Streams of Thoughts 1: Creativity

I used to think that sketching and painting are the "highest" form of art. I admire the flowing of colors in western paintings and the beautiful transition of light in sketching; however, I used to look down on modern drawings because I thought they are meaningless.

When I first came to America, I learn one semester of drawing and I did not like it. I remember one assignment was drawing the outline of a hand. I tried to study the structure of hand and did a precise sketching. However, I got a B because the teacher said, "do not copy your hand, you should let your pencil 'flow' on the paper." We did at lot of creative drawings with whatever material we wanted to use; I could not grasp the idea of abstraction and hated my own drawing of object "without basic 3 D structure".

Everything changed after I started taking Sculpture class, and I started to understand the idea of Creativity. You can use any materials to make whatever form you what in Sculpture class, and to me it seems even bolder than Drawing class. I tried hard to pull the long-shut door of creativity and I was amazed by what I found. I saw a girl dropping pigments on broken glass, I saw a person embedding grass on a hand model, and I found myself turning a big chunk of clay into a  real size human head with explosion on one side of its face and newspaper coming out of it.

By breaking the fetter of material, I was able to think outside the box and open the door of creativity. Once the door is wide open,  there is no way to resist the fantasy world behind it. I started to explore new materials such as wax, clay, wire, everything.

I did do a lot of creative things for fun in the past, such as paint a T-shirt and draw on a turtle shell, but this time, it is WITH PURPOSE. I'm trying to search my own art style by trying to combine different materials. I worked with snow in the winter like I was carving a marble sculpture; right now I'm doing a clay head which is going to eventually turn to half metal half clay; I'm excited to try a painting on canvas using watercolor style combined with sketching; I plan to carve a watermelon into a cluster of roses this summer.

Albert Einstein once said, "Imagination is more important than knowledge." I truly believe it. I was once narrow-minded, and now I'm eager to try everything. I believe that the first step to achieve something is to dream about it; creativity is not only important to art but also crutial to life. The idea of exploring and thinking outside the box can apply to any aspect of our lives.

I'm excited to do more creative art projects, and I'm excited about my life!