How to Feed Your Inner Artist and Create Joy

Loukas owns the Honeybee Farm in Troy, New York. He makes cheese.

Most days, you will find him stirring a pot of soup or chatting with locals over coffee and a homemade muffin in his small shop tucked in the middle of a block of emerging businesses.

He lights up when you ask him about the local, natural foods he offers.

And the cheeses that he makes.

They are hand crafted with names like Tuscan Sunset, Pur Chevre and my favorite, Schoharie Caverns Wild Bloom, which is a Honeybee Farm special.

Can you get artisanal breads and farm to table foods elsewhere?

Of course, this is upstate New York, where you cannot swing a dead cat without hitting an urban city person who has escaped midtown Manhattan for the weekend. This is what they expect to find.

And you will get all of that plus something only Loukas can give.

An experience of joy.

It is there in every product in his shop. Every item has a story and a connection to a choice he made several years ago to choose a life that gave him purpose, fulfillment, a sense of being connected with people and joy.

He left a demanding job in the city and moved his family to Schoharie county where he says, “We have a number of creative, resourceful, talented individuals that take on the challenge of hard work, dedication and creativity daily, and develop wholesome, quality, artisanal products, for which they pride themselves in.”

He is passionate about what he does.

He is driven to create something, to make something with his hands everyday.

He shares and sells his work.

Doesn’t that sound like the dream of every artist?

Loukas has fed his inner artist and created a joyful life around the idea of bringing local, natural foods from his farm to you.

What if I’m not an artist?

“Creativity is the intellectual ability to make creations, inventions, and discoveries that brings novel relations, entities, and/or unexpected solutions into existence. Creativity is a gifted ability of humans in thinking, inference, problem solving, and product development,” says Yingxu Wang, Professor of Software and Brain Science at the University of Calgary.

Humans are creative creatures.

The opportunity to be creative is everywhere.

Loukas was not trained as a farmer. However, he saw a need in connecting local farmers and artisans directly with their customers. His inner artist was inspired to make that happen.

What makes him an artist is what he makes with what he produces on the farm and what he brings of himself as “a guy from a Greek neighborhood in Astoria, Queens.”

The only difference between you and and the ones who call themselves artists is that they realize how creativity defines them and everything they do.

How to feed your inner artist

“Everything that happens in my day is a transaction between the external world and my inner world. Everything is raw material. Everything is relevant. Everything is usable. Everything feeds into my creativity,” says Twyla Tharp, the dancer and choreographer.

Loukas created the Honeybee Farm around this idea of bringing fresh food from the farms to people. His passion for what he makes attracts other like minded artists and people both as suppliers and customers.

By listening to his inner artist he has created a way to make life better as well as his own recipe for happiness.

Think about how you and your inner artist can make something better.

Hoong Yee is a writer who draws. She is the author of Rabbit Mooncakes, a children’s picture book and the Executive Director of the Queens Council on the Arts. Hoong Yee is married to a nice Jewish boy and they live in Rockaway Beach, NY with their family. Visit her website at hoongyee.com

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