agency. He
had his own drawing studio in the basement and I use to hang out with him. He also had a moonlight job
designing houses and he won an award one year for the best house in the Chicago area. He was the only
person who entered who wasn't a licensed architect. It was called "The House of Light." And then my mother
was also extremely creative, she was always doing various crafts — she made costumes for us, was the
leader of the Girl Scouts or the director of the PTA — she was always leading children in very
creative activities. My grandparents were all really
Q.
At what age did you realize that you
A.
I don't know if I really realized it — I think I just always was from the earliest I
can remember. My grandfather had a bunch of building materials on his farm, and I would actually design
and build real miniature houses when I was four. My mother taught me how to read when I was three and
right away, I started writing poems. And by the time I was in first grade I was reading novels. So I was
completely bored with school because I was way ahead of the other kids. I always sang. I studied ballet
and modern dance. Then my father was teaching me how to draw — not only draw but draw houses —
and then he would come home from work, and ask my brother and I, we were like child copywriters for his ad
agency, about a campaign for "green giant vegetables" or something, and he'd say, "By the end of dinner, I
want a slogan," and we'd come
Q.
Why do you believe opening up our creative process is so vitally important —
especially
A.
I think women tend to get squashed, really, our self-expression, as we grow up, or
certainly it becomes over-shadowed often by men in positions of superiority. I think women, in that we're
natural creators, really have a bounty of wonderful ideas to bring forth and everyone needs to be
encouraged in a workplace and just in any area of life. Without creativity, life wouldn't move forward
— we wouldn't have new services, we wouldn't have new products, we wouldn't have new ways of looking
at ourselves, we wouldn't have new thoughts about how the world could work. To me creativity is what we
live for — it's the positive part of
Q.
Are there any tips you can give us so that we can enhance
A.
One thing I do when I'm stuck is look at things from a different perspective. One
technique of doing that is called "mind-mapping," where you write down all the different ideas or thoughts
that are floating around in your head and you try to re-arrange them in a different order than you might
normally do and map them out. You can draw them on a piece of paper or if you have a computer tool, like
Inspiration, you can literally map out the ideas and you'll undoubtedly see things in a different way.
Even if you put them in a different order, or you take a list of words that represent the problem you're
tackling, or you put different groups of them together, even if they don't seem logical, invariably you'll
come up with a new idea. It can be wild, it can be outrageous, but you'll definitely come up with a
different way of looking at
Q.
Any other pearls of wisdom
A.
Well, first of all, set aside time for it. You may think you don't have time, but it's
crucial. You have to think of it as an investment in yourself, in your business, and your future. Even set
aside little islands. Like if you have a full time job, take a half-hour of your lunchtime and just carry
a journal with you everywhere. Write down any creative ideas that come. If you are better at drawing say
than writing, just draw a picture or a stick figure of any creative idea that comes to you. If you sing or
music comes to you, then carry a little
Q.
Why do you feel you are a spirited woman?
A.
I try to live as much as possible from my spirit and from my heart and whenever my brain
gets in the way too much I try to stop for a few minutes at least, and say is that what I'm really feeling
deep inside. Is that what my spirit wants? And when I'm sad or I'm depressed, I try to feel is this coming
from my spirit or is this some mental garbage going on. If it is from my spirit, like I'm grieving or
something, I try to allow myself certain times to do that because that's important. This is the thing, you
have to constantly nurture your spirit everyday and find your own individual way of
THANK YOU CATHRYN. YOU ARE A Cathryn Hrudicka looks forward to hearing from you at www.cathrynhrudicka.com or www.creativesage.com. © 2005 Nancy Mills
7/28/05 |
