Creativity

When I was younger, I was skateboarding a lot. I was listening to music and skateboarding. There were two songs, that are widely different: DJ Shadow’s “Building Steam With a Grain of Salt,” and Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice It’s All Right.” And I remember skateboarding to them and they made me just stop. And the world felt so cool. I would look... See more

Yancey Strickler’s Nine Creative Meditations

1. To me or to the mean - Focus on what makes your work strange or unique rather than trying to fit in with what everyone else is doing.

2. You are your audience - Create work that satisfies your own desires and interests rather than trying to please an imagined mass audience.

3. Small is more rewarding than big -

... See more

I said earlier that if we want to encourage creativity, we should just get out of its way. That was an ambiguous statement and I’d like to clear up some of the ambiguity. I will insist that creativity is not rare at all, which becomes clear once we identify the obstacles, organizational and personal, that get in its way.

Is creativity really scarce?... See more

Where do you get your inspiration? What sorts of things do you fill your head with? What do you read? Do you subscribe to anything? What sites do you visit on the Internet? What music do you listen to? What movies do you see? Do you look at art? What do you collect? What’s inside your scrapbook? What do you pin to the corkboard above your desk?

... See more

You may think that if your studio is tidy, it will free you up to be more efficient, and therefore, you will produce more. Maybe that will help you in the execution stage of your work if you’re, say, a printmaker pulling prints, but it won’t help you come up with an interesting design for the next print. It’s always a mistake to equate productivity

... See more