hello everyone welcome to Facebook live and Twitter live I believe we're all on
that okay today we have internationally recognized artist speaker and author
Phil Hansen as you know I don't have to tell you but for those folks out there
phil has been featured on the Grammy Awards Disney Mazda Rockefeller
Foundation and the Ripley's Believe It or Not museum what is that about first
of all that was a random one they so I did a project few years back where I
painted a picture with french fries french fries on butcher paper rubbing
the fries made the paper transparent as I was able to draw a picture with the
french fries when they reached out and they wanted a huge picture for a
location I think somewhere in DC and they wanted to use hamburger grease to
make the giant portraits of Bill and Hillary Clinton you've been on TED talk
the main stage and I understand has over two million views I mean it keeps rising
so we're next shooting for three million and Beyond right so but yeah but it's
it's a it's amazing how how that that presentation still resonates with so
many people I mean we get calls from people all over from many industries and
we ask how they learned about you and that is still it still resonates with
them a lot of people have seen you yeah I think it just speaks to the old
ultimately the story it's it's just a it's a message of somebody overcoming a
challenge in life and being able to take that story and I told it in a way where
of course I was sharing my story but then at the same time making those
connections where you know here's my story but then that also it's kind of
everywhere right I mean I faced a limitation in my life but then
limitations are everything from interpersonal relationships to
challenges at work to kind of everything we face and so it's it's really that
that nice message of being able to overcome and get creative with in any
sort of limitation and chaough that we face and I think that's why I
was able to spread so well as a ten-time in speaking that you briefly what was
the the limitation that you personally had overcome and an oddly enough of a
phrase of all things that kind of propel you into really what you're doing now
yeah so is so I want to be an artist kind of four years all through high
school then I went off to art college but all that time I was really
interested in an artistic technique called pointillism where is just using
millions of little tiny dots to make pictures but then what would happen is
occasionally you know all of our hands if our hands will shake naturally if
we're stressed if we've had too much caffeine those kinds of things which I
have in some situations is fine it doesn't really happen but for me trying
to do pointillism getting all those dots perfectly placed and all the right spot
when my hand would shake it was an issue and so I would end up holding the pen
really tight to try and keep it as steady as I could but then what happened
is when I would hold a pen tight that would cause fatigue in my arm which
would lead to more shaking and it was just this cycle that action of holding
the pen so tight that eventually caused my hand to shake constantly and then I
dropped out art school I was away from art for a while and then I ended up
going back to I was I got interested again in art and went to the
neurologists and the neurologist diagnosed me with permanent nerve damage
and ultimately it was a shake in my hand it's not as severe as other diagnoses
he's probably and so when I was sitting there in the doctor's office
he sort of he's kind of watching me he's like well why don't you just embrace the
shake that was like that's that's not very nice thing this kind of a moment
all right you're gonna be okay and it wasn't the advice I wanted to hear but
it was ultimately that advice of embrace embrace the limitation right here that
you're faced with and I ignored him for a while but then when I found my way
back to arts and back to creativity what I found is that working with that
limitation because not now I could no longer do the fine detail art that I
wanted to do but working with that that was what allowed me to really push my
creativity because then I started to see limit Hey
as a as a method of actually being work great so then that's when I started to
actually intentionally limit myself and and try to find more creativity within
that well what I love is it I mean you used tend to fine art out of so many
different mediums material and I got to say from the outside looking in you know
watching a lot of your YouTube videos which you've done documenting the art it
is just just amazing and everything from you know matchsticks and making Jimi
Hendrix and let even burn away I think that was probably your goodbye art
serious and to the burger grease of making Mona Lisa karate chops of Bruce
Lee I used typewriter recently ya the typewriter with the pen would say well
what was behind that that I think I'm so fascinating - yeah so I used a
typewriter and I just designed little tiny pictures that when I what I was
typing out and the typewriters actually poems mhm but then when you the you so
the poem read across but then I actually created the portrait and I'm the person
who wrote the poem and that all stemmed from I feel like there's so often times
in life and actually before we sat down you had mentioned this this movie quote
that pop to mind yeah I went straight to straight to the actor and I loved how
those words and different things in our lives can really stick with us and how
they attached people to us and then some of that stickiness and that connectivity
and I wanted to find a way to to take that that element and bring it into my
art and so I thought I was thinking about words and poems and different bits
and pieces that that always that when I think of certain phrases they connect to
other people for me and so from there then that's where I branched into this
these artworks that connected the poem to the daughter recently you and I were
talking about just reasons why organizations and many different types
of industries I mean everything from banking financial health care groups
manufacturing groups I mean the list goes on and on the type of industries
that bring you into their conferences and conventions to present talk up a
little bit about maybe some of the reasons you hear like why they're
bringing you in it I'd say the the top three are changed within the come
some sort of industry shift that's causing limitations and challenges kind
of for everybody and then also oftentimes people look for look for me
to come in because they want ultimately a motivational inspirational speaker but
within that they also want somebody who's different right what they've had
before and and with an art background a
different definitely bring a different a different air to with what you would
often see on stage and I try to make it connected and engaging so there's
different elements that I hand out to audience and so everybody gets to engage
with something I get to touch some art and and that's kind of a fun element but
within within that the change within the company you know if there's maybe a new
a new CEO or new kind of big shift maybe like there's a huge layoffs or there's
maybe a layoff and then a new huge round of hiring yeah so there's just lots of
fluctuation that's what that's what often people reach out and want me to
come in because again my story is about limitations but it's also creativity and
finding that that resourcefulness on the inside during those times of challenge
well it leads me to think about everyone has issues and we say I can't because of
and this is just in the business world budgets people power may be not enough
we can't take on another project or you know there's so many reasons I'm on and
on and I can't how do you address that in your presentation
yeah so that is really good so this whole experience when I you know we got
created with my limitation then it changed my life and I wouldn't give a
TED talk that's the story that I shared but what happened after that was weird
because people would then ask me how can I do what you did I said I don't know I
had no idea because it happens kind of fluidly and naturally in my life but I
didn't know if there were any steps remember people to be able to transform
their own limitation but then that sent me I guess on a bit of a personal quest
to try to figure out what was at the root of limitations and how is
transformation possible and within that what I found and I did a huge art
project that talked with over a thousand people on the owner online which is for
the faint of heart but I put my phone or online ask people to share stories about
limitations and so from there I spoke with tons of people and I really got to
the root of what believe is the struggle of limitations
is that when we face a challenge so oftentimes we see the challenge and we
talked about the constrict we talk about the limitation but all of our challenges
are actually composed of two parts in the limitation that's the thing that we
always talk about but the other part of it is actually what I call a
self-limiting belief and for me that was the thing that ultimately I transformed
because I still have to shake you know it still affects me in my work but but
what really ultimately changed was this belief because for a long time I
believed that if my hand shakes I can't make art mmm and that was that was the
belief right and that was that belief is what caused me to stop and not being
able to move for right so what I began to do is I began to look at that Alabam
to kind of try to hold the limitation and this self-limiting beliefs
separately mm-hmm and I ignored the belief this idea that I couldn't make
art and I just asked myself how can I make art with a shaking hand and so I
dressed the limitation in a different way and it's that shift that is where I
think that true secret to transformation is right is that when we can begin to
look at our limitations kind of in isolation of the beliefs then these cans
you know it won't work this way because or you know we can't get it done this
way because right those are mostly beliefs then we have to look at just the
limitation and we will look at just the limitation without these expectations
and ideas of how things work that's where innovation really can come in our
creativity that's for transformation is one of the best components that I love
about what you also bring to organizations for conferences
conventions and not only the keynote in addition you offer this collaboration
art experience which i think is totally fantastic not only if I seen it in
person and it's fun to just experience I think that's really important for for
grips these days they I tend to hear that they want kind of a in sessions
they're looking for experiences at time so but so can you talk a little bit
about this the collaboration art experience and then the second part is
some of the the value behind it yeah and so the this experience of course as you
said people are often looking for they're looking for something different
they're looking for experiential and looking for you know
somebody to come in and not just stand on the stage and in talk they write
something they can touch and interact with yeah and that's what I've won I'm
trying to do that in my speech but then the next level is and it was just
yesterday working with a group of 350 people and so what we do is I'll bring
in all these supplies will hand it out to the entire audience and then at
basically I'll give my presentation after my presentation we segue into now
the audience gets to create their art right and well I'll walk them through
exercises depending on the size of the audience there's two different types of
art experiences and then if it's whatever it is I'll walk them through
these exercises and at the end they have their own little artworks but that
little those little artworks then become part of a larger picture right and so
all these little bits and pieces get put together for this bigger image and what
becomes the the element that becomes not just visually fun right but also for for
connecting to why we're creating this with an audience right is because of is
this experience that when we're in our daily lives when we're at work from day
to day is harder to see that that bigger picture that five year view that 30,000
foot right whatever it is those become that becomes the beautiful metaphor for
this amount of art because when you're close to a work that's made of dots or
fragments it's a very different experience than when you're far away
from it and so that close and far away then I feel represents a lot of aspects
of life and how those little bits and pieces and life can add up to it and
there's a there's a lot of collaboration that goes into a team work in
collaboration with any blurred making those as well right that because in some
ways a team if they do well know there's a little team building in the in the
sameness yet but I so it really is right yeah because then what happens is at the
end you have this one huge artwork that everybody can find their piece right and
maybe sometimes people you know if somebody's doing an amazing job but then
somebody a little you know a few few rows now and isn't doing maybe as good
of a job and you can see all these pieces and they blend together and they
create this almost quilted patch where I have an image and that's really a lot of
the beauty is that you know even even if we you know
if it's whether it's fingerprints for one of the image artistic things or if
it's using the mythos mosaic taking technique I developed whatever it is it
all adds up to end up creating that to that and in the in the end images and
when you do the reveal is again I've been part of witnessing this and seeing
the audience their face is just astonished by what they really you've
helped guide them to create and you know the the final images are just amazing
and I think it also speaks to correlates to you know in an industry or in a
company of all the small pieces that work together to create that product the
service the value of a company so I think there's there's so many
connections that you know that work that you do yeah all right yeah I feel like
with with art that's one of the kind of beautiful things is that art can be
whatever we want it to be you know an artist makes something they may have one
intention of one idea behind it but then as other people look at it they can put
their own meaning onto it right and so that's one of the beautiful things about
creating this kind of artwork is that it can be you know as we talked about it we
can have our own ideas but if we want to share with other people we can adjust
those to be able to be flexible and bring another piece it invites a
conversation you know what while they're creating it and then also after they've
created yeah because what's so fun is then people as they're finishing up
whatever pieces they're right you know that I always ask them to take a picture
of it and then later on they can when they come up to the big piece they can
actually then look at their phone and find that ctcf and then begin to look
for their Rice's and it's fun to see people to sit there and spend an hour
and a half in front of it hunting right right I think it's okay well Phil we
really appreciate you coming by stopping in our South Orange New Jersey office
and thank you very much everyone live for joining us if you want to learn more
about Phil visit eagles talent com have a great day