Creating Archives - Farther to Go!

She Changes:
Janet Echelman’s Lacenet

November 8, 2021 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

Janet Echelman spent seven years as an Artist-in-Residence at Harvard. She left Harvard to go to India on a Fulbright lectureship with the intention of giving painting exhibitions around the country.

Although she arrived in Mahabalipuram, a fishing village in India, her paints did not. Well, you can’t very well give a painting exhibition without your paints. Rather than focusing on her inability to complete her objective as planned, she remained committed to her desired outcome. She just needed to find another medium.

First she tried working with bronze casters, but that was expensive and unwieldy. Then one night, she notice the fishnet the fishermen were bundling on the beaches, and that sparked her imagination. She wondered…

if nets could be a new approach to sculpture: a way to create volumetric form without heavy, solid material.

The works she’s created since then are ethereal and stunning, unlike anything I’ve seen before.

But What If Her Paints HAD Shown Up?

Echelman was probably dismayed, to say the least, that her paints hadn’t made it to India. But she didn’t give up and go home. It didn’t stop her from doing what she’d come to India to do. She took the materials at hand and used them in a way they’d never been used before. Although she didn’t have her paints, she still had her imagination and her creative spirit.

Things hadn’t gone according to her plan. And it was a very good thing they hadn’t because if they had, we wouldn’t have these gorgeous lacy sculptures to look at. It’s important to have a plan that’s based on an objective. But it’s equally important to be clear about your desired outcome—to not be so committed to the specifics of the plan that when things begin to fall apart, you fall apart, too. Because it’s when things come undone that you have the opportunity—the possibility—to create something new: to transform.

She Changes

Change. Adapt. Be flexible. Look around. Create from the pieces, the non-obvious, the broken shards, the impossible.

More views of the piece She Changes (above) can be seen on Echelman’s website, which also describes the materials used in this and other sculptures and their method of construction.

And you can listen to Echelman—and see slides of her work—in this TED talk called “Taking Imagination Seriously.”

Note: Based on an original article posted to my creativity website in 2012.

Creative Destruction:
Painting Over the Underpainting

June 18, 2019 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

This is a guest post from my friend and client Cathy Ann Connelly, who recently completed the “Trickster Makes the World” module of the Create Your Own Story course.

Definition: In painting, an underpainting is a first layer of paint applied to a canvas or board and it functions as a base for other layers of paint. It acts as a foundation for your painting and is a great way to start your painting off with some built in contrast and tonal values.

The attributes of Trickster in any culture, era, or life all add up to being one thing—a change agent.

To embody the Trickster attributes in our lives can be intense as we refine how to make change a friend rather than an anxiety-producing enemy.

And yet, isn’t that what we want? To be able to enact change? To develop more intensity—more juiciness—in our daily lives? And believe me, you don’t get that unless you make friends with your inner Trickster and Trickster’s sometimes more challenging attributes.

So, it occurred to me that overcoming some of the resistance to the Trickster package might be eased if we examine one of Trickster’s less alluring attributes through a different lens. The attribute I’ve chosen to look at in a different way is that of destruction—an essential element for change, but one we often shy away from.

Destruction or Under- and Over-painting?

I’m in no way a professional artist, but I do like creating visual art—taking painting classes and learning new techniques.

Along my art journey there have been two thoughts that totally match the concept of destruction as integral to creating something wonderful:

Nothing is so precious that you shouldn’t be willing to paint over it—because anything can be recreated or improved upon, and
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Underpainting is critical to producing a great work of art—and anything you create and don’t like can simply be called underpainting (the constructive act of destruction)!

Both these concepts tell me that in my entire life, nothing is useless, wasted, broken, or ruined, and that everything “destroyed” contributes to something better—even if the little parts I once thought were “perfect” have disappeared from view. In essence, everything can be seen as a jumping off point to be improved upon, full of surprises, and all of it can be viewed as valuable under- or over-painting for the next round of creativity in life.

Often, I find that simply playing with marks, colors, and images on a canvas—and then painting over them again and again—results in “changed art” that I could never have created through a controlled, single layer of predetermined brushstrokes. It is often the things that show through—the uncontrolled, playful surprises—that I take advantage of and embrace to make a painting far better than its original, solo layer.

Even if a specific corner of a painting starts to seem special and precious to me, and somehow I linger over the concept of preserving it, I force myself to paint over it if the entire canvas needs another rework.

It is the willingness to do this—to embody destructive change—that for me is juicy and that I ultimately know will produce even better results.

It is the very act of embracing the under- and over-painting that in and of itself can bring change that is wonderful, renewing, and liberating. It is the act that brings the juice of Trickster-change to my world.

Creative Destruction in Life

Outside my art, I believe I try to embody the Trickster attribute of creative destruction when traveling through liminal space—the threshold space of change. When my narrator tells me, “I know what’s going on and I can out think the things trying to run you off the path we’ve charted,” often that proves just downright silly. Liminal space is all about exploring alternate paths, often “destroying” the one you’ve started down. Who knows, just because you’ve started off one way doesn’t mean going a different way isn’t juicier, and might not be a better over- painting route to your desired destination. How can you know? After all, that first path might just be under-painting for the greater work emerging.

“Paint” with your personal agency and try out another path that could have fewer obstacles and might be a hundred times juicier. It’s uncomfortable, but “destroying” our “I know best” attitude with Trickster’s influence is exactly what gets us the change we want.

Cathy Ann Connelly lives in New Mexico and takes Farther To Go! classes because they’re juicy for exploring how to better use her brain for what she wants it to do, rather than her brain using her. Currently, her focus is on reawakening her own Trickster while encouraging new, longer-term intentions. This blog post sprung from that focus.

Building Blocks of Creativity: Curiosity

June 8, 2019 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

If we really want to understand and shape behavior, maybe we should look less at decision-making and more at curiosity. —David Brooks

Having an open mind and being open to experience go hand-in-hand. And if you’re open-minded, you’re curious. You don’t believe that what you know about something—anything—is all there is to know. You want to explore and you want to learn more. You’re not afraid to put yourself in unfamiliar situations or to expose yourself to people and ideas that challenge you or your beliefs.

Curiosity, by its nature, implies uncertainty and ambiguity. Your brain doesn’t like uncertainty, which is why the experience can be uncomfortable. But if you choose comfort and the illusion of certainty (because certainty is an illusion) over curiosity, you’re turning your back on the very characteristics that make humans human.

Besides, curiosity can also be rewarding. Mario Livio, astrophysicist and author of Why? What Makes Us Curious? says:

[The] lust for knowledge is associated with a pleasurable state, and in our brain activates regions that anticipate rewards.

It makes sense that curiosity activates reward pathways in our brain. Curiosity and openness to experience give us the ability to be inventive and creative, to solve complex (sometimes life-or-death) problems, to imagine things that don’t yet exist, and to accomplish great undertakings in the face of enormous odds.

Curiosity is the essence of human existence. ‘Who are we? Where are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going?’… I don’t know. I don’t have any answers to those questions. I don’t know what’s over there around the corner. But I want to find out. —Eugene Cernan

Curious, open-minded people see the world differently from other people, both literally—in terms of basic visual perception—and figuratively. They tend to screen out less visual information, so they sometimes see things others block out. And they “see” more possibilities as a result of being divergent (rather than convergent) thinkers.

Are You Intentional?

In order to be creative, we need to be able to change something in the world. But we also need to be able and willing to be changed by the world.

Of course, to a great extent we do create our own reality, so our interactive relationship with the world could be said to be creative. But the reality that we create for ourselves happens outside our awareness and outside our control. It’s pretty amazing, but we can’t take credit for it. It doesn’t require anything from us, and we can live our entire lives taking it for granted, having no curiosity about it and paying no attention to it whatsoever.

If you have no curiosity about yourself and your relationship with the world, you may want things to be different, but you’re unlikely to engage in the cognitive investigation and exploration that can lead to creativity and change. So you’re unlikely to do anything to change the status quo.

If you’re curious, however, the questions are more interesting—and more alive—than the answers. As a result, you never stop exploring. You take very little for granted. And you’re intentional about changing your brain, yourself, and your world.

YOU: A Work of Art in Progress

May 8, 2019 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

As long as you’re alive, your life is a work in progress (unfinished). But is it just work or is it a work of art? And what difference does it make?

The idea of living one’s life as a work in progress is not original. But several decades ago, when I was struck afresh by the rich possibilities of artistic metaphor, I not only looked at my own life in this context, I also queried some friends.

No one had trouble responding, and I was surprised by every one of their answers. A former insurance industry executive said his life would be a multi-media performance piece. A writer described her life as a sculpture, while a musician referred to his as a “junk” sculpture. A computer programmer declared his life was a symphony. Here are a handful of detailed descriptions:

Kathy:

I see myself as a mobile spinning out of control.
I’m not quite put together in a way that moves with the ebb and flow of gentle breezes yet.
I’m unbalanced and jerked around right now.
One or two pieces of something substantial need to be added so I can untangle myself when the forces of nature, or human hand, cause me to spin temporarily out of control.
(This temporary spinning does not inflict permanent damage. It just causes me not to be my usual self.)

Kelly:

The work of art in progress: me covered in layer upon layer of steel, concrete, wood, glass, gunpowder, feathers, year after year and lots of work…maybe some layers come off to expose this work of art…me.
Kinda like a big clump of marble, taking off what is not me and getting to the real David…um, no…Kelly.
Warning: completed works of art are not on our plane anymore.

Lee:

A sand castle, co-structured by a small child.
We came from the sea, I will go back to the sea…
Imperfect, made from tiny pieces and subject to the whims of nature…
Able to be tall and strong, ridged yet soft…
Able to be shaped by the people and the world around me…
Formed by wet sand dripping from a child’s hand or sculptured by forms and expert hands.

Linda:

I think of MY LIFE as an oil painting. Starting with a clean canvas I splash some paint on, just to see what it will look like.
After experimenting, I decide that it would be better to Have a Plan.
I draw out in pen what I want to paint. I add some color.
If I catch the paint before it dries I can change it or scrape it off entirely.
The memory of what has gone before is still there, but it is not entrenched in who I am.
When I wait too long and the paint dries, it becomes a part of the canvas.
I draw a new plan.
As I build up the layers of paint, adding depth, my canvas thickens with layers of paint.
I realize that I do not have to have a plan for everything.
I realize that my painting looks better when I have gone outside the lines of the plan.
My canvas now has years and years of paint added, paint that has dried, colors that have changed or been scraped off.
I’m really starting to like what I have painted.

Nicole:

Well, it would be a whirlwind in places spinning lots of reds, fiery and out of control, deep yellows, oranges, spinning AUTUMN colors. And then over where the BLUE starts to outnumber the red you will find other places: neatly categorized and presumably alphabetical little BLACK stacks. Each one placed with precision, stacked up to the ceilings in wavering stature, suggesting that they might fall at any moment in time.

Steve:

My life has always been a film, with music rambling in my head, the stimuli being “things passing by/me going forward”—motionless.

The Play’s the Thing…

Once upon a time, I saw my life as a play. There’s an inherent discipline in living life as a play in progress that’s different from the discipline involved in living life as a sculpture or a symphony or a painting. Staging, timing, and pacing are crucial. Significantly, in a play the props and scenery are vital—but only to the scenes they belong in. It makes no sense for an actor to become attached to any particular props.

I was aware of things as background props and of people, including myself, as characters from an early age. I wrote plays, read plays, hung out with the local drama group, and thought up names and descriptions of characters, as well as elaborate decorating schemes, to entertain myself.

At some point I noticed what I was doing and decided it was an odd way to think about myself and the world. Whereas other people seemed to make choices almost instinctively, I could consider a range of alternatives: a final choice would depend on the requirements of the scene or the plot line. Choosing otherwise seemed arbitrary. In spite of considering my view of life somewhat idiosyncratic, I continued to operate within that framework. When a major plot twist offered the opportunity for me to reinvent myself, I had no difficulty doing so. It was just a play, after all.

Although I probably appreciate the value in that point of view now more than I did then, I wouldn’t use the same metaphor to describe my current life. It often feels more like a surrealistic jigsaw puzzle: challenging, colorful, so much to look at, still not put together (still creating), and not at all what you’d expect.

There’s value in experimenting with styles and forms, imagining and reimagining our lives through different lenses and perspectives.

So, if your life were a work of art in progress, what metaphor would you choose to describe it? What shape would it take? What colors and/or sounds would it have? What process or media would be involved in its creation? What emotions would it evoke?

Would it be a painting, a sculpture, a black and white photo montage? A novel, a short story, a play, a poem, an essay? Would it be a song-cycle, a symphony, an opera, a collage, a Rodgers and Hart musical, a movie? Or…something else altogether.

A metaphor is always a framework for thinking, using knowledge of this to think about that. —Mary Catherine Bateson, author of Composing a Life

A focus on creating yourself is the opposite of a focus on fixing yourself: the motion and the action are forward rather than backward. Thinking about your life as a work of art in progress can shift your view of what you’re doing in life—and of what you’re capable of doing. Creating art is compelling and juicy and expansive. It is an ongoing process of bringing something—in this case you—into being.

It is that dimension [our imagination of ourselves] whereby we are not merely living our lives—passively, as it were—but are actively giving them shape: ceaselessly interpreting and inventing ourselves afresh. It is that dimension whereby we do not receive a life as much as compose a life—as we might compose a story. As we appreciate the extent of this dimension, it becomes impossible to see how any aspect of our lives can escape our self-creative touch. —William Lowell Randall, The Stories We Are

Habits of Behavior vs. Habits of Attention

July 10, 2014 by Joycelyn Campbell Leave a Comment

Last week poetdonald responded to my post What Do Your Habits Say About You? with this comment:

The following came to me as I was reading this post as well as your post on Mindfulness vs. Habits.

Let’s call this thinking out loud, Joycelyn. I’m going to pose 2 questions. I’m not ready to answer them, and I’m not sure if you are able to comment at this stage, but I feel it is important I ask and begin to explore them now.

For my Writing in Nature project, I am repeatedly going to sites and learning how to really see and thus write haiku. Eventually, I want to use what I learn to help others write haiku and connect with nature (for many, many reasons). Mindfulness is very important, as I need to pay attention—and at the same time be open—to my surroundings.

My two questions relating to this project…

1. Should I try to create habits to help with this process?

2. If I am not consciously creating habits, will I unconsciously be developing habits that will affect my seeing and writing?

These are such great questions! They got me thinking, first, about the distinction between habits of behavior and habits of attention. After that, I gravitated to looking at when we can best “use” habits to our advantage and when to avoid habits by focusing our attention intentionally. I hope this response will shed some additional light on the subject of habits.

Habits Are Habits

When we think or talk about habits, we’re usually referring to habits of behavior. Those are the habits that are the most obvious for us to see in both ourselves and other people. In fact, most advice about habits seems to assume those are the only kinds of habits we’re interested in changing. But after having explored this subject in considerable depth, I’ve concluded that behavioral habits are actually the easiest ones to deal with. There’s not much doubt as to whether we’re doing something or not doing it. We may not like what we see, but we can keep track of our behavior, either in the moment or after the fact.

Habits of attention, however less apparent they may be to us, are no less habitual than are habits of behavior. In both cases the unconscious brain (System 1) rather than the conscious brain (System 2) is directing us. System 1 takes in about 11,000,000 bits of information at a time, of which System 2 can process about 40. System 1 decides what information is important for us to notice and attend or respond to. It does this at a speed System 2 couldn’t hope to keep up with or replicate. So unless we make a conscious decision ahead of time as to where to direct our attention, System 1 will be making that decision for us. It can do so all day long, without much intervention from System 2.

So in response to poetdonald’s questions, I have two thoughts.

First: Develop as much of a routine as possible for going out to the sites in nature. Focus on creating the habit of doing so. That means identifying a trigger or cue (time of day, for example), following the same routine (although that doesn’t mean always going to the exact same place), and rewarding yourself for doing so. If you turn going out to these sites into a habit, you won’t have to waste any System 2 attention on the mechanics, whereas if you attempt to be flexible or spontaneous about going out to sites, you’ll be expending System 2 attention unnecessarily. Also, creating the habit of doing this will actually get your brain ready to pay attention and to write haiku.

Second: The kinds of habits you might unconsciously develop in regard to this venture are habits of attention, which are not the kinds of habits you want here. Habits of attention train the brain to always pay attention to this but not to that. You want to be conscious (using System 2) rather than unconscious so you can determine what to pay attention to. We all have the ability to train ourselves to be able to focus our attention, rather than allowing it to go wherever System 1 takes it.

Here are some excerpts from a very fine book on the subject, Rapt, Attention and the Focused Life, by Winifred Gallagher:

Paying rapt attention, whether to a trout stream or a novel, a do-it-yourself project or a prayer, increases your capacity for concentration, expands your inner boundaries, and lifts your spirits, but more important, it simply makes you feel that life is worth living.

Not only how you focus, but also what you focus on can have important neurophysiological and behavioral consequences.

Just thinking about paying attention affects your brain, revving it up for the actual experience.

Your neuron populations can represent pretty much anything, but not everything at once. You have to choose—or they do. (John Hopkins neuroscientist Steve Yantis)

New research…shows that what you pay attention to, and how, can actually change your brain and thus your behavior. This extraordinarily practical scientific breakthrough shows that like physical fitness, the mental sort that sustains the focused life can be cultivated.

To give yourself an opportunity to make the most out of your Writing in Nature venture, you might want to put System 1 to use to create the behavioral habit, which will then free up System 2 attention for you to focus intentionally. Recognizing the distinction between behavioral habits and habits of attention is important for any creative pursuit. It’s a waste of time and attention to have to think about and decide whether or not to perform an activity we’ve already determined we want to do. That attention is limited and could be put to much better use!

Poetdonald, thank you for asking such great questions. I’d really like to hear more about how this works out for you.

I’m also interested in hearing anyone else’s thoughts on the subject.