This post is directed at the faculty and staff of the Art Institute and the School of the Art Institute. What would you like to say to a class of mostly freshman students who are taking “The Art of Crossing the Street”? This class is about investigating the role of the artist in society and involves critical readings, field trips, visits from faculty experts and a class project where the students work in teams.
Possible questions to guide your comments: Why do you create? How do you support yourself? What would you have done differently? What guidelines do you follow to keep yourself fresh and engaged? Who inspires you? Thank you!
The Art of Crossing the Street Weblog 
Well – I guess I can start…
Why create? It’s who I am. I love to be involved in the creative process. I’m really not an artist, although I once was a Shakespearean actor. I’ve been more of a producer/animator/organizer. Check out the concept of flow, proposed by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (
http://qlrc.cgu.edu/mike.htm). Flow is the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing, characterized by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity. When I’m in a creative mode – the flow is on!In terms of keeping yourself fresh and engaged. For students it’s probably not an issue as you’ve in a learning environment. But as you get older and more settled, I find it useful to follow the Red Queen’s advice to Alice and to “do at least five impossible things before breakfast.” Failing that, try exploring, traveling, reading outside your discipline, networking, taking on ambitious projects, and having a playful an d questioning mindset.
Who inspires me? Vincent Van Gogh, Gandhi, Saul Alinksy, Paul Wellstone, Hokusai, Stan Lee, Bruce Springteen, Ben Franklin, Louis Armstrong, Jane Addams, Gail Cincotta, Paul Robeson, Jane Goodall…
I think people tend to make art that would satisfy the audience because the society always look for limited art and commercial (many artists nowadays look for something new and fresh that would get people’s attention). But I think making art for the audience is something that an artist should think about. The artists make art because it is something that they enjoy to do; i think better to really make art that one is involved in the creative process; if they would only make art that would fulfill the audience they would not be able to enjoy while making it,
I think too often artists are unable to clearly articulate the aims and goals of their work; in my experience, the more clearly an artist can express the “why” behind his or her work, the more precise, complex and interesting that work will be.
As for myself, when writing plays I am very interested in using the rules of realist theatrical convention in order to point out the performance conventions that exist outside the theatre. This can, as the Russian Formalist Schkovsky puts it, make the world “strange” and “unfamiliar.” In other words, it can awaken us to experiences in life that are otherwise dulled by habit. However, the Russian Formalists are interested primarily in the artwork and give little, if any, power to the audience. As a community-created art, I enjoy giving as much control to the director and designers as I can, and ultimately leaving a great many “gaps” for spectators to fill in. By using theatre to implicitly or explicitly point out performance conventions outside the theatre while leaving gaps for the audience to fill in, one can create a space in the theatre auditorium for audience members to change their world views. An artist can’t force it to happen, but one can create a space where it is more likely to occur.