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We fear criticism. We fear misunderstanding. We fear casual dismissal. We get tired of our piece evoking from a viewer only one small memory or association. We were hoping for that larger response of the basic human spirit when it is touched, that “Yes!” response. All these are good reasons to be judicious in where and to whom we show our work. On the other hand we also might like some recognition for what we have made and, once we have a backlog, may long for the children of our creativity to leave home so we can have the extra room. And being paid by someone who wants to live with the piece is pretty satisfying. Here’s another way to look at how others react to our work: Pure feedback. Much feedback will not be technically helpful but it can open doors that we might not have been aware of. How is the comment “Oh, that green would be just perfect in my bathroom,” different from “Ah, yes. I would love to have that”? We expect that the first response is more short-lived, that the depth of the piece has not grabbed the viewer, but only the more retail-oriented part of them. We fear they see the piece with the same part of the brain that is on the lookout for a good buy on a new coffeemaker. But . . . it might be that once the piece is in that perfectly color-coordinated bathroom, the depth of it will come through. “The bathroom!” you say? What better place to contemplate! Am I being too silly here? Do we not long for our work to be honored? Well, yes. But let’s go for the deeper honoring. If we trust the creative through all the hours of making something new in this world, can we not open up to our patrons, our buyers, our fans finding their own way to meet with it. Imagine a household where the only sanctuary for adults may be that one bathroom. Spending our energy resisting those unexpected and initially unwelcome comments of the viewer is hard and makes all efforts to get our work out there separate from the creative. If we can manage not to fight the comment – take it as feedback from the universe – we may learn something important about the value of our work that we did not know. For the piece ending up in your buyer’s bathroom, we can work at not cringing at the color comment, but agreeing with the coincidence, asking for more: “How did you choose that color?” Finally, if they do buy it, you can move to “Do you know how to protect the piece in a damp environment?” It may end up over the fireplace after all. You cannot control the reactions of others just as you cannot “control” many aspects of the creative process. We’d like our work to go to good homes. We can open ourselves up to that part of our creativity, helping our work find its audience, as part of the whole creative process. So here are some steps if you want to try them: 1. Find a way to truly agree with the comment, no matter how outrageous to you, your ego, your love of the piece. Example: “Yes the proportions are out of whack. I see you have strong reaction to that.” 2. Ask the person to say more about that. 3. Listen. (For me, this means consciously keeping my mouth closed.)
4.
Take the reaction home and later decide if this person is
truly not in your works’ audience or is a new audience (in disguise)
that you’d never considered. II. Friends in Print: When you feel like readingPrayers from a Non-Believer. Julia Cameron. (2003) This is the latest from the author of Artists’ Way and Vein of Gold, the classic guides to reconnecting to creativity. A wonderfully written small volume that is a salute to how taking action, especially experimenting in new ways, sets change in motion. Not waiting for a teacher to tell you how, going ahead and risking doing it wrong. Simply showing up is beautifully unfolded as a powerful first step, in this case, for God, but clearly, also for creativity. How you may think the focus is mostly on God or the piece you’re creating, but in fact you are learning a lot about yourself, and how you create yourself through your daily choices.
Turn: The Journal of a Artist.
Anne Truitt. (1986) Truitt tracks her life as it intertwines with
her work of making sculptures. In this, and a previous journal,
Daybook
(1984), she
uses language smoothly to share her personal life. She develops a
style closer to poetry in struggling to convey the subtle,
intangible forces that move her and her art. Especially good
companion reading for the times when other responsibilities keep you
away from crafting your art. III. Energy Management: Translations from the Psych Research Lab, the Board Room and the Shrink’s Couch: Quick Goal Choices
Jack Sprat could eat no fat; His wife could eat no lean. Is this an item about the continuing diet controversy between the low-fat vs. low-carbohydrate camps? No, it’s just a reminder that we are all different and the usual straight-forward ways of setting goals, often used to help us make changes, may not be right for everyone. We may have a list of changes so long that it discourages us from making any or we may be pretty well satisfied with the creative work we’re doing and only want to smooth out some rough edges. Oddly enough, this newer way to decide on goals comes from the world of alcoholism treatment. Miller and Rollnick* base their work on the 6 stage model of change by Prochaska and DiClemente that I wrote about in the May newsletter. They use it with alcoholics who often do NOT want to change. I think their ideas have something to offer the rest of us who may just be ambivalent about change and goals. Unlike other ideas about carefully choosing and sorting our goals, their approach is to look for practically any discrepancy between how things are and how you want them to be and get to work on that. You can imagine it is easier to get an alcoholic to work on the discrepancy they care about, like reducing the disapproval of their spouse, than trying to have them admit they have a problem. Using the discrepancies in how we do our creative work and how we’d like to do it is a quick way to get some changes going without worrying about why we want to change.
Clearly there are higher goals to shoot for, and one hopes the
alcoholic will eventually want to stop drinking. The point of this
approach is not to settle for small changes, but to start the change
process moving. Once an initial change is made, the
expectation is that the view will be different from that new place
and lead to further, often
unforeseen, changes.
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