Fostering Creativity Blog

There was a point in time where I decided to stop being creative.  In high school I loved making art, everything from painting and drawing to sculpture and customizing clothes. After high school I wasn't sure what I wanted to do, but I did want to do something creative. I received several scholarships for my artwork which was hung in a local gallery, and I applied and was accepted to several art colleges.  There were three problems.  1. I didn't feel like I was good enough. Somewhere in high school, I think it was probably during my AP Art class where we were required to creative a piece every week and submit them at the end of the year to a panel of judges, I started feeling more anxiety about creating than gaining joy from it. I didn't want to expand on my skills, because I already saw so many people who were "better than me," and I started to lose motivation for creating.  2. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I bounced around within artistic careers from c

Today I felt like I was especially "called out" by our in class discussion of risk taking and vulnerability so I thought I would share part of what I wrote for the in class exercise and elaborate on it here. For the last prompt: What is a Risk I Want to Take This Year, I immediately knew the risk, and my stomach started churning just thinking about it, yet again, this year.  A risk that I want to take this year is that I want to apply to a professional circus school and make circus the focus of my life. It is difficult because I know circus is not perceived as a profitable profession. I face a lot of judgement from my family and peers saying that pursuing circus is not a worthwhile use of time. My older sister asked me “What is more important, going to circus or pursuing your degree?” And I told her they were equally important but she didn’t understand. I worry that I am not advanced enough to get into a professional training program since all of them require an audition of s

2020 has been a year. I remember making a promise to myself around December of last year that 2020 would be the year I went back to school. I was looking forward to it in those first summer months ready to feel like I was accomplishing a goal and working towards a purpose. I never expected school to be remote, and I remember thinking I would put off the start of my degree again until something resembling "normal" was restored. But I also remember making myself that promise, that 2020 would be the year I went back to school. So I'm sticking with it. It's been rough so far because I have been away from being creative for such a long time. Part of why I chose to pursue Digital Design was that I took comfort in the idea that the kind of work I wanted to do involved more layout and spread ideas than something so vulnerable as putting what I personally created out into the world to be critiqued and judged. So far we have been making art for my Intro to Digital Design class

     This week I'm feeling really inspired by the Creative Process and ways to jumpstart that creativity. We've talked a lot in class about how creativity can be spurred through the use of various warm up exercises and step by step systems so that art can come at any time, it's not just waiting for the proverbial "apple" to fall and inspire creativity.       Being creative takes work, commitment and research. I struggle a lot with thinking that I don't have enough talent to be an artist. Especially as a new designer, I have challenges with all of the software programs that I'm opening for the first time this semester and expected to use to create art. I've shied away from pursuing a degree in art for many years, even though it was initially what I wanted to do, because of the reactions I received from peers and family members about becoming an artist.       Though I was in numerous art shows and received scholarships for my art in high school, I never