Art & Life with Eden McCutcheon Tirl

Today we’d like to introduce you to Eden McCutcheon Tirl.

Eden, please kick things off for us by telling us about yourself and your journey so far.
I grew up in a racially diverse neighborhood in Minneapolis in the 70’s and 80’s. I spent most of my time with my muse and beloved maternal grandmother, Lenora. As a lanky pre-teen, I would come to find out that the eminent artist Prince was also growing up just down the street.

This prized knowledge seemed to sustain while enduring nuns, feather-haired mean girls, and junior high in general. After countless voice lessons and school plays, I went on to study at The American Academy of Dramatic Arts here in Pasadena (now located in LA). Soon, opportunities in the fashion world arose and I spent many years as a successful model, living and working in the US and Europe.

Rummaging through saved reams of notebooks in my mid-twenties, a journal entry would remind me of literary dreams. I gathered a collection of rescued personal essays and children’s stories and bound them into homemade chapbooks. Though different in structure, they shared a focus – life and time with my grandmother. This literary fixation on my gran led to my intense desire to research and write about my extraordinary great great grandfather, her great father-in-law. I knew there was a published book about him – yet I knew little about the whole story.

Can you give our readers some background on your art?
I write personal essay and memoir. I write to make sense of the unexplained and unspoken in my life, the places where answers seem to elude. I write to connect the dots, where and when they are connectable. And I hope the takeaway for any reader is the sheer invitation to do the same.

Be curious about your past, and a “good farmer” in your life. It is hard to grow yourself up in “soil” that has not been plowed properly or cultivated. Sow the seeds of the visions you have for your life in that more fertile, “tilled” soil.

How do you think about success, as an artist, and what do quality do you feel is most helpful?
Though society would have you determine it differently, success is an entirely personal experience – and squarely related to authenticity. Comparison to others’ achievements is a losing endeavor – also a waste of valuable creative energy.

It has taken years, decades if I am, to be honest, to learn to live in my skin and own success in all its manifestations. And by success, that includes waking up to the dishes having been rinsed and put in the dishwasher the night before, to looking back on relationships I’ve cultivated well.

Success is: Knowing that the times that you took a left, (even when the right turn would have been more prudent financially or career-wise or in the eyes of the world) you are able to stand back and fully absorb the prodigious value in having had such a wildly wonderful, chimerical, breathtaking time – having taken that left turn.

What’s the best way for someone to check out your work and provide support?
You can currently find kneaded on edenmcctucheontirl.com. The Afterword contributed to the novel The Wages by Fanny Howe can be found on Amazon.com, and the audiobook can be found on Audible.com and iTunes.

I am also the executive editor and curator of notablySmitten – a project that I am continuously inspired by and wild about! notablySmitten is an online shopping guide, designed to help you procure singular, noteworthy gifts. We support and advertise companies that are creating ethical and supportive work opportunities for others and producing products that are sustainable and cause-conscious. We want you to be enthused and inspired to use your consumer power to invest in companies and individuals that are devoted to helping others. Please visit us at www.notablySmitten.com.

Contact Info:

• Website: edenmccutcheontirl.com
• Other: notablysmitten.com // www.amazon.com/Wages-Fanny-Howe/dp/1940396409

Image Credit:
Eden McCutcheon Tirl

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