Creative Something
Creative Inspiration
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8 million portraits.
One afternoon he put a bag of popcorn in the microwave and ended up sketching all 310 kernels, one at time in descending order of size for a book called “Every Piece of Popcorn,” not that he sold many copies.
Jason Polan is putting every New Yorker on paper.
That’s over 8 million people, drawn on a sheet of paper in a notebook barely larger than your phone. Why is Jason Polan sketching out every New Yorker he sees? Why would a man spend a few hours of every single day to draw people ‒ whom he has never met ‒ into a notebook?
Jen Bekman, who runs a SoHo gallery as well as the website 20x200, thinks Polan is drawing for the sake of creativity. Polan is sketching because it’s something to do, a way to think different. Bekman says:
He reminds us by what he is doing every day that New York is place where you can choose to be bored but don’t have to be.
The same could be said for any place in the world, and anyone. You can choose to be bored, but you don’t have to be. Get creative.
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Quote
“I try to make the photos feel less like my life and more like my memory.”
– Jonathan Harris, digital artist. -
U of T gets David Foster Wallace ArchiveAdding to its collection of archives by literary heavy-hitters such as Norman Mailer and Don DeLillo, the University of Texas’ Ransom Center has acquired the papers of the late David Foster Wallace, author of the massive 1996 novel “Infinite Jest,” several collections of short stories and powerful literary journalism.
Some great news for the University, and the general public as well. “Infinite Jest” is on my list of books to read this year, if you haven’t read it yet you should add it to your list as well.
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Motivation Monday: the absolute best of "But does it float"
If you’re looking for a little creative motivation today, all you have to do is ask yourself one question: does it float?
But does it float is a remarkable web gallery of creative goodness, to say the least. Curated by two gents that go by the names Folkert & Atley, the web gallery features posts in a peculiar fashion: often using a quote or famous insight as a title, followed by a few photos or images by a featured artist or creator or thinker.
To fuel your creativity this week, and to demonstrate exactly how incredible the But does it float gallery is, I’ve gone ahead and picked out several of the absolute best articles. Take a look and be inspired:
“For the world to be interesting, you have to be manipulating it all the time” – Acoustic listening devices developed for the Dutch army as part of air defense systems research between World Wars 1 and 2.
“I’m too sad to tell you” – Dutch/Californian artist Bas Jan Ader was last seen in 1975 when he took off in what would have been the smallest sailboat ever to cross the Atlantic. He left behind a small oeuvre, often using gravity as a medium, which more than 30 years after his disappearance at sea is more influential than ever before.
“A man provided with paper, pencil, and rubber, and subject to strict discipline, is in effect a universal machine” – Drawings by Jorinde Voigt.
“Morphologically disturbed” – Cornelia Hesse-Honegger, scientific illustrator and science artist, …has collected, studied and painted morphologically disturbed insects, which she finds in the fallout areas of Chernobyl as well as near nuclear installations.
“Education is the acquisition of the art of the utilisation of knowledge” – Prints by Derek Faust.
“Geometry does not teach us to draw these lines, but requires them to be drawn” – Bridget Louise Riley (1931) is an English painter and one of the foremost proponents of op art.
“Now we are aiming our technologies inward where they will start to merge with our minds, our memories, our metabolisms, our personalities, our progeny, and perhaps our souls” – Generative drawings by Leonardo Solaas.
“The human mind delights in finding pattern—so much so that we often mistake coincidence or forced analogy for profound meaning. No other habit of thought lies so deeply within the soul of a small creature trying to make sense of a complex world not constructed for it” – Photography by Jürgen Bergbauer.
“Our brains are no longer conditioned for reverence and awe” – Paintings by Lesley Vance.
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What does it mean to be creative?
Being creative means solving a problem in a new way. It means changing your perspective.
Being creative means taking risks and ignoring doubt and facing fears. It means breaking with routine and doing something different for the sake of doing something different. It means mapping out a thousand different routes to reach one destination. It means challenging yourself every day. Being creative means searching for inspiration in even the most mundane places. It means you’re asking stupid questions. It means creating without critiquing. Being creative means you know how to find the similarities and differences between two completely random ideas.
Being creative means you’re thinking.
Artwork by Sylvia Park.
