Our October 23 Newsletter: Finding Profound Creativity in the Most Unlikely Place
Wright Thompson earned it today.
It’s Friday, and we have big news about…
How author Wright Thompson dug into his creative well to write his latest book, The Barn.
White House Creative Director Meena Yi’s amazing office studio.
A team of artists, painters, and sculptors who make more than 500 life-like prosthetics each year.
But first… our editor Matt McCue shares his “view from here” about finding creativity in the most unlikely places:
Creativity is often considered a trait that only artsy, innovative people receive at birth. But the truth is creativity is a (highly-desirable!) skill that can be honed and improved. And it is not only reserved for artists. In fact, some of the most creative solutions we see today come from overlooked and less glamorous professions.
That brings me to our feature interview this week – one you probably did not see coming. Mike Holt applies his artistic skills to a unique product: prosthetics. For 30 years, he and his 10-person team of artists have made an average of 500 life-like prosthetics per year. They are typically for people who have lost limbs, sometimes in a gruesome fashion.
Mike founded ARTech with his brother Dale Holt in 1995 out of his garage in the Dallas suburbs. While traditional prostheses have been primarily to restore function with little emphasis on aesthetic appearance, ARTech focuses on restoring the appearance of the injured limb sufficiently to eliminate the stigma associated with disfigurement. ARTech's natural-looking restorations are virtually undetectable from real limbs. Holt and his team sculpt and paint the limbs (and the nails). In fact, the entire process is done by hand.
From Mike, I learned why making things by hand still matters. The entire process at ARTech is an art — the sculpting, painting, prep, even the technical portion of it is artistic. Each work is as unique as each patient. "We don’t have anything 'on the shelf' that we can put on the patient," Mike told us. "No machine can pump these limbs out — even 3D printers don’t print in wax. Everything is custom-made."
We live in an increasingly automated, mechanical world – AI yadda, yadda, yadda – but it makes me feel good to read about people like Mike whose team creates something with only their minds, eyes, and hands.
Have a great week.
Matt McCue, Founder + Editor
