leftrightleftrightleft

I saw this on another blog and loved it. Anyone who knows me knows I have a thing for luxury automobiles (because I know I'll never own one.) Anyone who knows me also knows I'm not so good at math and science. (It took me an hour to do one physics problem today...with my tutor, who happens to be genius.) I love this campaign.

Left brain: I am the left brain. I am a scientist. A mathematician. I love the familiar. I categorize. I am accurate. Linear. Analytical. Strategic. I am practical. Always in control. A master of words and language. Realistic. I calculate equations and play with numbers. I am order. I am logic. I know exactly who I am.

Right brain: I am the right brain. I am creativity. A free spirit. I am passion. Yearning. Sensuality. I am the sound of roaring laughter. I am taste. The feeling of sand beneath bare feat. I am movement. Vivid colors. I am the urge to paint on an empty canvas. I am boundless imagination. Art. Poetry. I sense. I feel. I am everything I wanted to be.

Advertising Agency: Shalmor Avnon Amichay/Y&R Interactive Tel Aviv, Israel
Executive Creative Director: Tzur Golan
Creative Director: Yariv Twig
Art Directors: Gil Aviyam, Dror Nachumi
Illustrators: Gil Aviyam, Lena Guberman
Copywriters: Sharon Refael, Oren Meir
Published: February 2011 ‏

world on a string

Three small globes hang above my drafting desk. They are round and perfect, each one suspended by fishing line from a fishing pole I found under the stairs. One is identical to a globe I gave a boy who told me he wanted a house with a library full of only books and a big globe. The expensive kind that sit snugly in wooden stands. The kind that belong in a Universe of books, and when you close your eyes and run your hands along as the world madly spins, mountain ranges and dips in the ocean floor rise up to meet your fingers. One of the globes is teeny tiny. It's coming apart at the seams, creating longitudes between the longitudes. The other doesn't have much meaning but it seems to round out the other two. It's the biggest of the bunch and tonight I hung a tiny silver star along side it, facing north. At night, when the lamplight is dim, three shadows appear on the wall, lunar eclipses big enough to swallow each earth whole.
* * *
I've been thinking about creation -- the creation of the earth. Of man. Of ideas. About how, in the beginning, we looked down upon a temporal earth with an eternal perspective and agreed to come to spots on the globe. To longitude and latitude lines. We agreed to come to an earth created by an infinite Creator. And here, on this temporary earth, this secular sphere, we could use the creations of the Creator and create things for ourselves. Ideals. Thoughts. Things of beauty. Coming downward was the only way we could move forward. We knew and understood this. We rejoiced in the promise of brilliant colors, and rippling waves, and terrestrial soil under our feet. And shouted for joy.
* * *
I get fixated on certain spots on each globe, longitudes and latitudes I have yet to straddle. I put figurative dots on the places I've been in one color and dots in another color for the places I'd like to go. There are many days when I wish there were more dots of the other color, that I'd been more places. Sometimes the world seems so big, the dots so far apart. The shadow of the moon seems large and looming. On those days, I like to look up at my worlds on a string, spin them slowly and remember to take it one day at a time.

on my desk

This is the creative space of one of my favorite writers.

My roommate took a class from Louise in college. (I don't really know why I just called her Louise. We've never met, but in my brain we are bosom buddies.) I used to go with Lindsay to hear her lectures because she is so entertaining. If you've never read "The Apron Stage," you'll love it. These ladies are talented, not to mention hilarious.

work in progress

In a wee bit of a creativity rut? See here.

Drink Me

The fear of failure gets to me, you know. There are days (and often weeks) when I worry that I'll end up in all the rubble, on top of a heap of misshapen aspirations, a mouth full of soot from the fire of failure. I fear what I create will fall short of my own expectations and also, (maybe more so) how it will be received by others. In another gem from Suzan, it reads, "Making art can feel dangerous and revealing. Making art is dangerous and revealing. Making art precipitates self-doubt, stirring deep waters that lay between what you know you should be and what you fear you might be."

* * *

It didn't seem that big from the outside, but once I stepped in, back and back it went; and up and down. The doors grew upward, towards the large white expanse that is the ceiling, making me feel ever-smaller and smaller. We stood in the foyer as fear fetched all self-esteem and shoved it into the flames, and I could smell the burning. She was waiting. Waiting for me to respond. To spew forth ideas. But I had nothing. I had landed in a world of utmost vulnerability where fear extended its long, spindly fingers and snatched all my creativity, drawing it in towards itself. My vision raced ahead of execution and suddenly I was in a Wonderland, where everything around me was chattering and busy busy busy and late late late. I turned the path only to discover I arrived at the tea party with nothing to offer. I had taken the proverbial bottle off the table and done what the tag instructed: "Drink Me." With the last swallow, there I was, only I wasn't quite sure where there was, or who I was.

* * *

In the Cheshire Cat moments when we don't know which path to take, or when the Caterpillar is lethargically blowing smoke circles in our face while repeating, "Who. Are. You?" where do we turn to muster the creative courage to get ourselves back where we came from; the birthplace of our creativity? A childhood art class, a college lecture, an experience with a masterpiece on a museum wall. In these moments (or days or weeks) when inadequacy takes charge, when the capriciousness of creativity gets the better of us and we fear our own art -- the very thing we've been put on this earth to do, what are we to do?

the creative un-genius, part II

I had an art professor in college who, to this day, is still the most intimidating person I have ever come in contact with. I wasn't in the Visual Arts program as an artist. I was in the program as a designer...in training. So when I learned Observational Drawing was to be the first of many 3-hour studio classes, I was a bit anxious. When I walked into class the first day and learned my professor was German (as in spoke little English) I was about to head for the hills, and I'm not talking hills alive with the Sound of Music.

Speaking of music, that class was full of ipod-wearing illustration majors, pinkie fingers permanently pigmented with Staedtler lead. They'd stick their ipods in their ears, and stare with static wonderment at an egg, a glass of water, a banana for the full three hours, leaving the room completely silent. Professor Glockenspiel (that's the only German word that comes to mind at the late hour. Seems I've blocked his real name from memory entirely) would slowly circle the room, hands clutched behind his back, critiquing our every pencil stroke. I'd feel him over my shoulder before I could see or hear him. Then, in a moment of sheer German-influenced intimidation, he'd lean over and get within a millimeter of my work, as if his glasses were circa WWII. Then he'd whisper his petty criticisms with the thickest of German accents into my ear. Most of the time, I had no idea what he was saying, but I knew it wasn't of a positive nature. He'd swirl his finger round and round my sorry scratchings on the page. I imagine it was along the lines of, "Fix here! And here! Add shadow here! Can't you see there is more light coming from here?!"

When our final was due, we were to turn in all the drawings we had done during the semester. At my final critique, I could finally read him loud and clear. The one thing I could decipher all semester was his analysis of a semester's worth of work. I sat in front of him as he flipped through each page past an egg, a banana, a glass of water on a table. His eyes peered out from behind his thick glasses, eyebrows the same color of my HB Staedtler lead. Slowly, as if to be sure I understood every word, he said in broken English, "Your eye cannot yet see." That was my final review; in its entirety. Then he marked my whole drawing pad with a big fat B-.

It was my first taste of college failure. When I come across that pad of paper, I shudder. I don't see an egg or a glass of water reflecting light and shadow. I see failure. I see a big fat B-. And then a little German appears on my shoulder and says, "Your eye cannot yet see."

Sometimes that's how the creative process is. Under the pressure of a Professor Glockenspiel, surrounded by people with immense talent or people who seem to pop in some Pearl Jam and whip out a masterpiece in mere moments, something whispers failure within earshot. But artistry doesn't have to lead to anguish. The creative process is exactly that: a process. It doesn't come all at once. It takes practice. Eyes must learn to see. It comes in moments when we extend ourselves beyond the classroom; beyond objects in front of us or the current task at hand. When we step back and look at the big picture. Sometimes my best ideas come when I turn my back on a Goliath of a project. When I decide not to be creative at all. On long walks. During long showers. Days when I allow myself to head for the hills and sing. I come back with eyes that see, ideas streaming like light through a glass of water on a table, ready to be sketched on a clean sheet of paper.