Ryan Grant Little: 0:42

Welcome to Another Climate Tech Podcast interviews with the people trying to save us from ourselves. It was only after she started making a living as an artist that Nicole Kellner felt comfortable calling herself an artist. A tech founder by background. She's now using her artistic talent to tell stories about climate change and especially about hope. I reached her at home in New York City. I'm Ryan Grant Little. Thanks for joining. Nicole Kelner, welcome to the podcast.

Nicole Kelner : 1:11

Thank you, very excited to be here.

Ryan Grant Little: 1:14

So this podcast. When I launched it, I imagined talking to artists who work in climate change and that's harder to find than founders who work in climate change and politicians. So I'm super glad to have found you and you're the first artist on the podcast, Congratulations. And a year and a half ago you founded something called Arts and Climate Change. What is it and what does it do?

Nicole Kelner : 1:39

Yeah. So a year and a half ago I had this idea to paint a watercolor day for 100 days. It was just kind of a fun side project. I was working full time at a climate startup and it was winter, it was all Omicron. I was like, okay, I just need something to get me through this season. And I started painting random things. They weren't climate related, just like cute pictures of baby otters and happy new year. And then 10 days.

Nicole Kelner : 2:07

Then I did one about kelp and carbon sequestration and I was posting them on Twitter at the time and I had like 400 followers, so I was mostly posting to the void. But this one about climate kind of like stuck a little and I was like, okay, I'll do the rest of the 90 days about climate. And it just started kind of getting some momentum. I was growing a community there and getting requests for commissions and within four months I ended up quitting my job and going full time on art and creating this broad name of arts and climate change. That encompasses all the assorted things I do now, which is primarily making art about climate change, especially like custom pieces for climate startups and government organizations, nonprofits. I do art workshops that are like team building exercises for companies. I'm working on a coloring book about clean energy that I'm publishing next week, so yeah, all sorts of fun things like that.

Ryan Grant Little: 3:10

It sounds like the beginning of a Dickens novel. It was winter, it was Omicron, and you hesitated to call yourself an artist for quite a while, even after you started making a living from art. What was that journey like, and how did that kind of transition happen? At what moment did you kind of stop, and where were you when you said, oh, I'm an artist.

Nicole Kelner : 3:31

Yeah, I mean it was so bizarre for me. I come from the tech world. I co-founded an after school program to teach kids how to code. Like sold that, like transitioned into climate tech. I've just been in tech land for the past decade and have been a founder most of the time, so calling myself an artist was not a title I was comfortable with. I hadn't taken an art class since high school and then to be doing this out of nowhere just really was like a hard left turn and I loved it. But I was like, oh, I'm making art, I'm not an artist, though. And then, like, eventually, I kind of had to like come to the fact that I was supporting myself off of art and like, therefore, I am an artist. So it was like a weird kind of transition into it. But now I think it's like the coolest title I've ever had. I love it so much.

Ryan Grant Little: 4:27

I love that and I feel like it's usually the opposite problem out there in the world, where there are a lot of people who are definitely not supporting themselves from art, but who are very liberal at calling themselves artists.

Nicole Kelner : 4:33

but who are?

Ryan Grant Little: 4:36

You mentioned the coloring book which you're launching next week about clean energy. I saw a few pages of this. Can you talk a little bit about it? Who it's for, what you hope to achieve with it?

Nicole Kelner : 4:48

Yeah, I am so excited about this. I think it's my favorite project I've done yet. So it's for all ages, which I think is the coolest part of it so someone described it as ages 5 to 100, my favorite description and it really is designed to be accessible for kids and adults. I think that's what's so cool about coloring books right now is like it's trendy for adults to color too, and it's very educational and kind of like calming at the same time.

Nicole Kelner : 5:20

Like each page has, you know, different topics around clean energy there's solar, wind, microgrids, all sorts of things in there and then there's also these like climate mandalas mixed in that I've made a thing there. I don't think that that has ever been a thing before, but basically it's like these repetitive patterns that are really like meditative to color in, but it's like you know, you're coloring in a wind turbine around the world or whatever, something like that. So, yeah, it's kind of I in the forward. I try to explain that. It's, like you know, both a like meditation class, art class and climate class all in one, and I like to think of each page is kind of like a flashcard about climate change, and so, yeah, it's been really cool to bring it to life and I can't wait to see kind of what happens when it's in the world.

Ryan Grant Little: 6:20

I feel like climate mandalas. com is probably still available. Also, and so will you be cooperating with schools or boards of education or anything like this to get this into schools? What's the distribution strategy?

Nicole Kelner : 6:34

Yeah, so it's going to be sold on Amazon. To start. It's called electrify everything the clean energy coloring book, and I would love to get it in schools and libraries and all sorts of places. I truly have no idea how book publishing works. I'm self publishing this so I know how to do it on Amazon and I know that there's the possibility of like wholesaling and like being available for me to like place bulk order. So I'm hoping that I can, you know, start building relationships with schools. I have relationships with schools in New York from when I ran that after school program so I might reach out to some of my old contacts there. But I have like someone who works with the New York Public Library that's interested in talking about how that could be a collaboration with people. I think once it kind of gets into people's hands in the world, like there's going to be some momentum around distribution in some way, shape or form. But who knows, Amazing.

Ryan Grant Little: 7:37

Well, I'll definitely put in the show notes a link for people to be able to track a copy down themselves. Thanks, so I'm going to go ahead and micro grids feature also in the coloring book, one of the graphics that you've done recently for a client which is it's the eponymous why are micro grids so dope? And we put the three reasons money, power and respect which has a bit of like scarface sounding to it as well, but it captures it perfectly and it made me kind of laugh when I saw it because, like, like, yeah, that is why micro grids are so awesome and so often, if you asked someone who worked in like distributed power, they would probably come up with a much more complicated and technology based answer than that. And I wonder, if you are, you feel that as an artist, you have ways of kind of presenting the message differently, making it maybe cooler and reducing some of the complexity that we in the industry tend to probably unnecessarily put on these messages.

Nicole Kelner : 8:42

Yeah, I love that painting. That was for scale, micro good solutions. They are one of my awesome clients and I'm friends with the team and the phrase like micro grids are dope is like kind of you know in the DR, like distributed energy resources community, and so they were playing off of that and they had this idea for making the scar phrase reference, which I live under a rock and I had to Google it. I loved it once I understood it and I think that it's like yeah, I mean we had a lot of trouble, like we went back and forth, like we made several complicated versions of it before we settled on that, because it is very complicated and that's often the case with my client projects.

Nicole Kelner : 9:26

I work with a lot of really complicated climate solutions and figuring out how to distill them into playful, creative, simple ways that anyone can understand is a huge part of what I do and I love it so much. I think of myself as a translator for climate scientists and research and things like that, by trying to make it so that anyone my parents can understand, kids can understand. People who aren't experts in climate want to be looking at this information rather than getting scared away by the complexity.

Ryan Grant Little: 10:03

I coach a lot of climate tech startups and one of the pieces of advice I almost always give them is have a graphic or a diagram that shows in simple terms what your business does. Yeah, sometimes I hear from people well, we can't do that, our business is too complicated. And then I use the example. I'm not if anyone who listens to the podcast knows I'm no big Elon Musk fan, but SpaceX is. The stuff they do is very complicated, but it's easy to explain and easy to put in a diagram in a lot of ways to explain it.

Ryan Grant Little: 10:34

So when something is too difficult to explain, that's really kind of a problem with the messaging. It's not usually the technology itself, because that's what metaphors are for, that's what visualizations are for. So I think that, yeah, you're onto something there. I think there's huge need for this and visual storytelling in our sector. And I wonder also I mean, you don't hear every day someone making art about climate change I wonder what kind of reactions you're getting what you said you came from the tech world. Do people kind of look at you as scans at first, or what are people saying about this and about your decision to move into this space?

Nicole Kelner : 11:13

Yeah, I mean it's been such a positive reaction. I feel so grateful for the supportive. I mean I started making art on Twitter, now ex, and that community is like what has allowed me to quit my job and do this full time and energy. Twitter has been like the nicest part of Twitter, I like to say, like they're really kind and like that's not saying much, though, yeah so like nerdy in the best possible way and like it's just been so great.

Nicole Kelner : 11:47

Everything's changed since Elon took over. As you mentioned, I'm also not necessarily the biggest fan of what he's done with Twitter, especially so. I launched a sub stack in response to when he took over because I was like, okay, I need to like have a backup plan if this fails. And that's when I came up with the phrase Arts and Climate Change, because that's the name of my sub stack, playing off arts and crafts, and so, yeah, it's just been such a great community Like people really resonate with the art that I'm making, I think because there really isn't, there's not really anyone else doing exactly what I'm doing, like watercolors and climate change.

Nicole Kelner : 12:25

Like aren't things that go together when you first hear them. Like I create really bright, colorful pieces of art and it's about really sometimes dark content, or I really focus on the climate solutions. I think that's what stood out to people and I try to focus on the like positive solutions that already exist in the world, rather than getting so stuck on the doom and gloom, because we have plenty of that news in the world and I like to kind of show that there is hope and I think that art is really powerful for that Like it helps visualize the solutions in the world that we want to be seeing in the world in a very like tangible way and, yeah, just lots of good vibes and support. It's been so nice.

Ryan Grant Little: 13:14

Amazing. Are you also making pieces that people can hang on their walls again, that will be displayed in galleries, or is it more kind of on the business side and the coloring book side?

Nicole Kelner : 13:23

Yes, so I do like prints. All of my art I turn into prints on my website. You can see them there. It's just in a cool calendarcom. I make t-shirts with like onesies and mugs and stickers and stuff that are people really seem to like those ones. And, yeah, lots of photos of people sending me photos of their prints in their offices and stuff like that. So it's been really cool to see kind of my art in the real world.

Ryan Grant Little: 13:51

That's very cool. You were recently invited to Harvard to teach a workshop about climate art for their youth summit on climate equity and health and I wonder, do milestones like this, where you know it's one of the top universities in the world, Does this help to kind of mainstream art as a force for fighting climate change?

Nicole Kelner : 14:12

Yeah, that was such a cool opportunity. I was really grateful to be brought up there with a lot of other amazing people in the climate space, and I think that opportunities like that are a great way to work with the next generation and they're so on it Like it's a very mutually educational experience where they're teaching the people there to teach them just as much, and it's yeah, it was really really great, and I do think, yeah, being able to kind of bring art into that conversation is really special.

Ryan Grant Little: 14:50

Is that going to be a regular thing? Are you going to be working kind of in more programs like that at universities, and with I mean this also, if it's the youth group, you can bring the coloring book.

Nicole Kelner : 14:59

Yeah, exactly, I do a bunch of workshops. Yeah, I taught one at American University earlier this summer that was like about director capture. So I do these like hands-on climate art workshops where therefore, you know universities or team building, corporate stuff online, all sorts of things that I will customize it to the group so they'll give me the theme and then we'll kind of do like a visualization exercise where they I like to think of it as like kind of a mood board or like a visualization of that theme so that they can kind of what I was referring to like bring it to life in their own world. And each one is a little different. So I try to understand the group and what their needs are, but it always is a lot of fun.

Nicole Kelner : 15:51

It's great to see kind of like the art that people make, even on Zoom. I'll have them hold it up and show it to each other and a lot of adults aren't making art shocker and so like just the experience of having them like have a hour of play and creativity. I feel really lucky to facilitate that, especially on the Zoom workshop ones that I've done, because so much of our life now is on Zoom and we're just staring at each other on a screen, but during my workshops I, you know, a lot of the time they're not looking at the screen. They're actually, you know, hearing me or talking to each other while drawing, or just like in silence, with some light music in the background, drawing and painting or coloring whatever they have. So that feels really nice to be in a space where you're like still together, but like in a totally different context than we normally are in front of our computer.

Ryan Grant Little: 16:50

It's amazing that three years into like kind of you know, zoom, topia or whatever that, this life of Zoom that we're doing we tend to still be quite uncreative about how we use it in 2020. Just after the pandemic started, when I moved a conference online, and now, kind of ever since then, anything that's more than three hours I hire a magician and it's a great way to break it up.

Nicole Kelner : 17:13

Stop it. I love that so much Wow.

Ryan Grant Little: 17:16

And then people are also based there in New York and I'll put his info in the show notes because it's like a great way to make sure that people show up for the meeting. And you know, and we've I've had him for a bunch of times already and I still can't figure out how he does it like these things, and so that's so fun, like mind reading .

Nicole Kelner : 17:35

Oh, My God, I love that.

Ryan Grant Little: 17:37

Using someone from the Zoom group and like and basically mind reading and like. I don't know how. I still don't know how you are doing this, but it's very cool and people always remember that.

Nicole Kelner : 17:49

So when I was back, I lived in LA for a year. I live in New York now, but this was before I did anything art related. But I've always been very crafty and I had this idea. I bought a domain that was called camp all year. com. I was like I want my life to just be summer camp all year. I don't know what that will look like, but that was the vision and I was like it's still working on the afterschool coding program. So it was just like a silly idea. And I did a little workshop at a conference where I taught people how to make friendship bracelets and paint pet rocks and it was like people were like this was the best part of my conference.

Nicole Kelner : 18:27

And I was like yes, I love that because it was between, like it was in the hallway, between all these intense talks, and so they just sometimes needed a breather to just sit down and like decompress. And I kind of imagined doing similar things like that at conferences with my coloring pages, when I, you know, once my coloring book's out where it's just like there's something so calming to just be able to talk to the people around you without having to like make eye contact with them. And like my mom was an art therapist she doesn't practice anymore, but like I think that idea of just like art being very calming and therapeutic was something that subconsciously I was like raised around, and so now it's cool to kind of like weave all those things together.

Ryan Grant Little: 19:14

That's very cool, and so then you're working on this and it means that you don't have to be focused on the conversation. It's not this sort of like full frontal conversation, and that's when kind of more interesting things come out. Yeah, okay, it's like the road trip theory, where people are like both facing forward and on a drive, exactly, and that's when the interesting conversations happen, because there's not or going for a walk same thing, yeah.

Ryan Grant Little: 19:36

I like that. I'm an art collector myself and a lot of the or some of the pieces I have are definitely could be considered protest pieces about, you know, the usual consumerism and war and stuff like that, and you talk about your art as a form of climate protest, and I'll just quote you here for a second. My protest looks like a nine by 12 inch paper and watercolors instead of large posters and black markers. The soundtrack is lo-fi music instead of drums and chanting. It feels like a community on Twitter instead of folks on the street. Now wonder what advice you have for artists who also want to make themselves heard about climate change.

Nicole Kelner : 20:18

Yeah, so that's from one of my sub-stack pieces and it was an interesting kind of like. Not all of my emails are like that, but that was like an. I wrote an essay. You know what I mean. Like some of my emails are just like here's an email about art and what I'm thinking about, and that one was like I'm writing an essay about how I think about creating art and what that looks like and how it is really a form of my world, how I think about protesting, because I, you know, I think about it a lot these days because there's the climate march coming up in like a week and a half and I'm not good in big crowds.

Nicole Kelner : 20:57

Like I just get really anxious.

Nicole Kelner : 20:59

Like it just has never been a place that I feel comfortable and I want to go so bad but I don't go to concerts.

Nicole Kelner : 21:07

It's just never been a thing that, like, I feel safe in.

Nicole Kelner : 21:10

Like you know, I like to be able to get out of places easily, like I get kind of claustrophobic, and so it's like how can I feel like I am making a difference and a part of a community that has an impact, without needing to be like in the traditional sense of a protest, and I absolutely respect what anyone feels is their version of a protest, and I think that you know, marches are very important and have made huge differences in our community, and so it was just like a moment of me trying to think about how my skills can be useful and like realizing that I don't have to be there but I can touch millions of lives from my computer and from my art desk.

Nicole Kelner : 22:03

And that felt really special. Once I kind of had that kind of like revelation and I was like, okay, I want to kind of share that and I just like my advice would be just like think about where your skills lie and then like try to, you know, tie that together with a cause or a mission you're interested in and kind of see where that like Venn diagram lies, and like that sweet spot in the middle.

Ryan Grant Little: 22:29

It's a great place to leave it. You already mentioned a couple of places where people can find you online NicoleKelner. com, and also your sub stack, which I'll put in the show notes. Anywhere else, LinkedIn, anywhere else where you like to be reached.

Nicole Kelner : 22:41

My sub stacks arts and climate changecom and my coloring book will be live by the time this comes out. So that's on Amazon. It'll be electrify everything the clean energy coloring book.

Ryan Grant Little: 22:53

Amazing. So check the show notes for all of these links. And, nicole, thank you so much for joining today.

Nicole Kelner : 22:58

Yeah, of course. Thanks for having me.

Ryan Grant Little: 23:02

Thanks for listening to another climate tech podcast. It would mean a lot if you would subscribe, rate and share this podcast. Get in touch anytime with tips and guest recommendations at hello at climate tech podcom. Find me, Ryan Grant Little, on LinkedIn. I'll be back with another episode next week. Bye for now.