Getting ourselves and our students self-motivated to get beyond a moment of anxiety and to not give up on ideas and artistic vision is what I’m looking for. How do we teach for and become self-determined to want to answer the phrase I don’t know on a consistent lifelong basis? When grades, money, and teacher driven projects become a non-factor how do we continue to creatively seek answers and visually give a voice to our wonderings? When other parts of our lives threaten to take over, how do we continue to be creative?
I have consistently been reminded during this study that creativity should ideally become habit, a ritual we weave into our daily lives. Daily taking note or notice of what is around us, what is of interest to us as individuals, giving a visual voice to our wonderings, and being curious is fundamental to a creative life. Learning to manage time and expectations, and understanding the value of consistency and the true purpose of art is to master creativity (Tharp, 2003).
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Skill and craft has gotten in the way for me a little bit. This study does not depend on the work itself, how skillful or unskillful, the quality or the quantity, or even the idea. This study is dependent on the process, doing the work and its creative implications. But, still the years of honed craft and creative process specific to an industry, has gotten in the way and has been a frustration while thinking about and creating for this study.
Skill is an interesting component to any creative endeavor. In my experience, younger children create with abandon. For instance, in the school art program, I facilitate, the first and second graders all flock to the art tables full of materials, are insistent on doing it their way, always create more than one piece, and are always anxious to tell me their story and show their work off. They have very little fear of the materials, and have no idea what is or isn’t possible. Keeping that ideal at the forefront is key. Then again, that passion does inevitably seem to wane, and ability becomes much more necessary to continue in confidence. Where does this leave me in the creative process? Creating with a child-like abandon is something I’m striving for every day, playing with new ways and processes albeit related to my current abilities has been preferable to keep from feeling stagnant, and evaluating my honed skill set in relation to this current study is helping to elevate my confidence. I know what a pixel is, and how it works. I know that several pixels gathered together forms an image and tells a story. I also know that the pixel-like square images in my social media feed tells a story, but maybe not the whole story. I have found a couple of different times per day to be the most productive. The actual times don’t matter so much as the fact that they are the quietest times for me, with very little distraction and no interruptions. I can process information and create in relative peace. I found that if I am anxious about some part of the process and distracted or interrupted I have the added emotion of being irritated, and that makes the anxiety during the process worse. I also find that if my creative time needs to be in the company of others that the act of pattern making, such as filling in squares on my grid paper, or drawing squares or cell-like shapes in my sketchbook affords me valuable time with my materials and keeps me going. The most anxious I have felt over the last two weeks was the first five days, when I was really working out the idea and the art activity itself. I have committed myself to at least one hour per day to sit with my materials, but my thoughts don’t stop there. If I can go longer I do, if not I feel comfort in having my notebook with me, to jot down ideas that pop up, notes, as well as sketching. Sometimes I come back to my workspace and work a little more in between my scheduled times. An hour per day is not a lot of time, but even so I already feel a bit more confident in my creative ability, less anxious about each new day, and am starting to feel a sense of personal accomplishment. The above image is my schedule as represented by pixels. The horizontal bar of black pixels represent my daily commitments between the hours of 5:30am and 10:00pm. The outside black pixels represent all of the commitments that need to somehow fit within committed schedule. The white pixel is my daily creative time, that I have gifted to myself in my overloaded schedule.
I realized during this study that I’ve never devoted much time to developing a personal creative habit. As an industry professional, I’ve been handed ideas to work through, usually with very specific rules for executing work. Even as an undergraduate art student, projects were given, with very specific ways to execute them, and sketchbooks were filled with pages practicing skills, and honing craft.
It has been interesting for me to create with no imposed boundaries, except my own, making connections between what I don’t know and what I do know, as well as reflecting on the emotions that pop up during the creative process. The emotions I’ve felt on every single project I’ve ever embarked on, but had been too pressed for time to ever consider. I kept going out of a sense of responsibility to a paying client or a grade. Anxiety or not, it had to get done. There is something very freeing about taking ownership of my creativity; how I utilize my creative time, or allow my mind to wander in whatever direction it needs to go, how I choose to represent my ideas, order my activities, and present my work and thoughts. Artists work with a scaffolding; a thoughtful plan or a broad strategy for getting started, but when you finally get down to work, unpredictable transformation inevitably takes over, and you need to be prepared for it. Being prepared for it also means accepting it.
Despite impeccable planning, ruts and groves, as Tharp (2003) calls them, happen. Lingering in a rut for whatever reason can be detrimental to the work. To notice those low points in creativity, “you have to question everything except your ability to get out of it” (Tharp, 2003, p.187). If you’re in a rut Tharp suggests a three-step process for dealing with one: first, see the rut, second, admit the rut, and three, get out of the rut. Ruts and grooves are met by people in different ways. When I hit a rut yesterday, I called it a day and got in my car to take a short drive. I mentioned before that I do some of my best thinking in the car. It helped and I was able to rethink some ideas and started back up again today. |