Meet Elizabeth Franko Janowski | Immersive Artist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Elizabeth Franko Janowski and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Elizabeth, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
After spending a decade working alongside my husband to build a mission-driven medical aesthetic practice, I felt a longing and a call to return to my first love, which is art. Well, actually art grabbed me by the hand and pulled me straight in to her, like a siren. I have two artistic loves, movement and photography. The two play in to and build upon one another – for I am constantly in awe of the beauty around us. Specifically, I am forever enchanted by the way emotion is expressed through and with the body, and all of my work surrounds this theme.
I began my current artistic work by modeling in shoots that I designed as a forms of self-expression for parts of myself that I felt were hidden inside me. I called my work the Permission Project and it became a healing journey for me to let myself “go there” to all the places and emotions that I felt I had suppressed.
I then began organizing more elaborate photo experiences with others photographed by my mentor, Julie Harris Chatham, and eventually began photographing and directing my own work.
I have themes that interest me and invite others to play – by dancing, expressing and giving permission to the parts of themselves that are seeking to be heard.

I consider myself an immersive artist who uses people as my medium – and I do this in movement experiences I create and in the photographs I take. My goal is always to find move aliveness and presence in this life for myself and for all my co-creators.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
I wake up everyday called to create transformative experiences of beauty everywhere in my life – whether it is an immersive movement experience, a photography project, a film I am co-creating, a poem I feel called to write, or a dinner party I am hosting. Every day is a chance to find and expand upon beauty and invite others to be transformed by all the beauty in life. I take photos only on film because it allows me to stay present and engaged with my subject. It also invites us both in to the mystery of creation — we don’t know what we are getting and that allows us to be “in” the experience of art-making together.
Because what I do straddles many mediums, it is definitely a challenge for me to tell people what I do. But when I find someone I want to play with, I fall in love with their spirit and want to create with and through them over and over again.
My drive to create has transformed the lives of my co-creators by reminding them that are always already artists, shaping their own lives with the daily way of being.

I am a bit of a late bloomer as an artist, and it wasn’t something that came easy to me. I still struggle with the drive to be practical with the desire to create with reckless abandon. I spent many years as an academic, a teacher and a business manager before I could really rip off the mask and reveal who I really am – which is an artist through and through.

I encourage everyone to trust more deeply that what drives you is worthy and valid – and that taking risks and making even huge mistakes – is the cost of being truly alive.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
I am completely entranced by the views and the experience of just driving around east Boulder county. I love to carry my camera with me and hop out to take pictures of the shadows of trees on the snow or to get a friend to ride along and jump in a creek or stand in front of a falling-down shed. I love the big, wide skies and the remaining rural, open spaces. I think everyone should have a pizza and champagne lunch at Pizzeria Locale and stroll down Pearl Street on a sunny afternoon. And I adore a good glass of wine on the rooftop of Corrida.
I’d also want to spend time guiding my friend in movement and witnessing their beauty – as well as taking their photos and having fun making everything art.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
My biggest supporters have been my husband, Lawrence Janowski, who always supports even my craziest artistic endeavor, my photography mentor, Julie Harris Chatham, whose wise gaze has helped me find myself over and over again, my creative partners and collaborators Harold Sims and Brenna Riley, who trust my vision and have helped me to find joy in the act of being alive, and my children, Eli and Dahlia. My children are the ones who constantly call me forward to be more present, alive, aware and ridiculously creative. We make everything art as a family, as having that as our family motto has been such a freeing expression. As I tell my kids, all art is a series of risks and failures – and we will never know the outcome if we don’t play the game.

Website: coming soon (permissionary.com)

Instagram: @ permissionary

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChpEcH5rXCQXpu6jOLYjHFw

Image Credits
all by me on 35mm film