3 posts tagged “creativity”
The last week was very busy socially....on Wednesday, we had the BoughHouse event. It was a great success...lots of interesting people, tasty food, wine donated by Barolo Grill. We raised over $6000 for the Rocky Mountain Children's Law Center, which wasn't bad considering that this was only the second year of the BH event. The total earnings were double last year's. The only unfortunate thing was that many of the trees, including mine, were sold for much less than they were worth. I guess that happens quite a bit at art auctions, but Sarah was a little sick about it. My tree was purchased by a couple who are very involved in the Denver art scene -- John works for the Museum of Contemporary Art -- so that made me happy. And I won a mobile made by our friend Scott Sturgis, which was also sold for much less than it was worth. But I was so glad to get it, and couldn't have afforded it at a much higher price.
Then on Thursday, Henry and I went to see Henry C.'s band concert at the Denver School of the Arts. It was a great concert, and a beautiful facility. I started thinking about how nice it would be for Henry to be in an environment that nurtured creativity. Morey (Henry's middle school) is a good school, and Henry is happy there socially, but he's definitely not getting a lot of creative encouragement. So I checked out the DSA website when we got home, and it turned out that Friday (the next day) was the deadline for applying for DSA for the 2008-2009 school year. So I sent in an application and talked to the video arts department head, and now Henry has an audition set up. Ted is not enthusiastic. I'm not even sure Henry is enthusiastic. So we'll have to sort this out....maybe it's crazy to even look into the School of the Arts, but maybe it would be more fun and stimulating for Henry.
There was an article in the New York Times a couple of days ago that got me thinking about the evolutionary and genetic aspects of art. It was in the science section, and was titled The Dance of Evolution, or How Art Got Its Start. The premise is that the creative drive, rather than being frivolous, is actually an evolutionary adaptation of its own. The making of art has drawn people together across cultures and times, and so has value in its ability to bring individuals and communities together. As the article says,
"Through singing, dancing, painting, telling fables of neurotic mobsters who visit psychiatrists, and otherwise engaging in what [neurobiologist Ellen] Dissanayake calls “artifying,” people can be quickly and ebulliently drawn together, and even strangers persuaded to treat one another as kin. Through the harmonic magic of art, the relative weakness of the individual can be traded up for the strength of the hive, cohered into a social unit ready to take on the world."
This idea of social coherence is also a currently trendy marketing idea: consumer products help people feel like they belong to a "tribe," and therefore define who they are. "What tribe are you part of?" is a question that design, style and marketing is supposed to help one answer.
The NYT article continues, "As David Sloan Wilson, an evolutionary theorist at Binghamton University, said, the only social elixir of comparable strength is religion, another impulse that spans cultures and time."
Interesting.
Makes me wonder whether this aesthetic/conceptual separation between
people, or "tribes," will become more distinct and divisive, or if we
could somehow work toward a return to more community-oriented art. Art
as unifier, rather than divider.
I took Henry with me to Cherry Creek to deliver my tree/lamp donation to One Home for the Bough House project. I knew he would enjoy seeing the trees that were created by architects and designers, and also he likes modern furniture and design. As I suspected, he looked closely at everything and noticed connections between the art displayed at One Home and his own work on Line Rider. He has a natural tendency to use repeating patterns that are very graphic and tightly composed. He also has a really good grasp of positive/negative space. Here's a logo that he designed for himself in the Line Rider program, and that he uses as his signature when he posts on Line Rider blogs and message boards.
