{"id":2278,"date":"2009-09-03T09:27:34","date_gmt":"2009-09-03T13:27:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gloriahansen.com\/weblog\/?p=2278"},"modified":"2009-09-03T09:28:13","modified_gmt":"2009-09-03T13:28:13","slug":"gilbert-on-nurturing-creativity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gloriahansen.com\/weblog\/?p=2278","title":{"rendered":"Gilbert on Nurturing Creativity"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Last night I watched this video, Elizabeth Gilbert – author of a favorite book, Eat, Pray, Love<\/a>, on nurturing creativity.<\/p>\n

Elizabeth Gilbert muses on the impossible things we expect from artists and geniuses — and shares the radical idea that, instead of the rare person “being” a genius, all of us “have” a genius. It’s a funny, personal and surprisingly moving talk.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em>She talked about the success of her book and people now asking her “Aren’t you afraid that you’ll never live up to your prior success … that you’ll be a failure?”<\/p>\n

She goes on to discuss how creativity was originally looked upon as an outside entity that visits one and graces it with a bolt of inspiration.\u00a0 The Romans referred to creativity as genius.\u00a0 Again, an outside force that would possess one with inspiration.\u00a0 At one point things changed.\u00a0 “We went from having a creative genius to being a creative genius.” And with that comes a lot of pressure, suffering, and despair.\u00a0 She talked about the “painful reconciliation” people go through when success comes along and then wanes.<\/p>\n

Immediately I could relate to the despair.\u00a0 In honesty, I was beyond thrilled to win two major awards this past year – Master of Innovative Artistry in Houston’s IQA ’07 show and Best Wall Hanging in AQS’s ’08 show resulting in a purchase award by the National Quilt Musuem — just in case you’re wondering and because I like repeating it once in the while as I still am stunned they happened.\u00a0 But with that thrill came the heavy feeling that that is that.\u00a0 I’ll never hit that high again.\u00a0 My best is now behind me.<\/p>\n

Some years ago at Quilt Market, an amazing quilt artist and I were sharing a table at the C&T booth promoting our books. The following\u00a0 Quilt Market I had another book to promote.\u00a0 She was at Market and came up to me saying she felt like last year’s news because her book was relegated to the back shelf.\u00a0 She no longer felt important, and she even commented that she felt invisible.\u00a0 I remember telling her she certainly was not\u00a0 invisible and, besides, my books will be on that shelf soon enough.\u00a0 Things cycle.\u00a0\u00a0 And it didn’t take long.\u00a0 All 13 books in the Free Stuff on the Internet series are out of print (although I’ve boxes of each in my basement, if anyone is interested).\u00a0 Does it sadden me?\u00a0 At times it did.\u00a0 At times it still does.\u00a0 But on good days I’m simply proud they happened to begin with.<\/p>\n

On good days I truly am happy for others who get the awards, who have the new books out, who create inspiring works of art.\u00a0 On good days I see everyone’s successes as knitted together, and I feel pride for someone I know doing well (I can feel pride for complete strangers).\u00a0 On a bad day when I stare at a blank monitor or piece of paper, trying to work out a new design, I find myself wondering if I’ll ever be creative again.\u00a0 It is painful.\u00a0 It can feel like torture.\u00a0 I can beat myself up like no one can. \u00a0 I can even get to the point where everything I create looks like junk and I throw things away.\u00a0 As a matter of fact one of those big award winning pieces was in the garbage.\u00a0 It was my partner who encouraged me to carry on.\u00a0 For that matter, he’s taken more than creation out of the garbage.<\/p>\n

In short, Elizabeth’s talk was a good one.\u00a0 It came at a good time.\u00a0 For the downtime, when nothing is coming together, she suggests just showing up and doing the work (is that why they call it “art work”?).\u00a0 And that’s what I’m off to do – I’m here and I’m ready to work. \u00a0 And, when I get stuck, as I know I will, I will try (“try” rather than “will” – is lingering doubt nearby?) to stay busy and wait for the design gods to visit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last night I watched this video, Elizabeth Gilbert – author of a favorite book, Eat, Pray, Love, on nurturing creativity. Elizabeth Gilbert muses on the impossible things we expect from artists and geniuses — and shares the radical idea that, instead of the rare person “being” a genius, all of us “have” a genius. It’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artdesign","category-creativity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gloriahansen.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gloriahansen.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gloriahansen.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gloriahansen.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gloriahansen.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2278"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/www.gloriahansen.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2278\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2296,"href":"https:\/\/www.gloriahansen.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2278\/revisions\/2296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gloriahansen.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gloriahansen.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gloriahansen.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}