Creative gifts from unlikely places

I LOVE the story below.  I have always believed that creative solutions to problems often come from the most unlikely sources.  People with little or no experience in a particular area can often see innovative ways to solve problems.  And of course, the first response from the person with the problem is “Oh don’t be silly – that would never work”. 
But it often does.  And I know I have conversations with people in other fields where I mention a problem that is puzzling me about a mosaic work in progress, and they often make suggestions that are helpful, but I would never have thought up on my own.  I hate to admit it – I’m always a little surprised, but I try to treat it as the gift that it is.
I have quoted from Justine Musk’s blog before – if you find this interesting be sure to subscribe to her blog.  Wonderful epiphanies all over the place there.

[In] Jonah Lehrer’s new book IMAGINE: How Creativity Works…the outsider perspective might sometimes be the superior perspective.

Lerner refers to a man named Alpheus Bingham, a vice president at Eli Lilly (one of the biggest drug companies on the globe). He was in charge of research strategy, managing countless scientists working on countless technical problems, and he was increasingly concerned.
For all the money the company was throwing at these problems, hoping and expecting to come up with the next Prozac, they were getting crappy results.
“And that’s when I started to wonder if all these supposedly impossible technical issues were really impossible. Maybe we just had the wrong people working on them?….I always assumed that you hire the best resume and give the problem to the guy with the most technical experience. But maybe that was a big mistake?”
What Bingham did next was pretty radical.
Although companies like Lilly believed in deep secrecy – guarding against the possibility that competitors might steal their ideas – Bingham decided (and I am paraphrasing here): Fuck it.
He launched a website called Innocentive. He took the company’s hardest scientific problems and threw them out to the public. He posted them on the site and offered a financial reward to anyone who came up with a solution.
He didn’t expect many of them to get solved.
He was wrong.
“The answers just started pouring in,” he says. “We got these great ideas from researchers we’d never heard of, pursuing angles that had never occurred to us. The creativity was simply astonishing.”
The secret to this success, says Lerner, is outsider thinking.
The people deep inside a domain – the chemists trying to solve a chemistry problem – suffered from a kind of intellectual handicap. They were working with the same sets of ideas within the same categories and boundaries. They were living in the same intellectual grooves. As a result, the impossible problems stayed impossible.
The actual solutions to these problems came from people who were working at the very edges of their fields.
Chemists were solving molecular biology problems; molecular biologists were solving chemistry problems.
When solvers “rated the problem as outside their own domain”, they were more likely to stumble upon solutions. They were “bridging knowledge fields” – taking ideas from one domain and introducing them into a different domain.
They reframed problems, combined and recombined ideas, and opened up new lines of thinking.

I want to make one little caveat here – I’m not suggesting that unqualified people be hired for jobs they can’t possibly even understand the scope of.  But some of those unqualified people might have an idea that can break a roadblock.
Next time you are struggling with an art project that has gone awry – go ask a mechanic how he would solve the problem.  Or a dentist.  Or the lunch lady.  You might be amazed.

Technorati Tags: Justine Musk,Creative Badass,creativity,problem solving

Take a chance.

Another post about creativity itself, rather than the product of it.  Everyone has something to say about creativity, the process, the roadblocks.  But when it comes to discussing why we sometimes can’t manage to create, even though we want to very much – even need to – it helps to remember this:

“The whole point of creating something is to become something more today than you were yesterday.”

That is from Ken and Paper, whose wise words I have quoted before.  How clever of him to put his finger on it so precisely, when the rest of us run around bumping into excuses for putting off starting this project, or finishing that one; avoiding the confrontation with the inevitable “what if it’s crap?” question.
And as Ken says – it doesn’t matter.  The point of it is growth.  Learn something.  Stretch yourself.  Take a chance.

© 1998 Lee Ann Petropoulos

Technorati Tags: creativity,Ken and Paper,painting,sunflower

Wish I’d though of it!

This is a marvelous post by Ken and Paper.  He proposes a Museum of Awkward Beginnings.  It’s brilliant!  I would become a sustaining member, give tours, even work the gift shop!  My favorite room would be the Angry Fit Exhibit.  It’s all about making you understand that even those famous masters of every medium started off as amateurs.  They made some crap too.  It’s ok to make crap – learn from it and move on!
I have mentioned before that I used to focus my creativity on music.  I played classical piano: Chopin, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Debussy among my favorites.  My hero and idol was Vladimir Horowitz.  (OK, this was a long time ago!)  I had many of his recordings that I listened to over and over again, certain that I was and always would be inadequate - longing to put the same power behind the music, to possess the same finesse on the arpeggios, command the same range of volume.  And then I saw a live broadcast of one of his concerts.  Oh.  My.  God.  He made mistakes!  The pieces that I played myself and knew inside and out – he flubbed them!  Not huge flubs, little flubs:  a missed note here, a hitch in the tempo there.  All through the concert!  He was human!  Hallelujah! 
I learned so much from that single concert that I have applied to many areas of my life, but it has been most useful in my art.  Yes, I can create a piece of crap.  And I can throw it away and do better next time.  Or maybe not, maybe the next one is a piece of crap too.  It’s still ok, because I know I’m learning what not to do, and that is as useful as what to do. 
Apply that to your own art and see how liberating it is!  You’ll never go back to the stress over continual perfection.

Technorati Tags: Ken and Paper,perfection,mistakes,piano

Why daydreaming is good for you.

Thinking creatively. We all want to do it. We probably all think we already do. But I ran across a post on another blog today (Tribal Writer) that made me stop and really consider what it really means to “think creatively”.
I have been a chronic daydreamer all my life, and usually felt a little guilty about it. Time spent daydreaming, after all, is not productive time. Well, guilt be gone! Here is what I read this morning: when daydreaming….

Your mind is free to roam through all its memory banks, including places that your conscious mind can’t get to, and to pick up odd snippets and fragments. This is when you’re likely to make those unexpected connections or insights that will solve that problem you’ve been mulling over all week. A recent study at the University of British Columbia has demonstrated that, when daydreaming, the brain is actually recruiting complex regions of itself including the “executive network”, the command-and-control center of your mind that gathers all the streams of information coming in from various sources and evaluates and interprets them.

I suppose I knew this on some level. But don’t we love to hear that a study has come to the same conclusions we did on our own?
Another thing discussed in that post is brainstorming. Justine references a book called Think Better by Tim Hurson (which I confess I haven’t read). But in the book, she says Hurson claims that most people go about brainstorming the wrong way -

Most people will list some ideas, say “yes” or “no” to each idea as it gets jotted down, and then stop at the first idea that seems “right”.

Hmm. Sounds familiar. But what’s wrong with that?

Good brainstorming gets rid of the binary. Each idea isn’t met with a “yes” or a “no”…but a maybe.

Hurson says we should keep tossing the ideas on the table until we reach the ones that seem really “out there” – the point being that we can’t reach a really innovative solution to a problem until we’ve moved beyond the tired old ideas we’ve heard elsewhere, which will be the first ones presented in any brainstorming session. We have to push further, even if one of those tired old ideas “sounds right”. If nothing else we come up with is feasible, we can always come back to an early idea. But if we stop too soon, we’ll never reach our potential.
Livin’ on the edge, baby.

Make a Joyful Mess

I’m not a fussy housekeeper. In fact, my mother is most likely embarrased to admit I grew up under her tutelage. I like things clean, but I usually feel like I have better things to do. However, I’m a little puzzled as to why I can’t work in the studio without cleaning it first. That’s so out of character!
I think today I finally figured out why ~~ it has something to do with the sheer joy of making a mess. There’s really nothing like the feeling of flinging stuff all over the room in a fit of creativity! Whether it’s nearly microscopic glass bits freeing themselves with abandon and skittering across the wood floor, or flour flung all over the kitchen (and myself) while making homemade egg noodles – it’s just more fun if the room is clean first! And frankly, the cleanup is a little easier too.

Granted, today’s mess was a mild one due to a late start. But I cleaned both tables off before starting, then dumped out a little of a lot of different shades of green tile and stained glass.
Speaking of tiles – I love these little tiles I made from polymer clay. I rolled the clay out with a pasta machine and stamped it with a regular rubber stamp. I love how they turned out looking like tooled leather! They will have to be cut fairly small to be used in this piece, but I have already put a few in and they still are pretty cool.

Ok, just go ahead and shoot me now.

What possesses me to make commitments when I already feel strung out, behind on housework, yardwork, and grocery shopping? Well, I’ve gone and done it again. Leah Piken Kolidas writes a blog that I enjoy. She uses challenges to help motivate herself and other artists to keep the creative juices flowing. She has a Creative Every Day challenge, to do something creative, whether that be art, cooking, taking pictures, knitting…whatever, and then share it with the others in the challenge. It is an ongoing thing, and she posts optional themes for each month in advance. I decided that might be too long term for me, what with my incredibly short attention span. So instead I have joined her Art Every Day challenge. In this one, for the month of November, you are supposed to make some art every day and share it with the others. But when December gets here I’m free. I think I can do this. Maybe.
So…I will be posting my efforts here and linking to it from Leah’s blog. You can see what the others are up to by going to the Art Every Day blog. All the participants are listed in a drop down list on the right, and you can click on the names to be taken to wherever they are posting (might be a blog, or Flickr, etc.)
Because most of my stuff takes so damn long weeks or months to make, I’ll be posting progress photos here, rather than individual artworks. Probably. So here is the mosaic I worked on today:

See you tomorrow!

Was I on vacation?

Jeez-O-Pete!  Where have I been?  You’d think I might have gone on vacation, but I’m pretty sure I never even left the house this week except to run errands.  Huh.  Missing time again, eh?  Seems to be a regular occurrence.  I think about once every 3 or 4 months I get internet overload and just wink out for a bit.  I feel better now, thanks.
And so what have we been up to this week, boys and girls?  Have you done any adventurous art?  Have you stretched yourself beyond what you are comfortable doing?  Is there something you have made this week that you have the nerve to dislike?  I can happily say Yes!  I have been working on an acrylic painting.  Acrylics are relatively new to me.  I am not comfortable with the paint itself.  It dries much too quickly to suit me (which is a little odd, since I come from a background of watercolor painting and have yet to try my hand at oils).   But with watercolors, they can be blended even after they are dry by adding more water.  Not so effective with acrylics.  I was planning to share with you the progress on it so far, but I’ve changed my mind.  I will wait until at least the next painting session to see whether it will turn out acceptable or whether it will be a learning experience that ends up in a closet. 
Meanwhile, I have started the marble on the Oak and Acanthus mosaic.   Not much to look at yet, but here you go, such as it is… 





And after a hike through the woods with my husband and camera, I have a couple of photos that I really think I’d like to do something with, although I’m not sure just what.  Take a peek:

Reflections of trees in the moving water of a brook	Leaves under water
Trees reflected in the still water behind a beaver dam	Hemlock and beech

The Spectrum of a Project

idea.
enthusiasm.
struggle.
conflict.
patience.
endurance.
completion.
peace.
What color am I today? The indigo of the peace that follows completion feels so far away. And yet so does the crimson of enthusiasm. I’m mired in the turquoise waters of patience and endurance. And because this is a commission, the black hole of guilt for not working faster is just at the edge of my vision. Taunting me, making my job even more difficult.
There will be a day without teeth clenching, a night without frantic dreams soon. It really can’t come soon enough.

Daily Sketches – a new torture device

Sketching on a regular basis is obviously critical to developing (and maintaining) one’s art skills. I don’t do it. Well, duh…..have you seen my artwork? So because I care enough to send the very best (damn you Hallmark!) work to improve my skills, I am committing to a daily sketch. Some days the sketch will be somewhat detailed, other days just a quick, minimalist sort of thing. I think both styles could be helpful, and besides, some days I’ll only have the patience for a quick little ditty.
So I’ll post the ones I like well enough to show you ;-) Here is yesterday’s effort:

The light source on this is different than in the photo at right – it came from a lamp at the back of the carving.

A carving my daughter brought back from Kenya last fall – the light source from the camera flash overpowered the lamp – I wasn’t thinking when I took this…..

One other that I will post here is from late winter/early spring (?) just as an example of the quick, minimalist type sketch:

My foot in a ribbed sock – fascinating subject matter, I know, but I was too lazy to get up and find something interesting to draw. It’s just practice, guys! Sheesh!

Brainstorming for a New Mosaic Challenge

Whee! A new mosaic challenge! I am actually a little surprised at myself, because I’m not usually comfortable letting others set the parameters for an art project. But these parameters are just about as loose as you can get! The theme is one of my favorites, and the deadline is blissfully adequate!
I have joined the Flickr Mosaic Challenge Group (check it out if you think this is something you would be interested in - http://www.flickr.com/groups/mosaicchallenge/discuss/72157621865158085/) and the new theme is “Leaves”. The parameters are "Any size, color, or material qualifies, as long as the main subject matter is leaves" and the deadline is October 31. I can do that!
So here are some photos I have taken for inspiration. Fabric designs, wallpaper, and garden photos….

	Leaves in shades of green on black background
All kinds of crazy colored leaves (including purple) on black background
	Acanthus leaf rug – black and taupe
Wallpaper, gold background, leaves in shades of sage and olive green
	Sweet potato vine
Nasturtiums
	Grape leaves

I have yet to decide whether to use one photo as a starting point, or combine several. I used a fabric design as inspiration once before and was relatively happy with the result:

It’s Not Easy Bein’ Green

I LOVE the fabric with multicolored leaves on the black background, but I think I want to do something less predictable than autumn leaves (for an October challenge). So…. we’ll just have to see what develops!

When Play Becomes Conflict

When I go into my studio, I tend to say things like “I’m going to go play with the paints” or “I’m going to play around and break some glass”. I may have a production deadline, but I refuse to begin thinking of what I do as work, in much the same way that I refuse to think of gardening as work. I love what I do, and to think of it as work would instantly suck all the fun out of it.
Having said that, this project has become WORK. I decided to “play” with some oil pastels I found in my goodie closet. I have never used them before, don’t have any idea where they came from, but they have been in the closet for years, waiting for someone to give them a voice. I only wish I had known ahead of time that they’d start swearing.
This piece is still not finished. I need to develop the view in the distance more, and I think I will darken the foreground. But I’m terribly frustrated with this medium. The most difficult issue for me so far has been the inability to layer the colors very well. When I try to put a color on top of another, or just add to one that’s already there, I seem to be scraping off the previous layer. And oddly enough, that seems to be a problem with the greens, and to some extent the blues, but not the other colors. This happened even after sitting for about 4 weeks untouched, so I guess it’s not just because I need to let them “dry”. If anyone has any suggestions, I’m all ears.
The problem is, I don’t know if I’m just not going to become buddies with oil pastels, or if it’s because they’re student grade, or you shouldn’t let them sit around for years…whatever. Oil pastels and I….let’s just say our relationship is unresolved.
So while I’m on the subject of play in a creative context, I suggest you take a look at the blog ‘An Artist in Brooklyn’. Today’s post, Creative Blocks and Play goes into a discussion of how very necessary play is in the creative process, but acknowledges that different people will use that aspect in different parts of the process. Great post. And the author includes a quote that I think will become my new mantra -
One can be serious about the frivolous,
frivolous about the serious. — Susan Sontag
So now I’m off to play in the garden, and let those oil pastels think about what they have done. Maybe they’ll be contrite when I come back.

The Art of Self-Discipline

It would be easy to say that poor time management is a special kind of problem for artists. Creative types are sometimes thought of as a little flighty anyway. But I think anyone who works at home suffers from this affliction. Granted, not all artists have studios in their homes, but all of the artists I know personally do. And we are all distracted to some degree by the needs of the household: the dog that needs a walk, the phone ringing, a child that needs a ride home from practice, the laundry spilling over in the hamper, well, you get my drift. And for many people working at home, they are dealing with a certain sense of guilt when these household issues aren't dealt with. Guilt is an unproductive emotion. Not that I'm immune, just that I recognize that guilt is not going to help me keep my house clean, and it certainly isn't helping finish art projects. So now that I have identified the problem, and at least one useless response to it, now what?

Recently I read entries on two different blogs about this. Both by artists, and both set up REALLY rigid schedules for themselves. At least, to me they seemed really rigid (being the floaty, play-it-by-ear type). One is Nikki Wright (see her system here)who has chopped her day into 1/2 hour to 1 hour blocks, in order to accomplish what seems to me to be a Herculean workload. Honestly, I would never consider trying to do that much in a day, and I know that I would chafe under the yoke of a schedule that tight. Another artist that works well under considerably more structure than I can tolerate is Lisa Call. Her blog details how she went from being very structured to being more laid back, and is reverting to the structure. It's how she works best. (see her system here) I read these within a day or two of each other, and though to myself that I was surely lost, because I had no hope of working like that. But as so often happens, synchronicity threw me a bone. I encountered the 20 Hour Challenge.

An artist on Twitter decided to set up a challenge for herself to spend 20 hours a week dedicated to producing her art. It could be structured any way at all, just that she was committing to 20 hours. She asked if other artists might be interested in joining her in the challenge, for their own benefit and to provide support for each other. Well, that sounded right up my alley, so I jumped on it. The deal is this: every Friday afternoon on Twitter, we will report to each other what the result of the week are, what the challenges have been, even do a little show and tell, etc. And no rules against discussions of challenges and need for support in between Friday tweet-ups, of course. We will use the #20hrchallenge hashtag on posts, so that anyone can search for posts by other artists on the subject. Read more about this here from Lori Woodward Simons, the artist with the fabulous idea! If you think a challenge like this would benefit you, join us on Twitter! My account name is @lapetropoulos, and Lori's is @Loriwords. We will officially begin the challenge on Tuesday, May 26 after the holiday weekend, but no reason not to join up now and get the discussions started. See you on Twitter!

Deep Thought Thursday (and yes, I know it's not Thursday)

About a month ago, I posted an entry What Took You So Long? In it I examined the reactions that people often have upon finding out the incredible amount of time that I invest into each mosaic piece, and sort of touched on my reaction to being asked the question in the first place. Apparently, this is an issue for a lot of artists, as I have run across a number of similar discussions since I wrote that. I think many artists feel as if people are trying to make a value judgement - weighing the amount of money you are asking for a piece with how long it might have taken. I'm not sure that's really an accurate perception, but it seems common enough to need to be addressed. After all, if you need to have your appendix removed, the fact that the operation only took a couple of hours isn't going to devalue the surgeon's work, is it? You will be grateful that the surgeon had the education and the skill to perform it well and in short order.

In one of the online conversations I ran across about this issue, I found a new perspective that I think probably comes closer to the heart of the matter than any other I've seen. Alyson B. Stanfield is a business coach for artists who offers seminars and a blog with lots of helpful tips and discussions. On her blog she asked for artists to contribute their best response to "How long did it take you to make that?" Several of the responses were variations on the classic "About *(insert age here)* years". Now I don't know about you, but that sounds flippant to me, and disrespectful of the questioner. If someone doesn't like or respect your art, they won't even bother asking you how long it took, because they won't give a crap. So it seems to me that they deserve a thoughful response, and yet I know artists are very often struggling to find acceptance for what they do, and therefore can be overly sensitive. And answering questions from a defensive frame of mind ALWAYS leads to trouble.

One of the things that I think is worth mentioning for artists who happen to work as I do on several things at once, (see The Twilight Zone of an Artwork) is that it can be really difficult to quantify the time spent simply because pieces are never produced start to finish, one at a time. Even if a piece languishes in the corner for a couple of months while I work on something else, it is never far from my consciousness. I spend a great deal of time thinking about the reason it was shelved, which is usually because something didn't go according to plan, or I have reached a point where I'm just not sure what to do next. So do I count that as time spent on the piece? It is part of the process and the planning, but there are no visible changes made on it during that time. Should I possibly count 50% of that time? None at all?

But the most interesting thing that was mentioned in Alyson's blog was that sometimes, maybe "how long did it take" isn't really even what the questioner wants to know. Maybe that person is terribly interested in what you do, but doesn't have any idea how else to start a conversation about it. So although I think they deserve an answer to their question, even if it's not what they really want to know, maybe the best answer is "Well, I don't really know. What is it about the piece that you like?" And then by making them focus differently, you can have a conversation that feels valuable to both parties. If time is really what they want to know about after all, they'll probably say "what do you mean, you don't know?" and then I can explain the stuff in the previous paragraph. If you would like to see how some of the other artists responded to this question, you can find them here: http://www.artbizblog.com/2009/03/deep-thought-thursday-how-long-did-it-take-you-to-make-that.html

We Get Too Soon Auld and Too Late Schmart

My mother-in-law used to have a plaque hanging in her kitchen with those words on it. Even 25 years ago, I realized that truer words were never spoken, but I didn't know what to do about it. Now I can look back and identify many things that would have made my life easier if I had been smarter about those things at the time. Eh, c'est la vie. But rather than getting mired in the "coulda been a contenda" mind set, let's revel in the things we've done right!

I have collected a very eclectic set of art books, so that there is always inspiration at hand, regardles of my creative mood at any given time. Of course, that is less important now that everything ever created can be found on the internet. Nonetheless, I like the tactile experience of turning the pages, holding them up close to my face to get a better look at the details, the smell of the book reminding me of trips to the library with my kids when they were small. One of the books in that collection is The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain: A Course in Enhancing Creativity and Artistic Confidence by Betty Edwards. The book explained so clearly how people often try to draw what they think a thing should look like, not what they actually see in front of them. That was revolutionary for me! The drawing above was my first attempt after reading the book. For someone who grew up jealously watching her father draw beautiful things, and create gorgeous landscapes in pastels, this tiny little modest attempt was SOO satisfying! At that moment I knew that if I worked hard at it, I could teach myself to make beautiful things too.

So now I am older, and a little schmarter, but better late than never!