Eight Keys to Enhanced Creativity
Aunty Edith chanting. She titled this photo, Ulu A'e K Welina A Ke Aloha, Franco Salmoiraghi which translates to "the growth of love is the essence within the soul." Creativity lies in the realm of mystery;
Like the finger pointing towards the moon, it should not be confused with the moon itself;
Yet, we strive to find an approach.
The Creative Response
“Every child is an artist.
The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.”
—Pablo Picasso Matthieu Ricard: Interview Excerpt
Very often creativity is confused with a spontaneous expression of one’s habitual tendencies and conditioning. The artist says, “look at me.” It is selfish and narrow-minded and can be confused with knowing the nature of your own mind.
Sometimes with nature or with art, you experience greater insight, a real moment of enlightenment, or a luminosity that connects you with the world or nature or others. …
So intuition or inspiration is really the experience of your own wisdom. It is like seeing a small patch of blue sky amidst the
David Ulrich clouds – and you try to widen that patch through personal transformation. Brain science
Two sides of the brain
+
Four Quadrants How do we access the right side of the brain?
Trauma Psychotic states Drugs Great emotional stress Damage to brain; autism, savants Sufering Medical conditions
Are these the only ways . . . ? Meditation
Open to creative parts of brain Play
Yoga
Drawing
Contact with Nature
Guided visualization
Imagery
Journaling; writing
Creative art
Dance
Movement
Exercise
Memory
Living with ambiguity; Discomfort: Mental,
physical or emotional
Sexuality I. Who am I?
• Lifelong quest: Self inquiry, the examined life
• Authenticity: What is my own?
• Search for what one needs to do / one's deepest responses or heartfelt questions
• Inner necessity (Kandinsky)
• Transcends commerce or rationality: What do I really care about?
Blind boy by Charles Harbutt
“I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me - shapes and ideas so near to me - so natural to my way of being and thinking that it hasn't occurred to me to put them down.
I decided to start anew, to strip away what I had been taught . . . To accept as true my own thinking.
I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way - things I had no words for.”
— Georgia O’Keeffe, Painter
“Finally . . . A Woman on Paper.” — Alfred Stieglitz 1918-1959
Expand Expose Examine Exalt Experiment Excavate Experience Excite Exceed Exclaim Explore Exchange Excise Exercise Express Exhaust Exhilarate Exhibit Exist
A time to play; to take risks; to find what you resonate with
What medium, which style, what form of expression suits our temperament and capacities, that grows naturally out of our lives and experiences, out of our very being?
Tadashi Sato Toshiko Takaezu
Devotion to an Ideal . . .
Ansel Adams
Ai Wei Wei II. Going within; Entering the body
• Relaxation needed to open to authentic voice or vision
• The body is always in the present moment
• Wisdom of the body and feelings . . . Combined with rigor of the mind.
• Neurological changes / heightened awareness / Entering the flow
• Staying open
• Lie on the couch; it’s a good place to begin.
• Entering the Flow, the zone
Hengki Koentjoro
This leads us to the second element in the creative act—namely the intensity of the encounter. Absorption, being caught up in, wholly involved, and so on, are used commonly to describe the state of the artist or scientist when creating or even the child at play. By whatever name one calls it, genuine creativity is characterized by an David Douglas Duncan intensity of awareness, a heightened consciousness.
—Rollo May, from The Courage to Create Mind Senses Lends depth, substance, and meaning. The meaning of a line, Communicates personal shape, volume or observations or highlights rhythm. Drawing, social or natural typography, design, conditions. composition.
Feelings
The meaning of color, the sense of light, the inner meaning, the knowing of emotion Contemporary art: performative and conceptual; installation Zhang Xiaogang has symbolically clarified memory, reality and experience. 16:9 format. He found a collection of old family photographs that would serve as the inspiration for a long running series of paintings set during the Cultural Revolution.
The series of works, which he would later dub "Bloodlines: Big Family," now constitute some of the most sought after paintings in the world; and 48-year- old Zhang Xiaogang is considered one of the country's pre-eminent painters.
Critics now say Zhang pointed Chinese contemporary art in a new direction; he fused old charcoal-like portraits with modern pop art to create iconic images of the troubled Chinese family. Henri Matisse Alan Arkin’s Butt Theory
In improvisation workshops:
“I have an almost infallible guide that tells me when
somebody’s being truthful or whether they are showing off
— and that’s my rear end. My rear end tells me.
If I find myself sitting forward in my seat, something is really
happening and it’s interesting because it’s out of ego
control. If it’s smart ass stuff, then I find myself sitting back
on the chair and saying, ooohh he’s clever, but he’s not
smart. It’s a gauge that I have that I feel I’m good at
because I pay attention to it.”
David Ulrich III. “Try to love the questions themselves”
• Living the question. What if I try this? And this?
• Not knowing; Beginners Mind
• Living with ambiguity. Mystery.
• Asking questions; allowing for gestation
• Need to extend beyond one's own current viewpoint — beyond the known.
• And what else?
Hengki Koentjoro “Have patience with everything unresolved
… and try to love the questions themselves.
Don’t search for the answers … the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now.
Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”
A 1902 portrait of poet Rainer Maria Rilke by Helmut Westhoff
“Everything is gestation and then birthing…”
— Rainer Maria Rilke, as translated by Stephen Mitchell Working from questions . . . not answers
— Harry Callahan Painting is an investigation of being.
Squeak Carnwath Anna Marie Hamilton Ad Reinhardt Art is inquiry:
Let go of what you know. Discover something new. Live with ambiguity and mystery. IV. Natural Wisdom: Opening to the Unconscious
• Trusting instincts and intuition
• The depth mind: the unconscious
• Search for inspiration; new understanding
• Put question in back of mind / allow to gestate / activate unconscious
• Open to unconscious / deeper layers of response beyond conscious mind
• Heightened consciousness and awareness / need to be open and flexible
Kaho‘olawe by David Ulrich
Unconscious (or Subconscious Mind)
Seat of Insight, Creativity, and Intuition No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.
— Albert Einstein
Natalie Goldberg recounts How to get to the depth mind . . . attempting on a number of occasions, without success, to write about her father’s death. Preparing the ground, hard work She describes this effort as The quiet mind exploring and composting the Taking artistic risks material. Allow for gestation Dreams Then suddenly, and I can’t say Letting go of dominance of surface mind how, in December… a long poem about that subject poured out of me. All the disparate things I had to say were suddenly fused with energy and unity — a bright red tulip shot out of the compost. …
“Just lie on the couch; it’s a good place to begin” —Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones Isamu Noguchi
“I don’t think that art comes from art. I think it comes from the awakening person. … It is a linkage to something flowing very rapidly through the air, and I can put my finger on it and plug in.” Be simple, but go deep. The exquisite "cutouts" of Matisse and elegant line drawings of Picasso came late in long careers of painstaking work and wild experimentation. In writing as in painting, simplicity often follows considerable torment. —Constance Hale in Sin and Syntax From where does inspiration spring?
Differing beliefs:
The unconscious / depth mind
Sources beyond oneself
Voices of ancestors that live within
Energies that pass between us: cultural conditions or collective mind
Transpersonal Forces: the muses
Maciej Duczynski
… the most amazing fact about it is that every time we went to sit down -- and it was normally about a three- hour writing session -- we never came out without a finished song. So that was like 200 days that we sat down to do that. And never had a dry moment.
RD: You've said that "Yesterday" emerged fully formed from a dream. What is your personal understanding of inspiration?
McCartney: I don't understand it at all. I think life is quite mysterious and quite miraculous. Every time I come to write a song, there's this magic little thing where I go, "Ooh, ooh, it's happening again." I just sort of sit down at the piano and go, "Oh, my God. I don't know this one." And suddenly there's a song there. I find the magic in it so -- it's a faith thing. … With creativity, I just have faith. It's a great spiritual belief that there's something really magical there. And that was what helped me write "Yesterday" … I don't quite know what it is and I don't want to know. V. Creative Courage
• Overcoming fear, insecurity, doubt
• Courage to become who you are.
• Learning to see what is
• Going against the grain of established ideas
• Seeing what is needed and finding the courage to proceed
• Taking risks — go beyond oneself
Olivia Harris Malala Yousafzai, 16, the Pakistani girl who was shot in the head by Taliban fighters, signed a copy of her memoir, “I Am Malala,” the cruel radiance of what is — James Agee
David Ulrich I have a dream . . .
“Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.”
W.H. Murray, on Goethe
“Good Enough" is the enemy of excellence. – Unknown I have a dream . . .
1976
Personal Risk: Change the world: make a dent in the universe Albert Einstein, Bob Dylan, Martin Luther King, Jr., John Lennon, Martha Graham, Muhammad Ali, Alfred Hitchcock, Mahatma Gandhi, Jim Henson, Maria Callas, Pablo Picasso, 1997-2002 I have a dream . . . I have a dream . . .
Artists = Taking risks for the betterment of the world
1976 I have a dream . . . Coffee table revelation
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal."
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today!
—August 28, 1963
Doug Mills August 28, 2013 I have a dream . . . VI. Craft and Love of Materials
• Striving Towards Excellence
• Attention to craft
• Dialogue with materials & with the moment
• Right Time; Right Place
• Need for supportive conditions
• Time and place to work
• Craft as a living exchange between oneself and materials
Anselm Kiefer "Peace and an hour's time — given these, one creates. Emotional heights are easily attained; peace and time are not. ...” — Edward Weston Nobody sees a flower, really … We haven't time - and to see takes time like to have a friend takes time. — Georgia O’Keeffe Constantin Brancusi
Love of materials
Mastery of materials Brancusi at MOMA, April 2010 Ansel Adams Moonrise over Hernandez, NM Populate your Mind
Books
Ideas
Techniques
Art
Music
Observation
Critical Thinking
Culture
People
VII. Deepening Connections
• Creativity grows from relationship
• Deeper interests, passions, commitments
• Artists are only the vehicle for work / understandings to be born
• The hero’s journey
• A durable connection to a larger dimension—social, cultural, historical, psychological or spiritual—and the discipline required to maintain and deepen that connection
David Ulrich
“If one believes in something sufficiently, one will find a form through which to create what one must ... It is not the spasmodic burst of activity based on ideas, but the sustained growth and devotion to a dominating force— a force upon which one’s very life depends— that moves me.
—Alfred Stieglitz
Guernica, by Pablo Picasso Mark Rothko
“The silence and solitude of consciousness” “I don’t express myself …I express my not-self” Diego Rivera Jean Charlot VIII. Who Are You? . . . Other People
• One's creative work—insights and intuition—are not for oneself alone; interdependent world
• Creativity is a form of communication
• Collective intelligence; collaboration
• The tavern, the coffee shop, the bedroom
• Ideas build upon ideas; exchange; in the air
• Making one’s contribution; contributing the to the dialogue of our times
• Making love as a metaphor for living creatively
“If what one makes is not created with a sense of sacredness, a sense of wonder, if it is not a form of lovemaking; if it is not created with the same passion as the first kiss, it has no right to be called a work of art.”
— Alfred Stieglitz The Human Condition
Dorothea Lange
Justin Lane Influence and Response
Georgia O’Keeffe
Julienne Kost Anna Marie Hamilton Ghost Ranch O’Keeffe Home Running the Numbers: An American Self-Portrait, Chris Jordan, 2007 Plastic Bottles, 2007 60 x120" Chris Jordan Depicts two million plastic beverage bottles, the number used in the US every five minutes. Paper Bags, 2007 60x80" Depicts 1.14 million brown paper supermarket bags, the number used in the US every hour.
Cedar Tavern: Abstract Expressionists Sharing insights and questions, internet, the tavern, the classroom.
We exist by their grace . . . 1956 1969 Art Maui
Only large juried exhibition in State of Hawai‘i
Community Benefits
• Educates broader community about art
• Provides a snapshot of the current state of the visual arts on Maui
and in Hawai‘i
• Helps us better understand our region
• Communicates concerns of artists to broader community
• Creates dialogue between artists; mutual influence
• Source of inspiration for people Individual Benefits
• Enhances community pride • Provides exposure for individual artists
• Creates dialogue between artists and general public • Economic stimulus for artists: potential sales
• Distinct benefit for visitors • Helps artists see their work in context
• Provides opportunities for personal interaction between artists, • Source of individual pride of accomplishment public, patrons, and interested people • Provides useful deadlines for completion
• Assists in perpetuation of diverse cultures in Hawai‘i • Gives artists a forum to communicate their concerns to
• Brings accomplished jurors and presenters to Maui broader community Intersections: The Artist and the Community
. . . Exalted individualism, for example, is hardly a creative response to the needs of the planet at this time. Individualism, freedom and self expression are the great modernist buzz words. To highly individualistic artists, trained to think in this way, the idea that creative activity might be directed toward answering a collective cultural need rather than a personal desire for self-expression is likely to appear irrelevant, or even presumptuous. But I believe there is a new, evolving relationship between personal creativity and social responsibility, as old modernist patterns of alienation and confrontation give way to new ones of mutualism and the development of an active and practical dialogue with the environment. —The Reenchantment of Art by Suzi Gablick W
www.creativeguide.com
www.theslenderthread.org
Personal Growth / Art $16.95 ($27.50 CDN) David Ulrich
“ This is an exciting and informative THE IDENING STREAM book...helpful to anyone interested in the “Ulrich has written an important and readable book that offers W creative process.” usable insights and answers to the question he poses: ‘What is the nature of the creative process?' Both inspirational and practical, —André Gregory, costar and cocreator of the author has many useful things to say to the art student, the the Seven Stages of Creativity My Dinner with André, author, and avant-garde director professional artist, and all those with an interest in knowing more THE IDENING STREAM about the creative process, which Ulrich shows to be ‘a metaphor for life itself.’”
! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! —Nathan Goldstein, author of W Life itself can be approached as a creative The Art of Responsive Drawing Photo credit: Sheila Cody challenge, through the medium of whatever we do on a daily basis, whether it be painting a picture or cooking a meal. In The Widening Stream, author David Ulrich gracefully David Ulrich has taught hundreds of classes “My wish for you, the reader, is that these insights may illustrates the series of stages encountered on and workshops on photography,creativity, ignite your own creative gifts, fanning them into a every creative journey, regardless of the form and visual perception nationwide for over of expression. Using the stream as a twenty-five years. He has served on the faculty blazing conflagration of authentic transformation; that metaphor, Ulrich takes readers from the of several universities, including fifteen years there be no turning back for you once you hear the moment of inspiration to completion, as Associate Professor and Chair of the thundering voices of spirit; that you will be shattered helping us navigate the joys and frustrations Photography Department at The Art Institute into fullness of being through your soul’s longing; that inherent in the process. of Boston. As a photographer and writer, his From years of studying the work of artists, work has been published in numerous books you will discover with unshakable conviction that you scientists, philosophers, and spiritual and journals including Aperture, Parabola, have some indispensable thread of awareness to weave teachers, Ulrich has identified a common Manoa, and Sierra Club publications. into the fabric of the world; and that your guiding lights thread running through the diverse Ulrich’s photographs have been exhibited will show you the way to grow gracefully into who you perspectives of these great minds, and internationally in over seventy-five one- already are.” developed a unique theory of creativity, person and group exhibitions, including the useful to people at any level of creative Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C. —From the introduction development, from novice to professional. He lives in Honolulu, Hawai’i. Complete with tools and exercises to help readers develop and nourish their innate artistic spirits and abilities, this book is an invaluable resource for all of us who desire to live with passion, courage, and insight, and David Ulrich to explore the connection between creative longing and our deepest, truest selves. Publishing