the idea: don’t make art, just make something

This idea is actually the title for the book and accompanying workshop that I am creating as my master’s thesis this spring.  The seed for it was planted a little less than a year ago when I started thinking of developing a creativity training program that I could offer as professional development to adults.

I’ve gone through many phases and already been influenced by so many incredible ideas.  I’ve looked into Alexa Miller’s ArtsPractica project, Tina Seelig’s inGenius: A Crash Course in Creativity, and many other books and programs that deal with the importance of creativity in daily adult life.  I’ve thought about working with kids, the med world, the business world, and the teaching world but eventually settled on a broader audience of working adults.

This book teaches the technique of trying.  It comes from the beginnings of a life of experiments and accidents, mistakes both helpful and hurtful, and the courage to jump followed by the will to get back up.  I became an artist by accident.  If I hadn’t gone to college at fourteen and taken two classes that conflicted in my first semester so that I had to pick up an art class I would probably be a biologist, psychologist, or some other logical profession.

I’ve built my entire artistic, musical, and literary self by simply making to enjoy the act of making and the personal satisfaction of completing.  I’ve tried new things every step of the way, always telling myself that it didn’t matter how it came out because I was making for myself and that I probably wouldn’t ever show anyone.  Then slowly, ever so slowly, I cracked open my creative closet and let people peer inside.  I sang loud enough in the practice room that other people could hear me and left paintings out in the studio so other people could see them.  And now, finally, I’ve built the courage and habits that allow me to not only embrace my passion but to spread it to others.

See, the thing is, if you always try to make Art, you miss out on everything else you can make.  And there are so many wonderful things to make.  So many awkward, ugly, strange, and uncomfortable things that are waiting to be created if you have the courage to make them.  This book is about taking pride in the ability that all of us have to make things.  What the thing is doesn’t matter.  It can evolve into something wonderful or remain a slightly embarrassing memory that you decide to own.  The important thing is trying, always trying, and re-trying and re-re-trying.

There are so many ideas crashing and crystalizing in my mind as I head into this project, most of them to be worked out through the actual creation of it.  My hope is to self publish the book and start teaching the workshop by this summer.  But my goal is to just make something.