Creativity, Value, Scraps

This is just a thought about my creativity, how it affects my life and perhaps others…. I don’t remember a time when I was not brimming with creativity; I would rather invent, make or design something than do any other kind of activity. I couldn’t tell you where that urge comes from; I know that other members of my family have it, yet at the same time it was somewhat trivialized. My mother was always downgrading her talent and saying she didn’t have time to be creative. Too often I was praised for making something predictable but not for experimenting -- that was a “waste of materials”. I have, unfortunately, absorbed a strong fear of wasting materials -- on the one hand, it helps me when I do assemblage, collage and other scrap craft, but OTOH it stops me from experimenting if I can’t see some ultimate value for the outcome (the best I can do is to “promise” to use it in scrap craft, ie: my paste paper experiments and monotypes become collage papers).

I know I am happiest when I am being creative. Give me a whole day to make art or to write, and I will pass up a trip to the coast, or a free shopping trip… or even a hot fudge sundae! And yet, I still find it hard to allow myself that time… and I want to know where that interdict comes from. Some of it is a pervasive “time is money” point of view; not just me, but many people believe the time one spends on something needs to “pencil out” somehow. I’ve been more successful lately in pulling away from that Celestial Accounting Book myth; seeing the value (as calculated in sheer joy) of allowing myself to move from color to texture to words and back, seeing how it revives my spirit and (even though much of the time is spent alone) reconnects me to my fellow humans has taught me that “value” ain’t just dollars and cents.

Now my challenge is to be able to sustain that POV in the face of our culture’s marketing mania. I have had some of my happiest times when giving my stuff away to friends and family, and having them tell me that it made an impact. I feel I’m at my most creative when I’m trying to come up with a special birthday or Christmas gift or card. Some kind of connection is made between what I know of the person (or maybe between their spirit and mine) and I create something that doesn’t seem to arise when I’m creating “for the market”… so creativity is definitely about connection, for me…But, speaking of “time is money”, I am now late for a board meeting, so I need to end this and run.