Michael Sturtz: Sculptor / OG Burner Builder / Fire Arts School Founder / Treehouse Builder

Sagewolf Interviews

michaelsturtz.com
The scene:
We are in Alameda, CA at Michael’s gorgeous, “highly modified” yet period correct-ish historical 1875 Victorian home, hanging out in the sunlit kitchen. Michael is one of the most insanely experienced and creatively inspired humans I know. Join us in the kitchen as he makes us lunch and tells us the wild and unexpected journey of his life - from refusing to be an orthopedic surgeon to teaching at Stanford to working at Google’s SpaceX to creating an intentional community in Bali.
Highlights:
+ Self-care: a trainer, bike rides with friends, and eating well
+ Being a “golden sheep”, not a black sheep
+ Did a TedX talk, NBD
+ Building things with your hands
+ Dad: Orthopedic Surgeon + Step Dad: Auto Body Repairman = Michael
+ Fighting family expectations to go to art school
+ Dyslexic and making it wrok. How dyslexia helps you think outside boundaries
+ The Crucible in Oakland, CA is now the nation’s largest non-profit industrial arts school
+ Founded The Crucible 23 years ago with a grant for $1,700
+ Make the environment you’re looking for and be the teacher you wanted
+ Alternative theater: mixing opera singers, ballerinas, fire arts and aerialists, motorcycles, whirling dervishes…
+ Taught at Stanford’s D (Design) School running “Redesigning Theater” for product design
+ Ran Stanford’s Creative Ignition Lab at Auto Desk for the future of making and learning
+ Unleashing the brilliance that the SAT test doesn’t measure
+ Recruited by GoogleX to run their in-house prototyping lab called The Design Kitchen
+ “Moonshots” = products that will impact the world
+ Self-driving cars, high-speed delivery drones, high-altitude weather balloons that broadcast internet
+ 90% of potential moonshot projects fail/get killed, 2% make it
+ Speaking, teaching, and consulting internationally: China, Nice, Amsterdam, New Zealand, Istanbul
+ Working 5 days/month (quality of life)
+ Working for the New Zealand government to create a mini Silicon Valley
+ Innovative culture is an ecosystem that includes street art and food, etc.
+ Consulting in Spain for zero-carbon manufacturing laws
+ Trusting yourself with your crazy ideas that no one else has thought of
+ Inverse inspiration: proving people wrong is a motivator
+ Collaboration, hands-on, non-competitive learning, support, community
+ Combining opposites to blow the blinders off
+ Stupidity and bravery can be very close together
+ Accidentally inspiring people and the ripple effect of that
+ Knowing when to go for it and when to throw in the towel, or shelf it and pivot
+ It’s hard to be an authority figure in and anti-authoritarian community
+ Working with creatives is like “herding cats to teach them how to nail Jell-o to a tree”
+ There are no supposed-to police
+ Ideas are easy, doing it’s the hard part
A taste:
“It’s interesting, the very same quote that I was inspired by by Buckminster Fuller […] they have in their very first page of their proposal is a quote about ‘You can’t change anything within a system, you have to create a new system that has so many radical ideas that it makes the current system of doing things obsolete’.”
“Some of my best experiences have been doing what I’m not supposed to do, not harming anybody but yeah maybe the security guard has to chase me down and tell me I’m not supposed to be there.”
Favorite saying:

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Love, Sagewolf xoxo