TED Talks Daily
How to invite creativity into your life | Rose B. Simpson, Debbie Millman
02 May 2026
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hugh. What happens when you grow up in a home where art isn't something you go see, but something you create to survive? Rosalie Simpson would know. She comes from a line of clay artists stretching back generations. She also builds custom lowrider cars.
And if that sounds like a contradiction, it's kind of the point.
I look at a car and I don't see the car. I see what it could be. I look at a garden and I don't see the garden. I see what it could be.
Chapter 2: What does it mean to grow up in a creative environment?
And then I begin.
Rose grew up in Santa Clara, Pueblo, New Mexico. Raised by her mother, the sculptor Roxanne Swensel, in a home where the electricity was sometimes deliberately turned off and art was indistinguishable from life. In this conversation with Design Matters podcast host Debbie Millman, she explores what it means to treat everything, a ceramic figure, a car, a room, your own body, as a vessel.
They talk about what it means to listen to the world around you, and Rose reminds us that we are never as powerless as we think.
There wasn't a difference between art and life. Everything was a creative process, and everything was applied, and everything had intention and meaning. The conversation's coming up right after a short break.
Bye.
And now our conversation of the day.
Rose, let's talk a little bit about your origin story. You grew up in Santa Clara Pueblo, surrounded by generations of artists and thinkers. Your mother, Roxanne Swensdell, and your grandmother both forged paths that united making and meaning. When did you first sense that art could also be a kind of language for survival?
Mmm.
Going real deep, real fast.
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Chapter 3: How does Rose B. Simpson define the relationship between art and life?
Yeah, I'm really sensitive to, like, yeah, it's all, we adapt to all the things that we add to our lives, and when we take it away, then we start realizing how much we're affected by it, yeah.
What did those early experiences teach you about self-reliance or the connection between self-reliance and imagination?
I feel like understanding true sustainability means that we always have a choice. Because my mom didn't put us into the school system, she intentionally homeschooled me and my brother from early on, and we chose to go to school later, and now we keep going to school. And I think that was a way of her building a capacity in us to choose. There's always a choice.
We're not victims to the world that we live in. We can always, if we're taught how to be sustainable and how to innovate and figure out how to survive in any situation, then we are in our agency when we navigate the world around us.
That requires self-reliance that is not always something that we're learned to cultivate as children. How do you sustain that?
How do I sustain that?
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Chapter 4: What role does listening play in creativity?
I love to remember that I don't need the things I think I need, right? Like we're told and told and told that we need X, Y, and Z. And every single day I realize it's a choice I'm making. And then I'm in my power in relationship to it. As long as I don't need it, it doesn't rule me, it doesn't own me. And so,
if i maintain my relationship with the natural world my food sources etc then i am actively engaging in the relationships that i'm making and that includes the art world that includes car culture that includes education that includes um all the decisions the res you know being here today what
intrigues you most about car culture? Are you a Fast and Furious fan or is it more spiritual?
At one point, I did Fast and Furious a lot. I watched all the movies. God in 60 Seconds is my jam. So you've got range. I grew up in EspaƱola, New Mexico, which is a town that's adjacent. It's actually sandwiched between two reservations, two tribal nations, Santa Clara Pueblo and Oquehuingue. So the town is...
the youth culture is very mixed between indigenous communities and then the local Hispanic communities. And so we grew up together, so my youth culture was very much like lowriders and what would be the Cholo culture Hispanic community there.
And as a little kid, my mom had a 52-wheelies truck that she built our house with, and there was no room for the kids in the front seat, so we used to sit in the bed of the truck as she drove through town. And I'd be watching all the cars pile up behind us, because we went max 40 miles an hour, right?
And I'd be looking at all the nice cars, and in my head, I was like, when I grow up, I'm going to have a nice car. That was just the goal, right? Did that happen? Oh, yeah. Tell us about what's in your garage. I have two custom cars that I built for myself in order to have an aesthetic experience. What does that mean? Relational aesthetics to me, when I was in graduate school the first time,
I wrote my thesis and I studied what indigenous aesthetic means, right? And the closest I found was actually Japanese aesthetics that I was written about, and aesthetics of the everyday and the intentionality of all that we do and the applied aesthetics to our lived environment.
And growing up in EspaƱola, where the cruise line on Sunday is everybody getting in their nice car and you put on some good tunes and you lean back, and you are present. you're enjoying your community, you're having a sense of self-worth, you're enjoying the sunset, you have a good drink from Sonic, right? That feeling is actually presence.
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Chapter 5: How did Rose's upbringing influence her artistic journey?
And that feeling is when aesthetic gets reapplied to our life, and when we make those aesthetic decisions, that we are in a state of agency. We're a state of empowerment in ourselves, right? And so I was building myself to have that moment, to create that aesthetic experience for myself that I felt was reminiscent of what I knew of applied indigenous aesthetics.
where it's not in a white cube on a white box in some other building somewhere where you don't necessarily have access to. It's for everyone. Everyone has access to that experience.
But your work does move between disciplines, ceramics, metal, automotive restoration, performance, and now includes all of them. Now, did you always imagine those boundaries dissolving, or did that happen more organically over the work that you've done in your practice?
I always wonder if I stop being an artist in the way that the world is arting, I would still be doing stuff. I would still be going from one place to the next and making things constantly. And I feel like I'm always interested in how I'm a dreamer. I constantly ... I'm imagining the next best thing. I'm imagining, I'm laying there like, that window should be over there, and how can I do that?
And like, I look at a car and I don't see the car, I see what it could be, right? Like, I look at a garden and I don't see the garden, I see what it could be, and then I begin. and I feel like I will always be doing that, no matter what.
I'm always going to be searching, whether that's in the world around me and how to better that and how to listen to it, ask how I can be of service of it, and then do work. and the satisfaction of stepping back and seeing how something transformed. That is that applied aesthetic to the world around me in all things. And I feel like that is also internal.
So it's also that internal investigation of our psychological and spiritual spaces.
You've called cars cars. vessels. And many of your figures, many of the sculptures you make, you've called vessels for transformation. What do these vessels hold? Consciousness. Tell us about that.
I am a vessel and I am aware. and I am moving and I am making decisions intentionally in this world. And I make ceramic vessels that are hollow inside, and they are watching, and they are doing work, and they are independent, and they make their own decisions, and they move through the world with a job to do. And so do cars. And so do the houses we live in, the spaces we inhabit.
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