(no subject)

[jinian]

I love reading Charles de Lint. I start thinking in myth.

I've also been thinking about my creativity, partly because of nanowrimo and partly because of lampworking class. I feel kind of unworthy a lot of the time because I am primarily an input person and I don't have a lot of Big Creative Ideas. It occurred to me that in the past an artistic person could spend a whole lifetime working on gargoyles or mosaic edging, and that maybe I am an embellisher instead of a builder. I might sometimes have ideas for the whole cathedral, but putting beauty into the world doesn't have to happen on a grand scale. It's perfectly okay to need a jumping-off point; it doesn't mean I'm less creative, just differently so.

I'm not entirely convinced yet, but I think this is a good thing to consider.

Comments

[marzipan-pig.livejournal.com]

I think of you as super-creative, what with the fancy red painted
cabinets and all. yeah, I guess different things unlock
it more in different people. I tend to go on weird little
'practical' creative tears over shortish periods of time, like 'stuffed animals'
or 'home made envelopes' or 'soap' and not so much Big Art For
Art's Sake kinds of projects that last for years over my life.

[jinian.livejournal.com]

Thank you, it's cool to know that you think that. I don't feel like the drawers (which are here (http://www.drizzle.com/~skywise/red-drawers/) if anyone wants to see them) are the same as making things from scratch, so that's embellishment too. I started with an item and decorated it. Also, making jewelry manages to fall under "embellishment" most of the time, because it's pure decoration.

Things with structure are what I don't make much. Like it would be uncharacteristic for me to have an inspiration about what a piece of furniture should look like and then construct it, you know? It was part of my trouble with the first day of lampworking, where he like just turned us loose to make stuff. Well, make what? If he had said, "Make a cat" or something I would have been able to express myself in the way that I made it, but a blank canvas (to switch media entirely) doesn't inspire me at all.

Art from scratch

[wiredferret.livejournal.com]

I would be all mopey if I thought art had to be from-scratch. All of my expressions are pearls. That is to say, without an irritant, I could not create a pearl.

To write, I need a phrase or idea or rhyme to start with.

To cook, I always start with a known recipe and modify it.

And you don't even want to know how derivative my quilting is. I need to stop reading books about art quilts, or I'll never be able to do it again.

My line between arts and crafts is very fuzzy. If I think it's pretty when it's done, and am willing to display it, then darn it, I'll say it's art. The doing is the craft.

[rosefox]

I don't know anyone who commits art without some kind of inspiration. Sometimes the inspiration is external, sometimes internal; makes no difference to me. I still call it "art". And it's still beautiful.

Most of my musical inspiration is internal, and most of my knotwork expiration is external, for the record.

[jinian.livejournal.com]

That is somewhat validating but not really what I mean. :) I see your knotwork as analogous to my jewelry-making -- at least in result, I don't know how it feels to you -- but I don't do anyhting that is similar to making songs, where there is nothing to start with, or only uncombined elements, and something with a structure and presence exists when I'm done. If I were very musical, I think it might be as though I couldn't write songs from scratch but could create harmonies or arrange existing songs.

I want to make a thing whole in itself. I guess I used to do it with clay sometimes, but I feel like that was an outgrowth of messing about until I had enough randomness to choose a seed. I never have an inspiration just from me, and I feel like if one is a Real Artist one is supposed to have that.

[rosefox]

I don't know what kind of jewelry you make, so I can't discuss that in very much detail, but... if what you do is starting out with a pile of wire and string and beads and ending up with jewelry, that's very much like what my songwriting is like. I start out with a pile of notes and harmonies and rhythms and end up with music. There is something to start with; I wouldn't be able to write music the way I do if I didn't listen to so much.

The only difference between that and my knotwork design is that it's less of a direct connection. With the knotwork, I see something and move directly from that to a pattern ("Oh, look, a Kokopelli! I bet I could make a Kokopelli pattern"). With the music, all my combined musical knowledge collects in my brain, and then I decide that I want to write in a certain mood, and riffle through my memories of other music that's brought on that mood ("Hmm, it's chilly and autumnal. That would be a sort of brisk minor melody"); or words that I've encountered put themselves together and I write music for them in the same fashion, like "Spare Change". It's still work. I've only very rarely experienced anything like a song appearing, complete, in my head. And the last time I got a full-blown chorus that way, I examined the melody closely and realized it was borrowed wholesale from someplace else.

I don't see arranging harmonies or arranging beads as fundamentally different from arranging notes or arranging words. It's just a matter of what you've encountered and what's implanted itself in your brain. I just know how music goes, because I listen to so much of it. I know how sentences are built because I've read thousands and thousands of them. The way that melodies and sentences and verses and rhythms and rhymes go together just... makes sense to me.

[firecat]

I can relate to the notion that one's art "doesn't count" unless one makes it all from scratch. I think it's not true though -- at least for me it seems like something I beat myself up with rather than something that frees me to explore as I please.

[baratron.livejournal.com]

I feel kind of unworthy a lot of the time because I am primarily an input person and I don't have a lot of Big Creative Ideas. It occurred to me that in the past an artistic person could spend a whole lifetime working on gargoyles or mosaic edging, and that maybe I am an embellisher instead of a builder.

Yes! That's me!

The other day, I sat polishing a silver duck of Richard's that had been allowed to get terribly tarnished over the 20+ years since his christening. Afterwards, it gleamed - and actually looked like a valuable item again. I enjoyed it so much that I wondered how much people charge to clean silver, and whether I could do it as a freelance job to make some money.

Embellisher - yes, that's me. I'm not very good at fiction writing (short of short stories), but I can do voices, conversations, descriptions and mannerisms. I'd like to find a writing partner to work with - someone who can come up with the plot and then give the base to me to rewrite. I'd have a chance with fiction then.