Creative culture often reinforces the idea that meaningful work happens in isolation.

But listening back to these conversations, a different pattern emerges.

In this bonus episode, voices from across Season Two reflect on the relationships that make creative work possible. Partners, collaborators, friends, and communities show up not as background support, but as part of the work itself.

This episode isn’t about collaboration as a strategy. It’s about creativity as something that often happens between people and with the help of others.

If you’ve been carrying too much of the work alone, this episode is meant to offer recognition, relief, and a way into the conversations that follow this season.

No interview. No polish. Voice notes.

This one’s about women.

No interview. No polish. Voice notes.

This one’s about need. With an assist from Melissa Etheridge.

In this episode, I talk with artist and educator Mike Mitchell, whose creative life is shaped by love, lineage, and a deep attention to the everyday. Mike’s art emerges in the “creases and cracks” of his life: grocery store walls, family rituals, neighborhood stories, and the long partnership that anchors him.

Together we explore what it means to grow creatively in adulthood, how identity and place shape an artist’s voice, and the role a loving, steady relationship plays in an evolving creative practice.

This is a conversation about art that’s lived. About marriage as a form of collaboration. About finding meaning in humble materials and daily gestures. About the beauty that appears when we let things fall apart and trust what comes next.

If you’re someone trying to make space for creativity inside a full life, or wondering how love and art can coexist, this episode is for you.

About Mike

Mikey Mitchell aka mikewindy manages the Nina Lovelace Center for Arts and Social Practice at Tennessee State University in Nashville where he is a professor in the Art Department. He is an artist, arts educator, writer, musician, and skater.

He is the host of the Drawing South Podcast which has over 100 episodes including conversations with artists across disciplines and career positions from Atticus a 15 year old drummer and punk show promoter in the Nashville Skate Scene to Jason Moran. He and his brilliant and beautiful wife Windy have been married for 29 years and their son Joey is a freshman at the University of Memphis.

No interview. No polish. Voice notes.

This one's about megaphones. And Maya Angelou.

No interview. No polish. Voice notes.

This one is about loneliness. And Jodie Foster.

In this episode, artists and producers, Everest Hall and Mike Russnak take us inside a shared life built, literally, from the ground up. We talk about art school, self-education, reinvention, homelessness, humor, moral courage, astrology, and the unexpected power of moving across the country with nothing but each other.

Together they describe what partnership looks like when it’s deeply creative: the way one person steadies the other, the way listening becomes a practice, and the surprising places where joy and possibility still break through.

About Everest and Mike

Everest Hall (born 1974, Auburn, New York) is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice spans painting, performance, architecture, and sculpture. He developed an early interest in the arts and attended Walnut Hill School for the Arts, where he received formal training in visual art. Hall went on to earn a BFA in Painting from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, followed by an MFA from the Yale University School of Art in 1998.

Hall has exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally, with his work held in museum and private collections. In addition to his studio practice, he is an active producer of digital content, creating several YouTube channels including EverestDIY and, most recently, Big Apple Mountain Tarot, which he co-produces with his partner, Mike Russnak.

Born in 1978 in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, Michael Russnak is an interdisciplinary artist whose work explores the intersections of tradition, superstition and human connection. Raised in a working-class Catholic family, Russnak’s early education in parochial schools instilled in him a lifelong fascination with the moral and symbolic framework that shape belief and behavior - an interest that continues to inform his creative practice today.

Originally awarded a scholarship to study architecture at Pratt Institute, Russnak also attended NYIT before departing to pursue broader creative and experimental paths. This pursuit led him to the William Esper Studio where he honed his craft as an actor studying the Meisner technique.

Michael’s eclectic career has included work as a decorative painter, wood finisher, actor, escort, surrogate partner and astrologer - roles that together form a living study of intimacy, labor and identity.

Since relocating from New York City to the southwest in 2020 with his partner Everest, Russnak has continued to expand his artistic and metaphysical endeavors through Big Apple Mountain Tarot, an astrology-based community that blends spiritual exploration with humor and cultural commentary. He is currently developing a news-comedy segment rooted in the same empathy and wit that defines his body of work.

As we begin Season Two of I’m Here Too, this bonus episode brings together voices from across the season to talk honestly about what creativity actually needs to survive inside real lives.

Instead of discipline or hustle, you’ll hear people talk about conditions. Time. Space. Safety. Care. Flexibility. Structures that make creative work possible rather than exhausting.

This episode is not advice and not a productivity framework. It’s a recognition that creativity falters not because people lack desire, but because the conditions around it are wrong, missing, or under constant pressure.

If you’ve been trying to make something work without the right support, this episode is meant to offer clarity, company, and a way into the conversations that follow this season.