CONNECT + CREATE
How do we make connections?
Currently sitting on the floor of the Minneapolis airport with thoughts flying faster than I can type. This past week I’ve been learning and connecting at the National Art Educators Association’s national conference, which - yes, is the serious people watching you are currently imagining it is. So while I apologize for not sharing my chapter thoughts this past Wednesday (my weekly goal), I’m not sorry for being intentional in wanting a space to write/share following this time spent with art teachers.
In this week’s reading - Connect + Create, Corita waits five chapters before actually talking about creating things, and even then she still offers us a new way of thinking about what it means to create something. She writes, “genuine creation is not merely the product of a gifted person” (p. 96) a direct statement to many mistaken beliefs around creativity. Instead, she’s asking us to embrace a bigger view of creativity - an approach in our own making of connections. She does this intentionally in how she sets her students up for creative thinking. Corita admits to herself, “When teaching, I aim to present a wide range of ideas and images to confuse students out of their assumptions of what art is and how a class is taught” (p. 90).
She starts our chapter with a creative thinking prompt right away by sharing with us the dictionary definitions to relate and to connect: this is such an art teacher move - by presenting definitions she’s encouraging her students here to already start making their own connections. The previous chapters - looking, sources, and structures are all in preparation to see where to begin in our own creative journeys. Creating is to take action and when I connected with the definition of the verb to take act (below), the similar words share similarities of past chapters in just making a mark and finding structures like steps.
This is important for me to point out to my students, as I believe like Corita, that there are so many ways to be creative that aren't based on a final product. This is a hard pill for many to swallow. Most of us are fed beliefs that being creative is the grandiose final piece of fine art, only allowed to few “creative geniuses”. This limited belief is where I experience humans thinking they’re “not creative” - Corita writes, however, that “the synthesis of creativity and connections is a process we are all experts in” (p. 94). We make connections inherently as humans, the work of uncovering one’s own creativity is making your own connections with the creative process. What happens when we shift our understanding to “the creative process is the same, whether we dance, make soup, shoe horses-or whatever it is we choose to do in this world” (p. 98)?
What does the term connection resonate in your life?
Throughout this chapter, Corita shares many ways in which she views the importance of connections in our creative practices - “the making of connections defines and makes possible creativity” (p. 94). This statement has stuck with me personally for years now, making my connection antenna always buzzing finding (and writing here) connections I think about between teaching, learning, and creativity in our culture.
Phew, there’s lots to digest in this chapter. So thanks for diving deep with me. Noticing, fostering, and sharing connections is one of my favorite practices in the act of teaching. Getting to know my students, sharing new ideas, and making marks in a sketchbook are all ways I hope to lead my students into making their own connections with themselves as creative human beings.
What connections will you pay attention to this week?
creative exercise: words + images
This creative exercise is to get you making connections. By combining words with images, how does the connection between them change? You do not have to wait for connections to magically happen, you can use collage to discover visual connections right in your journal.
timeframe: 15-45 Minutes
materials: visual journal, magazines, scissors, pens/pencils
steps:
Start by cutting out magazine images and words. No need to overthink here, start by finding things that stand out to you, make a pile to choose from.
Awesome, now start to arrange images and words into various compositions. Leave some white space here.
Create as many “mini-compositions” with your cut images and words as you have time. Now look at them, what connections do you see going on?
BONUS: Look up some of your favorite poems, quotes, or song lyrics. Add any further connections to your collage.
To wrap it up, here’s a list of my creative connections/celebrations for April so far,
Check out this incredible group that gathered with me for journaling to an acoustic set by LVDY the morning after Boot Tan Fest this year. In our journaling workshop, I asked everyone to think of their own connections to themselves, their experience, and others as a way.
Photos taken by my creative connection (aka friend) Kersten Vasey Bowers.
Here’s my Field Notes notebooks drawing connecting with all of them.
Sent my mom and sister these floral bouquets for their birthdays. Sending homemade snail mail is one of my favorite ways to connect.
Lynda Barry (painter, cartoonist, writer, illustrator, playwright, editor, commentator, and teacher - love this list) is a supreme connection maker. Loved sitting in the audience with my visual journal connecting with her morning talk.
This bumper sticker at the Walker Art Museum.
Spending time with my undergrad art professor and mentor.
Shapes, obviously.
My cousin made me this wrap, how we care for each other is full of creative connections.
April Fool’s powder day!
Sounds like the conference was a meaningful experience! And I love your reflections on connections - this is an important part of my creative practice.