Jack’s Notebook

October 2, 2007 by 2 Comments

A friend, who attended a workshop led by Gregg Fraley, lent me a copy of Jack’s Notebook. I admit I was a little skeptical about the concept: a business novel about creative problem solving (CPS). After reading countless books on creativity, most of them boring or redundant, I was ready for something new.

Jack’s Notebook was just the book I’d been looking for. A cross between Way of the Peaceful Warrior and The Da Vinci Code, it tells the story of Jack, an aimless young man, who meets Manny, a mentor, who teaches him creative problem solving (CPS) which he uses to change the direction of his life.

Fraley outlines the steps of CPS in the introduction:

  1.  Identify the challenge
  2.  Facts and feelings exploration
  3. Problem framing and reframing
  4. Idea generation
  5. Solution development
  6. Action planning

Then, he goes on to incorporate them into Jack’s decision making, which ultimately leads to him starting his own business – among other thrilling adventures.

  • What can you achieve using creative problem solving (CPS)?
Filed Under: Books, Business Creativity, Imagination, Problem Solving

Color in Motion

September 21, 2007 by 1 Comment

You’ll never look at color in the same way after viewing this interactive site that presents an entertaining lesson in color symbolism. It will inspire the way you create.

  • Check it out here.
Filed Under: Creativity, Ideas, Imagination

Guerilla Art Kit

August 23, 2007 by 3 Comments

After promoting Keri Smith’s guerilla art techniques, I discovered that she now has a full length book on the topic. Hurrah!

It covers everything from what is guerilla art to what to be aware of when creating art in public spaces and exercises and templates to fuel your creativity. I love how she describes that you don’t have to be able to draw or paint to be a guerilla artist; you just need to care about something and want to express yourself.

She describes 3 ways to approach guerilla art:

 

  1. beautifying – altering your surroundings
  2. questioning – using your voice, challenging the status quo
  3. interacting – with the environment or people

As a public art enthusiast, I appreciate that the exercises are easy to follow and most importantly create a community connection. From guerilla gardening (she shows you how to make a seed bomb to throw in vacant lots) to chalk quotes and book leave-behinds, Smith will get you thinking about your own environment and questioning how you can change it for the better. There’s even a list for you to find solutions and create your own guerrilla art projects.

Filed Under: Books, Imagination, Public Art

Try the Scribbler

August 19, 2007 by Leave a Comment

Create a simple sketch, then click on the Scribbler and watch it transform into a more complex drawing. You can even add color.

Filed Under: Drawing, Imagination

Susan Danko Artist

July 17, 2007 by Leave a Comment

During a recent day trip up to the Lake Erie Islands, I stumbled upon a small gallery. At first writing off the shop as another touristy art trap, I was pleasantly proved wrong, when I discovered some small works by Ohio artist Susan Danko.

They were constructed like reverse shadow boxes with the painting on the back of the box providing a hollowed surface to hang the works easier. The dreamy landscapes were layered with vivid colors and lines, which reminded me of contemporary designs

Image  Bonfoey Gallery

Filed Under: Artists, Design, Imagination, Painting

Top This TV Challenge

May 9, 2007 by 1 Comment

Are you noticing a trend here? Companies encouraging and even promoting creative expression. First, there was the Wheat Thins contest honoring women artists, and now Heinz is promoting an interactive contest inspired by their ketchup.

The Top This TV challenge by Heinz is another fun contest to exercise your creativity. Create a commercial for the famous ketchup and get paid $57,000. Commercials will appear on YouTube then the finalists will be voted on by you.

Filed Under: Contests, Creativity, Imagination

Radical Lace & Subversive Knitting

April 12, 2007 by 2 Comments

In the last several years, traditional arts have made a resurgence. I’ve been pleased that knitting and crocheting have been at the forefront of this movement.

Therefore, it was only a matter of time till artists started incorporating these materials and techniques into works that are innovative and thought provoking.

It allows us to look at these art forms with new eyes and question our old assumptions.

Filed Under: Exhibitions, Imagination, Museums

More Mail Art

April 5, 2007 by Leave a Comment

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I am taking a mail art class through a local arts organization. The first assignment was to create a self-portrait. Here is the collage I created of myself that I sent to the other participants.

After we received everyone else’s self-portraits, we were then instructed to combine them all, somehow, to create a group portrait of everyone in the class.

  • Try creating your self-portrait.
Filed Under: Collage, Imagination, MailArt

Cans Get Creative For a Cause

March 28, 2007 by Leave a Comment

In another life, I used to work and teach simultaneously in 2 architecture museums in Washington, DC. Although, I don’t have a degree in architecture, like many people assumed at the time, I do however have a passion for the built environment.

Another organization with a similar passion, Canstruction enlists competing teams of architects and engineers to create sculptures out of canned food, which are later donated to local food banks for distribution to those in need.

Filed Under: Architecture, Imagination, Innovation

Why the Arts Rule

March 3, 2007 by Leave a Comment

As an advocate of art education, not only for children, but for adults too. I think we can all learn something new from the arts. The National Art Education Association agrees with me.

Here is their take on the benefits of studying the arts: Ten Lessons the Arts Teach By Elliot Eisner.

The arts teach children to make good judgments about qualitative relationships. Unlike much of the curriculum in which correct answers and rules prevail, in the arts, it is judgment rather than rules that prevail.

The arts teach children that problems can have more than one solution and that questions can have more than one answer.

The arts celebrate multiple perspectives. One of their large lessons is that there are many ways to see and interpret the world.

The arts teach children that in complex forms of problem solving purposes are seldom fixed, but change with circumstance and opportunity. Learning in the arts requires the ability and a willingness to surrender to the unanticipated possibilities of the work as it unfolds.

The arts make vivid the fact that neither words in their literal form nor number exhaust what we can know. The limits of our language do not define the limits of our cognition.

The arts teach students that small differences can have large effects.

The arts traffic in subtleties.

The arts teach students to think through and within a material. All art forms employ some means through which images become real.

The arts help children learn to say what cannot be said. When children are invited to disclose what a work of art helps them feel, they must reach into their poetic capacities to find the words that will do the job.

The arts enable us to have experience we can have from no other source and through such experience to discover the range and variety of what we are capable of feeling.

The arts’ position in the school curriculum symbolizes to the young what adults believe is important.

SOURCE: Eisner, E. (2002). The Arts and the Creation of Mind, In Chapter 4, What the Arts Teach and How It Shows. (pp. 70-92). Yale University Press. Available from NAEA Publications

  • Find art education resources here.
Filed Under: Art Education, Imagination, Problem Solving
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