Post number 3 for my Principles of Art and Design class…

…I should want to show by my work what is in the heart of such an eccentric man, of such a nobody [as I am in the eyes of most people].  This is my ambition, which is notwithstanding everything, founded less on anger than on love, founded more on serenity than on passion.  It is true that I am often in the greatest miser, but still there is within me a calm pure harmony and music.  In the poorest huts, the dirtiest corner, I see drawings and pictures.   And with irresistible force my mind is drawn towards these things.  More and more other things lose their interest, and the more I get rid of them the quick my eye grasps the picturesque things.  Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and a continuous observation.

                                    —Vincent van Gogh, in a letter to his brother Theo, July 1882

1.  What interests you to the point of being drawn to it with “irresistible force?”

As strange or random as this sounds, I REALLY like murder mysteries. My favorite TV shows (besides Doctor Who) are Bones, NCIS, and The Mentalist. I just can’t get enough of them! I love it when all the little clues come together for the big reveal. And I think a part of me is fascinated with the reasons WHY they did it. What went wrong in their life that made them so twisted that they would kill? I also love that, in the TV shows, the good guys always win. They always figure out who did it and bring them to justice. It’s awesome! It is unfortunate that reality isn’t the same.

2.  What would you like to be interested in but life has kept you just on the perimeter?

 I wish I read more for fun. School for the past 16 years has kept me from reading almost anything for pleasure, Harry Potter excluded. I have been reading Lord of the Rings for almost 3 years now, and I’m barely halfway through. I have too many other pressing things to do, and when I have free time, my brain is so fried that I loathe the idea of focusing on a book and would rather watch a movie or simply sleep.

3.  What can make you need to create?

Taking a different look at the word ‘create’: when I feel really stressed or have had a lot to do for a while, my apartment usually gets… disheveled. I think what that drives me to do is to ‘create’ order. To take a mess and make it clean. Also, when I am really frustrated, I sometimes feel the urge to get dirty making violent, active art (using charcoal or paint). When I am overcome with God’s majesty and glory and perfection, I will sometimes write my thoughts in my journal, and they often sound like Psalms.

4.  What does being creative mean, or look like to you?

Being creative to me is taking what you have and making something new. Creating new order from a mess, making messy art from simple supplies, or taking my thoughts and my feelings and writing them down to make poetry.

Post number two for my Principles of Art and Design class.

1. When have you best been able to accept new knowledge and ideas?

I have found it easiest to accept new ideas when the person or entity presenting the new ideas has my respect. Also, the attitude of the person presenting the ideas has great impact on it: if they have a “know-it-all” feel about them, or, to put it simply, are prideful in their knowledge, I am less likely to listen and learn from them than I am to learn from someone who presents themselves and their ideas with wisdom and humility, being willing to listen to others opinions even if they are—and know they are—right.

2. Why do you think that was?

Accepting new knowledge and ideas takes humility. If you are prideful, you will be apt to hold onto your own ideas because accepting someone else’s ideas implies that you were either wrong, incomplete, or ignorant in your previous knowledge. In my experience, if the other person you are talking to shows humility first, it is much easier to be humble yourself.

For example: even in arguments, if my fiancé and I are both wrong in something (as is usually the case), if he lets go of his pride and apologizes—even if I was furiously set in being right—I will find that my heart melts and I am humbled myself and am able to apologize as well. I am sure it goes the other way as well when I apologize first.

3. How would you prepare yourself to do that again?

Unfortunately, one cannot do anything about someone else’s pride. However, I can definitely make sure that, before attempting to teach another, I am fully aware of my own shortcomings and have rid myself of any pride in my own ideas. That way, the person receiving knowledge or ideas from me will hopefully be free to listen to what I have to say with no pride holding them back. Then they can judge for themselves whether what I say is true or not regardless of whether they had the same opinion or not.

4. When are you best able to generate new ideas?

I find that, when I get talking to someone with whom I share common interests, especially late at night, we can bounce ideas off one another and come up with some really interesting things. Unfortunately, since they do usually occur late at night, we don’t often remember all the great ideas that we come up with, and none of them ever come to fruition.

I am beginning a series of posts that are for my Art and Design class. This is the first one and I will answer the following 5 questions:

1.  In terms of your influences, what is your environment?  Where are you from?  What are you from?  What are the forces, things, people, and situations that shaped you into who you are?

I’d say that my environment  is anything and everything I come in contact with in life: my family, my friends, my roommate, the church, the weather, Baylor, etc. I am from Flower Mound, a good-sized “town” next door to Lewisville and Grapevine, just north of the DFW airport. It’s a fairly wealthy town, so I grew up privileged, not spoiled, but definitely used to a certain standard of living. I was fairly reserved as a child and spent most of my time either at school or at home, so my family was very influential on me. For example: I grew up listening to music with my dad, which led to my tastes to be mostly geared towards the 80’s (because of my dad’s music) and then a little of the 90’s (because of my friends’ music). I was always very concerned with pleasing my parents and therefore did things that were pleasing to them (e.g. doing well in school, choosing good friends, and going to church activities). My friends did influence me, of course, but because I chose friends that were good influences, they simply offered a more “modern” version of what my parents were giving me.

2.  How do you think your current environment affects your opinions and tastes?

Once I went to college, I communicated much less with my parents and much more with my friends. Now that I’m engaged and planning a life with my fiancé, I am becoming even more detached from my parents. Their influence is decreasing and the influence of my fiancé, friends, and faith is exponentially increasing. I am changing a lot of even my core beliefs because I never questioned the beliefs of my parents that I simply took on as my own. I am keeping most of them, but I am owning them more and tweaking them to fit my personal opinions.

3.  What makes you feel alive and awake?

There are many things that wake me up and make me feel alive. Worshipping Jesus gets me fired up and fills me with joy, and meditating on certain scriptures helps keep me aware of God’s incredible love for me. I love taking close-up pictures of nature that reflect the incredible detail that God created. Spending time with my friends, especially with my friends that make me laugh, is incredibly life-giving. I love laughing and many of my friends have laughs that just crack me up! It de-stresses me and lifts my heart.

4.  What do you need to listen to, look at, or experience to keep your ideas fresh?

Like I’ve already said, laughing with my friends rejuvenates me remarkably well. Being in nature is usually refreshing, but when it’s too hot to breathe or too cold to feel my extremities, I enjoy nature more from indoors. Also, when my life gets cluttered, I have to organize and clean something. It relieves stress and makes me feel like my life is in order. I can’t concentrate on anything else when I feel cluttered.

5.  Experience artistry that is unfamiliar to you.  What would that be?

I have a friend that is a member of a Christian Screamo band, and one night his band performed at our church’s youth building. I went with a couple of other friends, and attended the concert to support our friend in an environment we trusted. It was interesting, to say the least. The band itself wasn’t too weird, since we knew they were Christians and trying to send a good message. But the crowd, since you can’t often understand the words of screamo, were there for the “music.” They were not all Christians, and their “dancing” was a little unsettling. A few people looked as if they engaging in a karate match with an invisible opponent, one was doing one-handed cartwheels, and others were simply running around in a “mosh-pit.” It was fun and interesting to see and hear something new, but screamo isn’t something that I think I’ll be putting on my iPod.