WagingArt

“It is not so much where my motivation comes from but rather how it manages to survive. “     (Louise Bourgeois)

Recap from last week:

• Starting point – WCCC AFA program profile
• Goals – Course Collaborations, certificate development, grants
• Game plan –Move. Anticipate the hurdles, deal with the unknowns

This week I began work with our college grant writer, Debbie Williams, on putting into a plan what we envision for the art program. The grant is under way, first draft due next week. In the heart of the unvarnished work of assessment and articulation to actualize a plan, it is important to remind ourselves why we do what we do.

We’ve all experienced it… that time when we are so engaged in what we’re doing that a kind of “time-warp” event occurs. Five hours can seem like a half hour, and if we’re engaged in something we really love to do, a quite profound satisfaction lingers in our bones.

In a career of shifting between the world of art education and my own private workspace, I have had to manage three things:

• Never forgetting my convictions about art – why I do what I do,
• Getting myself in the studio and creating, and
• Getting help when I need it to keep on going.

It is a daunting task to switch to the business-mind. It is a mode of thinking that requires specific language, clear and to the point, and demands a focused, deliberate mindset that stretches the creative brain, perhaps because it is resisting this kind of clear-cut thinking. Getting professionals to help with this task is a must.

What is also critical to manage – to integrate in the same span of these business tasks is the importance of serious, creative play. The “play” I’m talking about is not to be mistaken with passively being entertained, but actively exploring how one’s  own mind works. Necessary because it keeps us remembering why we are doing what we do. By participating in the creative act itself, the process does not merely reside as an “idea” or a “theory,” we make something, and that work has potential to ripple into the world. Powerful stuff.

A few years ago I listened to an interview with neuropsychologist, Rex Jung on how intelligence and creativity work in one’s brain-

“… the analogy I’ve used is there’s this superhighway in the brain that allows you to get from Point A to Point B. With creativity, it’s a slower, more meandering process where you want to take the side roads and even the dirt roads to get there, to put the ideas together. So the down regulation of frontal lobes, in particular, is important to allow those ideas to link together in unexpected ways.”

Linking unexpected ways are timely in a workforce that needs  the humanities to help foster innovations, and likewise, by making art we sustain our motivation to tend to art being fully in the world.