“Ideally you will learn how to build your own structure or limits which will prevent you from floundering around trying to do everything - or even from wondering what to do” (p. 64).
This statement from Corita hits right at the core I find many creatives face once they leave the safety of the art classroom or workshop. Without assignments or an enthusiastic art teacher (aka me) providing them structure, many students find themselves at a big moment of growth - what do I create now?
There are many ways to view structure when it comes to our creative lives. Structure is found in deadlines for projects, organizing our calendars, personal goals, the limitations of our tools, and even how you may approach the compositions of your visual journal. So here you may be thinking, but how will I know what structures to make? Often we want the structure to be given to us, there’s comfort in knowing the plan to follow - I get it. As a teacher, I see the challenges students face when they are given boundaries for working in open-ended assignments. It’s why I purposefully don’t include examples of final work, because their final work hasn’t been made yet - there is no one right answer.
Corita’s presenting to us in this chapter a deeper connection in shaping the frameworks that fit us each uniquely as creatives, and to top it off she reminds us that “you are always making new structures” (p. 65).
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