Saturday, October 31, 2015

Questions for the man, An aberration



Questions for the man: 
Is this life working for you?
Why do you strut in this manner?
Wanna take a walk?
Without the facade, can you talk?
What made you this way?
Where does your entitlement come from?
Are you content?
What is the purpose of your day?
What is your purpose?
How far do you see?
How do you see?
Do you see the grass? The ripples on water?
Why do you want to end your life?

Monday, October 19, 2015

On Creativity, David Bohm












Un-defining Creativity

Tereza Mazur

Dr.Vinograde

EdPs 620 Human Development

July 12-16, 2004

Un-defining C r e a t i v i t y

Stretching the Rules We Bind Ourselves With

Sounds of water spraying, birds chirping above, and wind rustling in the trees along with the sound of children playing in the park are just a slight vision of our understanding of creativity.  The air that passes through, in and out of our lungs even when we are not focused on the process is a natural part of our organism making up this magical creation. Many of the activities we do when we are absorbed in the present qualify as part of the creative process: a boy jumping continuously reaching the monkey bars, my hand writing upon this paper.  To become aware of the natural beauty is our only mission and a desperate need if we want to create a different world from this one. Why the pressing urgency?
" Most of us have lost touch with nature. Civilization is tending more and
more toward large cities. We are becoming more and more an urban people, living in crowded apartments and having very little space even to look at the sky of an evening and morning, and therefore we are losing touch with a great deal of beauty" (Krishnamurti, 1983, p.33-34).
            Creativity is.  "But thought in itself is limited, therefore whatever it does is limited" (Krishnamurti, 1983, p.16).  Initially, we act creatively very well, as young infants not acquiring knowledge but simply absorbing it (Gardner, 1993).
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Later we come close to this ideal through our potential in the arts, sciences and through
spirituality.  We want to know.  What we are faced with is a vast expanse of the unknown.  We feel a part of this vastness yet at the same time our universe cannot be conceived in our current minds (Krishnamurti, 1983, p.25). Reasoning makes a theory fixed, inflexible and this is not how the universe functions.  It is ever changing, limitless, organic and creative in nature, as are all things within it.  Many of our greatest minds have followed this flow being centered in their nature.  For example, Gardner (1993) states of Einstein,
"Einstein was a man of seeming contradictions: an individual in some ways young, in other ways mature beyond his years; a nonbeliever who spent much time thinking about God; a pacifist who stimulated the production of the most deadly weapon in history; a scientific radical who spent his last years seeking to refute the radical new scientific paradigm; a scientist whose own standards as a theoretician were quintessentially aesthetic; an individual obsessed by the physical world, who pondered timeless matters as well as the concept of time, yet also one who devoted many hours to addressing the mundane problems
that beset the humans of his era" (Gardner, 1993, p.130).
             How do we, like Einstein, get closer to just being and inadvertently knowing, sensing, living our potential?  We have our hints in the child within when we were closest to our natural, pure, fresh selves. When we were not concerned with knowing although we learned more in those years than we do throughout our entire life. Einstein himself declared "that we know all the physics that we will ever need to know by the age of three" (Gardner, 1983, p.89).  The more we learn to be in this absorbed state, naturally,
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through the practice of such activities as meditation or even running, the more open we will be to creative energy as it flows throughout the world.
            If the concept of thinking back to the time when we were young does not remind us of our potentialities, we are only to look upon the children around us today.  When working with and around very young children, before our forced structure alters their nature, these young ones shed great light on our tarnished society.  They explore genuinely as well as laugh and cry with all their heart.  And still see the beauty of a flower or a leaf. They can create the most beautiful, peaceful world that we innately have within us.  Too bad we have not yet learned to listen and see children, thinking them smaller and therefore less.  Their potential is hugely undermined.  We set our limits upon their learning in an outlined time frame that often does not correlate with their, or our for that matter, inner creative cycle.
                        "From some points of view education has done its task; looking around us
today, we can see great material gains.  But serious questions can be raised
about how much we have been able to educate beyond the making and consuming of objects. Have we in our educational system really put emphasis upon human values? Or have we been so blinded by the material rewards that we have failed to recognize that the real values of a democracy lie in its most precious good, the individual?" asks Viktor Lowenfeld in the art educator's bible, Creative and Mental Growth, p.3.
            How do we in this society come to adulthood with our artist-self intact? When and how do we loose those childhood ideals and the sight of our infinite potential? And most importantly through rediscovering ourselves is it possible to create something different
for us than our concrete-mechanical jungle?  On these topics I can only speak from
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my heart through my own experience.  I entered the art class on a whim my senior year in high school, very late in terms of going on with this career.  I found myself utterly absorbed, and being alone, without my best friend and sister who moved half way around the world, art became a source of support.  I drew from what I knew throughout the next decade or so and this being mostly suffering, I created only that in my work.  Images came from horrors found in newspapers; the process was used as a source of coping.  Sacrificing myself for the pain of others, I thought, was the most love I could give.  In reality it was an escape of the source of pain within myself and a lack of compassion for my own suffering, feeling it relative to everyone else's. This dual thinking made a separation and kept everybody at a distance, seeing everyone as an 'other'.  In Cape Town I glimpsed the rays of everyone's light even through centuries of blockage and restraint.  It is thanks to the process in and of South Africa that I paralleled after listening, converting my pain, healing. I am now free to create the kind of world I want to see.    
             Through my experience of teaching art for the past three years to over twelve hundred youngsters between the ages of five and thirteen, I have been privileged to observe children at play. Through this I conjured up a feeling of pure delight.  With the help of children, I have seen an aspect of my true potential of being a teacher, of being a beautiful human being.  Our children and we need a creative environment to develop in. Their life is too short, as is ours.  Through just this our world can turn into an entirely positive place. Let's support ourselves in this continuous growth!




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Tereza Mazur
Dr.Vinograde

EdPs 620 Human Development

July 12-16, 2004

Un-defining C r e a t i v i t y

Stretching the Rules We Bind Ourselves With
NOTES
Gardner, Howard. Creative minds: An Anatomy of Creativity Seen Through the Lives of Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot, Graham, and Ghandi. BasicBooks, 1993, 87-131.

Krishnamurti, Jiddu. On Nature and the Environment. Star Publishing, 1983, 33-39.

Krishnamurti, Jiddu and David Bohm. The Future of Humanity: A Conversation. Harper & Row, 1986, 5-51.

Lowenfeld, Viktor and W. Lambert Brittain. Creative and Mental Growth: Fifth Edition. The Macmillan Company, 1970, 1-19.























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Monday, October 12, 2015

Bruised


Capital Cleanse, Bruised, 2015
Cast Soap, Embedded Tape Transfer, Bleeding Ink (left), 2"diameter
Trayvon Martin (Preschool Graduation) Tape Transfer, Bleeding Ink revealed through washing (right), 2 "diameter

In Bruised, I look at the victims of police brutality and their families. I embed their image, printed directly from the internet, within soap. (Please see Capital Cleanse.) The image bruises, stains and cuts right into this soft material which is revealed as participant washes his or her hands. The project was installed at Vermont College of Fine Arts as part of "Art as Advocacy."

Art for Everyone

Soon to be available on PDF for free.
http://www.statesmanjournal.com/story/news/education/2015/10/05/chemeketa-creates-own-version-200-textbook-18/72976042/

Cards Against Brutality

These should be in all High School/College Courses throughout the US.
http://cardsagainstbrutality.com/