ArtWork: Seeing Inside the Creative Process

Art Work reveals the artistic notetaking habits of an astonishing range of artists, filmmakers, writers, designers, and other creators by granting rare access to the journal pages and other visual materials they use to capture and foster their work.

From Sasha Frere-Jones’ forward:

As artists, we often prefer the note to the final product; it is an object that is ours alone, free of explanatory fuss and ornament. A mundane list next to three pages of earnestly revised text—shouldn’t we have published it just like that?

From Ivan Vartanian’s introduction, the distinction between journal and notebook:

Where the journal is meant to serve as a daily (or intermittent) record of observations and reflections on a life and its experiences, the notebook is meant as a place of work—for solving problems, jotting an idea, figuring a sequence, determining a position, shaping a phrase. Where the journal documents the life of its owner, the notebook documents the life of an artwork or artistic process.

Here’s Tony Kushner, talking about writing by hand:

Most of my best ideas have not been things that I knew I had in my head. I’ve been surprised by them…and it’s always the case that if you just start moving words around on a piece of paper…if you start limbering up your fingers and get going, you will find your way in.

And Richard Hell:

Notebooks, it seems to me sometimes, are the ultimate art form… Notebooks might be as good as art gets in our time.

(images via grain edit)

creativemornings:

Woohoo! The moment you have all been waiting for.. the very first CreativeMornings/Austin talk is now live online!

The speaker is none other than Austin Kleon, the force behind Steal Like an Artist and Newspaper Blackout. Austin speaks on April’s theme of the future, by attempting to set the ground rules for future discussions between artists and designers—in terms of how we discuss our work and process.

“I think we’re living in this mass fetishization of creativity,” he says. “And you can tell that from the way we use ‘creative’ as a noun.” He goes on to breakdown some of his previous advice: Do Good Work and Share It With People, on what is good, what is work, and how we should share.

Excellent talk. Watch it here.

A transcription and the slides from the talk are here.

Astronaut Chris Hadfield’s transmissions from space

Couple of cool facts about astronaut Chris Hadfield, the commander of the International Space Station who’s been Tweeting, Reddit-ing, and YouTube-ing from space:

1) The idea to go behind the scenes with social media was hatched 3 years ago at the Hadfield family dinner table — the Hadfields were trying to figure out how to generate interest for the Canadian Space Agency, which is facing major budget cuts. Hadfield wanted is “to help people connect the real side of what an astronaut’s life is – not just the glamour and science, but also the day-to-day activities.”

2) Hadfield does the posting and responding himself, but Hadfield’s son, Evan, is his unpaid assistant, doing most of the maintenance work: “I make it so that he can simply float up to the computer and post without wasting any of his valuable time.” (I love his Twitter bio: “Internet janitor”) Evan also fed his dad tips about what was going on down on Earth, so he could snap photos.

3) When he gets back: “He’s gonna land on Earth, he’s probably gonna vomit on himself, and then he’s going to pass out. That’s what happens when you come back from space.”

I love this quote from Canada’s first man in space, Marc Garneau, who said he wished he’d had social media during his flights:

“You need that feeling that you haven’t been abandoned up there. You need to feel that there are a whole bunch of people on the ground that are watching over you,” he said. “I think the connection is much stronger now because [Hadfield] has all these people who are tweeting to him and he’s tweeting to them.”

Filed under: show your work

creativemorningsaustin:

Austin Kleon at CreativeMornings/Austin from CreativeMornings/Austin on Vimeo.

Here’s the text and slides if you don’t feel like watching it all…