Dec 1-6

At Black Mountain College, the process of creating, doing, making, wondering…all was more important than any end product. Though you likely plan to create an end product with your mini or micro skeins contained within this Creativity Box, we hope you will feel very free to explore and create in an open-ended way with the other materials enclosed within. We hope, too, that any negative messages you have internalized about yourself as a creative person, or about who is an artist vs. a craftsperson, or about perfectionism or any one “right” way to do something or work with this or that tool — all will be tossed out the window as you embark on a creative journey over this ever darkening winter month.

If it would be helpful to you, you could even begin with a little ritual of preparation: write down (or just think about) any negative messages you have internalized about yourself in relation to art or creativity. Once you have gotten them all out onto paper (or just thought them out), you could burn them, bury them, tear them up, or any other form of act of rejection and refusal!

As a human who can take up materials and tools and transform things, YOU are an innately creative being.

Black Mountain College (as you will read more about at the beginning of this group), was “founded on educational principles which developed the individual’s abilities to learn and develop through a process of thought and exploration. This was why the arts were seen as central to the curriculum. Through practical engagement with materials, forms, music, and theatre, students could develop better understandings of the world and integrate theoretical knowledge with their own experience.” (BMC website)

It was the “HOW” not the “WHAT” that BMC wanted to foster amongst its students. And that is our aim over the coming 24 days of this Creativity Box. Each day we will learn about an artist who studied at Black Mountain College or who in someway connects back to the BMC legacy, especially its fiber arts legacy. Through questions or ideas inspired by each artist’s work, we will play with some materials and see what emerges. And the “emerging” is not only things that we may make, but what ideas about our creative process as fiber artists emerge? what energies and percolations about how we live and work and play in the world emerge that help us connect more deeply to our creative selves?