Creativity

0=1+e^(-pi*i)

Of the necklaces I've made for 365 Necklaces so far, I think this one has been the most fun. It was a request from my friend Moritz to do what I could with the mathematical imaginary unit, i. He made it easy by giving me his favorite equation for i (see caption above) and I turned it into a very not imaginary necklace.

I used a variety of encodings and color codings. The mathematical operators (= + ^ - * )are done in 7-bit ASCII binary in silver beads. The numbers and letters are also ASCII binary, but red. The two constants, e & pi are picked out in numeric form with silver beads for decimal points (and pi is a circle, of course). I hammered some silver parentheses for a change of pace.

There are still some openings for a free necklace of your own, so if you want one, please comment on the offering post before it is too late.

Waiting to go on Etsy

I am falling far behind in the 365 Necklaces project. If I had followed my one-a-day plan faithfully from March 18th, I should have amassed over 150 necklaces by now. But as of today, I am up to 83.

I will blame the inconvenience of putting things up on Etsy. I love my Etsy shop, don't get me wrong, but it is very easy to procrastinate the product photography, descriptions, pricing, tagging, and the rest. The necklaces pile up and seem impossible to get online.

So I am going to bypass Etsy to try to increase the tally more quickly. Free necklace to the first 36 people who comment. You can even choose your message or mathematical constant and your preferred color (though what you get depends upon what beads I have in stock). In your comment, please include:

1. Message or Mathematical Constant (no more than 10 characters, please)
2. Desired color
3. E-mail (so I can get your physical mail address)

Everyone welcome, so come out of the wordwork lurkers and RSS readers. No strings attached (except for the cord on the necklace) but I've been socking away the profit from my Etsy sales for charity. If you'd like to donate, please feel free to pass me some money via PayPal that I will add to my kitty, or you can donate directly to a charity you care about.

Handmade envelopes

Swap-bot members run crafty swaps that encourage me to try new things. Today I made some envelopes from origami paper, tracing paper, and an old map. I'd never done that before, but it's easy and fun. I like these especially because they are pretty and practical, too.

To make your own envelope:

1. Take an envelope you like, carefully rip it apart at the seams (or Google for "envelope template" for some that you can print out)
2. Use the old envelope as a template on some fresh paper
3. optional: Trace around the template
4. Cut out the envelope shape following the template or tracing
5. Fold up the new envelope
6. Glue the side and bottom flaps together
7. Decorate as desired

It really couldn't be easier and you end up with fun envelopes from your own stash of papers. It's not too late to join the Handmade Envelope swap if you want to give yourself an excuse to try making some.

Collaged pages using antique documents

Yesterday, Greg & I explored his huge collection of ephemera and put together some collaged pages. We had an interesting discussion about whether it is OK to use old things and in the process of using them, destroy them or their context.

These pages I did are a good example. They include two old photos, a telephone line transfer form dated 1953, a 66 year old train ticket from Kyoto, and a tourist pamphlet from the seaside resorts of Chiba prefecture. Did I add value by turning them into something else? Or did I destroy a bit of a stranger's personal history (and thus a minuscule portion of the world's historical record)?

It was difficult to make those first cuts into the telephone form, even though Greg has a total of ten of them and they are obviously long-forgotten beuracracy. They were interesting to examine and to imagine what the process was like and why Tada-san sold his phone line way back when.

Now that form's been reduced to a series of slices - names, date-canceled duty stamps, name stamps - and worked into something that's vaguely artistic and divorced of its original context. Is it better off in a travel collage tucked into Greg's Moleskine and displayed online? It's different. Maybe not better. But maybe not worse, either.

Some collage people scan and reproduce their old documents. That's not a bad idea for really precious or personal things. But it's not quite adequate to print out a new copy of a scanned photo.

I loved working with the old paper yesterday. The texture of old stuff can't be reproduced very easily. The hard, curled-up edges of the 50 year old photos, the weight of the paper ticket, the bone-dry feeling of the form, acid-brittle newsprint of the tourist pamphlet. Those were exciting to manipulate. Now they are cut up and glued down, never again to be enjoyed whole, the way I did yesterday.

I feel a little sad for the objects I destroyed. But maybe I've extended their memory by incorporating them into something new. I don't know. What do you think?

Over on swap-bot, I joined a round robin journal swap. Each participant decorates a notebook and then pass it along to her partner who adds some pages and passes it along again. Each journal makes its way around the circle and after two or three months you get yours back with nine other people's art and entries.

I made a little hand-bound, linen covered journal that I sent to Belgium (but forgot to photograph). On Saturday, I received a painted & collaged sketchbook from Sweden. The Swedish journal had a theme of "seeking truth" so for my page, I drew this:

From the photographs of the other participants' journals I've seen so far, most people create multimedia collages. My pen and watercolor stuff seems flat in comparison but it's what I like to do. I'm a little anxious that simply drawing isn't satisfactory in this case. I've never gotten the hang of collage craft. Still, perhaps I should have sprinkled it with glitter or glued ribbon to the page.

Truth is: the more variety in these journals the better. I should be happy with my contribution and not worry if it's acceptable to others or not. But the truth is: I feel artistically inadequate.

Last night, at Jim's exhibition opening, I realised how lucky I am to have surrounded myself with interesting, creative people who respect and admire one another. It's a remarkable feeling to be in a crowded bar and know that more than half the people there are friends whose work you know, whose pursuits you've been part of, who frequently influence your creativity, who can fascinate you with descriptions of their latest projects, and who are likely to ask you intelligent questions about your art or theirs.

Three cheers for mutual admiration societies!

This past week I've visited the post office three times. I mailed out four books, two letters and six envelopes of small miscellany. Every one of these shipments was prompted by the Internet.

Tod said to me, "Wouldn't it be funny if the Internet was what saved the post office?" From the blight caused by e-mail, he meant. People's creativity, and desire for slower, physical interaction (another nod to the slow life) seems to be doing just that.

It reminds me of a short story I read in 1999. Bruce Sterling's Maneki Neko describes an alternate, underground economy of gift giving that's run by a network of computers. Characters get phone calls and e-mails from the system telling them what to do, when and where. In return for their random acts (usually of kindness) they reap benefits of others' anonymous acts.

The networks I belong to are moderated by computers, but with a clearer cause and effect to the exchanges.

Last week's four books went out from Bookmooch requests. Bookmooch is a book trading service with about 8,000 active members and 200,000 books. You list your unwanted books and other people can request them. And of course, you can mooch other people's books. There's a point system to keep things fair. We've mailed out 23 books since September. Nine books have made their way to our house. Our Bookmooch inventory is here, in case you want to mooch from our list and send me to the post office again.

The rest of the mail out went because of Swap-bot. I got turned on to swaps last year when we did the Creative Perspectives CD swap. Swap-bot members are mainly crafters, so a lot of the swaps are for yarn or buttons or collage bits and some are "artist trading cards" or pen-pal style letters. Searching through the swap listings is great fun and there are always a few that tickle my creative fancy: handmade envelopes, matchbox and film canister fills, music mixes, recipes, handmade stuff...

In Sterling's story the government is much concerned with tax evasion from the gift economy. I wonder if the government will twig to these alternate physical economies and start taxing us for books we mooch, or boxes of tiny beads and buttons we exchange? There's talk about how to manage online game economies - the sale of avatars in Second Life, or gear auctioned off in World of Warcraft.

This week I apprenticed myself to an Italian painter. He's been dead for nearly 600 years.

Cennino Cennini wrote Il Libro dell'Arte about the techniques of the professional painting in the 14th century. It's been translated into English (several times) and is known as The Craftsman's Handbook. It covers topics from drawing to making castings. I am going to see if I can't learn to be a Renaissance artist by following his instructions.

There's a huge appeal in doing this. I feel my life is too digital and sometimes too ready-made. Working with 14th century materials is about as hands-on and basic as you can get. By the end of the project, I will have heaps of new knowledge (though how I will use my ability to mix cement for ceramics, I don't know). And along the way, I'll be creating all different kinds of things - from silverpoint drawings to paint brushes. It's also a fun puzzle to translate from 14th century Italy's culture, customs and materials into what's available in 21st century Japan. I've already hit snags and I'm not even past the first step.

I'm documenting all of this as I go along on a new mediatinker site called Cennino's Apprentice. You're invited to have a look and to comment if you wish.

Glowing shadow

As the late afternoon sun streamed into my office at a steep angle, bringing my daily 30 minutes of winter warmth, I noticed a strange light flickering on my wall. The lenses of my glasses focused the sunbeams in the middle of my shadow.

I had to remove my specs and play a little bit. It was giggle-inducing fun to make the glowing eyes move around the wall.

It's time to review the year's creative projects. I don't think 2006 has been very kind to me. I feel as though it was a year of failures and false starts, but when I look back on everything I've done, I am truly surprised at all I accomplished.

So your last Creative Perspective for 2006 is to get a perspective on what you've done. List out on paper (or in the comments, if you like) every creative thing you remember doing this year: poems written, sweaters knitted, songs remixed, landscapes painted, costumes sewn, pinecones crafted, recipes invented. Then give yourself a good pat on the back for a year well spent!

I do not mean to toot my own horn, but I want to be able to refer to this list when I'm feeling blah and boring and uninspired. So here is

Kristen's Creative Accomplishments 2006

Patterns drafted: Tasty the lobster, dead wolf prop, mock wrap skirt, festive skirt, tetrapockets, metal bird masks, Indian lanterns, 5-minute t-shirt jacket. Recipes invented: 22 originals presented on Recipe Thursdays; dozens more unpublished. Videos edited: UltraBob wedding videos (including Japanese Wedding Wranglers), Hello Tokyo 2006, Hotta Rakashi Museum loop, KC's wedding greeting, Collectik screencasts. Recordings made: 13 chapters read for LibriVox, 2 shows for Hanashi Station; Matsuri in Matsudai; Sado Fringe Drumming. Stuff drawn: countless maps; dot painting; South Stradbroke Island; Tower of London; Jama Masjid (Delhi); untold random scribbles and paintings. Items sewn, knitted, & crafted: 4 pairs of pants; 3 skirts, 1 hat, 1 table mat, 1 pillow cover, keitai cover, several necklaces. People encapuslated in 40 words: 273 and counting... Collaborations enjoyed: Scott de Vacherie; Hotta Rakashi Memorial Museum; Futari.

The other day I was listening to an interview with an author on NPR when a call-in comment made me stop and think. This caller, John from Chicago, explained the powerful creative tool he learned from doing improv comedy.

"Yes! And..."

Whoa. Two words that affirm and springboard to more ideas. How simple. I can see that these two words will create a spark in my creative projects - and in my business and personal life, too.

Let's all say it together (good and loud now):

"Yes! And..."

Last night a large party of us were playing Catch Phrase, a game where you must beat the clock to describe a word or phrase without using the word itself. It's a fun game - for Americans. For non-native speakers, it's a little bit frustrating because it's full of American cultural references. Honestly, "tailgate party" is not a phrase you'll hear in the rest of the world. Our Australian friend (who shall remain nameless to protect the innocent) got stuck with that one. Here's what emerged:

"Someone is following me. I'm in a car and he's really close. He's following me. [pause] Someone is following close behind my car but it's ok...we're having fun. It's a good time!"

None of us guessed what it was, but when the answer was revealed we laughed hard and long. Tailgate party - of course! Such a creative explanation. Yay!

In another game I'm playing 40x365, I wrote today about someone whom I had almost entirely forgotten, but whose influence has certainly carried over into my adult life. I can so clearly remember Mary Alice's design studio - I loved examining all the stuff she had pinned up to her idea board, and the rows of yarn in all the colors and textures available to her. It was bright in her space and always interesting. Mary Alice herself was unflaggingly cheerful and enthusiastic, which I girlishly assumed was the result of getting to spend time in such a great room. Even now, I try to keep my room bright and full of inspiring things.

I'm not sure that I ever properly thanked everyone who did the Creative Perspectives mix trade with me a while back. I should shake your hands, all of you.

These CDs have become the soundtrack for my sewing projects and they work like you wouldn't believe. This week, I have churned out four pairs of pants, two skirts and a smock, developing two patterns, (publishing the better one earlier in the week) and modifying a commercial pattern as I uncovered its flaws.

When I cue up all the Creative Perspectives albums alphabetically by the giver's name, my playlist starts with Finally by the Frames (how I usually feel about screwing up the courage to cut into the fabric!) and ends with Carolyn's Fingers by the Cocteau Twins.

And there's not a single repeated song in the day's music. I love it!

Do you have trouble choosing materials for your projects? I do.

I can easily draft up the plans whether I'm doing a sewing project or some woodworking or jewelry or even a painting. And while planning, I get an idea for what I wood, metal or fabrics I want to use.

Then I go to the store and see everything that's available - all the possibilities I didn't even think about - and I get stuck wandering the aisles for hours, rethinking my plans. "Gee, if I did it with this fabric, I could use that scrap I have a home as a pocket." "What if I used a heavier guage copper, would I gain durability at the expense of flexibility?"

Or I realise that what I want doesn't exist. A couple of weeks ago I drew up plans for a small wooden shrine. The proportions are great and the size is just what I want. But the boards I spec'd are non-standard sizes, so the shrine is not yet built.

Today I went to Okadaya to get three meters of lightweight indigo linen and maybe one other fabric. It took me two hours and I ended up with my three meters of blue, plus 2.5 meters of novelty print cotton, 2.5 meters of brown cotton gauze and two meters of cotton plaid/stripe. I will sew them all up into skirts and pants this weekend, but that's not what I'd planned.

So when you go shopping for materials, do you have a firm idea, or do you change plans mid-stream?

My mother sent me an interesting package a few days ago, crammed with schoolwork, report cards and childhood art. Of course I dropped my work to page through everything and I was interested to see something on my report cards that I had never noticed.

My best marks when I was very young were in Reading Aloud. Teachers commented on my performances and stories (a few of which were enclosed in the package).

Mrs. Walder, nursery school: "She...speaks well before the class."
Mrs Brinster, kindergarten: "She...is completely at ease in performing before the class"
Miss Karatosis, 1st grade: "She is becoming quite a storywriter."

I think these small nods influenced me deeply. In sixth grade, I wrote the Christmas play and performed as MC for the spring school program. And my work now involves reading aloud, writing and performing. But I wonder if my weakest subjects, math & physical education, had been positively remarked upon in 1973, if I'd be more able and skilled in those areas as an adult?

Do you recall any positive youthful encouragement that still holds influence on your creativity? Do you give any to children in your life?

Earlier this summer, there was a craze in the sewing/crafting world for "wardrobe refashioning," taking an item of ready-made clothing and turning it into something else. There were some really clever ideas (here are some photos) and I wanted to play, too.

Finally, today, I grabbed a t-shirt I never wear - it's a little too long and tight - and turned it into a jacket. Took me five minutes to get the shape right with a pair of pinking shears. Now it's a flutter-sleeved, cutaway jacket/overshirt nd I can tell I'll wear it often.

I liked the results enough to write up an illustrated guide to doing it yourself. Writing the instructions took 2 hours. So much for getting any other sewing done today... Now here's your challenge. Reinvent one of your own ill-fitting t-shirts. If you like what you refashion, tell us about it in the comments.

Click for larger image, or download a printable version: 5-minute t-shirt jacket (PDF 232K)

Walking through my neighborhood recently, I've been paying attention to all the new construction. Most of it is terribly disappointing - generic, cheaply made apartment blocks - but I'm interested in all the different exterior facings that are popular now and how thy compare to exterior surfaces from a decade ago and even older ones.

There's a lot of creativity in these. Sometimes they all look the same, but they aren't.

Plasti-brick panel siding.

The new stuff seems to be mainly sheet siding formed into brick and stone shapes. The seams are obvious cracks filled with a finger-width of putty and the bricks don't meet up at the seams. Dreadful. A decade ago, they were using flat brick-like tiles on the exteriors. Stucco remains popular for certain styles of housing. Real stone and brick are hard to find. Wood and tin are relegated mainly to the old and decrepit buildings of 20+ years ago.

I've begun to take photos of exterior surfaces and have started a Flickr set here: Exterior Textures. The first set of photos is from yesterday's trip to Kanagawa. I'll add more from my neighborhood and around Tokyo as I have time.

Taking photos of exteriors makes me dangerous to walk around with, as MJ can attest. As we walked through her neighborhood yesterday, I stopped at almost every building to snap a photo of the siding. Homeowners throughout Hiratsuka were undoubtedly reporting the suspicious behaviour of a foreign person.

I took some of my own advice today. I changed locations to focus on my creative work. I walked over to the local library, and amidst some curious looks from the librarians and child patrons, plopped myself at the reference table and spent several quiet and productive hours poring over books and maps.

I am positive that if I'd tried to do the same amount of work at my office desk with its myriad distractions (all bundled into one tidy computer), I would have failed. But now I have a sense of having progressed on my latest idea, even though it is still in the early stages of planning and deciding. I'm excited about it and hope that in the coming weeks I'll be able to tell you more about what I hope to be doing over the winter months.

Walking home from the Kudan Kaikan beer garden Wednesday night, I reached Iidabashi, about halfway, and decided to spare my left instep from the growing blister my sandal was rubbing into it. I took off my shoes and walked the rest of the way home barefoot, taking great pleasure in the textures underfoot.

First I walked along a brick-paved street. It felt smooth and slightly warm. I liked the way my feet pressed into the cracks between the bricks, as if they would like to imprint me. After that too short stretch, I trod temporary asphalt paving for a while. The prickly uneven holes between tarred pebbles nipped at my toes.

At the intersection on Andozaka, I stood on the dotted yellow edging. I expected the rubbery plastic bumps to be more raised. I bounced around on it a little bit, unsuccessfully trying to position my reflex points for a massage before the light changed. The next bit of sidewalk patchworked old and new construction efforts - more temporary asphalt, a few squares of non-slip concrete, a couple of smoother tarred-over asphalts stretches.

I was pleased to discover how fun it is to climb the 60 stairs in the shortcut to our street in bare feet. The smooth concrete and tile steps are easier to take without shoes. And the summit achieved, I walked heel-to-toe on the smooth heat-painted white border to avoid my street's scratchy paving. The polished granite lobby and carpeted hallways of my building were welcome relief from the more robust exterior textures.

Take off your shoes and walk around outside today. See what you feel. You might be surprised.

Ah, it feels good to finish something. At the moment it seems like I have a lot of loose ends and unfinished projects. But I can reduce the count by three now.

I went through my jewelry project box a couple weeks ago and found a bunch of silver clay and other bits and bobs that I've been meaning to work on. I got down to business and made a trio of necklaces that you can see on Flickr. I like them, even though I realise I need to work on my wire techniques.

Aluminum Choker

I woke this morning to an in-brain concert of Ella crooning "Too Darn Hot." At 7 am, it was 28.3 (about 83ºF) with a likely high of 34 (93ºF). The hot and humid summer is upon us and I'm not enjoying it. I'll spend the next three months waiting for things to cool off again.

Two mornings ago, I was trudging across town slowly working up a sticky sweat. My mood was turning sour as I turned pink. Then I thought about all my friends who just love summer. They crave the sun, the warmth, the freedom they feel in the hot weather. If they can love it, shouldn't I be able to, too?

So I tried it on. I love summer. I thought about all the nicest summer icons - watermelon, shaved ice, picnics, cold drinks, fireworks, seaside holidays, boating, bathing suits, well-muscled lifeguards.

And you know what? My mood changed. The weight of the sun beating down on my shoulders lifted a little. I felt more comfortable, cooler, happier. It didn't last too long, but I tried again later and sustained a happy mood a few minutes more. Exercising a change in perspective may be the way to make summer not only bearable but enjoyable.

I'm persuaded that seeing things from another point of view is an effective way to change your thoughts and mood. Next I'll try to apply this technique to my feelings about certain projects that have me frustrated and worn out.

With the summer solstice approaching and a series of comments on Dr. Dave's blog I've been thinking about seasons. Of course spring, summer, autumn and winter are rational and natural, but why not some other more personal seasons?

I made up a few of my own seasonal sets today. Two are on an annual rotation, the other describes a shorter and more irregular cycle. What seasons can you find in your life?

Creative Seasons
fuss
groove
blank
input
rumination

Garden Seasons
hopeful plans
freshly planted
overgrown
overwatered
wilted
brown

Seasons of Feet
new blisters
soggy shoes
itchy toes
painted toenails
callous formation
extra socks

This week I've been working on illustrations for two different projects. For one, I needed a model. I browsed my collection of photos looking for someone turned at the correct angle, smiling and looking at the camera. No such luck. So I picked up the camera, tilted, smiled and snapped.

Then I went to work in Photoshop, using the pen tool and many layers to create a block-print look face. I made a very simplified version (at right below), using the placement of my features and the general shape of my face, ignoring details and eliminating curves, wrinkles and my nose. It was pretty much the look I wanted to achieve, so I submitted it for comments to the Collectik crew.

And then I decided to try making a more realistic stylised version of me. I added the laugh lines and moles, followed the curve of my face more closely, and gave myself a nose and slightly more accurate eyes.

The reference photo; me, realistically stylised; the submitted face.

I truly enjoy abstracting the essence of something in to shapes and lines. Simpifying an object requires you to focus on positive and negative space, form, shadow. Which details tell the story? What can be discarded? Which lines must be 100% accurate? Which ones can be adjusted and how? Can or should you add details that aren't there?

It's especially interesting when you work with your face as the object. I'm sure a psychologist would have a field day with the details I included or didn't...

When you look at a scene, an event or a person, what do you see? Where is your eye drawn? What runs through your mind - consciously or subconsciously? These are hard questions to answer, but I think they are important to improving your creativity. If you know what you naturally prefer, you can strengthen it, or choose to focus elsewhere for a break or a new perspective.

I've been studying my friends' photos and artworks lately to try to figure out what they see - their creative visions.

Jeremy sees light and shadows played on textured surfaces.

Jim finds old styles in modern places.

Lil sees humanity in the non-majority and the elegance of structure.

Julianne is attracted to color and form.

These are just some representatives of four large bodies of work. By looking more closely I'm uncovering (perceived) secrets of what makes them tick - and I'm starting to discover what I see - color, edges and relationships.

How do you feel about people using the creative output you share online?

I put a lot of materials online for people to use freely - patterns and tutorials. I don't mind, and really can't keep track of, people who borrow an image and use it on their site if they host it themselves.

I don't like it when strangers profit from my freely-given work by reselling it or when they hotlink my images. To me, both are forms of petty theft.

On March 18th, I discovered that one of the files on my server was being used extensively as a hotlinked background image on one of the free website hosts. So I replaced it with a placeholder - nothing as rude as bathtub girl or goatse, though it wasn't exactly polite. Original - Placeholder

This morning I woke up to this mail.

Listen up jerk!! Here is the deal - people put their pictures on line knowing that other people are going to come in and get copies of the pictures. And why you ask ( because you are obviously to stupid to figure it out on your own)? They do it for one of many, many reasons, like advertisement for their product on the page you bring up by clicking on the picture, or to sell me a product, or because they want you to take the picture, and that was the whole point, and they offer many more pictures on the page when you click on the picture, etc, etc, etc. But then there is the even worst of all, the idiots who put a picture up there so they can post their very, very, very, long and boring blog............So, guess what, if you don't want someone to have a copy of your picture, don't put it on line and shut your stupid A** H*** up!!

Well, what do you say to that? In the space of one ranting paragraph I've been labelled a jerk, an idiot, an asshole, and also boring and stupid (twice).

What kind of person writes a note like that in the wake of being told to stop stealing? A youthful American, I would guess. Who else has such violent , self-righteous anger?

So I replied. Politely.

Dear Colleen,

Thank you for expressing your opinion so clearly and strongly in your mail, but I beg to differ.

Regardless of what other people do, I do not put material online for unattributed use elsewhere. I am usually quite happy to allow others to borrow my pictures if they ask politely, and host them on their own server.

What irks me is when people hotlink my images. Perhaps you are unaware of what that means.

Hotlinking is when you put an img tag on your page that points to an image on my server. Doing that means that everyone who goes to your page hits my server first to collect the image. This uses the bandwidth that I pay for. While the image itself might not be so large, multiple hits add up quickly.

In this case, I presume you are complaining about my circles.jpg image which was being hotlinked by a large number of people as a background for their websites. I replaced that image with an alternate image on March 18th.

I appreciate your point of view on the matter of using other people's images, but do not agree. I hope you will respect my opinion and make some technological changes to your website or simply find someone with a more compatible philosophy who will not mind your hotlinking.

Regards,

--
Kristen

Wonder what I'll wake up to tomorrow? I sort of hope she sends me a link to her website so I can discover more of her sparkling personality.

I've been thinking a lot about mixtapes and mixCDs (and m3u playlists).

But I can hardly remember the last time I made a physical tape or CD with a narrative arc, a message, an ebb and flow of tempo and emotion. But I miss that, so here's a mix trade offer for Creative Perspectives readers:

I'll send you a CD of music that always puts me in a creative mood, if you'll send me a creative mix of your own. Leave a comment with your e-mail address before next Friday and I'll be in touch to trade mailng addresses and such.

In the meantime, if you want to find out more about mixtapes or see what other people mix together, here are some resources:

Wikipedia article - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixtape
Tiny Mix Tapes' Automatic Mix Tape Generator - http://www.tinymixtapes.com/amg/
Mixtapes at MusicWiki - http://en.music.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Mix_CD

Over at Simple Sparrow, a crafter's weblog I've just run across via Whip Up, I found a challenge I will take on.

Use What You Have Month
No new supplies in April.

I'm not, perhaps, as crazy about purchasing supplies as some people are, but even so, I've got a sizable stock of paint, papers, fabrics and other creative toys. And lately, I've had a craving to be crafty so I might just get some of these things used up next month!

It's hugely fun to improvise when you don't have just the right thing. What's close enough? How can you modify what you already have? I'll bet you can find all sorts of ways to use the remainders and oddments you have sitting around or maybe, like me, you have some completely new, untouched supplies to work with.

There's even a Flickr group for people to post photos of what they've been making with their stash of old stuff: usewhatyouhave. So go ahead and join in, and make some space for new stuff later this year.

Sometimes I reel at my own denseness when a twist of perspective opens my eyes to the obvious.

Tonight in the conbini, we were picking up some odds and ends to snack on and I saw a lovely can of chu-hi, - flavored soda with alcohol - with a beautiful style that evokes pre-war Japan. The color combination, typface and textured can drew my eye. And then I read the label:

Takara Shochu Highball Dry

Shochu Highball? Shochu Highball? Chu-hi?

Argh! I know that Japanese is full of portmanteau words. Why did the origins of this one never occur to me? Perhaps too much consumption and too little consideration.

Can of revelation. Tasty, too.

I read this quoted on my colleague Chris's weblog, and was struck by its simple insight.

This is from Paul Graham's How to Make Wealth but I think it applies equally to creativity as to commerce.

If you have two choices, choose the harder. If you're trying to decide whether to go out running or sit home and watch TV, go running. Probably the reason this trick works so well is that when you have two choices and one is harder, the only reason you're even considering the other is laziness. You know in the back of your mind what's the right thing to do, and this trick merely forces you to acknowledge it.

When you have a choice between two creative ideas or two ways to implement an idea, isn't it more fulfilling to do the harder one? I get such a sense of accomplishment from hard work. But sometimes I forget that and this reminder is a good kick in the pants to go do the multi-page mapping project I've been putting off for weeks.

My sister told me about the Johari Window yesterday. I thought I'd share it with you so you can try it. This is a 1950's pyschology tool that gives a glimpse into how everyone's perspective is different.

From a list of 55 adjectives, you select half a dozen that you believe describe yourself. Then you ask others to think about you and select the ones they think fit best. By reviewing the answers, you can see how others perceive you, where your idea of yourself overlaps with others' knowledge of you, and where it doesn't.

There is also the other side of the coin in the Nohari Window. It lists negative adjective with the same instructions to choose 6 you feel apply to you, then get friends and acquaintances to select the ones they believe describe your bad aspects.

Of course someone set up an online version , the Interactive Johari Window. And I played with it yesterday. You're welcome to look at my Johari and my Nohari windows. I invite you to add your own set of adjectives to my results if you like. The more people who add their ideas about me, the more I can see how far off my self-perception is.

Should you choose to give it a spin, and I know you, I'll add another datapoint to your window.

Last week I found myself in a favorite art supply store to buy some new technical pens. I've worn mine out with all the drawing and travel (pens do not survive many air trips before they get all splurty or dried up).

In the section of disposable technical pens, I found a brush pen with the same ink as my favorite pens. So I bought one to try.

And what a change it brought to my drawings. For the surprises I find myself putting on paper (I won't call them mistakes) make me feel more like I'm painting than penning. The variation of thickness and thinness (not always intentional) is great fun and has led to interesting and lively drawings.

Here's one that made me realise that the pen is influencing my drawing style:

My friend, Dan, one of the most exuberant and creative people I know, has just celebrated his 40th birthday. To mark this milestone, he launched a new project: 40x365.

Every day for the next year, he will publish 40 words about someone that he knows. "But not just anyone, it's got to be someone I've actually met in person, someone whose name I still remember, and someone who was interesting." He suggests that we all try to list 365 people from our own lives. Good idea.

My list came pouring out up to about 100 people, then I faltered, flailing like I do when I am in a bookstore ("What was the name of that author? There was that book, I read that review..."), but promised I'd pick it back up in a day or two, and haven't yet. I still have a few months before my own 40th birthday, so there's time. I won't wait too long. 365 is a lot of people, even when you travel and live in a place where interesting people come and go all the time.

The handful of Dan's vingettes that are already online are little gems. I particularly like this one:

Betsy said, the day we met, she hated the fact that every boy she introduced to her roommate ended up falling for her roommate. I was so swept away by Betsy I promised I'd be the exception. I was wrong.

Brilliant.

As I mentioned last week, I'm about to start redecorating the house a little bit. This week I moved all of the art on the walls through out the house to our little toilet room. It's surprisingly nice to have it crowded there, but the rest of the walls look so bare. I will start on new things for those walls soon.

While looking at sofas and thinking about new decorations, I'm seeing a shift in my color preferences. We've lived with a black leather sofa and greenish rug for the last 8 years, but I keep thinking "dark brown leather might be a nice change, and maybe a copper-colored rug"

So it occurs to me I might be starting a Brown Period. My two coffee cups, for many years a series of green ones (Tod drinks from blue ones), have been replaced with mismatched brown ones. Over the holiday, I dyed my hair dark brown. I considered and tried out changing the colors on mediatinker from purples to browns, but haven't yet found quite the right combination. I notice myself drifting towards browns in clothing, too. at least while window-shopping.

I'm not sure if this is only a fad of mine or if I am really developing a preference for brown over black , green and violet. I hope I figure it out before I commit to a sofa color.

We've renewed our lease for another two years, so it's time to make some changes around the house. Because the sofa is slowly disintegrating, I need to either reupholster it, or buy a new couch, which means I can think of redecorating the living room.

One small thing that will make a big difference in the room is changing the art. There's not a lot hanging on the walls, and even fewer objet on shelves, but what we have is so familiar that it's easy to ignore it.

I think I'll replace the two small ink drawings in the living room with one quite large piece--maybe something I paint myself. Also I've been playing with sheet metal this week and I see possibilities for a sculptural lamp made from the scraps of my current project.

And moving around some of the other photos and prints scattered around the other rooms should give the whole apartment a bit of a lift. Fun!

This project gives me a double creative dose. Not only to I get to design the new look of my interior, but I will be making the works I want. Maybe you can redecorate one of your rooms with some of your artistic endeavors and we can share before/after photos?

I'm going to close out Creative Perspectives for 2005 with another example of mapping. This time, I've mapped each month's key event--whether it was very good or very bad. There are five bad months and seven good ones. It's a very personal event calendar.

2005 - good and bad. Click for larger view

I tried to abstract the most important thing that happened in each month. Some worked beautifully and turned into lovely little geometric designs or flowing shapes.

On the other hand, a few of these are more concrete than I'd like. July was my trip to Beijing. See? There's Tian An Men, hidden by the red chaos of China. For December, I drew a gallah feather, a gum tree leaf, and one dot for each of the places we'll be visiting in Australia. I should rework both of these without the obvious symbols.

And some are just poorly done. In particular, May was our Golden Week camping trip to Niijima, but I choked for ideas and ended up with little symbols about nature. They aren't even interesting. Definitely need to think harder on that one.

As it turns out, the bad months were much more successful as abstractions than the good months. The good months were mostly about travel and places; the bad months were people problems. I find it easier to abstract emotions than places, I guess.

If you were going to draw out a map of your year, how would you do it?

I wish you very happy holidays and a fresh and insightful new year!

A lot of my maps are abstractions of my emotions. What is the state of my heart? My mental state? How am I being influenced by things I think or see or hear or do? It's cathartic and sometimes I don't even know I'm doing it. Idle doodles become outpourings.

Because I am afraid most people aren't going to understand these very personal maps, I don't often display them. But I reluctantly showed my sketchbook to a friend earlier this year with surprising results. He is extremely perceptive and gave me spot-on interpretations, revealing things to me that I hadn't considered. I think he knows me better than myself, in some ways.

Here is an example I will share that is very map-like. I even let my super-ego label it for the benefit of viewers. It summarises and lays bare a lot of emotions and things I've been feeling this year. There's a great deal unsaid, too.

2005 Heart Map click to enlarge

Feel free to interpret in the comments. Just don't suggest therapy or a regimen of drugs, please.

As a creative exercise, can you map out your year in some way?

For most of this year, I have been playing with map-making.

Some of my maps combine time and space: the last day of the trip to NYC, my trip from Tokyo to Pittsburgh to Paris and back. Some show the tasks I've laid before me. Others lay out the sounds of the space I'm in. I even mapped a really bad sunburn I got over the summer.

For a while I didn't think of these drawings as maps. They were just things I was thinking about and putting onto paper. But in August I picked up Katharine Harmon's You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination and realised that I had been drawing maps for months. The book is filled with clever, intricate, weird, and classic maps that make me feel connected to a long history of map-making.

Now I make a point to draw maps of whatever takes my fancy. Just like I was doing before, only now they have a label.

If you have a gap in your Christmas list, I can recommend You Are Here as an interesting filler that will give you many hours or enjoyable reading and study.

The other night I had a dream about a friend blowing soap bubbles for me as I delightedly chased them around a grassy lawn. The bubbles started out small and numerous but he combined them into bigger and bigger bubbles. I caught a silvery-grey one nearly as tall as me and balanced it on my head. It was viscous and slightly rubbery but delicate and thin and it eventually burst all over me. I woke up then, but I was happy.

Dream bubbles

Today in real life I burst another kind of bubble and I must say I'm feeling happier. I've been keeping a secret from one of my best friends for nearly two years but this afternoon I told her everything. Now my good friend is able to put my odd moods and bizarre behaviours into context. I'm not a total nutter, at least not in the way she imagined.

So it seems that dreams can be not only creative springboards, but springboards for finding real-life actions that express the dreams. Although the dream friend who blew the bubbles that delighted me and the real friend who asked me to keep the secret are not the same person, I can see how bubbles (of delight or deceit) that start small can grow into something huge. But they never last.

I don't know if telling my secret will change my creativity. I feel unburdened, but to be honest, I'm a little worried that my self-restraint was partly fuelling my abstract drawings. Without the stress of keeping silent, will I lose my ablity to create as I have been?

Gather up your sketchbooks and drawing materials tonight and get ready to come out into tomorrow's sunny, brisk weather to draw!

When: noon - 3
Where: Kinokuniya bookstore, Shinjuku (at Takashimaya Times Square)

My tentative plan is to plop down in the Kinokuniya plaza and draw the grey granite and shoppers, then pack up, grab a coffee, and move towards Kabukicho for some frantic color and bustle, and make one last stop in the greener pastures of Shinjuku Gyoen. If you turn up and have a better idea, then our destinations may change.

See you there?

Borrowing an idea from Danny Gregory at Everyday Matters, I'm planning a sketchcrawl in Tokyo. Come draw in the field and meet other people who like to do the same.

Let's meet on Saturday, November 19th at noon at Kinokuniya Bookstore (out side the ground floor entrance) in Shinjuku.

We'll wander around Shinjuku, get in the way of holiday shoppers, and spend 45 minutes or so at three or four locations to draw what's around us. If the weather is too cold, we'll move indoors--goodness knows there are lots of places to get a coffee in Shinjuku--and sketch what we see out the windows.

A recent outdoor drawing

The sketchcrawl is open to everyone. No experience required.

As Danny said in his invitation to his sketchcrawl in NYC, "I would urge you to bring something to draw on and with and a little folding money to purchase hot libations along the way." Good advice!

Hope to see you next Saturday. Feel free to e-mail me if you have questions or want more information.

What do you do with your dreams?

I sometimes have dreams with good storylines. They could be expanded into a short story--sometimes they even feel like a film. But usually I forget them upon waking. And when I do recall them, I don't usually act upon them.

My sister keeps a dream journal. Other friends do as well. But what do they do with their dreams after they write them down? Is the writing an exercise in emptying the brain? Or does it somehow cement the ideas and allow the creative artist to use them?

Here's a dream I had this week. What could I do with this?

A secret band of people were poisoning doctors and teachers (and others) with gas emitted from clock-radios. The gas worked very strangely: if you breathed fresh air, it worked faster; if you stayed in a sealed room with the gas it killed you more slowly. If you only breathed a tiny, tiny bit, then escaped into the fresh air you might survive, but since the gas was odorless, that didn't usually happen. So you had to decide what to do - stay in and die or go out and die.

When I discovered I was in a poisoned room, I held my breath and started collecting things to take outside with me--I remember grabbing the Zous to keep them safe.

There was an antidote, but since the killers were targetting doctors, nobody knew how to administer it.

I suppose I could start that secret band of poisoners. It was highly effective.

Is your creativity enhanced, influenced or improved by drugs or alcohol? Certainly in the history of creative geniuses, there are many tales of drunken brilliance and drug-induced visionary work.

Maybe in some cases, chemicals bring creativity. But how many of us try to induce a creative frame of mind with a little wine (or more than a little) and the drug of the week? Pleasant as it may be, it doesn'tbring on the super-genius that we dream of.

Personally, I find I get too absorbed in my altered-state plans and ideas to record them, then inevitably I fall asleep and when I wake up, the great light of creativity has been snuffed by a headache and fuzzy teeth.

Better for me to create with a clear head and my own, unaltered, vision.

You may have noticed that lots of the Creative Perspectives articles deal with one or more of the five senses. They are, after all, where we get the foundation for many of our ideas.

But have you ever considered which one is your dominant sense? We all are aware of our dominant hand, the one we write with; or our dominant eye, the one we use if we look through a telescope or camera viewfinder. But do you know that you probably have a dominant sense, too?

If you're not sure, think about these questions.

• When you think back on a dinner party do you remember the way the food tasted, or do you replay the conversations, or do you picture the table settings in your mind's eye?
• What most attracts you to your partner(s) - the texture of her hair, the smell of his skin, the color of her eyes, or the sound of his voice?
• Would you prefer to wear something that had a wonderful texture or something that looked great in the mirror?
• When you visit a garden, would you rather touch the plants, smell them, taste them, or look at them?

There are likely a thousand questions to draw out the answer, but I'm sure you get the idea so I will cut the list short. (Feel free to add some questions in the comments if you think of good or interesting ones)

Even through self-examination, it's not always easy to tell what your dominant sense is. If questioning doesn't get you anywhere, sometimes it will reveal itself in the sort of creative projects you take on. A creative cook is likely to have dominant taste and smell; a pen and ink artist is visual; a weaver is probably grooving on touch.

This can be a strength you play up. Or you can turn yourself around and try a new perspective by engaging your non-dominant senses. Visual creatives can try knitting, or people with hearing as a dominant sense might try to paint a watercolor.

Next time you're looking for a twist on your work, try letting your non-dominant senses take over for a while.

A conversation with a trilingual friend at dinner last night got me thinking about non-verbal languages.

She told me the story of how her grandmother would watch Japanese TV dramas with her every week, and each week at 8:40 when the director pointed out very clearly who the bad guy was, she would turn and say to her granddaughter, "Look, see, there. It's him! He's the bad one." Of course, the younger generation had already figured that out from more subtle clues. She had been immersed in the visual language of film since childhood.

Though grammar of film was once the province of an elite set of filmmakers and television producers, these days it's cheap and easy to make your own films with digital video cameras and computer editing. So film is being "spoken" by regular people rather than just watched. It's becoming more common.

In fact, kids are learning to speak it school when they make documentary and storytelling videos as class projects. And they learn by imitation, too. A group of 5th graders in Minnesota did this interpretation of DEVO's Whip It video.

A form of communication I have missed out on is the video game interface. Though interfaces are not a grammatical language per se, the skills a gamer exhibits - ability to quickly parse a visual field for information on ammo, maps, lives remaining, etc-- are changing the way people communicate. There is an entirely new vocabulary in film these days--variable-speed pans and montages, for instance, that convey movement thorugh time and space in a way that is novel.

All of this leads to the inevitable question: what language signal will I need to have pointed out to me in the most obvious and simplest way when I am 80? What creative visual or aural (or scent!) languages are developing now that will change the way a younger generation thinks and communicates?

I'm doing an art project now that I keep putting off. I really want to work on it, but it's causing some controversy here in the McQuillin household. So rather than upset my mate or work out a reasonable compromise or really explain what I'm doing so he's not freaked out, I avoid making much progress. I do a little, get oddly paralysed and stop.

Which sounds pretty rotten until I realise that I've gotten busy on a number of other projects instead. Today I made a headpiece for tomorrow's boating party. Yesterday I finished up my podcast for Hanashi Station. The day before that, I used the last page of my old notebook and went out and bought a new one. I've been organizing upcoming travel, too, which takes so much more time than it should, really.

So the delay in getting this difficult project off the ground isn't completely bad, but I realise I need to address what's stopping me from working on it. Is it really as bad an idea as Tod thinks, or am I just concerned for his feelings?

How do you fill the time when your projects don't run as smoothly as you'd like?

It's time to rethink the holidays. Many of use simply follow along with the nationals and relgious holidays that are presented to us without thinking too much about them. But I suspect that there are more significant holidays for each of us.

For example, my wedding anniversary has more signifigance to me than Easter; I always celebrate the solstices and the equinoxes. But those are the obvious ones.

What about other less well-known occasions? Maybe I should celebrate the invention of the pencil or the Internet. Or Lewis Carroll's birthday. I think I must declare a day to commemorate coffee. Can you imagine what fun we'll have on Cupcake Day?

So this week, make a list of the offbeat and the significant holidays in your life. Then mark them down on your calendar and find ways to celebrate. What's your first new holiday?

Have you ever imagined your perfect personal space? Mine is a large room, well shaded and insulated from the outdoors, but with a wide wall of windows onto a sunny veranda and garden with a fountain. Inside, there is a fireplace for chilly nights, a wall of books, a big table for working on and plenty of storage for supplies and tools. Need I mention the comfy chairs for relaxing and a spacious kitchen for cooking?

I guess that's quite a lot for a room to accomplish, but in my mind's eye, it is the perfect place for me. Relaxing, well-appointed and comfortable in all seasons.

I wonder if I'd be more creative there, or less? I think that maybe a bit of adversity improves my focus and drive to be creative.

I'm a little tired of my drawings. It's not the drawing process itself, but the way the pictures are turning out. Some days it's hard to get into the right frame of mind and as you have seen, they sometimes end up not well-observed or well-executed.

So to find a bit of outside inspiration, and maybe a few new ideas, I stopped into a Bargain Books yesterday. These are the bookstores that take over a vacated shop in a stripmall and fill the place with folding tables full of paperback overruns and out-of-date travel guides. They always have a big selection of large-format paperback cookbooks and crafting guides. And plenty of books on art.

I browsed through some of the "Best of Art" titles: Picasso, Degas, Monet, Calder. Studying those familiar images was helpful, but I realised that I'm not likely to imitate any of their styles. It may be sincere flattery, but I am not interested in copying. So I tucked into a few art instruction books until I found one that wasn't too annoying and put it in the basket.

Though there's nothing new to me in The Sketching and Drawing Bible, it's good to have some reminders of techniques I don't normally use. When's the last time I did a scratchboard? I don't have what I need to do one right now, but with the materials I have in my travel bag, I could try more crosshatching or a different blending technique.

Glad I stopped into that cheesey bookstore. I feel possibilities opening up.

Have you ever wanted to turn on your creativity, but for some reason just can't seem to settle into it? Maybe you're stressed.

"Nah, I'm not stressed. Everything's fine," you say to yourself. "Work's going well, the bills are paid, and the kids are healthy. I don't feel stressed at all. I just can't draw/compose/play/sculpt/write today for some reason."

But maybe it's a different kind of pressure than what we usually consider stressors. I discovered not too long ago that I respond badly to visual stress. When my desk isn't neatly organized--if it's covered with flotsam from other projects or if the wind has scattered my notes across the room--I can't focus on anything completely until things within view are put away, straightened up or tidied.

Some people have aural stress. Noises distract them. A TV in another room, traffic on the street, or something as simple as the wrong music will push them into a state of mind that makes it difficult to think.

Still others get discombobulated by smells, textures, or tastes. I'm sure you can think of a time when a scratchy clothing tag drove you batty until you cut it off, or when the lingering flavor of onions from lunchtime subtly irked you until you brushed your teeth.

So next time you're having trouble getting started or staying in the creative groove, inventory your environment through your five senses. You might find a surprise stressor that you can attend to and then get back to creating.

When you're sitting down to draw, do you pay attention to things other than the visual information in front of you? One morning at camp I listened carefully to my surroundings, put myself in the center of my paper and drew the noises all around me.

a page from my sketchbook

It was an ear-opening experience to translate sounds to the page and the more I listened, the more detail I heard. I wished I'd had a larger sheet of paper and some colored pencils!

This past week in China I experienced many exotic and fascinating places. I drew some, photographed a few (on b/w film with a camera older than me, thanks to Jim). I looked. I listened. I leapt into the unknown and the creative.

But was it enough? It was extremely satisfying and I've returned with a head and heart full of unforgetable moments, scenes glimpsed, and people remembered. I have stories to tell and images to upload, but does it satisfy my lifelong goal of sharing my experiences so fully that someone else understands them?

As I prepare for my next trip and the ones after that, I am in a quandary.

Should I continue to draw my way around the world, making amateurish pictures on paper that engage me mentally and physically but might not convey much about the real experience to the viewer? Or should I bring along the gadgets necessary to record the experiences digitally?

The trouble is that with each device I carry, I put myself at risk of living the moment only through that device. Turn on the audio recording gear and I forget to look at things. Flip open the viewfinder of the video camera and the scents of the place disappear as I look for an engaging motion and sound.

I worry, too, that gear will bewitch me and I'll stop drawing. I don't seem to be able to switch between them very easily. After using the film camera for the first couple of busy days in Hunan province, it was difficult to relax into the slower pace of sketching. Drawing requires me to be in one place for more than 30 seconds.

There are situations when it is simply not possible to draw at length. Is it prudent then to take a pass on capturing those moments at all? Or is it better to turn to technology and risk losing the joy of drawing?

I have a couple of weeks to decide. In the meantime, I am checking out the specs and prices on some tiny easy-to-pack DV cameras, just in case.

We've reached the zenith of long days and now we move into a slow shortening of daily light as Earth makes her way around the sun. For most of us, that means lingering summer evenings and a billiant noon light. Have you noticed?

If you haven't given thought to the sun and its light, get yourself outside this week.
Looking through the window isn't the same as being out in the world, so be sure to get outdoors for this experiment. Take a camera, or a paintbox or your journal and find a way to capture the experiences.

Take an early morning walk--jut after sunrise while the day is still a little bit cool. What color is the world in the morning?

Then go out at lunchtime and have a little picnic in the sunshine. Note the angle of light, the shadows, the color of the light, and its heat.

About an hour before sunset, go out again. The world mellows as the light turns goldy-pink and shadows lengthen. If you can stay to watch the sunset and twilight, you'll be well rewarded with gorgeous lightscapes as lights blink on and the world goes from natural to artificial light.

I'm about to embark on a creative project I have dreamed about for years. I'm going to go draw, sketch, paint and collage in cities worldwide--and rural areas, too. The next six months are devoted to travelling and creating.

I realised recently that there is nothing to stop me from doing this. I can budget my savings to cover the costs. My infrequent work as a freelance video editor, writer, and web monkey is not as valuable to me as testing my creative potential.

Perhaps I will get tired of being creative after six months of focus. If that's the case, then I can go get a job in an office and earn a lot of money doing something dull. But I doubt it; this is an adventure with hurdles, challenges and unforeseen excitement. How can I possible get bored?

If you happen to be in Beijing, Chicago, Nagoya, Delhi, Agra, Pittsburgh, Paris, Shanghai, Adelaide, Uluru, or Brisbane, and see a the woman with a sketchbook sitting in the shade, it might just be me.

Stay tuned for "where to buy a pencil sharpener in Beijing" and "fifteen ways to draw a crosswalk"

"Home is a place not only of strong affections, but of entire unreserve; it is life’s undress rehearsal, its backroom, its dressing room, from which we go forth to more careful and guarded intercourse, leaving behind us much debris of cast-off and everyday clothing."

Oakland, NJ -- home from 1969-1975.

In Oakland, I ran around in the wooded lot behind the house where the neighbor boys had carved out bike trails. I walked to school and picked fallen apples from the trees in front of the house. I played for hours in the glassed-in front porch with our collection of Fisher-Price toys. This is the house where I lost my front tooth and cooked my first meal.

Valley of Lake, PA -- home from 1976-1984.

In the Valley I wandered the woods, carving my own trails. Mom drove me to school but I learned more by reading books in the library and playing with my toys--tools, science gear, and art supplies. This is the house where I had my first period and baked countless desserts.

The places that we live shape us. I am connected to nature because of the trees, stones, hills and gardens of my homes. I recall many details of each house--the distinctive smells of the rooms, the smooth surface of the porcelain fixtures, the color of sunlight filtering through the windows. All of these memories come through in the things I create now.

Home is not only where the heart is, but where the subconcious goes for ideas.

Where did you grow up and how does it shape your creativity?

You probably know about CafePress, the online shop where you can sell your own custom t-shirts, mugs & other stuff.

Do you know abotu Lulu? Lulu is an on-demand book publishing service. What a cool thing! You upload your content and with a few additional steps (choosing cover artwork, setting a price, and so on) you have a ready-to-sell book. It doesn't cost you anything.

Lulu does more than books. You can publish and sell your music, photography or art through Lulu as well.

This seems like a god-send for us independent creative types. Who's going to be the first Creative Perspectives reader to publish through Lulu? And what are you going to publish?

I am well motivated by pleasure and fun. Money is useful but I'd rather be underpaid to work with people I like than to be overpaid to work on a project with a bad team.

Two days ago, I jumped into the end stages of a web development project. My role is minor (porting content from the old site to the new) and fair drugery, but I'm enjoying it tremendously.

It's all because of the guys I'm working with. Jeremy Bogan and Daniel Bogan, at Segment Publishing in Sydney are fun, smart, and smell like elderberries. I may never meet them in person but we get along famously through intstant messaging. We've joked and teased, while excavating a mountain of tasks quickly and efficiently.

My very favorite jobs have been with good teams. The Multimedia Development Center crew at Duquesne in 1997 was a dream--everyone was intelligent, capable, willing to share knowledge and able to be silly while working hard. It was a highly creative environment. We've all gone our separate ways, but we keep in touch and I think all of us would choose to work together again if we could.

The MediaSense team here in Tokyo is another group of hard-working, hysterically funny people; I always free up my calendar when they call me for a last-minute job. We make videos for a corporate client and even though it's always "the same thing as last time, but different" we manage to be creative within those limitations.

So for me, even toil becomes creative play when I like my collaborators.

A couple of weeks ago, Tracey was asking me why some colors look better on people that other colors. "Maybe you can explain it on Creative Perspectives," she suggested. Well, that's a tall order--books have been written about color theory & professionals charge an arm and a leg to give you a personal color session.

But it's possible to explain the basics in short order. In fact, I had fun yesterday playing with a personal color palette.

My personal color palette

First I took a close-up photo of myself in daylight. I brought into Photoshop and sampled the color my skin, eyes, hair and the red of my lips (which should be about the same color as when I blush).

From there I played with a nifty color tool Color Coordinator which allowed me to enter a color value (which I noted from my photoshop sampling) and view monochrome values (the first two columns above), alternate complements (120º & -120º), complementary (180º), and one of the tetradic colors (90º) on the color wheel. I adjusted brightness in horizontal bands and saturation in vertical bands to give a wider range of examples for each color.

And it turns out that some of these colors are already in my wardrobe. I noted the general colors of my current wardrobe in dots along the side. I'm not doing too badly, though I suppose I need more blue in my life.

Remember the college radio station you listened to late at night? It was an odd mix of musical styles, on-air personalities and funny PSAs...and if you were more than 500 meters from the broadcast tower, you couldn't listen in.

A new project--an online radio station--is taking off and you are invited to play. Hanashi Station seeks people to produce their own online radio programs (podcasts).

Podcasts are downloadable MP3s that you can listen to on your computer or your MP3 player (named after iPods, podcasts actually have nothing to do with Apple or iPod).

Hanashi Station is scheduling 10-15 minute programs to air July through December. Have you ever wanted to have your own show? This is your chance.

Content must be related to Japan, but pretty much any format goes: talk, interviews, readings, environmental sounds, field reportage, news, rights-cleared music. Producers don't have to live in Japan to particiapte; from anywhere in the world you can do a program about any Japanese topic: anime, haiku, gardening, translation, or whatever you like.

And it's all my idea. Over the last few months some friends have talked about doing podcasting, but nobody has enough time to do anything regularly. MJ, Jim, Tod & I combined forced to put this together.

Hanashi Station will run a six-month trial, with shows going out from July through December. The first announcement yesterday nearly filled up the starting slots, so it looks like there will be more show times added to the schedule.

If you want to podcast at Hanashi Station, please e-mail www at hanashi-station.net

When I was about 14, I won a prize for a drawing in a coloring book contest. My picture was not a masterwork but it was in perfect coloring book style--big, simple shapes that reproduced well as outlines to be colored in my little kids. I knew what the contest needed and I aimed for that. I think the subject of my drawing was villagers with pitchforks chasing a dragon or storming a castle.

Winning the contest was embarrassing; the drawings were turned into a coloring book given away at the next year's summer festival and the originals were on display in the same room with the juried art. My classmates saw this childlike drawing when I knew I could do better work. Horrors!

Fortunately not all teen art prizes send tremors down the spine 25 years later.

Helen's prizewinning pottery

My niece has a creative prize to be proud of. Her pottery bowl, Fantasia, has just won the Lorraine Franckiewicz Art Award in a juried exhibit in her town.

Unlike my coloring book drawing, Helen's contest entry shows her true talents. She's been making pottery for about two years and look at the beauty she can create from clay and glaze. This is a prize that is well-deserved. Congratulations, Helen!

Well, our house robber has struck again after we laxly left the door unlocked when we came home last night (this morning at 5 am, actually). He's ventured farther into the apartment, opening two briefcase bags in the hallway and stealing 5,000 yen in coins from a basket tucked out of sight under a table in the hall.

So now I'm thinking of ways to catch this bastard in the act. Of course I will set up a motion detecting webcam to record any activitiy at the door. Perhaps I will also install a very loud buzzer to wake up not only us but every tenant in the building.

But what I really want to do is to invent a really novel way to incriminate him. I envision a Rube Goldberg contraption that sets off a chain of events when the door opens--a rope tied to the doorknob pulls upward as the door swings out, lifting a ... what would you add to the machine and what would it do?

I've observed that there are two ways of figuring things out: observation and action.

I'm an observer. I look at something new, study it, and gain understanding. Sometimes I'll test it out after I have observed.

For example, when Jeremy was teaching me a swimming technique, he showed me by stretching his arms in the air the way they should move through the water. I watched, but didn't mimic his actions in the air. I observed him, thought about how it worked, imagined it in my muscles. After I got it in my head, then I tried it. I do well with swimming videos--watching them over and over until I see all the fine points. Then I try the movements in the pool. Success isn't complete until I've acted, but the understanding is there before I hit the water.

Many of my friends are the opposite--they take action to learn. They see something new, fiddle with it and gain understanding. I assume they think about it as they are manipulating it. Or maybe they save thought for after they've played?

This difference in learning sometimes causes trouble between me and Tod when we're shopping. "Honey, could you please not break the display model/bang that instrument so loudly/mess with that thing we can't afford to buy?"

This week, I'll be camping on Niijima so there should be plenty of new things to encounter. I'll try to break out of observation mode and see what happens when I act on things to discover their secrets.

Do you have a shape, sign, or mark that you consider your personal symbol? Something that resonates with you or sums up your connection to the world at the moment.

It might be something you habitually doodle. What shapes and patterns end up in the margins of your notebooks? I map one-period sine waves and complex mazes that look like circuit diagrams. I sketch stars, sometimes in constellations. Tod draws a squiggle that he was surprised to learn is the astrological symbol for Capricorn.

Or maybe your mark is a monogram you've designed. I created a Scott Kim inspired inversion of my initials when I was unmarried.

You might use something more representational. When I was in junior high grade (about the time I wanted to be called Kip), I decided I wanted to be a helicopter pilot. I signed all my school papers with the "k-copter" instead of my name. A little later on, I signed my name but added a pine tree and a star.

Think about your symbols and they mean to you--do they reflect your creativity? Mine are mostly related to science (sines and circuits) and the sky (stars, helicopters). These are factors that influence my best work and designs, as it turns out. I take a scientific approach to art and creativity. I'm drawn to metals and math. I like finding patterns in randomness and inventing stories to go along with the constellations I create.

So now I wonder whether if I stuck to the sort creative lines my symbols suggest, would I produce even better work?

It seemed like winter would never end, but at long last April's sunny days are warm. Today the weather is glorious and I'm feeling the urge to be outside. But I have work to do.

Well, work's not going to stop me from enjoying this glorious day. I'm taking everything outside for the rest of the afternoon. Having a laptop makes that easy, but I think I will do some of my work on paper today to refresh my brain and give my tired eyes a break from the screen. I have some site maps to draw up and I need to think about the effects in a section of the film I'm working on.

If you can sneak an hour outside with your work today (or on the next sunny weekday) see how it affects your mood and your creativity.

This week, we're going old-school with our creativity. I'm sure you remember (perhaps with some dread) the compare-contrast papers from your 9th grade composition class. With practice, you should have gone from basic observations to more finely noted details and finally on to the larger ideas that linked your compared objects. But other school distractions--geography homework, soccer practice, the cute boy in trigonometry--likely prevented this from happening.

So let's brush up our comparative skills. Take two things that fit together in a category--fictional characters, bottles of wine, politicians, songs--and prepare to write.

If you're not sure how to start, try simply listing similarities and differences. Get the obvious points out of the way, then let yourself have fun with some of the larger cognitive leaps.

Once you have a list, think about what's important in it and what is interesting. Can you combine ideas from the list into one "treatment" of the subject?

For example, apples and oranges are both fruits, but they grow in different climates, mature in different seasons, and are combined with different ingredients in the kitchen. You could take those points to write about how geography influences what we eat.

One of the more challenging aspects of being a creative person, especially if you're a freelance whatever-you-do like me and so many of my friends, is promoting yourself. How do you let people know what you can do, and do well, without coming off as an overinflated egotist?

You get one of your other creative friends to write your PR materials.

This week, make an arrangement with a creative friend who knows your work well and offer to trade puffery for puffery.

How do you want to promote your friend? How about a press release about a recent project, a brochure for her company, or a letter to send out to potential clients. Talk it over first to find out what will work for her.

A bit of reciprocal publicity lets you see your world from another perspective. You might be surprised at how glamorous and exciting your work is to an outsider. Give it a try and see what happens.

Imagine that your creativity is an entity of its own. What does it look like? Does it have a shape? What color is it? Does it move or is it static? Does it have a name? Where does it reside--in you, near you, somewhere apart?

My creativity is a sphere that's slightly fuzzy on the edges. The blur is from scattered particles outside the denser main body of speckles that are all single creative ideas. I see it as the photo of a distant elliptical galaxy.

My creative sphere changes sizes. Sometimes it's small and dark, like a red dwarf star or a galaxy on the edge of being engulfed by a black hole. Other times it expands, loosening the bonds between the individual points that comprise it, and changes color to a bright creamy white.

Regardless of size and color, my creativity hovers in front of me at eye level but pans left and right randomly. It doesn't have a name. It's quite a stellar image, isn't it?

Armatures are wire frames buried deep inside scultpures for structural support. They are a necessity for providing strength to the clay and direction to the artist.

Painters use frameworks, too. If you look at many of the old masters' paintings, you will find evidence of their armatures--figures arranged in the golden mean, root rectangles and other polygons. Once you learn to see them, they are everywhere.

I believe any creative person can benefit from armatures. I use them all the time in my creative endeavors, although rarely physical wires or even the golden ratio. I use time, patterns, and symmetry to structure my videos and writing. Since I am often telling documentary stories or explaining things, my choice of armatures works out well for the audience as well as for me.

There are people who say that structure limits creativity, but I disagree. I create improvise on top of my frameworks. Having an armature to drape ideas on allows me to set a creative desitnation, discard the paths not taken and focus on creating. An armature allows for flexibility and change, but makes sure that I achieve what I intended.

Here is a new set of five quick and easy creative activities on printable cards. This set takes a slightly dark turn to match my mood this week. But never fear, these activities are more likely to buoy your spirits than to bring you down. Be silly with them and see where they lead you.

If you have ideas to share, pass them along and I'll include them in upcoming sets.

Creativity cards, set 3 48K PDF

• Shades of Grey
• Fifteen Faces
• Break Something
• Emergency
• 50 Ways to Leave

Did you do any of last week's creative activities? I baked a pie--the coconut cheesecake featured in yesterday's Recipe Thursday.

Here is a new set of five more short, fun things to do on printable cards. If you have ideas to share, pass them along and I'll include them in upcoming sets.

Creativity cards, set 2 48K PDF

• Jump Rope
• Three Things
• Fix Something
• Pants!
• Have a Bath

I think my year in school was labeled Grand Guinea Pig Class. It seemed that every year there was some new textbook or learning tool that we had to try. Most were a bust, but I really loved the SRA reading lab. It was a box full of slick colored cards with independent study exercises to improve reading, writing and other language arts skills. My favorite series asked you to finish a story that they started with a half a paragraph or so.

Today I decided to do a set of "creative cards" to help improve our creative skills, kick start our senses, and develop our sense of whimsy. I'll do five a week until I run out of ideas. You are, of course, invited to suggest some activities.

Creative Cards, set 1 (52K PDF)

• Bake a Pie
• Tie a Knot
• Match a Color
• Write a Song
• Create a Hat

You can print these out onto cards, so get yourself some plain 3x5s and a box to keep them in.

Last year, I set my self up with a new year's resolution to "Do More." And I did quite a bit in 2004. I learned to knit, created over a dozen short films, wrote tens of thousands of words, sewed some clothes, invented a scores of recipes. When listed out, it's quite impressive.

But it would be more impressive still, if I had finished everything I started. By the end of the year, I had so many loose ends that I couldn't keep track of what I was supposed to be doing. I was flailing and felt like I was failing, too.

This year's resolution is Finish More.

My list of unfinished projects includes things from as far back as 1999. There are a few new projects that are just-born, and a lot of stuff in between.

I'm allowing myself an hour a day to work on them. It's effective! This week I finished up some small things and I'm making excellent progress on a bigger project. This positive action fires my enthusiasm to finish even more. Some days, I sneak in another hour or two to get things done.

It's 8 am now, and time for "Finishing Hour" so I'm off. Hope you'll find some time to finish a creative project today.

This new year is bringing a series of vivid dreams that make me want to act on them. Here are three memorable dreams and what I'm doing (or might do) to make them come true.

Book Dream: I bought a graphic design book, marked down from $1,600 to only $1,000. I purchased it even though it was an advance release copy and the typesetting was bad, but it was stolen from me by a teenaged girl who shape shifted into a middle-aged woman who denied the theft.

Creative connection: Write that book. I paged through it before I bought it--I know what it was! Or if the book doesn't work, I could turn the strange story into a screenplay.

Clothes Dream: I pulled things out of my closet to pack them for a trip but none of the clothes were familiar. I particularly remember a black skirt with red flowers done in a 1950s French style.

Creative connection: Sew that skirt and some of the other things I saw in my closet. Yesterday, I searched for the fabric to make the skirt. No luck, but I'll try again.

Food Dream: I arrived (maybe from the trip I was preparing for in the previous dream) just in time to attend a cast party for a show that all my friends had been in. Everyone was off buying wine and supplies, so I spent most of the dream babysitting big slabs of beef that were being marinated and talking to a the wife of a friend about the show and cooking.

Creative connection: Needless to say, I'll marinate steaks in the near future and invite my friend's wife to dinner. The real message for me in this dream is to produce a play. I have a script written that I'd like to see on stage, and have been thinking about hosting some dramatic readings of plays and scripts just for fun.

For the past few years, I've made a point to summarise my year in exactly 25 words. It's not easy to do and I end up skipping some of the main points but now that I'm gaining a collection (2003, 2002, 2001), I appreciate the effort I've made to try to get something down.

After a good deal of tinkering, this year's 25 word summation is presented below. Feel free to post your 25 words in the comments.

Did more, finished less.
Strengthened friendships and traveled.
Constructed 18 videos, knitted scarves,
Shared my pencils and my love.
Still seeking realisation of my principles.

There are no towering tannenbaum for sale here in Tokyo, unless you are a millionaire or plan well in advance. I make our holiday tree from whatever we have in the house, plus a small stock of 100 yen shop decorations I found a few years ago.

This little burst of creative energy is one of my favorite things about the holiday. We've had trees made of paper strung from light fixtures, bamboo poles tied into a teepee shape, and rosemary plants decorated with red velvet bows.

This year's tree was a stack of seventeen wine glasses carefully balanced, then decorated with beads and illuminated with candles. Elegant. Risky.

I was on edge throughout dinner and gifts, but the curtains did not catch fire, the beads did not melt, nor did an earthquake tumbled the arrangement. Merry Christmas