fear and the creative process

Have you experienced your own or other people's fear-based reactions to your creative education and career choices?

How have you successfully overcome these reactions?

What is your concept of your creative process?

How do you approach creating, making?


I've definitely experienced my own fear in my creative life. I've overcome a lot of those fears by showing art on my own and trying to keep that YOLO attitude; not thinking about other people's judgements, or my own for that matter. I've been lucky enough to have a very supportive family and a lot of creative people in my life. I really like Elizabeth Gilbert's take on all of this; the idea of letting the creative gods help me and if I fail, I fail. 

My process for painting: When I create a painting, I usually work on it at night. Lately, I've been doing freehand acrylic paintings, usually of abstract faces. The next morning, I either like it or I don't. If I don't, I paint over it. I was doing a lot of portraits- some realistic, some on the abstract side. Since, I'm in school, I'm trying to make painting more of a release and fun. These days, it's quick and colorful.

Sometimes I do feel the genius or daemon Gilbert mentioned. I feel inspired sometimes before I go to sleep and I'll write down my ideas.
This may sound weird, but sometimes when I'm hungover I feel like my mind opens up. I've had some awesome hangover ideas in the past few years. Hangovers have also gotten me into some amazing music that I may not have given a chance otherwise. 

I recently read Eckhart Tolle's book, A New Earth. In it he talks a lot about the human ego and living presently. In one chapter he says, "How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at this moment." 
I truly believe this; this kind of thinking saves my life sometimes and keeps me out of those dark, depressing bouts so many of us have encountered. 

I really try not to put too much pressure on myself. I try not to feel guilty about lacking ideas or motivation. When the creativity comes, it comes. 

4

This class we viewed a TED talk by Stefan Sagmeister, which was very awesome. Sagmeister basically spent 17 minutes taking his audience through his sabbatical. Every seven years, he takes a year leave from his studio and uses it to refresh and get inspired. I just watched a TED talk with the designer, Paula Scher, and it's funny because she focused on some of the same things. She says there's a point in her work when it goes from being "serious to solemn;" when she works on a project and she's excited about it, she calls it "serious play." But when the work becomes a popular every day task, it turns into a solemn experience and she knows it's time for something new. Not surprising, all of her most prominent works have been done during a time of "serious play" and excitement. Similarly, Sagmeister says that he often reaches a point where he's doing everything the same and it's obvious. Then he takes his time off and works on clever projects of his own and reads Dan Gilbert and BAM-- he's rejuvenated creatively.

day 3

Today I walked into fine art room 308 and sat down. Then I got up and sat closer to the front of the class. Then our professor asked us to organize ourselves by birth date...
So I moved one seat to my left.
The point of rearranging ourselves was an exercise in problem-solving.
I think there's a moment in these group exercises when you realize who's going to lead.  The first second, everyone looks at one another like, "duhhhh" (myself included). And then certain members of the group think to themselves that this group may be big, but someone needs to take initiative. So then, about 1 in 5 people will start making suggestions and taking the reigns, some more politely than others.

Another problem-solving exercise was putting our comics in order of "best" to "worst" in 20 minutes. I hope this exercise didn't ruin anyones day.
We began by making a list of criteria for what would make a comic "the best." And then we didn't follow those criteria at all.
We ended up each getting five tallies and whichever comic had the most, won.
This is probably the best we could do in the time we were given. We definitely didn't have time to read every single comic, so we all went with what looked the best.
This one was a little frustrating, for everyone it seemed. I put my two sense in initially, then I just took a nap under the desks.

Next exercise! Make a script with found objects, 20 minutes, groups of six... GO!

Our story took place on a house boat for someone's birthday where the birthday girl was murdered. It was a murder/suspense/mystery/thriller/comedy of course.
We had a lot of fun in that 20 minutes, but I wish I would've taken notes a tad better and that someone in our group didn't interrupt with silly ideas so often. I mean, this is a murder/suspense/mystery/thriller/comedy... let's get serious, man.
However, I think it actually made it funnier that we had so little time and were basically on the spot. We looked like a bunch of Jimmy Fallons on SNL.
Some groups worked better together than others. We were probably in the middle.
I was actually exhausted during this last exercise. Like my brain didn't want to interact and solve problems anymore. Apparently I need to drink more coffee for this class.

Day 2

I am officially in Concept Development.
Today we drew a comic and talked photography.

Jan 7, 2013

January 7, 2013
[Monday]

Today was the first day of the CSULA course, Concept Development. We went around the room and each person told two truths and one lie, and we had to uncover which was the lie. After this "get to know you" exercise, just as Professor Moss had pointed out, we could see who was a strong and comfortable speaker.
We also went over what the meaning of Concept Development and what this class will entail. This is essentially a "How to develop ideas" course. This is a course that every artist could benefit from and I look forward to taking it.