Elizabeth Gilbert has come to terms with the fact that she may very well never write a book as successful as her last. A major problem for creative beings is that once they create something wonderful, they struggle to reach that same level again. They spend the rest of their lives trying to get back to that same level they felt at the point of their creation. This is often where alcoholism, drug abuse and depression are at their worst.

Gilbert says “I think that allowing somebody, like one mere person to believe that he or she is the vessel, you know like the font, and the essence and the source of all devine, creative, unknowable eternal mystery is just a smidge too much responsibility to put on one human fragile psyche.” She says it “distorts egos and creates all these unmanagable expectations.”

She then discusses an idea that was used for creative beings in ancient times that it was infact a spirit that inhabited the body of a person, and the spirit made the creation, using the person merely as a medium to create the piece. This then placed no pressure on the artist themselves because it was the spirit who was responsible for the creation and not them.

I drew a quick sketch showing a painter at work being enhabbited by their creative spirit. The black in the top right corner is the spirit and it’s waves are flowing around and through the painter. I wanted this to show that that spirit can still be there even now when we create. Maybe it’s not looked at the same way, because creative acts are so constantly judged in this day and age, but we still all know the feeling of being taken over by “something” of an unknown source that gives us the ability to piece together words or colours, or whatever the medium for the creative act. It allows us to create something that by ourselves we wouldn’t have thought usually possible.

Perhaps if in society we could give some more credit to the creative spirit that is truly responsible for our greatest creations, artists would worry less about striving to create that next great piece andwe would all be at ease with the critics opinions of the final product. Perhaps if we all accepted that we are not solely responsible for our creations, then our creative spirits would truly flourish.

After seeing Amy Tan’s talk on TED, I began thinking about how I could test luck, or chance. Tan discusses her creative process as an author in this way, saying that “If you try too hard, you will only write “about”. You won’t discover anything, and that you were supposed to find, what you hope to find in some serendipitous way, is no longer there.” She says that often when she is researching to write something, she will have good luck and find herself in situations where she is in front of exactly what she needs to be at that point in her writing.

Some would say as an experienced and successful author she puts herself in a good position to come across these things. She says however, that when she is aware of the good things that are happening to her, more of them happen.

I decided to do a simple experiment with Max, my German exchange student housemate. I gave him a coin and asked him which side he would prefer to come up if he flipped it. After looking at me like I was an idiot for a minute, he said he preferred “heads”. I then got him to flip the coin ten times.

As he uncoordinatedly flipped the first coin, I told him it wouldn’t count because it barely rotated. He then tried again, and with a much better toss it landed on heads. He tossed it again. Heads. His third toss again landed on heads, and with a big smile on his face he asked me if it was a trick coin. He realised it wasn’t thought when his next two landed on tails. He no longer had a smile on his face and you could see the doubt in his mind starting to kick in.  

Could it be that because his confidence was down he would now get another tail? Does his mood influence chance or fate? No. He got heads. He then landed two more heads in a row and his confidence was back up. He gave another big smile. Finishing off with a tail, and then finally another heads, he looked at me and exclaimed “I won!” He finished with 7 heads and only 3 tails in a game that is 50/50 chance. While this probably was just purely chance, he was still feeling the same fortune that Tan feels when luck favours her.  

Whether it was a positive attitude that changed his luck, or whether it was just chance that he won we can’t really be sure. Maybe luck of the Irish Germans? No I think I just made that up.

Either way he told me I made his day. So whether this experiment proved anything about chance or not, at least it gave someone a quick break from their homework and put a smile on their face.

I decided I would photograph a friend, focussing on their eyes. I would take 3 photographs, with the subject keeping different facial expressions (smiling, frowning, focussing) and see if from just their eyes you would be able to link them to a loved one, or experience of your own.

From this photograph what do you feel? I personally link it to my Mum. To me this is the watching, caring eye of a mother watching over their child. It shows love and almost a sense of worry, I think, that only a mother could have for a child.

The second photo for me shows sorrow. It reminds me of someone who has just lost someone they love. I’m not sure who I would link it to as a person in my life, but it is still familiar to me. Possibly the eyes of someone you would see being interviewed on the news after a disaster. All hope is lost and the eye is simply expressing acceptance and sorrow.

The third eye was taken after telling the subject to focus on a point in the room. To me it shows the concentration involved in the human mind searching for every piece detail given to it. It also almost looks as if it conveys anger. I relate this eye to the “evil eye” usually given to me after I severely piss off a girl. But to someone else perhaps it could convey the passion in the act of searching for detail.

As we have all had different experiences in our lives, we subconciously make links every day to past experiences. This is an example of one way we do that, in facial recognition. As humans, if we are unsure of something we link it to the most familiar thing in an attempt to understand it. This is why Meigs feels that her form of artwork will be appreciated, because every person has an experience that can be linked to a familiar face.

I wanted to experiment with this idea, taking a blank piece of paper and seeing how many different things I could make by folding it. I wasn’t allowed to go back to the start though, I just had to continue creating from the canvas that had been left from the last thing I had made.

I firstly made a house. Not a very good one, as origami isn’t my forte, but a house none the less. I then transformed that into an Air Canada aeroplane. Let’s say a Boeing 747.. From that it became a sail boat, however it no longer has a sail because there was a severe storm and it was broken. Finally I transformed my broken boat into Egyptian Pyramids, as I would like to one day see them.

While I mostly destroyed work that in all honsesty deserved destruction today, I still got the sense of what Picasso felt when he created from something else. I think it’s important because it teaches us that we don’t always have to start from a blank canvas to be able to create. In everyday life there are so many natural and man made things around us that we take for granted, that if looked at creatively could be transformed into some kind of art work.

So next time you are walking through the UVic campus, don’t just look at your surroundings as the things that entertain your sense of sight on the way to class, think of how you could creatively destruct them in the name of ART.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bo9UDldSDgk

As I read the article on Zen Theory and the Creative Class, I considered the creative path that I usually take. Often I find going for a walk allows my mind to wander and sparks new thoughts that can be related to creation. In my case, relating to the article, I am the instructor and the student, so this then made me think about whether the difference in the path I take to get to my end result would impact the result itself. Perhaps in changing my path, the result would vary from the norm. I wanted to experiment this both physically by walking somewhere different, and metaphorically by allowing my mind to take in the new atmosphere and see if that changed my perception of my thoughts.

I decided the most convenient way to go about this was to take a different route to the gym, as this is where I most often walk to. I usually would walk down Sinclair Rd. and take a short cut through a back street which leads you straight to Ian Stuart, however today I would take a longer, more scenic route in the hope to spark something in my creative mind.

With light rain falling from the sky and a cool breeze blowing by, I set out with an open mind for what was to come. Heading past Caps and onto Ring Rd. students were hurriedly walking to and from class with solemn looks upon their faces. Whether it is the weather this time of year or just the thought of midterms and last minute essays on their minds, there was not so much as a friendly smile amongst the hoards of commuting students.

Continuing on I walked past the SUB building and over to the bus interchange where there was a slight boost in positivity. Perhaps it was that some of the people waiting for buses had finished classes for the day, or were on their way to meet a friend. Still mostly dull looks, but the odd smile brought some degree of hope back into my thoughts. As I kept walking, I came to Mackinnon Gym. At this point there were fewer students around, just the odd commuter walking to the bus stop or athletes heading to the gym for practice.

Finally making it to the path I had been waiting for, I walked down it heading for Gordon Head Rd. This bike / footpath was a pleasant change from the crowded areas of central UVic and allowed me to better take in my surroundings. A few bunnies casually ate grass with a business as usual expression on their face. The light rain trickled from the leaves of the tress on either side of me and the sound of water drops hitting the pond relaxed me. I took a minute to enjoy this peaceful atmosphere, as it was a nice change from the lectures and computer screens that usually fill my day.

When I got to Gordon Head, it was back to traffic and manmade noises coming from every direction. A truck drove past with exhaust fumes heavily trailing behind, reminding me that all good things must come to an end. The remainder of the walk unfortunately didn’t meet me with too many exciting happenings… No five car pile ups at the lights, or deer leisurely crossing McKenzie, or really anything else that would hold its own weight in my story.

When I finally reached the gym, I took a minute to think about what had been accomplished in my walk. I still hadn’t thought of a creative task for the weeks blog, I had taken 10 minutes longer to get to my destination, or the top of the “mountain” as the Zen would say, and my non-waterproof jacket had proven that it was in fact not waterproof. I did really enjoy parts of the walk, and certainly thought about different things. I looked at things with greater interest and in search of detail. And I realised that perhaps if I spent more time around wilderness, such as the trees and pond with the hungry bunnies and trickling rain drops, that I would be stimulated by nature to create.

As a final thought; while I firmly believe in an individual finding their own path to their goal, whether it be creativity, enlightenment, or even that childhood dream that slipped away somewhere along the way, we cannot expect an instantaneous result from changing our path. While I may not feel enlightened or especially creative after walking 10 minutes out of my way right now, maybe in a few days, or weeks I will subconsciously reflect on something in that journey and spark a thought. Whether that same thought could have come from walking directly to the gym? You decide.

I took a lot from the article on The Scientific Study of Artistic Creativity, especially the part where it states “we might inquire whether the artist’s success lies in an ability to see a scene in a new and different way”. This made me think about the different sculpter’s impressions of the statue of David. Two different sculpter’s (Michelangelo and Donatello) both created sculpter’s of David at different stages of their careers. Donatello depicted him as a younger, thinner boy, where as Michelangelo depicted him as a bigger, stronger man. Both were great pieces of art work and I think this really got me thinking about how I could interpret what was already there, but at the same time drastically change it.

I decided to use oatmeal… No marble, no stone, just oatmeal on a plate. Starting with a rectangle of oats on a plate, I gradually sculpted the upper body of Michelangelo’s David using a knife. You may notice that I’m not the same caliber of sculpter as the other two, but I did try my best!

This thought came to me when I was sitting at my computer tonight after just finishing an essay for another class. I started thinking about how I hadn’t done anything creative this week. I was thinking about what I could possibly do after hearing other people’s creative acts today in the tutorial. I took a minute away from thinking purely about what I could create, but back to Monday’s lecture and the readings about what draws creativity to a certain place. I also thought about the talk we had today in the tutorial about our generation being seen as the “technological generation” so people expect our creativity to come through a form of technology. I wanted to create something simple, something that wouldn’t involve technology, just to prove to myself as much as anyone else that I was still capable of it.

I then just happened to look up at one of the shelves above my computer and saw a bag of change, mostly pennies. I then had the idea of spelling out “creativity” with the pennies. I wanted to do this because I thought it would represent the simplicity involved in some acts of creativity. By using pennies (the smallest and most worthless coin possibly in the world… Thank god, back in Australia it doesn’t exist anymore.) i felt that this was successfully displayed.

I chose to use blank pages of paper as a background for the coins, because every work of art starts with a blank canvas. For me as a writer, this is a blank page of paper. I also chose to have it set up on my laptop to show the contrast between the “technological generation” and the past (displayed in the old pennies). I think it is symbolic that on the screen there is a Microsoft Word document open with a blank page. I wanted this to show that even with all the help of technology, I was still stuck for ideas.

I think this just goes to show that creativity can come to you from anywhere, in any form. The most important thing is that you are receiving it with an open mind.