Chris Dyer's Creative Friends – Details, episodes & analysis

During Hulaween festival 2024, Chris Dyer had the chance to sit down for an in-depth mystical conversation with artist friend Torus Energy aka Jack Lightfoot.

Jack shares the meaning behind the name Torus Energy, his artwork, the inspiring interplay between dark and light, dream realm visions and channelings.

The two also discuss the rapidly evolving trajectory of humanity towards singularity, AI, consciousness, how they are learning from what they are observing and how to navigate.

About the Artist:

Jack William Lightfoot under the pseudonym Torus energy is a multifaceted artist and creator from the UK born in 1992. Projects include painting, fashion design, architecture, carpentry, digital design and many others. Born in the Midlands countryside and exploring world's in search of constant inspiration to the work he creates with these experiences attempts to represent powerful unification of all the human spirits and in turn with the natural world and our part to play in it.

Website: 

www.torusenergyart.com

Social Media (IG): 

@thetorusenergy

During a visit to his former hometown of Montreal, Canada, our artist friend Chris Dyer sits down with longtime street artist friend, Derek, better known to many as “Troy Lovegates” or “Other”.

Derek shares about the magic he finds in street art, tales of train hoping and treasure hunting, the days when artists could focus freely and solely on their art, his worldwide travels as a unique creator, people watching in relation to his subject matter and working with a multitude of mediums.

About the Artist:

A self-described "collector of lost souls”, Lovegates focuses on the figure as a story, building motifs through heavily condensed mark-making. The figures in his work are sympathetically drawn from equal parts caricature and realistic observation.   

Website: 

https://www.troylovegates.com

Instagram:

@troy_lovegates

@otherscribbles

For our 100th episode Chris sits down with legendary visionary artists, Alex & Allyson Grey!

Together they recount the founding of Chapel of Sacred Mirrors and creation of Entheon, both a museum and sanctuary of visionary art. They expand upon the mission of CoSM and the importance of what it offers to the community as social sculpture, merging spirituality with business, what each is expressing through their creative work, the trinities of “mind, body, spirit” relating to “chaos, order & secret writing”, interdimensional philosophy and much more!

About the Artists: 

Alex Grey is best known for his depictions of the body that provide a multi-dimensional “x-ray” of anatomical, psychic and spiritual forces. For many people his visionary art presents icons of the psychedelic mystical experience.

Allyson Grey: Painter, Social Sculptor, Muse... For forty years, Allyson has expressed in her paintings an essentialized world view consisting of three root components: CHAOS, ORDER, & SECRET WRITING.

Alex Grey & Allyson Grey are co-founders & Ministers of CoSM. CoSM is a place of contemplation & worship for community honoring the practice of art as a spiritual path.

Website: 

https://www.cosm.org

https://www.alexgrey.com

https://www.allysongrey.com

Social Media (IG): 

@AlexGreyCosm

@AllysonGreyCosm

@ChapelOfSacredMirrors

In this 10th Episode of Chris Dyer's new Podcast show, he interviews the show's co-creator Ben Zion Jackson (http://rawzion.com)!  He is a filmmaker based in Montreal who has been Dyer's longtime video collaborator.   They talk about skateboarding, kids, homeschooling, coming to Montréal, how they met at the Foufounes Électriques Skate Night, Ben's projects and career, making Chris Dyer's Artventures, relationship breakdowns, surfing in Canada, what it means to be Black, personal racial histories, Black Lives Matter and thoughts about the future.

In this 9th Episode of Chris Dyer's new Podcast show, he interviews his artist friend Leyla Ghobadi, aka Leyla is on Fire ((@leylaisonfire)!  She is a multimedia artist and DJ based in the Plateau hood of Montreal.  
They talk about her studio and the Plateau Mt Royal neighbourhood, horror movie props and Halloween, the band Alexisonfire, Leyla's Persian heritage, Miami Art Basel, her path of becoming an artist, working in marketing, interior design, real estate and modeling, as well as pricing art, working with epoxy, working with galleries, fraudulent art reprinters/bootleggers, teaching art, live painting at festivals, her infamous tryst (or lack thereof) with Kanye West, and world travel and art jams

In this 8th Episode of Chris Dyer's new Podcast show, he interviews "En Masse" founder Jason Botkin!  Jason is a muralist and studio painter based in Montréal.  
They talk about his studio in Hochelaga, his journey from the USA to the Alberta College of Art and Design, his dreams of becoming a professional snowboarder, divorce and a new commitment to art, Montréal, living in Japan and studying ceramics, gallery art, the En Masse project Jason founded, their show at the Musée des Beaux Arts de Montréal, the difficulty of enacting cultural activities during Covid, creating a new art marketplace, the role of galleries nowadays, finding ways to share wealth and resources in the community, street art and intramuralism, using paintbrushes for murals, the difficulty of finding masks for art creation, how to deal with less or no social media, the revival of street art and using it as a tool of emancipation, dealing with depression and an autoimmune disorder, psychedelics and other plant medicine, DMT visions, meditation, Jason's religious path from Christianity to Buddhism, Yogic studies, Scientology and beyond, and their personal perspectives on 2020.

In this 7th Episode of Chris Dyer's new Podcast show, he interviews his artist friend Adam Millward!  Adam is a painter based on the south shore of Montréal.   They talk about how they met, buying and collecting art, drinking beer and alcoholism, choosing sobriety, the Costa Rican party life, marriage and divorce, becoming an artist, the spiritual experience of painting, a serendipitous encounter with the president of Costa Rica, the business of being a full-time artist, changing algorithms and fighting against AI, wanting to give up, the COSM art workshop, local art markets, mandalas, the new video game level art style, using different acrylic paints, the Arty Time Podcast, manifesting negative energy and fighting conspiracy theories, why Qanon's missing child statistics are wrong, the Keto Diet and eliminating sugar, playing guitar and making music as meditation, and improvisation in music and art.

In this 6th episode of the Chris Dyer's Creative Friends Podcast we get to meet Sake, who has been most prolific graffiti artist in Montréal for the last 26 years.  
They talk about graffiti, the meaning of Sake, Instagram, climbing, being chased, Kings and Queens, murals and drawings, Sake products, stealing from stores, eating healthy organic food, cilantro and garlic pills, toxic spray paint, and then go on a deep dive into Sake's political perspectives of our current world; wrapping it all up a little discussion on getting back to nature and doing art.

In this 5th Episode of Chris Dyer's new Podcast show, he interviews his artist friend Sloast!  Sloast is a studio and street artist based in Montréal.  
They talk about Satellite Studios on St Laurent Blvd, art jams, the Montréal street art community, what Sloast means and the importance of artist names, they address gender questions, pronouns, queer identify and gender expressions in art.  They talk about the mission of art, studying art history at McGill and NYU, activist professors, the Silence = Death movement, politics vs healing in art, defending freedom of speech, street art around the world, travelling to Colombia, Brazil and Armenia, the Armenian war situation, obsidian crystals,  and how Covid has affected her art.

In this 4th Episode of Chris Dyer's new Podcast show, he interviews his artist friend Adida Fallen Angel! Adi is a skateboarding visual artist and multimedia creator who has travelled the whole world from his original home in Israel and is now starting a family in Montréal.    
In this wide-ranging conversation they talk about his identify, spiritual living and angels, music, traveling in Europe, Israel, California, New York, the Laurentian mountains and Montreal, working as a VJ, singing in the band SpoonLicker, getting off drugs, winter in Canada, living as an Israeli, being evalutated by the Israeli Army, comparing insanity and disability, computer skills, Tel Aviv life, the Israeli situation, working at a skate shop in Israel, living in San Diego, California, living in Paris without knowing French,  living in Berlin, Love Parade and street art, studying art in Rotterdam, Flash website design, Street Art in galleries, living in NYC, Montreal, Struggling as an illegal artist, the music industry in Quebec, Adida's Wheat Paste project, The Fresh Paint Gallery, the Under Pressure and Mural Festivals, the theme of Love, spray paint and mural art, Winter and other impediments (COVID), adaptation and evolution, the drive to create, letting go and the impermanence of street art and impending fatherhood.