Reflections

Deep Kailey spent years building a glossy, high-powered career in fashion, as the first fashion editor of Vogue India, fashion director of Tatler UK, and right hand to major names in the industry, before a persistent pull toward life's bigger questions changed her trajectory. She left it all behind to co-found Without Shape, Without Form, an arts organization rooted in Sikh philosophy that uses exhibitions, publications, and gatherings to help people quiet their minds.

In this episode, Deep joins Salomé to trace her path from fashion into this work, the personal losses that first opened her up to life's bigger questions, and why traditional forms of success didn't bring the fulfillment she expected. They talk about Simran, a form of meditation, as the anchor of her practice, and the impact she's witnessed in the people who encounter this work. Grounded in Deep's personal journey, it's an eye-opening conversation about centuries-old Sikh traditions and tools that have the power to quiet our minds and reconnect us to source.

https://www.withoutshapewithoutform.com/

Emily Weiner worked many jobs within the art world before giving herself entirely over to painting. She was a writer, a curator, a professor, and many other things in between, until four years ago when she quit her day job to paint full-time. Soon after, everything seemed to fall into place. Today, the New York-born, Nashville-based artist has built an increasingly celebrated practice rooted in intuition and symbolism, reconsidering the art historical canon through crisp, hypnotic canvases and a Jungian, feminist lens.

In this episode, Emily joins Salomé to trace the long, winding road she’s traveled to become an artist, from a childhood fascination with art, through years of searching for her place in the art world. They talk about what it means to stay present with your own creative instincts even when the path isn't clear, why persistence sometimes looks like patience, and how vulnerability and spirituality inform her stunning work.

Terry Tempest Williams is an American writer, environmentalist, and author of more than twenty books, including Refuge, When Women Were Birds, and Erosion. A Guggenheim fellow and the writer-in-residence at Harvard Divinity School since 2017, she has spent decades exploring the intersection of nature, spirituality, and the written word.
In this episode, Terry joins Salomé to discuss The Glorians, a book that arose from a dream she had one week into the 2020 global lockdown. They speak about the six-year journey of writing it; what it means to pay attention in a world built on distraction; how grace became a central question of her time at Harvard; and the remarkable, awe-inspiring story of the Divinity Tree that she wove so beautifully into the book.
It's an episode about presence as a spiritual practice and the leaps of faith that shape a writing life devoted to the ineffable.

Link to buy The Glorians
Willow Interview on Reflections

Suchitra Mattai is a Guyanese-American artist of South Asian descent who creates spellbinding, monumental installations and textile sculptures to spotlight women's voices, while honoring her ancestors, who were once brought from India to Guyana as indentured laborers.
In this episode, she joins Salomé to talk about art as a practice of healing, reclamation, and liberation. She opens up about the role art-making played in her recovery from a years-long struggle with bipolar disorder, how centering heritage, memory, and mythology in her work has helped her process collective trauma, and how she's seen that healing ripple out into the communities her work touches. Among many themes, they explore her winding professional path from studying statistics to getting an MFA, and the sacred, intuitive way she makes art, letting the divine and materials themselves speak through her.

For previous conversations between Suchitra and Salomé, see:
https://www.wmagazine.com/culture/suchitra-mattai-artist-interview
https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-suchitra-mattais-soulful-works-convey-unspeakable-truths

Fashion stylist Cassandra Lanrick says she likes things "a little bit ugly." She resists the traditional rules of fashion—dressing for flattery, dressing for the male gaze, dressing for trends—and instead treats getting dressed as a practice of self-expression and delight.
In this episode, Cassandra joins Salomé to talk about what it takes to show up online consistently, how she overcame the fear of being seen, and why she refuses to participate in the culture of performing a curated, perfected self. They explore the radicalism of dressing for yourself, the expectations society places on women, and what it means to create simply because it brings you joy, without knowing where it's all going. Ultimately, this is a conversation about what happens when we allow ourselves to be real and be seen in a world that has never made either easy.

Follow Cassandra: @cassandralanrick