The thing about creative excellence is that it’s always an undiscovered country. You know it’s out there, you know it’s real, you’ve seen plenty of evidence. Maps to reach it, however, often stop at the edge of the world.
Read MoreMY SOCIAL MEDIA DISAFFECTION
For people who try to live their lives in creative spaces, the trivialization imposed by a steady diet of social media has the effect of dissolving yet one more support in the foundations that enable sustained focus. That’s effectively like allowing thieves inside our mental castles in broad daylight: who can tell the thieves from the masses of other roving thoughts crowding the main hall of our consciousness?
Read MoreLOSS OF MEMORY
Creative works are hardly ballast against the drowning, downward pull of recent events. Art is not “the answer”, especially considering how time and time and time again the human collective seems to eschew creative options in favor of destructive ones. It’s inevitable, perhaps, to wonder: does art really matter in the face of humanity’s often malevolent inclinations?
Read MoreTRANSFORMATIONS (or, Why an Essay about the First Gulf War appears in a Blog about Creativity)
Performers on stage? Soldiers ready for battle? Protesters lining the streets? That’s the thing about moments of transformation. There are usually multiple, simultaneous forces at work. In this month’s blog post at 1AU Global Media, we consider moments of transformation, when real world events intersect with lives pursuing creative expression.
Read MoreIRL (In Real Life)
I don’t want to draw from abstractions about the world to create new realities. I want to draw from the real world in order to create abstractions. My feeling is that this is a thought can apply to everyone, no matter what you do for a living.
Read MoreSHIELDS UP!
Artists and accountants are not always motivated by the same forces, but there are often more crossover forces between artists and accountants than first glance might suggest. Clearly this is a matter more about aesthetics; I cannot fathom a life in accounting, but I’m sure glad I know a good one when I need her to sort things out. Success for artists, accountants, and everyone else too, is often a function of figuring out how to get something completely done.
Read MoreA FEW WORDS ABOUT WORDS
Where a picture maybe worth a thousand words, a few well-placed words can make all the difference to giving that picture lift and heft and context all at the same time.
Read MoreGAME RECOGNIZES GAME
There are always new challenges ahead, and those challenges cannot be undertaken blithely. Spectators may look up in wonder, but fellow climbers intimately understand the feelings of endless distance in front of them.
Read MoreCONVERGENCE
Convergence suggests that many seemingly novel ideas are probably similar to solutions developed for entirely difference circumstances. What works here….will probably work there, too. That’s a profound insight if you spend your life doing creative work. Rather than re-invent the wheel, consider how that well proven device might enable you to discover someplace entirely uncharted.
Read MoreTHE SHAKY RETURN OF ART
Arts require stability as much as they require energy, and for new voices to speak, the people who propel those voices must be able to stand, to eat, to think, to dream.
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