After just the right amount of adulthood years mucking around and trying to figure out what I’m good at, I’ve learned that one of the things I’m meant to do in this lifetime is work with creatives to help uncover the excitement, freedom and wholeness that comes from paying attention to your intuitive inner artist;
To help identify and pay attention to that creative energy that makes you feel fully alive.
Years ago at a time when I was in the thick of figuring out how photography fit into my life and my career, I started seeing a therapist. I remember sitting in that room each week, laboring over all the things I thought I should be talking about. And fully aware - that all I really wanted to do was talk about photography.* I was desperate to talk about it. To have someone ask me about whatever project I was working on or look at the website I’d spent two years building or just tell me what they thought of my photos. Yes I had photography friends, peers, but I was never one who could say,
“can we just please take a minute to talk about me and my art??”
What I needed was a mentor, another photographer who wanted to know exactly and in great detail - who genuinely cared - how I felt about making pictures, my creative goals, my photo-related daydreams, my experiences up until that point as a photographer. What I needed was a space where I had full permission to talk as much as I wanted about my relationship with photography.
as a mentor, I AM COMMITTED TO:
Forming a relationship where you feel equally supported and challenged.
Providing check-ins that hold you accountable to the ways you’d like to see yourself grow.
Listening, asking questions and offering insight.
Helping you identify the things that make you feel artistically alive, and encouraging you to stay true to those things. Whether it’s through a daily practice, a shift in the way you think about yourself, a project you’d like to see through to completion.
Guiding you as you plan the next step that is needed to move towards your goals.
Giving critical feedback on your work.
Exploring ideas about how you can weave your life as an artist into your everyday life.
And most of all, being a champion of your creative pursuits.
Everyone has, at their core, a creative spirit that longs to be expressed. Not everyone gives that inner VOICE the time, space or permission to be explored.
unrelated 2007 photo of my underwear drying in a house that I was renting while working on a documentary project - (intended to break up the monotony of an overly wordy webpage)
“Quiet, understated, impactful, encouraging, and inspiring. Molly’s truest gift to her mentees is when she starts with a reflective, “I wonder if…” That gentle nudge, the contemplative push towards exploration and true self. It’s the essence of her curiosity that stays perched on your shoulder when you’re photographing. She has no hard edges. She knows the difference between judgement and careful critique. Her thoughts and ideas encourage exploration, which is the perfect kindling to add to creative fire.”
- Zoë Gemelli
Reasons WHY YOU AND I SHOULD WORK TOGETHER:
I’m a strong photo editor with an instinctual sense of narrative structure, a background in creative writing, literary journalism, documentary radio and multimedia production.
I am a lifetime student of storytelling and photography.
I have experience working with photographers of many genres, experience levels, interests and approaches to photography.
I am equal parts spiritual and practical and can relate to artists with a wide spectrum of beliefs.
I am encouraging but also direct, and will always give you my honest opinion.
I get genuinely excited (sometimes to the point of tears) about other people’s creative growth.
Molly's wholehearted approach to teaching is everything I could ask for in a mentor. She offers insight that ignites and expands curiosity. The time spent learning from Molly boosted my confidence in my unique voice which has been a true gift.
- Mary Moore, Director of Real Life Photo Conference
On a Fall Morning
Joni Mitchell on a fall morning with the sun heating up the Volvo as I drive slowly down Euclid. A sweet, nostalgic excitement about creating art that feels entirely present. Like a calm sense of clarity, a bringing together of all past experience, memories and longing:
The tree at the edge of the woods when I was a child with the long, outstretching arms thick as trunks. The rotted-out center at the place where the branches spread out. If I used the right foot-holds I could climb up onto the flat spot of soft dusty wood and use it as my perch to peer into the neighbors yard, or pretend I was an orphan who lived in a tree.
Listening to mix tapes in high school from my first boyfriend, and taking melodramatic self portraits with my black and white film camera in the mildewy basement. The concrete crawlspace and how it smelled. The boxes of slides and negatives kept in the way back where it was too dark to see.
Seventeen years old, staying up all night creating. That feeling of independence and rebellion and something that belonged only to me, an entire night that I could own. My life on fire with all the unknown.
What does your inspiration feel like? What does it feel like when you’re filled with some holy presence of creativity that comes like a rush and sweeps your insides so you’re left vibrating, empty, open, alive?
That feeling which is like a memory and a promise at the same time. Reminding that you have something inside that needs to come out. It’s always been there, it’s not going away. It’s part of who you are, it’s who you are.
I also offer a guided mentorship specifically geared towards completing a multimedia story using photography and audio!
* Crazy story - Several years later I became friends with a local photographer. I was in her home office giving a Lightroom tutorial and while she was talking about her partner (of over 20 years) I realized that her partner had been my therapist!