I taught creative process courses for several years in a graduate program at the Sophia Center at Holy Names University. The thing I enjoyed most about teaching this course was that I got to share the things that inspired me. Week to week all I did was bring in what inspired me. So on that [ Read more … ]
Art
17 potent, inspiring and relatively unknown books on the power of art, imagination, learning, and metaphor
In alphabetical order, 17 potent, inspiring, and relatively unknown books on the power of art, imagination, learning, and metaphor. (These are books not commonly known, so that’s why some popular books on creativity and imagination aren’t listed.) Enjoy. THE AESTHETIC DIMENSION: Towards a Critique of Marxist Aesthetics by Herbert Marcuse ALONE WITH THE ALONE: Creative [ Read more … ]
The psyche prefers to work with images.
For many years I led creative writing workshops. Early on I noticed that some writing prompts tended to keep people entrenched in analytical thinking and their subsequent writing was heady and dry. These exercises often involved using a word or newspaper headline to write from. Their writing might have been slick and witty, but it [ Read more … ]
Our world needs the artist’s cognitive capacities
The physicist Arthur Zajonc says that our culture needs the artist’s cognitive capacities. But what ARE those cognitive capacities? Perhaps those capacities include the artist’s willingness to be confused, welcoming any unlikely connection that shows up. Perhaps it’s his or her sensitivity to nuance and qualities of beauty that others miss. Perhaps artists are more [ Read more … ]
Art is love ~ Paul Reynard
The artist Paul Reynard wrote: “A work of art is necessarily incomplete. It is a way of learning.” We’re all in this process of art-making, whether we think of ourselves as artists or not, because we’re all learners. Reynard was asked before he died, “What is the place of art in contemporary life?” He responded, [ Read more … ]