SaltSpray Design

What if you’re not starting over?
What if everything you’ve learned, built, survived and figured out is still economically useful? That’s the conversation I had with Startup Canada.

Art. Ageing. AI. Reinvention.
And why I don’t believe experienced people should be treated as though their most valuable years are behind them.

We don’t go back to zero.

🎧 Today on the Startup Canada Podcast
Episode 582: Never Back to Zero — Art, Aging and AI

https://www.startupcan.ca/never-back-to-zero-art-aging-and-ai-with-anthea-t/

Some seasons of life do not ask for our permission.

They turn, they break open, they take us somewhere we had not planned to go.
And in the middle of that, it can feel as though you have disappeared.

But perhaps that is not always what happened. Perhaps you did not lose yourself at all, perhaps you lost the version of life you thought you were going to have.

This little boat on the wave is about that moment.

The moment when life changes shape, and you are asked not to control the water, but to stay with yourself inside it. Not everything steady is calm, sometimes steady simply means remaining yourself while the wave moves beneath you.

That is why I made this piece.

If this sculpture feels familiar to you — or reminds you of someone you love — you can see it here:
https://www.saltspraydesign.ca/product/yellow-round-boat-on-a-blue-wave-studio-edition/1627?cp=true&sa=false&sbp=false&q=true

Handmade contemporary Canadian folk art from Nova Scotia.

Well, that was quite a week.

Over the last few days I’ve introduced you to the Off-Point Girls, shared the stories behind them, and then let Molly, The Swimmer, Norma and Keeper of the Light have their own moment through their songs.

What I find most interesting is what has happened around the original artwork.

The sculptures are still made by me, by hand, from paper, cardboard, paint and story.

But I’m now using AI and digital tools to help those ideas travel further.

A sculpture can become a story.
The story can become a song.
The song can become a video.
The video can bring someone back to the website.
And suddenly one piece of work has a much bigger life than the object sitting in my studio.

That is the part of AI I am becoming increasingly interested in.

Not replacing experience or creativity.

Using technology to get more value from what you already know, already make and already have.

And that thinking now sits behind my Experience to Income work too.

If you are an artist, maker, consultant, trainer, small-business owner — or simply someone with years of experience and no clear idea how to turn it into something useful or income-producing — I’m starting to teach the process I’ve been using myself.

There are practical downloads if you want to work through it on your own, and workshops if you would rather work through it with me.

If this week has made you think, I wonder what I could do with the things I already know, have a look.

https://www.saltspraydesign.ca/experience-to-income

Molly has never been terribly interested in being the version of herself that makes everyone else comfortable. She takes up space, she wears the hearts, she stands there, gloriously herself, in her bright yellow shoes.

And perhaps that is the point.

We spend an extraordinary amount of our lives trying to improve, adjust, behave, belong and become more acceptable. Molly asks a different question.
- What if there is nothing you need to improve?
- What if you simply need to come back to yourself?

That is why I made her, and if you look at Molly and recognise something of yourself in her, perhaps she has already done her job.

Meet Molly: my paper mache sculpture.

https://www.saltspraydesign.ca/product/molly/M6YIMCHK7U5UNFLJ4J2KEET7?cp=true&sa=false&sbp=false&q=true