Concepts and Creation

Here is a rug ( uncompleted as you can see ) from the way back time machine. It a was a piece did at Teacher's workshop many years ago. Swatches were the material provided but the teacher ran out and I was happy to try another way. This rug looks very different from others in the class and other Paisley Hexes I've seen since. All it took as a teaspoon of daring to be different and accepting a challenge where I might fail.

The problem with the type of teaching in these environments is we create the same things over and over and over without much deviation. This impedes progress.

In a perfect class ( in my mind ) at a teacher's workshop you would be given a pattern and thrown some extremely diverse materials and visual aids for half the day to create a concept that was uniquely yours and the rest of the day would be spent comparing and discussing these possibilities.

This way teachers would go home with 15 ways of doing this project instead of the predictable one way. What fodder we would garner for our lives as teachers this way, what a well spring of delectable fresh water we would drink down and bottle up for our students.

I feel a teacher's school welling up in me! Would you be interested?

It would require you to be open to your creative spirit and the creative spirit of others.

Once you get tuned in to your creative spirit and the feelings it creates, you'll feel it welling up all the time.

Welling up is a great word for this!

I like to tell people creativity is a vast ocean of possibilities, too vast for us to conceive of with our limited imaginations. You can tap into to this ocean or reserve of creativity any time you want. You can take a teaspoon. You can take a tea cup. You can take a bowl or bucketful. You can pump it in, you can build an aqueduct so the supply rushes through you every minute.

It is up to you how much you can use, share or allow yourself to wallow in. You might want to think about how much creativity can tolerate because it can be disturbing at times too.

Maybe you like a notion of the creativity well. You can go there when you have time to drink your fill, so you don't feel frustration from urges and itches you don't have time to scratch.

So many of you are marvellously creative already. You have been all your life and you don't feel the welling up because its always been part of you. Maybe this concept is foreign to you.

Here are some signs you are getting the urge to go to the well or the well is calling you.

You are having a hard time concentrating

You are waking up in the middle of the night.

You feel restless

You might feel lonely, unsatisfied somehow

You need to be by yourself

You think of angles, and can make a decision very quickly

You are hungry

It is time to get ratcheting the bucket down the well.

Get out your tools of choice and give them a whirl. Your creativity needs attention! Your house of invention needs it closets looked into and it's shelves repapered!

Look around you for recurring concepts and themes that are attractive to you

Don't worry about what will happen - just be in the now- make a start

Dare to follow your instincts

Don't rest on your laurels

Step out of the zone of feeling good and put one foot in the zone of unsure

Accept what transpires in your work, love it or just leave it

Look for support from those who can give it.

Make, don't look, read, think, ask ... DO

"In creating, the only hard thing is to begin: a grass blade is no easier to make than an oak."
-- James Russell Lowell

This message has been brought to you from the corporate headquarters of WandaWorks International where the well is never dry but the humour always is!