Yesterday I listened to Michael Krasny's interview of Austin Kleon (pictured above) on KQED Forum. The two men discussed Kleon's recent book, Show Your Work!: 10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered. Basically it's a guide to artistic self-promotion. Most of the material wasn't new to me, given that I work in social media, but I still felt nourished by listening.
Something that came up during their conversation was the concept of "verb versus noun", as applied to personal identity. It's a play on this perspective-tweaking cliche:
// background painting by Fons Heijnsbroek //
Krasny and Kleon agreed that the key aspect of being an artist is making art, not labeling yourself as a person who does so. Kleon emphasized that a sustained daily practice is what cultivates creativity. It made me think, is there a disconnect between how I perceive myself and what I actually do?
My sustained daily practice is multimedia self-documentation. I'm constantly writing tidbits in various places, and I take a lot of pictures for my style diary. But I have trouble framing that in terms of a conventional artistic discipline. In my head these activities are distinct from "real" art, the kind you would find in a literary magazine or a gallery. I regard my projects as insignificant and insufficient. I yearn for something that feels more: more serious and more "good".
Further reference: Austin Kleon's most notorious work is Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative. He also wrote Newspaper Blackout, a volume of blackout poetry that is accompanied by a blog.
No comments :
Post a Comment