nurturing talent: page 2

.....

The fact is, when you're given total permission to get in there, be messy, use your intuition and make mistakes, the results can be incredible. ....

Creating in a state of flow can convince you that you are, indeed, on the right track. Yet, the converse can be true, too.

If flow is missing for too long, an artist will start to feel blocked and miserable, like a constipated fish out ofwater. And yet ... no artist experiences flow all the time or even very often.

Professional artists know that flow cannot be counted on, so they learn to create without it -- putting their work together every single day,whether or not they're "in the mood."

Suzanne Falter-Barns - from her article
Coaching Creativity: 7 Lessons From Artists

> her books:

How Much Joy Can You Stand : A Creative Guide to Facing
Your Fears and Making Your Dreams Come True

Living Your Joy: A Practical Guide to Happiness

> also founder of coaching resources site:
HowMuchJoy.com
- practical tools for creative dreamers -

** **

..
.. Yaddo [the artist retreat] and Bennington share several things, having sprung into being at a similar moment in American history; many of the teacher practitioners on Bennington's faculty (and a good number of its alumni) have also come to Yaddo as guests over the years.

Beyond that, the two institutions share a rare belief that creativity and reflection should be at the center of existence, not at the periphery.

I can't tell you how many letters I receive over the course of the year from artists who've spent time at Yaddo and who want to express the sense of relief they felt at being in a place where they didn't have to explain all the time.

The importance of their work, the decadeslong pursuit of an idea, the whacky hours they might choose to keep ... here, it's all taken for granted; they sit each night at dinner with people who get it.

In an essay he wrote about Yaddo, John Cheever put it significantly better than I can:

"To find a room in which you can count on being undisturbed until four in the afternoon and count then on sympathetic company, a swim and a good dinner is extremely difficult.

"It sometimes helps if the room that you work in bears the impress of someone you esteem, but it doesn't much matter if your predecessor has been a broken-down historical novelist or - like myself - a blocked short story writer. They will have contributed to the fertility of a climate that encourages serious work."

Elaina Richardson - from her essay, MSN.com June 6, 2003

She is president of Yaddo, an artists' retreat in Saratoga
Springs, N.Y. - and former editor in chief of Elle magazine.

..
..
...The Artist's Quest for Inspiration - by Peggy Hadden

Filled with exercises, mediation topics, and creativity techniques, the book explains how to heighten awareness of the world around you; how memories and play can trigger creative inspiration; and how to increase sensitivity and broaden your vision, including: journal writing; talking with other artists; travelling; enhancing your studio's productivity; creative brainstorming; and other helpful exercises. [amazon.com]

...The Quotable Artist - by Peggy Hadden

A text on creativity and the creative process, as told through the enduring words of artists. Taking the reader on a journey through the wit and wisdom of generations of visual artists, photographers and architects, the volume explores what makes creative people extraordinary.

It presents a compilation of more than 1000 quotations from the famous to the obscure, celebrating what artists through time have said on a number of provocative subjects: colour, fame, finding inspiration, money woes, beauty, critics, other artists, and more. [amazon.com]

The Artist's Guide to New Markets: Opportunities to Show and Sell Art Beyond Galleries - by Peggy Hadden

...The Know-It-All : One Man's Humble Quest to Become the Smartest Person in the World -- by A. J. Jacobs

[Publishers Weekly:] Imagine, the original Berserkers were "savage Norse soldiers" of the Middle Ages who went into battle stark naked! Or consider the Etruscan habit of writing in "boustrophedon style."

Intrigued? Well, either hunker down with your own Encyclopædia Britannica, or buy Esquire editor Jacobs's memoir of the year he spent reading all 32 volumes of the 2002 edition -- that's 33,000 pages with some 44 million words.

Jacobs set out on this delightfully eccentric endeavor attempting to become the "smartest person in the world," although he agrees smart doesn't mean wise. Apart from the sheer pleasure of scaling a major intellectual mountain, Jacobs figured reading the encyclopedia from beginning to end would fill some gaps in his formal education and greatly increase his "quirkiness factor."

There is no evidence to support that rather bleak assessment [that creative people are a rare breed]. Talented people aren't in short supply but we are doing the wrong things to them in the educational process. People emerge at the other end with no idea what their creative abilities are. ...

Creativity has had a bad press. People see it as opposed to academic standards - something you do on retreats during an hour's brainstorming. But creativity is a function of the intelligence that everyone has. We underestimate it because we underestimate our intelligence. We need to reassess the way we think about ability, intelligence and creativity.

**Ken Robinson .. [Business Voice, May 2002] - Robinson is Senior Advisor for Education, the J. Paul Getty Trust

****Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative - by Ken Robinson

Sacred space and sacred time form two essential ingredients in developing creativity. Cultivating creative talents and giving form to creative endeavors requires uninterrupted time enjoyed in a special place. ...

While the home has traditionally been women's domain, we've had to share it with everyone. ... The challenge is to make others respect our sacred space and time. But we often find ourselves in the dilemma of feeling selfish when we think about insisting on doing something for ouselves. ...

Any woman trying to engage in creative work must demand the physical space and the quiet time to nurture a relationship with her creativity.

C Diane Ealy - from her book The Woman's Book of Creativity

more quotes by Ealy in columns: Creating to be authentic, not perfect / Acting on your creativity

Although a brief description of the four skills successful people share does not do them justice, let me list them:

one, an awareness of the need for attention as well as generosity in giving and receiving appreciation;

two, an awareness and respect for fear - a willingness to feel it and to reach for comfort ;

three, when afraid, successful people have a built in "nurturing voice" that automatically and compassionately reassures them that "it is okay to make mistakes, okay to be afraid, okay to ask for help."

And fourth, successful people possess a sense of mission or vision: they are clear about their goals, and their sense of purpose sustains them in crisis.

from article: Writing: An Art or Science? by Robert Maurer, PhD - on his site: scienceofexcellence

I am here alone for the first time in weeks, to take up my "real" life again at last. That is what is strange -- that friends, even passionate love, are not my real life unless there is time alone in which to explore and to discover what is happening or has happened. Without the interruptions, nourishing and maddening, this life would become arid. Yet I taste it fully only when I am alone here and "the house and I resume old conversations."

The ambience here is order and beauty. That is what frightens me when I am first alone again. I feel inadequate. I have made an open place, a place for meditation. What if I cannot find myself inside it?

I think of these pages as a way of doing that. For a long time now, every meeting with another human being has been a collision. I feel too much, sense too much, am exhausted by the reverbations after even the simplest conversation. But the deep collision is and has been with my unregenerate, tormenting, and tormented self. I have written every poem, every novel, for the same purpose -- to find out what I think, to know where I stand.

May Sarton - from her book: Journal of a Solitude

"I refused to take 'No' for an answer."

Denied access to flight instruction in America, Bessie Coleman
became fluent in French and, in 1921, crossed the ocean to
realize her dream. As the first African American to earn a pilot's license,
she defied injustice and won. [from womenfly.com]

~ ~ ~ ~

Jean Houston

***

Ellen Burstyn

Greatness may take the form of a great endeavor, or it may manifest as a fullness of life -- a living out of one's Essence self. When I ponder the nature of greatness, thinking over the many truly great people that I have known, I conclude that what they shared was a potent sense of their own Essence.

Margaret Mead, Buckminster Fuller, Joseph Campbell, Clemmie, an old black woman in Mississippi, the Trappist monk Theophane Boyd, actress Ellen Burstyn, my oldest friend Gay Luce -- all were able to live out of Essence for longer periods of time than most of those around them.

This ability helped them use their gifts and capacities to a fuller extent. From this it follows that we must examine the nature of Essence and discern our own if we are to achieve our greatness.

Essence is neither a place nor a time, an insight or a state of mind. It is the deepest part of our nature, an actual presence that is innate and inborn. Sometimes it wears a personal face and a form and manifests as an image to our mind's eye. When it does, some call it a daimon; others an angel. In its incorporeal form, still others think of it as the soul. ...

It is hardly surprising that.. a bevy of popular recent books attempt to describe the experience of Essence and to encourage its cultivation; for example, Thomas Moore's Care of the Soul, Clarissa Pinkola Estes' Women Who Run With Wolves, Gary Zukav's Seat of the Soul, as well as books by James Hillman. These writers wrestle with the concept of Essence because it may be the most important requirement for our emergence as full human beings.

Jean Houston

from essay: Of Butterflies and Essence by Jean Houston
butterfly image: Purple Emperor / Apatura iris

...books: **

Jean Houston. The Possible Human : A Course in Enhancing Your Physical, Mental, and Creative Abilities

Thomas Moore. Care of the Soul

Clarissa Pinkola Estes. Women Who Run With Wolves

Gary Zukav. Seat of the Soul

James Hillman. The Soul's Code : In Search of Character and Calling

photo of Jean Houston from jeanhouston.org

photo of Ellen Burstyn from film based on the book: Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells

What exactly does venturing out into nature and studying a blade of grass or a bamboo stalk have to do with creativity? ....

The reason is a deep one. We've been built to live in this world, to eat pumpkin pie and need the sun, to enjoy a swim in a lake and go for long walks.

We are, as the neurophilosophers say, not just brains, but fully embodied creatures. Sitting in our office cubicle or in our studio, we tend to forget this...

There is no doubt that we can think indoors, and if creativity were just about thinking we could live in a pickle jar on life support and keep on producing ideas.

But what sort of ideas would we produce if we never saw a gull dive into the sea, never saw a bleached bone in the desert sand, never saw the silhouette of an oak against the skyline at dusk?

We are embodied creatures and we come from the natural world, and it's no wonder that MozartÇs music so often came to him during carriage rides in the woods. ...

Study a blade of grass for several minutes. Find some tall grass, sit down, select a blade, and give it your undivided attention.

If you can't get out, study a leaf of the potted plant in your living room or office cubicle.

What should you be thinking about or noticing? If you can actually quiet your nerves and your chattering mind and pay attention to the blade of grass to the exclusion of everything else, you'll know what this exercise is designed to do.

Pay the same attention to your own creative work.

from: The Creativity Book by Eric Maisel, PhD

Things to do to excite, stimulate
and exercise the brain

Move your watch, ring, keys, wallet, pager, pen to a new place for a day, week, month.

Brainstorm 25 alternate uses for a toothpick, tp roll, newspaper, paper clip, rubber band, etc.

Do all the scrabble, jumble, puzzlers in the day's paper.

Take a common object (pencil, newspaper, watch, etc.): examine it in detail using all your senses.

Focus on your breathing counting from 1 - 10 with each exhale: start over if you lose track.

Identify all the geometric shapes that you can see from where you are.

Develop lots of uncommon answers to How Come it's raining; traffic is slow; school is out; etc.

Improvise curious/playful responses (where appropriate) in answer to questions today.

Imagine and develop a conversation between a fishing lure & fish; a bee & flower; a racket & ball.

Strike up a conversation with someone you don't know..

Take a new or different route today.

Intentionally sleep in a new place or position for a few nights. Note what happens upon waking.

Use your non dominant hand to eat, brush teeth, dial phone etc.

Listen to and try to appreciate a different style of music or point of view; sample a new food or restaurant.

Doodle through all your meetings and phone calls.

Take a walk or run.. smile at and greet each passerby.

Take notes using colored pen or pencils.. on colored paper.

excerpt from Stretch-ercises:creativitycentral.com

*from book:*

Fanning the Creative Spirit
by Maria Girsch, Charlie Girsch

Time is absolutely vital to the creative process. We have to figure out how to take it and give it to ourselves.
Only when we realize the kind of attention we need to be creative, do we realize the value of our time.
I don't think any of us learned about this when we were growing up. I know I didn't. ... And learning that
has taken a very long time.

Alice Aspen March - from book: Gail McMeekin. The 12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women

photo from Alice Aspen March site: The Attention Factor

"It took me a long time to get a setup like this," he says, referring to his hillside creative complex, which also includes a lavishly appointed recording and editing studio. "That's one of the things I used to long for, a setup where if you catch an idea you have the means to realize it. There's a lot of frustration when you don't have that; it can be a torment. The idea may not go away, but it's not going to have the heat it had when you first got it. So it's good to have a shop of some kind."

Looking at David Lynch in this setting, and listening to his rapid, digressive, almost alarmingly animated discourse, I realize that he has, to a greater degree than anyone I've ever met, organized his life to facilitate the collection and processing of artistic ideas. In fact, he speaks of ideas as if they were things entirely outside him, buzzing in the air like the insects he uses as part of the texture of his paintings. He speaks of them the way a devout Christian speaks of grace.

from article: "In a Weird Way, David Lynch Makes Sense" by Terrence Rafferty, New York Times, March 10, 2002

biography: Lynch on Lynch

Fire in the Crucible: Understanding the Process of Creative Genius by John Briggs

John Briggs reveals that there is no special trait of genius. Geniuses are not necessarily smarter or more talented than other people, but they give their attention to subtle nuances, contradictory feelings and perceptions that others experience and ignore. ...

Fire in the Crucible offers a compelling exploration of the roots of creativity and genius. Drawing on the lives and work of extraordinary scientists, artists, writers, composers, and inventors, Briggs shows how creative individuals exploit doubt and uncertainty, and the mental strategies and tactics they employ when they work. [amazon.com summary]

Since my early twenties, painting has filled my life with joy. But, most of all, painting has allowed me to explore the mystery of my soul. When I first discovered the power of painting, I considered myself extremely lucky because I believed I had almost missed it.

I instantly wanted to share my discoveries with others. Out of my enthusiasm, I became a teacher. For almost thirty years, I have watched with delight as thousands of painters overcame their fears, broke old patterns, and tapped into that marvelous, mysterious place of creation and soul exploration. ...

Point Zero presents an original method to stir up the creative potential and awaken creative passion. It describes practical ways to dissolvecreative blocks and keep inspiration flowing. I believe this non-technique method brings forth uniqueness, originality, and personal style without influencing them.

Moreover, this book stresses the depth and spiritual beauty of the intuitive force, its healing and expanding qualities. It is based on a deep understanding of creativity and how to use self-questioning to reach Point Zero,the source of creation.

The questioning process is built on the principle that creativity blossoms in a non-judgmental, non-goal approach.

...Point Zero: Creativity Without Limits by Michele Cassou / excerpt and photo from Michele Cassou site