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Making a Living with Your Arts & Crafts Creativity A couple of weeks ago I was driving through Brownstown Indiana. I passed a house and remembered the family that lived there had a laundry and dry cleaning business. I had done a wall sculpture for them back in the early 70's. They had wanted something that had to do with their business. I kind of put it on the back burner and worked on pieces that appealed to me more. Suddenly I needed some money and so got to work on it. It turned out to be a very creative piece. There was the inside of the dry cleaning establishment with a counter, the clothes on a conveyor in clothes bags, a steam press and those canvas carts on wheels made out of copper. I would like to say that my creative ideas come from some some revelation, but this is a case where money was the motivating factor. While doing this piece I learned some new skills that I've been able to use on other pieces. While thinking about this sculpture I remembered a woman from Indianapolis, whose husband was a pharmacist and owned a drug store. She wanted me to do the front of the drug store as a Christmas gift. At first she wanted me to do just the front of the store. I wasn't too excited about it because the front of the store was quite plain and just didn't look like an interesting building. It was about the end of the season here and in those days the winters could be rather lean. I agreed to do the piece. Then she called back and asked if I could do the front and with the large plate glass windows looking inside the pharmacy. She sent me some photos and I was sorry I ever said I would do it. But, as I said "the winters could be rather lean". It was a complicated piece but I worked through it one step at a time. In the end it worked out far better than I had expected. The inside of the store was loaded with detail. Again, the motivating factor was money. In the process I not only got the money but also picked up techniques which I have used in other sculptures. If I sat down and thought about it I'm sure I would remember any number of cases where money was what drove me to attempt a a sculpture that I ordinarily wouldn't have considered. Then again, there have also been many times when an inspiration just hits me. For me ideas are rarely about a finished sculpture. They usually have to do with some problem I'm trying to solve. Like wanting to do something in metal and not quite knowing how to go about it. The word creative is sometimes threatening to people. It’s often used in connection with art work, music, sculpture and painting. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard, “I wish I was creative, I can’t even draw a straight line”. I’ve never figured out what drawing a straight line has to do with creativity. Plus, the more one tells themselves that they are not creative, the less apt they are going to be creative. If you haven’t done much of these types of arts it’s easy to feel somewhat intimidated. Sometimes there is more creativity in the tools that I make to do metal sculpture than in the sculptures themselves. I think of creativity as doing things "a bit differently". Much of creativity is “problem solving”, In other words, “how do I do this”? Meaning, how do I take the idea I have in my head and turn it into a reality? You can take it from me that I don’t always know what I’m doing when I start a new piece. I have to feel my way along. My first stabs at a new project generally will not provide the results I’m looking for. Yet, this always leads me in a slightly different direction and sooner or later I come up with what I intended or close to it. It’s mostly a matter of trying. I just received a photo from one of my customers. This man wanted to do a specific type of sculpture. He gave me some idea of what he wanted to do and I helped him work through it. The piece was rather difficult but he stuck with it and has finished what he started out to do. In my mind "sticking with it" is one of the secrets to creativity. To be sure there are pieces I’ve given up on, but I feel confidant if I had kept with it I would have achieved the result I wanted. Sometimes when one is making a living at their craft time becomes the issue. There comes a point where it is not cost effective to continue. I can almost guarantee you that if you do one of the pieces in my videos, when you are finished you will have a slightly different idea for the next one. When I look at some of the pieces that I did twenty years ago and look at the same piece I’m making today I see a definite difference. Often these changes took place without my even being aware of them. To enhance your self confidence in creativity start thinking about how you are creative. What do you do when you are ready to cook and find that you don’t have one of the ingredients? You substitute! You find a way to make it work. Creativity is “trying a different way”. Back in 1973 I bought a Mig Welder. It was about a thousand dollars and the money came out of the family budget. It was money that could have been spent on food, clothes or a vacation. When I started to weld with it I was disappointed in my results. It didn’t do anything like I had expected. What I did find was that by not knowing how to use it I could make a tree look like it had bark. This was a dramatic effect. I eventually learned how to use the welder and all was well, but in the process I had also picked up a new technique. I’ve used this technique repeatedly over the years. Happy accidents do happen! Another creative approach that I lucked into was how to set the oxygen acetylene flame to cut out copper maple leaves. Since that time I have cut out literally thousands of maple leaves with this technique. I’m getting a little philosophical here, but it seems to me that we have an extra sensory part of ourselves which helps us. It’s like this other side of us says, “okay, you have an idea, go to it, but if you need any help just open yourself to new ideas and one will appear”. Sometimes when I am trying to figure out how to do something in the shop, I will think of it just before falling off to sleep. Frequently the answer will hit me a couple of hours after I’ve awakened. This doesn’t always work, but it has worked enough that I always give it a try when I’m stuck for a solution. No matter how creative a person is if they don’t have the basic skills of their craft, their creative abilities don’t do much good. Learning your craft is what a friend of mine calls, “paying your dues”. Once a person has the basic skills they can start taking those ideas that they have in their mind and begin reproducing them in metal. Having confidence in your creativity is essential. Above I mentioned cooking and the substituting of an ingredient. To increase confidence in your creativity start thinking of all the things that you have done which required, “trying another way”. The more creative history that you can pull up the more confidence you can build in your conception of yourself as a creative individual. Another source of creativity: When I make the small bicycles I do fifty at a one time. First I cut the rods to length and make the circles for the bicycles. From that point on it just a matter of brazing them together. I've done so many over the years that it takes very little conscious attention. My left brain knows exactly what to do. My right brain doesn't have anything to do so it roams around coming up with new ideas. Some of my right brain's ideas are ridiculous but many are very achievable in relationship to my skills, materials and equipment. When you are doing something rudimentary this gives your right brain some freedom to roam. It's always interesting to see what it comes up with. Back to table of contents
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