What inspired me to write this post was seeing a number of large-scale prints of the work of Maggie Taylor (and other exciting images by photo artists) in the Digital Darkroom show at The Annenberg Space for Photography (Los Angeles, CA, December 17, 2011 through May 28, 2012).

Her work is so evocative – rich with symbols and themes of inner states and unusual realities.

[Click to view larger size.]

In an interview, Taylor talked about this aspect of her creations.

“To me the images work on two levels: they are about these specific objects, yet they also invite reverie or recollections.

“I like to think that the objects are obviously symbolic, but not symbolically obvious. Most of the items have some sort of resonance or uniqueness for me when I first see them, whether that happens in a flea market or out in the yard.

“As I begin to work with them, and particularly after I use an object in several different images, that object begins to develop a personality for me. Some of the objects begin to play roles as if in a small theater in front of the camera or on the computer screen.”

But she is “usually in the dark as far as the symbolism – especially when I am working. Some of the objects have a resonance for me, and others might even call up specific memories. But when I put them all together, they often add up to more than I consciously had in mind at the time I was outside photographing. I like the images to be ambiguous and even a little disturbing or uncomfortable.”

Like perhaps most artists who make emotionally impactful work, she creates from “personal experience, from my own memories and dreams – from my psyche. Many times what I make work about is very pedestrian: the everyday life, stray thoughts, feelings of anxiety, boredom, something I remembered from a science class, something I dreamed last Tuesday.

“In this sense, I think of this work as autobiographical. Sometimes the very ordinary content or emotion expressed in an image is at odds with the vibrant color and quirky presentation. I am kind of interested in setting up a conflict between the very mundane aspects of an ordinary life (What time is dinner? What am I going to do today?) and a very vibrant, lush, heroic style of art.”

[From interview with Paul Karabinis, Director of the University of North Florida Gallery in Jacksonville, in 1998.]

A bio from Modernbook Gallery describes how artist Maggie Taylor works:

“Using 19th century tin-types, photographs, and images, she scanned them on a flatbed scanner. She then combines them with some other images that she photographed, acquired, or other objects that she scanned. These images are then composed, combined, and colorized by using the Adobe Photoshop program. In a typical image composed by Taylor, there can be as many as 40-60+ layers.

“Taylor received her BA degree in philosophy from Yale University and her MFA degree in photography from the University of Florida.  In 1996 and 2001 she received State of Florida Individual Artist’s Fellowships.  In 2004 she won the Santa Fe Center for Photography’s Project Competition.  She lives in Gainesville, Florida with her husband, photographer Jerry Uelsmann.”

My post title comes from Maggie Taylor – an interview by Steve Anchell, in which she says: “Making images for me is a way of life. I can’t imagine not doing it . . . I guess in terms of what motivates me, the best answer would be, if I don’t make images I’m unhappy.”

[In the Introduction to his book The Van Gogh Blues, creativity coach and author Eric Maisel, PhD says that "creating is such a crucial activity in the life of a creator. It is one of the ways, and often the most important way, that she manages to make life feel meaningful. Not creating is depressing because she is not making meaning when she is not creating.”]

Anchell notes, “It takes a long time to make these layered images; sometimes a couple of weeks, sometimes six months. Working on more than one image at a time, she might have four or five projects going at once. Because the digital files are so big, they are rarely all open at one time. She’ll open one, work on it for a day or two, then close it, make a little print to tack up on the wall and live with it for a while, then start on another one.”

Taylor says, “This is a very convenient way for me to work, because I’m always being interrupted, or I might only have an hour or two hours in a working session, so I can save the image and come back to it another day.

“So it’s definitely something that works well for me. I can take a break from the computer, go outside for awhile and work in the garden, or do something completely different, then come back and start again.

“The images feed off each other this way.”

In another interview, on the Zurjah blog, she responds to the common question for artists of what inspires her work:

“This is a very difficult question for me to answer…I think many different aspects of my everyday life influence what I create on the computer. Sometimes images begin with a dream or a childhood memory that I sketch quickly so that I don’t forget. Sometimes they are inspired by something I discover in the garden or on the street.

“But usually when I start with one idea, I end up changing the image so much during the process of working that the final result bears little resemblance to the original sketch. I try to work in a flowing and spontaneous manner as much as possible–although with the computer this can be a little challenging.”

She describes collecting materials to use in her compositions:

“Whenever I have the chance, I go to flea markets and antique stores to see what I might find that can be used in my work. Occasionally I also look on Ebay or exchange objects with other artists. When I worked with a traditional camera four or five years ago, I had to select objects that worked with each other in terms of their scale, color and texture. Now, with the computer, I can find something to create a texture, and something else to scan to add more texture…change the size of everything, and alter all the colors. So I look at objects in a different way now.”

Her site: www.maggietaylor.com

Books:

Adobe Photoshop Master Class: Maggie Taylor’s Landscape of Dreams.

Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland: Illustrated By Maggie Taylor.

Images by Maggie Taylor: “Small Possible Worlds” and “The Experience.”

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Here are a few.

Creativity at Work: Developing creativity and innovation in organizations

Founder: Linda Naiman – a creativity and innovation consultant. “Our focus is on leadership and team development, creativity, collaboration, and cultivating environments that foster innovation.”

And All That Jazz – “A creativity researcher’s take on the highs and lows of pop culture and the arts.”

By James C. Kaufman, Ph.D., a creativity researcher and Associate Professor of Psychology at California State University, San Bernardino.

One of his articles:
Too much novelty, not enough appropriateness

Cognitive psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman, Ph.D.

Articles on creativity (listed on his site)

Also see his blog on The Huffington Post
> Current articles:

• What Happens When the IQ Test Taker Becomes the IQ Test Constructor?
• The Need to Believe in the Ability of Disability
• Confidence Matters Just as Much as Ability
• Who Is Currently Identified as Gifted in the United States?
• The Will and Ways of Hope

His Psychology Today blog: Beautiful Minds
> Current articles:

• How Convergent and Divergent Thinking Foster Creativity
  What happens when the IQ test taker becomes the IQ test constructor? read more
• The Need to Believe in the Ability of Disability
  Our society has clear expectations regarding students who don’t fit the norm.read more
• Must One Risk Madness to Achieve Genius?
  Must one risk getting lost in the sea of madness in order to reach the lone island of genius?read more
• Educational Psychologist Kevin McGrew: An IQ Test Maker Who Goes Beyond IQ
  IQ test maker Kevin McGrew on IQ testing and the need to go beyond IQ.read more
• Who Is Currently Identified as Gifted in the United States?
  A recent national survey of state policies and practices reveals how the United States defines giftedness, identifies giftedness, and accommodates gifted minority students.read more

The Creativity Post – “a non-profit web platform committed to sharing the very best content on creativity, in all of its forms: from scientific discovery to philosophical debate, from entrepreneurial ventures to educational reform, from artistic expression to technological innovation – in short, to all the varieties of the human experience that creativity brings to life.

Milena Z. Fisher, PhD, Co-founder / President; Scott Barry Kaufman, PhD, Co-founder / Executive Director.

> Three sample posts:

Why Daydreamers are More Creative
By Scott Barry Kaufman

Twelve Things You Were Not Taught in School About Creative Thinking
By Michael Michalko

3 Ideas to Prevent Schools from Killing Creativity, Curiosity, and Critical Thinking
By Dr. Todd B. Kashdan

> Current posts:

• 21 Ways to Kill Your Creativity
  21 suggestions, recommendations and habits that will guarantee you will never come up with a good idea.
• You Know What It Is: Learning Words through Listening to Hip-Hop
  Can music influence language learning?
• Time to Overcome Our Fears and Kill Subscription Journals
  The scientific community could decide tomorrow to eliminate restrictions on access to the research literature.
• Mediums & Muses
  A discussion of Patience Worth and Plato.
• What Does an Innovator Look Like?
  Ageless characteristics of innovators and entrepreneurs.

Life as Art – “How our world shapes who we are and how who we are shapes our world”

Psychology Today blog by Shelley Carson, Ph.D., “an instructor and researcher at Harvard University, where she teaches creativity and abnormal psychology.”

Two of her articles:
The New Year, Time Travel, and the Essence of Creativity
Plagiarism and Its Effect on Creative Work

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Mindbloggling – “Current ideas about cultural evolution and the creative processes that power it.”

Psychology Today blog by Liane Gabora, Ph.D.

Two of her articles:
How Creative Ideas Take Shape by Liane Gabora, Ph.D.
Are Effective Leaders Creative?

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Finding the Next Einstein: Why Smart is Relative – “discusses research findings in areas such as intelligence, creativity, psychology and education, touches upon multiple issues surrounding the identification and development of intellectual and creative talent, and explores how these issues might be relevant to what’s going on in the world.”

Psychology Today blog by Jonathan Wai, Ph.D., a psychologist, writer, and research scientist at Duke University.

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Psychology Today blogs on creativity

About twenty writers, including some of the above.

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Creativity enhancement articles – “Perspectives and strategies to increase creative ideas and expression.”

This is part of my own articles database, with hundreds of titles by multiple authors.

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Neural network image from article “The Biology of Learning,” by Gregory Kellett, on the blog of Lumosity brain training. For more about it, see my post Better Thinking: Brain Games For Cognitive Training.

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“That’s why we use the Internet and we put these projects that we do online, and anybody can contribute to them. I’m there directing, participating, curating, and editing, and we make things together.”

Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Well-known as an actor (movies: “Inception,” “50/50″ etc), Joseph Gordon-Levitt is also the founder and director of hitRECord.org, an online production company that shares profits with contributing artists.

This is an intro video by him on hitRECord.org.

Also on the site, he describes the venture:

“In a nutshell: we create and develop art and media collaboratively here on our site; we use my position in the traditional entertainment industry to turn that creativity into money-making productions; and then we share any profits with the contributing artists. In a nutter shell, we just have fun making things together. Videos, writing, photography, music, anything…”

In an Entertainment Weekly article he notes, “As much as I love acting, I also like telling stories, making little short films, music, art, writing, etc.

“Normally when an actor starts a production company, it’s sort of an insular, Hollywood thing, but I wanted to collaborate with all of these artists all over the world who are making beautiful art and don’t necessarily have the connections to work in Hollywood.

“That’s why we use the Internet and we put these projects that we do online, and anybody can contribute to them. I’m there directing, participating, curating, and editing, and we make things together.”

He notes their project “Tiny Stories” “is our most popular collaboration that we’ve ever had. It’s really easy to contribute to it. As it says on the back, we had 8,000 contributions that came into this collaboration. From that we edited it down into this tiny book.”

The author of the article (Joseph Gordon-Levitt on ‘The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories’), Stephan Lee asks him more about the creative endeavor, and how much it engages him and the many contributors.

Stephan Lee: What are some of your favorite bits from the book?

Joseph Gordon-Levitt: The Tiny Stories tend to end up in two broad camps: Some of them have a real button, like a punch line. Like, for example, “the Doctor’s Wife ate two apples a day, just to be safe. But her husband kept coming home.”

That one’s got a bit of a zinger at the end, and I love those, and the illustration that goes with that one is particularly well done.

There’s such a story in her facial expression and her posture. It’s like great acting to me. Then there are other ones that don’t have such a zinger at the end, but I feel like they’re a little more whimsical.

They invite the reader to bring what meaning he or she chooses. You just get into really beautiful aesthetics of the words and the images.

There’s one that goes, “I collect flickering stars in old pickling jars, poking holes in the lids so they can breathe.”

I love those words. They’re fun off the tongue and evokes so many images. Are we talking about a little kid who’s collecting fireflies, or are we talking some god of the night sky?

What exactly is going on is up to interpretation, and I feel it’s so rich.

Stephan Lee: The drawing that goes with that particular story is so great.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt: That’s actually a cool story to bring up in terms of the HitRECord process.

That illustration is a combination of several elements. It’s the work of several graphic artists putting things together and finding ways to remix each other’s work into this beautiful new story, and I think when you look at it now, it seems like it’s meant to be.

I love the creative process like that. That’s what life is. You go through life and you take these different elements that are coming at you, and you don’t understand why they are or what they’re doing there, but it’s up to you to be creative and match the elements together.

Stephan Lee: I think the composite nature of the art gives it a bit of mystery. It makes the reader wonder, “How did this unusual drawing end up this way?“

Joseph Gordon-Levitt: Exactly! It’s sort of like evolution. Nature itself is such a beautiful thing whether you’re talking about jungles or the human body or whatever.

It’s something that can only naturally evolve over time; things come together in unexpected ways and all of a sudden you have a product that’s still in evolution, but it makes sense for what is in that moment.

It makes more sense in its absurdity than it would have if it were created by just one person, one designer.

Publications:

The Tiny Book of Tiny Stories: Volume 1 – “Joseph Gordon-Levitt directed thousands of collaborators to tell tiny stories through words and art. With the help of the entire creative collective, Gordon-Levitt culled, edited and curated over 8,500 contributions into this finely tuned collection of original art from 67 contributors.”

This screenshot image from a small section of the site indicates some of the breadth of people involved in adding their creative expression – as does this description of the site’s main project:

RECollection: Volume 1 is the very first anthology of hitRECord’s work, featuring the contributions of 471 collaborators. The eight-inch square, cloth-bound tome is a well-crafted and meticulously-designed piece of art. With equal attention given to each medium—video, audio, image, text—this relic of our records is rich in detail and a feast for the senses.

The DVD – A collection of 36 short movies created collaboratively on hitRECord under the direction of—and with some starring roles by—Joseph Gordon-Levitt. You’ll find short films, animations, music videos, ‘tiny stories’ and records from hitRECord’s various live events.

The Book – 64 full-color glossy pages filled to the brim with everything you love about your beautiful books: poetry, prose, paintings, photography, comical curiosities, non-sequiturs, bed-time stories and, of course, more!

The CD – Join your DJ RegularJoe (Joseph Gordon-Levitt for all you newbs) as he hosts his ‘pretend’ radio show — complete with 17 collaboratively-made songs.

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Keith Sawyer, a professor of psychology and education says creativity is a collaborative process that applies not just to prodigies and masterpieces, but also to more ordinary innovation. He says, “In spite of the ‘lone genius’ myths that always spring up after an invention’s success, these important inventions always originate in collaboration.”

From my post Creative collaboration.

In my earlier Creative Mind post Creative Inspiration – R. Keith Sawyer on Myths of Creativity, he notes “Ideas don’t magically appear in a genius’ head from nowhere. They always build on what came before. And collaboration is key.”

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By Jennifer Lee, Artizen Coaching – The Right-Brain Business Plan and more

[From her newsletter]

Sure, it may sound melodramatic when I say that doing Art Every Day Month in November 2007 really did change my life, but I do think it’s true!

By giving myself permission to create every day, the concept for the Right-Brain Business Plan® intuitively came to me and since then has helped me grow my business in exciting ways.

While I’d like to create every day, I don’t always make the time to do so. That’s why I love when November comes around. I know I’ve got structure and community to keep me creating regularly.

Here’s what I’ve been learning this year that I can apply to my creative life and creative business:

• Capture ideas early, even if they’re not fully formed. When I wait until end of day to do my doodle, I struggle to come up with what to create. But if I start doodling earlier in the day when ideas come to me (even if it’s not intended for the final product) my mind and muse begin to subconsciously sculpt the idea. Then when I do sit down to do the work, I’m able to tap into more ease and inspiration and the doodle flows. My take away for my business is to keep jotting down my half-baked thoughts and doodling ideas for future projects. They’re fodder for when I’m ready to develop and implement the next exciting thing.

• Find the stories and anecdotes. Throughout the day I’m constantly looking for a story or message to inspire my doodle. Sometimes they’re mundane things but often times I find some hidden meaning for myself that helps me explore an emotion or a life lesson. Plus, sharing the stories helps to increase connection, since often times, people can relate.

• Think visually. I challenge myself to find a way to tell the story in pictures not just words. Doing this daily is helping me to strengthen my visual thinking muscle. And that muscle sure comes in handy when running a creative business (I shared in a previous newsletter how I ended up drawing a diagram for my lawyer to help him understand my licensing program)!

Whether you participate in AEDM or not, I encourage you to dedicate some time on a semi-regular basis to explore your creativity. You never now when your next great idea will emerge!

You can see my daily AEDM 2011 doodles on Flickr.

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Learn more about Artizen Coaching’s The Right-Brain Business Plan

- and click “About” for free newsletter.

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Max Ehrman

From LOVE IS IN THE AEROSOL, Text by Denise Kitt, SOMA magazine.

When artist Max Ehrman is not completing privately commissioned works, he is zealously spray painting the walls of start-up companies in the SOMA district of San Francisco. Don’t recognize his name? Perhaps you know him as Eon75, a pseudonym Ehrman uses that stands for “Extermination of Normality” (and “75” denotes the year he was born).

Despite Ehrman’s affinity for San Francisco, he has worked around the world and has mentioned that he may move abroad in the future. “I loved Germany,” Ehrman said of the country in which he earned his Master’s. “I moved my happy little self to Berlin as quickly as possible and lived in that amazing city for two years. [It was] one of the best experiences of my life.”

Ehrman painted every day, met people from all over the world and relished in Berlin’s “great art, music and everything in between.” Ehrman plans to stay in San Francisco for some time but is considering moving to Barcelona in a few years.

When asked how creating art makes him feel, Ehrman answered in a raw and resounding manner: “Art is my air. Without it, I would drown. It’s also my therapy and way to stay sane in this crazy city and world. If I couldn’t create, I don’t know what I would do … paint with my toes or something? I would say that any artist who loves what they do is obsessed with it. What’s the difference between obsession and passion? Who knows?”

..

Travel is cited as a way to enhance creative imagination – and creative achievement often depends on experiencing a fairly high level of obsession. Here is one of my posts on the topic:

Creative Obsession | The Creative Mind Jul 4, 2010 … See my related video Creative obsessions: Adam Savage and Stanley Kubrick, in which he talks about his passion for making this sculpture, … blogs.psychcentral.com/creative-mind/2010/07/creative-obsession/

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Elizabeth Olsen

From Elizabeth Olsen Interview MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE
by Christina Radish :

Your famous sisters, Mary-Kate and Ashley, were child actors, but you decided to wait until later, and you went to college to get your degree. Did your sisters influence your decision to act, at all?

OLSEN: I’m still trying to get my degree. Maybe somehow they did influence me, but I never made choices based on the choices they made. I just always made choices based on following how my path was going. Obviously, your family influences you, in every choice you make, in some way or another, but it was nothing that was really thought out. It was just something that I always wanted to do, and I went about it a different way. I was in a position where I could go about it in a different way.

Did you always want to be an actress?

OLSEN: Yeah, I did. I was a theater camp kid. It’s all that my friends and I did. We were always creating movies and plays on the playground. Instead of playing on the playground, we were rehearsing musicals that we wrote.

I was always surrounded by creative people, growing up here in the Valley, and I just had teachers who were really great in high school and that gave me the confidence to pursue it for real, as opposed to a fun fantasy.

…

From interview: Sean Durkin and Elizabeth Olsen by Scott Tobias October 19, 2011

[Olsen]  I read the script during my first six or seven months of auditioning for roles. And I really enjoy auditioning, first off. I just think it’s a really amazing point in the process of creating a character, because it’s completely yours at that point. So I love it. I don’t think anything is weird about it, or scary.

But when I read the script, I was completely obsessed with it. And since I was an unknown, I wasn’t able to read very great scripts, you know? [Laughs.] And so immediately, I responded to the narrative and the way the story was told.

I’m a fan of playing with linear structure. And I really enjoy it when people don’t feed the audience so much information.

I think a lot of films do themselves a disfavor by putting in way too much information, and everyone knows what’s gonna happen next, and no one can actually discover things as they go. So I really responded to that.

And I really loved how complicated and difficult and fun the character seemed to me. And I really just thought I understood her, and just came in with a few specific choices, and something that I was constantly trying to change.

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One of the reasons I wanted to include Elizabeth Olsen here was the prevalence of critical acclaim for her acting in “Martha Marcy May Marlene” - her feature film debut.

Many other talented actors talk about putting on plays as kids, and how that got them started in a way as an actor. But how many children are encouraged to think of play-acting (or other creative activities) as a potential adult pursuit, if that is what they want? How did you play as a kid? Is it merely something you “got over”?

I also appreciate her comments about “playing with linear structure” – which some of the most interesting films do (as well as some other creative projects, like novels) – and about always changing the development of her character. That is also something many writers talk about: that the process of writing “reveals” and allows characters to evolve.

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Julia Cameron

Julia Cameron is a teacher, author, poet, playwright, novelist, filmmaker, composer, and journalist. She is perhaps most famous for her book The Artist’s Way, and has written many other non-fiction works, short stories, and essays as well as novels, plays, musicals, and screenplays.

From The Creative Life: An Interview with Julia Cameron by Annette Fix, Women on Writing / WOW:

WOW: “Write what seems to want to be written” is a piece of advice you gave one of your students. Should that always be the practice or should some consideration be made for writing what is marketable?

JULIA: “Write what wants to be written” is sound advice, guaranteeing we will have passion and enthusiasm for our subject matter. When we write with such fire, our work is persuasive and often marketable.

When we try to write “to the market” with no thought given to our enthusiasm, we run the risk of sounding stale. But it’s important to note that what we want to write, and what the market wants to buy, may well be the same thing.

WOW: Discipline can be both a writer’s best friend and her antagonist. In your opinion, how can commitment (planned writing) and creativity (inspired writing) co-exist?

JULIA: It is important to write for the love of writing, and that love may well be exercised on planned writing as well as our creative forays. It is important to realize that we can write salable work, and that our inspiration may come quite freely when working on a commercial piece. I believe that when we write from a spirit of service, it frees our writing and allows us to write with clarity, precision, and passion.

WOW: You talk about the importance of having an emotional compass. How does that help with your creativity and your writing?

JULIA: I believe that we all have a source of inner guidance that moves us in right directions if we are willing to listen to it. I call this inner guidance “True North,” and it is a strong, inner sense that we are moving in the right direction.

WOW: In The Creative Life, you say the key to success lies with open-mindedness—being willing to change and improve a piece rather than being stubborn and insisting on its genius. How does employing that open-mindedness affect your personal creativity?

JULIA: Early in my career, I was not very teachable. I had a lot of ego invested in being “good.” As I matured, and my work matured, I became willing to be open-minded. I found colleagues whose opinion I valued.

I would show them my work and listen carefully to their feedback. Now, it is routine for me to show my work to a close circle of friends whom I call “Believing Mirrors.”

..

Photo from my post The mind of gifted adults: Julia Cameron on her mental health challenges.

Julia Cameron is leading an online teaching course – see my post Developing Creativity: the Julia Cameron Live online program -

or visit the program site: Julia Cameron Live online course.

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There are many concepts about how to develop creativity in corporations and individuals, starting at an early age.

Here are a few key ideas in excerpts from several sources:

Moving at the Speed of Creativity – Creativity is a Decision: Keys to Developing Creativity in Children and Adults

By Wesley Fryer. These are my notes from Robert Sternberg’s presentation, “Creativity is a Decision: Keys to Developing Creativity in Children and Adults” November 1, 2011, at the 2011 Oklahoma Creativity Forum. Dr Sternberg is the provost at Oklahoma State University. …

The less you know, the more flexible you can be in your thinking – Robert Sternberg

To be creative, you have to take sensible risks
- example was a showdown at tenure time – Key decision: to find what you love to do
- research shows creative people are almost always doing things they love

Example: son Seth playing the Trumpet
- you will never have a creative kid if you want them to be you

It is really hard to find what kids love to do, it’s hard to find what you love to do

You have to believe in yourself – you have to keep in touch with that belief

Need to tolerate ambiguity

Sense of humor: you have to take oneself and one’s ideas somewhat lightly and to a have a sense of humor.

Only God finds truth, we don’t. Creativity is a way of life.

Publish Date: 11/01/2011 13:25

http://www.speedofcreativity.org/2011/11/01/creativity-is-a-decision-keys-to-developing-creativity-in-children-and-adults/

[Image: one of Sternberg's books on creativity.]

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Developing Creativity: Mariel Hemingway Interviews SARK

Uploaded by TalentDevelop — http://bit.ly/PlanetSARK – Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy, known as SARK, says “There is nothing more important than following our creative dreams. It’s the wellspring of everything, and the wonderful news is that creative dreams are incredibly resilient – they will wait for you your entire life. People get afraid it is too late or they’ve missed out, but creative dreams will wait.

This interview was produced by Spiritual Cinema Circle – “Your source for feel-good entertainment that inspires compassion, conversation and change” – visit the site at http://bit.ly/SpiritualCinemaCircle.

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 The Therapist Who Catches Bad Guys
Real therapist invents fictional one who solves murders. By Susan K. Perry, Ph.D. in Creating in Flow

For a change of pace, licensed psychotherapist Dennis Palumbo, MA, MFT, makes up stories about a therapist who solves murders in his spare time. He says he enjoys the “silent conversation” with himself that such creative work offers. …

The Q&A

Q: What do you get out of writing that you don’t get from doing therapy? I don’t think it’s money!

Certainly not the money! I’ve been reading and writing stories since I was a teen. Writing is a passion of mine, one that not only feeds my creative impulse, but offers solitude and contemplation, the chance to explore my own heart and mind. I love being a therapist and connecting with others in that clinical–though undoubtably intimate–way. But as a respite, I appreciate the silent conversation with myself that writing provides.

Dr. Palumbo also expresses a number of insights on living an authentic creative life in a Shrink Rap Radio interview: Therapist to the Hollywood Stars – and his book [click image].

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Here is an item relating to how motivation to solve specific needs can fuel creative thinking:

Fostering Innovation and Creativity in Youth Through App Development

This story chronicled a middle school student who built an app to help him stay organized in the coming year and the revelation that more and more young people are developing their own creative solutions to problems.

Not only did the piece showcase the uniqueness of this particular student, but also the opportunity to cultivate creativity through technical awareness and skills development in children, teens, and young adults.

Organizations are helping to facilitate these conversations and learnings globally. Two such organizations are Apps for Good and Youth Radio’s Mobile Action Lab, which are teaching youth to learn, create, and improve their communities through the development of apps.

http://www.netsquared.org/blog/vanessa-rhinesmith/fostering-innovation-and-creativity-yout

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Developing the Creative Craft XVI

By Peter Mosley

Brainstorming

The term Brainstorming has become a commonly used word in the English language as a generic term for creative thinking. The basis of brainstorming is a generating ideas in a group situation based on the principle of suspending judgment – a principle which scientific research has proved to be highly productive in individual effort as well as group effort. …

In Serious Creativity, Edward de Bono describes brainstorming as a traditional approach to do deliberate creative thinking with the consequence that people think creative thinking can only be done in groups. The whole idea of brainstorming is that other people’s remarks would act to stimulate your own ideas in a sort of chain reaction of ideas.

Groups are not at all necessary for deliberate creative thinking, and Serious Creativity describes techniques for individuals to use to produce ideas. In a group you have to listen to others and you may spend time repeating your own ideas so they get sufficient attention. Thinking as a group using brainstorming can certainly produce ideas, but individual thinking using techniques such as those described by de Bono should be employed.

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Photo: paint by numbers! – By originallittlehellraiser

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Those are two of the limitations creativity author Michael Michalko addresses in his article The Seven Deadly Sins that Prevent Creative Thinking. Here are two excerpts, with some of my comments.

SIN ONE – “People do not believe they are creative. We have been taught that we are the product of our genes, our parents, our family history, our personal history, our I.Q., and our education. Consequently, we have been conditioned to have a fixed mindset about creativity and believe only a select few are born creative and the rest not.”

The painting is “Kiss of the Muse” by Paul Cezanne, from my article Creative talent: genetics, a muse, or hard work? – which also includes a video of author Elizabeth Gilbert from her presentation for a TED Conference (Technology, Entertainment, Design).

The video description notes she considered ‘the impossible things we expect from artists and geniuses — and shares the radical idea that, instead of the rare person “being” a genius, all of us “have” a genius.’

Continued: How to Stop Your Creative Thinking

Idea generation may be very “loose” and unrestrained – even fantastical and not necessarily tied to normal reality.

In my earlier post Creative Thinking and Schizophrenia, I wrote a little about the link between schizotypy and creative achievement, and included a quote by Susan K. Perry from her book Writing in Flow that “looseness and the ability to cross mental boundaries are aspects of both schizophrenic thinking and creative thinking.”

But in contrast to “looseness,” the constraint of ideas and work can enhance creativity.

In his new article How Constraints Force Us to Be More Creative, Scott Barry Kaufman, Ph.D. notes that creativity “involves variability — different ways of doing things” but also “involves constraints, which can either promote or preclude creativity.”

Continued in More Constraints, More Creativity.
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In his Demon Muse post A Brief History of the Daimon (and the Genius), Matt Cardin presents a rich overview of concepts related to creative inspiration and entities such as muses.

He writes, “In Hellenistic Rome (circa 4th – 1st centuries BCE), the word genius, like the Greek daimons, referred to spirit beings in general — and also, tangentially (and interestingly), had a direct connection to the word genie, which itself came somehow from the ancient Persian desert demons known as djinnee.

He notes the idea of the personal genius evolved to mean “the individual attendant spirit that accompanies a person and represents his or her divine intelligence and inbuilt life pattern.”

With “the outburst of Renaissance-style and Enlightenment-style humanism in the 15th through the 18th centuries… genius as a guiding and inspiring separate spirit morphed rather suddenly  into a perceived quality of extraordinary intellectual intelligence and/or artistic giftedness possessed by only a few titanic and heroic people.

“This was a significant reversal, since it meant the idea of genius went from referring to a separate force that guided and, in effect, occasionally possessed people to referring to a special inner quality that people themselves possessed.”

[Painting: Kiss of the Muse by Paul Cezanne.]

Video: Author Elizabeth Gilbert (“Eat, Pray, Love”) made a presentation for a TED Conference (Technology, Entertainment, Design) on these ideas, and the video description notes she considered ‘the impossible things we expect from artists and geniuses — and shares the radical idea that, instead of the rare person “being” a genius, all of us “have” a genius.’

For more of her quotes, see my post Just Show Up, With or Without Your Muse.

It takes practice

Writing in his New York Times Op-Ed Column on “Genius: The Modern View,” David Brooks declared, “The key factor separating geniuses from the merely accomplished is not a divine spark.

“It’s not I.Q., a generally bad predictor of success, even in realms like chess.

“Instead, it’s deliberate practice. Top performers spend more hours (many more hours) rigorously practicing their craft.”

Genes and serendipity and hard work

In his article Is genius genetic or is it nurtured?, Joe Smydo includes comments by Christopher Beard, who received a MacArthur Foundation grant, and is curator and head of vertebrate paleontology at Carnegie Museum of Natural History.

“Dr. Beard said he had his parents’ guidance, along with their genes. He’s worked industriously to make a mark in his profession. And he believes that serendipity has been on his side. “Some people would call it luck,” said Dr. Beard.

“The question of whether high-performers are born or made long has captivated the scholarly community, whose search for answers has led to studies of chess players, musicians and leaders in various fields.

“In the 1980s, Howard Gardner, professor of cognition and education at Harvard Graduate School of Education, published a ground-breaking work proposing multiple kinds of intelligence. Dr. Gardner, a 1981 MacArthur grant recipient, also proposed multiple kinds of creativity.

“In Dr. Gardner’s view, “Picasso probably could not have been Mozart and Mozart probably could not have been Picasso because they had different kinds of intelligence,” said Kenneth Kiewra, professor of educational psychology at University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

“In recent years, the mystique of high-performers has been grist for popular books, such as Daniel Coyle’s “The Talent Code: Greatness Isn’t Born. It’s Grown. Here’s How,” Geoff Colvin’s “Talent is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else” and Malcolm Gladwell’s “Outliers: The Story of Success.”

“The books downplay the notion of genetically predetermined greatness and suggest that other factors, including many hours of strategic practice, differentiate high performers.”

Just Do The Work

In her post “Creative Inspiration vs. Creative Resistance,” Jenna Avery asks if it is necessary to be “creatively inspired” before pursuing creative projects, “or is waiting for creative inspiration a pitfall that trips us up?”

She adds, “Another way of saying this is: Do you have to be in the ‘right mood’ or ‘right energy’ in order to be creative? Steven Pressfield would call this ‘resistance,’ and say instead that what we need to do is show up and ‘do the work’ no matter what pain, doubt, terror, or mood we might encounter in the process.”

Jenna Avery is an intuitive coach who works with clients to enhance their creativity and life purpose. Learn about her programs at JennaAvery.com.

Steven Pressfield is author of The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles.

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Related :

Genius: The Modern View, By David Brooks, New York Times

It takes more than talent.

Grit and perseverance mean more than talent.

Outliers and developing exceptional abilities

Audio podcast interview with creativity researcher James C. Kaufman, PhD

R. Keith Sawyer on developing creativity with time, risk, love and hard work

developing multiple talents, self-exploration, developing creativity, creative potential, creative personality type

The photo is John Dabiri, a Professor of Aeronautics and Bioengineering at Caltech, who was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship last year for his work that “draws on a wide range of fields—including theoretical fluid dynamics, evolutionary biology, and biomechanics—to unravel the secrets of one of the earliest means of animal locomotion,” according to a profile on the MacArthur site.

The bio notes, “Dabiri’s research has profound implications not only for understanding the evolution and biophysics of locomotion in jellyfish and other aquatic animals, but also for a host of distantly related questions and applications in fluid dynamics, from blood flow in the human heart to the design of wind power generators.”

The Connected Mind

That profile reminds me of creativity researcher Shelley Carson’s idea of ‘brain set’ as a take-off on ‘mind set’ in her book Your Creative Brain, particularly the ‘connect’ brain set.

She explains that “in this brain set you are generating multiple ideas, you’ve activated numerous associational networks in the brain and one idea seems to lead to another to another to another.”

From my post Shelley Carson on Brainsets and Creativity.

Her book: Your Creative Brain: Seven Steps to Maximize Imagination, Productivity, and Innovation in Your Life.  

Innovation-nurturing environments

In a post on his blog about his book “Where Good Ideas Come From,” Steven Johnson notes part of why he wrote it was “to grapple with the question of why certain environments seem to be disproportionately skilled at generating and sharing good ideas.”

In the book he considers “human environments that have been unusually generative: the architecture of successful science labs, the information networks of the Web or the Enlightenment-era postal system, the public spaces of metropolitan cities, even the notebooks of great thinkers.”

In addition, he also looks at “natural environments that have been biologically innovative: the coral reef and the rain forest, or the chemical soups that first gave birth to life’s good idea.”

The book has dozens of stories about incubating creativity “from the history of scientific, technological and cultural innovation,” including how Darwin’s “eureka moment” about natural selection “turned out to be a myth; how Brian Eno invented a new musical convention by listening to too much AM radio; how Gutenberg borrowed a crucial idea from the wine industry to invent modern printing; why GPS was accidentally developed by a pair of twenty-somethings messing around with a microwave receiver.”

His post: Where Good Ideas Come From.

Book: Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation by Steven Johnson.  

These videos are also in the post Steven Johnson on Where Good Ideas Come From, by Maria Popova on her excellent blog Brain Pickings.

Sparks of creative genius are rare

In his interview article Steven Johnson: ‘Eureka moments are very, very rare’ (The Guardian 19 October 2010), Oliver Burkeman comments on the book and notes that Johnson thinks good ideas “are built out of a collection of existing parts”, both literally and metaphorically speaking.

Burkeman concludes, ‘What all this means, in practical terms, is that the best way to encourage (or to have) new ideas isn’t to fetishise the “spark of genius”, to retreat to a mountain cabin in order to “be creative”, or to blabber interminably about “blue-sky”, “out-of-the-box” thinking.

‘Rather, it’s to expand the range of your possible next moves – the perimeter of your potential – by exposing yourself to as much serendipity, as much argument and conversation, as many rival and related ideas as possible; to borrow, to repurpose, to recombine.’

He adds, ‘This is one way of explaining the creativity generated by cities, by Europe’s 17th-century coffee-houses, and by the internet. Good ideas happen in networks; in one rather brain-bending sense, you could even say that “good ideas are networks”. Or as Johnson also puts it: “Chance favours the connected mind.”‘

Less static

But creatively connected doesn’t mean endlessly stuffing ourselves with sensory and cognitive input.

As author and intuition consultant Nancy Rosanoff notes, “Because our culture bombards us from every side to keep busy, we really do have to make an active effort to do nothing.”

Rosanoff suggests encouraging the incubation period of the creative process by finding activities that will “take your mind off the problem: “Take a day off, get some exercise, cook a nice meal. In addition, there are some things you can do to help access your intuitive side: playing an instrument, meditating, doing yoga, and yes, even sleeping. You can’t force an illumination; don’t even try.”

Jon Kabat-Zinn, author of Coming to Our Senses, points out there is a “commonly held view that meditation is a way to shut off the pressures of the world or of your own mind, but this is not an accurate impression.

“Meditation is neither shutting things out nor off. It is seeing clearly, and deliberately positioning yourself differently in relationship to them.”

From my post Living more fully without so much inner static.

Also see articles on Meditation and mindfulness.

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