Breaking down Barriers Workshop
A four week class conducted during the Sunday School hour
September 30 - October 21, 2007
We are co-creators, shaping ourselves, each other, and our environment.
Yet we live in a world dominated by linear, strategic thought. Art and
the creative process are open to all as vehicles for spiritual growth.
In this 4-week class we will:
> Identify barriers to creativity (examples: art is silly; art takes
lots of time and skill)
> Discuss language (examples: shape, rhythym, movement)
> Enjoy benefits (examples: stress relief, passion)
> Sample varied visual art methods and materials in hands-on activities
> Discuss the creative process and the creativity movement
Week 1 - Getting into the artistic flow
Materials/Methods: Clay molding, wood burning, crayon melting
The smell during burning, the patterns in wood which can be traced
or embellished, melting colors into each other and sliding smooth across
a warm surface, handling materials easily manipulated.
A step further—Visit a craft store. Spend time thinking about
the various materials, your feelings toward them, and assumptions about
what is involved. What have you tried in the past? What have you always
wanted to try?
Week 2 - Anytime, Anywhere
Materials/Methods: Found metals, organic materials, something from
the kitchen
Art need not be elegant and planned, using fine materials and patiently
acquired skill. It can be crazy, quick, impromptu. It can be fierce,
and swept away a moment after display. An origami napkin left behind
at the pizzeria.
A step further- While sitting in traffic, act like a photographer searching
out new perspectives. Mentally zoom, crop, pan and tilt in order to
find interesting or beautiful details in unexpected places.
Week 3 - Processing negative feelings
Materials/Methods: Fabrics, collage, destruction in the artistic process
Rip, tear, shred. Use the whole arm and scratch words from a page.
Use forboding colors. Then, allow the pieces to sit. Give them space.
When you return, weave light into the darkness.
A step further- When is destruction healthy, and when is it an end
and not a means? What attachments and metaphor do you place on the things
you keep? Are any of them negative and worthy of dismissal from your
environment?
Week 4 – Personifying the artist within
Materials/Methods: Story, pastels and concrete poetry
Conversations with the artist within, iconic images, timelines illustrating
creative journeys. Geometry, figure, and thought blend.
A step further- What qualities would you assign to your “artist
within?” Curious? Pushy? Look back in your life and identify times
when “time stood still.” Invent story lines in which you
met and converse with your “artist within?”
Discussion Material
12 Steps, a journey in confronting obstacles and courting creativity
1. Purpose - There is meaning in life, and each of us has a unique
role to play.
2. Perspective - View from new perspectives to better see limiting thoughts.
3. Experience - Let the heart race, the body move.
4. Use nature - Invite chance and include nature as a guide.
5. Use emotion - Tap into a funnel of energy.
6. Use logic - Identify inconsistencies and use them as levers to dislodge
limiting thoughts.
7. Destruct - Crumple, rip, tear-- It's okay to be negative.
8. Step by Step - Let the pieces assemble themselves.
9. Re-order - From the ruins and nonsense, find new order.
10. Gears & interrelatedness - How does this fit into everything
else?
11. Mission - Where is your sense of urgency?
12. Activism - Share your knowledge, power, gifts.
The Creative Process
In childhood, our dreams, art and play carry weight. Our attention
flitters between our inner imagination and the outer world. We experience
emotions clearly, and feel what we do and do not want. As adults, this
creative process can become muddled. Art becomes something that is silly
or perfectionist. There is pressure to fit in to social groups as an
adolescent, and into roles of provider, worker, citizen, as adult. Often
we adopt roles, rather than carving out our own.
But we are – each of us – beautiful creations made by God.
In His/Her own image, we are co-creators. We have a profound impact
on ourselves, each other, and our environment. There is worth in diving
into our own richness, into the messy areas of our minds, emotions,
bodies.
Art is a great tool for self discovery and enrichment. In this day
of mass production and specialization, it is refreshing to have a hand
in a creative process from inception to culmination. Even if it is simply
baking bread, we smell the yeast, tense our muscles as we roll, see
the smooth curve of the tanned crust as it rises.
Our thoughts are allowed to wander during the creative process, and
it is beneficial to listen. As we attune to our inner life, we may hear
a myriad of voices, including the well-known inner critic. Like a teacher
calling on children with raised hands, we can choose which voices to
listen to, when.
The Creativity Movement
There is a creativity movement afoot. Individuals seek stress relief
through yoga, guitar lessons, and clay modeling, while corporations
seek innovative workers with team-building and lateral thinking workshops.
Many activities are a result of the meeting of Eastern and Western Worlds
– martial arts, feng shui, meditation. What once was foreign is
becoming commonplace.
Society is speeding up its rate of change. The internet and globalization
are heating up competition. Ideas travel faster. “Mix up”
and “Mash up,” current hip words, refer to musical and visual
art sampling and combinations of existing elements. It’s a sort
of popularity contest for globalization. Will homogenization be the
result? Will we allow the current dominant elements—dark, sharp,
crude and cruel video games—to win? How do we honor tradition
and give it a proper place? Can we converse clearly about which cultural
elements are important to us, and which we can do without? In doing
so, could we replace war, a blunt tool which fights for a total win
of the cultural struggle?
Look at the structures and interiors we build now. Some beautiful,
graceful. Many boring and blocky. Think about the workplace from which
ideas are built— too much complacency, depression, vindictiveness,
ineffiency. How many workers are enabled to shut their eyes, envision,
and create? How much of our earthly creation is inspired by God, and
how much is done with our eyes and hearts closed?
Research at the nano-scale, or very smallest levels at which humans
can interact, will allow a revolution in materials and biologies. Like
Legos, we will grow our tools, environments, perhaps even our selves.
Like the rapid change we have experienced with computers and information
technology, we will experience bewildering growth in our creative powers.
The mindset from which we create will become far more important.
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