Some Great Creative Thinking Quotes

Creative Thinking Quotes from Luke Sullivan's book - Hey Whipple Squeeze This

 I have been taking an art direction and typography class to satisfy an elective requirement for a master’s I’m pursuing.  The text is by Luke Sullivan entitled Hey Whipple, Squeeze This.  There are many things I could say about it, however, I am just going to share some quotes.  I had a difficult time curating these, as there is least one per page.  What’s more, Sullivan mentions other books he’s read which I’d love to get into, maybe after the thesis.  Anyway, enjoy!

“Look for polarities.  Where you find them you will also find tension.  And where you find tension, you will find creative sparks.”

“ ‘Ask a better question.’ By that he means a question to which you don’t know the answer.  He likens it to ‘placing the solution just out of your reach,’ and in answering it, you stretch yourself.”

“I’m serious.  Creativity is exactly like washing a pig.  It’s messy.  It has no rules.  No clear beginning, middle or end.  It’s kind of a pain in the ass, and when you’re done, you’re not sure if the pig is really clean or why you were washing it in the first place.”

“The best answers always arise out of the problem itself.”

“Woody Allen says, ‘If you’re not failing every now and again, it’s a sign you’re not doing anything innovative.’ “

“When forced to work within a strict framework, the imagination is taxed to its utmost and will produce its richest ideas.  Given total freedom, the work is likely to sprawl.”

Ok that’s it for now.  I’ll come back with some more later.

Cheers,

Devin

Where Creative Teaching Comes From

It's been a long time since I've written this blog, in part because I am being pulled in many directions, but also because I have set out to do some research-oriented writing for this blog.  The research is coming along, but I want to share the following writing in the meantime.

I wrote this because I am looking for a job and using What Color is Your Parachute as one of the guides to help me along my way.  I wrote this following little story to look closely at something I did quite well, something that defines me to an extent.  It also happens to fit into the concept of this blog.  So without further introduction . . .

Developing Creative Thinking Strategies for the Classroom

            I had been teaching about a year at BCIS and fumbling around for the right way to do things.  I felt that I was using technology well with the students, but I was not very happy with the overall results.  The ones I expected to do well were but a lot of students were performing fine, but not good.

            Honestly, at this point I cannot recall what the actual tipping point was.  I think it may have been reading and studying the outlining text closer, looking at the assessment criteria and what the guide said about teaching the arts.  I remember a little better now, I was looking for ways that assessment would not be vague but able to be pinned down so I could show students exactly where they were succeeding and where improvement needed to be made.  That’s where I saw the artistic process component and thought:  “Design and thinking are part of the artistic process.  Like in mathematics, students need to show their work.” 

            I wanted my students to do well so I helped them through this process and found that not only did many more of then asses better, they also enjoyed the class a lot more, became more engaged, and made better art.  Once I found this I took a systematic look at different thinking styles, Bloom’s Taxonomy, and peers’ work and began to create my own system.  Truthfully it’s not my own system, but it’s my own protocol that is culled and adapted from ideas I found in every source imaginable.  Talking to others, research, and plain old pragmatism.

keeping it Going On Instagram

Unfortunately, the Bodies exhibit would not allow us to take photographs, so we couldn't make it work there.  However, With the grade seven Japanese exhibit we had the students complete
their responses using Visible Thinking routines.  It would be inappropriate for me to send out the the student Instagram posts, but I put of a couple of their responses on my Instagram.  Recently I also made a post all on my own.  check out #mralleniscool.

http://instagram.com/dplusinternational

# Thinking Routines on Social Media

This is a test and I hope it works well.  In a week and a half I am driving the science bus to the Bodies exhibit (I'm an art teacher but I like the science people.)  I hoping to engenineer the employment of visual thinking routines through social media as a learning tool.  Following are the instructions.  Please try it out so we can see how it works and what needs to be fixed.  I'll put some of the posts up here in the future.
Yours,
Devin
D Plus International

Follow the thinking routines below.  Either on Instagram of Twitter post your reposnse and use the appropriate hashtags.

#TPS for Think Pair Share
#WMYS for What Makes You Say That
#AIS for everything
#msfloresiscool for everything (For those of you who don't know, Ms. Flores is one of our science teachers.)


Think Pair Share
1. Take a photo of something and ask a question in your post.
2. Find a classmate's post and respond.

What Makes You Say That
1. Take a photo, tell us what's going on and say why.

You can see my example here:
D Plus International

Process Boards and Polariods with a Side of Corn

Greetings Everyone, It has been quite some time, I’m aware, but this is the life of a teacher/student.  Finally I am getting some images up to show something a Project Zero teacher/friend of mine suggested and some double-ended art making that recently occurred. 

About a year a go I wrote about film making as an educational tool and the unit has come around again.  This group of students is very good about staying on task and while they were making their sets and characters, I ran around the class with the Polaroid to take photos of the process.  My reasons are two fold.  1. To be a bit of a goof ball (the charm of being a middle and high school art teacher is that it is in the job description to be a little corny), and 2. To document the students’ progress and post it on their semester process board. 

The idea of the process board is to help the students visually see where they start the term and how it progresses along.  Not only is it a history making device, I believe it helps students make connection between experiences they have, what they learn, and what they accomplish.  Hopefully in the future this will reinforce their ability to call on prior knowledge when approaching current tasks.

Enjoy the corny photos!
Devin

Challenge

It has been difficult to write with school keeping me busy over the past three months.  I have a little respite so I am taking advantage to write here some.  I will make my best effort to continue to write this blog over the following terms.  There have been several creative thinking ideas I had over the past stretch of time, above is an image from an eperience I had that was most definately a creative thinking exercise.  I was brought in to work with Theatre du Reve for a performance at the High Museum of Art.  The performance celebrated French History and specifically the role the Tuilerie Garden took. My role was to create street art during the performance.

To develop the imagery I looked through the script and experiemnted withusing differnt elements in a graffiti style.  I found that dialog from a play isn't always the most graffiti friendly.  There is a reoccuring theme throughout the play, how people should be free and that this sometimes comes through violent action, the French Revolution, the Terror, WWI, and Nazi occupation all played a part of this performance.  The balloon also made several apperences in the text , so after a while I took my freedom message, droits de l'homme, the balloon worked as a good visual element that attracts the attention, then it was just time to work out the color scheme.  This came mostly from experimentation, in the end, one doesn't go wrong with a primary triad.

What you see above is a mock-up I did on the painting wall at school.  As it turns out the museum was funny about me using spray paint so the mock up turned into the actual thing the night of th performance, where instead of painting, I wheat pasted. Problems promote creativity!

Film as an Educational Tool

I have been mulling over the idea of using film as an education tool for students for some time now and over the past week I have started to think about it more in ernest.  I should describe what I mean.  When I say film as an educational tool I do not mean showing students films that relate to content in the class, or as a reward or anything like that.  Rather I mean students should be making films to exhibit learning.  This originally came from an experience I had in the classroom where instead of requiring students to write a reflection (I called it an artist’s statement) at the end of a unit I offered the option of writing, or recording sound or creating a short video.  Later I offhandedly said to my students “For your artist’s statement you can write longhand, type and essay, record a video, write a song or a poem or whatever tickles your fancy as long as it covers the following points”.  The points are listed in their book as well as in a rubric and I covered them verbally.  I did not expect it, but when the artists statements were turned in as normal I got many typed essays and videos and low and behold I got one poem and two songs.  I believe this points to the nature of current students’ environment and where they are comfortable working and expressing themselves. 

A while back I was reading a graphic design back (by a while back I mean probably six or seven years now) and a particular statement stood out to me.  To paraphrase:  Graphic design is not longer about static images, if you create a logo or symbol, eventually someone will spin and twirl it.  If we extend the definition of students all the way through university then I feel comfortable is saying that students today have grown up in an environment of moving images.  It is not novelty but a way life is presented to them.  Naturally they should then feel accustomed to receiving and also sending information in this manner.  In fact they are so comfortable with this platform that I have found students often do a better job of meeting class requirements when allowed to communicate in this manner.  To set the stage:  In my class part of the requirements of the every unit is to reflect.  Often times there are audible groans in the classroom when the work ‘reflection’ escapes my lips.  The sad thing about this is first, reflection is shown to be a very valuable learning tool as it promotes metacognition in students and second, reflection can be quite exciting but students have learned that reflection is the same as describing.  Sincerely, when I read a description of what happened in class I also groan because I was there, I saw what happened in class and do not need to revisit.  What reflection should be about is describing meaning and pinpointing areas where a multitude of possibilities became an idea worth pursuing and where for artistic reasons the student took a direction different from the design.  It is my belief that as students come to recognize these moments (and there are more than I have just written) then we as teachers develop better honed thinkers.  Through giving the students an option to record a short film for their reflection instead of writing, I have seen students respond to the above mentioned moments instead of just describing what happened.

This is a singular event, film can be used to go beyond reflection and can also be a tool for exploration and of course, expression.  However I want to stress for the time being that a film as a thinking tool does not need production value which is a problem I have run into with film in the classroom.  At times with both students and enthusiasts of film, production value has gotten in the way of content.  From a simplistic point of view with basic tasks, clarity in communication is more valuable than a good looking film.  In most cases the better video reflections I have received are shot on the Mac program Photo Booth and usually features the art work and the student.  So long as the video and audio are clear  the job can be done and high marks can be earned.  This is not to discount the value of production but in circumstances I have described it is not important. 

But there are places where production value is important.  Making an eye catching film is the content of other education domains.  Drama and ICT for example.  Seeing as these are the places where the art of film are of paramount importance I believe this presents an excellent opportunity for true cross-curricular education.  The thinking skills and techniques that are being instiledl through these classes can be put to use by making it easier to operate the hardware/software and to better communicate a message.  Additionally, the platforms for sharing are increasing all the time.  You Ku and You Tube aside, film festivals and even student film festivals continue to grow every year.  I believe this give us a teachers the opportunities to exhibit to students how intellectual and technical skills are linked to valuable participation in the global community.

To conclude, I hope I have made my point that the value of using short film is great for a generation of students who understand and communicate in this method.  As teachers we should be giving the students the thinking process, technical skills and the platform to develop their minds and their abilities.

Journal that started with a friend and a web site

Being that it is summer I am have the time to think a little more abstractly about things and I have been toying around conceptually with what I am doing here.  a friend of mine works in the online education field and linked me into his web sites.  I had a read through and drummed up some questions and ideas.  Below are my notes, below that is my response.

• What kind of certification do courses need to practically benefit students?
• What is important to students in the future in regards to thinking skills and technical skills?
• How does one engage students?
• The current system of education is outdated in places but it is such a system that it cannot be completely uprooted.
• Teach students skills that allow them to apply techniques to the required courses.
• Educational gaming.

The united states has the AP system which is designed to allow students complete college courses before they actually enter college.  That aside I am certain that every state has its course of study and and universities have their own standard requirements.  There is a push towards STEM which makes me a little sad because it further reinforces the idea that the arts are for flakes and rich people and is a totally superfluous endeavor.  On all these accounts I am in complete disagreement.  One doesn’t need to have the goal of being an artist in order to study art.  How many people learn to dance; swing, line latin, whatever in order to have fun and exercise?  How many people play baseball for fun, how many children and adults are playing catch in the back yard?  Is it because everyone is working towards a career as a big leaguer?  I suggest no.  By this same argument studying the arts doesn’t have to mean one wants to become an artist.  The arts can be used to to better understand oneself and how to better understand other people and the human condition.  A further support of this lies in a comment I heard a director make “A good film allows people to understand the point of view of the character” we all want to know what it is like to be a hero, or a cancer survivor or even a bad guy.  I am getting a little off topic here but to bring it back it is not these skills that are explicitly looked for in a high school or university education.

Think skills are the underlying methods by which we attain technical skills.  A science teacher friend of mine said “Teach the students how to ask a question, and they will learn the methods so that they can answer that question”.  Teaching art skills or really thinking skills will never directly pay off because it is difficult to test, and I am not entirely opposed to testing to be honest, it can be an effective sorting mechanism.  So what we need to teach students is effective thinking skills and show them how they can be applied to acquire or use the technical skills that make money.  To go on with the hackneyed axiom “The world is changing very quickly and the skills we teach students today may not be applicable tomorrow” but there is a lot of truth to it.  Definitely communicating and sharing is the direction things have been moving in the last ten years.  So my argument is that making connections is quite an important thinking skill to have.  when one sees an object or a technology or even thinks an idea, the mind should be looking for way aforementioned thing is connected to its environment and other things.  In my own teaching practices there are several units where connection between ideas is required.  A partner teacher of mine wrote a unit in which she requires students to look at one specific tradition in the visual arts and then connect it to one tradition from modernism on.  That kind of thought process can be executed in any discipline.

Educational gaming:  Although I do not know much about it, I believe this is one strong way to develop students’ minds through a medium they are already familiar with.  fortunately/unfortunately my parents never got hip to the video game concept and unlike many of my peers my gaming experience is limited to Atari and Nintendo.  But so many people engage in gaming and truthfully I am quite encouraged by the amount of art I see being put into gaming these days.  Games now have designers that create whole worlds and story lines and the world of gaming creates communities that ten years ago did not exist.  I’ve had a couple of silly ideas like online Cadaver Esquis and brainstorming and association.  A new thought I had sprung from the new google Artwork catalog.  My idea is to start communities where people curate their own exhibits.  Look to curators and gallerists to create challenges based on how they put exhibits together and then allow the players to fulfill those requirements.  In fact it does not even need to be limited to just visual arts.  For example take a concept and look for items from a variety of disciplines that highlight that concept.  

Well, I don’t know exactly how to end this entry because there wasn’t really a point to prove to begin with.  It’s a journal exercise of sorts from which I examined a web sight and recorded my thoughts.  Hopefully it drums ideas for those of you who took the time to read it.  As always I am open to your thoughts idea, questions and comments.

Basic Understanding

I have been reviewing some of my practices and to do this I wrote out some of the techniques I have used in class with my students.  Through this process I actually changed some and please keep in mind this is for just developing the idea, there is still a lot of art to be done when it comes to creating the art.  As always, free to use as you wish because I'm a good Communist like that.  However, if you end up making some good money maybe you could kick a little my way since teachers don't get paid squat, or even better, buy me a bottle of wine.

School-Scapes Grade Six

1. Brainstorm feelings.
2. Brainstorm feelings about school.
3. Associate colors and shapes with feelings in #1.
4. ASsociate places with those feelings in #2 and add colors and shapes from #3.
5. Review good photo-taking techniques.
6. Go out and take photos around campus and keep in mind #4 and #5.

Ceramic Culture Grade Six

1. Define what culture is, both what it means and what are some examples of it.
2. Look at Principles of Design pattern, rhythm, harmony, unity, variety.
3. Research how different cultures have identified themselves on ceramic work (this is coupled with a slide show where one culture from each continent is displayed as well as some contemporary work).
4. In process journal brainstorm cultures you may be interested and making a cultural motif of.
5. Keeping in mind the principles of design we studied develop a decoration for your ceramic object.

1. Research different ceramic techniques and terminology.
2. Practice with each of the techniques - pinch pot, slab construction, coiling.
3. In your process journal design at least three different profiles.
4. Execute your work and halfway through working on it write a short journal entry about what is working well and what is difficult.

Artists and Communities Grade Eight

1. Brainstorm words that are important to your person or your place
2. Ideally 4 - 5 letters
3. Write on in all capitals
4. Join the bottom of the letters together
5. Write three questions about your name/tag.
6. Add a number and symbol.

Surrealistic Portrait and Still Life

1. Look at several surrealistic paintings and identify things you believe make them surrealistic.
2. Think about some dreams you’ve had, they are difficult to remember so do not rty to remember the whole dream, just images and as you have one write it down in phrases or a couple of sentences.  If you really can’t think of one then use classic ideas of dream imagery.
3. Practice drawing techniques found in both still life and portraiture.
4. Introduce students to some of the symbolism found in Carl Jung’s psychology, e.g. Greek myths symbolizing aspects of the psyche.
5. Have students brainstorm with images - circle exercise - of symbols they think represent themselves.
6. After a good bank of images exists, then design the drawing, with the symbols and the ultimate design of the painting, keep in mind that it needs to be surrealistic, so make odd changes in your imagery or juxtapose things not normally found together.  Also keep in mind you portrait and your hand need to be in the composition.

Sequential Art Grade Nine

1. First map out (write in words, in order first, second, third . . .) normal activities of an insect.
2. Now map out the insect doing something a human would do.
3. Now combine the two.
4. Look at your story map, rearrange parts of it.
5. Make an official story map.
6. From a story map make a story board.
7. Film your animation.

Crossing Cultures Grade Nine

1. Choose one work of art from one of the traditions.  Interpret it for the purposes it serves - look at the Purposes of Art for examples.
2. Describe how the work looks, be specific about colors and shapes and their relationships, narrative and overall design.
3. Take individual words from these activities and write them in a top to bottom list.
4. Now do the same with one work of art from the other tradition and write your top to bottom list next to that list from the first tradition.
5. Look for natural connection and random connections, as you make these make a small sketch of an image this makes on another sheet of paper.
6. Take these images and compose a drawing of one or a combination of a few.

Process

I thought I would outline the creative process when creating this painting as it highlights some of my methods.

• I wanted to expand my graffiti practice so instead of just writing my name I looked into typography and thought to practice all the letters of the alphabet.  My first was ABCD and then I recited the alphabet until I found some letters that had a nice mnemonic device.  I decided upon LMNOP
• After a couple of sketches I thought shorter would be better.
• Back to research, looking more at I Love Typography and read articles about some font developers and what makes an easily readable font.  IN this process I also seized on some color words..
• Adjusted the design to just LMN because it fits better on the paper.
• I drew each letter in a box, actually I drew the box first.
• Looked at the underdrawing on the paper and thought it was too simplistic.  so I reflected back and reviewed some sketch books to add to the design.
• Began painting and in the process and reviewed the color wheel during the process.  Added the little circles and octopus later during work.
• Reviewed the final painting and decided I like the design but it's too small, it needs to be wall sized.

Idea Generator

So I am playing around with this, check it out, try it out.  Hopefully something great or at least entertaining comes from it.  If you are so inclined, comment with some feedback.

Magazine Development

I have been working more scientifically (not really scientifically mind you) and have begun compiling evidence for creative thinking exercises.  Below is something I have written up in a report and I thought it would be nice to share.

Task Description:

When embarking on this unit I asked the students to think about the content of their magazine cover and I wanted them to follow a certain protocol when developing their ideas.  I instructed them that this method is not the only method but one I had found successful for students.  I also instructed them to put their idea development on paper, I believe this is most beneficial because it allows the mind to focus one one thing, new ideas, and allows paper to do the job of keeping track of ideas.  The concept here is that one should put as many ideas down as possible and then when they are documented, choose the best or most appropriate.  The student followed the following protocol:

1. Make a group of nine circles on you paper and in two minutes time fill in each circle with one thing they like.  It could be in the form of  words or sketches and that quantity is better than quality.
2. Then I asked the students to review verbally the previous lesson about the design of a magazine covers and make another circle brainstorm of topics they found interesting.
3. After the students had filled several pages of ideas I asked them to pick one of their ideas and brainstorm in a list sub-genres of this topic/item.
4. Finally the students were required to discuss with the classmates at their table their brainstorms and have their classmates give honest response to what was a good/interesting idea, what would be most suited to the student and alternative solutions.
5. Once the students had an idea they were happy with they could begin sketching out possible designs.

This is not a very involved process and in total time it lasted about thirty minutes.  My intention was to show the students how they could use what was already in their mental vocabulary and then developed that concept more robustly.  Then to make editing decisions that would best suit their skills, interests and third party opinions.  What is missing from this picture here is that the students had already been thinking about magazines and they had been given the unit introduction which definitely influenced their decisions.  On the opposite end some of the student reflections are missing so it is difficult to evaluate their exact opinions on how the creative thinking exercises assisted them.

Student A followed the in class method well.  She gave herself a variety of options when beginning the idea and choose clothing.  Where the idea for fashion for pensioners came from I do not know.  I believe it is related to her desire to do something different from the norm.  I do not recall specifically if this conversation took place between myself and this student, but several times I did discuss the issue of not having a magazine only about fashion but to choose a particular demographic to target.  Her choice is clever and entertaining.  This student’s trimester grade for Criterion C Thinking Creatively is six out of eight.

Student B used a slightly different method, choosing from a more limited brainstorm but then expanding upon that brainstorm and setting a kind of to do list for herself before beginning on the design of her magazine cover. This student’s trimester grade for Criterion C Thinking Creatively is a six out of eight.

Intellectual Review

I have been working, somewhat sluggishly, at developing myself more as an artist these days.  The entire Autumn was dedicated to first figuring out what kind of art I am going to make now that I have returned to the USA and then pushing that concept into a body of work.  In this regard things are going well.  I decided upon taking a class at the local art school to get some expert advice and take advantage of working at a studio instead my flat.  The expert advice came in the form of a discussion with my teacher, Kevin Archer and then I followed it up with a phone conversation with my friend and artist Charlie Kerns, or Beijing Charlie as he goes by  when he was traveling in China where we met.  They made two similar suggestions, one was to write about art that I like so that I can zero in more clearly on what interests me and then make art around those things.  Make what I like my own.  The second was to read art critiques from well known magazines and analyze the writing of the article and then write about my own art in the same way.  I have also made an active effort at making connections between ideas and I saw these two suggestions as a creative thinking tool as well.  So what follows below is a diary entry of my exercise of the first idea and then a short auto-critique of my own work.

Anish Kapoor
I first got a close up view of Anish Kapoor's work in Seoul although at that point I didn't really know much about him.  I just felt the trick of the eye that he was playing with were pretty neat, interesting, entertaining.  The way there was the appearance of a swirling vortex disappearing into the wall or the floor brought a smile to my face and led to many "How did he do that" moments.  In Beijing I got a much closer look.  There was one very large piece installed in the main room of Galeria Continua; that piece - Very Yes!

The entire art was constructed of mist and air.  Nothing more than a column of fog from ceiling to floor; how stunning.  I have the same appreciation for this piece as I do for something of James Turrell's  The art itself plays with the necessity of needing a thing to make art.  In these cases it is like music.  It only exists in a dynamic state.

Here my mind takes a step on its own (the creative thinking bit).  When we look at great art 'in the flesh' we normally stand in front of it for a few moments and more often than not it comes after seeing hundreds of other great works of art.  The moment we spend with it is fleeting.  The work of James Turrell and this of Anish Kapoor's highights this fact in a more direct way.  The memory we have of seeing something iconic  as Starry Night remains only a mental function.  This work of Kapoor's is vision in and of itself.  This is the strong attraction for me.
This is also why I like traditional Chinese and Japanese painting so much.  There is a delicacy that is almost ready to disappear before the eyes.  This is connected to my desire not to make more stuff.  I am very discerning about what I will hang on my wall.  When I make work I prefer to display it online or in a gallery space so that one can experience it for just a short moment.

But back to Kapoor.  I should read an interview to understand better why he makes work (the following quotes are from Kapoor during a BBC interview).

"A good work has the potential to promote a whole series of meanings, none of which are exclusive".

"The job of an artist is to excavate meaning, not to deliver it."

And her is a thought for the reader to put together - Anish Kapoor, James Turell and Yoko Ono - ephemeral and impermanence.

Auto-Critique
This work was created as the final to a series of four that were executed by myself and guided through the process by Kevin Archer, an Atlanta-based artist teaching at SCAD.  The work reflects an extension of imagery that I have been working with in one way or another for the past three years.  However, this series in particular serves the most effective summarization of the multitude of influences that may on the surface seem contradictory but are united by narrative and experience.  Similar to images one finds in Japanese comics or Chinese landscape paintings, the eye of an octopus gazes directly at the viewer and a tentacle hovers along the upper edge of the painting, lazily reaching across the surface with a mild, menacing intent.  Along the left hand side of the painting are three Asian-rendered trees which are a product of my years studying traditional Chinese painting and modeled after the three pines outside my flat.  The work is simultaneously open and closed; there is little depth and in the one space where to painting surface opens the viewer is halted by the large eye of the octopus in the receding space.  Despite this closed space, the large, black semi-sphere acts as the punctum to where the viewer enters the painting.

As I mentioned earlier this work is about narrative, like all of my art over the past year.  I am expressing journeys I have taken, things I have learned and my shyness when asked to expose myself.  I am a cautious person by nature and do not like to talk about myself unless I am sure of it or exploring some new possibility.   From my life as an epistemology teacher I have become uncertain about everything, so talking about myself deeply rarely happens.  But the eye is pleading to be noticed, much like myself, and wants to be noticed in a sincere fashion.  I am aware I am not an abnormality, although my personality type may be less typical, this work speaks to that aspect of everyone who is like myself.  We recognize the shyness and the desire to be noticed, and also the desire not to be arrogant.  The work is small which also requires participation on the viewer to approach and engage with it.  The other works in this series are less like this, they are open and fluctuate in their perspective.  They reveal other aspects of myself, in a more bold or symbolic fashion.  Throughout all these works the viewer is invited to share my experiences but also asked to share theirs as well.

Zen, The Sword, The Brush and David Lynch

I have taken a break from writing for a bit so that I could do a little bit of research, reading, making art, playing music and celebrating Christmas.  But now I am back and want to spend a little time making some connections between what I have been reading and making art.  This is slightly off of the normal creative thinking topic that I normally write about, but it’s related and worth an examination.

I recently changed schools and classrooms and I share a very large space with two other teachers.  They have made a point of collecting old books that are heading for the recycle bin, particularly if they have an art slant to them.  The book I picked up is entitled Zen and Japanese Culture by Daisetz T. Suzuki published in 1973.  I have, in the past read several text about Zen, some I’ve retained, others I haven’t and this one I am hoping I retain for a while to come, this is in part why I am writing this article.  To date I have only finished the first four chapters, the nature of what Zen is and its relation to sword play.  If possible I will attempt summarize nearly three hundred pages of material into a short paragraph.  The sword is an instrument of life.  It administers justice but puts its bearer the in the position where if not executed properly will result in death.  The swordsman trains the techniques, learns them by heart, puts himself to the utmost physical challenge.  Why?  because the swordsman must get to the point where no mind is used to execute his maneuvers.  When the mind stops to rest on a thought during a fight it will hesitate, it will not flow it will think and that brief pause of thinking is enough gap for an opponent to strike one down.  Beyond just knowing the maneuvers a swordsman must learn to let go of his thoughts and allow his subconscious to make the right moves, to be aware of the body’s actions but not allow the conscious mind to control them.  To say that the swordsman needs to be fearless is not stating the situation strongly enough.  He must have no concept of death, he must be beyond life and death so as to not interrupt the subconscious mind at work.

Aside from physical training the mind needs to be trained to access the subconscious.  Practice in not thinking while employing simple daily tasks is important.  Meditation is also of great importance.  By sitting and quieting the conscious mind one reaches into the areas of the subconscious, it creates a stronger link to the waking life we live everyday.  Through this conduit one can live one’s life beyond life and death.

If we are to substitute the sword for the brush I believe we will see that the same correct actions will come about.  The arm and the hand will move in correct, precise order.  The need to make decisions will be unnecessary because the subconscious knows what to do.  But to reach this state the same physical and mental training needs to be put into action.  The artist must train, push through strain and mental hardship.  I hate to use the word hardship because it sounds cliché, however, I believe we are all aware of the suffering artist stereotype and in this situation there is a valid connection.  Exactly what manner of hardship is difficult to say.  My opinion is that the artist push their skills far beyond what they believe is capable.  She must work tirelessly on things that are difficult, challenging, incomprehensible.  Also she must lean to reach into that subconscious, to lose herself in the painting, or sculpting or whichever art  form is being executed.  I believe not only the correct actions will come about, but also new ideas, ideas that cannot be accessed in the conscious state.

David Lynch talks about this, he describes it as “The real big fish”.  The great ideas/big fish are in deep water and to get one fishing line into deep water one needs to still the shallow.  I really like this metaphor and whether you like his movies or not I think most will agree that his ideas, stories and imagery are among the finest examples of creativity in the last fifty years.  I wrote an article a while back about the graffiti artist and movement and I still believe that this connection between movement and art is there.  The graffiti artist must know his art because it is executed on a grand scale.  The movements must be correct and precise and the body must not hesitate lest the line or the fill has a hitch in it that disturbs the entire work.

I will leave you with a verbal painting, something I have been meaning to work out visually.  One rectangle on top of two squares and another rectangle below the squares.  In the top rectangle a scene from Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon where the two heroines are discussing the relationship between swordplay and calligraphy.  In the square to the left a graffiti artist at work, the square to the right a photo of Chinese brushes and a calligraphy workbook and in the rectangle at the bottom the following quote: “Therefore do not get your mind stopped with the sword you raise; forget what you are doing, and strike the enemy.  Do not keep your mind on the person who stands before you.  They are all of emptiness, but beware of your mind being caught up with emptiness itself.” Suzuki 1973

Too Much

Ah too much time has passed since I've written here but I have a good excuse. I am a teacher and we had reports to write, then it was Thanksgiving and now it is the build up to Christmas.  Sadly I do not have anything properly prepared although I have a few things in the works and I will preview these with a little follow up to something I started a few months back.

First, to add to sequential art.  It has been the second time around that I have asked the students to make a story map, then a story board then studio work of art telling a story.  The first project of this unit is complete and assessed and the students are now onto their second project.  What I have noticed is somewhat inconclusive.  First, out of thirty students only about five or six actually completed both a story map and a story board (although all but one completed one of these) so it is hard to read whether it helped them creatively or not.  Secondly, as teachers know, students come in all mental shapes and sizes and while some ideas are quite imaginative, it may be a naturally occurring thing rather than the opportunity to use a thinking exercise.  What I have noticed is that the student who did not make either story board or map had a very limited story, with only one scene change and no bodily change showed in the art's subject matter.  Also the story board (which most of the students completed) definitely has an effect on how well they designed their work and even when the story was simple, it came out well rendered and engaging.  One student even wants to have the story mounted on a record player so that one can sit and watch the story spin before one's eyes.  The students are now onto the film making aspect of the unit and results won't be in until just before the Christmas holiday.

Also I spent some time working with one of our Spanish teachers and we looked at different ways we use story telling in our classes.  She uses it to help students access information and display learning.  We both thought that this is an excellent opportunity to start collaborating because I am working on the art of the story, she is using the form of the story and our ICT department is discussing the tools.  What I really like about this is the change in education that is being indicated here.  We all inform each other how to work and what we work on, and students can employ methods which are relevant to contemporary society in their education.

As an addition to this I decided to take my own medicine and created several narrative for myself which I could then turn into art.  This has had several results.  I've created a couple of paintings where part of the narrative is told and it has given me new ideas for imagery.  Another result is that my graffiti is taking on a more engaging aspect.  as well as getting my tag up I've been using my character (an octopus) to interact with the surrounding environment.  I'll link in my art Tumblr, not a lot is up there but you can see some of it.

http://www.tumblr.com/blog/devinallenart

Something I have been preparing to write (actually I wrote the outline but have since misplaced it)  Is the idea of struggle and creativity.  As one possible technique of examination I looked at the impossible problem.  Derive a solution to an impossible problem.  I think back to the time when I devised a scheme to create an atmosphere on the moon.  I will save you the details here but it involves planting one flower in a jar and letting things go from there.  Not that I really think this is possible but it's fun to imagine and could set the stage for a good story, imagery and maybe even dance, possible design.  This is somewhat highlighted by an NPR story filed about a month ago concerning how Japanese and American students respond to work.  Even when given an impossible to solve mathematics problem the Japanese students stayed with it for the entire time given (one hour) and attempted to derive solutions from it.  Here's the story you can listen for yourself.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/11/12/164793058/struggle-for-smarts-how-eastern-and-western-cultures-tackle-learning

There is another exercise I am working on involving nouns, adjectives and verbs but it is less well formed so I won't write about it.  So that's it, if you are celebrating a holiday this month or next hope it goes well.  Like always I will celebrate Christmas and Spring Festival (Chinese New Year) because I like the idea of seeing family, eating too much and blowing things up.

Daniel Pink, Autobiography and a Little More

At school today (I'm a teacher) Daniel Pink came to give the keynote address.  I watched his TED previous to watching him speak and I was a bit turned off because he seemed to spout the same thing a lot of people talk about regarding the right brain and creativity and the need to change schools.  The first issue here - right brain - I find annoying because recent research that I have encountered says that the brain is dynamic, not just hemisphere and I feel this description is just simplifying the complex issue of teaching.  However, his keynote address made up for what I expected to be a mediocre performance.  What I appreciated most is the data he presented us with concerning what the science and technology industries are looking for in education and how the policy makers in education are defining the system.  I will allow you to review what he said, since he said it and the information is readily available and my point here is to expand upon it from my point of view.

If you have been following this blog for the last six months you will see that I am working at creating exercises that can be employed in any situation to allow one to develop new ideas.  This informal research started out to assist my art teaching, however, upon consideration I have determined that it is applicable in many situation and I just have not worked out the details.  In fact, part of the reason for me writing this blog is so that others can try some of these concepts out and see what results can be obtained.  In this respect I am a punk/communist/Buddhist e.g. no one owns a guitar chord or idea, this should be owned by all and try it for yourself to make the best out of it you can.  Some of the exercises I have written about in the past are brainstorming plus, writing from a point of view, motion as a creative thinking skill (this one is weak but kudos to Will Percy for turning me onto an article about a motion classroom that helps students think) and story mapping.

Last night I put my money where my mouth is so to speak by employing one of my techniques (mind you I did not invent these, they came about over the course of my experiences, some synthesized, some dreamed up and some just from conclusions I've drawn).  In an effort to make my own art work stronger I brainstormed two categories to make art about and ultimately would like to combine them.  The first autobiography the second what I fantasize or dream my life to be.  I forced myself to write non-stop for a given time period for each of these categories, even if I did get off topic, and then review the results.  What I found was some thoughts that pop up once and again but I never focus on and some ideas I think about have finally been put to paper.  From there I put titles at random on the top of sketch book pages and while I may have no visual vocabulary at present and am requiring of myself that I make two sketches of each title.  What has piqued me most is that I have a problem to solve and generally speaking it is a fun problem for me to solve.  Will it make my art stronger?  I hope so.  Something nice that did come of it was my affinity for art materials and then a collage from art supply flyers that will be a drawing or painting soon.

An implied charge in Daniel's address today was that it was up to us, the teachers, to figure out how to educate students to think creatively, holistically, recognize patterns and develop systems and things people need.  Hopefully this is what I am doing, at the very least, it is what I am attempting to do.  I am beginning to consider how this work can be made into a tangible and I am looking for people who would like to collaborate with me on this endeavor. My initial thought is to create tablet computer apps (I even have some hand-drawn interfaces for these) or to work with people in a variety of industries and have work sessions where we try out some of these exercises an see what results present themselves   If you yourself are interested or know someone who might also be, by all means get in touch and let's see what can become of it.  I am going to do something bold here, I will put both my phone number and email address. - 2167540879 - china.devin@gmail.com.  This is because I am not sure if you can get the info from my blog, but I hope it shows how sincere I am in this endeavor and how much I trust humans' good nature.  Waiting to hear from you

Point of View

Over the past week I have been writing an additional supplement for my grade eleven students about how to analyze art.  The course they are studying requires that they pay the most attention to the study of art, which I find quite fascinating  especially for a high school student.  They will be assessed most heavily on their research and exploration.  While they are required to make art the importance is on what they think about and what I can find in their sketch books.  In my graduate studies I happened upon a course which discusses the fundamentals of analyzing a work or art.  In brief there are two main types of analyzing, formal and stylistic.  formal deals with how a work or looks and stylistic is about interpreting its meaning.  for the longest time I felt that what critics were interpreting in art, while entertaining to read was based so much on just one's subjective opinion.  Ultimately I have trouble with subjectivity, at least as it being the sole basis of evaluating a work of art.  There is such a thing as good and bad art, but this good and bad is difficult to pinpoint and left me the weaker of the arguments.  Another thing I find quite annoying in art is that shock and/or entertainment value seems to be how people immediately recognize a work of art as good or bad.  I myself am guilty of this but I have gotten better at enjoying the immediate pleasure derived from an eye catching work of art but also forcing myself to look deeper to see if the piece is really of value.

Let me tie this together now.  Through my re-review of stylistic analysis I was able to put together two practices I have encountered over my work as an artist and art teacher.  What we have already been talking about, stylistic analysis and what a colleague of mine dubbed 'The Idea Generator'.  Let us talk stylistic analysis first.  I am actually going to write about more specifically contextual analysis.  The idea that one adopts a certain standpoint when interpreting a work of art.  The common contexts I have come across are Marxism and Feminism.

Let's start with Marxism.looking at the work of art from the standpoint of artist as worker and patron as gentry.  I told my students to ask questions like 'What does this work say about the life of the artist versus the select public that enjoy it?'  However, I feel this does not go far enough and I have individually substituted the artist as creating a product and the public as consuming that product.  So when we look at a work of art, we are the consumers, how does it influence us when we consume it?  I am quite pleased that art is now more in the public realm than before and we can even ask 'How does the public consume the art?'  How does it influence our clothing, our food and our computer games.  I'm not a gamer but I am aware that a lot of popular music is now used for the soundtracks.  So next time you are at the gallery ask yourself "When will this show up in my breakfast?'  Have a look at Takahashi Murakami's work with LV to get the idea.  Feminism works in a similar fashion only we are reading the art from a woman's point of view.  Ask yourself "What story does this work tell?" "How do women understand this?" "What is the role of the artist in relation to their use?"  Beijing based artist Megumi Shimizu has a performance piece where she reverses Yves Klein's blue model work with red and a boy, and when I saw it that boy must have just been eighteen.  The reason I am writing about this as a creative thinking skill will become apparent soon.  We are putting ourselves in a context or a perspective and applying thinking skills from those perspectives to imagine meaning.

The Idea Generator - I read that Bob Dylan book a few years back.  In it he discussed placing himself in a character's position and then writing from that position.  I've seen art teacher Richard Todd do this and he even made a graph for it.  Take a concept and brainstorm what that concept means from and old/young position, a old/new position, mother/father, student/teacher, commercial esoteric, analogue/digital, baby boom/generation y.  Really two terms that are unlike in some way.  The IBO does this when they ask students to think from different areas of interaction.

So try this for me.  Seize on a thought you find interesting.  The run it through different contexts to see what new comes about.  Add interpretation and also new meaning.  See where the contexts take you.  If you are an artist, make art about it, if you are a thinker build a syllogism around it. See what becomes.

Not Sure Yet

So this entry is going to be a thinking entry, at present I do not exactly know what I am going to write about, however, it will be related to my most recent creative thinking work.  I set the task for myself to first investigate any apps at apple's App Store that had to do with creativity  and when that was only so-so I looked up thinking, less that so-so  The two quality apps I found were WordMpress and Ulysses.  The reason I liked Word Press is because it gives one a variety of tones, styles and whatnot to create posters and they are generally designed to fit together so that no matter what you do it will look like good design.  This being said after you make neat posters it really doesn't do much more and if you are slick enough with Photoshop one could  do it on one's own.  Ulysses intrigued me more because because it offered writers a wide variety of tools that I suspect are going on in writers heads' as they write.  One can write and you will get different prompts for word choices, definitions and research on the spot.  My impression that it allows one to multi-task without leaving one window.  Pretty slick, but I don't write and I probably will not write.  Thinking did not present much in lines of aids for thinking but the process lead to me contemplating programs like Mind Node and then another I saw later in John Medea's talk on TED where a company structure could be mapped out and one could view not only the connections between departments but also keep track of the kinds of correspondence (in electronic form) that a member of a company has with that person.

Sine this did not push my thoughts too far forward I went onto another task I set for myself and was to watch at least two talks on TED about creativity and this time keep notes hoping to find confirmation of my existing ideas, or realize new things that others are doing, thinking about or reveal.  I watched for like the fifth time Sir Ken Robinson's lecture about schools and creativity, John Madea's discussion of design, technology, art and leadership and finally Issac Mizrahi's discussion on his own creativity.  Several things came to my mind but I am only going to discuss one right here.  As I said before this is a thinking entry so what follows is unstructured but hopefully helps me reveal an idea to myself.

Movement as a creative thinking process.
The thought process started from here.  Ken Robinson discusses in a joking fashion that university professors use their bodies as transports for their heads and that these people live almost entirely in their head.  My mind started churning and I will copy verbatim what I wrote in my notebook:  Professor - head - body is only a transport   Then can we say that action should be encouraged as thinking?  If so how can we use action as a creative thinking tool?

I am going to reach back into my history and memories and recall something I heard said in a cabin at a YMCA camp.  One of the lead male councilors was discussing his love of sport and they way he described it was like this:  When a person moves, completes an action like a dunk it is perfect artistry, the manipulation of the muscles to create in time something that is both useful and beautiful   In regards to professional sport even the usefulness of it is inconsequential.  While we make take very seriously how our favorite baseball, basketball or football team does, this has little effect on matters of the world.  So in essence that dunk is art for art's sake.  It's the creation of something beautiful simply for the purpose of performing the act.

So how do we turn movement into a tool for thinking.  Personally, I have only weak ideas.  One of my drawing teachers had the class exercise before beginning a studio drawing.  Simple Qi Gong which I am not embarrassed to say worked exceptionally well.  At times I have had my own students get up and move around to get the blood flowing, hopefully to the correct part of the brain that gets them excited about work.  I've often told them to pat their heads and rub their bellies because it feels good and moves the blood around and will get them energized for drawing, painting or even just thinking.  Most the time I get rolled eyes or laughter but the occasional student will oblige.  I've never collected research on how this works.  Another instance comes from my training in Wing Chun.  I will by no means claim to be an expert in this field, but from what I have learned we are studying movement and sensitivity, as force comes in, roll away from it and into its source, as it retreats follow it towards its source, attack the center of your opponent.  I also tell my students this, sit square to your work, focus on it, always go straight for its center.  But most of what I have just written is about approach to working not thinking.

So how? I am hoping my friends who teach drama or my friends who dance can enlighten me.  My ideas are that when given a way to think and then asking the body to speak that way, the individual will be revealed new connections, ideas and can translate that to completing a thought or solving a problem or making art.  I am anxious to see what becomes.

P.s. As I was searching for the right photo for this entry the figurative lightbulb went off over my head.  I chose a photo of someone who may be myself and friend making graffiti in Beijing.  I like this photo (which maybe someone who is my girlfriend took) because when drawing on the wall, especially bit letters, movement is quite important and it is in movement that form revelas itself, not all my graffiti is planned out, I just center myself and release.  Ah here is a key.  More exploration ahead.  And while on the subject also when playing the trombone, moving the arm is an art that effects the art of sound and Yoko Ono's word piece "When one is playing the violin, which is incidental, the sound or the movement of the arm"

Brainstorming Plus - The Spiderchair Incident

Brainstorming is a good start but experience has taught me that it needs more steps to make it more effective.  This is particularly apt with middle school students who sometimes need more guidance when developing ideas.  For purposes of clarity I want to define brainstorming as writing words and phrases freely, without editing or even stopping.  I often tell the students they must write no matter what, even if it's nonsense, for a given amount of time.  I limit this to writing because words usually work in concepts.  Images are also good but I believe they are thinking in a different method and I treat that as another creative thinking exercise.

I have serval starting points.  The first is to allow the students to just have at it and see where their ideas take them.  The next is to give the students the unit question and/or significant concept to think about and again go at it.  While some students will naturally take to this the results I have seen in the classroom are as follows:  About fifty percent of the students get right to it and the other fifty percent are stymied and may write one or two things down but spend the rest of the time looking at their paper.  Of the writing fifty percent only about 25 percent will have something that is a good representative of their ideas and the other 25 percent get off task.  Not that getting off task is entirely bad, but in the classroom setting where the teacher is guiding the students to a goal centered around a certain topic, it is ultimately unproductive, but I reiterate, still valuable.

These observations have lead me to construct the 'plus' method.  Break the concept down into more simple themes and have the students brainstorm along a certain theme.  The brainstorm may deviate as work progresses but it makes the work categorical.  From here I may take another aspect of the concept and have them brainstorm along those lines as well. Or instead of brainstorming along another line of the concept, have them run the first brainstorm and use another aspect of the concept as a lens to view the brainstorm.  Perhaps my writing is not clear but it is far more straight forward when actually conducting the exercise.  I will illustrate with a couple of examples:

Concept: Artists can combine unlike ideas together in a work of art - credit to Richard Todd who wrote this concept.

The students will create two brainstorms they like in separate columns in their workbooks.  Then randomly draw links between these columns and see what ideas generate.  (This moves onto a different idea of concept association that I will discuss in another blog entry) As I mentioned earlier this stymies some students and others get quite off task.  In my opinion it is a little too broad for students.  So my remedy has been to give the students more guidelines.  For this particular unit (once again credit to Richard Todd for planting the seed of this unit) I give the students two concepts to brainstorm, one of my choosing - furniture and another of their own.  Here I encourage the students first to brainstorm nouns and then to pick some of the nouns they feel attracted to and brainstorm those further.  When the massive brainstorming is complete then it's time to combine the concepts.

Typical instructions may sound like this:

1. Open your books and on the next blank page write 'Furniture' then take two minutes and write as many different types of furniture you can think of.  Don't worry of you get off of the furniture idea just keep writing for the entire two minutes, even made-up words are ok.

2. Now go to the next page and for two minutes brainstorm as many nouns as you can.

3. Pick three nouns you find most interesting and brainstorm them on separate pages.

Now comes time for concept association, which is another exercise I will discuss in future blog entries.

Here is an alternative example:

Concept: Humans made tools to make life easier and they make objects attractive to improve quality of life.

1. Brainstorm objects for use.

2. Take three objects from your brainstorm and describe each object looking pretty.

Ok I am going to leave it here.  In reality, many of the exercises are not isolated and please keep in mind that after the ideas are generated there is still a lot of work to do.  Refining the idea, designing and executing.  The goal of these exercises is to access the idea.  There is still a lot of creativity involved but I have found getting the idea makes the next steps more successful and more fulfilling for the students and teachers.