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Sparkle (2)
Everyone is creative.
Wait, before you protest here's why I say that. Let's take a peanut butter and jelly sandwich as an example. It's pretty basic: bread, peanut butter and jelly - the peanut butter and the jelly are put between two pieces of bread. There. Nothing creative about that is there? Wait. Yes there is.
Here come the individualized creative decisions that go into your PB&J:
- which bread did you choose to use? Wheat? Rye? Sourdough? Oat and nut? Bargain brand white or bread machine-made cranberry and hazelnut?
- which peanut butter spread did you choose to use? A favorite brand because you are convinced it tastes better than any other? Creamy? Chunky? Honey added? "Natural?"
- which jelly did you choose to use? A grape jelly? A strawberry jam? An apricot preserve? A marmalade? An apple butter? Homemade fig?
- Did you spread the peanut butter on only one piece of the bread or both? Did you put jelly on just one piece of the bread or both? Did you mix the peanut butter and jelly together and then apply it to the bread? Did you add raisins to it?
- Once made, did you cut the sandwich into two pieces? Four? Triangles? Did you retain the crust or cut it off?
See, it's the variations, the choices we make, that are the proof of the creative processes involved. When you make a PB&J you are indeed making creative decisions all the way through.
Creativity is not about picking up a pencil and drawing a realistic rendering of what's before you. That's "drawing." True, not everyone is born with the gift of instant rendering, but most of us can learn the skill of drawing a pretty good circle.
Creativity is the way our minds view and then interpret what we see. As an artist I experience creativity...I know how it feels and I think it happens intuitively [my opinion only]; that it is part and parcel of the human psyche and that it differs slightly person-to-person. Each individual sees Art differently...everything we know [and don't know], everything we've experienced in our lives to that moment, how we feel emotionally at the time...all of this informs how we approach any work of art [including the music, writing and performance arts].
Yes, discussions of creativity - the whats, whys and hows of it - often fall into the category of philosophy, but creativity is also something all of us "do" and experience every day. Think about that the next time you're looking over a menu or staring into your closet to decide what to wear that day or at the card counter at the store picking out a birthday card...these are all creative decisions.
What do you think?
Linda C Smith, Artist and Writer
