Browsing: Letters

Letters
8 Your teenage brain

A recent study published by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has reframed the vulnerabilities of the risk-taking, reward-seeking brains of adolescents. Now, it seems, those teenage brains are actually powerhouses of creativity. After all, we can’t develop new ideas or build skill without taking chances. Innovation requires a near-absence of caution — once considered a weakness in young people, but something scholars now believe could be a teen’s greatest creative strength.

Letters
12 The child within us

“The childhood shows the man, as morning shows the day,” said the British poet John Milton. For many of us, the choice to be creative was made early on, and it had a lot to do with how we interacted with others. Boston College professor of psychology Ellen Winner found a great many similarities in her studies of gifted children — difficulty making friends, scholastic boredom, and social problems. While often unconventional and nonconforming, her subjects seemed to become creative because of the introversion that sprang from teasing or isolation. “The more profound the gift, the more the isolation.” she noted.

Letters
18 Slow-motion multi-tasking

English Economist Tim Harford defines creative growth as taking ideas from their original context and applying them elsewhere. Like cross training, he says, it inoculates our creative muscles against hitting a plateau. To avoid getting stuck, just change the subject. Here are a few ideas:

Organize your studio and surrounding areas like a Montessori classroom — with stations geared towards different projects you can flutter to and from. When work slows or you hit an obstacle, move to another station and pick up where you left off.

Letters
13 Studio visit ideas

We each have unique social styles and levels of tolerance for visitors to our creative sanctuaries, but after watching my dad do it for forty years, I’ve picked up a few techniques that I continue to use. Whether it’s a gallery, curator, collector, a sprawling group or a single soul, you can manage their impact on your creative happiness. A sensitive, well-planned visit can carry the potential for creative enrichment and could advance your practice, even your dreams. Here are a few ideas:

Letters
7 Cheap advice

Last Sunday I gave an artist’s talk. There was standing room only in the small museum where my retrospective exhibition is being held. Some people had to stand out in the hall where they couldn’t hear, so I’m giving it a repeat this coming Sunday.

I’ve tried to figure out the usefulness of the talk convention, and what others might be getting out of it. Most who attended were artists, but there were quite a few collectors as well. I kept my talk to one hour — including spirited audience interaction

Letters
8 A study of us

Hadia Hassan, a fourth-year honours visual art and anthropology student at York University in Toronto, is working on a research study of online communities. As an artist herself, Hadia is especially interested in how artists use the Internet to further their art practices, connect online and even shape their creative lives. The Painter’s Keys, she says, is interesting because of its many long-time artist, student, curator, collector, dealer and educator subscribers and The Letters’ 21 years of evolution.

Letters
31 Prints or originals?

This morning Pamela Haddock of Sylva, NC, wrote, “Our art association is in a quandary. One of the requirements of our well-attended and successful group shows is that all work has to be original, with no reproductions. We make an exception for photographers. Now some of our painting members want to keep and enjoy their own originals and are busy making giclees. They want to show and sell them. Some club members don’t want this. I can’t see what the fuss is about — it seems they’re reproductions just like photos. What do you think about having prints among our originals?”

Letters
14 A valentine for teachers

When I was 12, I had two art teachers — Jenny, a sculptor and ceramicist, and Carolynn, a printmaker. When Jenny emailed this week, I wrote back with a question: “Do the Great Teachers know the depth of their impact and all the crystalline memories and indelible moments of encouragement and example they imprint?” She replied with photos of a painting I had given her at my graduation, with a love letter written on the back that read, “Thanks for pushing.”

Letters
14 Talent

“What a bitter struggle is waged between talent and fate,” wrote Nguyen Du, author of The Tale of Kieu, the most revered saga in Vietnamese literature. So important is the 3,254-verse epic poem that most children in Vietnam know much of it by heart. Written in 1820, it’s the story of a young girl whose beauty is her principal talent but who suffers one miserable setback after the other. Finally, she is forced to sell herself. The Vietnamese take the story to be a metaphor for their country — beautiful but doomed. “When one is endowed with talent,” goes the moral, “one cannot depend on it.”

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