For a long time, the various parts of me have felt separate: I’m both an academic and a creative. I am passionate about teaching and learning, as well as creativity and the arts. As I’ve journeyed on my path, I’ve realized that it’s my mission to bridge the academic and creative. Since images lie at [ Read more … ]
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We’re at our most creative when we actively engage with images
Creative individuals mentally play with images all the time, no matter what field they work in. But research shows that all of us are embedded in the world of mental imagery all the time… and our cognitive systems are based in metaphor. Even individuals who define themselves as “less creative” are at their most creative [ Read more … ]
What is an Image
I’m really lovin’ Lynda Barry’s book What It Is. “When I was little… I would hold myself as still as I could and make my eyes like a toy’s eyes that don’t movce and I would wait. I would wait for the other things in the room to forget about me and begin to move…I [ Read more … ]
Working the Soil: Social Change and Metaphor
Don’t look for me in a human shape. I am inside your looking. No need for form with a love this strong. The lines above from Rumi can be interpreted in more than one way. As I teach courses on the psychology of metaphor, to my mind, Rumi’s lines refer to the power that metaphors [ Read more … ]
Non-Literal Ways of Knowing
Picasso: Every one wants to understand art. Why not try to understand one song of a bird? Why does one love the night, flowers, everything around one, without trying to understand? But in case of a painting, people have to understand. If only they would realize above all that an artist works because he must, [ Read more … ]