Health & Fitness
Where Does Creativity Live?
What is it to be creative? How do you sustain creativity? My blog explores these questions. I'll tell you what I think and how to get some creative juices flowing. Or, at least, how I get mine going.
Do you consider yourself creative? Have you decided you are NOT creative? How do you get ideas for art, music or life?
Per Wikipedia (aka, my brain crutch) creativity refers to "the phenomenon whereby a person creates something new (a product, a solution, a work of art etc.) that has some kind of value. What counts as 'new' may be in reference to the individual creator, or to the society or domain within which the novelty occurs. What counts as 'valuable' is similarly defined in a variety of ways."
New and valuable... that's a pretty tall order, for me. I can sometimes do new - though I appropriate a lot in my art. (That's a controversial topic for another blog post!) I can usually do valuable, due to my strong work ethic and the engineering side of me that values the valuable. But both in one creation feels hard and when I am pressed to achieve both, well....it makes me feel like giving up. So in my creative process, I just start by doodling. Bad Art Night is a great place for me to nurture my creativity by taking away the pressures to be new and valuable. I can just make bad art. The badder the better is how my friends Laurie Phillips and Jon Spayde, creators of Bad Art Night 16 years ago in St. Paul describe it. "Bad Art is all about conscious, dedicated badness — in community — as a tool of liberation."
Find out what's happening in Half Moon Baywith free, real-time updates from Patch.
Community helps relax the pressure to be perfect in my creativity - thus leading to something new. Dedicated badness usually guarantees it has value, even if in an upside-down sort of fashion. The funny people I draw during bad art nights were born out of this badness. They are new, and one day they may be valuable.
My advice to you for getting creative is to not be too hung up on the whole new and valuable thing. Just get out there and let go of the need to create something perfect. Instead, create something bad, or just make something. It is bound to be new and valuable.
Find out what's happening in Half Moon Baywith free, real-time updates from Patch.
When was the last time you were creative? I want to hear your stories.
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*For more information on Half Moon Bay's Bad Art Night visit this link.
