“Creativity is the art of combining a little idea with another idea, with another little idea, and so on…at the end maybe a great idea will come.” Serge Bloch
My NYC art experience, I wrote about in the last blog had a more negative effect on me than just making me sad and angry. For the first time, in longer than I can remember, I did not want to be in my studio. I lost my desire to work. But my life was empty. I asked myself repeatedly what do people do all day if they are not working, pursuing an interest, or volunteering someplace? After the first week in this state of “nothingness”, I gave myself a whack on the side of my head… “You write a blog on the ‘Creative Spirit’ do something about it! Take your own advice”! It was time to reboot my “Creative Spirit.”
We have all been there…a time when the “mojo” seems to disappear, and we don’t know what to do or where to start. So I went back through my own blogs and I re-read Creative Spirit Blog: 112 “Exploring your Creative Side” and started to follow my own advice. I wrote a Haiku poem:
Get your ass in gear Nothingness is very boring Make yourself happy
Geologic Rhythm Mixed Media
And, I laughed at myself. Then I cleared my work space and finished framing a couple of new pieces I had done before the “nothingness” set in. When I was about to frame the last one, I thought “you can make this one better”. It needed more value. If I added a little more of the natural element, I had used it would hold more interest, and with that there was a spark. I walked out in the garden and picked up some pieces of palm bark and an idea came. It was the feel of “possibilities”, how I could transform that bark into something interesting. So, I made a list of the possible ways that I can use palm bark. (Also from Blog 112) And with a few simple exercises I rebooted my “Creative Spirit.”
Agustin Fuentis in his book The Creative Spark: How Imagination Made Humans Exceptional, wrote: “The essence of creativity is to look at the world around us, see how it is, and imagine other possibilities that are not immediately present or based on our immediate personal experience. Creativity is seeing the possibilities and then trying to make those imaginings into material reality”
We are all born creative but how we use it is up to us. Those of us who develop the ability to build on the little things we see to create something new, or expand ideas so they have more intricate meaning, that they might touch another life in a meaningful way, are so fortunate. Being back in the studio is so exciting, because within its welcoming embrace has come new ideas for a whole new series.
One of my readers, who I have come to appreciate so much because of her support and thoughtful responses to my blogs, sent me a spiritual saying which is so spot on… “be in the world but not of it”. We all must walk to our own drumbeat. We can document or we can create and make something better: inspire, energize, and influence, with each creative effort we put forth.
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