“The Creative Process” is a term that is most loved by art schools and professors. I’ve heard it sooo many times since I’ve started college, not saying it’s a bad thing! It’s not really a term that can easily be defined, not in my opinion anyways.
In the basics, it is the way an artist works. It is how you form ideas, how you execute the ideas and how you produce work.
Kim asked me a question the other day, “K. How do you create your journals? Paint and stamps and sketches and whatnot? What inspires you? It’s all so lovely and quite inspiring, actually. I am very curious.”
I wanted to answer in a full blog post because it’s something that I think is interesting and inspiring to hear.
Before I begin answering, I want to point out one photographer that has a very interesting Creative Process. Her name is Ann Hamilton, we watched an Art 21 clip about her in my Photo Seminar class.
She has a project called “Face to Face” in which she uses pinhole photography. She makes a small pinhole camera (out of a film canister) and holds it in her mouth, then opens her mouth to take a portrait of a stranger or a friend. In her own words, Hamilton spoke of this project, “But, even in situations where it’s more or less a stranger, that being willing to stand face to face or to turn and and allow that kind of odd, formal, but very intimate act – that it’s about opening. I mean, I don’t know if it’s like soul to soul, or if that would be a word I would use, but I would say it’s about revealing something that’s not the surface stuff that we usually allow out to the world.”
In the clip we watched she talked about how the process of standing in such a vulnerable position for minutes on end and being that open to the other person was more important and significant to her than how the image turned out. And that is a very deep and interesting Creative Process. That is the point of the creative process I think, to have the act of creating more important than the creation.
Which brings me back to myself. I’ve always said that it doesn’t matter how your pages in the journal come out, it is the process, the act of creating the pages that matter. The final product can turn out looking like the worst piece of art ever created, but if you learned something about yourself or about why or how you create along the way, that is all that matters.
What inspires me, Kim?
I love these questions, they’re so simple really, but so difficult to find the answer for. In general, nature and the quietness, the simpleness of nature has always inspired me. To look at say a leaf, something we see everyday, but then to examine it, to really really look at it and realize how beautiful it is even in death, is inspiring to me. Sometimes a color inspires me. More often than not, emotions drive my journals however. I keep an art journal almost as therapy half the time, it is a place to put my feelings and my thoughts and not worry about who reads it or who looks at it because it can be just for me if it choose that. Emotions are such a powerful tool. They are also a strong driving force for my photography, I think one of my ultimate goals with my work is to great art that is impact-full, that people walk away with an emotion, something that makes them feel and think.
Words. Words are one of the biggest inspirations for me, be it a poem, a creative writing book, a quote from an artist or even just simply one word. Words flow as an extension of my fingers and therefore flow just as fluidly into my journals and my photography.
New techniques also inspire me, when I learn of something new I can do in my journal or with my photography, I am anxious to get my hands on my journal or my finger on the shutter so I can attempt it for myself.
How do I create my journals?
Lots of ways really. Generally I start with paint. I usually use watercolor but have recently found myself working with acrylics (after a long running hatred of acrylics, I am beginning to accept their usefulness). Paper. Paper. Paper. I have such a huge obsession with paper it makes no sense. I have hundreds and hundreds of pages of scrap-booking paper, home-made paper, construction paper and everything in between. I forgot to add, paper is a HUGE inspiration to me. The right page can drive me to work in a journal just as fast as anything else, if not faster.
Sometimes I use magazines or image transfers of my own photos.
I use lots of ephemera, lots of found objects and 3-D type pieces. Leaves, fabric, beads, wax, book pages….
Tech pens and Calligraphy pens usually are what finish off my piece. Either by adding some special touches of sketches or words or outlining part of an image.
How I create is much more difficult to answer than what inspires me, because each page I create almost completely differently. I use so many different elements and objects on my pages, that it is hard to be specific. In my journals, I create instinctively, I just let it happen. I don’t think as much when I journal, what needs to be on the page will make it’s way there as I work.
What about other people? Can you answer the same questions? What inspires you? How do you create? What is your Creative Process?