Author: lauramchugh

This is the week that a lot of people I know have kids going off to college for the first time. Getting all their stuff together, making the trip, getting them settled into their dorms or apartments. Big steps for the little people and their parents.

I went through it last year when my youngest left for Monterey. True to form, she did not want me to go with her. She moved the week or two before actually leaving and the day of her final move, timed it perfectly so that I was on a conference call and could not even hug her goodbye. It may have been all that jagged crying spontaneously at breakfast in the weeks leading up to that day that had her decide it would be best for both of us if the long goodbye was removed from the equation.

We have a funny little thing in our family, and especially between youngest one and me: I miss you already. Just this morning, in the midst of some more argumentive times we’ve had this week, she said she wants to miss me before I go on my trip in a week.

What is this we have about missing someone even when we are with them? It sounds a little like being together with friends or family for dinner, then spending the whole time on a cell phone checking emails and sending messages to others, or even those we are with in person.

She jumped in her car and took off and I continued my conference call with my jaw dropped wide open. I didn’t know she would pick that time to leave and was at once surprised and relieved. I would have done a poor job of hugging her goodbye, probably crying a lot and saying something unhelpful.

As soon as the call was over, and after weeks of me not knowing how I might manage being all alone and missing my baby, I suddenly got over it. I went out to her room, finished cleaning it and hung up art on the walls. I put out fresh linens that I’d been saving up to make the room into a vacation retreat for visiting family and friends.

I spent the next few months with my mom visiting and that was nice. She enjoyed the new room, and then she left too. And then I was alone for the first time since a short time in college when I had an apartment and was between roommates and not yet married. I was engaged, but my husband to be lived in Northern California and I was in LA. I enjoyed that time alone and being alone again 35 years later was similar though now I’m not in a relationship, so I am truly alone.

No one to tell you when to eat, what to watch on television, when to go to bed, or when to get up. I was able to just be with myself and the two little dogs. I was able to hear the cadence of my own breathing and cycles, and see for myself what caused me to be irritable or grumpy, happy, elated. What made me laugh out loud or cry. I felt liberated and unencumbered.

I will never stop being a mom to my four children and caring for and about them. But I have learned to appreciate the nest that is mostly empty of open little mouths, instead now visited by self-sufficient adults that my children have become. They make me breakfast, take me out to dinner, and just sit and talk to me about what is going on in their lives and ask me about what I’m up to.

The nest is empty and then full, and then empty again.

I’m developing a theory about creativity and Mondays: we hopefully spend time over the weekend relaxing, hanging out with family and friends, and indulging in some art viewing or art-related activities.

For me, by Monday, I am open and porous, a creative sponge. I am relaxed and my mind is flowing with ideas about what I can do next, creatively.

Today, I went to see a man about a kiln. I have long had a secret desire to make three dimensional objects. I see them at art shows and love them, admire them, fondle them and sometimes buy them. So admitting I want to make them is a relief.

I got an email from this biz-nessy guru, Ramit Sethi, this morning about fear and the reasons why we hold back from doing something. My logic and reasoning, which he pointed out is just fancy camouflage for fear, is that someone else has done what I want to do thus I don’t need my stuff out there in the world too. This fear is sandwiched between two nice layers of how I am inspired and also appropriate in my art to a huge degree. I am still looking for and finding my own voice. The post today about fear was helpful because honestly, so few people see the work of artists anyway, that me adding to that universe of work would not be noticed by others in any negative way.

Instead, I should do the work and get myself into the zone of unique voice and creativity and let it all flow from there. So despite all the logical thinking to the contrary, I am going to get a kiln and a drying rack and a clay roller device and some porcelain clay and start making things I can see in my head.

I believe they will be fantastic. I know when I see something this clearly, as a vision, I am meant to do it. Here I go with my creative process!

There’s a post from Harvard Business Review out this morning on creativity that has me thinking.

The credo here in Silicon Valley and business from my MBA studies is “innovate or die.” It’s so harsh. Die. And yet, this is true – if you have a product or service and you don’t continue to keep it fresh and updated, you lose your competitive advantage and die just a little each day, leading to being lost in the weeds while your competitor out-advances you and scoops market share and revenue. Ugh.

That’s one scenario anyway. And along the way, creativity has been co-opted as THE WAY to discover these innovations and stay in front of the pack.

My life work – engineering the liberation of creativity – has me thinking today about what I am meant to do in the context of “innovate or die” thinking. How do I help people be more creative and why are they wanting to be creative?

I discovered a book a couple of weeks ago that was, titularly at least, in my sweet spot. I thought Joseph Berk’s book*, Unleashing Engineering Creativity was going to be my book – my thing. I ordered it, terrified to open and read it, thinking “here we go again, you have no original thoughts.”

Inside, I discovered a wonderful set of tools and methods for helping engineers work through the creative process in a very analytical way. It was as though the very essence of creativity got distilled back down into analytical – all linear, and process-y. It was a fun read and I know has valuable nuggets, but it is NOT what I’m up to at all. It is everything I’m trying to run away from – the structure, the process, the documenting of it all. I wonder how you can be in a room full of people asking them to bring forth their creativity while you charge and document the whole thing. It SEEMS logical, but intuitively, I know this isn’t entirely how creativity works.

My experience is that creativity happens when there is NO structure. Instead, when there are a few colored pencils and some paper, a chill atmosphere with some light music in the background and some like-minded people immersed in the soup of their own interests and creativity.

This is what happens at Bad Art Night every two weeks at my house: people come here with something they are working on. It is usually not their main area of art. For example a women who weaves and knits very competently may be here to work on necklaces or collaged boxes. She works quietly while chatting. She is paying enough attention to her work to get the glue on the box or the beads on the thread, but she is not consumed in her own world thinking hard about how to make this the next good thing. Instead, she is chatting, sipping some tea, loosely observing someone across from her who is painting or cutting out shapes – doing their own thing. Meanwhile, she is innovating. Maybe her next new necklace design, innovating ahead of her competition, is in the making. She isn’t working hard at it through a rubric of think this, brainstorm that, write down possible designs, evaluate them and eliminate/refine. She’s just making the next best necklace out of her intuitive knowing and skill and talent.

My “job” is to create the right environment for this type of creative R&D to be able to happen. The atmosphere – the room, the lighting and the music and vibe I have some control over physically. I sweep the floor, put out tea, clear the table each night before people arrive. That’s the physical. Easy.

What I really do to have this happen is BE. I am the creative person I want to see all of them be. I am open to possibilities. I dive in and try new things looking for where my art will next innovate. I work with reckless abandon, and I keep working something over until I am happy with it. I hold in my heart the love of creativity and the possibility that everyone is creative and that their creativity feeds their art and personal happiness.

Oprah was onto unleashing creativity in 2011 which I did not know until I started this blog entry and did a search for Joseph Berk’s book. Even Peggy Orenstein’s take on creativity has suggestions for coming up with  how many ways you can use a egg carton in five minutes.

I guess because I don’t perform well under pressure, at least creatively, this approach overwhelms me. Instead, I would rather sit at my art table with some paints or ink and paper, and my pen, and start doodling. I keep my “problem to be solved” in the background, but don’t head on dwell on it. Instead, I noodle and doodle and like journaling can help people, the answer comes to me directly, or I relax enough into my creative thinking that it will pop up in a dream or a bit later.

I’m not wanting to bash this head-on methodology because it can and does work for a lot of people and even me, sometimes. It’s just that I find the indirect soup of a creative and nurturing environment better in the long run.

That’s how I help people liberate their creativity. I invite them to be in that nurturing environment and believe in them that their next best idea will come out.

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*In his latest book, author and educator Joseph Berk explores the best techniques for stimulating creative thinking, creating new products, improving existing products, and solving design challenges. Surprisingly, even those of us who are paid to be creative often need help. Most of us lose much of our natural creativity by the time we finish high school, but we can regain it through the techniques included in Unleashing Engineering Creativity. This is exciting and fun material, and Unleashing Engineering Creativity presents it in an interesting and engaging manner. Many organizations and engineers rely on brainstorming as their primary creative and inventive tool, but this simplistic approach often fails to stimulate creativity in a meaningful way. Unleashing Engineering Creativity goes far beyond brainstorming. This book explores powerful new creativity stimulation approaches and provides recommendations for overcoming self-imposed obstacles. The title says it all. If you want to unleash your engineering creativity, this book will help you and your organization attain significant creativity improvements.

I was at “art camp” this weekend – at my good friend Diana Giambrone’s in Folsom.

We played art camp while her hubby Steve went off to Beer Fest. We visited him on Saturday in Grass Valley and I had THE BEST polish dog ever, freshly barbequed from Lockeford Sausage outdoors on the grill, under the camo patio, but that is another story for another day.

Back at Diana’s we got into full art mode, playing with the Adirondack alcohol inks I picked up while in Bellingham visiting my mom a few days early.

I matched mine up with some paint chips I filched from our trip to Home Depot to get my mom some 2x4s for her wood scroll saw (also another story).

In all, I did 26 of these little pieces while Diana and I rocked out to the Beatles until 2 in the morning.

I will pick one and only one to feature on FB; if you want to see all of them, you will have to click through to my blog, here.

Enjoy! Which one do you like best?

My 2014 Class and Workshop schedule is set. Follow this link for all the deets.

– Art in an Hour – Weds night drop ins. Fast and fun!
– 1 day workshops – beginning and advanced
– 2 day workshops – beginning and advanced
– Collage/mixed media, printmaking, inks, acrylics, beeswax, 2 dimensional and 3 dimensional
– Small groups, larger groups and private 1:1 VIP classes available.

Something for everyone! Discounts when you sign up for multiple classes.

You will always leave with a completed project, or two.