When I re-started The Creativity Club at the beginning of the year, I wanted to explore big ideas I thought artists should explore: form, inspiration, perception, light. I wanted to get to the ideas behind the making of things. But unfortunately I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about. I am no art teacher. I know very little about the ideas behind art. The last art class I took was in high school for crying out loud.

My list of challenge ideas were at best difficult, but mostly just muddied and off putting. I needed to stop being so serious! Besides, for me it is through the making of things that the big ideas come about. The other way is too hard. So with that in mind, I threw that list away and started a new one. [this is the only thing I have on the list so far, so if you have any creativity club ideas please comment!]

THE CHALLENGE:

1. Mend something! Make the mending visible.

THE SMALL PRINT

This is pretty self explanatory, I think. There is some article of clothing in your house that has a hole in it. Fix it, but don’t hide the fixing. Here are some ideas to get you started:

1. patch up your woolies 2. elbow patch 3. creative mending 4. visible mending as art form 5. sashiko tutorial 6. how to patch a hole with crochet

YOU HAVE ONE WEEK FOR THIS CHALLENGE

That means next Monday, March 23. Tag your work with #thecreativityclub so we can see it. This should be fun!

Welcome to the 2nd challenge of the year for The Creativity Club!

I think all creative processes start with copying. We copy people we admire, famous artists, not so famous artists, ourself. We copy things we think are beautiful, useful, delicious, helpful. We copy dinners and dresses and drawings and other things that start with D–and things that start with all the other letters too.

1. spring 2010 2. fall 2010 3. spring 2011 4. fall 2011 5. spring 2012 6. fall 2012

I feel a little sheepish about writing this post, but I think I should. For the first time almost 5 years, I’m not sewing along this kid’s clothes week. As I pulled together all the buttons from all the KCWs, I counted how many I’ve done. 14!  14 including the very first one where it was just me ;)

1. stop knocking yourself out 2. why not just start 3. just because you are good at being busy does not mean that being busy is good 4. the hard way is the easy way

Amazing submissions this month for the creativity club challenge: inspire yourself. I picked a few of my favorites, but I urge you to go see them all. They can be found under the hashtag  #thecreativityclub. If you’re not on instagram, you can see all the tagged photos on the elsie marley facebook page (in the instagram app on the right). 

A few people wrote to me saying that the first creative challenge this year was too difficult. I didn’t mean it to be hard, but I did want it to be a bit of a stretch. The challenge is:

…quote yourself and illustrate that quote. Pick something you thought or said and write it beautifully.

The title of this challenge is “inspire yourself” and maybe that’s where the problem lies. When we think of being inspired we think of lofty, erudite, carefully crafted, words of wisdom that are supposed to move us. Don’t do that. Not because you won’t succeed (you might) but because it probably won’t be true–true to who you are. That is what this challenge is about, listening to yourself and writing down what you hear.