STUFF IN THE SHOEBOX

I believe creative ability is innate in all people. It becomes active when we channel basic capacities rooted in our species’ bodily survival and communal functioning. These primal skills include how we observe and recognize things around us, how we represent and hold in our minds things that are not present, and how we distinguish qualities from objects. Creativity draws from what makes us human and it is where we become human. Left to their own devices, our innate creative capacities will thrive. Unfortunately, our educational and economic systems operate by suppressing creativity in the many while nurturing it in the few, those who have been singled out as uniquely gifted. We treat creative ability either as a luxury to be indulged or a commodity to be recruited and exploited. In a time demanding change in how we think of ourselves in relation to our planet and its other inhabitants, creativity is too vital as a personal resource, too valuable as a communal asset to be left to just a select subset of the population.

This blog is the virtual shoebox into which I’m throwing odds and ends from an exploration into the nature of creativity using my own artistic practice as the laboratory. It is the by-product of the MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts that I’m pursuing through Goddard College.

John Borstel